The Madness of King Donald. The 25th Amendment Watch List, Sixth Edition. The demented panicked Octogenarian edition.

November 15, 2025

Rep. Thomas Massie's wife passed away, and he's remarried.

Trump hates Massie as Massie is not a toady sycophant.  In that vein, he's posted:

This from a guy whose been "married" four times and has cheated on at least three out of the four of his wives, admits that he screwed around, literally, earlier, and who hung around with kiddy diddlers.

What a vile disgusting human being Donald Trump is.

Massie's first wife died a little over a year ago.  They'd been married some 30 years.  His second wife is somebody he's known since 2016 who has worked for Sen. Rand Paul.  FWIW, marriages in that time frame are pretty common for people in Massie's situation.  Theodore Roosevelt, for instance, remarried about two years after the death of his first wife, and when he did marry, it was to somebody he had known for quite some time.

Trump, on the other hand. . . 

November 17, 2025

Q: Your voice sounds rough. Are you feeling alright?

TRUMP: I was shouting at people because they were stupid about something having to do with trade and a country. I blew my stack at these people

Q: Well it sounds like there's a follow up there--

TRUMP: What? I thought you said there was a polyp. I don't want to hear that!

November 18, 2025

Trump had a confrontation with Bloomberg reporter Jennifer Jacobs yesterday on Air Force One in which he once again demonstrated he has dementia

Jennifer Jacobs: “If there’s nothing incriminating in the Epstein files why not…?”

Trump: “Quiet. Quiet, Piggy.” 

Trump's clearing being kept in office by the NatCons as he's unintentionally running cover for them.  This can only go on so long. 

Also, while it didn't at first occur to me, as its so weird, this strikes me as quite misogynistic.  Calling a woman "piggy" is really vile, but it does serve to illustrate Trump's history with women, really.  Going into their dressing rooms, according to one of Epstein's former girlfriends, groping her in front of Epstein, etc.

cont:

There are times I look at him and I see my grandfather. I see that same look of confusion. I see that he does not always seem to be oriented to time and place. His short-term memory seems to be deteriorating. . . [Trump's] lifelong struggles with impulse control are also “deteriorating as well."

Mary Trump.

November 21, 2025

Sen. Elissa Slotkin, Sen. Mark Kelly, and Reps. Jason Crow, Chris Deluzio, Maggie Goodlander and Chrissy Houlahan, all veterans, released  a video urging member of the armed forces not to follow illegal orders.  Donald Trump is now threatening them with prosecution for sedition, and the death penalty, which is ironic, as Trump is a seditionist.

The government is in the hands of a mad man.

November 28, 2025

Trump had a full blown late night Thanksgiving meltdown.

He's now openly, and obviously, completely unstable.

This wasn't the only example of this.  He also called a reporter stupid for pointing out that assailant who shot two National Guardsmen in Washington D.C. had received asylum from the Trump Administration.

There can be little doubt at this point that Trump is no longer control of himself, and probably only partially in control of the nation.  NatCons behind the administration are likely largely in control, but not fully, which is in part which makes Trump doubly dangerous.  A NatCon coup is basically going on while Trump retains enough authority to be legitimately dangerous.

Having allowed this to go on so long we're now in the situation where it's actually becoming increasingly difficult for the 25th Amendment to be invoked.  By pretending that Trump is not deranged, the bar has been set so high that Trump's supporters will not be able to tell what he actually did that caused him to be removed.  We are, therefore, really gambling now.  We're gambling that his actions don't cause a war, and that the war doesn't see the use of weapons that have largely become unthinkable in modern times. We're gambling that force isn't used against American citizens. And we're gambling that Trump's disregard for the law doesn't set in on a permanent institutional basis.

And about those supporters:

Jonah Goldberg

@JonahDispatch

60 percent of the people who constantly use the phrase “Trump derangement syndrome” and 98% of those who use it as an all-explanatory theory for any inconvenient arguments or facts, suffer from pro-Trump Derangement syndrome. Forget the terminology. If you think any information that make you doubt yourself is crazy, you are in a bubble.

Regarding that deline, the New York Times ran a recent article with this headline.

Shorter Days, Signs of Fatigue: Trump Faces Realities of Aging in Office

President Trump has always used his stamina and energy as a political strength. But that image is getting harder for him to sustain.

The article notes that Trump has reduced his workload 39%.

Also of note, those close to Trump are begging to openly admit that they're stressed and fatigued.  Poor old Mike Johnson has complained about not having a vacation in two years (yeah, well, suck it up, buttercup, I haven't had one for at least twice that long).  Loyal sycophant Karoline Leavitt complained openly about stress recently.

The question now is where all this leads.  Those who can invoke the 25th Amendment may simply have waited too long and now need Trump to do something that anyone would regard as fully insane. . . with the question being what that would be.

cont:

Trump is clearly vindictive and unhinged.  This will set the stage up for wiping out his executive orders, and perhaps reign back in the excessive use of executive orders.

November 30, 2025

Reporter: Walz called for the release of your MRI results

Trump: They can release it. It was perfect like my phone call where I got impeached.

Reporter: What were they looking at? 

Trump: For what? Releasing? 

Reporter: no, what part of your body was the MRI looking at

Trump: I have no idea. It’s just an MRI. It wasn’t the brain because I took a cognitive test and I aced it.

Uh huh. . . 

First of all, I heard Walz's remarks, and he's right. They don't give MRI's for sport. They had some brain thing they were looking into.

And they tell the patient the result. . . if they're functioning and able to understand it.

And as for cognitive tests, the entire nation gets a dose of bat shit demented from Trump weekly. 

December 3, 2025

Not a sign of dementia, but rather of age, Trump is having a hard time staying awake during daytime events.

No doubt this problem is made worse by his staying up late into the night to post rage tweets.

December 8, 2025

President Trump is upset because pardoned Democrat Rep. Henry Cuellar is running again as a Democrat.  

Trump, who pardoned him, is accusing him of disloyalty.

Cont:

Trump to ABC's Rachel Scott: "You are the most obnoxious reporter in the whole place. Let me just tell you -- you are an obnoxious-- a terrible reporter. And it's always the same thing with you. I told you."

December 10, 2025

He's clearly not well.

And he has his finger on the nuclear trigger.

Last edition:

The Madness of King Donald. The 25th Amendment Watch List, Fifth Edition. He's not okay.

Labels: Donald Trump, Illinois (Chicago), J. B. Pritzker, J. D. Vance, Mental Health, National Conservatism, Sic transit Gloria Mundi, The Madness of King Donald, The Second Trump Administration, Weird, You heard it here first

Blog Mirror and Pondering: Cassie Craven: Welfare Was Supposed To Be Our Job

Let me start off by noting that as a rule, I can't stand Cassie' Craven's op eds.  They tend to be in your face unthinking populist, and I also resent (I'm not kidding) the co-opting of a cowboy hat that obviously doesn't fit.

And frankly I don't much like people spouting off about protecting Wyoming or what Wyoming is or was, when they aren't from here. She's from Nebraska, so that's not far off, but Nebraska is not Wyoming.  

Well, like some other populist things, or NatCon things, I'll confess that as a real conservative, and for htat matter a distributist agrarian, I find myself occasionally disturbed by a one of their members saying something that taps into something I've said myself.  This article by Craven does that:

Cassie Craven: Welfare Was Supposed To Be Our Job

As much as I hate to admit it, and I do hate to admit it, she has a point, although in the typical populist manner, she starts off by saying something cruel to get to the point.  Indeed, it basically takes her 40% of her article to quit being an asshole before she gets to the point that 's worth considering, with this paragraph:

Welfare, in the 14^th century meant one’s good fortune, health and exemption from evil. This changed in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries as public assistance became a role the government took over from the private charities, which had historically helped to ensure that people fared well. Welfare was holistic, community-driven and just as much emotional and spiritual as it was physical.

The shift of society away from the church-based and community associations and toward the government was no good for our fellow man. Adding fuel to the fire were the rapid technological advances that made us distant, isolated, and serotonin-addicted.

This has addled people’s ability to engage in real conversation or romance.

Well, she's correct, sort of .

Craven seems to edge up on the point, actually and then wonder off again, being slightly mean spirited once again.  She never gets to the bigger point which is that a welfare system that creates semi permanent benefits, run by a bureaucracy, creates dependency, and corrupts.  Indeed, that was the huge difference, other than an inability to cover all who really needed help, from modern welfare and pre Great Depression charity.

Support form charitable organizations, and churches, and the like, was always very temporary.  And it tended to come with some requirements.  State funded welfare tends not to, although the GOP has attempted to insert some.  There are work requirements, of course, but it is difficult to tell how much they're winked at as the principles of subsidiarity have not been applied, so there's no real control.  In contrast, I know of a situation in which a Church collects directly for the poor and distributes directly to the poor.  In doing so, they do ask "are you working?"

And there are more uncomfortable truths as well.  Welfare has, ironically, been a major driver in the decline of Western morality, and more particularly, and arguably much more pronounced, American morality.

Prior to the current welfare regime, children were very much the responsibility of both parents, in every fashion.  We've discussed this in the context of the Playboy Philosophy and what not, but what was the case, even into the early 1980s, was that people that had children were normally married, and to a large degree, women who became pregnant out of wedlock either married the father or gave the child up for adoption (or after 1973, aborted).  Moral decay brought on by the Sexual Revolution, aided by pharmaceuticals, started to erode the two parent family however and in our current age that's pretty pronounced.  An African American commentator got in trouble a year or two ago by claiming that some women "married the government", but there's more than a little truth to that.  Kids raised in this environment are more subject to abuse by subsequent "boyfriends" of their mother, and are more likely to  be raised in poverty and declining morality.  It's simply the truth.

That in turn kicks back to society at large.  The American lower middle class tends to wade at least knee deep in a sort of moral sewer even while being horrified by those swimming in it.  This wasn't the case thirty year or more ago.  The trend line isn't good.

So, Cravens has a point.

But how do you end this? She doesn't opine on that, which is the cowardly way out.  Indeed nobody, except perhaps for those deep in the Heritage Society, is doing so.  What Project 2025 did, apparently, is to suggest an increase in work requirements, which was attempted sort of sub silentio earlier this year.  But then, the entire NatCon group in the government right isn't really willing, in general, to admit trying to bring into play any of their policies. They do them all silently while sometimes denying they're doing them at all.

Which is one of the things I really detest about the Trump Administration.  It's dishonest.  They should simply admit, if they think it, that "welfare is contributing to moral decay and we have to do something about it."

Of course, the problem here is that most Americans really don't want to do anything about the things they claim they do.  Bloated Americans who spend Sundays watching the NFL and who are living with their second or third wives or girlfriends might think about going to the megachurch once a month where the pastor is not going to equate their lifestyle with adulterous mortal sin, or preach about the dangers of wealth to their souls, and might bitch about homosexuals and the like even while being just as morally adrift, but they don't really want the responsibility of responsibility.

Of course, save for some, which explains a movement towards cultural conservatism in the young, thereby being proactive in the culture, even if not attempting to be cultural revolutionaries.

Thursday, November 20, 1975. Death of Franco.

Franco with Eisenhower in 1959.

Francisco Franco died at age 82, ending his long dictatorship and bringing the country back to the path of democracy.

Franco, in spite of his long reign, remains one of the most enigmatic of 20th Century figures  Often cited to be a fascist, he was not, but he was certainly a fascist fellow traveler in the 1940s, and Spain's true Fascists, the Falangists, were consolidated under his rule and had no choice but to follow them, even though he very occasionally suppressed them.  He supported the Axis in much of World War Two while managing to avoid actually having Spain become a full blown combatant.  German submarines had refuge at Spanish ports for a time, and early in the Battle of Britain the Luftwaffe used northern Spain for launching aircraft on Great Britain¹  Fascistic Spanish troops fought as a German foreign legion.²  Always savvy to political winds, he began to draw away from the Axis late war.  He might be best compared to Petain in his political alignment, but even that is imperfect.  

A monarchist at heart, he restored the Spanish monarchy late in his rule, but even at that he did not ever release power. Death brought that.

Franco's rule commenced with the Spanish Civil War, which he was not originally the right wing military head of.  The war itself was basically a military revolt against an incoming Communist regime.  Franco fought the war well, but it also maximized violence in some notable ways.  Approximately 420,000 Spaniards were killed by way of extrajudicial killings during the Civil War, and in state executions immediately following its end in 1939, a remarkable figure given that Republican combat deaths were about 110,000, and Nationalist about 90,000.  Killings tapered off thereafter and into the 50s.  His rule emphasized Spanish nationalism and traditionalism, enforcing by force of law.  

Economically, his policies were murky, and for some time the country adopted autarky, which was the economic theory favored by the Nazis, and which didn't work out for them either.  Economic disaster resulted in reform.

Like France, Spain attempted to retain its empire post World War Two, but Franco was forced to yield to the times.  When France yielded to Moroccan independence, Spain largely did as well, but retained some holdings.  Spain fought a war with Morocco to hold on to the Spanish Sahara, but in 1975 it ultimately ceded to Moroccan wishes.  Spain,under Franco, provided bases to the OAS in its effort to retain French control of Algeria.

Unlike most of the far right dictators of the European 20th Century, Franco always retained a bit of a following in certain sectors of the US, and still does.  In some circles he was viewed as the only alternative to Spanish communism, and in fact, in terms of the Spanish Civil War, that might actually be right.  That wouldn't excuse the nature of his rule, however.³

Others, more alarmingly, are currently attracted to his politics.  A Wyoming Hageman intern, for example, resigned his position when he was found to be a follower of Francoist websites, although he later successfully reemerged as a Turning Point USA figure at the University of Wyoming, brining the late Charlie Kirk to the campus..  Some figures on the Illiberal Democracy, National Conservative, side of the GOP are very close to being Francoist in their views.  Indeed, absent the economic aspects of it, Francoism is nearly the model of how certain Illiberal Democrats imagine Western nations should be run.

This is one of those things I can actually remember from 1975 and place the date on.  For some reason, on this date, I was traveling with my father in our 1973 Mercury Comet.  I think we were going to Cheyenne.  The radio news broke in continually with updates on Franco's physical decline.⁴

A report by the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee confirmed that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency had tried twice to assassinate Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, and once to tried to poison Congo Premier Patrice Lumumba.  It also confirmed that the CIA had supplied aid to insurgentes who later assassinated South Vietnam's President Ngo Dinh Diem and Dominican Republic dictator Rafael Trujillo.

However, it also confirmed that "No foreign leaders were killed as a result of assassination plots initiated by officials of the United States", which is good I guess, but it wasn't for want of trying in the case of Castro.  Diem and Lumumba were in fact both assassinated, but not by the US, in spite of the ongoing belief that the US actively participated in Diem's assassination.

Dr. Heinrich Schuetz was sentenced to ten years in prison after being convicted of war crimes in Munich, West Germany. In 1942 as an SS colonel he had injected bacteria into eleven Catholic priests at Dachau.

Footnotes:

1.  Churchill has his diplomats quietly approach the Spanish government and informed them that the UK was aware of where the Luftwaffe plains taking off in northern Spain were coming from, and that the UK would bomb the airbases if it didn't stop.  It stopped.

2.  The unit started off as an outright Spanish contribution to the German effort in the USSR, but after the Allies complained, troops in the Spanish Army were ordered to return home to Spain or resign. Those who resigned remained behind as a unit in the German SS.

3.  My mother, who was well aware of the Spanish Communist sacrilegious desecration of Catholic churches, took the position that Franco was Spain's only choice against Communism.  My father took the much more nuanced view that whichever side won, the Spanish were going to lose.

In the US, the Republicans were generally seen, in the Great Depression, as liberal democrats, which they largely were not.  As the war progressed, the Republicans became more communistic as Spanish Communists, with support from Moscow, presumed victory and began to purge the rival forces on the left.  American leftists famously contributed the Abraham Lincoln Brigade of volunteers to the Republican cause, some of whom were American Communists.  In the pre Cold War era, the full nature of Communism was not really very well understood in the US.

In Europe, in contrast, the war drew volunteers to both sides. Both Irish and English mercenaries volunteered, for example, to serve under Franco.

4.  The fact that it was a Thursday means my father took a very rare off day from work.  What I think we were doing is going to Warren Air Force Base so we could pick up uniforms for the Civil Air Patrol.  When we were there I recall a supply sergeant gave my father a USAF "Dumbo Collar" OG-107 Field Jacket.  My father unsarcastically loved it and wore it as a winter outdoors coat for the rest of his life.

I was 13 years old.

The next time I would be on Warren AFB would be when I was 17.  I had applied for admission to the Air Force Academy and was required to go there for a physical.  My father likely drove me down as I probably wouldn't have driven to Cheyenne as a 17 year old.  I can recall when I checked in the Air Force medic noted my name and told me he had the same first name, albeit in Spanish.

As I was also an applicant to the U.S. Military Academy (and the Naval Academy) I took an Army physical at the local Army National Guard armory.

I obviously didn't get in, which I'm glad about, I think.

Last edition:

Sunday, November 18, 1975. The return of Eldridge Cleaver.

Labels: 1970s, 1975, 1980s, 1987, 2010s, 2018, Black Panther Party, Domestic Terrorism, Personalities

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 105th Edition. What's up with the rush on the White House?

It occurs to me that something is really odd about Trump rushing to start his vandalization project on the White House, and then expanding it to destroy the entire East Wing. . . . it's almost like he fears not being around to enjoy it.

Maybe he knows he's not going to be.

Maybe he fears that if he's not around the ugly garden shed won't be built.

Maybe he fears that's going to be so soon, he had to actually take steps that try to force its completion.

Why would that be?

Maybe Trump knows that he's on death's door, or maybe its something else.  Let's look at the possibilities.

Trump knows he's not long for the world.

There's been some speculation on this for other reasons.  

One could say he's acting weird, but he acted weird in his first term too.  He's been acting extra weird.  He's been talking a fair amount and expressing fears that he's going to Hell.  And well he should fear it.  For one thing:

Now someone approached him and said, “Teacher, what good must I do to gain eternal life?” 

He answered him, “Why do you ask me about the good? There is only One who is good.* If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.

He asked him, “Which ones?” And Jesus replied, “ ‘You shall not kill; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness; honor your father and your mother’; and ‘you shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” 

The young man said to him, “All of these I have observed. What do I still lack? 

Jesus said to him, “If you wish to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to [the] poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me. 

When the young man heard this statement, he went away sad, for he had many possessions. 

Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Amen, I say to you, it will be hard for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. 

Again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” 

When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and said, “Who then can be saved?” 

Jesus looked at them and said, “For human beings this is impossible, but for God all things are possible.”

Based on the difficulty that implies, and it is not intended to be metaphorical, Trump should fear Hell.  He's been far from perfect.  He's a serial polygamist for one thing, and genuinely a bad person.  It appears to some extent he's trying to buy his way into Heaven with the thought that if he can secure peace in some war somewhere God will credit that and allow him to otherwise get a pass on his sins.  He keep seeking reassurance from those around him that will work.

That obsession suggests that he knows he's running out of time.

Trump wants to be remembered for amount to something.  He knows that much of his Presidency will be regarded as a fart in a windstorm.  So he's building his own monumental mausoleum, maybe.

And in doing so, time is short.  Either he'll be out of office in three years, and this is a project that for American construction would take longer than that, or he'll die before its built  He well knows that if a Democrat comes into office after him, under the original plan, no ballroom would be built.  He's taking steps, by destroying the entire wing, to make sure it has to be.

But even that won't.  It'll just assure that something has to be done.  

Trump knows that there's next to no chance of getting this monstrosity done in time.

I touched on that above, but there's every chance in the world that Trump leaves office, either at the expiration of his term, or being lead out while babbling in full dementia, and this project stops.  As he departs his last glimpse of the ballroom will be of a construction project with workmen likely picking up debris.

There's a good chance that the week thereafter the construction company has cleared out and the trackhoe is back with the same operator demolishing this worthless monument.

It's a natural instinct in most people to complete a project.

And it's a natural instinct to keep and use something, once it's built. . . except for Americans.

Trump's spent a lot of time in the orbit of the high and the mighty his whole life. Since his first legitimate term in office, and now in his second illegitimate one, he's had the opportunity to see monumental public buildings that are really old, quite frankly frequently gaudy.  He's not that smart of guy and he probably doesn't realize that the regimes that built such structures aren't always admired in later years, but he probably does appreciate that things Louis XIV built, or the Czars, are still being used.

The American track record isn't quite so good.  We take down buildings all the time, including our athletic civil temples that were constructed at great expense.  We usually get around to morning them long after they're gone.

Trump probably feels that if he can get this built, particular if the East Wing gets destroyed with it, it'll have to be built, and it'll have to stay when its built.  Like Justice Kennedy, he probably naively assumes that after he's out of office, and after he's dead and gone, people will forget that he was a putz, and love him.

People aren't going to love him.  He'll be remembered as the worst human being to ever occupy the Oval Office, and the building will come down.  A future Democratic President will take it down to make a point, if not out of spite.

Trump is banking on nobody tearing it down (which I suspect is a pretty bad bet).

See above.

Another view of the hideous monstrosity.

An interesting aspect of this is the NatCon one that was circulating before this piece of shit project started to advance.  

As we've noted before, Trump's real backers are members of the Dominionist New Apostolic Reformation, but within the NatCons are Catholic and Orthodox intellectuals who have become Illiberal Democrats.  Not too surprisingly, this same group has pretty strong architectural views.

They like architect James McCrery.

Some of these folks hang out at website called Rorate Caeli, which is actually a type of Mass, but which means "drop down, ye Heavens."  They really like James McCrery, and for good reason.  Here's their post on his getting the job of being garden shed architect:

McCrery, Architects of Catholic Beauty, chosen to renovate the White House

McCrery Architects, New Carmel, Wyoming

Those familiar with the architectural work of James McCrery know he is among the greats of the 20th and 21st centuries. 

McCrery Architects, St. Mary Help of Christians, North Carolina

Based on the Senate side of Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, he has designed, restored and enhanced numerous churches, schools, homes and other buildings — all in a classical style where the average man, woman and child responds “beautiful” upon seeing his work.

Now, Jim McCrery has designed what will be his legacy for generations of Americans: a new White House ballroom. President Donald Trump announced on Thursday $200 million in private funding (including Trump’s own money) will fund a ballroom next to the east wing of the White House that can accommodate 650 guests. This is needed, as the East Room of the White House (the largest for gatherings) seats around 200 people, so the custom has been to put up tents outside when a large dinner or event is hosted.

See the designs for yourself to appreciate them.

McCrery, who is celebrating his 60th birthday, completed a restoration and enhancement of Saint Mary Mother of God church near his DC studio, where the TLM existed from the mid-1980s until its suppression three years ago. From the cathedrals in Knoxville, Tennessee, and Raleigh, North Carolina, to Corpus Christi in the Diocese of Arlington, to the Newman Center in Lincoln, Nebraska, to the Carmelite monastery in Wyoming, the churches he designed are spectacular — no easy task in an age of modern codes, budget limitations and senior officials often advocating bland over beauty. McCrery’s name is synonymous with beauty.

Rorate congratulates Jim McCrery on this achievement and looks forward to the next three years of his project’s construction. And we commend President Trump for choosing traditional architecture, and developing a great relationship with such a fine architect. Who knows what others would have chosen to dump on the White House lawn! It is a time to be thankful for the partnership of McCrery and Trump on this project that will stand tall long after all of us depart this earth.

Rorate Caeli.

This is, quite frankly, part of what upsets me.  This thing is ugly and stupid.

It'd be ugly and stupid anywhere, but it'd make more sense in some places.  In Georgian England, for example, or in 18th Century France.  If you went back, an were honest with yourself, you'd think "well. . . this is ugly and stupid, but looks like belongs here" and then you'd go on to tell everyone, "wow, that's impressive.

The top two buildings are in fact impressive.  Why did they take this assignment?

Well, . . . on this, I'll be frank that I"m not so sure about the top building.

Wyoming isn't Medieval France or pre King Henry VIII the Vandal England, and I'm not really too sure that this fits the state too well.  There's been a fair amount of murmuring about it, which is slightly embarrassing for Wyoming Catholics.  We know we don't live in Medieval France.

I guess, however, that this is religious architecture and they are free to build what they wish.

Monumental public architecture belongs to the public, however.  The public doesn't want a gigantic gilded garden shed.

Worthless Democrats

One thing this has served to do is to illustrate how completely worthless the Democratic Party is.

If this was the party of 1975, or 1985, it would have rushed out on day one and filed an action for an injunction, which would have included a request for a TRO.  They would have gotten it.

More particularly, what they would have asked for is an injunction returning the White House to the status quo ante until the architectural commission in charge of these things had a chance to consider the matter.  That would have meant that Donny would have had to stop the construction and the structure repaired, on his dime, until the body could meet and make a ruling.

Yes, that body is going to say "go ahead", but that would have burned through about $10M of the vandalization money in advance, and delayed the project by at least a year.  Mobilization costs would have gone up, and Democrats would likely be back in power.  The thing would never have been built.

Instead they sat around and did nothing.

This all points to an existential crisis within the Democratic Party.  Most Democrats are actually center left, politically, but over the last fifteen or so years the party has been captured by its hardcore left wingers that will not compromise on anything, and so the party has glaciated.  The left wingers in the Democratic Party are every bit as nutty, if not more so, than the hard right of the Republican Party.

We need new parties.

McCrery

I noted earlier that I had placed some home in the design in that James McCrery was responsible for it.

I've lost that hope.  

The more I look at it, it's just flat out gaudy and ugly.  It's interesting to note that McCrery, who was one of the people that Donny did the roof top tour with recently, has been taking some flak. 

Apparently McCrery wasn't always a classicist.  And people interviewed about him recently haven't been all that kind.  For example, Robert Livesey, who was chair of the Ohio State architecture department from 1983 to 1991 when McCrery was a student wrote recently in an email that “to be honest, I do not have a real memory of Jim. My sense was that he was a good design student which is why Eisenman hired him,  Unfortunately, his work does not have the presence of real classical architecture, or even of people who were also after the classical, like Palladio, or later Hawksmoor.”

Eisenman refers to Peter Eisenman, who was a professor at Ohio State and who took McCrery under his wing and later employed him.  Eisenman is not a classicist and has called his former underlings design "bonkers", adding "putting a portico at the end of a long facade and not in the center is what one might say is untutored.”

Pretty harsh.  In fairness, Eisenman and McCrery seem to have had a falling out some time ago, and McCrery seems to have become very identified with his Faith in regard to his architectural projects, which leads a person to wonder why he'd want to take on a giant civil structure like this.  Frankly, Eisenman's criticism seems pretty valid to me.

Rats

One potentially good thing about this is that it might make a lot of rats homeless.  Apparently the White House is full of them, in the walls.

No big surprise.

Rats being rats, however, they're probably just moving into the house itself.

What should reconstruction look like?

One thing that this brings up is what should reconstruction look like.  The White House grounds are already pretty crowded without this monstrosity. Frankly, a pretty good argument can be made that the East and West Wings detract from the original appearance of the structure.  Maybe this presents an opportunity just to take them out, although apparently that would create an office space problem.

The donors

Here's who is paying for this abomination:

Altria Group, Inc.

Amazon

Apple

Booz Allen Hamilton

Caterpillar, Inc.

Coinbase

Comcast Corporation

J. Pepe and Emilia Fanjul

Hard Rock International

Google

HP Inc.

Lockheed Martin

Meta Platforms

Micron Technology

Microsoft

NextEra Energy, Inc.

Palantir Technologies Inc.

Ripple

Reynolds American

T-Mobile

Tether America

Union Pacific Railroad

Adelson Family Foundation

Stefan E. Brodie

Betty Wold Johnson Foundation

Charles and Marissa Cascarilla

Edward and Shari Glazer

Harold Hamm

Benjamin Leon Jr.

The Lutnick Family

The Laura & Isaac Perlmutter Foundation

Stephen A. Schwarzman

Konstantin Sokolov

Kelly Loeffler and Jeff Sprecher

Paolo Tiramani

Cameron Winklevoss

Tyler Winklevoss

Some of these you know, and some of their products you use everyday.  Microsoft, for example, is pretty hard to avoid. 

Some can be easily avoided.  I'll never eat in another Hard Rock Cafe again, ever, which of course will be an easy thing for me to do.

Last edition:

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 104th Edition. Mike Johnson, toady, and other matters.

Labels: 2010s, 2019, 2020s, 2025, 2025 Off Year U.S. Elections, Donald Trump, Mike Johnson, New York, North Korea, Socialism, Special Forces, The Madness of King Donald, Trump Derangement Syndrome, U.S. Navy, Zeitgeist