That's exactly what it is, you beer-swilling surrender monkey

 

 Trump's peace push 'not a betrayal' of Ukraine, Hegseth says

The legal system is about to be clogged with multiple battles over Trump's second and imperial presidency, which has deployed Elon Musk as the embodiment of the line-item veto which it does not possess

It's a strange day when I find myself agreeing with Ed Markey.

. . . “The courts, if they interpret the Constitution correctly, are going to stop Musk, are going to stop Trump,” Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Ed Markey told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Thursday.

“Article One is the Congress. Article Two is the president, Article Three is the judiciary. There is not an Article 3.5 where Elon Musk gets to do whatever he wants to do,” Markey said. “They are trying to rewrite constitutional law in this country.” . . .

Three weeks in, the growing storm of lawsuits means some of this young administration’s most extraordinary applications of unilateral presidential power could be reined in. But the litigation also conjures a scenario that no one wants to think about: what would happen if the administration refused to recognize court rulings — even one handed down by the Supreme Court?

This is a particularly acute matter because it’s the Justice Department, which is now operating under Trump’s firm hand, that’s responsible for enforcing the law. The constitutional remedy for a president who breaks the law is impeachment, but Republicans have twice shown that they will not hold Trump to account in such trials, making moot this key check on power envisioned by the founders.

“That is the doomsday scenario,” Ryan Goodman, a former Defense Department special counsel and NYU law professor, told CNN’s Burnett. “So far, they are complying with all the court orders, but what happens come the day that they do lose at the Supreme Court?” Goodman asked.

“If they really want to push it, we are in a real constitutional crisis.”

From the story here.

Trump's new Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, has given Elon Musk control of the payment systems which control everyone's Social Security and Medicare benefits

 

 Billionaire Elon Musk’s deputies have gained access to a sensitive Treasury Department system responsible for trillions of dollars in U.S. government payments after the administration ousted a top career official at the department, according to three people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe government deliberations.  

On Friday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent approved access to the Treasury’s payments system for a team led by Tom Krause, a Silicon Valley executive working in concert with Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency,” the people said. 

David A. Lebryk, who served in nonpolitical roles at Treasury for several decades and had been the acting secretary before Bessent’s confirmation, had refused to turn over access to Musk’s surrogates, people familiar with the situation told The Washington Post. Trump officials placed Lebryk on administrative leave, and then he announced his retirement Friday in an email to colleagues. 

Spokespeople for Treasury and DOGE declined to comment. 

The sensitive systems, run by the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, control the flow of more than $6 trillion annually. Tens of millions of people across the country rely on the systems. They are responsible for paying Social Security and Medicare benefits, salaries for federal personnel, payments to government contractors and grant recipients, and tax refunds, among tens of thousands of other functions.

More.

These guys are up against the debt ceiling and are obviously looking for other ways than the customary "extraordinary measures" to cut spending under the circumstances of a new administration trying to pass new tax and spending legislation. That's why Trump has offered buyouts to government workers so they quit, among other novel spending gambits like freezing program spending for 90-days.

The Treasury stopped paying into certain accounts from January 17th, before Trump and Musk took over, as part of the extraordinary measures undertaken by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to keep from hitting it.

She's been keeping the national debt at $36 trillion to $36.2 trillion ever since Thanksgiving.

It's all very troubling, as elected officials like to say.

Typically, only a small group of career employees control the payment systems, and former officials have said it is extremely unusual for anyone connected to political appointees to access them. 

Black Hawk helicopter collision with passenger jet was part of a routine, annual re-training of night flights on a standard corridor for a continuity of government mission

 Crashed US Army Black Hawk unit was responsible for doomsday readiness

... The three soldiers killed in the collision were part of the 12th Aviation Battalion at Fort Belvoir in Virginia, whose responsibilities in a national crisis include evacuating Pentagon officials. Another 64 people were killed in the passenger plane. ...

Maybe the two best things about Marco Rubio are his condemnations of China for persecuting the Uyghur Muslims and of Tesla for opening a store where they live

 You go, Little Marco.

WaPo story reproduced here.

You say Uyghur and I say Uighur . . ..

Iraq combat vets wondered why National Guard member Pete Hegseth showed up in Iraq in 2005 leading a platoon

 “I showed up in the 101st Airborne Division, in one of the most storied units in our nation’s history, with a bunch of combat vets who’d already done a tour in Iraq and they looked at me like, ‘Who the hell is this guy?’” Hegseth said in a 2021 interview on “The Will Cain Show” podcast.

One former officer who served with Hegseth said he was surprised to see a National Guard member taking on such a role. He surmised that Hegseth probably wanted to run for office someday and thought a combat tour could help, the former officer said. ...

The former Army officer who served with Hegseth in Iraq said he believes he has latched on to “populist scenarios” in a quest for personal gain. When news of Hegseth’s potential nomination emerged, old acquaintances from those days got back in touch with one another, the former officer said.

One text he received especially stood out. All it said: “WTF?”

More.

Jonathan Chait just glosses right over the fact that Pete Hegseth at the minimum cheated on his second wife AND on his eventual third wife, who had just had his baby, with a married woman

 The baby was born in August 2017, which coincided with his divorce from his second wife, which means Hegseth cheated on the second wife in 2016.

The "consensual sexual encounter" with the married woman occurred in October 2017.

This is the guy the officer corps should look up to? He's an out of control sexual predator.

Pete Hegseth is a train wreck of a man.

Does he remind you of anyone?

I predict that the US Senate will not get an opportunity to inquire of Mr. Hegseth about his belief that America was founded in proto-Marxism because he will have to withdraw his nomination, just like Gaetz, long before that, preferably by this Friday afternoon's news dump.

Here:

Hegseth denies the allegation and says that the encounter, which took place while he was transitioning between his second and third wives, was consensual. He paid the alleged victim an undisclosed sum in return for her signing a nondisclosure agreement.

The LA Times wants you to know there are way fewer Trump signs in rural Michigan right now, perhaps because of the Trump assassination attempt

 Some rural and suburban Michiganders also reported a general sense of unease and even fear, particularly those who say they were spooked by the attempted assassination of Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania last month. Kitchen said she “kind of shut down” her previously active Facebook account after the attack, because the political rhetoric got too heated.

Raffy Castro, 22, was fishing for bass from a dock over the Clinton River on Monday afternoon. Though this will be the first election the Sterling Heights resident has voted in, he recalled much higher enthusiasm in the lead-up to the 2020 election.

“I haven’t heard people talking about it,” he said. “I think people are scared, especially with the shooting. I guess people don’t want to portray who they support.”

More.

 

Bloomberg is reporting Kamala Harris has the nomination clinched

 Kamala Harris has more than enough pledged delegates to clinch the Democratic presidential nomination, following an extraordinary two-day blitz that saw the vice president consolidate her party’s backing to challenge Donald Trump in November.

Harris sealed her status as the presumptive nominee Monday night after crossing the magic number of 1,976 pledged delegates, according to an unofficial Associated Press tally. While delegates who indicated their support are not required to back her nomination, the achievement — and lack of credible opposition — underscores the vice president’s hold on the Democratic ticket.

More.

But look at those big stretches of light blue in places like New York, Michigan, and Illinois, among others. The resistance to Kamala Harris is real, even in California.

 

Coup attempt against Joe Biden by democracy worshipers Adam Shifty Schiff, Nancy Big Guns Pelosi, Chucky Schumer, and Hakeem Jeffries isn't working lol

 

WH Says Biden 'Unmoved' By Discussions With Schumer & Jeffries

CNN: Pelosi Told Biden He Can't Win

Biden Campaign Sees No Change In Odds of Him Being Nominee

Schiff Calls on Biden To Drop Out

Germany's Alternative für Deutschland is against EU bailouts of Greece and Italy and against EU membership for Ukraine

 

In discussing the party's policy platform, Weidel said AfD's future allies in the European Parliament should oppose the disbursal of taxpayer money to the "debt states" of Europe - a reference to countries such as Italy and Greece - and the idea that Ukraine belongs to the European Union, after it opened membership talks this week.

Reported here.

British conservatives are still blind to Nigel Farage's truth, which is identical with Henry Kissinger's long-held position that Ukraine should not join NATO

 Western civilisation is being destroyed by its own decadence

Zoe Strimpel, UK Telegraph

Last week, Nigel Farage outed himself as deeply unfit for leadership by piping the same line as other populists in Europe and the United States: that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is effectively our fault because, through Nato expansion, we had “poked” the Russian bear . . ..

Henry Kissinger was US Secretary of State under Nixon and Ford.

This position has nothing to do with populism, except by the accident of thinking correctly.

The truly mentally ill person in this story is the tolerant woman who was brutally attacked and raped by the same man who murdered the other one

 

  She's as much a danger to the rest of us as the perp.

 2 women are brutally attacked on Venice Canals, focusing debate on crime, homelessness

She feels the attacks are emblematic of an issue no one wants to address: the mental health and drug crisis among the unhoused residents of Venice.

"It's not like they're horrible people," Klein said. "It's just we need to stop being in denial about our family members and our community members who are in desperate need of mental health help — especially those who are really struggling on the streets."

 

Nate Cohn of New York Times/Siena College Poll: This time around, Joe Biden has become the broadly unlikeable one

  

 Donald Trump has never been popular. He’s still not popular. His unfavorability rating is just as high today as it was heading into Election Day 2020. This group of disengaged voters doesn’t like Donald Trump, and never did. What’s changed, to my mind, is that Joe Biden went from being a broadly appealing person — they didn’t necessarily love him, they didn’t necessarily even like him, but he was acceptable — to someone who many voters do not find acceptable anymore.

More.

LA Times editorial board lol: You’re not alone if it seems like your electric bill is getting too damn high

From the story here, slightly edited for clarity:

State greenhouse gas reduction Fascist government policies are pushing forcing residents to adopt electric cars and appliances that will only increase their electricity consumption.

Biden restarts Obama's war on new coal leasing ended by Trump . . . just in time for the election

 

 In one of its biggest steps yet to keep fossil fuels in the ground, the Biden administration announced Thursday that it will end new coal leasing in the Powder River Basin, which produces nearly half the coal in the United States.

Climate activists have long pushed the Interior Department to stop auctioning off leases for coal mining on public lands, and they celebrated the decision. It could prevent billions of tons of coal from being extracted from more than 13 million acres across Montana and Wyoming, with major implications for U.S. climate goals. ...

Last year, the Powder River Basin generated 251.9 million tons of coal, accounting for nearly 44 percent of all coal produced in the United States. Under the bureau’s [Bureau of Land Management] determination, the 14 active coal mines in the Powder River Basin can continue operating on lands they have leased, but they cannot expand onto other public lands in the region. ...

The Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign estimates that 382 coal-fired power plants have closed down or proposed to retire, with 148 remaining. ...

Trump ... pledged to immediately end the Biden administration’s freeze on permits for new liquefied natural gas exports in a second term . . .. He also pledged to start auctioning off more leases for oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and to lift restrictions on drilling in the Alaskan Arctic. 

More.

It was all inflation, running at 3.4%: Advance retail sales in April up 3% year over year, but flat from March to April

You're just shelling out more for the same stuff, not buying new stuff.

“Today’s retail sales report reflects a pullback in consumer spending that retailers have called out in recent earnings reports,” said Claire Tassin, retail and e-commerce analyst at Morning Consult.

Compared with last April, sales were up 3%, but the Census Bureau doesn’t adjust the data for inflation, which came in at 3.4% on an annual basis in April, according to the latest consumer price index report. That suggests that the sales gains from a year ago are “entirely attributable to inflation, not increased consumer demand,” Tassin said.

Barron's, reproduced here.

Remember when Joe Biden pledged to reverse Trump's senseless tariffs lol?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Biden Levies Sweeping Tariffs on China, Intensifying Trade Fight With Trump

Good Lord man, that "wave" is just 291,400 people, 0.086% of the entire population

 Record Wave Leave Big Cities for Small Ones...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They expect to be paid for this news.

Victims of the permanent psychedelic trip demand accommodation

 From the LA Times here:

“This disorder has stigma and shame attached to it. People often dismiss people with HPPD as druggies,” he said. “We deserve the same amount of caring and attention as people with any serious life-altering condition. … For that to happen, doctors need to know this is a thing."

I'd be more sympathetic if there were even one word in this story suggesting that drug liberalization laws have been a big mistake, but no. There isn't the slightest hint of remorse.

We've known since at least the 1960s that psychedelics can cause permanent harm, removing users from productive society and making them a burden on us all.

There is no excuse for this sorry state of affairs.