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Canadian liquor stores have dumped all American booze. Dinner conversation up north for the past few days has been all about travel and services boycotts (Amazo

by fluxic 2y ago

Canadian liquor stores have dumped all American booze. Dinner conversation up north for the past few days has been all about travel and services boycotts (Amazon, Netflix, Uber, etc.) Haven’t heard the US anthem booed at all Canadian hockey games since the “freedom fries” days post-Iraq mobilization. Will take a decade to recover the goodwill lost this week.

cocacola1 2y ago
I’m not particularly old or nostalgic, but these past 2 weeks have certainly helped me appreciate the Obama years a lot more.
- tombert 2y ago
  It was kind of nice to have a president who could actually finish a complete sentence while speaking. I miss those times.
  - toomuchtodo 2y ago
    Remember the ruckus because he wore a tan suit? Those were the days. > U.S. Representative Peter King, a member of the Republican Party, deemed the suit's color combined with the subject matter of terrorism to be "unpresidential". He went on: "There's no way, I don't think, any of us can excuse what the president did yesterday. I mean, you have the world watching.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama_tan_suit_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama_tan_suit_controve...
    - tombert 2y ago
      Yeah, or when he wanted spicy mustard on a hot dog (correction, burger). https://youtu.be/cAvq12Sa3VE https://youtu.be/cAvq12Sa3VE I found that one especially funny, because dijon mustard isn't more expensive than regular mustard! I buy dijon mustard all the time, and at least at my local grocery store the price is always within about 5% of regular yellow mustard, sometimes even less. It's not something that is out of reach of most Americans.
      - defrost 2y ago
        We only remember these as Obama lacked the Trump reality distortion field. [Reporter] President Trump wore a tan suit. [Trump] Let's retake the Panama Canal. [Reporter] President Trump ordered a fancy mustard. [Trump] We're going to invade Greenland. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_cat_strategy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_cat_strategy
    - WheelsAtLarge 2y ago
      Thanks for the laugh. I don't remember when this happened. The horror... :)
- Gud 2y ago
  On the other hand, Barrack Obama normalized death from the skies over the middle east and helped destabilize the entire region. He was also an awful president, in other ways.
panarky 2y ago
The WSJ says this is the "the dumbest trade war in history" because "when you tax something you get less of it". If the goal of the Red Hats was to get more goods from Canada and Mexico, then yes, tariffs would be a dumb policy. But the Red Hats aren't dumb. They've been planning this blitzkrieg for at least 18 months. They have thousands of intelligent people on their team and they're well organized. It's too easy to just dismiss this as ignorance, hubris and ego. If you recognize that they're not dumb, that they know exactly what they're doing, then they must be pursuing different and mostly hidden objectives for this to make sense. Once the hidden objectives are revealed, we'll all recognize the horrible logic of their actions. > Will take a decade to recover the goodwill lost this week. Indeed. All according to the plan.
- uejfiweun 2y ago
  What do you speculate that the end goal is here? What are you implying?
  - panarky 2y ago
    I don't pretend to know their playbook. All I can see are the visible actions on the surface and try to infer from that what the underlying rationale and strategy are. But if a new regime took control in another nation and did everything the Red Hats have done, you could infer that they had a coherent strategy that explains their actions. When the stated rationale for an action like tariffs doesn't make sense (preventing fentanyl from Canada?), the reason it doesn't make sense is not that the action itself is "dumb", it's because the stated rationale for the action is bogus. So they're doing tariffs for a reason and they're hiding the real reason. If you're on the inside and know the real story, you win. If you're on the outside and keep believing their stories and thinking they're just ignorant, you lose. Then you see the largest physical movement of gold into the US in decades, and now you guess that insiders are already positioning themselves for what's coming. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-01-31/jpmorgan-plans-4-billion-gold-delivery-in-us-amid-tariff-fears https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-01-31/jpmorgan-... If it takes a hoard of gold to protect yourself, then what's coming is not good. The last one to figure out the real strategy will be left holding the bag of devalued dollars and repudiated Treasury paper.

by fluxic 2y ago

cocacola1 2y ago

I’m not particularly old or nostalgic, but these past 2 weeks have certainly helped me appreciate the Obama years a lot more.

tombert 2y ago
It was kind of nice to have a president who could actually finish a complete sentence while speaking. I miss those times.
- toomuchtodo 2y ago
  Remember the ruckus because he wore a tan suit? Those were the days. > U.S. Representative Peter King, a member of the Republican Party, deemed the suit's color combined with the subject matter of terrorism to be "unpresidential". He went on: "There's no way, I don't think, any of us can excuse what the president did yesterday. I mean, you have the world watching.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama_tan_suit_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama_tan_suit_controve...
  - tombert 2y ago
    Yeah, or when he wanted spicy mustard on a hot dog (correction, burger). https://youtu.be/cAvq12Sa3VE https://youtu.be/cAvq12Sa3VE I found that one especially funny, because dijon mustard isn't more expensive than regular mustard! I buy dijon mustard all the time, and at least at my local grocery store the price is always within about 5% of regular yellow mustard, sometimes even less. It's not something that is out of reach of most Americans.
    - defrost 2y ago
      We only remember these as Obama lacked the Trump reality distortion field. [Reporter] President Trump wore a tan suit. [Trump] Let's retake the Panama Canal. [Reporter] President Trump ordered a fancy mustard. [Trump] We're going to invade Greenland. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_cat_strategy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_cat_strategy
  - WheelsAtLarge 2y ago
    Thanks for the laugh. I don't remember when this happened. The horror... :)
Gud 2y ago
On the other hand, Barrack Obama normalized death from the skies over the middle east and helped destabilize the entire region. He was also an awful president, in other ways.

panarky 2y ago

The WSJ says this is the "the dumbest trade war in history" because "when you tax something you get less of it". If the goal of the Red Hats was to get more goods from Canada and Mexico, then yes, tariffs would be a dumb policy. But the Red Hats aren't dumb. They've been planning this blitzkrieg for at least 18 months. They have thousands of intelligent people on their team and they're well organized. It's too easy to just dismiss this as ignorance, hubris and ego. If you recognize that they're not dumb, that they know exactly what they're doing, then they must be pursuing different and mostly hidden objectives for this to make sense. Once the hidden objectives are revealed, we'll all recognize the horrible logic of their actions. > Will take a decade to recover the goodwill lost this week. Indeed. All according to the plan.

uejfiweun 2y ago
What do you speculate that the end goal is here? What are you implying?
- panarky 2y ago
  I don't pretend to know their playbook. All I can see are the visible actions on the surface and try to infer from that what the underlying rationale and strategy are. But if a new regime took control in another nation and did everything the Red Hats have done, you could infer that they had a coherent strategy that explains their actions. When the stated rationale for an action like tariffs doesn't make sense (preventing fentanyl from Canada?), the reason it doesn't make sense is not that the action itself is "dumb", it's because the stated rationale for the action is bogus. So they're doing tariffs for a reason and they're hiding the real reason. If you're on the inside and know the real story, you win. If you're on the outside and keep believing their stories and thinking they're just ignorant, you lose. Then you see the largest physical movement of gold into the US in decades, and now you guess that insiders are already positioning themselves for what's coming. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-01-31/jpmorgan-plans-4-billion-gold-delivery-in-us-amid-tariff-fears https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-01-31/jpmorgan-... If it takes a hoard of gold to protect yourself, then what's coming is not good. The last one to figure out the real strategy will be left holding the bag of devalued dollars and repudiated Treasury paper.