Showing posts with label J. D. Vance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label J. D. Vance. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 21, 2026

25th Amendment Watch, 25th Edition and CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist 161st Edition. The Time is Running Out Edition.

In looking for a photo to caption this, I found this fascinating World War Two (apparently) vintage Heuer advertisement featuring Swiss soldiers all synchronizing their watches.  Heuer is a Swiss company but was not part of the "Dirty Dozen" that sort of ignored Swiss neutrality laws in order to export watches to the British Army.  Fascinating advertisement.  Posted under the Fair Use exception.

October 4, 2026

Running out of time.

We're starting a new edition of this for several reasons.

To start off with, King Donald has been in rare form the last few days.  Whether these qualify as 25th Amendment events or not is another matter. They probably don't.  But they do show the titanic weirdness of the man.

The first was a long rambling post about trying to enact Permanent Daylight Savings Time.

Personally, I hate Daylight Savings Time and I always have.  It was a stupid idea when it came into being, and it still is.  I'd like to see it go.  But King Donald and some Republicans, and probably some Democrats as well, would like for it to be adopted year around.

This is dumb, and yes that's spelled with a "b".

The reason it's dumb is that the sun rises and sets when it does with no regard to the opinions and musings of man.  In real terms, there's a real high noon, and a real midnight. The clock should be based on that.

The stupidity of Daylight Savings Time somehow accepts the concept that by moving the arms of the clock, it somehow changes that.  What Daylight Savings Time is, in real terms, is Go To Work An Hour Earlier.  Apparently we're dim enough, however, to accept that if we pretend to move the arms of the clock, we're still going to work at 8:00 a.m. in the summer, rather than 7:00 a.m.

We're not.

Anyhow, Donalds wants the bill to pass.   If it does, at least it looks like the 119th Congress did something.  Here's his long screed:


As can be seen, Trump is personally blaming this on Tom Cotton, which isn't fair.  What this means is there aren't enough votes in the Senate to take it up and pass it, even if a majority in the Senate are in favor of it.

Cotton's reasons:


Cotton has been a pretty consistent back of Trump's all along, so this is really ironic.  He's getting stabbed in the back by the guy he supported, which isn't surprising.  Everything Trump touches gets destroyed. 

Cotton's reasons here are solid.  Everything he's stated here is correct.  I can personally recall the 1974 experiment with this.

Sunday, January 6, 1974. Messing with the time.

In a bizarre response to the ongoing oil crisis, the U.S. began a trial of year around daylight savings time.

I recall it well, as when I walked to grade school in the morning, it was pretty dark.  We still walked, however.

What I noted there has been noted by supporters of King Donald's proposal.  Kids don't walk to school as much as the culture's addiction to laziness and automotive transportation actually increased since 1974.

Anyhow, what are the reasons for this absurdity?

Golfing and tennis.  Oh, and "farmers want it".

On that last item, farmers don't care one whit about this.  They're going to work when they are going to work.  DST doesn't change that at all.

Indeed, I've always heard the justification for DST being the one that Trump is giving.  You can go out and play sports when you get home from work as you'll have more daylight.

M'eh.

The reason, anyhow, this appears here is that Trump posted, and therefore wrecked, Cotton's cell phone number. That's really mean.  Only a self centered asshole would do a thing like that.  Trump's been asked to justify it in a press interview and just repeats his reasons that he wants the vote.

Personally, and I have no way of really knowing this, I think he wants it as the Republican 119th Congress has done nothing and now we're headed into a general election with inflation ramping up, an  illegal war going on, and none of the list of usual suspects excuses working anymore.

Also for the same reason, Trump's been running around giving campaign rallies to the true believers.  I haven't tracked where he's been going, but I've read that it tends to be in places where there's a lot of MAGA.  Quietly some candidates in battleground states are trying to distance themselves from him.  Anyhow, at one such rally Trump, who didn't graduate from Wharton with honors and never appeared on the Dean's list, stated:

I am a person with very high intelligence—one of the highest IQs in the world.

Okay, this is at the really weird level.

Generally really intelligent people don't run around saying "I'm high IQ".  Trump says it all the time, which suggests that he's really insecure about his intelligence.

Frankly, at this point, if anyone believes he's super intelligent, they're probably either stupid or incredibly gullible.  MAGA by now is the bottom of the bell curve in intelligence and ignorance.

What's going on with the 25th?

It's rather clear at this point that my prediction that the 25th Amendment would be applied after the first 18 months of Trump's illegal occupation of the Oval Office were off the mark.  This probably should be regarded as a failed prediction.

Having said that, I saw somebody hinting at the possibility that their similar thought might not be.

I think it's a long shot right now, but there's still a chance, and a not insubstantial one, that a backroom plot, basically, remains in place.  The same basic parameters would be in operation, replacing Trump with J.D. Vance before the 2028 election.

My thought was that it would occur before the 2026 election in order that the GOP had a chance to save itself before that election. Clearly that was wrong.  But that in and of itself might be part of what's going on.  The various factions in the Trump backrooms that supported his campaign and which boost their pet theories on everything may very well have realized that the results would be unpopular.  Economic radicals behind the tariffs, for instance, likely were aware that they'd be hugely disruptive.  They may have given up the 2026 midterms from the onset.  They likely didn't appreciate that Trump would start a war with Iran, but most of the rest of the stuff Trump has done has backers within the administration.  All of those people also know that they're in the minority in terms of American culture so Trump is their best chance of making this stuff happen.

But, if I'm correct, at some point Trump has to go and take the stench out with him.  There will come a day, and it's probably in November, when Trump will be personally blamed for what's occurred.  The Republicans are going to lose both houses of Congress in a month.  A Fall Guy will be necessary, and Trump has made himself that person.  He's even asked for people to imagine him on the ballot.

A lot of people will.

After November 3 being a Trumpite in most places will have lost its value.  A lot of the Republican politicians who have supported him all along will grow silent, or more silent than they already are.  Harriet Hageman will likely not be heard to mention his name.  John Barrasso won't either.  Poor Chuck Gray, who has campaigned more than anyone else in Wyoming on being a deep lover of all things Trump, will be lost, but even he will rally to claim that "true conservative values"  need to be defended.

Anyhow, the point is Republicans are already dog trotting away from Trump. Trump is, at the same time, stabbing some of them in the back.  Chip Roy got it, and now Cotton is getting it.  After the vote in November, there will be very little reason to be a Trump backer in the GOP, save for being in a district of diehard MAGAs, which is a declining population.

The National Conservatives and Christian Nationalist still need Trump, however.  Nobody else is going to help them get in their worldview.  They can sort of home that Vance will, but Vance is too savvy to adopt anything fully that's going to wipe out his hopes of being President.

And hence the gamble.

Right now, it may well be the case that NatCons and Christian Nationalist are seeing how far they can have Trump carry on as a sort of dictator until it's too late, and Vance's chances in 2028 are destroyed.  That may have already occured.  Letting that occur might be one reason that Marco Rubio hasn't acted.  But my guess is that they're riding along and just don't quite know where that point is.

It might be coming very soon.  If Trump makes an effort to steal the 2026 midterms, and he will, that might present the opportunity.  If it isn't taken then, it has to be taken some time in 2027.  2028 will probably be too late.

October 10, 2026



This man is a titanic narcissist and deeply mentally ill.

Trump called Letitia James a "dog".

James has been a controversial Attorney General for the State of New York.  She went after Trump some time ago unsuccessfully.  I don't know what brought her back to mind for Trump, but she's been in the news recently over the Cornell rape story.  I'll have an item on that shortly, but in a comment he noted he feels "badly" for the seven men accused.

Eh?

It's hard to ignore that Trump is rapy wealthy men's best friend.

October 12, 2026
And you know what they're doing? They go straight down, you know, you can make those drill bits talk. You can make 'em sing, you can make them go, they go down. New York's over here, Pennsylvania-- they go down and they take a sharp left. And they suck our oil out. Can you believe it? Lines of different states, and you'll see one has Cadillacs, because they like Cadillacs better than they like Mercedes, but one has an Escalade, and one has a 50 year old Chevy. And you're talking about 3 ft. It's a line that goes right up. One has some beautiful drilling plants, and one has no drilling plants, it's got no money, it's got poverty.
Donald Trump.

This is a statement, I believe, on horizontal drilling.  It's posted as an example of his rambling speech.  This was just delivered over the weekend.

Cont:

Regarding the supposed agreement to cease hitting energy targets:
Reporter: You said Russia and Ukraine agreed to a ceasefire but both sides say they have not. 

Trump: They agree. You know why? Because I said you agree. That’s why. They agreed because I said they agreed.

Well, they didn't agree.  Apparently King Donald's word doesn't mean that much.

October 19, 2026

That stone is so beautiful ... see the cushions? Those beautiful yellow cushions? Don't they feel nice? I have them specially made ... you have the new heliport and ballroom.

Donald Trump addressing a women's health event.

cont:


Oh, sure, that's normal . . . 

October 21, 2026

I'm studying his body. I've never studied the body of a man before. It's not my thing. Nothing wrong with it, of course. But it's never been my thing. But I looked at his ass. I said, 'His ass, shit, it's like a pile of muscle.' Then I looked at his legs and I said, 'Man, his feet are big.'

I don't do this with men very often. I started examining his body because I didn't know he was a great athlete. And I looked and I watched up and down. I looked at his ass...And then I looked at his hands...He's got these like claws.

Donald Trump on Jon Husted on, apparently, two seperate occasions.

This is weird.

I don't know what to make of this.  People who comment on Twitter are having a field day with it.  I've never even heard of Jon Husted so I assumed that he was a football player or something.  I guess he was a college football player.

Anyhow, this is not a normal way that a man talks about the appearance of another man.  It's not completely beyond the pale for Trump, who earlier commented on the late Arnold Palmer's, well anyhow.

One of the signs of dementia is an inability to filter comments.  I've personally seen that with somebody who could not filter comments about people being overweight.  Some people become hypersexual.  This all relates to the frontal and temporal parts of the brain that the disease destroys.

Something is obviously going on with Trump generally.  He's taken up wondering badly on his way to his helicopter.  He's obsessed with architectural matters.  He can't always control his temper.  And now, all of a sudden, he's making comments on men's bodies.

I've never heard a man speak about another man this way.  It verges on homoerotic.  It's very weird.

We'll conclude this episode of this here.

Related threads:

Daylight Savings Time, Dangers, and Crabbiness.

Last edition:

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist 160th Edition. On being a worthless sycophant



25th Amendment Watch, 24th Edition. He's crying for help, or completely insane.

Tuesday, October 20, 2026

2026 Elections In Other Countries.

April 13, 2026


Trump's endorsement again turned out to be a predicator that the endorsed candidate would go down in well deserved flames as Péter Magyar defeated the illiberal democrat darling of the far right Viktor Orbán.

Also a figure of the Hungarian right, and in fact once an Orbán protege, he is a sign that even in a country that's be converted into the model of an illiberal democracy and hence adored by the Heritage Foundation set, a corrupt autocrat can come down.  He's also a sign that support by Trump means nothing in much of the world, and is becoming meaningless in the United States.

Orbán, who is not insane as Trump is much of the time, does deserve credit for conceding defeat.

April 14, 2026

Canadian liberals gained a majority in the Canadian parliament through by elections yesterday.

While less clear, the Donald Trump Effect, i.e., repulsion over his vile politics, is moving everything to the left that's associated with him.

June 22, 2026


Colombian Trump backed right-wing candidate Abelardo de la Espriella narrowly won Colombia's presidential election, apparently.

August 31, 2026


Icelandic voters rejected a proposal to negotiate with the EU for admittance.

September 7, 2026


I frankly don't grasp how German elections work, but  Alternative für Deutschland, (AfD) won state elections in Saxony-Anhalt but fell short of a majority.  The party is a far right German party and about as close to the Nazi Party as a German political party legally can be.

It's rise can be seen as part of a rise of the far right throughout the Western world, although the first two countries with far right parity's who gained control of their governments, Hungary and Poland, have subsequently seen those party's fall out of power after governing for some time.  Presently, the only other European country to be governed by a far right party is Italy, which is presently governed by Fratelli d'Italia, which has its roots in the Fascist Party.

Fratelli d'Italia is interesting here as well, as while even its symbol shows it rising out of Fascism, it's very much moderated itself since achieving power, converting itself from a populist far right party into more of a right wing party.  Time will tell if the AfD is able to do that, although it already criticizes Trump, the head of a proto fascist party himself, on some things.

October 6, 2026


Quebec separatist Parti Québécois won the Quebec provincial election but fell short of obtaining a majority.  I guess it's proof you can't keep a bad idea down.

October 20, 2026


Alberta separatist, the Canadian equivalent to Maga, were told to take a hike in the referendum this week on separation with 75% of the provinces residents voting no.

The dumpster fire the US has become under Trump probably helped influence the result.

Last edition:

2025 Elections In Other Countries.

Monday, October 5, 2026

2028 Election, Part I. The Preview of Coming Attractions Editions.


December 19, 2025

 And the 2028 Presidential Season has begun.  Erika Kirk of Turning Point USA has endorsed J. D. Vance.

And yes, it's way, way, early.

But perhaps its not surprising.  Trump's mentally departing the stage and chance are good that he'll be out of office in the next few months, Vance is probably looking towards his future right now.  His best chances for that position, of course, would be if Trump is escorted out of the building babbling about being the greatest and sent to a gilded retirement home.

But if that doesn't occur, the knives will be coming out before 2028.  Marco Rubio will not have sat through four years of soul corrupting dementia not to take a run at the White House.  No doubt others are in the wings.

One who may be in the wings, if I'm wrong on his being too demented to carry on in any fashion, is Donald Trump. Everyone keeps noting that he's constitutionally barred but he has no regard for the law in the first place and his threads to run need to be taken seriously.

On Vance, he's a true NatCon, although a recent convert to the philosophy, and his being backed by Turning Point means something, assuming that Turning Point doesn't fly apart or become highly diminished (which I think it will).  It's hard to know exactly what's going on, but it might be suspected that it's probable that Kirk's coming out now has the backing of other significant NatCon figures, who know that they need to put their man in power now (Trump really isn't their man, but their tool).  A figure like Rubio would turn the clock back.

And so the race is on.

December 22, 2025

It wasn't until listening to the weekend shows that I learned that Marco Rubio has endorsed Vance as well.

That's really interesting, and frankly surprising.

Cont:

And now the rumors are circulating, probably correctly, that Ted Cruz will be running.

Moreover. . . .

The NatCon nerve center and author of Project 2025 starts to come unglued as the Trump Administration does:

The conservative movement continues to splinter about how to deal with its most controversial voices

I've always thought Roberts' organization would maneuver to put Vance in power in 2026 and shove aside the Pine Tree flag folks, who don't have the intellectual capacity to run a government.  The risk has always been that they'd hold the hand they were dealt too long.

They may have.

And Pence, who didn't look like a good candidate before, is starting to with some folks.

September 23, 2026

Christie with President Zelensky

Chris Christie has made what is effectively an announcement that he's running for the Presidency in 2028.

Christie is a solid and real conservative and is not only seeking to obtain the Oval Office, but to stage a counter insurgency against the populist MAGAs.  This is a good time to do so, as the MAGA's are abandoning ship pretty rapidly as the bloom is off the Trump Stenchweed for everyone except the most diehard loyalist, many of whom are in the ignorant category.  The MAGA's are floundering around like fish in the deck with the two presumed 2028 candidates for the Trump thrown, Marco Rubio and J. D. Vance having real trouble dealing with a legacy they both want to take and to avoid.

Christie was a Trump supporter after his first run for office in 2016 and was part of the Trump transition team.  He got COVID 19 at a White House event, which shows how late he remained on Trump's team, sort of. It would seem that his loyalty was always somewhat cynical, as he never played that much of a role and his views don't dovetail with Trump's. Christie definitively broke with Trump on election night 2020 when he adamantly maintained that the election was not stolen and he's pulled away from him ever since.  He's a frequent guest on the This Week panel where he's been a very vocal opponent of Trump's, while still being a conservative.

Christie's announcement brought out tons of criticism, some of it from people like me who have always opposed Trump.  I understand that, but I feel it's unwarranted as Christie never compromised his own views and stood for them when the time came.  His support for Trump was likely self serving, as is J. D. Vance's and Marco Rubio's.  He's a real Republican, a real conservative, and in my view is a very good candidate.  It's early, of course, but in this environment, positioning himself early, before the November 2026 election, would appear to be a good strategy. 

I will note that the immediate opposition to Christie in some quarters is interesting.  As noted, I get those who are disgruntled as he supported Trump in the first administration.  But a lot of people just keep saying "he's fat". 

Yeah, he is. So was Taft. So was Cleveland.  So is Trump.

It's weird to think being fat would be a reason not to vote for a person, while being a serial polygamist isn't.

We should mention the Democrats as well.

No Democrat has announced or even gone as far as Christie with an announcement of intent to announce.  That's likely a wise strategy as announcing in advance of the November election will give absolutely desperate Republicans something to focus on.  An interesting development has happened, however, in that Gavin Newsom has been clearly testing the waters but came out saying he would not run if Kamala Harris does.  Presenting a united front against the GOP is a good strategy, to be sure, but in 2028 the Democrats will not face Trump and the need to be united early may not really be there.  Moreover, Harris is a terrible candidate.  Harris would fit the mold, however, of Democrats re-running failed candidates.

September 25, 2026

Prior Pritzker logo.

JB Pritzker, who Trump likes to insult for being fat, even though Trump is fat, has effectively thrown his hat in the ring as well as of yesterday.

Pritzker is 80 lbs lighter than he was this time last  year.  

An interesting thing here is that we now have two ex Governor's from east of the Mississippi and north of the Mason Dixon line running for the GOP ticket.  It's over two years until the 2028 election, but it's still noteworthy as this could very much reflect a shift in the GOP.  Donald Trump is a New Yorker, of course, but he's basically from the State of Television.  The last Republican President who was a true East Coaster was George H. W. Bush of Maine.

September 29, 2028

Robert Reich reports that Rahm Emanuel is thinking of running on the Democratic ticket.

The Rahm Bomb

And Reich is worried.

He should be. 

I don't know that much about Emanuel, but I do know that the Democratic Party can blaze a way to defeat like no other.  Given a chance to simply walk into the White House, and right now it's looking like they have one, they'll mess it up by picking a candidate that's unelectable.

Let's be perfectly frank about 2024.  Donald Trump won in no small part as the Democrats picked two completely lousy candidates.

Joe Biden was obviously suffering from mental decline and allowed to run until it simply couldn't be ignored.  Then they went to the next worse option, Harris.

I warned at the time that Harris was a bad choice, at which time I urged that they pick Tammy Duckworth.

Why can't Democrats get a clue? 

Why isn't anyone suggesting that Tammy Duckworth replace Joe Biden on the Democratic ticket?

Nope, Kamala Harris with her high pitched whiny voice and completely unworkable personality.  

Uff.

There's plenty of rumors afoot that Harris is going to run again, which his repeating the mistake the Democrats made with Hillary Clinton.  People didn't like Clinton, at all.  The Democrats kept acting like her failures weren't her failures.

There's a serious risk that the Democrats do that again, and figure, sure she lost to Joe Biden in the primary, and sure she lost to a demented septuagenarian in the Presidential election, but, by golly, that means nothing.

Which of course has nothing to do with Emanuel. . . or maybe it does.

Emanuel is from the Clinton and Biden administrations.  It's really clear that a lot of people are really trying to put distance between the past and the present and are disgusted with politicians in general who symbolize the past.  About the only Democrat of old who could win now would be Barack Obama, and he can't run (although if the GOP finds some illegal way to run Trump. . . ).  The Democrats need to move forward.

They also need to ditch the Baby Boomers like the stenchy worn out gym shorts they've become.  There ought to be an age limit on anyone running in 2028.  I'd put the cap at being born in 1965, which is the upper year for Generation Jones.  If the Boomers haven't gotten things right by now, they're not going to.

On this, the Democrats also need to get Bernie Sanders to shut up.  Nothing says Gerontocracy like having a million year old man running around as the voice of "progressivism"  

Duckworth, fwiw, would be a good candidate.  Amy Klobuchar would as well.

Basically, if you were born before 1965, or had a position in a prior administration, stay out.

Pritzker, I'd note, makes that cutoff.

So does Republican Chris Christie.

October 5, 2026

Rahm Emmanuel was on Meet the Press this weekend. He's clearly running, and frankly he sounded perfectly reasonable.  I was impressed.

Additional labels:

2028 Election, Part I. The Preview of Coming Attractions Editions. Additional labels.

Friday, September 25, 2026

25th Amendment Watch, 24th Edition. He's crying for help, or completely insane.

You know the drill.

Republicans will claim he's "trolling".  MAGA will say "watch the libs, har, har, har, pass me my twelfth Bud. . . "  Mike Johnson will claim he was too busy to notice. John Barrasso will look like he's badly constipated.

The Trump will do it.

J. D. Vance will claim it's a good idea, while going back to spruce up his resume for his inevitable Starbucks job application.

Seriously, he's either completely insane, or crying out for intervention.

This is not normal.  Trump is not normal. He's not alright.

September 8, 2026


And then there's this: https://x.com/Amy_Siskind/status/2097119661884162247/video/1

Yesterday he appeared to be lecturing a Marine Corps helicopter pilot shortly after Marine Corps One landed and omitted saluting the guards, which has become an unfortunate tradition.

Part of Labor Day he devoted to a deranged series of tweets.

He's insane and the Republican Party just won't do anything about it.  It's up to the voters, but even at that we'll be facing two more years of untold destruction due to GOP cowardice.

cont:

The government of Iceland has summoned the US ambassador to the country for Donald Trump's having posted an image yesterday showing the island nation as a U.S. possession.  Mexico, Canada and Greenland were included in the same crazy image.

cont:

I just thank my people. I was building a big building in New York and I took the whole crew down there right after this happened and they had no hesitation. Everybody went down with me. We went down as a big group of people ... we thought it was coming down on top of us ... two fireman lifted me up and started running with me. 
Two fireman, big strong guys, they grabbed me under the arms -- 'got to get our of here!' -- and they literally lifted me up, and they started running with me.

Donald Trump about 9/11.  It's a complete lie.

cont:

And later today:

The Failing New York Magazine wrote a story that I wasn’t down at the World Trade Center after the Tragedy of September 11th, because nobody saw me there. Well, I don’t think I would be the first thing on anyone’s mind but, I was there, obviously not on the same day as the collapse, but shortly thereafter…

The Fake News doesn’t want to listen, even when they know their story is false. That’s why their approval ratings are at an All Time LOW, but mine are VERY HIGH! 

On another September 11th front, Maggot Hagerman continues to say that I did not go to the New York World Trade Center event, but the Pentagon instead, because they wouldn’t let me speak in New York. Maggot knows that this is a lie!

This is actually a fairly big event as Trump was caught in a lie so large that he was forced to attempt to step away from it.  He wasn't there, and was called on it, and admitted he wasn't there.

He's a liar whose occupation of the White House dishonors the country.

September 12, 2026

King Donald and Number 4 at 9/11 memorial.  ©Reach Publishing Services Limited. Posted under fair use exception.

It's difficult to see how MAGA continues to call Joe Biden "Sleepy Joe".

Getty Images, same event.  Fair use exception.

September 16, 2026

Trump's hand picked board on the Kennedy Center closed it ostensibly for renovations but Trump made it clear beforehand that it would be closed unless it's named after him.

Trump has been a Tour d' Wacky all week.



The man is insane.  Supporting a person who supports Trump is unconscionable.

September 21, 2026.

It's hard to tell if this is rank stupidity, or craziness at the tinfoil hat stage:

September 20, 2026


Yeah, sure the military asked for that. . .


Either way this suggestion is really stupid. There's almost no way the military suggested something this dumb.

Trump is getting piles of pushback on this one, and with each day he appears increasingly wacky.  We're riding right up on the November election and we have to once again seriously wonder if there's a conflict between doing what's right and applying the 25th Amendment and trying to ride through the election.  As it becomes increasingly clear that Trump is a major Republican liability at this point, the pressure to remove an obviously unwell man has to be increasing.

September 25, 2026


The Looney Tune nature of the current Pretender has been on full display this week as 习近平 has been in Washington.  A besotted Trump took him to the White House and showed the Chinese leader his absurd portraiture hall and a painting of Trump giving the Communist Party Salute after he was shot on or near the ear.  习近平 looked on expressionlessly. 

Last edition:

Subsidiarity Economics 2026. The Times more or less locally, Part 9, 25th Amendment Watch, 23d Edition. The Canadian Harvard and Oxford doctor in economics vs. the Wharton playboy. The Trade War with Canada edition.

Friday, September 4, 2026

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist 153rd Edition. The Hunt for the Golden Pheasants, Delusional monuments, Recovering the imaginary 1950s.

Ousted.


Maria Bartiromo was given the boot at Fox.

That's really remarkable.

Bartiromo managed to go from being a credible mainstream reporter to a Trump talking head after leaving going to Fox in 2014.  Her departure would indicate that we've entered the "Hunt for the Golden Pheasants" stage of the Trump regime in which there's localized uprising.  The recent resignation of the Secretary of the Army fits into that as well.

I seriously thought that by this point the 25th Amendment would have been invoked and we'd have a President J. D. Vance trying to cut his own path.  People like Hegseth would be gone.  There'd be no Iran war and the tariff experiment would be over.  What didn't count on wa the administration being made up of radical right wing Confederates and Seven Mountain adherents, as well as members of the Waffen Grenadier Brigade of the SS Charlemagne that have no place to go.  So it appears my prediction was incorrect, although there's still hope.  Having said that, those who plan on surviving the regime are beginning to make their exit, or are being tossed overboard.

Well, Bye Felicia.

Trying to sell.


Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum announced that the Trump Admin will begin a further vandalization project this upcoming week and very clearly he knows nobody wants it, and therefore is trying really, really, hard to sell it.  He took to Twitter trying to show that Presidents have so dearly wanted an arch   Witness:

Secretary Doug Burgum@SecretaryBurgum

We are pleased to announce that after a very long wait (over 125 years!), we are preparing to start, over the next two-week period, the excavation work necessary for the Great Triumphal Arch and Military Observation Deck, at Memorial Circle on Columbia Island between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery. This will be one of the Great Pieces of American Architecture, honoring the history and significance of Arlington Cemetery and befitting the most powerful Capital in the World.

For over 125 years, Congress and various congressionally chartered commissions decreed that a monumental work should adorn Columbia Island. In 1902, the U.S. Senate’s “McMillan Commission” called for “a concourse suited to memorial treatment be established” on the westerly terminus of the Memorial Bridge.

In 1924, the congressional chartered Arlington Memorial Bridge Commission stated, “[Columbia Island] was always considered as a suitable site for formal park treatment, a fitting end for the Memorial Bridge, as well as an important feature in itself.” Specifically, the Commission called for “a plaza with fitting architectural adornment in a measure supplemental to the Lincoln Memorial across the river.”

Despite Congress’s intent, the site became and remains today a barren traffic circle lacking any monumental treatment and significant historic value. In fact, the passage extending from Arlington Memorial Bridge to Arlington National Cemetery was meant to serve as an Avenue of Heroes.

In the years after World War II, Ulysses S. Grant III— who was the grandson of the former president and Union general Ulysses S. Grant, executive officer of the Arlington Memorial Bridge Commission, and member of the National Capital Park and Planning Commission—decried the state of Columbia Island as a “temporary road with an informal circle.” He lamented that “the central plaza on Columbia Island had never been undertaken and seems to be absolutely essential to link together the two parts of the project, namely the main bridge itself and the entrance to Arlington Cemetery.”

Over 70 major cities/capitals around the world, from London, Paris and Rome to Madrid, Athens and New Delhi, all showcase beautiful arches. Interestingly, Washington, DC, is the only major Western capital without an arch. Now after 125 years of waiting, the most powerful capital in the world will be home of the most spectacular and beautiful arch of them all!

M'eh.

Nobody wants it except for King Donny.  The irony of building a triumphal arch while losing a war is really rich for one thing, and this is a huge monstrosity.

Maybe if they were going to put something there, they could put up a small monument (not gilded) to Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus.  He could serve as an example to these guys.

Anything one government builds, another can rip down.

The U.S. Army blows the Swastika off of the Nuremberg parade grounds.

Anyhow, at last there's a really growing movement to rip this crap, including the ballroom, down as soon as Trump is out of office.

This from Senator Ted Lieu:

Here is my prediction: the Democratic presidential candidate who promises to restore the White House to what it looked like pre-trump will win the primary and the Presidency.

I"m seeing a lot of that now.

Just ripping it down might be illegal. But then the Supreme Court has already established that  you can get away with building this crap even if it is illegal, and ripping stuff down takes a lot less time than putting it up.

On the White House, by the way, the wings were added in 1902.  With one already gone, they ought to take the other out in my opinion and just restore the building to its original architectural integrity. The wings don't look great to start with and the ballroom looks absurd.

A trip down Trump's memory lane.

An Albert Dornei illustration of how bowling was once imagined in the urban world of the 1950s.  Posted via fair use exception.

The Trump administration has announced its renovating the bowling alley in the White House as well.

The bowling alley story really brings into focus the way that the Trump administration, captured by the decaying mind of Donald Trump, is sort of a monument to an imaginary 1950s where everyone was urban, white, middle class, or maybe upper middle class.

I realize that people still bowl, but bowling reached the apex of its popularity in the 50s and 60s when automatic pin setters came in.  Golfing peaked later, in the 90s and 2000s, but the mental image of golfing in a lot of ways, in terms of its popular image, is from an earlier era.  Ballroom dancing was biggest in the mid 20th Century, basically from when the American population started to rapidly become urban and music, first jazz, and then later big band, dominated.

7up ad featuring bowling, 1963.

A popular study of the decline of American culture in some ways is titled "Bowling Alone".  A person can look at this in a lot of ways, but the cultural evolution of the country, which has been negative in many, maybe most, ways has hit all of this stuff.  One big factor, and yes here we go again, is that the demographic rabbit in the snake of the Baby Boomers changed all of this.  Bowling, as noted, is still sort of a big deal, and its charmingly portrayed in The Big Lebowski, but even when I was young most young people didn't bowl, and regarded it as, well, square.  Big halls where you had to rent shoes and dispirited older blue collar workers hung out, drank Budweiser, and smoked cigarettes lacked appeal.  If you talked to our parents generation, however, you'd see that isn't how they viewed bowling when they were young at all.


Golf had a real reputation as an upper middle class sport when I was young. The sort of sport that lawyers and doctors engaged in and talked shop.  I still sort of regard it that way, although that time has passed too, and now I think of it as a sport that is played by old lawyers and doctors.  I know that's not really fair, but there's an element of truth to it.



Ballroom dancing is something that was dead as a doornail by the time I was old enough to hit any kind of a dancefloor, by which I mean a high school gym.  The 60s had killed it.  Indeed, this was illustrated recently by a video going viral of elderly people dancing to AC/DC at a nursing home.  I've wondered if that would occur. For years, if you went to a nursing home at certain times of the day, you'd hear The Lawrence Welk Show blaring.  

I'll be that's not the case anymore.

Well, for somebody like Trump, who is old, wealthy and likes to golf, and is old, and has big structures, and is old, all this probably seems a lot like taking a trip back to the past, like watching American Graffiti. One thing about the really wealthy is that they hang on to certain social aspects of the past more than other classes, so a wealthy hotelier like Trump probably did grow up thinking ballrooms were cool, and probably still does.

Going back to the past is a pretty strong desire for the old, and particularly strong for the demented old.  I'm told that my dying grandmother on my mother's side, as her dying words, noted that my grandfather "sure can play tennis" no doubt recalling what he'd been like when they were young.  Trump's now fixated on his reputation and on building.  He's building like crazy, and building his way back to the past.

Of course, most old people can't command the entire resources of the nation to attempt to reconstruct an imaginary past.

Sic transit gloria mundi

Trump's monuments in stone will only last as long as Americans tolerate their presence.  They shouldn't tolerate them for more than one second after he's gone.  The next administration should tear them all down on the very first day of the next adminsitration.

It's necessary.

Last edition:

King Donald's War, Part 12. The "Economic D-Day" edition. CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist 152nd Edition, the irony edition.