That's a little thing called "Brain Drain".
Apr 20, 2025
Today's Belle
300 US scientists are seeking access to a French program that hires them into various positions in France, and require them to move out of the US.
The Roads With Belle, episode 87
From The Tangerine Tinhorn
Trump's holiday message for Easter 2025
So cheery. So uplifting. So inspiring. So obviously what's making this country coarse and loud and hurtful and hateful.
Supply Chain Trouble
Craig Fuller, CEO at FreightWaves, the only freight-focused organization that delivers a complete and comprehensive view of the freight and logistics market. FreightWaves’ news, content, market data, insights, analytics, innovative engagement and risk management tools are unprecedented and unmatched in the industry. Prior to founding FreightWaves, Fuller was the founder and CEO of TransCard, a fleet payment processor that was sold to US Bank. He also is a trucking industry veteran, having founded and managed the Xpress Direct division of US Xpress Enterprises, the largest provider of on-demand trucking services in North America.
Fuller is saying that container shipping volumes (how much stuff is being shipped) have dropped drastically and very quickly.
- He predicts that by May, freight moving out of California ports will almost completely stop.
- “Bloodbath in dray”: “Dray” refers to drayage — the short-distance transportation of goods, especially from ports to rail yards or warehouses. A “bloodbath” means many job losses or business closures are expected here.
- Impact spreading: After drayage, the collapse will hit intermodal (freight using multiple forms of transport — ship, rail, truck), and then long-haul trucking routes, specifically I-20 and I-40, which are major east-west highways.
- Blank sailings: This means scheduled ships are not departing — often due to lack of demand.
- Comparison: In May 2020 (early in COVID), there were 51 blank sailings. Now, in April 2025, there are already over 80, which suggests this current situation is worse than during the pandemic.
- “COVID will look like good times”: This is a dramatic way of saying that the shipping crisis now could be even more economically painful than what happened during COVID-19.
- There’s a major freight crisis brewing, especially out of California ports.
- This could trigger a domino effect: port slowdown → local freight jobs lost → national trucking routes disrupted.
- Some experts believe this may be more severe than the economic shipping impacts seen during COVID.
Jahana Hayes (D - CT05)
The operative question:
What do you "conservatives" intend to do with all the people you think don't exist -
- or you think don't belong here
- or you think need to be run out of town
- the "undesirables"
- the "others"
Warrior Spirit
Mallory McMorrow brought the fire 2 years ago, and she continues the good fight.
This is the warrior spirit that we have to internalize in order to wield it against the dark forces.
Apr 19, 2025
Clap Back
The prick can't even be bothered
to signal the minimum respect
at the passing of a former President
Three ex-presidents denounce the current one in a two-week stretch
While presidents have been at odds before, there is often a sort of camaraderie among the small club of individuals who have served in the highest office in the land.
Barack Obama urged Americans to resist President Donald Trump’s bullying. Joe Biden warned that Trump is wrecking the “sacred promise” of Social Security. Bill Clinton decried the emphasis on grievances and the need to dominate.
In an extraordinary stretch of just over two weeks, three former presidents have taken to the public stage to sound the alarm against the current occupant of the White House, despite the tradition that former presidents generally refrain from publicly criticizing their successors.
Obama, Biden and Clinton did not explicitly name Trump, but their message was unmistakable. The three Democrats said, as much by their presence as their words, that these are unusual times for American democracy, that norms are being disregarded and extraordinary measures are required. The only living president who has not spoken out since Inauguration Day is Republican George W. Bush, though he has made little secret of his antipathy for Trump.
“Former presidents are uniquely qualified and situated to raise their voices and warn the American people if the country is taking a dangerous turn,” said Timothy Naftali, a historian at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. “Think of them as a sort of advisory council to the people of the United States. And when the advisory council sounds the alarm, the people should listen.”
The ex-presidents made their statements in settings that underlined their points and their alarm.
Obama spoke on April 3 at Hamilton College in Upstate New York, one of the country’s oldest colleges, pushing back against Trump’s pursuit of universities and other institutions and urging those with resources to fight back.
“It is up to all of us to fix this,” Obama said. “It’s not going to be because somebody comes and saves you. The most important office in this democracy is the citizen, the ordinary person who says, ‘No, that’s not right.’”
Biden, speaking in Chicago on Tuesday at the national conference of Advocates, Counselors and Representatives for the Disabled, denounced Elon Musk’s cuts to Social Security, his first public remarks since leaving office. “The last thing [beneficiaries] need from their government is deliberate cruelty,” Biden said, adding, “In fewer than 100 days, this administration has done so much damage and so much devastation.”
Clinton spoke at an emotional ceremony in Oklahoma City on Saturday morning to commemorate the bombing 30 years ago of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, which killed 168 people. Clinton compared the way that city has come together with the current national divisions.
“It’s like everybody is arguing about whose resentments matter most, whose resentments are more valid, when it’s okay to stretch the truth a little bit to gain an advantage,” Clinton said. “If our lives are going to be dominated by the effort to dominate the people we disagree with, we are going to put the 250-year march to a more perfect union at risk.”
Clinton praised the service of federal workers at a time when Trump is slashing the federal workforce. He also made a case for humility. “It does you good every now and then to admit you’re wrong,” he said.
It is unusual for a single president to publicly excoriate his successor, historians say, given the American tradition of seamless transfers of power and the principle that the country has one president at a time. For three to do so in such short order may be unprecedented.
“What is really significant is this is happening before the end of the first 100 days of the Trump presidency,” Naftali said. “Ordinarily, former presidents give the current president space to establish himself and learn the rules of the road. … But these presidents already see the contours of the changes that President Trump wishes to bring.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The three Democratic presidents spoke in terms of fundamental American traditions and values. But their relationship with Trump is also marked by personal animosity, as Trump has aimed attacks and insults at each of them or their family members.
He has repeatedly mocked “Sleepy Joe” Biden as a senile, elderly figure who has no idea what he is saying much of the time. Three months into his second term, Trump continues to regularly disparage Biden.
After Biden defeated him in 2020, Trump falsely claimed the election was stolen, an assertion he still clings to. He has attacked Biden’s son Hunter as a criminal and drug addict, recently ending Secret Service protection for Hunter and Biden’s daughter Ashley. (Hunter acknowledges spiraling into addiction after the death of his brother, Beau.)
When Obama first ran for president, Trump falsely suggested he had not been born in the United States, an assertion seen by many as racist. And he harshly attacked Clinton’s wife, Hillary, his opponent in the 2016 election, calling her “Crooked Hillary” as his crowds chanted, “Lock her up!”
The Democratic presidents, in turn, have said Trump’s violations of legal and democratic principles make him unfit for the presidency. Biden in 2022 called Trump supporters “a threat to our very democracy” and said the GOP under him had turned toward “semi-fascism.” He has said he ran for president in 2020 because of Trump’s support of white supremacists after violence in Charlottesville.
Obama, during the last presidential race, called Trump “a 78-year-old billionaire who has not stopped whining about his problems” and compared him to former Cuban president Fidel Castro “ranting and raving about crazy conspiracy theories.”
Clinton, who left office 24 years ago, mocked Trump’s age at the Democratic National Convention in August and again on Saturday, noting that he himself is younger. “Donald Trump — a paragon of consistency — is still dividing, blaming and belittling,” Clinton said.
This sort of rancor is not typical for the men who have held the country’s highest office. While presidents have been at odds before, there is often a sort of camaraderie in the small club of individuals who have borne the weight of the job.
After running a bitter race against each other in 1976, Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford developed what Carter called “mutual respect” and “intense personal friendship,” agreeing that the longest to live would speak at the other’s funeral.
When Bush unveiled Clinton’s portrait in 2004, he spoke with affection, saying, “The years have done a lot to clarify the strengths of this man. … Bill Clinton loved the job of the presidency. He filled this house with energy and joy. He’s a man of enthusiasm and warmth.”
Such sentiments have not been much in evidence in recent years, even as the presidents appeared together at Carter’s funeral and Trump’s inauguration, both in January.
Obama, Biden and Clinton have all seemed struck by the sheer frenzy of the first stretch of Trump’s second term. At the end of his talk on Saturday, Clinton stressed that the United States has a wealth of institutions and assets.
He asked, “Are we really going to put them at risk to prove we’re always right and our resentments are more important than someone else’s?”
Come Uppance
It totally sucks that she had to go thru that shit.
It totally doesn't suck that 6 hired thugs have been busted and charged in Idaho.
In Idaho
- Paul Trouette: Battery, false imprisonment, security agent uniform violation, security agent duties violation
- Alex Trouette IV: Security agent uniform violation, security agent duties violation
- Russell Dunne: Battery, false imprisonment, security agent uniform violation, security agent duties violation
- Chistofer Berge: Battery, false imprisonment, security agent uniform violation, security agent duties violation
- Jesse Jones: Battery, false imprisonment, security agent uniform violation, security agent duties violation
- Michael Keller: Battery
BREAKING: Remember this video of a Democratic woman being was dragged out of a Republican Townhall in Idaho? Remember how MAGA claimed that the security officers acted appropriately?
— Brian Krassenstein (@krassenstein) April 19, 2025
They were ALL just charged.
Here are their Names/Charges.
- Paul Trouette – Battery, false… pic.twitter.com/2YFHImcZlO
Dear MAGA
Just a quick note to all you guys with the tiny dick energy, who're always spoutin' off about how the Jews wouldn't have had it so bad if they'd just fought back.
They did. And your asshole forebears slaughtered them.
History Lesson
I was an on-again-off-again fan of John McCain. There was always something likeable about him, even though he was pretty much a total nepo-baby fuckup until he spent 5 years as a POW in North Vietnam.
He was the logical heir to Barry Goldwater (also on-again-off-again for me), but McCain seemed less like a Bomb-'Em-First-And-To-Hell-With-Asking-Questions kinda guy - way less than Goldwater anyway. For a while, you could count on the guy to go with his intellect and not his emotions.
That began to change as MAGA made inroads, and he began to feel forced to go along with it.
We'll forever have to wonder about 'what if' McCain had still been around to keep guys like Lindsey Graham on the right side of things.
Long sad late night bull sessions are waiting to be had by the PoliSci majors of the future.
From 10 years ago:
John McCain's prophetic words spoken 10 years ago...but nobody listened.
byu/yaponetsa inukraine
Level Up
There're reasons to draft a threatening letter so you have it handy in case you need it, but when your crew fucks up (assuming it was in fact a fuck up), and you get bad push back, the decent honorable thing to do is to retract it publicly, and reprimand whoever made the unauthorized decision to send it out.
But we're talking about the Trump White House, so we're not talking about decent honorable people.
Key Points
- The Trump administration’s April 11 letter to Harvard University was “unauthorized,” two people familiar with the matter told the New York Times.
- In the letter, the White House demanded that Harvard eliminate its DEI programs and screen international students for ideological concerns, among other sweeping changes.
- The letter set off a public feud between the White House and Harvard over funding for the institution.
The April 11 letter, which demanded that Harvard eliminate its DEI programs and screen international students for ideological concerns, among other sweeping changes, was “unauthorized,” people familiar with the matter told the Times.
The contents of the letter were authentic, but “there were differing accounts inside the administration of how it had been mishandled,” per the Times.
The letter was signed by Josh Gruenbaum, the commissioner of the General Services Administration, Sean R. Kevney, the acting general counsel of the Department of Health and Human Services and Thomas E. Wheeler, the acting general counsel of the Department of Education.
A Harvard spokesperson said in a statement to CNBC that “the letter that Harvard received on Friday, April 11, was signed by three federal officials, placed on official letterhead, was sent from the e-mail inbox of a senior federal official, and was sent on April 11 as promised.”
“Recipients of such correspondence from the U.S. government—even when it contains sweeping demands that are astonishing in their overreach—do not question its authenticity or seriousness,” the spokesperson said.
“It remains unclear to us exactly what, among the government’s recent words and deeds, were mistakes or what the government actually meant to do and say,” the spokesperson added.
“But even if the letter was a mistake, the actions the government took this week have real-life consequences on students, patients, employees, and the standing of American higher education in the world.”
The White House did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment on the New York Times report.
The April 11 letter set off a public feud between the White House and Harvard.
The university on Monday rejected the White House’s demands that were put forth in the April 11 letter, putting almost $9 billion in federal funding for the university at risk.
The White House quickly fired back and, in response, said it would freeze approximately $2.2 billion in grants to the university.
According to the New York Times, the April 11 letter came as lawyers at Harvard University were in dialogue with the White House about how the school handled antisemitism and other issues.
The letter was signed by Josh Gruenbaum, the commissioner of the General Services Administration, Sean R. Kevney, the acting general counsel of the Department of Health and Human Services and Thomas E. Wheeler, the acting general counsel of the Department of Education.
A Harvard spokesperson said in a statement to CNBC that “the letter that Harvard received on Friday, April 11, was signed by three federal officials, placed on official letterhead, was sent from the e-mail inbox of a senior federal official, and was sent on April 11 as promised.”
“Recipients of such correspondence from the U.S. government—even when it contains sweeping demands that are astonishing in their overreach—do not question its authenticity or seriousness,” the spokesperson said.
“It remains unclear to us exactly what, among the government’s recent words and deeds, were mistakes or what the government actually meant to do and say,” the spokesperson added.
“But even if the letter was a mistake, the actions the government took this week have real-life consequences on students, patients, employees, and the standing of American higher education in the world.”
The White House did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment on the New York Times report.
The April 11 letter set off a public feud between the White House and Harvard.
The university on Monday rejected the White House’s demands that were put forth in the April 11 letter, putting almost $9 billion in federal funding for the university at risk.
The White House quickly fired back and, in response, said it would freeze approximately $2.2 billion in grants to the university.
According to the New York Times, the April 11 letter came as lawyers at Harvard University were in dialogue with the White House about how the school handled antisemitism and other issues.
Today's Belle
Stagflation is just about the worst thing ever. I don't know the ins and outs and loops and spins that got us there, but I lived thru it in the 70's and into the 80s, and it sucked.
An awful lot of people were barely squeaking by - like now. And that was back when a one-bedroom apartment in the city was renting at about $120 a month, you could buy a new car for $99 down and $99 a month, gas was 50¢ a gallon, and 25 or 30 bucks bought you 4 big paper sacks filled with groceries.
If Trump tips us into a full blown stagflation-type recession, we'll be lucky if it doesn't come to blows.
I understand that there has to be disruption of the usual everyday shit that we seem to be locked into before we can make the kind of changes we need, but what Trump is doing will only change things for the worse.
Everything Trump touches turns to shit.
Philosophizing
Fear is a universal emotion,
common among all sentient beings.
We all walk with fear - all day every day.
But here's the point:
Never ask your fear for directions.
Apr 18, 2025
92
The fuckin' idiot we've got for a president has issued 92 separate tariff policies in the last 6 weeks.
And still the rubes are cheering. Because, apparently, they believe that if you throw a big enough tariff at somebody on Tuesday, manufacturing plants will magically materialize by the weekend - or in a few months - or weeks - or decades - or whatever.
"C'mon - he said there'd be some discomfort at first. The guy's a super genius. He's playing 37-dimension chess. Trust the plan."
None of it really matters, because Trump has created the chaos he always creates, which creates opportunities for his minions to go grubbing around, looking for some easy-pickin's in the rubble. Plus, he owns the news cycle for another day or two.
Everything is totally episodic. If today's show flops and creates a problem, no sweat - we'll just throw some different bullshit at 'em tomorrow.
In the meantime, guys with the money to spare are stockpiling things like cell phones and laptops.
Apr 17, 2025
A Quote
Hell, you can decide to invade Russia at dinner - choose Waterloo for battle on a whim. It's the details. The small stuff.
It's easy to gamble a million lives. What's hard is to see how it can hurt one single person. And if you can't keep that straight, you'll lose your humanity.
Even-Handedness My Ass
Yes, Republicans were all over Obama when his DOJ was looking at certain "conservative" outfits that claimed tax shelter under their 501(c)(3) status because they'd been stepping over the line between "research and political education" and straight up campaigning.
And of course, it doesn't matter that Vance, Cruz, and Rubio were quite vocal in their condemnations, but also vocally adamant about how they'd definitely for-sure absolutely condemn a Republican administration if they did the same thing.
Guess what
Vance: 2:30
Cruz: 8:30
Rubio:10:15
Overheard
Our justice system was put together in a way that lets a few of the bad guys slip through the cracks, in order to protect decent law-abiding people.
And the justice system is there not only to protect us from each other, but to protect us from any overzealous goons working for a wacked out demagogue.
If government can deny even one single person the right to due process, then nobody has any rights that the government is legally bound to respect.
MAGA:
I don't care that gang members don't have the right to plead their case in court - they deserve whatever law enforcement doles out to them, and the harsher the better.
Normies:
Alrighty then - I say you're a gang member. The government is coming to arrest you, and they'll have you on a plane to El Salvador in the morning.
MAGA:
I'm not a gang member. They can't touch me. They have no right.
Normies:
You can't prove you're not a gang member. Without due process, none of your rights even exist. Government can do whatever it wants.
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