Christmas Miracle! — America Learns What "Tariff" Means

After a post-election spike in consumer confidence, Americans behold the mystery of a sudden fall from grace

Dec. 24: Americans ask Siri to define “tariff” … China already prepping to weather Trump bullshit … Mangione pleads guilty—of hawtness! … Genuine, actual Christmas Eve awesomeness in the heavens …

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As foretold in The Bible, Americans are finally learning what tariffs are. It’s not the end times, though, it’s the end of consumer optimism about America’s economic future with a pretend businessman running things.

Every month since Jesus was born in Kansas, the Conference Board think tank assesses American consumer confidence. After Donald Trump won the election in November, optimism spiked, as you can see on the right of the chart:

Not as much as it fucking soared when Pres. Joe Biden took office in 2021, but still, we can’t deny it went up with Trump’s victory last month. But then, this month, the Consumer Confidence Index® did something amazing. The Index® returned to Earth as prophesied, to walk once more in mortal form among the common people and their lack of consumer confidence.

Here it is, made manifest in the headline of the Conference Board scripture issued by its communications team in yesterday’s press release:

As it is written, the Index® dropped by 8.1 points. (Each point in the Index® represents one, uh, unit of confidenceness, apparently.)

And it wasn’t that the economy suddenly got worse this month. Confidence dropped due to fears of an uncertain, tawny-hued future. Here’s Conference Board Chief Economist Dana M. Peterson explaining what changed (emphasis added for clarity):

“While weaker consumer assessments of the presenT situation and expectations contributed to the decline, the expectations component saw the sharpest drop. Consumer views of cuRrent labor market conditions continued to improve, consistent with recent jobs and unemployment data, but their assessment of business conditions weakened. Compared to last month, consumers in December were substantially less optimistic about fUture business conditions and incomes. Moreover, pessiMism about future employment Prospects returned after cautious optimism prevailed in October and November.”

As a result, the Index® chart now shows a sharp dip when we extend it out just one month further right to include this month:

How do we explain such a drop in confidence in the absence of any discernible new development post-Election Day? Obviously, whenever something can’t be explained, the default explanation is that God did it.

But the Wise Men Thems at the Conference Board this month did something different special miraculous. Like a sacred gift of whatever the fuck myrrh is, the Conference Board added a special question to the December consumer survey, the holiest consumer survey of the year. And the result shone down like a new star in the consumer firmament.

The Conference Board release doesn’t tell us what the question was, leaving it shrouded in God’s mystery. But the answer was a miracle: “[A] special question this month showed that 46% of US consumers expected tariffs to raise the cost of living.”

Prior to the election, Trump supporters appeared to suffer under the delusion that tariffs just magically, painlessly generated money. MAGAites discussed Trump’s proposed tariffs of 10% 20% whatever-the-fuck% as if they were paid by the Chinese and Mexican governments and said governments would simply absorb the cost.

In reality, of course, even newsfucking spelling whizzes can’t spell tariff without if, and if Trump imposes them, they’ll be paid by the company importing the stuff, which will then raise prices accordingly because the whole point of tariffs is to make foreign-made goods less cheap so the more-expensive American-made goods can compete. And, in fairness, targeted tariffs can work to address international unfairnesses that don’t benefit us (America likes the other unfairnesses).

But now, due to miraculous magic and/or people reading The Fucking News, at least a solid almost-half of the country now understands that tariffs are paid by we.

Which is not only why confidence is down. It’s also why people will know that, if Trump does impose broad tariffs, the resulting economic consequences will be all him.

If that happens, of course, RePresident Trump will have several options for restoring consumer confidence. He could withdraw the tariffs, admit he was wrong and apologi—I can’t even pretend to finish that sentence.

More realistically, Trump could boost consumer confidence by deporting consumers, directing the Justice Department to prosecute gloomy consumers, or simply telling Congress to make consumer pessimism an act of terrorism.

Actually-Planning Country Planning for Trump

No one seems to know whether President-elect Donald Trump is serious about his tariff threats or whether he’s just face-noising about tariffs so he can later declare victory because something.

But the point of it all is that other countries will experience economic pain — either because tariffs will help American-made goods reclaim market share or because people just stop buying said goods from everyone. Then, to ease said market pain, the tariff-targeted country will give — or pretend to give — Trump what he wants or pretends he wants. Got it? Point being, tariffs are toothless if the countries are insulated from said economic pain.

Which brings us to China.

China’s government reportedly plans to issue $411 billion worth of bonds next year. That’s almost as much money as Elon Musk is worth on paper and/ or in the eyes of God. China’s bond sales would bring in triple the revenue they did this year, with the explicit purpose of cushioning China against the economic impacts of Trump’s tariffs. And, of course, China plans to invest the money in their own economy, including manufacturing, further negating Trump.

In other words, Trump’s tariffs have already lost some of whatever power they theoretically had to make China do whatever Trump theoretically wanted it to do like convert to Christianity or whatever.

Trump Already Tenfolding His Own-Foot Shooting

RePresident-elect Donald Trump last week confirmed his pre-election promise to eliminate ten existing regulations before passing any new ones. Which is great news.

“[P]reparations are underway to slash massive numbers of job-killing regulations — eliminating 10 old regulations for every new one,” Trump reportedly said last week. Thing is, eliminating regulations is hard!

So Trump just installed a giant hurdle for passing his new, odious regulations.

First you have to identify regulations you can kill without generating political blowback. (Fun fact: Most regulations have a purpose!) Then there’s the process for getting rid of that rule. Then there’s the lawsuits.

And even then, Trump still has to get his own rules through. He pushed 77 major rules during Trump1.0 that were challenged in court. Of those, Trump won partial victory in 11.7% of cases, won outright 31.2% of the time, and totally lost most of those fights.

Plus, it turns out that to do a deregulation, you need a new regulation. And if you need to eliminate ten rules every time you pass one, you speed exponentially into a physics- and logic-defying wormhole from which there is no escape. Violating norms is a lot easier than violating physics!

Mangione Pleads Not Guilty

Luigi Mangione yesterday pleaded not guilty in New York state court to killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. He’s charged with first-degree murder because he allegedly terrorismed, trying to scare people and/or change government policy. Neither of which is true, of course.

But even the not-true-ishness of that charge wasn’t the biggest issue for Mangione’s lawyer. Among her complaints:

• Police did a needless perp walk complete with Hannibal Lecter-level security theater.

• New York City Mayor Eric Adams showed up for the perp walk presuming Mangione’s guilt, and

• The state charges conflict with the federal charges — apparently brought primarily so the government can execute Mangione in defense of the sanctity of life? — in ways she didn’t make clear but I’m guessing we’ll hear a lot about that in the weeks ahead.

Disney Already Paying for Agreeing to Pay Trump

Disney’s decision to pay Donald Trump $15 million plus $1 million in illegal fees for alleged defamation by ABC News is already biting Disney in its red shorts.

Trump’s incoming Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chair Brendan Carr is citing that settlement as proof that ABC News isn’t trustworthy, which justifies fucking ABC News. Whodathunkit!

Carr wrote to Disney CEO Bob Iger, who signed off on the capitulation, foreshadowing plenty of FCC interest in ABC’s dealings. For instance, ABC stations require FCC licenses because unlike cable/streaming, broadcast stations literally send their programming through the public airwaves. So Carr is already threatening to fuck with ABC licensing, affiliate agreements with stations it doesn’t own, and retransmission deals.

All because Disney settled a defamation lawsuit for $16 million. Imagine what Democrats could have done if Fox had settled a defamation lawsuit for $787.5 million.

Biden Caves to the Religious Right’s Identity Politics

In his presidency’s end of days, Still-Pres. Joe Biden yesterday granted two Christmas wishes to the religious right. The subject matter, of course, is the identity politics that the right and therefore the media insist are Democratic obsessions.

Biden — an allegedly devout-whatever-that-means Catholic who participated in the right-wing theocratic National Prayer Breakfasts after incessant nagging from theocraccomplice Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) — sold out in two fell swoops transgender people, the troops, and sex-havers.

Yesterday, Biden signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), allocating $895 billion for military spending to protect us from everyone but the terrorist theocrats who injected their identity politics into the bill.

Because Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) devoutly believes whatever Biblical text is sufficiently twistable to relate to transgender people, he injected language into the NDAA which will deny members of the armed forces health-plan coverage for gender-affirming care for their kids that’s been approved by actual doctor people.

Biden signed that language into law, forcing underpaid troops to pay for their children’s care themselves, which they can’t afford. In fairness, what else was Biden gonna do? Not enrich weapons makers?

Also yesterday, the Biden administration surrendered on a proposed set of rules that could’ve been put in place long ago and would have forced companies to include birth control in employee health-care plans.

Withdrawing the proposed rule means that a Donald Trump regulation remains in effect letting virtually every company deny birth-control coverage to their workers. Previously, the only companies that could do that were companies that accepted Jesus Christ as their corporate savior and believe that The Bible prohibits the use of intrauterine devices.

Trump expanded the magic-based exemption to include non-magic reasons for denying birth control. The now-un-proposed rules also would have created a workaround for employees whose Jesusy employers deny them birth control, letting them get birth control free directly from providers.

According to Politico, an estimated 130,000 people would have become eligible for contraception coverage. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Bacerra said last year that the new set of rules “says to women across the country, we have your back.”

The HHS said yesterday the administration is dropping the new rules to “focus their time and resources on matters other than finalizing these rules,” the way I wish I had addressed my lack of homework-doing by explaining that I was focusing my time and resources on matters other than doing my homework.

Starbucks Strike Goes Trenta

The five-day Starbucks strike, ending today, expanded to more than 300 outlets, the Workers United union said.

The union represents workers and workeristas at more than 500 Starbucks, which is about 5% of all the Starbuckses, which means we have way too many Starbuckseses.

Workers are pissed that in current contract talks Starbucks has offered wage hikes starting at only 1.5%. Also, the massive company still hasn’t resolved more than 150 labor complaints.

A Christmas Scientific Miracle Wonder

Sometimes people ask what makes atheists experience awe and spiritual wonder. The answer is shit like the following.

At 6:53am eastern time today, a ten-foot, 12-hundred-pound vehicle did two things that have never happened before.

Thing One. It went faster than anything made by humans has ever moved, achieving a speed of 430,000 miles per hour. If that doesn’t fit well into paltry human brains, try it this way: It traveled so fast it would have crossed the United States in less than 30 seconds.

Thing Two. The vehicle came closer to the sun this morning than anything made by humans ever has. The Parker Solar Probe flew inside the sun’s atmosphere, coming just 3.8 million miles from whatever we’re calling the sun’s “surface.”

Here’s a nifty shot that Parker took in the summer of 2020, showing us with the neighbors.

(Image: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Naval Research Laboratory/Guillermo Stenborg and Brendan Gallagher)

On Friday, Parker will again be able to send information back to Earth — also an awe-inspiring miracle feat — and we should have actual images over which to lose our shit. I confess I’m not sure how anything strikes people as miraculous if God can do anything: If everything is possible, why would anything be a big deal? But to this atheist Newsfucker, not believing in magic certainly makes this kind of fucked-up-in-a-good-way human achievement vastly more wondrous and awe-inspiring by stretching the boundaries of what can be done.

NY Times gift article here. ‘Tis the season!

Two Quickies

• Your substance-obsessed TFN tries not to indulge in too much Matt Gaetz navel-gaetzing, but this development seems maybe worth noting. The House Ethics Committee is evenly split but still voted to release all his disgusting Gaetziness, which means someone on the Republican side must’ve voted to release it. Well, now Axios reports that it was Reps. Andrew Garbarino (R-NY) and Dave Joyce (R-OH). Those who voted against letting taxpayers know what the taxpayer-funded investigation learned about taxpayer-paid Rep. Gaetz were Reps. Michelle Fischbach (R-MN), Michael Guest (R-MS), and John Rutherford (R-FL).

• Politico reports on general rumbling among the Democratic National Committee (DNC) that none of the chair candidates are especially inspiring members. The four candidates qualifying for next month’s debates are all pretty similar in their approaches, and none of said approaches involve big visions or plans for sweeping change. The possible upside: It could be a sign that the DNC doesn’t have the power it once did. Which might not be the worst thing.

TCB

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