. . .
K “The meat cleaver experiment failed.”
J “The gross medical and political malpractice committed on the body politic is ending up costing the country in money and lost opportunity far more than may have been saved.”
. . .
J “Wielding a chain saw was always a puerile and petty stunt by a few punks.”
K “I still maintain that we need a stout paring knife.”
. . .
[See the e-commentary at Trump: MBA Not MPP: Meat Cleaver Versus Surgeon’s Scalpel (March 3, 2025).]
. . .
K “He is fundamentally a businessman not a politician. He has never participated in the PTA or a presided as a precinct chair. He is MBA not MPP. That is a burden and a benefit.”
J “He is fundamentally a showman not a statesman. A government is not a show or a business. There are no profit and loss statements. There are people and lives.”
. . .
K “You could get a Ph.D. in public policy by chanting that change must be undertaken with a scalpel not a meat cleaver. However, there are some times when a meat cleaver may be needed.”
J “Meat cleavers beget messes. You need surgery not butchery.”
. . .
K “Their manner of canning employees lacks good manners and is both brutal and brutish.”
J “So it should end?”
. . .
K “Trump is crass and coarse and often impolite and impolitic, yet he promised to be a disrupter and he is fulfilling his promise to disrupt.”
J “You do not need a Ph.D. in economics to recognize that the lost consumption of all the fired employees and the additional reluctance of others to consume in a time of uncertainty will wallop the economy. Just wait until his cherished barometer of success – the stock market – plunges precipitously.”
K “For many compounding reasons, the stock market will drop precipitously. The economic and social disruption is wrenching and painful, yet some disruption is necessary to disrupt the abnormal norm and reset the system.”
. . .
J “Wielding a chain saw is puerile and petty.”
K “How about a paring knife? A stout paring knife?”
. . .
Bumper sticker of the week:
“It is the classic fallacy of our time that a moron run through a university and decorated with a Ph.D. will thereby cease to be a moron.” H. L. Mencken
e-commentary 