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drjohndesmarteau.bsky.social
Retired anesthesiologist | I read JAMA so you don’t have to | Avid flight simmer | Fair gardener | Classical composer | Married a great guy in 2004 | Dual citizen Can-Am | Voted BO, HRC, JRB, KH without a moment’s hesitation — should tell you my politics.
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The four law firms that it was announced are now Trump collaborators -- Kirkland & Ellis, Latham & Watkins, Simpson Thacher, and A&O Shearman Sterling -- ALSO agreed today to "Disavow DEI" as part of a settlement with EEOC. Why would any new associate join such a place? Why would any partner stay?

submitted 2 days ago • 633 comments

Don't forget to try this when you visit #Syria، the best ice cream in #Syria 🍨📍#Bakdash Ice Cream #Damascus

submitted 2 days ago • 1 comment

That Germany was in an economic crisis after the stock market crash of 1929 was a large part of the reason Hitler was able to come to power. However, Hitler did not cause the problems. Trump is already in power and can’t use the economic demolition he’s causing as a crutch or blame it on others.

submitted 3 days ago • 1 comment

The Dow is down over 750 points, the NASDAQ is down over 450 and the S&P is down over 120. Gold is up almost $70/ounce to $3,149/ounce. Gonna be a bumpy day on Wall Street today.

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

Trump hinted he will treat Tesla differently than other companies doing business with China. I wonder what the Chinese Govt. will do with Tesla, since a very big part of Tesla's manufacturing capacity is located in Shanghai. They sell a lot of Teslas in China and export a lot of Teslas from China.

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

Trump's at it again — promoting "clean beautiful COAL!" Great article in Wired why coal is a dying industry. Ironically, AI needs lots of electricity. If we use coal to make it, and the AI robots take over someday, they'll be fine with a hot dying planet, that we killed and us with Trump's coal.

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

Trump: "I don't want anything to go down. But sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something." Me: "Sometimes despite our best efforts in the operating room, the patient, who got run over by a bus, doesn't make it."

submitted 6 days ago • 0 comments

One man just wiped out $10 trillion in wealth, is destroying centuries-old legal protections, and seems determined to unravel humanity’s greatest public health achievement. In 3 months. I don’t know how we get out of this. But if we do, one person can never have that kind of power again.

submitted 7 days ago • 1708 comments

Asian markets having another crap day and US premarket indices are down again. Presages another rough day on Wall Street. So much winning.

submitted 7 days ago • 0 comments

I am not an economist, but I do spend a *lot* more time than the average person does in studying politics and elections. I can never once recall a time where a recession was so directly and obviously traceable to the president alone, let alone one where he CLAIMED CREDIT FOR IT.

submitted 7 days ago • 188 comments

It can’t be said enough how right Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris were. About everything.

submitted 7 days ago • 317 comments

Anyone who is SURPRISED by Trump Tariffs was deluding themselves. This wasn’t like the Project 2025 stuff that he disclaimed. He talked about these over and over and over again.

submitted 7 days ago • 20 comments

The Scottish Government should take control of all of Trump’s assets in Scotland. No more meetings @johnswinney.bsky.social Trump is a crook. #Scotland🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

submitted 8 days ago • 17 comments

Unlike other times tariffs have been applied, the dollar fell. Investors could be worried about a US recession, and/or Trump's erratic policies have spooked them. A weaker dollar is good for exports except when other countries retaliate, but will make imports more expensive > consumers pay more.

submitted 8 days ago • 0 comments

Sen. Tim Sheehy (R-MT) who founded one of the largest aerial firefighting company in the US, stepping down as CEO last year to run for the Senate, wants the annual aircraft inspection of the firefighting planes eliminated. Corruption no longer confined to the shadows.

submitted 9 days ago • 0 comments

Mark Kelly: "This is not surprising. Here's a guy who told Americans to inject bleach into their bodies, who sent a mob to Capitol Hill. And now I think it's fair to say he stands out as singlehandedly destroying more wealth with his bad decisions than anybody else who has ever lived on this planet"

submitted 9 days ago • 1120 comments

The formula the Trump people used to "calculate" their tariff rates, that just about every serious economist ridiculed, is still up on the US Trade Representative website.

submitted 10 days ago • 0 comments

Some in Trump 2.0 think short term economic pain will produce long term benefit as a justification for what's happening now. However, no one can predict with any accuracy how quickly the rest of the world is going reduce their dependence on the American market, which is 4% of the world's population.

submitted 10 days ago • 0 comments

I asked ChatGPT to create a formula taking into account inflation, exchange rate, price-demand elasticity, tariff passthrough elasticity and trade barriers. It came up with something far superior to the crap on the US Trade Representative website: chatgpt.com/canvas/share...

submitted 10 days ago • 1 comment

1 of 4) I went to the US Trade Representative page ustr.gov/issue-areas/... where the equation the Trump people used to calculate their tariffs can be found. Then I found the 2024 trade numbers www.census.gov/foreign-trad...) and the list of country codes they use www.census.gov/foreign-trad...

submitted 10 days ago • 1 comment

To paraphrase what Bette Davis said in the movie "All About Eve": "Fasten your seatbelts; it's going to be a bumpy day" www.cnbc.com/pre-markets/

submitted 10 days ago • 0 comments

Dan Halloran, once a rising GOP star in NY, was arrested at the Miami Airport on April 2 and charged with child pornography. About 1,000 child sexual abuse videos were found on his iPhone. He got an early release in June 2020 from a 10-year sentence for bribery to stop the spread of COVID in jail.

submitted 11 days ago • 0 comments

@maddow.msnbc.com just talked about Trump placing a 10% tariff on the Norwegian island of Jan Mayen that has no human inhabitants. Apparently , it does have polar bears. I’ve lived in the Arctic and am well aware you can’t trust those shifty polar bears. A 10% tariff probably isn’t high enough.

submitted 11 days ago • 1 comment