(Permanent Musical Accompaniment To The Last Post Of The Week By The Blog's Favourite Living Canadian)

Good morning, suckers. From CNBC:

The deal, announced with great fanfare before Trump took office, was billed not only as a heroic move to keep jobs from going to Mexico but also as a seismic shift in the economic development landscape. Nearly seven months later the deal has not worked out quite as originally advertised, and the landscape has barely budged. "The jobs are still leaving," said Robert James, president of United Steelworkers Local 1999. "Nothing has stopped." In fact, after the layoffs are complete later this year, a few hundred union jobs will remain at the plant. But that is far different from what then-President-elect Trump said just three weeks after the election. "They're going to have a great Christmas," Trump said to cheering steelworkers and local dignitaries on Dec. 1. The plan to close the plant and lay off 1,400 workers had become a frequent topic in the Trump campaign. He said 1,100 jobs would stay in Indianapolis, thanks to the deal. "And by the way, that number is going to go up very substantially as they expand this area," he said. "So the 1,100 is going to be a minimum number."

This, apparently, is the way things are going to go. He's going to lurch from photo op to rally to photo op, proclaim victory over something, celebrate his own greatness, and then move on to whatever the next thing is. It's the George Aiken Victory In Vietnam strategy toward governing the entire country: Declare victory and then get out. Nothing is real, except in the immediate moment, when the cameras are hot and the ovations, rapturous. Actual results are irrelevant. Carrier didn't count at the very moment he went wheels up in Indianapolis.

We all live in his reality, and his reality is no reality at all. This, by the way, is a lesson American politics first learned from Ronald Reagan.

So Dean Heller, Republican of Nevada, would prefer to get re-elected in 2018, thank you, and said he won't support his party's healthcare bill snaking its way through the Senate.

This bill, the one that's before the Senate, is not the answer. In this form, I will not support it.

There are loopholes in the statement, god knows, but Heller's fired a shot across Mitch McConnell's bow. The substantial opposition to the bill remains the property of the four conservative hardbars. If the path to compromise goes through the likes of Mike Lee and Tailgunner Ted Cruz, then Heller and the rest of the "moderates" get less than nothing. I still think at least a couple of the Gang of Four will fold, and I think Susan Collins will prove to be a tower of Jell-O. But Heller really brings this down to the wire next week. He didn't sound like a guy who'd been given a hall pass by Mitch McConnell. He was deadly serious and fairly fierce about it.

Because, I mean, really, how can anyone vote for a bill brought to the Senate by someone who stiffed the March of Dimes, despite what its founder did for him as a child? The March of Dimes? You have to be kidding.

Weekly WWOZ Pick To Click: "White Dog" (Luke Allen): Yeah, I pretty much still love New Orleans.

Weekly Visit To The Pathe Archives: Here's a guy in 1947, talking about the brand new National Health Service in Great Britain. The use of the word "scheme" here strikes me as very odd, but Mr. Willink seems like a decent enough old chap, even though repeated viewings of Monty Python have created in me a feeling that, every time I hear a British fellow talking to me from behind a desk, a giant hammer should come down from off-camera. History is so cool.

Two things on the Intertoobz that I believe are worthy of note: First, over at Lawyers, Guns & Money, one of my favorite ongoing features is Erik Loomis's tour of the graves of famous—and not so famous—Americans. This week, he's been doing one per day, which really has been a treat. For example, on Thursday, I learned all about a scoundrel named John Galen Locke, who ran the revived KKK in Colorado during the 1920s. I tend to agree with Erik's ultimate assessment of Locke, by the way.

Second, there has been no more indefatigable chronicler of the violent American right than my pal David Neiwert. He was one of the first people I noticed doing god's work on the 'Toobz back during my days as a legacy media grump. Now, he has finished a five-year project charting the activities of the homegrown brand of American terrorism which, like Russian ratfcking in the 2016 election, is another thing with which the president* has declined to trouble himself.

The most interesting occurrence of Thursday night's NBA draft was the fact that, after the Celtics had offered the Bulls everything except the Old North Church in exchange for star Jimmy Butler, Chicago then peddled him for virtually peanuts to the newly interesting Minnesota Timberwolves. 'Ees a puzzlement, certainly.

Is it a good day for dinosaur news, Business Insider? It's always a good day for dinosaur news!

Up until Phillips' discovery, no one had ever found a definitive horned dinosaur fossil from the Late Cretaceous rock of the eastern United States. Tyrannosaurs, hadrosaurs, ankylosaurs, ostrich mimic dinosaurs and more have turned up, but no horned dinosaurs. The boundary of a vanished sea was the standard explanation. During the Late Cretaceous, the Western Interior Seaway divided North America into two subcontinents – Laramidia to the west and Appalachia to the east. Apparently various dinosaurs had spread across North America prior to that division, and, given their absence to the east, it seemed the large horned dinosaurs called ceratopsids stayed to the west. "We had basically assumed that they just didn't make it over," Farke says, "and probably hadn't even evolved as a group before Appalachia was isolated from the rest of North America."

Never underestimate your neighborhood ceratopsid, folks. Rule for living.

By the very close of the Cretaceous, the Western Interior Seaway was receding off North America. The landmass was opening up, allowing dinosaurs to travel and intermingle in ways they hadn't for millions of years. Given the timing of when big horned dinosaurs evolved and the occurrence of the tooth, then, the most likely scenario is that some of the last horned dinosaurs were spreading eastward as the seaway drained off the continent, spreading through prehistoric Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas to make their way down to the Mississippi Embayment. Perhaps additional clues to the march of these dinosaurs are hidden in the strata of these states.

I hope to use the phrase "March of the Dinosaurs" often over the next year here in the shebeen, if only because it's further proof that dinosaurs lived then to make us happy now.

The Committee was drawn this week to Top Commenter Kent Anderson's reminiscence about his days as a football beat guy. There was no doubt of who the Top Commenter of the Week was going to be. I mean, talk about your playing to the judges.

I covered the Lions off and on for nearly 20 years. The trips to Chicago in December, Green Bay and Minnesota were tedious and treacherous. From Monte Clark to Wayne Fontes. Darrell Rogers provided the most unintentionally hilarious quotes. One time, in November (and if you've ever been in Michigan in November, you know what I'm talking about), we were outside the soon-to-be-demolished Silverdome and Rogers looked up at the roof of the dome and said, "I wonder how many birds I could shoot off there?" Any kind of beat reporting can wear you down, whether its politics or sports. It's all the same.

God, I hated the fcking Silverdome. Anyway, well-struck, good sir. 85.98 Beckhams to you.

I'll be back on Monday with a report from Wisconsin about Randy Bryce, the steelworker who's challenging Paul Ryan in the First Congressional District. Be well and play nice, ya bastids. Stay above the snake-line, and spare a prayer for J.G Locke in hell.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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