The dealmaker makes another empty deal

I’ve mentioned the nasty guy made a deal with Russia to sell diesel fuel to the US. He made that deal because diesel prices are so high due to the war he started in Iran. Kos of Daily Kos explains how bad the deal is. Russia would supply 300,000 metric tons with another 500,000 tons in November and eventually up to 4 million tons sometime in the future. That sounds like a lot. But it isn’t. That first shipment is about 14 hours of American diesel consumption. The three shipments of 1.8 million tons will last about three and a half days. The grand total will cover less than ten days. The total amount is not enough to affect global prices. The deal is based on whether Russia has diesel to spare – and it doesn’t. Ukraine has so damaged Russia’s refineries it doesn’t have enough for domestic needs. Russia had banned exports and is importing from Iran and South Korea.

Trump doesn’t care about any of that. What matters to him is that 1) he could finally align U.S. policy alongside fascist Russia, and—this is particularly important—2) he could now blame Ukraine for high diesel prices. And his surrogates spent the weekend doing just that.

The nasty guy is also able to announce he made a wonderful deal to help out truckers and farmers. He won’t be saying anything about how empty the deal is.

Trump and Putin are fuming about Ukraine because their refinery strikes have emerged as one of its most effective weapons against Russia’s war machine. They damage Russia’s ability to fuel its military, disrupt its domestic economy, and deprive the Kremlin of revenue it needs to continue its invasion. So for Trump’s diesel deal to work, he needs Ukraine to stop doing one of the things that is actually working against Russia.

Thankfully, not many people are buying the BS the nasty guy is selling. That means he has no more leverage over Ukraine. And Europe has noticed and is working to replace American military and intelligence assistance. That leaves Ukraine to chart its own course through the war. The nasty guy announced an energy ceasefire. Zelenskyy said he would agree to it if Russia did. Russia hit some energy infrastructure – so Ukraine is back to attacking refineries. FischFry of the Kos community worked from a thread by progressive economist Gabriel Zucman to explain one of the ways the rich don’t pay taxes. The particular rich person in this story is Peter Thiel. He founded PayPal and got rich when he sold it. He’s gay yet a far right political player and anti-tax crusader. Back in 1997 the Roth IRA was created. It allows a person earning less than $110K to put up to $2K a year into a Roth account. When the person turns 60 he can withdraw from it tax free. At the time Thiel set up his Roth he was earning about $73K at PayPal. Thiel had his Roth invest in PayPal stock – 1.7 million shares at a price of $0.001 a share. A month later PayPal sold shares to investors for $500,000 each. Now there is speculation Thiel’s Roth is worth about $20 to $30 billion. And he can start withdrawing it – all tax free – in six months. FischFry wrote:

One can only begin to imagine the impact Thiel might have with that vast fortune, but we should fear so much of it will be used to further pollute political discussion, advancing the worst elements of our body politic.

Time for a wealth tax. Eleanor Beardsley of NPR reported that 500 to 700 grocery stores in France had their freezers and cold rooms hacked, turning them from coolers to heaters. Of course, all the food in them was spoiled. Strangely, the hackers didn’t ask for money. The freezers were hit because their security software hadn’t been updated (a reason not to connect freezers to the internet? – didn’t used to need to). One of the shopkeepers said incidents like this will only increase with AI able to sniff out hacking opportunities. My thermostat is programmable, but does not connect to the internet. I’m going to keep it that way. In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Paul Krugman writing for his own Substack. By mid March of 1945 Hitler knew the war was lost. He didn’t believe he had failed, he had been failed by the German people. Yeah, the tyrant believed the people hadn’t sufficiently supported his tyranny.

So on March 19 he issued the “Decree concerning demolitions in the Reich territory,” which has come to be known as the Nerobefehl or Nero decree. It ordered the destruction of Germany’s own infrastructure — supposedly to deny that infrastructure to the Allies, but the obvious purpose was to punish his own country. […] Think of the Kennedy Center, a national icon that Trump is destroying because he can’t put his own name on it, as the model for what is all too likely to happen to America over the next two years. Can Democrats stop the coming reign of destruction?

Democrats won’t get any help from the Supreme Court or supine Republicans and the nasty guy has backing of billionaires,

with vast resources who will continue to enable his attack on democracy even if their billions in political spending aren’t enough to buy this election.

In the comments exlrrp posted a meme from Tom Weinner.

Trump decided what to do in Iran by listening to Netanyahu. Now he’s deciding what to do in Ukraine by listening to Putin. The worst people in the world just lead him around by the nose from one catastrophe to another.

South Grand Prairie High School in Texas was told by their school board to shut down a production of Little Shop of Horrors. The reason: The lead character is Seymour, but not enough boys auditioned for the part. So it was given to a girl. That would mean when Seymour fell in love it would be with another girl. And that would violate Senate Bill 12. At least that’s the excuse the school board is giving. The version of SB12 prohibiting sexually-oriented performances on public property in the presence of anyone under 18 has been blocked by the courts. That provision isn’t in the current version of the bill. But Gov. Greg Abbott and AG Ken Paxton are pressing the ambiguity, prompting the school district to obey in advance. Thankfully, Abbott and Paxton are both in tight races.

And while the bill originally targeted drag queens, Texas Republicans have now made a new and vocal enemy: theater kids.

David Horsey posted a cartoon on Kos showing a large pizza with four people around it. The guy with a huge grin labeled “Top 1%” will get most of it. “Merely wealthy” with get a small slice. “Upper middle class” will get a thin slice. And “Lower 50%” will get crumbs. Horsey’s caption says, “This is not a joke.” Pedro Molina posted a cartoon on Kos appropriate for the Cornell 7 scandal. It shows a ball rolling downhill gaining size as it goes. Beside the small ball at the top is, “They’re just boys.” At the next larger ball is, “Their parents should teach them how to behave... I’m talking about the girl’s parents, of course!” After three more quotes, the one at the bottom is, “You know, I have this private island.”