Sunday Serendipity

Under water is not “there” yet. Needs to be a completely drowned rat.

“So I wanted to have a bigger picture conversation about what this Trump doctrine is. I’m joined today by Fareed Zakaria, the host of “Fareed Zakaria GPS” on CNN, a Washington Post columnist and the author of the best-selling book, “Age of Revolutions.”

So the result of the Trump doctrine in action has been a war on America’s allies. But the second more important part is: Yes, you’ll gain a little bit here and there by getting slightly better tariff deals. And just so people understand, tariffs in the industrialized world are around 3 percent. They’re very low. So we’re not getting penalized in any large way. You can cherry-pick a few examples to the contrary. But mostly, among liberal, democratic states, it’s a free-trade world.

And what you will do, by squeezing each of these individual countries, humiliating them, forcing them to accept renegotiation of terms, is that you lose the relationships that you had built over eight decades, that created this extraordinary anchor of stability in the world, which was the Western alliance. And the gains are not that great.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/01/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-fareed-zakaria.html?unlocked_article_code=1.004.eTAB.1lSctn3CxpYy

New York Times

Begs the proverbial question why do we hear diddly-squat from any Bush?

The Trump administration’s elimination of PEPFAR, the American program to combat HIV infection in Africa, symbolizes the path ahead. President George W. Bush created the program because it would do immense good at low cost, and thereby demonstrate to the world the moral basis of American power. His successors continued it, and Congresses of both parties funded it, because they saw that the program advanced both U.S. values and U.S. interests. Trump and Vance don’t want the United States to be that kind of country anymore.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/02/least-now-we-know-truth-about-trump-and-vance/681872/?

The American people need to reckon with the mess Trump and Vance are making of this country’s once-good name—and the services they are performing for dictators and aggressors. There may not be a deep cause here. Trump likes and admires bad people because he is himself a bad person. When Vance executed his personal pivot from Never Trump to Always Trump, he needed a way to prove that he had truly crossed over to the dark side beyond any possibility of reversion or redemption; perhaps his support for Russia allowed him to do that. But however shallow their motives, the consequences are profound.

Maybe because all the Bushes were machine creations.

Valid point, Jack, though I had some respect for Poppy.* Now the legacy is further besmirched by Dodo’s doodoo. You’d think there’d be at least one member who’d speak up to defend it. Jenna’s Today show gig can’t be that vulnerable.

*but not enough to vote for him

Love Taj Mahal! Got to see him up close at Alys Stephens, our season seats fourth row center.

I picked up on the shout-outs to my old stomping grounds..

Nwodim, who graduated from Eastern Technical High School in Essex, and Kenan Thompson brought back their Mid-Day News sketch from 2019 that features TV anchors for WANU competing to score based on guessing the race of perpetrators of a crime in the news. 

Thompson and Nwodim were joined in the sketch by SNL host Shane Gillis and series regular Heidi Gardner. 

The sketch kicks off with Nwodim announcing that “Community members remain rattled after yet another gang-related drive-by shooting that took place in the 4000 block of Reisterstown Road late last night.” 

Gillis reads about another crime, saying “Police are looking for looters … hear that? These looters were spotted after wildfires devastated homes in Hunt Valley Township.” A chyron on the screen calls out “Hunt Valley Wildfires.” 

Later, Thompson reports about a “Harford County man who has been hospitalized after taking on a bizarre challenge of eating raw chicken every day.” (It’s possible he said Hartford, but we know what he meant.)

Condoleezza said similar but nobody was listening.