4/3/2025

 Thursday, April 3, 2025

D+148/74

1860 Start of the Pony Express; mail was delivered by horse and rider relay teams between St. Joseph, Missouri and Sacramento, California

1948 President Harry Truman signed the Marshall Plan to rebuild war-torn Western Europe after World War II, granting an initial $5 billion in aid to 16 European countries

1955 The American Civil Liberties Union announced it would defend Allen Ginsberg's book "Howl" against obscenity charges

1968 N Vietnam agreed to meet US reps to set up preliminary peace talks

1969 Vietnam War: Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird announced that the United States would start a policy of "Vietnamization", reducing American involvement

In bed at 9, awake and up at 4:10.    

Prednisone, day 348; 3 mg., day 7/21; Kevzara, day 2/14; CGM, day 1/15; Trulicity, day 77/7.  2 mg. of prednisone at  4:40 a.m. and 4:10  p.m.  Other meds at 9:15 a.m.   I think I missed my afternoon 1 mg. prednisone yesterday; I found the pill still in its 'Wednesday' compartment this morning, but I wrote that I took it at 5 p.m.  Either my notation was wrong or my pill count was wrong.  

Is Trump our Manchurian Candidate?  

This is Liberation Day.  April 2nd will forever be remembered as the day American industry was reborn, the day America's destiny was reclaimed, and the day that we began to make America wealthy again.  For decades. our country has been looted, pillaged, raped, and plundered by nations near and far, both friend and foe alike,  It won't happen anymore.

How many people and nations were cheering Trump's tariff announcement yesterday, 'Liberation Day'?  How many were booing?  How many are optimistic about its probable effects here in the US?  How many are worried?  How many will benefit from the tariffs?  How many will be hurt?  Will they lead to a recession, or worse, or will they lead to widespread prosperity?  What does Vladimir think of Trump's move, and Elon?  They are both probably happy; certainly Vladimir is.  How will the tariffs affect Geri and me? Not too much?  More importantly, how will they affect Andy, Anh, Peter, Lizzie, and Drew?  David, Sharon, and Ellis?  Steve and Nikki?  How will Andy's and Nikki's law practices be affected?  David's business?  Sharon's start-up business?

Some comments:

Heather Cox Richardson: "Just five months ago, on October 19, 2024, The Economist ran a special report on America’s economy. That economy was, the magazine said, “the envy of the world.” Today, stock market futures plummeted after President Donald J. Trump announced that he will impose a 10% tariff on all imports to the United States, with higher rates on about 60 countries he claims engage in unfair trade practices, including China, Japan, Vietnam, and South Korea, as well as the European Union.

Dow Jones Industrial Average futures lost more than 1,000 points upon the news, falling by 2.5%; the S&P 500 dropped 3.6%.

“Never before has an hour of Presidential rhetoric cost so many people so much,” former treasury secretary Lawrence Summers posted. “The best estimate of the loss from tariff policy is now [close] to $30 trillion or $300,000 per family of four.” “The Trump Tariff Tax is the largest peacetime tax hike in U.S. history,” posted former vice president Mike Pence.

Trump paints such a rosy, halcyonic picture of the world after the imposition of his tariffs, and his critics such a dire, bleak picture of devastating consequences, it makes me think of Englebert Humperdink's old hit "Two Different World's" and of the joke about the rabbi hearing a dispute between two members of his shul.  After he tells the first disputant, "You're right," he hears the second disputant and says, "You're right." The disputants react, "But we can't both be right!: to which the rabbi says, "You're right."

Are these tariffs simply the setup for Trump's engaging in worldwide geopolitical and economic extortion from (former) friends and foes?  Just the first or second inning of the extortionate game he likes to play, as he has done, for example, with "Big Law," universities, and the media?  He puts the gun to the heads of his enemies/victims and then starts 'bargaining.'   The law firms promise millions of dollars of free legal services to Trump's favorite (and mostly pernicisou) nonprofits and don't have to promise but will never again represent clients or causes opposing Trump.  The nations whose businesses are hurt by the tariffs will either suffer big losses or do what Trump demands in return for relief.  Free trade Trump-style.  Meanwhile, consumers all over the world pay the price.

Did Vladimir write this script?  Did he have a chip implanted in Trump's brain when Trump was in Moscow for the 2013 Miss Universe Pageant?  Or was there a Golden Shower event in addition to the Red Carpet event?  "I know Russia well,” Trump told Fox News on May 6, 2016.   “I had a major event in Russia two or three years ago, which was a big, big incredible event.” Asked whether he had met with Putin there, Trump declined to say, though he added: “I got to meet a lot of people.  And you know what?  They want to be friendly with the United States. Wouldn’t it be nice if we actually got along with somebody?” He later said Putin “has a tremendous popularity in Russia.  They love what he’s doing. They love what he represents.” (Nota bene: Trump imposed tariffs on 165 countries, but not on Russia, North Korea, and Cuba.  What???)  He certainly got friendly with (and subservient to) Putin, and we are all paying the price for that friendship and subservience.

Vietnam, tariffs, and history.  Trump placed a horrendous 46% tariff, or sales tax, on Vietnam, a country that we once called "our trading partner,"  He did this because of the trade deficit between Vietnam and the U.S.   Consumers in the U.S. bought goods, like Nike and Adidas sports shoes, worth $136 billion dollars, while the Vietnamese only bought $13 billion worth of American produced goods, a difference of more than $123 billion.  This, of course, is no surprise considering the different sizes of the poulations and wealth of the two countries,  the different standards of living and average incomes, and considering that it was American corporate capitalists who rushed to Vietnam as a supplier of inexpensive goods when obtaining those goods from China became a problem.  Just as American illegal drug users provide the market for Mexican and other drug cartels, American consumers provide the market for for goods produced by low paid workers in countries with weak empoloyment laws protecting workers and the environment.  What most struck me, though, beyond the hypocrisy of saying that Vietnam has been "looting, pillaging, raping, and plundering" America, was the fact that Vietnam is now our 7th largest trading partner, the country that we devastated for years between 1965 and 1973, actually much longer since we Americans financed and otherwise supported the French colonial war against the Vietnam after the end of World War II and the end of the Japanese occupation.  Millions of us, including watashi-wa, were sent to that beautiful country to bomb, shoot, burn, poison, and forcibly relocate its people.  We did it in the name of 'freedom and democracy', but it was always to oppose communism and support capitalism.  We got our ass kicked little, skinny guys in black pajamas,  and now those guys sell us $136 billion worth of running shoes, t-shirts, and other other goodies every year, and Trump is bitching and moaning that they don't buy enough Fords, Chevvies, and John Deere tractors from us.  Pass the basin, please, and cover your ears while I scream.  USA! USA! USA!