Thundermail… yeah yeah. :gently pushes my aol.com account under the sofa:

I have one on my keychain. I can always find my keychain in the dark…

Bezos wants his own X…

Funny thing the 1828 Tariff of Abomination, The Smoot Hawley Tariff and Donald’s Liquidation Day Tariff are all roughly a hundred years apart. Living memory of the consequences of such tariffs need to die out completely before a new generation tries this stupidity.

It’s the same with the nativist bullshit. Memory of the peak of Know Nothing, KKK and now MAGA bullshit has to die out before it is tried again.

My only hope is that this is viewed as the high water mark of the MAGA movement. MAGA incompetence is on full display.

As much as I disagreed with Sen. Chuck Shumers decision to roll over on the budget. Shutting down the government and giving MAGA any excuse to blame Democrats for this economic slowdown would have been a bad call. Donald and the Republicans now solely own this disaster.

For the MAGA faithful it won’t make a difference but for independents, moderates and low information voters this could be a huge turning point.

Never thought I’d root against an American company but here we are…

We’ll be around. We may not be a democracy but we’ll be around.

China though, it’s cooked .

China will be lucky if they still exist as a single unified nation. Demographics, employment, debt, over built property market, over dependence on manufacturing exports, energy import dependence, food import dependence.

They have a number of very strong headwinds that could very well cause the failure and break up of the CCP in the next twenty years.

I agree I’d rather Trump shit the bed hard and early so we can contain the damage and show the public at large what his policies will really do to them.

But Tariffs will never be enough to offset income tax completely. I think he is going to use Tariffs to offset renewing his tax cuts for the wealthy. There are a good number of house republicans who will not go along with tax cuts if it increases the deficit. Revenue from tariffs would give him enough cover to placate those Republicans while directly pushing the cost onto US consumers who are primarily lower and middle classes.

Even after 4 years when he is out of office and the next administration reduces those tariffs and goes back to a progressive tax system. Even reducing those tariffs then will never bring prices down. Companies will never pass those savings entirely to the consumer they will pocket the money and everyone else will be screwed.

I agree, I doubt very much that price savings for any reduction in Tariffs will be passed onto the consumer. However any increase in Tariffs will immediately be felt.

I’d rather see an increase in a single sector such as microchips to show the public the costs of Trump’s plan in real modern dollars to help build opposition. Than wait until he pushes an across the board Tariff. Which would likely result in a stagflation for the population at large.

Trump is going to use Tariffs to try to offset making larger tax cuts for the wealthy.

It’s better that he does this now so that we have a solid recent example to point to of how this will impact what we pay for goods.

Never mind we have 100 years of data backing this up, people are idiots and won’t recognize the treat until it hurts them directly.

I use PIA VPN.

One government is actively committing genocide against subsets of their population I’d say it’s a pretty big fucking difference.

I always found the build quality for Lenovo Thinkpads to be better than any of the top tier Dell laptops. Most of the laptops I had in circulation were Dells and the always gave me problems. The Thinkpads just worked.

You’ve described my limited FB experience. After refusing to join FB since the 00s, I joined FB a few years ago to get better access to the Marketplace. (Craigslist has gone to shit).

I joined a few groups that interested me and then the constant political bombardment started in the more mainstream groups.

Small niche FB groups are a night and day difference compared to some of the more contemporary groups I’ve seen.

Bot algorithms definitely target large groups with lots of activity. The resulting increased activity due to algorithms just amplify it further.

I just try to stick to my smaller groups to avoid all the mess.

They probably did build it. It’s possible they sourced the necessary chips through intermediaries. Sanctions aren’t going to stop them from getting their hands on small batches.

Sanctions will prevent them from being able to do this at scale. They can’t source enough high end chips to really build out the infrastructure to take advantage of AI for their economy at large.

It is the same with automotive parts. Anything imported from China has at least a 40% markup before it is resold.

As an owner of a Nissan I am thrilled Honda is bailing them out. I need those spare parts to flow.

China has terrible demographics, a real estate mark that is in free fall, high debt, is the target of tariffs in every major economy and a domestic market that can’t consume what they produce.

Economically they are fucked unless the US and EU throw them a life line and allow them to dump products in their market again… which is not going to happen no matter which party is in control. The best they can hope for at this point is a Japanese style lost decade. But I doubt they can manage even that outcome.

Bottom line is the CCP will do whatever is in the best interest of the CCP staying in control of China. Even if that decision is terrible for China itself.

If they are backed into a corner it doesn’t matter that Taiwan is out of reach. All that matters is that the CCP stays in control.

That is what makes this next ten years very dangerous.

We are on the tail end of the crypto grift. Getting the largest country on earth to invest in Crypto is basically the last gasp before the bubble deflates and cleans all the suckers out.

Been done in El Salvador. This is going to be a grift on the US tax payer of EPIC proportions.

https://www.bloomberglinea.com/english/el-salvador-loses-50-of-its-bitcoin-investments-due-to-crypto-collapse/