But if he doesn't do that, you sickos are supposedly in for a long speech.
Previewing Tuesday’s State of the Union address, President Trump told reporters on Monday that “it's going to be a long speech because we have a lot to talk about."
(maybe)
Tuesday, February 24, 2026
Trump Has The Opportunity To Do The Funniest Thing
Sure You Weren't
Police officers arrested Lord Mandelson at his London home on Monday afternoon because they worried he was a flight risk, his lawyers have said.
The peer's lawyers have told the BBC there is "absolutely no truth" in the suggestion that Lord Mandelson was planning to leave the UK and move abroad.
I suspect he wasn't planning, but if he was then it's a shame they didn't let him. Peter Mandelson, international fugitive, would be a funny story!
It said: “Peter Mandelson was arrested yesterday despite an agreement with the police that he would attend an interview next month on a voluntary basis.
“The arrest was prompted by a baseless suggestion that he was planning to leave the country and take up permanent residence abroad. There is absolutely no truth whatsoever in any such suggestion.
“We have asked the MPS [Metropolitan Police Service] for the evidence relied upon to justify the arrest.
"Peter Mandelson’s overriding priority is to cooperate with the police investigation, as he has done throughout this process, and to clear his name.”
President Deals
Even though his tariff flexibility is now more limited, you can't make deals with a guy who makes decisions because he saw some AI slop at 3:30 in the morning which convinced him that Germany has too many wind farms, or whatever.
The U.S. has breached the terms of its trade deal with the European Union and the bloc is ready to retaliate if necessary, a top EU trade lawmaker told CNBC.
“We wanted to have really stability and predictability. And unfortunately, the government, the president of the United States, has really made a breach of this deal several times,” Bernd Lange, chair of the European Parliament’s international trade committee, told CNBC on Tuesday.
Chaos Agent
One (obvious) problem with tariffs being made on the whim of the mad king is that lack of certainty does make it a bit hard for businesses to plan things.
The "we are just onshoring manufacturing" pitch, which they mostly abandoned after a few weeks, was transparently ridiculous for this (and other) reasons.
Now there will be even more costs and chaos.
The White House is confident that this will substantially rebuild the tariff regime the Court struck down. But Trump has two problems. First, in all likelihood he can’t yell tariffs and instantly bully the world anymore, which was his main goal with tariffs anyway. His remaining options require longer-term planning; the only tariff available with less stringent fact-finding, an open-ended levy up to 50 percent under Section 338 of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 on countries that the president defines as discriminating against U.S. trade or commerce, has never been tried before and would likely also lead to a lawsuit.But more important, the administration must figure out some way to return the money it’s collected from illegal IEEPA tariffs for more than ten months. And this tug-of-war will roil the rest of Trump’s presidency and beyond, with the possibility for a rerun of this scenario if the newly implemented Section 122 tariffs or others get invalidated by the courts as well.
That Bari Magic
She wasn't going to give in to the Woke Mob, and then she did.
Celebrity doctor Peter Attia has resigned from his new contributor position at CBS News following new revelations about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.
“Dr. Attia’s contributor role was newly established and had not yet meaningfully begun,” a spokesperson for Attia said in a statement.
“It’s Bari versus everyone right now on Attia,” a Paramount insider told Sharon Waxman, editor-in-chief of The Wrap, Monday afternoon.
“Update on the Peter Attia situation: We’re hearing there is a battle royale between Paramount corporate and CBS News’ Bari Weiss,” Waxman wrote on X. “She does not want to cut ties w/ Attia and sees it as givin in to the mob. Paramount sees it as an HR matter and that Attia can’t give expert advice.”
Clever Accounting
I suppose you can get AI to do your clever accounting and then blame the computer for it.
A gap in US accounting rules allows Big Tech companies to conceal tens of billions of dollars of potential liabilities for their AI data centres, the credit rating agency Moody’s warned on Monday
This stuff is above my paygrade, generally, but this illustrates the issue pretty well. A long likely-to-be-renewed lease has to be recorded as a debt liability, but a shorter lease with a guaranteed payment doesn't for some reason.
The largest private credit data centre deal is a case in point, Moody’s said. Meta’s planned Hyperion facility in Louisiana, housed in a special purpose vehicle called Beignet Investor that has financing from Blue Owl Capital, will be leased to the company for an initial term of four years, but with options to renew for up to 20. Meta is also guaranteeing compensation of up to $28bn if the value of the property falls.
Obviously this stuff isn't entirely hidden, but the benefit arises when everybody pretends to believe numbers they know are sorta fake. They do that because they are often betting other people's money.
Not precisely the same, but a bit like pretendng a mortgage backed security is AAA rated because it is 51% AAA, but 49% shit (or something like that). It isn't as if no one can see what's inside, but if we pretend the label on the package is correct, then we can sell it to people who demand the correct label and trust it (and us).
Monday, February 23, 2026
Might Be Pony Time Soon
Just 32% of Americans now say that Trump has had the right priorities, while 68% say he hasn’t paid enough attention to the country’s most important problems. That’s the president’s most negative reading on that question to date during either of his terms in office. At the same time, Americans say, 61% to 38%, that Trump’s policies will move the country in the wrong direction rather than the right one. And Trump’s job approval rating among all adults remains mired at 36%.
The Prince Of Darkness
They arrest people just for passing state secrets to their pedo pal, now.
Peter Mandelson arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office
published at 17:09
17:09
Breaking
Peter Mandelson has been arrested. Here is the Met Police statement in full.
"Officers have arrested a 72-year-old man on suspicion of misconduct in public office.
"He was arrested at an address in Camden on Monday, 23 February and has been taken to a London police station for interview.
"This follows search warrants at two addresses in the Wiltshire and Camden areas.”
For people who don't follow British politics closely, it's probably a bit hard to understand who Mandelson is. He was of the Blair era, but he kept having to resign in disgrace. Journalists would declare him to be "the disgraced Peter Mandelson" whose career was inevitably over.
Then, somehow Peter returned. Again and again. The "disgraced" would soon disappear from his name each time.
They thought it was hilarious to refer to him as the Prince of Darkness, without ever explaining why. We all have a good laugh with our friend Petey, the Prince of Darkness, on our podcast. Why do we call him that? Haha funny you ask, let's talk about something else.
Most recently, he's been the man behind the rise and and rule of Keir Starmer, a thing British journalists all knew but didn't really tell people (until much later, and even then quietly). British journalists are like that. Most people still have no idea, much as they have no idea why his nickname is the Prince of Darkness.
Constantly Like This
Conservatives and Republicans regularly say things like, "Democrats don't complain when serial killers kill people (bad) so why do they complain when cops kill people, which is good, obviously??? Check mate!!!"
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, appears to have deleted his tweet after these Democrats responded
— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur.bsky.social) February 23, 2026 at 5:05 AM
[image or embed]
Oh Did They Lie To The Courts
Everyone is shocked and will forget by tomorrow when they lie again.
Hoping for a tariff refund? Don’t hold your breath. Winning at the Supreme Court was the easy part. To understand what comes next, consider how the government survived the legal skirmishes that led to its loss last week.
From the earliest challenges at the Court of International Trade, Justice Department lawyers made one consistent argument against preliminary injunctions: “Plaintiffs face no harm from a stay; they can fully remedy any harms by obtaining a refund of any tariffs ultimately held invalid,” to quote a 2025 government motion. Justice Department lawyers entered formal stipulations in Princess Awesome v. CBP and a January 2026 consolidated proceeding, each promising not to contest the court’s authority to order reliquidation after a final decision. The courts denied the injunctions, refusing to suspend liquidation (the process that finalizes tariff payments) in direct reliance on those assurances. Yet the government now appears ready to litigate those very promises.
Pray I Don't Alter It Further
I am not going to try to decipher Trump's latest screed about his powers to bully other countries. The main point is he was never interested in "deals" and, as his long career showed us, he never feels bound by them anyway.
He first seized on tariffs because he has some broken brain understanding of trade balances and who actually pays them, but then kept pushing the tariff button because it got him attention and because he realized it was a good bullying tool.
It should not have taken the geniuses in the rest of the world this long to realize that you don't cave to bullies.
Europe has warned that trade deals struck with the U.S. could now be at risk after President Donald Trump unveiled a new global 15% tariff on all imports at the weekend.
Trump’s move came after the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday struck down his global tariffs policy, implemented last spring, that had upset the long-standing global trading order.
There are no deals! That is the whole thing with President Deals! That is his whole career! The art of the deal is breaking them!
...as I was writing this:
European Parliament negotiators on Monday suspended the EU-US trade pact, as threats from Washington and a US Supreme Court ruling cast doubt over the validity of the 2025 agreement.
and then:
Did Anyone Ever Figure Out What This Was About
I know the thing that most likely sparked Trump's hospital ship claim is Greenland rescuing a US Navy sub crewmember, but we're still missing the middle bit of this chain as far as I have seen?
I keep trying to construct possibilities and failing.
Sunday, February 22, 2026
Saturday, February 21, 2026
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