Yet again, AI has done a bang-up of summarizing a Fifth Column episode, which mostly covers the insane economic policies of both idiot candidates and why members of Hezbollah are having their balls blown off.
It's hard to believe after the news broke that 2 or 3 thousand of the same model pager blew up that anyone would've hung onto theirs, but they did. I mean, shit, they must've gotten a hell of a deal on them.
I love this: Matt (who is most engaged with & knows us best), regarding TFC listenership: "We don't have an ideological through-line, it's more like a comedy through-line"🎯THIS is why I feel like I've found my online *home* for current (& sometimes historical) events
Seems like that's really true for a large majority of us (and we love to talk about it too!). No through-line there either and that's okay, I'm very passionate about my own music but I try not to judge the choices others make, if you love artists/genres that I don't care for enjoy & God Bless. Whatever music lifts your spirits in these crazy-making times is unalloyed good
Michael, I have a slight disagreement on Springfield. And it is more on degree than actual substance.
1. I do not think “jobs” is plainly why Haitians are going to Springfield OH in the 10s of thousands. I just struggle to believe there is/was that level of opportunity in open positions. Like did these jobs sprout out of nowhere after Haitians arrived in about ‘21; or, what the hell were these companies doing in pre-2020? Were they functioning at like 50% employment for years? In the industry I am in, if you’re running at about 10-20% less than ideal employment the operation starts to fall apart and even more so, the current staff starts to have meltdowns. I think it’s much more likely some people went there. And then word got around (people are inherently tribal and like being around people like themselves, look at any “little Italy” or “Chinatown” in any major city) and more people came regardless of opportunity.
2. I have seen business owners who are pro the immigration too but also business owners who are anti. I don’t think that aspect is as clear cut as you’re making it. But 100% true everyone isn’t opposed.
3. I have now watched like 5 20min+ walk throughs of the situation in Springfield from people on the ground going around the town. And, I know that means absolutely nothing in “knowing the issue”, but I think the one take away seemingly everyone agrees with is that Springfield is not a great town. I am actually pretty shocked by the conditions of seemingly a large percentage of the residents. I mean the median income is $27k which is certainly not great. Point being here, if everyone is in pretty bad shape and there are all these job opportunities, why the hell were the people not taking the opportunities? Which I think you kind of nailed with they think the salaries are too low, but missed addressing “compared to what?”. I am no expert, but I feel pretty confident saying the comparison is to government assistance/welfare (which anecdotally in all these videos seems very prevalent). If you at all agree with that assessment at all I think this could have been a much more interesting conversation. If there were all these jobs available and residents weren’t occupying the positions and instead turned to government assistance, it seems like a really really really shitty outcome to then have tons of low wage immigrants on TPS payments come in, maybe be worried their TPS will run out (or maybe you can supplement TPS with a job, I am not sure what the case is there) and get a job as it is more reliable when the residents won’t because they’re on welfare and don’t want to lose that for a low paying job.
Now, I think that is a much more confusing scenario than the one you laid out. Because simultaneously, the immigrants coming in CAN be beneficial to industry in the area and also CAN be detrimental to the residents. And, me personally would place the blame for both on the government first for allowing immigrants in and for holding the residents back. I know it is very controversial to say government assistance is holding people back, but from my vantage point that seems like an unquestionable assertion at this point. If asked you could probably guess an opinion informed by Sowell, Lowry, and Hayek, Schumpeter and Mises (more tangentially). Accepting your take that there were jobs and immigrants came in and filled them in an underprivileged town my first thoughts are “why were there so many open positions in an underprivileged town? And, how is this solution going to help?”. Again even accepting business owners are pro the immigration overall, it seems to me then that the government created a problem and then to *fix* the problem they’re creating an even bigger one that is putting current residents in an even worse position as home values, rental rates, etc. are all going up. It’s not a market based adjustment, it’s an external variable disrupting by government fiat an already piss poor market and I cannot understand how that is possibly a benefit.
The craziest part is how to me this is such a mixed issue and everyone (the parties) just picked their sides and are standing by them even though if you just change the setting I do not think the parties would still be on the sides they’ve chosen. For instance, 20,000 Eastern Europeans show up in southwest neighborhoods of Chicago and start filling positions in gas stations, auto shops, cleaning jobs, industrial work, etc. I don’t think anyone on the left is saying “thank god for the immigrants” and it’s not clear to me the right would be saying “look at this travesty”. In fact I’d imagine it’d be the opposite.
The two things that seem crystal clear to me are:
1. Dropping a 33% increase to your population of immigrants who mainly if not almost entirely speak a different language into a town is insane and almost certainly going to be an enormous disruption to a town. That is not the immigrants fault and it isn’t the residents fault. It’s the governments.
2. Springfield OH residents are not doing well. And, if the assertion is they aren’t doing well but there are tons of available jobs then what the hell is allowing for the poorly off residents to not take those positions. Again, seems like the governments fault to me.
I have done work in many underprivileged neighborhoods. I am very aware that there are plenty of individuals in these neighborhoods who have not held employment for decades without any other reason that it isn’t worth their time (no medical, familial, etc reason). It seems like a piss poor *solution* or even to call it a *benefit* to the town in some all overall sense to say “let’s just ship in low wage immigrants to fill the positions the residents whose lives we’ve already irreparably damaged won’t take”. And again, I do not put that blame on the immigrants or the residents at all. Each party is doing what they believe is in their interests, whether or not that rational is near-sighted or ill thought through.
“Point being here, if everyone is in pretty bad shape and there are all these job opportunities, why the hell were the people not taking the opportunities?“
Because floor managers do not want to hire people who cannot pass a drug test to work with heavy machinery.
Well according to the DEA themselves majority of fentanyl comes from foreign sources and some officials claim over 90%. So by my metrics you’re just moving the locus of the government failure. I’d also ask how someone without a job is paying for drugs, seems like another point you could highlight a failure.
And to be clear, although I do think these all are government failures, I also do believe everyone is responsible for their choices in life.
I am just more trying to highlight how I believe at the foundation, looking at it as an entire town instead of individuals, this seems like a problem almost entirely of the governments making on all sides. And as much as I think individuals should do all they can to better themselves, saying “it’s the residents fault for not accepting the immigrants” or “it’s the immigrants fault for being detrimental to the lives of the residents” seemingly ignores that in both responses the government is directly responsible for each. They are almost entirely responsible for the immigrants being there. And they seemingly hold a ton of the responsibility for the condition of the residents.
If you’re accepting “the jobs are there, no one will do them”, then you cannot make the “industry left the area” argument and blame it on market forces. Maybe the *desired* industry did leave, but you’re stating there are still jobs and the people aren’t doing them. In any market without government intervention that has people willfully not working, those people are excised from the dataset incredibly quickly. I.e. they die, because how does anyone already on the bottom rungs of society survive without any income. That is clearly a bad scenario, hence why we have government assistance. But, if you’re saying there are jobs and people are willfully not doing them and they’re still around clearly there is a variable that is not purely market driven involved. People are choosing no (traditional) income instead of something. That is not an option in a market without intervention. Again, clearly people on welfare is a better outcome than people starving, homeless in the streets. I am in complete agreement there.
One point is, that is STILL a bad outcome. It’s better than the alternative, but it is bad. And the main point is that adding a foreign body of low wage workers to *fix* the issue because the local population is already demoralized by your prior intervention (wherever you want to locate that intervention) seems like a absolutely abysmal solution to say “hey there’s upsides” about.
It seems something like having a bum ankle that hurts like hell and instead of doing physical therapy and recovering a doctor hands you a bottle of opioids and says “hey this will take the pain away, now you just have an opioid addiction”. Doesn’t feel like much of a solution even if someone can point to you and say “hey, they’re now pain free” and have that be an honest accurate statement but still miss the entire issue.
Right or wrong, and idk what exactly it means for policy in particular, but as someone who drives around a ton for work, it is an absolute fact that there are places that never really recovered from previous crashes. Even places where many/most people have moved out, it's not everyone and deferred maintenance is grossly apparent
The Springfield job story is totally plausible to me because the same thing happened in my mom’s hometown a dozen+ years ago - the factory had to bus in immigrants living in a couple small cities an hour or more away, because the local pool of workers couldn’t pass the drug test. (Its sole purpose was processing a highly perishable agricultural food product supplied by surrounding farms, so no, you could not just move it to El Salvador or Eritrea or whatever.) If anyone wants to complain about immigrants taking American jobs, they have to figure out the market-clearing wage to get Americans off welfare and meth.
First off, as an artist who does value self-expression and greatly appreciates the female form, I applaud our former first lady for her efforts and hope she encourages more of the same. And, if there are any models out there looking to collaborate on an art series, I am available, and willing to meet and discuss over a lovely dinner and several drinks.
As a New York City pedestrian, however, I cannot object strongly enough to Mr. Welch's odious and execrable endorsement of a pro-bike platform, and would, in fact like to introduce city legislation making it legal to clothesline any bicyclist who buzzes you or disobeys traffic laws and then beat them to within an inch of their life with the very same metal means of their conveyance.
Finally, as a bipolar manic-depressive who spent the majority of my adult life as an overemotional, suicidal, constantly-catastrophizing reactionary in my own personal life (something I have fortunately been largely cured of, road rage towards cyclists being an exception), it's been both depressing and incredibly familiar seeing so much of our country, especially our political and supposed thought leaders, increasingly react and respond to politics the way I did to so much of my life when I was at my worst. People constantly joke about how crazy our politics and social discourse has gotten, but when I say it, I mean it quite literally! People are behaving (and probably making themselves) mentally ill with the constant apocalyptic rhetoric surrounding every single cause and election that comes our way. It's so recognizable to me that it's like looking into a very embarrassing mirror sometimes. It is absolutely no way to live and almost always an overreaction, whether regarding events in your personal or professional life, or in politics at large. It reminds me of when Mickey Mantle was diagnosed with liver cancer back in the mid-90s. A very old and frail-looking Mick gave a press conference where he referenced all the generations of kids who wanted to grow up to be "The Mick" in contrast to his own Herculean alcohol consumption over those same years, and said "Don't be like me". I've thought about that a lot these past few years, while watching normal people lose their minds over current events. DON'T BE LIKE ME. Or, as I also like to say, "I'm mentally ill, but you people are fucking nuts." Personally, my advice is to not let yourself go nuts. Because, even if you're like me and being driven crazy is a fairly short drive, the drive back takes for-fucking-ever.
Tariffs, like most other public policies, are tools. And just like any tool, they come with unintended consequences and some negative side-effects - there is no such thing as a free lunch; only deferred costs. The questions are, as ever, (1) whether the policy situation you find yourself in calls for the use of that particular tool. and (2) whether the anticipated benefits outweigh the foreseeable negative side-effects.
Tariffs worked pretty great in helping the northern US industrialize during the early 19th century, at the cost of driving up the cost of superior manufactured goods produced in more-established industries (e.g. England)...meanwhile, the free-trade south preferred to import all their finished products, and probably got better-quality goods while they were able to do so. They certainly were, for a long time, significantly richer than the North! Their free-trade stance also had the benefit of keeping their political economy centered on the owners of the great plantations which provided their export cash crops, rather than having to struggle with nouveau-riche urban industrialists and the annoyingly-demanding voting blocs of free urban laborers. Of course, the South's lack of domestic industries bit them hard when they tried to fight a war against the North...
Tariffs and pretty ruthless import-substitution policies also worked pretty well to help South Korea zoom upwards from the GDP below the Congo in the 1950s to the hi-tech dystopia it is today...but also have had a stultifying impact on e.g. the Japanese economy over the past few decades. Other countries also have had a much worse experience when they tried to blindly copy the Import-Substitution method over to their own economies without doing the hard and uncomfortable work of really examining their own situations (e.g. Mexico).
It just depends on what you're trying to do, how well you've done your homework, and what costs you're willing to pay for it.
I view defense industrial spending being almost entirely being a tariff (if we could procure from overseas it would be cheaper and have more competition), but a necessary evil since it's critical to national security.
The pager op is amazing. Think about all the intelligence they got from mapping out who was carrying a pager, when, and where. And then map that out to who they live near, work with, etc. It's a genius way to swoop up Hezbollah leadership and operations intel in one fell swoop.
What Michael doesn’t understand about the Springfield example is that the migrants can only afford to work the incredibly low wage jobs (which he acknowledges are low wage) is because tax payers are subsidizing their housing, med care, debit cards loaded with cash, etc. He missed that critical point in this whole circle jerk. I believe the mayor in Springfield owns apartments and has contracts with the feds to house the migrants who work for $9/hour or whatever slave wage the factory pays them.
Do you know what would be even more awesome than Scott Lincicome on the pod? The Fifth LIVE with Scott Lincicome here in the thriving metropolis of Raleigh!
We've got real BBQ, cheap beer, Lincicome's famous hot sauce, and Southern hospitality. I'd happily house all Southern out-of-state Fifth fans, refugee camp style.
Would love that! Scott was a friend of mine in college. Lost touch with him after leaving the DC area, and then I saw him one day on X and was just happy to see him thriving and sharing his spunk and smarts.
I hear Scott’s a member of a swanky country club and can secure a ballroom to host. Only thing is Kmele would have to leave Cohen home, it’s…uh…restricted
My TDS from 2016 has, thanks to DEI, the lack of rule of law, our open border, suppression of speech, antisemitism, victimhood culture, race essentialism, transing kids, men in women’s sports and spaces - combined with the constant double standards, gaslighting and projection - now given way to full blown DPDS (Democratic Party Derangement Syndrome). I’ve done a complete 180. I mean, I haven’t gone MAGA, but the thought of having to tolerate this nonsense for four more years is so depressing. That recent video of Tim Walz’s wife “turning the page” made my DPDS flare up.
You may be right, but I can’t in good conscience vote for crazy. Policies aside, have you seen her recent “town hall” with Oprah? Trump may put his foot in his mouth, but at least he’s saying something.
Even more ridiculous when you realize that El Segundo was not named by some Spanish missionary or conquistador or something, but due to the land being the second (El Segundo in Spanish) Standard Oil refinery on the West Coast
MM accidentally hit on why I'm so much less concerned about crackpottery from the right currently. One one side you have Laura Loomer, and on the other - same amount of bs - you have Yale professors.
Hahaha I have this same thought all the time. What institution does Trump/the right hold control over? Maybe the military but even that is a long stretch at the upper echelons. What institution does the left hold control over? Every one I can think of.
So exactly your point. Right has nut cases saying crazy shit. Left has professors, studio heads, celebrities directing culture, heads of every administrative agency, etc.
Not to say masses of dipshit nut cases cannot cause an enormous amount of trouble. But with the jury still out I think I know which I’m more worried about.
Awful, cringeworthy “*identifying characteristic* here” post… AD military spouse here. Humble acknowledgement that this is anecdotal and not stats based, but the military is such a mixed political bag even at the lower levels (and I say this as someone fully immersed in my husband’s beloved Corps, not like, the Air Force - no offense to all our airmen/women) that I think it’s safe to say the right controls no institutions. If anything, I’d say (obligatory referral back to my initial caveat about anecdotal evidence) the military bends libertarian. They just want to do their own thing and be left alone.
What gets me about the doomsayers on all sides is that they seem to care more about being right than about the bad thing not happening. JD Vance should be delighted that there’s no indication that people in Ohio are eating cats and dogs. I’m certainly glad about that, because I don’t want that to happen. We should be relieved to be proven wrong when things go better than you predicted. When that isn’t the case, it makes me think that someone cares more about their image than the issues they claim to worry about.
"We know of new methods of attack" took on a whole new meaning this past week, didn't it?
Sincerest Regards,
My Unexploded Testicles
good to hear you left Hezbollah!
The Sixth Column
It's hard to believe after the news broke that 2 or 3 thousand of the same model pager blew up that anyone would've hung onto theirs, but they did. I mean, shit, they must've gotten a hell of a deal on them.
I love this: Matt (who is most engaged with & knows us best), regarding TFC listenership: "We don't have an ideological through-line, it's more like a comedy through-line"🎯THIS is why I feel like I've found my online *home* for current (& sometimes historical) events
I mean, who WANTS an ideological through-line except an ideologue?
I just want a sexy through-line, to be honest.
That is a good insight but I would add a real appreciation for music
Seems like that's really true for a large majority of us (and we love to talk about it too!). No through-line there either and that's okay, I'm very passionate about my own music but I try not to judge the choices others make, if you love artists/genres that I don't care for enjoy & God Bless. Whatever music lifts your spirits in these crazy-making times is unalloyed good
Pretty tasteless of Israel to play this prank mere weeks after the tragic loss of Kmele's manhood...
He was a testes case
I was gonna say something about sticks and STONEs but you win.
Michael, I have a slight disagreement on Springfield. And it is more on degree than actual substance.
1. I do not think “jobs” is plainly why Haitians are going to Springfield OH in the 10s of thousands. I just struggle to believe there is/was that level of opportunity in open positions. Like did these jobs sprout out of nowhere after Haitians arrived in about ‘21; or, what the hell were these companies doing in pre-2020? Were they functioning at like 50% employment for years? In the industry I am in, if you’re running at about 10-20% less than ideal employment the operation starts to fall apart and even more so, the current staff starts to have meltdowns. I think it’s much more likely some people went there. And then word got around (people are inherently tribal and like being around people like themselves, look at any “little Italy” or “Chinatown” in any major city) and more people came regardless of opportunity.
2. I have seen business owners who are pro the immigration too but also business owners who are anti. I don’t think that aspect is as clear cut as you’re making it. But 100% true everyone isn’t opposed.
3. I have now watched like 5 20min+ walk throughs of the situation in Springfield from people on the ground going around the town. And, I know that means absolutely nothing in “knowing the issue”, but I think the one take away seemingly everyone agrees with is that Springfield is not a great town. I am actually pretty shocked by the conditions of seemingly a large percentage of the residents. I mean the median income is $27k which is certainly not great. Point being here, if everyone is in pretty bad shape and there are all these job opportunities, why the hell were the people not taking the opportunities? Which I think you kind of nailed with they think the salaries are too low, but missed addressing “compared to what?”. I am no expert, but I feel pretty confident saying the comparison is to government assistance/welfare (which anecdotally in all these videos seems very prevalent). If you at all agree with that assessment at all I think this could have been a much more interesting conversation. If there were all these jobs available and residents weren’t occupying the positions and instead turned to government assistance, it seems like a really really really shitty outcome to then have tons of low wage immigrants on TPS payments come in, maybe be worried their TPS will run out (or maybe you can supplement TPS with a job, I am not sure what the case is there) and get a job as it is more reliable when the residents won’t because they’re on welfare and don’t want to lose that for a low paying job.
Now, I think that is a much more confusing scenario than the one you laid out. Because simultaneously, the immigrants coming in CAN be beneficial to industry in the area and also CAN be detrimental to the residents. And, me personally would place the blame for both on the government first for allowing immigrants in and for holding the residents back. I know it is very controversial to say government assistance is holding people back, but from my vantage point that seems like an unquestionable assertion at this point. If asked you could probably guess an opinion informed by Sowell, Lowry, and Hayek, Schumpeter and Mises (more tangentially). Accepting your take that there were jobs and immigrants came in and filled them in an underprivileged town my first thoughts are “why were there so many open positions in an underprivileged town? And, how is this solution going to help?”. Again even accepting business owners are pro the immigration overall, it seems to me then that the government created a problem and then to *fix* the problem they’re creating an even bigger one that is putting current residents in an even worse position as home values, rental rates, etc. are all going up. It’s not a market based adjustment, it’s an external variable disrupting by government fiat an already piss poor market and I cannot understand how that is possibly a benefit.
The craziest part is how to me this is such a mixed issue and everyone (the parties) just picked their sides and are standing by them even though if you just change the setting I do not think the parties would still be on the sides they’ve chosen. For instance, 20,000 Eastern Europeans show up in southwest neighborhoods of Chicago and start filling positions in gas stations, auto shops, cleaning jobs, industrial work, etc. I don’t think anyone on the left is saying “thank god for the immigrants” and it’s not clear to me the right would be saying “look at this travesty”. In fact I’d imagine it’d be the opposite.
The two things that seem crystal clear to me are:
1. Dropping a 33% increase to your population of immigrants who mainly if not almost entirely speak a different language into a town is insane and almost certainly going to be an enormous disruption to a town. That is not the immigrants fault and it isn’t the residents fault. It’s the governments.
2. Springfield OH residents are not doing well. And, if the assertion is they aren’t doing well but there are tons of available jobs then what the hell is allowing for the poorly off residents to not take those positions. Again, seems like the governments fault to me.
I have done work in many underprivileged neighborhoods. I am very aware that there are plenty of individuals in these neighborhoods who have not held employment for decades without any other reason that it isn’t worth their time (no medical, familial, etc reason). It seems like a piss poor *solution* or even to call it a *benefit* to the town in some all overall sense to say “let’s just ship in low wage immigrants to fill the positions the residents whose lives we’ve already irreparably damaged won’t take”. And again, I do not put that blame on the immigrants or the residents at all. Each party is doing what they believe is in their interests, whether or not that rational is near-sighted or ill thought through.
“Point being here, if everyone is in pretty bad shape and there are all these job opportunities, why the hell were the people not taking the opportunities?“
Because floor managers do not want to hire people who cannot pass a drug test to work with heavy machinery.
Well according to the DEA themselves majority of fentanyl comes from foreign sources and some officials claim over 90%. So by my metrics you’re just moving the locus of the government failure. I’d also ask how someone without a job is paying for drugs, seems like another point you could highlight a failure.
And to be clear, although I do think these all are government failures, I also do believe everyone is responsible for their choices in life.
I am just more trying to highlight how I believe at the foundation, looking at it as an entire town instead of individuals, this seems like a problem almost entirely of the governments making on all sides. And as much as I think individuals should do all they can to better themselves, saying “it’s the residents fault for not accepting the immigrants” or “it’s the immigrants fault for being detrimental to the lives of the residents” seemingly ignores that in both responses the government is directly responsible for each. They are almost entirely responsible for the immigrants being there. And they seemingly hold a ton of the responsibility for the condition of the residents.
If you’re accepting “the jobs are there, no one will do them”, then you cannot make the “industry left the area” argument and blame it on market forces. Maybe the *desired* industry did leave, but you’re stating there are still jobs and the people aren’t doing them. In any market without government intervention that has people willfully not working, those people are excised from the dataset incredibly quickly. I.e. they die, because how does anyone already on the bottom rungs of society survive without any income. That is clearly a bad scenario, hence why we have government assistance. But, if you’re saying there are jobs and people are willfully not doing them and they’re still around clearly there is a variable that is not purely market driven involved. People are choosing no (traditional) income instead of something. That is not an option in a market without intervention. Again, clearly people on welfare is a better outcome than people starving, homeless in the streets. I am in complete agreement there.
One point is, that is STILL a bad outcome. It’s better than the alternative, but it is bad. And the main point is that adding a foreign body of low wage workers to *fix* the issue because the local population is already demoralized by your prior intervention (wherever you want to locate that intervention) seems like a absolutely abysmal solution to say “hey there’s upsides” about.
It seems something like having a bum ankle that hurts like hell and instead of doing physical therapy and recovering a doctor hands you a bottle of opioids and says “hey this will take the pain away, now you just have an opioid addiction”. Doesn’t feel like much of a solution even if someone can point to you and say “hey, they’re now pain free” and have that be an honest accurate statement but still miss the entire issue.
They should just move the factory to Haiti (or the Dominican) and employee them there.
Also, for many if they take a low wage job, they lose their Medicaid benefits. What they get paid does not offset their medical and food stamps.
Right or wrong, and idk what exactly it means for policy in particular, but as someone who drives around a ton for work, it is an absolute fact that there are places that never really recovered from previous crashes. Even places where many/most people have moved out, it's not everyone and deferred maintenance is grossly apparent
The Springfield job story is totally plausible to me because the same thing happened in my mom’s hometown a dozen+ years ago - the factory had to bus in immigrants living in a couple small cities an hour or more away, because the local pool of workers couldn’t pass the drug test. (Its sole purpose was processing a highly perishable agricultural food product supplied by surrounding farms, so no, you could not just move it to El Salvador or Eritrea or whatever.) If anyone wants to complain about immigrants taking American jobs, they have to figure out the market-clearing wage to get Americans off welfare and meth.
https://www.youtube.com/live/dyuUGWXpb5Y?si=4G6pxrZ6UbLQXkUf at 1:30 they discuss police calls about things happening to domestic animals. This is from months ago. The boys should be ashamed.
First off, as an artist who does value self-expression and greatly appreciates the female form, I applaud our former first lady for her efforts and hope she encourages more of the same. And, if there are any models out there looking to collaborate on an art series, I am available, and willing to meet and discuss over a lovely dinner and several drinks.
As a New York City pedestrian, however, I cannot object strongly enough to Mr. Welch's odious and execrable endorsement of a pro-bike platform, and would, in fact like to introduce city legislation making it legal to clothesline any bicyclist who buzzes you or disobeys traffic laws and then beat them to within an inch of their life with the very same metal means of their conveyance.
Finally, as a bipolar manic-depressive who spent the majority of my adult life as an overemotional, suicidal, constantly-catastrophizing reactionary in my own personal life (something I have fortunately been largely cured of, road rage towards cyclists being an exception), it's been both depressing and incredibly familiar seeing so much of our country, especially our political and supposed thought leaders, increasingly react and respond to politics the way I did to so much of my life when I was at my worst. People constantly joke about how crazy our politics and social discourse has gotten, but when I say it, I mean it quite literally! People are behaving (and probably making themselves) mentally ill with the constant apocalyptic rhetoric surrounding every single cause and election that comes our way. It's so recognizable to me that it's like looking into a very embarrassing mirror sometimes. It is absolutely no way to live and almost always an overreaction, whether regarding events in your personal or professional life, or in politics at large. It reminds me of when Mickey Mantle was diagnosed with liver cancer back in the mid-90s. A very old and frail-looking Mick gave a press conference where he referenced all the generations of kids who wanted to grow up to be "The Mick" in contrast to his own Herculean alcohol consumption over those same years, and said "Don't be like me". I've thought about that a lot these past few years, while watching normal people lose their minds over current events. DON'T BE LIKE ME. Or, as I also like to say, "I'm mentally ill, but you people are fucking nuts." Personally, my advice is to not let yourself go nuts. Because, even if you're like me and being driven crazy is a fairly short drive, the drive back takes for-fucking-ever.
Tariffs, like most other public policies, are tools. And just like any tool, they come with unintended consequences and some negative side-effects - there is no such thing as a free lunch; only deferred costs. The questions are, as ever, (1) whether the policy situation you find yourself in calls for the use of that particular tool. and (2) whether the anticipated benefits outweigh the foreseeable negative side-effects.
Tariffs worked pretty great in helping the northern US industrialize during the early 19th century, at the cost of driving up the cost of superior manufactured goods produced in more-established industries (e.g. England)...meanwhile, the free-trade south preferred to import all their finished products, and probably got better-quality goods while they were able to do so. They certainly were, for a long time, significantly richer than the North! Their free-trade stance also had the benefit of keeping their political economy centered on the owners of the great plantations which provided their export cash crops, rather than having to struggle with nouveau-riche urban industrialists and the annoyingly-demanding voting blocs of free urban laborers. Of course, the South's lack of domestic industries bit them hard when they tried to fight a war against the North...
Tariffs and pretty ruthless import-substitution policies also worked pretty well to help South Korea zoom upwards from the GDP below the Congo in the 1950s to the hi-tech dystopia it is today...but also have had a stultifying impact on e.g. the Japanese economy over the past few decades. Other countries also have had a much worse experience when they tried to blindly copy the Import-Substitution method over to their own economies without doing the hard and uncomfortable work of really examining their own situations (e.g. Mexico).
It just depends on what you're trying to do, how well you've done your homework, and what costs you're willing to pay for it.
Whoa that is way too much nuance. Tarrifs = taxes. Taxes = bad. Except taxes on tips, those = necessary, because reasons?
Cars can eat shit U-S-A! U-S-A!
I view defense industrial spending being almost entirely being a tariff (if we could procure from overseas it would be cheaper and have more competition), but a necessary evil since it's critical to national security.
The pager op is amazing. Think about all the intelligence they got from mapping out who was carrying a pager, when, and where. And then map that out to who they live near, work with, etc. It's a genius way to swoop up Hezbollah leadership and operations intel in one fell swoop.
On the other hand, we may now have thousands of maimed zealots. I wonder what they will be thinking about all day?
What they were thinking most of the time before they got maimed, I'd guess, if they were on the pager distribution list.
What Michael doesn’t understand about the Springfield example is that the migrants can only afford to work the incredibly low wage jobs (which he acknowledges are low wage) is because tax payers are subsidizing their housing, med care, debit cards loaded with cash, etc. He missed that critical point in this whole circle jerk. I believe the mayor in Springfield owns apartments and has contracts with the feds to house the migrants who work for $9/hour or whatever slave wage the factory pays them.
In discussions about people overdoing the rhetoric against the “elites” …can we see CC our friend Batya?
She was on Megyn Kelly the other day, and holy shit, she’s gotten worse and worse.
I was a sommelier at a restaurant where Bill Ackman was a regular and I can report he’s a dummy.
Do you know what would be even more awesome than Scott Lincicome on the pod? The Fifth LIVE with Scott Lincicome here in the thriving metropolis of Raleigh!
We've got real BBQ, cheap beer, Lincicome's famous hot sauce, and Southern hospitality. I'd happily house all Southern out-of-state Fifth fans, refugee camp style.
And just FYI for anyone considering moving, North Carolina, is in fact, completely full.
Do the South a favor; buy a Yankee a ticket home. :)
Would love that! Scott was a friend of mine in college. Lost touch with him after leaving the DC area, and then I saw him one day on X and was just happy to see him thriving and sharing his spunk and smarts.
In case the lads read this far down in the comments, I second the motion for a Raleigh live show!
I hear Scott’s a member of a swanky country club and can secure a ballroom to host. Only thing is Kmele would have to leave Cohen home, it’s…uh…restricted
That is, um, not the bias down here.
Are you Scott's burner account?
The exclamation point is proof of my authenticity.
Is Lincicome's famous hot sauce a euphemism for something?
If you know, you know...
I would seriously consider driving up for this! (I had such a crush on Scott during Covid when he had that mohawk…)
My TDS from 2016 has, thanks to DEI, the lack of rule of law, our open border, suppression of speech, antisemitism, victimhood culture, race essentialism, transing kids, men in women’s sports and spaces - combined with the constant double standards, gaslighting and projection - now given way to full blown DPDS (Democratic Party Derangement Syndrome). I’ve done a complete 180. I mean, I haven’t gone MAGA, but the thought of having to tolerate this nonsense for four more years is so depressing. That recent video of Tim Walz’s wife “turning the page” made my DPDS flare up.
I've gone from "No thanks!" to both parties to "Please God no!"
I'm voting for Harris because I think it will calm down the crazies on the left more than if Trump wins.
You may be right, but I can’t in good conscience vote for crazy. Policies aside, have you seen her recent “town hall” with Oprah? Trump may put his foot in his mouth, but at least he’s saying something.
Exactly.
100 points for the Tribe reference! Now we just need to go find my damn wallet. I think it might be in El Segundo. I gotta get it!
Check with Bonita Applebaum. I heard she’s got it goin’ on.
(Just to clear up any confusion, yes, I’m a huge dork.)
I live down PCH from El Segundo. I can go see if it is there for you.
P.S. It wasn't until I moved here that I realized ATCQ had never been to El Segundo. The actual city is NOTHING like the video.
Even more ridiculous when you realize that El Segundo was not named by some Spanish missionary or conquistador or something, but due to the land being the second (El Segundo in Spanish) Standard Oil refinery on the West Coast
How ... did I not know this.
MM accidentally hit on why I'm so much less concerned about crackpottery from the right currently. One one side you have Laura Loomer, and on the other - same amount of bs - you have Yale professors.
Hahaha I have this same thought all the time. What institution does Trump/the right hold control over? Maybe the military but even that is a long stretch at the upper echelons. What institution does the left hold control over? Every one I can think of.
So exactly your point. Right has nut cases saying crazy shit. Left has professors, studio heads, celebrities directing culture, heads of every administrative agency, etc.
Not to say masses of dipshit nut cases cannot cause an enormous amount of trouble. But with the jury still out I think I know which I’m more worried about.
Awful, cringeworthy “*identifying characteristic* here” post… AD military spouse here. Humble acknowledgement that this is anecdotal and not stats based, but the military is such a mixed political bag even at the lower levels (and I say this as someone fully immersed in my husband’s beloved Corps, not like, the Air Force - no offense to all our airmen/women) that I think it’s safe to say the right controls no institutions. If anything, I’d say (obligatory referral back to my initial caveat about anecdotal evidence) the military bends libertarian. They just want to do their own thing and be left alone.
Yeah this is one of the reasons I don’t have much fear of the right. They have no power.
What gets me about the doomsayers on all sides is that they seem to care more about being right than about the bad thing not happening. JD Vance should be delighted that there’s no indication that people in Ohio are eating cats and dogs. I’m certainly glad about that, because I don’t want that to happen. We should be relieved to be proven wrong when things go better than you predicted. When that isn’t the case, it makes me think that someone cares more about their image than the issues they claim to worry about.
Thus has ever been the way.
Next episode title: “If I Diddy’d It”!