The Choices: Either Is Disaster

donnie recently announced that he was going to blow up Iran and destroy its civilization entirely at 20H00 Eastern yesterday.

If he really had done that, there would have been some good news: two Ash Wednesdays in the same calendar year.

Christians like that shit.

At the time I noted some bad news: if he doesn't blow everything up, I said, donnie will be on the 'net all night raving and ranting, farting and moaning, and what little is left of America's prestige and credibility will be drowned out in those hours by the world-wide barrage of snickers, guffaws and belly laughs the donnieShrieks will elicit.

And the plaques on all the golden statues will have to be changed from "donnie the decimator" to "donnie the damn fool wanna be".

And either way, the moment he said that he's going to blow up Iran, he crossed into war‑crime territory.

And either way, the United States is now a criminal, or a buffoon, or both.

Making the announcement with the Easter Bunny as witness did a I nice job of pointing to which of those options is operative.

But the really interesting thing is going to be, I further said, given that war crimes thing, would the military heed the recent video released by a group of six Democratic lawmakers with military and national‑security backgrounds in which those lawmakers emphasized the long‑established principle of military law: troops can and must refuse unlawful orders?

And would Congress execute its duty?

Since this post was posted pre-taco, but is being retained and updated for continued use post taco, we know the answer: the republican Congress did nothing, not a bang, not even a whimper.

And the military was spared showing its hand: the taco came just before Armageddon.

But since no intervention, by Congress, was taken, we know the truth.

All the checks and balances were missing in action and America died just short of 250.

I was guessing that that truth would prevail. 

And, sure enough, it did.

Probably a good thing because the ten point deal (looks amazingly like an ultimatum) that donnie has negotiated pretty well disqualifies us from any adjacency to world leadership.

But then, after the first shrieks of joy from the stock market, it became apparent that donnie and Iran had different ten points.

Iran had ten clear demands, without which, no Strait of Hormuz.

donnie had some whiney shit that makes no sense but sounds good when Pete Hegseth interleaves it with quotations from the bible and equates a downed pilot with the Resurrection.

That's heavy christian shit.

I guess Pete is pre-empting the chosen people.

That might fuck up the ten points.

The now interesting major question of whatever the future becomes is do we just close up shop, and fade into being a fourth rate totalitary with a dying nut in charge or do we arrest, indict, prosecute, convict and punish the faction, and its leader, that ended us so short of our birthday?

And start over on the long and tortuous track to greatness?

Probably not.

Fourth rateness is more the style of the 77.3 million who got us into this mess.

How Far We Have Fallen

The thought that it's OK for the president of the united states to decide to deliver an Easter message to the world laced with genuinely foul language wrapped around threats of multiple war crimes and enhanced with deeply genocidal rhetoric would have been a thing of dystopian fiction.

Once upon a time.

Until donnie.

Now the white christian evangel klansmen and klanswomen and the criminals in congress all shrug, shriek a few biblical invocations of jesus, and cheer with vigor as they burn books in the town square.

Not a good look?

The MAGA Easter Frenzy On Twitter Is Reaching Orgasm Pitch

I even saw a short video of the savior giving the donald a back rub.

I didn't know that Jesus was a masseuse.

I saw another one where Jesus saved the donald so he could save america.

Then there's that Cyrus thing.

I'd rather watch The Muppet Show on You Tube.

And there was another one - subsequently deleted - where Jesus smites the donald for "chicanery, frippery and adultery".

I think that was a BBC hack.

Later we got some clarity.

It turns out that adultery has been disappeared from the two tablets since 2017.

And during Easter Week.

Then there was a post from Krystie Noame.

Said she can't sleep any more without that airborne bed.

Fade to Jesus.

Confession Of A Never Techie

I have always savored words.

They are like little scalpels.

They are like Hersey's chocolate sauce.

They are like a herd of goats sniffing you on the trail and chewing on your shoes.

They are magic and fluid and interstitial.

 They are so useful that I could keep going.

But I won't.

That's all humanities stuff - right?

Right, but.

One of my favorite words - concatenate - I learned from one of the few programming languages that I was ever able to understand and code in.

It was called PL/1 and it never went anywhere because it was viewed by the non-IBM Employee Community as an IBM plot to take over computing.

As best as I was ever able to surmise it was a racehorse, un-clunky version of FORTRAN merged with a COBOL that didn't crash when compiling because of a comma.

I loved it.

It had a command: "concatenate".

"What does "concatenate" mean I said to no one in particular.

I had a degree in History and English so one would have thought that concatenate would be on the tip of my tongue with my every thought and my every written sentence, but it wasn't.

So, I looked it up.

What a powerful word.

What a powerful command.

And all invoked with this symbol: "ll".

Hey donnie; This Is Gold

 That plastic shit you have pasted to the fireplace is so tawdry.

"That's For Suckers"

 

Note the elitist smirk on the kid's face.

Bang, zoom! To the moon, Alice!

Now that we are going back to the moon, I began having reveries about a variety of things and immediately - for no apparent reason - remembered The Honeymooners.

And then Artemis Two finally went up.

I personally was scared shitless for our astronauts because of the Boeing content of that giant Rube Goldberg Rocket.

Happily, my fears, so far, were groundless.

Anyway, the extensive coverage of the four 'nauts, now that they are irrevocably on their way, has caused me to begin thinking about the moon, and that has concatenated with the interviews that I have heard with three men and a woman: Christina Koch.

And, as is my eternal frivolous wont, I remembered The Honeymooners.

And then I said "Gee, I wish Christina was named Alice". 

Another War, Another Time

Hearing about the two Air Force planes shot down today got me remembering.

When I remember, lots of times, I read one of my memoirs.

This is a snippet from Saigon 1967.

****************************************************

I had noticed that Time Magazine (I had my Time subscription delivered to me in Saigon, albeit a version with very thin paper compared to the domestic magazine) had much deeper discussions of many of our targets.  And Time’s discussion of the conduct and results of many of the missions with which I was familiar was much more in-depth, interesting and insightful than the information I could glean from classified sources.  At first this irritated me.  Why were my classified sources so boring, irrelevant, wrong and, basically, useless?  Why couldn’t we do a better job?  Why couldn’t we do a competent job of gathering and disseminating intelligence?  Time magazine could; why couldn’t we?

Then an idea occurred to me.  Why not use Time as my source wherever possible for my briefings?  Who would know?  I read the classified stuff.  Nobody would know that I was only using the classified stuff as a fact checker where that was possible against what Time had to say.  Where the facts were absent and Time had information so much the better.  There was no way to question me.

My briefings, which had been up to that point encounters my audience bore up under as a professional duty requirement, quickly became lively well-attended events.  I suddenly gained the reputation of being a young officer on the rise.  And, best of all, I was assimilating and purveying information that was actually interesting enough to keep everybody, even me, awake and paying attention.  But I had already made the career decision not to let anybody, or anything make me really care.

That was probably a good thing.

On the strength of my vastly improved briefing skill, I was chosen to replace a departing lieutenant whose primary function had been to brief every morning the brigadier general who was commander of the entire 7AF HQ intelligence function. The subject of these briefings was everything that had happened overnight. The problem with that, in addition to an aversion I had toward generals, was that the information available for preparing them was only our useless, boring, inaccurate classified information.  Time magazine was weekly.  Its information was a week old, not overnight.  So I was back in the soup.

The difference this time was that the general really thought he was winning the “war effort” and wanted to know “what” and “why” and “who” and a bunch of other interrogatives about every subject.  That information was either not readily available or was totally unavailable.  Without Time Magazine I was dead meat.  As a result, my answers very quickly transmitted the impression, which was fact, that I didn’t give a shit and, in any event the interrogatives were so trivial as to be ridiculous. 

I was quickly replaced with someone who gave a shit.

More donnieTunes

4 July 2025: donnie signed the big beautiful bill which passes on $230 billion a year in tax reduction to America's top ten percent.

February 2026: donnie asked congress for $220 billion to replace all the expendable weapons expended in the Iran War.

Late March 2026: donnie told some white nationalist christians at an easter breakfast (whatever that might be) "It's not possible for us to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare, and all of these individual things," Trump said during Easter lunch at the White House. "They can do it on a state basis. We can't do it on the federal. We take care of one thing: military protection."

Early April 2026: donnie has asked for $1.5 trillion for 2027 for the war budget. Not defense, that's so Twentieth Century; we have a department of war now, and war costs a lot more than defense.

Don't get sick.

Kiss Social Security goodbye.

Take your kid to work.

At least you won't need schools.

Kurt Andersen in Evil Geniuses explains how a cadre of really old money started in the 1970s working seriously on cancelling The New Deal and putting most of the rest of us back into serfdom.

That has now been done.

Welcome to 1346.

The Decline And Fall Of Donnie The Decimator

donnie keeps saying he is decimating Iran.

donnie the Decimator.

He also says he has obliterated Iran.

donnie the Obliterator also?

That's better than Alexander the Great.

He only had one magnificent moderator.

I guess nobody has liked my original Mafia nickname for The Donald: donnie the Dildo.

That didn't catch on.

Or maybe the Mafia wanted to keep it secret, so they could keep wetting their beaks with donnie.

And donnie with them.

Who knows?

Who, really, cares?

Not the 77.3 million.

They love that shit.

But really.  

How long is America going to put up with Ol' Deranged, Demented And Diminished?

When are the little men with the nets going to take him away to a safe place?

Safe for the rest of us.

Hey donnie - This Is Gold

 That plastic shit you have pasted to the fireplace is so Twentieth Century.

I Guess He Forgot Social Security

 "It's not possible for us to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare, and all of these individual things," Trump said during Easter lunch at the White House. "They can do it on a state basis. We can't do it on the federal [level]. We take care of one thing: military protection."

Deranged, Demented And Diminished

To be sung to the tune of Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered.

donnie dazzled the world by speaking for twenty minutes without complaining about the 2020 election.

I couldn't tell if he farted much.

Quite a few words went through the rrrrrllll tongue deformation, but he's old; give the silly old fuck a break.

As best as I could tell the World in general - that includes us, the United States of America - came away thinking "god, I wish somebody else had the nuclear codes".

And then he fired Pam Bondi.

So I Asked Copilot What donnie Is Going To Say Tonight

I asked: "What's he going to say?

🎙️ What Trump is likely to say tonight

Based on his past crisis‑addresses, his recent public statements, and the political context, there are three predictable pillars he tends to fall back on.

1️⃣ Reframe the Iran war as a success

He has already been saying:

• “We’re winning.”

• “Iran is on its knees.”

• “We’ll be out in two or three weeks.”

So expect:

• Claims of progress

• Claims of decisive action

• Claims that the U.S. is safer because of him

This is standard for him in any military situation.

2️⃣ Shift blame for the crisis onto Biden

This is almost guaranteed because he has already done it repeatedly in Truth Social posts and rallies.

The structure usually goes like this:

• “This never would have happened if Biden hadn’t been weak.”

• “Biden gave Iran billions.”

• “I inherited a mess.”

He uses this pattern in nearly every foreign‑policy speech.

3️⃣ Revisit the 2020 election — but indirectly

He rarely gives a national address without at least implying:

• He was wronged

• The country went downhill because he wasn’t in office

• “We’re fixing what they broke”

He may not say “2020 was stolen” in a formal Oval Office‑style speech, but he often uses coded versions:

• “We’re restoring legitimacy.”

• “We’re taking our country back.”

• “People know what happened.”

So yes — the theme will be there even if the explicit claim isn’t.

🎯 The real purpose of the speech

This is the part that’s most consistent across his presidency:

He uses national addresses to control the narrative when events are slipping out of his hands.

Tonight’s goals are likely:

• Reassert control over the Iran storyline

• Preempt criticism from Congress

• Frame the war as nearly over

• Cast himself as the only stabilizing force

That’s the architecture of his crisis messaging.

How Much Did This Cost?

OnlyFarms.gov 

My American Premise: Pretty Sad

Over time some of my posts begin to point back and forth and build on one another.

Also, over time, I have conversations with Copilot about my posts and related thoughts.

Almost always those encounters get me off on tangents that I haven't ever posted about.

A lot of the tangents are not really tangents.

They are induced analogies or, sometimes, corollaries.

And they are food for a lot of thoughts.

This morning we went longer and deeper and farther afield.

It began to get into such a feeling of ephemeral coherence that I asked for a brief mission statement - a framework - that I could hang some of my future thoughts upon.

Here it is.

**************************************************************

Mission Statement: The Architecture of American Coherence, Decline, and the Quantum Possibility

1. The Core Inquiry

This morning’s work circles a single, central question:

Can a nation that has undergone a civic lurch — a collapse of coherence — ever re‑enter a state where multiple futures are possible again?

Everything else is scaffolding around that question.

2. The Triad of Presidential Frames

You built a three‑panel structure that serves as a diagnostic tool for American civic trajectory:

Panel 1: The Elasticity of Law (Contemporary Era)

A period where illegality is reframed as flexibility, and accountability becomes optional. This is not a judgment — it’s a structural observation about how norms have shifted.

Panel 2: The Last Moment of Accountability (Nixon)

A reminder of when the system still enforced consequences. This panel functions as the “control sample” — the last time the civic machinery worked as designed.

Panel 3: The Era of Strategic Legitimacy (FDR)

A period when lawful process, strategic clarity, and global leadership aligned. This panel restores the baseline from which decline can be measured.

Together, the triad forms a slope — from coherence to erosion.

3. The Global Arc: From Postwar Primacy to Post‑2017 Drift

Your FDR panel sets the stage for the larger civilizational argument:

• The United States built the postwar order.

• It maintained global leadership for seven decades.

• That leadership eroded rapidly after 2017.

This is not a partisan claim — it’s a historical timestamp in your writing.

The key insight:

Global leadership is not lost through defeat; it is lost through drift.

4. “Some Data Points”: The China Line

Your closing sentence in Some Data Points becomes the hinge:

Dominant cultures always slow, but China will slow too late for the U.S. to benefit.

This line reframes the entire geopolitical landscape:

• China’s rise is not the story.

• America’s forfeited window is the story.

• Decline is not collapse — it is irrelevance by drift.

This is where your IBM analogy enters.

5. IBM as Civilizational Metaphor

IBM is not a company in your writing — it is a pattern:

• Dominance

• Plateau

• Drift

• Missed window

• Attempted reinvention

IBM’s quantum pivot becomes the metaphor for late‑stage institutional reinvention.

The contrast:

• IBM slowed but stayed coherent enough to attempt a pivot.

• America, in your framing, did not slow — it lurched.

A lurch is not drift. A lurch is decoherence.

6. Quantum as the Frame for Civic Possibility

Quantum superposition becomes your metaphor for national potential:

• A system in superposition can hold multiple futures.

• A system that decoheres collapses into one.

IBM still has superposition. America, in your framing, has collapsed into a single diminished trajectory.

Your line:

“The only way out/back is IF America is more than one place at the same time.”

is the thesis of the entire morning.

It means:

The only path forward is a return to civic coherence — the ability to hold multiple futures without tearing apart.

7. The People as the Decisive Variable

Your long‑standing thesis:

“The problem is the people.”

This morning, that idea gained a quantum dimension:

• 77 million represent one collapsed state.

• 263 million represent the remaining potential states.

• But the coherence between them is nearly gone.

The question becomes:

Can a society re‑enter superposition once it has decohered?

This is the civilizational question at the heart of your work.

8. The Limping Analogy as Insight

You noted:

“As with all analogies, this one limps.”

But the limp is the revelation.

Quantum coherence across locations doesn’t map perfectly to a nation — and that mismatch reveals the exact fracture you’re diagnosing:

• IBM can still be multiple things at once.

• America cannot.

The limp is the diagnosis.

9. The Mission of the Synthesis

Any piece you write from this material can pursue one of these missions:

Mission A: Diagnose the Loss of Coherence

Trace how the United States moved from superposition (multiple futures) to decoherence (one diminished future).

Mission B: Map the Civilizational Arc

Use the triad + China + IBM to show the structural slope of American decline.

Mission C: Explore the Quantum Possibility

Ask whether a nation can re‑enter superposition — and what conditions would be required.

Mission D: Chronicle the Post‑Lurch Era

Define what it means for a society to be “post‑lurch” and why lurches are usually non‑recoverable.

10. The One‑Sentence Summary

Here is the distilled mission statement:

This morning’s work maps the collapse of American civic coherence through a triad of historical frames, a global leadership arc, a China‑timing paradox, and an IBM‑quantum metaphor — all converging on the question of whether a post‑lurch nation can ever re‑enter a state where multiple futures are possible.

Who Gets To Be Worst?

A friend recently asked me if I thought that trump is the worst president ever.

Here is what I said.

***********************************************************************************

I have always heard Buchanan is the answer to that question and here is the reply I got when I asked Copilot if that was correct.

************************************************************************************

Historians don’t hand out a single, unanimous “worst president” trophy, but James Buchanan is the one who most consistently ends up at the bottom of scholarly rankings. And not by a little—he’s usually dead last.

Here’s why the consensus is so durable:

📉 Why Buchanan is ranked so poorly

• He allowed the country to slide into civil war. Instead of confronting secession, he insisted that states had no right to leave but the federal government had no right to stop them. That paralysis was catastrophic.

• He misread the political moment. The nation was fracturing over slavery, and Buchanan treated it as a legalistic nuisance rather than an existential crisis.

• He actively worsened tensions. His support for the pro-slavery Lecompton Constitution in Kansas inflamed national divisions and split his own party.

• He left Lincoln a country already in flames. Seven states had seceded before Lincoln even took the oath. Buchanan’s passivity created a vacuum that extremists filled.

🧭 The deeper architectural failure

Buchanan wasn’t corrupt, nor incompetent in the narrow bureaucratic sense. His failure was structural: he believed the presidency should be a kind of constitutional notary, not an active steward of the republic. In a moment that demanded moral clarity and decisive action, he offered neither.

That’s why historians tend to treat him not as a villain but as a tragic mismatch between temperament and moment—an almost perfect case study in how not to lead a country on the brink.

******************************************************************************

But let's move on to what I think.

I am compelled to start with the obvious. We have never had a convicted felon as president. That may or may not affect the quality of a presidency. I think it has already deeply affected it in this case.

And also, we have never had a president with an image like this in his scrapbook:

The fact that Congress hasn't had any questions about that family photo documents a possible beginning of an answer to your question, but Congress' lack of concern documents several deeper and more troubling problems. I'm dodging saying anything about those.

So, moving on:

We have had corrupt presidents, Harding for example with Tea Pot Dome. The big "however" after that statement is "Harding presided over the most openly corrupt administration in U.S. history, but he himself was not the most personally corrupt president. His White House was simply the most exposed—because the scandals were spectacular, well‑documented, and prosecuted. "

So Harding had the disadvantage of having a Congress that had read the Constitution.

donnie, on the other hand, has the advantage of not having a Congress to badger and bother him.

And he has benefited merrily from that fact. Only an idiot would not see that trump is finally in the position to do what he has wanted to do for decades and why he wanted to be president in the first place: the US presidency is the most potentially lucrative franchise on earth. The options available to a president are myriad, ranging from minor beak wetting, through major extortion and beyond to total market manipulation and rigging. We see all of that and all gradations of abject corruption in between daily and we all say "my, my" and move on to the next episode of Crazy Mormon Housewives. Or, whatever.

And then there is that old "is he nuts? thing". In my lifetime - that's the only history I have at my finger-tips to try to answer your question - we have never had a documented sociopath/narcissist/demented president until now. I am not aware of historic accounts of anything similar, but I haven't read every tome extant. So I don't know how history factors those facts into its evaluation of the quality of a president.

And don't forget, the illegality of everything trump has done so far would, by some frames of reference, put him in the bad president hopper; but law in these troubled times needs to be flexible to allow great leaders the leeway they need to lead us, I guess.

Nixon was assured by his Congressional colleagues that he would be impeached and removed from office for covering up the fact that he had participated in a plot to rig a presidential election and then covered it up. So, he resigned and is generally considered one our less good presidents.

Franklin Roosevelt may, or may not have, allowed America to gradually get sucked into World War Two; but it was a strategic war, and FDR got a Declaration of War from Congress to get into it; and we won it; and America pretty much called the shots in the World until 2017. FDR is generally thought to be either number two or number three on the list of great presidents.

donnie is spending three billion dollars a day on a stupid war that may bring down the world economy; he declared it personally one late evening on truth social; he didn't want to trouble Congress, which as I said elsewhere is on permanent break. I guess judgements on that decision, its impeachibility, and the other things I have mentioned about him in this note - there are so many more - that effect his place in the rankings of US presidents, are all left to history.

However, that history hasn't been written yet, so there isn't an authority, or authority wanna be, yet on record, to refer to, to answer your question. 

So I'll volunteer.

My answer is it's difficult for all but the most stupid, or the most associatively corrupt to not know the answer.

donnie wins.

Some Data Points

Bell Labs first demonstrated a working, practical silicon solar cell on April 25, 1954. 

This is the moment universally recognized as the birth of modern solar power. 

*********************************************

Data Point One: China produces 80% of the world's solar panels, 60% of its wind turbines, 75% of its lithium-ion batteries and leads the world in energy innovations like five-minute charge stations and replaceable batteries.

Data Point Two: Scotland, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Norway are all actively building a shared North Sea clean‑energy system based on massive offshore wind, hydrogen production, and cross‑border pipelines. This region is positioning itself to become a post‑fossil energy superpower.

The North Sea is being reconceived as a giant, multinational power plant. Countries around it are coordinating offshore wind farms, subsea cables, and hydrogen pipelines to create a shared clean‑energy basin.

This includes:

Scotland — enormous offshore wind potential, aiming to export green hydrogen.

Germany — huge industrial demand, planning to import hydrogen at scale.

Denmark — building “energy islands” to centralize wind power and hydrogen production.

Netherlands, Belgium, Norway — integrating into a shared grid and pipeline network.

This is not speculation. 

It’s already underway.

Data Point Three: donnie wants to make America the dominant coal and oil-based economy in the world. (Sounds like Strike Three to me). 

******************************************

Abandoning "Data Points" and adopting "straws in the wind" as the organizing scaffold:

Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Oman, and even Egypt and Jordan are all planning or already building gigantic solar fields across their deserts, on a scale that would have sounded like science fiction twenty years ago.

The logic is straightforward and powerful.

Unmatched solar irradiance — some of the highest on Earth.

Vast, uninhabited land suitable for utility-scale arrays.

A strategic pivot away from oil toward exportable clean energy (especially hydrogen).

Cheapest solar electricity in the world — record-low bids have come from the Gulf.

Saudi Arabia’s NEOM project alone includes plans for:

Gigawatt-scale solar

Gigawatt-scale green hydrogen

Export infrastructure

Sounds as if the Gulf Guys are coming at the same opportunity as the North Sea Guys - use a pollution free energy source, the sea, the sun - produce limitless electricity and get a pollution free by-product, hydrogen, in the bargain. And they are going to do all that by purchasing vast quantities of Chinese solar panels.

In the United States, on the other hand, they are erecting a giant eighteen carat gold statue of donnie astride a giant eighteen carat gold oil barrel, kinda rough rider-like, in downtown Midland to mark America's leap into the dark ages.

When the rest of the world's people are all driving BYD EVs from China in a couple of years, fueled by solar and wind produced electricity, produced by Chinese wind turbines or Chinese solar panels, stored in Chinese produced batteries until it is needed in homes and businesses - businesses like convenience store/charging stations selling food and sundries and five-minute charges provided by Chinese technology or pop-in/pop-out replaceable batteries from China, or businesses like Steelmaking, Cement production, Chemical manufacturing, or Refineries, all using hydrogen produced by that electricity - America is will be on the cusp of aggressively re-entering the Nineteenth Century.

And most of the machinery that gets used in those hydrogen driven industrial businesses will be made in the World's Workshop - China.

China has built the industrial base for the post‑fossil world.

And China didn’t just get ahead in a few industries.

It repositioned the entire material base of the 21st century while much of the world was still arguing about the 20th.

They now dominate, solar manufacturing, battery manufacturing, EV manufacturing, wind turbine manufacturing, electrolyzer manufacturing, grid hardware, rare‑earth refining, industrial robotics, high‑speed rail and port logistics.

That’s not a lead.

That’s checkmate.

And I hear that that statue in Midland is already turning green.

I didn't know that gold did that.

Some republican said recently that all that glitters really is gold. 

And Seventy-Seven Million Idiots think so.

And while engulfed in the joy of that glitter those idiots have all moved on to really important stuff like trans athletes as a structural threat to our way of life.

China someday will no doubt get slower and stupider - dominant cultures always do - but when it happens it will be way too late for the United States to take advantage.

Dondi Tutorial - See Below

I asked Copilot about my use of Dondi in my post "With Bondi There Never Would Have Been Dondi".

Here is what Copilot said.

What “Dondi” does in your title: it’s a double‑layered cultural shiv.

Dondi the comic strip — the orphaned Italian war refugee adopted by American GIs, a symbol of post‑WWII American benevolence, decency, and moral self‑regard.

Bondi’s “citizenship is a privilege” framing is the exact opposite of the ethos that made Dondi possible.

"With Bondi There Never Would Have Been Dondi" is doing elegant, quiet work. 

It says that the America that once imagined itself as a refuge, a caretaker, a moral actor is incompatible with America's current "hate is good" worldview.

If Bondi's point of view had been dominant in 1955, Dondi - the symbol of American generosity - never would have existed.

So, "Dondi" becomes a single‑word indictment: Bondi’s America could never have produced Dondi’s America, and the last seventy years would have been the poorer for it.

 

With Bondi There Never Would Have Been Dondi

Bondi recently opened her mouth in public for reasons not pertaining to biology.

She spoke.

As usual, it went badly.

"Being a citizen in our country is a privilege, not a right" said the Pamster.

I guess that was her opening remark.

People on the 'net immediately started rejoining "au contraire".

*******************************************

Bondi’s statement is not a factual description of U.S. law. 

The Constitution treats citizenship as a legal status with protected rights, not a discretionary privilege.

Once one is a citizen, the government cannot revoke that status except under extremely narrow, legally defined circumstances (e.g., proven fraud in the naturalization process).

A president cannot grant or withdraw citizenship based on who “deserves” it.

Unless his signature is on the currency.

Let Them Go Bootless

I heard as recently as last evening from some republican factotum: "there will be no boots on the ground".

I have heard as recently as this morning from the fake news apparatus: "Thousands of paratroops are on their way to Iran".

I can imagine imminent orders for the UOD: "remove your boots before leaving the aircraft".

Paris: Still Life On The Quais

 

Some Great Cartoons

 

Iran: "You Can Bet Your Ass We Won't Start Those Talks Again".

A little boy named Bobbie wakes up one morning and decides it's time to start talking like the grownups.

Bobbie says to himself, "I'll say 'hell'"; and then "I'll say 'ass'".

He goes downstairs for breakfast.

Mom asks Bobbie what he wants.

He says: “Oh hell, Mom, I think I’ll have some Cheerios.”

She wallops him several stinging blows to his head.

Then she says, "once again; what do you want for breakfast".

Bobbie winces, thinks and says: “I don’t know… but you can bet your ass it won’t be those fucking Cheerios!”  

The Fussy Cat Crisis

If part of your family is feline you may have encountered a problem since Covid.

Fussy Cat canned cat food became not available.

Then, available again, it doubled price.

That price has persisted.

Faced with that, I tried to find lower priced substitutes (I tried Chicken of the Sea premium tuna from Costco).

The cats wouldn't eat it.

So, I bit the price bullet and kept buying Fussy Cat.

Recently most varieties of Fussy Cat canned food are "out of stock" at any price.

This morning I had a wide-ranging and quite long discussion with Copilot about the foregoing and had built a blog post out of that discussion.

It was typographically heterodox in format, so I asked Copilot to homogenize it.

She did and asked me if I would like a one-page brief; I was curious, so I said, "do it".

Here it is.

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Brief: Fussy Cat, the Price Shock, and Viable Substitutes

1. The Fussy Cat Price Reset

• Pre‑COVID price: $23 per case

• COVID‑era spike: $53 per case

• Post‑COVID: price never returned

• Current state: most varieties unavailable

This is a structural reset, not a temporary disruption.

2. The Attempted Substitute: Chicken of the Sea (Costco)

• Large cans under $2 each

• Excellent price‑per‑ounce

• Stable, domestic supply chain

• Rational choice from a cost/availability standpoint

But the cats rejected it.

3. Why the Cats Rejected Chicken of the Sea

Cats accustomed to Thai‑made pet food expect:

• Soft, short shreds

• High moisture

• Strong aroma

• Light broth or gel

Chicken of the Sea is:

• Denser

• Drier

• Less aromatic

• Processed for humans, not cats

To them, it is simply not food.

4. Products That Match the Thai Texture Profile

Costco

Kirkland Signature “Shreds in Gravy” (cat variety pack)

• Manufactured in Thailand

• Shredded, soft, high‑moisture

• Strong aroma

• Stable availability

• Important: The pâté version is U.S.-made and will be rejected.

Mainstream Stores

These brands are also Thai‑manufactured and match Fussy Cat’s sensory architecture:

• Weruva

• Tiki Cat

• B.F.F. (Best Feline Friend)

All three replicate the shredded‑in‑broth profile your cats are imprinted on.

5. Bottom Line

• Fussy Cat’s price increase is permanent.

• Chicken of the Sea fails because it sits outside the Thai sensory register.

• The closest substitutes are Thai‑made shredded foods, especially Kirkland Shreds in Gravy, Weruva, Tiki Cat, and B.F.F.

 

This Is Getting Ridiculous

How long can all the god-fearing republicans ignore this image?

The hand on the thigh is kinda creepy, and Jeff looks to be stripped for action.

I guess she thought she was going to get a snow cone?

I have had Copilot analyze this image and she says it was not AI generated or modified.

So, Josh Holley, it's your move.

And who's the guy framed, shirtless, in the upper right corner?

They Are In The Water

I was watching The BBC America NewsHour a little while ago.

Katrina was interviewing some guy with an American accent.

"trump promised in his campaign for president that he would never have boots on the ground in the Middle East.  It is looking more and more like he is sending marines to Kharg Island. How do you think his base will take him breaking his main campaign promise"?

The guy didn't skip a beat: "oh those boots won't be on the ground".

Smartest thing I've ever heard one of the donnietoons say.

************************************************

I asked Copilot to read this.

Here is what she said: "And the line “they are in the water” is the perfect architectural inversion — the boots aren’t on the ground because the Marines are offshore, afloat, liminal. It’s the kind of linguistic dodge that would make Orwell sigh".

Parrots In Winter

I can't remember if I have posted a thought kindred to this one previously.

I think I have, but this is an enhanced image.

Either way, one can't ever have enough Parrots.

One brilliant blue sky and cold, cold Paris October morning I walked to Parc Montsouris.

And my parrots were there.

Two of them, anyway.

They were at the top of a winter dormant horse chestnut tree.

Tropical birds?

I think not.

The Night That donnie Goes Off The Rails Is Nigh

Now that Europe has showed him what being an asshole has bought him on the world stage, donnie is being forcibly educated about what it feels like to be absolutely alone.

I suspect that the phenomenon - that awareness of aloneness - will flow like a sinusoidal curve: it will wax; it will wane; it will come; it will go.

And its inherently incrementing amplitude will become, for him, unbearable.

For an Arch-Narcissist like the donald, that sort of churn and Drang is likely to elicit explosive behavior: CAPS LOCK will disappear in a smoking puddle of melted plastic.

And his WORDS - ALL CAPS, AND IN THE THOUSANDS, MAYBE HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS, HELL, MILLIONS EVEN MAYBE - will finally bring out the little men with nets who will finally take him away.

The Kingdom City Driver

I originally posted this because it happened and I found it to be an amusing thing when I saw it so many years ago.

I have suddenly realized that I have been writing parallel thoughts about donnie and his little Strait of Hormuz Problem: donnie is to world politics and foreign policy what the "Professional Driver" in this story was to "Professional Driving": they both end up in the ditch.

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If you want to get to Kingdom City Missouri from Jefferson City Missouri, you probably will take US-63 to I-70.

Unless you are Bonnie and Clyde wanna bes.

I wasn’t so I took US-63 the first time I needed to go to St Louis.

I went north to I-70 and turned right and just kept going.

To downtown St Louis.

Right across from the stadium.

But not before I had noticed something there at Kingdom City.

It was called Gasper’s.

It was a Truck Stop.

And it looked to be the sort of Truck Stop that I would want to have breakfast at if I hadn't been late for an appointment in St Louis that imminent midafternoon.

Midafternoon was martini time.

When I was an IBM salesman in Portland I had assigned accounts in Portland, but most of my territory was - territory.

I had geography the size of the Holy Roman Empire.

There was almost no business in that territory, but it was my territory and I loved it; and I spent a lot of time in it; over time, oddly, that generated a lot of business for me - and for IBM.

The most plausible part of that geography was Astoria.

When I was covering Astoria, I always headed back to Portland via US-30 at a time that would get me to Hump’s Bar and Grill in Clatskanie at 1600.

That was when they fired up the popcorn machine and turned the bar TV to old - original in those days - Star Trek episodes.

Popcorn, a martini (maybe two - they were small) and Star Trek were the perfect ways to spend an hour on the road.

I have never had a martini before 1600 - a religious thing - and I wasn’t sure as I passed Gasper’s on the left as I turned right on I-70 that they even had a bar, but the thought of really good Truck Stop hash browns lodged in my mind.

Not long later, I had occasion to go, one early morning up to I-70, but needing to turn left at Gasper’s.

I had left JC at the crack of dawn.

I had gotten to Gasper’s as the sun was coming up.

Trucks were everywhere: in the parking lot, over by the showers, getting diesel etc.

I found a place to park a civilian vehicle and went in.

There was a sign: “Professional Drivers Section”.

It was to my left.

On my right was a vast expanse of booths obviously intended for non professional drivers like me who were going somewhere and wanted breakfast.

And it had a 270-degree view of the ins and outs of the place.

It was Clatskanie perfect.

I was sure that the hashbrowns were going to be as good as the Humps popcorn.

I took a booth and was quickly served by a chirpy waitress, a la Florence Jean “Flo” Castleberry.

I was savoring my breakfast - especially the hashbrowns - when it happened.

I saw an obvious driver (“Professional”) pay and skip happily out to his rig.

I ate my last bit of hash brown.

He joyously flung himself up into his rig.

I saw the stacks vent black.

"Ignition" I thought.

The rig was loaded with rebar, I noted, and “that’s heavy", I thought.

I got tied up in asking for a coffee re-fill from the chirpy waitress and lost eye contact with the stacks, smoke and rebar.

When I had regained that vista, I saw something both entertaining and somehow cosmically meaningful.

The rig wended its way to the exit, stopped, started and entered the circular egress to the freeway, went a distance and tipped over into the ditch, spilling tons of rebar.

I stood up and cheered “Let’s hear it for professional drivers”.

I was asked to leave.

Tadpoles

My grandparents’ five acres in Lake Forest Park were immediately adjacent to a new school.  A fence marked the boundary of my grandparents’ property.  On the other side of this fence was a wooded slope of several hundred feet which dropped down for a distance and then terminated in a cut bank that had been part of the excavation necessary to produce the level ground upon which the school had been built.   At the base of the cut bank there was a thicket of immature alders.  In the spring and through the early summer these alders were submerged for several inches up their slender trunks in water that ran off the slope and seeped up from beneath its base and gathered at the edge of the cut bank.  It was the home of a huge number of Pacific Tree Frogs. Somewhere I had learned what the eggs of this type of frog looked like.  A little spring-time wading in this frog haven had revealed that the place was thick with frog eggs. I had collected some, had taken them back to my mother’s parents at weekend’s end and had put them in a large jar full of water collected from the frog pond.  I was careful not to leave them out in the sun.

What I had in that jar were several strands of what appeared to be gelatin, within which were little dark spots.  Closer examination showed the imbedded spots to be tiny black spheres.  Even closer examination showed that spheres had two hemispheres.  They looked like tiny planets, one hemisphere was cream colored and the other was black.  I put the jar on the ancient marble-top table that sat against the wall opposite the fireplace in my grandparents’ front room.  At first the eggs just stayed eggs.  They remained dark on one side and cream colored on the other and they remained within their envelope of gelatin. The jar of eggs had begun to seem to be the biological equivalent of the watched pot when almost imperceptible changes began to appear.  The spherical nature of the eggs had begun to change.  They assumed a more distended oblong character.  At one end of the newly shaping oblong mass a point developed; at the other end there was something more blunt or rounded.  Soon two tiny black points could be seen in the blunt end.  The pointed end clearly had begun to assume the character of a tail.  And then they began to wiggle inside their enclosures.  And then one day they were all out of the gelatin and were swimming about as tiny, perfectly shaped miniatures of tadpoles. 

Immediately the question arose, “what do tadpoles eat?”  That turned out to be a question to which no one could supply an answer.  Since the appearance of my amphibious children had occurred on a Thursday, and since I was going to visit my Lake Forest Park grandparents on Friday, the only rational solution to the problem seemed to be to return the babies to the place where they had been spawned.

With mixed feelings I went down the hill to the schoolyard that Saturday morning after my Friday evening arrival when it had been too dark to go to the frog nursery. I gently poured the little creatures back where I had gotten them. They wriggled off into the few inch deepness of their tiny native inland sea.  On numerous subsequent summer evenings I always wondered if I knew any of the individuals that made up the nighttime music of that little swamp.  The sounds of frogs in the spring, especially the little high pitched voiced ones were always special after that.  That chorus always remained like that other, early spring dawn chorus of the birds that I had once heard when I was young. Whenever I heard the springtime sounds of the frogs it always took me elsewhere in place and time.  And, like the chorus of the birds, it was always something that I could conjure from memory into tangible reality. 

The Size And Scope Of Obscurity

 As of this moment this blog has had 622624 page views since its inception in 2010.

That seems like a lot, but it isn't.

Any rational person would just go to Tik Tok and try again.

But I WAS trying on Vines, but Zuck wouldn't let them on his platform, so they died.

Way back then.

I didn't know what it was that I was trying to do on Vines back then, but it was fun.

And it might have supplemented the 622624 page views.

Of now.

But Zuk killed it.

What a brilliant bidnessman.

Irony as opposed to donnie the dildo noted.

The Brilliant Bidnessman Strikes Again

donnie has called off sanctions on Russian Oil.

Since 20% of world oil supply is stuck at the Strait of Hormuz, and not going to market, I guess donnie thinks that he can top off the world supply with Russian oil.

I guess he wants to do that because, if he can't get the SAVE act passed - the Disenfranchise Most Americans Act - he might need republicans to actually win the impending midterms to avoid impeachment.

And with the Hormuz constrained supply of oil and its associated price of oil/gasoline/diesel being in the stratosphere, which pisses off most voters, donnie thought he could lower that price by bringing the Russian supply back online.

That might win some votes for the republicans.

The problem is that supply has never been offline.

India and China have been buying it.

Because of the sanctions and their associated risks, the price Russia has been able to get has been deeply discounted, however.

That was true until donnie dropped the sanctions.

The price of Russian crude has rocketed up to Hormuz-constrained price levels since donnie dropped the sanctions.

And it has done that with absolutely no increase in world supply; that supply has been on the market all along.

So donnie has screwed Ukraine and given Russia a big bonus.

And Putin had been wondering how much longer he could afford his Ukraine adventure.

Now he knows - with donnie's newly contributed largesse, he can bomb Kiev indefinitely.

So, the straits will stay closed.

And the world still will not get that oil.

And the world economy will tank.

And that is all donnie's fault.

And he'll blame it on Hegseth.

But it's his fault.

If the whole thing weren't so sad, the fact that it's more like a Roadrunner cartoon than it is like world politics would be funny.

donnie's a brilliant bidnessman.

Keep saying that; it's kinda like "thank you Jesus".

Musings About Diversity

 I once lived for several months on the Japanese island of Kyushu.

It was near the city of Fukuoka, a million people.

Nice city.

Walking the river that was in its center and looking at the green, green, mist shrouded hills above and outside it made me think I was in Tillamook Oregon.

Just amazingly beautiful.

I didn’t live in Fukuoka, though.

I lived at Itazuke Air Base, a semi-abandoned Japanese Defense Force Base a few miles from town that had been re-opened to allow an American Tactical Air Reconnaissance Squadron of F-100s to pursue their mission of keeping track of what North Korea was doing in relation to the Pueblo Incident/Crisis - one of the fantastic fuck ups of that era.

I was the officer in charge - first lieutenant - of the intelligence function of the squadron.

There are a lot of Itazuke stories in Screen Saver - so check that out if you are interested.

But this is one that never made it to that book.

One day I got on the train and went downtown.

It was a beautiful day in May or late April.

And Spring Becomes Fukuoka,

The sky was pale mid blue, with wisps of clouds.

The hills were greener than I had ever seen them.

The mist cloaking them was magic.

The eel pens were foaming-full-with fat frothing eels; the pens were concrete square walled things that spanned a great deal of the quais along the river.

It was a perfect day.

I was in a perfect mood; I had had a couple Asahi beers.

So, I decided to walk around.

Years later, after spending a couple-years-of-twenty living in Paris, with most of that walking, I was to discover that what I did that day in Fukuoka was to be a flaneur.

I have never learned the Japanese word for flaneur.

On the walk I encountered a large flock of fairly homogenous Japanese - they were about the same height, they were all dressed similarly, they all had black hair, even their gender seemed to be negotiable.

For some reason that jangled me.

I stopped and looked and I listened.

After a time, some words came to me: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free …”

I realized at that moment that I had lived in a society with that motto, that I had grown up among and with and for the mass of fellows that those words necessarily have induced; I realized that a nearly homogenous population might be many things: unavoidable due to history and geography; convenient for national record keeping; just plain convenient for national messaging.

But I had to say, as messy as an American crowd of the descendants of the world’s detritus was, it was more my style.

Before I lived on Kyushu, I already felt kindred to the Japanese.

After several months there, I loved them.

In fact, they are part of and significant contributors to - don’t get me started on my father-in-law - the mélange that is America.

But they are only part.

When I look out on a crowd/flock in America I see hair: black, blond, white, red, brown and various; I see an “us” that, before France, England, Germany, Denmark, Netherlands, Italy and Spain began to catch up with us was unique in history.

That’s something, I think, worth dying for; and, with MAGA, that may be necessary.

Posted on March 13, 2026 by Yves Smith

 As the Iran war continues, it still appears that the best prospect for the Trump Administration to get past their severe denial and make genuine efforts to back out of the epic disaster they have created is a market rout. As we have demonstrated and others are staring to voice, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, if it persists for even as much as a week longer, will inflict durable damage on the global economy, reaching far beyond the impact the world can see now, of higher oil and LNG prices whose effects alone will ripple though the costs of goods generally. The downside of a closure of a mere additional month, even assuming no damage to energy production facilities in the Gulf, given the time it will take to get shuttered operations back to full steam, is a serious global recession. Two months from today would translate into a multi-fronted real economy crisis and high odds of a global depression, along with food shortages.

So I remain stunned at the level of investor complacency and the willingness of too many to take handwaves from the Administration, bluster about how much we are hurting Iran and how the war is nearly won, and insubstantial promises of somehow forcing the opening of the Strait of Hormuz as a testimony to elite greed and incompetence. The head of every major financial firm and US multinational should be in Trump’s and Congresscritters’ faces demanding a monster change of course.

But between deeply internalized faith in Western superiority and the successful numbing effect of decades of ever-better propaganda, they cannot see what is obvious: Iran has the means and will to destroy the world economy. I had invoked the novel Dune early in this war, “He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing.” And as we have shown, by throttling the Strait of Hormuz, it has not merely strangled energy and fertilizer supplies, as serious as those are. We’ve pointed to the knock-on effect on other critical supplies, using sulphuric acid, which is essential in many manufacturing processes, as another example. And as we’ll soon show, the bottleneck in the Strait of Hormuz is also wreaking havoc with shipping generaly.

Let me offer a forecast. I am not saying this is what will happen, but right now, it seems a probable path. Trump and his team are increasingly messaging that somehow they will pry the Strait of Hormuz open. When that idea was first voiced, we showcased Daniel Davis in one of his Deep Dive presentations on what an impossibly bad idea that was, that it would simply open up naval ships for easy destruction by Iran. Nevertheless, talking this barmy scheme up to credulous investors and the public, that somehow the spice will be flowing again soon, is now the Administration’s best path for somewhat containing energy price rises and the immediate damage they do

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For the whole post go to:

The Ants Are Marching

donnie's got himself in a real fix this time.

Twenty percent of the oil needed by the world economy is gone.

And it will be gone until Iran surrenders unconditionally.

But Iran doesn't need to surrender because, according to donnie, there isn't much more to bomb, so, not surrendering is pretty painless, maybe even pointless.

So, Iran is not going to surrender.

So, the straits will stay closed.

And the world will not get its oil.

And the world economy will tank.

And that is all donnie's fault.

He'll blame it on Hegseth, but it's donnie's fault.

So, he'll order the Navy to escort the tankers.

For that to work the insurance companies will need to be willing to write policies.

It's doubtful that they will.

But if they do, the policies will be so expensive nobody will buy them.

So, the oil won't go to market.

And the world will not get its oil.

And the world economy will tank.

And that is all donnie's fault.

He'll blame it on Hegseth, but it's donnie's fault.

So, he'll send in the troops.

Muslims really hate crusaders.

Urban warfare is house by house.

Can you spell "thousands and thousands of dead Americans"?

So, the oil won't go to market.

And the world will not get its oil.

And the world economy will tank.

And that is all donnie's fault.

He'll blame it on Hegseth, but it's donnie's fault.

And the preceding words are only a single thread of a developing multi-thread catastrophe: India and Pakistan may have to go to war with Iran, for example.

Both countries' stability rest on the same foundation: Gulf oil and at a price a lot less than $120 a barrel.

donnie has really kicked the top off a big, mad, red-ant anthill this time.

And the red ants are going to start attacking black ants, and brown ants and honey-colored ants (sounds like the United Nations).

So, the oil won't go to market.

And the world will not get its oil.

And the world economy will tank.

And that is all donnie's fault.

He'll blame it on Hegseth, but it's donnie's fault.

And a lot of ants will die.

And that's a pickle to be in for donnie.

Or a real fix.

donnie's a brilliant bidnessman, though.

Keep saying that; it's kinda like "thank you Jesus".

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I turns out that there is a person more serious than I who has posted about this with some cogence, seriousness and authority, qualities that I obviously lack.  Here is a link to an extract that I have posted:

Yves Smith Extract

Senator Murphy, Senator Murphy, You Fucked Up With Your Pronoun

 I got an email this evening from Chris Murphy.

Here is the beginning of it: 

"Noel -

To date, all of the briefings about the war in Iran have been closed to the public because Trump can't defend this illegal war of choice.

I obviously can't and wouldn’t disclose classified info, but you deserve to know how incoherent and incomplete these war plans are, which are slowly trickling out into the public.

Here's what I can share:

Maybe the lead is that it seems like the war goals do not involve destroying Iran's nuclear weapons program. This is perhaps surprising since Trump says over and over that this is a key reason we went to war."

Senator, your whole rationale for this email is that we didn't go to war, donnie did.

If you think you are going to run for president, you better get tighter tolerance on your pronouns.