A Disaster Of Idiocy: So This Penguin Came Up To Me

Flaunting "the peculiar Trumpian stupidity," the mad king's giddy "liberation" of the global economy - by witlessly slapping tariffs on every country except Russia based on a simplistic, "insane" formula that instantly crashed U.S. and foreign markets - has been universally slammed. And that was before we learned several tariff targets are in fact remote outcroppings of ice and rock populated by no humans but many freeloading penguins and seals, who thank God won't be "looting and pillaging" us any more.

In his announcement we've finally been liberated from being able to buy things from other countries, the fragile, unloved man-child with a terror of being mocked or fleeced based his "batshit crazy" action on a sociopathic "you hurt us, we hurt you" world view, wielding random tariffs as a weapon to "fight back" against countries that have “taken advantage of us." "For decades, our country has been looted, pillaged, raped and plundered by nations near and far," he said of the richest nation in the world. Holding a big chart of his shiny new tariff plan, he repeatedly trotted out a new word he just added to the 17 he already knows. "Reciprocal," he proclaimed, “That means they do it to us, and we do it to them. Very simple. Can’t get simpler than that." Or, it turns out, dumber. Evidently orchestrated by some "willing sycophants," the moronic method he used to calculate trade and economic figures for every country in the world - except Russia - has been compared to "a science project by a stoned high schooler."

In their "back-of-the-envelope calculations" - but with Greek letters! - the White House looked up our trade deficit with each country, divided it by that country's exports, and to be "kind" halved that figure. But obtusely using tariffs to target countries, not products - the only way they can sometimes work - is so random, over-simplified and counter-productive that Thom Hartmann compares it to Yosemite Sam chasing Bugs Bunny around with a shotgun, blasting holes in everything while completely missing his target. As a result of what one expert calls this "extraordinary nonsense," the tariffs bear almost no relation to the economic realities of many countries: There are "grotesque” tariffs of almost 50% on poor countries like Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, tiny Lesotho in southern Africa, and even the UK, with an almost $12 billion surplus, got a 10% tariff. And thanks to America's voters "handing the keys to the world’s largest economy to a low-wattage imbecile who went broke running casinos," US companies will be hardest hit.

Ironically, the worst will be the biggest - Microsoft, Amazon, Nike, Meta, Tesla, Target, Lululemon, Dollar Tree - whose supply chains depend on overseas manufacturing, mostly in China or Vietnam; Apple will reportedly see $275 billion in market value wiped out. Overall, the "uninformed tariff song-and-dance" meant an economy months ago deemed “the envy of the world” saw markets abruptly plunge into a free-fall that erased nearly $2 trillion from U.S. stocks, a nosedive of over 800 points, the biggest decline in years. Within minutes, over 80% of companies in the S&P 500 were trading lower, a market response traders called "worse than the worst case scenario." In one surreal moment, Trump appeared on air declaring, "Stocks will soar," even as a split screen showed stocks plummeting in real time. A flood of disastrous headlines quickly followed: Stocks "tank," "dive," "slide," "plunge," "dip," ""tumble" as investors "flee," along with the broad consensus, "There really is no positive outcome to this." So much winning.

Donny tried to avoid possible - albeit so unfair - criticism by waiting till 4 p.m. when the markets closed to announce his swell new idea. He failed (again): The backlash was swift. The Shovel: "In 'a massive fucking surprise,' a man who has run six companies into bankruptcy and wasn’t even able to make money out of A CASINO has absolutely no idea what he is doing while in charge of the world’s largest economy." Paul Krugman called the "crudity" of his tariff plan "malignant stupidity." Many cited its fatal flaws: The US isn't "spinning up new Nike factories overnight," employment will soar, so will China's economy in the vacuum, rage will greet ruined retirement funds, even coffee - no we don't make it - will be hit. "There is no reality in which the American consumer does not get majorly fucked," said one sage. "The trouble with tariffs," said a JP Morgan executive, "is they raise prices, slow economic growth, cut profits, increase unemployment, worsen inequality (and) increase global tensions. Other than that, they’re fine.”

Still, being "a blithering idiot," "a fucking moron" and "a Barely Sentient Shitstain," Trump blithely praised himself for allegedly lowering prices on "groceries, an old-fashioned word but beautiful. It's a bag with different things in it." Responses to the "groceries" lecture from "a demented madman who's never set foot in a grocery store": "Good thing we've never heard of them because we can't afford them now," "Give me 2 groceries, my good man!" "President Poopypants is learning us bigly," "You're paying $20 or $30 for a banana? We're going to bring it back down to $10 dollars or whatever you grocery people pay," "And don't forget your ID!" "Stable genius doing stable genius shit here," "A man for the people, just not our people." "It’s like watching a bad episode of South Park," "We are living in the stupid timeline." He also took credit for the word "gasoline - usually we talk about fuel prices. Gas. I love that word." More responses from those paying up to $12 on eggs: "I'd throw eggs at him but they cost more than gasoline." And, "What planet is he living on? Because this one has had enough of him."

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

Still, the idiocy went on. Because the list of the world's countries "plundering" the U.S. was evidently assembled by some clueless MAGA intern who looked them up in Wikipedia, it turns out several targeted with tariffs are a. not countries, b. mostly inhabited by American military and c. have little to no economies and/or no people. They include Tokelau, a New Zealand territory of three atolls in the South Pacific, population 1,600, exports around $100,000; The Marshall Islands, 34 atolls in the North Pacific, home to 82,000 mostly American military at a U.S. base for missile testing; the British Indian Ocean Territory, ditto about 3,000 British and U.S. military and contractors; Saint Pierre and Miquelon, eight small French-owned islands near Newfoundland (few thousand residents, modest shellfish exports somehow hit with 50% tariff; also Australia’s Norfolk Island (big oops), Norway’s Svalbard (polar bears, one town) and remote, volcanic Jan Mayan in the Arctic Ocean, home to 18 researchers at a meteorological station.

The most outlandish, admittedly a tough call, are the Heard and McDonald Islands in the southern Indian Ocean, a collection of small remote islands (not countries) managed by Australia's Antarctic Division, listed as UNESCO World Heritage Sites, and only accessible by sea. Heard, dominated by active volcano Big Ben, is ice, snow and glaciers; McDonald's 100 acres are rocky, and it's had no economic activity since 1877, when the elephant seal trade ended. Mostly used for scientific research, both are uninhabited by humans, but have large populations of penguins, seabirds and elephant seals who don't export anything except cuteness and an occasional waft of "eau de penguin." Still, slap a tariff on those wingless, waddling, fish-gulping, tuxedo-wearing moochers all dressed up with no place to go who've been taking advantage of us way too long: "Flippers up!" "Eat tariffs." "Goddamn woke penguins have to pay up - it's time we stood up to 'em." "Penguins will never menace America again." Etc.

Australia's so pissed they started a government petition topermanently ban Trump, his family, and his flunkies: "Australians have VALUES of mateship, hard work, righting wrongs, and fighting for the underdog" and Trump, opposite, is "an agent of hate and a danger to world peace." Online, almost all the hundreds of comments are from Americans, also Canadians, asking if they can sign, or start their own, or can the Aussies "change your mind, take him and keep him." At home, a Senate resolution just passed rejecting the tariffs, but it'll likely die in the House. FYI: As with deportations and other executive orders, they're treated as laws only because Congress, which ordinarily imposes them, has abandoned its co-equal role before Trump's claim of "national emergency." And servile MAGA bizarrely plays along. On his tariff malpractice, Agriculture Sec. Brooke Rollins praised Trump's "genius" even as a ticker showed stocks down 1,200 points, gushing, "We are really, really excited, and very grateful for (his) leadership (sic)."

The next morning, Trump was likewise delusional. "THE OPERATION IS OVER!” he wrote. “THE PATIENT LIVED, AND IS HEALING! (aka global markets are plummeting like we've never seen). THE PROGNOSIS IS THAT THE PATIENT WILL BE FAR STRONGER, BIGGER, BETTER, AND MORE RESILIENT THAN EVER BEFORE." To reporters, he babbled, "I think it’s going very well... I said this would exactly be the way it is. Now the rest of the world wants to see if there is any way they can make a deal. It’s going to be unbelievable. We’ve never seen anything like it.,,The stock is going to boom. The country is going to boom." (The tricky part: just what kind of boom.) Then he left for a golf dinner with Saudi reps, skipping the viewing of the coffins of four soldiers killed in Lithuania. But one patriot helpfully finished his narrative: "So this penguin came up to me, big penguin, strong penguin, tears running down his flippers, and he came up to me and said ‘Sir, thank you sir, my fellow penguins, they’ve been taking advantage of you sir, in ways that nobody has ever seen, sir...’"

“It’s now clear that the Administration computed reciprocal tariffs without using tariff data. This is to economics what creationism is to biology, astrology is to astronomy, or RFK thought is to vaccine science." - Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers