The Frankish Reich

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.

Well, they did start the Blame Canada movement after all. I think you're right. Which is why it was curious to make the announcement that the show isn't being renewed now - some 10 months before cancellation. In other words, the announcement was made to suck up to Trump's FCC, which he is using to attack political enemies.

You have a fine ear for satire, newcomer ...

As I've explained before, there is substantial overlap in the Venn diagram showing "Mennonites" and "immigrants." Or "Mennonites" and "foreign travelers." Just for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mennonites_in_Mexico Not all "foreigners" or "immigrants" are dark people.

And nothing said about the tweet that started all this? The one that sought to blame strange dark people for a measles outbreak more directly attributable to strange white people?

Take a moment away from cheerleading for right wing populism and actually read AFD's manifesto. https://www.afd.de/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/2017-04-12_afd-grundsatzprogramm-englisch_web.pdf Lots of fun stuff there like a Universal Basic Income. It's a weird mix of Donald Trump and AOC.

And still ... no substantive response about how all those Indians are bringing measles from halfway around the globe and the homegrown Mennonites are pure as their white skin.

Team names are stupid. There is none stupider than Buffalo Bills, but we're used to it so it sound o.k. to us. I'd rather have a world in which it was like the English Premier League, but even that has some with nicknames and some without, which may be the weirdest thing of all.

Hah! Beat you to it. Maybe you will come to understand that Mennonites are rural folk. You don't find them in NYC except in that Harrison Ford movie.

I stand corrected. Manitoba appears to have the highest percentage of Mennonites. You be you, our dear schoolmarm.

A little project for a bored elder statesman like you: Do an overlay map. Mennonites per capita on one, then measles rates on the other. Report back. thank you. [Mennonites is weird]

I say we bring back the New York Black Yankees name. (Yes, that was a ***** League team) EDIT: the auto censor is weird. N[e]gro League is not ok?

Going to school is dangerous because: you must get to school. Buses crash. Kids get hit by passing cars. They pick up measles from the Mennonite at the next desk (joke!!). They fall off monkey bars. Staying home all the time is no doubt safer. No denying that. That's what I mean. We must always accept some risk if we are not going to be Howard Hughes. Everyone on the anti-Covid vaxx requirement side focuses on the risks associated with getting it, and not on the risks associated with no one getting it.