The Frankish Reich

Yeah they really pay-op’d the Dems this time. amazing the crap they’ll believe.

I agree. Even setting aside environmental concerns, EV technology is the future. Basically no maintenance. Faster. Better. The long range thing is the only issue holding them back, but that will come. A nudge in the EV direction strikes me as good policy for all of those reasons.

Weird take from Dinesh: "given the current makeup of Congress." The current makeup of Congress is a reflection of the current makeup of the Trump Republican coalition. For example, you can't severely cut Medicaid without pissing off all of Josh Hawley's Missouri voters. You can't eliminate the SALT deduction without losing seats in NYS. It is true that this is the difference in governing vs. philosophizing, but that's not a particularly profound point.

I finally leased an EV (not a Tesla, although I considered one) because the incentives/rebates just made it too damn cheap to consider anything else. I think it's great. Never buy gas for trips around town. Still have an ICE for roadtrips. This seems to be the most popular combination for EV adopters in my neck of the woods.

This is why Ukraine cannot be occupied. Guerrilla warfare for the 21st century.

I thought he was referring to the Epstein Pedo Files.

9/11: 19 of 20 terrorists from Saudi Arabia. Saudi not on the new banned visa list. 2015 San Bernardino terrorist attack: terrorists from Pakistan or Pakistani background. Pakistanis not banned. Boston Marathon bombers: of Russian/Chechneyan origin. Russians not banned. Boulder pyro attack: Egyptian who lived in Kuwait for 17 years. Neither Egyptians not Kuwaitis banned. Hey, close enough! Trump in a nutshell. All performative symbolic outrage signifying nothing.

Pedos tend to be gender specific. So yeah, whatever. Plus Elon will just make another one.

Remember Musk loves pedo shaming his enemies.

You guys never cease to amaze.

Same here. I also can't watch a recorded game that I missed live. The most I'll do is record it and join in while the live action is nearing halftime, then catch up to real time before the game ends. Sporting events are made for live viewing.

It's a good thing. The Bills brand is strong and getting stronger. That bodes well for the future. In other words ... no discernible pattern.

DOGE was amazingly ... inefficient. Look at the proposed defense budget. Remember when Elon said "Defense is next." Umm, right. Do we have any idea what the Golden Dome will cost when all is said and done? Whether it is considered a vital defense interest? Whether it is actually workable with current technology? And that's just the biggest one of many, many others.

True. But the 2017 tax bill - let's face facts, Trump's sole legislative achievement - made a big point of not subsidizing profligate states through the SALT deduction. It is worth pointing out that any principled design of the tax code to reduce these incentives is now shot to sh!te

So I'm wondering. Did prescription drug costs also go down IMMEDIATELY? Did the Ukraine war end in 24 hours? Inquiring minds want to know.

True. The 30 year is at 5.1% as I write this. Borrowing costs have gone up ... a lot. https://www.ft.com/content/c2dd8918-d6c1-4c60-b0d8-4959e287b11a The 30-year Treasury yield rose 0.11 percentage points to 5.096 per cent in evening trading in New York, the highest level since late 2023, as the price of the bonds fell. It extended its rise to 5.12 per cent after the bill passed the House of Representatives by a single vote, up more than 0.2 percentage points this week.

I am very proud of my little Bills Fan in NC. We are approaching singularity here, in which all conversations may be with himself and only himself! Keep on blocking, keep on talking to yourself. You are a winner!

I like how this too is being blamed on Biden. Is there a statute of limitations on Biden blaming, or does it basically continued forever?

So, shockingly, the bill that passed is a whole lot worse than anyone expected. Yes, worse. Budget busting, complexity-increasing, special interest-favoring. This is what they do when they have the power to do whatever they want. They become the parody of the Party of the Wealthy and special interests. Eric, buddy, weirdly no mention of No Tax on Social Security! I wonder why.

$40,000 SALT deduction. AYFKM? Subsidy for California and NY residents. And who pays $40,000 in state and local taxes? People with a lot of income. We call them "rich."

Here's the law in asylum cases: to be granted asylum or refugee status (they're the same thing, it just depends where you apply) you have to show that there's a good chance you'd be persecuted (think: killed, beaten, thrown in jail and severely mistreated without process) based on your race. There's always a question here: are they trying to drive you off your land so they can benefit from having the land? Or are they trying to throw you off the land because you're white? This is typically a case-by-case thing. Sometimes they just want the land or your stuff, and they'd do the same thing if you were, say, a South Asian/Indian ancestry land owner. The offensive thing here is that Trump has declared that basically every Boer farmer is being persecuted because he's white. He shortcut the analysis, but only for white people.

You are inadvertently making my point. Even if Biden was wholly out to lunch, people were in place who knew their fields and made generally sound decisions. You might not like the political bent of those decisions but they were rational and consistent. Compare Peter Navarro vs Scott Bessemer, Pete Hegseth, RFK, Howard Lutnick, Tulsi Gabbard, Pam Bondi…

Thank you for the reminder. Ukraine is still a country thanks to Biden.

Not addressed to me, but whatever ... ... I thought Mayorkas was a weak DHS Secretary. He didn't have the nerve to stand up to the pro-immigrant types who had huge power within the Democratic base. But he knew the subject matter. You can argue that this didn't help him a bit, but he knew the field. The fact that you didn't like the Biden/Democratic policy is no excuse for a Trump/Republican cabinet full of people who simply do not know the subject matter. Not knowing the subject matter means you cede real power to the Stephen Millers, who are not Senate-confirmed and are largely immune from any oversight. That, of course, is on purpose. There is a reason they didn't float Miller as DHS Secretary.

I saw Elon on CNBC this morning. He's still an impressive visionary on the business side. But I do think he's either bs'ing or deluded about his self-driving taxi concept. Why? Because I've been a pretty regular Waymo user when I'm in AZ. It strikes me as miles and miles ahead of what anyone else - including Tesla - is doing. Elon stubbornly refuses to admit that Waymo's use of LIDAR gives it a big safety advantage. Google/Waymo are winning this battle. Waymo is making it's first tentative move into a so-called "bad weather" climate - DC (where it will hook legislators like it hooked me) - and from there it's likely to go national. Buffalo last, I'm guessing ...