Brent Nyitray
Fairlington Blade
Let the mutherfuker burn!
jnc4p
Kevin S. Willis
Michigoose
lmsinca
markinaustin
Arcanaut
novahockey
quarterback
ScottC
yellojktVital Statistics:
Stocks are flattish as we await earnings from Nvidia after the close. Bonds and MBS are down small.
Consumer confidence fell sharply in February, according to the Conference Board. Both the Present Situation index and the Expectations index fell. “In February, consumer confidence registered the largest monthly decline since August 2021,” said Stephanie Guichard, Senior Economist, Global Indicators at The Conference Board. “This is the third consecutive month on month decline, bringing the Index to the bottom of the range that has prevailed since 2022. Of the five components of the Index, only consumers’ assessment of present business conditions improved, albeit slightly. Views of current labor market conditions weakened. Consumers became pessimistic about future business conditions and less optimistic about future income. Pessimism about future employment prospects worsened and reached a ten-month high.”
The Expectations Index is back at levels usually associated with an impending recession. Inflation and tariff fears are the biggest drivers, though we are also seeing consumers become less constructive on the labor market.
Richmond Fed President Thomas Barkin said the fight against inflation is facing headwinds such as changing demographics and higher government spending. “If headwinds persist, we may well need to use policy to lean against that wind,” he said. In other words, rates may have to be higher for longer. “We learned in the ’70s that if you back off inflation too soon, you can allow it to re-emerge. No one wants to pay that price.”
The price differential between new construction and existing homes has disappeared, according to the NAHB. Limited inventory of existing homes is pushing median sales prices higher, while builder decisions (a focus on lower-priced offerings) is the driver for new homes. In the fourth quarter of 2024, the differential was only around $9,000 versus a $50,000 10 year average.
Mortgage applications fell 1.2% last week as purchases rose 0.2% and refis fell 3.6%. “Treasury yields moved lower on softer consumer spending data as consumers are feeling somewhat less upbeat about the economy and job market. This pushed mortgage rates lower, with the 30-year fixed rate decreasing to 6.88 percent, the lowest rate since mid-December,” said Joel Kan, MBA’s Vice President and Deputy Chief Economist. “Applications were about one percent lower for the week, which included the President’s Day holiday, as purchase applications stayed flat from a week ago while refinance applications saw a small decline. Purchase applications were up 3 percent from the same week last year. Increasing for-sale inventory in some markets has provided prospective buyers more options as we approach the spring homebuying season.”
Filed under: Economy |
All Things in Moderation 
lol! They’ll keep using the same playbook as long as it works.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c70eky7l6pxo
I’m assuming the broad running the ARF(?) party in Germany is next as long as Romanians don’t start shooting at government troops.
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AfD.
And this quote:
“declassified intelligence documents that suggested that hundreds of TikTok accounts had been activated backing Georgescu.”
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Gasp! Hundreds? Shocks the conscience!
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Brent, do you really think average consumers worry about tariffs? Let alone their potential impact on inflaction? That seems like a stretch.
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I think the media really, really, really leaning into this issue.
But take something like the 25% proposed tax on Canadian goods. The narrative is that it is going to make unaffordable housing more unaffordable. But the implication is that it will rise 25%, which is patently untrue.
What will really happen is that companies like Weyerhaeuser will source more of their timber from their Southern forests and less from their Canadian ones. The Canadian ones are Western, so it is a shorter distance to West Coast markets.
So, instead of paying the 25% tax, they will ship more lumber from the Southeast to Phoenix and San Diego. That incremental cost isn’t 25%.
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Aren’t all the tariffs primarily to incentivize either using American resources or producing the same product in America with American labor to avoid the tariffs? Both reduced corporate tax and tariffs seem to be all about incentivizing moving or creating manufacturing and product production in the US. I get the media would ignore this but the right seems to ignore that too so I feel like I’m missing something.
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The thing to remember, is we aren’t imposing tariffs on anyone who isn’t already imposing tariffs on the US.
“Globalization” has allowed Europe to pretend it is still 1946, and they need help to develop, or China is still in the post-Mao 1980s where liberalization was just beginning.
Trump is taking the “kick me” sign off the US’s back
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That’s what I thought. I’ve never gotten a sense any of Trump’s tariffs are without a strategy. All I hear traditional conservative pundits do is complain about how tariffs don’t work, which is like saying taxes don’t work to raise revenues—certain forms work, others cause problems. Done right they can benefit the economy, and thus far everything sounds either reciprocal or an as if it acts as an incentive to manufacture and employ in the US.
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I’m personally less confident now than I was right after the election because I believe that the uncertainty level has increased. I did not expect Trump to move as aggressively as he has and I wonder how much disruption there will be even if his policies may be good ideas.
I think the VIX reflects that and I’m also paying attention to Warren Buffet’s cash position.
I realize it’s not what he wants to do, but Trump could have left a lot of stuff on autopilot and just stopped annoying Biden actions and kept his popularity high instead of going full Javier Milei in his first month.
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He needs to communicate more. He is just allowing the left to flood the zone with yellow font “HE’S CUTTING OFF VETERANS BENEFITS!!!!!!!!” memes
And maybe pump the brakes a little.
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This was a good observation from the Ezra Klein discussion I linked yesterday:
I think they need to give a big picture speech about what the end goal is of all their disruption besides just “owning the libs”.
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I’m not sure I agree. I think they may be to some degree using the cover of chaos, giving their enemies a million things to chase after. Getting out an explaining their end goals might be like giving the enemy their battle plans, telling them what they really need to protect and how.
We will see how it turns out. I tend to suspect it won’t be perfect but will be a lot better than a lot of skeptics think. I think a lot of the objections people from Ezra Klein to Ben Shapiro have about so much of what Trump is focusing on being small potatoes misses the point—it’s establishing precedent, it’s a constant exposure to normies of how government bleeds the taxpayers, it’s new exposure to many of how entitled our public servants are, and during it things can be put in place to establish more transparency that might be obvious if taken away in the future … I dunno, I still think it would be a bad idea for Trump to give them one serious big overarching vision he has—if real—to fight against. Better dozens of small battles, constantly. At least until the left can find a response that doesn’t end up making them look awful.
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KW:
I think a lot of the objections people from Ezra Klein to Ben Shapiro have about so much of what Trump is focusing on being small potatoes misses the point—it’s establishing precedent
I completely agree. How can you expect to reform the big ticket items if you can’t even get rid of the low-hanging fruit? People who deride the effort as only going after small potatoes are like people deriding the new coach of a losing team for focusing on the fundamentals rather than scheduling a game with the defending champions.
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As much as I want to see all monies going to close the deficit and then pay down debt, the idea of distributing a “savings” check to taxpayers is brilliant. It gives people a stake in savings and will grease the skids/blunt the hit from getting the fraud out of SS/Medicare/Medicaid as well as reforming those agencies.
This has to be made politically sustainable.
Those calling for more precision or thoughtfulness in cuts are really seeking delay so the moment passes. There is no way to do this thoughtfully.
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There are ways to do it more thoughtfully, I think—just as there are ways in theory to do everything better. But the problem is Musk and Trump aren’t going to do it better than this, and anybody else simply wouldn’t be doing it.
In the real world, either it happens messily like this or it doesn’t happen.
I like the idea of repatriating funds to people on two levels. I like it being characterized as a percentage because I want to see SS taxes eventually get a percentage carved out as a private investment acct for each American, a percentage of Medicaid go to Healthcare Savings accounts, etc. The percentage modeling advances the idea that a percentage of this money is and should be yours.
It also allows them to case it more viscerally that judges ordering that money is unfrozen, that Democrats demanding money goes to the gay Guatemalan dance troupes, are stealing that money from you. It fights the psychological divorce people get from their tax dollars by having it deducted from their paycheck rather than having to write a check; it recasts the “government money” that the government is wasting back to bring “your money” that the government is wasting.
I think there is real potential long term value to that approach. A value in excess of any inflationary impact or risk to the debt of having some extra cash that is constantly cast as “your money”, rather than a gift from the government.
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“deriding the new coach of a losing team for focusing on the fundamentals rather than scheduling a game with the defending champions”
That’s it exactly.
And fundamentals is exactly it. People need to see this. If you are ever going to touch entitlements like SS and Medicare, the general public needs to see ALL OF THIS first. And that despite the chaos it can end up handled, low hanging fruit successfully picked.
I also think before doing anything more, they need to have the court cases, get solid rulings, see where legislation might need to fit in and what it might need to look at. I love Shapiro but it can about become a drinking game every episode, where he complains about politicians not going after entitlements. If Trump had rolled into office and gone straight at Social Security reform the Democrats would have thrown a party, and he knows that.
Maybe there’s a better way, but this is what we’ve got and it’s better than anything I’ve seen in my lifetime. I’ll take it.
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I thinks a lot of what DOGE is doing is removing the activists from government who will only sabotage his administration.
If you listened to his interview with Joe Rogan, he said he was naive about choosing advisors and dealing with the administrative state.
He isn’t going to make the same mistake twice.
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I get his urgency though. There is less that a year to get what he wants done enacted and right now his popularity is what is keeping a 2 seat House majority and a Senate majority with zero buffer (because Collin’s, Murkowski
And McConnell) in line and obeying. That will fade away by the end of the summer if not the end of spring.
I say, harder, faster, more.
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“He isn’t going to make the same mistake twice.”
True, but in swinging too far the other direction he may make a worse one.
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I don’t think there’s a way to avoid democrats flooding the zone. He gives constant press conferences. There are constant media events. Not sure how much more he could do that is actually something he is constitutionally capable of—maybe put JD Vance out there more?
In regards to pumping the brakes, I don’t think they ever works out for the right. They pump the brakes, the car roles to a stop and stalls and then the Democrats swarm it like zombies and it’s all over. IMO.
I think the whole admin is largely reconciled to the fact there are going to be parts of this that aren’t pretty.
That said, strategy with Epstein files “roll out” and bring the Tate brothers over here—WTF is that? Noise?
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That’s fair, but I’m not sure I’d classify you as an average consumer. I guess I don’t see the media having the impact via narrative control that it once did. To me, it’s Christmas bill coming due while winter drags on. Add in post election euphoria(?) or at least post election relief being replaced with concerns that existed before the election.
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The labor market is softening, IMO. Though I think the gig economy messes up the employment numbers
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Long term, it’s possible that the government will be more efficient due to the actions Trump is taking (although I’m starting to doubt that will be the case).
Short term, laying this many people off and cancelling the number of grants that they have will have an impact in the employment market.
The Virginia gubernatorial race in 2025 will be interesting to watch.
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I’m reminded of Reagan’s first term and what it took to get the country back on track. It was miserable, but fundamentally altered this country in a profound way for a sustained period of time. I’d say until late Clinton, early W.
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Also, what an amazing time to be alive!!!
I do not see how the Arab countries cannot move in and rebuild now! I guarantee the Pakistani slave labor that built Dubai are touching up their résumé’s. Dude’s a fucking foreign relations savant.
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The one thing i forgot about during the first Trump Administration is how many of my erstwhile smart friends on Facebook are now spamming Occupy Democrats memes.
Holy fuck the left is annoying when they lose.
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That and every time a Democrat says something it’s a “big win”.
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Brent you see this?
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/26/business/trump-china-shipping.html
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I think they mean Chinese flagged, not Chinese built.
So the Chinese will flag them in Liberia or Bermuda or something like that.
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Article says Chinese made:
Sort of like the Jones Act on steroids.
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I suspect this won’t change the trajectory of the Washington Post.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/26/business/media/washington-post-bezos-shipley.html
Among other reasons, anyone who would be successful in that space is already writing for Substack and probably getting paid better than they would have at the Post.
He should have done this five years or so ago when people were getting fired from the NY Times and NPR and given them a place to land and write dissents to the current media collective.
Now it just looks like kissing up to Trump.
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The MSM is beside itself over this
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I cannot think of a reason for posting this.
Is he hoping to get fired? Seriously, what is the reasoning behind this other than virtue signaling?
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Preparing to martyr himself and go to Substack.
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Apparently he deleted it. What did it say?
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It was from the economics writer for the Post saying that he will watch Bezo’s closely and quit if he thinks Bezo’s is acting in bad faith. It was purely performative and I think he should have been shit-canned for it.
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These entitled motherf*ckers. They really do think they are all that. He should have indeed been fired.
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Found the quote from Stein that he deleted:
“I still have not felt encroachment on my journalism on the news side of coverage, but if Bezos tries interfering with the news side I will be quitting immediately and letting you know,” Stein wrote.
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Interesting that he deleted that. That seems like very typical and predictable journalist virtue signaling. Maybe he went home and looked at his prospects and finances and decided “quitting” might not actually be a deliverable.
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Trans sex chats on the classified messaging system at the NSA:
https://www.city-journal.org/article/national-security-agency-internal-chatroom-transgender-surgeries-polyamory
More detailed interview:
https://www.city-journal.org/article/nsa-whistleblower-trans-gender-ideology-dei
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If only they were sex chats by hawt MILFS!
What a lost opportunity.
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Can’t say I am surprised. Every intel weenie I met in the military was odd in some way or another.
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They were actively recruiting for it.
“Speaking at the White House press briefing, Jean-Pierre said, “Individuals in the video certainly will not be invited to future events.” The White House spokeswoman said the bare-chested display “was not a normal thing that has happened under this administration.””
https://apnews.com/article/biden-transgender-topless-white-house-rose-montoya-811dc7f4473ad6b3dd43dbec7f8b5d37
No it absolutely was a normal thing that happened under that administration. Along with luggage stealing.
https://cbsaustin.com/news/nation-world/non-binary-ex-biden-nuclear-official-who-stole-luggage-was-traveling-on-taxpayer-dime-report-says-department-of-energy-official-sam-brinton
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Cute.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/25/technology/iphone-dictation-trump-racist.html
Reason 1,000,000 why I cannot stand the left.
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Interesting:
“Mexico Transfers Dozens of Cartel Operatives to U.S. Custody
The handover of so many significant cartel figures was one of the most important efforts by Mexico in the modern history of the drug war to send traffickers to face charges in U.S. courts.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/27/us/politics/mexico-cartel-sheinbaum-trump.html
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I actually respect this answer.
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2025/02/28/hakeem-jeffries-was-asked-to-provide-evidence-of-gop-cuts-to-medicaid-his-answer-was-a-train-wreck-n2652966
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Holy shit! Trump and Vance just got into a shouting match with Zelensky, and the press, in the Oval Office.
IT. WAS. AWESOME!
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Unless you are a Ukrainian.
https://substack.com/@kenklippenstein/note/c-96916290
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Considering that Ukrainians are being press-ganged and kidnapped to get butchered and that literally millions of military age Ukrainians have fled to avoid having to fight? Not so sure there is a negative view of what happened in Ukraine. There is no way the eastern regions and Crimea are coming back to Ukraine, and they couldn’t hold it even if it did. All those area have majority Russian populations who have no desire to be part of Ukraine.
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I’m all in favor of Trump helping to negotiate an end to the war, even if that requires pushing the relevant parties to make concessions.
I’m not sure that this is the best way to go about it.
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Fair enough, we agree to disagree.
I very much want all this stuff to play out in public. I think Congressional Conference Committees should be televised. Americans have a history of getting fucked when negotiations play out behind closed doors.
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I too would like to see congressional committees. I would like to see it playing out publicly in a more organized and accurate manner, but if the only other choice is business as usual—and in reality that was the choice—I’ll take this.
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Probably not, but it is what we got. I do like setting a precedent of taking an “America First” approach to this kind of stuff, prefer it to outright isolationism by a long stretch, and would love to see a more eloquent JD Vance doing the same thing at some point. Establishing a more balanced way one could pursue the same goals.
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Good read:
https://executivefunctions.substack.com/p/trump-is-the-law-for-the-executive
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lol! Cry harder.
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So the CISA won’t defend again Russian cyber threats story is BS. What a surprise.
https://x.com/joshuasteinman/status/1895931133449421181?s=46
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This made me laugh.
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Interesting:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/03/opinion/trump-wall-street-biden-big-business.html
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Loved this line,
and Mr. Trump’s continued flood of appalling actions, like his abrupt firing of several top military officers or embrace of Vladimir Putin of Russia, may well undermine approval of the administration in the business community.
So hopeful yet hilariously out of touch.
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I love this thread because their entire strategy is predicated on Trump being influenced by the lefty media.
https://www.dailykos.com/story/2025/3/2/2307480/-Coalition-of-the-Willing-outsmarting-Trump#comment_90833853
Despite the hype, their is zero belief that the EU can do this without the U.S.
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“Surely all the brilliant minds involved, the leaders and their advisors in the UK, Eu and Canada can see this? If so, why does Starmer keep insisting that the US must continue to be involved in any peace deal?”
Because their militaries are incapable of deterring Russia.
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Absolutely zero commenters assert Europe go it alone.
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I get the sense they are also highly dependent on America money—they need America to pay for much of the war-making.
This universal objection to negotiation and diplomacy fascinates me. Also, even when it’s for another country, the left make very unconvincing patriots.
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I think the opposite of “nationalism” these days is being a shmuck
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Speaking of NY Times Opinion columnist cluelessness:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/01/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-fareed-zakaria.html
Yeah, clearly it’s much better to have a digital economy that doesn’t actually make anything and just do redistribution to the massive number of people who aren’t digital creators and innovators.
He just made Trump’s argument for him.
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That indeed, is a bizarre arguement.
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And self serving for Klein & Zakaria.
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Good piece:
https://www.konstantinkisin.com/p/zelenskys-big-mistake-why-he-made
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Now it can be told.
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Words fail.
https://slate.com/life/2025/03/donald-trump-divorce-marriage-politics-men-women.html
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Couldn’t help but marvel at this sentence and the implied unfairness of it.
She’s also considering her sizable pension, which could get cut in half if she does leave. “That pension is the biggest asset we own as a family,” she says. Emotional freedom is one thing, but what of financial freedom? What kind of life can Beth have if she’s working harder and longer to make up for an ugly divorce?
Yeah, that does suck.
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Cue the John McClain “welcome to the party, pal” GIF
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Maybe he’s going along with it to just shut her up.
Annie says that it feels as if her husband, at long last, is in reality with her, though they’re still working on his grasp of feminism and women’s rights. Her husband’s liberal radicalization has gone so swimmingly, in fact, that he’s also considering an out-of-country move. “We’re looking into Hong Kong and Singapore,” she says. “Divorce isn’t something that I’m thinking about.”
None of these people are able to accept good faith disagreements. Their slavish devotion to politics is exhausting.
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If she is getting into it with HR too, the problem is her, not him.
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This was telling:
I almost heard the Law & Order sound in my head:
“These are their stories”
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This was a remarkable moment.
That kid was legit thrilled and I gotta say that his dad’s shirt was sharp!
This is the part where the youngster heard about the Secret Service thing and his eyes bugging out is absolutely heartwarming!
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