Another Good Day

 

Cruelty

I have never considered myself to be all that nice/generous of a person, but I do not understand the gleeful cruelty of these people, or their inability to ever to imagine - selfishly! - "maybe that could be me."

Break Everything

Can't collect any beautiful tariffs if you can't import anything.

“It’s causing problems left and right,” says one current USDA worker, who like other federal employees in this story asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. “It’s basically a skeleton crew working now,” says another current USDA staffer, who noted that both they and most of their colleagues held advanced degrees and had many years of training to protect US food and agriculture supply chains from invasive pests. “It’s not something that is easily replaced by artificial intelligence.”

“These aren’t your average people,” says Mike Lahar, the regulatory affairs manager at US customs broker behemoth Deringer. “These were highly trained individuals—inspectors, entomologists, taxonomists.”

Lahar and other supply chain experts warn that the losses could cause food to go rotten while waiting in ports and could lead to even higher grocery prices, in addition to increasing the chances of potentially devastating invasive species getting into the country. These dangers are especially acute at a moment when US grocery supply chains are already reeling from other business disruptions such as bird flu and President Trump’s new tariffs.

Lunch

 eat

Brave Sir Schumer

He has canceled - er, postponed - all his book tour events.

What To Do

One difficulty I have is trying to figure out how not to be part of the problem, how not to be what I criticize.

Every insane Trump tweet kicks off a whole news cycle, and while you can't ignore them, precisely, it is maddening that we get  "Trump declares Charlie Brown had hoes/[paragraph 18] Some experts say he did not have hoes" every time.

I Suppose It Depends On The Meaning Of The Word "Violate"

I didn’t break the law, I just declared that the law has no power over me.

The Trump administration denied on Sunday that it had violated a court order by deporting hundreds of Venezuelan immigrants to a prison in El Salvador over the weekend, saying that the president had broad powers to quickly expel them under an 18th-century law meant for wartime.

The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, also asserted in a statement that the federal courts “have no jurisdiction” over the president’s conduct of foreign affairs or his power to expel foreign enemies.

Morning

Another week begins.

Extra Thread

Phone posting is always a bad idea.

Send Up The Tapper Signal

Isn't his job Official Troop Respector.

There are other ways to write this up, WaPo, that don't make it sound as if all these people and their honors were just "DEI."

Afternoon

Doing a bit of weekending.  Complaining about my "job" is mostly ridiculous - I do know this - but the inability to tune out is a bit stressful!

I Guess We Are Still Doing This

Rich guy claims nonsense, we type it up.

SpaceX founder Elon Musk has said his Starship rocket will head to Mars by the end of next year, as the company investigates several recent explosions in flight tests.

Morning

go

Saturday Evening

Life is a cabaret, old chums.

Seems Bad

I know some of the reaction to this is "but he's a White European!!!" but it does drive home that the goons have been unleashed.

Senior described Schmidt being “violently interrogated” at Logan Airport for hours, and being stripped naked, put in a cold shower by two officials, and being put back onto a chair.

She said Schmidt told her immigration agents pressured him to give up his green card. She said he was placed on a mat in a bright room with other people at the airport, with little food or water, suffered sleep deprivation, and was denied access to his medication for anxiety and depression.

“He hardly got anything to drink. And then he wasn’t feeling very well and he collapsed,” said Senior.

He was transported by ambulance to Mass General Hospital. He didn’t know it at the time, but he also had influenza.

"Mistakes" at the entry points happen -- or possibly there were genuine issues - but the normal response should be to turn people back, not detain them and torture them.

Norms Violations

I guess Schumer is willing to violate some!

Among the material devastation to everyday people, Senate Dems have now blown a hole in their ability to work with the House. We had an agreed upon plan, House took immense risk, then Senate turned around midway and destroyed it w/ a fear-based, inexplicable abdication. They own what happens next.

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@aoc.bsky.social) March 14, 2025 at 11:18 PM

I am sure it is not the only reason, but we all are motivated by multiple things, and "Chuck Schumer shouldn't have to cancel his book tour" certainly was part of this.

Wallet Inspector Returning

 

Either Schumer is stupid or he is corrupt and wants you to believe he's stupid.

Morning

I hope some more people are receptive to my occasional "maybe the Dem leadership needs to be yelled at more" posts.

Friday Night

Rock on

Happy Hour

get happy