Holy cow, a seventh prosecutor resigns over the renegade DOJ attempt to toss the Eric Adams case

 

A seventh federal prosecutor resigned Friday over the Department of Justice’s controversial order to dismiss criminal corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams.

The prosecutor, Hagan Scotten, in a blistering letter to top DOJ official Emil Bove, said “I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion” to dismiss the Adams case.

“But it was never going to be me,” wrote Scotten, who had been the lead prosecutor in Adams’ case for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.

On Thursday, Scotten’s boss, acting U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon resigned in protest over Bove’s order to toss the case. ... 

Scotten is a Harvard Law School grad, who clerked for Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts after serving in the U.S. Army in Iraq in the Special Forces. He also served as a clerk to Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh when Roberts’ fellow conservative was sitting on a lower court.

More.

The new Attorney General Pam Bondi is really working overtime to accumulate obloquy. 

Banana Republican Donald Trump denies meddling in New York Mayor Eric Adams case as 6 top prosecutors quit over DOJ dismissal order

 

 ... After Sassoon refused to dismiss the case Thursday, the matter was reassigned to John Keller, the acting head of the DOJ’s Public Integrity Section, who then also refused to dismiss the case and quit, NBC reported. ...

Acting DOJ criminal division chief Kevin Driscoll also resigned Thursday after refusing to accept the Adams case.

At least three other senior officials in the DOJ’s Public Integrity Section quit after that following a meeting with the deputy attorney general. ...

Sassoon had been the lead prosecutor at the fraud and conspiracy trial of Sam Bankman-Fried, the former head of the failed cryptocurrency exchange FTX. Bankman-Fried was sentenced last March to 25 years in prison.

More.

 

US District Judge Amir Ali orders resumption of foreign aid disbursements in place before Trump took office

 

. . . the latest blow to the administration’s sweeping efforts to halt international aid. ...

The judge said in his ruling that the administration has not yet “meaningfully contested detailed and credible evidence of harm to countless American businesses, ranging from shutting down programs, to furloughing and laying off employees, to shuttering altogether.” ...

More.

Trump left the room yesterday where he was supposed to swear in Tulsi Gabbard, without doing it

 He . . . forgot.

 

 

A libertarian wants you to know that accumulated losses in a war are "not sensible", as if war were ever sensible

 "Here, let's look at this completely irrational thing and apply some logic to it now that we're down 28 points in the fourth quarter".

Their tidy little world of dollars and cents makes no sense, either.

Imagine Winston Churchill saying this after Dunkirk.

 

 

The VP of the country which invaded Iraq in a pre-emptive attack can't figure out who the bad guy is in Ukraine

 

The GOP controlled US Senate has confirmed both Tulsi Gabbard and RFK Jr

 The only Republican with the courage to say No was Mitch McConnell.

The lunatics control the asylum.

 

 

That's exactly what it is, you beer-swilling surrender monkey

 

 Trump's peace push 'not a betrayal' of Ukraine, Hegseth says

Thirteen paragraphs in we learn that last month's wholesale price headline was, well, total fiction

Which means that this headline is what then?

Producer prices report points to softer Fed inflation measure than feared:

A gauge of wholesale prices rose more than expected in January ... Over the past year, the all-items PPI increased 3.5%, well ahead of the central bank’s objective. ...

“Wholesale price growth came in slightly higher than expected for January, and the read for December was adjusted upward,” said Elizabeth Renter, senior economist at personal finance site NerdWallet. “In other words, inflation at the producer level remains high, and one concern is that this inflation could ultimately be passed along to consumers.”

Revisions to the December numbers also complicated the inflation picture, with the gain now put at 0.5%, compared with the 0.2% increase previously reported.

Last month's headline: Inflation watch: Wholesale prices rose 0.2% in December, less than expected.

As usual, the truth is under the hood of the polished headline, or maybe next month's polished headline.

 

Nothing looks soft to me in the measures shown below, which are the not-seasonally-adjusted ones.

Overall producer prices are up  0.7% in Jan 2025, and 3.5% year over year. Core producer prices are up 0.5% in Jan 2025, and 3.6% year over year. At least until next month.

 

 

 

The billionaires never say, Raise taxes now or face an economic heart attack

 

The word "tax" appears nowhere in this story.

Ray Dalio is worth $19 billion.

 

Ray Dalio to the Trump administration: Cut debt now or face an ‘economic heart attack’

 

“Make sure that you really know what you’re doing and you’re practical, and do it on … the conservative side, because you know, how much can the cutting actually be?”

 

Elon Musk is the biggest federal government teet sucker in history, the wealthiest man in the world on the backs of American taxpayers, and the biggest hypocrite about it

 

The hypocrite:

Elon Musk: Many Bureaucrats, Like Samantha Power, Are Getting Wealthy At Taxpayers Expense 

 

 

The grifter:

As Musk works to slash federal spending, his own firms have received billions in government contracts

Over the last decade, Musk's companies SpaceX and Tesla were awarded at least $18 billion in federal contracts, according to spending data -- with SpaceX winning more than $17 billion worth of contracts since 2015.

 

And don't forget the benefit of the government coin in the till for every Tesla purchased: 

"Good boy! Now fetch me Moldova"

 

The beer-swilling surrender monkeys of the Trump administration have just caved to Putin

 The art of the cave.

The art of the deal would drop NATO membership for a return of the occupied lands, but no, let's concede EVERYTHING for . . . what exactly?

A cessation of hostilities?

These people are a joke and a disgrace.

 

 

In Jan 2025 the average price of utility natural gas is 49% more than the 2017-2020 average

 The average price of utility natural gas was $1.04 per therm 2017-2020.

In Jan 2025 it costs $1.55, 49% more.

Since about 10% of natural gas production is diverted to LNG export for big profits, most of the increase is related to diversion of natural gas from heating to electricity production because of the lunatic policy of retiring massive amounts of coal electric generation capacity.

It makes heating your home much more expensive, and keeping the lights on much more expensive at the same time.

Thanks for nothing, green energy assholes. It's 22 degrees F and snowing in Grand Rapids, MI.

New all time high for the average price of electricity in the United States: $0.179/kWhr January 2025

 

Nine basic foods posting new all time high average prices in January 2025 according to the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank

Round steak $8.28/lb

Eggs             $4.953/doz

Frozen OJ    $4.48/12oz.

Coffee          $7.019/lb

Sugar            $1.011/lb

Ice Cream     $6.459/half gallon

Steaks, all     $10.905/lb

Table wine    $14.035/liter

Beer              $1.813/pint

Everybody's favorite food inflation indicator, eggs, made another new all-time record high average price in January 2025: $4.953/dozen

 Sorting for the 100 largest flocks of egg-layers affected by H5N1 bird flu since 2022 which have had to be destroyed, as of this morning I count in excess of 21 million chickens destroyed to stop the spread so far in 2025 alone.

 

At 3.258% in Jan 2025, the rate of core cpi inflation year over year is still 65.8% worse than the annual average 2017-2020

 

At 3.258% in Jan 2025, the rate of core cpi inflation year over year is still 65.8% worse than the annual average 2017-2020.

 

The rate has been going sideways since Jul 2024, seven months.

 

The Fed has failed, the Congress has failed, and the Executive has failed. They all suck at their jobs, which is to say they're doing great! They're bloodsuckers after all.

 

All figures are the not-seasonally-adjusted figures.

 

The 2017-2020 average was 1.965%.

 

The 2024 average was 3.4%.

 

The 2021-2024 average was 4.48%.

 

The percent change in Jan 2025 was +0.56986%, which since Jan 2021 is the third worst Jan out of four. 

 

 

Gold prices soared to another record high Tuesday

 

 $2,942.70

-- CNBC

Steve Bannon pleads guilty to one count of first degree scheme to defraud in New York in plea deal to avoid trial and jail

Trump pardoned Bannon on the federal charges literally at the 11th hour in January 2021, but not Bannon's partners, who all went to the big house. 

New York State went after Bannon separately.

Former Trump aide Steve Bannon pleads guilty in New York ‘build the wall’ case

 

... Bannon and three other men were accused of pocketing donations, while the group managed to build a paltry three miles of fencing along the southern border. ...