For the Record: Make it so, Democratic senators!

 Couldn't help diving back into the economics a bit, because Shapiro thinks he DEVASTATED my girl Senator Warren:

1. Warren is not particularly a proponent of MMT, though she's understood the point that deficit panic is stupid. She insists that "debt matters" https://t.co/cuMZRN0Xf8 pic.twitter.com/bfON5SYGyt

— Ghastreblyansky (@Yastreblyansky) October 25, 2021

Nevertheless after five years in which we've added something like $10 trillion to the national debt, first because of Trump's insanely wasteful tax cuts, then the emergency response to the COVID crisis, it's time to start adding more tax back into the mix https://t.co/u5NFk4ba1c

— Ghastreblyansky (@Yastreblyansky) October 25, 2021

You really need to learn something about a subject before you start popping off on it. I realize you get paid by the tweet and don't have much time to prepare.

— Ghastreblyansky (@Yastreblyansky) October 25, 2021

And then I got annoyed by the very distinguished historian Timothy Snyder, retailing a silly formula in place of an argument:

For the Record: Cheap Shots

Married father of four and notorious pickup artist Corey Lewandowski, left, catches 'em all. How does he do it? Sheer Republican animal magnetism. "Mrs. Odom stated that over the course of the dinner, Mr. Lewandowski tried to hold her hand, and she pushed his hand away. He touched her leg, and she moved it away. He grabbed her napkin off her lap and tried to touch her leg again, and she pulled her dress over her leg, to move his hand away and cover her skin," Odom’s attorney wrote in the statement. "He touched her back and she tried to get away," the statement continued. "He described an area where he was sore from a workout, on the side of his butt, but he demonstrated this by touching her there—on the upper side of her rear end. Lewandowski tried to touch her approximately 10 times, and Mrs. Odom always rebuffed him." (Politico; composite photo via New York Post.)

I too was surprised by reports of Corey Lewandowski admitting to stabbing murders in the course of his amorous pursuit of Mrs. Trashelle Odom at a Republican fundraiser, in defiance of efforts to restrain him on the part of Governor Noem, who may be or have been his girlfriend, until I heard the event was held at a Benihana's:

"Hey, I'm pretty good with knives too," said Corey. "I've killed some guys." pic.twitter.com/kRwwUdR9Ex

— Ghastreblyansky (@Yastreblyansky) October 3, 2021

More weekend miscellanea below the fold.

Why I Hate The New York Times: Centripetality

Josh Gottheimer gets a commitment from the Speaker, 24 August. Via.

 

Josh Marshall does an excellent job of skewering the dreadful New York Times reporting on what happened yesterday on Capitol Hill, according to which the House's failure to vote on the "BIF" (Bipartisan InFrastructure bill, though it's getting less bipartisan every day as its few Republican supporters dwindle in number and commitment) is a "significant setback" for Biden's agenda produced by a "liberal revolt" and a "humiliating blow to Biden and Democrats" ("Something's Very Wrong With the Times"):

The president’s goal throughout has been both bills. They both have to pass. The last week has appeared to be on a steady course toward decoupling the two bills, passing the BIF bill and then facing negotiations over a reconciliation bill with no leverage at all over the two Senate holdouts who seem increasingly happy to let the reconciliation bill die on the vine. This is far from over. But what really happened is that the threat to kill the BIF bill got the two holdouts or at least Joe Manchin to actually start negotiating. What the Times calls a “significant setback” and a “humiliating blow” is actually the two bills being recoupled which has been the White House’s aim literally for the entire time.... But the outcome of yesterday is th[e] first good news supporters of the President’s agenda have gotten in days. Not seeing that means having a profoundly distorted understanding of the most basic dynamics at play here.

But he's not so clear on what exactly is wrong with the paper—what exactly is the profound distortion, and where does it come from? 

The Mustache of Conciliation and Compromise

Via.

Old Tom Friedman bothsidesing the Democrats internally ("Do Democrats Have the Courage of Liz Cheney?"):

I have only one question for them: Are you ready to risk a lot less than Liz Cheney did to do what is necessary right now — from your side — to save our democracy?

Because, when one party in our two-party system completely goes rogue, it falls on the other party to act. Democrats have to do three things at the same time: advance their agenda, protect the integrity of our elections and prevent this unprincipled Trump-cult version of the G.O.P. from ever gaining national power again.

It is a tall order and a wholly unfair burden in many ways. But if Cheney is ready to risk everything to stop Trump, then Democrats — both moderates and progressives — must rise to this moment and forge the majorities needed in the Senate and House to pass the bipartisan infrastructure bill (now scheduled for a Thursday vote in the House), a voting rights bill and as much of the Build Back Better legislation as moderate and progressives can agree on.

I guess Rep. Gottheimer (leading the tiny rump in the House who say they won't vote for the human-insfrastructure bill unless they get to vote for the structural-infrastructure bill first, but refuse to say whether they will vote for the former if they get their way on the latter) might think he's already doing the same kind of thing as Cheney when she voted to impeach Big Donald—fearlessly bucking his party.

Literary Corner: Vulnerable to the Reliability

I call this his "deer in the headlines" look. Via Fox News.

If the Supreme Court really comes up with a way of finding the Texas Posse Postcoitum Act constitutional, I'm going to demand that New York State enact a bill deputizing private citizens to enforce libel law by filing suits against liars on behalf of reality itself, and spend the rest of my life hunting bounties, $10,000 at a clip from all the Republicans I can catch. 

I'm not sure I'll go after Senator Manchin, because his stupid act is getting so convincing I'm not at all sure he's lying, as in this interview with Dana Bash at CNN:

The Urgency That We Have

by Joseph Manchin III

What's the urgency? What's
the urgency that we have? It's not
the same urgency that we have
with the American Rescue Plan. We
got that out the door quick, it was
about $2 billion — $2 trillion. And
on top of that, all the things we
have got with the CARES package,
everything leading up to that. So,
we have done an awful lot and there's
still an awful lot of people that need help.

But you have 11 million jobs that aren't
filled right now. 8 million people are still
unemployed. Something's not matching up.
Don't you think we ought to hit the pause
and find out? The vulnerability that we have,
Dana, right now, we don't know what is happening
with this COVID. It's awful, coming back
the way it is with a vengeance. And
we don't know about inflation. We know
it's running rampant right now. I can tell you,
in West Virginia, inflation's running rampant.

And, on top of that, the challenges we're
going to have, geopolitical challenges.
Shouldn't we be prepared?

Mod Squad

 

Mods with modified scooters, Peckham, South London, May 1964, Daily Mirror via All That's Interesting.

This is making me crazy, on the subject of the push in the House, back early from August recess to deal with the double infrastructure package, the trillion-dollar bipartisan infrastructure proper, and the $3.5-trillion "human infrastructure" including the universal pre-K, universal two-year college, permanent child tax credit, expanded Medicare and Medicaid, and all the global warming initiatives that got cut out of the first one, to be passed by Democrats alone if necessary in the form of "instructions" to be carried out in the Senate.

As you've probably heard, the second part is threatened by a rump group of nine representatives who used to call themselves "Problem Solvers", led by New Jersey's Josh Gottheimer—now they're billed as "the Mod Squad"—insisting that they'd like to just vote on the first part for starters, in opposition to the 95 Rockers of the House Progressive Caucus, who have demanded starting with the second part, to forestall any cheating on the part of the Mods. Speaker Pelosi (who is solidly on the "progressive" side of the issue, contrary to some reports portraying her as in the middle) is said to have been working out a plan to do both of them more or less simultaneously.

So last night the nine issued a curious statement in the Washington Post—

Joe Did What? Glass Half Full

 

Image via African Skies.

We've finally got some text on the Human Infrastructure budget reconciliation package, in the form of a one-page summary of budget topline items under four headings of spending categories (Families, Climate, Infrastructure and Jobs, and Healthcare), and a nine-page Memorandum addressed to Democratic senators, organized by committee, with very broad numbers for how much spending each committee is instructed to approve. Or saving in the case of the Finance Committee, which is instructed to come up with a plan to cut the deficit by "at least one billion dollars", which reminds me enough of Dr. Evil to make me laugh, but is evidently standard procedure in these matters, for reasons I'm not grasping:

There is ample precedent over the past fifteen years for using a nominal reconciliation instruction as a mechanism to allow a committee to bring forth legislation with larger budgetary implications than such an instruction suggests. Republicans used a nominal instruction amount to both the Finance and the Health, Education, Labor, and Pension (HELP) Committees to move forward with their efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act in 2015 and 2017. The instruction to each committee in each case was to reduce the deficit by $1 billion....  In addition, Democrats used nominal reconciliation instructions in 2010 and 2007 to achieve important changes to health care and education programs. The 2010 example, the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act (HCERA) included a nominal instruction of $1 billion in deficit reduction to both the Senate Finance and HELP Committees. According to CBO, That bill impacted hundreds of billions of dollars in meeting those targets.

But it seems to be about "flexibility", and connected to the fact that they won't be asking the Congressional Budget Office to score the programs before the vote:

It's Still Not There

 

City of 2050, credit to VRayGuide/CGarchitecht.

Well, so, the Senate has agreed to consider the bill that it refused to consider last week because it didn't exist yet, although it still, in point of fact, doesn't exist:

The 67-to-32 vote, which included the support of 17 Republicans, came just hours after senators in both parties and the White House reached a long-sought compromise on the bill, which would provide about $550 billion in new federal money for roads, bridges, rail lines, transit projects, water systems and other physical infrastructure programs.

While a final Senate vote on the legislation is days away, the test vote on Wednesday marked a major victory for Mr. Biden, who has pressed for the plan for months, and a validation of his faith that a bipartisan breakthrough was possible even in a polarized Washington.

Well, it sort of exists, but contrary to some rumors it hasn't been passed, and it really hasn't been written yet, and it's honestly not very encouraging. It seems to represent $550 billion in new federal spending in contrast to Biden's request, in the traditional-infrastructure American Jobs Act, for $2.3 trillion, none of which is actually new spending but instead "repurposed" spending from the Covid relief bills, unemployment supplements not used by Republican states that dropped that program, "more robust reporting around cryptocurrencies", and "economic growth resulting from a 33 percent return on investment in these long-term infrastructure projects”, or in what looks like a more accurate report from Washington Post, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯:

Stupid Economist Tricks: Sex, Lies, and Deficit Terror

Tom Toles did not cite a source for that 97% figure. Then again, unlike Michael Strain, he is paid to be a cartoonist.

Actually, no, no sex, just Michael Strain of the American Enterprise Institute, warning readers of The New York Times that

Biden Is Asking for $4 Trillion. Congress Shouldn’t Give It to Him.

He seems to like this headline format. Last time I had reason to deal with him, in 2015, it was with reference to a WaPo piece recommending the repeal of the Affordable Care Act:

End Obamacare, and people could die. That's okay.

Spoiler: my commentary concluded that it was not okay. And the GOP Congress, failing to end Obamacare, sort of agreed! I mean not exactly, but we won.

Anyway, the reason Strain would like Congress to refuse Biden the money, or at least the $3.5 trillion of it to be appropriated through the budget reconciliation process without requiring any Republican votes, is ostensibly the raging inflation he (Michael Strain) sees and expects to see continuing through next year even without this extra spending, and which would surely be aggravated by the increased demand for stuff (where "demand" means, as it usually does in this style of economics, "ability to pay for things you really need that you couldn't afford before") that the spending on the expanded child tax credit in particular will bring on by yanking people out of their God-appointed poverty, while the Biden administration makes no plans for increasing the supply of stuff, other than by PROVIDING THE UNIVERSAL FREE PRE-K EDUCATION that recipients of the child tax credit are most likely to be spending it on, but you can't expect Strain to make that connection.

So in the course of his argument he gives a lot of attention to an analysis of the Biden program by Moody's, in which for some reason he doesn't offer a link to it:

Glimmerings

Via.

Jeff Greenfield in Politico's magazine ("The Democrats Need a Reality Check") laid it out in pretty grim terms: President Biden can't be FDR in 1933, or Lyndon Johnson in 1964, because he doesn't have the votes in the Senate: a majority as thin as a razor blade and no cooperation from anybody in the opposition party. He thinks expanding the Supreme Court is a terrible idea (don't know if he's aware the Lincoln administration did that in 1863, adding a tenth justice in the hope of hemming in the vile chief justice Roger Taney) and getting rid of the filibuster is bad too; the John Lewis and For the People acts can't pass, and even if they could wouldn't solve the problem of state legislatures claiming authority to overturn national election. The only hope for Democrats, Greenfield concludes, is to find a way to "win more"—in "messaging", apparently, like by announcing every day that they want Jeff Bezos to start paying his fair share in taxes, an overwhelmingly popular idea with the American public. But it's difficult, because of the "political climate":

Of course this is a whole lot easier said than done. A political climate where inflation, crime and immigration are dominant issues has the potential to override good economic news. And 2020 already showed what can happen when a relative handful of voices calling for “defunding the police” can drown out the broader usage of economic fairness. (It’s one key reason why Trump gained among Black and brown voters, and why Democrats lost 13 House seats.)

Which, as Steve points out, is a problem Republicans (and bothsider journalists) have actively worked to create:

Dance of the Squares

 

Square dance, Skyline Farms, Alabama. 1937. Ben Shahn, photographer. FSA/OWI, Library of Congress, via Johns Hopkins University Press.

Revealed in paragraph 11 of the New York Times version on this new Senate infrastructure proposal:

The five Republicans are Senators Rob Portman of Ohio, Mitt Romney of Utah, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana. The Democrats are key moderates: Senators Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, Mark Warner of Virginia, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Jon Tester of Montana.

I'd been kind of wondering why MSNBC, CNN, and NPR didn't seem to be mentioning any of their names except Romney's and Sinema's, and also just who they were. The inclusion of Casssidy is a bit of a clue: he's not known the way the others are as a "moderate", but he was the big surprise among the Republicans who who voted to convict Trump in the second impeachment, as did Romney, Murkowski, and Collins, while Portman (who's leaving the Senate because he can't get along with the Trumpers), said Trump's conduct on 6 January was "inexcusable" and represented a violation of his oath of office but claimed the impeachment itself was illegal. In other words, they represent the anti-Trump faction, which is kind of interesting, but probably can't put together the ten Republican votes that would be needed to pass the plan in regular order (they might get to eight with Toomey and Burr, who are also retiring, and conceivably Sasse, who isn't).

Which suggests the proposal, such as it is

Very Haruspicious

A Roman haruspex examines the entrails of a sheep. By Mary Evans Picture Library.

Me earlier today (not to mention 10 days ago):

And Democrats, including Biden, will for once get credit after the $2.3 trillion budget reconciliation version is done. Biden has given GOP enough chances to get some of that. Next week on to Plan B.

— Freewheeling Passion (@Yastreblyansky) June 2, 2021

And guess who agrees with me, give or take a month or so and a few hundred billion dollars—a team of economists from Goldman Sachs, predicting that Biden's negotiations will break down and the big plan (Jobs plus Families proposals) will be passed with Democratic votes alone, per Ben Winck/Insider:

Negotiations have so far been fairly bipartisan, with Republicans meeting with Biden in recent weeks to mull over their respective plans. Yet Goldman sees the White House eventually ditching the GOP and pushing forward with Democratic support only.

Three-Dimensional Chess Is Good Enough For Me

11-dimensional chess is fun to think about, but 3-dimensional chess actually exists. Star Trek–compliant set via eBay from WorthPoint.

Funny thing happened when I heard how the Biden administration offered a compromise infrastructure package for Republican consideration yesterday, cutting about $550 billion from the original $2.25 trillion price tag, after Republicans failed to meet a Tuesday deadline to offer their own counterproposal—or rather didn't happen: no howls of protest from those who fear Biden's appeals to "bipartisanship" are a Clintonian effort to chop down his own program. Perhaps because Republicans rejected it so swiftly most of us didn't even notice it flying by.

I'm here to tell you the administration wasn't expecting anything different. The proposal didn't give in on any principle, for one thing: it suggested reducing spending on traditional bridge-and-highway infrastructure, the stuff the GOP professes to like, and broadband access, to levels more like the ones the Republicans had suggested, and shifted some of the less traditional proposals (on R&D and manufacturing, backing "homeshoring" of industry and competition with China) to other bills making their own way through the process, but it didn't give any concession to McConnell's demands on the semantics of the word "infrastructure", and it didn't give an inch on the tax issue:

Joe Did What? Access Journalism

Andrea Pozzo, anamorphic ceiling fresco in the Church of Sant'Ignazio (1690), Campus Martius, Rome, photo by Anthony Majanlahti, 2005.

Weird spectacle in Politico in a lengthy piece by Laura Barrón-López: a bunch of old more or less rightwing Democratic retired senators, Ben Nelson, Kent Conrad, Bob Kerrey, coming out to say that Biden seems to have become a completely different political thinker since he was in the Senate himself, but they're mostly pretty OK with that:

Current and former Democratic lawmakers who’ve known Biden through the years describe his current spending initiatives as an evolution. But none see his presidential agenda — cast in the face of the historic pandemic — as a misstep or simply the result of liberal pressure. Conrad, a self-described conservative Democrat, said Biden’s $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan was “not out of the Biden playbook of the past.” But he said that he’d support it if he were still in the Senate today.

What's that about? I mean, not why is Kent Conrad thinking that way, though that's an interesting question, but why is a story about him expressing a positive view of Biden popping up in Politico? Do you suppose it's possible Democrats could be learning how to use Politico-style access journalism?

Because this story is putting out a kind of specific narrative with a kind of specific purpose—

Joe did what? He didn't—yet.

 

 

Republican Chuck Hagel and Democrat Joe Lieberman in 2008, when they were both being considered for cross-the-aisle vice presidential candidacies. Remember who won the vice presidency? Via Politico.

Really interesting tidbit from Anita Kumar/Politico, passing on what look to me like some pretty carefully orchestrated hints from the White House as to what's likely to happen to the Biden agenda this summer, after he's finished with the essential task of looking hopeful for Republican cooperation:

But Biden aides also are hinting that there are time limits to how long that engagement will last. They say the president hopes to make progress on both spending bills — either as a pair or individually — by Memorial Day and sign them into law this summer. And the calendar creates some urgency: By the end of his first year, members of Congress will be consumed by the midterms and then the next presidential race. The White House also knows how a drag-on legislative process can consume a presidency and party.

“Biden and the people around him understand you have to get as much done this year as possible,” said Republican Chuck Hagel, who served with Biden in the Senate and later served as Defense secretary in the Obama administration. “At what point then — if you’re not making any progress on any front and you've been willing to compromise on some things — do you have to go it alone. That’s a decision they’re going to have to make. You don’t have a lot of time.”

Joe Did What? Coal edition

 

Mountaintop mining in West Virginia: Image by Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images via Marketplace, and a story on Trump administration zeroing out funding for a study on the health hazards of the process.

In what I think is a stunning sign of support for the Biden administration and its infrastructure program/Green Newish Deal, President Cecil Roberts of the United Mine Workers of America showed up at the Press Club yesterday with Senator Joe Manchin (Difficult-WV) by his side, to announce that his union would back, specifically, the administration's plan for phasing out the coal industry, sort of:

The United States’s largest coal miners’ union said Monday it would accept President Joe Biden’s plan to move away from coal and other fossil fuels in exchange for a “true energy transition” that includes thousands of jobs in renewable energy and spending on technology to make coal cleaner.

Cecil Roberts, president of the United Mine Workers of America, said ensuring jobs for displaced miners — including 7,000 coal workers who lost their jobs last year — is crucial to any infrastructure bill taken up by Congress. (Aljazeera)

Which is bigger than it sounds in the first place because the things he's demanding are already there in the plan, more or less:

For the Record: Biden's Corporate Tax

Cartoon by Clifford Berryman, June 1933, via Wikipedia. More material on the issues being faced then here, but (spoiler) it wasn't Roosevelt's idea to replace income tax with a sales tax..

 

Bos sent me this thread from Stephanie Kelton offering suggestions for forgetting about a hike on corporate taxes (or living with Manchin haggling the hike down, I'm not sure which). Also some corroboration for my hypothesis that she lacks clear concepts of how the budgeting process works and what Biden and Yellen are planning for the tax system. Both her ideas are pretty good, too, I hafta say, but don't offer good reasons for giving up on the tax hike:

@Yastreblyansky any thoughts on this? If the Dems can’t get the 28% incr. on Corp. taxes, what happens to the infrastructure bill? Reduce programs? Get other taxes? Or her 2 suggestions. https://t.co/IbbaCwh5bX

— Boswood - for a Job Guarantee (@Bosengood) April 14, 2021

Brooks Whigging Out Again

 

John F. Kennedy campaigning door to door in West Virginia, 1960, Life cover, via Reddit.

Shorter David Brooks, "The Heart and Soul of the Biden Project", New York Times, 9 April 2021:

So Biden is a Whig. Fight me.

That is, not, thank heavens, a Democrat:

Some people say this is like the New Deal. I’d say this is an updated, monster-size version of “the American System,” the 19th-century education and infrastructure investments inspired by Alexander Hamilton, championed by Henry Clay and then advanced by the early Republicans, like Abraham Lincoln. That was an unabashedly nationalist project, made by a youthful country, using an energetic government to secure two great goals: economic dynamism and national unity.

Because nobody could say the New Deal had anything to do with economic dynamism or national unity. The New Deal didn't build any infrastructure, other than the rural electrifcation, the Bay Bridge and the Triborough Bridge, the Chickamauga Dam and the Grand Coulee Dam and the Pensacola Dam and the Hoover Dam, the Overseas Highway from Key West to the Florida mainland, the Lincoln Tunnel and the Bankhead Tunnel (in Mobile) and the Detroit Sewage Disposal and dozens of airport projects, or education programs other than the numerous schools, teachers, and classes provided by the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Works Progress Administration, the National Youth Administration, including many programs devoted to the training of the African American community.

Two, Three, Many Reconciliations

Janet Yellen, photo by Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Insider but I think it belongs to Getty.

Speaking of taxes, there is heartwarming tax news coming from everywhere all of a sudden, starting I guess from the Senate Parliamentarian, Elizabeth McDonough, who has ruled not just that the Senate is permitted to consider a second reconciliation bill this year (because the first one replaced the fiscal 2021 budget bill that the Trumpies and McConnell failed to work out last year) but actually three bills, meaning three more bills that can be passed with just 51 votes (48 Democrats, Sanders and King, and Vice President Harris and zero Republicans). 

I'm seeing very little coverage of why this is, from the usual suspects, where reporters either don't know or don't think it's interesting, at The Times, CBS, or even Vox, so I thought I should devote a few words to that, via Center for Budget and Policy Priorities:

Infrastructure

 

Statement by Donald J. Trump, 45th President of the United States of America

04/01/21

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I'm bored. There is nothing good on T.V. other than this young woman called Lara Trump who claims to be related to me.and says Latinos instead of Hispanics. Is she really related to me? Is she running for office? Is she running against Nikki Haley? She is hotter than Nikki Haley in my opinion, but I don't know if she can be trusted.

Also creepy Joe Scarborough who used to beg me to go on his show now spends his time insulting one of our finest and most patriotic Congressmen, Matt Gaetz. If he thinks this will get him good ratings he is wrong. Everybody is switching the channel, looking for items about me, your favorite President. Now everybody is talking about Infrastructure, but they don't even remember that I  was the one who came up with infrastructure in the first place. 

This is probably because the Woke Mob has silenced me. Along with so many others. There is so much Woke pouring into our country it's like another China Virus. It has to stop!

Gaetz Gate, as many people have called it, is a hoax. You know who the real sex trafficker is? You probably think I'm going to say Hunter Biden. But no, it's Mitt Romney. It's a fact! His family went to Mexico with their child brides. They were doing this for years! Afterwards he came to beg me to make him secretary of state. I made him eat the frogs legs and laughed in his face. This is why he tried to "impeach" me. It was his jealousy when I gave Pompeo the job instead.

As for Infrastructure, do you really think Sleepy Joe Biden is going to give you Infrastructure? He couldn't even win an Election without my help. I was going for the popular vote this time, instead of the electoral College, which is easier to win, so I let him have Wisconsin and focused on Georgia and Arizona. Then Fox called Arizona for Biden. Suspicious, right? I couldn't believe my eyes when they did that.

And why aren't more people talking about those dogs? It's a disgrace what's happening to the White House or to be honest I call it the Shite House because those dogs are treating it like their personal Rest Room. 

Anyway when I'm back in the White House I'll give you Infrastructure like nobody's ever seen before. Much better than Biden's. I will have his infrastructure all ripped out and replace it with the good stuff. Marble, with those pink veins in it. And maybe Matt Gaetz, one of our finest and most patriotic young Congressmen, will be the Vice President, because who knows? I haven't picked anybody yet. I don't even know if I'm going to run, frankly. I'm very busy going to weddings and playing golf and issuing statements. I just wish you'd give me a call once in a while. It wouldn't kill you to call.