First up, PINO TACO is poisoning Americans, followed by American Resistance.
It’s not enough that the TACO Regime is encouraging people to avoid vaccinations, which is helping measles stage a deadly return. Now the inept and ignorant TACO Regime is POISONING OUR FOOD SUPPLY!!! Yes, deadly tomatoes are out there! IT’S ATTACK OF THE KILLER TOMATOES!!!
My confession: I don’t know if this salmonella outbreak can be attributed to the TACO Regime and the DOGE cuts. A look back through history shows that these outbreaks happen. But PINO TACO would not hesitate to hyperventilate with all caps and exclamations points were a Democrat POTUS. So I’m really just emulating TACO’s style.
Does a post like this help with civil discourse and problem solving? Hell, no. But when the GOTP and TACO Regime stops doing it and get serious, so will I.
Next, American Resistance! This was posted over on Mock Paper Scissors. WP still won’t permit me to properly reblog from them, so here’s my work-around. Summary: Masked gunman are trying to round people up. Without badges and insignia, they could be anybody.
This should give us a little lift to start our day. Make no mistake, if you get the mellow beach bums of San Diego to rise-up, anyone can rise-up.
The thing that worries me is that without badges or other identifying insignia, any crack-pot militia can start playing this game and rounding-up people in white vans and disappearing them, and vigilantes are not exactly known for rules. We need more of this to stop the Gestapo/ICE (and maybe the Proud Boys).
As much as I hate saying this, IF you are white use your white privilege if you see this happening: it’s your Superpower against these fascists/racists. Demand to see warrants signed by a judge, and don’t let them disappear people.
(Hat tip: Scissorhead Purplehead)
Remember to resist this and other un-American behavior on No Kings Day, June 14th.
Someone else wrote the original post. TACO shared it to his followers.
What’s weird to me is not the unfounded conspiracy that former President Biden was assassinated. Hell, no; the right wing has been a conspiracy machine since the beginning of this century. They’re just going deeper and broader by the day.
No, what’s really revealing and absurd about this conspiracy theory is that Joe Biden was replaced by a clone or robot, and yet, weirdly and inexplicably, ‘they’ replaced him with an aging version of himself who struggled with his memory and energy level and now has cancer.
Sounds about as solid as Greedy Old Trump Party planning gets.
Got up early, cut the grass. It’s Frida. Gonna be 95 F plus here in Ashlandia today. It’s 85 F now, all pretty typical for May’s penultimate day, the 30th, in 2025. Connectivity issues are stalking me in the coffee shop, which is also typical for when it’s hot, cold, wet, snowy, windy, or stormy. This post took an extra chunk of time because connectivity drops, and the categories and tags would disappear. Sigh of frustration.
Papi has taken early to his hot weather hidey hole among the vinca on the house’s side yard.
The photo was taken through the window glass, between the blinds, with my phone. Papi is usually hyper aware of sound, so I didn’t want to move the blinds and risk waking him. That’s me, don’t-disturb-the-cat Michael.
The news spin is so fast, it’s like trying to catch Road Runner. Just ask Wile E. Coyote how challenging that is, and he’s a super genius. Tariffs are on hold, tariffs are back, the Roberts Court ruled for TACO, the SCOTUS ruled against TACO. Senators are speaking against Trump, speakers have just supported his agenda. The stock market is up, the stock market is down.
Speaking of super geniuses,TACO sent the stock market tumbling with accusations that China has been caught cheating on tariffs. Given TACO’s usual M.O., that means the TACO Regime was probably caught cheating. Or they’re playing squirrel again, trying to distract us from news and information which TACO finds upsetting and doesn’t want us to notice. It might just be that he’s trying to make us forget that we’re calling him TACO now.
LET’S GO, TACO!
There. Don’t know if he got that. It’s our version of “Let’s Go, Brandon” that made the right so happy last year. Maybe if more of us did it, TACO will get the message. So, let’s all amplify it via social media:
News reading and wondering what fresh bad news is rising for TACO has The Neurons firing up “Duran Duran” with “Is There Something I Should Know?” from 1983 in the morning mental music stream. I suppose it could be the Propublica and Texas Tribune article (shared here via Alternet) that the Trump Regime knew that the Venezuelans they deported were not the criminals claimed. Maybe there’s worse economic news coming that’s prompting the Trump Regime to shout, “Squirrel!” Time will tell.
Hope your Frida works out well for you. Hope mine works out for me and my family, too. Let’s make it the best one we can. Coffee is at hand. Here we go again. Cheers
Corporate profits fall $118.1 billion in first quarter
Economy contracts at 0.2% rate in Q1 by all measures
WASHINGTON, May 29 (Reuters) – The number of Americans filing new applications for jobless benefits increased more than expected last week and the unemployment rate appeared to have picked up in May, suggesting layoffs were rising as tariffs cloud the economic outlook.
The report from the Labor Department on Thursday showed a surge in applications in Michigan last week, the nation’s motor vehicle assembly hub. The number of people collecting unemployment checks in mid-May was the largest in 3-1/2 years.
The dimming economic outlook was reinforced by other data showing corporate profits declining by the most in more than four years in the first quarter, pulled down by nonfinancial domestic industries.
A U.S. trade court on Wednesday blocked most of President Donald Trump’s tariffs from going into effect in a sweeping ruling that the president overstepped his authority. They were temporarily reinstated by a federal appeals court on Thursday, adding another layer of uncertainty over the economy.
“This is a sign that cracks are starting to form in the economy and that the outlook is deteriorating,” said Christopher Rupkey, chief economist at FWDBONDS. “There is nothing great about today’s jobless claims data and the jump in layoffs may be a harbinger of worse things to come.”
Initial claims for state unemployment benefits rose 14,000 to a seasonally adjusted 240,000 for the week ended May 24, the Labor Department said. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast 230,000 claims for the latest week.
They said Trump’s aggressive trade policy was making it harder for businesses to plan ahead, a sentiment echoed by a Conference Board survey on Thursday, which showed confidence among chief executive officers plummeting in the second quarter.
Meanwhile, as the economy begins to show the cracks all of us expected with TACO’s economic policies, Paul Krugman adds insights into how TACO’s malicious stoppering of foreign students at US colleges and universities will impact the economy.
My wife and I are co-authors of a widely used textbook on the principles of economics, which is revised on a three-year cycle. When a new edition comes out, I normally visit a number of schools that might adopt it, usually giving a big public talk, a smaller technical seminar, and spending some time with students and faculty. I enjoy it, by the way; there are a lot of good, interesting people in U.S. education, and not just in the high-prestige schools.
So it was that at one point I found myself visiting Texas Tech in Lubbock. Yes, it seemed pretty remote to someone who has spent almost his whole life in the Northeast Corridor, but as usual the overall experience was very positive. And it was also surprisingly cosmopolitan: there were students from many nations. I just checked the numbers, and currently 30 percent of Texas Tech’s graduate students are international.
So it is all across America. Our nation’s ability to attract foreigners to study here is one of our great strengths. Or maybe I should say was one of our strengths.
According to Politico, a cable from Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, has directed U.S. embassies and consulates to halt all processing of visa applications from foreigners hoping to study in the United States. This is reportedly a temporary measure in preparation for a new system in which would-be students will be screened on the basis of their social media history. And you can be sure that the criteria for denying entry will go far beyond, you know, advocating terrorism. Probably asking “Why was Trump talking to West Point grads about trophy wives?” will be grounds for rejection.
This completely insane policy move is presumably a temper tantrum in response to a court’s rejection of the administration’s attempt to prevent Harvard from admitting foreign students, which was in turn a temper tantrum in response to Harvard’s rejection of demands from Trumpists that they be allowed to dictate the university’s hiring and curriculum.
The courts will probably reject this policy move, too, but I worry that Rubio and co. can put enough sand in the gears of the visa process to bring the entry of international students to a near halt. And even if they can’t, the clear message to students that they aren’t welcome (and may be arrested once here) will have an immensely chilling effect.
It’s hard to overstate the self-destructiveness of this move, and the war on higher education in general. This is madness even in purely economic terms.
We don’t often think of education as a major U.S. export, but it is. International students typically pay full tuition and require little or no financial aid. Here’s “education-related travel,” basically international students, compared with some other major U.S. exports:
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics
And because international students typically pay full freight, while domestic students often don’t, foreign students help support higher education financially. That’s a big deal. My sense is that most people have no idea how important higher education is as a source of jobs, many of them middle-class. Here’s a comparison of employment in “Universities, colleges and professional schools” with employment in some politically prominent sectors:
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics
Apparently, Making America Great Again means destroying one of our most successful indust
It’s been over two weeks since I last heard the furnace warming our house. That pleases me. Pleases my mango tango, the ginger floof known as Papi even more. He scampers in to say hello and eat but otherwise lives a life snoozing in secret places among cooling bushes and vinca. Not a bad life for him, I think.
Today is Wenzda, May 28, 2025. Munda passed in a flounce. Tuesday barely registered for me. Here I sit on Wenzda, enjoying blue sky and sunshine. Air temp is already 80 F with 88 in our sights today. Later this week, we expect to push past 90 F. We’ll soon see the green hills on the valley’s northern sun brown like baking bread.
I went to cut back the backyard. The weeds had shoot up to a foot in height. Finally turned my attention to whacking it back, but when I went out there — bees were buzzing around the weeds. I was so pleased to see them. A hummingbird zipped by, too. Hallelujah, sang The Neurons. Out front, a thick buzz was rising from the tree upfront which the bees regularly frequent. They hadn’t been around yet and I was happy to see them back.
The Neurons have blessed the morning mental music stream with “Bad Company”. “Bad Company” is a 1974 power ballad by the group called “Bad Company”. Ostensibly, it relates to the chosen life of being a gunslinger but to hear him say it, he really had no choice. I can dig that; I feel as if choice is taken from me when it comes to writing. This boy’s gotta do it. However, I don’t know why The Neurons plugged “Bad Company” into my head. Was this a reference to people coming into town to visit, or were they making a disparaging remark about my attitude? Hard to say with The Neurons. They jump out with a claim and then dance away before they can be questioned.
Over in the political quarter of my life, I read about Republican Rep. Mike Flood’s town hall meeting in Nebraska. Flood was there chatting about the disastrous bill that the Greedy Old Trump Party passed in the House last week. When called out about one provision, Flood admitted that he didn’t know the provision was in it because he hadn’t read the bill.
Republican Rep. Mike Flood appeared before his constituents in Nebraska on Tuesday for a town hall that turned ugly as he tried to defend President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” the reconciliation package the House of Representatives passed last week, and which is expected to force millions of Americans off their health care coverage and food aid.
Unfortunately, Flood hadn’t actually read the bill.
Flood could barely get through a sentence without facing boos and heckling from the audience. At one point, when asked about a provision in the GOP’s massive reconciliation package that would restrict the judiciary’s ability to hold government officials in contempt, Flood said he did not agree with the provision, before admitting that the “provision was unknown to me when I voted for that.”
That’s what we’re hearing time and again from Republicans in Congress: the classic but weak defense, “I didn’t know.” It’s especially weak when it’s their job to know. That’s why he was voted into office, wasn’t it? As their servant and representative? As seen across the nation during PINO Trump’s first four months in office in 2025, rising numbers of constituents are pissed that their representatives aren’t doing their jobs. Flood went on to claim that he’s taken an oath that he’ll defend the Constitution. As always, actions speak louder than words. With his inaction, he’s complicit in undermining the Constitution, our checks and balances, and the rule of law. Likewise, he’s part of the party gleefully tearing down the education system that helped the United States advance as it did last century. But as part of the Greedy Old Trump Party, he can’t see or admit what he’s doing.
Rep. Mike Flood is a DOGE Faithful and Trump lover. Back in March, his constituents called him out for DOGE’s cuts to research, Medicaid, and Medicare. Flood defended it by saying that cuts were needed because of the national debt. Back then, Flood said, “Ultimately, where we need to go is to a balanced budget. How can you be against a balanced budget?” This, before passing that bill that cut taxes for the wealthy. It all reeks of bullshit and hypocrisy, doesn’t it? The way they’re ‘governing’ is a crime.
Okay, out of lecture mode. Coffee has been embraced; into writing mode. Have the best day you can, and do things that make you hold your head up high. Cheers
As law officers search Arkansas’ rugged Ozark Mountains for a former police chief and convicted killer who escaped prison this weekend, the sister of one of his victims is on edge.
Grant Hardin, the former police chief in the small town of Gateway near the Arkansas-Missouri border, was serving lengthy sentences for murder and rape and became known as the “Devil in the Ozarks.”
I’m surprised that he’s on the run. Trump just pardoned another convicted sheriff. His own DOJ was behind the prosecution and sentencing for former sheriff Scott Jenkins. Jenkins was found guilty and sentenced for bribery. But Scott Jenkins is a Trump supporter. Naturally, Trump pardoned him.
I figure that Grant Hardin should turn himself in, declare himself a massive Trump supporter, and ask for a Trump pardon. All he’d need to do is make a few speeches about how Biden was behind his prosecution and wax about how brilliant Trump is, and how the mango one is the greatest president ever, and a Trump pardon would surely be forthcoming. The violence shouldn’t matter. Trump is not that far removed from accusations of rape, and he eagerly pardoned all the Jan. 6 insurrectionists, even though people were killed through their violence. I figure another pardon for another convicted rapist and killer is fitting for Trump, the ‘law and order’ president.
The morning’s routine skipped past faster than a visit with a good friend. Starting at 53 F when Papi ordered me out of bed, the sun pushed the day through the sixties in short order. It’s a hot sun. Yeah, all suns are hot, but you know what I mean, that given air temp and sun angle and other factors, this one puts out extensive heat in our region. A cool northerly breeze sometimes drops in with relief. We sit at 75 F as we race toward an 89 F high. Sunshine? You bet. Blue sky cuts a fine scene behind the green themes of the hills and mountains surrounding us. Ice still caps the highest posts for a moment. This is Twosda, May 27, 2025.
My wife and I spoke about transitioning out of the holiday mode. I said, “Isn’t it interesting that we’re aware of that, that we feel that, even though we don’t work? Yet, we feel that holiday spirit.”
She made a face. “It was a weak holiday. We have the so-called leader of our country denigrating and insulting many of those who fought for this country because of a difference in politics or skin color and things like that. It’s pretty sad. Pathetic, really.”
No argument from me. I’m pleased that with the bad weather warnings and air traffic control issues, no major disaster marred the weekend. That feels like slim praise: yea, no crashes! We made it. But that’s the state of the nation under Trump.
I read that consumer confidence was up higher than economists expected. I heard that it was because Trump put off doing something with tariffs. People apparently responded, “Yea, we’re saved!” I had to laugh. Like the arsonist didn’t start a fire, so everyone is happy because there’s no fire to put out.
Meanwhile, the Senate takes up Trump’s Big Disastrous Bill. One of them at least and at last mentioned the piece of non-finance legislation in this spending bill that says, “Courts can’t say Trump or his administration are in contempt.” So they just want to keep re-writing the laws to cut out criticism of his un-Constitutional behavior. That’s so sad, weak, and spineless. If the merits his decisions and ideas can’t stand the scrutiny of the law, they’re not worthwhile. By calling for weaker enforcement against him, the Greedy Old Trump Party just hastens us toward the bottom. We’ve been climbing that mountain for hundreds of years and they’re happily pushing us back down it.
Dreams influence by music choice today. A lasting image from my dream had me speeding through a bold blue sky. It wasn’t flying but free fall. But The Neurons supplied “Fly By Night” by Rush to my morning mental music stream. The progressive rock song from 1975 has a spirited, uplifting feel to it. It came out the year my wife and I married, and was sort of an anthem for me as I went about my military career. Neurons have it right as a theme choice, I think, as the lyrics go, “Fly by night away from here, change my life again.” That’s about how I feel, but in a good way.
Coffee has made its entrance. Time to rock on. I hope the best for you and your day. Here we go again. Cheers
My stomach often makes noises after eating. Dinner – my late meal – is the one that has my guts singing the most. Today, weirdly, though, my stomach began booing.
My stomach has never booed before. It kind of hurt. I wondered, is my stomach booing me? Of all the body parts which might have reason to boo, I never thought that my stomach would be the first.
I realized my stomach could be booing other things. I’d just eaten pasta for dinner. This pasta is made from chickpeas. I had garlic/lemon olive oil on it. Maybe my stomach disagreed with my taste buds and brain and wanted something other than that meal.
I’d also turned on the television. Coverage of Trump making hateful comments about former President Biden was on. Like, what’s new, right? I don’t usually watch anything in which I must be forced to hear or see Trump. My stomach could have been booing him or his elements of image and voice. I can understand that. I’m with my stomach on the booing if that’s what it was all about.
But, I’d also been thinking about having watermelon for dessert and decided against that because I thought it would make me feel too full My stomach may have been booing that decision, or the subsequent decision that I was moving from the news to watch Hacks.
I don’t know. Like My Neurons, my stomach has a will of its own. It’s also not afraid to speak up. I just hope that this booing isn’t something that it plans to do more often. I wonder if I can give it something which will make it cheer?
We’ve made it through another cycle, and we’re set up to repeat it again. I mean the week, of course. Today is May 26, 2025. The month is singing its last notes. Many associate Memorial Day in the U.S. with the beginning of summer. I’m a traditionalist, though, and recognize summer’s start with the June solstice, as we’re north of the equator. The weather doesn’t care what we’re calling the season; it’s gonna do as it wants. Today, it looks like it wants more cloudiness baking with some sunshine. 60 F now, we’re be roaming the seventies through the late afternoon.
My bright mood has expired. Darkness has soldiered in. That’s my standard cycle. I just need deep breaths and patience to survive it, and then more normal moods will rotate in, and it’ll be up and down again for a while. That’s me.
“With each new Republican administration, it is the same promise. With each round of tax cuts, it is the same result: vast benefits for the wealthiest Americans and a pittance for everyone else. There is little growth but widening inequality and an even starker gap between the haves and have-nots.“
Reagan promised tax cuts in 1981. Bush Senior was forced into tax increases to address the damage done by Reagan’s cuts. Dubya promised tax cuts, and then Trump in 2017, and now Trump in 2025. Each time those cuts came, the economy did not do better. It took Democrats in charge to clean up the economic mess and get the economy on track again. And here we go again. Will it work this time when it failed every other effort? Time will tell.
But as Mr. Bouie writes of this latest effort:
We are now looking at another round of Republican tax cuts. Yet again the claim is that this will benefit most Americans. “The next phase of our plan to deliver the greatest economy in history is for this Congress to pass tax cuts for everybody,” Trump said in his March 4 address to Congress. But as Paul Krugman points out in his Substack newsletter, this latest package is both a shameless giveaway to the rich and a ruinous cut to safety net programs for lower-income and working Americans.
Today’s song comes from reading about the viral corruption spreading under the Trump Regime. Out of that GRRRRRRRRRR news review, The Neurons dropped “Perry Mason” by Ozzy into the morning mental music stream. Perry Mason is a fictitious lawyer of high repute. He saved the innocent and delivered the guilty for a serving of justice. He came onto the scene in a series of Erle Stanley Gardner novels in the 1930s and joined the pop culture as a television show starring Raymond Burr in the 1950s and 1960s. Yes, I know of the later series. Anyway… Ozzy Osbourne put some words to music by guitarist Zakk Wylde and keyboard player John Sinclair. The song’s chorus goes,
Michael Seidel, writer 