It's a shame none of Trump's supporters are here right now. It would be interesting to hear their opinions on all this.
I'm sure it's because Putin is no longer sending them a paycheck. They have accomplished their mission of destroying America, so he no longer needs them.
Another anecdotal observation which I'm sure others have noticed.
It used to be that Trump and MAGAt flags were everywhere, but now they seem to be disappearing.
For example, in a more rabidly MAGAt part of the county there's a main road that goes past neighborhoods with some houses that always flew Trump flags. Out of curiosity I drove that way last Friday: not a single flag in sight.
In the same kind of neighborhood on a bluff overlooking the river across from a Trader Joe's (my only reason to be there) is a house with a flagpole that always few a MAGAt flag, usually the appropriated "Don't Tread On Me". Now that flagpole is empty.
I assume that everybody else has made similar observations in their neck of the woods.
Are Trumpers starting to wake up? Seems so, but it's still too little too late.
And as we enter tax season, apparently IRS staff are affected. I'm glad I filed early - I received my refund yesterday. Those of you waiting until April 15th, good luck! I *am* worried about my social security check. I'll know in the next few days.
Ah, a Third Wednesdayer. I'm a Second Wednesdayer. I did get my Social Security check, so you might get yours.
Though given how Trump's minions have taken to taking back legitimate payments by removing money directly payments from payees' bank accounts without notice and for no other reason than "why not?" (eg, the 80 million dollars taken right out of NYC's bank account apparently by Elon and the Musk-ovites-- eg, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUvgwUgboBc ), I keep double-checking to make sure that the money is still in my checking account. Just because you get the check doesn't mean they won't just take it back when you aren't looking.
so they haven't got down their enemies list far enough to find me yet.
Nah, we're not on any of their lists. The more likely way we'd get individually targeted would be by one of their flying monkeys who's either overzealous or just bored and looking for a little fun. We're just part of an entire group that they'll just sweep under the rug, figuring that nobody will miss us nor care about whatever happened to us after they've eliminated us so that they can pick up a little extra pocket money.
But that won't be our main concern after they've succeeded in destroying our national defense capabilities (eg, isolating us from our former allies such that nobody will want to share vital intelligence with us (since it would go straight to Putin and China, like I'm sure all our personal data etc has), destroying our own intelligence capabilities by destroying the CIA and FBI and NSA, fucking up our military) as well as painting a big target on our backs with bullshit like taking over Gaza. We'll be a big fat helpless soft target just waiting for terrorist attacks on our home soil.
We really don't want to go there even though it may end up happening.
The situation would be like you being caught in the middle of a home invasion robbery of your business where they are just cavalierly carting away everything you own while randomly killing your employees and customers. You call the police to come and stop them because there are very definite laws on that matter which the robbers are flagrantly breaking. The police inform you that they can't do anything to help since they are under new management, the robbers are their new bosses. But you can go to the courts and file a lawsuit there. You might win after a few years, but even then the police's new management has a policy of ignoring court rulings.
The urgency couldn't be greater and requires immediate action. But the DOJ is complicit in the criming, so they won't do anything about it. The Republican-run Congress is also complicit and won't do anything, leaving us with the only hope with Congress is to win the next election two years from now (that's assuming elections will even still be held). The courts are proving to be our only hope, but not only are they far too slow to meet the need for immediate action stop the irreparable damage being done in real time, but their rulings require law enforcement to enforce those rulings and that law enforcement (eg, US Marshall Service) is working for the robbers and so will never enforce the courts' rulings.
In the meantime, other possible rapid responders (eg, FBI, CIA, DoD, military) are also being placed under new management as wholly-owned subsidiaries of the robbers. Since those agencies and institutions are having their entire leadership be replaced with the robbers, that eliminates them in terms of any kind of organized response, rapid or otherwise, except for response in support of the robbers.
Developments we see with the military is the top brass being replaced with Trump's DEI hires ("DEI" in the perverted weaponized MAGA sense), losers whose incompetence is surpassed only by their personal loyalty to Trump. Therefore, any kind of military response to this threat cannot come from the top of the Chain of Command, but rather would necessarily have to come from lower echelon leaders taking action on their own. That would lead to violent chaos in which patriotic units forced to act independently (or in ad hoc coalitions with each other) would be opposed by Trumpist forces being directed under the Chain of Command ... with extreme prejudice and violence characteristic of Trump's fantasies.
Having the military lead a coup in order to stop a horrifically and flagrantly criminal civilian government would be bad enough and hard enough to come back from with a unified military, but having to do it with a splintered military would destroy the Republic. The result would be armed civil war in which mainly the military would be fighting amongst itself with us serving as collateral damage.
The irony is that Trump will thus end up creating the "deep state" that he constantly decried but which did not exist. Before.
quote:Zohan: "I have seen this. I have done this. You do not want this."
The same would apply to any rapid response from the intelligence community in that it would require lower echelon teams (as depicted in so much Hollywood fare) to respond independently and in direct violation of orders from the top. Again, an internal civil war and chaos.
And, of course, in the midst of all that national security would have been flushed completely down the tubes -- though that's already happening anyway right now with the wanton dismantling of law enforcement, intelligence, alliances, etc.
Things to look for in the coming months.
Trump will turn the active duty military being turned against us. It will make Kent State look like a snack break.
We are trained to obey lawful orders and to disobey unlawful orders. But that requires guidance on what constitutes an unlawful order. That determination is the job of the Judge Advocate General (JAG), military lawyers who advise military leaders. Trump's DUI hire, DefSec Numbnuts (or whatever his name is), has fired the JAG officers. That opens the door for abusive misuse of the military through unlawful orders.
We already saw this in Trump's first term where during the BLM demonstration in front of the White House (June 2020) Trump ordered active duty army units (82nd Airborne as I seem to recall) to oppose the demonstrators; he also pushed for use of deadly force against the demonstrators, Gen. Milley's opposition making him "back down" to "why don't you just shoot them in the legs?" But it was SecDef Esper who, knowing that Trump's calling out active duty military against American citizens was damned illegal, recalled those army units back to base. So Trump mobilized them again and Esper had to recall them back to base again.
The difference this time is that all the adults are gone. The current SecDef would gladly deploy active duty troops against American citizens. And when Trump orders that those troops fire on American citizens, his DUI-hire SecDef will gladly relay those orders.
The only thing stopping them would be for those troops to rebel and refuse to follow those orders. Which would spark the splintering of the military and an internal civil war that would grow into a general one.
Trump will use those demonstrations as an excuse to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 which in turn he would use to justify his bloody response -- during the campaign, he kept talking about the Insurrection Act so we know he has his eye on using it. That will be part his final takeover and assumption of emergency powers.
Just like Hitler did, which leaves us wondering just what Trump's Reichstag fire will be. They're doing everything they can to leave us open and vulnerable to a terrorist attack (eg, by destroying the law enforcement and intelligence communities), so he might use such an attack as his excuse.
Nor is it hyperbole to compare everything Trump's doing with how Hitler consolidated power, since just about the only thing that Trump has studied has been what Hitler did. Besides, even Godwin has declared that Godwin's Law against comparing an opponent to Hitler does not apply to Trump:
Wikipedia:In 2023, Godwin published an opinion in The Washington Post stating "Yes, it's okay to compare Trump to Hitler. Don't let me stop you." In the article, Godwin says "But when people draw parallels between Donald Trump’s 2024 candidacy and Hitler’s progression from fringe figure to Great Dictator, we aren’t joking. Those of us who hope to preserve our democratic institutions need to underscore the resemblance before we enter the twilight of American democracy."
I need to take a break. Besides, I still have to make breakfast.
Chaos is not good for sustained, long term investment or partnerships.
You are making the mistake of assuming sustained, long term investment and partnerships to be their goals too. To paraphrase from Trump, those who work towards sustained, long term investment and partnerships are "suckers and losers", since the real money is in short term deals made in highly volatile situations.
Chaos is very good for making a lot of money, especially if you're rich enough to take advantage of it and be able to ride out the rough spots. The Great Depression was devastating for the economy and for the people, but the rich made out like out like bandits. When the housing bubble burst in 2008 (see The Big Short), many individual home owners had to walk away from their mortgages which were Hoovered up by the banks who sold them to investment firms, etc; bad for the people and the economy but good for the rich (also arguably a key component in our current housing crisis).
"Buy low and sell high" works extremely well if you can cause the market to oscillate, going from cratering (where the normals are panicked and liquidating for pennies on the dollar and you rich guy can buy everything up) to recovering (where you rich guy can sell at a huge profit). Kind of like day-trading on steroids. Especially when you are in a position of generating that chaos in the markets.And you also control the timing of that chaos so that you and your buddies can benefit from that inside trading information -- eg, as Trump is positioning the gov't to create a huge cryptocurrency reserve by buying large amounts of cryptocurrency, his buddies are buying large amounts of crypto knowing that there will be a guaranteed buyer (part of the problem with cryptocurrency investment is converting it to liquid assets -- it only has great value when held as an investment, but when you sell it that reduces its value).
None of what Trump and Musk are doing has anything to do with improving the country or its economy, but rather in how much they can profit from mishandling the government, by running the country into the ground if necessary (and the world too, if there's a profit to be made).
An afterthought regarding the bad idea of running a government like a business.
Businesses have slipped into the practice of pursuing short-term goals, mainly planning ahead only one quarter at a time. Instead of growing the business (eg, reinvesting profits back into the business), they have to show shareholders a profit every quarter. In order to do that, they have developed a number of tricks.
One trick is to use massive layoffs immediately before the end of the quarter to drastically lower your expenses, artificially inflating reported profits, and then hiring everybody back at the start of the next quarter. And isn't that exactly what President Musk is doing?
News I heard is that Trump's Social Security Admin (SSA) decided to close down the very successful and useful phone lines, requiring everyone to do all their business online or in person at a SSA field office. Not only does that make it much more difficult, if not impossible, for the elderly and handicapped to register for benefits or clear up problems, but the requirement to show up in person is being coupled with the closing of many, if not most, field offices.
According to the report, faced with considerable push-back they backed off from shutting down the phone lines. For now.
Now what you're reporting says that they are also crippling the website, such that the only option they offer you does not work. It's the return of Catch-22:
quote:
Yossarian: Is Orr crazy? Dr. 'Doc' Daneeka: Of course he is. He has to be crazy to keep flying after all the close calls he's had. Yossarian: Why can't you ground him? Dr. 'Doc' Daneeka: I can, but first he has to ask me. Yossarian: That's all he's gotta do to be grounded? Dr. 'Doc' Daneeka: That's all. Yossarian: Then you can ground him? Dr. 'Doc' Daneeka: No. Then I cannot ground him. Yossarian: Aah! Dr. 'Doc' Daneeka: There's a CATCH. Yossarian: A catch? Dr. 'Doc' Daneeka: Sure. Catch-22. Anyone who wants to get out of combat isn't really crazy, so I can't ground him. Yossarian: Ok, let me see if I've got this straight. In order to be grounded, I've got to be crazy. And I must be crazy to keep flying. But if I ask to be grounded, that means I'm not crazy anymore, and I have to keep flying. Dr. 'Doc' Daneeka: You got it, that's Catch-22. Yossarian: Whoo... That's some catch, that Catch-22. Dr. 'Doc' Daneeka: It's the best there is.
Starting at the 2:00 mark:
Maj. Major Major Major: Sergeant, from now on, I don't want anyone to come in and see me while I'm in my office. Is that clear? First Sgt. Towser: Yes, sir. What do I say to people who want to come in and see you while you're in your office? Maj. Major Major Major: Tell them I'm in and ask them to wait. First Sgt. Towser: For how long? Maj. Major Major Major: Until I've left. First Sgt. Towser: And then what do I do with them? Maj. Major Major Major: I don't care. First Sgt. Towser: May I send people in to see you after you've left? Maj. Major Major Major: Yes. First Sgt. Towser: You won't be here then, will you? Maj. Major Major Major: No. First Sgt. Towser: I see, sir. Will that be all? Maj. Major Major Major: Also, Sergeant, I don't want you coming in while I'm in my office asking me if there's anything you can do for me. Is that clear? First Sgt. Towser: Yes, sir. When should I come in your office and ask if there's anything I can do for you? Maj. Major Major Major: When I'm not there. First Sgt. Towser: What do I do then? Maj. Major Major Major: Whatever has to be done. First Sgt. Towser: Yes, sir.
What you're reporting is almost literally Maj. Major Major Major's standing orders: "You can only talk to us online, but only when we're not online."
I haven't had time yet to watch the news I recorded from last night, but I heard that report on MSNBC's Sirius XM channel while driving to duty last night which means it should have been on All In With Chris Hayes somewhere between 5:15 and 5:30.
One, impeachment, may be in the nation's/world's best interests but we already know the republicans don't see that remedy as being in THEIR best interests. That will also not happen.
Even if we were able to impeach and convict and remove Trump, what is there to make him actually leave?
The US Supreme Court has ruled that Trump is immune from the law, freeing him to break any and all laws and engage in any conspiracy to commit any crime just as long as he can claim he's "acting in his official capacity". And we are watching him and his administration openly commit terrible crimes and preparing to prepare ever more horrific crimes (eg, we can see the start of Pinochet-like enforced disappearance of anybody and everybody who might oppose them, the enlistment of law enforcement at all levels directly participating in their crimes).
The GOP Congress has already given up its power (eg, "power of the purse") to Trump. Even if they were to finally find their spine and assert themselves, how could they expect the Executive Branch to honor their Constitutional power? Or even the Constitution? And what's to keep opposition members of Congress from getting disappeared? I'll return to the matter of impeachment below.
I don't think that the 2026 elections offer us any hope. Besides Congress having willingly emasculated themselves, Trump has replaced the agencies and offices for running the elections and for ensuring free and fair elections with his own psychophants who will do whatever he wants. The fix is already in! He promised his base that they would never have to vote again and he is keeping that campaign promise.
The Trump Administration has already signaled the intention of ignoring court orders and have already started doing so, albeit up to this point not yet directly refusing to obey a court order, but that step is not far away. The judiciary has no actual power to enforce its decisions, but rather must rely on the DOJ (eg, US Marshall Service). Well, DOJ has become enforcers of Trump's will and whims, so they're not about enforce any court decisions.
Remember, Trump kept praising President Andrew Jackson, especially the part where Jackson refused to abide by a SCOTUS decision. An act that Trump appears to be chomping at the bit to emulate. Also remember how in his first term Trump had removed the Judiciary as the Third Co-equal Branch of the government from the government websites.
So, let's imagine the scenario where Congress finally wakes up and impeaches and convicts Trump and orders him removed from office. Who is going to enforce that removal? The DOJ? Nope! The courts? Nope, since they are being rendered just as impotent as Congress.
And even if Trump himself were to be removed, we still have the MAGAts entrenched in the Executive and in power. Trump is not the problem! He's just the face of this hostile takeover of our country. He's just the enabler of their takeover that they had been planning for decades.
Until someone exercises the third option ...
Trump is already planting his psychophants in the DoD and in the upper echelons of the chain of command. There can be no unified military response to this existential threat to national security and to the Constitution of the United States of America. Rather, any military response would have to be by individual lower echelon commands, which would also lead to a form of civil war within the military. Basically a massive cluster fuck with tons of collateral damage on the side:
Classic Stereotypical Vietnam War Military Logic:
It was necessary to destroy the village in order to save it.
More and more that looks like the most promising solution, but there's no coming back from it.
... we're fucked.
I'm trying to work in the ending of the movie, M*A*S*H (1970), where the PA announcer reads off the cast ending with the Army driver in Tokyo delivering his line:
quote:Driver: Goddamned Army! PA: That is all!
But I just got up and haven't had my breakfast yet, so my writing skills haven't spooled up yet.
So, yeah, we're fucked. Even if we are able to defeat and purge this MAGAt pestilence, America will have been destroyed and there will be no way back.
Edited by dwise1, : Corrected "and having had my breakfast yet" to "and haven't had my breakfast yet". Sorry for the mistake, but I hadn't had my breakfast yet.
It felt, at least at the time, that his talking points took 10 seconds to state and that any rebuttal would have had to take the form of 10 minutes of what would have seemed like lecturing.
The key to the problem of "creation/evolution" debates and how creationists rig them. The creationist spouts a stream of lies, each of which would take more than a mere 10 minutes to reply to, and his opponent is only given five to ten minutes for the whole kit and kaboodle. When take to its natural consequences, that is the Gish Gallop.
A secondary trick is when the opponent asks a creationist a very pertinent question, the creationist will evade it, usually with some token gesture towards "answering", but the structure of the debate format does not allow the opponent to press for an answer and lets the creationist get away with it.
Back to the "MAGA Gallop", I'm sure you noticed in the first Trump Administration how every time a MAGA spokesperson appeared in public (eg, whenever Kelly Ann Conway was on Bill Maher) they would just open their mouth and unleash an continuous torrent of nonsense that nobody was able to even begin to respond to (eg, Kelly Ann and several other MAGAts Bill Maher had on his show would continue to fire-hose over Bill as he tried to get a word in edgewise).
This is exposing a chink in the armor of US democracy.
More than that, unfortunately.
I am retired, so my security clearance has been suspended and I have no access to anything classified, nor am I carrying any secrets around in my head (just informing any bad intentioned lurkers that I am not a viable target). While I was still working, at one facility my collateral duties included facility security officer and classified materials custodian -- for the most part, my security clearance was for handling those materials, hence I possess no classified knowledge. As such, I underwent more security and handling of classified materials training than most clearance holders would.
One cardinal rule is that you do not put classified on an unclassified computer system. No exceptions! Only a classified computer system can ever hold any classified information and the requirements for setting up a classified computer system are very stringent. We considered setting up a classified computer system and it would have been so difficult to do that we just decided to just keep any classified off our computers.
What these bozos did was to put classified information onto an unclassified system, that being in this case the encrypted Signal app (my impression is that it's good enough for personal or even commercial privacy, but not military grade).
Another requirement is that you don't allow any unauthorized persons to have access to classified; eg, you don't leave it lying open on your desk, nor do you talk about it within earshot of unauthorized persons. That's why classified documents have a cover sheet or folder (you saw many examples in the Mar-a-Lago raid photos) and those cover sheets must be in place when you're not actually reading the document. With lower levels of classification you can work with it at your desk when handled appropriately, but with higher levels of classification you can only read it inside a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF), an enclosed area within a building (ie, an enclosed room) which is kept secured. Besides being locked and sometimes guarded, you cannot take anything out nor in; you must surrender all phones, cameras, personal electronics that could transmit or record (eg, smartwatches, ear buds), writing materials for note-taking, etc. Inside the SCIF, you may access classified, discuss it, provide classified briefings, use classified communications equipment, etc. For example, on active duty circa 1980 I remember we had to go down to the Bomb Wing Command Post, which served as a SCIF, to use the AUTOSEVOCOM (Automatic Secure Voice Communications Network, a special telephone used for encrypted voice communications).
Lest we forget:
Wikipedia: Matt Gaetz:In October 2019, Gaetz organized a "storming" of a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility on Capitol Hill by about two dozen Republican congressmen, including House minority whip Steve Scalise, in an effort to sit in on and hear the deposition of a Pentagon official during the impeachment inquiry into Trump. The congressmens' cell phones and other devices put the secure facility, and U.S. national security, at risk.
Why that POS and his co-perpetrators weren't arrested on the spot is beyond me; any of us doing the same thing would have been locked up on the spot. Oh yeah, Trump.
So these bozos should have gone to their SCIFs to set up those classified conference calls as it was always done before. Instead, they were using their phones anywhere with no control of who was around. Signal has voice capability, so anyone nearby could overhear what they're saying. That aspect of security is gone.
They're using their own personal phones, so they're mixing classified with an unclassified system (far worse than breaking God's Law of not mixing fabrics). And unlike the classified communications channels in the SCIF, personal phones can be hacked such that malware could access the information.
We already saw Trump work to circumvent those laws; eg, Trump personally ripping up notes and either eating them or flushing them down the toilet, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows regularly burned documents in his office. In addition, one of Jared Kushner's first assigned tasks was to create and install a back-channel communications channel direct to Putin bypassing any and all US communications channels, thus allowing Trump to leave no record of what he discussed with Putin (much like the hours of Trump meeting personally with Putin with no US officials present).
It's that last that raises the issue of our band of bozos and their Signal apps. Using the prescribed communications in SCIFs would provide the required document trail for preservation, but not so a Signal group chat. Worse, Signal chats get marked for automatic deletion, the exact opposite of what's required by federal law. And all such communications would be outside the purview of the US goverment, exactly like Trump's desired back-channel and his private personal meetings with Putin.
Whatever these bozos are doing and discussing and possibly plotting is being done completely outside the purview of the government. No trace, no cognizance, no nothing to track what they're doing. We saw another example of this in the movie, VICE (2018), about VP Dick Cheney. As per the film Cheney exploited the fact that he served two separate roles in two separate branches of government: in the Executive branch as Vice President, and in the Legislative branch as President of the Senate. As such, he was only subject to the preservation of information laws as VP, but not as President of the Senate, so he would conduct all his dirty dealing and plotting as President of the Senate, not as Vice President. In effect, he was doing what these bozos appear to also be doing by communicating outside of government channels.
OK, so there's the maxim (or is it a Law?): Do not attribute to malfeasance that which could be explained as incompetence and/or stupidity. Well, most certainly these bozos are woefully incompetent, but that shouldn't rule out malfeasance. Especially with this crowd of crooks.
Bette Davis:
You'd better fasten your seat belts. It's going to be a bumpy ride!
quote:Trump still has "DEI", only it means "Demogogues Empowering Idiots".
Thom added that, by examining how they use the term, "DEI" is just the more recent Republicanese for "n****r". Take any MAGAt statement about "DEI" and substitute the "n-word" and it will read the same.
I've heard that Trump has always lusted after Greenland when he first saw it on a map and was amazed at its size. On a Mercator projection map. IOW, Trump was and still is so dumb that he didn't and still doesn't understand how Mercator projection greatly distorts the apparent size of land at extreme northern and southern latitudes, making them appear far larger than they really are.
I was in CostCo today where I noticed something. They sell toilet paper (TP) in a large package: 5 packets of six rolls each for a total of 30 rolls. It seemed that almost every basket I saw had TP in it. And the big pile of TP was much smaller than usual. It seems as if everybody had learned a lesson the last time Trump was in office, so they're stocking up now in preparation.
As follow-up on that, I saw an economic news video on YouTube suggesting a repeat of the TP shortage.
TP and other paper products are made out of wood pulp. Guess where we get most of our wood pulp. From Canada. You know, the country we're about to launch a trade war with such that imports from Canada, such as wood pulp, will become much more expensive along with anything made from wood pulp. The country looking to replace us with better customers, such that they could very well decide to not export any wood pulp to us.
Yeah, that Canada.
We do not grow enough trees to meet our wood pulp needs, nor do we have enough factories to convert trees to enough wood pulp.
Could just be sensationalism, but do you want to bet your @$$ on it? Though this would make Trump a literal PITA.
So far, nobody has mentioned where Trump got his ideas of tariffs from.
On Friday, as I recall, Rachel Maddow reported this:
Story is that Trump had some vague ideas about tariffs and tasked Jared Kushner to research it. So Jared browsed through some book titles and glommed onto a book, Death by China, by an economics crackpot named Peter Navarro who advocated fighting against China trade with tariffs.
In his book, Navarro depended on and quoted from the works of a "Harvard economics student" named Ron Vara. It turns out that "Ron Vara" doesn't exist but is purely fictitious. "Ron Vara" is an anagram of "Navarro" (ie, take out your Scrabble game, spell out "Navarro", then rearrange the tiles to get "Ron Vara", much like how in the movie, Sneakers (1992), they decoded a message, "SETEC ASTRONOMY", as "TOO MANY SECRETS").
In addition, "Ron Vara" has appeared on the White House staff; from Wikipedia (my emphasis added):
"Ron Vara":
An investigation by the Chronicle of Higher Education found that no such person existed, and that Ron Vara (an anagram of Navarro) appeared to represent views that Navarro himself held. Navarro has admitted to making up the character, an author surrogate, and quoting him in his books.
Economist Glenn Hubbard, who co-authored Seeds of Destruction with Navarro, has said he was not aware that Vara was fictional, and that he did not approve of Navarro attributing information to a fictional source. In December 2019, a memo purportedly written by Ron Vara began circulating in Washington, D.C. The memo highlighted the "Keep Tariff Argument" and the use of tariffs against China a few days before an additional 15% tariff on $160 billion of Chinese-made goods was set to be implemented. Navarro later confirmed that he had written the memo. In response to the "Ron Vara" character, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China spokesperson Hua Chunying accused Navarro of "smearing China with lies".
No expert can make any sense out of Trump's tariffs and even Trump supporters (eg, K.Rose) can only say stuff like, "I don’t fully understand Trump’s strategy, but I’m confident he’ll succeed." (K.Rose, Message 664)
And the "mathematical formula" the White House has presented as being the basis for calculating that chart Trump displayed to justify imposing tariffs to correct the trade imbalance with the penguins of Heard Island and McDonald Islands (population: zero humans) also appears bogus.
Today-ish (factoring in time zones/Int'l Date Line) on YouTube Stand-Up Maths' Stand-up Mathematician Matt Parker posted an analysis of Trump's tariff equation, Explaining the Trump Tariff Equation:
He uses the government's own figures, etc. A couple times while trying to figure out what they were trying to do but it made no mathematical sense, the video has to display a test pattern with the caption, "Mathematician Resetting: Please Stand By" (eg, 13:25).
Basically, the only purpose for that formula is for a show of "mathiness". Kind of like when creationists don a white lab coat to impart the appearance of "scienciness" to their BS nonsense.
Edited by dwise1, : added my emphasis in that quote
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