It's stupid for Trump to riff off today's producer price report and call Jay Powell names because the number is likely to be revised higher, and besides, that's just poor form, old boy

 

 May 2025 core producer prices, aka core wholesale prices, were reported today up 3.02% year over year. That will doubtlessly be revised up, especially as we get farther away from May.

Today's chart indicates April was up 3.18% yoy, but was originally reported at 3.1%. The latter was already rounded up, but the former rounds up to 3.2%. We'll see if that gets revised higher in coming months as well.

March was up 3.91% yoy we are told today, but originally it was reported at 3.3%.

February was up 3.74%, but originally reported at 3.4%.

January was up 3.92%, but originally reported at 3.6%.

December was up 3.74%, but originally reported at 3.5%.

The average up revision, including April, has been 0.3. 

Be that as it may, we have in the May report nine consecutive months with core producer prices up in excess of 3% year over year.

Meanwhile for the nine years 2012-2020, the average increase was 1.62% yoy. I don't call producer prices rising at a rate 85% higher than that in May 2025 good news. It may be "less bad" news, but that doesn't make it good news.

Trump's a jerk to Powell. Vance is a very polished jerk. Remember his treatment of Zelenskyy? Stephen Miller is a jerk to Rand Paul. If you've seen the Trump cabinet in action, many of whom are political losers, you've seen even more insulting jerks. They may be descendants of the people of Jerkola for all I know, but I can only speculate.

 

 

  

 

Cowardly Republican stooges, but I repeat myself, dummy up on UN vote and Trump appeasement, but Cocaine Mitch comes through

 

 Republicans mostly mum on Trump’s upending of Russia policy: Some spoke out against Putin, sidestepped Trump 

... The two votes on Monday were the latest sign of a dramatic reversal of America’s bipartisan policy since World War II of standing diplomatically and militarily with Europe to defend against the threat of Soviet and later Russian aggression.

It is a shift that congressional Republicans have, with very few exceptions, silently watched unfold.

Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, issued the most fulsome GOP dissent to date against President Donald Trump’s position on Ukraine.

McConnell, in a statement, called Trump’s unfolding policy reversal “disgraceful” and “unseemly” and suggested it was a reprise of the appeasement that led to World War II.

“‘Peace for our time’ is a noble end, but hope that appeasement will check the ambitions of this aggressor is as naïve today as it was in 1939,” McConnell said, referring to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s famous remark after signing the Munich Agreement and Germany’s subsequent invasion of Czechoslovakia. “America is right to seek an end to this war, but an end that fails to constrain Russian ambition, ensure Ukrainian sovereignty, or strengthen American credibility with both allies and adversaries is no end at all.”

Such a “hollow peace,” he said, would “invite further aggression,” a reference primarily to the lesson China might take away from a demonstration of wilted U.S. resolve.

... virtually no GOP lawmakers besides McConnell have directly criticized Trump’s emerging plan . . ..

 

J. D. Vance is proving himself to be a very intelligent imbecile

 Earlier in the week there were no good guys nor bad guys in the Ukraine War:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Later in the week the Russian army is invading European countries en masse:

 

 

Everyday actually:

President of Jerkola renames places on maps, Canal of Panamonium, Grifterland, and The Great White Eh up next

 

Google Maps to rename ‘Gulf of Mexico’ to ‘Gulf of America’

Keep on sucking until you do succeed, illustrated

 Second one for him, third for her.

He'll be 63. She's 48.

 

Now that Democrats have lost everything, The New York Times has nothing to lose by telling the truth about their illegal immigration tsunami under Joe Biden

 

 The numbers in the Times analysis include both legal and illegal immigration. About 60 percent of immigrants who have entered the country since 2021 have done so without legal authorization, according to a Goldman Sachs report based on government data.

The combined increases of legal and illegal immigration have caused the share of the U.S. population born in another country to reach a new high, 15.2 percent in 2023, up from 13.6 percent in 2020. The previous high was 14.8 percent, in 1890.

Story here.

People should give Joe Biden more credit. He promised this immigration disaster, and boy did we get it, good and hard. Nothing sucks like success.

Joe defended it during the Democrat debates in 2019, and invited it during the final 2020 debate with Trump, and America voted for it.

 

 

 

One nutball era ends, another begins

 Trump attorney general pick Matt Gaetz under scrutiny as House Ethics report on sex and drug claims takes focus :

On Thursday, an attorney for the woman who alleges she had a sexual relationship with Gaetz when she was a minor said the Ethics panel should release the report.

“Mr. Gaetz’s likely nomination as Attorney General is a perverse development in a truly dark series of events. We would support the House Ethics Committee immediately releasing their report,” John Clune, a partner at Hutchinson Black and Cook, wrote on X.

“She was a high school student and there were witnesses,” the lawyer added.     

 

Trump picks vaccine skeptic RFK Jr. for Health and Human Services secretary

Kennedy, in a post on X, thanked Trump and wrote, “I’m committed to advancing your vision to Make America Healthy Again.” ...

Andrea Ducas, vice president of health policy for the advocacy group Center for American Progress, in a statement called Trump’s choice of Kennedy “nothing short of disastrous for the country.”

“His track record and open skepticism of longstanding medical science could jeopardize the incredible public health gains we’ve accomplished as a nation – including the gains we’ve made in combatting infectious disease through childhood vaccination programs and in making our food supply safer through pasteurization,” Ducas said.

 

End of the Nutball Era

Sure, sure it is.

 

 

 

 

For a public school teacher, Tim Walz is a very intelligent imbecile

 

Billionaire Mark Cuban is what Moe would call a very intelligent imbecile

 

LOL, 73-year old tranny calls 26-year old tranny fringe, apparently because of the bulge

The beef has been simmering for months and began long before Mulvaney’s string of brand-name endorsement deals. In October 2022, Jenner took issue with Mulvaney’s campaign to “normalize the bulge” — a reference to “women” who have male genitalia. “Dylan …congrats you’re trans with a penis,” Jenner snapped in a tweet. 

Getting a chopadickoffame is good enough for The Post apparently, which calls Mulvaney a biological male but not Jenner.

That won't cut it for most folks, for whom the two principals and The Post make three who are all umbday in any language.

Story. 

 

 

LOL, US Senate votes "unanimously" for permanent daylight saving time, "probably the worst choice"

 The bipartisan bill is the work of perhaps the two dumbest people in the US Senate, Patty Murray and Marco Rubio, who represent the extreme northwest, the extreme southeast, and the nation generally.

While no time system will be perfect for everyone, making daylight saving time permanent would lead to a greater number of dark mornings than we have now, said Phyllis Zee, chief of sleep medicine at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. ...

Experts say circadian misalignment has been associated with adverse effects on cognition and mood as well as cardiovascular and metabolic function. “It’s really not a good thing to have your internal body clocks out of sync,” Zee said. “Imagine being in jet lag a lot of the time; it can’t be good for you." ...

Zee said her “heart sank” when she saw the news of the Senate vote. “I thought there would be more of a discussion, that it wouldn’t be as unanimous.” Of the three potential time systems for the country to be on — permanent standard, biannual switching and permanent daylight saving time — she said, the last is “probably the worst choice.”

More.

 

If the Fed folks think raising the Federal Funds Rate will help control inflation, they are sadly mistaken . . . again

From 1983 through 2001, the Federal Funds Rate was aggressively high and averaged 6.27%, and the Consumer Price Index averaged 3.24%.*

From 2002 through 2020, the Consumer Price Index was much lower on average at 2.01%, as the Fed pursued an aggressive low interest rate policy, which averaged just 1.36%.

So, lower Federal Funds Rate, lower inflation, higher Federal Funds Rate, higher inflation, just the opposite of what the Fed says it intends.

But only a numbskull thinks these are correlated. The Fed is merely reactionary to complex existing phenomena, not pro-actively creating conditions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

* I used the average of the annual averages.

Wow, this cheered me up

Link.

Update:

Nazi Twitter has suspended the account showing the video of the guy with the backpack shutting down the protesters who were blocking traffic.

You Tube still has it here.

Update:

OK, YouTube took it down.

View it here.

I feel like Curly:

The "all items" CPI is up 2.1% year over year, wages 2.5%

Now don't go blow all the 0.4 points all in one place.

Marco Rubio, the very intelligent imbecile: "You don't win the nomination by how many states you win"

No, obviously you win the nomination by losing all the states!

You Republicans who are promoting this moron better find a new candidate because this one is umbday in any language.

Video available here.

Ted Cruz, separated at birth hallelujah edition

Senator Marco Rubio: We need more welders and less philosophers

Oh boy, they ate that up in Milwaukee.

Go less miles . . . use fewer gasoline.

Drudge is umbday in any language: Good help is still hard to find

Benito Curly & Barack, As A Trio They're A Crock

125 Million Americans Are "Close To The Edge Of Ruin"

Story here:

"Nearly a quarter, 24 percent, admit to having more debt on plastic than money in the bank, while 16 percent say they have neither credit card debt nor savings. That puts 40 percent of the population close to the edge of ruin while everyone else seems to be sitting pretty."

(The Three Stooges, "An Ache In Every Stake", 1941, here)