21 IX 2026: Trump and monumentality

Trump seems determined to leave his name on buildings and create new monuments in D.C. For some reason it all reminds me of the Governor William J. Le Petomane Freeway in Blazing Saddles. 

Trump should bear in mind the ancient practice, called damnatio memoriae in modern literature, of excising from inscriptions the names of thoroughgoing scoundrels and tyrants. We will need a patient clean-up committee to clear away all of Trump’s droppings.

Looking ahead, I wonder what plans Trump has made for his tomb (assuming he will die like everyone else, and not be made a god by the Republican Senate). Will he be buried in his Library? Will it be sufficiently monumental? Or will he create a separate mausoleum for himself, his wives, and his offspring? And, are we to assume that we will have to pay for it?

15 IX 2026: Haven’t we heard this before?

Headline from apnews “Trump calls AI risks a ‘hoax,’ says there is a ‘SICK conspiracy’ against AI and data centers” It would be amusing to total up all the accusations that Trump has called a hoax. Indeed, hoax is one of his favorite words, and more often than not the word is used to describe something true that Trump needs to pretend is untrue. I wish also that we could “follow the money” in Trump’s resistance to regulating AI. It’s hard to believe that he is taking this stand without some people of the “Epstein class” paying him to do so. Trump is the doddering, insane tool of some morbidly greedy men who are as indifferent to the welfare of the United States as Trump is.

12 IX 2026: Natalie the Nanny

Observers and co-workers are struggling to describe the relationship between Donald Trump and Natalie Harp. Ms Harp is many things to Trump; she fulfills a spectrum of needs. But if we are to posit a single job description for her, she is a nanny caring for a special-needs child. She helps conceal his incontinence and work around other ailments, the most obvious of which is his pitiful lack of self-esteem. This may seem paradoxical, for Trump is well known as a monument to megalomania. But this sometimes comic megalomania is his way of coping with the self-contempt that was instilled into him by his father and that he constantly renews. So Natalie is on hand to keep him clean and wind him back up with litanies of praise to neutralize his self-contempt.

24 VIII 2026: The cost of revenge

I wonder if anyone is keeping track of the amount of taxpayer money is being wasted on Trump’s vendettas. He pushes his DOJ to prosecute his “enemies.” That’s silly enough, be we have to pay his DOJ. With the right data, one could assign an arbitrary hourly wage to all involved in these bogus cases, count up the hours devoted to Trump’s fantasies, and then come up with an imprecise but very indicative figure of how great is the waste.

So you have Russel Vought in the Office of Management and Budget virtually destroying our government in order, he says, to save money, while Trump pisses away who knows how much on his entertainments and monuments and vendettas.

18 VIII 2026: Trump and the Tar Baby

Our President’s personal war on Iran reminds me of the story of Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby. The Rabbit takes offense that the Tar Baby does not return his greetings. His browbeating the Baby yields no result, and so he moves on to make a series of threats. Finally, in a temper, he follows through on the threats, throwing punches and kicks into the Tar Baby. The Tar Baby is unmoved. But the Rabbit finds himself stuck to the Tar Baby hand and foot and cannot escape his predicament. The sinister Brer Fox eventually frees Brer Rabbit from the embrace of the Tar Baby. Now who is going to get Mr. Trump and the United States unstuck from Trump’s War?

14 VIII 2026: Stephen Miller’s cattle cars

I’ve read a report that ten huge airplanes for which we paid nearly half a billion dollars are rusting away on a runway somewhere. Homeland Security/ICE purchased these planes for use in deporting what they hoped would be hordes of illegals, but this scheme seems not to have worked out. So we’re stuck with 1/2 billion dollars worth of aircraft for which (I pray) we have no use.

These airplanes are the jet-age revival of the cattle cars the Nazis used to deport people to the concentration camps.

13 VIII 2026: The Israeli Lobby

“And after all, says John Wyse, why can’t a jew love his country like the next fellow? 

Why not? says J.J., when he’s quite sure which country it is.” 

        from Ulysses

Through the last months it has become apparent that the United States is now almost a satellite of Israel. How can this be? The various organizations and persons that make up the Israeli lobby have at their disposal enormous amounts of money and use it to purchase candidates and policies that must uncritically affirm the nationalism of the country that is in effect supplying the money.

11 VIII 2026: Appalling and all too predictable

Rep. Nancy Mace, after her defeat in a bid to be the Republican candidate for Governor in South Carolina, is trying to breathe life into her moribund political career by raving against Muslims about whom you can be sure she knows nothing at all. Oh, the bimbo’s zeal!

The President says he’s not focusing on Iran so he can concentrate on domestic issues. Having done permanent damage to the United States overseas, he will intensify the same work at home.

Anglo-American reactionaries are yucking it up about Jason Arday, product of Cambridge’s near-fatal case of liberal guilt. Academic appointments are, of course, usually political in some way, but we should not be forced to play make-believe about unqualified candidates.

30 VII 2026: Trump a chronic winner

It occurred to me that there is a link between Trump’s mania about the 2000 election and the war against Iran. Trump lost the 2000 election, but immediately claimed that he had won it. Why? because it is not possible that Trump loses. Trump has won the war against Iran because he says so, again, and again, and again. Why? again, Trump cannot possibly lose. Just another idiosyncrasy of our Looney Leader.

20 VII 2026: “Do you hear that whistle down the line?”

Today one of Nature’s wonders ambled through our backyard. I don’t mean the beautiful deer that live in the neighborhood. No, I’m referring to Union Pacific R.R. locomotive no 4014, one of UP’s legendary “Big Boy” locomotives, the largest steam engine currently in use. It is an articulated locomotive with the wheel arrangement 4-8-8-4, and it is the apotheosis of articulated steam.

It had been on display yesterday at St. Louis’ Union Station, and today began its journey to the West over what was originally the right-of-way of the Missouri Pacific R.R., the oldest railroad west of the Mississippi, a line that happens to run through the end of our yard. A phone call let us know that it had passed through Webster Groves to the East of us, so we started listening for it to come along our way after passing through Kirkwood. Soon, we heard its bell ringing as it made its way up to the top of Kirkwood Hill where our house is located. Then, as it moved closer, we could hear that steam-engine sound, and then it passed by, a giant taller than the passenger cars it was pulling. It passed in the twinkling of an eye, but, after a short time, we heard its distinctive three-chime steam whistle blowing for a nearby grade crossing. 

This was a transcendent experience. And I beg God to bless the U.P. and the crew that maintain and operate Big Boy.