Sunday, June 15, 2025
Saturday, June 14, 2025
Israel has started attacking Iran's oil sector in Bushehr Province this morning, which will concern China since it imports 16% of its oil from Iran, buying 90% of Iranian oil exports
The cash China provides Iran in this transaction funds the ballistic missiles raining down on Tel Aviv this week.
Friday, June 13, 2025
Anti-democratic airhead DHS Secretary ICE Barbie says Feds are in LA to liberate it from duly elected governor and mayor
We are staying here to liberate the city from the socialist and
burdensome leadership that this governor and this mayor have imposed.
Imagine if the Democrats interfered like this in Wyoming or West Virginia. Republicans would throw a fit like they're doing in LA.
Thursday, June 12, 2025
Israel makes sausage of Salami
Israel attacks Iran, airstrikes kill Revolutionary Guard chief Hossein Salami
... Iranian state media reported that Hossein Salami, commander-in-chief of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps [IRGC] was killed in a strike. ...
Beyond Tehran, Iranian news channel IRINN reports that there were airstrikes on the city of Natanz, which is home to a key nuclear facility. Also hit were targets in the city of Khandab, where a heavy water nuclear reactor is located, and Khoramabad, the site of a ballistic missile base. ...
Charles Breyer, Senior US District Judge of the Northern District of California, rules Trump acted illegally in federalizing the California National Guard
... At one point, the judge said, “We live in response to a monarchy,” noting that there is a difference between the president and King George III, the British monarch on the throne at the time of the American Revolution.
“At this early stage of the proceedings, the Court must determine whether the President followed the congressionally mandated procedure for his actions. He did not,” Breyer wrote in his order.
“His actions were illegal — both exceeding the scope of his statutory authority and violating the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution,” the judge wrote. “He must therefore return control of the California National Guard to the Governor of the State of California forthwith.”
Breyer said that none of the three conditions required for Trump’s federalization of the Guard under a certain federal statute existed, namely the U.S. having been invaded or in danger of being invaded; a “rebellion” against the federal government; or the president being unable to execute U.S. laws.
“The protests in Los Angeles fall far short of ‘rebellion,’ ” Breyer wrote.
And he said that “regardless” of the outcome of California’s lawsuit against the administration, Trump’s federalizing of the Guard without the consent of Newsom “alone threatens serious injury to the constitutional balance of power between the federal and state governments.”
“And it sets a dangerous precedent for future domestic military activity,” Breyer added. ...
More.
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.
What they lack in intelligence they make up for in bad manners
... Trump claimed at the White House that lowering rates by 2 percentage
points would save the U.S. $600 billion per year, “but we can’t get this
guy to do it.” “We’re
going to spend $600 billion a year, $600 billion because of one
numbskull that sits here [and says] ‘I don’t see enough reason to cut
the rates now,’” Trump said. ...
Trump’s insult came hours after the Labor Department reported that U.S. producer prices rose less in May than some economists anticipated. ...
... “I’ve just been told that I’ve been uninvited from the picnic; I
think I’m the first senator in the history of the United States to be
uninvited to the White House picnic,” Paul told reporters. “The White
House is owned by the taxpayers, we are all members of it, every
Democrat will be invited, every Republican will be invited, but I will
be the only one disallowed to come on the grounds of the White House.” ...
Taco, taco, taco man . . .
Most retail execs expect Trump to walk back ‘reciprocal’ tariffs, survey says
"Liberation Day" was just a trial balloon.
Yeah, but half of employers pretend to pay
Half of Your Employees May Be Pretending to Work, According to a New Survey
It’s called ‘ghostworking,’ and a recent poll of workers shows that it’s more prevalent than you think.
... Fully 23 percent of people (nearly 1 in 4 workers) admitted to walking around the office with a notebook so that they look purposeful and busy, while 22 percent have typed away at their keyboard entering nonsense. Though it’s rarer, 15 percent have faked being on a phone call so they appear busy, and 12 percent scheduled nonexistent meetings so they had an excuse to not do real tasks. ... 47 percent of employees said they waste more time working from home, while 37 percent said they waste more time in the office. ...
Wednesday, June 11, 2025
Five months in, the Trump administration still doesn't have spending under control with the fiscal year to date deficit running 13.5% higher than last year to this point
Deficit FY 2024 through May: $1.202 trillion
Deficit FY 2025 through May: $1.364 trillion
Difference: $162 billion MORE in the hole than last year at this time
I don't care what Elon Musk's DOGE claims, the May numbers from the US Department of the Treasury do not lie.
A tax increase was never more needed.
Well, look on the bright side, at least the barbarians didn't put them to the sword
... Jed Katz, the chair of the board and managing director of Javelin Venture Partners, , referred CNBC to the statement when asked about his and the other members’ resignations.
Like every other member of the board, Katz was appointed to the panel by former President Joe Biden. ...
The average price of gasoline in May 2025 was $3.306 per gallon, 7.2% lower than the average under Biden but still much higher than under Obama or Trump I
Under eight years of Obama gasoline averaged $2.974 per gallon.
Under four years of Trump gasoline averaged $2.488.
Under four years of Biden gasoline averaged $3.563.
The average price of a dozen eggs in May 2025 was $4.548, which is 157% higher than the average price of $1.769 2010-2020
The homeowner with the coop up the street sells his for $5 a dozen, but he was out this morning.
The homeowner with the coop down the street sells his for $4 a dozen, but he was out, too.
At the corner convenience store I had to pay $6.49.
Core cpi inflation year over year in May 2025 is 2.8% for the third month in a row, 55% higher than 2010-2020 average of 1.8%
The not seasonally adjusted trend is flat as a pancake.
The seasonally adjusted trend puts a little down-tilting lipstick on the trend pig, but still rounds to 2.8%.
Tuesday, June 10, 2025
GM will not produce EVs at Orion Assembly Plant in suburban Detroit as the company moves production of gasoline vehicles to the US from Mexico to avoid 25% tariffs
GM to invest $4 billion in U.S. plants amid tariffs for Mexican-produced vehicles
... GM said the investment will add assembly of the gas-powered Chevrolet Blazer and Chevrolet Equinox that are currently produced in Mexico to two other plants in the U.S. and convert a large idled plant in Michigan — formerly expected to build all-electric trucks — to make gas-powered SUVs and trucks in 2027. ...
Mark Levin is urging Donald Trump to join Israel in a pre-emptive strike against Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities
Mark Levin is up against many individuals in the Trump administration who are anti-war, including J. D. Vance in particular, and Tulsi Gabbard.
Former national security adviser Mike Waltz was of the same mind as Mark Levin.
Inside the MAGA vs. hawk battle to sway Trump on bombing Iran
Gabbard warns of ‘nuclear holocaust’ in ominous social media video
The White House's Stephen Miller attacks libertarians for opposing the reconciliation bill's immigration enforcement spending
... the White House deputy chief of staff — and chief architect of Trump’s immigration agenda — is taking a sledgehammer to what remains of the libertarian-conservative fusionism that was prominent in the party pre-Trump.
“The libertarians in the House and Senate trying to take down this bill — they’re not stupid. They just don’t care,” Miller said in an interview with conservative activist and commentator Charlie Kirk last week.
“Immigration has never mattered to them; it will never matter to them. Deportations have never mattered to them; it will never matter to them. You will never live a day in your life where a libertarian cares as much about immigration and sovereignty as they do about the Congressional Budget Office.” ...
Miller’s aversion to libertarians, though, seems to go deeper than opportunistic messaging for the bill. He posted in 2022 that the uprising of the ideology in the House GOP is “how we ended up with open borders globalist [Paul] Ryan.” He blamed libertarian candidates for siphoning votes away from failed Trump-endorsed candidates in 2022 — Herschel Walker in Georgia, Blake Masters in Arizona, and Don Bolduc in New Hampshire.
“Another example of how libertarians ruin everything,” Miller said in one post responding to a 2022 Georgia Senate poll. ...
More.
The CBS Poll referenced in the story indicates 55% like Trump's deportation goals but 56% dislike his approach.
Polling on the reconciliation bill indicates most think it will help the wealthy and hurt poor and middle class people, with a third admitting they have no idea what's in the bill. Well, neither did many in the US House who voted for the damn thing.
This points up the political danger of these Christmas Tree bills adorned with something for everyone. They're too complicated to understand and therefore capture little enthusiasm. But Stephen Miller fancifully thinks otherwise:
“By including the immigration language with the tax cuts with the welfare reform, it creates a coalition. Politics is all about coalitions,” Miller said in the interview with Kirk — also praising Trump in the interview as “able to create a winning formula for populist, nationalist, conservative government.”
But not libertarian government.
Monday, June 9, 2025
Mad King Ludwig, who is quite clearly nuts, says LA would have been completely obliterated had he not sent in the California National Guard, proves it by sending in more, and 700 US Marines
“We made a great decision in sending the National Guard to deal with the violent, instigated riots in California,” he said in a post on Truth Social.
“If we had not done so, Los Angeles would have been completely obliterated,” said Trump.
Trump called Newsom “incompetent,” and said the governor and L.A. Mayor Karen Bass should be thanking him, saying “YOU ARE SO WONDERFUL. WE WOULD BE NOTHING WITHOUT YOU, SIR.”
More.
Different parties, same senility: Aging Trump stumbles up the stairs of Air Force One
What's good for the goose is good for the gander.
Sunday, June 8, 2025
Different parties, same dopium: The Trump administration might get less blow back from these immigration raids if they tried just a little bit to appear less like Joe Biden's fascist police state
... There were “at least 10, 15 marked and unmarked units right in front of me. Surrounding the side of my house, I have 100 yards to the street, cars lined all the way up to the street, long guns pointed at me, heavily armored vests, ballistic helmets, ballistic shields, a battering ram,” he said.
He said his daughter “took note” of an FBI agent in the back of the house, and there were at least five federal agents on his porch “with M-16s pointed at me and now my wife as she entered the opening of the door.” ...
Agents Use Military-Style Force Against Protesters at L.A. Immigration Raid
... The raid at the clothing wholesaler began about 9:15 a.m. in the Fashion District, less than two miles from Los Angeles City Hall.
It was an extraordinary show of force. Dozens of federal agents wearing helmets and green camouflage arrived in two hulking armored trucks and other unmarked vehicles, and were soon approached by a crowd of immigrant activists and supporters. Some agents carried riot shields and others held rifles, as well as shotguns that appeared to be loaded with less-than-lethal ammunition. ...
Saturday, June 7, 2025
An AI-induced economic collapse is coming in one to five years on the heels of millions losing their jobs to AI and on the spending of those millions drying up
... This time, it's not blue-collar and factory workers getting whacked — it's college graduates with white-collar jobs in tech, finance, law, and consulting.
Entry-level jobs are vanishing the fastest — stoking fears of recession and a generation of disillusioned graduates left stranded with CVs no one wants.
College grads are now much more likely to be unemployed than others, official data show.
Chatbots have already taken over data entry and customer service jobs. Next-generation 'agentic' AI can solve problems, adapt, and work independently. ...
Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, one of the world's most powerful AI firms, says we're at the start of a storm.
AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs — and spike unemployment to 10-20 percent in the next one to five years, he told Axios. ...
Critics say universities are churning out graduates into a market that simply doesn't need them.
A growing number of young professionals say they feel betrayed — promised opportunity, but handed a future of 'AI-enhanced' redundancy. ...
Well, if spending collapses those blue-collar and factory workers won't have anything to do either, now will they?
Prices for everything might very well reset much lower in a deflationary spiral.
Imagining being in charge of addressing all that.
Trump ICE arrests: 100k in 20 weeks
At this rate Trump will arrest just over 1 million illegals in four years, that's it.
If ICE could sustain 2,000 arrests a day from here on out, 2.6 million would be the total, out of many millions more claimed to be in the country illegally.
As with DOGE, campaign promises are easier to make than they are to keep.
ICE arrests under Trump top 100,000 as officials expand aggressive efforts to detain migrants
Arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement during President Trump's second term topped 100,000 this week, as federal agents intensified efforts to detain unauthorized immigrants in courthouses, worksites and communities across the U.S., internal government data obtained by CBS News shows.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, ICE recorded more than 2,000 arrests each day, a dramatic increase from the daily average of 660 arrests reported by the agency during Mr. Trump's first 100 days back at the White House, the federal statistics show. During President Biden's last year in office, ICE averaged roughly 300 daily arrests, according to agency data.
The latest numbers show ICE is getting closer to meeting the far-reaching demands of top administration officials like White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, an immigration hardliner who has forcefully pushed the agency to conduct "a minimum" of 3,000 arrests each day.
On Thursday morning, ICE was holding around 54,000 immigrant detainees in detention facilities across the country, according to the data. The Trump administration is asking Congress to give ICE billions of dollars in extra funds to hire thousands of additional deportation officers and expand detention capacity to hold 100,000 individuals at any given point. Officials are also looking at converting facilities inside military bases into immigration detention centers. ...
Friday, June 6, 2025
Supreme Court votes 6-3 to allow DOGE access to Social Security data as litigation in the case continues
... The unsigned order said
that members of the DOGE team assigned to the Social Security
Administration should have “access to the agency records in question in
order for those members to do their work.” ...
U.S. District Judge Ellen Hollander had ruled that DOGE had no need to access the specific data at issue. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Richmond, Virginia, declined to block Hollander’s decision, leading to the Trump administration to file its emergency request at the Supreme Court. ...
Trump's DOJ brings Kilmar Abrego Garcia back from El Salvador to face a slew of criminal charges it has cooked up against him in the interim since the Supremes ordered him returned in April
Watch out, Elon, you may be next.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia returns to face immigrant smuggling charges after wrongful deportation
Kilmar Abrego Garcia was returned to the United States to face criminal charges involving an alleged undocumented immigrant smuggling ring Friday, months after the Maryland resident was wrongfully deported to a prison in his native El Salvador. ...
The indictment alleges that Abrego Garcia and others from 2016 through 2025 “conspired to bring undocumented aliens to the United States from countries such as Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Ecuador, and elsewhere, ultimately passing through Mexico before crossing into Texas.”
The grand jury that issued the indictment found that he made more than 100 trips smuggling thousands of immigrants. ...
In a post on X on Friday, El Salvador President Nayib Bukele wrote, “As I said in the Oval Office:1. I would never smuggle a terrorist into the United States. 2. I would never release a gang member onto the streets of El Salvador.”
“That said, we work with the Trump administration, and if they request the return of a gang member to face charges, of course we wouldn’t refuse,” Bukele wrote. ...
The Donald Trump/Rush Limbaugh Dumb Ass Unemployment Rate in May 2025 climbed for a second consecutive month to 37.7%
103.2 million eating, but not working.
Average US Treasury yields climbed all across the curve in May 2025
Bills 4.28
Notes 4.096
Bonds 4.91
Aggregate 4.31
Average Bond yields climbed for a second consecutive month.
The Daily Federal Funds Rate averaged 4.33.
Thursday, June 5, 2025
Traffic through the Suez Canal to and from the Red Sea remains down 60%, Egypt is losing billions of dollars on transits still rerouted around the southern tip of Africa
The New York Times reports here:
... The cease-fire, which began May 6, ended a U.S. campaign that involved over 1,100 strikes against the Houthis in Yemen and became a source of embarrassment for the Trump administration after group chats about the strikes inadvertently became public. The Pentagon had planned on a monthslong bombardment, but President Trump ended it after about 50 days.
“If the intention was to restore freedom of navigation, which is what they stated it was, then the results speak for themselves: The shipping industry has not gone back,” said Richard Meade, editor in chief of Lloyd’s List, a shipping publication. ...
American inability to guarantee freedom of the seas is a serious turning point for the world.
It took only a few months of intense familiarity for Elon Musk to develop his complete contempt for Donald Trump and Capitol Hill
Elon made his Oval Office farewell just six days ago, and now look at them.
Elon is an exceptionally accomplished person in the auto industry, the communications industry, and the space industry. He's not a perfect man by any stretch of the imagination, but he stands head and shoulders above the puny little rejects of the political class, a bunch of climbers whose sole ambition in life is to control the $7.2 trillion in its hands this particular fiscal year. That must have been pretty boring to be around, and frankly beneath him.
New RAM CEO admits retiring the V-8 Hemi engine for RAM 1500 truck was a mistake, brings it back this summer
... Ram CEO Tim Kuniskis, who unretired from the automaker late last year, admitted the decision to cancel the Hemi engine for its popular consumer-focused Ram 1500 was a mistake.
“Everyone makes mistakes, but how you handle them defines you. Ram
screwed up when we dropped the Hemi — we own it and we fixed it,”
Kuniskis said. “We’re not just bringing back a legendary V-8 engine,
we’re igniting an assertive product plan and expanding the freedom of
choice in powertrain for our customers.” ...
Ram’s sales have been struggling for years amid price increases and production mishaps, as well as the automaker killing off the Hemi engine — a staple of the automaker and its predecessors since the 1950s. ...
More.
The Republican claim that the Big Beautiful Bill's cuts to Medicaid coverage will be offset by enrollments in employer-provided health insurance is a bad joke
The enrollment rate in employer provided health insurance is down four points 2008-2021, from 54% to 48%.
Why?
Costs.
The average premium for a health insurance plan from an employer was 36% higher in 2021 than the inflation adjusted premium from 2008 should have been. The 2008 premium of $4,386 should have been $5,446 in 2021. Instead it was $7,380.
People can't afford this insurance.
Meanwhile their out of pocket cost for it increased 86% over the period, while their deductibles shot up 131%.
Government mandated health insurance, Obamacare, has been a disaster for workers who have voted with their feet against it because they can't afford it and benefit little from it, swelling Medicaid enrollments in desperation.
Republicans promised to fix this in 2017 and failed.
Now they're saying, Let Them Eat Cake.
Wednesday, June 4, 2025
Mad King Ludwig's soul is in chaos, full of conflicting desires which he is utterly unable to satisfy: Trump now calls for letting Congress spend without limit weeks after touting tax increases on the rich to pay the bills
Trump calls for scrapping debt limit (June 4)
Trump pushes Republicans to have rich pay more taxes (May 8)
Trump pivots, says GOP should ‘probably not’ raise taxes on rich (May 9)
Trump millionaire tax hike idea upends Republican political wisdom (May 10)
He belongs in a psych ward, not in The White House.
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