This story, for example, says nothing about evading a Houthi missile.
Fighter jet slips off carrier hangar deck in Red Sea, one minor injury
And is this even the Truman?
I mean, that's an F-35 going in the drink, not the same jet.
You can't trust anybody these days apparently.
Journalists gloss over. My eyes glaze over.
So embarrassing.
Rod Dreher, world citizen.
The consensus estimate for tomorrow's core pce inflation number is 2.6% year over year in March, and 0.1% month over month. In February the actual numbers were 2.8% year over year and 0.4% month over month.
The consensus estimate for tomorrow's real GDP estimate is 0.4% vs. 2.4% actual the previous quarter. Yes, you read that right, 0.4%. GDPNow's final read on 1Q2025 out this morning is . . . -2.7%.
Yikes.
The ADP employment change will also be reported. Consensus is for +108,000 vs. +155,000 actual the previous month.
Nonfarm payrolls comes out on Friday. Consensus is for +130,000 for April vs. +228,000 actual in March.
... Trump has declared eight national emergencies in his first 100 days, more than any other president. ...
Invoking an emergency has come to mean that the president can bypass Congress, intimidate courts, and run roughshod over normal procedures, even civil liberties. And while the current number is striking, it’s not a Trumpian innovation. Presidents have become addicted to emergency powers, unlike many other countries. The U.S. Constitution says nothing about how to declare or end an emergency. This has allowed presidents to organically assume a wide range of powers. This usually happened during wartime. ...
Today, Americans are living under dozens of ongoing national emergencies, mostly tied to foreign policy like sanctions. The oldest standing one, targeting Iran, dates back to the Carter administration. Others come from the post-9/11 era, when Congress granted the executive branch sweeping new powers, all in the name of national security. Both parties have used emergency powers to serve their broader agendas. In 2022, President Joe Biden attempted to forgive student loan debt by using an emergency authority related to the COVID-19 pandemic. ...
More.
Like failing to establish a formula for the continued growth of representation, thus unwittingly concentrating power in an oligarchic Congress by default, the constitution's silence about emergencies is yet one more example of the founders' inability to imagine every which way one branch might try to exploit it, which is an increasingly pressing problem in our increasingly illiberal society.
I remember he officiated at a funeral once, and yep, he wore a blue suit.
Even when I visited him at his home he was wearing a blue suit.
More remarkably, though, on pay day once a month my boss would go to the bank, take out a wad of cash, and then pay his mortgage in cash, walk to the phone company and pay in cash, and walk to the utility company and pay in cash.
He'd also pay me in cash.
Then he'd walk to the hotel bar with his friends for the evening and pay in cash.
He paid for everything in cash, unlike this guy.
Standards have really declined.
And Elon Musk wanted this guy to be Treasury Secretary instead of Bessent, which is even funnier.
As usual the alarmists and doomsayers are . . . alarmists and doomsayers.
Demand for US debt is steady and strong this week:
3MO at 4.225% average vs. 4.225% previously
6MO at 4.05 vs. 4.06 previously
2Y at 3.795 vs. 3.984 previously
5Y at 3.995 vs. 4.1 previously
7Y at 4.123 vs. 4.233 previously.
Yields across the curve last night averaged 4.240, down from 4.261 a week ago, below the Daily Fed Funds Rate at 4.33.
The GDPNow model estimate for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the first quarter of 2025 is -2.5 percent on April 24, down from -2.2 percent on April 17.
More.
The BEA's first estimate of first quarter real GDP is scheduled for release on April 30th.
... U.S. District Judge Stephanie A. Gallagher in Baltimore on Wednesday ruled that removing him without a chance to complete his asylum petition or challenge his deportation violated the settlement agreement. Cristian, and any other person who had been removed in violation of the settlement agreement, should be returned, she said. ...
More.
... By politely and factually shoving all that disgrace in their smug faces, Tim Pool diminished and embarrassed the media elite, which is crucial in our noble crusade to someday enjoy the lamentations of their women. ...
More.
The cruelty is indeed the point of MAGA.
China says no ongoing trade talks with the U.S., calls for canceling ‘unilateral’ tariffs
"At present there are absolutely no negotiations on the economy and trade
between China and the U.S.,” said Ministry of Commerce Spokesperson He
Yadong. ... "If the U.S. really wants to resolve the problem ... it should cancel all the unilateral measures on China,” He said.
The Treasury Secretary would know, of course, because he has to report income and outlays every month.
One person who witnessed the dispute said:
It was quite a scene. It was loud. And I mean, loud.
The story is here.
The casualties of America’s loss of glassware manufacturing to China
... the U.S. glass industry lost almost 40,000 manufacturing jobs between 2000 to 2008. At the same time, China’s share of the U.S. market rose from 3% to 31%.
Boeing hopes to find new buyers for up to 50 planes returned by China
... Two Boeing jets have returned to the US from China,
with another on the way, after the imposition of steep 125% tariffs on
American imports. China imposed the levies in retaliation to the White
House’s 145% rate that threatens to significantly slow down the world
economy. ...
Blank Sailings Rattle Trans-Pacific Trade as China Imports Nosedive
... Container shipping companies have blanked at least 80 sailings this month, compared to 51 in March 2020, when volumes crashed amid early Covid-19 lockdowns, Sea-Intelligence said. ...
Bloomberg published the story just before noon on Tuesday reporting the closed-door meeting where Bessent said he expected the tariff stand-off with China to de-escalate, and that the current situation, which amounts to a trade embargo, is unsustainable and will de-escalate in the very near future.
Markets opened Tuesday morning strongly higher and by 11:00 AM were up 110 points on the $SPX.
The Secretary of the Treasury shouldn't be having closed door meetings with the very people most likely to profit from what he has to say.
This is quite literally fascist economics.
... Spot gold slipped 2.2% at $3,305.79 an ounce by 09:23 a.m. ET (1323 GMT), after hitting a record high of $3,500.05 in the previous session. U.S. gold futures dropped 2.9% to $3,320.40. ...
More.
The chutzpah of these parasites is really something, but Real Clear should be ashamed for promoting it.
The billionaires complain that expenditures far outpace revenues, but taxes must never be raised to pay for them:
"My answer on tax policy, what should tax rates be? Just always a little bit lower. I'm not going to tell you the number, they should always be a little bit lower."
Billionaires for tax cuts!
Meanwhile the $40 billion USAID budget was nothing but a virtue signaling food for the poor scam to these two:
"And so much of this left-wing philanthropy nonprofit world, I think it was just a cover for borderline criminal activity."
Spot gold was up 1.4% at $3,472.49 an ounce, as of 0247 GMT, after touching a record high of $3,473.03 per ounce earlier in the session.
More.
Hochul fought back, declaring: “The cameras are staying on.” ...
Gold surges to a record above $3,400 as Trump threatens Fed independence
Gold prices broke $3,400 on Monday, hitting a new record as President Donald Trump’s threats against the Federal Reserve’s independence and his tariffs shake investor confidence in the U.S. economy.
Gold futures jumped about 2.69% to $3,418 per ounce by 8:20 a.m. ET on Monday, with investors buying the precious metal as the dollar hit a three-year low.
Gold has jumped about 29% since the start of the year and nearly 8% since Trump unveiled his sweeping tariffs on April 2.
Trump said last Thursday that Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s “termination cannot come fast enough,” after the U.S. central bank chief warned that the president’s tariffs will likely increase inflation in the near term. ...
Video from Friday night shows Immigration and Customs Enforcement buses full of Venezuelan migrants headed toward an airport in North Texas before abruptly turning around before the Supreme Court ruled the Trump administration must, for now, refrain from deporting Venezuelan men based in the state under the Alien Enemies Act. ...
As the motorcade was headed for the airport, a last-minute federal hearing on the matter was taking place in Washington.
U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, who has been hearing a case related to the flights to El Salvador, scheduled an emergency hearing for Friday evening — just hours after a bus rolled up to Bluebonnet.
Shortly before that hearing kicked off, ACLU attorneys also asked the Supreme Court to step in.
“We hear they are on buses on the way to the airport,” said Lee Gelernt, the lawyer for the ACLU arguing on behalf of detainees on the verge of being deported under the Alien Enemies Act. ...
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There were six years when all three, the unemployment rate, headline inflation, and 10-year US Treasury yield, were at 6% or higher on an average basis at the same time:
1975: 8.5% 9.14% 7.99%
1977: 7.1% 6.46% 7.42%
1978: 6.1% 7.62% 8.41%
1980: 7.2% 13.5% 11.43%
1981: 7.6% 10.37% 13.92%
1982: 9.7% 6.15% 13.01%.
In March 2025 unemployment was 4.2%, headline inflation was 2.4%, and the 10Y yielded 4.28%.
The current data set is no compelling case for reducing interest rates. If Trump had confidence in his tariff regime, he wouldn't be clamoring for further reductions.
The Trump administration has been bragging that the Supremes let them deport Venezuelans under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which of course is a half-truth. The April 7 decision 5-4 stipulates that due process be followed, which is why they ordered 9-0 the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia who didn't get it, and the Supremes this morning aren't sure that's the case either with the latest group set to be deported.
U.S. Supreme Court temporarily halts deportations of Venezuelan migrants under wartime law
The U.S. Supreme Court early on Saturday paused President Donald
Trump’s administration from deporting Venezuelan men in immigration
custody after their lawyers said they were at imminent risk of removal
without the judicial review previously mandated by the justices. ...
At issue is whether the Trump administration has met the Supreme
Court’s standard for providing the detainees due process before sending
them to another country - possibly to the notorious prison in El
Salvador where others are jailed. ...
Their deportation would be the first since the Supreme Court’s 5-4
ruling that allowed removals under the 1798 law while specifying that
“the notice must be afforded within a reasonable time and in such a
manner as will allow them to actually seek habeas relief in the proper
venue before such removal occurs.” ...
On March 15, the Trump administration deported more than 130 alleged Tren de Aragua members to El Salvador. Many of the migrants’ lawyers and family members say they were not gang members and had no chance to dispute the government’s assertion that they were.
From the story here:
... He told me, yesterday, that eight days ago—so nine days ago from today—he was moved to another detention center in Santa Ana, where the conditions are better. Despite the better conditions, he still has no access to any news from the outside world and no ability to communicate with anybody outside the prison. His conversation with me was the first communication he’d had with anyone outside a prison since he was abducted. ...
... The administration is “asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order,” wrote Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson in an opinion for a panel of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals.
“Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that there is nothing that can be done,” he wrote. “This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear.” ...
Wilkinson and the two other judges on the 4th Circuit panel rejected the administration’s appeal of an April 10 order from Xinis directing the administration to “take all available steps” to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return to the U.S. “as soon as possible.”
Wilkinson zeroed in on the Justice Department’s admission that it had “mistakenly” deported Abrego Garcia.
“Why then should it not make what was wrong, right?” Wilkinson wrote. ...
Wilkinson warned of a dangerously slippery slope on the horizon. “If today the Executive claims the right to deport without due process and in disregard of court orders, what assurance will there be tomorrow that it will not deport American citizens and then disclaim responsibility to bring them home?” he wrote.
“And what assurance shall there be that the Executive will not train its broad discretionary powers upon its political enemies?” ...
More.
More recently, far-right writers like Curtis Yarvin, who’s influenced Vice President JD Vance, have talked about how to capture power through a culture war. “This war is not fought with bombs and bullets, or even laws and judges,” Yarvin wrote in 2022. “This war is fought with books and films and plays and poems. It is still a savage war!”
Here.
As if power were an object outside oneself, a thing to be grasped, as opposed to something one already possessed in one's very self.
This objectification of power as outside oneself is a confession of weakness, a sign of spiritual decadence.
Power in one's self is expressed as self-mastery and contentment. That kind of power, subjective power, radiates outward and masters its environment naturally. It doesn't need to run for office, or want to.
There is a dearth of such individuals in the country now, which is the actual problem, not that the minority which still exists doesn't rule.
Generally speaking you cannot impose virtue from the outside and make it stick. You have to change yourself.
Conservatives are stuck on a derivative. Culture is downstream from the cult. They need to swim upstream and find it.
Oh, but the sky is falling, the 10Y's going to the moon, everyone's dumping their bonds, the dollar will stop being the reserve currency, yada yada yada, blah blah blah.
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