The lighter side of 3300 points
Seems to be a pattern in the current administration…of not thinking things through very well.
It started with Cabinet nominations… we noted months ago that with a tiny majority in the House and Senate, taking too many candidates from the – yep, House and Senate – might come back to bite ’em in that old gluteus maximus. And what happened Thursday last?
Trump confirmed he was withdrawing the New York Republican’s nomination in a Truth Social post, saying that it was “essential that we maintain EVERY Republican Seat in Congress.” AP News
Then there is all the DEI brouhaha – anti-DEI orders have allowed pictures of the Enola Gay to be pulled, then reinstated, the Tuskegee Airmen to be pulled, and reinstated, the first black Medal of Honor awardee to be pulled,, and reinstated…latest one on that aired Thursday with word that pictures of Jewish Naval Academy grads had been pulled, and reinstated. A pattern?
The US Naval Academy has returned photos and memorabilia of Jewish women after they were “mistakenly removed” from a display to apparently comply with diversity, equity, and inclusion directives from the Pentagon. CNN
Is this malicious over-enforcement? Is this anti-Trump loyalists trying to make him, or Hegseth, or Vance, whomever – look like an idiot? Dunno, but let me stick my neck out a bit. It doesn’t matter. If a directive is so poorly phrased, so badly written that it can be misinterpreted or give wiggle room to malicious parties to do something the opposite of what you intended – it’s just a poorly written order. If the only way to do the wrong thing is to BREAK the order, you’ve got it right. But that’s consistently what we are not seeing. If these folks at the highest level of our government are supposedly the best of the best of the best (apologies to Will Smith) they should be able to issue clear, unambiguous orders.
Now we have the market doing ugly things (the Dow is down 3300 points in the last month, half of that just Thursday.) Not the end of the world – in the famous ’87 crash the Dow sipped something like 22% – in one day. Equivalent to that now would be somewhere north of 8000 points, and we aren’t there. Yet. But for someone who got elected on the premise he was going to make our lives better, this is a funny way to go about it. Why? The tariffs. The tariffs, the tariffs…. (apologies to Don Rafael.)
Now, I am not going to get into whether they are a good idea or not… Econ was a one and done set of courses for me thirty years ago, and who knows, they may work. But the choice of things and places to slap tariffs onto? That’s where I started to get into it.
The Trump administration’s tariffs list (archived), posted on the White House X account, did indeed include the “Heard and McDonald Islands,” which were hit with 10% “discounted reciprocal” tariffs. Therefore, we rate this claim true. Snopes
Oh, yeah… these are islands south of Australia… and are uninhabited. Penguins, mostly. What, are they taxing American guano and we’re retaliating? (yes, they belong to Australia… but they are listed separately.)
And even better.
Among the more bizarre tariffs were a 10 percent levy against the uninhabited Heard and McDonald Islands, and an identical tariff on British Indian Ocean Territory.
A chunk of British Indian Ocean Territory is the remote Chagos archipelago, embroiled in a long-running dispute between the U.K. government and Mauritius.
You know what is in the Chagos archipelago? Our base at Diego Garcia. It’s the only thing on the island, the inhabitants were evacuated in the ’60s and ’70s. So what are we slapping tariffs on, our own Air Force? Newsweek
I have seen various (non-Trump supporting) outlets say that the administration looks like Amateur Hour. Kinda see why.
Category: "Your Tax Dollars At Work", Politics
I don’t care.
I support Trump 100%.
Democrats can eat a big bag of dicks.
This seems like a buying opportunity to me. Buy low sell high.
As long as you do not have to sell now you will do just fine.
This does put pension funds in a bind though.
The current generation, with few exceptions, hasn’t invested in their retirement. Many overspent on their kids or on themselves living in the moment. Therefore when the market tanks they are “oh well”, about it.
I agree, the Democrats can eat a bag if dicks. Trump’s administration is still demonstrating a level of comical incompetence.
Perhaps a Demonstration of Exceptional Incompetence, even?
Well he hasn’t murdered 13 service members in Afghanistan. He has shut down the border, allowed the chickens to repopulate (eggs where I live went down $3 an 18 pack) and is actively rounding up murdering gang members and getting them the hell out of here. Plus the mentally ill men wearing dresses in the services are shaking in their pantyhose. seems like a pretty good start for a few weeks.
Who do you feel did murder those folks? I’m really curious.
And the great thing about politicians, from either party, is that you can celebrate when they do things that you like, and criticize them when they’re idiots. Shutting down the border? Great. Crashing the market and alienating the US from allies? Yeah, not so great.
Try it! I bet even you can find things you agree and disagree with across the aisle. It’s nice having principles vs allegiance to a party,.. or a person.
Every member of the Joe Biden / Barack Obama 2.0 administration that failed to stand up and say “Hey, this is fucking stupid and will fail drastically” when the Afghanistan “withdrawal” plan was briefed murdered those folks. And that includes Biden and Obama.
Got it – do you apply the same to, say, the failures of the Bush administration with respect to 9/11? Or the failures in the FAA with respect to the crash of the airplane and help back in February?
I’m not asking that as a ‘gotcha’, but rather because it’s always a question of where the buck stops, so to speak.
I can certainly see the argument that Obama and Biden are responsible for the Afghanistan deaths, because ultimately responsibility flows upward… but I obviously don’t think they were reviewing or changing decisions made by the military, so I’m also unsure how much to put on them.
Ultimately, I’m fine with either approach, but it needs to be uniform. Eg, the failures of 9/11 were failures of numerous agencies reporting to POTUS — was Bush responsible for that?
“but I obviously don’t think they were reviewing or changing decisions made by the military, so I’m also unsure how much to put on them.”
Every. Bit. Of. It. There’s a reason we call the President the Commander in Chief. He’s the final approval or disapproval authority. O’Biden got fed an unworkable plan by uniformed political operatives masquerading as General officers. Nobody in the chain of command stood up and said a word. A boy scout patrol leader could’ve planned a better operation. And these same generals applauded the operation as a success.
There were failures in the Bush administration leading up to 9/11. Information stovepiping that led to the creation of DHS, with the intent of enabling information sharing. In reality, it created bigger, larger stovepipes. Bush assumed responsibility for all of it as President. The FAA had decades of failures, not directly attributable to any President but still, the guy at the top is ultimately responsible,
OK, I can respect that. So the 65 US military personnel that died in Afghanistan during Trump’s first term are on him, and the 13 that died during Biden’s term are on him.
I don’t know that I agree, but I do appreciate the consistency.
Any decent E-4 11B could have planned a better exit from Afghanistan.
The errors are on the level of “How much Acid did you drop before making this plan, sir?”
Graduates of the War College have utterly no excuse for Afghanistan.
They chose kneepads and career over telling the President the truth, and/or “I will resign publicly if this goes forward. I will make a beeline to Congress, and I have the receipts. Sir.”
Sooner or later, even you will have to acknowledge the criminal malfeasance shown in that -obvious consequences- clusterfuck.
Even you.
Any casualty of war ultimately falls on the President. That’s blatantly obvious. The 13 that died in Afghanistan were a direct result of politically aligned officers and DoD personnel producing a shit withdrawal plan to a dementia-addled President. Jill, Hunter, and the auto pen were probably the approving authority. No one had the balls to object or put their stars on the line. 13 young Americans and countless Afghan allies died as a direct consequence, I hold Joe Biden and his puppet master Barack Obama directly responsible.
Try again LC.
Bill Clinton owns the failures of the 9/11.
Bin Laden was emboldened by our withdrawal from Somalia with nothing really accomplished. Under Clinton, it changed from a humanitarian mission to a hunt for warlords without the necessary resources. I never did know what the desired end-state was.
Biden printed trillions of dollars and devalued our currency, making markets all over the world start looking for a better standard. The market has to correct itself. Yeah it isn’t gonna be pretty but it has to be done. About tariffs, fairs fair. Hit me and I hit you back, don’t hit back and get taken advantage of. I guess you get to go over to friends houses and steal from them, and they stay your friends. Our “allies” are using us as a piggy bank and stealing from us. Not my idea of an “ally”.
After a career as a petty bureaucrat, I know there is no way to write an order of that nature that is both (a) comprehensible and (b) comprehensive in scope, so that no possible mistake (or “mistake”) can be made in its execution.
That said, following the general rule of thumb to not attribute to malice what can be attributed to incompetence I try to lean toward that interpretation while acknowledging that malice can be involved.
Regardless, Team Trump is working to fix the very real problems, and I’m thankful.
Ah….the elusive Leprechdon
Trump has been in office less than 90 days, and has done more in 2.5 months than many have done in a career in Washington. Before Trump was reelected, I remember hearing Mike Johnson talking about stopping, or at least slowing the tide of border jumpers by saying it’s a very difficult process. Apparently it wasn’t.
Tariffs? Trump has said drop yours to zero and we will do likewise. The countries that are complaining have gotten used to living off import fees, duties, taxes, whatever brought in and have nothing more invested than a warm body with rubber stamping abilities.
As far as the uninhabited island tax levy goes, maybe the media should put in as much effort into stories that matter as they did on researching that part of their story.
Posting a video of the USG flying some criminals to a high security prison in Central America tends to make people rethink their options.
Left wing scare mongering media is playing their part as though they were made for it. I wonder if they will ever realize how badly they were played like a cheap Ukulele.
Stopping the tide of border jumpers is a very difficult process when the President not only refuses to act on it, but actively encourages it. All it took was a new President to say no mas.
During his 2020 campaign, I heard Brandon tell all of those wishing to illegally come here “to surge the border.” So, they did. We all saw the videos of the illegals wearing their “Thank you, Joe Biden” T-shirts in the caravans and on the border.
Senile old bastard was probably getting kickbacks from the cartels.
The mob leader always gets his cut. He feels entitled to “wet his beak.” Plus, the Prog goal is to replace us with a larger dependent class made up mostly of economic refugees from third world countries. They figured with 15 to 20 million new illegal residents for the 2030 census and making it easy for them to illegally vote, the Progs and open commies will have one party rule forever.
The market was badly overinflated. The interesting side effects here is that interest rates are plunging as people run like the house on fire into the bond market. I don’t know if we will see negative rates like in 2008 but it is possible. The national debt might pay itself off.
The economy should kick into high gear after China folds. They won’t have any choice in a couple of months unless they want mass riots.
Crude is tanking big time along with the market and I love it.
I never bothered with stocks, bonds, ira’s or any other type of
risk whatsoever. I invested everything in CD’s and savings accounts. Didn’t even contribute to my retirement plan and
just let it grow on the company’s dime.
Now retired and sitting on a pile of cash that keeps growing
no matter what the stock market does. It would take a
complete colapse of the economy and banking system for me
to get worried about my savings.
Ah, the benefits of being old and uncaring.
Scare mongers are pimping inflation as the boogieman right now. With interest rates collapsing and Petro dropping prices are going to plunge.
Something different.
Chinese regime could be on the ‘cliff of disintegration,’ Gordon Chang explains | Fox News Video
Vietnam wants to negotiate:
https://www.reuters.com/markets/asia/vietnam-foreign-ministry-says-regrets-us-tariff-decision-2025-04-04/
Sssshhhh. That Can’t be true! Tariffs will be the ruin of us all dammit!
In this instance, it’s the big stick that TR spoke of.
I retire within five years. I am heavily invested in stock funds. Going to be increasing my buy this year to capture the current bargains.
But if I lose half of it all, Trump is still worth it, to squash the epic graft/swamp as only he can.
Celebrating this. All of it
Go Trump Go. Any mistakes pale in comparison to the long term payoff of undoing a century-plus of Leftist wreckage, and also undoing the “helpful” contributions of RINO-progs.
With a bit of luck, Vance and or DeSantis are on the next ticket. Maybe one of Trump’s more firebreathing spawn.
I’ll live in a tent happily if my Country is safe.
Kudos to your rationality. I just lost a sizable chunk of my IRA’s value. But it will go back up, and Trump’s income tax changes have already saved me over $15K in income taxes in the past seven years. Plus, I would like my grandchildren to have a Great America in which to freely prosper.
https://x.com/JackLombardi/status/1908346021500903838
I am rigging things so if the market is temporarily down, I can tap the non-stock-based stuff and wait out the dip.
But I sense -yuge- long term potential, so will not be tapering off now (not as much, anyway) as originally planned pre-dip. Still need to juggle the next five years. But assuming we don’t elect another senile retard or globalist sellout, should exit the workforce in sustainable if very modest comfort.
Not bad for about 23 years net investment. 25 years ago, I was dead broke and heavily in debt.
Folks in their 40s can do the same. Austere life, pay off debt, invest prudently.
Folks in their 20s can retire in comfort. Possibly -vast- comfort. See above, with 20 years more compounding, thus less austere life if you dont mind austere retirement.
Stay out of debt. Pay it off early. Borrow nothing. Owe nothing. Invest shrewdly and long term. Every dollar put to work for -you-. Retire on your terms, with Social Security a bonus, not survival.
Thus no fear.
The Uniparty proggies -cannot- abide fearless subjects. You -must- be afraid and dependant. Thus easily manipulated.
Trump is trying to put us back pre Income Tax. Which means near universal wealth potential, assuming Folks use just a bit of prudence. Self interest prudence.
Now we just have to keep the grifters, sellouts, globalists, marxoids, and proggies from sabotaging that objective to maintain fear, dependency, and control.
MAGA
He really means it. So do we.
“If a directive is so poorly phrased, so badly written that it can be misinterpreted or give wiggle room to malicious parties to do something the opposite of what you intended – it’s just a poorly written order.”
Not true. The average human being these days will read a directive and then interpret it to suit their needs when all that needs to happen is to take it at face value, as is. People will also second-guess a directive, extracting what they think the director is really saying. This is the reason OPORDS start with Commander’s Intent. Then you can add in malicious compliance. I absolutely loved malicious compliance in the Army. There’s also a problem with people who just don’t read all of it. I wrote OPORDS for years, and you just cannot make it simple and clear enough to remove any kind of variation in execution.
An excellent example of what I posted above is how CSM’s view AR-670-1. They see it as interpretable to suit their whims, when it’s actually very cut and dried. You know the old saying, “You can add to a regulation, but you can not take away from a reg.” My argument, which very often out me at odds with 1SG’s and CSM’s, was if you add to a regulation, you are in effect taking away from it. It’s a change to a reg that you are not authorized to make.
100 percent. Doesn’t matter how careful you are writing, people will interpret it how they want to.
If this was not true, we wouldn’t need a Supreme Court.
Good point Joe! ” Shall not be infringed” is pretty damn clear to anyone with two brain cells to rub together, yet here we are..
In the 20 years after WW2, many of those countries needed the boost to dig out of the rubble. No more! Past Presidents did not have the balls to do anything about it. Trump is doing because it needs to be done. Of course markets will over-react, and politicians will bang their first on podiums…
Then the dust will clear and we’ll all be asking why didn’t somebody do this sooner?
Any tariffs on Chinese pirated Red Hat Software?
Patience, Grasshoppers. We didn’t get into the mess overnight and we damn sure aren’t going to get out of it overnight. Agree with everything The Bad Orange Man does or how he does it? Nope! Do I think he is truly trying to do what is best for the Country? Yep! Are there people doing whatever they can to throw roadblocks up and put out negative waves? Yep! Is BOM’s attempt to “turn things around” gonna hurt a bit? Yep! Better to have tried and failed than to not try at all. Gonna get worse before it gets better? Yep! One thing for sure is that the American Taxpayer can no longer afford to be the world’s “Piggy Bank” or the world’s “policeman”. Odd that many of the places screaming about “tariffs” don’t speak of the tariffs that they placed on American Goods. And few Americans think about the fact that before 1913 the entire US grubermint ran off of tariffs and NOT income taxes. Let’s give it a chance and make some ham and cheese omelets with these broken eggs.
Add mushrooms to that omelet order please. At least on mine anyway.
And jalapenos. Extra cheese.
Horseradish cheddar cheese. If you’ve never tried it, I don’t think you will be disappointed when you do.
Just thinking about it made my nose run. I’ll be looking tomorrow.
Ladies and Gentlemen:
My two cents, Trump has the perfect opportunity and political alignment in the next two years to completely rework the globalist agenda that required the destruction of individual liberties to be successful and to which we were slowly marching. He has expressed his vision through his executive orders. It is now up to congress to legislatively support them. I fear they will FAIL. I feel this is our one true time to reverse the damage inflicted upon the United States since the advent of the Marshall plan and the continued one sided abuse of American will and treasure across the globe. Trump does not have to worry about reelection and if his party will reach inside themselves to find the courage to support it I think we’d find ourselves in perhaps the strongest position we have been in since WW2. We can expect malicious compliance across the spectrum. For too long our middle class has lost its say and power as globalist have sought to destroy it. It goes against the savoir of the masses narrative they rely on. I am happy the markets are freaking out. Boo hoo we can’t make YUUUGE profits by exploiting cheap labor and loose foreign regulations anymore that we have to comply with by treaty but they don’t. Prices will go up for a while. The market inflation brought on by regulatory and labor abuse will drop. Manufacturing will either return to the US or will pay our treasury. This readjustment will be painful for a time but will slowly begin to rebuild our middle class and provide a new generation with hope that the American dream is attainable. The dems themselves had made the argument repeatedly in earlier years before orange man caused them to lose their flippin minds and grasp unto every crackpot cause across the globe and give agency and urgency to the most unsavory of fringe ideologies. I am going to wait this out. I wish you all the best of luck.
I am wary, power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. I have faith God has got this and has use for the good Ole United States yet. Like he did for me.
-He- will Triumph in the end. We have a guarantee of it.
We just do our part and believe.
My greatest concern is the attempt to stop him. They are not stupid, and have already generated two tries, and one -epic- picture.
The next try may provoke …. unpleasant consequences.
Biden’s puppeteers pardoned the co-conspirators. So could Trump. As long as the skulldugery occurs in DC, pardons apply, and no State interferance. (Read Tom Kratman’s “Caliphate” for examples.)
Trump understands rules and games. He has made multiple fortunes exploiting rules. Please folks, don’t provoke him into misusing that office. He is the one guy largely playing by the rules. (Even if you hate the result, he is) Dont cheat so bad he decides FTS, its hardball time.
You won’t like it.
Off Topic; has anyone heard about san francisco charging people that were issued a speeding ticket the amout of $$$$ being based on their income…Which means that if I were an 18 year old kid with no job/income, the speeding ticket would be a freeo.
Not only would it be free, you can expect a rebate in the mail.
They got the idea from the Europussies. Some of the Scandinavian countries do this income-based traffic fine crap.
Most of this inflation is supply-side and surplus gimmedats much exacerbated by poor (read: criminal) bond rate policy and dropping any kind of capital requirements on banks. (Treasury backstopping upside-down bonds has been something not even Brezhnev could have thought of)
I’m planning for slowly and steadily repeating the 70s stagflation or having the daddy of all depressions.
State and local governments’ bloat will be decimated, which is nice.
Prepare.
P.S. Also this is in no way attributable to the tariffs or DoGE, but an eventuality. Zeros, no matter how many you tack onto a number, still retain their intrinsic value.
Did I say 3000? More like 6,000, we’re down in the 38,000 range
Meh, it’s only 11 trillion dollars from US stocks:
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/u-s-stocks-poised-for-biggest-two-day-wipeout-in-history-as-marketloses-9-6-trillion-since-inauguration-day-430919f6
Good. Time for Uncle Scam to adjust his mainline sustenance of tax receipts to a more palatable form.
Once upon a time, we financed almost all of FedGov via tariffs, and had money pouring into the coffers so fast we needed a blue ribbon committee to allocate it.
1875-1915 was simply amazing.
Then the proggies fucked it all up, applying to the middle class Marx’s twin millstones of taxation and inflation.
It was so easy to go from total poverty to decent middle class, that illiterate idiots from elsewhere -thrived-. Former -slaves- prospered in -JimCrow- land.
The Marxist garbage will do and say -anything- to avoid losing their destructive “progress”.
I value Trump because the correct people are screaming and doing their headless chicken routine.
Give the man a bigger axe.
And the Left should pray daily in gratitude for Trump. He likely prevented ACW2, thus the wanton slaughter of Leftroids.
Because far too many Leftroid idiots believe their own backwash that they are a majority, and that their soyboy pencil-arm cosplsy freaks are an Army. The slaughter would have been …. biblical. OT stuff.
We voted in Trump, instead. You are welcome.
Yes, absolutely biblical.
If the nation is to endure a republican form of government should be sought. One where the states select their representation and have equal stake in taxes in two exclusive forms; tariffs agreed upon by congress and, the balance due not covered by the first, apportionment the states respectively. You know, as f’king intended!
I’m not having this debate any longer with the authoritarian progressive-regressives.
note: all those letters are worth a read and a reread!
LOL..You have the TDS…
Almost everything he was taught was wrong, lies, or both. It’s very hard to shake that off and be wise.
I was brought up very hard left. Took decades to undo it. Still have some reflexive left-flinches to slap down.
David will wise up, assuming he is not happy with ignorance. It’s inevitable. He cannot prosper without gaining understanding. Sooner or later, he will Red Pill. If late, it will be when dining on pet food in a hovel. “Dang. That asshole was right….”
I shall not gloat. Much prefer self made neighbors to self impoverished ones.