Good morning one and all to another titillating day!
Trump imposes tariffs on imports from Canada, Mexico and China: ‘National emergency’
Dow futures slammed by 600 points
Musk Says Trump Has Agreed to Shut Down USAID
DOJ Turns Tables On J6 Investigators, Orders ‘Review Process’ Ahead Of Possible FBI Purge
Marco Rubio Succeeds in Convincing Panama to Exit Belt and Road Initiative with China
Trump to Suspend Funding to South Africa Over Land Expropriation
Third soldier inside Black Hawk helicopter involved in DC midair collision identified
Gun Control Activist David Hogg Elected Vice Chair of DNC
Jeffrey Epstein files: Trump’s election could expose names on ‘black book’ list
State Department replaces ‘LGBTQI+’ with ‘LGB’ on travel page
That’s all I got for today. I’ll leave you with a song and move along with my day.
Morning, Banjos — morning all… I doubt I’m alone in thinking Banjos just lit the Q signal there.
I’ve been the Vince McMahon meme for two straight weeks now.
“Stop, I can only get so hard”?
–“I doubt I’m alone in thinking Banjos just lit the Q signal there.”–
First thought that popped into my head. I would have been disappointed if that wasn’t one of yhe first comments.
State Department replaces ‘LGBTQI+’ with ‘LGB’ on travel page
I have to confess I never understood the Q and everything after it.
It was admittedly a queer addition.
It was strange and redundant.
*Regency accents on*
“I don’t see how you two can be friends; you’re too temperamentally misinclined. He’s so queer, and you’re so gay.”
More of an Organian Peace Treaty sort I take it then, Pie.
I’m old enough to remember when G came before L and B, T, and the rest did not exist.
what caused the order change?
Purity spirals, Pie.
RC Dean is right — Tru Intersectionality requires that of wimmens be given precedence.
Ladies first Pie, Ladies first.
Thankfully, male T’s are here to put women back in their place.
National emergency and assholes just eat that up. How long did Congress debate tariffs in the antebellum era? Now, because of nAshuNal SeCuRitY the president can slap them on anything, anywhere for no real reason. We really need DC to be nuked from orbit.
The difference is in how much of the federal funding was tariffs in that time.
The mistake of the 16th has reduced the importance to the bickering grifters, so they delegated the power away.
Congress doesn’t get to legitimately delegate away power, but of course, here we are.
JI is right, of course. Unfortunately, because Congress is mainly there to advance the interests of the two parties rather than voters/citizens, and they are both addicted to using the Presidency to (effectively) enact legislation, I see little prospect of any reform that reins in the Executive.
I mean, Biden tried to amend the damn Constitution from the Oval Office. The ratchet only turns one way.
We’ll see what happens, I suppose — heaven knows there’s lots of hyperventilating about it so far. Personally, I think only 10 percent on China was too generous — yeah, they aren’t directly pushing things through our borders… but I thought a lot of the fentanyl was produced there, and I’d personally lean towards a 50 percent or higher tariff just for their labor and IP theft practices. Make it a clear policy that we won’t allow US businesses to get away with partnering with forced labor / sweatshop countries like China.
And things like this is why I’m not a True Libertarian, I know…
I thought the fentanyl was coming from Mexico, along with most of the rest of our narcotics supply.
I thought it was being funneled through Mexico but manufactured in China. :shrug: Could be wrong… just what I recall.
Apparently it isn’t that hard to manufacture. Maybe we need a tariff on fentanyl, so we can encourage domestic production.
…and they’re forcing people to consume it..
3 million people die every year in the US, about 1 %. 70 K died last year from fentanyl. Somehow I’m not getting too excited.
It is coming from Mexico, but it is made with chemicals from Canada and China. That is what I understand.
I’m not aware of any Canadian involvement but yes, China ships the ingredients to Mexico for production.
I also think ten percent is too kind to China but I guess that is why I don’t make the big bucks.
Tarrifs should probably be targeted not blanket… I am broadly free trade but not if it makes you dependent on strategic stuff to an enemy.
We don’t choose our enemies carefully.
This is the thing I disagree with Trump on. He thinks that the trade deficit is caused by unfair dealing by our trade partners. The reality is that’s caused by the fact that we’re the reserve currency of the world and triffin’s dilemma. The only way this works is to lower internal taxation so the overall tax incidence remains the same.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triffin_dilemma
I am talking solely based on gut instinct — but I expect it is also caused by overregulation making it difficult to actually process natural resources and manufacture relative to other countries (probably not the EU, granted — that may well be a matter of their having barriers against our goods [because that’s how the French at least have always rolled]). Not really unfair dealing to not fetter their economies like we do — but I may be more biased being stuck in the California regulatory hell (but there’s also New York, New Jersey, Oregon, Washington State, the entire FedGov under the last admin… etc.)
There can be unfair practices (see my opinion of China and labor above) too, sure… but certainly I agree that’s not all of it.
Christ, hearing him say “America gets ripped off by every country in the world” – is as bad as the turds bitching about corporate PROFITZ.
Since WWII we have had the notion that we should defer to the interests of other countries because we are so wealthy and powerful…give them a handicap so to speak. The idea was for them to begin to prosper and foment ‘democracy and the American way’.
Instead what happened is they became a bunch of ungrateful welfare queens. Fuck ’em. They hate us. They hate American ideas. They are fucking us and laughing about it.
“We have free healthcare, employment for life and 6 weeks paid vacation every year unlike you uncivilized Americans with your hate speech!”
Yeah? How about we stop paying for all of your perks and you go eat some shit? Let’s try that for a while and see what you have to say.
Actual conversation I have had more than once: “I hate America. You have all of the _______ and wont give us any.”
Me: “We make those ____. We bust our asses making them. Why dont y’all start doing that?”
Commie furriner: “Work is wasting life. Get up, get out of bed, sweat all day. Fuck that. We know how to live and enjoy our lives. You Americans are a bunch of sticks in the mud ascetics. No joy. No life. I hate you.”
I remember when Pelosi was trying to convince people to spend their lives in self-indulgence rather than work. Imagine if you could do art all of the time or some horseshit like that. I could feel my face getting hot and wondering how anyone could buy such transparent horseshit.
Fuck ’em.
Yeah, I used to marvel at how the streets in Germany were universally top quality while here it’s potholes everywhere.
We can never successfully export democracy and capitalism. We don’t even do it all that well at home. Both are Wilson’s legacy.
Trump to Suspend Funding to South Africa Over Land Expropriation
I have not followed much about South Africa, are the expropriations well documented or were they exaggerated by the alt-right?
They recently changed the law to allow them to steal with even more impunity.
Just another case of Eminent Domain, we know how that works.
They went full Zimbabwe retard last week.
Why does Trump hate equity and inclusion?
Because he’s a racist. Try and keep up.
I am greatly amused that S.A. is using the language of American progs to justify this stuff.
Same language because same kind of people. See support for the evil fucktard that assassinated the insurance guy.
See, what SA needs to do is relabel that expropriation as civil asset forfeiture. [taps side of head]
I like all of the candy coating used to describe ‘rape wives and daughters, chop the whites up with machetes and axes then steal the crops and livestock before abandoning the land to gtow weeds’.
Some call it ‘land reform’. It always seems to happen during harvest season when the crops are ready.
It got very little press but when ‘end apartheid’ was being debated the majority of blacks in SA were strongly against it. They knew exactly what was going to happen.
A little back of the envelope math says that half of black South Africans weren’t even alive during apartheid and the ANC has been in charge for their whole lives.
But taking the farms from whitey will finally make things right.
Commies gonna train more commies…
State Department replaces ‘LGBTQI+’ with ‘LGB’ on travel page
The genocide begins.
Musk Says Trump Has Agreed to Shut Down USAID
Nayib Bukele
@nayibbukele
Most governments don’t want USAID funds flowing into their countries because they understand where much of that money actually ends up.
While marketed as support for development, democracy, and human rights, the majority of these funds are funneled into opposition groups, NGOs with political agendas, and destabilizing movements.
At best, maybe 10% of the money reaches real projects that help people in need (there are such cases), but the rest is used to fuel dissent, finance protests, and undermine administrations that refuse to align with the globalist agenda.
Cutting this so-called aid isn’t just beneficial for the United States; it’s also a big win for the rest of the world.
https://x.com/nayibbukele/status/1886059275174506850?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet
Works for me — but I have this crazy idea that a nation with a 2 trillion (or whatever it is.. that’s the ballpark) dollar deficit shouldn’t be dumping money across the world anyway. The wallet is past empty, it is only gushing red ink. Time to cut off all the junkies in and out of this country used to their cheap Uncle Sugar fix.
except for you know what
Your million? Or are you wanting a billion now? At the rate we’re going, it will be worth less than the shipping container we send it to you in… but if it keeps you from buying foreign estates and having your realtors eating flies, I suppose it is worth the investment.
I have always wanted a billion. I don;t think I was ever as low as one million. I think 10 mil was the floor of the ask
USAID is pretty much a front for the CIA, no?
It is the money spigot for no end of NGO/intelligence community awfulness. It funded the censorship programs. They sent money to the PLA for bioweapons research (yes, they helped develop COVID). It’s where the color revolutions are organized. It is absolutely a central node in cancer that has metastasized worldwide out of the federal government.
Apparently, when DOGE went to look at their books, security refused to allow it, so Trump fired their security bosses. Now the office is closed and DOGE has the run of it. This could be epic.
USAID was a CIA front to create chaos as a means of controlling the population of other countries and whom they put in charge. Under Obama they decided they should also use it on America and Americans. Kill it.
So Lobach was the pilot getting the refresher (500 hours) per an earlier report and the WO was the more experienced pilot. That would all jibe with her having a non-flying role at the Biden WH.
Oh no….. anyway…..
Stock markets are volatile. Long term investments will settle out, markets will shift. News at 11.
Do you understand what that kind of volatility does? The insiders can’t profit off of it, that’s what it does! And you go all blasé about it.
Nancy Pelosi hardest hit?
Some of us don’t the time for long term investments to settle.
“It’s my money and I want it now”
The Dow closed at $44,544 on Friday. A 600 point drop is 1.34%. Comparing dollar drops will always make it sound scarier than it is because the market goes up over time, so the percentage represented by each dollar goes down. The 1987 crash was a 1 day drop of a bit over 500 points, but that 500 points was 22.6% of the value. A 1.3% drop is not a crash it is a ripple. Now, futures don’t always get it right, so it may be worse, but it’s early to panic.
I just hate that everyone reports on market movements in points, not percentages. The points are meaningless to 99.8% of people, and the other 0.02% converts it to percentages in their heads anyway.
It makes things sound dramatic. Clickbait is all it is, but it’s clickbait that scares people into foolish decisions. I had a client who sold out of the market entirely on the Covid drop. Nothing I could say would change her mind. She was sure it was going to zero, and better to save something than lose it all ‘speculating’ that the market would recover.
And you’ll also notice they do that even more on the downward movements, much less so on the upswings.
OTOH, it may just be the beginning. Or it may take a few months to regain that 1.3%. In the stock market time is all important.
RC Dean: Not everybody. I listen two or three days a week to the German-language from SRF (Switzerland) and they report in percentages.
and lo and behold the market has already recovered almost all the opening losses.
Epstein’s black book and all pictures of it were burned, deleted, etc… i can almost guarantee it. No way that thing is lying around.
what difference at this point….
Plenty. The catalog of visitors and crimes could put the final nail in the corrupt uniparty’s coffin.
Pardon the expression.
Maybe — it might also be in a CIA vault because it is too useful as leverage.
If it is, nobody will ever fess up to it during our lifetimes. It night even be an “Egyptian burial” situation where the guy who hid it was killed.
It is. Remember, the FBI went around Hoovering up everything Epstein from his island, ranch, condos etc. Then…crickets.
Yes they have it. Yes, I used ‘Hoovering’ for a reason.
My favorite was when they went to his Manhattan apartment, found a bunch of videos and notebooks, and the agent in charge said “Well, dammitall, I just have is a search warrant, not a search and seizure warrant”, so they wandered off without the evidence, and when they came back a few hours later, it was all gone, gosh darn it.
Fox requires me to register to read that article, so I don’t know what they’re arguing, anyway.
They have a rolling registration wall. They let you read so many articles for free, then nag you to register, then after a period of time it goes away. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Here is the site I use to bypass most pay/registration walls.
https://archive.fo/
Credit to here — but have to admit <a href="https://media.townhall.com/cdn/hodl/ha/images/2025/33/61d0b2e3-cd35-420a-89ba-95dc9b8ffd6c-650×0.jpeg"this feels like it ought to be right up there with Lobster Girl as a site standard image. Certainly sums up my voting history.
A SugarFreed link is up there with Lobster Girl?
Sigh… You would think I’d proofread. And come on… at least the intended link is obvious this time! 😉
Should have been…
“Bad Gateway” does seem oddly appropriate for black-pilled contrarians.
I was just scratching my head wondering “What does that mean?”
Also, where is my goddamned fucking Obamacare repeal?
Be careful what you wish for – Obamacare repeal would mean replacement by some other govt program.
Daily Ray of Sunshine
Yup, those are Corgis.
Thanks for the grin
Kids at an Easter Egg hunt.
Thanks, Jimbo, Kinnath won’t be talking to you at HH this year
Wait, what?
What did I do to Kinnath? I guess I can live with the silent treatment as long as he still lays some of that glorious mead on me.
Could be he’s teasing Kinnath about not speaking to any of us at this past HH.
Oh, yeah. I forgot that Kinnath’s Kalendar was broken this year.
I always have to suspect Fourscore though. He’s a mean one when it comes to the HH!
You wanted us to laugh at Corgis, Jimbo.
You’re right about the mead, though, ain’t no one laughing at that.
Kinnath visited a week after HH, something about “those” people that come to HH. We had a nice visit.
Libertarian convention?
The Libertarian convention is not nearly as cute. The understanding and progress toward goals is about the same though.
There was only one stripper …
That’s true…lots of purple hair, hog rings and the stench of patchouli and pot vs. cute shampoo’d fluffy dogs that smell like jasmine.
Can relate to corg number 9.
A question of killing
https://thecritic.co.uk/a-question-of-killing/
While many MPs would oppose the state condemning a guilty killer like Axel Rudakubana to an early death, they are happy to rush into law legislation that would lead to the early deaths of many of the most vulnerable people in our society. Many who oppose the death penalty do so on the grounds that it cannot be reversed if it is later discovered the condemned person was innocent. “One innocent person is too many,” they cry with moral righteousness. Yet, the same voices seem remarkably sanguine about the potential for assisted suicide laws to risk the premature deaths of those who might receive incorrect prognoses, later have second thoughts or be coerced into ending their lives.
“What margin of error would we, as a society, find acceptable?” asks Dr Katherine Sleeman, an expert in palliative and end-of-life care at King’s College London. “Would we accept the death of one person who didn’t want to die in order to allow the assisted death of one who did? Or maybe that ratio is one to ten, or maybe it’s one to a hundred.” If some object to the death of those guilty of the most heinous crimes because of the risk of an innocent person dying, on what grounds would they not apply the same principle all the more with assisted suicide laws?
“One innocent person is too many,” they cry with moral righteousness. Yet, the same voices seem remarkably sanguine about the potential for assisted suicide laws to risk the premature deaths of those who might receive incorrect prognoses, later have second thoughts or be coerced into ending their lives.”
No.
Yeah, some people need killin’ but the state nor anyone I have ever met is qualified to decide who those people are. Assisted suicide is, just as its critics predicted, an abomination. Killing people is evil. That is not hard to work out.
It’s like Christmas every day. I can barely keep up.
https://www.breitbart.com/border/2025/02/02/anti-trump-deportation-protesters-wave-mexican-flags-across-u-s/
There were about 20 people doing this protest in downtown Greenville, SC yesterday. I had to laugh at their complete lack of support by people driving and walking past.
Oh no……
Anyway…..
We didn’t think there would be consequences!
Twelve was probably 2/3’s of the staff! The place probably had to shut doors! Hell yes, grounds for firing!
Mr. Jimbo’s story is dated 2017.
Doing the jobs Americans wont do?
They aren’t sending us their best?
Go. Home. Get out.
I thought they learned last time they did pro-invasion protests that it’s a bad look to wave the flags of Mexico and other foreign countries. I recall all these uncoordinated, spontaneous protests changing on a dime, like within a few days, to waving US flags last time around.
It makes no sense to burn the flag of the country you want to stay in, and fly the flag of the country you don’t want to return to.
It almost seems designed that way.
There was one in my town too. Specifically protesting that ICE picked up an illegal alien felon but the usual commie riff-raff was there too.
I’m starting to think that all of this “protest” is really just about chaos and stirring shit up.
This is going to get violent, maybe terrorist violent before long. It won’t end well for the illegals.
Immigrants are the next useful tools. I guess Antifa is passé.
Nah, it’s all antifa in the end – that is why you see the same crowd at every “protest” regardless of what it’s supposedly about. “Smash the system” is the ultimate goal.
I have always advocated for the Trumpian approach. Deport them. Pay no attention to what they say or do. Deport them and keep deporting them.
Scream, wave your flags, tell your sob stories, burn shit down, whatever. Now get on the plane, you are going home.
The fall of the German firewall
The establishment cannot continue to prioritise keeping out the AfD
https://thecritic.co.uk/the-fall-of-the-german-firewall/
n Wednesday the 29th of January 2025, the “Brandmauer” or “firewall” started to collapse, and German politics shifted forever. This is the cordon sanitaire in which the main political parties all agreed never to cooperate with Alternative for Germany (AfD), the hard-right party which is now second in the polls before the election in February.
The cause was an anti-migration motion in the Bundestag, which passed with 348 votes to 344, with 10 abstentions. It had been laid by the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the centre-right party, and was also backed by the FDP, a liberal and free market party which until recently was part of the ruling coalition. However, it only passed with votes from the AfD and some affiliated members without a party.
As strange as it might sound, the firewall was so strong that motions which might have only passed with AfD support have previously been withdrawn, just to avoid that happening. Therefore the CDU’s acceptance that they would pass it only with AfD votes, constitutes the first step to the ending of the firewall and the return of democratic politics to Germany.
Even though the motion accuses the AfD of conspiracy theories and xenophobia, it passing with the votes of the AfD was enough to bring down a storm of fury from the left-wing establishment. A huge protest was held in front of the CDU’s offices and their staffers had to evacuate to hide from the mob. Nancy Faeser, the Interior Minister, accused the CDU of leaving the “democratic centre”, calling them “oblivious to history”. Chancellor Olaf Scholz said he “needed some time to process”, as if he was an LA Valley Girl undergoing therapy.
I covered that story last Thursday afternoon. LOL
The left mobbing up outside CDU HQ is some new – and utterly unsurprising – information, at least.
But yeah, this is huge. Our uniparty has nothing on the uniparty there – and hoo boy are they going apeshit.
Unsurprisingly, I didn’t hear anything about the mob blocking the CDU on tagesschau24.
I see they’re yammering about Trump. I can get that here.
Yeah, but it’s a good way to practice my German.
It’s also a good way to see how unhinged the rest of the world’s “mainstream” media are.
Yeah, I need to do more of that. Maybe try the DW podcasts again except I don’t commute lately so when do I listen to them.
You guys should form an Alliance for German
A Bund, if you will.
I think the cordon sanitaire held in the end, and the bill wasn’t passed.
That’s good. You shouldn’t vote for something that’s popular with your own constituents if the bad people like it too. That’s how democracy ends.
If anything, they are upping the insanity.
[TW: The Nation via MSN]
“Back then everyone was on my side. Now they are all against me. ”
I wonder why? It is a mystery. We may never know.
Lets ask those middle school girls who were raped in school bathrooms by tranny boys. They may shed some light on the subject.
“Back then everyone was on my side.“
Not really, no. Most people never wanted men in women’s bathrooms, but were intimidated/tricked into keeping their mouths shut. Now the preference cascade is on, and we are learning what most people thought the whole time.
It was more that no one cared, or noticed. MTF were this teensy tiny minority that wanted to avoid causing trouble or unwanted attention. So they used the bathroom that avoided causing trouble or unwanted attention.
/taps out
JFC.
The invention of the air friar. [Colorized]
https://x.com/incunabula/status/1885976038833860805
The image very much does not disappoint, though I was expecting a trebuchet.
Okay, but what does a trench bucket have to do with anything?
Faith is in the air!
Everywhere I look around.
Sally Fields comes to mind.
Which Glib author is going to write the Fury/Marcelene crossover slashfic?
Sounds like you’ve got dibs.
https://www.businessinsider.com/delaware-governor-matt-meyer-corporate-law-elon-musk-bill-ackman-2025-2
The new Delaware Governor is trying to lure companies back. Probably too little too late unless they remove activist judges. They are in the “find out” phase of FAFO.
Gonna be tough if “the Big Guy” is still getting 10% of the dealings.
Scott Alexander
@slatestarcodex
I went on a walk and saw a child drowning in the river. I was going to jump in and save him, when someone reminded me that I should care about family members more than strangers. So I continued on my way and let him drown.
https://x.com/slatestarcodex/status/1886089392961532265
ah rationalism…
Becoming a professional writer decreases your originality. Getting married and having a kid turns you stupid. Guess which two lifestyle changes Scott’s made?
Originality is overrated.
What is that fallacy called where the conclusion does not follow from the premises? You know, no logical connection between the if and the then? I cant remember.
Aquinas: Your duties of love to your family are more than your duties to strangers. However, that order of loves does not change that you must love all of your neighbors.
This moron: hurr durr Christians let people drown because they love their family.
Got to love Peachy with the top comment:
“Are you playing dumb, or are you this stupid all the time”
Scott Alexander increasingly impresses me as someone who thinks he’s a lot smarter than he is. That tweet was a case in point.
So thoughts on De’Aaron Fox to the Spurs?
Also there is a new theory that the owners of the Mavericks want to move the team to Vegas.
“So thoughts on De’Aaron Fox to the Spurs?”
*rummages around inside brain*
Nope.
Yeah, I got nothin’.
I don’t think about it.
You’ve got to believe the Kings know what they’re doing. It’s not just anybody who can make the playoffs once in the last 17 years.
Norwegian Cruise Line CEO might want to be careful walking down the street. He might be the next evil capitalist to get offed.
Sounds like two different insurance agencies are fighting over who has to pay, so the dude might get reimbursed. I’d love to see an itemized breakdown of what he was charged for though.
I thought Norway had free health care …
2 aspirin, $23,500 each.
Say what you will, it does seem a tad overpriced.
No shit. My daughter got sick and needed meds on a Royal Caribbean cruise, we just used our insurance and paid a deductible. Normal costs. No big whoop. Was he uninsured and at the brink of death? That detail would be important to know.
And here’s the FBI Reddit discussing how to leak without getting caught.
https://x.com/joshwalkos/status/1886240532394819864
I bet the NSA can tell us who put that on Reddit.
Jacobin
@jacobin
Socialists considering how to break with capitalism are confronted with a dilemma: support a gradual move to social ownership, so workers can build up the know-how to run those firms, or support a rapid transition so capitalists can’t sabotage the economy.
https://x.com/jacobin/status/1885312083987738696
Socialism in one
countrycompany.Well, the workers could all contribute their own money, buy the company and run it with volunteers. Or continue as is with someone else taking all the financial risks.
Or do it as Cuba has done, let the government run it.
The workers don’t want to risk their own money.
Either way when it’s the Jacobins doing it it’ll involve mass executions.
Not necessarily. They can also fill mass graves with victims of starvation.
Dont like the free market? Dont participate. Easy peasy. Start a commune and live on sunlight.
Odd how not being in a free market always involves looting the free market.
Why cant they just go away and do their own thing? If it works so well they dont need free market people, do they?
The Right to Pee Is Everything
What a longwinded addlebrain. I tapped out.
I went on a walk and saw a child drowning in the river. I was going to jump in and save him, when someone reminded me that I should care about family members more than strangers. So I continued on my way and let him drown.
He should have commandeered a boat and run the kid over.
Dial 911
Is that one of Brando’s cut scenes from Apocalypse Now?
“An idiot’s response to Thomas Aquinas”
Panama: All you need to do is have the pres tweet about invading the place (implied anyway) and they drop China like a hot potato? That was surprisingly easy and not a shot fired.
They just weren’t hitting it hard enough
It may seem that big companies are just adapting to political and legal pressure, but diversity experts also blame a more fundamental failure: Many businesses didn’t think through their pledges — or their costs — from the start, they say. So corporate America may have never gotten DEI right in the first place.
“What we’re seeing in the moment is the few companies who took it to heart … and the many who just wanted to sprinkle some DEI on top, especially after George Floyd,” says Portia Allen-Kyle, who runs the racial justice nonprofit Color of Change. “And that was never going to be a viable strategy.”
Allen-Kyle is pretty pessimistic these days about the future of DEI in corporate America, and the fallout for Black and other minority workers.
But some diversity experts see a silver lining from the scrutiny: They hope that companies that care about building fairer, more inclusive workplaces are rethinking their strategies — and may now finally have a chance to get it right.
This would totally work if you guys would just listen to us and pay us more.
“So corporate America may have never gotten DEI right in the first place.”
So the left has gone to their “true communism has never been tried” move already.
It was poor messaging.
Grifter’s narrative falls apart. They are under the spotlight. Grifters use pretzel logic to weave new narrative showing why their old narrative was not a lie and totally not a grift.
It is what they do. It is all they know how to do. They cant help it.
Meanwhile The DNC elects David Hogg vice chair…or whatever.
I think a lot of what we are seeing with the increased insanity is a result of panic. Mentally ill people when put under stress will become exponentially crazier, a psychotic break if you will.
The DNC is doing nothing to attract voters, but they keep doubling down on the things that have been pushing people away.
The DNC is doing nothing to attract voters.
Profit?
I said a while back I thought we were seeing the death of the party. I think it is now dead and doesnt know it yet. Everything socialists touch turns to shit…that is their spoken strategy, isn’t it?
Remember when TOS declared after careful thought and debate they had decided to get on board with the left because they could more easily effect change arglebarglebloop I am really a commie after all I was always just in the closet but now I am coming out libertarian moment claptrapblap?
I remember.
The Dems have stopped doing “politics”. Meaning, you used to lie and schmooze people to get votes. After a loss they’d recalibrate the lying and schmoozing and do a better job of telling people what they want to hear, and win the next time.
Now they’re a cult where you have to believe everything on their list, and if you don’t they pull out the knives and come after you.
The inmates are running the asylum.
That is an impressive amount of gibberish.
Worth a watch. Trump opening the Epstein operation could be a big problem.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaoGl-soL1g&t=746s
He tries so hard to paint the guy as some kind of super-evil, Darth Vader type lord of darkness. The truth is much simpler, dumber and yet still pure evil. It is all ridiculously obvious.
Epstein was a IC operative running a honey trap. Given the depravity and moral feebleness of most people in power it was laughably easy. Yes, all of it is documented and the people involved are nearly all of the people you see on the news every day.
Now let’s do Diddy.
Rotten to the core.
Yep, more and more it looks like the Democrats made a yuuuuge mistake stealing the ’20 election. It gave OMB four years to figure out what he did wrong and what he felt he needed to do if he got back in power. Only someone with his wealth and tenacity and arrogance and ability to bluster could have persevered like he did. What might have spurred him too was knowing that if he failed he would literally be destroyed along with his family and many of his supporters.
He ain’t perfect by a long shot, some of the shit he’s doing now (launching a new bitcoin?) is simply stupid and counterproductive (I’m on the fence re the tariffs, I think it’s just a tool to force policy changes. The Colombia kerfuffle is an example). But waiting for Mr. Perfect Politician would take longer than the wait for Godot. You go with what you got.
Pedants: Wife and I were discussing the various modes of moving about one of our dogs employs. So far we have three styles of scooting, scampering, skittering, trotting, galloping and slinking. He most often scoots…the business scoot (I have to be somewhere beeline), the furtive scoot ( tuck tail, head down I have to eat this treat in secret) and the happy scoot (head down beeline with tail wag).
I say this because…no reason at all beyond amusement.
I might have had too much coffee.
You missed one my ex’s dog exhibited: wiping his ass on the carpet.
Usually that’s a sign that the dog has worms, take them to the vet to get checked out.
Oh, he eventually went to the vet. Just was a one way trip.
More likely swollen anal glands that need to be expressed than worms.
You can pay a vet tech to do that or do it yourself. Me, I’ll happily pay the $26 to have someone else do it.
needs more diplomatic handwringing
The most difficult thing to understand is how the linking of tariffs to the flow of fentanyl, and threatening Mexico and China — not to mention Canada, with a very small role in the flow of fentanyl — will achieve the very worthy objective of stemming the flow. In my world, the policy approach should have some realistic and practical chance of meeting the policy objectives. In this case, the actions reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of the complex dynamics at play.
Let’s take Mexico first. The drug trade is not merely a government failure; it’s a battle against cartels that often outgun local authorities, in part because of an endless flow of U.S. manufactured high-powered weapons. Trump’s demands could in fact push the government of Mexico toward a hot war with a heavily armed and lethal group of organized crime cartels, destabilizing the country and exacerbating the very border crisis the policy also intends to address.
Aaaand you’ve lost me. We deserve this because gunz.
You wouldn’t want the Mexican government to enforce their laws. That would undercut their booming criminal industrial complex and upset the apple cart.
This is just standard issue ass-covering and more-of-the-same diplomat corps turf warfare.
It’s because the drugs are illegal.
I think they’re leaving out an intermediate step there:
The largest river that contributes to the flood of illegal firearms into the Mexican black market goes as follows.
US Gun Manufacturers sell guns to the Mexican army and police forces with state dept approval. Corrupt Mexican officials divert these firearms and sell them on the black market.
So private firearms ownership in the U.S. has only a tiny impact on Mexican gun crime.
Corrupt Mexican officials
How DARE you notice that inconvenient bit of reality!!!
They got those guns from Obama.
In regards Canada, why doesn’t their government (I don’t know who is in charge now) just offer the standard kind of olive branch?
“We are forming a task force of the RCMP and Customs Canada to partner with US Border Patrol, Customs, the FBI, the DEA and other law enforcement agencies to immediately take strong measures to halt the flow of drugs from Canada to consumers in the United States.”
Because Castreaux is still in office?
Don’t they have an army or something?
“The executive order, Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship, if it withstands legal challenges, will forbid federal agencies from issuing or accepting any documents recognizing citizenship of children whose parents are citizens born after February 19.”
https://justthenews.com/government/courts-law/federal-judges-block-multiple-trumps-executive-orders
That can’t be right.
Let’s not ignore the obvious: the real crisis lies within U.S. borders. In 2022 alone, over 75,000 Americans died from fentanyl overdoses. Law enforcement seized enough fentanyl to kill every American multiple times over. This is not just a supply problem — it’s a demand problem.
No amount of tariffs will curb addiction. What’s needed is a comprehensive strategy that includes addiction treatment, mental health services, public health campaigns, and community-based interventions. Businesses know better than most about the necessity of understanding and managing the supply-demand curve relationships and that solving complex problem requires government to acknowledge this as well, and do more than just use blunt instruments. If this administration wants the government to act more like the private sector — an idea I am not always a fan of – it does apply here.
A vast new government bureaucracy and trillions of dollars will solve the problem.
All this bullshit about how many times over the fentanyl will kill all Americans many times over. If even half of the drugs have been stopped, why haven’t the other half that got through already killed all Americans?
Welfare chauvinism or welfare state nationalism is the political notion that welfare benefits should be restricted to certain groups, particularly to the natives of a country as opposed to immigrants, or should be for the majority, excluding ethnic minorities. It is used as an argumentation strategy by right-wing populist parties, which describes a claimed connection between the problems of the welfare state and, in essence, immigration, but also other social groups such as welfare recipients and the unemployed. The focus is placed on categorizing state residents in two extremes: the “nourishing” and “debilitating” and the contradiction between them in the competition for the society’s scarce resources.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_chauvinism
“Welfare shouldn’t be limited to people in the country.”
“This axiom applies to only one country in the world. Guess which one.”
That’s some high-class flapdoodle there.
The fight against fentanyl is critical and every life that is lost is one life too many. But tariffs are not the tool to deal with the crisis. Tariffs are taxes on American companies and consumers. They disrupt supply chains, create market volatility, and introduce policy unpredictability. Weaponizing trade policy for unrelated issues —whether immigration, drugs, or security — erodes America’s credibility as a reliable economic partner. Most importantly and unfortunately, they will not stem the flow of fentanyl.
I don’t really disagree with most of this (I could do without the anguished “”one life is one life too many” wailing), but the same old same old hasn’t gotten us anywhere. It’s almost as if we haven’t really been serious about dealing with this stuff.
Note- I am not in favor of hard core core criminalization of fentanyl or any other drugs. I don’t understand its appeal, but if people want to wreck themselves with it, that’s their lookout.
In my opinion the solution to the fentanyl crisis lies in healing the U.S. economy. A huge drug consumption problem is invariably a sign that people feel hopeless, that their lives suck. Drugs are an escape from an unpleasant reality.
If people have meaningful options to work, build a family, run a business, pursue hobbies etc, the demand for mind altering substances will go down. Moreover, the demand will shift to more social consumption rather than all consuming consumption – i.e. analogous to drinking a beer with friends vs. getting blackout drunk.
People have been seeking altered states of consciousness since the beginning of time. Intoxicants of many kinds have been used throughout history.
Addiction has also been with us since the beginning of time.
Making intoxicants illegal to prevent addiction doesn’t work; has never worked; and will never work.
Stop making people criminals because of their vices. It only makes things worse.
A huge drug consumption problem is invariably a sign that people feel hopeless, that their lives suck.
Employment can be a cause of that. It isn’t like work is sunshine-and-lollipops. Some people drink, others go for something more likely to be lethal.
Kids selling illegal products should be teaching marketing in college, they understand supply/demand. Keeping it illegal provides more opportunities for certain groups.
Making intoxicants illegal to prevent addiction doesn’t work; has never worked; and will never work.
Stop making people criminals because of their vices. It only makes things worse.
Letting them shit up the streets, destroy neighborhoods with crime and squalor, rob people, and generally be a blight on society hasn’t worked either.
There’s a middle ground where people aren’t hauled off to jail for vices, but they’re not allowed to hold the rest of society hostage with their anti-social behavior.
I think trashy is right on. Go ahead and legalize everything, but I’m not interested in subsidizing someone’s use and lifestyle.The ridiculous “harm reduction” programs are just another NGO grift that doesn’t actually help addicts. Meanwhile sections of every major city are becoming unlivable because the “homeless” just set up and commit their slow motion suicide.
There has to be a better way.
Letting them shit up the streets, destroy neighborhoods with crime and squalor, rob people, and generally be a blight on society hasn’t worked either.
Aren’t those all (save the last) crimes in and of themselves? Prosecute that and leave the drugs out of it.
But it means you care!
Prosecute that and leave the drugs out of it.
Haha! Good one!
Most cities aren’t even prosecuting armed carjackings.
Most cities aren’t even prosecuting armed carjackings.
They reap what they sow. I want those cities to collapse in on themselves, and take every Democratic voter in them along for the ride.
Aren’t those all (save the last) crimes in and of themselves? Prosecute that and leave the drugs out of it.
Most are, or at least were. Enforcement is, of course, the issue.
Yup. This is another restatement of ‘Politics are downstream of culture, culture is downstream of economics.’
Drug wars are killing our kids! Can’t they just die the old-fashion way, from an overdose.
That didn’t take long.
https://x.com/PressSec/status/1886441086203158844
Will Canada follow this afternoon?
During the cross-border shootout, the Mexican army was on the scene and promptly let the cartel forces withdraw unopposed. At best this will do nothing, at worst it is an increase in cartel firepower.
I sure hope Canada tosses out the olive branch. A former colleague tells me that the huge U.S. competitor of my former employer (of which I am still third largest stockholder) made a call this morning offering our majority stockholder a deal to buy us out at 75% of book value. “Just for your customer list and goodwill.” Certainly made in jest and to rub in the fact that our company has no other source of product than Canada. The discount to book that they suggested would only cost me about $98,000 but what the hell. Haven’t talked to the majority owner yet, but I know he was a big contributor to the GOP this last election.
Of course they will. Both Canada and Mexico would be destroyed by these tariffs. It’s China that is gonna be interesting.
In my opinion the solution to the fentanyl crisis lies in healing the U.S. economy. A huge drug consumption problem is invariably a sign that people feel hopeless, that their lives suck. Drugs are an escape from an unpleasant reality.
The spike beginning ~four years ago wasn’t exactly a coincidence.
It was not. Increase hopelessness, deluge with drugs. The mentally weak fall first. Then replace them all with illegal aliens who vote for you. The whole thing was so monstrous and obvious.
See also – the “jobs Americans won’t do” bullshit that’s pissed me off since the days of TOS.
That didn’t take long.
1800 pound gorilla in a china shop.
We need to put hefty tariffs on foreign made fentanyl so our domestic producers can compete. It’s the fair thing to do.
The vast majority of generic drugs and supplements are made in India and China. It seems like every time an independent lab tests them they aren’t even close to consistent lot to lot. Sometimes not even close in dosage. Is it far fetched to think that the Fentanyl coming in across borders (and ports) might be wildly fucked up?
Fentanyl is so strong there is no good way to make pills out of it.
Won’t reducing the supply drive up the costs? And encourage more crime by the users? And encourage more adulteration of product?
What to do, what to do? Woe is me…
Back in the 80s, during the farm crises, someone mentioned legalizing weed to give the farmer’s a crop that they could make money growing. I said it would take John Deere and Monsanto less than decade to make growing and harvesting weed so cheap and easy that farmers would flood the market. The price would crash, and FedGov would need to subsidize farmers all over again.
Fentanyl would be a different industry, but the results would be the same.
Okay, Tech Glibs, I’ve got a question.
I’ve got a stack of Chinesium usb battery charger boards whose output voltage on the “power out” connectors (separate from the battery connectors) is only 4 volts. Several things I’m working on are supposed to be 5 volts. Is there any way to safely and easily get the voltage back up to 5?
Nevermind
Initially, the question ahd arisen because my batteries were only 4.7v, but I wasn’t sure if that would even be a problem. Then I measured the cinesium boards output, and found it had dropped.
Of course, the step-up chip cost more than getting the right power supply in the first place.
“step-up chips” aren’t for power supplies either.
That’s not what the datasheet says.
Though there’s another option for $1/unit which has the additional components I’d have needed to add to the fancy chip and should cover it anyway. Cheaper way to trade amps for volts.
Oh, that’s not a regular charge pump. It’s some fancy $10 chip that needs an external rectifier and inductor. Regardless, its output is not going to be as well-regulated as a typical supply.
Yes, I know. I did read the documentation.
Who’s in charge here, anyway?
The Democrats’ leader in the Senate, Chuck Schumer of New York, slammed the move Sunday and announced that Democrats are going to propose a bill that could take some of Congress’s tariff power back.
“I will work with my colleagues to undo this mess,” Schumer promised.
Indeed it is Congress that formally — per the US Constitution — has the power to “lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises.” But Schumer and his colleagues likely face long odds given the current political climate and after decades where lawmakers have ceded much of their tariff power to the Oval Office in a series of bills.
Shouldn’t you be out fundraising or something, Chuck?
God FORBID they actually follow that musty old document. Progressives have bigger ideas!
Just shut it all down.
https://x.com/TheChiefNerd/status/1886388995334017150
This is why Fauci’s pardon dated back to 2014, too.
That “document” appears to have some issues, sort of like Dan Rather’s.