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Seems to be a pattern in the current administration…of not thinking things through very well.<\/p>\n
It started with Cabinet nominations… we noted months ago that with a tiny majority in the House and Senate, taking too many candidates from the – yep, House and Senate – might come back to bite ’em in that old gluteus maximus. And what happened Thursday last?<\/p>\n
Trump confirmed he was withdrawing the New York Republican\u2019s nomination in a Truth Social post, saying that it was \u201cessential that we maintain EVERY Republican Seat in Congress.\u201d\u00a0 AP News<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Then there is all the DEI brouhaha – anti-DEI orders have allowed pictures of the Enola Gay to be pulled, then reinstated, the Tuskegee Airmen to be pulled, and reinstated, the first black Medal of Honor awardee to be pulled,, and reinstated…latest one on that aired Thursday with word that pictures of Jewish Naval Academy grads had been pulled, and reinstated. A pattern?<\/p>\n
\nThe US Naval Academy has returned photos and memorabilia of Jewish women after they were \u201cmistakenly removed\u201d from a display to apparently comply with diversity, equity, and inclusion directives from the Pentagon.\u00a0 CNN<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Is this malicious over-enforcement? Is this anti-Trump loyalists trying to make him, or Hegseth, or Vance, whomever –\u00a0 look like an idiot? Dunno, but let me stick my neck out a bit. It doesn’t matter.<\/em> If a directive is so poorly phrased, so badly written that it can be misinterpreted or give wiggle room to malicious parties to do something the opposite of what you intended – it’s just a\u00a0 poorly written order. If the only way to do the wrong thing is to BREAK the order, you’ve got it right. But that’s consistently what we are not seeing.\u00a0 If these folks at the highest level of our government are supposedly the best of the best of the best (apologies to Will Smith) they should be able to issue clear, unambiguous orders.<\/p>\n
Now we have the market doing ugly things (the Dow is down 3300 points in the last month, half of that just Thursday.) Not the end of the world – in the famous ’87 crash the Dow sipped something like 22% – in one day. Equivalent to that now would be somewhere north of 8000 points, and we aren’t there. Yet. But for someone who got elected on the premise he was going to make our lives better, this is a funny way to go about it. Why? The tariffs. The tariffs, the tariffs…. (apologies to Don Rafael.)<\/p>\n
Now, I am not going to get into whether they are a good idea or not… Econ was a one and done set of courses for me thirty years ago, and who knows, they may work. But the choice of things and places to slap tariffs onto? That’s where I started to get into it.<\/p>\n
\nThe Trump administration’s tariffs list (archived), posted on the White House X account, did indeed include the “Heard and McDonald Islands,” which were hit with 10% “discounted reciprocal” tariffs. Therefore, we rate this claim true.\u00a0 Snopes<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Oh, yeah… these are islands south of Australia… and are uninhabited. Penguins, mostly. What, are they taxing American guano and we’re retaliating? (yes, they belong to Australia… but they are listed separately.)<\/p>\n
And even better.<\/p>\n
Among the more bizarre tariffs were a 10 percent levy against the uninhabited Heard and McDonald Islands, and an identical tariff on British Indian Ocean Territory.<\/p>\n
A chunk of British Indian Ocean Territory is the remote Chagos archipelago, embroiled in a long-running dispute between the U.K. government and Mauritius.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
You know what is in the Chagos archipelago? Our base at Diego Garcia. It’s the only thing on the island, the inhabitants were evacuated in the ’60s and ’70s. So what are we slapping tariffs on, our own Air Force?\u00a0 Newsweek<\/a><\/p>\n
I have seen various (non-Trump supporting) outlets say that the administration looks like Amateur Hour. Kinda see why.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"