Rentlar

Musk, Trump and the rest of the Republican leaders have been trying their very best to sink the ship of America.

Let’s put an end to antisemitism by – putting a star symbol highlighting the profile of every confirmed Jew or Israeli? Where have I heard this before…

As someone who is good at reading between the lines of Japanese news reporting, here’s my translation of a Japanese news source on what is being discussed in tariff negotiations:

アメリカ側は日本車の安全基準を見直すことなど要求を並べてきましたが、日本車にかかる関税25％を引き下げるつもりがあるのかなど、日本との交渉の方針は確認できなかったということです。

(Translation: The American side lined up requests to review Japanese automobile safety standards, but there was no confirmation of whether there was intent to drop the 25% automobile tariffs, and no indication of where the negotiations with Japan would lead.)

また日本への輸出を拡大したい農産物の品目に牛肉やコメ、魚介類、じゃがいもなどを列挙し、関税以外の障壁や制約を取り除くことも求めてきました。

(Additionally, the US negotiators rattled off a list of products they requested to expand their exports to Japan of as well as to remove regulations/non-tariff barriers. This included beef, rice, seafood and potatoes.)

赤沢大臣はこうした指摘に「優先順位をつけて示してほしい」と述べたということです。

(In response to these pointers, Minister Akazawa stated “We would like these requests ranked by priority”.)

So all in all, the US side seems to spend their time listing a bunch of grievances, the Japan side lending an ear to their concerns, but not sure where the give-and-take part of the negotiations is here.

We have great examples from a certain country, to show that “allowing unlimited money in politics = free speech” is bad. There will be disingenuous ‘slippery slope’ arguments to it but the types of campaigns that this rule is meant to stop is clearly defined and limited.

The “next year” promise of the year…

The thing about Europe is its economy is permanently stuck in the doldrums, a global cautionary tale. And no wonder. Europeans enjoy August off, retire in their prime and spend more time eating and socialising with their families than inhabitants of any other region. Oddly, surveys show people in countries both rich and poor value such leisure time; somehow Europeans managed to squeeze their employers into giving them more of it. Even as they were depressing GDP by wasting time playing with their kids, the denizens of Europe also managed to keep inequality relatively low while it ballooned elsewhere in the past 20 years. Nobody in Europe has spent the past week looking at their stock portfolio, wondering if they could still afford to send their kids to university. Europeans have no idea what “medical bankruptcy” is. Oh, and no EU leader has ever launched their own cryptocurrency.

This whole paragraph had me on edge, a little unsure of whether The Economist, (edit for clarity: from presumably) an American publication (wing), legitimately thought these were good things or not.