Wednesday, May 6, 2026
Trump spends YUGE in Indiana to defeat incumbent anti-redistricting Republicans in their primary election, and wins big
... In interviews across the state, Hoosier voters described being inundated with television and digital advertising and daily mailers from candidates and the outside groups supporting them. The numbers back that up.
The political advertising tracking firm AdImpact said that $13.4 million was spent on advertising in this year’s Indiana state Senate primaries. For comparison: In the 2024 election cycle, about $280,000 was spent on state Senate primary ads in Indiana — in all races combined.
The bulk of that spending came from a group linked to US Sen. Jim Banks, a close Trump ally. Club for Growth led the direct mail effort for the pro-Trump forces, Indiana Republicans said, and Turning Point USA supplied ground troops for door-to-door get-out-the-vote efforts as the group sought to carry out one of the last political stances taken by its late co-founder Charlie Kirk, who was killed weeks after urging Indiana Republican lawmakers to redistrict.
The incumbents and their supporters bemoaned outside forces’ role in the Indiana primary. Indiana Senate President Pro Tem Rodric Bray said the primary contests were “really driven from outside the state of Indiana, mostly in Washington, DC, and the money’s coming from outside Indiana as well.”
But the flood of advertising spending — more than 47 times more than was spent on state Senate primaries just two years earlier — proved too much for most incumbents to overcome. ...
Current Bab-al-Mandeb tanker traffic at the end of April 2026 appears consistent with 1Q2026 Suez Canal tanker traffic, nothing more
Suez Canal Tanker Traffic 1Q26 v 1Q22
SOUTH
Tankers per day +1.6 to 7.5
Tonnage per ship +16.7%
NORTH
Tankers per day +0.3 to 7.9
Tonnage per ship +18.9%
Bab-el-Mandeb Strait Tanker Traffic 4/28-5/4/2026
SOUTH
7.42/day
NORTH
8.14/day
Tuesday, May 5, 2026
JMIC Update 41 for tanker traffic in the Middle East April 28-May 4 2026
Middle East Tanker Traffic April 28-May 4, 2026
Strait of Hormuz E: 1.85/day
Strait of Hormuz W: 1.28/day
Total: 3.13/day
Normal (2022): 70/day
Down 95.5%
Bab-el-Mandeb Strait SE: 7.42/day
Bab-el-Mandeb Strait NW: 8.14/day
Total: 15.56/day
Normal (2022): 30/day
Down 48.1%
Monday, May 4, 2026
The consequences of the Reagan Revolution: $11.1 trillion missing real GDP since 1Q1984
Real GDP in 1Q2026 reached $24.175 trillion.
Had real GDP continued to grow at the pre-1984 rate to now, it would have been $35.273 trillion, 46% more than it is.
That's the difference between a compound annual growth rate from 1947 to 1984 at 3.585% continued to 2026 instead of at 2.657% since 1984 to now.
IDEAS HAVE CONSEQUENCES.
Sleepwalking into a big recession: SPX hits new all-time intraday high 7230.12 on May 1 after oil jumps 78% year to date
‘Misplaced euphoria’: Markets are sleepwalking into a recession amid Iran war oil price shock
Global economies could be “sleepwalking” into a “big recession”, as investors continue to underplay the impact of the oil price shock, Amrita Sen, founder and director, market intelligence at Energy Aspect, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Monday. ...
“This is a massive, massive energy crisis. I have been equally amazed at how the equity market is completely dismissing it, talking about how great Q1 results are. They are not going to be great nearly to the same extent in Q2.” ...
Sunday, May 3, 2026
JMIC Update 40 for tanker traffic in the Middle East April 26-May 2, 2026
Middle East Tanker Traffic April 26-May 2, 2026
Strait of Hormuz E: 1.85/day
Strait of Hormuz W: 1.28/day
Total: 3.13/day
Normal (2022): 70/day
Down 95.5%
Bab-el-Mandeb Strait SE: 7.0/day
Bab-el-Mandeb Strait NW: 7.42/day
Total: 14.42/day
Normal (2022): 30/day
Down 51.9%
Back when America was still truly great, in July 1973, a barrel of oil was just 26 bucks
What?!
A barrel of oil in July 1973 at $3.56 is $26.54 in March 2026 adjusted for inflation.
I keep hearing that Baby Boomers are just sucking this world dry. Keep telling yourselves that, suckers.
Ty Cobb: We're governed by a madman
https://inews.co.uk/news/world/donald-trumps-lawyer-mental-state-unfit-serve-4378218
https://archive.is/uceDe
Christopher Caldwell for The New York Times thinks the American Empire has met its match in the Persian Gulf when it already met it a year ago in the Red Sea
... the United States lacks the military means to impose its will on Iran in a long conflict. In 1991 a million soldiers from more than 40 countries were needed to reverse the invasion of Kuwait carried out by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, a country less sophisticated than Iran and a fraction of its size. When Iran and Iraq fought each other to a standstill in the 1980s, deaths ran into the hundreds of thousands on each side. The United States would have to send a significant portion of its armed forces — which total only 1.3 million troops — to stand a chance of subduing Iran, and that force, if successful, would have to stay for a long time. ...
Here.
Caldwell is just as blind as Trump.
Neither one gets it that the lowly Houthis already beat us to a draw last year in the Red Sea.
Nothing is moving out of the Persian Gulf today, and tanker traffic through the Red Sea is less than half what it used to be in 2022, even under the new conditions of a world desperately thirsty for the Middle East oil no longer coming out of the former.
And neither one gets it that you can't have an American Empire without paying for it.
We're $39 trillion in debt and can no longer impose our will in the world's vital choke-points because elites have pretended since Reagan that low marginal income tax rates are sufficient to maintain American Empire when what those rates have done is impoverish us and enrich our adversaries.
1,135 billionaires are the symbol of our lost empire.
Caldwell steers well clear of naming the obvious remedy, and Trump's Big Ugly Bill will do nothing but put America $62 trillion in debt by the end of 2032.
Taxes must be raised . . . a lot.
Saturday, May 2, 2026
Why I'm not very interested in the redistricting hullabaloo pre- and post- the Supreme Court decision
I view fixed representation at 435 as a crime against the Founders and a crime against the people, and all the recent developments involving this subject simply rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Representation was meant to grow with population, and Republicans stopped that in 1929.
Political power is now more concentrated in fewer hands than ever, resulting in sharply more polarized politics where more is riding than ever before on the outcome of U.S. House elections.
Anti-federalists sought representation at 1:15,000 of population. An early compromise settled on 1:30,000, which grew to 1:50,000 but was never ratified in Article The First.
At this moment in time we have representation at 1:787,290 thanks to the Republicans in 1929.
Now your congressman doesn't know you from Adam, and couldn't care less what you think. Write him or her about an issue, and you'll get a nice form letter back thanking you for writing if you're nice. If you're not nice you will not hear back from your lords and masters.
6,849 U.S. representatives is unimaginable to most people today, let alone 11,415 or 22,831.
The problem is 435 for a country this size would be unimaginable to the Founders.
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