“There is no doubt in my mind that the people that we just talked about conspired. They conspired against President Trump, they conspired against the American people. … I don’t think statute of limitations are going to impact, because in a conspiracy, Maria, the statute of limitation doesn’t start to run out until the last act in furtherance of that conspiracy, and, Maria, part of why this is so important is that the people behind this are still furthering the conspiracy,” Ratcliffe.
We can hope, sdferr. At the very least these people can be put through the legal nightmare and expense they unjustly inflicted on Trump and associates. In their cases, the offenses under investigation are real, not invented.
If you want fun with dogs watch the Crufts obstacle course races. The sheep dogs are the champs at running the course but my favorites and good for a lot of laughs are the dachshunds. They try so hard but because of their build can barely get their belly over a bar laying on the ground.
The difficulty, I guess Kate, will be developing rock solid evidence with which to firmly establish standing in a court in Florida (as speculated) or some other state where the govt would have a hope in hell of obtaining an unprejudiced jury and judicial officers. How that goes I don’t think we can tell at this stage, which in itself may be a good thing, suggesting that the DoJ isn’t leaking like a sieve as per usual. But I don’t mind the wait to find out.
regarding the video posted … wonderful! watching it with our Keeshonds, Moon, asleep on the floor next to my left foot, and Star, asleep next to my right foot. Brought a tear to my eyes.
The idea that tariffs will inflate consumer prices seems completely obvious. But I’m hearing many stories of US vendors & other middle men eating the cost increases, and today the CEO the Dutch Philips corp. said that they will eat the entire tariff cost that Trump just announced for the EU.
There may be ancillary factors as well. Travel exploded after covid, and consumption generally increased, but now there is some tapering off. Prices had already been inflating considerably, and there may have been some slightly excessive prices already implemented.
Whatever the reason, it seems that most sellers are loath to see their sales numbers decline because of more price increases.
@TommyJay:But I’m hearing many stories of US vendors & other middle men eating the cost increases, and today the CEO the Dutch Philips corp. said that they will eat the entire tariff cost that Trump just announced for the EU.
Doesn’t matter. “Middlemen” are also consumers. Whatever money they spend on paying the tariff that they don’t pass on to their customers, is unavailable for whatever they used to buy with it, and whoever produced what they used to buy with it is also “eating the cost”. The protective tariff tax is paid by consumers and producers of other goods, and the “middleman” only affects the proportion which goes to each–he can pass it all on to his customers, or pass none of it on and stick it to his producers, or anything in between. (Those producers and customers all have the same choice to make; in the end a little money from everyone’s pocket is extracted.)
It’s no different from any other tax. Who actually writes the check for the tariffs and taxes is a matter of accounting, the effect of taxes and tariffs is matter of economics and goes beyond the goods actually subject to the tariff and tax and the direct participants in the transaction.
Yes, sdferr, I don’t want Dems charged on flimsy or imaginary grounds, as Trump and others were. But just the investigation and the uncertainty will cause these Dem miscreants to hire expensive attorneys and worry.
You make good points on the very grand scheme of things. However, I was trying to make a point about the somewhat surprising near term results for something like the US CPI (consumer price index) which is what most people are looking at now, and have been fearful of its increases.
@TommyJay:somewhat surprising near term results for something like the US CPI (consumer price index) which is what most people are looking at now, and have been fearful of its increases.
I think it would be surprising only if listening to media fear-mongering. Prices going up would be the end state after the dust settles, assuming nothing else changed in the meantime (and things are always changing), but journalists chose to spread a narrative that prices would go up immediately, by highly selective quotation of various experts.
I took Intro Econ (during the previous millennium), so I know that the relationship between tariffs and inflation is way more complicated than what Tommy Jay proposes.
Higher tariffs mean fewer imports (lower consumption, which is intrinsically deflationary). Fewer imports mean more positive Balance of Payments. More positive BoP means a stronger dollar, which means that imports are cheaper for Americans. Maybe that will increase imports back to baseline, or even higher. Impossible to predict.
Is it that simple? Heck, no! Multiple other inputs matter, such as the availability of domestic substitutes for the previously imported stuff, and the price of same, which may go up as demand for said domestic substitute increases.
There is no way to predict which of these moving parts will predominate, or the timing that one or more may take.
While all of this is going on, things are changing overseas also. Sellers there will find ways to increase efficiency, petition their governments for assistance, lower taxes, or export subsidies.
Eventually a new equilibrium will be reached, but whether that will be better or worse for Americans cannot be predicted, or even defined.
One thing for sure is that anyone who confidently predicts the outcome of this or any other complex economic intervention may be right, but also may be wrong.
In a remarkable discovery, scientists have identified a unique sugar molecule found in deep-sea bacteria that exhibits the ability to selectively destroy cancer cells. Preliminary studies reveal that this compound targets malignant cells, breaking down their energy production pathways and leaving healthy tissue unharmed….
(OTOH, it sounds too good to be true….)
Whatever money they spend on paying the tariff that they don’t pass on to their customers, is unavailable for whatever they used to buy with it, and whoever produced what they used to buy with it is also “eating the cost”. – Niketas C.
Very likely that will be in the form of reduced net profit, and may affect shareholders in the form of reduced dividends or lower share price.
It’s a tax. We need to raise tax revenue and this increases receipts to the government without forcing legislators to vote for an tax increase.
Until we see the final deal with China, it’s really unknown what the effects on consumers pocketbooks will be. And the rationale for working for balanced trade is to increase economic activity in our country, which will also increase tax revenues and increased wages.
In the case of the EU, Grok puts the cost at $61 billion, or $1320/per household, based on 171 million households. But that’s not how it will be divided. Some households that don’t drink French wine, purchase Gucci handbags or drive Mercedes will see less impact.
On the flip side, some workers might find their incomes increasing as American companies take advantage of the lower barriers to selling products in Europe.
Doubleheader sweep wasn’t on my bingo card this morning but by god I’ll take it with glee
re Tariffs….here’s a JP Morgan analyst on the tariff mitigation strategies being employed by the Dollar Tree chain:
“Taking a full year view, we believe that by successfully deploying our 5 levers, we will be able to mitigate most, if not all, of the potential earnings impact from higher tariffs, assuming the current levels remain in place,” Dollar Tree’s Creedon added on the call.
By employing this toolbox of “5 key levers” — which includes negotiating with suppliers, adjusting product specification, moving country of origin, dropping “non-economic” items, and leveraging multi-price categories — (JP Morgan analyst Matthew ) Boss thinks Dollar Tree (NASDAQ:DLTR) will not only mitigate the $70M COGS tariff headwind and end the year net-neutral with respect to tariffs, but enter the first half of 2026 with a wrap-around tailwind.
Hmm tsunami watch is new. Includes Port Townsend, the county seat. We will be watching the water tonight. Might reach Tacoma at 2am. Wife has a sophisticated algorithm to predict exact tide height down to the minute. The predicted tide +5.62’ and dropping at 1:30am
Saw a 7:15pm arrival for Honolulu where it’s currently 4:00pm. You seeing M8.7 reports Chases?
CONFIRMED trunami warning.
The Russian off-shore earthquake has been raised to 8.8 Richter scale — which would make it the 6th most powerful quake ever measured.
An earlier reorganisation suggested that this new quake was the biggest in 10 years.
Alaska and Japan, the Hawaii around 7PM local times, are expected to report first. The biggest HI island Hilo has closed the airport, to instead organise relief flights to the smaller ones.
Only then do we get to the West Coast US, around 3-4 AM.
Tomorrow. Meanwhile, John Solomon doing massive lifting on ObamaGate, Russiagate Hoax at JustTheNews (where he’s editor in chief), says that Sen. Grassley will release the formerly redacted Clinton Annex from the John Durham Special Prosecutor Report.
So, killer tsunami? Or Clinton-Obama revelations? Which story will lead the news cycle on Wednesday?
Allegedly, only 2 minutes on the DNI Gabbard Deep State corruption has been aired in “MSM”.
C’mon Grassley— delay release to Thursday.
It’s a no brainer.
PS — what about the ultra flat Midway Islands? Although small in population, it might be wiped out…
In the end he does not come down with any really positive expectations, so I ended up thinking the chances of a really interesting set of court battles is going to be slimmer than I thought previously.
Others’ comments related to “the process is the punishment” may still apply, however, if the DOJ finally decides they just might win a conviction.
Been through several of these tsunami watches. None have amounted to much so I’m not panicking. But it could, and someday it will. Which is why we didn’t buy at the beach.
Filling the bathtub and divers containers just in case.
My house is on a bluff above the ocean, 450′ so we are are evacuation central for friends at the beach and we usually host the watch party.
If it does hit we will most likely be stranded as our main road, Kamehameha Hwy runs right along the shoreline.
Racing through the laundry before the power goes out.
21 minutes and counting!
Husband watching the surf cam at Pipeline…
Molly Brown;
I get so jealous when I read your Hawaii comments! I’ve been to the Big Island three times. But I’ve dreamed about O‘ahu since I was a surfer kid in Florida.
So now I’m reading Heinlein’s “Glory Road” in French. It looked like comparatively easy reading and I loved it when I was a kid.
But good grief, French translators for American paperbacks go so easily out of their depth when it comes to American slang:
_____________________________________
Heinlein: …we dug cool sounds in stereo…
French: …nous gravions en stéréo des sons vides d’émotion…
Literal: …we recorded in stereo sounds devoid of emotion…
_____________________________________
Mm-yeah.
“Glory Road” is 60s Heinlein, when he was sort of a libertarian curmudgeon who hung out with hippies.
Heck, he helped create the hippies.
AND… another false alarm!
Huxley,
Ha! Back when you were a kid dreaming about Oahu only surfers knew about the North Shore! It’s still wonderful here, even though we’ve been discovered and the traffic is horrible.*
Back in the 70’s there was a big Florida surf contingent here. One of my best friends grew up surfing on Miami Beach.
*Nothing AI can do could possibly be as bad as what social media did to ‘secret spots’.
ICYMI – The Sydney Sweeney American Eagle Commercial – Video
Good to know Hawaii and the upper Left Coast were not swamped by a tsunami. Better to have warnings which turn out to be unnecessary than to suffer a disaster with many deaths. It hasn’t happened (in recorded history), but it could.
Back in the 70’s there was a big Florida surf contingent here. One of my best friends grew up surfing on Miami Beach.
Molly Brown:
It’s long given me satisfaction that Florida surfer kid, Kelly Slater of Cocoa Beach, made it to Hawaii and won the Pipeline Masters by age 20, and has become definitively the top professional surfer in history.
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Federalist, “Ratcliffe Signals It’s Not Too Late To Prosecute Ongoing Russia Collusion Conspiracy“: https://thefederalist.com/2025/07/28/ratcliffe-signals-its-not-too-late-to-prosecute-ongoing-russia-collusion-conspiracy/
We can hope, sdferr. At the very least these people can be put through the legal nightmare and expense they unjustly inflicted on Trump and associates. In their cases, the offenses under investigation are real, not invented.
If you want fun with dogs watch the Crufts obstacle course races. The sheep dogs are the champs at running the course but my favorites and good for a lot of laughs are the dachshunds. They try so hard but because of their build can barely get their belly over a bar laying on the ground.
The difficulty, I guess Kate, will be developing rock solid evidence with which to firmly establish standing in a court in Florida (as speculated) or some other state where the govt would have a hope in hell of obtaining an unprejudiced jury and judicial officers. How that goes I don’t think we can tell at this stage, which in itself may be a good thing, suggesting that the DoJ isn’t leaking like a sieve as per usual. But I don’t mind the wait to find out.
regarding the video posted … wonderful! watching it with our Keeshonds, Moon, asleep on the floor next to my left foot, and Star, asleep next to my right foot. Brought a tear to my eyes.
The idea that tariffs will inflate consumer prices seems completely obvious. But I’m hearing many stories of US vendors & other middle men eating the cost increases, and today the CEO the Dutch Philips corp. said that they will eat the entire tariff cost that Trump just announced for the EU.
There may be ancillary factors as well. Travel exploded after covid, and consumption generally increased, but now there is some tapering off. Prices had already been inflating considerably, and there may have been some slightly excessive prices already implemented.
Whatever the reason, it seems that most sellers are loath to see their sales numbers decline because of more price increases.
Well thats certainly one way of looking at things
https://x.com/RodDMartin/status/1949928748901683563
Tariffs are a blunt weapon like a moab often used to block foreign competition as much as revenue
I came across this astonishing post by Rod Dreher, which some, in these challenging times, might likewise find extraordinary…and perhaps helpful….
https://europeanconservative.com/articles/essay/taking-the-nostos-journey/
@TommyJay:But I’m hearing many stories of US vendors & other middle men eating the cost increases, and today the CEO the Dutch Philips corp. said that they will eat the entire tariff cost that Trump just announced for the EU.
Doesn’t matter. “Middlemen” are also consumers. Whatever money they spend on paying the tariff that they don’t pass on to their customers, is unavailable for whatever they used to buy with it, and whoever produced what they used to buy with it is also “eating the cost”. The protective tariff tax is paid by consumers and producers of other goods, and the “middleman” only affects the proportion which goes to each–he can pass it all on to his customers, or pass none of it on and stick it to his producers, or anything in between. (Those producers and customers all have the same choice to make; in the end a little money from everyone’s pocket is extracted.)
It’s no different from any other tax. Who actually writes the check for the tariffs and taxes is a matter of accounting, the effect of taxes and tariffs is matter of economics and goes beyond the goods actually subject to the tariff and tax and the direct participants in the transaction.
https://www.breitbart.com/latin-america/2025/07/29/worrisome-precedent-marco-rubio-denounces-colombia-convicting-conservative-ex-president/
Yes, sdferr, I don’t want Dems charged on flimsy or imaginary grounds, as Trump and others were. But just the investigation and the uncertainty will cause these Dem miscreants to hire expensive attorneys and worry.
“Microsoft Tech Support Could Have Exposed Pentagon, DOJ, Treasury Data to Foreign Adversaries”
https://www.propublica.org/article/microsoft-tech-support-government-cybersecurity-china-doj-treasury
Niketas,
You make good points on the very grand scheme of things. However, I was trying to make a point about the somewhat surprising near term results for something like the US CPI (consumer price index) which is what most people are looking at now, and have been fearful of its increases.
@TommyJay:somewhat surprising near term results for something like the US CPI (consumer price index) which is what most people are looking at now, and have been fearful of its increases.
I think it would be surprising only if listening to media fear-mongering. Prices going up would be the end state after the dust settles, assuming nothing else changed in the meantime (and things are always changing), but journalists chose to spread a narrative that prices would go up immediately, by highly selective quotation of various experts.
I took Intro Econ (during the previous millennium), so I know that the relationship between tariffs and inflation is way more complicated than what Tommy Jay proposes.
Higher tariffs mean fewer imports (lower consumption, which is intrinsically deflationary). Fewer imports mean more positive Balance of Payments. More positive BoP means a stronger dollar, which means that imports are cheaper for Americans. Maybe that will increase imports back to baseline, or even higher. Impossible to predict.
Is it that simple? Heck, no! Multiple other inputs matter, such as the availability of domestic substitutes for the previously imported stuff, and the price of same, which may go up as demand for said domestic substitute increases.
There is no way to predict which of these moving parts will predominate, or the timing that one or more may take.
While all of this is going on, things are changing overseas also. Sellers there will find ways to increase efficiency, petition their governments for assistance, lower taxes, or export subsidies.
Eventually a new equilibrium will be reached, but whether that will be better or worse for Americans cannot be predicted, or even defined.
One thing for sure is that anyone who confidently predicts the outcome of this or any other complex economic intervention may be right, but also may be wrong.
Dammit sdferr!
What’s Strowd doing hitting people in the head?!
https://www.mlb.com/bluejays/video/george-springer-hit-by-pitch-eb6kno
Good win over Toronto though.
[cough]
Ahem. ‘Twas but a scratch (or an oopsie! pick’em).
Kinda fun watching the Jays’ boards bemoaning their short stay at the top of the power ramkings though, gotta say.
Here’s an interesting one…
(Note that it’s a work in progress.)
“Deep-Sea Sugar Destroys Cancer Cells”—
https://www.newsmax.com/health/health-news/cancer-sugar-molecule/2025/07/29/id/1220528/
Opening graf:
(OTOH, it sounds too good to be true….)
Whatever money they spend on paying the tariff that they don’t pass on to their customers, is unavailable for whatever they used to buy with it, and whoever produced what they used to buy with it is also “eating the cost”. – Niketas C.
Very likely that will be in the form of reduced net profit, and may affect shareholders in the form of reduced dividends or lower share price.
It’s a tax. We need to raise tax revenue and this increases receipts to the government without forcing legislators to vote for an tax increase.
Until we see the final deal with China, it’s really unknown what the effects on consumers pocketbooks will be. And the rationale for working for balanced trade is to increase economic activity in our country, which will also increase tax revenues and increased wages.
In the case of the EU, Grok puts the cost at $61 billion, or $1320/per household, based on 171 million households. But that’s not how it will be divided. Some households that don’t drink French wine, purchase Gucci handbags or drive Mercedes will see less impact.
On the flip side, some workers might find their incomes increasing as American companies take advantage of the lower barriers to selling products in Europe.
Doubleheader sweep wasn’t on my bingo card this morning but by god I’ll take it with glee
re Tariffs….here’s a JP Morgan analyst on the tariff mitigation strategies being employed by the Dollar Tree chain:
“Taking a full year view, we believe that by successfully deploying our 5 levers, we will be able to mitigate most, if not all, of the potential earnings impact from higher tariffs, assuming the current levels remain in place,” Dollar Tree’s Creedon added on the call.
By employing this toolbox of “5 key levers” — which includes negotiating with suppliers, adjusting product specification, moving country of origin, dropping “non-economic” items, and leveraging multi-price categories — (JP Morgan analyst Matthew ) Boss thinks Dollar Tree (NASDAQ:DLTR) will not only mitigate the $70M COGS tariff headwind and end the year net-neutral with respect to tariffs, but enter the first half of 2026 with a wrap-around tailwind.
https://seekingalpha.com/news/4455932-dollar-trees-tariff-mitigation-efforts-will-compensate-for-costs—jp-morgan
Hmm tsunami watch is new. Includes Port Townsend, the county seat. We will be watching the water tonight. Might reach Tacoma at 2am. Wife has a sophisticated algorithm to predict exact tide height down to the minute. The predicted tide +5.62’ and dropping at 1:30am
Saw a 7:15pm arrival for Honolulu where it’s currently 4:00pm. You seeing M8.7 reports Chases?
CONFIRMED trunami warning.
The Russian off-shore earthquake has been raised to 8.8 Richter scale — which would make it the 6th most powerful quake ever measured.
An earlier reorganisation suggested that this new quake was the biggest in 10 years.
Alaska and Japan, the Hawaii around 7PM local times, are expected to report first. The biggest HI island Hilo has closed the airport, to instead organise relief flights to the smaller ones.
Only then do we get to the West Coast US, around 3-4 AM.
Tomorrow. Meanwhile, John Solomon doing massive lifting on ObamaGate, Russiagate Hoax at JustTheNews (where he’s editor in chief), says that Sen. Grassley will release the formerly redacted Clinton Annex from the John Durham Special Prosecutor Report.
So, killer tsunami? Or Clinton-Obama revelations? Which story will lead the news cycle on Wednesday?
Allegedly, only 2 minutes on the DNI Gabbard Deep State corruption has been aired in “MSM”.
C’mon Grassley— delay release to Thursday.
It’s a no brainer.
PS — what about the ultra flat Midway Islands? Although small in population, it might be wiped out…
@ sdferr and @ Kate,
This legal analysis by Hans von Spakovsky, in a Heritage Signal essay,
https://www.dailysignal.com/2025/07/23/prosecuting-the-russia-trump-collusion-hoax
goes through some of the possible laws that might have been broken by the “Russia-gaters”.
In the end he does not come down with any really positive expectations, so I ended up thinking the chances of a really interesting set of court battles is going to be slimmer than I thought previously.
Others’ comments related to “the process is the punishment” may still apply, however, if the DOJ finally decides they just might win a conviction.
FIRST tsunami photo and video I’ve found show flooding of coastal Kamchatka. https://instapundit.com/735162/#comment-6744919122
MORE at the Guardian, including CC in a Hawaii ordering all boats and ships to sea.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2025/jul/30/tsunami-alert-pacific-islands-japan-russia-magnitude-8-earthquake-follow-live-updates
Been through several of these tsunami watches. None have amounted to much so I’m not panicking. But it could, and someday it will. Which is why we didn’t buy at the beach.
Filling the bathtub and divers containers just in case.
My house is on a bluff above the ocean, 450′ so we are are evacuation central for friends at the beach and we usually host the watch party.
If it does hit we will most likely be stranded as our main road, Kamehameha Hwy runs right along the shoreline.
Racing through the laundry before the power goes out.
21 minutes and counting!
Husband watching the surf cam at Pipeline…
Molly Brown;
I get so jealous when I read your Hawaii comments! I’ve been to the Big Island three times. But I’ve dreamed about O‘ahu since I was a surfer kid in Florida.
So now I’m reading Heinlein’s “Glory Road” in French. It looked like comparatively easy reading and I loved it when I was a kid.
But good grief, French translators for American paperbacks go so easily out of their depth when it comes to American slang:
_____________________________________
Heinlein: …we dug cool sounds in stereo…
French: …nous gravions en stéréo des sons vides d’émotion…
Literal: …we recorded in stereo sounds devoid of emotion…
_____________________________________
Mm-yeah.
“Glory Road” is 60s Heinlein, when he was sort of a libertarian curmudgeon who hung out with hippies.
Heck, he helped create the hippies.
AND… another false alarm!
Huxley,
Ha! Back when you were a kid dreaming about Oahu only surfers knew about the North Shore! It’s still wonderful here, even though we’ve been discovered and the traffic is horrible.*
Back in the 70’s there was a big Florida surf contingent here. One of my best friends grew up surfing on Miami Beach.
*Nothing AI can do could possibly be as bad as what social media did to ‘secret spots’.
ICYMI – The Sydney Sweeney American Eagle Commercial – Video
https://commoncts.blogspot.com/2025/07/icymi-sydney-sweeney-american-eagle.html
Good to know Hawaii and the upper Left Coast were not swamped by a tsunami. Better to have warnings which turn out to be unnecessary than to suffer a disaster with many deaths. It hasn’t happened (in recorded history), but it could.
Back in the 70’s there was a big Florida surf contingent here. One of my best friends grew up surfing on Miami Beach.
Molly Brown:
It’s long given me satisfaction that Florida surfer kid, Kelly Slater of Cocoa Beach, made it to Hawaii and won the Pipeline Masters by age 20, and has become definitively the top professional surfer in history.