I think you guys are taking way stronger stances than what is necessary at this point.
Are tariffs a horrible idea, yes. Does Trump actually think they’re economically beneficial, yes. Is that unbelievably stupid, yes. However, Trump is seemingly using them as a tool pulling them back and putting them forth willy-nilly and I do think both Canada and Mexico are responding to them. You can say he got nothing but prior commitments, which I think is underselling although I see where you’re coming from, but I think the number one thing to take from that is under Biden they remained commitments, no action in any way was ever taken to fulfill those commitments. Trump is giving them a 30-day window on tariffs and I think in his head he is using it as a sword of Damocles to enact if they do not follow through with their commitments. Further, because I think he’s an idiot and has no idea how tariffs work, it is a believable tool to use. I think he’s will implement them if he doesn’t get what he wants because he in error actually thinks it will be good for him.
Meanwhile, yes a trade war hurts everyone and would hurt us a lot. But, it would almost certainly hurt Mexico and Canada more. And, although this might be short sighted and come from a position of *privilege*, I wouldn’t mind us all bloodying our noses if it meant getting some results on the border. Canada and Mexico don’t give a fuck about the border because the traffic is quite unidirectional. That is bullshit like a neighbor who has a tree growing over a fence dropping branches and leaves and acorns and shit on your house, and when you ask them to fix it they go “sorry, not my problem”. Well, if Trump takes a tactic of setting up speakers and blasting music as loud as possible hurting everyone’s quality of life until they try and help fix the problem, I am all for it. Also, everyone on the other side of this keeps bringing up diplomacy, or aid, or cooperation, etc. When has that ever worked? I am 31 years old and do not know when that has ever been helpful for any extended period of time. For that reason alone, I am again fully on board with Trump trying some whacky shit even if it doesn’t work and on paper it’s stupid. At a very minimum it is a different strategy, and if the other sides response is “let’s try the same thing again for a 32nd year”, I’m going with the babbling dipshit in the corner. I rather pick the blind monkey throwing a dart than the machine I know misses, if just not by that much.
Which brings me to Gaza because I think it is the base of my feeling there. First, I think your summary of what we know at this point is completely wrong. I think Trump has proposed we let everyone leave who wants to leave and keep people out who are terrorists. I don’t think he ever suggested transplanting the entire area. But, same logic applies, the entire world has apparently had their best and brightest minds focused on this sliver of land for 80 years. For 80 years we have been getting *genius* plans for how to solve the problem. Over 80 years it is absolutely unquestionable the area has only gotten worse. Yes, we have had spells of more peaceful existence, yes the was more consistent violence in the 80/90s. However, the relationship has only gotten worse and more calcified. The most charitable view I have of what Trump is doing here is again just taking a brand new approach. The going theory has been that land is Palestinians land, we can’t move them, we cannot let them leave, we have to play the board as it lies. That has never worked, and now 16 months since Oct 7th of listening to hundreds if not thousands of hours of *experts* on the subject, not a single one has a plan for how to fix the issue that is even somewhat convincing. Even to themselves, they usually qualify when they’re talking it probably won’t work.
Well Trump just through the board in the air. All the rules everyone thought they were playing by are gone. Your comparison to Iraq is absolutely insane in this case, yes I think nation building (recently) has been an enormous disaster. But, I believe mainly that is due to will and effort. Afghanistan everyone chalks up as a failure, yes it was, because we quit. To say we never did anything these is one of the most crazy making idiotic sentiments to me in the world. Completely drives me insane. Women were going to school and getting an education and didn’t have to hide themselves under sheets at risk of being beaten. That alone is a thing we did. I don’t know how people just say that doesn’t count when it applies to millions of people. We quit, we quit at a time that if we did the same with Japan there were still entire battalions fighting on islands from WWII. Yes, we occupied and basically controlled their government until 1952, but then we left 260,000 soldiers there for years and still to this day have ~30,000 stationed there. We were holding Afghanistan with zero military casualties with 2,000 troops. And then we just gave it up and subjected millions of women to hell.
Do you know how easy it would be for us to control Gaza? Why it has no comparison to Iraq? The place is 140 square miles. Iraq is 160,000 square miles. Gaza is basically 10 Ohare airports. That is it. If we truly wanted to control it (meaning to the point where military casualties were somewhat nonexistent) I think it could be done in a month, especially with Israel’s help. We just would have to WANT to do it. And actually stick with it and continue with it for years. I do not even think it would be a challenge to anything but will. Wouldn’t be a military challenge, a logistical one, or really a geopolitical one (I firmly believe the rest of the world doesn’t actually give a shit). We would just have to want to do it.
Trump by throwing the board in the air I believe put this on the table. And I think all the players in the game have the same realization that I just spelled out. They have been operating under the assumption they can do an Oct 7th, take an absolute beating, but even at the worst, they just have to wait out the storm, and regroup over years, and they can try again. Trump just put on the table that this will literally not be theirs anymore. At the very least, I think that holds a lot of weight for negotiations. “Hey, if you guys don’t figure this out, Israel is going to clear out every military threat, then we are going to clear out every dissident threat, and then we are going to set up camp and you’ll be under our control for decades. We are done dealing with your stupid shit, it’s over.”. Seems to me a way better starting place than anything any other administration has had in my lifetime.
> We were holding Afghanistan with zero military casualties with 2,000 troops. And then we just gave it up and subjected millions of women to hell.
This is an underrated point that almost no American understands. Withdrawing was one of the worst things Biden did. And I know that he was following Trump's plan, but Trump is erratic, so if he had won there's a good chance he would have backed out of the withdrawal once he saw how it was going to go.
Oooh, I respectfully disagree. It was the one thing Biden did deserving credit, granted my cocker spaniel could've organized it better. What a disaster.
I give it a thumbs up purely for process reasons and am certainly willing to argue if we should have troops there or not. BUT, if we want our military there, Congress should *declare war and fund it.* It's congress' job, and Congress must be held accountable.
I mean, the process horse was out of the barn at that point. Yes, fantasy libertarian Joe Biden should have demanded that Congress authorize the military presence in Afghanistan and provide clear conditions for its termination (which would probably not be achieved for decades). But real-life Biden had the de facto power to stay or leave on his own terms, and he chose to leave and consign Afghans to live forever under a brutal, totalitarian regime.
Fantasy libertarian Joe Biden? You may be the first person ever to string those words together. And until regional (not just national) conditions change, and the people who live in that region decide to change those conditions, totalitarian regimes will reign. It is a tragedy all the way around. I want them to be free and prosperous. (I've had a lifelong dream of backpacking in Afghanistan - I'd LOVE for it to be safe.) But so far, it seems like we want all that for them more than they want it.
Moynihan's TDS is very grating at this point. I never recall this level of anger when discussing the godawful Joe Biden administration. IDK how many more tarriff rants I can take. Might have to unsubscribe at this point. Did Moynihan ever call Biden's presidency "embarrassing"?
I'm pretty confident he did, among many other, worse pejoratives. The boys were anything but soft on Biden about almost everything. The theme of 2024 was how fucked up it was that we had a cadaver running the country.
It's strange to describe accurately criticizing economic illiteracy and shallow, strong-man governing philosophies as "derangement." If you think tariffs and insulting mutually beneficial trading partners is actually not that bad, you should make a case for that, instead of simply dismissing the perspectives of people who have a demonstrably solid understanding of economics and governance.
It's reminiscent of how trans-activists express melodramatic exasperation for medical and scientific experts who raise legitimate concerns about kids transitioning without any critical responses to their arguments.
You seriously don't recall the fella's criticizing the Biden administration with anger? I think you must not have been paying very close attention the last 4 years. One of the main themes of the podcast is criticizing whichever idiot is currently in power, and now it's Trumps turn
Also though to highlight, you compared a 160,000 square mile area with a 140 square mile area, as if that was an intelligent thing to do. Additionally, Iraq is notoriously difficult terrain for militaries going back to antiquity. Mountains, deserts, etc. Gaza is a flat strip of land that is urbanized. Urban warfare is notoriously difficult, also though Gaza is rubble at this point and again 140 square miles. They also have no military and the US could control it without putting a human life at risk (hypothetically, depending on what systems they’d like to use, I.e. an air force [I am not talking about anything insane like nukes, just traditional weapons systems]).
And what I started with, but lost sight of. Trump can be wrong on all of this. It can all not work out. Also, you guys are taking such a strong stance here that is setting yourself up to look like idiots. Yes, possible all of this doesn’t work out, but they’re in reference to problems that have been intractable for decades upon decades. If he fails, he joins the list of everyone before him. If he succeeds, he does something in each case no one has ever done before. To have the reaction you all have had, I think you have to believe the chance for any of this to work out is quite literally 0%. I might be optimistic giving it 10%, but at 10% I’m not roasting the shit out of the man for trying something new. Although I also cannot stand Trump and hate him to my core. Just sick of *experts* repeating known failing strategies over and over and over and over again acting like they’re insightful. Again, I rather take the crazy man taking a wild shot.
Team, the area sucks, we all expect them to kill each other, no peace will hold, no one is optimistic about the future, everyone has blood deep hatred’s of everyone else.
Also, let’s not shake up things because it might make them worse.
I get the sentiment, but dear god you all are sounding like condescending pricks. Again, I hate Trump, posted that on these messages for years. But, you just can’t sound like condescending pricks while also saying the status quo of by your description, hell on earth, is the best you have. “HA! What idiots! What they’re trying to do is sooo stupid!! Oh…. What would I do? I’d let them live in hell…. Yeah, that’s better… shitty, no future, hell on earth, hell. Yeah, forever. No end in sight. Yep, that’s my suggestion.”
‘They have been operating under the assumption they can do an Oct 7th, take an absolute beating, but even at the worst, they just have to wait out the storm, and regroup over years, and they can try again. Trump just put on the table that this will literally not be theirs anymore.’
This was my first thought too, and why I believe Trump’s statement might not be as stupid/crazy as some believe. However bad the situation in Gaza is, hamas etc seems ok to keep it that way if they have the chance to continue launching attacks, knowing that Israel can only go so far in response before caving to international pressure and the cycle repeats. If there was a chance that Gazans might lose everything completely, they might start making different choices.
I realize this does not mean much as the area is in a constant state of refusing to address this issue. And, any promising steps are usually met by opposing forces. But, hopefully this post still has enough juice to get in front of the Team and maybe have them temper their comments.
Another sign of the apocalypse. When I was a kid all the Hockey teams were in places like Winnipeg and Saskatoon. They gave a few American snow cities a team just for DEI purposes. Now they're in places like Nashville and San Jose and Florida has nine teams. It's like the Bizarro NHL.
The St. Louis Blues almost moved to Saskatoon in the early eighties, when they were so cash-strapped they actually skipped a whole NHL draft!
The Penguins almost moved to Hamilton, Ontario around the same time, but then they drafted this Mario guy and it all worked out well. (The Leafs and Sabres would likely veto a Hamilton team in any event.)
I'm glad Winnipeg got the Jets 2.0 but I really wish they'd gotten the original team's history, too. Maybe they will, considering the Coyotes officially disbanded and the Utah team is technically a new organization.
Half of the players on American teams are Canadians anyway. If you were an elite athlete, where would you hope to live, Edmonton or Miami? I know what I’d pick.
In my opinion, any time an American team wins it still counts as a victory for Canadian hockey players.
I love you guys, but if you are going to repeatedly use economic consensus as the defense of freed trade, you should probably also mention that the economic consensus is almost equally strongly in favor of congestion pricing:
Agree - I have spoken to many economists about this. We regularly use pricing to regulate demand for a scarce good. Free busy roads are like communist bread lines!
Yes! Agree that there are hidden costs to congestion charging but there are also hidden costs to congestion. When in doubt trust people to respond to rational financial incentives!
This was the subject of my first (naive, non-subscriber) email to the hosts.
Grateful to Moynihan for explaining why filming an interview works the way it does. I just wish people would just ask themselves why any given thing is done a certain way, than barreling into Conspiracy Country.
My profession is selling commercial HVAC equipment. I don't know anything about how interviews are made. I felt pretty confident Trump was wrong here, but it was nice to have Moynihan pull back the curtain on the process for normies like me.
It makes sense that the money to Politico isn’t a subsidy, literally. and yes at the end of the day it’s just ANOTHER thing the Feds waste money on, but like… the numbers math out to like $14,000 per subscription.
so sure, not a subsidy. then what is it? cuz it sure feels like corruption, or something related to corruption.
It's a premium service that is priced comparably to market competitors. It offers legislators up to the minute updates on regulatory changes. The government is a big machine churning out many decisions all the time, and following all of it can be a rather huge burden. Reason has a good writeup on why it's not all that concerning.
Does the Department of Energy need 200 subscriptions? It seems to me this is another tool agencies can use to soak up unused end of year funds and send them to an ideologically aligned cause. "This is perfectly normal" might placate your sensibilities about malfeasance but dumping millions of dollars to media outlets won't fly in the next election.
The DOE has 14 thousand employees, and are highly dependent on being up to date about things like court rulings pertaining to their work. So yeah, 200 subs to cover the management team for that many workers is not all that surprising. They can either price it through subscriptions, or price it through some other way, I suspect that the amount of work necessary doesn't change, nor the cost of it. I also suspect that if the government were to run such a service it would be priced more like what Obama managed with the ACA website, or worse, since there is actually more work to be done then just code a website.
My sensibilities aren't "placated" I just see a reasonable excuse for government to be giving this money to these companies for rendering this particular service. Is there a way you can argue that this is actually a malfeasance without the obvious bias you have for a single outlet? You know, actually address the logic about how government doesn't need this service, and how it actually was just a kickback for being ideologically aligned. I'm not even fully sold that this is a good thing. I'm an actual libertarian who doesn't think that the DOE should even exist. But until it can't, then this is a necessary service such government agencies need if they're going to have any measure of efficiency, laughable as that is.
I think if it was so "necessary" they would be showing what the service actually offers. The descriptions typically go something like "it's a very wonky political analysis that gets into the weeds." It also looks like the price on this varies wildly, with the government constantly paying the highest amount despite having hundreds of subscriptions. It's not as obvious as $3000 toilet seats but when the funding is mostly hidden and the benefit can't even be explained coherently I lean towards this being straight up fraud.
"But that's not what USAID and the other government agencies are paying for. In truth, Politico's premium product isn't political news coverage, progressively slanted or otherwise: It's minute-to-minute updates on regulatory decisions that impact specific industries. This is information that political and government agencies need and that Politico supplies, for a premium price. As independent journalist Lee Fang points out, Politico isn't the only game in town: Bloomberg and LexisNexis run similar services. Politico's price tag is comparable to theirs."
That's from the article I posted. I've read others, but even I haven't come away with this idea that it's just an extra deep analysis of politics. The funding wasn't hidden, either. Not at all like the 20 billion they just found the EPA hiding from the new administration. If this were real fraud, then Trump would have activated the DOJ instead of just ending the subscriptions. They're just going to get the service from Bloomberg now, instead. It's part of the changing of the guard. Especially after it turned out that only 44k of it came from USAID, and they got millions over a series of years, from multiple departments, not in a single year, or from USAID. Also the subscriptions were right there, in the budget, and accounted for. Hell Politico is supposed to go bankrupt because of this, and they're not. I lean toward this being a nothing-burger. Which is unfortunate because it stands a chance at overshadowing their win over the EPA attempt to hide 20 billion dollars.
For fuck's sake. Kicking off the episode reminding me of the '02 and '05 division series and the goddamn Thunderstix. Christ on a cracker I hated those things. And, no, Matt, Yankee fans are not all loud and obnoxious. You know what's loud and obnoxious? THUNDERSTIX. You guys were just jealous because you needed foreign objects to make all that noise, whereas we could do it naturally. I'm so happy we got our revenge in '09 on the way to a championship. Looking forward to the next episode where you discuss the history of the Rally Monkey and break down David Eckstein's batting stance.
Fun fact: The first text message I ever received from my late father was during the 2009 ALDS while I was out on a date. It read: "Robinson Cano stinks!"
I saw the Angels play at Yankee Stadium in the 2005 postseason against the Big Unit. When a friend and I sat down wearing Angels caps the Yankees fan next to us said "outta da whole stadium I gotta sit next to yous guys" but in a very good natured way. We did not bring thunderstix.
While it says nothing about what policies should be enacted one way or another, and I may be sympathetic to the underlying take regarding these policies in general, international law is 100% fake.
Between December 2022 and September 2023 the murderous Aliyev regime of Azerbaijan blockaded 120,000 Armenians in Karabagh (10 times the size of Gaza) until they were starved and cleansed out of their ancestral lands and sent away. And the world didn’t care, no protests, no USAID, no NGO.
A recent historical reference that could be compared, despite order of magnitude differences.
Idk, Boston fans are definitely the worst. When I was in college my friend Jarvis and I were watching the Yankees play in a common room and a marauding gang of Red Sox fans were so upset about it that they actually threw the TV we were watching on out the window.
Starting a gofundme to schedule jobs at Moynihan's home repeatedly until that plumber shows up. Everyone wins.
I think you guys are taking way stronger stances than what is necessary at this point.
Are tariffs a horrible idea, yes. Does Trump actually think they’re economically beneficial, yes. Is that unbelievably stupid, yes. However, Trump is seemingly using them as a tool pulling them back and putting them forth willy-nilly and I do think both Canada and Mexico are responding to them. You can say he got nothing but prior commitments, which I think is underselling although I see where you’re coming from, but I think the number one thing to take from that is under Biden they remained commitments, no action in any way was ever taken to fulfill those commitments. Trump is giving them a 30-day window on tariffs and I think in his head he is using it as a sword of Damocles to enact if they do not follow through with their commitments. Further, because I think he’s an idiot and has no idea how tariffs work, it is a believable tool to use. I think he’s will implement them if he doesn’t get what he wants because he in error actually thinks it will be good for him.
Meanwhile, yes a trade war hurts everyone and would hurt us a lot. But, it would almost certainly hurt Mexico and Canada more. And, although this might be short sighted and come from a position of *privilege*, I wouldn’t mind us all bloodying our noses if it meant getting some results on the border. Canada and Mexico don’t give a fuck about the border because the traffic is quite unidirectional. That is bullshit like a neighbor who has a tree growing over a fence dropping branches and leaves and acorns and shit on your house, and when you ask them to fix it they go “sorry, not my problem”. Well, if Trump takes a tactic of setting up speakers and blasting music as loud as possible hurting everyone’s quality of life until they try and help fix the problem, I am all for it. Also, everyone on the other side of this keeps bringing up diplomacy, or aid, or cooperation, etc. When has that ever worked? I am 31 years old and do not know when that has ever been helpful for any extended period of time. For that reason alone, I am again fully on board with Trump trying some whacky shit even if it doesn’t work and on paper it’s stupid. At a very minimum it is a different strategy, and if the other sides response is “let’s try the same thing again for a 32nd year”, I’m going with the babbling dipshit in the corner. I rather pick the blind monkey throwing a dart than the machine I know misses, if just not by that much.
Which brings me to Gaza because I think it is the base of my feeling there. First, I think your summary of what we know at this point is completely wrong. I think Trump has proposed we let everyone leave who wants to leave and keep people out who are terrorists. I don’t think he ever suggested transplanting the entire area. But, same logic applies, the entire world has apparently had their best and brightest minds focused on this sliver of land for 80 years. For 80 years we have been getting *genius* plans for how to solve the problem. Over 80 years it is absolutely unquestionable the area has only gotten worse. Yes, we have had spells of more peaceful existence, yes the was more consistent violence in the 80/90s. However, the relationship has only gotten worse and more calcified. The most charitable view I have of what Trump is doing here is again just taking a brand new approach. The going theory has been that land is Palestinians land, we can’t move them, we cannot let them leave, we have to play the board as it lies. That has never worked, and now 16 months since Oct 7th of listening to hundreds if not thousands of hours of *experts* on the subject, not a single one has a plan for how to fix the issue that is even somewhat convincing. Even to themselves, they usually qualify when they’re talking it probably won’t work.
Well Trump just through the board in the air. All the rules everyone thought they were playing by are gone. Your comparison to Iraq is absolutely insane in this case, yes I think nation building (recently) has been an enormous disaster. But, I believe mainly that is due to will and effort. Afghanistan everyone chalks up as a failure, yes it was, because we quit. To say we never did anything these is one of the most crazy making idiotic sentiments to me in the world. Completely drives me insane. Women were going to school and getting an education and didn’t have to hide themselves under sheets at risk of being beaten. That alone is a thing we did. I don’t know how people just say that doesn’t count when it applies to millions of people. We quit, we quit at a time that if we did the same with Japan there were still entire battalions fighting on islands from WWII. Yes, we occupied and basically controlled their government until 1952, but then we left 260,000 soldiers there for years and still to this day have ~30,000 stationed there. We were holding Afghanistan with zero military casualties with 2,000 troops. And then we just gave it up and subjected millions of women to hell.
Do you know how easy it would be for us to control Gaza? Why it has no comparison to Iraq? The place is 140 square miles. Iraq is 160,000 square miles. Gaza is basically 10 Ohare airports. That is it. If we truly wanted to control it (meaning to the point where military casualties were somewhat nonexistent) I think it could be done in a month, especially with Israel’s help. We just would have to WANT to do it. And actually stick with it and continue with it for years. I do not even think it would be a challenge to anything but will. Wouldn’t be a military challenge, a logistical one, or really a geopolitical one (I firmly believe the rest of the world doesn’t actually give a shit). We would just have to want to do it.
Trump by throwing the board in the air I believe put this on the table. And I think all the players in the game have the same realization that I just spelled out. They have been operating under the assumption they can do an Oct 7th, take an absolute beating, but even at the worst, they just have to wait out the storm, and regroup over years, and they can try again. Trump just put on the table that this will literally not be theirs anymore. At the very least, I think that holds a lot of weight for negotiations. “Hey, if you guys don’t figure this out, Israel is going to clear out every military threat, then we are going to clear out every dissident threat, and then we are going to set up camp and you’ll be under our control for decades. We are done dealing with your stupid shit, it’s over.”. Seems to me a way better starting place than anything any other administration has had in my lifetime.
> We were holding Afghanistan with zero military casualties with 2,000 troops. And then we just gave it up and subjected millions of women to hell.
This is an underrated point that almost no American understands. Withdrawing was one of the worst things Biden did. And I know that he was following Trump's plan, but Trump is erratic, so if he had won there's a good chance he would have backed out of the withdrawal once he saw how it was going to go.
Oooh, I respectfully disagree. It was the one thing Biden did deserving credit, granted my cocker spaniel could've organized it better. What a disaster.
I give it a thumbs up purely for process reasons and am certainly willing to argue if we should have troops there or not. BUT, if we want our military there, Congress should *declare war and fund it.* It's congress' job, and Congress must be held accountable.
I mean, the process horse was out of the barn at that point. Yes, fantasy libertarian Joe Biden should have demanded that Congress authorize the military presence in Afghanistan and provide clear conditions for its termination (which would probably not be achieved for decades). But real-life Biden had the de facto power to stay or leave on his own terms, and he chose to leave and consign Afghans to live forever under a brutal, totalitarian regime.
Fantasy libertarian Joe Biden? You may be the first person ever to string those words together. And until regional (not just national) conditions change, and the people who live in that region decide to change those conditions, totalitarian regimes will reign. It is a tragedy all the way around. I want them to be free and prosperous. (I've had a lifelong dream of backpacking in Afghanistan - I'd LOVE for it to be safe.) But so far, it seems like we want all that for them more than they want it.
Moynihan's TDS is very grating at this point. I never recall this level of anger when discussing the godawful Joe Biden administration. IDK how many more tarriff rants I can take. Might have to unsubscribe at this point. Did Moynihan ever call Biden's presidency "embarrassing"?
I'm pretty confident he did, among many other, worse pejoratives. The boys were anything but soft on Biden about almost everything. The theme of 2024 was how fucked up it was that we had a cadaver running the country.
I don't share your perception. They went pretty hard on Dems
It's strange to describe accurately criticizing economic illiteracy and shallow, strong-man governing philosophies as "derangement." If you think tariffs and insulting mutually beneficial trading partners is actually not that bad, you should make a case for that, instead of simply dismissing the perspectives of people who have a demonstrably solid understanding of economics and governance.
It's reminiscent of how trans-activists express melodramatic exasperation for medical and scientific experts who raise legitimate concerns about kids transitioning without any critical responses to their arguments.
You seriously don't recall the fella's criticizing the Biden administration with anger? I think you must not have been paying very close attention the last 4 years. One of the main themes of the podcast is criticizing whichever idiot is currently in power, and now it's Trumps turn
Also though to highlight, you compared a 160,000 square mile area with a 140 square mile area, as if that was an intelligent thing to do. Additionally, Iraq is notoriously difficult terrain for militaries going back to antiquity. Mountains, deserts, etc. Gaza is a flat strip of land that is urbanized. Urban warfare is notoriously difficult, also though Gaza is rubble at this point and again 140 square miles. They also have no military and the US could control it without putting a human life at risk (hypothetically, depending on what systems they’d like to use, I.e. an air force [I am not talking about anything insane like nukes, just traditional weapons systems]).
And what I started with, but lost sight of. Trump can be wrong on all of this. It can all not work out. Also, you guys are taking such a strong stance here that is setting yourself up to look like idiots. Yes, possible all of this doesn’t work out, but they’re in reference to problems that have been intractable for decades upon decades. If he fails, he joins the list of everyone before him. If he succeeds, he does something in each case no one has ever done before. To have the reaction you all have had, I think you have to believe the chance for any of this to work out is quite literally 0%. I might be optimistic giving it 10%, but at 10% I’m not roasting the shit out of the man for trying something new. Although I also cannot stand Trump and hate him to my core. Just sick of *experts* repeating known failing strategies over and over and over and over again acting like they’re insightful. Again, I rather take the crazy man taking a wild shot.
Team, the area sucks, we all expect them to kill each other, no peace will hold, no one is optimistic about the future, everyone has blood deep hatred’s of everyone else.
Also, let’s not shake up things because it might make them worse.
I get the sentiment, but dear god you all are sounding like condescending pricks. Again, I hate Trump, posted that on these messages for years. But, you just can’t sound like condescending pricks while also saying the status quo of by your description, hell on earth, is the best you have. “HA! What idiots! What they’re trying to do is sooo stupid!! Oh…. What would I do? I’d let them live in hell…. Yeah, that’s better… shitty, no future, hell on earth, hell. Yeah, forever. No end in sight. Yep, that’s my suggestion.”
I mean come on.
Also genuinely shocked to hear Moynihan bring up international law after beating the drum for Israel for the past year in change.
As someone actually impacted by this, I'm so grateful you wrote this. Thanks man 🙏
‘They have been operating under the assumption they can do an Oct 7th, take an absolute beating, but even at the worst, they just have to wait out the storm, and regroup over years, and they can try again. Trump just put on the table that this will literally not be theirs anymore.’
This was my first thought too, and why I believe Trump’s statement might not be as stupid/crazy as some believe. However bad the situation in Gaza is, hamas etc seems ok to keep it that way if they have the chance to continue launching attacks, knowing that Israel can only go so far in response before caving to international pressure and the cycle repeats. If there was a chance that Gazans might lose everything completely, they might start making different choices.
Hear hear! Wish they would address your well written comment on the next pod.
I dont mind you bloodying your nose into a gory mess…but leave me out of it.
https://x.com/scottjenningsky/status/1890015541118869823?s=42&mx=2
https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/arab-states-wake-up-to-fact-that-trump-means-what-he-says-on-gaza-56380703
I realize this does not mean much as the area is in a constant state of refusing to address this issue. And, any promising steps are usually met by opposing forces. But, hopefully this post still has enough juice to get in front of the Team and maybe have them temper their comments.
Is Gaza actually their home if gazans are de jure refugees? Doesn't that status mean they don't have a home and are there temporary?
Logic is white supremacy culture in action.
I'll do better
Low blow, Welch, pointing out how long it’s been since a Canadian team won the Cup.
The “Florida” Cup
The Cup runs through Sunrise
That’s a funny way to spell Tampa Bay.
Another sign of the apocalypse. When I was a kid all the Hockey teams were in places like Winnipeg and Saskatoon. They gave a few American snow cities a team just for DEI purposes. Now they're in places like Nashville and San Jose and Florida has nine teams. It's like the Bizarro NHL.
The St. Louis Blues almost moved to Saskatoon in the early eighties, when they were so cash-strapped they actually skipped a whole NHL draft!
The Penguins almost moved to Hamilton, Ontario around the same time, but then they drafted this Mario guy and it all worked out well. (The Leafs and Sabres would likely veto a Hamilton team in any event.)
I'm glad Winnipeg got the Jets 2.0 but I really wish they'd gotten the original team's history, too. Maybe they will, considering the Coyotes officially disbanded and the Utah team is technically a new organization.
Half of the players on American teams are Canadians anyway. If you were an elite athlete, where would you hope to live, Edmonton or Miami? I know what I’d pick.
In my opinion, any time an American team wins it still counts as a victory for Canadian hockey players.
I love you guys, but if you are going to repeatedly use economic consensus as the defense of freed trade, you should probably also mention that the economic consensus is almost equally strongly in favor of congestion pricing:
https://www.kentclarkcenter.org/surveys/congestion-pricing/
Agree - I have spoken to many economists about this. We regularly use pricing to regulate demand for a scarce good. Free busy roads are like communist bread lines!
Yes! Agree that there are hidden costs to congestion charging but there are also hidden costs to congestion. When in doubt trust people to respond to rational financial incentives!
This was the subject of my first (naive, non-subscriber) email to the hosts.
So new motto for black people, "Don't step on skate"?
Grateful to Moynihan for explaining why filming an interview works the way it does. I just wish people would just ask themselves why any given thing is done a certain way, than barreling into Conspiracy Country.
“Conspiracy Country” sounds like a series you would find on A&E
My profession is selling commercial HVAC equipment. I don't know anything about how interviews are made. I felt pretty confident Trump was wrong here, but it was nice to have Moynihan pull back the curtain on the process for normies like me.
Yes! Much appreciated.
It makes sense that the money to Politico isn’t a subsidy, literally. and yes at the end of the day it’s just ANOTHER thing the Feds waste money on, but like… the numbers math out to like $14,000 per subscription.
so sure, not a subsidy. then what is it? cuz it sure feels like corruption, or something related to corruption.
It's a premium service that is priced comparably to market competitors. It offers legislators up to the minute updates on regulatory changes. The government is a big machine churning out many decisions all the time, and following all of it can be a rather huge burden. Reason has a good writeup on why it's not all that concerning.
https://reason.com/2025/02/06/usaid-paying-for-politico-is-a-nontroversy/?utm_campaign=reason_brand&utm_content&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&utm_term&fbclid=IwY2xjawITfmVleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHRGQW9q1E4QuYeiqgE9tfPe3MVA-9zPp22Yo6nbq99ms_qf76FoThKPD3g_aem_l3eLrIiTdiLejEWEdCFf2Q
Does the Department of Energy need 200 subscriptions? It seems to me this is another tool agencies can use to soak up unused end of year funds and send them to an ideologically aligned cause. "This is perfectly normal" might placate your sensibilities about malfeasance but dumping millions of dollars to media outlets won't fly in the next election.
The DOE has 14 thousand employees, and are highly dependent on being up to date about things like court rulings pertaining to their work. So yeah, 200 subs to cover the management team for that many workers is not all that surprising. They can either price it through subscriptions, or price it through some other way, I suspect that the amount of work necessary doesn't change, nor the cost of it. I also suspect that if the government were to run such a service it would be priced more like what Obama managed with the ACA website, or worse, since there is actually more work to be done then just code a website.
My sensibilities aren't "placated" I just see a reasonable excuse for government to be giving this money to these companies for rendering this particular service. Is there a way you can argue that this is actually a malfeasance without the obvious bias you have for a single outlet? You know, actually address the logic about how government doesn't need this service, and how it actually was just a kickback for being ideologically aligned. I'm not even fully sold that this is a good thing. I'm an actual libertarian who doesn't think that the DOE should even exist. But until it can't, then this is a necessary service such government agencies need if they're going to have any measure of efficiency, laughable as that is.
I think if it was so "necessary" they would be showing what the service actually offers. The descriptions typically go something like "it's a very wonky political analysis that gets into the weeds." It also looks like the price on this varies wildly, with the government constantly paying the highest amount despite having hundreds of subscriptions. It's not as obvious as $3000 toilet seats but when the funding is mostly hidden and the benefit can't even be explained coherently I lean towards this being straight up fraud.
"But that's not what USAID and the other government agencies are paying for. In truth, Politico's premium product isn't political news coverage, progressively slanted or otherwise: It's minute-to-minute updates on regulatory decisions that impact specific industries. This is information that political and government agencies need and that Politico supplies, for a premium price. As independent journalist Lee Fang points out, Politico isn't the only game in town: Bloomberg and LexisNexis run similar services. Politico's price tag is comparable to theirs."
That's from the article I posted. I've read others, but even I haven't come away with this idea that it's just an extra deep analysis of politics. The funding wasn't hidden, either. Not at all like the 20 billion they just found the EPA hiding from the new administration. If this were real fraud, then Trump would have activated the DOJ instead of just ending the subscriptions. They're just going to get the service from Bloomberg now, instead. It's part of the changing of the guard. Especially after it turned out that only 44k of it came from USAID, and they got millions over a series of years, from multiple departments, not in a single year, or from USAID. Also the subscriptions were right there, in the budget, and accounted for. Hell Politico is supposed to go bankrupt because of this, and they're not. I lean toward this being a nothing-burger. Which is unfortunate because it stands a chance at overshadowing their win over the EPA attempt to hide 20 billion dollars.
Can anyone with some photoshop skills put Welch’s face on the Mickey Mouse sorcerer in honor of coining “Fantasianal “
Matt I see your Thundersticks and I raise you the infamous Vuvuzuela Night the Marlins had during the 2010 World Cup:
https://youtu.be/26Jn7a0Aw5o?si=oabISYDJDt-jHgeo
I remember the tiny bats they gave out at Shea Stadium. You had to watch your Ps and Qs on bat day.
For fuck's sake. Kicking off the episode reminding me of the '02 and '05 division series and the goddamn Thunderstix. Christ on a cracker I hated those things. And, no, Matt, Yankee fans are not all loud and obnoxious. You know what's loud and obnoxious? THUNDERSTIX. You guys were just jealous because you needed foreign objects to make all that noise, whereas we could do it naturally. I'm so happy we got our revenge in '09 on the way to a championship. Looking forward to the next episode where you discuss the history of the Rally Monkey and break down David Eckstein's batting stance.
Fun fact: The first text message I ever received from my late father was during the 2009 ALDS while I was out on a date. It read: "Robinson Cano stinks!"
If it helps, I was at the Stadium for the 2009 drubbing.
I was at Edison Field for game 4 of the 02 ALDS where the Halos knocked off the Yankees. Pretty sweet day. Shawn Wooten HR 💪
Nah. Your suffering does not erase mine. Lol. I hope you were treated civilly while you were there, though
All my homies hate Chone Figgins. I’ll never get over the 2002 season lol.
Chone Figgins! Now, there's a name I've not heard in a long time... A long time
I’d love to forget it myself. That dude was rough to watch as a teenage Yankees fan.
Wasn't any easier watching it in your mid-twenties. "Chone"... Fucking "Chone"! It's SEAN. Learn how to spell!
My disdain for him has only been surpassed by Jose Altuve. Those short fuckers.
I saw the Angels play at Yankee Stadium in the 2005 postseason against the Big Unit. When a friend and I sat down wearing Angels caps the Yankees fan next to us said "outta da whole stadium I gotta sit next to yous guys" but in a very good natured way. We did not bring thunderstix.
While it says nothing about what policies should be enacted one way or another, and I may be sympathetic to the underlying take regarding these policies in general, international law is 100% fake.
Preach
Just a reminder regarding Gaza.
Between December 2022 and September 2023 the murderous Aliyev regime of Azerbaijan blockaded 120,000 Armenians in Karabagh (10 times the size of Gaza) until they were starved and cleansed out of their ancestral lands and sent away. And the world didn’t care, no protests, no USAID, no NGO.
A recent historical reference that could be compared, despite order of magnitude differences.
Saw “Sandals Gaza” in the title and thought maybe she was a guest who works for the Free Press.
Moynihan’s rage is the thing I relate to the most.
He’s inspired me to launch the Closing Down app.
Idk, Boston fans are definitely the worst. When I was in college my friend Jarvis and I were watching the Yankees play in a common room and a marauding gang of Red Sox fans were so upset about it that they actually threw the TV we were watching on out the window.
That’s fucking based lmao
American 1: "Boston fans are the scariest."
American 2: "No way. Philadelphia fans are the worst."
Serb: sets own stadium on fire
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yH1SadDfF00
My experience with Boston fans is as someone that lived in Tampa a few years and would go to Rays games because they were dirt cheap.
Boston fans before 2004: Die hard losers like Cleveland sports fans before Lebron.
After 2004: all the smarminess of the Yankees fans while occasionally turning on a dime to "What?! You think you're better than me?!"
That TV had it coming
Fair point, the Yankees (and their fans) are a different and special kind of bad.
lol. That’s awesome