Well, at least he was being even-handed. Felon 47 actually imposed his “Liberation Day” tariffs. He hit everywhere. EVERYWHERE! Including a couple of islands, Heard Island and McDonald Islands. He’s HAD it with them giving us the business when it comes to trade. Unless it’s about Fentanyl. I’m not sure anymore. He’s not either, because of the Adderall. Still, he’s not going to STAND for it one day longer. He named those two islands specifically. Called ’em out, you might say. Every single person who lives there can see that the US isn’t playing around anymore!

And IF anybody actually lived there, they’d probably be upset at the destabilization of the trade relationship. But since nobody does – live there, I mean – the locals (Penguins) probably didn’t notice. To be perfectly clear: he imposed tariffs on penguins! Sometimes, I get genuinely concerned this guy doesn’t know what he’s doing…

Oh, it’s not just me, either. The Drumpfster’s mind-boggling boggled mind is destabilizing the dollar. The dollar is, well, was, the world reserve currency. In simplest terms, that means EVERYONE wanted/needed dollars because the dollar was so dependable, so strong, so… safe. Well, not with Donny driving, it isn’t.

The headline in the Guardian this morning read, “US dollar ‘at risk of confidence crisis’ as Trump tariffs rattle global markets.” Other countries are abandoning the dollar altogether, now. Increasingly, they’re turning toward the Yuan. That’s Chinese money. Donny’s hat is wrong. He’s making China great again. He’s pushing AMERICA into a depression. (I know I’M depressed…)

Mostly, I just believe he really doesn’t understand. I suspect he honestly thinks this will work. Someone told him there would be “market adjustments” so he doesn’t CARE about the crashing economy or your 401k. He thinks it will just be short-term pain. Respected economists think we’re on our way to a wheelbarrow full of money to buy a loaf of bread.

On the other hand, he IS an evil son-of-a-bitch. One cannot discount that. He and his evil buddies might well have a profit scheme dreamed up that involves the ultimate “bust out,” the United States of America. He and his buddies end up with trillions in Yuan (NO, he’s not buying dollars. Those things are useless. What are you, crazy?) and the vast majority of Americans will be left with nothing…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The right seems to have found a new bogeyman to expose and expunge: empathy. Empathy is a noun. It means, ‘The ability to identify with or understand another’s situation or feelings.’ I guess there’s a concern that some MAGA might start to wonder what it FEELS LIKE to be whisked off of the street, held without charge, put on a plane, and flown to a maximum security prison without EVER being charged, let alone convicted, to “serve your time.” How MUCH time? No one can say. There IS no crime, so there IS no statute. Technically, you’ve been “disappeared.”

I kind of couldn’t believe it when I first heard about it. I mean, who thought they needed THAT? I see a ‘lack of empathy’ as entry level stuff for MAGA, a basic requirement. Yet, they’re starting to talk publicly about how empathy is weakness. Elon Musk went on the Joe Rogan show and said, “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.” All right, so Musk is a greed-blinded moron whom one would NEVER mistake for a decent or moral human being. Oh, AND, he has autism. It’s EASY to believe he can’t quite grasp the concept of empathy. I doubt he could do to people what he’s doing to people if he could. But among the leaders of that anti-empathy movement? “Christian” Nationalists.

The quotes around ‘Christian’ are about me not accepting them AS Christians.
“Hey! Who are YOU to judge my relationship with Jesus?”
“I’m a guy who can read your storybook and understand what it says, then watch your behavior and compare the two. When they don’t align, I draw conclusions, like it or not. When everything you do, say, think, and feel is the exact opposite of the teachings of Jesus, you just don’t qualify as Christian, no matter WHAT you call yourself. Maybe start with John 13:15…”

For those of us not so familiar with John 13:15, it says, “For I gave you an example, so that you also would do just as I did for you.” (That’s Jesus-talk for “I showed you how to behave. Do that.” They don’t, and I “discern.”) But maybe it’s just me, right? Maybe I misunderstood the message. No, I don’t think so. Here are some other examples from the “Christian” Nationalists:

JOSH MCPHERSON from the podcast ‘Family Talk’: “Empathy almost needs to be struck from the Christian vocabulary.”

ALLIE BETH STUCKEY from the podcast ‘Thinking In Public’: “Really, I think empathy as hoisted up as the highest virtue, or even a virtue at all – I think that really gets us into a really big mess.”

JOE RIGNEY, discussing his book, ‘The Sin Of Empathy,’: “Most people have a hard time imagining how empathy could ever be harmful. And therefore, if I’m the devil, where am I going to hide some of my most destructive tactics?”

Purging empathy, any possibility of empathy, is crucial to the next steps in the coup. They’re about to get outright cruel, as though they haven’t been evil enough already…
“Oh, Mark, you’re always so hyperbolic!”

In Better America, one could NOT just put someone on a plane and send them to prison in a foreign country. Just for emphasis: ‘SEND THEM TO PRISON’ in a foreign country! By definition, then, we haven’t been Better America since at least 2001, when the US started jailing people in Guantanamo Bay based on the idea that, while being tortured, someone had mentioned a name just like theirs. Nothing else, just that.

Now we’ve sent a planeload of people to a prison in El Salvador. No, I DIDN’T write about how they lost their court cases – because they didn’t GET court cases. THIS time, it isn’t ‘named under torture’ that got them tossed (permanently?) into prison. THIS time, it was the “crime” of having a tattoo on brown skin. Ooh, scary…

Human beings were summarily declared guilty and sent to a prison. The US paid that prison $6 million dollars to keep them. No trial. Just a payment. Prison. No, not just a prison. One of the most notoriously brutal prisons in the world. What was their crime? Nothing. Nada. Zilch.
“Uh-huh! They were members of a bad gang.”
“Oh, yeah? Prove it.”
“Well, we can’t…”
“Oh? And why is that?”
“It turns out, some of them weren’t really in that gang. But they were still in gangs!”
“Same answer: prove it.”
“No…”

The LAST time the cruelest incompetents misled the country, they kidnapped people’s children as a way to discourage them from coming to the US. We, the people – they did this in OUR name – never DID reunite some of those children with their families. We just… stole them. ‘Come to America, lose your children’, was the threat.

Now it’s ‘Come to America, end up in a brutal, El Salvadoran prison – for nothing.’
“Sneaking into this country illegally is a crime.”
“Yeah, a misdemeanor. Not usually maximum security prison stuff.”

They call it “Shock and Awe.” The idea is to use the threat of violence to coerce a civilian population in pursuit of an ideological goal. Hey, wait a minute. I’ve heard that before. Where have I– Oh, I remember! That’s the actual definition of ‘Terrorism,’ using violence or the threat of violence to intimidate or coerce a civilian population or government in pursuit of political or ideological goals.

Thanks, MAGA. Donny’s only been in charge for just over two months, and already, the United States of America is, officially, a terrorist state! And you’re… cheering? I guess MAGA media doesn’t have to put TOO much effort into that “purge empathy” movement after all, eh?