Had a visitor this morning

Sometime Sunday night or Monday morning, someone tore down our pride flag. Today, a better, brighter colored one is back.

I can't imagine he could do anything short of dying and bequeath his Tesla shares to the Human Rights Campaign to get liberals to buy Teslas again.

I'm rooting for a shattering of the coalition between billionaires wanting more money and Trump wanting absolute power. The Russian model did not turn out so well for the many Russian billionaires that keep "falling out of windows."

I was rooting for destroyed military equipment during Prigozhin's drive to Moscow. I'm reminded of this as I watch Trump v Elon - more open verbal hostility but so far an absence of military hardware. Will Trump ask himself "what would Putin do?"

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_...

Lexington, Concord, and Menotomy - Lexington was an accident, Concord a skirmish, the Battle of Menotomy was the bloodiest part of the "Battle of Lexington and Concord."

UPS to cut 20,000 jobs, close dozens of buildings due to lower Amazon volumes Shares of United Parcel Service Inc. surged in early trading Tuesday, after the package-delivery giant’s earnings beat Wall Street expectations, which offset announced plans to cut 20,000 jobs this ye...

Send your thank you notes to Trump care of his tariffs war. And expect more to come.
ground.news/article/ups-...

Somebody is very happy about the return of Sunday pod dinners!

YouTube video by Atun-Shei Films Who Were The Minutemen?

Happy Patriot's Day. And if you wonder who were the "Minutemen" at Lexington and Concord.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ufQ...

johnroycomic says: Right wing Star Wars fans at some level realize that throwing a wrongly accused man into an off shore mega prison where no leaves is literally what the Empire does in Andor, right?

EXACTLY.

I think suggesting Trump's obsession with tariffs is ideological give ideology a bad name. Ideologies are usually at least mostly internally coherent.

Looks like Wall Street woke up and realized that the trade war was still happening, just on a slightly smaller scale.

Trump retreats in his tariff war with the world. He is now to fight only China.

However, I think the markets maybe over reacting in the positive. A trade war with China is still bad, and we now can't expect any goodwill or support for the rest of the world.

Yes, this is about right

And

Boston Commons

Stagflation is the combination of high inflation, stagnant economic growth, and elevated unemployment.

The Fork in the Road | Mark Greif There may well be normalcy again. But it lies on the other side—not in accommodation to this malevolent insanity, run by lackeys and toads. The risk of overreaction is trivial compared to the risks of...

We are here:
"Gleichschaltung. The Nazi term [meaning] “coordination,” is when they use legitimate authority to illegitimately align independent institutions - forging an obligation to the leader rather than the constitutional state."

www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/...

Show tonight

Trump has betrayed the free world

Happy Cheap-Chocolate Eve for all my friends who celebrate!

It has become embarrassing to drive a "swasticar". Try to use that word in a sentence at least once a day.

And if that isn't disturbing enough consider...

If Trump were to die in office, would DJ Vance become President? Maybe Donald Jr as the heir? Perhaps Elon Musk would try to size the thrown? Perhaps they would each rally portion of the US military and start flinging nukes at each other (and us)?

The election in 2025 and 2026 are going to be critical. They may determine if we have meaningful elections in 2028.
(4/4)

We see this in executive orders that would change the constitution. We see this today in Elon Musk's "co-presidency"

The US system was designed with lots of checks and balances to thwart tyrannies, but these rely on people accepting them. Lawsuits are in-flight, but they can only delay.
(3/4)

Vote in local and state elections while you can. Consider running for office.
-- On Tyranny, Timothy Snyder

Many tyrannies in the modern era began with fair elections, but once the leader was in charge they undermined and destroyed any chance of future elections.
(2/4)

Beware the one-party state:
The parties that remade states and suppressed rivals were not omnipotent from the start. They exploited a historic moment to make political life impossible for their opponents. So support the multi-party system and defend the rules of democratic elections.
(1/4)

Stromatolites

Finding our relatives
xkcd.com/3046/