CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 133d Edition. What happened to that Board of Peace?

The Trump Administration breaks down crying and asks for help from adults.

The Trump administration is desperately seeking UN intervention in the war it started as the US is on the verge of a complete defeat in the war with Iran.

Remember the much vaunted and completely absurd Board of Peace that Trump rolled out when he liked to pretend he was a peacemaker?  The countries that joined were Albania, Argentina, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Belarus, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Egypt, El Salvador, Hungary, Indonesia, Israel, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Kuwait, Mongolia, Morocco, Pakistan, Paraguay, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam.

Ask them for help. . . 

Go ahead Marco, call them up. . .

Go ahead, have him do it.

Yesterday the Trump Administration rolled back into existence the Presidential Fitness Test which Eisenhower had put into effect in 1956 and Obama did away with in 2012, replacing it with the Presidential Youth Fitness Program.  Trump can't have anying Obama. . . like a peace deal with Iran that dealt with nuclear stuff . . anyhow.  . .

Secretary of Batshit Crazy Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. made a joke about Trump being able to do a fifty mile hike and Trump joked back that he could do it.

Go ahead.  Let's see him manage that. . . 

Mass Mailings

We've been getting tons of political mass mailings from three candidates.  I noted that here:

And we have this:

Gray, Rasner, Friess All Send Out Mass Mailers — And They’re Very Trumpy

Yes, they are.  They're frankly really irritating.

All three of these candidates essentially have the same message. They love Trump as only Trump loves Trump. They love Trump more than Trump's children love Trump.  They love Trump more than Melania, assuming of course that she loves Trump.  

Trump retains a hold on the minds of MAGA and the GOP has descended into the Party of Trump.  There really aren't real Republicans anymore.  As I've noted here already, there's a really good chance that after November the GOP will simply cease to exist.

But is being more Trump, than Trump, a liability in Wyoming?  I guess we'll see.

Not that the mailings are all identical.  Gray's just asserts his Trumpiness.  Rasner, who has a MAGA truckers cap J.B. Welded to his head, takes shots at Gray.  Freiss mostly accidentally shows himself to be super rich and not really knowing what, or where, Wyoming actually is.

Anyhow, the mass mailers are so irritating I took a little time to see if I could return them to senders.  The USPS Reddit, which isn't an official page, makes it clear that would be pointless. They just throw them away.  The topic really irritates mail carriers, as they'd rather you just throw them away yourself.  I can see their point.

Apparently a lot of people just throw them on the ground, which really irritates mail carriers also

What do we know about these guys?

It's occurred to me that Wyomingites have been voting for people they know absolutely nothing about.

This isn't true about candidates from other states.  We know all about Colorado's BoBo and Alaska's Peltola.  Why don't we know more about these people who claim to have all these super duper values that are supposed to reflect the state's?

Take Gray for example  Next to nothing about him is publicly known.  He could be robbing liquor stores on his off hours and we wouldn't know.

All we know about him is he grew up near Los Angeles and graduated from high school there in 2008, after he went to Wharton, where based on the economic example of Donald Trump, who also graduated from Wharton, must educate its students with Archie cartoons.  He spent his summers in Wyoming growing up, and when he graduated from Wharton, he went right to work for his father's radio station where he broadcast political babble.  That's pretty darned close to never having had to work in the real world.  He rose to his current position by barely beating Tara Nethercott for the Secretary of State by constant hystericaly spewing of lies.

He was a founding member of the Wyoming Freedom Caucus which was heavily funded by out of state and rich carpetbagger money.  I know that he's a Catholic, but only because when he lived in Casper I'd see him at Mass on odd occasion.  My presumption is that he regularly attended Mass, although I don't know that.  He went to a different parish than I do.  Frankly, if I'd been a parish priest, I'd have called him out for lying.

He's unmarried at age 36 and nobody is ever mentioned as a love interest.  Maybe he has one.  For all I know he could be dating AoC.  But the question is never asked.  It should be, as being unmarried at 36 is frankly odd and we have a right to know if people are personally living up to their declared political values.  It's one thing if he's so dedicated to work, or whatever, that he doesn't have time for gals.  Maybe he just isn't interested, some percentage of people, a small number, aren't.  But if on the other hand he hangs out with the dancers from The Clown's Den every night, and I'm in no way suggesting he is, we ought to be so informed.

Press, you aren't doing your job.

We don't know much about Reid Rasner either, although the fact that he keeps suing people for defamation (and people have said some awful things about him) has revealed a little.  In one suit he admitted, if "admission" is the correct word, to being a homosexual.  In the suits he's filed he's taken grave exception to being accused of molestation of somebody below 18, or molesting anyone, and I don't blame him a bit for that.  I suspect that some people just believe that every homosexual does things like that, which is certainly not the case, but suspecting such a thing is just flat out wrong.  The suits therefore make sense, although its really risky for a politician.  He's some sort of investment businessman.  So all in all, we know a lot more about him than we do Gray, which is really odd.  I don't like his politics at all, but the fact that he's been open about these things is really to his credit.

With both of these candidates what we don't know is if their mailing appearance matches anything about them in real life.  Chuck likes to wear Western cut wool shirts now, but he looks really uncomfortable appearing that way.  His button-down and blue blazer looked a lot more natural.  He's been videoed on oilfield locations, where he's never worked, and on a four wheeler, which looks unnatural to him.

Rasner likes to be photographed with firearms.  So does Freiss.  But do they really use them?   Maybe, but do we really know that?

Freiss, I'd note, is another one.  His father was a super wealthy carpetbagger and he seems to be the same.  Go home, carpetbagger.

Balow, who is the best candidate so far, is from Laramie.  As already noted, Gray is a carpetbagger from California.  Rasner is from Casper.  She was a career educator who took over as Wyoming Superintendent of Public Instruction after the disastrous Cindy Hill, who brought full blown batshit into that office.  Balow held that office and then took the same one in Virginia, where the position is (sensibly) appointed.  People have held that against here here, which is really ironic.  If that's bad, Brent Bien ought to be exiled to the far side of the moon.

We know a lot more about Hageman, Barrasso, Lummis and Gordon, although I'd even question that to some extent.  There's some questions I'd ask Hageman and Barrasso which I think are legitimate, but which just aren't done.

Anyhow, Press, why don't you tell us something about these people?  You report on them so little, that it's honestly the case that a triple ax murderer could move into Wyoming.

Or maybe it doesn't matter.  

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CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 132nd Edition. Voting with their feet

Labels: Ascendant Ignorance in the Age of Donald Trump, Denmark, Education, emigration, Europe, Finland, Iceland, Ignorance, Immigration, It was because of the Cold War, Military, Taxes, trends, United States, Zeitgeist

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 132nd Edition. Voting with their feet

For the first time in US history, more Americans are moving to Europe than the other way around.

Indeed, European immigration to the US is at historic lows.  US emigration is at historic highs.

Why?

Simple, the US has become a dumpster fire.  It's no longer really a democracy but a semi democracy presently ruled by an insane (if we don't assume worst) megalomaniac who is destroying the economy.  We look like uneducated morons, which a lot of us actually seem to be.  There are absolutely no positive indicators which the US tops the charts at.  We are the 23d happiest country on the planet.  Finland, Iceland, and Denmark are the first three.  We cling to obsolete signs of greatness, such as refusing to have a national health care system and having a tax system that grossly under taxes Americans and funds a government that benefits us little, while people like Reid Rasner campaign for even lower taxes.  We've gone from being a country that had nearly no military to having one that has a bloated military that serves an insane President.

What's not to love?

Well, there is the country, but that involves being realistic, which will get you accused of being a left winger (which should not in and of itself be regarded as an insult) by insufferable twat waffles like Chuck Gray.

We are really due for an overhaul.

Ironically, the orange buffoon destroying the White House probably helps show us the way on this.  He's shown us where we have massive institutional defects.  And he's taken us off the global map as a great power and made us a second rate one.  Part of our descent into ignorance was a legacy of what was then a noble Cold War response to things, including a big military and governments that meddled bigly.  

Now we are going to have to dance to the tune of others, but the good thing is that the others are adults.

To progress at all, which doesn't mean a return to high immigration or anything of that sort, we're really going to have to get back into education, which people like the Wyoming Freedom Caucus and other right wing zealots hate.  Better to be dumb is their default position.

Better to be smart, and educated, and face our problems honestly.

And the sooner the better.

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CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 131st Edition. Ballroom Blitz

Labels: 2020s, 2025 White House Vandalization, 2026, Donald Trump, Epstein Scandal, The Second Trump Administration, White House Correspondence Dinner Assassination Attempt 2020s, Zeitgeist

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 131st Edition. Ballroom Blitz

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.

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CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 130th Edition. Narratives

Labels: 2026, 2026 Election, China, Christianity, Crime, Donald Trump, Iran, religion, United States and Israel v. Iran, Weapons, White House Correspondence Dinner Assassination Attempt 2020s, Zeitgeist

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 130th Edition. Narratives

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.

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CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 129th Edition. An unfortunate observation of our times.

Labels: Abraham Lincoln, Antipathy, Catholic, Christianity, Civil War, Death, Donald Trump, Empathy, Introspection, Reconstruction, religion, Sic transit Gloria Mundi, The Practice of Law, Zeitgeist

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 129th Edition. An unfortunate observation of our times.

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...

I tend to over empathetic.

That might be an easy thing to claim, but it's true.  I'm often tortured in litigation by how little Plaintiff's lawyers care about their clients.  Indeed, I think it's a hallmark of being a Plaintiff's lawyer, which I'm not, to not really give a rat's ass about them.  Most of them are callous to it.  I'm also tortured, however, by the extent to which litigation is regarded as a mere business transaction while it wrecks the lives an livelihoods of real people.

I'm bothered by the personal plights of people I don't know.  In movies with sad situations I'll find myself tearing up.  The killing of the Iranian schoolgirls in the current war bothers me so much that I couldn't tell my wife about it without starting to tear up and saying "think about their poor parents".  I can hardly stand to think about it now and it fills me with rage that we killed them, even if it was a targeting accident.  We have excuses, but we have no sympathy.

I note all of this as I'm bothered today by the extent to which the horrible human being and his acolytes in the White House have actually made me so fatigued that I'm having a hard time caring about what occurred at the Press Dinner.

Intellectually, I know it was awful.  I don't support killing people.  I'm opposed to abortion.  I'm opposed to the death penalty.  I'm opposed to wars save in the case of absolute need, a part of which his self defense.  I'm realistic enough to know that people can take the lives of others in self defense, but murder of a person is never justified.

But day after day of Trump's assault on human dignity has worn me down so much that I'm not empathetic about yesterdays events.  I know that they were wrong, but it's just an intellectual acknowledgement of it.

Sooner or later, most likely sooner given his advanced age, Donald Trump is going to pass on and go to his reward.  He's publicly wondered if he's damned.  As a Catholic, I hold to the belief that we should hope and pray for his salvation and that we do not know who is amongst the damned.  Hans Von Baltazar posed the question if we might dare to hope that all men are saved, and while we might dare to hope it, I very much doubt that is the case.  Still, we have no idea who is amongst the damned and who is amongst the saved, but just by objective Christian criteria, there's not a single member of Trump's administration that I hear about often whom I would not regard as having their souls in jeopardy.

I hate fact that Trump is so vile that he's made it so that I'm having a hard time being empathetic about a horrible event.  If Trump was to choke on a Big Mac today I'd say a prayer for his salvation, but it wouldn't be one of those things were I consciously morn a death, as I usually do.  I'm not wishing for his death, but I'm so burnt out about all things Trump I'd say a prayer for the dead and then probably move on to other things.

Trump has made many things that way.  He's done such violence to our society and its norms that its reached the state where it's almost impossible to care about them. At this point, if the next President had to tear out the Reflecting Pool, I wouldn't care.

When Trump is gone the nation is going to have a monumental time repairing itself.  I guess we have the example of the post Civil War era, in which the country manage to come back together in spite of actually fighting itself.  How it managed that isn't really clear.  It seems like it just decided it would.

Here's to hoping that the Better Angels of Our Mercy might return.

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CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 128th Edition. Attempted assassination at a pointless event.

Labels: 2020s, 2025 White House Vandalization, 2026, Conspiracy Theories, Donald Trump, Men, Military, News, Secret Service, The Press, The roles of men and women, Weapons, Women, Zeitgeist

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 127th Edition. The Dipshit Edition. The Wyoming Freedom Caucus decides the a General officer of the U.S. Army is too "woke" to be the President of UW.

Labels: 2020s, 2026, Army, Education, Ignorance, Stupidity, United States Military Academy, University of Wyoming, Woke, Wyoming Freedom Caucus, Zeitgeist

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 128th Edition. Attempted assassination at a pointless event.

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:

Inside the Ballroom: Chaos and Confusion

One wonders if the surreal events of Saturday night might make it hard to return to the familiar conception of the White House Correspondents Dinner.

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.

Aid and Comfort to the Enemy

The recklessness of the White House Correspondents’ Association’s self-own

A cartoon:

The WH Correspondents' Dinner

Unethical and tone deaf

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:

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 127th Edition. The Dipshit Edition. The Wyoming Freedom Caucus decides the a General officer of the U.S. Army is too "woke" to be the President of UW.

Labels: 2020s, 2026, Army, Education, Ignorance, Stupidity, United States Military Academy, University of Wyoming, Woke, Wyoming Freedom Caucus, Zeitgeist

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 127th Edition. The Dipshit Edition. The Wyoming Freedom Caucus decides the a General officer of the U.S. Army is too "woke" to be the President of UW.

Typical member of the Wyoming Freedom Caucus . . in their relaxed clothing, not their Confederate dress uniforms.  Ready to spear any thinking that might arise in an educational system.

What a bunch of flaming dipshits.  The Wyoming Freedom Caucus decides that the new UW President is too "woke" to serve in that role:

Who is UW's New President?

UW's newest leader criticized for bringing woke academics to West Point

I'll admit, I criticized this choice as well, but not for this reason.

But then I would not have guessed that there would be some people who would try to include in the GOP platform that Wyoming is a "Christian State".

Seriously, this hillbilly dipshitery has got to stop.

Last edition:

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 126th Edition. The “Go to church. Find Jesus. Why is everyone so horny around here?”

Labels: Donald Trump, Scandal, The Second Trump Administration, Women, Yeoman's Twentieth Law of Behavior, Yeoman's Twenty-fifth Law of Behavior, Yeoman's Twenty-Seventh Law of Behavior, Yeoman's Twenty-Six Law of Behavior

Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 125th Edition, part three. The Ty D Bol Presidency.

Of course! 

Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 12...: Lex Anteinternet: CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 125th Edition. Monum... :   Geez, this is stupid. Harrison Design, you should be ashamed of ...

Where have I seen that shade of water before?

Lex Anteinternet: CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 125th Edition, part two. Monumental Stupidity Edition.

Well now, that is appropriate.