Category: Politics

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Tuesday/ you’ve got royal mail 🇬🇧

King Charles III is on his first state visit to the United States as monarch, and addressed congress today.

The Washington Post: As the king spoke, the White House posted an image of Trump and Charles on X, calling it “TWO KINGS,” with a crown emoji.
My comment: The United States of America has no king.

Meanwhile, my latest purchase from an Ebay seller in London arrived yesterday, with a stamp on the envelope that features the king.

United Kingdom, 2026 Definitives
Issued Apr. 7, 2026
Perf. 15×14½ syncopated | 39mm x 30mm | Design: Martin Jennings | Engraving: Cartor Security Printing | Gravure printing | Bar-coded | Phosphor bars, lettering | Self-adhesive
5194 FCP19 £3.60 Purple Heather | Profile of King Charles III
[Sources: stampworld.com, royalmail.com, Google AI]
Held at an angle, the embossed printing, the die-cut security holes (to prevent lifting and re-use of the stamp) and the phosphor lettering comes to light.
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Thursday/ expensive diesel ⛽

Expensive diesel is a much bigger problem than expensive gasoline.
The world economy runs on diesel because diesel has more energy per gallon and powers trucks, marine vessels and heavy equipment.

Supplies of diesel were tight even before the war in Iran— and, writes Emmett Lindner for the New York Times— refineries in the Persian Gulf exported much more diesel and jet fuel than gasoline, while no other countries have the capacity to make up for that loss.

For the longest time, this sign here on Seattle’s Capitol Hill would show $4.99 a gallon for gas. 
And here we are at $6.30 for gas and $7.70 for diesel.
(Gas is very expensive on the West Coast. The national average for the USA stands at $4.03 per gallon. Diesel $5.60). 
Since the war began, diesel has gone up about 45% and regular gasoline by 35% percent.
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Thursday/ the blockade in the Strait of Hormuz 🛑

Reporting by Josh Holder, Adina Renner and Blacki Migliozzi for the New York Times:

On Monday, the United States imposed its own naval blockade, intent on ending Iran’s dominance of the waterway and cutting off its oil income by blocking all traffic to and from its ports.

More than 12 American military vessels were stationed in international waters in the Gulf of Oman, beyond the strait, a U.S. official said on Tuesday.
And the military is likely monitoring the region from a distance, using radar, patrol aircraft and drones, said Jennifer Parker, a former naval officer now at the University of Western Australia’s Defense and Security Institute.

Since the U.S. blockade took effect, no ships linked to Iran have been spotted leaving the region, according to the vessel‑tracking company Kpler.

Headlines, images and captions below are from the New York Times:

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Sunday/ Orban is out 👏

Hungary’s Viktor Orban, ally of Trump and Putin, concedes election defeat

With record turnout, Hungarians chose to end the 16-year rule of the prime minister who was a self-proclaimed champion of illiberal Christian democracy. 

– Headlines from the Washington Post

Péter Magyar is the prime minister-elect of Hungary, set to take office by early May 2026 following a landslide victory by his Tisza Party.

The election in Hungary made me look up these pictures of political and propaganda posters that I took inside the Budapest History Museum.

It was December of 2008 and a heady time for me.
I had just voted in my first election— as a new American citizen— and Senator Barack Obama was now President-elect Obama.

HUNGARIANS! THE RED ARMY WILL LIBERATE YOUR HOMELAND FROM THE FASCIST YOKE!
The Red Army (officially the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army) was the armed force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and, later, the Soviet Union (USSR). Founded in 1918 to defend the Bolshevik revolution, it became one of the largest and most influential militaries in history, pivotal in defeating Nazi Germany in World War II and, in 1946, it was renamed the Soviet Army.
Statistics from World War I.
World War I caused the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, resulting in severe consequences for Hungary. The 1920 Treaty of Trianon stripped Hungary of two-thirds of its territory and over half its population. The nation suffered 600,000 soldier deaths, severe economic collapse, and post-war political instability, leading to a conservative, “counterrevolutionary” regime led by Miklós Horthy.
Imre Nagy (born June 7, 1896, Kaposvár, Hung., Austria-Hungary—died June 16, 1958, Budapest, Hung.) was a Hungarian statesman, independent Communist, and premier of the 1956 revolutionary government whose attempt to establish Hungary’s independence from the Soviet Union cost him his life.(He was put on trial, sentenced to death, and executed).
– From Britannica.com
The Workers’ Militia (Munkásőrség) was an armed paramilitary force formed in Hungary after the 1956 Revolution, operating from 1957 to 1989. Under the direct control of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party (MSZMP), it served as a loyal force to defend the communist regime and prevent another uprising, often viewed as a security check against both the public and regular armed forces.
A poster for the 1989 Hungarian Referendum
A four-part referendum was held in Hungary on 26 November 1989.
Voters were asked whether the President should be elected after parliamentary elections, whether organizations related to the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party should be banned from workplaces, whether the party should account for properties owned or managed by it, and whether the Workers’ Militia should be dissolved.
All four proposals were passed, the first narrowly by 50.1% of voters, and the remaining three by 95% of voters. Voter turnout was 58.0%.
[From Wikipedia]
Poster for the Communist Youth League called
“Let the Communist Youth League be the heir to the most beautiful traditions of Hungarian youth, the successor to the youth of March and the sacrificial struggles of the KIMSZ.”
The text on this Hungarian propaganda poster, originally created by artist Sándor Légrády in 1919 and later reprinted in 1957, translates to:
You! Rumor-spreading counter-revolutionary hiding in the dark. Tremble!
The Hungarian text on the poster translates to:
“For the country of iron, steel, and machines, vote for the People’s Front!”
This is a 1949 Hungarian propaganda poster for the Hungarian Independent People’s Front.
It was created to encourage citizens to support the Communist-led coalition during national elections, emphasizing industrialization as a key national goal.
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Saturday/ another protest 🪧

It was time for another ‘No Kings’ protest today.

Here in Seattle, we gathered at Cal Anderson Park at noon.
There were a few speeches, and then the crowd made its way along Pine Street,  past the Seattle Convention Center and on to Seattle Center.

My two amigos and I made it to the Convention Center, from where we surveyed the long parade of protesters and their signs that kept on coming.

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Wednesday/ the Strait of Hormuz 🚢

As Stephen Colbert said tonight on The Colbert Show: Iran does have a nuclear option.
It is to close the Strait of Hormuz.

That pinch point between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman is the Strait of Hormuz. It is not only oil that goes through the Strait, either.
Qatar produces roughly a third of the world’s helium. More than a quarter of the world’s helium supply could be cut off if the Strait of Hormuz remains closed. (Helium is not only for party balloons; it is used in semiconductor manufacturing). 
Half of the world’s sulfur supply is now trapped on the Persian Gulf side of the Strait of Hormuz. Sulfur is used to produce sulfuric acid, which is essential for manufacturing fertilizers, chemicals, and detergents.
[Map from Google Maps]
A reader’s comment in the NY Times, by an article titled ‘How Trump and His Advisers Miscalculated Iran’s Response to War’. 
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Friday/ the Trump tariffs are unconstitutional 🤑

Happy Friday.

Breaking News: The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) ruled today in a 6-3 decision that Trump’s sweeping tariffs on imports from nearly every U.S. trading partner are unconstitutional.

Last April, in 2025, Trump had claimed that a 1970s emergency statute* (which does not mention the word “tariffs”) allowed him to unilaterally impose the duties without congressional approval.

*The International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) of 1977.
It authorizes the President to regulate international commerce, including limiting or taxing imports, upon declaring a national emergency in response to an “unusual and extraordinary threat” from abroad.

The SCOTUS justices for the majority noted that no other US president had invoked the statute to impose any tariffs — let alone tariffs of this magnitude and scope. Tariffs are a tax and the President of the United States must identify clear congressional authorization to exercise it.

The U.S. Treasury has collected about $240 billion in tariff revenue since April 2, 2025. Consumers paid about 90% of that.

Trump is, um— shall we just say, mightily upset—  over this ruling, and immediately ordered a new 10 percent tax on all imports to the USA.
For justification, he is using the 1974 Trade Act and a provision called Section 122.
(No president before him had invoked that provision, either.)
Section 122 was designed to address short-term emergencies, not long-term trade policies. 
It can only be put in place for 150 days.

In 2025, Trade Deficit in Goods Reached Record High
Data released Thursday by the Census Bureau showed the overall US trade deficit with the world narrowed, the result of an expanding trade surplus in services. The trade deficit in goods was the highest on record.

Ben Casselman and Ana Swanson write for the NY Times:
The total trade deficit, including trade in both goods and services, shrank slightly last year, as growth in exports narrowly outpaced growth in imports. But that was entirely the result of an expanding trade surplus in services. The trade deficit in physical goods, which has been Mr. Trump’s focus as he has sought to use tariffs to restore the U.S. manufacturing sector, actually grew in 2025.
The trade deficit grew sharply at the end of the year, rising 32.6 percent in December as imports rose and exports fell.
[Graphic by Keith Collins]

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Monday/ all that we have lost

“There is such a sadness for all we have lost, the rage and disgust that propels us forward, unimaginable before, held together by our trust in our democracy, now shattered by video proof, we do live in a police state. Maybe not in your neighborhood, yet, but history teaches that they will arrive.

It was the cameras in Viet Nam that relentlessly showed Americans what was being perpetrated in their name, that turned sentiment against the war. It was the videos in the murder of George Floyd that amassed protest against racism. And it is the videos of Gestapo tactics, used indiscriminately against all of us, exposing villainous lies, that will be that pivot point to what we knew was coming.

We the people do not consent.”

– NY Times reader DL, commenting on a report called ‘Watching America Unravel in Minneapolis’ by Charles Homans.
Homans is from Minnesota, and a political correspondent for The Times. He spent 10 days in and around Minneapolis observing clashes between federal agents and city residents and interviewing immigrants, activists and the mayor.

Charles Homens starts with this summary in his report for the New York Times:
‘Donald Trump’s most profound break with American democracy, evident in his words and actions alike, is his view that the state’s relationship with its citizens is defined not by ideals or rules but rather by expressions of power, at the personal direction of the president. That has been clear enough for years, but I had not truly seen what it looked like in person until I arrived in Minneapolis, my hometown, to witness what Trump’s Department of Homeland Security called Operation Metro Surge.’
[Photo by Philip Montgomery for NYT]
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Tuesday/ a very bad feeling 🫣

This Greenland situation feels even worse to me than the run-up to the disastrous invasion of Iraq in 2003.

A protest against President Trump in Nuuk, Greenland, last week.
Never in the past century has America gone forth to seize other countries’ land and subjugate its citizens against their will.
[Photo by Juliette Pavy for The New York Times. Caption by the New York Times.]
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Friday/ Nha Trang, Viet Nam 🇻🇳

The Diamond Princess arrived at the pier in Cam Ranh at 7 am this morning.

My coach bus excursion to Nha Trang was a whirlwind tour consisting of a visit to Po Nagar Temple, a short cruise on Cai River, and visits to an ancient house built from ebony wood, a mat weaving shop and an arts & crafts market.

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Monday/ a deal is made 🤝

The shutdown of the US government is going to end*, after eight Democratic senators broke with their party’s blockade to make a deal.
*For now. Most of the government is funded only until the end of January.

It seems to me the Democrats should have let the Republicans own the Republican shutdown.
A lot of people are being hurt right now with the shutdown, though. Of the eight senators that supported the deal with the Republicans, two are retiring, and the rest are not up for reelection in 2026.

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Friday/ Day 37 🔒

Good morning.
It’s not a happy Friday here in the United States.
We are 37 days into this stupid shutdown of the US government.

A sample:
CNBC: Jobs Friday won’t be happening again this week as the record-long government shutdown has resulted in a lack of official data on the labor market as well as a host of other important indicators.

CBS: The American Federation of Government Employees, a labor union that represents more than 800,000 federal and D.C. workers, is urging senators to back Johnson’s legislation that would provide funding to pay members of the military and federal workers during the shutdown.

CBS: A Rhode Island judge on Thursday ordered the Trump administration to provide full federal food benefits to states by Friday and admonished the government for what he said is its defiance of an earlier order.

The Seattle Times: The Federal Aviation Administration’s order to reduce up to 10% of flights to bring relief to air traffic controllers at the country’s busiest airports takes effect Friday.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said that flights will be reduced until the government shutdown ends.

Chris Hayes, host of political talkshow ‘All In’ on MSNBC, showed this picture yesterday on his show. It’s of a radioactive George W. Bush, videoconferencing in to the 2008 Republican National Committee (instead of attending in person).
The outcome of the 2008 election in favor of the Democrats was actually a forgone conclusion (looking back now with the benefit of hindsight). It sure seems that we are headed that way with the 2028 election, even though it is still three long years away.
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Tuesday/ New York’s young mayor 👨🏽‍💼

It’s official: Zohran Mamdani (34 years old) is New York City’s new mayor.

From the New York Times:
Zohran Mamdani, after a triumphant campaign built on progressive ideas and a relentless focus on affordability, will become the city’s first Muslim mayor, and its youngest in more than a century.

Elsewhere, Democrats won races for governor in New Jersey and Virginia, and Californians approved a redistricting initiative designed to add Democratic seats in the House of Representatives for next year’s midterm elections.
We have a mayor’s race here in Seattle as well, with incumbent mayor Bruce Harrell leading progressive activist Katie Wilson by some 7%, but it’s still very early in the ballot counting.

Headlines and reporting from the online New York Times.
And here’s the headline from Fox News: “Socialist shockwave: Zohran Mamdani stuns NYC as voters hand power to Democrats’ far-left flank”.
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Thursday/ beer and fried chicken 🍗

It sounds like at least fentanyl, rare earth metals and soybeans were discussed at the Trump-Xi summit today. Beijing will ease the restrictions on rare earth exports and start buying soybeans from American farmers again.
According to Trump, the relaxing of export restrictions on Nvidia’s latest chips was not discussed.

Meanwhile, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang had beer and fried chicken with the CEOs of Samsung and Hyundai in Seoul, South Korea*.
It was clearly a marketing stunt, because there was a throng of journalists and photographers present as well.

*Samsung has a multi-faceted relationship with Nvidia, serving both as a supplier of memory and a foundry partner for specialized chips.
Hyundai will presumably use Nvidia’s chips for its self-driving cars of the future.
Does Tesla use Nvidia chips for its self-driving cars? No, Tesla does not use Nvidia chips for its vehicle’s self-driving computers, having switched to its own custom-designed chips in 2019. However, Tesla still uses Nvidia GPUs in large clusters for training its AI models, and has also recently purchased Nvidia chips for its new AI5 inference platform, which will be used in its new Cortex 2 AI data center alongside Tesla’s custom AI5 chips. – Google AI Overview.

Reporting from The Star (더스타 in Korean) magazine’s website.
I looked up the Google Streetview image of Kkanbu Chicken in Seoul’s Gangnam district. This is an image from 2018 but presumably not too much of the buildings and surroundings have changed.
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Wednesday/ NVDA crosses 5️⃣ trillion

“It’s incredible. Did you ever think in our lifetime we’d see a $5 trillion company?”
– David Faber, a host on the CNBC show “Squawk on the Street”, this morning

Artificial intelligence chipmaker Nvidia (ticker symbol: NVDA) is now worth 5 trillion US dollars.
The company’s latest AI superchip (the Blackwell Ultra) carry 200 billion transistors. Nine out of ten AI chips that are sold in the world, are made by Nvidia.

Tripp Mickle, writing for the New York Times:
Nvidia’s milestone, making it the first publicly traded company to top $5 trillion in market value, is indicative not only of the astonishing levels of wealth consolidating among a handful of Silicon Valley companies but also the strategic importance of this company, which added $1 trillion in market value in just the past four months.

Meanwhile, President Trump indicated that he would discuss the sale of Nvidia’s Blackwell chips with China in the summit on Thursday. Some US officials say that would be “massive” national security mistake.

Nvidia now makes up more than 8% of the S&P 500. Apple and Microsoft themselves sit at $4 trillion. Combined with Meta, Amazon, Alphabet and Tesla (these are called the ‘Magnificent Seven’) they make up ONE THIRD of the S&P 500’s market valuation.
So there is the answer to the question as to why the stock market indexes keep going up while the economy is barely growing. It’s the tech companies that are pulling them up.
Jason Furman, a professor of economic policy at Harvard, calculates that spending on data center construction accounted for 92% of the GDP growth in the US in the first half of the year. Take all of that out, and the US economy would have grown at a measly 0.1%.
[Graphic and headlines from the New York Times]
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Thursday/ Halloween ghost 👻

The Halloween decoration in the window of the Pacific Supply hardware store on Capitol Hill’s 12th Avenue is nicely done.

Newspaper headlines of world news and the scandals and corruption of the Trump administration adorn the white folds of the mantle on the ghost’s arms.
Today’s corruption scandal (it seems there is one every day), as reported by Associate Press:
President Donald Trump has pardoned Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, who created the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange and served prison time for failing to stop criminals from using the platform to move money connected to child sex abuse, drug trafficking and terrorism.
The pardon caps a monthslong effort by Zhao, a billionaire commonly known as CZ in the crypto world and one of the biggest names in the industry. He and Binance have been key supporters of some of the Trump family’s crypto enterprises.
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Sunday/ the bloody battles of the American Revolution 🎖️

I got these ‘USA forever’ stamps on Friday.
It never costs me just one stamp when I take something to the post office, because I always buy a whole sheet of stamps! 🤗

From Wikipedia:
The American Revolutionary War (April 19, 1775 – September 3, 1783), also known as the Revolutionary War or American War of Independence, was the armed conflict that comprised the final eight years of the broader American Revolution, in which American Patriot forces organized as the Continental Army and commanded by George Washington defeated the British Army. The conflict was fought in North America, the Caribbean, and the Atlantic Ocean. The war’s outcome seemed uncertain for most of the war. But Washington and the Continental Army’s decisive victory in the Siege of Yorktown in 1781 led King George III and the Kingdom of Great Britain to negotiate an end to the war in the Treaty of Paris two years later, in 1783, in which the British monarchy acknowledged the independence of the Thirteen Colonies, leading to the establishment of the United States as an independent and sovereign nation.

Battlefields of the American Revolution (1775-1783)
Issued Apr. 16, 2025
Perf. 11 serpentine die-cut |Self-adhesive |Design: Derry Noyes (from watercolor paintings by Greg Harlin) |Sheet size: 15 stamps |First-Class Mail® ‘FOREVER’ stamps (75c) | Engraving: Banknote Corporation of America | No watermark
[Source: stampworld.com]

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Saturday/ another No Kings march 👑 ❌

Four amigos attended the No Kings* march in Seattle today.
We walked alongside the monorail on Fifth Avenue, and the train would honk at us with a whoop! whoop! every time it passed overhead.

From local TV broadcaster King5 news:
Organizers with Seattle Indivisible reported preliminary counts of nearly 90,000 people taking part.
The demonstration began beneath the Space Needle and poured into downtown streets, part of what organizers call the largest coordinated protest in U.S. history.

*The No Kings protests is a series of demonstrations, largely in the United States, against what the organizers describe as authoritarian policies of Donald Trump and corruption in his administration.

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Thursday/ the shutdown 🛑

At this point there are no signs of an imminent resolution of the partial US government shutdown.

The BBC reports on its website that “some, but not all, US government services are temporarily suspended, and 40% of the federal workforce – about 750,000 people – are expected to be put on unpaid leave”.

From the Washington Post:
How concerned are Americans about the partial shutdown of the federal government and whom do they blame for causing it? The Washington Post texted a nationally representative sample of 1,010 people on Wednesday to ask.

The Post’s poll finds significantly more Americans blame President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans for the shutdown than Democrats, though many say they are not sure. People express moderate concern about the shutdown’s impact at this early stage, with “somewhat concerned” the most common answer. A large majority support Democrats’ call to extend federal health insurance subsidies in general, though just under half support the party demanding this if it extends the government shutdown.

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Monday/ at Expo 2025 Osaka 🤗

I made it to Expo 2025 Osaka!
It’s hot and it’s crowded with very, very long lines at most pavilions— the ones that allow you in without a reservation, that is.
Entrance to the top-rated pavilions are pre-allocated by a lottery system. I struck out despite diligently applying, as far out as three months before my visit today.

No matter, once you have made it into the entrance gate (with 180,000 others), you are in a world onto its own, inside the Grand Ring. The Ring is the world’s largest wooden structure, constructed on Yumeshima (夢洲), the artificial island located in Osaka Bay.

The USA pavilion is a structure designed by Trahan Architects with two triangular wings and a raised translucent cube flanking a central plaza. It features video imagery that features the Plains, the mountains and the cities in the US— and hey! Seattle’s Pike Place market made an appearance as well. 

I was mesmerized by the installation of shiny cubes called null². The sun bounced off the surfaces, and a low sound was emitted from the structure.
Developed by Yoichi Ochiai, the pavilion’s structure is based on a cubic grid of voxels measuring 2 to 8 m (6 ft to 26 ft) wide. The facade is covered with a membrane that resembles a mirror.  [Source: Wikipedia]

Look for a few images (towards the end) beamed out from the enormous high-resolution screen outside the Korea pavilion. The three-story pavilion has a high-resolution screen on its facade that is 27 m (89 ft) wide. The screen displays on a spectacular series of animated images and videos.

South Africa withdrew from Expo 2025 Osaka in late 2024 despite repeated invitations from the Japanese government, citing the country’s ‘financial constraints’.