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.
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.
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.
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.
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