mtutiger

I'm just now seeing this clip from yesterday, but this is up there in the pantheon of stupid defenses of bad policy decisions.

We Have Never Been More Respected

This was always the problem with the GP's logic on saying "well, he was fine in 2019, it'll be OK this time too".... the Esper, Cohn, Mnuchin, Mattis, Pompeo types are all gone. The inmates were gonna run the asylum, and he advertised it continually.

Clearly.... kinda wish people were thinking along these lines prior to yesterday instead of assuming that he wasn't intending on doing the thing that he campaigned over and over on during last year's POTUS election.

To the above point

Not necessarily directly related, but in a better world, this action would cause a little soul searching about the wisdom of, over time, the legislative and judicial branches ceding and endowing this much power in the Executive on trade. Regardless of whether Trump sticks with the tariffs or not, the uncertainty will always be there going forward as other countries price in the fact that trade could potentially whipsaw on the whims of just one person

It's important to keep in mind as well that Trump (and people like Navarro underneath him) have simultaneously treated tariffs as both punitive measures to punish other countries as well as a reliable revenue stream to fund their priorities (ie. extending the Trump tax cuts). It's incoherent as hell - tariffs are usually applied in order to influence consumer decisions and what they choose to buy which, taken to it's end logic, will reduce how much people choose to buy and over time will reduce the amount of revenue that the tariffs will take in. Sorry, there is absolutely zero reason to trust this administration knows what the hell its doing here.

If the first few months of this administration have taught us anything, it's that the rest of the world is a lot more willing to tell us to pound sand than Trump's administration (or supporters) believed. Just a toxic combination of arrogance and delusion

The protection racket angle is probably accurate, but there is no "being made whole" for companies that submit regardless so long as other countries retaliate and so long as uncertainty remains sky high (as it will). And that is something Trump has zero control over. The end result that there's no getting around is that, in all likelihood, he will make goods more expensive for all of us. And will likely drag his popularity down even further on the economy (which is currently underwater)

Something something we will never be more respected something something

Open to the possibility that there will be some pump-and-dump happening, but the damage to relationships with our trading partners are going to remain damaged even if there are walkbacks. And the uncertainty in the markets is going to be an impediment to the markets overall.

These guys sound insane

I hate consolation prizes, but this Dodgers team is going to be an absolute terror for the rest of the league this year...

Tommy Kahnle has good stuff....

Ump show bay bee

Spencer Torkelson kinda seems like the offense so far two games in.... didn't have that on my dance card

I initially thought it was Torres as well, fwiw

Sweeney

That was a wipeout inning for Jack Flaherty.... wow

Pollster is Fabrizio, ie. Trump's pollster. There are too many undecideds to think an upset is likely, but anything within 10% still seems like it would be a massive overperformance

Actually made this point to a colleague at work this week... He fell back on some sort of morally relativistic "everything's just so partisan" argle bargle. Which kinda makes the point that this stuff is really really hard to defend on the merits.

I think it's wild that coming off of four years of hearing my old man talking about Biden as if he was Konstantin Chernenko, we now have Donald Trump demonstrating that he has no ****ing clue what's going on. And no, I don't think this is all part of some secret plan or 4D chess or anything, he just doesn't care. Credit to Goldberg for going public with this, going against the grain of how his fellow journalists have handled things thus far... if it was Maggie H, she'd be hawking a tell-all book in 2029 about this incident.

About 55% or so percent of a normal turnout in the district, but considering its Lancaster County (about as ancestrally GOP as it gets), wow...

I don't think the headlines about the Department of Education, which were all over the news yesterday and on social media, were good ones. And I think they likely broke through

I really don't agree with the bolded, Fox News had a poll this week that suggests that going after the Department of Education is deeply unpopular (32-65) I go back to my original point though... people vote on their pocket books and their economy. We are currently going backwards.... with Trump himself talking about tariffs with the kind of zeal that Sterling Hayden's character talked about the fluoridation of water in Dr. Strangelove. It won't go unnoticed. The thing that plays well is immigration.... the rest of it is tenuous at best.