Wednesday, March 05, 2025
Mister We Could Use A Man Like Ronald Reagan Again
If you praise Reagan in a high profile speech, you should know there will be a backlash from assholes like me. If that's what you want, great, then we all play our roles. Slotkin praises Reagan, Atrios gets annoyed, Democrats say, "See, we annoyed the lefties, so we are doing something right."
One dumb speech doesn't matter, of course, but it does show that they really don't know what they are doing.
Cold War kid Slotkin was 12 when he left office, so she really was a kid. I imagine she has fond memories of her childhood, as many do.
No one under 45 has any real memories of Reagan at all.
There is the Trump party and the Democratic party. What the fuck are voters supposed to understand are "shared values." Please vote for us or also Republicans, but good ones. You know, such as, um, zombie Reagan
Smart
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is not open to lifting Canada’s full package of retaliatory tariffs if US President Donald Trump leaves any tariffs on Canada in place, according to a senior Canadian government official.
Hanging Curveballs
You gotta at least nudge the press on this stuff if you want them to cover it.
I know it's not as bad "stood on a stage near Farrakhan once" or "a college student protested genocide" but maybe some journalists could find this troubling. You gotta prompt them though, maybe even do the full Lindsey hissy fit!Kingsley Wilson, the newly-appointed DoD Deputy Press Secretary, believes in a thoroughly-debunked antisemitic conspiracy theory. I've mostly only seen this theory promoted by mask-off neo-Nazis. archive.is/dPvse
— Tristan Lee (@tristanl.ee) March 5, 2025 at 2:05 AM
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Hanging Curveballs
One to swing at.
WASHINGTON — White House adviser Alina Habba said Tuesday that military veterans affected by the DOGE-led layoffs of federal workers may not be "fit to have a job at this moment."
Speaking to reporters on the White House lawn, Habba was asked about fired workers whom Democrats have invited to President Donald Trump's joint address to Congress on Tuesday night. Habba defended the cuts and said she had no sympathy for the thousands of people who have lost their jobs.
Morning
As a cold war kid, Reagan was a senile monster who did crimes and killed a generation of gay men.
Tuesday, March 04, 2025
Stock Manipulation
Increasingly convinced this is a motive, if not the only one.
Everybody in the know gets rich on every swing . Easy.
Sorry, Elon
The leader of Ontario - Canada's most populous province - has said that American companies will be banned from provincial government contracts until the US ends the tariffs President Donald Trump imposed on Canada.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford also emphasised that his government would be "ripping up" its C$100m ($68m; £55.1) contract with Elon Musk's satellite internet company Starlink.
Governments refusing to pay people they'd contracted with? Unprecedented.
Rooting For Stonks To Fall
I admit that I do. Not because I wish for broad economic catastrophe, but because the stonk line going down is one of the few things that might get the attention of Trump (and rich people who he listens to).
The stonk line can always go up again if everything hasn't been destroyed yet, so it is better that they crash earlier instead of later. It is harder to put Humpty Dumpty (everything else) back together again.
Who Radicalised You, Tom?
I always get a bit amused when centrist dudes (Tom Edsall, here) start freaking out.
Assuming that the past six weeks are predictive of what’s coming next, expect an age of anxiety, expect the elimination of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of jobs, expect the decimation of liberal institutions to go on for all four years of Trump’s second term, expect government services to deteriorate, expect reduced funding of the safety net, expect more homelessness, hunger and disease. Expect poverty, expect the financial starvation of universities and of nongovernmental organizations, expect unannounced raids, unreliable data, an America increasingly aligned with authoritarians worldwide, expect a pervasive climate of suspicion and a preoccupation with revenge. Expect more suffering, more fear, less security and less happiness
In other words, expect the worst.
I'm not a mindreader, so perhaps this is unfair to Tom, but I suspect if, I dunno, Chris Hayes had made that prediction 2 months ago, Tom would have thought it was ridiculous hysteria.
That Could Be An Issue
That isn't to say they're costless, but no taxes are.
They did this because the real issue - trade *wars* - isn't neatly an issue for economists, but economists provided the "intellectual" cover for taking them off the table as much as possible.
I suppose Tom Friedman was more honest about this stuff than economists, whether or not he was correct about his free trade obsessions back in the day.
Anyway, trade wars are messy!
China’s Ministry of Finance put tariffs of 15 percent on imports of American chicken, wheat, corn and cotton and 10 percent tariffs on other foods, ranging from soybeans to dairy products. In addition, the Ministry of Commerce said 15 U.S. companies would no longer be allowed to buy products from China except with special permission, including Skydio, which is the largest American maker of drones and a supplier to the U.S. military and emergency services.
Lou Qinjian, a spokesman for China’s National People’s Congress, chastised the United States for violating the World Trade Organization’s free trade rules. “By imposing unilateral tariffs, the U.S. has violated W.T.O. rules and disrupted the security and stability of the global industrial and supply chains,” he said.
Go Team
Monday, March 03, 2025
What's Going On With the CFBP
Declarations issued last week show that the acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Russ Vought, had a clear plan to break up the agency, and reduce it to as little as “five men in a room.” The revelation of this plan in federal court highlighted its clear illegality. So Vought and his team are now reverse engineering their plan to gaslight employees and the courts that it was always legal to begin with.
If Laws Are Being Broken, Why Aren't People Being Arrested?
I suspect they are hesitant to criticize Our Great Law Enforcement Institutions.
Most people will not understand that things are deeply fucked unless you start explaining it to them. And, no, one media hit or press release doesn't do that, especially when paired with bipartisan photo ops.
Pet Peeve
How Does This Work
Driving the news: Kennedy wrote an op-ed for Fox News' website on Sunday with the headline "Measles outbreak is call to action for all of us" and the subheading "MMR vaccine is crucial to avoiding potentially deadly disease."It does include a lot of mealthy-mouthed nods to personal choice and some other anti-vax dog whistles, but it seems like the Deep State (someone in a white coat who knows what they are talking about) got to someone important enough in the Trump administration and they made RFKJr do it. Dead kids make Trump look bad!
Also, I suspect Fox's editors pumped up the subhed which is a lot stronger than the piece itself:
ROBERT F. KENNEDY, JR.: Measles outbreak is call to action for all of us
MMR vaccine is crucial to avoiding potentially deadly disease
Sunday, March 02, 2025
Oscars
Best picture nominees I have seen:
Conclave
Dune II
I'm Still Here
Conclave was good. Dune II was fine if you like that sort of thing. I'm Still Here had great performances but I didn't think the movie was overall that great.
I'm not one of those people who thinks "not seeing things" is some sort of boast or rebellion. I'm just giving my brief opinions on what I've seen.
Good Luck With That
This is Third Way but they are pretty influential, and of course journalists love them.
I Hope Eritrea Is On Board Again
Defund Rahm Emanuel
Do we think it's helpful? Do we think it's helpful to say it like this, in this format? Do we think 2024 nonvoters will be inspired by this, that what they lacked was a candidate that didn't hate trans people enough?Ex-Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel spouts transphobic talking points to Bill Maher. "Look, in seventh grade, if I had known that I could have said the word ‘They’ and got in the girls bathroom, I would have done it."
— Jake Wittich (@jakewittich.bsky.social) March 1, 2025 at 8:23 PM
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Rahm doesn't run the party, but he has a bigger platform than any trans person does, than any person who is positive about trans people.
"Most Cis men are big sexual predators, like me, and the only way to keep us from trying to peep in bathrooms is to make being trans in public illegal."
Saturday, March 01, 2025
Seems Bad
The new era of vaccine tourism arrives.
A panel of scientific experts that advises the Food and Drug Administration on vaccine policy — and that has been the target of criticism from Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — learned on Wednesday that its upcoming meeting to discuss next year’s flu vaccines had been canceled.
Vitamin A
One issue with supplements is people tend to think that if one is good, then two might be better, and Vitamin A is actually a bit dangerous, especially if you started hyperdosing kids.
More than one month into a major measles outbreak in western Texas that has sickened 146 people and killed one school-age child, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released its first public statement and it highlighted a therapy that has raised some eyebrows among infectious disease experts.
“Measles does not have a specific antiviral treatment,” read the statement, which was posted only on X on Thursday night. “Supportive care, including vitamin A administration under the direction of a physician, may be appropriate.”
tl;dr There is evidence Vitamin A helps with measles in areas where people tend to have a deficiency, but it certainly doesn't prevent or cure measles.
Good Republicans
You would think that we could put that one to rest. We could've put it to rest about Lindsey Graham, specifically, about 25 years ago. Maybe the Klob believes her unique charms can win him over, but, well...
Predictions Are Hard, Especially About The Future
Rich people getting a sad would lead to them... giving a bunch of free money to rich people.
The Carville "sit back and wait for everything to collapse" view is wrong for many reasons, but one is that there is a good chance it won't happen like that.
People forget, largely because at that point that DC press had been on Team Bush for so long they barely let it infect their copy, but Bush's approval rating went into the 20s!