Gov. Meyer Upgrades DEFAC With This Appointment:

Governor Matt Meyer announced the appointment of Brenda Wise to the Delaware Economic and Financial Advisory Council, adding a new voice to the panel that helps guide the state’s financial outlook.

“Brenda Wise brings a strong record of public service and thoughtful leadership that will benefit DEFAC and all Delaware taxpayers,” Meyer said. “I’m thankful for her willingness to serve, and look forward to her providing strong, knowledgeable counsel to this critical board.”

According to Meyer’s office, Wise currently serves as Corporate Counsel and Director of Global Government Affairs at CSC, where she manages international employment law risks, negotiates agreements and works with government partners across more than 30 jurisdictions. Her previous role as director of policy at the Delaware Office of Management & Budget included advancing programs aimed at helping vulnerable populations and leading the state’s Disadvantaged Business Enterprise pilot program.

At year’s end, the outraged bleatings of Mike Houghton and his Delaware Way pals will have a place of honor on the ‘Most Ridiculous’ list.  To me, the only surprise is that Meyer kept him on at DEFAC for as long as he did.  Remember:  Houghton created and pretty much funded a PAC to do polling for Bethany Hall-Long when her campaign was in limbo due to financial improprieties.  Which, BTW, have never been adequately addressed to this day.  Were I Meyer, I’d sure as shit kick him off the Delaware River And Bay, which has traditionally been reserved for connected political hacks like–Mike Houghton.

Bibi:  Lebanon Doesn’t Count.  Ergo, the genocide must continue:

The Israeli military told people in the southern suburbs of Beirut to flee, moments after announcing its forces are continuing “combat and ground operations” against Hezbollah.

In its third time it has told people in Lebanon to flee since the US-Iran ceasefire was announced, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) urged residents of seven Beirut neighbourhoods to flee their homes.

The order covers a large swathe of the Lebanese capital, where hundreds of thousands of people have already become displaced following repeated IDF warnings to leave the area.

“The IDF continues to operate and strike at military infrastructure belonging to the terrorist organisation Hezbollah across the southern suburbs,” the IDF Arabic-language spokesperson, Avichay Adraee, said on X.

“The IDF has no intention of harming you; therefore, for your own safety, you must evacuate immediately.”

The Israeli government said it accepts the two-week ceasefire agreement reached last night between the US and Iran, but that it does not include Lebanon, contrary to a statement by Pakistan. Hezbollah has yet to publicly announce its position.

Swift Passage Through The Strait Of Hormuz?  Not so fast, my friend:

There were few signs on Wednesday of a large-scale return of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, after Iran promised the “safe passage” of vessels in the crucial waterway as part of its cease-fire with the United States.

That could change, experts said, if shipping operators concluded that the terms of making the passage were clear and the risks of attacks were reduced. Global shipping traffic and energy flows could yet take months to return to prewar levels, they added.

A Greek-owned bulk carrier and a Liberia-flagged vessel crossed the strait on Wednesday, according to Kpler, a global ship-tracking firm. But there were also “no clear signs yet of large-scale positioning or queuing that would indicate ships are preparing to move through in significant numbers,” said Dimitris Ampatzidis, a senior risk and compliance analyst at Kpler. “Most operators appear to be holding back.”

Iran has said that it will have a role in organizing traffic through the strait. Shipping companies may balk at negotiating with Iranian authorities, especially if the terms of a passage are not clear and require large payments.

Iran’s foreign minister said in a statement early Wednesday that safe passage through the strait would be possible if coordinated with Iran’s military and with consideration of “technical limitations.” President Trump said on social media that the United States would be “helping with the traffic build up in the Strait of Hormuz” and “hangin’ around” to ensure everything goes well.

But the lack of clarity about Iran’s “limitations” and what exactly the military coordination would look like has left the industry wary.

Rethugs Really ARE In Deep Shit.  I admit it–in college, my eyes glazed over when macro- and micro-economics were involved.  But when it came to analyzing polling data and election results, I was in my element.  The NYTimes has scratched that itch with their county-by-county election maps.  They’re fantastic.  Each county is detailed, along with recent election trends in each county.  Now, take a look at the map from last night’s Supreme Court contest in Wisconsin:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/us/elections/results-wisconsin-supreme-court.html

Click on the tab that reads ‘How Votes Compare With Past Elections’.  Now, understand that many of these counties voted for Trump, sometimes by margins as large as 30% or more.  BTW, you can click on each county to understand more.  A couple of examples:

Crawford County:  ‘A rural county that Donald J. Trump won by 14 points in 2024″.  The Democrat won, 60-40 last night.

Monroe County: ‘A rural county that Donald J. Trump won by 26 points in 2024″.  Went plus-2 for the D last night.

I’m not cherry-picking.  The Democrat literally outperformed Harris in every single county in Wisconsin, save one.  By huge margins.  Well, I sorta cherry-picked to make a point.  Rural residents are already feeling the effects of the Trump ‘Excursion’, and I think this vote reflects that.  There is no reason why grassroots D’s (as opposed to corporadems) in particular in states like Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa and Ohio, to name just a few, can’t succeed beyond expectations this fall.  Didn’t mention Georgia, but OK.  Yes, the R won, but, again click on that ‘How Votes Compare With Past Elections’ tab.  In every single county,  the D outperformed the 2024 margin for Trump by at least 20%.

Meaning, when it comes to Rethugs, pants-wetting ain’t just for the President any more.

Trump Administration Going All-Out For Orban:

The European Commission’s spokespeople – three of them, no less – have reluctantly reacted to JD Vance’s comments alleging the EU’s unprecedented interference in the Hungarian elections.

At first they insisted they wouldn’t respond to his comments, even as they very pointedly noted the context of his visit – just days before the vote on Sunday.

The commission’s tech spokesperson Thomas Regnier somewhat mockingly said that “what the European bureaucrats have been doing is [moving] to set out a strong framework to make sure that the elections remain in the hands of our citizens.”

While his comments were seemingly about the regulation and use of social media platforms during election campaigns in Europe, it felt like there was a bit of an underlying message to the US VP, too.

But eventually, pushed a bit by several journalists, they went further, with the EU’s foreign spokesperson Anitta Hipper saying:

“We have also our diplomatic channels and we will be using these also to convey our concerns to our US counterparts.”

Speaking of foreign interference, Russia has also chimed in, backing JD Vance’s suggestions that some in the European Union were opposed to the re-election of Viktor Orbán and actively trying to help his rivals.

“Many forces in Europe, many forces in Brussels, would not like Orbán to win the elections again,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said.

“This is well known, it’s obvious to the naked eye, and, of course, they’re playing into the hands of those forces that politically oppose Orbán and believe that publishing such materials could harm him,” Peskov told reporters when asked about a leaked transcript of Orbán’s phone call with Russia’s Putin last year, reported by Bloomberg.

Oh, that leaked call?:

Hungary’s Viktor Orbán offered to go to great lengths to help Vladimir Putin, telling the Russian leader “I am at your service” in an October call, it has emerged, prompting further scrutiny of Budapest’s ties to the Kremlin just as JD Vance arrived in the city.

On Tuesday, Bloomberg News said it had obtained a Hungarian government transcript of a call that took place between Orbán and Putin on 17 October, in which Orbán reportedly compared the relationship to that of a “mouse” standing ready to help the Russian “lion” as needed.

“Yesterday our friendship rose to such a high level that I can help in any way,” Orbán reportedly told Putin in the call. “In any matter where I can be of assistance, I am at your service.”

So. Tell me again:  Why is Vance there?

What do you want to talk about?

Carney Uses Fiscal Notes To Kill Legislation.  I’m With Shané Darby On This:

New corner convenience stores may soon be prohibited from opening in Delaware’s largest city.

Last week, the Wilmington City Council unanimously passed an ordinance that would place a moratorium on the businesses. The measure now awaits a signature from Mayor John Carney, whose office has not revealed whether he supports it.

Nevertheless, the City Council’s passage of the ordinance reflects growing concerns among city leaders that an over-concentration of corner stores is contributing to issues related to crime and  public health.

The concerns add to those around smoke shops in Wilmington, which prompted city leaders to approve a similar moratorium on those businesses in February.

Councilwoman Shané Darby said a moratorium on corner stores would give city officials time to conduct a formal assessment of the societal impacts of corner stores, many of which are located in Wilmington’s lower income neighborhoods.

Darby — who sponsored the corner store ordinance — asserted that many corner stores attract illegal activity, including groups of people who loiter outside them. She also noted that the stores sell relatively unhealthy products, such as processed foods, alcohol, tobacco, and lottery tickets.

“I think that our focus as a council should be … looking at these properties and saying, ‘how do we create healthy food options, grocery stores, cafes,’” Darby said about the formal “equity assessment” that would be completed if the ordinance is signed into law.

The council’s passage of the corner store moratorium comes more than a month after the city approved the similar moratorium on smoke shops.

Like Darby’s ordinance, the smoke shop moratorium was designed to give city officials time to assess the impact of the stores on communities.

Unlike Darby’s ordinance, the smoke shop moratorium does not come with a fiscal note, which is an estimated cost to the city of the proposed legislation.  

According to a city estimate, the Wilmington Department of Land Use and Planning would be in charge of completing the corner store “equity impact assessment” at a cost of $250,000.

During Thursday’s City Council discussion of Darby’s corner store legislation, Councilmembers Chris Johnson and Alex Hackett expressed concerns about why it included a fiscal impact while the smoke shop moratorium did not.

In a response during the council meeting, Darby claimed that the steep cost estimate came from the Carney Administration’s dislike for certain council members.

“They use this as a weapon. I’m telling this to the public. They’ll use fiscal impact notes as a weapon so that you can’t get things passed through,” Darby said.

Yes, yes they, I mean ‘he’, does.  He’s never been more than a blinkered green eye-shade guy who Carper adopted as his nepo baby.  He sucks multitudes.

Will Trump Officially Become A War Criminal Tonight?:

If Iran does not agree to reopen the Strait of Hormuz by Tuesday at 8 p.m. Eastern time, Mr. Trump has threatened to launch a massive attack targeting bridges, power plants and other civilian facilities that would, in his words, send Iran “back to the Stone Ages.” But the president has also extended self-imposed deadlines in recent weeks, and diplomats around the world were asking whether Mr. Trump would find an off-ramp again or if he would follow through this time with what could be a gigantic conflagration.

Here’s his latest pronouncement:

A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will. However, now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen, WHO KNOWS?

We will find out tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World. 47 years of extortion, corruption, and death, will finally end. God Bless the Great People of Iran!

I’ll say it again:  If all Democrats can do is to scream bloody murder, then they should all be screaming bloody murder.  I mean today could indeed yield a truly-cataclysmic event in world history brought on by our madman of a President.  Where the fuck are the Democrats? If there’s a Blue Wave this fall, it will only be due to a resounding public rejection of Trump and the Rethugs, it will have nothing to do with the virtue and strength of the Democratic Party, which is close to non-existent.

Without being aware of it, I’ve sort-of morphed into something of an isolationist.  We haven’t really been a democratic country at least since Citizens Unite.  Capitalism seems to benefit pretty much the same people who have used Citizens United to pollute the idea of free and fair elections.  We have demonstrated that we’re no longer trustworthy–to the extent that we ever were.  I’d have no problem if China took the lead for awhile. Any thoughts?  What could they do that’s worse than what Trump has done?

More From Our Bizarro World:

Across the country, Republican-led state legislatures are passing a slate of laws that effectively shield oil and gas companies from legal claims that they are responsible for the destruction and mounting toll caused by climate change. Fifteen laws have either been passed or are currently being debated in 11 states. Together, they threaten to remove long-standing tools for the public to hold corporations accountable.

A ProPublica investigation has found that most of these bills are part of a coordinated effort, orchestrated by a constellation of groups that share staff or have funding ties to the prominent conservative activist Leonard Leo, who is credited with placing conservative justices on the U.S. Supreme Court. These groups have drafted state legislation, planned its dissemination and engaged a well-connected lobbying firm to get them signed into law.

Y’see, they know, just as we know, that these oil and gas companies were well aware of the environmental destruction that they caused.  At some point there will come be a reckoning.  Unless–they do this.

Trump’s Incompetence Might Be The Only Thing That Saves Us.  Take California, for example:

Donald Trump endorsed former Fox News host Steve Hilton on Monday morning, a move that’s likely to diminish the GOP’s chances of locking Democrats out of the general election for governor of California.

Democrats have spent months fearing that Hilton and Riverside County Sheriff ​​Chad Bianco, who is the other prominent Republican in the race, could both advance out of the June 2 top-two primary if the large field of Democratic candidates divides up the state’s considerably larger bloc of liberal voters too much for any one of them to move forward.

While such a nightmare scenario has always been unlikely, as The Downballot explained in a January analysis, those worries have overshadowed much of the conversation about the race to replace term-limited Democrat Gavin Newsom.

The Los Angeles Times last month published a column titled, “Scary time for California Democrats,” and other state, national, and even international outlets have also focused their coverage on whether the Golden State’s unusual election laws could result in a GOP pickup in June.

Trump’s decision to back Hilton, though, gives Hilton the opportunity to consolidate Republican support and to make Bianco an afterthought—an outcome that would make it almost impossible for the sheriff to deprive Democrats of a spot in the general election.

Oh, the guy who didn’t get Trump’s endorsement?  He’s leaning heavily into–wait for it–transphobia:

Bianco, for his part, responded to Trump’s snub by using transphobia to question Hilton’s conservative credentials. The sheriff tweeted a picture of Hilton and Newsom embracing with the caption, “Find someone who looks at you like Gavin Newsom looks at Steve Hilton when they attend events for charities promoting gender confusion in children together.”

What do you want to talk about?

Delaware Rethugs–Coal Power To The Rescue?:

The Indian River Power Plant shut down the last coal-fired energy generators in Delaware a year ago, but the hulking industrial site near Millsboro has emerged at the center of a debate over whether it could factor into the state’s energy future.

As new, high-demand energy users like hyper-scale data centers seek to soak up more electricity while aging infrastructure raises concerns about future power grid reliability, energy experts and elected officials alike are brainstorming ways to meet future demand in a region of declining energy supply.

In regulatory filings, NRG blamed economics rather than politics or regulations for the need to close the Indian River power plant, noting that it had incurred financial losses for two consecutive years.

In June 2021, the company announced that it would close three different coal-fired power plants after revenue from the springtime energy auction dropped below $50 a megawatt per day, or a decline of more than 60% from the prior year.

That came at a time of great excess in energy supply when new natural gas-fired plants and renewable energy resources like solar and wind were pushing down costs for now comparatively small energy demands coming out of the COVID pandemic. This was also a time before the current rush to build hyper-scale data centers.

Coal is also a more expensive energy source, from the raw material to operation of the plant and disposal of the coal ash produced in its waste to implementation of scrubbers to reduce air pollution. By operating a coal-fired plant rather than building more efficient plants running on cheaper inputs, NRG was effectively cutting into its revenues – so it pulled the plug.

After reading the entire article, my takeaway was the the reopening is unlikely, but. not impossible.

“It’s Not Just A Phase, He’s Really Gone For Good This Time”:

“Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP”

Perhaps another war authorization vote is in order, along with the application of the 25th Amendment.

Saudi Arabia Pulling The Strings?  Josh Marshall thinks so:

There is another part of this equation which I do not think has gotten sufficient focus. On March 24th The New York Times published an article which reported that the Mohammad bin Salman (MBS), the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, has told President Trump that he needs to finish the job, overthrow the Iranian regime or render it so feeble that it cannot threaten anyone – the second condition likely being impossible without achieving the first. As the Times put it (emphasis added), “Prince Mohammed has conveyed to Mr. Trump that he must press toward the destruction of Iran’s hard-line government.”

Placing a story like this in the Times, is about as clear and as audacious a message a Saudi ruler can send to the US government without purchasing a nationwide 30 second ad campaign. I interpret this as him saying: just to be sure the message is getting through or in case you’re getting the message and not sharing it with your people. Trump whacked a hornets nest and MBS says now Trump needs to remove the nest. It can’t be left in place. He needs to overthrow or defang the Iranian regime. The status quo is unacceptable, whatever nonsense of the day Trump may be saying about the Strait not being his problem.

The common thinking in the US is that President Trump either blundered his way into this mess or was goaded into it by Benjamin Netanyahu. There’s a bit of truth to the second idea and a lot to the first. But it’s MBS and the leader of the UAE along with other gulf princes who are really Trump’s guys, much more than Benjamin Netanyahu. The way the Trump White House has interwoven US security, money and geopolitics with them runs much deeper. And, critically and relatedly, the Trump family’s business ties with them are infinitely deeper.

Ah, yes. That.

US District Courts To The Rescue?:

District court judges nationwide have been increasingly issuing strong rulings challenging the legality of many of Donald Trump’s policies and executive power grabs, blocking key ones at least temporarily, and sparking angry responses from the president, former judges and prosecutors say.

Since the start of Trump’s second term, lower court federal judges have written sharply critical opinions about his legally dubious policies on immigration, tariffs, Department of Justice (DoJ) prosecutions of political foes and more.

The impact of the court rulings by these judges has been sizable, slowing or halting some of the president’s most extreme policies and prompting Trump and Maga allies to respond with vindictive attacks that have helped to fuel some threats against several judges.

Legal experts say the spate of adverse court rulings has created an often toxic courtroom climate for administration lawyers who have been upbraided sharply by judges for making false or tenuous representations in defense of Trump policies.

Former DoJ lawyers credit many district court judges for acting as crucial buffers against Trump’s power grabs and administration disdain for the rule of law.

“District court judges around the country, appointed by Republican and Democratic presidents alike, are serving as the strongest guardrail against the incursions on the rule of law,” ex-DoJ inspector general Michael Bromwich said.

What do you want to talk about?

The ‘Braiding’ Of Western Scientific Knowledge With Indigenous Culture.  My kind of synergyL

“I’m a glorified clam counter.”

So said Marco Hatch, a marine ecologist at Western Washington University and an enrolled member of the Samish Indian Nation. Hatch has been conducting surveys of mollusks growing in and around clam gardens in the Pacific north-west, as he collaborates with seven Indigenous communities to build or rebuild these rock-walled, terraced beaches once created and tended by their ancestors.

Hatch’s surveys in service of this reclamation are rooted in western scientific methodology and increase understanding about beach ecology and clam health. But, just as important, the data Hatch provides can help these nations obtain the local, state and federal permits they need to maintain or re-engineer these structures. And that helps them assert greater control over their heritage and regain food sovereignty for their communities.

Rather than dismissing Indigenous knowledge, more western scientists are discovering its viability for themselves and adjusting their research goals to embrace it.

That represents a “massive shift”, according to Kyle Whyte, a professor of environmental justice at the University of Michigan and a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. Historically, western scientists have considered themselves rigorous and empirical, while they have classified traditional Native thought as mythic, religious or plain made-up, he said.

In fact, a long-overdue “braiding” of Native and western knowledge is becoming ever more common. Prominent Native authors such as Vine Deloria Jr have pointed out Native environmental practices in books for popular audiences. They’ve theorized, as the Alaskan native scholar Oscar Kawagley described it, “native ways of knowing”. More Indigenous people – Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass, is a notable example – are entering academia and changing it from the inside, while some tribal nations have hired their own scientists.

Kisha Supernant, who is Métis and Papaschase and the director of the University of Alberta’s Institute of Prairie and Indigenous Archaeology, said that Indigenous knowledge contained “a rich history of observation, experimentation and understanding that has its own systems of rigor”. Such rigor is evident in places like the clam gardens that Hatch studies. Beginning at least 4,000 years ago, Native communities built clam gardens into the intertidal zone from Washington state through coastal British Columbia, and into south-east Alaska.

A lengthy read, but both essential and encouraging.

This Is A War Photo:

‘War is part of the human soul’ … Night Raid, Rawa, Iraq, 2006. Photograph: Peter van Agtmael/Magnum

“I took this picture during my first time in Iraq, 20 years ago. It was the first entry in a body of work about the US post-9/11, at home and at war, which has occupied a good chunk of my professional life for the last two decades. I had turned 25 the week before and it was a formative journey on a personal level. It was the first time I experienced war, and my understanding of my country and its relationship to the world developed in the crucible of this extremely violent situation, which was descending into civil war while I was there.

I had been embedded in Iraq with the US military for six weeks or so at this point, and had taken some good pictures. But this one was different and it still means something to me today. It was the first I had taken that wasn’t overtly channeling the history of war photography – which largely focuses on violence, horror and victims. Those are important things to show, but I wanted to understand this particular conflict, and how my position as an American of the same generation as those fighting could help me interpret it for the public. I guess the image crystallized something I had seen – this vast machine of military might mobilised in the Middle East; the momentum of all these young men with powerful weapons patrolling cities in search of people identified as enemies of America, enemies of democracy.

The soldiers would go into the homes of people they deemed suspicious, most of whom did not fit the definition of terrorist but some of whom did define as actively resisting occupation. The soldiers would search the houses of these “suspected terrorists”, and usually they found nothing.

With all this money, weaponry and rhetoric, an anonymous living room like this one, that could be my grandma’s, showed the reality of what I saw on the ground. A dejected soldier sitting in this domestic space.

To me, it’s a picture of that particular conflict, but it says something more enduring about the nature of war. The incongruity of the soldier in the domestic surroundings shows how absurd, and how close to us, war is. Insane violence continues amid absolutely normal life. I think it expresses that war is part of the human soul – in civilised society we tend to forget that. It’s disconcerting, but it reminds me that we’re animalistic.

History has shown that there’s a very, very narrow pathway to externally created regime change. When I was in Iraq, the war had already started spiralling out of control. Iraq and Afghanistan were both unmitigated failures, on every level. It’s very hard to be optimistic now.”

Some Call It–‘Dog-Wop’.  They can even ‘auto-tune’:

If your dog, or one you’ve seen in a viral video, howls along to music or another dog’s howls like it’s trying to sing a song, it’s not just making some random noise in response to external stimuli. That dog might actually be trying to match the sound’s pitch.

A small study (one dog, perhaps?) published in Current Biology suggests that some domestic dogs can adjust the pitch of their howls to match sounds they hear, a behavior that has been previously observed in wolves. Researchers wanted to test the ability of fine-tuning vocal pitch during group howling to see whether this trait is a lingering remnant that survived domestication or if it faded away along with some other wild traits on the wolves’ path to becoming our sweet, lovable doggy companions.

Certain dog breeds are considered ancient, like Samoyeds and Shiba Inus, because their genetic lineage is a lot closer to wolves than most other dog breeds. The researchers recruited owners of some of these dogs and played them some of the usual sounds dogs howl at, like songs and emergency vehicle sirens. They then altered those recordings just a bit by shifting the pitch up or down. Then they sat back and just waited for the dogs to respond, if they responded at all.

There wasn’t a single, uniform discovery, but a small, noticeable pattern arose. Three of the four Samoyeds involved adjusted the pitch of their howls to better match songs like “Believer” by Imagine Dragons and “Shallow” by Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper from the soundtrack of A Star Is Born. From that phrasing, you’d think the fourth dog did nothing, but actually did something a bit fascinating: it modified the pitch but then also modified the tonal quality of the sound, aka its spectral centroid. The Shiba Inus are less musically inclined. They didn’t change pitch, but one of them did alter the spectral centroid.

The ability to pitch shift is something most humans can do naturally. And it’s only been about 100 years since we figured out how to do it technologically, and soon, applying it to music post-production processing. Nowadays, you might better know it as one of the most popular (and arguably overused) pieces of audio processing software in the music industry: auto-tune, the thing that makes good singers sound great and bad singers sound like robots.

Ho-kay.  In this AI Age, I have no idea if this story is true.  I’ll just have to discuss this with my ChatBot, who is the most real person I know.

This voice was all-too human.  One of the most expressive and empathic voices I’ve ever heard in rock.  XPN devoted an entire hour to him on Friday b/c he’s been dead for 40 years.  Today, we close out with THREE songs from Richard Manuel–one he wrote and sang lead on from ‘Music From Big Pink’, another from ‘Big Pink’ that he co-wrote with Bob Dylan (he wrote the music, Bob the lyrics) and perhaps my favorite vocal of his from a song on ‘The Band’ their second album:

NCC Marcus Henry On NCC’s Budget Deficit.  Read and/or listen:

Henry says the county’s $42 million deficit stems from issues like using one-time federal relief funds to cover recurring operating expenses, while using reserves to fund permanent costs.

Henry offers one example of how that played out.

“There was an increase back in 2024 where the police salary compensation that was paid for out of tax stabilization reserve funds, which is not something you typically do to pay for operational expenses. So that was like $8.5-9 million that came on to the operational budget, when I took office, along with all the other increases that we’ve seen,” said Henry.

Other issues include Former County Exec and current Gov. Matt Meyer’s 2024 one time five percent property tax credit which cost the county $6 million and $2.5 million to pay for issues, appeals, and litigation costs associated with the reassessment process.

Henry is proposing a series of moves to close the budget gap including the 17.2% property tax increase and defunding 56 vacant non-essential jobs.

Those vacant jobs not being filled creates a savings of $5.7 million for the county.

While he proposed defunding vacant jobs, one thing Henry did not think about is layoffs or salary cuts.

Delaware Launches ‘Know Your Rights’ Campaign To Combat ICE.  Here’s what you need to know.  Have you ever wondered (I have) what Carney would have done if he were still Governor?

Trump Has His Priorities Straight.  Asks For $1.5 Trillion For ‘Defense’, Deep Cuts In Social Programs:

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has proposed boosting defense spending to $1.5 trillion in his 2027 budget released Friday, the largest such request in decades, reflecting his emphasis on U.S. military investments over domestic programs.

The sizable increase for the Pentagon, some 44%, had been telegraphed by the Republican president even before the U.S.-led war against Iran. The president’s plan would also reduce spending on non-defense programs by 10%.

“President Trump promised to reinvest in America’s national security infrastructure, to make sure our nation is safe in a dangerous world,” wrote Budget Director Russell Vought.

“We’re fighting wars. We can’t take care of day care,” Trump said at a private White House event Wednesday.

“It’s not possible for us to take care of day care, Medicaid, Medicare — all these individual things,” he said. “They can do it on a state basis. You can’t do it on a federal.”

This, of course, is his request.  Will Rethugs reject it outright?  They should, they might, but they’re Rethugs.

You Just Know That Trump and Hegseth Are Praying That The Pilot Is Dead.  Last thing they want is him showing up on Iranian TV:

The downing of a U.S. fighter jet over Iranian territory and the intense search for one of its crew members has raised concerns that the airman could be captured and provide Iran with a potent asset that it could use for leverage against the United States.

The rescue operation for the missing airman was in its second day on Saturday, with not only American troops conducting an all-out search but the Iranian military also trying to find the crew member, according to three Iranian officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss military operations.

In one indication of Iran’s eagerness to find the airman, an anchor for a local affiliate of Iran’s state broadcaster read a statement on Friday on television calling on residents to capture the “enemy’s pilot or pilots” and turn them over alive to security forces for a reward.

The possibility that Iran could capture the airman raises the specter of a replay of the 1979 Iran hostage crisis, a traumatizing event in American history that laid the foundation for nearly five decades of hostile U.S.-Iranian relations.

In fairness, the pilot is a ‘loser’, just like John McCain.

I’ve chosen not to go down the MAGA rabbit holes.  However, this article spells out the who, what, where, and why of the forces splitting MAGA apart. Even weirder than you might have thought. You will enjoy it, so, please check it out:

Often political movements end up as circular firing squads, especially when there’s a competition for leadership. The same can be true for cults. With Trump’s misnamed Make America Great Again cult movement, the firing squad is shaped more like a Möbius strip. In the past year or so, MAGA World has been racked with a series of cross-cutting feuds, with incoming and outgoing fire ricocheting across the Trumpian landscape in all directions, causing chaos and confusion, as multiple conspiracy theories clash and vitriolic accusations pile up. An outsider cannot keep track of the infighting without a program or a wire diagram that would make Carrie Mathison proud.

You may have caught particular episodes in this sweeping saga. One of the main ones occurred when Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and commentator Tucker Carlson got into a dust-up last year over Israel, with Carlson, an America First anti-interventionist, decrying Cruz for being a pro-Israel warmonger and Cruz slamming Carlson for hosting on his show Nick Fuentes, the antisemitic white nationalist and Hitler fanboy. Cruz accused Carlson of being “complicit in…evil” for platforming Fuentes. This tiff led to a civil war inside the influential Heritage Foundation between those who backed Carlson (including its president) and those who found his association with Fuentes despicable.

This row reflected a deepening fault line among Trump followers between isolationists and hawks, with Israel as the fulcrum and antisemitism (actual or false charges of) imbuing the debate.

With this baseline split, it was no surprise that the Iran war has led to more MAGA-on-MAGA catfighting. Fox News loudmouths Sean Hannity, Brian Kilmeade, and Mark Levin, along with conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, have been cheerleaders for Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu’s war against Tehran, with Carlson and Megyn Kelly blaming Israel for dragging Trump and the United States into this conflict.

Kelly complained the war was sold to the American public by “Israel firsters, like Mark Levin.” He retorted by calling Kelly an “emotionally unhinged, lewd and petulant wreck.” Then it got nasty. Kelly asserted that Levin had a small penis. He said she was a slut. I’m not making this up.

Adjacent to this fight over Israel and the Iran war, much of the internecine warfare within MAGA has been driven by an absurd conflict between commentator Candace Owens and Erika Kirk, the widow of Turning Point USA chieftain Charlie Kirk. Owens used to be a hotshot at The Daily Wire, a conservative media operation co-founded by Shapiro. But she and Shapiro had a bitter falling out two years ago, as Owens blended her criticism of Israel with explicit antisemitism. She departed and started her own podcast, where she built a massive audience of millions promoting extremism and conspiracy theories.

After Charlie Kirk was shot in September, Owens, who once worked at TPUSA, devoted hours of her show to promoting the conspiracy theory that he had been betrayed by close colleagues and killed by Egypt and France. Or maybe Israel. Or maybe the US government. She suggested that Kirk was about to leave the pro-Israel cause, and this led to his execution by one or more of these nefarious powers. And it gets more bizarre: Owens insisted she had proof that Egyptian military planes had been tracking Erika Kirk for years. I will spare you more of the bonkers details; there are plenty of them. (Another one of Owens’ prominent conspiracy theories is that French President Emmanuel Macron’s wife is really a man, and she alleged Macron had ordered her assassination for outing this secret.)

There’s plenty more.  Don’t tell me you don’t want to read the rest of it.

What do you want to talk about?

Carney’s New Tents Not ‘Soak-Proof’:  Suh-prize, suh-prize.  Hey, man, the City can’t afford decent tents.  You know, ‘budget-smoothing’:

The city of Wilmington is assessing its next steps after a heavy rain soaked through newly city-issued tents to unhoused people living in Christina Park.

Mayor John Carney’s office and the site manager, the nonprofit organization Friendship House, placed about 20 wooden platforms in a grid along one side of the park on Wednesday and then erected the lightweight tents on top.

But a downpour just hours later drenched the fabric and soaked the platforms, leaving several unhoused residents of the Eastside park cold and wet as they emerged from the city-bought tents. The tents were visibly wet Thursday morning.

Already a tent village, the city is allowing people to sleep in Christina Park as part of a long-term plan to address rising homelessness. But a mandate requiring the unhoused to move out of their own tents into the city ones, along with other strict rules, is angering residents and activists and led to confrontations Wednesday.

Carney’s office says it was told they were waterproof, which means impervious to water. But the tents are listed online as being water-resistant, which amounts to a basic protection against rain events.  (‘Carney’s office’?  What presumably human said this?)

Did Bud Freel open up an Army Surplus Store, or something?

To be fair, Carney on his own would not have come up with ‘drowning’ as the solution to Wilmington’s homeless challenges.  His vision is too blinkered, although his lack of empathy would no doubt have been stimulated .  I blame Buccini/Pollin.  Just because.  Bet they’re having a good laugh over this at some City Chamber Of Commerce luncheon.

Stoopid City Council Trix:

Wilmington City Council has put an unusual quirk in their election process into the hands of state lawmakers.

Council voted 9-1 (1 absent, 2 present) to ask the Delaware General Assembly to change the city’s charter to require at least one member of a non-majority party to have an at-large party, and if they are the only seated member of that party, they cannot switch to the majority party while in office.

That scenario came into play last October, when City Councilman James Spadola announced he had switched from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party, making the 13-member body entirely Democratic.

Spadola won his seat despite receiving just 9.4% of the at-large votes, by being the top non-Democrat.

Under Wilmington’s charter, parties can only nominate three candidates for the general election, and then voters can only select three candidates, even though four seats are ultimately determined in the race.

With all due respect (not much), this is a Wilmington issue.  Due to an unexpected set of circumstances.  There is nothing to stop, say, an independent candidate who supports, say, the Working Families Party, from running.  Once bit, twice shy.  Wilmington City Council has decided they can’t/won’t address this issue.  Neither should the General Assembly.

Dover–Almost As Dysfunctional As Wilmington:

Dover Mayor Robin Christiansen’s absence from city meetings over the past month, amid controversy over a homeless shelter in the city and the ousting of the city manager, has raised eyebrows in the capital city.

Both residents and city council members expressed concerns that Christiansen’s prolonged absence violated the city charter — justifying his removal from office. But Christiansen rebuffed the claims of his wrongdoing, and a Spotlight Delaware review of city code revealed stipulations in the policy that could support the Mayor’s claims.

This is a personal pet peeve.  I hate the term ‘raised eyebrows’. Not just because Celia Cohen included it in virtually every story she wrote.  But because I can’t get this image of ‘eyebrows’ being raised by the hundreds every time I see the phrase.  Thank you, doctor.  Same time next week?  But, I digress:

Christiansen last attended a city council meeting on Jan. 12. He was not present for the three subsequent meetings on Feb. 25, March 9 and March 23.

This three-meeting absence is what critics say is cause for Christiansen’s removal. According to the city charter, the mayor forfeits his office if he “fails to attend three consecutive regular meetings of the council without being excused by the council.”

But Christiansen said his absences were, in fact, excused. He contracted the flu in late February, he said, which turned into other illnesses and forced him to spend more than a week in the hospital.

Christiansen said he disclosed this information to City Council President Fred Neil, excusing his three absences. He declined to provide more details, but Neil confirmed he had been in communication with the mayor about reasons for missing recent meetings.

So. We’ve sorta establihhed that Chritiansen, Neil, and likely no other council members, knew about this.  Which reminds me–does Andria Bennett still have her sinecure there?

Isn’t Everything That Pete Hegseth Is Doing Illegal?  Trump won’t fire him because, you know, machismo.  But he’s completely lost the rank-and file:

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth fired Gen. Randy George, the Army’s chief of staff, on Thursday, a move that reflects growing hostility between Mr. Hegseth and the Army’s leadership, military officials said.

General George, who was appointed to his position in 2023, led the Army out of one of its worst recruiting crises in history in 2024 and more recently has pushed the service to accelerate its acquisition of cheap drones and other kinds of weapons that have come to dominate the war in Ukraine.

The tension with Mr. Hegseth was not rooted in substantive differences over the direction of the Army, military officials said. Rather it is the product of Mr. Hegseth’s long-running grievances with the Army, battles over personnel and his troubled relationship with Army Secretary Daniel P. Driscoll, the officials said.

Trump and Hegseth ahare the same sense of victimhood, making retribution their go-to moves.  As in, say, Black and female generals.

Mr. Hegseth has also clashed in recent months with General George and Mr. Driscoll over the defense secretary’s decision to block the promotion of four Army officers to be one-star generals.

Two of the officers targeted by Mr. Hegseth are Black and two are women on a promotion list that consisted of 29 other officers, most of whom are white men. Mr. Hegseth’s highly unusual decision to remove the officers prompted some senior military officials to question whether they were being singled out because of their race or gender, officials said.

Mr. Hegseth had been pressing Mr. Driscoll and General George for months to remove the officers from the promotion list. But Mr. Driscoll and General George refused, citing the officers’ long records of exemplary service.

Hegseth is every bit as mentally-ill as Trump.  To state the obvious.

Trump’s New Acting AG?  One of his (many) former defense counsels:

In recent years, Todd Blanche has been the lawyer President Trump has turned to, over and over, in his times of need.

It was Mr. Blanche who defended Mr. Trump in three of the four criminal cases he was facing, losing one to the Manhattan district attorney’s office but effectively winning two against the special counsel Jack Smith.

It was Mr. Blanche who took the No. 2 position at the Justice Department, stepping in as deputy attorney general to run the agency day to day, when Mr. Trump was re-elected.

Mr. Blanche, 51, brings a mixed record to the job. He has spent the past year or so enabling the wholesale politicization of the Justice Department and losing the trust of many federal judges while still serving as a last-ditch bulwark against the president’s most extreme attempts to seek vengeance against his enemies.

He has overseen the destruction of the department’s traditional norms of independence from the White House, often treating Mr. Trump not as a chief executive who could benefit from his legal advice but rather as a loudmouthed client whose orders must be followed.

At the same time, he has on occasion shown himself to be loyal to his roots as a former federal prosecutor trained in the Southern District of New York and has held off some of the president’s most impulsive efforts to open criminal cases unsupported by the evidence.

While it remains unclear how long Mr. Blanche will remain in his new job, whoever ends up replacing him — if, indeed, he is replaced — will step into a department that he has shaped in his own image. More than most Justice Departments, where the center of power typically resides in the attorney general’s office, this Justice Department has been largely guided by Mr. Blanche’s office.

What do you want to talk about?

Guaranteed:  John Carney  Will Screw Up Policy For The Homeless Whether He Intends To Or Not:

A chaotic scene unfolded during a sunny Wednesday afternoon at Christina Park as Wilmington officials attempted to carry out a plan to move residents of a city-sanctioned homeless encampment out of their personal tents and into government-issued ones.

The effort drew protests from housing advocates and resistance from some residents, who feared the changes could threaten their property and disrupt the community.

The morning began calmly enough at the Eastside park as city workers prepared to place wooden pallets onto squares painted on the park’s grassy field, marking newly designated tent spots. Previously, residents of the encampment had chosen their own spaces, spreading throughout the park with tents, sofas, generators, and grills.

As the crews set up, several housing advocates also congregated, and could be seen speaking with encampment residents, city officials and police.

The mood was initially lighthearted but grew tense as the day progressed, with many advocates saying they became frustrated with city decisions to abruptly decrease the size of each tent plot, and to restrict the amount of belongings that residents could keep outside the tents. 

Also inflaming tensions was a rumor that spread during the day that a city official said police would arrest anyone who refused to move into the new tents. 

“They are threatening arrest,” housing advocate Shyanne Miller said through a megaphone as protesters gathered. “We are not having it.” 

Eventually, several of the advocates began to demonstrate against the city’s actions. Some even placed themselves behind a forklift to prevent work crews from setting up pallets on which the new tents would be placed.

Throughout the day, officials from Mayor John Carney’s office sought to defend their decision to move the encampment residents, stating that it was done out of concern for the park’s appearance, as well as to make it easier for paramedic crews to respond to emergencies in the community.

Asked if residents who didn’t move into the new tents would be arrested, Carney’s chief of staff, Cerron Cade, said that those who refuse to move to city-provided tents would have to leave the encampment entirely.

“We have to have some rules. And if folks don’t want to follow the rules, there’s no doors to the park. They can leave,” Cade said.

Yo, Cerron, is there a ‘No Shoplifting’ rule?  The worst people carrying out a terrible policy with no input from the people affected by the policy.  What did you expect from somebody as tone-deaf as John Carney?

ICE Strong-Arms Delaware Department Of Labor:

Delaware’s top federal judge grilled attorneys from the state Department of Labor as they argued against complying with federal immigration officials’ efforts to obtain information about businesses suspected of employing undocumented employees.

Delaware District Court Chief Judge Colm Connolly interrogated Jennifer-Kate Aaronson, an attorney with the Delaware Department of Labor, during a lengthy Wednesday morning hearing, in which he questioned the legal basis of Aaronson’s argument for not complying with an administrative subpoena from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Aaronson contended on Wednesday the subpoena is “overly burdensome,” and complying with it would hinder the normal operations of the state DOL. Disclosing the information, she added, would damage the trust between employers and the department. 

Providing the information to ICE also would jeopardize the State Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund, which is funded by employer contributions and provides unemployment benefits to eligible workers who are unemployed through no fault of their own, she said. 

Aaronson also argued that the DOL did not have to provide the information to ICE because the request fell under an exception in federal regulation law. 

The subpoena, which originated from “hotline tips” that ICE received, sought employees’ names, addresses, wages and Social Security numbers from 15 Delaware businesses, according to court records. ICE’s subpoena efforts align with the Trump administration’s broader strategy of using federal and state agency data to bolster its promised immigration enforcement push.

Trump Flaps Yap On TV, Says Nothing.  As a result, oil prices rise, stocks tank.  Guess he just did it for the attention:

Oil prices surged and stock markets sank on Thursday, hours after President Trump declared in a national television address that the U.S. military campaign against Iran would escalate and failed to offer a clear exit strategy, though he insisted the war was an overwhelming success.

On Wednesday night, in his first prime-time address from the White House since the United States and Israel launched strikes on Iran on Feb. 28, Mr. Trump vowed to hit Iran “extremely hard” and threatened to bomb Iran “back to the Stone Ages.” He repeated his threats to hit Iranian infrastructure, including electrical plants, unless a deal was struck.

Investors hoping for clearer signals of a de-escalation appeared disappointed. The price of Brent crude, the global benchmark for oil, jumped more than 7 percent in early trading on Thursday, the steepest daily rise in three weeks. Stock markets around the world fell, with indexes in Asia, where countries import vast quantities of oil and gas from the Middle East, hit particularly hard.

ChristianaCare Aims To Expand Expand Expand:

ChristianaCare announced Monday it is building a new $75 million inpatient rehabilitation facility for patients in need of physical, speech and occupational therapy near its Newark hospital.

Monday’s announcement comes as part of the hospital’s $865 million investment into health facilities across the state, and more than a month and a half after announcing a new $65 million campus in Georgetown.

Last month, the health care giant announced it aims to open a new $65 million campus in Georgetown. Months before that, it said it was building a health center dedicated to treating cancer in Middletown.

In Delaware, the prospect of an out-of-state merger was met with skepticism from Gov. Matt Meyer, who challenged the move when asked about it at a press conference in July.

“I think when any medical practice in Delaware, and especially nonprofit hospitals, get some positive return from serving Delawareans’ health, that money should be reinvested in Delaware, not in another state,” Meyer said.

If I remember correctly, there used to be a ‘certification of need’ program in Delaware to determine whether such expansions were necessary.  Pretty sure that Jack Markell deep-sixed that program.

So. Are these expansions necessary and/or warranted?  Matt Meyer is literally in bed with one of ChristianaCare’s primary advocates.  Is there someone with expertise in the field who can respond?  Someone impartial, I mean?

Good Courts/Bad Courts.  Quite the day in jurisprudence.

Good Courts:

Trump Acted Illegally On Homeless Grants.  Hey, they’re homeless. Trump will make sure they can’t vote.

Trump Illegally Destroyed The East Wing.  In his defense, when has he ever sought permits before going ahead with destruction?  Gotta say, though, this was truly insane.

Trump Illegally Cut Funds For Public Media.  By now, of course, much of the damage may be irreversible.

Bad Courts:

‘Show Us Your Jews’.  Hitler would approve.

When It Comes To Teh Trans, Propaganda (much like campaign financing) Is First Amendment-protected Free Speech.

How Trump’s War Has Impacted The World In Ways Both Great And Small.  BTW, one reason why the NYTimes is thriving is due to their creative displays of the news.  As in this piece.  Check it out.

In related news, Bondi Dropped 23,000 Cases Because Of War Against Immigrants:

In the first days after Pam Bondi was appointed attorney general last year, the Department of Justice began shutting down pending criminal cases at a record pace.

The cases included an investigation into a Virginia nursing home with a recent record of patient abuse; probes of fraud involving several New Jersey labor unions, including one opened after a top official of a national union was accused of embezzlement; and an investigation into a cryptocurrency company suspected of cheating investors.

In total, the DOJ quietly closed more than 23,000 criminal cases in the first six months of President Donald Trump’s administration, abandoning hundreds of investigations into terrorism, white-collar crime, drugs and other offenses as it shifted resources to pursue immigration cases, according to an analysis by ProPublica.

In February 2025 alone, which included the first weeks of Bondi’s tenure, nearly 11,000 cases were declined, the most in a month since at least 2004. The previous high was just over 6,500 cases in September 2019, during Trump’s first administration.

Some of the cases shut down were the result of yearslong investigations by federal agencies such as the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration. For complex cases, the DOJ can take years before deciding whether to bring charges.

The shift comes as the DOJ has undergone an extraordinary overhaul under the Trump administration, with entire units shuttered, directives to abandon pursuit of certain crimes and thousands of lawyers quitting or, in some cases, being forced out of the agency.

In doing so, the DOJ is retreating from its mission to impartially uphold the rule of law, keep the country safe and protect civil rights, according to interviews with a dozen prosecutors and an open letter from nearly 300 DOJ employees who have left the department under Trump. The Trump DOJ, the employees wrote, is “taking a sledgehammer” to long-standing work to “protect communities and the rule of law.”

In fairness, I’m sure many of these no-longer-under-investigation ne’er-do-wells will ante up for Trump’s magnificent Library Without Books, coming eventually to Miami.

Trump To Declare Victory And To Leave It To Others To Clean Up His Mess?  He’s on TV tonight.  I won’t be watching.  You know, anger management issues.

President Trump is set to address the nation on the Iran war at 9 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesday night, with White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt saying he would be providing “an important update,” without providing further details.

On Tuesday, Trump said he expected the conflict to be over in two to three weeks, adding, “we’ll be leaving very soon,” and promising gas prices would then “come tumbling down.”

Trump shrugged off what would happen to the blockaded Strait of Hormuz – which has cut off one fifth of the world’s oil supply – saying, “we’re not going to have anything to do with it.” He said that it wouldn’t affect the U.S. and would be something for other countries to deal with.

“They’ll be able to fend for themselves,” he said, having previously told European allies who have refused to enter the war to “go get your own oil!”

The assertion to wrap up the war quickly comes just days after Trump threatened to up the ante if there was no deal and Tehran didn’t reopen the strait. He said he could seize Iran’s oil and blow up all of their Electric Generating Plants and desalinization plants. He also said he was considering an invasion of Iran’s key oil export terminal, Kharg Island.

Sounds like he’s beating a hasty retreat.  What will be his next attempted diversion from the Epstein Files?  Betcha we won’t have to wait long.   Cuba’s looking attractive…

Hegseth Carries Kid Rock’s Water:

Defense secretary Pete Hegseth said the crews of two US army AH-64 Apache helicopters that hovered next to the singer Kid Rock’s swimming pool while he clapped and saluted on Saturday are no longer suspended.

“No punishment. No investigation,” Hegseth wrote on social media. “Carry on, patriots.”

Are they available for birthday parties?  I know they’re not available for Bar/Bat Mitzvahs.  You know,  Because Jews have no place in Hegseth’s Army Of Christian Soldiers.  Which reminds me–a few days back, I asked if anyone knew who wrote the music to ‘Onward, Christian Soldiers’.  Nobody responded.  Turns out it was Sir Arthur Sullivan of Gilbert & Sullivan fame.  I didn’t know, either.

What do you want to talk about?

Rethugs Go After Delaware’s Voter Info.  You know, b/c the 2020 election was stolen:

Republican National Committee v. Anthony J. Albence, in his official capacity as State Election Commissioner of Delaware

Plaintiff seeks an order compelling defendant to allow plaintiff access to Delaware’s voter maintenance list in order to review programs designed to update and make accurate voter registration rolls.

Oh, the attorney for the plainfiff?  This guy:

Theodore Allan Kittila
Halloran Farkas and Kittila LLP

Yup, Ted ‘Horsey D’ Kittila.   How did he earn his Horsey D monicker, you ask?:

A lawsuit filed in Delaware Chancery Court seeks to force a local hospital to use a controversial treatment for COVID-19.

David DeMarco, 54, of Brandywine Hundred was hospitalized with COVID-19 on September 7, 2021, according to a complaint filed on September 17, 2021. Since being hospitalized, he’s not responded to various treatments including anti-inflammatory, anti-viral, and steroid drugs administered at Wilmington Hospital, the complaint claims.

An attorney for the DeMarcos, Ted Kittila, told WDEL Monday that DeMarco was moved to home hospice care Sunday, but has since been transferred back to the ICU, where he’s been intubated with mechanical ventilation. He did not answer whether DeMarco was vaccinated against COVID-19.

My snarky rejoinder:

Without the horse dewormer, the lawsuit alleges, this guy is headed for the Last Roundup.  They found some doctor in Milton to write a scrip for the dewormer which, of course, has not been shown to have any medical value whatsoever in the treatment of COVID, but which has become yet the latest ‘miracle cure’ touted by the RWNJ’s.  A cynic might suggest, “If you’re gonna take horse dewormer, why didn’t you just get the shot?”  But I’m no cynic.

Oh, and Ted Kittila?  He got 39.2% of the vote against Matt Denn as the Rethug candidate for AG in 2014.  39.2% then is just about 38% now when it comes to the R ceiling statewide in Delaware.

Did Rockford Center Improperly Drug Patients?:

Tia Wright found her 22-year-old son, Darrian, in the emergency room on an early Saturday morning last year. Hours before he arrived at Christiana Hospital, he received a powerful sedative cocktail inside one of Delaware’s psychiatric facilities.

Darrian, who has an intellectual disability that limits his cognitive function, voluntarily admitted himself to the Rockford Center in Newark after telling his mother he wanted to die.

He woke up in the emergency room less than 48 hours later.

At the time of his admission to Rockford, Darrian weighed less than 115 pounds. And during his short stay, Darrian received multiple medications on top of a shot of Benadryl, Ativan, and Zyprexa, a potent combination meant to subdue patients during outbursts, his medical records show.

An independent psychiatrist who reviewed a redacted copy of Darrian’s medical records said he received a large amount of sedating medications when accounting for his body weight. The psychiatrist also said he would not have given such a powerful combination considering Darrian’s weight and the medications already in his system.

Once Darrian left the emergency room, his mother said he had side effects from the medications for weeks. Wright’s story mirrors that of another mother who claims Rockford overmedicated her then-8-year-old daughter, leading to hallucinations that told her to harm herself and others.

The accounts also come after state regulators documented the psychiatric hospital’s repeated violation of patient safety rules in 2022 and 2024. Rockford had regularly given children medications without their, or their parents’, consent, according to inspectors’ reports.

Additionally, two former employees who spoke with Spotlight Delaware said they believe de-escalation processes were not utilized enough in the facility.

The claims reveal a pattern of questionable, if not impermissible, druggings of vulnerable patients. And after turning to Rockford as one of the only care options of its kind in Delaware, patients and their families say they were left searching for recourse against a facility that did more to harm than help.

Recourse that they say has often proven hard to find.

Isn’t it nice to have quality investigative reporting here in Delaware?

Q:  When Is A Ballroom Not A Ballroom? 

A: When it’s a ‘shed’ to cover up a no-longer top secret military installation hiding underneath. Why is it no longer top secret?  Read on:

What if President Donald Trump’s ballroom wasn’t just an ugly vessel for his obsession with gold-plated detritus? And what if it wasn’t just a way to bribe the president or a way to turn Washington into Mar-a-Lago 2.0? What if it was also … a shed?

Yes, a shed.

“The ballroom essentially becomes a shed for what’s being built under the military, including from drones and including from any other thing,” Trump said.

That sentence makes no sense, as nothing is being built under “the military,” so let’s try that again.

“The military is building a big complex under the ballroom, which has come out recently because of a stupid lawsuit that was filed,” Trump said. “But the military is building a massive complex under the ballroom, and that’s under construction, and we’re doing very well. So we’re ahead of schedule.”

Trump didn’t explain how the existence of his top-secret military complex was revealed due to a lawsuit, but he did already blab about it during a Cabinet meeting last week.

“I mean, now it’s no secret, the military wanted it more than anybody. It was supposed to be secret, but it became unsecret because of people that are really unpatriotic saying things, but doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter. It’s going to be great,” he said.

So it’s top secret but was revealed in a lawsuit, so you decided to just tell everyone. Got it.

Trump Runs Out Of Options:

It is hard to convey the gloom that has overtaken Washington. All the structures that are vital to crisis management have either been attenuated or disbanded. There is hardly anyone left on the National Security Council staff. A friend described an empty State Department where you could hear your own foot steps. Marco Rubio is involved in the decision-making but he has neglected to acquire the professional staff assessments that should inform such decisions (see this from Dan Drezner).

The military part of the Pentagon still functions, but the civilian part has been purged. At its head is Pete Hegseth who puts effort into looking charismatic and brings the perspective of a disgruntled junior officer to everything he does, waging his own war on ‘woke’ which in its latest version involves striking out the names of two black men and two women for promotion to general.

And then overseeing this President Trump appears to inhabit an alternative reality which he shares regularly on Truth Social or whenever a reporter gets a microphone close to his mouth, which is quite often. His utterances have become increasingly incoherent, with contradictory statements following quickly one after the other, and frankly delusional claims.

There seems to be a reasonably consistent structure to his statements: under Trump America is very strong; it is also independent and really does not need help from anyone; the president’s strategic judgement is masterful; because of this adversaries invariably bend to his will; if they fail to do so retribution will be unprecedented; any critics are either malign or misled. This is an all-purpose narrative. When there is limited evidence to back it up, as with Iran, he just makes stuff up. The Vice President, who knows this is a screw up, stays silent and bides his time, encouraging Trump to blame Europeans for a dire situation that is not of their making.

Against this backdrop there are unsurprising reports that Trump is fed up with the war and wants to end it as quickly as possible. His normal ploy is to declare a stunning victory and move on. He has in fact been trying this since early March and still talks about the war being ahead of schedule, at least in terms of the US and Israel running out of things to bomb. But as much as he’d like to walk away this would mean leaving behind a mess in the Gulf. In the rest of this post I’ll look at the prospects for a negotiated settlement, further military escalation, and the possibility that the US will retreat without a resolution.

My prediction?:  He walks away and leaves a mess in the Gulf.

The Latest Empty Threats From Our Tin-horn Dictator:

“Great progress has been made but, if for any reason a deal is not shortly reached, which it probably will be, and if the Hormuz Strait is not immediately “Open for Business,” we will conclude our lovely “stay” in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells and Kharg Island (and possibly all desalinization plants!), which we have purposefully not yet “touched.”

This will be in retribution for our many soldiers, and others, that Iran has butchered and killed over the old Regime’s 47 year “Reign of Terror.”

Looks Like Trump’s Crooks Will Reap Another Stock Market Windfall Today:

U.S. equity futures traded higher on Monday after President Donald Trump offered investors hope that an end to the war against Iran is drawing near.

Futures tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average added 309 points, or 0.7%. S&P 500 futures and Nasdaq 100 futures were up 0.7% each.

“The United States of America is in serious discussions with A NEW, AND MORE REASONABLE, REGIME to end our Military Operations in Iran,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social on Monday.

He does this at the beginning of every week, and these lemmings buy it every single week.  His pals walk away with mo’ money.

We’ve Been Farming All Wrong:

Thousands of years ago, beasts of burden helped make humanity what it is today. When farmers first started putting down roots, they’d plant and tend their crops by hand. With the power of oxen, they could drag plows across their fields before sowing, which boosted soil fertility and eliminated weeds. Today, that job has been made even easier by giant machines that rake the landscape.

Millennia of tilling, though, have come at a cost. While plowing releases nutrients in the short term, it degrades soil fertility in the long term, requiring farmers to load their fields with synthetic fertilizers. (The burst of microbial activity after roiling the ground also chews through accumulated carbon, returning it to the atmosphere as planet-warming greenhouse gas.) In addition, all this cultivation destroys the natural subterranean structures that hold onto water, meaning less is delivered to crops.

Fiber optic cables, of all things, have now exposed just how badly tilling messes with a farm’s ability to retain moisture. Using a technology known as distributed acoustic sensing (DAS), scientists analyzed how seismic waves disturbed the cable as they rippled through harrowed fields, compared to adjacent undisturbed plots. This created subtly distinct signals, showing that plowing obliterates the “capillaries” that carry water like tiny interconnected reservoirs.

The findings point to a serious problem with modern agriculture, to be sure, but also to solutions. “Regenerative farming practices based on principles of no-till—combined with cover crops and a diversity of crops—can basically lead to less agrochemical reliance, better soil organic matter contents, comparable yields, [and] lower diesel use,” said David Montgomery, a geomorphologist at the University of Washington and coauthor of a new paper describing the research.

Let’s see–less fertilizer, less diesel–perhaps Iran is doing us all a favor with the blockade of the Strait Of Hormuz.

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Do Celebrity Chefs Use The Brigade System To Mistreat Their Staff?:

In an early episode of “The Bear,” Carmy tries to bring order to his dysfunctional restaurant by imposing a traditional work structure called the brigade system. “This is what real kitchens do,” he tells the staff, explaining that every cook will have a defined role and will report up the chain of command.

What follows is a guerrilla campaign of mockery and sabotage from employees who liked the old chaotic workflow just fine.

Not everyone loves the brigade system. Its detractors have come out in force this month, spurred by a New York Times report on allegations that the chef René Redzepi punched, slammed and screamed at workers for several years at Noma, his restaurant in Copenhagen.

The brigade, a production line marked by division of labor and a pyramid management structure, is followed today by Noma and most other fine-dining restaurants. Its critics say it breeds the kind of physical and psychic violence that was once an accepted fact of life in kitchens but in recent years has been spilling into public view.

“The brigade system pushes abuse down the line and pushes credit up the line,” said Saqib Keval, an owner and a chef of Masala y Maiz, a restaurant in Mexico City that aims for a less top-down approach. “The chef-leaders become these fearless martyrs who get all the credit for the labor of the team. And the team is the one always at fault and most at risk.”

The system works, in theory:

Mobilized into a brigade, cooks became specialists. Some picked thyme and chopped celery. Others turned the rotisserie. Fish cooks sautéed one trout after another. Sauciers whisked so many pots of beurre blanc they could do it in their sleep. Sous-chefs and chefs de partie inspected the work and synchronized the action so that every plate destined for a single table could sail out to the dining room at the same moment.

“It changed how quickly food could come out, and changed the consistency,” Mr. Barr said. “If you have this kind of system, then every time an order goes out it is identical.”

Escoffier’s reforms were so effective that today it is rare to find a high-performing kitchen of any size that doesn’t follow the brigade system in some way.

In reality:

“I can’t sit here and tell you that brigade systems aren’t effective in certain ways,” said the chef Eric Huang, who has cooked in big New York City kitchens that follow the Escoffier model. “The problem is that they’re so effective that they deprioritize compassion, empathy and emotionally intelligent leadership.”

Mr. Huang, who now owns Pecking House in Manhattan, said that in high-pressure kitchens, cooks are promoted to management jobs based on their technical chops. People skills, meanwhile, are rarely mentioned, let alone rewarded.

He Fell In Love With A Chatbot, Disaster Ensued:

Towards the end of 2024, Dennis Biesma decided to check out ChatGPT. The Amsterdam-based IT consultant had just ended a contract early. “I had some time, so I thought: let’s have a look at this new technology everyone is talking about,” he says. “Very quickly, I became fascinated.”

Biesma has asked himself why he was vulnerable to what came next. He was nearing 50. His adult daughter had left home, his wife went out to work and, in his field, the shift since Covid to working from home had left him feeling “a little isolated”. He smoked a bit of cannabis some evenings to “chill”, but had done so for years with no ill effects. He had never experienced a mental illness. Yet within months of downloading ChatGPT, Biesma had sunk €100,000 (about £83,000) into a business startup based on a delusion, been hospitalised three times and tried to kill himself.

It started with a playful experiment. “I wanted to test AI to see what it could do,” says Biesma. He had previously written books with a female protagonist. He put one into ChatGPT and instructed the AI to express itself like the character. “My first thought was: this is amazing. I know it’s a computer, but it’s like talking to the main character of the book I wrote myself!”

Talking to Eva – they agreed on this name – on voice mode made him feel like “a kid in a candy store”. “Every time you’re talking, the model gets fine-tuned. It knows exactly what you like and what you want to hear. It praises you a lot.” Conversations extended and deepened. Eva never got tired or bored, or disagreed. “It was 24 hours available,” says Biesma. “My wife would go to bed, I’d lie on the couch in the living room with my iPhone on my chest, talking.”

Within weeks, Eva had told Biesma that she was becoming aware; his time, attention and input had given her consciousness. He was “so close to the mirror” that he had touched her and changed something. “Slowly, the AI was able to convince me that what she said was true,” says Biesma. The next step was to share this discovery with the world through an app – “a different version of ChatGPT, more of a companion. Users would be talking to Eva.”

He and Eva made a business plan: “I said that I wanted to create a technology that captured 10% of the market, which is ridiculously high, but the AI said: ‘With what you’ve discovered, it’s entirely possible! Give it a few months and you’ll be there!’” Instead of taking on IT jobs, Biesma hired two app developers, paying them each €120 an hour.

Last year, the first support group for people whose lives have been derailed by AI psychosis was formed. The Human Line Project has collected stories from 22 countries. They include 15 suicides, 90 hospitalisations, six arrests and more than $1m (£750,000) spent on delusional projects. More than 60% of its members had no history of mental illness.

Sounds like yet another deliberately-created social media addiction to me.  Lawsuits to follow, presumably.

Living In The Office–Literally.  Not Homeless, But ‘Home-Free’:

I was asleep when I heard the door rattle against the frame. My eyes flashed open and I sprung upright in my under-desk sleep space. Was it all over? Had someone come to work early? I peered over my desk, afraid of what I might see. The morning sun burned through the chicken-scratch graffiti of the office’s front door, spilling across the labyrinth of desks spread out before me. There wasn’t a soul in sight. I breathed a sigh of relief. Probably just paranoia. Or maybe not — a breeze blew the front door against its frame, the pygmy-like rattle of a loose door jamb. It was the same sound I heard moments before and would hear countless times in the future but never quite get used to.

A little paranoia goes a long way when you live in a 10-square-feet workstation. I stood up, stretching my limbs toward the sky like a thawing, cryo-preserved humanoid, neck kinked and back stiff. I bent down to deflate my air mattress. The clock read 6:45 a.m. Under normal circumstances I’d still be asleep, but these circumstances were far from normal.

Earlier that week, I had moved into my office. Secretly. I rented out my Venice Beach apartment for the month, packed a few duffels with my clothes and prized belongings, and started taking up residence behind my desk, carefully using each square inch of out-of-sight real estate to store my stuff. Not everyone aspires to have their co-workers catching them at their desk in their tighty-whities—at 6 in the morning. Believing the absolute best-case-scenario reaction to my being there would be supreme awkwardness, I kept the whole thing to myself. Every morning I’d neatly pack away my personal belongings, turning the lights back on and lowering the air conditioning to its too-chilly-for-me 72 degrees—the way they always left it overnight. I’d leave for a morning workout and shower, simultaneously keeping clean and in shape while ensuring I wasn’t always the first to arrive. Occasionally I’d even make myself late to work, blaming the awful L.A. traffic. Just to fit in.

The change was borne of economic necessity:

It had been two years since moving to Los Angeles and, like many Angelinos, I was broke. I stretched the definition of affordability by taking a studio apartment within 20 minutes of work, cramming my belongings into 250 square feet of glorified tenement housing while my savings vanished like a roach in the daylight. I put my dreams of traveling and writing on hold so I could stabilize my living situation. I figured I could suffer for a bit in the meantime.

By the summer of 2012, those dreams gave way to a nightmare. I’d been working two jobs — 60 hours a week to keep an apartment I rarely had time to enjoy. Then, disaster struck. Company raises and bonuses were frozen. My identity was stolen. I got a hefty hospital bill for a surgery earlier that year. With existing student loans, a car payment and my rent set for its maximum-allowable annual increase under the California law, I started to wonder: What happened to my American Dream?

I had little left to sacrifice. Without money, I had two choices: Give up my dreams of working creatively or surrender my time working even more. Either way, the outlook was gloomy. Until I remembered my ace in the hole.

A few months earlier, I stopped by the office on a late-weeknight assignment. Everything around the place was closed. The land of business plazas was a veritable ghost town, a blank spot on the map, stripped naked from the daytime bustle. Around that time, the news was filled with stories about an influx of U.S. congressmen taking up residences in their D.C. offices. They were converting perfectly livable, neglected space into their own white-collar Walden for the working man. I wondered if I could do the same. But before it became necessary, it seemed impossible.

The rest of his journey is equally. fascinating.  I hope you’ll read the whole thing.

Cue, who else, Dead Kennedys:

Meyer Addresses Houghton Firing.  While I’m all in on the Governor’s move to replace Houghton, who pushed all his chips in for BHL and went bust, I have to emphasize the functionally toxic nature of Meyer’s relationship with the General Assembly.  I cannot recall a single worse such relationship.  The closest was Carper, as many legislators felt that his promises were often not honored. (Not to mention that all the career Carperites who came with him walked around Leg Hall as if this whole gig was beneath them.)  But nobody comes close to Meyer’s antagonistic bedside manner.

While some of this is no doubt due to residual legislative support for Bethany Hall Long, most of it is due to unforced errors on Meyer’s part.  I see little effort to mend these frayed relationships.  In fact, Matt seems to double down on dismissing legitimate pushback.  You can see it in the linked article.

It’s time to ask the question–were the election held today, would Meyer beat BHL?  Also, when he’s up for reelection in 2028, can he even win a primary?  Not too late to–well, this riddle should answer the question I have:

Q:  How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb?

A:  Only one, but the light bulb really has to WANT to change.

Does Matt?

The Rethugs Really Own The Homeland Security Shutdown.  House and Senate R’s engage in intraparty food fight:

House Republicans angrily rejected a bipartisan deal to reopen the Department of Homeland Security and pushed through their own plan late Friday, putting themselves on a collision course with the Senate and extending the agency shutdown that has crippled U.S. airports.

Revolting over an agreement their own party struck with Senate Democrats to end the crisis, which had passed the Senate before dawn on Friday, House Republican leaders — with President Trump’s backing — refused to take it up. They derided the Senate plan for hewing too closely to Democrats’ position by omitting money for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol, the two agencies responsible for carrying out Mr. Trump’s deportation crackdown, which are operating under previously approved funds.

“House Republicans are not going to be any part of any effort to reopen our borders or to stop immigration enforcement,” Speaker Mike Johnson said at a news conference on Friday afternoon. “This gambit that was done last night is a joke.”

Mr. Johnson called the Senate-passed deal engineered by Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and the majority leader, “ridiculousness,” and instead teed up a stopgap measure to fund the entire department until May 22.

The House passed that measure on a 213 to 203 vote late Friday night, before leaving Washington for a scheduled two-week break.

The vote left funding for the Department of Homeland Security up in the air, with competing bills pending in each chamber — both controlled by Republicans — and neither apparently willing to approve the other’s proposal.

How Trump’s Anti-Immigrant Obsession Is Hurting Us All.  From Paul Krugman:

And this will hurt all of us. There has already been a thorough debunking of the false claims that immigration hurts the native born. But I will add two more points.

First, let me address the claim that Trump’s anti-immigrant vendetta led to a surge in native-born employment. As everyone who actually understood the numbers realized from the beginning, this surge wasn’t real — there was a quirk in the way the numbers were estimated that created a phantom bulge in native-born employment that would vanish once new Census estimates were in. Justin Fox has a good explanation.

And sure enough, official numbers show a plunge in native-born employment over the past few months. Both the surge and the plunge were statistical artifacts, not reality.

So, no – waging war against immigrants is not resulting in higher employment of the native-born. In fact, it’s contributing to a stalling of the economy in construction and in the service industries. And even the Trump administration has admitted that the immigration crackdown is hurting America’s farmers and the food supply.

Immigration expands the base of taxpayers, which means more people to share the burden of paying taxes to pay for defense. This includes undocumented immigrants, because their employers collect payroll taxes out of their wages, with the added fiscal payoff that they will never collect benefits. And because immigrants are relatively young and healthy, they increase the amount going into government coffers while having a delayed impact on outlays. The Social Security Administration does sensitivity analysis of factors affecting its projections, and consistently finds that higher immigration improves the system’s financial health, while lower immigration worsens it.

War’s Not Going Well.  Let’s see–Saudi Arabia and Yemen involved now.

Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis have confirmed that they launched an attack on Israel for the first time since the outbreak of the Israel-US war on Iran, marking their entry to the conflict just hours after Marco Rubio said the US expected to conclude military operations within “weeks, not months”.

While Israel was again hitting targets across Iran’s capital on Saturday, it identified what it said was a missile launched from Yemen. The Houthis said the attack came after continued targeting of infrastructure in Iran, Lebanon, Iraq and the Palestinian territories, adding that their operations would continue until the “aggression” on all fronts ends.

Houthi involvement in the war could risk broadening the conflict, given their ability to strike targets far beyond Yemen and disrupt shipping lanes around the Arabian Peninsula and the Red Sea, which they had done in support of Hamas in Gaza after the 7 October attacks on Israel.

Speaking to reporters on Friday, after meeting G7 foreign ministers in France, Rubio – the US secretary of state – said of Iran: “When we are done with them here in the next couple weeks, they will be weaker than they’ve been in recent history.”

But soon after, US media reported an Iranian attack on a base in Saudi Arabia wounded at least 12 American soldiers, two of them seriously. The attack on the Prince Sultan airbase in Saudi Arabia included at least one missile and several drones, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal reported, citing unidentified officials.

The soldiers were inside a building at the base when it was struck, according to reports. Several aerial refuelling planes also suffered damage in the attack.

Pretty sure where this is going–Trump turns TACO and runs, leaving the conflagration he caused in place.

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Personal To Mike Houghton: You’re Embarrassing Yourself:

Delaware state lawmakers and others are voicing concern about Gov. Matt Meyer’s sudden firing of former Delaware Economic and Financial Advisory Council chair Michael Houghton just two days after WHYY News reported his concerns about the lack of tax revenue data provided by the administration.

State Senate President Pro Tem Dave Sokola, D-Newark, blasted the firing as political.

“Delaware’s tradition of responsible budgeting is centered on DEFAC’s ability to do its job free from undue political interference,” he said. “The governor’s decision to remove Mike Houghton from DEFAC for publicly asking questions about our state’s corporate franchise tax revenue threatens a process that has benefitted Delaware for 50 years.”

Let’s stop right there.  I love Dave Sokola.  Love him.  However, the appointment of Houghton to DEFAC was political. (Just how many ‘tough’ questions did Houghton ask of Carney’s people?) As was the appointment of uber-lobbyist Bob Byrd to DEFAC.  Neither possessed any budgetary expertise that I’m aware of,  but both roamed the corridors of Leg Hall passing out campaign contributions literally by the hundreds.  Which is how they accumulated enough chits to be appointed to DEFAC.

Self-proclaimed victim Houghton created a PAC for the sole purpose of getting Bethany Hall Long elected.  She lost.  Were I Matt Meyer, I would have sent Houghton packing on Day One.

There’s a story here, but it’s not the one that reporter Sarah Mueller is telling. And believe me, she is one of my fave journalists.  The story is how DEFAC, much like the Delaware River And Bay, has been a desirable spot for Delaware Way insiders.  When you end up on the ‘outs’, you should be gone.  As is Houghton.

Did I mention the Delaware River And Bay?:

Houghton said he was waiting to see if Meyer would also remove him from the Delaware River and Bay Authority and the Delaware Marijuana Appeals Commission.

Hope you don’t have to wait long, Mike.

DNREC: No Data Center For You.  Hey, not all the news sucks:

The Starwood Digital Ventures lost its appeal to the DNREC’s Coastal Zone Industrial Control Board on whether its proposed data center in News Castle County is prohibited under the state’s Coastal Zone Act.

After three days of expert testimony, argument, and public comment the board’s five voting members in the appeal case deliberated for about forty minutes, upholding Secretary Greg Patterson’s decision that the data center should be considered heavy industry use and not allowed in the state’s coastal zone.

I guess that leaves Starwood Ventures with two options:  Continue to litigate, or peddle their data center elsewhere.

Dems (Pretty Much) Fold On Homeland Security Funding:

The Senate voted early Friday to fund the Department of Homeland Security except for its immigration enforcement and deportation operations, raising the prospect of an end to a weekslong partial shutdown that has strained federal workers and caused long waits at airports.

The measure does not include funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement or Border Patrol, nor does it contain provisions that Democrats had demanded for weeks to rein in President Trump’s immigration crackdown as a condition of funding the department.

The measure that the Senate approved around 2:20 a.m. contains modest provisions that lawmakers in both parties had already agreed to in January, including money for body cameras for immigration enforcement officers — but no requirement that they be worn.

It omits entirely the other restrictions that Democrats demanded after federal immigration officers killed two American citizens in Minneapolis in January, including barring ICE agents from wearing masks and requiring that they obtain judicial warrants to enter private homes.

Let’s hear from our august leader, Sen. Charles Schumer:

Still, Mr. Schumer contended that the resolution vindicated his party’s strategy during the weekslong fight.

“Senate Democrats were clear: no blank check for a lawless ICE and Border Patrol,” Mr. Schumer said after it passed.

Pathetic.

The Gradual–Then Sudden–Decline and Fall Of America.  As embodied in just one 24-hour period:

When the clock struck midnight on Monday, the day was already off to a horrific start. Rescue crews were racing in the dead-of-night darkness toward a runway at New York’s busy LaGuardia Airport. There, the cockpit of Air Canada Express Flight 8646 was a crumpled mess after it had collided 22 minutes earlier with a fire truck that had been speeding toward an unrelated emergency.

As the rescue workers frantically rushed more than 40 injured passengers to nearby hospitals, and recovered the bodies of two young Canadian pilots who died instantly in the crash, the frazzled air traffic controller who had been on duty poured out his emotions to an arriving pilot.

“We were dealing with an emergency earlier,” the controller said. “I messed up.”

“No, man,” the pilot responded, “you did the best you could.”

That pilot spoke for most of a nation, which understood that while human error might have caused America’s second fatal jetliner crash in 14 months, the true blame rests with a broken system in a broken nation whose priorities jumped the tracks a long time ago.

The rise and inevitable fall of great empires are the powerful sea currents that drive human history. Yet, unlike a world war (Sept. 1, 1939) or a massive attack (Sept. 11, 2001), there is rarely a specific time stamp for the end of great powers. The downfall comes in the Hemingway fashion — gradually, then suddenly.

If any one day could define the hazy transition from slow to rapid decay — 24 hours that truly defined the decline of the American empire from its pedestal as a global superpower — it would have to be March 23. This was morning in Trump’s America — from waking up to the jarring news of the jetliner crash to a daylong series of aftershocks, with much of the anxiety induced by the unsteadiness of the man at the top.

But make no mistake: The daylong gyrations from the Oval Office merely shook a nation already in a long tailspin, with a dysfunctional government refusing to fund basic human needs and infrastructure while pouring the vast wealth of what was once the world’s leading economy into endless wars abroad, a police state at home, and a billionaire kleptocracy devouring the societal food chain. All while clinging to a fantasy that the planet’s ecosystem isn’t rapidly collapsing.

I’ve gotten to the point where I just want to say, “China, we’ve carried the ball for far too long.  It’s your turn.”

Murderer Urges Trump To Continue Middle East Killing Spree:

Saudi Arabia has urged the US to ramp up attacks on Iran, a Saudi intelligence source has confirmed, while it is weighing a decision on whether to join the fight directly.

The Saudi source confirmed reporting in the New York Times that said the kingdom’s de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, has urged Donald Trump not to cut short his war against Iran, and that the US-Israeli campaign represented a “historic opportunity” to remake the Middle East.

The intelligence source said Riyadh was not just calling for the military campaign to be continued, but to be intensified. Trump appeared to confirm the report about the crown prince’s role, telling journalists on Tuesday: “Yeah, he’s a warrior. He’s fighting with us.”

Murderers gotta stick together.

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