Did not ruin the economy in 3 months
Did not throw thousands of government workers out of a job for no reason.
Strengthened our health care in this country.
Treated our friends as friends; Treated our enemies as enemies.
Could be trusted by friend and foe alike.
Governed for all, not just the rich.
So much more we could go on for hours.
Tariffs used as a tool of the economy not a hammer to wreck the economy
Were you there? (18:45)
Stinky Pants seems to be uniting the country! Yep, most of us can no longer stand to hear of him anymore. As he threatens to tip the balance of our economy into the disaster zone, many Americans are realizing the great standard of living that we have may go down the crapper based on the whims of this one man. And that one man is very unstable and very vain and cares not one whit about anyone but himself.
So a week before religious people celebrate their savior’s awakening, many of them are finally awakening themselves.
Congratulations to the more than 5 million folks who went out in mostly bad weather last Saturday to show their resistance to America’s worst leader ever by far. America will be calling on your indomitable spirits several more times to help right the ship of state.
Capricious is the word of the day. As in “Stinky Pants makes policy for capricious reasons that no one understands.”
A) Do you remember what the percentage of the population it takes for resistance movements to start affecting society?
B) The MAGA US House Friday passed what bill that could hugely suppress the vote of women in this country?
C) The US Senate approved what unqualified General to chair the Joint Chiefs of Staff in a vote held in the wee hours of Friday morning?
D) How is the date for Easter determined every year?
E) 250 years ago next Saturday (April 19,1775) what memorable battle of the Revolutionary War took place?
F) A comic noted last week that the only qualified person Stinky Pants ever hired for a job was who?
G) The Keystone Pipeline has ruptured once again, this time spilling oil in what state?
H) In a landmark decision Tuesday, what group of athletes will begin to get paid for playing their sports?
I) Yesterday was the 80th anniversary of the death of what American leader?
J) The brilliant(?) Elon Musk called what tariff advisor “dumber than a sack of bricks” last week?
K) And the high holy days of basketball ended on Monday. Who were the men’s and women’s champions this year?
L) The National Weather Service quit doing what to the forecast last week?
M) Today is known as what Sunday in the Holy Week before Easter?
N) April of 1865 had a couple of very historic occurrences. First on April 9th what happened at Appomattox Court House, Virginia?
O) Less than a week later what transpired in the early morning hours of April 15th in Washington, DC?
P) By the way, the Boston Tea Party was a protest against what being levied on tea?
Q) Nearly two months after his party led the voting for parliament in Germany, what leader has been able to form a governing coalition in Germany?
R) Playing gawd? Colossal Biosciences says it has brought what extinct animal back into existence?
S) A committee reviewing deaths relating to pregnancy in Iowa in 2020/2021 reported that of the 20 deaths how many could have lived?
T) Finally, what major Iowa politician announced they will not run for another term in 2026?
Sorry I’m a little behind. Was it DEI or a trans athlete that crashed the stock market. – Skyler Johnson
Tip of the hat to http://all-hat-no-cattle.blogspot.com
Answers:
A) 3.5% or in the US about 12 million people
B) The so-called SAVE Act which says the voter name must match that on the birth certificate. Could hugely suppress women’s votes
C) Lt. Gen Dan Caine – Caine had not served in any of the roles legally required to become Joint Chiefs chair.
D) The first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox (first day of spring)
E) Batlle of Lexington and Concord (start of the Revolutionary War)
F) Stormy Daniels
G) North Dakota near Fargo
H) college athletes. This goes beyond NIL money to colleges actually paying athletes
I) FDR – April 12, 1945
J) Peter Navarro
K) Men’s – Florida Gators. Women’s – Connecticut (#12 for Gino Auriema)
L) Translating them
M) Palm Sunday
N) Lee surrendered to Grant ending the Civil War
O) Lincoln died from the effects of an assassination
P) a tariff
Q) Frederich Merz
R) the dire wolf
S) 19
T) Kim Reynolds
You know how new parents delude themselves into thinking that their babies are saying words when they’re only randomly babbling? That’s how the corporate media covers Trump. – Andy Borowitz
Tip of the hat to http://all-hat-no-cattle.blogspot.com
Ernst / Miller-Meeks Invited To Speak
(Ed. note: Got this in email Wednesday from the Muscatine County Democrats. It appears that they will have a public forum and have invited Senator Ernst and congress member Miller-Meeks to appear, but I don’t see anything that says they will be there. So it could be an ‘empty chair’ event.
However, a good showing of concerned citizens would be another mark to show how Iowans want their representatives to represent them and not Trump.)
https://www.mobilize.us/mobilize/event/772966/
At the Mississippi Valley Fairground.
Iowa Congressional District 1 Hearing
Meeting · Hosted by AFL-CIO
Time
Tuesday, April 22
6 – 8pm CDT
Location
Mississippi Valley Fairgrounds Starlight Ballroom
2815 W Locust St
About this event
Join us for the Congressional Recess Public Hearing. Senator Ernst and Congresswoman Miller-Meeks are invited to talk with their constituents about our concerns and the future of our country.
We will also have speakers from the community and labor.
“He made $2 billion today and he made $945 million”
Wednesday’s play by Stinky Pants behind the scenes was a combination of a person getting pantsed in public and at the same time a person manipulating markets against laws in almost every country in the world. That is how I understand what happened anyway.
In either case, Stinky should be impeached for what he did. He has shown himself to be totally unreliable and not fully understanding of how either government nor finances work. As such he is a danger to our country and the world.
Briefly, from what I understand when Trump raised tariffs to ridiculous levels around the world, ministers led by Canada’s Mark Carney decided that this would be a good time for selling off their US Treasury Bonds. Even a slow sale would greatly devalue the bonds, thus putting the US in financial danger.
There is a great substack that explains the vice that Trump was put into. Suffice it to say Trump had machoed himself into a very bad situation. Here is a brief excerpt from the substack letter. And full explanation of why Carney’s maneuver worked and how Trump had been utterly trapped can be found in the letter:
This wasn’t about bravado. It was about leverage. Cold, calculated, and devastatingly effective.
Trump’s pause wasn’t because people were getting yippy…
Rewind a bit. While Trump was gearing up his trade war machine, Carney, Canada’s Prime Minister, wasn’t just sitting in Ottawa twiddling his thumbs. He’d been quietly increasing Canada’s holdings of U.S. Treasury bonds—over $350 billion worth by early 2025, part of the $8.53 trillion foreign countries hold in U.S. debt. On the surface, it looked like a safe play, a hedge against economic chaos. But it wasn’t just defense. It was a loaded gun.
Carney didn’t stop there. He took his case to Europe. Not for photo ops, but for closed-door meetings with the EU’s heavy hitters—Germany, France, the Netherlands. Japan was in the room too, listening closely. The pitch was simple: if Trump went too far with tariffs, Canada wouldn’t just retaliate with duties on American cars or steel. It would start offloading those Treasury bonds. Not a fire sale—nothing so crude. A slow, steady bleed. A signal to the markets that the U.S. dollar’s perch wasn’t so secure.
That was part one of the day. Stinky Pants thus cornered had little choice but to call off the tariffs. He, as did everybody, knew the markets would soar when he announced such a move. Therefore any indication that he might lift the tariffs would be met with a stock rocket. This would be a great time to cash in bigly. So he gave some only slightly disguised hints posting “it’s a great time to buy” on his social media just shortly before he announced the pull back in tariffs.
From the Guardian we get this report that some folks noted the timing seems pretty suspicious:
“ The timing of the US president’s posts and subsequent huge share jumps has sparked accusations of market manipulation. The Democratic senator Adam Schiff has called for an investigation, saying: “These constant gyrations in policy provide dangerous opportunities for insider trading.
“Who in the administration knew about Trump’s latest tariff flip-flop ahead of time? Did anyone buy or sell stocks, and profit at the public’s expense? I’m writing to the White House – the public has a right to know.”
The Democratic senator Chris Murphy also wrote on X that an “insider trading scandal is brewing … Trump’s 9:30am tweet makes it clear he was eager for his people to make money off the private info only he knew. So who knew ahead of time and how much money did they make?”
The New York Democratic representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called for all members of Congress to disclose any stocks they had bought in the past 24 hours. “I’ve been hearing some interesting chatter on the floor,” she wrote on X. “Disclosure deadline is May 15th. We’re about to learn a few things. It’s time to ban insider trading in Congress.”
Unfortunately Democrats are not in power or we know a real investigation would be underway quickly. But if MAGAs (or in this case what few real Republicans are left) they would be demanding an investigation so they (and the country) don’t get caught in Trump’s next big failure that could take the country and all its citizens down.
This was a close call. And it is still not over. 10% tariffs are still left on the whole world and that is way too high. Beyond that, our barely literate president has jacked tariff rates up to 145% (last I heard) on China. That alone is enough to cause huge damage to the US. It is as if he has pointed a gun to America’s head.
Don’t forget this is only his financial dealings that most crumbled the country. His administration is doing similar crap in many other areas including destroying the governmental infrastructure, destroying our school systems, destroying regulations, destroying our health care systems, destroying our foreign aid systems, destroying our social security and medicare and medicaid system. The list seems endless. Each and every system they destroy will set our country back immensely.
And there is one big play he wants to make yet that could be catastrophic. That is making cyber currency the coin of the realm. That will make he and his family perhaps the richest people ever. Putin will get a huge windfall as will other selected billionaires. The rest of the world will be impoverished. I believe that is his ultimate goal.
For the sake of the country and the world impeachment hearings should be started and quickly before he can continue on his path of destruction.
And never, never think that Trump tells the truth about anything.
You won’t want to miss the Thursday, April 10 weekly check-in call with Indivisible founders Ezra Klein and Leah Greenberg. Excellent strategy information here including what happens next. Questions answered. Doubts and fears addressed. Wrong media narratives exposed. Master re-framers, Ezra and Leah are excellent at what they do.
If you didn’t attend live, here’s the recording.
Greenpeace Rainbow Warrior
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A jury in North Dakota has ordered Greenpeace to pay more than $660 million in damages for defaming Energy Transfer Partners, the corporation behind the Dakota Access Pipeline. The Texas-based pipeline company accused Greenpeace of orchestrating criminal behavior by training and providing funds to the Indigenous-led protests at Standing Rock. Greenpeace and its supporters, including other nonprofits and advocacy groups, argued that the lawsuit is part of a conspicuous attempt by corporations to destroy the right to free speech.
Longtime human rights and environmental lawyer Steven Donziger, who was part of the independent trial monitoring team observing the trial, says it was purposely held in a region of the country with deep ties to the fossil fuel industry. Donziger said most of the jurors in the case were connected to the industry and were “predisposed” to rule in favor of Energy Transfer despite the “false narratives” presented at the trial. Greenpeace plans to appeal the ruling.
Greenpeace said it played a minor role at the protests, and warned the lawsuit was aimed at destroying the right to peaceful protest. Greenpeace attorney Deepa Padmanabha spoke outside the North Dakota courthouse on Wednesday.
Deepa Padmanabha: “What we saw these last three weeks was Energy Transfer’s blatant disregard for the voices of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. And while they also tried to rewrite Greenpeace’s story, what this trial showed was Greenpeace’s unwavering commitment to nonviolence in every action that we take. We should all be concerned about the attacks on our First Amendment and lawsuits like this that really threaten our rights to peaceful protest and free speech. And Greenpeace is going to continue its fight to protect these fundamental rights for everyone.”
He’s not just in Iowa anymore.. and he’s killing it everywhere he goes.
Here are links to Tim Walz in Iowa and Tim in Texas with Beto O’Rourke.
I’m sure you’ve seen the local news coverage, social media posts about the massively successful April 5 #handsoff protests around Iowa, the country and even other countries. Here is a look at the crowd in Iowa City. First video is a view of the crowd. 2nd video speaker from Food and Water Watch, Jennifer Breon calling out IA-01 Representative Millelr-Meeks and getting the crowd involved. The following four videos are of Democratic Senate Leader Janice Weiner’s inspiring remarks.
If you didn’t get out, there is another mass action planned for April 19.
See you on April 19!
From the On Tyranny series by Timothy Snyder, Lesson #20 of twenty. This will be the final post of the series posted here every Monday for the last twenty weeks. You can find them all on YouTube. They are all short videos, no ads. Click on the link for the twenty lessons in printable form.
Editor’s note: Today’s lesson is timely, the Monday after the opposition’s first national mass #handsoff action. Many friends who have not ever attended a protest or been politically active displayed courage this weekend by showing up. They came out of their comfort zones to speak up and show up. He also explains why courageous acts will be different for everyone. There are cynics and doubters who want to say the protests won’t do any good, won’t change anything. Dr. Snyder discusses why that is not true. I bolded the text in the excerpt below that speaks to the point.
“Courage can take small forms. The important question is whether we choose to be as courageous as we can…In small ways or large the point is to be as courageous as you can…It’s also about the chances that the tyrants have to rule us take because if prospective tyrants, if the people who want to rule us, look out and see people who are willing to take small chances, willing to take risks, people who are being as courageous as you can, they are less likely to take risks. They’re less likely to do the things they need to do to seize power. So be as courageous as you can. It has to do with daily life but like so many of these other lessons it also has to do with the way things finally turn out.” – Timothy Snyder
Politics girl: (2:40)
A simple straight forward lesson on how the constitution works. We need to be reminded in this time when one man is trying to upend the constitution and accrue power into his own hands and that of presidents to follow.
The freedom that is now spread wider and deeper in this country than it ever has been before is in jeopardy of being lost and the country turned into an oligarchy and authoritarianism.
This is the time for all of us to (in the words of Jack Kennedy:
“Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country”
And now a word from Senator Bernie Sanders (13 minutes)
Blog For Iowa 