The Conversation -- May 18, 2025
Marie: Looks as if El Gordo de Mar-a-Lardo does understand that foreign trading "partners" are not the ones who pay his big, beautiful tariffs/taxes: ~~~
~~~ Josh Boak of the AP: “... Donald Trump on Saturday ripped into Walmart, saying on social media that the retail giant should eat the additional costs created by his tariffs. As Trump has jacked up import taxes, he has tried to assure a skeptical public that foreign producers would pay for those taxes and that retailers and automakers would absorb the additional expenses. Most economic analyses are deeply skeptical of those claims and have warned that the trade penalties would worsen inflation. Walmart warned on Thursday that everything from bananas to children’s car seats could increase in price. Trump, in his Truth Social post, lashed out at the retailer, which employs 1.6 million people in the United States. He said the company, based in Bentonville, Arkansas, should sacrifice its profits for the sake of his economic agenda that he says will eventually lead to more domestic jobs in manufacturing. 'Walmart should STOP trying to blame Tariffs as the reason for raising prices throughout the chain,' Trump posted. 'Walmart made BILLIONS OF DOLLARS last year, far more than expected. Between Walmart and China they should, as is said, “EAT THE TARIFFS,” and not charge valued customers ANYTHING. I’ll be watching, and so will your customers!!!'” (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Marie: So Tyrant Don has used his position as POTUS* to bully the Congress, the courts, the press, the universities, his perceived individual political enemies, immigrants, people of color, women, consumers, small companies, and now he's zeroing in on the world's biggest retailer. No group -- save white racist men who pledge their fealty to him -- has been able to evade him. I do not understand how anyone can abide him. ~~~
~~~ He's a Businessman! Naftali Bendavid of the Washington Post: “In the opening months of his second term, Trump has taken an unusually direct and high-profile role in attempting to manage the sprawling American economy — an approach that could bring him enormous benefits if it thrives or danger if it stumbles. It’s a departure from decades of Republican orthodoxy and arguably from Trump’s own history; during the 2024 campaign, he called Democrat Kamala Harris a communist and a Marxist because her vow to tackle price gouging could have led to price controls.... 'In this administration, policy decisions seem to be made only based on the president’s personal views, not after systemic analysis,' said Douglas Elmendorf, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office and a top economic official under President Bill Clinton.... 'I think this president likes the idea of being the CEO of businesses, but that’s not the role of the president. They should be setting broad polices, not intervening for particular companies,' [Elmendorf said].”
~~~ Speaking of major American retailers, RAS is wondering if the feds will be hauling Jeff Bezos downtown for a chat. The linked page, BTW, is one more indicator (among many) that the entire Trumpy 8647 outrage is a hoax. With all the stories we read about the Secret Service being stretched so thin, the real outrage here is that Kristi Noem is wasting its resources on "investigating" Jim Comey, especially -- as Akhilleus points out -- it was probably Comey who got Trump elected back in '16. (Also linked yesterday.)
Hannah Natanson, et al., of the Washington Post: “Across the federal government, a push for early retirement and voluntary separation is fueling a voluntary exodus of experienced, knowledgeable staffers unlike anything in living memory, according to interviews with 18 employees across 10 agencies and records reviewed by The Post. Other leaders with decades of service are being dismissed as the administration eliminates full offices or divisions at a time. The first resignation offer, sent in January, saw 75,000 workers across government agree to quit and keep drawing pay through September, the administration has said. But a second round, rolling out agency by agency through the spring, is seeing a sustained, swelling uptick that will dwarf the first, potentially climbing into the hundreds of thousands, the employees and the records show.... [It appears] that disproportionately older, more senior and experienced employees are heading for the exit — in part because they fear being fired or having their positions reclassified as political, at-will jobs under a new Trump program. Others are leaving simply because they are tired of the chaos, mismanagement and poor treatment they say they have faced under the new administration.” ~~~
~~~ Scott Dance of the Washington Post: “... the ... National Weather Service office responsible for monitoring weather hazards across eastern Kentucky ... is one of a growing number of the agency’s local offices that have been unable to cover overnight shifts after the Trump administration significantly reduced staffing levels through buyouts and firings this year. But 'We saw the risk many days ago. We were already planning how we would staff days in advance,' said Christian Cassell, one of the office’s lead meteorologists. By Thursday, the staff had set up a schedule to stagger shifts Friday 'knowing we were looking at a nearly full day of a threat of severe weather,' he said.”
More Trumpification of Bondi's Injustice Department. Perry Stein & Jeremy Roebuck of the Washington Post: “Federal prosecutors across the country may soon be able to indict members of Congress without approval from lawyers in the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section.... Under [a] proposal [currently being considered], investigators and prosecutors would also not be required to consult with the section’s attorneys during key steps of probes into public officials, altering a long-standing provision in the Justice Department’s manual that outlines how investigations of elected officials should be conducted. If adopted, the changes would remove a layer of review intended to ensure that cases against public officials are legally sound and not politically motivated.” ~~~
~~~ Mark Berman, et al., of the Washington Post: “Legal experts said in interviews that they doubted [former FBI Director James] Comey’s post [featuring a photo of the numbers '86 47' --] would qualify as a genuine threat. Instead, they said, the incident appeared to mark the latest attempt by an administration with a maximalist view of executive power to criminalize or otherwise punish people for speech, protests and other actions traditionally viewed as legally protected in the United States. Since Trump’s inauguration, his administration has on multiple occasions sought to wield the federal government’s expansive power to scrutinize and, in some cases, punish people for things they said or wrote.... In several court cases, judges have said the Trump administration appeared to have stepped on the First Amendment free-speech rights of people and businesses, including retaliating against them.... Administration officials have asked Justice Department staff to investigate actions longtime prosecutors view as protected activities that should not lead to charges, including a push to probe campus protests.... Legal analysts and political observers said the focus on speech is meant to intimidate critics and exact political retribution.”
Alan Feuer & Abbie VanSickle of the New York Times: “If there has been a common theme in the federal courts’ response to the fallout from ... [Donald] Trump’s aggressive deportation policies, it is that the White House cannot rush headlong into expelling people by sidestepping the fundamental principle of due process. In case after case, a legal bottom line is emerging: Immigrants should at least be given the opportunity to challenge their deportations, especially as Trump officials have claimed novel and extraordinary powers to remove them.... Many legal scholars have hailed courts’ support of due process. At the same time, they have also expressed concern that such support was needed in the first place. The Supreme Court’s decision comes as Mr. Trump and some of his top aides have openly flouted the idea of providing due process to immigrants awaiting deportation, a position that the Constitution appears to lay out clearly and that the justices themselves have repeatedly upheld in previous decisions. 'We have millions of people that have come in here illegally, and we can’t have a trial for every single person,' Mr. Trump said this month on CBS News.”
Frances Vinall of the Washington Post: “A federal appeals court on Friday lifted a block on an executive order from ... Donald Trump that seeks to strip union rights from federal workers at dozens of agencies and offices. Trump in March issued an executive order that said that parts of the United States Code that protect federal workers’ rights to organize and collectively bargain would no longer apply to agencies including most or all of the Departments of Treasury, Defense, Veterans Affairs, State and Justice. The executive order covers about two-thirds of the federal workforce, according to the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), which filed a lawsuit challenging it. It had been blocked by a federal judge last month as part of the NTEU lawsuit, but that block was lifted Friday by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. In its order canceling the injunction, the appeals court’s 2-1 majority said the union had not proved it would suffer 'irreparable harm' if the executive order was executed while the lawsuit challenging it was ongoing.”
Lisa Lerer of the New York Times: “The five-hour-and-10-minute audio recording of a special counsel’s interview with [President] Biden on Oct. 8 and 9, 2023, shows a president struggling to recall dates and details, whose thoughts seem jumbled as he tries to recreate events that had occurred just a few years earlier.... The Hur tapes reveal the president exactly as a majority of Americans believed him to be — and as Democrats repeatedly insisted he was not.... In the audio recording, [Special Counsel Robert] Hur’s conclusion — that a jury would see Mr. Biden as a 'sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory' — is not merely valid, it is irrefutable.... For his part, Mr. Hur is generous and professional, hardly the political villain that the White House made him out to be after his report was released. He gently and repeatedly tries to refocus the president on the storage of his classified documents.” ~~~
~~~ Axios has released the full Biden-Hur interview. If you have five-plus hours with nothing to do, you can listen here. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Marie: I still think it was wrong for Hur to make his comment — that Biden was a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” — during an election cycle. The remark, IMO, was the written equivalent of Republican FBI Director Jim Comey's announcement in July 2016 [NYT link] that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton would not be indicted even though she was “extremely careless” in her email practices. Even if Hur's motive was to warn the public, he is a Republican, so his motives would be suspect, and I'll bet he's smart enough to know that. However, as much as I hate Trump's lying to me as many times a day as he opens his mouth and words come out, I hate the Biden conspirators' big lie just as much. They didn't just tell it to you and me; they told it to Biden himself. And that, I maintain, is elder abuse: hardly the way to treat the man who made their sorry careers.
~~~~~~~~~~
California. Eric Tucker, et al., of the AP: “The person believed responsible for an attack targeting a Southern California fertility clinic Saturday posted rambling online writings before an explosion that investigators are treating as an act of terrorism, according to a law enforcement official. The suspect, who died in the explosion that tore through the clinic and rattled the upscale California city of Palm Springs, also attempted to record video or stream the attack, said the official, who was not authorized to discuss details of the attack and spoke on condition of anonymity to The Associated Press. 'Make no mistake: This is an intentional act of terrorism,' Akil Davis, the head of the FBI’s Los Angeles field office, told an evening news conference. Authorities were still working to piece together a motive and build a chronology of events leading up to the attack.” (Also linked yesterday.)
~~~~~~~~~~
Mexico. James Wagner of the New York Times: “There are only two legal gun stores in all of Mexico — making them destinations for customers from every corner of the country and an embodiment of Mexico’s conflicted relationship with firearms. The Constitution enshrines the right to own them, and there are millions of weapons in civilian hands, with a black market flooded by American-made guns. But the two legal stores, military-run and tightly regulated, are emblematic of government efforts to better control Mexico’s guns.... Applicants need to present nearly a dozen documents at the stores — once they’ve waited a few months for approval to buy a gun.” ~~~
~~~ Marie: This is a excellent idea that we should adopt in the U.S.: one federally-run gun store in every state. Elon -- lover of federal data bases -- could set up one that records the details for every gun purchaser. Congress could pass a law with a substantial period before the law went into effect to allow current gun store owners to change their stores to soda shops or bordellos or whatever.
Ukraine, Russia, et al. Koen Verhelst of Politico: “Moscow sent 273 drones to Ukraine in a record-breaking attack early Sunday, two days after Russian President Vladimir Putin snubbed ceasefire talks with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Turkey. The attack was the single largest since the Kremlin started its full-scale invasion in 2022, the Ukrainian air force said. A woman died in the Kyiv region, while the assault also targeted the eastern Dnipropetrovsk and Donetsk regions, officials said.”
Vatican. Anthony Faiola & Stefano Pitrelli of the Washington Post: “The Catholic Church is inaugurating its 267th pontiff Sunday in an incense-laced rite heralding the start of a novel papacy — one filled by a White Sox fan and former missionary whose dual citizenship of the United States and Peru make him the first American and second Latin American to lead the world’s largest Christian faith. As dawn broke over Vatican City, throngs streamed into St. Peter’s Square to join cardinals, bishops, royals and dignitaries, led by Italy’s prime minister and president, Vice President JD Vance and Peruvian President Dina Boluarte. Before the 10 a.m. Mass invoking the ancient roots of the faith, Leo XIV made his first official tour in the popemobile, cruising the teaming square to the cheers and applause as the bells of the basilica tolled.”
5 Comments
Reader Comments (5)
Wait…I thought China was going to pay for Fat Hitler’s temper tantrum tariffs. But now he’s saying Walmart has to pay? Because they made too much money last year? And because SOMEONE has to pay for his ignorant stunt?
I see. That’s because he never makes mistakes, but if it LOOKED like he did, someone else has to take the fall, pay the price.
Yeah, got it. The king doesn’t pay, he only takes. Okay.
But let’s get back to Fatty’s argument that because Walmart made a ton of money last year they should help out and pay something. Hmmm…sounds like he’s making a case for why the super rich should shoulder some of the fiscal responsibility for the operation of the government. Sounds like an argument for certain parties to pay their fair share in taxes.
According to Fatty’s arguments for lowering taxes to pretty much non-existent levels for the wealthy and big corporations, the rich should be rewarded with taking almost no responsibility for the operation of the cointry, and in fact, should effectively get money BACK from the state and other (non-rich) taxpayers.
By this logic, the Orange Monster should not only be paying for his own tariffs—out of pocket—he should be giving EXTRA money to Walmart, not asking them for a cent, since by being so successful, making a bundle last year, they deserve a reward: they should get out of paying anything.
The wages of idiocy are steep. And who’s picking up THAT tab?
As always, us.
The Weekend Sermon that appeared in the local paper:
GIANTS IN THE EARTH, I called it (BTW, one of my favorite novels...)
Though they might seem an unlikely pair, Isaac Newton (1643-1727), the English genius who formulated the Law of Gravity, and Jim Hightower, former Texas Commissioner of Agriculture and present political pundit, share the same profound understanding of history.
Newton had every right to brag about his accomplishments. With his Laws of Motion, he revolutionized our thinking about the physical world. Because of him we know why the Moon circles the Earth and the apple falls from the tree. But genius though he was, Newton didn’t claim exclusive credit for all he’d done for human understanding. Instead, he generously acknowledged the work of his predecessors by saying he “stood on the shoulders of giants.”
Jim Hightower expressed the same idea in a more humorous way when he described presidential candidate George H. W. Bush, who was born to great privilege and wealth, as someone “born on third base and thought he’d hit a triple.” Whatever Mr. Bush thought about himself, the point Hightower made was clear. George H.W. Bush, our 41st president, began his life standing on the shoulders of others.
We all do. We inherit a society whose accumulated knowledge and institutions support us from birth. Beyond public schools, roads, fire and emergency services, we have Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Food Stamps, the Affordable Care Act, unemployment insurance, workers’ and union rights, and above all, the Bill of Rights to protect us from exploitation by the powerful. All were gifts from those who came before us. The Founding Fathers created the Constitution with its Bill of Rights nearly 250 years ago. What we know as our safety net is a legacy from the previous generations that created and expanded it, one step at a time, often at great cost to themselves.
In fact, nothing of what we depend on happened on its own. The medical science that created Covid vaccines that saved 1.9 million lives in the United States and 20 million worldwide in their first year of use (pbs.org) didn’t just magically happen. Millions of dollars and years of research preceded their quick and timely arrival on the scene in late 2020.
When someone casts doubt on a vaccine’s proven safety and efficacy, I think of the many remarkable men and women who created the vaccines that combat the deadly diseases that once plagued us. According to the World Health Organization, vaccinations for fourteen diseases other than Covid have saved over 150 million lives over the last fifty years, measles prominent among them. Dreadful diseases like polio are only a name to most of us today, thanks to those immunizations. When Senator Sanders asked Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. if he agreed the Covid vaccines saved millions of lives, Kennedy, apparently forgetting the giants of medicine who preceded him, said. “I don’t know” (science.org). Now, as our Secretary of Health, Kennedy is deliberately slowing the approval and production of new vaccines (nbcnews.com).
Medical science is not all this administration has forgotten. The forgetting starts at the top. When asked if he thought it his duty to enforce the due process clause of the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment, Trump responded, “I don’t know,” saying this only one hundred days after placing his hand on a Bible and swearing an oath to do so (abcnews.com).
The Right’s war against DEI is another instance of convenient memory loss by those who believe the past is the enemy of their preferred present. They want us to forget our long history of racism and inequity. Remember the good stuff (and yes, there is plenty of good stuff to remember) but forget the bad. Their message: We have nothing to feel guilty about. Nothing about our nation still needs fixing. In Trump Land, only Happy Daze ahead.
Popular as forgetting is, ensuring we never learn anything new to worry us is also fashionable in Trump World. The administration has directed the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to stop collecting data on the cost of extreme weather events (cnn.com). Thanks to the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, over half of the Environmental Protection Agency’s research staff will be eliminated and its Office of Research and Development is closing (apnew.com). And, despite the mountains of evidence to the contrary, the Trump administration just declared burning fossil fuels incurs no social cost (nytimes.com). There is so much Trump World would rather not know.
The Bible says, “There were giants in the earth in those days.” Besides Newton, there have been many giants, some remembered but most forgotten, who carried us on their shoulders to today.
I wonder who today’s giants are. Maybe your neighbor. Maybe you.
A portrait of Christian charity to all?
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/18/us/project-esther-heritage-foundation-palestine.html
Or of an author of the mission creep of the Right's war against anti-semitism?
Does seem like we elected the Heritage Foundation to run the country, only too eager as it was to rush in and fill the vacuum between the Pretender's ears.
Ahem.
Newton did not explain "why" gravity works. Rather, "how" it works. And he (among others) made the point that he was only measuring, and that the "why" of "action from a distance" remained God's secret for Newton.
It seems a quibble, but it bears on the difference between science and philosophy.
Patrick,
Thanks, and fair enough.
Granted, Newton did not eschew God. No more than did Adam Smith. For both, God remained central to their machines.
Your "ahem" brings up some fond memories of my grandfather, who was given to similar throat-clearing. Might use him in the next sermon.