DL Open Thread: Wednesday, March 5, 2025

Didn’t watch the speech.  If any of you subjected yourselves to that unpaid commercial, please comment.

Russia: America Is No Longer The Evil Empire.  Gee, wonder what brought about that change…:

Almost overnight, it’s Europe — not the United States — that has become the source of instability in the Russian narrative. On his marquee weekly show on the Rossiya-1 channel Sunday night, the anchor Dmitri Kiselyov described the “party of war” in Europe as outmatched by the “great troika” of the United States, Russia and China that will form “the new structure of the world.”

“This, indeed, couldn’t have been imagined,” the spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, replied, marveling at the shift. American foreign policy, he added, now “coincides with our vision in many ways.”

My Kingdom for a pee tape.

When You Lose The Gen-Z White Guys…:

Six weeks into the new presidency, [pollster John] Della Volpe said that Trump’s support among young voters is already taking an unambiguous hit, as expectations about a shiny new economy collide with our current reality. Trump’s overall favorability with younger voters has dropped seven points since his January poll, the weekend before the inauguration. Trump came into office with a 50 percent favorable rating among Gen Z voters. Now, he’s at 43 percent. Since mid-January, Trump’s favorable rating has dropped most significantly among young rural voters (down 17 points), independents (down 13 points), white women (down 10 points), and women overall (down 10 points). At the same time, Trump’s standing among young white men has remained about the same. “Slippage with white men is not statistically significant right now,” Della Volpe noted.

But when it comes to specific questions about how he’s handling the economy and inflation, the president is on much shakier ground with young men.

The dumbest are the last to realize they’ve been had.

The Disastrous Results Of Eviscerating USAID.  Done illegally, I might add:

After the Trump administration moved to freeze nearly $60 billion in foreign aid in January, officials like Secretary of State Marco Rubio repeatedly assured Americans that lifesaving operations would continue. “We don’t want to see anybody die,” he told reporters in early February.

The administration conceded that many programs prevent immediate death and should remain online: field hospitals in Gaza, an HIV drug supplier for the Democratic Republic of Congo, Syrian refugee food programs, health clinics that combat Ebola in Uganda and most of the landmark President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, known as PEPFAR.

In late January, Rubio and one of his top aides, Peter Marocco, said those programs and dozens of others could continue, granting them temporary waivers while the officials conducted what they have called a “targeted, case-by-case review” of all foreign aid programs managed by the State Department and USAID. That review, they said, would take three months.

Four weeks later, on Wednesday, Rubio and Marocco completely ended nearly 10,000 aid programs in one fell swoop — including those they had granted waivers just days earlier — saying the programs did not align with Trump’s agenda. The move consigns untold numbers of the world’s poorest children, refugees and other vulnerable people to death, according to several senior federal officials. Local authorities have already begun estimating a death toll in the hundreds of thousands.

Tough shit. Doesn’t align with Trump’s agenda.

When The Numbers Suck, Change The Formula.  More funny math to obscure the disaster of Trump’s policies:

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said Sunday that government spending could be separated from gross domestic product reports, in response to questions about whether the spending cuts pushed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency could possibly cause an economic downturn.

“You know that governments historically have messed with GDP,” Lutnick said on Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures.” “They count government spending as part of GDP. So I’m going to separate those two and make it transparent.”

Doing so could potentially complicate or distort a fundamental measure of the U.S. economy’s health. Government spending is traditionally included in the GDP because changes in taxes, spending, deficits and regulations by the government can impact the path of overall growth. GDP reports already include extensive details on government spending, offering a level of transparency for economists.

Cris Barrish’s Superb Reporting On The Proposed Corporate Legislation.  Complete, balanced, and understandable to people (like me) who don’t understand the ins and outs of corporate law.  WHYY does a great job covering local news.  Consider a contribution.

I might have more later.  Headed to PT now.

What do you want to talk about?