We end one fortnight, and begin the next, full of optimism… or something passing for optimism.
And why not? As an apocryphal man once allegedly said, as he fell past the windows of the 33rd floor, we’re “doing just fine, so far.”
Having thus established, through forceful assertion, that things are currently just ducky, we can now report that soon, thanks to the most amazing, most stupendous leadership anyone has ever seen—truthfully, there has never been anything like it—things will be Great. Again.
And when is this Greatness expected to manifest itself? Our best guess is about two weeks.
Why two weeks? Because, in this administration, everything is going to happen in “about two weeks.”
For reasons unknown to us, and about which we prefer not to speculate, this newspaper—the Nation’s Oldest™—and the nation’s newest presidential administration, are seemingly bolted together at the hip by a deep and abiding attachment to a fourteen-day span of time.
We know why fourteen is our magic number. Our leisurely fortnightly schedule, adopted on May Day, 1999, is the primary reason why our tiny staff, operating on a miniscule budget, has been able to publish 686 successive editions of this paper, with a cumulative press run of about 1.7 million free copies.
The reason for the president’s fixation on the same number is less clear to us, but it was on full display at a White House briefing held on June 19th. Fortunately, though the administration is doing everything in its power to hide climate data and expunge unbecoming historical facts, videos of press briefings are readily available online. The exact phrase “two weeks” appears in the transcript 15 times: one extra for good measure, we suppose.
This repetition drew the attention of The New York Times’s Shawn McCreesh. He wrote that day, “Tax plans, health care policies, evidence of conspiracy theories he claimed were true, the fight against ISIS, the opening of some coal mines, infrastructure plans—all were at one point or another riddles he promised to solve for the public in about two weeks.”
In a less-contentious world, perhaps we could call up and ask fellow Granite Stater Karoline Leavitt about this. She is, after all, the White House Press Secretary. We will refrain, however, to avoid putting her in the awkward position of wanting to slam down the phone.
What would tempt her to do that? In the unlikely event that she picked up the phone to begin with, we couldn’t help but start by asking when she plans to pay off the $326,370.50 she owes to more than 100 creditors in the aftermath of her failed 2022 Congressional campaign.
William Skipworth reported all this on August 6th, in the New Hampshire Bulletin:
“During the 2022 congressional race, Leavitt’s campaign accepted donations that exceeded the legal limit a single donor can contribute, according to the campaign’s amended FEC filings. This was first reported on by NOTUS in January, but a newly released filing in July shows it still hasn’t paid back any of the debt over the past three months. The campaign faces an FEC complaint filed by End Citizens United, a liberal political action committee seeking to fight the influence of money in politics. The FEC has not yet ruled on the complaint. Still, the Leavitt campaign’s amended filings reflect that the campaign accepted excessive donations.
“It’s technically not illegal under federal finance campaign law to accept more money than the legal limit. However, campaigns are required to repay donors anything over the limit, which at the time was $2,900 per election, within 60 days, per FEC regulations. Leavitt’s campaign appears to not have done that based on this disclosure.”
One can’t help but think of Rep. Frank Guinta, who in 2010 ran afoul of the FEC over a mysterious $355,000. It took Guinta five years to ’fess up and pay.
Representing, as she does, such a strict law-and-order administration, Leavitt will no doubt do better than Guinta. We expect she’ll settle this matter within two weeks.
Oops. Maybe not. The sharp-eyed Skipworth spotted an eyebrow-raising detail: “The filing also shows the campaign owes one of its aides, Dylan Quattrucci—who was also present at the Jan. 6, 2021 U.S. Capitol riot—$609.75 for mileage costs.” We are shocked—shocked—to find Leavitt associating with an insurrectionist!
What’s that you say? Ah, yes… .
It’s so easy—and so comforting—to forget that the Executive Branch, headed by a felon, with the acquiesence of the Legislative Branch, and the assistance of the Judicial, is only interested in the law insofar as it can be imposed on those who oppose it.
While the editorship of the Nation’s Oldest Newspaper™ does instill a deep interest in the past, it bestows no facility for seeing into the future. Recent events have made it clear, though, that these days absolutely anything could happen.
So, about the best we can do as we wrap up this issue is to assure our readers that—provided we’re not abducted by masked goons in broad daylight and fed to the alligators—we will do our best to be back next fortnight, to try to make sense of the incomprehensible.