3. People who stop short of the military and diplomatic aspects - people who talk about taking in Ukrainian refugees but are uncomfortable with sending weapons - are objects of scorn, and rightfully so. Ukraine doesn't need your pity. It needs heavy weapons with which to defeat Russia.

You put the MAC and AAC etc as part of it all, they just don't get autobids to the playoffs.

All joking aside I wonder if there is political hay to be made for a federal candidate advocating for a sane system, e.g. a single entity with 1 tv contract, 10-team regional divisions, collective bargaining, that ends the first week of January with a single transfer portal after that

you would still expect higher inflation, but slightly higher inflation offsetting lower economic output is a preferred outcome to me than rising unempl. Inflation is still a political problem. Fed should be apoltical and has to choose between two bad options. inflation to me is preferable.

If I were on the fed board I might lean towards a rate cut bc of the aggregate payroll numbers, but I would also want to see October - if aggregate payroll and/or headline jobs numbers rebound, I'd probably hold steady. If aggregate payroll qtly % stays low or jobs # erode, i'd cut again.

The recent fed rate cuts were entirely appropriate within that context, and we are probably going to see OK but not great employment numbers followed by rising inflation.

If we didn't have tariffs and inflation rates were more normal, and you didn't have ICE raids messing with the labor force levels, you'd feel fine about the Fed easing policy a bit and that the economy would keep chugging along. Of course we *do* have that stuff, so things are uncertain.

the unemployment rate (which *is* increasing but not at a crazy rate) in this context tells a similar story - the labor market is getting soft, and while +119k is a good number it doesn't offset all the other indicators.

And of course the jobs story has been bad since the tariff announcements, and I think we should expect September to get revised downwards going forward based on how revisions have gone lately.

I do see early signs of concern in the aggregate payroll story, with the quarterly change looking a bit soft (I'd like to see that dark green line kick up above 5% to offset the natural noise on the low end).