"[Javier] Milei has pledged to slash spending and taxes, close Argentina’s central bank and replace the nation’s currency with the U.S. dollar."

"He has also proposed banning abortion, loosening regulations on guns and considering only countries that want to 'fight against socialism' as Argentina’s allies, often naming the United States and Israel as examples. In his victory speech, he attacked the political 'caste' that he says has enriched themselves at the expense of average Argentines, saying 'today is the end to Argentine decadence.'...

From "Argentina Elects Javier Milei in Victory for Far Right/Argentina’s next president is a libertarian economist whose brash style and embrace of conspiracy theories has parallels with those of Donald J. Trump" (NYT).

Is he like Trump? We're told "his strong adherence to a libertarian ideology... has led him to support, in theory, policies like open immigration and drug decriminalization." The similarities? "He harshly attacks his critics and the news media, he calls the scientific consensus on climate change a socialist plot, he argues that a shadowy cabal controls the country and he even has an unruly hairdo that has become an online meme."

An example of his rhetoric: "The state is a pedophile in a kindergarten... with the children chained up and bathed in Vaseline."

Key fact: Inflation in Argentina is over 140%.

At the Jack-in-the-Pulpit Café...

... you can talk all evening and into the night.

FROM THE COMMENTS: From Ingachuck'stoothlessARM: "Trump-like triphyllum ! look at that coif" (Ingachuck'stoothlessARM). Ha ha. We wondered if anyone would see it the way we did.

"Amelia Brookins, object handler, arranges a poster of Bella Abzug to be photographed at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History."

Photo caption at "The Smithsonian is digitizing political and military posters — 18,000 of them/More than 200 posters a day are being converted to make them more accessible to the public" (WaPo).

I like that job title, "object handler."

From the article:

Neither of the young Smithsonian object handlers knew of the formidable New York feminist and three-term member of the U.S. House of Representatives. Brookins said she had heard of Abzug, who died 21 years ago, for the “first time in the poster.”...

The Bella Abzug poster, in orange, black and white, shows her in one of her trademark hats, along with the slogan “This Woman’s Place is in the House . . . the House of Representatives!” (The Smithsonian also has one of her hats.)

You'll have to imagine the orange lettering:

Pictures really do help us to remember. Pictures of posters, posters that helped us to have an idea of the candidate at the time. The hat helped too. It's another visual (and the Smithsonian is preserving one of her hats). This woman really did imprint herself on the public by wearing a hat. She was the one with the hat.

These days, Trump is the one with a hat, and he imprinted himself on us by making his head distinctive not with a hat but with a very odd hairstyle.

Anyway, these kids today. They don't know much about history. But maybe if you give them some pictures, some glimmer will arise. And what do you really know about history? What's there in your odd head? Isn't it — to be fair — just some posters? Stuff like...

Oh, my. Does he looks like Trump?

It's so powerful, the visual. In the visual archive of my own head, there is John McCain leaning over and muttering the names of dictators in the ear of Amy Klobuchar at the Trump inaugural. Trump/dictator. It's connected.

And look at the hands... Trump has tiny hands... what is he hiding?

What does the candle mean? Why is it burning low? Look at the other hand, look at the objects... the pen, the sword, the orb...

We are all object handlers in the mind's visual archive.

""[Theresa May's] most likely successor, given the extent of rabid pro-Brexit sentiment among Tories, is Boris Johnson, the unscrupulous, ramshackle, flip-flopping, dissembling former foreign secretary..."

"... whose uncertain relationship with the truth and unwavering narcissism resemble Donald Trump’s. 'He’s got what it takes,' Trump, who will visit Britain early in June, has ominously proclaimed of Johnson. The adulation has been reciprocated. Both are men gifted in the dark arts. With Johnson as leader, the chances would increase of a so-called 'Hard Brexit' — Britain crashing out of the European Union at the new deadline of Oct. 31 without any arrangement to govern its future relationship with its neighbors."

From "Britain on the Brink of Boris Johnson and Chaos/Theresa May exits but the Brexit impasse will endure for the simple reason it makes no sense" by Roger Cohen in the NYT. Boldface added.