Good morning from my office stashed between the Seattle Boat Show and the two stadiums in Seattle. It is a Tuesday morning and a day or so away from the end of the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler. It has been a long run with its highs and lows, but unfortunately, I, and apparently most of you, have come to the conclusion that it’s time to shut it down. It appears that of the 3846 registered members who had signed up here over the past 25 years are either dead and/or gone. Except for me, and I’m just here to shut the door and turn out the lights.
I can’t just pull the plug though. To do that I would need access to the server, and I don’t. As I recall, the last time I talked to Misha, he had lost the login credentials, but was going to try to get them. That was the last time I heard from Misha — and that was almost 18 months ago.
I will probably strip the site clean and post some music or something in its place. I really do not want this to be ripped off and turned into some porn site, like many abandoned WordPress sites turn into. So I will still be posting a music video or something here from time-to-time just to keep it from slipping into the wrong hands.
I did have an interesting email appear in my box the other day. It was a recovery email for access to one of Misha’s gmail accounts for this site dating back to 2010. I don’t know if he had tried to recover the password, but for some reason MY email was listed as the recovery. So if Misha is reading this, he can contact me at djallyn-gmail.
The egg has started to become the symbol for the economy. Egg prices high: BAD. Egg prices low: GOOD. Bread and butter has finally taken the economic indicators from the Stock Market back to where it belongs: the average person’s wallet.
During his first term, Trump used to crow about how well the economy was going — because of the stock market being in “record territory”. If the stock market was doing good, then regardless of how you were personally doing, and regardless of the fact that a growing number of people were starting to live on the streets, in Trump’s mind, the economy was doing GREAT!
Yeah, great for the investor class, not so great for the rest of the people who increasingly were living off of their credit cards and stagnant wages. A “livable wage” in some areas right now would be somewhere around $35 right now. There are a record number of Americans living on the streets — and in some areas, literally violating the law for doing so.
Let me repeat that: It is now illegal in many areas of this country to be homeless. And somehow it is THEIR fault for being homeless. There, but for the grace of God go YOU…
It was not my intent to talk about this today, but after seeing today’s headlines, it is hard NOT to predict that we are about to slip into an economic crisis in this country — and it will all be on the head of one Donald J. Trump.
Cause and effect? Nope. This has been coming for a LONG time now, and BOTH Trump and Biden and now Trump again have pretty much ignored it, if not exacerbated it further.
Let’s get to the news…
The economy should never be measured by how the stock market is doing
Working Americans Turn to Food Banks as Fed Inflation Battle Drags On
(Bloomberg) — ??????Once a month, Kersstin Eshak visits a food pantry in Loudoun County, Virginia to stretch her family’s budget.
Eshak’s husband works at a big box retailer. She works as a substitute teacher. They have income, but with prices up nearly 23% over the past five years — and still rising — their earnings just don’t stretch quite far enough some months.
Food banks across the nation are seeing a similar story: A post-pandemic wave of demand for food driven by working people caught in America’s cost-of-living crunch.
“This is a new era of food insecurity,” said Emily Engelhard, vice president of research at Feeding America, the largest US hunger relief organization. “This isn’t an unemployment issue.”
As prices have risen, so have the share of Americans reporting they don’t have enough to eat. And despite robust economic growth and historically low unemployment, those figures have remained elevated in 2024, US Census data show.
MY TAKE:
Credit card balances, which now total $1.17 TRILLION outstanding, grew by $24 billion during the third quarter of last year and is up 8.1% above the level of a year ago. The average American had $5,733 in credit card debt in Q1 2023, according to data from TransUnion. In the first quarter of 2023, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York estimated total credit card debt for all Americans was $986 billion.
Pointing Fingers…
Donald Trump vowed to slash grocery prices as soon as he took office, yet he has barely addressed the cost of food in the whirlwind of executive orders he signed in his first week, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and other Democratic lawmakers wrote in a searing letter.
The letter, addressed to Trump, accuses the president of backtracking on a campaign promise to lower supermarket bills starting on Day 1 of his term.
“During your campaign, you repeatedly promised you would lower food prices ‘immediately’ if elected president,” read the letter, which was sent to Trump on Sunday evening and shared first with NBC News. “But during your first week of office you have instead focused on mass deportations and pardoning January 6 attackers.”
Trump made inflation and the cost of food a hallmark of his run for a second presidential term, displaying everything from a teeny box of Tic Tacs at a rally in North Carolina to entire tables full of groceries outside his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club to express his commitment to lowering voters’ grocery bills.
But the scores of executive orders Trump has signed since Inauguration Day only briefly touch on food, Warren, D-Mass., said in the letter, which was co-written by Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., and signed by a total of 20 Democrats.
“??Your sole action on costs was an executive order that contained only the barest mention of food prices, and not a single specific policy to reduce them,” they wrote, citing a Trump administration memo that commits to helping with Americans’ cost of living by eliminating “harmful, coercive ‘climate’ policies driving up the costs of food and fuel.”
The letter comes as food prices continue to rise. Labor Department data shows that the cost of groceries rose 1.8% from December 2023 to December 2024. Eggs saw the biggest price jump, increasing 36.8% during the same time frame in large part due to a bird flu crisis that has killed millions of poultry.
MY TAKE:
Okay, this was predictable. Trump won the 2024 election because of two things:
• The younger generation was upset because the Biden administration didn’t do anything about keeping Benjamin Netanyahu from targeting and killing anything that moved in Gaza regardless of whether they were Hamas fighters or civilian men, women and children just trying to get out of the way of the Israeli destruction.
• Trump ran on the promise of “fixing” the economy by magically bringing down prices on eggs specifically on “day one”
It’s this latter point that has drawn this attention.
First off, let’s get one thing straight: Neither Trump nor any other president or presidential candidate can control the price of eggs, specifically. I know the ‘anti-science’ crowd will balk when I say this but, there are these things called ‘viruses’ that have the capability of killing animals and people alike. This is what’s going on with the egg supply right now.
The virus affecting the price of eggs is called the “bird flu”, and it is killing off birds. A chicken is a bird, in case you somehow missed it and the chicken stock is under a severe threat of bird flu at the moment. In fact, it has been for a couple of years now. The poultry industry has birds under quarantine and are having to keep birds separated so they don’t get infected and wipe out the entire flock.
But Trump, either not caring or understanding the actual situation before he opened his maw to bellow out the promise that he, alone, will fix the price and availability of eggs if elected. The dumbest amongst us seized on that promise and viola! Trump became POTUS again.
Trump has an Egg Problem
Expect record-high egg prices for most of the year
Americans can continue to expect high prices for eggs this year, new estimates show, due to the ongoing avian flu outbreak and inflation.
Egg prices are estimated to increase about 20% in 2025, compared to about 2.2% for food prices in general, according to the US Department of Agriculture’s price outlook. Beef, coffee and orange juice are among groceries with higher prices, but eggs are uniquely impacted by the aggressive strain of avian flu, which has strained supply.
While some states escaped last year’s outbreaks, many have reported a resurgence of the virus, which killed about 17.2 million egg-laying hens in November and December. That’s nearly half of all birds killed by the virus in 2024, according to the USDA.
The average price of a dozen large, grade-A eggs was $4.15 in December, up from $3.65 in November, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Egg prices were also up more than 36% year-over-year in December, according to the Consumer Price Index.
“Not to be the bearer of bad news, but we’re in this for a while,” said Emily Metz, president and CEO of the American Egg Board. “Until we have time without a detection, unfortunately this very, very tight egg supply is going to continue.”
The industry has seen more than 20 consecutive months of record-high demand, according to Metz. The demand, which increased due to the holidays, contributes to the rising cost of eggs.
MY TAKE:
What more can I say?
A Decline or Realign?
The Americans Pledging to Buy Less—or Even Nothing
People are tiring of overconsumption and want to pay off debt
Instagram, TikTok and other social-media sites are usually overwhelmed by people showing off what they bought. This year, people are pivoting to something else: displaying how they’re buying nothing.
The “no buy 2025” trend encourages people to purchase as little new stuff as possible. Some people make lists of specific items they won’t purchase, while others vow not to buy any nonessentials.
While it’s occurring on social media, it has very real-life reasons for catching fire. There have been two years of higher prices and rising levels of debt for households. There was also a shorter holiday season that felt rushed, where many Americans on the lower income end cut back aggressively.
Instead of needing to have the latest and greatest viral products, people are finding it’s better to focus on what they already own.
MY TAKE:
I must be off to a wrong start, because just since January 1st, I’ve spent roughly $3500 on podcast equipment. That doesn’t count the other $3500 worth of equipment that Blackmagic Designs is giving me to promote their product line.
On President Elon Musk…
Polls show views souring on Elon Musk as Trump’s wingman
There are already signs that Elon Musk’s marriage of convenience to President Donald Trump could be a fraught union. Musk turned more than a few heads by taking the lead on defeating a government spending bill last month — Trump doesn’t like being overshadowed — and undercutting a just-announced White House artificial-intelligence project last week. In between, he got into a heated online battle with the more nationalistic elements of the MAGA movement.
Through it all, Musk doesn’t appear to have lost appeal among a GOP base that has embraced him as one of their own, despite his recent political conversion.
But there are increasing signs that the American people writ large don’t have a ton of patience for a second billionaire — this one unelected — wielding such power over our politics.
Musk is hardly a pariah, but he is viewed increasingly skeptically.
An AP-NORC poll last week is the latest among several surveys that have shown Musk’s image deteriorating in recent months, to the point where 36 percent of Americans had a favorable opinion of him and 52 percent had an unfavorable one.
That negative 16-point split was down from minus 10 (41-51) last month.
MY TAKE:
For the record, I have NEVER liked Elon Musk.
Most people in the world I am neutral on . But there are a few — Musk being one of them — I’ve always had an actual dislike for. Not a ‘hatred’ — I don’t ‘hate’ anyone, but I do dislike certain people and Both Musk and Trump are just two of those people.
Basically, I have this ability to immediately assess the CHARACTER of a person within the first thirty seconds and determine that person’s character enough to form the feeling of dislike towards that person. It’s usually non-verbal cues.
Have you ever walked past a person that you’ve never met and gotten this feeling that there is something “off” about them in just that instant?
I felt that about Donald Trump when I first saw him in 1984 at an event in NYC. I never talked to him, I was just in the same room with him and I got that vibe I didn’t like him. Same goes for the first time I ever saw Elon Musk on television. There are a few dozen of other people who have given off this vibe, but I don’t need to name them here.
The point is, we all have this ability to immediately size up a person and decide whether or not this person belongs in your circle or not.
Tearing apart the Post WWII World Order
Trump threatens country after country with U.S. economic weapons
President Donald Trump has already threatened to impose major economic penalties on at least a half-dozen countries, alarming global leaders as he uses the prospect of sanctions and tariffs to force other nations to do what he wants.
Almost every day during his first week in office, Trump promised to hammer some country with potent economic weapons, rapidly reshaping U.S. foreign policy in pursuit of goals on everything from trade to migration.
Trump’s combative approach — applied to such key trading partners as Canada and Mexico; adversaries such as Russia; and smaller economies such as Colombia and Denmark — reflects his view that the United States is being routinely “ripped off” by most other countries. But the blizzard of demands that don’t always address only trade put him on track for simultaneous confrontations around the globe, which could escalate unpredictably to the detriment of the U.S. and global economies.
On Sunday, his administration announced, then backed off, tariffs and sanctions on Colombia, citing a deal on the deportation of migrants that the South American nation had initially resisted.
Successive U.S. presidents have stepped up their use of economic power over the past several decades. The early days of Trump’s second term, however, are already signaling a new stage of that trend, as the president stunned the world by saying he would be willing to pulverize the economies of even allied countries over seemingly routine policy disagreements — or over sudden demands for their territory.
MY TAKE:
It is only a matter of time before many of our allies abandon us. The United Nations was formed to prevent the likes of a Donald Trump coveting another nation’s land to the point of using the military to invade and take over shit that doesn’t belong to us.
Panama Canal is one of those things that Trump wants to take. He also wants to take Canada, Mexico, and Greenland.
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