The Frankish Reich

Free the hostage James White! I saw some guy who looks suspiciously like Ray Epps egging him on ....

Quite a conspiracy there, buddy! We definitely need an investigation into how quarter-trillionaires like Musk and quarter-billionaires like Rogan are having their livelihoods impacted here.

What is the world coming to when a guy worth $7 billion like George Soros (having already contributed $30 billion to various Marxist causes that would otherwise view him as a personification of Das Kapital that must be overthrown) can intimidate a guy worth a quarter trillion dollars? It just ain't fair! More than that, it's a threat to democracy!!

Translation: Guy whose net worth is at least $250 billion may be intimidated by potential advertisers on his personal toy social media site. James Lindsay is worried!

Nice work! That's more Mt. Rushmore square footage than there is in the entire Black Hills. Too soon. https://www.legacy.com/news/celebrity-deaths/o-j-simpson-1947-2024-nfl-star-defendant-in-trial-of-the-century/

No thread that borders on the "most athletic QB ever" conversation will be complete without me mentioning this guy (RIP) And as a runner. Is it Josh or is it Roman?

There's a free market all right. Part of a free market is that advertisers get to decide what programs/feeds they support. And there's always the weird PPP side of a football fan forum if all else fails.

I'm not sure Vance is a Trump understudy. He's a very smart guy and to some extent he's been playing the role of Trump understudy to put himself in line for 2028. But if Trump be inevitable (I still have hope for a Biden replacement), at least he is genuinely interested in policy and governance. Maybe, just maybe, Trump could focus on the public stuff while Vance actually put things on a sound policy path?

Oooh, oooh, oooh, I can hardly wait!!!! The advertisers are lining up. My Pillow, some kind of Viagra supplier, maybe copper-infused trusses

Ahh, New Mexico, my very special neighbor to the south. I know it well ... very nice people, very beautiful landscapes, very inefficient and corrupt leadership ... let's just say I'm not surprised that this whole thing started as a fiasco there and ended as a farce.

There's this idea out there that men are averse to doing "women's jobs," which unfortunately means the jobs that are more in demand.

Although the schedule is making it look like Rubio v. Vance, I still predict Burgum. Burgum is a secular Pence. No charisma, hence no threat to Trump. Virtually no chance of catching on as a VP and planning his own 2028 run, so no incentive to try to distinguish himself (even in subtle ways) from The Boss.

First point: yeah, I get that. But the MSM isn't purely one-sided. There is clearly a mainstream liberal/Democratic bias to the NYT and the Wash Post, but there's also some good discussion from the other side. That's why I share the Ross Douthut pieces on JD Vance. Second point: also true. JD could've taken his time and been his own man for 2028 ...

What you miss if you do the whole "I never read the mainstream media" - a pretty interesting/fair discussion of JD Vance from a NYT columnist who obviously likes him. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/13/opinion/jd-vance-interview.html Or even better, this audio discussion: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/21/opinion/jd-vance-populism.html I don't like how Vance pivoted to sucking up to Trump. But hey, it's working, isn't it ... but take away that sycophantic tendency and there's a pretty interesting guy who is starting to see what a "populist" vision means in terms of actual policy. I’ve known the senator since long before he was a senator. He’s first very culturally interesting because he’s someone who rose to prominence as a memoirist of working class life, white working class life, who was sort of taken up by the liberal intelligentsia in 2016, 2017, as someone who explained the pathologies and cultural disarray that led to Trumpism, but who then sort of became a leading Trumpist himself. That is, to begin with, a kind of fascinating transformation of his sort of place in American culture. But then he’s also interesting because he is much more than most people, most Republican politicians, who have sort of adopted populism. He’s someone who’s really interested in the policy dilemmas around populism that we were talking about earlier, right, that show up in the United States, as well as Europe. The question of, can populism actually offer solutions to the mix of economic and cultural problems it’s interested in? So to the extent that there’s sort of a place where a populist agenda might come from in a second Trump term or over the next 10 or 15 years, it’s probably going to come from someone like Vance.

Harvest, harvest, harvest. Reprogram, reprogram, reprogram. And then have Veep Kamala certify. Whatcha gonna do about it, big guy?

Iron Law of Trumpian Projection.

Agreed. But I will add: there's also a ton of fraud with the EITC/additional child tax credit, and that fraud occurs in the lower-income returns. A lot of people who file those returns don't even know that some unscrupulous tax preparer included false dependents. I've seen this (a lot of times) in returns from recent immigrants, legal or not. Since these are so called "refundable" credits, someone who had no withholding will still get a nice Easter present from Uncle Sam. So we shouldn't audit those returns if they show several nephews and nieces as "dependents" because, after all, these folks are not rich?

Example of this kind of Law School Exam analysis: https://digitalcommons.law.uga.edu/fac_artchop/1012/#:~:text=In fact%2C the relevant constitutional,that office to the Presidency Read my last comment. I think it's a horrible idea. I wouldn't want it to happen with Obama in 2024 or Trump in 2028. But honestly, what do you think Trump would do if he is elected in '24 and still wants to hang on to the presidency? The playbook is out there, and it's pretty much what his mancrush Putin did in Russia about a dozen years ago.

Sorry, that doesn't do it either. It's long been a hypothetical question. And it is today too. Let's hope it stays that way. But it's kind of a loophole in the constitution. Biden-Barack ticket elected, Biden resigns right after inauguration, third Obama Term follows. In 2028 if Trump is President we'll be hearing about this: Burgum (or some other nobody) nominated for Pres, Trump for VP, with the understanding that Burgum will step down.

I remember my dad saying that when I was a kid. A guy would get popped, stay down, and dad would say "swallowed his tongue." A phrase that certainly made an impression. Nobody says that anymore. Urban myth exploded?

Wow, I guess Tommy Boy never thought of that! Or maybe he did think of that and he puts $399,999 on his return and doesn't want to be audited.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/11/20/uaw-contract-ford-general-motors-stellantis/ OK, not the Teamster; the UAW. But with Biden behind the Unions bigly, here's the contract the UAW signed with the "U.S." Big Three (Stellantis is only honorary U.S. at this point): The UAW contracts include raises of at least 25 percent for the highest-paid workers, to more than $40 an hour, and even bigger gains of up to 160 percent for the lowest-paid, who will also reach more than $40 an hour by the end of the contract. The deals come after a long period of worker wages not keeping up with inflation, and after the union gave up some of its benefits around the time of the Great Recession, when the automakers were struggling to survive. The union managed to claw back many of those perks in the new deals, including restoring regular cost-of-living wage adjustments to offset inflation. And it fought to reopen a large Stellantis factory in Belvidere, Ill., in a rare reversal of the plant closings that have harmed industrial communities for decades. “These were just extraordinary wins, especially for those of us who’ve been studying strikes for decades,” said Jake Rosenfeld, a sociology professor and labor expert at Washington University in St. Louis. 40 bucks an hour = $80,000 + per year. Plus good benefits. So the Republican Convention is in the near-sh!thole city of Milwaukee, a somewhat more prosperous Buffalo (thanks for the compliment, Donald). The average home price in Milwaukee? $209,000. Can you afford that on an $80,000 salary? Yeah. Easily. $1266/month for principal and interest. Sure, insurance ain't cheap. But still ... affordable. Maybe your spouse works there too: $160,000. Or is a teacher: $40,000 - $82,000 a year, so $120,000 - 164,000 for the household. Stop whining. The sh!thole cities of America are cheap. That's what you'll find in WI, MI, PA, WNY. Not exactly garden spots. Go ahead Union workers, and forget what side your bread is buttered on. You got a helluva deal. Elect Trump and get a whole new NLRB, with a Supreme Court that eventually says the NLRB is unconstitutional and can be ignored. [I'm not saying this kind of union deal is a good thing from an overall economic standpoint. In fact, the next recession will probably send all 3 into bankruptcy and void the contracts. But for now, enjoy the spoils of a Democratic pro-union administration ...]

Thank you. If I remember correctly, you are an accountant, so you know what you're talking about. Shocker: tax cheats annoyed that someone will actually check their returns.

Where? Full text: No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once. But this Article shall not apply to any person holding the office of President when this Article was proposed by the Congress, and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the office of President, or acting as President, during the term within which this Article becomes operative from holding the office of President or acting as President during the remainder of such term. Why not? No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once. But this Article shall not apply to any person holding the office of President when this Article was proposed by the Congress, and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the office of President, or acting as President, during the term within which this Article becomes operative from holding the office of President or acting as President during the remainder of such term.

They really should just give away their country to Putin, shouldn't they. I always thought being President was an open book exam.