6 September—He said it yet again. Yesterday Donald Trump assured his peanut gallery, “I always put America first, every single time.” Tell ‘em what they wanna hear. Of course, no candidate for national office would even imply anything to the contrary. But coming from Trump you know he’s full of it, that he really meant “I always put myself first, every single time. Suckers.”

The very concept of putting America first means so little to Trump and he’s mouthed the popular patriotic platitude so often that he recited it yesterday in a totally rote singsong way devoid of any feeling or thought, like a clergyman blah-blahing a congregation with the repetitive ritual incantations and invocations that come to mean nothing to him and them.

And then there are the new signs drivers entering Connecticut on the interstate highways will probably not notice—or ignore if they do notice. These are they:

Connecticut may safely be considered the submarine capital of the United States, the only other state with any military submarine production at all being Virginia. With China’s submarine fleet a bit smaller than ours and Russia’s smaller than China’s, that makes Connecticut the submarine capital of the world. But home of the submarine capital? Why not say “Home of Groton, the Submarine Capital of the World”?

Same with the pizza capital nonsense. Why not name New Haven, which prides itself on pizzas, but for no good reason? And despite UConn’s success in basketball, implying that anything in Connecticut is the basketball capital of anywhere is rather farfetched.

Certainly the signs aren’t intended to be taken seriously, but they’re none the less asinine and inane. And the one inviting drivers to “Stop for a bite in the foodie capital of New England” is just plain ludicrous, even though three of the other New England states charge a higher restaurant tax than Connecticut (and the meal tax in Massachusetts isn’t much lower).

Sure the signs are cute, but they’re nothing but a waste of taxpayer money. Ned Lamont isn’t the first governor to waste money like that (and in other ways, of course). And, as with his predecessors, his name is on a conveniently replaceable strip affixed to the bottom of the jokes.

On the other hand, the CT logo—the ultra-bold stylized C with a little horizontal T cut out—is pretty damn clever. Kind of like the forward-facing arrow embedded in the Ex of the FedEx logo that nobody notices but remembers anyway . . .