The Frankish Reich

It really isn't too hard to recognize when one party or the other makes a move that is just far beyond what was previously considered acceptable. Here's a few from recent memory: - Obama's DACA program. He had said he lacked authority under the constitution to create it. Then he created it. - Trump's "Muslim Ban." - Biden's student loan forgiveness program - Trump's wholesale firing - without cause - of a large number of members of federal boards and commissions - Texas' unprecedented mid-decade expressly political redistricting, not done in response to anything like new census numbers This is what I mean. Don't conflate incremental opportunistic policies with wholesale changes that go beyond what we have all believed to be acceptable uses of raw political power. There really is a difference in kind, not of just degree here.

Yep, that's what needs to happen. Mutually assured destruction.

It's not so much the gerrymandered districts; it's the attempt to force through a quick/unprecedented redistricting in response to Trump's call to do so for purely partisan reasons. There is nothing to stop this from happening all around the country, including attempts to draw districts that result in two incumbents in one district. That happens sometimes, but due to population declines, etc., and not in response to a brazen/calculated attempt to rig the entire process. Sure, you can say this has always happened to a lesser degree and with lip service paid to things like shared community ties or Supreme Court-mandated racial concerns, but this is a step beyond. And as we've seen many times already, once one side gets away with it the floodgates are opened. Whatever one thinks of the Texas Dems, no one on either side should applaud this attempt to even further politicize redistricting. It is the ultimate "the congressman chooses his voters instead of the voters choosing their congressman." It's shameful and it ought to be called out as such.

Is the Reagan position the "Democrat position" here? I don't think so.

Please read the below in about 26 minutes: HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Even better for Boeing! They get to rest on their laurels since outsourcing non-goods things like airplane design won't be subject to the tariffs. Proudly designed in India, proudly manufactured in Seattle, proudly crashing somewhere near you.

Oh, you're right. Why do you always assume that when someone points out something is warped in modern Republican thinking that they believe modern Democratic thinking is just fine? I really do hope Elon Musk forms his 3rd party and that it gets a little traction just like Ross Perot did in the 1990s. That helped push Bill Clinton's Democrats to the middle.

Here's Trump's leading "tariff theorist" in January 2024: Just wondering how a tariff on Airbus will incentive Boeing to become more "competent."

What "Republican" used to mean:

I cannot understand how any rational person would think that raising the average weighted tariff on imported goods by approximately 10x would not have an impact on prices and growth. But that's the power of the cult. I knew Trumpism had largely extinguished Reaganism in the newer and dumber Republican Party. But I guess I hadn't realized that it completely extinguished any logical economic thinking.

In other news, our Ministry of Truth (Social) reports Another Record Grain Crop!

I am at the point where discussing whether something is or is not technically "genocide" is part of the problem, not part of the solution. It is a humanitarian tragedy.

What a life! A fine coach and a kind and decent man. And many more ...

At least you finally understand that the new tariff regime is essentially a VAT on American consumers. Baby steps.

This is the guy who supposedly went to the Bills game in London and still managed to sh!t post here approximately 40 times a day. In London. Hence the get a life comment.

So let's say I want the Fed to lower interest rates. It is well understood that the Fed will be hesitant to do so if the economy is running close to full capacity because that would be inflationary. So I get a report that says "number of newly created jobs last month fell below expectations" and that "prior monthly jobs created were actually lower than initially reported." I am a Very Stable Genius President. I respond by: A. Saying, "See, economic growth is slowing under these high interest rates after all. Now is the time for the Fed to act to ensure continued growth." B. Saying, "These numbers are politicized lies; we are growing at a faster clip than ever before. Everything is wonderful. I am firing the person who cooked up these fake numbers." [Therefore, interest rates should remain high, or perhaps go a tick higher before the Trump 2.0 economy overheats?] Sometimes you just gotta conclude that he is that stupid.

Now look me in the eye and say that.

So I took some time to read that Annex stuff. I think Ross Douthat just about sums up where I'm at on all of this: Then consider Russiagate, where we have cycled from one conspiratorial reading of the 2016 election to another: The resistance theory about malign Russian influence over Trump’s campaign or Trump himself, which birthed the Robert Mueller investigation and a climate of hysteria, has given way to the Trumpist theory that the Obama administration conspired to promote a false narrative about collusion in order to cripple the Trump presidency from the start. In each case, the theories have been interpreting the same underlying conspiracy, largely hidden in 2016 but more visible since — a Russian information operation to undermine American democracy. But both theories, at least as I read the evidence, have ended up assigning too much conspiratorial agency to their domestic enemies, and too little to the Russians themselves. The anti-Trump side looked at how eagerly the Trump campaign responded to the 2016 email hacks and WikiLeaks dumps and assumed, they must be in cahoots with Putin. And now the pro-Trump side looks at the misinformation and motivated reasoning involved in the inception of the Russia investigation and assumes, they must have known that this was a fake story from the start. But in both cases, it’s quite possible that the only self-conscious Machiavellians were the Russians; it was their conspiracy, in which both Republicans and Democrats collaborated as marks. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/02/opinion/conspiracy-theories-epstein-russia.html Bottom line: - Russia did try to "influence" the election by making Hillary look bad (and in a 2-person race, by definition make Trump look good) - Trump's people eagerly played cheerleader - When it became clear that Trump's people (Manafort, Don Jr.) got a little too cozy with Russian assets, the Democrats eagerly played cheerleader - Politics is a dirty game Remember, Trump wasn't impeached over "Russia, Russia, Russia." It turns out that Russia did try to influence the election, and Trump's campaign was involved in a couple of ham-handed efforts at lending support ("collusion"), but, as the Mueller Report concluded years ago, that never amounted to much. Democrats had more than enough to genuinely believe that there was more there, but they also understood that simply the implication that there was more there was helpful to their cause. No one is pure as the driven lake-effect snow here, and that includes Trump.

And guess what Nixon 2.0 just did! President Trump said he directed his team to fire the top Bureau of Labor Statistics official after the bureau issued a weak jobs report on Friday. Trump in a social media post said Erika McEntarfer, the BLS commissioner, would be “replaced with someone much more competent and qualified,” asserting without evidence that the government’s jobs numbers have been manipulated for political purposes. So predictable. https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/jobs-report-today-stock-market-08-01-2025?mod=hp_lead_pos1

And how has your alt media done on that Minnesota shooter story? Has your Catturd issued a formal retraction of the “contract killer for Tim Walz” angle? How about your frenetic friends here?

Well, now we know what the initial quid pro quo was. One of the better moments of Succession was watching Tom (the guy they were throwing under the bus when the Feds came looking) leafing through a binder of federal prisons put together by his “prison consultant.” Yes, that is a real thing.

What? You mean the Trump job numbers were also revised sharply downward? Conspiracy! When this happened to a previous Republican president, he demanded that his minions count all the Jews working at the Bureau of Labor Statistics. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/08/01/jobs-report-july-2025.html

Sounding vaguely like, umm, what do you call them, incels?

Another fine addition to the crowd-sourced Incel Manifesto we're developing here.

Not since the 1980s. Kind of a long time ago, right?