(Permanent Musical Accompaniment To The Last Post of the Week From The Blog's Favourite Living Canadian)

Somebody please stop him. From The New York Times:

Asked whether the United States needed to pay its debts in full, or whether he could negotiate a partial repayment, Mr. Trump told the cable network CNBC, "I would borrow, knowing that if the economy crashed, you could make a deal." He added, "And if the economy was good, it was good. So, therefore, you can't lose." Such remarks by a major presidential candidate have no modern precedent. The United States government is able to borrow money at very low interest rates because Treasury securities are regarded as a safe investment, and any cracks in investor confidence have a long history of costing American taxpayers a lot of money. Experts also described Mr. Trump's vaguely sketched proposal as fanciful, saying there was no reason to think America's creditors would accept anything less than 100 cents on the dollar, regardless of Mr. Trump's deal-making prowess. "No one on the other side would pick up the phone if the secretary of the U.S. Treasury tried to make that call," said Lou Crandall, chief economist at Wrightson ICAP. "Why should they? They have a contract" requiring payment in full.

On the one hand, as far as the national economy goes, we might as well elect a career pickpocket as this guy. On the other hand, the proposal only makes slightly less sense than do supply-side economics, so there's that.

Oh, Huckleberry. Nobody cares.

Well, it took a while, but the Motherland finally scraped together a government. Enda Kenny is back for another trip around the track as Taoiseach, but only because the opposition agreed not to bollock things up until 2018. Per Reuters:

The government I lead will be a very different kind of administration formed in almost unprecedented circumstances," Kenny told parliament after 59 of its 157 members -- one more than he needs to be assured of passing legislation -- backed him on the fourth attempt in two months… Analysts have said such a patchwork government may struggle to last until 2018, and that policymaking could be hamstrung. Fianna Fail, buoyed by an unexpected recovery in February's poll, might be tempted to force a snap election at any time, while three independents will sit at cabinet for the first time and their resolve will be tested by any major crises. "The narrowness of the numbers and the gamesmanship that brought us to this point wouldn't strike me with any great confidence that this government will last until 2018," said Gary Murphy, politics professor at Dublin City University."Fianna Fail have all the power here. They will be able to pull the government down at any time."

Meanwhile, Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams seems to be a bit off the trolley these days. First, he tweets out an N-bomb while praising Django Unchained, and then he defends it with a bit of the old okey-doke that I last heard from an Irishman in The Commitments. From Mediaite:

In our own time, like African-Americans, nationalists in the North, including those from Ballymurphy and West Belfast, were denied the right to vote; the right to work; the right to a home, and were subjected to draconian laws."

Insult to injury, you will note that the headline of the Mediaite piece refers to him as a "UK politician." That's gotta sting.

Holy hell, this ought to be a gas. Per Politico:

The secretive group of well-connected Yale seniors meets in a foreboding campus building called "the tomb" and is rumored to conduct macabre rituals (one persistent rumor holds that the Bones tomb contains the skull of Geronimo, among other occult objects). Over the years, the society has been the subject of several books as well as a "60 Minutes" segment.

I don't care about Geronimo's skull. I'm buying a new shovel because…Templar treasure, beeyotches!

Say hey—the late Red Smith once lamented that he wished that one day, there would be another Joe DiMaggio. Turns out that baseball had something better in mind. Happy 85th birthday to Willie Mays. Any discussion of the greatest ballplayers of all time has to include him. But not, alas, DiMaggio, who insisted on being introduced as "the greatest living ballplayer" even though Willie Mays was still alive, which was absurd.

Weekly WWOZ Pick To Click: "Immigrant Song" (Tin Men): Yeah, I pretty much still love New Orleans.

Weekly Visit To The Pathe Archives: It's Kentucky Derby weekend! Here's Gallant Fox, Earl Sande up, winning the race in 1930. I don't know why Sande is called "America's Steve." But history is so cool anyway.

Pareene is right. "Dangerous Donald" is stupid and childish. You are not going to out-stupid and/or out-childish He, Trump. Nobody can do that, not even incredibly stupid children. Skate your lane, Clinton people. Yeesh.

I think the most adorable #NeverTrump exhortation is this darling little cosplay tantrum from Erick Erickson's blatherfarm in which the author waves his plastic lightsaber over his head and pretends the beanbag chair is Jabba The Hutt.

This morning, my Resurgent colleague Steve Berman noted that Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day), which is now in Israel and begins at sunset tonight here in the U.S., actually falls this year on the same day as Star Wars Day. Readers know where I stand on issues pertaining to the former, so I'd like to focus on the latter—and, specifically, on borrowing from Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Here we go: we are the Resistance. Yes, the orange-hued demagogic "presumptive nominee" charlatan and his "alt-right" ilk are the First Order, and movement conservatives comprise the Resistance… No way in hell will we go silently into that good night and let America's recurrent national political choice be merely amongst a terrifyingly Statist, illiberal, pseudo-communist party of the Left, and a cartoonish, white nationalist, quasi-fascistic, European-style party of the Right.

The author also points out that he is "still collecting my own thoughts." Or any thoughts, as nearly as I can tell.

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

Fossils from the end of the age of dinosaurs, some of which were estimated to be 71 million years old, were discovered including many marine reptile remains. "[We found] things like plesiosaurs and mosasaurs — a type of marine lizard made famous by the recent film Jurassic World," said Dr Steve Salisbury from the University of Queensland, who took part in the mission.

Man, digging for fossils in Antarctica? You have to really want it.

It takes between four and five days to cross the Drake Passage to get to the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. "Crossing the Drake Passage can be kind of rough — some of the biggest seas in the world occur in that area — so most of us just bunkered down for the time we were crossing it," Dr. Salisbury said. Dr. Salisbury had made several attempts to get to Antarctica to conduct the research, but sea ice had previously made reaching land impossible."It was so great to finally get there and have a full blown expedition," he said. "It's a very hard place to work, but it's an even harder place to get to."

Among the other things they dug up were prehistoric ducks from the Cretaceous period, which must have been a sight to see, because dinosaurs lived then to make us happy now.

We had a winner from the late entries in our Top Commenter Of The Week competition. Longtime regulars here at the shebeen know that the great Firesign Theater is one of the joint's primary intellectual avatars. In a piece about Ken Starr's problems down at Baylor, I (relentlessly and ruthlessly) dropped a little Firesign into the post. Top Commenter Dan Buls snagged the reference, and replied:

Far out, Catherwood.

That's good enough for 71.86 Beckhams, my good man. What? You want more? What kind of chump do you take me for?

I'll be back on Monday with some presumptive Republican nominee gobshitery. Be well and play nice, ya bastids. Stay above the snakeline, or I'm handing your name over to Rocky Rococo.

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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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