changegonnacome

perhaps - though what I would say is that Fox news news...not opinion remains pretty good and fairly balanced albeit right leaning.....CNN news remains pretty good too albeit the line is blurrier cause they dont quite divide up the opinion journalists from the news journalists there.....what gets printed on cnn.com is kinda the news news filter they have.....on their evening shows they want to pretend the 'hosts' dont have liberal opinions but these are clearly East Coast liberal elites......to be fair to CNN most of their shows now when they move to a panel format come with conservative voices attached calling out liberal socialist bulshit....Scott Jennings, Shermichael Singleton do an excellent job....I more regularly hear the conservative viewpoint on CNN than I do the liberal viewpoint on Fox evening shows......the opinion shows on Fox tend to be echo chambers....a little less so on CNN albeit the conservative voice is in the minority with little 'help' from the host

In the modern era, one can argue, that the accuracy and fidelity of news reporting has an inverse correlation with viewership figures.....more lies/BS = more clicks/views......less lies and BS and your viewership is going to drop. Put another way a 'news' channel that shovels unsubstantiated bullshit to the public or maybe one 'side' of the political divide with no newsroom and close to zero cost 'news' infrastructure can expect increasing or very high ratings.....while a news organization attempting to operate down the middle-ish with standard ethics around story substantiation & story verification/sources with a hugely expensive newsroom overheads & boots on the ground....can perversely expect lower viewership. I think the news 'business' is broken........if you care about accuracy, fidelity, standards etc. It's a topsy turvey world we're headed into with synthetic AI generated news & amplification about to ramp up......suspect we are in a tough period for 'professional' news orgs......suspect things need to get worse, in terms of mis-information and its costs to soceity, before 'real' news gets valued properly again in the marketplace.

A JFK conspiracy theorist dies and meets God. "Any questions?" God asks. "Who really shot JFK?" the man blurts. God replies, "Lee Harvey Oswald. Acted entirely alone." The theorist blinks, nods slowly, and mutters: "...Damn. This goes way deeper than I thought." An old joke but a good one.!.....funny to watch the conspiracy wing of MAGA turn on MAGA itself.....and to a certain extent we had Trump the conspiracy theory candidate who just loved spreading innuendo and falsehoods as a campaign tool.....funny to watch that stuff come a full 360 back to his own administration. Its something of a preview I suspect to how the MAGA movement ultimately ends......distrust, in-fighting, accusations of treason & various conspiracy theories will implode the coalition.....its only the cult of personality of the Donald that holds this thing together....if/when he's gone it fractures into a zillion pieces.

the leadership of the bureaucracy is at fault....cause they instituted an incentives package that was counter to the best functioning of the bureaucracy.....the competent civil servant did what was best for them and left....the lazy incompetents did what was best for them and stayed....you can see how a voluntary redunacy package in the civil service often leads to extreme diminution of competency........80/20 rule.......20% of the people are doing 80% of the work......what happens when the 20% of workers leave.....the same principle is why corporate death spirals occur surprisingly quickly....the sailors who can swim abandon the ship first......they were responsible for 80% of the output.....and they are gone.......its a very interesting fact of organizations that gets lost in the mix alot......in any corporate downsizing you need to figure out how to keep the top performers or else your screwed....the story of the federal government is probably even more extreme distrubtion of performance to a smaller number of people than even the the 80/20 rule..

When cuts are indiscriminate….competent people don’t wait around to be randomly cut….they take as many did the early retirement gig and go work elsewhere and double up on the salary….i suspect if the Texas report shows some lack of resources or competency….you’ll find the competants took the deal on offer to go work somewhere else. Let’s see, way too early in this particular case to assign DOGE blame….but what I said above is true….competent people don’t wait around with a cloud of uncertainty of whether their department or agency will exist next month….or wether workforce optimization is going to lead to a better work environment…..they simply bounce….and my central thesis is that a good proportion of the MOST competent people in the federal government bounced in H1 2025…and we’ll find out what that results in over time.

Yep....and what would you do as a State that just went through an almost decapitation of its military leadership from external forces with expressed preference for your overthrow?....remembering that you have 60% enriched uranium on-hand, some functioning centrifuges but most certainly the knowledge to build new ones. Which goes to the heart of the matter. See the B-2 bunker busters didn't obliterate Iran's nuclear capability......they fired the starting gun in an all out sprint by Iran to develop a nuclear bomb.....Bibi the old dog knews this, he just needed to set off that race to get what he's always wanted.......and its only in their 100m dash for a nuke can Bibi build the invasion case for whats required...and what he's wanted all along......a ground incursion into Iran and the overthrow of the regime with US support.......thats the Bibi playbook here.....and with no IAEA monitors on the ground...and Mossad's clear intelligence superiority versus anybody else......when Bibi says Iran is two weeks away from a nuclear bomb next time.....we wont be able to tell if he's the boy crying wolf...or if the wolf is here.....its an embarrassment to nuclear non-proliferation that North Korea got a bomb.....it wont be allowed happen again. When I look at it - the final destination here looks almost inevitable. I think Donald may have put a down payment on America’s next ‘forever’ war.

I think you missed my sarcastic tone.......indiscriminate cuts which characterize alot of what DOGE did in the beginning for sure...meant exactly what you say......the most qualified and most competent people left of their own free will.....indeed as a mentor of mine once said to me....... "it isn't the rats that leave a sinking ship..... but rather the sailors who can swim"........ when Elon started taking a chainsaw to various parts of the federal bureaucracy and injecting uncertainty into various departments......I can assure you it was the sailors who could swim who left.......the folks that remain arent as competent and arent as experienced and by simply remaining have shown a hell of a lot of less initiative than the colleagues that left........I suspect we'll see the results of this diminution of state capacity/competency in the coming years.....a post-mortum will be done on this Texas tragedy....and we'll find out what happened.

Expect the chant to 'finish off' Iran's nuclear program to grow louder and louder as Trump's Presidency continues......and to be clear.....finish off may sound like more aerial bombs to the lay person....but in reality to truly 'finish off' Iran's program you require regime change....and regime change cannot be achieved via aerial bombardment. A commentator made a great point recently - that with the IAEA shut out of Iran and unlikely to get back in anytime soon...the world is flying blind re:Iran nuclear program capability.....into that blind spot Bibi can inflate the Iranian nuclear to whatever degree he wishes to fulfill his ultimate aim of regime change in Tehran and its very hard for an American administration to counter those claims.....Bibi has 3.5yrs left to fulfill his life's work...in Donald vs. Bibi bake-off....I'd bet on Bibi all day long.

You dont miss your useless lazy overpaid tenured waste fraud and abuse bureaucrats till something tragic happens....like 20 kids from Camp Mystic - then you realize that maybe there was a point to it all.......lets wait for all the details to come out.......but early indications even from Musk's own truth maximizing AI agent Grok are pointing that way -

I think that particular analysis is correct in a kinda of macro sense - but it underplays the disruption and indeed destruction your going to see in US manufacturers and SME's for whom China or steel or other low cost producer countries inputs we're an essential part of their business......a reorganization of what makes sense in the new Trump tariff world will be bumpy for many US firms.....I think manufacturing employment in the US for example will go down in the short term before it may go up later on.

Agree - anecdotally the tariff prices are only starting to be fully felt in supply chains and are making their way to store shelves starting about now......feels to me like were in the midst of slow down at the moment but lets see what the data says in a while.....having said all that I think things re-accelerate afterwards if the scaled down tariff situation emerges as is expected now.

I'd say a good guess would be whatever countries haven't done a golf course or hotel JV deal yet with Eric Trump!

Ha ha just calling it like it is.....not many Presidents with as thin a majority could do what Trump did in the House with the BBB.....he dominates the GOP in a way that no President has since Reagan. He is a master in the leverage of power. Happy 4th weekend.

I was skeptical - but he did it, it’s a massive achievement in the exercise of power and influence that he herded and whipped a tiny majority across both houses to deliver a consequential piece of legislation….I disagree with much of its contents and intent but that’s a different topic ….but agree @cubsfan it’s a huge win and political achievement for Trump. Hats off to him.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2025-07-02/donald-trump-net-worth-620-million-of-crypto-wealth-reshapes-fortune?sref=7zqHEcxJ Trump used to be a real estate developer > then he became a TV personality & a brand > then he became President > after that he became a stock promoter > then he became a crypto grifter > then he became President again......predominately now by net worth he's a seller of various investment opportunities (& cell phone plans)......as if Jordan Belfort became President of the United States but maintained, in plain sight, his boiler room operation in Long Island. Say what you will about Donald Trump - I care little for him as a human being - but he is a remarkable financial cockroach.

I think that's a very legitimate position......the alternatives are/were poor, very poor and I acknowledge that.....however the 'no alternative' position is a form of apathy which perpetuates poor candidates, poor governance over time.....you've got to call Trump out for his bullshit even with the context that the alternative to Trump in 2024 was poor.

From which we can infer that you agree Trump is involved in shady financial dealings too. Whataboutism....in my book and many others.....is a concession to the central thesis being put forward....."Trump is engaged in shady dealings"....MAGA's response "well what about Hunter & the Biden they were too"

Well lets see - we'll start getting data on the Trump economy soon enough....and we can compare it to the Biden economy........good thing is seen as Trump has decided to keep the outrageous Biden fiscal debt levels in place.....its more of a like for like comparison where MAGA can't claim that Donald shrunk the deficit and so he shouldn't be judged against Biden 'juiced up' economy. Anyway my guess Biden's H1 2024 economy is gonna beat the crap out of Trump's H1 2025 economy....but you know H2 2025 could catch things up....in Donald's defense he decide to crack a few eggs to make an omelette early in his term so H1 might be understandably weak given all the policy volatility....and i guess if your on Team MAGA H2 is when the BBB gets done and Liberation Day work gets completed and all the fruits of Donald labor will come to fruition. Genuinely hope Donald turns out to be right on all this stuff and we take off from here.

That's true - but only cause companies stockpiled a bunch of stuff in advance of tariffs.....effectively beginning about this month we will start to see the true tariff effects on spot pricing....so too early Cubs for a victory lap on this particular Trump policy.....open question to see how it all flows through to Walmart/Apple etc.....weakening dollar hasnt helped thats for sure...one of Bessent's central tariff thesis was the currency picking up some slack which clearly hasn't worked out.

And American business/industry where the inputs come from overseas......whatever the tariff revenue is.....you can take a big chunk of it off due to lower domestic industrial production, employment, profits....Trump/GOP loves dynamic scoring so much when its used to juice the numbers in a positive way....but this is one line item that won't be dynamically scored as you'd have to write it down significantly.

Bessent's secret 3-3-3 plan........is mid-3's inflation.....3% or mid-3's 10yr (via yield curve control).....and in a blue sky scenario 3% real GDP growth.....all while holding nominal discretionary spending down as much as is possible moving forward......do think Bessent, who is a fiscal hawk at heart and somebody who got into politics because he cares about the country....will have a come to jesus moment ala Musk.....when it becomes clear to him that Trump, deep down, couldn't give a rats ass about the fiscal state of the country he'll leave behind in 2029.

The aim of the game here for the current administration - I'm almost certain everytime I hear Bessent speak and then hear Trump talk about the next Fed chair- is to 'fix' the annual fiscal deficit & bring down the debt to GDP ratio is by running the US economy 'hot' from here on out.....inflation up, real rates down (potentially negative).....suspect we're headed for much much lower short term rates and some monetary interventions, if necessary, by the Fed to the yield curve to control 10yr & 30yr auctions.

Ok understood - MAGA files this under "them is jokes".....maybe you're right....its just all his jokes these days seem to be in the genre of joke threats against political, legal, institutional or citizens that disagree or oppose his agenda.......very niche type of humor I guess.....and I'm not sure threat jokes are funny from a guy who actually controls the federal government.

I'd agree....if it weren't that one of the assholes is the President and the other a private citizen.

Reporter - “Are you going to deport Elon Musk?” Trump - “We’ll have to take a look.We might have to put DOGE on Elon. DOGE is the monster that might have to go back and eat Elon. Wouldn’t that be terrible? He gets a lot of subsidies.” So much for free speech in America?!?........I'm sorry Trump lovers out there but this meets the technical definition of authoritarianism...would he follow through, maybe not.....thats not the point though...this most certainly is authoritarianism under the category of suppression of dissent using the apparatus of the State.....threatening a US citizen with de-naturalization and to harm them economically via federal contracts because they DISAGREE with you on policy is simply un-American...... Really would like to hear COBF's MAGA army give me their hot-take @cubsfan etc.....really like to understand if they think this is "cool" and fair game or if I'm being a "crybaby"?