Ecch (Tweet) of the Day

internet vs real life pic.twitter.com/XUqFrplcLw

— non aesthetic things (@PicturesFoIder) May 6, 2025

This is true, as true as turnips is, as true as taxes is, and nothing is true than them.

Good News

Though I expect the Supreme Court to overturn the ruling from U.S. District Judge Richard E. Myers requiring North Carolina to certify the victory of Democratic incumbent state Supreme Court judgeAllison Riggs.

The core of the ruling is that one should not be allowed to change election rules retroactively when they do not like the results:

In a ruling that could put an end to nearly six months of legal battles over North Carolina’s contested Supreme Court election, a federal judge on Monday ruled against the Republican candidate’s effort to overturn his narrow loss.

Chief U.S. District Judge Richard E. Myers, an appointee of President Donald Trump, ruled that Jefferson Griffin, a judge on the state Court of Appeals, cannot “change the rules of the game after it had been played.”

Myers ordered the state not to throw out any votes and to certify the results of the election as they were at the close of the canvass period, with Democratic incumbent Allison Riggs winning by 734 votes.

………

However, Myers has put his own order on hold for seven days to give Griffin a chance to appeal.

I would expect this to go to the Supreme Court, where it has no chance, because we know how that the defining characteristic of Chief Justice Roberts legal career can be summarized as, "Not letting n***ers vote," and when added to Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh that gets you to 5 votes against democracy and the rule of law.

Gee, Corruption Much?

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel has droped charges against University of Michigan pro-Palestinian protesters after it was revealed that she had what should have been disqualifying ties to the school's board of regents.

This creates the appearance of corruption.  She should have recused herself:

Michigan’s attorney general, Dana Nessel, announced on Monday that she was dropping all charges against seven pro-Palestinian demonstrators arrested last May at a University of Michigan encampment.

The announcement came just moments before the judge was to decide on a defense motion to disqualify Nessel’s office over alleged bias. Defense attorney Amir Makled said the motion largely stemmed from an October Guardian report detailing Nessel’s extensive personal, financial and political connections to university regents calling for the activists to be prosecuted.

These ties?

• $33,000 in campaign donations from university regents.
• Her office hired the law office of the regent who chaired her 2018 campaign.
• Her office was more than 8½ times more likely to prosecute protesters than the local DAs. 
  

“This was a case of selective prosecution and rooted in bias, not in public safety issues,” Makled added. “We’re hoping this sends a message to other institutions locally and nationally that protest is not a crime, and dissent is not disorder.”

It certainly seems that way.

………

The Guardian’s investigation revealed concrete evidence of conflicts that defense attorneys argued factored into the prosecutions. Among the findings, the story revealed Nessel’s office charged pro-Palestinian protesters at a higher rate than other state prosecutors.

Nessel was recruited by university regents, who were frustrated by local prosecutors’ unwillingness to crack down on most of the students arrested, to take over the case and file charges, three people with direct knowledge of the decision told the Guardian at the time.

The investigation also found that six of eight regents contributed more than $33,000 combined to Nessel’s campaigns. Additionally, her office hired a regent’s law firm to handle major state cases, and the same regent co-chaired her 2018 campaign. Meanwhile, Nessel received significant campaign donations from pro-Israel state politicians, organizations and university donors who over the last year have vocally criticized Gaza protests, records show.

………

Makled said the judge had told him he was leaning toward granting an evidentiary hearing on the bias allegation, which would have opened Nessel’s office to discovery, or the requirement to turn over evidence.

“I think she didn’t want to open the can of worms that was coming her way,” Makled added.

This is important because the State AG taking over local prosecutions in this way are highly unusual, and in this case it appears to be motivated by political considerations.

Best Vacation Video Ever

Well, now I know where I want to go on my next vacation.

H/T Stephen Saroff      o o  The Bear who Swims      
                        (_)_____o      
                     ~~~~(______)~~~~~~~~~~
                         oo    oo

How About Throwing Tim Cook in Jail?

The good folks at Wired note that the malicious compliance with regard to federal Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers order loosening Apple's control of its app ecosystem may constitute criminal contempt and that the judge has accused Apple finance VP Alex Roman of lying under oath.

Yeah, criminal contempt, that's the ticket.  Just have Apple to pay a few pennies in fines and perhaps issuing another order that they will subvert will stop this behavior.

Sorry, if Roman attempted to deceive the court, that's perjury, and it is clear that he did so with the approval of Apple CEO Tim Cook.

Jail them.  Even if it's only for a weekend, throw their flabby white asses in jail:

Apple “willfully chose not to comply” with a court order to loosen its app store restrictions—and one of its executives lied under oath about the company’s plans, a federal judge wrote on Wednesday.

Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers has referred the situation to the US Attorney’s Office in San Francisco “to investigate whether criminal contempt proceedings are appropriate.”

………

Apple pursued its noncompliance strategy “with the express intent to create new anticompetitive barriers which would, by design and in effect, maintain a valued revenue stream; a revenue stream previously found to be anticompetitive,” Gonzalez Rogers wrote in her ruling on Wednesday. “That it thought this court would tolerate such insubordination was a gross miscalculation.”

She also said that Apple executives tried to hide the real motivations for the changes. “In stark contrast to Apple’s initial in-court testimony, contemporaneous business documents reveal that Apple knew exactly what it was doing and at every turn chose the most anticompetitive option,” Gonzalez Rogers said. She went as far as accusing Alex Roman, a vice president of finance at Apple, of lying during testimony in which he talked about how Apple came to its decision to go with a 27 percent commission on purchases made outside the App Store. “The testimony of Mr. Roman was replete with misdirection and outright lies,” the judge said.

………

Citing internal Apple documents from 2023, Gonzalez Rogers said Apple’s App Store chief Phillip Schiller “had advocated that Apple comply with the injunction” but that CEO Tim Cook “ignored Schiller and instead allowed Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri and his finance team to convince him otherwise.”

No, Cook decided to subvert the court order and he encouraged Apple executives to lie under oath.

That is suborning perjury, and it's a felony.

 

 

Maybe DOGE Can Look Into THIS Fraud, Waste, and Abuse

Elon Musk's Boring Company is now claiming that it is a small business and so qualifies for contracts reserved for such entities.

Not long after Donald Trump won the 2024 election, Elon Musk’s $7 billion tunneling company registered as a small business on a government portal for federal contractors. The Boring Company registered with the System for Award Management portal, better known as SAM.gov, on November 12, 2024, exactly one week after Trump’s victory. Some federal government contracts are designated only for qualified small businesses. Its decision to file as a small business suggests that Boring, despite its substantial valuation, has failed to generate meaningful income.

I think that the author of this article, Caleb Ecarma, is missing the forest for the trees.  This is not a case of a failed business, this is a case of fraud against the people of the United States of America.

This company has raised and spent hundreds of millions of dollars.  The lede is that this is the sort of fraud that Elon Musk rails against.

………

The company, which is based near Austin, Texas, has built just a few miles of commercial tunnels, all of which are located in Las Vegas, Nevada. Its failure to generate substantive business could explain why it would seek federal funding from a White House that has proven to be partial to Musk’s business interests. A senior Trump adviser, Musk also leads the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the White House’s austerity and parapolitical initiative. Steve Davis, the president of the Boring Company, is reportedly in charge of DOGE’s day-to-day operations.

It appears to me that DOGE has a bird's eye view of the shenanigans, and so should be able to stop them. 

This is not a case of a badly run business, this is a crime.

And Trump Elects Yet Another Center-Left Party

FriendlyJordies is Actually Giddy

In this case, it was Australia, where incumbent Labor PM Anthony Albanese has
secured a landslide win of the the Liberal Alliance (Notwithstanding their name the Liberals are right wing)  after being well down in the polls.

Australia’s centre-left prime minister, Anthony Albanese, has won a second term with a crushing victory over the opposition, whose rightwing leader, Peter Dutton, failed to brush off comparisons with Donald Trump and ended up losing his own seat.

Albanese’s Labor party scored an unexpectedly comfortable win on Saturday, after a five-week election campaign dominated by the cost of living and global economic uncertainty.

At the turn of the year, Labor was struggling in the polls, but Dutton ran a campaign derided by commentators as one of the worst in Australian political history, and the former police detective struggled to clearly dissociate himself from some Trump-like rhetoric and policies.

Albanese, 62, had pitched himself as a steady hand to guide Australia through a period of global turbulence turbocharged by Trump’s tariff war. He becomes the first Australian prime minister to serve consecutive terms since 2004.

Did I mention that the Liberal leader lost his seat just like the Conservative Party leader in Canada did??

Well they did:

Labor was certain to add to the 77 seats it held going into the election, with the opposition Liberal/National Coalition projected to receive its lowest ever national vote and to lose further seats.

In a six-minute concession speech, Dutton accepted “full responsibility” for the party’s wipeout, which included losing his own seat, and said that the party had unfortunately been “defined by our opponents in this election”.

………

The Australian conservative party’s loss mirrored that of the recent election in Canada where the centre-left Liberal party won a fourth-term despite being well behind in the polls in the leadup to the election.

Like Dutton, Canada’s Conservative leader, Pierre Poilievre, lost the seat he had held since 2004 in an election dominated by the impact of Trump’s presidency.

In his own way, Donald Trump is like the Soviet Union:  Providing nothing of value to its own people, but improving life in other nations because of their reaction to the threat.

Why is Larry Ellison Rich?

I know no one who likes Oracle, either the product, which really is not any better than its competitors, nor the company whose policies towards its customers can only described as abusive.

Still, I do get the idea that if your IT department selects Oracle, they can be sure that they will never be fired for that decision.

At least until now, as Oracle engineers screwed the pooch yet again, leading dozens of hospitals having to return to paper records for almost a week.

This is what happens without aggressive antitrust enforcement.

Monopolists lapse into incompetence:

Oracle engineers mistakenly triggered a five-day software outage at a number of Community Health Systems hospitals, causing the facilities to temporarily return to paper-based patient records.

CHS told CNBC that the outage involving Oracle Health, the company's electronic health record (EHR) system, affected "several" hospitals, leading them to activate "downtime procedures." Trade publication Becker's Hospital Review reported that 45 hospitals were hit.

The outage began on April 23, after engineers conducting maintenance work mistakenly deleted critical storage connected to a key database, a CHS spokesperson said in a statement. The outage was resolved on Monday, and was not related to a cyberattack or other security incident.

………

An EHR is a digital version of a patient's medical history that's updated by doctors and nurses. It's crucial software within the U.S. health-care system, and outages can cause serious disruptions to patient care. Oracle acquired EHR vendor Cerner in 2022 for $28.3 billion, becoming the second-biggest player in the market, behind Epic Systems.

………

Oracle's CHS error comes weeks after the company's federal electronic health record experienced a nationwide outage. Oracle has struggled with a thorny, years-long EHR rollout with the Department of Veterans Affairs, marred by patient safety concerns. The agency launched a strategic review of Cerner in 2021, before Oracle's acquisition, and it temporarily paused deployment of the software in 2023.

I would note that every medical professional that I have discussed this with hates EHRs.

It's all been downhill since the initial release of MUMPS, because the people in charge of development are now programmers, and not medical professionals, and the customers are now IT departments and bean counters whose goal for the software is to maximize profits, largely through upcharging.

This is what happens when you allow the inmates run the asylum.

バカにつける薬はない*

Dateline, Mt. Fugi, Japan. A student climbs the iconic Japanese mountain before the start of the official climbing season, loses his climbing equipment, needs a helicopter rescue, realizes that he left his mobile phone on the mountain, so he climbs back up the mountain to recover his cell phone and needs to be rescued again. 

An inexperienced climber became stranded on Mount Fuji last week, after climbing to the top of the Japanese mountain and losing some of his climbing gear. As if that weren’t bad enough, the man subsequently returned to the peak a few days later because he’d forgotten his phone at the summit. He then had to be rescued again.

BBC reports that a 27-year-old Chinese university student (whom authorities have mercifully declined to name) was initially rescued last Tuesday near the summit of the mountain after losing his crampons. Crampons are a kind of spiked cleat that allows for safe traversal of icy environments. He was at a height of some 12,388 feet when he had to be rescued by helicopter and flown to safety, authorities told CNN.

However, the student then made the dubious decision to scale the mountain again a few days later because he had forgotten his phone at the top, officials said. He had to be rescued yet again, after climbing to a height of 9,842 feet and experiencing altitude sickness, CNN writes. Altitude sickness occurs as the body’s response to climbing in elevation too quickly. Some climbers can have trouble adjusting to the more limited oxygen levels and may experience disorientation and difficulty breathing.

This guy is cruising for a f%$#ing Darwin Award.

^*This translates to, "There is no medicine for stupidity."

Glad I Got a Costco Membership

Because for once, I will be following the lead of Trump administration officials, and stockpiling things like toilet paper and canned goods:

Donald Trump’s trade wars with China and other nations are widely expected to cause sharp economic pain, but some experts have warned consumers not to hoard supplies and goods before prices skyrocket, arguing that mass stockpiling could backfire spectacularly.

Well, many Americans aren’t listening to that advice, according to survey data this year, instead preparing for the possibility of store shelves being bare amid a Trump-inflicted recession. Funnily enough, this includes a number of government officials and staffers working directly for the man who launched these massive new trade wars, all on the grounds of bad tariff math and the flimsy premise that he would bring economic “liberation” to America and make the country “wealthy again.”

Two Trump administration officials and a Trump aide tell Rolling Stone that they have done some stockpiling of their own in recent weeks or months, and that they know others working in Republican politics — inside and outside of the administration — who are doing the same. One of the Trump officials says they have already run to Target to bulk-buy toilet paper, some types of food, and other household supplies.

When asked why they’re doing this, the Trump aide — who says they and their partner have done similar household-supply hoarding lately, and are also “stashing cash” reserves in their D.C.-area home — simply replies: “Because it would be stupid not to!” The aide adds that they still believe in Trump’s tariffs regime, though, citing the supposed advantage of “short-term pain” in exchange for long-term “prosperity.”

I do want to make a historical note here:  The toilet paper shortage at the height of the Covid pandemic was a real thing, and it was not caused by hoarding.

It happened because home and business toilet paper are two completely different products, and with people not going to restaurants or the office, demand for that crashed, but demand for household toilet paper rose, because whether or not you are going out, you still need to crap.

I would note that there is no small amount of hypocrisy involved, but I am not shocked about this at all.

Yeah, I Know, One Should Not Speak Ill of the Dead

But in the case of David Whorowitz (Horowitz) who has died at the age of 86, it's pretty hard to follow that cultural norm.

Given that Whorowitz, as I have referred to him throughout my time blogging, was a mentor and major influence on Stephen Miller, I do not feel any obligation to follow cultural norms.

I have never been able to figure how much of his schtick was honest belief and how much was a character he played for money, but in the end, it does not matter.

The fact that he was crucial in the creation of Stephen Miller is all you need to know about him.

Luckily, there is a Jewish saying that is appropriate for describing him, "יִמַּח שְׁמו",

Question of the Day

Why Do AI Company Logos Look like Buttholes?

—Velvet Shark

The quick answer is, of course, that form follows function, but the anus is an essential part of our body, and artificial intelligence is an essential part of nothing.

And Now the Monthly Jobs Report

And ADP's survey was wrong with 177,000 new jobs added to the non farm payroll and unemployment remaining at 4.2%.

The U.S. labor market steadily added jobs last month despite jolting tariff announcements that many economists expect will give way to a trade policy-induced slowdown later this year.

The Labor Department reported Friday that the U.S. added 177,000 jobs in April, above the gain of 133,000 jobs that economists polled by The Wall Street Journal had expected to see. The unemployment rate, which is based on a separate survey from the jobs figures, held steady at 4.2%.

The report revealed solid data “that no one wants to trust,” said Thomas Simons, chief U.S. economist at investment bank Jefferies. That is because the figures likely reflected staffing decisions made in February and March, before President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff announcements early in the month that induced significant market volatility.

………

The time frame of the jobs survey only captures so much. The Labor Department asks employers how many people they had on their payrolls during any pay period that includes the 12th of the month. That provides a limited look at companies’ early thinking on how to adjust to sudden tariff announcements.

I think that we are not seeing the full effects of chaos in international commerce and international finance yet.

Also, there is this:

………

What’s more, businesses and individuals are telling surveys that they are worried about the economy. Consumer sentiment in April hit one of its lowest levels on record, according to the University of Michigan.

The pace of April’s job gains was lower than the 185,000 jobs added in March. The gains for February and March were revised down by a combined 58,000 jobs. Hourly wages grew by less than expected compared with both a month ago and a year ago.

Some of April’s job gains may have been driven by the burst of activity that occurred as companies worked to get in front of tariffs, said Pantheon Macroeconomics economist Samuel Tombs. Employment in the transportation and warehousing sector rose by 29,000 jobs last month.

I think that we are in a recession now, while I am looking for a job.

Sucks like 1,000 Electrolux all going at once,

It's Thursday ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Not good news, with initial claims rising to a 2 month high and continuing claims rising to a 4 year high.

I would note here that it's the continuing claims, (I am STILL part of this statistic) that are of concern.

While the (inherently noisy, in this case driven by Spring Break in New York) continuing claims data shows that employers are still very conscious of the costs of laying people off, the continuing claims show that they are currently loath to engage in new hiring.

Applications for US unemployment benefits rose to the highest level since February during the week that followed Easter and spring recess at New York City public schools.

Initial claims increased by 18,000 to 241,000 in the week ended April 26, according to Labor Department data released Thursday. The median forecast in a Bloomberg survey of economists called for 223,000 applications.

Before adjusting for seasonal factors, initial claims increased about 12,900 last week. Applications in New York alone rose more than 15,500. Some school workers in New York City, such as bus drivers and janitors, are allowed to apply for benefits during winter and spring breaks. This could account for the large gain in the state’s unemployment claims. 

………

The four-week moving average of new applications, a metric that helps smooth out fluctuations from week-to-week, rose to 226,000.

The number of job cuts announced by US-based employers dropped to about 105,400 in April as plans to shed federal workers subsided, outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas said in a report. After some 280,000 firings linked to the actions of the Department of Government Efficiency were announced in March, last month’s tally included only about DOGE-related 2,700 job-cut plans.

Continuing claims, a proxy for the number of people receiving benefits, rose to 1.92 million in the week ended April 19, the highest since 2021 and a sign that it is taking longer for out-of-work people to find a job. The figure exceeded all estimates.

What should be noted is that at this point, most of these federal firings are either:

• Stayed by judicial order,
• Not complete, so the workers are still on paid leave, and cannot file for benefits.

We are seeing the beginnings of the bow wave of federal firing, 

Also, we have the tariffs, which will cause damage even if not implemented, as much of our economy is frozen in place waiting for the other shoe to drop.

I'm not sure if this is really bad news, but it sure as hell ain't good news.

It Appears We Have Another Trump Climb-Down

The new MAGA hat

It now appears that Trump and his Evil Minions™ are restoring student visas that they had previously revoked.

So not surprised by this:

Thousands of international students studying in the United States whose immigration status was revoked by the Department of Homeland Security this month may now see that status restored.

On Friday, lawyers for the Trump administration said at a hearing that the Department of Justice planned to reactivate the immigration status of students whose status had been recently revoked, several media outlets reported.

Many of those students have already left the country. The unprecedented scale and lack of clear explanation for these changes left other students fearful that they might be next.

But signs that the Trump administration was backing down appeared on Thursday when college administrators doing a regular check of the government database known as SEVIS to see if any new students had lost their status noticed something new, according to one who asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized by their college to speak to the media. Several students’ immigration status had been restored. When administrators checked a few hours later, several more students’ status had been restored. At the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, two of the three students whose immigration status had been changed saw their status restored on Friday, a spokesperson said.

………

Hundreds of students sued the government, saying their offenses, if they had any, did not warrant the government pulling their ability to continue their studies in the United States. (The Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration also brought a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security and others.) So far, those students have notched wins in court. Last week, a federal judge in Georgia ordered Homeland Security to restore the immigration status of 133 students.

I think that what is going on here is that someone has realized DHI is on its way to losing those hundreds of court cases, and now they will come up with some bullsh%$ reasons and restart the process.

Still, I'll take the little win.

Busy Economic Day

And the next 3 quarters look weak too


Note the surge in inventories of people trying to beat the tariffs

Basically panic buying

The US Commerce Department has reported that GDP fell at a 0.3% annual rate in the 1st quarter, well under the forecast of +0.4%.

This was largely driven by a decline in US exports driven by Trump's trade war.

Hoocoodanode?

I'm sure that the response of the Trump administration will be to replace the statisticians who compiled this report with their own evil minions.

The U.S. economy contracted in the first three months of 2025, as businesses rushed to stock up on imports ahead of the Trump administration’s tariffs and consumer spending slowed.

The Commerce Department said U.S. gross domestic product—the value of all goods and services produced across the economy—fell at a seasonally and inflation adjusted 0.3% annual rate in the first quarter. That was the first contraction since the first quarter of 2022.

Consumer spending, the economy’s main engine, rose at a 1.8% pace in the first quarter, the smallest increase since mid-2023. Spending by the federal government fell as the Department of Government Efficiency cut jobs and contracts.

But the main driver of the first-quarter contraction was Trump’s trade war. Net exports, the difference between what the U.S. imports and exports, subtracted nearly 5 percentage points from headline GDP. That was the biggest quarterly drag from net exports on record dating back to 1947.

………

Trump has made tariffs a cornerstone of his economic agenda, saying that they will in the long term make America richer and bring back manufacturing jobs. In March, the trade deficit in goods hit a record as businesses stocked up to get ahead of tariffs.

Trump is, of course, saying that this is all Biden's fault, because ……… The Aristocrats!!!

Meanwhile, private sector job growth fell to 62,000 according to the private AD?P report.

This is well under what is needed to account for natural growth in the workforce so it points toward increasing unemployment.

What is going on here is pretty simple, employers are willing to hire in the face of risk, where they (roughly) know the chances of the sh%$ hitting the fan, but they are NOT willing to hire in the face of uncertainty, where they have no clue what will happen from one day to the next.

This is what happens when trade policy is being run by a meth addled chihuahua.  

Friday should be interesting.

Shut Up and Take My Money!!!

Click to embiggen images








I have seen the Chernobyl-Inspired Humidifier.

This is even better than the nose snot egg separator.

Also, if you have a 3D printer you can download the STL files and print your own.

You know, there are food 3D printers now, so one could print a Chernobyl birthday cake.

The unit is small 130 mm x 150 mm long x 120 mm , but one could theoretically scale this up larger in your printer.

Also, you can add fragrances, I would suggest RADIUM by Caliber perfume, should you so desire.

Only $80.10 with 3 choices of backlight color.

Such a steal!

As the maker notes:

By pressing the button on the body, a moisture sprayer is activated from the reactor zone along with lights, creating the effect of burning and smoke during the disaster. This is not only a visually impressive spectacle but also a practical function – the model can work as a night light and a humidifier, which is very beneficial for health.

If you feel that this is in bad taste considering the suffering that this brought, I would note that the seller is from the Ukraine.

You can find instructions, and links to the STL models here .

 

Donald Trump Screwed Up in Reverse, Canada Edition

In a development that would have been unthinkable 3 months ago, the Liberal Party of Canada has won the election.

Bad for Trump, good for Canada.

It's unclear if the Libs will have a majority in Parliment, but they appear to be doing better than they did last time, when they had to form a coalition with the firmly, if mildly, left-wing NDP.

It appears that the NDP, and to a lesser extent the PQ (slightly Quebec secessionist) took it on the chin this election, likely because people thought that the Libs were worse than Trump.

What this says about Canada, besides that the electorate generally finds Trump to be toxic, I don't know.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I Am Amused

PublicSquare, which touts itself as an, "Anti-woke online marketplace," has has discovered that its MAGAt friendly listings are being used by many people as a boycott list.

I do not have a small enough violin for them:

PublicSquare, a website which bills itself as “the anti-woke online marketplace" and offers a list of MAGA-friendly businesses, found its mission completely upended after critics instead used the site to fuel boycotts around the country.

The platform connects tens of thousands of businesses across the country that publicly align with MAGA views and oppose “progressive priorities” such as women’s reproductive rights and diversity initiatives. To list a business on the site, owners must first affirm that they will “respect the core values of PublicSquare” and agree not to “support causes that are in direct conflict with our core values.”

PublicSquare urges the MAGA faithful "to embrace this community of customers and merchants by providing platforms, products, and services that enrich the way of life they hold dear.” It notes it "is on a mission to restore the culture through the power of commerce."

To use the platform, you simply enter your ZIP code and it shows businesses nearby that openly align themselves with Trump and his values. PublicSquare, which launched in 2022, also has direct ties to Trump—Donald Trump Jr. sits on the board of directors and is one of its investors.

………

Jeff, who had extensively researched PublicSquare at his previous bank job, chimed in with a tip about the platform:

“MAGA has made it easy for all of us to avoid their businesses. A couple years ago, they introduced a website — publicsq.com — to promote MAGA businesses. We can use that same tool to make informed purchasing decisions.”

His post quickly gained traction, spreading across Reddit threads nationwide among people eager to do whatever they can to oppose President Trump.

Won't someone think of the children? 

Seriously, this is a case of, "You mess with the bull, you get the horns," or as I like to say, "This is what happens when you fist f%$# a cobra."

The solution is to stop fist f%$#ing cobras.

Headline of the Day

We Have to Save Ourselves from Trump, Because Ambitious Careerists Won’t

—No More Mister Nice Blog

This is an energetic and thoroughly deserved take-down of the self-absorbed hacks who acted as fluffers for Donald Trump so that they could write their, "First 100 Days," story.

………

Here's what's most striking about this story: Its authors are remarkably eager to to tell us how they were jerked around by Trump, and how they responded by writing exactly the story he asked them to write. Admitting that doesn't fill them with shame. Hey, they're ambitious careerists, A-list journalists who had to produce a big story for a "Trump's first hundred days" deadline. Wouldn't you have allowed Trump to manipulate you to get that story?

Seriously, with a little bit of effort, they could have gotten Trump to say all kinds of destructive stupoid sh%$, and Trump would have been happy, because Trump is f%$#ing stupid.

Just push the buttons, and you get journalistic gold.

Of course, it means that your sources might go elsewhere, and shoe leather journalism is hard.

The pampered princelings who come out of journalism school are a disgrace, and I wish that A. J. Liebling was alive to tear them a new asshole.

Needless to say, I have added No More Mister Nice Blog to my blogroll.

OH!!! Canada!!!

I'm not certain about this, but this may be the most Canadian thing that I have ever heard of.

Today is election day in the Great White North, and we will see if Donald Trump has screwed the pooch for the Conservative Party of Canada, and if there will be a backlash resulting in a Liberal Party victory as polls suggest.

I have no clue as to who this will go, but Canadians telling American journalists to f%$#-off, and then apologizing for it is a very strong reinforcement of stereotypes, at least for English speaking Canadians. (the Quebecois apologize for nothing) 

I have to note that the Canadians count their votes by hand in one night, and we will probably know the general results by midnight.

As for me, I am of the same mind as xkcd creator Randall Munroe:

Corruption Much?

The Trump administration has removed reporting requirements for self-driving cars, because ……… Elon has been lying about Tesla self-driving capabilities for years?

Hoocoodanode?

Automakers and tech developers testing and deploying self-driving and advanced driver-assistance features will no longer have to report as much detailed, public crash information to the federal government, according to a new framework released today by the US Department of Transportation.

The moves are a boon for makers of self-driving cars and the wider vehicle technology industry, which has complained that federal crash-reporting requirements are overly burdensome and redundant. But the new rules will limit the information available to those who watchdog and study autonomous vehicles and driver-assistance features—tech developments that are deeply entwined with public safety but which companies often shield from public view because they involve proprietary systems that companies spend billions to develop.

………

The new rules allow companies to shield from public view some crash details, including the automation version involved in incidents and the “narratives” around the crashes, on the grounds that such information contains “confidential business information.” Self-driving-vehicle developers, such as Waymo and Zoox, will no longer need to report crashes that include property damage less than $1,000, if the incident doesn’t involve the self-driving car crashing on its own or striking another vehicle or object. (This may nix, for example, federal public reporting on some minor fender-benders in which a Waymo is struck by another car. But companies will still have to report incidents in California, which has more stringent regulations around self-driving.)

And in a change, the makers of advanced driver-assistance features, such as Full Self-Driving, must report crashes only if they result in fatalities, hospitalizations, air bag deployments, or a strike on a "vulnerable road user,” like a pedestrian or cyclist—but no longer have to report the crash if the vehicle involved just needs to be towed.

Cui Bono?  Why the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™, of course!

………

One company in particular emerges as a winner: Elon Musk’s Tesla, which now will be able to curtail public reporting on its Autopilot and Full Self-Driving (Supervised) features, and may enjoy an easier road to federal safety approval for its upcoming Cybercab, a two-seat, purpose-built robotaxi that does not have a steering wheel or brakes.

“The company that probably benefits the most from that is Tesla,” [Telemetry Marketing VP Sam] Abuelsamid says. Though the Transportation Department cited safety as the number one motivator behind the new rules, “there’s nothing in these changes that actually prioritizes safety,” he says.

Of course it does nothing for safety.

The goal here is to make it easier for people to make money killing their customers, and other drivers, and pedestrians  ………

I Say the Darndest Things

War Pigs Make No Sense Without Elephants

You may recall that yesterday, I mentioned that flaming war pigs were a real historical thing.

Seeing as how this IS a real thing it seemed to me that there should be some sort of combat event in the Society for Creative Anachronism recreating this.

This would be analogous too the occasional game of Buzkashi, a Central Asian equestrian game, that are conducted every now and then by SCA groups.

I was on the way to an SCA event with Sharon, and said this.

It's basic logic, since war pigs are a weapon specifically targeting elephants, any analogue must find a way to simulate both animals.

As soon as I said this, I saw how absurd of what I said was 

I do feel the need that this is not even close to the weirdest thing that I have ever said.

The weirdest thing that I have ever said was probably, "It's not Buffet Time at the Wildebeest."

My children were being taken feral at dinner over a decade ago, and it seemed to me that they resembled a pack of heyenas having a throw down over a recent kill.

This did stop Charlie and Nat from misbehaving, because they were laughing to hard to do anything else.

There may be something seriously wrong with me.

Deep Thought

In antiquity, armies used war pigs as a weapon to counter elephants used by other armies.

At this time it is not certain whether it was just the squeals of the pigs, or if the pigs were coated in pitch and lit on fire before being driven towards the elephants.

This says something important about humanity, but I have absolutely no clue as to what this important thing actually is.

To the best of my knowledge, the Black Sabbath song has nothing to do with this historical factoid.

Hope for Humanity

A group of law students are are organizing to create a list of law firms that are caving to Donald Trump. 

The implication, of course is that this list will be used to allow graduating lawyers to be will not be applying to these firms: 

The day after Donald Trump’s election last year, three Georgetown Law students started a political movement to brace for impact.

The students texted each other, started organizing, and eventually discovered the ability to perform a simple act to put the world’s wealthiest and most powerful law firms on the defensive.

They created a spreadsheet.

After Trump signed executive orders singling out law firms for political retribution, the students recorded BigLaw’s responses in a document they titled “Legal Industry Responses to Fascist Attacks Tracker.”

The Google spreadsheet currently names more than 800 firms, assigning them to one of five stark categories: “Caved to Administration,” “Complying in Advance,” “Other Negative Action,” “Stood Up Against Administration’s Attacks,” or “No Response.”

The document started out a resource to help fellow Georgetown Law students make informed decisions about potential future employers.

In case you are wondering, there has been an impact on where recent law school graduates are applying:

………

Forbes first picked up on a trend of students turning down the possibility of six-figure salaries from the likes of Skadden Arps, Paul Weiss, Milbank, and Willkie, Farr and Gallagher, which all entered into settlements providing the Trump administration with tens of millions of dollars in pro bono legal services. One Geogetown first-year law student (1L) interviewed for the story reportedly skipped a Skadden interview. (The firms did not immediately respond to emails requesting comment.)

Politico then reported that these individual choices resonated industry-wide, speaking to students, recruiters, and partners at major law firms.

I am stunned, but for the first time in a long time, this a good thing.

To quote Ann Frank, "In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart."

Filk of the Day

 Normally not a fan of filk songs, I can take them or leave them, but this one is inspired:

For those of you who do not know what a, "Filk," is, it's typically a song where lyrics are substituted for an existing piece of music, kind of like Star Spangled Banner.

The Star Spangled banner is a filk of "To Anacreon in Heaven".

Mind blown. 

Headline of the Day

You Want to Fuck With Harvard?

—Bill King

The equally epic sub-hed is, "Mall Cops Give it a Go." 

His thesis is that f%$#ing with Harvard is a lot like Tommy DeVito killing, "Made Man," Billy Batts in the Scorsese classic movie Goodfellahs. (My analogy, not Mr. King's)*

He thinks that the legal power available to the university will defeat Trump completely.

I'm not sure that I ascribe the nigh mythical capabilities of Harvard alumni that Mr. King does, but I do know that the Harvard community does seem to be an extremely connected clique at the highest levels of society.

Yes, I know, it's not, "Say f%$# January," but the hed deserves to be reproduced in its entirety.

^*It's the only reason that many of the writers at The New Republic in the Marty Peretz era had those prestigious jobs
^†Well, that and plagiarism. Peretz seemed to love serial plagiarists.

No, I Don’t Think That the Couch F%$#er Murdered the Pope

Still, it does appear that people that Vice President Vance meets with have the life expectancy of Sean Bean in his movie roles.

Pope Francis died less than 24 hours after meeting him.

FWIW, I'm pretty sure that the next Pope will not be as good as Francis, he is arguably the best Pope since John XXIII, but I am certain that he will be a better Catholic than J.D. Vance.

Hell, I'm a better Catholic than J.D. Vance, and I'm Jewish. 

I will not be doing a play by play of the smoke coming from the Sistine Chapel.

No Blogging Tonight

I know that my output has been low lately.

It turns out that disengaging from work at the end of the day to blog is much easier than is disengaging from looking from a job at the end of the day to blog.

Grows on You ……… Like a Fungus

I am referring, of course to Peter Thiel, who is attempting to privatize and loot the $700 billion Treasury internal payments system. (Basically, the federal government equivalent of company credit cards)

There is already a system which works, and is cheaper than the private alternative, but Pete Thiel needs a few trillion dollars to enslave human subjects for his life extension technology.  (I have mentioned before that Thiel is literally a vampire wannabee?)

One of the most important stories in some time came out two days ago. But with so much else going it didn’t get quite as much attention as it should have. It’s from ProPublica. And it’s about a Peter Thiel-backed start up called Ramp. It’s a corporate credit card processing outfit. The game here is pretty straightforward. Trump and Musk are looking to hand some or all of the government’s $700 billion internal expense card program (SmartPay) over to Ramp. A bunch of the meetings were organized by Josh Gruenbaum, a private equity guy who Trump and Musk installed as chief acquisitions officer at the GSA. (He was also the lead signatory on the demand letter to Harvard we’re now told, as of last night, was accidentally sent. So Gruenbaum’s got a lot going on.) Ramp’s value add is supposed to be the use of AI to monitor spending.

The overall picture is a standard one: Come in, take over the data and financial architecture; discredit it by having your media arms dish out mountains of phony stories about fraud and abuse; fire all the employees and hand a cash-drenched, sweetheart contract to yours and your friends company.

It really is amazing how much all of these Ayn Rand worshiping individualists are spending every working moment trying to steal from the rest of us.

………

Now, yesterday I heard that a new DOGEr, named Roland Tenglong Shen, showed up (remotely) at the Treasury Department’s Bureau of Fiscal Service (BFS) and was hastily granted access to the Bureau’s systems. (Way faster than normal onboarding rules allow.) The focus of his access appears to be something called the Payment Analytics Cloud Environment (PACE) which is itself part of Disbursement And Debt Management Analytics Platform (DDMAP). I’m told it all came together very fast yesterday. At first I thought this might have something to do with DOGE’s new “Defend the Spend” program, which I mentioned last night and was discussed in an article in the Post. The timing seemed to come together very nicely.

But when I got around to googling Shen’s name this morning, that told a different story. Roland Shen works for Ramp. Right, the Thiel and Kushner family-backed company trying to land that motherlode payment processing contract.

In any case, back in the old days civil servants chose contractors and there was supposed to be a process of competitive bidding, though no bid contracts could come together in some circumstances. But if your company’s wants the contract, it certainly helps to have an employee literally scoping out at the environment in advance.

If fraud, bribery, and securities statutes had been properly enforced against the Silly-Con Valley tech bros, many of these folks would be enjoying that hip new theme park ride, the, "Orange is the New Black Experience."

Wut?

So we have David f%$#ing Brooks calling for an uprising on the OP/ED pages of The New York Times, we have William f%$#ing Kristol saying that we should consider abolishing ICE.

Specifically, Brooks is saying that, "It’s time for a comprehensive national civic uprising. It’s time for Americans in universities, law, business, nonprofits and the scientific community, and civil servants and beyond to form one coordinated mass movement. Trump is about power. The only way he’s going to be stopped is if he’s confronted by some movement that possesses rival power."

Kristol is even more out of character, noting that the "Abolish ICE" crowd deserves an apology from the rest of us:

I think that it an understatement to note that we are living in profoundly strange times.

You Know, Morons

Source of the headline

It appears that while sharing sensitive dsetails of a stroke on Yemen with his fellow government bureaucrats, Pete Hegseth was also sharing these same details on his personal phone to his wife, brother, and lawyer. 

I did not know that a pathetic drunk could multitask so effectively: 

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared detailed information about forthcoming strikes in Yemen on March 15 in a private Signal group chat that included his wife, brother and personal lawyer, according to four people with knowledge of the chat.

Some of those people said that the information Mr. Hegseth shared on the Signal chat included the flight schedules for the F/A-18 Hornets targeting the Houthis in Yemen — essentially the same attack plans that he shared on a separate Signal chat the same day that mistakenly included the editor of The Atlantic.

(Emphasis mine)

Mr. Hegseth’s wife, Jennifer, a former Fox News producer, is not a Defense Department employee, but she has traveled with him overseas and drawn criticism for accompanying her husband to sensitive meetings with foreign leaders.

Mr. Hegseth’s brother Phil and Tim Parlatore, who continues to serve as his personal lawyer, both have jobs in the Pentagon, but it is not clear why either would need to know about upcoming military strikes aimed at the Houthis in Yemen.

I've got a guess as to why, it's because Secretary Pete is an addicted co-dependent idiot?

Then again, I'm an engineer, not a psychologist, Dammit!*

The previously unreported existence of a second Signal chat in which Mr. Hegseth shared highly sensitive military information is the latest in a series of developments that have put his management and judgment under scrutiny.

Gee, you think?

Their stupidity may yet save the Republic.

^*I love it when I get to go all Dr. McCoy!

Not Quite Sure What to Make Of This

The Supreme Court issued an injunction prohibiting the deportation of any more people to El Salvador.

This is a bit of a surprise, albeit a pleasant one, because I thought that the court was too busy prostituting itself to Trump and his Evil Minions™.

What did surprise me is that the court issued its ruling at 1 am Saturday morning, and did so before Justice Scalito could finish writing his dissent.

Late night rulings are unusual.  Issuing a ruling before the dissent is finalized?  I cannot recall when this has been done before.

Also, the moved with blistering speed, jumping the line in front of the 5th Circuit appellate court, and they did so before the DoJ had a chance to respond.

It's pretty clear that a majority of the justices, only Alito and Thomas dissented, did not trust the Trump administration not to change the facts on the ground before they issued their ruling:

Shortly before 1 a.m. on Saturday, the Supreme Court issued an emergency order halting the Trump administration’s reported efforts to fly Venezuelan migrants to an El Salvador prison before they could challenge their deportation. The court’s late-night intervention is an extraordinary and highly unusual rebuke to the government, one that may well mark a turning point in the majority’s approach to this administration. For months, SCOTUS has given the government every benefit of the doubt, accepting the Justice Department’s dubious assertions and awarding Trump immense deference. On Saturday, however, a majority of justices signaled that they no longer trust the administration to comply with the law, including the court’s own rulings. If that is indeed the case, we are likely careening toward a head-on conflict between the president and the court, with foundational principles of constitutional democracy hanging in the balance. 

 SCOTUS’s emergency order in A.A.R.P. v. Trump arose out of the government’s unlawful efforts to ship Venezuelan migrants to a Salvadoran prison by invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. On Thursday, lawyers for these individuals told a federal court that the government was preparing to summarily deport them to El Salvador, where they would be indefinitely confined at a notorious detention center. A federal judge in the Southern District of Texas had already blocked their removal—but the government sought to evade this order by busing the migrants into the Northern District of Texas, where the restraining order would not apply. It then gave these migrants “notices,” in English only, declaring that they would be deported immediately, without stating that they could contest their deportations in court. (Officials refused to give these notices, or any other information, to the migrants’ lawyers.) The government intended to fly them out of the country within 24 hours, according to court filings. 

………

There are three remarkable aspects of the court’s decision. First, it acted with startling speed—so quickly, in fact, that it published the order before Alito could finish writing his dissent; he was forced to note only that a “statement” would “follow.” It is a major breach of protocol for the Supreme Court to publish an order or opinion before a dissenting justice finishes writing their opinion, one that reflects the profound urgency of the situation. Relatedly, awkward phrasing in court’s order may imply that Alito—who first received the plaintiffs’ request—failed to refer it to the full court, as is custom, compelling the other justices to rip the case away from him. No matter what, exactly, happened behind the scenes, it’s clear that a majority would not let Alito hold up speedy action. It also acted before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit had a chance to step in, and before the Department of Justice had an opportunity to respond to the plaintiffs. These highly abnormal moves also reveal a desire to act fast.

Second, it is plain as day that the Supreme Court simply did not trust the Trump administration’s claims that it would not deport migrants over the weekend without due process. If the court did believe these representations, it would not have acted in such a rapid and dramatic fashion; it could have waited for the lower courts to sort through the matter, confident no one would face irreparable harm in the meantime. The majority’s decision to wade in straightaway points to a skepticism that the Justice Department was telling the truth. It’s damning, too, that the majority did not even wait for DOJ to file a brief with the court before acting. The only plausible explanation for the court’s order is that a majority feared the government would whisk away the migrants to El Salvador if it did not intervene immediately. That fear is well-grounded, since we now have substantial evidence that the government lied to a federal judge last month to thwart a court order stopping deportation flights.

Also the fact that the DoJ fired one of their career attorneys for telling the truth in about the abduction and rendition of Kilmar Abrego Garcia may have had something to do with this as well.

I am not sure if this is a one time hiccup, or if the court is beginning to feel their prerogatives as the Supreme Court are being ignored by the Trump administration, or that they (7 of them anyway) actually feel that Trump's behavior is a threat to the constitutional order.

Nice to see a brush-back pitch in any case.

Deep Thought

Seen on Facebook.

Had to share.

Your Mouth to God's Ear

I hope that this is true, but I doubt, but I am profoundly dubious that once the American public will end its support for ICE-type brutality they understand what is being done in their name.

This othering has been central to American politics since before the founding of the Republic, so count me as skeptical.

While I do think that one could turn this hostility towards employers who exploit illegal workers, as well as those who weaponize hatred in order to exploit legal workers:

The Gallup poll on whether Americans think immigration should be increased or decreased shows a curious pattern. From about 2001 at a high of 65 percent, there was a steady decline in the fraction of respondents who favored less immigration, with a corresponding upward trend in the fraction favoring more. The lines briefly crossed in mid-2020, with a plurality in favor of increased immigration—but starting in 2021, there was a sudden jump back toward restriction.

During the 2024 campaign, Donald Trump consistently received his highest approval ratings on immigration. The fraction of people saying that immigration is the most important issue in the country jumped from 9.2 percent in 2021 to 14.6 percent in 2024. And Trump’s xenophobic stance seemingly paid off even among Latinos who would be targets of his mass deportation agenda—he was the first Republican to win the Rio Grande Valley, which is chock-full of mixed-status families, since 1912. Post-election reporting saw many anecdotes of unauthorized immigrants themselves saying they would have voted for Trump, because surely he wouldn’t deport hardworking people like themselves.

But now, that support is fading fast. More recent polls show the priority of immigration plummeting, and majority disapproval for Trump on the issue. In the most recent YouGov/Economist poll, he is now 11 points underwater, down 16 points since he was inaugurated. Among Latinos, he is now 46 points underwater.

I think it is reasonably clear what is going on here. Republicans have a highly effective propaganda apparatus that, with the decline of mainstream journalism and the rise of social media, is more effective than ever. Under the Obama and Biden administrations, conservatives successfully whipped up a xenophobic anti-immigrant frenzy with a torrent of outrageous lies, against a background of perceived crisis at the border. But as soon as Trump takes power and makes actual decisions rather than just spreading misinformation, the public gets a whiff of what Republican anti-immigrant policy looks like in practice, and they don’t like it. It turns out that few people thought they were voting for the president to kidnap a legal resident by mistake, deport him to a torture prison in a foreign country, and openly defy a Supreme Court order to bring him back.

The problem here is that things really suck in our society, and until we direct people's attention to the actual causes of these problems, which is to say what Theodore Roosevelt called the, "Malefactors of great wealth."

The Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) needs to stop pre-conceding negotiations with the Republicans and point the finger at those who are actually

Skeet of the day

This is as true . . . as turnips is. This is as true . . . as taxes is. And nothing’s truer than them. 

Donald Trump is King George III.

He should be treated as such.

Trump Blinks Again

In response to Harvard publicizing it's f%$@-you to the White House demands for control over its admissions, hiring, and curriculum, the Trump and his Evil Minions™ are now claiming that it was just some rando who sent the letter without authorization.

Yeah, and I'm the Queen of Sheba:

Harvard University received an emailed letter from the Trump administration last Friday that included a series of demands about hiring, admissions and curriculum so onerous that school officials decided they had no choice but to take on the White House.

The university announced its intentions on Monday, setting off a tectonic battle between one of the country’s most prestigious universities and a U.S. president. Then, almost immediately, came a frantic call from a Trump official.

The April 11 letter from the White House’s task force on antisemitism, this official told Harvard, should not have been sent and was “unauthorized,” two people familiar with the matter said.

The letter was sent by the acting general counsel of the Department of Health and Human Services, Sean Keveney, according to three other people, who were briefed on the matter. Mr. Keveney is a member of the antisemitism task force. 

I'll believe that it was an honest accident if Mr. Kevene is fired and deported to El Saklvador's CECOT prison.

OK, I know that this is extreme.  His head could be impaled on a pike, or he could be publicly hoist up a flag pole by his testicles.

………

After Harvard publicly repudiated the demands, the Trump administration raised the pressure, freezing billions in federal funding to the school and warning that its tax-exempt status was in jeopardy.

A senior White House official said the administration stood by the letter, calling the university’s decision to publicly rebuff the administration overblown and blaming Harvard for not continuing discussions.

“It was malpractice on the side of Harvard’s lawyers not to pick up the phone and call the members of the antisemitism task force who they had been talking to for weeks,” said May Mailman, the White House senior policy strategist. “Instead, Harvard went on a victimhood campaign.”

And then the Trump administration caved like the bitches that they are.

And those claims of an accident?

………

Harvard pushed back on the White House’s claim that it should have checked with the administration lawyers after receiving the letter.

The letter “was signed by three federal officials, placed on official letterhead, was sent from the email inbox of a senior federal official and was sent on April 11 as promised,” Harvard said in a statement on Friday. “Recipients of such correspondence from the U.S. government — even when it contains sweeping demands that are astonishing in their overreach — do not question its authenticity or seriousness.”

OK, my bad, THREE flagpoles.

And of course, Trump responded by cutting off billions of dollars in aid, and ordered the IRS to try to pull Harvard's tax-exempt status. 

Yeah, clearly an error.

Signs of the Apocalypse

Sarah Huckabee Sanders has done something right.

Not only has she done something right, in signing a bill that bans Pharmacy Benefit Managers from owning pharmacies, she is the first in the nation to do this.

Governor Sanders had to choose between Big Pharma and ordinary folks, and she went with ordinary folks.

Good news, not not what I expected:

Arkansas became the first state in the nation to prevent healthcare conglomerates from operating drugstores here when Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed House Bill 1150 on Wednesday.

State law already regulates what pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) pay to reimburse independent pharmacies, but pharmacists have complained that the companies violate the law. The state has also fined four PBMs a total of $1.47 million for paying Arkansas pharmacies below the legally required amount for prescription drugs.

PBMs negotiate prescription benefits among drug manufacturers, distributors, pharmacies and health insurance providers, and the biggest ones also own pharmacies and insurers. The Federal Trade Commission released an interim report in July 2024 saying these conglomerates are eliminating competition and increasing drug prices at the expense of patients.

HB 1150 headed to Sanders’ desk April 9 after clearing the Senate with a bipartisan 26 votes, six days after it passed the House with 89 votes. The bill generated hours of discussion and public comment in the House and Senate committees on Insurance and Commerce this month.

“These massive corporations are attacking our state because we will be the first in the country to hold them accountable for their anticompetitive actions,” Sanders said in a statement Wednesday.

This is probably the most aggressive anti-monopoly action taken by a Republican of national stature since ……… (Checks Notes) Teddy Roosevelt?  (Maybe Nixon, or William Howard Taft, but definitely a long f%$#ing time ago)

It's welcome news, but this is profoundly weird.for this to have come from Governor "Smokey Eye".

It's Thursday ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Initial Claims and Labor Turnover


Continuing claims and confidence


And Real EstateMaybe more like Thursday, "Dafuq?"

I'm beginning to wonder if the DOGE boys are messing the the Department of Labor data to create a false sense of prosperity, because it makes no sense that initial unemployment claims fell to a 2 month low.

Everything seems to have been freezing up in response to the Trump Mishugas.

I would note that continuing claims have continued their slow climb.

Maybe no one is hiring or laying off right now:

The number of Americans filing new applications for unemployment benefits fell to a two-month low last week, suggesting labor market conditions remained stable in April, though uncertainty around tariffs is making businesses hesitant to boost hiring.

President Donald Trump's import duties are squeezing the housing market, with other data on Thursday showing single-family housing starts plunging to an eight-month low in March, which underscored economists' expectations that economic growth likely ground to a halt in the first quarter. 

………

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped 9,000 to a seasonally adjusted 215,000 for the week ended April 12, the lowest level since February, the Labor Department said.

Economists polled by Reuters had forecast 225,000 claims for the latest week. There are still no signs mass firings of federal government workers have significantly impacted the labor market.

Dunno what is going on, but I do know that things are f%$#ed up and sh%$.

………

Claims declined during the March and April survey weeks, suggesting a steady pace of job gains this month. The economy added 228,000 jobs in March while the unemployment rate rose to 4.2% from 4.1% in February.

Next week's data on the number of people receiving benefits after an initial week of aid, a proxy for hiring, could shed more light on the labor market's fortunes in April.

The so-called continuing claims increased 41,000 to a seasonally adjusted 1.885 million during the week ending April 5, the claims report showed, indicating some laid-off workers were finding it difficult to land new opportunities.

Yeah, some workers, like, you know, me.  f%$#

………

A third report from the Commerce Department's Census Bureau showed single-family housing starts, which account for the bulk of homebuilding, dropped 14.2% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 940,000 units in March, the lowest level since July.

They decreased 9.7% year-on-year. Weak homebuilding added to economists' expectations that gross domestic product growth slowed to below a 0.5% annualized rate in the first quarter, with greater odds for a contraction.

A surge in imports as businesses front-loaded goods to avoid tariffs accounts for some of the anticipated stall in growth. The economy grew at a 2.4% pace in the fourth quarter.

………

Overall housing starts tumbled 11.4% to a rate of 1.324 million units. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast housing starts falling to a rate of 1.420 million units.

Multi-family building permits jumped 10.1% to a rate of 445,000 units. That lifted overall building permits by 1.6% to a pace of 1.482 million units last month.

Yeah, a new prosperity.  And eggs are cheap now too ……… NOT! 

Whatever the f%$# is going on here, it ain't good.

Seen on Tumblr

Link

This is as true . . . as turnips is. This is as true . . . as taxes is. And nothing’s truer than them.

This Ain't Good

We now have reports that Elon Musk's merry band of vandals have download sensitive information from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

By "Sensitive Information" I mean confidential legal discussions, the names of whistle blowers, and list of labor organizers.

Any guess as to what the famously union averse Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ is going to do with this information?

In the first days of March, a team of advisers from President Trump's new Department of Government Efficiency initiative arrived at the Southeast Washington, D.C., headquarters of the National Labor Relations Board.

The small, independent federal agency investigates and adjudicates complaints about unfair labor practices. It stores reams of potentially sensitive data, from confidential information about employees who want to form unions to proprietary business information.

………

But according to an official whistleblower disclosure shared with Congress and other federal overseers that was obtained by NPR, subsequent interviews with the whistleblower and records of internal communications, technical staff members were alarmed about what DOGE engineers did when they were granted access, particularly when those staffers noticed a spike in data leaving the agency. It's possible that the data included sensitive information on unions, ongoing legal cases and corporate secrets — data that four labor law experts tell NPR should almost never leave the NLRB and that has nothing to do with making the government more efficient or cutting spending.

Meanwhile, according to the disclosure and records of internal communications, members of the DOGE team asked that their activities not be logged on the system and then appeared to try to cover their tracks behind them, turning off monitoring tools and manually deleting records of their access — evasive behavior that several cybersecurity experts interviewed by NPR compared to what criminal or state-sponsored hackers might do.

(Emphasis mine)

Criminals acting like criminals.  It should be noted here that this shows that Elon Musk's Evil Minions™ had specific criminal intent, which makes prosecution under statutes like the CFPA much easier. (I offer the caveat that I am an engineer, not a lawyer, dammit! ⃰)

The employees grew concerned that the NLRB's confidential data could be exposed, particularly after they started detecting suspicious log-in attempts from an IP address in Russia, according to the disclosure. Eventually, the disclosure continued, the IT department launched a formal review of what it deemed a serious, ongoing security breach or potentially illegal removal of personally identifiable information. The whistleblower believes that the suspicious activity warrants further investigation by agencies with more resources, like the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency or the FBI.

The labor law experts interviewed by NPR fear that if the data gets out, it could be abused, including by private companies with cases before the agency that might get insights into damaging testimony, union leadership, legal strategies and internal data on competitors — Musk's SpaceX among them. It could also intimidate whistleblowers who might speak up about unfair labor practices, and it could sow distrust in the NLRB's independence, they said.  

The new revelations about DOGE's activities at the labor agency come from a whistleblower in the IT department of the NLRB, who disclosed his concerns to Congress and the U.S. Office of Special Counsel in a detailed report that was then provided to NPR. Meanwhile, his attempts to raise concerns internally within the NLRB preceded someone "physically taping a threatening note" to his door that included sensitive personal information and overhead photos of him walking his dog that appeared to be taken with a drone, according to a cover letter attached to his disclosure filed by his attorney, Andrew Bakaj of the nonprofit Whistleblower Aid.

Elon's thugs are not just criminals, they are terrorists.

They need to be treated as such.

^*I love it when I get to go all Dr. McCoy!