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Jesus, the brand

You may have seen where the Defense Department recently cut 180 religions from its list of recognized religions. Among those cut from the list of “Christian religions were the Mormons. After Sen. Mike Lee, a Mormon from Utah, complained to Trump, the list was revised. Not to include Mormons as Christian, but to remove the “Christian” designation entirely. What’s going on? It turns out that sect to which Whisky Pete belongs considers Mormons to be apostates. Yep, the Church with “Jesus Christ” right there in its name isn’t Christian according to Hegseth’s mentor. And Hegseth decided he could just disappear a religion that is practiced by millions. When Trump vetoed that, Hegseth made sure Mormons were not designated “Christian.” I don’t really know much about the Mormon faith, but this isn’t really about faith, it’s about branding. It’s like if Colgate said that Crest isn’t a real toothpaste.  People killed each other for centuries over their styles of worshipping Jesus. The foundin...
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The nothingburger

I somehow missed this, but a couple months ago the Trump Administration abandoned its effort to cut indirect cost reimbursements for federal grants to colleges and universities. Just before I retired, the indirect cost rate at Saint Louis University was 51.5%, so this cut would have been devastating to research at SLU.   When I asked my chairman, who is a Republican and who assured me in 2016 that Trump would “be good for America” what he thought about the cuts, he called them “a nothingburger.” Turns out he was right. “ In January, a   federal court of appeals   ruled that the NIH policy to cap indirect cost reimbursement rates at 15% is unlawful. The Trump administration had until April 6 to appeal the ruling—and did not. It also did not appeal a similar ruling against Department of Energy cost rate caps.” Apparently, the administration is working to find another way to cook the nothingburger. <a href=" https://www.nacubo.org/News/2026/4/Court-Fight-Over-NIH-Indirect...
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Why do Republicans consider American families to be a battlespace?

“ In April, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, a Republican, signed a resolution designating June as   “Nuclear Family Month”   and claiming that a family with “one husband, one wife and any biological, adopted or fostered children” is “God’s design.”   *snip*   “This resolution denigrates not just same-sex families but unmarried straight couples with children; married straight couples without children; single-parent families; grandparents raising their grandchildren; adults raising younger siblings; and any of the countless other configurations that don’t hew to outdated images of what a family looks like.” They’ve turned marriage into battlespace. They’ve turned public schools into battlespace. Could it be that they need culture wars to distract from the ballooning Trump deficits, ballooning inflation, ballooning gas prices, ballooning grocery prices, 100 days of war in Iran, closing rural hospitals?   https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/06/07/opinion/same-sex-marriage...
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The road to gainful employment*

When I was in junior high and high school, I earned a little money babysitting and, during the summers, mowing lawns. As high school graduation loomed, my parents wanted me to get a better-paying summer job between high school and college. I ended up wandering around filling out job applications at fast food restaurants and retail stores. None of those generated a response.   I’m not sure what my parents were thinking. Maybe they thought jobs for teenagers with no connections or work histories were just lying around waiting for applicants. Eventually, the maid who cleaned once a week after my mom became a full-time grad student arranged with her son-in-law to get me a job pumping gas. The station was on the other side of the river, so when the station closed at 11 PM, I had to ride my bike home in the dark across a narrow bridge. This was the first clue that it helped to have connections if you’re looking for jobs. The next clue was when, a few days after I started at Bull Run Oil ...
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Where’s the beef?

Thanks to climate change, which the Trump Administration is actively promoting, and the Trump Administration defunding of USAID and   a project dedicated to monitoring and containing New World screwworm in Central America , screwworm is back in the US after decades of successful containment. What is screwworm? “ New World screwworm is a fly that lays its eggs in open wounds and body openings of warm-blooded animals. Infestations start when a female fly lays eggs on open wounds—wounds as small as a tick bite can attract a female fly to lay her eggs—or other parts of the body in live animals. Eggs hatch into maggots that feed on the living flesh for about 7 days before the larvae drop to the ground, burrow into the soil, and emerge as adult screwworm flies—starting the cycle again. Most infestations occur in animals, but they can occur in people. ” How does this affect beef prices? “ The United States eradicated screwworm in the 1960s through a massive   sterile fly program , bu...
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Quote of the day

National vanity is arguably dependent on the absence of national pride. To be proud of one’s country is, as Yeats says, not to disguise its faults but to want to believe that the country is capable of rising above them. The keynote of national pride is “We’re better than this.” National vanity, on the contrary, is indeed a form of disguise. It uses the mask of greatness to cover up a society’s complex realities. The dark parts of its history and the persistent stains of injustice must be erased. The dignity of self-knowledge is sacrificed to the willed ignorance of inflated self-esteem. Self-belief is replaced by self-delusion.   ~Fintan O’Toole
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Down the Tesla memory hole

To follow up on a previous post about Tesla autonomous driving vehicles: “Tesla has retroactively modified “Full Self-Driving” purchase agreements to add “supervised” language that did not exist when owners originally bought the product. In some cases, the original documents have been made entirely inaccessible.   “ Electrek   has confirmed the issue with multiple owners. The contracts in question were signed between 2016 and early 2024, when Tesla sold the package as “Full Self-Driving Capability” — with no mention of “supervised” and the implicit promise of unsupervised autonomy.” Will this deflate Tesla’s laughably inflated stock value? No, because stockholders are investing in Elon Musk, not cars. https://electrek.co/2026/06/03/tesla-retroactively-modified-fsd-contracts-supervised/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=bluesky
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