Today’s the the 5-year anniversary of the above tweet by the polymath Elon Musk. There were 7175 Covid deaths in the US that March. It would be two years until there were fewer than 7175 deaths in a month. More than 1.2 million Americans have died of Covid, and more than 99 percent of the deaths occurred after Musk posted this tweet.
He probably should have been put in charge of public health instead of “government efficiency,” but of course Trump already had an anti-vaxxer for health.
Pretty startled to discover this week that I did not get good at golf over the winter.
When I last mentioned the Timberwolves (March 8), they had won four games in a row. I felt duty-bound to note that all four wins were against teams with losing records, but the streak has now reached seven, and the game before the last one was a 20-point romp over the Nuggets in Denver. The Wolves are trying to catch Golden State for the last automatic playoff berth in the Western Conference and it's not proving to be easy. The Warriors have also won seven games in a row so we've been a half game behind them for around two weeks now.
I watched yesterday's game, in which the Wolves rallied from an 11-point deficit in the fourth quarter to win, 118-111, over Orlando. Do you tell who's playing well by watching the game and forming impressions, or by studying the box score afterwards? I thought Donte DiVincenzo was the star of the game for Minnesota, but now I see in the box score that, in a game we won by seven points, Orlando outscored us by four while Donte was playing. Meanwhile, Mike Conley, whom I barely noticed, and who is generally in the game when Donte isn't, led the Wolves with a +20. Do numbers lie, or my own eyes?
The Gophers just fired their men's basketball coach. Going back through the records, I see that the last time we had more wins than losses in consecutive Big Ten seasons was 1995-97. If you're trying to make the point that the program's been poor, should you say that you have to go back 30 years to find consecutive years with a winning conference record--or, that in the last 28 years, the team has had a winning conference record just three times (the Gophers were 9-7 in 2001-02, 10-6 in 2004-05, and 11-7 in 2016-17). Clem Haskins was the coach in 1995-97. The guy they just fired, Ben Johnson, is the fifth head coach since Haskins. Is it impossible to succeed at the job? Our neighbor to the east seems to do okay.
Please accept my congratulations if, on the election of Trump, you sold all your stock and invested the proceeds in certificates of deposit yielding an interest rate of, say, 4.25%. Hell, congratulations if you deposited the proceeds in a mattress. Markets are said to abhor uncertainty and, along this line, someone recently observed that Trump's next move might be to impose a 50% tariff on all imported goods, but only for 45 minutes. Then, after 45 minutes . . . something else.
There is a possibility that Trump will be sunk by a Trump slump, but what would sink him immediately, were it not for the national malaise that elected him, is the vanishing of a pro-Palestinian student protester. The Times's columnist Michelle Goldberg summarizes the case here. Money quote:
But the fact that it was easy to see this ideological crackdown coming shouldn't obscure how serious Khalil's detention is. If someone legally in the United States can be grabbed from his home for engaging in constitutionally protected political activity, we are in a drastically different country from the one we inhabited before Trump's inauguration.
That Goldberg's conclusion is apt may be seen in the way the phrase "ideological crackdown" seems to have been tapped out on her keyboard in the manner of a mere prepositional phrase. When the First Amendment was operative, we didn't have "ideological crackdowns" in the United States. No one has said Khalil committed a crime. The Department of Homeland Security says he "led activities aligned to Hamas." Take note of that weaselly formulation. What does it even mean? Only that the detainee opposes the policies of the Israeli government. So does Hamas, therefore this Columbia grad student is a terrorist. That's the logic. I mean "logic."
Officials who crow about being "free speech absolutists" are rounding up for deportation people whose expressed views they don't like. You could not say they're trying to hide anything. Trump, on his Truth Social account:
This is the first arrest of many to come. We know there are more students at Columbia and other Universities across the Country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity, and the Trump Administration will not tolerate it.
The first amendment has a Formerly Respected Opinion about Who and What is Un-American.
After last night's Timberwolves' game (fourth win in a row) (though all against teams with losing records), I was flipping through the channels and saw there was a "Kris Kristofferson tribute" on public TV—musicians, including Alison Krauss, others likely of similar renown though unfamiliar to me, performing Kristofferson songs between pledge drive pitches. This reminded me that Kristofferson died last year and I missed the chance to recount the somewhat unusual aspects of his youthful biography.
He was born in Texas in 1936. His father was in the service. The family moved a lot, but eventually settled in San Mateo, California, where Kristofferson graduated from the public high school in 1954. He then enrolled at Pomona College, from which he graduated, summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, in 1958: an English major, and a Crackerjack student. How good a student? He was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship and studied at Oxford, England, for the next two academic years. His first notice in the national press had come in 1958 when his athletic exploits at Pomona landed him a spot in Sports Illustrated's "Faces in the Crowd" feature. He played football and rugby, boxed in the Golden Gloves, and ran track. St. Augustine had a phrase he applied to people like Kristofferson: one of God's fit and fair.
It was around in here that his life turned. With his B. Phil. from Oxford, the proverbial ticket to ride, in hand, Kristofferson's next move was to enlist in the US Army. He trained as a Ranger and a helicopter pilot, then served in Germany as a pilot until, in 1965, he was offered a position teaching literature at West Point. He turned it down because he'd gradually gotten more and more interested in music and songwriting. Without any guarantee of success, or even much in the way of musical credentials of any kind, he left the Army and moved to Nashville.
There followed a somewhat extended period of scraping around as he struggled to gain a foothold in the music industry. He wasn't a kid—he'd turned 29 the year he quit the Army, was married, two kids. He wrote songs while working construction, and as a bartender, and, on weekends, in the Tennessee National Guard. He took a job as a janitor at a recording studio so that he could press his songs on musicians who came through. This is the context for one of the more memorable vignettes in Ken Burns's film on country music. At just about the time Kristofferson was to be plucked from obscurity, he got a letter from his mom, who was not pleased with his life choices. You can imagine why. Her Rhodes Scholar son bumping along, earning a precarious living, for several years—he'd better get down to business, she said, else he'd be cut out of the family forever. Kristofferson had recently made the acquaintance of Johnny Cash, to whom he read the letter aloud. When he came to the end, Cash said, "It's always nice to get mail from home."
As suggested by his connection to Cash, Kristofferson's music career was about to lift off. Some might think the point of the story about his mom's letter was to establish her as a Philistine, especially compared to her genius son, so I should say that I have some sympathy for her views. And what about his wife? She'd put up with more than his mother did. It's even possible that it was at least partly for her that mom wrote the letter. The couple divorced in 1969, which seems like it might have been bad timing for her. It was the same year that Roger Miller got to No. 12 on the country music chart with a song Kristofferson had written. Two years later, the song went to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 when covered by a different artist:
The year before (1970), Kristofferson had released his debut album, called Kristofferson, which included, besides "Me and Bobby McGee," a song made famous when recorded by Cash: "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down." Kristofferson got good reviews but sold poorly—until, after Joplin's posthumous success, it was reissued in 1971 as Me and Bobby McGee. The rest of Kristofferson's career, with The Highwaymen and in the movies—being among the fit and fair, he looked like a movie star—must be pretty well known. My quirky opinion is that his best film role was not in A Star is Born (for which he won a Golden Globe for best actor) but in John Sayles's Lone Star. Possibly I just love Lone Star inordinately: great story, and an unforgettable cameo by Frances McDormand.
Trump says his magic tariffs—are they on or off as of 11:33 p.m. central time, 6 March 2025?—will raise enough money to replace the income tax. Yet he will forgo this bonanza if a foreign leader is willing to kiss his ass for twenty minutes over the phone. On its face, seems more like Trump first than America first. You’d think the MAGA bros would rather keep all their income and not have to file a 1040, but the preferences and impulses of these nuts is a topic for abnormal psychology. Not my jam.
You can tell Trump is lying about his desire to “bring peace” to Ukraine because
1) his lips are moving; and
2) he’s only pressuring one side—the one that suffered an unprovoked invasion by a dictatorial power.
It would be impossible to pressure Russia now, since we’ve already said Ukraine can’t join NATO and will have to give up territory captured by its invader. The leverage that could have been wielded against Russia was thus junked before there were any negotiations. I haven’t read The Art of the Deal so can’t cite chapter and verse for the lineage of this hard-nosed tactic. It makes sense, however, if the goal is not “peace” but rather a deal selling out Ukraine in order to cozy up to Putin, a tyrant. We’re on Russia’s side now.
Other than grovel before Trump and Vance, what is Ukraine supposed to do? Accede. Quit defending itself against a murderous aggressor.
Lying groggily in bed this morning, I heard John Bolton, one of Trump’s National Security Advisors from his first term, interviewed on NPR. The questions and answers were competing with my whining dog, who had either an empty stomach or a full bladder, probably both. But I’ve now looked it up online. The interview is here. The whole thing is of interest. Bolton says yesterday’s Oval Office meltdown was “a disaster for the United States.” He says Secretary of State Rubio and National Security Advisor Waltz should resign. He says the Taiwanese should be worried. He expresses disgust with Trump for mouthing Russian propaganda. The last question was about whether there’s any prospect of Trump reversing course. He answered:
No, I don’t think so. Look, to Trump everything is personal. He thinks he’s friends with Vladimir Putin. I happen to believe, having first met Putin in October of 2001, that Putin is extremely cold-blooded, thinks he can manipulate Trump—and he is. The other thing is Trump doesn’t like Zelenskyy. He hasn’t liked him since the so-called perfect phone call. He doesn’t like him now. That’s what you’re seeing play out. That’s the level of Trump’s understanding of international affairs.
Trump 2.0’s motto could be “move fast and break things,” which seems apt: it’s the motto of lots of other robbers, too. One risk, that of thoughtlessness, generally applies only to those capable of the power of thought, but it does appear that Team Trump is sometimes paying a price for moving too fast. From a Feb. 21 NPR story:
Last week wrought days of chaos at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), a civilian agency within the Department of Energy that oversees the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile.
After being told that they would not get an exemption for national security purposes, officials were given hours to fire more than 100 employees. Workers were abruptly shut out of their government email accounts and told to clear out their desks on the spot. . . .
Those who were fired spent Friday worrying about what to do next. “That mental game was horrible,” says one NNSA employee who received a termination notice.
On Capitol Hill, lawmakers were incensed by the firings, given the sensitive nature of the agency’s work, which includes making safety and security upgrades to nuclear warheads, overseeing emergency response plans at nuclear storage facilities and trying to prevent terrorists from acquiring weapons-grade plutonium and uranium.
Behind the scenes, pressure built on Energy Secretary Chris Wright to reverse the terminations. By Saturday, many employees were rehired, without explanation.
”I think they were, like, ‘Oopsie, let’s just say you didn’t work Friday,’” said another NNSA employee who watched the firing process unfold.
Meanwhile, the military’s new transgender ban is being challenged in court, and the judge appears unimpressed with the government’s argument:
“[President Trump’s executive order] calls an entire category of people dishonest, dishonorable, undisciplined, immodest, who lack integrity,” [Judge] Reyes said. “People who have taken an oath to defend this country. People who have been under fire. People who have received medals for taking fire for this country. I want to know from the government, does that express animus?”
”I don’t have an answer, your honor,” Jason Lynch, an attorney with the DOJ’s Federal Programs Branch, said. . . .
Over more than five hours, Reyes pressed Lynch to provide any data or analysis Trump relied on in making his decision or any expert opinions about the effects of transgender service members on military readiness. Over and over again, Lynch was forced to say he had no answers to give.
“I’m really loathe to speculate what the president had in mind when he signed this order,” Lynch said.
“It’s not like I randomly picked you off the street. You’re the government’s representative here,” Reyes said.
The energy department employees were fired by mistake, then rehired, at least the ones who could be found. Great place to work! Transgender service members are also out although, as the judge’s questions revealed, the administration has yet to work up any reasons that can be articulated in court. I feel kind of sorry for Mr. Lynch, the lawyer in the transgender lawsuit: you can look like a dope while representing one.
People are afraid of Trump, because he has power and is a vindictive a-hole. But he’s also an incompetent idiot. He gives more proof, as it were casually, every day. Was this yesterday, or the day before?
Trump: "I did ask Elon because he knows more about computers than anybody I know. I said, what do you think of the voting system? He said, computers are not meant for voting. It's too many transactions taking place too quickly." pic.twitter.com/9h9LXxDQZ5
Once you’ve listened enough for YouTube to figure out what you like, it makes music “mixes” for you, and damn if they don’t have me pegged. The problem is the ads between songs. You can skip them after a few seconds, but sometimes you’re not hovering over your device, maybe you’re hovering over a drink instead, and are thus disinclined to rise and take a few steps. So you hear the whole ad. Medical quackery is the recurring theme. I think they might also have figured out that I’m an old man, because coming in first place for product frequency is “natural remedies” for ED. These typically feature testimonials from a woman, buxom and thirtyish, concerning what happened when she hooked up with a 60-something man who is willing to share his “secret” for the endlessly fun rompings that she describes.
Arguably less plausible is an ad claiming that, for Christians, the cure for neuropathy in the feet is hidden in plain sight within the Gospel According to St. John. When it ended, I took two sips and considered that it was probably impossible to imagine a mental world farther from mine than the one inhabited by someone who would credit such a come-on.
On the upside, I discover stuff I love. Didn’t “The Mike Douglas Show” air at around 3 p.m. on weekdays, target audience people like, say, my mom, who had done the laundry, dusted and vacuumed and was now returned home from the grocery store? I doubt that people who watch whatever the present-day equivalent is ever see anything like this—the Patti Smith Group performing “Free Money” for Mike Douglas viewers in 1977: