Well, he renamed it and made minor changes around the edges so he could claim that it was broken and he fixed it. And then, of course, proceeded to violate the agreement he signed.

You guys get that 4.3% is low unemployment, right? Something like 90% of the last 30 years have had higher unemployment rate than that. It's the participation rate that's dropping, and that's almost entirely a demographic issue... there are more people retiring every year than graduating. The labor pool, as a percentage of the total population, is falling. This was all known well in advance and has been talked about to death. Those lower 4.3% of the population... the vast majority of them are really difficult to employ. A small percentage of people show up work late, or get drunk before they come to work, or whatever, and it's that group that finds it hard to stay employed.

I apologize for my generalization to "all people that haul things". My point is, not having a longer bed option cuts out a significant part of the market. For me, that's a deal breaker.

Specifically, I'm referring to yards of mulch, loads of firewood, long lumber (over 10' without it being too sketchy), helping friends move that have too much shit, ...

I think they missed the mark on the possibility of it being a short distance fleet vehicle. All these new trucks with four doors and short beds (including the gas ones) are just expensive luxury vehicles. People that actually use trucks to haul things want at least a 6-1/2' bed and they don't want to spend $70k on something that's probably going to get a lot of scratches and dings.

Excellent post, just a couple of comments.

First, it's interesting that Nikkos said "a previous administration", without naming it. It was, of course, Trump 1.0.

Second, international treaties on refugees don't require a country to accept every refugee and there are multiple examples where nations have made agreements that modify which county must handle asylum claims. For example, the US-Canada Safe Third Country agreement specifies that asylum seekers must make their asylum claim in whichever country they arrive in first. If the US and Mexico had a similar agreement, then refugees could not enter from Mexico at all. Trump tried to get Mexico to sign a Safe Third Country agreement, but Mexico refused -- and it probably would have been invalid anyway, since Mexico might not satisfy the requirements of a "safe" country under the US law that authorizes the signing of Safe Third Country agreements.

Instead, Trump signed the "Migrant Protection Protocols" agreement with Mexico, which was the "remain in place" agreement. You said that no other country should be willing to put up with it, but Mexico did formally agree to it, though only to avoid tariffs. Of course, Mexico has declined to renew the protocols in Trump 2.0 (though Trump announced they had, which Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum immediately denied -- Trump's habit of unilaterally announcing that an agreement has been reached obviously doesn't really work).

Anyway, there are lots of reasons why countries might agree to various limitations on asylum processes to manage refugee volumes, and these agreements are often perfectly valid under international and national law. Trump, of course, doesn't care about legality, or humanity, only what he can get away with.

If you're referring to the chargers, I agree. They have a bad reputation currently. But I think a lot of the effort and resources has to go into more generation and distribution infrastructure, which tends to be robust, but expensive and it takes a while. I do think the AI boom is going to leave us with a lot of unused electrical capacity, and I think that's a good think for EVs.

With a president who solves an existential threat by finding the best expert he can find, and using his own formidable political skills and charisma to run interference for that expert.

Seriously, Comacho was a meathead, but Iâ(TM)d vote for him.

Contemporary home-school does not look like it did decades ago.

We home-school and from what I can tell from the homeschooling community is that like us most of the kids participate in one or more co-ops that where groups of parents collaborate to deliver a course that are more hands on like science and music. Local YMCAs, gyms etc, offer classes during the day like Home School PE.

So homeschoolers get quite a lot of repeated and consistent interactions with other children. How 'diverse' those others are probably varies a lot by the size and makeup of where you live.

I work in the automotive industry. Two years ago the attitude across the automotive industry was that whole industry was switching to EVs and it was all expected to happen at a completely unrealistic pace. There was still a ton of charging infrastructure to build out, but the industry was expecting high double-digit growth and a rapid phasing out of gas vehicles within a few years. It was absurd at the time. Then a couple years later and the whole industry has flipped (yes, this has a lot to do with government subsidies and Trump winning the election) and now everyone thinks EVs are "dead". This is, of course, just as silly as the continual proclamations that the PC market is dead. In reality, the EV market will continue to exist and mature, and with a number of really promising battery technologies in the pipeline, not to mention a massive build-out of electrical generation capacity to support an AI future that's primed to burst for a few years, there's actually a bright future for EVs. Just not on the ridiculous timeline that everyone was thinking two years ago.

There's another detail that often gets missed. I don't know the details myself, but the way it's been described to me, mid-size pickup trucks fall into a category under the EPA or something which requires them to meet much more stringent environmental and other regulations that full-size pickups are exempt from, and at the end of the day it means that the price difference between a mid-size and a full-size truck was much smaller than it should be based on the amount of materials and extra functionality you get from a full-size truck, so that caused the auto-makers to discontinue most (all?) of their mid-size lineups. You really couldn't buy a smaller truck for about a decade or so. I think the last one was the Colorado.

Why would it?

The FAA could make the fee schedule in a way that encourages whatever behaviors congress sets out as desirable in its charters if it were made more independent. Nothing would stop them from say charging higher fees to file a flit plan for a cargo plan vs one with commercial passengers. No reason they can't do that even on a per source or destination airport basis. Want to fly cargo into LAX - $$$$$ but if you land it in some less busy airport a couple hours away in the desert its only $. Where a passenger flight plan with an LAX terminus might only be $$.

They can similarly drive more or less revenue for certification of aircraft. Maybe domestically manufactured craft get cheap certs, and AirBus gets bent over the counter and thoroughly reamed. Tons of opportunities and lots of potential stability improvements if you make it a little bit more removed from the executive branch, without an need for your basic plane fare to change a much. It would just be one hand giveth the other taketh.

If that is true, and I am not saying it isn't then everyone will pay for it anyway. It will show up in the cost of products etc.

The FAA and everyone who flies, registers an aircraft, etc already interact directly. It would not even be inefficient to just make the FAA operate more like the post office, a government sponsored by not directly funded agency. It will insulate it from things like Finding Spats and shutdowns.

Actually turning the skies into a toll road seems like a pretty smart move.

The financial bullshit started long before 2008; it just took that long for the system to break. Bill Clinton removed a lot of the rules governing investment banking being separate from the S&L world.

Of course Republic Congress enacted the repeal; but that was bipartisan 343-86...

Hey no need to let facts get in the way of good story right, much more fun to just blame the other guy because calendar happened to roll over at the right time, that low-information-voters (also know as Democrats) will be easily suckered.

No but the Senate makes its own rules, and one of those rules is a tradition of unlimited debate. Until there are no objectors or a super majority agree the discussion should be terminated, legislation cannot be voted on.

For decades now minority parities have leveraged this to block the bodies business when it is doing something they don't like.

It is possible for the majority to simple 'change the rules' but nobody really wants to do that because they know the shoe will be on the other foot in another election cycle or two and don't want be railroaded when its there turn.

So the 60 vote majority requirement persists, as removing it is basically a mutually assured destruction situation, that will hold until one party feels they are certain to have a sustained comfortable majority going forward - I expect. The moment that happens and if said party has anything hovering right around that 60 mark which could become 59 or whatever the rule will be eliminated so fast your head will spin - I also expect.

The typical increase when the enhanced subsidies go away is like $150 a month. You act like it is apocalyptic but it is anything but..Green New Deal driven inflation cost these people more. Hell Cash for Clunckers probably drove up their annual transportation costs more then these premium supports expiring do!