THE ART OF THE TACO On March 8, President Trump said that he would not sign any bills into law until the SAVE America Act was passed. Perhaps he’d forgotten his threat because by 15 April 6 bills were presented by Congress to the President for his consideration. He has signed all of them.

THE WORM CONTINUES TO BURROW Supreme Court blocks your batshit crazy tariffs? No problem. Open another front under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, 19 U.S.C. § 2132(a). More crazy, you think? You are not alone. See this Amicus brief: www.aei.org/articles/ami...

5 NON-NEGOTIABLES OF THE PROGRESSIVE LEFT • Housing • Civilian labor corps • Medicare for all • Election integrity • Climate action Solid. Read about them: bit.ly/unftr-non-ne... @unftr.com

IF YOU HATE AI WITHOUT BOUNDS, YOU ALSO MUST BALANCE BENEFITS WITH RISKS CASE: "OpenAI and biotech company Ginkgo Bioworks paired an AI model with a robotic lab autonomously to run 36,000 experiments and produced a desired protein at significantly reduced costs." bit.ly/humanity-unr...

SUPPLY CHAIN RISKS THREATEN ESSENTIAL MEDICINES Many drugs are not in shortage but are structurally vulnerable to shortages. Many drugs require key starting materials originating in a single country, creating single, critical potential points of failure for essential drugs. bit.ly/vulnerable-m...

"WEAK ON CRIME AND TERRIBLE ON FOREIGN POLICY" I am not sure that Trump should take on a notorious bad-ass world-class warrior of morality and justice who is not afraid of taking a stand. "The Pope? How many divisions has he got?" ~ Stalin Where is Trump's ethics army? on.wsj.com/4sJAkYF

A TAX REVOLT? "Democrats and Republicans alike seem to be concluding that swathes of Americans should pay almost no income tax at all. To fund the state, many on the left would squeeze the richest few, while many on the right would hit foreigners with tariffs." bit.ly/3QtSqk5

LISTEN FOR PLEASURE Now that Angine de Poitrine (www.cbc.ca/music/angine...) is in our sights, here is some nice Iranian microtonal jazz that you might enjoy: youtu.be/kfUAC90Aq30?...

CAN TRUMP BE THROTTLED “When he does what he does, everyone around him keeps their eyes to the floor and says nothing.” www.nytimes.com/2026/04/13/u...

THE POPE'S A PUNK. RIGHT? RIGHT? "An Eastern Orthodox Christian and past Vance acquaintance, said....'Trump seems to think that the pope is nothing more than Keir Starmer in a white cassock.'” www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

WHERE'S THE BEEF? OH, IT'S THERE.... "Fed beef production set a record in 2022 (at approximately 23 billion lb.) – and that happened with cow inventory being down 1% versus a decade earlier." www.beefmagazine.com/market-news/...

FORECASTING ECONOMIC EFFECTS OF AI Among other conclusions: "Labor force participation rate falling from its current level of 62% to 55% by 2050, with roughly half of that decline—equivalent to around 10 million lost jobs—attributable to AI." www.nber.org/papers/w35046

========== FREIGHT TRANSPORTATION ========== Freight transportation is fundamentally multimodal. Intermodal terminals are core infrastructure. Intermodal terminal improvements could yield $.46-$1.85 billion in real GDP gains. bit.ly/nber-w35065

LIVING WITHOUT PERSIAN GULF OIL U.S. refineries are far less dependent on crude oil from the Middle East than they were before the Shale Revolution and the ramp-up in Western Canadian production. rbnenergy.com/daily-posts/...

AND, NOW, ISLAM MR. PRESIDENT? Trump posted a long "Truth" starting with "The Pope is weak on crime...." Then he displayed himself as a healing Jesus. When he gives us an AI Allah and then desecrates the Quran? A red line he will not cross? Too far for him? Study the Quran and read the Hadith.

JUMPIN' SHIP "They hurried us aboard a bark, Bore us some leagues to sea, where they prepared A rotten carcass of a butt, not rigged, Nor tackle, sail, nor mast; the very rats Instinctively have quit it." ~ Prospero, Act 1, scene 2, "The Tempest" TY, Bill Kristol, "What Melania Didn't Say."

NEW WORLD SCREWWORM RESPONSE PLAN UPDATED A plan for coordinated, science-based action against a parasitic fly whose larvae feed on living tissue of warm-blooded animals (that's you, too). Eradicated from U.S. in 1966. Could affect livestock health, treatment costs, & trade. bit.ly/usda-screwworm

BEFORE THE WAR, THE TRUMP ADMIN... "...chopped back the State Department’s Middle East desk, gotten rid of its oil and gas experts & eliminated its dedicated Iran office" & fired National Security Council staff at the behest of a conspiracy-minded Laura Loomer. nyti.ms/3PWunKx

HAVE GAS? "The world’s largest gas field lies in the Persian Gulf between Qatar and Iran." U.S. gas could span the gap in world supply. Most U.S. LNG sold under long-term contract. Some available for short-term sales. U.S. terminals can produce LNG >contracted level. bit.ly/global-gas-i...

MY LABOR FOR YOUR DELIVERY! I have an extra room. I am setting up a delivery suite in it. Shower & bath across the hall. I have a great coffeemaker (BYO milk/sugar/stir sticks). I read a bunch of books and watched some great YouTube videos. I am ready for clients!

DA POPE.... Good morning. Have a blessed day. youtu.be/MD5qTvkSKp4

THE PETRODOLLAR Money earned from the sale of oil. Here is a diagram I created for an essay I am building about the petrodollar. This financial system is dying, kids. Big consequences for the U.S. economy—and, that means you, citizens. More in the pipeline, so to speak, from me.

SO WHAT? "Inequality is such a fact of American life that it’s easy to shrug off....Over the past two years, 19 households have added $1.8 trillion to their coffers...—roughly the size of the economy of Australia." www.nytimes.com/2026/04/08/o...

AMERICAN VALUES? Trump has vowed to level power, desalination and oil plants, & bridges. Mohsen Borhani, a law professor at Tehran University, said how it is "possible for a U.S. president to undermine and discredit all American values and 250 years of human legacy?” nyti.ms/iran-shock-d...

TECH WORKERS CREATING AI THAT ELIMINATES THEIR OWN JOBS Layoffs.fyi has cataloged nearly 450,000 tech layoffs.

HEY, WE CAN ONLY DO SO MUCH "We’re fighting wars....it’s not possible for us to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare....We have to take care of one thing: military protection. We have to guard the country." ~ DT Trump, U.S. President.

WINNING THE WAR AGAINST SCIENCE! Paul Krugman notes that the Trump administration’s latest budget proposal calls for debilitating reductions in research funding, along with a gigantic increase in military spending and severe cuts to social programs. bit.ly/ignorance-st...

CRUELTY Left me all helpless with th' irreparable loss Of sight, reserv'd alive to be repeated The subject of thir cruelty, or scorn. Nor am I in the list of them that hope; Hopeless are all my evils, all remediless. ~ from Samson Agonistes by John Milton (1608-1674 CE)

EVENTUALLY, AI.... “I don’t think A.I. has hit the labor market yet, and I don’t think it’s radically changed corporate productivity yet, either, but I think it’s coming.” www.nytimes.com/2026/04/03/b...

JUST CURIOUS....CAN HISTORY REPEAT ITSELF? myemail.constantcontact.com/German-subma...

JUST CURIOUS.... Do you believe this assertion? www.beefmagazine.com/policy/exten...

PAUL KRUGMAN ON BATTERIES "The decline in battery prices has been incredible....Solar + batteries provides round-the-clock power....better, cheaper, cleaner energy future is on the way, and not even Trump can stop it." bit.ly/good-news-ba...

Data centers are developing across U.S. states, with variation in environments and contexts. rbnenergy.com/daily-posts/...

Waters of March Jobim and Elis Regina youtu.be/wBEesrdaRog?...

GOVERNMENT SHARE IN PRIVATE OWNERSHIP Trump's government has acquired ownership stakes, or the right to purchase shares, in a dozen companies, many in critical minerals, putting citizens at risk if these companies tank. bit.ly/enshrine-equ...

MISSING SOULFUL NEW ORLEANS Sprinkle my ashes on Frenchmen Street. Don't be upset at the news. Just cut me a loose with a soulful song. Don't play no Frenchmen Street blues. Hitch me a ride on a river breeze to Elysian Fields so green. And I'll join the spirits standin' by to smile. ~Jon Cleary

PRIORITIES.... www.propublica.org/article/trum...

YOU MIGHT HAVE WONDERED: HOW AM I GOING TO PAY FOR MY BULL? Bulls should be worth 5 times a feeder calf (young mature cattle ready for fattening). If $10,000-15,000 simply isn’t in your current budget, you need to think outside the stall. www.beefmagazine.com/farm-busines...

🎼THESE ARE A FEW OF MY FAVORITE THINGS🎶 On Sunday, Trump told the Financial Times that “my favorite thing is to take the oil in Iran.”

Blackstone Investment committed to spend $25 billion in Pennsylvania at Senator McCormick's Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit. This investment is expected to create 6,000 construction jobs along with 3,000 permanent positions in digital and energy infrastructure. bwnews.pr/blackstone-p...

MORE SUBSIDIES? FOR SPORTS TEAMS? “Nearly all empirical studies find little to no tangible impacts of sports teams & facilities on local economic activity....The level of venue subsidies typically provided far exceeds any observed economic benefit.” on.wsj.com/bears-subsid...

ExodusLLM

THE IRAN WAR — WOW, IT'S A GREAT ACTION MOVIE! Turns out you, if you are a genius, can manage the war in a few minutes per day with action-oriented evidence. As Trump has said, "BING! BANG! BOOM!" www.nbcnews.com/politics/whi...

NFL DRAFT DAYS IN PITTSBURGH DAFFY? We Yinzers are likely to feel the effects of the NFL Draft Day through traffic (delays, gridlock, added risk of collisions). But will Pittsburgh benefit economically? www.publicsource.org/nfl-draft-sp...

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles. ~ Emma Lazarus

A cigar box band in New Orleans www.youtube.com/live/7zieAGs...

THE FLOW OF OIL FROM THE STRAIT OF HORMUZ A sankey diagram showing the countries of destination for the volume of oil shipped out of the Strait of Hormuz. nyti.ms/4bxhO0D