That's kind of missing my point. The Supreme Court told them to bring him back. I would think all reasonable people agree that's the right remedy. What they aren't going to do is try to lay some smack down that proscribes further political maneuvering and litigation. That's not something that happens normally and its not something anyone has any reason to expect.

It is a defeat for Trump. I think everyone needs to temper their expectations about what the courts are able to do. Even a less conservative SCOTUS isn't going to order Trump to send in the marines to bring this guy back. My count is that 7 of 9 care enough about the institution on some level as to understand that a holding the executive branch can't comply with might turn out to be as bad as one they expressly refuse to follow.

My question is why she was out in her yard with a gun. If it's that her reaction to a bunch of riff raff running through the neighborhood was to strap up and go out to face them I have to respect it. Don't get me wrong. It's totally crazy and the wrong way to respond to that situation... but if thats what happened? What a woman!

https://apnews.com/article/jillian-lauren-shriner-weezer-scott-1e3a0a27298d29bd37635349ae4e5b9e

In a break from all the serious topics this thing with the wife of Weezer's bassist is wild.

I was very positively disposed to those efforts.

I think it's all a question of what the goals are. There's a strong national security case to be made around IP, or certain types of manufacturing. You don't want the critical pieces of your best weapons technology being built or copied in the country you might end up needing to use those weapons against, or in close range of that country's missiles. I think there's also maybe a less straightforward but nevertheless compelling case that you do not want a country that you may be on a collision course with to enrich itself on easy access to your big rich consumer market. Tariffs may play some part in the strategy to deal with those things. The issue we face now is that the ship has already sailed on the latter, and maybe also on the former. The strongest criticism of what Trump is doing IMO is that tariffs on countries that sell us natural resources or make our shoes in horrid conditions aren't relevant, and starting stuff with traditionally friendly advanced economies is counter productive.

It seems to me that the most important part of the debate is about 'the now' and the future rather than the past. I had lunch earlier with a friend whose politics are a few ticks to my left and we talked a lot about the differences between doing something like this today versus, say, the 1990s. Thirty years ago there were still a lot more jobs on shore to protect. Now, to the extent you're protecting anyone with them, it's going to be a relatively small number of people juiced in on legacy arrangements. Which isn't to say that decisively resolves the issue but it does IMO change what the question is. We aren't really talking about a benefit to now existing people, not on any large scale. The question is whether the tariffs would operate to spur new investment in good jobs with strong labor protections. I've already stated my skepticism of that elsewhere but I'd certainly be curious if anyone has laid out why my view is wrong.

Truly farcical.

Prepping for the primary. With the kind of crap going on it's never too early to start.

Thats actually good news.

Jaybird, DeSantis didn't even make it to New Hampshire by the will of Republican primary voters. Are you really saying that this kind of rhetoric (which I also find mostly stupid) weighed into their decision? They voted for Trump because they preferred him, not because online blue tribe hysteria forced their hand.

I think it goes without saying that the Democrats' fortunes will greatly improve if they come up with an answer to that question. They're in the wilderness for a reason.

However I don't think the swing-ish voters have read von Mises. I think there was a very understandable thermostatic reaction due to inflation with immigration and some cultural issues as auxillaries but there was no resounding mandate for this. People are about to get double forked here, and the promise that it's all going to be worth it because a bunch of factories are going to go up (where? when? for what? who knows) is a complete lie, if that's even what people are relying on, which I'm not entirely sure it is.

Sure, I'd support a more intelligent approach to this from the Democrats, same as the last 8 years.

I think what's frustrating me is our silence on the question of at what point more than a couple Republicans should start to break ranks. Given their stated desire to make America great again and all, and this plan's er- inconsistency with that.

Guys, this is bordering on autistic. The Democrats have made plenty of errors resulting in some real issues of credibility. But this idea that partisan mudslinging is the decisive consideration here strikes me as its own type of Twitter brain, where political junkies project their own obscure fixations into everything without even bothering to make a case for a connection.

You don't think it's worth mentioning that Trump is about to reward his working class supporters by pushing the prices of goods through the roof and destroying whatever retirement they have saved? Or driving us towards a recession where jobs and benefits will be harder for them to come by?

I don't think too many of them were following whatever MSNBC or pre-Elon Twitter was saying about DeSantis.

No disagreement from me on the big strategic picture.

But I still think it's worth making a stink about the bonfire we're throwing ourselves on with Trump in hopes that maybe he in all his fickleness pulls back some; maybe some credibility is salvaged for the day after he's gone. Because as much as I agree with you on the desirability of a responsible altering of course Trump may do enough damage to make that impossible for a generation. There's no 'oops just kidding' anymore, now that we've put him in charge twice.

If only indeed.

Sure but none of that excuses Trump from doing an objectively crappy job at whatever it is he's aiming for (assuming he's aiming at anything at all). The Europeans apparently already offered a bilateral 0 industrial tariffs deal that he's thumbed his nose at. Now we all know Europe is hardly the cause of the decline of the post industrial Midwest but it's a small win that doesn't threaten anyone, and probably helps some of our own exporters, yet he won't take it because he's an idiot. At what point does it become fair to judge him on his own performance?

It's all a question of what your goals are. We sold the American consumer market way short to China in the 90s. There's a (IMO good) case to be made for a correction and tariffs may well be part of it. What there isn't a good case for is cutting off our own supply chains in the Western hemisphere, risking our access to other developed economies with whom America is more than capable of competing fairly, or punishing a bunch of undeveloped African countries who sell us raw materials, plus some already marginalized colonies of photogenic flightless birds.

This probably explains at least some of my outdated thinking. I'm operating with a 13 or 14 year old 54" flat screen which still works so well I can't rationally justify replacing it, no matter how tempted I am every time I see all the shiny new ones in Costco.

America was engineered to select against ambient social pressure since the day the 1st Amendment was ratified.

Probably so. Of course I say this with the knowledge that I am very likely going to capitulate to my older son's requests to go see the Minecraft movie when he is on spring break. This leads me to believe that something will always be around just not anything close to what we've been used to.

Yea I agree. Either that or film makers need to re-orient how they're making and budgeting films. I came across this post on substack that I found interesting:

https://www.jeffrauseo.com/p/where-is-hollywoods-money-going-inflated-movie-budgets?

It may be that the entire ROI model needs to be reconsidered to keep both studios and theaters afloat.

That seems... highly unlikely.