Here is a big “no” to college football’s 24-team playoff

College football is expanding its playoff from 12 teams (we hardly knew you) to 24 for the 2027 season. Gee, I am old enough to remember when from 1998 to 2013 it was just the top two teams in the polls and we all yelled at the computer rankings. Then it went to four, and then to 12 in 2024. Now get ready for 24. When will it stop? Will it become like the basketball tournament, now with 76 teams? Twenty-four is designed simply to get more Big “10” and SEC teams into the playoffs, which may or may not also save some coaches’ jobs. Take Iowa, for example, which seems to be stuck with 7-5 and 8-4 records, neither of which would get it a sniff at a 12-team playoff. But lo and behold, its 8-4 record last year would have made the playoffs despite going 0-4 against AP Top 25 opponents. An invitation now being nothing more than a participation trophy. So we will get a bunch of mediocre teams from the Power Four conferences and maybe one lonely Group of Six team (I am pulling for Temple), and while we are at it, how about a little DEI with an HBCU team?

Now, no one (except the one lone rabid Iowa fan) would expect Kirk Ferentz’s team to compete for the championship. But the playoffs aren’t job security either, since Ferentz has been in the job since 1999 without winning a national championship and with only two Big “10” championships (2002 and 2004). He would have been fired long ago at most other Big “10” schools (James Franklin) and at the SEC schools (Mark Richt). Some have said that making the playoffs will mean job security for most coaches (other than Ferentz). But a coach who is consistently No. 24 won’t be long tenured (other than Ferentz who may outlast us all).

One of the byproducts of the new system is that there will be no more conference championship games. I guess if two or more teams are tied at the top, it is likely that all of them will go to the playoffs and be ranked by their final AP ranking like kids lining up by height for the class picture. (I was the second boy in line at my graduation. First was a midget.) I might be by myself here, but I liked the conference championships. Georgia may not have won the national championship last year, but it did win the SEC and bragging rights, even if it got upset in the playoffs by a Kiffin-less Ole Miss with a quarterback who played out of his mind. Likewise, Ohio State’s loss to Indiana (Indiana?) showed that the Hoosiers were no fluke and, in the end, a worthy national champion (Indiana?). Let that sink in.

But seriously, even in a 12-team playoff, there are probably three or four teams with about as much chance of being crowned champion as I have of being awarded the Nobel prize. So the first round of the 24-team playoff is a simple money grab paid for by ESPN’s multibillion-dollar contract. The first-round games will be on campus, with No. 17 at No. 16, No. 18 at No. 15, No. 19 at No. 14, and so on down to No. 24 at No. 9. Wow! I’m already clearing my calendar for that No. 17 at No. 16. Must-see TV.

With 24 teams in the playoffs, what happens to the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl, the Poulan Weed Eater Bowl or the Duke’s Mayo Bowl, where the winning coach gets doused in mayonnaise rather than Gatorade? Those bowls were devalued long ago anyway. There are so many of them that teams with losing records get invites, like a party where the host ran out of friends and started asking the neighbors.

Look, college football left me when conferences like the SEC went away from divisions. I came to the University of Tennessee in part because it was in the same division as my Georgia Bulldogs, and the two played every year in football and twice in basketball. I really didn’t have much interest in seeing the league expand to take in half of the Big 12. I would rather have seen it poach half of the ACC instead (Florida State, Miami, Georgia Tech — which used to be in the conference — UNC, Clemson, Virginia Tech and UVA). But those markets, except Miami and Atlanta probably aren’t big enough for the mighty SEC.

I guess the schools need the money to pay for NIL. One game I watched had a player who had been at five of the 18 schools in the Big “10.” I guess there wasn’t enough eligibility left for him to get to nine. Look, I will watch only Georgia, Ohio State and Tennessee. I have no interest in seeing USC play Rutgers — or any team play Rutgers including Ohio State.

Lastly, although some will argue that this will be a watered-down chase to a national championship, surprisingly I am not one of them. Whoever wins will be one of the same teams that would have won in a 12-team playoff. Recall that Ohio State won the first 12-team playoff in 2024 with two losses (to Oregon and Michigan — and yes, the second one still stings). The Buckeyes were the eighth seed (my Georgia Bulldogs were No. 2), but they made the expanded playoff and beat Tennessee, Oregon in a rematch, Texas and then Notre Dame in the championship game. No one would argue that that was a fluke.

One note: my neighbors went to Columbus for the Tennessee–Ohio State game. It was frigid, and Tennessee played like it had left its offense back in Knoxville. However, I was ashamed of my fellow Ohio State fans, who were ugly, cursing at and threatening my neighbors. I don’t recall anything like that when I was there from 1966 to 1970 — back then, the rudest thing you heard was the band playing “Hang On Sloopy” for the 40th time — and I apologized to my neighbors, who had to endure such abuse.

Now let’s see if James Madison wins the first 24-team playoff. Stranger things have happened. Indiana, for instance.

AllGLS1.com

After reading my Seemingly Random Thoughts #87, Mr. Edward Newton at AllGLP1.com sent me this valuable note:

Hi Dr. Black,

I read Three seemingly random thoughts #87, where you argue that cash-pay competition brought GLP-1 prices down where insurance did not. If you return to the subject, you might find a daily record of those cash prices useful, since they keep moving.

AllGLP1 is a free tracker that re-reads the cash prices about 60 telehealth providers and the manufacturers’ own pharmacies charge, every day. As read today (19 October):
– Lilly’s own pharmacy (LillyDirect) charges per 4 weeks for Zepbound, with your own prescription: $299 at 2.5 mg, $399 at 5 mg and $449 at 7.5 to 15 mg if refilled within 45 days
– NovoCare charges per 4 weeks for Wegovy, with your own prescription: $349 at 0.25 to 2.4 mg and $399 at 7.2 mg

Tracker: https://allglp1.com/glp1-daily-price-tracker
Renewal price alerts: https://allglp1.com/price-alert
You’re welcome to link to it, or to embed the live table on your site (free, one line of code): https://allglp1.com/glp1-price-tracker-widget

Disclosure: AllGLP1 earns a commission from some of the providers listed. A price is listed whether or not the provider pays us.

Edward Newton
AllGLP1.com

Thank you Mr. Newton!

Can I post this for my readers?

Yes, please do, and thank you. The prices change from day to day, so if you can link to the tracker (https://allglp1.com/glp1-daily-price-tracker), your readers will see the current figures rather than the 19 October ones. A credit to AllGLP1.com is all I’d ask.

Best regards,
Edward Newton
AllGLP1.com

Trump Has Picked a Side, and It Isn’t Ukraine’s

Trump has obviously picked sides and is trying to force Zelenskyy to settle on Putin’s terms. He lifted sanctions on Russian oil, letting Putin keep financing the war. He declared a unilateral cease-fire that surprised both sides and was ignored almost at once. He told Zelenskyy to stop hitting Russian refineries, and that was ignored too. He threatened to cut off U.S. intelligence and, apparently, ordered limits on SpaceX’s Starshield satellite service, which has hampered Ukraine’s air defenses and its strikes on Russian positions in occupied territory.

Putin’s answer was one of the largest attacks yet on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, hitting more than 15 power generation and transmission facilities. Zelenskyy said he was never consulted on any formal energy truce, and Ukraine’s long-range drones resumed striking Russian refineries, including those at Ryazan. The logic on each side is plain. Russia wants to cripple Ukraine’s heating grid and economy before winter while Ukraine wants to squeeze the refining capacity that funds Moscow’s war. The dispute also raises the pressure on European allies to make up for the financing and weapons Kyiv is no longer getting from Washington.

Trump’s latest anti-Ukrainian move was to waive the new sanctions in the so-called Graham bill, named for Sen. Lindsey Graham. The Senate had passed it 86–11 – unusually broad bipartisan support. Trump waived it without explanation, though by now none seems needed: he has long shown more warmth toward Putin than toward Zelenskyy. Russia was delighted. Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev wrote on social media that “the Trump administration’s suspension of the Graham Act is an important and truly historic moment.” Zelenskyy wasn’t.

The sanctions were due to take effect in two days. They would have targeted Russian officials, banks and the shadow fleet of tankers that keeps Russian energy moving, and they would have directed Trump to impose tariffs of up to 100% on the five largest importers of Russian oil or natural gas. Countries that import less than 15% of Russia’s gas exports and have taken significant steps to cut those imports would have been exempt.

Trump’s biases are stark and evident. He has condemned Ukraine for hitting Russian refineries, but not Moscow for hitting Ukrainian power plants. He says Zelenskyy is hurting the world’s diesel supply: “He wants to make problems for our farmers, our ranchers with diesel fuel because Russia supplies a large portion of the diesel fuel throughout the world. I said to him, ‘Do what you want. Don’t hit refineries. There’s plenty of targets. Don’t hit refineries.’ And he went out and he hit,” Trump said. “He better damn well stop.”

Its’ Zelenskyy’s fault! – and Trump has called for a new Ukrainian leader – presumably one who is a puppet of Putin’s.

Russia, for its part, kept up its attacks on civilians. A strike on Zaporizhzhia killed 20 people, three of them children, the third mass-casualty attack on Ukraine in four days. “Today, Russia said thank you for the lifting of sanctions on diesel exports by dropping five glide bombs on residential buildings in Zaporizhzhia,” Zelenskyy said. “Last night provided yet more confirmation that Russia perceives any easing of pressure as a signal that it can supposedly keep fighting, that it can supposedly keep dropping bombs on cities. Different signals are needed.”

The pattern is hard to miss. Trump is reversing Washington’s pressure on Russia and aiming it at Ukraine, hoping Kyiv will give in.

Zelenskyy then did something to obviously tell Trump where he could go with his demands. Ukraine launched a drone attack on a major oil terminal and other key targets in Putin’s hometown, St. Petersburg. Zelenskyy said Russia had struck Ukraine’s oil and gas sector 76 times in a week, leaving tens of thousands of families without power, and that Ukraine would target Russia’s energy infrastructure.

Reaction on Capitol Hill has been muted, perhaps because most lawmakers are focused on the midterm elections. The sharpest Republican criticism has come from members who are leaving Congress, such as Rep. Don Bacon, who said the sanctions Congress just passed should be applied, not rolled back. There have been some criticisms on the campaign trail from endangered republican candidates.

But the 86–11 Senate vote shows where Congress stands: overwhelmingly with Ukraine and not Russia. Trump, as usual, is ignoring the wishes of Congress and of the American people.

One more point for the president’s attention: 86 is well over the 67 votes needed to convict in an impeachment trial.

A Democrat Senate?

Will the democrats win the Senate? To take control, they need to flip four seats without losing any of their own. The polls say they will. So do the prediction markets, which show republicans losing North Carolina, Ohio, Maine, Alaska and Texas while democrats hold Michigan. And if they do take the Senate, what will they do with it? For starters, Sherrod Brown, who is trying to win back a Senate seat in Ohio, says no more Trump-nominated judges will be confirmed: “We’re not obviously confirming Trump judges.” Roughly 60 to 70 federal judges are nominated each year. Since Trump won’t leave the Oval Office until January 2029, that could mean about 140 vacancies waiting for the democrats to fill if they capture the White House in 2028.

The federal judiciary has three main tiers: the Supreme Court, with nine justices; the courts of appeals, with 179 judgeships; and the district courts, with 677 judgeships. A backlog of 140 vacancies can hardly make for a healthy administration of justice. But the democrats would see it as an opportunity – a chance to flood the federal bench with liberal judges.

And what about the other positions that require Senate confirmation – cabinet secretaries, ambassadors, the heads of major agencies? Would those go unfilled too? In all, roughly 1,200 positions must be confirmed by the Senate. What happens to them? Then, of course, there is the rest of the wish list: killing the filibuster (Trump should love that one), granting statehood to Puerto Rico and DC, loosening voting laws, bringing back DEI and the Green New Deal, reopening the border, rolling back oil and gas production, and adding seats to the Supreme Court. I wonder whether they will also try to cut funding for Trump’s military dalliances.

Trump’s hand is going to get tired signing all those vetoes.

And of course, a democrat House will be sending articles of impeachment over to the Senate, where they will have no chance of passing. No math gets the democrats to the 67 votes needed to convict.

But if the democrats are focused on Trump, they will not be focused on what Americans actually care about: affordability. As I have noted before, democrat “solutions” will only make things worse. Do you really think a Senate that includes Sherrod Brown, Abdul El-Sayed, James Talarico and Mary Peltola will make things better? Name one democrat position that would actually improve the economy. Raising the minimum wage? Shutting down data centers? A billionaires’ tax? Medicare for All? Lowering the cost of housing – how, exactly? Spurring manufacturing by keeping Trump’s tariffs, which have done the opposite? Bringing down utility costs? Going after Big Pharma to lower drug prices – didn’t Trump already try that?

What we will get, essentially, is more tax and spend. No proposals to cut federal spending or the national debt – when have democrats ever proposed that? Nothing on energy independence. Nothing that smacks of growth. The real question is whether the democrats will seize the opening and expand the socialist programs Trump started, namely the government’s push into the private sector. If they did, perhaps Trump wouldn’t veto them.

With both the House and the Senate in democrat hands, Trump will rule by executive order even more than he does now. I came across an undocumented claim that during the 2016 campaign Trump made this curious remark, an obvious jab at Obama: “A presidency that lives by the pen and the phone dies by the pen and the phone.” Yet Trump has issued 509 executive orders across his two terms, and he will have to issue even more if the democrats are in power. No president has expanded executive power the way he has. Will a democrat House and Senate try to rein that power in, or will they wait, hoping a democrat wins in 2028 so they can use the same power to advance their own agenda?

When Biden took office, his first executive orders undid whatever Trump had done. Trump then did the same to Biden. So what does 2028 hold? Jamie Raskin of Maryland, one of Trump’s most vocal opponents in the House, says Trump’s use of presidential power can and should be reversed. In Raskin’s words: “We have a massive reconstruction task ahead of us. Fortunately, reconstruction has a great history in our country, and when it’s allowed to work, it has been a lot more successful than either authoritarianism or revolution. We will have to go department by department, subject by subject, and public purpose by public purpose to determine what we salvage and what we re-create.”

So what bills have Raskin and his colleagues introduced to restrain Trump? One would bar presidents from entering into financial settlements with their own government, prompted by Trump’s “settlement” with the IRS. Others would limit the president’s power to declare emergencies or impose tariffs. Another would enforce the ban on presidents accepting payments or gifts from foreign governments without congressional approval. Still another would require public review of any renovations to the White House. And there are more.

Again, my bet is that none of these will become law even if the democrats take the House, the Senate and the presidency. If anything, look for presidential power to grow. And some of what the democrats say they want, they already have – tariffs, for instance. The problem is that Congress does not enforce its own laws.

But contrary to most observers, I think that if the democrats take the Senate as well as the House, they won’t be able to help themselves: they will overreach. Washington is already a circus and a clown show (again, with apologies to clowns). With a democrat Senate and House, I predict they will alienate voters so thoroughly that, ironically, they will help put a republican back in the White House in 2028. Let’s all hope, for the country’s sake, that it isn’t JD Vance.

A Democrat House?

Remember when the president told voters, “Pretend I’m on the ballot”? It looks like they’ve taken him at his word.

I was recently telling a couple of friends about the latest prediction-market odds on Congress. The democrats’ chances of winning the House have been high all along, I said, and now stand at 91 percent on Polymarket. That got nothing more than a few nods. Then I mentioned the surprise: the odds of democrats taking the Senate have climbed to 64 percent. One friend went ballistic. No way, he said, was a socialist going to win Michigan, or a weirdo going to win Texas, even against an ethically challenged opponent.

Yet Polymarket gives Talarico a 64.5 percent chance in Texas and El-Sayed a 70.5 percent chance in Michigan. Elsewhere, Mary Peltola is favored in Alaska at 73.5 percent, Sherrod Brown in Ohio at 61.5 percent, and Troy Jackson in Maine at 59.5 percent. Kalshi tells the same story: 91 percent for a democrat House and 63 percent for a democrat Senate.

These are betting markets, mind you. If you feel the way my friend does, go put your money on the republicans holding the Senate. Just don’t bet on them keeping the House. History was against them from the start: the president’s party almost always loses ground in the midterms, especially when his approval rating is below 50 percent. Trump’s is around 34.

I once predicted the democrats could win as much as a 50-seat majority. That was before the republicans’ gerrymandering push. Polls now put the margin somewhere between 32 and 47 seats.

So what should we expect from a democrat House?

Impeachments, for a start. Trump has already been impeached twice, and I’d put the odds of a third at close to 100 percent. His cabinet won’t be spared either. Articles of impeachment have been filed, or soon will be, against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Education Secretary Linda McMahon, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., budget director Russ Vought, Attorney General Todd Blanche, FBI Director Kash Patel, and Homeland Security’s Markwayne Mullin.

Then come the investigations. Kimberly Strassel, my favorite columnist at the Wall Street Journal, counts 11 House committees preparing to investigate at least 26 separate subjects. Her list runs from the Trump family business, emoluments, and pardons to the $1.776 billion “antiweaponization” fund, Jeffrey Epstein, immigration shootings and deportations, Iran, Venezuela, the use of Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff as diplomats, the Board of Peace, the Qatari Air Force One, tariffs, DOGE, the firing of inspectors general, political prosecutions, the FBI under Patel, Corey Lewandowski’s conduct at DHS, the ballroom, the Kennedy Center, energy and mining deals, federal contracting, pressure on corporations, actions against the media, law firms, and universities, and taxpayer-funded advertising. (https://www.wsj.com/opinion/buckle-up-for-a-democratic-house-73b89e07)

My reaction: Gee, is that all? What about all the renamings? The Arch? The Rose Garden? The devastation of Hains Point, my favorite spot in Washington? The meme-coin dinner? The billions flowing to the president, his relatives, and his friends?

Strassel also reports that members have already drawn up long lists of people to subpoena, from the president himself (good luck with that) to family members and advisers like Stephen Miller and Susie Wiles. Corporate chiefs will be hauled in to do penance, and so will ordinary people: ICE officers, ballroom contractors, DOGE volunteers. If witnesses refuse, democrats plan to go around them by subpoenaing contractors, corporations, banks, colleges, and law firms, and to file lawsuits, pursue contempt, and issue criminal referrals as the hearings unfold. As she points out, the contempt citations and referrals will go nowhere in Trump’s Justice Department.

Then there’s the House’s actual business. The House controls the purse strings, and Strassel expects Democrats to use that power to attach conditions to spending, block specific expenditures, restrict military operations, and turn the federal spigot back on. They also have bills in the works to overhaul pardons, emergency powers, impoundment, inspector-general protections, foreign gifts, presidential disclosure rules, whistleblower laws, and prosecutions and settlements.

No presidential budget will pass, but then they rarely do. The president will govern by executive order alone. So get ready for a clown show (with apologies to clowns) even worse than the one we have now. The president brought this on himself, though frankly I doubt he cares. The real question is whether the gridlock will, ironically, produce less harmful government, with power split between a democratic House and a pseudo-republican president.

In another post, I’ll look at the Senate.

Connie Neal (July 9, 1948 – October 16, 2026)

My other half

My other half, Connie Neal, has died. She had dementia. We had a wonderful 31 years together, and in all that time we had exactly one rough patch and not a single argument. People find that hard to believe, so here is my secret: I don’t argue. I seldom raise my voice. I’ve always found arguments unproductive, and my policy is simple: if you feel strongly enough about something, you win. Connie figured that out early and, to her credit, never abused the power that she held over me. We both agreed that there was almost nothing worth damaging a loving relationship over. Certainly not where the thermostat is set.

The first signs of her dementia came about three years ago, when numbers started to confuse her. She would ask the same question over and over, write the answer on one of a growing stack of yellow pads, and then ask again. One by one, she stopped wanting to do the things we loved. No more riding on the back of the motorcycle. No more boating and fishing. No more camping in the fifth wheel toy hauler. We camped mainly where we had good friends to visit. While in Florida to spend time with one of her best friends, it turned out to be our last trip. At two o’clock in the morning after we had just arrived, she told me she could not stay in our camper and I had to take her home. She was seeing people in the kitchen, in the bedroom, and they were all strangers.

That continued at home. She would ask me “whose baby is that sitting next to you?” She would look out the windows of lounge area in our home at the lake and see an automobile accident instead of boat traffic. And one day she looked at me and said, “You are a nice looking young man. What do you do for a living?” I’ll admit that at my age, ordinarily being called a nice looking young man would be some of best news I’d had in years, but this time not so much.

Her daughter wanted to move her into assisted living. I said that since Connie lived with me, I would make that call. Eventually I did, because I became afraid to leave her alone in the house. She had forgotten how to operate every appliance: the coffee maker, the microwave, the washer and dryer had all become foreign to her. Her coffee was as likely to end up in the oven rather than the microwave. Then she started asking me where the bathroom was. She had lost her sense of direction.

So I consented to put her in assisted living and visited at least every third day and took her out to lunch or dinner once a week. At first, on Sundays when I was in town, I could bring her back home, fix one of her favorite meals, and take her back after breakfast the next morning. Our dog, Lili, had been depressed ever since Connie had to leave, and she was ecstatic every time Connie came through the door. When Connie left, Lili would retreat to her box and stay there except to eat, drink, or go outside, and she made it very clear she was not having much to do with me. If she weren’t in her box, she’d go up to the guest quarters I had built for my parents and lie beside the recliner where Connie used to spend her days watching TV or reading, leaving me to my own devices until mealtime. Lili and I both knew whose company we preferred, and we missed her deeply.

Connie soon had to move from assisted living into the Alzheimer’s facility next door. One of her great joys was her morning walk, which she could take on the path outside of assisted living. Now she had to walk the corridors inside memory care. She had made friends at assisted living, played games, and had a group to talk with. In the new unit, most of the residents were confined to wheelchairs, slumped over, and hard to understand when they spoke. Connie was not happy, and she grew more and more unhappy. So I started visiting every other day just to give her some relief from the stress she had started to exhibit.

Then I read an article in the Wall Street Journal that depressed the hell out of me. It was “Dementia Doesn’t Have to Be the End of Travel” by Kathleen Hughes, about families taking loved ones on trips “to chase joy before advancing disease makes trips impossible.” Cruises. Alaska, Antarctica, Australia, South Africa, Sicily, the Caribbean, Dubai, and Europe.

https://www.wsj.com/health/wellness/travel-dementia-family-trips-5c28e0bc

She did note that people with dementia can get confused or stressed in unfamiliar places, which makes the already difficult job of caregiving even tougher. I could have told her that. Never mind Antarctica. It got so I couldn’t even bring Connie home. She would get restless, disoriented and confused, and demand to be taken back to memory care.

We would sit outside the facility in rocking chairs, hold hands and talk. Then one evening her daughter called to say Connie had been taken to the hospital next door with pneumonia, UTI and fluid on her lungs. Further diagnosis revealed heart failure. I saw her after they got her into a room, she was alert and on oxygen. I left her with her daughter and went to Georgia for two weeks where we had four generations attending the Georgia Oklahoma game (me, my son, my grandson and my great-grandson), which I believe has to be some kind of record. Then the next week my son and I watched the Vanderbilt game from the President’s box. It was Homecoming, and the 60th anniversary of my graduation from Georgia. We didn’t have a reunion because it is probable that there are not enough of us left to reune.

When I got back to Knoxville, I was stunned by how quickly Connie had declined. She was now in hospice care, in a wheelchair, couldn’t stand without falling, and spent most of her time asleep on a sofa. I would pull up a chair, sit beside her, hold her hand and talk to her, even though she could no longer carry on a conversation. But she knew who I was. Sometimes she would just say, over and over, “Help me, Harold. Help me Harold.” I was visiting almost every other day, watching her grow weaker and weaker. Soon she was confined to her bed, without fluids and nourishment and not expected to live more than a few more days.

Connie was perfect for me. She moderated my intensity, so much so that when I retired from UT, the person who replaced me as finance department head thanked her for it. She taught me a great deal, coming from a totally different culture than mine. She was from Upper East Tennessee. Her father was one of the Bedford Boys and was in the first wave at Omaha Beach. When he went into the Army, he got his first pair of new shoes, and they pulled all his teeth in one sitting. Against her father’s wishes, Connie went to college at East Tennessee State University, but could only stay one year. She married her high school sweetheart, who had enlisted in the Air Force, and they were married almost twenty years before he left her for another woman. His loss. Lucky me!

We met when I walked into the UT credit union and her boss sent her to pull me out of line and help me personally. I had been appointed by Jimmy Carter to the first National Credit Union Board, so every credit union manager around knew me from the press releases or my speeches at meetings and conventions. Connie had seen me and heard me speak, too, and later confessed she’d been strongly attracted to me at first sight. So imagine her surprise when I was standing in line dressed head to toe in motorcycle leathers, because I had ridden my bike. She asked if she could help me. Then she asked: “Do you have a Harley?” “No, I have a Honda.” “Can I see it?” “Sure.” “Will you take me for a ride?” “Wear long pants and boots tomorrow. I have gloves and a helmet, and we’ll ride at lunch.” So we did.

We started seeing each other almost immediately. Her divorce was being finalized, and she had a daughter in middle school who, like many children of divorced parents, didn’t seem to like me. But I had been through that with my own children, who never really accepted anyone I saw after my marriage ended. It took ten years or so before they accepted Connie and considered her family. She grew on people.

She educated me in how most of the real world thinks. She had wonderful instincts and insight into everyday things that had always gone right over my head. She gave me an appreciation for her roots and her culture – she was kin to the famous Carters of country music. And she settled into mine as easily as she settled onto the back of that Honda. She referred to herself as “just a southern girl” and like a good southern “girl,” when I would dress to go hunt she would say “You look cute in camo” and “Get a big one.”

When my father died, then my brother, and then my mother, a bit of my happiness died with each of them. With Connie, I was happy for all of our 31 years together, these last three notwithstanding. Now that she is gone, I don’t know if I will ever be happy again.

When Mom died, I would start to cry without warning. Now it is happening again. So rest in peace, my love. It is almost impossible to describe how much I miss you. Wherever you are, I hope the sky is blue, the mountains scenic and the weather is good for riding. Save me a spot. I’ll bring the gloves and the helmet.

More Where’s the Beef?

Warning: Never use “beef stew” as a password. It isn’t stroganoff.

Retail Choice beef is going for around $10 a pound. I’m personally spared the sticker shock, since I haven’t bought a single cut of beef since 1971. What ends up on my plate is venison I harvested myself, or nothing at all. Still, prices like that demand an explanation. The textbook answer is simple enough: supply has shrunk while demand has held steady meaning that the short term demand for beef is inelastic (people keep buying even as prices climb).

The president’s response to the shortfall has been to open the door to imports. In February, he raised Argentina’s tariff-free quota for lean beef trimmings by 80,000 metric tons a year. Then in August, he announced that up to 300,000 metric tons of beef could come in tariff-free over 90 days, saying he had a commitment that it would sell at 25% below market.

However, that savings has not shown up in the grocery stores. Rather the price that ranchers get for their cows has fallen by $200 to $400 per cow, further infuriating ranchers. American cattlemen are understandably unhappy. One observer remarked “It wasn’t worth the headache and what it did to the market. It’s doing exactly what we thought it was going to do, which was nothing.” But it has help imperil republican seats turning otherwise noncompetitive races into tossups or “lean democrat.”

Of course, the White House has a different take. White House spokesperson (how many “spokespersons does the White House have?) Anna Kelly said in a statement that Trump has “done more for American agriculture than anyone” through new trade deals, tackling high production costs and sweeping investments in the farmer-facing programs passed through Republicans’ policy megabill. At the same time, he is delivering on his promise to consumers by reducing beef prices while allowing our American beef herd to grow,” Kelly said. The President will continue taking actions to support our great farmers while driving economic prosperity for all Americans.” In other words: let them eat cake! Or chicken. Chicken is still somewhat reasonable.

Ranchers say that they were hit twice. First, the president gave them $6 a gallon diesel and now because of the importing of foreign beef are getting less for their cows. The president said ““I did this one little thing because I think it’s very important, and it ends very quickly. And I’m not looking to renew it, but I do want them to produce more. It really became unacceptable to the voter, and we do have to get elected. Because if we’re not going to get elected, your ranchers and your farmers are in big trouble — if the Democrats got in.” Make that “bigger trouble.”

The U.S. herd is at a 75-year low: 86.2 million head as of January. That isn’t because Americans have forgotten how to raise cattle. Severe drought did real damage, but so did soaring input costs (diesel, equipment and fertilizer), driven up in part by Trump’s tariffs, that forced many ranchers to sell off their herds. Underneath it all lies a question that comes up again and again: how can something raised thousands of miles away be shipped here and still undersell what we produce right down the road? For beef, as for so much else, the answer may be that our own bureaucracy makes it easier and cheaper to import than to produce at home.

High beef prices have not translated into profits for the processors. Tyson Foods, one of the nation’s largest beef processors, closed its Lexington, Nebraska, plant in January. In August, citing the historic cattle shortage, it announced it would close its Joslin, Illinois, beef plant and its Eagle Mountain, Utah, case-ready (packaging) facility, and would try to sell its Pasco, Washington, plant. In June, JBS USA announced the closure of its Souderton, Pennsylvania, beef plant, which could process about 2,000 head a day. Add Tyson’s Lexington (about 4,500 head a day) and Joslin (about 3,000) plants, and that is roughly 9,500 fewer shackle spaces per day for cattle. Somewhere, 9,500 cows a day are enjoying an unexpected reprieve, though I wouldn’t advise them to make long-term plans.

Tyson isn’t abandoning beef. It is consolidating around its three central plants in Dakota City, Nebraska; Holcomb, Kansas; and Amarillo, Texas, where it plans to add a second shift as cattle become available. In its fiscal third quarter, Tyson’s beef volume fell 16% and its beef segment lost $138 million. That takes real talent: losing money selling something most everyone wants.

But Tyson’s closures probably won’t raise beef prices. Because of the cattle shortage, the industry has been operating well below capacity, and Tyson says it can keep harvesting about the same number of cattle across a smaller, more efficient network. That idle capacity is a big part of the losses Tyson is trying to fix.

If the processors aren’t getting the money, who is? Cattle producers – ranchers and feedlots – get around $5.23 of that $10 retail price. Out of that come costs: feed, fuel, labor, vet bills, fence repair, hay, equipment and interest payments. Even so, the cow-calf ranchers at the start of the chain are doing well. Oklahoma State livestock economist Derrell Peel says they are making record returns. But the feedlots that are getting squeezed: they sell cattle at high prices, but they also pay record prices for calves. As Peel puts it, “Pretty much everybody above [cow-calf producers] is a margin operation, and most of those margins are under some sort of adverse pressure.”

What I am wondering is whether closing processing plants raises the cost of getting cattle to slaughter? When JBS announced the Souderton closure, one market analyst predicted extra trucking costs would trim what regional producers get for their fed cattle. If those costs mount, ranchers may raise fewer cattle rather than more. And if a rancher wants to sell beef directly to local buyers, the animal first has to go through an inspected facility. If the nearest one is hours away and booked for months, the sale simply never happens. Ranchers who could sell straight to consumers, cutting out the distant packer entirely, are stopped not by a lack of demand but by the lack of a legal way to get the job done. It can be done, though. A rancher on the land next to our neighborhood in Knoxville sells his beef directly to the public, and some of my neighbors buy half a cow from him. But he’s the exception, and I wonder how much the bureaucracy is costing us.

To his credit, this is one of the few areas where the president has tried to expand competition rather than constrict it. On September 4, he signed two executive orders directing federal agencies to reduce regulatory barriers, expand opportunities for state-inspected meat to move across state lines, support smaller and regional processors, modernize inspections and give ranchers more options for processing and selling their own beef. Much of this is still at the report-and-recommend stage, but with more processing capacity, one hopes ranchers will have the incentive to rebuild their herds and put more beef on American tables.

Then again, one could always take up deer hunting.

“Cotton-Picking” and Other Everyday Phrases With Racist Pasts

Whoever came up with “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me” was obviously a fool because – pardon my language – words can hurt like hell.

That point was driven home recently by a flap over the term “cotton-picking,” as in “Wait a cotton-picking minute” or “Are you out of your cotton-picking mind?” During an appearance on a conservative talk-radio show, Virginia Rep. Jen Kiggans agreed with the host when he said House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., should keep his “cotton-picking hands off of Virginia.” Jeffries had come to the state to support a gerrymandering effort that would have eliminated all but one of Virginia’s republican House seats.

Massachusetts Rep. Katherine Clark and California Rep. Pete Aguilar demanded that Kiggans apologize and resign, accusing her of endorsing “brazenly racist language to attack black leaders.” Kiggans refused to apologize. The host, she said, shouldn’t have used those words, but she had only been agreeing with his point.

The host may well have chosen that phrase precisely because Jeffries is black. But it’s entirely possible that Kiggans heard it the way many Americans do, as a folksy intensifier with no connection to slavery. And “cotton-picking” is hardly alone. Plenty of phrases we use without a second thought have racial or ethnic baggage. Another example is in an article on the fraud in Minnesota in the New York Post where the writer states that the state’s attorney general Keith Ellison may lose his race to a republican saying “Ellison is going down” immediately followed by “Fraud isn’t the only black mark on Democrats’ nearly two-decade-long domination of state politics, either.” Oops. Ellison is black. https://nypost.com/2026/10/13/opinion/tim-walzs-legacy-of-failure-may-doom-minnesota-democrats/

At breakfast the other day, I made a statement and my friend jokingly said “That’s white of you.” Wellthe use of white as a metaphor for purity and sinlessness in English dates to the Old English period. Consider:

þæt gedafenað toforan eallum oþrum þingum þæt ælces mannes heorte beo wið ealle leahtras hwit & clæne, swaswa ge gewilnigeað þæt ge to ciercean becumen mid hwitum reafum & mid clænum

(That it is fitting above all other things that the heart of each man be white and clean of all sins, so that it both strives for it and comes to the church with white and clean garments.)

By the later Middle Ages, skin color began to be used as a metaphor for purity and goodness. And now even if the speaker has no deliberate racist intent, such phrasings now are seldom taken out of a racist context.

Consider these others:

Phrases rooted in slavery and Jim Crow

• Cotton-picking. It dates to the cotton plantations of the South. Today it rarely carries a racial meaning, but in the United States its roots are tied directly to slavery.
• Sold down the river. Most of us use it to mean “betrayed.” The phrase comes from the slave trade, when enslaved people in the upper South were sold to plantations farther down the Mississippi, where conditions were notoriously brutal. In Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, that is exactly Tom’s fate.
• Grandfathered in. After Reconstruction, several Southern states passed “grandfather clauses” that exempted men from literacy tests and poll taxes if they or their grandfathers had been eligible to vote before 1867. Since black men were not allowed to vote before then, the rule protected poor white voters while shutting black citizens out.
• Uppity. No surprise here. White Southerners used it to describe black people who supposedly didn’t “know their place.”
• Cakewalk. Enslaved people performed a dance that slyly mocked the formal ballroom dances of their enslavers. Slave owners watched it as entertainment and awarded a cake to the “best” performers.
• Peanut gallery. The term referred to the cheapest seats in a theater, often the segregated section where black patrons were forced to sit. I remember that in Atlanta, black moviegoers had to sit in the balcony.
• Eeny, meeny, miny, moe. The rhyme itself is old, but for generations the most common American version used a racial slur where we now say “tiger.”
• Spooky. The dictionary defines “spook” as a ghost, or as slang for a spy. But during World War II, white American soldiers began using “spooks” as a slur for black servicemen. The Tuskegee Airmen were even mocked as the “Spookwaffe.”
• Thug. The word comes from the Thuggees, a gang of robbers in colonial India. In recent years it has become a coded way to describe young black men.
• Mumbo jumbo. Meaning nonsense or gibberish, the phrase comes from a Mandinka word from West Africa. European colonizers used it mockingly for African religious practices they didn’t understand.

Phrases aimed at other groups

• Getting gypped. To be cheated or swindled. It comes from “gypsy,” a slur for the Romani people, who were stereotyped as swindlers.
• Long time no see. The phrase is widely thought to have started as a mockery of the broken English of Chinese immigrants, though some trace it to caricatures of Native American speech.
• Paddy wagon. “Paddy,” short for Patrick, was a stock name for an Irishman, and the term played on the stereotype that the Irish were always getting arrested.
• Hooligan. Another dig at the Irish. The word is believed to come from a rowdy fictional Irish family, the Hooligans, made famous in 1890s London music-hall songs.

Phrases about Native Americans

And now the words that make Native Americans see red:

• Powwow. A powwow is a significant cultural and spiritual gathering. Using the word for a quick office meeting trivializes it.
• Too many chiefs, not enough Indians. The phrase turns Native leadership into a punch line about disorganization.
• Circle the wagons. It conjures settlers defending themselves from “attacking Indians,” casting Native people as the aggressors on their own land.
• Hold down the fort. Often linked to frontier forts held against Native raids, though the phrase may simply be military in origin.
• On the warpath. It reinforces the stereotype of Native people as savage and violent.
• Low man on the totem pole. It gets totem poles wrong. The figures aren’t ranked from top to bottom, and the lowest carvings are often the most important.
• Indian giver. It grew out of settlers’ misunderstanding of Native gift-exchange customs and implies that Native people can’t be trusted.
• Off the reservation. Native Americans were once forbidden to leave their reservations without permission. Leaving could get them hunted down.

And one false alarm

• Call a spade a spade. This one gets lumped in with the others, but it is Greek in origin, came to English through Erasmus in the 1500s, and long predates the use of “spade” as a slur. Its history is innocent, even if some listeners may no longer hear it that way.

Slurs for everyone else

Nearly every immigrant group has collected its share of slurs. Italians were called dagos, wops and guineas. Remember the scene in the Godfather where the movie producer, Jack Woltz, refuses to cast Johnny Fontane in his firm. Woltz makes a string of derogatory remarks about Italians, which results in his waking up with the severed head of his favorite horse, Khartoum, in his bed. Johnny got the part but the scene highlighted the prejudice faced by Italian Americans during that era. 

I won’t even list the ones for the Poles, Chinese or the Mexicans.

White Southerners got “hillbilly,” “redneck” and “cracker” though for most of my childhood the minor-league baseball team in my hometown proudly called itself the Atlanta Crackers. I kid you not. My other half is from upper east Tennessee where “ootens” was used as a substitute for “trailer trash.”

Then there are Jonathan Swift’s Yahoos. In Gulliver’s Travels, the Yahoos are filthy, brutish creatures in human form, and “yahoo” has been an insult for a crude, ignorant person ever since. (A happier legacy of that book: I named my German shorthaired pointer Lili, after Swift’s Lilliputians, because she was the runt of the litter.)

My Lili, the runt of the litter.

So what do we do with them?

Which brings me to the real question. If a phrase has racist roots, should it vanish from our vocabulary, even when most people who use it have no idea where it came from? Or does what a word means today matter more than what it meant a century ago?

I don’t think there’s a single answer. Some of these phrases, like “uppity” or “cotton-picking” still sting because the old meaning never really went away. Others have drifted so far from their origins that hardly anyone hears the history in them. But once you know where a phrase came from, it’s hard to un-know it, and that knowledge is worth having before the words leave your mouth.

“Affordability” – Bernie puts out the fire!

The Joke Democrats are Playing on the Voters

Democrats running on “affordability” are playing a joke on the voters. I would say playing voters for fools. That might be a bit harsh but it is true if voters fall for it. Democrats talking about affordability is like an arsonist lecturing on fire prevention.

When Trump took office, the country was a mess. Open borders, inflation, DEI, and transgender issues such as “gender-affirming care” (mutilation) were tearing the country apart. The president went after each of these domestic problems aggressively—perhaps too aggressively. But on inflation, he adopted policies guaranteed not to eliminate it, even if prices are rising more slowly than they did under Biden. Isn’t it interesting that “affordability,” the buzzword used to attack Biden, is now the buzzword democrats are using against Trump?

The president’s response is to insist that his policies have made everything better and that any remaining problems are Biden’s fault. It reminds me of the old line: “If everything is so great, then why do I feel so bad?” There are two truths here: the first is that the president has done very little to focus his administration on the issues of affordability. The second is that democrats are completely incapable of fixing affordability. If anything, they will make it worse. What we need are market solutions, because politicians of every stripe will keep getting it wrong—unless their name is Reagan or Thatcher. Still, the idea that many voters will turn against Trump and the republicans over “affordability” is a joke. There are plenty of reasons to vote against Trump, but affordability isn’t one of them.

Let’s look at a few of the issues:

Housing: Democrats will not loosen the zoning and permitting rules that make housing expensive in the first place. They want rent controls which discourage the construction of new apartments and shrinks supply and banning corporations from owning single-family homes which limits the availability of homes to renters. It costs nearly three times as much to build an apartment in California as in Texas and so-called “affordable” housing projects in California and New York cost more than $1 million per unit. Part of the reason is state and local prevailing-wage mandates. Then add all the costs that come with the Green New Deal. 

AIER’s Daily Economy asked why rents in Tokyo are only a fraction of those in New York, even though Tokyo has twice as many people. The answer is supply. Over the past 30 years, New York has added about 600,000 net housing units. Tokyo has added 4.85 million. Want to make housing more affordable? Increase the supply! (thedailyeconomy.org). So why hasn’t the president charged his HUD secretary to aggressively attack the housing issue with market-based solutions?

Wages and labor costs: Minimum wages now top $15 an hour in many democrat states, and there are proposals to raise the federal minimum to $25. Increases like these drive small businesses under and raise unemployment among low-wage workers, leaving more of them dependent on welfare. Prices go up, not down. Businesses respond by replacing workers with technology, pushing unemployment and welfare dependency higher still. It’s worth remembering that some early minimum wage laws openly wanted to keep black workers who were willing to work for less from competing with white workers. Today the main effect is to keep younger, less-skilled workers out of the workforce. That is why labor unions always support minimum wages even though their members get paid much more. It limits competition for their jobs. Very few heads of household earn the minimum wage. But imposing mandated minimums simply drive up costs and result in workers being laid off. Just ask the restaurants and hotels in Washington state and California. Here the president could charge his labor secretary with the tasks of eliminating the federal constraints on wage costs on federal projects and any other federal impediment.

Energy: Yes, Trump’s war has driven up gas prices. But so did Biden, when he shut down drilling, ended leases on federal lands, canceled leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and banned new offshore drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico and off the Atlantic coast. Expect more of the same—and less supply—under the democrats, along with the return of the Green New Deal and all its attendant costs. Want lower energy prices? Increase the supply! Here it seems that the EPA director and the secretary of energy have been proactive in opening up more supply and decreasing the costs associated with the Green New Deal. Build more refineries! Scrap the Jones Act! Remove all restrictions on Canadian oil! Build more pipelines from Canada to the US (remember Keystone?)!

Healthcare. Don’t you think the “Affordable” Care Act has had a wee bit to do with rising health costs? Premiums for employer plans have roughly doubled since 2010, about twice the rate of inflation. Want to bet that whatever comes next won’t be worse? Trump thinks price controls on drugs will help, but fewer life-saving drugs will be developed and less not more will be available. Meanwhile, certificate-of-need laws limit new facilities and keep existing ones from offering new services, scope-of-practice laws restrict what nurse practitioners and other non-physicians can do on their own, and state licensing laws make it hard for doctors to treat patients across state lines. These all limit supply and keep costs high. Trump bungled tried to get rid of Obamacare in his first term and has not touched it in his second. The democrats want Medicare for all and a single payer health system. If you think these are what we need, just go to Britain of Canada and look at all the bad teeth and all the long wait lists for medical procedures that we take for granted. As one Canadian outfitter once told me, “sure we have lousy healthcare, but at least we don’t have to pay for it.” Believe me, Americans would soon find out that British and Canadian healthcare are nonacceptable. However, any solutions would have to go through Trump’s HHS secretary who does not seem interested in addressing affordability issues and any “solution” coming out of HHS would probably make matters even worse.

Electricity: Many people now blame AI for rising electricity costs but costs were rising before the advent of AI. The democratic “solution” is to restrict supply and to make it more costly. Coal and nuclear plants were shuttered and replaced with more expensive solar and wind power. In other words: decrease supply while increasing costs. Some solution. Here again, the EPA director and the secretary of energy should have an explicit agenda to deal with this problem based on market solutions. Suggestion: go nuclear!

Get rid of the bums and replace them with democrats? Do it but one thing is guaranteed: democrats will make matters worse, because they hate market solutions that take control out of the government’s hands. They have no real interest in any “solution” that doesn’t involve more government control. So tell me, how exactly will the democrats make things more affordable? Which of their policies will actually help? Democrats don’t see ousting republicans as a way to address affordability, they see it as a chance to impose their own agenda. Their policies do the opposite of what they promise.  Where have we seen this picture before? (Fool me once). With democrat policies in place, things will get a lot worse, and voters will again turn out the bums. Only this time they will be democrats.

Still the real solutions lie in simple economics: prices are determined by supply and demand. To lower prices, either demand has to fall or supply has to increase. Anything else does not work. The real question is whether things will get bad enough that voters demand a return to common sense market solutions instead of the heavy hand of government. Perhaps. But where is the politician who can carry that message and win? I’m not holding my breath.

The President’s Diesel Two-Step: Grasping at Straws

The president, who likes to make stuff up, is now apparently worried at long last about diesel prices and has taken two rather curious steps.

First, red-dyed diesel

The first was an executive order lifting the prohibition on truckers’ use of red-dyed diesel. For readers who don’t live in farm country, red-dyed diesel is tax-exempt fuel intended for agricultural use. It is dyed red so that inspectors can test the tanks of non-farm trucks and make sure the cheaper fuel isn’t being used in commercial vehicles. The president’s hope is that long-haul drivers will save a substantial amount of money by switching to it.

There’s a catch: it is not widely available. Have you seen it at your local gas station, or at any of the truck stops along the interstate? I have only seen it at a handful of local stations in rural Georgia. Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, estimates that perhaps one truck in 100 would actually be able to get the tax-exempt diesel.

And what about the farmers? Wouldn’t more competition for red-dyed diesel drive up its price? Not according to our president, who told a rally that the average trucker “will save over $100 every time they fill up” and that farmers “will also save millions and millions of dollars.” He went on to claim that the tax waiver “will also drive down the cost of all goods, including grocery prices, very substantially.” Sorry, but only the most devoted MAGA fan could believe this, and it shows once again the president’s lack of economic knowledge – despite his degree. The problem is supply and the order does nothing to increase supply. If anything, it raises demand for tax-exempt diesel and may well push its price up.

Also, contrary to the president’s wishes, his executive order does not “trump” state law. Georgia’s Governor Brian Kemp has already waived the state tax on diesel, but as of this writing he has taken no action on red-dyed diesel. Bottom line: it’s up to the states, not the president.

And by the way, what does Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have to say about all this red dye?

Second, lifting Russian sanctions and Trump’s mysterious “ceasefire”

The president’s second move was to lift sanctions on Russian diesel and amounted to stabbing Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the back. That isn’t just my characterization, it is the headline in the Kyiv Post (https://www.kyivpost.com/post/86677): “Trump’s deal with Putin stabs Ukraine in the Back.” The paper called it “A staggering sell-out of Ukraine by President Donald Trump, with the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announcing a license to allow Russia to sell diesel to the US and on global markets.” That is an understatement.

Under the announcement, sanctions on Russian diesel exports are lifted for six months. As the Wall Street Journal reported: “In a post on Truth Social, Trump said Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed that his country would supply over 300,000 tons of diesel fuel into the U.S. and global markets, another 500,000 tons in November, and 1 million ‘immediately thereafter.’ He added that Russia would also later deliver an additional 3 million tons of diesel ‘within a short period of time,’ based on the condition of its refineries.” Trump also declared “Lower prices for Americans, especially our Great Farmers, Ranchers, and Truckers, is my Greatest Priority.” Again, no lower prices will be evident from this action.

Some perspective: the Russians measure diesel in tons rather than barrels. The world is currently short about 1.6 million barrels of diesel a day. Even if every ton Russia promised arrived at once, it would plug that gap for only about three weeks.

Zelenskyy was understandably upset and warned that any easing of sanctions plays into Putin’s hands: “Russia will ‘repay’ the diesel with further terror and perfidy. Allowing Russia to sell petroleum products is an investment in a war that must be ended, not prolonged. What is needed is real de-escalation with Russia on a reciprocal basis.” Of course he is right.

The president then went further, essentially ordering Ukraine to stop targeting Russia’s refineries. Those strikes have been effective. Before Ukraine’s campaign began, Russia produced between 85 and 90 million tons of diesel a year, with domestic consumption just under two-thirds of that. Since then, Ukrainian strikes have hit six refineries representing about half of Russia’s diesel capacity. Some analysts doubt that Russia can export anywhere near the amounts Trump promised, given the poor state of its refineries and its own export restrictions.

Zelenskyy rejected Trump’s demand, saying Russia must also agree to stop attacking Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. 

Then in a truly bizarre move, Trump announced a partial ceasefire that neither side seemed to know about.  “Effective immediately, there is an ENERGY CEASEFIRE in the War between Russia and Ukraine. Both parties have agreed. Do not break it!” he posted on social media. Zelenskyy’s response: “That’s news to me.”

So Ukraine didn’t know about the ceasefire. What about the Russians? Apparently, they didn’t know about it either. The Kremlin prompted rejected the idea of a temporary ceasefire outright, with a spokesman telling reporters that Moscow wants a long-term peace deal instead. As for Trump’s self-declared “energy ceasefire,” the spokesman said only: Contacts continue. As soon as we have something to say on the matter, we will inform you. Translation to Trump: Go pound sand. Still, Zelenskyy said he would accept it if Putin did the same: “If President Trump negotiated it with Putin – please tell us when the ceasefire begins. We are ready and we will accept it.” 

Meanwhile, The Guardian, citing the New York Times, reported that U.S. officials had offered the Kremlin lucrative economic incentives in exchange for a ceasefire, reportedly including the release of billions of dollars in frozen Russian sovereign assets. The administration has also revived a plan to sell off parts of the Russian energy company Lukoil, a multibillion-dollar deal that would benefit Middle Eastern investors with “business ties” to U.S. negotiators. That should surprise no one, given reports that negotiators Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff have been looking to profit from the talks.

Zelenskyy was understandably furious, and an equally irate Trump said Zelenskyy should “damn well stop” hitting Russian refineries, adding, “I think it’s time for Ukraine to get a new president.”

Just hours after Trump’s announcement, Russian strikes hit energy infrastructure across Ukraine, ignoring his unilateral energy ceasefire. All of this is embarrassing, though apparently not to our president.

Not surprisingly, democrats (and a few republicans) criticized the president’s actions. A bipartisan group of senators called on Trump to “immediately reverse course” on allowing Russian diesel imports, accusing the administration of violating federal law and throwing Moscow a financial lifeline as it wages war on Ukraine. Citing Congress’s 2022 ban on Russian energy imports, the senators wrote that “President Trump’s decision to allow Russian diesel imports to the U.S. runs directly counter to that law” and that “The Administration has also failed to consult with Congress or submit any explanation to justify its decision as required by statute.”

Excuse me, but when has this president ever consulted Congress or justified any of his actions? Notably, the republicans in the group are the usual suspects: Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and John Curtis of Utah. None of them is a supporter of the president, and all of them are routinely ignored by him. They know the letter will have absolutely no effect, but it makes for good theater, especially for Collins, who is in a tough fight for reelection. But where is the republican leadership? The silence is deafening.

Now with apologies to the O’Jays whose lead singer Eddie Levert is a cousin of mine:

Backstabbers (lyrics)

(What they do?)
(They smilin’ in your face)
All the time, they want to take your place
The back stabbers (Back stabbers)
(They smilin’ in your face)
All the time, they want to take your place
The back stabbers (Back stabbers)

I wish they’d take some of these knives out my back