John Bercow seems pretty pleased with himself, doesn't he?House Of Commons/PA Wire via ZUMA

Brexit sure is interesting, isn’t it? “Interesting,” that is, in the old Chinese sense. After Parliament refused to approve Theresa May’s Brexit deal, but also paradoxically insisted on not leaving the EU without a deal, May scheduled a third and final vote on approving the deal. With ten days left until the Brexit deadline, it seemed right to give Parliament one last chance.

But then the House of Commons speaker—a nonpartisan MP who acts as a combined parliamentarian and order maintainer—threw a spanner in the works. He ruled that long precedent prohibited the same legislation from being introduced twice in a single session, so May couldn’t bring up her deal for another vote unless it was “substantially different” from the previous deal. That’s impossible, of course, since the deal was agreed with the EU and can’t be changed without their approval.

Isn’t that great? There are still options, though. Parliament could adjourn and then begin a new session. Or May could ask the EU for an extension to work through this mess. It’s worth noting that as bad as a no-deal crash out of the EU would be for Britain, it would be bad for the EU too, and for the same reasons. So they’d probably agree to an extension.

But who knows? On March 29 Britain is out of the EU unless everyone figures out some other alternative. They sure do like their drama in Europe, don’t they? I guess it takes the place of the endless wars they used to have.

The Pentagon has finally told us which construction projects they plan to postpone in order to dig up money for Donald Trump’s wall:

The projects on the list run the gamut, including a hangar for drones at Kunsan Air Base in South Korea and a wastewater treatment plant at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y. They represent the full spectrum of construction initiatives that the Pentagon undertakes to maintain a vast network of bases and operations around the globe. Many of the projects are updates to facilities that affect daily military life on bases — dining halls, schools, fire stations, medical facilities, roads and parking lots. Others are construction projects that directly impact military operations and training, such as firing ranges, aircraft maintenance hangars, flight simulation facilities and munitions depots.

And guess what? Out of a total of $6.8 billion, a whopping $1.1 billion comes from projects in California. Isn’t that just the biggest surprise? I wonder what loyal spear carriers like Kevin McCarthy and Devin Nunes think of this? They support Trump to the point of embarrassment, but they nonetheless keep losing money for their districts thanks to Trump’s jihad against California Democrats. Or maybe they don’t. Has anyone checked? When Trump screws over California, is he careful to make sure that Republican districts don’t take a big hit?

UPDATE: I read the spreadsheet wrong. I’m not sure what California’s share is anymore, so ignore this. I need to recalculate based on all fiscal years and including only spending within the United States. I’ll do this eventually.

I think it would be interesting if someone converted the Pentagon list back into a spreadsheet and then compared red and blue states to see how much punishment they’re getting. Does that sound petty? Then it’s petty. I’m still interested.

UPDATE: I meant billions, not millions. Sorry about that.

A few days ago I posted a picture of our local butterfly invasion. At least, that’s what I said it was. But really, I could have just taken a blurry picture and added a few blurry white streaks to it. How would you know? But the butterflies were so intent on migrating that none of them stopped so I could get a better picture.

As it turned out, the butterflies kept on coming. However, it looks like we’re finally at the tail end of things, and apparently the stragglers are either tired or confused or hungry. Or, maybe the daisy patch I found yesterday was just too entrancing to pass up. Either way, the Painted Ladies decided to rest for a bit on the daisies, and I was able to get some very nice pictures of them. The first photo shows the coloring and marking on the top of their wings. The second photo shows the markings on the underside of their wings.

The Wall Street Journal reports today that Fed officials are increasingly nervous about the “dot plot” they release periodically. The dot plot shows how each member of the FOMC projects interest rates over the next few years, with one dot for each member. Here’s a Bloomberg version of the dot plot:

Back in 2014, as you can see, projections were all over the place. They ranged from a 2016 projection of 1.5 percent to a projection of 4.25 percent. Today, however, there’s quite a bit more agreement. The projections for 2019 range only from 2.4 percent to 3.1 percent. The “longer term” projections average around 3 percent, a full percentage point lower than the average FOMC projection back in 2014.

Which isn’t bad, really. A miss of one percentage point over the course of five years is hardly a terrible track record.

But that’s not what anyone cares about. Rather, it appears that the most recent dot plot, released in December, has “rattled” some investors. Why? Because it continues to suggest there could be further rate increases this year even though “top Fed leaders” have “signaled” that rates are on hold. “The dot plot to be released Wednesday would muddy this message if it showed several officials still expect to raise rates this year. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell appeared to pre-emptively play down the projections in a recent speech.”

Needless to say, this is not a problem with the dot plot, which is perfectly comprehensible. It’s a problem with the actual opinions of FOMC members, some of whom may not agree with their top leaders. In fact, it sounds like that’s the real problem here: not that the dot plot is too confusing, but that it’s too transparent. If there are several FOMC members who think interest rates should or will go up, the dot plot makes that crystal clear. There’s no way to hide it using fuzzy language the way they do in their press releases.

So hooray for the dot plot. It is raw data in its rawest form: easy to read and easy to interpret. Leave it alone.

Airbus via the Center for Strategic and International Studies

Please break out your tiny violins for Trump officials who hate the fact that “unofficial” reports of North Korea’s missile activity are showing up in their newspapers:

Senior U.S. officials involved in the negotiations with North Korea can barely contain their disdain for the unofficial analysis, viewing it as overly pessimistic and potentially disruptive to their efforts.

“The tendency to reach these snap conclusions is, in my view, a little bit hasty,” Stephen Biegun, the special U.S. envoy for North Korea, said at a Washington conference Monday….John Bolton, Trump’s national security advisor, similarly dismissed recent overhead images showing rail cars and other activity at Sanumdong, a facility near Pyongyang where North Korea has assembled some of its intercontinental ballistic missiles and satellite-launching rockets.

….No one suggests the analysts are endangering national security. But evidence that Kim’s government is continuing its missile and nuclear weapons development deepens questions about whether Trump is engaged in a fruitless diplomatic initiative….U.S. intelligence agencies that study the reclusive North Korean government use communication intercepts, defector reports, reconnaissance flights and other sources. Sophisticated spy satellites transmit classified images said to be substantially more detailed than those publicly available.
That enables them to keep surveillance on dozens of sites where Kim’s government is believed to be working on nuclear weapons or long-range missile components.

Well boo hoo. Trump’s idiotic negotiations with North Korea are about as public as anything could possibly be. Hell, Henry VIII would be jealous of Trump’s prowess at personal promotion. So of course Trump doesn’t want to see evidence on his TV showing just how idiotic his love affair with Kim Jong Un is. That’s why analysis from all these disdainful intelligence officials is kept far, far away from public view. It’s because it embarrasses the president, not because it’s wrong or because it endangers national security.

Look, we all know that even if intelligence agencies are doing their best to provide honest analysis, Trump routinely refuses to listen to them. But he does listen to Fox & Friends every morning. So if you want to force him to face reality, your only hope is to plaster it all over the media, which Trump does listen to. Quit bellyaching.

David Leonhardt:

The president of the United States suggested last week that his political supporters might resort to violence if they didn’t get their way. The statement didn’t even get that much attention. I’m guessing you heard a lot more about the college-admissions scandal than about the president’s threat of extralegal violence.

Thanks, David! This allows me to complain about my two pet peeves from last week. First, the unbelievable amount of attention paid to a tiny little college admissions scandal. We still don’t know how many people were involved, but at appears to be something like 0.01 percent of the entering freshman class of America’s most elite universities. This is a rounding error, and it’s for a scandal that only affects about 5 or 6 percent of American families in the first place. What’s more, it’s just standard issue cheating, not even a symptom of some new or systemic problem. It deserved a few column inches on A7, not flood-the-zone coverage everywhere we looked.

And then there’s the president of the United States coyly suggesting that he has “tough” supporters who might—wink wink—get even tougher under the right circumstances. Sure, it’s just Donald Trump acting like his usual asshole self. But still. Doesn’t this deserve a few front-page stories? I mean, maybe it’s just a coincidence that hate crimes suddenly spiked as soon as Trump became president. But then again, maybe it’s not.

The Wall Street Journal reports that CEO pay was up yet again last year. Here’s the chart:

Big-company CEOs have seen a median pay raise of about 40 percent since 2010. Ordinary workers have seen a pay raise of 20 percent. Adjusted for inflation, that’s 25 percent for CEOs and 5 percent for ordinary workers.

And why not? After all, CEOs have been coasting along on a long wave of good economic times, and why shouldn’t they be rewarded for that? What’s more, in 2016 they helped elect a guy who gave them a big tax cut in 2017. Why shouldn’t they be rewarded for that too?

As for ordinary workers, they coasted along too, and they also voted for the tax-cut guy. Oddly enough, no one thinks they should be rewarded for that. Go figure.

Here are the results of my spur-of-the-moment survey from Sunday. It got about 1,700 responses.

I’m a little surprised that so many of you are swooning over Pete Buttigieg, but I expect that will change before long. I also suspect that Elizabeth Warren will lose her lead among my readership. Sure, she’s been churning out policy positions like nobody’s business, but everyone else is going to have them too before long.

Speaking for myself, I’m not actually all that thrilled with Warren’s everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach. It strikes me as a little too panderific. Also, with all the policy she’s had time to crank out, she’s still got nothing on climate change? I know, I know: she supports the GND. But I’d like to see her demonstrate in her own words that she cares at least as much about climate change as she does about breaking up Facebook.

Unsurprisingly, my own favorite at the moment is Jay Inslee. I expect that will change in time, but for now he’s the only candidate who plainly cares about one of the two most important issues facing our planet. (He’s the climate change guy, in case you haven’t been keeping track. The other top issue for the planet is artificial intelligence.) So that makes him my guy, at least for the moment.

Beginning at 8 am, Donald Trump put up no fewer than 30 tweets on Sunday. Busy guy! Here are the subjects that are obsessing him at the moment:

• Saturday Night Live making fun of him too much.
• The Steele dossier and the whole Russia witch hunt (7 tweets).
• St. Patrick’s Day (2 tweets).
• Fox News taking Judge Jeanine Pirro off the air because she suggested that someone who wears a hijab might not support the Constitution. Trump is pis-s-s-s-s-ed about this. He put up nine tweets related to the Judge Jeanine affair, including four that basically called Fox News a bunch of pussies for giving in to the left-wing hate mob.
• The border (3 tweets).
• The immense popularity of Donald J. Trump (3 tweets).
• MS-13.
• The Lordstown auto plant (2 tweets).
• The Democrats effort to steal the 2016 election.
• Make America Great Again!

It’s worth noting that two of Trump’s tweets were actually retweets of Jack Posobiec, a lunatic conspiracy theorist who helped promote the pizzagate fable among many, many others.

Anyway, this is what’s on Trump’s mind as of March 17, 2019. I’m sure we all feel safe with him at the helm.

I am still recovering from my cold. Not the February cold or the January cold, but the March cold. I’m beginning to feel like I’ll never be healthy again.

While we wait, however, I’m curious to take the temperature of my readership. Who’s your favorite Democratic presidential candidate at the moment? I wanted to give you the option of choosing your top three, but apparently Google Forms doesn’t allow that. So just tell us your #1 choice.

UPDATE: The survey is now closed. Results will be posted Monday morning.