Category: Knowledge

The Secretary of Labor has resigned

Scoop, ... 45 comments.

Lori Chavez-DeRemer is now romping playfully in a farm upstate with my favorite Game of Thrones characters, Kristi Dogslayer and Pammi Burnbook, as Trump continues to replace all women and minorities. (Actually, the new nominees for Attorney General and Secretary of Labor have not been announced. The nominees could include somebody other than an obnoxious, white, Christian male, but I wouldn’t bet on it.)

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Now that she is gone, it opens up a whole new opportunity to be the most incompetent and/or corrupt person in the Trump administration. There’s tough competition for that slot.

If wagering on the next to get the axe, I wouldn’t bet on Hegseth or Bobby, since they are white Christian males.

Here are the Kalshi odds on who in the cabinet will be the next to leave

Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence: 36%
Howard Lutnick, Secretary of Commerce 22%

Here are the Polymarket odds for who will leave the administration before 2027:

Kash Patel 87%
Kristi Noem (from her new job) 56%
Tulsi Gabbard 51%
Howard Lutnick 50%
Lee Zeldin 43%
Pete Hegseth 43%
Karoline Leavitt 39%
Tom Homan 39%
David Sacks 37%
Susie Wiles 32%
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 30%

I had to look up David Sacks. Even after finding out who he is, I still don’t know why he is on the list, because he left his position on March 26th.

Per CNBC that day: “Trump’s AI and crypto czar David Sacks said his role as a special government employee has ended.” He is still on the President’s Council of Advisers on Science & Technology. I suppose that’s the position we’re betting on. That seems too obscure to be on the board. (???)

50 Great Celebrity Mugshots

Scoop, ... no comments.

You may have seen most of them all before, but this is an excellent collection of them in one place, with good details about the circumstances.

Cue up “The Way We Were” for this story:

Frank Sinatra was initially arrested for “seduction,” which in the 1930s meant convincing a single woman of good reputation to have sex under a false promise of marriage. (Apparently there was no crime if the single woman had a bad reputation. Contrary to what your racist uncles tell you at Thanksgiving, there were no “good old days.”)

The charge was later changed to “adultery,” when it was revealed that the woman was already married. Both charges were dismissed: the former charge was invalidated when it was discovered that the woman was married; the latter was resolved after he paid a $500 “bond,” which is the New Jersey word for “bribe.”

Sinatra spent the night in jail. His mugshot and fingerprints were taken the following day. The fingerprint record lists birth date and age (22), weight (125lb), height (5-8), hair color (black), eye color (blue), and occupation (singer).

By the way, adultery was a crime in New York State until last year!

“Trump Created Fake Job to Keep ICE Barbie Out of the Senate”

Scoop, ... 12 comments.

According to reports from The Daily Beast in April 2026, Donald Trump privately intended to “put Noem out to the glue factory” — meaning removing the puppy-slaughtering cosplayer from power — by creating a fake, nominal job for her after firing her as Secretary of Homeland Security. This move aimed to sideline her while keeping her on the payroll to prevent her from getting enough signatures for a Senate primary challenge, which had to be submitted by March 31.

Well, a tip of the hat to Trump if he decided to use the metaphor “send her to the glue factory.” I only wanted to “let her romp playfully in a farm upstate.” If I had been in Trump’s shoes, instead of creating a fake agency, I would have made her a special Ambassador to the UK, Pacific Division, with instructions to open a new satellite embassy in Adamstown, on Pitcairn’s Island, which is the only remaining British territory in the Pacific. I’d even let Lewandowski go along as her chief of staff.

Harvard’s grade inflation experiment

Scoop, ... 18 comments.

85% of all grades awarded at Harvard are either A or A-. 67% are A.

In the Harvard class of 2025, 21% of the graduates finished with a perfect 4.0!! That’s more than 300 students.

(SIDEBAR: I wondered how they select a valedictorian when there is a 300-way tie for first? It turns out that they don’t. The concept of “valedictorian” no longer exists.)

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What does that mean in reality?

Imagine a class of 100 students. The best student in the class gets the same grade as the 67th best. One can essentially graduate cum laude at the bottom of the class.

B is the new F.

Many educators feel, probably correctly, that this has two important negative effects on society:

1. Employers and grad schools who want the very best students have no idea who they are. They have to resort to logic like “This guy got a B in one of his classes. He’s probably cognitively impaired.” (This was especially true when the use of standardized tests was declining, although I have read that elite universities are going back to the standardized tests after a brief experiment with abandonment.)

2. The students are not encouraged to really master the subject matter when 67th best produces the same results, leading to an overall decline in competence in all fields.

Do the brilliant educators at America’s most elite university have a solution?

Well, maybe.

But it ain’t gonna to be a popular one.

The betting markets on leaving the Trump administration

Scoop, ... 30 comments.

Who will be the next to leave?

Polymarket

Tulsi Gabbard 27%
Lori Chavez-DeRemer 21%
Pete Hegseth 16%
Howard Lutnick 10%

The betting above is restricted to cabinet members.

I don’t see Hegseth as a smart bet, since he is a white, male Christian. I can’t see Trump firing him unless Iran goes so far south that Trump needs a scapegoat. Lutnick is not a Christian, but he has some insulation because of his friendship with Trump, and I don’t think Trump really cares about religion other than as a tool to pander to his base. Faith requires the acknowledgement of a power higher than oneself, which Trump is not wont to do. If Jesus returned and criticized the President, Trump would call him a “low IQ God.”

Given Trump’s need for sycophancy, Gabbard could be in trouble. She is not an enthusiastic supporter of his Iran strategy, and she is an ethnic woman. That’s three strikes when Trump is the umpire.

Outside the cabinet:

The betting on Kash Patel is that he will be gone soon. If you want to bet on him getting nuked before the end of August, you would risk 98 cents to earn two cents! It is an even money wager that he will be out by the end of June

RFK Jr. loves some raccoon dick

Scoop, ... 5 comments.

In his diary, he writes about cutting off the penis of a road-killed raccoon in 2001, while his kids waited patiently in the car, so that he could examine it later.

Damn, my parents’ road trips were so boring. The only time we ever stopped was to pick up some pralines at Stuckey’s. It would have really broken up the boredom if my dad had stopped occasionally to mutilate some woodland creatures.

The Onion’s take:

‘I Am 6 Animal Penises Away From Curing Cancer’

Bill Maher will get the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor

Scoop, ... 1 comment.

It was announced officially on March 26

The chronology:

  1. The Atlantic reported this last week.
  2. The White House flatly denied this to be true. “This is fake news. Bill Maher will NOT be getting this award,” said secretary Karoline Leavitt.
  3. But on Thursday, the center confirmed Maher was the pick.
  4. The White House explained: “This was false reporting at the time of the Atlantic’s reporting, but the situation changed.”

So they lied, then lied about whether they lied!

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I wondered how Maher would react to receiving something that is officially named “The Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize for American Humor,” but he seems to be OK with it.

Thank you to the Mark Twain people: I just had the award explained to me, and apparently it’s like an Emmy, except I win. I’d just like to say that it is indeed humbling to get anything named for a man who’s been thrown out of as many school libraries as Mark Twain.

Trump, of course, has never been thrown out of a library. That would require him to enter a library.

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The capper on the story:

According to several sources, outgoing Kennedy Center president Richard Grenell wanted to give the prize to Fox News talk show host Greg Gutfeld. Then he actually watched Gutfeld’s show and asked, “When does he get to the funny stuff?”

Pete Hegseth calls on Jesus to bless his Crusade

Scoop, ... 8 comments.

To honor the Crusader legacy, just call him Peter the Lyin’-Hearted.

In another demonstration that facts and satire have become indistinguishable, this is real, not from The Onion.

Every day, on bended knee, with your family, in your schools, in your churches in the name of Jesus Christ.

I’m not very religious, so I am assuming Jesus was a huge war guy, who always preached destruction and vengeance, and asserted that your faith and your government are inseparable.

In yet another example of the ever-increasing irrelevance of irony, it appears that Fox News is actually being inspired by The Onion. There was an Onion story last week about how MAGA nation was happy about the high gas prices, was hoping they would go even higher, and even gave a little extra to the gas stations to show their patriotism. Just a few days later, the MAGA media hive actually started trying to convince us that high gas prices were our patriotic duty, and the sacrifice we have to make for our nation, a la gas rationing in WW2.

I’ve forgotten Das Kapital from my college days, but I assume that only dirty commies want average people to be able to afford gas.