"This apparent strong growth stands in odd contrast to other, murkier economic indicators we’ve gotten recently, most notably a rise in the unemployment rate."
Gentlemen, journalists and lawyers always should remember when getting information, "Consider the source". When the Dear Leader is known to fire people who give him "bad news", i.e, news he does not want to hear, that advice is even more relevant. Or was that what you were implying with the observation "stands in odd contrast"?
The top-level economic data is assembled by a small army of career employees from an enormous constellation of smaller data points and for that reason would be pretty difficult to just cook, even if Trump were to command top-level political appointees to do so. Jason Furman has a good breakdown of the possible reasons why these metrics might be pointing opposite directions in the NY Times today:
If no one can see the smaller data points used for this top-level economic data, how hard is it to “cook the books?” I remember a comic in a newspaper. Two scientists were looking at a blackboard covered in numbers and formulas. One scientist says to the other that the work looks good except for the middle part where “expect a miracle” was written.
So the article basically said what we're being shown today may or may not be true, and that this snapshot may not accurately show what's actually happening.
thanks for the brief summary, since it's behind a paywall, I couldn't look at it myself, and I cannot afford to subscribe to absolutely everything every year!
Me too, but there is a ton of money being dumped in AI centers so maybe we see growth until the AI bubble bursts. I can't see where anything else would be driving GDP numbers.
Yes, the entire point of AI is (to look at it from the good side) to make us all more productive. From the bad side: to replace workers. In either case, the idea is to need less human workers.
Whether that's what really happens who knows. But that is the goal. We've endured numerous rounds of layoffs this year already where I work.
As someone in software engineering I can tell you AI hasn't impacted employment to any big degree. I suspect there is something else driving the unemployment. Back of my mind thinks tariff impact and related trade issues.
Yes Bill, it appears the goal of the new billionaire oligarchy is to replace unreliable, illness-prone, aging workers with semi-sentient machines to increase profits and eliminate human induced liability.
Yes. Everyone would do well to read the sections of 1984 wherein it was announced how many shoes and other goods were produced. That's what this new GDP report reminds me of.
600% agree! I thought I would add some Trump hyperbole for effect! He fired the head of BLS for delivering bad news. Then we get unbelievable second and third quarter performance numbers, while Trump’s tariffs are decimating our economy.
I could understand the second quarter numbers since the first quarter GDP numbers were negative; however, GDP at 4.3% after the second quarter performance of 3.8%, I don’t think so.
This would be the best two consecutive quarters of GDP we’ve ever had while not experiencing the best economic expansion this country has ever experienced! Sorry, I’m not buying it!
Bill: "But Trump expressed not a word of sympathy for Epstein’s victims. Not a word. In fact, through this whole process, has Trump ever shown any concern or empathy for Epstein’s victims, for what they endured and how they have subsequently been treated by the government? Trump can’t bring himself to pretend, even for a minute, to empathize with those who were victimized by this monster, who was his good friend."
Well, that's because in Trump's view women exist only to satisfy the sexual desires of men. The base of the GOP sincerely believe this, too. This is why they vote for men like Matt Gaetz and support people like RFK Jr. and Pete Hegseth.
These men that do these things, they do not look at women as fellow human beings. We're like a dirty secret they can discard and forget about. I remember the 90's very well and those men were gross back then, always leering at and hanging around teenage girls. Trump probably doesn't remember half of the terrible things he did. That's probably what scares him the most.
I am enjoying the right tear each other apart. I hope there's nothing left but blood when they finish.
Lol I know!!! Women need to be woo’d a little bit. Even unattractive guys can easily get laid if they are funny or interesting. Women aren’t nearly as picky as men are about looks, we can’t afford to be. But yes, misogyny is a big problem on the right, and they are not raising their boys to compete with women, they are raising them to try and dominate women. A huge mistake as young women are going to college at nearly twice the rate as young men these days.
This last blast for the “conservative” side of the coin needs to end soon, before young women really start to hate men, and misandry takes over.
The more I thought about that focus group the more ambivalent I became - not because I agreed with any of their opinions - but because I remember being 20 and being this feckless and frankly, stupid, from lack of real life hitting me over the head. These are upper-middle class kids who've done nothing but float downstream their entire lives and take their cues from their equally feckless and spoiled parents.
Andrew - I appreciate your generous spirit🩵 in giving some benefit of the doubt. When I said "widespread" in my Comment, that was despair talking. On reflecting, I should have said "too common" cuz I don't know how widespread, but feel sure it's too many for comfort.
I apply the expression "young & stupid" to some of my own choices & beliefs (applicable to age 20 me, as well as last week me 😉 ...OK, scratch "young").
I am SO grateful my grandchildren are all more morally aware than this focus group, even the elementary schoolers!
I think these YAs just want something to rebel against. I just wish they'd form a metal band or smoke weed; something other than associate with these goons and their fecking red hats.
I agree in the wishing they would apply that rebellion towards something else.
When I was 20 my rebellion was getting into punk rock and dating a true Valley Girl (not as bad as the Frank Zappa song, but talked a lot like the girl, more like the movie) - while at BYU.. Mormon rebellion at it's finest.
My point being with that example is at that age my friends and I didn't care enough about politics to go out of our way to do a focus group.
I'd like to think that only the hardcore nimrods attended that focus group and are not representative of the broader population of young men.
Dave, they were screened as Trump supporters, and they were all from Tennessee. By those facts alone, you cannot extrapolate to the broader population of young men in America. Apparently the Manhattan Institute only wanted to know about Gen Z Trump supporters in the South.
I couldn’t help but think of yesterdays Triad and the increasingly prevalent view on the right that woman want to be raped. How can they be victims if they want it? Trump himself has expressed those sentiments before (though not quite so abrasively).
It seems to be a typical male complaint. I heard it during Me Too discussions. Oh the poor man, an accusation of misconduct will call his life into question all because he paid the woman a compliment like "your posterior (insert a different word) looks awesome today. My hand accidentally slipped off her shoulder and lightly brushed her posterior.."
It’s insane that Vance says he welcomes everyone and attacks anyone who attacks his wife as if he and the Trump Administration do not routinely exercise grotesque bigotry every day. I agree that we shouldn’t attack people for their ethnicity but let’s not forget that he repeatedly defended Trump’s claims that immigrants in Springfield OH “are eating cats & dogs!” And yes, people should not attack Usha Vance for being of Indian heritage or having slightly darker skin but then the Administration targets everyone with nonWhite skin. The hypocrisy is mind blowing but not surprising.
Despite his protestations otherwise, JD has made his demonstrated where his sympathies lie. But can JD secure the nomination and presidency while still having a non-white wife? Will he need to throw her overboard to really prove himself? Erika Kirk might be only too pleased to provide the answer to that question.
Accepted by the elite, perhaps, but not by the racists among the MAGA voters. They'll see her for a n****r. The thing that matters most to them is white skin, and no amount of money or education can buy that!
I happened into a Vivek Ramaswamy thread (he's running for gov of Ohio, of all things), and the racism in the replies was horrible. I reported like 15 posts, for all the good that did.
I can't believe he thinks he has a chance of holding elected any office in the GOP. They hate him more than we do.
Does he loose because it is a horrible year for Republicans or because of the racism the original poster mentioned. Given the recent trends in Ohio, the Republican candidate should be pretty much guaranteed the win. This is one of those comments worth book marking to see how well it ages.
It doesn’t look like he is the only one and the primary is not until May of next year, but he seems to be the only one getting traction and there is polling showing him in what would be a close race with the Democratic candidate.
They are such morons. Just the basic use of the words "RINO" and "Uniparty" says there is a purity test not to mention previous uses of "Mega-MAGA"....
When your best election results are sub 50% with a margin under 2%, you need every (crazy) vote you can get. Add to that Elon’s absolute free speech requirement and you’ve backed yourself into a corner. Trump has been able to hold the crazies and Ben Shapiro wings together. But can JD or alternatives do that? Does Mike Pence think he can maneuver back into a leadership role, it appears he is trying. If JD can not keep both camps under the tent, he’ll have to figure out whether he can mine more votes from the Shapiro/Pence wing if he throws out the crazies. Or maybe it’s the reverse.
They are competitors. But if Pence “wins”, that probably means a bunch of MAGA folks won’t support him in a general election. Vance has to figure out, if he wins, can he get enough of the Pence and Fuentes bros to win a general election.
I think Pence has a basic assumption that MAGA will decline and people will trend towards a better balance of a political leader. I actually thought he burned his political capital with J6 however people jumping from Heritage to his format is surprising to me
How many think tanks are there since MAGA took over? Once Heritage made clear it's NeoNazi views, people who are not that will jump ship as quickly as possible and Pence pounced.
JD will always agree with whomever he believes will support him at any given moment. I frequently wonder if he can hear the crazy crap that he spews from his mouth.
"But Donald Trump has shown himself completely incurious about the fight for the soul of the movement he built."
That could well be a result of his conviction that HE is the movement, and that without him, there is no MAGA Trumpism. That has been told him over and over, not only by his fawning sycophants, but by "opponents" who observe, correctly, that without his name on the ticket, there is no Red Wave, not even a ripple. How do you say "après moi le dèluge" in MAGAese? No Trump, only rump.
He would openly root for the R candidate to lose, it wouldn't even be a secret! However, now he has to be at least a little worried about getting prosecuted for some of his new crimes during Trump 2.0, so he might prefer a president JD Vance and a sycophantic DOJ to cover for him if he's still alive after 2028.
Re: "It doesn’t matter how many times Vance and Co. issue mealy-mouthed calls for “unity” against the left."
Is it just me or is the 'tainment part of info- and anger-tainment starting to wane?
I mean, I heard a lot of honest reporting from Trump Rallies back in 2015: they were fun. Seriously, everyone was having a good time. Trump was putting on a show. Lock Her Up. Build The Wall. USA! USA! Lots of flags and like-minded people, all there for the show. Looking back, it didn't look like fascism or totalitarianism. It looked like, "Ugh! More Clintons in the White House? Let's give this guy a try. He's not one of them and he's making some sense."
Hillary Clinton events might have been a lot of things, but fun wasn't one of them.
But now...
Watch these guys, particularly Vance. He's the unpopular kid in high school who's finally getting to stand up on stage at the assembly and tell a joke. The joke's not funny. He's a dork. And then there are all the strap-hangers: Candace, Bannon, Fuentes, Shapiro, et. al. All humorless self-promoters. Those people in the audience paid good money to see ... that.
And it's not like the old conferences back in the '90's when you'd get actually thoughtful, accomplished people who knew things talking about interesting and important subjects. No. These guys are a bunch of cranks.
Is the market for this stuff as big these people seem to think it is? Or are there a lot of people out there in Red States thinking, "Um, they just closed down the Jim Beam distillery because Canada hates us. We can't sell our soybeans because China hates us. We can't sell our corn because USAID is gone. My health insurance premium is four times what it was. The roads are still full of potholes and these guys are talking about litter boxes and trans swimmers in Connecticut. I'm not feeling like America's that great..."
Wait. The fun included "I alone can fix it." One of the chillingest, creepiest things I've ever heard. And the 'hilarious' mocking of a disabled journalist. I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed, especially politically, but my hair practically stood straight up at these two things. I get your point, he wasn't boring as most pols are. But the malice was apparent always, and they liked it that way. Now they're directing the malice towards one another, and I like it that way.
I'm not trying to normalize Donald Trump, but he is a showman. And Hillary Clinton was an awful candidate. And Joe Biden was awful too, in his ancient way. After that debate, oh no. He was never going to win.
Kamala was a thousand times better, but just not enough. Some of it was time. (She didn't have enough of it.) But also, listening to her today, on her book tour, she also wasn't great and I think that combination -- unknown, short campaign and not a great campaigner -- was enough for Trump to squeak out a win.
Might one presume that people you describe were those who voted for Trump, but do not love him, whereas Alondra describes that segment of the voters who derive some pleasure from contempt and derision. They are the ones who proudly state "This is exactly what I voted for", and would have loved the 60 Minutes CECOT Special spectacle.
There are a lot of different kinds of Trump voter out there, which is why he won. I always think of the older couple that heard that Our President was going to have a rally at the fairgrounds on Saturday, so they gassed up the Buick and drove over there, all happy that they got to wear their red hats with a bunch of like-minded people. Tote bag. Sunscreen. Lawn chairs. Making a day of it. They watch Fox News because they've always watched Fox News. They think the country's going to hell. They watched -- and liked -- Trump on The Apprentice and thought, because he was a successful businessman, he would bring that sensibility to The White House.
They're not bad people. They're not racists. They had long, successful, middle-class careers. Their kids and grandkids are doing alright, but they didn't want another four years of Clinton in The White House. They didn't like the mean tweets, but prefer that to Monica Lewinsky and all that.
They voted for him, but they (no longer) love him.
And then there are the online haters and racists and White Supremacists and all of those people, the ones standing back and standing by. They want CECOT here. They want the cruelty. They like the pain and suffering. Ride or Die.
If all Trump had was the second group, he wouldn't have won in 2016. He lost in 2020. And he squeaked it out in 2024, mostly because Biden was too damned old, they hated the inflation and they didn't know what Kamala was for. Even then, if just a few people had gone the other way, he would have lost in 2024.
Yes, the margin of difference was about 1.5% and yet, the political extreme on the right claims a landslide and mandate. But here we are and it will be difficult to roll back the extreme changes wrought by the current administration. Perhaps there will be an election in 2026. Perhaps not.
Wind farms do cause radar clutter. This generally takes the form of a few pixels that are nearly stationary over the location of the wind farm. Other things that cause radar clutter: the sun, planes, birds, bats, insects, dust, and even sometimes cars.
The Chinese have a stealth cruise missile that can evade radar by weaving its way between offshore windmill farms. They call it Long March Epstein Boom.
Movements like this don’t die when they lose coherence. They don’t vanish. They leak. Rot doesn’t politely stop at collapse. It spreads. Even if you believe the Red Hat project is failing, what’s failing is the branding, not the impulse. The slogan decays. The appetite does not.
This is where liberal optimism keeps misfiring. Decline is not defanging. Failure does not civilize people whose politics were never about policy to begin with. It hardens them. When victory doesn’t arrive, there is no self-examination, only a hunt for traitors. January 6 didn’t evaporate because we’re tired of remembering it. Rage detaches from outcomes and becomes identity. Cruelty stops being a tactic and turns reflexive, automatic, muscle memory.
People like JD Vance understand this at a visceral level. He isn’t positioning himself to lead a movement. He’s positioning himself to endure a population that no longer requires leadership at all. A base that doesn’t ask what should be done, only who should be made to hurt. A culture marinated so long in grievance it no longer needs coordination, only permission, and that permission has already been granted.
A collapsing cult can be more dangerous than a victorious one. When hierarchy fractures and the center dissolves, what remains is pure affect, resentment without discipline, identity without purpose, violence without strategy. History doesn’t stabilize at that point. It accelerates.
The Red Hat project doesn’t need to win to scar the country for generations. It already has. The real danger is believing unraveling is an ending, when it is usually the moment the restraints finally come off.
The base is about Trump. All of this infighting is because they are desperate to hold on to the base, but just as there are splits among the "leaders," (to think of any of these people as leaders is vile), there is a growing split among the base. They will continue to fracture. And Trump doesn't care about the future. The unraveling isn't an ending, but it means that the power they have right now will be diluted. Sure, lawmakers will still get death threats, but the volume will decrease, because none of the successors has the magnetism, so to speak, to mesmerize and direct acolytes like Trump. All of the people who want to succeed him know this, as does the GOP who fall in line right now with spineless deference. How "fashionable" will hate be among the young in five years? Ten?
Remember, the Germans of today are not the Germans of the Third Reich. Rwanda has survived beyond the genocide. The former Yugoslavia is gone, but the Baltics have found peace. Sadly, the problem with a post-Trump America is that as long as the First Amendment can be abused, as long as there are no guardrails on AI, social media, and the internet, the loony conspiracy theories, the hate, the bile, and the lies will continue to proliferate. And the right will continue to milk the hate and divisiveness that fuel the culture wars because it's all they have. So no, they all won't go away, or go back into their caves. And that is a problem for us all.
The base was All About Charile Kirk, until he was gone. Now it's all about Candice.
I love how every comment section eventually turns into someone pointing at Germany or the Soviet Union like they’re inspirational Pinterest quotes. See? They turned out fine. As if those transformations happened because everyone logged off, took a breath, and chose unity.
What keeps getting missed is the inconvenient middle chapter. Germany didn’t heal because the vibes improved. The USSR didn’t soften because the discourse matured. Those societies changed after collapse, not before it. After devastation. After shame. After systems imploded so completely that denial was no longer an option.
So yes, societies can emerge from horror. That’s true, but pointing to the endpoint while skipping the crater is like praising a healed bone while pretending the fracture never happened. It’s not optimism, it more like you've decided to have selective amnesia and taped a motivational poster over it.
If those examples are meant to reassure us, they should do the opposite. They’re reminders that change doesn’t arrive because people suddenly get nicer in the comments. It arrives when reality finally stops negotiating.
I am well aware of what happened in WWII and the aftermath as well as the USSR and don't have "selective amnesia." JFC. Condescension doesn't improve your argument.
And no, the base wasn't all about Charlie Kirk. MAGA is not a monolith; the factions are together only because of Trump.
I don’t doubt you’re aware of what happened in WWII or the Soviet collapse. That’s not the question. The question is why those are the examples people keep reaching for as hope?
When someone points to Germany or the Soviet Union and says, “See, societies recover,” what they’re really saying is, “I like the ending, so I’m skipping the middle.” Those aren’t stories of graceful correction. They’re stories of total systemic failure followed by reconstruction under conditions so severe denial was no longer possible.
Invoking those cases as comfort quietly concedes something uncomfortable. That meaningful change didn’t arrive because people became more reasonable, more informed, or more civil. It arrived after collapse forced reality to win.
If those are the examples being offered as hope, the subtext isn’t calming. It’s diagnostic. It suggests people intuitively understand that this doesn’t resolve through better arguments or nicer discourse. It resolves when the system finally stops absorbing abuse and starts breaking.
Which is fine, if that’s the claim. Just don’t pretend it’s good news.
No condescension required. Just basic logical hygiene.
My God, that ludicrous obsession with windmills! One of his clubs loses a law suit in Scotland, and therefore the U.S. a quarter century later has to withdraw from the battle to dominate renewable fuels for the rest of the century. It reminds me of a prescient column written by Catherine Rampell about a year ago, while she was still with the Post, entitled, something like: How to lose the 21st Century for the U.S. She noted that three of Trump's favorite themes would prove deadly to U.S. prominence in coming decades: He despises the rule of law (which attracts foreign business to the dollar and the guarantees of fair treatment in business); he dislikes science (which gave the U.S. its initial boost); he despises immigration (at a time when 40% of the Forbes 400 are led by immigrants.) I was hoping she was wrong, but so far that column has been depressively predictive.
Regarding the MAGA/TPUSA conflicts, how long will it be before the average Trump/MAGA voter fesses up to sympathy for racism and begins to follow the next-gen fascists, knowing that Trump is not forever (due to his age)?
It's bad enough that our Navy continues to build sitting-duck aircraft carriers, but now it's proposing to build sitting-duck "battleships" and soothe Trump's ego. This is not the future of warfare, but the Congress and defense industries just don't care. There's no way to hide these vessels on the high seas, given contemporary sensor technology. And it has become far easier to strike them precisely with missiles than it is for them to defend themselves against same. Here, again, the admirals, pols, and industrial titans are fighting the last war, if not the one before it.
I don't think you understand naval combat. According to the President, our current warships are ugly. The Trump Class will look like cool battleships. See, his glorious leadership makes us great again!
National Security, woooooo!
[If the sarcasm wasn't obvious, I don't know what to say.]
It takes years to build any navy vessel. Felon Trump will be long gone if Father Time has any say, and those ships will be repurposed, maybe as garbage scows, a fitting name for DonOld.
Why on earth would a US Attorney have a "challenge coin"?! Does she think her fake job makes her part of the military too? I mean, I suppose if Hegseth can be in charge of the DoD, the only qualification after all is probably hairstyle and looking good on camera.
I have an inordinate foldness for our Corvid friends. Magpies often visit my roof garden. Although I am suspicious of their tolerance of RFK Jr. Seems like their famed intelligence does not stretch to being good judges of character.
Right? I know LE officers have them as well but ffs...these maga twits will appropriate anything that they think makes them look cool and part of the in club.
Honestly, I do not understand why military members vote overwhelmingly for these imposters. My husband was a Ranger and my X-roommater a Marine. It outrages them when someone steals valour. I don't know how a military person could vote for "Private Bonespurs" or tolerate his Cosplay Cabinet!
My Navy Vet cousin loves both Trump and Hegseth. The reason he told me was “they stick it to the Dems”. His mother, my aunt, told me “Mike is a Republican, so of course he voted for Trump”. She also voted for Trump “because I’m a Republican”. Well, I’m a Republican, but I voted for both Biden and Harris. For that matter, I voted for Hillary. All 3 because I hate Trump and see him as a clear and present danger to the United States, if not the world.
I’ve never understood “party loyalty”. Why should a Republican always vote for the Republican? Why should a Democrat always vote for the Democrat? I have been a Republican since 1977, but I’ve always voted the person not the party. Especially in local and state elections, but even in national elections as with the 3 mentioned. For people like my relatives I’ve decided it is a phenomenon called Negative Partisanship. When Negative Partisanship is at work, the voter’s hatred of one political party is so strong that they will vote for the other political party even if that candidate is odious and disgusting. Hence my cousin saying he likes them because “they stick it to the Dems”.
Yeah, I get you. My husband is of the opinion that "owning the Libs" is more important to Trump voters than their personal well-being, wealth, safety, everything. But I really didn't expect the military and their rabid fans to tolerate the shit he says about their "beloved corps".
My cousins are all Navy and Marine vets, and they are all foaming at the mouth MAGA Republicans. Their father was a hyper conservative navy vet, and he indoctrinated the entire family. I drank the Kool Aid too, until I went to law school and started working IRL. My views eventually grew away from theirs, and now I am center right and flexible. They remain rigid. Such is life.
“A challenge coin is a personalized medallion with an organization's emblem, symbolizing achievement, membership, and camaraderie, especially in the military, law enforcement, and corporations, where it's awarded for special recognition, commemorating events, or proving affiliation, often involving a tradition where members must produce their coin when "challenged" or face buying drinks. These coins foster group loyalty, celebrate milestones, and act as tangible reminders of shared experiences, with designs varying from standard unit coins to unique creations for specific missions or leaders.”
They continue the fundamental canard of "for thee, but not for me." They attack universities, institutions, immigrants, etc., for being anti-semetic. But they themselves embrace it.
They're completely morally indifferent to expressions of antisemitism, even the most violent and repulsive, depending on who's uttering them and in what context. Their attack on universities was never about protecting Jewish students and faculty: it was always about tightening the federal government's grip on those institutions as part of a broader attack on academic freedom and the free, fearless exchange of ideas. The Republican right has regarded higher education as a clear and present danger since the rise of the Birchers (seed bed for the Koch brothers) back in the 1950s.
You'll find that the Republican remedy for antisemitism in Academe is the silencing of moderate and liberal voices and even of critical conservative voices, and the imposition of state-approved curricula that glorify the right people (white people, billionaires, Christians) at the expense of the teeming billions who are the "wrong people," including actual Jews.
There is no way that GDP is at 4.7%. It has his fingerprints all over it. The only way that it would be more obvious is to have odd capital letters in the BLS announcement.
True. Voters really won’t care about good numbers - except maybe to a small extent their 401K’s. Voters care about “ affordability”. If that $30 bag of groceries continues to cost $100, THAT is what will matter. ( The only good - but painful thing, I only have to carry a single reusable bag with me when I shop)
CNN reports that most of that was driven by spending by rich people. If so, it emphasizes what I keep reading about our current K-shaped economy. The Trump economy is sure turning out to be "the rich get richer."
I hope a dedicated researcher will devote some time to determining how much money — taxpayer money — has been spent placating Trump’s desire to plaster his name all over everything. A billion here, a billion there — it’s disgusting.
If we get "battleships" with as much class as Trump, the Golden Fleet will turn out to be the Golden Fleece, though not of the Jason and the Argonauts variety...
"This apparent strong growth stands in odd contrast to other, murkier economic indicators we’ve gotten recently, most notably a rise in the unemployment rate."
Gentlemen, journalists and lawyers always should remember when getting information, "Consider the source". When the Dear Leader is known to fire people who give him "bad news", i.e, news he does not want to hear, that advice is even more relevant. Or was that what you were implying with the observation "stands in odd contrast"?
The top-level economic data is assembled by a small army of career employees from an enormous constellation of smaller data points and for that reason would be pretty difficult to just cook, even if Trump were to command top-level political appointees to do so. Jason Furman has a good breakdown of the possible reasons why these metrics might be pointing opposite directions in the NY Times today:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/23/opinion/gdp-numbers-economy-job-numbers.html
If no one can see the smaller data points used for this top-level economic data, how hard is it to “cook the books?” I remember a comic in a newspaper. Two scientists were looking at a blackboard covered in numbers and formulas. One scientist says to the other that the work looks good except for the middle part where “expect a miracle” was written.
So the article basically said what we're being shown today may or may not be true, and that this snapshot may not accurately show what's actually happening.
Basically, we don't know what we don't know.
thanks for the brief summary, since it's behind a paywall, I couldn't look at it myself, and I cannot afford to subscribe to absolutely everything every year!
I'm a subscriber. Here's a gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/23/opinion/gdp-numbers-economy-job-numbers.html?unlocked_article_code=1.-08.Orvz.9oPOpy7PbjoS&smid=url-share
Cristine- Bluesky has a gift links section that usually has high traffic stories that live behind paywalls. Thanks to Sandy for her gift link here!
If only the NYT had a reputation for not shading things in the direction of Trump’s benefit……
Let’s bet Grok can cook any book they want.
Yeah, that figure smells like bullshit to me. The truth will come out.
Me too, but there is a ton of money being dumped in AI centers so maybe we see growth until the AI bubble bursts. I can't see where anything else would be driving GDP numbers.
Well, of course MAGAts love AI. If it were not for AI, they would have no "I" at all.
But there is no "I" in MAGA.
Dave, what are you talking about? The Felon is the only "I" in MAGA that counts for a hill of beans.
Yes, AI is keeping the economy going now.
Amazing how the economy grows while unemployment is going up. :)
In the new, “AI” economy, people will be an extraneous data point.
Yes, the entire point of AI is (to look at it from the good side) to make us all more productive. From the bad side: to replace workers. In either case, the idea is to need less human workers.
Whether that's what really happens who knows. But that is the goal. We've endured numerous rounds of layoffs this year already where I work.
As someone in software engineering I can tell you AI hasn't impacted employment to any big degree. I suspect there is something else driving the unemployment. Back of my mind thinks tariff impact and related trade issues.
Yes Bill, it appears the goal of the new billionaire oligarchy is to replace unreliable, illness-prone, aging workers with semi-sentient machines to increase profits and eliminate human induced liability.
We really just can't know anymore, can we.
Yes. Everyone would do well to read the sections of 1984 wherein it was announced how many shoes and other goods were produced. That's what this new GDP report reminds me of.
600% agree! I thought I would add some Trump hyperbole for effect! He fired the head of BLS for delivering bad news. Then we get unbelievable second and third quarter performance numbers, while Trump’s tariffs are decimating our economy.
I could understand the second quarter numbers since the first quarter GDP numbers were negative; however, GDP at 4.3% after the second quarter performance of 3.8%, I don’t think so.
This would be the best two consecutive quarters of GDP we’ve ever had while not experiencing the best economic expansion this country has ever experienced! Sorry, I’m not buying it!
No one trusts the data anymore after that firing (except MAGA of course).
Your last sentence, uh huh.
Yep. Best to greet with skepticism any economic numbers coming out of the White House. The trump regime surely wouldn't cook the books, would they?
And if they did, would the result share the characteristics of Trump's well-known culinary preferences? Ultraprocessed and unhealthy?
Next up: Prices fall by 10%. Bigly.
Why 10%, Dave? Why not 400%?
or 600%!
Was wondering the same thing, if the number & data behind it was legit.
Bill: "But Trump expressed not a word of sympathy for Epstein’s victims. Not a word. In fact, through this whole process, has Trump ever shown any concern or empathy for Epstein’s victims, for what they endured and how they have subsequently been treated by the government? Trump can’t bring himself to pretend, even for a minute, to empathize with those who were victimized by this monster, who was his good friend."
Well, that's because in Trump's view women exist only to satisfy the sexual desires of men. The base of the GOP sincerely believe this, too. This is why they vote for men like Matt Gaetz and support people like RFK Jr. and Pete Hegseth.
These men that do these things, they do not look at women as fellow human beings. We're like a dirty secret they can discard and forget about. I remember the 90's very well and those men were gross back then, always leering at and hanging around teenage girls. Trump probably doesn't remember half of the terrible things he did. That's probably what scares him the most.
I am enjoying the right tear each other apart. I hope there's nothing left but blood when they finish.
Using Trumpian hyperbole you are 600% correct on Trump 's views on women.
JVL’s Triad yesterday covered how this view is quite widespread among younger Trump voters.
So disturbing
And then they wonder why they can’t get laid.
Lol I know!!! Women need to be woo’d a little bit. Even unattractive guys can easily get laid if they are funny or interesting. Women aren’t nearly as picky as men are about looks, we can’t afford to be. But yes, misogyny is a big problem on the right, and they are not raising their boys to compete with women, they are raising them to try and dominate women. A huge mistake as young women are going to college at nearly twice the rate as young men these days.
This last blast for the “conservative” side of the coin needs to end soon, before young women really start to hate men, and misandry takes over.
The more I thought about that focus group the more ambivalent I became - not because I agreed with any of their opinions - but because I remember being 20 and being this feckless and frankly, stupid, from lack of real life hitting me over the head. These are upper-middle class kids who've done nothing but float downstream their entire lives and take their cues from their equally feckless and spoiled parents.
Andrew - I appreciate your generous spirit🩵 in giving some benefit of the doubt. When I said "widespread" in my Comment, that was despair talking. On reflecting, I should have said "too common" cuz I don't know how widespread, but feel sure it's too many for comfort.
I apply the expression "young & stupid" to some of my own choices & beliefs (applicable to age 20 me, as well as last week me 😉 ...OK, scratch "young").
I am SO grateful my grandchildren are all more morally aware than this focus group, even the elementary schoolers!
I think these YAs just want something to rebel against. I just wish they'd form a metal band or smoke weed; something other than associate with these goons and their fecking red hats.
I agree in the wishing they would apply that rebellion towards something else.
When I was 20 my rebellion was getting into punk rock and dating a true Valley Girl (not as bad as the Frank Zappa song, but talked a lot like the girl, more like the movie) - while at BYU.. Mormon rebellion at it's finest.
My point being with that example is at that age my friends and I didn't care enough about politics to go out of our way to do a focus group.
I'd like to think that only the hardcore nimrods attended that focus group and are not representative of the broader population of young men.
Dave, they were screened as Trump supporters, and they were all from Tennessee. By those facts alone, you cannot extrapolate to the broader population of young men in America. Apparently the Manhattan Institute only wanted to know about Gen Z Trump supporters in the South.
Dave - was more engaged circa 20 due to watching draft lottery picks & Watergate hearings…. Maybe today the personal stakes seem smaller?
They could start The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton! 😉
Hail satan 🎼
I used to think the idea of Christian Rock was an oxymoron. Turns out I was wrong.
And he is a psychopath. He has no empathy at all.
I couldn’t help but think of yesterdays Triad and the increasingly prevalent view on the right that woman want to be raped. How can they be victims if they want it? Trump himself has expressed those sentiments before (though not quite so abrasively).
It seems to be a typical male complaint. I heard it during Me Too discussions. Oh the poor man, an accusation of misconduct will call his life into question all because he paid the woman a compliment like "your posterior (insert a different word) looks awesome today. My hand accidentally slipped off her shoulder and lightly brushed her posterior.."
It’s insane that Vance says he welcomes everyone and attacks anyone who attacks his wife as if he and the Trump Administration do not routinely exercise grotesque bigotry every day. I agree that we shouldn’t attack people for their ethnicity but let’s not forget that he repeatedly defended Trump’s claims that immigrants in Springfield OH “are eating cats & dogs!” And yes, people should not attack Usha Vance for being of Indian heritage or having slightly darker skin but then the Administration targets everyone with nonWhite skin. The hypocrisy is mind blowing but not surprising.
Despite his protestations otherwise, JD has made his demonstrated where his sympathies lie. But can JD secure the nomination and presidency while still having a non-white wife? Will he need to throw her overboard to really prove himself? Erika Kirk might be only too pleased to provide the answer to that question.
Let’s hope he doesn’t get the nomination.
Yesterday the WSJ had an article about the Heritage Foundation: the revolt against MAGA has begun.
A whole bunch of people quit and moved to a more old-style Republican outfit.
Mike Pence's of all people. Something delicious about this whole thing
Would he have to jettison his kids? I suspect he's capable of it.
He does seem capable of a lot of things. I guess it depends on how serious he is about them being buried in the family plot back in Kentucky.
Like all Black and brown conservatives, she'll speak the party line about how much she hates the Left, and she'll be accepted.
Accepted by the elite, perhaps, but not by the racists among the MAGA voters. They'll see her for a n****r. The thing that matters most to them is white skin, and no amount of money or education can buy that!
That's exactly what Vance is trying to figure out, as Tim and Bill discussed it yesterday. How does he keep the elite and the racists together.
🤣😂 Good luck JD!
He might have better luck trying to square a circle or building a perpetual motion machine.
I'd be fine with those two groups killing each other, if I wasn't afraid they'd kill the rest of us in the process!
Agree
I happened into a Vivek Ramaswamy thread (he's running for gov of Ohio, of all things), and the racism in the replies was horrible. I reported like 15 posts, for all the good that did.
I can't believe he thinks he has a chance of holding elected any office in the GOP. They hate him more than we do.
To be fairness, Vivek is a horrible person. But I don't think he wins that Governor's race in Ohio. Going to be a terrible year for the GOP.
Does he loose because it is a horrible year for Republicans or because of the racism the original poster mentioned. Given the recent trends in Ohio, the Republican candidate should be pretty much guaranteed the win. This is one of those comments worth book marking to see how well it ages.
Is he the only republican running?
It doesn’t look like he is the only one and the primary is not until May of next year, but he seems to be the only one getting traction and there is polling showing him in what would be a close race with the Democratic candidate.
Hope! Hope!
It is Ohio though.
And the unmitigated bullshit about no purity tests is beyond irony. Allegiance to trump is their purity test.
They are such morons. Just the basic use of the words "RINO" and "Uniparty" says there is a purity test not to mention previous uses of "Mega-MAGA"....
💯
Well put, Mr. Big.
When your best election results are sub 50% with a margin under 2%, you need every (crazy) vote you can get. Add to that Elon’s absolute free speech requirement and you’ve backed yourself into a corner. Trump has been able to hold the crazies and Ben Shapiro wings together. But can JD or alternatives do that? Does Mike Pence think he can maneuver back into a leadership role, it appears he is trying. If JD can not keep both camps under the tent, he’ll have to figure out whether he can mine more votes from the Shapiro/Pence wing if he throws out the crazies. Or maybe it’s the reverse.
Hmm, do you think Pence is trying to forge a relationship with Vance? I don’t think so. I think Pence is challenging MAGA outright.
They are competitors. But if Pence “wins”, that probably means a bunch of MAGA folks won’t support him in a general election. Vance has to figure out, if he wins, can he get enough of the Pence and Fuentes bros to win a general election.
I think Pence has a basic assumption that MAGA will decline and people will trend towards a better balance of a political leader. I actually thought he burned his political capital with J6 however people jumping from Heritage to his format is surprising to me
That universe I think is represented by Nikki Haley’s 20-25% max.
How many think tanks are there since MAGA took over? Once Heritage made clear it's NeoNazi views, people who are not that will jump ship as quickly as possible and Pence pounced.
I think JD was the one who made up the cats and dogs lie. At least that’s what he told a reporter later.
HA makes it even worse then.
JD will always agree with whomever he believes will support him at any given moment. I frequently wonder if he can hear the crazy crap that he spews from his mouth.
"But Donald Trump has shown himself completely incurious about the fight for the soul of the movement he built."
That could well be a result of his conviction that HE is the movement, and that without him, there is no MAGA Trumpism. That has been told him over and over, not only by his fawning sycophants, but by "opponents" who observe, correctly, that without his name on the ticket, there is no Red Wave, not even a ripple. How do you say "après moi le dèluge" in MAGAese? No Trump, only rump.
At the outset Trump told US he was the only one who could fix it.
Too bad he didn't.
In his mind he has.
This is consistent with the view that Trump will secretly root for the R candidate to lose as it will prove that they can't win without him.
He would openly root for the R candidate to lose, it wouldn't even be a secret! However, now he has to be at least a little worried about getting prosecuted for some of his new crimes during Trump 2.0, so he might prefer a president JD Vance and a sycophantic DOJ to cover for him if he's still alive after 2028.
Re: "It doesn’t matter how many times Vance and Co. issue mealy-mouthed calls for “unity” against the left."
Is it just me or is the 'tainment part of info- and anger-tainment starting to wane?
I mean, I heard a lot of honest reporting from Trump Rallies back in 2015: they were fun. Seriously, everyone was having a good time. Trump was putting on a show. Lock Her Up. Build The Wall. USA! USA! Lots of flags and like-minded people, all there for the show. Looking back, it didn't look like fascism or totalitarianism. It looked like, "Ugh! More Clintons in the White House? Let's give this guy a try. He's not one of them and he's making some sense."
Hillary Clinton events might have been a lot of things, but fun wasn't one of them.
But now...
Watch these guys, particularly Vance. He's the unpopular kid in high school who's finally getting to stand up on stage at the assembly and tell a joke. The joke's not funny. He's a dork. And then there are all the strap-hangers: Candace, Bannon, Fuentes, Shapiro, et. al. All humorless self-promoters. Those people in the audience paid good money to see ... that.
And it's not like the old conferences back in the '90's when you'd get actually thoughtful, accomplished people who knew things talking about interesting and important subjects. No. These guys are a bunch of cranks.
Is the market for this stuff as big these people seem to think it is? Or are there a lot of people out there in Red States thinking, "Um, they just closed down the Jim Beam distillery because Canada hates us. We can't sell our soybeans because China hates us. We can't sell our corn because USAID is gone. My health insurance premium is four times what it was. The roads are still full of potholes and these guys are talking about litter boxes and trans swimmers in Connecticut. I'm not feeling like America's that great..."
Wait. The fun included "I alone can fix it." One of the chillingest, creepiest things I've ever heard. And the 'hilarious' mocking of a disabled journalist. I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed, especially politically, but my hair practically stood straight up at these two things. I get your point, he wasn't boring as most pols are. But the malice was apparent always, and they liked it that way. Now they're directing the malice towards one another, and I like it that way.
I'm not trying to normalize Donald Trump, but he is a showman. And Hillary Clinton was an awful candidate. And Joe Biden was awful too, in his ancient way. After that debate, oh no. He was never going to win.
Kamala was a thousand times better, but just not enough. Some of it was time. (She didn't have enough of it.) But also, listening to her today, on her book tour, she also wasn't great and I think that combination -- unknown, short campaign and not a great campaigner -- was enough for Trump to squeak out a win.
Might one presume that people you describe were those who voted for Trump, but do not love him, whereas Alondra describes that segment of the voters who derive some pleasure from contempt and derision. They are the ones who proudly state "This is exactly what I voted for", and would have loved the 60 Minutes CECOT Special spectacle.
There are a lot of different kinds of Trump voter out there, which is why he won. I always think of the older couple that heard that Our President was going to have a rally at the fairgrounds on Saturday, so they gassed up the Buick and drove over there, all happy that they got to wear their red hats with a bunch of like-minded people. Tote bag. Sunscreen. Lawn chairs. Making a day of it. They watch Fox News because they've always watched Fox News. They think the country's going to hell. They watched -- and liked -- Trump on The Apprentice and thought, because he was a successful businessman, he would bring that sensibility to The White House.
They're not bad people. They're not racists. They had long, successful, middle-class careers. Their kids and grandkids are doing alright, but they didn't want another four years of Clinton in The White House. They didn't like the mean tweets, but prefer that to Monica Lewinsky and all that.
They voted for him, but they (no longer) love him.
And then there are the online haters and racists and White Supremacists and all of those people, the ones standing back and standing by. They want CECOT here. They want the cruelty. They like the pain and suffering. Ride or Die.
If all Trump had was the second group, he wouldn't have won in 2016. He lost in 2020. And he squeaked it out in 2024, mostly because Biden was too damned old, they hated the inflation and they didn't know what Kamala was for. Even then, if just a few people had gone the other way, he would have lost in 2024.
Yes, the margin of difference was about 1.5% and yet, the political extreme on the right claims a landslide and mandate. But here we are and it will be difficult to roll back the extreme changes wrought by the current administration. Perhaps there will be an election in 2026. Perhaps not.
Wind farms do cause radar clutter. This generally takes the form of a few pixels that are nearly stationary over the location of the wind farm. Other things that cause radar clutter: the sun, planes, birds, bats, insects, dust, and even sometimes cars.
The Chinese have a stealth cruise missile that can evade radar by weaving its way between offshore windmill farms. They call it Long March Epstein Boom.
Movements like this don’t die when they lose coherence. They don’t vanish. They leak. Rot doesn’t politely stop at collapse. It spreads. Even if you believe the Red Hat project is failing, what’s failing is the branding, not the impulse. The slogan decays. The appetite does not.
This is where liberal optimism keeps misfiring. Decline is not defanging. Failure does not civilize people whose politics were never about policy to begin with. It hardens them. When victory doesn’t arrive, there is no self-examination, only a hunt for traitors. January 6 didn’t evaporate because we’re tired of remembering it. Rage detaches from outcomes and becomes identity. Cruelty stops being a tactic and turns reflexive, automatic, muscle memory.
People like JD Vance understand this at a visceral level. He isn’t positioning himself to lead a movement. He’s positioning himself to endure a population that no longer requires leadership at all. A base that doesn’t ask what should be done, only who should be made to hurt. A culture marinated so long in grievance it no longer needs coordination, only permission, and that permission has already been granted.
A collapsing cult can be more dangerous than a victorious one. When hierarchy fractures and the center dissolves, what remains is pure affect, resentment without discipline, identity without purpose, violence without strategy. History doesn’t stabilize at that point. It accelerates.
The Red Hat project doesn’t need to win to scar the country for generations. It already has. The real danger is believing unraveling is an ending, when it is usually the moment the restraints finally come off.
The base is about Trump. All of this infighting is because they are desperate to hold on to the base, but just as there are splits among the "leaders," (to think of any of these people as leaders is vile), there is a growing split among the base. They will continue to fracture. And Trump doesn't care about the future. The unraveling isn't an ending, but it means that the power they have right now will be diluted. Sure, lawmakers will still get death threats, but the volume will decrease, because none of the successors has the magnetism, so to speak, to mesmerize and direct acolytes like Trump. All of the people who want to succeed him know this, as does the GOP who fall in line right now with spineless deference. How "fashionable" will hate be among the young in five years? Ten?
Remember, the Germans of today are not the Germans of the Third Reich. Rwanda has survived beyond the genocide. The former Yugoslavia is gone, but the Baltics have found peace. Sadly, the problem with a post-Trump America is that as long as the First Amendment can be abused, as long as there are no guardrails on AI, social media, and the internet, the loony conspiracy theories, the hate, the bile, and the lies will continue to proliferate. And the right will continue to milk the hate and divisiveness that fuel the culture wars because it's all they have. So no, they all won't go away, or go back into their caves. And that is a problem for us all.
The base was All About Charile Kirk, until he was gone. Now it's all about Candice.
I love how every comment section eventually turns into someone pointing at Germany or the Soviet Union like they’re inspirational Pinterest quotes. See? They turned out fine. As if those transformations happened because everyone logged off, took a breath, and chose unity.
What keeps getting missed is the inconvenient middle chapter. Germany didn’t heal because the vibes improved. The USSR didn’t soften because the discourse matured. Those societies changed after collapse, not before it. After devastation. After shame. After systems imploded so completely that denial was no longer an option.
So yes, societies can emerge from horror. That’s true, but pointing to the endpoint while skipping the crater is like praising a healed bone while pretending the fracture never happened. It’s not optimism, it more like you've decided to have selective amnesia and taped a motivational poster over it.
If those examples are meant to reassure us, they should do the opposite. They’re reminders that change doesn’t arrive because people suddenly get nicer in the comments. It arrives when reality finally stops negotiating.
I am well aware of what happened in WWII and the aftermath as well as the USSR and don't have "selective amnesia." JFC. Condescension doesn't improve your argument.
And no, the base wasn't all about Charlie Kirk. MAGA is not a monolith; the factions are together only because of Trump.
I don’t doubt you’re aware of what happened in WWII or the Soviet collapse. That’s not the question. The question is why those are the examples people keep reaching for as hope?
When someone points to Germany or the Soviet Union and says, “See, societies recover,” what they’re really saying is, “I like the ending, so I’m skipping the middle.” Those aren’t stories of graceful correction. They’re stories of total systemic failure followed by reconstruction under conditions so severe denial was no longer possible.
Invoking those cases as comfort quietly concedes something uncomfortable. That meaningful change didn’t arrive because people became more reasonable, more informed, or more civil. It arrived after collapse forced reality to win.
If those are the examples being offered as hope, the subtext isn’t calming. It’s diagnostic. It suggests people intuitively understand that this doesn’t resolve through better arguments or nicer discourse. It resolves when the system finally stops absorbing abuse and starts breaking.
Which is fine, if that’s the claim. Just don’t pretend it’s good news.
No condescension required. Just basic logical hygiene.
Gosh darn those treacherous Jews, provoking poor uncle Adolf into a world war when all he wanted was for everyone to polka baby !
My God, that ludicrous obsession with windmills! One of his clubs loses a law suit in Scotland, and therefore the U.S. a quarter century later has to withdraw from the battle to dominate renewable fuels for the rest of the century. It reminds me of a prescient column written by Catherine Rampell about a year ago, while she was still with the Post, entitled, something like: How to lose the 21st Century for the U.S. She noted that three of Trump's favorite themes would prove deadly to U.S. prominence in coming decades: He despises the rule of law (which attracts foreign business to the dollar and the guarantees of fair treatment in business); he dislikes science (which gave the U.S. its initial boost); he despises immigration (at a time when 40% of the Forbes 400 are led by immigrants.) I was hoping she was wrong, but so far that column has been depressively predictive.
Trump has ensured that the future belongs to China, sadly. Tell your kids to brush up on their Mandarin.
Regarding the MAGA/TPUSA conflicts, how long will it be before the average Trump/MAGA voter fesses up to sympathy for racism and begins to follow the next-gen fascists, knowing that Trump is not forever (due to his age)?
It's bad enough that our Navy continues to build sitting-duck aircraft carriers, but now it's proposing to build sitting-duck "battleships" and soothe Trump's ego. This is not the future of warfare, but the Congress and defense industries just don't care. There's no way to hide these vessels on the high seas, given contemporary sensor technology. And it has become far easier to strike them precisely with missiles than it is for them to defend themselves against same. Here, again, the admirals, pols, and industrial titans are fighting the last war, if not the one before it.
I don't think you understand naval combat. According to the President, our current warships are ugly. The Trump Class will look like cool battleships. See, his glorious leadership makes us great again!
National Security, woooooo!
[If the sarcasm wasn't obvious, I don't know what to say.]
We'll have the hottest battleships. Everyone will say so.
Yep. Battleship were sure ugly to the Japanese at Pearl Harbor.
Got it loud and clear! Keep up the good work!
It takes years to build any navy vessel. Felon Trump will be long gone if Father Time has any say, and those ships will be repurposed, maybe as garbage scows, a fitting name for DonOld.
Boatie McTrumpFace!
His latest waste/fraud/abuse expense
An orange spongeBob Trump pants
Why on earth would a US Attorney have a "challenge coin"?! Does she think her fake job makes her part of the military too? I mean, I suppose if Hegseth can be in charge of the DoD, the only qualification after all is probably hairstyle and looking good on camera.
Shiny objects are popular with children, crows, crabs…
Or maybe the correct term is “flair” 😄
This is shockingly unfair to children, crows, and crabs. ;)
Ok, I’ll concede children & crabs cuz of grandchild recently performing in Sponge Bob musical 🙂
But crows- I’ll risk the “self-defeating purity test” 🤣
LOL!
I have an inordinate foldness for our Corvid friends. Magpies often visit my roof garden. Although I am suspicious of their tolerance of RFK Jr. Seems like their famed intelligence does not stretch to being good judges of character.
RFK jr? Wasn't that falcons? Whatev - any meat-based creatures best be careful around that dude when he's hungry
Nope. Ravens. The crows' bigger cousin.
And Jennifer Anniston in Office Space.
Is that where we are now?
And Trump
Right? I know LE officers have them as well but ffs...these maga twits will appropriate anything that they think makes them look cool and part of the in club.
Honestly, I do not understand why military members vote overwhelmingly for these imposters. My husband was a Ranger and my X-roommater a Marine. It outrages them when someone steals valour. I don't know how a military person could vote for "Private Bonespurs" or tolerate his Cosplay Cabinet!
My Navy Vet cousin loves both Trump and Hegseth. The reason he told me was “they stick it to the Dems”. His mother, my aunt, told me “Mike is a Republican, so of course he voted for Trump”. She also voted for Trump “because I’m a Republican”. Well, I’m a Republican, but I voted for both Biden and Harris. For that matter, I voted for Hillary. All 3 because I hate Trump and see him as a clear and present danger to the United States, if not the world.
I’ve never understood “party loyalty”. Why should a Republican always vote for the Republican? Why should a Democrat always vote for the Democrat? I have been a Republican since 1977, but I’ve always voted the person not the party. Especially in local and state elections, but even in national elections as with the 3 mentioned. For people like my relatives I’ve decided it is a phenomenon called Negative Partisanship. When Negative Partisanship is at work, the voter’s hatred of one political party is so strong that they will vote for the other political party even if that candidate is odious and disgusting. Hence my cousin saying he likes them because “they stick it to the Dems”.
Yeah, I get you. My husband is of the opinion that "owning the Libs" is more important to Trump voters than their personal well-being, wealth, safety, everything. But I really didn't expect the military and their rabid fans to tolerate the shit he says about their "beloved corps".
My cousins are all Navy and Marine vets, and they are all foaming at the mouth MAGA Republicans. Their father was a hyper conservative navy vet, and he indoctrinated the entire family. I drank the Kool Aid too, until I went to law school and started working IRL. My views eventually grew away from theirs, and now I am center right and flexible. They remain rigid. Such is life.
Totally agree.
What is a “challenge coin” anyway?
AI summary:
“A challenge coin is a personalized medallion with an organization's emblem, symbolizing achievement, membership, and camaraderie, especially in the military, law enforcement, and corporations, where it's awarded for special recognition, commemorating events, or proving affiliation, often involving a tradition where members must produce their coin when "challenged" or face buying drinks. These coins foster group loyalty, celebrate milestones, and act as tangible reminders of shared experiences, with designs varying from standard unit coins to unique creations for specific missions or leaders.”
Thanks for the info.
https://allaboutchallengecoins.com/
They continue the fundamental canard of "for thee, but not for me." They attack universities, institutions, immigrants, etc., for being anti-semetic. But they themselves embrace it.
They're completely morally indifferent to expressions of antisemitism, even the most violent and repulsive, depending on who's uttering them and in what context. Their attack on universities was never about protecting Jewish students and faculty: it was always about tightening the federal government's grip on those institutions as part of a broader attack on academic freedom and the free, fearless exchange of ideas. The Republican right has regarded higher education as a clear and present danger since the rise of the Birchers (seed bed for the Koch brothers) back in the 1950s.
You'll find that the Republican remedy for antisemitism in Academe is the silencing of moderate and liberal voices and even of critical conservative voices, and the imposition of state-approved curricula that glorify the right people (white people, billionaires, Christians) at the expense of the teeming billions who are the "wrong people," including actual Jews.
Good catch!👍
Strong, the hypocrisy is. ( sorry, Yoda-speak)
There is no way that GDP is at 4.7%. It has his fingerprints all over it. The only way that it would be more obvious is to have odd capital letters in the BLS announcement.
Lucky for us, good macroeconomic numbers don't sway voters, even if they're true.
True. Voters really won’t care about good numbers - except maybe to a small extent their 401K’s. Voters care about “ affordability”. If that $30 bag of groceries continues to cost $100, THAT is what will matter. ( The only good - but painful thing, I only have to carry a single reusable bag with me when I shop)
CNN reports that most of that was driven by spending by rich people. If so, it emphasizes what I keep reading about our current K-shaped economy. The Trump economy is sure turning out to be "the rich get richer."
I feel good when he feels bad as well!
I hope a dedicated researcher will devote some time to determining how much money — taxpayer money — has been spent placating Trump’s desire to plaster his name all over everything. A billion here, a billion there — it’s disgusting.
The stupidity of building battleships would be insane. Correct me if I am wrong but doesn't congress have to appropriate money for this.
We have so much tariff money from China, what's the problem? Getting China to pay for the battleships that defeat them was a genius masterstroke!
I'm eagerly awaiting for him to reveal the Trump Class Battlestar for the domination of space!
/s
Sounds expensive. He'll have to raise tariffs back to where they were at the 17th iteration of his...plan?
Space force!!!
He can Executive Order a battleship into existence! Picture him in the wheelhouse, blowing the air horn. Greatness, full speed ahead
That is if they don't abandon this other function as well.
If we get "battleships" with as much class as Trump, the Golden Fleet will turn out to be the Golden Fleece, though not of the Jason and the Argonauts variety...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aL-sFl3XPSE