“Screwing around with Treasury payments and tariff walls is not just outrageous—it is like mixing a nice bleach-and-Drano cocktail. You wouldn’t describe that as ‘breaking mixology norms’, unless you were doing a goof.” ~Paul Musgrave musgrave.substack.com/p/shredding-...

i’m always talking about thick scary tails i’m worried about but say the base case, the modal outcome, is we muddle through largely as we have. i’m not sure that’s right any more.

“One must be careful not to reify the clichés: just because everyone says it’s real doesn’t make it real. Or rather, it does, and that’s the problem.” @lioneltrolling.bsky.social www.unpopularfront.news/p/vibes-cartel

“i will abuse you until you consent to marry me” may not be the flex they think.

besides maybe a handful of billionaires on an inauguration stage, is there anyone more pathetic than Congressional Republicans, who are watching their guy burn down the country but do nothing because what? they might have to face a competitive primary? oh the poor poor dears.

somewhere in an attic there is a portrait of a head of lettuce rotting most floridly.

lots of talk about how Ds should shut down the Senate, and i get it. but are there no Rs concerned about the vandalizing of the Federal govt by an unelected megadouche and some 14-year-olds? is there no chance of the legislative branch asserting itself as the legislative branch to say woah wtf?

it’s kind of wild to incentivize Canadian and Mexican firms to move production intended for the US market to China because lower tariff rates.

it seems weird to pretextually tariff good friends and allies, Canada and Mexico, if the motivation is trade balance. why wld China be tariffed more lightly? but it makes perfect sense to tariff our biggest trading partners if the motivation is revenue, re-McKinley-izing, replacing the income tax.

i am grateful to Trump and especially Musk for making so powerful and visceral a case that wealth taxes — at levels quite confiscatory for a while, to remedy past lassitude — are an absolute necessity, prerequisite to a sustainable democratic society.

whose idea was it to make doom a verb anyway?

just as a matter of risk management, you’d think these guys would be less enthusiastic about the Federal death penalty.

guy whose continued wealth depends on the beneficence of a foreign adversary seeks classified records of agency under cover of which US intelligence agents are rumored sometimes to risk their lives.

the based move would be for Donald Trump to declare his own presidency the national emergency upon which his authority to impose tariffs is, um, based.

“the whole reason i voted for him is i thought he was bullshitting. i feel betrayed.”

call me old fashioned, call me naive. but i say impeach, convict, remove. rinse and repeat. no. they won’t do it tomorrow. but motherfucker may become pretty unpopular before very long.

pathetic.

maybe it’s worth just saying, as an american to our remarkable neighbors, i’m really sorry. this is ultimately our responsibility and we’ve sure fucked it up.

“let’s break the world and see what happens.”