the New Prison, Fresh Moat edition

​NF, one L
Issue #4

1. As a longtime resident of San Francisco, I think I can say with complete confidence bolstered by indisputable first-hand factual observation that reopening Alcatraz may be the single stupidest idea I've heard since the last hyperbolic sentence I typed about an idea floated by the untethered mind of The Grifter. Is it dumber than the military occupation of Greenland, making Canada the 51st-58th states, paying Pete Hegseth minimum wage to sort through the Ziploc bag of old screws and nails in your junk drawer, or even, at this late date, still not grasping the meaning, purpose, or repercussions of enacting unilateral tariffs? Actually, yes.

2. Gunrunner Frank C. Weatherman was the final prisoner released, way back in March of 1962, five months before The Cuban Missile Crisis. Hey, you know what happens to a big pile of cheap cement, iron, and steel exposed to Pacific fog, salt air, and freezing temperatures for six decades? It slowly degrades into a monument to folly and rust. So, as they say over at Redfin, a Handyman's Special.

3. There is no electricity on Alcatraz, which, by the way is Spanish for Pelican. What there is, is up to 1 million tourists per year, graffiti, and massive piles of gull, cormorant, and egret shit. Most experts of either party will agree that a brand new shiny Supermax Prison will probably require electricity for full effectiveness. Running a prison entirely on diesel generators, or, at Pete Hegseth's suggestion, running the generators on vodka, seems unwise.

4. There is also no fresh water, fuel, or sewage. There is also no Nick Cage or Sean Connery. It would, on a dollar-to-dollar basis, be more cost effective to build a new prison in the middle of Lake Huron (pay up, Canada) made out of Elon's rejected chin implants, Jeff Bezos' duplicity, Zuckerbook's promises, and the thousands of meters of internal wiring that allow Melania, when unplugged from her charging station for public appearances, seem 12% less androidal.

5. The last president to brainstorm up some really top ideas with his coterie of sycophants and fingertip-sniffers about what to do with Alcatraz was Millard Fillmore, everyone's favorite 13th president, who decreed a lighthouse be erected there. When it was pointed out to Millard that, actually, Mexico owned Alcatraz, The Mill Man pouted for a while, consulted some of the sharper minds on Truth Social, and the next morning announced that since James K. Polk, who everyone knew was a pussy, annexed Texas in 1848, which along with California was 55% of Mexico's overall territory (emphasis on WAS), why couldn't we snatch a little island full of egret guano?

6. More arrests, more prisons, more deportations, more denunciations, more holding cells, more punishment, more anger, more us, less them.

7. Although bulldozing the island, erecting some tents, calling it PARDON TOWN, and then shipping every single Jan 6. rioter plus Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, Steve Bannon, Elliott Broidy, Randall "Duke" Cunningham, Kwame Kilpatrick, Mike Flynn, George Papadopoulos, Charles Kushner, Anthony Levandowski, Lil Wayne, Ken Kurson, Joe Arpaio, and Alex van der Zwaan to live there while being guarded by The Central Park Five, just might be a notion that has legs.

8. Only the weakest, softest, most deeply pampered, least masculine of men, let alone politicians, let alone presidents, attempt to use a former symbol of ruthless authoritarianism and incarcerative state punishment to bolster their tiny-fingered, dodged draft, porn payoff, wanna-Pope insecurity.
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9. Wait, if we placed 300% tariffs on Chinese-printed "Alcatraz Swim Team" shirts that, in per-unit sales to German tourists are more profitable than farming soybeans in Iowa, we just might rake in billions of Tariff dollars, which, when you read the fine print actually goes to the Chinese but sounds good on Fox & Friends, we just might save this Feel The Pain economy after all.