WashPost on those seeking to join immigration cops: “Well I’m going to work with these guys that are going to arrest you, slam your face on the pavement and send you home.’”
Fed and economy reporter with @reuters.com, ex-Wall Street Journal. Failed musician, guitar holdout, I really like pedals.
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WashPost on those seeking to join immigration cops: “Well I’m going to work with these guys that are going to arrest you, slam your face on the pavement and send you home.’”
We’re only a few years removed from creatjng a vaccine to protect against a deadly airborne virus in a matter of months. Now, we have a scion fail son running the CDC into the ground not because it failed, but because its success conflicts with RFK Jr’s eugenicist ideology.
the betting platforms can't open markets on Trump's death for obvious reasons, but Kalshi just so happened to open up a "Trump out as President" market on Saturday
Trump’s schedule tomorrow
The Trump administration used Benny Johnson's claims that his house was "burned to the ground" and that "people were murdered in my front yard" to justify its federal takeover of DC. @kenbensinger.bsky.social found out that Johnson made it all up. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/30/b...
WSJ poll: “More than three-quarters said they lack confidence that life for the next generation will be better than their own.”
We did this to ourselves www.nytimes.com/2025/09/01/w...
After some labor leaders warmed to Trump during election, president strips nearly half a million government workers of union rights: “This is literally the largest act of union busting in American history.” Via NYT
Israeli forces have killed a pregnant Palestinian and her unborn baby near Shati refugee camp amid their ongoing large-scale attacks on Gaza City aje.io/3ndkh8
Goodbye summer, the only decent season.
How odd to have a man in charge of the nation’s health system who is completely at odds with the medical professionals who actually do the work and understand the science.
I have some unknown stacked hum in an old Strat that sounds great and recognize there’s been innovation on that front. Been curious about those Kinman Jazzmaster pups, love traditional singles but the noise issue is real.
A steady stream of emergencies to justify government action.
Bessent expects Supreme Court to uphold legality of Trump's tariffs but eyes Plan B reut.rs/4gn6s01
9 CDC Directors going back to 1977 speak out. What RFK Jr has done to our nation’s public health system "should alarm every American." It "is unlike anything we have ever seen at the agency, and unlike anything our country has ever experienced." www.nytimes.com/2025/09/01/o...
Thinking about how the great Barbara Ehrenreich nailed one of the primary problems with modern journalism a full decade ago. “The real face of journalism today: not million dollar-a-year anchorpersons, but low-wage workers and downwardly spiraling professionals…“ www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
Single coils are better than humbuckers and this device claims it eliminates the pickup's biggest downside: electrical hum.
Photo passed along from a federal employee from inside the Dept of Labor building, where a giant Orwellian image of Trump's face is now draped outside. Big Brother is watching.
It tracks that more and more folks neither want to write nor read but good lord video is not a great way to take in a lot of info quickly.
“The Fed should be independent. The Fed is independent, but I, I also think that they've made a lot of mistakes.” Via Reuters
The president concedes that he’s lost control of his own COVID response after RFK Jr. limited access to the vaccine.
senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, former chief economist to Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) & director of budget and spending policy for Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential campaign👇🏽
Trump’s unilateralism and trade war bellicosity push world’s largest nations into alliance against eroding American order. Via Reuters
“At Goodwill of North Georgia, the number of Black people who for the first time ask for help finding work is up 41% over the past three months, compared with a 23% increase in the number of new white job seekers.” www.wsj.com/economy/jobs...
lmao @ both the ridiculous idea that $15T is being invested in the US because of the tariffs or that we’d become a “third world nation” without them
August was another month of falling gun violence in the United States. Shooting victims were down 11.5% in August compared to August 2024 and down 34% compared to August 2021 per data from the Gun Violence Archive.
USDA quietly said Friday it will, after a century, end the Farm Labor Survey (FLS), the only wage survey of ag employers. FLS is a critical input to setting local minimum wages for H-2A visa workers to try to avoid harm to U.S. workers' wages. #LaborDay #EconSky www.nass.usda.gov/Newsroom/Not...
Wall Street will bet on anything.
“.. with the exception of the pandemic, Black women have never seen such staggering losses in employment.” @nytimes.com www.nytimes.com/2025/08/31/u...
As someone who was in 9/11 I agree.
Former Fed chief reiterating hard learned lessons about central banking. There’s a reason why the Fed is set up like it is.
Not sure but 9/11 started the ball rolling down hill, not sure you can separate any of it.
So many flags in every form, often integrated with camo stuff. Patches and clothing from “patriot” brands, pro-police and lots of aggressive political shirts, sportsmen group weapons display with military influenced guns. I grew up rural, it didn’t used to be like this.
Yes but who do you trust more: The nation’s largest nurses professional organization or the people who love raw milk www.nationalnursesunited.org/press/nation...
The pardoned Jan 6 rioters want to be PAID FOR THEIR PROSECUTIONS www.nytimes.com/2025/08/31/u...
Trump's tariffs roil music industry, some services giving sellers option to cut off American buyers amid import tax uncertainties. Via CDM
Just back from a rural county fair and boy the war on terror really left the mark on local culture.
One thing the DC occupation drives home is how many types of federal cops there are.
Dershowitz, once a lawyer for Epstein, aiming to break a key foundation of the modern press that if successful will curtail journalism’s ability to hold the powerful accountable.
Alexis de Tocqueville's best-known work was his classic study "Democracy in America," analyzing our living standards and system of government during his travels here He noted America's cash bail system was aristocratic horseshit way back in *1835* 190 years ago:
Pritzker on Trump sending troops into cities: "He has other aims other than fighting crime... he would like to stop the elections in 2026 or frankly take control of those elections. He'll just claim there's some problem with an election and then he's got troops on the ground that can take control."
Congestion pricing is actually the perfect example here. Trump declared that “congestion pricing is dead” (and that he is the king) Hochul and the MTA told him to fuck off, and now, more than 6 months later, congestion pricing is still alive and working exactly as planned
Trump said tonight he is going to issue an executive order purporting to require enforcement of voter ID rules: www.nytimes.com/2025/08/31/u... The president has no such authority to order how elections are conducted.
Always amazed when someone keeps working in media after a plagiarism scandal.
"When the public asks, 'How did we get here?' after each mass shooting, the answer goes beyond NRA lobbyists and Second Amendment zealots. It lies in large measure with the strategies of firearms executives like Richard Dyke." www.propublica.org/article/how-...
Gizmodo on the chaos of Facebook's AI operation.
Once again, tariffs are taxes on Americans
RFK Jr’s anti science as “medieval peasant superstitions”
Looks like something Bill Pulte might want to check out in his self declared non partisan hunt for mortgage fraud.
A president has a million important things to worry about, this is what catches Trump’s attention.
Butlerian Jihad needed.
Looks like entrepreneurs will soon have a new way to help pad Trump’ wallet.
ICE targets firefighters actively working to suppress a blaze. www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news...
Promise tariffs ⟶ faff around ⟶ announce tariffs ⟶ pause tariffs ⟶ promise deals ⟶ court rules tariffs illegal ⟶ appeal ⟶ court order stayed ⟶ make no deals ⟶ 90 days expires ⟶ delay tariffs again ⟶ announce tariffs again ⟶ appeals court rules tariffs illegal again ⟶ you are here
A one time journalist tearing down an institution of journalism.
“I think the press should be asking these questions and the White House should make the president‘s medical team available to answer questions,” Dick Cheney’s heart doctor said
Frustrated about the difficulty in getting a COVID19 shot and wondering who to blame? It’s not healthcare workers, pharmacies, public health or Big Pharma. It is Robert Francis Kennedy Jr. and every Republican Senator who voted to confirm him, especially Bill Cassidy.
Stuart Stevens, currently to the left of most democratic leaders on the Hill
“.. The Oval Office photos don’t resolve those questions. They raise them. And until the press decides to treat Trump’s health the way it treated Biden’s, makeup and memos will remain the White House’s first—and last—line of defense.” @passantino.bsky.social www.status.news/p/trump-heal...
RFK Jr. taps his top deputy, Jim O’Neill, to be the new CDC director. Both men appear to wear skinny ties from Otaa. Otaa's ties are made in China from microfiber, a kind of plastic that, under the right conditions, can migrate to your balls.
With the AJC dropping its print edition, I feel compelled to share one of the greatest moments in print design history
“One day, I think we'll look back at reading and writing as historical artifacts, like we do with papyrus scrolls or hieroglyphs or cave paintings." Via NPR
“A respected network of hospitals and cancer centers is halting enrollment in clinical trials for children with brain cancer after the federal government said it would no longer provide funding to the group”
My favorite Indian restaurant just did a 9.5% hike on my longstanding go to order.
However this ends up, econs mostly agree tariffs are a form of taxation that falls hardest on lower income Americans, an inflation risk to the extent it destabilizes expectations, not a replacement for taxes GOP cut, all the while reducing consumer choice while doing little to reshore factories.
Appeals court knocks down most Trump tariffs but case almost certainly is heading to Supreme Court, which has been very deferential to president.
A federal appeals court has ruled that President Trump’s tariffs exceeded his authority under an emergency powers law.
Always controversy in Facebook world.
A dramatic, extremely worrying moment; over 61,000 people held in ICE detention. That is the highest number ever on record in United States history; roughly 6,000 higher than the previous record set under Trump six years ago, and over 21,000 higher than when Trump took office just seven months ago.
Fed's balance sheet drawdown enters new stage as reverse repos largely drained
NEW: Social Security’s chief data officer, Charles Borges, has resigned, three days after submitting a whistle-blower complaint that alleged members of DOGE had uploaded the confidential personal information of hundreds of millions of Americans to an insecure cloud server.
The VP is allegedly “moving fast” behind the scenes to seize power as an aging Trump continues to brush off rumors that his health is slipping.
Everything Mark Zuckerberg has gotten from Donald Trump so far, by Casey Newton @caseynewton.bsky.social / Platformer www.platformer.news/trump-zucker...
Legal and constitutional experts worry Trump is laying the groundwork to use the Guard to seize control of any city he wants to bring to heel. On Monday, he signed an executive order that primes the Guard “for rapid mobilization,” across the country. www.democracydocket.com/analysis/tru...
Essential reading from @dziblatt.bsky.social. Hitler rose because of other politicians’ belief that “democracy’s protections could be bargained away but democracy itself could still somehow survive.” www.foreignaffairs.com/germany/hitl...
RFK Jr update
As far as I know they're not on contracts, so yes, all the secret policemen do have a choice in continuing to do this work.
Trump moves to nullify congressionally mandated spending: “It is unclear if more Republicans will object.” Via Reuters
I think we can start to consider whether this is a trend of actual grand jury nullification. We will never really know given secrecy. The sandwich case was dreadfully overcharged. That said, given the rarity of no bills… these jurors are not rolling over for prosecutors in this moment.
A federal grand jury has declined to indict another person arrested as part of President Trump's D.C. crime surge. This was the only case we know of in which the National Guard participated in an arrest. After the grand jury declined to return an indictment, DOJ moved to dismiss the case.
The Fed is not good at talking to citizens. Its communications culture is aimed at markets, which means it knows how to give coded, cautious hints that leave room for negotiation. That means there's little will and no experience with strong, affirmative signals in response to wanton norm-burning.
oh come on www.nytimes.com/2025/08/29/u...
Oh, great. Trump's designated puppet at BLS has the warm endorsement of Arthur Laffer, an economist who (checks notes) has been wrong about essentially everything. www.wsj.com/opinion/e-j-...
What a cursed sentence (gift link) “The A.I. companies selected to oversee the program would have a strong financial incentive to deny claims. Medicare plans to pay them a share of the savings generated from rejections.”
NEW PIECE: Powell and the Federal Reserve System has already failed to meet the moment and not defending Lisa Cook will seal both Powell's and the Fed's fate. www.crisesnotes.com/powell-will-...
It's remarkable to me that markets aren't pricing in monetary policy being set to achieve the goals & whims of the President, who has been clear he wants lower rates because he thinks that will save federal interest costs (true until the day infl expectations rise, pushing interest costs up wildly).
Looking forward to portraits of other military leaders who fought against the United States — Hideki Tojo, Ernst Rommel, all of Lee’s peers
“Trump has also ended federal security protection for others, including those who have criticized him.” Via Reuters
This should not be viewed in isolation from the workarounds to renaming army installations, the removal of predominantly women flag officers from positions they earned, and the decision to grant funeral honors to Ashli Babbitt. All designed to shape and re-write history in service of a select group.
Encouraging the murder of political opponents
* TRUMP REVOKES KAMALA HARRIS' SECRET SERVICE PROTECTION -- CNN @reuters.com
"If the president can remove someone based on allegations, without any evidence, then we have lost Fed independence." -Former Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester on CNBC
Fugazi opening for Sonic Youth.
They're now saying it out loud: The Administration's goal is to undo the political independence that Congress granted the Fed, so that the President can directly set rates.
New acting director of CDC Jim O'Neill expressed being pro paid organ donation. "There are plenty of healthy spare kidneys walking around, unused."
In @nytopinion.nytimes.com “It’s clear that the nation’s leading public health official does not have any real interest in — or possibly any real understanding of — public health,” Jeneen Interlandi writes of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
More journalists have already been assaulted in the U.S. this year than in all of 2024 — most while covering anti-immigration protests. We're tracking every case. Watch Managing Editor @kamccudden.bsky.social explain and subscribe to our newsletter for more: pressfreedomtracker.us/blog/nearly-...
Letter of the day (in the Times)
I have never seen so many public servants protest the mismanagement of a government. Trumpists will point to this as proof of the deep state, but the reality is that these are professionals who are desperately trying to get the public to understand how bad things are.
Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook filed a lawsuit claiming President Trump has no power to remove her from office, setting up a legal battle that could reset long-established norms for the US central bank's independence. Subscribe to The Afternoon Docket: reut.rs/4iQvdSd
