Clay Ranck

Wilhoit’s Law in action.

Our enemies are not switching from Hiluxes to EVs.

Go home Air Force, you’re drunk.

You were the canary in the coal mine, so to speak.

Two years ago a Times reporter tried to sell Nancy Mace as a maverick who was trying to buck the GOP and change it to be more mainstream. Now Mace is ranting about chemtrails and how fluoridation is a communist plot to sap and impurify our precious bodily fluids. Access journalism is a cancer.

The more the GOP becomes subordinate to Trump’s whims, the more they shave off layers of the coalition that he used to win them a narrow majority. Don’t think of it like an event, but more like slicing an onion. That’s why he’s so desperate for a bunch of gerrymanders.

If they’re going to kill the show, this is how it should go out. It just follows in the tradition of complaining about management that Dave created.

The elected figures keep falling into line behind Trump, but they’re just hitching their wagon to him as he gets less popular. No matter how much he tries to sell his BS about a great economy, if people feel like things are bad then that’s bad for Republicans.

I disagree. I think that Trump having full power and not being able to actually deliver is creating real fractures. You can sell the base on conspiracy theories, but that doesn’t work with people that aren’t fully into the cult.

A right-wing conspiracy theory about fluoride in water from Trump and Bobby Junior’s childhood is now government policy, and the rest of us are supposed to accept that as normal?

Nancy Mace didn’t exactly say that fluoridation was a communist plot, but when people bring up that issue I can’t help but think of Dr. Strangelove because it’s been a weird right-wing obsession going back that far. But the Birchers are in charge of the GOP now, so that’s where we’re at.

Two years ago a Times reporter tried to sell Nancy Mace as a maverick who was trying to buck the GOP and change it to be more mainstream. Now Mace is ranting about chemtrails and how fluoridation is a communist plot to sap and impurify our precious bodily fluids. Access journalism is a cancer.

Real parody is just better than AI slop video that tries to emulate it. Some of this would work as an SNL skit, but when you make it look like she’s actually saying it, the lines fall flat.

Although stopped clocks do get it right occasionally.

That was good! Thanks for sharing.

AND A GOOD DAY TO YOU SIR

Lyndon Johnson signing the law that created Medicare and Medicaid. His wife looks on in the background, near Vice President Humphrey. In the foreground on the right are Harry and Bess Truman.

Lyndon Johnson signing into law the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Martin Luther King is among those visible in the background.

It's frankly amazing that the law creating Medicare and Medicaid was enacted on July 30, 1965 and the Voting Rights Act was enacted on August 6, 1965.

These epochal laws—laws that, as we've learned, we take for granted at our own risk—were signed one week apart.

You couldn't tell me Jack Johnson didn't star in that one movie when it was Oscar Isaacs

Ha!

If it makes you feel better, I read it the way you intended it.

I wrote this three years ago and it's grim how prescient it turned out to be.

Reagan's GOP isn't coming back. Classical liberalism's home within the right was short-lived, and the Republican Party has reverted to the full-throated populism endemic to the American right throughout its history. The economic freedom where libertarians once aligned has been replaced by nationalist calls for autocracy and efforts to use state power to punish businesses that don't toe the social conservative line. That's simply what the GOP is today. A libertarian-Republican coalition doesn't make sense anymore, if it ever did. If the GOP gets worse, and there's every reason to believe it will, then libertarians risk being judged by history as the people who fretted about marginal tax rates while palling around with lawmakers who voted to steal a presidential election and who are actively trying to return an authoritarian, and arguably fascist, leader to power.

Good piece. This resonated with me as someone who once identified as a “small L” libertarian Republican but left the GOP during Trump 1. The difference between a 37% and 40% top marginal tax rate isn’t existential the way the GOP claims and it wasn’t worth it when they abandoned other principles.

A Teddit post that shows Picasso’s self portraits at ages 18,25 and 90. The one from 18 years old is a black and white naturalistic drawing. The one from age 25 shows the influences of Cubism, but still recognizably a person. The one from age 90 is extremely abstracted and cubistic.

He totally had work done, I can always tell.

This is why assuming that Trump is some sort of rational actor is a mistake. Trump wants big numbers because he likes big numbers, not because of anything related to the state of the actual economy. Tim gets it, at least.

Gotta love all the Wall Street types who thought that last week would finally create some sort of “certainty” around trade issues.

What a wonderful way for Trump to repay Tim Cook for giving him that nice little gift today.

Heather Long @byHeatherLong The "K-shape" economy is back. To me, this is one of the most important charts to understand the 2025 economy... The wealthy are still spending (though there has been some moderation). Meanwhile the bottom 80% are tapped out. Their spending is basically in line w/inflation. ***Whether we go into a recession will depend almost entirely on whether the top 10 to 20% of earners keep spending*** #economy The U.S. economy depends on consumption by the rich Wealthy Americans in the top 20 percent continue to grow their spending. Meanwhile, the "revenge spending" era for middle-class and lower-income Americans is over. Their spending is roughly in line with inflation. (Chart shows growth in personal outlays vs. inflation.)|

Or is spending by the wealthy making the aggregate look better than it is?

I agree with you that talk of a “crisis” is overblown, but there may still be problems under the hood.

It literally says “ChatGPT Memes + AI Art” on the video, and yet Cuomo’s such a meathead that he didn’t even catch it.

If the Nazis had given concentration camps cute names, the folks at Politico would have praised them for their use of alliteration and their use of strong messages like "Arbeit macht frei."

He won't back down against Europe or Japan, but he'll fold like a cheap suit when it's Putin or Xi.

Putin has completely given Trump a cold shoulder, so now Trump is rewarding Putin with a face-to-face meeting. This all makes America look weak and impotent against Russia.