Well, Duh!

So, some psychologists at Penn have looked into why so many bosses are so insistent on a return to the office 5 days a week, and their conclusion is that executives are a bunch of malignant narcissists.

Well, paint my ass and call me Susan! 

When the pandemic came to an end, many people who had been working from home assumed they would be allowed to maintain that habit at least a few days a week. But today in the U.S., a third of companies have forced everyone back to the office full time and have banned remote and hybrid work.

Some leaders say they insist on full-time in-person work because it boosts productivity, despite clear evidence that it does not. Others claim it’s about collaboration, creativity or culture. Our new research reveals that the objection to any work from home is more likely to be driven by something else entirely: ego.

Case by case, there may be good reasons for teams to work together in person. As a general rule, though, it turns out that ordering people back to the office full time is a power and status move. It’s a signature strategy of leaders who exhibit narcissistic qualities. They see any kind of remote work as a threat to their authority and admiration. They want to be worshiped at the office altar.

Welcome to America.

Today in Weird

A man claiming to be an FBI agent and wielding a barbecue fork and a pizza cutter attempted to bust Luigi Mangione out of jail.

To refresh your memory, Mr. Mangione is accused of  

As Anna Russel would say, "I'm not making this up, you know." 

A man claiming to be an FBI agent showed up at a Brooklyn jail with a barbecue fork and pizza cutter and tried to free Luigi Mangione on Wednesday night, according to a law enforcement official and a federal criminal complaint.

Prosecutors said Mark Anderson, 36, told employees at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center that he worked for the FBI and said he had a court order to release a detainee. A law enforcement source who asked not to be named because they were not authorized to share the information publicly said that the detainee was Luigi Mangione.

When jail staff asked Anderson to provide his credentials, prosecutors said, he gave them a Minnesota driver’s license.

He threw several documents at them related to filing claims against the U.S. Department of Justice, the criminal complaint said. He also told officials that he had weapons in his bag, and a search turned up the barbecue fork and a circular steel blade, according to the complaint.

………

In Brooklyn federal court on Thursday, defense attorney Michael Weil asked Magistrate Judge Taryn Merkl to release Anderson to a hospital for an evaluation instead of holding him in jail. He said claiming to be an FBI agent without a badge was “not a serious attempt to spring a federal inmate.”

“It seems like a case representing something else going on,” Weil said.

Gee, ya think? 

 

 

Have You Heard the One About the Heckler Autoworker?

Donald Trump was touring a Ford plant, and one of the workers called him a, Pedophile protector."

Trump responded with, "Fuck you," and flipping him the bird. 

He was suspended from his job, and the UAW local set up a GoFundMe for him, and it has raised around $½ million, well in excess of the goal of $150 thousand.

He will be donating the remainder to charity.  (I'd suggest various anti-ICE organizations)

A GoFundMe campaign for a Detroit autoworker who called Donald Trump a “pedophile protector” was suspended from the Ford plant where he worked on Tuesday. But it looks like he’s going to be alright financially. A GoFundMe campaign set up for the Michigan man has already raised over $450,000 and counting.

TJ Sabula, a 40-year-old line worker, told the Washington Post he was suspended from his job for shouting “pedophile protector” at Trump during the president’s visit to the Ford F-150 plant. Trump responded, either by audibly saying or just mouthing the words, “fuck you” twice. The president then extended his middle finger as he kept walking.

Two different videos posted to social media captured the exchange, including the first published by TMZ. White House Communications Director Steven Cheung defended Trump’s actions, telling the Washington Post: “A lunatic was wildly screaming expletives in a complete fit of rage, and the President gave an appropriate and unambiguous response.”

There’s no evidence that Sabula was shouting expletives, though he did call Trump a “pedophile protector,” according to the video. Trump, who was reportedly best friends with notorious sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, has received criticism in recent months because his Department of Justice has failed to release millions of documents related to Epstein’s crimes. Refusal to release the files violates the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which passed last year.

Sweet.

Fuck Yeah!!!!!

A study has shoen that swearing makes you stronger and less sensitive to pain.

This being the case, I should be able to life Mount Everest. 

Headline of the Day

Trump’s Primary Problem Isn’t Aging, It’s Narcissism

—Mike the Mad Biologist, on the fact that Trump is Nucking Futz.

He's right, you know.

………

The fundamental issue is that Trump is, and has been, mentally ill: when I use the word narcissist, I do not mean that he is a self-absorbed asshole (though he is). I mean that he is often delusional and does not perceive reality in any way that could be described as accurate. Moreover, he does not recognize that he is ill and takes no steps to control his illness; in fact, he has established significant structures to prevent the intrusion of reality.

Outside of The Guardian and The Huffington Post, which have discussed this in detail with clinical professionals, the only media outlet that has even come remotely close is Politico (?!?), which last week described Trump as a twelve year-old child.

His longstanding mental health problem and the inability to recognize it is far more dangerous than any possible aging.

Yep.  

Because Of Course He Did

On the matter of self-driving cars running over and killing cats, the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ is firmly on the side of killing cats.

Disappointing, but not surprising. 

In between trying to become the world’s first trillionaire, expanding his defense contracting business, fighting the “woke mind virus,” feuding with Sam Altman, and overseeing half a dozen tech companies, Elon Musk has somehow found the time to wade into the debate over whether it’s good or bad that a rogue Waymo robotaxi (by the company’s own admission) seems to have run over and killed a beloved bodega cat in San Francisco.

In case you somehow missed it, a cat was run over earlier this week, leading to ongoing anger against the reputed culprit (Waymo). The feline, whose name was KitKat—but who also went by the moniker “the mayor of 16th street”—was a longtime staple of Randa’s Market in the city’s Mission neighborhood. KitKat’s owner, Mike Zeidan, told The San Francisco Standard that his pet was hit by a robotaxi late Monday night. “Honestly, man, it’s difficult,” Zeidan said. “He was a one-of-a-kind cat. He brought joy to so many people. People loved him.”

To their credit, Waymo admitted that it was one of their cars that did this, but Elon's response was basically, "Who cares, it's just a dead cat."

……… 

On Friday, as a means of adding his two cents, Musk retweeted an account that had defended driverless cars as being a savior, not a killer, of neighborhood pets. “5.4 million cats are hit by cars every year in the U.S., and 97 percent of those cats die from their injuries,” @WholeMarsBlog wrote. “Autonomy will dramatically reduce that number.”

“True, many pets will be saved by autonomy,” Musk commented.

It’s great that Elon could take time out of his busy schedule to participate in the discourse around KitKat. Big picture, Musk is launching a robotaxi service, so we all know which dog he has in this fight. But the truth of the matter is, we don’t really know if autonomous cars would reduce the number of feline deaths.

Gee, yet another case where Elon musk determines that the only moral decision is one that makes him more money.

 

Something to Confirm with My Computer Programmer Reader(s)

I was doing some programming/database work today, relatively simple stuff, basically a not very procedural report generator and cleaning up a database.

When I was done, I realized that I do not feel like myself when I have done this.

This is distinct from engineering problems, where, even if it is percolating through my head in the background for days, I still feel like me.

It takes about 2 hours before I feel like me again.

Anyone else have this experience. 

Gee, Ya Think?

Around the turn of the century, there was a story on NPR about counseling, and insurance coverage for psychiatric services.

As is common, they started with a specific case and a specific person, because they felt that this would provide a reference point for the listeners.

In this case, it was a high power executive who was spending 15-20 days a month away from home, and hated it, and so needed counseling to deal with this.

I remember shouting at the radio (I shout a lot while driving, I inherited that trait from my Dad), "You don't need counseling, you need a different job!" 

This is not what is typically done in the United States.  I am not sure if this is a conceit of the profession, that is that they see themselves as being able to work everything out, or because the economic incentives make the practitioners disinclined to provide a permanent, or at least durable, solution which requires no additional treatment.  

You choose.

In any case, Dan Nelson has made a similar observation, though it is focused at general issues with societies more than the specific example above:

Human behavior is shaped by a complex interplay of life’s events, conditions, and circumstances. To truly understand a person’s actions and behaviors, one must ask: What was this person exposed to? What did they experience? These questions point to a profound truth: behavior cannot be separated from the environment in which it develops. From the safety of one’s surroundings to access to proper nutrition, sleep, and social stability, the circumstances of life have a lasting biochemical effect on the brain. These experiences are not merely coincidental with development, they actively shape it. 

………

Yet, it seems natural to us today, in a society shaped over a mere few hundred years, to assume we know better than nature itself. When we make aspects of nature illegal, we may be damaging humanity in ways we cannot fully grasp. Likewise, when we sever people from the natural rhythms and connections to their natural environment, we risk causing problems that remain beyond our understanding.

Yet, modern psychiatry operates as though behavior can be neatly categorized, diagnosed, and treated without this deeper understanding and consideration of the biological, social, environmental, circumstantial evidence and events that need to be understood unless they want to sell snake oil remedies. Psychiatric diagnoses, rooted in observable patterns of behavior, are often presented as authoritative conclusions.

His conclusion, that treating mental illness without recognizing the effects of an ill society, is a valid point.

It's a good read.  So read it.

Just F%$#ing Shoot Me

I have an ear worm, the Chipmunks Christmas Song.

If I have to suffer, so do you.

Gee, Ya Think

So, the Daily Mail (Yeah, I know) interviewed  David Garrow, Barack Obama's Pulitzer prize winning biographer, and he criticizes the former President's campaigning for Harris as, "Tone-deaf preaching."

I do not understand why he is surprised by this.

Smug tone deaf preaching has kind of been Barack Obama's thing since he was (at least) a law student at Harvard:

Barack Obama and his wife Michelle have been slammed by his biographer for 'talking down' to voters in 'tone-deaf and clueless' preaching that harmed Kamala Harris' ill-fated presidential campaign.

The effect was so bad that – combined with Donald Trump's victory – it is likely to reduce the 44th president's political relevance to 'Bill Clinton levels', David Garrow said in an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com.

'People do not want to be talked down to, no matter who they are,' the 71-year-old Pulitzer Prize winner said.

………

Garrow said Tuesday's electoral rout has left Obama, 63, 'nervous' about the impact Trump could have on how he is seen by future generations.

'He has been and remains extremely concerned and nervous about his historical legacy,' he said.

Barack Obama's concern for his historical legacy has always been about him, and not about what he did, and did not do.

He betrayed his promises to labor, gave what amounted to amnesty to torturers, and he steadfastly protected the criminals behind the 2008 financial crisis from criminal prosecution.

At the same time, his administration allowed the victimization of homeowners through legally dubious means in order to, "Foam the runways," for the banksters.

F%$# Obama's narcissism, and %$# his legacy.

Here's Johnny!

No, Johnny Carson is still dead, though it appears that dotard Donald Trump is not aware of this, seeing as how he wants Carson, who has been dead for almost 20 years, to replace Jimmy Kimmel on the Jimmy Kimmel Live!

So, he wants a dead man to replace a late night host, and he got the show wrong.  Carson was the host of The Tonight Show, currently hosted by Jimmy Fallon, and this is on a completely different network.

For all the talk about Joe Biden's neurological state, it's pretty clear that something is very wrong with Trump's brain, and it has gotten a lot worse recently:

Donald Trump is still sore at late night host Jimmy Kimmel for making him the laughingstock of the 2024 Academy Awards ("Isn't it past your jail time?") back in March. So much so that he thinks Johnny Carson should take over the show and make late night great again.

Trump told his worshipers at a Pennsylvania rally that the jokes Kimmel and Colbert tell aren't funny. "It's supposed to be comedy," he rued. "It's hatred."

"Where's Johnny Carson?" a dazed Trump queried the crowd. "Bring back Johnny."

No one in the bleachers had the heart to tell their leader — who is starting to look and behave like the embunkered Hitler in Downfall — that Carson retired from the show in 1992 and died in 2005. Or it just could be that his followers believe Trump has the power to raise Carson from the dead and put him back at his desk to interview fresh young talent like Angie Dickinson and Joey Bishop.

Even before the cognitive decline, Donald Trump was not right in the head.  This is not a surprise, he was the child of an abusive alcoholic father.

But his brain is beginning to resemble a slice of Swiss Cheese, or perhaps Stinking Bishop.

Why Am I Not Surprised?

Kevin Robert the architect of the right wing's plans to destroy America, aka Project 2025,  has been revealed to have beaten a neighbor's dog to death because its barking annoyed him.  He also considered beating to death his neighbor's puppies.

So, he's a f%$#ing psychopath.  Hoocoodanode?

The man behind Project 2025, the rightwing policy manifesto that includes calls for a sharp increase in immigrant deportations if Donald Trump is elected, told university colleagues about two decades ago that he had killed a neighborhood dog with a shovel because it was barking and disturbing his family, according to former colleagues who spoke to the Guardian.

Kevin Roberts, now the president of the Heritage Foundation, is alleged to have told colleagues and dinner guests that he killed a neighbor’s pit bull around 2004 while he was working as a still relatively unknown history professor at New Mexico State University.

“My recollection of his account was that he was discussing in the hallway with various members of the faculty, including me, that a neighbor’s dog had been barking pretty relentlessly and was, you know, keeping the baby and probably the parents awake and that he kind of lost it and took a shovel and killed the dog. End of problem,” said Kenneth Hammond, who was chair of the university’s history department at the time.

Two other people – a professor and her spouse - recall hearing a similar account directly from Roberts at a dinner at his home. Three other professors also said they heard the account at that time from the colleagues who said they had heard it directly from Roberts.

None recall Roberts – who worked at the university as an assistant professor from 2003 to 2005 – ever saying that the dog he allegedly said he killed was actively threatening him or his family.

………

Project 2025, which was written by the Heritage Foundation under Roberts’s watch, has become a focal point of the 2024 presidential election as Democrats warn that its radical policy prescriptions – such as the eradication of the Department of Education and imposing further restrictions on abortion – will serve as a blueprint for Trump’s administration if he is elected. Both Trump and Vance have sought to distance themselves from the 900-page report, with Trump claiming he had not read it. But in a foreword to Roberts’s book written by Vance, the vice-presidential nominee praises Roberts’s “depth and stature within the American Right” and says that, “in the fights that [lie] ahead, these ideas are an essential weapon”.

Roberts is one of the most prominent rightwing voices in Washington. He has close ties to Opus Dei, the Catholic group, and has spoken openly about how he considers the outlawing of birth control to be one of the “hardest” political battles facing conservatives in the future.

………

Marsha Weisiger, a colleague of Roberts at the time who is now an environmental history professor at the University of Oregon, recalled being invited to dinner at Roberts’s home with her husband, and Roberts telling both of them the story about how he had hit a neighbor’s pit bull with a shovel and killed it.

“My husband and I were stunned. First of all, that he would do such a thing. And second of all, that he would tell us about it. If I did something horrific, I would not be telling my colleagues about it,” she said.

To make matters worse, she recalled Roberts saying that the neighbor in question also had puppies and that he had considered killing them, too. Weisiger’s husband, who asked not to be named, recalled Roberts saying he had complained about the dog to the police, who were not responsive, and that the dog sometimes got into his yard.

(Emphasis Mine)

This is a deeply, deeply evil man.

Best Healthcare System in the World

In the relentless pursuit of profits, we see a new business model at some hospitals, kidnapping patients to get insurance money.

Acadia Healthcare is one of America’s largest chains of psychiatric hospitals. Since the pandemic exacerbated a national mental health crisis, the company’s revenue has soared. Its stock price has more than doubled.

But a New York Times investigation found that some of that success was built on a disturbing practice: Acadia has lured patients into its facilities and held them against their will, even when detaining them was not medically necessary.

In at least 12 of the 19 states where Acadia operates psychiatric hospitals, dozens of patients, employees and police officers have alerted the authorities that the company was detaining people in ways that violated the law, according to records reviewed by The Times. In some cases, judges have intervened to force Acadia to release patients.

Some patients arrived at emergency rooms seeking routine mental health care, only to find themselves sent to Acadia facilities and locked in.

A social worker spent six days inside an Acadia hospital in Florida after she tried to get her bipolar medications adjusted. A woman who works at a children’s hospital was held for seven days after she showed up at an Acadia facility in Indiana looking for therapy. And after police officers raided an Acadia hospital in Georgia, 16 patients told investigators that they had been kept there “with no excuses or valid reason,” according to a police report.

Acadia held all of them under laws meant for people who pose an imminent threat to themselves or others. But none of the patients appeared to have met that legal standard, according to records and interviews.

………

But at Acadia, patients were often held for financial reasons rather than medical ones, according to more than 50 current and former executives and staff members.

Acadia, which charges $2,200 a day for some patients, at times deploys an array of strategies to persuade insurers to cover longer stays, employees said. Acadia has exaggerated patients’ symptoms. It has tweaked medication dosages, then claimed patients needed to stay longer because of the adjustment. And it has argued that patients are not well enough to leave because they did not finish a meal.

Unless the patients or their families hire lawyers, Acadia often holds them until their insurance runs out.

“We were keeping people who didn’t need to be there,” said Lexie Reid, a psychiatric nurse who worked at an Acadia facility in Florida from 2021 to 2022.

Seriously, this sh%$ is unsustainable, and if the government does not fix it now, then it will implode, placing the health of tens of millions of Americans at risk.

Totally Not Surprising

Researchers at the University of Toronto and the University of Miami have found that people who use cryptocurrencies are more likely to exhibit psychopathic tendencies.

Not surprised at all:

Cryptocurrency is an industry notably rife with fraudsters, nutjobs, and criminals. Now, in a development that just makes sense, an academic team has published a study asserting that people who are really into fake internet money are more likely to display psychopathic tendencies.

Researchers at the University of Toronto and the University of Miami recently set out to answer the question: “How are cryptocurrency buyers different from those who do not purchase cryptocurrency?” To get to the bottom of this, they surveyed 2,001 American adults, asking them questions about themselves and about their interest in cryptocurrency. They found that crypto’s core demographic is a bunch of maladjusted young men who believe everybody’s out to get them.

“The results presented here suggest that cryptocurrency ownership is associated with several nonnormative and arguably maladaptive characteristics,” the report says. “Crypto ownership was associated with belief in conspiracy theories, ‘dark’ personality characteristics (e.g., the ‘Dark Tetrad’ of narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and sadism), and more frequent use of alternative and fringe social media platforms,” it continues.

When one consider what makes cryptocurrency attractive to some people, it comes down to money for nothing, and, in the case of folks like A16Z, the ease of using insider access to make a profit before the pyramid comes tumbling down.

It follows that this would select for psychopathic traits.

Not Enough Bullets

John Foley, the co-founder and former CEO of Peleton is saying he is broke following his firing by the exercise bike firm.

By broke, he means that he only has $225,000,000.00 in the bank. 

Oh, the horror:

John Foley, the co-founder and former CEO of Peloton, went from being a billionaire to being broke after he lost his job. Foley told the New York Post that he was forced to sell his homes and most of his belongings to make ends meet.

"You know, at one point, I had a lot of money on paper. Not actually [in the bank], unfortunately. I've lost all my money. I've had to sell almost everything in my life," Foley told the Post.

………

Foley was forced to step down as CEO in February 2022. Now, Foley, who was once worth nearly $2 billion, found himself with no job and $225 million in the bank.

He was forced to sell his $55 million East Hampton waterfront home and cut back on his and his family's expensive lifestyle.

To quote F. Scott Fitzgerald, "The rich are different from you and me."

Yes, they are.  They are more delusional, greedy and evil than the rest of us.

They are the worst of us.

This

If You Love Being Alone, There's Nothing Wrong with You.

—Jessica Wildfire at OK Doomer

While I believe that I am neurotypical, except for poor coordination, y wife maintains that I am on the autism spectrum,  but I do have a deep appreciation of solitude.

Many people seem to think of being alone as some sort of punishment though.

Enjoying being alone is a difference, not a disability.

About half of adults would prefer electric shocks over spending fifteen minutes alone with their thoughts. That's what a team of psychologists at the University of Virginia found out ten years ago. They're the ones who want to hang out with you during a plague.

They didn't just consent to electric shocks. They did it to themselves. They were given a little button to push.

They pushed it.

………

Since those people make up a majority, they get to make the rules. They pass the laws. They decide the social conventions. They determine what's normal. They define the personality disorders. Yes, that's right. It's the people who prefer to shock themselves rather than spend 15 minutes inside their own heads. They run things. There's no personality disorder to describe their behavior, because there's so many of them.

………

So, there's nothing wrong with you. It's completely reasonable to prefer solitude or a small community than to participate in a society that's abandoning any pretense of kindness or even logic. You can interact with it as much as you want. Stop feeling guilty. You don't have to save the world, but it helps to understand it.

These days, being a hermit isn't a sign of mental illness.

I do understand the potential irony of blogging about this.

If I favor solitude, why am I shouting out into the world like this?

Given the number of readers that I have, I would argue that what I do is akin to yodeling at the edge of a cliff in a wilderness to appreciate the echo, and then the following stillness.

She is a Saint

I am referring, of course to Sharon*, who has not murdered me over the past 30 years,  though such as action would be completely justified.

Case in point, she asked me to print the chicken away in the refrigerator, and I said, "No."

When she asked why, I replied, "Because I already have."

That may just seem mildly annoying, but I have been doing this for 30 years.

This, and 30 years of, "Funny haha, or funny strange?" (She still had not answered that question) make violence against me, whether bullet, knife, or cast irond skillet entirely justified.

^*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.

The Finns are so Law-Abiding

That just one guy was responsible for more than half of the crime reported in the Scandinavian nation.

As Anna Russel would say, "I'm not making this up, you know."

A cyber-thief who snatched tens of thousands of patients' sensitive records from a psychotherapy clinic before blackmailing them and then leaking their files online has been caged for six years and three months.

The district court of Länsi-Uusimaa, Finland, sentenced Aleksanteri Kivimäki, 26, on Tuesday for crimes against the Vastaamo center and those in its care, which included more than 20,000 extortion attempts.

Specifically, a judge last month found Kivimäki guilty of 9,231 counts of aggravated dissemination of information infringing on individuals' private lives, 20,745 counts of aggravated attempted blackmail, and 20 counts of aggravated blackmail. The former CEO of Vastaamo has already received a three-month suspended sentence for failing to protect his clients' data.

Kivimäki's extortion spree seemingly triggered so many complaints to the police, it caused Finland's reported crime figures to skyrocket in a week, going beyond more than double the usual rate.

(emphasis mine)

And they claim that millennials don't work hard.

Support Your Local Police

Cops are trained to be cowards. 

For example, police are are trained that if someone is closer to you than 20 feet might have a knife, so empty your magazine into them.

It means that we see too many shootings, and this training is a petri dish for creating PTSD.

It comes as no surprise then that a police officer in Florida emptied his gun and dove for cover in response to an acorn falling on the roof of his car.

This is not aberrant behavior.  He has been trained to react in this way since his days at the police academy:

Loads of people feel skittish on the job and can be spooked by the slightest noise, but if you’re that kind of person it’s maybe not a good idea to have a career that lets you loose on the streets with a loaded weapon. Something Florida cops are likely to consider after video emerged this week of a Florida cop firing all the bullets from his gun and running for cover after he was spooked by a falling acorn.

The officer, identified as deputy Jesse Hernandez, emptied the clip on his firearm back in November 2023 while attending to a call at McLaren Circle in Kissimmee, Florida. Hernandez had been attending a call in the area when an acorn fell from an oak tree and struck the roof of his squad car.

In body cam footage shared across social media, the officer was seen jumping to the ground and shouted “shots fired” after the acorn strikes the roof of his car. He then turned and emptied every bullet from his gun, each aimed squarely at his squad car.

While Hernandez fired on the car, Marquis Jackson, who was accused of stealing his girlfriend’s car, was in the back of the police cruiser. Officers had searched, handcuffed and loaded the accused into the back of the police car and, despite being cuffed, it was Jackson that the officer thought was shooting at him.

We need to be clear, now-former deputy Jesse Hernandez was doing what he was trained to do, to assume that any anomaly was a lethal threat, and respond with lethal force.

This philosophy, best known by moniker, "Killology," coined by Dave Grossman, is designed to produce this result.

This is why I argue that the police need to be razed to the ground as an institution and rebuilt from scratch.

I Just Can't

You may have noticed that I have not written much about what is going on in Israel and Gaza.

I just have not been able to write about it.

I feel parilyzed by the terrorist attack and the aggressive response from Israel.

So,someone on Facebook reposed this video from actress and PhD Neuroscientist Mayim Bialik.

I'm not comment about the substance of what she said, but rather about her affect.

It matches what I have been feeling since the Hamas massacres in Israel.

I feel frozen in place, and unable to address what has gone on, and what is going on now.

It's gotten me so upset that I am talking about my feelings, an event that is about as rare as hen's teeth. (I'm not tough, I am just a lousy communicator)

I think that I can manage to offer my usual litany of ill-informed rants if (when?) Benjamin Netanyahu gets turfed out.

If my brain unfreezes, I'll make some comments on what is happening.