Stuck

 The movie currently playing in my head is The Wrong Box (1966), specifically the scene where some removal men are attempting to extract a grand piano from the home that Michael Finsbury (Michael Caine) shares with his irascible grandfather.  After watching them try to muscle it out the door the ancient butler (Wilfrid Lawson) observes, "Do you know what that is?  That is stuck.  That is what that is."

It takes very little to constipate a planet.  Since last week an enormous container ship has been stuck in the Suez Canal after running onto a sandbar and turning sideways, or whatever the nautical term is.  Other enormous ships are backed up for miles; some have peeled off to circumnavigate Africa instead.   In the shipping business, I am told, time is money, so expect to pay more for stuff made in Asia (what China makes, the world takes).  This is the sixty-fifth anniversary of Nasser's seizure of the canal and of NATO's failure to do anything about it despite Article 5, so if you hear ghostly laughter from the direction of London it's not an ancient butler:  "Not our problem, old man."  It's up to Egyptians to move the Ever Given (ugly ships have ugly names) before the entire world economy grinds to a halt.  They could try unloading some of its 220,000 tons of stuff, but how to get a gigantic crane onto sandy ground?  They're already dredging sand from around the steerage, but it could take weeks.  My guess?  They'll blow the thing up.  It's Japanese-owned and Panamanian-flagged, leased by a company in Taiwan, so the lawyers can live off this until the next century.

Do you remember when Barack Obama decided to keep Bush's Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in his Cabinet?  It was supposed to provide continuity or signal his willingness to work with Republicans or something.  Didn't work, of course, because Moscow Mitch had already stated his intention of crippling the Obama presidency.  Joe Biden talks unity but he's under no illusions about the gang who tried everything up to and including the January 6 putsch to keep him out of the office we elected him to.  No Trump collaborators were invited to apply for jobs in the new administration and most have melted back into the private sector (rightwing propaganda outlets mostly) or are hoping their pardons will cover future criminal charges.  Most, but not all.  There is an active cell of Trump fifth columnists working to impede or sabotage most Biden initiatives.  For example, there are still a couple of weasels called Andrew Saul and David Black at the Social Security Administration holding up stimulus checks by refusing to hand over records to the Treasury Department.  (This was the Trump tax-returns technique until a judge had enough and told them to cough up or go to jail.)  Judge Amit Mehta is livid that Michael Sherwin, another Trump hire as acting US attorney for the District of Columbia, decided to chat with Sixty Minutes about pending indictments of Oath Keeper thugs who took part in the coup  attempt.  In legal circles this is called corrupting the jury pool.  It's almost as if Sherwin doesn't want them convicted of sedition.  

The worst, most visible offender is Louis DeJoy, who seems to think Trump made him postmaster for life like some unqualified Federalist Society judge.  His plan -- his ten-year plan, thanks very much -- for completing the destruction of the postal service is so appalling that a group of House Democrats paid him the compliment of the DEJOY Act (stands for Delivering Envelopes Judiciously On-time Year-round, clumsy but effective).  Here, enjoy a sampling of complaints from Americans who don't care if the post office makes a profit as long as they don't have insurance policies cancelled over checks lost in the mail, or have to pay late fees on credit card bills, or are at risk of losing small businesses over missing or delayed packages.  It's not just a matter of Aunt Mary not getting her birthday card.  And the Sedition Party don't care as long as they can convey the message that Government Can't Do Anything Right.

Alejandro Mayorkas just fired a bunch of Trumpers from the Department of Homeland Security advisory board, in a move to improve immigration policy that the Washington Post calls a purge.  Good.  Bring on the Swiss Kriss.  If Louis Armstrong did ads for it, it's good enough for removing Trump toxins.