Newsletter #11: The Tariff Pain is Coming

Canada Strikes Back, Part Deux | Saggy Trump | Vertigo Revised | A Wonder(full) Mix

What’s the Frequency, Putin?

Like everyone wanting a Stanley insulated tumbler for a minute last summer, you never know what’s going to break through and catch on in our society.

When it comes to the Trump Regime there’s such a firehouse of core corruption and bad policy that it’s kind of tumbler-like that this Signal story became the first real scandal of Regime 2.0.

No doubt, it’s a terrible story and in a normal world, heads would roll. And maybe they still will. But, the particulars of the Houthi military strike on Signal isn’t the real story here.

If this highest-level group is willing to talk top secret military operations on an unsecure public app (known to be targeted by our enemies) on their own private phones (again, unsecure) it’s very likely that Signal is involved in nearly everything.

It makes sense since the disappearing message functionality the app provides is a favorite of criminals and gangsters who don’t want to leave a trail.

Sound familiar?

The one sad, sad silver lining about Russia and China listening in on our private calls is that it really doesn’t matter anymore. We’re pretty much with the bad guys in the world now.

Canada Strikes Back II

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has done it.

He broke up with America.

Maybe I shouldn’t use that phrase because it makes the move sound almost comical, and it’s not. Carney is ending Canada’s relationship — trade, security cooperation, intelligence, everything — with the United States after Trump threw a 25% tariff on “imported” autos.

"The old relationship we had with the United States based on deepening integration of our economies and tight security and military cooperation is over."

Of course, the market (and car companies in particular) tanked and the damage that’s going to be done is real and widespread.

Beyond the philosophy of free trade that used to be a core conservative principal, it’s amazing that Trump is going 180 degrees away from Trump 1.0. In his first term one of the only things I agreed with (in part) was the renegotiation of NAFTA.

What NAFTA has done since it was passed in 1994 is to encourage the financial ties between Canada, the US, and Mexico — especially auto production. Just look at the production of a damn piston:

This is the story for the majority of auto parts and tons of other manufactured goods — all with different paths. My wife worked at Ford for years and visited plants outside Toronto. Those vehicles might have been finished in Canada but to call them Canadian is amazingly simplistic — which is why core MAGA accepts Trump’s lies on tariffs and trade.

For now, at least.

If this continues the damage will be widespread — and very likely hit our house. Most of my entire career in advertising has been tied to autos — GM and Chevy in particular. That includes my current job. When auto sales tank the first thing that’s cut is advertising budgets. And when advertising budgets are cut the first people to be let go are freelancers, which I am.

I hope it doesn’t come to that — for me and the countless jobs tied to the auto industry in this country — my state of Michigan in particular.

And it’s not false hope. This is all so completely dumb and the pain is going to be real, that it’s hard to believe that Trump won’t be forced to back down. Of course, he’ll never admit to backing down even if Canada stands its ground. He’ll come up with some reason to say he won that his cult laps up.

Even if we do get some sort of better deal that’s not the point. This is a petulant dictator man-child doing a bunch of illegal shit based on his own warped mind.

I mean, let’s rewind. How did Canada ever get here? How is this a thing? You don’t treat the economy and the lives of millions of Americans like it’s a fake reality show.

Unless your Trump who has (and will always be) a failure at business and an even bigger failure as a human being.

The Sagging Trump Brand

Trump’s numbers are still in the shitter and nothing on the horizon looks to change that. And look at the two stories above and put them through the prism of Trump’s brand and the hit it’s taking.

Yes, the Trump brand (first and foremost Successful Businessman and Tough Guy) has always been manufactured bullshit — but millions ate it up. Now he’s tanking the economy in a way so dumb, on so many levels, that it almost seems purposeful.

When your 401k bottoms out and you lose your job the price of eggs becomes completely moot — even though he’ actually raising inflation.

In Trump 1.0 he had the excuse of Covid he could blame, even though his original inaction and contradictory moves made everything worse. He has no excuse this time around. It’s all on him and the successful businessman is looking more and more like the failure he really is.

And on the Signal scandal Trump has seemed weak and small.

His involvement in military strikes seems minimal at best. That’s the Commander in Chief part of the job that all Americans expect the POTUS to be on top of. I mean, the White House social accounts did everything including photos of dead bodies with a you’ll be killed next message so they seem tough, but it was all stagecraft.

Trump looked really, really weak. And multiple times after the scandal broke he did everything possible to make it clear that he didn’t have anything to do with it. First he didn’t know, then he hadn’t talked to people.

From the guy famous for his you’re fired reality show catch-phrase.

Forget non-voters and Independents, these are the kind of brand blows that even parts of the MAGA cult are going to start having a hard time ignoring. That’s bad news for Trump and good news for the country.

And we’ve barely hit the big cuts and and the real attempt to destroy Medicare and Social Security.

Keeping the Heat on Democrats

As I’ve said, beyond spreading the truth, I think the most important thing we can do in our daily lives to fight the Trump Regime is to push Democrats to fight and fight effectively.

One way they could do that is to introduce Articles of Impeachment on a regular basis to highlight Trump’s crimes and corruption…

During the Biden administration Republicans introduced bullshit articles multiple times. You might not have heard much about them, but they were big news in the MAGA-verse, keeping those fake scandals alive and well with their base.

I meant to only post this on the site last week but mistakenly sent it out. Sorry! In case you missed it, you can read the whole rant here.

Here’s another example of how we need to push Democrats.

Last night Cory Booker took to the Senate floor for an old-fashioned filibuster-like speech to disrupt business as usual in the Senate. It’s the right thing to do, and he’s getting some news coverage. Good.

But, here’s the honest truth — Booker was one of the top D senators talking about bipartisanship after the election and he voted for a number of Trump nominees. He should have known better — and been more quickly ready to fight — on both counts.

I’m glad he’s moved in the right direction, and that’s likely because of pressure from grassroots Democrats.

If he really wanted to disrupt the Senate he’s being pretty senatorial about it. The Senate isn’t back in session until tomorrow at 10 am, so he’s likely not going to really disrupt anything. If he wanted to start Friday morning and keep the Senate in session and stop members from flying home for the weekend, that would be disruptive.

I like Senator Booker, always have, but it’s time for every elected Democrat to REALLY step up to the magnitude of the crisis we face.

Another Bigly Poll!

My poll last week on this same subject was an overwhelming mandate begging for more content delivered to your inbox.

Okay, only five people responded. I wanted to throw it out there again, just in case anyone else wanted to join the deluge of responders.

Culture Club: Vertigo Revisited | Stevie Wonder Happiness Playlist

AND SCENE… The Mastery of Vertigo

Note: I mentioned if before, but Substack is pretty bad for any kind of photography layout. My work-around was to do a collage in Canva. I think it worked well. I wrote this for my old blog that literally no one ever saw.

Alfred Hitchcock’s run of Hollywood films in the 1950s films — beginning with Stage Fright and ending with North By Northwest — is an amazing feat. He was at the absolute peak of his creative powers and had the budget and the clout to do pretty much anything he wanted.

It’s easily his most impressive and productive decade, and one that stands out in film history. Just look at the list:

• Stage Fright (1950) • Strangers on a Train (1951) • I Confess (1953)
• Dial M for Murder (1954) • Rear Window (1954) • To Catch a Thief (1955)
• The Trouble with Harry (1955) • The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)
• The Wrong Man (1956) • Vertigo (1958) • North by Northwest (1959)

There’s no real duds on it. Three (Stage Fright, I Confess and The Trouble with Harry) aren’t amazing, but they aren’t bad either. Four (Strangers on a Train, To Catch a Thief, The Man Who Knew Too Much and The Wrong Man) are great films.

Which leaves us with Rear Window, Vertigo and North by Northwest as unarguable classics. Of these, I think Vertigo is a cinematic masterpiece, and (IMHO) not only his best film ever, but one of the best films ever.

I’ll try not to review the entire film, but to understand why the movie (and the particular scene) is so great entails a little backstory about writing, and the passions that drove the master director.

Hitchcock never took writing credit for any of his films. But he was deeply involved in the writing process, especially during these years. Usually working from source material (a book, play, article, etc.) Hitch would spend hours a day for days on end plotting out the script with the writer. Needless to say, when it came to things like theme, Hitchcock was deeply invested in his scripts.

Which brings us to theme and the deeper motives that drove them in Hitchcock’s films. Just because he dealt with the macabre doesn’t mean that Hitchcock was some kind of, err, psycho. But he did have issues of guilt, abandonment, etc. But his deepest psychosis was surely based on his gigantic girth, and how he could never be considered as a sexual being to his very beautiful leading ladies.

Hitchcock became obsessed with the careers of his leading ladies. It really came to the surface with Grace Kelly, and went over the edge with Tippi Hedren during the filming of The Birds.

But for Vertigo, life really did imitate art to the point of genius, in the story, and in the form of Kim Novak.

In the film, Jimmy Stewart (in his most complex role) attempts to turn a seemingly random girl into the woman of his dreams, the woman he can never have. Starting innocently, this transformation is fraught with drama — real, honest-to-goodness psychological drama that transcends the era.

This transformation cumulates in one of the best scenes I’ve ever seen.

After finally making her subjugate the last of her former self (her hair), Judy comes out of the apartment bathroom to present herself to Scotty Ferguson and the transformation is complete.

What follows is the perfect synthesis of technical skill and fantastic storytelling. Now his dead Madeline, she walks out, into a green light that takes on a ghostly glow that envelops them both.

The camera starts to spin, taking Scotty back. It transforms him into the past — to her — and the score sheds it doubts and brings back the beautiful love theme at its most bittersweet.

It is a scene that does everything. With no words it says everything about both characters and the story. It’s packed with so much emotion — longing, doubt, desperation, love. It’s simply perfect:

From a technical POV, the spinning camera gets the kudos from this scene, and it should. It still looks amazing, and has a “stage” quality that totally fits into the mindset of Scotty. And the scene becomes his mind, spinning to different times and places.

While I mentioned to ghostly fog, note the brilliant art direction to make it happen. The green neon light is set up from almost the first shot when they walk into the apartment, including in the mirror. And the green is foreshadowing from the beginning.

As this scene begins, it’s at Scotty’s back, and then almost in his eyes… Before it becomes “his” vision. The art direction and lighting in this scene convey so much.

In fact, the use of green is such a prevalent thematic element I’m surprised an entire book hasn’t been written just about that color in the film. And obviously others given The Birds still above.

Just look at these fantastic stills, with the green motif foreshadowed from the very beginning of the film:

Then there’s Bernard Herrmann.

He scored some of the best of Hitchcock’s movies from this time. It’s a composer/director relationship probably only second to Williams/Spielberg. Here, it is the apex of his best score. I wish I had a longer clip, but even seconds before, when Judy goes into the bathroom, the score fills the screen with the doubts and mental strain of Scotty’s character, only to be transformed into a swell of a love theme itself filled with dark undertones of dread.

Herrmann scored everything from Citizen Kane to Taxi Driver. And he scored other classic movies with Hitch — North By Northwest is the template of action scores. But this film, and this scene… it’s one of the most sublime pieces of music I’ve ever seen put to screen.

Jimmy Stewart was great in this scene, and in the movie. As I said, I think it’s one of his best performances, and I think he’s one of the greatest actors ever. Kim Novak is a little debatable. In all honestly, I don’t think she’s bad. In fact, I think she totally works in this film, for this director.

As for Hitchcock, I’ve pretty much said it. His relationship with Novak after the film, and then Vera Miles, sent him on a spiral. His last film of the 1950s (North By Northwest) is my second favorite. But after that, the obsessions started getting a bit too real.

Spellbound by Beauty: Alfred Hitchcock and His Leading Ladies is a fantastically researched and well-written documentation of this spiral.

Lastly, if for some ungodly reason you’re reading this and haven’t seen Vertigo, please, close this page and go watch it immediately. Even without the Hitchcock subtext, it is simply a classic — a film somewhat panned at the time, but now voted near (or at) the top by critics.

And, rightfully so.

Tuesday Mix: The Wonder of Happiness

Of the artists that deserve the moniker genius, Stevie Wonder is near the top of the list. Not long ago I heard If You really Love Me and started think how unique Wonder is in embodying just pure joy in so many songs. Even his harmonica can exude joy.

If this mix doesn’t make you happy, something’s wrong. Enjoy!

My anemic subscriber numbers came up a bit last week, so thank you if you took a moment to share this joint. If you don’t mind, do it again. Thanks!