Sunday Evening

That means that tomorrow is...

Not As Evil As The Other Guys

With the WV teachers' strike going on (go teachers), there's the usual undercurrent of "why don't they vote for Dems!!!" Aside from the stupidity of collective blame - in which the 45% are supposed to be punished for the votes of the 55% - WV was a Dem stronghold for *decades*. It's wrong to conflate national and state politics, but Dukakis won West Virginia! It was theirs to lose - and they lost it eventually. Even the current governor ran as a Democrat... and then promptly switched. It's now a "red" state, but it wasn't really even 4 years ago. The legislature - both House and Senate! - is now Republican but was held by Democrats for decades.

We can ask why bad Democrats get through whatever primary system there is so that the choice between Ds and Rs isn't that strong a choice, though primaries are for various reasons generally not the purest manifestation of majoritarian democracy, but just saying "vote Democrat!" isn't enough. Dems ran WV forever and the results haven't been pretty.

Stupid Crazy Black Lady

Treating Maxine Waters like this is just normal for DC. Been normal for decades.

Trump made an incredibly racist crack about Maxine Waters needing to take an IQ test tonight at the Gridiron and it has barely even registered a mention in coverage of the event. An appalling moment that I can’t believe isn’t everyone’s lead takeaway.

— Matthew Miller (@matthewamiller) March 4, 2018

Sunday Morning Thread

Late Night

Tomorrow is...

Oscar

Of movies up for the "big" awards (best picture, actor/actress, that type of thing), I've seen...

Get Out and Boss Baby.

Afternoon Thread

The weather is nice today than it was yesterday.

Things Aren't What They Used To Be

Trump knows nothing about nothing, so defending anything he says is never actually defending him, but the tariff thing his highlighted some stupid by people not named Trump. And, look, again, I am not defending Trump's tariffs and certainly not defending his motives, which are gibberish, for implementing them, but I saw one very stupid economist mock Trump's assertion (said, stupidly, of course), that it's important to have a domestic steel industry. You can just import steel! Mocked this economist.

Yes you can. Also we have just in time production and internationally spread out supply lines for everything. It's not an unreasonable concern. We aren't too friendly with Mexico these days, Trump's about to nuke Korea, we never get along very well with South America (Brazil), and Turkey is, well, having some issues at the moment. Those are the four after our top source of steel, Canada. I suppose we get along with them pretty well this week, though nuking Korea might cause a few problems with everyone.

The defense of "free trade," which is never really "free trade" anyway, is always overblown, and brings out lots of stupid from people who should know better. It's just one of those things which separates The Very Serious People from everybody else. A form of virtue signalling, as the kids would say.

Saturday, Saturday

Was there no morning Tweetening? Is Jared in jail yet?

Morning Thread

Oh, what a world. What a world.

Fun Fun Fun Fun

Friday happy hour.

Why Won't People Say Nice Things About Me On The Teevee

The elite consensus is a stubborn, almost immutable thing. Tariffs are bad. On this point "no one" disagrees? Why are they bad? Well as we all know, they're bad for "the economy." What is "the economy?" Well, erm, ah, um, GDP or growth or something?

On most things, if one political party or another, or the president, takes a particular side, then the issue becomes "political" and for "objective" journalists, it is no longer a thing for which there is a right or wrong answer, either empirically or morally, but an issue with two sides, about which the importance of the "optics" of posturing supersedes the importance of the issue itself. It's merely politics.

But for some issues, those hardwired Econ 101 issues, it is much more difficult to move them from the realm of agreement to the realm of dispute. Tariffs are bad, and it's going to take a lot more than President Trump deciding they are good to dislodge this idea.

So Trump isn't going to get good press for it, not unless the conservative propaganda machine revs up and decides, suddenly, that we are all protectionists now. Trump doesn't quite get how these things work.

By Thursday afternoon, the U.S. stock market had fallen and Trump, surrounded by his senior advisers in the Oval Office, was said to be furious.

It's Their Town

Sometimes, from the outside, it just seems like a game. A very lucrative game for those on the inside.

Broken Windows

The law is for other people.

While at the hospital, after the crash at Glenwood Road and E. 43rd St., Wiggins volunteered to have his blood tested for alcohol or drugs at the hospital. That test came back negative. Reports from the EMT and DWI technician each said Wiggins had no signs of intoxication.

That didn’t stop the arresting officer, Justin Joseph, from officially reporting Wiggins had slurred speech, watery eyes, an odor of alcohol on his breath and was observed swaying. Three months later, prosecutors dismissed the charges

The cop ran a stop and hit him and you get the idea.

Meddling Kids

I'd sorta respect a "fuck it, we're just gonna steal everything" attitude, but I don't think Jared is ballsy. I think he's really fucking stupid. Like it never occurs to him that maybe even the most amoral gutsy thief still has to be a smart about things. You have to actually pull off the most audacious caper of the century.

Or maybe I'm the idiot. If you're high enough up, you can be Beavis, or at least The Great Cornholio, and get away with stealing half the country.

Guns Kill People

While mass shootings justifiably get headlines, guns kill a lot of people in more mundane, for America, circumstances. And, yes, it's the guns. People do stupid things and get depressed and get angry and if not for a firearm within reach, those moments probably wouldn't result in fatal tragedy.

At Least There's A Bathroom For Women Now

But not much more.

"For example, you are not allowed to bring children onto the floor of the Senate at all," Duckworth noted. "If I have to vote, and I'm breastfeeding my child, especially during my maternity leave period, what do I do? Leave her sitting outside?"

She added, "I can't leave her with a staff member, that's a conflict of interest, so am I allowed to vote? Can I not do my job? What are some of the requirements there?"

Duckworth said she's also being told she can't "technically" take maternity leave to care for her daughter. "Because if I take maternity leave, then I won't be allowed to sponsor legislation or vote during that time period," she explained.

Failsons and Faildaughters

I don't want to pick on any one book (and some of them are good!), but I've been reading more contemporary fiction lately than I had been previously, and I've realized that without really intending to I've been reading more books by people roughly my age writing obviously semi-autobiographical novels (nothing wrong with that) about their young adulthoods, and they're too often books about (and, presumably, by) the NYT target audiences. You know, the lifestyles of the not quite rich and successful enough. The ennui of being mediocre, with pampered privileged Ivy grads discovering their lives aren't quite as grand as they expected. The horror of having to make a life in Brooklyn (in an era when Brooklyn was not cool), or to settle for just 2 bedrooms in Manhattan. I'm exaggerating a bit, but what's missing is that these failsons and faildaughters, in real life, go on to rule the world (and publish books) and there's something a bit scary about it all.

Won't Anyone Think Of The Children?

I've spent my life listening to conservative panics about "the culture" (movies, video games, Bart Simpson, rap music/basically anything associated with black people, etc...) and its corrupting influences on our yutes.

If I were a yute today, the "culture" would tell me to be corrupt AF or be a sucker.

Morning Thread

But DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD

um.

Privately, some aides have expressed frustration that Mr. Kushner and his wife, the president’s daughter Ivanka Trump, have remained at the White House, despite Mr. Trump at times saying they never should have come to the White House and should leave. Yet aides also noted that Mr. Trump has told the couple that they should keep serving in their roles, even as he has privately asked Mr. Kelly for his help in moving them out.

Tariffs

Whether they are Good or Bad is complicated (Econ 101 says they are BADBADBAD but it's complicated). Instituting them or taking them away is more likely to be bad than merely having them or not having them (it's the change). Trade wars can be bad, because other countries can respond to Trump's likely actions by trying to impose tariffs which cause maximum concentrated pain, not just broad based diffuse pain. You know, China might buy all the widgets from some widget factory in Mike Pence's hometown. An ant compared to China, but pretty damn important in Pence's town. Time to put it out of business. That kind of thing.