Welcome to Tuesday, April 15, 2027: TAX DAY in America! Have you sent in your return? And it’s also National Glazed Spiral Ham Day, a method invented in 1952 to slice an entire bone-in glazed ham into spirals. Here’s an example. I have tried this rarely as nobody serves them, and it’s too much for one person to eat. Maybe this Easter. . .
It’s also Anime Day, McDonald’s Day (the first McD’s was opened by Ray Kroc on this day in 1955), National Griper’s Day, Holy Tuesday, Titanic Remembrance Day (the ship went down on this day in 1912), and National Rubber Eraser Day. (on this day in 1770, “Joseph Priestly founded a vegetable gum to remove pencil marks. He dubbed the substance ‘rubber'”.
From Wikipedia, here’s “the oldest operating McDonald’s restaurant is the third one built, opened in 1953. It is located at 10207 Lakewood Blvd. at Florence Ave. in Downey, California”. Perhaps you can guess the heartthrob of mine who was born in Downey:
Da Nooz:
*This is insane: a piece reporting that “U.S. and El Salvador say they won’t return man who was mistakenly deported.”
The Trump administration has been fighting for days against a judge’s order to return a wrongfully deported Maryland man to the United States. But this meeting in the Oval Office with the president of El Salvador was the most clear example yet that Trump had no intention of returning Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia to the United States, despite the Supreme Court instructing the U.S. government to take steps to return the Salvadoran migrant.
Trump and his top aide Stephen Miller essentially scoffed at the Supreme Court’s ability to direct the administration to take any action on foreign policy and made clear that if anyone was going to return Garcia to the United States, it would have to be Nayib Bukele, the Salvadoran president. Bukele, seated next to President Trump, rejected any notion he would return Abrego Garcia, a father of three who has no criminal record.
And American citizens, too!
President Trump just said he was open to sending American citizens convicted of violent crimes to President Bukele’s prison in El Salvador. Trump had a similar response when Bukele first offered to jail convicted American criminals in February. “I’m all for it,” Trump said, adding that his attorney general was studying whether the idea was legally feasible. “If it’s a homegrown criminal, I have no problem, no,” he said, adding: “I’m talking about violent people. I’m talking about really bad people.”
Returning a man who was mistakenly sent to prison (and a horrible prison) in another country is not a foreign policy issue. It is an issue of justice, and the Supreme Court was right. This could come down to a nasty fight, but if the guy has no criminal record, and the U.S. won’t give a reason for what they did, but admit it was a “mistake,” then it has to be made right. And the idea that American citizens could be sent to El Salvador is simply ludicrous. But Trump doesn’t know the meaning of “ludicrous.”
*It looks as if Putin isn’t much concerned with having a cease-fire with Ukraine, at least according to the WSJ. Russia is amping up its attacks and killing more Ukrainian civilians.
The deadliest missile strike on Ukraine this year pushed up the civilian death toll from Russia’s invasion and widened divisions between the U.S. and Kyiv’s European allies over President Trump’s strategy for ending the war.
Ukraine and European countries said the latest Russian missile strike, which killed 34 and left more than 100 injured in the city of Sumy on Sunday, showed Russian President Vladimir Putin wasn’t interested in a cease-fire.
Russia fired two ballistic missiles that Ukraine said hit university and residential buildings, cars and streets. Russian officials said it struck a meeting of Ukrainian military commanders. The strike killed Ukrainian Col. Yuriy Yula, commander of a Ukrainian artillery brigade that is equipped with advanced U.S. Himars rocket launchers, according to a person familiar with the matter. Kyiv said the attack also killed two children among a crowd of civilians.
Western leaders criticized the strike over the loss of civilian life, with France’s foreign minister calling for increased sanctions on Moscow following the attack. Friedrich Merz, Germany’s incoming chancellor, described it as “a serious war crime” and said he was open to equipping Ukraine with long-range Taurus missiles.Putin “evidently interprets our willingness to talk with him not as a serious offer to make peace, but as weakness,” Merz told German public broadcaster ARD on Sunday.
Trump, meanwhile, described the strike late Sunday as “a horrible thing,” adding: “I was told [Russia] made a mistake.” In a post on his Truth Social platform Monday, Trump called the conflict “Biden’s war” and said that the former president and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine “did an absolutely horrible job in allowing this travesty to begin.”
Remember Trump’s boast that he would end the Ukraine/Russia war on DAY 1 of his administration. Now there are no serious talks and Tru,p is blaming the war on Biden and on Zelensky! What the deuce did Zelensky do to make the war begin. It is Russian aggression and desire for Lebensraum, pure and simple.
*Over at the NYT, one of my favorite pundits, James Carville, has written a piece called “How to turn Trump’s economic chaos against him” (archived here):
Now we know why. Mr. Trump didn’t have a plan to bring down inflation and make life better (except for the rich, who disproportionately benefit from his tax cuts), and he was hellbent on tariffs at all costs.
The problem is that smoke and mirrors only work until you screw up so hard that no act of lunacy can pull the American people’s attention elsewhere. And boy, did the president just screw up royally.
In what will certainly be recorded as one of the most ignorant acts of political leadership in American history, the president of the United States has now willfully damaged the global economy with his tariff chaos. Not only was this an act of economic warfare, it has broken the cardinal rule in American politics: Never destabilize the economy.
. . .In the coming weeks and months, many Americans are going to experience pressure and pain with the tariffs on China and the remaining tariffs on an array of goods and countries. Prices could rise sharply, consumer spending may well dry up and we are already seeing evidence of surging mortgage rates and a weakened bond market. The Trump administration will not be competent enough to dig us out. The path to stabilizing and strengthening the country starts when Democrats can take back the economic narrative from the Republican Party and persuade the majority of Americans to close the book on the Trump chaos.
This can only be done if we avoid the distractions — whether it’s Mr. Trump’s third-term talk or Democratic infighting on social issues — and instead focus on the economic foundations that matter to Americans most. My fellow Democrats, it’s time we transform our party into a projector for the economic pain of the American people.
His advice for Dems includes focusing in prices and on 402(k)s (which are the average Joe and Jill’s saving funds), and focusing on local stories:
The Democratic Party must now take local stories and project them where they matter most. Record the story of Nicholas Gilbert, a dairy farmer upended by the tariffs — and localize it to Wisconsin. Focus on the Latino and Black men who supported his previous election, and take it to Georgia or Arizona. Go on influencer networks and podcasts talking about the looming increase in car prices and the fact that the president exploded Nintendo’s plans for the Switch 2.
If we do this, says Carville, we can “take back the power” and “begin again.” Perhaps. But these are not charismatic issues for the Dems, who don’t seem to focus on these “narrow” issues. If Carville is right, they had better start now.
*Unlike Columbia University, Harvard stood up today to the Administration’s threats to cut off federal money unless the University makes changes to Trump’s liking.
The school is the first to push back against the government’s efforts to force change at elite universities.
And it has the most funding potentially at stake: The administration recently announced that it was reviewing $9 billion in contracts and grants to Harvard and its affiliates.
That’s a lot of dosh, but Harvard’s endowment is 53.2 billion. And the President, Alan Garber, has moxie. Harvard people got an email from Garber this morning that includes this:
I encourage you to read the [Administration’s] letter to gain a fuller understanding of the unprecedented demands being made by the federal government to control the Harvard community. They include requirements to “audit” the viewpoints of our student body, faculty, staff, and to “reduc[e] the power” of certain students, faculty, and administrators targeted because of their ideological views. We have informed the administration through our legal counsel that we will not accept their proposed agreement. The University will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights.
The administration’s prescription goes beyond the power of the federal government. It violates Harvard’s First Amendment rights and exceeds the statutory limits of the government’s authority under Title VI. And it threatens our values as a private institution devoted to the pursuit, production, and dissemination of knowledge. No government—regardless of which party is in power—should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.
. . . The work of addressing our shortcomings, fulfilling our commitments, and embodying our values is ours to define and undertake as a community. Freedom of thought and inquiry, along with the government’s longstanding commitment to respect and protect it, has enabled universities to contribute in vital ways to a free society and to healthier, more prosperous lives for people everywhere.
For once I’m proud of Schmarvard, just as Columbia people should be deeply ashamed of their school. The Administration is blackmailing colleges with funding threats, and of course any administration could do that, though perhaps only Trump’s would have the hubris to do it. I’m sure Harvard will survive a funding cut, but what about all those other schools?
More about Harvard later today.
*They’ve caught a suspect in the arson attack on Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro’s home (the Governor’s Mansion), and the suspect is in the hospital. Instead of being a rabid anti-semite or a Republican, the suspect may simply have been mentally ill. He has a history.
A man who authorities said scaled an iron security fence in the middle of the night, eluded police and broke into the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion where he set a fire is in police custody at a hospital after an unrelated medical event, state police said Monday.
Cody Balmer, 38, told police he had planned to beat Gov. Josh Shapiro with a small sledgehammer if he found him, according to court documents. He was being treated at the hospital, which police said was “not connected to this incident or his arrest.”
That part about being him with a “small sledgehammer” gets me. Was that supposed to cause only small injuries? There’s more:
Balmer’s mother told The Associated Press on Monday that she had tried in recent days to get him assistance for mental health issues, but “nobody would help.” She said her son had bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. The AP was not able to verify that information.
“He wasn’t taking his medicine, and that’s all I want to say,” Christie Balmer said, speaking at the family home in Harrisburg.
The fire left significant damage and forced Shapiro, his family and guests to evacuate the building early Sunday. Balmer, who was arrested later in the day, faces charges including attempted homicide, terrorism, aggravated arson and aggravated assault, authorities said.
Balmer had walked an hour from his home to the governor’s residence, and during a police interview, “Balmer admitted to harboring hatred towards Governor Shapiro,” according to a police affidavit, but it didn’t explain why.
. . . .Balmer turned himself in after confessing to his “ex-paramour,” the affidavit said. Authorities had initially said he was being transported to Dauphin County Prison, but did not say whether he has a lawyer. Calls to people believed to be relatives went unanswered or unreturned Sunday. One recent listed residence in Harrisburg was condemned in 2022.
. . . Balmer has faced criminal charges over the past decade including simple assault, theft and forgery, according to online criminal court records.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili demands selfies. And she got one!
Hili: Take a selfie of us.Andrzej: It’s not my specialty.
Hili: Zrób nam selfie.Ja: To nie jest moja dyscyplina sportu.
*******************
From Things with Faces, an Italian tree:
From Jesus of the Day:
From Stacy:
I may have posted this recently (I forgot) but Masih is absolutely right:
The Islamic Republic will never dismantle its nuclear program.
Khamenei isn’t negotiating, he’s clinging to anti-American hate at any cost.
He’d rather see its nuclear sites bombed than sign a deal.They understand only one language: pressure.
— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) April 12, 2025
A scene from Ricky Gervais’s fantastic “After Life” series. Actually, in the show his wife had died of cancer some time before.
This is one of the most empathetic and compassionate pieces of television I’ve ever seen. #AfterLife ❤️🩹pic.twitter.com/5OC23UF9yw
— After Life 🐕🦺 (@truebritgbr) April 13, 2025
From Reese, who got it from Facebook:
From Malcolm: a d*g that rides a horse!
Dally and Spanky: friendship of a Jack Russell Terrier and a rescued miniature horse pic.twitter.com/2ZIhcgbgSo
— why you should have an animal (@ShouldHaveAnima) April 6, 2025
From Luana, who called this a “fun analysis”:
“I told you” says @powerfultakes.
Was it a mistake to vote for Trump?
If I’d known that MAGA would become a poverty cult obsessed with bringing Chinese sweatshops to the US, I would have supported DEI Kamala. However, as far as I am aware, no one (including Karlin) anticipated…
— Nathan Cofnas (@nathancofnas) April 9, 2025
From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I reposted:
1.1 million people died at Auschwitz, the vast majority being Jews, but also Romani, gays, POWs, and so on. Many were gassed in this chamber, which at the height of its use killed 6,000 people per day.
— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-04-15T10:41:45.841Z
Two posts from Professor Cobb. First, a lovely snow leopard:
Up close with Sabu!Snow leopards – nicknamed the "ghost cat" – are known for being difficult to see and study in the wild due to their elusiveness and beautiful, camouflaged coat that blends seamlessly with their rocky terrain.📷: Lead zookeeper Taylor S
— Zoo Boise (@zooboise.bsky.social) 2025-04-13T15:30:56.615Z
A tweet by Sheffield mammoth expert Tori Herridge and a buttressing response. It is, of course, about Colossal Bioscience’s proposed “de-extinction” of the woolly mammoth.
Still, never thought I’d see the day that some ancient DNA peeps would so whole-heartedly embrace (a somewhat iffy version of) the morphological species concept.
— Tori Herridge (@toriherridge.bsky.social) 2025-04-13T19:08:10.443Z
This is the sort of thing any informed journalist should have queried them on. So you are sequencing the DNA, manipulating the DNA, but to determine whether or not you succeeded, you're looking to soft tissue anatomy and behaviour on a [checks notes] animal known from skeletons.
— Dr Dave Hone (@davehone.bsky.social) 2025-04-13T19:41:57.646Z
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. -Leonardo da Vinci, painter, engineer, musician, and scientist (15 Apr 1452-1519)
So we have two dictators, posing in an Oval Office all tricked out in gold s**t befitting third world politicians, smirking about how they won’t return one illegally deported man when, as Matt Taibbi points out, one of them is paying the other $6,000,000 of our tax dollars to imprison people abroad.
I hadn’t realized that Trump had redecorated the Oval Office. It looks awful.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/04/bukele-trump-court-order/682432/
I didn’t even recognize it as the Oval Office! Tasteless. Just like the guy who ordered it done.
Exactly. Looks like a room in a brothel.
Today is the 160th anniversary of the death of President Lincoln, who was shot the evening before and expired in the early morning of the 15th. As Stanton said at his deathbed, “Now he belongs to the ages.” Stanton himself was a target of the assassins, as was Seward, who was actually injured, while bedridden after a riding accident.
In one of those historical ‘what-ifs’, Lincoln had actually been invited to attend the ceremony on April 14 at Fort Sumter, where General Anderson, the fort’s erstwhile commander, would raise the flag that he had hauled down four years before. Being exhausted, though, Lincoln declined. Had he attended he would not have returned to Washington on the 14th or gone to Ford’s Theater.
That is interesting. But Booth was determined to murder him. From bits learned over time, a President was pretty accessible to the public, and there was not much security at the White House. Different times.
Harvard’s high-minded stand on principle would be more convincing if they hadn’t spent recent decades in systematic and illegal racial discrimination, strongly disfavouring Asian Americans and massively favouring blacks.
PS: So Trump writes Bukele a letter asking nicely for the return of Garcia. Bukele writes back politely refusing, pointing out that Garcia is a citizen of El Salvador. Trump then shows this to the Supreme Court saying “well I tried but my writ doesn’t run in El Salvador any more than yours”. What’s the Court then going to do?
I don’t know how one would get him back. I was hoping that some charges could be made to someone in the chain of command. Obstruction of justice, or something like that directed at the Attorney General? But I have no idea if that can be done.
At present, this admin. is finding that it really is above the law.
I think Trump should work on easier problems first. Trump should change the value of Pi. We have been suffering with 3.141592… for too long.
Just a quick question, how could the third McDonalds open in 1953 when the first opened in 1955?
I was confused too. FWIW, Wikipedia says this;
Given your love of great music and musical talents, my guess is that your heartthrob is Karen Carpenter, although there are several contenders on the Wikipedia list of Downey natives.
I thought maybe Wierd Al?🤓🤓
IIRC, Karen Carpenter was born in Connecticut.
I think the billion$ that Harvard has in endowment is irrelevant. That money is contractually spoken for in terms of endowed faculty positions, student scholarships and awards, and even for special grounds-keeping projects. It cannot be touched. I expect Jerry’s recent fellowship is to be counted among the endowments at U of Chicago.
In other news, the Department of Energy just capped indirect costs at 15%.
Universities are in for a gut-wrenching next few years.
Dr Hone’s quip is funny but inaccurate. At the risk of giving succor to charlatans, a considerable amount is known about both mammoths and dire wolves, including what their hair and diet was like; hair, skin and stomach contents have survived in a few cases. Indeed, many proteins from both are known. So it isn’t just “skeletons” that paleobiologists have to help understand these extinct animals.
1) I think there’s overreach from the government (you can’t really demand “viewpoint diversity”, especially given it seems most people in academia are left-leaning), but equally Harvard has behaved abysmally for some time and it seems they’re not willing to course correct themselves. They need to be policed and the voters appear to have given Trunp something of a mandate to do that policing. It’s tax-payer’s money he’s withholding. Hopefully a middle ground can be achieved, one that Harvard and others were not going to search for themselves.
2) The innocent guy transported and imprisoned in El Salvador is a tricky one. Obviously wrong and all efforts should be made for his return, but mistakes are going to be made reversing the open borders of the last four years. The government has accepted as such. Yes, you feel terrible for this guy, but there will be many, many innocent people in American jails also. It does feel like this is something of a stick used to beat the administration with. It’s also very odd El Salvador doesn’t just return him. More to the story? If not every effort should be made to force them to return him…a) because it’s the right thing to do, and b) great optics for the MAGA crew.
I think Andrew Sullivan said, earlier in the Reign of Trump II, that if they just went about all these tasks a little more subtly and carefully they’d achieve a lot more in the long run.
The man from El Salvador arrived in 2011 so we can’t blame Biden for him
I’m not defending the open borders, although the more I read about this the more I notice that there’s a demand for low wage workers, often in agriculture and meat packing.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the demand for illegals was coming from business, not sappy liberals.
Ding, ding, ding, winner!
Businesses of course want the low-cost labor. I don’t understand why there has not been more focus on this.
I’ve heard first-hand of a couple of local companies who employ unskilled manufacturing labor in which employees are provided social security numbers and fake names, work for a couple months, then are let go, only to come back the next week with a new name.
“Follow the money” is often a great way to thing about policy.
I’m trying to put the Garcia case in a local context, in my shoes, let’s say.
A Canadian citizen is living in the United States, legally or not doesn’t matter. For whatever reason the U.S. wants to deport him back to Canada. For whatever reason, a U.S. judge issues a ruling that says he can’t be deported. The U.S. deports him anyway, violating their law. He gets dropped off in Canada and we lock him up. He’s not guilty of a crime in the U.S. but he’s in Canada now, not the U.S. According to our justice system he can be imprisoned for whatever it is we think he’s done. (Even if in El Salvador you can be locked up on El Presidente’s say-so, that is still the law of a sovereign county.)
The U.S. President calls up our Prime Minister, “Sorry, we made a mistake. Can we have your citizen back? Our Supreme Court says I have to ask.”
Our Prime Minister would say, “Sorry. According to our law, if not yours, he belongs in prison. We don’t want to release him because, as our citizen, we can’t force him to get on a plane to the U.S.. And neither can you. For all we know, as soon as we spring him, he’s going to disappear into the Toronto gang world and start causing trouble. Even if we knew he went back to the States willingly, we can’t know that he won’t re-enter Canada, as he has the absolute right to do. If we had released him from prison, we can’t just arbitrarily lock him up again even if we could find him. If we decide he shouldn’t be in prison, we’ll release him on our initiative and he can try then to get back into the States if he still wants to.”
It would not sit well with most Canadians I think for our Government to release a criminal (in our eyes) from our prison and send him to a foreign country as a free man. The foreign country made a slip-up but it’s not our problem to fix it. If the United States really wants him back, they can launch a commando operation against our prison and carry him out in a helicopter. (This is actually easier than you think. A motorcycle gang boss escaped aboard a helicopter that landed in the prison’s exercise yard in broad daylight.)
I think both countries should just accept that a citizen has been returned to his home country, beyond the reach of American law or Court orders, and move on.
Trump. We’re observing in real time the downside of concentrating so much power in the hands of one person. Overconfidence, impulsiveness, questionable intelligence, and a surrounding band of sycophants make for a dangerous combination.
I can only hope that President Trump has enough connected synapses to walk back his effort to destroy the global economy. He can’t walk it all the way back even if he wants to, as his actions have proven that the U.S cannot be trusted as the protector of the global economic order. The breach of trust will takes many years to fix, and government leaders will forevermore have Trump’s tariff folly in the backs of their minds when dealing with the United States.
Another day, another outrage. I’m verklempt.
Norman, I couldn’t agree more.
Congress has abdicated its responsibilities and let the President take more and more power over the previous 20 years (or more). Executive Orders have become the defacto method for enacting policy. Rand Paul has been very vocal against the tariffs and argued for Congress to take this on, but with zero results. Of course the Republican congressional leadership won’t vote on them – if Repubs vote for the tariffs and the economy tanks, their constituents will blame them. If Repubs vote against the tariffs, then they are voting against Trump and have to face those consequences. In other words, if they vote, they become accountable. This way they can spin the results however they want to save their seats in the midterms.
That Congress has abdicated its responsibilities, as you say, is such a big part of most of the messes this country is in. You’re right, this goes back several administrations. It is so maddening to me. I caught the tail end of a podcast that happened to be on NPR that was actually quite good — at least, what I heard of it tonight (It was called “Left, Right and Center”), there was a woman guest on by the name of Sarah Isgur and she made the comment (I’m paraphrasing a bit) that she wished we had a “robust Congress that didn’t spend all its time tweeting, appearing on news shows, and pleading for money [for reelection]”. That’s it right there. The majority of them just want to keep their jobs and be little celebrities. Oh, they make me crazy!
The Great and Powerful Oz couldn’t get Dorothy back to Kansas. Now the Great and Powerful O’Julius can’t get Abrego Garcia back from El Salvador.
Otherwise, with Ukraine, there are now about 1100 Russians in boxes to show from their relentless efforts in the Pokrovsk area, particularly Shevchenko, where Ukraine is gaining while Russia uses drones to pick off any of their soldiers who retreat.
One fly in the ointment with Mr. Garcia here is that some Latin countries (Brazil especially) WILL NOT extradite their citizens for any reasons – I don’t know if El Salvador is in that group.
Ironically, one of the first mass amnesties was signed by Reagan to allow the compassionate stay of El Salvadoreans fleeing their civil war.
I don’t know Mr. Garcia’s case hardly at all but I don’t know why he didn’t legalize himself or try to in the last 13 years. ? Answer may be that many illegals don’t think that deeply about immigration law (I noticed when, occasionally, I was their attorney in Immigration Court). Government decrees in their home countries are frequently seen as suggestions only.
Also in answer to above, agribiz and food processing companies lobby heavily in favor of (low cost or illegal) immigration and dole out money to politicians generously.
The meat processing companies particularly, hence the traditionally light touch of immigration enforcement in midwest “meat states” (I just made that up – like it?) … meat states like Indiana, IL, NC etc.
So it isn’t just urban liberals.
D.A.
NYC
I could well be wrong (not an American) but I’ve read so much recently on the subject of American illegals that I see one consistent pattern: if you enter illegally it’s pretty much impossible to become legal. Even marrying a US citizen (as this man did) isn’t enough.