State of the Discussion

It is hard to imagine much more that Trump would do if he were actively working for the Chinese or Russians. I don't believe he is (he's just an elderly idiot) but it remains a daunting mental exercise.

The Courts are less than one percent of the gov. The bulk answer to Trump.

Trump fired everyone he could when he entered office. That's the top 3+ levels of management with most being people who were there to carry out the will of upper management. So that's a lot of "tribal" knowledge and the people who understands how to do stuff.

Some of upper management understand just how fished they are without people to carry out orders, others do not. In addition a lot of upper management were given their jobs for insane reasons. Kennedy for his opposition to medical science. Whoever is in Justice and various other law enforcement agencies needs to be good with Trump pardoning the Jan 6th rioters.

So the overall competence level of the gov has gone massively down. We should expect every department to have it's own equiv of Signal Gate on a daily basis it's just mostly it doesn't end up in the news.

We should expect massive amounts of really stupid stuff, maybe including defying court orders, to happen just because the gov doesn't have the ability to do a lot of basic stuff.

And here we go with the constitutional crisis: A Federal judge Paula Xinis has ordered the Trump administration to bring Kilmar Abrego Garcia back from El Salvador _right now_. To have him back in the US by _Monday_.

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/04/el-salvador-deportation-ruling-trump-administration-00272872

In fairly usual move by the government and is seen more often in 'criminal defense attorney has to make excuses for his client', the lawyer for the DOJ was begging to get another 24 hours so he could convince _his client_ to do what the court asked without issuing the order.

Shortly before the judge ruled, the visibly frustrated attorney pleaded with Xinis for 24 hours to try to persuade U.S. officials to try to seek Abrego Garcia’s return without intervention by the court.

Which is basically a straight up admission of 'My client is not going to follow your orders and things are about to get really bad for us, but my client is a complete moron and doesn't understand that'.

Which they are. The government is operated by idiots who do not understand that asserting that they cannot get get people back from El Salvador puts them in violation of all sorts of laws and will make the courts incredibly reluctant to allow them _ever_ put _anyone_ there or, indeed, do anything at _all_ WRT immigration.

Also, interesting fact: The Attorney General has been signing these legal papers, a thing which the AG would not normally do, which makes _her_ legally liable and avoids any possible claim of irregularity if she gets hauled into court to explain the government's position. It seems very strange for her to volunteer to do this, but not when you realize that lawyers have been probably been very reluctant to sign their names onto the Trump administration's legal theories, and having Bondi also sign means they cannot be thrown under the bus...and also means they can resign from the case and just throw her under her own bus. I am suspecting the lawyer will wake up Monday morning, be at a 'bring your toothbrush' to court moment (Aka, they might throw me in jail on content and not let me leave.) on Monday when he shows up without the detainee, and will instead be quitting his job this weekend.

As I've said before, my working assumption is that the goal is the North American Empire under Donald the First. If you're on the Donald's side, it doesn't matter how you justify the walls at this point, so long as the walls go up.

There was no tariff plan you would have been okay with. Hell, I doubt there is much of anything President Trump could do that you would agree with.

I don't think that's quite the own you seem to think it is.

I was just going to post this. They really don't have much power over President Trump at this point. It would take a coup to get him out of office and to reverse course.

No, the issue is that the way the tariffs were set is very, very stupid. Like, no rational person with even a basic understanding of economics or international trade would set tariffs that way.

More importantly, on a personal level, I'm not online as much as I used to be, so the opportunities for serious owns are few and far between, so thank you, man, for teeing one up for me. Next time, read the articles you post.

This WaPo article is making the rounds from (anonymous) inside sources on how the 'tariff' formula was picked.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/04/04/trump-tariffs-reason-advisers/

There's also additional (anonymous) reporting on some of the pre-negotiations with other nations... the operative point (IMO) is this: "“It’s not clear what they want to achieve,” the diplomat said."

Putting the two things together... the article suggests that negotiations were unclear on what was needed -- i.e. Tariff reductions or barriers to trade or both and what would happen if they did them. In the end, those 'concessions' were fruitless because the formula Trump selected wasn't one of the ones that factored tariffs and barriers.

And, implied is that now none of the states know exactly how to get out of the box because changing the trade imbalance is downstream of lots of other things and not something govts can simply control by negotiations.

Strange to have a self-described billionaire as president, and the richest man on the planet as, er, co-president, and ask where the oligarchs are.

I mean, I get the joke, but the oligarchs are in the fishin' building.

and Jimmy Carter being secretly replaced with an android.

That was a joke in a movie (parody).

There was a Chinese official explaining that... "The Jimmy Carter who went to China wasn't the one we sent back".

Oh good lord.

Years ago when I worked in downtown DC I used to encounter a guy near Union Station passing out 'literature' on this sort of thing. I remember occasionally taking it to thumb through for laughs. In addition to chemtrails there were stories about fruit drinks turning children into lizard creatures and Jimmy Carter being secretly replaced with an android. There was kind of a sad story behind it. IIRC the guy's son had been killed in Iraq which I can only assume contributed to the break with reality he was experiencing.

In any case I miss the days when there was a little more distance between crazy street proselytizers and those in the halls of government.

YOU CANT USE RATIONAL THOUGHTS WHEN ANALYZING TRUMP’S ACTIONS. THERE ARE NO PLANS. THERE JUST THE RAGES AND OBSESSIONS OF AN OLD AND VERY STUPID MAN.

Any time someone tries to analyze Trump’s actions rationally, I imagine their neurons are saying raise the cognitive defense shields, raise the cognitive defense shields!!

Embrace the madness