Is anyone else getting a strong whiff of Gen. Jack D. Ripper off Benjamin Netanyahu?
Meanwhile, we have a president who is less concerned for the American people than he is for his image in the history books that he doesn’t read.
It seems the Human Reliability Tests have failed us yet again.
Wildfire smoke and a record temp yesterday — 101°, 10 degrees above normal.
Nothing like what’s happening down in Aridzona, of course. Tucson hit 111°, and that wasn’t even a record. Neither was the high of 114° in Phoenix.
Do not expect to see me pitching my little tent at McDowell Mountain Regional Park anytime soon. Smoked Irish ham is not on the menu.
The air quality hereabouts being remarkable for its lack of same, I decided to skip the Monday Geezer Ride. I thought briefly about a short trail run, but when Herself returned from a morning appointment she advised against it, which is significant, her exercise mantra being “We can do anything for 30 minutes.”
After I drove to the bakery for a loaf of bread and a breakfast scone I agreed with her. Looking west I could barely see the river, and the Sandia foothills were shrouded as in the photo up top.
So we stayed indoors, following the news and gnawing on our livers.
Speaking of the news, here’s a thought: I’m sick of seeing cops decked out like comic-book vigilantes. I appreciate that theirs is a dangerous occupation, but it’s the one they signed up for. And the rest of us — the civilians who pay their salaries — don’t get to go about our business kitted out like X-Men as security cameras, drones, and our own pocket informers document our every move.
I want to see badges, nameplates, and faces. When even the cops can’t tell who the cops are, it’s time for a little transparency. Save the costumes for Halloween.
Another day, another steaming heap of some punk-ass shit.
Dr. Carla D. Hayden — the first woman and first African-American to head the Library of Congress — got the ol’ heave-ho yesterday in a curt, two-sentence email from Trent Morse, deputy director of White House personnel (see above).
New Mexico Sen. Martin Heinrich, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Subcommittee on the Legislative Branch, hit the high points of the doctor’s curriculum vitae for us and had a few thoughts of his own on her unceremonious dismissal:
“President Trump fired our nation’s Librarian, Dr. Carla Hayden, by email at 6:56pm tonight, taking his assault on America’s libraries to a new level.
“Over the course of her tenure, Dr. Hayden brought the Library of Congress to the people, with initiatives that reached into rural communities and made the Library accessible to all Americans, in person and online.
“While President Trump wants to ban books and tell Americans what to read – or not to read at all, Dr. Hayden has devoted her career to making reading and the pursuit of knowledge available to everyone.
“Be like Dr. Hayden.”
I can’t wait for the day when we get to give the shove to these chickenshit vandals. Two sentences? Try two words: “Fuck off.”
In the meantime, I suppose we can look forward to seeing Enrique Tarrio sworn in as Dr. Hayden’s replacement. The recently pardoned seditionist needs a job of work, and who knows? He may have checked out a few “Punisher” comic books from the prison library when he wasn’t busy finking for the John Laws.
• Update: Here’s more on the story from The Associated Press.
Hoo-lawd. Anybody’s portfolio turn into a postcard yet?
In case you’ve missed Paul Krugman, he’s speculating over at Substack that Elon’s Hitler Youth may have cobbled together the tariff scheme using ChatGPT and/or other A.I. models.
In my post immediately following the Trump announcement I speculated that Elon Musk’s Dunning-Kruger kids might be responsible for those tariff numbers. That now looks like a distinct possibility.
Who makes policy this way? The key point is that Trump isn’t really trying to accomplish economic goals. This should all be seen as a dominance display, intended to shock and awe people and make them grovel, rather than policy in the normal sense.
Again, I’m not being snobbish here. When the fate of the world economy is on the line, the malignant stupidity of the policy process is arguably as important as the policies themselves. How can anyone, whether they’re businesspeople or foreign governments, trust anything coming out of an administration that behaves like this?
Good time to be heavily invested in the knee- and elbow-pad markets.
It being St. Me Day, and with a nod to The New York Times for its story on how the DOGEbags have been taking a shillelagh to the National Nuclear Security Administration — which is said to have lost “a huge cadre of scientists, engineers, safety experts, project officers, accountants and lawyers — all in the midst of its most ambitious endeavors in a generation” — we present The Bothy Band performing, “Old Hag You Have Killed Me.”
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