Because anyone who hasn't seen this yet must: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost/wp/2018/07/05/keep-scott-pruitt-moist/?utm_term=.79be01b2fa4b
I'm idly wondering how Trump plans to profit from the trade war, or if he actually hasn't thought it through. Or both, as is likely.
I suppose I wasn't cynical enough before, but the past two years have really reset my priors as to the expected shittiness of the human race.
My theory is that it's pure loony politics aimed at stupid people. "Do you feel poor? It's because China is fucking with our economy. I'm going to fuck with China right back!" And then whether anything gets better or it doesn't, Trump's out there fighting about stuff.
That's not a very effective argument against 3, if it was intended as such.
AMERICANS WILL FORGIVE YOU FOR ANYTHING EXCEPT BEING WEAK.
Nielsen, Sessions, Ross are probably suffering appropriate heat for their actions, including but not limited to misconduct, though obviously not enough.
Who are the WH/cabinet people who are accomplishing more horrific stuff while keeping mostly out of the scandal-spotlight?
* Azar and Verma - facilitating work requirements and the lawsuit to judicially destroy the ACA
* Mattis - closing off military service as route to citizenship; trans ban which is under judicial stay
I have heard very little lately specifically about Pompeo, Mnuchin, Mattis, Zinke, Perdue, Acosta, Carson, Chao, Perry, or even DeVos. Nouveau zombie movie line: They're learning!
Ross would have been fired and on trial six months ago if he were a Democrat or if Republicans had basic honesty.
Mattis is evidently on the way out. I stand to be corrected but believe he's on the record opposing the administration on trans and immigrants.
I think he really believes what he says on trade -- it's the one way he deviates from Republican orthodoxy. He really thinks foreigners are stealing from us and that we will win a trade war.
It's weird living through the end of an era, and actually knowing it. The Cold War ended, 9/11 happened, the Great Recession happened, but it's only now where it feels like the post-war era has ended.
LYNDON BAINES JOHNSON, BEST US PRESIDENT EVER. ASSHOLE.
Who are the WH/cabinet people who are accomplishing more horrific stuff while keeping mostly out of the scandal-spotlight?
Depends on your definition of spotlight, but Navarro has to be up there. He seems like the Stephen Miller of trade.
10 OTOH he's one of the few along with Tillerson and McMaster who held the line against a full-out war blowing up in the Gulf during the GCC crisis. He also tried to repair the damage albeit unsuccessfully.
I think that's on the same hand?
You can tell because the other hand is slimy with expensive lotion.
The fact that he got the nickname "Mad Dog" as a joke, but Trump took it seriously and made him Secretary of Defense is the dumbest... okay, one of the top hundred dumbest things to happen in the last year and a half.
No way is that in the top hundred.
Remember Mattis was taken in by Elizabeth Holmes.
This is 100% daydream territory, but if someone were in a position to meet Trump and say something targeted to be as hurtful as possible, would it be ethical to do so?
On the one hand, if it gets to him, there's the risk everything goes kablooie. On the other hand, maybe he's too addled on syphilis, uppers, and finasteride for anything to get to him.
I guess that should be, "Punch him, the clown!" Drunk.
21.1: Here's what would hurt Trump's feelings, and is exactly what needs to be said to him: "Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?"
"You're going to prison, you fucking traitor."
I'll miss Pruitt. His scandals were entertaining, were garden-variety corruption rather than bad policy, and they were so bonkers that they made me think that he was universally incompetent. He couldn't possibly be inverting the mission of the EPA very effectively if he's micromanaging which hotels his assistants have to steal moisturizer from.
Following politics for the entertainment value might not be a healthy attitude in some respects but it'll keep me from feeling let down too much when his replacement is even worse.
I'm tempted to treat this like a general griping thread and complain about work. Today I came in earlier and buckled down harder than usual because we're taking a weekend trip and I'm hoping to get out of town before rush hour starts. Fridays, my work depends on input from other people that's due COB Thursday. There are 13 of them. When I came in this morning I only had six. This is probably worse than average but not by much. I got the last three within the past 40 minutes. I'm ambivalent because while I feel I shouldn't complain because I was on top of things on my end and my managers are reasonable enough to recognize that and I'll probably be done on time either way, it's still objectively a bad situation. In a third sense I definitely shouldn't be complaining right now, I should be finishing my work on them and passing them on to the next reviewer. And by now I definitely have made this comment a general gripe about work. Whoopsie.
He couldn't possibly be inverting the mission of the EPA very effectively if he's micromanaging which hotels his assistants have to steal moisturizer from.
Yeah, there was a good observation to the effect that he has never actually been in business - he became a political-cases lawyer straight out of law school, then elected office - and seemed to have a weird idea of executive perks and the need to get in on that by any means necessary.
I don't advocate violence, but personally unless I was actually taking Trump into custody I'd only find saying 124 satisfying if I was, I dunno, also kneeing him in the balls, and even then it wouldn't be that great. Everything else is just a reminder of our impotence. Honestly nothing would be satisfying except seizing his assets, bankrupting him or lawful incarceration.
In the WTF department, remember a couple of months ago when Russian mercenaries attacked a US-Kurdish position in Syria and the US killed 200 of them? They apparently belonged to the Wagner Group, taking their name from its founder's nom de guerre:
According to various media reports, Utkin was given the sobriquet Vagner because of his affection for "the attributes and ideology" of Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime.
I guess, per tradition, when Russians have anything to do with Nazis, regardless of the outcome, most of the dead are Russians.
I guess, per tradition, when Russians have anything to do with Nazis anything, regardless of the outcome, most of the dead are Russians.
27: I don't think there's anything really satisfying you could say to Trump, but I've noticed from insulting Trump supporters online that the one that bothers them is "traitor".
11.2: True that. I'm skimming Westad's Global Cold War book now, and some of the threads of the present shitshow are there already. I think of most of the various authoritarianisms and nationalisms can very simplistically be interpreted as reactions to modernity (as largely true also right through the 20th C). The difference from the postwar is that the US has swung entirely onto the reactionary side.
It's a character failing, but I can't even summon the will to insult Trump supporters online. My only hope is that someone is gathering an easily-searchable list of affirmative pro-Trump people (i.e., the online army, rally attenders, not just whatever Republicans) to be used for naming and shaming purposes. I would never hire someone who attended a Trump rally, for example, without some elaborate show of repentance, and I hope people are compiling similar information for use in the (let's all pray) better future. I mean obviously that's super awful and it would be nice to have a country where you didn't have to think that way, but, well, they forced it on us.
Wife and I had an actual not joking discussion about whether it would ever be necessary for a subset of people to leave the country for their safety. She thought it would be a sudden thing, like Trump loses in 2020 and refuses to turn over power, backed by a combination of the FBI, ICE, and local PDs- she proposed spending January 20 elsewhere if he loses. I disagreed it would get to that, I said that they'd mess with election mechanics to prevent a loss if they had the power to do so.
On the bigger question, my beief is they're not going to physically round up millions of people, if things really got bad they'd mess with large numbers of people financially and let the economic system do the rest- it's easy to freeze lots of accounts, suddenly you can't pay your rent or mortgage and can't buy food, and what recourse do you have that doesn't take years.
Here's a WTF from yesterday's Montana rally (a bit of context exists but who gives a shit):
This is the only musical, the mouth. And hopefully the brain, attached to the mouth, right? The brain more important than the mouth is the brain. The brain is much more important.
I kinda creeped myself out with 34. I guess I don't really want the searchable list. If we ever win and things get better, I just won't want to know who went to a Trump rally.
There was a scene in Huckleberry Finn where the fraudulent heir to the crown of France was putting on a show and, to draw a large crowd, implied there would be porn. And then the crowd showed up and got really angry but never told the rest of the town that it was a rip off to avoid admitting they'd been had.
I think of that often these days, except given all the wrestling scandals, I'm not sure that this crowd would consider itself very cheated if it got a half-naked boy on the stage.
7: Who are the WH/cabinet people who are accomplishing more horrific stuff while keeping mostly out of the scandal-spotlight?
Carson at HUD. Raising rent on the poor
Although I don't know if that's more horrific.
Is there any news I can use without putting myself in a situation where I'll be driven nuts?
And to LB up at 2: Trump has been babbling about trade deficits and how the US is being screwed since at least 1988. There's interview footage out and about lately showing him (looking like the playboy he was at the time) sounding pretty much exactly the way he sounds now, even down to intonation. Now, maybe he had personal profit in mind even way back then, but I suspect he really is just ignorant, a dog with a bone, on this one.
It was a thing back then. Ross Perot was Trump with some basic standards of decency, which is why Perot didn't do well.
I think Trump literally thinks a trade deficit means countries are buying our goods and we're taking a loss on those specific transactions; or on the flip side we're buying other countries' goods at too high a price. That's the only sense I can make of all his comments.
45: That's wrong, because Trump doesn't literally think.
2: WaPo said that some of the kids in detention were in private prisons run by people with ties to Trump businesses.
I think 45 is right, but in mild fairness the trade deficit is a pretty weird and confusing concept once you start to think about it, especially if you are trying to think about why it matters as something more than either an accounting identity or trade surplus good! and especially especially if you are familiar with how capital flows in the contemporary world work. Of course Trump is a total idiot and incapable of being ashamed for being seen as one so he thinks that a bilateral trade deficit with another country means that country is "screwing" you.
Yeah, well, Trump is troubled by small-penis syndrome, so whatever.
Meanwhile! On Pruitt's resignation, I believe it's the case that even though he's out, he could still be criminally liable in some of the dozen or so investigations currently on tap against him. Is that right?
Likewise, Trump wants a strong dollar without really having a grip on what that means (particularly for trade).
48. There seem to be a fair number of reasonably sane people who think the Chinese have screwed us over on IP (mostly due to greedy or credulous American businessmen, to be fair) and on keeping their market as closed as possible but never admitting it. I'm not at all sure Trump even knows or cares about that, though. Also, Xi has an ever bigger Emperor complex than the Donald, and has the power to achieve it. In my naivete I used to think China might morph into a reasonably liberal, somewhat democratic state. Trump seems to envy authoritarian rulers (Xi, Kim, Putin, etc.) because he can't actually be one. (Crossing my fingers there.)
Following on that note, plenty of Americans assume that only a strong leader will stop America from getting screwed and are not willing to subject this belief to empirical review.
52: Japan did the same, so did the US to Europe earlier; and the US and Europe are still around, richer than ever. And I entirely agree about Xi, but Trump's policies will only make China relatively stronger.
33 Same thing with the variety of fundamentalisms.
I'm sure 'traitor' does work on the followers, but for the man himself 'laughingstock' better captures how I read his insecurities/vulnerabilities. Everyone on earth is laughing at the pathetic ignorant fool we've put in power, and his pathetic ignorant fool movement.
Yeah, my daydreams involve convincing him that everyone, even those he thinks loves him, is secretly laughing at him all the time. Maybe also that they think of him as a dog. But again, his career is consistent with him worrying exactly that every minute of every day.
Trump isn't a stellar businessman, obviously, but so far he's made a killing off being president and I figured there was probably something in the crazy tariffs for him. Maybe the heuristic he uses is that they'll hurt his competitors equally if not more, but as U.S. president he'll be able to cut deals to minimize the damage to his own interests.
I am sticking to my prediction that (you all may want to sit down for this) in 2020, Trump will be a good deal richer and the country will be a good deal poorer, if not necessarily bankrupt. I know he has consistent ideological commitments, but I also think he'd consider himself a failure if he didn't skim the maximum possible amount of money off the top of the US GDP for himself.
52: I'm no expert on software patent law or whatever, but one of the criticisms I heard expressed about the trade deficit with the PRC was that US financial firms didn't "have enough access" to Chinese markets. I'm not exactly seeing Bank of China ATMs springing up all over the place -- if Wells Fargo wants to screw people in China, they oughta be able to screw people over here, it's only fair.
Can't they just call them up with spoofed numbers and "We have important information about your credit card account" the way they do everybody here?
60: But what you do see is mass-produced Chinese goods, because that's where China's comparative advantage is. Whereas the US advantage is in fields like finance and software. The claim presumably is that China has taken advantage of market access for its manufactures while effectively denying equivalent access for US services.
Although AFAIK services aren't covered under WTO rules*, so it isn't grounds for a trade war.
*Which TPP was designed in part to deal with, but the Strong Leader Decided that was a Bad Deal, so no IP protections for you.
62: Yeah, of course that's the official line. It all just seems so obviously neo-colonial, but that's the comin' thing, I guess.
Here at our night market, two of the food vendors are, respectively, "Miss Papaya" and "Mrs. Eggroll". It just seems kinda creepy to anthropomorphize food like that. Of course, one of the other vendors is "Ninja Sushi" which raises all sorts of questions of it's own -- is it the person preparing the sushi, knives a' flashin' who is the ninja? Or are there ninjas all up and down the supply chain, the cook on a ninja fishing boat, etc. Or, given this confusion of social and gustatory roles, perhaps it is meant to be the fish themselves who are ninjas, like Dr. Evil's sea bass.
Maybe you're just a cannibal?
|| I just rewatched Gimme Shelter for the first time in like 40 years. My son performed at a dysfunctional mess of a concert in Oregon yesterday, so I was telling him about Altamont, and got all the important details completely wrong. No one got killed at my son's concert, so who says there no progress in human affairs. |>
Have linked to the play for change version of Gimme Shelter?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJtq6OmD-_Y
Your son, a musician, didn't know about Altamont?
That's actually awesome. The best part of getting old is watching all of the trivia that was The Most Important Thing Ever get forgotten.
I'm idly wondering how Trump plans to profit from the trade war, or if he actually hasn't thought it through. Or both, as is likely.
This is old and familiar, but in case you forgot:
1. Start trade war.
2. ... ?
3. PROFIT!
He djs electronic music.
I was trying to think of something as far away from me as Altamont is from him. Obviously, a bunch of stuff happened in 1933 that I don't know shit about. Here's one I do kind of know: my grandfather, a new West Point grad, was in the cavalry, assigned to Fort Bliss. Family lore is that one day they all went out to a field, they lined up, drew their swords, and charged. Some respectable distance. Lined back up, sheathed their swords, and that was it: no more horse cavalry. At least for that outfit, maybe?
Wikipedia isn't backing me up on this.
It's just a shot away A long shot away.
No! They sent them to a nice glue factory farm upstate.
World War II started with horse-mounted cavalry and with nuclear weapons and the births of members of both the Rolling Stones and the Beatles.
Obviously, a bunch of stuff happened in 1933 that I don't know shit about.
And one very significant thing you do know shit about. But not in America.
You know those movies where it starts with some shmuck mysteriously getting locked out of technology? I think that's happening to me but by mistake they picked someone who would take years to notice and this was some 2015 plot. I can't get into Instagram or twitter or anything but I also can't sustain the urge to think about it for more than 15 seconds.
The Russians used those accounts to steal the election. Thanks a bunch Heebie.
two of the food vendors are, respectively, "Miss Papaya" and "Mrs. Eggroll"
There's this new pizza place here (apparently it's a chain) called EXTREME PIZZA. And I'm kind of obsessed with how stupid that name is. What makes a pizza extreme? I imagine that, as soon as you walk in the door of the restaurant, the employees yell "Welcome to EXTREME PIZZA!" and then throw a piping-hot pizza at your face.
They serve only whole pies for take out. Extremism, when dispensed by delivery, means "no slice."
When your crush is clearly not crushing on you, it's time to get drunk
How can you tell when it's time to get drunk?
Anyhow, 80 should be reworked into an Irish dating-problem "That's Amore"
You know those little square glass bottles of Testor's model paint? That paint is priced at $700-$800 per gallon. Man, I am in the wrong business.
The people who paint real planes and boats get a bulk discount.
||
I just have to say that this is one of the most hilarious headlines I've read in a long time: "Philippine President says he'll resign if anybody can prove God exists"
|>
Yeah no it's ok. I had my sailing hols lately and I'm always inclined to crush on somebody. This time it was actually someone who I'd like anyway. I'll be fine in due course. I'm actually considering not killing it with fire straight away becaus it'll make it easier for me to adopt a sensible eating strategy (kill it with fire is for like, married people where I don't friend them or anything after the occasion of crush )
Hopeless crushes can be kind of pleasant if they're not driving you nuts; at least it gives you something to think about.
Does "fire" in "kill it with fire" mean "whisk[e]y"?
So I'm crashing a wedding now with my newish female buds. The bride and groom are young so we could be anybody's aunties
So I'm crashing a wedding now with my newish female buds. The bride and groom are young so we could be anybody's aunties
So I'm crashing a wedding now with my newish female buds. The bride and groom are young so we could be anybody's aunties
So I'm crashing a wedding now with my newish female buds. The bride and groom are young so we could be anybody's aunties
That wedding must be totally destroyed by now. Shattered bodies everywhere.
I'm now typing this on an iPad. I'm not sure these will catch on. It's too hard to type comments.
This thing is really not good for blog commenting.
77" What makes a pizza extreme?
It's not the pizza, the employees are all displaying EXTREME FLAIR.
An actual WTF (thin-skinned NYT reporter style) that I did not get around to yesterday. (The article did not get much play anywhere, so that is probably good but I feel the need to rant about it a little bit.)
Ken Vogel was lead author (with Katie Rogers-- not familiar with her) on an article entitled "For Trump and 'Angel Families,' a Mutually Beneficial Bond". (It was not labelled as a "News Analysis" although it clearly was, but I do not care too much about the label; it was reprehensible either way.)
It was focused on the politics of it, and in tweets Vogel emphasized how it showed Trump showing "heart" (he also dropped the parens around 'Angel Families in his tweet). So the two points of view were Trump the warm-hearted concerned president and the travails of the families and how this was poised to help Trump/Republicans. A key paragraph:
The rotating group of families who have appeared at times with the president -- totaling more than three dozen -- provide a powerful rejoinder to criticism of Mr. Trump's hard-line approach to immigration as heartless, in some ways embodying his gift for creating narratives that resonate more with his base than concrete policy proposals or statistics undermining his argument that unauthorized immigration leads to increases in crime.
And that was the only mention of what BS the narrative is in terms of actual crime rates. (And failed to mention that a large number of those killed died in car accidents where an undocumented person was at fault.) I don't know, typing it out it all seems in the weeds and not so outrageous on the face it except that in my view his exploitation of immigrant crime is one area of the Administration that most closely echoes the actual early practices of Nazi Germany.
Anyway, don't read the whole thing. When people pushed back at Vogel on Twitter he responded in classic NYT politics defensive "read the article", blah, blah, blah mode.
OK I'm better now.
||
For Japan, the "Niksonu Shokku," or Nixon Shocks, of 1971 led to some big discussions about the country's future, even within the ruling LDP. This was Japan's Cold War turning point. Nixon's departure from Bretton Woods was to a high extent directed against Japan's commercial interests. Seen from Washington, Japan had done too well under American tutelage. And Nixon's China adventure had left Japan high and dry diplomatically.|>
Wedding survived. Bride and groom so young omg probably first of peer group to get hitched. DJ played loads of stuff from exactly late 80s early 90s which we knew from first time around. Met one of bridesmaids who was all keen to support our invasion ( venue staff had run us off when we were too obvious earlier - " I'll just say you're ,Maureen and Sheila quoth she").
Hungover now oh dear
Also yes 89 is just it, I can quite enjoy my little notions but it does bump up against the sad reality occasionally
I like to think you crashed four weddings in quick succession.
Extended Friday WTFuckery: Tatsu is now spending his third day in hospital waiting for emergency surgery for a hernia. The two of us spent all Thursday night in A&E before he was finally admitted on Friday morning. It's bad enough that they don't want to discharge him and bring him back for an elective procedure, but minor enough that he keeps getting bumped down the list by more urgent cases. Poor kid is going out of his mind with boredom.
I hope he got it doing something awesome, like lifting a fallen tree off a little old lady.
Nope. Throwing a frisbee. (He plays Ultimate.)
Hope he feels better soon. That sounds unpleasant.