Update with Biden’s speech.
h/t NotMax
*****
FFOTUS has broken the record for worst approval rating of a President ever at this point in a presidency. The record he broke? That was his own record from 2017. Congratulations!
Not lookin’ too good for FFOTUS among Independents, where he is at -22. Not so good for him!
Net approval on the economy?
Not looking so good at -29, a drop of 30 points in the 5 years that have passed since he took office in January 2025.
Big surprise on tariffs!
How long before he hits the magic 27%?
So… good that people are starting to wake up.
Bad, I guess, that things are so bad that even the potentially clueless are getting a clue?
Certainly bad for FFOTUS!
*****
Can we talk about Independents for a minute? Because I don’t see how true Independents (who theoretically vote for the best candidate, regardless of party) could have thought he was fine to be begin with. My theory is that Independents are mostly people who don’t want to admit that they are mostly Republican.
I’ll close with the thought that if I’m right about that, FFOTUS is losing a lot of folks who voted for him, even if they voted for him on the down low.
NotMax
From downstairs.
Link to live stream of Biden’s speech.
sab
True indepents don’t follow the news at all, but feel dutybound to turn up and vote every four years. Plus more than half of them hate Democrats just because.
Baud
@sab:
Sounds like Democrats.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
Information environment
Hack gap
coin operated
Majority of Americans unhappy with the tariffs? LOL! They’re plenty happy with all the bigotry…they’re just upset that they have to pay more for it this time around.
Baud
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon:
Yep.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
That’s been shown to be true for oh, close to 40 years now.
dmsilev
Right now, the only real leverage we have is to make enough Republican Representatives more frightened at the possibility of losing a general election than the possibility of losing a primary. We’re clearly not in that state. Are we getting towards it? Hard to say, but continuing to push, especially in vaguely swing-ish districts, is the way to go.
Melancholy Jaques
Polls I would like to see:
Percentage of Americans who admit they were fucking stupid to vote for that asshole
Percentage of Americans now see that not voting was not such a good idea
Percentage of Americans who agree that no Democrat would ever do shit like this
kindness
I used to believe that 27% of the voting population was right wing nut cult nuts. Trump proved me wrong. It’s closer to 40%. My bad.
WaterGirl
@NotMax: I’ve been working all afternoon. What’s the speech about?
WTFGhost
You kinda feel bad for “business leaders” who claimed to have wisdom enough to know a dead rat on a stick when they see it, but apparently needed it rammed up where the sun don’t shine to believe it.
I mean, it’s not like it was difficult.
WTFGhost
@WaterGirl: Social security, per the press.
MisterForkbeard
@Melancholy Jaques: I have literally seen someone (THIS WEEK) say that Trump isn’t any worse than ‘Liberals’ because Obama droned-attacked people in Iraq and one of them was an American Citizen.
And therefore, totally okay for Trump to want to deport american citizens to El Salvadorean concentration camps because Libs Are Bad.
Honestly not sure if it was trolling or someone on the left just super damn high on their own supply
@kindness: I’m willing to believe it was 27% back in 2008 when we first settled on that number. But there’s been 15+ more years of propaganda, media consolidation and rightwing takeover of social media, not to mention tons of foreign influence operations to get slavish devotion to Trump and to go after actual patriots. The number is probably 40% now, like you say
NotMax
@WaterGirl
Mainly about Social Security.
Jay
bbc.com/news/articles/c33z6kn7xvyo
Funny, that there are places with laws.
Suzanne
Some of them, for sure. There’s also a cohort of people who are just reflexively angry at everything and they vote for the Other Party every time.
sab
@WaterGirl: Social Security. I am 71 and they have been threatening it for my entire working life.
Kids, if you hang in and support us it will remain the third rail of politics they dare not challenge.
Otherwise you just have to save for your own retirement ( can you currently even afford to buy a house?) And they won’t stop taking FICA taxes out of your paycheck. They just won’t give you the benefits (earned benefits because you paid in all those years) aka as entitlements (aka earned benefits you paid for.)
RevRick
@sab: Iindependents divide pretty equally between effectively Republicans and effectively Democrats with about 10% holding incoherent political beliefs.
Jay
@Suzanne:
A bunch interviewed in Cletus Safari’s are local and State ReThug party officials.
eclare
The people that I knew that claimed to be Independent before 2016 are now fully MAGA.
SW
“Oh my god maybe the Democrats were right about Trump”
Jay
theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/15/merwil-gutierrez-venezuelan-teen-deported-el-salvador
Ksmiami06
Still think we can get rid of these miscreants without violence?
They Call Me Noni
I will admit that I did not think Trump would win in 2024. I couldn’t imagine that anyone who lived through and paid even a little bit of attention to his first term would actually want more of that. Then add January 6th on top of all the other criminality and grifting. I totally underestimated the number of people who seem to be ok with being lied to and actually believe him. I do not have any social media exposure (on purpose) and have only watched Fox News for a total of maybe 30 minutes before my head exploded but the firehose of constant lies and misinformation sure does a number on folks who cannot or will not think for themselves. More disheartening is that a fair majority of Trump voters welcome all the evil he brings. My grandfather who fought in WWll is turning in his grave.
lowtechcyclist
@Jay:
So an independent is someone who self-identifies to a reporter as an independent, regardless of their actual politics and voting habits? Whatever.
Anyway, Rachel Bitecofer did some good work on this back in the ‘teens. Most self-identified independents consistently vote for one party or the other. (I can relate: after leaving the GOP with Anderson in 1980, I consistently voted Dem, but I didn’t identify as a Democrat until about 1997.) Only a few percent* of the electorate don’t consistently vote for one party, and they have a tendency to swing against the party in power.
*I’d put a cap of about 6% on this group: in all the Presidential elections from 2000 to now, no Dem has pulled in less than 48% of the voters, and no Rethug has been supported by less than 45.6% (and that was in 2008 when the GOP had just crashed the economy).
Aziz, light!
Why should Trump care what his numbers are? He has more power than he ever dreamed of (and what he lacks, he’s working on) and is safe from jail and most other repercussions. As long as he lives he will have sheep to fleece.
It’s up to the Kraven Kowards in Kongress to fear the wrath of the voters.
sab
@RevRick: That is pretty much what I expected.
Belafon
bsky.app/profile/chronicle.com/post/3lmu7bb6qws2q
Old Dan and Little Ann
I’ll take any bit of good news I can get.
Jay
@lowtechcyclist:
A bunch of bloggers and Dead Bird Site users, used their “google fu” to ID a bunch of the “Independents” in the Cletus Safari’s.
Yes, a large number were ReThug officials. In one case, a simple google search would have turned up that one of the Ohio Diner Cletus’s was the Ohio State Republican Party Chairman.
Still, the FTFNYT interviewed him 5 different times, presenting him as an “Independent voter.”.
Nukular Biskits
Good evenin’, y’all.
I need to light up the phones of my Trump butt-kissin’ Republican congressional delegation again but didn’t have time today. Y’all?
And this:
Made me think of this:
Indycat32
@Belafon: I know this is petty, but It’s Indiana University. You’d think the Chronicle of higher education would know better. We IU grads get perturbed when that happens.
Baud
Montgomery Alabama hero.
Leto
Tim Snyder on the future of American Democracy and the Rule of Law. This interview was posted a month ago by democracyFIRST. It’s a good interview.
Nukular Biskits
@lowtechcyclist:
Not trying to be a smartass here but then what would be the definition of an “independent”?
TheOtherHank
On the topic of independent voters, my now deceased father in law always claimed to be an independent. And I guess he was because he thought the Republican party of the last 30 or so years just was too full of squishy liberals. Dude was literally calling for ethnic cleansing of California more than 15 years ago. He was talking about how white folks were being replaced back in the 80s. When he came out with that one I asked him why he only had 2 kids.
Nukular Biskits
@Baud:
Good for him!
The local mullet wrapper stopped running LTEs a while back … but they have no problems running conservative opinion pieces by TX pundits.
Suzanne
@Jay: Agreed.
Arizona allows Independent as a registration, and IIRC it’s the largest. There’s a lot of people there who are just anti-everything. “Politically incoherent”.
lowtechcyclist
@Jay:
Yes, we know about that. Like, years ago. (Yawn.)
Point is, “who is able to fool gullible reporters about their party affiliation” has little relevance to the question of how many true independents there really are and what they’re like.
Jay
@Baud:
Not a reddit member, so I can’t see comments unless they are clipped into the post, but I am really enjoying r/Leopardsatemyface.
Saw one today by a 3 time MAGgot voter, redistributor of cheap, Chinese made mag wheels, whinging about not getting any sympathy for his company having to shut down, saying he never judges anybody for their politics, just how they treat people and their character,………
the couple of replies I could see were brutal.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I can’t see Trump being worried about those ratings. He’s in charge of the world.
Jay
@lowtechcyclist:
As Suzanne points out, one can in theory, go by State Party Voter registration, but unless that is checked against names and addresses, and State Election Laws*, Voter’s claims on affiliation, to pollsters and so called Press are simply “self proclaimed”.
*In some states, registering as an “Independent” allows one to vote in either parties primary, be it for electing or ratfucking.
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne: There are different categories. I’ve known a lot of “independents” who were more reflexively centrist–often “socially liberal and fiscally conservative” types. They’ve got money, they don’t like paying taxes, but they like institutions and education and science and such, but they think of being all-in for a party as a thing only dum-dums do. They mostly vote for Democrats but they love voting for the Republicans who seem sane.
And then there are the junior Marxist or anarchist types who may be averse to voting at all–“it only encourages them”.
lowtechcyclist
@Nukular Biskits:
You can define it in a number of different ways. I personally prefer a definition of ‘independent’ as ‘someone who doesn’t always vote for the same party at the Federal level’ because the label tells you something meaningful.
There are other definitions, obviously. Self-identification, which pollsters have to use in the absence of anything better, doesn’t mean very much AFAIAC since most self-identified independents consistently vote for the same party, year after year. And of course defining independents as people who don’t register as a member of any party has the flaw that many states don’t have registration by party. (A definition that says every voter in Virginia is an independent really wouldn’t tell you anything.)
Suzanne
@Jay: Some states actually do swing, which indicates that there is a small-but-pivotal cohort of people who move around. But I have no doubt that most Independents usually vote for one party or the other, if they vote at all.
RaflW
My seat-of-the-pants impression is that independents are a weird stew of embarrassed Republicans, a small number of disillusioned Dems, and a bunch of people who hate politics, hate making decisions, and avoid voting unless they have some big reason to get off the couch.
I’ve also seen mention on Bsky that there’s data that low-propensity voters, who are in this sense somewhat different than stated Independents, break fairly heavily Democrat. The problem is getting low-propensity voters to show up. This, I think, is why some states are swingy.
Jay
@Matt McIrvin:
Junior Marxist types in Canada vote NDP or the Communist Party of Canada.
Anarchist types vote for the Rhino Party or the Party Party.
Danielx
@dmsilev:
That’s what the so called SAFE act and Its executive order attempting to assert control over elections are designed to do – remove Republican worries about general elections.
Baud
Matt McIrvin
@lowtechcyclist: A lot of states now have open primaries that don’t require you to register with the party, and even which primary they vote in might not tell you much since often only one of them is competitive.
Suzanne
@Matt McIrvin: I’ve also known a bunch of Independents who are really just single-issue voters. Legal weed was a big one.
Nukular Biskits
@lowtechcyclist:
Schrodinger’s independent?
Seriously, I understand that the term “independent” probably has a bazillion subjective definitions, all dependent upon the context, who is doing the defining and who knows how many other factors.
I am of the opinion, based solely on observation and not actual evidence, there are very few “true” independents in the sense they vote without any consideration for a candidate’s party affiliation or other label (i.e., “progressive”, “conservative”, etc).
Jay
@RaflW:
Well, the PM Debate in Canada has been rescheduled because the Habs, (Montreal Canadians) have a big game tonight.
Still remember a Canadian reply to an American question on the intertubes.
“What do you call Gay Marriage in Canada?”,
“We call it marriage, nobody cares what team you play for, it isn’t hockey.”
Jackie
@Baud: I’m trying to figure out if his last sentence was snark? I’m not familiar with the author.
David Collier-Brown
@sab: In Canada, independents are common, because the parties don’t do the registration. They start paying attention about 30 days before the election, which is a bit shorter than the election period itself. Before that? They pay little or no attention.
WaterGirl
@Jay:
That makes me want to vomit.
Danielx
@Indycat32:
Got that right.
Suzanne
@RaflW:
I have inchoate thoughts about this. I know that this used to be true…. so we threw effort into turning people out. And historically higher turnout helped Democrats. But I saw some reports that FFOTUS has upended that somewhat…. he seems to turn people out who don’t show up for others. So in the last election, turning more people out was not an electoral advantage for Dems.
Which makes me wonder if FFOTUS just has some magic power over a swath of people who just otherwise DGAF and stay home, and if that can be replicated by some other person. I can’t see anyone being really inspired by JD Vance.
Belafon
@Jackie: definitely snark. Meant to be funny for those of us in the left and a “hey now” for the rest.
WaterGirl
@Dorothy A. Winsor: FFOTUS doesn’t have to be worried. Republicans in congress DO.
Jackie
@Jay:
In other states, like WA, Independents can’t vote in primaries at all. To vote, you have to declare for one party or the other.
Jay
@Jackie:
It’s a toss back on DJTdiot’s posts yesterday, blaming the War in Ukraine on Zelenskyy and Biden, stating that ruZZia would never have attacked Ukraine on his watch, (they did, every day) and that Putin was innocent.
YY_Sima Qian
The polls make me more confident that the reactionary counterrevolution will be defeated. The ineffectiveness of the existing institutions at checking the reactionaries makes me less hopeful that their defeat will come via peaceful means.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@kindness:
I’ve always felt what we’ve seen is the Crazification Factor plus the stone cold racist factor which appears to be 13%, thus getting us to 40.
Delicate Butterfly
My god, just listen to Joe Biden trying to string a sentence together before falling asleep.
We certainly dodged a major bullet by chucking him out the door in favor of someone who only fell 6,250,000 votes short of what Biden got last time.
Kamala 2028!!!
Jackie
@Baud: Adorable! So tiny!
Danielx
I considered myself an independent voter until, oh, forty years ago or so. Then I realized that somehow Republican policy choices were invariably vile.
Jay
@David Collier-Brown:
In Canada, Federal, Provincial and Municipal, you have to pay annual membership fees to join a registered party.
There have been some “ethical” and “scandal” issues around this, where 2nd parties have paid the fee to register others to vote in Leadership and Candidate selections.
Another Scott
@NotMax: Thanks for the pointer, and thanks to WG for highlighting it.
Ah, what might have been…
And it’s another illustration of the importance of modern sound systems with Automatic Level Control. :-/
Shouty Biden is great! Quiet Biden is concerning. :-(
It’s good his first major talk back was about the ADA and Social Security. Getting olders to walk away from MAGA would be huge for returning to the course of progress.
Thanks again.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Captain C
@Jay:
When Baud is President I’m going to request that he runs the FTFNYT out of all government press rooms on the grounds that they’re either too incompetent or too desirous of being Pravda USA to be taken seriously as a journalistic institution.
At least Fox News is honest (relatively) about who they are.
sab
@Leto: I am glad he is getting out for a while.
Husband thinks it is a betrayal.
I think a lot of his usefulness around the world is being heard around the world, and for that he needs international graduate students.
No one in his position and a responsible teacher/mentor/ human being would lure foreign grad students into America today.
ETA for those not following back to prior comment: He is Tim Snyder the academic anti-audocrat.
Suzanne
When I was a kid, the mom of one of my best friends said that she would never register to vote because that was how they made the pool of people to serve jury duty. She said she had never gotten called.
different-church-lady
Yeah… uh… HE WAS THE SAME GUY BEFORE YOU VOTED FOR HIM, DUMBSHITS.
sab
@Suzanne: Then Ohio started to call up registered drivers. They even call up lawyers! The shame.
Suzanne
Seen on Xhitter:
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Matt McIrvin:
I have quite a few tote-bagger friends who ID as independent because political parties are just so partisan and besides “both sides” and how can one adopt a stance of moral superiority if one is aligned with “the system” and so on.
Years ago, BCrack had a magnificent piece on “independent” voters that I swore I stashed away but now can’t find.
Gary Wills had this to say 13 years ago:
sab
@Suzanne: Well let those little shits save for their own retirements without social security. Don”t expect an inheritance. We will have spent it all on nursing homes.
Chetan Murthy
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: “We’re independent: we didn’t vote for Bush.” Out of the mouths of a couple that proceeded to vote for fucking Trump.
Suzanne
@sab: Well, uhhhh, to be fair, I’m not getting an inheritance, either.
That pandemic is a bright, glowing dividing line, isn’t it? It really damaged our kids. I think we will be finding out the extent of that damage for a long time.
TONYG
I think that Trump’s idiotic tariffs are having a big negative impact on his popularity. Except for inside traders, the tariffs are hurting everybody economically. So the “average American” can’t just ignore them and say that they’re hurting Those Other People.
Harrison Wesley
@Suzanne: I am immediately reminded of the scene in the movie version of Cabaret, where the young man stands up in the beautiful bucolic setting and sings “Tomorrow belongs to me.”
Scuffletuffle
I have been registered Independent my entire voting life simply because I don’t think it’s anyone’s business but mine. I vote and contibute financially to Democrats exclusively, well, since Bill Weld and I freely acknowledge having regrets on that score…
Another Scott
@Captain C: Can you also request that he not decorate the Oval Office with plastic crap from Alibaba??
:-/
Best wishes,
Scott.
Soapdish
Ding ding ding we’ve got ourselves a winner!
Jay
@sab:
U of T started setting up the Monk Center three years ago. It’s basically SFU’s Center for Dialogue, same program, different sponsor. It’s basically a Global Think Tank/Education around Democracy, Human Rights, Indigenous rights and issues, Climate Change. Like SFU’s Center for Dialogue, it will have a global impact on leaders.
2 years ago they started building a program around him and his wife, and about a year ago he and his wife agreed to take positions in the program, but it was kept quiet. Mostly around the issue of UoT “poaching” 3 prominent Yale Proffs and their last 3 semesters at Yale.
Chip Daniels
Everyone keeps acquiescing as if he rode in on a wave election.
But he squeaked by on a razor thin margin, andis wildly unpopular.
Plus, he has shown himself to be a coward who backs down when given a fight.
He can be beaten.
Matt McIrvin
@RaflW:
My understanding is that that used to be true before 2016, but Trump turned it upside down–he won by turning out low-propensity voters, and ever since 2016, the lower-turnout midterm and special elections that used to lean Republican because they were the most reliable voters have swung Democratic instead.
Jay
@Suzanne:
It needs to be broken down by gender to really mean much.
Most young male’s social media is dominated by the worst. Rogan, Tates, Peterson, etc.
Most young women’s social media is dominated by their friends.
Elizabelle
@Chip Daniels: This. Agreed.
Chetan Murthy
@Leto: I’m sitting here, listening to Snyder, at 15m now, and ….
(1) I have never regretted listening to Timothy Snyder
(2) Wow, this is an amazing discussion
Wow, wow.
Jay
@Jay:
Oh and as the 4Chan blow up shows, a huge amount of US Academia is full on Reich shitposters in their spare time.
Elizabelle
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Great Gary Willis quote.
“Independent” means either “low information voter” or “embarrassed Republican to me.” I guess we have some sporadic Democratic voters in there too.
People who tell you “I vote for the person, not the party” — tell me you’re stupid without telling me you are stupid.
PS: Wiki tells me Gary Willis is 90 years old, and still with us.
For that matter, Tom Lehrer just had his 97th birthday on April 9th.
Wish they were having calmer golden years, with President Kamala in office. But, no.
Cuz. “Independent voters” and apathetic nonvoters.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Suzanne:
I know a 20 year old guy at work, who apparently voted for Trump last year. Oh, he loves to put on an affable “love is love, everybody’s free to be whatever they are” but it’s complete bullshit. A coworker of mine showed me a FB post of his from last September, right after the debate, where he was regurgitating the “Haitians are eating people’s pets!1!” shit, saying it was true because he lived in Ohio, going on about he was tired of “illegal immigrants” and that maybe he might vote for Trump because he “loves the military”. He was promoting a fucking blood libel. He doesn’t live anywhere near Springfield where the Haitians lived! And they were here legally!
This is a guy who doesn’t even code “MAGA” to me. He’s a “Tankie” (Thomas the Tank Engine fan, talks about it all the time). He even apparently has a longtime girlfriend, somehow.
Recently, I’d had my suspicious that he was a chud. He apparently thinks Blake Lively is lying about Baldoni because he “read it online” somewhere.
He’s also a Sonic fan which is hilarious because Sonic fans hate fascists. Sonic is a character that fights an evil mad scientist that’s destroying nature. Has been since the beginning. It’s hilarious to think that if Sonic were real and he met this dude he’d despise him lol. Media literacy really is dead with some of these people
I remember a month ago this guy claiming to somebody else at work that at least gas prices were coming down; it’s only been a month, can’t expect Trump to work miracles.
A week ago? He doesn’t “talk about politics anymore because it doesn’t solve anything.”
Translation: He’s embarrassed, feels duped, but doesn’t want to take responsibility for his stupid choice and wants to play it cool
Captain C
@Another Scott: I can ask. He might go for that if we don’t require him to wear pants.
David Collier-Brown
@Jay: Nazi types in Reform Party
Captain C
@Jay: 4chan blow up? Sounds intriguing.
Geminid
@Jackie: Virginia has no registration by party, so every primary is open to all voters. Same with South Carolina.
Jay
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
And the Human Brain is not even fully formed at 25 years of age,…….ymmv.
Suzanne
@Leto: Thx for the tip! I’m gonna listen to it tomorrow.
Doc Sardonic
I view Snyder as Brave Sir Robin, talks a lot of shit about stand and fight, but when it gets down to the nut cuttin’ all you see is asshole and elbows going the other way.
Suzanne
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Many such cases.
David Collier-Brown
@Jay: Absolutely!
Chetan Murthy
Boy howdy, there’s a big tell.
Jay
@Captain C:
Big hack of the user base and posts, people used their real names, their .edu accounts, etc. Known vulnerabilities in the software going back to,……………………2016.
The fall out will eventually be bigger than Ashley Madison. That was just people screwing around on their partners.
Chetan Murthy
@Doc Sardonic: NOBODY, NOBODY should chastise somebody for getting the fuck out of this country for their safety. NOBODY.
Jay
@Another Scott:
Tariff’s (FFS) have that covered.
Jay
@David Collier-Brown:
Yurp, although Reform isn’t a Party anymore, it’s Cons all the way down.
I take heart in BC’s last provincial election. Each faction of the Con’s hated eachother more, than they hated “us”.
Gretchen
This is Josh Hawley’s idea for a working class tax cut: refund their payroll tax:
Republicans should fix this now. Make the home mortgage interest deduction, the child tax credit and the charitable deduction available against the payroll tax. That is to say, allow Americans earning a wage and paying the payroll tax to claim these credits to offset their tax liability
Clever way to completely gut social security
Doc Sardonic
@Chetan Murthy: Sorry, I disagree, if you are going to tell me to stand and fight against the autocracy, you better be there with me. More to say but going to just leave it at that.
BritinChicago
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: “I’ve always felt what we’ve seen is the Crazification Factor plus the stone cold racist factor which appears to be 13%, thus getting us to 40.”
That’s quite plausible, given that the original 27% was for a black person (Alan Keys). I was in IL in 2004 and remember that election. The most likely R candidates self-destructed that made it seem as if the hand of God was sweeping them away. (And I’m an atheist.) Keys was parachuted in, one black guy to run against another. The other did rather better, in that election and his next two.
frosty
@sab: I met Senator Sarbanes (MD) on the Hopkins track when I was about 30. I told him to kill Social Security now because I’d never see a dime from it.
He didn’t. I’ve been drawing it for almost exactly five years now.
Lyrebird
@Baud: Wow, Joel Sanders my hat is off!
Short, sweet, and educational.
Chetan Murthy
@Doc Sardonic: “stand and fight”? stand. and. fight. ??
There is only one way it makes -sense- to stand and fight, and that is united by local and state governments. The idea of somehow individually resisting …. that is BULLSHIT. And our state & local officials are doing -jack-shit-, and I speak of California, where they should be in open defiance by now, -arresting- ICE po-po who try to detain -anybody- in California. And they’re not doing it. They’re not doing jack.
At the beginning of the Ukraine war, people noted that the big, big difference between Ukraine, and Syria, was that in Syria, the resistance was disorganized, and that as a result Russia was able to roll them up with ease. It required for them to get organized, before they could effective fight back. And in Ukraine (by contrast) the resistance was organized from the get-go. By the -government-.
Don’t tell me about how I need to stick around for some -fight-, when our state and local governments are busy rolling over and showing their fucking bellies to MAGA to get gutted like fish.
ETA: something more: I read someplace that the entire idea of nonviolent resistance, is that you offer up your body to be beaten, crushed, maimed, killed, by The Power, as a way of showing others (neutral onlookers) the truth about The Power, and why those onlookers should side with you. Well lemmetellya, if the time comes and we need to put our bodies in the way so that The Power can have its way with us, I won’t be there; if I haven’t gotten out already, I’ll be learning how to make IEDs and suicide vests, and I’ll wear one into some MAGA mega-church.
Besides the fact that I don’t think there -are- any neutral onlookers — just lazy shitheads — I’m not about to sacrifice my life when our elected officials WON’T DO JACK SHIT.
NEWSOM HASN’T DONE JACK SHIT. SF ELECTED OFFICIALS HAVEN’T DONE JACK SHIT.
frosty
@They Call Me Noni: My F-I-L who was on a ship in McArthur’s Navy was an avid Fox-watcher. Definitely not spinning in his grave.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Suzanne:
What infuriates me is the refusal to take responsibility or admit fault. He spread a blood libel against a whole group of innocent people. He lives over 200 miles away from Springfield, OH! People he’s never even met.
@Chetan Murthy:
He’s definitely a chud. He doesn’t seem to be very critical of the things he reads
frosty
@Nukular Biskits:
I didn’t call my D/R Senators today about the SAVE act or deportation. I forget what else was on my list that got buried by the Shit Tsunami.
Tomorrow! For real!
Chetan Murthy
Or, he’s a misogynist (that isn’t incompatible with having a long-term girlfriend: plenty of misogynists have wives and kids) and what he reads confirms his priors.
MagdaInBlack
@Chetan Murthy: @Leto: Yeah, I’m hooked now too.
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne: That gigantic a shift, I would expect to see in my daughter’s cohort who are all that age. And I don’t, at all. Maybe they’re exceptional, but I suspect something hinky is going on here. It *might* just be a gender split.
Jeffro
I’ve been adding #TheLibsWereRight onto every last little FB post, BlueSky post, and personal email for the past month, gleefully.
Jeffro
“someone who can’t admit that they lean one way or the other, just like the rest of us”
Jay
@Doc Sardonic:
Technically, all 3 left 2 years ago, when Biden was President.
Not fleeing what the US has become, but taking the opportunity to engage more, that now has become even more important globally, now that the US has become what it is.
The Monk Center at UoT is modelled after SFU’s Center for Dialogue.
T lasted 3 years there, as an Admin, before she was completely burned out. Stress leave for 1.5 years and major stress induced illness. Every Global crisis landed on their desks, every Global leader calling in. The staff were lovely people dealing with, on a day to day basis, the worst that humans can do to the globe and each other, and everyone was calling them for answers.
All three Yale Proff’s have gone from being in the fat, to the fire.
And Yale capitulated in advance to the Nazi’s.
Suzanne
@Matt McIrvin: Agreed. Spawn the Elder is in that younger cohort and I don’t see any of that in them. Anyway, passing it along as a potential data point.
NotMax
@Jeffro
I’d humbly suggest WereCorrect.
“Right” subject to misinterpretation.
frosty
Yes. My anecdata from working polls in 2016 bears this out. For some reason the local Dems didn’t want us doing that since then (checking who voted, calling the others if they haven’t shown up).
COVID?
Jeffro
This is 110% correct.
trumpov has, unfortunately, been really good for the GOP in terms of pulling these people out of the woodwork. but only when he’s on the ballot.
Martin
@Suzanne: One of the warnings that has been going out for some time, and being ignored is that real and perceived opportunities are declining for young people. They are increasingly disconnected from both school and jobs – a perception they are not helping them attain their goals. As usually the employees with least seniority, they are often the first laid off when there are layoffs which is becoming increasingly common in a manner that is disconnected from the businesses success (see tech layoffs in the last few years). They are more likely to be gig workers and trapped in the gig economy, and they’re the group least likely to own a home and working backward from the cost of buying one are more dissatisfied with pay. I could easily afford my $1.6M home because I got in when it was $200K, and my salary could easily cover it. But a new worker looking to buy my home would need to earn 8x what I earned.
During the campaign there was a big focus on inflation and the degree to which wages kept pace of inflation and how lower wage workers were seeing pay increases faster than higher wage workers. But there was no discussion of how wealth flows are working, and wealth inequality was continuing to increase very rapidly during Biden’s term. Note, inflation doesn’t measure the cost of assets, but assets are where you get financial security from, and asset prices were rapidly outpacing both inflation and wages, because rich people can afford to remove those assets from the market. Again, almost 25% of all home sales last year were purchases by private equity. They took an enormous amount of asset opportunity off the table, and in the process drove the entry cost of those assets really high.
Mind you, Trump isn’t doing anything to address that, but he did speak more to the anger that people feel being shut out of the economy, while Democrats couldn’t stop defending the economy as being great, and it was in certain ways, but it’s a terrible economy in other ways. When you have full time workers living in cars, you have a serious economic problem. Among 18-21, there’s a HUGE gap by gender, with young women having more opportunities now than men, and earning higher wages now than men in a lot of markets, and men not seeing the kind of income stability that they expect. Note, there are different expectations on gender. Even though women increasingly see themselves as sharing the financial load and so on, the expectation is still on men that they MUST carry the financial load – and this is an environment where that’s really hard.
My son is an engineer. He makes 6 figures. He owns a share of his company and gets profit sharing. But he’s in a 1br apt, no car, doesn’t travel, and he’s maybe 15 years from being able to afford a house on his salary. And he’s at the top of earning potential for someone his age. Imagine being in the middle or at the bottom. If you’re sitting on a million in unearned home equity, it’s a lot easier to see the economy as good than if you’re on the outside looking in and seeing that there is almost ZERO opportunity to do that now.
Kelly
Yes but no true independent…
SW
Well he is giving them the racism they voted for.
Professor Bigfoot
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Fairly bog-standard white guy.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Jeffro
@NotMax: haven’t had a misunderstanding yet, but thanks
It’s important to rub it in their faces at every opportunity. Like the guy Goku was talking about it upthread, who’s just quietly embarrassed now. That’s the kind of person I want overhearing my commentary whenever about the tariffs, the deportations, the stock market, etc.
“Gosh, who could POSSIBLY have foreseen such calamity?!? Oh wait…I did. Me. I was right.”
Kirk
@Ksmiami06: I am hoping so, but not putting money on it.
We’re broken and what will come of this will be unsatisfactory to many. Add blood and it’ll be worse even in the long run.
Chetan Murthy
@Leto: Leto, I just finished listening to that discussion. Thank you for finding and posting this.
Ksmiami06
@Kirk: I know but I’m not sure how the country stays together
Chetan Murthy
@Martin: Everything you write is true. I remain (somewhat) gobsmacked, that people saw all that, and thought “I know, let’s put the rich guys in charge! They’ll fix it!”
Just gobsmacked.
MagdaInBlack
@Professor Bigfoot: Yup.
Sister Golden Bear
@Doc Sardonic: A number of trans people are leaving the country before we end up in camps. Just sayin’….
Jay
@Ksmiami06:
Much of previous divisions of Nations, few peaceful, were because of ethnic/cultural/religious lines being reasonably well defined.
With Blue Cities in Red States and Red Rural’s in Blue States, well,……………….
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Chetan Murthy:
Does it make me a bad person to think to myself, “Must be nice, I wouldn’t know what it’s like having that option” when it comes to Snyder and the other two? And resent them a little bit? Like, when do I get to leave and get the hell out?
Ksmiami06
@Jay: I get that but I’m not going to sit back and let innocent people be victimized. Fuck that shit. I’m not going to wait around to become a victim either
Chetan Murthy
There’s a thing Snyder says at the end of that discussion: he says that the US won’t stay the way it is, 50-50, gridlock, forever. It will either get much, much worse, or much better. He then goes on to describe what that “better” might be like. I remain focused on the “worse”.
YY_Sima Qian
@Martin: That dynamic was what the PRC was seeing in the late ’10s during the real estate bubble, which is why Xi was determined to deflate the bubble by any means necessary (the famous/infamous “houses are for living in, not for speculation”), even if it meant the bubble popping, & w/ the inevitable hostility from the rich & the urban mass affluent that had/has much of their net worth parked in multiple properties., & the professionals in the finance & real estate sectors whose livelihood depended on the bubble.
Left unchecked, it would have created such stresses in society that would likely have threatened regime stability & legitimacy. Better to have the older & well off demographics griping, the vast majority of whom remain well off despite the plunge in real estate asset prices, than the younger demographics disillusioned, disaffected, marginalized, idle & desperate.
Suzanne
@Martin: I agree with you on all of these points. I think the world for young people is incredibly difficult right now and we’d be wise to get them started on the path to success.
I continue to believe that one of our biggest problems as a society is not having enough houses where people work.
dww44
@Jackie: it was definitely snark. I’m Southern. and I know these things!
MagdaInBlack
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): They’re not “more special” than you or me. They have more options than we do. And yeah, I do get a wee bit of “wish I had those options.”
But they worked for those options, and I didn’t. So I don’t resent them that.
I reserve my resentment for folks like musk and the like, because they deserve it =-)
and nope, it doesnt make you a bad person.
Ridnik Chrome
If his approval numbers get low enough, maybe the Republicans will throw him under the bus, in which case we might end up Scraping FFOTUS Off The Wheel.
Ksmiami06
@Chetan Murthy: yep. The state democratic electeds have underperformed by far. And no I’m not offering up my body without taking a bunch of MAGATs down too.
Geminid
@TheOtherHank: Yeah, there are some ultra-conservatives who consistently vote Republican but do not identify with the party because they think it’s not conservative enough. There is a corresponding– maybe smaller– group of leftis who will vote for Democratic candidates but think the party is too conservative to identify as Democrats
That’s two types of Independents, but I can think of several more, and i think people have described at a couple more on this thread. There may be even more types of Indies than there are types of Democrats, and I know there are several types of Democrats because I read this blog.
Chetan Murthy
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): No, it doesn’t make you a bad person.
Jay
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
They are globally acclaimed educators, writers and experts, who two years ago were offered positions at the Monk Center at the University of Toronto.
Are you also upset about all the Doctors, Foreign Grad students and others, fleeing to Canada, or abroad?
How about those who are dual citizens, or have gone through the process of establishing Irish or other citizenship?
Billionaires fleeing to the Caymans, Malta, buying Golden Passports?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Sister Golden Bear:
There’s a stickied megeathread on r/ImmigrationCanada for Americans wanting to immigrate to Canada that was posted in July of last year where a lot of the answers to trans people, even as recently as a few months ago, boil down to “you don’t qualify for immigration/asylum, you live in a ‘safe’ country by ‘global standards’ (meaning you’re not literally being thrown in jail just for being trans), just move to a blue state”
ETA: Same reasoning for gay people was given too. Even the overturning of same-sex marriage wouldn’t be enough to claim asylum according to these people
Chetan Murthy
@Ksmiami06: I -specifically- asked my Supervisor (equiv of city councilmember in SF) what they were planning to do to protect citizens of color, LGBTQ citizens, etc, and their answer was FUCKING NAMBY-PAMBY about sanctuary, and protecting all San Franciscans and shit. Which, sure buddy, you do you. You’re not givin’ anybody with the means to GTFO any reason to stick around.
What I WANT is for SF (and CA) to tell Trump that if he TOUCHES any citizens, they’re fucking gonna start arresting federal agents and holding them without bail in the shittiest jails.
Jackie
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Aside from nothing – that statement gave my age away – as I momentarily thought you meant he was a Sonics fan – as in the sadly demised Seattle Super Sonics now known as OK Thunder lol
eta My grandson is a huge Sonic the Hedgehog fan, so I caught up quickly ;-)
Chetan Murthy
I don’t mean this unkindly, so please take it in that context: if more of you decent Red State dwellers would get your asses over here, maybe we could convince our state elected officials to get their asses in gear. It ain’t like California is some radical leftist paradise: we got our nutters and our money-is-all-I-care-about assholes too.
Doc Sardonic
@Martin: It is mind boggling how depending on where you are on the age strata, how different the economy is. The only way I knew what was going on, since I don’t have kids, was listening to friends and relatives kids (I say kids, they are actually young adults) talking about it. One is in college and is paying around 12-1500 a month for rent that gets a bedroom suite and a common kitchen and living room, shared with 3 other people. Apartments in my area are going for more than my property taxes and mortgage combined. So, the disconnect is there, our politicians just either are not seeing it or just whistling past it.
MagdaInBlack
@Jackie: Yeah, me too. And it wasn’t til your comment that I caught on.
Martin
@Chetan Murthy: And yet Democrats didn’t seriously campaign on it, or do anything about it. They didn’t really give voters a contrast on that.
Don’t get me wrong, I think Bernie is a crank. But he’s not wrong. So long as the focus is on income and not wealth, the problem will get worse. You have to tax wealth. The rich will drive everyone into poverty by scooping up all of the wealth opportunities. We have this notion that the national debt is this insurmountable number, but you could tax the entire national debt out of the wealth of the top 1% and they’d still have an average net worth of $7M each.
Jay
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Asylum in Canada is case, by case. If you can prove persecution, you are in, if not, you have a “safe space” for 16 months, until your case is heard, but with 75,000 applying in Ontario and Quebec alone in the last 2 months, 7X the norm, might be longer.
A bunch of Vietnam refusenick’s, well, their asylum cases lasted longer than the war.
YY_Sima Qian
In other news, the Trump Administration has just now banned the Nvidia H20 GPUs from being sold to the PRC, indefinitely. This was after the administration allowed the chips to be sold to the PRC, after Nvidia CEO Jansen Huang attended a US$1M / plate dinner at Mar-a-Lago (& who knows how much more). When the plutocrats bribe politicians, I think they prefer the politicians stay bought.
I think the impact on the PRC’s AI ambitions will be limited. The H20 is already a neutered version of Nvidia’s latest GPUs, specifically to meet the limits imposed by the Biden Administration so that they can be sold to the PRC. The impression in the PRC tech community is that these neutered chips are OK for inference & not great for training, & they are not particularly advantaged over what the domestic vendors (especially Huawei) can provide. Furthermore, advances by AI model developers in the PRC, as well as Google, are making a lot of progress significantly reducing the amount of compute (& thus the cost) required for inference. Finally, lots of Nvidia chips, H20s or those banned earlier, will flow to the PRC via Singapore & Taiwan, just like during the Biden Administration. In fact, the DOGE has probably degraded the USG’s ability to enforce end user certifications relative to during the Biden term.
Unsurprisingly, Nvidia is taking a US$5.5B charge from Q1 revenue, & its stock futures has plunged. Also unsurprisingly, there were a lot of put options purchased for Nvidia stock in the hours before the announcement, so the massive insider trading continues.
Chetan Murthy
@Doc Sardonic: In Jan 1995 in NYC (99th & Bway) I paid $800/mo ($1.7k in today’s dollars) for basically that. In NYC. I’m assuming the kid you’re referring to wasn’t living in Manhattan. This article seems relevant: theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/mar/19/end-of-landlords-surprisingly-simple-solution-to-uk-housing…
“The end of landlords: the surprisingly simple solution to the UK housing crisis”
In the 1970s, when Leigh’s contemporaries were buying their first homes, they were the direct beneficiaries of an imploding private rental market. Rent controls, secure tenancies and high interest rates had conspired to decimate the sector: it shrank from nearly 60% of dwellings in England and Wales in 1939 to just 9% in 1988, towards the end of Margaret Thatcher’s premiership. This was welcomed by Conservative governments and Labour councils alike: the former rejoiced that rack-renting landlords were having to sell up to new owner-occupiers, while the latter enthusiastically repurposed existing private lets into new social housing stock.
The project of “municipalising” the private sector enjoyed cross-party support. With landlords desperate to sell, and councils having access to preferential public loans and grants, there was not even a need for compulsory purchases, and social housing stocks could grow cheaply, sustainably and without a single new brick being laid. In the 1970s, Harold Wilson’s government issued circulars encouraging municipalisation, the chancellor Denis Healey made £200m available in the budget and Wilson’s “good sensible socialist government” criticised Edward Heath’s Conservatives for adopting municipalisation funding criteria that had been too generous: “Almost a carte blanche,” complained a Labour minister.
In 1973 and 1974 alone, Camden council acquired more than 4,000 privately rented homes through voluntary sales, which – at a stroke – reduced the London borough’s private rented sector by about 10%. A contemporaneous article proposed municipalisation as a route towards “the end of landlordism in London”, explaining that “with commitment it could be achieved in six years – it would be easy to do in 10”.
Chetan Murthy
I don’t think most voters actually want that. I think most voters have bought into the myth that if they get on that property ladder, they’ll be rich, and they aren’t for changin’.
Doc Sardonic
@Sister Golden Bear: Don’t have a problem with that…. One does what one needs to do to protect themselves. My problem is with those that tell us to stand up, and then unass the AO
Chetan Murthy
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Goku, if you’d like to discuss this privately, you can send me email at gastromancer at gmail.com. I only use that for such mail-drop purposes: I’d reply to you from a different email. I suggest this b/c I have concrete suggestions to offer.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Chetan Murthy:
Have a front-pager email it to me. You don’t want randos emailing you
Chetan Murthy
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): that’s why I have that email (gastromancer means “ventriloquist”). I don’t use it for anything else.
Doc Sardonic
@Chetan Murthy: No they are definitely not in Manhattan, if they were in Manhattan that rent wouldn’t as eyebrow raising to me. However, 6k/month divided amongst 4 people in a Florida college town……that’s a different pony.
Chetan Murthy
@Doc Sardonic: yeah, that’s nuts. I remember the rent for an apt in Ithaca NY in 1986 being $300/mo (or maybe that was x2 for two of us, I forget). In any case, that’s $900/mo today. That’s what I’d expect in a college town. But I kinda think that was $300/mo for the entire apt.
Jeffro
maybe
but…more likely…since trumpov’s approval numbers suck and are likely to only head further down to the fabled 27%, let me suggest that he will probably start squawking soon about a ‘rigged election effort’ for the 2026 midterms and activate all sorts of anti-democratic tactics in order to avoid being held accountable for the past 90 days’ obvious crimes.
would not surprise me to see the dumbest thing being held up as a “Reichstag Fire” moment and trumpov tries to suspend the elections themselves.
that, or just finding some convenient war to start
Jackie
@MagdaInBlack: Thank you for confessing! LOL!
Jay
@Jeffro:
ReThugs have to face three things, primaries where Edolph and other PAC’s have threatened massive funding for primary MAGgot challengers,
death threats from MAGgot’s,
and then, the electorate.
3 Hurdles and we all know White Supremacy Men can’t jump.
Eolirin
@dmsilev: That doesn’t even do it. Losing an election but staying super loyal means they’re on the wingnut gravy train for life, bucking Trump means they’re facing death threats or worse for who knows how long.
Getting excommunicated is far worse for most republican officials in terms of the effect it’ll have on their lives than losing an election is. It’s one of the biggest asymmetries between the parties. Democrats that are willing to attack other Democrats have more opportunities post office than Republicans who step even a slight bit out of line. And there’s a whole industry to reward loyalty from Republicans that just doesn’t exist on the left.
Martin
@Chetan Murthy: I wasn’t arguing against that. I was arguing that residential housing should only be available for purchase to people living in the home, not to billionaire corporations. I do think people would be on board with that.
bjacques
@Ridnik Chrome: I see what you did there
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Jay:
I understand that they are acclaimed academics, that they worked to get where they are, so they have that option. I still wish I had the options they had. I’m nearly 30 (I’m not getting any younger), I’m not made of money, the economy’s probably going to go in the crapper, universities aren’t getting any cheaper, any degree is years away, and there’s probably going to be a lot of upheaval in the near future. Not exactly a great environment to try to make yourself more attractive to prospective countries to immigrate to.
ETA: Nursing school didn’t work out for me, I only got my associates degree (not bachelor’s) 5 years ago and I never got licensed. I knew I couldn’t hack it because it I never felt comfortable during clinicals
TONYG
@MisterForkbeard: I periodically force myself to read and listen to “leftist” media. Their one unyielding belief seems to be that THE TWO MAJOR PARTIES ARE EXACTLY THE SAME. I don’t think that they will ever change that belief.
Chetan Murthy
@Martin: 100% with you on that: it is a big part of that Guardian article link I posted above. But even what you propose, is something I think most people would oppose. They simply cannot see that housing is a different asset class from others.
Heh, as an aside, I have a European friend; he has a ton of friends who live in Europe. I asked him what they do with their savings, and he said “they all buy rental property”. Sigh.
Eolirin
@YY_Sima Qian: I’ll admit this is one area where democracies are likely at a significant disadvantage; the incentives of our electorates make this a much harder to solve problem than it needs to be.
NotMax
@Jackie
Heh. I thought it might mean he was a frequenter of a fast food chain.
;)
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Jackie:
@MagdaInBlack:
LOL, I should have added “the Hedgehog” part
Eolirin
@Martin: They would, up until their housing values fall because of the forced mass sell off that changing that would precipitate.
It’s the same issue with stopping money laundering pushing up real estate costs; even though it’s really easy to campaign against crime, when it comes to doing something about that, stopping it is going to be unpopular with anyone who already owns property in those markets, and guess who’s more likely to be involved in politics and more likely to vote.
Kind of the best we can do is to limit real estate cost growth to slightly less than wage growth for a decade or two. Voters won’t notice if it’s done that way. But that doesn’t exactly help quickly.
There’s also the shitty way to get housing costs under control, by bankrupting most of the country and/or uncontrolled pandemics, with a massive homelessness and starvation crisis and/or mass deaths due to illness leading to an excess of housing stock, and we may get to watch that play out the way things are going.
Martin
@Chetan Murthy: I think that view has changed in the last 5 years. I mean, housing affordability is now a serious problem in Idaho.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Chetan Murthy:
Gotcha, maybe I’ll shoot you email one of these days
Jay
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
I am old. I need to work. Tariff’s for FFS’s has basically killed anybody hiring here, for now.
What I am saying, is you can walk up to a Canadian Border crossing and claim asylum, (or not, we only find and deport around 16,000 “”unregistered” immigrants a year, out of roughly 1.2 million in the country, and all have criminal charges in Canada).
A Canadian Border Services Agent, (notice that the title is much more benign), will interrogate you, fill out lots of paperwork, and will decide if you are a risk, (Immigration Detention, much nicer than the US, single cell, 3 good hots and a cot, protein, carb, 3 vedge, outside communication, gym , library). If you have some money, or a sponsor, c’mon in. Lawyers are pro bono, or not if you have money. On average, it’s 16 months to your first hearing. You get 3 appeals, so about 4-5 years before a deportation hearing as long as you aren’t crimeing. In the meantime, you can with a few doges, work “under the table”, through somebody else’s SIN, it’s 333,333,333 and nobody (employer) checks, or actual cash under the table, (less pay).
In the meantime you can marry a Canadian boy or girl, and become legal.
YY_Sima Qian
@Eolirin: I think the problem of out of control housing prices are limited to a few countries (the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, South Korea, Taiwan). My impression is that most of continental Europe does not have this problem.
Jackie
@NotMax: Heh. I rarely do fast food and the lonely Sonics we have is way out of my way, so that didn’t even cross my radar lol
Eolirin
@YY_Sima Qian: I’m saying once it becomes a problem, the solution to it is very hard to implement in a democracy. Because you need to make people who own property poorer, and they’re the ones more likely to be involved in voting, and also in influencing politicians as far as that goes.
Continental Europe absolutely had issues with this, but the countries with the worst problems got wiped out in the 2008-2009 financial crisis. A lot of it was being driven by foreign investment, and I don’t think all of them ever fully recovered.
Jay
@Jackie:
Working in the US and Canada at the same time, living off for a while fast food, (until they put me in the condo, where I could cook), I would go out of my way for a Sonic’s.
YY_Sima Qian
I guess the Trump Administration is coalescing around this strategy (gift link to WSJ article):
This is what the WSJ published the day before:
Eolirin
@YY_Sima Qian: That sounds about right. And as with everything these chucklefucks do, it having exactly the opposite intended effect tracks.
We really needed to take the fact that everything Trump Touches Dies more seriously and kept his tiny hands away from the US economy.
But so it goes.
YY_Sima Qian
@Eolirin: Thanks for the clarification.
YY_Sima Qian
@Eolirin: The feeling I get is that the Trump gang is increasingly desperate to seek an off ramp, w/o too obvious a humiliation, but Xi is refusing to give such an off ramp, for the time being, because Xi believes the PRC has more leverage & can outlast the US.
Martin
Hong Kong has suspended package postal delivery to the US.
YY_Sima Qian
The PRC temporarily bans export of rare earth elements (REE) & rare earth magnets, & Trump wants to place tariff on them:
The incoherence of Trump’s trade & industrial police shows through again. The bottleneck is in the refining of REE. There is only one site in the US building such refining capacity, the Mountain Pass mine in CA. It has limited light REE refining capability. The more difficult heavy REE refining capability is still being stood up, is not scheduled to come into production until 2027, & will only satisfy a small fraction of the US’ overall demand. & guess where Mountain Pass needs to source their refining & processing equipment to stand up production? The PRC, because that is where the IP & know how on REE refining currently reside.
YY_Sima Qian
@Martin: Ooh boy…
This will disrupt the operations of MNCs (like the one I work for.) PRC Customs is already slow walking clearance of packages from the US.
It took the PRC 8 years to substantially de-risk from the US & build a set of retaliatory tools. MAGA is trying to wing this on a weekend, cold turkey.
Eolirin
@YY_Sima Qian: We’re about to see if the republican donor class has any power left at all I think.
Andrya
@Chetan Murthy: (Fellow SF Bay Area person here). Gavin Newsom thinks he’ll increase his chances of being president if he panders to the MAGAs. (He’s wrong.) He recently had Charlie Kirk (!!!) on his podcast and acted like they were buddies- including saying some nasty anti-trans stuff. In 2028, if we are still having elections, I will definitely work for/contribute to someone else in the Democratic primary.
Bupalos
@Doc Sardonic: I’m sure you’re a fine person and maybe you’ll get better at this someday.
YY_Sima Qian
Good FT article on the imbalance of leverage in the Sino-US contest of wills:
Probably the most important chart from the article (click through the link):
Richard Baldwin has been highlighting the imbalance in mutual dependency for years (more charts through the link):
Bupalos
@Chetan Murthy: ok that, plus that’s not what he’s doing. I’m willing to bet anyone any amount of money that in the future he spends plenty of very high profile time inside the United States doing a much better job of fighting Trumpism than anyone here. The dude is low key famous as a liberal and spent October walking around in red Ohio knocking on doors.
chemiclord
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): The sort of people who complain how terrible immigration in the US is (and make no mistake, it’s bad) rarely grasp how absolutely terrible it can be to immigrate pretty much anywhere else.
I sometimes say that the United States has one of the most liberal immigration systems in the entire developed world, but when I say that, I don’t mean it as a compliment to the United States.
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne: I think that a lot of the generally angry, “burn it all down” types who don’t normally vote were attracted to Trump because he’s so gross and stupid. That’s the appeal. It’s like shitting a giant turd on Washington. They see him as a big thumb in the eye to the establishment, this violent clown who is just going to put a bullet in the head of everyone who thinks they’re better than them.
Ruckus
@sab:
75 and close to moving up.
If Social Security folds up or shuts down, think about how much money you put into it over the decades you (or I) worked. I had over 60 years of payments so that I could actually retire and eat and have a reasonable place to sleep. IT IS MY MONEY, just like it is your’s and everyone else’s that paid into it. Which is very close to everyone in the US alive today. It didn’t use to be this way but this way is one hell of a lot better than starvation and/or dying at a much younger age than many get to these days. It makes living better. Rich assholes, who might or would have a hard time spending all they have might not like Social Security but screw them. They would, if given the opportunity, end SS so that they would own us as well as their bank accounts and their multiple homes and all the rest of the crap that they can afford and the people that often work for them can’t and a couple of those things might/likely would be food and shelter.
I don’t care that some are filthy rich, as long as the federal program I paid into my entire working life – Social Security, is still here to afford me a reasonable, rational retirement. I imagine that there are more than a few US citizens that feel the same way.
Ruckus
@Suzanne:
I believe that many of those voters actually vote for money. Do they think that they want to vote for smart people and that is someone with MONEY. Because they work and maybe aren’t even poor but they never really have MONEY. Likely not even close to broke but don’t have MONEY. What’s that old saying MONEY TALKS!