Keep Dreaming 😱🤡 ✡️🌻😱🤡

Minnesota Madness: Over the weekend, Trump’s DOJ announced that it was investigating Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, alleging the two leaders who’ve been trying to calm Minneapolis have conspired to impede federal immigration agents. Notably the DOJ isn’t investigation Jonathan Ross, the INS agent who shot Renee Good four times rather than the three originally reported, though they are investigating her partner and it’s only a matter of time before they go after her dog . The investigation into Walz and Frey is ominous, not just because the two haven’t been engaging in an obstructive conspiracy, but because asserting that they are involved in a conspiracy is one way that Trump can justify invoking the Insurrection Act which, once invoked, will “allow” him to send military troops into Minneapolis.  We know he’s serous about sending in the troops because Pentagon Pete has ordered about 1500 active-duty troops currently stationed in Alaska to prepare for deployment to Minnesota. We should all consider Minnesota to be Trump’s dry run, that’s not hyperbole. He’s repeatedly said that he’s fearful of what will happen to him if Democrats regain control of the House during the midterms.  He will do anything he can to prevent that from happening and having Pentagon Pete’s forces posted at polling places will go far to achieving his goal. 

 

Greenland Gravitas:  Minnesota isn’t the only place where Trump may send troops.  He keeps ratcheting up his threats against Greenland.  Our European allies, or at least the countries that used to be our allies, are taking him seriously, so should we. Denmark, Germany, Sweden, France, Norway, the Netherlands, and Finland all plan to send military personnel to Greenland this week. In retaliation, Trump announced that he will impose 10% tariffs on goods from those countries, an amount that will ratchet up to 25% on June 1 if an agreement to “purchase” Greenland isn’t reached by then. Those are the tariffs that we pay when we buy goods from those countries so he’s taxing us for his idiocy.  Naturally, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, one of his complicit hench man, took to Meet the Press on Sunday to defend Trump’s tariff threat as well as the strategic necessity of “annexing” Greenland. The Greenland issue is preposterous on many fronts and like the effort to invoke the Insurrection Act to send troops into Minnesota, is also devious.  Preposterous because at least until Trump started saber rattling, we had a good relationship and treaties with Denmark and Greenland. We don’t need to “own” Greenland to enhance our strategic position in the region or to get more access to their resources, all we have to do is ask.  We withdrew all but one of our bases from Greenland when it looked like we didn’t need them. If we want to put them back, we can easily work that out without annexing or seizing its land. Devious because Trump has long wanted to withdraw from NATO. In response to Trump’s 1.0 threats to withdraw the US from NATO, in 2023 Congress passed legislation that restricts a president from unilaterally pulling the US out of NATO. It’s not a stretch to believe that Trump is provoking NATO so that he can point at their “hostile” actions to justify circumventing that law. Putin is smiling.  Adding to the absurdity of the situation, yesterday Trump tied his ominous Greenland shenanigans to the failure of the Nobel Committee to award him their Peace Prize. In a letter to Norway’s Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store, he said: “Considering your Country decided not to get me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace.”  That’s far beyond 25^th Amendment level insanity, not that his cabinet would ever take any action against him. Worth noting Norway doesn’t pick Nobel Prize winners, that privilege falls to the Nobel Foundation. Lastly, it’s not clear that any of Trump’s tariffs are legal, we’re still waiting for the Supreme Court to rule on that.

Viral Musings:  Despite Trump’s anti-Tylenol rant, a scientific review of 43 studies on acetaminophen use during pregnancy concluded that there was no evidence that the painkiller increased the risk of autism or other neurodevelopmental disorders. So, despite Trump and RFK’s assertions otherwise, acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol, remains “the first-line treatment” for pain or fever in pregnancy.  In other health news, RFK Jr is funding a study in Africa that sounds a lot like the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis study, the one undertaken by the US public Health Service from 1932 to 1972 in which they studied syphilis by “observing” its progression in untreated African American men. The Health Service withheld penicillin treatment from the infected men even after the effective antibiotic became widely available. That study is widely recognized as a stain on the medical profession which makes it that much horrifying to report that authorized by RFK, $1.6 million of our tax dollars was being spent to study the already proven Hepatitis B in Guinea-Bissau. The study, which was just put on hold by local authorities pending a “redesign,” only because details regarding its unethical methodology became known, would have compared the health trajectory of babies deprived of what has already been determined to be a safe and effective vaccine with those receiving the shot.  RFK has been saying he wants to do similar studies of all the thoroughly vetted vaccines that we currently benefit from.  He didn’t explicitly say that he would do those studies on Black people in Africa but are we surprised?  After all, though we’re still celebrating Martin Luther King’s birthday or at least some of us are, Trump and his friends constantly diss the Civil Rights Movement, characterizing it a movement against whites.   In other health new, measles cases are up especially in South Carolina.  While we can’t blame every measles case on RFK, his stance on vaccines is feeding the decline in the percentage of the vaccinated population and that decline will continue to grow. We have Louisiana Republican Senator/Doctor Bill Cassidy to thank for part of that decline.  He provided the crucial vote for RFK’s confirmation as Health Secretary even though he knew the consequences.  Cassidy was one of the few Republican Senators to vote for Trump’s second impeachment.  He’s up for reelection this year and naively thought, or prayed, that supporting RFK’s nomination would placate Trump.  The jokes on him (and us).  Yesterday Trump endorsed Republican Representative Julia Letlow, who is now expected to announce her intent to primary Cassidy in Louisiana, a state where Trump’s endorsement carries lots of weight. Cassidy still has the support of Republican leader John Thune, but Thune has far less sway than Trump so keep an eye on this race.  Cassidy could be following North Carolina’s Thom Tillis out the door.

Media 💩:  Last night CBS finally aired the 60 Minutes episode about the Venezuelans shipped to the El Salvador gulag and despite new Editor in Chief Bari Weiss’ insistence that she only held it up because it was missing an interview from a senior member of the administration, there was no interview largely because the administration just wanted to see the segment stalled, or better yet cancelled.  CBS is now owned by Paramount Skydance, which is owned by David Ellison, scion of Larry Ellison who is using some of his $240 billion net worth to back his acquisitions.  Paramount is trying to edge out Netflix, the current leading bidder for Warner Brothers.  The Ellisons really want Trump to weigh in on Paramount’s behalf, one of the reasons that CBS is working hard to turn CBS News into Fox News. Last week, after Press Secretary Lying Leavitt threatened that CBS “better” air Trump’s entire interview with their new evening host Tony Dokoupil without any editing “or else,” CBS did as ordered. Dokoupil who is likeable and was fine as a morning anchor but is in way over his head dealing with Bari Weiss, Paramount, and their Trump kowtowing, is being set up to take the fall for Weiss and he probably will. CBS’s evening news ratings, never impressive, are down.  It doesn’t help that during the unedited interview Trump told Dokoupil that he had him to thank for his job and pay package.  Trump’s poll numbers are way down too: his overall approval is around 39%;  86% of us oppose seizing Greenland; 55% say he has made the economy worse;  only 38% support his immigration crackdown; and 58% say his first year in office has been a failure. Frankly, what’s wrong with the people who think he’s doing a good job?

Fog:  Events in Iran seem stalled.  Yesterday’s Times of Israel daily podcast reported that despite the large number of deaths and arrests, Iran’s mullahs appear to have regained the upper hand for now.  The wild card is Trump who is either speaking truth when he says he’s not planning to attack or is pulling a fast one on everyone while he gets his ducks as in ships and planes in position.