4/5/2025

 Saturday, April 5, 2025

D+150/76

1242 Battle on the Ice: Russian Prince of Novgorod Alexander Nevsky defeated the Teutonic Knights on the frozen Lake Peipus between Estonia and Russia

1792 George Washington exercised the first presidential veto to strike down a  bill to increase the number of seats for northern states in the House of Representatives

1948 WGN TV channel 9 in Chicago, IL (IND) began broadcasting

1969 Massive anti-Vietnam War demonstrations occur in many U.S. cities

1971 US Lt. William Calley was sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering 22 unarmed South Vietnamese civilians in the My Lai Massacre

1992 Serbian troops began besieging Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia, which would become the longest siege in modern warfare

In bed at 8:45, awake and up at 4:15.  38°, wind chill 30°, high of 50°,  Light rain expected, 0.1 inch fell overnight.   

Prednisone, day 350; 3 mg., day 9/21;Kevzara, day 4/14; CGM, day 3/15; Trulicity, day 2/7.  2 mg. of prednisone at 5 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. Other meds at 8:30 a.m.

Clips from morning readings:

From the New York Times:

Steve Rattner: "I Watch the Markets for a Living. This Week, Everything Changed."

The business community, which by my count heavily supported Mr. Trump in the election five months ago, seems stunned. Few have spoken publicly, but the Business Roundtable, the premier corporate trade association, on Wednesday warned that universal tariffs run “the risk of causing major harm to American manufacturers, workers, families and exporters.”

Privately, several chief executives told me that they recognized that imposing the tariffs, as well as Mr. Trump’s intractable support of them, was a potentially cataclysmic mistake. “Few of us ever imagined he would go this far,” one told me. “He could well bring down the economy and himself.”

Ezra Klein: "Paul Krugman on the ‘Biggest Trade Shock in History’

Klein: "[W]what they’re saying is something subtly different, which is that if we have a trade deficit with anybody, that is bad, and it should be treated as evidence of market discrimination or at least something we want to fix.

Krugman: "There’s no particular reason to think that these numbers should be balanced country by country. All kinds of things can go on. So there’s a whole discussion and literature in the research on what explains bilateral trade imbalances. But nothing that says that they are ipso facto evidence of foul play, which is what the Trump people seem to believe. . . And then they have this other thing that basically says: If you are running a trade surplus with us, then we’re going to take that as evidence of bad behavior. We’re going to kick at you if you do that.   That wasn’t at all — at least in the selling of this policy — what they said they were going to do. 

 From the Wall Street Journal:

‘Fewer Choices and Higher Prices’: The Supply Chain of the Future

The companies that built up Asian supply chains over decades operate on slim margins, and many say they have little choice but to pass on the cost of President Trump’s higher tariffs, assuming he sticks by his plan. They say it is impossible to make many labor-intensive products in the U.S., and shifting around production to ease the tariff burden will be time-consuming and costly.

From The Atlantic:

"Laura Loomer Is a Warning" by Ali Breland

White House staffers, it seems, had better hope that they stay in Laura Loomer’s good graces. This week, Loomer—a far-right provocateur who has described herself as “pro–white nationalism” and Islam as a “cancer on humanity”—met with Donald Trump in the Oval Office. After she reportedly railed against National Security Council officials she believed were disloyal to the president, the White House fired six NSC staff members the next day. More firings could be on their way: Yesterday, a person close to the administration told my colleague Michael Scherer that “Loomer has been asked to put together a list of people at State who are not MAGA loyalists.” 

 "Take Trump Seriously on Greenland" by Tom Nichols

The United States grabbing land from an ally sounds like the stuff of a Netflix political thriller. But every American should contemplate three realities about Donald Trump’s aggressive desire to acquire Greenland, a semiautonomous Danish territory. First, unlike his usual shtick, in which he floats wild ideas and then he and his aides alternate between saying he was serious and saying he might have been joking, he means it. The Danes seem to believe him, and so should Americans. When institutions begin planning based on the president’s directions, as the White House is now doing, it’s no longer idle talk.

Second, Trump is calling for actions that likely contravene American and international law. He is undermining the peace and stability of an allied nation, while threatening a campaign of territorial conquest. He refuses to rule out an unprovoked war of aggression, a violation of the United Nations Charter and an international crime that would be little different in kind from Russian President Vladimir Putin’s attempt to seize Ukraine. 

Finally, the almost-certain illegality of any attempt to seize Greenland against the will of its people and the Danish government means that if Trump directs the U.S. military to engage in such an operation, he could well precipitate the greatest civil-military crisis in American history since the Civil War. 

"Hands Off!" rallies across the nation.  Do they make any difference to Trump/Musk?  I don't think so.  A White House official was quoted yesterday saying Trump "has reached the peak of just not giving a fuck anymore."  He knows, and we all know, that 51% of the American voters voted against him last November.  He won 'bigly' in the Electoral College, but only by 1.5% in the popular vote over Kamala Harris.  75 million Americans voted against him.  The widespread opposition to him didn't arise in the last 2 and ½ months; it's been around since 2015.

There is another reason Trump doesn't give a fuck about demonstrations against him.  He considers himself, and men (not women) like Elon Musk übermenschen, superior to and probably different in kind from the 'suckers' and 'losers' on the streets in today's demonstrations.  He and his ilk are billionaires, and they are not.  They are billionaires because they are genetically superior to ordinary men.  They are rich because they deserve it.  The rabble are not rich because they don't deserve it.  In Aldous Huxley's Brave New World terms, Trump and his ilk are Alpha Pluses; the rabble are Deltas.  He entertains a sort of divine right of kings mentality, with himself as a king and the rest of us his subjects.  The 'little people' around him got in his way in his first administration, but not this time.  Back in the 2016 Republican primaries, Lindsey Graham said, “If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed, and we will deserve it.”  He is proving to be prescient.

I tried to narrow the lady's face, put a cadmium orange glaze over the red dress, added some paint to her fan on the table, and tried to figure out whether I could make her face work.  I should have started with her face instead of leaving it to now.