Category Archives: Uncategorized

From a month ago:

“My criteria, President Trump’s criteria, is different,” [Kennedy Center President Richard] Grenell said. “We cannot have arts institutions that lose money because you have programming that is woke or not popular. We need popular programming to sustain arts institutions.” [WaPo]

Nonsense. Opera, theater, ballet, all of these art forms and more, when a new specimen happens on the scene, must work to find the proper form to effectively express them. This is not a five minute exercise, but it may be a five production exercise, or even more, because this is difficult and laborious work; to claim otherwise is to demonstrate profound ignorance.

To impose a limitation from another sector of society is to pervert the expression of the art, and that’s just … dumb. Corporate sponsorships are an implicit recognition that we have a society that principally functions in the private sector, that art does not fit that sector’s practices very well, and the sponsorships are attempts to bandage over the unfortunate problem.

A lovely riposte from Governor Pritzker (D-IL) concerning the tariffs:

Although I might have said Pay up or resign!

I know they exist in one to one, but not in this size. It made me laugh.

The tussle over Federal prosecutors is continuing:

The federal judges in the Eastern District of Virginia unanimously appointed longtime litigator James W. Hundley to serve as interim U.S. attorney on Friday, and the Justice Department almost immediately fired him, continuing a clash over control of one of the country’s highest-profile prosecutor’s offices, which is particularly known for handling significant national security cases. [WaPo]

This not even the second incident, but the third, at least; I saw, but did not comment on, the first such incident:

Federal judges in New Jersey declined Tuesday to appoint Alina Habba, President Donald Trump’s pick for U.S. attorney in the state, to continue serving in that role, delivering a resounding rebuke to one of his administration’s most polarizing Justice Department appointees and teeing up a showdownover whowould lead the office.

A panel of the state’s U.S. district court judges made the announcement in a brief order that did not offer any explanation for its decision. The order — signed by Renée Marie Bumb, the chief federal judge in the state — appointed Desiree Leigh Grace, a career prosecutor whom Habba had named as her first assistant, as her replacement.

But within hours, top Justice Department officials announced they had fired Grace and reinstated Habba “pursuant to the president’s authority.” [WaPo]

Until & if Trump goes completely rogue^[1], these clashes are very important, and are becoming a pus-filled wound on the skin of the Administration.

1. The privilege of nominating U.S. attorneys is an executive function; the judiciary, by selecting interim U.S. attorneys, are removing this important privilege from Administration control, making the Administration look weak and confused.
2. But, by not using the privilege, again the Administration looks weak and confused.
3. As I noted in the beginning post of this thread, Trump cannot nominate top-flight attorneys for these positions because they won’t, for the most part, work for him. His reputation as a terrible boss cripples him.
4. As, as noted before I think, Trump demands total loyalty, and he only can get that from third-raters and worse; better attorneys understand they’re working for the USA, not for Trump. I don’t know if he doesn’t understand, or refuses to accept it, but the government is only occasionally a boss/employee situation; more often, especially for top-level positions such as Cabinet-level positions and US Attorneys, the President picks the best available for the job, and then gets out of the way. In the previous point I said top-flight attorneys won’t work for him; it may be more accurate to say they see his interference, such as directives to investigate political rivals, as unacceptable.

But, as the news articles indicate^[2], there are laws permitting the filling of these positions on an interim basis by Federal judges. This is the pinch point for the Administration: accept the loss of this privilege, or nominate acceptable attorneys, if they can find any. Either choice is damaging to an Administration that wants to project absolute power, but instead has projected incompetence and chaos for its entire existence. Such is governance by arrogant amateurs.

The next step, if it’s possible, is for the Federal judges whose appointments were rejected, to appeal the rejection. In the context of Trump’s loss in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, the overturning of tariffs decision, a quick trip to SCOTUS, and a loss at that level for Trump regarding US Attorney interim appointments, would be interpreted by most everyone as Trump losing his grip. We might even see protests outside the White House, with the demand being his resignation.

And, if I might fantasize for just a moment, someone with some chutzpah might challenge Trump v. United States, which is the Presidents get immunity! blunder decision of the conservative activist wing of the Court. Find an incident in which litigation in a Federal court results in the judge citing Trump v. United States for rejecting the suit. Then march it up judicial hierarchy until it reaches SCOTUS, and slyly let them have another go at Presidential immunity. While Thomas and Alito might still think it justified, the balance of the wing may be having second thoughts.

Well, that’s just a fantasy. No one will do that, will they?

¹ By rogue I mean Trump tries to turn the USA into a dictatorship. Trump may have waited too long. MAGA is falling apart as they realize Trump’s name is all over the Epstein Files. The threatened loss of MAGA is why Trump is repeatedly shouting the Epstein Files have exonerated him in news clips, just as he did with the Mueller Report, which it did not. But the Mueller Report also didn’t come with pictures and salacious poems; it was something like twenty pages of passive voice legalese, a real chore for non-lawyers to read. I know because I did. Taking revenge on Governor Walz (D-MN) must have been too tempting and delayed Trump for too long, although he may have thought terrifying folks with his ICE troops was important. All kudos to those Minnesotans on the front lines of the ICE protests!

² I am but a lowly obsolete software engineer, not a lawyer and not prone to looking at Federal law books, so I’ll take the news articles at their word on the matter.

Imposts:

1. ​(chiefly historical) A tax, tariff or duty that is imposed, especially on merchandise.
2. (horse racing, slang) The weight that must be carried by a horse in a race; the handicap. [Wiktionary]

Not something seen much these days, unless you’re a Constitutional scholar, or some legislators; however, back in the day, which would be the late 1700s, it might have been a bit more popular since arbitrary tax imposition was the motivation of the American Revolution.

Noted in “Watching tariffs come down,” Mark Walsh at the delivery of the opinion of the Court in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump (Tariffs) on Feb 20, 2026, SCOTUSblog:

[Chief Justice] Roberts continues, referring to Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution setting forth the powers of the legislative branch, including the first clause specifying that “The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises.”

The decision was 6-3, with Associate Justices Kavanaugh, Alito, and Thomas dissenting. I’ve not read the dissents.

How annoying that no one had the right answer, I presume:

During a rambling rehash of false assertions of voter fraud, President Donald Trump claimed that Republicans will never lose an election “for 50 years” if his allies in Congress pass the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (SAVE) America Act, which critics have called the most restrictive anti-voting law in U.S. history.

“I tell you what, Republicans have to win this one,” Trump said during a speech at a steel facility in Rome, Georgia. “We’ll never lose a race. For 50 years, we won’t lose a race.” [Democracy Docket]

The proper answer would be … America loses every single race!

This is the basis of America, participatory democracy, where we all have some input into the process of governance. If races are rigged, as Trump is implicitly advocating, then the purpose of America, a peaceful selection of legislators and executives, will dissolve the Union into wee little States with varying levels of freedom, and an outsized vulnerability to larger adversaries, such as China.

And America loses.

WaPo answers one or two of my questions:

• Refunds:
  

  As part of its ruling striking down most of President Donald Trump’s tariffs, the Supreme Court’s majority did not make clear whether the Trump administration will have to refund billions in tariffs already collected by the federal government.

  And then

  Within minutes of the Supreme Court’s decision Friday, a group of small businesses made a public appeal for the federal government to swiftly refund the money they had paid in connection with the president’s illegal tariffs.

  Followed by

  Some Democrats have started calling for the Trump administration to issue refunds now that the Supreme Court has struck down most of the president’s sweeping tariffs, although the court’s ruling Friday did not address whether that would happen.

• It was a 6-3 decision. Too bad it wasn’t 9-0. The dissenters were the two most conservative Justices, Alito and Thomas, plus Kavanaugh.
• How is Trump going to feel about this? Here’s what he’s been saying for a year:
  

  “Everybody should pray that the United States Supreme Court has the Wisdom and Genius to allow Tariffs to GUARD our National Security, and our Financial Freedom!” Trump wrote in Truth Social in December.

  His acting skills may allow him to look even-tempered, but when the camera’s are not on him?

  Trump called it a “disgrace,” the governor [unnamed] said, and left shortly after, telling the governors he needed to work on a statement on the ruling.

This will take some pressure off of the economy, although I expect not all of it. Trump will test his supporters, looking for a measure of how much support he retains after being defeated at the Supreme Court, but in such a way that his supporters will be less stressed.

Refunds? I doubt it; SCOTUS dodged a bullet when it didn’t specify refunds, since Trump won’t have to defy SCOTUS on that count. Still, he may defy the ruling denying him authority, as that’s a central blow to his claims. It’s an affirmation to the limits of Executive power, and one that SCOTUS should have affirmed long ago when Trump begged for immunity. Republican soft-headedness, whether by SCOTUS or Senators, has been one of the sources of our current contretemps.

Yes, yes, Democrats make contributions as well.

I see Breaking News on various news sites saying the President has been rebuffed, when it comes to tariffs, by SCOTUS. No details, yet. Questions coming to mind:

• Will currently collected tariffs be refunded? Will the Administration comply?
• Will Trump ignore SCOTUS? Will he denounce SCOTUS? I don’t know if there were dissents or not just yet.
• Will Trump demand Congress pass his tariffs, or even hand him the power he claimed to already have?
• Can Trump even continue to collect tariffs, or is the operation of tariff collection not under his control?

Might this big sign that Trump is not the strongman many want break him? I doubt it; indeed, it may save him as the economy will hopefully stabilize.

Still, there’s a lot of ways this could go, and they’re dependent on a President whose goals are not our goals.

Competency porn:

Competency porn, or competence porn, is a term describing media that portrays competency, qualification, intelligence, and other rigorous, capable qualities. Coined in 2009 by screenwriter John Rogers, it has often been used in coverage regarding television shows like The Pitt and The Diplomat and movies like Apollo 13. [Wikipedia]

Around since 2009, yet I had not encountered it. Shame on me. Noted in this Jennifer Garner interview.

Oooops!

I missed a few slightly stale polls, so I include them here to get the ball rolling on the quantum uncertainty of polling.

And Onwards

Since the last update we have the following:

• I noticed Senator Ossoff (D) of Georgia was on the Wednesday night edition of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Will Colbert be required to interview the Senator’s challengers as well, numbering fourteen at the moment? Or will the FCC, meaning Trump’s Toady Brendan Carr, and “CBS lawyers,” of whom the latter I must doubt their qualifications, decide to ignore the entire matter? At least they have the sense to not have another go at Colbert, who ate them alive in the Talarico incident. But before you begin shouting hypocrite at the FCC, et al, keep in mind that some folks have come to the conclusion that Trump and his minions believe being a hypocrite is of survival value, and not survival-negative, like the rest of us do.
• The “I have no idea if this is true” file: Dean Blundell wants me to believe Senator Graham of South Carolina is way too friendly with the bottle. Yes, that bottle. I don’t believe it until I see a second or even third confirmation; this could all be a scurrilous rumor. And does it matter to voters in South Carolina?
• A University of New Hampshire (UNH) poll shows New Hampshire Senate candidates Sununu and Pappas leading their respective primary opponents, Sununu 48% – Brown 25%, and Democrat Rep Pappas 65% – Manzur 11%. It also shows Rep Pappas with a 50% – 45% lead over Sununu. It’s a long time to Election Day, even to Primary Day, which is September 8, and this poll is from a month ago. UNH has a very good reputation as a pollster, as I recall.
• Unknown-to-me pollster Carolina Forward measured Roy Cooper (D-NC) as having a five point lead over Michael Whatley (R-NC), 47% – 42%, in North Carolina back in January. Yes, Whatley has a large lead in the primary. Polling for the Democratic primary doesn’t seem to be present. But is this a credible pollster?
• Last December highly respected Emerson College Polling released a poll of Ohio voters that showed Senator Husted (R) leading former Senator Brown (D), 49% – 46%.
• Stuart Rothenberg, contributor to biweekly newsletter Inside Elections, believes Senator Collins (R) of Maine will not win reelection. I wish he’d said why. Didn’t see anything on the website.

We need a reminder of the summer after 6 inches of snow last night.

Oooops! Last night’s snowy debacle combined with a camera that didn’t like snow. Let’s try again.

My Arts Editor says her rock sculpture is surly.

Oh, that’s better.

Lusciously delicate.

OK, warm but slightly vertiginous.

Back to reality? Actually, from weeks ago.

An announcement from England:

Thames Valley Police said in a statement that authorities arrested “a man in his sixties from Norfolk” but declined to name him. [MS NOW]

This politic announcement masks the identity of the alleged offender, the former Prince Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. It seems likely that his arrest has to do with his name being found in the Epstein Files.

If you’re part of the super elite who subscribes to the assertion that the elite .1%, however it is you wish to measure it, should not be subject to the rules applying to the hoi polloi^[1], then this is another attack upon the rights and, let’s be wry here, superlatives, of said class.

President Trump has demonstrated through his pardons of both domestic and foreign rich felons that he has at least some regard for the elite, and I’m wondering how he’ll react to the fall of the former Prince, shorn of rank, privilege, and now even liberty. Legally, Trump cannot intervene: panicky pardons will look foolish and be impotent. Will he rant and rave as he has with a few other former privileged who discovered they were vulnerable? Will he predict terrible, or at least terribly incoherent, futures for England if Mountbatten-Windsor is not at liberty?

Or will Trump repress himself? Suggest Mountbatten-Windsor isn’t part of the super-elite? Or maybe the Epstein Files have exonerated Mountbatten-Windsor just as he keeps proclaiming they’ve exonerated him?

The dangers of the super-rich, super-privileged have always been present; many famous despots, etc, have had failsons as their progeny. I suspect Mountbatten-Windsor is a prime example of this grimly human failing.

¹ From Wikipedia, The English expression “(the) hoi polloi” (/ˌhɔɪ pəˈlɔɪ/) was borrowed from Ancient Greek (οἱ πολλοί), where it means “the many” or, in the strictest sense, “the people”.

Who Needs An Intro?

Since the last broken breaking report, this has happened:

• WaPo reports on how the three Kentucky GOP candidates aren’t giving former Senate Majority Leader McConnell (R-KY) any respect. While McConnell’s not generally popular, his connections and allies are taking offense at the attacks generated by these three candidates who all have connections to McConnell. One of them is most likely the next Senator from Kentucky, but they may find themselves representing a discontented State searching for alternatives. Or a Democratic candidate with more gravitas, such as Booker or McGrath, might upset them, especially if Trump’s reputation continues to decay due to discoveries in the Epstein Files.
• As I’m sure everyone expected, Texas AG Ken Paxton’s (R-TX) yearning to be a Senator from Texas is upsetting many conservatives, even as Senator Cornyn’s relative lack of extremism displeases extremists. Erick Erickson:
  

  Some of these Texas supporters of Paxton have reasoned they’d rather the Democrats take the Senate than keep John Cornyn. They will not be reasoned with. They wrap themselves in the language of Christianity and promote a serial adulterer of ill repute and then convince themselves the country is going to hell in a hand basket.

  Welcome to the epistemic bubble of the right. The left has one, too. The Texas primary is scheduled for March 3rd, but early voting has already begun.

• Texas is a big State with lots of news, and I saw this one the night it occurred: An interview with Democratic candidate for the Senate James Talarico by Stephen Colbert for the The Late Show was banned by “CBS lawyers” (read: David Ellison?) because of FCC shit. Word on the street is that Talarico is worrisome as he’s studying to be a minister and rejects the evangelical arguments for voting Republican. If you want details such as the actual announcement/denouncement by Colbert, a transcript, or a link to the actual interview, follow this link to a poopdogcomedy post on Daily Kos. This MS NOW piece includes a clarification from the CBS News lawyers. This TNR piece says, It has gotten 8.3 million views as of this writing. The show typically has 2.3 million viewers. And this MS NOW piece helpfully summarizes this entire drama. This leaves interpretation wide open: Is this a simple case of the current chief of Paramount, which owns CBS, which in turn owns The Late Show, David Ellison, clumsily trying to silence a dangerous Democratic contender for the Senate seat held by Senator Cornyn, and instead amplifying his candidacy? Losing evangelical voters would doom the current lot of Republican grifters, that’s for certain, and that’s one way to enhance your failson credentials, Mr Ellison. But the result was predictable. Is Ellison, or whoever’s the hand in his puppet, taking a shot at Senator Cornyn, who, see above point, is disliked by the “compromise is evil” extremists? Perhaps Talarico is seen as easier to beat than his Democratic competitors, Rep Jasmine Crockett and Ahmad Hassan. Or is it something deeper yet?
• Oh, and President Trump endorses all three top GOP candidates for the Senate seat in Texas. The terror of being wrong, eh?
• Readers of the first installment of this coverage may recall this note in the initial coverage of Texas:
  

  “I told [lawmakers] straight up: South Texas will never be red again,” said Mario Guerrero, the CEO of the South Texas Builders Association, a Trump voter who traveled to Washington last week. [Politico]

  I mention this because I’ve run across something similar involving Florida. From Professor Richardson, as I don’t currently have a Wall Street Journal subscription:

  In May 2023 the Florida legislature passed a law requiring employers with 25 or more employees to confirm that their workers are in the U.S. legally. The new law prompted foreign farmworkers and construction workers to leave the state. Now, the Wall Street Journal reported in a February 6 editorial, employers “are struggling to find workers they can employ legally.”

  The newspaper continued: “There’s little evidence that undocumented migrants are taking jobs from Americans. The reality is that employers can’t find enough Americans willing to work in the fields or hang drywall, even at attractive wages. Farm hands in Florida who work year-round earn roughly $47,000, which is more than what some young college graduates earn.” “The lesson for President Trump is that businesses can’t grow if government takes away their workers,” the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board concluded.

  As predicted for many years. This sounds like alienation of voters’ affections, if the Democrats can link the inability to build housing and harvest food to the anti-immigrant efforts of the Republicans. That might make Senator Moody (R) a vulnerable target.

Read All About It

The news seems a bit time-sensitive, so here’s what has hit my windshield so far.

Exsolve:

Mineralogy (of two minerals in solid solution)
to separate from one another at a critical point in temperature​ [Collins Dictionary]

Noted in “Yellowstone Is One of the World’s Largest Magmatic Systems – And It May be Missing a Key Volcanic Gas,” Rosie McCall, Discover:

As the magma flows towards the surface, the decrease in pressure causes the gasses to exsolve from the liquid magma and continue to rise to the surface, eventually escaping into the atmosphere – a process known as outgassing.

Never seen exsolve before. Neither has my spelling checker.

Although some will argue it is.

Fighting over Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funding, minus that of ICE, which is ludicrously funded, damages both Republicans and Democrats.  DHS has come under scrutiny, it’s reported, from both sides of the American political spectrum.

This seems like an opportune time to abolish DHS. Advantages:

1. Progress is made involving the abolition of a government department that draws public ire.
2. Grandiose claims concerning cost savings are possible.
3. For Trump, Noem and Lewandowski, reported to be scheming to put Noem in the Presidency, would be out. Yes, I know Noem has figured out how to project … something, but it’s not competency.

I would suggest the return of all agencies to their original homes. The two parties can thumb wrestle concerning FEMA, as it has no original department listed.

And take some of the ICE funding and give it to other agencies. FEMA, for example, is threatening to become yet another anchor around Trump’s neck, so find a competent manager and fund them. Folks left sitting on their roofs for weeks on end do not look kindly on the Administration who took away FEMA.

And the “shutdown” of DHS is done.

But Wait

After my relative disaster of the 2024 Senate Campaign posts – let’s not review, for example, the trumpeted Selzer & Co poll at the end of the race which claimed Harris had a 3 point lead over Trump in Iowa, followed by the news that Trump won Iowa by 13+ points – I had considered skipping this summary for us regular folks who work in non-political jobs and don’t have time for this.

But I keep running across news, so what the heck, hey?

The GOP in The Senate Isn’t Going To Lose That Many Seats … Right?

Right. That’s what I think. Why bother wasting my time on this? They have 53 when only 50 is required, with VP Vance voting to break ties. Throwing four seats away, even in the dysfunctional Senate, would be horrible incompetence on the Republicans’ part, and require voters to develop a trust for the Democrats that doesn’t seem to be there, and the Democrats’ elements of autocracy and arrogance are nearly a match for the Republicans’.

But then there’s this:

In case the above disappears, it’s a tweet from InteractivePolls:

For the first time, GOP strategists are telling Axios that losing the Senate — where Republicans have a 53-47 majority — is a distinct possibility.

According to GOP internal polling, even deep-red states like Alaska, Iowa, and Ohio are now in play

Top GOP strategists acknowledge that immigration and the economy — the two issues that drove Trump’s win in 2024 — are now liabilities.

“A year ago, I would have told you we were almost guaranteed to win the Senate,” one GOP operative who’s reviewed internal polling told Axios. “Today, I would have to tell you it’s far less certain.”

The Republicans have been acting rather nutty these days. Amateur hour, some might say. Like me. Although Senate Majority Leader Thune (R-ND) does not seem to like President Trump and may try to hold the Senate to only reasonable actions.

The Senate could change hands.

Current News

There are always retirements imminent and announced among the one hundred members of the Senate, unless your name is Chuck Grassley (R-IA). The current list of announced retirements:

• Senator and former Majority Leader McConnell (R-KY)
• Senator Ernst (R-IA)
• Senator Lummis (R-WY)
• Senator Tuberville (R-AL), who is running for Governor of Alabama.
• Senator Smith (D-MN); additionally, Senator Klobuchar (D-MN) has announced a run for Governor of Minnesota in 2026, so she’ll be required to resign from the Senate if she wins. Since her current Senate term is until 2031, a loss in the primary or general election would not result in her necessarily leaving the Senate.
• Senator Durbin (D-IL)
• Senator Peters (D-MI)
• Senator Shaheen (D-NH)

What About Polling?

The collapse of FiveThirtyEight does put a dent in resources for polling. Along with FiveThirtyEight, Monmouth University Polling announced it was shutting down, as did Selzer & Co, source of the Iowa Poll. This is all depressing for folks like me, but then again only one poll really counts, and that’s the election itself.

After the 2024 disaster in polling, these service terminations may not be that important.

Other Sources

Inveterate political observer Matthew Yglesias thinks the Democrats have a chance to take Congress:

The Tennessee special, by contrast, was a real election with real budgets and some earned media attention. And Behn, though by most accounts a charismatic person and effective public speaker, was a genuinely terrible candidate for the district. Unlike Zohran Mamdani, she declined to disavow earlier support for defunding the police and had a record of inflammatory statements that made it clear she wasn’t just talking about hiring more social workers.

If Democrats can put up 13 points of overperformance in a meaningfully contested House race with a candidate who is terribly positioned to win crossover voters, that suggests Republicans are in deep trouble.

Deep enough to realistically put a Senate majority within reach, if Democrats come up with good nominees.

Nate Silver, founder of the late FiveThirtyEight, has a nuanced position that I read as uneasy:

Just in case this isn’t clear, today’s newsletter is meant to be descriptive, not proscriptive. Yes, I agree with those who say Democrats ought to place a heavy emphasis on “electability,” especially in states like Texas. In fact, the greater the threat that you think Trump is to the future of American democracy, the less you can afford to nominate only candidates who pass a progressive purity test. I also agree that moderation usually helps. Not necessarily being a down-the-line centrist, but at least vibing with your local electorate rather than the MSNBC (excuse me, MS Now) audience.

And David Shor has some data on issues here.

Wyoming

Single-term Senator Cynthia Lummis (R) will retire at the end of this term, saying … she didn’t have it in her to fill out another six-year term after an intense session that got particularly exhausting in the past several weeks.

It’s Wyoming, so whoever wins the Republican primary is probably a sure-fire winner of the general election. However, as an experienced politician, the Republicans will probably miss her far more than any of these “business leaders.” Fortunately for them, Rep Harriet Hageman (R-WY) is reportedly running for the open seat, although she is burdened with a Trump endorsement.

No word on Democratic candidates.

What’s Next?

I hope to post occasional updates with significant news: primary results, news of concern to candidates, maybe even polls.

All from a guy who doesn’t do this for a living and can’t imagine same.

But I hadn’t expected it to be quite so … meta:

Kristi Noem: "When it gets to Election Day, we've been proactive to make sure we have the right people voting, electing the right leaders to lead this country."

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-02-14T14:51:25.730Z

In case it disappears …

Kristi Noem: “When it gets to Election Day, we’ve been proactive to make sure we have the right people voting, electing the right leaders to lead this country.”

Yeah, the wannabe fascist can’t keep it in her shirt. Oh, sure, we can justify the first part in isolation if we take right people voting to mean citizens only. I have no problem with that in isolation.

But electing the right leaders to lead this country?

No. That’s code for Ensuring only We get elected. And it invalidates the first part’s neutral interpretation as well.

This is the sort of thing that will have everyone’s nerves standing on end. Including my readers’.

If you look for this stuff with your mouth hanging open, you’ll likely die of suffocation or drowning. That’s how fast it’s coming in.

So some readers will be familiar with the House hearing in which Attorney General (AG) Pam Bondi descended into, well, gibberish isn’t quite accurate, but she certainly looked like a lunatic. Observers believe she was trying to impress one person, that being President Trump.

This is an amateur hour thing to do, because any AG knows that you answer the questions as fully and truthfully as possible, regardless of the impact on the President, or anyone else. This is Government 101 stuff and not an advanced topic. Diverge from this simple rule and shit starts to happen.

And, for the President who is presumably responsible for manipulating Bondi into such behavior, it, too, is amateur hour stuff. He has given his his allies in Congress another reason to disregard his wishes when legislation arises. He’s given his MAGA supporters another reason to walk away. All to soothe his savage ego.

Doubt that? Here’s chloris creator, rather snarkily, via Daily Kos:

Maga Podcasters Jumping Ship After the Bondi Hearing

We may or may not forgive these people, but the fact that some MAGA podcasters are peeling away is a BFD.

They have a lot of influence.

They have the pulse of right-wing culture.

Yep, left wing arrogance, but what they pick out is worth the teeth grinding. Here’s just one bit:

JOE ROGAN.

Here’s what Joe Rogan had to say. Let’s play it. “So we know Sultan Ahmed bin Sullean Sul Suliam [no idea about the actual spelling] sent the torture vide to Epstein. This is in 2009. Um, so Epstein was saying, that, ‘where are you? Are you okay? I love the torture video.’ Jeez. ‘I am in China. I’ll be in the US the second week of May.’ What the ???, man? And why is his name redacted? Why would your name be redacted if you’re not a victim?

Go read, or listen, to the rest of it.

If MAGA podcasters are dismayed by Bondi and Trump, they may begin to reject them. Yes, Rogan may not be MAGA, but he’s very popular and if he’s commenting negatively on Trump and his minions, Trump supporters may also be dismayed and walk away.

And in other amateur hour news, the New Mexico GOP appears to have failed to nominate anyone to challenge Senator Luján (D). While beating a sitting Senator is typically no mean feat, it’s not impossible in slightly blue New Mexico. After all, Kamala Harris did win the State in 2024, but only by six points. A failure to nominate anyone at all emphasizes what an amateur hour production the New Mexico GOP has become. Local blogger Joe Monahan (same link as above):

The party holds no statewide elected executive offices and no seats in the five -member congressional delegation. The governor is a Democrat and both chambers of the legislature overwhelmingly so. The five-member state Supreme Court is all Democratic.

This is what happens when ideological purity becomes the primal measurement stick, and experience is loathed.

Failson:

failson (plural failsons)

1. (Internet slang, derogatory) An incompetent, unsuccessful middle- or upper-class man who is protected from economic duress by his family’s wealth or influence. [Wiktionary]

Well, I’ll be. Noted in “The President Of The 0.00001 Percent,” Andrew Sullivan, The Weekly Dish (paywall):

How did the Trumps pull this off? The incomprehensible bullshit called crypto currency (i.e. WLF) induces a coma in most voters; and the ethical conflicts are “resolved” by having the failsons of Trump, Howard Lutnick, and Steve Witkoff “run” the businesses while their dads direct government policy. Here’s nepo-baby Zach Witkoff at a crypto conference in Dubai last year announcing the deal with WLF, sitting next to the heir-spare Eric Trump:

We really need to take a page out of His Highness’s and the Emirates’ book. They are just an amazing example of how you can lead with innovation while also maintaining your family values.

Really makes you wonder about David Ellison, the son of database magnate Larry Ellison. The son is in charge of CBS, Paramount, and various other properties, and is the dude who brought in Bari Weiss and The Free Press for a few hundred million dollars. I’d never even heard of David Ellison before now.

Given how much Weiss received, I’d say rookage occurred.

No, I do not recognize the reference to ‘WLF’. Searching on it revealed WLF Irrigation Service.

The noise of the evolution of education grinding to a bloody and devastating halt.

This sycophancy is hardly confined to leaders trying to stay in the government’s good graces. It’s a plague in the classroom too. When students earn A’s just by enrolling in a class and handing in assignments, sycophancy reigns. When professors’ jobs depend on their popularity with those they grade, the incentives align for mutual back-scratching. When teachers are afraid to tell someone “that’s a really dumb idea,” or even “that’s wrong,” education gives way to customer satisfaction. This reticence does nobody a favor. Dispensing praise instead of provoking learning may be comical in an AI chat, but it’s poisonous in the classroom. [“The epidemic of toxic flattery is spreading,” Michael S. Roth, president of Wesleyan University, WaPo]

I recall writing a post, many years ago and apparently unfindable, that concluded one does not buy an education; one merely buys access to that education, and it’s up to the student to utilize it.

I subscribe to Skeptical Inquirer, which investigates everything from religious miracles to Bigfoot and other cryptids to creationism to other mysterious occurrences, usually deploying mundane explanations of what probably happened and that sort of thing.

Including Havana Syndrome, dating from 2016 in Havana, Cuba, and referring to incidents where

U.S. and Canadian government officials and their families reported symptoms associated with a perceived localized loud sound. The symptoms lasted for months and included disabling cognitive problems, balance problems, dizziness, insomnia, and headaches. Havana syndrome is not recognized as a disease by the medical community. [Wikipedia]

I always thought the proffered explanation, a variant of psychosocial illness as I recall, seemed a bit weak.

It may have been weaker than I realized.

Working in strict secrecy, a government scientist in Norway built a machine capable of emitting powerful pulses of microwave energy and, in an effort to prove such devices are harmless to humans, in 2024 tested it on himself. He suffered neurological symptoms similar to those of “Havana syndrome,” the unexplained malady that has struck hundreds of U.S. spies and diplomats around the world.

The bizarre story, described by four people familiar with the events, is the latest wrinkle in the decade-long quest to find the causes of Havana syndrome, whose sufferers experience long-lasting effects including cognitive challenges, dizziness and nausea. The U.S. government calls the events Anomalous Health Incidents (AHIs).

These results were discovered by a Havana Syndrome skeptic, so points for him, and bolsters the case for actual, working weapons being deployed against U.S. and Canadian personnel. They were released recently

Well, this should make either the next issue, or the issue after that, of Skeptical Inquirer quite interesting. There’s nothing on their website’s front page about this development, but this is recent enough that they may not have developed a response.

Will there be a retaliatory response from the current Administration?

I cannot find a full, clean quote, but I love what I’ve seen and will go with it:

Kash Patel

“[FBI Director Kash Patel is] going back to the one skill that he thinks he has, which is self-promoting: diving into the media, diving into social media to compensate for his complete ineptitude at being the director of the FBI, which should not surprise anybody,” [former FBI counterterrorism division senior executive Christopher] O’Leary said. “He has no leadership experience, no operational experience, no investigative experience.”

In other words, Patel is little more than a neutering of the FBI. Why? Because they’re a great danger to President Trump. And, I suppose, his family.

Pozzolan:

Pozzolans are a broad class of siliceous and aluminous materials which, in themselves, possess little or no cementitious value but which will, in finely divided form and in the presence of water, react chemically with calcium hydroxide (Ca(OH)₂) at ordinary temperature to form compounds possessing cementitious properties. The quantification of the capacity of a pozzolan to react with calcium hydroxide and water is given by measuring its pozzolanic activity. Pozzolana are naturally occurring pozzolans of volcanic origin. [Wikipedia]

I just stumbled across pozzolans, unknown to me, while researching this post. Noted in the Wikipedia article, “I-35W Saint Anthony Falls Bridge“:

In the concrete comprising the drilled shafts, piers and footings, a significant proportion of the Portland cement was replaced with slag, fly ash and other pozzolans.^[36] These materials reduce the embodied energy of the structure and allow the concrete to resist the ingress of water and dissolved solids such as chloride ions. This allowed the structure to be designed to resist deterioration for much longer than structures made with conventional concrete.

I am not a civil engineer, but I know one. I might have to ask him to clarify this to me. Or maybe not. Embodied energy, while perhaps self-explanatory, eludes my sense of significance.

It would seem there’s a bit more to the story of Trump & the bridge than I had envisioned, according to The New York Times:

The billionaire owner of a bridge connecting Michigan with Canada met Howard Lutnick, the U.S. Secretary of Commerce, on Monday hours before President Trump lambasted a competing span, in the latest flashpoint in the deteriorating relationship between the United States and Canada.

Matthew Moroun is a Detroit-based trucking magnate whose family has operated the Ambassador Bridge between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, for decades. He met on Monday with Mr. Lutnick in Washington, according to two officials briefed on the meeting who requested anonymity to discuss a private conversation.

After that meeting Mr. Lutnick spoke with Mr. Trump by phone about the matter, the officials said.

Well. President Trump as hit-man, eh?

To play devil’s advocate, I’ll also note this:

The new bridge was fully paid for by Canada but is owned in part by Michigan, and is expected to ease congestion in the busiest trade corridor between the United States and Canada.

There is something to be said about private vs public competition, although I must say the situation is rarely as clean as a libertarian, who will emphasize the vast public resources available to the state, make for unfair competition, might have you believe. I did a bit of research on the privately owned entity, the Ambassador Bridge, in Wikipedia, which claims the bridge’s condition is, oh, I don’t know, let’s say marginal and getting worse. However, it also notes the various permissions to repair the bridge have been difficult-to-impossible to obtain, again, my words. It may be that both public and private have dirty hands, but that’s for other researchers to debate.

All that said, the state, err, states in this case, have a possibly critical interest in a dependable and speedy transport link over the Detroit River; if the Ambassador were to collapse, replacement would take years. Yes, I know the I-35W Saint Anthony Falls Bridge, which replaced the collapsed I-35W Mississippi River Bridge, took roughly 13 months to complete, but managers who bank on setting construction records rarely have good outcomes, and this would be a far larger project. Canada and Michigan might justify the construction of the Gordie Howe International Bridge on these concerns alone, and have a good case.

And to learn the Ambassador Bridge was once owned by a public company, before the Morouns bought it up!