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.