Category Archives: Uncategorized

“Three hundred years of being an innkeeper. Who knew immortality would be this terribly boring? Maybe next time I’ll screw up the sacrifice just to see if ‘L’ has it in him, her, it, to try to take me on!”

The City of the Dead (aka Horror Hotel; 1960) is an uneven tale of witches and their general motivations, in which the survivors of the persecution of witches in Whitewood, MA, possibly on both sides, have survived from the 1690s to the 1950s. Fresh blood is needed, though, to propitiate Lucifer (not seen here) and maintain their immortality, so when student Nan Barlow comes a-calling to gather information for a paper on witches, she becomes a sacrifice. It’s a dangerous intellectual pursuit, apparently.

Romantic interest Bill Maitland discovers she was last seen in Whitewood, so after a barking session at her professor, played by Christopher Lee, he and a sidekick make the dangerous drive to Whitewood, stopping at the gas station for directions, just like everyone else, which must bore the gas station owner something fierce. Once there, they discover the antique dealer has left hurriedly, the inn keeper has barely heard of Nan, the inn’s housekeeper is upset, and the townspeople will barely speak with them. Maybe not even that.

Eventually they discover enough clues to find Nan’s body, along with the cute antique dealer who is about to be sacrifice number two, who they rescue. Lucifer becomes mad about the missing sacrifice, and a whole lot of dead people end up … deader? Add in the sidekick, dying heroically, and it’s a goodly number.

Yes, the plot is a bit silly, but as I’ve said before, the charm of earnest horror eludes me; corny horror, however, can amuse me. Still, this plot had some egregious holes in it, such as the point of the professor in this story.

And why seek immortality?

On the other hand, the cinematography is gorgeous; the fog is overblown; the cars ponderous; and Maitland’s lack of reaction to the sacrifice of his fiancé is a disturbing big bell that falls unexpectedly flat.

If you are a Lee completist then you have to see this, but otherwise it’s for horror aficionados only.

No doubt President Trump thought Iran would be an easy pushover win, bringing him a cheap glory to match his pretentious aesthetic sensibilities, much like Putin’s War began with letters to President Putin’s Army officers from the war’s namesake to take their dress uniforms with them when they attacked Ukraine, for use when Ukraine surrendered.

Both Presidents have proven incompetent war clairvoyants. In Trump’s case, this just happened:

• Houthis enter war: Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels waded into the expanding Middle East conflict, announcing that they fired two missiles at Israel. The movement previously disrupted shipping lanes in the region, attacking vessels in the Red Sea in retaliation for Israel’s war against Hamas. [CNN]

While very few analysts wanted this war, I suspect this development surprises only a few of them, and rewards the balance with the bitter pleasure of Well, we were right. Wars are rarely as simple and predictable as overconfident amateurs like to predict. Sympathetic nations full of young men eager to prove their manhood allying themselves with the nation suffering the aggression, earned or not, is just one of the many unintended consequences of starting a war.

So are we seeing a war spinning up into a bigger war, a war for which we’re neither prepared nor properly armed? Will we have to accept a truce?

Maybe we can send Trump to his self-made enemy with a note pinned to his jacket saying, Do not return.

VP Vance had best be prepared to move into the position of President. This may happen in a big hurry.

Who’s next? From the same CNN report:

• Strait passage: Iran will allow 20 Pakistani ships to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar said. Pakistan has been acting as the mediator for negotiations between Iran and the US.

Pakistan also has nuclear weapons. Their chronic adversary, India, does as well, and has been under the control of virulent nationalists since around 2014, give or take. While Pakistan is trying to mediate Trump’s War, it’s not unknown for a mediator to join one side or another.

The next month should be very interesting.

(I wrote this a few days ago and then forgot to publish it.)

Mr Baker is a Wall Street Journal editorial board member.

— George Conway ⚖️🇺🇸 (@gtconway.bsky.social) 2026-03-23T14:37:29.291Z

Mr Baker missed the easy, obvious one.

Our President has become Tehran Trump

would have been so much better.

Catenary:

The catenary is the shape taken by an inextensible, homogeneous, infinitely thin, flexible, massive wire hanging from two points, placed in a uniform gravitational field. Galileo posed the problem and observed that the curve followed by the wire was approximately an arc of parabola, the approximation improves when you extend the wire. These are Leibniz, Jean Bernoulli and Huygens who found, independently in 1691, the right equations. [“Catenary or Funicular Curve“, mathcurve.com]

Noted in this xkcd cartoon.

Yes, I’ve fallen, inadvertently, far behind on my xkcd studies.

There’s a form of farming called Slash-and-burn agriculture,

Slash-and-burn agriculture is a form of shifting cultivation in agriculture that involves the cutting and burning of plants in a forest or woodland to create a field called a swidden. The process begins with cutting down the trees and woody plants in a given area. The downed vegetation, or “slash”, is left out to dry, usually right before the rainiest part of the year. The biomass is then burned, resulting in a nutrient-rich layer of ash which increases soil fertility and temporarily eliminates weeds and pests. After about three to five years, the plot’s productivity decreases due to depletion of nutrients along with weed and pest invasion, causing farmers to abandon the plot and move to a new area. The time it takes for a swidden to recover depends on the location and can be as little as five years to more than twenty years, after which the plot can be slashed and burned again, repeating the cycle. [Wikipedia]

As I was reading about the loss Meta Platforms, parent to Facebook, just suffered in court, it occurred to me that Meta is practicing Slash-and-burn Social Media. They, or ‘Z’ (for Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg) if you prefer, came into a field that had never experienced anything quite like this sort of social media, attracted a crop of users and advertisers, and then abused the former in order to satisfy the latter in a frenzied reaping of profit through a number of morally dubious schemes involving user information, most notably the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Now this comes along:

A jury ruled Tuesday that Meta must pay the state $375 million for failing to adhere to New Mexico’s laws related to unfair practices. The state’s lawyers alleged that Meta misled residents about the safety of its apps with respect to child sexploitation and related harms. [CNBC]

And

A New Mexico jury found Tuesday that the parent company of Facebook and Instagram knowingly hid what it knew about child exploitation on its social media platforms, prioritizing profits over safety. [WBUR]

The fine is peanuts, but having ruined the trust necessary to successfully running an immense social media institution, they tried to move on into other institutions: Instagram and, in a noteworthy blunder, threw away billions of dollars on the failed metaverse development. This jury decision brings into sharp relief the jagged edges of Zuckerberg’s broken morality, and is a symbol of just how much money that broken morality will cost Facebook.

We’re truly in the era of enormous power and enormous greed. This may not end until power plants literally go up in flames, depriving unlimited ambitions of the power needed to chase those dreams.

I wonder if ‘Z’ will try to buy up the Sahara desert to host solar panels galore? Microsoft and others are trying to go nuclear by partnering with Three Mile Island , in the case of Microsoft, to power their artificial intelligence (AI) efforts. ‘Z’ has ambitions in the AI sector, so he has to keep up, now doesn’t he?

An Outsize Impact

President Trump (R) continues to have an outsize impact, at least in my perception, on the Senate races. From tariffs, which Trump continues to try to impose, to the Epstein Files, those Republican Senators who perceive their district’s citizenry as being influenced by Trump, or having anti-Trump sentiments, find they have to make decisions which may alienate large segments of the voters. If they try to dance on the line between them, they may lose both segments.

In this respect, those Senators demonstrate their failure to have a set of important moral principles. I expect Senators who disapprove of Trump to make that clear, and why. Consequences may fall on their heads, but leading through governance is their job. Their job is not necessarily retaining their job.

From the Racetrack

Continuing the call from the booth….

• In Illinois, the March 17 primary yields a Senate seat contest between Lt Governor Juliana Stratton (D) and lawyer Don Tracy (R), plus three independents who have yet to impress me. Neither Stratton nor Tracy took more than 40% of the vote, but Tracy faces the bigger challenge as the Democratic primary drew more than 1.1 million ballots, while the Republican primary drew 0.35 million ballots.

  For the cryptocurrency industry this is a loss, as it backed Rep Raja Krishnamoorthi in the Democratic primary, but it’s hardly an existential loss. The cryptocurrency industry is brimming with new-money millionaires and billionaires who’ll fight to retain the source of their riches. Look for more contests in which the industry backs a candidate until they either begin winning, or a scandal occurs that substantially diminishes the industry’s already waning popularity.

• Maine‘s Graham Platner (D) has been endorsed over Governor Mills (D) by Senator Warren (D-MA). In case I’ve not mentioned it before, Platner is a veteran and an oyster farmer, with some controversy in his past, but no elective office experience. Meanwhile, Governor Mills is older than the likely GOP nominee and incumbent, Senator Collins (R), currently 73.
• Polls in Maine: Emerson College suggests Maine’s Senator Collins (R) is floundering a bit, with Governor Mills (D) holding a three point lead over the Senator at 46%-43%, and Graham Platner holding a larger 48%-41% lead. This Emerson College poll suggests Platner holds a large lead, 55%-28%, over Governor Mills in the primary race.

  Senator Collins is moderate enough that I puzzle over her not going independent and escaping the hot mess that is the GOP, as can be seen to the right on this On The Issues summation. If the gap widens after the primaries, she may start noising such a change about, although I’m not familiar with Maine’s political atmosphere and that might be suicide rather than an acceptable maneuver.

  More important, though, is the fact that a moderate Republican Senator of her years and standing is in trouble. Does this indicate trouble brewing for “safe”, more conservative Senators who’ve made the mistake of placating the President, thus infuriating constituents? Especially in the face of idealistic youth?

• I thought Nebraska would be a placid victory for incumbent Senator Ricketts (R), but apparently the Nebraska GOP doesn’t think so. In the uninteresting part of the news, since my last notice of Nebraska, the Senator has lost primary challenger Edward Dunn (R), but gained four others, none of whom appear noteworthy. Why do they bother?

  But on the Democratic side, two entrants have appeared, Cindy Burbank (D) and William Forbes (D). Again, on their own they are not interesting – no relevant experience. So why is the Nebraska GOP suing them? And losing?

  Democrat Cindy Burbank will be back on the ballot for the state’s U.S. Senate race after the state Supreme Court ruled Monday that the state’s top election official [Secretary of State Bob Evnen] overstepped and missed a deadline to consider complaints.

  “We hold that regardless of who is objecting to a candidate filing form, the plain language of § 32-624 requires that unless the written objection is made within 7 days after the filing deadline, the candidate filing form shall be deemed valid,” the high court wrote.

  Burbank is the second Democratic candidate that Nebraska Republicans had tried to get off the ballot this cycle  — Burbank and Douglas County sheriff candidate Mark Martinez. Both have now sued successfully to reach the ballot. Both were placed back on by the Nebraska Supreme Court or a judge acting on the court’s behalf. [Nebraska Examiner]

  The really interesting part is the allegations:

  Attorneys for Evnen and the Nebraska Republican Party had argued that Burbank’s campaign website and comments from Nebraska Democratic Party chair Jane Kleeb indicated Burbank did not plan to serve in Congress but planned to compete for the nomination and eventually support registered nonpartisan Dan Osborn. But Burbank’s legal team argued the decision to remove her from the ballot violated her First Amendment rights and the U.S. Constitution’s qualifications clause.

  Burbank’s attorneys argued voters should be able to decide the nominee and that the same scrutiny should be applied to the other Democrat in the Senate race, William Forbes, whom some have alleged is trying to help U.S. Sen. Pete Ricketts, R-Neb. The Nebraska GOP’s attorney rejected that characterization of Forbes, saying there is no “proof.” Forbes has sidestepped a question about whether he wanted to address allegations of being “loyal” to Ricketts. …

  Burbank has said on her campaign website that she would drop out if she won the nomination and support Osborn because she wants to give him a “fair shot against Ricketts.”

  Machinate, machinate, sounds like a spell. Why does the Nebraska GOP care about any of this? Is Senator Ricketts, the appointed successor to Senator Sasse (R), in trouble according to GOP internal polls?

  Nebraska’s primary election will be held on May 12, which will be dull on the Republican side and, quite possibly, fascinating on the Democratic side.

• Regarding the open Iowa Senate seat,
  

  Today, VoteVets is announcing that it is beginning an ad campaign in Iowa to help elect Joshua Turek to the U.S. Senate. The fully integrated paid media campaign, which will begin this week with an $825,000 ad buy, will run statewide on broadcast, cable, and satellite television as well as on digital platforms including streaming platforms, YouTube, digital audio, and on social media. It will help introduce Josh Turek as a fighter for working families to voters across Iowa. [VoteVets]

  Rep Turek currently has three competitors in the Democratic primary. The Iowa primary election is June 2nd.

• Emerson College is giving New Hampshire Rep Pappas (D) a slim one point lead over former Senator John Sununu (R-NH), 45%-44%, presuming each wins their primary for what will be the empty New Hampshire Senate seat. New Hampshire has two Representatives, so using Pappas’ electoral results in his House district may not be terribly relevant, but it appears he averages roughly eight point victories, so he’s not anomalously unpopular over his career.

And that’s it for this week’s soap opera accounting.

If the Republicans can’t hear the alarm bells now, they were born without ears. A special election in Florida District 87, won by Republicans in 2024 by 20 points, resulted in the seat being flipped last night by Democrat Emily Gregory, 51.2 – 48.8.

This is considered a deep-red district.

And it contains Mar-a-Lago, the President’s residence.

It’s certainly true that a President doesn’t have to live in a district with endless fidelity to them, but we’re talking Florida, where the Democratic Party has demonstrated little recent competency, and the district is Republican.

It appears the Republicans are now despised by Floridians.

Can the Democrats correct their ideological errors and take one of the most important, electorally speaking, States in the Union? Given DNC Chairman Ken Martin’s decision to hide their post-mortem, probably not.

But what do you call this? War betting? Battle betting?

Well, former Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) doesn’t like this shit.

“Somebody clearly with inside information inside the government was making bets, made money,” he said in an interview. “You have fellow Americans, what I call the true 1%, the people that volunteer to serve the interests of this country and its national security, they’re putting their lives on the line[,] and you’ve got somebody else sitting in his or her basement placing bets on it.” [KOIN.com]

Grifters don’t have much for a moral sense.

I wonder how long it’ll take, if ever, for President Trump to relieve the Joint Chiefs of Staff of their positions and give orders directly to the combat commanders involved in Trump’s War. This would, in Trump’s demented mind, lead to greater glory, now wouldn’t it?

Would those commanders tolerate it?

This headline has been evolving all day on CNN:

Iran denies talks with US as Trump claims ‘major points of agreement’ (paywall)

Early versions didn’t mention Iranian denials; they might not have been announced yet. I mentioned it to my Arts Editor and she said, “Trump must be out of bombs.”

It may well be that Trump is running out munitions, especially keeping in mind China and Russia will advance and challenge a weak leader like Trump if they perceive weakness; Trump may have been warned by his generals that his short, glorious war will be neither short nor glorious given how Iran is dug in.

But because Trump lives on reputation, he’s sensitive to changes in it. Trump’s War was not the quick and, if I might use that word again, glorious victory he no doubt envisioned. Instead, Iran is hitting back. Iranian leadership decapitated? They were replaced.

In a word, Trump, in his own mind, looks weak. He banked on looking strong and failed.

What’s his general fallback tactic? We all know it, folks, even his supporters know it.

LIE, LIE, LIE.

It’s an instinct for him. This time around he’s probably lying about having these talks, hoping whoever speaks for Iran plays along. He’s already given them a chance to sell oil, believing that to be a win-win maneuver, as Iran gets some cash and Trump gets the price of oil down.

But everyone watching knows this is Trump trying to wriggle out of yet another mistake.

Now, this could be wrong. The Iranian leadership may be lying, although I haven’t yet found angle in it for them, although I will note that, as theocrats, they’re not good people. But it’s far easier to believe Trump is lying, because that’s what he does.

Still, I do hope he announces a cease-fire that Iran publicly agrees to, because people will then be less likely to die. I don’t expect it, but I hope for it.

Mocking this film is a dangerous avocation. Still, old Bessie was quite the charmer and easily the most normal character in this story.

The Old Man (2019; Estonian: Vanamehe film) presents the pleasant earthiness of rural life to three children who’ve been brought to stay with their grandparents over the summer.

They have a plenitude of experiences awaiting them: the death, the funeral, and the resurrection of their grandfather; an obscure deep-forest hippy party; the madman of the commercial world; the mad-tree of the forest; the trusty Do It Yourself spirit of earthy rural folk; the deep love for the milk of the cow; how their love of tradition benefits them; and how to milk a cow.

It’s that last subject driving this story, as we discover, or at least reminded, that cows must be milked to a regular schedule, and that terrible things happen should the schedule be disrupted.

Terrible things. Involving electric guitars.

But enough on the plot. References to other movies are rife, to the extent I’m left wondering what I’ve missed. I counted old favorite Pacific Rim (2013), the venerable Chicken Run (2000), and the squalid The Human Centipede (2009). Cryptids are a critical component, and stories involving untranscribable dialog, an obscure tradition applicable to the children in this story, to whom adults are some other species, are also referenced throughout this story.

This is all told with a gleeful humor glorying in, well, fart jokes and worse, taken to extremis. It’s all about the earthiness, I suppose.

My Arts Editor and I followed it into Hell, but only out of morbid curiosity. Our mouths gaped and we periodically muttered that the dialog was unintelligible and unaided by the captioning. The cinematography was clean; the imagination unencumbered by constraints such as believability. The psychological profiles richly varied, united only in their pathological roots.

I do not recommend this. Even if you’re over the age of forty.

It’s been a month or so since I last commented on DJT (Trump Media & Technology Group Corp), and a lot has happened since then related to DJT‘s star property, namely Donald J. Trump, President of the United States. Do investors see the future of  DJT, in view of the war initiated with Iran by Trump, his reactions to losing the tariffs case in the Supreme Court, as well as as Trump’s behaviors, in a positive or negative light?

It seems negative. On February 8 DJT‘s price per share closed at $11.45, while last Friday, March 20th, investors priced that same share and market close at $8.58, for a 25% drop in value. See here for a current price. Or, as the Wall Street Journal headline explained,

DJT Stock Falls to All-Time Low

I do not see the DJT price and price trend as a prognostication of Trump’s political future. Investors are focused on economic futures, and politics has varying influence on the future of companies, which is sometimes leads to unpredictable results.

But DJT‘s future is inevitably tied up in Trump, and as his popularity wanes further, DJT‘s chief product and potential spinoff material, Truth Social, will continue to lose value. The value of any social media is partially determined by the trustworthiness of its lead participants, and the trustworthiness of the Mendacity Machine, aka Trump, is virtually zero. Only those who see Trump as a ladder to fame and fortune use Truth Social, I rather suspect.

Another headline, this one from 24/7 Wall St, points to another problem:

DJT Is No Longer a Media Company. It’s a Bitcoin Treasury With a Brand

That problem is that cryptocurrencies are losing value. Bitcoin (BTC) coins are now trading at below $70K/coin, well off its TTM (trailing twelve month) high of $124K/coin. It’s been in this range for a while, so it may recover – but I won’t be betting on it. I am still inclined to agree with Mr. Farr:

Richard Farr, chief market strategist and partner at Pivotus Partners, has issued a stark prediction for Bitcoin (BTC-USD), setting a price target of zero for the cryptocurrency.

“Our BTC price target is 0.0. That’s not just for shock factor. It’s where the math takes us,” the strategist said, noting that Bitcoin (BTC-USD) has failed to function as a dollar hedge and instead operates as “a speculative instrument correlated to the Nasdaq.” …

And DJT‘s foray into fusion power? While its potential is great, the required investment is huge and requires immense expertise. Don’t expect a cheapskate like Donald J. Trump, always distracted by cost, to even try to pull it off.

Finally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t echo the observations of many pundits: President Trump appears to be descending into dementia. Listening to some of his press conferences is to try to interpret gibberish, as the jumps from topic to topic morph into meaningless noises. Perhaps his legion of minions should suggest Trump is the second coming of the Delphic Oracle. But it bodes poorly for DJT.

As always, I’m just an investor with an opinion and a mouth. There is no certified financial advice present in this post, nor should it be taken that way.

Monotypic:

• having only one type.
• of the nature of a monotype.
• Biology. having only one representative, as a genus with a single species. [Dictionary.com]

Noted in this video on Camel Spiders from the General Apathy YouTube channel.

In case my reader has heard a bit about the SAVE Act, and wonders about the opposition, here’s Norm Ornstein on Morning Joe. Ornstein, yes, is a Democrat, and worked in the Obama Administration as an expert in governmental ethics. But he’s also scholar emeritus at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. This position should bring a measure of credibility for folks who don’t trust Democrats. The SAVE Act has to do with … securing elections.

Katty Kay: If Republicans say this bill is simply about voter ID — something many Americans support — why has it sparked so much opposition?

NO: This isn’t about voter ID. It’s about voter suppression. The bill would require every registered voter to reregister in person using documents like a passport or certified birth certificate, which many people don’t have and can be costly to obtain. That amounts to a modern-day poll tax.

JL: Some Republicans argue this is needed to combat voter fraud, even after winning the last election. What’s your response?

NO: The actual level of voter fraud is vanishingly small — about 0.07% of votes cast. So what’s being presented as a popular voter ID effort is really a Trojan horse for something else entirely.  …

John Heilemann: Rev, what does this actually mean in practice? Who bears the brunt of policies like this?

Al Sharpton: It’s a textbook example of how to make it harder for people of color to vote in large numbers — and to use that to maintain political power.

MB: What about people who don’t have easy access to documents — say older Americans or those born decades ago?

NO: Many don’t have passports and may not know where their birth certificates are. Replacing those documents can be complicated and expensive, and a lot of people could end up effectively shut out of voting.

Let’s address a common argument I’m sure is out there: It’s not possible to prove a negative, that is, that there is little to no fraud.

Speaking as a software engineer, which means I have to deal with logic every day, this requires some context, and by this I mean the addendum, in the unlimited case. When you’re dealing with an unlimited scenario, it’s always possible to imagine the unexamined ballots are falsified. But if there’s a limit, then you can process and verify each such ballot, given enough resources such as folks to work on it, in the most naive approach. But clever people work on this problem all the time.

Here in Minnesota, for example, there are lists of valid voter names for each precinct, and when you walk in and give your name, its checkbox is checked, and if it’s already been checked then that’s a clue that someone’s trying to cheat. Names are cross-referenced against lists of dead people so that when someone requests a mail-in ballot, dies before it is completed and sent back, and some relative decides, quite against the law, that the late relative should still get to vote, that illegal vote is caught, and a little questioning of the relatives will usually catch the lawbreaker.

These and similar procedures serve to catch the vast majority people who want to cheat voters.

But President Trump specifically talks of non-citizens voting, shipped in via bus, and students. Let’s address what he won’t: Who are these idiots? By which I mean these hypothetical cheaters.

Why am I calling them idiots? Because the potential penalties for voting when you’re not permitted are non-trivial; they’re on the order of five years in prison. If the illegal voter isn’t a citizen but is working towards it, they’ve put their potential citizenship at risk. Consider this case of a woman in Texas. And whatever for? For one vote. Hardly does a single vote matter; rarely does a bus full of students. The risk/reward ratio is tilted towards the State, not the cheater.

So why is the voter fraud rate not 0%? Well, when you have around 300 million people of voting age in the country, there’s always a few misinformed folks, such as the woman described at the link, above, and there’s always a few idiots who think they’ll never be caught.

But it’s not a horde and the responsible officials, Republican, Democrats, or independents, have good reason to work hard to make it all work.

And that’s why the Save ACT is unnecessary and repressive.

Imran Khalid notes that Iran’s government is becoming more cohesive:

The decapitation of Iran’s Intelligence Ministry is a tactical success that masks a strategic failure. It has simplified the Iranian power structure by removing the voices of caution and institutionalizing the most aggressive factions of the military. It runs counter to efforts to make the world safer or to force Tehran to the negotiating table. Israel’s Ministry of Defense might call the strike a milestone, but Washington and its allies are not witnessing the collapse of a regime; rather, they are effectively shepherding the birth of a more streamlined, more militant and more unpredictable adversary. A post-Khamenei regime run by hard-liners is not a challenge that can be solved by a missile strike. It is a new global reality that the U.S. is unprepared to manage. [MS NOW]

If this guy is right, then we’re looking at a five year war that will effectively alienate a chunk of the world that has no time for Trump’s entitled crony capitalism, whether it actually believes in upright competition or has its own version of crony capitalism.

If we’re disruptive enough we may even face a unified bloc willing to use violence to pacify us.

Neither of our political parties appear smart enough to really be worthy of leading this nation: one thinks the divine is backing it with no evidence of same, while the other thinks everyone else is idiots and they’re the smart ones.

The future is not bright at the moment.

So another chunk falling off the rotting pile that is the Trump Administration is imminent? This just might indicate so:

The Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee formally subpoenaed Attorney General Pam Bondi to testify before lawmakers over her department’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files.

Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., issued the subpoena after five Republicans on the Oversight Committee and all Democrats voted in favor of a motion to call Bondi to testify about the release of troves of documents related to years of investigations into the late sex offender and his co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell. The motion was brought by Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., earlier this month.

A Justice Department spokesperson called the subpoena “completely unnecessary” in a statement to MS NOW. [MS NOW]

And yet, like a steaming pile of dog turd, there’s a subpoena.

Is Representative and Chairman Comer (R-SC) tired of being the buffoon of the House? Or is he quite earnest about removing pedophiles from prominence, even if it involves his Party leader and President, and a consequent loss of prestige?

Or maybe he was offended by AG Bondi at her infamous hearing, or even President Trump and his war. Maybe he regards a political association with either of them to be repellent to his constituents.

This may prove quite interesting.

The Senate Goes National?

Pundits are noting that Senate candidates are reaching across State borders, probably more than usual, but still pursuing the typical pillar of candidate-hood – critical support. In Palm Beach, FL, Texas Senate candidate Ken Paxton (R) is running campaign ads…

A super PAC backing Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) for Senate is airing television ads in Palm Beach, Fla., where President Trump is spending the weekend at his Mar-a-Lago resort, as his endorsement in a competitive primary runoff hangs in the balance. [The Hill]

The candidate not receiving Trump’s endorsement should drop out, says Trump. Who will that be? No name, yet. Given Trump’s desperation to appear right – about anything at all these days – it’ll be whoever’s ahead in the polls on Texas’ Primary day. He’s apparently missed one deadline., which means the runoff cannot be disregarded and both Cornyn and Paxton’s names will be on the ballot. While Paxton doesn’t seem the type to discourage easily, Trump’s failure to pick anyone by an important deadline has to be a blow.

Back on point, Graham Platner (D-ME), according to Steve Benen …

… while Graham Platner is a Democratic Senate candidate in Maine, he wrote an op-ed for The Houston Chronicle [paywall] last week, taking aim at Republican Sen. Ted Cruz over his position on the war in Iran.

It’s a reflection of the centralization of power in D.C., especially in the super PACs and in a President who has attracted the attention of a usually politically apathetic group, now known as MAGA, who did not understand politics and was attracted to the comforting rhetoric of Donald Trump. Being politically naive and not aware of much more than his claims to wealth and his contributions to The Apprentice, while loathing Congress’ deliberate pace, the rumors of corruption, and its combative nature, they were easily influenced by deep pockets, which are now being tapped by certain Senate candidates.

The calculus that said rich politicians would be immune to bribery has proven, once again, to be false; billionaires are often the essence of avarice. That’s how they became billionaires in most cases. The American electorate needs to wise-up. Fast.

Polls, polls, everywhere!

The polls, for what they’re worth, are starting their annual migration to Mexico to pop out from behind every squeaky door in the joint. As I mentioned earlier, most of my polling information is sourced from 270 To Win, but I don’t plan to lean on polls heavily, and that’ll be reflected in my brevity and omissions in this regard: Good pollsters are referenced via 270 To Win, unless I run across the poll in some other way; questionable, unknown, and bad pollsters will be ignored. Most pollsters I’m seeing so far are unfamiliar.

Anew, Renew, Ptu! .. Ptui, I mean

Getting on with this tale for no pay….

• Mississippi held its primary last Tuesday and incumbent Senator Hyde-Smith (R) won her primary with an intriguing, if crushing, 80.6% of the vote. I have to wonder if there is some dissatisfaction with the Senator if 19+ points went in search of someone else. On the Democratic side, Scott Colom (D) won his primary with 73.3% of the primary vote. He is currently a district attorney for the State of Mississippi, and so knows something about government.

  Interestingly enough, the total votes in the Democratic primary exceeded that of the Senator, but not that of the Republican primary; however, Republicans are currently more fractious than Democrats, although progressives, authentic or faux, do seem to be working to falsify that observation.

  That said, I don’t think the seat of the Senator is up for grabs, but I do think this race could be a lot closer than Republican strategists want to believe. Colom’s big problem? Ty Pinkins (I), already qualified for the general election for this Senate seat because he’s not claiming Party membership (and therefore resources), may attract votes that would otherwise go to Colom.
• Illinois is holding its primaries today. WaPo reports the cryptocurrency industry is backing Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi in the Democratic primary, while Gov Pritzker (D) is backing his Lt Gov, Juliana Stratton (D). Both the crypto industry and Gov Pritzker, a billionaire, represent a lot of money, so Rep Robin Kelly is trying to use that concern as a pivot for her campaign. For the record, retiring Senator Durbin (D-IL) is a cryptocurrency opponent.
• For any of several reasons, Texas Senator Cornyn (R) is flipping on an important position:
  

  Cornyn, who previously opposed Democratic efforts to end the filibuster, flipped on the issue on Wednesday, writing in an op-ed in the New York Post, “My fellow conservatives and I have proudly used the 60-vote threshold to protect the country from all sorts of bad ideas and dangerous policies. But when the reality on the ground changes, leaders must take stock and adapt.”

  “For many years, I believed that if the US Senate scrapped the filibuster, Texas and our nation would stand to lose more than we would gain,” Cornyn wrote. “After careful consideration, I support whatever changes to Senate rules that may prove necessary for us to get the SAVE America Act and homeland security funding past the Democrats’ obstruction, through the Senate, and on the president’s desk for his signature.”  [Roll Call]

  For the record, Democrats have been a speed bump by demanding reformation of ICE, with specifics, and to the SAVE America Act as they claim it would disenfranchise citizens, employing the filibuster to bust Republican chops. While the firing of Secretary Noem may be interpreted as a gesture to the Democrats, it was hardly adequate. I’m a Minnesotan in a suburb of the Twin Cities, and it is very clear from ICE behavior and investigative reporting that ICE was blundering about, breaking laws, arrogantly ignoring court orders, and, if it’s to serve Americans rather than paranoid xenophobes, discussion, debate, and reformation is a necessity.

  Off rant, it appears the Senator is feeling the pressure of AG Paxton, he of a thousand scandals and a mention earlier in this post, and Cornyn, desirous of retaining power and position, will reverse positions in search of reelection. As it happens, Public Policy Polling gives Paxton the lead over Cornyn, 45-42; Texas Public Opinion Research makes the lead 49-41.
• Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico (D) of Texas has his own set of problems, according to independent thinker Andrew Sullivan (paywall):
  

  Like many fundamentalists, Talarico also bungles the science.

  In Talarico’s case, it’s the science, what little there is, related to the transgender issue. Apparently, Talarico is a few steps behind. My thoughts on transgender are here.

• As Senator Mullin (R) of Oklahoma will be required to leave his current gig to accept, if confirmed by the Senate, the position Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Rep Kevin Hern (R-OK) is suddenly entering the Oklahoma Senate race, and with President Trump’s endorsement. The primary is June 16th, so Rep Hern has time to campaign and almost certainly win the primary. I can’t help but wonder if Republicans are considering abolishing DHS once Mullin is out of the Senate? Piecemealing DHS was noised about earlier this year. And will Trump’s endorsement be viewed as a blessing or a curse for Hern come Election Day?

And that’s all for today, time to fold up that 500 foot radio tower and slip it into my back pocket … oooops, that’s a bad rip. My tailor will be unhappy about that, I fear.

With the sudden resignation of Tulsi Gabbard aide Joe Kent, we have another piece falling off the Administration engine.

In case the above disappears:

After much reflection, I have decided to resign from my position as Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, effective today.

I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.

It has been an honor serving under @POTUS and @DNIGabbard  and leading the professionals at NCTC.

May God bless America.

My bold, and the judgment expressed in that bold is the most important part of this resignation letter, really. Mr. Kent was a low-profile member of the Administration, and his resignation may not resonate with most of the American public, the ultimate decision makers of the country. However, the accusation I highlighted should enlighten more of the American public to the essential mendacity of the current Administration, and drive away more lukewarm supporters.

I was contemplating when President Trump is likely to resign, and it occurred to me that if the House and Senate are overwhelmed by a blue wave this November, President Trump may be visited by Congressional GOP leaders sometime in late November to early January ’27, who’ll tell him it’s time to leave office, before the next Congress convenes and opens impeachment proceedings against Trump for incompetence and waging an illegal war.

Trump will yell, but if the GOP‘s fourth-rater ensemble is defeated as I suspect it’ll be defeated, he’ll be facing a very hostile Congress and a GOP which had been forced to put their trust in Trump and, for their troubles, been so utterly defeated that only the safest of seats will remain in their hands. Amid the screaming of cheating and calls for martial law and all the garbage that comes from chronic losers will be folks who’ll put country over party.

Yes, this is all overly-optimistic, and assumes the Democrats will recognize their own deficiencies and do something about them. So far, I understand DNC chair Ken Martin has refused to do anything responsible in the area of postmortems, but he still has time to retract those decisions, open the debates, and maybe expel some incompetent zealots practiced in the art of performative morality. If not, I can still hope new parties, or at least factions, centered around folks like Platner and Gallego, will appear and come to the fore, replacing the tired old Parties that have forgotten how liberal democracies operate.

The Bad Guy is dead, yet the President is outraged that his lack of knowledge and support for Europeans and NATO is resulting in his own teeth being kicked in:

President Donald Trump has berated and threatened America’s NATO allies. Now he wants these same countries to help unblock the Strait of Hormuz — and their response has not exactly been enthusiastic.

“This is not our war, we have not started it,” German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius told reporters Monday.

That appeared to sum up the mood among U.S. allies, with leaders from Berlin to London expressing reservations about Trump’s demands and indicating they had no immediate plans to provide military support to reopen the crucial waterway.

Iran effectively closed the trade route in response to the American-Israeli assault launched last month. This sent global oil prices surging and threatened an international economic shock, something economists had warned about before the war began. [NBC News]

Considering how poorly Trump treated the Germans, the Danes, the Brits, the Ukrainians, he shouldn’t be surprised that he’s getting no support in what amounts to his hour of need. But there’s more to this than a spat that pleases President Putin.

Think about it: Our abused allies are suffering roughly the same material pain as are the Americans due to the Straits of Hormuz being closed, yet their assistance is not being eagerly thrust upon us. Why? What we’re seeing is what separates professional politicians and leaders from arrogant amateurs like Trump and his minions: The ability to think more than a quarter of a year ahead.

Our allies are deadly tired of the foolishness and bullying of President Trump, and, looking ahead, they want their big North American ally, the Arsenal of Democracy, to return to the wisdom that has made Western Civilization the leading form of government throughout the world. The refusal of our allies to come running is a message to 300 million Americans, and the message is simple: Get rid of your amateur-hour piece of kitsch. Get rid of the whole crew. It’s time to find some adults who are willing to do the work to find our way out of this mess.

Khamanei is dead? Great. He was a theocratic bad guy. But the reverberations of his assassination, all the accompanying American government lies, waste of munitions, deaths of innocents, and the satisfaction of the romantic delusions of President Trump’s hunt for military glory – so long as he’s not in the line of fire – will ring ill for America long after Trump and Hegseth and Rubio and that entire crew of idiots is gone. The professionals had figured out that muscling our way in would not result in a peaceful, friendly, and prosperous Iran. That’s where wisdom begins, in realizing that being a brute in Iran will not work.

Cleanup begins by removing the old cleanup crew that can barely wipe its own nose.

Art as an institution in American culture and economics seems to be in an uncomfortable position. If it’s pop music then, economically, the artists often do well, but there’s always questions, spoken or not, concerning its seriousness, while its revenue numbers often mark it as successful – if that’s an appropriate metric.

Then there’s more traditional, expensive, and difficult to measure arts and organizations for classical music, ballet, opera, and their kin – venerable, yet with an economic history of patronization and support by members of the elite classes. Whether an organization or art form from this class is “successful” becomes even more problematic.

And whether such is an essential part of, say, American culture becomes a difficult question, because whether we should or should not publicly fund such organizations in a supposed meritocracy / capitalist society when its contribution is not easily convertible to a currency … I’m almost speechless at the complexities.

Now, add in the neediness of a billionaire whose essential crassness makes him ineligible for entrance into high class society!

Ric Grenell, a diplomat and favorite of President Trump, was made Executive Director for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts back in January of 2025. A very prestigious organization, the Kennedy Center suffered  an unprecedented cancellation rate of performing artists as its association with Mr Grenell and, more importantly, President Trump has reduced its prestige and importance on the American Arts scene; indeed, it has become so close to deserted that President Trump, undoubtedly in order to conceal his humiliation of being rejected, yet again, by the elite classes he’s so desperate to join, ordered it closed for renovation.

So is this important?

Certainly, the recent and sudden firing of Grenell^[1] marks another chunk of the edifice called the Administration falling off and into the encroaching Sea, a body of chaos engendered by the arrogant amateurism generated and embraced by the very Administration from which it was born and now driving it into madness and abject failure. If I may wax, errrr, poetic.

But Trump’s rejection by the nebulous upper classes marks another failure on his part. Artists, for all their perilous existence in garrets, are both the originators and the mediums through which morality, both its rules and the questions that surround and change, or confirm, that morality, are conveyed to the citizenry; often, artists are the recipients of largesse from the upper classes for their work as their work justifies such recompense.

The rejection of the Trump-Kennedy Center by the artist class marks the refusal of artists to be associated with Trump, whose worship of wealth is considered the mark of an inferior morality, even though he may have been so infused in a prosperity church. Grenell claimed big productions were coming, but in the end the Center is closed, instead, and Grenell … reassigned to a position that sounds as fantastical as Noem’s. Will Grenell stick around and continue to be humiliated by President Trump?

¹ Officially, Mr Grenell now holds the position of  Special Presidential Envoy for Special Missions, which has undoubtedly led to a great deal of humor at his expense.

Long-time readers are aware of my fascination, healthy or not, with Professor Turchin & his colleagues’ work in structural demographic theory (SDT). One of the themes of their books on the subject is the struggle of those who are members of elite overproduction, which is a fancy way of saying that the population of the elite classes of a society tends to balloon in relation to the non-elite members, until those who must perform the work are insufficient to keeping the elite in the luxury to which they feel entitled. The struggle encapsulates the conundrum faced by children of the elite who discover they are to be ejected into the lower classes: perhaps they are not inheriting a title of nobility from their parents, or the fortune necessary to be recognized as a member of the elite classes; or whatever defines a member of the elite class in the contextual society.

A not atypical response to an impending downgrade in position is violence. Internecine wars, assassinations, that sort of thing. See Turchin & Nefedov’s SECULAR CYCLES for an authoritative overview. The point is that, for many humans, their position in the social order is so important that accepting a societal demotion, to maybe have to work for a living, is simply not acceptable.

So what brought this on? We’ve been watching The Sounds series recently, and what rocked my world was a scene in Episode 6 in which Tom, an alcoholic who has cheated on his wife and killed someone, is negotiating with his wife in the time-honored way of alcoholics in Western society, to not be booted out of the marriage. It was most painful, and I’m sure social workers and psychologists were shivering in recognition at his behavior, and his wife, a strong-will person herself, confronting the problem of knowing when to trust this person to which she’s been married for quite a while … and when not to.

But what really got my attention was not Tom’s, the alcoholic, arguments concerning trust, but when Tom, who comes from an elite family but, unexpectedly, will not be inheriting the family business, abruptly shouts, I’m not going to be poor! I shan’t reveal more in order to avoid the traditional spoilers accusation, but it made me shiver to realize that, for him, retaining his social position, as signified by wealth, was more important than the trust of his wife. That extra motivation made me wonder if the storytellers are familiar with SDT, because that frantic obsession and focus on wealth reminds me of some members of today’s society.

And it’s not a bad little series, if you’re looking for something to watch.

I receive email from moveon.org and other such organizations requesting signatures on demanding this and demanding that. I used to sign, but no more, which is good as demanding just seems like a poor word choice, although I have no suggested alternative. Getting all het up in a frenzy over petitions doesn’t seem to have much effect on our amateur Administration of incompetence, as it seems motivated by solely by money, and backed by clerics of Senator Goldwater’s horrified description.

What will? This guy, for example:

[John Bartman, a corn and soybean farmer,] criticized the president for gutting the U.S. Agency for International Development, which historically had purchased billions in food aid from American farmers.

“Right now, there’s 33 million people in Sudan who are suffering severe hunger,” he said. “And if those people at USAID were able to take our grain that we have, that billion bushels of wheat that’s just sitting there in our ending stocks right now, and give that flour to overseas, that would make a huge difference. It would give us a leg up and [help us] be able to make some money as a farmer, and we’d be able to have soft power again.”

Bartman added: “We would be the good guys in the world again — and maybe wouldn’t be in Iran right now.” [MS NOW]

Right there, from a farmer, we see opposition to the destruction of USAID by the arguably illicit DOGE, opposition to Trump’s War, advocacy for soft power, which is an approach to international relations involving foreign aid and persuasion, often loathed by the amateur set on the far right, and empathy for people in a country that our crass, obdurately amateur President calls a shithole country, quite in opposition to the best features of Christianity.

This interview is easily accessible by one of the backbones of the President’s support, the rural communities, and you can bet it’s being passed around. It’ll make people think.

Whether or not this will make farmers vote Democratic is an open question, given the blunders of the left; I could see a new political party appealing for their votes. But I think a substantial portion of the rural communities will realize, if they have not already, that the President, and all his loyal minions, have lost contact with the core concerns of the rural communities, much like the Democrats. Did they ever? Or was the rural community deemed a collection of suckers by the far-right extremists? I don’t know.

Where will this go? Hard to say. Those farmers who’ve found prestige in their Republican membership will stick to it, blinded by that prestige, even as their economic well-being begins to fray, and the central motivation of avarice reveals itself through corruption. Gains in prestige both satisfy and generate hunger for greater increases – and, –ahem– surely what worked before will work again.

But some will figure it out and abandon the Republicans.

Doc, you parked the plane in the factory! Again!

The Diamond Wizard (1954; Brit., The Diamond) is a run of the mill crime drama, featuring the theft of new American coinage. Now in Britain, it is laundered through the device of financing the creation of synthetic diamonds using a new process devised by Dr. Miller; the plan is to sell the diamonds as natural for a whole lot more.

Dr. Miller is an innocent inventor, and thus he’s kidnapped and forced to work for the thieves. Miller’s daughter, Marline, happens to work for the police, so when she becomes alarmed, she discovers that her father is suspected of being a criminal himself. Between American Treasury agents who find her attractive and thieves who consider her ineffectual, she becomes a victim herself, held in the abandoned factory where the diamonds are being manufactured.

By large, dangerous machinery.

But such machinery … well, let’s not give the game away. The characters try hard to reach reality, but remain trapped in their 2-D world, and the more nuanced consequences of being a criminal are largely unexplored. There are clever bits, but here I am, a month out on writing a review, and not remembering the plot very well at all. I am thus led to conclude this was unmemorable.

But still a bit of fun.

As an addendum, Wikipedia tells me this movie was filmed in 3-D. This was a surprise to me, but if you have the facilities, it might be worth tracking down a 3-D print of the film.