Thursday, January 15, 2026

Mr. No Regime Change Wars J. D. Vance blocks Senate effort to stop regime change war in Venezuela

He believes in nothing. 

Trump's government is $602 billion in the hole for the first three months of fiscal year 2026

 This rate of deficit spending implies $2.4 trillion added to the national debt for FY2026 when it's over.


It ain't called SUX for nothing

 Performance for VUSUX, Vanguard Long-Term Treasury Fund, total returns, as of 12/31/25:

1-year:  5.64%

3-year:  0.78%

5-year:  -7.20%

10-year:  0.06%

Inception 2/12/2001:  4.10%

Wednesday, January 14, 2026

The dollar remained strong in Dec 2025 at the same time that the metals have been surging

 



Core producer prices have been increasing year over year at 2.9+% for four straight months, but we're supposed to believe inflation is waning

 


Did you save your pennies for a rainy day?

 


Gold hits record high of $4,641.40/oz, silver at $92.23

 


Unconstrained by re-election considerations, Trump does what he wants, but quietly, funding Planned Parenthood

 


Some of the commenters on this video snarl over the absence of such protests in Minnesota over the $9 billion fraud schemes, not realizing that this street theatre is costing them $75 billion

The ICE agents in this video twice fail to find open doors on their own vehicles to dump their detainees in, the incompetence being a metaphor for the ultimate failure all this sound and fury will turn out to be, when in the end ICE will be lucky to have deported only 2.4 million of the now 25 million illegal aliens Trump says are present in the United States.

The rapidity with which one man has turned the relatively quiet streets of America into a heretofore only imagined police state exposes yet another failure of the American system of government to prevent the abuse of power.

If it were not so, this would not be happening. 

  


Tuesday, January 13, 2026

Now 47 members of the U.S. House are not running for re-election in 2026

 


Scott Adams has checked out of this domain permanently

 Obituary here.

 


 

Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson and five others resign in Minnesota as Trump tries to strong-arm the investigation of Renee Good's killing in the direction of victim-blaming

... the office continues to face pressure to treat the investigation of the fatal shooting of a Minneapolis woman by an ICE officer as an assault on a federal officer case. ...

He resigned from the attorney's office along with Harry Jacobs, Melinda Williams, Thomas Calhoun-Lopez, Ruth Schneider and Tom Hollenhurst. ... 

100% ground beef averaged a record $6.089 in year one of Trump 2.0, and hit a record high $6.687 in Dec 2025 to celebrate the New Golden Age for them, not for you

 Like many other such graphs, the graph for 100% Ground Beef won't show the 2025 average because the government shutdown meant no figure for October in the data.

The average $6.089 in 2025 is for eleven months without October, with October obviously a high figure, too, which means the annual average is no doubt higher than $6.089.

 



 

The average price of gasoline in year one of Trump 2.0 . . . SUCKED

 


Trump has done little to speed replenishment of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve gutted by Biden: 413.4 million barrels as of 1/2/26 vs. 695.1 million in Jan 2016

 


Another new high for gold at $4,634.33, another for silver at $89.10

 Story here.

Food at home inflation was 2.4% year over year in Dec 2025, and there has still been no food deflation like there was in 2009 or 2016 to relieve the have-nots of America

 

food at home inflation 2.4% yoy

food inflation 3.1% yoy


In December 2025, gasoline still averaged over $3/gallon, electricity was effectively still at the all time high, and natural gas was still at the crazy 2022-2023 levels

 




Mark Zandi: Missing data from October and November combined with tariffs means inflation is still probably higher than it appears, closer to 3% year over year rather than 2.6%

From the story here

... “The bottom line is, I think inflation is still uncomfortably high,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s. “Inflation for staples, necessities, remains elevated.” ... 

Tariffs levied by President Donald Trump have put upward pressure on the inflation rate, Zandi said. ...

“I think were it not for the tariffs, we would have been back to target already,” Zandi said. “But tariffs have pushed up inflation a little over half a [percentage] point.” ...

Overall, the headline inflation rate is higher than it appears on paper, Zandi said. The record-long government shutdown, which ran from Oct. 1 to Nov. 12, prevented federal statisticians from collecting typical inflation data in October. Without that data, the BLS assumed that no price increases had taken place during the month for most categories of goods and services, Zandi said. Moody’s estimates the annual CPI inflation rate would be around 3% if that data were included, he said. ...

Overall CPI inflation, not seasonally adjusted, came in at 2.7% year over year in December 2025, while core CPI inflation was lower at 2.6% in today's report:

overall

core