kallend

There is a silver lining: Tesla is down 41% YTD,

S&P down 13.65% YTD Lotsa people going to be unhappy.

481 in Texas today. 607 total in US

The Prime Minister of Heard Island tells a CNN reporter of her concern that Trump's tariffs will seriously impact the fishing economy of the island.

Pertussis too. 6000 cases in the US so far in 2025: In Louisiana, two infants have died of pertussis in the past six months, according to the state health department, the first deaths from the disease in the state since 2018. Louisiana has had 110 cases of pertussis reported so far this year, the health department said – already approaching the 154 cases reported for all of 2024. Cases are on the rise nationally, too. There were more than 35,000 cases of whooping cough last year in the US, the highest number in more than a decade, and 10 people died — six of them less than 1 year old. Experts say they see peaks and valleys with these kinds of illnesses over the years, but there have been about 6,600 cases already in 2025, almost four times the number at this point last year. https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/02/health/whooping-cough-pertussis-louisiana/index.html

That will teach them to steal jobs from American workers. https://www.ladbible.com/news/us-news/donald-trump-tariffs-penguins-sub-antarctic-islands-838363-20250403

Apparently Musk 2025 is not as popular as Trump 2024 in Wisconsin. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/wisconsin-votes-high-profile-judicial-race-after-millions-spent-by-musk-2025-04-01/

Why due process is important. From WaPo: The Trump administration acknowledged in a court filing that it had wrongly deported an immigrant living in Maryland to a mega-prison in El Salvador despite a court ruling prohibiting it, but alleged that U.S. officials are unable to pressure the Central American nation to return the man to his family in the United States. Officials deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who is Salvadoran, on March 15 as part of a surprise airlift of purported gang members to the Terrorism Confinement Center in El Salvador, where they were surrounded by armed soldiers and hooded police who shaved their heads and locked them inside high-walled cells. His removal came six years after an immigration judge found that Abrego had testified credibly that he could be harmed or killed by gang members in that country. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers acknowledged in court records that they were aware of internal forms forbidding them from sending Abrego to El Salvador, and called his removal an “oversight.” “On March 15, although ICE was aware of his protection from removal to El Salvador, Abrego Garcia was removed to El Salvador because of an administrative error,” the government wrote in a declaration, first reported by the Atlantic.

And who's going to pick all those crops to stop them rotting in the fields? And mow my lawn!

OK, but other than that......?

400 in TX as of Friday. 480 total in US.

Guess which media outlet took these positions in its editorials: (Hint, it's not The Daily Beast): Politicizing the judiciary is a “disreputable racket.” Trump must act “within the bounds of American law.” The administration is pursuing the “Fool’s Gold of a Crypto Reserve.” Hegseth shut down the Pentagon’s internal think tank “for no good reason.” Trump’s “willy-nilly” tariffs “Whack Trump Voters” and “someone should sue” him for claiming emergency powers. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is “dangerous to public health.” Ending Secret Service protection for former aides facing threats from Iran is a “vindictive whim” and a “new low.” The Oval Office showdown with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that Vance instigated “only helps Russia’s dictator.” The administration’s “rehabilitation of Vladimir Putin is especially hard to take.” Witkoff “parroted one specious Russian talking point after another.” Vance promotes an “abandon Ukraine strategy”; Trump “won’t tell the truth about which country started the war”; and the president’s vision is “less a brave new world than a reversion to a dangerous old one.” Pardoning the Jan. 6 offenders is a “rotten message from a president about political violence done on his behalf. ... What happened that day is a stain on Mr. Trump’s legacy. By setting free the cop beaters, the president adds another.” Surprise! It's the Murdoch owned Wall Street Journal.

Montgolfier was a scientist. He observed that smoke, unlike water, rises. Reagan just combined that smoke with mirrors,

So Trump is now taking over the Smithsonian, keeper of the nation's history. How much longer before we have a Ministry of Truth?

Perhaps if Herman Cain had done that he'd still be alive.

Why is it that the GOP, which for decades has hypocritically added more to the debt than the Dems while preaching fiscal conservatism, has now decided to do something about it on the backs of the poorest and most needy members of society while promising big tax breaks to billionaires and hobbling the IRS's efforts to identify wealthy tax cheats.

I'd like to know what Trump voters here (if any are brave enough to admit they did it) think about stuff that's happened in the past 2 months: Pardons that bless and invite insurrectionary violence, the purges of career lawyers at the Justice Department and in the Southern District of New York, inspectors general across the government, and senior FBI agents. The attorney general’s command that lawyers obey the president over their own understanding of the Constitution, the appointment of people such as Kash Patel who view their loyalty to the Emperor as more compelling than their constitutional oath, the emperor’s declaration that he and the attorney general are the sole authoritative interpreters of federal law for the executive branch. The transformation of ordinary spending responsibilities into tools to punish perceived enemies, the stripping of security clearances from opponents including the previous president, the threat of criminal prosecutions for speech deemed unfavorable, and the verbal attacks on judges for enforcing the law. Among other things.

It's all disturbing, but that is what I find most distressing of all.

Well, the Supreme Court upholds Biden Administration’s limits on ‘Ghost Guns’, 7-2. Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion. No prizes for guessing which two justices dissented.

379 in the TX/NM/OK outbreak. Also cases in Alaska, California, DC, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington.

The children will be fine. There will be plenty of unemployed civil servants to work in the fields, put up drywall, and mow lawns.

And think Orwell wrote "1984" in 1948. Prescient!

Right on both counts.

If convicted of a crime you were always subject to being deported. What's new is being deported for expressing an opinion that the emperor doesn't like.