I was reading that Fox stopped detailing Mamdani’s policies because the audience was finding them too attractive.
I’m looking at the final items on that list: “Capitalist model” being “increased NYPD funding,” and the “Socialist model” being “fund mental health response teams” with some surprise. Are they admitting that police don’t exist as a public service, but instead purely exist to protect capital?
Yep, and boy, are they telling us what they’re going to do:
The Latino population of the U.S. is 65 million. She’s explicitly talking about exterminating an entire ethnic group. And while Loomer was once an internet crackpot, she’s now got the ear of the President and he’s done exactly what she wanted on multiple occasions (e.g. fired six National Security Council officials on her word alone).
It’s the usual Trumpian wordsalad, but he seems to be saying that there will be a 20% tariff on goods from Vietnam (which will be paid, of course, by US consumers), and they’re not going to apply a reciprocal tariff. (Which seems pretty unlikely to me, because that’s not a trade deal, that was his threat if they didn’t come up with a trade deal.) Transshipping is third country (for instance Chinese) goods being sold through Vietnam. I’m not buying any of this, really, even if the bit about SUVs is just Trump’s wishful thinking rather than any sort of agreement (real or imaginary). It just sounds more like they haven’t actually made any sort of trade deal and Trump is trying to make it sound like he has, because I don’t see anything here that’s a benefit for Vietnam. It’s just disastrous for their manufacturing (and US consumers).
I guess maybe Trump’s foray into the Middle East conflict has taught him an important lesson in diplomacy – it’s much easier to make a deal if the other party isn’t involved in it.
I just wonder what happens when Vietnam has its own idea of how things are supposed to go down… outrage, or just ignoring it and pretending it’s not happening to save face? Trump goes either way…
I wondered about that too. This wording from Bloomberg News is a bit clearer.
a 20% tariff on Vietnamese exports to the US and a 40% levy on any goods deemed to be transshipped through the country.
No mention of how goods will be “deemed to be transshipped”. I can think of several ways, ranging from “that makes sense” to “that’s batshit”, and I’m confident that my “batshit” expectations will be met or exceeded.
In between violence and protests are general strikes. Corporations and Wall Street helped make this mess; they can help clean it up or face the financial music.
Given that Trump is currently bringing members of congress in for meetings to get them to vote for the bill, telling them that they should never vote for [what’s in the bill] seems like it would be nicely counterproductive. Fingers crossed this torpedoes the bill.
That would be interesting if he tried it, since SCOTUS has declared that unconstitutional. Of course, he doesn’t care about that, so . . . maybe I want him to try? Jesus, I really hate this timeline.
In other news, 58% of US adults have no fucking idea what is happening in the country. Nor do they care. (No, that’s too harsh. ~30% or so are MAGAts and actually are happy and proud of what is happening here. The other 20-30% are ignorant, for any of a number of reasons, some legit, some willful, of just what a shitshow this country has become.)
I think there’s a large number of people who are appalled by what this country is doing but still say things like “in the whole it’s a force for good”, “it’s still better than other places” or “I still love my country”.
We’re in a state campground for several more days.
We’ve seen one trump shrine and a couple small trump flags.
But, we’ve also seen sites blanketed with American flags, canopies that are giant flags, red white and blue carpets, flag towels, flag stickers, everything turned into a flag.
It’s not hard to figure out who they support.
A single flag could go either way but these giant look at me I’m a patriot displays always get an eye roll and head shaking as we walk by.
It stinks that a lot of people like us won’t put up a flag because we don’t want the slightest possibility of being associated with those so called patriots.
We are embarrassed by our country right now, that also stinks.
I also feel bad for the park staff having to be around those morons.
