One Step Back from The Handmaiden’s Tale

A federal judge has ruled that Alabama cannot prosecute anyone who helps someone travel out of state for an abortion.

While there have yet to be any such charges filed, the state AG has announced that he is looking into this, so there is already a chilling effect on healthcare providers:

Alabama’s attorney general cannot prosecute individuals and groups that help Alabama women travel to other states to obtain abortions, a federal judge ruled on Monday.

The US district judge Myron Thompson sided with an abortion fund and medical providers who sued Alabama’s attorney general, Steve Marshall, after he suggested they could face prosecution under anti-conspiracy laws. Thompson’s ruling declared that such prosecutions would violate both the first amendment and a person’s right to travel.

Marshall has not pursued any such prosecutions. However, he said he would “look at closely” whether facilitating out-of-state abortions is a violation of Alabama’s criminal conspiracy laws. The ruling was a victory for the Yellowhammer Fund, an abortion assistance fund that had paused providing financial assistance to low-income people in the state because of the possibility of prosecution.

………

“It is one thing for Alabama to outlaw by statute what happens in its own backyard. It is another thing for the state to enforce its values and laws, as chosen by the attorney general, outside its boundaries by punishing its citizens and others who help individuals travel to another state to engage in conduct that is lawful there but the attorney general finds to be contrary to Alabama’s values and laws,” Thompson wrote in the 131-page opinion.

It's like prosecuting people for organizing a trip to Los Vegas, and it i9 clearly unconstitutional.

Or at least it is until the Supreme Court issues yet another corrupt ruling.

Gee, Here is a Surprise

With concerns growing among European nations that the United States might no longer be a reliable supplier of weapons systems, they are attempting to move their defense procurement from the US to European suppliers, and the Trump administration is having major butt hurt over this.

Personally, I'm Ike's (Eisenhower) side on all of this, and I think that the excessive presence of the military industrial complex in our economy is a bad thing, so this change in policy will ultimately be good for both America and Europe:

U.S. officials have told European allies they want them to keep buying American-made arms, amid recent moves by the European Union to limit U.S. manufacturers' participation in weapons tenders, five sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.

The messages delivered by Washington in recent weeks come as the EU takes steps to boost Europe's weapons industry, while potentially limiting purchases of certain types of U.S. arms.

………

Some of the proposed measures could mean a smaller role for non-EU companies, including those based in the U.S. and the United Kingdom, experts say.

In a March 25 meeting, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told the foreign ministers of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia that the United States wants to continue participating in EU countries' defense procurements, the sources told Reuters.

According to two of the sources, Rubio said any exclusion of U.S. companies from European tenders would be seen negatively by Washington, which those two sources interpreted as a reference to the proposed EU rules.

I'm not surprised that the Europeans are considering this, both the current economic situation and the erratic nature of Trump foreign policy would tend to encourage such moves.

This is particularly true for some of the more sophisticated US weapons systems, (the F-35) require near real time support from US controlled entities to operate for more than about a week.

The Technical Term for This is Fraud

You may have read that Elon Musk has announced that he has sold Ecch (Twitter) to his artificial intelligence company XAI.

The thing to understand here is that was an all stock transaction, that xAI is privately held, so there is no market price for its stock, and as such, he's basically using magic beans.

This is an attempt to confuse his lenders to delay when they make a margin call and Hoover up the bulk of his stake in Tesla.  (Don't worry, he'll still be worth billions after that)

This is securities fraud, or it would be if we were still enforcing those laws:  (How quaint of me)

Elon Musk announced on Friday that xAI, his artificial intelligence company, had purchased his social media platform X. “xAI and X’s futures are intertwined,” he wrote on X. “Today, we officially take the step to combine the data, models, compute, distribution, and talent. This combination will unlock immense potential by blending xAI’s advanced A.I. capability and expertise with X’s massive reach.” The all-stock transaction between the two private companies valued xAI at $80 billion [this is a fraud] and X at $33 billion in equity, [this is a fraud] plus $12 billion in debt. [this is a fraud]

The numbers behind Musk’s valuation of X add up to a convenient enterprise value of $45 billion, or $1 billion more than what he paid in 2022 to acquire the company formerly known as Twitter. [this is a fraud]

That Musk would seek to close this chapter of X up $1 billion — notionally, at least — could be a response to critics who say he ran the company aground by decimating its core revenue stream: ad buys from blue-chip companies. Over the past few months, Musk has made a concerted effort to puff up X’s value by claiming a return of the top advertisers who fled the platform after his leveraged buyout. [this is a fraud]

With some top companies resuming advertising on the platform, Musk declared a new $44 billion valuation for X last month, [this is a fraud] even though some X investors valued the company at $12 billion as recently as last December. Musk went on to claim that X had doubled its annual profits since he bought it. [this is a fraud]

The advertisers on Ecch (Twitter), with the exceptions of Chinese firms Temu and Shein (who would advertise on my ass if they knew that there were space available), are small advertisers, and various scammers.  (Particularly crypto scammers)

Ecch (Twitter) has become a haven for scammers, because the Hellsite has refused to investigate them because they need the advertising revenue.

This "Sale" is little more than an attempt to obfuscate the precarious financial position of Musk's Tesla and Ecch (Twitter) holdings from his lenders, and that is pretty clearly fraud.

Tariffs on Flightless Aquatic Fowl

It appears that Donald Trump has has imposed tariffs on uninhabited islands around Antarctica, because penguins are masters of the art of deception.

As Anna Russel would say, "I'm not making this up, you know."

A group of barren, uninhabited volcanic islands near Antarctica, covered in glaciers and home to penguins, has been swept up in Donald Trump’s trade war, as the US president hit them with a 10% tariff on goods.

Heard Island and McDonald Islands, which form an external territory of Australia, are among the remotest places on Earth, accessible only via a two-week boat voyage from Perth on Australia’s west coast. They are completely uninhabited, with the last visit from people believed to be nearly 10 years ago.

Nevertheless, Heard and McDonald islands featured in a list released by the White House of “countries” that would have new trade tariffs imposed.

I'm beginning to think that the morphine addled Hermann Goering could do a better job governing than this sorry lot.

It's Thursday ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Continuing Claims


Initial Claims

And initial unemployment claims fell slightly, but continuing claims rose to a 41 month high. (Full disclosure, I am a part of the latters statistic)

U.S. initial jobless claims moved lower last week, according to the Department of Labor, underscoring that there has been no big increase in newly employed workers through the end of March.

The week through March 29 brought 219,000 initial jobless claims, compared with 225,000 a week earlier. Economists polled by The Wall Street Journal had been forecasting 228,000 initial claims.

The number of continuing claims, a gauge of the size of the unemployed population, rose to 1.9 million in the week through March 22, the highest level since November 2021. A week earlier, continuing claims held at 1.85 million. The continuing-claims data lag the data on new filings by a week.

The figures are a final weekly labor-market snapshot before the Labor Department’s full jobs report for March lands on Friday. Economists believe the unemployment rate held steady at 4.1% last month, per the Journal’s survey, and that the economy added 140,000 jobs, a slight slowing from February.

Of more note, at least for this week, is the stock market.

I generally do not consider the stock market as reflective of the economy, but today we saw an absolute bloodbath in the stock market today over trade war concerns.

U.S. markets suffered their steepest declines since 2020 on fears President Trump’s new tariff plans will trigger a global trade war and drag the U.S. economy into recession.

That selloff was triggered by the Covid shut-down.  This is a big f%$#ing deal.

Major stock indexes dropped as much as 6% on Thursday. Stocks lost roughly $3.1 trillion in market value, their largest one-day decline since March 2020. Stock-index futures drifted lower Thursday evening, and stocks in Japan were hit for a second day as Friday trading began.

In Thursday's market plunge, the Dow industrials dropped 1679 points, or 4%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq, which powered the market higher for years, was down 6%, pulled lower by big declines in Nvidia, Apple and Amazon.com. The S&P 500, which fell 4.8%, and the other benchmarks suffered their sharpest declines since the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The dollar meanwhile tumbled, with the WSJ Dollar Index suffering its sharpest decline since 2023. The 1.3% fall brought the greenback to its lowest level since October, a sign of unease over the growth outlook and fears that the flow of funds into the country will be sharply curtailed.

Not good, and it gets worse:

………

Trump took the selloff in stride. “I think it’s going very well,” Trump said in response to a question about his tariffs Thursday afternoon. “The markets are going to boom.” He left the door open to making deals to lower tariffs, while also promising new ones on pharmaceuticals and semiconductors.

Dozens of household-name stocks posted double-digit declines, including HP, Nike and Target. Stellantis also fell sharply. The Jeep maker said it is temporarily halting production at its auto assembly factories in Mexico and Canada.

The turmoil spread beyond stocks, with oil prices dropping more than 6% and investors selling gold after its sharp run over the past year to fresh records.

So Trump is cool with this.  I guess that this makes it all better.

We are f%$#ed.

Headline of the Day

I Won’t Connect My Dishwasher to Your Stupid Cloud

—Jeff Geerling

Here's a hint for Consumer Reports, which top-rated the Bosch 500 series of dishwashers:  If the feature requires an app, it's not a feature, because either the manufacturer will start charging for it, or they will eventually shut down the web service disabling the feature.

The features that are missing without the app?  Minor things like delayed start and rinse.

No one ever used those before the internet of sh%$.

OK, Trump Has Created a Miracle

He has convinced most of the Québécois in Canada that they are Canadians:

This is profoundly odd. 

………

For the first time in my life, I noticed a very strong nationalistic--even patriotic--feeling arise from coast to coast here in Canada. I was speaking with a good friend of mine yesterday, he's a bit older, he's been around like almost 20 years, longer than me, and we were talking about how generally Canadians are not the most patriotic people.

They're not as much keen to flag-waving or public displaying of their national pride, never as much as our southern neighbor anyway.

And that is especially true here in Quebec, where, as I mentioned before, the French-speaking Quebecers are most likely to identify as Quebecer before Canadian, if at all.

But even here, since those declarations, shocking declarations from Donald Trump, we've been noticing that patriotic Canadian pride take over people.

It's really unbelievable. Suddenly, like you're in a grocery store and you see that elderly lady wondering in French, reading the label on the mustard pot, like, "Was this made in Canada? If not, I'm not even buying it."

Personally, I first came to realize that there was something going on when I randomly came across some posts.

You know it's getting serious when Quebecers start feeling patriotic towards Canada.

………

Montreal guy here, born and bred, he made Quebecers patriotic. Do you know to what degree you need to piss off a Quebecer to make them stand up for Canada?

I can't even imagine to what degree you need to piss off a Quebecer to make them stand up for Canada.

Whatever number this is, I believe that it is so big that any tolerance would be on the exponent if you wrote it in scientific notation.  (Something like 3.113 × 10187±4.4. Astronomers frequently put tolerances in exponents.  It's a big f%$#ing number.)

Elections Tonight

We had 2 special elections for US Representatives in Florida, and Republicans won both races, which was not unexpected, but it was far closer than the demographics of this districts would indicate. 

Two Trump-backed Republicans won special congressional elections in Florida on Tuesday, according to The Associated Press, shoring up their party’s slim majority in the House at a crucial moment for President Trump’s domestic agenda.

Jimmy Patronis, the state’s chief financial officer, won the race to replace Matt Gaetz in the First Congressional District, on the western end of the Panhandle. With most of the vote counted late Tuesday, Mr. Patronis had won 57 percent.

As Gaetz getting 66.0% in the last election.

And State Senator Randy Fine captured the Sixth District seat that had been held by Michael Waltz, now Mr. Trump’s national security adviser. That district is rooted in Daytona Beach and parts of the northeast coast. Mr. Fine had 56.7 percent of the vote as of 9 p.m.

That's as against Waltz winning the district with 66.5%

This is more than a 10% swing toward the Democratic Party in both cases. 

Heartening, but it's about 18 months until the 2026 elections.

More importantly to my mind is that Susan Crawford won the race for Wisconsin Supreme Court justicee against Elon Musk supported right-wing knuckle-dragger Brad Schimel. 

This is important for a number of reasons:

• It means that Republicans will be limited in their ability to rat-f%$# redistricting and election laws.
• That Wisconsin's laws forbidding manufacturer owned car dealerships, which Musk has managed to secure waivers for in most (all?) of the other states, will likely remain on the books. (Almost every state requires that new cars be sold by independent dealers, and not the manufacturer)

The latter is important because it is a significant loss for Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ who spent millions on an ad blitz and paid hundreds of people for their votes.

The fact that his candidate lost by 11% is a mark of his complete toxicity as both a human being and a political figure.

https://madison.com/news/state-regional/government-politics/elections/article_bbbd2886-ff64-404e-a259-1d4680f42f64.html 

He's Running for President in 2028

That is my take-away of Corry Booker's 25 hour long record breaking speech from the floor of the Senate.

Credit though for the distinguished gentleman from New Jersey's kidneys of steel.

He spent 25 hours lambasting Donald Trump without a bathroom break, breaking Strom Thurmond's record by 1 hour.

I'm not sure that this had much meaning in a greater strategic sense, but at least he is doing something, unlike, for example, Chuck Schumer.

It’s Fraud (Turtles) All the Way Down

Former, "30 Under 20," business star Charlie Javice has been found guilty of fraud while selling her company to JP Morgan to the tune of about $175,000,000.00.

She faked her customer numbers during the sale.

If this had not come out before JP Morgan had flipped it to retail investors. (aka "suckers")

Am I the only one who thinks that a this is more the rule than the exception, and we only see prosecutions when the big fish lose money?

Charlie Javice, who made big headlines in 2023 when JPMorgan Chase accused her of faking her start-up’s customer list, was found guilty in federal court Friday of three counts of fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit fraud.

She now faces the possibility of decades in prison.

The bank has its own civil lawsuit on standby as it attempts to claw back some of the $175 million it paid for her company, Frank. It sued her three years ago, and Ms. Javice was arrested at Newark Liberty International Airport not long after that.

Frank, which was founded in 2016, aimed to help customers fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid at a time when the FAFSA was notoriously complicated. Ms. Javice, 32, quickly became a go-to quote for journalists writing about paying for college and turned up on lists of under-30 and under-40 up-and-comers.

Gee, we are going to make millions of dollars helping people filling out financial aid forms, and you are going to dominate the market because ………?

Bueller?  Bueller?

This isn't even a business model?  It's sillier than WeWork's plans for world domination, because colleges already have financial aid offices that help students for free, because the Colleges want their f%$#ing money?

Not long after Ms. Javice sold Frank to JPMorgan, there was trouble. The bank ran a test of Frank’s customer list, hoping to persuade its young customers to open Chase accounts. Of 400,000 outbound emails, just 28 percent arrived successfully in an inbox.

………

An internal investigation ensued, and the bank claimed to have found evidence that Ms. Javice and Olivier Amar, Frank’s chief growth and acquisition officer, had faked much of its customer list. JPMorgan sued her, and the federal government followed with its own charges, which resulted in the verdict Friday.

But we do find why they wanted to buy her sh%$ idea:

Sweet.

………

During the trial, JPMorgan bank executives said that one appeal of Frank was its promise of over four million customers, with detailed contact information, whom the bank could pitch. The bank could hook young adults with a checking account and potentially keep them and their business through decades of mortgages and retirement savings.

So Frank and JP Morgan were co-conspirators with a goal of raping the privacy of their customers, only Frank faked its customer base, hue?

You know, if we prosecuted everyone on both sides of the case who broke the law, the world would be a much better place.

I guess that it is just business as usual in the United States of Fraud.

 

Recognize this Song?

I think that I have heard this song more often than any other song that I had ever heard:

This song does not give me pleasant memories.

I don't think that this song gives anyone warm fuzzies. 

Yes, it IS that f%$#ing hold music.

Music Review From a Man Who Lived in a Cave Since 1977

1977 is the year that composer and professor R. Douglas Helvering was born, and 2024 was the year that he first heard the iconic Mason Williams song Classical Gas.

It boggles my mind that he manged to make it through 47 years of life without ever hearing the song.

How the F%$# does this happen?

His analysis is very interesting.

I would note that my favorite version is the Mason Williams version, but it is the guitar only rendition on his album Handmade.

Ummm………There Is a Question That Everyone Misses Here

In the latest DOGE insanity,  the Trump administration is planning to release a spreadsheet listing recipients of foreign aid has been accidentally released, and some of the recipients are likely to be targeted for this, putting them in very real danger.

First, yes, this is a major breach, and the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ and his merry band of young boys are completely incompetent.

That being said, we are not talking about funding from the CIA, or the DoD, etc.

These are basic foreign aid programs, and unless this is just a front for regime change activities by the United States state security apparatus, these folks should not be at risk.

This is, of course a rhetorical question.  Many of these activities are ust a front for regime change activities by the United States state security apparatus.

It's something that we blithely accept, and have blithely accepted since some point in the 1950s. 

Reports that Donald Trump’s top national security officials accidentally shared their Yemen attack plans with The Atlantic in real-time drove the news in official Washington in recent days. But it wasn’t the only damaging leak of information held by the administration this week.

Two Trump administration spreadsheets — which each include what numerous advocates and government officials say is highly sensitive information on programs funded by the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) — were sent to Congress and also leaked online.

The leak, which sent a variety of international groups and nonprofits scrambling to assess the damage and protect workers operating under repressive regimes, came after the organizations had pressed the Trump administration to keep the sensitive information private and received some assurances it would remain secret.

………

The State Department, led by Marco Rubio, informed a variety of international nonprofits and longtime implementing partner organizations last week that upcoming payments of their congressionally approved grant funds came with some conditions that the Trump administration wanted to clarify.

As part of their campaign to eliminate what they’re calling “waste, fraud, and abuse,” Team Trump and DOGE had demanded comprehensive grant recipient information — and State Department officials let the organizations know that Musk’s lieutenants were likely planning on turning this information into a public spreadsheet or database.

Needless to say, this is profoundly f%$#ed up, both from an operational perspective, but also from the window that it gives into the ordinary operation of the surveillance state/non-governmental organizational complex.

Both sides know what they are being paid for, and for the rest of us, it's just more of the merry band of regime change mousketeers creating worse problems in the future.  (See Iran, Afghanistan, much of Latin America, Vietnam, Congo, etc.)

Seen on Maryland State Route 295 South Today

Full disclosure here, I did not take the picture, I was driving.

I spotted it, and asked Sharon* to take the picture, so no traffic rules or basic safety protocols were broken.

I hate to tell this guy, but this sort of half-assed camouflage just ain't gonna cut it.

^*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.

This Will Leave a Mark

It's a Liberal Party campaign ad, and it is, at least according to our stereotypes of Canada, very in your face.

I know what you are all thinking, "When did Mike Myers go gray?" 

Well it happens to a lot of us, and at least he still has hair.

Loved the bit of Canadian Trivial Pursuit in the middle.

Headline of the Day

Hire Clowns, Get a Circus

—Dan Rather and Team Steady on Donald Trump misadministration

What is remarkable here is that their lede isn't the accidentally revealed war plans, it's the economy going sideways faster than anyone could imagine. 

They get to that in the latter half of the essay.

I do differ though on one thing, circuses are very well planned and organized, otherwise people die and tents catch fire, and elephants go on rampages, etc.

I'd rather have President Pennywise.

Solidarity Forever

JD Vance's wife Usha wanted to go to Greenland and see the sights, catch a dog sled race, etc.

One small fly in the ointment, she wanted to have a meet and greet with a Greenlander household, and no one wanted to talk to her.

Not a single person.

Though there are not many people in Greenland, about 56,000, it is stunning just how uninterested anyone was to hang out with her:

It’s a good thing that the second lady’s trip to Greenland was canceled, because apparently nobody wanted her there.

U.S. representatives were reportedly seen knocking door-to-door in Nuuk, Greenland’s capital, to ascertain just how Vance’s visit to the Nordic island would be received. The answer? Not well.

“The Americans’ charm offensive mission has failed,” reported TV 2 correspondent Jesper Steinmetz, adding that locals have completely cold-shouldered the Vance family’s prospective visit.

American representatives were seen walking around the city, canvassing residents to see if people would be interested in a visit from the vice president’s wife.

“They’ve gotten no, no, no, no, no, every single time,” Steinmetz said.

………

The Vance family’s travel plans to Greenland were, however, dropped. Instead, they will visit a U.S. space base on the island’s northwest coast later this week.

………

Greenland’s government said in a statement posted on Facebook Monday that it had “not extended any invitations for any visits, neither private nor official.”

They do not take kindly to Donald Trump's threats to annex (or perhaps invade) them.

All this because Trump doesn't understand how a Mercator Map works.  (A Mercator projection grossly enlarges areas near the poles) 

 

It's Bank Failure Friday!! (On Saturday)

We don't have another commercial bank failure, not have another credit union failure of the year, we have a credit union, Valwood Park Federal Credit Union of Carrollton, TX (Full NCUA list, and the direct link for this year) removed from conservatorship.

Basically, that means that the NCUA has decided that they got their sh%$ in order, and so can go back to business as usual:

Valwood Park Federal Credit Union of Carrollton, Texas, is once again under the control and direction of its members, the National Credit Union Administration announced today.

“The recovery of Valwood Park reflects the extraordinary efforts of its leadership team, staff, and members,” NCUA Chairman Kyle S. Hauptman said. “Working in collaboration with the NCUA, the new management team saved the credit union from failure by enhancing controls and mitigating risks. Valwood Park is now in a stronger position to provide vital financial services and enhance the financial well-being of residents in Dallas’s Metrocrest communities.”

The NCUA placed Valwood Park Federal Credit Union into conservatorship on January 20, 2023, because of unsafe and unsound practices at the credit union.

  Not a clue as to what this means.

Rats, Ship, Sinking

There has been an explosion of American citizens taking dual citizenship.

I understand the desire for a metaphorical, "Go Bag," but spending the time and effort on this is not spending the time and effort on stopping Trump and his Evil Minions™.

Tim Hennigan and Peter Atlas are tired of the political divisiveness, unstable international relations, and Teslas parked in front of the White House. Most of all, they are fed up with President Trump. The Charlestown couple is in the final stages of obtaining Irish citizenship and recently moved to their new home in Ireland, where they will wait out the current administration.

“This is not just four years of a president that we don’t happen to like,” Hennigan said. “This is a different regime, and it’s time to leave. For years, I saw progress with race equality, women’s equality, and gay equality. Now, I think maybe we’ve already lived through the pinnacle of equality, at least in this country.”

Atlas, a retired school teacher, and Hennigan, a travel adviser who can work remotely, are concerned about their rights as a gay married couple. Despite recently completing a 20-month renovation of their Boston home, they have decided to uproot.

The couple are among the growing number of Americans seeking dual citizenship through ancestry or golden visa programs. Rules vary by country, but a golden visa allows individuals to qualify for residency or citizenship in exchange for an investment in real estate. They obtained ancestry through Hennigan’s Irish roots. Google searches in the United States for dual citizenship hit a five-year high the week of the November presidential election and grew again the week of the inauguration. However, the number of those taking the next step has been more telling than quick Google searches.

………

Hennigan and Atlas began looking into Irish citizenship during the first Trump administration. Rich Welch, a biotech executive in Somerville, started working on his Italian citizenship three years ago with plans to retire to Europe when he’s ready. His college-age sons will also become Italian citizens, allowing them to study and work in Europe. For Welch, dual citizenship wasn’t about escaping political turmoil, but he said he’s thankful he has a Plan B.

………

Not everyone is on board with fleeing the United States until Trump is out of office. Even TV host Bill Maher, a moderate Democrat, has been critical of the movement, saying, “We don’t need quitters. We need people to stay and fix it.

F%$# me, I agree with Bill f%$#ing Maher.

We are living in a dystopian young adult novel.

Chaos is Job Won

President Elon Musk taking a wrecking ball to the IRS will likely reduce tax collections by 10%.

This is a feature, not a bug.  

They want to destroy the IRS because they want to destroy the income tax, so that they can tax poor people using alternate taxes:

Senior tax officials are bracing for a sharp drop in revenue collected this spring, as an increasing number of individuals and businesses spurn filing their taxes or attempt to skip paying balances owed to the Internal Revenue Service, according to three people with knowledge of tax projections.

Treasury Department and IRS officials are predicting a decrease of more than 10 percent in tax receipts by the April 15 deadline compared with 2024, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share nonpublic data. That would amount to more than $500 billion in lost federal revenue; the IRS collected $5.1 trillion last year. For context, the U.S. government spent $825 billion on the Defense Department in fiscal 2024.

This is a feature, not a bug. 

They want to burn it all down.

If It Farts, It Charts

On the local news, if it bleeds, it leads. On this blog ………

 

Light Posting for a While

I'm brewing something unpleasant.

My eldest tested positive for Covid, but I did not yesterday.

I will check again tomorrow.

I feel like crap.

Electoral Panic Much?

You may recall that Trump has nominated Elise Stafanik to be the UN Ambassador.

He has now withdrawn the nomination over concerns that the Democrats would take her seat in a special election.

Note that the 2024 PVI was R+10, which is pretty much in territory of the Evan Edwards quote, "The only way I can lose is if I'm caught in bed with either a dead girl or a live boy.

But the Republicans are afraid that they will lose the district in a special election. 

President Trump on Thursday said he had asked Representative Elise Stefanik, Republican of New York, to stay in Congress rather than serve as ambassador to the United Nations, amid concern about the minuscule voting margin that Republicans hold in the House.

“There are others that can do a good job at the United Nations,” Mr. Trump wrote on his website, Truth Social, where he said it was critical for Republicans to hold onto every House seat they have. “Therefore, Elise will stay in Congress, rejoin the House Leadership Team, and continue to fight for our amazing American People.”

Mr. Trump hinted that he might make it up to Ms. Stefanik in the future with another position in his administration. But for now, he said, Speaker Mike Johnson was “thrilled” with the development.

Trilled?  More like relieved.

If there is an election in 2026, and this is not certain, it is likely that control of Congress will be lost by a margin that will be impervious to Republican rat-f%$#ery.

Here Are the Attack Plans That Trump’s Advisers Shared on Signal - The Atlantic

If your f%$# up can be best described by a Muppet meme, you have failed completely

So now the good folks at The Atlantic, after having been assured that the discussions on Signal were totally non classified, have released the messages that were inadvertently sent to Jeffrey Goldberg.

Can you say sh%$ show?

Good, I knew you could. (Yeah, I know invoking Mr. Rogers and the Muppets.  PBS is way more powerful than I had previously thought)

So, about that Signal chat.

On Monday, shortly after we published a story about a massive Trump-administration security breach, a reporter asked the secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, why he had shared plans about a forthcoming attack on Yemen on the Signal messaging app. He answered, “Nobody was texting war plans. And that’s all I have to say about that.”

At a Senate hearing yesterday, the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, and the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, John Ratcliffe, were both asked about the Signal chat, to which Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of The Atlantic, was inadvertently invited by National Security Adviser Michael Waltz. “There was no classified material that was shared in that Signal group,” Gabbard told members of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Ratcliffe said much the same: “My communications, to be clear, in the Signal message group were entirely permissible and lawful and did not include classified information.”

President Donald Trump, asked yesterday afternoon about the same matter, said, “It wasn’t classified information.”

Well, that's a relief for Mr. Goldberg.  It means that his story did not reveal any secrets, and it also means that further releases will not reveal any secrets.

So Goldberg and his posse are releasing the whole megillah.

Much hilarity ensues:

………

Experts have repeatedly told us that use of a Signal chat for such sensitive discussions poses a threat to national security. As a case in point, Goldberg received information on the attacks two hours before the scheduled start of the bombing of Houthi positions. If this information—particularly the exact times American aircraft were taking off for Yemen—had fallen into the wrong hands in that crucial two-hour period, American pilots and other American personnel could have been exposed to even greater danger than they ordinarily would face. The Trump administration is arguing that the military information contained in these texts was not classified—as it typically would be—although the president has not explained how he reached this conclusion.

Yesterday, we asked officials across the Trump administration if they objected to us publishing the full texts. In emails to the Central Intelligence Agency, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the National Security Council, the Department of Defense, and the White House, we wrote, in part: “In light of statements today from multiple administration officials, including before the Senate Intelligence Committee, that the information in the Signal chain about the Houthi strike is not classified, and that it does not contain ‘war plans,’ The Atlantic is considering publishing the entirety of the Signal chain.”

………

As we wrote on Monday, much of the conversation in the “Houthi PC small group” concerned the timing and rationale of attacks on the Houthis, and contained remarks by Trump-administration officials about the alleged shortcomings of America’s European allies. But on the day of the attack—Saturday, March 15—the discussion veered toward the operational.

At 11:44 a.m. eastern time, Hegseth posted in the chat, in all caps, “TEAM UPDATE:”

The text beneath this began, “TIME NOW (1144et): Weather is FAVORABLE. Just CONFIRMED w/CENTCOM we are a GO for mission launch.” Centcom, or Central Command, is the military’s combatant command for the Middle East. The Hegseth text continues:

• “1215et: F-18s LAUNCH (1st strike package)”
• “1345: ‘Trigger Based’ F-18 1st Strike Window Starts (Target Terrorist is @ his Known Location so SHOULD BE ON TIME – also, Strike Drones Launch (MQ-9s)”

Let us pause here for a moment to underscore a point. This Signal message shows that the U.S. secretary of defense texted a group that included a phone number unknown to him—Goldberg’s cellphone—at 11:44 a.m. This was 31 minutes before the first U.S. warplanes launched, and two hours and one minute before the beginning of a period in which a primary target, the Houthi “Target Terrorist,” was expected to be killed by these American aircraft. If this text had been received by someone hostile to American interests—or someone merely indiscreet, and with access to social media—the Houthis would have had time to prepare for what was meant to be a surprise attack on their strongholds. The consequences for American pilots could have been catastrophic.

Yeah, nothing in the least sensitive here.

You can read the rest. at the link.  It's pretty clear that these folks have no f%$#ing clue.

Snark of the Day

Jasmine Crockett Scorching governor Abbott.

"You know, we got Governor hot wheels down there. Come on now. And, and the only thing hot about him is that he is hot ass mess, honey.

I'm gonna move on. I'm gonna move on because I got other people to diss."

🔥🔥🔥 pic.twitter.com/ccWKMR6tSL

— Winter’s Politics 🖤 (@WintersPolitics) March 25, 2025

Texas Reichsstatthalte Governor Greg Abbott is a truly horrible excuse for a human being.

In a way, this is actually good.  It shows that the disabled, Abbot is wheelchair bound, can be as much of an affront to human cedently as the temporarily able bodied. 

To the degree that Representative Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) causes anguish for the Texas Governor and his Evil Minions™, this is a good thing.

For all of the MAGAts who have a problem with this, it must suck to be such delicate snowflakes.

How to access Dogequest on the Dark Web

 The backstory here is that I saw the normal web site about 15 minutes before it was taken down, and so I did not have a chance to see if someone assembled this from public data, or if there was a data breach at Tesla.

After looking at the dark web version of the web site, I’m still not sure.  My neighborhood is accurate though, at least in terms of the dealers and superchargers.  (Not gonna confirm the private owners, that is creepy beyond belief)

So, on to the instructions: (click images to embiggen)

---

First, download the version of the Tor Browser from torproject.org appropriate to your computer operating system. In MS Windows, this is a portable installation, so you just run the file and choose a directory, and everything will load on or below that directory. Once installed, set to , "Always connect," then click, "Connect"
You will get a search prompt.  Turn on, "Onionize," and then enter "Dogequest.st," and hit return.
You will get a Duck Duck Go page, click on the link.
A partial map with limited information and sucky icons will come up. In the upper left hand corner, you will see a purple button.  Click it.
You will get the interstitial image and fact box.  There will be a .onion address immediately after the Tor hyperlink.  (Not posting this publicly) Copy and paste this into the address bar.
You now see a more complete map, but you still have crappy icons, so click on the picture icon next to the url bar, select, "Allow," and reload the page.
You get this, with locations of Tesla dealers, Tesla owners, and Doge ratf%$#ers. See the Molotov cocktail cursor?  Took me an hour to get it in there, thank you very much.

I have one complaint: Musk's home outside of Austin is listed as, "Personal residence," It should be listed as, "Musk family compound,” because the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ has some serious David Koresh vibes going on.

The Current Divide in the Democratic Party

It's not between left and right, it's between the careerist cowards and those who want to fight.

Given the tumultuous reception of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez resistance tour it's clear who is on the right side of this issue:

For months, Democratic leaders have been struggling to develop a strategic response to the problems that Donald Trump has laid at their doorstep: his demographically expanded electoral coalition, his flood-the-zone dismantling of the federal government, and his turbocharged push for authoritarian control. While Democratic electeds have found some collective will on occasion—like their House caucus forcing the GOP to pass their own budget bill—the party establishment has, in the main, failed to coalesce around a clear plan to fight this multifront war. Worse, their overall approach has generally lined up with James Carville’s recent call for Democrats to “roll over and play dead” and “allow the Republicans to crumble beneath their own weight.”

This was a bad strategy when Biden made it the cornerstone of his 2024 campaign. It was a bad strategy for Germany’s opposition parties in the early 1930s. And it is a bad strategy today, especially at a time when Trump’s plans are advancing and the American people are increasingly agitated by the administration’s encroachments—and growing more angry with Democrats in Congress for their perceived inaction. Voters, in fact, have already rendered a judgment about Carville’s strategy, with a recent poll finding that 40 percent of voters don’t think the Democratic Party has any strategy at all for responding to Trump and 24 percent think they have a strategy that isn’t working. By contrast, just 10 percent think they have a good strategy.

Arriving to head off this trend is Bernie Sanders, who has formulated a very different vision. With his “Fighting Oligarchy” tour, Bernie has begun holding a series of rallies in GOP-represented swing districts to bring attention to Trump’s billionaire-boosting, middle class–busting agenda. As he’s swung through heartland states such as Nebraska and Iowa, the grassroots response has been electric. Last Friday, 4,000 people came out to hear him in Kenosha, Wisconsin; the next morning he was joined by 2,600 in Altoona, Wisconsin, a town of less than 10,000; and then in a suburb outside Detroit he spoke to a crowd of 9,000 that filled a packed gym, two overflow rooms, and the parking lot outside.

………

By rejecting passivity, Sanders is also doing more to actually put Republicans—who’ve recently been ordered to abandon town halls in the wake of mounting anger from their own voters—under pressure, demonstrating how Democrats locked out of power in Washington can go on offense. What if, rather than simply praying that some swing-district Republican legislators will grow a spine and help Democrats hold the line against irreversible cuts to life-or-death social programs, we instead rallied their constituents to directly demonstrate to them that going along with Trump might cost them their next election?

Finally, Bernie’s approach is proving to be a far more effective mechanism for delivering new information to targeted communities, and not just through the mega-blast of social media discourse that actions like these produce. Just take a look at a few examples of local coverage from Bernie’s rallies this weekend.

It's not just Bernie Sanders and AOC though, it's also Representative Al Green, and Chris Murphy.

It is most assuredly NOT Chuck Schumer.

Headline of the Day

The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans

—Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic

It really is remarkable how completely incompetent these folks are.

If they were any stupider or more incompetent, they could have run Hillary Clinton's or Kamala Harris' Presidential campaigns.

The world found out shortly before 2 p.m. eastern time on March 15 that the United States was bombing Houthi targets across Yemen.

I, however, knew two hours before the first bombs exploded that the attack might be coming. The reason I knew this is that Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, had texted me the war plan at 11:44 a.m. The plan included precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing.

This is going to require some explaining.

Indeed it will require, "Some explaining."

Unfortunately, except for some snark about the emojis(!) used, Mr. Goldberg declines to go into as much detail as this incident really demands.

It is notable that JD Vance participated, and was primarily concerned with the optics of the situation, and not the real world consequences.  (What an oleaginous sh%$ stain) 

Skeet of the Day

This is the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) in a nutshell.

I'd call the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) worthless bags of sh%$, but that is unfair to fertilizer containers.

So, We Have a New Fighter

Generic NGAD Rendering Donald Trump has announced that Boeing has won the Next Generation Air Defense (NGAD) fighter contract

The F-47, as it will be designated, is a new heavy fighter to replace the F-22 and (at least some) F-35s.

As near as I can tell from publicly available data, it will have a MTOW in the 40 ton range, similar to that of the F-22.

I would expect the range to be better, because of propulsion and material improvements, though the F-15, which does not have to carry a significant amount of fuel for cooling, might still out range it.

Obviously the stealth features should require less maintenance, and much like its F-22 and F-35 predecessors, it will carry all munitions internally, limiting flexibility.

Personally, I'm of the opinion that the effectiveness of stealth will decrease in future years, given that the underlying physics is publicly available, having been initially published in a Soviet academic journal, and advances in processing power and radar systems should increasingly be able to extend detection ranges.

Also, I am very dubious of Boeing being able to execute on time or on budget, since the company is still a clusterf%$#:

Boeing won a contract March 21 to develop a next-generation combat aircraft for the U.S. Air Force that will spearhead future air wars and throw a lifeline to the company’s struggling military aviation business.

The White House announcement came after a tumultuous competition between Boeing and Lockheed Martin for the prized rights to build the aircraft that is meant to anchor the Air Force’s Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) family of systems.

“It will be known as the F-47, the generals picked a title,” President Donald Trump said. “It’s something the likes that no one has seen before.”

Yeah, sure.  The "Generals picked," the title, which corresponds to Trump being President 47.

Following years of losses and missteps by Boeing Defense, this contract was a, "MUst win," for them, and one has to wonder if much of the reason for this choice is for industrial base preservation as anything else.

………

The Air Force wants a new aircraft with the range, speed and stealth to operate effectively over the vast Indo-Pacific region and against some of China’s most advanced weapons systems, including current and future stealth fighters and surface-to-air missile systems. The requirements dictate an aircraft with performance that defies familiar categories for combat aircraft, such as a fighter or bomber. But Boeing’s future aircraft is expected to feature supersonic speed and perhaps a lack of vertical control surfaces, along with a large structure to carry all fuel, sensors and weapons internally.

The cost-plus contract award for NGAD also offers a reprieve for a defense and space business within Boeing that has reported over $18 billion in reach-forward losses on fixed-price military and NASA programs since 2014, including $5 billion in new charges from 2024 alone. Despite the losses, Boeing invested heavily to win the NGAD contract, including starting construction nearly two years ago on a new factory in St. Louis to produce the aircraft.

This appears to be, unlike the F-35, a single service program, as all the current renderings show a tailless design, which mitigates against carrier versions or STOVL versions.

They are promising that it will be cheaper than the F-22, but I sincerely doubt this. 

Other sources have stated that they expect the aircraft to first take to the air some time in 2028, of which I am dubious.  In any case, I would expect service entry to follow any first flight by around a decade.

This Is Not a Surprise

Trump has a plan to eliminate Social Security.

It's simple, they believe that if they gut the Social Security Administration, the resulting poor performance will undermine support for the program.

They put it in a memo, and the memo got leaked:

An internal Social Security Administration (SSA) memo, sent on March 13 and obtained by Popular Information, details proposed changes to the claims process that would debilitate the agency, cause significant processing delays, and prevent many Americans from applying for or receiving benefits.

The memo, authored by Acting Deputy SSA Commissioner Doris Diaz, purports to be motivated by a desire to mitigate "fraud risks."

 

Elon Musk has pushed several false claims about the nature and scope of Social Security fraud. In a recent interview on Fox Business, Musk suggested that 10% of federal expenditures were related to Social Security fraud. This is false. Social Security fraud does exist, but "improper" Social Security payments amounts to about $9 billion annually — less than 1% of total Social Security benefits paid and 0.1% of the federal budget. Most improper payments are not criminal fraud but the result of beneficiaries or the SSA failing to update records.

The biggest change contemplated by Diaz's memo is to require "internet identity proofing" for "benefit claims… made over the phone." When an SSA customer is "unable to utilize the internet ID proofing, customers will be required to visit a field office to provide in-person identity documentation."

When this is juxtaposed with thousands of layoffs at field offices, and dozens of field office closures, it means that people will not be able to get their benefits.

With wait times for face to face appointments exceeding a month before the cuts, it is no stretch of the imagination to see wait times of 6 months to a year to address even the most basic issues.

When people don't get their benefits, or they are forced to jump through ridiculous hoops to get them, the popularity of the program will tank, and at that point, Trump and his  Evil Minions™ can gift wrap social security and give it to Wall Street.

Accounting Fraud Much?

It appears that Tesla somehow managed to misplace $1,400,000,000.00 in capital expenditures.

I'm thinking that some of it may have made its way to various conveniences at the Musk family compound outside of Austin.

As Tesla’s car sales and share price plummet in response to Elon Musk’s political and physical stances, we would like to draw readers’ attention to something puzzling in the group’s accounts.

Compare Tesla’s capital expenditure in the last six months of 2024 to its valuation of the assets that money was spent on, and $1.4bn appears to have gone astray.

The sum is big enough to matter even at Tesla, and comes at a moment when attention is returning to the group’s underlying numbers, now that its fully diluted stock market valuation has crashed from $1.7tn to below $800bn.

A closer look at Tesla’s cash flow statement may also prompt investors to ask other questions, such as why a business with a $37bn cash pile raised $6bn of new debt last year?

First, consider the apparent anomaly. Tesla is investing heavily, particularly in AI infrastructure. It intends to spend at least $11bn in each of the next few years, aiming to take advantage of opportunities in robots, computing and batteries.

Looking at last year, in the third and fourth quarter combined, Tesla spent $6.3bn on “purchases of property and equipment excluding finance leases, net of sales” according to its cashflow statements.

Over on the balance sheet, however, the gross value of property, plant and equipment rose by only $4.9bn in that period, to $51bn. Note seven to the financial statements has the breakdown:


………

Tesla reports the gross figures and the accumulated depreciation, so we can see how the net figure is arrived at. It didn’t disclose any sales or “material” asset impairments that would account for the missing $1.4bn, and we’re sure auditors PWC would be alive to the important signal such declarations of mal-investment would send.

Foreign exchange seems unlikely to explain the gap either. Tesla makes cars in the US, China, and Germany, and while the euro did weaken against the dollar in the periods, four-fifths of Tesla’s “long-lived assets” are in America. See note 17, for those reading along:



Tesla’s gap is also unusual by its own standards. Here’s a chart of capital expenditure on PP&E vs the change in gross value of those assets for every quarter since the start of 2019:



A positive number indicates that the balance sheet value of assets rose by more than capex. Aside from 2021, when there was a $1.3bn rise in the value of the assets, the variance has tended to even out and has not approached the scale of the last quarter.

Such anomalies can be red flags, potentially indicative of weak internal controls. Aggressive classification of operating expenses as investment can be used to artificially boost reported profits.

(emphasis mine) 

OK, it could be money to the Musk compound AND accounting tricks to boost the profit numbers in order to slow the collapse of Tesla stocks.

In either case, this is beginning to sound like some Enron sh%$ is going on.

This Has Been the Right's Goal for Decades

Donald Trump has issued an executive order eliminating the Department of Education.

In case you are wondering, this is unlawful.  This requires an act of Congress.

That being said, Trump and his Evil Minions™ are doing their level best to destroy the DoE:

Teachers unions and Democratic politicians joined in denouncing Donald Trump’s executive order aimed at eliminating the US Department of Education, with the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) saying simply: “See you in court.”

Trump’s move was long trailed, so much so that Randi Weingarten, the head of the AFT – which represents 1.8 million teachers – put out her statement the day before the order was signed. Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers, which represents 200,000 members, teachers and other education workers mostly in New York City, said: “We will join our national union and public education allies to protect students and educators. We are working with our partners to file lawsuits to stop this executive overreach.

………

Polling shows the majority of people in the US oppose dismantling the Department of Education.

………

Eliminating the department has long been a goal of some parts of the Republican right. On Friday, Margaret Spellings, education secretary under George W Bush, who expanded the department’s role, told the Associated Press that Republicans in Congress traditionally voiced support for elimination while voting against it, mindful of how federal funds reach schools in their districts.

“It was always a little bit of a wink and a nod deal,” Spellings said. “Donald Trump has called the bluff.”

………

Trump’s order will not eliminate the department entirely. Created by Congress in 1972, it can only be eliminated by the same body.

The law doesn't matter to criminals, so even with the inevitable court injunctions, I expect the dismantling of the DoE to continue apace.

I don't think that Trump will be backing down, since dismantling the DoE will make it far easier for local school districts to discriminate against people of color, and making bigotry great again is a core value of this administration.

Damn

One of the more fun things to do on a Sunday in Baltimore is to go to the Baltmore Farmers' Market. It's typically open from mid April to the end opf November underneath the JFX (I-83) overpass right next to the (unfortunately closed) Hollywood Diner of the Barry Levinson film fame.

You can get lots of great produce, some street food, the fresh off the machine donuts are da bomb, and commission a writer to type up a poem or suchlike on an old manual typewriter. 

There is a storm on the horizon though, with the market due to open April 13, and for a long time it appeared that there is no one to run it.

It’s a sign of hope — that after the business has made it through the lean winter months, it’ll start to make money again, said Dorian Brown, who owns Neopol Smokery with his mom. There’s the chance to gain new customers and catch up with old ones. And it’s just plain fun. “I think it stands up against any farmers market” on the East Coast, he said.

But this year, Brown and other vendors say they’re worried about the market’s future. Others said they’re questioning whether the event, which dates to 1977, is still a priority for city officials. “We’re obviously concerned,” Brown said.

In January, representatives for Mayor Brandon Scott announced they were seeking a new operator for the market. The news came three months after Scott canceled the city’s contract with the Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts, which had previously run the farmers market and other events. Though the request for proposals closed Feb. 21, the city has yet to announce a successor.

There have been reports that BOPA will be brought back for a final year, and that the search will continue.

………

In an email, [Baltimore Mayor Brandon] Scott spokesman Kamau Marshall said the city is still reviewing applications for proposals to operate the market. They received eight responses, of which five met the criteria for selection. BOPA will continue to manage the market until a replacement is found, and the group will assist with the transition to a new operator, Marshall said. Funding for this year’s Baltimore Farmers’ Market comes from BOPA’s existing contract with the city. Baltimore is currently negotiating a new contract with BOPA for the next fiscal year, which starts in July.

I'm not sure where this is going, but it appears that vendors have not been kept in the loop.

I do hope that it opens on schedule, it's the best place to get Romanesco (fractile) broccoli.

Ecch (Tweet) of the Day (Unverified)

OMG it’s happening.

‘The 2024 Cybertruck does NOT qualify for coverage under Safeco’s Personal Auto Program due to the vehicle being on our ineligible vehicle list.’

This is gonna leave a mark.

Wow. pic.twitter.com/pryBL1ga5h

— CoffeyTimeNews (@CoffeyTimeNews) March 21, 2025

I need to note that I have seen no independent confirmation of this, so I am dubious that this is true, though I really REALLY want it to be true.

That this closely mirrors a proposal that I have supported for about a decade, which would require cops to carry liability insurance, is just icing on the cake. 

Headline of the Day

The True Genius of Elon Musk Is His Subsidy Harvesting Strategy, Political Science Professor Says

—Fortune Magazine

The Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ is the most egregious welfare queen in the nation.

Meanwhile in Turkey

Facing the most serious electoral challenge in years, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has initiated a crackdown on his political opponents.

Turkish police have detained Istanbul’s mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, the main political challenger to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, in an intensifying crackdown against the opposition to the country’s longtime ruler.

State media said İmamoğlu’s detention on Wednesday was part of an investigation into alleged terrorism links, but the opposition described the move as a “coup attempt” and the arrest sent the nation’s markets tumbling.

The opposition Republican People’s party (CHP) had been set to name İmamoğlu, one of the country’s most popular political figures, as its presidential candidate on Sunday ahead of elections due by 2028.

The detention comes a day after the state Istanbul University cancelled İmamoğlu’s higher education degree, which would disqualify him from entering the presidential race if not overturned on appeal.

The state-run Anadolu news agency said the probe into İmamoğlu was linked to possible support from a pro-Kurdish political group for his 2024 mayoral re-election campaign.

Yeah, sure.

………

In recent months, his government has embarked on a crackdown targeting politicians from left and right, journalists, academics — even an astrologer who strayed into election predictions — with hundreds of people arrested as the president’s rivals have been hobbled.

………

In local elections last year, the party suffered its worst defeat since its creation more than 20 years ago. İmamoğlu secured re-election in Erdoğan’s old stronghold of Istanbul by a margin of more than 11 per cent.

This is an incredibly transparent attempt by Erdoğan to kneecap his opposition before the upcoming elections.

It's Thursday ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Fed Funds Rate Since 1970


Year over year inflation


Initial Unemployment Claims The lede here, from yesterday is that the the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee held rates steady, as forecast.

This is not really a surprise.  There are a lot of uncertainties right now, and the Fed is disinclined to make changes under such conditions:

The Federal Reserve left interest rates unchanged in its meeting on Wednesday for a second time in a row, and officials stuck to their previous forecast for two more cuts this year.

But policymakers indicated that they are bracing for higher inflation and slower growth as a result of President Trump’s policies, which they said had increased “uncertainty” about the economic outlook.

The central bank’s decision to hold interest rates at 4.25 percent to 4.5 percent extends a pause that has been in place since January, following a series of cuts in late 2024 that lowered borrowing costs by a percentage point.

When — and to some extent whether — the Fed ultimately follows through with cutting rates again this year remains dependent on Mr. Trump’s economic plans, including the sweeping tariffs he has threatened or imposed. ​ Wednesday’s meeting marked the central bank’s most direct acknowledgment to date that the president’s policies are set to have a real impact on the economy.

That last sentence is a rather oblique way of saying that the Federal Reserve is dealing with an aircraft piloted by a chimpanzee.

It is significant that they held rates steady even though the February inflation report was pretty good:

Let me cut right to the chase: the February consumer inflation report was actually very good. It wasn’t just that the headline and core numbers only went up 0.2% for the month, or that the YoY gains in each decelerated. Let me let you in on a little secret: one of the first things I do when the report comes out is scour the categories for any “problem children,” which I arbitrarily define as a category where there has been more than 4% inflation YoY.

This month, outside of the two most lagging suspects, shelter and transportation services, there were none outside of some really obscure small components, like men’s suits. And even in the case of the two remaining problem children, both decelerated, especially on a YoY basis.

In other economic news, the January JOLTS (Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey) report: monthly increased in January, though there were downward revisions to earlier reports:

To review briefly, the monthly JOLTS reports give us a more granular look at the employment sector, but are delayed by one month vs. the jobs report. Like the jobs reports, most JOLTS series have shown deceleration for several years. The question over the last year has been whether they level off or continue to decelerate towards outright declines in net job creation or stabilize in a “soft landing.”

Additionally, I look at this data because it is a slight leading indicator for both initial jobless claims and unemployment; and for wage growth as well.

For January, the JOLTS data released this morning with one exception was positive on a month over month basis. Unfortunately, this was counterbalanced by substantial downward revisions to all of the 2024 data on openings, hires, and quits. Layoffs and discharges were not materially affected.

Finally, we have the weekly unemployment report, which is still largely flat, with initial claims up 2,000 to 230,000, continuing claims increasing by 33,000 to 1.892 million, and claims by federal employees (delayed by 1 weeks) increased from 514 to 1,066.

The number of Americans filing new applications for unemployment benefits increased slightly last week, suggesting the labor market remained stable in March, though the outlook is darkening amid rising trade tensions and deep cuts in government spending.

Despite the low level of layoffs, more people are staying on jobless rolls longer compared to the same period last year, the report from the Labor Department on Thursday showed. 

………

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits rose 2,000 to a seasonally adjusted 223,000 for the week ended March 15. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast 224,000 claims for the latest week. Claims have been bouncing in the middle of the 203,000-242,000 range this year, with layoffs generally staying low and hiring cooling off.

………

A separate program for unemployment compensation for federal employees (UCFE), which is reported with a one-week lag, decreased by 514 to 1,066, despite the mass firings of public workers by President Donald Trump's administration as part of an unprecedented push to shrink the government.

Labor analysts said the rapid firings led by tech billionaire Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency were in some cases being undertaken in ways that made it harder for laid-off workers to file for unemployment benefits.

I think that the numbers at this point are not reflecting what is going on.

Whether it is just lagging, or, as is implied above, the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ and other elements of the Trump regime are taking steps to game the numbers.

Not a clue as to where the numbers are going.

Sauce for the Gander

Instructions

Have you heard of Dogequest?

It is (was) a site, at  https://dogeque.st, which has since gone dark.

I caught a screenshot of the instructions, as well as a download of the web page

I loaded it mid afternoon, and  about an hour later, you got, "Domain not found."

Whoever made the site describes it as follows:

DOGEQUEST is the ultimate hub for enthusiasts of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)! Our innovative platform allows users to explore an interactive map of DOGE landmarks.
But that's not all! We also cater to Tesla Motors owners, providing a comprehensive resource to locate nearby service centers, showrooms, and charging stations-all at their fingertips.

Leveraging our cutting-edge artificial intelligence algorithms, DOGEQUEST goes a step further by connecting like-minded Tesla owners with one another, facilitating a vibrant community through shared contact information. Join us as we revolutionize the way DOGE fans and Tesla owners connect and explore!

They further note that, "DOGEQUEST neither endorses nor condemns any actions," referring to potential protests while talking about artistic acts with spray paint.

Also, the cursor is a Molotov Cocktail. 

You can go here for more details.  Give 404 Media some love.  They broke the story.

My suggestion to Tesla owners, sell your cars before your insurance skyrockets.

Funny, That

It turns out that Schumer's concession to Republicans on the continuing resolution to fund the government, the one where he got to have 4 amendments considered, and the 'Phants predictably shot them all down in short order has resulted in Democratic Party’s favorability rating hitting a record low/.

This level of naked fecklessness, cowardice, and craven careerism does not sit well with the American Public.

The numbers are 54% unfavorable, 29% favorable, and 16% no opinion, a record low.

The numbers are driven by a drop in favorability by Democrats and Democratic leaners.

A reasonable conclusion is the Democratic faithful have lost patience with the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment)

It also does not appear to sit well with House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jefferies, who has pointedly refused to support Schumer's continuing as the Senate Democratic leader.

Year after year, in shutdown fight after shutdown fight, in debt-limit standoff after debt-limit standoff, you could count on this: While Republicans would be bickering and taking potshots at each other, Democratic leaders would stay in lockstep — giving their members a united front to rally behind.

That all exploded in dramatic fashion this week, culminating Friday at a news conference unlike any I have seen in my career covering Congress, where the No. 1 House Democrat repeatedly dodged questions about whether the No. 1 Senate Democrat was fit to lead.

Should Senate Democrats ditch Chuck Schumer? House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, as the kids say, chose violence: “Next question.”

Jeffries did not dodge the question, he said that Schumer was unfit to lead as directly and forcefully as he could given the constraints of his position.

Rather unsurprisingly, Pelosi, through anonymous quotes from current and former staffers, is condemning Jeffries, because one geriatric leader past their sell by date supports another geriatric leader past their sell by date.

I get why Schumer and Pelosi did what they did, they are incapable of understanding that things have changed, much like Franz von Papen, they are as wrong, or perhaps as grasping and malicious, as von Papen was.