Sunday of Orthodoxy

Great Compline with Canon of Repentance, Clean Thursday

Hours, Typica, Presanctified Liturgy, for Clean Wednesday

Memory Eternal

My aunt Catherine (Cathy), reposed last night following a battle with cancer. Excepting my mother who still lives, she was the last member of the family from that generation. May her memory be eternal.

Midnight Office and Matins, 1st hour for Clean Tuesday

Great Compline with Canon of Repentance for Clean Monday

Forgiveness Sunday

On the eve of the Great Fast, I ask forgiveness for anything I may have done or said, especially on this blog, that may have been a source of injury or offense. The last year has been a trying one on many different levels. The last several months have been especially so. Strong opinions have been expressed, which have at times sparked vigorous discussions. I think this is a good time to step back and disengage from the affairs of the world, at least briefly. Absent something extremely urgent there will be no blogging this week on any topic unrelated to the Fast. 

Ooops

Citigroup mistakenly credited a customer’s account with $81 trillion last year when it meant to send just $280.

The payment, which took place last April, was missed by two employees but caught 90 minutes after it was posted, the Financial Times first reported Friday. It was reversed several hours later and reported to the Federal Reserve and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency as a “near miss.”

Read the rest here.

A Day of American Infamy

In August 1941, about four months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Franklin Roosevelt met with Winston Churchill aboard warships in Newfoundland’s Placentia Bay and agreed to the Atlantic Charter, a joint declaration by the world’s leading democratic powers on “common principles” for a postwar world.

Among its key points: “no aggrandizement, territorial or other”; “sovereign rights and self-government restored to those who have been forcibly deprived of them”; “freedom from fear and want”; freedom of the seas; “access, on equal terms, to the trade and to the raw materials of the world which are needed for their economic prosperity.”

The charter, and the alliance that came of it, is a high point of American statesmanship. On Friday in the Oval Office, the world witnessed the opposite. Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s embattled democratic leader, came to Washington prepared to sign away anything he could offer President Trump except his nation’s freedom, security and common sense. For that, he was rewarded with a lecture on manners from the most mendacious vulgarian and ungracious host ever to inhabit the White House.

If Roosevelt had told Churchill to sue for peace on any terms with Adolf Hitler and to fork over Britain’s coal reserves to the United States in exchange for no American security guarantees, it might have approximated what Trump did to Zelensky. Whatever one might say about how Zelensky played his cards poorly — either by failing to behave with the degree of all-fours sycophancy that Trump demands or to maintain his composure in the face of JD Vance’s disingenuous provocations — this was a day of American infamy. 

[Emphasis mine A/O]

Where do we go from here?

If there’s one silver lining to this fiasco, it’s that Zelensky did not sign the agreement on Ukrainian minerals that was forced on him this month by Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary who’s the Tom Hagen character in this protection-racket administration. The United States is entitled to some kind of reward for helping Ukraine defend itself — and Ukraine’s destruction of much of Russia’s military might should top the list, followed by the innovation Ukraine demonstrated in pioneering revolutionary forms of low-cost drone warfare, which the Pentagon will be keen to emulate.

Read the rest here.

(Link fixed.)

Quote of the day...

My fellow Americans, we are in completely uncharted waters, led by a president, who — well, I cannot believe he is a Russian agent, but he sure plays one on TV.​ -Thomas Friedman

Source

First kill all the lawyers

After President Trump lost the 2020 election, his allies thought about what to do differently if he returned to power. One lesson from his first term, they decided, was that government lawyers, even very conservative Republican political appointees, had frequently raised legal objections to ideas he or his White House advisers put forward.

If they got another shot, they said in campaign-era interviews, they would install much more permissive gatekeepers. Now, a month into a term that has been defined by Mr. Trump’s radical challenges to the basic structure of government, his administration is moving aggressively to curb a critical internal check: independent legal thinking.

His appointees have swiftly cleared the Justice Department’s top ranks of career lawyers, even as Mr. Trump stocked leading posts with his own defense attorneys. His aides sidelined the department’s Office of Legal Counsel, bypassing its traditional role of vetting draft executive orders and giving it no acting chief. Last week, Attorney General Pam Bondi added to the purge by firing the top lawyer at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

This subjugation of lawyers has now extended to the Pentagon. Late last Friday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth fired the top judge advocates general for the military. As three-star uniformed lawyers, they give independent and nonpolitical advice about the international laws of war and domestic legal constraints Congress has imposed on the armed forces.

Read the rest here.

In Trump’s Washington, a Moscow-Like Chill Takes Hold

She asked too many questions that the president didn’t like. She reported too much about criticism of his administration. And so, before long, Yelena Tregubova was pushed out of the Kremlin press pool that covered President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

In the scheme of things, it was a small moment, all but forgotten nearly 25 years later. But it was also a telling one. Mr. Putin did not care for challenges. The rest of the press pool got the message and eventually became what the Kremlin wanted it to be: a collection of compliant reporters who knew to toe the line or else they would pay a price.

The decision by President Trump’s team to handpick which news organizations can participate in the White House press pool that questions him in the Oval Office or travels with him on Air Force One is a step in a direction that no modern American president of either party has ever taken. The White House said it was a privilege, not a right, to have such access, and that it wanted to open space for “new media” outlets, including those that just so happen to support Mr. Trump.

But after the White House’s decision to bar the venerable Associated Press as punishment for its coverage, the message is clear: Any journalist can be expelled from the pool at any time for any reason. There are worse penalties, as Ms. Tregubova would later discover, but in Moscow, at least, her eviction was an early step down a very slippery slope.

The United States is not Russia by any means, and any comparisons risk going too far. Russia barely had any history with democracy then, while American institutions have endured for nearly 250 years. But for those of us who reported there a quarter century ago, Mr. Trump’s Washington is bringing back memories of Mr. Putin’s Moscow in the early days.

The news media is being pressured. Lawmakers have been tamed. Career officials deemed disloyal are being fired. Prosecutors named by a president who promised “retribution” are targeting perceived adversaries and dropping cases against allies or others who do his bidding. Billionaire tycoons who once considered themselves masters of the universe are prostrating themselves before him.

Judges who temporarily block administration decisions that they believe may be illegal are being threatened with impeachment. The uniformed military, which resisted being used as a political instrument in Mr. Trump’s first term, has now been purged of its highest-ranking officers and lawyers. And a president who calls himself “the king,” ostensibly in jest, is teasing that he may try to stay in power beyond the limits of the Constitution.

Some versions of this are not new, of course. Other presidents have taken actions that looked heavy-handed or put pressure on opponents. No president in my experience at the White House, which goes back to 1996, particularly liked news coverage of him, and certainly there have been times when journalists were penalized for their reporting.

After an article on whether Vice President Dick Cheney might be dropped from the re-election ticket in 2004, The New York Times found it no longer had a seat on Air Force Two. President Barack Obama’s team tried to exclude Fox News from a briefing offered to other networks, only to back down when the rest of the press corps stood up for Fox.

But those relatively contained disputes were nothing like what is happening now. The White House takeover of the pool — a rotating group of about 13 correspondents, photographers and technicians given close access to the president so they can report back to their colleagues — upends the way the president has been covered for generations.

The alarm has been felt by media outlets across the spectrum. Just as the other networks backed Fox against the Obama administration, Fox has backed The Associated Press against the Trump White House and its senior White House correspondent criticized the pool takeover. The precedent being set now, certainly, could be used by a future Democratic administration against media that it disfavored.

Read the rest here. 

Crypto is near bear market territory

Crypto is flirting with, or potentially has crossed into bear market territory. A bear market is usually defined as a market index or asset class dropping by 20% from its nominal high trading value. Usually this is based on the price at the close of trading days. However most crypto currencies trade 24/7 so that complicates things a bit. That said, the by far largest crypto currency is Bitcoin  which reached a nominal high just north of $103k per unit in the aftermath of Donald Trump's re-election. During intraday trading today it fell to ~$82.2k which would meet the technical definition for a bear market. As of this comment, it is currently trading at just over $83k.  

Economists are sounding the alarm

Donald Trump’s assault on the US federal government and the world’s interlinked manufacturing system have together reached an economic tipping point.

“It seems almost unavoidable that we are headed for a deep, deep recession,” said Jesse Rothstein, Berkeley professor and former chief economist at the US labour department.

Once the pace of job losses crosses a critical line, the multiplier effects can snowball suddenly.

Prof Rothstein said monthly non-farm payrolls – the barometer of US economic health watched closely by markets – could turn viciously negative by late spring, contracting at rates surpassed only during the worst months of Covid and the Lehman crisis in 2008.

“I think we’re going to see historically large drops. Losses of 400,000 a month are not implausible because people are getting nervous out there.

“It is not just the federal employees being fired: it’s all the other people worried they could be next, so they are cutting back too,” he told The Telegraph.

Torsten Slok, of Apollo Global, said layoffs could approach 1m after factoring in the likely chain reaction through contractors. “We are starting to worry about the downside risks to the economy and markets,” he said.

Mr Slok said it is a mystery as to why credit spreads and equities are still so well-behaved when the US Economic Policy Uncertainty Index was now higher than at any time during the great recession.

Read the rest here.

Hello Utah...

"This is RFK Jr, the Secretary of Health calling. I wanted to talk to you about something important..."

RIP: Clint Hill

An American hero. He spent much of his life consumed by guilt (unfairly) for not being a split second faster.

Trump has switched sides

The US formally voted against a UN resolution labeling Russia as an aggressor state and demanding their withdrawal from Ukraine. All while demanding roughly half of Ukraine's GDP and natural resources in exchange for what one administration official described as "implied security guarantees." Trump's track record does not suggest much respect for the word "implied."  

Never in my life did I think I would live to see a US president, of either political party, reduce himself and this country to being the shoe-shine boy for a KGB dictator bent on restoring the Soviet Empire by force and terror. Ronald Reagan must be spinning in his grave.

Attention NATO; the United States of America has left the building. 

Boston in 1903

Sunday of the Last Judgement (Meatfare)

Pope Francis' Condition Worsens

ROME — Pope Francis was in critical condition Saturday after he suffered a long asthmatic respiratory crisis that required high flows of oxygen, the Vatican said.

The 88-year-old Francis, who has been hospitalized for a week with a complex lung infection, also received blood transfusions after tests showed a condition associated with anemia, the Vatican said in a late update.

“The Holy Father continues to be alert and spent the day in an armchair although in more pain than yesterday. At the moment the prognosis is reserved,” the statement said.

Earlier, doctors said that Francis was battling a pneumonia and a complex respiratory infection that doctors say remains touch-and-go and will keep him hospitalized for at least another week.

The Vatican carried on with its Holy Year celebrations without the pope on Saturday.

In a brief earlier update on Saturday, Francis slept well overnight.

But doctors have warned that the main threat facing Francis would be the onset of sepsis, a serious infection of the blood that can occur as a complication of pneumonia. As of Friday, there was no evidence of any sepsis, and Francis was responding to the various drugs he is taking, the pope’s medical team said in their first in-depth update on the pope’s condition.

“He is not out of danger,” said his personal physician, Dr. Luigi Carbone. “So like all fragile patients I say they are always on the golden scale: In other words, it takes very little to become unbalanced.”

Francis, who has chronic lung disease, was admitted to Gemelli hospital on Feb. 14 after a weeklong bout of bronchitis worsened.

Doctors first diagnosed the complex viral, bacterial and fungal respiratory tract infection and then the onset of pneumonia in both lungs. They prescribed “absolute rest” and a combination of cortisone and antibiotics, along with supplemental oxygen when he needs it.

Read the rest here