The 100% Tariff Bluff
Everybody's playing poker with your wallet and you're not even at the table. The threat does the work — actually firing it would mean the threat failed. An incentives map of the tariff standoff.
Open it up →
Featured autopsy № 001 — Tariffs
The 100% Tariff Bluff: Everybody's Playing Poker With Your Wallet
Washington's got a loaded tariff cannon aimed at China and India — and nobody's pulled the trigger. That unfired gun is the whole strategy. Here's who's supposed to flinch, who gets the bill if it fires, and the story they're telling you while you foot the bill.
Read the autopsy →Advertisement
01The Autopsies
Every story, same procedure: what happened · what each side claims · what the evidence says · who benefits. Jabs only where earned.
The Next Autopsy
The next autopsy is on the slab. It goes live when the editor signs off on every claim — no exceptions, no "sources say."
The One After That
Got a claim you want autopsied? That's what the reader wire is for — coming soon. Bring receipts or bring nothing.
★The Truthseeker's Bible
Twelve rules for reading the news without getting played — plus a jargon decoder that translates what politicians and pundits actually mean. A living document: corrected in public, never quietly.
★How Governments Fall
From the first grain taxes of Mesopotamia to the present day: eleven themes behind every collapse — complexity, succession, debt, emergency powers, scapegoats, ecological overshoot, and more — stacked with examples across five thousand years.
★The Now
The week in American politics — what happened, what each side claims, and the incentive read underneath it. Dated every edition, refreshed weekly, never quietly rewritten.
★The Game
Game theory is the operating system of politics: prisoner's dilemmas, chicken, credible threats, costly signals, and why gridlock is an equilibrium. Taught from zero, with real political examples.
★The Ledger
The economy in plain English — what the Fed did, what inflation is actually doing, what it means for your wallet — plus the policy changes moving the money. Updated weekly.
02The Wire
Short takes. Same rules. No sacred cows.
SEP 20
09:41
09:41
/// The Permanent Crisis
Both parties just found a problem they can raise campaign money off of. Don't expect it solved: a solved problem can't scare supporters into donating, and in Washington the donations matter more than the fix.
SEP 20
09:12
09:12
/// Outrage Is Inventory
Every headline designed to make your blood boil is doing its job: your anger is the goods on the shelf, your attention is what's being sold, and advertisers are the buyers. You're the crop.
SEP 20
08:30
08:30
/// Check Your Receipts
When Washington starts a trade war — new tariffs, new threats — skip the press conference. Watch your grocery bill. That's the only honest announcement in town.
Dissent is the most American thing there is.
Distortion Daily is a DIY political news board run out of Dallas, Texas. No party owns it. No donor owns it. No advertiser gets a red pen. We cut every story open the same way — what happened, what each side claims, what the evidence supports, who cashes in — and we only swing where the receipts say to swing.
The Distortion Dispatch
One email when an autopsy drops. No spam, no list-selling, no seventeen "just bumping this" follow-ups from a marketing intern. Unsubscribe whenever — we'll only be mildly devastated.
The Dispatch email list opens when the .com lands — until then, the board itself is the feed. No dead signup forms here.
03Keep the lights on
No paywall. Ever. Distortion Daily is a one-person operation — if this board earns your time, keep the lights on: your donation goes directly to the publisher. Hosting, research, and coffee. In that order.
Support Distortion Daily →