TheVat

In a modern global economy, arguments for tariffs that sabotage free trade and global supply chains may be rare. Well, thought processes from ardent Trump supporters are often difficult to discern. As you suggest, they favor bold declarations over nuanced and informative arguments. Yes, that's really the question. It does seem that social media, a decline in journalism and civic education, and a shortening attention span, may contribute to a decline in more informative public debates between experts. What we have now leads more to culture and ideological wars than to real dialogues.

The Constitutional lawyer I had read (name EMATM) said the 12th applies, but I'm sure there are those who disagree. AFAICT, the scholars argument was that unable to be elected is meant as ineligible, i.e. why bother making this whole new amendment to limit terms, get 3/4 ratification from the states, all to just install an easily dodged speed bump? And I would guess even a conservative SCOTUS would see it that way, too. The Congress and state legislatures that got behind 22 were reflecting a very popular public sentiment that term limits should be constitutionally mandated (it still polls at around 80% for term limits). But I would be genuinely interested in the counterargument, and what regions of the political spectrum it is emanating from.

12th Amendment blocks that maneuver, happily. No person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States. (and there aren't enough state ratification votes to repeal the relevant amendments - 3/4 of states must ratify any change in the Constitution)

Yep. What I glean from experts is that everything is connected, like an ecosystem. So after tariffs have landed hard on the middle/ working class, they reduce their spending on consumer items (or they become unemployed and cut back to bare necessities) and the corporations that make them begin to wither and...then turn on the WH administration they had previously backed. People sometimes forget that many of the wealthy are wealthy only so long as hoi polloi have disposable income. This applies even to wealth that is earned from what Americans define as essentials - with sufficient stagflation, consumption of utlities and fuel will drop. Thermostats are turned down, lights are shut off, car trips are fewer, cellphone users switch to cheaper plans, simpler meals are served, etc. The MAGA approach to tariffs is a recipe for stagflation and the shrinking economy that brings - it's not an oligarch pleaser. (it might, however, be good for urban air quality, just as the Covid lockdowns were...) Was the World Economic Forum link I provided of any use, as an example of such topics being institutionalized? To your core question, tariffs have determinable outcomes because their effects can be tracked with various mathematical tools, so if such research is done it offers some possibility of drawing unambiguous conclusions. I suspect that the results of the tariff s--tbomb being dropped today will be unambiguous. Stagflation was unambiguous in its effects in the early 70s, and economists still reference that period of economic shrinkage, massive unemployment, and inflation. One wonders how often unambiguous effects need to be dropped on people's heads before they start to notice and connect the dots.

I wonder if the World Economic Forum would host expert discussion along the lines of what is described in the OP. https://www.weforum.org/about/institutional-framework/ https://www.weforum.org/stories/2025/02/how-do-trade-tariffs-work/ It sounds like tariffs and trade is one area of economics where there is some convergence on the conclusion that the TP administration tactics are capricious and counterproductive, given the global nature of manufacturing supply chains, investor needs for stable regulatory conditions, and the withering effects of stagflation.

Yeah, seems to be a popular one in the UK. I've heard UK members at another science forum referring to it as such. To me it looks like a cross between a dumpster and a Transformer. ________________________________________ In honor of the day.... https://theonion.com/pete-hegseth-calls-for-steep-cuts-to-number-of-steps-in-aa-recovery/

Thanks, I was able to Elongate my focal distance.

In this time zone, anyway. I can't speak for Samoa or Tonga.

In related news, Roget's Thesaurus now tops the national bestseller list, as a million civil servants scramble to find synonyms not on a banned language list. "Aqueous potables!" shouts a USDA worker, receiving cheers and applause from nearby cubicles.

(AP News) The president has today directed the state of Texas to rename itself Lonestar, to rid itself of a false narrative involving Latino invaders from the remote past and properly reflect the great work of its White European settlers in bringing civilization to a savage land.

Will these new bats be banned, as the controversy grows, or will everyone in MLB soon be swinging them? At some point, further testing by a panel of engineers may be needed, lest fans are driven batty. https://www.npr.org/2025/03/30/nx-s1-5344998/new-bats-yankees-record-breaking-home-runs According to former infielder Kevin Smith, the Yankees' new bats were designed by Aaron Leanhardt, a former physicist turned baseball coach. Leanhardt, an ex-physics professor who earned his doctorate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has been working for the team for over six years. He used to be the Yankees assistant hitting coach, before becoming an analyst. He recently moved to work for rival team the Miami Marlins. Smith posted on X that the "torpedo" barrel bat was designed to decrease misses by hitters. The bat's barrel is thicker and wider than a standard baseball bat. The goal is to bring more wood and mass to the part of the bat that makes most contact with the ball, according to Smith, so that the hitter is less likely to miss.

It's a dictators club thing - Pootie and Orbie have been trying to boost the fertility rate (both nations headed for inverted pyramid demogs like many developed countries). Can't have the pure native blood tainted any further with immigrants from the (shudder) global south.

We will see the same or greater spread in Gaza, I would guess, between warfare as a proximate cause and war-created social/infrastructure disruption causing excess deaths. To me the ED numbers are the real ones, which address human suffering and years of life stolen from a society. If I'm a civilian in Gaza, get a sharp piece of rebar in my foot while walking, and die of septicemia because no (still standing) hospital can take me, that's still the toll of warfare against civilians and the Likud Party is still culpable. And to bring this back to the OP, I would suggest that reducing the ED tolls and civilian casualties generally is one good step towards reducing bitterness and vengefulness in the future, between adversarial groups. Killing civilians, ethnic cleansing through ED, is the way to perpetuate aggression for decades.

I've heard a half dozen hurdles that relativistic distort the synchrony between receiver and sat clocks - these seem to collectively make perfection difficult. Sat velocity in different orbits and altitude variations going over rumpled terrain. Reduced G field (opposing the v effect) GPS users are located at varying distances from geocenter (Denver v Miami) Sagnac - difference in Earth rotation speed at different ground locations with different latitude, hence inconsistency in their agreements Sat orbits somewhat elliptical so there are v variations along path, and also passing through changes in G, say over the equatorial bulge or Himalayan lump, etc (and don't forget, speaking of Denver, those folks are zapped with more muons, also thanks to relativistic TD) Could all this be behind the "messy" that Gregor Samsa is bugging us about?

I read that comment, from @npts2020, as being sarcastic. Tis what happens when you are walloped with a blitzkrieg of executive orders and other actions. Flooding the zone is a phrase we're hearing a lot. Everyone scrambling to figure out which things to respond to first, which are legally actionable and would have the most traction in a court, and which could be countered with a bipartisan coalition, e.g. bring GOP reps from districts that are reeling from funding cuts together with Dems.

Long spear pierces presidential head, no serious injury or effect on cognitive skills.

This was funny (from The Hill, today): The temperature was minus 3 degrees Fahrenheit when the U.S. officials landed at Pituffik, and Vance expressed surprise at the chill when joining U.S. Space Force Guardians for lunch. “It’s cold as s‑‑‑ here. Nobody told me,” he said. ------------------------------------------------------------ I mean, there you are, around 77° N, on the north end of Greenland, and you're not expecting it to be pretty cold?

This sort of breathless praise, all through the review, suggests the poster is more focused on promoting the book than discussing it. Also, the book is not available in English (as I discovered checking Abebooks and Amazon), nor do I find any mention of it in philosophy journals or really anywhere that a second opinion could be heard.

Yeah, if you're a dedicated career public servant who accidentally sent unclassified info and then owned up to it, under the bus you go; if you're the Secy of Defense texting secret war plans, any criticism is a "witch hunt." FYDT

The Smithsonian is Independently run, not a federal agency, but that doesn't seem to be stopping the barbarians at its gates. From today's Post... The “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” order directs Vice President JD Vance to eliminate what he finds “improper” from the Smithsonian Institution, including its museums, education and research centers, and the National Zoo. The White House fact sheet describing the order said it will focus on removing “anti-American ideology.” The institution, the official keeper of the American story, has operated independently as a public-private partnership created by an act of Congress in 1846. The order is an unprecedented act to edit an institution that has been expanding over many decades to include a wider, richer and more diverse telling of the nation’s history.

What evidence is that? Karma is built on a couple premises - one, that we reincarnate, and two, that the universe has some means of recording all our actions, assessing their causal impact and calibrating our future life experiences in accordance with them to impart justice and moral growth. If you have evidence of this, I'm prepared to be gobsmacked.

delete

If TP and minions are smart enough to bring that off, then are they smart enough to understand that constantly banging the drum about election integrity and reducing voter fraud will then make it seem like they are incompetent in their efforts to "fix" our voting system. (and it could bring down a bunch of angry oligarchs on the TP admin, given how many of them lavish 100s of millions of dollars on those elections - whatever their political agenda, those folks don't like to see their investments go for nothing - they may want the incumbent in a particular race, but that doesn't mean they will want all present officeholders frozen in place) Also, if TP could somehow shut down the 2026 midterms, it would leave his party stuck with razor-thin majorities and the possibility of bipartisan coalitions that could torpedo Project 2025. This latter possiblity is already rearing its head in the House.

HBB, could you please give our tired eyes a rest and use punctuation and upper case, to avoid the unreadable mess of one continuous run-on sentence?

For sure, there's malice aplenty in the whole MAGA movement - I did not mean to imply otherwise. More saying that great incompetence can somewhat blunt the edge of malicious intent. People who can't pour piss out of a boot when the instructions are printed on the soles are a little less scary than your standard fascist. If what I'm seeing is feigned, then this MAGA brigade are the finest actors of their generation.