Lying about polls (or anything else). Who would have guessed it? Altogether now: All. of. Us.
Well, when White Houses and campaigns cite private polling, you have to read fine print very carefully. Here’s what Dasha Burns reported:
It shows the tariffs strategy is playing well among working-class voters who agree with Trump that other nations have taken advantage of the U.S
The key phrase here is “among working-class voters who agree with Trump that other nations have taken advantage of the U.S.” That is not working class voters as the report suggests. It’s a small subset of voters who are almost certainly very pro-Trump. So, what the White House is saying is that the tariffs are playing well with Trump’s biggest supporters.
Well, no shit. Of course, they are.
What matters is how persuadable or soft Trump voters feel about the tariffs. These are the voters who will decide the midterms. The fact that the White House had to slice the salami so thin to find a poll result that seems positive tells you everything you need to know about the terrible politics of Trump’s tariffs.
Now for some real polls.
I wrote about the polling on tariffs as recently as this past weekend. But since that post, we have new, more updated polling that is even more devastating for Trump. Yesterday morning, within an hour of the Politico report, Navigator Research released a new poll conducted after Trump’s tariff announcement and amid the ensuing market turmoil.
According to the survey, Trump’s approval rating is down to 44 percent and his economic approval is at it’s lowest level since Navigator started polling in 2018.
In terms of both overall and economic approval, Trump has seen significant drops since last month. In case you are wondering whether this is from the tariffs or one of Trump’s many other recent flubs and scandals, the polling is crystal clear on that point as well. Respondents report hearing significantly more negative news about Trump in the last month, and almost all of that negative information is about tariffs, specifically.
In a time when information overload is a real thing, I can still recommend Dan Pfeiffer as a great source.
Any good news to share, along with the bad? We need to pay attention to both or we’ll burn out.
Open thread.
Steve LaBonne
We really haven’t started to feel the consequences of this madness yet, and it seems increasingly certain that they will be dire.
H.E.Wolf
The good things are in existence, as soon as we do them.
I’m donating in a small way to our local food bank, which has a program that feeds schoolkids on the weekends, and to some small local organizations who provide music and arts education to children in under-served communities.
Bread for the body, hyacinths for the soul.
WaterGirl
@Steve LaBonne: I would like to argue with you about that, but sadly I can’t.
laura
A bit of personal good news- we have a really good sized orange tree in our backyard. It is covered in blossoms, it’s covered in bees, and there’s a bunch of hummingbirds are competing to see who can pollinate the most. The scent is exquisite- especially in the afternoon and early evening hours, so we may call an emergency backyard hang with a couple few friends because orange blossom season is so short but so lovely. I wish I could post the smell to share with each of you.
Hildebrand
Dan is the only Pod Save America bro who actually provides valuable information and insight.
schrodingers_cat
@Hildebrand: Podbros can go fuck themselves and take Ezra Klein and Matt Y with them.
cain
I see 44% of this country are still moronic.
There is still a strong christian nationalist streak here and those people don’t give a fuck about the economy they are looking to see some serious shit going down for women and social issues. Expect stuff like religion to take top billing as a distraction.
Lobo
Do some good: Transgender Law Center Fundraiser.
Geminid
This is good news of a sort: US oil benchmark WTI Crude is trading at $57.11 a barrel.
That’s the lowest price since the pandemic. Trump declared a “National Energy Emergency” his first day in office, and now US oil producers are getting one, good and hard.
My glee is tempered somewhat by concern for New Mexicans. Their state government relies on revenue from oil and gas production, both direct and indirect. New Mexico is the fourth poorest US state, and this oil crash will hurt.
catfishncod
@cain: The number of morons is still overstated, as the “deluded”, “misinformed”, “self-soothing”, and “in-denial” groups are still contributing to that number.
But they’re getting hollowed out, rapidly. We will soon see numbers closer to the actual fraction of diehards. I’m guessing something like… 27%.
rusty
Some good news. A coworker has a daughter who is a senior in high school. The daughter has been wheelchair bound her whole life, has faced lots of medical challenges along the way. She is smart and hard working, and they just found out she is getting a full ride at a good university we would all recognize. They are a great family of modest means and if there was anyone that deserved a big break, it is them. My whole department is thrilled for them.
WaterGirl
@Hildebrand:
Totally agree.
I like Jon Lovett because he’s totally irreverent, but for political insight these days, nope.
catfishncod
@Geminid: I’m not feeling glee over US oil interests taking a hit. I am pleased that this will briefly cushion the blow to bystanders. But the really effective schadenfreudegenerator, for those who celebrate such, is what this does to Russian oil interests. As in, the funding sources for the physical assault on the West.
Betty Cracker
Thanks for posting that polling data, WG. It’s maddening that voters ever trusted Trump to handle the economy (or anything else, ever), but the electorate is what it is, and Team Sanity’s only path back to power runs through public opinion.
rk
@cain:
Unless they’re independently wealthy and don’t depend on any government services, they’re going to be impacted soon enough. What they care about will be irrelevant when they lose their jobs and can’t afford to feed their families.
YY_Sima Qian
Bessent is now musing on the possibility of delisting PRC companies from US exchanges. From all out trade war to all out financial war in one leap.
However, it is clear that the Trump gang has misread the sentiments in Beijing, as everyone paying the slightest attention have said:
mardam
@Geminid: At that price they might be losing money.
jonas
@Steve LaBonne: Agreed — the consequences of this week’s detonation of the world economy will only become evident to a lot of normies in the next six months as they see prices climb, shortages on the shelves, and ultimately when they get laid off because their company is no longer profitable given the higher costs for everything. Right now, unless you’re invested in, or watching, the markets closely, this is all still largely academic.
mardam
@rusty: NOICE!!!!
Steve LaBonne
@rk: They are too stupid to know what’s coming, but they will certainly notice when they can no longer put food on the table.
Scout211
We have three orange trees and you are so right. You cannot replicate the scent of real orange blossoms, although many have tried. Our trees still have oranges on them and we have early buds but the blossoms will need a few more weeks to fully open and bless us with their amazing scent.
Hoodie
@Geminid: That’s getting near the break even price for the Permian Basin back in 2024. I imagine the break even price may be higher than that now because of increased costs of production (e.g., equipment). It’s even higher for small producers. If this trend continues, it will eventually put a lot of smaller producers out of business and eventually give more pricing power to the Russians and Saudis. Generally speaking, Trump is killing smaller, non-integrated businesses that are empowered by the global supply chain and have little leverage to constrain costs. You know, his Poujadist base. The irony is that rich liberals in SF will be fine.
suzanne
This is funny, and true as hell:
The Rachel Dolezals of Blue Collar Work.
It continues to amaze me how the “Gen Z boss and a mini” video managed to shatter the brains of a whole swath of American men.
jonas
If Republicans in Congress have their way, that will all be taxable soon.
Joy in FL
I want to let you all know what I found out from the Zoom on Monday (April 7) evening regarding the re-election (in November, 2024) of Justice Allison Riggs in North Carolina. She won, and the GOP challenger, Jefferson Griffin, sued. The matter is still not settled. The Zoom was originally planned to be a phone-bank to contact voters whose registration the GOP candidate had challenged. But the NC Supreme Court has temporarily stayed (this link provided by NCDems is to X) the ruling from the Court of Appeals. So the Zoom was changed to an information Zoom.
The organizers, NCDems, changed from a Zoom meeting to a Zoom Webinar, which created confusion for attendees and urgency for the organizers: How are we going to meet with the 2000+ people who signed up for original Zoom? I mention this because 2000+ people want to help in this North Carolina Supreme Court election! That’s awesome.
NCDems got it together fast and had a very informative meeting. Anderson Clayton, Chair of NCDems, Cat Lawson, Director of Voter Protection, Jonah Garson, 1st Vice Chair, and Kristy Boer, Training Director, were there from NCDems. Justice Riggs was there.
Here is the link for keeping up with this situation. NCDP.org/protectthevote It takes you to a Mobilize page where you can sign up to get updates on actions NCDems take. Assuming I understand correctly, eventually they will need phone bankers to contact voters whose registrations are being challenged. But the deadline of 15 days is not currently in effect. NCDems and Justice Riggs are using this time to work in the legal system and to prepare for what they expect to happen.
The recording of the Zoom is available on YouTube. Below is a link that will get you there. It’s to the NC Dems’ site, and the video for Monday’s Zoom is the one with the big red letters Save Our Democracy. Justice Riggs talks at about the second minute, in case you simply to want to hear her. The whole video is about an hour long. I think it is full of good information.
youtube.com/@ncdems
One of the things that I took away was the importance of the “Griffin List.” It’s the list of voters whose registrations are being challenged by Jefferson Griffin, Justice Riggs’ opponent. Here’s a link for jackals in NC or anyone who wants to check on friends or relatives. https://thegriffinlist.com/
Justice Riggs said she will fight all the way. Here is a link to an interview with her on March 20 from The Bulwark. https://www.thebulwark.com/p/nc-justice-alison-riggs-opponent I haven’t watched it yet; NCDems provided the link.
NCDems also provided a link to the talking points about this specific election: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-v0zmxPKZUNd9G4tsFj2UmSri3ndSZoEsmfmAG5FfUo/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.p0toj252vnor
Jonah Garson, from NCDems, said that on a NC ballot, the State Supreme Court is the first election that is listed. He said that shows the priority of the courts in the politics of that state. Maybe you all know stuff like that, but it is new info for me, so I’m pointing it out here.
Scout211
Follow-up to BCs post, EU takes revenge on Trump’s tariffs as countries approve €20B+ retaliation
Maybe they really didn’t kiss his ass? Would Trump lie about that? LOL
I know this isn’t actually good news, but why does it make me feel like it is? I know, I’m bad but China and the EU sticking it to Trump just feels satisfying for some reason.
Gravenstone
You could have just as easily said ” Popular among a subset of clowns who refuse to understand how the world actually works.”
Fair Economist
@YY_Sima Qian: Xi has always been willing to inflict a lot of pain on the Chinese economy for things he thought needed to be done. He popped the housing bubble, which was probably worse for them than any trade war with the US. And, frankly, this *does* need to be done for Chinese national interests. They can’t knuckle under to a knucklehead like Trump. The Chinese population, I assume, mostly understands this, and I expect they will tolerate a lot of pain as long as Xi at least pretends to try to help
Edit: and I’m sure the EU will leap to list Chinese companies on their stock exchanges if the US delists them.
JML
I’m still horrified that GOP support for this clownshow is still so high. The MAGA Cultists are unpersuadable at this point and we likely have no chance at rational behavior from them until after the cult leader dies and desperate scramble for power as various people try to hold together a cult of personality for their own benefit.
but there are still a lot of non-MAGA republicans. and while I find their ideology repellant and often incoherent, they’re still moveable and tariffs hit them like everyone else. their portfolios are shrinking too (I foolishly looked at my retirement today for the first time since this insanity kicked off; it was “fun” to see every dollar that I’ve put into retirement this year completely gone).
The Indy numbers are interesting but have some of the same issues I have with the non-cult GOP samples: what we’re seeing is the people who ID as independent but regularly vote for democrats coming home. It’s still not reflective of as much of a collapse of support as you’d hope to see when the GOP voter really starts to jump ship.
Need more bad polls for the Current Occupant, see if we can get a snowball effect going…
Gravenstone
@Steve LaBonne: Really loving the news that he wants to extensively tariff incoming prescription meds now. Not.
jonas
Shit, even Hungary? When you’ve lost Orban…
Steve LaBonne
@Gravenstone: Yeah, I’m really looking forward to that. 😡
Chetan Murthy
I started reading, and just started laughing out loud, then coughed b/c laughing so hard. He’s really up Trump’s asshole all the damn way, he’s ready to blow up the US equity markets in service to his Mango Mahdi. Just amazing.
brendancalling
A friend of mine has spent a lot of time teaching abroad, and when I mentioned that my gal and I were thinking of doing the same, he scolded me for considering “running away” from a fight. That was before he came back from his recent trip to Chile. Email pasted below:
So. There ya have it. Two hours to get back into the US, for a US citizen. And we all know it’s even worse for non-citizens and foreign visitors, who may think they’re going to see the Statue of Liberty and the Hard Rock Cafe, and wind up in El Salvador. Any wonder why I won’t let my trans kid visit me in the US, and why I wonder if my next visit to Canada may be a semi-involuntary immigration?
Steve LaBonne
@JML: We’ll get there. As I noted above, only the smallish minority of people who pay attention understand what’s coming. For everyone else, everything is still OK and will be until it suddenly isn’t.
mapanghimagsik
75% of people clapping liked the show!
jonas
Trump is in office now because of a small subset of voters in the swing states who voted for Biden in 2020 were pissed off about the economy and/or didn’t like Harris and so stayed home or gave Trump a protest vote. If these people come back and vote Dem in 26 *and* we peel enough Trump-leaning independents off who are horrified at the economic damage being wreaked and honest enough to admit it, it will be a real wave election .
The MAGA faithful are unreachable. Their entire financial and professional lives could collapse around them and it will never be Trump’s fault.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@rusty:
Best news of the week.
YY_Sima Qian
Here is one of the EU Co-Chairs for the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, a grouping of parliamentarians around the world dedicated to confronting the China threat:
The IPAC has been funded US NGOs closely tied to USG (such as the NED, NDI, NRI, probably has dried up now), & from foundations allied to the pro-Independence DPP in Taiwan. Marco Rubio was a US Co-Chair. The group energetically promotes anti-PRC/CPC regime legislations around the world, & sponsors trips to Taiwan by parliamentarians, reportedly paid for by Taiwan. Here is their website.
No, the PRC will not ally w/ the EU against Putin, but it will be happy to ally w/ the EU against Trump, & perhaps help to guarantee whatever negotiated settlement in Ukraine end up being.
Chetan Murthy
@suzanne: That is really good! I only got to read the teaser (not subscribed) but still good! I also thought to myself: who’re these jamokes kidding? The people who do all the -hard- manual labor in our country are immigrants, and more and more, undocumented immigrants. Construction, farm work, meatworkers, all the hard jobs in restaurants? Immigrants.
Fuckin’ candy-ass wingnut bloggers. Let ’em try an 8-hour shift behind the grill at a Jack-in-the-Box. Fuckers.
jonas
@Gravenstone: Oooh, boy. That would include Ozempic and Wegovy, made by Denmark’s NovoNordisk, both of which are already eye-wateringly expensive if used off-label, and which millions more use to manage their diabetes. This should go over great.
Scout211
Democrats don’t need the MAGA faithful. We need the Trump voters who are now saying, “We didn’t vote for [fill in the blank] and are suddenly becoming frustrated with Trump. Most of them projected onto him their own idea of who he was and what he would do as president. They are gettable if they begin to realize that Trump told them what he stood for and what he would do but they just didn’t believe him.
The response should be, “Yes, you did vote for [fill in the blank].”
catclub
@Steve LaBonne:
and now there are Dire Wolf puppies!
p.a.
Tongue moderately in cheek:
Anything that drags him down is good!
Glass half-empty guy: so the destruction of American democracy, ☹️. Costing us more money on imports 🤯
In the end: whatever it takes!
YY_Sima Qian
@Chetan Murthy: Bessent has (had?) the reputation of being a financial genius, having made his name helping Soros break Bank of England in ’92, although people forget Soros failed to break Hong Kong during the Asian Financial Crisis.
However, he does seem to be suffering from a terminal case of the “finance brain”, & has completely lost touch w/ material reality.
Steve LaBonne
@catclub: Genetically modified grey wolf puppies cosplaying as dire wolves. Fitting in this Age of Bullshit.
suzanne
@jonas:
Fingers crossed, friend!
JML
@jonas: I think that’s possible. long way off for 2026 and 2028 elections, though.
I will say the one thing that could move the Current Occupant off his tariff obsession is poll after poll after poll of bad news and result for him. yes, I’m sure he will find some half-assed “poll” authored by the Pillow Guy or something that tells him he’s the bestest, but we also know he likes watching TV all the time and if he sees polling that keeps getting worse and worse, the TV hack in him will think of it like ratings.
Of course, being surrounded by sychophantic fools and and grifters will make it hard to pivot on anything.
A Ghost to Most
People programmed from an early age to accept and regurgitate lies do what they do.
Ohio Mom
@rusty: Great news!
Try wheel-chair user instead of wheelchair-bound. People in wheelchairs are not bound by them, they are liberated by them.
Steve LaBonne
@JML: He won’t back down, but it’s not completely outside the realm of possibility that Republicans will become more scared of voters than of him and take away his tariff toys.
Chetan Murthy
So many, so many MOTUs suffer from the ceteris paribus fallacy.
Citizen Alan
More like ignorant (albeit often willfully so). I made a quip the other night, but the more I think on it, the more I believe it’s an important point. Everyone knows the statistic that half the country reads on the 6th grade level. But no one stops to think about what it means if half the country is stuck at the 6th grade level in every area of educational study. And what should we reasonably expect a 6th grader to understand about economics?
IIRC, my parents were advised that I was reading on the 6th grade level in 3rd or 4th grade. In Mississippi. Which, in retrospect, explains why so much of my childhood social experience was so shitty and depressing.
Citizen Alan
I hate to be a killjoy, but I read in the news this morning that the mofos in the House are proposing to tax college scholarships.
Captain C
@Scout211:
Or if you’re feeling kind, “I’m sure that’s not what you wanted, but it is what you voted for.”
Chetan Murthy
@Citizen Alan: Vice Principal to my mom (about my youngest sister): “She wouldn’t be bored in school if you hadn’t taught her to read at home.”
A-yup. Fucking Weatherford TX. Fucking Weatherford.
Ksmiami06
@A Ghost to Most: why religious beliefs are completely stupid
Anyway
Counter- anecdata : Monday evening a friend flew to JFK from Bamako (Mali) – naturalized American got through the line in 15 mins. He said they asked him no questions, waved him though. I was concerned and relieved for him.
Matt McIrvin
@YY_Sima Qian: The PRC has been more cozy than not with Putin, haven’t they? Well, they’re looking out for #1, interests shift.
UncleEbeneezer
The really depressing thing is that despite all of this bullshit, Trump’s approval rating is still higher than Biden’s was after the debate. Open, virulent fascism and purposefully tanking the economy is more popular than 20 minutes of bad performance at a debate.
The voters are the problem, part ∞+1
Matt McIrvin
@Chetan Murthy: I think my kindergarten teacher really didn’t know what to do with a kid who could already read. In the first grade they started tracking us into different reading groups, though, and there were other advanced kids in the class.
Ohio Mom
@Gravenstone: Thanks for reminding me, I need to check where all of Ohio Family’s maintenance drugs come from. Just so I can be prepared. Though even if they are manufactured here, ingredients may come from other places.
My first automatic thought (old habits die hard) was, Ohio Son is covered by Medicaid so any increased costs will be ironically born by the Federal government but then I remembered that Medicaid is about to be slashed to pieces.
Geminid
@Hoodie: Some Permian Basin producers will be be put out of business, for sure. But but the oil and drilling rigs will still be there, so it seems to me that that this won’t give the Saudis that much more control over future oil prices. If and when prices rise Permian Basin oil production should rise again too, just with different companies producing it.
Chetan Murthy
@Matt McIrvin: Raising a child with even half a brain in a Red state is child abuse. There, I said it.
Matt McIrvin
@UncleEbeneezer: Democrats will turn on their own because they don’t see following the party leader as part of their identity. So retaining support is inherently harder. Republicans have this tough nut of Trump cultists and habitual Republicans to crack. That’s just the game we’re playing.
Steve LaBonne
@UncleEbeneezer: Yet another reminder that they haven’t actually felt any effects yet. Let’s see what happens when they do.
Matt McIrvin
@Chetan Murthy: Mine was a red state at the time. Well, going red from Dixiecrat. But Virginia politics has always been a bit sui generis. Our conservatism had this elite technocrat streak.
Steve LaBonne
@Matt McIrvin: We did try to explain to people that they needed to vote against fascism even if they weren’t enthusiastic about the alternative. So many people just aren’t able to think about politics in an adult way.
Bupalos
@H.E.Wolf: I wouldn’t want my kid playing the hyacinth. What would that even sound like?
Gvg
@Citizen Alan: college scholarships are already taxed if you get more than the cost of tuition and books and have been for decades. The thing is, in most states tuition is so high that scholarships don’t exceed that very often, so people think they are tax free.
the proposal is to start taxing the entire amount. Since most students don’t work enough they may still be under the standard deductible but it all depends. It is pretty minor money to the government but major to families so I think it will be seriously unpopular. They may do it because they want to be perceived as attacking college kids. I just don’t think it’s a good move.
prostratedragon
@Gravenstone:
Murderer. Many common generics, of which I like thousands of others take several, are mostly manufactured overseas.
Bupalos
@Steve LaBonne: There really was a bit of dissonance in “you have no choice, because of democracy.”
what we did was run on something that was true but toxic. We got boxed in.
RevRick
@catfishncod: Republican Senators and Representatives are caught between a rock and a hard place. Even 70% of non MAGA GOP voters approve of Trump and that soars even higher amongst MAGA. That’s their primary electorate. And time and again that electorate has nominated unwinnable candidates. Remember the “I’m not a witch” lady?
So, while most may know that what Trump is doing is absolute madness and they hear the howls of anguish from their billionaire donors, they dare not cross his supporters, more then a few of which are armed and unhinged. Cruz and Grassley and Paul sense a potential political storm, but their party is paralyzed.
Citizen Alan
@UncleEbeneezer: TBF, the media resolutely refuses to give the same sort of hysterical coverage to Trump’s deranged and destructive behavior that they gave to Joe being sick and perhaps overmedicated in a single debate.
I will forever weep that the Joe Biden from the previous SOTU address didn’t show up, because I’m convinced that Joe would have beat Trump like a rented mule and cruised to reelection.
Geminid
Speaking of the Permian Basin, the NYT and others report that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is mounting a primary challenge to Senator John Cornyn next year. Cornyn’s response was to call Paxton “a con man and a fraud.” This shapes up to be a bitter intra-party fight for Lone Star State Republicans.
Citizen Alan
@Matt McIrvin: My late mother said I shocked her as a 6yo when I started reading out of my dad’s Progressive Farmer magazine over Christmas break during my 1st Grade year. The summer after 1st Grade, I discovered the family’s World Book encyclopedia set and spent most of the summer reading random entries. Which marked the beginning of my life-long self-education and the end of my ability to socialize easily with my age peers.
YY_Sima Qian
@Matt McIrvin: The PRC will always act out of self-interest. It does not believe in entangling alliances, especially ones w/ treaty commitments.
Harrison Wesley
@Gravenstone: I was going to get the generic version of Eliquis from a Canadian mail-order pharmacy, but wanted to see if something like this was in the works. Think I’ll stick with warfarin for a while longer.
scav
Didn’t miss much.
Matt McIrvin
@Gvg: Many grad students get tuition waivers as part of their compensation for a teaching or research assistantship. The big tax bill in Trump’s first term originally taxed that as income, which would have ruined most of these grad students, since it could well exceed the stipend they were paid. I remember explaining that on Facebook and getting a response something like “good, all they ever do is riot these days”.
Geminid
@Citizen Alan: Have you read John Grisham’s The Painted House? It’s set in 1950s northern Mississippi. The novel differs from Grisham’s typical work in that It’s not a legal thriller and is relatively short. I thought it was pretty good.
Steve in the ATL
@Chetan Murthy: I was in a wedding in the Baptist church downtown!
Bupalos
@YY_Sima Qian: I’d say human reality. It sounds like the theory the economists in this administration are pursuing is a kind of reordering of trade by forcing countries to choose going under (roughly) a Chinese umbrella or an American umbrella. It demands that everyone else just give up their pride and identity.
That this kind of plan is something a lot of people in the administration believe in and talk about explains some of Trump’s off the wall shit like Panama and Greenland. Those actually do make a kind of sense in an scenario of economic Cold War with China.
Belafon
@rusty: Until Republicans tax her for it.
Melancholy Jaques
@Steve LaBonne:
This business will get out of control. I am already set for retirement in June & reversing that is not an option at this point. To the extent that my retirement wealth is in common stocks, I will have to just forget they are there for several years & hope for general recovery.
I would like to know if the normies are hearing Democratic screaming that hammers the simple message that Trump’s tariffs are killing the economy. It doesn’t matter if we here are aware of it. Do normies know that there is no problem except Trump? Do they know that this is not something that happened, it’s something he did for no good reason other than that he is stupid & crazy? It takes a lot of repetition & a lot of time for it to get through.
Fair Economist
@Scout211:
Actually I think the message should be “If you vote Republican, you vote for this. Don’t do it again.” The name of the game is changing their behavior in the future.
Steve in the ATL
@Geminid: whichever one wins, the country loses
Steve LaBonne
@Melancholy Jaques: As I said, they won’t know until they can’t afford to put food on the table. Then we’ll see.
Soprano2
@Geminid: People want gas to be $1.30/gal again. I tell them if it gets that cheap we have a lot of other problems that will overshadow the cheap price of gas. They don’t believe me, they remember gas got cheap during Covid and they want that back even though what caused it was so terrible.
Steve LaBonne
@Soprano2: I wonder where they’ll be driving on that cheap gas when they have no job and there’s nothing in the stores.
Matt McIrvin
@Melancholy Jaques: A MAGA line I’ve already seen tried is “Democrats loved tariffs until five minutes ago,” trying to frame this opposition as pure Trump Derangement Syndrome. Of course it’s purely non-quantitative, nobody was clamoring for Smoot-Hawley.
Matt McIrvin
@Soprano2: Nobody is happy about cheap gas when they have it (because it’s usually when the economy is in the toilet): they just revise their memories so that it was great once it’s gone.
Republicans tried to make people nostalgic for the cheap gas in the bowels of the Great Recession, too. Never mind that it’d been expensive a year earlier. I don’t think it really worked that time.
Citizen Alan
@Geminid: I have it on my bookshelf (I inherited my late mother’s collection of every John Grisham novel, which was, I think, the only author she ever read other than romance novelists), but I have not read it yet. I didn’t want to just give away all those books, but I got turned off of Grisham during law school because I could read A Time to Kill and think “Oh, he wrote an entire novel because he was impressed by how Professor X at Ole Miss explained the Golden Rule in Evidence class.”
Fun Fact: The Pelican Brief begins with the assassination by car bomb of a minor character, Darby Shaw’s con law professor and lover, who was clearly based on an Ole Miss professor he hated (and who was one of my favorites).
Professor Bigfoot
@Steve LaBonne: Whereupon they will blame Biden, the Democrats, women and “minorities.”
It’s what they do. Nothing, but NOTHING is EVER their own damn fault.
Betty Cracker
House Repubs voting to neuter themselves:
If you’re repped by one of these dumbasses and are calling/writing/emailing, maybe add this to your talking points?
Melancholy Jaques
@Scout211:
Most emphatically. They have to be told they were wrong to vote for Trump or they will never change.
Steve LaBonne
Hehe, one good Treasury auction and investors are immediately back to living in dreamland. Never let it be said that Wall Street types are any smarter than the average MAGA idiot.
Belafon
@Melancholy Jaques: Short answer: No, they’re not hearing it. Slightly longer answer is that the only normies I know of that are hearing it are the people who see my posts on Facebook about it. My coworkers aren’t.
YY_Sima Qian
@Bupalos: The PRC is offering physical goods, investment & tech transfer, w/ hard bargaining & potential for economic coercion. MAGA is offering printed greenbacks, crypto coins, rent seeking, & constant threats of military coercion & financial extortion.
Professor Bigfoot
Open thread, so… day three in the hospital and man it sucks. Going in for another heart cath this afternoon; but then back in two weeks for another. (oy)
I must be getting better, because today I’ve been thinking, “oh god, how much is this gonna cost?”
They Call Me Noni
@rusty: That is heart warming. A reminder that every once in a while good things happen to good people.
me
Dow surges 1,600 points after Trump suggests a 90-day pause on tariffs: Live updates
Suckers.
Steve LaBonne
@Professor Bigfoot: Crap, hope everything will be OK soonest.
WaterGirl
@Scout211: @laura: Sounds like heaven. Wish you guys could bottle it for us.
Melancholy Jaques
@me:
No doubt there are many people making bank off this deliberate market manipulation.
Belafon
@me: They missed the part where he said “In October.” /sarc
Steve LaBonne
@me: And so much for Trump not paying attention to markets. It’s out of our hands, but I hope the money guys keep the pressure on. I can’t believe I’m rooting for them.
Ksmiami06
@YY_Sima Qian: I lived and worked in Hong Kong, the next century will see China as the pre-eminent leader. It’s simple math.
Steve LaBonne
@Melancholy Jaques: Once upon a time we had people called “reporters” whose job was to look into things like that.
bbleh
@me: I wonder. Ima guess he’s backing down at least for a little while, cuz he DOES watch the market indexes and it was far from clear they had bottomed out.
The problem of course is that the market can turn on a dime just as fast as he can, and meanwhile all the twisting and turning is doing significant long-term damage.
Would love to see TRUMP BACKS DOWN headlines, but of course I’d also like a unicorn to pull a wagon of gold to my front door
@Melancholy Jaques: and yeah this seems to be business as usual these days. But at least he’s not wearing a tan suit in the Oval Office!
Soprano2
Boy this is the truth. Even the faithful choose what to see and what not to see of what he says and does. The normies were even worse, they heard what they wanted to hear and didn’t think about how impossible it would be to do it.
The Audacity of Krope
Ah, yes , delusional folk.
The real truth is the top leadership of most of these countries designed these trade deals to let them and the industrialists supporting them abuse workers no matter which country anyone is working in.
It’s the only thing in the Trump agenda anything close to America first (in the ugliest way possible), unless you consider “America First” a motto in a global suicide pact.
Trollhattan
@Geminid:
Paxton is so hated even Texas Republicans don’t like him. IIRC they tired and failed to impeach him.
IOW, Texas on a Wednesday.
The Audacity of Krope
There’s one born every minute. And, yes, they vote and invest.
Geminid
@Citizen Alan: Like you were finally able to, John Grisham left Mississippi once he could. He ended up in the Charlottesville area, on a farm 12 miles south of town.
A customer of mine is in Grisham’s church, and went on a mission trip with him to the remote Brazilian jungle area where parts of Grisham’s The Testament take place.
prostratedragon
@Steve LaBonne: Been really something this week watching the markets buoying themselves on the flimsiest of rumors.
They Call Me Noni
@Chetan Murthy: You paint with too broad a brush. Living in a red state does not mean you are in lock step with all things Trump. In many areas we are surrounded by it, but we do not ascribe to it.
Chetan Murthy
@They Call Me Noni: I grew up in that racist backward Neanderthal hellhole. It is no place to bring up a child.
Soprano2
@Matt McIrvin: Same here, I sat in the back reading Childcraft books while everyone else was reading Dick and Jane stuff. I was reading 5th grade books in second grade. My mother always said I taught myself to read, because neither she nor my dad spent much time doing it. They read to me a lot, though.
Soprano2
@Geminid: I remember seeing a bunch of oil wells on the way to Texas when I was a kid. I was told that when the price got high enough, they would all start pumping again.
prostratedragon
@Professor Bigfoot: Goodness. Hope this helps you. I think you’ve hit upon a clear indicator of imrovement.
Ksmiami06
@prostratedragon: don’t buy it. Trump is nuts and calamitous
Belafon
@Trollhattan: As a Texan, I hope Republicans hate him enough, because whoever has an R will still win the general election. I keep hoping it will be different, but we’re so far from that changing.
pluky
@Steve LaBonne: Cosplaying for sure, but they’re awfully cute doing it. They’re not responsible for the deceptive marketing!
Chetan Murthy
@Belafon: Will there be a measurable difference between Box Turtle Cornyn and Paxton? Really?
Ksmiami06
How long until Navarro is out? Bets anyone?
Soprano2
@Steve LaBonne: They don’t think that will happen, though. Remember FFOTUS saying that if we get the price of “energy” down everything will be great? That’s what they believe.
The Audacity of Krope
It is noteworthy he is one of the few holdovers from the original administration. He’s there because he reflects one of the few authentic positions Trump holds other than “seated.”
Geminid
@Trollhattan: Paxton evidently leads a Republican faction that’s been feuding with the party’s establishment for some years. I’m hoping the fight spills over into some House races in districts winnable by Democrats.
Republicans there try their best to gerrymander the state, but that isn’t always enough to withstand demographic changes and political headwinds. Libby Fletcher’s and Colin Alfred’s 2018 wins over Republican incumbents are examples of this
rusty
@Ohio Mom: Thank you, that is much better language.
pluky
@Chetan Murthy: Torture in 5th grade was having to slog through a set of text booklets intended to improve reading comprehension. Friend of the family with a graduate degree in education tested me; I had the vocabulary of a college sophomore.
prostratedragon
@Ksmiami06: Like I said. Hadn’t seen the latest alleged future pause when I wrote that, but that bounce is what I’m talking about.
Betty Cracker
@Professor Bigfoot: Oof, feel better, and I hope they spring you soon! Except for the fact that they contain professionals who can save your ass, hospitals suck!
Soprano2
@me: I just saw that and wondered what happened. It makes you think more than ever that this was partly market manipulation.
Baud
@Professor Bigfoot:
Feel better soon.
Kristine
@Professor Bigfoot: Best wishes for a quick and complete recovery. Hope insurance covers more than you fear.
Steve in the ATL
@pluky: so…all your words related to beer and sex?
me
Like I said, suckers.
oldgold
The Tangerine Terror of Tariffs flinched. Seeing how the media plays this will be interesting.
With apologies to Gerry Lee Lewis:
Tariffs shake my nerves and you rattle my brain
Too much tariff drives a man insane
You broke my will, but what a thrill
Goodness gracious great balls of fire.
Bill Arnold
@me:
Like a Russian “ceasefire”.
Steve LaBonne
@me: Greed and fear are not aids to clear thinking.
zhena gogolia
@Professor Bigfoot: I’m sorry! All good thoughts for you!
zhena gogolia
@Steve LaBonne: Me too.
Baud
Ken Jennings is a hero.
karen gail
I often wonder how most people in US view China; my speculation is that the average person sees China as a big “China Town” either from movies or by visiting cities that have “China Towns.” The only city I have had much exposure to a China town is the one in San Francisco since I spent years living in Bay area. Lived in both Sunnyvale and Cupertino back when they were new housing developments; when a three or four bedroom house cost less than $10k.
I am trying to remember how in laws in Wisconsin viewed China; I know it would have been slanted since they were big fans of Rush. I don’t think they viewed it as any more than place that made cheap goods, nor would they have formed any opinion about the people other than they weren’t white christians.
New Deal democrat
Reposted from this morning’s dead thread:
“ I read an important note this morning that foreign car manufacturers are pausing exports to the U.S. not because they fear the tariffs, but because they realize our Idiot King might change his mind in a heartbeat.”
And “ The main point is that T—-p has completely upended overnight the global order of trade that had prevailed for decades. To say that “uncertainty” is the main driver of markets now is an understatement. Particularly as T—-p could completely reverse course and declare “Victory!” at any time.”
And just like that! This afternoon both CNN and CNBC are reporting that the Idiot King has hit “pause” for 90 days on almost all countries except China (CNN) or dropped rates to 10% for all countries except China (CNBC); and the S&P 500 has rallied 8% as I write this.
He is still the Idiot King. Rely on his latest whim at your peril.
Martin
@Steve LaBonne: Yeah, inventory will hold for days to weeks to months, depending on the items. Imported perishable goods will be the first to show it – bananas, etc. Expect shortages as some goods get steered around the US for better markets. Audi has stopped shipments to the US. That’ll expand. In some cases the US is a small enough market to just drop us. In others, there will be some pride involved (see Canada).
That’s likely should he go through with ‘major tariffs on pharmaceuticals’. We’ve already grabbed 3 months supplies of ours. There will be a run on them and my guess is they’ll get scarce until a few weeks after the tariffs are in place.
And things are escalating. He mentioned a 100% tariff on TSMC, which makes no sense – TSMC doesn’t sell exportable goods. That would have to manifest as a tariff on AMD, Nvidia, Apple – all US companies. Does it manifest as an embargo against Taiwanese semiconductors, which is just a full stop to any products in the US? I wouldn’t rule that out. Even if the Senate is fed up with this, I don’t get the sense the House will back them up.
Belafon
@Chetan Murthy: Cornyn would walk by a homeless person and not give him money. Paxton would walk by a homeless man, stomp on his head, and then call the police and complain that the man got his shoe dirty.
Chetan Murthy
@Belafon: Sure, but -legislatively- would there be a difference? I mean in terms of the votes they would cast.
ETA: concretely what I mean is, if they’d vote the same, then we should want Paxton to win the primary, b/c it might make it easier for a Dem win the general.
Steve in the ATL
@karen gail:
General Tso’s chicken:China::pizza:Italy
Belafon
@Belafon: To be more serious, Paxton is using the CPS to harass families of trans people, and using his office to go after doctors in New York. Cornyn isn’t nearly as aggressive. Paxton would be the evil LBJ senator. I guarantee he would do more than lean on his wavering colleagues.
Belafon
@Chetan Murthy:
Between Beto’s “I’ve canvased in every country and drawn Republicans” campaign and Allred’s, I’ve stopped believing any one Republican at the highest offices can be beat until the entire party is damaged.
WaterGirl
@Joy in FL: Thanks for all of that great information.
I talked with our NC Black Alliance peeps about this attempt to invalidate 60,000 votes because the LOSER is willing to cheat to win.
I planned to make a post with an update, and I will happily include all the great info you proved here.
The Audacity of Krope
Depends on your point of view.
For example, Republican leaders on labor and industrial policy view them as aspirational. If only American workers would let us grind them to dust…
cain
@rk: They have the power of faith. Meaning they think God will take care of them. Could be that churches will help, I don’t know. But they will have to decide whether that is socialism or not.
Matt McIrvin
@karen gail: Trump tried to make China the big villain in his first term and in the early early days of the COVID pandemic, there was a wave of anti-Asian bigotry that came from it being “the China flu”. It’s a thing that can be reactivated at any time.
WaterGirl
@Gravenstone:
prostratedragon
Interesting that there’s no national observance of any kind on Appomattox Day.
Adam Serwer today, on the ICE director pining for mass deportations:
William Faulkner:
Dr. Lawrence Jacoby, enthusiastically describng patient Ben Horne who has awakened to the realization that he is Gen. Lee:
Steve LaBonne
@Martin: It’s frightening that our only hope may be that Federalist Society judges will side with their patron Leonard Leo and strip Trump of his power to set tariffs.
Betty Cracker
Re: Trump’s latest climbdown: isn’t it still the case that goods from other countries (and penguins) that had retaliatory tariffs placed on them will go up 10% while stuff from China will more than double in price?
Martin
@Matt McIrvin: Navarro is very strongly in that camp as well, and likely feeds Trump on it. Personal experience on that one.
cain
@Scout211: Trump just claimed that he’s putting a 90 day pause on tariffs and the markets reacted accordingly. He’s using the tariffs as a pump and dump scheme. But retail investors are still getting fucked.
But I highly suspect that our allies will continue to keep their tariffs on the U.S.
Geminid
@WaterGirl: I saw a report about another poll, sponsored by the Economist and YouGov. It showed support for Trump among respondents age 18-29 dropping frm +5 percent last October to -29 percent most recently.
Steve LaBonne
@Betty Cracker: Shh, don’t wake up the investors.
The Audacity of Krope
It is not. No decision required.
WaterGirl
@mapanghimagsik:
Loud guffaw here! I scared the kitties. I loved it so much that I made it a rotating tag.
Martin
@Steve LaBonne: Wouldn’t count on that.
But this climbdown makes it very clear to other countries that Trump can’t be negotiated with, only dominated, and they should keep their retaliatory tariffs in place despite the climbdown. We’ll see how charitable they’re feeling.
Steve LaBonne
@WaterGirl: The others were afraid to be the first one to stop clapping.
WaterGirl
@Steve LaBonne: If they are genetically modified to fill a niche previously held by the dire wolves, that seems to me to be a good thing. Helping to restore a little balance is a good thing.
No?
cain
@Citizen Alan:
We have degraded education and it will get even worse with no dept of education.
Children won’t go to school they’ll work in coal mines (apparently). We’re literally regressing.
Barbara
I just listened to an hour long presentation from the asset manager my husband’s company favors — it hadn’t yet accounted for the retaliatory tariffs (and said it knew those were in the works) and most of what it pointed out I had already understood — like tariffs are bad enough, but could be accommodated, but the uncertainty of constant gyrations and changes and delays, etc. are just toxic to businesses.
They also emphasized something that probably should be obvious, which is that these tariffs are specific to us. China isn’t increasing tariffs on Europe, and vice versa, or the rest of the world. The biggest losers are “demand” based suppliers focused on the US, like Vietnam and Cambodia, and their customers (Walmart, e.g.) and the biggest winners are those — like Brazil — that are substitutes for supplies from erstwhile US suppliers. US farmers are fucked.
They also said something my husband has been telling me — a lot of the so called balance of trade credits that other countries accrue and that Trump complains about so bitterly comes back to the U.S. as investment, either commercial or in the purchase of Treasury bonds. If the balance of trade is artificially suppressed then we can expect foreign investment in the U.S. to go down not up.
A lot of the rest of it was technocratic. They admitted that they underestimated the sheer breadth and apparent randomness of these actions. The economist also said that Peter Navarro is well known to be someone who has hated world trade for a long time and as long as he is in the pole position on policy they don’t expect the U.S. to take available “off ramps” in time to avoid a recession, but they were unwilling to speculate on how bad or long it would be.
WaterGirl
@Chetan Murthy:
oh my god. the principal said that? I would have yanked my kid out of that school so fast!
Lobo
@me:
What about the penguins?
Martin
@cain: Retail investors always get fucked, and retirees. This is part of why crypto is popular – little guys get to do the fraud just like the big boys.
This economy is like 30% fraud now and we keep inviting more of it on, because we can’t hold bad actors accountable, so the lesson is everyone needs to be a bad actor.
scribbler
@Professor Bigfoot: Oh no! Sending positive vibes your way. Feel better soon!
The Audacity of Krope
@Chetan Murthy: When I was in Kindergarten in the 80s, I showed up already knowing how to read.
As soon as they figured out that was why I was not paying attention during reading lessons, they gave me access to these sort of optional supplemental reading assignments that usually started at 2nd grade.
Did we lose this technology?
Barbara
@cain: I have been telling my husband that there are definitely people who are being given advance notice of these seemingly random changes and trading on that knowledge.
Martin
@Barbara: I just sent a text to my manager “ready to kill yourself yet? LOL” with the response “literally every day”.
Martin
@Barbara: Oh, of COURSE they are. Good christ. That’s not even a new thing.
Barbara
@Martin: These people said that investing in Europe and select emerging markets should be considered a hedge against these actions, because as noted above, the rest of the world continues to trade freely while we are busy tying one hand behind our backs.
Martin
@WaterGirl: Dire wolves died off 10,000 years ago. Whatever place they held was filled 9,000 years ago. We are just creating invasive species.
Barbara
@Martin: Insider trading isn’t a new thing but insider trading instigated and egged on by the president of the United States is. I am not willing to be so blase about it.
Ksmiami06
@New Deal democrat: ding ding ding. This is no way to run an economy
Geminid
@Steve LaBonne: Leonard Leo is often seen as the public face of the Federalist Society so a lot of people think he runs the outfit, but long-time President Eugene Meyer still calls the shots there.
Eugene Meyer keeps a low profile and last I saw he did not have a Wikipedia biography, which struck me as odd. HIs father, Frank Mayer, was well-known though, as a “movement conservative” of the 1950s and 60s. The elder Meyer was a mentor to William F. Buckley.
Eugene Meyer is a poor public speaker; his strenghths are as a strategist and tactician. He’s also an International Chess Master, and I think it shows.
cain
@Martin:
Sadly, this is what it has come to. In the end, small businesses and family farms are going to tank. With cheap labor shortages – we are going to have a rough time of it despite all these pauses, unpauses, re-pausing – nonsense. Nothing is normal.
@Barbara:
They have, that’s why there was a rumor and then he said it was fake news then he does the pause. But if I was EU and everyone else those retaliatory should stay in place. Everyone needs to keep holding those tariffs against him no matter what he said. His insulting speech about countries kissing his ass will drive nationalism up in those countries. Those populations will demand that you keep those tariffs but also boycotting of U.S. goods is going to increase.
Ksmiami06
@Barbara: tbh it’s pretty difficult to successfully do insider trading in an era of algos and minute by minute info feeds. Most of the financial ppl I know see Trump for the chaos clown he is
cain
@Barbara:
It’s funny how the media continues to just “report on the news”. Just astounding given how puerile their reporting was for Joe.
Steve LaBonne
@WaterGirl: See Martin’s answer.
Barbara
@Ksmiami06: Yes, I suppose I am trying to make order out of chaos and I should know that it’s really just chaos.
cain
@Ksmiami06: fintech companies can do millions of transactions in seconds. They probably can be a lot more reactionary than retail investors.
Hoodie
@Martin: I was talking to in-house counsel at a Fortune 200 company the other day. The have an integrated supply chain including Canada and Mexico and substantial operations in China. He said this back-and-forth is driving them crazy, a ton of wasted time just trying to figure out what they’ll be paying so they can advise management, everything changing on a daily business. Nothing has really changed, now everyone will have to wonder what will happen in 90 days. Trump obviously hasn’t made any deals (can’t see why anyone would, you can’t trust him). Did they just got spooked, perhaps by the possibility of Congress actually doing something to take their toy away and/or the rise in t-bill yields? Anything to do with scoring of the budget bill?
Martin
@Barbara: Yeah, though that won’t manifest until things settle down. Everyone is going to get caught in this chaos, and shifting markets takes at a minimum months. Often years. But yes, over the broader arc that’s true. It’s also true for a lot of US companies. Only about 30% of Apple’s sales are to the US, and despite the 100% tariff on China, they can steer their Indian made phones to the US and only incur 10%, and steer their Chinese made phones elsewhere in the world. Who the fuck knows if Trump will figure out that the only thing this will accomplish is increasing the carbon footprint of shipping things around. I don’t know many end-good manufacturers that are exclusively in China any more (component suppliers yeah, but that just means that end-good manufacturers who need to import those components should move out of the US unless their component expenses are very low – which is what my son’s company is doing). Most have diversified at least some manufacturing to India, Indonesia, Vietnam, etc. mainly because China started to crack down on their industrial sectors, plus Covid exposed the risks of not being diversified, and most US customers I know of started to divide up their manufacturing over the last 5 years.
Martin
@Barbara: This is increasingly a fraud based economy, and the GOP has zero interest in stopping that, and Democrats aren’t exactly taking it up as a cause either because they’re afraid of the voters who want it to be that. This is another one of those issues that yeah, Democrats are a bit better about, but not willing to stand up and reverse the trend, not willing to make it an issue.
Scout211
HaHaHa. I had read recent reports that he never showed up at ATF offices even though he was director. How is that combining bureaus to save money going again?
The Audacity of Krope
🔥🔥🔥BURN WALL ST., BURN!!!🔥🔥🔥
Martin
This has been happening nonstop though. The new businesses people keep harping on are just gig jobs. Drop shipping, Etsy stores, etc. They aren’t real small businesses in the sense that they’ll create jobs – they’re side hustles for people who can’t get by on their 40 job.
In my area, a small business can’t set up in a space where they could possibly own the location because every zoned retail/commercial space is owned by 1 of 3 huge corporations, and they take a cut of sales and will terminate your lease if your sales drop even a little, or if they have a better operation to put in your space. As a result, over time the place gets increasingly filled with large chains. People keep trying and we have little side bets on how long they’ll last because we know it’ll be short enough to remember the bet.
We’re probably the tip of the spear on that kind of setup, but it’s spreading. Family farms have never not been going out of business.
MisterForkbeard
@Martin: Which is interesting: The other lesson is that if you ignore Trump and are nice to him, he’s a paper tiger and you’re punished “minimally”.
That’s the interpretation he’s going to push. I imagine smaller countries are going to go this route, and larger countries are going to contest it and come out on top, as you noted.
cain
@Martin: Dems didn’t really reverse a lot of things from the first Trump administration did they?
The Audacity of Krope
They’d have to disagree first. Not half-heartedly in public, but sincerely.
cain
@Martin: Depressing. I guess though this is the final showdown here.
I expect a final collapse of the old order and something new and deadly afterwards.
cain
@The Audacity of Krope: Yep. While our sides are not the same, they definitely took advantage of some of the things Trump did. We have a number of assholes on our side.
oldgold
There needs to be an investigation as to who bought large amounts of stock this morning.
cain
I don’t see it playing out that way. The big player is going to be China and they would likely work with a known player than a chaos actor.
karen gail
I remember when just-in-time was the “new” thing for manufacturing; one of the things that made it possible was trucking over railroads. Along with the delusion that factories are just sitting there waiting to be fired up again is so much of what came into a factory and left the factory was done by railroads.
I have to laugh at anyone who thinks that you just supply some workers and a factory is back in business. I have seen what happens when a factory shuts down, everything on the floor is sold; from the massive machines to the coffee machine in the break room. In some cases everything is stripped; one place ripped out all the copper pipes and copper wires; all that was left was an empty gutted building.
Old Dan and Little Ann
Funny reading stories. My 1st grade teacher placed me in the lowest of the three reading groups because I was so quiet. It only took a few weeks to placed in the highest group once she heard me read. I also got in trouble that year because of the student teacher. Our phonics book had a picture of a glass and we had to fill in the gl in front of the _ _ ass. I asked her to read the word because I could not. She was not amused.
geg6
@Gvg:
You’re not exactly correct there. Scholarships are only taxed if they exceed the cost of attendance (COA) at a school, which is reported to the Department of Education each year. COA includes tuition, housing, food, books, travel expenses and some miscellaneous costs. Usually, the only taxable scholarships are for grad students who get a stipend beyond their COA. It’s very rare.
Martin
@cain: Not as much as you would have thought.
lowtechcyclist
@Professor Bigfoot:
I was thinking I hadn’t seen much of you the past few days. Hope whatever put you there is treatable, and that you get better soon!
Barbara
@karen gail: If they didn’t rip them out someone else would have. There is a huge market for copper from abandoned sites of all kinds.
Steve in the ATL
@karen gail: even if you don’t strip the factory, shutting down and starting up machines is costly and time consuming in manufacturing operations.
Trollhattan
@Professor Bigfoot:
Pulling for you Professor, bigly!
TBF at work so, call it even? ;-)
Get well, get discharged, get happy soon.
The Audacity of Krope
I’m sorry and hope you heal well.
Though it occurs to me that this is exactly the sort of thought that will but undue stress on your newly remedied heart.
Steve LaBonne
@The Audacity of Krope: It’s obscene that people who need medical care have to think about that instead of focusing on getting well.
Cheryl from Maryland
@Matt McIrvin: Same here. Per my mother, I was reading pre-kindergarten because I could connect oral words to printed words. My 1960s/1970s schools had tracking; I had teachers slip me adult books as early as the fifth grade. This in SW VA. I understand why tracking is a serious problem, but it helped me. My high school was untracked, but I was considered a freak by most of my fellow students, whom I feel certain are Trump voters.
Martin
@oldgold:
April 9, 2025, 8:37am “Now is a great time to buy!”
April 9, 2025, 1:22pm “Conversely, and based on the fact that more than 75 Countries have called Representatives of the United States, including the Departments of Commerce, Treasury, and the USTR, to negotiate a solution to the subjects being discussed relative to Trade, Trade Barriers, Tariffs, Currency Manipulation, and Non Monetary Tariffs, and that these Countries have not, at my strong suggestion, retaliated in any way, shape, or form against the United States, I have authorized a 90 day PAUSE, and a substantially lowered Reciprocal Tariff during this period, of 10%”
What do you know, DJT stock is up almost 20% since that announcement.
Like I said, fraud-based economy.
JML
@geg6: unfortunately, it’s not Cost of Attendance, it’s tuition, fees, books, and supplies that are tax-free. Scholarships that would cover room & board, even for on-campus living run through the university and would be included in COA are taxable. That said, for many students, the tax liability on scholarship funds above and beyond tuition/fees/books/equipment isn’t going to be that significant, and certainly worth receiving the scholarship to pay for those expenses.
(personally, i think it should all be tax-free. hell, make the beer tax deductible, per Toby Ziegler. but taxing scholarships & grants beyond where they currently are is disastrous for higher ed)
Martin
@Cheryl from Maryland: Here as well. In Kindergarten they sent me over to the 2nd grade reading group. In the 4rd grade I went to a special math group.
In 9th grade I moved to a different state and asked to be able to take foreign language. They said I was too young (different birthdate to start so I was a year younger) and I explained that I’d already had 2 years of the language in my former state, how could I not be prepared to retake the first year? Sorry, too young. I was sent so far back in math that they didn’t even have a course that matched what I was studying in 8th grade. It was all repeat.
My grades fell off a cliff after that. This was just a game. Nobody cared about whether I learned anything or not. Fuck these people. I had a few sympathetic teachers later in high school who let me do my own thing when they realized I was trivially solving math problems before they had introduced the topic and my grades recovered there, but it wasn’t until college that I really got back on track, and I was lucky even to get that opportunity because my grades were so uneven.
Omnes Omnibus
@Bupalos: No, taking over Greenland and/or Panama doesn’t make any sense.
The Audacity of Krope
Perhaps not to someone who hasn’t taken residence in a swirling miasma of nonsense…
JML
@Martin: Ha, I identify with the “my grades were so uneven, it’s amazing I got into college” thing so hard. “does not work to potential” was the most common thing on my report cards. I’d crush a standardized test, then not turn in homework for 3 weeks.
Today they’d probably have diagnosed me ADHD at 11 and gotten me on a program that would have helped, especially since I had caring and engaged parents (who were monumentally frustrated with my school habits). Wouldn’t have saved me from the bullies, but probably would have fixed my grades…
Martin
@Bupalos: There is no theory. Seriously, there isn’t. Peter Navarro doesn’t think that China presents an economic threat to the US based on some economic theory, he does because he’s racist against the Chinese. I know this first hand. I’ve seen it personally.
The economic threat that China might present is not a factor in any of this. That this might resemble a sensible policy based on an economic theory doesn’t mean it was based on one, and it’s far too transparently simple in nature to work as one. He wants manufacturing to come to the US while also tariffing all of the materials needed to do that manufacturing, the materials needed to build the factory, and the tools needed to start production.
None of this is serious. It’s all based on racism and needing to prove a point.
rikyrah
@schrodingers_cat: 👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾
rikyrah
@rusty:
Yesss👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾
Miss Bianca
@Citizen Alan: I hope whoever advised Joe Biden to go ahead with a debate rather than take the line of “why should I stoop to ‘debate’ a felon and an idiot?”…never works again. And that’s the kindest thing I could hope for them.
The Audacity of Krope
@Miss Bianca: I hope whoever decided Biden’s telegenicity during that debate mattered more than the content of what he is saying goes straight to hell.
That’s going to be a lot of people.
Geminid
@Geminid: Another Texas politician made the news today, in a Politico article about challenges to older Democrstic Representatives including Brad Sherman (CA), 78 years old; Jan Schakowski (IL) 80; Nancy Pelosi (CA), 84?; and Andre Carson (IN). Carson is 50 years old but his 34 year-old challenger says the district needs more vigorish representation.
Rep. Greg Casar, who represents a San Antonio, Texas district, defended Rep. Schakowsky as a “stand and fight Democrat.” Schakowski has not yet said if she’s running for reelection, but the 35 year-old Casar said that if his Progressive Caucus colleague did, “I’d be behind her 100%.”
Citizen Alan
@Martin: I’m convinced that the only reason they did this was that some rich Game of Thrones fan pushed for it. I bet they think that if they have a dire wolf pet, they will be able to warg into it like Bran Stark or something stupid.
karen gail
@Steve in the ATL: Company ex works for bought a stamping machine from a factory closing; before it could be used it had to be refurbished since it had sat unused for nearly a year. The buyer didn’t have to order parts, even if there had been someone to order from, since the business was tool & die along with small part manufacturing so they were able to make the needed parts to replace what had been badly worn.
It took months of work before that press was able to start churning out parts; the very idea that one could cold start a press or whatever and have it working in no time at all? One would have a better chance of finding a unicorn in herd of horses.
Bill Arnold
@Barbara:
The statute of limitations for insider trading is five years, and it can be extended.
Martin
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artem1s
@Bill Arnold: Infrastructure week, after week, after week.
Ksmiami06
@Martin: what is crypto doing today???/ speaking of fraudulent economics
Ksmiami06
@Barbara: we all want to rely on our mental models for how the world works, but really we are in the upside down now, so …
Ksmiami06
@cain: they are bit players compared to the larger hedge funds like Citadel and Millennium though
WaterGirl
@Professor Bigfoot: Oh yikes, I had completely missed that. That’s no fun, to say the least.
WaterGirl
@Betty Cracker: Black is white. Up is down.
WaterGirl
@Geminid: Ooh, that is good!
Mike in Pasadena
@me: Tariffs were announced after markets closed. Pause was announced about three hours before markets closed. Do you have any doubts that boy genius Jared was among the many cronies called by trump, “Buy stocks bigly. Pause in triffs to be anounced shortly.”
SUCKERS! FOOLED YA!
Ramona
@WaterGirl:
@Geminid:
That 18-24 year olds favored Trump in October by 5% is why we are in this mess. But, I am glad they’ve come to their senses at least if this pair of polls is to be believed.
WaterGirl
@Ramona: Yeah, I confess to a 5% WTF? moment after originally reading that. What were they thinking???
The Audacity of Krope
@WaterGirl: They were thinking on a very superficial level that the economy was better when Trump was first President and that he is “successful.”
They weren’t thinking of timelines, who took what specific actions, causes….I could do on.
Matt McIrvin
@Soprano2: Mine say I was taught to read by Sesame Street and The Electric Company on PBS. They did other things too, though–one trick they used with me and my sister was to get a little miniature photo album, and into it, put lots of words with illustrations that I might recognize that they’d cut out of newspaper ads and catalogs. I had lots of kids’ picture books, too.
WaterGirl
@The Audacity of Krope: By any measure, the young should have been completely repulsed by FFOTUS.
Bill Arnold
@Mike in Pasadena:
Maybe the administration has a stock tips Signal group.
YY_Sima Qian
I am glad that I slept through the latest gyration in the market. Perfect opportunity to take the rest of my 401K funds that was still in equities & put them into cash!
Keeping the tariff high on the PRC will simply mean that the PRC exports to the U.S. will reroute through 3rd countries, benefiting the shippers & the intermediaries, while adding cost to the U.S. importers & consumers. Utterly pointless.
US exports to the PRC, however, will lose out to alternative suppliers.
Geminid
@WaterGirl: I’m not sure if this +5%-positive rating was for likely voters or was more general. Actual voters in this group might have been even or maybe even have favored Harris.
I mainly attach importance to the trend shown in this poll. And I’ve read that political opinions developed early in adulthood tend to stick to some extent.
I just feel sorry for young people graduating from high school or college into the coming economy. They will learn about Republican governance the hard way.
@Ramona: Ed: I would blame my own demographic cohort for Trump’s win before I blamed any other. We older White males voted for Trump by a margin much greater than 5%.
Kayla Rudbek
@Professor Bigfoot: yeah, I am having similar thoughts about how expensive I am to keep alive with all my medications (and quietly freaking out about the recent lump in my breast). Best of luck and I hope you have good doctors.
Ruckus
@rusty:
Agree with others – FANTASTIC!
I’ve known people that grew up with polio, like my neighbor who lives in a wheelchair, like a girl I went to school through high school with and she walked into our 10 yr reunion without the arm crutches she had used for years.
So much has changed in medicine over the last 75 years that it almost boggles the mind.
Sally
@Cheryl from Maryland: All my boys taught themselves to read. I read to them a lot, and showed them the (picture) books as we read “together”. They memorised the stories, then looked at the books and figured out with words were which. The only things I actively taught them regarding reading was the individual letters.
My eldest pretended he couldn’t read in first grade, as the books were too boring, he said. So the teacher sent him home with “The Duck is on the Pond” books, which he dutifully knocked off in less than a minute and went about his afternoon play. He was a rule follower and wouldn’t fib about doing reading homework to the teacher. He got away with it till the end of the year, when she caught him doing a project and checking the encyclopaedia for details. I had stayed out of it, as he was happy. It was a bit of a KPI amongst parents which books your child was reading and other parents did look down on us a bit. I survived, and he studied physical sciences at Cambridge.
I read to the boys at bedtime till they were about fifteen.
Sally
@Martin: Ha – a ninth grade teacher told me to just go away and teach myself calculus!