The average price of unleaded regular gasoline in 2022 was $4.09, but that's what I paid for it yesterday at Sam's Club, except now this morning it's $4.19!

Gasoline stations around Grand Rapids were selling gasoline for $4.29/gallon yesterday.

Gas Buddy says the average price in my county this morning is $4.791 and climbing. 

 

The Jerome Powell Fed Chair era draws to a close effective May 15, but Powell could remain a Fed governor until his term ends in January 2028

Fed holds rates steady but with highest level of dissent since 1992

... In what may have been Chair Jerome Powell’s final meeting at the helm, the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee voted to hold the benchmark funds rate in a range between 3.5%-3.75%. Markets had been pricing in a 100% chance of no change. ...

It wasn't much of a dissent when the vote to hold rates steady was 11-1. Three of the eleven simply disagreed that right now the Fed should say as it does in the official statement that it remains open to new information which might suggest additional rate cuts in the future, when in their opinion that sends the wrong signal when inflation remains as elevated as it is at present.

Jerome Powell says he will continue to serve as a Fed governor, calls Trump criticism ‘unprecedented’  

... “My decisions on these matters will continue to be guided entirely by what I believe is in the best interest of the institution and the people we serve after my term as chair ends on May 15, and will continue to serve as a governor for a period of time to be determined,” he added. ...

Stock investors fared very well under Powell. Bond investors, not so much 

...  the S&P 500 rallied 14.7% annually under Powell, the third best performance for Fed chairs going back to 1970, Bespoke Investment Group found. ...

“He believed in easy money. He voted for all the QEs. He voted for zero interest rates,” Boockvar said. “It’s only when inflation mugged him ... that he became more hawkish ... .”

But the problem with accommodative monetary policy is, “Easy money gets investors drunk on things, and puts beer goggles on them,” Boockvar said. ’Sometimes it ends up OK, but other times it ends up in rampant inflation.”

 ... The Bloomberg US Aggregate Bond Index that aims to track all U.S. investment-grade debt returned just under 2% annually during Powell’s tenure, far below the average of 6.5% since the 1970s, according to Bespoke. ... 

Analysis: The Warsh revolution is coming. Powell won’t stand in the way. 

... the only major challenge for Warsh, as far as Powell is concerned, will be driving consensus within the Fed for where to set interest rates. Wednesday’s dissents suggest that won’t be easy. But Powell, whom Warsh has described as a failed chair who chose inflation, went out of his way to say Warsh is up to the task.

The chair’s job is to “create consensus” among the Fed’s voters and to “be inside their thinking,” Powell said.

Warsh “has the capabilities, skills to be very good at that,” Powell said.

 

If Warsh cuts interest rates in this environment, he'll be choosing inflation, too.

Inflation is very painful for the people, but for a government which absolutely refuses to get its fiscal house in order Powell's choice of inflation was the only medicine available to him, faced as he was with a national debt snowballing toward $40 trillion and the moon after that, and desperately in need of devaluation. 

So-called moderate Democrat Haley Stevens (MI-11) comes out on top in latest primary poll for U.S. Senate from Michigan

If Democrats hope to keep the seat being vacated by Gary Peters, they'd better nominate Stevens.

 

Y'all can't handle honesty

The Left Is in Thrall to Political Violence

John Daniel Davidson, The Federalist

 

The Left's Embrace of Political Violence

Washington Examiner

  

Is America in a Politically Violent Age?

Sabrina Tavernise, New York Times

 

We Need To Have an Honest Discussion About Political Violence

John Lott, RCP

 

 

Trump's government murdered two American citizens in Minneapolis just this year.

 

Bill Clinton's government murdered the Branch Davidians in WACO in 1993.

 

George H. W. Bush's government murdered Randy Weaver's wife and son at Ruby Ridge in 1992.

 

Abroad, presidents have been routinely killing civilians since the advent of the drone era.

 

George W. Bush conducted at least 57 strikes, killing over one hundred civilians.

 

Barack H. Obama ramped up the strikes to over 500, killing many hundreds. 

 

Trump I conducted so much killing from the air he stopped reporting the numbers, leaving others to estimate thousands of killings from an unknown number of drone strikes.

 

Joe Biden radically curtailed the use of drones, but still killed dozens of civilians, including in an infamous incident during the ignominious U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

 

Trump II is murdering non-combatants in speed boats in the Caribbean, and school girls in Iran. 

 

The high criminal violence is completely bi-partisan and impeachable, but it reflects the country rather than leads it.

 

Americans of all stripes have been quite content quietly to enjoy life year in and year out while pretending that some of their fellow citizens have not been busy killing tens of millions of the unborn. Abortions don't make a loud noise and leave a puff of smoke, but the outcome is the same.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Breaking: Two broken clocks right at exactly the same moment!

 

Mark Levin: The First Amendment for me, but not for thee

 Mark Levin: Private Tech Companies Like Amazon or Facebook Should Be Able to Deplatform "Lowlifes"

When does your daddy come home from work?

 

JMIC Update 38 for tanker traffic in the Middle East April 21-27, 2026

Middle East Tanker Traffic April 21-27, 2026

Strait of Hormuz E: 1.71/day

Strait of Hormuz W: 0.57/day

Total: 2.28/day

Normal (2022): 70/day

Down 96.7%

 

Bab-el-Mandeb Strait SE: 6.42/day

Bab-el-Mandeb Strait NW: 6.85/day

Total: 13.27/day

Normal (2022): 30/day

Down 55.8% 

 

Jimmy Kimmel lives rent-free in their heads

A lot more people know about what Kimmel said about Melania last week than would have otherwise only because Melania took the bait.

 

MELANIA: FIRE JIMMY KIMMEL...  

FCC launches review of Disney broadcast licenses years ahead of schedule

... Trump revived his push for ABC to take Kimmel off the air after the host of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” referred to First Lady Melania Trump as an “expectant widow” during the show last week, days ahead of an alleged assassination attempt at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. ... 

They're going to have to put the whole country in jail

 James Comey charged with threatening Trump’s life in ‘8647’ seashell post

 ... Trump had accused Comey of “calling for the assassination of the president” by sharing the image of the numbers in the May 15 post. ... Around four months later, however, he was indicted in Virginia on [SOMETHING ELSE!] one count each of making a false statement to Congress and obstruction. ...

 

Here we go again, plunging into more stupidity

 

 Trump Administration Secures New Indictment Against Comey

The new case stems from a photograph of seashells on a North Carolina beach.

... The charge stems from an incident nearly a year ago, when Mr. Comey, vacationing on the North Carolina coast, posted a photograph on social media showing seashells arranged to say “86 47,” combining the slang term “86” often used to mean dismiss or remove with an apparent reference to Mr. Trump, the country’s 47th president. ...

When Mr. Comey learned of the uproar, he deleted the post, saying that he did not know that it had a violent connotation and that he opposed violence of any kind. The Secret Service interviewed him by phone that evening, and Mr. Comey said he had no intent to cause the president harm. The next day, he sat for an in-person interview. The Justice Department eventually dropped the matter, but it was revived in recent months. ...

 

Fetterman is still not right in the head

 Fetterman's recent history of saying some reasonable things makes people on the right treat him like he's some oracle now.

But another lunatic tries to shoot Trump and suddenly America is on the hook for a new ballroom, which wouldn't be necessary AT ALL if Mad King Ludwig hadn't torn down the East Wing in the first place?

I don't think so, pal. Not when Trump promised it would be funded entirely from private donations.

Fetterman: Dems Should 'Drop the TDS,' Fund WH Ballroom

Alexander Bolton, The Hill

 

... “We were there front and center. That venue wasn’t built to accommodate an event with the line of succession for the U.S. government. After witnessing last night, drop the TDS and build the White House ballroom for events exactly like these,” Fetterman posted Sunday on the social platform X, referring to “Trump derangement syndrome,” a term the president uses for his critics. ... 

 

My heart's . . . on fire . . . for Fu-jai-rah

 United Arab Emirates leaving OPEC, effective May 1

 

Trump makes America 2015 again

 48.66% had a full time job in March 2026.

48.65% had one in May 2015.

 

Ha, taxes coerce behavior whether you like it or not, so you'd better decide what behavior you want because you're going to get it good and hard either way

 Tax Power Not Designed To Coerce Behavior - Gary Abernathy, RCEnergy

... the Fifth Circuit’s ruling is a welcome nod to the fact that the federal government cannot take tax laws intended to increase revenue and twist them merely to regulate business activities. ...

I mean, do these people not remember Ronald Reagan?

“If you want more of something, subsidize it; if you want less of something, tax it.” 

But Ronald Reagan ignorantly reduced high marginal ordinary income tax rates, destroying the need for the owners of capital to make the arbitrage decision going forward between either choosing low long term capital gains tax rates or the high ordinary income tax rates. 

The owners of capital had been no dummies and had picked the low rates for years. That drove domestic investment throughout the post-war because it had to, and produced the good paying full time jobs and GDP which too few even remember now. But faced with an easier path to low taxes, they took it.

The tax windfall set the conditions for the hollowing-out of the U.S. economy when those billions of dollars met the opening to China in 2001, where they worked for pennies on the dollar and regulations were practically non-existent.

20,000 domestic manufacturing establishments alone were lost in the wake of the 1986 tax reform, and 70,000 more after 1997. Millions of manufacturing jobs went with them, and with them the American middle class and the American dream.

All because Ronald Reagan, the liberal, thought rich people knew best what to do with their own money.

In the mid-1980s we had maybe 35 billionaires and people in their 20s routinely married and bought their first home. Today we have 1,135 billionaires and people are nearly 40 before they can afford to buy their first home. And we have Ph.D.s all over the place who can't spell in their own language let alone in a foreign one.  

Put a random set of 100 people in a room and the fact is only 25% of them are college material, but the rest need and deserve good jobs the same as they do, and they aren't going to be "knowledge" jobs.

I can still remember my company's HR head telling my truck-driving employees in the 1990s that they had to start thinking of themselves as "knowledge workers" instead of as what they were. I got the hell out of there. By 2003 most of those new "knowledge workers" of mine had lost their jobs driving truck when the company had to "restructure". Just one tale in tens of thousands of such tales.

America will not begin to be great again without tax policy which favors the American people over some eggheaded libertarian's idea of a principle which favors only the rich. 

. . . and the East Wing, and the Kennedy Center, and USAID, and the UN, and Ukraine, and NATO, and the Persian Gulf, and Trade, and GDP, and Prices, and Energy, and . . .

We voted for Bob the Builder and got Don the Wrecker instead.

 

Will Trump Wreck Spirit Airlines Like He Did Truth Social?

Chris Brennan, USA Today

 

On October 23 photos from the Associated Press showed that the entire East Wing had been demolished.

 

Mollie Hemingway just wrote a book fanning the flames she decries at the Supreme Court

Zero self-awareness.

 

Collegiality of SCOTUS Is Under Attack - and It's Dangerous

Mollie Hemingway, NYP

 

... Recently, however, the court’s famed collegiality has been strained by justices wondering out loud about how their colleagues got there. ... 

 

 

 

Yeah, but what Trump saved with military spending cuts to Ukraine he's blowing on the Iran war, which is why he's asking for $1.5 trillion in defense spending next year

 Europe’s rearmament push drives global military spending to record $2.9 trillion despite U.S. pullback

The U.S. national debt is up $3.069 trillion to date since November 1, 2024, an annual rate of deficit spending of $2.2 trillion after seventeen months of Donald Trump. 

... Global military spending as a share of GDP climbed to 2.5%, its highest level since 2009, the report showed. Europe was the main driver of the increase in global spending, with spending rising 14% to $864 billion. ...

While global defense spending continued to grow, the growth rate slowed to 2.9% in 2025, markedly lower than the 9.7% rise in 2024. This was largely due to a 7.5% reduction in U.S. military expenditure after no new financial assistance for Ukraine was approved during the year. The U.S. remained the world’s largest defense spender at $954 billion. ...

The Pentagon has requested about $1.5 trillion in defense spending for fiscal 2027, which would mark the largest request in history. ...

JMIC Update 37 for tanker traffic in the Straits of Hormuz and Bab-el-Mandeb 19-25 April 2026

 SoH E: 2.4/day

SoH W: 1.0/day (ZERO 23-25 Apr)

Normal 2022: 70

Down 95% 

 

BAM SE: 7.1/day

BAM NW: 8.4/day

Normal 2022: 30 

Down 48% 

Well, that's what ugly does doesn't it?

 Forgotten no more: Generation X is driving beauty sales

Yes, I'm in a   m o o d   today.