Hammer Mill Days

Idle hands do the devil's work, right? What about idle minds? Are they commandeered by some other malevolent agency? Inquiring minds want to know. We appear to have arrived at the doldrums of summer a bit early here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill in beautiful upstate New York. Just finishing up a stretch of 90-degree plus days, some of them feeling over 100 degrees with the humidity. When it gets like that, we go subterranean - down into the cavernous basement of the mill, where it's about 30 degrees cooler and wherein we have built an alternative habitat of sorts. Makeshift furniture made of bits and bobs. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has a charging station set up down there. It's a big, dank, windowless home away from home, perfect for summer staycation. Okay, I'm exaggerating. It's anything but perfect. It's drab as hell and it reeks down here. Even worse, there's nothing to freaking do except scratch on the walls and think about shit. Th

We started this week with some news flash about North Korea expanding its uranium enrichment capability. NBC talking heads were all on the job, rolling out the standard script on how the North Korean commies can't be trusted, how they've done this with successive U.S. administrations from Clinton forward, and how they've rolled a feckless president Trump by flattering him, gaining a massive concession - essentially, the prestige of a summit with the U.S. president - in exchange for nothing. There's broad agreement on this point on MSNBC, for example, meaning that everyone on the network who detests Trump, from National Review editors to Democratic party strategists, are saying roughly the same thing. What emerges is the same bipartisan consensus that has driven bad foreign policy decisions through administrations of both parties for as long as I've been alive (and, in truth, longer). It feels to me very much like the assholes vs. the fuckers, and while I certain