It is kind of devils dancing on the head of a pin stuff.
As for parents self correcting? I'm not a parent myself but I have a suspicion that if your idiocy gets your kid killed you really really have a motivation to defend that idiocy as not idiotic otherwise who's to blame for your dead kid?
We must shout and scream and raise a fuss;
Before somebody thinks of blaming usssssss!
I hope they do but, based on their records, they'd have one ready to go not in the next Presidents term but the President after the next Presidents term.
I'm sure RFK Jr. is like "hold my beer" also to my knowledge we can't lay any disease riddled child's corpses at Hegseths' feet whereas we very much can with RFK Jr...
Not surprising. Trump has no loyalty to any of his minions and Hegseth has been doing nothing but embarrassing Trump. Also, on a personal level, Trump reputedly doesn't like alchoholics at all; while he probably would overlook a characteristic like that to "own the libs and the media" once that choice starts embarrassing him the alcoholic trait would move up to the front of Trumps brain making it even easier for him to rationalize throwing Hegseth under the bus.
But the real challenge for Trump will be how to find someone worse to replace Hegseth.
As a grit I'm, of course, pleased though I admit a certain trepidation as well. The Liberals of Canada did a fantastic job in the late 90's and early 2000's then benefitted from a stint in the wilderness to come back and do a tolerable job in the late teens and early 20's but Trudea forgot a lot of ol' Jonny Cretchien and Paul Martins hard won lessons. The Liberals maybe could do with another trip to the wilds in a world where the right wing party was, well, *looks at Poilievre* ...not that and a world with no Trump. In this world, though, I'm pretty happy to be able to vote for Carney and expect him to do well.
Okay but even if we grant your premise Trump won't, himself, be on the ballot and has proven entirely unable to transfer his personal support into general election wins for other non-Trump candidates when he's not on the ballot. So, nothing says any of that populist energy will redound to the GOP- especially if people are screaming "sh*t is fished up and sh*t and you fishers are in responsible."
If you're trying to hunt for who the Democratic candidate is going to be in 2028, well that strikes me as a fools game since Biden basically reset the whole deck with how things went down in 2024- I don't know if any of the previously rans will have any shot at contending next time. But a lack of a single standard bearer doesn't bode much for 2026.
Now if you're saying "I don't see any sign that a party/candidate that is admirable to me is going arise." well you're probably right and, I sadly say, I may be in the same boat- though my standards are less exacting than yours. But we're both not populists*, to put it mildly.
*Though you have a fondness for edge theories that codes populist so there's that!
Just so I'm clear, because I'm curious, is the hydrochloric acid needed for the extraction process of mining REE's or for the recycling REE's from coal ash ponds?
I have to admit that, looking back over the last decade or so immigration seems to have been the real driver for trouble for everyone to the left of the wild restrictionists both here and in Europe. Virtually none of the other subjects the right inveigles about compares remotely in scale or size. Hindsight is painful on this one.
Fortunately, as you well know, the popularity that matters in this current time is Trumps'. If he's disapproved of, and he is, more and more every day, then the voters will vote against him and his party. The Dems are not looking pretty on stand alone popularity but that's because a very large portion of those "disapprovers" are disapproving because they want the Dems to push back on Trump more. If Trump stays at this level of popularity he'll be wiped out in the midterms. If he keeps at his current trajectory of popularity change he'll be landslided out in the midterms.
After the next election maybe they will but this one certainly won't. The general silence, downplaying and indifference of the "freedom and small government" right has been quite impressive, it really just was about lower taxes and will to power all along.
Oh I agree; I noted as such in my original comment. But I can't help but notice that all the stories of power transmission and power generation projects being blocked seem to be in blue states. NY and CA cost per mile of mass transit is a global joke but, to be fair, I suspect red states simply don't build mass transit.
That is a fair critique to a very broad blanket statement but Florida and Texas are, iirc, the largest red states and they do build both infrastructure, housing and utilities to a degree that leaves the largest blue states; New York and California, looking like punch lines. It's also not like the smaller blue states do much better though Minnesota has made some progress on housing at least.
Red states build a lot more infrastructure, housing and such development compared to their Blue state compatriots. There's not much getting around that fact. Part of it, assuredly, is that Red states are less developed and have more space to grow but the other part is Red states do not let people fish up development in the quixotic and self defeating ways that Blue states do.
Freddie has always had this squeamishness about YIMBY’s that I think stems from the fact that he, intellectually, knows that the YIMBY position is right but he personally and emotionally identifies with the NIMBY coalition, the regulators, the restrictionists and, especially, the minority filled communities that NIMBY’s in New York use as the Baptist part of their Baptist/Bootlegger coalition against development. He knows, on some level, they’re flat out wrong- ludicrously wrong, on the merits but he really really doesn’t want the developers/deregulators/abundance folks to be right.
His analysis on this one strains badly for both this reason and because he hasn’t actually read the book in question. He leaps on the education debate as a parallel both because it’s a subject is both very informed on (and largely right about) and because it’s virtually the opposite situation from the NIMBY/YIMBY debate. The deregulators, neolibs and privatizers in education have enacted lots of policies and failed to produce durable improvement both because the problem is extremely hard and also because the goal is logically impossible. No Child Left behind demands that no child be below average which is, of course, impossible unless every child produces perfectly equal results. The disaster of that whole line of thinking is hard to over state.
But the Abundance debate doesn’t fall into those traps or quandaries. Unlike education we’re talking, here, about the construction of material, measurable “real’ things. Manufactured educated children is incredibly complex and the goal- no subaverage child, is mathematically impossible. In contrast the development of infrastructure, housing etc is, fundamentally, a material thing. Education advocates scream “Education isn’t like manufacturing widgets” and they’re right but housing and infrastructure is near EXACTLY like measuring widgets. Our laws , economics and regulations make it easier or harder and the output is not difficult to measure. Moreover no one anywhere has really “cracked’ the education question (certainly not on NCLB terms) whereas many other societies both liberal (Japan, parts of continental Europe) and illiberal (red states, China) have enormous and obvious successes on the Abundance question.
In short, Freddie hasn’t read the book, he is tired and hazy from his new blessing (and good for him for it!) and he really really doesn’t like the nerds who push the abundance agenda and wants them to be wrong even though he knows they’re largely right.
Going back to an electronic equivalent of a person standing on a soapbox in the market square interspacing their "analysis" with declarations that are not a crank is a possibility, sure. People are hunting desperately for something better because it's a pretty lousy possibility.
There's no money in journalism. It only survives as a going concern by people working in it for prestige and bragging rights and by people owning it for prestige and bragging rights along with a trickle of revenue from the social media empires that leech off it and appropriated its original revenue streams.
The old model is dead, sustained in a kind of twitching coma state by those factors. No one has a fishing clue what the new model can be.
On further reading it looked like the market turmoil got so bad that even Trump got nervous. Specifically the bond markets for Federal debt and the dollar started to get wobbly. Trump, evidently, isn't worried about a recession but a full on financial crisis makes him nervous.
My 2 cents: he's starting to get worried that this is weakening him so much that congress won't be able to get their clowns in order to pass his tax cuts and safety net evisceration budget. So he's pausing to try and get the big victories through congress first.
I think I get all that but the question of free trade is more nuanced in the Dem coalition than describing it as "adopting the opposite" covers. Clinton, after all, oversaw NAFTA and Obama was a relatively decent free trader too while W had significant apostacies on Trade and Trump, of course, never met a tariff he didn't love.
The complexity of packaging that and selling it is why politics is difficult. The Dems have had a pretty nuanced and sensible approach to trade. Biden certainly wasn't an enthusiastic free trader- he didn't ink any free trade bills, but he primarily rolled back free trade in an area of industrial policy that was based on national security considerations rather than economic/moral arguments and was pretty easy to defend (unless you're a doctrinaire free trader).
But, really, the Dems are early in a wilderness phase so all the factions trotting out their positions and aligned journalists, like Chait, flying the banners for their respective positions is part of the operational process of a healthy party. Marketing trade to voters is hard to fit into a sound bite but a clever enough politician can be both appealing and vague enough to sell just about any policy and, after Trumps idiocy, just about any nuanced trade position should be a political winner.
And this is all presuming that A) Trump doesn't eventually realize that his Tariff nonsense is killing him, declares victory and rolls it all back or B) the GOP in congress realizes the tariff nonsense will kill THEM before it kills Trump and joins with the Dems to end all of it.
Why am I not surprised a Shapiro is involved with this outfit?
R.R. Martin cuddling the pups was a super cute pic but my cruel brain just grunted and thought *well anything to put off writing the next book*.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Open Mic for the Week of 4/21/2025”
It is kind of devils dancing on the head of a pin stuff.
As for parents self correcting? I'm not a parent myself but I have a suspicion that if your idiocy gets your kid killed you really really have a motivation to defend that idiocy as not idiotic otherwise who's to blame for your dead kid?
We must shout and scream and raise a fuss;
Before somebody thinks of blaming usssssss!
"
I hope they do but, based on their records, they'd have one ready to go not in the next Presidents term but the President after the next Presidents term.
"
I'm sure RFK Jr. is like "hold my beer" also to my knowledge we can't lay any disease riddled child's corpses at Hegseths' feet whereas we very much can with RFK Jr...
"
Not surprising. Trump has no loyalty to any of his minions and Hegseth has been doing nothing but embarrassing Trump. Also, on a personal level, Trump reputedly doesn't like alchoholics at all; while he probably would overlook a characteristic like that to "own the libs and the media" once that choice starts embarrassing him the alcoholic trait would move up to the front of Trumps brain making it even easier for him to rationalize throwing Hegseth under the bus.
But the real challenge for Trump will be how to find someone worse to replace Hegseth.
On “Canadian Leaders Debate Amongst Themselves”
'Zactly, I'm a grit from childhood but even I'll admit they richly deserve a hiding periodically.
"
As a grit I'm, of course, pleased though I admit a certain trepidation as well. The Liberals of Canada did a fantastic job in the late 90's and early 2000's then benefitted from a stint in the wilderness to come back and do a tolerable job in the late teens and early 20's but Trudea forgot a lot of ol' Jonny Cretchien and Paul Martins hard won lessons. The Liberals maybe could do with another trip to the wilds in a world where the right wing party was, well, *looks at Poilievre* ...not that and a world with no Trump. In this world, though, I'm pretty happy to be able to vote for Carney and expect him to do well.
On “Open Mic for the Week of 4/14/2025”
Thank you.
On “The Lawless Lying Duplicitous Bastards of Abrego Garcia”
Okay but even if we grant your premise Trump won't, himself, be on the ballot and has proven entirely unable to transfer his personal support into general election wins for other non-Trump candidates when he's not on the ballot. So, nothing says any of that populist energy will redound to the GOP- especially if people are screaming "sh*t is fished up and sh*t and you fishers are in responsible."
If you're trying to hunt for who the Democratic candidate is going to be in 2028, well that strikes me as a fools game since Biden basically reset the whole deck with how things went down in 2024- I don't know if any of the previously rans will have any shot at contending next time. But a lack of a single standard bearer doesn't bode much for 2026.
Now if you're saying "I don't see any sign that a party/candidate that is admirable to me is going arise." well you're probably right and, I sadly say, I may be in the same boat- though my standards are less exacting than yours. But we're both not populists*, to put it mildly.
*Though you have a fondness for edge theories that codes populist so there's that!
"
That's not unreasonable.
On “Open Mic for the Week of 4/14/2025”
Just so I'm clear, because I'm curious, is the hydrochloric acid needed for the extraction process of mining REE's or for the recycling REE's from coal ash ponds?
On “The Lawless Lying Duplicitous Bastards of Abrego Garcia”
I have to admit that, looking back over the last decade or so immigration seems to have been the real driver for trouble for everyone to the left of the wild restrictionists both here and in Europe. Virtually none of the other subjects the right inveigles about compares remotely in scale or size. Hindsight is painful on this one.
"
Fortunately, as you well know, the popularity that matters in this current time is Trumps'. If he's disapproved of, and he is, more and more every day, then the voters will vote against him and his party. The Dems are not looking pretty on stand alone popularity but that's because a very large portion of those "disapprovers" are disapproving because they want the Dems to push back on Trump more. If Trump stays at this level of popularity he'll be wiped out in the midterms. If he keeps at his current trajectory of popularity change he'll be landslided out in the midterms.
"
After the next election maybe they will but this one certainly won't. The general silence, downplaying and indifference of the "freedom and small government" right has been quite impressive, it really just was about lower taxes and will to power all along.
On “From Freddie de Boer: Abundance, Up To A Point”
Oh I agree; I noted as such in my original comment. But I can't help but notice that all the stories of power transmission and power generation projects being blocked seem to be in blue states. NY and CA cost per mile of mass transit is a global joke but, to be fair, I suspect red states simply don't build mass transit.
"
That is a fair critique to a very broad blanket statement but Florida and Texas are, iirc, the largest red states and they do build both infrastructure, housing and utilities to a degree that leaves the largest blue states; New York and California, looking like punch lines. It's also not like the smaller blue states do much better though Minnesota has made some progress on housing at least.
On “The Emergency Ordinary Times Facelift”
I have zero complaints, you've done an amazing job and, frankly, the site looks fantastic.
On “From Freddie de Boer: Abundance, Up To A Point”
Red states build a lot more infrastructure, housing and such development compared to their Blue state compatriots. There's not much getting around that fact. Part of it, assuredly, is that Red states are less developed and have more space to grow but the other part is Red states do not let people fish up development in the quixotic and self defeating ways that Blue states do.
"
Freddie has always had this squeamishness about YIMBY’s that I think stems from the fact that he, intellectually, knows that the YIMBY position is right but he personally and emotionally identifies with the NIMBY coalition, the regulators, the restrictionists and, especially, the minority filled communities that NIMBY’s in New York use as the Baptist part of their Baptist/Bootlegger coalition against development. He knows, on some level, they’re flat out wrong- ludicrously wrong, on the merits but he really really doesn’t want the developers/deregulators/abundance folks to be right.
His analysis on this one strains badly for both this reason and because he hasn’t actually read the book in question. He leaps on the education debate as a parallel both because it’s a subject is both very informed on (and largely right about) and because it’s virtually the opposite situation from the NIMBY/YIMBY debate. The deregulators, neolibs and privatizers in education have enacted lots of policies and failed to produce durable improvement both because the problem is extremely hard and also because the goal is logically impossible. No Child Left behind demands that no child be below average which is, of course, impossible unless every child produces perfectly equal results. The disaster of that whole line of thinking is hard to over state.
But the Abundance debate doesn’t fall into those traps or quandaries. Unlike education we’re talking, here, about the construction of material, measurable “real’ things. Manufactured educated children is incredibly complex and the goal- no subaverage child, is mathematically impossible. In contrast the development of infrastructure, housing etc is, fundamentally, a material thing. Education advocates scream “Education isn’t like manufacturing widgets” and they’re right but housing and infrastructure is near EXACTLY like measuring widgets. Our laws , economics and regulations make it easier or harder and the output is not difficult to measure. Moreover no one anywhere has really “cracked’ the education question (certainly not on NCLB terms) whereas many other societies both liberal (Japan, parts of continental Europe) and illiberal (red states, China) have enormous and obvious successes on the Abundance question.
In short, Freddie hasn’t read the book, he is tired and hazy from his new blessing (and good for him for it!) and he really really doesn’t like the nerds who push the abundance agenda and wants them to be wrong even though he knows they’re largely right.
On “What To Expect When You’re Expecting a Trade War”
Going back to an electronic equivalent of a person standing on a soapbox in the market square interspacing their "analysis" with declarations that are not a crank is a possibility, sure. People are hunting desperately for something better because it's a pretty lousy possibility.
"
There's no money in journalism. It only survives as a going concern by people working in it for prestige and bragging rights and by people owning it for prestige and bragging rights along with a trickle of revenue from the social media empires that leech off it and appropriated its original revenue streams.
The old model is dead, sustained in a kind of twitching coma state by those factors. No one has a fishing clue what the new model can be.
"
On further reading it looked like the market turmoil got so bad that even Trump got nervous. Specifically the bond markets for Federal debt and the dollar started to get wobbly. Trump, evidently, isn't worried about a recession but a full on financial crisis makes him nervous.
"
My 2 cents: he's starting to get worried that this is weakening him so much that congress won't be able to get their clowns in order to pass his tax cuts and safety net evisceration budget. So he's pausing to try and get the big victories through congress first.
"
We could have worse candidates, but I'd prefer better ones. Still, I wish him well.
"
I think I get all that but the question of free trade is more nuanced in the Dem coalition than describing it as "adopting the opposite" covers. Clinton, after all, oversaw NAFTA and Obama was a relatively decent free trader too while W had significant apostacies on Trade and Trump, of course, never met a tariff he didn't love.
The complexity of packaging that and selling it is why politics is difficult. The Dems have had a pretty nuanced and sensible approach to trade. Biden certainly wasn't an enthusiastic free trader- he didn't ink any free trade bills, but he primarily rolled back free trade in an area of industrial policy that was based on national security considerations rather than economic/moral arguments and was pretty easy to defend (unless you're a doctrinaire free trader).
But, really, the Dems are early in a wilderness phase so all the factions trotting out their positions and aligned journalists, like Chait, flying the banners for their respective positions is part of the operational process of a healthy party. Marketing trade to voters is hard to fit into a sound bite but a clever enough politician can be both appealing and vague enough to sell just about any policy and, after Trumps idiocy, just about any nuanced trade position should be a political winner.
And this is all presuming that A) Trump doesn't eventually realize that his Tariff nonsense is killing him, declares victory and rolls it all back or B) the GOP in congress realizes the tariff nonsense will kill THEM before it kills Trump and joins with the Dems to end all of it.
On “Next Throughput: An Electronic Resistance to Unreason”
Why am I not surprised a Shapiro is involved with this outfit?
R.R. Martin cuddling the pups was a super cute pic but my cruel brain just grunted and thought *well anything to put off writing the next book*.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.