Coldest US winter in a decade ends, most of the country had below-average snowfall

... March 1 ... ended the coldest three month period in the United States since the winter of 2013 to 2014. It was about 1.1 degrees below average as a whole in the contiguous United States ...  Despite the frigid temperatures, 67 percent of the country experienced below-average snowfall. ...

More. 

Average temperature in Grand Rapids, MI was 46.5 degrees F in 2014, indeed the lowest of the last eleven years.

"Meteorological winter" here Dec-Feb was above the mean for temperature by 1.1 degrees. And snowfall was 3 inches above the mean for the period. So GR, being warmer and snowier, ran completely counter-trend in the current winter season.

 

US Treasury auctions last week indicated that yields held up from the previous auction only for the 1-month, and fell apart strongly in the Notes

 US Treasury auctions last week:

3-month 4.195 average yield/4.225 previously

6-month 4.18/4.22

2-year 4.169/4.211

5-year 4.123/4.33

7-year 4.194/4.457

4-week 4.25/4.245.

 

The weekly average of US Treasury yields by duration finished the week showing Bills holding up and Notes collapsing the most, with Bonds not far behind.

Yields for the 1MO, 1.5MO, 2MO, 3MO, and 4MO were strong in the range of 4.3. Investors piled into 2Y and 3Y Notes with yields plunging to 3.99 on Friday.

 

Elon Musk 1940: Londoners keep dying because Winston Churchill refuses to make peace with Hitler lol

 

Imagine FDR telling Churchill in August 1941 to make peace with Hitler and fork over Britain's coal to America

 

A Day of American Infamy

Bret Stephens, The New York Times

... If Roosevelt had told Churchill to sue for peace on any terms with Adolf Hitler and to fork over Britain’s coal reserves to the United States in exchange for no American security guarantees, it might have approximated what Trump did to Zelensky. Whatever one might say about how Zelensky played his cards poorly — either by failing to behave with the degree of all-fours sycophancy that Trump demands or to maintain his composure in the face of JD Vance’s disingenuous provocations — this was a day of American infamy. ...

Impeachment of judges is pure theatre, that's all, end of story

 

  Musk and Republican Lawmakers Pressure Judges with Impeachment Threats

 

 ... Judicial impeachments are rare and notoriously time-consuming. ... Any such move would be all but certain to fail in the Senate, where a two-thirds majority would be needed for a conviction. ...

J. D. Vance's disgrace: As vice president he berated, bullied, and humiliated a president of a foreign country, in front of God and everybody

Yale's finest!

 

House Republicans everywhere are taking incoming at townhalls and district office protests over DOGE layoffs and cuts, budget bill is full of more of the same

Republicans fear their big budget win is a 2026 time bomb

... Some Republicans already see signs that the backlash to the Trump administration's "efficiency" efforts is spilling over into opposition to their legislative plans. ... Republicans have been barraged the last week and a half by angry constituents at town halls and protests outside their district offices complaining about DOGE's layoffs and cuts to federal programs. ...       

The lone GOP truth-teller is Thomas Massie, who voted against the budget bill because it puts America at least $56 trillion in debt in 10 years, even with the spending cuts.

America needs spending cuts and tax increases, but Republicans are virtually incapable in their DNA of raising taxes.

 

 

Fascism delayed: Intel postpones Ohio chip plant opening from this year to 2030 after receiving $8 billion from bi-partisan Chips Act

But yeah, let's claw back money for food and medicine programs under USAID.

Intel delays Ohio chip plant opening to next decade, was supposed to start production by 2026

... The company said it won’t complete construction on the first plant until 2030, starting operations that year or the next. The second factory in the up to $100-billion complex will likely be finished in 2031 and start running the following year. The company had initially planned to begin production on the first plant in 2025. ...

Lindsey Grahamnesty epitomizes everything that's gone wrong with the GOP and America generally: America's interests abroad are purely about money, not at all about freedom

 

John McCain would not be happy with his old friend. McCain was a main agitator for freedom in Ukraine and its alliance with the West. The policy wisdom of that was controversial, but it wasn't framed as purely economic.

Lindsey used to be for freedom in Ukraine like McCain. Lindsey used to be an immigration liberal who advocated for amnesty. Now he's a suck-up to Trump as bad as Marco Rubio, who also used to talk about the old American values preached by Ronald Reagan.

They are shapeshifters all, just like the formerly NeverTrump J. D. Vance.

You cannot trust any of these people any more than we can trust Vladimir Putin. 

Lindsey Graham here:

I told Zelensky we'll talk about security guarantees. We'll talk about ceasefires and how the war ends. This is a process. You have a new relationship with America, a 500 billion, half trillion, dollar deal that President Trump is proud of that gives us an interest worth defending.      

In other words, if it's not about money it's not worth defending.

 

Thy money perish with thee.

-- Acts 8:20

Trump-Vance orchestrate an ambush of Zelenskyy, and when they are bested in the debate by Zelenskyy, Vance accuses Zelenskyy of orchestrating it for the media

 The chutzpah is amazing.

This is the moment when the whole meeting descended into chaos and hurtled toward failure.

Here Zelenskyy explains how Ukraine tried diplomacy with Putin after Putin took Crimea in 2014, but Putin broke the agreements they made.

J. D. Vance then attacked Zelenskyy, as if Zelenskyy had orchestrated this media shit show in the first place to make him look bad.

But J. D. looked bad all by himself. He didn't need any help at all.

What a disgrace.

 

 

 

For everything else there's MasterCard

Trump-Vance throw a fit: Thou shalt not point out that Vladimir Putin cannot be trusted

 

They threw Zelenskyy out of the White House

 

Donald Trump and J. D. Vance tag-teamed Ukraine's Zelenskyy today in front of the cameras for five minutes in a display which disgraces the Oval Office forever

This after reversing himself this week, Trump saying he didn't call Zelenskyy a dictator and then called him the best president Ukraine has had, which was obviously all a set up for this public attack and humiliation.

The attack was telegraphed by the reporter asking why Zelenskyy didn't wear a suit for the meeting. Everyone knows Zelenskyy hasn't worn a suit to meet with anyone since the war started in 2022, an act of solidarity with his troops whose clothing he wears.

 

 

 

Core pce inflation in January 2025 was 2.6% year over year, a full point higher than the 1.6% average 2017-2020, or 62.5% worse

The last 10 months have seen the year over year measure fluctuating between 2.88% and 2.63%.

 

If you thought the GOP pretending that Ukraine started the war with Russia was nuts, behold Senator Mike Crapo of Idaho who wants to pretend that Trump's 2017 tax law wasn't passed under reconciliation rules

 

 Honest to God, these people are clowns.

Republicans consider major budget change to obscure deficit impact of extending Trump’s tax cuts

... Extending the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which Trump signed into law in 2017, would cost $4.6 trillion over a decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the official nonpartisan scorekeeper.

That’s under the “current law” metric that has traditionally been used, as the tax cuts are slated to expire at the end of this year. But Senate Republicans want to use a different scoring method called the “current policy” baseline, which would assume that extending tax cuts costs $0 because they’re already law.

The chair of the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee, Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, endorsed the “current policy” approach, telling reporters that it “recognizes that extending current law does not change the tax policy, does not reduce tax revenue.”

Congressional GOP aides say the idea could have a huge impact on what they’re able to pass in the budget bill. If they use the current accounting process, they have no chance of making the 2017 tax cuts permanent, because that would require paying for it. And this process would also be key to unlocking Trump’s other tax proposals, like slashing taxes on tips and overtime pay. ...

Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., said it would set a “terrible” precedent if Republicans adopt that budgeting approach.

He said it would be a backdoor way to nuke the filibuster and take an anything-goes approach to the reconciliation process, which Congress can use once per fiscal year to evade the 60-vote rule in the Senate for changes to spending and taxes. The process imposes significant constraints, like needing to pay for long-term laws that add to the U.S. debt.

“My advice is: If they adopt that policy, we should advise the American people to forget about their credit card debt,” Neal said. “You wouldn’t have to analyze revenue and expenditure.” ...

The budget framework passed this week by the GOP House is guaranteed to raise the national debt by $19 trillion in 10 years, which means we'll be $60 trillion in the hole by 2035. 

All the shenanigans and pretending and make believe used over the years to get us to the current point of $36 trillion in debt, trotted out yet one more time aren't going to stop us from a date with $60 trillion in debt.

 

WE ARE NOT A SERIOUS COUNTRY.

Federal Judge William Alsup rules against Trump's Office of Personnel Management for overstepping its authority and firing federal employees in other departments illegally

A federal judge on Thursday ordered the Office of Personnel Management to rescind earlier instructions telling federal agencies to “promptly determine whether these employees should be retained at the agency.”

The directions, communicated in a Jan. 20 memo and Feb. 14 internal email, are “illegal” and “should be stopped, rescinded,” Judge William Alsup of the Northern District of California said from the bench. ...

“The Office of Personnel Management does not have any authority whatsoever under any statute in the history of the universe, to hire and fire employees within another agency,” Alsup said Thursday night. “It can hire its own employees, yes. Can fire them. But it cannot order or direct some other agency to do so.”

“OPM has no authority to tell any agency in the United States government, other than itself, who they can hire and who they can fire, period. So on the merits, I think, we start with that important proposition,” he said. ...

More here.

So now Trump is denying he said Zelenskyy is a dictator

 Trump cannot be trusted.

 

 

RFK Jr cancels regular March meeting of flu vaccine panel which determines for which flu strains vaccines will be developed for next fall and winter

 

A crucial March meeting of vaccine advisors to the Food and Drug Administration has been canceled without explanation, a member of the advisory panel told CNBC on Wednesday. ... CDC data shows the flu has caused up to an estimated 910,000 hospitalizations since October, which puts the season on track to be the most severe in at least a decade. ...

Reported here.

The barbarians are inside the gates.

Chief Justice John Roberts intervenes in dispute between USAID and USAID recipients and Judge Amir Ali, pausing Ali's order to disperse USAID funds by midnight yesterday

 

. . . Roberts issued an interim order placing on hold Washington-based U.S. District Judge Amir Ali’s action that had imposed a deadline of 11:59 p.m. on Wednesday night.

Roberts provided no rationale for the order, known as an administrative stay, which will give the court additional time to consider the administration’s more formal request to block Ali’s ruling.

Roberts asked for a response from the plaintiffs - organizations that contract with or receive grants from the U.S. Agency for International Development and the State Department - by noon on Friday.

More here. 

The story posted at 10:14pm last night.