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The best place to read this is on Substack here. You are invited to subscribe. It is free.
On the very bottom of the page on Substack is a new feature. It is my reaction to various news reports of the day updated though the day.
We know that Trump sense of humor leans heavily towards the sadistic. He thinks it’s amusing to tell police officers not to be too careful loading people into the backs of their cruisers so they don’t bump their heads or bragging that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue or grab a woman by her privates. There are numerous articles about Trump’s sense of humor. I won’t delve into it here. You can read them with a Google search here.
This guy pictured above you probably never heard of. He epitomizes the kind of sadistic, cruel, insensitive humor favored by Trump and mimicked by his toadies. He demonstrated this in what was meant to be a joke in something he tweeted last night.
Read “‘ICE — not Iceland!’ Fired IRS head jokes about Trump’s chilly reassignment” in RawStory here.
Here’s another article about this:
This is supposedly the joke, i.e., something meant to be funny.
Here’s what he posted on X:
So, are you holding your sides to keep them from splitting as you are rolling on the floor laughing uncontrollably at his saying that he got so fired up when he saw that the former Superman actor Dean Cain had announced he was joining ICE that he wanted to do the same, and called Trump to tell him that he wanted to do this. And then Trump misunderstood him and made him ambassador to Iceland instead.
Oh my fucken God, that is so hysterically funny… he wanted to join the thugs at ICE who are terroizing thousands of law abiding citizens across the country.
The question as to why this guy was fired after only two months on the job running the IRS has not been answered. It’s possible he refused to order the agency to go after some of Trump’s enemies. Perhaps this act of intergity got him axed and, because in other ways he was a loyal Trumper and because Trump didn’t want anyone looking too closely at his removal he was given another job, albeit what isn’t considered a to be a plum ambassadorship. Perhaps he got since of running an agency which had it’s staff cut by 25% by DOGE.
Iceland is not a major player in world politics except for the Greenland “thing,” living in Reykjavik, Iceland’s capital, is not a hardship assignment. In fact, it seems to be a rather pleasant place to work for the next few years.
The government website about Iceland has not been updated. It shows that the US still has an interim ambassador. (Reference)
Reykjavík is consider to be vibrant and colorful city which is far from the icy wasteland which the name Iceland suggests. The city is filled with museums, cafes, and has a lively arts scene. Here’s a photo of their Pride celebration which began on Aug. 5th and ends tomorrow:
Read more about the city here.
Assuming he is approved by the Senate this is where Billy Long will be working:
It occurred to me when I woke in the middle of last night that there was another piece of humor that I hadn’t heard. Someone else may have made this observation since it seems to obvious.
Iceland wasn’t always called Iceland. You may have heard this orgin story:
Despite its chilly name, Iceland isn't covered in ice year-round. In fact, it has lush green landscapes, hot springs, and volcanoes. The name Iceland might make you think of a frozen wasteland, but the story behind it is quite different. According to legend, early Viking settlers named it Iceland to deter others from coming to this beautiful land. They wanted to keep its natural beauty and resources for themselves. This clever naming strategy worked, and Iceland remained a hidden gem for many years. Reference..
The word ice has two more or less opposite connotations when used in everyday language. One is good. For example: ice cream, iced coffee and tea, chocolate icing, and we even have rappers: Vanilla Ice, Ice Spice, Ice Cube, Ice Billion Berg, and rapper/actor Ice-T. (I didn’t know all of these, I had to look it up here). For some reason rappers resonate with the word ice. I’ll leave it to a linguist to explain why.
I didn’t know this before, but there’ s a German high speed rail service also called ICE-T.
Then there are bad uses for the word. For example ice storm. It is obvious why you don’t want to hear that in your weather forecast. There are also descriptions like an icy stare or icy reception. Being on the receiving end of each of these can be rather uncomfortable.
What I am leading up to is wondering whether considering the bad reputaion the word “ice” now has thanks to Trump’s, ICE is equated here and around the world with something worse than bad. He has an agency referred to as ICE being called by crtics like me the ICE Gestapo. The letters stand for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the agency was feared by smugglers and people trying to enter the country illegally. Now it is feared by anyone who may be profiled by them because of the color of their skin.
This led me to think of a not really all that amusing joke. It’s because of all of this that Iceland might want to change its name to Niceland.
