Reflections from the Heart of the Empire: Rollbacks and Just a Spot of Blow

Plus Florida Cat makes an appearance instead of Florida Man

• Wal-Mart announced it will be raising prices later this month because of the new tariffs on China.

• This comes after Trump retreated on his tariffs on China, lowering them from 145% to a mere 30%, which is still three times higher than they were, and Wal-mart noticed. Trump’s Press Secretary for Obfuscating the Obvious expressed his dismay.

  

  • Why did Trump retreat? There are multiple stories on China negotiating new trade deals with everybody from its Asian neighbors to the Europeans, which means China doesn’t actually need to export to the US.

    

  • Trump said China had no cards, when they in fact held a royal flush and he held a hand more like this,

    

  • That’s the poker version of what the US manufacturing base looks like.

• On that train…of cocaine: French President Macron, German Chancellor Merz, and British PM Starmer sure look high and happy and I went to college in the late 70s, and I know there’s a baggie of coke and a hifalutin coke straw here no matter what Reuters says.

  

• Donald Trump finally noticed Palestinians are starving, but if this statement doesn’t fall under the category of “That’s mighty white of you,” I don’t know what does.

I think a lot of good things are going to happen over the next month, and we're going to see. We have to help also out the Palestinians. You know, a lot of people are starving on Gaza, so we have to look at both sides.

• “Both sides?” Imagine if Truman or Stalin had said we had to look at “both sides” of Auschwitz, Dachau, or the Rape of Nanjing. Still, Trump did refer to Palestinians as “people,” which makes Trump Hamas.

• David Hearst, one of the pillars of the Western legacy media, said “Israel has already lost the Gaza war. It just doesn’t know it yet,” and then says it lost for two reasons—the Palestinians won’t leave, and mounting outrage in the Western world. Israel,

• Is it just me or does the Western world seem a little slow?

• Sudan is officially in a brand new phase of its ongoing civil war, and both sides are extensively using drones. Ain’t 21st Century warfare fun?

• Russians and Ukrainians met for peace talks in Istanbul for a whole two hours without a single drone strike, and agreed to a prisoner exchange and more talks. Well, at least they’re talking again.

• Indian PM Modi declared his Operation Sindoor, under which he attacked Pakistan, is “the new normal.” He also refuses to convene Parliament to discuss the situation, thus burnishing his democratic credentials.

  • Apparently Modi’s supporters were bewildered when the ceasefire negotiated by the Americans was announced; Indian media was making it sound like the final solution to the Pakistani problem was at hand.

• It’s funny how ethnic cleansers always sound the same regardless of skin tone.

• Former FBI Director James Comey posted this on Twitter and said it was a “cool shell formation.” Donald Trump Jr. and DNI Tulsi Gabbard immediately accused Comey of calling to assassinate President Trump.

• Tulsi Gabbard is an authoritarian bitch. Eighty-six #47 is a call for burying Trump, the 47th president, but it’s a metaphor, not a call for direct murderous action, and therefore protected by the First Amendment. Besides, Comey didn’t even bang the podium with his shoe for emphasis.

  • Tulsi, you just made me defend James Comey, and that really pisses me off.

    

• Donald Trump signed an executive order requiring prescription drugs to be sold to the US Government at the same rates other countries pay, or something like that. Anyway, it’s sure to piss off Big Pharma, and if you want more detail here it is:

The Drug Pricing Scramble

• The US Supreme Court ruled 9-0 to make it easier to sue cops for excessive use of force by limiting the “moment of threat” doctrine, which requires courts to consider only the cop’s frame of mind at the precise instant he decided to blow someone away or kick the shit out of them. Now courts can consider the totality of the circumstances, which only makes sense.

• Below is a cop reacting to the news.

• Trump’s big “beautiful” budget may be in trouble. Some Republicans are rightly pointing out that it doesn’t reduce spending so they may well vote No.

• Finally, a Florida cat escaped from the vet after the kind of surgery that makes men the most nervous and made his way home through three miles of wilderness.

  

Thank you for reading, good day or night, and good luck.

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