Posted on May 2, 2025
Cranial Tumbleweeds
Tariff troubles, bad words, the
me-monster, etc.
by
Daniel Clark
* Of all
the things of which Pete Hegseth had been accused, an inability to keep a
secret from his wife was not among them.
* Do the
Democrats really imagine that "Fight Oligarchy" is going to carry them to
victory? What finished second in their
slogan contest, "Eschew the Nativist Paradigm?"
* When
President Trump wildly exaggerates other countries' tariff rates on American
goods, he confounds his own ability to negotiate with them. Say you're the prime minister of a country
that imposes tariffs at a rate of 2.5 percent, but Trump's chart claimed a rate
of 44 percent in order to justify a "reciprocal" tariff of 22 percent. Why would you not simply promise to lower
your rate to 2.5 percent? What could he
say?
* The fact
that representatives of other governments were quick to contact the Trump
administration after his "Liberation Day" tariff announcement is
unremarkable. If some other country
suddenly slapped a 10 percent tariff on imports from the U.S., our guys would
have something to say about it, too.
That doesn't mean they would be confessing to some sort of wrongdoing
and looking to make concessions.
* The
reshoring of manufacturing jobs to America in response to Trump's tariffs, if
it happened at all, would take several years just to get started. In the meantime, existing American factories
would be in danger of closing, because the materials they use to create their
products would have been made more expensive.
And that doesn't even take the impact of retaliatory tariffs into
account.
* The
expectation that international corporations would go through the trouble of
moving factories to the United States in order to circumvent the tariffs is
based on the presumption of a continuity that no longer exists. It would be one thing if the tariffs were
imposed by Congress, as the Constitution prescribes, so that it would take
another act of Congress to lift them.
Nobody is going to embark on that significant a long-term commitment,
however, based on the fickle words of Donald Trump.
* Not long
ago, Trump said "there will be bombing" in Iran, if Ayatollah Khamenei did not
agree to negotiate with him directly.
Now, he says it's up to Israel, but that if the Israelis decide to bomb
Iran, the U.S. will be right there with them.
The MAGA movement's Buchananite ancestors would be interested to know
that "America First" now means delegating foreign policy decisions to Israel.
*The
pro-Russian faction of the Republican Party sees that country as the leader of
the "nationalists" who are supposedly our only hope of salvation against the
"globalists," but these designations are caricatures. Far from being a lone wolf in international
affairs, Russia maintains its seat on the UN Security Council, and it belongs
to the World Trade Organization, the G20, and the International Monetary Fund
and World Bank. It even created BRICS, a
multinational economic alliance among many of the world's most oppressive
governments. Like most countries, Russia
is in favor of any global order that gives it a prominent place.
* When
there is a pro-Russian faction of the Republican Party, the "Big Tent" has
gotten entirely too big.
* Many
Trumpies would tell you with total certainty that President George W. Bush is
not only a globalist, but one of the worst among them. However, Bush waged (and won) the Iraq War
over the opposition of the UN, opposed the creation of the UN Human Rights
Commission, and withdrew the United States from the International Criminal
Court. It was because of such "go it
alone" policies, remember, that Democrats assailed him as a "cowboy," which in
their world is apparently some kind of an insult.
* In fact,
Bush's "unsigning" of President Clinton's commitment to the ICC foreshadowed
Trump's doing the same thing to Obama's and Biden's signing of the Paris
Climate Accord.
* For the
sake of humanity, will everybody stop using the non-word "gaslighting"
already? If you mean to say somebody is being
dishonest with us, say he's lying. Say
he's deceiving us. Say he's engaging in
sophistry. Whatever you're trying to
convey, there are plenty of already existing English words for the purpose of
doing so.
* The term
is supposedly derived from the 1944 movie Gaslight, starring Ingrid
Bergman and Charles Boyer, but this is not a valid reference point, because
almost nobody who uses the term has ever seen this movie. It's almost impossible to watch the entire,
tedious two hours of hoity-toity high society types attending pompous dinner
parties and going "uh-fah-fah-fah-fahh." If we showed this movie to
death row inmates, the ACLU would raise hell, and for once it would have a
point. No oblique reference to this
stilted, snooze-inducing cinematic atrocity really means anything to anybody
today who is opining on cable news or social media.
* Even if Gaslight
weren't such an insufferable drag, most people under the age of 40 would sooner
guzzle a bottle of cod liver oil than watch a black and white movie. Many of them would prefer Avatar: The Way
of Water to Casablanca for that reason. Seriously.
Call this a curmudgeonly observation if you want, but stop pretending
that "gaslighting" means anything to you, or to the person to whom you are speaking.
* Please,
everybody also stop using the word "iconic" until further notice. When everything is an icon, then nothing is.
* And
there isn't enough cyberspace to explain everything that's wrong with using
"gift" as a verb. Practically nobody did
this until about five years ago, and now it seems to be mandatory. At some point, a memo must have gone out to
all sportscasters to say things like, "Illinois gifted Ohio State a
touchdown with that fumble inside the red zone." They really struggle to force it in
sometimes, as if they're fulfilling a quota.
* The NFL
Draft has become just another version of the Oscars, except that it is for
people who have actually accomplished something.
* It may
have been a surprise to a lot of sports reporters that Shedeur Sanders wasn't
drafted until the fifth round, but it should not have been an outrage. If they can't even conceal their rooting
interest in one player being drafted over another, then fans can't trust their
reporting about anything.
* Rather
than accusing NFL general managers of some form of injustice or other, these
journalists should have been able to explain that Sanders had refused to work
out at the NFL combine. Like it or not,
scouts have always put a disproportionate emphasis on the combine, and they
would naturally become suspicious of Sanders' decision to conduct interviews
there but not participate in any physical activities. Either Shedeur's father, NFL Hall of Famer
Deion Sanders, failed to impress upon him the importance of the combine, or
Shadeur did not heed his father's advice.
It makes little sense to blame anyone else.
* Any paid
analyst who complained about Sanders' draft position without pointing this out
as a factor needs to spend more time analyzing and less time jocksniffing.
*
Increasing tolerance of unsportsmanlike conduct throughout the world of sports
has led offenders to commit more outrageously unsportsmanlike acts just to get
attention. Not content with showing up
the pitcher with a bat flip, a batter will sometimes carry his bat halfway down
the first base line before grabbing it by the barrel and spiking it to the
ground. Yet nobody is ever disciplined
for it. Is it too cynical to observe
that the possibility of seeing a bench-clearing brawl would be great for
ratings?
* Why is
there a Major League Soccer team called Inter Miami? The prefix "inter" means "between." An interstate highway is a highway between
states. So Inter Miami would be the
soccer team between Miamis. Is there
another Miami we don't know about? Inter
Kansas City would make a modicum of sense.
Inter Vancouver, even, but not Inter Miami. Did John Edwards show up and give a speech
declaring, "There are two Miamis?" If
not, then what's their excuse?
* Most
Trump administration spokespeople need to take lessons from border czar Tom
Homan, who directly states the facts in his own words, instead of regurgitating
catch phrases and making snotty remarks in an attempt to "own" the opposition. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt,
by contrast, speaks as if she had just swallowed a week's worth of Trump's
Truth Social posts and barfed them back up.
* Deputy
White House chief of staff Stephen Miller is a singularly unpleasant, ornery
and abrasive person. He becomes louder
and more combative the less of a point he has, and he is always loud and
combative. Even a golden retriever
wouldn't be able to like this guy. He is
as if Alec Baldwin's character in Glengarry
Glen Ross had popped of the movie
screen and into real life. Yet there are
apparently a lot of people out there who absolutely love this nasty man for the
simple reason that he's being nasty for Trump.
Is that all it takes?
* Marco Rubio, Trump's former rival, now holds four different offices
within his administration: secretary of state, national security adviser,
acting archivist for the National Archives and Records Administration, and
acting administrator of USAID. He must
be plotting to take over the presidency through osmosis.
* Rubio says Trump is completely serious about annexing Canada, which
kind of makes perfect sense, in a way.
Trump is usually funny when he means to be, sometimes hilarious. But his quip about Canda becoming our 51st
state wasn't funny the first time he said it, let alone the
hundredth. It turns out that it's not a
joke.
* The movie Canadian Bacon is
totally unfunny, also, but less intentionally so.
* One explanation for all the disarray within the Trump administration
is that constructive criticisms are not allowed. One of the purposes of a cabinet meeting is
for the president to give a hearing to the differing opinions among his trusted
advisers, so that he may make well-informed decisions. The Trump made-for-TV cabinet shows, by
contrast, present a unified cabinet whose secretaries take turns praising the
president and assuring the audience that all of his policies are working out
wonderfully. Hence, nobody ever tries to
dissuade him from making a bad decision.
* Because it's not normal for a president to televise his cabinet
meetings, we don't exactly know this for a fact, but it's unimaginable that cabinet
secretaries typically begin their remarks by saying things like, "Mr.
President, I would just like to thank you for your leadership, and your
commitment to the American people." It's
also unthinkable that any previous Republican president would have tolerated
such wasteful behavior at such a time.
* At this most recent cabinet show, a red or blue hat was placed in
front of each secretary's chair, with "GULF OF AMERICA" emblazoned on it. The unspoken message behind them was that no
dissent would be tolerated. Once the
secretaries have been pressured into enthusiastically embracing something so
absurd, their defenses have been broken.
* Michelle Obama recently went on a podcast to dispel the rumor that
her marriage was in trouble. "My
decision to make choices at the beginning of this year that suited me," was how
she characterized playing hooky from Jimmy Carter's funeral. Was that supposed to make selfishness sound
bold and admirable? "People couldn't
believe that I was saying no for any other reason," she said. "They had to assume that my marriage was
falling apart." So the real reason she
stayed home on her private beach in Hawaii is that she's a callous,
inconsiderate me-monster. Guess she
straightened that out.
* It's a heck of a time for Mrs. Obama to decide to start minding her
own business.
* A year ago, Republicans were expressing fear that Mrs. Obama would
jump into the presidential race, because her poll numbers have always been very
high. They needn't have worried. People don't really like this woman any more
than she likes them. Her approval rating
reflects the deference that is traditionally paid to a first lady. It would have changed dramatically the
instant she became a politician.
* Republican fears about Hillary Clinton were overblown, also. Granted, Democrat women are scary, but let's
not get carried away.
* On the first anniversary of Trump's first election a group of liberal
activists gathered in New York to, in their words, "scream helplessly at the
sky." That's what impeachment has
become. Having already impeached Trump
twice despite having no hope of removing him, the Democrats have normalized the
process to the point that it hardly carries much of a stigma anymore. Now, when they talk about impeaching him a
third time, it's just boring. Screaming
helplessly at the sky would actually be a more effective way to register their
objections.
* The retirement of Sen. Dick Durbin is being reported as part of a
transition in the Democratic Party from the old guard "moderates" to the new
breed of extremists. In fact, there is
no transition, because there is no such thing as a moderate Democrat. Durbin has advocated taxpayer funding of
abortion, regulating firearms as a "public health" concern, reinstating the
"Fairness Doctrine" to shut down conservative talk radio, and ending drilling
in ANWR. As if that weren't enough, he
once likened our terrorist detention center at Guantanamo Bay to Nazi
concentration camps and Soviet gulags.
Try finding the moderation in that guy.
* When Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele visited the White House, he
was not wearing a tie or a collared shirt, and his pants were about three sizes
too small. Yet his meeting with the president
went perfectly amicably. It turns out
there's not an angrily enforced Oval Office dress code after all.
* America's declining birthrate is a valid societal concern, but that
doesn't mean the government should try to manipulate the number of children
people are having. How could a
Republican administration fail to see that it's none of Uncle Sam's business
whether a family has one child or two?
* Trump's proposed $5,000 "baby bonus" is doubly stupid. Not only is that insultingly little compared
to the cost of raising a child, but it establishes the premise that the
taxpayers should be footing the bill for it in the first place. If we're really going to pay people to have
children, how much is enough?
* Once we've accepted the premise that the replacement rate of our
population is a federal concern, why not establish government clone farms? Then the feds could produce more people to
make up for the shortfall, just like they produce more money to make up the
deficit.
* J.D. Vance hinted at the creation of a federal population growth
initiative when he spoke at the March For Life in January. This was an attempt to redefine what it means
to be pro-life, so that the administration of which he is a part could claim to
be so, when it is not. Pro-lifers have
never held a position on how many children people should have. It's just that when one exists, you shouldn't
be allowed to kill it. Surely, the vice
president is intelligent enough to grasp that.
* During the campaign, Trump promised not to enforce those provisions
of the Comstock Act that prohibit the mailing of abortion pills across state
lines. This undercuts his own position
that abortion is a state issue, by enabling chemical abortion in states where
it is illegal. It also contradicts his
claim to be "the law and order president."
So he's simply opting not to enforce a law he doesn't like? What is he, a George Soros-funded district
attorney?
* Vance was widely praised for an interview he gave last October, when
he argued with ABC reporter Martha Raddatz about the presence of the Venezuelan
gang Tren de Aragua in Aurora, Colorado.
Nevertheless, Raddatz's assertion that "the issues in Aurora were
limited to a handful of apartment complexes," and that the gang had not
"conquered" whole towns as Trump had said, was factually correct, if
callous. Vance's response to the charge
that he and Trump had exaggerated the situation was to defend the practice of exaggeration. "Well, Martha, you just said the mayor said
[Trump's claims] were exaggerated. That
means there's got to be some element of truth here." So, exaggeration is just like truth, only
bigger? What a piece of work.
* If Donald Trump ever goes away, Republicans everywhere are going to
have to scour their memory banks to recall the things they used to
believe. As many articles as have been
written about "Trumpism," there really is no such philosophy, and with the
exception of immigration, Trump's policies are not likely to live on without
him. It's doubtful that any Republican,
prior to the 2024 campaign, thought that what America needed was a liberal
bureaucrat from a famous Democrat family to play the role of the Federal Food
Police. In the absence of Trump, this
won't be a popular Republican idea, either.
* We Republicans may not be pro-life anymore, and we may have adopted a
leading-from-behind foreign policy, and it turns out we're really not all that
keen on the whole free enterprise thing after all, but dammit, we're going to
stamp out seed oils if it's the last thing we do!
The Shinbone: The Frontier of the Free Press