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They are Watching
Google provides Jackspotpourri with data indicating how many out there have clicked on its URL and possibly read it. Over the past week, there has been a tremendous increase in the number of ‘hits’ from the ‘city-state’ of Singapore.
This has happened before in times of international concern, and I usually assume this represents monitoring of Jackspotpourri by the Chinese government which has a friendly presence in Singapore. (Singapore’s position on Taiwan, for example, parrots Beijing’s.)
The only reason that I can see for this to be happening at this time are President Trump’s tariffs, about which the Chinese diligently check every possible source for intelligence, even Jackspotpourri.
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| Chinese President Xi Jinping |
Hey there, President Xi: All I know is what I read in the newspapers and online, just like your guys. Trump doesn’t even know what he’s doing.
JL
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Inconceivable? Impossible? Who Knows?
In the preceding Jackspotpourri (which for some of you might appear directly following this posting, depending on what device you are using), in writing about a president’s disregard for the ‘rule of law,’ I pointed out that once that happens ‘what had been inconceivable is no longer impossible,’ and that is dangerous.
And now, economic policy, represented by the President’s tariff increases, joins ignoring the ‘rule of law’ in making ‘what had been inconceivable no longer impossible.’
The Constitution gives to Congress, not the president, the power to impose tariffs. But the International Emergency Economic Powers Act allows the president to impose tariffs if he declares a national emergency under the National Emergencies Act, which Trump has done. He has declared a “national emergency to increase our competitive edge, protect our sovereignty, and strengthen our national and economic security.”
While many Presidents, including Trump, have declared such national ‘emergencies’ in the past, they usually have been in response to specific situations, not the non-specific ‘bullshit’ talking points the President declared as his reasons as quoted above. Nobody has attacked us from abroad or domestically or threatened to do so. I doubt that Trump’s reasons are what Congress had in mind as constituting a national emergency when they passed those Acts, nor that a President might use these acts to usurp a power the Constitution first gives to Congress.
If the truth were to be known, the President might just as well have come out and said, ‘I’ll do whatever the hell I want to do, regardless of what the laws say.’ That would at least be honest, possibly a ‘first’ for him.
Really though, there is a ‘national emergency’ right now, identifiable as Donald John Trump being in the White House. It may last as long as he is there. And that ‘emergency’ can be blamed on the ‘misinformed and misled’ mentioned in the previous posting of Jackspotpourri.
President Trump’s playing around with tariffs as a political tool, wreaking havoc to our economy, hurting individual Americans and businesses, threatening a 1930s style depression here and in the entire world, now joins disregard for the ‘rule of law’ as making ‘what had been inconceivable no longer impossible.’
Check out Professor Heather Cox Richardson’s April 3 and April 4 postings of her ‘Letters from an American’ (CLICK HERE or copy and paste https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/ on your browser line) to find out how Trump’s tariff policy, which has no basis in any real economic data or theory, amounts to what one critic compares to a mob boss shaking down all the businesses in a town, but in this case, they are our 50 States and other nations!
It is even likened by former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers to ‘what creationism is to biology, astrology is to astronomy, or RFK's
thoughts are to vaccine science.’ The Trump tariff policy, Summers added, ‘makes little sense EVEN if you believe in protectionist mercantilist economics.’
Even many of the wealthy and business leaders, of course excluding the MAGA dummies, who supported Trump in November, 2024, are losing faith in him.
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All of which raises a question: Is it time, right now, for supporters of the President and those opposed to his actions to be more specific about what is now ‘conceivable’ and now ‘possible’ in the United States of America?
Those at both extremes are beginning to go further and wonder if the adjective ‘possible’ ought to be replaced with the more urgent ‘necessary’?
Are we at that point where ‘what had been ‘inconceivable’ is not only ‘possible,’ but also ‘necessary’?
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Here’s a hint: Contradictory answers from both sides involve the President, some taking him to be a heaven-sent angel and others, as a disciple of the devil. You can guess where Jackspotpourri stands.
I have my ideas as to possible answers, but I don’t want to be ahead of the news about things that haven’t happened yet and may not ever happen. Eventually, however, I may share my thoughts. Please ‘stay tuned.’
JL
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Fox Reaction to Bad Economic News
Courier, a liberal newsgathering website, to which I don’t subscribe, recently documented the reaction of FoxNews personalities in a posting designed to attract donors. They reported the following comments after enormous declines in the financial marketplace resulting from the President’s tariff policy, put into effect despite it being contrary to all reputable economic theory. Here’s what Courier reported Fox News’ most biggest hosts said after the crash:
Jesse Watters: “It’s an exciting time to be alive.”
Jeanine Pirro: “I don’t really care about my 401(k)... I believe in this man.”
Sean Hannity: “I am absolutely a thousand percent confident that things are going to work out.”
Laura Ingraham: “I personally know a lot of people who are buying into this market. That's how people always make money.”
Yes, they actually wrote ‘most biggest.’ That sounds like something our President might say. That says a lot for Courier, but they did get their idea across.
My take on these four Fox hosts’ words: Let Jesse be excited, let Jeanine keep on believing, let Sean be 1000% confident, and it is reassuring that Laura knows people who ‘buy low’ hoping to ‘sell high.’
None of them give a darn about the American people who are being hurt by higher tariffs that automatically lead to higher prices having to be paid by the importer and then passed on to the customer. (I would venture to guess that all four are wearing some imported clothing and drive imported cars, but they are sufficiently overpaid not to care. Most Americans do care.) Meanwhile, foreign countries put retaliatory tariffs on American exports lessening demand for them, hurting employment in the United States. It’s a ‘lose-lose’ proposition: Higher prices and fewer jobs!
All these four Fox hosts are interested in doing is spreading misinformation to those they daily mislead, which is what their employer pays them to do, and how we got into this mess in the first place.
JL
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Housekeeping on Jackspotpourri
Your comments on this ‘blog’ would be appreciated. My Email address is jacklippman18@gmail.com.
Sources of Information on Jackspotpourri:
The sources of information used by Jackspotpourri include a delivered daily newspaper and what appears in my daily email. Be aware that when I get to that email, I take these steps. (1.) I quickly scan the sources of the dozen or so emails I still get each day at my old email address to see from where they are being sent. Without reading 99% of them, I usually immediately delete them. (2.) I then go to the email arriving at jacklippman18@gmail.com. Gmail enables ‘Promotion’ emails to be so designated and separated out. I believe their criterion is whether or not they end up asking for money. I ignore most of these emails without reading them, deleting them. A very few, perhaps one or two a day, get moved over to the emails at which I will actually look, which on a typical day add up to about fifty or sixty.
Besides email, my other source of information is the Google search engine where I can look up any subject I want. Lately, these search results have been headed by a very generalized summary clearly labeled as being developed by AI (Artificial Intelligence). I do not use such summaries in preparing Jackspotpourri because I am unaware of the sources AI has mined to come up with its summaries. Sources with their origin clearly identified follow, and that is what I use as sources for Jackspotpourri postings. In doing searches on Google, I have found that these AI summaries can be avoided by saying so in your search. For example, instead of searching for ‘FDR’s New Deal,’ I search for ‘FDR’s New Deal – no AI please’. This is a work in progress.
Forwarding Postings: Please forward this posting to anyone you think might benefit from reading it (Friends, relatives, enemies, etc.) If you want to send someone the blog, you can just tell them to check it out by visiting https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com or you can provide a link to that address in your email to them.
There’s another, perhaps easier, method of forwarding it though! Google Blogspot, the platform on which Jackspotpourri is prepared, makes that possible. If you click on the tiny envelope with the arrow at the bottom of every posting, you will have the opportunity to list up to ten email addresses to which that blog posting will be forwarded, along with a brief comment from you. Each will receive a link to click on that will directly connect them to the blog. Either way will work, sending them the link to https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com, or clicking on the envelope at the bottom of this posting.
Email Alerts: If you are NOT receiving emails from me alerting you each time there is a new posting on Jackspotpourri, just send me your email address and we’ll see that you do. And if you are forwarding a posting to someone, you might suggest that they do the same, so they will be similarly alerted. You can pass those email addresses to me by email at jacklippman18@gmail.com.
JL
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