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| At the Mar Elias Church in the Dweila neighborhood of Syria's capital Damascus on Sunday. |
Sunday, June 22, 2025
Islamist suicide bombers kill at least 20 Christians, wound many more, during mass in Damascus church a day after the U.S. attacks on Iran's nuclear enrichment sites
Mouth-breather Marco: By the time we left we were already gone lol
He could be our Yogi Berra redivivus, but just hasn't got the C H A R M.
Saturday, June 21, 2025
The U.S. Senate parliamentarian still has not ruled on the GOP's wacky current policy vs. current law baseline
The current policy is the temporary Trump tax cuts from 2017.
The current law is the tax compromise worked out by Barack Obama and John Boehner.
I don't think this thing is going to be done by the Fourth of July.
GOP’s food stamp plan is found to violate Senate rules. It’s the latest setback for Trump’s big bill
... The parliamentarian’s office is tasked with scrutinizing the bill to ensure it complies with the so-called Byrd Rule, which is named after the late Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., and bars many policy matters in the budget reconciliation process now being used. ...
Some of the most critical rulings from parliamentarians are still to come. One will assess the GOP’s approach that relies on “current policy” rather than “current law” as the baseline for determining whether the bill will add to the nation’s deficits. ...
The truth is buried in the very last paragraph: Obama's war on coal did this to us
... certain facilities like old fossil-fuel powered plants have been decommissioned and new energy capacity to replace it has been relatively slow to come online ...
The example most detrimental to U.S. and U.S. presidential stature is Two Weeks Trump's ridiculous coddling of Vladimir Putin at the expense of Ukraine for two months
... Over the last two months, Trump has said repeatedly that various answers to questions about the war, including U.S. assistance to Ukraine, would be just two weeks away.
On April 24, he told a reporter who asked about continued military assistance for Ukraine: "You can ask that question in two weeks, and we'll see." He gave a similar answer days later when asked if he trusted Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom he had publicly criticized in recent months.
Those weeks came and went. And on May 19, when asked if Ukraine was doing enough to support U.S.-led cease-fire negotiations, Trump replied, "I'd rather tell you in about two weeks from now because I can't say yes or no."
Over a month ago, on May 28, Trump gave Putin another two-week deadline when a reporter asked whether he believed the Russian leader truly wants the war to end.
"I can't tell you that, but I'll let you know within two weeks," Trump said. "We're going to find out whether or not he's tapping us along or not. And if he is, we'll respond a bit differently, but it will take about a week and a half, two weeks." ...
Last Wednesday marked three weeks, and still bupkis from Trump.
It's been two months, not two weeks.
More.
Maureen Dowd: This is the moment when we find out just how mad a king Donald Trump is
... As the “No Kings” resistance among Democrats bristles, and as President Trump continues to defy limits on executive power, it is instructive to examine comparisons of President Trump to George III. ...
Atkinson said that the only similarity between the pious monarch and the impious monarch manqué is “the use of the military against their own people to enforce the king’s will. There are incidents, the Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party.”
He added: “This proclivity for using armed forces for domestic suppression of dissent. That’s a slippery slope in this country. It led to an eight-year war when George did it, and Lord knows where it’s going to lead this time.” ...
“The fact that we’re looking for a monarch to draw parallels to him is telling in and of itself, because that’s not what we do. That’s what the whole shooting match was about in the 1770s.”
Friday, June 20, 2025
The more things change, the more the fascist U.S. system of corporate welfare does not
... In the race to attract large data centers, states are forfeiting hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue, according to a CNBC analysis. Among the beneficiaries of these exemptions are tech giants such as Amazon, Meta and Google, which all have market caps of over $1 trillion.
Tax breaks have long been a tool states use to compete for businesses. However, watchdog groups said that for data centers the tradeoffs are iffy, because the facilities don’t tend to create large numbers of jobs, while the amount of electricity required can be immense.
The growing number of tax breaks has sparked a debate about whether massive corporations should be receiving these generous incentives. ...
Greg LeRoy, executive director of Good Jobs First, a nonprofit research group that tracks corporate subsidies and advocates for transparency and accountability in economic development, has spent more than a decade examining the impact of exemptions nationwide. He said the clear winners are the Big Tech companies.
“There was a giant transfer of wealth from taxpayers to shareholders,” LeRoy told CNBC. “Some states, like Virginia, are headed toward billion-dollar annual losses.” ...
LeRoy calls it a losing proposition for taxpayers.
“When tax breaks don’t pay for themselves, only two things can happen: Either public services are reduced in quality, or everybody’s taxes go up in other ways if you’re going to try to keep things the same in terms of quality of public services,” he said. ...
Meanwhile, known corporate welfare, in the form of tax abatements and subsidies by states and localities to attract businesses to come and bring jobs, is presently estimated at in excess of $417 billion. The real total is probably far higher given that local data is poor relative to state disclosures.
The data, incomplete as it may be, shows just ten states where we're talking about only "hundreds of millions" in lost tax revenue and tax loss expenditures. In the rest we're talking about billions, even tens of billions.
It ain't over, but 3 judge panel of Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals votes unanimously to let Trump keep control of California National Guard troops
Appeals court lets Trump keep control of National Guard troops deployed to Los Angeles
... In its decision, a three-judge panel on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals unanimously concluded it was likely Trump lawfully exercised
his authority in federalizing control of the guard.
It said that while presidents don’t have unfettered power to seize control of a state’s guard, the Trump administration had presented enough evidence to show it had a defensible rationale for doing so, citing violent acts by protesters. ...
Thursday, June 19, 2025
So, a White House official supposedly told FOX News that use of tactical nuclear weapons against Iranian nuke facilities is not off the table
The idiot who did this map didn't know that B-2 Spirit Bombers are based at Whiteman Airforce Base in Missouri.
Also, the idiot from the White House should be an ex-official.
These guys want to talk about the 802k foreign born who left in April, not about the 1.6m who arrived in January lol
That said, the January surge is probably more about the revisions of the data for the previous year than about anything else.
Elon Musk's hair sample for fentanyl, ketamine, etc. comes up negative
George Floyd wouldn't have died with such results.
Only five months in lol
To be fair, only Tulsi Gabbard and Mike Waltz worked in an official capacity, and they remain in official positions.
In 2017 seven people got the ax by June, eighteen by the end of the year.
This report sounds like there's wiggle room for Israel to take out Iran's Supreme Leader after missile strike on Israeli hospital
... Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised to hit back even harder at Iran following the strike.
“We will exact the full price from the tyrants in Tehran,” he vowed in an X post.
Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, backed up Netanyahu’s threat.
“These are war crimes of the most serious kind — and [Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei will be held accountable for his crimes,” he tweeted.
“The Prime Minister and I have instructed the IDF to increase the intensity of attacks against strategic targets in Iran and against government targets in Tehran in order to remove threats to the State of Israel and undermine the ayatollahs’ regime.” ...
And there it is:
Real Clear Politics runs post by a comedian telling us Iran never invaded anybody and Donald Trump would ruin his presidency by starting a war against it
In Rob Schneider's world Iran never funded Hamas which invaded Israel on October 7, 2023, never built and launched wave after wave of ballistic missiles at Israeli civilians, never enriched enough uranium to build over a dozen nuclear weapons, never promised over and over again death to Israel and death to America.
Truly hilarious.
The world's population of everyday normal millionaires heh since the year 2000 has more than quadrupled to 52 million
... There is not much data on individuals in the $50 million to $1 billion range, which distorts the picture, according to Mazeau. He also said the wealth growth among middle and lower wealth brackets is underappreciated. For instance, the number of individuals with $1 million to $5 million, whom UBS dubs “everyday millionaires,” has more than quadrupled since 2000 to about 52 million.
“They have more wealth collectively than all the billionaires in the world,” he said. “It is often overlooked how much wealth is rising and is going towards the middle of the pack.”
The middle of the pack. Yeah right.
It takes $33 million in 2025 to be a 1913 millionaire.
More in "The U.S. added a thousand new millionaires a day in 2024: Report".
Meanwhile . . .
Wednesday, June 18, 2025
What Kristi Noem's "allergic reaction" incident did was focus attention on yet another lab shutdown at Fort Detrick, apparently on-going since April 29th
What we have here is a DHS secretary who on her own admission can be incapacitated by an allergic reaction, which doesn't seem very "secure" to me.
Maybe we need someone else on the job.
And what we also have here is yet more drama from the actors at Fort Detrick. Somebody needs to clean that place up once and for all, or shut it down permanently.
Will that someone be RFK Jr.?
Kristi Noem discharged from hospital as ICE Barbie's sudden illness sparks conspiracy theories
... According to its website, the Integrated Research Facility at Fort Detrick studies viruses 'causing high-consequence disease' like like Ebola or COVID.
One of its major focus areas is to 'mitigate major public heath events related to emerging or re-emerging infectious diseases or biological weapons attacks.'
But Kennedy's Department of Health and Human Services ordered an indefinite work stoppage at the facility in April.
'NIH has implemented a research pause—referred to as a safety stand-down—at the Integrated Research Facility at Fort Detrick,' HHS officials said at the time.
'This decision follows identification and documentation of personnel issues involving contract staff that compromised the facility’s safety culture, prompting this research pause.'
They added: 'During the stand-down, no research will be conducted, and access will be limited to essential personnel only, to safeguard the facility and its resources.'
Dr Connie Schmaljohn, the lab's director, was also placed on administrative leave after she allegedly failed to report the incident to other officials.
Speaking anonymously, an HHS source revealed to Fox News that the shutdown came after one of the researchers poked a hole in the other's protective equipment during a vicious 'lovers' spat'. ...
Lying whopper from Newsweek, says Fort Detrick was created and built by DHS as a federal response to anthrax letter attacks in 2001
I mean, holy crap.
The 2001 anthrax letter attacks CAME from anthrax STORED at Fort Detrick, which was the government's bioweapons research facility from way back in 1943 during WWII, until it became politically suicidal to say that and they snapped their fingers and presto!, it became a biodefense research facility.
The researcher there responsible for the anthrax attacks committed suicide as investigators finally got close to him.
James Comey and Robert Mueller infamously tried to frame the wrong guy for the crime. You know those guys, the guys who relentlessly went after Donald Trump.
DHS didn't even exist until March 2003.
I mean, c'mon Newsweek.
Fort Detrick is also suspiciously close to the location of a facility where elderly people came down with an unknown respiratory illness and died in summer 2019, which I think might have been a precursor to COVID-19. Most people now believe the Chicom lab at Wuhan was the lab from which coronavirus leaked, but I think Fort Detrick and Wuhan were cooperating at the time because bioweapons research was technically forbidden in the USA but they farmed it out to Wuhan on the sly, perhaps through Peter Daszak and Ecohealth-Alliance which got grants connected with Anthony Fauci. I speculate something leaked into the USA in summer 2019 from Fort Detrick.
There is plenty of anecdotal evidence from people in America and abroad that there was a very severe flu-like illness already on the loose in the second half of 2019 which they commonly describe as the worst flu they ever had.
Meanwhile Fort Detrick has been perennially notorious for failing inventory protocols for the HAZMAT stored there, for shoddy maintenance and record keeping, and for leaking waste water into the local environment.
That ICE Barbie fell ill after a visit to Fort Detrick is really one hell of a coincidence.
Kristi Noem Visited Biohazard Lab Day Before Allergic Reaction
Mad King Ludwig restarts agricultural deportations, says the real illegal alien problem is the criminal ones in the big cities
Trump yanks brief reprieve for immigrants he said are ‘good, long time workers’
The Trump administration has reopened arrests of immigrant workers at hotels, restaurants and agricultural businesses, backtracking on the brief reprieve they got after President Donald Trump stated they were necessary, good, longtime workers whose jobs were almost “impossible” to replace. ...
The announcement backpedals on Trump’s statement last week on social media that “changes are coming” after farmers and hotel and leisure business employers had complained that “our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace.”
Just six days ago, Immigration and Customs Enforcement paused arrests at worksites in agriculture industries, including fisheries and meatpacking plants, restaurants and hotels, according to an internal policy memo obtained by NBC News last Thursday. ...
Asked about the change during a gaggle with reporters aboard Air Force One on his return from the G7 summit, Trump said: “We’re going to look everywhere. But I think the biggest problem is the inner cities.” ...
Trump said cities are where “the really bad ones are, the murderers.”
“We’re going to get them out,” Trump said. “There are far more in the inner cities, Democrat-run cities, sadly, and I’m just giving you, there’s far more in there than you have on a farm or someplace.”
Tuesday, June 17, 2025
Daily Beast reporter demotes Stephen Miller to deputy press secretary, still can't spell feud after correcting story lol
The White what?
https://www.thedailybeast.com/stephen-miller-and-ice-barbie-kristi-noem-in-bitter-west-wing-civil-war-over-round-ups/
Corvette chief engineer speak English goodier then evah
... “It brings performance, electrification and all-wheel drive to further enhance the unthinkable ZR1,” said Josh Holder, Corvette chief engineer. “It brings learnings from the ZR1 and the E-Ray, and combines them to create an unbelievable driving experience.” ...
Moar.
Total bs about Tesla from CNBC relying on Business Insider, lying by omission
... The pause, which is for maintenance on production lines, would be the third such shutdown at the Austin facility in the past year, according to BI. ...
Death toll from Iranian ballistic missile attacks in Israel rises to 24, reinforced safe room bunkers in the centers of high rises all across the country prove vulnerable to direct hits
 |
An Emad missile on a launcher at a parade in Tehran, 2019 |
Bunker-busting missile strike shakes Israelis’ faith in their safety
... Rather than detonating its roughly 700kg warhead on the external walls of the residential block, the Iranian ballistic missile travelled right into the heart of the structure.
It exploded only when it struck the reinforced bunker nestling in the core of the building.
Four people were killed, two of them inside the shelter. ...
Following the tragedy in Petah Tikva, the Home Front Command was forced to state that the reinforced concrete shelters were not designed to withstand “direct hits”, after conceding that the Iranian missile “breached” the structure, causing it to collapse. ...
Like the soul of the tyrant himself, Trump's administration is beset with fear and is full of convulsions and distractions, including on immigration enforcement, reversing last week's pause on deportations
All his life long he is beset with fear and is full of convulsions, and distractions, even as the State which he resembles.
-- Plato, Republic
Meanwhile Sean Davis' The Federalist is ground zero for the anti-war right, still ignoring what der Führer says
There isn't a single story on the front page right now at The Federalist about the Israeli-Iranian conflict, like it's not even news.
Monday, June 16, 2025
Israel states that one third of Iran's ballistic missile launch capability has been destroyed
It took Israel just two days to get control of the skies over Western Iran. With that accomplished, destroying the rest of the launchers should come more easily.
Iran's last gasp, ship signals in the Strait of Hormuz jammed from the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas
Bloomberg reports:
Ship Signal Jamming in Persian Gulf Worsens as Conflict Widens
Navigation signals from more than 900 vessels in the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf went awry over the weekend, creating confusion in the shipping chokepoint as the fighting between Iran and Israel intensified. ... The Joint Maritime Information Center, an international naval task force monitoring the area, warned on Sunday that there are instances of “extreme jamming” of signals from the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas. ...
Update:
Two oil tankers collided and caught fire on Tuesday near the Strait of Hormuz, where electronic interference has surged during conflict between Iran and Israel, but there were no injuries to crew or spillage reported.
With Iran and Israel firing missiles at each other since Friday, interference has disrupted navigation systems near the vital sea route between Iran and Oman which handles about a fifth of the world's oil. ...
Sunday, June 15, 2025
Much of Trump's support comes from people with a libertarian habit of mind which insists that what is politically possible and what is perfect must be enemies of each other
Of course he isn't going full TACO, just half TACO with a twist.
Chinese students in America number under 300k annually. Communist Party membership/support will receive more scrutiny.
And helping Israel beat Iran doesn't mean being neck-deep in war.
But this gets traffic, which is the point for social media parasites.
TACO Trump is negative for long term investment, 1Q2025 exports were the worst on record for their positive contribution to GDP
Does anybody ever talk about exports anymore? You know, from domestic production?
... In recent years, a cautious optimism had returned, as supply chain shocks from the pandemic pushed some companies to bring production back to the US.
But frequent changes and uncertainty around where Trump's tariff policy is headed has 'got people spooked,' Andrew Anagnost, CEO of Autodesk, told the outlet.
The company sells software used by manufacturers to design factories and improve processes.
'The current operating mode is just the death to long-term investment,' he said.
While construction projects that were already underway are still going ahead, he added, confusion about the future is stalling new work. ...
More.
Exports are a " + " when calculating GDP. Imports are a " - " when calculating it.
Exports' contribution to GDP in 1Q2025 is THE WORST ON RECORD.
No wonder GDP was negative. Outside the pandemic soaring imports had their worst negative impact on GDP on record in 1Q2025.
It's a terrible time to be introducing new huge taxes on imports needed by domestic manufacturers, but that's what Trump is doing.
TACO Trump chickens out on more than just tariffs, calls off the ICE raids on agriculture, restaurant, and hotel jobs to quell heartland rebellion
Stephen Miller most hurt.
On Wednesday morning, President Trump took a call from Brooke Rollins, his secretary of agriculture, who relayed a growing sense of alarm from the heartland.
Farmers and agriculture groups, she said, were increasingly uneasy about his immigration crackdown. Federal agents had begun to aggressively target work sites in recent weeks, with the goal of sharply bolstering the number of arrests and deportations of undocumented immigrants. ...
Inside the West Wing, top White House officials were caught off guard — and furious at Ms. Rollins. ...
But the decision had been made. Later on Thursday, a senior official with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Tatum King, sent an email to regional leaders at the agency informing them of new guidance. Agents were to “hold on all work site enforcement investigations/operations on agriculture (including aquaculture and meat packing plants), restaurants and operating hotels.” ...
More.
Observe again how quickly Trump is to turn on a dime. The policy changed in less than 48 hours. The last person he talked to can be the most influential, which is not what you want from the leader of the free world. Sometimes he stumbles into the right decision, to be sure, but he can always stumble the wrong way. The tyrant's soul resembles the state which he rules, full of chaos and conflicting desires which he is utterly unable to satisfy.
NBC News: Trump behaved himself at the Army parade, for which the weather did not cooperate
... Prone to delivering long, boastful speeches, Trump kept his remarks brief and made the military the focus. Beforehand, critics had warned he would politicize the event for his own purposes. ...
The winds picked up and a light drizzle commenced just as the tanks were about to roll.
The parade was supposed to begin at 6:30 p.m. ET, but it was moved up a half hour in deference to the weather, a Secret Service official said. Army tanks, their treads squeaking against the pavement, trundled along Constitution Avenue under an intermittent drizzle. Hundreds of people were still stuck in line, even as the parade was coming to a close two hours later.
Some of the planned flyovers had to be canceled. Still, the crowd gathered on the National Mall looked up appreciatively as helicopters flew overhead in formation.
The parade came on the 250th anniversary of the Army and, as it happens, Trump’s 79th birthday. ...
More.
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