Do you feel like the winds of change are blowing today too?
POSTED BY: 6ixStringJack
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 16:05
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Who Is Paying the Trump Tariffs?
Feb 15, 2026
Until recently the question of who pays tariffs wasn’t controversial among economists. The overwhelming consensus was that under normal circumstances tariffs — taxes on imported goods — are passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices. There are caveats and exceptions to this consensus, but these caveats are well understood and for the most part don’t apply to the tariffs imposed by the Trump 47 administration.
Once tariffs became a centerpiece of Trump’s economic policy, however, views about their impact became politicized, and Trump supporters were obliged to echo his claim that foreigners, not U.S. consumers, bear the tariff burden. There was a slightly comical demonstration of this politicization during a recent House Financial Services Committee hearing, when Scott Bessent was asked whether, before joining the Trump administration, he had sent a letter to hedge fund investors declaring that “tariffs are inflationary.” At first, Bessent denied having written that. Confronted with proof that he had, he declared that he had been mistaken.
But who is, in fact, paying the Trump tariffs? Two reports released last week — the Congressional Budget Office’s latest report on the budget and economic outlook, and a study released by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York — both concluded that the tariffs are overwhelmingly being borne by U.S. households and firms. But Friday’s report on consumer prices showed fairly low inflation, rather than a big price spike from tariffs.
So are Trump officials right? Are studies concluding that Americans, not foreigners, are paying the tariffs wrong?
No and no. The evidence that foreigners aren’t paying the tariffs, which means that Americans are, is rock-solid. And the seemingly mild impact on measured inflation (the qualifier “measured” is important) isn’t a mystery once you do the math. Conventional economic analysis says that the tariffs should have pushed consumer prices around 1 percent higher than they would otherwise have been. Parsing the data to isolate the tariffs’ effect suggests that they have in fact raised prices by something close to that amount.
More at https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/who-is-paying-the-trump-tariffs
Did Trump tariffs increase manufacturing jobs or move manufacturing back to the US?
No, and no, so you know.
https://www.google.com/search?q=did+trump+tariffs+increase+manufacturi
ng+jobs+or+move+manufacturing+back+to+the+US
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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1) How much did Trump tariffs cost families?
Trump's tariffs are estimated to cost the average U.S. household approximately $1,300 in 2026, rising from an estimated $1,000 in 2025. These tariffs function as a regressive tax, placing a higher relative burden on lower and middle-income families. Other estimates, depending on the scope of the tariffs, have suggested higher costs ranging up to $3,800 to $4,600.
Key details on the impact of these tariffs include:
• Projected 2026 Costs: The Tax Foundation estimates that if current policies continue, the average household will pay $1,300 in 2026.
• Impact on Goods: Tariffs are driving up costs on everyday items, including electronics (up 11%), clothing (up 7.5%), and vehicles (up >6%).
• Consumer Burden: Studies indicate that U.S. consumers and importers bear 96% of the cost of these tariffs, rather than foreign exporters.
https://www.google.com/search?q=How+much+did+Trump+tariffs+cost+famili
es
2) Did Trump tariffs increase manufacturing jobs or move manufacturing back to the US?
No, and no.
https://www.google.com/search?q=did+trump+tariffs+increase+manufacturi
ng+jobs+or+move+manufacturing+back+to+the+US
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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(Why would Trumptards hate the Pope? Trumptards are Unchristians masquerading as Christians.)
Steve Bannon courted Epstein in his efforts to ‘take down’ Pope Francis
By Christopher Lamb | Feb 14, 2026
Steve Bannon, a former White House adviser to US President Donald Trump, discussed opposition strategies with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein against Pope Francis, with Bannon saying he hoped to “take down” the pontiff, according to newly released files from the US Department of Justice.
Messages sent between the pair in 2019, released in the massive document dump last month, reveal Bannon courted the late financier in his attempts to undermine the former pontiff after leaving the first Trump administration.
Bannon had been highly critical of Francis whom he saw as an opponent to his “sovereigntist” vision, a brand of nationalist populism which swept through Europe in 2018 and 2019. The released documents from the DOJ appear to show that Epstein had been helping Bannon to build his movement.
“Will take down (Pope) Francis,” Bannon wrote to Epstein in June 2019. “The Clintons, Xi, Francis, EU – come on brother.”
Pope Francis was a significant obstacle to Bannon’s brand of nationalist populism. In 2018, the former Trump aide described Francis to The Spectator as “beneath contempt,” accusing him of siding with “globalist elites” and, according to “SourceMaterial,” urged Matteo Salvini, now Italy’s deputy prime minister, to “attack” the pontiff. For his part, Salvini has used Christian iconography and language when pursuing his anti-immigrant agenda.
Rome and the Vatican have been important for Bannon. He set up a Rome bureau when he ran Breitbart News and has been involved in trying to establish a political training “gladiator school” to defend Judaeo-Christian values not far from the Eternal City.
Francis, meanwhile, was a counterweight to the Trumpian worldview, strongly critiquing nationalism and making advocacy for migrants a hallmark of his pontificate.
The recently released DOJ files reveal Bannon messaged Epstein on several occasions in his efforts to undermine the late pope. . . .
Rev. Antonio Spadaro, a Vatican official who collaborated closely with Pope Francis, told CNN Bannon’s messages show a desire to fuse “spiritual authority with political power for strategic ends.”
The late pope, Spadaro explains, resisted such a link: “What those messages reveal is not merely hostility toward a pontiff, but a deeper attempt to instrumentalize faith as a weapon – precisely the temptation he sought to disarm.”
More at https://www.cnn.com/2026/02/14/world/bannon-epstein-take-down-pope-fra
ncis-latam-intl
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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In actuality, you are the machine gun, Second.
The Democratic Party, Hollywood and the Legacy Media are the monkey with the gun.
Look at you proudly showing off that article last night all over the boards about some white college "educated" lesbian liberal showing off her guns and telling everyone else to get armed. (She's actually not special. There are dozens if not hundreds of her on Tik Tok making those very same videos as we speak).
A lifetime of screaming for gun control and taking away people's guns just cast right off to the side without thought because this is what you want now. This makes you extremely happy. You want more of this. You want to see more of this every single day because you feed off of it and use it to continue justifying the dark path you went down and will likely never be able to find your way back out of.
But you are too much of a coward to do anything about it. Most of the time that is displayed in your own writing. Rarely have you ever gotten angry enough to say that you, specifically, were going to do something. You speak your assassination threats in hypotheticals, or you insist that other people should carry them out and even get angry when they don't do it for you. I've got about half a dozen archives of you being actively hostile to Joe Biden* and members of your party for being cowards and not executing our President for you.
All you want to do is be angry and miserable every single day for the rest of your life, and it has become your life's mission to make sure you can pull others down with you and be just as miserable and awful as you are.
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Be Nice. Don't be a dick.
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Presidential democracy was a mistake
President’s Day is a bad holiday — and a symptom of a bad system.
Matthew Yglesias
Feb 16, 2026
https://www.slowboring.com/p/presidential-democracy-was-a-mistake
Today is Presidents Day, almost certainly America’s fakest holiday, and yet a bona fide day off, which means today’s post will be a bit shorter than usual.
Not only is Presidents Day dumb, the reason for its existence — a disagreement about whether we should observe Washington’s birthday or Lincoln’s birthday or both — is dumb.
But to go even bigger and bolder, the entire presidential system of government that’s in use in the United States is, unfortunately, a pretty bad idea.
I was reminded of this most recently when writing about the Olympics and the political wrangling surrounding it. Some of this wrangling stems from progressives being fussy and irrational, and some of it stems from Trump and his allies being assholes.
But part of the problem is that the American constitutional system fuses the concept of a head of state who symbolizes the nation and the concept of a head of government who leads a political party and engages in partisan political disputes.
In a parliamentary system, the job of representing the country at an opening ceremony would be done by a monarch or a disempowered president. Italy is a republic, but it’s a parliamentary republic, and the Olympic Games are hosted not by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni (a partisan figure who wields massive power in Italian politics) but by President Sergio Mattarella (a largely symbolic elder statesman whose job is mostly to do this kind of ceremonial stuff).
The fusion of these roles has been in the spotlight during both Donald Trump presidencies because he is so bad at performing the dignified non-partisan aspects of the job.
But it’s a perennial tension in American politics.
We lack someone who plays a national role rather than a partisan one. Presidents are always trying to leverage their head of state status to advance partisan agendas, and rank-and-file supporters of the opposition party are always feeling marginalized or disrespected. The separation of the symbolic and practical roles is a better arrangement.
A much less fake holiday, Independence Day, is coming up this summer, and it’s not just any Independence Day — it’s the 250th anniversary of the country.
I’m a patriotic American. I love July 4 observances, and it’s fun to make a big deal of the 250th. But having all the festivities and pageantry led by Trump stinks. And while of course I personally would be happier with a Kamala Harris semiquincentennial, she would be embroiled in her own set of contentious policy arguments and a whole different set of people would be annoyed by that.
Anti-monarchism is as American as apple pie and there’s a reason that, in the context of American political culture, “No Kings” was a good slogan for making a point about the lawless and capricious and arbitrary way that Trump has wielded power.
But many other countries addressed the capriciousness of royal power by sharply limiting those powers, while retaining the pomp and circumstance. The solution we hit upon was visionary and world-changing, but in many respects less satisfactory than either constitutional monarchy or the modern European vision of a parliamentary republic with a disempowered president.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Donald Trump and George Washington Have Some Surprising Traits in Common. There’s One Gigantic Difference.
Washington desperately wanted to be a great man, and to be remembered as such.
George Washington Had One Key Presidential Trait, Selflessness. Guess Who’s Missing It?
Washington and Donald Trump share an obsession with legacy. They’ve expressed it … differently.
By Joel Achenbach | Feb 16, 2026
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2026/02/donald-trump-george-washin
gton-presidents-day-history.html
We’re coming up on a big national anniversary, the (defiantly unspellable) semiquincentennial. To get in the spirit of things, I’ve been curled up with books about the founders, particularly George Washington, someone I became acquainted with when I wrote a book about him many years ago. But meanwhile, our current president has been honking away in the distance—a man difficult to abide and impossible to ignore.
Despite the glaring differences between Washington and Donald Trump in character, judgment, and historical significance, there are some interesting similarities. Born rich. Aggressive acquirers of real estate. Big-house guys. Thin-skinned, image-conscious. Extremely nationalistic: Trump’s message is Make America Great Again. Washington’s was … Make America.
So why will history judge them as polar opposites? In part because Washington readily and repeatedly gave up power. He did so conspicuously at the end of the War of Independence, then again after eight years as president. He lived in an era in which selflessness was considered one of the core virtues of a great leader, and at crucial moments in our history, he behaved accordingly.
Whereas Trump … well, he’s no George Washington. And he tells us so! He is instinctively royalist and brazenly self-aggrandizing. He repeatedly claims powers he does not legally have. He promiscuously puts his name on everything this side of the moon, and I probably shouldn’t even mention that particular satellite, lest he get ideas.
His decision to appoint himself as chair of the Kennedy Center was outrageous enough, but then he put his name on the place. He also put his name on the United States Institute of Peace, just a few blocks away. His face is all over D.C. now, on huge banners hanging from government buildings. He wants Dulles International Airport named for him, and also Penn Station. His open campaigning for the Nobel Peace Prize was plenty dismaying, but then he threw one of his tantrums when he didn’t get laureated and, in an official letter to the leader of Norway, demanded Greenland in compensation. At this point, we know that Trump is going to be Trump, and if anything, he leans into the narcissism, becoming Trumpier by the day. Trump has learned that his most flamboyantly selfish behavior will likely be ignored or forgiven by his base and political allies. There is no one willing to tell him that You Can’t Do This.
Our nation was founded upon the principle that power derives from the people. We don’t like despots and dictators and monarchs or anything smacking of royalty. That was why the founders were very careful when they crafted the Constitution: The president is just one branch of government, is constrained by checks and balances, and can always be given the heave-ho.
Which takes us back to George Washington. Everyone knew he was going to be the first president—he was right there in the room, presiding, when the founders drew up the Constitution. But they were taking a chance, because no one really knew what a president was. Such a thing didn’t exist anywhere in the world. George Washington had to define the role through his actions.
What modern historians know is that selflessness didn’t come effortlessly to Washington. He had to will it, in tension with his natural, human desires. This is a subtlety of Washington that Americans weren’t taught in elementary school, and I don’t think the A.I. bots have quit
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In actuality, you are the machine gun, Second.
The Democratic Party, Hollywood and the Legacy Media are the monkey with the gun.
Look at you proudly showing off that article last night all over the boards about some white college "educated" lesbian liberal showing off her guns and telling everyone else to get armed. (She's actually not special. There are dozens if not hundreds of her on Tik Tok making those very same videos as we speak).
A lifetime of screaming for gun control and taking away people's guns just cast right off to the side without thought because this is what you want now. This makes you extremely happy. You want more of this. You want to see more of this every single day because you feed off of it and use it to continue justifying the dark path you went down and will likely never be able to find your way back out of.
But you are too much of a coward to do anything about it. Most of the time that is displayed in your own writing. Rarely have you ever gotten angry enough to say that you, specifically, were going to do something. You speak your assassination threats in hypotheticals, or you insist that other people should carry them out and even get angry when they don't do it for you. I've got about half a dozen archives of you being actively hostile to Joe Biden* and members of your party for being cowards and not executing our President for you.
All you want to do is be angry and miserable every single day for the rest of your life, and it has become your life's mission to make sure you can pull others down with you and be just as miserable and awful as you are.
--------------------------------------------------
Be Nice. Don't be a dick.
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‘South Texas will never be red again’: Home builders warn GOP over Trump’s immigration raids
Politico reports:
Home builders are warning President Donald Trump that his aggressive immigration enforcement efforts are hurting their industry. They’re cautioning that Republican candidates could soon be hurt, too.
Construction executives have held multiple meetings over the last month with the White House and Congress to discuss how immigration busts on job sites and in communities are scaring away employees, making it more expensive to build homes in a market desperate for new supply. Beyond the affordability issue, the executives made an electability argument, raising concerns to GOP leaders that support among Hispanic voters is eroding, particularly in regions that swung to Trump in 2024.
Hill Republicans have held separate meetings with White House officials to share their own electoral concerns.
This story is based on eight interviews with home builders, lawmakers and others familiar with the meetings.
“I told lawmakers straight up: South Texas will never be red again,” said Mario Guerrero, the CEO of the South Texas Builders Association, a Trump voter who traveled to Washington last week.
He urged the administration and lawmakers to ease up on enforcement at construction sites, warning that employees are afraid to go to work.
The construction industry is one of the latest and clearest examples of how the president’s mass deportation agenda continues to clash with his economic goals of bringing down prices and political aims of keeping control of Congress. Even the president’s allies fear disruptions to labor-heavy industries will undermine the gains with Latino voters Republicans have made in recent years, in large part because of Trump’s economic agenda.
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/02/14/south-texas-will-never-be-red
-again-builders-warn-gop-over-trumps-immigration-raids-00781374
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
In actuality, you are the machine gun, Second.
The Democratic Party, Hollywood and the Legacy Media are the monkey with the gun.
Look at you proudly showing off that article last night all over the boards about some white college "educated" lesbian liberal showing off her guns and telling everyone else to get armed. (She's actually not special. There are dozens if not hundreds of her on Tik Tok making those very same videos as we speak).
A lifetime of screaming for gun control and taking away people's guns just cast right off to the side without thought because this is what you want now. This makes you extremely happy. You want more of this. You want to see more of this every single day because you feed off of it and use it to continue justifying the dark path you went down and will likely never be able to find your way back out of.
But you are too much of a coward to do anything about it. Most of the time that is displayed in your own writing. Rarely have you ever gotten angry enough to say that you, specifically, were going to do something. You speak your assassination threats in hypotheticals, or you insist that other people should carry them out and even get angry when they don't do it for you. I've got about half a dozen archives of you being actively hostile to Joe Biden* and members of your party for being cowards and not executing our President for you.
All you want to do is be angry and miserable every single day for the rest of your life, and it has become your life's mission to make sure you can pull others down with you and be just as miserable and awful as you are.
--------------------------------------------------
Be Nice. Don't be a dick.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME