Pres Trump has said his tariffs will bring auto manufacturing jobs back to the US from Canada, and that would help US auto workers.

Now, he wants to make Canada the 51st state, which means that auto manufacturing there would not have to move to the US to avoid tariffs.

Indeed, if it is less expensive for auto manufacturing in Canada, more auto manufacturing may move to the 51st state.

Reducing the jobs available for auto workers in the "lower 48" states.

Is this an inherent contradiction in what Pres Trump has been saying?

More from the article...

... Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) showed white matter lesions around her lateral ventricles, large cavities in the center of the brain filled with cerebrospinal fluid that, from the side, are C-shaped. The type of MRI used, a FLAIR MRI, is used to more easily detect lesions, and the fluid-filled lateral ventricles appear as dark, curved spaces in the center. Doctors could see white -------- and smears around those dark spaces, indicating lesions. After doing a spinal tap and running tests on her cerebral spinal fluid, they suspected she might have a bacterial infection in her brain. So they treated her with an antibiotic and a fever reducer.

But two weeks later, her symptoms hadn't improved. The doctors repeated a FLAIR MRI and found that the white lesions had only gotten worse. They did more tests. ...

Did the FTC lawyer also mention Mr Bezos kissing the ring of Pres Trump as a possible part of the reasoning to request the delay?

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... Jonathan Cohen, a lawyer for the FTC, made the request before U.S. District Judge John Chun, who is overseeing the legal proceedings from a 2023 lawsuit the commission filed against the e-commerce giant in Washington state.

"Our resource constraints are severe and really unique to this moment," Cohen said during a status hearing on Wednesday. "We have lost employees in the agency, in our division and on the case team."

When the judge asked if the agency's challenges were due to recent cuts in the federal government, Cohen said it was, adding that some employees chose to leave the FTC following the "Fork in the road" email sent by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency in January. Staff members who resigned for other reasons also have not been replaced due to a government hiring freeze, he said. ...

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... The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reported a 5 percent increase in the federal deficit for February, with outlays growing by 7 percent compared to the same period last year.

The DOGE stimulus initiative, championed by investment firm CEO James Fishback, proposes allocating 20 percent of the department's savings to taxpayers and another 20 percent to national debt reduction. The plan suggests that DOGE could save $2 trillion over 18 months, enabling the distribution of $400 billion among approximately 79 million taxpayers, resulting in checks of $5,000 each.

However, the latest CBO data challenges the feasibility of these savings. The federal government borrowed $1.1 trillion in the first five months of Fiscal Year 2025, including $308 billion in February alone.

This trend raises concerns about the effectiveness of DOGE's cost-cutting measures and the likelihood of achieving the projected savings necessary to fund the stimulus checks. ...

@#17 ... ...In the process of costing them billions.. ...

Shhhh ...

You're not supposed to acknowledge that part, or even talk about that part.

It goes against the narrative, therefore it is verboten.

Get with the program.

/s ¿- major sarcasm alert here

@#1 ...The Monarch butterflies I see here in Connection travel to Mexico for the winter, and then back to Connecticut in the spring?

That butterfly flies 3000 miles? ...

!!!

Wait, what????

Now, in addition to the Musk kids having to learn on the job (and, apparently showing how poor they are at that), Mr Musk also wants AI bots to learn on the job?

So, after we withdraw from NATO, Mr Musk envisions a Country where we are controlled by AI robots?

... District Judge Christopher Cooper said the vast and "unprecedented" authority of DOGE, formally known as the U.S. Digital Service, combined with its "unusual secrecy" warrant the urgent release of its internal documents under the Freedom of Information Act. ...

Good.

If what DOGE has been doing is so great, then the formal records of what they have been doing should only bolster the need for DOGE.

So... where are those formal records?

Let's see them.

More from the live-updating article ...

... Aftermath of drone attack in Moscow published at 02:45 [EDT? - LL]

We can now bring you the latest images from Moscow after Ukraine launched an overnight drone attack on the capital region, according to local officials. ...

So... as the population eligible for working to support the economy is declining, the Countries are actively reducing the number of workers available to support their economy?

My first comment is along the lines of ... huh? Please explain the rationale of this to me.

More from the article ...

... "This is the largest annual decline recorded since 1961", the first year for which EU-wide aggregate data is available, the bloc's statistical agency, Eurostat, said of the drop in births. ...

As a consequence, the bloc's population is ageing fast, and some countries face labour shortages at a time where hard-right gains have pushed many governments to crack down on migration. ...

My guess would be that this podcast would not be about which lipstick to use, nude modelling or renegotiating prenuptial agreements, which would be topics I would expect from the current First Lady.

I give major kudos to Sen Sanders.

He seems to be one of the few (oh so very few) who are willing to step up and criticize what Pres Trump has been doing.

@#93 ... They're going to have to figure out how it's unconstitutional to allow people who love each other to get married.

Also. A lot of states passed laws to legalize same sex marriages before the federal government took action to protect them. ..

You raise a couple of interesting points.

For starters, yeah, gay couples were getting married before it was declared to be legal nationally.

But I think the more important aspect is, people who love each other being allowed to formally and legally declare that love.

Two questions on the test may be ...

Are you willing to declare loyalty to Pres Trump instead of the Constitution?

Are you willing to declare loyalty to the Constitution?

I mean really, just look at the toady Cabinet appointees. Cannot you see where this administration may be going?

@#1 ... Software engineers with no government experience, some in their early 20s, have clashed with career civil servants at multiple agencies where DOGE has sought--and in some cases received--access to systems ...

"received access to systems"

That is concerning.

Of course the transparency that Mr Musk has promised should say exactly that level of that "access to systems" entails.

So, has Mr Musk said what that level of access by his kids entails?

@#11 ... The US antiwar movement is as old as the American Revolution. ...

Yup.

Back in the day, I was one of those who protested against the Vietnam War.

@#23 ... Yes, and the list of people Trumpers look down on has been expanded to include minorities of all stripes, women, LGBTQ, immingrants, etc. It's not just race anymore. ...

I've told this story a few times here ...

An in-law, in a discussion with me, once told me that he thought women should be barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen cooking his dinner so he could sit down and eat when he came home from work.

That was how he viewed women..

When I questioned him on that, he just doubled down.

I'll just say, he and I had discussions ...

@#16 ... If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. ...

... and is that not the apparent purpose of the GOP's current anti-DEI scam?

i.e., removing qualified people because their skin color is ~wrong~ while replacing those people with little more than toadies?

Can you say, Sec Defense Hegseth?

I knew you could.

@#15

Worth a repeat, in bold ...

... "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."
Lyndon B. Johnson >..

@#5 ... Bernie Sanders: "I think this is a prelude not only to cutting benefits, but to privatizing Social Security ... why do you lie so much about Social Security? Why do you make it look like it's a broken system? The reason is to get people to lose faith in the system so you can give it over to Wall St" ...

Well, yeah.