I don’t think the Washington Post means for it to sound awesome. But it sounds awesome. The article is titled Trump federal budget 2018: Massive cuts to the arts, science and the poor. Shweet! You had me at “massive cuts to the arts.” To science and to the poor too? My cup runneth over!

President Trump on Thursday will unveil a budget plan that calls for a sharp increase in military spending and stark cuts across much of the rest of the government including the elimination of dozens of long-standing federal programs that assist the poor, fund scientific research and aid America’s allies abroad.

Trump’s first budget proposal, which he named “America First: A Budget Blueprint to Make America Great Again,” would increase defense spending by $54 billion and then offset that by stripping money from more than 18 other agencies. Some would be hit particularly hard, with reductions of more than 20 percent at the Agriculture, Labor and State departments and of more than 30 percent at the Environmental Protection Agency.

It would also propose eliminating future federal support for the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Within EPA alone, 50 programs and 3,200 positions would be eliminated.

The cuts could represent the widest swath of reductions in federal programs since the drawdown after World War II, probably leading to a sizable cutback in the federal non-military workforce, something White House officials said was one of their goals.

It probably sounds callous to you for me to say: “Cuts to the poor? (Whatever that means.) Awesome!” But not if you understand the free market. Government assistance to the poor is not helpful, in my view. (Explaining why takes more energy than I have right now, plus it’s mostly pointless because either you already know this, or I will never convince you because it’s the Internet and because of human nature.)

I’d be for cutting the military too, but you can’t get everything you want, and everyone here will disagree with me anyway. But this is nice.

There. I praised Trump. Don’t worry, you’ll forget it the next time I criticize him.

[Cross-posted at The Jury Talks Back.]

My post this morning was too long. This one is not. Press the play button and listen to this.

[Cross-posted at The Jury Talks Back.]

It’s time for Song #6 in the Patterico Music Project.

If you haven’t encountered it before, this is a project in which I have sought to have some my musical heroes record covers of songs I wrote over 25 years ago. Before today, I published five of these songs:

• “Creation” recorded by Jay Semko

• “Was It Really You?” recorded by Jay Semko

• “The Same Mistake” recorded by Jay Semko

• “Alien Song” recorded by Parthenon Huxley

• “Wrong Side of the Road” recorded by Steve Bertrand

All can be accessed at my SoundCloud page at soundcloud.com/patterico.

The latest artist to agree to do this for me is Jamie Woolford, the front man for The Stereo and Let Go, and a great solo artist in his own right. I’ve been telling you about Jamie for more than ten years (!) — starting in 2006, in this post raving about his band Let Go. In 2010 I posted for you a video from The Stereo:

And in 2013, I posted two videos from his solo album, in different posts. In this post, I posted this video of the song “A Framed Life in Charming Light,” and in this post I showed you the video from “This Isn’t Goodbye” from Jamie’s solo album:

I gave Jamie a group of songs to choose from, including ones that had been covered before by other artists. (I have not written that many songs, and even fewer good ones, so I’m kind of limited, unfortunately.) He decided to do four, including two that had been covered before by other artists, and two that have not. Today I am releasing one that you’ve heard covered before: Jamie’s version of Alien Song. Parthenon Huxley has already done a great cover of the song. Jamie’s version is very different from Parthenon’s. Where Parthenon’s was whimsical, this one is straight-out rock, with grinding guitars. I love both of them, but in very different ways.

The song you’re about to hear is about reptilian, multi-headed aliens, conquering the world through their strange music. Turn up the sound.

Here are the lyrics and the original version.

There will be more songs coming. Jamie has done three more. And I have another artist lined up who you’ve probably heard of. This is all great fun for me. Stay tuned!

[Cross-posted at The Jury Talks Back.]