Op-Ed from Zontar: when will party leaders atone?

Editors’ Note: With American democracy in the process of being demolished by a corrupt demented Russian-owned stooge and his angry sadistic Republican cadres, our media has focused on the real issue facing our polity, which is why Democrats need to atone for the 2024 campaign.  More particularly, they first were too slow to force into retirement a qualified honest leader with an impressive record of accomplishment, and then they had the nerve to nominate another qualified accomplished high-achieving candidate who happened to be a woman of color.  That's a lot to apologize for.

Just  a few examples of the pigpile:

That was the New York Times Editorial Page last week.  Auch Das Politico marschiert ein:

Here's Slate's take:

For Democrats, every day is Yom Kippur.

By amazing coincidence, the Spy Deep Space Desk just received a new transmission from the mysterious planet of Zontar, located in the Remulac galaxy millions of light years from Earth, where something vaguely similar seems to have happened millions of light years ago. As loyal readers will recall, Zontar is populated by a race of intelligent alien life forms whose communications may shed some light, however dim and distant, on the thought patterns of these bizarre creatures.  We present it to you translated from the Zontarian so that you can appreciate how strange and diverse are the beings who populate this universe and start contemplating how to bridge the cosmic divide between the way they think and the way we –  [OK, they get the setup – Ed.]

by Tess Harding
Zontarian Post Columnist

Every day brings new revelations of the Zemperor’s incompetence, criminality, and efforts to destroy the great Republic of Zontar. This torrent of disastrous news has led leading Zontarian commentators to predict that the Zenpublican Party will face an electoral catastrophe in the next election if Zenpublicans do not start apologizing for the catastrophic actions of their obviously deranged Zemperor Donald Z. Drumpf.

Zemperor Drumpf

Leading video deck personality Jake Zapper, continuing his 30-planet tour for his new book, has warned Zenpublicans that their continuing cover up of Drumpf’s obvious dementia will be a decisive issue in the 9f28 elections. “Zenpublicans are refusing to admit that Drumpf is in decline and unable to govern despite the evidence on display every day: his incoherent yo-yo’ing tariff policy, his illegal vendettas against law firms and universities he is mad at, his reliance on drug-addled billionaires, and his pardons of insurrectionists and garden-variety grifters,” Zapper said.

“For all these many omissions, Zenpublicans must atone and make amends if they have a hope of surviving the next election.”

Other leading commentators point out that Zenpublicans must confess the error of supporting Drumpf’s irrational actions which threaten hundreds of thousands of lives on Zontar and other planets.

Longtime Zenpublican consultant Zavid Azelrod said, “Zenpublicans have a lot of explaining to do to the American people. Why are they jeopardizing the health and safety of every family in the Zontar system by cutting medical research and replacing science with irrational nonsense spouted by a brainworm-demented drug addict like Bobby Zennedy?”

“Why are Zenpublicans trying to destroy the vibrant economy they inherited from Joe Ziden by imposing and lifting tariffs without any rational basis? Why are Zenpublicans on a crusade to kill American jobs by targeting America’s great universities with economic calamity? Why are Zenpublicans cutting food and health care for Zontarians to pay for tax cuts for the richest? Why are Zenpublicans trying to explode the deficit? Why are Zenpublicans undermining all efforts to prevent the calamity of galactic warming?” And I could go on,” Azelrod said.

Other Zenpublican pundits believe that their party must apologize for Drumpf’s assault on the Zontarian system of justice, once regarded as the pride of the galaxy. Longtime Zenpublican columnist Zennifer Zubin said, “Zenpublicans must take responsibility for Drumpf’s assault on the galactic rule of law. Pardoning the insurrectionists who tried to take over the Galactic Council chamber was unforgivable. Kidnapping immigrants and sending them on a one-way rocket to the Death Star with no hearing is contrary to all principles that Zenpublicans have long pretended to advocate.”

Even the normally staid New Zork Timez Editorial Board has called for Zenpublicans to apologize for failing to do anything about a multitude of Drumpf’s actions:

Galactic Council Zenpublicans must atone for their lack of oversight

Zenpublicans barely even pretend that Drumpf has the mental capacity to carry out the duties of Zemperor. From his bigoted dismissal of highly-qualified Fleet Commanders to appointing an incompetent alcoholic to lead the giant Department of Galactic Defense, Zemperor Drumpf has abandoned his duty to protect the security of our planetary system. His installation of obviously unqualified hacks, insurrectionists, and drunks to lead his Administration of Justice threatens the future of Zontar itself.

His irresponsible attacks on our vital allies in the Zurope system, and his tinny threats to conquer the ice planets of Zeenland and Zanada have only strengthened the Evil Empire and weakened Zontar.

His decision to allow a drug-demented billionaire to rampage through the Imperial Government and fire distinguished professionals in between snorts of Zadderall and Zetamine has subverted our beloved planets.

And every day brings new evidence of his unfitness, from his vidposts condemning judges who rule against his tyrannical acts, to his selling the wife of his Zombie Commander to the highest bidder like some modern-day Jabba the Hutt.  These indefensible acts deserve the condemnation of all thinking carbon-based Zenpublicans.

Sen. Zed Cruz sees nothing to worry about

Others in the media demand that Zenpublicans apologize for the rampant corruption of the Zemperor and his feckless children, Zonald and Zero. “The Zemperor’s family is making billions off of currency scams and straight up taking bribes from the families of convicted criminals and potentates from other planets who know that the Zemperor can be bought for nothing more than a tricked-out version of the Millenium Falcon,” said popular morning vidcast host Zo Zarborough. 

In a stirring editorial, the Journal of the Zontarian Medical Association told Zenpublicans “they must apologize for their relentless law on science and research that threatens to leave our galaxy vulnerable to future space-borne pandemics, not to mention zombie attacks.”  In response, Zemperor Trumpf issued an Imperial Order cutting off all contact with the Journal and giving all Journal subscribers cooties.

But some Zenpublican loyalists insist that the current furor is overblown and that most Zontarians have gotten used to their Zemperor’s forceful, rash, colorful, and outspoken ways. Said Galactic Communication Overload Zupert Zurdoch, “They’ll believe what I tell them to believe. Even though I’m 193 years old.”

So far Zenpublicans in the Galactic Council, whether from fear, stupidity, or avarice, have continued to stand by their Zemperor. Asked to respond to the calls for Zenpublicans to apologize for Drumpf’s conduct, Sen. Zed Cruz said from his beachside tiki hut on the Mezican Coast, “I see nothing. Nothing.”

Harvard to America: So long, it's been good to know you

By Yard Correspondent Larry Lowell with Canadian Correspondent Ramona Flowers

Next week as they have for the past 373 years, the President and Fellows of Harvard College, joined by the Sheriff of Middlesex County on his white charger, will celebrate Commencement.

The graduates and their families will celebrate their newfound status,  thousands of alumni will mill about trying to look like they belong, or at least remember where they are, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar will address the assembled great and good.

It's usually a festive occasion but this year the joy of those involved may be tempered by the realization that unless things change, it may well be the University's last Commencement.

Not content to illegally cut off billions of federal grants to University researchers, the Trump Regime has announced that it has lawlessly terminated the ability of all of Harvard's constituent schools to enroll, and cash tuition checks from, students outside the United States.

As Harvard Magazine reports:

There were 6,793 international students enrolled at Harvard during the 2024-2025 academic year, representing 27.3 percent of the student body. The tuition and other student charges they pay are an important source of income for the University. In fiscal year 2024, student-related income (such as tuition, room, and board fees, minus University-provided financial aid) was about $1.4 billion, representing approximately 21 percent of Harvard’s total operating revenue. International students typically pay closer to the full cost of a Harvard education than students from the United States. 

Halifax has a lovely harbor [That's not Halifax – R.F.]

The ostensible excuse for terminating with immediate effect the University's ability to enroll foreign students was a hysterical word salad of overblown threats, ranging from antisemitism to supposed collaboration with the Chinese Communist Party to taking puppies out behind Harvard Stadium and shooting them (oh wait, that was Kristi).

More particularly, Harvard had the nerve to resist unlawful demands to turn over virtually all records relating to international students in violation of federal privacy and other law.  The obvious point of the records request is to give DHS's body-snatchers a road map to seizing foreign students off the streets of Cambridge as they did with now-freed Tufts student Rümeysa Öztürk.  Even Harvard Law Professor Noah Feldman, who previously told us all to chill out because the courts will protect us, condemned the DHS special action.

Right now Harvard is fighting, filing a banger of a complaint to stop Kristi Noem from doing to the University what she did to her dog.  The lawsuit was immediately described by some juvenile Pol Potbelly cadre as “frivolous.” 

The Federal Court disagreed.   It took all of three hours to persuade Federal Judge Allison Burroughs to stop Kristi even before she could load her shotgun with arguments like this:

Yesterday, the government [revoked Harvard’s ability to enroll foreign students] via a letter that makes plain that DHS is not even pretending to follow its own regulations, either as to process or as to substance. Instead, DHS all but announced that the revocation is blatantly in retaliation for Harvard’s exercise of its academic freedom. Revoking Harvard’s certification is unlawful many times over. It is a pillar of our constitutional system that the government cannot “invok[e] legal sanctions and other means of coercion” to police private speech, especially when the government’s treatment is animated by viewpoint discrimination....The government’s effort to punish the University for its refusal to surrender its academic independence and for its perceived viewpoint is a patent violation of the First Amendment.

Motion for TRO at 10, President and Fellows of Harvard College v. DHS (May 23, 2025, No. 25-cv-11472)

But even if honest judges stop the latest outrage cold (subject of course to the delicate sensibilities of the six bent Republican Supreme Court Justices), the onslaught against Harvard and other universities will continue without surcease. Pol Potbelly’s Congressional cadres have already passed a 21% endowment tax. If enacted, Harvard would face a $850 million tax bill every year until its financial condition reaches the level of a Trump casino.

We have a simple solution for Harvard’s plight: get the hell out of Dodge and move to a place where academic freedom is protected and the climate is as miserable as it is in Cambridge. The obvious location is Canada.

Our own suggestion is to follow the example of approximately 30,000 Americans unwilling to support our American Revolution and flee to Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Halifax is reputed to be a nice place and, given its history, unsurprisingly reminiscent of the Boston area:

You will feel the dynamic energy in the air as you explore every corner of the city, from a diverse food scene and innovative hubs of technology and business to exciting sports events, beach days, and coastal hikes. Halifax continues to invest in innovation and growth and has a connected and thriving business community. We’re also home to diverse groups and cultures, welcoming people of all backgrounds who want to make this region home.

With a population of over 480,000 people, Halifax is the capital city of Nova Scotia and the educational, cultural, and economic hub of Atlantic Canada. Often referred to as Canada’s “best-kept secret,” Halifax boasts a youthful spirit, rich history, and scenic waterfront.

At least that’s what the website of Dalhousie University, which until Harvard’s arrival would be the leading academic institution there, says about its hometown. And colleges never lie about the charm of the city that houses their campus. Except Yale, that is.

Put Harvard here [That's our public garden, you idiot – R.F.]

It sounds nice and we’re sure somewhere in the greater Halifax metropolis they could shoehorn Harvard in. With what’s left of the endowment Harvard could build a new Georgian-style campus that would remind everyone of Cambridge, as long as they add some incomprehensible perpetually-jammed one way streets and belching diesel buses with their emissions control systems removed.

Given the relative values of real estate in Cambridge and Halifax, Harvard should be able to finance the move just by selling its original campus off as high priced condos and adopting longtime Cambridge City Councilor Al Vellucci’s plan to transform the deserted Yard into the John Harvard Car Wash.

But really anywhere in Canada would do the job of protecting Harvard from the depredations of crooked corrupt Russian-owned sex offenders and puppy killers. Winnipeg would be another possibility, as its sub-Arctic climate would remind all Harvardians of January in Cambridge. 

We have reason to believe that the new Prime Minister of Canada, Mark Carney, would support Harvard's move north.  Canada's PM is better known to the President and Fellows of Harvard College as Mark Carney '87.

To those alleging that picking up and moving the university to a different country is unwarranted and unprecedented, consider the case of Central European University, an institution founded in 1989 intended to celebrate and foster free inquiry in Budapest, Hungry.

As Hungary fell under the sway of a Fascist corrupt power-mad Russian-stooge autocrat (sound familiar?) named Victor Orban, the Hungarian dictator systematically brought all independent institutions in Hungary under his control. When CEU declined his offer it couldn’t refuse, Orban enacted a series of laws intended to strangle the University.

To survive, CEU left its Budapest home and moved to Vienna, where it thrives today. If they can do it, Harvard certainly can.

Moving to Halifax with its cash hoard safely in the Bank of Nova Scotia would also protect Harvard’s endowment from further parasitic attacks demanded by intellectual giants like Gym Jordan and Marge “Threeway” Greene.

At the rate things are going, with a coup against America led by a corrupt depraved demented criminal Russian-owned President, backed by 100% of the craven Fascists of his party serving in Congress and majorities of white voters happy to sell their legacy of freedom for anger and bigotry, we may all end up in Halifax sooner rather than later.

It might be a good time to open Elsie’s of Halifax. A country that puts mayonnaise on hamburgers would certainly enjoy roast beef with Russian dressing.

None dare call it dementia

By Meta-Content Generator A.J. Liebling with Medical Editor Vincent Boom-Batz, M.D.

It was hard to pick out the most appalling moment at the recent Nerd Prom, formally known as the White House Correspondents Association annual dinner.  

The abrupt cancellation of Amber Ruffin, whom the WHCA leadership was shocked, shocked to learn would deliver jokes about the current President and his gang of drunken corrupt lackeys, was one.  The fact that having done a s*** job of covering the ongoing coup against America and the election that made it happen, they are now preening on the red carpet like the Real Housewives of Annandale, Va., or the chummy complicity evidenced between journalists and those whom they are supposed to cover without fear or favor were other candidates.

All the cool kids were at the WH Correspondents Dinner...

But for us the nadir was a self-congratulatory address by some hack named John Thompson who told the media they should be more like him in stating plainly that President Joe Biden was not fit to serve.  You all remember the crazy senseless decisions he made as President and the times he failed to respond quickly and appropriately to a national crisis, don't you?  We sure don't.

Thompson, plugging his book about Biden's supposed mental decline, castigated the media for failing to cover Biden's alleged incompetence.  He said nothing about his opponent's fitness for office. 

Jake Tapper has also pitched in by hyping his nothingburger exposé with tidbits like Biden's advisers fearing that he might someday in his second term use a wheelchair, like his utterly incompetent predecessor Franklin D. Roosevelt:

The media's supposed failure to attack Biden's fitness based on the facts that he was 82 and could get tired at the end of a day has now hardened into Conventional Wisdom, which is why that reliable geyser of such Wisdom, Jonathan Chait, passes it off in The Atlantic as it were a truth as firmly-established as Hussein's arsenal of nukes and biological weapons. That iron-clad tale was, you may recall, peddled by journalistic stalwarts like Jeffrey “Bombs Away” Goldberg, the former Iraq War shill who now runs, wait for it, The Atlantic! Spoiler alert: it was the basis for a gruesome war of choice that took 400,000 lives, and a brilliant career as a Washington savant, but it wasn't, um, true.

Chait even walks into the trap of berating supposed liberals who asked why the media wasn't reporting Trump's evident mental decline, as if asking reporters to cover an inescapable objective fact was nothing more than whiny what-aboutism.

But now that Chait has stepped on the mine, let's help him pursue his inquiry.

Wtf isn't the media covering the efflorescence of Trump's cognitive decline, on full display last year during his one tragic debate with Kamala Harris, his decision to turn a town hall into a karaoke party, or his outsourcing his great Madison Square Garden rally to neo-Nazis and bigots?  At the time, this was all reported as if it was just Trump being Trump.

But that was then.  Since the carnage and chaos of his Presidency began again on January 20, the evidence of cognitive collapse has been on display every time he opens his mouth or falls asleep at a Cabinet meeting or Papal funeral.

Here he is catching a snooze in the comfort of Mohammed bone Saw's palace: 

And here are some recent examples of nonsense, disinhibition, and other mental lapses all diagnostic of progressing dementia:

Is he President or the Roastmaster General? He hasn't a clue!

Now he's admitting he appoints randos to senior Government positions without knowing who the f*** they are:

It might be fair to argue that appointing a heroin-demented ignorant sadist to oversee Federal health policy is probative of dementia as well.

And here's one that needs no explanation:

We could go on, but here's just one more, evidencing his loss of productive vocabulary:

...but all agreed no one makes an entrance like Olivia Nuzzi

But we want to ask why the press (with the admirable exception of Aaron Rupar of Public Notice) hasn't taken any public notice of Pol Potbelly's dementia, when they could not stop rubbing out stories about Biden's supposed cognitive deficits.

A partial explanation, but not an excuse, is that unlike Biden, Pol Potbelly's cadres have steadfastly refused to leak their doubts about whether their boy is a few drumsticks short of a family bucket. 

Not a single Republican has dared to call out their Dear Leader's dementia, in part because they are don't want to undercut his program of government destruction and white supremacy, and in part because they know that he can retaliate by anointing some area stooge to crush them in the next Republican primary. 

What is harder to grasp is whey Democrats relentlessly refuse to point what would be a clear political winner for them.  If prominent Democrats like Amy “Hot Mess” Klobuchar or Chuck “Strong Questions” Schumer were to respond to the insane eructations of Pol Potbelly by citing them as evidence of mental incapacity, the press would have no choice but to report those charges, and the whiny Republican denials, thereby keeping the charge in the news.

Over time, even the professional cowards at The New York Times would have to admit that “some critics say” Trump is barking mad.  The conversation about his incompetence would pervade our political discussion, much as stupid talking points about “DEI” or “defending the border” do now.

Public opinion notices these discussions.  By the same token, the absence of any press or Democratic inquiry about the insanity of Pol Potbelly reassures the public that their Dear Leader is not in fact not strolling down Pennsylvania Avenue buck naked, his Yeti pubes sweating in the heat.

The media loves to lecture us on the vital necessity of full, if not fulsome, disclosure of any evidence of a President's cognitive decline.  But apparently that only applies if the President is Joe Biden.

Report From Washington: It's not a one-man coup

 

By Spy Washington Correspondent Nellie Bly with Meta-Content Generator A.J. Liebling

The Sunday New York Times was really bringing the fire last Sunday, marshaling almost all of its gasbags on an assault on the administration of Pol Potbelly.

From the left flank, Michelle Goldberg pounced:

This brutish hostility to foreigners has already changed the character of America, maybe irrevocably. And in this new America, even citizens shouldn’t count themselves safe. Trump is already talking about sending Americans to be locked up in El Salvador, far beyond the reach of our law. He’s laying siege to our universities for tolerating criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza by Americans as well as by foreign students and professors. There’s a reason Martin Niemöller’s poem is such a cliché. First they came for Khalil. They obviously weren’t going to stop there.

On the right, Weird Ross Douthat commented, unexceptionably, that tariffs were bad.

His colleague Bretbug, one of the last Republican neocon survivors of the once-mighty Hot Air Force which crashed and burned in Iraq, weighed in with a lethal strike on Pol Potbelly’s pro-Russian foreign policy:

Someone ought to tell Trump, Vance and other administration lemmings that nasty, dishonest and stupid is no way to conduct foreign policy. Since then, Russia has continued to press its barbaric attack while Ukraine fights on. All the meeting accomplished was to give America’s friends and foes a clearer sense of the dangerously self-infatuated fool in the White House.

Meanwhile in the center the heavy artillery of the anonymous Editorial Board thundered:

The first 100 days of President Trump’s second term have done more damage to American democracy than anything else since the demise of Reconstruction. Mr. Trump is attempting to create a presidency unconstrained by Congress or the courts, in which he and his appointees can override written law when they want to. It is precisely the autocratic approach that this nation’s founders sought to prevent when writing the Constitution.

Of course like good centrists they couldn’t avoid shelling their allies for being too “performative” and not reaching out to the very fine people who like it when Pol Potbelly’s campaign variety show features comics who compare Puerto Rico to a floating pile of garbage.

But let’s go back to that bit about creating a Presidency “unconstrained by Congress...”

We have a powerful Congress under the Constitution

There’s still a Congress sitting, last we looked, with both chambers dominated by slim but adequate Republican majorities. What are they doing to protect America from these outrages so eloquently set forth in the Newspaper of Record?

This week, the Senate is considering legislation to authorize a money-laundering crypto scam known as “stablecoin,” a fake crypto currency that’s supposed to maintain a stable $1 value because it’s backed by money. So why not use real money? Are there any reasons other than letting scam artists launder money without having to use a regulated banking system and bribe the President by investing in his latest, wait for it, stablecoin scheme, that is?

As usual, useless Democrats, their pockets bulging with real money from crypto finaglers, are trying to ram the legislation through while others are urging not fervent opposition, but caution.

Republicans, also smelling the real money from crypto promoters and afraid to get in the way of the Tangerine-Faced Grifter’s latest corrupt money-maker, are as usual backing the forces of greed and dishonesty.

Republican Senators are also trying to ram through the nomination of Ed Martin, an insurrectionist, election denier, and perverter of justice, to the job of US Attorney for Washington DC. Acting in that job, he has already brought the force of his office to threaten law schools, medical journals, and political activists for exercising their legal rights. This is a crime. 

This week Pol Potbelly is leaning on Republican Senators to approve this subversive nomination.

Republican tower of blubber Thom Tillis is supposedly against, but we’re waiting to hear which way performatively-moderate Susan Collins is going to jump, which is usually a function of whether her vote is needed for confirmation.

Meanwhile the Republican House, faced with the parade of horribles marshaled by The New York Times is focused on the supposed menace of anti-Semitism in colleges and universities that employ Democrats. According to The Guardian, the Republican inquisitors include a few whose Jew-loving credentials are, shall we say, open to question:

A number of Republican legislators set to grill university presidents in a congressional hearing on antisemitism this week are associated with calls for Jews to convert to Christianity, have quoted Adolf Hitler, or have reportedly threatened to burn a synagogue to the ground.

To borrow from Bobbie Fleckman, “And you don’t think that’s anti-Semitic?”

Republican funders expect to get the tax cuts they paid for

In fairness, the Republican Congressman who threatened to burn a synagogue to the ground was a Jewish Republican and it was his own synagogue. So that’s OK then and not at all a schondeh fir di Goyim.

Beyond installing corrupt insurrectionists as prosecutors and performing concern about those lovable Jews to destroy colleges they don’t like, Congressional Republicans have but one single overarching legislative goal this year: cutting rich people’s taxes permanently. The revenue loss would be made up by letting poor people starve, sicken, and die from Medicaid and food assistance cuts, and borrowing the rest.

With that vital legislative goal paramount, Republicans in Congress don’t have much time to worry about all of the terrible things so important to Times opinion columnists.

Which leads us to wonder why Republicans in Congress who have failed to thus far do even one tiny thing to protect the Constitution and the rule of law are getting a free pass from the massed gasbags at New York Times Opinion and to be fair pretty much everyplace else in the mainstream media, including the “pro-freedom” Washington Post.

There's no mystery about the motives of these soulless Republican Solons: they are craven and they are bad people.

They know that their political lives can be ended by Pol Potbelly's decision to back any nitwit in a Republican primary contest.  Never before in American history has a President been able to neuter Congressional majorities of his own party by threatening to primary them. But it’s working because they have nothing but their Trump Stamps. 

Many of them also agree with what is happening.  They never liked foreign aid, food stamps, health care for the poor, or anything that takes one dollar out of a rich white man's pocket for any purposes other than protecting the man's ill-gotten gains.  And many of them were elected only because 40 years of Republican pandering to white racists paid off across the American South, Midwest and prairie.

And yet the media, even the supposedly brave bits, can't bring themselves to state the obvious fact that all, all Republicans in Congress are either actively or by omission aiding and abetting the coup.  Here's The New Yorker on supine cowardly Republican Majority Leader John Thune:

Thune, a fourth-term senator from South Dakota, is an awkward leader for Trump’s ruthless Republican Party, in part because even Democrats invariably describe him as amiable and honest....Thune could pass for an actual movie star, with pale-blue eyes, a square jaw, and Mt. Rushmore cheekbones. Now sixty-four, he has salt-and-pepper hair that is still thick enough to part neatly on the side, and the broad shoulders, thick arms, and narrow waist of a basketball player. 

Yes, that's the important point: Unlike Ted Cruz, Thune's face doesn't make babies cry.

Actually, the important point is that our Constitutional system is being dismantled not just by Pol Potbelly and his raving cadres, but by every single elected Republican, including dreamboat John Thune. It’s almost like the entire Republican Party bears the blame for the chaos and carnage of the Pol Potbelly regime.

Despite their blistering fusillades last Sunday, we’d submit that the forces of The New York Times Sunday Opinion, The New Yorker, and anyone else who believes itself to be in the news business, have a long and grueling campaign ahead of them. They should saddle up.