Disagree. 'Data' can be treated as a collective noun (singular) in the same way as 'information'. E.g. 'All the information shows this.' You wouldn't say, 'All the information show this.'
Data scientist here. In my field, "data" is both singular and plural. In fact, that ship has sailed. English, like all living languages, evolves. Using "the data are..." or talking about "a datum" sounds to my ears like Shakespearean English.
In my journalism college days, the word "media" was plural and "medium" was singular. For example, correct: "The media are neglecting election coverage." Incorrect: "The media is neglecting election coverage." What happened? Sloppy proofreaders or ???
Data is the name of a character in one of the Star Trek series. That’s what Paul was referring to. And thus singular. It is also tge plural of datum. Yes.
I'm a software engineer. I'm pretty pedantic (esp. when it comes to "literally"), but I'm not dying with you on this hill. What might be correct in Latin has 0, nada, bupkes, no bearing on English usage.
YESSSS!!! Except for a certain Starfleet commander... (I want to scream every time I hear even very intelligent people treat data as a singular noun...)
Incidentally, speaking of English, if you read a lot of things published in England, you'll find that nouns referring to a group often use a plural; e.g., the jury were not able to come to an agreement (but the jury is in fact, still out as group). Some books on English-language usage make this clear.
Then again, some of them properly describe the distinction between will and shall, which we Amurricans find hard to grasp and pedantic to apply.
1. Is trump an idiot? Yes. Is he being driven by really smart and evil people? Highly likely. They are the ones sweating the details of the cruelest and vilest policies, particularly wrt immigration and the federal workforce, deregulation of the environment, etc. They type up his festering executive orders. They probably manage some of his feed on xitter and remote control his Press Nazi.
Two questions here:
a) who are these people and why don't we out their names? These are not Leonard Leo et al. Nor are they the kabuki idiots who hold cabinet positions (Hegseth, Noem, Gabbard, RFK, ...). They are concrete deep state apparatchiks and we need to know who they are. Just like the press outed the Dunning Kruger doge kids (e.g., "Big Balls" Coristine), we need to know.
b) why don't these smart people rein in trump's idiotic economic policies? The common argument is that the oligarchs can buy stuff (e.g., farmland) for pennies on the dollar when everyone goes bankrupt, but what good will that farmland be if we can't export anything to China due to their tariffs? As a corollary, wouldn't MAGA be far more successful if the economy were doing great? That would give them cover to do all the other racist, nazi evil stuff that they are trying to do, and trump's approval ratings wouldn't be tanking at lightning speed.
So why on Earth would they want to mess with the economy? (In spite of his obvious current state of decline, Carville is still right about "it's the economy, stupid!").
2. Are trump's voters a bunch of cultists? Most definitely. They need a daddy figure, they hate anyone who is not white and Christian, and will find apologies till kingdom come for the putrid ape. Will they ever wake up? I would submit that our best chance is to hit a massive depression very soon, and hopefully before the rule of law is torn to shreds. There are multiple evil competing processes at play in destroying our country, we just need to find the lesser evil and that happens to be a deep depression.
3. What the f. is Congress doing. They could legislate to end this nonsense very quickly. They aren't. This means that GOP senators and representatives are 110% complicit and even more guilty than trump, since they can't plead insanity or any kind of mandate. Nobody really voted for what is happening, and congress critters didn't even go campaigning on "mass deportations" or 'tariffs", which trump did. I guess he's at least making good on that promise.
Marie Antoinette said "let them have two dolls" - try explaining that to your kids and grandchildren, magats.
We know who two of these people are: Stephen Miller and more importantly Russell Vought. Vought and the Heritage Foundation orcs are the people who wrote Project 2025 and the executive orders that Trump began signing as soon as he was sworn in.
Voyght is a Christian nationalist who wants an authoritarian theocracy.
Russell Vought is the voice of trump. To try to understand the reality of what is taking place requires a deep dive. At least back to the 80s. The billionaire class, the tech bros (Thiel, Ackman, Musk, VP J D Vance, etc., etc.), and some members of SCOTUS are all on board. A new power structure, a new world, all their way. Check out J D Vance’s and the tech bros new religious faith, lots of reliable info out there. J D likes to talk about his new faith. Winning the senate vote and the VP appointment was not random! Well planned and on board with Vought’s Project 2025.
Remember PNAC, Project for a New American Century? I believe the Project 2025 folk are pretty much the same people who brought is 9/11, the Iraq war, 20 years in Afghanistan. And now they are bringing us a sick, ignorant, hate and violence filled feudal-fascist world. That is their GOAL.
I’ve never understood why so many people on the left and right feel the need to claim that all the evil and stupid things done by people in power are actually being done by people they have never seen, with no evidence that they ever existed. The reason these “smart people“ don’t reign in trump‘s idiotic economic policies is that there are no such people. Why not use Occam’s razor, and acknowledge that the people at the wheel are the ones in control, and that they are driving us off a cliff?
We know that Trump and the people he's visibly surrounded himself with are too stupid and useless to do all the destructive things that are being done. And we also know about Project 2025, and about the "dark endarkenment" of the self-named TechBros, who are not techies at all. And Putin's interference with US politics and his strong hold over Trump are obvious. We KNOW who are the people currently wrecking the USA. But the press is afraid to say so. And people often respond to the information with a sneering "conspiracy theory nut!"
When people capitalize the word, ‘KNOW” it’s usually because they don’t have any evidence to back up what they’re saying. And yes, people who believe things without evidence are conspiracy theory nuts
They really believe that they will be the rulers and masters when the dust settles.
They lack real imagination and creativity, they are afraid of originality. They are not geniuses.
I can imagine what will happen after they wreck the USA: we'e seen it before. It will be a nightmare... but I doubt Russel Vought or Stephen Miller or the Heritage Foundation will be running anything.
As nobody deliberately shoots themselves in the foot, that’s pretty strong evidence that those people either don’t exist or are really stupid. And as we already have enough really stupid people in the publicly visible Trump cabinet, there is no need to posit an invisible network of stupidity controlling things behind the scenes.
They think they are shooting Democracy, the USA, in the foot.
They feel they are far above us 99%, that hey are born aristocrats, creators and rulers of the herd, the mob. So they're destroying the system that made them wealthy aristocrats, and think they will keep the status and power Democracy gifted them, to create yet another fascist state ... a hellhole like Russia or N Korea, or quite a few South American countries. That seems to be their ideal.
I don't think he's driven by "really smart and evil people." There may be a few, but any access to Trump depends on flattery and loyalty. Resulting "policy" is a hodgepodge from his moods and whims. No real coherence. That's why it will fail so completely. His personality disorder allows only self glorification. He has no interest in whether anything works.
I have forced myself to watch some of the Trump rallies and it's quite obvious that he's a mediocre business executive who likes to "get things done", but has less interest in what, by whom or how. Flattery and loyalty is the mantra.
I must admit that I have worked for bosses like Trump, they tend to fail in the end, just give them time and don't try to save them from their imminent failure.
It's difficult to sit on your hands while a clown juggles.
Read Project 2025. It is right there online. Read about Curtis Yarvin and his prime acolyte Peter Thiel, and his puppet JD Vance. Observe what Musk has done with his DOG-E team, keeping in mind he is one of the "TechBros" who aren't really techies at all, just carpetbaggers who got rich off the tech boom.
At least the robber barons, the railroad magnates did not think that they invented and built the railways, the mills, the forges.
S**mbag Miller was one of them, unsurprisingly. So was Homan.
Exploding the economy was/is an effective tool to engage in major insider trading. The robbery of farmland (here's looking at you POS Vance) isn't about the farming, but about the real estate.
I would say about half of MAGA voters are true cultists, the other half just weren't paying attention. A major depression would wake up the latter half. The former are too far gone to ever wake up.
GOP senators are definitely, absolutely complicit. So are any Dems who voted to allow any of Chump's nominees. They should've voted no to all of them.
Marie Antoinette's fate should be that of this "administration" and all of their enablers: "Let them eat cake!" Chop!
140 of the Congresspersons who participated in the attempted coup on January 6, 2021 still hold their seats and are awaiting their pardons from Dump, including the Louisiana cockroach, Liddle Mike Johnson. Cockroach just blocked a Dem attempt to investigate Signalgate in order to avoid embarrassing the “putrid ape”! I wonder why? Nah, I do not wonder.
It's even stranger than that. They have had to resort to saying that a day is not a day. From Heather Cox Richardson's post yesterday: "Congress could end Trump’s power over tariffs by cancelling the national emergency, a step Democrats were willing to take. But Republicans in the House used a procedural rule to make sure that Democrats could not cancel that emergency. A challenge to the president’s declaration of a national emergency must come to the floor for a vote within 18 days of the challenge. The House defanged that rule by declaring that each day for the rest of the congressional session will not 'constitute a day for purposes…of the National Emergencies Act.'"
"As a corollary, wouldn't MAGA be far more successful if the economy were doing great? That would give them cover to do all the other racist, nazi evil stuff that they are trying to do, and trump's approval ratings wouldn't be tanking at lightning speed." I have often wondered the same thing!
i’ll never understand why so many people assume that whenever someone does something that is evil and stupid, there must be another person more evil, totally unnamed, and unseen, who is responsible for it. Why not just follow Occam‘s razor and say that these people are themselves evil and stupid? The reason those “smart people“ don’t rein in Trump’s idiotic economic policies is that those smart people don’t exist. To paraphrase Freud, sometimes an idiot is just an idiot.
Look no farther than Russel Vought, your OMB director, for the answer to your question; a truly dangerous ideologue who represents a techno-cabal that is looking to create a "post-constitutional" government. Trump neither understands this movement nor cares, as it gives him the latitude he needs for the only thing he truly cares about--maximal grift in order to monetize the government for the personal gain of himself and his family.
Jane Mayer gave you all their names in a New Yorker article. And they absolutely have fingerprints on this project. She was warning us years ago that these people had evil intentions.
Because he wants to shift the tax base to the middle and lower classes. Income tax is progressive. The rich pay more. Tariffs are regressive. Ordinary people pay more.
The problem is not that Trump states that the downturn in the economy is Biden’s fault, it is how many people believe him. Lying is now normalized, and fatal for our country. The bigger the lie, the better it works. Thank you Goebbels for that lesson, Trump is following your footsteps.
I hope the people see the truth and bring him down.
The lying is one thing, but SOOOO many people thoroughly believe his lies and that is the worst part. So many completely believe the economy was in disarray under Biden simply because Trump and his posse said so (repeatedly).
And not to speak ill of anyone, but “alternative facts” is a ridiculous term and we are apparently a very stupid country. I will do my best to soften that approach and try to speak kindly. But my instinct is to avoid speaking to them at all.
It is a challenge. My approach is to puzzle with the Maga and see where their solutions lead conversationally. Often when they have fallen into several punji steak traps, we can begin to talk.
My experience in conversation is that when presented with facts about economic growth under Biden, MAGA followers tend to revert back to "no, that's wrong ... everything was worse under Biden." It's not real communication which implies that information is going back and forth since there is no real response to presented economic data other than basically MAGA putting their fingers in their ears and shouting "LALALA I can't hear you."
Don’t forget the elimination of civics as a requirement for graduation in the 1970s as one of the reforms to keep kids from dropping out. More electives, fewer requirements was supposed to result in more high school graduates. It didn’t really work and we currently have three generations of adults who have no idea how their government works.
Now it’s too late. My state legislature tried to reintroduce the civics requirement post January 6, and Republicans refused to agree on the curriculum which mirrored the content my parents learned in the 1940s and my grandparents learned in the 1920s. Republicans wanted an ahistorical curriculum promoting the unitary branch concept with the president as sole authority.
Pete Buttigieg is outstanding in how his brain processes what comes his way and then how he clearly articulates his thoughts! I am not that eloquent and I am a blue dot in a sea of red (where I live). But I agree with all that you said so beautifully and thoughtfully. I am just so utterly disappointed in my fellow citizens and how we got to this point. Individuals within the MAGA movement are very much interested in ME ME ME and how everything will affect ME. There doesn't seem to be any concern for the greater good and unfortunately MAGA followers believe the lies which are designed to appeal to their very myopic, self-centered desires.
As for "wokism," unfortunately it did indeed prohibit meaningful debate. But wokism is a false narrative. Being woke is just being aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice). We can acknowledge that there is systemic racism and we can want to do better (think Maya Angelou's quote “Do the best you can until you know better. Then, when you know better, do better.”).
Education wasn't always this expensive. When I studied for my Master's, my tuition was something like $345 per quarter. It was about 2/3 that when I got my Bachelor's degree. That was the rate for in-State students; out-of-State students paid about three times as much.
Just dealing with inflation, in-State tuition at UT should be less than $3,600 per year today. It's actually $13,812.
Richard Mitchell's book The Graves of Academe does a good job of telling how American education got so bad at the public-school level. Alas, it's long out of print. He had an insider's view, teaching teachers.
And wouldn't it be nice if the Democrats had an aggressive stance on clarifying the lies for the general public? I have liked the idea of a key indicator dashboard that tracks all the things voters claim they care about - inflation, employment, deficit, manunfacturing jobs, infrastructure spending, crime, now add following the constitution, etc.
It continues to baffle me that with so much bad that Trump is creating and that could be pointed out, needs to be passionately pointed out the Democratic Party leadership seems to be sitting on their hands. Sadly, not too different than the silence from the Republicans and abdication of any agency of the legislative body and responsibilities.
Love the idea of a dashboard that tracks it all … campaign promises, DOGE actions, executive orders, deportations, as well as all the constant lies that he and his administration spew. The Democratic Party is absolutely out of touch. I just heard a D congressman from NJ say that the democrats have pushed back and that the people can see they are party of common sense. There are a handful who are fighting back but I see the rest as a party of whining do-nothings.
I just hope that these people are asked to explain, in laymen's terms, exactly HOW what is happening is Biden's fault. If they try to say that the stock market was already bad -- tell them they have to produce the exact data that show this.
When you DO ask a Trump supporter to explain them, it is obvious where the opioid epidemic is thriving. One must question why Trump wants to reduce fentanyl coming into the country as that will gut his base.
Trump claims that eggs have fallen 97% in price since he took office, that gas now costs less than $2 in some states and that grocery prices have fallen overall.
Whether the public believes those things remains to be seen, but it's a big ask of the Trump faithful.
For the record, I haven't seen eggs at 18¢/dozen anywhere.
Donald is so ignorant about how regular people live. We don’t give 30 dolls to our children, we never could afford that, he just thinks that everyone grew up like the people in his family that always had everything their little hearts desired. Crazy. I remember my 12 birthday, in 1959, the last birthday I would have with my father, my entire birthday present was a quarter that he had in his pocket. I was happy to get it.
When I was a child during the great recession, my parents had to scrounge every penny to save the house, and my gift one Christmas was a case of my favorite flavor of instant noodles. Of course I don't remember how much it cost, only how lovingly my mom wrapped it and how much I enjoyed eating them. The snotheads in power now have no concept of a thoughtful gift, they only think that the more you spend, the better it is. They live such empty lives.
For me, it was the one cent hard candy ball. I got one of those every month when my father stopped at a country store on our way home from the barber shop. Then the barber moved. :-(
Not hardly. We had polio, measles, mumps, whooping cough, cars that lasted less than 60,000 miles, unaffordable electronics, blue laws, and many other things to produce unpleasant living. And my family would've been considered middle class if the concept had been popular at the time. This is the main gripe I have with the MAGA crowd that thinks it would be great to return to that.
He WILL have the agencies manipulate numbers next time, but the sticker price on shelves, if there are products at all on shelves, cannot be manipulated.
“Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, you know? And maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally.”
Trump is an obscenity on top of a heap of obscenities. How do people still support him is a mystery I will never fathom -- these are the same people who will not be able to buy one doll let alone two because of their Dear Leader's poisonous, pointless games.
What amazes me regarding economic reality is that Trumpistas have gaslighted their base into a reality where the Biden economy was like the height of the Great Depression and that there was immense social suffering. And they apparently actually believe it.
So, Dr. Krugman, while facts and reality may be your stock in trade, I doubt Facist loving Republicans will believe in reality.
Even some Democrats here in my TN town believed that we were in an economy "worse than the Great Depression." It turned out they saw TikTok videos that said so, so it must be true. People are dumb.
One of the things the polls showed for the last two years was that people who believed this all believed that they lived in an island that was doing pretty well, while the rest of the country was going down the toilet.
Over at #econsky there’s a post about the rise of right wing politics in Finland. A study shows young people (young males especially) voting for right wingers while preferring liberal policies. The study finds TikTok usage highly correlated to this phenomenon. TikTok’s algorithm is powerful, but it doesn’t seem to be helping China in the way it might have hoped. Losing export markets to trade wars probably wasn’t on the list of possible outcomes when they decided to promote authoritarian regimes around the world.
I plan to put “Two dolls instead of 30” on my protest sign. Mr. Marie Antoinette truly is oblivious to the struggle of families trying to make ends meet on two paychecks.
Poor Marie Antoinette. By what I've read, she never said that (or eat brioche, which is the classic form); Voltaire attributed it to an unnamed German princess, and this was before the French Revolution.
Thank you. Very, very solid analysis. There was nothing "unsustainable" about the Biden boom. There was room for even more improvement, as the "abundance" advocates understand. But things were pretty good and likely to stay that way and keep going up, until MAGA broke everything by doing the opposite of everything the doctor ordered. Educated people need to remember that amidst the propaganda blitz.
As Krugman pointed out, forcing data sources to report the 'right' data will happen soon. Also on the horizon, Trump publicly shaming companies for applying 'fake' new prices. Next on the list: firing someone in his close circle for 'not performing'.
Anybody wanting to join me in making a 'Trumpshit Bingo Card'? :-)
On the ground data: WalMart employees and Lowe’s employees are reporting dissatisfaction with tariffs and indicating prices will change soon. Mexico and Canada apparently took the tariff snub personally; as they should.
Yep, you can't buy American alcohol in Canada now. Subaru Canada will be importing cars from Japan to Canada rather than from the company's US auto plants. Maine has seen Canadian vacation rentals plummet. Canadians are selling US vacation properties. And I am sure there are many more examples. The cumulative effect will cost the US Billions of Dollars in revenue leading to further GDP declines this year, as well as layoffs and unemployment for workers who used to satisfy these demands for goods and services from our formerly friendly neighbors to the North. All of this was preventable.
Interesting, thanks. I had canceled WaPo and Amazon Prime but didn't know about Audible and forgot about Alexa who we just use as a timer anyway. Hasta la vista!
The last time I was in Lowes, the place was nearly empty of customers. Not much seems to have changed at Home Depot, however. Maybe it was just timing.
It is extremely important to recognize that the decimation of NOAA, NASA, NIH, EPA, and University research by this administration will have far greater impact on our future and future well-being than even the tariffs. There is one and only one truly lasting legacy of Hitler and the Third Reich- it took all of science and mathematics which was centered in Germany and converted its universal language from German to English. Do your children speak Chinese or Hindi?
Mr. Trump announced an escalating set of tariffs on Chinese goods, settling at 145 percent after several angry moves and countermoves with Beijing. That rate is so high that it essentially freezes trade; already there are reports of freighters loaded with goods that are being turned around, so that importers do not have to pay those tariffs.Mr. Trump’s bet is that Mr. Xi will blink first because the pain for the Chinese economy will be so great that he will have to strike an accommodation that will, over time, allow the United States to get back to something approaching normal. Mr. Xi is betting the opposite: that Mr. Trump has overreached, and can’t withstand bad G.D.P. numbers, rising inflation or plummeting polls.Only one of them is right."
There was an article in the media that I read that pointed out that it takes a container ship about a month to cross the Pacific. The China tariffs went in on April 2. The real impact is starting now.
I would not bet on a US shot through with underachieving MAGA whiners in a contest of wills and discipline with Xi's China. They have the whole rest of the world to trade with, after all, and a much more rigorously controlled society and economy. We have a delusional moron-in-chief, a cabinet of clowns, a majority party that appears to be clutching a lily in its casket, a platoon of cynical billionaire bros jostling for advantage, and a profoundly ignorant and distracted population.
BIDEN RESPONSIBLE FOR TRIUMP’S FISCAL FAILURE—HUH?
As a teenager I remember reading George Orwell’s 1984. I found it a frightening projection of what Stalinist Russia could become.
It never occurred to me that I could witness much of the same in the United States. But now I am experiencing 1984’s ‘black is white and white is black, if I say so’ with Trump.
Of course he didn’t lose the 2020 presidential election. And January 6th at the Capitol Building was a ‘love fest.’
Now, after inheriting Biden’s robust economy, ‘King’ Donald, with his cockamamie ‘America First’ tariff blackmail, has triggered major economic turmoil in America and elsewhere in the world.
He assumed that the world would ‘kiss America’s ass.’ Instead, President Xi kicked Trump’s ass and other countries are contemplating how to deal with this wild guy in the White House.
Echoing 1984, Trump publicly blames President Biden for the current spate of bad financial news. Also, he is publicly castigating the media for misreporting his ‘economic successes.’
THANKS TO PAUL KRUGMAN WE WILL KNOW THE BLACK AND THE WHITE OF TRUMP’S ECONOMIC EGOMANIA
Treating "data" as plural! Thank you. You should get a Nobel Prize for that.
singular (from Latin) DATUM, neutral plural um->a so get DATA
To paraphrase an ex-POTUS "the (cypto)buck stops (no-w)here". The predictable outcome
- denial (fake news)
- deflect (point to some meaningless off-topic)
- delay (temp pain)
- denigrate (blame underlings ... yet to come)
- ???
Mario's brother added the final word last year.
The crypto buck actually stops in the President's crypto wallet. Untraceably, of course. So that no data can be compiled.
Disagree. 'Data' can be treated as a collective noun (singular) in the same way as 'information'. E.g. 'All the information shows this.' You wouldn't say, 'All the information show this.'
Wrong. Full stop. Datum is the singular.
Data scientist here. In my field, "data" is both singular and plural. In fact, that ship has sailed. English, like all living languages, evolves. Using "the data are..." or talking about "a datum" sounds to my ears like Shakespearean English.
Sorry but I spent my career teaching quants and we still use the plural. Perhaps because we are in the UK and resist the bastardisation of English ? 😎
I moved here in 1970 and slowly but surely watched 'data' become singular. I hate it.
As Paul pointed out, not singular unless you are that Starfleet commander.
still pleural!
If so, I'm all choked up.
So a lung cavity?
Or at least an inflammation!
As in the space around the lungs?
Datum is singular. Data is pleurisy.
♥️
Enjoying this argument - thanks for being civil!
You sure about that? All the young dudes carries the news? Or all the young dudes carry the news?
That’s because the subject of that sentence is “all” and not information, but I get your point.
I’m with you, Rick.
Can be, yes – but we are under no obligation to do so ourselves.
Take that for data.
In my journalism college days, the word "media" was plural and "medium" was singular. For example, correct: "The media are neglecting election coverage." Incorrect: "The media is neglecting election coverage." What happened? Sloppy proofreaders or ???
Lower standards in schools and colleges, I fear.
Or, languages simply...change.
Linguists have no trouble with this. Apparently English teachers do.
Showing their youth. People who didn’t watch StartTrek! I did and I loved it and Data!
You clearly have all the best informations, bigly!
Ed, I can't stop laughing. You made my day!
When you're right, you're right...
What about 'hair' vs 'hairs'?
Love it, Paul. Thank you: “Data” is singular, “data” plural.
You may want to revisit "datum."
Data is the name of a character in one of the Star Trek series. That’s what Paul was referring to. And thus singular. It is also tge plural of datum. Yes.
He already did ...
You don't say...
Even Commander Data turned out to be plural, if you count his android brother Lore https://images.app.goo.gl/iSQUzka5DYvqjLy2A
and https://screenrant.com/star-trek-brent-spiner-characters-data-b4-lore/
I'm a software engineer. I'm pretty pedantic (esp. when it comes to "literally"), but I'm not dying with you on this hill. What might be correct in Latin has 0, nada, bupkes, no bearing on English usage.
YESSSS!!! Except for a certain Starfleet commander... (I want to scream every time I hear even very intelligent people treat data as a singular noun...)
Absolutely!!
Pulitzer too.
You stole my comment! Thanks indeed for treating ‘data’ as a plural noun—I never understood why ‘news,’ on the other hand, is singular ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Hear, here!
Hear, here!
Hear, here!
YES!
If “data” is plural what is “jury” or are the jury still out on that?
Incidentally, speaking of English, if you read a lot of things published in England, you'll find that nouns referring to a group often use a plural; e.g., the jury were not able to come to an agreement (but the jury is in fact, still out as group). Some books on English-language usage make this clear.
Then again, some of them properly describe the distinction between will and shall, which we Amurricans find hard to grasp and pedantic to apply.
The jury is out because of one juror holding out.
Or, as I noted before reading this, because the jury were not able to come to an agreement, a likely construction in British English.
I was thinking the same thing. And "Commander Datum" just wouldn't have the same ring to it.
1. Is trump an idiot? Yes. Is he being driven by really smart and evil people? Highly likely. They are the ones sweating the details of the cruelest and vilest policies, particularly wrt immigration and the federal workforce, deregulation of the environment, etc. They type up his festering executive orders. They probably manage some of his feed on xitter and remote control his Press Nazi.
Two questions here:
a) who are these people and why don't we out their names? These are not Leonard Leo et al. Nor are they the kabuki idiots who hold cabinet positions (Hegseth, Noem, Gabbard, RFK, ...). They are concrete deep state apparatchiks and we need to know who they are. Just like the press outed the Dunning Kruger doge kids (e.g., "Big Balls" Coristine), we need to know.
b) why don't these smart people rein in trump's idiotic economic policies? The common argument is that the oligarchs can buy stuff (e.g., farmland) for pennies on the dollar when everyone goes bankrupt, but what good will that farmland be if we can't export anything to China due to their tariffs? As a corollary, wouldn't MAGA be far more successful if the economy were doing great? That would give them cover to do all the other racist, nazi evil stuff that they are trying to do, and trump's approval ratings wouldn't be tanking at lightning speed.
So why on Earth would they want to mess with the economy? (In spite of his obvious current state of decline, Carville is still right about "it's the economy, stupid!").
2. Are trump's voters a bunch of cultists? Most definitely. They need a daddy figure, they hate anyone who is not white and Christian, and will find apologies till kingdom come for the putrid ape. Will they ever wake up? I would submit that our best chance is to hit a massive depression very soon, and hopefully before the rule of law is torn to shreds. There are multiple evil competing processes at play in destroying our country, we just need to find the lesser evil and that happens to be a deep depression.
3. What the f. is Congress doing. They could legislate to end this nonsense very quickly. They aren't. This means that GOP senators and representatives are 110% complicit and even more guilty than trump, since they can't plead insanity or any kind of mandate. Nobody really voted for what is happening, and congress critters didn't even go campaigning on "mass deportations" or 'tariffs", which trump did. I guess he's at least making good on that promise.
Marie Antoinette said "let them have two dolls" - try explaining that to your kids and grandchildren, magats.
We know who two of these people are: Stephen Miller and more importantly Russell Vought. Vought and the Heritage Foundation orcs are the people who wrote Project 2025 and the executive orders that Trump began signing as soon as he was sworn in.
Voyght is a Christian nationalist who wants an authoritarian theocracy.
Russell Vought is the voice of trump. To try to understand the reality of what is taking place requires a deep dive. At least back to the 80s. The billionaire class, the tech bros (Thiel, Ackman, Musk, VP J D Vance, etc., etc.), and some members of SCOTUS are all on board. A new power structure, a new world, all their way. Check out J D Vance’s and the tech bros new religious faith, lots of reliable info out there. J D likes to talk about his new faith. Winning the senate vote and the VP appointment was not random! Well planned and on board with Vought’s Project 2025.
And don't forget their mentor: Curtis Yarvin.
Remember PNAC, Project for a New American Century? I believe the Project 2025 folk are pretty much the same people who brought is 9/11, the Iraq war, 20 years in Afghanistan. And now they are bringing us a sick, ignorant, hate and violence filled feudal-fascist world. That is their GOAL.
Feudal sounds about right
It's an all new Dark Ages.
Nobody is without a sin... least of all Miller and Vought. But the two of them can't be singlehandedly preparing all the shit sandwiches.
I’ve never understood why so many people on the left and right feel the need to claim that all the evil and stupid things done by people in power are actually being done by people they have never seen, with no evidence that they ever existed. The reason these “smart people“ don’t reign in trump‘s idiotic economic policies is that there are no such people. Why not use Occam’s razor, and acknowledge that the people at the wheel are the ones in control, and that they are driving us off a cliff?
We know that Trump and the people he's visibly surrounded himself with are too stupid and useless to do all the destructive things that are being done. And we also know about Project 2025, and about the "dark endarkenment" of the self-named TechBros, who are not techies at all. And Putin's interference with US politics and his strong hold over Trump are obvious. We KNOW who are the people currently wrecking the USA. But the press is afraid to say so. And people often respond to the information with a sneering "conspiracy theory nut!"
When people capitalize the word, ‘KNOW” it’s usually because they don’t have any evidence to back up what they’re saying. And yes, people who believe things without evidence are conspiracy theory nuts
Occam's razor says that they are shooting themselves (and us) in the foot if the economic part is deliberate.
They really believe that they will be the rulers and masters when the dust settles.
They lack real imagination and creativity, they are afraid of originality. They are not geniuses.
I can imagine what will happen after they wreck the USA: we'e seen it before. It will be a nightmare... but I doubt Russel Vought or Stephen Miller or the Heritage Foundation will be running anything.
As nobody deliberately shoots themselves in the foot, that’s pretty strong evidence that those people either don’t exist or are really stupid. And as we already have enough really stupid people in the publicly visible Trump cabinet, there is no need to posit an invisible network of stupidity controlling things behind the scenes.
They think they are shooting Democracy, the USA, in the foot.
They feel they are far above us 99%, that hey are born aristocrats, creators and rulers of the herd, the mob. So they're destroying the system that made them wealthy aristocrats, and think they will keep the status and power Democracy gifted them, to create yet another fascist state ... a hellhole like Russia or N Korea, or quite a few South American countries. That seems to be their ideal.
I am trying to tell you that this is orchestrated from somewhere and it can't be the potato heads that are keeping the maga public on a boil.
So Trump & company are lemmings ?
I don't think he's driven by "really smart and evil people." There may be a few, but any access to Trump depends on flattery and loyalty. Resulting "policy" is a hodgepodge from his moods and whims. No real coherence. That's why it will fail so completely. His personality disorder allows only self glorification. He has no interest in whether anything works.
Agreed.
I have forced myself to watch some of the Trump rallies and it's quite obvious that he's a mediocre business executive who likes to "get things done", but has less interest in what, by whom or how. Flattery and loyalty is the mantra.
I must admit that I have worked for bosses like Trump, they tend to fail in the end, just give them time and don't try to save them from their imminent failure.
It's difficult to sit on your hands while a clown juggles.
Read Project 2025. It is right there online. Read about Curtis Yarvin and his prime acolyte Peter Thiel, and his puppet JD Vance. Observe what Musk has done with his DOG-E team, keeping in mind he is one of the "TechBros" who aren't really techies at all, just carpetbaggers who got rich off the tech boom.
At least the robber barons, the railroad magnates did not think that they invented and built the railways, the mills, the forges.
And David Sacks, who is another Putin lover/ Vulture capitalist oligarchic wanna-be.
https://newrepublic.com/article/168125/david-sacks-elon-musk-peter-thiel
Not really smart so much as cunning and conniving, and absolutely evil.
Trumpkopf finds their mere presence to be flattering, because they're just like him.
On the immigration, deregulation and federal workforce fronts there's a lot of concerted and relentless action.
Only in how he thinks it will play.
A whole list of all the swamp scum involved in P2025's creation can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025
S**mbag Miller was one of them, unsurprisingly. So was Homan.
Exploding the economy was/is an effective tool to engage in major insider trading. The robbery of farmland (here's looking at you POS Vance) isn't about the farming, but about the real estate.
I would say about half of MAGA voters are true cultists, the other half just weren't paying attention. A major depression would wake up the latter half. The former are too far gone to ever wake up.
GOP senators are definitely, absolutely complicit. So are any Dems who voted to allow any of Chump's nominees. They should've voted no to all of them.
Marie Antoinette's fate should be that of this "administration" and all of their enablers: "Let them eat cake!" Chop!
Whoever they are, when the roof falls in later this year, Trump won’t have ever known any of them, never met them, he had nothing to do with them.
That won't save him - or any of them - from the guillotine. They've all got it coming.
I have zero problem with that.
140 of the Congresspersons who participated in the attempted coup on January 6, 2021 still hold their seats and are awaiting their pardons from Dump, including the Louisiana cockroach, Liddle Mike Johnson. Cockroach just blocked a Dem attempt to investigate Signalgate in order to avoid embarrassing the “putrid ape”! I wonder why? Nah, I do not wonder.
It's even stranger than that. They have had to resort to saying that a day is not a day. From Heather Cox Richardson's post yesterday: "Congress could end Trump’s power over tariffs by cancelling the national emergency, a step Democrats were willing to take. But Republicans in the House used a procedural rule to make sure that Democrats could not cancel that emergency. A challenge to the president’s declaration of a national emergency must come to the floor for a vote within 18 days of the challenge. The House defanged that rule by declaring that each day for the rest of the congressional session will not 'constitute a day for purposes…of the National Emergencies Act.'"
They keep getting worse. Every day.
The only "national emergency" is the one sitting in the Oval Office. It's imperative that he be extricated from there.
Every day in every way, rethuglicans prove they are the embodiment of evil!
They all need to get in line...for the guillotine!
"As a corollary, wouldn't MAGA be far more successful if the economy were doing great? That would give them cover to do all the other racist, nazi evil stuff that they are trying to do, and trump's approval ratings wouldn't be tanking at lightning speed." I have often wondered the same thing!
The problem is that Trump, their pied piper, is anything but rational.
i’ll never understand why so many people assume that whenever someone does something that is evil and stupid, there must be another person more evil, totally unnamed, and unseen, who is responsible for it. Why not just follow Occam‘s razor and say that these people are themselves evil and stupid? The reason those “smart people“ don’t rein in Trump’s idiotic economic policies is that those smart people don’t exist. To paraphrase Freud, sometimes an idiot is just an idiot.
he’s 🤮🤮🤮🤡
Look no farther than Russel Vought, your OMB director, for the answer to your question; a truly dangerous ideologue who represents a techno-cabal that is looking to create a "post-constitutional" government. Trump neither understands this movement nor cares, as it gives him the latitude he needs for the only thing he truly cares about--maximal grift in order to monetize the government for the personal gain of himself and his family.
Surely vought has som violation (taxes? Traffic? ) that could get him sent to el salvador based on this regime's rules?
None of them seem very bright.
Jane Mayer gave you all their names in a New Yorker article. And they absolutely have fingerprints on this project. She was warning us years ago that these people had evil intentions.
Link please? Thanks in advance
Why doesn’t someone rein in Trump’s crazy economic policies?
Apparently Bessent did rein in some things. He got the 90 day tariff pause by overriding Mr Tariff, Navarro.
that's too many days late and trillions of dollars short
Not saying it was very effective but it was something. Trump is obsessed with tariffs. He even thinks they could replace income tax.
Trump is obviously wrong about tariffs but for some reason or other, he’s fixated on them and has been for years.
He insist everyone be tariffied.
Because he wants to shift the tax base to the middle and lower classes. Income tax is progressive. The rich pay more. Tariffs are regressive. Ordinary people pay more.
Indeed.
The problem is not that Trump states that the downturn in the economy is Biden’s fault, it is how many people believe him. Lying is now normalized, and fatal for our country. The bigger the lie, the better it works. Thank you Goebbels for that lesson, Trump is following your footsteps.
I hope the people see the truth and bring him down.
The lying is one thing, but SOOOO many people thoroughly believe his lies and that is the worst part. So many completely believe the economy was in disarray under Biden simply because Trump and his posse said so (repeatedly).
LEt's see what happens when lying collides with reality.
It can’t happen fast enough!!
And not to speak ill of anyone, but “alternative facts” is a ridiculous term and we are apparently a very stupid country. I will do my best to soften that approach and try to speak kindly. But my instinct is to avoid speaking to them at all.
It is a challenge. My approach is to puzzle with the Maga and see where their solutions lead conversationally. Often when they have fallen into several punji steak traps, we can begin to talk.
My experience in conversation is that when presented with facts about economic growth under Biden, MAGA followers tend to revert back to "no, that's wrong ... everything was worse under Biden." It's not real communication which implies that information is going back and forth since there is no real response to presented economic data other than basically MAGA putting their fingers in their ears and shouting "LALALA I can't hear you."
Don’t forget the elimination of civics as a requirement for graduation in the 1970s as one of the reforms to keep kids from dropping out. More electives, fewer requirements was supposed to result in more high school graduates. It didn’t really work and we currently have three generations of adults who have no idea how their government works.
Now it’s too late. My state legislature tried to reintroduce the civics requirement post January 6, and Republicans refused to agree on the curriculum which mirrored the content my parents learned in the 1940s and my grandparents learned in the 1920s. Republicans wanted an ahistorical curriculum promoting the unitary branch concept with the president as sole authority.
Pete Buttigieg is outstanding in how his brain processes what comes his way and then how he clearly articulates his thoughts! I am not that eloquent and I am a blue dot in a sea of red (where I live). But I agree with all that you said so beautifully and thoughtfully. I am just so utterly disappointed in my fellow citizens and how we got to this point. Individuals within the MAGA movement are very much interested in ME ME ME and how everything will affect ME. There doesn't seem to be any concern for the greater good and unfortunately MAGA followers believe the lies which are designed to appeal to their very myopic, self-centered desires.
As for "wokism," unfortunately it did indeed prohibit meaningful debate. But wokism is a false narrative. Being woke is just being aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice). We can acknowledge that there is systemic racism and we can want to do better (think Maya Angelou's quote “Do the best you can until you know better. Then, when you know better, do better.”).
Education wasn't always this expensive. When I studied for my Master's, my tuition was something like $345 per quarter. It was about 2/3 that when I got my Bachelor's degree. That was the rate for in-State students; out-of-State students paid about three times as much.
Just dealing with inflation, in-State tuition at UT should be less than $3,600 per year today. It's actually $13,812.
Richard Mitchell's book The Graves of Academe does a good job of telling how American education got so bad at the public-school level. Alas, it's long out of print. He had an insider's view, teaching teachers.
And wouldn't it be nice if the Democrats had an aggressive stance on clarifying the lies for the general public? I have liked the idea of a key indicator dashboard that tracks all the things voters claim they care about - inflation, employment, deficit, manunfacturing jobs, infrastructure spending, crime, now add following the constitution, etc.
It continues to baffle me that with so much bad that Trump is creating and that could be pointed out, needs to be passionately pointed out the Democratic Party leadership seems to be sitting on their hands. Sadly, not too different than the silence from the Republicans and abdication of any agency of the legislative body and responsibilities.
Time will tell...
Love the idea of a dashboard that tracks it all … campaign promises, DOGE actions, executive orders, deportations, as well as all the constant lies that he and his administration spew. The Democratic Party is absolutely out of touch. I just heard a D congressman from NJ say that the democrats have pushed back and that the people can see they are party of common sense. There are a handful who are fighting back but I see the rest as a party of whining do-nothings.
I just hope that these people are asked to explain, in laymen's terms, exactly HOW what is happening is Biden's fault. If they try to say that the stock market was already bad -- tell them they have to produce the exact data that show this.
When you DO ask a Trump supporter to explain them, it is obvious where the opioid epidemic is thriving. One must question why Trump wants to reduce fentanyl coming into the country as that will gut his base.
That and crystal meth. Along with generous amounts of Kool-Aid and copious quantities of Schlitz.
You know they'll just reply "Well they said so on Fox News!"
They tend to fixate on the deficit. That becomes the only indicator they pay attention to.
Trump claims that eggs have fallen 97% in price since he took office, that gas now costs less than $2 in some states and that grocery prices have fallen overall.
Whether the public believes those things remains to be seen, but it's a big ask of the Trump faithful.
For the record, I haven't seen eggs at 18¢/dozen anywhere.
Oh, they will. As soon as the catastrophe hits them, they'll suddenly have the long awaited epiphany.
Donald is so ignorant about how regular people live. We don’t give 30 dolls to our children, we never could afford that, he just thinks that everyone grew up like the people in his family that always had everything their little hearts desired. Crazy. I remember my 12 birthday, in 1959, the last birthday I would have with my father, my entire birthday present was a quarter that he had in his pocket. I was happy to get it.
A lot of kids will get no dolls because their parents cannot even afford one.
I remember a story about a man delivering Christmas baskets to those in need. The kids ignored the toys and went straight for the loaf of bread.
When I was a child during the great recession, my parents had to scrounge every penny to save the house, and my gift one Christmas was a case of my favorite flavor of instant noodles. Of course I don't remember how much it cost, only how lovingly my mom wrapped it and how much I enjoyed eating them. The snotheads in power now have no concept of a thoughtful gift, they only think that the more you spend, the better it is. They live such empty lives.
A one cent piece of Dentyne from the subway vending machine was a big deal:-)
For me, it was the one cent hard candy ball. I got one of those every month when my father stopped at a country store on our way home from the barber shop. Then the barber moved. :-(
Paradise lost:-(
Not hardly. We had polio, measles, mumps, whooping cough, cars that lasted less than 60,000 miles, unaffordable electronics, blue laws, and many other things to produce unpleasant living. And my family would've been considered middle class if the concept had been popular at the time. This is the main gripe I have with the MAGA crowd that thinks it would be great to return to that.
Thus, the frown:-)
Seems like it's time to queue up the Four Yorkshiremen:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKHFZBUTA4k
Aye. Tell that to kids these days and they’d never believe ya.
You haven't looked a little girl's closet lately.
Creepy
Would depend on the little girl's family ability to afford toys. Some kids have very few and will now have fewer.
You’ll notice he picked on dolls, not video games. At least he’s consistent in his messaging on one thing: girls and women can take a hike.
Good catch. His young male voters would crucify him, if it was video games.
He WILL have the agencies manipulate numbers next time, but the sticker price on shelves, if there are products at all on shelves, cannot be manipulated.
If they haven't done it already.
“Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, you know? And maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally.”
Trump is an obscenity on top of a heap of obscenities. How do people still support him is a mystery I will never fathom -- these are the same people who will not be able to buy one doll let alone two because of their Dear Leader's poisonous, pointless games.
He promised they would own the libs. They will soon enough find out just exactly what that really means, if they haven't already.
Who knew how expensive it would be to own libs?
What amazes me regarding economic reality is that Trumpistas have gaslighted their base into a reality where the Biden economy was like the height of the Great Depression and that there was immense social suffering. And they apparently actually believe it.
So, Dr. Krugman, while facts and reality may be your stock in trade, I doubt Facist loving Republicans will believe in reality.
Even some Democrats here in my TN town believed that we were in an economy "worse than the Great Depression." It turned out they saw TikTok videos that said so, so it must be true. People are dumb.
One of the things the polls showed for the last two years was that people who believed this all believed that they lived in an island that was doing pretty well, while the rest of the country was going down the toilet.
Over at #econsky there’s a post about the rise of right wing politics in Finland. A study shows young people (young males especially) voting for right wingers while preferring liberal policies. The study finds TikTok usage highly correlated to this phenomenon. TikTok’s algorithm is powerful, but it doesn’t seem to be helping China in the way it might have hoped. Losing export markets to trade wars probably wasn’t on the list of possible outcomes when they decided to promote authoritarian regimes around the world.
Trumpistas! Good one! Welcome to the Twilight Zone.
I plan to put “Two dolls instead of 30” on my protest sign. Mr. Marie Antoinette truly is oblivious to the struggle of families trying to make ends meet on two paychecks.
"Let them eat cake!" Chop!
Poor Marie Antoinette. By what I've read, she never said that (or eat brioche, which is the classic form); Voltaire attributed it to an unnamed German princess, and this was before the French Revolution.
Thank you. Very, very solid analysis. There was nothing "unsustainable" about the Biden boom. There was room for even more improvement, as the "abundance" advocates understand. But things were pretty good and likely to stay that way and keep going up, until MAGA broke everything by doing the opposite of everything the doctor ordered. Educated people need to remember that amidst the propaganda blitz.
It's unforgettable. As in "I can't unsee that!"
But the voters are starving,Let them eat CAKE!
Chop!
As Krugman pointed out, forcing data sources to report the 'right' data will happen soon. Also on the horizon, Trump publicly shaming companies for applying 'fake' new prices. Next on the list: firing someone in his close circle for 'not performing'.
Anybody wanting to join me in making a 'Trumpshit Bingo Card'? :-)
On the ground data: WalMart employees and Lowe’s employees are reporting dissatisfaction with tariffs and indicating prices will change soon. Mexico and Canada apparently took the tariff snub personally; as they should.
Yep, you can't buy American alcohol in Canada now. Subaru Canada will be importing cars from Japan to Canada rather than from the company's US auto plants. Maine has seen Canadian vacation rentals plummet. Canadians are selling US vacation properties. And I am sure there are many more examples. The cumulative effect will cost the US Billions of Dollars in revenue leading to further GDP declines this year, as well as layoffs and unemployment for workers who used to satisfy these demands for goods and services from our formerly friendly neighbors to the North. All of this was preventable.
MAGA says: Canadians are hopeless libtards. Their country is collapsing.
I haven’t noticed it collapsing myself. But they keep repeating this.
Sounds like there will be an increase in prices on Amazon too -- although I have stopped purchasing from Amazon (to boycott Jeff Bezos).
Along these lines, Trump-kisser Mark Zuckerberg saw a big jump in his market yesterday. Remember: Everyone who uses Facebook is supporting Zuck.
I decided to quit Amazon too! Somewhat inconvenient, but life is still workable. Then I read this….https://www.thomasnet.com/insights/jeff-bezos-companies/
Interesting, thanks. I had canceled WaPo and Amazon Prime but didn't know about Audible and forgot about Alexa who we just use as a timer anyway. Hasta la vista!
They were mentioning things (changes) that are not on the news; and not rumor quality.
The last time I was in Lowes, the place was nearly empty of customers. Not much seems to have changed at Home Depot, however. Maybe it was just timing.
Cock gun. Aim at foot. Shoot yourself in the foot... tRump's words to live by.
Examples?
Tariffs, kidnappings, ignoring SCOTUS orders, Appointing sycophantic, inexperienced idiots to high-level posts...
It is extremely important to recognize that the decimation of NOAA, NASA, NIH, EPA, and University research by this administration will have far greater impact on our future and future well-being than even the tariffs. There is one and only one truly lasting legacy of Hitler and the Third Reich- it took all of science and mathematics which was centered in Germany and converted its universal language from German to English. Do your children speak Chinese or Hindi?
Mr. Trump announced an escalating set of tariffs on Chinese goods, settling at 145 percent after several angry moves and countermoves with Beijing. That rate is so high that it essentially freezes trade; already there are reports of freighters loaded with goods that are being turned around, so that importers do not have to pay those tariffs.Mr. Trump’s bet is that Mr. Xi will blink first because the pain for the Chinese economy will be so great that he will have to strike an accommodation that will, over time, allow the United States to get back to something approaching normal. Mr. Xi is betting the opposite: that Mr. Trump has overreached, and can’t withstand bad G.D.P. numbers, rising inflation or plummeting polls.Only one of them is right."
There was an article in the media that I read that pointed out that it takes a container ship about a month to cross the Pacific. The China tariffs went in on April 2. The real impact is starting now.
I would not bet on a US shot through with underachieving MAGA whiners in a contest of wills and discipline with Xi's China. They have the whole rest of the world to trade with, after all, and a much more rigorously controlled society and economy. We have a delusional moron-in-chief, a cabinet of clowns, a majority party that appears to be clutching a lily in its casket, a platoon of cynical billionaire bros jostling for advantage, and a profoundly ignorant and distracted population.
What could go wrong?
Has Mr. Xi ever run a casino?
BIDEN RESPONSIBLE FOR TRIUMP’S FISCAL FAILURE—HUH?
As a teenager I remember reading George Orwell’s 1984. I found it a frightening projection of what Stalinist Russia could become.
It never occurred to me that I could witness much of the same in the United States. But now I am experiencing 1984’s ‘black is white and white is black, if I say so’ with Trump.
Of course he didn’t lose the 2020 presidential election. And January 6th at the Capitol Building was a ‘love fest.’
Now, after inheriting Biden’s robust economy, ‘King’ Donald, with his cockamamie ‘America First’ tariff blackmail, has triggered major economic turmoil in America and elsewhere in the world.
He assumed that the world would ‘kiss America’s ass.’ Instead, President Xi kicked Trump’s ass and other countries are contemplating how to deal with this wild guy in the White House.
Echoing 1984, Trump publicly blames President Biden for the current spate of bad financial news. Also, he is publicly castigating the media for misreporting his ‘economic successes.’
THANKS TO PAUL KRUGMAN WE WILL KNOW THE BLACK AND THE WHITE OF TRUMP’S ECONOMIC EGOMANIA