You Might Not Know

It appears, for a long time, that John Q. Public has a false notion of how the Damn Gummint interest rate works. First, and most importantly, the USofA doesn't have a Gummint Bank to rule all others. Most countries (1st world and lower) do, the Bank of England is one such. Our Fed doesn't set any interest rate, at all. Imagine that? The closest lever it has is the so-called Overnight or Interbank Lending rate. But this is just a benchmark which the Fed promulgates to commercial entities. "Pretty please." Of course, if an entity thumbs its nose...

Ok, you might ask, where does an interest rate come from? Well... it depends, but most importantly, it isn't like when you get a credit card (20% ish), or a car loan (6.35% for new and 11.62% for used; people buying used are high risk deadbeats I guess), or a house mortgage (6.62% 30 year). All of those rates are given to you by the lender, period.

Selling Uncle Sugar's Treasuries doesn't work that way. First off, once a note is sold "to the public", it remains an asset for sale forever, well until retired. So the value at which a note sells for this minute is not likely to be exactly the same value shown on the face of the note (you're not likely to ever see one printed like an Abe). So what, you might rejoin!!! It sold for 4.5% at auction last week, so it's a 4.5% note. Nope.

The key word there is "auction". Treasury announces the so-called coupon (what Treasury pays the holder every so often) of, say $5 for a (nominal) $100 note. Normal citizens can't directly buy one or two, but if they could they don't really buy a $100 note because the actual price will be determined by the auction process. So the earned interest rate will depend on the coupon / sale value. If they sell at $100, then the earned rate is 5%, just what Treasury expected. But it doesn't have to be.

More to the point, all those active notes are on sale every minute just like Tesla stock, and the current sale price (and thus the earned interest) is what the trading public wishes to pay. More than $100 and the buyer gets less than 5%; conversely, lower and more.

So, once the implications of Mad Dictator Don's insane tariff regime began to sink in with the hedge funds, and retirement funds, and Japan, and billionaires they all went bananas. According to some reporting Japan (and not China, surprise) was sufficiently pissed at the gag that they sold off reams and reams of Treasuries. Pretty much all at once. Treasury prices sank, implied interest rate soared, and the financial Daddy Warbucks sent Mad Dictator Don a message: "cut the shit, asshole". And he did.

Treasury does auctions, under usual circumstances four times a year. Guess when the next auction (again, normally) is up? May. Guess what happens to that $5/$100 note auction if the trading market keeps dropping the price of Treasuries? Uncle Sugar takes it in the nuts. Expecting $X billion but ending up with $(X - Y) billion instead. Not Good Eats. Even Batshit J. Moron could read those big block crayon letters on the wall. He loves him some debt, and he's gonna need gobs of it to pay hisself and fellow millionaires and billionaires that juicy tax cut he promised. Again. Oops.

Thus endeth the Tariff War. May be. He's so unhinged that he could well try it again soon. Stay tuned.

DIE Motherfucker

Mad Dictator Don has no idea that his Tariff Program is really just another DEI effort.

D is for diverisity, which for the tariffs means each tariffed country gets its own special treatment.

E is for equity, which for the tariffs that every country is treated equally, 10%, until Mad Dictator Don decides that it's really ripping us off and he ups the tariff.

I is for inclusion, which for the tariffs means everybody into the pool, including those uninhabited penquin islands, crafty those funny birds.

But...

Just for shits and grins, I picked the big kahuna of the Banana Republics, Ecuador, to see what's in store.

So, they get the 10% whack, so E, kinda. Turns out, Ecuador has a trade deficit (their USofA imports exceed their exports to the USofA), so why are they worthy of tariff? And so it goes.

We really, really need to protect our domestic banana ranches from this ruinous competition. Don't we>? I mean, bidnezz critters always, but always, claim the mantel of 'competition' when it suits their agenda, almost always to defend obscenely high profits or equally obscenely low wages. Or, in the case of Mad Dictator Don stiffing his hired help. But let some alien force provide an equal, or better, good or service and that must not be allowed to stand. We must defend our banana ranches!!

We Have a Drug Problem

Well... I was busy fighting with a bad tempered M900 and ubuntu, waiting to rant about Mad Dictator Don's drug issue. Imagine my luck when the wholly reliable Derek Lowe picks up the cudgel. You must read. It's longer than your usual innterTubes post, but the essence is in the details. One last offering shows he knows a bit about econ.

That's because the dollar was considered the most important reserve currency in the world, and the yields on US Treasuries set the pace for interest rates around the globe.

Long ago, some finance minister or such complained that the USofA's major unfair advantage (and still is, btw) was the right/ability to borrow in our own currency. That might sound like a small detail. It isn't. There was a conflagration amongst the Right Wingnut econ types when Nixon detached the US buck from gold, and, so it was opined, shitcanned Bretton Woods. What a stupid thing to do, they said. Not a bit of it. "Ditching" Bretton Woods was the best advantage the US Buck ever got. That simple act made the US Buck the globe's reserve currency. And we stole it. China's goal is to take that status for themselves. Idiots like Mad Dictator Don doesn't get it. (He claims that his BA in 'real estate econ' from Wahrton makes him a genius! Yeah.) We are "Great" not because we have more nukes than anyone else, or fiddle many elections in the second and third worlds, but because the US Buck is the basis of global trade. Toss that away, and we're, at best, a second world country.

Over the last couple of months, at least prior to the latest spasm, the notable action was that the Big Bucks crowd was moving vast amounts of money to Treasuries.

Thought For The Day - 8 April 2025

In classical econ, wages are assumed to be equal to the marginal revenue product. In the real world, wages are determined by political power. Get rid of unions, OSHA, class action litigation, and other worker protections, and wages go down. Allow unions to wield some counter-vailing power against capital, and wages go up. It's no coincidence that mamufacturing employment has fallen with the kneecapping of unionization. It can be argued that union wage gains are just the extortion by unions of higher wages out of the extortion of high prices by big bidnezz. How much of manufacturing labor can be categorized as highly skilled, and thus worthy of middle class earnings?

Here's one report that belies the Right Wingnut myth.

Despite the prominence of the skills-gap debate, a new paper co-written by a University of Illinois expert in labor economics and workforce policy finds that the demand for higher-level skills in U.S. manufacturing jobs is generally modest.
[my emphasis]

As it happens, my rather motley career path has included drone assembly line work. All of those tasks were learnable in a day or two, sometimes an hour or two. That's the main reason manufacturing capitalists always flee to the most welcoming 3^rd world countries on offer. That and no labor laws.

The poor, misbegotten sub-GED crowd, envious of educated middle-class status are willing to buy Mad Dictator Don's baloney. Sure, American capital would willingly pull their factories over here, over here. Just one thing, though: pay workers what they pay in Vietnam (or wherever), get rid of worker protection laws, and subsidize any losses. What could be better? Kind of like what he did for shitkickers last time he tariffed China, who retaliated by squelching ag imports from the USofA. $28 billion. Who said welfare isn't in the DNA of the GOP?

Let Elon Run Your Money

The Musk Ox is so transparently dumb (he has that vacant visage so often seen in HS dropouts) that I've not felt the need to confirm this obvious truth. But times change, I was impelled to let my fingers do the walking through the Yellow Googles. And what did I find? He's as dumb as a sack of hair. It's been known for a long time that the only thing he made from scratch was PayPal; or so the PR says. As Tesla, he didn't create that either. (In this quote, X.com isn't twitter, but the pre-cursor to PayPal.)

In January 2000, it was discovered that a security flaw allowed users of X.com who had the account number and bank routing number of any other bank account, even at other banks, could move money from that other account to their own and withdraw it. The problem existed for a month before it was discovered and corrected.

Such a fucking genius.

The Office of Data Integrity in Action

Regular reader knows my thought on the risk NSA pays to the Evangelical Reactionary Radical Retrograde Right Wingnuts in general and Mad Dictator Don specifically. Now Lunatic Laura Loomer appears to have instigated a data purge at NSA. Of course she would.

Believe it or don't: the NSA remit is to hoover up all electronic comms to and from, but recorded from, anyone not in the USofA. That, of course, includes all the chatter betwixt Mad Dictator Don, his minions, Vlad and his minions going back forever. Where's Edward Snowden when it matters? We American People need to know whether Mad Dictator Don has and is selling out our country. Full stop.

Thought For The Day - 3 April 2025

Long time readers will recall one of the memes of these missives: anarchy favors the rich. The Left Wing Lunatic Fringe has been frothing at the mouth over Mad Dictator Don's tariff regime. They can't or won't figure out the rationale of what, from a macro point of view, is full blown stupidity.

I can't bring myself to type the needed words to describe what he, or as likely, his staff of simpletons concocted

To determine how much higher those nations' rates should be, the White House says it calculated the size of each country's trade imbalance on goods with the United States and divided that by how much America imports from that nation.

It then took half that percentage and made it the new tariff rate.

That is just idiocy.

Now, Mad Dictator Don claims to have a high-quality econ degree from The Wharton School. Well, he's about a third right. 1) he didn't go to Wharton, he got a hall pass through the back door after two years at Fordham, where he did go. 2) that degree he got wasn't a rigorous econ curriculum (I went through that at about the same time); it was not the MBA that Wharton has been famous for, for years, but just something called real estate economics as a BA. 3) at the time, that program accepted nearly anyone who could fog a mirror out of high school; they didn't want him.

Once again, with feeling: only a fucking moron thinks that the foreign entities, governments and businesses, send the US Treasury a check once a month or quarter to pay the tariff bill. It appears that Mad Dictator Don made up that shit decades ago, and he's sticking to it. Tariffs are a, very regressive, sales tax. Full stop. And will harm the sub-GED crowd, Mad Dictator Don's base, the most. Ya know, those folks who think 'experts' are out to get them, and who think that book larnin is a waste of time at best and evil most of the time. Measles? Just load up on vitamin A. Covid? Ivermectin.

Moreover, if the intent is some (as yet undescribed) plan to re-shore business in the Red Blooded USofA, by what law of modern economics will the average oligarch pay middle class wages for average assembly line drones????? The plain fact is that American oligarchs could have paid such wages decades ago, the Damn Gummint didn't prohibit them from doing so. The Damn Gummint (mostly the Right Wingnut version), throttled unions about that time, which lowered manufacturing wages, yet the oligarchs still shipped the jobs off-shore. Again: what's going to compel them to pay good wages now if they do re-shore? Case in point (read it up): Boeing's attempt to cut cost in South Carolina; pure disaster.

As many pundits, not just this author, have pointed out: the main beneficiaries of the fucked up tariffs will be those few oligarchs with on-shore production, who'll simply raise their prices to match the higher tariff-induced import prices. They're not so dumb as a sack of hair to leave all that moolah on the table. Will their worker drones see any of it? In a pig's eye.

What Mad Dictator Don just about guarantees is Trumpcession. Whether it's just a really bad Great Recession or full blown Depression isn't yet known. Once again, I remind gentle reader of Smoot-Hawley

The ultraprotectionist Smoot-Hawley Act is widely blamed for deepening and prolonging the worst chapter in U.S. economic history. In a 1993 debate with independent presidential candidate Ross Perot on Larry King Live, then VP and free-trade advocate Al Gore brought an antique picture of the two senators, mocking them for a disastrous policy prescription that "sounded reasonable at the time." Indeed, for the general public and a wide swath of trade experts, going the Smoot-Hawley route is the economic equivalent of shooting yourself in the foot.

The oligarchs, mostly, kept partying in speakeays all the way through.

Feets Don't Fail Me Now

It was, IIRC, Dr. McElhone who introduced me to the saying, "the good people vote with their feet." 'Good' is, of course, fungible. Some take a broad view, while others keep it to the very straight and narrow. As in minded, by the way.

Speaking of straight, here's a report on the bent among us.

"With everything going on in my previous country, I didn't have much choice," Kasatkina said about choosing to switch nationality, per Reuters. "For me, being openly gay, if I want to be myself, I have to make this step, and I did it."

Doesn't say why she chose Aussie rather than some European enclave. May haps she knows more about Vlad the Impaler's plans than the rest of us? I expect we'll see more Americans leaving the Red states for the relative 'freedom' of the Blues. And so far as killing all that funding from Blue to Red through DC, well we in the Blue will welcome the lifting of the burden. Will Red state administrations work to replace the lost moolah? HA.

I Told You So - 1 April 2025

And not, alas, an April Fool's Joke. The real skinny.

In the week ending on March 8, the number of homes for sale in the Washington, D.C. area market grew by 56.2 percent compared to a year earlier, Realtor.com found.

It was the third consecutive week of rising inventory, after the number of homes for sale in the metropolitan area grew by 46.5 percent year-over-year in the week ending on February 22, and by an even higher 48.3 percent year-over-year in the week ending on March 1.

Next, we'll find out that those private equity monsters that have been buying up distressed houses all across this great land, will have lunch on worthless, out of work, bureaucrats.

No Fucking Way - part the sixth

Yet another shoe has dropped. How many shoes does a centipede have? And, just as last time, shitler is bailing out the Rednecks. Farmers first, of course.

A sponsor of the measure, Representative Dan Newhouse, a Republican who owns an 850-acre farm in Washington State, said his colleagues had felt unable to act while the border remained chaotic. "That excuse no longer exists," Mr. Newhouse said. "I truly think this is the Congress that we can make it happen."

Who said they can't find folks? Oh, they can't find American folks who'll work for starvation wages like those Mexicans?

And, then, there's the direct bailout, just like 2018.

The early discussions offer a tacit acknowledgment that Mr. Trump's expansive tariffs could unleash financial devastation throughout the U.S. agricultural industry, a crucial voting base that the president similarly tried to safeguard during his 2018 trade war with China.

So, ya tink egg prices are bad now? Just you wait.

Such a rescue package ultimately proved expensive, with the government shelling out about $23 billion after China imposed high retaliatory duties on soybean, corn, wheat and other American imports beginning in 2018.
...
But the price tag this time could prove even higher, since Mr. Trump has threatened to target many countries, including American allies like Europe, Canada, Mexico and Japan. The potential scope of their collective retribution could inflict deeper, more lasting harm on American businesses.

Or, as shitler has said

"When a country (USA) is losing many billions of dollars on trade with virtually every country it does business with, trade wars are good, and easy to win," Trump tweeted Friday morning. "When we are down $100 billion with a certain country and they get cute, don't trade anymore — we win big. It's easy!"

Once again, with feeling: "Hey shitler, show us just one wire transfer that pays the tariff from just one foreign gummint or company!" Whataya say man?

What only a few of the pundits have told the American People: when tariffs increase the price of a foreign good/service, domestic producers follow along. And, why not? Why leave money on the table? Anyway, who'll tell differnce between French Champagne and that Gallo ersatz version at about the same high price?

No Fucking Way - part the fifth

It should come as no surprise that the venerable NYT reports on the process by which the MAGAnauts avoid the lash of the shitler and muskrat^©dugugotw whip. But, I suppose, you knew that would happen. Right? We can't let the shithole states bear any burden from their stupidity, now can we?

Mr. Cole, the chairman of the powerful House Appropriations Committee that controls federal spending, quickly swung into action to try to head off the cuts. He and his aides started dialing their staff contacts at DOGE, the White House and the federal agencies in charge of the facilities on the chopping block, which also included a field office for the Indian Health Service.

What!!! Shut down SSA and SPC facilities??? That's so unAmerican!!! Digest the report, it's corruption of the highest (or lowest, depending on your point of view) order.

May be the coming mega-storm which will raze the midwest and south in the coming days will put a dent into the MAGAnauts heads? Nah. I don't think so either.

It's already been a busy year for tornadoes even though the peak of severe weather season is still a few weeks away. There have been about 300 tornado reports since 2025 began, compared to 164 by the end of March 2024.

Yeah, climate change is just a hoax ginned up by pointy head woke "scientists". Shitler knows he's the polymath to top all others, and will prove that climate change is a hoax. Same as RFK proves that vaccines cause autism. The Musk Ox will prove the earth is flat shortly thereafter. A flat earth makes EVs more practical.

Thought For The Day - 27 March 2025

Well... yet another, sorta kinda, slap at AI. But it doesn't get at the kernel of failure: AI, as currently implemented, isn't intelligence. Any more that winning at Jeopardy! is intelligence. Yeah, there's all that "Ken Jennings is sooooo smart!" bullshit. It's just prodigious memory (churned through a correlation exercise); some people have it, most people don't. Having prodigious memory doesn't make you smart, it might, in the end, make you kinda dumb. While the current count is 86 billion little grey cells, that's still not an infinite number and some will be dedicated to memory and others to, among other things, logic. It's logic processing that makes intelligence. That's how Einstein figured out special relativity just by sitting in a tram and watching a clock tower disappear in the distance. Can your AI do the same? Call me when it can.

This is where we, the people, are apparently failing AI. Because in addition to being humans with jobs and social lives and laundry to fold and art to make and kids to raise, we should also learn how to tiptoe around the limitations of large language models that may or may not return accurate information to us.

Where's the logic in all that? Nada, zip, nil. It's all a galaxy sized correlation matrix, and as we all know, 100% correlation belongs only to God.

And, for what it's worth, I've not been hit with a hallucination from the wiki. Ever.

Party Like It's 1829 - part the first

Well... what is it that Kim Don-Felon and his Merry Band of Fascists (so says this Tesla investor) keeps blathering? Oh, yeah. Let's get rid of them damn illegals and the sub-GED crowd will have better wages and lifestyle. Yeah, that's the idea!

Well... not so much, at least in Florida. As you might expect from a fascist state (both versions of the word).

Florida has been working for years to crack down on employers that hire undocumented immigrants. But that presented a problem for businesses in the state that are desperate for workers to fill low-wage and often undesirable jobs.

Florida's Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and the state legislature have a potential solution: children.

Are you surprised? I sure as shit ain't.

The number of child labor violations in Florida has nearly tripled in recent years, according to US Department of Labor statistics.

And, I expect, such data will soon disappear thanks to the Office of Data Integrity. Can't have those Blue State Wokers bitching and moaning about our sovereign right to exploit our kids. Now, can we??

Pyrrhic Losers - part the third

Well... some times I manage to get it wrong. Not a robot, I suppose. The series of No Fucking Way essays speculated that Kim Don-Felon and his Merry Band of Fascists (so says this Tesla investor) would go all out to protect the MAGAnauts from his ministrations. At all costs to the Blue States. It appears, not so much.

He's about to cut the nuts off FEMA!! Who wooda thunk it? Figures are hard to come by, "everybody knows" that regular, damaging weather disasters happen mostly in those southern Red States. Blue states get some snow now and again, but nothing like the hurricanes, tornados, hail storms, and (what used to be as rare as hen's teeth) winter freezes (hellooooo Texas). See ya!!

It was one of the worst years for disasters declarations in the last three decades (1995-2024), according to a new analysis from the International Institute for Environment and Development, or IIED, shared exclusively with CNN. Ninety major disaster declarations in a year is nearly double the annual average of 55 declarations, according to the London-based think tank.

Here's the 2024 tally from NOAA. Better go and look before the Batshit J. Moron orders it removed. And, yes, not much on the Blue coasts, and almost all in the Red South and Midwest.

On Wednesday, Trump signed an executive order that outlines his desire to shift more responsibility for disaster response and recovery to the states.

Some state officials and even Republican lawmakers have raised concerns about Trump's plans to slash FEMA, expressing worry that it will weaken responses to future disasters.

All those Red State MAGAnauts were just dupes and pawns in Kim Don-Felon and his Merry Band of Fascists (so says this Tesla investor)'s effort to be the next Orban/Erdogan.

Have a nice day.

Erasing History

Ah, some news. One of the first thing that a dictators does is to erase any history which contradicts his authority. Been done before. Here's an update on Mad Dictator Don's effort to remove DEI from every nook and cranny (or, crook and nanny) in HIS gummint.

"Of all the things they could be doing, the places they're putting their focuses on first are really things that just don't matter ... This was literally a waste of our time," a defense official said. "This does absolutely nothing to make us stronger, more lethal, better prepared."

On a related note, we get this report which, I suspect, relates to the one just above

"We will not tolerate politically motivated efforts by the Deep State to undercut President Trump's agenda by leaking false information onto the pages of their allies at the New York Times," Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement on Friday. "The Alien Enemies Proclamation is supported by fact, law, and common sense, which we will establish in court and then expel the TDA terrorists from this country,"

I'll bet you a tall lemonade that the stupidity of the DEI purge will be 'classified' as a national security breach, and all those involved will be poly-ed.

Dictators can't be too careful in protecting their hindmost. In due time, only Mad Dictator Don dick suckers will be left in the Damn Gummint. Just like it was in Mad Andy Jackson's day. If you're up there God, strike this asshole down.

You Go Don

You knew something like this would happen. Those nice Canadians (or Canadiens from the east) just gave the finger to a Downeaster:

The owner of the Point of View Inn tells CNN's Randi Kaye he's had so many cancellations that his business may not survive.

And more to come. Lots more.

The Greatest Threat - part the tenth

An interesting piece on CNN website, about where Trump-phobic geezers might escape to. The piece does a high-level primer on each of five countries. Some obvious, others likely not so.

Of course, Mexico is on the list, last, as one might expect. Given all the news we get about drugs and gangs and so on.

Mexico ranks among the least peaceful countries in Latin America. According to government statistics, there were 31,062 homicides in 2023, about 24 per 100,000 residents (in the US, that figure was about six per 100,000 people in 2023, according to Federal Bureau of Investigation data).

So, the Office of Data Integrity is caught between a rock and a hard place: which way should they slew the number? If they push it down, the MAGAnauts will be disgusted that our own FBI can't find the Real Danger to Our Precious Bodily Fluids from criminal migrants, Okies, Arkies, and Darkies ravaging the Homeland. If they push it up, the MAGAnauts will be disgusted that our own FBI can't find the Real Danger...

What's the American Goebbels to do?

Minority Report - part the seventh

There continues the argument as to whether shitler and muskrat^©dugugotw have a 'mandate' or 'landslide win' to justify destroying Federal governance. On the face of the bare fact, they don't. Batshit J. Moron won less than 50% of the popular vote, so he is, by definition, a Minority Ruler. He's crowned himself King, of course.

But, how common is the Minority President in our history? Common? Rare? Somewhere in between? The wiki has the answer, but I'll save you the effort. Let's skip Washington, who ran unopposed and likely would have gotten 100% anyway.

Less than 51%          Less than 50%
Madison/2
                       J. Q. Adams
Van Buren
                       Polk
                       Taylor
Pierce
                       Buchanan
                       Lincoln
                       Hayes
                       Garfield
                       Cleveland/1
                       Harrison
                       Cleveland/2
                       Wilson/1&2
                       Truman
                       JFK
                       Nixon/1
Carter
Reagan/1
                       Clinton/1&2
                       Dubya/1
Dubya/2
                       Trump/1&2

That's a lot of Minority Rule for a democracy.

Buyer's Remorse - part the second

Oh my!!! Roberts is getting all hot and bothered that shitler and muskrat^©dugugotw are claiming impeachment against the judges that have been slapping them down for flouting the law and Constitution!! Doesn't Roberts know that Garfield 2.0 has proclaimed himself King? Says so right here

"CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD. Manhattan and all of New York, is SAVED," he wrote, adding, "LONG LIVE THE KING."

So, now Roberts, slyly, takes a dig at Batshit J. Moron and his minions

"For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision," Roberts said in a statement released by the Supreme Court. "The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose."

I guess Serf John forgets that he, as the head of the Gang of Six, was the one to put the tiara on his balding head? And he's all bent out of shape that Kim Don-Felon and his Merry Band of Fascists (so says this Tesla investor) take umbrage at getting their fannies paddled? What might an intelligent human expect? Gad.

The proof will be in the pudding when, not if, the first skirmish makes it to the Supremes. What will the Gang of Six do then? Re-affirm his Dictatorship? If not, will they feel the uncertainty of coming violence demanded against them as have many others? Does Serf John actually have gonads? Or raisins?

Es-Im Bank

It is intuitively obvious to even the most casual observer.
-- Donald Hughes McElhone, Ph.D.[statistics, Iowa State]/1975

So, what's obvious, this time? The title refers to the Export-Import Bank which is intended to facilitate trade. It could be, but not yet clear, that shitler and muskrat^©dugugotw intend to use it as yet another weapon of retribution. We'll see.

Of more direct interest is the obvious question with regard to Batshit J. Moron's trade retribution: do domestic companies raise prices on their product when a tariff is imposed on foreign (equivalent) product? It sounds like an obvious answer should be: shit yes!! Why give away free money?

So, lets go see if anyone in the pundit class has gone through the data. It's an age old question, so there ought be an answer by now.

American households will bear most of the burden of higher tariffs. This will mostly come through higher prices for imported goods and, crucially, higher prices for domestic goods that compete with imports.

There you have it. It is obvious.

Thought For The Day - 10 March 2025

Well... now might be a good time to go to cash. Kim Don-Felon and his Merry Band of Fascists (so says this Tesla investor) welcome a recession, and better yet, a full blown depression. Why might that be?

Well... depression equals deflation, and deflation favors the well-to-do. Just look at the pet project of the well-to-do like shitler and muskrat^©dugugotw, crypto, which are all (should they get past each's fad stage; bitcoin for example) deflationary. Of course, not so long ago Batshit J. Moron, derided crypto as a scam. But The Musk Ox set him straight; enough to mint his own coin, of course. A modern Barnum, he hopes. At last count ~95% are in existence. One estimate has it that 2,140 will be the final year of release. If, of course, there's enough electricity around to support mining at such tiny reward, $0.00000001 . The common wisdom is that, at some point, the cost of mining will exceed the reward of bitcoin, and paying for new bitcoin will have to be paid for through transaction fee. That Rubicon will be crossed long before 2,140. You betcha. Ya think your Visa bill is ridiculous? Just wait for that to happen.

As Dr. McElhone says, "the world is not linear", which commonly means change is geometric/exponential, but that also describes asymptotic behavior. And bitcoin/crypto are surely that. We've got ~19 million of the critters in ~15 years, and ~125 years to get the remaining ~2 million. Should bitcoin specifically become the New Buck, watch economic growth go in the tank. We've had long periods of deflation, and not one was prosperous.

And, as the twice told tale says: major crypto held by very few hands.

As of March 2023, the top 1% of Bitcoin addresses hold over 90% of the total Bitcoin supply, according to Bitinfocharts.

I'd be willing to bet a carafe of lemonade that, two years on, that 90% has grown. May be 95%? Yeah, crypto is all about freedom from the elites!!!

A Test of Will

So, we've been hearing the bleating from the Evangelical Reactionary Radical Retrograde Right Wingnuts about how the EU is taking the poor ole USofA to the cleaners by them not funding NATO 'enough'. May be. May be not. But it is true that the USofA has been shipping materiel to Europe to a faretheewell, at least since the invasion of Ukraine.

Well... here's the test. Will shitler and muskrat^©dugugotw 'support' Ukraine by limiting the export of materiel to any EU nation? Ya know, France or Germany buys and transship to Kyiv? It's obvious to even the most casual observer that Bone Spur Samurai^© means to carve up the greater West with Vlad The Impaler: he takes Europe, Bone Spur Samurai^© takes the Americas (I guess including the Gulf?).

Won't that be a fun world to live in?

Those Damn Externalities

At one time, for a long time, all econ types recognized and studied the force of externalities on an economy. By and large, except those in the pocket of monied interests, argued for charging those who generate externalities (nearly all negative, of course). Among the more famous is the stench of pig farms in the Carolinas. So far as I can find, the pig machines continue unabated.

Well... here's another one, possibly worser

A South Carolina woman faces charges after igniting yard debris that burned out of control and allegedly sparked a wildfire that has scorched more than 2,000 acres near Myrtle Beach, the state's forestry officials said.

This is beyond stupid. My guess: a MAGAnaut asserting her liberties.

And, not surprisingly, at least one of the LA fires was caused by utility pole failure.

Routinely, Big Bidnezz pleads to be let go of responsibility, since taking care of these externalities will raise their costs, and most likely, the price to consumers. Well... there's not a thing wrong with that. Even if you're a Evangelical Reactionary Radical Retrograde Right Wingnut economist: your obligation is just that, not your neighbors. For those of us who love bacon, we should be paying to ameliorate the stink. Mammy Yokum has spoken.

The Musk Ox - the other stable genius

Well... here's a report which makes The Musk Ox look the charlatan that he really is, Batshit J. Moron fellow traveler. You've no doubt heard, insistently, that The Musk Ox is a once in a millennium genius and that he's built the most powerful rocket in the history of mankind. And that this rocket will take humans back to the moon, and thence to mars. How could he not be a true genius?

Well... that report contains the fatal flaw in this wonderful new rocket. And, by the way, it's by no means the first to try liquid methane as fuel. Didn't work out before. Now, we humans got to the moon boosted by the Saturn V rocket, at the time the most powerful, and such. And, also just by the way, all this yapping about returning booster shells to earth for reuse isn't anything new, either. We did the same for SRBs on the space shuttle. Plopped them in the Atlantic and ferried them back; cheaper to do, I expect. And, as to that landing of the spent booster feet first, not so new either, but is said to burn 700 tons of fuel. Makes for a cool photo-op, but not much else. The Musk Ox wasn't even born yet when we landed on the moon. The LEM's landing was accomplished with compute equivalent to almost nothing of today: 2K Ram and 36K of ROM. I'll guess that a current digital watch (not smartwatch) has more oomph. Landed feet first on the moon and came back. So there.

Most critically, it needs to show that it can move liquid oxygen and methane propellants from one Starship to another. That procedure is key to allowing a Starship to accumulate enough fuel to go to the moon or Mars.

Say, whaaaaaaaat!!! This most powerful rocket ever made doesn't have enough ooomph to get just to the moon like Saturn V did more than 50 years ago? What the fuck? And we're supposed to think this piece of expensive shit will get to mars? Yeah, right.

Turns out, and this being the first report I've seen (as you likely guessed by now), Starship needs trips to the gas station to get anywhere of consequence.

Mr. Musk has asserted that propellant transfer is a straightforward exercise. But pumping that much liquid that quickly while floating in orbit has never been attempted, and no one knows yet how many Starship launches — perhaps as many as 20 — will be needed for a single moon mission.

So, instead of a single competent rocket, which doesn't waste its fuel on its landing feat, we need 20 (may be more) additional launches to get the gas tanks filled, just to get to the moon? This is cost effective, how?

Mr. Dumbacher even proposed that NASA switch to a smaller, simpler lander to improve the chances that NASA can win the 21st-century moon race with China. As SpaceX is supposed to conduct a demonstration of its Starship lander without any astronauts aboard before Artemis III, a successful astronaut landing on the moon using Starship could require as many as 40 launches.

He did not regard the chances of that many successful launches as high. "I need to get that number of launches dramatically reduced," Mr. Dumbacher said during the hearing. "I need to go simple."

Expect him to be attacked by The Musk Ox and his merry band of Fascists, any day now. Telling us that Emporer Elon is naked? Can't have that.

What was it Barnum (denizen of my current state of CT) may have said (somebody did and P.T. is close enough): "There's a sucker born every minute."

The Musk Ox sure has found one in Batshit J. Moron. Gotta get rid of all them dumb Damn Gummint workers; we rich folk just ain't rich enough.

The World is Not Linear

Perhaps a series? If need be, I suppose. But here's a new report on the extent of global warming. I know. I know. Global warning is just a hoax from the woke wonks of the Ivory Tower. They probably are shorting fossil fuels and food commodities. I would if I believed in global warming.

Last year was the hottest year in recorded history, breaking a record set just the year before. It was also the first calendar year to breach 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, a critical climate threshold.

And, of course, the punchline

Scientists have been struggling to fully explain the extraordinary heat of the past few years. While it has been driven predominantly by burning fossil fuels and the natural climate pattern El Niño, these factors alone don't entirely explain the unusually rapid temperature rise.

Isn't it sufficient to admit that most natural processes are non-linear? How else do we get income inequality, with a few gazillionaires, and billions living on acorn bread?

Grifters Will Grift - part the first

As Dr. McElhone was fond of saying, "It is intuitively obvious to even the most casual observer". Which to say that this series should have begun in January, 2017. My bad, but better late than never. Or, more correctly, if only the Blue Cities had gotten off their collective asses, we wouldn't be in this mess. And this series would never have been.

It's clear, and has been since we all found out that Project 2025 existed, that Kim Don-Felon and his Merry Band of Fascists (so says this Tesla investor) wish to return the USofA to the thrilling days of yestercentury, and suck moolah out of the Damn Gummint, which is to say the 99% who actually pay taxes.

We don't pay taxes; only the little people pay taxes.
-- Leona Helmsley/1989 (or earlier)

Over the years, even when I toiled at OPM (yes, that one), it was clear informally and analytically that being a federal worker bee wasn't necessarily lucrative. Certainly not in the DC Metro. The high priced spread worked on K Street and such. We had salary surveys done each year, and it was clear. But, of course, the Evangelical Reactionary Radical Retrograde Right Wingnuts always said we lied. Ah well.

Turns out the CBO occasionally looks, too. And they find pretty much the same thing.

What is ironic, from some perspective, is that the sub-GED crowd does better being a fed than the educated cabal of woke wonks. Go figure. Might be that Big Bidnezz really, really wants smart folks?

The federal worker has always been the favored whipping boy for the Evangelical Reactionary Radical Retrograde Right Wingnuts and Big Bidnezz and such. Especially the regulator agencies. Big Bidnezz employees are always smarter and more capable and can leap tall hierarchies in a single bound. The thing is, the federal worker bees (to be distinguished from Capital Hill flunkies) only want solid data to decide whether Big Bidnezz is living up to the statutory/regulatory requirements. Congress mandated them, and the President (supposed to) is to see that the laws are faithfully executed. Well, until now, of course. We could return to the time when FDA never existed, right? Or just to the time when drug companies only had to show that their pills didn't kill patients? What could possibly go wrong? Would the USofA be better off if The Musk Ox and his Tesla were never scrutinized? Run over a few people? Just ignore that. Get rid of NTSB because Boeing knows better? I guess we really don't need a CDC, since all those decisions are up to parents/adults/clergy and such. And so on. What could possibly go wrong? We all know that measles outbreaks happen every so often, don't we? And that bleach and ivermectin and hyrdo cure Covid?

I Told You So - 8 March 2025

Well... this is one of those "take a victory lap" reveals. Many's the time, during the MAGAnaut assault, that these missives have said that the DOGEmorons are messing with compute tech they have no idea about. It might as well be in Zulu. It's the wonder of COBOL. Now, there's nothing inherently wrong with COBOL, esp. for an organization like Social Security Administration. It's the sort of application that COBOL was designed for.

While I was a worker bee at CSC (where I took the job because I was told "we're going to be doing heavyweight database development"), the job, it turned out was putting a pretty face on ancient (70s vintage) COBOL code. This process is widely known as 'putting lipstick on a pig'. I suspect the phrase originated in computer. Let's go see... Well, one source says it was baseball. Which is chronologically before the GUI problem. Close enough.

So, now we have the DOGE intent on breaking SS. Of course they are. Dropping multiple wrenches into the computers which run SS is a plausible deniable method of destroying SS. Which is the point, of course.

"This system needs a lot of maintenance, and the concern is that if they're not careful with their firing — and they're obviously not — these people who are experts in COBOL tend to be retirement age," said Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, an advocacy group.

You're not likely to be able to run SS on webservers running java, or even C++. The best hope is to keep the COBOL and leverage the relational power of z/OS DB2 (most likely what's available on the IBM Big Iron). Now, here's the real kick in the balls. While at CSC, when it tried, with shitty results, to both put webGUI lipstick on its pig COBOL by creating a java applet front end (the aforesaid lipstick), it also attempted to transition from the original VSAM files for the COBOL code to z/OS DB2. That was an even bigger clusterfuck: the clients got the worst of all worlds - the overhead of database transaction control coupled with the olde fashioned bespoke transaction monitoring in their COBOL and a bit of secret sauce from CICS. SS is likely in that situation, and likely for a couple of decades, if not more.

So, let's send some PHP kiddies over there to fix the problem. At least CSC had the sense to bring in a brigade of Indian Freshers to maintain the COBOL. Oh, and one client demurred from the 'upgrade' to GUI and DB2. They've been running just fine.

"Right now, they're driving these people that understand the IT architecture, understand how things are connected, understand how things work — and they're driving them out of the agency as quickly as they can, with absolutely zero transfer of knowledge," he said. "We looked at attrition as the fire breathing dragon at the gate that needed to be defended against. These guys think it's a fire upon which to douse kerosene and to give people incentives to leave."

And, of course, the reason it all got this way

The computer system is old enough that its monochromatic green screen upon loading says "welcome to the future" — an irony given the age of the technology.

"There had been talk about removing it, because it seems so ridiculous, but that would have cost money and required more staff that they didn't have," O'Malley said. "So they've never done that."

Neither java nor C++ is an easy replacement language for COBOL logic. They just aren't, which is why most of American Big Bidnezz still runs on COBOL. With webGUI lipstick. The further irony: back some years ago, xml stormed on to the scene, and the PHP and javacript kiddies decided that it would make for really new, modern, and cool database stores. Dumber than a sack of hair. xml as datastore is just a clear text implementation of the hierarchical 'database' IMS from IBM before DB2. At least VSAM fit nicely with COBOL.

And, yes, there are myriad COBOL to C/C++ converters/translators on the market. In general, the result is mixed, and not just a push-the-damn-button process.

The Greatest Threat - part the ninth

The Office of Data Integrity has the bit between its teeth and galloping along. This report lays out the threat explicitly. Not that I'm surprised, naturally. It's the playbook of the Dictator.

It should be no surprise to gentle reader that I predicted that Kim Don-Felon and his Merry Band of Fascists (so says this Tesla investor) would brazenly set out to fudge the data to make Mad Dictator Don always look good.

Comments from a member of President Trump's cabinet over the weekend have renewed concerns that the new administration could seek to interfere with federal statistics — especially if they start to show that the economy is slipping into a recession.

Of course they will. That's the purpose of the Office of Data Integrity: to make the Dictator look good.

Federal statistical agencies have long operated with a degree of autonomy from the cabinet departments that they are nominally part of, following methodologies developed by technocrats inside and outside government. But experts in recent years have warned that independence rests more on norms than on statutory protections, and that the agencies could therefore be vulnerable to political interference.

Ah, "norms" raise their evil heads yet again. And, once again, we run headlong into the egregious failure of the Founding Fathers: that only moral folks would be elected, and would govern in the interests of all Americans without need for explicit statute restraining their corrupt natures should any emerge. As if. It's not well known (and not mentioned in the report) that almost all of the surveys are conducted by Census, no matter which department/agency name is on the resulting report. Lutnick controls Census.

Nancy Potok, who was appointed chief statistician for the United States by President Barack Obama and remained in the role for much of President Trump's first term, said Mr. Lutnick's comments were a sign that those fears could be becoming reality.

"It's very concerning," she said. "It puts the U.S. in the company of countries that are notorious for fudging the numbers to support failed economic policies."

Ah, the United States of Bananas? And, it gets better. For some definition of 'better'.

More recently, the Commerce Department moved to kill off several advisory committees that provided feedback and guidance to federal statistical agencies.
[FDA is doing similar]

"It's very disconcerting," said Mary Jo Mitchell, who was a member of a Census Bureau advisory committee. "These committees were important avenues for ensuring that the bureau was receiving input from experts and stakeholders who care about these issues."

Ah, but everybody knows that Mad Dictator Don knows more about anything than those stupid experts (he's told us often enough), especially math stats and survey design. Piece of cake for such a polymath as Mad Dictator Don.

Soak the Rich

The Evangelical Reactionary Radical Retrograde Right Wingnuts continue (since 1933) to bleat that Social Security is unfair and immoral and will go broke ever so soon because of the Baby Boom. What's always been puzzling is the income maximum for SS tax. Here's what a CT congresscritter has to say about the effect.

If the cap for Social Security had not existed (there is no cap on Medicare taxes) the some 6% of U.S. workers who earn more than Social Security's taxable maximum would contribute more than $388 billion to Social Security. If the earnings maximum had been eliminated, just the handful of people — a bit more than 229 — earning over $50 million a year would have paid $3.6 billion in Social Security tax, which is more than 77% of American workers — earning less than $57,000 per year — paid in Social Security tax.

How many modern countries have public pensions? 80. The USofA is hybrid, of course.

Thought For The Day - 4 March 2025

OK, so what are the odds that Mad Dictator Don will go all the way and declare himself President for Life? In order to save the country, of course. After all he did say

Christians, get out and vote! Just this time — you won't have to do it any more. Get out — you gotta get out and vote. In four years, you don't have to vote again. We'll have it fixed so good, you're not gonna have to vote.

By The Numbers - part the eighty seventh

A pundit on MSNBC just let go with the howitzer comment: if Kim Don-Felon and his Merry Band of Fascists (so says this Tesla investor) don't change mind between now and midnight, the cost of a USofA (titularly, of course) auto will rise by $12,000!!! Now, that sounds a bit gross, and the pundit didn't state what current/base cost autos he was talking about. I mean, if he's talking about $90,000 SUVs, I can surely get behind that.

Good News!

I've seen the headline to a CNN interview with Maher (didn't bother reading the interview, since Maher has gone all in on MAGA), in which interview (according to the headline) he posits that there won't be another election. Letting my fingers do the walking through the Yellow Googles yields some disquieting news. While the Constitutional types agree that the President alone can't, Congress sure can. And, such a law/vote isn't in the 2/3 category. So, even with the, currently, very narrow majority in both Houses, there needn't be a 2026 or 2028 election.

Have a nice life. And stock up on brown shirts.

Thought For The Day - 2 March 2025

That clearly was a scripted mugging of Zelenskyy by Bone Spur Samurai^© and Just Dumb Vance^©; only the worst cocksuckers (I'm talking about you Lady Lindsey) could call it a show of strength by the USofA. Bone Spur Samurai^© remains frosted by Zelenskyy's refusal to 'investigate' all things Biden.

Bone Spur Samurai^© kept saying that Ukraine/Zelenskyy has to really, really want peace. Well... what sort? Peace with Honor? Peace with the status quo ante? Peace with USofA security guarantee? Of course not. Mutt and Jeff want Ukraine to accept peace with capitulation to Vlad The Impaler. Only the most MAGA of the MAGAnauts want that. One might wonder how long it will take for that cabal to admit that Vlad The Impaler is really, really embarking on a quest for the Second Russian Empire. One might expect that Poland is next. What will Bone Spur Samurai's^© USofA do then? Go Full Lindbergh^©? I suppose so.

And, of course: Joe McCarthy, Commie hunter in chief, is spinning at high RPM in his grave. Not that he worked all that well.

"Were the Junior Senator from Wisconsin in the pay of the Communists he could not have done a better job for them."

Now, of course, Bone Spur Samurai^© and Just Dumb Vance^© gleefully suck Vlad The Impaler's dick. Times, they are a changin'.

[update]
Well... Joe's speedometer just got twice as fast.

No Man Is An Island - part the fourth

A kind of famous poem (well... a bit of it)

No man is an island,
Entire of itself;
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.

From John Donne (~1600)

Regular reader may recall that I've mentioned on occasion our visits to Block Island. It's not way off-shore, only about 11 miles as the seagull flies. But it is sorta, kinda isolated. Well, this week's Block Island Times reports (subscription since the COC took it over) that H5N1 was found by state DEM in a noncommercial farm flock. This is the official report.

There is a farm open to the public by donation. It's more an open air zoo. All kinds of critters, including many ducks, although 40 sounds a bit high. We stop by at least once each visit. Neither the Times nor the DEM name the location. The DEM goes on to state

Initially restricted to wild birds and poultry, H5N1 has spilled over into other mammals, including wildlife like foxes, bears, and seals; domestic animals, like cats and dogs; and farm animals like goats and dairy cows.

The farm has a wide variety of animals on many acres of hillside. And the report goes on to say that Block Island is smack dab in the Atlantic flyway. Since much of the island is semi-wild (which the McMansion crowd hasn't yet destroyed), a good place to burger and soda for the migratory set. What's kind of important here is those multiple other variety of animals. If it happens, and it's not yet public so far as I know, that this flu has jumped to mammals on the island... You get the picture. One might wonder what Kim Don-Felon and his Merry Band of Fascists (so says this Tesla investor) USDA and FDA and CDC will do? Secretary Mumbles has already said many stupid things. Let's see if he does really stupid things. Or, more to the point, doesn't do anything.

Block Island, without the animal farm, is a diminished thing. And keep in mind: it ain't easy getting there with animals in tow. The main ferry brings dogs on board, which seems not to be the source of infection in winter. It almost certainly flew in.

How many east coast events have there been? Near as I can find as I type, one report in New York state and one in New London, Connecticut (that's Atlantic flyway, too). The Cassandra types have been warning. If they're right, Secretary Mumbles is in deep shit. And so are we, for having such an idiot running HHS.

By The Numbers - part the eighty sixth

Well... Kim Don-Felon and his Merry Band of Fascists (so says this Tesla investor) have made the choice: it's vodka and Vlad all the way.

For someone who claims to be the deal maker of all time (with at least 6 bankrupt companies that we know of, so far), he's pretty stupid. The impulse appears to be (not admitted, so far as I'm aware) that Zelenskyy didn't do as he was told: gin up a fake investigation into the Biden family. The Oval Office skit was clearly staged, with Bone Spur Samurai^© and Just Dumb Vance^© tag teaming against Zelenskyy. As if Bone Spur Samurai^© is a military genius. Peace with honor? Not likely. Peace with Vlad taking as much as he wants. Poland's next.

But what is really, really stupid is that by cutting off his nose to spite his face, it's likely the EU will clean his clock.

USofA GDP  - $28 trillion
Russia GDP -  $2 trillion
EU GDP     - $29 trillion

Now, what does Russia have to offer? Not much. 99.44% of its land area is worthless tundra, and no one needs its petro anymore. USofA petro companies do not want anymore petro on the market. They make more moolah on scarcity. If Batshit J. Moron weren't so fucking stupid and petty and paranoid and... he'd have figured that out.

The Orange Shitgibbon^©anon. has picked the loser. Bankruptcy number 7 (at least) on the way. And we all get to participate!! Oh joy.

The Greatest Threat - part the eighth

The Office of Data Integrity slinks along. Today (dead trees version) that Kim Don-Felon and his Merry Band of Fascists (so says this Tesla investor) have killed a significant source of epidemiologic data. Good on Elon. Likely that these data only matter to the poor Black folks of South Africa; not that they matter.

With funding from the United States Agency for International Development, the Demographic and Health Surveys were the only sources of information in many countries about maternal and child health and mortality, nutrition, reproductive health and H.I.V. infections, among many other health indicators.

The surveys collected data in 90 low- and middle-income nations, which then used the information to set health benchmarks at the local, national and global levels, including the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals adopted by member countries of the United Nations.

Get rid of data collection, and the Evangelical Reactionary Radical Retrograde Right Wingnuts can bleat, "but, but it's only
your opinion, and you're very, very wrong, and the Evangelical Reactionary Radical Retrograde Right Wingnuts are so, so right!! Party like it's 1829!!"

"It's really challenging for me to understand how you could implement thoughtful programs in public health and monitor progress toward strategic goals if you don't have the kind of data that are available from the D.H.S.," Win Brown, a demographer at the University of Washington, said.

"You can't keep track of what's going on, you can't form strategies, you can't make adjustments based on how your data are changing," he added.
[my emphasis]

How can one truly use those words in the same thought as Kim Don-Felon and his Merry Band of Fascists (so says this Tesla investor)? One can't, of course. Those two are just so coarse.

God's Mercy

Well... the Evangelical Reactionary Radical Retrograde Right Wingnuts are having a field day.

First, some news you aren't likely to have found in your usual newsfeed. The Aussies have sent a wide swath of idiot adults to prision for killing an 8 year old. Not with a car or hammer or such. For not giving her a necessary insulin injection. Kinda, sorta need those when you're type-1. And this wasn't the first time these adults did this to this child.

Elizabeth Struhs died in January 2022 on a mattress on the floor of her home in Toowoomba, west of Brisbane, days after her father Jason Struhs, 53, declared that she no longer needed medication for Type 1 diabetes.

Her mother, Kerrie Struhs, 49, encouraged Elizabeth's father to withhold her insulin, as did 12 other members of a Bible-based sect known as "The Saints," who were last month found guilty of manslaughter in a judge-only trial.

As a macabre side light, there's a kinda, sorta funny line from Tom Lehrer:

What with President Johnson practicing escalatio on the
Vietnamese, and then the Dominican crisis on top of that,
it has been a nervous year, and people have begun to feel
like a Christian Scientist with appendicitis.

Now, of course, if idiot adults choose to be idiots of and for themselves, good on them. They'll all win Darwin Awards, and thankfully so. Not so much for their kids.

And, as you likely suspect, there's a domestic case brewing in West Texas (where else? any southern Red state, of course), with a death of a child from measles.

Coverage of the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine is particularly low in Gaines County, where nearly 1 in 5 incoming kindergartners in the 2023-24 school year did not get the vaccine. Other affected Texas counties also fall below a goal of 95%, set by the US Department of Health and Human Services, that's necessary to help prevent outbreaks of the highly contagious disease.

"Ya pointy headed Liberals ain't gonna tell my how to raise ma kids!!!" I suppose not. On the plus side, there'll be a bit fewer getting to adulthood indoctrinated with this Evangelical Reactionary Radical Retrograde Right Wingnut shit. With no Medicaid, of course.

I expect, any day now, for Mr. Mumbles will order CDC to take down all that data. Let's go see... still there. Space on the page for data tables has only a Big Black Cross (hmm?) on both Firefox and Chrome, so I expect (but can find no explanation) that CDC has removed them.

No Fucking Way - part the fourth

Well... the bleating Evangelical Reactionary Radical Retrograde Right Wingnuts in Red states are now explicitly pleading to be protected. Only the Blue states deserve to be hurt. Of course.

GOP Rep. Austin Scott of Georgia spoke out against Elon Musk's X post earlier this month that included a reference to individuals who rely on federal programs as the "parasite class," saying during the Tuesday meeting that he has family members that work for the federal government, one of the sources told CNN.

Boo hoo! Scott is your generic White Evangelical Reactionary Radical Retrograde Right Wingnut, as you might expect.

Bad Moon Rising - part the first

Well... with all the ado over Federal Debt and interest rates, here's some equivocal news. The Oracle of Omaha loves him some sovereign debt instruments.

Warren E. Buffett, the famed investor known for his enthusiasm for undervalued stocks and businesses, is feeling bullish these days about a traditionally staid investment: Treasury bills.

What's not routinely admitted: the idle rich love them some idle instruments. Always have. Some do so for capital gains, others for the coupon. Some do only that.

But the steady interest rates offered by Treasury bills helped stabilize Mr. Buffett's empire during a year in which more than half of the nearly 200 businesses it operates saw their earnings drop. Berkshire Hathaway had net earnings last year of $90 billion, a decline from the more than $96 billion it generated a year earlier.

Not so much of an Oracle, eh? Even Buffett admits, ever so quietly, that he's just as much a victim of Mr. Market as your average retail plunger. You can't outsmart Mr. Market. Buffett just has a big enough wallet that he can outlast any recession and still eat filet. If that's what he likes.

What neither the lamestream media nor Evangelical Reactionary Radical Retrograde Right Wingnuts will admit is that sovereign debt is just as important as money. For a growing economy, both must expand to meet their, somewhat different, purposes. The mantra from the Evangelical Reactionary Radical Retrograde Right Wingnuts that sovereign debt drives out private is horseshit and always has been. The Oracle of Omaha just showed that.

I Told You So - 25 February 2025

As soon as shitler and muskrat^©dugugotw started with the 'probationary' firings, my time in DC lit up in my lower brain stem memory. While it is true that something on the order of 4/5 of Federal employment is outside the DC area, it appears right now that the nationwide total is about 30,000. If we add in the 'deferred resignations' of 75,000, it all adds up to a bunch. Now, let's say that only 20% of the total are in the DC metro, what's likely to happen to all those mortgages?

Today's NYT has some reporting on that.

"Even on unemployment," said Mr. McKenzie, 27, who worked as a community engagement specialist, "I'm not going to be able to make my mortgage payment."

Well, no shit Sherlock. You and may be 20,000 others. That'll put a kink to house prices in the DC Metro. Boy howdy. The cavalry will come to the rescue; well, sort of. In other similar situations private equity has slurped up the surplus, and turned them in high priced rentals. Just what the recent MAGAnaut crusader didn't expect in order to hobnob, if not with shitler and muskrat^©dugugotw themselves, but at least some high level acolytes. All those MAGAnaut crusaders will, if they have more than just a primitive brain stem in their skulls, discover that they're just more cannon fodder in the Evangelical Reactionary Radical Retrograde Right Wingnuts' war on progress.

The effect of the layoffs has been palpable, especially in the Washington area, where there are more than 300,000 federal government employees. Rumors have swirled that the firings are causing the area's housing market to crash after videos began circulating on social media.

And, yes, it's likely too soon to see the tsunami of foreclosures, and some hope, lowball sales to kick in. But kick in they will.

Cruelty is the point, after all, they're all just lazy bureaucrats. No such folk exist in the private sector, as we all know.

Oops - part the second

The headline of today's New York Post (dead trees division) front page reads [on the left]

THIS
IS A
DICTATOR

[and to the right]
a photo of a scowling Vlad the Impaler

shitler and muskrat^©dugugotw are in for some turbulence when even Murdoch News calls Bullshit.

Oops - part the first

Sen.Thom Tillis (R-NC) pushed back on President Donald Trump's comments blaming Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for the war in Ukraine, and issued a warning that Russian President Vladimir Putin is a "cancer" that cannot be given "any space."
CNN

A small crack in the dam? Will anyone else in the GOP admit that shitler and muskrat^©dugugotw are lunatics?

DEI - part the first

Well, well, well. Just got a posting from one of the job boards. Here's the title

University of Wyoming, Wyoming Natural Diversity Database has a new opportunity

I wonder how long it will take Kim Don-Felon and his Merry Band of Fascists (so says this Tesla investor) to have that get trapped in their filters? I mean, Wyoming has gone all DEI on shitler and muskrat^©dugugotw!!!

Are You Dumb Enough - part the first

Are you dumb enough to swallow that Kim Don-Felon and his Merry Band of Fascists (so says this Tesla investor) and DOGE will use access to the raw files looking for "fraud" from the .1% cheaters? Or may be just folks who give money to various woke NGOs? Hmmm?

"Get your brownshirts here!! Get them while you can! Don't get caught on the street without one! The American STASI will arrest you if you don't wear one!!!"

Better Government Through LSD

Well... Kim Don-Felon and his Merry Band of Fascists (so says this Tesla investor) is clearing out FDA as we speak. If you think Mutt and Jeff are going to stop destroying the Damn Gummint with just the easy bits; well... wake the fuck up.

So, Bone Spur Samurai^© will add Trump Ivermectin, approved by The Trump Drug Company of St. Petersburg, Russia. No tariff on import, of course. Guaranteed to cure anything what ails you.

Many scientists that CBS News spoke to said they had uprooted their lives for the chance to serve the federal government, sometimes taking steep pay cuts from what they could be earning in academia or the private sector. Others had been on probation for staff roles after many years working for the same agency as a contractor.

Yeah, we all know that if you work for the Damn Gummint you're, at best, a C- employee. The private sector would never think to have you on board.

"Words cannot adequately express how financially screwed I am," the former NIH scientist said.

As explained in earlier missives: another house on the auction block for private equity to slurp up and then rent out for a nice phat profit. Ain't Social Darwinism the way to go?

Our Mr. Brooks

You get the joke, right? Well, may be not. As a rule, I'll excise some sentence or two from a pundit's pronouncement, put it in the Sigs pile and use it, or not, in the Thoughts section. These days, I'm finding more than I can use on the once-a-week schedule.

One of my pet peeves is David Brooks, who along with some others, presents as the Respectable Republican not-a-MAGAnaut. Not really. And today's (dead trees division) column is so full of baloney, he gets a regular entry, in which he seeks to blame the folks who bothered to get edumacated (and, of course their parents who saw to it). I've said it before in these essays: the redneck shitkickers are poor, stupid, unhealthy, and envious for the simple reason they keep electing politicians who spend their every working moment feeding these rednecks bullshit that they're being actively abused by the northern/city folk who don't value their Traditional Ways. A euphemism for overt racism.

So, let's start somewhere with Brooks

Well, starting about 60 years ago, a group variously labeled the Bobos or the creative class began establishing hegemony over commanding institutions of American life — the universities, the media, the foundations, publishing and entertainment. There are two things you should know about this class. First, like most groups, its members dislike intellectual diversity and tend to impose a stifling progressive orthodoxy in the places they dominate. Second, more than most groups, they see themselves as the moral uplifters of society, on everything from environmental attitudes to sexual ethics, and enjoy preaching in order to enlighten their morally backward countrymen.

There you have it: progressives are the problem. Like hell they are. And, by the bye, the Right Wingnuts are far more strident with their fellow travelers. By a mile; just Hang Mike Pence. Earlier in the piece, Brooks says this

If America elected a populist as president, you would expect him to devote his administration to addressing these inequities, to boosting the destinies of working-class Americans. But that's not what President Trump is doing. He seems to have no plans to narrow the education chasms, no plans to narrow the health outcome chasms or the family structure chasms. He has basically no plans to revive the communities that have been decimated by postindustrialization.

In the first place, addressing those inequalities is exactly what the FDR Dems have been trying to do, with no help from the so-called conservatives. I sense a major league level of projection.

With a few sentences he put the blame where it belongs: on the rednecks who continue to elect politicians (starting at the Top) who exploit their dumb as a sack of hair persecution complex (yes the educated elite are better than you, and very many of them are the ones trying to lift you up, but you're small minded ingrates), The simple fact is: it's been the progressives who've pointed the finger at the existential issues, not the rednecks and their politicians. In a few paragraphs, as most dissemblers, he tries to have it both ways.

He goes on to lament the left-ish tilt of the educated class. Well, d'uh!! The so-called conservative class is driven by a single principle: the Rich ain't Rich Enough. You see this in Kim Don-Felon and his Merry Band of Fascists (so says this Tesla investor)'s tax giveaway from 2016 and, likely, 2024. The right wingnuts assert there exist no social goods, only profit-making enterprises. Laissez faire on speed. And they always feed the rednecks in the shithole domestic countries race baiting themes. If you're not into race baiting blamesmanship, where ya gonna go? To the nattering nabobs of negativism of course. You can only fix a problem if you, at first, recognize that it exists.

Many of them are not pro-conservative; they are anti-left. There's a big difference. They do not focus on building and reforming the civic institutions that conservatives believe are crucial to any healthy society.

It would help his argument if he simply ennumerated (which he can't) what those (different from what the progs list) institutions are. And how relying on those institutions promotes a higher standard of commonweal. He can't simply because such effort is nowhere in the lifeblood of an American conservative.

He closes the piece

I'm not a fan of populism, but real populism would be better than the right-wing elite nihilists who are running the country now.

Of course, that's a self-contradictory sentence. There is no real populism, of the right wing sort, other than what we see. Trumpism is just as bankrupt as, and identical in structure to, all the other Populists going back at least to Mussolini and Hitler. Real populism, not Huey Long, is truly what progressives abide: increasing the commonweal.

He won't admit that, because to do so he'd have to shitcan the Prime Directive of the Conservative Class: all that matters is that the Rich ain't rich enough and we need to fix that.

Gabbard

Well... I guess now we (the People) will have to rely on the Four Eyes spooks to tell us when Kim Don-Felon and his Merry Band of Fascists (so says this Tesla investor) and/or Gabbard betray us to Vlad.

Have a nice day.

Fun With Words

Some on-air pundit recently noted that DOGE is the name of a fake cryptocurrency which actually went live. Go figure.

[A] cryptocurrency created by software engineers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer, who decided to create a payment system as a joke, making fun of the wild speculation in cryptocurrencies at the time.

The Musk Ox is a joke, so it does fit.

But Doge has another meaning: dictator

In Venice, doges normally ruled for life, although a few were forcibly removed from office. While doges had great temporal power at first, after 1268, the doge was constantly under strict surveillance: he had to wait for other officials to be present before opening dispatches from foreign powers; he was not allowed to possess any property in a foreign land.

No Gaza for you!!

It's a Non-Linear World - part the first

Well... yet another series of essays. This one could have, should have, been started when this edifice came to be. Oh well.

So, on to climate change. Yes it does exist. Some new data to contemplate.

This month he co-authored a paper which concluded global warming is accelerating faster than expected, due in large part to regulations to reduce shipping pollution. While this pollution is a human health hazard, it also has the effect of reflecting sunlight away from the Earth.

So, it seems, even scienists who should have some notion of non-linear systems keep getting caught with their panties down. My guess as to why: they figure that if they tell the truth about non-linear (colloquially 'exponential') systems, they'll scare the shit out of folks who understand it, and cause the sub-GED Bible thumpers to attack these pointy headed Liberal Lying Scientists. The mis-rule of the idiots.

From the point of view of the MAGA leaders, and their most faithful, if Mother Earth ceases to be habitable in its current level, such will happen after they're long dead. Or, in their Bible thumping ways, extrapolate the Bible's assertion that God won't ever flood Mother Earth again. Ignoring the geologic fact that such never happened (filling the Med is almost surely the source of the myth). Do any of these give a shit about their kids and grandkids? Much less more future generations? Big fat no to both.

Thought For The Day - 10 February 2025

Why, I'll just bet it all on the Guh-eye-annts being just soooooooo happy for Saquon. They really did get it that he wasn't worth a slimy hanky.

Stupid is as Stupid Does - part the fifth

Once again, Batshit J. Moron proves once again how dumb and demented he really is. 25% tariff on steel and aluminum? Way to go dummy!

Yes, tariffs are a tax on Americans, not the foreign producers. Yes, tariffs (everywhere, for what it's worth) are used to 'protect' nascent industry. Yes, tariffs encourage, no - demand, that domestic producers raise price to meet the inflated price of the imported stock. Yes, tariffs drive inflation. Way to go!

So, no, the American consumer gets nothing in the bargain.

Both steel and aluminum are not nascent industries in these here United States. In fact, iron production has been declining for years due in significant measure to the over-mining of the ore, mostly in the Mesabi Range, a once largest deposit on the planet. A significant amount of it was extracted during WWII to make the weapons of war which enabled the Allies to beat the Nazis. I wonder if Batshit J. Moron even understands that? Wasn't Daddy Drumpf an "America Firster"?

During Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, his father's 1927 arrest at a KKK march resurfaced.

KKK and Lindbergh and the rest were siblings. In any case, putting tariffs on steel are unlikely to rejuvenate an industry made moribund by lack of raw resource.

US iron ore made up 2.5 percent of the total mined worldwide in 2015.
...
None of the iron ore now mined in the US is "direct shipping" ore ready to be fed into the iron- and steel-making process. The ore is concentrated to raise the iron content before use. All the iron ore currently mined is from open pits.

IOW, what's left is shitty bottom of the barrel ore.

So, what countries have the most high quality ore, one might ask? Not the USofA. Nascent industry protection? In a pig's ass.

1 - Australia 
3 - Russia
4 - China 
6 - Canada

So, stupid is as stupid does.

Now, what about aluminum?

Well, again stupid is as stupid does. The USofA isn't even on the list. No industry to protect! Australia is the largest producer of aluminum (second in reserves) with Guinea having the largest bauxite reserves.

I Bet You Thought I Was Full of Shit

As the title says. Turns out, not so much. Yet more reporting on the evil deviousness of Kim Don-Felon and his Merry Band of Fascists (so says this Tesla investor).

Even a moment's pondering would yield more than a few surrogates for Red states which could be corralled for the purpose of boosting the Red and screwing the Blue. This one, breeding, as the proper measure for which states get transportation funding is beyond ludicrous. But there you go.

Prioritizing areas with higher birthrates would, however, send more federal funding to Republican states. South Dakota, Alaska, Nebraska, North Dakota and Texas are among the states with the highest fertility rates, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. States that have the lowest fertility rates include Vermont, Oregon, Rhode Island and New Hampshire, none of which voted for Mr. Trump in the 2024 election.

I suppose that the sub-GED crowd that lives in our domestic shithole countries are fond of fucking (bareback, and not on da pill) in their cars while stuck in traffic jams in the middle of nowhere? Why not?

That's Why!! - part the second

Well... staff of the NYT has confirmed the main points of the earlier missive

The instrument approach for Runway 1 calls for a descending plane to cross over the helicopter corridor while the plane is at a much higher altitude, somewhere from 620 to 1,700 feet and more than a minute from landing. The approach for Runway 33, however, calls for a plane to cross over the helicopter corridor at a much lower altitude, because a plane is seconds from landing. The clearance between a helicopter in the corridor and a descending plane may be from 100 to 300 feet, which can result in close calls if there are severe fluctuations in the altitude of either aircraft.

So, the clearance on 1 is so much more than on 33. I don't yet know whether the CRJ would be advised to touchdown closer to the threshold on 33 than it would aim for on 1, but it seems logical given the shorter length of 33 and the CRJ's rollout. In any case, as stated, the height at the river's edge, where the two flight paths intersect, is quite different.

Not only that,

But the helicopter was at least a half-mile off of the approved route when it collided with the jet

Now, in which direction that half-mile is, makes a difference and isn't stated in the report. If a half-mile closer to the west bank of the river means the CRJ would be still closer to the ground at intersection. What isn't yet confirmed is why ATC sent the CRJ over to 33. Was it crosswind, or just convenience for ATC for some reason? So far, only The Shadow knows.

Thought For The Day - 6 February 2025

OK, let me get this straight. Kim Don-Felon and his Merry Band of Fascists (so says this Tesla investor) wants to give his (white) billionaire (and, may be, if they're nice to him, millionaire) buddies phat refunds, even phatter than the one he gave them last time.

And to do this, he's going to take money from starving Black kids, and some brown and yellow ones, in all those shithole countries he complained about the last rodeo? Will he still feed starving Norwegian kids? One of, likely the only one that works, ways to keep the Domino Theory (Nam, look it up) from playing out is to lift the boots off the necks of poor starving Black kids. Revolts happen when playing by the rules in a rigged game becomes obvious. Empty bellies make people angry.

It's worth remembering that American Gunboat Diplomacy, protecting American companies south of the border from the governments of the countries they occupy, is what led to (and still does) countervailing dictatorship.

The utter stupidity of the MAGAnauts is breathtaking. I guess they still believe that Kim Don-Felon and his Merry Band of Fascists (so says this Tesla investor) and The Musk Ox really, really are looking out for them.

Side Effects

If, and that's still as specific as one can be, Kim Don-Felon and his Merry Band of Fascists (so says this Tesla investor) and The Musk Ox get their way in gutting employment in the Damn Gummint (which is small potatoes in expenditures), we can contemplate the side-effects of such effort.

And, being from the econ tribe, what might I see the effects on metro DC where most agency main offices reside? The one that comes immediately to mind is a regional housing crash. I lived in The District for all the time I was a Fed, but most bureaurats live in the burbs. By the time I got there, most new housing was being built on the Virginia side, what with Maryland largely taken. The District and Baltimore, downtown to downtown, are about an hour apart. So, you've got about 40 miles of area to make burbs, which was mostly done by the mid 70s.

If you're a new couple, come to DC for civil service, once you get to GS-13 (mid-level worker bee) it's time to get your mortgage. Now, being in civil service (getting there isn't the cake walk the Right Wingnuts blare), you expect that you'll be employed long enough to pay off said mortgage. For those "out in the field", life is a bit different. Some years ago, the GS payrates were regularized to recognize that regional/local cost of living differed, sometimes by a whole lot. But being away from The District often means that you're not in some One Company Town. Make no mistake: the big houses you see when tooling around the Metro Area don't house civil service worker bees, but rather lobbyists and lawyers and other Private Sector Poobahs.

If Kim Don-Felon and his Merry Band of Fascists (so says this Tesla investor) and The Musk Ox manage to cull 10,000 from the rolls, and 80% are central office agency worker bees, what happens to those 8,000 worker bees? At least one of my former colleagues managed to segue from public to private employment, but not because he was thrown out of the Damn Gummint. And he was AB.D. in psychometrics, a somewhat rigorous technical skill. Bureaurat middle managers? Not so much. A lot of those mortgages will default, simply because the DC Metro is not equipped to suck up all those public sector worker bees, like Bounty does in the teeVee adverts. The worker bees' lives will be smashed. And, as elsewhere, private equity will scarf up all those bargain basement houses and turn them into high priced rentals for the next cohort of starry eyed new couples coming to The District to do Good Works. May be Kim Don-Felon and his Merry Band of Fascists (so says this Tesla investor) will get in on the game; make some small change, welcome as it will be, on the hardship. Cruelty is the point.

If the Flaccid Duo get all the way to 100,000, the effect on the DC Metro will be a neutron bomb. Just what they want. There are no Social Goods, only rent extraction (that's an econ term). Andy Jackson, Kim Don-Felon and his Merry Band of Fascists (so says this Tesla investor)'s Idol created, in large measure, the spoils staffing protocol. 19^th century Federal governance was one party's corruption after the other's. A swell time to be an American. Let's all do it again!!