8.4.2026 – the dumbest tariff

the dumbest tariff
trade war in history got
dumber this weekend

I have said over and over that I wish I could stay away from political commentary and go back to what I wanted to this space for and that was to recognize interesting word play or use of words in the news.

Today I get to do both!

When the Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal … just to write that, I picture caricatures of large men in dark suits and white shirts and ties who have faces that never smile, sitting around a board and looking in disapproval at everything … writes a headline that states: The Dumbest Trade War Revisited (WSJ: 8/24/2026), I had to take notice.

Dumbest?

Dumbest!

Grammatical breakdown:
dumb → adjective
dumber → comparative
dumbest → superlative

Even in being DUMB, that man currently in office reaches the superlative.

The Editorial Board wrote:

President Trump took exception last year when we called his tariffs against Canada and Mexico the dumbest trade war in history. It got dumber this weekend as Mr. Trump escalated with another round of border taxes on Canadian imports, a mere 10 weeks before midterm elections.

Prices for steel and aluminum mill products have surged 22.5% and 40.5%, respectively, over the past year. General Motors last month projected a $2.5 billion to $3.5 billion hit this year from tariffs. U.S. auto makers have been lobbying the Administration to reach a truce with Canada. Mr. Carney said Saturday that a major reason the deal blew up is that the Trump team refused to ease tariffs on heavy and medium duty trucks, including those made at Ford’s plant in Ontario. Why is Mr. Trump punishing Ford, America’s largest auto producer?

Mr. Trump’s latest round of border taxes will hit an array of consumer goods, construction materials and manufacturing components. Republicans are already getting pounded on the campaign trail over his tariffs and inflation. One reason for Mr. Trump’s frigid approval rating is that voters believe Mr. Trump is waging blunderbuss wars without a strategy, and on trade they’re right.

To repeat, Why is Mr. Trump punishing Ford, America’s largest auto producer?

Is this what that man’s followers voted for?

In his inaugural address, he said:

My recent election is a mandate to completely and totally reverse a horrible betrayal and all of these many betrayals that have taken place and to give the people back their faith, their wealth, their democracy, and indeed, their freedom. From this moment on, America’s decline is over.

What is his chosen avenue to reverse these horrible betrayals?

How does he stop his percieved decline?

Wage the dumbest trade war in history … with Canada.

Who knew Canada was at the root of our decline?

Wars without a strategy!

The dumbest trade war in history got dumber this weekend.

As Jim Hacker said in the TV show, Yes Minister, “When a country is going downhill, it is time for someone to get into the driving seat, and put his foot on the accelerator.”

8.30.2026 – two bridges across

two bridges across
river one closed for repairs
other for painting

Education a Failure

The minor stupidities
of my world
dominate that world—
as when

with two bridges across
the river and one
closed for repairs
the other also

will be closed by
the authorities
for painting! But then
there is heaven

and the ideal state
closed also
before the aspiring soul.
I had rather

watch a cat threading
a hedge with
another sitting by
while the bird

screams overhead
athrash
in the cover of the
low branches.

As published in The Collected Later Poems of William Carlos Williams by William Carlos Williams (James Laughlin: Norfolk, Connecticut, 1944).

According to Wikipedia, “William Carlos Williams (September 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963) was an American poet and physician closely associated with modernism and imagism. His Spring and All (1923) was written in the wake of T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land (1922). In his five-volume poem Paterson (1946–1958), he took Paterson, New Jersey as “my ‘case’ to work up. It called for a poetry such as I did not know, it was my duty to discover or make such a context on the ‘thought.'” Some of his best-known poems, “This Is Just to Say” and “The Red Wheelbarrow”, are reflections on the everyday. Other poems reflect the influence of the visual arts. He, in turn, influenced the visual arts; his poem “The Great Figure” inspired the painting I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold by Charles Demuth. Williams was awarded a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems (1962).”

The Great Figure

By William Carlos Williams
Among the rain
and lights
I saw the figure 5
in gold
on a red
firetruck
moving
tense
unheeded
to gong clangs
siren howls
and wheels rumbling
through the dark city.

8.28.2026 – feelings and feelings

feelings and feelings
feelings and feelings – let me
try thinking instead

Feelings, and feelings, and feelings. Let me try thinking instead.

From the rational point of view, what new factor has H’s death introduced into the problem of the universe?

What grounds has it given me for doubting all that I believe?

I knew already that these things, and worse, happened daily.

I would have said that I had taken them into account.

I had been warned—I had warned myself—not to reckon on worldly happiness.

We were even promised sufferings.

They were part of the programme. We were even told ‘Blessed are they that mourn’ and I accepted it.

I’ve got nothing that I hadn’t bargained for.

Of course it is different when the thing happens to oneself, not to others, and in reality, not in imagination.

Yes;

but should it, for a sane man, make quite such a difference as this?

No.

And it wouldn’t for a man whose faith had been real faith and whose concern for other people’s sorrows had been real concern.

The case is too plain.

If my house has collapsed at one blow, that is because it was a house of cards.

The faith which ‘took these things into account’ was not faith but imagination.

The taking them into account was not real sympathy.

If I had really cared, as I thought I did, about the sorrows of the world, I should not have been so overwhelmed when my own sorrow came.

It has been an imaginary faith playing with innocuous counters labelled

‘Illness’,

‘Pain’,

‘Death’

and ‘Loneliness’.

I thought I trusted the rope until it mattered to me whether it would bear me. Now it matters, and I find I didn’t.

Of course

it is different when the thing happens to oneself,

not to others,

and in reality,

not in imagination.

8.27.2026 – when up, not know what

when up, not know what
going to say – down, do not
know what they have said

Speaking in the House of Commons on December 20, 1912 in the debate about the Board Of Admiralty And Sea Lords: Resignation of Sir Francis Bridgeman, Winston Churchill said this of Lord Charles Beresford, M.P. –

I have never taken these things too seriously.

I am not one of those who take the Noble Lord too seriously.

I know him too well.

He does not mean to be as offensive as he often is when he is speaking on public platforms.

He is one of those orators of whom it was well said,

“Before they get up, they do not know what they are going to say;

when they are speaking, they do not know what they are saying;

and when they have sat down, they do not know what they have said.”

In this country, and I think on both sides of the House, his measure has been taken, not unfairly, but harm is done and has been done often abroad in other countries by the reckless statements which he makes …

This was in 1912.

Two years before the Great War.

Twenty Seven years until 1939 when World War 2 started.

Twenty Eight years until Churchill became Prime Minister.

By all accounts this was said in debate.

No doubt Mr. Churchill had his quote ready to be used if he found the appropriate moment.

What I find interesting in reading the account in the official record of the House of Commons …

No one in the House, no one from the same side of the aisle as Lord Charles … no body rose to say anything in his defence.

As Mr. Churchill said, “In this country, and I think on both sides of the House, his measure has been taken, not unfairly …”

As for the politicians and their minions today with access to social media … I can imagine what Mr. Churchill might say because this fits so well anytime anyone says anything on behalf of that current man in office or the issues created by that current man in office being in office.

Anytime anyone connected in anyway with anything starts to talk or type or tweet or whatever they do …

Before they get up, they do not know what they are going to say …

When they are speaking, they do not know what they are saying …

And when they have sat down, they do not know what they have said!

Oh, but Mr. Churchill would have had a field day with those people today!

8.26.2026 – begin putting books

begin putting books
in your way – more actively
they will possess you

Adapted the book, So Well Remembered, by James Hilton (Boston: Little, Brown And Company, 1945) where Mr. Hilton has his hero writing a letter to his young son …

Which is why I intend soon to begin putting books in your way,

because the more freely and vividly you see things while you are young,

even if you can’t fully understand them,

the more actively they will possess you when you grow up —

especially if, in adult life, you have hard battles to fight and bitter disappointments to face.

New worlds, Martin, are for the young to explore;

later one is glad of a new room, or even of a view from a new window . . .

As I understand it from listening to my online radio station, when they changed the guard at Buckingham Palace today, those Redcoats in their Bearskin hats came to attention and the Band of the Coldstream Guards broke into a military performance of Dolly Parton’s 9 to 5.

I cannot add much to the tributes being delivered AROUND THE WORLD today for this woman but I will say that the news break that mentioned the musical tribute also said that the Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library book program had given away over 300 million books.

Serit arbores, quae alteri saeclo prosint said Cicero quoting the poet Statius in his Synepheb.

Serit arbores, quae alteri saeclo prosint … “she plants trees, which will be of use to another age.”

Which has come through the ages as, “Blessed is she who plants trees under whose shade she will never sit.”

I have read a lot of history so far in my life.

I am pressed to match what Miss Dolly did with some historical precedent.

Mr. Carnegie gave away libraries.

Miss Dolly gave away books.

You do have to sign up.

You do have to sign up but no questions are asked.

Not who the parents were.

Not what church they went too.

Not how much money they had.

Just signup and enter your birthday.

And once in the system, every month, until their 5th birthday, a new book comes in the mail.

I was able to sign up 4 of my grand children in the program.

But I don’t know of another celebrity-created philanthropic program or any other philanthropic program that matches the Imagination Library’s combination of scale, longevity, simplicity, universality and direct personal benefit.

And that’s what makes it so interesting.

Dolly took something incredibly inexpensive on an individual basis, a children’s book, and built it into a philanthropic system that has delivered more than 325 million individual gifts.

Scale.

Longevity.

Simplicity.

Universality.

Direct personal benefit.

Serit arbores, quae alteri saeclo prosint … Indeed!

Thank you Miss Dolly.

Because the more freely and vividly you see things while you are young, even if you can’t fully understand them, the more actively they will possess you,

Miss you already.