SaturTabs
- G. Elliot Morris at Strength in Numbers: New poll: Percent saying America on the “wrong track” hits new high.
- Via The Guardian: Oklahoma Republicans propose all state colleges must have Charlie Kirk statue. Recognizing that “legislative proposal” is a loooong way from the law, I am nonetheless struck by the ongoing attempted beatification of Charlie Kirk.
- Via NOTUS: Billions in Taxpayer Dollars Have Become Virtually Untraceable.
- Via Politico: Musk, Bannon and Thiel named in new Epstein estate documents.
- Via Politico: ‘They will pay a huge price for this’: Shutdown-ready Trump expects Democrats to blink.
- Via Politico: White House to agencies: Prepare mass firing plans for a potential shutdown.
- Via Politico: Inflation remains elevated. That won’t keep the Fed from cutting rates.
- By Noah Berlatsky at Public Notice: The Trump Murder Policy.
- Via The Atlantic: Fentanyl Doesn’t Come Through the Caribbean.
Last month, the U.S. cutter Hamilton returned to Florida with what the agency called “the largest quantity of drugs offloaded in Coast Guard history”: 61,740 pounds of cocaine and 14,400 pounds of marijuana (that’s the weight of about three city buses). The haul, gathered by multiple federal agencies during 19 seizure incidents in the Caribbean as well as the Pacific, had an estimated street value of $473 million. But there wasn’t any fentanyl on the boat.
Steve Roth, a Coast Guard lieutenant commander and spokesperson for the agency, wrote to me that Coast Guard crews confiscated a “historic amount of cocaine” during the 2025 fiscal year that ends this month, but no fentanyl.
By the way, record hauls like this fit directly into the kind of deja vu I mentioned in my post on the drug war. If year after year, decade after decade, you keep breaking seizure records, that is not, as it may sound at first, like a victory. It is just a sign that year after year, decade after decade, the indictment efforts aren’t working. Put another way: how impressive is a record if it keeps getting broken?
But the point about fentanyl is important, since it is a major rationale for Trump executing people without due process.
- More mafia-boss-like threats:
- It’s grifts all the way down.
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Reminds me of something Bob brier says in his course on Ancient Egypt: Egyptians never lost a battle. They just kept winning them closer and closer to home.
More likely the cartels and others account for seizures and interdiction efforts the way other businesses account for spoilage.
I’d sincerely like to congratulate Drugs for winning the War on Drugs.
https://share.google/images/dF2CN7XmUNvlpwQwu
ETA Fond memories of my rejected thesis (working title, “cost-benefit analysis of legalization and taxation of currently illegal drugs”) circa early-mid ’70s.
@Kathy:
Sounds like German media late in WWII.
If Trump were to push the World Cup out of Seattle, I would be delighted.
There have been ads on social media encouraging people to sign up to volunteer for FIFA, and if they don’t want to pay their workers, that sounds more like a red state thing.
Begone ye Giant Multinational Business. And take your traffic disruptions with you!
We really need to use AI Deep Fakes to soil Charlie Kirk’s legacy. Imagine him saying decent things about helping your fellow man, welcoming refugees, etc. We have the technology. We can do it.
@Gustopher:
Wait, you mean that closing both major freeways every weekend for decades of ignored maintenance won’t deter them?
Who the hell is going to buy Trump Vodka given the price tag on it?????
@Gustopher:
It’s like Formula One in Vegas. Oh no, Br’er Fox, don’t throw me in that briar patch. Would anyone else like it? How about Tulsa? You guys want a race that’ll be run after midnight, shut out locals and piss off area businesses while doing nothing to boost the tourist business?
@Gustopher: I dunno, Gus. If a World Cup game were to cause a traffic disruption on I5 in Seattle, how would you tell the difference from a normal day?
😉
Trump thinks Dems will “pay a price” for the shutdown. Because that’s his game. He’s always perfect, he’s always right. He’s good at this!
Meanwhile, I’m thinking there are some Republicans who are wondering if they should vote to approve a budget that will be ignored by the administration, as described above in a different link.
It seems the wiggle room they are using is “grants”, which they are treating as 100 percent discretionary. Including those that are already in place.