Done by Forty

What Danielle said.

According to the Yale Budget Lab, the average effective tariff rate in this economy right now is 18.2%

Let me put that another way.

President Trump has raised taxes on American businesses and consumers by -- on average -- 18.2%

Most people won’t realize we’ve lost the republic until several years after it’s gone. Most of the eligible electorate has no idea what’s happening. They might have a vague feeling that things are worse, harder. But they don’t connect it to “politics.” I see it every day through the work I do.

President Trump just fired almost the entire staff of the CFPB, who protect you from getting scammed by Wall Street.

This is another assault on consumers and our democracy by Trump's lawless Administration.

We will fight back with everything we've got.

👇🎯

They. Are. Breaking. Signed. Contracts. For. No. Legal. Reason.

You want to pass legislation not funding this stuff going forward? Fine. Epically idiotic, but legal.

This is something else. Shredding the basic foundations of the rule of law. Textbook authoritarianism.

Today, DHS moved to strip nearly a million immigrants of legal protections—then is sharing their info w/ the IRS. All based on lies about crime & voting that have been debunked time and again. This isn’t security.
It’s cruelty.
And it’s not the America we claim to be.

tinyurl.com/The-hill-DHS

You can totally see how this mf bankrupted a casino.

The Economist and MSNBC called the American economy heading into Election Day in 2024 “the envy of the world,” and The Wall Street Journal called it a “remarkable economy.” On October 31, 2024, just days before the close of the 2024 presidential election, MSNBC’s Morning Joe highlighted a litany of economic indicators demonstrating the continued strength, resilience, and stability of the American economy, with the hosts holding up a copy of that day’s Wall Street Journal, which stated, “The Next President Inherits a Remarkable Economy.” After listing a number of specific indicators that belied right-wing attacks on the Biden-Harris administration’s economic track record, co-host Willie Geist and economic analyst Steve Rattner reiterated that the American economy was “the envy of the world.” That phrase was drawn from an October 19, 2024, special report from The Economist titled “The envy of the world.” [MSNBC, Morning Joe, 10/31/24; The Economist, 10/19/24] MSNBC and Politico described the United States as a “dream economy” as recently in October. During the October 14, 2024, edition of her program, MSNBC prime-time star Rachel Maddow highlighted how the mainstream press had recently begun to “begrudgingly” admit how vibrant the American economy was in the closing weeks of the election cycle, quoting a recent Politico piece that called it a “dream economy.” Maddow detailed various news reports on economic indicators showing all-time stock market values, stable inflation, historic job creation, “profoundly low” unemployment figures, increased wages and consumer spending, and strong economic growth outpacing the previous Trump administration. [MSNBC, The Rachel Maddow Show, 10/15/24]

The United States had the *best economy in the world* on Election Day, and voters threw it in the toilet for a candidate who was **promising to destroy the economy** because ... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ www.mediamatters.org/donald-trump...

Again, we're witnessing a near-total comprehensive failure of the leaders of our societal institutions to overcome basic collective action problems & speak out against the lawless authoritarianism. By the time everyone decides to speak up, it will be too late.

I called both my senators yesterday but it looks like Schumer rolled over.

Trump says millions of people over 150 years old are getting Social Security checks. That is a LIE. He is sowing doubt so he can gut benefits for tens of millions of Americans. Social Security is not broken—it is a lifeline. And we are going to fight like hell to protect it. 🚨

Headline: Musk's business empire is built on $38 billion in government funding Government infusions at key moments helped Tesla and SpaceX flourish, boosting Elon Musk's wealth. Graph shows aid to SpaceX and Tesla from 2003 to 2023.

Of course. Subsidies for me, not for thee.

Elon Musk: "We will make mistakes. We won't be perfect ... so for example, with USAID, one of the things we accidentally canceled very briefly was ebola prevention."

They've been waiting for you...

a sign that says " what is even happening " next to a dumpster Alt: Flaming dumpster fire floating happily down a flooded area, past a traffic sign that say “WHAT IS EVEN HAPPENING”

me: i must stay informed

also me: but i shouldn’t doomscroll

also also me: but i need to know what’s happening

also also also me: but it’s deeply upsetting

also also also also me: but willful ignorance is irresponsible

alas also also also also me: but i can’t function when i’m this overwhelmed

Just as I predicted, once no other media organization stood with AP (other than issuing statements) this was the next step. And when you bow down to this, there will be another step taken to erode press freedoms. If you don’t fight for your rights, you lose them.

Started / Going

Like. and I cannot stress this enough. WTF.

Scatterplot titled “Empirical Evidence of Ideological Targeting in Federal Layoffs: Agencies seen as liberal are significantly more likely to face DOGE layoffs.” • The x-axis represents Perceived Ideological Leaning of federal agencies, ranging from -2 (Most Liberal) to +2 (Most Conservative), based on survey responses from over 1,500 federal executives. • The y-axis shows Agency Size (Number of Staff) on a logarithmic scale from 1,000 to 1,000,000. Each point represents a federal agency: • Red dots indicate agencies that experienced DOGE layoffs. • Gray dots indicate agencies with no layoffs. Key Observations: • Liberal-leaning agencies (left side of the plot) are disproportionately represented among red dots, indicating higher layoff rates. • Notable targeted agencies include: • HHS (Health & Human Services) • EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) • NIH (National Institutes of Health) • CFPB (Consumer Financial Protection Bureau) • Dept. of Education • USAID (U.S. Agency for International Development) • The National Nuclear Security Administration (DOE), despite its conservative leaning (+1 on the scale), is an exception among targeted agencies. • A notable outlier: the Department of Veterans Affairs (moderately conservative) also faced layoffs despite its size. Takeaway: The figure visually demonstrates that DOGE layoffs disproportionately targeted liberal-leaning agencies, supporting claims of ideological bias. The pattern reveals that layoffs were not driven by agency size or budget alone but were strongly associated with perceived ideology. Source: Richardson, Clinton, & Lewis (2018). Elite Perceptions of Agency Ideology and Workforce Skill. The Journal of Politics, 80(1).

The DOGE firings have nothing to do with “efficiency” or “cutting waste.” They’re a direct push to weaken federal agencies perceived as liberal. This was evident from the start, and now the data confirms it: targeted agencies overwhelmingly those seen as more left-leaning. 🧵⬇️

I'd heard on Marketplace recently that while the unemployment rate is fairly good, the hiring rate is pretty dismal and may be a sign of things to come.

Free speech baby

Me: If you save up, you can buy things you want.

Toddler JC: I can buy everything in the whole world?

Me: Well, no one can buy everything in the whole world.

Toddler JC: Well...what if I steal everyone's money, then can I buy everything?

Me: You're going to have a spot in this administration.

NEW: Sources tell my office that Treasury Secretary Bessent has granted DOGE *full* access to this system. Social Security and Medicare benefits, grants, payments to government contractors, including those that compete directly with Musk's own companies. All of it.

It really should have been caught.

Explains why Knox gets so much play.

Countries who aren’t part of the World Health Organization:

- Liechtenstein
- The United States

Countries who are part of the World Health Organization:

Literally everyone else

2024: Our year in review

“Ronald Reagan does not determine my mood. Its’s not his country. It’s our country.” -June Jordan 1986

A horrific image of a someone who seems to have his hands tied behind his back. A big cat (the predator kind, not the overfed pet kind) has jumped up at him and is devouring his face. Blood splashes on the floor.

For Blue Monday we can't think of anything more appropriate than this charming depiction of a man getting his face eaten off by a leopard.

#MosaicMonday

Update:

I did a thread about that the other day.

For a guy who touts his business skills, he actually seems very challenged on the subject.

Excerpt from a NYTimes essay on longevity: In the meantime, it’s the things we tend to ignore, like our exposure to pollution, that will affect us far more than the things we obsess about, like whether to eat gluten. That’s the problem with n-of-one-ism, in which we pursue, individually and alone, our own path to health. The greatest gains in longevity have occurred not because of personal choices but because of public sanitation, clean water and the control of infectious diseases. According to Dr. Thomas Frieden, the former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “since 1900, the average life span in the United States has increased by more than 30 years; 25 years of this gain have been attributed to public health advances.” That’s why we should all fight for other people’s health. Your decisions can affect when I die, and vice versa.

I’m as obsessed with health as anyone but, amid glut of longevity influencers, important to recall that “since 1900, average life span in US has increased by more than 30 years.” Of that, ”25 years attributed to public health.” By @pagankennedy.bsky.social. Gift link www.nytimes.com/2018/03/09/o...