It's Tariff Week... Again

I can't be bothered to follow the meanderings of the brain worm. Supposedly Tuesday is the big day!

Afternoon

The fundamental weakness of Western civilizaton is empathy for conservatives.

Issue Polls

Is this what Trump is doing, though, CBS? Is that his actual deportation program?

"People approve of Trump's program to arrest people guilty of crimes" kind of thing.

And, hey, wow, there it is in the poll itself:

Which does get this in the writeup:

As for some potential implications, as a general principle it's not acceptable to most if some legal U.S. residents were to be mistakenly detained by immigration authorities. But half of Republicans say it would be acceptable.

*IF*

Small Pleasures

It is the weekend, so we do have to have a little laugh about Elise Stefanik getting dumped from her UN ambassador position. She thought she had graduated to VIP and now she is a person Trump is embarrassed to talk to.

At a White House event honoring Women’s History Month on Wednesday afternoon, President Donald Trump took six minutes out of his speech to personally recognize many of the Republican women gathered in the audience. But one person in attendance whom he did not mention was Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., who was, at the time, Trump’s nominee to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Morning

Sunday funday

Sure Why Not

Every macho guy needs a babysitter.

The wife of the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, attended two meetings with foreign defense officials during which sensitive information was discussed, according to a new report from the Wall Street Journal.

Lunch

Shop while you eat! (Ad, I get a commission).

Concerning

For no particular reason, I've been reading people on reddit describe their experiences with long term ketamine use 😂.

Masterful Gambit, Sir

Pretend one company you mostly own is worth a gazillion dollars and have it buy the company that might personally bankrupt you.

Elon Musk on Friday evening announced he has sold his social media company, X, to xAI, his artificial intelligence company. xAI will pay $45 billion for X, slightly more than Musk paid for it in 2022, but the new deal includes $12 billion of debt.

Keep the scheme going a bit longer! Hope none of the xAI investors are annoyed!

Morning

Slacker Saturday.

Happy Hour

Finally the weekend.

Seems Bad

I suppose the main question is whether this just a smokescreen for destroying the whole thing or if they are this stupid.

Boss Baby

[Conor watches documentary about the bombing of Hiroshima]: This is nuclear cancel culture.

Conor has been full time on the "college students are taking away our freeze peach" beat for years.

How Do Things Work

This wasn't especially important, relatively speaking, but it was an example of how the people running things do not have any idea how things work.

Feb 14 (Reuters) - Days after U.S. President Donald Trump ended duty-free entry for cheap Chinese goods entering the U.S., his administration put the order on hold after more than a million packages piled up at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport.

It was the result of a rushed, confusing policy change that proved unworkable on short notice. Government officials are now scrambling to implement the order in a way that won't cripple America's hyper-efficient import system.

As the article says, 1.4 billion packages come in through the "de minimis" rule which negates tariffs for small value packages. Maybe there is a way to stop that from being exploited by large sellers, but you can't suddenly get rid of it and expect the system to handle it. This is something that you shouldn't have to explain. Also it is what Elon Musk is doing to everything.

Framing

I've said this in various ways, but until journalists start making it clear that the FBI and DOJ will never go after someone unless Trump wants them to, most people in this country will have no idea what is going on.

If the crime authorities don't get involved, there's no crime, right, that's how it works?

That's A Twist

Normal brain: customers pay the tariff costs, passed on by importers

old Trump brain: foreign countries pay the tariffs 

new Trump brain: importers pay the tariff costs, sell at losses:

behind paywall, everything is these days.

They probably will "comply" by not changing the MSRP, but that doesn't constrain dealers.

Morning

Oh what a beautiful...

Thursday Night

Rock on.

Happy Hour

Get happy

Every Week

Trump says tariffs are coming, Ford implies he's going to cut off the power, Lutnick steps in to try to prevent it.