Friday, May 15, 2026

Another Reason To Vote The Republicans Out

Congress can do that starting in ‘27. 

I really want to see Trump in a veto fight on that one.
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The DOJ Works For Trump, And Trump Alone

Sounds like a job for Congress, actually. Isn’t that what the $1 billion is for?
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Nothin’ But Good Times Ahead!

Our 5th warning:

The bond market crisis is intensifying.

The US 10Y Note Yield is now officially above 4.55% for the first time since May 2025.

After weeks of euphoria, the market is beginning to react today.

As we have been stating for the last few weeks, the current situation in the bond market is unsustainable.

We are now above levels seen when President Trump implemented a "90-day tariff pause" in April 2025 due to a collapsing bond market.

Furthermore, the market now sees a 60%+ chance that the Fed's next move is an interest rate HIKE, with rate cuts entirely priced-out.

We expect to see 7%+ mortgages next, all as auto loan delinquencies have reached 32-year highs.

Inflation is back and higher rates are coming.
And then comes the rationing: "Another automaker warning on motor oil availability?

And our President’s reality is a bubble in his own mind: In the same "gaggle:" What does "fake news” even mean anymore? 😑 Same energy. This is what happens when you play “Follow the Leader” for too damned long.
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I’m Sure This Means….

... we don’t understand what the Sinister Six are doing.

But I’m pretty sure we do….
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Great Leaders Have Great Ballrooms 🪩

That’s how you know they’re great leaders.
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🥗🥦🥒

Soon we’ll all be vegan. Out of necessity. And if we can afford the vegetables.
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We Have Met The Enemy, And He Is Us

"We want the same thing. Iran closed it, but we want it open, so we closed their closure. Now we want it open. Them open. Something.”

Who is “we” in that statement?
The only reason he’s there is to pleasure himself. "Am I special? Am I really special? Am I his BFF? Tell him 🩷🫶” So this is the Chinese version of tacky? Laser focused on what matters. If that caused Stephen Miller to stroke out, it would almost be worth it. Xi:  You’re failing, we’re rising. So watch your ass.”

Trump: “Do you like me? Do you really like me? 🫶”

The Thucydides trap is a bogus analogy and weak concept, but that doesn’t mean Xi is wrong. The cause of the shifting positions between China and America is wholly due to America. The yahoos backing Trump never understood the post war world America created. I’ve been watching “The Man in the High Castle,” and it’s a rather telling reversal of history if the Axis powers had won. They were after establishing a police state that we completely undid in Eastern Europe after the war. In the fiction, that’s all there is in the world, divided roughly between Germany and Japan. It was our post war efforts (some of them humanitarian; some of them stupidly belligerent and imperialistic) that secured a victory for the world. More than less, and I don’t discount the less. China learned from our example, and now we are ceding the stage to them. Not because we are “old,” but because ignorant idealogues have finally gained the upper hand. Two strains of Americanism at work there: racist xenophobia; and the isolationism that kept us out of WWII until Pearl Harbor. I suspect the conceit of the fiction is that we stayed out of that war just a little too long, which in reality we almost did. 

And now we are withdrawing from the world for much the same reasons. Everything old is new again. And that’s where our problems begin. Again. And again.
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Thursday, May 14, 2026

Goddamned Boomers

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Never Miss An Opportunity

A good response. Sell that hard. It doesn’t quite fit on a bumper sticker, but the sentiment sells. Which brings us to this: The Parliamentarian ruled that major portions of the  bill pending in the Senate violated reconciliation rules. Border Patrol funding is dead, but two other sections of the bill fell for violations of the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, and/or the Flores Settlement. Significantly, the Parliamentarian pointed to the OBBBA and “she pointed directly to how the Trump administration has already applied OBBBA spending as evidence of what this new money would actually do.” The Parliamentarian meant that money had been used in violation of the TVPRA and/or the Flores Settlement. It’s a point beyond the usual scope of the Parliamentarian, and one that indicates concerns that others could use effectively:
It is a notable move for a parliamentarian whose office is careful to note that its advice “is not a judgement on the relative merits of a particular policy.” MacDonough’s ruling is procedural, not political — but the practical effect lands like a sledgehammer on a package that Senate Republicans had structured as a workaround to Democratic opposition.

Senate Republicans opted to fund the bulk of DHS through the appropriations process while moving funding for immigration enforcement separately after talks with Democrats collapsed over reforms to ICE and CBP. That strategy required the reconciliation package to survive parliamentary review intact. It has not.

....

For immigration advocates and civil rights attorneys who have spent years defending the Flores Agreement and the TVPRA from executive branch erosion, the ruling is a rare procedural vindication. It is also a warning: the parliamentarian’s finding that the Trump administration’s OBBBA implementation itself constitutes evidence of intent is language that is likely to surface again in federal court.

The package now returns to the drawing board — with a Senate floor vote still on the calendar and a House that has yet to formally adopt the same budget resolution.
Relevant here for a few reasons. One, the $1 billion for the ballroom is supposed to be a part of this package. But many Senators don’t want to pass it, and it isn’t clear there are the votes in the House for it, either. So if it is stripped out, it likely dies. Now, about that $1.7 billion….

Congress has to authorize that, too. Trump is trying to end run the trial court. But he still needs Congressional approval for the money. It would be a slush fund for him, with a committee to oversee it that he appoints and controls, and no reporting on how the funds are used. But getting the DOJ to bless it doesn’t mean the Treasury can release the funds. If it does, impeachment proceedings should begin in January, 2027. But as Sen. Dirksen said, “A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you’re talking about real money.” A billion dollars for a ballroom is real money. $1.7 billion for a fund for Trump to control with no oversight or accountability? Very real money. Think he’s going to get it?

Neither do I. Should we beat him about the head and shoulders over it? Absolutely. Never miss an opportunity.

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It’s A Theme

GILLIBRAND: What is your record?! I don't want to just hear about what you don't like about the Biden administration

SCOTT TURNER: During the Biden administra--

GILLIBRAND: Stop talking about Biden! Talk about your record

TURNER: During the Biden administration--

GILLIBRAND: Oh my God!
C-SPAN: Consumer prices in April rose 3.8% in April year over year. How long do you think the American public will be able to sustain this level of inflation and gas prices?

REP. TIM MOORE: It's not just Americans who are bearing what's happening. Europe is probably bearing it even more. Asia is dealing with it.
PATTY MURRAY: Your budget cuts housing. Can you help more families with housing with $84b or $73.5b?

SCOTT TURNER: Here's what I'll say. In the previous four years--

MURRAY: Ok. This is the go-to answer for every secretary is to go back to Biden. I'm asking you about your administration

TURNER: Inflation was up. Regulatory environment was crippling.

MURRAY: It's your go-to answer
And when it isn’t Biden’s fault: It’s coming from the White House. Yeah, but, how many supporters? Wasn’t that Trump’s defense in New York? Well, okay, but I don’t think Trump is going to like it there.
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Stick A Fork In Him

He’s done.
Snorkeling and diving at the Arizona are almost entirely off-limits to the public. The wreck has been a military cemetery since Japan bombed and sank it in 1941. The only people who regularly dive there are marine archaeologists, National Park Service crews surveying the wreck's condition, and the occasional ceremonial diver interring the remains of Arizona survivors who wanted to spend eternity alongside their shipmates.

Hack Albertson, a Marine veteran who dives the Arizona annually as part of a select group from the Paralyzed Veterans of America, didn't mince words.

"It's like having a bachelor party at a church. It's hallowed ground," he said. "It needs to be treated with the solemnity it deserves."

A former government diver, who spoke anonymously for fear of retaliation, told the AP that no FBI director since at least 1993 had ever gone snorkeling at the memorial. The diver called it unusual for anyone not connected to the memorial to have such access, citing physical risks and serious "security, safety, and logistical challenges."

What makes this worse: the FBI never disclosed any of it.

When Patel swung through Hawaii on his way to official visits in Australia and New Zealand, the bureau issued press releases touting his tour of the Honolulu field office and his meetings with local law enforcement. What those releases didn't mention was that Patel came back to Hawaii for two additional days after his initial stop — and spent one of those days snorkeling over the graves of nearly a thousand American servicemen.

Flight tracking data show the FBI's Gulfstream G550 lingered on the island for two nights before jetting off to Las Vegas — Patel's adopted hometown.
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🚀🧪

 So it seems this is what the NYT was talking about:

"According to Andrew Duehren and Alan Feuer of The New York Times, a settlement is in the works that would drop any IRS audits of Trump, his family, or his businesses," wrote Noah. "One advantage to this approach is that it would spare Trump having to pretend he’ll donate the proceeds to charity.

"Since nobody knows what the penalties from such audits would be, nobody can pinpoint such a settlement’s monetary value." Indeed, Noah wrote, it's possible Trump's lawyers want "some sort of indemnification against future IRS action akin to the blanket immunity the Supreme Court gifted him in 2024."
Not an end run on the court to get $10 billion in Trump’s pocket (an amount that would still have to be authorized by Congress, bugger the emoluments clause),* but an agreement to not audit Trump and his companies.

Unless that’s some kind of court order, the next administration could direct the IRS to follow the money. But a binding court order on that is as problematic as a court sanctioned monetary settlement, because there’s a very serious question of jurisdiction.

So, despite the screaming and shouting and hair pulling, I don’t see how Trump wins this one. He can authorize a settlement, but he can’t fund it. Only Congress can. Trump can’t direct the IRS to turn over the money it doesn’t have, or tell Treasury to cut him a check out of general funds. Only Congress can authorize that.

I get the power of the political argument here; but this kind of ignorance about how government functions is how we elected Trump. Twice.

Government simply doesn’t work this way; and if it does, it is corrupt beyond redemption. A CEO couldn’t authorize the funds to settle a PI claim he had against the corporation before he became CEO. If he did, there would be something irredeemably corrupt about that corporation.

But unlike the CEO, Trump doesn’t even have access to the checkbook. Nor does the SOT. The government can only spend the money it is allocated and authorized to spend. Even the local school district here has budgeted amounts for every department in administration. If that budget is exceeded, money is moved from another budget, or the purchase simply isn’t made. There isn’t anywhere in a government budget where $10 billion is authorized “in case of settlements.” That kind of payout would take authorization from someone well above the person signing the settlement documents. In this case, it would take a vote of Congress.

It isn’t rocket science to figure out Trump is ignorantly prating again. And it actually just further decreases understanding of what government is, and what it does, to play the game by Trump’s rules. It’s just making it that much harder to get past his corruption and destruction, and get back to having a government that works for us.

*
There's also a chance that Judge Kathleen Williams could block a settlement from happening at all — but if she throws out the lawsuit altogether, as she seems to be considering, "it’s not clear anything can stop the IRS from settling with Trump at that point, except possibly another lawsuit brought on behalf of taxpayers arguing that Trump’s in violation of the Constitution’s emoluments clauses" — and in Trump's last term, the Supreme Court sat on emoluments litigation until it died.
No, it’s very clear the IRS can’t just hand Trump $10 billion, and the emoluments clause has bugger all to do with it. Trump’s not the only blithering idiot in this conversation. (The Congress can, for example, authorize $1 billion for the ballroom. Are they likely to do so? Signs point to “No.” They can also block construction of the ballroom, despite the “donations” no one knows anything concrete about. Will they? It’s almost a certainty in 2027.)

I have now beaten this dead horse as much as I can.

CODA: I would rather treat Trump as the incompetent boob he is, rather than the nefarious axe murderer who is going to kill our democracy in its bed.
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It’s Because We Have A Drug…

... that no one’s ever heard of that brings them back to life. And for some reason they vote for Democrats.

Or maybe he means the zombie vote. 🧟‍♂️
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Trump In China 🇨🇳

Then why is the price of oil so high? Why?
BERMAN: How much longer is it gonna cost you $100 to fill up your truck?

REP. ALFORD: We have control over the Strait of Hormuz right now. Things have improved

BERMAN: If we have control, why aren't there vessels coming in and out of the strait right now?

ALFORD: Because there are still safety issues
Because Trump cares? You gotta understand 4-dimensional chess. ♟️  Or to American agriculture and rural America.
KERNEN: Will Xi ask Trump to change the longstanding strategic ambiguity policy or limit arms sales to Taiwan?

BESSENT: I'm confident President Trump understands the issues around that and is very resolute in his answers

KERNEN: Would Trump give concessions to XI?

BESSENT: I'm not gonna get ahead of the president
Because he’s as predictable as the movements of a loose fire hose. See?
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Wednesday, May 13, 2026

J. Edgar Hoover Did The Same Thing

The "Most Wanted" list was a PR stunt for Hoover. People the FBI was ready to arrest were on it, so Hoover could prove how effective his “G-men” were.

Ka$h is following in old footsteps.
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Cheer Up, It Could Be Worse

70% of farmers don't have enough fertilizer to plant their crops. 70% of Americans say the economy is WORSE under Trump. The real estate market is struggling. Vets are struggling. Hospitals are closing. The war is costing BILLIONS per day. The price of EVERYTHING is soaring out of control: gasoline, diesel, coffee, a plane ticket, summer travel, UTILITY BILLS. Donald Trump said out loud that he doesn't think about any of it.
And just as reminders: How?
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In Trump’s Dreams

Chris Hayes is NOT a lawyer:
"It is hard, dear viewer, to keep track of the very, very long list of shady deals and no-bid contracts and outright corrupt crypto schemes that have been the hallmark of the presidency of Donald Trump, particularly this second version of it," said Hayes. "But I ask you tonight to pay attention to the one that he appears to be about to pull off, because it's got to be the greatest heist in American history, a direct transfer of billions of your taxpayer dollars directly into the bank account, and the pockets of Donald Trump, all dressed up as a settlement of a lawsuit in which Donald Trump is both the plaintiff and also the defendant. It would be a maneuver that could nearly triple his net worth."

"All of this happening as the Trump administration is literally making your life harder and more expensive with wars and tariffs," said Hayes. "None of that has stopped Trump from trying to get his hands on more of your money."

"The president, in effect, sued himself for more than $10 billion, or he sued the government he controls," said Hayes. "$10 billion, by the way, is nearly the entire annual IRS budget. And those dollars have paid out would come from the U.S. Treasury, which he also oversees. Now, this is so novel, I don't really know how you characterize it legally, like we're out past the frontier, whether legal or not. I am of the strong opinion, and I think many would be also that this is an attempt at the largest theft ever by an American politician, plainly, flagrantly. Blatantly, in plain daylight. It is a conflict of interest so enormous the term itself, conflict of interest hardly begins to capture what's happening."

"In fact, get this: last month, a federal judge in the case ... gave them until May 20th to come back and explain how the case isn't a scam to enrich Trump," said Hayes. "She's like, wait a second, wait a second. The constitution requires cases or controversies, but I don't see one here, she writes. 'Although President Trump avers he is bringing this lawsuit in his personal capacity, he is a sitting president and is named adversaries or entities whose decisions are subject to his direction,' she added ... What the judge is saying is, like, I don't think this is actually a real case. It can't be. You're on both sides." "So the lawyers have one more week to file briefs that would convince the judge to let Trump's $10 billion lawsuit continue," said Hayes. And this, he said, is why the Justice Department is considering settlement talks now, before that deadline: to "shovel tons of cash over to him in return for him dropping the suit. The mob has a word for that: shakedown."
Well, it would be a shakedown if Trump got the money. But as the old adage puts it, there’s many a slip between the cup and the lip.

The judge can still declare the settlement a scam. The DOJ could move to dismiss the case, but that would leave the settlement in limbo. Having already engaged the court to bless this unholy act, they can’t now expect it to be square if they go through with it and try to tell the court to fuck off.

The court has authority, including dismissing the case on its own motion. It doesn’t have to accept the motion to dismiss of the DOJ, especially in these circumstances. You can’t settle a lawsuit that doesn’t exist. And a lawsuit only exists if the court says so. Now, private parties could reach an agreement without a lawsuit. But in that case, it would require some kind of authorization, especially when at least one of the parties is a corporation. Or a government. 

So then there’s Congress.

Put simply, where does this $10 billion come from? The IRS slush fund? Petty cash? A congressional authorization?  Put it this way: the $1 billion authorized by the Senate Judiciary  Committee for the ballroom is about as popular as a whore at a prayer breakfast. 🥞  Trump can’t claim to raise those funds privately (we still don’t know where the money is he claims is paying for the ballroom now. Congress has full authority to ask, and to approve the construction; which means they can ask, and halt construction, in 2027, if they won’t do it now.). Do you think Congress is going to authorize $10 billion for this cause? 

Here I pause to remember the settlement Ken Paxton agreed to with several staff attorneys who sued the Texas AG. Paxton settled that suit, then went to the Lege to get the money. The Lege responded by impeaching Paxton. That effort failed, but the Lege never did authorize the settlement.

If the DOJ agrees the IRS will pay Trump $10 billion, we still have the question: where does the money come from? Government agencies don’t have access to all the cash in the world they could want. The Army is running short of operating funds because it’s still paying for the National Guard to pick up trash in D.C., and paid for deployments in other cities, and for deployments to the region around Iran. Which could mean Congress would have to authorize funds for those troops Trump talks of sending to polling places in November. Thinking things through is not Trump’s strong point.

So where does the money come from? Congressional authorization? Fat chance. From wherever Trump wants to skim it? Grounds for impeachment that even Alito might approve of (he has no say, but you get my point). Wherever it came from, if it did, Congress could claw it back. And they might be inclined to do that before 2027. It certainly won’t be a feather in Republicans’ caps to let it stand as of November. That ballroom’s already unpopular enough.
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“The infirm glory of the positive hour” — T.S. Eliot

I’m reading one of Kurt Vonnegut’s last books (I’m too lazy to do the full bibliography, so further affiant sayeth nought), A Man Without A Country. In it Vonnegut declares himself a humanist, by which among other things he means:
…if  Christ hadn’t delivered the Sermon on the Mount, with its message of mercy and pity, I wouldn’t want to be a human being.

I’d just as soon be a rattlesnake.
Despite this caveat, Vonnegut confesses that he’s given up on the human race. He had, he wrote, no hope for them anymore. I used to feel that way, or thought I did. (That attitude amused my wife when we were dating, through high school and college. She knew me better than that. She has always been the wiser of the two of us.) I now see, confronting Vonnegut in my ‘70’s rather than the 1970’s (when I read just about everything he wrote), that I don’t agree with him at all. And it’s fundamentally because I consider myself a Christian, rather than a humanist (although I’m more a Christian existentialist, and I know Sartre said existentialism is a humanism. So I’m not so much at odds with Vonnegut, as simply mildly disagreeing with him.)

I don’t mean I profess the charlatan Xianity of the preachers who praise Trump. I mean the Christianity of Julian of Norwich:
With this bare word 'sin" our Lord brought to my mind the whole extent of all that is not good, and the shameful scorn and the utter humiliation that he bore for us in this life, and his dying, and all the pains and sufferings of his creatures, both in body and spirit--for we are all to some extent brought to nothing and shall be brought to nothing as our master Jesus was, until we are fully purged: that is to say until our mortal flesh is brought completely to nothing, and all those of our inward feelings which are not truly good. Have me insight into these things, along with all pains that ever were and ever shall be; and compared with these I realize that Christ's Passion was the greatest pain and went beyond them all. And all this was shown in a flash, an quickly changed into comfort; for our good Lord did not want the soul to be afraid at this ugly sight.

....And because of the tender love which our Lord feels for all who shall be saved, he supports us willingly and sweetly, meaning this: 'It is true that sin is the cause of all this suffering, but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.'
and the martyrs of El Salvador and of Saint Oscar Romero, of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and St. Francis of Assisi, of the Beatitudes of Luke (Vonnegut champions the Beatitudes of Matthew, and in the RSV, but I stand on the even more radical Lukan version,  in the Scholar’s Version translation). These Beatitudes:
"Congratulations, you poor! God's domain belongs to you!

“Congratulations, you hungry! You will have a feast.

“Congratulations, you who weep now! You will laugh.”

“Damn you rich! You already have your consolation!

“Damn you who are well-fed now! You will know hunger.

“Damn you who laugh now! You will learn to weep and grieve.”
Luke 6:20-26, SV (Interestingly, when I googled to get the scripture numbers, the first item for “Luke beatitudes” that came up directed me to only verses 20-23; the blessings, but not the curses. Jesus continues to make us uncomfortable, I guess.)

I don’t mean to condemn humanism, but Vonnegut’s is a paltry and selfish vision, especially up against the vision of Julian; or even the Beatitudes he professes to find so important. Vonnegut aligns himself with Einstein and Mark Twain, both of whom, he claims, gave up on humanity at the end of their lives, too . Neither were notably religious men (Einstein was Jewish; I don’t know if Twain claimed to be Xian, or how he felt about it). It’s not that being religious or Xian is a “Get Out Of Despair Jail Free” card.  Nor is it a false, or fantasy, consolation. But while I read Vonnegut when I was young and impressionable, and while I saw the absolute worst in people directed at me just because of the role I assumed (and I don’t mean being a lawyer. Judges, clients, other lawyers, were saints and Sunday School teachers compared to the people who turned against me in the churches, the ones I pastored and the one I attended after losing my second church). While, as I say, I saw that vitriol directed at me for the entire (short, but too long) period I was daily among professing Christians who knew me solely because of that confession, I still came out the other side (years later, granted) convinced that Julian’s vision was right. And that there is a moral arc of the universe, and it does bend toward justice. I am as secure in it as I am in my love for my wife and my daughter (and that they love me, which I can only understand as love being a kind of divine madness.

I don’t despair, in other words. I cannot despair. I’ve seen too much and learned too much to believe it’s all going to smash now because I’m here to see it. I read the accounts of settlers in the 19th century on horseback in the dark in wilderness where I now ride on well lit roads to stores, or use this phone in my hands to have the world’s goods delivered to my door, and I think what they faced, and they didn’t despair. I think of what the Native Americans and African Americans and any non-white people in this country went through, still go through, and I don’t see a bitter end, I see a struggle that has to be championed, a fight that will succeed if we don’t yield. And so few of us want to yield. As Auden wrote in World War II, “Maps can point to places/where life is evil now.” These places were in America in the ‘60’s, and they are here again now. Auden meant evil being done by governments, intentionally. So yes, here, now. Those maps are also places where more people are resisting, fighting back; more of us, many, many more of us, are repulsed by the evil; and that why I don’t despair. Vonnegut worried, almost 25 years ago, that we were making the planet unlivable. I grew up on that fear. It started as the environmental movement in the ‘70’s, a full 50 years before Vonnegut wrote his conviction that there was no hope. The movement that in short order convinced Congress to create the EPA, and passed the Clean Water Act. Trump wants to abolish all that, but he can’t erase it, and the pushback to stop polluting the planet and make it more livable will go on. Hell,  I remember when we set a river on fire. “The Lord can make you tumble/The Lord can make you turn./The Lord can make overflow./The Lord can’t make you burn.” 🔥—Randy Newman

In the ‘70’s the message was despair: there was no hope, and we were done for. Do you remember the simplest things? The scene in “Mad Men” where the Drapers go on a picnic, and finished shake off their blanket and leave their trash to blow across the grass? That was normal in the early ‘60’s. It isn’t normal now. A great deal that was normal, still isn’t normal now. And what seems abnormally normal, is not going to last, is already fading even as it arouses opposition to eradicate it, to not allow it to be the norm again.

Little things are important, especially in the view that all the big things are lost and falling to ruin. In Matthew’s parable of the sheep and the goats, he tells the sheep how they fed him when he was hungry, clothed him when he was naked, visited when he was sick or in jail. “Lord,” they very reasonably ask, “when did we see you?” Whenever you did that for anyone, Jesus replies, you did it for me. Whenever. For anyone. What does the Lord require of you? Only that much. When Jesus later tells his disciples, also in Matthew, to make disciples of all people, it’s in the context of Isaiah’s holy mountain. Teaching people to be like the sheep will create the holy mountain where everyone wants to live, because life is so good there, and the reason why so simple, so easy to follow.

So: do we despair because the world has not figured it all out yet? This nation was born in racism. When Jefferson said “All men are created equal,” he clearly meant some men (humans) and not others. We finally stopped portraying the Natives as “savages” (Jefferson’s term, in the Declaration) in our entertainment late in the 20th century. It took longer to stop portraying black males that way (consider the example of our current president only 30 years ago). We’re moving far too slowly for justice; but we’re moving that way nonetheless. Do we despair because we aren’t there yet?

Well, you can, but I’m not going to.

I can’t give up, and I can’t explain why in any other terms except that I believe. Not in fairies at the bottom of the garden, or in the better angels of our nature. I believe in the strength and endurance of human love and goodness; and I believe there is a moral arc to the universe. And after 70 years, I find those beliefs unshakable, because I also believe in the confession of the first chapter of Genesis: that creation is good, and that that means “all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”

I can’t make you believe that. I can’t talk you into my belief. I can only stand by it and offer it as my contribution to the conversation. In Candide, Voltaire concludes that we must all tend to our own garden. He means we can’t live the life of others, and we can’t make them live life as we see fit. Dorothy Day, by the way, would agree. And I think Walker Percy and Thomas Merton would agree, too. As well as the Desert Fathers. You can find my references to them in the search function of this blog. Of course, just by writing that novel, Voltaire was trying to interfere in our lives; or at least just give us some advice. Much as Jonathan Swift did in Gulliver’s Travels and “A Modest Proposal.” Advice is not really interference, though; it’s not telling you what to do like so many “THOU SHALT NOTS!” It’s more about pointing out the ultimate reality of the situation, because the destitute will have their condition alleviated; and the rich have already had their reward. Too bad they didn’t do more for the destitute when they could have, because the moral arc of the universe does indeed bend toward justice.

Of that I am as sure as I am sure I am virtually at your elbow, as you read.
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The JCPOA Did That

Per @JenniferJJacobs , according to U.S. Vice President JD Vance, he recently spoke with White House Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff and Envoy Jared Kushner on talks with Iran and said that talks are still progressing, but added that U.S. President Donald J. Trump “needs to feel confident that we've put a number of protections in place such that Iran will never have a nuclear weapon.”
But Trump tore it up because:

A) Obama, and

B) Trump is profoundly stupid (see, e.g, his ranting 20 years later that Iran got suitcases of cash. All Iranian assets in American banks frozen by executive order, and released by same. It was frozen as punishment, and released as incentive to make the deal. It also had to be released eventually, as it wasn’t seized in accordance with legal process. It was just in limbo.).

Now Iran demands control over what were international waters because they fucking can. Even with heavy naval escorts, from us or Europe, tankers will be reluctant to present slow moving, highly flammable targets, and one burning wreck in the right place could shut down the Strait for months, anyway.

We are in a situation where the whole world needs Iran to be reasonable, but short of the world agreeing to nuke Iran ‘til it glows, there’s no reason for Iran to give up its catbird seat.* They’ve got the world by the short hairs and, until a different method of transport is available, the world will have to dance to their tune.

Trump did that. He can plan all the monuments he wants (they won’t get built). But this will be how history remembers him.

And us, for electing him and the Congress that let him do this.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi landed in Delhi, India today for the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa+) foreign ministers meeting, amidst ongoing but stalled U.S. Iran negotiations. Per reports and assessments from a number of subject matter experts, Iran is expected to push for a joint statement from the Chinese-led economic bloc in support of Iranian interests.
I don’t think China will allow a very direct statement, with Trump in town (or just gone, depending on timing). But a very subtle one could be very interesting; and still not good for American interests.


*And aside from the obvious humanitarian disaster, that would ruin most of the region’s oil fields for production via fallout contamination. Not to mention the millions exposed in the region. So “humanitarian” covers a multitude of sins and nightmarish consequences.
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Context

Q: Gas prices are up. Inflation is up. Americans are having financial hardship. Is now the right time for Congress to be prioritizing a billion dollars for security at the White House and a ballroom Trump said would be paid for privately?

MIKE JOHNSON: I think that's a gross misstatement of what's going on right now
Yeah. Sell that between now and November.
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Well, Since You Don’t Work….

Been there.

Can I just say, I’m really enjoying this (and I’m really forced to wonder what this guy does for a living. You’ll see.):
NEGUSE: My understanding is a no bid contract is reserved for situations where delay would cause serious injury. What's the injury with the reflecting pool?

BURGUM: We had 19 fountains across the city that didn't work

NEGUSE: That's the serious injury to the government?! And who picked this company? Trump said 'I have a guy who's unbelievable at doing swimming pools'
HUFFMAN: Do you agree most Americans are struggling right now to afford basic necessities because of rising costs?

[which is now higher. thanks for that.]

BURGUM: This administration inherited the highest inflation in 40 years

HUFFMAN: Are families struggling with rising costs? Yes or no

BURGUM: During the first yea--

HUFFMAN: You're deflecting to Biden
Biden pretty much said that, too.  He didn’t get re-elected, in case Burgum missed that, too.
HUFFMAN: Who is this arch for?

BURGUM: The American people. And there are 68 capitals that have arches

HUFFMAN: And we're gonna build one just a little taller than the one in Pyongyang, because someone in the White House insists ours be the biggest. And Trump said this arch is for him. We can enter that into the record if you like.
MIN: Do you know how much new energy China put online last year?

BURGUM: Intermittent or base load?

MIN: All energy. 543 GW. How much was renewable? 434 GW.

BURGUM: But only when the wind is blowing and sun is shining

MIN: Meanwhile, the US put up 53 GW of new energy last year -- less than 10% of China. You're clear bias against renewables is harming our national security.
DEXTER: Your budget cuts national parks by $1 billion. If you put this $1 billion towards our parks instead of Trump's ballroom, you could avoid that cut. That would benefit every single American. Did you ever object to this level of spending on the ballroom?

BURGUM: There's a massive security complex--

DEXTER: It's clear to me you didn't do anything to stop it
RANDALL: Look at this safety hazard. There's a backlog of $300m in deferred repairs needed for Olympic National Park alone. Now look at this AI image Trump posted of draining the reflecting pool. You're actually in it. Of these images, which do you think should be the higher priority?

BURGUM: We have deferred maintenance issues all over the country

RANDALL: Yes! And you find Trump's vanity projects more important
Oof Burgum walked right into this.

Burgum: Can you explain why the states that pursued the policies you’re describing have the highest power prices in the country?

Magaziner: Does North Dakota have one of the highest power prices in the country? You have one of the highest percentage of renewables.

Burgum: False!

Magaziner: The data doesn’t lie.

Burgum: The data is lying.
Data is notorious for lying. Especially in this Administration.
Rep. Magaziner plays video of Doug Burgum boasting about wind energy production in North Dakota while he was governor.

Magaziner: Were you wrong as governor to expand wind energy? Why don’t other states around the country deserve the same? We do. We deserve access to these wind and solar projects that you are blocking.
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$1 Billion

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Trump With His China Experts

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So Now It’s Pocket Watches

I happen to be reading Lord Chesterfield's letters to his son, written in the 18th century. There are a ton of letters and, frankly, most of them are quite boring. But this passage from a letter he wrote in October 1748 stuck out to me. It feels pertinent to the discourse about the coming Swatch x Audemars Piguet collaboration, which has some people feeling a certain way.

An excerpt from his letter:

"What the French justly call les maniéres nobles are only to be acquired in the very best companies. They are the distinguishing characteristics of men of fashion; people of low education never wear them so close, but that some part or other of the original vulgarism appears. Les maniéres nobles equally forbid insolent contempt, or low envy and jealousy. Low people in good circumstances, fine clothes, and equipages, will insolently show contempt for all those who cannot afford as fine clothes, as good an equipage, and who have not (as their term is) as much money in their pockets: on the other hand, they are gnawed with envy, and cannot help discovering it, of those who surpass them in any of these articles, which are far from being sure criterions of merit. They are likewise jealous of being slighted; and consequently suspicious and captious; they are eager and hot about trifles because trifles were, at first, their affairs of consequence. Les maniéres nobles imply exactly the reverse of all this. Study them early; you cannot make them too habitual and familiar to you."

In plainer, more modern English, Chesterfield here says that people of truly high status exhibit emotional discipline and a generosity of spirit, so that they never sneer downward or seethe upward. They are not concerned with small rank signals, such as who is wearing what. Bristling at whether someone is wearing a cheaper version of your watch, and thus possibly diluting your status, is itself a mark of low character and thus status.

I should add that, when you read Chesterfield's letters, you find him to be often very self-serving. He's not concerned about morality for its own sake, but how the appearance of virtue frames him as a gentleman (and therefore a man of higher status). But I found the passage above to be nice, nonetheless.
I have a pocket watch. It probably doesn’t surprise you. It’s a Bucherer, made in the ‘70’s (yes, 1970’s), which is when I bought it. It has a metal cover with a bas relief reproduction of “The Lion of Lucerne” on it, which is why I bought it. I carried it, on a chain, in my blue jeans watch pocket, for years. Worked a lot less well in chinos and suits without vests, so I traded for a wrist watch.

Even though I’m back in jeans, it still hangs undisturbed in a display case (a plastic one; nothing fancy. I have a whole room practically devoted to bric a brac. I’m a sentimental kind of guy.) It’s just conclusive proof that I’ve never had a sense of style. And that everything old is new again. But that doesn’t necessarily make it good, again.

Lagniappe:
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The Ground Beneath His Feet…

Trump April 23: I contacted people "that have worked for me in the past, doing swimming pools," and one gave me a great price on the Reflecting Pool project

Trump May 4: "I have some very good contractors," asked three of them to "do me a favor fellas" and go look at the Reflecting Pool, and the best one gave me a great price

Trump today: The Reflecting Pool contract "went to a contractor I did not know, and have never used before"
... is getting smaller and smaller. And clearly Trump is using the long flight to prepare for his meetings with Xi: Trump don’t need no experts. Trump is a very stable genius.
And yet:
The UK and France chaired a meeting attended by 44 nations, including non-European nations, such as Bahrain, Australia, Japan, South Korea and others, on building out an international framework to provide security, through military means, for the Strait of Hormuz. However, Iran has responded by saying that any military framework enacted by international state-actors will be treated as an escalation by Iranian decision-makers.
Good to know the bombing of Iran, which Trump STILL has not resumed, was totally worth it.
New: Classified military intelligence assessments from early this month show Iran has regained access to most of its missile sites, launchers and underground facilities. Including: U.S. intel assesses Iran has restored operational access to 30 of the 33 missile sites it maintains along the Strait of Hormuz, and ~90% of Iran's underground missile sites are "partially or fully operational." w @Adamentous @maggieNYT
Wasn’t it? Or, with our munitions seriously depleted, is this why Trump keeps extending the ceasefire?
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Tuesday, May 12, 2026

More Appropriately…

MacFarlane: Changing it to the title of a Peter Gabriel song is only going to win over so many people in Washington, DC. But I think there's a more fundamental dynamic we need to talk about. On its best day, some congressional hearings can have the maturity and tone of like a middle school on a Friday when there's a substitute teacher, not even a good substitute teacher. There were elements of that when Pete Hegseth testifies and when Kash Patel testified, and I don't think they're winning over people with this testimony, I don't think Pete Hegseth won new allies for the war.
..."Sledge Hammer” is the name of a TV comedy featuring the eponymous character as a thoroughly inept cop. Starring David Rasche. (His father was a UCC pastor in southern Illinois. I met him because his sister was a member of the church I pastored as a student. He said nice things about my Xmas Eve service so, like Trump, I like him. No, he would not remember me. It was 1 hour over 30 years ago. But he was a very nice guy.  IIRC, I told him I was a fan of the show. Yeah, it was a sterling conversation, worthy of the fabled salons of Paris. Or, you know, not.)
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The Only Other Way To Make Sure…

... people stay off that highway/interstate would be to make it a toll road.

(That’s an inside Texas joke. Decades back the Lege discovered what they thought were “free” roads. Toll roads would repay the cost of construction and maintenance. And private interests would buy them, repaying construction costs for the collection of tolls. Turned out Texans don’t mind paying taxes for roads, but don’t like paying twice: once to build it, once more to use it. 

There’s a history here. The “turnpike” between Dallas and Fort Worth (when they were part of the megalopolis that is D/FW), was a toll road. But only until the bonds for the road were paid off. I still remember when the toll gates came down. The road was paid for, so it was a fair bargain. 

Cities in Texas have toll roads; mostly it keeps the traffic down. Somewhat. But the toll roads between cities? Almost nobody uses them. There’s one that was supposed to replace the godawful congestion on I-35 between San Antonio and Dallas. I-35  is still crowded. Nobody wants to pay for the alternative. The private companies? They sold their interests back to the state, and left town. The Lege thought they’d solved highway financing to the end of time.

Nobody even talks about toll roads anymore. 

And nobody wants a highway named after Trump in Texas. Well, except for a few GOP primary voters, maybe. Probably not enough to give Cornyn a chance to make good on his efforts (which will probably be reversed in ‘27, if he gets that far.) But signs indicate cruising Trump highway will be little balm to the Texas GOP in the foreseeable future.)
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