On this 'liberation day' I'm reminded of Norm's clip about going to war ... with the World.

Maybe just start with a hemisphere or some ripe continent spoiling for a fight and see how that goes first.https://t.co/Qque9xdxQ2

— Marchmaine (@Marchmaine) April 2, 2025

I take your point; Part 3 is where the votes are.

But the reason why Cass (and others) are at least interesting to follow is that the goal of Economic Policy shifts for them *isn't* a friend/enemy reward/punish model... it's a game referee model and the goal is to stop ignoring rules infractions because they benefit the current order (in the short term)... changing the rules *always* causes some disruption somewhere. Changing the rules stupidly (as Cass is implying about Trump) will bring about more and stupid disruptions (and by implication - somewhat unnecessary).

But in the end, the point isn't tariffs or no-tariffs, its addressing the lies about the rules - and who benefits from them.

It's not the very best Jon Stewart clip... but as far as digesting a pretty boring speaker (Cass), it has some value.

I think JB is wrong about McCain/Romney and I don't think he's GHWB... so let me see if I can break it down by the good 'ole stool analogy.

Leg 1: Economics/Libertarians
* He's explicitly taking down the Free Market fundamentalists... Markets are good, but markets are basically all about games/rules/incentives. There is no invisible hand.

Leg 2: Foreign Policy/Neo-cons
* He's explicitly acknowledging a multi-polar world order, and the goal isn't maximal containment, but strategic alignment; which means honey/carrots/sticks and the willingness to use whichever is needed. Pax Americana comes with duties from those who participate. But the era of hegemony is over and over-extension will lead to losing our allies in the medium term.

Leg 3: Social/So-Cons
* He's not a bootstrap conservative; he thinks the 47% has been ill-served by the economic policies of Leg #1 and that arbitraging labor *isn't* a comparative advantage in trade; the market should have rules that benefit families and the state has a role in making policies that protect and advance civil society.

None of those things are 'conservative' in the old Republican synthesis kind of way.

But, what Steward missed (this is pretty common) is that challenging the old consensus doesn't mean that the Left's solutions are vindicated -- he's got different ideas from Romney/McCain/Clinton/Obama/Pelosi/Trump/McConnel that he's peddling.

Basically everyone thinks he's wrong about everything, but from different angles. And that's ok.

I think the premise that someone like Cass is working with is that Trump and Musk *aren't* on-board. This isn't a Trump/Musk explainer.

Folks like Rubio have flirted with these non-orthodox ideas (they go broader than simple tariffs) but as Cass says, Politicians are lagging indicators -- they rarely lead the way. Cass mentions a few other folks on the economic side with whom I believe he has a direct line.

So yeah, that's what makes some of the Stewart interview 'funny' to watch, Cass doesn't have a mission to trash Trump... so he just let's Stewart's jokes roll over him... and he's pretty clear that he thinks Trump/Musk are not competently executing whatever plan it is they think they are executing (that's the point of the article). But his audience isn't Trump/Musk/McConnel or any of the Old Republicans or MAGA cultists... he explicitly says the targets are 40-under.

Post-Trump is pretty explicit in his by-line...

Come for the Jon Stewart fun, stay for the autistic nerd talking about the new-center-right economic policies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgEQeLR-M0g

To me, Cass is interesting for his Pre-Post-Trump positioning...

I think he fumbled a couple answers ... I don't think he quite gets across his message that NATO doesn't have to be destroyed to become renewed/reordered effectively (it kinda gets tacked on at the end after he meanders a bit); and I think he's too circumspect 'implying' what he pretty much says, which is that the Trump Admin is poorly run and even if you enact some policies that *could* be good, if you do them haphazardly and without a clear outline of what other countries can do to amend behaviors to bring trade into alignment... then you aren't doing good policies at all. Or, per usual, the Trump Admin undermines everything it touches. It's pretty clear that his long-term Post-Trump objective is tied to younger parts of the party... but he doesn't define his future goals as either supporting Trump nor directly taking Trump to task for botching things up.

He addresses this second point directly in this essay (probably written after the interview, I assume) where he critiques the administration for not articulating the point, direction or correction behind tariffs. So, if you were looking for a steelman on the Point/Purpose of Tariffs if handled by a competent administration, this is your article.

https://www.understandingamerica.co/p/americas-three-demands

As a supervillain origin story, he tells how he was the guy tasked by Mitt Romney(!) to look at the China trade policies... and turns out, there was a bit of a gap between theory and reality. This is before (I think) Autor's China Shock came out. So out of the Romney Bain Capital labs ...

My 17yo daughter went to see Snow White last weekend... when she got back I asked, 'So, was it woke?'

'Worse,' she said, 'It was boring.'

I suppose that's what they mean by underperforming as word of mouth gets out.

That isn't the operative part of the monologue. The part that resonated with a *lot* of vets (WW2, Korea, and Vietnam) was the part we'd now call his PTSD breakdown.

"Nothing is over, Nothing!" is the line that set's up the monologue.

But JB's point stands, Rambo is built around this 4 minute monologue vs. quips.

https://youtu.be/oLBMqORKWSg?si=003HXWOA4hRo-ZQE

"If there’s a speech you remember from Stallone, it’s a surprisingly heartfelt"

Hadn't thought about that, but yeah... Stallone's Rambo is built around the monologue he gives to Col. Trautman.

Forgot to add that this would effectively mean that the Sox play without a DH all year, right :-p

I certainly appreciate the idea of trade-offs with certain rules; but I suspect that the Players Association would strike before ever letting pitchers to hit again, plus I'd expect them to balk (so to speak) at the perverse incentive of making Starters pitch even if they are out of gas possibly leading to more injuries.

That said, I *do* like the rule change requiring relievers to face minimum number of batters... I could see maybe trying some expansions around that ruleset.

We had 80yrs of inefficiency that made the game lively *and* HR friendly.

Since then we've seen batting averages drop 30 points, strikeouts/game go from 2.5 to 8.5 and walks go up by 1/game and HR go up 1/game. While the total runs per game is exactly the same at 4.39 (odd coincidence between 1920/2024 - but variance is low)

Which is just to say that we've optimized for Walks/Strikeouts/HR at the expense of putting balls in play.

One small bright side is that making the bases 3" larger increased stolen bases per game by 50%... which puts it on the higher side in the ebb/flow of SB over time.

That why I started with 'lower the mound' ... the biggest 'bad' trend in baseball is the Strikeout. The overall bad trend is fewer balls in play - which makes the game less interesting to watch... overall. But yes, HR are fun and if we lowered the mound without doing anything else? We'd get even more of them and more walks.

So... expand the parks, keep the ball lively and batted around the park more and lets see what happens.

Otherwise it's just the long march of Earl Weaver through the baseball institutions.

"That hitters were unwilling or unable to do that is part of the problem."

Should've lowered the mound instead.

Just not sure what to do with Three True Outcomes baseball. If I'm being serious and waving a magic wand? Need to make the ballparks bigger.

More ground to cover for fielders and fewer homeruns = more hits on contact... and if every ball can't be launched for a HR... then also lower the mound to address strikeouts. But, we all know what the chicks think about the longball.

But I do like the pitch clock and ending the OCD batter rituals.

Heh, I see what you're doing; it's funnier to play Chait saying this straight.

To be fair to David's original point, I expect the Tesla firebombers really have their shit together.

The guy from Inglorious Basterds was in there too?

Man, talk about bad OpSec.

Edit to add: On the plus side, can we all not stand back an appreciate how far we've come from an insecure home email server to using state of the art dual encryption?

Of all the random Jeff's in the world... they got the Editor in Chief of the Atlantic Jeff.

Talk about bad luck.

Came here to post that I never get invited to the cool group chats. Good for Jeffrey.

Thanks, hadn't seen that.

So the French Scientist was randomly selected for screening and the TSA (mis-)characterized them as "hate and conspiracy messages" that the FBI investigated and dropped?

Seems like shockingly bad luck and sub-optimal, yes. I'm at least a little curious whether they were orangeman bad memes or kinda unhinged hate speech that would get you arrested in the UK -per links above - by way of comparison.

The other example from Newsweek was:

"Dr. Rasha Alawieh, a physician at Brown Medicine in Rhode Island, held a "valid" H-1B visa when she was detained at Boston's Logan International Airport last week. She was returning to the U.S. following a trip to Lebanon to visit family. U.S. officials said she had photos of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, whose funeral she attended."

Seems potentially optimal... she wasn't randomly searched, but rather either the DHS knew she attended the funeral and barred her entry or she voluntarily said she attended the funeral (reporting isn't certain on either of these points) and her case was referred to DHS.

I will, however, adjust my priors one-tick to the left that 'maybe' this is something keeping an eye on to see if it's a real pattern emerges.

My baseline assumption is that it's related to Mahmoud Khalil... which strikes me as a bad comp for tourists; are there other instances I should be looking at?

Strikes me as odd because *in England* you can be arrested for what is posted on Facebook; but while visiting America there is no real or imagined risk of being 'deported' while on vacation for something you might have posted on Facebook that wouldn't get you arrested in England in the first place.

Specifically:
Communications Act (2003)
Online Safety Act (2023)

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/21/section/127

The night before was 'The Incredibles' and was packed when we drove by (in our golf cart... which is something people do now -- in my day you took open sided Trams and liked it).

'Ways to be Wicked' is the opening to the Descendants 2 movie that cleared the room. Long Live Evil is more of a slogan, I guess.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lX6g_cm2rM4

This is a good way to put it; the Disney creative types kinda hate the Disney vibe.

Its funny, we were visiting my folks in FL and took an impromptu trip to Disney. We've been going to Fort Wilderness since 1973, and the new 'Cabins' are really nice for families. Anyhow, we went to the nightly Campfire where you roast marshmallows, sing songs, do the hokey pokey, and then watch a Disney movie. Pretty much the same thing since 1973.

The 'singer' is really a sort of stand-up act with corny G-rated jokes plus a few insiders for the Moms/Dads... actual Chip and Dale in costumes come up as props (my kids have no idea who Chip and Dale are). And everyone sings Country Roads and a bunch of other Americana. My 10yo boy laughed at the jokes, groaned at the puns, sang the songs and then did the big group hokey pokey (with Chip and Dale).

As I say, completely on-brand Disney lightly humorous Americana.

Then the Disney Movie started: Long Live Evil music video

Sure, the movie (Descendants 2) is a dreadful 'Saved by the Bell' quality tween drama, but dreadful cringe it is. Desperate to be cool and failing at every step. We left after act 1 (as did everyone else), but the drop off from 200 people dancing the hokey pokey with a 50yo guitar playing comedian? Couldn't be more clear when witnessed in person.

Anyhow, my 17yo daughter went to see Snow White last night with her friend because they like princesses and are a little ironic tuned; her friend is 'really' conservative (which, given us is, well, remarkable) so I'll get the 17yo conservative girl princess take when she gets back from work.

Worst CGI evah pic.twitter.com/X64KImLc9p

— Marchmaine (@Marchmaine) March 12, 2025

This is Ravenna and Belasarius erasure!

My personal pet peeve was 'Early Modern' starting in 1500 and going to 1800. Felt like it was leading the witness.

410 to 793 is about as long as I'd go for an 'era' ... 793 to 1071 is the Varangian era ... Vikings/Byzantium/Carolingians

At any rate, Empires coming and going have nothing to do with 'Darkness' and there's little to be 'learned' about Rome's fall in 476 - especially since it survived and thrived until 1453. In the 'Dark Ages', the dominant powers were Rome and Persia (and China)... and those darned Steppe Peoples. And...