A few years ago, I came across this 1979 special performance by Dolly Parton and Carol Burnett. Watch them interact. They are wonderful. As they talk, they write a song, then invite the audience to join in. It is funny, warm, and happy. I think I have watched it 10 times.
“No One Picks Like a Nashville Picker Picks.”
It’s wonderful to watch two stars at the top of their game.
Now that Trump is in full megalomania mode, the possibilities are endless.
As threatened, Trump has issued an executive order renaming Lake Ontario, the smallest of the Great Lakes. Now it will be “Lake America.”
He previously renamed the Gulf of Mexico, calling it “the Gulf of America.”
He said:
“If you think about it, we have a gulf and we have a lake, now all we need is an ocean,” Trump said during the signing ceremony, comparing the move to his administration’s renaming of the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. “So maybe we’ll have to change the name of the Atlantic and/or the Pacific.”
The Atlantic Ocean? The Trump East Ocean.
The Pacific Ocean, The Trump West Ocean.
Or why not name them for his children? The Donald Trump, Jr. Ocean. The Eric Trump Ocean.
But what’s left for Ivanka? The Indian Ocean?
As for Tiffany and Barron? Name the Swiss Alps for Tiffany, and the Danube for Barron. Or the Rhine.
The possibilities are endless.
All glory to the Trump family. Until 2029.
Here is a country song about Trump’s most avid associate, Stephen Miller. Miller is the chief architect of Trump’s immigrant deportation policies. He has pushed Homeland Security to reach a goal of one million immigrants deported each year.
Those who are arrested and detained are not “the worst of the worst.” They are not “rapistd and killers.” Though it may be that some of those arrested are criminals, many are hard-working people who are raising their children and contributing to their communities.
Why doesn’t ICE focus on the undocumented immigrants who are in prison and leave law-abiding people alone. Congress should create a path for those who entered the country illegally to work towards citizenship.
Deport the worst of the worst. Deport murderers and rapists. Encourage and help good people to participate in our society and to become loyal citizens.
David Dayen is the executive editor of The American Prospect.
He suggests that the saga of the Reflecting Pool is a metaphor for the Trump administration’s incompetence, mendaciousness, corruption, and unwillingness to accept responsibility. This, with its tales of vandals dumping fertilizer and slitting the paint with a knife, may be a lasting metaphor for the Trump era.
The Reflecting Pool and the killer rabbit
Donald Trump’s second term is being defined for the public in real time.
One day in April 1979, Jimmy Carter was out fishing alone in a Plains, Georgia, pond during a brief vacation away from the White House. What he described as a “swamp rabbit” started swimming toward the boat, teeth bared and “hissing menacingly.” Carter, separated from the Secret Service, was on his own. He wielded his paddle and swatted in the rabbit’s direction; it changed course.
None of this would have been more than an amusing anecdote Carter told staff if an Associated Press reporter hadn’t gone out drinking with White House press secretary Jody Powell a few months later, in the dead of a Washington summer. (Powell later said it was over a cup of tea; OK, sure.) Powell let slip the killer rabbit story, and the reporter, having nothing else to cover in August, wrote it up. The Washington Post put it on the front page (“Bunny Goes Bugs: Rabbit Attacks President”), and fashioned a parody Jaws movie poster to illustrate the story, with the moniker “PAWS.” (Do rabbits have paws? Never mind, we’re on a roll.) This was a big media story for at least a week, and after Carter lost the presidency, Ronald Reagan’s team found a picture of the incident taken by a White House photographer and released it, giving the story more legs, or paws.
The story became something Washington reporters just love: a synecdoche. Though nothing really happened, Carter getting attacked by a killer rabbit became a symbol of a feckless presidency, the paddle splash symbolic of his flailing amid global crises like the Iran hostage situation. Carter was seen as weak, or at least that was the red meat served up by Reagan’s campaign. And the killer rabbit fit that narrative, and was easy enough for the public to understand.
We’re seeing that dynamic now in real time with Donald Trump and the green Reflecting Pool. This isn’t the most important story, or the biggest example of Trumpian corruption, incompetence, humiliation (it took a bigger body of water, the Strait of Hormuz, to do that), or conspiracism from this president. But it’s rather easy to understand, and there’s an ever-present visual reminder that cannot be explained away.
You have the sudden DEFCON 1 imperative to fix the pool, demanded by a president focused on the wrong priorities. You have the Trumpian boasts that nobody had remedied this national disgrace in 100 years, but he alone could do so. You have the no-bid contracts for a total cost of over $16 million and counting, with more than twice the usual profit margin, for cleaning, filtration, and a layer of “American flag blue” paint on the bottom meant to ensure a consistent color. You have part of that, a $1.7 million no-bid contract, given to John J. Cafaro, a Trump donor, Mar-a-Lago neighbor, and understudy in a high school musical theater production of The Sopranos. You have the paint inevitably peeling off and the algae returning to its traditional perch, with Trump literally unable to drain the swamp. You have the president, manic about being defeated by microscopic aquatic organisms, claiming that dastardly Democratic vandals unloaded fertilizer into the pool and sliced up the paint, insisting that there’s visual evidence of this without releasing it, sending out law enforcement to arrest the perfidious saboteurs (one of them a three-time Olympian who was just an onlooker), and threatening lawsuits against the media for not reporting these facts.
Literally everything wrong with Trump 2.0 is revealed in this story. He’s fiddling with the bottom of the pool while Rome burns, while inflation rises and precarity builds. He’s paying off cronies with our money to make things worse. And he refuses to take responsibility for failure, instead blaming anyone and everyone else with a sea of lies.
Barack Obama’s administration did indeed spend twice as much to beautify the pool and faced the same result. But this project is now a symbol of Trump’s broken presidency. And once the public makes that connection, no amount of bluster will beat the charges. Trump’s toxic reputation is increasingly and perhaps permanently linked to a slimy green pool.
Oh well. At least there aren’t any rabbits roaming in it.
If there were a rabbit in Trump’s pool, it would have died from the highly toxic hydrogen peroxide that workers added to the pool to kill the algae.
John Merrow, long-time education journalist for PBS, has become a humorist in his retirement. In this post on his blog, he gives many references to the creative uses of 86-47:
Some of Trump’s allies and supporters say that the expression “86-47” is a call to assassinate President Donald J. Trump. As you no doubt are aware, Trump’s Justice Department has persuaded a grand jury in North Carolina to indict former FBI Director James Comey simply because he posted an image of seashells organized to read “86-47.”
However, a scant amount of research turns up dozens of examples of “86-47” that have nothing to do with killing Trump. However, quite a few “86-47” references do involve Trump and his administration.
One involves Jesus. That’s right, Jesus Christ had his own “86-47” moment when he expelled 86 money-changers from the Temple, and the oldest was 47. Will this uncomfortable historical fact awaken Trump’s (supposedly) Christian supporters who have yet to notice that Trump and his family are running a 24/7 grift that has brought them billions? Don’t bet on it!
Here are some more non-Trump ones:
Now let’s talk about the Trump Administration.
“86-47” applies to Trump’s infamous ICE, because 47% of ICE new hires have IQ’s of 86 or lower. It could be worse: suppose 86% of ICE had IQ’s of 47 or below?!?
When he was 47, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, who brought the charges against Comey, was arrested for going 86 miles an hour in a school zone.
The Trump Administration’s severe cuts in foreign aid for nutrition and health care are causing an estimated 86 deaths every 47 minutes; most are children and pregnant women. Take a bow, Trump and Marco Rubio, for your “86-47” accomplishment.
The undistinguished podiatrist who wrote multiple evaluations of Trump’s supposed bone spurs that allowed him to dodge the draft for several years was 47 when he wrote the first diagnosis. He died mysteriously in ‘86. An odd “86-47” moment.
The draft slot that Trump should have filled was, over the years, filled by 86 young men, 47 of whom were wounded, some fatally, in VietNam. Take a bow, Trump, for that “86-47” moment.
The Epstein Files have at least one “86-47” moment that may involve Trump. According to unconfirmed sources, Epstein boasted that he and a few of his friends had ‘interesting, complicated, and memorable’ sex with 47 different young girls 86 times during the month of June, 1989. Was one of those friends DJT?
One more “86-47” moment, this one in the Oval Office. In early April the 47th President of the United States told 86 lies in a mere 47 minutes, on subjects ranging from the 2020 election, windmills, solar power, Gavin Newsom, Mexico and the Wall, Iran’s nuclear capacity, Hunter Biden, mandatory gender-altering surgery for children in Blue states, Jeremy Raskin, immigrants eating cats, his intelligence, and his sexual prowess.
That particular “86-47” moment says to me that we can and must “86-47” Trump in the forthcoming elections, which we can do by supporting Democrats, supporting the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and other organizations that are working to protect the vote, and by making our voices heard.
Perhaps it’s time to “25th” our neo-fascist, corrupt President by invoking the 25th Amendment. JD Vance couldn’t possibly be worse, could he? (written with fingers crossed).
Bruce D. Baker is one of the nation’s foremost experts on school finance. He is now a Professor of Teaching and Learning at the University of Miami.
His blog is SchoolFinance 101. He recently mused about how Dr. Seuss would explain school finance and equality of educational opportunity.
He wrote:
Alas – I’ve found a use for OpenAI – Converting my deepest theoretical musings on school finance into Seussical prose:
Oh, the Funds You Will Flum!
(A Zany Zoodle on Equity, Adequacy, and Opportunity Gum)
In a flibber-flap land of the Schollaroo Schools,
With Sneetchy-like districts and Yoppity rules,
There lived some young learners (some tall, some quite small),
Some had lots of Zoom-Zooks… some nothing at all.
Now the Board of Big Thinkers (in hats three feet wide)
Said, “Fairness! We’ll fix it!” and puffed up with pride.
“We’ll give EVERY school just the same little stack—
Same dollars! Same books! Same chalk in each pack!”
But the Glumguzzle Kids from the Far Fizzle Vale
Said, “That sameness you’re selling is starting to fail!
For we’ve got more needs than the Zazzberry crew—
Same stuff doesn’t make us equal to you!”
“Oh fiddle-dee-FOOF!” said a Number McNerd,
Adjusting his graphs (which were wildly absurd).
“If fairness is sameness, then sameness we’ll do!”
But the data went BLORP! and the theory fell through.
Then a Wise Whiffling Wonk (with a long curly tie)
Said, “You’re asking the wrong kind of ‘what’ and of ‘why.’
Don’t stare at the STUFF—don’t just measure the pile—
Ask what kids can do at the end of the mile!”
“Set goals!” cried the Wonk. “Let outcomes be king!
A common big target for every small thing!
If all kids must reach the same Zibble-Zoo height,
Then fund them so EACH one can climb it just right!”
“But WAIT!” cried the Snargle from Budget Bay Bog,
“You’re forgetting the Blibbers! The Froons! And the Fog!
Some start way behind on the Great Learning Track—
You can’t just say ‘equal!’ and pat your own back!”
So they huddled and muddled and scribbled in ink,
With equations that wobbled and charts that would clink.
Till they stumbled—KERSPLOOSH!—on a curious rule:
“To be truly fair, you fund not by the school…
But by NEED!” they all shouted. “Yes, NEED is the key!
More Zorks for the Borks! More help for the Wee!
Unequal inputs (now isn’t that neat?)
Are how equal outcomes can finally meet!”
Then in strutted Adequacy (round as a bun),
Saying, “I’ve got a shortcut! A quick way! A fun!
Just set a low bar—call it ‘good enough done’—
And declare every system a marvelous one!”
“For school’s not a puddle—it’s more like a race,
Or a ladder, or jungle, or zig-zaggy place!
Where where you land matters (oh yes, it is true),
For jobs and for futures and who gets what who!”
“Oh NO!” cried the Wonk, with a wobble and squeak,
“That ‘good enough’ thinking is terribly weak!
If some kids zoom high on a rocket of flair,
While others just hover… that still isn’t fair!”
“So adequacy?” asked a small nervous Nerp.
“Is it useful at all, or just policy burp?”
“Why yes!” said the Wonk. “But don’t let it shrink—
When budgets go BLINK! and revenues BLINK!
That floor must stay sturdy, not sink in the goo,
Or opportunity slips right away from your view.”
Then they built a GRAND GIZMO (with levers and springs),
That balanced these tricky, conflicting things:
One lever for NEED (pull it higher for some),
One lever for GOALS (so all kids can become),
One lever for BASES (tax gaps big and wide),
So poor little districts don’t lag far behind.
The machine whirred and clanked—CLACK-CLUNKETY-CLACK!—
Spitting fairness (at last!) from the back of the stack.
And the children? The children went ZOOMITY-ZEE!
Climbing their ladders as far as could be!
Not all in the same way, not all at the same pace,
But each with a real, fighting, fair-starting place.
So remember, dear reader (with eyebrows or none),
This tale of the Funds You Will Flum when begun:
Don’t trust simple sameness—it’s often a trick.
Don’t settle for “adequate”—that’s far too quick.
Set bold common goals, but fund smartly indeed—
And tilt all the dollars in favor of NEED.
For a system that’s fair (in this wibbly world stew)
Must be stretchy and thoughtful and slightly askew—
A bit Seussian strange, but precisely on track…
Or the whole thing goes SPLOOP!
…and we’re right back to whack.
Humorist Andy Borowitz praises Donald Trump for his tribute to the Unknown Podiatrist.
QUEENS, NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report)—In what has become a Memorial Day tradition for him, on Monday Donald J. Trump laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Podiatrist.
Trump made his annual pilgrimage to pay homage to the heroic doctors who issued bogus diagnoses to ensure that their privileged patients never answered the call of duty.
In an emotional tribute, Trump thanked the fallen foot specialists who bravely risked their medical licenses so that others facing military service could be free.
Choking back tears, he said, “They gave everything so people like me could give nothing.”
Actually, Trump’s podiatrist is not unknown.
The New York Times published an article in 2018 stating that the daughters of the Trump podiatrist claimed that their father, Dr. Larry Braunstein, had given Trump the bone spur diagnosis to help him evade the draft. It was a favor to his landlord, Fred Trump, Donald’s father.
The podiatrist, Dr. Larry Braunstein, died in 2007. But his daughters say their father often told the story of coming to the aid of a young Mr. Trump during the Vietnam War as a favor to his father.
Not long after the Trump released a video of Trump interrupting Stephen Colbert’s final show and throwing Colbert into a dumpster, a Twitter member posted a corrected video.
https://x.com/paulleyticks/status/2058235678048268648?s=43
The corrected video begins the same way, with Trump walking onto the set of Colbert’s final show and attempting to throw him into a dumpster.
But in the new version, Colbert turns and throws Trump into the dumpster and slams it shut.
The dumpster is labeled “PEDO DUMPSTER.”
Almost everyone knows the zany rhyming of Dr. Seuss. Bruce Baker applied Dr. Seuss’s special blend of wit and rhyme to explore the topic of school choice. It’s very clever! And a good explanation of why the public good promotes well-being for everyone, not just the private goods that benefit consumers. Bruce Baker is chairman of the Department of Teaching and Learning at the University of Miami and one of the nation’s leading authorities on school finance.
He wrote the following parody of a Dr. Seuss poem:
In the town of Ka-Boodle by Lake Sneetchy Creek,
The folks all paid taxes each month and each week.
For schools and for sidewalks and fire trucks so red,
And libraries full of good books to be read.
But then came the Chortlers from Voucher Von Vee,
Who shouted, “That money belongs to each wee
Little child with a backpack! It follows them round!
Just stuff it in pockets and spread it around!”
“The money’s the CHILD’S!” cried the Bellowing Band.
“It does not belong to the schools or the land!
Just hand every parent a sack full of cash,
And schools can all scramble and boomity-crash!”
Now the Grickle-eyed Mayor scratched hard at his chin.
“That’s not how public goods work, my dear kin.
When taxpayers gather their dollars in pools,
They build mighty systems — like hospitals, schools.
The money’s not owned by one youngster named Ned
Who doodles green Yoppets and sleeps in his bed.
It pays for the buses! The pipes! The big roofs!
The science lab beakers! The gymnasium hoops!
The playgrounds! The band room! The boilers downstairs!
The nurses and counselors helping with cares!
And some of these things were bought long years ago
With debts that will linger through sunshine and snow.
So taxpayers all — even old Uncle Zed,
Whose children are forty and mostly bald-headed —
Still pay for the schools because everyone gains
From communities filled with smart citizens’ brains!”
“But what about choice?” cried the Chortlers once more.
“Shouldn’t each family shop school like a store?”
“Ah yes,” said the Mayor, “but schools are not socks.
They’re not jars of pickles or purple mail-box locks.
A public good works when folks plan it together,
Through rainstorms and hard times and wild Wumbus weather.
If every last dollar just fled with each child,
Whole systems would wobble and grow rather wild.
You still must heat buildings and run every route
Even when one little Who-zit skips out.”
The Chortlers grew quieter. Some scratched their knees.
One murmured, “Public goods aren’t private fees…”
And down by Lake Sneetchy, beneath truffula skies,
The townsfolk grew slightly more thoughtful and wise.
For schools are not gadgets to auction or trade.
They’re promises communities carefully made.
And taxes, though grumbly, when pooled with some care,
Can build things no single small person could bear.
Things are looking bad these days. We have a rightwing lunatic as President who thinks he’s a king. We are entangled in a war with religious fanatics who are gleefully tearing down the global economy by closing passage through a crucial, narrow waterway. We have a Congress that is supine and subservient to our Mad King. Prices of everything are spiraling up because of aforementioned war.
Time for some cheerful news! Watch this brief clip made by the four astronauts aboard Artemis 2, which has already gone further into space than anyone else. They passed the old record of near 250,000 miles, and they will see the dark side of the moon. That’s happening about now.
They are having a good time.
Diane Ravitch's blog 