Gretchen Witless

First Gavin Newsom tried to make nice with MAGA.  Now it's another governor's turn.

Unlike Newsom, however, who only sought interactions with high-profile Trump supporters on his podcast, Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, embraced Donald Trump himself.  Even as Trump postponed sweeping tariffs for ninety days in light of the global economy cratering (and some foreign manufacturers, like automakers, holding back their products at American ports!), Whitmer said that she was not against tariffs outright and added that she understood Trump's motivation for initiating them.

If Whitmer understood Trump's motivation for initiating tariffs, she would be against tariffs outright . . . at least the sort of destructive tariffs Trump is pushing.

Whitmer could have stopped there, but she then met with Trump at the White House to discuss issues and crises pertinent to her state, like an ice storm that hit the northern part of Michigan, and the result was that the electricity surrounding her 2028 presidential ambitions, like the electricity for northern Michigan residents, went out with a loud thump.  She unwittingly found herself in the Oval Office while Trump signed executive orders demanding investigations of Republican critic Miles Taylor for calling Trump to task over his potentially illegal actions in his first presidential term and of former Trump official Christopher Krebs of having declared the 2020 presidential election to be free fair and secure.  (Trump also intimated that Miles Taylor could be guilty of treason, which, like publishing a blog critical of Trump could be soon, is a capital offense.)  As a visibly nervous Whitmer looked on, Trump praised as was a "very good person" who has been doing an excellent job."

Remember when Elissa Slotkin said that the energy for the top of the Democratic ticket in Michigan in the 2024 presidential campaign wasn't there?  Well, that's why Whitmer is making nice with Trump.  As Allan Smith and Henry Gomez of NBC News wrote, "Whitmer is among a handful of prominent Democratic governors viewed as potential presidential contenders in 2028.  But unlike some of her contemporaries, Whitmer has chosen to seek out a stronger working relationship with Trump in his second term. Trump won her state last fall, and Whitmer views herself as more of a center-left moderate with a middle-of-the-road, Midwestern constituency — one that is receptive to Trump’s message, including and especially on manufacturing and tariff policy."

Whitmer forgot one simple fact, though . . . her strategy might be effective in winning Michigan in 2028, but as a national candidate for President, she has to carry enough other states to win the Presidency.  And Democrats in other states are appalled at what she just did and said, with one Democratic operative calling it "a disaster."

Once again, I am for dissolving the Union and breaking up the United States into separate countries.  Whitmer might still be able to get elected president of a post-Union Midwestern republic.  But after how she just "handled" Trump, no one outside of Michigan wants her to run for President of the United States.  Probably even no one inside of Michigan as well.

Liberation?

I have too much to cover in one post, but as I have other things I want to talk about later on on this blog - possibly including comments about my other blog, which I am shutting down later this spring - I'll try.

First, Liberation Day.  Yesterday was Liberation Day, because Donald Trump said it was the day we'd been liberated from foreign domination of  American market.  We were "liberated" from German cars, French wine, Japanese electronics and Swedish furniture because Trump is placing an average tariff of 29 percent on all countries still part of the Paris climate accord.  As a result, every imported product sold here will be priced high above what they should be.  And any products produced domestically, be it by an American or a foreign company, will be priced higher because the manufacturers will know that they can't be undercut.  

Trump, by the way, ordered domestic manufacturers, including the Paris-based Stellantis, not to raise prices of their vehicles.  The muffled sound you hear coming from Detroit is suppressed snickering.

As for foreign products . . .  well, let me use Volkswagen as an example.  Trump's tariffs are meant to discourage us from buying foreign vehicles and en-courage us to buy Chevrolets and Fords.  Apart from the latter half of the nineties, when I owned a Toyota Tercel out of necessity, I have owned nothing but Volkswagens since 1990 because domestic cars are so dull.  Now, more than ever, I'd better hang on to my 2012 Golf tooth and nail because tariffs will raise prices so high on foreign cars that the Golf GTI and R (imported from Germany) and even the once-cheap Jetta (imported from Mexico) will be out of reach.  Parts for my car will be expensive enough, since Trump is imposing tariffs on them too.  And all VW will offer for sale in America are SUVs, just like Chevrolet (except for the Corvette) and Ford (except for the Mustang) now do.

In short, everything will be expensive, some products (including Post Shredded Wheat cereal, made in Canada) may be unavailable completely, and lots of merchants and merchants' employees, along with importers, import-car dealers, customs officers, and virtually everyone else will be out of a job.  And then comes a recession.  I'm luckier than most.  I own my house outright, I have a recession-proof job (as well as a second job that's not recession-proof) and I am single, with no family whatsoever to support.  But my long-awaited and long-postponed trip to Europe . . . well, it might be postponed a bit longer, because Trump's recession will make it impossible to travel.  A depression will also have the benefit (for Trump) to force any Americans ready to undertake the very expensive process of moving out of the country to stay where they are.

And for Americans who already have made the move, to, say, Germany . . . yeah, well, they're going to regret the move when the Russians, having reconquered Ukraine and Poland, march through Berlin a second time.

As for the tariffs . . .  financial institutions are rightfully alarmed, fearing the worst.  The Dow Jones Industrial Average is down 3.71 percent as I type, with a 35 percent chance of recession.  The Standard & Poor's gross-domestic-product forecasts have fallen as a result of Trump's tariff effects, which could cause the weakest post-pandemic growth since 2022.

I mentioned automobiles . . . prices for cars could rise by as much as 31 percent, and not just imported models - also domestic models with high import content, which could see increases higher than the overall average.  (Forgot about that, didn't you, Trump?)  Foreigners are now boycotting American products, particularly those that come from Republican states.  Tourism is already being affected, as foreigners are canceling trips to the U.S., though Americans (at least those with the means to do so) are likely to continue traveling to foreign locales . . . unless Trump declares martial law in response to anti-Trump demonstrations, in which case no one leaves.

And while all this tariff business was going on . . .  Democratic U.S. Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey (above) - my Senator - stopped being a cautious moderate and rediscovered his progressive roots as a councilman and mayor of Newark.  He took to the floor of the U.S. Senate in a 25-hour speech that eclipsed then-Democratic then-Senator Strom Thurmond's record filibuster speech against the Civil Rights Act of 1957 (which took place on August 28 of that year, exactly six years to the day before the March on Washington) from his first term representing South Carolina as the longest Senate speech in history.  Senator Booker deliberately wanted to break that record to make a longer speech for civil rights, as well as a speech that chronicled every violation of the rule of law committed by Trump Mark Two.  That is why he was guaranteed to break Thurmond's record, so long as he had a steady supply of coffee - he had more than enough material.  A Senate speech chronicle all of Trump's crimes from January 2025 to the beginning of April 2025 would have to go for a week - in relays. 

For doing something rare among Senate Democrats - standing up to Trump - Cory Booker not only won back the respect of progressives who dismissed him as a centrist hack, he left many Democrats wondering why on earth Charles Schumer is the leader of Senate Democrats.  As for Booker, this speech was definitely a liberation - for himself and any Democrats still taking the advice of an overpriced consultant.  

Well, that's the end of this post.  Did I cover everything that happened this week so far?  I'm not sure.  I think there were other stories, but I probably forgot them after Trump's tariffs flooded the zone.

I'm free.

And freedom tastes of reality.   

The Week In Crazy

So much insanity has happened this week that I'm almost ready to give up blogging.

First, there was Trump's temper tantrum over trade with China, a legitimate issue, considering our trade deficit with the world's most populous country, that he has de-legitimatized with tariff threats and unilateral bullying of China's president. Trump said  he was "the chosen one" - at the same time that he also accused Jews of selfishness and disloyalty for voting Democratic and thus betraying Israel (therefore expressing solidarity with and making anti-Semitic tropes against Jews simultaneously).  Trump may have been chosen by 304 electors, but 54 percent of the American popular electorate chose someone else.

And then there's his sudden support for manifest destiny.  I don't know how this whole business started (to borrow an opening lyric from a late-seventies pop song), but someone suggested that Donald Trump might want to buy Greenland.  I used to joke, back in the late eighties when Trump was a real estate developer and climate change was called the greenhouse effect and not taken very seriously by anyone whose name wasn't Albert Gore, that if the planet warmed up, Trump would buy property up there to build condos.  Now he wants to buy the whole damn island!

Denmark, which owns Greenland, politely let Trump know that the island is not for sale, and Trump canceled a state visit to Copenhagen because Denmark's female prime minister was "nasty" to him.  There may be strategic reasons to own the world's largest island - Secretary of State William Seward tried to buy it when he bought Alaska from Russia in 1867, and President Harry Truman considered the idea in 1946 - and there are also commercial reasons to but it, which I'll explain in the next paragraph. But Trump made a hissy fit when he was old that Greenland was not for sale, not unlike in the book "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," when Veruca Salt refused to take no for an answer when she wanted to buy one of Willy Wonka's trained nut-shelling squirrels.  ("I want the world . . .")

Despite being far up in the Arctic, Greenland is a viable island because of its vast mineral resources, which Americans are eager to get in on, and the Danes would be happy if we do, because they make money off mineral exploration, which is already being undertaken there by . . . China.  But then, mineral exploration in Greenland is only made possible by climate change, which is melting glaciers up north as well as exacerbating rain-forest fires in the Brazilian jungle, and rain forests there, which help blunt the effects climate change, have been cleared for farmland at an amazing clip already.  French President Emanuel Macron hopes to address the Brazilian wildfires at the Group of Seven economic summit in the French seaside resort town of Biarritz, except that Trump won't want to talk about it because he wants to keep Mr. Murray's coal trains running back home. 

At least one billionaire industrialist - not the coal magnate Bob Murray - won't live to see the worst effects of the climate change he's famous for denying.  It seems that David Koch died.

And on the day that Trump, whose protectionism the Kochs despised, made unflattering remarks about China and his own Federal Reserve director, sending the stock market down over six hundred points and threatening his own re-election hopes - so long as Marianne Williamson isn't the Democratic nominee.

Crazy.

Chinese Walls

Trump is trying to get China to agree to a better trade deal with the United States, and by a better deal, he means one that will more greatly benefit the U.S.   In the absence of one, despite continuing talks with the Chinese, he's just hiked tariffs against China, already at 10 percent, to 25 percent.

Trump says that he'd hoped to avoid raising tariffs but adds that they will benefit the average American by spurring more U.S.-based manufacturing, though none of his economic policies have shown any payoffs.  China makes practically everything sold here.  The tariffs, if they stick in the event of a failed trade deal, would only increase prices on consumer goods in U.S. stores, while U.S. importers can simply avoid the brunt of the adverse affects of higher import taxes by lower profit margins and cutting costs.  "Most importers, Reuters recently reported, "use a mix of such tactics to spread the higher costs among suppliers, consumers or buyers."

Stocks went down recently but have rallied - damn! - after trade talks with the Chinese ended prematurely but with the promise that progress had been made and that they would resume, Trump is hoping that the incredibly strong American economy - damn again! - will provide leverage against the Chinese, but they hold a great deal of low-interest U.S. Treasury bonds that allow them to exact a little leverage of their own  As James Howard Kunstler put it:

A great deal for us while it lasted. Or so it seemed. Eventually, China caught onto the swindle and began liquidating its US bond holdings to buy gold and other real goods like African mining rights and farmland, Iranian oil, and port facilities in strategic corners of the world . . .. Now China has obviously designed a policy to dissociate itself as much as possible from the losing trade racket with us and replace the American market by increments with whatever customer base it can cobble together from the rest of the world.

The Chinese could bring down that incredibly strong economy of ours if they wanted to, but we're going to be bringing it down ourselves when we allow ourselves paying more for goods that shouldn't be so darn expensive.

Alas, Trump will probably still be re-elected, because he can always rail against Central American migrants and wear down Democratic efforts to investigate him.  He wants to investigate the Democrats for trying to rig the 2016 election to prevent his victory.  Trump supporters are that hell-bent on keeping their guy in power - they may be underemployed and overstressed, but as long as Trump, and not Hillary or Bernie or Mayor Pete or even Uncle Joe, is President, they can sleep more easily.  And he's already blaming the Chinese for whatever harm might come to the U.S. economy, because, hell, you can't trust them furriners.

An Angry Post About Cars and Climate Change

I should have known that something like this would happen.

After Trump promised workers at auto plants that their jobs were secure under his "America First" economic policy, General Motors announced it would be closing plants in Ohio, Michigan, and Maryland (and another in the Canadian province of Ontario), which mostly make sedans.  The ostensible reason for the plant closures was the set of tariffs that Trump imposed on raw materials from other countries, such as steel and aluminum.  Apparently, GM needed cheap imported steel and aluminum to make basic sedans to keep them profitable in an era - still, alas, very much in progress - when everyone in North America seems to want to buy sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks.  So GM is discontinuing no fewer than six sedan models, including the revolutionary Chevrolet Volt (below), the groundbreaking hybrid sedan that debuted for the 2011 model year and lasted two generations.  It's sort of become the Corvair of our time.  Underappreciated while in production, it may be a prized collectible fifty years from now.

And while the sedans GM is ditching are mostly larger cars, the small, economical Chevrolet Cruze is getting ditched too. 

GM CEO Mary Barra says that the company will now move toward developing electric vehicles and autonomous vehicles.  Buffalo bagels.  The company is now joining Ford and Fiat Chrysler in pushing more and more SUVs and pickup trucks to satisfy the unquenchable thirst for bigger, cruder, more obnoxious gas guzzlers.  Unless the foreign brands keep traditional cars in their U.S. and Canadian lineups, anyone in the New World who simply wants a regular, sensible car is going to be out of luck.

But not as much out of luck as the workers in those car factories who will soon be losing their jobs.  I almost feel sorry for Barra, the first woman to lead a car company in the United States.  She made this decision to make GM more competitive, yet Trump is now blaming her for laying off so many people - as many as 14,000 - even though it was his policies that caused it.  Not just the tariffs, but the rollback of fuel economy standards that would have required the automakers doing business in the U.S. to make more fuel-efficient, more sensible cars that you don't need a stepladder to get into.  And Trump also boasts about keeping gas prices low, which he in fact has nothing to do with - even though low gas prices have depressed sales of said sensible cars that most of these now laid-off workers were making in the first place.  And even though GM should be serious about developing electric cars, Trump may actually take away its electric-vehicle tax credits in reaction to GM's cutbacks.  Not that he cares about electric cars anyway.

Is this a total disaster?  Not entirely - as soon as Barra (below) made her announcement, GM stock prices soared.  And that's why I almost feel sorry for Barra . . . but don't.  She still has a job.  And she'll make out fine.

Needless to say, I'm ticked off at how SUVs, which I call BUWs - for "big ugly wagons" - are taking over the American auto market.  I hope to keep my humble little VW Golf for as long as I can, but with demand for small cars dropping like a rock, I may end up having to suffer the indignity of getting a Toyota C-HR, which may yet become the closest thing to a small car from any automaker.  With even Volkswagen emphasizing SUVs in America these days (its most recent ads highlight the Tiguan and the Atlas, with the Jetta thrown in as an afterthought  - but not one mention of the Golf!), even VW isn't asking Americans to think small anymore.   

Which ties in to the equally unpleasant subject of climate change.

The required quadrennial government report on climate change, the most recent edition of which came out a week or so ago, shows that it's getting worse than originally thought, with hurricanes and winter storms - there will still be winters as the planet warms - becoming more frequent and more extreme, diseases becoming more widespread, and economic losses of $160 billion in today's money by 2090.  And while more Americans and even more Republicans believe that climate change is happening, Trump does not.  So even if Congress tries to do something about it, don't expect any climate-change-fighting plan to get any traction with Trump in the White House.

One big reason climate change is happening, of course, is because Americans love their big ugly wagons and keep buying the hell out of them.  Autos accounted for nearly 29 percent of America's too-high carbon emissions in 2016.  More fuel efficiency and smaller cars, though, would mean that our cars would have less of an impact on the environment. Gas prices would have to go up to about six dollars a gallon to make people think small again, but asking Americans to give up their cheap gas is like asking the French to give up sex - and, incidentally, the French aren't exactly ready to pay a higher tax  on their petrol, either, as demonstrations in Paris proved.       

But at least already high fuel prices in France mean that the French get to have nice little cars like this Peugeot 208.  

Conclusion: The planet is doomed.  Even Europeans are buying SUVs (or BUWs) now.  Avoiding them is like avoiding the plague that's going to emerge as a result of global warming. >:-( 

Our only hope is to get Trump out of office in 2020 and replace him with a Democratic President who puts the automakers on notice by reinstating the higher fuel economy standards that Trump scuttled.  And the message will be this - start making more fuel-efficient cars and make more electric vehicles.  

Oh yeah, that will be easier said than done.  Although the job layoffs at General Motors are Trump's fault, he's likely going to blame GM and possibly foreign countries for mucking things up in the auto industry, and his supporters will believe him.  Many of them still believe him when he says that climate change isn't a problem. 

I'm sorry.  I can't take it anymore.  When Mikie Sherrill, my incoming congresswoman, holds her first constituents' meeting, I'm going to go and plead to her to bring up climate change and reforming our transportation policy - with an emphasis on mass transit as well as small cars - on the floor of the House of Representatives.  I'm ticked off now.  

Weapons of Mass Distraction

I so wanted to avoid talking about Trump this week, but he leaves me no choice.  He's already made  a week's worth of news, and this is only Tuesday.

Trump ratcheted up tensions with Iran, the country that Americans love to hate after they took over our embassy and took fifty-odd Americans hostage for fourteen months.  Maybe he won't start a war with the Iranians (though it could lead to higher gas prices if Iran takes action, which could mean SUVs becoming obsolete overnight, and I would love to see that, of course), but he can certainly distract from his disastrous summit with Putin last week with this ploy.  Don't expect his tough talk to cool tensions with Iran like it did with North Korea; Iran is deeply committed to refusing to improve relations with the U.S. except on its own terms.  You can't win with the Iranians, as Ronald Reagan found out when he tried back-channel negotiations and arms sales with them.  He was hoping for a "Nixon goes to China" moment but got a Laurel and Hardy "fine mess" moment instead.  

Iranians love to punk us, but not as much as Trump loves to punk his base.  As I type this, he's addressing a VFW convention and promising $12 billion in emergency relief for farmers affected by tariffs.  Hey, isn't it illegal to buy votes? Again, he's trying to distract his base.  It might not work for the midterms, as farmers don't want a handout.  They want foreign markets.

And former national-security officials advising current national-security officials need security clearances because they need to give their successors advice. Trump wants to take them away because he can't tolerate their negative criticism.  Another distraction from that "Russia thing."

One of them is former national security adviser Susan Rice.  Don't worry, she'll get her credentials back if she loses them - she'll get them back when she becomes President Martin O'Malley's Secretary of State in 2021.

Forget 2021 - is it Friday yet?

These Trump-triggered brain dumps could ruin my writing . . ..               

Trade War Escalation

After Trump imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum produced in the European Union, the EU retaliated by placing tariffs on American liquor and peanut butter, among other things.  Trump is now threatening to retaliate against that by imposing a whopping 20 percent tariff - up from 2.5 percent - on EU-built cars.  The European Union currently has a 10 percent tariff on U.S.-made cars, but that doesn't matter since American cars are about as popular in Europe as soccer is here.  in fact, I think soccer may even be more popular here than Chevrolets or Dodges are in the Old Country.  Since it sold Opel, GM has practically no presence there at all.

Well, as the owner of a European car - which is currently in the shop so my Volkswagen dealer can determine why it periodically stalls while idling - I'm not very happy about this.  I prefer European cars in general and German cars in particular because of their superior engineering, and one of the reasons I am a loyal Volkswagen customer is because it's the only inexpensive German brand available in the U.S.  (Of course, apart from Opel, there is no other inexpensive German brand, unless you count Ford of Europe.)  My 2012 Golf was in fact made in Wolfsburg.  Apart from the stalling problem I just mentioned, I haven't had a problem with it.  But even a VW that stalls is preferable to the best Ford or a Chevy, and Trump's tariffs are aimed at making European cars less available and less affordable.  I can't tolerate that.  His trade policy may force me to buy as my next car a car I don't really want.

And, before you make the inevitable point that many VW models sold in America are made in either Mexico or right here in the U.S., shut the hell up.  Not all VWs sold here are made on this continent, and what would I want with a Tennessee-built SUV or midsize sedan anyway?   And while the U.S. versions of the Golf and the Jetta are made in Mexico . . . watch out, Trump is getting ready to tear up NAFTA also.

If I have to give up my Golf for its stalling problem or for anything else, I might as well move to the city and take the subway.   

Isolated

Trump just cut the United States off from every other major industrialized country at the Group of Seven summit by inciting tariff threats that could undermine the global economy - and it could also undermine the U.S. economy, but not until after the midterm elections.  He won't endorse their communique on free trade or anything else.  Now even Canada is an enemy.   

Trump showed his true colors when he disregarded a G-7 meeting on gender equality by arriving late at a meeting on that topic.  He's made it clear that the United States - still without a gender equality amendment in its Constitution - can't be bothered with the issue.  And he's right; the people who constantly elect people like Trump to office can't be bothered either.  Again, we're on the outs with everyone else.

So what do I think will happen at the Trump-Kim summit in Singapore this Tuesday?  I don't give a twit.  Nothing will be resolved or even started, but if Trump gets through the summit without chewing with his mouth open, the media, with such low expectations for the summit, will rate it a success and his approval rating will go up twenty points.  All for negotiating with a fellow global pariah.

Oh yeah, Net neutrality ends tomorrow, the House doing nothing to join the Senate in solidarity to preserve it.  I am not posting anything on either of my blogs tomorrow in protest.  I'll be back in this space soon after, with another Beatles White Album song commentary on Thursday, but I don't know how many of you will get to read it, because with Net neutrality gone, with my White Album commentary following the running order of the tracks, and my last commentary before this week focusing on "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" . . . well, you can figure out the rest.

Theoretically, I might be cut off from my own blogs - not just my regular blog but my beautiful-women picture blog (I discussed that here) - and maybe even my Family page, because Internet service providers don't want to facilitate access to content on a band most Americans have never heard due to the fact that no one cares about it.

Now that's isolation.

Trumptonite

You might remember the Mississippi rock band 3 Doors Down, not to be confused with Three Dog Night.  Back in 2000 (let that sink in for a moment), they were a top band on what passed for rock radio in America, and they were apparently hoping to replace the Allman Brothers Band as the Beatles of the South.  But, like so many rock bands that proliferated in the quarter century after the grunge revolt, they were gone almost as soon as they'd arrived, and to this day I still can't name a single member of 3 Doors Down without checking out their Web site or their Wikipedia biography.  By 2017 they'd fallen so far that they were one of the (very) few pop acts to accept an invitation to play at Trump's inauguration; their appearance suggested imagining the Beatles not having another hit after "Love Me Do" and playing a Tory rally on the occasion of Margaret Thatcher's assumption of the prime ministership of Great Britain seventeen years after.  As a result of this gig, 3 Doors Down lost numerous fans, shrinking their already pathetically small audience.

Ironically, their only hit of any consequence was a song called "Kryptonite."

Since 3 Doors Down killed their already-dead careers with their Trump gala gig, many Trump watchers have been patiently waiting for the one thing that would destroy Trump's Presidency - the equivalent of kryptonite, the one thing that could kill Superman.  This past week proved once and for all that nothing - and I mean nothing - can kill his political career.  Trump imposed steel tariffs on our closest allies - Canada, Mexico, the European Union countries - and our ex-friends vowed to retaliate.  At that news, the stock market plunged a couple hundred points. Then the next day, he leaked the latest unemployment statistics before the Labor Department could officially release them, sending stocks back up.  A friend of mine says Trump did this to manipulate the stock market to his advantage.  Maybe.  But he did manipulate the news to his advantage; thanks to the good jobs report and the headlines about a robust economy, you don't hear much concern about tariffs.

All right, so import taxes that could undermine future American economic growth didn't kill him.  How about the aftereffects of Hurricane Maria, and the news that, while only 64 people on the island of Puerto Rico died directly from the storm, over 4,600 Puerto Ricans died indirectly from the hurricane's damage - mainly because of the interminable blackouts and the disruption of the territory's services?  Certainly Trump's failure to react sufficiently to the damage from Maria would kill his Presidency!  That is, until the National Hurricane Center announced that the 2018 hurricane season, having just gotten under way, is expected to be an average season, lessening the chances of another storm like Maria, which allowed people on the mainland to shrug off last year's hurricane season as old news.  So what if Puerto Rico was turned into a wasteland? So what if Puerto Rico isn't even prepared for even a storm just short of Category 1 status? >:-(

But of course, there was the North Korean situation.  Trump felt the need to cancel his summit with Kim Jong Un in Singapore, which denied him to burnish his foreign policy credentials (even though he actually has none.  What a setback.  Until the North Koreans and the Trump administration worked out their differences over the proposed meeting.  Now the summit is back on.  Trump is back on top.

Nothing can kill him.

At this point, we have to realize that if Trump's Presidency is going to be brought down, it won't be brought down by circumstances beyond his control.  Whether or not he survives depends on a strong opposition.

It's too bad that the Democratic Party is prone to kryptonite poisoning.

3 Doors Down records, anyone?  

Driven To Distraction

With Robert Mueller possibly getting closer to finding out what really happened with regard to Russian influence in the 2016 election and a possible trade war with the Chinese, Donald Trump is getting desperate.  He tired to reconnect with his base by sending National Guard troops to the border to Mexico to stop illegal immigrants from crossing.  The Guardsmen won't have to do much . . . the flow of illegal immigrants over the southern border is currently at its lowest point since 1971.     

Tariffs against Chinese products?  I'm all for it, so long as it's done the right way.  But Trump is going about it in such a cavalier fashion that it might have the unintended consequence of making it impossibles for American farmers to sell grain and soybeans to China and cause a severe agricultural recession.  Most of the states and counties affected supported Trump in 2016.

The attempt to ignite the Republican base by highlighting illegal immigration may backfire on Trump and the GOP when they see Guardsmen lying about and doing nothing.  (You know what Republicans think of layabouts!)  But they might be distracted enough not to realize that teachers in reliably Republican states are striking for not only better pay but for more money for their schools, so they don't have to pay for their own supplies.  By the time these Republican voters, who think the education is bad or you, see that they're about to be hit with the biggest sh--storm since the Never Again anti-gun movement, it'll be too late.

Meanwhile, the FBI raided Trump lawyer Michael Cohen's office to investigate his alleged payment to Stormy Daniels.  And Trump, bemoaning the loss of attorney-client privilege (which isn't relevant in this case), wants to get back at the FBI for looking into this sex scandal by . . . firing Robert Mueller, an ex-FBI guy investigating Russian meddling in our elections?  That makes no sense at all . . .

I can't believe I just covered so much ground in such a short post . . ..