Category Archives: Uncategorized

Dysbiosis:

Dysbiosis means that you have an imbalance in the different types of microscopic organisms living in your body. If there are too many of some types and not enough of others, they don’t work with you as they should, and they might work against you. In particular, dysbiosis in your gut may have broad effects on your health. [Cleveland Clinic]

Noted in “‘Hidden’ group of gut bacteria may be essential to good health,” Chris Simms, NewScientist (14 February 2026; paywall):

In another part of the study, [Alexandre] Almeida [at the University of Cambridge] and his colleagues investigated which bacterial species were most associated with a healthy mix of gut microbes or an unbalanced one, known as dysbiosis.

I’m not entirely comfortable with that definition. What defines unbalanced?

I have a confession: I did not watch SOTU 2026. I missed Rep Green (D-TX) being expelled, Rep Omar (D-MN) yelling at the Mendacity Machine (MM), I missed Justice Gorsuch missing out on being reprimanded by MM for having the daring of ruling against MM’s conception of his rank’s rank privilege. Justices Roberts and Barrett had to take that beating alone.

Reportedly, claims of the 2020 Elections being stolen were rampant, although wisely MM omitted mention of the Epstein Files, even as a source of exoneration. Thus, the many celebrities tangled up in that mess were omitted as well.

As I told a work colleague, I turned on SOTU, saw MM drinking in the adoration, faux or not, of his party, gratification pouring off his face, and decided there was nothing to learn from this presentation. Then again, I’ve not watched SOTU in years, the repeated applause by the President’s Party, Republican or Democrat, makes what should be a serious event into a game show.

The liberal and lefty opinion writers called it a pack of lies, Republican and allied opinion writers cited it as the home run Trump needed, and one poor bar that had promised free drinks until the first insult from Trump reportedly served more free booze than they had anticipated.

The national decay continues.

One of his more fruitful efforts.

When you’re applauding a tidal wave of lies, you win a nomination for an award!

In case it disappears:

The President delivered a home run State of the Union tonight …

Consummate politician, eh?

For new readers, Earl Landgrebe uttered those immortal words concerning President Nixon…

Don’t confuse me with the facts. I’ve got a closed mind. I will not vote for impeachment. I’m going to stick with my president even if he and I have to be taken out of this building and shot.

The Earl Landgrebe nominations are modeled after Andrew Sullivan’s various nominations on The Daily Dish, and they are celebrating lunatic loyalty, to the point of them being un-American, to President Trump and his kindred.

It’s been nearly three years since my last entry on this topic, but Secretary of Defense Hegseth is making alarming news:

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth summoned Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei for a meeting at the Pentagon on Tuesday as the Defense Department attempts to pressure the artificial intelligence company to loosen its restrictions around the use of its technology to spy on Americans and to enable weapons to fire without human involvement. The Defense Department is currently heavily reliant on the AI tool, Claude, and Anthropic’s executives have thus far resisted the pressure campaign. Needless to say, Anthropic acquiescing to Hegseth on this matter would open up the likelihood of yet more powerful AI tools being deployed against people abroad and living within U.S. borders. [Ja’han Jones, MS NOW]

Even if the possibility of faux-AI^[1] systems turning on their keepers is mostly delusional, this is still disturbing as it sounds more like the slaughter of the civilians and safeguarding of power rather than, say, the use of AI to negotiate peaceful relations.

The sad part? The nature of warfare and its weapons does not lead to stable scenarios; escalation is the unfortunate norm, as any historian will attest. And the consequential increase in casualties, both military and civilian. Protests against same, so exciting for the protesters, may lead to results such as invaders winning their objectives, i.e., taking over your peaceful little community.

But these “killer robots” make me very uncomfortable.

Almost as much as the next section at the link above:

Donald Trump’s sons have invested in an Israeli-backed drone company that’s slated to do business with the Trump administration and has boasted about its ability to kill people at low cost.

My bold.

¹ An “AI” system lacking self-agency is not intelligent, it’s just a machine-learning (ML) system, and, as many pundits far better versed in the relevant technologies than I will tell the reader, there’s no evidence of such a system existing, yet. Such systems don’t think, they just followed rules deduced from data fed them by people.

That last sentence is far more important than I can emphasize.

The State of the Union address, or SOTU, for 2026 may be quite predictable, and yet most at variance in the history SOTU presentations. I expect President Trump, who is facing multiple challenges, mostly of his own making, to treat this as a campaign rally rather than a sober status report, because the latter would put him in a very poor light. Wondering about that?

• Tariffs. His loss in Learning Resources was a devastating riposte to his claims of having total freedom to impose tariffs. Don’t take his claims since then that his powers are greater than ever to actually be honest; my read is that he’s desperately trying to patch the leaky dinghy of State, and … he doesn’t know how to patch a dinghy. He’ll address the issue tonight, and it’ll be a repeat of his written claims. SCOTUS blew a hole in his claims and he has no real way to rebut.
• House of Representatives. His slim majority has been shrinking into near-oblivion, and now there’s rumors that Rep Gonzalez (R-TX) may be resigning soon. His policies have led to the GOP House advantage being less than the Senate’s, and if Gonzalez departs then it’ll be temporarily at nothing, though there are upcoming special elections which might help put Speaker Johnson back in the black, so to speak.
• 2020 Election. Will he once again repeat his claims that he won the 2020 Presidential election, “in a landslide!” Sure. It’s part, even the principal glue, binding MAGA to him; its solvent, which he’s desperately fighting, is the Epstein Files. It also may have a function on his religious side, the repetition that prosperity theology uses to get what they want. They think.
• Epstein Files. Bank on hearing how the release of the Epstein Files exonerated him. He’s hoping the great majority of MAGA isn’t going to go through the Epstein Files. He’s not wrong, but contending with those MAGA leaders who will and have gone through them is a major challenge. I’m guessing he’ll spend a good five minutes claiming exoneration.

Don’t tune in to hear how things are going, although when they cast a flattering light on the President, he’ll mention them. Iran may be mentioned, the Gordie Howe bridge, etc.

It’ll all about the President. Not the country.

I haven’t done one of these in a while, but this moon of Saturn is just so cool looking:

Hyperion, moon of Saturn.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

The density of craters is amazing.

When last I checked in on my favorite influencer of the right wing in this thread, Erick Erickson was lamenting the breakdown of American society. Today, he’s sighing over President Trump:

What makes [President Trump’s tariff decisions] particularly tragic is that the damage may outlast the tariffs themselves. Even if a future administration moves quickly to dismantle the policy, the economic disruption — broken supply chains, abandoned trade relationships, shuttered small businesses — will not simply reverse overnight. Trading partners who have spent years diversifying away from American markets will not rush back. Manufacturers who relocated or restructured to survive the tariff regime will not immediately undo those decisions. The economic scar tissue tends to linger long after the wound is closed.

There is also the matter of credibility. The United States built the post-war global trading order largely on the premise that American economic leadership was stable and predictable. Allies and adversaries alike now have fresh evidence that a single administration can upend decades of policy on a whim, and that the courts may not intervene swiftly enough to limit the damage. That credibility, once spent, is extraordinarily difficult to rebuild. Future administrations — Republican or Democrat — will pay that price at the negotiating table for years to come, and American businesses and workers will ultimately bear the cost.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Quite right. Reader, prepare yourself for diminishment. The ejection of the Republican pack of grifters, zealots, and folks marinated in incoherent ideologies doesn’t mean we’ll return to the top of the world; they are inflicting damage that, in many cases, cannot be erased.

The world will be different on the other side of the bridge.

Just to put the nail in this bit of what I’ll call propaganda by announcing he’s sending USNS Mercy to Greenland:

As of late January, the 1,000-bed hospital ship was firmly in drydock at Alabama Shipyard in Mobile, where it has been undergoing scheduled maintenance since July 2025.

The USNS Mercy, commissioned in 1986, departed San Diego last July for a one-year scheduled maintenance period at Alabama Shipyard under an $18.7 million firm-fixed-price contract for a 153-calendar day mid-term availability, including drydocking. The contract, awarded in June 2025, marked the Mercy’s first visit to Mobile. [gCaptain]

What was the purpose of Trump’s ridiculous propaganda, besides distracting from the Epstein Files? I suppose it’s an attempt to drive a wedge between the Greenlanders and the Danes by suggesting inadequate health care is provided by the latter. Since that health care is socialized, this propaganda also serves the purpose of hitting at the great evil bugaboo of the right, socialized health care.

It’s easier to spread evil rumors than to have a civilized conversation. And, yes, there are times I think that applies to both sides.

Trump’s entire announcement looks like foolishness and, to use a word I saw recently from Steve Benen, beclowns the President. He should resign.

The New York Times notes that Cuba is teetering on the edge of collapse, and notes the “this is not a blockade” of Cuba is having an effect.

What I find fascinating is that the Russia / Ukraine pair is not mentioned.

As most folks who were around for at least part of the Cold War remember, Cuba was a client state of the USSR. Fidel Castro depended on the Soviet Union for fuel and other commodities; a blockade of Cuba was promulgated on discovery of Soviet nuclear missiles being shipped to Cuba. The blockade was canceled following Soviet agreement to withdraw the missiles, but it proved Cuba’s claims to self-sufficiency were dubious.

Now, I do not doubt that Russia, USSR’s predecessor and successor nation, continued as Cuba’s patron, if far more quiet about it, as Cuba constitutes an unsinkable aircraft carrier not far from the coast of mainland USA. When President Obama began squeezing Russia’s oil exports, it must have impacted Cuba, and I have to wonder if Obama’s peaceful gestures towards Cuba were attempts to lure it away from a patron exhibiting distress.

And then came Putin’s War, President Putin’s deeply mistaken war against Ukraine. Any war that lasts more than a few weeks becomes a drain on all primary parties involved; this war, in its military phase, has lasted four years, and Ukraine’s military has proven deft in its defense, including … the harassment and possible sinking of oil tankers.

Of even more importance is the depression of Russian influence world-wide. While neighbors in close proximity to Russia are undoubtedly nervous concerning Russia aggression, countries that can only be reached by nuclear missiles feel freer to harass, and even redirect, any commerce approaching Cuba. They know that patron Russia is distracted, has crap for a military due to Ukraine’s heroic defense, and the existence of the current Cuban government may be extinguished without too much tangible backlash from patron Russia.

Because even patron Russia may be in existential danger. Quite possibly, only the hold President Putin has on President Trump, whatever that may be, is keeping the current Russian government from drowning.

Look! Look! Look at my hand!

President Donald Trump said Saturday that he is sending a hospital boat to Greenland, the Danish territory he has sought to acquire, even as the Arctic island says it doesn’t want it.

“Working with the fantastic Governor of Louisiana, Jeff Landry, we are going to send a great hospital boat to Greenland to take care of the many people who are sick, and not being taken care of there. It’s on the way!!!” the president posted on social media alongside an illustration of the naval hospital ship the USNS Mercy. [CNN/Politics]

Everyone in both Denmark and the USA, with the exception of President Trump and, maybe, Governor Landry (R-LA), are rubbing their chins in puzzlement, as Greenland has not reported being a plague island. CNN inquiries yielded finger pointing, with the last link in the chain, the U.S. Navy, refusing to answer.

A first guess might come from this part of the report:

Trump’s post came after Denmark’s Joint Arctic Command said in a statement Saturday it had evacuated a crew member needing urgent medical treatment from a US submarine in Greenlandic waters. The crew member was transferred to the Greenlandic health authorities and a hospital in Nuuk.

If he misread it, maybe.

I’m more inclined to go with the Magician’s Maneuver explanation, aka distracting the audience. From what?

The Epstein Files, of course. Not his tariff loss at SCOTUS, though, as he’s using that an opportunity to paint rhetorical targets on Justices Roberts, Barrett, and Gorsuch, although it’s a risky indulgence. But he doesn’t want anyone thinking about the Epstein Files.

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.