Off On A Sidelobe

     It took professional help.  I was trying to realign a satellite dish -- a big one, 6.1 meters in diameter -- on a satellite it should have still been pointing at.  The signal was there, but it wouldn't quite lock.

     These days, there's an outfit we hire when this kind of thing gets weird.  The best gadgets for the job have gotten smaller -- but way more expensive.  When we used uplinks all the time, and had guys on the staff who ran 'em often, it made sense to keep the latest, best stuff.  Now we might need that gear once every year or two.

     So I called in the experts, and they showed up, got it a little better and got stuck until another team member showed up to help.  The receiver kept trying to lock on the signal, but it wouldn't stay

     A really big satellite dish has "sidelobes," kind of extra focus points, where the signal strength peaks -- but not by much.  And it's small compared to the main lobe.  But with a good receiver on a big dish?  It'll work, or almost.  We were on a nice fat sidelobe, diagonally off, and it was tricky fumbling back to the main lobe.  But we -- which is to say the guys who do that kind of thing all day every day -- got it.

     The receiver still wouldn't lock.

     This dish is a legacy.  It shows up on the software that runs all of my employer's dishes, but nobody's supposed to use it.  Someone, probably quite some time back, had been looking to aim one of the general-purpose dishes at the main campus, got on this one by mistake, realized it too late and tried to set it back.  It almost got pointed in the right place, so that's one thing.

     But it appears the receiver got a command, too (oops!), and ended up with a very wrong configuration.  Untangling that had us deep in menus I'd never seen before, but a mere fifteen minutes later, it locked -- and held.

     I kinda somehow left power to the dish motors turned off.  It's supposed to be left looking at one specific satellite.  Maybe this time it will stay.

Whew!

     The writer of The Lazarus Project managed to wrap it up in a satisfying way despite multiple time loops -- and still left a cliffhanger ending!  No spoilers, but I'll recommend the series.  There's handwavium and a few moments where you just have to let young Jim Hawkins pilot a pirate ship without questioning how he has that skill, but it's worth the effort.

Current Events

     I have not commented on immediately current events; two in particular have been all over the news, international talks with an eye to ending the war Russia initiated against Ukraine and President Trump's push to have Republican states redraw U. S. House districts ahead of the midterms.

     As for the peace effort, good luck to honest principals -- Ukraine, Europe, the UK and yes, even our President, who wants a Nobel Prize so badly that he may even be standing up to his good friend Mr. Putin to try for it.  The problem is, Russia -- and Vladimir Putin in particular -- started the war with the express purpose of absorbing Ukraine.  He went so far as to write (possibly with help) and publish a paper arguing at some length that Ukraine has no independent historical existence and is wholly a modern creation; actual historians do not agree.  His position does not augur well for even a "freeze the battle lines and draw the new border there" outcome (unacceptable to Ukraine and international law): Mr. Putin's Russia wants to take all of Ukraine and Ukrainians want to keep it.  So I'm not hopeful -- but I'm happily willing to be surprised.

     On mid-decade House redistricting to grab more seats for one party or another, it's cheating.  It's not the done thing; states redraw those districts every ten years, with the new census results in hand.  States have considerable latitude in where the lines are drawn and there's no black-letter law that says they can't do so in a partisan manner, though by long custom, the end result is not supposed to be too lopsided when compared to the state's proportion of votes for the main parties.  (And there's a whole Voting Rights Act thing in which districts should be arranged in such a way that racial minorities have a shot at proportional representation, but let's leave that for later: it's in the courts again, last I heard.)

     The Constitution puts it this way: 

     Clause 1, Composition:
     The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature.
     [...]
     Clause 3, Seats:
     Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons. The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct.

     Yeah, the Framers didn't leave us a paint-by-numbers.  They left the details for Congress, and Congress has tended to let the courts work it out (and the courts, in turn, have demurred on some of it).  Clause 1 comes in for some serious work.  Clause 3 does, too -- but the notion of only changing district maps in response to new decennial census data has been taken as axiomatic since the first time it was done.  In that light, it may be of some interest to note that the Supreme Court, when ruling that asking demographic questions above and beyond a simple count was a permissible action, said, "...that our interpretation of the Constitution is guided by a Government practice that 'has been open, widespread, and unchallenged since the early days of the Republic.'"  Thus, too, the time and timing of redistricting.  So if it feels kinda cheat-y, that would be because it is; it's not the way it's been done in the past, nor the way most people expected it to continue to be done.

     Nevertheless, Texas seems to be bound and determined to do it; my home state of Indiana is considering doing the same, to yank the rug out from under our two blue House districts (in Indianapolis and Chicagoland, about as blue as Indiana ever gets).  And the Trump administration is asking other red states to do so, too.

     Elsewhere, the latest Pew poll shows the President is underwater on approval ratings and especially on tariffs, the economy, peace talks and his administration's handling of the Epstein files.  Results run near 60% disapprove/40% approve on most items.  Being underwater by 20% is not the kind of thing that makes a party's ticket appeal to voters.  Why, it might almost tempt a political party to try giving the old pinball machine a good slam.

The Lazarus Project

     Tam and I have been watching a British science-fiction series, The Lazarus Project.  It arrived in the U.S. already canceled, and I think that's a pity: it may be the best treatment of time travel in science fiction film and television.

     The story is heavily character-driven, echoing some of the themes and concepts in Fritz Lieber's "Change Wars" stories and even Johanna Russ's "Trans-Temporal Authority" that figures in several of her stories and novels.*  (Poul Anderson and John Varley wrote stories in this vein as well.)  The series doesn't bother to explain much, which is for the best: the "science" hardware in SF time travel is inherently handwavium that can't stand close examination.  Instead, the episodes and overall arc are as tightly plotted as a murder mystery.  There is no shortage of car chases and gunfights -- but they're in service of a convoluted story with plenty of "ah-ha!" moments.

     It may have been a little too hip for the room, too good as SF to hold a mass audience.  You have to be ready to buy in to the central conceit, that (to a greater or lesser extent) past events can be undone and redone.  But it got two seasons, and even if the series doesn't stick the landing (I don't know yet), it's a heck of a ride, at times as shades-of-gray as the best film noir. 
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* There might even be touches of Heinlein's "By His Bootstraps" and the film Looper.  Another Heinlein story, "--All You Zombies--" was filmed as Predestination, which is probably the second-best time live-action time-travel story.

Filtering History

     It's best to let historians do their own fighting; they'll do so at the drop of a hat, and discuss the hat's provenance, origins and cultural connections on the way down.  We're best off when we have a lot of them and they're all under some sort of "publish or perish" pressure: they'll fight their way to accuracy, by the jealous pointing of the mistakes of their predecessors and peers if nothing else.

     You know what's not a good idea?  Rewriting history to suit an agenda.  From the Soviets airbrushing purged Party members out of photographs and twisting history books around to suit their own ends to Parson Weems' well-intentioned fable about a young George Washington ruining a cherry tree (but not his untrammeled honesty) or the White House and the Press concealing President Roosevelt's inability to walk unaided, distorting history is harmful.  If you don't have a clear idea where you've been, you're not going to understand where you're going.  Meddling with the presentation of history is literally Orwellian: it's Winston Smith's job in 1984.

     So when the President of the United States tells the Smithsonian Institution -- he is not their boss, by the way -- they're to start combing through their museums and culling any commentary and exhibits that don't jibe with his notion of a positive portrayal of American history, historians are right to object.  The venerable Organization of American Historians is looking out for the rest of us.

Apparently, They Don't Know Beans

     Stopping by the other foodie-mart on my commute yesterday, I bought a "southwest hash" mix that looked interesting -- diced russet potatoes, sweet potatoes, red and green peppers...and black beans.  This morning, I squeezed a chorizo sausage out of its casing, browned it, set it to one side and cooked the southwest hash in the grease with a dash of chili powder and some dried onion flakes.  When it was done, I stirred the sausage in, pushed it to the sides of the pan and scrambled three medium eggs in the center.

     I mixed it all together, added some cilantro and parsley, and served it for breakfast.  Tam was dubious and only had a little -- those beans, you know.  I feel much the same way about sweet potatoes, but I gave it a try.

     It's pretty good, with one exception: about half of the beans are still middlin' hard.  Maybe I didn't give it long enough under the lid.  The directions call for "8 to 12 minutes," and I went for ten, plus the uncovered cooking time for the eggs.  Maybe the beans didn't get soaked long enough before packing.*  It was a change from the usual stuff, and if there's a next time, I'll know what to try. 
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* There are lots of reasons why most of the canned and frozen legumes you buy are rehydrated dried beans.  Ease of storage and transport is the main one.

And Now, Threats

     It's hilarious.  The barbarians, having breached the gates (and claiming to be "defenders of culture," which is apparently how they spell racism) are now making threats.  I have, apparently, hurted their dearly tender feelings through the use of facts, history and logic, and they are a-comin' to get me.  Or maybe it's just karma.  Most of them are not exactly clear.

     I've seen 'em at the range.  They're not exactly credible there, either. 

     Update: Another nitwit has chimed in to tell me that the problem is I'm too mean to Trumpist Republicans and their fellow-travelers.  OMG!  How could I not have known?  Oh, that's right, I did.  I meant to be rude to them.  I've already said so.  But I am not threatening them; I am not promising retribution or gloating that I believe it is coming for them.  Honestly, I don't know.  The American Experiment may be doomed, and if it is, I expect to be harmed by what comes after.  But until it falls, I intend to keep pushing back, because the real ideals of this country are worth fighting for: that all people are created equal, that we've got a right to be represented in the government, that what we say and write and read should not be censored, that no religion should have the power to dictate our beliefs nor be suppressed by the government, that everyone here is entitled to due process of law and so on as spelled out in our Constitution as amended.

     That blood-and-soil bullshit isn't Americanism.  This country is a set of ideas, and if you're opposed to them, you're opposed to this nation.

     When I get threats, I will mention it on this blog.  I won't publish them.  If anything happens to me -- and that's unlikely, most of these people are cowards, who impotently wish I would stop reminding them of how far short they have fallen -- then there are people who can get at the unpublished comments and will know where to start looking.

Night Shift Spider

      There was no sign of a spiderweb when I got home from work yesterday but -- Thursday being trash night -- I went outside with a bag of office trash well after sunset and she had a full web up, this time all under the eaves, the usual plane of the web carefully bent into a kind of saddle shape to fit neatly around the corner, well out of human reach.

     The spider scuttled smartly into hiding behind the downspout as I approached.  She's not taking any chances!  The web showed signs of a few big catches, holes in the mesh where something big had been trapped and secured (and consumed) or cut loose.  In deference to Tamara's concerns, I moved the big trash can out from the wall so it wouldn't be under the web.  (Tam used to live in a house with big, hairy wolf spiders haunting the entryway.  They had either poor timing or lousy eyesight, since they tended to rappel down on her to the mutual discomfort of both parties, and she's been suspicious of all spiders ever since.)

     The web near our back door is a good spot for a spider; there's a farmyard-type light high on the kitchen extension that lights the back yard and around the corner from it, a small sconce illuminates the back door.  The web is right between them, with a good influx of flying insects.

     Early this morning, most of the web had been taken down; the spider was motionless on the few remaining strands, legs pulled in, apparently asleep.  An hour later, she'd removed the last of the web and (presumably) hidden for the day.

     We've got a night shift spider, at least for a few days.

Exceptionally Self-Deluded

     The United States of America is in the midst of a Viktor Orbán-style takeover of the institutions of our republic -- including many that have long existed outside of the government, either by independent formation (like universities) or via structures intended to distance them from direct government control, like the United States Institute for Peace or the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

     In particular, the Executive Branch is arrogating to itself powers that had either not previously been deemed to exist or are Constitutionally granted to the Legislative Branch -- and a supinely complicit Congress along with a compliant Supreme Court are letting it happen, in some cases even empowering it.  It out-Jacksons Andrew Jackson, and puts forward a Wilsonian "Unitary Executive" without the odious Woodrow Wilson's academic rigor and commitment to an international deliberative body.  What it does share with both Presidencies is an overt dedication to furthering so-called "white supremacy," with the added frill of pushing women back to the powerlessness they suffered under Jackson and Wilson.  It's broadly authoritarian; I'm not going to get into any nitwitted discussion of how it couldn't possibly be fascism because they don't have spiffy uniforms or the underlying ideas don't come from the fascistae region of Italy.  The incumbent Administration means to rule, and they are completely comfortable laying a heavy thumb on any measure that will further that end, like partisan mid-decade Congressional redistricting.

     There's still a lot of talk of "overreaction," as though the sweeping changes were inconsequential follies, to be washed away or changed after the next election.  Oh, some of them may be, depending on how that election goes, and barring yet another Trumped-up "emergency" getting in the way of voting.  Others will not; many parts of the Federal edifice, like USAID, have been broken beyond recovery.  There might some day be another "soft power" effort along the same lines, but the institution, with all of its values and specialized knowledge, is gone.  And the accretion of power to the Executive may be as irreversible as the accretion of power to the Imperial throne of Rome.  Maybe not; the men who wrote the Constitution knew Classical history and tried to build a stronger bulwark against despotic power than the Roman Senate proved to be.  But so far, our Congress is failing the same test.

     So don't try to jolly me along, and understand that my rudeness to Trumpist Republicans is deliberate; unlike the conservative Republicans who preceded them, they have nothing of value to contribute to our society or system of government, only destruction and barbarism.  When they speak, hear the shouts of the mob and the howling of wolves in the background.  They seek only power and personal wealth; they smash institutions and sow only ruin.  What comes after them, unless we are very lucky in rolling it back, is darkness.

     American exceptionalism long held that our country was immune from the kinds of chaos that swept through the governments of other nations, leaving death and despotism in its wake.  Turns out that's not the case.

A Philosophical Approach

     "Aim high; adapt to difficulties; do your work; clean up after yourself."

     Last night, an ambitious spider the size of a fat cicada -- or an average thumb -- built a web outside the back door of my house, where the back part of the kitchen extends about six feet and overhanging eaves offer a little shelter.  The center was nine feet above the ground.

     The spider's shape resembled the Spiny Micrathena that visited a few years ago, but much larger and no spines.  She had gold bands on her legs, and was most probably an orb-weaver, a very large family of spiders.  Her web had four main anchor points: one up under the eaves, one on the crook of a downspout, one out of sight from the door, probably the sill of the west kitchen window -- and the last one ran all the way to a small pile of sticks on my patio!  Or so I inferred.  By the time I noticed her, it was too dark to see any of the web unless the sunset sky was behind it.  The spider would swoop down like a trapeze artist, apparently floating, tie a new strand to the anchor and head back up towards the center of the web.

     It was fascinating.  The spider's concentration was total, spinning and weaving.  I checked in several times though the evening and by the time I went to bed, she had completed the radials and was running a spiral of cross-strands.  I was considering the best path around the web to the garage for the next morning, since I would much rather have one spider than a surplus of flies and mosquitos.

     I woke in the night and it was raining.  A quick look out the back door found the grumpy-looking spider rerigging her web; the long ground-level anchor line had given way, and the web was flapping gently in the breeze.  While I watched, she got it well-secured at three points and went to work on repairs.  I went back to bed, thinking the problem of how to get by the spider without disturbing the web had been solved, leaving the problem of Tam's aversion to spiders overhead (and plotting, she says, to drop down on her) for later.

     This morning, the spider had solved it for me: there's not a trace of the web to be found!  The Spiny Micrathena had similar habits; she would make a new web every day, having taken the old one down at the end of her work.  Maybe this spider's on second shift.

     That's a pretty good tenant to have, one who works diligently and doesn't leave a mess.  My shy little indoor ghost spiders, who leave gossamer, dust-collecting traces in the ceiling corners week after week, would do well to follow her example.

Behold, the spider. Also, a cloud formation that looks like an enormous eye, watching the spider and me.

The Mutally-Invisible Debating Society

     There's a pretty lively discussion in my comments section, kind of.  None of you are getting published.  As of this posting, I'm not even publishing comments I think are wonderful on those posts.

     Anecdotes are not data.

     Speculation is not fact.  (And buddy, your speculation about what Uncle Sam is up to is wildly off the mark, and insanely optimistic.)

     We're wired up to extrapolate from what we personally see, hear and feel.  We're wired up to trust members of our in-group and we're remarkably flexible creatures when it comes to forming families, trust circles and tribes.  Those are great attributes for a clever, tool-using hunter-gatherer that tends to function in small groups.

     It sucks out loud when we try to apply that set of inclinations to understanding the wider world, to deeper understanding.  It misleads when we mistake second-hand information for direct experience or infer too much from our immediate surroundings.  We can go wildly wrong; we can be right and not know it.  We have devised a great many structures and hacks and clever approaches to get around these limitations, and a lot of them work pretty well, but damn-all of them suffice if we start with an internet connection and an opinion we want to keep.

     I have a lot of opinions and I am not shy about sharing them here.  You have probably got opinions of your own, and I invite you to share them on your own blog.

     And I invite you to share links to solid statistical data and actual expert analysis, if you want to address things of greater scope than your own work, your own family, your own curtilage.  I spent the entire pandemic looking for the most impartial sources of data, looking for places that had large sample sizes or worked from mass collections.  There were lots of heart-rending stories, especially early on, but that's just a general alarm bell; the big numbers pointed to where things were worse or better and suggested trends.  The year-to-year "excess deaths" data showed how things were going compared to previous years, with a large pool of non-pandemic years as the standard of comparison.  Those large pools of data showed the vaccines working.  Regionalized graphs of vaccination rates and infection rates showed the vaccines working.  And they showed vaccine safety, too, especially as the death rates returned to within pre-pandemic levels.

     Nothing is a hundred percent.  Not a hundred percent effective, not a hundred percent safe.  But it was hugely safer to get vaccinated than to contract the illness, and you were better off even if you did have the misfortune to catch it after being vaccinated, far less likely to have a bad outcome.  These things are facts.

     You don't have to like facts.  You can have opinions about facts.  You may even disagree with facts.  But by and large, you'll be wanting your own blog for that purpose.

How Safe Is Safe Enough?

     An unpublished commenter, while noting that pulling the plug on research stymies getting answers, said he wasn't convinced of the long-term effectiveness and safety of the MRNA vaccines that got the COVID pandemic under control.

     What's it going to take?  It's been over four years, and people are not dying of being vaccinated.  They're not suffering harm.  Not even the worst medical grifters (cough, RF, Jr. and most of his appointees at the forefront, cough) have been able to point to any widespread ill effects.  To date, it's one of the safest vaccines ever deployed.  It's still fertile ground for the peddlers of misinformation and woo, but they'll sell you flying saucers and chemtrails, too, and surely you're not falling for that?

     Everything you do can kill you.  Traveling on the roads is remarkably dangerous, one of the worst risks most people will face.  And every hot dog you eat, I'm told, robs the average person of 37 minutes of life.  (Might as well go for the chopped onion and fancy mustard, then.)

     In 2021, I wrote, 
      "You see, the U. S. is at something around two-thirds vaccinated by now.  If the vaccines were doing horrible, horrible things to people, or if they do so in the future, that's over two hundred million Americans and the number is steadily increasing.  Two hundred million pissed-off people is plenty more than you'd need to find enough ready to string up drug company executives and researchers along the side of the road, one per lamp post."

     Ain't happened yet.  Ain't gonna happen, either -- oh, it's not a hundred percent certain; nothing is.  But it's one of the most solid bets you could make.

Reality Check

     I'm linking to a fact- and link-heavy newsletter from The Bulwark, which addresses in detail how Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s HHS has screwed the future by yanking Federal funding for MRNA vaccine research.

     Those vaccines are our best hope to fight future pandemics, as well as go after illnesses that have no good preventative, treatment or cure.  And now -- well, here's hoping the drug companies see them as potentially lucrative, or other governments with deep pockets want to pursue them, because the Feds are out of the game.  EU, I'm looking at you; Red China's not real big on sharing unless the price is right, and used low-tech methods as their first-line response to the COVID pandemic.

     Political disagreements are one thing, issues for debate.  Hamstringing medical research on something we already know works well against deadly illness is not a matter of opinion: it's the eventual mass murder of people by the dozens, thousands or millions.  How many is too many?  How many, do you suppose, does it take before the total becomes what the USSR's Stalin called "just a statistic?"

     Government by unbridled fantasy isn't a good idea.  The lesson will, in time, hammer itself home.  I fear we'll have to be hit very hard indeed before enough of us take it to heart.

Oh, The Geeky Temptation

     There has been a very old, vacuum-tube portable audio mixer for sale on eBay for quite some time now.  None of the usual buyers want to touch it: it's been modified.  The price reflects that, too; it's offered for about two-thirds to half the price that model usually commands.

     Here's the thing: as it happens, I know that model pretty well.  The first radio station I worked for had one.  It's built like a tank -- and with one exception, the mods to the eBay one consist of added parts that need to be removed or non-original replacement parts that I have the correct parts for.

     I could buy it, get it back to almost-original condition, keep or sell the handful of expensive microphone transformers someone crammed into it and probably double my money if I sold the thing.

     The problem is, I want one.  I've been looking at them online for years, watching the prices get higher and higher.  And if I buy it, it's one more project that will languish while I put in forty hours a week working and spending the rest of my non-sleeping time cooking, cleaning, reading or writing.  Realistically, the thing to do if I just gotta have one is buy one of the nice examples at a blood-curdling price and enjoy it.

     But the thought of turning this poor, abused clunker back into a keeper is so very tempting.

The Great Crash, 1929

      I finished John Kenneth Galbreath's book about the stock market crash and, almost in passing, its connection to the Great Depression that followed.

     He closes with some interesting observations, listing major contributing factors.  At the top of the list, extreme income inequality.  The problem as he sees it is that the whims of a few major players can make an impression that the chaotic urges of thousands of lesser lights cannot -- unless they're following the lead of the big guys.  There'd been booms and busts during the era of the "robber barons" a few decades earlier and the phenomenon of extreme wealth for a very few came back even harder in the 1920s.  Look around: we've got that again.

     He follows that with "bad corporate structure," the kind of trusts and holding companies that concatenated during the boom years before the Crash, companies that existed only to own the stock of companies that also existed only to own stock and so on: while they amplified gains, they also amplified losses, so that when things went bad, they kept getting worse.  While that kind of thing is a lot less likely today -- and you can thank New Deal reforms and regulations for the reduced risk -- any novel financial instrument carries similar risk, as the sub-prime mortgage crisis awhile back revealed.

     "Bad banking structure" comes in for censure, and that got a post-Crash restructure, too.  Some of it has been rolled back.  Good, bad?  I don't know; ask an economist.  Ask three of 'em, and you'll get four different opinions. 

     Next, "the dubious state of the foreign balance," and Galbreath credits high tariffs with helping to create the problem.  They were not nearly as high then as they have become in the last few months.  Ouch.

     The stock market has "circuit breakers" these days: if prices start plunging, trading is suspended.  While that may sound like a cheat, one of the main reasons for it (past putting brokers in time out to ponder their actions) is to let the record-keeping catch up.  On multiple occasions during the 1929 crash, the decline and subsequent trading, sell-outs, bankruptcies, etc. got so far ahead of the data coming out of the stock market that nobody knew what was going on until hours after the close of trading; some people "lost everything" not once but multiple times.  They ended up in holes too deep to claw their way out of.  These days, the market can still crush you -- but it's a lot less likely to keep trying to wring out more afterward.

     We're certain to see abrupt dips in the stock market -- if not today (seems to be mildly up so far), then eventually; we're unlikely to have another Great Crash.  Unlikely does not mean impossible, and no matter how carefully a thing has been made foolproof, new and more ingenious fools arrive every day.  Have they once again become too clever for their -- and our -- own good?  Time will tell.

It's Too Nuts

     So, I'm online this morning and President has climbed onto the (flat and railed) roof of the White House Briefing Room because...well, nobody's sure.

     You can't make this stuff up, and multiple press outlets are undoubtedly busy sanewashing it because they don't dare call it crazy.  Or as the WaPo likes to say these days, "Lights out!"

Parade Of Clowns

     The most disconcerting element of the Sunday morning political talk shows was the persistent sound of sirens and shouting in the background of NBC's Meet The Press; I kept expecting police or soldiers or rioters to burst into the room, push Kristen Welker aside, make a hurried, largely incoherent announcement and fall back under fire.  Didn't happen; moderator, guests and panelists alike all ignored it with the determination of the prospective heirs of a wealthy, elderly great-aunt pretending her dire flatulence isn't happening.  I still don't know what the noise was about, though if I had to bet, I'd split my money between starvation in Gaza and general Presidential protests.

     Kevin Hassett continues to toady and smirk; he behaves like a tween-age boy passing a set of silent-but-deadly farts and letting his rich great-aunt take the blame.  Today, he thought he'd put one over by pointing at the normal review process for employment data as "evidence" of some sort of skullduggery.  Nope, sorry, won't wash; it's routine, and the numbers come from scads of scribbling statisticians, not one (now-fired) appointee.  It'll be interesting to see if they can find someone who can both understand the math and sugarcoat it for Presidential consumption.  Hassett's glee is in part motivated by his sure and certain knowledge that he's playing to an audience of one, and he thinks he'll always be able to play that one like a cheap harmonica.  ...It'll work until he blows it wrong.

     Over on CBS, Doctor Oz showed up, trying to add a spoonful of sugar to the Medicaid cuts.  It didn't go over nearly as well as any segment of his old TV show, and we know about the snake oil it peddled.

     All of these people -- and many more, throughout the Trump administration -- got their jobs by coming across well on TV.  Look, being on TV and not looking like a fool is a lot harder than it appears, but the only skill it proves is the skill of giving good television.  A narcissist who can't find the off button for his TV -- and would not use it if he could -- in charge of Executive branch is filling it with people who have two main skills: A) Being on TV and B) Flattering the boss. And he's steadily dumping people who bring him inconvenient truths, especially if they're not telegenic.  In the process, he's ascending a pyramid of fantasies, building it as he goes, a process that never ends well.

It's Not Easy

     There's a three-ring circus going on in Washington, D.C., and it is echoed in many state capitols.  It's hard to ignore it, but I can't take every morning to point out the latest crazy thing thing the nitwits -- and especially the Nitwit-in-Chief -- did.  He loves the attention, after all, and like wresting a pig, all it does is splash mud around.

     It's a big wonderful world out there, and even the best efforts of the worst people probably won't break it forever -- but it's sure going to leave a mess.