Musk calls for federal troops in San Francisco even as Benioff softens stance
Tuesday, October 14, 2025
Monday, October 13, 2025
Democrats are aghast at the lack of coordinated pushback from their GOP colleagues against the Trump administration's aggressive incursion into the power of the purse
The GOP wants autocracy, and boy are they ever giving it to us, in the name of cutting duly authorized spending of already appropriated funds.
It's pure madness, a complete abnegation of the constitution, brought to us by the GOP.
It would be unpatriotic to ever vote for them again.
... “I believe that we don’t have a choice about reducing spending,” said Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-Louisiana), a member of the committee. “The only time I’ve seen us reduce spending from the 10 years I’ve been here is through a rescissions package.”
The administration’s “aggressive” incursion into the power of the purse follows decades of members of Congress ceding their authority to the executive on other matters like tariffs and war powers, according to Molly Reynolds, an expert at the center-left think tank the Brookings Institution. But the appropriations process — although messy and increasingly partisan in recent years — had remained generally free from the reach of the executive branch. ...
More.
Of course the deal with Hamas was too good to be true, as is the case with every deal involving Donald Trump
Hamas releases names of only four deceased hostages to be returned Monday
The Hostages and Missing Families Forum called for all aspects of the ceasefire with Hamas to be suspended until all of the slain hostages were returned to Israel
IDF Chief Spokesman Brig. Gen. Effie Deffrin confirmed on Monday afternoon earlier rumors that only four deceased hostages would be returned by Hamas on Monday evening. ...
In response, the Hostage Families Forum called for an immediate suspension of Israel's agreement with Hamas until every deceased hostage was returned. ...
Deffrin initially provided no information about the other 24 deceased hostages ...
... in a briefing on Sunday night, IDF sources had not hinted that the number of returned deceased hostages would be so low on the first day.
... most observers were expecting a more significant number of hostages to be returned on the first day and the majority to be returned within a few days, with only a small number of unresolved cases. ...
Gold hits record $4,083.42, silver hits record $51.70, Bank of America forecasts $5,000 and $65
Gold, silver hit record highs as Trump threatens fresh China tariffs
... Spot gold was up 1.64% to a record $4,083.42 per ounce. ... Spot silver jumped 2.22% to $51.39/oz, after hitting $51.70/oz, driven by similar factors as gold alongside tightness in the spot market. ...
Bank of America on Monday raised its price forecasts for precious metals, lifting its 2026 outlook for gold to $5,000 an ounce and for silver to $65/oz. BofA is the first major bank to raise its gold price forecast to $5,000/oz for 2026.
On a technical basis, gold’s and silver’s Relative Strength Index stands at 80 and 83, respectively, indicating the metals are overbought. ...
Sunday, October 12, 2025
The total value of all the stocks on the U.S. stock market is now 216% of GDP
... The total value of all the stocks on the U.S. stock market is now 216% of gross domestic product, a metric once cited by Warren Buffett as his favorite yardstick for whether the market was cheap or expensive. The current reading is “one of the highest levels on record,” according to calculations by Jennifer Nash at Advisor Perspectives. According to another long-running measure, the Tobin’s Q, the market is more than twice average valuations. ...
More.
Delusional Trump promised 9-cent electricity within 12 months and doubled electricity generating capacity "quickly" in Detroit in October 2024
We haven't seen 9-cent electricity since 2003 and aren't likely to ever again, and doubling generating capacity will take well into the 2040s, twenty more years.
Piped utility gas costs 15% more on average than when he spoke, while the average price of gasoline is basically flat but falling.
We'll get updated data this week maybe, since despite the shutdown the administration is pledging to report the consumer price index figures.
But the main point is, Trump has no idea what he's talking about.
Delusional Donald Trump thinks Joe Biden was in charge of the FBI on Jan 6, 2021
That's the thing about Donald Trump. Even when he's in charge he's not.
Undemocratic progressives, but I repeat myself, utterly blew it by betraying Joe Biden in summer 2024
Imagine Joe Biden is president today.
All eyes would be on progressive policy standard-bearer and VP Kamala Harris at this point in Joe Biden's second term, had he run and won, because of his illness headlined below.
Progressives would have been sitting in the catbird seat for the foreseeable future, advancing their agenda on climate change, renewable energy, higher taxes on the rich, and higher spending on healthcare.
The Democrat failure to stick together in 2024 was a crack-up worthy of 1968, the damage from which Democrats did not recover until 1992.
Just 270,000 votes across four states were the difference between the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat in 2024, and that was for the disloyal Kamala Harris.
Progressives have proven themselves unworthy of the name Democrat by their actions in usurping Joe Biden's presidency, and Kamala Harris proved it by her words in her memoir when she framed Biden's decision to run for re-election as entirely personal and therefore reckless, when 14+ million Democrat primary voters for Joe Biden thought otherwise.
14 million primary voters, ignored. That's what progressives stand for. They respect democracy no more than does Mad King Ludwig.
Saturday, October 11, 2025
What's next for Mad King Ludwig's revolution after an Arc de Triomphe, Madame Guillotine?
... Triumphal arches were widely used by the Romans to commemorate victories. Those Roman arches inspired more recent structures in Europe, most notably the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, which was constructed in the first part of the 19th century. The models displayed in the Oval Office closely resemble those structures, inspiring some online commentators to joke that the new monument would be “the Arc de Trump.”...
Friday, October 10, 2025
Gold and silver this morning
... Spot gold, which hit a record high of $4,059.05 on Wednesday, was up 0.5% to $3,992.97 per ounce as of 0919 GMT - a gain of 2.7% so far this week. U.S. gold futures for December delivery rose 0.8% to $4,005.30. ... Silver rose 3.7% to $50.95 per ounce a day after touching a record high of $51.22. It has gained 76% so far this year. ...
More.
Thursday, October 9, 2025
The Department of the Treasury of the United States isn't supposed to be politicized like this
The BEA and BLS aren't like this.
Gold vs. SPX
SPX 1999-2025
1,469.25 12-31-1999
6,753.72 10-8-2025 close
+359%
GOLD 1999-2025
278.88 average 1999 price per Kitco
+1348%
Open and shut case, right?
Well, not so fast.
With dividend reinvestment SPX returned approximately 712% over the period, not just the 359% increase in the price level.
$279 invested in SPX in 1999 would yield approximately $2,267 by now vs. $4,038 for gold, which yields nothing over time beyond the increase in its price. Plus you have to pay to protect your gold from thieves.
Still, the gold outcome has been about 78% better, but that's only thanks to the recent dramatic rise in the gold price since 2023 when gold was still in the neighborhood of $1,940 an ounce, after averaging just a little over $1,800 in 2022.
Although I expect gold to continue to rise, a stock market reset would most likely trigger a big self-off in gold as stock and other speculators raise cash to cover their debts.
As always, diversification is key to surviving as an investor. And more important than that is being able to cover your debts if you won't live without debt.
King Coal 2024, for more than 50 years, sixth paragraph in lol, weak wind and hydro in Europe
... Coal, a major contributor to global warming, was still the world's largest individual source of energy generation in 2024, a position it has held for more than 50 years, according to the IEA. ... in the EU, months of weak wind and hydropower performance led to a rise in coal and gas generation. ... winter wind lulls can last for weeks, requiring backup power sources that batteries alone can't provide - making the system more expensive to build and run. ...
Wednesday, October 8, 2025
Palisades Fire was lit by a 29-year old pyromaniacal Uber driver, not by fireworks, lightning, power lines, or climate change
The NBC story doesn't mention that last one lol.
How many is that now? All of them?
29-year-old former Uber driver arrested in connection with starting deadly Palisades Fire
... Authorities said the Palisades Fire was a “holdover” fire or a continuation of the Lachman Fire that Rinderknecht allegedly started on New Year’s Day.
Firefighters were able to suppress the Lachman Fire, but did not know that it continued to smolder and burn underground, a criminal complaint states.
On Jan. 7, as heavy winds swept through the area, the fire began to surface and spread, becoming the Palisades Fire. ...
Investigators said other possible factors, including fireworks, lightning and power lines, were determined not to be the cause of the fire.
Senator Ron Johnson squeals like a pig for the Gang of Nine
... none of us were ... targets of this investigation. There's no predicate. ...
Ha ha ha.
Here.
Johnson is not telling the truth about his role in the fake elector scheme.
So far, the Trump administration is projected to have spent about $71,000 on each one of the ~50,000 deported per month to date
H.R. 1 passed in July allocates $170 billion to DHS for immigration and border enforcement over four years.
In September DHS said over 400,000 had been deported since January 20th.
So in eight months that's 50,000 deported per month at a cost of $3.542 billion per month, or $70,833 per person deported.
It would have been far cheaper to cut illegals off at the source, by going after their employers instead of going after each and every illegal employee.
But that would have been a really bad look, in a country where the employer can do no wrong and the full time job is the summum bonum.
The red meat of the current deportation theatre is far more useful to Trump as politics. It must be thrown daily to keep the base energized, the warriors busy, and the emperor in the spotlight.
"Boy, that Trump is really doing a great job! Look at that! He got another one!".
Nevermind that the best he'll ever do like this is 2.4 million deportees, when we've got many millions more than that. The easy pickings are soon to be exhausted, if they aren't already. And it will only get harder from here.
Remember that just a few months ago the goal was 3,000 deportees per day, or 4.38 million in four years. The goalposts have already been moved, and they'll no doubt be moved again. We're down to 1,666 per day on their own accounting.
That's how you know this is not serious.
The spectacle is the whole point.
Year to date spot gold is up ~54%
By comparison, Total Stock Market Index VTSAX is up 14.83% ytd through yesterday.
Total Bond Market Index VBTLX is up 6.4%.
... The [gold] rally has been driven by a cocktail of factors, including . . . a weak dollar. ... -- CNBC
Would these people know a weak dollar if they saw it?
Trying to explain gold like this is just silly.
The Nominal Broad U.S. Dollar Index is 120.51, down 7.4% from the January all time high of 130.21.
The all time low for this index was under Obama in July 2011, at 85.46.
You remember the summer of 2011, right?
The dollar was at its weakest, America lost its AAA rating, and precisely net zero jobs were created that August, the first time since WWII.
We have a strong dollar today, not a weak one.
Tuesday, October 7, 2025
Democrat Jay Jones who advocated violence against police and Republicans and their families wants to be Virginia's next attorney general, opposes qualified immunity same as libertarian Justin Amash
"... And I said, ‘that’s insane.’ But he firmly believed that if you removed qualified immunity, that police officers would act differently, and I firmly believe that it would not result in good public policy, and it would put police officers and the public’s lives at risk if they have to second-guess themselves on a decision they’re making in a moment where someone is doing something violent.” ...
... The texts come days after the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported that Jones was caught going 116 miles per hour in a 70mph zone in 2022 and did 500 hours of community service at his own political action committee.
U.S. gold futures surged past the $4,000 per ounce milestone for the first time on Tuesday
Spot gold new high $3,990.85.
Republican Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin appears to have been involved in trying to get a slate of fake electors into the hands of Vice President Mike Pence on January 6th, 2021, but Pence refused them
The text message Senator Johnson sent referred to in the Jamie Dupree post on X, who has been all over this like white on rice since last year, see here for some of the receipts, was recovered by an FBI investigation into the fake elector scheme, which resulted in convictions of Ken Chesebro and Sidney Powell, who cooperated with investigators.
Apparently they gave up Kelly (PA-16, lives in Butler!) and the Senators.
Johnson is presently screaming about being surveilled as if there had been no reason for it lol. It is said that Johnson accused Kelly in 2022 of mounting a fake elector scheme in PA in 2020, which sounds kinda like Johnson knew what was coming on all this and was trying to get out ahead of it by pointing the finger at Kelly to deflect from his own involvement.
The blonde in the photos is an aide for Johnson who took the handoff of the fake elector documents from a staff member from Rep. Mike Kelly's office which had also been unsuccessful in persuading Pence to take the documents. They did this on the streets of Washington DC on January 6th.
The video of all this is damning as hell.
Monday, October 6, 2025
Gold makes new high $3958.57, silver highest since May 2011 at $48.55
... Spot gold hit an all-time peak of $3,958.57 an ounce and has climbed 48% so far this year, adding to last year’s gain of 27%. ...
Silver climbed to $48.55 an ounce, its highest since May 2011.
Its rally is supported by the same factors as gold, as well as strong industrial demand and a tight spot market. ...
More.
Will Trump be tried for murdering drug traffickers like former Philippine president Duterte is being tried?
... Duterte was arrested in March by Philippine authorities on a warrant issued by the ICC. He is now being held at an ICC facility in the Netherlands.
Supporters of Duterte criticized the administration of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., Duterte's political rival, for arresting and surrendering the former leader to a court whose jurisdiction his supporters dispute. ...
More.
I suppose it depends on a future president giving Trump up to arrest by the International Criminal Court somehow.
... The strikes on Venezuelan narcoterror smuggling boats provide one possible avenue. Shortly after the U.S. Navy destroyed the first such vessel, Ken Roth, a former head of Human Rights Watch, endorsed ICC intervention. “Trump just did what the International Criminal Court has charged former Philippines Pres. Duterte with doing—ordering the summary execution of alleged drug traffickers,” Mr. Roth tweeted. Venezuela is a Rome Statute party, which in the court’s thinking gives it jurisdiction over U.S. officials and servicemen involved in the attacks. The ICC has already launched an investigation against a nonmember state (Israel) based on a single boarding of a vessel flagged by a member state, so it has all the precedents it needs.
Mr. Trump has thus far taken an incremental approach to the ICC. He revived a first-term executive order authorizing sanctions against the court and applied it against four ICC officials. None of this has significantly reduced the risk to the U.S. or led the ICC to change its ways.
The ICC’s supporters don’t see the existing sanctions as an “existential threat.” The tribunal can easily ride it out by lying low until a Democratic president lifts the sanctions, as Joe Biden did. The court takes a long view—its prosecutors and judges have nine-year terms, and its other staffers are part of a global deep state who can expect to remain at their jobs indefinitely.
International lawyers are already developing multiple lines of attack against the administration and its officials. ...
More.
All of our problems with Donald Trump are at root theological
 |
| Trump turned 6-years old when his pastor first published this in 1952 |
Sunday, October 5, 2025
Saturday, October 4, 2025
Hypocritical, disgraceful Republican Speaker of the U.S. House Mike Johnson thwarts democracy, slow-walks swearing-in of Adelita Grijalva (AZ-7), newly-elected on September 23rd
Republicans refuse to swear in newly elected Democrat, delaying success of Epstein petition
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and House Republican leaders refused requests from Democrats to swear in Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva (D-Ariz.) on Tuesday, saying she will be sworn in when the House returns to regular session.
Grijalva, who was elected last week in a special contest [September 23rd] to replace her father, the late Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.), has already vowed to sign the discharge petition as soon as she’s sworn in, and the bipartisan lawmakers pushing to release the Epstein files had hoped to launch the process as quickly as possible. ...
Although there are no votes scheduled, the House floor opened up briefly at noon on Tuesday for a pro forma session, a routine procedure allowing one chamber to pause floor activities for long stretches without the consent of the other.
Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-Va.) presided over Tuesday’s pro forma session, gaveling out and refusing to recognize Democrats shouting on the floor as they attempted to force a vote on a Democratic proposal to keep the government open. He did not swear in Grijalva.
“Historically, you do it when the House is in session other than pro forma,” Griffith said after the session when asked about not swearing in Grijalva.
Grijalva noted that Florida Republicans were sworn in during a pro forma session earlier this year, on April 2, the day after their special elections. The House had been in session the day before. ...
A shutdown would not prevent Grijalva from being sworn in. The full House was sworn in during a government shutdown when a new Congress started in January 2019. ...
“It is common practice in the House of Representatives that Representatives-elect are sworn in immediately following their decisive election, with some being sworn in as little as 24 hours after they have won,” wrote Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández (D-N.M.) . . ..
Imagine Democrats doing this to Republicans. The latter would be howling in front of the cameras about Democrats killing democracy.
"My ex had DDs" is actually good now lol
... if they constantly bring up their ex in purely negative ways ...
Speaking of Margaret Thatcher, "right-wing" candidate for Japan PM backs "hardline conservative" policies of easy money and aggressive spending of it LOL
 |
| "Let''s devalue the Yen and spend the hell out of it" |
Japan’s ruling party picked hardline conservative Sanae Takaichi as its head on Saturday, putting her on course to become the country’s first female prime minister in a move set to jolt investors and neighbors. ...
Takaichi, who says her hero is Margaret Thatcher, Britain’s first female prime minister, offers a starker vision for change than Koizumi and is potentially more disruptive.
An advocate of late premier Shinzo Abe’s “Abenomics” strategy to boost the economy with aggressive spending and easy monetary policy, she has previously criticized the Bank of Japan’s interest rate increases. ...
It's obviously the nationalism, anti-globalism, and possible militarism which really bother the writer from Reuters:
... But her nationalistic positions — such as her regular visits to the Yasukuni shrine to Japan’s war dead, viewed by some Asian countries as a symbol of its past militarism — may rile neighbors like South Korea and China. ...
Takaichi also favors revising Japan’s pacifist postwar constitution and suggested this year that Japan could form a “quasi-security alliance” with Taiwan, the democratically governed island claimed by China. ...
“We hope she will ... steer Japanese politics in an ‘anti-globalism’ direction to protect national interests and help the people regain prosperity and hope,” Sanseito said in a statement.
If Japan really wanted to scare the world, maybe it could peg the Yen to the price of plutonium, the vast majority of which in the world it owns, and start aggressively selling it to the highest bidders.
 |
| "That will teach them" |
It never occurs to homo Andrew Sullivan that Christianity in Great Britain has already been replaced by, well, himself
... The fart in a coffin [his high school classmate, PM Keir Starmer] did his best this week — and survived. Critically, he acknowledged the centrality of mass immigration to the national discourse, the way it has undermined a sense of common culture, undercut wages, begun to replace Christianity with Islam, required ever higher levels of censorship, killed Jews, and turned the cities my grandparents knew into something they wouldn’t even recognize as British. ...
More.
The new archbishop of Canterbury, first among equals of the Church of England, is a woman. And not just any woman, but a self-described liberal, feminist, dyslexic [one of us! one of us!], supporter of fetus-murdering and LGBT. It's not like she's Margaret Thatcher for God's sake.
That's not Christianity.
How utterly lost is the left, he asks.
How utterly lost is he.
Friday, October 3, 2025
Secretary of War Crimes Pete Hegseth wants you to know he was just following orders
German General Anton Dostler was executed by firing squad in December 1945 after admitting he ordered the executions of fifteen captured American soldiers in March 1944 because he was ordered to do so by Field Marshal Albert Kesselring.
The latter was convicted in the Ardeatine massacre of hundreds of Italian citizens and sentenced to death in May 1947, but, incredibly, pressure exerted by the sympathetic English, including by Winston Churchill and Harold Alexander, resulted in a commutation of his sentence to life in prison by General John Harding in July 1947.
Kesselring would have died in prison, but even more incredibly was released from there in October 1952 for health reasons, and didn't die until 1960 of a heart attack.
The Kesselring affair is emblematic of the decadent trajectory of the English character still plumbing new depths even today, a trajectory America is also on. At least the Americans of the time dispatched Dostler expeditiously within months of his arrest.
The Italians hated Kesselring about as much as they hated Mussolini.
It's probably too early to guess how Pete will be remembered here. After all, he has crimes to go before he sleeps, and promises to keep.
In the absence of labor statistics because of the federal government shutdown, here's Initial Claims for Unemployment, not seasonally adjusted, for 48 states, DC, and Puerto Rico through 9/27/25
The states continue to collect their data and it gets transmitted to FRED at the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank for each state. You just have to hand-tally it since the Feds won't due to the shutdown.
My result for 9/27/25 for 48 states and DC and PR reported this morning: -2,229.
MA, AZ, and Virgin Islands initial claims reporting lags by a week.
The largest downtick was in Texas at 3833.
The largest uptick was in Kentucky at 3049.
Declining initial claims is good.
Compare 9/20/25 at -14,822:
In the absence of labor statistics because of the federal government shutdown, here's Continued Claims for Unemployment, not seasonally adjusted, for 48 states, DC, and Puerto Rico through 9/20/25
The states continue to collect their data and it gets transmitted to FRED at the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank for each state. You just have to hand-tally it since the Feds won't due to the shutdown.
My result for 9/20 for 48 states and DC and PR reported this morning: -21,866.
MA, AZ, and Virgin Islands continued claims reporting lags by a week.
Texas was down 4994, California 3562, Pennsylvania 2765, New Jersey 2351, New York 1439, Connecticut 1437, and Virginia 1275.
The largest uptick was in Michigan at 940, followed by Kentucky at 430.
Declining continuing claims is good.
Compare 9/13/25 at -32,092:
Thursday, October 2, 2025
Trump couldn't defeat the Houthis in the Red Sea, now picks on someone his own size in what is both a phony and illegal Caribbean war, all because he needs a victory to save face
Trump ‘Determined’ the U.S. Is Now in a War With Drug Cartels, Congress Is Told
... In this case, the Trump administration is conflating the trafficking of an illicit consumer product and associated crime with an armed attack, asserting in the notice that cartels “illegally and directly cause the deaths of tens of thousands of American citizens each year.” But it has not explained how selling a dangerous substance constitutes a use of force, and Congress has not authorized the use of any type of military force against cartels. ...
Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, accused Mr. Trump of deciding that he could wage “secret wars against anyone he calls an enemy.” The president “offered no credible legal justification, evidence or intelligence” for the strikes, Mr. Reed said.
“Drug cartels are despicable and must be dealt with by law enforcement,” he said. “But now, by the president’s own words, the U.S. military is engaged in armed conflict with undefined enemies he has unilaterally labeled ‘unlawful combatants,’ and he has deployed thousands of troops, ships and aircraft against them. Yet he has refused to inform Congress or the public.” ...
Kamala Harris owed everything to Joe Biden, so stabbing him in the back like this means she's finished
She says she was hypnotized by Joe Biden lol, I mean by Dark Brandon, just like the 49ers were on February 11, 2024 at 10:46pm ET.
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