Thoughts for the Day, April 29, 2025: Check out my Video of the Day for a good laugh
Pistons
Regardless of the outcome of tonight’s game five with the Knicks, who lead the Pistons 3-1 in the series, this season has been better than anyone could have anticipated. It has been historic.
Last year the Piston’s were atrocious under head coach Monty Williams They had a 28-game losing streak which started with the fourth game of the season. They finished with a 14-68 record. They fired coach Williams after one season, and they fired General Manager Troy Weaver.
The Pistons hired Trajon Langdon as President of Basketball Operations, who then hired J.B. Bickerstaff as head coach, after he was surprisingly let go by the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Prior to the beginning of the season, the Las Vegas oddsmakers predicted 23.5 wins for the Pistons. After losing Jaden Ivey, a young, talented, fast guard to a broken leg early in the season, things looked bad for the season. But this team was different under Coach Bickerstaff. This team was learning to play hardnose defense, and they were learning to share the ball. They also benefited from the development of Cade Cunningham into a legitimate all-star.
After Ivey went down, the Pistons never lost their commitment to defense. In the NBA, defense wins championships. Losing streaks were minimized and winning streaks were common. The Pistons had developed into a tough team that played with physicality. The Pistons were not a fun team to play against.
With a 44-38 record, the Pistons became the first team in NBA history to triple their win total in one season. They annihilated Vegas odds makers prediction of 23.5 wins. They qualified as the sixth seed in the Eastern Conference, avoiding the play-in round.
In their first round series with the Knicks, the young Piston players are gaining valuable playoff experience. Experience that is going to pay off next year and many years into the future.
So, no matter what happens tonight, the Pistons’ season has been a rip-roaring success.
Check out my Video of the Day with Charles Barkley doing his thing.
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Some relief for American carmakers
President Trumps sees himself as genius when it comes to business. When business leaders raise concerns about his policies, he often adjusts them afterwards. Today he made an adjustment to tariffs on American made automobiles.
Per the NY Times, President Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday that will walk back some tariffs for carmakers, administration officials said, removing some levies that Ford, General Motors and others have complained would backfire on U.S. manufacturing by raising the cost of production and squeezing their profits.
The changes will modify Mr. Trump’s tariffs so that carmakers who pay a 25 percent tariff on auto imports are not subject to other levies, for example on steel and aluminum, officials said in a call with reporters Tuesday.
Carmakers will also be able to qualify for tariff relief for a proportion of the cost of their imported components, though those benefits will be phased out over the next two years.
Speaking on Tuesday before he left the White House, Mr. Trump said the administration wanted to help automakers “enjoy this little transition, short-term. If they can’t get parts, we didn’t want to penalize them,” he said.
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Silencing and intimidating the judicial branch is next
Now that he has frightened and silenced the Republicans in the Legislative Branch, his next step is to frighten and silence judges throughout the judicial branch as well as state judges. Once that is completed, his transition from president to autocrat to dictator will be complete.
Here are excerpts from Harry Litman’s, Talking Feds. Litman is an American lawyer, law professor and political commentator. He is a former U.S. Attorney and Deputy Assistant Attorney General.
When word broke on Friday about the arrest of a sitting Wisconsin state court judge, Hannah Dugan, on charges of obstructing the arrest of an illegal immigrant, my immediate reaction on Bluesky was “Whoa. Feels like massive overreaching.”
Having now reviewed the charging documents and some accounts of colleagues, my off-the-cuff assessment stands. The arrest of Judge Dugan was a long stretch that is hard to square with the principles of federal prosecution which govern the decision whether to charge every federal case.
A perusal of the facts, as laid out in the affidavit of an FBI agent accompanying the criminal complaint, easily isolates the weak spot in the case.
The six-agent team that had gathered in Milwaukee County Circuit Court to arrest Eduardo Flores Ruiz, who was appearing in Judge Dugan's courtroom on domestic violence charges, had not worked out a protocol for Ruiz's arrest. Dugan was angry when she learned of their presence and demanded that they speak with the chief judge. She then returned to her courtroom, adjourned Ruiz’s case, and directed him to leave through the jury door.
Although the key detail is obfuscated in the FBI affidavit, the jury door led directly back to the same public hallway, where one agent was waiting as Ruiz, and his counsel emerged. (The others were conferring with the Chief Judge.) The agent followed Ruiz and his lawyer and went down the elevator with them. Other agents joined them and sought to arrest Ruiz in front of the courthouse. Ruiz ran and was arrested after a foot chase lasting the length of the courthouse.
So the case is fairly weak, and the FBI overreached. It's not the first time that's happened, and it's not unique to the Trump administration. Of far greater concern is the unprofessional and corrupt political exploitation of the charges by FBI Director Kash Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi.
Patel’s social media post trumpeting the arrest, which he quickly deleted, was the least of it. His gross abuse of discretion began with the decision to physically arrest and handcuff Judge Dugan at the courthouse as she was arriving for work Friday. A defendant like Judge Dugan should have been permitted, and 999 times out of 1000 would have been permitted, to surrender voluntarily after receiving a summons. FBI and DOJ rules give guidance for when to physically arrest a charged defendant – e.g., that the defendant is a flight risk, or a danger to the community, or is likely to destroy evidence, or has an extensive criminal history. Every one of the factors points to self-surrender rather than arrest, much less in sensational fashion at the courthouse as she arrived for work.
Treating Judge Dugan like a violent, dangerous criminal was obviously designed to score broader political points about the Administration’s wholesale deportations initiative. Patel decided to humiliate Judge Dugan for a sensational headline and to strike fear into the hearts of other judges. That not only contravened DOJ guidelines; it was bush and cowboyish.
Which brings us to Attorney General Bondi and her deeply embarrassing and unlawful exploitation of the arrest. Within hours of the episode, Bondi took to the airwaves of Fox News, where she cheerfully trashed Judge Dugan. She presented the allegations in the complaint as fact and added her own editorial denigrations. She said of the judge, “shame on her,” and of the charges, “you can’t make this up.” She continued, “we could not believe that a judge really did that,” and “what has happened to the judiciary is beyond me,” finally asserting that Judge Dugan is “deranged.”
Since she came to office, Bondi has had a consistent tin ear and an abhorrent proclivity to pepper her every public statement with blandishments of Trump and a suggestion that DOJ attorneys work for him personally, rather than the public.
It is a fundamental constitutional requirement in this country that a defendant is innocent until proven guilty, and that the government must prove all elements of a criminal charge beyond a reasonable doubt. It is probably the single most important rule that a prosecutor must live by.
Accordingly, the U.S. Attorney’s Manual, the operating bible for federal prosecutors, requires strict adherence to that command. That includes forbidding prosecutors from offering opinions on a defendant’s guilt, supplying their own character assessments, or making any statement that could influence the outcome of a trial at the charging stage.
It is drummed into the head of every federal prosecutor that in announcing the filing of charges, you stick to the four corners of the charging document. Moreover, you emphasize that the defendant is innocent until proven guilty, a statement that appears routinely in every press release announcing an indictment.
Bondi’s diatribe transgressed all of these guidelines and more. For any prosecutor, state or federal, Bondi’s trashing of a just-charged defendant was breathtaking. In this and multiple other instances in her short tenure – her speech introducing the President at the DOJ particularly jumps to my mind – she has appalled DOJ veterans of all stripes and eras. She is a disgrace to her office.
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Not a dictator yet
Excerpts from Joyce Vance’s Civil Discourse April 25, 2025, following President Trump’s executive order requiring birth certificates with the same last name, marriage licenses, or passports to register or reregister to vote.
Presidents do not get to dictate the rules in our elections. Today a federal judge reminded Donald Trump that he is not a dictator—not yet, and not ever if federal district judges across the country are permitted to continue doing their jobs.
A decision like this should be a foregone conclusion at the end of this case. No president should try to usurp the power to control elections, let alone be able to do so. The executive order and the lawsuits challenging it underscore just how off the rails Trump is. Every day, part of the spectacle of Trump is his assumption of the role of an autocrat at the expense of the American presidency. And the risk is that it all becomes somehow normalized.
Please call your members of Congress today. The U.S. Capitol switchboard is 202-224-3121. Tell the operator where you’re from and the operator will connect you to your representatives and senators. I tested this out today. It is very simple. They will ask for the congress member you want to contact. They will then switch you to that office.
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Quote of the Day: “This is not about immigration, but about the Constitution…Standing for the idea that the government doesn’t have the right to kidnap you without due process is arguably the MOST EFFECTIVE CAMPAIGN SLOGAN IN HISTORY. Today, it’s an immigrant with a tattoo. Tomorrow, it’s a citizen whose Facebook post annoys Trump.” Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker speaking to fellow Democrats.
Orchid of the Day: Derrick Harmon grew up in Detroit, a graduate of Loyola High School and played three seasons at Michigan State before transferring to Oregon. Moments after being drafted 21st overall in the first round of the NFL draft by the Pittsburg Steelers, Harmon’s celebration was short lived. His mom, Tiffany Saine, was on life-support at a Detroit hospital and Harmon headed to the hospital to tell her he was drafted. She died shortly after.
Onion of the Day: Attorney General Pam Bondi. She hasn’t a clue.
Lyrics of the Day: Trouble ahead A lady in red Take my advice You'd be better off dead.
Switchman sleeping Train hundred and two is On the wrong track And headed for you.
If you think you know the answer, feel free to send me your answer in the comments section of the blog.
Answer to Lyrics of the Day for April 28, 2025: Dreams by Fleetwood Mac
Question of the Day: Why is Trump so wishy washy on tariffs? Why didn’t he listen to most economists who were yelling from the rooftops that tariffs are a bad idea?
Video of the Day: Charles Barkley at his finest. He is one of the funniest people in the world, even when he is serious. This is worth your time. Thank you Dan.
Charles Barkley had unique way of washing uniform between games
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