28 Comments
User's avatar
Scott Spitze's avatar

Just FYI, Justin Wolfers is an Economist and his tweet about the clarity of the Tariff process is 100% sarcasm.

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Cartoons Hate Her's avatar

Ohh lol I wasn’t familiar

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Scott Spitze's avatar

I have alerted @jeremiahjohnson. The YIMBY-police are on their way right now to revoke you of your chief shill title. Sorry, I don't make the rules.

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Jawn_Quijote's avatar

this is why you will never be the top neoliberal shill

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Frog H Emoth's avatar

Behold! He is Australian, so speaking up directly against Trump risks deportation as an enemy of the state.

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Kyle White's avatar

The Taliban government of Afghanistan has actually paid influencers, usually right wing male influences, to visit the country and say how great and "misunderstood" the Taliban is.

I find it quite fascinating how these influencers build this conspiratorial mindset of "the west is lying to you" while they're literally being paid to shill for a horrific totalitarian regime.

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KH's avatar
Apr 13Edited

Also what’s so GenZ is that instead of “we just destroy the bigass Buddha statue and we don’t give af what westerners say” they are like “why everyone hates me😭😭😭”

In fact, I feel like the undertone of modern right is “I wanna be selfish and hurt someone AND everyone MUST be attracted to me and respect my intelligence for this manly dominance”

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Bruno S.'s avatar

Plus if they were born 20 years earlier they would’ve swallowed the war on terror talking points whole and never even thought of doing something like this.

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KH's avatar

yea in fact, i guess in fact they have a lot in common including like trans hate, girlbossig hate etc

and hey, you can claim that Jesus is a prophet in Muslim lol

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KetamineCal's avatar

Not surprising that nihilistic liars assume everyone else is also lying and transactional. I suspect the only question they had was the price.

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VJV's avatar

That living room tweet gave me an idea to start an account that just posts pictures of random shit from the 1990s with the phrase “remember what they took from you.” Boxy TV. Public transit token. Payphone. Stack of hard disks. Pleated men’s dress pants. Those little tickets they gave you that list the exits on the New Jersey Turnpike.

Here’s some people walking down the street in 1997. Here’s a guy sitting on a bench drinking coffee. Remember what they took from you! Nobody can do these things anymore in the age of the Late Capitalist Woke Mind Virus!

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Toiler On the Sea's avatar

Actually, re-watching shows from the 80s, I do get mad nostalgic for 80s interior decorating . .all of the light blue carpet, the cozy kitchens with the old school ovens/appliances (fuc^ stainless steel! 😆), the pictures on the walls by the staircase.

But liberalism didn't kill them; Boomer home renovations in the aughts did.

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Samantha Stevens's avatar

we Catholics celebrate Cheddar

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David Roberts's avatar

How is Black Mirror this season? I recall not loving the last season.

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Mr. Cartoons Hate Her's avatar

Two eps in! Definitely better than last season

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KH's avatar

And what's so funny about this "Art of Deal" take is that book is famously ghost written lol

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Daniel's avatar

The problem with France is the presence of French people. A absence of French people would be the best thing to ever happen to that country.

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Mr Black Fox's avatar

Love my Frenchies! They have that rude glamour 🇫🇷😎

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Rovinion's avatar

The fact that Trump keeps doing this again and again makes me think he's only doing it so he and his buddies can buy stocks at a discount.

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Stuart Armstrong's avatar

I'm missing some context - what does the blank mirror response mean or alude to?

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Eöl's avatar

Man but I do love me a good neoliberal shill. That tweet is one of the best things I've ever read.

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Jeff E's avatar

"because at 7, it's marginal right?" another iconic Trump line we need to never forget.

Literally telling a child there is no Santa like the villain in a Christmas movie.

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I was never given a name's avatar

Maybe I don't really understand Black Mirror, but it seems to me that the horror really comes from the people, not the technology.

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Jeff K's avatar

I have no idea if that British chap was serious or doing a bit and since I don't have twitter I don't think Elon will let me see his full timeline. But I feel like there's a Mr. Bean reboot movie waiting to happen where he gets captured by the Taliban.

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wjp's avatar
Apr 13Edited

I have no "real" opinions about tariffs. All I know I hear in line at Walmart. I know lots of people of all ilks and ages and none of them are "experts" on tariffs, and I'm not even certain sure I'd trust them and their confident proclamations. But that doesn't appear to stop anyone, including CHH, from having firm and certain opinions about them, or is it a matter of who is imposing them. I can't be sure. So, I wade carefully into the abyss.

What I'm am fairly certain about is small. Whatever I or anyone thinks about tariffs, I know that they are globally very popular, imposed for likely a host of reasons, by the rich and poor. I'm fairly certain that DJT is not a trained economist, even if he may be friends with those who are. What I think he likes about tariffs is this odd capability that we have gifted the executive: the unilateral ability to impose (or threaten) tariffs in whatever manner and exquisite detail that he so desires. No justification is required. No tiresome and clumsy judicial or legislature review process.

What is more, he can do this at the turn of a dime. What he threatens one day, can the next be withdrawn. What he imposes one day, gone the next. The very threat of one, or a delayed imposition, has effect. The one thing that tariffs most assuredly do is impose some kind of hardship on some foreign country or foreign exporter. That they may simultaneously impose harm on us is also likely, even if we might hope that in a promised future it will improve matters. But this is only one purpose to which tariffs might be employed.

If we want our child to clean up their room or to do their homework, we have in hand carrots or sticks. In the former, we reward, in the latter, we punish. Tariffs can accomplish both. Carrots can withdraw or lessen tariffs; sticks can impose them. As such, tariffs are a means of gaining some desired international end. How often have we heard that we could essentially compel Netanyahu to end his war on Gaza by leveraging his very dependence upon our military aid? It's not a tariff, but it employs the identical tactic of carrots and sticks. This suggests that we are "all" in favor of carrots and sticks, even if we squabble over which ones.

So, whether we approve or disapprove of Trump's application of this particular executive power, we can appreciate his, or anyone's, delight at it being at his or her disposal. Whether he will, as many suggest, employ it unwisely or ruinously is still not clear. The danger is, however, always at hand when we bestow power on anyone or any institution. Our Constitution both worries about this and attempts to address it. We tend to want a powerful government when there is some crisis that we want addressed now, even while it is that very same governmental power that can wreck havoc. Such power can be employed for both good and evil. And this is the case for every government. It is why our government is slow, and why crises and exceptions must be rare. It is also why we must trust non-governmental institutions, ones composed of our neighbors, families, and friends, even, I dare say, our economies, what everyone distrusts.

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Betsy's avatar

*random living rooms in single wide trailers LOL (I recognize that ceiling from my own 70s/80s impoverished childhood)

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Noah's avatar

Just FYI arsenal fans have been called "Gooners" or "Gunners" long before the term gooner was adopted by neets.

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Bryan Ng's avatar

Gunners I knew but Gooners I did not

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