Steven L. Taylor is a retired Professor of Political Science and former College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
Follow Steven on Twitter and/or BlueSky.
I’m surrounded by very sound sleepers or the totally deaf. Shortly after midnight I woke up to hear our condo fire alarm sounding. After it continued to do so for 5-10 minutes, I called 911. The fire department was here a short time later and turned the alarm off. Apparently no fire.
This is at least the 3rd time the fire alarm went off here since 2019 or since Dear wife and I moved in. All the previous occasions had been during daylight hours.
DW and I will be traveling to Istanbul on April 17 and will be gone for 8 days.
Today is the 11th anniversary for my book business. That I have been so successsful sounds like an April Fools joke. Dung beetle fiction anyone?
Wife is getting up at 4 am in the morning now. Laundry, feed the feral cats, check her husband’s blood sugar*. She keeps busy. It is a quarter past five this morning and I’m already finishing my 3rd cup of coffee and have 7 innings of Strat-O-Matic baseball in. Mickey Vernon just hit a home run for the 1954 Washington** Senators.
*- I am hypogylcemic.
**- First in war, first in peace, 6th in the American League.
OMFG. Read this and weep for our country and the man whose life is ruined. The Trump administration did this and now claims it can’t be fixed. That’s not good enough. All Americans should be losing their minds over this, even those who don’t usually pay attention.
An ‘Administrative Error’ Sends a Maryland Father to a Salvadoran Prison
The Trump administration says it mistakenly deported an immigrant with protected status but that courts are powerless to order his return.
administration says it mistakenly deported an immigrant with protected status but that courts are powerless to order his return
This makes no sense. The U.S. is paying El Salvador—6 million USD per year, according to Bukele—to house those people in its prison. The administration could just tell Bukele to send him back… or send them all back for actual due process.
Add.: I see that @CSK and I each said that he/the administration “make no sense”. No doubt about that.
Maybe we could solve the “male loneliness epidemic” if they weren’t being taught to be creepy assholes that talk like this.
As a relevant aside to my snarky comment above. I have a guy friend that, through his own actions, caused a great deal of harm to our friend group. A girl in the group took an interest in him and he got a little wonky about it. I think he’s one of those guys that desperately wants a wife and family but doesn’t understand how to actually get that. He got a little weird and kinda possessive-ish. I don’t want to minimize what he did, but on the other hand it wasn’t throw the whole man out bad.
As one of the group elders, I put his ass in a timeout and then took the time to explain to him what he did wrong, why it was upsetting to me and the other women in the group, and how he should go about fixinging it. To his credit, he mostly listened to me. Enough of actual work that we welcomed him back and most of the other women accepted him back. The best part of that was seeing his relief at being welcomed back by two of the guys and how cute they all are together. He’s still fucks up a bit, but I tell him honestly and he at least attempts at listening. If guys could get to this level there would be no “loneliness epidemic” because women would actually tolerate being around them.
The girl on the other hand, she was definitely wronged, but motherfuck her. I was there to support her and when I needed help she cut me out in the absolute worst way and lead to an near suicide attempt. Her and the other chud guys she surrounded herself with were excised from the group like a tumor. I’m a firm believer in the best of 90’s girl power, but treat other women like that and I’ll fucking cut you out.
Senator Cory Booker has been giving a marathon speech on the Senate floor that has lasted into the early hours of Tuesday morning, highlighting what he described as the “recklessness” of the Trump administration.
The New Jersey Democrat began his address on Monday night and said he would continue to speak for as long as he could “physically endure”. By 7.30am ET, Booker was still going.
The focus of his remarks are concerns over president Trump’s proposed cuts to programs like Medicaid.
At the start of his speech, Booker said:
I rise with the intention of disrupting the normal business of the United States Senate for as long as I am physically able. I rise tonight because I believe sincerely that our nation is in crisis.
He went on:
In just 71 days, the president of the United States has inflicted so much harm on Americans’ safety, financial stability, the core foundations of our democracy and even our aspirations as a people for – from our highest offices – a sense of common decency.
These are not normal times in America, and they should not be treated as such.
Given the rules in the House and Senate, Dems are limited in their power, but what they can do is stridently point out the abuse and throw as much sand in the gears as they can. Booker is a start.
@CSK: But you know what he’s talking about, right? He made a big deal about IVF during the campaign. He was getting pressure against it but he stood up to it. The comment is just an extension of it.
I think he was trying to talk about IVF, because he remembered people were talking about that a lot, but his brain mush can only remember one word at a time, so he was reduced to just saying “fertilization” over and over
Re @DrDaveT‘s comment yesterday. HACCP is a food safety method developed by NASA and, of all companies, Pillsbury, in the 60s. The idea was to have safe food for space travel. Imagine getting food poisoning en-route to the Moon. Not only is there no doctor and few medicines available, but there’s limited water, and you can’t even turn the ship around quickly.
I know about this not through my interest in space, but through my job. Many of our operations are HACCP certified, and more customers require such certification from their suppliers (along with a bunch of others).
Oh, the initials mean “hazard analysis and critical control points.” It’s pronounced something like HAZAP.
@Stormy Dragon: trump occasionally touted free IVF on the campaign trail, when it suited the audience. I think he just found out what the letters stand for and fertilization stuck, but the other words sound foreign, therefore un-American.
And I see Sleeping Dog and I are on the same page.
What Schumer and other leaders have been missing in this moment is that because there are so few tools available to them, the fight has to be one of communication and messaging. Booker is doing exactly what needs to be done, generating headlines, generating social media clicks, and showing that the opposition party will do everything–even things that will ultimately be futile–to slow or stop this madness.
Booker’s youtube channel is closing in on 37K live viewers, up from 10K early this morning, another 23K on AP’s livestream and 12K on MSNBC’s livestream. EDIT: Booker’s stream went up to 38K while I was typing this. Can’t find CSPAN’s livestream numbers, not sure if they have those published anywhere, but between their broadcast and livestream it’s likely higher than 75K accounted for above.
It’s a start.
Meanwhile, in other tracking numbers, the DJIA has dropped 400 points in the 90 minutes since it opened.
The felon just doesn’t want to expose the conspiracy. IVF, in vitro fertilization, is handled the world over by the Mexican conglomerate Vitro. That’s why it’s called in vitro. Duh.
Financial markets have the shakes as President Trump prepares to launch his next big tariff salvo on Wednesday. And nerves are appropriate since Mr. Trump’s chief trade adviser, Peter Navarro, is boasting about what he says will amount to a $6 trillion tax increase from the tariffs.
“Tariffs are going to raise about $600 billion a year, about $6 trillion over a 10-year period,” Mr. Navarro told Fox News on Sunday. This is on top of $100 billion a year from Mr. Trump’s car and truck tariffs. He also tried to claim that “the message is that tariffs are tax cuts.”
George Orwell, call your office. In the real economic world, a tariff is a tax. If you raise $600 billion more a year in revenue for the federal government, you are taking that amount away from individuals and businesses in the private economy.
I hope Drew/Guarneri/Pablo/Elaine/Joe/Skywalker/Connor – the World’s Greatest Businessman – will come along to explain how the ultra-conservative WSJ has gotten it so wrong. Because surely, surely the WGB cannot possibly countenance the biggest fucking tax increase in American history.
But whaddabout Democrat tax increases, huh? Huh? Whaddabout?
Let’s have one more graf:
By any definition that is a tax increase, and the $600 billion figure would be one of the largest in U.S. history. It amounts to about 2% of gross domestic product, and it would take the federal tax share of GDP above 19%. The average since 1975 is about 17.3%. Democrats, who love tax increases, haven’t dared pass such a large revenue heist.
1. The current regime establishes a precedent that denying non-citizens due process is perfectly OK, under the Alien Enemies Act.
2. The current regime establishes a new category of deportable people, such as people on track to become citizens naturalized citizens, or even recently naturalized citizens, under some equally dull-witted, tortured excuse.
3. They deport people in this new category without due process.
Which leads one to ask, if they’ve gone this far down this illegal and unconstitutional road, what’s to stop them from going the distance?
4. The current regime now targets citizens, using some stupid interpretation of laws covering emergency powers, or some other authoritarian argle-bargle.
5. The current regime starts detaining and deporting citizens.
It’s worth remembering, perhaps, that the Alien and Sedition Acts were some of the worst federal laws ever passed in American history, up there with the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918. I’m mentioning those and not other bad federal laws because they seem most relevant to this topic.
And if you think this comment is alarmist, what level of cruel intent and flagrant lawlessness do you need to see?
The Alien Enemy Act presents the flipside of that problem: Judicial review after an individual is (wrongfully) removed from the United States cannot compel their return; at most, the government has acknowledged an obligation in some cases to “facilitate” such a removed individual’s return. But even if it could, there’s the separate matter of the harm the individual suffers in the interim. This may help to explain why, even in 1798, Congress provided for a “a full examination and hearing” for those against whom the government sought to invoke the Alien Enemy Act—because it understood the importance of a meaningful assessment of whether the individual at issue actually was properly subject to the sweeping authority conferred by the statute before they could be subject to long-term detention and/or removal. And it helps to explain why, during the War of 1812; World War I; and World War II, in contexts in which there was no genuine dispute over whether the Alien Enemy Act applied, courts still conducted case-specific review of whether specific detainees were, in fact, subject to the statute (e.g., were they a native, citizen, denizen, or subject of a country against which Congress had declared war).
(The Cornell link above was within the paragraph I blockquoted, the following sentence):
This may help to explain why, even in 1798, Congress provided for a “a full examination and hearing” for those against whom the government sought to invoke the Alien Enemy Act
So the Trump regime is behaving worse than the embarrassment that happened back in the 18th century.
If we actually have an election in 2028 the Democrats will have a fantastic issue: drop tariffs and slash prices on a whole range of goods. Trump (illegally running for a 3rd term) will claim this kills re-industrialization. Problem is that the 2028 campaign begins in three years, and in three years we won’t have re-industrialized to any significant degree. So it may be ‘cut prices, kill inflation,’ vs. ‘jobs. . . eventually.’
The tariff issue folds neatly into the fight against billionaire parasites. Why tariffs? Because the alternative is Musk and Zuck and Jeff paying taxes. Screwing the working man for the benefit of the billionaires.
Cheaper cars, cheaper TVs, and fuck the billionaires. I like it. Pity the senile rapist and his co-conspirators won’t allow an election.
You have posed the wrong question. The real question is how do you justify the EU, Canada and China’s mercantilist policies, eviscerating the US manufacturing base? And costing countless US citizen’s their livelihoods and their communities. I’m actually a staunch free trader. But for free trade to work, you need, well, free trade. Not mercantilist policy. And that doesn’t even touch the strategic implications of trade policy.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Let’s give him his due if his sanewashing reveals just how despicable Trump actually is being here.
In this case, Trump wants to get credit from women (as the Fertilization President no less!) for giving them IVF – as if he has provided a new infertility treatment option rather than declining to take away something they already have. The “pressure” Trump purportedly stood up against was coming from the pro-life zealots he claims to champion but doesn’t give a sh!t about. The maximalist faction of pro-life is at least able to acknowledge the incongruity of their sacred truth that a fertilized embryo is a life and the hard fact that IVF involves freezing this life for years or forever. But, the congruent pro-life view is inconvenient in the face of the popularity of IVF, so Brave Sir Donald gave those zealots what for.
So, in short, Trump believes he should be LOVED by women because he’s giving them the “goodie” of not depriving them of a popular reproductive health technology. And his resident lickspittle things he deserves respect for that as well, even though he is clearly not a Trump supporter.
Let’s not over-think Trump’s words. Was it AL that tried to ban IVF because it produces unused fertilized eggs, babies by their definition, that are subsequently killed? Perfectly logical per their claimed definitions. That proved unpopular. So Trump proclaimed himself in favor of IVF, just as he claims to support SS, with no idea what it is or any intent to do anything about it. And knowing, or caring, nothing about IVF, his addled mind can’t dredge up more than the one word,“fertilization”, and that whatever it is, women like it. Who is it that comments here that Trump is the dumbest person you know? Accept it, he is
@Connor:
So, challenged to justify the largest tax increase in history, The World’s Greatest Businessman yelled Squirrel! and babbled about balance of trade, entirely forgetting the fact that his Dear Leader had justified tariffs on the basis of. . . fentanyl precursor chemicals and illegal immigrants.
Now, why don’t you see if you can actually talk about:
It amounts to about 2% of gross domestic product, and it would take the federal tax share of GDP above 19%. The average since 1975 is about 17.3%. Democrats, who love tax increases, haven’t dared pass such a large revenue heist.
Be sure to frame your answer in such a way as to rationalize huge tax increases on working people in terms of wokeness.
@charontwo: Oh, no doubt. They’re providing almost no legal justification at all, just doing it. That’s actually less than many autocracies, which generally take pains to at least have the appearance of legality.
Rather than engage in the sterile excitation of pillorying bad faith commenters for commenting in bad faith, I want to quote from the Steve Vladek article about due process to which I linked the other day. Here’s the core of that article:
But I don’t think it’s a stretch to suggest that due process is what separates democratic legal systems from … less democratic legal systems. As usual, Justice (Robert) Jackson may have put it best in 1953, in his dissent in the Mezei case:
Only the untaught layman or the charlatan lawyer can answer that procedures matter not. Procedural fairness and regularity are of the indispensable essence of liberty. Severe substantive laws can be endured if they are fairly and impartially applied. Indeed, if put to the choice, one might well prefer to live under Soviet substantive law applied in good faith by our common-law procedures than under our substantive law enforced by Soviet procedural practices. Let it not be overlooked that due process of law is not for the sole benefit of an accused. It is the best insurance for the Government itself against those blunders which leave lasting stains on a system of justice but which are bound to occur on ex parte consideration.
Courts will often get the due process calibration wrong. Or they’ll misapply the correct calibration. But procedural fairness is not about obtaining some kind of epistemological truth; it’s about maximizing accuracy and minimizing the risk of error. It’s how we can have any faith that the government is using the Alien Enemy Act to remove Venezuelan gang members and not American political opponents. And now more than ever, it’s a principle all of us should be fighting for—along with the indispensable role that courts have played (however imperfectly), and can and must play, in enforcing it.
A critical question is, how do we support the efforts of judges to insist on the rule of law, and hold the current regime accountable for violating it? I’m not sure, other than supporting the legal efforts of groups to take the administration to court, calling representatives to demand they protect the judiciary system, and what else?
Exactly, 100%, a thousand thumbs, whatever other standard of praise one can apply. Playing the game of guessing what Trump really means is foolish and dangerous. It erodes accountability for what the current regime actually says and does, wasting time on musings and counterfactuals.
He says what he says, as do his lieutenants. We can take what they say at face value. And you can stop right there.
@Fortune: Can’t speak for CSK, but I listen to nothing that Trump says on the campaign trail. I learned that lesson the first time when he changed his position on abortion 4 times over 6 hours and multiple audiences.
@Connor: I actually laughed out loud at sentence two. US businesses off-shored US manufacturing mostly by their own efforts.
And cited comparative advantage theory and creative destruction as the rationale for doing so. You aren’t even trying anymore. You’re just a punch line.
Trump’s statements are in fact creepy and inappropriate. I fully endorse that. I am not pushing back on that at all here.
I want, though, to talk about “male loneliness” as I understand it. I am a student of this topic. I have experienced “male loneliness” myself. In my reckoning, it doesn’t even have a thing to do with sex. Though obsessions with sex will probably make it worse.
Loneliness, at its core, is the sense that nobody cares about you. Not the lack of people in proximity. Not a lack of conversation. Not a lack of job opportunities. Not even a lack of sex partners.
No, it is the sense that nobody cares. That’s the crunch of loneliness. And traditional masculine roles and behavior steer men toward acting in a way that might make people think that they don’t need or want your care. It’s a lie, but it’s the role they must take on. I’ve seen many men – not just the toxic ones, but solid family men with very good track records of behavior – play a part i call “The Man With No Needs”. Does that sound familiar?
And general culture still is inclined a man who is too needy in public.
Take employment. Men experience privilege in employment, particularly in my field, computing. Men are more readily hired. However, this is not because some employer likes men and wants to help men. (Though that might be true for some employers, it is not universal). No, the better explanation is that they think the men will do more, and thus represent a better bargain as employees.
This can get really bad in places like the NFL, where careers are short. Players are paid very well, yes. And they are bought and sold and measured and evaluated like pieces of meat. I’ve read pieces about this vis-a-vis the Seahawks under Pete Carroll, who tried to do a bit better. I don’t know how much difference this made. But mostly, any care an organization might have for a man in its employ is transactional, based on their value as a player.
I’ve lots more to say, but I think I’ll finish on this: Female culture spends a lot of time talking to each other and validating each other. Traditional male roles prevent this from happening in male culture, where one is not supposed to talk about feelings. This also contributes to loneliness, even in a crowd. It is the sense that no one wants to hear your hurt. I see this changing. I work on changing it, in fact. I think it’s really important.
@Beth:
In ancient times (my youth) men focused on women’s looks, and women focused on men’s earning potential and suitability for fatherhood.* Nowadays, women are still beautiful but the earning differential is small and shrinking rapidly, and there are a lot fewer babies being fathered.
Women still lean into earnings potential and fewer men clear that bar. Men still lean into looks, usually with, shall we say, overly-optimistic expectations. Both sexes are unrealistic, looking either for what isn’t there, or for someone to meet exaggerated expectations.
Does not apply to me. I was a penniless, desperate fugitive with wild hair when I met my wife and within 24 hours had started a 45 year relationship that weathered a whole hell of a lot poverty and paranoia. A shared sense of humor goes a long way.
On the tariffs there are at least two issues here, marketing and the actual economics. Trump marketing here has been pretty awful. It’s on and off tariffs. It’s due to fentanyl, so we can export and bring back jobs, it’s about fairness, etc. The claims that its the other countries that will pay the tariffs. I watched a Lutnick interview where he claimed tariffs (He specified tariffs imposed by Trump) will lower prices for consumers.
On the economics side there is the practical bit and the theory. On the practical side Trump unilaterally left NAFTA, negotiated USMCA which he called the best deal ever and then companies in the 3 countries involved built factories and made plans based upon that agreement. Now Trump is unilaterally breaking that again. Most businesspeople when they get reneged upon repeatedly stop doing business with that company. Note that to the best of my Knowledge China has never done anything like this and would make a more reliable trading partner.
On the theoretical side what seems pretty clear is that US consumers will end up paying higher prices. Companies can probably absorb some of the increases short term but longer term consumers pick up the tab. Will we gain more jobs from this? Not clear. We likely gain jobs in some areas but lose them in others as input costs increase. Also, for the US to compete the idea is that we need to be more productive since labor costs are lower other places. However, we know that those other places, especially China, are heavily automating. We are going to need to automate even more productively and or turn out a better product. So we dont get many jobs and it’s not that likely they pay a whole lot better than current manufacturing jobs. Overall, we might get more jobs. We definitely get higher prices.
It’s how we can have any faith that the government is using the Alien Enemy Act to remove Venezuelan gang members and not American political opponents.
@Kingdaddy: Its worse than American political opponents, its human campaign props.
This makes no sense. The U.S. is paying El Salvador—6 million USD per year, according to Bukele—to house those people in its prison. The administration could just tell Bukele to send him back… or send them all back for actual due process.
No, no, that wouldn’t do. If they ask for this man to be returned, Bukele might send him back, and then reporters might ask questions, and this man might answer them.
That wouldn’t do at all.
Americans are ok with torture if it’s in short, glossy videos. Americans are less ok with graphic descriptions of torture. The Good-German-Americans are going to get queasy. So we can’t have that.
For a more complete explanation on tariffs Furman is good. He helpfully points out that Trump does a lot of cherry picking in his claims about the tariffs other countries impose.
@Michael Reynolds: Don’t have to wait a couple of years. Just say (because it is true) that the tariffs are a form of sales tax. People know that sales taxes impact the bottom 90% the most. All to fund tax cuts to taxes on the top 1%. Take from the middle class and give to the rich. Simpler the better. That is Trump’s (and Trump’s rich friends) plan.
@Fortune: So, you’re basing your statements on what other people think (written transcriptions of what Trump says are no more lucid than the original statements, but suffer from extreme editing/redaction/interpretation). Good to know.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: Basing on what other people say about various people is a critical weakness that permeates the American experience. For one example, most contemporary evangelicals have no particularly strong opinions based on what scripture/Calvin/Arminius/Augustine/etc. said. Most of us are basing what we believe on what generationally removed students are telling us their teachers told them that Calvin, etc. said/believed. The same is true for many other subjects. That’s a lot of signal noise to filter.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: You’re trying to pick a stupid fight here. If you only read one sides’s material, you don’t follow politics, you follow your side. CSK couldn’t understand Trump’s statement but several of us could. Blaming me for understanding Trump’s statement is reveling in ignorance. “Hey stop that guy, he reads!” I’m not going to apologize for knowing something or for not listening to every word Trump says.
… in Monday’s court filing, attorneys for the government admitted that the Salvadoran man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, had been deported accidentally. “Although ICE was aware of his protection from removal to El Salvador, Abrego Garcia was removed to El Salvador because of an administrative error,” the government told the court. Trump lawyers said the court has no ability to bring Abrego Garcia back now that he is in Salvadoran custody.
They’re not admitting error because they regret what they’ve done. They’re admitting an error they refuse to undo because they want us to see that we can’t hold them accountable. (Obviously, one phone call to El Salvador’s Trump-fanboy president, Nayib Bukele, could get this prisoner returned.) They are God in here — “here” being the entire United States, and wherever else their power extends.
Obviously, in many regimes, sadism of this kind is meant to keep society going on the regime’s terms. That’s true here, but the sadism also appears to be an end in itself. They want us to suffer. Our suffering makes them happy. Destruction for the hell of it makes them happy. It’s why they’re doing all this.
Just say (because it is true) that the tariffs are a form of sales tax.
I keep thinking that at some point, even those who do not follow the news will understand this. If you usually buy a glass of pinot grigio at the local Italian restaurant and it suddenly goes from $7 a glass to $21, you ask why.
Trump’s national security adviser is trying to manage his way out of a crisis. But new revelations about his team’s operational security are piling up in the inbox.
[…] The use of Gmail, a far less secure method of communication than the encrypted messaging app Signal, is the latest example of questionable data security practices by top national security officials already under fire for the mistaken inclusion of a journalist in a group chat about high-level planning for military operations in Yemen.
A senior Waltz aide used the commercial email service for highly technical conversations with colleagues at other government agencies involving sensitive military positions and powerful weapons systems relating to an ongoing conflict, according to emails reviewed by The Post. While the NSC official used his Gmail account, his interagency colleagues used government-issued accounts, headers from the email correspondence show. […]
I’ve seen many men – not just the toxic ones, but solid family men with very good track records of behavior – play a part i call “The Man With No Needs”. Does that sound familiar?
Toxic masculinity is toxic to the man himself first and foremost.
A lot of those men then go and make that everyone else’s problem. Those are the abusive pricks. But each and every one of those abusive pricks was hurt by their toxic masculinity before hurting everyone else. (Not excusing their behavior)
I think we need a new model for masculinity that isn’t a stoic shithead bottling up their emotions like a bad John Wayne impression. Unfortunately, the emerging alternative is a misogynistic grifter shithead like Andrew Tate or Donald Trump.
People have written things about bowling alone and what not, and have suggested various workarounds like men’s bowling leagues or whatever, but they shy away from doing more than suggesting alleviating the symptoms, and avoid the main point: masculinity is fundamentally broken and does not work in anything approaching a meritocracy.
It’s tied in with white supremacy, which is always best read as white male supremacy. The only way these broken people can succeed is if everyone else is held down, and even then they won’t be happy.
In ancient times (my youth) men focused on women’s looks, and women focused on men’s earning potential and suitability for fatherhood.* Nowadays, women are still beautiful but the earning differential is small and shrinking rapidly, and there are a lot fewer babies being fathered.
I think you’re looking at effects rather than causes. You’re not wrong, but it goes a lot deeper.
Hide your wives, Hide your Daughters, Hide your femboy sons, cause they’ll get them too….
RE: Aaron Rupar – Trump: “I’m the fertilization president!”
Elon Musk has 14 children with 4 different women. He has had 4 children with his current partner (Neurolink CEO), 3 of which were by in vitro fertilization.
Trump may be the fertilization President, but Musk has got a Boys-From-Brazil thing going on, spreading his genes far and wide. It would be enlightening to unpack his motives here, given the degree with which he embellishes his behavior with adolescent fantasy/myth themes and memes.
I have some OCD about numbers. Anyway, in the last week there has been a surge of articles claiming that may be Trump has a point and other countries are charging such high tariff rates we should retaliate. Link goes to tariff rates for individual countries. Note that all EU countries have the same overall tariff rates and they are lower than those of the US, before Trump raised them. Mexico is even lower. Canada is a bit higher. It’s Russia, our new BFF that is a lot higher.
I read somewhere that Musk is offering his semen to women who desire to bear his spawn, assuming, I suppose, that they meet his qualifications. I don’t know if he charges for the service.
I assure you I can read written English and follow spoken English quite well. I have a Ph.D. in English from the University of Edinburgh, I’ve taught it at Tufts and Harvard, and I’ve written seven books, fiction and non-fiction, in English.
I confess, however, to having difficulty comprehending the witless meandering babble Trump issues.
@Michael Reynolds:
Every graphic novel should have plenty of BATMAN-style Onomatopoeia.
BAM! POW! KRUNCH! ZOWIE!
Let me know if you need other writing tips!
/snark
Bottom line: America has gotten people free from prison in hostile countries and in enemy countries. So (rhetorical question) how can the felon’s administration not get out an innocent man sent in error to a prison under contract to the US government?
What happens when they send actual citizens there? How about white citizens?
@Beth:
Some people really seem to think the “Handmaid’s Tale” is a f@ckin’ instruction manual.
For some reason, this annoys me, sorta-conservative traditionalist though I may be.
We did not spend centuries curbing religious ascendancy, and the subjugation of the individual to dim-witted customary law, to put up with this nonsense.
I recall a phrase from the old reactionary bastard Winston Churchill:
“But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.”
@Fortune: Stop being a jerk. Seriously, we all understand exactly what CSK is talking about. Trump speaks gibberish.
That people–the same people who just a few months ago were saying Biden couldn’t be understood–are hell-bent on Trump-splaining to parse whatever he’s managed to spit up is both hypocritical and annoying.
@Michael Reynolds:
Currently sphincters in the City of London are so clenched, de Beers is probably looking out for a new diamond concession.
Trumps inclination to autarky might have worked, even given the massive collateral damage, if he were not such an idiot.
Now he has all the other major economic players looking for ways to screw him back and open up lines of co-operation.
EU, UK, China, Japan, S. Korea, India, Australia, ASEAN, Brazil, Canada etc.
I suspect a key breach may come if Trump is cozened by Putin into ending sanctions on Russia, and the Europeans at that point tell him to shove it.
The thing is, I’ve studied historical crises for decades, and cannot for the life of me thing of ANY, even the outbreak of WW1, that was so founded on utter and incredible stupidity.
Trump actually inherited from Biden a potential “golden moment” in US history, and seems determined to piss it way out of sheer folly and resentment.
Trump actually inherited from Biden a potential “golden moment” in US history, and seems determined to piss it way out of sheer folly and resentment.
Repeated for emphasis.
This statement needs to be the gist of every commentary regarding US foreign policy for the entirety of Trump’s term. Biden shepherded unexpected and unprecedented alignment and cooperation from NATO regarding Russia/Ukraine and Trump would rather blow it all up rather than undermine his contention that Biden was the “worst president evah.” Folly and resentment is no basis for international relations.
That’s saying a lot, bringing up WWI. But at least then there were real tensions, old and new, between the European powers. Germany felt left behind in the colonization game, the Ottoman empire was in decline, Russia was its usual mess, and, not least, a lot of these powers were governed by actual kings.
The Atlanta Fed has just lowered its estimate of GDP for the first quarter of 2025. Again. -3.75%. Was -2.8%. Q4 of 2024, January, before Trump took office, it projected 2.4% growth.
We need a MAGAt cultie to tell us why this is a good thing. Drew/Stradivarius/Timbaland/Connor? Tell us – and be scornful about it – why a shrinking economy at a time when Trump is, as the WSJ wrote, engaging in a record-breaking revenue heist, is a great thing.
Then, just for fun, see if you can still access what little intellctual integrity you still possess and tell us what you’d be saying if it was Kamala, or Biden, or Obama.
@JohnSF:
China is apparently surrounding Taiwan with a very large ‘practice’ blockade, involving quite a few ships and one of their two carriers. At the same time Putin is taunting Trump on Ukraine, playing Lucy to Charlie Brown. And Putin is warning Trump off of Iran.
IOW, Trump is being bullied by Putin and Xi simultaneously. They’re laughing at him. The big American strong man is an object of scorn, ridicule, disappointment and contempt around the globe.
I met a Scottish party girl in a loud basement club. She had a thick accent and talked like a partier; lots of jump cuts and random ideas.
We were talking and dancing for like 20 minutes and goes “wait! You can understand me!” I was like yeah, you hear this shit accent! She was all “these fucking English say they can’t understand me! What are you drinking?”
And that’s how I got two free vodka and whatever the fuck passes for Sprite in this pop deprived hellhole. Her accent was thiiiiiick but understandable.
JohnSF, what does all the pop and chips taste like chemical garbage?
I know about this not through my interest in space, but through my job. Many of our operations are HACCP certified, and more customers require such certification from their suppliers (along with a bunch of others).
HACCP is mandated by many states. It has saved untold trillions of dollars in lost worker productivity, not to mention millions of lives, that pre-HACCP were lost to food-borne illness. And it would not have existed without funding — no commercial company anticipated any profit from that line of research, so none was investing in it.
@Kathy:
The monarchs were arguably less in control than one might have thought.
Willhelm II, Nicholas II and Franz-Josef all learnt that they were simply riding the crazy train.
Colonies, imho were a side issue.
It contributed to the German/British irritations, but otoh Britain and France were quite amenable to sorting out colonial disputes amicably, in the end.
Similarly Turkey.
They key factors were:
– the ineradicable Franco-German tensions, due to Bismarck’s folly re Alsace Lorraine in 1871,
– Russia’s inability to leave well enough alone in the Balkans,
– Austrian paranoia re same,
– German fear re the Franco-Russian alliance they had conjured,
– and the British decision that Germany could not be permitted to crush France and Belgium.
It all made a horrid sort of sense, given the priors.
Whereas, the Trump/MAGA policy makes no sense at all, that I can figure out.
“…what does all the pop and chips taste like chemical garbage?”
Because pop IS chemical garbage, by definition.
By chips, I assume you are referring to crisps?
Not chips as in chip shop chips?
If so, some upmarket kettle crisps are OK.
Walkers etc prob. best avoided
@Beth: I usually have no problem in Edinburgh, but the farther I get into the Highlands, I have to “tune” my ears. It takes about a day. And the Glaswiegan accent? I am lost.
The official Mexican norm (NOM) dealing with hygiene in food production and handling NOM-251-SSA1-2009, takes several elements from HACCP, and recommends implementing a full HACCP regime as well.
As I’ve noted many times before, Americans plain don’t get soft power. It’s not just foreign aid, though that’s huge, and not just imitation of a bicameral/presidential system with an independent judiciary, but also things like global benefits from US government research and standards.
And the felon is pissing all that away, as JohnSF notes.
“…the EU, Canada and China’s mercantilist policies…”
China may be mercantilist.
Neither Canada nor the EU are.
The EU average tariff on US manufactures is about 1.5%
In 2023, the US collected approximately €7 billion of tariffs on EU exports, and the EU collected approximately €3 billion on US exports.
Nor does the EU pursue a policy of an undervalued Euro; Germany in fact is quite notorious for insisting that the euro not be depreciated.
This is, quite simply, MAGA victimhood mythology.
Canada has operated within the negotiated USMCA arrangement; as signed up to by one President Donald Trump.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Calvin was a bit of an ass, imho.
But a lot of contemporary Christians could likely benefit from studying Aquinas.
His priors were arguable, but the man was eminently rational given those priors.
The medieval Christians started from assumptions rather different to ours, but given that, they were not fools.
I have private suspicion current US “political Christian” discourse would tempt Aquinas to kick in a stained glass window out of pure annoyance.
@JohnSF:
I can’t recall of I asked you this before, but have you ever read the Flashman series by George MacDonald Frasier? You’d like it. I love the guy and poured one out when he died.
I could not count the number of times I’ve approached the idea of doing a riff on Flashman, and backed away.
@Michael Reynolds:
Never have got round to it, despite recommendations.
From what I know of the series, from excerpts and summaries, I suspect I’d be overwhelmed with a desire to travel back in fictional time and f@ck Flashman up.
A sort of person I’m not inclined to abide, on the whole.
I have an unfortunate record of punching Etonians.
(I was provoked, honestly. 🙂 )
As most of the British culture I consume is in the form of comedy, my comprehension of Scottish pronunciation is measured in comedians. I get 90% of Billy Connolly, 80% of Fern Brady, 70% of Frankie Boyle and 50% of Kevin Bridges.
Kevin Bridges, BTW, had perhaps the greatest of all Would I Lie To You bits.
I loved those books.So did my father. They were my gift to him for his birthdays and Christmas. And he and I too raised a glass to Fraser when he died.
@Michael Reynolds:
In the immortal words of my father:
“Being polite, washing regularly, and clean clothes goes a long way.
Also, learn to cook. At least an omelette. Trust me.”
On the whole, not acting like an entitled twerp, and more like a friendly human being also helps.
(Also, being tall, and not overweight, perhaps, lol)
My idiosyncratic sense of humour is sometimes a bonus, sometimes a defect.
Such is life.
The case appears to be the first time the Trump administration has admitted to errors when it sent three planeloads of Salvadoran and Venezuelan deportees to El Salvador’s grim “Terrorism Confinement Center” on March 15.
… in Monday’s court filing, attorneys for the government admitted that the Salvadoran man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, had been deported accidentally. “Although ICE was aware of his protection from removal to El Salvador, Abrego Garcia was removed to El Salvador because of an administrative error,” the government told the court. Trump lawyers said the court has no ability to bring Abrego Garcia back now that he is in Salvadoran custody.
They’re not admitting error because they regret what they’ve done. They’re admitting an error they refuse to undo because they want us to see that we can’t hold them accountable. (Obviously, one phone call to El Salvador’s Trump-fanboy president, Nayib Bukele, could get this prisoner returned.) They are God in here — “here” being the entire United States, and wherever else their power extends.
Obviously, in many regimes, sadism of this kind is meant to keep society going on the regime’s terms. That’s true here, but the sadism also appears to be an end in itself. They want us to suffer. Our suffering makes them happy. Destruction for the hell of it makes them happy. It’s why they’re doing all this.
Like teenagers vandalizing stuff for the fun of it.
They want liberals to be shedding liberal tears.
Cleek’s Law:
Today’s conservatism is the opposite of what liberals want today, updated daily.
As for the tariffs and the rest of the economic idiocy, look to Trump’s psychological issues and stupid economic beliefs.
No business will make any major investment based on tariffs that may or may not remain in effect for however long, Trump has already reneged on too many agreements. My guess, people will defer buying cars if they can, see if the tariffs last or not.
And Strom Thurmond’s record Senate filibuster [as expected from that useless wretched person, his purpose was to prevent passage of the civil rights act] has been broken – fittingly, by a black guy, Corey Booker.. and he’s not done yet, over 24 hours and still marching on. Important to get good trouble like this on the historical record.
Trump is being bullied by Putin and Xi simultaneously. They’re laughing at him.
And the thing is, Trump either cannot see it, or is determined to think it’s not actually happening.
My little question is, what are the others in the admin, who are not so stupid and delusional, thinking at this point?
If it wasn’t so existentially tragic, it would be rather funny.
Both the neo-isolationists, and the anti-China/US revivalists, and even the Iran-ophobes, have all bet on on the wrong horse.
Because said horse is a lame nag.
There are many attempts at an explanation, rationalization, sane-washing, and so on, but it all comes down to the definition of power in 1984: a boot stamping on a human face, forever.
Even Reagan realized that his policy of wild tax cuts [which led to a giant current account deficit] was the thing that was de-industrializing the US.. because as expected to everyone not a Republican, the Laffer Curve was entirely nonsensical jibberish. To address this de-industrialization, the Plaza Accords happened. The Plaza Accords were an agreement to let the dollar depreciate, which of course was a pure giveaway to the US.
This meeting of the top industrialized countries became known as the G-7 as the leaders of those countries continued to meet.
This is important history because Trump’s moves are in fact not the first time US re-industrialization has been attempted.
@Michael Reynolds: I loved the Flashman series and have re-read them all.
Fraser also wrote a memoir of his time as a soldier in General Slim’s army in the Burma theater during WWII, “Quartered Safe Out Here”. Quite a change from his Flashman series but not surprisingly a very good look at a rifleman’s war in a nasty but not well known theater of the war.
@a country lawyer:
He could write about his experience in Burma and Otto Von Bismarck’s sexual peccadillos with equal authority. He’s a big reason I wrote my Front Lines trilogy, though, unfortunately I had much less latitude for humor. I’m still pissed off he died.
@JohnSF: Just so. I think a war of some kind became inevitable once Austria-Hungary double-crossed Russia by acquiring Bosnia-Herzegovina, while undercutting Russia’s ambitions to control the Straits. Of course, two Balkan Wars just made things worse.
Georgia protests (via BJ):
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:ouxqdky6ba67jv22jv22k74p/post/3llpjbgnf7223
(The Georgia in Europe).
I’m surrounded by very sound sleepers or the totally deaf. Shortly after midnight I woke up to hear our condo fire alarm sounding. After it continued to do so for 5-10 minutes, I called 911. The fire department was here a short time later and turned the alarm off. Apparently no fire.
This is at least the 3rd time the fire alarm went off here since 2019 or since Dear wife and I moved in. All the previous occasions had been during daylight hours.
DW and I will be traveling to Istanbul on April 17 and will be gone for 8 days.
Today is the 11th anniversary for my book business. That I have been so successsful sounds like an April Fools joke. Dung beetle fiction anyone?
Wife is getting up at 4 am in the morning now. Laundry, feed the feral cats, check her husband’s blood sugar*. She keeps busy. It is a quarter past five this morning and I’m already finishing my 3rd cup of coffee and have 7 innings of Strat-O-Matic baseball in. Mickey Vernon just hit a home run for the 1954 Washington** Senators.
*- I am hypogylcemic.
**- First in war, first in peace, 6th in the American League.
Hide your wives, Hide your Daughters, Hide your femboy sons, cause they’ll get them too….
Contains gift link to Atlantic:
“Bsky”
@Beth:
I’ve cited that quote. It makes absolutely no sense. Not even Trump sense. What does he not care about?
@charontwo:
This makes no sense. The U.S. is paying El Salvador—6 million USD per year, according to Bukele—to house those people in its prison. The administration could just tell Bukele to send him back… or send them all back for actual due process.
Add.: I see that @CSK and I each said that he/the administration “make no sense”. No doubt about that.
@CSK:
Maybe we could solve the “male loneliness epidemic” if they weren’t being taught to be creepy assholes that talk like this.
As a relevant aside to my snarky comment above. I have a guy friend that, through his own actions, caused a great deal of harm to our friend group. A girl in the group took an interest in him and he got a little wonky about it. I think he’s one of those guys that desperately wants a wife and family but doesn’t understand how to actually get that. He got a little weird and kinda possessive-ish. I don’t want to minimize what he did, but on the other hand it wasn’t throw the whole man out bad.
As one of the group elders, I put his ass in a timeout and then took the time to explain to him what he did wrong, why it was upsetting to me and the other women in the group, and how he should go about fixinging it. To his credit, he mostly listened to me. Enough of actual work that we welcomed him back and most of the other women accepted him back. The best part of that was seeing his relief at being welcomed back by two of the guys and how cute they all are together. He’s still fucks up a bit, but I tell him honestly and he at least attempts at listening. If guys could get to this level there would be no “loneliness epidemic” because women would actually tolerate being around them.
The girl on the other hand, she was definitely wronged, but motherfuck her. I was there to support her and when I needed help she cut me out in the absolute worst way and lead to an near suicide attempt. Her and the other chud guys she surrounded herself with were excised from the group like a tumor. I’m a firm believer in the best of 90’s girl power, but treat other women like that and I’ll fucking cut you out.
Democratic senator Cory Booker holds marathon speech to highlight ‘recklessness’ of Trump policies
@Beth:
Yup, white girls will be consigned to the baby making factories while black girls will be sterilized.
edit
@Scott:
Given the rules in the House and Senate, Dems are limited in their power, but what they can do is stridently point out the abuse and throw as much sand in the gears as they can. Booker is a start.
@charontwo:
Horrific, simply Horrific.
Thanks for the link
@Sleeping Dog:
And hot trans girls will be forced into sex work and the rest of us used as dog food.
@CSK: But you know what he’s talking about, right? He made a big deal about IVF during the campaign. He was getting pressure against it but he stood up to it. The comment is just an extension of it.
@CSK:
I think he was trying to talk about IVF, because he remembered people were talking about that a lot, but his brain mush can only remember one word at a time, so he was reduced to just saying “fertilization” over and over
@CSK:
Who can tell what the voices in his head are telling him.
@Fortune:
Do women always make sure you’re in front of them and at least arm’s length away? Maybe cross the street when they see you coming?
@Fortune:
It’s interesting that you need to explain what Trump means.
@Beth:
If they don’t lock you up or worse…
@Stormy Dragon:
That and he doesn’t know what “in vitro” means.
Re @DrDaveT‘s comment yesterday. HACCP is a food safety method developed by NASA and, of all companies, Pillsbury, in the 60s. The idea was to have safe food for space travel. Imagine getting food poisoning en-route to the Moon. Not only is there no doctor and few medicines available, but there’s limited water, and you can’t even turn the ship around quickly.
I know about this not through my interest in space, but through my job. Many of our operations are HACCP certified, and more customers require such certification from their suppliers (along with a bunch of others).
Oh, the initials mean “hazard analysis and critical control points.” It’s pronounced something like HAZAP.
@Stormy Dragon: trump occasionally touted free IVF on the campaign trail, when it suited the audience. I think he just found out what the letters stand for and fertilization stuck, but the other words sound foreign, therefore un-American.
And I see Sleeping Dog and I are on the same page.
@CSK: Not really. I follow politics. It’s ok if you don’t. Stormy Dragon and becca do too.
@Eusebio:
I have seen the idea expressed that Stephen Miller is the real chief of staff, not Susie Wiles. This looks like the conduct Stephen Miller advocates.
@CSK: At least he isn’t a supporter.
Defender? sure.
Translator? Of course.
But not a supporter!
@Sleeping Dog: @Scott:
What Schumer and other leaders have been missing in this moment is that because there are so few tools available to them, the fight has to be one of communication and messaging. Booker is doing exactly what needs to be done, generating headlines, generating social media clicks, and showing that the opposition party will do everything–even things that will ultimately be futile–to slow or stop this madness.
Booker’s youtube channel is closing in on 37K live viewers, up from 10K early this morning, another 23K on AP’s livestream and 12K on MSNBC’s livestream. EDIT: Booker’s stream went up to 38K while I was typing this. Can’t find CSPAN’s livestream numbers, not sure if they have those published anywhere, but between their broadcast and livestream it’s likely higher than 75K accounted for above.
It’s a start.
Meanwhile, in other tracking numbers, the DJIA has dropped 400 points in the 90 minutes since it opened.
@becca:
The felon just doesn’t want to expose the conspiracy. IVF, in vitro fertilization, is handled the world over by the Mexican conglomerate Vitro. That’s why it’s called in vitro. Duh.
Donald Trump thinks that it means “…you can grab them by the pussy!”
Source? MSNBC? Nope. The New York Times? Nope. This is from the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page.
I hope Drew/Guarneri/Pablo/Elaine/Joe/Skywalker/Connor – the World’s Greatest Businessman – will come along to explain how the ultra-conservative WSJ has gotten it so wrong. Because surely, surely the WGB cannot possibly countenance the biggest fucking tax increase in American history.
But whaddabout Democrat tax increases, huh? Huh? Whaddabout?
Let’s have one more graf:
@charontwo: Here’s a possible timeline:
1. The current regime establishes a precedent that denying non-citizens due process is perfectly OK, under the Alien Enemies Act.
2. The current regime establishes a new category of deportable people, such as people on track to become citizens naturalized citizens, or even recently naturalized citizens, under some equally dull-witted, tortured excuse.
3. They deport people in this new category without due process.
Which leads one to ask, if they’ve gone this far down this illegal and unconstitutional road, what’s to stop them from going the distance?
4. The current regime now targets citizens, using some stupid interpretation of laws covering emergency powers, or some other authoritarian argle-bargle.
5. The current regime starts detaining and deporting citizens.
It’s worth remembering, perhaps, that the Alien and Sedition Acts were some of the worst federal laws ever passed in American history, up there with the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918. I’m mentioning those and not other bad federal laws because they seem most relevant to this topic.
And if you think this comment is alarmist, what level of cruel intent and flagrant lawlessness do you need to see?
@Kingdaddy:
Historically, there was due process:
https://www.stevevladeck.com/p/bonus-133-due-process-and-the-rule
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/50/23
(The Cornell link above was within the paragraph I blockquoted, the following sentence):
So the Trump regime is behaving worse than the embarrassment that happened back in the 18th century.
If we actually have an election in 2028 the Democrats will have a fantastic issue: drop tariffs and slash prices on a whole range of goods. Trump (illegally running for a 3rd term) will claim this kills re-industrialization. Problem is that the 2028 campaign begins in three years, and in three years we won’t have re-industrialized to any significant degree. So it may be ‘cut prices, kill inflation,’ vs. ‘jobs. . . eventually.’
The tariff issue folds neatly into the fight against billionaire parasites. Why tariffs? Because the alternative is Musk and Zuck and Jeff paying taxes. Screwing the working man for the benefit of the billionaires.
Cheaper cars, cheaper TVs, and fuck the billionaires. I like it. Pity the senile rapist and his co-conspirators won’t allow an election.
@Michael Reynolds:
You have posed the wrong question. The real question is how do you justify the EU, Canada and China’s mercantilist policies, eviscerating the US manufacturing base? And costing countless US citizen’s their livelihoods and their communities. I’m actually a staunch free trader. But for free trade to work, you need, well, free trade. Not mercantilist policy. And that doesn’t even touch the strategic implications of trade policy.
Not much of an economist, are you.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Let’s give him his due if his sanewashing reveals just how despicable Trump actually is being here.
In this case, Trump wants to get credit from women (as the Fertilization President no less!) for giving them IVF – as if he has provided a new infertility treatment option rather than declining to take away something they already have. The “pressure” Trump purportedly stood up against was coming from the pro-life zealots he claims to champion but doesn’t give a sh!t about. The maximalist faction of pro-life is at least able to acknowledge the incongruity of their sacred truth that a fertilized embryo is a life and the hard fact that IVF involves freezing this life for years or forever. But, the congruent pro-life view is inconvenient in the face of the popularity of IVF, so Brave Sir Donald gave those zealots what for.
So, in short, Trump believes he should be LOVED by women because he’s giving them the “goodie” of not depriving them of a popular reproductive health technology. And his resident lickspittle things he deserves respect for that as well, even though he is clearly not a Trump supporter.
Let’s not over-think Trump’s words. Was it AL that tried to ban IVF because it produces unused fertilized eggs, babies by their definition, that are subsequently killed? Perfectly logical per their claimed definitions. That proved unpopular. So Trump proclaimed himself in favor of IVF, just as he claims to support SS, with no idea what it is or any intent to do anything about it. And knowing, or caring, nothing about IVF, his addled mind can’t dredge up more than the one word,“fertilization”, and that whatever it is, women like it. Who is it that comments here that Trump is the dumbest person you know? Accept it, he is
@Connor:
So, challenged to justify the largest tax increase in history, The World’s Greatest Businessman yelled Squirrel! and babbled about balance of trade, entirely forgetting the fact that his Dear Leader had justified tariffs on the basis of. . . fentanyl precursor chemicals and illegal immigrants.
Now, why don’t you see if you can actually talk about:
Be sure to frame your answer in such a way as to rationalize huge tax increases on working people in terms of wokeness.
@charontwo: Oh, no doubt. They’re providing almost no legal justification at all, just doing it. That’s actually less than many autocracies, which generally take pains to at least have the appearance of legality.
Rather than engage in the sterile excitation of pillorying bad faith commenters for commenting in bad faith, I want to quote from the Steve Vladek article about due process to which I linked the other day. Here’s the core of that article:
A critical question is, how do we support the efforts of judges to insist on the rule of law, and hold the current regime accountable for violating it? I’m not sure, other than supporting the legal efforts of groups to take the administration to court, calling representatives to demand they protect the judiciary system, and what else?
@gVOR10:
Exactly, 100%, a thousand thumbs, whatever other standard of praise one can apply. Playing the game of guessing what Trump really means is foolish and dangerous. It erodes accountability for what the current regime actually says and does, wasting time on musings and counterfactuals.
He says what he says, as do his lieutenants. We can take what they say at face value. And you can stop right there.
In reference to a recent OTB exchange about the American penchant for avoidance of personal responsibility for behavior:
Americans in general, and the new Republicans in particular, are not likely to follow the example of Al Franken and step down over personal trespass.
I’m reminded of Al Pacino’s line in “Scent of a Woman”:
“You’re building a rat ship here!”
We’ve built a society of rats, miming some cartoonish exaggerated distortion of adulthood and manhood.
@Fortune: Can’t speak for CSK, but I listen to nothing that Trump says on the campaign trail. I learned that lesson the first time when he changed his position on abortion 4 times over 6 hours and multiple audiences.
@Connor: I actually laughed out loud at sentence two. US businesses off-shored US manufacturing mostly by their own efforts.
And cited comparative advantage theory and creative destruction as the rationale for doing so. You aren’t even trying anymore. You’re just a punch line.
Trump’s statements are in fact creepy and inappropriate. I fully endorse that. I am not pushing back on that at all here.
I want, though, to talk about “male loneliness” as I understand it. I am a student of this topic. I have experienced “male loneliness” myself. In my reckoning, it doesn’t even have a thing to do with sex. Though obsessions with sex will probably make it worse.
Loneliness, at its core, is the sense that nobody cares about you. Not the lack of people in proximity. Not a lack of conversation. Not a lack of job opportunities. Not even a lack of sex partners.
No, it is the sense that nobody cares. That’s the crunch of loneliness. And traditional masculine roles and behavior steer men toward acting in a way that might make people think that they don’t need or want your care. It’s a lie, but it’s the role they must take on. I’ve seen many men – not just the toxic ones, but solid family men with very good track records of behavior – play a part i call “The Man With No Needs”. Does that sound familiar?
And general culture still is inclined a man who is too needy in public.
Take employment. Men experience privilege in employment, particularly in my field, computing. Men are more readily hired. However, this is not because some employer likes men and wants to help men. (Though that might be true for some employers, it is not universal). No, the better explanation is that they think the men will do more, and thus represent a better bargain as employees.
This can get really bad in places like the NFL, where careers are short. Players are paid very well, yes. And they are bought and sold and measured and evaluated like pieces of meat. I’ve read pieces about this vis-a-vis the Seahawks under Pete Carroll, who tried to do a bit better. I don’t know how much difference this made. But mostly, any care an organization might have for a man in its employ is transactional, based on their value as a player.
I’ve lots more to say, but I think I’ll finish on this: Female culture spends a lot of time talking to each other and validating each other. Traditional male roles prevent this from happening in male culture, where one is not supposed to talk about feelings. This also contributes to loneliness, even in a crowd. It is the sense that no one wants to hear your hurt. I see this changing. I work on changing it, in fact. I think it’s really important.
@Beth:
In ancient times (my youth) men focused on women’s looks, and women focused on men’s earning potential and suitability for fatherhood.* Nowadays, women are still beautiful but the earning differential is small and shrinking rapidly, and there are a lot fewer babies being fathered.
Women still lean into earnings potential and fewer men clear that bar. Men still lean into looks, usually with, shall we say, overly-optimistic expectations. Both sexes are unrealistic, looking either for what isn’t there, or for someone to meet exaggerated expectations.
Does not apply to me. I was a penniless, desperate fugitive with wild hair when I met my wife and within 24 hours had started a 45 year relationship that weathered a whole hell of a lot poverty and paranoia. A shared sense of humor goes a long way.
On the tariffs there are at least two issues here, marketing and the actual economics. Trump marketing here has been pretty awful. It’s on and off tariffs. It’s due to fentanyl, so we can export and bring back jobs, it’s about fairness, etc. The claims that its the other countries that will pay the tariffs. I watched a Lutnick interview where he claimed tariffs (He specified tariffs imposed by Trump) will lower prices for consumers.
On the economics side there is the practical bit and the theory. On the practical side Trump unilaterally left NAFTA, negotiated USMCA which he called the best deal ever and then companies in the 3 countries involved built factories and made plans based upon that agreement. Now Trump is unilaterally breaking that again. Most businesspeople when they get reneged upon repeatedly stop doing business with that company. Note that to the best of my Knowledge China has never done anything like this and would make a more reliable trading partner.
On the theoretical side what seems pretty clear is that US consumers will end up paying higher prices. Companies can probably absorb some of the increases short term but longer term consumers pick up the tab. Will we gain more jobs from this? Not clear. We likely gain jobs in some areas but lose them in others as input costs increase. Also, for the US to compete the idea is that we need to be more productive since labor costs are lower other places. However, we know that those other places, especially China, are heavily automating. We are going to need to automate even more productively and or turn out a better product. So we dont get many jobs and it’s not that likely they pay a whole lot better than current manufacturing jobs. Overall, we might get more jobs. We definitely get higher prices.
Steve
@Kingdaddy:
Raise money to provide security for targeted judges and be very public about it. Not just for the security, but for the propaganda value.
Commission documentaries on judges threatened by MAGA.
That’s all I’ve got right now. I have to get back to adapting a book to graphic novel. It is so boring. Panel 1, panel 2, panel 3. Fuck me.
@just nutha: I didn’t listen either, the man’s terrible. But I read.
@Kingdaddy: Its worse than American political opponents, its human campaign props.
@Eusebio:
No, no, that wouldn’t do. If they ask for this man to be returned, Bukele might send him back, and then reporters might ask questions, and this man might answer them.
That wouldn’t do at all.
Americans are ok with torture if it’s in short, glossy videos. Americans are less ok with graphic descriptions of torture. The Good-German-Americans are going to get queasy. So we can’t have that.
Also, he might just be dead.
@Michael Reynolds: Those are helpful suggestions.
For a more complete explanation on tariffs Furman is good. He helpfully points out that Trump does a lot of cherry picking in his claims about the tariffs other countries impose.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/31/opinion/trump-tariffs-economy.html
Steve
@Michael Reynolds: Don’t have to wait a couple of years. Just say (because it is true) that the tariffs are a form of sales tax. People know that sales taxes impact the bottom 90% the most. All to fund tax cuts to taxes on the top 1%. Take from the middle class and give to the rich. Simpler the better. That is Trump’s (and Trump’s rich friends) plan.
@Fortune: So, you’re basing your statements on what other people think (written transcriptions of what Trump says are no more lucid than the original statements, but suffer from extreme editing/redaction/interpretation). Good to know.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: Basing on what other people say about various people is a critical weakness that permeates the American experience. For one example, most contemporary evangelicals have no particularly strong opinions based on what scripture/Calvin/Arminius/Augustine/etc. said. Most of us are basing what we believe on what generationally removed students are telling us their teachers told them that Calvin, etc. said/believed. The same is true for many other subjects. That’s a lot of signal noise to filter.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: You’re trying to pick a stupid fight here. If you only read one sides’s material, you don’t follow politics, you follow your side. CSK couldn’t understand Trump’s statement but several of us could. Blaming me for understanding Trump’s statement is reveling in ignorance. “Hey stop that guy, he reads!” I’m not going to apologize for knowing something or for not listening to every word Trump says.
Steve M. has thoughts on the motivation for the outrages:
“NMMNB”
@Scott:
I keep thinking that at some point, even those who do not follow the news will understand this. If you usually buy a glass of pinot grigio at the local Italian restaurant and it suddenly goes from $7 a glass to $21, you ask why.
Speaking of fools….
The incompetence is breathtaking. And total.
@Jay L Gischer:
Toxic masculinity is toxic to the man himself first and foremost.
A lot of those men then go and make that everyone else’s problem. Those are the abusive pricks. But each and every one of those abusive pricks was hurt by their toxic masculinity before hurting everyone else. (Not excusing their behavior)
I think we need a new model for masculinity that isn’t a stoic shithead bottling up their emotions like a bad John Wayne impression. Unfortunately, the emerging alternative is a misogynistic grifter shithead like Andrew Tate or Donald Trump.
People have written things about bowling alone and what not, and have suggested various workarounds like men’s bowling leagues or whatever, but they shy away from doing more than suggesting alleviating the symptoms, and avoid the main point: masculinity is fundamentally broken and does not work in anything approaching a meritocracy.
It’s tied in with white supremacy, which is always best read as white male supremacy. The only way these broken people can succeed is if everyone else is held down, and even then they won’t be happy.
@Michael Reynolds:
I think you’re looking at effects rather than causes. You’re not wrong, but it goes a lot deeper.
@Michael Reynolds:
100%
@charontwo:
And that Trump is back in the White House is likely due to an “administrative error.”
@Scott:
And, aside from a small minority of gas-lightable MAGAs, the raise in prices will be an undeniable truth.
I saw Ezra Klein say the other week that democracy in the US could wind up being saved by Trump’s incompetence. He might be right about that.
@Beth:
RE: Aaron Rupar – Trump: “I’m the fertilization president!”
Elon Musk has 14 children with 4 different women. He has had 4 children with his current partner (Neurolink CEO), 3 of which were by in vitro fertilization.
Trump may be the fertilization President, but Musk has got a Boys-From-Brazil thing going on, spreading his genes far and wide. It would be enlightening to unpack his motives here, given the degree with which he embellishes his behavior with adolescent fantasy/myth themes and memes.
I have some OCD about numbers. Anyway, in the last week there has been a surge of articles claiming that may be Trump has a point and other countries are charging such high tariff rates we should retaliate. Link goes to tariff rates for individual countries. Note that all EU countries have the same overall tariff rates and they are lower than those of the US, before Trump raised them. Mexico is even lower. Canada is a bit higher. It’s Russia, our new BFF that is a lot higher.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tariff_rate
Steve
@Rob1:
I read somewhere that Musk is offering his semen to women who desire to bear his spawn, assuming, I suppose, that they meet his qualifications. I don’t know if he charges for the service.
@Fortune:
I assure you I can read written English and follow spoken English quite well. I have a Ph.D. in English from the University of Edinburgh, I’ve taught it at Tufts and Harvard, and I’ve written seven books, fiction and non-fiction, in English.
I confess, however, to having difficulty comprehending the witless meandering babble Trump issues.
@Michael Reynolds:
Every graphic novel should have plenty of BATMAN-style Onomatopoeia.
BAM! POW! KRUNCH! ZOWIE!
Let me know if you need other writing tips!
/snark
Bottom line: America has gotten people free from prison in hostile countries and in enemy countries. So (rhetorical question) how can the felon’s administration not get out an innocent man sent in error to a prison under contract to the US government?
What happens when they send actual citizens there? How about white citizens?
@CSK: Like I said, there’s no shame in not following politics.
@CSK:
My brain’s takeaway: “What is important to note here, is that CSK can *understand Scots* and yet still, Trump is incomprehensible.”
I’m right there with ya.
@Beth:
Some people really seem to think the “Handmaid’s Tale” is a f@ckin’ instruction manual.
For some reason, this annoys me, sorta-conservative traditionalist though I may be.
We did not spend centuries curbing religious ascendancy, and the subjugation of the individual to dim-witted customary law, to put up with this nonsense.
I recall a phrase from the old reactionary bastard Winston Churchill:
Bugger that.
@Fortune: Stop being a jerk. Seriously, we all understand exactly what CSK is talking about. Trump speaks gibberish.
That people–the same people who just a few months ago were saying Biden couldn’t be understood–are hell-bent on Trump-splaining to parse whatever he’s managed to spit up is both hypocritical and annoying.
@JohnSF:
Same with “1984”
@Michael Reynolds:
Currently sphincters in the City of London are so clenched, de Beers is probably looking out for a new diamond concession.
Trumps inclination to autarky might have worked, even given the massive collateral damage, if he were not such an idiot.
Now he has all the other major economic players looking for ways to screw him back and open up lines of co-operation.
EU, UK, China, Japan, S. Korea, India, Australia, ASEAN, Brazil, Canada etc.
I suspect a key breach may come if Trump is cozened by Putin into ending sanctions on Russia, and the Europeans at that point tell him to shove it.
The thing is, I’ve studied historical crises for decades, and cannot for the life of me thing of ANY, even the outbreak of WW1, that was so founded on utter and incredible stupidity.
Trump actually inherited from Biden a potential “golden moment” in US history, and seems determined to piss it way out of sheer folly and resentment.
@JohnSF:
Most Americans were too ageist and stupid to just take the easy path: re-elect the old man responsible for creating said golden moment.
Bigotry has consequences.
@JohnSF:
Repeated for emphasis.
This statement needs to be the gist of every commentary regarding US foreign policy for the entirety of Trump’s term. Biden shepherded unexpected and unprecedented alignment and cooperation from NATO regarding Russia/Ukraine and Trump would rather blow it all up rather than undermine his contention that Biden was the “worst president evah.” Folly and resentment is no basis for international relations.
@Jen:
You’re a braw lassie. And Fortune has a heid full o’ mince, much like Trump.
@JohnSF:
That’s saying a lot, bringing up WWI. But at least then there were real tensions, old and new, between the European powers. Germany felt left behind in the colonization game, the Ottoman empire was in decline, Russia was its usual mess, and, not least, a lot of these powers were governed by actual kings.
The Atlanta Fed has just lowered its estimate of GDP for the first quarter of 2025. Again. -3.75%. Was -2.8%. Q4 of 2024, January, before Trump took office, it projected 2.4% growth.
We need a MAGAt cultie to tell us why this is a good thing. Drew/Stradivarius/Timbaland/Connor? Tell us – and be scornful about it – why a shrinking economy at a time when Trump is, as the WSJ wrote, engaging in a record-breaking revenue heist, is a great thing.
Then, just for fun, see if you can still access what little intellctual integrity you still possess and tell us what you’d be saying if it was Kamala, or Biden, or Obama.
@JohnSF:
China is apparently surrounding Taiwan with a very large ‘practice’ blockade, involving quite a few ships and one of their two carriers. At the same time Putin is taunting Trump on Ukraine, playing Lucy to Charlie Brown. And Putin is warning Trump off of Iran.
IOW, Trump is being bullied by Putin and Xi simultaneously. They’re laughing at him. The big American strong man is an object of scorn, ridicule, disappointment and contempt around the globe.
@CSK:
That’s very impressive.
However, no amount of proficiency in English helps in deciphering the degenerate trumpísh the felon speaks.
@CSK:
@Jen:
I met a Scottish party girl in a loud basement club. She had a thick accent and talked like a partier; lots of jump cuts and random ideas.
We were talking and dancing for like 20 minutes and goes “wait! You can understand me!” I was like yeah, you hear this shit accent! She was all “these fucking English say they can’t understand me! What are you drinking?”
And that’s how I got two free vodka and whatever the fuck passes for Sprite in this pop deprived hellhole. Her accent was thiiiiiick but understandable.
JohnSF, what does all the pop and chips taste like chemical garbage?
Well, Jim Kramer is unhappy with Trump, the worst president on the economy since Carter, in his view:
https://youtu.be/PBXAYTjDXMM?si=_UQWmaJf50lwm56O
@Fortune:
Anyone who speaks and writes proper English would know that it’s “as I said,” not “like I said.”
@Kingdaddy: Since he endorsed Kamala, at least he can say “I told you so”
@Kathy:
HACCP is mandated by many states. It has saved untold trillions of dollars in lost worker productivity, not to mention millions of lives, that pre-HACCP were lost to food-borne illness. And it would not have existed without funding — no commercial company anticipated any profit from that line of research, so none was investing in it.
@Kathy:
The monarchs were arguably less in control than one might have thought.
Willhelm II, Nicholas II and Franz-Josef all learnt that they were simply riding the crazy train.
Colonies, imho were a side issue.
It contributed to the German/British irritations, but otoh Britain and France were quite amenable to sorting out colonial disputes amicably, in the end.
Similarly Turkey.
They key factors were:
– the ineradicable Franco-German tensions, due to Bismarck’s folly re Alsace Lorraine in 1871,
– Russia’s inability to leave well enough alone in the Balkans,
– Austrian paranoia re same,
– German fear re the Franco-Russian alliance they had conjured,
– and the British decision that Germany could not be permitted to crush France and Belgium.
It all made a horrid sort of sense, given the priors.
Whereas, the Trump/MAGA policy makes no sense at all, that I can figure out.
@JohnSF:
100% + Totally
@Beth:
Because pop IS chemical garbage, by definition.
By chips, I assume you are referring to crisps?
Not chips as in chip shop chips?
If so, some upmarket kettle crisps are OK.
Walkers etc prob. best avoided
@Beth: I usually have no problem in Edinburgh, but the farther I get into the Highlands, I have to “tune” my ears. It takes about a day. And the Glaswiegan accent? I am lost.
@CSK: Well, he will go down in history as the fertilizer President (in chief).
@DrDaveT:
The official Mexican norm (NOM) dealing with hygiene in food production and handling NOM-251-SSA1-2009, takes several elements from HACCP, and recommends implementing a full HACCP regime as well.
As I’ve noted many times before, Americans plain don’t get soft power. It’s not just foreign aid, though that’s huge, and not just imitation of a bicameral/presidential system with an independent judiciary, but also things like global benefits from US government research and standards.
And the felon is pissing all that away, as JohnSF notes.
@Connor:
China may be mercantilist.
Neither Canada nor the EU are.
The EU average tariff on US manufactures is about 1.5%
In 2023, the US collected approximately €7 billion of tariffs on EU exports, and the EU collected approximately €3 billion on US exports.
Nor does the EU pursue a policy of an undervalued Euro; Germany in fact is quite notorious for insisting that the euro not be depreciated.
This is, quite simply, MAGA victimhood mythology.
Canada has operated within the negotiated USMCA arrangement; as signed up to by one President Donald Trump.
@Jen:
“Weegie” is almost language all unto itself.
Almost as impenetrable as old-style Cockney.
@dazedandconfused:
Wouldn’t that be Musk, since he appears to be determined to spread his semen far and wide?
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Calvin was a bit of an ass, imho.
But a lot of contemporary Christians could likely benefit from studying Aquinas.
His priors were arguable, but the man was eminently rational given those priors.
The medieval Christians started from assumptions rather different to ours, but given that, they were not fools.
I have private suspicion current US “political Christian” discourse would tempt Aquinas to kick in a stained glass window out of pure annoyance.
@JohnSF:
I can’t recall of I asked you this before, but have you ever read the Flashman series by George MacDonald Frasier? You’d like it. I love the guy and poured one out when he died.
I could not count the number of times I’ve approached the idea of doing a riff on Flashman, and backed away.
@CSK:
Now there’s a mental image I could have done without.
😉
@Michael Reynolds:
Never have got round to it, despite recommendations.
From what I know of the series, from excerpts and summaries, I suspect I’d be overwhelmed with a desire to travel back in fictional time and f@ck Flashman up.
A sort of person I’m not inclined to abide, on the whole.
I have an unfortunate record of punching Etonians.
(I was provoked, honestly. 🙂 )
@CSK: Fertilizer in an agricultural context.
As most of the British culture I consume is in the form of comedy, my comprehension of Scottish pronunciation is measured in comedians. I get 90% of Billy Connolly, 80% of Fern Brady, 70% of Frankie Boyle and 50% of Kevin Bridges.
Kevin Bridges, BTW, had perhaps the greatest of all Would I Lie To You bits.
@dazedandconfused:
Aha! Good one.
@Michael Reynolds:
I loved those books.So did my father. They were my gift to him for his birthdays and Christmas. And he and I too raised a glass to Fraser when he died.
@Michael Reynolds:
In the immortal words of my father:
“Being polite, washing regularly, and clean clothes goes a long way.
Also, learn to cook. At least an omelette. Trust me.”
On the whole, not acting like an entitled twerp, and more like a friendly human being also helps.
(Also, being tall, and not overweight, perhaps, lol)
My idiosyncratic sense of humour is sometimes a bonus, sometimes a defect.
Such is life.
@JohnSF:
It makes perfect sense if Steve M. is right about the objective. I posted this upthread, I’ll just post it again:
“NMMNB”
Like teenagers vandalizing stuff for the fun of it.
They want liberals to be shedding liberal tears.
Cleek’s Law:
Today’s conservatism is the opposite of what liberals want today, updated daily.
As for the tariffs and the rest of the economic idiocy, look to Trump’s psychological issues and stupid economic beliefs.
No business will make any major investment based on tariffs that may or may not remain in effect for however long, Trump has already reneged on too many agreements. My guess, people will defer buying cars if they can, see if the tariffs last or not.
@Michael Reynolds:
Not British but Irish, but have you ever come across the pure genius that was Dave Allen?
One of the best comedians ever.
And Strom Thurmond’s record Senate filibuster [as expected from that useless wretched person, his purpose was to prevent passage of the civil rights act] has been broken – fittingly, by a black guy, Corey Booker.. and he’s not done yet, over 24 hours and still marching on. Important to get good trouble like this on the historical record.
@Michael Reynolds:
And the thing is, Trump either cannot see it, or is determined to think it’s not actually happening.
My little question is, what are the others in the admin, who are not so stupid and delusional, thinking at this point?
If it wasn’t so existentially tragic, it would be rather funny.
Both the neo-isolationists, and the anti-China/US revivalists, and even the Iran-ophobes, have all bet on on the wrong horse.
Because said horse is a lame nag.
@CSK: I was using Bugs Bunny phrasing to show derision.
@charontwo:
There are many attempts at an explanation, rationalization, sane-washing, and so on, but it all comes down to the definition of power in 1984: a boot stamping on a human face, forever.
Even Reagan realized that his policy of wild tax cuts [which led to a giant current account deficit] was the thing that was de-industrializing the US.. because as expected to everyone not a Republican, the Laffer Curve was entirely nonsensical jibberish. To address this de-industrialization, the Plaza Accords happened. The Plaza Accords were an agreement to let the dollar depreciate, which of course was a pure giveaway to the US.
This meeting of the top industrialized countries became known as the G-7 as the leaders of those countries continued to meet.
This is important history because Trump’s moves are in fact not the first time US re-industrialization has been attempted.
@CSK: @Jen:
Thank you.
I resisted the impulse to respond to that person. I waited patiently for someone involved to state the obvious:
That person’s ‘explanation’ did absolutely nothing to clarify specifically what Trump was trying to say.
Pretty sure most of us knew it was about IVF—this is not the first time that quote was posted here.
But knowing the subject matter does nothing to shed light on the purpose or meaning of his dislocution.
Need I raise the issue of the lawsuit that alleged a media outlet deceptively edited a Harris interview to hide her incoherence?
@JohnSF:
Are you sure about that? I thought it was a gelding.
@Michael Reynolds: I loved the Flashman series and have re-read them all.
Fraser also wrote a memoir of his time as a soldier in General Slim’s army in the Burma theater during WWII, “Quartered Safe Out Here”. Quite a change from his Flashman series but not surprisingly a very good look at a rifleman’s war in a nasty but not well known theater of the war.
@a country lawyer:
He could write about his experience in Burma and Otto Von Bismarck’s sexual peccadillos with equal authority. He’s a big reason I wrote my Front Lines trilogy, though, unfortunately I had much less latitude for humor. I’m still pissed off he died.
@JohnSF: Just so. I think a war of some kind became inevitable once Austria-Hungary double-crossed Russia by acquiring Bosnia-Herzegovina, while undercutting Russia’s ambitions to control the Straits. Of course, two Balkan Wars just made things worse.