$100 when this bond was issued had the spending power of $1,892.16 today.
How did the U.S. pay off much of the debt from the Second World War and the Cold War?
It inflated the economy out of it.
Let me note something here right from the onset. I think Donald Trump is suffering from dementia in a major way and doesn't come up with plans for anything on his own, very often. Put another way, I think he's a puppet at this stage, pulled by National Conservative and Populist strings, the two not being the same.
Which brings me to this.
What if, behind the scenes, somebody on the NatCon end has come up with the plan to inflate the economy and steal as much of the petroleum oil belonging to Venezuela and Iran as possible.
It'd be way sinister, and evil, and destroy the lives and savings of many, but it might work.
But it'll be devastating to individuals.
Here's how it might works.
Raise tariffs to the point where domestic production actually is increased. That would make everything much more expensive, and hence inflation would result. Putting US oil increasingly on the global market would do the same, as that only happens when the price of oil is high. The value of the debt would decrease as the value of money would decrease.
Crazy?
Well, that's similar to what was done with the World War Two and Cold War debt.
The problem is, of course, that living in inflationary times is devastating to individuals, which is why it can't be, and never has been, done openly.
NatCons, however, may very well like this idea, if they can pull it off. At the end of it the thesis would be that government spending would be brought under control, the national debt greatly reduced, and domestic production realty increased. All of which would be for those who economically survived the ten to twenty year period it'd take to pull it off.
Which many would not.
And it might not work at all. Indeed, it would only work if it was accompanied by high employment, which often high inflation operates against. That's why the increased domestic production would be necessary.
NatCons are a really different group and they've operated in this administration very much in the shadows, which doesn't mean they aren't operating.
BBC Television, which had been off the air since September 1, 1939, resumed broadcasting. The resumption was for only an hour on June 7, but it signaled its first return. The programming featured speakers welcoming the audience back, a performance by ballerina Margo Fonteyn, a talk segment, and a rebroadcast of Disney's Mickey's Gala, the latter being the last thing broadcast in 1939.
There were over 18,000 television sets in the US when service was suspended.
The players of the Pittsburgh Pirates, which had threatened to walk out if they were not allowed to join the American Baseball Guild, didn't.
First flight of the Short Sturgeon.
The design was to have been a carrier borne aircraft, but like a lot of revolutionary piston engined aircraft of its era, it wasn't around very long. Only 28 were built.
French High Commissioner Georges Thierry d'Argenlieud recognized a French controlled "Autonomous Republic of Cochin-China" in French Indochina in violation of the Ho-Sainteny agreement. The proto state, which had been a pre World War Two administrative unit, would later become South Vietnam and would lead directly to the French Indochinese War.
Ho Chi Minh was in France negotiating under presumptions raised by the Ho-Sainteny agreement at the time.
Georges Thierry d'Argenlieu is an unusual figure as he was a French diplomat, Admiral, and a Catholic Priest. From a family of naval officers, he started off in life in that path before becoming a Priest in the 1920s. During World War Two he was recalled to naval service and would serve the Free French. He was an ardent Gaullist and it was that, rather than an opposition to Communism, that pushed him towards the creation of Cochin China.
Seriously devout, upon retiring from naval service in 1947, he entered a monastery, where he died in 1964 at age 75.
The Senate granted Truman emergency powers to end strikes. The House had done so the prior week.
Second World War Romanian dictator Ion Antonescu was executed.
Romania tends not to get that much attention in the West and therefore Antonescu, who remains a large and controversial figure in Romania, does not. His reign was abhorrent and attendant with all the crimes that the Nazis afflicted during World War Two. He none the less retains a small following.
The first color feature film, The Black Pirate, was released.
Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin addressed the British public about the ongoing strike in the UK, the first such emergency radio broadcast of that type in that nation.
The first test of the Mark 6 torpedo exploder was conducted.
The secret device would not receive much in the field testing before World War Two, at which time it was learned that it had extremely dangerous flaws and defects that needed to be fixed immediately, although they were rapidly learned of and corrected early in the war.
Sir David Frederick Attenborough was born, and turns 100 years old today.
Former Japanese Prime Ministers Hideki Tojo, Hiranuma Kiichirō, Kōki Hirota, Kuniaki Koiso, and 24 co-defendants were indicted in Tokyo for war crimes.
James White, the discoverer of Carlsbad Canyon, died at age 63.
Chips, who had started off his life as a family pet and who went on to be the most decorated American war dog of the Second World War, died. He served in the Algerian-Moroccan, Tunisian, Sicilian, Rhineland and Central Europe Campaigns and won the Distinguished Service Cross, Silver Star and Purple Heart prior to the military ruling that only human beings could receive such awards.
He was returned to his owners, where he later died, after the war.
Trump has entered a new phase of is insanity, one characteristic of the insane, and insane revolutions.
He's eating his own.
Make no mistake, Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelley, Candace Owens and Alex Jones deserve no sympathy. But their Trump's little lap dogs. The fact that he's attacking his own is profound. Trump has very few friends, and he's going after them. There are fewer and fewer people in the bunker.
We might actually be on the very cusp of the 25th Amendment being applied.
Richard Nixon and Donald Trump. One man worried his cabinet who planned around a possible mental collapse that didn't come, the other is having a mental collapse and his cabinet is doing nothing.
We later learned that in 1973 as Nixon came under increased pressure due to Watergate, his aids feared he would do something rash. Nixon was reacting badly under the stress. He was lashing out. He was drinking heavily.
Of course, in the end, he resigned.
Donald Trump, who like Hitler doesn't drink, is visibly collapsing before our eyes. He's obviously been in a state of mental decline for a decade now, and its increasing. He was heavily impaired when elected, making any rational person wonder why he was elected to the office, other than that people the weird insurrectionist feared that Joe Biden's dementia was too advanced to allow for him to hold office again, something that history should not forgive Biden for. Even that doesn't really explain it, as Harris was the alternative in the end, for people who play along with the two party system nightmare that actually doesn't have to exist.
A major difference between late stage Nixon and late stage Trump, other than that Nixon was not insane (a major difference) is that Nixon was surrounded by sane, if not always admirable, advisors. Trump is surrounded by sycophants.
That's a huge difference as we now know that Nixon's advisors consulted amongst themselves about his mental state. They were worried about it. None of them were as deeply loyal to Nixon at all costs as Trump's sycophantic advisors are to him.
Many, including me, have wondered how it is that Trump's cabinet hasn't acted to replace him. Heather Cox Richardson, in one of her video shorts, has provided the answer. The people surrounding Trump have nowhere else to go.
In Trump's first administration his cabinet included sane people. Trump didn't know how to take office and in fact his natural laziness kept him from really ever fully forming a government. That natural laziness came into effect when he was elected a second time. He was kept from acting like a king in his first term as his advisor wouldn't let him, and he didn't like that. In his second term he wanted people who would slavishly do what he wanted without question, and he got them almost exclusively.
If you look at the current cabinet you can see that, with perhaps two or three exceptions, it's wholly made up of people for whom Trump is their only chance. Some may be rich, but wealth is credited much more than it should be as allowing for intellectual independence. People lavish praise on Trump not because they believe it, but because they are his willing concubines and have prostituted themselves to him. Some of these people are outright dim. Some have just sold their souls and know that when Trump falls, they fall with him, as Richardson has noted.
Why these people are in this position is another matter. Some got there as they believe in Trump. Others were placed their by forces supporting Trump, knowing that he was too lazy to actually do the work to pick competent people. The Heritage Society, for example, saw Trump as a hollow vessel they could pour their radicalization through.
Trump's cabinet, therefore, is much like Hitler's. Where was Goebbels going to go? And Trump's true followers are much like members of the German SS, who fought to the bitter end. They didn't see a future, literally, in a post war Germany where they figured they'd be killed, if not by the Allies, then by the Germans. MAGA still shows up like the Waffen Grenadier Brigade of the SS Charlemagne, the French SS unit that went down fighting in Berlin. They thought the alternative to that was a bullet in the back of the head. Real Trump loyalist show up as they fear that if Trump fails, or more likely when he does, they're era is over. And like the SS in Berlin, they fanatically hope that Der Fuehrer will pull off a miracle, which he won't, or that they'll be saved by some mysterious outside force at the last hour.
That won't happen either.
Many people have wondered how the Germans were so cowed by a leader who was sending them into a disaster. It can't be said that Americans are. Only 30% of Americans actually support Trump. Probably an equal if not larger number outright hate him at this point. If the election was held today the Republicans would loose both houses, and in November when the election is held, they will.
But here's the dangerous thing. Between now and November the leadership of the US is in the bunker and Der Fuehrer is insane.
I've long held that Trump would be removed in 2026 by the 25th Amendment. I hadn't considered, however, the points Richardson raises. He still might be but as she notes if Trump goes down, they all go down with him. They're a bunch of cowardly sycophants and they do not appear to be willing to save their country any more than Goebbels was.
Still, even in Hitler's cabinet not everyone was unquestionably loyal towards the end. Himmler actually serious considered trying to cut a separate deal with the Allies and effectively remove Hitler via a coup. There was even one SS member in the July 20 plot. It remains possible, but only barely so, that the cabinet will vote to save itself.
We know that at least a few people in the cabinet likely are willing to do that. J. D. Vance is one. Marco Rubio another. Both of them hope to be President and neither benefits from going down with Trump. I've long thought they were playing out this string until they could act. But two men alone won't get it done. There's likely a few more, but only few. None of the ass kissers in cabinet meetings are amongst them.
Which brings us to this. Over the next few months things are going to be extremely bad. Trump's mental state is declining so rapidly it's difficult to gauge. He's going to pull out of the war he joined with Israel which will be a major defeat he can't disavow. The economy will not rapidly recover and he can't blame that on Biden. He's lost the Hispanic vote and he won't be able to get it back. The Arab American vote which dimly voted for him is lost as well. The people who are left in his cabinets who openly support him increasingly look like outright kooks. The financial flood to his family is not being ignored and is very likely to result in post Trump criminal prosecutions, maybe of Trump himself.
And yesterday, a judge made clear that his obscene bordello on the Potomac addiction to the White House will never happen.
He's a desperate, and demented, man.
Trump, from now to November, will try to steal the November election. He's already trying. And he'll do every odd thing imaginable or never imagined to try to deflect attention form his failure. There will be no limit to what he will try. Invasions of Cuba and Greenland are possible, with Cuba almost a certainty. Deals with Russia, or China, or whomever. Attempts to cancel the election, or seize the polls are probable. Ignoring the courts a near certainty.
The 25th Amendment should save us from this but might not. Impeachment of Trump should occur, but will not, unless there's a massive post November shift in Congress.
Instead, expect things to get worse and worse. And expect the few members of the administration who aren't willing to go down in the bunker to start resigning. Vance can't, Trump being removed or dying in office is his only hope of being President. Rubio can, and he will, likely before November.
April 6, 2026
Trump's mental status is collapsing.
That post, posted on Easter, read like something a drunk man would post, and frankly but for the fact that we believe Trump doesn't drink, this post would receive that speculation.
This post has renewed public demands for invocation of the 25th Amendment, and it should. Trump is insane. The reference to God in Arabic is insulting to Muslims, the vast majority of whom have nothing to do with Iran or its leadership.
We're committing war crimes under the leadership of a madman.
I'll note I'm not the only one whose concerned.
I'd originally posted that yesterday as a standalone, which I've taken down as I've posted it here. But what I'll note is that Klungman doesn't say what a lot of us are thinking. Trump is, in my view, edging up on using an atomic bomb.
In normal times, which these are not, there'd be sufficient people around him to probably put a halt to that. Now there aren't. The cabinet appears to be nearly complete flunkies. We'll know this is true if Trump remains in power this week. The military is being stripped of those who oppose rationality.
We not only live in dangerous times, we live in times in which the most powerful nation on earth is governed by a madman.
At this point anybody running in the fall with an "Endorsed by President Trump" (this means you, Delgenfelder) is absolutely unqualified for office.
By the way, the man whom Evangelicals and some others routinely praise as a great Christian spent the day riding around in Washington DC and visiting one of his golf courses. No attendance at church.
cont:
Today is a very special day. It's a day where we celebrate Jesus. It's a day where we celebrate religion. It's an honor to be the president. Our country is doing so well. We've broken every record in the stock market. We've broken every record in our military. And what about the rescue?
Donald Trump in an Easter speech. He's insane.
cont:
If I had my choice, what would I like to do? Take the oil, because it's there for the taking…Unfortunately, the American people would like to see us come home. If it were up to me, I'd take the oil. I'd keep the oil. I would make plenty of money.
Trump. What a morally bankrupt human being.
cont:
I'm polling higher than anybody has ever polled in Venezuela. So after I'm finished with this I can got to Venezuela. I will quickly learn Spanish. It won't take long. I'm good at language. I will go to Venezuela. I'm going to run for president.
Trump again.
There are a pile of these from today. Trump is bat shit crazy. Supporting him at this point is criminal, and not invoking the 25th Amendment is as well. He's completely, utterly, insane.
April 7, 2026
Today we have the news that the insane Donald Trump, in addition to declaring his intention to run for the Presidency of Venezuela (don't discount that with any of the numerous excuses his apologist give for his bat shit crazy statements, we should assume he means it), is defending his statement about keeping Iranian oil on the basis that he's "a businessman" and "to the victors, go the spoils".
Today we're promised a full slate of war crimes.
We offer here a bit of a note.
Often people with a psychotic criminal drive they cannot control hope for intervention. Trump is so out of control right now there's more than a little reason to believe that he's hoping for the same. He has no way out, he's lived a life of utter depravity. The 25th Amendment and hope supervision get him out of the mess he's created, and frankly away from a host of people he probably doesn't like.
Cont:
Even this threat is immoral.
If carried out, it's murder.
Only the immoral will support a thing like this. Donald Trump is a deranged monster.
April 9, 2026
Having learned that being a demented madman didn't impress Iran, he's back at it again with Greenland.
This man needs to be removed from office now. The 25th Amendment needs to be applied immediately.
Of Scots Irish descent, he was born in Kennington, England to a Church of Ireland cleric and grew up principally in Australia when his father was appointed Bishop of Tasmania. He was commissioned an Army officer in 1908. He became a British Field Marshall during World War Two and is justifiably famous. He was deputy commander of NATO until 1958, when he retired at age 70.
The phony baloney Soviet constitution as amended to increase the number of republics in the U.S.S.R. from 11 to 16, and to give the head of each republic a position in the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union, meaning nothing whatsoever.
Prime Minister Clement Attlee declared in the House of Commons the government's intention to grant British India its independence, stating.
India herself must choose as to what will be her future situation and her position in the world", said Attlee, adding that "If ... she elects for independence—and in our view she has a right to do so—it will be for us to help make the transition as smooth and easy as possible.
The UK was, at this time, in the advance stages of divesting itself of its empire while causing its former Imperial subjects to believe that they were forcing it. To this day, Indian likes to give the UK a guilt trip, which perhaps its entitled to do, but its not like they forced the British out. The British sprinted out.
Truman exhibited confidence about the Soviets over Iran.
This is quite the contrast to Donny, who loves Putin almost as much as he loves himself.
And:
Seriously, Hemingway, why even bother?
Surplus was proving a problem:
Some interesting back country ski boots were offered. These were much like telemarking boots when I took that up in the 1980s, save for the bindings. And these were pretty much like what my mother, who learned to ski in the 30s and 40s, used her whole life.
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