Republican Congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky, under constant attack from demented New York real estate developer Donald Trump, milled his own lumber, chiseled stone, and formed iron to hand build his own house.
Massie actually is what Republicans claim to want to be, but aren't. He's a far cry from Chuck Gray who went right to work for his daddy's radio station.
And he's sure a lot closer to Lincoln than Trump is.
We've remarked before on how the GOP has adopted the color red, the color of the far left, as it's own. That's beginning to seem more appropriate than ever.
Our dim illegitimate chief executive has gone to China and returned. In the process, it seems clear that he's getting ready to abandon Taiwan.
Trump's entire trip to China was a complete and utter humiliation for the United States. An embarrassment of the highest order. But it fits a pattern.
Trump loves Russia's Putin. He's super impressed with Xi. He's kind of a bit of a fan boy to Kim Jong Un. He loved Orban who was a Putin ally.
If our adversaries from former Communist states had conspired to place into office a man to act as a sleeper agent, they could not have succeeded more wildly than Donald Trump has done without being one. . . presumably. He's brought a US that was already in trouble down from a world power to a second rate collapsing nation. It's utterly incredible.
I saw an old friend getting hot and bothered by this today. The small Democratic Party is having an internal debate about its members switching their registration over to Republican so that the Wyoming Freedom Caucus candidates stand a bitter chance of losing. Truth be known, almost all moderate Democrats in the state did that decades ago, some later running as fairly successful Republicans. Cowboy State Daily Carpetbagger Dave Simpson has written an op ed about checking the "label" of Republican candidates.
Indeed, check it. Most of the WFC candidates don't belong in the GOP at all. They aren't Republicans.
My old friend is supporting Brent Bien, who spent 28 years sucking on the government tit before taking a retirement (more sucking on the government tit) and is upset with Degenfelder and Barlow. I'm not keen on Barlow either, but if you spend almost 30 years working in an institution that's funded by the taxpayers and then come out with a no taxes policy, you are some kind of hypocrite.
And yes I'm speaking of a military career. Yes, there's a lot that's honorable about a military career, but I'm pretty familiar with it and you never have to 1) send out a bill, 2) worry about the competition, 3) worry your employer isn't going to have money to pay you, 3) work for fifty years before you retire, if you can ever retire, 4) worry that you line of work is just going to cease to exist. Sure, you do have to worry about violent death, that's very true. Like the Potts character says in Major Dundee; "that goes with the pretty girls and the pension", but the chances of that, while very real, are much less than they're made out to be for most career military people, although they are real, and the risk of violent death goes with a host of other professions too for which such worries do exist and you aren't going to get a "thank you for your service!" accolade and aren't going to be regarded as a hero.
Being a logger is actually the most dangerous job in the U.S., followed by being a commercial fisherman. In a location specific sense, being a taxi driver was, and may still be, the most dangerous job in the U.S.
Anyhow, the criticism is that Barlow and Degenfelder might not adhere to, well:
Meine Ehre heißt Treue
Oh my, think for yourself, can't have that.
Anyhow, my friend is no doubt part of the Wyoming Freedom Caucus which is demanding loyalty oaths from Republicans.
But they aren't Republicans.
They're Dixiecrats through and through.
May 1, 2026
It was a victim of high aviation fuel, something brought about by Donald Trump's illegal attack on Iran.
Regarding petroleum, the U.S. is now exporting a record amount due to the war with Iran, which doesn't help U.S. citizens whatsoever, as it cause the price of the product to rise, and accelerates U.S. depletion of the resource. Export of it, save for conditions in which the petroleum cannot be refined here, should be banned.
For that matter, as a resource that nobody contributed to putting in the ground, some thought should be given to nationalizing the resource in some fashion.
Some members of Congress are threatening to ban the import of Chinese electric vehicles as the GOP searches for ways to make a bad situation worse.
May 7, 2026
Headline:
A panel of federal judges found that President Trump could not legally impose the tariff on most imports.
No surprise whatsoever.
Anyhow, now this money will have to be refunded too. And Mad King Donny still hasn't refunded the money owed from the last such ruling.
May 13, 2026
Inflation rose to 3.8% last month with the fastest rise in prices in three years, caused by an illegal war with Iran which the demented Mad King Donny has no idea how to end.
Mad King Donny has gone to China. It'll be a disaster. The best possible result would be if he just gets lost over there, thinks the Chinese babes are cute, decides to marry one, and stays.
Since the White House Correspondence Association's Dinner attack, Donald Trump has gone full gonzo on his pet project, a ballroom.
In the United States of 2026, with a massive deficit, declining world status, a war its loosing, a culture that's moved beyond balls, only Trump and his acolytes, most of whom have never been in a ballroom, care about this project. Probably for that reason we're hearing all sort of excuses on why this is an absolute necessity. It's for the safety of the President and for a military command and control bunker.
Both of which are two really good reasons not to build it.
Underneath the ballroom would be a giant command and control structure. It would replace the secret but not so secret Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOC) dating back to World War II. The PEOC was itself an example of paranoia. It was probably much more useful during the Cold War than it was during World War Two.
It probably is obsolete. Times change.
All of which is a good reason not to build it.
The fact of the matter is that since the start of World War Two security and privilege has attached to the office of the President at an ever increasing rate. Special cars, special aircraft, a dedicated helicopter and a house with a bunker.
In recent years some paranoid Americans who like to imagine the world turning to shit, by which they mean the United States as the rest of the world doesn't count, have built their own bunkers. It's fun. It provides them with a false sense of security. But they can't launch wars.
The President can and he's launched two so far with a third nearly inevitable. Surrounded by security as he is, he probably feels perfectly safe, although the dinner attack would tend that isn't really true. Anyhow, people feeling perfectly safe do dumb and destructive things.
Trump himself is a perfect example of that. His income has made him feel perfectly safe from economic disaster and convinced himself that he's an intelligent man. And during his administration men who raped teenage girls have been safe, due to their association with him. The amount of financial oddities going on during Trump's administration has shown that lots of people associated with him feel pretty safe doing things they would not otherwise do.
And Trump has felt free to participate in a war that murdered the oppositions political leadership.
Nobody should feel that safe.
That is, I realize, as shocking thing to say, but a leader should, at least to some degree, share the fate and dangers of his people. Lots of Americans go about their daily activities knowing they could be killed at random and nobody is going to do anything about it. Servicemen in the Middle East no doubt knew right from the onset that they were not safe from Iranian attacks. Quite frankly, Americans here in the United States aren't free from Iranian attacks either, we've just been oddly lucky so far.
The President of the United States, whomever he is, ought to be in the same situation as the rest of us, no matter who he is. No one man is that valuable such that he should benefit from billions of dollars of effort to set him aside in safety from the people he serves.
And the same for the military. We have command and control facilities already. We have enough. If we don't, well, that would be odd and so be it.
Last edition:
The things they've said.
The attempted assassination at the White House Correspondence Dinner has spawned some interesting events and narratives.
One thing is that apparently Trump called several prominent reporters who were at the event that night, and expressed concern for their well being. That's outright remarkable given his generally abusive self centered public persona.
He also made a statement about needing to come together.
That's true, but at least one politician interviewed about it had a very difficult time not expressing skepticism.
Already, I'd note, Trump fans have yelled out about how Democratic and left wing rhetoric cased this. Well, bull.
There is a lot of hostile verbiage directed at Trump, and much of it is due to the horrible things he says all the time. Just a few weeks ago he noted how he was glad a public figure was dead.
Trump brought American political rhetoric into new territory when he very first started to run for the Oval Office. Republicans who complain about the language directed at him, and some of it is vile, need to look in the mirror.
Ballroom fixation
Amongst comments made by Trump were those stating this is proof we need his expensive ballroom, which is tied up in litigation.
The logic of that would be that the ballroom, if built, will have expensive security features. Where it fails in logic is that the dinner event was a private one, not a state function. Unless everything a President accepts an invitation to is held in the ballroom, things like this would not be prevented.
But here's another, and frankly radical, thing to consider.
Maybe Presidents need less protection, not more.
At one time there was a tradition that members of the public could wait in line at the White House to shake the President's hand on New Years. That ended in 1932. Now it would be unthinkable.
The only thing that's changed since 1932 is us. If the President's under constant threat, and of course there were three Presidents that were assassinated prior to 1932, that's because of us or some other factor.
One thing that's clearly changed is that the President is treated much more like a king now than he was in '32. Air Force One is the very symbol of that.
These trappings ought to be stripped away. If a President needs to fly somewhere, on official business, the Air Force has airplanes. There doesn't need to be a designated special one. Nor does there need to be a Marine Corps helicopter dedicated for the President. If he's just flying to a resort to golf, he can by a commercial airline ticket.
Maybe part of the overall problem is that they're given too much and separated from the people they are supposed to serve.
A big dumb ballroom emphasizes that.
It actually is true that prior Presidents lamented their being a lack of entertainment space. Well, too darned bad. Rent a hotel room.
And I'm not in favor of a giant bunker on the White House grounds either.
Maybe if a person is more like everyone else, they'll think twice about things that harm people. I don't want them exposed to violence, but making things so they can inflict it video game style is not a good thing, and elevating the President above the people isn't either.
And now you know. . .
how thousands of other people live every day. With one exception, when I listed to interviews of people from the press who had been at the event, things were not too surprisingly focused on themselves. The one exception was somebody who pointed out that they had excellent security but that most people don't, and that a lot of people live in fear of their family members, including children, being killed every day.
That's an excellent point.
Trump said something about this being just part of the price of holding office, which is easy to say for somebody who has a taxpayer funded security team. It shouldn't be part of the price of holding office, and exposure to violent death shouldn't be something you have to endure just because you live in this country.
Anti Christian?
When I went to Mass yesterday there was a Sheriff's truck parked in front of the Church. That's not a parking spot. When I went in, there was a uniformed sheriff's officer in complete kit. That's unusual.
I wondered if something was going on. Maybe not. He went to Communion like everyone else, so maybe he was just on his way to work.
Trump claimed that the shooter had been a Christian than apostatized and that was part of his motivation. We'll see. If so, it's ironic, as there's no visible evidence of Trump taking Christianity seriously.
What our enemies must be thinking.
It's been long believed that Iran has sleeper cells in the US. If they do, they haven't activated them in the current war. They either don't really have them, or they're holding back as it provides them with an advantage.
I can see where the latter might be the case. The old joke, dating back to World War Two, was that Hitler was the best general the Allies had, and that same may apply to Trump. He might be the best general the Iranians had.
That we went into the war with Iran with no clue what we were doing, and what our enemy was actually like, is to plain to excuse away. We have no idea whatsoever what we're doing and have no way out of the war. It's going to wreck the global economy. At this point, and we're at the sixty day mark, Trump legally has to submit the question of continuing the war to Congress, which will have to determine, as a practical matter, if we're going to engage in a full scale ground invasion of the country or surrender and leave Iran stronger than it was.
The Iranians maybe gambling on the latter, and it'd probably be a good gamble.
Anyhow, assuming they have sleeper cells, they've really shown restraint. Yesterday proved that a dedicated group of men could have breached security and completely decapitated the American government. We participated in doing that, which is beyond the Pale in war normally, in this war. On the basis of turnabout is fair play, it's amazing they haven't tried it. Maybe they just didn't think it'd work.
They know now it would have, although presumably the administration won't be dumb enough again to put the complete administration together in one room.
The others who must be looking are Russia and China, China in particular. But not at that, but at the war itself.
We've pretty much burned through our war reserve of missiles. If war came with China, we couldn't fight it.
Tone Deaf
Once a week now we get identical sized flyers from Chuck Gray and Reid Rasner promising to support the demented octogenarian that put us a war that's going to completely wreck the economy, and whose wrecking a lot of other things.
Maybe that still works in Wyoming. Trump has a lot of fans here. But as prices get higher and higher, and we sluff into a summer that's going to be hot and dry, with a tourist industry that's going to fall flat on its face, I wonder.
For the first time, actually, I got a sort of nervous "what do you make of the assassination" from somebody whose a huge Trump supporter and knows I'm not. I think he was looking for reassurance of some sort. I gave analysis. That probably isn't what he was looking for.
Proof of Devine Providence?
Franklin Graham was quick to come out with what I was sure would occur. Trump's survived three assassination attempts and that is, he suggested, proof that God wants him in power.
Adolf Hitler survived over 40 assassination attempts. There are five known plots on Stalin's life.
A person should never dismiss something being the Hand of God, but we shouldn't presume to know the mind of God either. Nor should we ignore, as the examples above show, the Problem of Evil.
On that, we can presume that God allows an evil to occur, but does not cause it, in order to bring a greater good out of it. While foreseeing the future is always risking, I could see that being the case here.
In spite of what Trump/Gray/Hageman/Barrasso/Rasner and others believe, or claim to believe, the ongoing use of fossil fuels is harming the world. This may actually accelerate their end.
Let me restate that, it is accelerating their end.
Countries all around the globe, including China, are rapidly phasing out fossil fuels for power generation. China is leaping into electric vehicles big time. Europe has, I believe, 2030 as the date for the end of the import of Russian oil.
The war is freeing the globe of US influence, something we'll regret and with it our steadfast refusal to look at reality. We're being put in our place, and the era of fossil fuels is coming to a rapid end.
The other thing, it seems to me, that Trump is brining about is the discrediting of American Evangelicalism. I.e., people like Graham.
Evangelical churches are particularly an American thing. They're strong in the US in a way they aren't anywhere else. Where they evangelize outside the US its nearly always where Catholics have made it safe for them to go. The latching on to Trump by them in a very public manner is hurting Christianity in general, but them in particular. Catholicism is already growing world wide and, while the story is only now being noticed, it's growing in the US. I suspect Trump is accidentally helping bring hte latter about.
On firearms.
On assassinations, one thing worth noting, although I won't detail it, is that so far the only assassin/would be assassin who seems to have had a clue what he was doing was the guy who shot Charlie Kirk, although even there it's clear that the shot being lethal was essentially accidental. There's very free access to firearms in the US, although I suspect that this will start being curbed back due to Trump, but that free access doesn't mean competence.
People who are really familiar with firearms are unlikely to go out and try to kill somebody. This is true of "military style" firearms. There's a group of firearms aficionados who like military style firearms, but aren't very likely to use them in any lethal fashion.
This may simply be because people know and like firearms know what they'll do, and are unlikely to be people who use them in that fashion. It's the people who buy them just because they're worked up about politics, on the right or the left, or who have an exaggerated fear of being attacked, who are the problem here. Fortunately, they're not all that likely to actually know how to use them.
Last edition:
Lex Anteinternet: CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 128th Edition. Attem...: The 127th edition of this was teed up to go before last night's White House Correspondence Dinner, or this would be that edition. Havin...
The 127th edition of this was teed up to go before last night's White House Correspondence Dinner, or this would be that edition. Having the other one ready to go, I went ahead and ran it.
I didn't realize anything had happened right away until I went upstairs and my wife was watching a little of the news feed. It was fairly typical with the press doing the usual "oh gosh, who could the target have been" routine. We all know who the target was, Donald Trump.
This is a tragedy, even though nobody was hurt, thankfully, for a variety of reasons, one being that while there are now questions about how the assailant "got so close" (in a country armed to the hilt, Trump probably comes surprisingly close to armed people every single day), what this accomplishes once again will be to help rally people around Trump. I know that's not supposed to be the first observation, but it's quite true.
Trump has been sinking like a rock in popularity but people rally around somebody who is attacked. And in the MAGA camp, where quite a few people believe that Trump is on some sort of Devine mission, it'll be seen as proof of that.
That this occurred is not a surprise at all. Trump is an illegitimate President who vomits hatred on a nearly daily basis. He inspires hatred of him and is likely the most hated American President since Abraham Lincoln. He is a horrible human being.
None of that justifies an attempt at murder, but it's not surprising the attempt was made. What's additionally interesting, fwiw, is the far right of this country effectively adopted the concept of tyrannicide during both Biden's and Obama's terms in office, so in a way, that set the table for something like this to occur in a way that didn't exist when there were attempts on prior Presidents.
With this attempt, depending on how you look at it, Trump holds the record for the most attempts on a Presidents life. Having said that, if you limit that to while a figure is in office, he's tied with Ford if you regard him as being presently in office.
I probably would have skipped mentioning the dinner as its shameful that it even occurs anymore.
Some outside commentary on it:
That article by a reporter who was there.
Surreal? Maybe, but by this point in Trump's illegitimate reign I suspect a lot of people are like me. We know that this was a horrible event but it hardly even registered on the attention meter. Trump so dominates the news with his horrible behavior that even when its directed at him, it's hard to really get too worked up about it.
Again, I don't condone this, and the effect will aid Trump, who needs to be removed via the 25th Amendment.
About the dinner itself, a lot of people, myself included, flatly feel that it should have been cancelled, or at least Trump should not have been invited. He treats the Press horribly, and yet there they are, worshipping him.
A cartoon:
Apparently J.D. Vance and sycophantic today Mike "Toady" Johnson were at the event. Of interest, the Secret Service rushed Vance off first.
That's interesting.
If that comes up again, I'm sure there will be some solid explanation, but I wonder if its just not a combination of fatigue on the part of security as well. Vance and Trump probably have separate security details and Trump's is probably numb from having to be around such a horrible person constantly.
On clearing the room, the excessive number of iPhone cameras anymore means everything is photographed to the hilt and then over analyzed. That's already happening, but as horrible as something like this is, it can lead to some semi assuming photographs, none of which would be the slightest bit amusing if you were there.
One is that Kennedy Jr. appeared to leave his wife behind as he was escorted out to safety. His wife, actress Cheryl Hines, later explained that her formal dress hindered her ability to get out and she had to be carried.
Stephen Miller basically shoved his wife out, which is understandable, but photographically unfortunate too, as he was leading her while behind her and his hand was unfortunately placed for control on her upper torso, um, well anyhow.
On the post scene photographs, one security figure is clearly carrying a SIG M17 in the same photograph as a female security officer carrying a Glock 19. The M17 is way larger. It had the conventional iron sights.
The man carrying it was way larger than the female officers as well. I know that in 2025 a person isn't supposed to feel these things but in at least two of the Trump attempts a female secret service officer has been present and just the photographs don't inspire confident in me. That's probably just me. Anyhow, well. . .
Well, a slight addition.
Since the decline in sartorial standards, Secret Service officers are absurdly easy to pick out. They're always wearing dark suits. I have a photograph of Theodore Roosevelt from 1903 or so in which a Secret Service officer is wearing tweed and a newsboy cap. Much harder to pick out. The women are even easier to pick out as women don't normally wear dark business suits.
Glocks leave me unimpressed as well. M'eh.
Trump promised to reschedule the event, which of course, wasn't his to schedule in the first place.
Trump offered some comments from the White House. Included in those were that the military is demanding the ballroom.
The military probably doesn't normally provide any sort of security to the President at all, although the man with the M17 is interesting as he was clearly in some security role, and was not in the Secret Service, and probably in the military. That aside, the military probably doesn't give a rats ass about the ballroom in this context. Trump just makes crap up.
What does seem to be the case is that there's a giant bunker being built under where the ballroom is supposed to go, but won't. We only know the details of that which we know as Trump can't stop his verbal diarrhea.
It is an interesting aspect of this however is how much of the White House destruction was motivated by a military request, and then taken advantage of by the White House, if it was.
I'll add that building giant bunkers leads to an inflated sense of self worth on the part of everyone involved. That part of this project ought to be halted as well.
One final note. Most people who attempt to assassinate Presidents are nuts. This is notable as by an large, their efforts are incredibly poorly done. This is true of nearly every historical assassination attempt. Of all of them, Lee Harvey Oswald's was by far the most competent attempt, which is probably why people insist it must have been a conspiracy.
Not that this isn't already happening here. I've already read claims that this attempt, and all the prior ones, on Trump's life were staged. They weren't, but something remarkable here is that Trump, Vance and Johnson were all present, which is stupid. The argument would be that you know they were staged, as the government would never be so dim as to put the first three people in line for power in the same public room.
Oh yes it would.
Rubio was there too.
Given the line of succession, if a competent attacker was president, Chuck Grassley might now be President. That would assume a lot of skill that most attempted assassins really lack, which is a good thing for everyone. Indeed, even well trained assassins tend not to pull regime change off, as the repeated German Army failures on Hitler demonstrate.
It does demonstrated a lot of hubris, however. We are presently at war with a country whose entire leadership was assassinated early on. Murdering the leadership of opposing combatants is generally regarded as beyond the Pale in war. We did not do it in World War Two, and our opponents didn't attempt it either. The targeting of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto in Operation Vengeance during World War Two is still controversial. It was well known that Trump would be at this event and it was likely known that members of his cabinet would be too. That Iran did not regard the event as a target of opportunity says a lot about their restraint, and frankly, their intelligence. They could literally have decapitated the administration and left a person so old in charge that he would have had to resign. I don't know how many members of Trump's cabinet were in fact there. Maybe all of them.
Last edition:
