Category Archives: Uncategorized

Rolling Stone reports:

According to ethics disclosure reports released by the White House, Miller owns between $100,000 and $250,000 worth of stock in Palantir, Peter Thiel’s data and intelligence software company that has a several lucrative contracts with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to track data and conduct surveillance on undocumented immigrants. It’s a pretty clear conflict of interest from the man behind much of Donald Trump’s immigration policy, in an administration that is already rife with corruption.

A lesson in how to take advantage of one’s position. Maybe Mr Miller can take up a senior teaching position after this Administration closes down.

Something about this video is underhandedly creepy. My Arts Editor just shrugs.

For those who believe in goat entrails special elections as a light on the future, here’s last week’s spotlight from Steve Benen:

Headed into last week’s state legislative special elections, Democrats were confident about a contest in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The state House race was in a district that Kamala Harris carried by 19 points, and the party’s candidate, Amanda Clinton, appeared well positioned to do at least as well.

The good news for Democrats was that their candidate prevailed. The better news for Democrats was the margin: Clinton won a 69-point landslide, easily surpassing expectations.

Republican voters are either dispirited or switching sides in that particular district. Keep in mind that gerrymandering no doubt packed the district with left leaning voters if it was easily carried by Harris just a few months ago – in ruby red Oklahoma.

I wouldn’t try to extend that to other parts of Oklahoma.

Sock puppet account:

A sock puppet, sock puppet account, or simply sock[,] is a false online identity used for deceptive purposes.^[1] The term originally referred to a hand puppet made from a sock. Sock puppets include online identities created to praise, defend, or support a person or organization,^[2] to manipulate public opinion,^[3] or to circumvent restrictions such as viewing a social media account that a user is blocked from. Sock puppets are unwelcome in many online communities and forums. [Wikipedia]

As political and financial objectives supersede simple honesty, it’s difficult to tell readers that they shouldn’t use social media for their news.

But you shouldn’t.

I’m contemplating a post concerning the corruption that is pervading society; while Fox News has a decades-old reputation for misleading their audience, more recently the failures to reveal the failing nature of President Biden’s cognition has left mainstream and left-wing media similarly disgraced.

So what to do? Use multiple sources; think carefully about who can manipulate a given source, such as social media account.

And read the below.

Socket puppet account noted in “Is Your Favorite Influencer’s Opinion Bought and Sold?“, Lee Fang:

There was a momentary push in 2017 for stricter social media disclosures in the political realm. The discovery of foreign influence campaigns aimed at the 2016 presidential election set off alarm bells. As a result, the major tech platforms began working to track and close so-called sock puppet accounts operated by the Russian and Chinese government. Yet few reforms were institutionalized, and as more and more Americans get their news from social media, the problem remains largely unchecked.

Time for another check on the price of DJT, the stock of Trump Media & Technology Group, which was priced at $23.60 on May 27. And now?

This monthly chart^[1] shows DJT is currently in decline. Since my last casual note, my calculator shows DJT’s dropped 24.4%. Is this disaster?

No, not in my experience. I have observed, and in a few instances, owned stocks that have dropped that much and more, and then recovered. All it takes is patience; the bold investor might even buy more.

But there are no guarantees, folks. DJT could drop 20% tomorrow. In a month, it might go under the waves, never to be seen again. Or it could jump 20%.

Thank goodness I’m not a financial advisor, and readers shouldn’t take this as anything more than an old investor’s observations of a certainly unusual company, a company with a social media product that reportedly doesn’t do well, an American President as its chief draw, and a cryptocurrency on offer.

Speaking of, how’s that doing?

CoinMarketCap

From Day Zero to today, it appears to have dropped quite a ways. Investors who’ve bought $TRUMP coins are experiencing an unexpected depletion of their core wealth, I’d say, which is rather in line with everything Donald J. Trump touches.

But I do recall Professor Richardson of Letters From An American commenting that $TRUMP experienced a big drop during the week of feud between President Trump and Elon Musk^[2]. Such feuds are not uncommon in politics, but inexperienced folks often assume that allies are forever and bonded at a deep level, when the reality is that it’s often an alliance of convenience, and breaks up as goals are accomplished, personalities clash over tactics – or someone decides their slice of the pie isn’t big enough. Consider the fate of former leading Communist revolutionary and Stalin ally Leon Trotsky, exiled and assassinated.

I have to wonder if investors are awakening to the facts of DJT.

And President Trump’s bombing of Iran? I don’t expect that to affect the price of DJT. But we shall see.

¹ It also appears to be exhibiting a bug in that the After Hours display replicates the daily trading information of a 3.98% decline, yet the price hasn’t changed.

² I regret not finding the link.

Remember when the United States invaded Iraq under the excuse that Iraq, under President and megalomaniac Saddam Hussein, had weapons of mass destruction (WMDs)? Oh, some readers might be a trifle young.

And President Bush ordered the invasion despite his intelligence services telling they didn’t think there were WMDs? No WMDs were ever found.

And now we’ve hit Iran because President and megalomaniac Donald J. Trump believes the Iranians were only weeks, or months, away from completing nuclear weapons development.

Not an assessment – or excuse – to which his intelligence professionals agree.

So this CNN headline

How Trump quietly made the historic decision to launch strikes in Iran

while technically accurate, ignores the pattern in Republican Presidents to ignore inconvenient advice, making a mockery of running the best Administrations possible in favor of fiscal advantage and emotional preconception.

I wonder how many innocent Iranian citizens will die in this needless conflict?

It starts with a pleasant surreality, and then goes off into … weirdness.

Beckett-King is not a recent, random find. We have, I think, two of his books for children; his whimsical short videos appeal to the nature of both myself and my Arts Editor.

Caught these last night, across from the former Dairy Queen, which is now called Sprinkles and rumored to be opening … today!

Back when cars had character, looks, whatever you want to call it.

And weighed 6 tons.

And the garden is doing medium well.

No strawberries, yet. We usually have a harvest in mid-June. I wonder if the bee shortage is causing it.

It’s tough to be a chicken. Or maybe that was just a tough chicken.

The Tale Of The Fox (1930?) is a somewhat whimsical, somewhat grim exploration of the animal kingdom of King Noble, a Lion, as taken from the stories of Reynard the Fox. The key feature, I think, is that while the characters are intelligent animals that retain their basic dietary and behavioral natures, they occupy human roles: ruling nobility, the craft class, clerics, etc.

And the primary point comes when King Noble, in frustration with the antics of Reynard the Fox, sets forth the absurd rule that animals must not kill and eat each other, except the King gets a couple of exceptions. While Reynard’s behavior may be almost ridiculously clever, in the end he’s only trying to feed his family.

So now what is he, and the rest of the carnivores of the kingdom, to do? Well, the chickens take it in the shorts.

The King shows his loyalty to his subjects, or maybe to himself, when Reynard is revealed to be responsible for the death of a chicken, and is sentenced to death. Reynard doesn’t hang around, but slips the noose and makes a run for his castle.

Foxes have castles?

Once there, he employs various tricks to defeat the King’s Army, eventually leading to the King leaving the field of battle, blaming the Cock for a betrayal and thus excusing the King from prosecuting his war vow; soon, Reynard goes from imperilment to the King’s top minister.

And there we have the story of what happens when absolute monarchs make absolutely nutty rules: chaos. Only when all sides participate, in this case by Reynard becoming an advisor while representing the people of the kingdom, will prosperity be possible.

Unless you’re a chicken.

It’s a good lesson for today’s America, which has retreated to the fantasy that arrogant leaders are better than leaders that compromise and admit that they may not know the best way forward; instead, the self-regarding wannabe rulers make up edicts without consultation with others or even with reality (abortion, transgenderism), while ginning up gods of the mystical or scientific sorts from their imaginations in order to grasp after legitimization and not engage with Americans who just might disagree with them. It’s a horror show driven by arrogance that should shame them, but won’t: the leaders benefiting their egos will never admit error.

Ahem. Sorry ’bout that.

But this movie is also interesting, even fascinating, because it is a very early example of stop-action. The creators of the movie were also developers of the art, and if the characters aren’t always as engaging as those of, say, Aardman Animations, they do have quirky charm of their own.

But can you cheer on Reynard, who is, after all, eating his fellow citizens? It’s really a serious question. It’s why I’ve never watched The Lion King: it is implicitly ridiculous.

But The Tale of the Fox tackles that problem head on.

Caudillo:

1. A leader.
2. A military dictator, especially one ruling in Spain, Portugal or Latin America. [Wiktionary]

That’s a new one on me. I get the impression it’s used to express some disdain. Noted in “The American Caudillo,” Andrew Sullivan, The Weekly Dish:

And anyone peacefully protesting this grotesque cooptation of a military parade worthy of Putin or Xi? They will be met with a “very heavy force,” just as they would be in Beijing or Moscow. Yes, that’s what free speech now amounts to in this man’s America. Write an op-ed criticizing a foreign country’s mass infanticide, and you will be deported pronto. Protest this caudillo’s trashing of every American value since the Founding, and his masked thugs will arrest you, deport you, or injure you. Be a US Senator and ask a cabinet secretary some questions at a press conference, and guards will wrestle you to the ground and cuff you. This administration has now praised ICE and Secret Service violence against elected Democratic officials more than once.

But when President Trump

… demands ‘unconditional surrender’ in warning to Iran

[CNN headline] … it’s really hard not to see Trump frantically scrambling to remain relevant to the world stage. His poor management of the United States government continues to drive away casual supporters, his immediate reaction to the conflict was to claim the United States was not part of the conflict and had not coordinated with Israel, and now he wants not only a piece of the pie, but the entire pie and anything else he can scoop up through this demand.

And, meanwhile, it’s not even clear he can control his subordinates. From rumors that Stephen Miller is a loose cannon …

This shift makes it seem as if White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, a white nationalist who insists that the U.S. must deport a million immigrants this year, is determining White House policies, just as he did on the Signal chat about the military strikes on the Houthis in Yemen when his statement that Trump wanted a strike appeared to shut down any further debate of the question.

… to RFK, Jr apparently taking the overpopulation issue into his own hands by sabotaging vaccines, Trump’s legacy is right at the bottom of the list of Presidents – and sinking fast.

It’s a very serious demand, to be sure, but it’s not driven by strategic considerations, but the fears of a man-child who should be in a rest-home – not the Oval Office.

Ever wonder how groundwater losses, or gains for that matter, are measured? WaPo mentions it in passing:

NBC News notes the staggering casualties suffered by Russia in Putin’s War:

The Russian military will likely surpass 1 million casualties in its war on Ukraine this summer, according to one of the world’s leading think tanks, reflecting the staggering human toll of President Vladimir Putin’s assault on his neighbor.

Around 250,000 of these Russian soldiers have died, the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) said in a report Tuesday.

Surpassing 1 million killed and wounded would be “a stunning” and grisly milestone for Russia and showed “Putin’s blatant disregard for his soldiers,” according to the report. To put this figure in historical perspective, it is five times as many deaths as all Soviet and Russian wars since World War II.

It’s also worth remembering that President Trump has expressed frustration with President Putin’s continued prosecution of his war. So my proposal integrates these two observations, adds in Trump’s sneakiness, and is this:

The Trump Administration should leak that its plans for the partitioning of Russia by United States grifters is nearing completion.

That might get Putin to sue for peace.

Communications is the transmission of concepts from one group to another group. This is accomplished mostly via words, with some support from, in print, from font modifications and pictures, and in spoken language the use of body language, and other modalities.

Quick! Did you wonder at the word modalities?

For example, if I were giving a speech and used the word secular^[1] in its tertiary sense of Greater than 100 years, without explaining that alternative definition, the confusion that would follow during the speech might easily anger some of the audience.

My point is that using words unknown, or at least unfamiliar, to your audience can result in failure; worse yet, in the social tableau of humans, it can result in alienation, anger, and frustration. In fact, it can be perceived as exclusionary, and those who are excluded in a society in which groups are rivals to each other often migrate to the rival regardless of fundamental disagreements.

So I was surprised when this very conclusion was not mentioned in this WaPo article that opens with:

Maybe it’s using the word “oligarchs” instead of rich people. Or referring to “people experiencing food insecurity” rather than Americans going hungry. Or “equity” in place of “equality,” or “justice-involved populations” instead of prisoners.

As Democrats wrestle with who to be in the era of President Donald Trump, a growing group of party members — especially centrists — is reviving the argument that Democrats need to rethink the words they use to talk with the voters whose trust they need to regain.

They contend that liberal candidates too often use language from elite, highly educated circles that suggests the speakers consider themselves smart and virtuous, while casting implied judgment on those who speak more plainly — hardly a formula for winning people over, they say.

It’s worth remembering, too, that politicians of all stripes, as well as top military brass, corporate leaders, religious leaders, and even leaders of non-profits, are considered liars^[2] by varying segments of the citizenry. Using fancy-schmancy words that are puzzling and even misleading can pave the path to lying by everyone from military leaders to tobacco company CEOs – or so it’s perceived by the audience.

In the end, using sophisticated, unfamiliar words to communicate simple, familiar concepts is an exclusionary practice, which is precisely contradictory to the goal of the Democrats. They remain arrogant and too impressed with themselves, with a few exceptions.

Too bad the Republicans are even less acceptable. My guess is that we’ll be seeing most members of Congress replaced in the near future by an electorate that is tired of all the lying and abuse, regardless of the source.

¹ As in Secular Cycles, by Turchin & Nefedov.

² My nickname for President Trump is The Mendacity Machine; mendacity is a sophisticated way of saying he has a habit of lying, and it seems like another lie comes crawling out every time President Trump waggles his tongue.

Bourse:

The term bourse refers to the French word for the stock exchange. A bourse was traditionally organized as a place to buy and sell securities, commodities, options, and other investments. The word is commonly used in Europe where it is used to describe the Paris Stock Exchange and other Euronext exchanges, including those in Amsterdam and Frankfurt. The word bourse as it is used today traces its roots back to 13th century Belgium. [Investopedia]

Yep, I’ve been investing for forty years and did not know that. Noted in a piece of promotional mail from AL-Monitor:

Investors around the world this week have been anxiously awaiting the outcome of trade talks between the United States and China. Gulf bourses, along with the price of oil, have been rising at the prospect of an agreement — which was finally announced on Tuesday — that takes the sting out of the trade war. President Donald Trump said the pact would see China supplying rare earths and magnets and the United States allowing Chinese students into its colleges.

Please don’t snog the murder suspects.

The Oxford Murders (2008) is a sophisticated and slightly gamy murder mystery that, for audience members who like to actually try to solve the mystery du jour, unfortunately uses stochastic forces to obscure the mystery.

Stochastic. Yep, sophisticated.

A new mathematics student at Oxford, an American named Martin, wants famed Professor Seldom to be his thesis advisor, although Seldom no longer accepts PhD students for supervision. His landlady knows Seldom, and her husband and she worked with him at one time on the Enigma machine, along with Alan Turing. Oh, he wants Seldom, doesn’t he.

And then the landlady turns up dead. Her body is found by Professor Seldom and Martin.

From here we’re on a gallop to figure out not only who did this, but who’s leaving clues in the form of logical series pictures. Why would they do that?

I dunno.

As I mentioned, stochastic forces appear to cloud over the mystery’s clues, not to mention a couple of young ladies interested in Martin. The end is quite exciting, if perhaps a trifle incoherent.

It’s fun, if a bit unbelievable. Enjoy it, but you won’t remember it after a week or so.

Of course this could happen – but those cemeteries spilling into the sea took the limelight:

To the already very long list of problems caused by global warming, add toxic waste in old landfills exposed by coastal erosion and polluting beaches and seas.

“There is not lots of toxic waste spilling out at the moment, but there will be in the future,” says Andrew Russell at Queen Mary University of London. [“Toxic waste is spilling onto beaches as rising seas erode landfills,” Michael Le Page, NewScientist (24 May 2025, paywall)]

Glug.

In Britain alone, the team has now identified more than 1000 old landfill sites at risk of eroding, Russell told a recent meeting of the European Geosciences Union in Vienna, Austria.

I doubt litigation will help with this. Another item for the long list of things to cleanup.

In case you’re not keeping an eye on the news, Israel hit Iran’s nuclear program today:

Israel is at “full-up war” with Iran and will be expecting a “massive” retaliation, said CNN’s security analyst Beth Sanner.

Israel has been targeting key officials in Iran by starting from the very top, she added.

“They started very, very seriously removing the chief of the general staff, in other words like our chairman of the joint chiefs of staff,” she said. “You can imagine what Americans would do.”

On early Friday, multiple Iranian state media outlets reported that General Hossein Salami, the commander-in-chief of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), was killed during Israel’s overnight attacks. [CNN/World]

From the same link,

On Friday, Israel struck. The strikes hit dozens of locations across Iran, targeting the nuclear program and its long-range missile capabilities, according to an Israeli military official and an Israeli military source. “This is not a one-day attack,” the military source told CNN.

In January of 2016, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), negotiated over the previous two years, came into effect. Signed by Iran, the United States under the leadership of then-President Obama, China, France, Russia, the U.K., and Germany, the Trump Administration then withdrew from it in 2018, for no particularly good reason.

And now I wonder if that withdrawal had not occurred, would we still be standing at the brink of full-scale war in the Middle East? Should we be visualizing President Trump as covered in blood, along with the anti-Obama bile that seems to have motivated the withdrawal?

This is foremost in my mind, overshadowing such questions as how President Trump will respond to being eclipsed, possibly without notice, by Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel, and how Saudi Arabia, et al, will respond to this attack on an old rival of their’s. Will this entice them into recognizing Israel, or will they veer off from such a course? Netanyahu, of course, is dancing like mad with corruption charges threatening his freedom, just as is President Trump.

The future’s interest level keeps increasing.

Yeah, yeah, sounds like my efforts in the fiction realm. Good joke.

No, I’m talking about my favorite tackling dummy, Erick Erickson, who has an explanation for the California mess protests from the Democratic side:

Here’s what is really going on.

Under the United States Constitution, all persons in the United States, whether or not citizens, count for congressional apportionment. California is projected to lose between four and five seats in Congress after the 2030 Census. …

California needs as many illegal aliens as possible both as a source of cheap labor and as a way to offset projected 2030 census losses.

Because the Electoral College is calculated by adding together a state’s two senators and the total number of its House members, if California loses five congressional seats, it would go from 54 Electoral College votes to 49. Those five seats will go elsewhere, most likely to Republican-leaning states like Texas and Florida.

It is why George Soros is pouring tens of millions of dollars into turning Texas blue by 2032 — the first presidential election after the 2030 census.

It is also why California is so invested in the continued protection of illegal aliens. They need them for national political power through congressional seats and the Electoral College.

It’s a story I’ve not otherwise run across. And this snippet from one of his sources is interesting:

By either 2030 projection, were the 2032 Democratic nominee for president to carry the same states that Harris did this year, he or she would win 12 fewer electoral votes.

But so far as the balance of power goes nationally, Erickson’s making a common mistake: presuming everything else is not going to change.

But it is. How can it not?

• Trump’s reaction of sending troops in has alienated much of the nation.
• Trump’s unforced error of tariffs has alienated much of the nation.
• Trump’s implementation of the 2025 Project has alienated much of the nation.
• The rampant corruption of the Republicans is sickening to many.
• A source Erickson uses believes the Electoral votes will move to Texas and Florida, two States highly vulnerable to climate change. They may, instead, move to more lightly populated States, such as Minnesota or the Dakotas, where the climate is less cold than of old.

Still, it remains an interesting view of the real reason for the protests, verging on riots. Is it accurate? Beats me. Mobs rarely function on rational analysis. I see them more as reaction to the vicious tactics of ICE.

But show me an email with the cited strategy elucidated involving relevant parties and I can believe. Insofar as conspiracy theories go, this one’s believable.

For those motorcycle fans out there:

I noticed Erick Erickson’s having to pick his words carefully in the context of the two putrid Parties making up our political system these days.

Law and order is a winning issue for the GOP.

He says that about a President with 34 convictions and lost two civil suits for sexually assaulting E. Jean Carroll. Does he really want to remind folks of the guy who keeps losing in Court? And then there’s all the pardons he’s handing out to embezzlers, violent insurrectionists, corrupt politicians, and what have you. President Trump is fully bought into doing favors for criminals who’ll then owe him, and that’s a terrible look.

But people could see the videos online for themselves. People could see the weak local response. People could see the harassment and violence of those hoisting the Mexican flag. And most Americans support deporting illegal aliens.

Could they? Speaking from long observation, the answer to Erickson is a horse’s laugh. The films could be edited, they might not be recorded in Los Angeles, what happens across a set of streets is easily non-linear.

We are witnessing events that, through the narration of the national press corps, do not watch what our eyes have seen.

An extraordinarily ugly, confusing sentence, and a reminder not of the alleged perfidy of the national press, but of President Trump’s own words in 2020. Which, it turned out, was bad advice.

In an exchange with Jim Acosta, McEnany said, “So let me first address: No tear gas was used and no rubber bullets were used.” Acosta pushed back, “Chemical agents were used.” McEnany doubled down, “So, again, no tear gas was used.” Acosta asked McEnany why she was drawing a distinction between the use of pepper balls and tear gas canisters – since both have the same effect of causing burning and irritation of the eyes. “Well, no one was tear-gassed,” McEnany insisted. Except that viewers saw it happen. And reporters tasted it in their throats and felt it in their lungs. The AP published a fact-check on Wednesday that said “any difference is semantic.” So why is the WH arguing semantics? Perhaps to spread seeds of disbelief…

Erickson has this right, at least.

And if you can’t understand the American public is on the side of law and order, you are going to miss what happens next.

But law and order is not a winning issue for the GOP; it is a losing issue for the Democrats, who, convinced that blind, performative passion will overwhelm their adversaries, cannot bring themselves to sit down, think, and ask if they’ve made any major errors recently^{[1 – yes, go read it!]}. They run around, screaming at the top of their lungs about their goodness and their adversaries’ evil, and, for all we know, have sabotaged their own cause, even their own nation.

Meanwhile, both Parties lose out. How so? Displaying their indiscretions, perfidy, lack of standards, and a dozen other mistakes made by both Parties, these Parties become less and less appetizing. Will, for example, a sincere church-goer continue to buy into the despicable behavior of President Trump, former Rep Gaetz, Justices Thomas and Alito, Secretary Hegseth, the corruption of which a number of former GOP Representatives have been convicted, and then were forced to resign? How about Rep Ogles (R-TN)? Sincere and theologically knowledgeable church-goers should be fleeing all them, and the profound corruption of the prosperity churches should have them screaming in horror.

For the Democrats, Erickson’s point concerning riots may come true; the corruption of the BLM leadership; the defunding the police debacle; the botching of the management of the transgender issue; the appointment of Harris as the nominee for President, rather than running a primary. It can be argued that their autocratic inclinations, while not of the same magnitude as the Republicans’, are there to be seen.

Perhaps leading to implicit disqualification of both Parties from candidacy for running the American government.

Erickson wants to bury the Democrats because they’re “baby-killers,” but his side is arguably even worse. Neither side is appetizing, the Sullivan interview of Tapper and Alex Thompson suggests that both sides are unworthy of our votes.

¹ Which is, not so incidentally, a flaw they share with the Republicans.

Having just finished listening to Andrew Sullivan interview Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson concerning their new book, Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, I came away simply more convinced that our political system’s denizens have become dangerously ossified and cancerous. Tapper and Thompson, of course, concentrate on Biden, but implicitly indict the balance of the Democrats for not interfering (with kudos to exception former Rep Dean Phillips (D-MN), who took the Nikki Haley role as wannabe spoiler) with Biden’s election run. Add in the alleged manipulation of Biden by his Chief of Staff, Ron Klain, keeping in mind Sullivan’s loathing for the DEI way of doing things, such as identitarian reservation of positions, and the Democrats come off looking very bad.

And then they lost to that other Party which, for the good of the United States, should be replaced, the Republican Party. I’m inclined to say the entire Democratic Party, from Senator Klobuchar (D-MN) to the State legislators, really should go.

But the media also comes in for some well-deserved kicks, too. I know that I was taken in by their refusals to report on Biden’s true condition, and I’m not altogether happy about it.

I’m not a real fan of Sullivan’s interview technique, but it’s not awful, and he elicits a lot of information from these subjects. But you do have to pay for it – which is only right.

So here’s to getting rid of the Republicans and the Democrats, and their awful autocratic inclinations. Salut!

I’d sure like to view Senator John Kennedy’s (R-LA) flow of thoughts right at the moment, in view of this exchange with Commerce Secretary, and billionaire lacking any sort of link with reality, Luttnick:

KENNEDY: If Vietnam came to you and said, ‘You win. We’re gonna remove all tariffs and all trade barriers. Would the US please do the same?” Would you accept that deal?

LUTNICK: Absolutely not. That would be the silliest thing we could do

KENNEDY: What’s the purpose of reciprocity then?

Judging from the Senator’s line of inquiry, he’s rapidly finding himself separating from the Trump Administration. Keeping in mind that Senator Kennedy was once a Democrat and he’s an old-line politician, I have to wonder if he’s considering his next move.

Return to the Democrats? Seems unlikely. He left for a reason. Stick with the Republicans? While it seems the easiest, if his constituents begin to hate on the Republicans, then his seat may be endangered.

Become Independent? He’d be joining King and Sanders, and possibly Murkowski, in this category. That’s make for a fascinating mess.

I think he’ll quietly stick with the Republicans or retire, as he’s in his early seventies now and his body probably detests the long hours of politics. But it’s worth keeping an eye on his guy.