The Frankish Reich

Good question, since he promises a pretty Bernie-ish agenda, including "aggressive action on climate change."

So let's say we have a purely technocratic military leadership. The question is this: "Is it more cost effective to grant 3 weeks leave to a pregnant soldier to travel to get an abortion, or to have that soldier unable to perform her duties for an extended period of time during late term pregnancy, childbirth, and post-childbirth?" To ask the question is to answer it. In one case your employee is out of commission for 3 weeks and you're out of pocket a bit of travel money; in the other case your employee is sidelined for months.

I have an in-law from deep red America who switched from Bud Light to Coors Light as his daily drinker. He had recently finally started to branch out, drinking a "local" microbrew. But then he found out that Anheuser Busch had bought out that microbrewery so that's out too. The amount of time people spend overthinking these things just boggles my mind.

A very quick statistical example of the type that Cowherd doesn't bother to do: - 49ers, last full year with Montana starting at QB: 3.8 yards per carry - 49ers, first full year with Young starting at QB: 4.8 yards per carry OK, so Steve Young himself averaged 7 yards per carry (500+ yards) in that season. So let's take his numbers out of the mix. - 49ers, first fill year with Young starting at QB, eliminating Young's stats: 4.4 yards per carry. Quick back-of-the-envelope guess: a running QB improves your RB production by about half a yard per carry. (I chose the old Niners because there was a great deal of continuity on offense there, other than at QB. Choose your own example, Cowherd. Or maybe stop trying to get an audience by being "controversial," by which I mean "stupid.")

I haven't looked at the numbers, but this strikes me as the dumbest of dumb Cowherd takes. A running (not scrambling and buying time; I'm talking about actual designed run plays and QB options) QB changes the basic advantage of the defense where you have 11 defenders trying to stop 10 offensive players in the run game. Think about how well we ran the ball with Tyrod at QB. Guys like Karlos Williams and Mike Gillislie were suddenly unstoppable, both getting almost 6 yards per carry in 2015. The confusion might be that some running QBs are exactly that: runners who play QB, which results in a one-dimensional offense, which allows defenses to stack the box to stop the run. Think Tebow. But with any running QB who can also throw, the answer is obvious: a running QB makes the run game more effective. Why on earth would it make it less effective?

Probably true. We do have to recognize that societal and law enforcement treatment of illicit drugs has changed drastically over the last decade. It used to be that someone trying to get a baggie of marijuana thru security would be routinely referred to the cops for arrest. Now it seems to be treated the same as a guy trying to bring an unopened bottle of water through TSA.

I agree. As a federal employee at various times, I'll note (as I reminded younger workers of many times over the years) that the public sector loan forgiveness is not something that my generation had. Basically it's a ten-year commitment, and I've known a lot of government employees who get over $100,000 of student loan debt discharged. In other words, all the kids complaining about their high debt burden? Check out all those government jobs going unfilled. The downside: you actually have to work. Your career as a budding film maker or full-time influencer may have to wait.

Charlie: the "People's House" is generally used to mean the House of Representatives. Not the White House. Someone needs to retake middle school civics. And no, this wouldn't be a new thing: https://consequence.net/2020/09/jimmy-carter-willie-nelson-weed-white-house/

But who on earth "liked" Bud Light to begin with? Crap old pre-Good Beer in America pisswater. It was ok as an "I just mowed the lawn on a hot summer day and I want a really cold beer that tastes kind of like water" way. But "like?" Someone somewhere actually liked it? I guess it shows how good their pre-woke marketing was, convincing Americans to pay a slight premium for a terrible product. Look, I agree in principle. But why does it always have to take a racist turn? Snow White kind of needs to be ... white ... but she always had black hair and there's no reason to criticize the casting of a hispanic actress. Now as for the 7 Dwarves ... don't actors with dwarfism need jobs? EDIT: Just saying that back in the day when I had to take a young daughter to every princess movie, watching certain hispanic actresses for 2 hours would've made that task just a little more tolerable ...

Correct. There are lots of reports showing that the government made the promised student loan forgiveness ridiculously difficult to obtain. Whether that policy (income based/public service based) loan forgiveness is a good one is a different question. But I see no legal/constitutional objections to what they're doing now.

No. As I understand it, this is a loosening of the controls on who qualifies for income-based/public-service based loan forgiveness. In other words, something people were promised when they took out the loan. So not the same thing.

I think they're pretty similar actually. Both supremely confident but with a kind of cornball midwestern way of playing it down. If Mahomes we'd drafted Mahomes a year earlier and Allen had somehow wound up on the Chiefs, I suspect our opinions of them would be the opposite.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/checked-by-reality-some-qanon-supporters-seek-a-way-out We'll be there for all of you when you have your moment of clarity.

You don't remember what savings account/CD rates were after COVID? My bank account was paying a laughable 0.1 percent. I have a CD that is now (thankfully) maturing that I bought when I got all excited that rates were rising again. 18 months, 2.55%. There's nothing "normal" about that. "Normal" over the last 40 years or so was on the order of 4% for short-term savings.

The entire "travel, restaurant and hospitality" sector has seen some of the biggest price increases. It's labor intensive, and labor costs have gone through the roof. I'm not trying to be the Monopoly man here, but ... broadly speaking these are still discretionary spending categories. 1 year CDs? About 5.5 percent. So like I said: if you owe money, not good. If you have money to save and don't like risk, good.

One man's higher loan rates are another man's higher savings rates. We tilted the economy toward ultra low rates through Federal Reserve intervention ever since 2008. Things are finally getting back to normal rates.

tl;dr Journalist Chait says real wages are going up. Critic hits back: paper towels are getting really expensive. Chait mocks that. I don't know about you, but I buy the 12 roll Costco pack. Now $26. Basically 2 bucks a roll. Each roll lasts a week or more in my small household. I'm with Chait here.

Great news for all people who have a uterus. 😁

Thanks. I guess. I don't know what "one of those people" are. I am not a Biden apologist. We have some serious problems with the economy, but in general the job market is very strong, the economy is still growing, and that means there's no recession.

So you have adopted the more woke definition of a recession - "Damn your charts and graphs ... I just feel like I'm not doing as well as I have a right to be doing."

What is your definition of "recession?" Source?

Maybe Jack should stick to finding those kids in the Comet Pizza basement. Ukraine in NATO - is a key bargaining chip, and Biden is keeping it on the table. "The destablization is the goal" - what "destabilization?" Apparently Jack thinks an ongoing invasion and war is stable.

Same thing here. My college age daughter has basically zero memory of the sites we saw in Europe when she was 9. I have decided that all the photos/videos are for the purpose of creating false memories in our kids, which in many cases may be better than the real thing (since we tend to take pictures/videos of the peak moment and not of endless waiting in line, etc)

Different societies, different economies. But take a step back and we have similar things happening for similar reasons: both the US and China grossly inflated the money supply to keep things humming. And the spike in demand caused by that can't last forever. It was a bubble in both cases. The only thing we don't know yet is how big the bubble was in each case, and whether it can be slowly deflated or whether it will burst.

Setting spin aside: I am still betting on a recession starting later this year. The ripple effect of the Fed raising rates takes time to work its way through the economy. We may finally be seeing signs of a cooling job market. We are certainly seeing signs of cooling inflation. But ... that whole "soft landing" thing now looks like a real possibility. From a political standpoint: a recession is the Republicans' friend. An actual soft landing? The opposite. There's a lot of time between now and November 2024. It's a dangerous policy. They've created the brand now - "Bidenomics" - and that's great if they do get the "soft landing." Otherwise they've created a new one-word way to mock themselves.