economic outlaw

Just throwing this out there: what if, instead of just a transfer, they agree to invest a certain amount of money in US firms each year. We could even tie that amount to the trade deficit.

thinking of one of abraham lincoln's great quotes this morning:

"As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy."

we have an utter fucking nimrod attempting to set himself up as dictator because for 50 years anyone who could have stopped him has dithered and procrastinated, hoping someone else would do it

I’m the Canadian who was detained by Ice for two weeks. It felt like I had been kidnapped I was stuck in a freezing cell without explanation despite eventually having lawyers and media attention. Yet, compared with others, I was lucky

“I’m the Canadian who was detained by ICE for two weeks. It felt like I had been kidnapped.
I was stuck in a freezing cell without explanation despite eventually having lawyers and media attention. Yet, compared with others, I was lucky” 3/19/25 www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

A guy falls off a 40 story building. As he passes by the 20th floor, a friend sticks his head out the window and goes "good news, so far you're all right"

Stop defining Trump defying the Supreme Court as the red line. He is a lawless tyrant *right now*. He is failing to comply with court orders *right now*. He is violating the Constitution and the law *right now*. We're past all the red lines.

the way I encourage you all to think about it right now is that we need fighters to put the government back together and their cowardice created the conditions to transform this party and give us the leadership that will be required

For an (admittedly imperfect) case example, think of the Trump Administration and Fox News as near-state media: Fox News (1) will never hold Trump accountable and (2) because of its skew, is unlikely to provide the full scope of information that an investor might need when investing in US Treasuries

From the study in question. If the local paper is owned by the local government in question, the first mechanism for the local-newspaper-municipal bond yield linkage is gone and the second mechanism will likely be extremely weakened.

“Area merchants uniformly like the concept of what the mafia set out to do—provide protection from unexpected disasters—but have been frustrated by the threats of broken kneecaps and the expensive bribes.”

marionberry is pretty good

It’s pretty interesting that both Tim Walz and Gavin Newsom are clearly positioning themselves to run for President and one thought he should publicize that he’s having diplomatic conversations with Canadian provinces close to Minnesota and the other thought he should publicize that he sucks

Four Republican Justices “Stunned” Trump Isn’t a King Yet The Court's decision in the USAID lawsuit reveals an institution perilously close to making Donald Trump a king.

wrote about this morning's Supreme Court decision, in which five justices said maybe we're not a monarchy yet--and the other four, already half-dressed for the coronation, said wtaf

ballsandstrikes.org/scotus/usaid...

The idea the president alone can levy taxes on a whim and spend it as he pleases without any congressional approval is the kind of thing so beyond the pale it's not unconstitutional, it's anti-constitutional. It is overturning in starkest terms the central rallying cry of the American Revolution.

OTOH:

The resemblance between the George W. Bush Administration as portrayed in Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay and the 2nd Trump Administration in reality are uncanny. Not to make light of this hellscape, but I'm getting real Rob Corddry-esque vibes here

i feel like people do not get this isn’t some distance hypothetical hard-to-model impact assessment. 20mm people receive life sustaining medical care via pepfar, they will die without that care. Republicans shut it off

“Why don’t you say thank you”

the wages of sin is death

I will never forget the photo of Zelenskyy’s face after he saw Russia’s war crimes in Bucha in 2022. He seemed to age years in an afternoon. Watching him constantly cross the world asking for aid that should have been thrown at him is one of the deepest shames of our age.

Watching Putin’s little stooges try to bully Zelenskyy in our goddamned White House is pretty repulsive.

a People magazine article headline reads, "Trump and Vance Shout at Ukrainian President Zelenskyy for Not Saying 'Thank You,' Then Tell Him to Leave White House." Sub-headline reads, "A high-stakes Oval Office meeting spirals out of control as Donald Trump and J.D. Vance berated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and cut their peace negotiations short."

this @people.com headline is real as hell

he for sure did

I hope you realize that you and Pritzker just are the Democrat Party leaders now. I know that's not how it works for committees or other officialese, but nobody has picked up the keys and the car is full of gas. Just take over. Obama did this in an incredibly similar precarious moment. It's yours.

Tech titans stand with Donald Trump to kill off activism in Silicon Valley Fearful employees have done little to protest against the rightward shift of leaders such as Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg

I just wanted to highlight this earlier break because it seemingly lends credence the idea that a big reason why Big Tech in the United States has aligned itself with Trump is because they think he will allow them to curb the power of their employees.

Elon Musk may have violated labor laws with a tweet Musk faces new legal problems over his tweets, this one a complaint by the NLRB that he violated labor law during union organizing effort.

Briefly: on that date, Musk suggested in a tweet that, by unionizing with the @uaw.org, Tesla workers would lose their stock options. This generated a firestorm on Twitter at the time because, well, you can't make coercive statements as an Employer with respect to work unionization efforts.

After looking at the underlying data, this structural break appears to begin on May 20, 2018. This date coincides with the date Musk made a tweet about Tesla unionization effort that subsequently became the subject of an NLRB complaint.

While much has been made of the structural break in Musk's tweeting pattern after Musk's Twitter acquisition, there appears to be an earlier structural break that has received less attention: the marked increase in tweeting in mid-2018.

When have we ever referred to the Secret Service as the "SS"?