Alas

     One of the problems with figurative language is that you set out to describe a regime composed of cranks, crooks and grifters, and instead find yourself insulting noxious, loathsome toads, a largely harmless class of amphibians who benefit us by consuming deleterious insects.

     Linguistic flights of fancy can be great fun, but bad and dangerous people are what they are; comparing them to other dislikeable things only obscures the evil acts they enable and commit.

     If prominent members of the Trump maladministration would commit themselves to consuming at least their own weight in harmful insects every year, I might grudgingly find they were of some use.  This, however, is unlikely; they are indeed useless excrescences at best, like warts or skin tags.

About That Economy

     Okay, it's just one set of hoofbeats.  Might be a horse, might be a zebra.  But it doesn't seem like a good sign when a major candy distributor files for bankruptcy shortly before Halloween.

     Sure, SNAP benefits have been shut off by the shutdown (there is, of course, a lawsuit.  Wonder if you can cook that up and eat it?  Nope).  Sure, ACA subsidies are expiring and there's no plan to bring 'em back; if you got your health insurance through the Feds or one of the state exchanges, the price is going up, and possibly by quite a lot.  And there's a whole big mess around Federally-subsidized flood insurance, too.  But candy at Halloween?  The people who usually couldn't afford it still can't; this is result of people who once could deciding they'd better not.

     Oops. 

Tool-Geekery

     It's expensive enough that I can't recommend it unless you really need one -- or have money to spare.  But it's as neat a combination of useful tools as I have encountered, and comes packaged in a carrier that keeps all of it together.

     I'd better start at the beginning: for a couple of decades, I have carried and used a Wadsworth Falls Manufacturing Company Mini-Ratchet set.  They use a proprietary 1/4" spline drive, and come packed in a neat little box with a wide array of bits, a screwdriver handle, extension, a couple of tiny spin handles and a clever small ratchet with 12° indexing.  It was a small company, and I think it changed hands a few years ago; their website shows most things as "out of stock" these days and there's no contact information now, but they keep the copyright up to date.  Their big set includes 44 bits and easily fits into a cargo-pants pocket.  It is also around $180.00 now.

     Or it would be, if it wasn't always listed as not being in stock.  And it is handy, with almost every driver bit you might need.  There was a time when you'd call up the order department and the nice people there would ship the stuff in advance of your check, if they remembered you from previous purchases.  (Yes, that was a long time ago.)

     Stumbling around on a big sales site, I discovered Wera Tools has the next best thing, their "Tool-Check" line.  Sorted out into Imperial and Metric sets, with a number of interesting variants, the basic versions have 37 bits, a small screwdriver handle, a short (locking) extension and a nice small ratchet with 6° indexing, packed into a neat little carrier with places for every piece.  They use standard 1/4" hex drive (with an adapter for the sockets).  Prices run about $100; a little more for the larger sets and a little less for the smaller ones.  It has most of the driver bits you might need, and since they use standard drive, you can add more.  (The set sensibly includes two #1 Philips and three #2 Philips, the most commonly use-worn types, and you can always stow the spares elsewhere and sub any added bits in their places.)

     Wera's even got a modular system that will let you add and expand the carrier with other small sets.  It's decent quality; give me a few years to stress-test my set and I'll give you a full report, but I don't expect any bad surprises.  You might know Wera from their Kraftform ergometric grip, one of the most widely-imitated driver handle designs in the world.  I'm not saying they've been watching some of you guys work, but their line includes screwdrivers that can be used as chisels without wrecking them, and beefed-up ratchet handles with striking surfaces intended for hammering.*
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* I have to admit that at my work, we've referred to linesman's pliers as an "electrician's hammer" for years.  A good set of Kleins will stand up to this kind of abuse, but the company doesn't encourage it.

Milestone

     I did something today I have done only four times before in 38 years of my job: I put a new transmitter on the air.

     In this case, it's new only to my immediate employer, having already served for five years elsewhere in the corporation.  But it's new to us.

     Depending on how you look at to, they have only had four or five different transmitters since the station first went on the air, and I am the only person who has worked on all of them.  I was the last person to operate their first transmitter, an all-tube 1950s behemoth that took a little coaxing to get working again (and every second of tuning it up was an adrenaline-heavy thrill ride).  Now I'm the first person to put their newest transmitter on the air, a device so rich in surface-mount components that there's no troubleshooting most of it down to the level of individual parts: most problems, you trace back to whatever subassembly has gone wrong, and order a new one.

     The previous transmitter, in analog and digital configurations, served for over 29 years, and it's still a backup.  The 1950s giant lasted for 32 years, counting backup service and that record will probably be broken by the one I just shut down.  Except for a few hours here and there -- the day we overloaded the big generator during a power outage was the longest, five or six hours -- it was on 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for nearly three decades.

     The transmitter I put on the air today will probably still be on the air when I retire, and that's a strange feeling.

What, No Monday?

     I was up late Sunday night for no good reason, and slept in a little Monday -- but I have to admit it, the strangeness and unpleasantness of current events leaves me spoiled for choice and lost in the noise.  Which strain of awfulness is so dire as to invite further comment, and what stands on its own, inherently horrible?

     There's a giant hurricane headed toward Jamaica (and Cuba afterward), the eye moving slowly but circulating wind gusts inside the storm in excess of 200 miles an hour; at the same time, Indiana's Lieutenant Governor Micah Beckwith, who has picked up a reputation for condemning every rainbow flag or lapel-pin listing pronouns as "grooming," has found himself right next to a real case of felony child exploitation charges involving the son of his podcast partner, and has nothing whatsoever to say about it.  Both of these are tragedies, one of unthinkable scale, the other of unspeakable harm, and yet they're nearly lost in headlines clamoring things just as bad, if not worse.

     Most of it defies easy remedy.  If you want to do something, donate to your local food pantry -- money, time and/or food.  With SNAP and WIC funding unavailable (and the Feds too busy dreaming up new Hatch Act violations to find creative solutions) and Federal employees not getting paid, they're about to be hit by a flood of need far in excess of their resources.

     We are careening towards a precipice -- and there are many, all far too near: economic, weather (or climate; go argue with the dead about terminology), politics, and that unlovely extension of politics, war, all of it on both national and global scales.  Which will pop first -- and how many of the rest will follow -- is a fool's bet and will eventually be a career for historians.  "Events leading up to..." and we are in the middle of them.

When The Feds Say "Do This" And "Don't Do This" At The Same Time

     There are a number of Federal grant programs, some dating back decades, that aim to help survivors of domestic abuse, human trafficking and violent crime.*  Many of them are written in such a way that the immigration status of the victim is no bar to getting such aid, and some even have provisions to make it possible for victims to seek permanent residency.  The notion is that crime is crime, victims ought not be made to suffer further, and escaping an abuser shouldn't make it less likely that a person could get permission to stay here and even work towards citizenship.  For most of these, the money flows to individual states, and from them to non-profit aid groups (as well as local police, prosecutors and public defenders).

     Mr. Trump's Justice Department is no fan of such open-handedness, especially the sweeping inclusion in the Violence Against Women Act, and has issued guidelines restricting the kinds of legal services this money can be used to provide to people without legal status in the U.S.

     The problem is, that's not what the law says.  That leaves the states stuck at a fork: they can obey Federal law, passed (and later reauthorized) by Congress and signed by Presidents, and get sideways with Justice in the doing, or they can go along with DOJ's guide, and get sued six ways from Sunday for noncompliance by attorneys for the victims who don't get help.  Unsurprisingly, twenty states opted to do the suing themselves, and are hoping the courts will sort out the contradiction.  The clock is ticking; unless there's a preliminary injunction or other resolution, the new rules go into effect in November, and it's not entirely clear what is and isn't covered.

     This is one part of a broader tangle of preexisting Federal law, contradictory Administration guidance, and puzzled state agencies and nonprofits suing to hold the status quo or at least get the courts to weigh in on which set of rules to follow.  Do we follow the law, or Executive Branch whim?  At one time, I thought the proper course would be obvious to nearly every American; these days, I'm not so sure.
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* Violence Against Women Act, Victims of Crime Act, and, slightly less directly, Byrne Justice Assistance Grants, among others.

Steak, Sure, But The Risotto!

     Dinner tonight was a splurge.  Our corner grocery had good -- well, not insurmountable -- prices on ribeye steaks, so I bought a couple of small ones.*  They didn't have any lump charcoal, and I'm out, but they had "assorted hardwood" firewood and I decided to try it.  The hardwood kindling I use burns down to coals, after all.

     It turns out that a wood fire works fine in my covered grill: close the cover once it's well underway, and it smolders with little or no flame.  Splitting the wood down to grill size with a hatchet -- not an axe -- and a mallet isn't quick or especially easy, but it's not all that hard.  I'd get a real axe and a proper wedge if I was going to do it often.

     Along with the steaks, I picked up a bagged salad and some cherry tomatoes.  You're not going to find them in a salad kit: cut tomatoes don't keep.  Adding them really helps.  Some sliced olives are a plus, too. And I snagged a box of assorted fresh fancy mushrooms and Alessi brand dehydrated mushroom risotto.

     Alessi's shelf-storable pasta dishes, soups and rice have never let me down.  It's about as good as scratch-made (Italian grandmothers will disagree).  I cleaned and cut up the mushrooms -- trumpet, maitake and golden oyster -- and put them in a covered grill pan with glob of butter, parking the whole thing on the back of the grill as soon as the fire had caught.  The steaks followed in order, on a perforated stainless-steel tray, medium for me and very rare for Tam.  The rice just simmers once it's been stirred into boiling water; you set the heat on low and ignore it.

     As the steaks came off the grill, I brought in the cooked mushrooms and stirred them into the creamy risotto, and the combination smelled delicious.  It tasted delicious, too, an excellent accompaniment for the little steaks.  Throw in some well-cooked stew meat or sausage, and the rice dish could have been a main course.  I had a last few nibbles when I was clearing away the pots and pans -- it was just that good.
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* The child of Depression babies, I'm usually half-convinced the economy is about to tank, so why not have something special for supper once in a while?  Growing up, we had steak for supper most Fridays, once Dad had a good job.  He never tasted a steak until he was an adult, and he was bound and determined to make up for lost time.  These days, that would be quite an indulgence (and what would my doctor say?), but I'll have one every so often, until I get priced out.

Lift The Curtains

      Canada ran a TV ad in the US that included excerpts from a Ronald Reagan radio speech about trade barriers, back when he was President, and the ad leaves the impression the late President was no fan of tariffs.

     President Trump was annoyed, firing back on social media, "The Ronald Reagan Foundation has just announced that Canada has fraudulently used an advertisement, which is FAKE, featuring Ronald Reagan speaking negatively about Tariffs. [...] Based on their egregious behavior, ALL TRADE NEGOTIATIONS WITH CANADA ARE HEREBY TERMINATED." (You can go read the whole thing on "Truth Social" if you like.)  And indeed, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Institute said the ad “misrepresents the Presidential Radio Address.”  As CNN notes, they didn't explain just how.  It's a whole Dance of the Seven Veils, over something that is part of the public record.

     Why take someone else's word about it?  Newsweek published the entire text of the radio address and you can read it for yourself; Mr. Reagan makes it clear that he's opposed to tariffs in general, greatly prefers free trade, and has imposed very specific tariffs on some Japanese products in response to their failure to abide by a previous agreement -- and that he hopes to resolve the issue soon and return to free trade.  But see for yourself.

Ah, Cleverness

     It would make me happy to have something witty to say about the demotion of the East Wing of the White House, and the monster of a ballroom that (supposedly) will rise in its place.  But I don't.

     The money for this work is coming from "private donors."  At the same time, the present government shutdown means SNAP and WIC coffers will -- probably -- run dry, just in time for Thanksgiving.  There's some private help, but it's pretty paltry compared to the big government programs.

     You don't have to believe that government food assistance programs are a good idea to understand that shutting them down abruptly is a bad idea.  It's a rugpull, just as the heating season is starting up.  It'd be one thing if Congress, after due debate, ramped them down, but this is, well, cruel.  And all the more so in the light of a lavish building project for the Presidential mansion.  It might be "The People's House," but don't count on getting in if you show up for dinner unexpectedly, no matter who's living there at the time.

     States and cities and private food charities are scrambling to make up the shortfall, but they're not going to have enough.  One of our local food banks has already extended help to Federal employees working without paychecks -- yes, they've opened the doors to the families of TSA agents -- so they're already under an extra burden.

     Somebody tell me how this is making us great again?

Pulp Fiction

     I wrote yesterday in a rush, and at first sight, it implies something I had no intention of saying, something I don't believe in: I said recent events were like a scrambled Atlas Shrugged, lacking John Galt.

     Ayn Rand was a huge fan of pulp fiction when she was younger, translated stuff in Russia and the pure quill once she came to the U.S.  Those stories were generally cast in the Gothic mode: there's a clear conflict between good and evil, a villain -- and a hero.  Robin Hood, Zorro, general Western Sheriffs, the Continental Op, Philip Marlowe, Batman, G-8, Doc Savage: they appear at key moments, solve the crime, vanquish the bad guy(s), save the day!   When Rand turned to novels, she used archetypes for her characters; of course she had a hero.  It's larger-than-life pulp.  A lot of famous literature is, if you take a step back.

     In real life, the guy who rides in big and bold to save the day is as likely to be a villain as a hero, if not more likely -- Napoleon springs most readily to mind, but you can fill in the blanks.  Good guys getting through tumultuous events and carrying the gen. pop along are likely to be committees: the Founders and Framers of the American Revolution and U.S. Constitution; the leaders, generals and admirals of the Allies in WW I and II.

     A recent news commentator opined that the Democrats are unlikely to sweep the midterm elections despite widespread disapproval of Republican performance in office, because voters see Dems as "weak" and the GOP as "strong."  Since when did we stop rooting for the underdog?  We got into two world wars a bit late, on the side that looked weak -- because it was the proper side; because the other guys were authoritarians with no respect for individual freedom, for freedom of the press, freedom of religion.  Unlike the pessimistic commentator, I don't think we we've lost that.

     We're Americans.  We dance right up to the brink.  So far, we've always known when to step back.

     (PS: Tam said, "So you're rehabilitating Ayn Rand?"  I don't think so.  She fell for her own fiction; you shouldn't.  There are a lot of interesting ideas floating around in fiction, SF especially, everything from The Moon Is A Harsh Matters to The Dispossessed and beyond.  None of them are guidelines around which to remold society, a project that always involves oppression.  One of the overlooked things about the governments that arose from the American Revolution is that in large measure and at every level, the people involved were trying to hold on to what they had and keep it going, not knock it flat and build a New Citizenry from the rubble and ash.  For better and worse, there weren't any huge departures from the trajectories they were already on.  Eventually, the most contradictory elements came into conflict....)

Hurtling Though History

     Photographs of the destruction at the East Wing of the White House from yesterday and today suggest that this Administration is speedrunning the notion of "ruin value."

     Or perhaps it's the boast of Caesar Augustus, who claimed to have found Rome a city of brick and left it a city of marble -- only, you know, the average Roman was still living in a flimsy apartment house, hoping the lightweight upper stories wouldn't catch fire while the Emperor was fiddling around with his building plans.

     Hey, did you hear about the anthrax outbreak in Argentina -- the country our Federal government just bailed out and is talking about importing cheap beef from?  Dig in!

     It's like someone threw Atlas Shrugged in a blender, only with no John Galt.

No More Kings

      The "No Kings" rallies across the country appear to have gone without a hitch: no tea thrown in the harbor, no throwing things at the police until the police shot back, plenty of U.S. flags, silly inflatable costumes, and hand-made signs.  Between five and seven million people took part, very probably the largest mass protest in our history.

     And we do have a history with kings.

     Rule by decree is bad; Congress and not the President is supposed to have the power of the purse (it's right there in the Constitution).  There's still a broad consensus about this, but it's weakening.  It shouldn't, no matter who is President.  Love him, loathe him or feel indifferent, all Presidents are obliged to play by the rules, and when one won't, it's not a thing to chuckle over, it's a reason to chuck him out.

     The first chucking-out is going to be Congress.  Even when they're not shut down by an unwillingness to negotiate across party lines, the present Congress has been largely supine, bullyragged and led around like dull oxen by the Executive.  That's not how it's supposed to work.  They're due for a housecleaning, starting with next year's elections

     Our government is a circus.  We need the clowns, the ringmaster, the lion-tamer -- the whole thing.  One guy leading a herd of elephants to trample it all down isn't much of a show.