So Val Kilmer….what a fucking asshole. I did a weekend job for him in the early 80’s. Guy was into footplay. Kept trying to put his toe in my mouth.
I told him to cut it out after waking up with the piggy that stayed home on my tongue. I told him I would bite the fucker off if he tried again. Sure enough an hour later…he tries again. So I went for it, and tried to bite his fucking toe off.
He pulled his foot away just in time. A couple years later, he’s doing that shit in movies. What an asshole.
Liberation Day! Apparently the markets aren’t happy.
After all the shit we get for having their back, they had tariffs on us the entire time? This is worse than USS Liberty.
Walter Block: “sure tariffs are bad but the income tax is what really sucks.”
Yes we know, the FBI lied.
Don’t just sue this clown—deport him!
Gmail? That’s just fucking stupid.
Perception is reality as they say.
That’s enough for you. I’m going back to work.
The fact that Trump wants to eliminate the income tax and the IRS puts him ahead of any Republican in office or any libertarian seeking office.
Yeah, tariffs are dumb. Lesser of 2 evils.
He literally just raised my taxes.
And has no shot at eliminating income taxes.
Fuck. That. Asshole.
‘He literally just raised my taxes.’
How so?
I meant to say unilaterally and not literally.
And I would hope you know the answer.
I assume you mean the tariffs, I’m just trying to understand if there is some other tax that also got raised.
Tariffs are bad. The reflexive anti Trump shrieking and ridiculous fiction that he is somehow wrecking what is currently an ongoing system of “free trade” is incredibly tedious.
I was shocked to learn that Canada has (potentially had) tariffs between their provinces.
I recently learned about that from a Tos post. Absolutely mad.
That used to be a problem here and a big reason for the formation of the Federal Government.
This. It’s pure anti-Trump psychosis. Most have *zero* clue what a tariff even *is.* But Trump is ‘doing something’ with them, so they’re evil. Just like him.
The reciprocal tariffs are kind of fun to watch.
“Hey Europe and Canada, we’re going to tariff your stuff like you’ve been tariffing our goods for decades.”
Instant crying meltdowns and screams of “betrayal” by our bestie allies.
Yup, screw them all.
It’s a game of chicken.
“It’s a game of chicken.”
Yes. Well-put. Trump was open about the reciprocity. I’m not sure I’ve seen anyone say that’s an ‘unlaudable’ goal. Hard for Euros+ to hate Trump’s game when it’s the same one everyone is obviously playing.
Revealing.
“ ridiculous fiction that he is somehow wrecking what is currently an ongoing system of “free trade” is incredibly tedious”
This is a straw man. No one is arguing this.
You sure about that?
https://financialpost.com/opinion/trump-carney-wrecking-ball-free-trade
That’s pretty much the headline over at the WSJ, although their op-ed uses “blowing up” instead of “wrecking”
Trump’s New Protectionist Age
Blowing up the world trading system has consequences that the President isn’t advertising.
Why it matters: The administration’s handling of sensitive information is already under scrutiny, and Gmail is even less secure than Signal.
Gmail less secure than Signal is quite the understatement.
NOAA uses Google. We cannot interface with them because the DOT does not allow Google products. FedGov…its perfect
The revelations themselves – documented in official records and grant disclosures – are undeniable and should shock anyone who values truth. The means of exposure matter far less than what’s being exposed: one of the largest narrative control operations in history.
“We are all deeply, deeply sorry you found out about this.”
A spot of sunshine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfHUa3GD5aU
From the Brownstone article:
Think about the cycle: American taxpayers unknowingly funded the crisis itself – then paid again to be deceived about it.
It’s almost like a self-licking ice cream cone.
fedgov is a money laundering operation
That article was TL;DR but I got a kick out of this:
lol The 1980s or maybe earlier called.
Sure, USAID has done some good work – but so did Al Capone with his soup kitchens. Just as the infamous gangster’s charity work made him untouchable in his community, USAID’s aid programs create a veneer of benevolence that makes questioning their larger agenda politically impossible.
No way.
“After all the shit we get for having their back, they had tariffs on us the entire time?”
Like literally all our ‘allies’.
“Smotrich signs directive to immediately scrap remaining tariffs on US goods, mainly in agriculture, with US president about to hit trade partners with tit-for-tat duties”
So .. it’s working?
President Trump announced that the U.S. will impose a 10% tariff on all imports, and even higher rates for some nations, in a series of moves he declared “Liberation Day” for U.S. trade policy.
He said that the U.S. was going to be “charging a discounted reciprocal tariff” because the U.S. is kind. For China, the U.S. is levying a 34% tariff, then for Europe “we’re going to charge them 20%” and Japan 24%. He is going down the list of more than a dozen countries.
Better than I thought in North America.
However, people will not be happy long term. OTH, it will be interesting to see what happens in Europe.
I’m hoping the end game is lower tariffs everywhere, but I’m not holding my breath.
Nike Shares Tumble After Trump Puts 46% Tariff on Vietnam
Sounds like time to buy some Nike…
Oil down. Gold up.
As expected.
Oh. Damn.
https://x.com/RapidResponse47/status/1907531727683334384
We should charge 2x what they charge us, minimum.
“Including currency manipulation and trade barriers”. I wonder how much creative math is in those numbers.
I notice the countries with the highest tariffs on us are hotbeds of slave labor.
Jamie: I remember a cartoon from back in the early ’70s portraying a car salesman, a lawyer and a weatherman seated on stools while another guy dressed in a wizard’s outfit (robes with sun moon stars) was waving his arms and talking. Printed on his wizard outfit was ECONOMIST.
One of the three seated guys is whispering to the others “We haven’t got shit on this guy”
I dont believe any economic numbers, period. They are all lies.
I saw beer and aluminum can blanks were both getting hit with a 25% tariff. I could always do a deep clean of the brewing equipment and get ready to make my own again…
Maybe, just maybe, we could all go to bottles, pitchers, and growlers.
You know, glass!
ZWAK:
For breweries, it’s cheaper to get a bottling line versus a canning line (by a large amount); however, the operating cost for a bottling line was much cheaper than a canning line (at least it used to be, not sure with the new 25% tariffs on aluminum can blanks). For breweries that don’t have either, there are mobile canning companies (they come to your brewery, hook into your tank, can, and label the beers) there’s no mobile bottling lines.
Quite a few of the newer (6= years open) would do kegs only, and then bring in a canning line if they wanted to get into distribution (Ohio allows self distribution).
Better than I expected. Maybe the Street feared worse. Especially in NA.
Even better.
What would the benefits be thereof? First of all, there are many intelligent, productive people who work for the IRS. There are some 90,000 of them. If dismissed by their employer, they would be freed up to produce goods and services desired by the populace.
Whoah, easy now.
For China, the U.S. is levying a 34% tariff
Those cheap knockoff aluminum small block Chevy cylinder heads won’t be so cheap no more.
Whoah, easy now.
Yeah, that’s deep in “claimed without evidence” territory.
This is a straw man. No one is arguing this.
Bullshit.
No economist or pundit that I’ve encountered is arguing this tariff approach is ruining a perfect system of free trade. Maybe you can identify some who are.
Obviously they’re all arguing these tariffs make people generally more poor and less free, but that to me is more nuanced.
If the tariffs Trump is implementing are in fact directly reciprocal I find it very hard to climb on board the “They are bad” wagon. You can argue that protectionist tariffs are ultimately counter productive and harm the economy they are supposed to benefit, and I believe that you are correct over the entire economy and over any protracted period, but foreign tariffs harm domestic industries as well, and reciprocity seems a very fair and reasonable weapon to try and eliminate those foreign tariffs.
I can actually entertain the reciprocal argument.
Don’t actually believe that’s what he’s doing.
See later arguments below though.
I think this is example 9001 of the literalness v seriousness issue in Trump watching. It is generally a mistake to take him literally. He talks a lot of shit both to troll people and as a miss-direction or bargaining tactic. It is also a mistake not to take him seriously. I could be wrong, I often am, but while Trump has some surprising blind spots, he is not an economic idiot and I think he is fully aware that it is not possible for tariffs to simultaneously generate huge amounts of revenue, provide the impetus for a revival of domestic manufacturing, and open foreign markets to US goods. Obviously the more of any one of these three things that happens the less of the other two that can. Tariffs will only create big revenue if they don’t reduce imports while staying in place. If they are effective in getting other countries to the table to enter agreements to remove the tariffs in both directions they go away, and if they force companies to move production back to the US then they don’t apply to those goods which are no longer imported.
“Let me reiterate, NSA Waltz received emails and calendar invites from legacy contacts on his personal email and cc’d government accounts for anything since January 20th to ensure compliance with records retention, and he has never sent classified material over his personal email account or any unsecured platform.”
In other words, nothing to see here.
One thing that keeps coming up over this is the word classified.
Now, something has to be classified, by a person qualified to do so, for something to be classified, no? And, apparently, none of this was.
Should it have been? Dunno. But in any case, it wasn’t.
Signal was approved by the Biden administration for secure communications. Everyone Trump appoints gets a government phone with Signal already installed. Were they a little cavalier? Possibly, but the only issue at all with this is how the reporter got on the string.
Original Classification Authority:
https://securityawareness.usalearning.gov/oca/index.htm
Default declassification date is 25 years hence. If any part of a message is classified, the whole thing is. See portion marking for more info.
Well maybe 3/4 of the time,
3/5ths.
I’m not shitting my pants over tariffs, or praising them. I’m on the fence waiting to see what happens, because you can’t use past uses of tariffs. Every situation has been different. I’ve read everything from pants shitting hysteria to “they’re not going to be that bad”. I do think there will be some short term issues, but there’s potential for longer term gain. The problem is, we’ve become a society with the patience of a toddler.
Agreed. I’m interested in watching the consumer pivots – there is minimal price elasticity for many items.
Yeah, I probably should have gone out and bought a case worth of wine.
The moderately-priced American stuff is disproportionately sweet shit like Moscato.
Who pays? Anyone buying or selling the product. Who gains? The government.
Just another tax. Hidden, of course.
Amen.
Tariffs: Short term (hopefully) pain for long term (hopefully) gain. Is the US market as importent as we think it is? We’ll soon find out one way or the other, probably should have picked them off in smaller batches though.
I can think of three arguments for why they might be good long term.
1) They are primarily designed to force other countries to lower their tariffs.
2) They have a strategic benefit in case of war or conflict.
3) This would enable us to lower other types of taxes (such as income)
While I’d love to be wrong, I ultimately don’t believe any.
#1 is obviously not true unless Trump is lying to the media. Simply listen to him for 5 minutes and you’ll learn he believes tariffs are inherently good. Also other countries who have removed tariffs (ie, recently Israel) are still getting smacked with them today. We will see though.
#2 You might be able to make this argument for a few things and a few countries. But this obviously doesn’t apply to most.
Ultimately I also think it actually makes the danger of war more likely in certain ways.
#3 Maybe I’m black pilled but I think this is somewhat naive.
I would be willing to wager a nice bottle of booze with any Glib that Trump does not eliminate or even greatly reduce income taxes. He simply doesn’t have enough control of the government.
There will still be a 2T deficit this year. Trying to mask the spending problem with a little smoke and mirrors won’t work.
Anyone who thinks Trump is a laissez-faire kinda guy is beyond deluded.
I am mostly remembering the pain and anguish of the first Regan term, and the need for change from a central, planned economy and a move toward a more dynamic economics.
Most of what we hearing are bs excuses used to express hate at change, and hate that someone’s preferred economic model has been found wanting. Will this work? I have no idea, but a lot of areas are in the hole from the internationalist economy of the last 30 odd years.
That’s interesting.
Are you disputing that people have gotten wealthier over the past few decades?
I remember this was a huge Bernie Sanders fan argument as well that seems to have some play among Trump supporters.
I’ve been looking for a concise and quantitfiable definition of “wealth” to track changes in it over time. Does anyone have one handy?
I’ve been looking for a concise and quantitfiable definition of “wealth” to track changes in it over time. Does anyone have one handy?
A husband/father working a blue-collar job being able to raise a middle-class family on a single income.
Much like landing on the moon, what was achievable 50 years ago seems out of reach now.
Just because people can get a cheaper TV doesn’t make them wealthier. What people are looking for is a level of economic security that we don’t have. SSD gets it below, although the single working parent aspect doesn’t really concern me. But, good jobs lead to a lower level of crime, better education outcomes, and other social benefits. And these benefits are not replicable with a UBI, which seemed to be the trajectory we were on with the internationalist economic platform.
In other words, wealth, if only tracked by a monetary number, may increase, while social wealth might decrease.
When I see molecules, I see nuts, bolts, gears, and springs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xUEi7Sd9bE
Essential amino acids have a chain-like structure, but there are many other possible amino acids. It would be worthwhile to synthesize ones based on hexamethylenetetramine, as that has been detected in various meteorites.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-20038-x
Trump is not raising tariffs. This is not an environment where everything is static except what Trump does. He is forcing other countries to lower their tariffs.
Every time the guy farts the chorus of wailing and crying begins. It is truly the end of times. Get your affairs in order.
Akshully, he doesn’t have to force them to lower their tariffs. He just effectively cut them in half.
I don’t buy it (see my #1 above) but we will see.
If this true and these are only reciprocal in nature then he’s lying about his reasons every day.
I think we all know by now, don’t go by his brain farts, go by what actually happens.
Rhywun,
I mean I *hope* this is true.
I’m on the fence waiting to see what happens, because you can’t use past uses of tariffs.
“Wait and see?” That’s crazy talk.
People who get paid to make snap judgements are looking at people like you (and me) and projecting a recession based on completely random short term data points.
Today in stupid “thin blue line” ideas…
Florida law enforcement officers who use deadly or harmful force could have their names shielded from the public under a proposed state law.
The proposal would prohibit law enforcement agencies from releasing any public record that identifies the officer for 72 hours after they shoot someone or use other force that causes “great bodily harm.”
But even after that 72-hour period expires, an agency head can decide to indefinitely withhold the officer’s information if they deem it necessary.
The King’s Men are already shielded by qualified immunity. Low-level bureaucrats who make a questionable or bad shoot should be named and, if appropriate, shamed.
“Tuttle? His name is Buttle. There must be some mistake”
“We don’t make mistakes”
Big titties for THICC Thursday.
https://archive.is/9XYZP
Thursday? Easy fella I think you’re a bit premature.
Asian tits?
Uh oh, how embarrassing. Premature publication.
You’re refusing to look, out of principle?
“Asian tits?”
Noticed, what you did there.
Futures ain’t looking so good, down a 1000 now.
But we’ve got those people that were ripping us off now!
Futures ain’t looking so good, down a 1000 now.
In the long run, we’re all dead.
Walter Block may not love the income tax, but H&R sure do.