Our Cup Doth Not Runneth Over

The 2026 World Cup in North America is in trouble before it's even begun.  People are refusing to come to the American matches as part of a tourism boycott of the United States.  FIFA president Gianni Infantino, who is in cahoots with Donald Trump, has tried to milk soccer fans for they're worth and overcharge them for tickets, and no one is buying them.  Far fewer people are reserving rooms in the hotels in the eleven U.S. cities hosting the matches.  People are describing the World Cup, according to MeidasTouch network Ben Meisalas, as a "non-event."

Hey, Donald, is America great again yet?

Infantino promised that the World Cup tournament would be an economic engine that would be the equivalent of 104 Super Bowls - 104 being the number of matches to be played in this tournament - but in the eleven U.S. host cities, that prediction has obviously turned out wrong.  Most foreigners don't want to come here because of the restrictions on travel to the United States (and when enough Americans get wise to MAGA, that's when we'll see Trump implement restrictions on travel from the United States!) and because of Trump's hostility toward every country in the world not named Russia or Israel and not located on the Arabian Peninsula.  

It gets worse.  Meisalas has reported that bookings are even behind a typical summer vacation season.  FIFA has even had trouble making a licensing deal with China and India, the two most populous nations in the world and about one-fourth of the world's population put together, to ensure World Cup broadcasts there.  And tickets are not only expensive for the American games, but also for games in Canada and Mexico, and almost no one in Mexico can afford them.  Here in These States, the U.S. men's team's opening match in Los Angeles, the U.S. men's national team versus Paraguay, can't have a sellout despite expectations of one.

Fortunately, that's not very serious.  After all, this is the U.S. men's soccer team, the Colorado Rockies of international soccer. 

Trump bragged about having the World Cup, the 250th anniversary of the United States' founding, and the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics all under his watch after he forced Kamala Harris into early retirement.  But not only is the American semiquincentennial a meh-fest, the World Cup is collapsing before his and our eyes.  Because Trump and Infantino turned what should have been a celebration of the three major nations of North America into a corrupted cash cow.  And the Olympics?  Oh, honey, that is going to be another great disaster.   And the idea that Trump, not native Californian and Los Angeles resident Kamala Harris, will be presiding over the opening ceremonies with the governor of California of an Olympiad already redolent of Berlin 1936 is itself redolent.  

At least, whoever the governor is, it won't be Eric Swalwell.

The Los Angeles 2028 organizing committee is already dealing with its chair Casey Wasserman having ended up being mentioned in the Epstein files, and Trump's inevitable efforts to make the Games all about him will make it worse.  And yet the committee's chief athletics officer - a champion athlete you might have heard of, Janet Evans - is still convinced that these Games will turn out fine.

Uh, Janet?  Honey?  Can I see you in my office?  Because we need to seriously talk about the prospect of your resignation from the LA 28 organizing committee so that you do not go down with this ship.  

As for the rest of you reading this, I don't need to tell you again that the International Olympic Committee only awarded the 2028 Olympics to Los Angeles eleven years in advance because they apparently figured that Trump would be gone long before then; either he's be re-elected in 2020 and be an ex-President by 2025 at the latest or be voted out of office and not make a comeback, because no such thing had happened in American politics since 1892.  Yeah, you can ask John Cornyn how that calculation turned out for him!  (I'll have more on that later.)

Do I plan to watch any of the World Cup.  I don't know.  Maybe.  I can't root for the home team, of course, because being an American these days is nothing to take pride in, and of course, the home team sucks anyway.  Let's just say I plan to give the World Cup the same attention I gave to the Winter Olympics this past February. 

You can now draw your own conclusions.

Primary News

I never got back to this story before now, but as you likely already know, Analilia Mejia is my congresswoman.  She won the April 16 special election.

A Latina progressive who used to work for Bernie Sanders is now representing a centrist Republican-leaning district in the U.S. House of Representatives - whod'a thunk?

But the show's not over yet, this one's a double feature.  Representative Mejia has to go through another Democratic primary a week ago from today against, as far as I know, three competitors to stand in November for the full two-year term that starts in January.  And in November, is she wins the primary next week, she'll face the persistent Joe Hathaway on the Republican side once again, meaning I'll have to deal with more racist GOP flyers in the mail.

Meanwhile, the Texas Republican primary runoff to decide the GOP nominee for U.S. Senate is today, in which Republican voters have to choose between incumbent Senator John Cornyn and the Trump-backed, wholly corrupt state Attorney General Ken Paxton.  The winner faces James Talarico, who's competing to be the first Democrat elected to the U.S. Senate from Texas since . . . 1988.

Wake me when it's over.   

Faith and Flag?

One week after getting confirmed in the Roman Catholic Church, the church of my birth, I had a disturbing experience at Mass today.

The service began with the priest speaking about Memorial Day and asking that we show respect for those who have died in service of the United States.  That was fine by me, but a parishioner marked the moment by carrying a large American flag to the altar, where he placed into a flag stand where the very same flag always rests.

Although today as the observation of the Pentecost, the priest's homily linked the Pentecost to the values of patriotism and the celebration of freedom and liberty in America. Freedom and liberty in an America run by Donald Trump? Every Catholic homily in every parish in the world was devoted to the Pentecost, because homilies are always based on the same Scriptures on any given Sunday, but how many Pentecost homilies in other parts of the world were associated with patriotism and nationalism?  Not many, to be sure, since the association in my priest's homily was part of the Memorial Day theme, but even in countries observing national holidays in late May, would there be any nationalistic homilies?

The closing hymn at Mass in my parish was "America the Beautiful," which, despite the mention of God, is mostly a secular song celebrating the nation's natural beauty and is more national anthem material (and it's a pity it's not our national anthem) than a sacred song  Earlier, the vocalist sang "God Bless America," one of those songs that would have offended Jeremiah Wright. When I walked outside after Mass ended, I notices small banners on the lawn like the one below, celebrating America's 250th birthday and celebrating "faith, family and freedom" - and Trump has done an excellent job in severely damaging all three. And, of course there were manty miniature flags on display.  I was so upset about the nationalism in today's Mass that I bumped into a chain-link fence post backing my car out of the parking space. (Don't worry, both my car and I are fine.)

This all obviously made an impression on me.  Hey, why fib?  It may be true that Pope Leo XIV is an American and obviously cares about the moral turpitude and the hypocritical un-Christian behavior of MAGA supporters, some if not many of whom are Catholics, but Leo doesn't see the Church as being a personal dominion and a reflection of his own Americanism.  It's a universal church, which is what the word "catholic" means.  Unlike Leo, though, many of his forebears in the American Church have tried to guide the faithful in a uniquely American understanding of the Gospels to link the faith to American values.  This has been a tradition so longstanding and so disturbing that the previous Leo, Pope Leo XIII, who reigned in the late nineteenth century, complained to his American bishops about it. 

I recommitted myself to the Church not out of patriotism but to put my trust in God and honor the Holy Father and his agenda for the Church - help for the poor, support for life from cradle to grave, humility toward the Holy Trinity.  I did not recommit myself to the Church to worship at the altar of the United States of America.  If I wanted to devote myself to a faith that imagines Jesus as an embodiment of American values, I'd have become a Mormon.

I'm sure I mentioned this here on my blog before, but when I went to France and Germany, I could count the national flags in Catholic cathedrals there on zero fingers.   European Catholicism, given its history of integration with the state, is now dissociated from secular governments that run Catholic-majority countries like France, Ireland and Italy.  In France, as part of the need to separate church and state, the government owns the houses of worship and gives the Church the right to use the buildings for free - unlike in America, where the Church owns the houses of worship and gets tax exemptions.  Also, American Catholics, having fought hard for acceptance by the Protestant majority, have traditionally emphasized patriotism to demonstrate their devotion to this country.  But how can American Catholics continue to do so when a Christian nationalist dictatorship led by the least religious President in U.S. history is attempting to construct the most repressive society since the Third Reich?  While Leo continues to move the Church in a more humanistic direction and speak out against Trump's inhumane policies, many MAGA Catholics decry the pope's involvement in politics (he's a head of state, how can he not be involved in politics?) and denounce the Church's direction toward humility and acceptance since the abdication of Pope Benedict XVI.  (Noted MAGA Catholic Steve Bannon considered Pope Francis a disaster.)  The American Church should not be celebrating America as an extension of the faith, and certainly not in this semiquincentennial year of American independence.  The liberty that America supposedly represents cannot be seen as integral to or entwined in the Catholic faith when the United States has curtailed liberty under Trump.

In other words, the Church should be illuminating the lack of freedom and justice in America rather than celebrate the freedom and justice it only nominally represents today.  It should be resisting, not celebrating, the America that exists now.  And, given my secessionist views, the Church should be prepared for the fall of the United States as sure as the European empires it once consecrated dissolved.

Every Sunday after Mass, in addition to praying for my late mother, I'm always praying for the cancer in Washington to be removed and by any means that God deems necessary and just. As noted before in this space, I have already decided that my allegiance is to the Holy Father in Rome, not to the Antichrist in Washington.

Autopsy Dissection

A truncated version of the Democratic Party's autopsy of the party's 2024 election loss to Trump is out, and it essentially says that the party didn't relate to voters enough.

Thank you, Captain Obvious!

I have no hope in the Democratic Party learning from its mistakes, mainly because it never has - at least not in the past 45 years.  Also, progressives and moderates see the failure of the party to communicate effectively with voters see the results of the autopsy - such as they are - and derive entirely different takeaways.  Progressives say that Kamala Harris lost because the party wouldn't condemn Israeli atrocities in Gaza (which the autopsy did not mention) and threw marginalized groups under the bus while not talking enough about issues like climate change.  Moderates - and sympathetic ex-Republicans like Rick Wilson - say that Harris lost because they were afraid to offend marginalized groups - hence the party's failure to respond to the Trump campaign's attack ads about transsexual issues - and talked too much about issues like climate change and not enough about the economy.

Both progressives and moderates have this much in common - they both despise DNC chairman Ken Martin.     

Martin is considered a party hack who thinks that all he has to do is tweak the practices of the mainstream Democratic Party and deliver a milquetoast message that tries to appeal to progressives and moderates but ultimately satisfies neither.  The only Democratic strategist who has championed him in recent months is Simon Rosenberg, who insists that Martin is doing the work to strengthen state parties in states dominated by Republicans that Democrats had previously written off.  In other words. Rosenberg is praising Martin for bringing the same pablum message to Alaska, Texas, Iowa and North Carolina that Democrats tried in all seven swing states in 2024 to no avail.  And lest you think that Simon Rosenberg is a seasoned Democratic operative who knows Ken Martin better than I do and therefore I shouldn't critique him so harshly, I need to remind you that Rosenberg was the chap who spent the 2024 election campaign saying that he'd rather be a Democrat than a Republican ("I'd rather be us than them")  and that the Democrats were winning but hadn't won yet.  

The day after the election, I commented on one of Rosenberg's YouTube videos, saying, "I'd rather be them than us."

This disagreement between progressives and moderates, by the way, is not only toxic, it could undermine Democratic chances of winning back one or both houses of Congress.  Take the U.S. Senate race in Michigan, for example.  Progressive Democrat Abdul El-Sayed is leading in the Democratic primary polls over two women, Mallory McMorrow and Hayley Stevens, who are more in the vein of Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer.  Progressives like noted centrist-basher Jennifer Welch are rooting for al-Sayed to win, while veteran Democratic strategist James Carville, who can't stand progressives for being so sanctimonious and elitist, is hoping that one of the women withdraw from the campaign to avoid splitting the anti-El-Sayed vote.  If the movers and shakers of the Democratic Party can't be united in the primaries, how can they be united in the general midterm elections?  

This division in the Democratic Party has been evident for a decade, from the divide between moderate Hillary Clinton and progressive Bernie Sanders in the 2016 presidential campaign to the 2025DNC chairman election in which the chief contestants were the moderate Ken Martin and progressive Ben Wikler.  In both contests, a third candidate offered a more unifying strategy to build up the party - Martin O'Malley.  In both cases, he was ignored and came in third place - both times too distant a third place to matter. 😡 

Music Video Of the Week - May 22, 2026

"Only You Know and I Know" by Dave Mason  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

The Spirit of $1.776 Billion

Donald Trump tried to sue the very government he allegedly leads for $10 billion, alleging that Internal Revenue Service allowed Trump's tax returns and the tax returns of his business to be leaked in 2020 - when he was also leading the government. In what is apparently a settlement out of court (you think?), Trump will not collect ten billion smackers for himself, but he will establish a $1.776 (get it?) billion slush fund to compensate Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol on January 6. 2021, paying them for their legal fees and any wages lost as a result of their prosecutions and the time and money spent on their court cases.

The fund is likely to be used to cover the expenses of any Trump supporters who commit transgressions to display their allegiance to him and his schemes  So not only is Trump paying January 6 insurrectionists for committing violence and insurrection for him, he's planning to give out money to anyone who commits violence and insurrection in service to his regime.  Service includes harassing immigrants, intimidating voters, shutting down protests, and all sorts of storm trooper-redolent stuff. 

To think - you can get rich and get a pardon just by breaking the law for Donald John Trump himself!

And who's paying for all this?  We are! 

I wish I could start a slush fund to encourage the Democratic states to secede - a fund f, say, $1.861 billion!

Hanta Yo!

So, we have a new virus to contend with . . . the hantavirus.

Actually, the hantavirus isn't exactly new, like SARS-CoV-2 was in 2019.  It's a virus that's been around quite awhile, and it's gotten attention recently due to numerous passengers on a cruise ship, some of whom have died.  The bad news is that there is no vaccine for it.  The good news is that it isn't as communicable as SARS-CoV-2 - far from it - and so the risk of catching hantavirus disease, which comes from rodent feces (which may lead Fox News "personalities" to refer to it as a Mickey Mouse disease), is as low as politicians in February 2020 thought that le covíde was.  You can catch le covíde by merely breathing.  You have to go out of your way to get hantavirus disease.

But none of that means, while we shouldn't take hantavirus as seriously as le covíde, that we should take it seriously at all.  And Trump isn't taking it seriously.  I don't think he's even talked about it.  He seems to think the situation will take care of itself.  Because of all of the obvious differences between the hantavirus and le covíde, he may be right this time.  But his lackadaisical approach to the hantavirus - if it can be called an approach - revives nightmares of his similar attitude to  le covíde in early 2020.

And while all this in going on . . . Ebola is back in central Africa.

The United States ought to consult the World Health Organization for strategies on how to navigate all this.

It's too bad that the United States formally left the World Health Organization earlier this year per Trump's orders based on his racist Sinophobic attitude involving a controversy over China  - not to mention that its director is an Ethiopian.

You know, that's another reason for me to advocate secession and disunion.  Trump tried to pull the U.S. out of the World Health Organization in 2020, but the Biden administration canceled the process of withdrawal as soon as President Biden took office. This time Trump has succeeded.  As with the Paris Agreement, the United States will not be welcome back into the World Health Organization a third time when a Democratic President tries to undo Trump's action if there's a chance that a future Republican President withdraws the U.S. a third time later on.  Better for an independent New England, a Middle Atlantic republic, or an independent California to join the World Health Organization and leave fascist American states like an independent Texas and a revived Confederacy (from which blacks will flee in another great migration northward) will stay out and fall by the wayside. 

I Bow to Rome, Not Washington

Today is a milestone in my life.  After failing to get confirmed in the Roman Catholic Church, the church of my birth, when I was supposed to back when I was thirteen, I finally received the Holy Spirit and entered into fellowship with my fellow parishioners.

How did I miss getting confirmed when I was a kid?  Let's just say that, despite the traditions of Catholic confirmations, Jewish mitzvahs, and Mormon lay priesthood indoctrinations at the age of thirteen, that age, according to my own personal experience, is an extremely inappropriate age for the clergy to confer adult status on any child. 

I chose as my confirmation name Linus, after the saint to became the first successor to the Apostle St. Peter after the apostle was martyred via inverted crucifixion.   As I explained on my Facebook timeline, where I first announced the good news, Peter had established his ministry in Rome at the direction of Jesus and, with the followers he attracted, built the foundation for the Roman Catholic Church as we know it today. When Peter was martyred, Linus assumed leadership of Rome’s Christians and led the new church under difficult circumstances, and Linus himself was martyred after twelve years as the bishop of Rome. Linus was succeeded by Anacletus, and with that succession, the Holy See was firmly in place, thanks in no small part in Linus’s work as the bishop of Rome. Saint Linus represents starting from the beginning. I only returned to the Church recently and I have been confirmed 47 years late, so this is very much for me a beginning.

Unfortunately, for me and my fellow initiated Catholics in my parish, today was also the day of Rededicate 250, a Christian jubilee of recommitting These States to Jesus Christ, or at least the stern, stoic, authoritarian Jesus Christ that MAGA evangelical Christians revere unreservedly.  In addition to the usual fundamentalist charlatans and snake-oil salesmen who make up the MAGA Christian nationalist clergy, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who served his long-awaited last day as archbishop of New York three months ago, also officiated.  It was mostly a gathering of misanthropic clerics who want Americans to live a life of Christian fundamentalist self-repression and control through the federal government - and oh yes, ostracize Jews and Muslims.  And, despite the presence of Cardinal Dolan and MAGA Bishop Robert Barron, Catholics, whom MAGA Christian leaders like Pete Hegseth's pastor regard as enemies of the state.  Because, apparently we bow to a Roman dictator.

That's pretty rich from Christian nationalist Trump supporters who bow to a golden calf. 

Or should I say a golden jackass?

This monstrosity was unveiled recently at Trump's Doral golf club outside Miami.  It was dedicated by one of Trump's "spiritual advisor."  

I have a feeling that mime artists who make a living as living statues of gold will need to pick another color.

How about white?  Trump likes that!

Count me out.  By getting confirmed, I rededicated myself to a church with beautiful and enduring traditions and principles, the church of Rome, the church of my family.  I have also turned away from the land of my birth.  I am turning away from the American ideals that have propped up this nation and the reality of the U.S. as it is today, der Amerikanisches Reich.  I will direct my attention to the Vatican, and as always, I will commit myself to following the Holy Father in Rome - not the Antichrist in Washington.

And don't be surprised if the Church identifies the United States as an oppressor that must be broken up into smaller entities.   

No Answer

Would you trust Donald Trump. Jr. and his brother Eric with you cellular telephone service? 

Five hundred and ninety thousand people did.

About a year ago, Anastasio Trump Debayle (Don Jr.) and his brother Luis (Eric) came up with a plan to create a cell phone that would "outdo Apple" and provide excellent and personalized service that would have other cell phone companies eating its dust.  Anastasio Debayle and Luis got 590,000 Trump supporters to pay a hundred dollars each, for a total of $59 million, to buy this mobile phone, and then . . . nothing.  The phone was delayed for months and all of these MAGA people who bought it were left . . . on hold.  

This past week, the phone finally materialized - a gold-colored (natch!) mobile phone that the Somoza - er, Trump - brothers ordered to avoid a lawsuit for failing to produce the product they promised to their customers.  The phone itself was worth next to nothing - maybe about five cents, meaning that it was overpriced by about $99.95.  The phone was rendered obsolete by newer products in the cell phone market.  All Trump supporters got for a hundred bucks was the cheap color application and the Trump brand.  Whereas Anastasio Debayle and Luis got $29.5 million each. 

The phones finally ship out soon. Maybe they'll actually work. 

Music Video Of the Week - May 15, 2026

"Atlantis" by Donovan  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Pope Leo XIV - One Year On

There can be no doubt that Pope Leo XIV, the first American pontiff, was selected by the voting members of the College of Cardinals in May 2025 to be a talisman against Donald Trump.  Leo is a champion of immigrants, he had ministered to the poor in Peru as Bishop Robert Prevost, he opposes nationalism, and he is pro-life in that he supports government aid for women and children and opposes capital punishment - two positions that puts him at odds with MAGA in the U.S.

The pope has spent the past year appointing new bishops and archbishops, particularly in the U.S., that are less confrontational and more belligerent in an effort to promote the humanity and the compassion taught in the Gospels as opposed to a more militant Christianity promoted by Catholic and evangelical rank-and-file believers alike.  His biggest problem, however, remains Donald Trump.  Trump is to Leo what Polish strongman Wojciech Jaruzelski had been to John Paul II, a political leader from the pontiff's homeland making trouble for his people that the pontiff must stand up against and react to.  And, like Jaruzelski, Trump is being prompted by the Kremlin in Moscow.

Leo has had to deal with the slings and arrows from Trump, who has questioned his integrity as a religious leader and as a head of state (the Vatican papal state)  and has tried to undermine his authority as the spiritual leader of his fellow American Catholics, many of whom inexplicably (unless you've heard of the word "hypocrisy") voted for Trump in 2024.  Trump is to find out that he's met his match.  Leo knows more about the Christian faith and the Gospels than Trump pretends to, and he leads a Church that has persisted for two thousand years, assembled by St. Peter and led in the wake of St Peter's martyrdom by St. Linus, who established the bishopric of Rome that is now the modern papacy.  He's held off Trump quite well so far.  He's in a good position to bring Trump down that way John Paul II brought down Communism in Eastern Europe.

One question, however, remains to be answered.  If Pope Leo XIV is America's John Paul II, who is our Lech Wałęsa?  Maybe after the midterms, we'll find out.

Kings and Knaves

Britain's King Charles III could have, as many people wished he would have, stayed home and not visited the United States to celebrate this sorry excuse for a nation for its semiquincentennial (doesn't that word make you want to throw up??).  But it was good that he did.

The king addressed a joint session of Congress last week with a speech citing the American government's foundation on English common law and how the Supreme Court preserved the separation of powers by constantly citing the Magna Carta that King John was forced to agree to back in 1215 to limit his powers.  It was the ultimate humiliation for These States - it took a king, and the descendant of the very king we revolted against 250 years ago, to teach Congress about American democracy.

Charles scored another coup with Trump, bequeathing him a bell for display on, say, the narrow elevation of the dining room of the White House or Mar-a-Lago, or on the stern of the yacht . . .a bell end, which is British slang for "dickhead."  What more would you expect from a king who, as Prince of Wales, was a big fan of and also a close friend of comedian Spike Milligan?

All of this obviously went over the heads of the bell-enders in MAGA, who likely think that Magna Carta is a credit card and Spike Milligan is that black guy from Brooklyn who makes all those movies sermonizing about racism.  And it certainly didn't move the Republicans manipulating the congressional district maps in the South, with most of the Southern states redrawing their U.S. House districts to get rid of as many black-majority districts - and as many Democratic-majority districts, which are the same thing down in Dixie - as possible.  Democrats in the one Southern state where a redistricting plan worked out to benefit their own party - Virginia, which is so full of transplanted Northeasterners (including the New Jersey-born Abigail Spanberger, the state's governor) that it's not even a Southern state anymore (hey, it is north of 36°30′) - got a serious blow to their efforts when the state Supreme Court threw out the referendum that allowed gerrymandering to maximize Democratic U.S. House representation from the state, striking it down on a technicality.  Now the Democrats are at a disadvantage in being able to win back the House.  It can still be done, but this revolting development makes it far more difficult.

The Attorney General of Virginia placed a stay on the state Supreme Court's decision to see if he can appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court on the basis of a constitutional violation.  Not because he believes that the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court will side with him, but to use a delay tactic, which could work if he can take his time to make sure that the Court hears the case too late for the old district maps to be used in time for the November elections.

Meanwhile, the effort to redraw that U.S. House district maps in Louisiana has prompted Governor Jeff Landry to suspend primary elections even after people have voted early.

Pundits and activists like Steve Schmidt and Sarah Longwell keep saying that we have to get through a very difficult and destructive period, but we can wait out Trump, and as soon as a Democratic President is in office on January 20, 2029 (and just how do they know that will come to pass?), we can start, the long, arduous work of rebuilding what Trump has torn down.  No.  There will be no more waiting - at least not for me.  The United States has demonstrated quite clearly that its experiment in representative government of this sort has failed.  And thanks to issues like the war in Iran and tariffs, the U.S. has also demonstrated with equal clarity that it can no longer be trusted or taken seriously in the international community as a responsible actor.  Our "President" has been too much of an irresponsible actor - a "reality" show actor who, since 2004, has been playing a parody of himself - for there to be anything left to rebuild and for any international trust to be regained by the time he does leave the scene.  That is why I still support the dissolution of the Union.  That is why I am still a secessionist.  

Music Video Of the Week - May 8, 2026

"Harry Truman" by Chicago  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Dammit, Janet!

 Maine governor Janet Mills dropped out of the 2026 U.S. Senate campaign in her state.

Governor Mills, 78, was encouraged to run for the Senate in the Democratic state primary and, were she to win, run against the similarly ancient Susan Collins, first elected to the Senate in 1996, back when most of us were still licking postage stamps to paste on envelopes to send greeting cards.  It was Chuck Schumer who did the encouraging.  He saw her as a safe and conventional liberal who would be a good Democrat - that is, a Democrat like Schumer.  AIPAC probably figured in there somewhere.

Mainers increasingly perplexed about a woman two years older than Schumer presenting herself as a new face in Washington chose instead to pay attention to Graham Platner, a staunch progressive and an oyster farmer who spends his time touching on the same issues that Bernie Sanders pushes.  As a Mainer who rants against Republicans and corporate Democrats, Platner, 41, sounds like a crusty young salt.

Platner will face tough opposition from the Republican money machine operating out of Washington.  The GOP will go after him on his questionable quasi-Nazi tattoo, his lack of political experience above the municipal level, and maybe the fact that his grandfather, Warren Platner, was an interior designer, which sounds, well, kind of gay.  But Platner has one advantage in his favor.

He'll be running against Susan Collins.  

The VRA Is DOA

Let's play make-believe.  Pretend you're a professional music critic.  You've written a column saying that rap. a predominantly black pop form, is not music.  A civil rights lawyer sues to have you fired from the music magazine you work for, citing a racist subtext in your column and implying that you are a bigot.  But you've also written numerous reviews heaping all sorts of acclaim and praise on numerous black musical artists, none of whom are rappers.  The judge throws out the civil rights lawyer's suit, saying that he can't prove racial bias on your part.  Now, here's the clincher - you in fact are a bigot.  You love black music, but you would never seek black friends, live next door to a black family,  or let your son marry a black woman, not even Iman.  You are a total racist, but no one can prove it because you're very good of keeping your bigotry to yourself.

Well, apply that same idea to the standard the Supreme Court in limiting the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to the point where it's just a meaningless piece of paper enshrined in the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library, and you understand why it's so odious and viciously cruel.  The Court ruled in Louisiana v. Callais this past week that a plaintiff charging the the voting rights of a minority group have been violated because minority voters have been gerrymandered across districts that make it impossible to elect one of their own to the state legislature or the U.S. House of Representatives has to show direct evidence that the gerrymandering was racially motivated.  The plaintiff can't do that.  The gerrymandering can always be explained away as being a need for bipartisan balance or some rubbish like that.  But the truth is that Republicans gerrymander districts to ensure that as many Democratic voters are spread out over as many districts as possible to keep a Republican legislative or U.S. House majority in a state; and in the Deep South, most Republican voters are white and most Democratic voters are black.  

And there are several Republican-dominated states elsewhere, like in the Rust Belt, where Democratic-leaning minority voters are confined to a handful of urban and inner suburban districts while Republican-leaning white voters dominate the more numerous districts elsewhere.  Black people can still vote - poll taxes and literacy tests have pretty much gone the way of the Studebaker -  but whom they vote for, usually a black candidate, is a lot less likely to win.  This is even assuming they can remain on the registration books, as many jurisdictions that no longer need preclearance to secure minority voting under the Voting Rights Act have purged black voters with impunity. 

In that spirit, Louisiana, the victor in the Supreme Court case, canceled primaries for its U.S. House elections pending a redistricting that will likely eliminate one of its two black-majority districts.

U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts (above) is no stranger to the conservative desire to eliminate the Voting Rights Act.  He has been working to eliminate it since 1980, the year Reagan was elected President and a 25-year-old Roberts was clerking for the then most conservative justice on the Supreme Court, William Rehnquist, whom Roberts succeeded as Chief Justice.  Roberts and other conservatives have been playing the long game to push a conservative agenda for decades, and their long hard work has pretty much paid off.  The only people who get screwed are the innocent.  Because if black people get thrown off the voter rolls, can vote but may not vote knowing they their votes could get canceled out, or are denied representation or political power, there's no one in Congress or the legislature to represent their own interests - some which likely overlap with those of white voters.

Democratic states are likely going to redistrict their own House seats to counteract Republican states gerrymandering their minority, Democratic-leaning districts out of existence to cancel any advantage Republican states get from their own shenanigans, and New Jersey is looking at doing so.  Governor Sherrill has suggested that two of the three GOP districts in the state could be gerrymandered out of being.  But New Jersey and several states may not get to do so until 2028 or 2030, and the census in 2030 might move even more House seats to Republican-leaning states in the Sun Belt (a trend that has been unstoppable for seventy years).  If Democrats can compete more effectively in these Sun Belt states - states Democrats gave up on years ago - they might be able to stanch the bleeding, and they might be able to elect a more progressive Democratic President and Congress in 2032 - without a Voting Rights Act, and largely on the strength of white voters - and accordingly restore the Voting Rights Act while dealing with other right-wing decisions handed down by the Roberts Court.

Like Citizens United. 

If we have to, we can elect a progressive Congress and administration without guaranteed voting rights for all citizens no later than 2032.  After all, Americans managed to do that in 1932.

And by the way, if anyone is wondering . . . no , I don't like rap, of course, but no, I'm not racist.  I think I've proven that many times on this blog.  And come on, if I were racist, do you think I would have written such a long post bitching about the gutting of the Voting Rights Act??  

Music Video Of the Week - May 1, 2026

"The Ballroom Blitz" by Sweet  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.) 

Pictures of Beautiful Women, The End - One Year On

It was a year ago today that I posted on my now-defunct beautiful-women picture blog for the last time, terminating it completely a month after.  A year later, do I miss it?

Do I miss it?  You mean, do I miss posting pictures that I did not own the rights to, risking the possibility of being called my violations of intellectual-property rights, fair use be damned, until it  finally happened?  Do I miss posting pictures of models no one had ever heard of from the also-defunct model comp-card site run by Peter Marlowe?  Do I miss posting pictures of movie actresses young enough to be my daughters that I'd only heard of twenty minutes before to appeal to guys young enough to be my sons?  Do I miss posting pictures of television actresses who would disappear from public view and/or become culturally irrelevant within five years?  Do I miss posting pictures of dancers from dance companies whose performances I'd never seen?   Do I miss posting pictures of local broadcast-news anchorwomen I'd never seen on TV in metropolitan-area markets I'd never been to, thinking I was celebrating their journalism careers when I was actually objectifying them for their looks?  Do I miss posting pictures of actresses and athletes who turned out to have no inner beauty because they were Trump supporters?  Do I miss posting pictures of national broadcast-news anchorwomen I had once idolized when they confronted Trump but failed to speak truth to power?  Do I miss any of that?

In a word, no.

I still have pictures of the numerous fashion and beauty models I posted on that blog and saved them on a USB file, and I've even added to them, and had my blog continued longer, I would have certainly posted those added pictures there, like this gorgeous picture of model/actress Susan Hess. 

I know I never posted this picture of Susan Hess on my blog - mainly because I never posted any pictures of Susan Hess on my blog.  She was one of those names that slipped through the cracks.  She's a Facebook friend of mine, and she is an absolute sweetheart - I only wish I had featured her instead of media showhorses like Gayle King and MAGA horse's rear ends like Danica Patrick. 

Anyway, I still hope to put together a Web site with the pictures of models that I accumulated over nineteen years, and it would be challenging, though it also must be fun, and that's why I ended my beautiful-women picture blog last year - it was no longer fun. For now, though, my plans for such a site are on the back burner - and maybe off the stove - while I deal with more pressing manners.  Like the evil clown occupying the White House.

Correction: April 29, 2026

In my March 9 post about the White House Correspondents' Association, I said that Eugene Daniels was the association's president.  He is not their president anymore; at this writing, Weija Jiang is.  The error, which I regret, has been corrected.   

Ballroom Blitz

It was staged.  Or maybe it wasn't.

The security should have been better.  Then again, maybe Donald Trump wanted it that way to let it happen.

All any of us know for certain is that Cole Tomas Allen, a tutor in southern California, made his way into the Washington, D.C. Hilton lobby with a gun in the hopes of entering the ballroom where the White House Correspondents' Association dinner and assassinating someone.  Shots were fired . . . just like Trump press secretary Karoline Leavitt said there would be before the dinner started.  Trump actually accepted the invitation from a subservient, sane-washing press to be there in the first place, as if he were putting himself and others in harm deliberately. 

Is Cole Allen an actor?  Yes, he is.  But that's a different Cole Allen.  Is Cole Tomas Allen an actor?  Did he get hired to pretend to shoot Trump?   He may or may not have been trying to shoot Trump for real, though the bullets were likely real, not blanks - makes sense, Trump probably hired the kid who shot at him back in Butler, Pennsylvania to make it look real, and if a few people - including the gunman himself - died as a result, so what?  As long as Trump came out with his popularity on the rise.  And Allen is invoking his right to remain silent. 

Except that this Allen kid is serious about going after Trump, having compared him to Hitler and having made references to Trump's alleged pedophilia.  But even if he the real deal, even if he was out to assassinate someone, how do we know he was out to kill Trump?  

Maybe he was out to shoot members of the press out of anger for kowtowing to them.

And once the assassination attempt came and went, assuming it was for real, what did Trump use it for?  To declare martial law and suspend the Bill of Rights?  To issue an executive order declaring the Democratic Party a terrorist organization and blaming the assassination attempt on them to make an excuse for banning them?

No . . . he used it to make an argument for a White House ballroom.

I kid you not.

Trump later opined that the assassination attempt would not have happened if the White House Correspondent's Association dinner had been held in a White House ballroom that should have already existed, and several of his MAGA toadies went on Fox News to endorse the idea of a White House ballroom, which they said would have far greater security than a hotel ballroom.  I have just two questions in response:

1) Why would the White House Correspondents' Association, a private cooperative of reporters covering the executive branch of the federal government, have its annual dinner in a taxpayer-funded edifice that serves as the home for the very U.S. President they cover for better or for usually worse?

2)  If the President of the United States is appearing at your private dinner in a hotel ballroom, why would the security at the hotel not be increased to the point where MS Now's Symone Sanders-Townsend could not, as she did, arrive at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner in a dress by motor scooter and go right up the front drive to the entrance?

Oh, man, I'm getting a really ridiculous image in my head right now.

But what is really ridiculous is that Trump is using this incident as a reason to get his damn ballroom built when the incident should be used to prompt a discussion of how to make schools, offices, and other pubic spaces safe from lone gunmen.  As for the so-called journalists who invited Trump - who had planned to make a speech attacking the very press that was toasting him - to their annual soirée in yet their latest effort to suck up to Der Donald, what happened this past weekend, which caused the dinner to be canceled, was nothing short of karma.

The White House Correspondents' Association is supposed to be fair and balanced toward the President of the United States and the association insists that they have covered Trump without bias for him despite the pressure against them, and if you believe that, I have a 1973 Studebaker to sell you. 

But if I did have a 1973 Studebaker to sell you, this AI picture shows what such a car might have looked like if Studebaker hadn't bitten the dust in 1966.

Music Video Of the Week - April 24, 2026

"Comin’ In And Out Of Your Life" by Barbra Streisand  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Sic Semper Tryannis

 Virginia lived up to its state motto this week. 

The state responded to efforts by Trump to have Republicans gerrymander enough U.S. House districts nationally to give the GOP an edge in the 2026 midterms.  Virginia voters had the opportunity to temporarily repeal a state constitutional provision requiring redistricting to be done in a bipartisan manner to allow the Democrats to gerrymander House districts and gain a greater advantage in mid-cycle redrawing of the congressional maps.  There are currently six Democrats and five Republicans in the Virginia's U.S. House delegation.

This week, the voters in the Old Dominion gave the state the authority to gerrymander the state in favor of the Democrats.  Trump's and the Republican Party's efforts to rig the system to keep the Republicans in control of the House in January 2027 and prevent congressional investigations into the administration can now be best described as . . . "failed." 

The temporary provision approved in Virginia is facing a legal challenge in the state Supreme Court.  But the odds are in the Democrats ' favor that the position will remain in force through the 2030 census.  

Thus be it always to tyrants.

Thinking Small Again?

I need a break from the current news cycle. I'd like to talk instead about one of my favorite topics - Volkswagen.

Kjell Gruner, president and CEO of Volkswagen of America (which marked its seventy-first anniversary yesterday),  assured die-hard Volkswagen enthusiasts that, despite the fact that five out of six Volkswagen vehicles sold in the U.S. are sport utility vehicles, the Golf and the Jetta will remain in VW's American lineup.  Gruner called them the two compacts the soul of the brand.

That  is all good and fine - at least it sounds all good and fine - but, last time I checked, the base version of Volkswagen's eighth-generation Golf (above) is still unavailable, as the current Golf - available here and in Canada in GTI and R form only - concludes its fifth model year in the New World, while the current Jetta (below), the seventh-generation model, has been on the market for eight years with the occasional facelift and upgrading.

I guess that's better than nothing, as the 2020s have mostly been a nothing decade for Volkswagen enthusiasts in the U.S. and Canada.  The decade began with the lack of a modern Beetle (and no convertible), the decision to drop the base Golf from the New World, and a pandemic that made Volkswagens difficult to produce thanks to supply-chain disruptions.  It continued with the termination of the Passat and the debut of the incredibly boring Taos compact SUV.  And while Europeans continue to get new and exciting electric vehicles, we have only gotten the ID.4 SUV and the ID. Buzz minivan - the latter taking a break for 2026 because VW dealers still have plenty of 2025 models in stock, because it's too damn expensive.  The Passat-sized ID.7 electric sedan was canceled when it became apparent that U.S. government support for EVs was fleeting, and it will likely remain unavailable even if a Democrat is elected President in 2028.  The Golf GTI and Golf R remain too expensive for many VW customers, leaving the Jetta as our only recourse.  

And the biggest news for 2026 is a second-generation Atlas full-size SUV. That's what Volkswagen highlighted at the New York Auto Show in 2026. And that was another reason for me not to bother with the show this year, frankly.  

For the time being, the Jetta will return Volkswagen to its roots.  The car will be improved under the hood and under the floor with updated engines, fuel injectors, shocks and suspension as well as inside the car with better ambient lighting and controls, while the styling, already more conservative than a Heritage Foundation policy paper, will remain unchanged.  In other words, it will be how the Beetle evolved in the U.S. for thirty years.  Volkswagen of America ought to reprise its ad for the 1962 Volkswagen showing a blank page and explaining the car's non-visual improvements to sell next year's Jetta.

But it might not be our only realistic choice for long.  With production costs rising in Germany, and with an all-electric ninth-generation Golf (which, like the ID.3, will likely be forbidden fruit in These States) still a couple of years away, Volkswagen is actually planning to produce the current Golf in Mexico for the European market.  That's like Ford producing the Mustang for in Japan for Americans.   But Volkswagen deems it necessary to reduce production costs and make the Wolfsburg factory more devoted to EVs. 

Now bear with me here.  Part of the reason the base Golf was dropped from the North American market with the debut of the eighth-generation car (that does not only include Canada, it includes Mexico, and Mexico doesn't get any eighth-generation Golfs, not even the high-performance variants) was because VW had decided to produce the Mark 8 Golf exclusively in Wolfsburg and not in the Mexican factory at Puebla.  Puebla had been sourcing the Mark 7 Golf to North America because it was cheaper than exporting them to North America from Wolfsburg, as had been the case with the fifth- and sixth-generation cars.  But with the shift of Golf production back to Germany, restricting the Golf to only its high-performance variants in North America was the only thing that made sense to VW from an economic standpoint, considering the base Golf's lack of popularity in North America beyond VW's die-hard customer base.  So if the eighth-generation Golf is going to be made in Mexico for Europeans, and the Golf GTI and Golf R will be made for North America in Puebla as well . . . why not bring the base Golf back to North America, when it will inevitably be cheaper to make?  VW is playing the same game with SUVs that every other automaker doing business on this continent is playing - that is, make 'em bigger and more expensive.  But if Kjell Gruner really does want VW to remain true to its roots, maybe, just maybe, the base Golf can return to North American dealerships.

Volkswagen ought to consider taking advantage of this opportunity to bring the base Golf back to North America while continuing with the Jetta.  Both cars are economical and easy on gas, and at a time when affordability and a possible oil crisis are the top issues of the day, having affordable small cars available is good for Volkswagen, just as it can only be good for Toyota, Honda and Hyundai.   Admittedly, we wouldn't get the array of engine choices for the base Golf that Europeans get and have gotten for decades, but maybe VW might want to consider returning to the hybrid market in light of  U.S. transportation policy backtracking on EVs.  I drove the base Mark 8 Golf with an eTSI hybrid setup in Germany, and it performed as well as my Mark 6 Golf.  I loved it.  Former Volkswagen of America CEO Scott Keogh famously said that Volkswagen stood for affordability, and fuel-efficient, inexpensive compact cars are always the way for Volkswagen to go.

Come on, Volkswagen of America, think small again.

(Oh yeah, I'm still keeping my Mark 6 Golf for the foreseeable future.)

Strait Jacket

When Iran got attacked, the Iranians took control of and closed the Strait of Hormuz, Trump responded by . . . blocking it?  A blockade of a strait that was already closed?  So no one could pay tolls to the Iranian government that Trump promised he would help the Iranian people overthrow? Blocking blockers?  That don't even make good nonsense.

Then Iran opened the Strait of Hormuz yesterday and Trump said the war would be over soon.  The stock market jumped.  But Trump never bothered to lift the U.S. blockade on the strait, so . . . Iran closed the strait again today and . . . well, apparently Trump made a killing off the killing by manipulating the market and then saying he plans to bomb Iran again soon.

Well, I've long since stopped trying to make sense out of all this, but I know that as long as the strait is closed, the Persian Gulf is the maritime equivalent of Willy Wonka's chocolate factory - no one goes in, no one comes out.  And since so many resources that make modern civilization function, including oil and helium, come out of the Gulf region, it means that much of the West and a good deal of the rest of the world will suffer really severe shortages of almost everything.  And given Iran's newfound power in the region and the United States' lost credibility, the Omanis and the Emiratis ought to consider a canal across the Musandam Peninsula to bypass the strait . . . though it would take at least a decade or so to even plan it before they could start building it.

Trump won't live long enough to deal with a long-term Iranian domination of the strait.  And that's assuming he even lives to see January 2029. 

Music Video Of the Week - April 17, 2026

"Ebony Eyes" by Bob Welch  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.) 

No Orbán Renewal

After sixteen years of unparalleled power, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán (below) and his party were voted out of office, with opposition leader Peter Magyar gaining a supermajority in Parliament and overwhelming Orbán's Fidesz party.

Magyar, a conservative who's not a nut about his conservatism (he's actually a former Orbán ally), plans to use his overwhelming power in Parliament to dismantle the very system that had kept Orbán in power for so long and had enriched Orbán and his toadies.  The corruption in the Hungarian government he initiated eventually brought down the Hungarian economy and gave people in the Central European country a sense of fatigue, and it caught up with him.  He lost despite - or maybe because of - U.S. Vice President Vance going to Hungary and campaigning for him and his Fidesz party. 

Given that, here in the States, Donald Trump has done in a year what it took Orbán over a decade to do - push the limits of power to the point where his countrymen have grown sick of him - you would expect the Democrats to be buoyed about regaining the Presidency against a MAGA Republican in 2028.  They likely are.  But they're likely pumping themselves up with false hope.  A recent focus group in upstate New York found that the Democratic rank-and-file used adjectives such as "lacking," "bruised," and "spineless" to define their party and their party leadership.  And this is true.  What more can you say about how pathetic and useless the Democratic leadership is - misguidedly thinking that they only have to wait out Trump and return to a renewal of collegial fellowship with the GOP - when the only American willing to stand up against Trump and call out his crap is this guy? 

Why did the Vatican choose and American to be the next Holy Father?  Isn't it obvious?? 

There are two other things to consider.  Hungary is a small country of about nine million people or so - about the same size as the population of New Jersey - and it's ethnically homogenous, so it's a country where the people are much more tied to each other culturally and politically than in These States.  Also, Hungary is a European country, and Europeans at large tend to be smarter than Americans, who are easily misled and misdirected.  How else could we have kept voting for supply-side economics - a theory dating back to the 1970s and the economic policy that enabled guys like Trump - for the past 45 years?  All right, I'll come out and say it - Americans are too stupid to deal with MAGA the way Hungarians dealt with Orbán.

And as for Pope Leo XIV, I'm seriously taking advantage of my status as a Catholic to go to the Vatican and plead sanctuary.

On the other hand, it looks like Analilia Mejia, the Democratic socialist, pro-Sanders candidate for the U.S. House in my district, will win the special election for the district's seat after all . . ..

Eric the Red-Faced - The End

Eric Swalwell was one of the most esteemed members of the U.S. House of Representatives.  He was prized for his attacks on Donald Trump.  He was one of the Democratic Party's most effective communicators.  And he was on a glide path to the governorship of California. 

Then the roof caved in.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported on Friday that Swalwell had raped a female staffer and had sexually assaulted three others, with one woman insisting the Swalwell had assaulted her twice - both times when she was drunk.  Swalwell denied the charges, apparently hoping that he could navigate the accusations and ride out the storm.  But the storm was already past riding out.  The incident involving the woman accusing Swalwell of assaulting her while drunk occurred in New York City, which led Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg to launch investigation.  Several other women are alleged to have similar accusations against Swalwell as well.

All of this proved to be too much for Swalwell, who terminated his California gubernatorial campaign two days after the Chronicle's report, announced his intention to resign to avoid a congressional investigation three days after the Chronicle's report, and made good on his intentions four days after the Chronicle's report - right as Lonna Drewes, a former model who had sought help from Swalwell for her software firm, came forward to say that he had raped and choked her in a hotel room after he'd drugged her glass of wine in the hotel bar.  She claimed that Swalwell had raped her and even choked her, which sounds a good deal like something Bill Cosby would have done.

In fact, in this particular case, the accusation from Lonna Drewes is what I call the Beverly Johnson Coordinate, the point at which an accusation is so credible and so detailed, it must be true on top of all of the others that preceded it.  The Beverly Johnson Coordinate is named for the legendary fashion and beauty model who came forward with accusations of sexual assault against her by Bill Cosby and described the incident in great detail that more or less corroborated charges from earlier accusers.  Before then, I had dismissed claims of Bill Cosby sexually assaulting women as too wild to be believed.  But when Beverly Johnson - a model I had long had a crush on (she was one of a handful of black models who opened my eyes to how astonishingly beautiful black women can be) and a woman who I always knew to be someone of integrity - made the same accusations against Cosby, that's when Cosby lost me, as I explained back in December 2014.

(Aside: I saw Ms. Johnson's one-woman show about her career in February 2024.  She opened with a brief slide show of her most famous modeling photos.  It ended with a picture of Bill Cosby, to which Ms. Johnson said, "What a fucker!"  Her f-bomb got a positive response from the audience, including me.  Call it expletive-delighted.)

And so, once Lonna Drewes came forward against Swalwell, it became impossible for anyone still defending him (if there were any such people left) to continue doing so. Ms. Drewes even claims to have notes from therapy sessions over the incident.  Swalwell's withdrawal statement included a denial of the accusations against him while apologizing for mistakes and bad judgment regarding . . . what?  That's just it, he doesn't say.  

Uh, anything you want to get off your chest now, Eric?  So the investigators don't have to pull it off first?

Compared to Swalwell's downfall, Al Franken's fall, pushed by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand to ignite her unignitable 2020 presidential campaign, was much more gradual.  Accusations of a tryst in Bimini in late March 1987 brought down Gary Hart's presidential campaign in a week.  Swalwell went from the top of the world to the bottom of the heap (from Mount Whitney to Death Valley, as it were, seeing that he's from California) in four days - a new record for a disgraced politician, unless Matt Gaetz somehow counts.  And Franken and Hart were forced out for not even having done one one-hundredth of what Swalwell has done.  Rumors of Swalwell's sexual misconduct, it turns out, have been circulating for years on Capitol Hill, so the rush of all this news is an unfortunate but well-deserved cap to his political career, which was sound and fury signifying hubris.  And by the way, Swalwell is not the only House member out the door - Representative Tony Gonzales, a Republican from Texas, also resigned after having admitted to an affair with a staffer who later committed suicide.

People may get the government they deserve, but we won't get the leaders we need until we demand better leaders that we deserve better from.  That goes for both parties.

Running Roughshod on Romanism

With Pete Hegseth prosecuting the war against Iran as a crusade against the Iran's extremist brand of Islam - no, make that all Islam - and Hegseth's own evangelical pastor railing against the Roman Catholic Church as being hostile to American values, Catholics who established partnerships with evangelicals in pursuit of common goals (like overturning Roe v. Wade)  suddenly found out that Christian nationalists like Hegseth and his pastor are anti-Catholic and anti-Vatican.

Hah - I figured that evangelicals and progressives had something in common!

The particular beef Donald Trump and his Christian nationalist allies had with the Church was Pope Leo XIV's opposition to the war against Iran apparently devolved into a threat in which the Pentagon warned the Holy See's ambassador to the United States, according to one source, that the U.S. "has the military power to do whatever it wants" - and if the pope knows what's good for him, he'd better acknowledge that and keep his damn trap shut.

I think it's time that Roman Catholics in the U.S., especially the extreme conservatives who voted for Trump thrice, realize that Trump is not their friend and, given his threat to end Persian civilization as well as force the pope to serve under the dominion of the American military machine in an arrangement not unlike the Avignon papacy in France, he is in fact the Antichrist.  You cannot serve the Holy Father in the Vatican and the Antichrist in the White House.  You cannot undermine your own values by establishing alliances with non-believers who wish you ill when the alliance no longer serves its purpose.  Catholics in the United States must renounce Trump, Trumpism and MAGA, even if it means the dissolution of the Union - which, as I've already argued here, is likely for the best.

And Trump chose the wrong religious patriarch to pick a fight with.  Let me remind you that Pope Leo is from Chicago . . . and he can play hardball as well as any alderman or machine boss. 

Iran Amok Again

At a pre-inaugural party for President-elect Ronald Reagan in January 1981, as the Iran hostage crisis was nearing its end - the American hostages were released on January 20, 1981, the day President Reagan was sworn in - Bob Hope, always one for a zinger that bordered on bad taste but was still trenchant, told the following joke: "What's big, sandy, and glows in the dark?  Iran, after Reagan's inaugurated." 

Ronald Reagan, of course, had no intention of nuking anyone, viewing nuclear weapons as a bargaining chip in which to negotiate with the United States' adversaries - "Peace is only achieved by a projection of strength" - in hammering out a treaty.  Like the Flintstones" character the Great Gazoo and his button for destroying the universe, Reagan never had any intention of using the U.S. nuclear arsenal.  He just liked the idea of having one.

Trump does want to use nuclear weapons - because he figures that there's no sense in having them if you don't use them - and so threatened to wipe out Iran and seven thousand years of its history and heritage with said nukes to make Iran open the Strait of Hormuz, which would still be open today if Trump hadn't started a war with Iran in the first place.  But then, at the last minute, Trump announced a "cease-fire" that he tried to treat as a victory and as a testament to his negotiating skills.  Right.  Only the Strait of Hormuz remains under Iranian control and the Iranians are charging fees - tolls, if you will - for oil tankers, and the "deal" does nothing regrading Iran's nuclear program.  Meanwhile, the "cease-fire" is being violated by the U.S.'s closest and only partner, Israel, which is busy bombing pro-Iranian militias in southern Lebanon.

All indications that, short of nuking Iran proper, Trump plans a ground assault on Kharg Island, the strategic island where Iran's oil exports are stored and sent out, which could involve a force as big as 50,000 service personnel.  It would be a fruitless - a fatally fruitless - endeavor, for the war is already lost.

Anyone who's been to a gas station can attest to that.  

As for rising gasoline prices . . . get used to it, SUV owners.  Good luck in finding a more fuel-efficient replacement.

Music Video Of the Week - April 10, 2026

"April Come She Will" by Simon and Garfunkel  (Go to the link in the right-hand corner.)