#11

A Sedevacantist! Well, you are quite the little Fascista, aren't you? Explains a lot.

#15

What if? I'll play that game.

What if he isn't?

From what proof you've seen, which is more plausible?

Where's today's Barry Goldwater when we need him?

Diabetes and toxic environment of the mother are the causes of autism. Nature is trying to off us. We're a virus with shoes.

Zebra

Man, been awhile since I've heard them. Used to call them Almost Zep.

On topic: Just prove he's a convicted MS-13 gang member. That's all we're asking.

#5

Sure. When their approval ratings and donations drop to the floor.

The White House responds:

"We plan to seek immediate appellate relief. The President is 100% committed to ensuring that terrorists and criminal illegal migrants are no longer a threat to Americans and their communities across the country."

Boasberg's ruling is scathing:

"Taken together, this behavior indicates "deliberate or reckless disregard" of the Order ... leading this Court to conclude that there is probable cause that Defendants willfully disobeyed a binding judicial decree."

BREAKING " In an extraordinary ruling, federal judge James Boasberg finds probable cause to hold the Trump administration in "criminal contempt" for ignoring his order to turn around deportation planes transporting Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act.

#12

Correct. It's easier to go after easy money than what is going to cost money. I'll leave it at that. The situation is reversable. Everything political is. I'm not going to go down a semantical supposition with you.

On topic, the Trump administration had four years to build up precedence. They came back with a plan fully loaded with legal bullets. That why the rollout has been so fast. Sort of a blitzkrieg on the constitution. The Trump Wehrmacht is in full ramming speed.

#5

As much as it pains me, he's right. In San Francisco and Los Angeles, city government will go after taxpayers and let the homeless get away with breaking laws.

The citizen children of Uvalde were massacred, and the police didn't do anything but stand around and talk, the kids Constitutional rights didn't matter. If Trump goes through with sending the "home grown" to prison in El Salvador and no one stops him, then the Congress and the courts are irrelevant. The Constitution, which was created to protect landowners in the first place, is really just a godam piece of paper. We almost made it to 250. It was a good run. The experiment is over. It was a failure.

------- Nancy was a legend. Turned Ronnie into a righty.

69!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well, he better capitulate fast!

China has just shown it can defeat America in a trade war. Donald Trump has almost certainly started a battle he cannot win

The exclusions, published late Friday by US Customs and Border Protection, narrow the scope of the levies by excluding the products from Trump's 125% China tariff and his baseline 10% global tariff on nearly all other countries.

The exclusions would apply to smartphones, laptop computers, hard drives and computer processors and memory chips. Those popular consumer electronics items generally aren't made in the US. Setting up domestic manufacturing would take years.

A tax funded wealth shift to him and his "investigators"

A week after Donald Trump shocked the world by imposing punitive tariffs on America's trading partners, he shocked it again today when he announced a ninety-day pause on the biggest duties against most countries"notably excepting China, among a handful of others"while leaving in place a ten-per-cent across-the-board levy.

The Administration tried to spin the midday move, which sent stocks rocketing upward, as an example of the President's dealmaking prowess, claiming that the tariffs had inspired new trade deals with many countries. But the reality seems to be that Trump caved in the face of alarming disruptions in the huge market for U.S. Treasury bonds, which the American government uses to finance itself.

Trump's announcement of his "reciprocal" tariffs last week, which weren't reciprocal at all, sent the markets into turmoil. The White House seemed to have steeled itself against an adverse reaction in the stock market, even as, by Wednesday morning, the total market had fallen by about twenty per cent from its high. What really spooked financial commentators"and Trump himself, as he conceded later on Wednesday, speaking outside the White House"was the turbulence in the bond market, where yields spiked on Monday and Tuesday.

A big sudden rise in bond yields equates to a big sudden fall in bond prices"which can be a sign that some financial institutions are in distress and being forced to sell at any price. On Tuesday, reports emerged that the source of this trouble might be the "basis trade," a process in which hedge funds borrow gobs of money to profit on the tiny differences in price between Treasuries and derivative securities, contracts designed to replicate the performance of these same Treasuries. When bond prices move unexpectedly, basis traders can face big losses and be subjected to margin calls, forcing them to raise cash by selling some of their portfolio. And that selloff, in turn, forces prices even lower.

It's not entirely clear that this was the actual cause of the rising yields in the bond market, but by this morning Lawrence Summers, a former Treasury Secretary, warned online that "developments in the last 24 hours suggest we may be headed for serious financial crisis wholly induced by US government tariff policy." The current Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, himself a former hedge-fund manager, initially shrugged off the threat. But by Wednesday afternoon Bessent was spinning the capitulation as best he could. Referring to Trump, he said, "It took great courage for him to stay the course."

If that was meant as an inside joke, Bessent didn't let on. More likely, he was trying to assuage his boss's bruised ego. In the end, the markets forced Trump to do something sensible"announce a timeout"but a lot of damage has already been done to 401(k) plans, business planning, consumer confidence, and faith in the U.S. government. None of these things will be repaired easily or quickly.

John Cassidy
Cassidy has been a New Yorker staff writer since 1995, and writes The Financial Page, a column about economics and politics.

Trump pump and dump

69!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Elect a clown get elephant ---- on your head

We're #1 at #2

Trump has just facilitated the biggest pump and dump transfer of wealth, to loyal MAGA patriots, in history.