binkysurprise.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

"Consumer sentiment plunged 11% this month to a preliminary reading of 50.8, the U. of Michigan said in its latest survey, the second-lowest reading on records going back to 1952. April’s reading was lower than anything seen during the Great Recession." www.cnn.com/2025/04/11/e...

submitted 8 hours ago • 32 comments

Wow. This is from a Trump II State Dept appointee, Tibor Nagy, unloading on the DOGE shitshow as a "stage production which combined elements of a tragicomedy with the Twilight Zone." Again, this is a Trump guy talking. www.lubbockonline.com/story/opinio...

submitted 23 hours ago • 77 comments

Amazing @annamerlan.bsky.social story about the AI slop factories making heroic Trump content. www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

submitted 9 hours ago • 31 comments

been wondering when people would start advocating for this. potential golden, once-in-a-century opportunity for the EU to fund a rearmament/investment program on the cheap as global investors start fleeing dollar assets www.bruegel.org/first-glance...

submitted 9 hours ago • 2 comments

Almost worked in 2013-14. Had Boehner allowed a vote on the Senate immigration bill, the Obama strategy - ramping up deportations to create the condition for reform - would have worked. Bannon et al helping beat Eric Cantor was incredibly important.

submitted 9 hours ago • 6 comments

Over 650 known cases so far, and most have nothing to do with pro-Palestinian advocacy. The admin seems to be engaged in a breakneck effort to kick out every foreign student who has had even the most minor interaction with the police possible, including for TRAFFIC CITATIONS and JAYWALKING tickets.

submitted 9 hours ago • 76 comments

"So there will be many fewer regulators looking over the shoulders of insurers and hospitals, and the rewards for cheating the system have been greatly increased." prospect.org/health/2025-...

submitted 9 hours ago • 4 comments

I got into this today. that gap is only going to widen as Trump opens the door for private insurers to swindle Medicare Advantage: prospect.org/health/2025-...

submitted 9 hours ago • 4 comments

But what about DOGE? A Wall Street Journal analysis of daily financial statements issued by the Treasury Dept found government spending since the inauguration is $154 billion more than in the same period in 2024 during the administration of former President Joe Biden. www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

submitted 9 hours ago • 0 comments

Trump has made clear that he thinks tariffs will (a) bring manufacturing back to the U.S., (b) reverse trade deficits, and (c) fund tax cuts, deportations, and other policies. Individualized trade "deals" won't do any of these things, and actually works against two of them.

submitted 9 hours ago • 20 comments

I talked to Biden industrial policy official @alexsjacquez.bsky.social about the wild success in bringing back critical industries in a targeted way just a couple years ago, and how painful it feels to see it frittered all away. prospect.org/economy/2025...

submitted 9 hours ago • 2 comments

Federal spending is up under Trump according to the Wall Street Journal. Chaos is not actually the same as cost savings. Actual budgeting is a kind of actual policy-making and takes real work spread over real time. Running around breaking stuff isn't that. www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

submitted 12 hours ago • 132 comments

The President’s unprecedented Executive Order yesterday targeting Messrs. Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor for nothing but the exercise of their First Amendment rights is the President’s most constitutionally corrupt Executive Order to date.

submitted 1 day ago • 579 comments

Within less than 24 hours of each other. I wonder if they even realize these are connected.

submitted 7 hours ago • 34 comments

"The combination of interest rates soaring amid a slump and the currency plunging despite rising interest rates isn’t what we normally expect for advanced countries, let alone the owner of the world’s leading reserve currency. It is, however, what we often see in emerging-market economies."

submitted 9 hours ago • 21 comments

"Something has happened to American political culture that divorces large parts of it from social reality." adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-...

submitted 10 hours ago • 5 comments

The Trump administration is quietly drafting a bold new policy for combating terrorism that targets a wide range of perceived foes, from Tesla vandals to protesters, intelligence sources tell me. www.kenklippenstein.com/p/trump-team...

submitted 21 hours ago • 93 comments

USA Today dug into the history of one of the private contractors who helped make the baseless decision that Andry Hernández Romero, a gay makeup artist from Venezuela, was a gang member. Looks like the contractor—and not Andry—was the one with the suspect history: www.usatoday.com/story/news/i...

submitted 10 hours ago • 9 comments

Dispatches from a country slipping into authoritarianism (if we don't come together to stop it)

submitted 10 hours ago • 31 comments

US 30-YEAR TREASURY YIELDS RISE TO 4.95%, MARKING BIGGEST WEEKLY INCREASE SINCE 1982 - RTRS Via FirstSquawk

submitted 19 hours ago • 63 comments

Here’s where we’re headed next: 1. Record number of S&P 500 companies pull full-year earnings guidance. 2. “Jay Powell is artificially costing us trillions of dollars with high interest rates, he must be fired.” 3. “Beautiful phone call with my friend President Xi, we’re making a deal.”

submitted 19 hours ago • 72 comments

Because the “problem” the bill purports to solve is non-existent, everything it does is “unnecessary” and every requirement it imposes is, definitionally, an “unnecessary barrier.” Imposing unnecessary barriers is WHY the imaginary problem was invented.

submitted 20 hours ago • 5 comments

Not kidding when I say it's not entirely clear that the Administration knows what current tariff rates are. Apparently the China tariffs were more punitive than the White House led folks to believe yesterday. www.wsj.com/livecoverage...

submitted 1 day ago • 14 comments

Axios: Top Senate Democrats plan to unveil legislation that would provide an emergency $200 monthly increase in Social Security benefits through the end of the year to account for potential tariff related cost increases www.axios.com/2025/04/10/c...

submitted 1 day ago • 87 comments

Reminders in considering Trump admin response to the SCOTUS decision: 1. Compliance isn't binary - the admin can avoid outright defying the court while failing to act in good faith 2. This is the first of these decisions, not the last - even if they comply now, it doesn't mean they always will

submitted 21 hours ago • 6 comments

It's worth remembering that the entire planet is being engulfed at the moment by a crisis that is the work of a single person. I've heard some people ask how many people actually support this. I think there's a better question: how many people support this who would still support it the day ...

submitted 21 hours ago • 114 comments

Open authoritarian repression of political enemies - happening right in front of us: "the memos send a stark message: To oppose Mr. Trump will mean risking punishment at the hands of the federal government" www.nytimes.com/2025/04/10/u...

submitted 21 hours ago • 2 comments

This is driving me crazy too. Not long ago 10% universal tariffs were considered the worst-case scenario, something even Trump wasn’t crazy enough to impose. Now have those PLUS 125% tariffs on China. Together, these raise raise inflation by about as much as original “Liberation Day” tariffs did!

submitted 1 day ago • 125 comments

it's wild that today ICE was just like, "we're the thought police" unironically

submitted 22 hours ago • 171 comments

Uh, the same person simultaneously serving as Sec. of the Army and head of a federal police agency seems problematic. www.politico.com/news/2025/04...

submitted 22 hours ago • 35 comments

The fear among academics and lawyers now talking on the record on just about any topic that involves the federal government or the White House is really extraordinary and worrisome, and getting worse, it seems to me, every week. Dissent by an establishment figures becoming verboten in the US

submitted 1 day ago • 302 comments

Trump has once again questioned the US-Japan Alliance: "We defend them but they don't have to defend us...We pay hundreds of billions of dollars to defend them...We pay all the money. They don't pay anything." [Japan pays money to support the US bases. Significantly more than other allies.]

submitted 22 hours ago • 67 comments

The Roberts Court, for once, did what it was supposed to do in a unanimous ruling telling Trump to try to bring back Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man the administration said they accidentally sent to an overseas gulag for life. We are in a very dangerous moment. www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...

submitted 22 hours ago • 61 comments

How is this different than what Republican senators say about Trump

submitted 1 day ago • 242 comments

Let's speak plainly about what is happening. The First Amendment has been terminated for immigrants.

submitted 1 day ago • 115 comments

Here's Part 2 of 3 from me, @adambonica.bsky.social, @rfunkfordham.bsky.social, & @ernestotiburcio.bsky.social. All the publicly available data suggests 2024 non-voters leaned Democratic and pro-Harris. data4democracy.substack.com/p/did-non-vo... 1/n

submitted 1 day ago • 31 comments

A disgraced former Milwaukee cop with credibility issues helped seal the fate of a gay Venezuelan makeup artist sent to El Salvador's notorious prison. Cross was fired from his position as a Milwaukee Police Sergeant in 2012 after driving his car into a family’s home while intoxicated.

submitted 1 day ago • 1 comment

DOD civilian employee roles that do not facilitate "lethality" should be assessed for restructuring or elimination, the memo states.

submitted 1 day ago • 304 comments