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April 3, 2025
Sunrise — 6:14, 6:33, 6:25.
Talk about whatever you want in the comments. And support the Althouse blog by doing your Amazon shopping going in through the Althouse Amazon link.
Posts
67 comments:
Our economy is in shambles. Our president, his family and cronies will get some sweet kickbacks as nations open back channels, possibly using Signal?
Please discuss how it’s part of the long game/ 5-D chess match to help working folk buy Grosh-er-IES.
XKCD has a nice comic today on the decay modes of various modern iPhone isotopes back to iPhone 7. Which as it happens is the one I have.
"Our economy is in shambles"
That reminds me of a nightly radio preacher in the 70s who sometimes got things amusingly wrong. In a similar situation, he said, "Housing starts, once a leading economic indicator, now lies in ruins."
He also constantly referred to AI as "A one." Mark of the beast.
Biden destroyed everything. Do s t f u.
Boasberg continues to ratchet up the pressure. I can't believe he would go this far out on a limb unless he felt "confident" that Roberts will ultimately back him.
The dems are dreaming of forcing Trump to defy the court, esp the SC. I think Roberts is more likely to take this path than de-fang the lower courts. I hope I'm wrong.
Scott Adams had bad news on Roberts, who spent a week with a global world order guy or something that I never hear of, but Adams had. So you can't trust the guy at all vs deep state.
Somebody else can listen and untangle the thing for me.
headline: "Lena Dunham Emerges from Hibernation to Deliver a Speech at Trans Day of Visibility Rally"
I didn't recognize her.
continues to ratchet up the pressure. I can't believe he would go this far out on a limb unless he felt "confident" that Roberts will ultimately back him.
They choose methods that aren’t reviewable so we all have to live in a lawless land between a TRO that will ultimately lose many many news cycles from now. Meanwhile the executive isn’t allowed to govern. They’ll trap Trump eventually with a non-defiance defiance of the court claim, with a novel legal interpretation thrown in…
Lena Dunham Emerges from Hibernation to Deliver a Speech at Trans Day of Visibility Rally
Did xe see xe shadow?
just googled lena - oh dear.
Scott Adams
@ScottAdamsSays
Senator Booker talked for a day in the Senate and no one knows what his point was. Democrats are praising him.
Trump gave one speech in the Rose Garden and caused every country in the world to make tariff negotiations with the United States their top priority this week.
That's the difference between "acting" and acting.
ooop! Another Democrat to be cancelled by democrats.
On high command.
"Mayor Eric Adams telling everyone the Deep State is Real and that everyone should read Kash Patel’s book, “Government Gangsters” "
YouTube: Pelosi was for tariffs, before she was against it. Apparently.
I had to add a weasel word because... AI.
With respect to the tariffs and all the commentary in the media today:
Dagen McDowell made a big mistake on Fox Business today. She said the BMW plant in SC, which also produces autos for export to China using imported engines and other parts, would be seriously affected by the tariffs. She said they might have to look to another location outside the US for these exports.
This is not true. Tha BMW facility is in a Free Trade Zone and tariffs on imported parts are rebated for cars produced for export, so there would be no impact on cars made for China.
From my query to Grok: Yes, BMW is part of Foreign Trade Zone (FTZ) #38 in the Greenville-Spartanburg metro area of South Carolina, specifically through a designated subzone. Subzone 38A is tied directly to the BMW Manufacturing Company, LLC facility in Greer, which lies between Greenville and Spartanburg along the I-85 corridor. This subzone status allows BMW to operate within the FTZ framework, benefiting from advantages like deferred customs duties on imported parts, no duties on exported vehicles, and streamlined logistics for its manufacturing processes. The BMW plant, a major producer of vehicles like the X-series models, leverages this FTZ designation to enhance its global supply chain efficiency, making it a key component of the broader FTZ #38 managed by the South Carolina State Ports Authority. So, while the general-purpose sites of FTZ #38 cover areas like Spartanburg County and parts of Greenville, Subzone 38A is specifically tailored for BMW’s operations.
Headline: "Journalist Matt Taibbi Files $10 Million Libel Lawsuit Against California Democratic Rep"
Weasel words are good for something. Just saying.
Don't do Groks.
Or as Nancy Reagan would say: Just say No.
Lena Dunham issue of the Oberlin Alumni Magazine.
Headline: "Republicans Help Dems Pass Bill to Block Trump Tariffs, 24 Hours After Canadian Leader Wanted to Give Trump Everything"
We are surrounded by Weak Knees Fools.
If the President of the United States really pays attention to what someone like Laura Loomer says, then we are all screwed.
Why this administration seems to be courting disaster in every single domain of the government is beyond me. He hasn’t helped his supporters once the entire time he has been in office.
Has Chuck or Inga become TeaBagHag?
He/she/they turn my stomach in the same manner.
Who likes Konstantin Kisin?
I do!
Kak - bad faith info and no credibility. Misquito.
Isn't the way Biden's decline is now being treated an image of how the tariff issue and the Medicaid issue will be treated in afew years? Right now, legacy media guys are all talking about how they all saw Biden's decline.' Course, the legacy guys said nothing at the time and even attacked those who reported that decline in real time. Legacy guys waited a couple of years till it didn't matter much. Couple years from now, legacy guys be talking about how "everybody knew" the USA was getting ripped off by tariffs and other exclusion methods and "everybody know" how it was essential to regain a fair trading position for the USA, amirite? Legacy'll be reporting on the waste in Medicaid and how essential it was for the health of the healthcare system to end the abuses and waste. "Everybody knew this," they will be saying. Well, they will then be talking about now. Everybody now knows what everybody will be admitting everybody now knows in a few years. In short, everybody now knows that the USA is being ripped off in every way possible, internally and externally. But, strangely, half the country has to go through the intellectual contortions of denying now what they know they will be affirming in a few years. No wonder lefty supporters have begun to fall to the ground, screaming. The whole charade is utterly ridiculous. My countrymen, what are you doing? Just say, yes, I do know it now. You do know it now. Say it and step into spring.
Trump says he may give China reduction in tariffs to get TikTok deal done ~ Reuters
"US president suggests he is open to horse-trading a day after imposing severe import levies on Chinese goods"
Trump tanked the market 3T for a 200B TikTok sale price?
I like Trump but this tariff war is a bridge too far.
Kakastory: "He hasn’t helped his supporters once the entire time he has been in office."
1) He completely shut the border and stopped the invasion by illegal aliens.
2) He started the roundup and deportation of the most dangerous criminal aliens.
3) He began the dismantling of the entire fraudulent system of NGOs the Democrats used to fund anti-American activities and pay off their cronies.
4) He is rolling back the insane and unfair trans-in-womens' sports policies.
I could go on. That's more than "once", Kak. You are so full of it.
Salon Headline: "Corruption hunters say Trump's USAID cuts just made organized crime groups “much more dangerous”"
Were we funding a DE&I, Harrison Bergeron methodology for keeping criminals from becoming too dangerous?
Instead of using guns for a holdup, they had to use bats and brass knuckles... forget knives. Knives as forbidden in the EU.
kak - Your fake president - mob controlled crook Joe - destroyed it all. So yes- you are full of it.
mosquito. you gotta sound it out. misqeetoe
lovely photos - btw.
It's snowing and cold here. April and March flip flopped. again.
@Lem, I subscribe to Taibbi so today I got his side of the story. He was at a House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee hearing when Sydney Kamlager-Dove, a Democrat representing California’s 37th district in Los Angeles, began her opening remarks with an allegation that he, Matt Taibbi, was a “serial sexual harrasser.”
Unfortunately, there is not much one can do in the face of wild allegations made by a member on Congress engaged in official business because of Article I, Section 6, Clause 1, the “Speech and Debate Clause.” However the Congresswoman chose to repeat her unfounded allegations on social media, which is not Constitutionally protected. Oops.
"I like Trump but this tariff war is a bridge too far."
If it's true that we have the upper hand, because we consume way more than everybody, we should use that leverage. What good is it to have it, if the rest of the world is just going to continue to eat our lunch, while we go bankrupt?
If something is going to give/break, I rather it happened while we are relatively strong. Granted, I haven't a clue the gambit is going to work. I'm just for trying something.
He hasn’t helped his supporters once the entire time he has been in office.
I don't want his help. I want him to do the things he said he was going to do.
And he is.
Yeah, I read that too Big Mike, Thanks. Taibbi is a good guy.
The IRS website verifies your identity in a clever way. They ask for your drivers license and a videotape of your face. Some sort of AI program confirms you are who you claim to be.
It's pretty painless and quick and, I think, a way for Wisconsin to implement its voter ID laws for mail in ballots.
"and, I think, a way for Wisconsin to implement its voter ID laws for mail in ballots."
Maybe to indicate who a ballot was given to, but it doesn't do much to confirm who is marking the ballot.
Warren Buffett in 2003 calling for something that looks a whole lot like tariffs https://faculty.washington.edu/ss1110/IF/Buffett%20Fortune%202003%20(6).pdf.
And for the same reason Trump is imposing them.
Warren Buffett in 2003 calling for something that looks a whole lot like tariffs https://faculty.washington.edu/ss1110/IF/Buffett%20Fortune%202003%20(6).pdf.
And for the same reason Trump is imposing them.
What does Warren Buffett think about tariffs? The billionaire investor called them an "act of war" in the Des Moines Register.
Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway currently holds a record cash pile of approximately $325 billion. This amount is more than the combined cash reserves of several major companies, reflecting Buffett's cautious investment strategy in the current market conditions.
On tariffs I have this to say: Nothing.
I did just sign a purchase agreement for a Toyota Sienna, sight unseen, but in transit. In transit means it's touched down in the USA and won't be subject to the tariff. Why I bought it sight unseen. Not the color I wanted, not the exact features I wanted, but 25% less then what people will be paying next month. There's no negotiation going on for price on any imported cars right now. You're paying sticker price, period. On any import.
"Headline: "Journalist Matt Taibbi Files $10 Million Libel Lawsuit Against California Democratic Rep""
Good for him. They think they can say any shit they want.
Sydney Kamlager-Dove, a Democrat representing California’s 37th district in Los Angeles, remarked that Matt Taibbi, was a “serial sexual harrasser.”
I am certain that Taibbi will lose his lawsuit because he personally exposed himself as a misogynistic asshole while publishing "The Exile" in Moscow in 2000. Taibbi wrote about how he and partner Mark Ames mercilessly sexual harassed and occasionally assaulted the women they encountered, both their colleagues in the Exile office and Russian women—some as young as 15—they met socially.
I continue to be horrified by the wasted opportunity that is DOGE. It was good concept, but the execution has been comically bad.
If one has any experience working with large legacy databases (e.g., personnel files, social security, vehicle registration, etc.), then Musk's breathless announcements come across as the work of an overeager intern with no self control.
Any 3rd rate graduate from a small tech college with a year of real world experience KNOWS that legacy databases have missing values, errors, and creeping corruption. Dealing with this requires constant maintenance and work around methods. You've sometimes got to look at column X' instead of column X, or table Y' instead of table Y to figure it out. Sometimes the documentation is terrible or missing, and you must talk to an old geezer who's been fixing it with no budget nor respect for decades to understand.
The arrogant pr*ck Elon Musk hired a bunch of arrogant and naive fools for his DOGE team. Not a single one of them had even a few months of experience working with real world databases (as may be expected for new tech developers in Musk's industries, as all his firms started from scratch and fairly recently).
Musk's naive fools screamed "the sky is falling" as they announced phantom fraud and phantom savings, imaginary fraudulent employees, and people who appeared to be very old because of missing data. And the naive arrogant pr*ck and bully Elon repeated this to Trump, and naive Trump wanted to believe so he said it publicly.
A terrible wasted opportunity. Very very very sad. I had high hopes for DOGE on January 19.
If you want to read a very good explanation of what Trump is trying to achieve with his tariffs, this is really worth a read.
https://x.com/BillAckman/status/1908084169885753848
Dow futures are down 1200 points, and I haven't even done the Wordle yet.
@ Old & Slow: The return of mercantilist thinking—especially tariffs aimed at forcing companies to reshore production—has introduced deep confusion into global trade policy. The Trump administration’s approach, which imposes high tariffs to incentivize domestic manufacturing and then seeks foreign government concessions in return for tariff relief, assumes that production location can be negotiated between governments. But this idea fundamentally misunderstands how modern economies function.
Foreign governments cannot guarantee where their companies invest or produce. In market-driven economies, firms make those decisions based on costs, logistics, and long-term strategies. Asking a foreign official to promise U.S.-bound factory construction simply exceeds what diplomacy can offer. It also risks breaching international trade norms and provoking retaliation.
For the US, expecting countries to commit to re-shoring in exchange for tariff reductions turns trade policy into an impossible form of industrial planning by proxy. It overestimates diplomatic leverage and underestimates private-sector autonomy. For foreign diplomats, being asked to deliver something outside their jurisdiction only leads to frustration and impasse.
This approach also ignores basic economics. U.S. production tends to be costlier. If companies relocate under tariff pressure, prices rise, demand falls, and real wage growth stagnates. Protected domestic goods may sell at higher prices but in smaller quantities. Consumers pay more, companies lose margins, and the overall economy slows.
In the end, trying to link tariffs to foreign-directed re-shoring is not a viable policy. It offers no clear path to enforceable agreements, alienates partners, and distracts from what actually drives competitiveness: investment, innovation, and efficiency. Tariffs may serve symbolic goals, but as a strategy to restructure global supply chains through diplomacy, they demand what no government can deliver—and no economy can afford.
It's all about refinancing 9 trillion in short term debt. There are many moving parts, and the plan may fail, but he has to do something. Carrying on business as usual is no longer tenable.
Kak, you aren't responding to the argument made in the post I linked. I'm well aware of the points you make, but they do not address the wider points made. I suggest you read it. It is the first decent steel man argument in favor of the tariffs I have read. My instinct is to reflexively oppose tariffs for the very reasons you lay out. This gave me pause, and a bit of hope.
Foreign countries can significantly reduce or remove tariffs they impose on us, don’t forget. They don’t have to build here if they level the playing field on their side.
2 Old & Slow: I read the link.
Ackman also writes:
"Sometimes the best strategy in a negotiation is convincing the other side that you are crazy." ~ Bill Ackman
Don't over-think things. Trump just loves tariffs and believes they have magic powers. It really isn't any more sophisticated than that.
And in other news, Trump displayed the first Gold Card yesterday. He said he bought it - lol. The first public offering will be in a couple weeks. $5 million for a US citizenship, thorough vetting required.
Shocking but not surprising. Trump thrives on finding stuff the country can buy or sell and then gives it a whirl.
Boy have you ever read a commenter less convincing than KAK? KAK’s persuasion per word ratio is rock-bottom.
Here’s Milton Friedman on tariffs:
“We call a tariff a protective measure. It does protect; it protects the consumer very well against one thing. It protects the consumer against low prices.”
Nice photos. Teasing sunrise - very neutral.
"It protects the consumer against low prices.”
I've heard people say that they'd gladly pay higher taxes to help non-working people who are underprivileged. It follows from that, that some of us might gladly pay higher prices to put more money into the pockets of our working neighbors in the US, doesn't it? Or is it only good when your money goes out in taxes to help others, but not good when it goes out in exchange for a product made by someone in the US?
@Enigma (5:10), back in the 1990s I worked on a project to upgrade a very old database running on DEC10 hardware to use Oracle and Unix. They stored date information as six digits in DDMMYY format and I found a bunch of records that would not convert to Oracle’s DATE datatype because the day and month were 3202, and Oracle correctly determined that February 32nd was a bad date. IIRC after all these years it took me a full week going through the old TOPS10 database to find the records and determine that they had been entered on March 23rd (2303). Good times, man, good times. (Not!)
I get that Musk’s crew consists of very bright people, but in all the cases I’ve sen so far they built their systems from scratch and could incorporate modern data quality controls.
I know some folks up in the SSA office in Baltimore. They use old COBOL technology because every single project that attempted to upgrade to more modern technology failed. Every. Single. One. Musk’s wonder kids will not be the first to break that record.
Quayle (rhetorically) asked..
"Or is it only good when your money goes out in taxes to help others, but not good when it goes out in exchange for a product made by someone in the US?"
Indeed!
i've heard several people loudly cry:
TARIFFS ARE THE SAME AS TAXES!!!
and, i think they think that's bad? These are The Same people calling for a VAT in the US..
VAT == Good?
TARIFF == BAD?
i'm not sure i see it?
why Should we be encouraging foreign slave labor? i don't get it
https://x.com/tanvi_ratna/status/1907880105369845865?s=61
You can certainly see who is getting gored by the market down turn.
Downturns happen. What most of us are in the market for is long term gains.
Let your heart be not troubled. This too shall pass.
I think Ill buy more Tesla.
Regarding the tariffs, you don't need Econ 542 mumbo-jumbo to understand what's really going on. In essence, Trump is declaring that the 80-year-old Marshall Plan for the entire world (i.e., U.S. taxpayers stuck with the bill for every other country's economic development and military policing) is over.
The EU in particular has loved it because it has allowed their 500 million people to slurp espressos on boulevards and tut-tut about what uncouth savages the 300 million Americans who have to pick up the tab for protecting them militarily forever are. Nope, they don't want it to ever end. How can we be so selfish.
And China loves it too, because it allows them to flood Costco, Walmart, and Amazon with slave-labor-cheap goods that transfers our wealth to them so they can eventually kill all of us or control us completely on our manufacturing supply chains, raw materials and pharmaceuticals.
No. Trump instinctively senses it's got to end. And it's got to end now.
Lady kaKA.
There's going to be a tariff war but we did not start it. Other countries imposed tariffs on us for so long without consequences that they think that, when we impose tariffs, we are initiating the war. No. We are just finally responding. And I believe most countries will change their tariff structures but they are trying the shrill scream of outrage tactic first. Why not? Previous administrations gave in.
"Boy have you ever read a commenter less convincing than KAK? KAK’s persuasion per word ratio is rock-bottom."
I skip those posts. Life's too short.
"You can certainly see who is getting gored by the market down turn."
The market today is at the same level as it was all the way back in September of last year. What? You don't remember all the wailing and gnashing of teeth back then? Me neither.
Groceries I used it a lot ,things you put in a bag an old fashioned word WTF this guy is so far removed from the real world and reality, and trumpers thinks he cares about them I don't know who is more delusional ,Him r the trumpers? GROCERIES an old fashioned word. Do you think this perp ever went shopping for groceries? By the way better start stocking up on Ramen Noodles.....
@Enigma, minor correction. The date data was in YYMMDD format. The rest of that comment is correct.
I also remember a Marine Corp logistics database which defaulted “unknown” to numeric zero. Except someone did not know the volume of the fuel tank of a particular type of combat equipment so the system calculated that they didn’t need to plan to transport any gasoline for that equipment.
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