Thursday--

An interesting historical/archeological mystery: how did ancient Roman coins get to a medieval Japanese Castle?

This is a fascinating piece Mauldin put on his Outside the Box blog. Some long time ago I criticized the policy described as MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) in much the same way as the author Mauldin featured does our response to radically fundamentalist Islam (code name ISIS). It works in a positive sum game where each side can negotiate a way to "divide the pie). However, it doesn't in a zero sum game where one (or both sides) are fine with their own destruction so long as the other bastard is also destroyed. His critique of Obama with respect to the negotiations with China, Russia, and Iran is spot on but should be extended to his negotiations with the far-right so-called conservatives in Congress. Obama came up as a "community organizer" whose strategy was to negotiate a division of the pie--in other words he has always played a positive sum game. It hasn't worked in a world where the opposition is playing a zero sum game. We have a whole lot of True Believers out there--fundamentalist Christians, fundamentalist Muslims, social/racial justice activists white supremacists  and the list goes on.

AHHH! Margaret and Helen are back with a wonderful piece on trying to find a word that adequately describe the cesspit that is Donald Trump--and coming up empty as no word seems to fill the bill. Sorry, Helen, even asshat isn't adequate. But the Archdruidess has a suggestion "Super Callous Fragile Racist Extra Braggadocious."