Kremlin Karoline pretends Trump doesn't judge-shop

 

Karoline Leavitt: Concerted Effort By The Left To "Judge Shop" To Derail Trump's Agenda, Undermine The Will Of The People 

 

... there is a concerted effort by the far left to judge shop, to pick judges who are clearly acting as partisan activists from the bench, in an attempt to derail this President's agenda. ...

 

Mahmoud Khalil still detained in notorious Louisiana detention center as case is moved to New Jersey

... Earlier this month, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested Khalil in the lobby of his Columbia University apartment building, took him to New Jersey and quickly transferred him to Jena, more than 1,000 miles away from his pregnant wife, who is a U.S. citizen, and his attorneys in New York.

Civil rights lawyers who work with immigrants locked up in Louisiana’s detention centers say they are concerned for Khalil, given the Jena facility’s unsettling history. However, they say they are not surprised that ICE transferred Khalil to Louisiana, where access to counsel is extremely limited, and where the courts skew conservative.

In a phone interview with Verite News last week, Anthony Enriquez, vice president of U.S. advocacy and litigation at civil rights nonprofit RFK Human Rights, said the Trump Administration is “forum shopping” Khalil’s deportation case — looking for the jurisdiction that will give the government the outcome it wants.

“The government has the ability to do that with immigration,” Enriquez said. “It can arrest someone in a jurisdiction where the case law is very favorable to the person arrested, and then sweep them away to another jurisdiction.” ...

Numbskull Jesse Watters' masculinity prohibits eating soup in public, crossing your legs, drinking with a straw, milkshakes, waving with both hands, self-awareness, intelligence informed by history . . .

... “I have rules for men,” Watters began on Wednesday’s [Fox News] The Five. “They’re just funny, they’re not that serious. Like, you don't eat soup in public. You don't cross your legs. And you don't drink from a straw. And one of the reasons you don’t drink from a straw is the way your lips purse. It’s very effeminate.”

Referring to Walz, he said: “His excuse was, ‘well I was drinking a milkshake.’ Again, you shouldn’t be drinking a milkshake. Milkshakes are for kids.” 

Watters also claimed that real men “don’t wave simultaneously with two hands.”

“We wave with one hand, not both hands at the same time,” he said. ...

More. 

 

Government belt-tightening theatre at CNBC: Social Security new proofing procedures requiring in person visits are a joke, a costly upheaval designed to stop a puny problem

 

Social Security Administration to emphasize in-person office visits to curb identity fraud

As the Social Security Administration seeks to curb identity fraud, more people will now be required to visit an office to prove their identity for new benefit claims and direct deposit changes. ... The changes are aimed at helping to avoid the fraudulent redirection of benefit checks, which the agency has been warning about for years. ... SSA estimates the agency is now losing more than $100 million per year due to direct deposit fraud. ... The change may require foot traffic to Social Security offices nationwide to increase by about 75,000 to 85,000 more in-person visitors per week, according to reports on an internal Social Security Administration memo. ... The AARP, an interest group that represents Americans ages 50 and over, urged the Social Security Administration to reverse the decision.

In fiscal 2024 Social Security paid out $1.35 trillion in benefits. $100 million is 0.0074% of that!

I predict that the costs of this silliness will exceed the savings. 

Impeaching judges turns into big headache for Speaker Mike Johnson lol

 Hill Republicans already hated the ‘idiotic’ call to impeach judges. Then Trump jumped in. 

... Impeachment proceedings, even when they don’t involve presidents, can be time- and resource-intensive affairs. ... privately there is dread inside Johnson’s leadership circle about the prospect of having to pursue messy, certain-to-fail impeachments that could ultimately backfire on the GOP’s razor-thin majority.

“It’s never going to happen,” said a senior House Republican aide. “There aren’t the votes.”

“It would be such a heavy lift and we’ve got too many heavy lifts coming up,” said another top GOP aide. “What is the endgame here?”

A third said GOP leaders and even some conservative House members are “rolling their eyes” at the impeachment filings that “aren’t going to go anywhere.” ...

15th record high for gold this year

 Bullion surged to an all-time high of $3,045.24 earlier in the session, marking its 15th record peak this year.

More.

Putin is much better at cruelty and humiliation than Mad King Ludwig, makes Trump wait an hour, agrees only to a narrowly defined ceasefire with Ukraine, and then immediately breaks it

 

Violent attacks on Tesla keep law enforcement busy nationwide, but especially in the leftist Pacific Northwest

 Violent attacks on Tesla dealerships spike as Musk takes prominent role in Trump White House

... Musk critics have organized dozens of peaceful demonstrations at Tesla dealerships and factories across North America and Europe. Some Tesla owners, including a U.S. senator who feuded with Musk, have vowed to sell their vehicles. 

 But the attacks are keeping law enforcement busy. ...

A number of the most prominent incidents have been reported in left-leaning cities in the Pacific Northwest, like Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, where anti-Trump and anti-Musk sentiment runs high. ...

J. D. Vance is fixated on cheaper foreign labor as the cause of American industrial decline when it was the tax preference given to ordinary income over long term capital investment which made it attractive

Vance: The Two Conceits Of Globalization That Squeezed American Manufacturing From Both Ends

 

". . . cheap labor is fundamentally a crutch, and it’s a crutch that inhibits innovation. I might even say that it’s a drug that too many American firms got addicted to . . ."

The indispensable contribution driving investment back home to the United States will have to be penalizing foreign investment's income and rewarding long term domestic investment's income through the tax code, which also means dramatically raising ordinary income tax rates. In other words, returning to the status quo ante-Reagan.

The reason is we have learned that rich people don't know what's best to do with their own money any more than the rest of us do. The rich have not done what's best for the country. Ronald Reagan was completely wrong about that. They took one look at the quick and easy money and immediately started looking to maximize it elsewhere. The tax code used to force them to do the right thing, which was keep it here and invest at home if they wanted to get richer. And that is what made all of us richer, with jobs with which we could afford to marry, buy houses and cars, raise children and send them to college.

People who got rich through Reagan's low ordinary income tax rates fell for the cheap labor abroad to get even richer, but now here they and we sit together beholden to countries abroad who are hostile toward us.

The chart below shows how domestic investment dominated foreign throughout the post-war until the Reagan tax reform of 1986. Investment abroad did not overtake domestic until 1993, at 105% of private fixed investment, after the Reagan tax cuts had taken full effect. Foreign as a percentage of domestic investment is double that and more today. For every four dollars invested at home in 2024, eight were invested abroad.

It took decades to screw this up, and it will take decades to fix it. But as sure as I'm sitting here neither J. D. Vance nor Donald Trump nor any other politician out there has any clue about this. 

 

 

U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang in Maryland rules Elon Musk violated the Constitution in dismantling USAID

 

 The ruling is significant because the dopes in the Republican Party just rammed through a continuing spending resolution which fully funds the now severely diminished USAID.

The money must be spent as allocated by Congress.

 

 Judge rules DOGE’s USAID dismantling likely violates the Constitution

WASHINGTON (AP) — The dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development by billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency likely violated the Constitution, a federal judge ruled Tuesday as he indefinitely blocked DOGE from making further cuts to the agency. ...

In one of the first DOGE lawsuits against Musk himself, U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang in Maryland rejected the Trump administration’s position that Musk is merely President Donald Trump’s adviser.

Musk’s public statements and social media posts demonstrate that he has “firm control over DOGE,” the judge found pointing to an online post where Musk said he had “fed USAID into the wood chipper.” ...

The judge said it’s likely that USAID is no longer capable of performing some of its statutorily required functions. ...

Chuang said DOGE’s and Musk’s fast-moving destruction of USAID likely harmed the public interest by depriving elected lawmakers of their “constitutional authority to decide whether, when and how to close down an agency created by Congress.” ...

 

Kremlin Karoline shockingly spouts Russian propaganda, says Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station is on the Ukraine-Russia border

The official White House spokesperson is conceding that the lands taken in Russia's invasion of Ukraine are Russia.

This is a lie, a big lie, an utter disgrace.

 

 

Mad King Ludwig flies into a rage all because a judge told him Nay Nay

Ordinarily after successfully pulling off such a deportation coup, which may or may not be legal, you would think Trump would be gloating, but you would be wrong.

Nothing is ever good enough. He is never satisfied. He is never secure.

"He who is the real tyrant," said Plato, "whatever men may think, is the real slave, and is obliged to practise the greatest adulation and servility, and to be the flatterer of the vilest of mankind."

 

 

 

"He has desires which he is utterly unable to satisfy, and has more wants than any one, and is truly poor, if you know how to inspect the whole soul of him: all his life long he is beset with fear and is full of convulsions, and distractions, even as the State which he resembles."

 

The US depression in road travel from COVID-19 ended in 2024 and lasted five years

 The 3.257 trillion miles of 2019 was exceeded in 2024 by 5 billion miles, on an average annual basis.

The depression in road travel from the Great Financial Crisis lasted eight years, from 2007 to 2015.

Previous to that we had similar, but smaller contractions in US road travel, from 1979 to 1982, three years, and from 1973 to 1975, two years, precipitated by the oil trade shocks of the Iranian Revolution and the Yom Kippur War respectively.

You are now free to move about the country.

 

Vehicles in the US are now 12.6 years old on average, up two months from 2023, 1.1% are EVs

May 22, 2024:

 Average age of vehicles hits new record in 2024

... The US vehicle fleet surged to 286 million vehicles in operation (VIO) in January ... 

... 3.2 million EVs in operation in January ...

Atlanta Fed 1Q2025 GDP Now Model update: -1.8%

Skippin' along down there.

 

Nevah hoid of it

 FERRRI buyers getting younger. 40% now under 40...

Atlanta Fed GDP Now Model predicts -2.1% real GDP for 1Q2025 in today's update

 Here.

This is the 10th of 19 estimates scheduled through the end of April for 1Q.

This is the 4th negative estimate.

This is brutal: A list of Senate Democrats who were all for last week's failed filibuster after they were against it

 In the first column are 30 Democrats who infamously voted to abolish the filibuster late in the evening on Jan 19, 2022, which failed 48-52 because of Sinema and Manchin, but happily tried to mount one last week.

The roll call vote in the US Senate is here (the Wikipedia entry is wrong on this, citing a CBS story and dating the vote to Jan 20).

In column two are 7 Democrats who campaigned to abolish the filibuster but who also happily tried to mount one last week.

The 2017 letter to Mitch McConnell in the last column references the names of 19 Democrats who then said they were for the filibuster, but last week 5 of them weren't lol.

The irony of all this of course is that Joe Biden's spending for fiscal 2025 was just passed with little modification by Republicans with the help of 10 Democrats (1 Independent) and the Democrats are beating themselves up over it.

But it's kind of hard to crow about Joe Biden's success after you just forced him out of power.

🤷

 

Gold hit another record high at $3,004.86 on Friday March 14th

 CNBC here.

Multiple job holders hit what only looks like a new high in Feb 2025 at 9 million not seasonally adjusted

 But as a percent of civilian population, the 3.3% current level still doesn't come close to the 1996 peak at 4.2%.

More Americans with college degrees are working multiple jobs, Fed report finds

 

 

IRS turmoil into thrown

 

IRS into thrown turmoil at height of tax season...

... two IRS employees who spoke to CNN said that some of the actions taken by DOGE inside IRS appear to be aimed at finding ways to use the agency’s protected data to find undocumented immigrants. ...