Guardrails

The Lunatic Left Wingnuts continue to lament for Trump V1.0. At least then, they say, there were some rational and sane adults in the room to keep Mad Dictator Don from blowing up the world. Trump V2.0 has none of those class. Or, so they lament.

But... is that true?

One can argue, as I am about to, that the guardrails will soon come into view. It's all a matter of self preservation.

It's by no means a coincidence that Mad Dictator Don is, at one and the same time, fixated on gold in Fort Knox and his personal crypto coin ($TRUMP). Here's the gag: as the Unitary Executive of the USofA, he can order Treasury to convert all the Fort Knox bullion into $TRUMP cypto. He can do it. The Gang of Six said he can. Who amongst his bitches is willing to see the USofA destroyed by such a whim? Who will be saved?

Thought For The Day - 28 May 2025

Earlier missives have offered up the notion that Mad Dictator Don's greatest wish was to carve up the Earth into Trumpland (Western Hemisphere, aka The New World) and Vladland (Europe and Imperial Mother Russia). Turns out, the Lamestream Media has finally figured it out. Some add in Xiland. Kinda makes sense, in a backassward sort of way. Xiland is bigger and strong, by a mile, than Vladland and would have no need for the approval of Mad Dictator Don. Hell, Xi may well intend to make Mad Dictator Don his bitch.

But... what better way to show Vlad, Xi, Orban, Erdogan and other tin-horn dictators that Mad Dictator Don really, really is a dictator, just like them. Share, and share alike. Not so great for the people of the world. May be we can all emigrate to Oceania. Well... not so safe either. If Orwell was right.

Grifters Will Grift - part the second

The headline reads "Trump Suggests Giving Trade Schools Money Taken From Harvard". Great idea: fill the coffers of all those sleazy for-profit storefronts. Alas, I taught in one for a year or so back in the 90s. The 'front men' lied to all those welfare moms about how much money they'd be making after taking this 'office computing' course. The machines were barebones back-room PCs with two (count 'em, two) 5¼ floppies. Multimate (ya gotta be olde to know that) and a bit of DbaseII.

Anyway, yet another way to syphon money from the poor (via Uncle Sugar) to the rich. The joint I worked at finally got closed down, when the Damn Gummint gave a rat's sphincter about this sort of thing.

Here's a Harvard Law Review!!! study of what Mad Dictator Don did during his first reign.

There's something to be said for the notion that knuckledraggers who hated regular school, and seldom went, should go to a regular college. But... that doesn't mean they should, once again, be fodder for grifters like Corinthian and the rest. Don't be shocked to see Mad Dictator Don see to its resurrection.

It Ain't Satire

Faithful reader may recall the coining (so far as I know) of "flesh robot" in an earlier essay. The point being that the very notion that manufacturing, in the Red Blooded USofA, is by definition, entry into a blue collar middle class is a pile of horseshit. Yes, there was such a blue collar middle class, made of largely sub-GED knuckledraggers (who, nevertheless, put a shiv in the back of the party that built that sort of middle class). But it wasn't anywhere near the bulk of manufacturing.

A thought experiment: why and how could a cohort of under-educated and unskilled laborers get comfortable wages? For a start, their employers have to have market mojo to, themselves, get above market moolah for the widgets they make. Adam Smith would be appalled. And so, of course, your average Evangelical Reactionary Radical Retrograde Right Wingnut would be, too. "Not a penny more than what I decide your pathetic hands are worth!!! God damn it!!!" And so forth.

But, we do know that there was a blue collar middle class of non-trivial size, up to about the Arab Oil Embargo of the 70s. How did that happen? The answer: countervailing power.

What the hell is that, one might ask? Well, if the employers have some amount of price-setting power, and they are faced with employees who are backed by a union with some price-setting power, then the two sides can work out an accommodation. And so it came to be in about the two decades following WWII. And, that was possible because the Powers That Be in DC were, by and large, still feeling that "we're all in this life together" glow. So, DC allowed unions to apply that countervailing power. It only really could work with large employers who operated, though they'd never admit it, oligopolies. Or, in other words, price-setting power.

But, in due time that glow of shared fellowship dimmed, and the CxO class came for their pound or two of flesh. Move production to fascist Red states (then known just as The South). When that didn't keep profits up enough, then Mexico. And so on.

And, still, the sub-GED class blamed the Donkey party for their fall, not the Elephant party which engineered it. We have shitler and muskrat^©dugugotw running amok just because the sub-GED class is way too stupid to see who's actually on their side. These morons have, for decades, voted for pols whose prime directive is keep them and theirs uneducated, unhealthy, and poor. Even now, with the "big, beautiful bill" laying waste to Red state interests, they still don't seem to get it. Ah, but Mad Dictator Don is laying waste to Harvard and any other school that isn't at least as far right as Project 2025. We'll show them thar pointy headed liberals what the real world is like!!!

So, now we get this report on the flesh robot phenomenon.

What does China offer that the United States doesn't?

Small hands, a massive, seasonal work force and millions of engineers.

Young Chinese women have small fingers, and that has made them a valuable contributor to iPhone production because they are more nimble at installing screws and other miniature parts in the small device, supply chain experts said. In a recent analysis the company did to explore the feasibility of moving production to the United States, the company determined that it couldn't find people with those skills in the United States, said two people familiar with the analysis who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Flesh robots by another name. In basketball there's the olde saying, "you can't coach height"; you can't make a short little shit taller. Who knew it was all about little fingers and the iPhone? Everybody knows Mad Dictator Don has tiny hands. May be he could earn a living making iPhones? If you've seen a video of modern circuit board assemply, it's all about robots, the machine version populating the board. What Apple has found is that people are cheaper than machines. At least for some tasks. People also have another advantage: you can dump them and quit paying them when demand slackens or the production quota is reached. You have to pay the machine no matter how many widgets it makes.

I Guess So

Another country heard from

"He did not develop it in the last 100 to 200 days," Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel, an oncologist who served as an adviser on the coronavirus pandemic for the Biden administration, said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." "He had it while he was president. He probably had it at the start of his presidency in 2021."

"I don't think there's any disagreement about that," added Dr. Emanuel, who noted that both Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush had reported being tested for prostate cancer.

Externalities - part the fourth

Once again, into the breech. Those damn externalities, which demand to be paid for. But by whom? There is a little known, outside of those moving into new housing developments in certain (approaching most) jurisdictions, war between the existing housing and new housing. Here is one report. While some will call it simply NIMBY, others, humble self included, say it's merely the proper way to fix externalities.

Turns out, the issue isn't limited to McManisions on Easy Street (gated, of course). It's been reported off and on since the bitcoin debacle, that some forms of compute tax the electric grid. And, some times, create noxious noise pollution. Here's a new report on the impact.

The report by Wood MacKenzie, an energy research firm, examined 20 large power users. In almost all of those cases, the firm found, the money that large energy users paid to electric utilities would not be enough to cover the cost of the equipment needed to serve them. The rest of the costs would be borne by other utility customers or the utility itself.

Growth extortion might be new coinage. But the employment associated with such data centers is nearly invisible; what's the benefit to the community?

But as Stephan Bisaha of the Gulf States Newsroom reports, data centers themselves create few permanent jobs.
...
In fact, when Apple created a $1 billion data center in North Carolina, the news stories reported that there were less than hundred permanent jobs created as a result.

That source of news is soon to disappear. Such reporting is Anti-American, doncha know?

The utilities "either need to socialize the cost to other ratepayers or absorb that cost — essentially, their shareholders would take the hit," said Ben Hertz-Shargel, who is the global head of grid edge research for Wood MacKenzie.

There's an olde saying in bidnezz: you buy a lot, you pay less per unit. It's why Wally World so easily runs local and regional retailers out of bidnezz. The Evangelical Reactionary Radical Retrograde Right Wingnuts are always, but always, on the side of big bidnezz. It will be tres interesting to see how they respond to Wally World's stated intent to raise prices in lock-step with Trump Tariffs. Will we earn a Trumpcession or Trumppression? Only The Shadow knows.

By The Numbers - part the eighty eighth

Are you as puzzled about Sleepy Joe just now being diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer? So am I. Here's the number

The overall accuracy of the PSA test for detecting prostate cancer is estimated to be around 50-60%.
...
Combining the PSA test with a digital rectal exam can improve accuracy to around 70-80%.

What's even more puzzling - after all those years being VP and POTUS with access to The Best Healthcare in the World, the cancer was able to get so far.

May be it's the Jewish space lasers from Mars that either convinced him to not get a finger up his sphincter, or the President's Doctor was an imbecile. His name is Kevin C, O'Connor. The innterTubes say he was doctor to both Biden and Trump (the latter for a while after the second term began).

Now, for the punchline: prostate cancer kills more men than breast cancer kills women. You can find many study results on the innterTubes. But... the one's I found added a caveat, of some humour: since prostate kills, majority, geezers it's less bad than breast since more women who die of it are years, if not decades, younger. And their lives are much more valuable.

Again, if you let your fingers do the walking through The Yellow Googles, you'll find reports, op-ed, screeds and such bitching that more is spent on breast than prostate.