Early Fall

It is a balmy 62° here in Pittsburgh today. The weekend looks like a washout but Labor Day should be nice and sunny.

Still, it’s September 1 and before long, the trees will start turning colors. We have beautiful city parks here. It never gets old.

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Well, that’s not good. It looks like chief economics advisor Gary Cohn, one of the grownups brought in to watch Donald and one of Steve Bannon’s nemesises, is on Trump’s s#%* list.

Asked later about the state of the Cohn-Trump relationship aboard Air Force One, Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders  told reporters only that the two were committed to passing tax-reform legislation. Meanwhile, Trump has apparently been making calls “on his personal phone” to former White House strategist and Cohn-nemesis Steve Bannon, when Chief of Staff John Kelly isn’t around:

Trump chafes at some of the retired Marine Corps general’s moves to restrict access to him since he took the job almost a month ago, said several people close to the president. They run counter to Trump’s love of spontaneity and brashness, prompting some Trump loyalists to derisively dub Kelly “the church lady” because they consider him strict and morally superior.

“He’s having a very hard time,” one friend who spoke with Trump this week said of the president. “He doesn’t like the way the media’s handling him. He doesn’t like how Kelly’s handling him. He’s turning on people that are very close to him.”

That’s not great news for Wall Street, which has put its faith in Cohn and Kelly to keep the president calm, collected, and contained as Congress attempts to reform the tax code for the first time in 30 years. The market rally—not to mention peace in East Asia—depends on it.    Cohn, for his part, has been reduced to making the usual hostage statements that tend to follow Trump feuds. During an appearance on CNBC Friday, Cohn said, “I have a great relationship with the president. . . . He and I are spending time working together on all the big economic issues that are going to drive economic growth and drive wages in this country. That’s what he cares about, that’s what I care about.” A White House spokeswoman told the Post, “Gary is here. The president is here.”

Sooooo, they occupy the same place? Doesn’t that violate some quantum physics theory? If that’s all you can say about their relationship, that means it is not good. I think.

Time for “Another One Bites The Dust”?

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Just got an email invitation to a computational biologics symposium in Cambridge in a few weeks. The topics look very interesting. For a moment, I forgot that I don’t do that anymore. 😢But if anyone out there is interested, check the topics and abstracts here. This symposium doesn’t cost anything and it’s a good opportunity to rub shoulders with people still in the field.

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