I know that puts me on the outside of people that snap and salute on anything that comes out of the White House but as a commentator, writer and radio talk show host, I value the right to ask questions and to think in a manner that was not afforded particularly during the time of COVID after Joe Biden had assumed office.

I just did a post here last week about one economist's outlook, and it covered all the bases for me. Amid Main Stream Media Doom and Gloom on the Economy, One Economist Sees Growth and I'll Take It.

A snippet from that piece...

Thus, when I came across this article from the hometown paper, the Detroit News, I was thrilled. Momentarily.

An economist with the University of Michigan says he believes there's still a path to U.S. economic growth in 2025, even as risks of recession rise from tariffs.

The new import taxes imposed by President Donald Trump have contributed to declines in consumer sentiment indexes and fears that the United States' economy could shrink. But Gabriel Ehrlich, director of the Ann Arbor university's Research Seminar in Quantitative Economics that produces U.S. and Michigan economic forecasts, says underlying metrics have held up, particularly in the labor market.

I'm one of those people watching anxiously, wondering if import taxes are super duper bad and will sink the economy.

"The economic uncertainty confronting the business community, nonprofit organizations and government leaders is a headwind to growth," Ehrlich said Thursday at Washtenaw Community College. "I continue to believe that there's a path to the economy to keep growing this year, but I do acknowledge that the risk of a recession has risen."

Awww crap, I'm sunk.

These are all "warning signs," Ehrlich said, but they're not a flashing alarm: "The economy came into 2025, and there's a lot of momentum."

Hooray. I'm saved, lol.

As you can see, I'm a bit skittish.

However, there are things about the economy or claims that are made that I'm absolutely not skittish about, and it is when blame is given to a person or a group that had nothing to do with what they are being accused of. I had a couple of outbursts yesterday regarding Donald Trump's trip to the Vatican, where people were mocking and accusing him of a couple of different things, and I had to point out how dumb it was. 

Like Trump wearing a blue suit to a funeral.

Of All the Things to Criticize Trump For, This Take From the Pope's Funeral Might Be the Dumbest Yet

Also, my personal favorite from yesterday:

Trump Should Never Go to Another Pope's Funeral Again, the Way the Media Is Sobbing About This Trip

Trump left sleepy Joe at the airport or something, according to the media...

Now, though, it seems that the spin is that Trump left Joe seemingly on the side of the road looking for Jill, as I read about right HERE.

Not even the death of Pope Francis could bring President Donald Trump to make nice and ride with former President Joe Biden.

Yet Trump did not even KNOW Biden was going.

“Oh he is? I didn’t know,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Friday, The Daily Mail reported. Trump said that a meeting with Biden during the trip to Italy was “not high on my list.”

He can't be blamed for not knowing that.

Now I'm reading that some parts of the world have experienced an economic slowdown and some in the media and government agencies want to blame whom?

Donald Trump.

Germany is the largest economy in Europe and a main player on the world stage, which is something to watch when we look down the road.

With a gross domestic product of 4,305 billion euros in 2024, Germany is the third largest economy in the world after the United States and China and just ahead of Japan, making it the largest economy in Europe.

As I was reading an article in a conservative publication about the German economy, I found out that they have been in a recession for a bit, and they don't want to blame their policies for the last two to three years. They are looking for a scapegoat.

The article right HERE had me shaking my noggin.

Germany today is not just in recession — it’s in a deep systemic crisis of its own making. Once Europe’s industrial benchmark, the country now endures its longest downturn since World War II. Yet rather than own their policy failures, Berlin’s leadership has chosen a convenient scapegoat: Donald Trump.

This week, we celebrate or mourn (depending on which side of the aisle you are on) the 100 days of Trump's second term.

That means he has been in office for just over three months.

Self-criticism? None. Instead, they hunt for a culprit: of course, Donald Trump’s tariffs are now blamed, retroactively (do they have time machines in Berlin?), for plunging the German economy into recession for the past three years. This is absurd and a disgrace to the political culture of Europe’s largest economy. It lays bare the desperation of leaders too wedded to ideology to face reality.

The article does a nice job of laying out Germany's problem and also, to a larger extent, Europe's. Government subsidies and businesses supported by taxpayer funds in Europe and, in Canada, are much more common than they are here, although that happens way too much in the United States also for my liking.

Yet the leftists in Europe have been infected in the same manner that the leftists here have been, and they're just going to blame Trump for something he had absolutely nothing to deal with. I understand that three years of being in a crappy economy almost sounds like three months that Donald Trump has been in office but in all actuality it's not the same.

I kid you not.

This is a knee-jerk reaction by people who are not willing to take responsibility for the very policies that they supported, which all of a sudden are not working well. Also, because of the internet they can see that discussions and ideas are being bandied about across the globe and they actually may want to try some of the things being discussed.

In a government-controlled economy, like I believe most of Europe is, that is not to be tolerated.

Trump is well on his way to re-shaping how things are done in the United States.

Maybe even the world, if he keeps this up.