The Frankish Reich

Let the courts finally stick a fork in this never-ending unconstitutional tariff game.

Trump is to blame here. Prime example: WSJ story on Trump's contribution to the "birthday book." Trump says it's a lie, made up, no such thing, I never drew a picture for any reason ever. That's all easily refutable stuff. We've seen the scribbles of buildings and cityscapes. WSJ reports today that Trump is in that birthday book's table of contents; so is Bill Clinton. So is Alan Dershowitz. Trump gave the story legs. Don't blame the Dems. They didn't even know they had an issue until Bondi and Patel gift wrapped it for them. Coming soon: Trump says maybe "his people" fielded Maxwell's request and submitted something for him; he's a busy man.

Wow. Big national newspapers ignoring Trump's attempt to shift attention from HIS PERVY BESTIE.

https://www.wsj.com/politics/elections/democratic-party-poll-voter-confidence-july-2025-9db38021?mod=hp_lead_pos1 Unreliable.

The Boomer finally makes it to the Hall. @JDHillFan celebrates!

I see. MSNBC - a low-rated basic cable network - is now the "Mainstream Media." So I guess Fox News is also the mainstream media? MAGA says no. They're good! Translation: the "mainstream media" is whatever media is not in the bag for Trumpism; it is therefore unreliable.

Hey, how about I link to an entirely unrelated article from an entirely unrelated news organization! That'll work, right?

That's the weirdest thing about this. Of course Trump is in "the files." The files likely include all kinds of public information like the photos we've already seen (Epstein with Trump and the Clintons) and the flight logs (same). So there's really not much new here, except for the Streisand Effect amplified by Trump's ham-handed attempts to say "nothing to see here." The Epstein Birthday book submission is creepy of course, but again, it's not like we don't know that Trump proudly associated himself with the Epstein lifestyle of hitting on young women; I guess the dividing line is "yeah, but they were all of the legal age of consent." So it's the "I may be a creep, but I'm not a criminal" public defense. In other words, he's a Republican Bill Clinton. The Democrats were just too slow to make the pivot from downplaying Epstein to playing him up. That's because the Clintons wouldn't go away. Although Hillary lurks and acts like she'd be ready to run again if drafted, that ship has sailed. The Clintons are now peripheral to the Democratic mainstream, which has shifted farther left. Meanwhile, Trump is the Republican Party, nothing more or less. So the Dems have a lot less to lose by more reporting like "Clinton/Trump Both Loved Epstein and His Girls." They didn't seem to realize this until about six weeks ago. Turnabout is fair play in politics. I saw an interview with an attorney for some Epstein victims where he said that the executors of Epstein's estate (pretty much independent lawyers) likely have the Birthday Book and that Congress (or, for that matter, the WSJ now that it's been stupidly sued by Trump) can simply subpoena it. Prediction: it will emerge, and it will be a kind of National Directory of Scumbags. By the way, anything the Trump Administration comes out with about "interviewing" Ghislaine Maxwell is only going to make this worse. Trump can pardon her or commute her sentence (I can't imagine him doing that before January 2029, when I can really really imagine it) so we can only assume that anything she comes out with would exonerate Trump and perhaps throw the Clintons under the bus. The incentive structure is all in one direction. People may be fools, but not so much that they'd buy that.

Profiles in Political Courage. Nice work draining the swamp, if by draining we mean sending the swamp creatures back to their districts.

Because he was citing a Fact. Two facts. A much higher tariff on imported Japanese steel than on imported Japanese automobiles. These facts are objective. The conclusion is textbook economics.

Exactly. The Advantage Plans are an example of how private health insurers used political power to screw a lot of old folks.

So maybe it would just be easier to pass a Washing Machine Excise Tax. Every washer has a $100 tax; we send all the proceeds to the residents of some random economically depressed area. It is the exact same thing. Would you care to address the clear point here? Krugman's been wrong for sure (our "Enron Advisor"), but the facts are the facts. This is incoherent Trump policy.

I've been helping my elderly parents deal with Medicare, and all I can say is it's a helluva a lot easier than dealing with my immediate family's private insurance.

Good on you, Rupert, for letting the WSJ reporters go where the leads take them. Now tell Fox News to actually report, you know, the news.

I told you the WSJ has a source/sources. The WSJ should have the guts to not move to dismiss Trump's lawsuit on 1st Amendment grounds but instead to immediately put in discovery requests. Then watch Trump's lawyers raise every possible ground against release. We previously had the story (from a different outlet) that FBI agents were instructed to go through the files to flag every time "Trump" is mentioned. And yeah, it's a lot.

And meanwhile, on the objective/non-ideological front: Krugman points out a particularly incoherent feature of the new Japan default tariff rate. Update: Friends have been pointing out that this deal means that Japanese cars will pay 15 percent tariffs, while US car producers will still be paying 50 percent on imported steel. Not exactly a strategy to boost manufacturing. What were they thinking? They probably weren’t thinking.

Meanwhile, on the Self-Dealing Trump Administration Front: Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick's kids now run (ostensibly) his former firm, Cantor Fitzgerald. They are openly betting on the proposition that collected tariffs will be refunded by the Treasury if/when the courts strike down Trump's (his) tariffs. Can't make this sh!t up. https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/economy/cantor-fitzgerald-offers-to-buy-the-rights-in-potential-refunds-from-companies-that-have-paid-trump-s-tariffs/ar-AA1J1A4I

So what did I say that's wrong? "ideologically crippled" = analytically solid?

https://www.usnews.com/education/k12/arizona/districts/american-virtual-academy-79461-104962 If your local school sucks, why not move your kid to an online school that sucks? I get it if there's safety issues at physical school, etc., but this is not a ringing endorsement of American Virtual Academy: 31% of students test proficient in math, 38% in reading. This is my problem with school choice. In general, I support it. I think parents need options, particularly in a lot of school districts that simply aren't getting the job done. But how do we ensure we're not just sending taxpayer money to a private option that is just as bad - or worse - than the public option? If we require the private schools to show adequate performance, what is the performance standard? At least 31% graduate "proficient" in math? That's just setting in stone the miserable "success" rate of the public option, and just transferring money from a bloated public school bureaucracy to a profit-seeking private option. (Note: even if ostensibly a non-profit, a lot of these private administrators pay themselves quite handsomely.) So a serious question to you @Orlando Buffalo, since you know and care about these things: how do we do it? What's a good starting point?

Tariffs as economic rent-seeking activity: https://www.wsj.com/opinion/cleveland-cliffs-lourenco-goncalves-tariffs-steel-nippon-76bfc939?mod=hp_opin_pos_6 - smaller steel producer Cleveland Cliffs opposed the Nippon Steel acquisition of U.S. Steel on the theory that foreign ownership of steel producers is a national security risk - Trump's big steel tariffs then made Cleveland Cliffs more valuable - So Cleveland Cliffs has hired JP Morgan/Chase to explore selling the company, INCLUDING TO FOREIGN PURCHASERS Tariffs distort the market. Tariffs are bad.

Yeah, wasn't it fun when all the crazy ass pedophile sedacious (sic) conspiracy theories were aimed at Hillary and Obama. I know, let's play the Greatest Hits of 2019 again! (Are they looking away yet? Please tell me that they are)

Hey, I thought online schooling was the ruination of a generation of COVID kids? Throw in a little MAGA and I guess it's ok. Whatever. No intelligent parent would ever sign a kid up for this.

You are proving my point. "tyrannical matriarchy"

Thank you for sharing that little Incel Manifesto. Boys: put down the video games, turn off the free pr0n, get out there and get a life and stop whining.

Because anything that brings Hunter Biden back into the news is a good thing for Trump.