Okay dokey, a new study by the Federal Reserve shows that Trump’s tariffs on imports, which were intended to boost the economy and protect jobs, ultimately led to job losses and higher prices for consumers.

Well, shock-a-roni, Skippy.

Do you want to know why this happened?  Because Trump does not know what he’s doing.  Never has and always won’t.

However, there is an upside.

The world’s richest 500 people increased their collective wealth by 25% in 2019.

Phew.  So everything’s okay because of Newton’s Equal Stuff Out Law.

Another great read, this time by David Frum about Trump’s lawbreaking to retaliate against the person identified as reporting his past lawbreaking.  Must read.

Gallup has a new poll out about Americans’ top concerns, showing that for three years, the top concern was the government.  I can understand that, especially since Trump took the WH to help Republicans who have been working for years to gridlock everything and keep it from working to the benefit of all Americans.  But there is more in the data that clearly shows that who is in the WH significantly affects the concerns of the population.  Here’s the summary chart:

Look closely at the top two concerns each year and who happens to be president.  Before Trump, immigration made the top 4 issues only 3 times since 2001.  In the last two years, it’s been number two. Since Trump (with an assist from the GOP and Fox Noise) started vilifying immigrants, the issue has rocketed to the top of America’s issues.  Also look at the top issues by president.  Under GWB, it was Iraq, and later the economy.  Under Obama, it was the economy, even WAY after the economy gained strength and continued expansion.  In the last couple of years, as McConnell continually sabotaged the ACA and blocked all of Obama’s initiatives, government rose to the top of the list.  Under Trump, it’s government, for obvious reasons, as he works 24/7 to debase long respected agencies and urinates all over our 250 year history and traditions.  Also look across the top four concerns in the years under Trump.  Race is number 3 in all 3 of his years.  Now look down the rest of the list.  Race only appears ONCE, when Trump was running his blatantly racist campaign.  He has clearly opened a Pandora’s box in the American psyche that we had tried to keep closed for decades.

I find it fascinating to look at the list recalling the events during those years, and who happened to be president.  What becomes clear is that the messaging from the occupant of the WH and his allies greatly affects sentiment throughout our society.  When you have an immoral and shameless president, the worst of our country rises right back to the top.

Rudy Giuliani says that the Southern District of New York is investigating him because of jealousy.  Sadly, they are upset that they aren’t as good as he is.

Wait, wait, you have to hear him say it.

“It’s a terrible thing to say because it will get the Southern District all upset, but I know why they’re all upset. Because they’ve never done anything like me since me. They haven’t done in eight years like I did since I left being U.S. attorney. Nothing close.”

Oh my stinkin’ goodness.  He caught severe unrelenting chronic reoccuring infectious trumpism.

He’s the best in the history of the Southern District or more likely, the universe.  And everybody wants to be Rudy.

Alaskan Senator Lisa Murkowski found her voice. She says Mitch McConnell’s behavior is “disturbing.”

I think it’s real nice of her to notice.  Finally.

Murkowski indicated she’d prefer to see a “full and fair process” that possibly uses the Clinton precedent as a model.

But would not say how she plans to vote on the question of conviction.

“For me to prejudge and say there’s nothing there or, on the other hand, he should be impeached yesterday, that’s wrong, in my view, that’s wrong,” Murkowski said.

Two things:

They cannot use the Clinton model.  Clinton testified under oath.  Trump refuses to do that.  Clinton did not send a 6 page letter to Newt Gingrich that went beyond disturbing and into the Land O’ Scary as Hell.

Second, Murkowski will do what the hell ever her handlers – the Alaskan oil and gas industry – tell her to vote. Trump supports raping the Alaska environment so she will support Trump.

She’s talking a good game, but she couldn’t find courage with a map, a sherpa, and a mission statement.

Christianity Today, mouthpiece of the evangelical movement since Billy Graham founded it in 1956, finally turned on Trump last week when its editor in chief, Mark Galli, published “Trump Should Be Removed from Office” laying out the case against him that most normal people have understood for years.  While lying that Trump “…didn’t have a chance to offer his side of the story…,” Galli did say,

The president of the United States attempted to use his political power to coerce a foreign leader to harass and discredit one of the president’s political opponents. That is not only a violation of the Constitution; more importantly, it is profoundly immoral.

The reason many are not shocked about this is that this president has dumbed down the idea of morality in his administration. He has hired and fired a number of people who are now convicted criminals. He himself has admitted to immoral actions in business and his relationship with women, about which he remains proud. His Twitter feed alone—with its habitual string of mischaracterizations, lies, and slanders—is a near perfect example of a human being who is morally lost and confused.

This is not the first time that the magazine has weighed in on impeachment, but the first time it has come down of the side against a Republican.  In 1973 it offered milk toast support of the process but remaining neutral on Nixon’s impeachment, and in 1998 supported Clinton’s removal.  Galli used the same reasoning this time to call for Trump’s removal.  At least he’s being intellectually honest, which doesn’t hold with other publications like the Christian Post, which stubbornly remains in Trump’s corner.

The piece in the Christian Post published on Monday repeats the willful blindness we’ve come to expect from evangelicals who’ve been happy to look the other way on Trump’s moral bankruptcy and criminality just because they’re getting judges who believe that the Earth is flat and only 4,000 years old as well as in the subjugation of women.  In their piece, the senior editors bashed Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, AND Beto O’Rourke, calling their words on Trump supporters and religions a “…toxic emotional and spiritual stew…”  Their ultimate justification for overlooking Trump’s conduct? He was elected.  Essentially, they repeated Trump’s own argument that, since he was elected, he is immune from all legal scrutiny or even investigation of his criminality and corruption.

The piece is so poisonous that Napp Nazworth, another editor at the Christian Post, threw up his hands and abruptly resigned, tweeting out, “Announcement: Today, rather abruptly, I was forced to make the difficult choice to leave The Christian Post. They decided to publish an editorial that positions them on Team Trump. I can’t be an editor for a publication with that editorial voice.”  He continued that editors had in the past worked through disagreements, but now has “chosen to represent a narrow (and shrinking) slice of Christianity.

What we’re witnessing is actual Christians beginning to find their voice against the falsehood of Falwell’s political lobbying company masquerading as a church.  Although evangelical support of Trump remains over 80%, Trump is starting to lose that edge he’s enjoyed up until he got caught red handed extorting a foreign government to gain domestic political advantage.  Evangelicals (I know many personally) have been hijacked by the Fox Noise version of Republican Jesus filled with the spirit of assault rifles, anti-vaxing, gay bashing, and Bible thumping.  It’s high time that actual Christians find their voices and speak up against this corruption of Christianity, or at least vote against it in the voting booth.