That's how they got Manafort after all.
As ever, it is primarily Trump's own clumsy mouth which is what gets him into trouble and keeps him from respectability, but that doesn't mean he isn't right about Obama.
Wednesday, July 23, 2025
Tuesday, July 22, 2025
Oh No! They're eating the peacocks . . .
37 peacocks reported missing from historic hotel...
... He added that the four remaining peacocks at the hotel are acting upset and demonstrating behavior he has “never seen from them before.” ...
GOP U. S. House of Representatives decides to . . .
Not sure what they're smokin' over there at CNBC this afternoon:
... On Tuesday, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said he was speaking with Maxwell’s defense lawyer to see if Maxwell “would be willing to speak with prosecutors” to see if she “has information about anyone who has committed crimes against victims.” ...
... Blanche previously served as a criminal defense lawyer for Trump when the president was indicted in four separate cases after ending his first White House term in January 2017. ...
Trend for Oceanic Nino Index, revised, 1951-2024
This revision incorporates data revisions since the 2004-05 season, now to two decimal places instead of one starting in season 2005-06.
Conclusions remain unchanged from previously: overall anomaly trend is slightly cooler, forecasting a drier West Coast and wetter Great Lakes region; cool anomaly seasons are trending slightly less severe, and the trend of warm anomaly seasons trending higher may have been broken, but only time will tell.
Food items making new all time high average prices in the United States in June 2025
All prices are FRED data from the St. Louis Fed in U.S. dollars.
The headlines are correct. Average beef prices are out of this world in June 2025:
Round Roast $7.762/lb
All Uncooked Beef Roasts $8.203
Ground Chuck $6.103
Choice Chuck Roast $8.197
100% Ground Beef $6.12
All Uncooked Ground Beef $6.342
All Uncooked Beef Steaks $11.491
Choice Sirloin Steak $12.923.
But that's not all:
Whole Chicken $2.086
Frozen Orange Juice Concentrate $4.493
Coffee $8.132
Potato Chips $6.815
Ice Cream $6.493.
Most of the other items in my list of over 40 basic food products remain near their average all time highs. Food price inflation was 3% year-over-year in June 2025. There has been no actual food price deflation since 2016.
Monday, July 21, 2025
Trump is shoring up UK defenses with B61-12 thermonuclear gravity bombs deployed to U.S. fighter squadrons based there
The British tabloids have been full of stories about Russian threats to use nuclear weapons against the UK.
Buzz Aldrin turned 95 in January
July 20, 1969 was also a Sunday. The live broadcast of the one giant leap for mankind was at 9:56pm Central Time.
Trump's NASA budget cuts threaten Congressionally-mandated identification of city-killing near-earth-objects
... Astronomers have found roughly 95 per cent of the near-Earth objects larger than 1km, and none of them poses any threat to Earth. We know much less about the smaller ones. An asteroid as slender as 50m across can wreck a city. Of the nearly quarter of a million that are around that size in Earth’s neighbourhood, 93 per cent remain undiscovered. ...
In July 1994, fragments of a comet called Shoemaker-Levy 9 smashed into Jupiter, and Nasa, for the first time ever, caught the spectacle on video. Later that summer, Congress tasked Nasa with mapping all near-Earth objects larger than 1km, sobered by the sight of the comet’s cataclysmic Earth-sized impacts. The brief was then expanded to include 90 per cent of all objects 140m or larger — a task that is still less than halfway complete. ...
In 2028, Nasa plans to launch an infrared asteroid-detecting telescope called NEO Surveyor. The following year, which the UN has designated “International Year of Asteroid Awareness and Planetary Defence”, an asteroid called Apophis [~375m] will pass within 32,000km of Earth, closer than some satellites. A Nasa spacecraft is on its way to study Apophis in detail. ...
More.
Sunday, July 20, 2025
People who agree to become organ donors risk being aggressively harvested when they might otherwise recover
We're getting more like China everyday.
Push for More Organ Transplants Putting Donors at Risk...
... Circulatory death donation is different. These patients are on life support, often in a coma. Their prognoses are more of a medical judgment call.
They are alive, with some brain activity, but doctors have determined that they are near death and won’t recover. If relatives agree to donation, doctors withdraw life support and wait for the patient’s heart to stop. This has to happen within an hour or two for the organs to be considered viable. After the person is declared dead, surgeons go in.
The Times found that some organ procurement organizations — the nonprofits in each state that have federal contracts to coordinate transplants — are aggressively pursuing circulatory death donors and pushing families and doctors toward surgery. Hospitals are responsible for patients up to the moment of death, but some are allowing procurement organizations to influence treatment decisions.
Fifty-five medical workers in 19 states told The Times they had witnessed at least one disturbing case of donation after circulatory death.
Workers in several states said they had seen coordinators persuading hospital clinicians to administer morphine, propofol and other drugs to hasten the death of potential donors. ...
Circulatory death donation used to be largely forbidden. That began to change in the 1990s, when a dying patient asked the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center to remove her life support and donate her organs. The hospital honored her wishes, then spent two years creating guidelines for future cases. Use of the practice gradually spread. ...
Saturday, July 19, 2025
The EU spent more on anti-carbon lunacy in 2024 than on defense
... the EU is now promising to cut carbon emissions by 90% in just 15 years. This goes even further than its already foolhardy promise of a 55% cut by 2030. ...
The EU splurged $381 billion just in 2024 on solar panels, wind turbines, electric cars and the like — more than its entire spending on defense. This is delivering skyrocketing electricity bills — last year they were two times higher than in the US. ...
... the climate impact from the EU’s policies will be next-to-nothing. Run the promised 90% by 2040 and net-zero by 2050 in the United Nations’ own climate model and compare the temperature outcome with the current policy. Because the EU matters little in global emissions and because it has already cut emissions significantly, it will only reduce global emissions through the 21st century by a small 3%. The temperature difference in 2050 is a vanishing 0.02°F and even by 2100 the impact will be impossible to measure at 0.07°F.
All while models show that the cost for the EU by mid-century could be more than $3 trillion every year — more than all current public spending in the EU. ...
More.
Friday, July 18, 2025
What a shock, right, Trump's attacks on Powell's extravagance turn out to be completely hypocritical, including when you consider that he redecorated the Oval Orifice in gold leaf
... As the Fed moved forward with plans to renovate its Great
Depression-era headquarters in Washington during Trump’s first term, it
faced concerns in 2020 during a vetting process involving Trump
appointees, who called for more “white Georgia marble” for the facade of
building.
The Fed’s architects said the central bank had wanted glass walls to
reflect the Fed as a transparent institution, but three Trump appointees
to a local commission felt marble best fit the building’s historic
character. Marble was added as a result, according to the minutes of the
Commission of Fine Arts, which advises the federal government on
architecture. ...
Russ Vought, Trump’s top budget adviser, cited “premium marble” in a letter to Powell last week as an example of the “ostentatious overhaul.” ...
Trump issued [an] executive order in December 2020, which criticized modernist architecture and expressed a preference for “beautiful” classical buildings with more [costly] traditional designs. ...
Thursday, July 17, 2025
As I said, TACO Trump & Co. talked up destruction of Fordow because that's the only one of the three sites they destroyed
The bunker buster bombs were made for Fordow, so they bombed Fordow with them, and talked Fordow, Fordow, Fordow, "obliteration", blah blah blah.
Military-industrial complex, rinse and repeat.
Meanwhile the threat remains, and the not serious people remain in charge.
Trump Always Chickens Out.
New U.S. assessment finds American strikes destroyed only one of three Iranian nuclear sites
WASHINGTON — One of the three nuclear enrichment sites in Iran struck by the United States last month was mostly destroyed, setting work there back significantly. But the two others were not as badly damaged and may have been degraded only to a point where nuclear enrichment could resume in the next several months if Iran wants it to, according to a recent U.S. assessment of the destruction caused by the military operation, five current and former U.S. officials familiar with the assessment told NBC News. ...
U.S. officials believe the attack on Fordo, which has long been viewed as a critical component of Iran’s nuclear ambitions, was successful in setting back Iranian enrichment capabilities at that site by as much as two years, according to two of the current officials.
Much of the administration’s public messaging about the strikes has focused on Fordo. ...
U.S. officials knew before the airstrikes that Iran had structures and enriched uranium at Natanz and Isfahan that were likely to be beyond the reach of even America’s 30,000-pound GBU-57 “bunker buster” bombs, three of the sources said. Those bombs, which had never been used in combat before the strikes, were designed with the deeply buried facilities carved into the side of a mountain at Fordo in mind.
As early as 2023, though, there were indications that Iran was digging tunnels at Natanz that were below where the GBU-57 could reach. There are also tunnels deep underground at Isfahan. The United States hit surface targets at Isfahan with Tomahawk missiles and did not drop GBU-57s there, but it did use them at Natanz. ...
Trump was briefed on the so-called all-in plan, but it was rejected ultimately because it would have required a sustained period of conflict. ...
Before the June airstrikes, the regime had enough fissile material for about nine to 10 bombs, according to U.S. officials and United Nations inspectors. ...
Wednesday, July 16, 2025
J. D. Vance has had to cast six tiebreaker votes so far in the Republican-controlled U. S. Senate, this time to advance legislation cutting a measly $9 billion in spending
Vance casts Senate tiebreaker to advance Trump’s DOGE-inspired cuts
... This was Vance’s sixth tiebreaker in the Senate, following his deciding vote on July 1 to pass the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. ...
Today's core wholesale price report breaks the nine-month-string of producer prices increasing year over year at 3% or more, but as always there will be revisions
Here are the current June 2025 yoy figures for core producer price increases Dec-Jun, followed by the figures reported the previous month, followed by the figures as originally reported:
December 2024: 3.74%, 3.74%, 3.5%
January 2025: 3.92, 3.92, 3.6
February 2025: 3.73, 3.74, 3.4
March 2025: 3.86, 3.91, 3.3
April 2025: 3.13, 3.18, 3.1
May 2025: 3.20, 3.02 (revised up as predicted)
June 2025: 2.60.
The optimism of the original figures has been removed by the revisions to Dec-Mar available only but lately.
December and January revisions alone still hold fast today, but not thereafter.
As always it is important not to press the monthly results too strongly, but the May revised uptick is consistent with a down-up, down-up, down-up pattern which is obviously trending down.
Viewed on a semiannual basis, however, we are Wei Tu Hai, and trending Wong Wei Charlie.
Electricity posts its highest semiannual average price ever in 1H2025, under Mad King Ludwig
The average price hit a record 19-cents per kWhr in June.
Tuesday, July 15, 2025
This person lives in the world of unreality and thousands upon thousands upon thousands follow him
That core cpi was up sharply is completely meaningless to this person. Who cares what people expected?
He also is mistaken about the Fed's preferred measure, which is NOT this but rather core pce.
Replies to all his posts are turned off, and he follows no one.
That there is so little pushback on this on X proves that American fans of American football have lost the testosterone which animates the game
Mad King Ludwig thinks he can re-name everything.
You know, like a man who thinks he can call himself a woman.
Same denial of reality disease, different expression.
... While the term “football” is widely used for the sport, especially in
Europe and much of the world, the U.S., Canada and Australia generally
use “soccer” to refer to the game. ...
Corey Comperatore dodged nothing
... It’s an ancient mistake to make messiahs out of politics. But likewise, it’s foolish to believe a God who clothes lilies and feeds sparrows is neglectful of the earthly authorities He commands His people to respect. To do either is to think too little of the sovereignty of God. It is the God of Heaven, the prophet Daniel says, who “changes times and seasons; he removes kings and sets up kings.” When doing so spares us from evil, we ought to thank Him. ...
Why do I think we would not be reading this today if God had removed the king instead of Corey at Butler one year ago?
Shall we thank God for the evil visited upon the family of Corey Comperatore?
Monday, July 14, 2025
Kevin Hassett is full of it as usual
That makes no sense.
Buying costlier U.S.-made goods over foreign goods would naturally boost inflation, quite apart from new tariff differences in price.
Meanwhile the core pce inflation rate in May 2025 year-over-year was 3.88% higher than it was in April, the 65% majority of which is services but still includes goods.
That's what the 0.1 point rise from 2.577% to 2.677% means.
The May 2025 rate is actually slightly higher than in May 2024, which means we've made no progress in the last year.
. . . with liberty and justice for all
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No Man can be a sincere Lover of Liberty, that is not for increasing and communicating that Blessing to all People; and therefore the giving or restoring it not only to our Brethren of Scotland and Ireland, but even to France it self (were it in our Power) is one of the principal Articles of Whiggism.
-- Robert Molesworth (1656-1725)
Gallup poll shows backlash to ugly Trump immigration enforcement, record 79% now say immigration is a good thing
The percentage saying immigration is a good thing has been slowly rising since the 2002 low at 52% to a record high 79% now.
The percentage saying it's a bad thing has been steadily falling since the 2002 high at 42%, now at just 17%, a record low.
The ten-point underwater spread in 2002 is now sixty-two points in 2025.
Donald Trump has completely botched the issue, putting the stink of his ugly behavior on it for the foreseeable future.
Sunday, July 13, 2025
A new climatology graph not previously shown here: Trend for total seasonal annual snowfall for Grand Rapids, Michigan
Seasonal measurements run from July to June.
Like the precipitation graph for Grand Rapids (recently updated), this one shows the same wetter trend over the last century plus, which makes sense given the cooler Pacific ocean trend shown by the Oceanic Nino Index (update forthcoming), and given the moderating winter heating demand shown by declining trend for heating degree days (also recently updated):
After the shot in Butler, Satan entered into him
 |
| And after the sop Satan entered into him. -- John 13:27 |
Saturday, July 12, 2025
They're leaving the dogs, they're leaving the cats . . .
ICE raids are leaving some L.A. cats and dogs homeless
... Pets belonging to people who are deported or flee are being left in empty apartments, dumped into the laps of unprepared friends and dropped off at overcrowded shelters, The Times found.
"Unless people do take the initiative [and get the pets out], those animals will starve to death in those backyards or those homes," said Yvette Berke, outreach manager for Cats at the Studios, a rescue that serves L.A. ...
"Pets are like the collateral damage to the current political climate,” said Jennifer Naitaki, vice president of programs and strategic initiatives at the Michelson Found Animals Foundation. ...
Trump's stupid bullying of Jerome Powell is analogous to his stupid bullying of Canada's Justin Trudeau and now Mark Carney
Jerome Powell doesn't set interest rates.
The Federal Open Market Committee sets interest rates. That's why the release of the committee's prior meeting minutes is always keenly awaited and is by itself a major market mover. Powell's is one vote among many on the FOMC:
Where
interest rates should be today, and when they should be reduced, is
already a topic of debate inside the Fed, a decision, it should be
noted, that cannot be made unilaterally by the chair. Powell’s
leadership and professionalism does not appear to be a concern within
the halls of the central bank. Certainly, none of his colleagues,
present or past, have made the case that he is incompetent.
Similarly the Canadian Prime Ministers' control over trade decisions is also muted, deferring as they must to provincial and territorial authorities.
Trump bullies people like this who cannot make unilateral changes to policy in order to make himself look like an assertive leader to his equally stupid followers.
That's why people like Larry Kudlow disgust me. He knows what I am writing is true, but he joins in on the pig pile nonetheless.
Greater things are at stake in this than interest rate policy. Trump is playing with fire.
The New York Times eulogizes one of its sources from the past with contempt, David Gergen, who has succumbed to Lewy body dementia at age 83
... Years later, he expressed contempt for President-elect Donald J. Trump. “A bully — mean, nasty and disrespectful of anyone in his way,” he wrote in a 2021 column for CNN. ...
Mr. Gergen wore his 6-foot-5 frame comfortably and was graced with an easygoing manner, verbal quickness and a ready laugh that made him popular with many White House reporters. He also leaked information often enough to be labeled “the Sieve” by some of them.
That reputation fed speculation that he was Deep Throat, the shadowy figure who provided The Washington Post with insights into the Watergate scandal in the early 1970s. That source, however, was confirmed in 2005 to have been W. Mark Felt, the No. 2 official at the F.B.I. ...
The spin “had nothing to do with ideas,” Mr. Gergen said. “It had nothing to do with anything that was real. Eventually, it became selling the sizzle without the steak. There was nothing connected to it. It was all cellophane. It was all packaging.” ...
Mr. Gergen was the author of a best-selling book, “Eyewitness to Power: The Essence of Leadership, Nixon to Clinton” (2000). The book offered lessons for would-be leaders that tended to be little more than bromides, advising them to develop “a capacity to persuade” and “an ability to work within the system.” He revisited the topic in a 2022 book, “Hearts Touched With Fire: How Great Leaders Are Made.” ...
More.
Republican David Gergen was on the wrong side, you see, even if he was a centrist.
Friday, July 11, 2025
Elon Musk/DOGE cuts failure continues: Federal deficit spending is 5% higher year to date through June than it was last year at this time, according to the monthly statement of the U. S. Treasury Department
The fiscal year to date deficit October 2023-June 2024 was $1.273258 trillion.
The fiscal year to date deficit October 2024-June 2025 is $1.337372 trillion, $64.114 billion higher than a year ago, or 5%.
This dope who works for Trump can barely speak English, is just looking for any way he can to oust Fed Chair Jay Powell
These people make me sick.
The renovations were approved in 2021 and won't be finished until long after Powell leaves next May.
It's an investigation with a pre-drawn conclusion, that's all.
... “When you go to the nation’s mall, you see the construction of this palace ... upwards of $2.5 billion massive cost overrun, and we want to make sure we have facts as to the largesse and the extent to which it’s overrun,” Vought said during a “Squawk Box” interview. “I think it just points to the fundamental mismanagement of the Fed under the chairman.” ...
″The problem with Chairman Powell is he has been late at every turn,” Vought said. “It’s time to lower rates. You have a problem there. But again, this is about the largesse and the fact that he has systemically mismanaged the Fed, and that is evident by what we’re seeing with regard to this monstrosity, this Palace of Versailles, on the National Mall.” ...
“This certainly has to do with the fiscal mismanagement of the Fed, of which [interest rates] is one aspect of it,” he said. “We are going to zoom in over the last several days on this. We have new commissioners at the National Capital Planning Commission who are asking very tough questions.” ...
Ron Insana: Why Trump’s new attack on Powell should be so troubling to investors
... If
I were a foreign investor witnessing the ouster of a Fed chair,
replaced by a presidential supplicant, I’d sell the dollar and U.S.
bonds and head for the hills. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.
The great impediment to a U. S. - Canada trade deal which most people in the U. S., including our dunce of a president, don't seem to understand is that it's not Mark Carney standing in the way, it's Canada's sovereign 10 provinces and 3 territories
Canada is today's poster child for America's bad old system of states' rights.
Canada does not have free trade with itself, let alone with the United States. Imagine not being able to drive an 18-wheeler cross country.
... When Carney made his campaign promise, he was talking about cutting red tape put up by the federal government — not the rules set by the provinces, which have the most authority in this area. ...
There is no comprehensive list of existing internal trade barriers. Even some lobby groups have told parliamentarians they don't know how many barriers their own industries face.
There isn't even consensus on what all counts as a trade barrier. ...
Internal Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland, who has repeatedly stated that most of the barriers are at the provincial level, testified to the Senate that she will meet with her provincial counterparts on July 8 to discuss next steps.
One major obstacle is in Freeland's crosshairs: Canada's patchwork of interprovincial trucking regulations.
"One of three areas that I will be putting on the agenda at that meeting is trucking," she said on June 16. "It should be a lot easier than it is to drive a truck from Halifax to Vancouver. We need to get rid of conflicting requirements."
Unaffordable Care Act to become more unaffordable for millions in 2026 due to Trump's reconciliation bill, just in time for the election
Why 22 million people may see ‘sharp’ increase in health insurance premiums in 2026
... More than 22 million people — about 92% of ACA enrollees — received a federal subsidy this year that reduced their insurance premiums, according to KFF, a nonpartisan health policy research group.
Those recipients would see “sharp premium increase” on Jan. 1, Cynthia Cox, the group’s ACA program director, said during a webinar on Wednesday.
The average marketplace enrollee saved $705 in 2024 — a 44% reduction in premium costs — because of the enhanced tax credits, according to a November analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
Without the credits, average out-of-pocket premiums in 2026 would rise by more than 75%, Larry Levitt, KFF’s executive vice president for health policy, said during the webinar.
Additionally, 4.2 million Americans would become uninsured over the next decade if the enhanced subsidies lapse, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
That growth in the ranks of the uninsured is on top of the nearly 12 million people expected to lose health coverage from over $1 trillion in spending cuts Republicans made to health programs like Medicaid and the ACA to help offset the legislation’s cost. ...
ACA enrollment has more than doubled, to roughly 24 million people in 2025 from about 11 million in 2020, according to data tracked by The Peterson Center on Healthcare and KFF. ...
According to Google's AI, there are 22.8 million fewer uninsured 2010-2024, presumably because of Obamacare, but 26.7 million more on . . . Medicaid!
Because of that Rube Goldberg Machine known as Obamacare!
Push here, and it comes out there. And the kicker is Medicaid involves estate recovery for nursing home and other care costs at death, which varies by state.
You can run, but you cannot hide.
Thursday, July 10, 2025
Undersea UFO expert Republican Tim Burchett (TN-2) says the Biden administration destroyed the Epstein client list lol
Atta boy, Tim, blame the Democrats.
Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) said Wednesday he believes a client list associated with disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein once existed but was “destroyed” by the Biden administration.
“I think the files existed at one time,” Burchett said in an interview on NewsNation’s “On Balance” with host Leland Vittert. “I think they were destroyed in the previous administration.” ...
Mad King Ludwig to impose 50% tariff on Brazil but not on Israel lol
I mean, some countries are more equal than others amirite?
Trump brands Netanyahu's corruption trial a 'witch hunt,' calls for it to be canceled
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