Maybe Donald Trump missed his calling in life. Maybe he secretly dreams of running a car dealership lot. Previously, he turned the White House lawn into a showroom for Teslas (as he showed his tenuous grasp of the English language, saying: "It's all computer!"). Now he has erected two very tall flagpoles on the White House grounds, complete with the sort of giant flag one usually sees from a highway to signify an auto dealership. Which means our title this week pretty much had to be based on the maxim: "Let's run it up the flagpole and see who salutes!"

We're not even going to get into the idiocy and priapic monomania Trump displayed in gushing about his new poles (which was pretty laughable, but we felt the late-night comedians are already doing a stellar job of mocking Trump's flagpole-stroking monologue), because this was a serious week.

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Next month, America will celebrate its 249th birthday on July 4th. But the rest of the world will be much more concerned with what happens five days later, on July 9th. That is the deadline for Donald Trump's 90-day "pause" in what he calls his "reciprocal tariffs" on the rest of the world. Either countries have a new trade deal in place with the U.S. by that date, or else steep tariffs will once again be imposed upon them.

This pause period came about because Trump backed down almost immediately after his big "Liberation Day" announcement, when the bond markets got (as Trump put it) "yippy" in response. His administration promised "90 deals in 90 days" and has been full of happy talk about how every country in the world is absolutely begging to cut a deal with Trump before the deadline is reached. Here's a typical quote from Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick: "You're going to see deal after deal, they're going to start coming next week and the week after and the week after. We've got them in the hopper." Except that week after week then goes by and... nothing is announced at all.

To date, the United States has cut precisely zero fully-fledged trade deals with other countries. One country -- the United Kingdom -- has agreed to a framework for a deal, and that's it. And that 90-day calendar now has less than three weeks to run.

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Today Donald Trump was asked whether he had made the decision to attack Iran's nuclear sites or not. He answered with perhaps the truest words he has ever spoken: "You don't seriously think I'm going to answer that question. You don't know that I'm going to even do it. You know, I may do it. I may not do it. I mean, nobody knows what I'm going to do." It's hard to disagree with that, really.

But the subject deserves more than just snark, since it is a serious decision Trump has to make -- and it would be an equally tough decision for any U.S. president to have to make. Entering the country into a war is always a serious decision, and it should be treated as such by all concerned.

The stakes are high. There are valid arguments to be made on both sides of the issue. Whatever Trump decides, it will come with some degree of risk -- both for the country and for him politically.

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[Editorial Note: Every so often, my scheduling/writing decisions turn out to be incredibly wrong. Yesterday, for instance, I wrote about something that seemed important and was worth pointing out because Trump seemed to be backing down and (for once) doing the right thing after all. Within hours of posting the article, however, the news broke that the White House had flip-flopped and decided that they weren't backing down, and instead had reinstated the original policy of ICE doing workplace raids on farmworkers, meatpackers, hotel workers, and restaurants. Eventually, economics will force them to reverse course once again, but it's questionable how long this will take after the fiasco of this flip-flop. In any case, what I'm trying to say is (hindsight being 20/20 and all) I wish I had run the following article yesterday rather than winding up with egg on my face.]

Donald Trump, once again, seems to be experiencing a case of "crowd size envy" in a big way. Or perhaps "in a little way" would be more appropriate? The White House confidently reported that 250,000 people showed up to view the Dear Leader's birthday military extravaganza, but the only way you can believe that figure is if you avoid seeing any of the actual photos of the crowd.

If this all sounds familiar, it should. It was in fact the premiere bit of idiocy from Trump's first term, when he claimed that a record crowd of a bazillion people (or whatever it was, I am too lazy to look it up, sorry) attended his inauguration when the photos showed one of the lightest inauguration turnouts in modern history. Thus began the "Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?" theme that continues to this day from Trump.

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Donald Trump bent to reality last week, issuing an order that amounts to a stunning turnaround on his "mass deportation" policy. Instead of rounding up every undocumented immigrant in sight everywhere, ICE will now back off on raiding farms, meatpacking plants, hotels, and restaurants. Because the reality of the situation is that if you removed all the undocumented immigrants from these industries, they would essentially grind to a halt. Which Trump has (thankfully) now finally realized.

In typical Trumpian fashion, this was not a well-thought-out plan which was carefully implemented, it was an off-the-cuff decision Trump made after talking to one person. So it remains to be seen what the impact of it all will be, as the dust settles.

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It has been a week of dangerous precedents being set -- and it's not over yet.

One precedent that didn't get much media attention (but which is truly disturbing) was Donald Trump giving a nakedly political speech to American soldiers in uniform, where he pre-screened the crowd for both looks and ideology. One memo sent out before Trump arrived specified: "No fat soldiers." Another stated: "if soldiers have political views that are in opposition to the current administration and they don't want to be in the audience, then they need to speak with their leadership and get swapped out."

This is dangerous stuff, folks. The United States military has always been seen as completely apolitical, for a damn good reason -- because it sets us apart from countries where the military is used for political purposes. Which is a good thing. Or it used to be, at any rate.

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The most important battle over immigration policy isn't being fought on the streets of Los Angeles right now, but rather over the airwaves. This is the fight for public opinion, and it could go either way. If the public largely sides with Trump's immigration tactics, it will strengthen his hand. But if the public decides the tactics go too far then it will weaken him in the long run. How the events of this week are ultimately seen by the public could be the deciding factor. Is Donald Trump and his administration doing what the voters elected him to do, or is he vastly overreaching in a dictatorial fashion? That's the entire rhetorical battle in a nutshell.

Trump has always wanted to be seen as a strongman, of course. So to him, brutal tactics and overreacting are exactly what he wants to see. Trump, aided by the rightwing media echo chamber, would like the public to think that Los Angeles is in danger of being "burned to the ground" and that lawlessness reigns throughout the city. This is wildly inaccurate hyperbole, but that's never stopped him before. But he is in serious danger of people turning against him on the issue precisely because of the brutal tactics.

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This is really a "From The Archives" repeat, although I didn't use that title since I'm only re-running a portion of a previous column rather than the whole thing. Sadly, when I looked it up, it was published (10 years ago, in February) right after Leonard Nimoy died (and began with: "Mr. Spock is dead. Long live Mr. Spock!").

Today also marks a sad passing, as the world lost Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys today. He will be missed. Requiescat In Pace.

The Beach Boys were one of those rare iconic bands that pretty much everyone loved to some extent or another. To put it another way, you could play their songs at any random party and it'd be rare than anyone objected. There aren't many such bands around (Creedence Clearwater Revival, the Beatles, maybe the Steve Miller Band and a handful of others) and their rarity is due to their being able to create music that was pretty universally appreciated. It's pretty hard to hate a song like "Good Vibrations," right? Their harmonization was second to none as well. Their music was dated, to be sure (it arose from the surf craze of the 1950s), but it was the best of the era (although Jan and Dean fans might quibble with that statement, to be fair). For the most part, it just made people happy to hear it. Which is exactly why Brian Wilson will indeed be missed.

Personally, the only times I heard the Beach Boys perform live was at free concerts given on the National Mall as part of Independence Day celebrations in the early 1980s. Which brings me to the reason I am re-running the following column excerpt. Through absolutely no fault of their own, the Beach Boys became the center of a small controversy during the Reagan administration (when they were regularly performing at the July 4th celebrations). While researching a subject only tangentially related, I came across the controversy once again, so I included it.

This column was written in honor of protests. In fact, after it ran in the Huffington Post, I was contacted by one of the original Youth International Party (Yippies) founders, who not only thanked me for writing it and chronicling this history but also told me a few amusing stories about the earliest of these events (which I was too young to attend).

I figured, what with everything else going on this week it would be a good time for an interlude of music and fun in the sun. We'll get back to the much-more-serious protests currently happening tomorrow, but for now, I would recommend finding the album Pet Sounds on YouTube, cue it up, and travel back with me to when the Beach Boys became ensnared in Washington politics (again, through no fault of their own!).

An Incomplete History Of Washington's July Fourth Smoke-In
[Originally published February 27th, 2015]

What could be a better way to pass a summer's afternoon than to sit across the street from the White House and smoke lots of pot?

This very simple idea birthed an annual tradition that continues to the present day. Now that Washington has legalized recreational use of marijuana, one can only imagine how festive this year's gathering will be. The organizers even have a Facebook page, if you're interested.

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There has been a very dangerous development in the Los Angeles protests, although so far it seems to be a series of isolated incidents as opposed to any sort of blanket policy. Journalists covering the protests and the police response have been targeted by police using what is now being called "less-than-lethal" weapons (non-lethal rounds such as rubber bullets). And so far, it appears that this targeting has happened not from the members of the National Guard or U.S. military (who have now been deployed, in a serious escalation of the situation by Donald Trump) but rather from local and state police forces. Which is almost more worrisome, since it can't be chalked up to the federal militarization of the response to the protests.

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We seem to be quickly headed for a confluence of events that is going to produce a rather shocking split-screen moment next weekend. We could be simultaneously watching a parade that is ostensibly being given for the celebration of the U.S. Army's 250th anniversary, while we also watch the national military being deployed on the streets of American cities. That's a jarring contrast, you have to admit.

What's going on in Los Angeles is the result of an entirely-predictable escalation in Donald Trump's push to deport as many immigrants as he possibly can. Trump promised he'd go after all the criminals first, but once he ran out of immigrants who had been convicted of crimes (and whose location was known to the authorities, making them easy to pick up), it was inevitable that he'd have to start raiding job sites and schools and other places where immigrants are known to gather. We're in that second phase now, and it's only going to get more and more pronounced in the coming weeks.

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