“Prices rose 3.8% in April compared to a year earlier, marking an increase from a year-over-year inflation rate of 3.3% in the prior month. Annual inflation jumped to its highest level in three years, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data showed.
As recently as February, inflation stood at 2.4%, clocking in just a tick above the Federal Reserve’s target level of 2%.
The jump in prices last month owed in large part to a sharp rise in costs for products impacted by a global oil shock. Gasoline prices were 5% higher in April than March, the BLS report said. Airline fares climbed 2.8% from the previous month.”
All realistic deals on the table that Iran might agree to look an awful lot like the deal Obama got without the costs and risks of war. Trump is reluctant to agree to such a deal because it will essentially be an admission that Obama and Kerry were right all along–this was the best deal possible and better than no deal or war.
Reporting was that Trump could have gotten such a deal before the war began, but Trump rejected it because he thought he was a great deal-maker who could do better than Obama. He was wrong, and we got war because of it.
Germany is starting to massively increase its military power. Europe needs German power. Once Germany has this power, some Germans will want to use it in ways that are not in America’s interest. We need Germany to pull its own weight, but we need to keep that weight on our side, and to do this, requires keeping America’s commitment to Europe strong and clear. German power is much less dangerous when embedded in a NATO structure that includes the United States.
Hantavirus kills relatively quickly. It comes from rats, but can be spread from human to human by close contact. Although it is deadlier than Covid if you get it, it is easier to contain because it doesn’t linger in the air for a while and tends to spread by closer contact. The World Health Organization is organizing a global response to contain the virus. Trump left this organization. The US is responding with its CDC, although it’s not communicating with doctors and the public as much as it should be.
The virus mutates slowly, so that should help contain it. If it does mutate in a way that makes it spread faster, God help us all.
After the US escorted just two ships through the Strait before ending the program, insurance for shipping through the Strait went up! So what did this operation achieve? Quitting after two ships looks like giving up, not victory.
“the president and his political allies flooded the ordinarily sleepy state legislative primaries — where the spending is typically in the tens of thousands and primary votes cast number about 10,000 to 12,000 — with millions of dollars in advertising casting the incumbents as disloyal to Trump and blaming them for voters’ various frustrations, particularly property taxes.
Trump’s approval rating has slipped nationally, and his support among independents has evaporated. But very conservative voters — those who make up his base — are still with him. And they are the voters who decide contests like state Senate primaries in deep-red Indiana.”
Spirit Airlines means nothing to the economy. The point of capitalism is that creative destruction helps us get good companies that sell us good products and services. It doesn’t work if you bailout the losers! It’s one thing if the fall of the company hurts the entire economy or much of the country, but Spirit doesn’t matter. The government had no business trying to bail it out.
We need engineers and technologists to advance the country forward, including in the government. It’s a great tragedy that when we gave a technologist, Elon Musk, great governmental power, he used it not to build, but to destroy. Rather than using his business and technical expertise to make government better, he used his biased ideology and political incompetence to destroy things that were providing good to Americans and the world.
Because the US has proven itself an unreliable arms supplier over Ukraine, offering weapons and then suddenly taking them away, Germany has decided to replace the US as a major arms supplier to Europe. This will result in a loss of US sales and negotiating leverage over European countries.
“”I posted earlier a picture of some shells I saw today on a beach walk, which I assumed were a political message. I didn’t realize some folks associate those numbers with violence. It never occurred to me but I oppose violence of any kind so I took the post down,” Comey said on May 15.”
The idea that you could prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Comey meant sharing a number as a true threat of violence is far-fetched. This is lawfare and is another step toward the end of the Republic.