I, more than Chait, clearly overestimated the Trumpkins. The choice to simply claim prosperity was Trumps doing rather than go down as the one who ended it seems like a no brainer in the wake of November.

Something Chait muses about over at the Atlantic and something I'd agonized about right after the election in November, was that this is a historically massive own goal on Trumps' part. All he needed to do was to do nothing substantively but switch his jawjaw tune from "The economy is garbage" to "The economy is great thanks to me" and the vibessession would have ended and the media would have been wall to wall with "the genius of Trump" nonsense. Trump utterly cratering the economy is, politically, the less dangerous thing he could have done vis a vis trying to topple the electoral order. It'd be a lot harder to try it with a hostile populace and congress controlled by the Dems which Trump seems to be working hard to conjure.

Once again, don't be fooled by the naked idiocy- there's no deeper scheme; they really just are idiots. Cold comfort but that's something.

In theory congress could knock this whole flaming edifice of feces down. The law Trump is using to impose these tariffs obligates Congress to weigh in on it. The current congress actually fiddled with their legislative calendar (IIRC) to functionally make their entire legislative session "day one" of this term specifically to evade a legally required vote on Trumps tarrifs. A new congress (in less than 2 years) or even this congress, if they notice the whining of the rails under their feet or the shrieking of their (suddenly much less) wealthy paymasters could put an end to this stuff with a vote.

But I'm very glad you saw the writing on the wall and jumped off near the peak.

The people I feel for are older folks nearing retirement or depending on investments for fixed income. The stock market, surely, is going to crater like nothing we've seen before. I'm in my mid forties so I can just avert my gaze from the 401k and chant "so long as you keep working you can ride this out" but if I was near retirement age... brrrr... I can't imagine.

It's a new height of idiocy from a dude who already was setting new records for it. He even, fishing, tariffed the Israeli's after they dropped all tariffs against the US.

Probably because of your canine sympathies.

Based on their performance so far? Zero. But to be generous I'll assume it's one.

I have that impression as well.

Seems like a plausible explanation.

The entire plan, such as it seems to be a coherent plan at all, is to let Trump do whatever he feels like while Musk and Trumps other hangers on run around damaging as many government functions (especially tax collection) as they can while trying to generate enough distraction that the GOP will somehow be able to eviscerate the safety net legislatively and pass an even bigger deficit exploding tax cut. The longer-term hope seems to be that somehow the voting rubes won't be angry enough to give Dems a big enough or long enough majority to undo the damage and tax the fish out of the plutocrats to pay for all their chicanery.

Heheheh 20 million dollars to lose by 9 points, couldn't happen to a nicer plutocrat.

It is possible though I don't know if it's plausible. The Dems haven't really decided what the fish they're offering yet which is to be expected at this stage of the electoral cycle and Bezo's "personal liberty and free markets" lines are word for word republitarianism which is something Trump has coopted in word (though emphatically not in deed).

Well, sure, if they meant it they would be hammering Trump. If I were a libertarian I'd be absolutely furious with what Trump and Musk are up to. Small government nostrums and Libertarian terms are all over this stuff. If Musk and Trump keep at this the whole dictionary and directory of libertarianism will go from being not taken seriously to being actively despised.

Smart. I'm not a coder but I can predict that if they're deranged enough to try it; it's going to be a clusterfish to rival all clusterfishes.

Is that before or after he tries to migrate Social Security off its legacy systems and onto newer ones in the course of a couple months?

https://www.wired.com/story/doge-rebuild-social-security-administration-cobol-benefits/

What cat isn't?

Heh, my "enjoyment" of bowling is so marginal it'd easily tip it into a "nope, never wanna do it no matter how good the company is" mindset.

Yes it's very well done! Good on you DavidTC!

Okay automated pin setters make a lot of sense- could you imagine paying for pin boys?

Like an overhead projector? That you'd write on with erasable marker? That's just nuts! The past really is another country.

Also... what is with those various strike-spare animations? They are different at various alleys and a lot of them seem like they came right out of a crack hallucination.

Well done.

I agree it was legal and I even agree it wasn't a great look which is kind of the Clintons in a nutshell. I just think you're projecting and exaggerating most of the alleged nefariousness of it. What it boils down to is that the Clintons caused billions of dollars to flow to charitable causes that otherwise wouldn't have. No one has been able to demonstrate any actual corrupt acts, any corrupt exchanges -the right just spins it up in their imagination; asserts it's true and then, jaw droppingly, try to one up on it when in power. It worked so well against the Clintons because they’d always been very skeevy but we’ve watched them throw it at every left wing political figure since: Biden; Bernie and, idiotically, even at Barrak fishin Obama (who is virtually the exact opposite of the Clintons both for good- he’s squeaky clean, and for ill- he’s always seemed to disdain retail politicking).

And that's where I bridle at the whole mess of it. You don't get to blame W's trillion-dollar war adventures or the way supporting his massive deficit spending obliterated libertarianism and neoconservatism in the hearts of the masses on Bill Clintons antics in the 90's. The neocons and the libertarians let W discredit them themselves. You don't get to blame Trump hollowing the GOP out and wearing it like a skin suit while being a convicted fraudster and nakedly (and legally convicted) being corrupt on Hillary Clintons behavior as Sec of state*. The GOP and conservatives sold their souls on that on their own.

And you sure as fish don’t get to blame the things Trump is doing now on the fishin’ Clintons- they’ve been off the scene for almost a decade now. Economic Sanity? The Clintons epitomized it and dragged the left along. Ethics? The Clintons committed appearances of impropriety but the right has convicted and unabashed corruption. And the Clintons never provoked constitutional crises and the GOP under Trump is churning it out on the weekly.

*Though anyone and everyone is entitled to blame her for losing to him. God(ess) damn it Hill, you. Had. One. Job.

To be clear the little pleasure in this case is Stefanik's discomfiture; expecting a seat out of those districts isn't something you celebrate unless it's in hand.

Sometimes you have to enjoy the small, sweet moments in life.

Ah I appreciate the explanation. I'm sorry, it hurtled so far over my head it didn't even ruffle my hair.