A Democratic politician and former mayor of Houston ...a city in Texas, named after Sam Houston, who would drop deader than he is now if he could see how it turned out... has died after attending Donald Trump ...Perhaps no man has ever had as much fun being president of the US... 's joint address to Congress.
Texas Rep. Sylvester Turner, 70, has passed away, according to his politician colleagues.
Turner was in the Capitol before Donald Trump's joint address to Congress, videos from his social media show.
His office has yet to confirm what caused his passing.
DailyMail.com has reached out to Turner's office for comment.
Though Fox 26 in Houston reports that Turner had been battling cancer in his jaw since before getting elected in November 2024.
'My message to the current administration for tonight’s State of the Union: 'Don’t mess with Medicaid,' he shared in a post that included a video of him alongside a constituent he brought to the speech.
'I am proud to have Angela Hernandez here from our Congressional district as my guest. She is representing and advocating for her daughter Baislee Garcia who has a rare genetic disorder Chromosome 8p: Inversion/Duplication/Deletion.'
[NYPOST] Capitol Police arrested House Speaker Mike Johnson's chief of staff Tuesday night for allegedly driving under the influence.
Hayden Haynes, who has worked with the Louisiana Republican for nearly a decade, was taken into custody about 45 minutes after President Trump's speech to a joint session of Congress.
''A driver backed into a parked vehicle last night around 11:40 p.m. We responded and arrested them for DUI,'' Capitol Police said in a statement.
The law enforcement agency confirmed that it was Haynes who was arrested.
A spokesman for Johnson indicated that the House speaker, who sat directly behind Trump during last night’s speech, has “confidence” in Haynes despite the incident.
“The Speaker is aware of the encounter that occurred last night involving his Chief of Staff and the Capitol Police,” Taylor Haulsee said in a statement.
“The Speaker has known and worked closely with Hayden for nearly a decade and trusted him to serve as his Chief of Staff for his entire tenure in Congress,” the Johnson staffer added. “Because of this and Hayden’s esteemed reputation among Members and staff alike, the Speaker has full faith and confidence in Hayden’s ability to lead the Speaker’s office.”
[IsraelTimes] The United States has "paused" intelligence sharing with Ukraine after a dramatic breakdown in relations between Kyiv and the White House, CIA director John Ratcliffe says.
US President Donald Trump ...They hit him with slander, they impeached him twice. Nancy Pelosi tore up his State of the Union address on national TV. They stole an election and put his adherents in jail. They vilified him. They couldn't crucify him, so they shot him. Still, they can't keep him down... and Ukraine’s leader Volodymyr Zelensky had a public falling-out in the Oval Office last week, followed by Ukraine’s top ally suspending crucial US military aid.
Ratcliffe confirms that intelligence sharing had also been frozen as Ukraine seeks to beat back the Russian invasion.
"President Trump had a real question about whether President Zelensky was committed to the grinding of the peace processor," Ratcliffe tells Fox News.
Ratcliffe says the pause "on the military front and the intelligence front" was temporary, and the United States will again "work shoulder to shoulder with Ukraine."
Trump said Tuesday that Zelensky told him Kyiv was ready for talks with Moscow and the finalization of a US minerals deal, as Ukraine works to move on after the Oval Office spat.
Zelensky has sought to bring Trump back onside, posting on social media that their clash was "regrettable" and he wanted "to make things right."
In his address to US Congress later on Tuesday, Trump read aloud from a letter from Zelensky.
"The letter reads, ’Ukraine is ready to come to the negotiating table as soon as possible to bring lasting peace closer. Nobody wants peace more than the Ukrainians,'" Trump told US politicians.
#4
Many moons ago, I worked (in a very low-level capacity) for an aircraft company That Shall Not Be Named. Many of the guys were Air National Guard, including my boss. The other guys told me a story about the time he bombed a barge.
I googled for this incident, which surely made the paper. It must be the incident described here. Scroll down to "The best story involved Dave."
The way I heard it, though, was that either Dave was not supposed to push the button (but did), or that the button wasn't supposed to be armed (but was). The fuel tank didn't just "break loose".
They did NOT tell me the sequel, about the hijacking and the Cadillac.
All because they don’t want to close their border to fentanyl deliveries and illegals migrating? Wow.
[PJMedia] People who truly understand Donald Trump ...dictatorial for repealing some (but not all) of the diktats of his predecessor, misogynistic because he likes pretty girls, homophobic because he doesn't think gender bending should be mandatory, truly a man for all seasons... know that he employs a variety of tactics to achieve his ends. He does come across as a bit ham-fisted on occasion, but to those who are able to read between the lines, we understand that, as Glenn Beck once quipped, many of Trump's remarks should be taken seriously, but not literally.
Trump is a negotiator and a tough-talker. But his enemies understand that Trump's comments and actions can and will be taken literally by the uninformed masses who are used to feasting on a regular diet of outrage and paranoia. The statist class hates the idea of negotiating, perhaps even more than it hates losing. The statist class relishes the feeling of having power but cherishes the ability to wield that power to attack its opponents. So it should come as no surprise that the Canucks are hitting back at Trump's tariff threat.
The Ontario Sun reports that Ontario Premier Doug Ford was speaking at a mining conference in Toronto on Monday. He said that in reaction to Trump's impending tariffs, he would be more than happy to cut the power supply to states in the U.S.:
If they want to try to annihilate Ontario, I will do everything — including cut off their energy with a smile on my face. They rely on our energy; they need to feel the pain. They want to come at us hard; we’re going to come back twice as hard.
He went on to say that he would match Trump tariff for tariff and dollar for dollar:
That’s exactly what we’re going to do. The provinces have a big say in it, but it’s the federal government that’s leading the charge, and we’re going to stand shoulder-to-shoulder no matter who’s in the federal government. I (didn’t) start this tariff war, but we’re going to win this tariff war.
According to the Sun, with the exception of Texas, every power grid in the U.S. is tied into the Canadian system. The paper says that Michigan, New York, and Minnesota are the biggest customers for Canadian power and would be the hardest hit. Not only would such a blackout be inconvenient, but it could be life-threatening to some.
Just the kind of sharp slap in the face to jumpstart acceptance of building new power plants and drilling for oil in America — and even streamlining regulations on both. Smallish pain, yuuuuuge gain.
#4
Refusing to sell them power would show those Yankee bastiges a thing or two. But now what are you going to do with it? I suppose you could use the profits you are no longer getting to build a transmission line to Europe. As long as you don't cross any tribal land, of course.
#6
There is a major Enbridge pipeline supplying fuel to Ontario that has to go through Michigan. Michiganders have been wanting that shut down for years. Just saying...
#7
There really is no cheaper or safer method of transporting oil or gas than an underground pipeline. (or in the case of Alaska, an elevated system) People who believe otherwise are sadly misinformed.
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] Donald Trump could make a drastic move to reshape American classrooms within the next 24 hours by shuttering the Department of Education.
The president is expected to sign an executive order as soon as Thursday which would bring about abolishing the federal agency, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon will be tasked with taking 'all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Education Department,' the publication reported, citing a draft of the order.
This will be done to 'the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law.'
According to the publication, the draft order reads: 'The experiment of controlling American education through Federal programs and dollars - and the unaccountable bureaucrats those programs and dollars support - has failed our children, our teachers, and our families.'
McMahon on Monday was confirmed to lead the doomed 4,200-person federal agency.
She sent a company-wide email to staff on Monday in which she lauded her mission to dismantle the agency, describing it as a 'momentous final mission.'
She said she had been 'tasked... with accomplishing the elimination of the bureaucratic bloat here at the Education Department - a momentous final mission - quickly and responsibly.'
'I want Linda to put herself out of a job,' Trump said of McMahon in February.
Established by President Jimmy Carter in 1980, the department provides essential funding to children with disability and low-income students around the country.
National Education Association President Becky Pringle said last month that cutting the department would ‘steal resources for our most vulnerable students, explode class sizes, cut job training programs, make higher education more expensive and out of reach for middle class families, take away special education services for students with disabilities, and gut student civil rights protections.’
The Department of Education has been low hanging fruit for Trump and Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) initiative.
Already DOGE has celebrated cutting billions of dollars from the agency, over half a billion of which came from canceling DEI grants.
And last month, Trump said the Education Department was 'a big con job' and that 'I'd like to close it immediately.'
During her confirmation hearing in February, McMahon lauded the work of the Musk-led group.
'So DOGE, there are a couple of implants at the Department of Education as there are with agencies throughout the district,' McMahon said. 'They're doing an audit.'
During the session she claimed the department was guilty of 'excessive consolidation of power,' and called for 'education freedom, not government-run systems.'
#2
Kids were better educated before the DOEd was created. However, education was federally funded before the DOEd years. It was funded by the then Dept of HEW (where the 'E' stood for Education).
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
03/06/2025 10:08 Comments ||
Top||
[TOWNHALL] The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 Wednesday morning to uphold a lower court ruling forcing the Trump administration to reinstate billions of dollars in foreign aid.
The move left Justice Samuel Alito "stunned."
"Does a single district-court judge who likely lacks jurisdiction have the unchecked power to compel the Government of the United States to pay out (and probably lose forever) 2 billion taxpayer dollars? The answer to that question should be an emphatic 'No,' but a majority of this Court apparently thinks otherwise. I am stunned," Alito wrote in the dissent, joined by Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas.
"Today, the Court makes a most unfortunate misstep that rewards an act of judicial hubris and imposes a $2 billion penalty on American taxpayers. The District Court has made plain its frustration with the Government, and respondents raise serious concerns about nonpayment for completed work. But the relief ordered is, quite simply, too extreme a response. A federal court has many tools to address a party's supposed nonfeasance. Self-aggrandizement of its jurisdiction is not one of them. I would chart a different path than the Court does today, so I must respectfully dissent," Alito continued.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/06/2025 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11135 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Alito: "A federal court has many tools to address a party's supposed nonfeasance. "
Too bad Alito didn't mention that the US Congress has many tools outside of impeachment to address a lower level federal court's supposed nonfeasance.
At least Alito otherwise described the situation accurately for us non-lawyers.
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] DOGE announced on Tuesday that the Inter-American Foundation has been slashed in accordance with an executive order the president signed last month deeming it 'unnecessary.'
The only employee left at the agency now is Peter Marocco, who previously presided over the Trump administration's gutting of the foreign aid programs at the United States Agency for International Development and the state department, according to The Guardian.
Marocco was appointed to head the agency on Friday, it reports.
The headcount at the independent federal agency prior to DOGE's onslaught was 48, and the average employee salary was $131,000 each year, according to Musk's department.
'The Inter-American Foundation, an agency whose primary action was to issue federal grants ($60million budget), has been reduced to its statutory minimum (1 active employee),' DOGE posted to its X account on Tuesday ahead of Trump's Address to the Joint Congress.
The agency was created by Congress in 1969 to issue grants to countries in Latin America and the Caribbean for 'localized community-led development,' according to its now defunct website.
It awarded some 5,800 grants valued at more than $945 million since 1972, with 425 active projects as of October, according to The Guardian.
[X]
The Inter-American Foundation, an agency whose primary action was to issue foreign grants ($60M budget), has been reduced to its statutory minimum (1 active employee). Examples of grants that were cancelled in the process:
- $903,811 for alpaca farming in Peru - $364,500 to…
— Department of Government Efficiency (@DOGE) March 4, 2025
… $364,500 to reduce social discrimination of recyclers in Bolivia
- $813,210 for vegetable gardens in El Salvador
- $323,633 to promote cultural understanding of Venezuelan migrants in Brazil
- $731,105 to improve marketability of mushrooms and peas in Guatemala
- $677,342 to expand fruit and jam sales in Honduras
- $483,345 to improve artisanal salt production in Ecuador
- $39,250 for beekeeping in Brazil
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] The Trump administration has published a list of more than 440 federal properties to be closed or sold after deeming them 'not core to government operations.'
Hours later, however, the administration issued a revised list with only 320 entries - none in Washington, D.C.
The General Services Administration, which published the list, did not explain the change and why some properties had been removed.
The initial list had included some of the country's most recognizable buildings, along with courthouses, offices and even parking garage and spanned nearly every state.
The potential sell-off appears to be part of Trump's effort to slash the size of the federal government, led by tech billionaire Elon Musk. The downsizing drive has already led to 100,000 workers taking buyouts or being fired.
Musk's Department of Government Efficiency has claimed that it has saved $105 billion so far, in part by cancelling leases on government properties. Budget experts have cast doubt on the reliability of DOGE's data.
In Washington, D.C., the list includes the Old Post Office, which formerly housed the Trump International Hotel and is newly renovated.
[DefenseOne] President Donald Trump ...Perhaps no man has ever had as much fun being president of the US... vowed to bring shipbuilding "home to America, where it belongs," while promising tax incentives and a brand-new office in the executive branch to reinvigorate the industry in his joint address to Congress on Tuesday.
"To boost our defense industrial base, we are also going to resurrect the American shipbuilding industry, including commercial ship building and military shipbuilding," Trump said during his nearly two-hour speech. "I'm announcing tonight that we will create a new office of shipbuilding in the White House and offer special tax incentives to bring this industry home to America, where it belongs. We used to make so many ships. We don't make them anymore very much, but we're going to make them very fast, very soon. It will have a huge impact."
Shipbuilding has emerged as a key theme for the second Trump administration. The president’s pick for Navy secretary, John Phelan, says Trump has texted him late at night about his rusty warship concerns.
The U.S. already builds ships domestically, but the number of manufacturers, shipyards, and suppliers has dwindled in recent decades—along with a skilled workforce—contributing to a significant backlog in production of warships and nuclear submarines.
Trump is hardly alone in his concern. Navalists have been sounding alarms for years, but the issue leapt to the fore in summer 2023, when a briefing slide prepared by the Office of Naval Intelligence reported that China’s shipyards can build around 232 times more tonnage than their U.S. counterparts.
Posted by: Vortigern Speaking for Boskone4685 ||
03/06/2025 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11151 views]
Top|| File under:
#2
Shipbuilding infrastructure is not going to come back during a four year presidential term. It is a long term investment. Trump can find a way to squeeze out more production with the existing infrastructure, but investment in recreating shipyards means there has to be certainty that contracts will not dry up down the road. I would be open to seeing tarring reductions on products delivered by ship built inland flagged in the auS.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
03/06/2025 6:29 Comments ||
Top||
#3
The French had a navy in the Age of Sail that was like a hothouse flower. Without a vibrant merchant marine it only was as strong as the care and monies lavished on it by the central government -- whenever there was a an interruption it quickly withered. The US is in a similar state.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited
[Regnum] Scientists from the Institute of Applied Geophysics (IPG) recorded a powerful M-class flare on March 5 that lasted for nine minutes. This was reported by the press service of the institution.
“An M1.7 flare was recorded in the X-ray range in the sunspot group 4016 (S25E43),” the IPG website says.
Scientists assess the integrated solar activity as moderate. Also, 18 class C flares were registered in the X-ray range, and two subflares in the optical range.
Solar flares are divided into classes A, B, C, M and X depending on their power. At the lowest activity, equivalent to the radiation power in Earth orbit, they are assigned the index A0.0. The power between classes differs by a factor of 10.
As reported by the Regnum news agency, on February 28 the Sun ejected the largest plasma cloud since the beginning of the year. The emission was from the side opposite to the Earth, and therefore did not pose a threat to the planet.
Solar activity can also lead to magnetic storms on Earth. The last time this phenomenon was recorded was on March 4. Its effect lasted for two days.
#2
If it does actually influence earthquakes, might it also not influence volcanic eruptions, both of which tend to be related to shifts in geologic structures, c.f. Kilauea.
#3
Your assumption is well taken Mercutio but not evidenced by Kilauea. Kilauea sits on top of a "hot spot" in the middle of the pacific plate. Yellowstone is over a hot spot in the middle of the North American plate.
Plate boundaries shifting evidenced by the ring of fire show earthquakes and volcanics are linked. Mt Fugi would be an example of subduction of one plate under another. The submerged plate heats up as it sinks, Density of the material is lessened as the blob expands and magma works its way to the surface in a usually spectacular way.
#4
^ All true, but the output is irregular and mediated by internal structures - those structures may also be affected as well as plate geometry... assuming there's any relationship to the sun at all...
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
...a city in Texas, named after Sam Houston, who would drop deader than he is now if he could see how it turned out...
...They hit him with slander, they impeached him twice. Nancy Pelosi tore up his State of the Union address on national TV. They stole an election and put his adherents in jail. They vilified him. They couldn't crucify him, so they shot him. Still, they can't keep him down...
...dictatorial for repealing some (but not all) of the diktats of his predecessor, misogynistic because he likes pretty girls, homophobic because he doesn't think gender bending should be mandatory, truly a man for all seasons...
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] Donald Trump could make a drastic move to reshape American classrooms within the next 24 hours by shuttering the Department of Education.
...Perhaps no man has ever had as much fun being president of the US...
