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We Interviewed Some People Who Agree With Trump And Discovered They Agree With Trump

An ongoing multimedia extravaganza.

Lunch

Genuine slacker Saturday, as I have to drive somewhere.

America's Worst Democratic Governor

Jared Polis

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Slacker Saturday

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America's Worst University

Cornell University.

Cornell just released this statement from its committee of Trustees investigating the incident where the President ran over a student's foot with his car. The statement extols the President and blames the students.

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— Dan Hirschman (@asociologist.bsky.social) May 15, 2026 at 3:20 PM

The Professionals

Bari's kids are continuing to do great.

After failing to secure a visa to broadcast from Beijing, Tony Dokoupil was also forced out of his backup location in Taiwan, Status has learned, adding to an embarrassing series of events for the Bari Weiss-led network.

"We"

Trump complains he can't brag about the Iran War because of the "little man with the $4 gasoline": "I don't want to say we're making a fortune ... because if I say it, they're going to say, 'He forgets about the little man with the $4 gasoline.'"

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— FactPost (@factpostnews.bsky.social) May 15, 2026 at 2:46 AM

Republicans Will Do Liberal Things, But Conservatively

Dem legislators have occasionally been able to (though not rreally in the age of Trump) get some Republicans to sign on to some liberalish things, though too often by making those things overly bureaucratic, privatized, punitive, and means-tested.  

Still the idea that the Republican party would ever embrace these things wholeheartedly is always nonsense.

This particular one was especially ridiculous.  ONCE WE OUTLAW ABORTION, WE WILL THEN BE IN FAVOR OF HELPING WITH CHILDCARE.  

Centrists are always imagining that there are nonexistent deals on the table, but this one was nonsensical.

Where In The World

Can I go to this place with no cameras?

Members of Mr. Kean’s team were seated conspicuously in the third row, watching as the Democrats took turns weighing in on their boss’s mysterious absence. Afterward, his chief of staff, Dan Scharfenberger, reiterated a now familiar explanation.

“He’s dealing with a personal health condition, and he’ll be back soon,” Mr. Scharfenberger said in an interview.

When pressed on the nature of the health condition and why Mr. Kean had not been seen in New Jersey or in Washington, Mr. Scharfenberger said, “There’s no cameras where Tom is.”

Gone for 2 months. 

I don't think we need regular medical updates of every member of Congress, but missing for 2 months is an issue in itself.

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Failson Friday.

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The Finest People

This will be a 4 minute story, because that's the world we live in now.

Mike Banks, the border patrol chief who oversaw the most aggressive militarization of the US southern border in recent history, has resigned with immediate effect.

“It’s just time,” Banks told Fox News in an interview. “I feel like I got the ship back on course from the least secure, most disastrous, most chaotic border to the most secure border this country has ever seen.”

It's just time...

The resignation comes weeks after the Washington Examiner reported that six current and former border patrol employees had accused Banks of regularly paying for sex with prostitutes during trips to Colombia and Thailand over more than a decade, and bragging about it to colleagues.

The behavior was said to have been investigated twice by CBP officials, with one inquiry reportedly ending abruptly while the former homeland security secretary Kristi Noem was in office.

Oh 

My Apes Are Doing Great

I have no deep thoughts here other than I have no idea how the AI-driven stock boom ends.  

I registered for a road race. The customary FAQ (what time does it start, where is there water during the race, is there a bag drop, etc...) was replaced by, or at least hidden under, an "AI" chatbot.  

It took about 45 seconds to answer any question and often couldn't.  

There was nothing that couldn't be more easily and more accessible in a FAQ. There aren't many possible questions about a race! The set of information is very small!  You don't need "AI" for it, especially slow AI that doesn't even work!

It Was Joe Biden Wot Did It

I know most people only see Fox News through clips (if at all), but while this sounds ridiculous, it is fits perfectly well into the Fox News Cinematic Universe.

It's always tempting to think their viewers can't possibly believe this stuff, but they've been hearing this stuff 24/7 for years. Of course they do!

And Fox is the tame right wing news source, relatively speaking, at this point.

Where It Hurts

I do think it's a bit tragic that everyone learned during the post-covid era, once again, that everybody hates inflation, even though I don't think that's precisely true. I actually don't think people are impacted too much by 4% versus 2% inflation, which is really what that debate is normally about, whether the Fed needs to put the brakes on every time the rate "spikes" to 2.2%.

I mean, I don't think they'd notice too much if that 4% was pure inflation, spread perfectly evenly across all goods and services (and wages!). Only people with real money would care. But that's not what happened. The prices of very visible things spiked due to post-covid supply chain and labor issues, and we just called that "inflation." General inflation was high for a bit, but food price inflation was even higher, running above 10%. That's the kind of thing that enraged people.

And, like now, it wasn't the "inflation" of Milton Friedman's mind, happening because the Fed was printing too much money. It was cost-push inflation.

Though Biden's cost-push inflation wasn't due to his actions.

Anyway...

Driving that increase were substantial price hikes for things like fresh veggies. On an annualized basis, fresh vegetable prices are more than 44% higher today than they were three months ago.

Keeping interest rates high to "fight" cost-push inflation is only obviously correct if you think fighting inflation trumps all other concerns. 

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Thackeray Thursday.

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Nasty Australians

Very mean, low IQ people.

Plans to build Australia’s first Trump Tower have been scrapped just three months after it was announced, with the local developer saying the Trump brand has become “toxic.”

“Let’s just say that with the Iran war and everything else, the Trump brand was increasingly unpopular in Australia,” David Young, CEO of Altus Property Group, told CNN in a statement.

No Need To Be Goldfish

Daniel's job is keeping track of this stuff, and he does that well, but the point his colleagues should take from his work is, "Everything Trump says is likely to be a lie and you should begin with that premise." It isn't a stretch to say that every news story about something Trump says should begin, "The president, who regularly lies, just claimed...".

Trump April 23: I contacted people "that have worked for me in the past, doing swimming pools," and one gave me a great price on the Reflecting Pool project

Trump May 4: "I have some very good contractors," asked three of them to "do me a favor fellas" and go look at the…

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) May 12, 2026

I shouldn't have to make this point after all of these years.

The NYT also does a full rundown. Good for what it is, but, again, TRUMP IS PROBABLY TALKING BULLSHIT should preface every claim he makes, not be addressed 6 weeks later.

Edge Cases

Driving is probably the most complicated (no way to quantify that really) task any of us ever do. Humans do stupid things too, of course, but at some point we manage to figure out that we did, indeed, do a stupid thing.

Waymo is recalling its U.S. fleet of robotaxis after one of the autonomous vehicles was swept away when it drove into floodwaters in San Antonio.

The voluntary software recall stems from an incident during severe weather April 20, when a Waymo vehicle “encountered an untraversible flooded section of a roadway,” the company told the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Though the vehicle detected the flooded road, it continued into floodwaters at reduced speed.

I'm not asserting that this type of thing means robotaxis are UNPOSSIBLE. They clearly work better than I had thought they would, though there is much more Mechanical Turk activity happening than they like to reveal. The point is more that this is still an incredibly complex activity which still is not close to being solved without constant active updates and intervention.

Your personal self-driving car is not much nearer than it was 5 years ago.

The Great Bed Shitting

Will hit consumer prices next.

The producer price index rose a seasonally adjusted 1.4% for the month, much higher than the 0.5% Dow Jones consensus forecast and the upwardly revised 0.7% March increase, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday. This was the largest monthly gain since March 2022.

On an annual basis, the index was up 6%, the biggest increase since December 2022.

Operation Pete Hegseth Has A Mighty Johnson So Stop Saying He Doesn't

Amazing.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. military is considering officially renaming the war with Iran “Operation Sledgehammer” if the current ceasefire collapses and President Donald Trump decides to re-start major combat operations, according to two U.S. officials.

If you change the name, it's a new war!

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Let's GOOOOOOO

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Goldfish

When someone - the president, other politicians, people in The Discourse generally - showes themselves to be a bad faith and dishonest actor, you are allowed to remember that. If you are a journalist, it should impact how you cover those people going forward. As an editor or producer, whether you go to them for quotes or appearances.

This should not be controversial.

I've written before that one problem with DC (government and government-adjacent DC, including journalism) is that almost everybody is paid to lie. Some of those lies are mostly harmless - puffing up your boss a bit, spinning something - and many of them are less harmless. If there were social and professional sanctions for people who bullshit in their bullshitting jobs, then the entire social system would collapse.

Go to a random dinner party and you're going to find people who work as lobbyists for Evil Corp, or people whose spouses and friends do.

That's the glorious "bipartisan" Washington.

If you are a journalist, you should be allowed to remember things. You certainly shouldn't be encouraged to pretend you don't.

Federal Gas Tax Cut

It's always on the table when gas prices rise, which I suspect leads to people thinking that it's a significant amount when it's only 18.5 cents/gallon.

It's an action which will make people more mad, because it's inevitably swamped by the actual price increase. You promised help! You said you'd cut the tax but gas is still 5 bucks a gallon!

Not At Any Price

The below is a joke, but so often that is the level of The Discourse. Anyway, fun things happen when the supply curve goes vertical, especially for a good which tends to have pretty close to just-in-time delivery AND which is an input in, well, everything through its role in transportation (including transporting itself!).

Even if there aren't lines at the gas station, $100 gas would reflect, by any colloquial understanding, a "shortage."

But of course in practice, those pumps would go dry, in places, in such a scenario.

I'm not predicting gas shortages, I'm just saying that people will have ridiculous things to say about them if ever they are looming.

Shortages

Me, dumb: We could have shortages soon.

You, smart, after two Econ 101 classes: Prices adjust to equate supply and demand so shortages are impossible.

Capacity

I'd still bet on Trump ramping up the violence soon and if he does there will be more long term impacts.

UAE won’t resume full gas production until 2027 after Iranian attacks

The United Arab Emirates’s main gas-processing complex, which was hit in Iranian attacks during the war, will not reach its full production capacity again until next year.

ADNOC Gas said the Habshan site, which is one of the world’s largest gas production facilities and supplies gas across the UAE, is now operating at 60 percent capacity and “the company is currently working towards achieving 80 percent restoration by the end of 2026 with full capacity restored in 2027”.

In a statement sharing its first-quarter results, the company reported $1.1bn in net income, a 15 percent decrease compared with the same quarter last year.

Why Did Sleepy Joe Do This

Impressed by Trump's ability to make messes.

US prices rose in April at their fastest rate since May 2023 as the impact of the war in Iran was increasingly felt by consumers.

A jump in the cost of gasoline and groceries pushed the consumer price index (CPI), the amount prices jumped by in the past 12 months, to 3.8%.

It is the highest level since inflation hit 4% three years ago.

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TACO Tuesday.

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Coming to America

Just got off the phone with @realDonaldTrump ... he told me he is seriously considering a move to make Venezuela the 51st state... pic.twitter.com/cofs12dhUS

— John Roberts (@johnrobertsFox) May 11, 2026

I guess all the ones whose Temporary Protected Status he eliminated will just become citizens and can stay, and many more will arrive!

Fine with me.

Are you a natuaral born citizen if you were born in Caracas?

Looks Like Marco And Pete Can't Do Anything Right

Mr. Trump, sir, you need to hire better people!

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has grown increasingly frustrated with the Cuban government’s ability to maintain power despite months of sustained U.S. pressure and has been pressing his advisers about why his administration’s efforts to tip the regime into collapse have not yet succeeded, according to two U.S. officials, a former U.S. official and three people familiar with the discussions.

The Bad News Keeps Coming

And the stocks keep floating!

One possible explanation is the Big Money assumes they (not necessarily you, of course) will always be bailed out if there's a crash, so why worry their pretty little brains about it.

These people won't be bailed out, but their creditors likely will be!

The strain from this increasing debt load is starting to show, with the percentage of after-tax income that households spend paying down debt ticking up since early 2025, according to Federal Reserve data.

Banks say they are not seeing signs of serious distress. Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan, said late last month that consumer borrowing habits looked “fundamentally healthy.”

But across all consumer debts, the share that is delinquent rose to 4.8 percent, the highest tally since 2017. For the first time in more than a decade, the national average credit score dipped last year, according to data from Experian, one of the three major U.S. credit bureaus.

Kneel

The US record on "winning" wars has not been especially awesome in the way we like to define that, which is unconditional surrender by the opposition, but we usually don't lose them quite this hilariously.

Iran’s demands for U.S. war reparations, recognition of its sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz and an end to American sanctions were among the conditions that President Trump has deemed “unacceptable,” Iran’s state-owned broadcaster reported on Monday.

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 MACHO MONDAY

At Least The War Is Over

Oh well.

Two Takes

The New York Times has two types of pieces it loves to run about Democrats. The first is:

Dems should do this thing that they are already doing.

I think Tom Friedman wrote a dozen of those in the Obama years.

The second is:

Dems should stop doing this thing they aren't doing.

We have that one today:

Without even getting into the argument about whether they should or shouldn't, most of them don't! This issue is not front and center at all! 

Ride The 'D'

I spend some time in LA for family reasons and I usually don't rent a car because (depending) you can actually get around pretty well on public transportation. 

Sure, public transit can take longer and be more inconvenient than transit. I don't expect everyone in LA to ditch their cars and follow the lead of Ed Begley, Jr. But driving in LA does suck, in part because parking is a pain in the ass almost everywhere. It's a big streetcar city/region that lost its streetcars, not a big parking lot-paved suburb.

I do find tremendous personal resistance from people who love using transit in fancy European cities but who never consider using it in their own city. For example, I have friends who live a couple of miles from downtown, on regular bus routes, and it never occurs them to take the bus and in fact find it weird that I would take it (from downtown) to their place. Parking in DTLA really really sucks! 

My favorite DTLA thing is there are metered parking spots you can use until (I think) 3pm and then they become car lanes for rush hour. Tow trucks come out to make it happen! No I was never towed.

Anyway, one more piece.

This week, Metro is set to unveil the first part of a nine-mile subway under Wilshire, one of the most dynamic and traffic-clogged stretches of Los Angeles. Public transit experts say the $9.7-billion D Line extension, which will connect Koreatown to the Westside, is a landmark achievement in L.A. public transit history.

$10 billion sounds like a lot of money, and it probably shouldn't cost that much, but my take on such things is it's actually the useful spending that gets scrutiny and derision, not dumb spending. We're gonna blow a few hundred billion, easy, because of Iran.

A few hundred billion buys a lot of 'D's.

At Least The War Is Over

How long can THE MARKETS soar on these fumes?

Traffic in the Strait of Hormuz remained throttled on Saturday, after naval skirmishes between U.S. and Iranian forces in recent days heightened tensions in the vital shipping route.

For weeks, the narrow passage between the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea has been choked by two competing blockades enforced by each side in the conflict. About 1,600 ships are bottled up in the Persian Gulf.

Morning

Sunday funday.

We Hide In The Dunes By The Seaside

It's all very confusing.

Russia is shipping drone components to Iran via the Caspian Sea, U.S. officials say, helping Iran rebuild its offensive abilities after losing roughly 60 percent of its drone arsenal during recent fighting. The officials spoke anonymously to divulge private military assessments.

The Starmer Project

I don't know how true the stories were about UK Labour advising the Harris campaign (and how much they listened) were true. People like to boast about such things. But it was a bit worrying at the time, because it was quite obvious that Americans generally had no idea what was going on with UK Labour and their already plummeting popularity.

Yes they managed to win the election with a large number of seats, but with a tiny share of the popular vote. That such things are possible in the UK electoral system does not mean they signal anything good about the victorious party.

Right after winning they decided the smart and sensible thing to do was prove how tough they were by announcing some benefit cuts, coinciding with a scandal about all the free gifts they were getting. The Labour party was announcing benefit cuts after 14 years of Tory rule.

Anyway, the UK Labour party was hijacked by the worst people in Labour. Perhaps the worst people in Britain. I am not exaggerating. Continuity Rishi Sunak would have been better, at least.

They've been destroyed in local elections (councillors and mayors in some places) and in the governments of Wales (especially) and Scotland.

I don't know if Starmer will cling to power, but the Starmerites undoubtedly will.

Capital

Occasionally I think about the hugely expensive automated baggage handling system which was built for the then new Denver airport. They invited reporters for a big debut demonstration and it was a disaster. It subsequently never really worked and was eventually removed.

Basically it was a promise that magic expensive technology would let them skimp on hiring airport workers.

Automation is nothing new, of course, and often it works quite well, but you don't have to be a supergenius to understand why it would be extremely difficult to implement such a system with non-uniform bags.

Workers aren't that expensive, either.

And On And On

I think we can put "Iran deal" in the box with "Trump health care plan" and "infrastructure week."

President Donald Trump told CNN on Friday that his administration was expecting to hear back from Iran later that evening about a US proposal aimed at ending the conflict.

Asked by CNN’s Kristen Holmes whether he had received a response from Iran, Trump said, “We’ll hear from them supposedly tonight.”

Pressed on whether he believed the Iranians were slow-rolling negotiations, Trump replied that he did not know. “We’ll find out soon enough,” he said.

Trump has to "win" a war we obviously lost. And with each passing day he cares less and just doesn't want to hear about it.

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Working Hard Or Hardly Working

I just can't comprehend not taking being a CABINET SECRETARY seriously. I might be shit at it, but I'd figure it was going to occupy all my time and mental space!

oh my god -- Sean Duffy on Fox & Friends this morning announced that he spent parts of *7 MONTHS* (more than half a year!) on a roadtrip with his family to celebrate America's 250th anniversary

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) May 8, 2026 at 5:02 PM

Nothing Really Matters

Even in the post-9/11 bloodlust era, most "respectable" commentators felt the need to express concerns and regret about civilian casualties, to discuss war as if it was a terrible, if necessary, tragedy. Most of the time, anyway.

You rarely see any expressed concern at all anymore.  Even if it was mostly fake in the past, or more about the pundits admiring their own morality than actual genuine concern, it still did convey the sense that people dying mattered.

Waiting For A Big Beautiful Deal

We are once again being told there might be an Iran "deal" today, though I suspect that is more nonsense.

Any "deal" that actually happens will essentially involve Iran being the victors in a war they didn't start, with terms set accordingly. I am curious how it will be covered.  If it happens.

I Gotta Admit This Is Funny

I left long before universities were overpowered by mandatory ed tech, but I don't know a single faculty member who actually likes being forced to use this stuff. It's one thing to make tools available, another thing to squeeze everybody into them and make it impossible for them to use anything else.

New York — An apparent cyberattack shut down an education platform used by universities and K-12 schools across the US Thursday, depriving students and teachers of essential classroom materials – at a time when many are taking or prepping for final exams.

Canvas, a popular, cloud-based digital hub for classrooms, has more than 30 million active users globally, with more than 8,000 institutions as customers, parent company Instructure says on its website.

And of course there are monitoring (spying on faculty, eroding any pedagogical freedom) and intellectual property (all your lectures belong to us) issues. 

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Fuckin' Friday.

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So Much Winning

(WaPo reporter)

U.S. intel also indicates that Iran retains about 75% of its pre-war inventories of mobile launchers & about 70% of its pre-war stockpiles of missiles, per a U.S. official. The regime has also been able to recover underground storage facilities & repair damaged missiles

— John Hudson (@John_Hudson) May 7, 2026

Kavanaugh Stops

Kavanaugh is an idiot, so I can believe it actually didn't occur to him that an immigration stop would never be a one-time thing, like you get your name checked and never have to do it again.

This wasn’t the first time ICE agents stopped and held Garcia Venegas. In fact, Saturday’s encounter marked the third such incident, according to court filings. Garcia Venegas, whose parents are originally from Mexico, had twice before been detained after ICE raided construction sites where he was working, and twice before he was let go after proving his American citizenship. This third detention, Garcia Venegas wrote in his statement, had caused him emotional distress and anxiety. “I live in constant fear that I will be subjected to further baseless detentions just for going about my daily life,” he said, adding, “I only wish to live my life in peace.”

He gave full license to terrorize Latinos constantly forever, and while I doubt that bothers him at all, I can, as I said, believe he didn't get what he was enabling. 

Unreality

I don't know if it's really worse than it used to be, but I do think everyone used to put a bit more work into their bullshit. Now, powerful people lie like crumb-faced kids saying that they didn't eat a cookie, and think it's extraordinarily rude if you don't pretend to believe them.

HERSHEY, Pa. — Chief Justice John Roberts on Wednesday defended the Supreme Court from what he believes are misconceptions held by the American people that he and his colleagues are “political actors” who are making decisions based on policy, not law.

Mr. Trump, Sir, Your Advisers Have Led You Astray

Nothing will shake Trump from his few core beliefs (racism, his own inerrancy), but it would be nice if he got mad at the people who convinced him he could conquer Iran in 24 hours.

Where All My Bed Unshitters At

Our "allies" are getting a bit tired of being turned into a war zone for no reason.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s abrupt reversal on his plan to help ships go through the Strait of Hormuz came after a key Gulf ally suspended the U.S. military’s ability to use its bases and airspace to carry out the operation, according to two U.S. officials.

Trump surprised Gulf allies by announcing “Project Freedom” on social media Sunday afternoon, the officials said, angering leadership in Saudi Arabia. In response, the Kingdom informed the U.S. it would not allow the U.S. military to fly aircraft from Prince Sultan Airbase southeast of Riyadh or fly through Saudi airspace to support the effort, the officials said.

Countries are realizing they can, actually, just say no.

Morning

Thrilling Thursday

Wednesday Night

Rock on.

Brain Geniuses

It's funny how much Rubio was pushed as The Next Great (And Good) Republican once upon a time.

SECRETARY RUBIO: You know what’s an act of war? Iran putting mines in the water. Why doesn’t Congress complain about that? pic.twitter.com/WJOIjkh30W

— Department of State (@StateDept) May 5, 2026

Yes Iran should get Congressional authorization for its minelaying operations.

Too Much Fucking Context, Barry

 Too much.

At Least We Cured Woke Cancel Culture

I'm not saying this particular reporter deserves it, but it is "funny" that the magazine which spent years documenting every time a college student violated the constitution by objecting to the presence of a highly paid campus speaker is experiencing this.

The FBI has launched a criminal leak investigation focusing on an Atlantic magazine journalist who wrote a deeply unflattering account last month of Director Kash Patel’s work habits, two people familiar with the matter told MS NOW.

Is That Good

He thinks that's good.

Hassett on American consumers: "Credit card spending is through the roof. They're spending more on gasoline, but they're spending more on everything else too."

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) May 6, 2026 at 2:19 PM

Seems Bad

I think having kids makes a lot of people crazy (I don't mean this derogatorily, I just mean it is a big fucking deal that breaks their brains a bit, understandably), and part of coping with that is convincing themselves they've found the secret tricks to parenting which have eluded other people.

Sadly, sometimes that includes potentially fatal crackpot health care choices.

Their autopsies, which took place over the last several years, all came to the same conclusion: The deaths were caused, in whole or in part, by a rare but potentially fatal condition known as vitamin K deficiency bleeding.

In almost every case, the babies’ deaths could have been prevented with a long-standard vitamin K shot. But across the country, families — first in smatterings, now in droves — are declining the single, inexpensive injection given at birth to newborns to help their blood clot.

Many of them are doing so out of a well-meaning but ill-informed abundance of caution. In the hopes of safeguarding their newborns from what they see as unnecessary medical intervention, they have shunned fundamental and scientifically sound pharmaceutical intervention. The trend is also fueled by a contradictory pairing: families’ fierce desire to protect their babies and a cascade of false information infused into their social media algorithms.

Much Shorter Than A Scaramucci

But I was told that the US had control.

The US operation to guide stranded vessels through the Strait of Hormuz will be paused for a "short period of time", President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday evening.

Trump said that "Project Freedom", which began days earlier, would be halted by "mutual agreement" because "great progress" had been made toward a deal with Iran.

Project Freedom is over already.  The writers are getting too cute.

Good chance something not great happened that we aren't being told about. Could be related to this!

or maybe this:

Trump humiliated Rubio by having him defend Project Freedom to the hilt at a presser today, only to unilaterally suspend the “project” this evening

Per the Eurasia Group, Trump pulled the plug on it because 1) Iran sank a South Korean tanker and nearly took out two other ships despite US naval protection, and 2) Trump was informed by a liaison to the international shipping insurance consortium that none of their members would support it without Iran agreeing not to shoot.

I think they disabled the Korean tanker and didn't sink it but... 

They're floating another deal that no one has agreed to. Stock market goes zoom!

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Wacky Wednesday

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My Clanker Buddy

How many hours per day do we think Egghead Andreessen spends talking to his computer God?

"Competing Claims"

 Determining the truth, or close to it, is an exercise for you, dear reader, as so much journalism is today.

The United States and Iran made competing claims over which side controlled the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday, adding pressure to their shaky cease-fire after the U.S. Navy launched an effort to protect vessels through the vital oil shipping route.

The strait itself remains effectively closed: Only two ships were known to have passed through the waterway on Monday, and none had made the trip on Tuesday. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the U.S. effort to free trapped vessels is ongoing, adding “We’re ensuring that we have control of that strait, which we do.” Iran’s state broadcaster dismissed the U.S. effort as a failure and said Iranian control over the strait had “intensified.”

We Will Always Be 2 Weeks Away From The End Of The War

I don't know when the supply chains snap.

 

US President Donald Trump indicates that if he decides to return to war against Iran, it would take 2-3 weeks to achieve his goals in the war.

“We’ve taken out much of what we’d have to do, probably another two weeks, two weeks, maybe three weeks,” he tells conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt.

“We either make the right deal, or we win very easily from the military standpoint,” says Trump.

Our Tech Overlords

Much can be said, but I think this shows that he both wants to believe spicy chatbot is God, and that he can control God.

That's The Way

A lot of the problems with political journalism are a bit subtle and hard to quantify, so you can sound like a bit of a crank if you complain about them. 

One example is whether the adjectives "unpopular" or "scandal-plagued" are regularly adjacent to Trump's name, or not. More generally, whether he is talked about as if he is unpopular, or whether the focus is on whether the people who love Trump love Trump, which is often the case.

Trump is historically unpopular! More than that, he was never historically popular, though you would not have known that from the press coverage/beat sweeteners from the beginning of his second term.

President Donald Trump appears to be more unpopular than he’s ever been – including after the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

In fact, his 35% average approval rating in the CNN Poll of Polls means he’s now flirting with George W. Bush territory. Bush is the only president since Jimmy Carter to spend a sustained period of time in the mid-30s or lower.

Again, it was hard to quantify, but it took a long time for the press to talk about George Bush as if he was unpopular. 

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Nacho Tuesday. 

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But I Thought He Was So Competent

A problem with insider stories about Hegseth is that, as with Kash Patel, nothing would be surprising.  Yah he's a stupid racist asshole who sucks.

Since Trump returned to office in January last year, Pete Hegseth, the rumbustious defense secretary who has made it his mission to remake a military ethos he denounced as “woke”, has fired or forcibly retired 24 generals and senior commanders, with no performance-related reason given.

About 60% have been Black or female, an approach seemingly driven by the administration’s proclaimed onslaught against “DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) hires”.

OK this, from the self-proclaimed Alpha Male, is funny though:

Pentagon staff have been surprised to see him accompanied to official meetings by his wife, Jennifer, a former Fox News producer who frequently sits at the back during such encounters.

Somewhere After Midnight In My Wildest Fantasy

Rudy Giuliani is in critical condition.

It will probably be illegal to say mean things about him when he dies, so now is a good moment to remember that not only was he one of the most loathsome individuals in public life at the time, but all of the details of that were fully known to every relevant American journalist then.

But after 9/11, they needed a hero, so they created the character of Rudy 9/11, something which required deliberately ignoring all of his 9/11-related unheroic deeds.  Great job, everybody.

Oh No The Capital Allocation System Allocated Capital Badly Again

You can hear the sound of chanting growing:

Banks are hunting for new ways to offload risks tied to a glut of data centre debt as the race to build AI infrastructure stretches financing limits among the largest global lenders. 

Groups including JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and SMBC are trying to find ways to distribute portions of data centre-related deals to a broader range of investors, according to people familiar with the matter. 

bailout Bailout BAILOUT BAILOUT

Just put wafer thin bits of shit in with the good stuff and no one will notice.

"Distributing":

“The sizes we’re talking about . . . they’re out of scale to anything we’ve thought about, ever,” said Matthew Moniot, co-head of credit risk sharing at Man Group. “Banks very quickly start choking.” Lenders, including JPMorgan and MUFG, have spent more than six months distributing $38bn of construction debt tied to a data centre project leased to Oracle in Texas and Wisconsin, people familiar with the matter said.

Lenders, including JPMorgan and MUFG, have spent more than six months distributing $38bn of construction debt tied to a data centre project leased to Oracle in Texas and Wisconsin, people familiar with the matter said. 

The First Casualty of War

No idea who is telling the truth, but we already know Hegseth's Pentagon is less trustworthy than usual.

The U.S. military on Monday rejected Iranian claims to have struck an American warship, as Tehran signaled an aggressive response to President Donald Trump's new mission to "guide" stranded vessels through the Strait of Hormuz.

🚫 CLAIM: Iranian state media claims that Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps hit a U.S. warship with two missiles.

✅ TRUTH: No U.S. Navy ships have been struck. U.S. forces are supporting Project Freedom and enforcing the naval blockade on Iranian ports. pic.twitter.com/VFxovxLU6G

— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) May 4, 2026

Though the Pentagon being not very concerned with telling the truth is not a Hegseth invention! 

 

Morning

boo local sports team

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America's Worst Democratic Governor

Josh Shapiro

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro secretly helped a Republican state treasurer's 2024 reelection bid after the official's Democratic opponent had criticized Shapiro as a potential VP pick, a close Shapiro ally said last week.

At Least The War Is Over

Iran's 14-point proposal reads like what conquering nation demands, not a surrendering one.

The new proposal calls for guarantees against future attacks, a withdrawal of US forces from around Iran, the release of frozen Iranian assets worth billions of dollars and the lifting of sanctions, war reparations, ending all hostilities, including in Lebanon, and “a new mechanism for the Strait of Hormuz”.

Iran, which was also attacked by the US and Israel last June, wants a guarantee against future aggression. Israel has previously targeted Iranian nuclear scientists and run campaigns to sabotage its nuclear sites.

Tehran also wants its right to uranium enrichment guaranteed as a signatory to the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), but Trump has made the nuclear issue a “red line”. Iran wants decades of sanctions, which have devastated its economy, to be lifted as part of any deal. The navigation through the strait and demands for war reparations are other sticking points in the talks.

Mommy He Punched Me Back

Trump just says a bit more crassly what is standard DC "foreign policy" thinking: civilian populations need to be slaughtered in order to redeem a county for not bending to our will.

Peace proposal: US President Donald Trump said he can’t imagine a new peace plan from Iran he will review “would be acceptable” adding they have not yet paid “a big enough price for what they have done.” Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said the room for US decision-making “has narrowed.”

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Sunday funday.

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Running On Empty

I know this just means we will increase the defense budget by another eleventy zillion dollars (some Dems will oppose, some will support with a frowny face), but that doesn't mean they can make new flying death machines especially quickly.

The Trump administration has authorized more than $8.6 billion in emergency arms sales to partners in the Middle East as negotiations to end the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran remained at an impasse.

It was unclear when the weapons would arrive in the region, since it takes years to build large quantities of defensive interceptors and other types of munitions. The slow pace of production has become an acute concern in Washington, and any such weapons that American arms companies make for other countries mean less for the United States. Some Pentagon officials have expressed anxiety about diminishing U.S. stockpiles.

Dead Malls

It might actually be a good indicator of Russia's economic problems, but it's still funny as "dead malls" have been a major US phenomenon since the Great Recession and before.

What a deserted mall in Moscow says about Russia’s economic woes

The piece even says other some other malls are fine! 

Lucky Them

Whatever sense the various post-war arrangements made once upon a time, I do  think that the advantages of having US troops stationed in your country are not exactly clear.

Pentagon officials said on Friday that they were pulling 5,000 troops from Germany and would redeploy them to the United States and other posts overseas.

Down to 2022 levels so this is hardly a major change, anyway.

It is funny that this is because of Merz, because he was the one who, on day one, told everyone not to criticize Trump over Iran. When his cunning plan didn't work so well he flipped entirely.

Earlier this week, Germany’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, said Iran had “humiliated” the United States, and he questioned how Mr. Trump planned to end the conflict.

“The Americans obviously have no strategy,” Mr. Merz said.

Merz obviously has Smartest Boy In The Room syndrome, a sign of which is people who do a 180 degree turn on their views without acknowledging any of the people who were right to begin with, or, presumably, listening to them the next time.  Give this man an Atlantic column! 

Morning

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Maybe The Strait Doesn't Matter At All

Wall Street seems to think so. What if they are right?

It's Tariff Week, Again

Trump is back to happier times, when he would announce them daily and watch his Foxy friends on TV clap.

How Is He Doing

This car-hating hippie does find rising gas prices somewhat pleasing (yes, I know they impose real additional costs on people who can't afford them, but so do so many other things people don't obsess about as much), and also a hilarious  tribute to the energy and industrial and military policies of our greatest president.

At Least The War Is Over

And we won, and we obtained many spoils.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration is arguing that the war in Iran has already ended because of the ceasefire that began in early April, an interpretation that would allow the White House to avoid the need to seek congressional approval.

The Catturd2 Presidency

I don't claim to have my finger on the pulse of America about everything, but I really don't think that the president regularly trying to get TV comedians fired has much appeal beyond the hardcore.  

President Donald Trump says ABC had “better” fire Jimmy Kimmel soon, in his latest broadside against the network and its popular late-night comedian.

To the extent that all the "cancel culture" nonsense resonated with normies, it's because in their not-paying-much-attention brains, this is sort of what they imagined "cancel culture" was.  

Elite concerns about cancel culture were something entirely different of course.

Normies (hearing the endless cancel culture whine): Biden is blacklisting my favorite actors because of woke!  Office workers are losing their jobs because they aren't saying Latinx!

Elites: Regular people are being mean to us on twitter and college students are protesting our 5 figure student fee-paid speaking fees because we are racist sex pests! This is tyranny!

Morning

Get a life!

Happy Hour

Get happy. The stonks are soaring!

Housekeeping

I've long thought about changing the font from the joke-pretentious Times New Roman (just like that real newspaper!) to something more readable to my (and your) ageing eyes. As a temporary measure, there's a little checkbox at the top of the left column that switches everything to Arial if you so desire!

Afternoon

Busy with some things.

Mills Out

I've avoided getting sucked into the Platner discourse, as my beautiful mind is already occupied by too many things, but Schumer recruiting Mills was an obviously ridiculous step.

Gov. Janet Mills of Maine, the Democratic establishment’s choice to run for the Senate seat long held by Senator Susan Collins, a Republican, suspended her campaign on Thursday, saying she no longer had the financial resources to compete against Graham Platner, a progressive political newcomer.

Her exit paves the way for Mr. Platner, an oysterman who has led her in polls, to become the Democratic nominee in one of the most important Senate races in the country.

Strait Flushed

The fundamental stalemate is that there is nothing Iran would agree to - especially when we all know that President Deals is not bound by deals -  that would satisfy Trump's ego and his need to semi-plausibly claim HE WON.

I shouldn't have been, but I was a bit surprised he went back to posting threats. Or, at least, a bit surprised his staff didn't stop him.

Chat Is This Good

This is how Trump approval can go from 34 to 27.

(source)

Morning

Thirsty Thursday.

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The Stonk Mystery

Oil prices soar, stocks keep going up, or at least stay flat.

Yes they're down a bit today, now, but hardly panic selling.

Leaf Eaters

We are ruled by people who were like my middle school cohort - almost everything you do means you're "gay" (effeminate, not a real man, etc.).

Continuing to address military culture, Cao said the services needed “meat eaters” instead of “leaf eaters.”

A funny thing about getting older is you see the same fads return again and again, with the details and justifications changing.  The usual aesthetic of "meat eating is manly" has been  bolstered by the "keto" and high protein diet fads, especially for wannabe muscleheads.

Aesthetics of masculinity aside, the one bit of diet advice which is likely more important than any other, at least in the context of a typical American diet, is: almost everybody needs to eat more fiber.

Certainly more than none!

At Least The War Is Over

Here in Ye Old Blogosphere, we've long joked that the political press are like 6-year-olds playing soccer, just chasing wherever the ball is kicked, but it's quite funny that a major international military and economic crisis can be largely forgotten because of a minor security incident where they were all assembled.*

*And, yes, a guy with guns - in America! -  who didn't fire a shot (almost certainly) and didn't get through security is an extremely minor security incident, even if the Secret Service started shooting.

The Peak Comeback Kid Column

It was David Broder rooting for his boy, Bush, in 2007.

It may seem perverse to suggest that, at the very moment the House of Representatives is repudiating his policy in Iraq, President Bush is poised for a political comeback. But don't be astonished if that is the case.

He gave the game away about what motivated the column:

He has been far more accessible — and responsive — to the press and public, holding any number of one-on-one interviews, both on and off the record, leading up to Wednesday's televised news conference. And he has been more candid in his responses than in the past.

Journalists got their special treat - a candid off the record talk with the preznit!  - and what could be more compelling than that! 

Newsworthy

You would think insane unhinged rants by the president - in this case on the flagship public affairs/news show! - would be newsworthy, but instead it is always something to be smoothed over and hidden.

CBS News’s 60 Minutes cut out large portions of its interview with President Trump in which he rambled about his ballroom, how hot his Secret Service agents are, and how the No Kings protests are just like the Ku Klux Klan.

An analysis by Decoding Fox News revealed that many portions of the interview, which took place Sunday following the shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, simply never made it to air.

As has been the case since I have been blogging, other top journalists are strangely quiet on clearly indefensible practices by their colleagues.  

That's one aspect of the news ecosystem that I think has become worse over the years.  There used to be more "internal" media criticism.  Much of it was bad, of course, but there was at least some insider reflection on what was happening.

Now there are plenty of critical voices (good!) but they are all outside the room, not in it, making it easier to just ignore them.

TNR (linked) used to be inside the room, when it was right-wing-masquerading-as-center-left, and now it isn't. Funny how things work.

Morning

Every single day.

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Popularity and The Press

Have the hacks started referring to Trump as "unpopular" yet? I haven't seen it.

Soon he will announce more and more shit and they will treat each bit of vaporware as his comeback kid moment.

L

America's greatest president.

WASHINGTON, April 28 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump's approval rating ‌fell to the lowest level of his current term, as Americans increasingly soured on his handling of the cost of living and an unpopular war with Iran, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll.

The four-day poll completed on Monday showed 34% of Americans approve of Trump's performance in the White ​House, down from 36% in a prior Reuters/Ipsos survey, which was conducted from April 15 to 20.

The Only Thing Americans Care About

I don't think that's true, really, but it probably is true of the generally confused group of "swing voters" that have a big impact on election outcomes.

Gasoline prices in the United States rose on Tuesday to their highest level in four years as peace talks between the United States and Iran appeared at an impasse.

The average cost for a gallon of regular gasoline is $4.18, according to the AAA motor club. The price at the pump has not been that high since April 2022, shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine. Tuesday’s jump of 1.6 percent was the highest percentage increase in more than a month.

Of course if they come down soon enough, they'll remember how that nasty Biden caused them to jump in the first place. Such are swing voters.

Georgetown Law's Finest

 The connection between Barry Jr. and Cole Allen is an exercise left to the reader.

Randy's 74. Back in Ye Old Blogosphere Days he was one of the Good Conservatives.

I'm sure this will be defended because it's a "joke" which "references" when Obama said, "If I had a son, he could have looked like Trayvon Martin." But what's the joke? WHAT'S THE JOKE, MOTHERFUCKER???

It's just proving Obama's point, of course. 

Sus

 Is he lying, or are they feeding him nonsense to calm him down? 

It Is 2006... It is 2026...

Criticism of the White House press and their annual dinner has been going on for decades.  The criticisms remain basically the same, even as the details change somewhat:

They are the highest paid and most celebrated journalists, even though their journalism is entirely access journalism which produces no genuine scoops. Whoever sucks up the most gets the press releases first.

They identify with the people and the institutions they cover. It is "we" not "us and them." They are on Team White House, and they rise and fall together.

They are quite defensive of the people they cover, both because of access reasons and in the same way that I can criticize Philadelphia but you had better fucking not. Their home, not yours.

They tend to be incredibly thin skinned about their own work, of course.

As journalists at the top of the food chain - salaries, status, fame - they are often quite dismissive of "lesser" journalists. You know, the ones with actual "scoops" which they are often unable to read or remember.

Access journalism includes a lot of "save it for the book" stuff. Aside from the obvious, a problem with failing to publish what you know is that you end up talking and writing around it. "Peter Hegseth says [lie which is refuted in my book out in 18 months]." It's a version of "catch and kill."  Tell journalists the truth but embargo it.  They have to pretend they don't know it.

They often run cover for their sources. Way too obvious case: Maggie Haberman with Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

For various reasons, these tendencies are much worse and less hidden during Republican administrations.  Arguably this is mostly because Republican administrations are "better" at manipulating them, better at their care and feeding (and corrective punishments at times), and not because of ideological affinity, but that is not preferable!

Morning

 Taco Tuesday.

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As Long As What Happens Is Funny

I have probably been a bit flippant lately, as I'm not especially optimistic that anything good is going to happen in the next few months. At best we can get some stuff which is funny. You know, something like the humiliation of Kash Patel.

Developments like that aren't likely to actually improve anything, but at least we can laugh a bit.

Awkward

Also funny, or would be if it all wasn't so consequential.

“We see how courageously and heroically the Iranian people are fighting for their independence and sovereignty,” Putin told Araghchi saying he hoped they can get through what he called a “difficult period” and peace will prevail.

“For our part we will do everything that serves your interests and the interests of all the peoples of the region to ensure that peace is achieved as quickly as possible,” he added.

Russia has offered to mediate to try to help restore calm to the Middle East following US and Israeli strikes, which Moscow has strongly condemned.

Some Are Held For Charity And Some For Fancy Dress

I don't know why Trump is so obsessed with his ballroom. I do know that a promise to get Godzilla on loan from Japan to stomp the shit out of it as soon as he leaves office is the right response.

Enrage Him

Insult his binky.

dems should start ripping the ballroom just to keep him distracted, say the renderings are tacky and itll be the only thing he talks about for a week

— Andrew Lawrence (@ndrew.bsky.social) April 27, 2026 at 4:21 PM

'MAHA Moms'

I'm mildly annoyed that every part of MAGA Extended Universe gets treated as a crucial voting constituency, instead of a mostly marginal internet subculture with an elevated sense of their own righteousness and importance. Still, there is value in pointing out that even within his own expressed crackpot framework, RFK JR. is hardly "MAHA."

But the Trump administration has since ordered more domestic production of the chemical, backed away from suggestions it may be harmful, and thrown its support behind Bayer by arguing that it is up to the Environmental Protection Agency, not the courts, to decide the safety and risks of agricultural chemicals.

The positions on glyphosate have sparked tension between traditional conservatives and the MAHA voters who argue they provided pivotal votes to secure Trump’s 2024 win.

If you guys did provide the pivotal votes, I hope you're proud of yourselves. 

At Least The War Is Over

The DC press fully seizing the opportunity to make themselves the protagonists of The Politics Story at the expense of all other news is bringing back memories.

Generally that aspect has improved somewhat since the peak Mark Halperin/Gang of 500 days, though I am not surprised to see they can still take the opportunity to turn the focus onto themselves.

A new attack on the rituals that define US democracy

No your annual dinner is not one of the rituals that define US democracy. Jesus fucking christ.

Morning

Oh what a glorious morning.

Sunday Happy Hour

Get happy

Winning

I don't know what happens next, but this is probably true no matter what!

“We will by no means return the Strait of Hormuz to its previous state, because this is an order from the Leader of the Islamic Revolution”, Ali Nikzad, second deputy speaker of the Iranian parliament, told the semi-official Mehr News Agency.

If the US somehow takes control, "we" will start charging. 

"Heated Rhetoric"

BASH: You and your fellow Democrats have used some heated rhetoric against the president. Do you think twice about that when something like that happens? RASKIN: What rhetoric do you have in mind? BASH: That he's terrible for this country and so on and so forth

[image or embed]

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) April 26, 2026 at 2:55 PM

Observing Me Observing You

I was struck by all of the clips from the various fake journalists and "influencers" whose response to being in the middle of a shooting was to point their phones at themselves to take photos/video.

One of Bari's dullards: 

People who conceive of themselves as the protagonist of existence are not new - a lot of writing has long been narcissistic "observing myself observing an event" - but the phones do let them all express that in a new way!

Point those cameras at what you're looking at, not at yourself looking at it!

Morning

Guess there was some news when I wasn't paying attention?

But He Was So Competent

Looks like we won't have Kash to kick around for much longer.

Current Status

As I keep writing, I know nothing about how delicate the various supply chains are. Some people seem to think things are going to be pretty fucked up soon!

The Strait of Hormuz remains largely empty of merchant ships, with only a few Tehran-linked vessels moving through the waterway, following a tense week that saw Iranian gunboat attacks and tanker interceptions by the US Navy.

As of Saturday morning, observable traffic was down to only two very small fuel carriers and one tiny coastal cargo ship, all with ties to Tehran, leaving the Persian Gulf through the crucial waterway, vessel-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg show. No ships were observed on their way in.

FIELD TRIP CANCELLED

Steve and Jared's trip to Pakistan was canceled. I suspect it was always fake - that all of this is just delaying to make time for putting things in place for major military action. But who knows...

Moral Clarity

This isn't important, but I haven't seen that war-on-terror era phrase used much recently.

I have never actually understood what the intended meaning of it is, if any, beyond "killing people I hate is moral, akshually, and you are immoral if you disagree."

Happy White House Correspondents' Dinner Day

I stopped getting annoyed by such things because I stopped imagining the White House Press were supposed to be anything other than what they were. I actually used to think this from Colbert at the 2006 WHCD was maybe a bit harsh, but it's only a bit harsh if you imagine it's about all journalists on the politics beat.

But, listen, let's review the rules. Here's how it works: the president makes decisions. He's the Decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put 'em through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know - fiction!

The good ones are mostly the ones whose names you don't know, the ones whose work goes mostly ignored by their own colleagues who have the access journalism jobs that makes them famous. The investigative stuff, the genuine scoops from lower level whistleblowers, the actual reportng about corruption and similar - that isn't their job! It is sill to expect it from them.

That doesn't mean you have to respect what they do, of course, just understand that they are doing their jobs! Jake Tapper made some defiant pocket squares. He's very proud of them.

Morning

Slacker Saturday

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Well That Will Fix Everything

Witkoff and Kushner are supposedly heading to Pakistan for Iran talks. I am sure a great deal will be achieved! Vance is sitting at the kiddie table.

Leavitt: "The vice president is on standby and will be willing to dispatch to Pakistan if we feel it's a necessary use of his time"

[image or embed]

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) April 24, 2026 at 6:21 PM

Gambling On War

One hopes this will dissuade others, but I doubt it.

A US special forces soldier involved in the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was arrested and charged for allegedly betting on that operation, netting him $400,000 in profits.

Event Horizon

I suppose anything is possible, but I suspect that with a guy like Trump, once people sour on him they are not going to suddenly decide they like him again. 

Are we being treated to endless thinkpieces about What Donald (or Republicans) Needs To Do To Reclaim The Center? Weirdly, no!

Our pundits and political journalists are no longer able to fathom a situation in which "moving left" is good advice to anyone.

How Abusers Thrive

Don't do anything to upset him!

The former U.S. ambassador to NATO is urging British and European politicians not to alienate Donald Trump by criticizing his administration’s handling of the Iran war and its fallout.

"Seemed Questionable"

One problem we have now is not being able to tell if Trump is lying because he is lying, if he's delusional because his brain is broken, or if he believes crazy stuff in part because the people around him feed him nonsense all day long.

Donald Trump has again said that the US has “total control over the strait of Hormuz”, adding that Iran’s leadership was so hobbled by infighting that it was unclear who was in charge.

But the US president’s claim seemed questionable in the face of the seizure of two container ships by Iranian commandos and a US report warning it could take six months to clear the strait of mines.

The answer is "all of them" but in which proportions, when?

Morning

Feisty Friday

Happy Hour

Raise a glass to our president!

TMZ Era

I suppose having journalists who report what they see instead of covering it up would be good.

I think a lot of people in D.C. are very circumspect about the fact that the Senate is full of people who are way too old to be there, including Mitch McConnell,” said one reporter. “He has people guiding him around, he can’t really answer questions — it’s really striking, and I feel like a lot of people are very hands off with that. TMZ is not going to be hands off.”

My first visit to the Capitol was about 3 days before 9/11. A friend was a Senate staffer. Had the full tour. Bumped into Strom and Jesse and their entourages. Those guys were already dead.

Stonks

I suppose it won't be too long before we see who is right.

The evidence that investors are overlooking the implications of the current situation is piling up. The war’s end is no longer the point at which things will return to something approaching normal. U.S. inflation was at 3.3 percent last month and is expected to rise further, and the second-order effects on goods that are derived from fossil fuels or rely on energy—in the latter case, all of them—haven’t even hit yet. Diesel and jet fuel, the heavy transportation fuels, are rising faster than gasoline. There are trucking costs and fertilizer costs and plastic and aluminum packaging costs, all of which will spark more core inflation, which hasn’t budged much relative to more volatile benchmarks like energy.

Then there’s the impact on capital flows coming from the Persian Gulf. The major Gulf states are in no position right now to invest, which had hitherto propped up projects and asset managers globally. Losing Gulf state capital might be a bigger deal than losing their oil. The fact that the U.S. is considering a bailout of the United Arab Emirates is a terrible sign.

Redistricting

There was a very high profile cunning Republican plan to do mid-decade redistrcting, supported by America's Greatest President, Donald Trump. Conservative media figures were all behind it! Do we think Fox News viewers and similar are actually buying this shit?

Oh No They Fired Brownie

Guy wasn't qualified anyway.

Navy Secretary John Phelan will leave the Trump administration “effective immediately,” the Pentagon announced Wednesday, marking the latest departure of a top defense official this year.

Just sounds like basic office politics stuff, with Hegseth hating him.

It probably doesn't matter much that he was fired, but it does matter that it doesn't matter, if that makes sense. The guy in charge of the Navy shouldn't be so easily dispsensable at this particular moment.

Elder Care

David Scott had been, diplomatically, not fully able to do his job for years and was running for another term.

US Democratic Rep. David Scott, who represented Georgia’s 13th Congressional District, has died at 80 years old.

They don't want to retire because even the very rich ones can't really purchase the kind of "care" that their staffers will provide for them, at least not if they didn't already have longtime personal staffers.

There used to be regular mini scandals about staffers doing personal duties for their bosses. I'm sure there is an enforced omerta now as so many offices are like this.

Morning

Once again.

Happy Hour

You only get one hour.

Nobody Knows This

I actually bet "nobody" does know this. (Almost) No more Florida oranges.

In 2003, the mighty Florida orange industry produced 242 million boxes of fruit, with 90 pounds of oranges per box, most of which went on to become orange juice. Now, not even 25 years later, the United States Department of Agriculture was forecasting a pitiful 12 million boxes of oranges, the least in more than 100 years, the worst year since last. A decline of more than 95 percent.

Sure Why Not

Replacing the old bullshit with new bullshit.

But over the last six months, Mr. Musk has shifted SpaceX’s priorities. Though the tech mogul once forecast that humans would take off for Mars as early as 2024, he has de-emphasized reaching the planet.

Instead, SpaceX on Tuesday said it had struck a deal with the artificial intelligence start-up Cursor that could result in its acquiring the young company for $60 billion. And Mr. Musk, 54, has proposed other moonshots that could drive more attention and investment to SpaceX as it prepares for one of the largest-ever initial public offerings.

Among his pronouncements are A.I. data centers that could orbit Earth, moon-based factories and an A.I. chip manufacturing plant, all of which will contribute to a utopian future where humans never have to work, he has said.

Mommy He Hit Me Back

Obviously a few seats can matter (as is the case now!), but I never worried too much about the Republican gerrymandering. I mean, if the Dems can't net 20+ seats after 2 years of Donald Trump, then they deserve to lose (not that we deserve the consequences of that).

Still it was good to see them overcome their normal timidity and actually respond. Republicans and much of the media don't consider this to be fair, as Dems are not supposed to behave that way.

Warfighting

One never knows how much this stuff is true and how much it is just part of the regular PR push for more defense spending.

The US military has significantly depleted its stockpile of key missiles during the war with Iran and created a “near-term risk” of running out of ammunition in a future conflict should one arise in the next few years, according to experts and three people familiar with recent internal Defense Department stockpile assessments.

Over the last seven weeks of war, the US military has expended at least 45% of its stockpile of Precision Strike Missiles; at least half of its inventory of THAAD missiles, which are designed to intercept ballistic missiles; and nearly 50% of its stockpile of Patriot air defense interceptor missiles, according to a new analysis conducted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Those numbers closely align with classified Pentagon data about US stockpiles, according to the sources familiar with the assessment.

If it is true, or even trueish, then the question should not be "how much more money does the Pentagon need" but "what the fuck do we spend all that money on."

The Mysteries Of Stonks

The market seems to follow what Donald Trump is saying instead of reacting to objective reality.

Open For Business

Gramps is gonna be raging.

Iran’s navy on Wednesday said it had seized two container ships in the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz, shortly after the U.S. extended the ceasefire and as diplomats seek to bring the countries together for peace talks.

Morning

Wacky Wednesday.

Oh No They Lost The Dersh

It's over.

America's Worst Humans

Jesse Watters.

Never Post

Good advice for us all.

Some Trump officials privately acknowledged to CNN that the president’s public commentary has been detrimental to talks, noting the sensitivity of the negotiations and the Iranians’ deep mistrust of the US. Compounding matters: American officials suspect there is a divide between Iran’s negotiating team, led by Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, leading to questions about who can ultimately sign off on a deal.

“The Iranians didn’t appreciate POTUS negotiating through social media and making it appear as if they had signed off on issues they hadn’t yet agreed to, and ones that aren’t popular with their people back home,” one person familiar with the talks told CNN, adding that the Iranians are particularly concerned about appearing to look weak.

America's superdiplomat, JD Vance, has postponed his trip to Islamabad. 

Warfighters

Whiskey Pete announced that flu vaccines would no longer be mandatory. Life aboard the big boats is going to be great.

I do believe that (most) Americans have no idea what the flu is, thinking it is just a bad cold. A bad cold is just a cold. The flu is fucking nasty and debilitating and possibly deadly.  

Totally

Trump: "We totally control the strait, just so you understand. For all the fake news out there."

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) April 21, 2026 at 1:37 PM

I think part of the story of 2020 is Trump increasingly losing his mind as Covid failed to obey his regular decrees.

He has less mind to lose, now.

Fake Laws

Years ago, some economists, and lawyers and judges pretending they were economists, convinced everybody that because antitrust laws violated the truly sacred higher laws of economics, they were actually fake laws.

Emails released on Monday by California’s attorney general show Amazon allegedly colluding with other companies to raise the prices of pet treats, khaki pants, eyedrops and other products sold online.

According to a newly unsealed court filing released by attorney general Rob Bonta, Amazon employees have repeatedly worked with vendors using its platform to push retail vendors including Walmart and Chewyto set higher prices collectively.

Morning

TACO Tuesday.

Happy Hour

Get happy

The Deepest Shade of Mushroom Blue

Gramps is having a good day.

Libertarians Never Surprise

(From Al Jazeera)

Can They Both Lose

In any case, this could very funny.

April 20 (Reuters) - FBI Director Kash Patel filed a defamation lawsuit against the Atlantic and its reporter Sarah Fitzpatrick ​following the publication of an article on Friday alleging the director had a drinking problem that could pose a threat to national ‌security.