Saturday Report 4/27/24 - Crazy Alert! Trump's VP favorite is boasting she shot her puppy, instead of using training. Does that show she is a "tough decision maker" or a garden-variety psychopath?

The Best of the Rest of the News

— Are Jack Smith’s odds for holding Trump accountable shrinking? The main job the Republicans on the US Supreme Court had this past week was to so scramble Jack Smith’s prosecution of Trump that his trial wouldn’t happen before the November election. The main reason for this was laid out in an op-ed Liz Cheney wrote for The New York Times earlier this week: “The indictment and public reporting suggest that the special counsel was able to obtain key evidence our committee did not have. For example, it appears that the grand jury received evidence from witnesses such as Mark Meadows, a former Trump chief of staff, and Dan Scavino, a former Trump aide, both of whom refused to testify in our investigation. Public reporting also suggests that members of Mr. Trump’s Office of White House Counsel and other White House aides testified in full, without any limitations based on executive privilege, as did Vice President Mike Pence and his counsel.” Cheney makes the point that if the Supreme Court delays the trial then the American people won’t be able to make an informed decision on November 5th, because so many of Trump’s co-conspirators only spoke candidly when they faced the threat of jail from Jack Smith’s grand jury — and without a trial we’ll never hear or see that information. And, sure enough, Alito, Thomas, Kavanaugh, and Gorsuch understood their job and did it well: by inventing a whole series of hypothetical situations and suggesting they should be applied to Trump’s trial, they laid the groundwork for kicking the case back down to a lower court where large aspects of the charges will have to be re-litigated and re-formulated. Thomas and Alito apparently want to retire under a Republican president (who will pick their successors); with Gorsuch and Kavanaugh it’s probably just pure malice, as both are still pissed off at Democrats (Gorsuch for his mother being run out of Reagan’s EPA and Kavanaugh still being outraged that Democratic senators invited women he tried to rape to testify). The Court can easily move fast: when it was a matter of stealing the election from Al Gore in Florida, the five Republicans then on the Court took all of 3 days to hear arguments and render a decision. This issue of Trump’s claim of immunity has been simmering since last fall, and could drag on until June or July, guaranteeing that Americans won’t see any of the details of Trump’s crimes (just like we still haven’t seen 99% of the paperwork associated with Kavanaugh’s time in the Bush administration). And, of course, if Trump wins in November we’ll most likely never see that evidence.

— Not only do right-wingers have a plan to turn the fed over to Trump .... but wait, there’s more! Recessions almost always guarantee an incumbent president won’t get re-elected, and a humming economy helps hugely with a re-election effort. Both are largely under the control of the Fed, so now a group of Trump insiders have hatched a plot to strip the Fed of its independence, putting Trump, should he win this November, above the Fed Chairman himself. Trump could then push “good times” during election years. Meanwhile, Trump-appointed Fed Chair and lifelong Republican Jerome Powell has tightened the screws on the US economy, stripping out nearly 100% of the “quantative easing” stimulus while jacking up interest rates. The result is that GDP growth slowed to a pitiful 1.6% in the first quarter, a terrible advance indicator for Biden’s fate in this fall’s election. Combine that with the huge oil production cuts Saudi Arabia announced two months ago now hitting the gas market, driving prices above $5/gallon in some states (with the possibility of $6 or even $7/gallon prices by November) and this fall could get really, really tight for Democrats. Keep an eye on these things.

— The German newspaper I used to read when I lived there just took down America’s so-called journalism. The Suddeutsche Zeitung, the largely Bavarian newspaper I used to read when I lived in Germany in the 1980s, carried an article absolutely tearing the American press a new one. Michaela Haas wrote: “When Trump said he would pull out of NATO if elected president, US TV News broadcasts spent less than 6 minutes on the story. In the same period, they spent over 21 minutes on Biden’s advanced age. In 2016, more broadcast time was spent on Hillary's sloppy e-mail management than on all of Trump's scandals together. When Trump said he would use the military to stifle political opposition, the Associated Press reported ‘Trump intends a wider role for the military.’ The US population largely believes the Trump propaganda that the economy in in the dumps due to Biden, whereas the truth is historically low unemployment and strong GDP growth. Local radio broadcasters constantly report on a crime wave caused by immigration, whereas the truth is that US-born citizens have double the crime statistics of undocumented immigrants. Six years ago, 1/4 of Trump voters believed the 2020 election was stolen. The number today is 70%. 3/4 of all voters today do not know that Trump called his political opponents ‘vermin’ and promised mass deportations on the first day of his presidency.” All true, and ouch! And now we learn that, according to two sources at The New York Times, that newspaper’s publisher is pissed at Biden because he hasn’t done a one-on-one interview with him like Trump did — and so has allegedly ordered the paper to wail on Biden’s age as punishment. Pathetic.

— Without drama or fanfare, Biden advances policies that matter. While Trump is stewing in court, President Biden is getting things done. Just this week his administration has finalized new climate change regulations that will shut down most all coal-fired power plants by 2039, required airlines to give cash refunds when they cancel or delay flights, ended the execrable practice of employers requiring non-compete clauses in employment contracts, cracked down on ripoff investment advisors who target seniors, made it easier for military spouses to work remotely, and rolled out over $7 billion in grants for residential solar projects in low- and middle-income neighborhoods.

— Crazy Alert! Who else is disgusted that Trump’s VP favorite is boasting she shot her puppy instead of training it or finding it another home? Does that show she is a tough decision maker or a heartless psychopath? We report, you decide: South Dakota’s Republican Governor Kristi Noem just published a second autobiography in which she comes clean about dragging the family’s 14-month-old puppy, “Cricket,” down to a gravel pit and shooting it to death. She followed that by shooting her kid’s pet goat, although she only grazed him with the first shot and had to run to her car to get another shell for the kill shot. Has this woman never heard of shelters? Or dog training (she says she shot the dog because when she took him hunting for birds the puppy went “out of her mind with excitement, chasing all those birds and having the time of her life”). Right, that certainly deserves a brutal death sentence. Apparently Noem knows that Trump hates dogs, so perhaps she thinks this revelation will endear him to her? Disgusting.

— Wisdom School Alert! Is the Logic of our “Younger Culture” Harmful to our Planet? If we were to adopt the Older Culture view of all things having value and a sacred right to live on this planet, then the odds of our unwittingly taking planet-scorching actions plummet...

Is the Logic of our "Younger Culture" Harmful to our Planet?

— Hunter in a Farmer’s World Alert! ADHD: Don’t be a “blamer.” One of the real challenges for people with ADHD is dealing with the constant stream of criticism and blame from teachers, parents, and society in general.

ADHD: Don’t be a “blamer”

— Because of climate change, scientists are calling for a new “category 6” for hurricanes. Global warming caused by fossil fuel emissions and animal agriculture have so destabilized the atmosphere that the old system for ranking storms is