Wednesday, April 30, 2025

🧠🪱 🪱

I’m watching shit action movies on Netflix (call it a weakness) and if you put RFK’s dialogue in the mouth of a character, everyone would consider it so over the top it would ruin the movie. Nobody talks like that. Right? "Harvard,” “Harlem,” you can see how someone would confuse the two. Hand to God, my teeth were so bad I had to have some baby teeth (molars) pulled and replaced with dentures until my permanent teeth came in. A lot of dental work thereafter. I’m convinced that, were it not for fluoride, I’d have lost all my teeth decades ago. And nobody has ever accused me of being stupid. (Dumb, yeah; but not stupid.). RFK. Jr is proof that you can’t fix stupid.

RESEARCH FACILITY within the US National Institutes of Health that is tasked with studying Ebola and other deadly infectious diseases has been instructed by the Trump administration’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to stop research activities.

According to an email viewed by WIRED, the Integrated Research Facility in Frederick, Maryland, was told to stop all experimental work by April 29 at 5 pm. The facility is part of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and is located at the US Army base Fort Detrick. It conducts research on the treatment and prevention of infectious diseases that are deemed “high consequence”—those that pose significant risks to public health. It has 168 employees, including federal workers and contractors.
They were using aborted fetal tissue in their research. Or food dyes, or fluoride; or something.
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The Art Of The Deal?

Is this how they think one negotiates? Where do the little screws come in? Does he know anything about manufacturing?  And “hi tech” depends on somebody doing the grunt work to make the tech. No tech, no “hi tech .” And we’re gonna need that “sea of sewing machines with Americans sewing” clothes if the tariffs last very long.
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Our National Summer At Camp Runamok

WIRED:
A YOUNG MAN with no government experience who has yet to even complete his undergraduate degree is working for Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and has been tasked with using artificial intelligence to rewrite the agency’s rules and regulations.
The Texas Legislature, decades ago, decided to codify Texas law. It went from Vernon’s Statues (the original publisher of Texas law, IIRC. Long out of business, but the name stuck.), into Codes. Government Code, Family Law, Probate, Civil, Criminal, and so on. Each statute had to be renumbered and reorganized, as well as rewritten. That was the crucial part: the rewritten codes couldn’t change the original statutes. Statutory interpretation depends on the wording: change the words, change the interpretation. But that was not the legislative intent. The intent was to make Texas law easier to find and follow. (I haven’t had to look at a Texas Code for over 30 years, but I could find the section I was looking for in a few minutes. I learned and worked (briefly) with Vernon’s. I wouldn’t know where to start in those.) It was a worthwhile endeavor, but it took years.

Remember the promise that all the emails government employees were required to send in to DOGE would be read by AI? And then the inbox backed up from the unread emails? Yeah; that’s how well this is going to work. 

There’s also the problem of not changing the regulations. AI is not a lawyer, nor a judge. It doesn’t know what it doesn’t know, and it doesn’t know how to think like a lawyer. Neither does the young know-nothing in charge of this project. 

Assuming he doesn’t want to change the regulations, that is. If he does, he’s definitely not a lawyer; because a lawyer would know that project is against the law.

Not the criminal law; but administrative law. The law companies and people rely on; just like they rely on government regulations. Which means those regulations must be reliable, not changed at the whim of a child and in the “black box” of AI.  That creates all kinds of problems that government isn’t supposed to create. Revising or adding or deleting regulations is itself a regulated process. It takes time, involves a lot of people, including the public, and if it isn’t done right, the changes are invalid. Period, end of.
Sweet’s primary role appears to be leading an effort to leverage artificial intelligence to review HUD’s regulations, compare them to the laws on which they are based, and identify areas where rules can be relaxed or removed altogether.
Again: what does AI know? Fuck all. It knows how to make up case law, which means it “knows “ to do what it’s asked to do. Something a first year law student would know was NOT what was asked for.
Another source told WIRED that Sweet has also been using the tool at other parts of HUD. WIRED reviewed a copy of the output of the AI’s review of one HUD department, which features columns displaying text that the AI model found to be needing an adjustment while also including suggestions from the AI for alterations to be made, essentially proposing rewrites. The spreadsheet details how many words can be eliminated from individual regulations and gives a percentage figure indicating how noncompliant the regulations are. It isn’t clear how these percentages are calculated.
Close enough is not good enough. And deregulation, which is the measure of noncompliance referred to, has to be authorized by Congress. That’s what statutes are for:
One HUD source who heard about Sweet’s possible role in revising the agency’s regulations said the effort was redundant, since the agency was already “put through a multi-year multi-stakeholder meatgrinder before any rule was ever created” under the Administrative Procedure Act. (This law dictates how agencies are allowed to establish regulations and allows for judicial oversight over everything an agency does.)

Another HUD source said Sweet’s title seemed to make little sense. “A programmer and a quantitative data analyst are two very different things,” they noted.
The President can’t suspend or cancel that “multi-year multi-stakeholder meat grinder” just because it inconveniences his “agenda.”

So, a bunch more lawsuits, incoming. The story of the second Trump Administration, in one sentence. Trump isn’t overseeing an administration. He’s the Chief looney at Camp Runamok.
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COMING THIS SUMMER!

Sorry, kid, but tariffs hit the North Pole, too.
Torsten Slok, chief economist at Apollo, laid out a timeline in a presentation for clients that showed when the impact of tariffs announced by President Donald Trump could hit the U.S. economy. Based on the transport time required for goods from China, U.S. consumers could start to notice trade-related shortages in their local stores next month, according to the presentation.

“The consequence will be empty shelves in US stores in a few weeks and Covid-like shortages for consumers and for firms using Chinese products as intermediate goods,” Slok wrote in a note to clients Friday.

April 2: Tariffs announced, containership departures from China to U.S. slowing

Early-to-mid May: Containerships to U.S. ports come to a stop

Mid-to-late May: Trucking demand comes to a halt, leading to empty shelves and lower sales for companies

Late May to early June: Layoffs in trucking and retail industries

Summer 2025: recession
Supply chains: broken until at least Xmas. And Ebenezer Trump telling us all to suck it!

Trump recreating Jimmy Carter’s MEOW speech is going to be the cherry on the sundae. He’ll just tell us it’s all our fault for not clapping loudly enough to revive Tinkerbelle. Or more likely it’s our tough luck and don’t come whining to him about it.

Nothin’ but good times ahead! 
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Lost In The Woods

That’s not a thing. Gonna be hard to collect “external revenue” on goods that aren’t being imported. And since China was the major source of imports…. He says that like it’s a good thing. 🤦‍♂️  And like it doesn’t affect “external revenue.”

These people simply aren’t living in the same reality as the rest of us.
"…doesn’t mean it won’t get better and we don’t need to be patient….” 

With this clown show?
Please.
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Even The People At Trump’s Michigan Rally…

 



...aren’t paying attention to this shit. 

Trump played a video at that rally of prisoners getting their heads shaved in CECOT, and the monkey monkeys roared approval. But the majority of the country is still concerned with due process and fairness.

Nobody’s reading Truth Social except foreign intelligence agencies and internet political obsessives. What’s going to matter is pocketbooks, not Trump’s stupid excuses.

I still remember how popular Jimmy Carter was when he said we’d have to turn down the thermostat and drive less because OPEC raised the price of gas. He said the effort to change we needed was the “moral equivalent of war.” Russell Baker pointed out that spelled “MEOW.” Carter never recovered politically after that.

And now the Republicans are saying we all have to suffer for the greater good. MEOW. 🐱 
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Armchair Journalists

Ten years of Trump going on TV and just fucking saying whatever, and still nothing like an industry set of best practices to deal with it. Put someone on the set with a laptop to look stuff up, pause the interview, whatever. He'd walk off but so what. Amazing to still be at "agree to disagree."
The last interviewer to try this was Jonathan Swan, and he quickly went to the Grey Lady and was never heard from again. (He shared bylines with Maggie Haberman for a bit, but the high profile he had soon vanished.)

How many TeeVee journalists want Swan’s  career, v. Wolf Blitzer’s?

I love it when people give other people career advice they are themselves at no risk of being held to.
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The Shipping News

All the shipping from China is done. Businesses anticipated the tariffs and ordered accordingly, because they know how tariffs work. 

President Dunderhead doesn’t.

Not sure who he’s going to blame when shelves go bare this summer and the outlook for Xmas is bleak because he broke the supply chains. I’m sure he’ll send Peter Navarro out again to tell us the economy’s fine if we just ignore Trump’s tariffs and DOGE’s illegal activities. (Even Navarro admits there was “a surge in imports because of the tariffs.” He doesn’t, of course, follow that train of thought all the way to the station.)

And about how all those cuts in government spending are going to make us all richer;
A 50% cut to science funding (which is close to what Trump is proposing for NIH) would result in huge negative long-term economic outcomes:

*7.6% cut in GDP
*8.6% cut in federal revenues
*equivalents of making the average American $10,000 poorer
NYT:
Cutting federal funding for scientific research could cause long-run economic damage equivalent to a major recession, according to a new study from researchers at American University.

...

It is going to be a decline forever,” said Ignacio González, one of the study’s authors. “The U.S. economy is going to be smaller.”

A smaller economy also means less income for the government to tax. As a result, while cutting investment could save money in the short run, it could leave the federal budget in worse shape over the longer term. The researchers estimate that a 25 percent cut to research funding would reduce government revenues 4.3 percent in the long term.

Larger funding cuts would have even greater effects. A 50 percent reduction in funding would lower gross domestic product nearly 7.6 percent, the researchers estimate, and a 75 percent cut would reduce it 11.3 percent — a larger decline than in any recession since the Great Depression.
Yes, it would be that bad:
Such estimates might seem extreme, but they are consistent with other research. A recent paper published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas found that government investments in research and development accounted for at least a fifth of U.S. productivity growth since World War II.

“If you look at a long period of time, a lot of our increase in living standards seems to be coming from public investment in scientific research,” said Andrew Fieldhouse, a Texas A&M economist and an author of the Dallas Fed study. “The rates of return are just really high.”
Or just ask Alabama about the prospect of losing funding for some of the major employers/economic engines in the state (healthcare and research). (In the’60’s, Alabama benefited from NASA. Most of the rockets were built in Alabama.). The idea that government spending all goes where the socks go in the dryer is just about ready to be challenged by Jimmy Stewart’s speech that stops the run on his S&L.
Political leaders in earlier eras appeared to recognize that payoff. In another recent study, Mr. Fieldhouse found that past efforts to cut the federal budget largely spared investments in nondefense research and development.
So everything old is new again; there is some cause for long term optimism.
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The Man Who Promised To Fix Everything Before He Took Office

The tariffs have already taken effect for businesses who were already planning for Christmas (and are now expecting disaster). As ew said: 
As "Art of the Deal" guy faces humiliating setbacks in several negotiations, he's going to have to do something to make up for the psychological and political damage of being a loser.
Trump will face it like this👆. The Big Idea cannot fail, it can only be failed.

The minute he took that oath, it was all his responsibility.
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Tuesday, April 29, 2025

The Strong Man 💪🏻

I never realized Trump had single-handedly fought Russia to a standstill in Ukraine. All these years, I thought that was the Ukrainians doing that. This is the photograph Trump is referring to: Even when:
Moran pointed out that the photo Trump was referencing was proven to be fake, as Abrego Garcia was photographed alongside Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) at the senator's hotel, and the purported tattoos were not present.
Trump still insisted the photo was real and the tattoos were real.

I guess the lawyers told him to think that.
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Sen. Foghorn Leghorn Reassures The Masses

So they can keep up with the inflation Trump is causing?

It’s a bold strategy. Let’s see if it works as unemployment ripples through the economy caused by a supply chain collapse caused by tariffs.

I’m sure it will all be fine….
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“You Already Paid For This”

 And yet my toilet remains unchanged:

(This is part of what I’m assured is Trump’s political genius. I’ve known at least two brilliant politicians (brilliant at politics, I mean, in my lifetime:  LBJ, and Clinton. Clinton actually balanced the budget and advanced programs that helped people despite being the target of a true witch hunt for most of his presidency.  LBJ, in just four short years (including his first term) created the modern world we’ve taken for granted, including Medicare, the Civil Rights Act , PBS, rural electrification…the list is incredibly long. Trump is not even a politician, by comparison. He’s only a con man, incapable of acting on the least of his promises.)

There is a process for changing product regulations. The FDA took three years to investigate and decide to ban red food dye no. 3, and gave companies using it until 2027 (in some cases 2028), to replace it in their products. Trump hasn’t changed anything, and if he had done so outside the regulatory process, the lawsuits would be (indeed, may be) flying. In any case, I’m pretty sure nobody’s re-tooling their factories.
These, after all, are the more interesting bits. Trump is doing this because Sean Duffy sucking his cock on Fox: is not affirmation enough. He had to sit through the Pope’s funeral, and couldn’t come back fast enough (Ukraine expected more discussions, for one). He needs the adulation. It’s really quite pathetic, and very newsworthy. Remarkable that the press doesn’t ask why a recently elected POTUS needs a rally like this. Well, that’s one reason. But does any objective observer really think this will change Trump’s standing in the polls? ???, indeed. He really didn’t. No more than the Supreme Court declared DEI illegal when they overturned Harvard’s admissions policy. Just not in the way he means.
100 Days, a Trillion Dollars: DOGE's Costs Keep Adding Up

$500B lost IRS revenue
$135B personnel fuck-up costs
$430B things we paid for but that were cut or frozen
ew has the receipts, here. Every sccusation is a confession. And the entire country is going to be in the shit.💩  Pretty sure Mike knows how to lose that much money while making pillows. Who explained that to him?!?!? I triple dog dare them. "You already paid for this. Ha ha ha ha ha.”—Laurie Anderson 
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Humpty Dumpty And The King’s Men

 This reads very much like the ideals of a mass murderer (McVeigh, et al.) expecting his action to spark the “race war” that will finally purge America and purify it. 

The former head of Project 2025 believes an “unchained” President Donald Trump has made immense progress during the first 100 days of his second term toward undoing liberal gains dating back to Franklin D. Roosevelt.

But Paul Dans — who led the effort to produce a detailed conservative transition plan and policy blueprint that was at the center of last year’s presidential election — believes the president needs an influx of new attorneys to fight for his policies in court. Those battles, Dans told NBC News, will shape the next 100 days.
Trump is not being stopped in court because he’s lost all “his” lawyers. The positions they are being asked to take are indefensible and contrary to law. New attorneys won’t fare any better than the ones who have quit, and certainly won’t be better qualified.

Trump’s problem is not the courts or the lawyers. His problem is the law, and the Constitution. One lawyer flailed so badly in a hearing on his Motion for Summary Judgment that the Perkins Coie lawyer had only to sit back and watch. The same fate awaits the DOJ lawyers in the Judge Dugan case, which is going to intimidate judges as much as Trump intimidated Canadian voters. Almost every EO Trump has issued has been stymied if not overturned. I know of three lawsuits credibly challenging his authority to even impose tariffs, and a new one challenging his authority to remake federal agencies according to his whim. It’s only a matter of time before challenges to his authority to act as he has become general enough to undo everything he has done wholesale, rather than piecemeal.

And all the king’s lawyers, and all the king’s paralegals, can’t put that Humpty Dumpty together again.
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First Principle Of Legal Practice: “They Don’t Pay Us To Be Wrong”

 Even though he is not a lawyer, JMM argued soundly two weeks ago that the agreements between Trump and several major law firms (one is too many; more than calls into question the soundness of the profession at “the top”) were unenforceable.

Just Security now agrees:

In short, the President cannot enforce the law-firm “deals” imposed by his Administration.  The firms who “agreed” under coercion should renounce those “deals,” or publicly explain why they feel constrained to fulfill illusory bargains. If those firms choose to honor the “deals,” their conduct might well prove to be illegal.  No new firms should accept them. And potential clients and employees are entitled to question why a law firm has chosen to surrender control of its choice of future clients or cases to the U.S. Government.
That’s the conclusion. Much of the analysis is a review of first year contracts law (because contracts are so much creatures of common law, and because so many basic legal principles and concepts are found in contract law), from consideration to coercion. The bottom line there is what I said earlier, based on JMM’s presentation of what the agreements said: i.e., they were not contracts and therefore unenforceable.

But Trump, of course, isn’t bothered by legal niceties. Which raises problems I didn’t consider, but Democrats in Congress have:
As some Members of Congress noted in recent letters to the “settling” law firms, if these agreements are in fact honored, the firms who execute them will have offered free services to the Administration in return for their continued access. Such open, continuing collaboration between the government and the firms runs the risk of violating a host of ethics and state laws, not to mention possible federal law violations ranging from statutes forbidding corruptly promising or giving “anything of value” in exchange for preferential government treatment to the ban on donation of voluntary services under the Anti-Deficiency Act. The accepting firms should clearly renounce what may otherwise be construed as “pay-to-play” arrangements aimed to curry favor with the Trump Administration.
I mean, inevitably, you would expect these firms to have foreseen the devil’s bargain they were agreeing to. I said before I think they thought they were being clever. But as Just Security points out, there was never any agreement Trump wouldn’t simply be more coercive, and no way to enforce such an agreement if the law firms thought they had one.

These law firms were the “winged with awe, inviolable” ones. Now it turns out their reputations were smoke and mirrors and a house of cards. The smart law firms told Trump to take a flying leap and went to court, where they filleted him. The cowardly law firms thought they could buy off a psychopath with ink stains on paper. And then he demanded they provide pro bono work for at least the rest of Trump’s term to every law enforcement officer in the country in so much as a disciplinary investigation. Now they are damned if they do, as they thought they would be damned if they didn’t.

Now they just look like damned fools. Not at all the kind of people you want negotiating your contracts. Negotiating anything from a business agreement to a settlement agreement. And, of course, if they’d put themselves in such peril, why would you trust them to see around corners for you?

A lawyer’s job is to foresee the worst possible consequences, and plan accordingly. As a lawyer I worked with liked to remind me: “They don’t pay us to be wrong.”
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The Alphabet Suit

 So:

...the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) and four AFGE locals; American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME); Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and SEIU Local 1000; Alliance for Retired Americans, American Geophysical Union; American Public Health Association; Center for Taxpayer Rights; Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks; Common Defense; Main Street Alliance; NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council); Northeast Organic Farming Association Inc.; VoteVets; Western Watersheds Project; City and County of San Francisco, California; County of Santa Clara, California; City of Chicago, Illinois; City of Baltimore, Maryland; Harris County, Texas; and King County, Washington. The case, AFGE v. Trump, was filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.
have sued Trump, OMB, DOGE, OPM, every Cabinet Secretary and Department, as well as Americorps, GSA, EPA, NLRB, NSF, SBA, and SSA.

The basic legal theory being that Trump simply doesn’t have the authority to do what he’s been doing to the federal government.

This could be interesting.
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Harvard Should Have Known Better; Or…

Even rich people have something to lose.
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Clown Show Fascism 🤡

The SOD is neither the Congress nor the Supreme Court. He can’t declare federal law null and void just because he thinks girls are icky. Or have cooties. Or think he’s fascinating and handsome when he’s drunk.

Lawsuits incoming….

MAGA speaks. The world laughs.
Carney: When I sit down with President Trump, it will be to discuss the future economic and security relationship between two sovereign nations and it will be with our full knowledge that we have many, many other options than the United States..

We will strengthen our relationship with reliable partners in Europe and Asia and elsewhere in the world and if the U.S. Doesn't want to play a pivotal in the world economy, we will lead, not the Americans.
Cutting yourself off from the world is not the way to bring the world to your doorstep.

A woman says her family’s fresh start in Oklahoma turned into a nightmare after federal immigration agents raided their home, taking their phones, laptops, and life savings – even though they were not the suspects the agents were looking for.

The agents had a search warrant for the home, but the suspects listed on the warrant do not live in the house.

The woman who actually lives in the house had just moved to Oklahoma City from Maryland with her family about two weeks earlier.

The woman, who News 4 will refer to as “Marisa”, and her three daughters came to Oklahoma looking for a slower, more affordable pace of life.

They rented a house in a seemingly safe northwest Oklahoma City neighborhood.

Her husband stayed back in Maryland a couple of extra weeks, planning to join them this weekend.

After “I was like, ‘okay, Oklahoma’s my home now,’” Marisa said.

But any comfort they had disappeared Thursday morning when about 20 men, armed with guns, busted through the door.

“I don’t know who they were,” she said. “It was dark. All the lights were off.”

Marisa said the men identified themselves as federal agents with the U.S. Marshals, ICE, and the FBI.

“I keep asking them, ‘who are you? What are you doing here? What’s happening,’” she said. “And they said, ‘we have a warrant for the house, a search warrant.’”

She said they ordered her and her daughters outside into the rain before they could even put on clothes.

“They wanted me to change in front of all of them, in between all of them,” she said. “My husband has not even seen my daughter in her undergarments—her own dad, because it’s respectful. You have her out there, a minor, in her underwear.”

Marisa said the names on the search warrant were not hers or anyone in her family.
Apparently they were looking for the former owners/tenants of the house. “Marisa” recognized the names on the paper from mail still being delivered to her home. The agents took their phones, computers, and all the money in the house as “evidence.”
Now, Marisa said they have, quite literally, nothing.

“I said, ‘when are we going to get our stuff back?’ They said it could be days or it could be months,” she said.

Marisa said she is left with nothing but questions.

“What if I would have been armed,” she said. “You’re breaking in. What am I supposed to think? My initial thought was we were being robbed—that my daughters, being females, were being kidnapped. You have guns pointed in our faces. Can you just reprogram yourself and see us as humans, as women? A little bit of mercy. Care a little bit about your fellow human, about your fellow citizen, fellow resident. We bleed too. We work. We bleed just like anybody else bleeds. We’re scared. You could see our faces that we were terrified. What makes you so much more worthier of your peace? What makes you so much more worthier of protecting your children? What makes you so much more worthy of your citizenship? What makes you more worthy of safety? Of being given the right that they took from me to protect my daughters?”

Marisa told News 4 the agents wouldn’t even leave her a business card.

She said she has no idea who to contact to get her things back.
Well, you know, they could have been “illegal immigrants m.” And it’s not like American citizens haven’t been forcibly relocated (they can’t really be deported). So I guess these people were lucky…
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What Will Amazon Say When They Flat Out Can’t Get The Goods?

In Amazon related news: What’s she going to say when WalMart’s  shelves are bare this summer? I mean, Trump could exempt MAGA merchandise, but the shipping costs would add at least 50%, since nothing else is coming. What you don’t understand is that the notice was unauthorized and never meant to be sent to Harvard published, and should have been ignored by Harvard the administration, anyway.

Remain calm. All is well.
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🦤

Except Pat Robertson’s example in the ‘80’s taught the televangelists to stay in their lane and never attempt the leap to politics. Trump figured out how to grift the Presidency.  Of course, politicians have always promised a chicken in every pot. Grift is baked in. The difference is even party machine politics had to benefit the voters at some level, even as it took the cream for the leadership. 

Trump is not running a machine. There is no party to provide it. And he’s a toddler with a shotgun. Second time around, he’s proving it. Only question is: will he finally break the politicians’ spell? Will we finally decide politicians shouldn’t promise shit, they should actually be able to do shit? Certainly the myth that “a businessman can run government better” is going to be as dead as the Dodo. 🦤 

For awhile, anyway.
As goes Canada, so goes the American midterms?

Probably. Same cause and effect is likely, anyway.
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SO SAY WE ALL!

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Monday, April 28, 2025

What Happened To Rev. Barber

One more thing about this: If you're wondering why you're not seeing much coverage elsewhere, it's likely partly because I was one of only two credentialed press covering this — the other was a videographer, along with some non-credentialed press.

Relatedly: hire more religion reporters.
That’s the message. The story is here.

And why do we only get news on religion when it’s a white TV preacher? Or the Pope? ‘Tis a mystery….
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But Will He Run For A Third Term?

But will he run for a third term??? Farmers ain’t students who should be learnin’ how to screw in little screws! Farmers deserve socialism! He seems like a sensible, level headed guy. Surprised he’s not working for Trump. Directly, I mean.
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Man Woman Birth Death Infinity*

I can’t believe there’s that much copium in the world. Complacent public thinking modest inflation is worse than grim, creeping death (when you’ve lived through a decade of double digit inflation, a few years of 6% or less is “modest” indeed); who forgot about Covid like it never happened? Especially forgot what Covid did, and who did the worst of it? Who recovered so fast because of who we elected, but we couldn’t see past mild inflation? Because we forget, over and over and over, that it’s about us, and not about being rich? Or saving the rich?

I don’t know. I just know it’s as American as cherry pie. That the generation raised in the Great Depression and who won World War II, were not the “greatest generation” (sod off, Tom Brokaw), but they learned a valuable lesson that just didn’t pass down to all the Boomers and all the Gen Xers and all of the Millennials….  And maybe it was never going to.
A) name 3.

B) The only one that matters is with China. Because store shelves are going to go bare before the 4th of July; and they won’t refill by Xmas, barring a miracle by July 4th. Or even then.
If you’re so rich, how come you’re so dumb? And make it more incredible? How much tariffs are collected from empty store shelves and non-existent container ships? So the brilliant plan is to use racism and xenophobia to make shipping even worse than it’s going to be? And is the test going to be:”Man, woman, camera, TV, person”? Because I hear that’s a tough one.


*It’s a test of how old you are. 
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Can’t Get’ Em To Self-Deport…

...if you don’t give ‘em some incentive?
One mother who was about to be deported was allowed less than two minutes on the phone with her husband to figure out what would become of her 2-year-old U.S. citizen son.

Another mother wasn’t allowed to speak with attorneys or family members before she was deported, accompanied by her U.S.-born children, even though Immigration and Customs Enforcement knew one of them had Stage 4 cancer.

Attorneys for the mothers and their children who were sent to Honduras are blasting Trump administration officials, saying the deportations of three U.S. citizen children over the weekend, including the 4-year-old boy who left without access to his cancer medicines, are illegal. They’re pushing back against statements that the families chose for the children to go with their mothers.
I thought separating families at the border was as low as they could go. Clearly, I should never underestimate their evil.
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Huh?

And how does that work? Truckers are not government employees, and EO’s are not law. I mean, unless you’re going to ban them from delivering to federal buildings, which would include all federal buildings in D.C. (White House, Capitol, etc.)

‘Course, they soon won’t have anything to deliver anyway, so….
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Follow Up Question:🙋‍♂️

Why was the Rev. William Barber arrested by Capitol Police in the Capitol Rotunda today, for praying? 🙏 

Barber leads the Center for Public Theology and Public Policy at Yale Divinity School.
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Maybe JB Pritzker Can Put This Into 8 Points…

 …in a letter to Schumer.

Or just bottle it and start passing the bottle around…
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Only Authorized Prayers Allowed!

Aloud.

 



BREAKING: Police just surrounded Rev. William Barber, prominent activist and pastor, as he and others prayed in the U.S. Capitol Rontunda.

Police then expelled everyone (including press!) from the Rotunda to (presumably) arrest them.

I've covered protests here a lot. Never seen anything like it.
Obviously alien enemies. 👽 
Can confirm: Just spoke to him, and Barber and two others were, in fact, arrested.

Story coming.
Praying while black. Very serious.
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FUBAR

Yeah, I don’t think he’s gonna need that. It’s Monopoly money. Kudlow has confused the Democrats for reality. The latter has stolen Trump’s lunch money and is now eating his lunch. And dinner. And breakfast.

Unfortunately, it’s going to eat ours, too.  Meanwhile the pundits and Pooh-bahs are worried about Trump running for a third term. Because the horse race is the only serious thing inside the Beltway.
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Inherit The Ignorance

To this I would only add: “Inherit The Wind” took the story of the Scopes Monkey Trial and turned it into an allegory of McCarthyism. But just as people thought Jonathan Swift was the narrator of “A Modest Proposal,” people come away from the movie to this day thinking it is a docudrama at least. It is no more an account of the Scopes Monkey Trial than “Close Encounters” was a documentary about flying saucers.🛸 

And yes, Hollywood likes the Roman Catholic Church because it has history, mystery, and knows how to use spectacle. As a practicing liturgist myself once upon a time, I say that with admiration. A woman determined to drive me from my last pulpit did tell me she admired my Easter Vigil variant for Easter Sunday liturgy. I didn’t do it for showmanship but for doxological and liturgical (the “work of the people “) purposes. A little dramaturgy is a good thing. Jesus’ annunciation; Moses stop Sinai conversing with God; Isaiah’s vision of God’s throne room (which has influenced Christian worship since Constantine’s day); Ezekiel watching the throne-chariot of God arising from the Temple. Theophany has its purpose. I recognize the power of Roman pomp, and the virtue of it. 

Hollywood, of course, just likes the spectacle.

(The story of the rogue Cardinal crashing the conclave reminds of a Harlan Ellison anecdote he told. He was a writer on a TV show (or was it a movie?) involving high drama on a submarine. Halfway through the work an executive decided the climax needed punching up, so the antagonist would be revealed to have been in disguise the whole time! (And thus revealed as the true antagonist. A Hollywood trope as well worn as the “eternal triangle.”) Ellison very reasonably (for Ellison) pointed out that the people fooled by this disguise (IIRC, “she” was revealed to be a “he”) had been in close quarters in a submarine yet had never noticed this disguise? He said he wouldn’t do it. 

The executive replied: “Oh, you’ll do it. Writers are toadies.” And Ellison leapt across the table at his throat. He was off the film almost immediately.)

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“All I Know Is…”

"...King Canute awoke this morning with the sun shining in his windows, and it didn’t rise before he needed to wake up, so I think the facts speak for themselves.”
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I Don’t Care What Trump Says

Canada can’t join the Union unless it wants to join the Union, and even then it needs the approval of Congress. And the GOP probably doesn’t want ten more Senators (at least), and 30 or so more Representatives, all Democrats.

And Trump is about as persuasive as a two-year old throwing a temper tantrum, so he’s not getting anywhere with this shit. He’s working hard to turn one of our closest allies into one of our most determined antagonists.

He’d have better luck convincing Congress to authorize invading a NATO country (yes, Greenland).
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This Is Your Brain On Eggs 🍳

The ports will all but shut down. Overseas deliveries will cease by early May. Transcontinental shipping will evaporate. Store shelves will go bare. People will get laid off, from ports to truckers to store employees. Factories will run out supplies they need, so there go factory workers.  It’ll remind everyone of the shutdown of Covid, and the recovery from supply chain disruptions that, ironically, Biden successfully led us through. Except Trump won’t know how to do that. 

Will we miss Biden then?

All for the price of eggs.
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Sunday, April 27, 2025

How’s That Working Out For Them?

I've been thinking about this a lot--though not even drafting stories to cross out. I keep wondering if he's contemplating just eliminating judges once SCOTUS turns on him.

Meanwhile, at least one of the tariffs lawsuits is backed by Leonard Leo.
Trump may think he can do that; but absent evidence, I put it down to sheer incompetence. In his first term Trump had people who actually understood how government works, like staff needed to make judicial appointment recommendations. Now the staff thinks they can legislate via executive orders, and even override Constitutional provisions because the Supremes will back their play (their case for presidential immunity was a real Hail Mary, until it wasn’t.). “Eliminating judges”? What, via hit squads? Attrition? Some who retired might return to the bench first. He really doesn’t have a mechanism for it, no matter how conjectural.

Opinion | That four-year-old cancer victim is no angel.
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🥱😴

He’s not asleep. He’s just catching flies.
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Can We Declare The President Delusional Now?

Asking for a friend. It takes how long to plan and build and open a factory? I know! Let’s ask Wisconsin and FoxConn!

Also, with China shutting down shipping to the U.S., and foreign companies doing the same:
How do we assess tariffs on non-goods, Mr. President?

🦗🦗🦗
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10% Of 180?

 So…

He said that he has made 200 deals on tariffs. 200 deals?" Raddatz told the secretary on Sunday. "Who has he made deals with? Is there actually any deal at this point?"

"I believe that he is referring to sub-deals within the negotiations we're doing," Bessent replied.

"But those aren't actual deals," Raddatz pointed out.

"Martha, if there are 180 countries, there are 18 important trading partners," the Trump official opined. "And we have a process in place over the next 90 days to negotiate with them. Some of those are moving along very well, especially with the Asian countries."
Still way less than 200. And Navarro said it was gonna be 90 deals.

Well, you’ve got 75 days left. And good luck with China.
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Fear And Trembling

 Does this make sense to anyone?

"I think, Shannon, America is paying the price right now for President Biden's appeasement," Kennedy replied. "The Biden people believed in diplomacy first, last, and always. We're in a knife fight with Russia and China and Iran, and the Biden people wanted to quote Socrates to them."

"Putin has reneged on every promise that he has made to President Trump," he added. "I think that Putin thinks that America has taken the bullet train to chump town."

"I think he thinks we're afraid of him. He has jacked around President Trump at every turn. He has disrespected our president."
Trump was supposed to know the magic words to solve this problem before he was inaugurated. His mighty presence was supposed to make all cower in fear at the power of his potential wrath.

And now Sen. Kennedy says it’s Biden’s fault? For sending too much military aid? No! For engaging in diplomacy! When Trump promised fear and trembling?

We just didn’t know he meant his own!
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Dead Reckoning

 WaPo poll:

"Trump has seen a decline of 10 points among White people without a college degree, a key part of his political coalition; he is also down 13 points among adults under age 30 and 11 points among those who say they did not vote in November."
The Hill:
“‘I’ll tell you what’s not going to happen is, people are not going to raise [money] to build manufacturing in America,’ [Ken Griffin] said, adding, ‘because with the policy volatility, you actually undermine the very goal you’re trying to achieve.’”
"...as expected..."
GOP donor Ken Griffin suggested the value of the U.S. dollar has significantly deteriorated compared to the euro in the past month under the thumb of President Trump’s latest tariff hike on global trading partners. Griffin, the founder and CEO of Citadel, said the country “has become 20 percent poorer in four weeks,” in conversation with Semafor’s Gina Chon at the World Economy Summit. Since the start of the year, the dollar index has weakened by more than 9 percent.

He added that the currency’s deflation amid shifts in economic policy and the president’s latest attack on Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has jeopardized the nation’s pristine reputation.

“We put that brand at risk,” Griffin told Chon. “It can be a lifetime to repair the damage that has been done.”

The hedge fund manager echoed economists and world leaders who said new tariff measures will produce no winners but instead force all parties involved to “tread water and not drown.”
Do you miss Biden yet?
Seventy-three percent said the economy is in bad shape, 53% said it's gotten worse since Trump took office and 41% said their own finances have worsened -- which is as many as those who said so under President Joe Biden last summer.
The ABC poll finds over 50% disapproval on every question about what Trump is doing, from immigration to closing the DOE, including how he’s handling immigration (53% disapproval).

The poll also shows disapproval if Democrats and Republicans. And yet Presidents get turned out after one term, and incumbents in Congress almost always get re-elected.

Go figure.
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“Proceeding As Expected”

 Processed…

At a hundred days into his presidency, Joe Biden had a 52% approval rating.

As we near the hundred days mark in his second term, Donald Trump has a 39% approval rating.

Here's how those numbers were framed by the media:
...as expected:
Biden, 52%: “low end approval”

Trump, 39%: proceeding “as expected”
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SNAFU


 

Not a single international cargo ship at the Port of Seattle. The port is dead. The last ship from China will dock at a West coast port on the 29th, and the last Chinese ship will dock on the East coast around May 10th. After that, there will be no more shipments arriving from China. We’re screwed.
FUBAR.

“China needs us more than we need China.” 

We’ll see, won’t we?
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Saturday, April 26, 2025

ICE-ing Down

 About Judge Hannah Dugan:

It's not about bringing a viable criminal case.

It's about manufacturing a negative image of judges.
No, it’s actually about terrible people punching down:
This line is going to stick with me for a very long time.

“One of them is a 4-year-old with Stage 4 cancer who was deported without medication or the ability to contact their doctors…”
Louisiana because three districts in Texas (out of four) have banned deportations under AEA. That, at least, might explain why three children were “quickly deported from Louisiana.”

I’m sure the children were terrible people who needed to be removed quickly for the security of the nation.
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RFK, Jr Seems Nice

Every accusation is a confession. Jr rails against Big Pharma because he’s supported by the competition. What’s that supposed African proverb: “When elephants fight, the grass gets trampled”?
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200 Down, 300 To Go

He replied, "I think in terms of the claims by the President that he has already sealed 200 trade deals, I think there are only 195 countries on this earth. So there's five extra," he said, adding, "and it's unclear how the administration could have sealed the deals with the entire planet in 13 days."
And every one of those imaginary deals has to be approved by the Senate, or they are non-binding. Of course, Trump tore up the revised NAFTA he negotiated in his first term, and it was ratified by the Senate.

So why would any country make a deal with Trump? He could change his mind ten minutes later (whether he has the authority to tear up NAFTA is another matter. Personally I think he has committed so many impeachable offenses under the rubric of “abuse of power” it has to be measured by counts per day.).
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The Corpse At Every Funeral

He has no idea how to behave, does he?
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The Entire DOJ Is Fucked

And then Bondi said:
"We are going to prosecute you, and we are prosecuting you. I found out about this the day it happened. We could not believe, actually, that a judge really did that. We looked into the facts in great depth… You cannot obstruct a criminal case. And really, shame on her. It was a domestic violence case of all cases, and she's protecting a criminal defendant over victims of crime."
Prompting Joyce Vance to observe:
This is all in violation of very clear DOJ policy," Vance accused. "You're not permitted in a case of an indictment or a complaint to go to the press and talk about anything that's not in the four corners of the document, because it prejudices the defendant's rights."

"We will probably see a motion to dismiss this case outright," she then asserted before continuing, "If this was a normal Justice Department. Pam Bondi, [FBI director] Kash Patel, anybody else who was talking about this case on national TV would be referred to the Office of Professional Responsibility for disciplinary action"

"This is not a functional Justice Department," she added. "So the dirty laundry will come out in the wash in these proceedings, where the facts just don't add up."
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