A Jolly Good Time?

It was an embarrassment to then-President Barack Obama when David Jolly, a center-right Republican, won an open U.S. House seat in a special election in a Florida U.S. House district.  It was just another example of how Florida was slipping away from the Democrats.  Florida was a state where a progressive Democrat like Reubin Askew could serve two terms as governor in the seventies and where a more conservative Democrat like Bob Graham could succeed him and become so popular that he served three terms representing Florida in the U.S. Senate.  Jolly's victory in a district in the Tampa/St. Petersburg area, was seen to be a symptom of a larger problem Democrats had in Florida.  Although Jolly lost his House seat in 2016, that was a negligible upward blip in an otherwise downward trend; Trump won the state in the presidential election that same year, and Marco Rubio was easily re-elected to the Senate seat that Bob Graham had once held.

So who would have thought that Jolly would lead a Democratic comeback?

Jolly is the Democratic candidate for governor of Florida, which would make him the second Florida Republican to become a Democrat and stand for the state's highest office.  The first, Charlie Crist, was, coincidentally, the chap who defeated Jolly for that House seat in 2016.  But while Crist was a Republican ex-governor who twice sought without success to regain the office as a Democrat, Jolly is a former Republican who had been an MSNBC contributing commentator who spoke out against Trump and MAGA and who left the Republican Party because there was no hope of returning the GOP to sanity.  Unlike Crist, he's now making his first effort to be elected governor.  Jolly could make history by becoming the first Democrat to win the office since 1994.  He not only has Bob Graham's politics, he has his daughter - Gwen Graham (below), who ran for governor of Florida in 2018, only to lose the primary to Andrew Gillum, who in turn lost the general election to Ron DeSantis - as his lieutenant-gubernatorial running mate.  

(So why didn't Gwen Graham run again in 2026 as soon as a term-limited Ron DeSantis was out of the way?  Because Graham, a one-term Democratic congresswoman who, like Jolly, lost her seat in 2016, is handicapped by a primary loss, just as her father lost his bid for President in the 2004 Democratic primaries, and the rule in general elections for Democrats also applies to primary elections - one strike and you're out.  Also, she's a woman.  Florida is one of seventeen states that has never had a female governor.  As for Andrew Gillum, the less said about him, the better.) 

Jolly should be well ahead in the polls, given how the affordability crisis has crippled people in the Sunshine State.  But Bryon Donalds, Jolly's pro-Trump Republican opponent, has only been two points at best behind Jolly, meaning that nearly half of Florida voters like the MAGA agenda Donalds is selling.  This indicates how difficult it still is for Florida Democrats to regain the relevance they once had.  But there is a silver lining.  Independents are beginning to break for Jolly, as reported by anti-Trump activist, former Republican consultant, and Florida resident Rick Wilson, which could put Jolly and Gwen Graham over the top, which would be good news for Democratic Senate nominee Angie Nixon (below).

Uh, yeah, about that . . . a few words about Angie Nixon.  A black female progressive in the Bernie Sanders mold, she upset Alexander Vindman, the Ukrainian Jewish immigrant serviceman who testified in Trump's first impeachment inquiry over Trump's efforts to blackmail Volodymyr Zelensky to get him to investigate Hunter Biden - in the primary for the Senate special election in Florida to fill the seat vacated by Marco Rubio.  She's running to be Florida's first black U.S. Senator and opposing interim Senator Ashley Moody to become Florida's first elected female U.S. Senator since Paula Hawkins, who was elected in 1980.  (Hawkins was one of sixteen freshman Republican U.S. Senators who rode in on Ronald Reagan's coattails, and she was considered the dumbest member of the Class of 1980, and this was the class that included Dan Quayle.  Oh yeah, she was also the first female Mormon senator.)

Anyway, Nixon's victory came out of nowhere, and in Washington, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, who had been counting on a Vindman victory in the primary, was so appalled by a Sanders Democrat winning in an upset that he refused to back her, allowing Moody to get an edge.  Yet another reason why so many progressives despise Schumer so much.  Democratic socialists in Miami celebrated her win over Vindman by putting out an ad heralding the socialist revolution in Florida - hardly a way to curry favor with Miami's Cuban population - but the support she's gotten from black voters has allowed her to remain competitive.  She'd be a shoo-in if not for Schumer and his fellow New Yorker Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who leads the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee this cycle, who have continued to snub her.  And it is here where I end this discussion by coming back to David Jolly, who, thanks to a crackup in the Florida MAGA coalition, could win enough votes to help Nixon overtake Moody in the final 48 hours of this statewide Democratic campaign and allow her to ride on their coattails.

I'm rooting for Jolly.  And Graham.  And please, Florida, send another Nixon to Washington . . . Angie ain't no DICK!  

Trump or Treat

It's Halloween, and Trump his up to his tricks to treat his base.  He's already announced plans to send ICE to polling places in districts and states that matter in the midterms, he's promised five thousand dollars to to adult citizens if the Republicans hold their congressional majorities he might get the FBI to seize voting machines, and he's even challenging the results in Alaska before anyone's even voted.

The situation is this: There are two men on the Alaska ranked-choice ballot named Dan Sullivan, the incumbent Republican U.S. Senator and an independent candidate.  Senator Sullivan is clearly identified on the ballot, but Trump is convinced that Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Mary Peltola got the other Dan Sullivan to stand for the office so that Senator Sullivan supporters would mistakenly vote for him, helping Peltola.

Now why would Trump make such an accusation against a nice lady like this? 

Because it's true.  Apparently, anyway.

The New York Times reported this past week that the Peltola campaign recruited Dan Sullivan the non-senator to mount a Senate campaign as part of a dirty truck against the senator and that the Peltola campaign had been working on this scam for months.  Republican Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy has ordered an investigation into the ruse, and the Justice Department has filed suit to stop the certification of a Peltola victory should she in fact win on Tuesday.

There's just one thing - assuming that the Peltola campaign did do such a thing, what the Peltola campaign did is perfectly legal.  Trump is pursuing a Nixonian effort to convince Alaskans and folks in the lower forty-eight otherwise.  

Also, the Alaska Supreme Court already litigated the matter, saying that the non-senator Dan Sullivan could appear on the ballot provided that non-senator Dan Sullivan and Senator Dan Sullivan be identified as such.  The ballot clearly indicates which man is which, and only an idiot would be unable to tell who is who.  But, given that MAGA Republicans are voting, being unable to tell who's who would be something of a possibility.

And yet the New York Times is treating the Peltola non-scandal as serious as Watergate, even as news of Trump having raped a former Miss Switzerland and deeper ties between Trump and Jeffrey Epstein than previously known - both from a report issued by House Democrats - get little more than a shrug.  Again, all that the news about Trump provides is entertainment value.

For that reason, I should seriously consider canceling my online subscription to the New York Times.  I got it for four dollars a month, and I have never been able to get my money's worth.  For one thing, my subscription rate is now going up. Another thing, I rarely have time to read it.  The stories I'd intended to read but never did outnumber the ones I did read by a wide margin.  And when I do go to the Times site, I go to the Times Machine archival site.  To read first-hand accounts of historic events like Pearl Harbor or Lyndon Johnson's landslide election?  To research material for my blog posts?  No - to look for department store ads from the late seventies featuring veteran models I befriended through Facebook.

That's about all the New York Times seems to be good for - indulging in its past.

By the way, here's a picture of my model friend Catherine Roberts from a Saks Fifth Avenue ad that appeared in the Sunday Times in 1979. 

Rebecca of Donnybrook Farms

She's a former Navy pilot and has had a successful civilian career, she's from New Jersey, and her name is Rebecca.

No, I'm not talking about Mikie Sherrill, whose given name is Rebecca ("Mikie" comes from her middle name, Michelle).  I'm talking about Rebecca Bennett, a businesswoman and a military veteran who, like the governor of New Jersey, is running for a U.S. House seat.

Bennett has the same safe, moderate, slightly liberal agenda that Sherrill got herself elected to the House with in 2018,  with emphasis on affordability and health care accessibility.  She's currently running strong in New Jersey's Seventh U.S. House district, but her victory is hardly assured.  Her Republican opponent is incumbent Representative Tom Kean, Jr., son of the former New Jersey governor from the 1980s, and blessed with the name of one of the Garden State's most historically prominent families.  He has also has Bennett's weaknesses going for him.  Bennett has worked in the health care industry, and this is a time when being a health care executive is about as popular as being a pork butcher in Jerusalem.  

But Kean doesn't have that much else going for him.  Quite the opposite: He has a lot going against him.  He spent over a hundred days out of his House seat - being treated for depression, or so he says - and he traded stocks as a House member despite having supported a ban on such activity.  And Bennett knows how to throw a punch.   

I haven't seen any polls for the district, but it looks to be an interesting election heading into Tuesday.  At this point, who will win is anybody's guess.  But it will be par for the course if Bennett wins.  New Jerseyans obviously have a thing for sending female Naval Air veterans to elective office. 😊

Swiss Mess

Why aren't I surprised by this?

Not a lot of people are, actually, and the lack of shock value  - coupled with Donald Trump's entertainment value - is just the trouble.

Beatrice Keul, a former Miss Switzerland, accused Trump - the owner of the beauty pageant - of raping her in November 1993.  He offered her help in getting a visa to stay in the United States so she could attend New York University and invited her to his room in the Plaza Hotel.  There, Keul said, he physically assaulted her, tore her dress, and caused her to bleed.

The information came out from the Democratic minority of a House subcommittee, which must have clearly embarrassed House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, who would prefer that Democrats concentrate on prescription drug prices.  (Sarcasm.)

Trump dismissed Keul's very credible and most likely true charges (the chances of Keul's charges being true roughly equal the purity of Ivory soap) as a Democratic plot.  That would only make sense if Switzerland had just been admitted to the Union. 

This is beyond disturbing.  The so-called leader of this country is obviously a serial rapist, and everyone just shrugs it off rather than demand that Trump be held accountable.

How long is it before Trump tried to take care of the scandal by starting a war against Switzerland? 

Trump has ruined beauty pageants - which, to be honest, were never that pure and wholesome to begin with - and, given his recent obsession with male posteriors, he's likely ruined the Mr. Olympia contest too. 

I Voted. Meh.

Everyone is talking about how enthusiastic they are to vote.  Not me.  I'm not enthusiastic at all.  I can't remember the last time I was enthusiastic, though I'm sure it was some time in this century.  (I was enthusiastic about Martin O'Malley's 2016 presidential campaign, but as I don't live in Iowa, I never got to vote for him.)

Anyway, I voted, now that early voting has started in New Jersey, and to be honest, my congresswoman, Representative Analilia Mejia (D-NJ-11), a former Bernie Sanders staffer, was the only person I voted for with any interest or excitement.  Cory Booker was up for re-election to the Senate, and while I can remember when there was a time when it was easy to get excited about Cory Booker - about twenty years ago, when he was first elected mayor of Newark - but these days, getting excited over Cory Booker (below) is like getting excited over straw.  Ditto Essex County (NJ) Executive Joseph DiVincenzo, who is running for his seventh - seventh! - four-year term.

Though there were twelve offices up for election on my local ballot - including members of the Essex County Board of Commissioners - I did not vote for mayor or two council members in my town or school board member because it didn't matter.   In all of these cases, except for school board member, the Republicans fielded candidates but there was no Democratic opposition on the ballot.  The school board election had one candidate for the sole seat at stake, but that's a nonpartisan election with a single nomination by petition.)  Also, the local Republicans made sure that the candidates now on the general election ballot ran in the primary election unopposed.  Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito was a resident of my town when he was a federal judge in Newark, and expanding how local elections are run here to the entire country is his biggest wet dream.  

Secession?  So long as we have in New Jersey burgs like mine, my hope of New Jersey withdrawing from the Union is more a of pipedream.  And though I think it can happen, I'm all wet. 

The Lost Picture Show

I very rarely watch movies anymore.

I go for walks, I go cycling when I can, I tend to my flower garden, I listen to music, and I am pursuing my latest hobby, making movie shorts with AI.  But while I'm making movies,  I don't spend much time seeing them.

I think it's the mood of the country that makes me disinterested in the cinema, and the mood was pretty much set by Donald Trump.  I've had issues with the cinematic tastes of previous Republican Presidents, most notably Ronald Reagan's embrace of the Rambo trilogy (the former B-grade actor had B-grade actor Sylvester Stallone for dinner at the White House), not to mention the elder George Bush's predilection for Arnold Schwarzenegger flicks (I like Arnold the man, but not Arnold the movie star).  Call me crazy, but I always thought a President should like foreign classics, the sort of pictures kids growing up in New Jersey in the fifties and sixties could only see by taking the bus to Manhattan once Mom and Dad gave them permission.  Would-be President Michael Dukakis was a big fan of Luchino Visconti, citing The Leopard as one of his all-time favorite films, but he found out the hard way that loving Italian neorealism is a good way to lose votes, especially in locales where not only is a theater showing Italian movies unheard of, so are neighborhoods with Italian families.   

But . . . at least while Reagan and Bush the Elder may have had bad taste in movies (and Reagan had bad taste in scripts), at least they still enjoyed movies.  I don't think Trump has ever seen a movie in his life.  Never mind Trump being unable to tell the difference between Jean Renoir and his painter father Pierre; Trump couldn't tell a Billy Wilder movie from a William Wyler movie.  

Trump watches cable news, as far as I can tell, just so he can call out Kaitlan Collins as a fake newswoman.  It is Trump's obsession with the reality TV show the Presidency has become under this former reality show star's watch, and his projection of the presidential reality show, that has required all of us to keep up with the news.  So we spend a lot less time seeing movies.  I don't watch TV news - I haven't done so since November 18, 2024, the day Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski admitted to have gone to Mar-a-Lago to kiss Trump's corned feet - but I have been keeping up with the news through various YouTube podcasts and video blogs.  And Trump is always at the center of attention, providing entertainment value.  I have written before about how much Donald Trump has in common with Madonna, as he, like she, is media savvy to the point where can promote himself with style when there's less than zero substance there.  Here's another thing he has in common with Madge; you never know what outrageous stunt he's going to pull next, but you know you want to be there when he pulls it.

Well, I have to be there.  As a blogger, I have to be ready for his next trick.  But he demands so much attention that we all have to be there, really, he being our dear leader and all that.  But at least he's entertaining, so what do we need movies for?

This could very well be why Trump tore down the East Wing of the White House, where the White House movie theater was.  He doesn't care about the movies; why should we?

Occasionally I'll be restless enough to want to see a movie, but that doesn't mean I'll actually see one.  Yesterday, October 22, was Catherine Deneuve's eighty-third birthday.  As Catherine Deneuve is my all-time favorite actress - still - I combed through the movie channels on my TV set looking to see if any of them were celebrating Catherine Deneuve by airing one of her movies.  No such luck.  In the process, as I looked at the movies that were on yesterday, I must have gone through about a dozen titles and I could not work up enough interest or desire to see any of them.

Trump has worn me out.

Did I happen to mention that the Montclair Film Festival, near where I live, is going on near where I live at the moment, and the screenings of the only movie or two I was interested in sold out before I was even aware of their existence?

We can't go to the movies or see them on our flat-screens at home.  We're in a movie, and Trump is the director.  He's treating us like cattle, as Alfred Hitchcock treated his actors (RIP Eva Marie Saint).  We're in a movie based on a reality show wrapped in a sitcom, as Churchill might have said.  And we're not going to be ready to go back to the movies with real actors and substantial stories until Trump is gone . . . and if we  remain a country once he's gone, I know what we have to do.

Rebuild the East Wing and the White House movie theater. 

I'm actually glad Trump doesn't care about movies.  If he ever saw It's a Wonderful Life, he'd think Mr. Potter is the good guy. 

The Art of the Deal With the Devil

Did Elon Musk tell Trump to cut Ukrainian access to Starlink or did Trump tell Musk to do it?  At this point, does it even matter?

And on top of that, Trump cute a "deal" with Putin to buy diesel fuel from Russia to alleviate has diesel prices at home for, apparently, two hours.  Because the amount of diesel fuel being purchased is too little to bring fuel prices down any longer than that.

Okay, Trump has not only sold out Ukraine, he's sold out NATO, all of Europe, and even the late Lindsey Graham, who probably still got into heaven when he died because he did not sell out Ukraine and pushed for a law sanctioning Russia that Trump signed in Graham's memory - only to waive it a heartbeat later. 

If there was any hope that we could get back in the good graces of the rest of the free world (assuming we're still part of it), it died when Trump performed the art of the deal with the devil Putin, and at this point, I don't think Europe and Canada can even trust us even if we do prosecute Trump and his cronies once they're out of power.  Trump's moves have added the United States to the list of countries that have committed atrocities against the Ukrainian people, that list including Russia, Iran, North Korea, Belorussia (I have decided not to call Belorussia Belarus, because no European country other than the Netherlands should have a name that ends with an S!), and two states of the past, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.  (Stalin created a grain famine against Ukraine, than a republic of the Soviet Union, in the thirties, which would be like the federal government creating a grain famine in Illinois; Stalin did it the through collectivization of farms and punitive actions against the farmers who resisted.)   Our only allies in Europe now are apparently Russia and . . . Belorussia (not Belarus!). 

It's time for the United States to break up into separate countries.  It's more important to do so that it was this time last week, and it will be even more important to do so this time next week.  As I said before, the more liberal nations that emerge from a breakup of the Union will have a fighting chance to get back in the good graces of the world, like an independent New England or California, while reactionary states like the Republic of Texas can sign treaties with Russia.  Any post-U.S. countries that still believe inn the rule of international law can join Canada in a North American Union and possibly became associate members of the European Union, as Canada has become.  The right-wing countries that emerge from the breakup of the Union can go to hell.  Including the Mormon State of Deseret. 

Our fate was sealed when enough people were taken in by Trump's bunk and drivel to make him President again in 2024.  Kamala Harris warned us about Ukraine in her only debate with Trump in Philadelphia and also warned that Poland could be next on Putin's list of countries to annex.  She issued that warning in the state, Pennsylvania, that has the highest concentration of Americans of Polish origin of any state in this hopefully soon-to-be-broken-up Union.  But apparently the voters in Pennsylvania, who gave the state to Trump in the 2024 election, thought it was more important to stop imaginary Haitians from eating cats and dogs in Ohio. 

Another reason I want America to be broken up: If and when the Democrats win back Congress, investigations of Trump will likely be put on the back burner, though Chuck Schumer will send Trump a "strongly worded letter" and Hakeem Jeffries will tell House Democrats to focus instead on prescription drug prices. 

On the bright side, Kimberly Guilfoyle was recalled from her ambassadorial post in Greece, and the planned televising of Nidal Hasan's execution for the Fort Hood massacre has been canceled (though not the execution itself).

Katie Foiled

Imagine a Trump regime spokesperson whose tenure is so short - five days - that she's gone before you even get a chance to comment on it!

Not since the implosion of Gary Hart in the first week of May 1987 has a political figure fallen so fast and so far.  White House press secretary Katie Zacharia started her new job on Monday and lost it on Friday after a single press briefing in which she turned out to be the one who needed to be briefed.  She proved to be an absolute disaster at reading prepared remarks and made some awkward comments about being a working mom, which ultimately enabled her to become a stay-at-home mom.  

She is, as Alfred Landon once described himself, a lawyer who never had a case.  Except that Landon, an oilman, was speaking metaphorically.  Zacharia is a graduate of Pepperdine University's law school.  However, she never passed the bar examination.  Why?  Perhaps you weren't paying attention: she's a graduate of Pepperdine University's law school!  Even Sean Hannity, when he interviewed her for his program on Fox News, didn't take her law education seriously.

Though I understand she's licensed to practice law in China.

Now that Zacharia is gone, it's only a matter of time before Trump gets some other bottle-blonde knock-knees to serve as his mouthpiece - and I don't mean as his lawyer, he already has Todd Blanche in that job.

I never thought I'd say this, but when I saw Katie Zacharia in action, I almost miss Karoline Leavitt.

Amused To Death

Just when I thought this country couldn't sink lower in the gutter, Pete Hegseth sends us right into the sewer.

Hegseth, who as Defense Secretary has become this administration's Hermann Goering, announced that the Islamist terrorist Army major who shot and killed fellow servicemen at Fort Hood in Texas in 2009, who was sentenced to death for his crime, will be shot by a firing squad for a . . . livestream television broadcast.

Now, I don't support the death penalty for the same reason I as a Catholic, don't support abortion - because only God should decide who lives and who dies.  (You atheists who have a bone to pick with me can shut up and sit down now, thank you very much.)  But if Nidal Hasan, the guilty party, should be executed, at least let it be done in private, and preferably with lethal injection - or, as befits a fascist regime, a cyanide capsule.  A firing squad on live television is barbaric, disgusting, horrible, egregiously stupid, and morally bankrupt.  Given that Hegseth is a white nationalist with enough tattoos to embarrass Graham Platner, his plan to have Hasan shot live (and in a wheelchair, at that, as Hasan is disabled), that's par for the course.

What's more, it will inflame Muslims all over the world to the point where the next terrorist attack on American soil could make 9/11 look like a bomb in a baby carriage. 

Hegseth is doing this for a target audience, and it's not the orange blob in the White House.  It's for all of us.   Not necessarily the MAGA crowd, who will likely find great amusement in watching a Muslim in a wheelchair got shot to death, but for those of us on the opposite side of the political spectrum.  We can't watch, and we don't want to watch, but Hegseth will see to it that we have to watch.  Airing an execution is his way of sending a message as to what we might expect going forward if we oppose the regime.  As Stephen Miller, this administration's Heinrich Himmler, said once it became apparent that a black woman with a Jewish husband was going to lead us to a new birth of freedom, the policies of the President will not be questioned. 

Be afraid.  Be very afraid. 

The execution is scheduled to take place at the scene of the crime on December 3, which, like November 5, 2009, the day of the shooting, is the first Thursday of the month.  Hegseth appears to have discovered this thing they call symmetry.  But Hasan's lawyers might be able to delay it for awhile.

Kimmy G Foiled

"Do you know me?  I was a decent looking woman when I was married to a Democratic governor, but when I changed my party,  I changed my looks.  

"I lived with Donald Trump, Jr. for awhile, and then his dad gave me a foreign ambassadorship to get rid of me when he got back in power.

"I'm now living as a nouveau-riche deadbeat in Athens, where everyone mistakes me for the daughter of the Creature of the Black Lagoon.  That's why I carry the American Express card.

"It allows me to live it up on Santorini, which I could have sworn was an Italian island, in the summertime, pay for security when I let the Greek government know that my boss could topple it if he wanted to, and when I charge more than I can pay, hey, I don't worry, I can get some rich man to help me pay it off.  Well, hopefully.  Anything to help me keep getting collagen treatments!"

To apply for the card, look for a form available wherever the card is welcomed.  Everyone except MAGA grifters is encouraged to do so.  Really.

"The American Express Card.  Don't leave office without it." 

Ball and Jack

I feel a little more confident that I'll live long enough to see the downfall of MAGA.

Senate Republicans called Jack Smith, the former special counsel who had the goods on Trump and would have put in him in prison had Kamala Harris not blown the 2024 election ("He has an enemies list, I have a to-do list!"  Oh, how cute!!!!), to testify on his investigation.  At one point, Senator Eric Schmitt (R-MO) tried to catch Smith in a lie so he could be charged with perjury.  

Schmitt asked Smith where if he was at an Atlanta Hawks basketball game in early 2024 Saturday, February 3, 2024, and Smith replied that he was not.  Schmitt, suddenly thinking he was Perry Mason, declared that he had caught Smith in a lie, saying that there was evidence that he was at a Hawks game on Saturday, February 3, 2024, while in town to collude with prosecutor Fani Willis to go after Trump.  But then Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), whose father was a top sportswriter for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune,  caught Schmitt in an egregious error, noting that he had confused the Atlanta Hawks with the University of Iowa Hawkeyes, whose collegiate women's basketball team, who featured star player Caitlin Clark, played the University of Maryland on Maryland's home court.  Sure enough, Jack Smith was caught on camera at that very game in College Park, Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C. - a long way from Atlanta. 

Senator Katie Britt (R-AL), who had apparently planned to follow up with further questioning about Smith's whereabouts on that date, was left with her mouth agape.  She probably was going to follow up with a question to make Smith get himself into deeper trouble and realized how close she'd come to following Schmitt in self-immolation.

Hey, it could have been worse.  😄 

By the way, I know exactly where I was on Saturday, February 3, 2024.  I was at top model Beverly Johnson's one-woman show at the 59 E 59 Theater in New York because I've had a crush on her since 1979 and I wanted to see her in person. And if I'm ever subpoenaed to testify and my whereabouts on that day, I can prove it by pointing out that Beverly Johnson (below) began her show with a slide show of her portfolio and ending with a picture of Bill Cosby and calling him "a fucker."  Just like Eric Schmitt.

(Look, I know it's unnecessary to feature Beverly Johnson's sexy pose from the cover of the February 1976 issue of Cosmopolitan, but because it is so sexy, I like to use it as much as possible. 😀)

Voting Blights

The Supreme Court ruled in the past few weeks on electoral games in favor of Trump and against him.  The Court acted against Trump by ruling that it was not permissible to make the Postal Service deny sending ballots to people that the regime believes are suspect and possibly not legitimately registered.  However, the Court did rule in Trump's favor by allowing him to have states remove from voter rolls names that the regime has significant reason to believe are names of illegal immigrants, which could result in the Spanish surnames of native-born Americans - some of whom are descended not from Latin America but directly from Spain itself (there are almost a million Americans descended from Spain) - being dropped from voter rolls despite being legally registered.

Justices Alito and Thomas sided with Trump both times.  Of course.  

Jim Acosta was recently talking to former Illinois Tea Party congressman Joe Walsh - who is to the right of Genghis Khan but believes in American democracy and absolutely despises Donald Trump - and both agreed that it was necessary for anti-MAGA voters to vote early, vote on Election Day, or hand in a mail-in ballot at the county clerk's office, or at least put it in a drop box . . . but not to mail it.  Although the Postal Service is still required to deliver fill-in mail ballots for counting, but there are many voters who think their mailman might be MAGA and, even if they trust the post office, don't trust the mailman.  None of my mail carriers have been white men for years, so I don't have to worry about that.  However, I too am voting in person, and early to boot.  Unless, of course, the ICE agents at my local polling place have read this blog.

Don't laugh.

Meanwhile, forgive me for bringing this up so late, but I cannot any discussion of elections go by without talking about one of the last primary elections in this election cycle.  In Massachusetts, Senator Edward Markey, one of the geezers in the Senate, was renominated to run for another term, defeating Representative Seth Moulton of Massachusetts' Sixth U.S. House District.  If the name of Seth Moulton sounds familiar to you, he was one of the young bucks who challenged Nancy Pelosi's leadership of House Democrats in the wake of Trump's initial White House win in 2016 - the other one being Tim Ryan.  And we all know what Pelosi thought of them. She didn't - she said they had no constituency.  First of them to fall was Tim Ryan, who we all know "ran a great campaign" for the U.S. Senate in Ohio but could not compete with Peter Thiel, who bought the Senate seat for his protégé, the bearded weirdo currently serving as Vice President.  Now it's Moulton's turn.

Moulton, who, like Ryan, ran for President in 2019 and didn't make it to 2020 because only his family took him seriously, had to give up his House seat to challenge Markey in the Senate.  He thought that his youth - he turns 48 this month - would be an asset, but his centrist politics were a liability.  Markey, despite his age, is a staunch progressive who connects with the young - he's the Irish Bernie Sanders - while Moulton is your dad's idea of what a Democratic candidate for office should be like, especially if your dad volunteered for Gary Hart's 1984 presidential campaign.  Moulton is the type of centrist Democrat who tries to please the older generation because he's old-school himself.  Not a way to win a statewide race in Massachusetts, which is so liberal that, if the federal government tomorrow adopted urban--development and transportation policies that favor transit over cars, it would start tearing down shopping centers along Route 1 and building suburban infill the day after.   

Seth Moulton is the Tim Ryan of the Northeast.  He had so much self-confidence that he was ambitious for bigger things and got too big for his britches.  Note that Moulton did not get included in the House Democratic leadership that succeeded Nancy Pelosi and her crew, a leadership that does not have a single non-Hispanic white man like Moulton or Ryan in it.  

At least Ryan didn't have to suffer the indignity that Moulton does - going out along with Pelosi.

Oh, the irony. 

My Second Short Film

I just made another short film with AI, and because I wanted to continue the story of the previous film - and because I have no ideas for other stories, because my imagination is limited for the time being - I made a sequel to A Lady Mime Unmasks.  And Talks . . . And Talks . . . And Talks.

In A Lady Mime Unmasks, Part 2 - Parallel Lives, the sequel, Thelma, the lady mime in question, returns to see her career begin to go beyond street performing.  She starts doing more gigs for upper-class parties, and soon she performs her first elementary school assembly. Jim, the unseen young man whom she connected with in the first film after finishing her street act, is seen and heard this time, as he becomes her boyfriend.  But, there's one thing you may have forgotten about him if you don't recall how Thelma described him in the first film . . ..

 

This particular split screen is the thumbnail for my new movie short on YouTube.  Thelma and Jim are not talking to each other on their cell phones but are in fact talking to friends about the new boyfriend/girlfriend that she/he has,

And you can see for yourselves just how their relationship blossoms right here.

I probably won't do another self-interview to explain this film.  This film, as a continuation of my first film, should speak for itself.

And remember that Thelma and Jim aren't played by real actors.  They're both AI creations. 

Ah! Analilia!

I went to a community meeting held by U.S. Representative Analilia Mejia (D-NJ), my new congresswoman, this evening (the picture of her above is mine), and my intention was to get up and address the congresswoman on what has since become my favorite issue - secession.

I had a prepared statement all ready to go.  I wrote it out a week in advance.  It was as detailed as I could possibly make it in two minutes, with most of the points I made here on this blog.  It took forever to get out of my house this evening, but I made it in time, and I was all prepared to give my statement.

But, uh, it . . . didn't turn out like that.

Representative Mejia structured her meeting around two basic issues, artificial intelligence and voting rights, and she preferred that people submit questions and comments on index cards.  I diligently wrote the basic talking points of my statement, and the congresswoman even noticed me, saying that I was clearly eager to get my thoughts down.  Alas, only a handful of questions and comments on index cards were read at the meeting.  None of them was mine.

Although an aide to Representative Mejia said that my comment would be taken into account, he did say also that I could submit my statement to the congresswoman through him.  I couldn't give him my copy, though; the printout was very faint.  I plan to send it to him via e-mail.

I don't want to waste it.

I remain committed to the idea of secession and dissolution of the Union.  I may be fighting a losing battle, but that doesn't mean I'm going to give up the fight. 

We Took Our Problem To the United Nations

Our problem is . . . Trump.

Last week's United Nations General Assembly speech from Trump was putrid, declaring that he was putting Iran on notice and more or less threatened to destroy the country, presumably with nuclear weapons, to end the war.  ("We made a desert and called it peace."- Tacitus, Roman historian)  he was promoting the sort of belligerence the United Nations was set up in 1945 to prevent.

Even while Trump went all Dr. Sinister on Iran, his emissaries at the United Nations undistinguished These States by putting the country on record as opposing a UN resolution to promote the rights of women because it was too "woke" and "DEI."  The vote on it was otherwise unanimous.  And remember, these sorts of General Assembly vote embarrassments didn't start with Trump.  The United States has had a long history with opposing UN resolutions designed to make the world a better place and being in a minority of one because there's no money in promoting women's equality, the environment, or children's rights.

Not only doesn't the United States deserve to be a member of the United Nations, it doesn't deserve to be a nation.  I continue to support the dissolution of the Union and I remain a secessionist.

Trump capped off a disastrous week by hosting President Xi Jinping of China in a display of fealty to the Chinese leader that must have led many in the Chinese province of Taiwan, the last Chinese province controlled by the Republic of China and an island we're obliged to defend.  Trump is so enamored with Xi and his unlimited power in China that he seems perfectly happy to let him do what he wants.  Like invading Taiwan.

Note: Along with Russia, the United States and China are permanent members of the fifteen-member United Nations Security Council and they can kill any resolution that the Security Council passes even with a solid majority with a veto.  Great Britain and France are the other two permanent members, now in a minority among the permanent members.

Sad.

Stop the Press

Trump banned CNN, MS Now (formerly MSNBC), and Politico from the White House press corps.

Apparently, they called the Great Lake next to upstate New York Lake Ontario.

Trump defended the expulsion by saying that these news media outlets on the basis of the deceptive and negative coverage of his regime.  Well, I guess that makes sense, at least as far as deception goes, because of all that sanewashing the mainstream media outlets do, but how is sanewashed reporting on Trump "negative?"  Well, it is a negative development, to be sure, but not in the way Trump would frame it.

One CNN reporter who isn't sugar-coating coverage of Trump is Kaitlan Collins, who is known for asking Trump questions as sharp as the tip of her nose.  Indeed, Collins may be the primary reason that CNN has been banned.  She does her job well - too well, perhaps, now that the deal for the Ellison family to buy CNN's parent company is going through, a deal enabled and facilitates by . . . Gavin Newsom?  Alas, this is so.  Expect Collins to be fired once Bari Weiss takes over the CNN channel - and then expect her to start her own channel on YouTube.

And expect Newsom not to be considered a strong contender for the 2028 presidential campaign.

Anyway, the three media outlets, CNN MS Now and Politico (Politico? A Republican-friendly publication that tries to go straight down the middle?) sued, and the rest of the mainstream media outlets - even Fox News! - are showing solidarity with them by boycotting the White House press pool.  So when Trump appears at an event, it doesn't get covered - or it does get covered by NewsMax or OAN and there's no sound because they're too small to provide sound themselves.  A federal judge just ruled in favor of the press outlets banned, and they've been allowed back in the White House, but you can bet that Trump is finding a way to boot them out again. For one thing, he's vowed to defy the ruling, and he may yet do that.  Go ahead, Trump - that's just one more thing you'll be indicted for when you're finally out of office. 

I'm glad the mainstream media are finally waking up.  But it may be too late.  As with MAGA voters who feel conned and duped by Trump now that there own situations suck, the epiphany the press just had could be the equivalent of the moment in Shakespeare's King Lear where the Earl of Gloucester realizes too late - just before his eyes get put out - that he trusted the wrong son. 

Hollywood Dream

California's lame-duck governor, the always controversial Gavin Newsom, caused yet another stir when he said that he would not run for President in 2028 if former Vice President Kamala Harris does so.

I don't know why Newsom would come out and say this when Harris has not indicated whether she plans to run for anything.  It doesn't make sense that Newsom would give up so easily in such a ridiculous circumstance, even as many Democrats are urging Harris not to try again for the Presidency. Unless, as Robert Kuttner suggested, writing in the American Prospect, that Newsom is "trying to smoke out Harris’s intentions, since they would indeed be drawing on the same donor base. Newsom and his backers need Harris to declare, or get off the (donor) pot."

So far, her only strong show of support for a possible 2028 presidential campaign is from black voters, suggesting the very sort of identity politics she trumpeted in 2019 (remember, she never made it to 2020) and tried to rise above when she became Joe Biden's reliever in 2024.  Polls indicate that she could win the South Carolina primary, which is going first in the Democratic presidential nomination campaign, a power play President Biden pulled to avoid any embarrassment in New Hampshire.  Yes, South Carolina Democrats are overwhelmingly black, but, given the fact that the state hardly matters in general elections - i.e., Republicans always win statewide elections - that's hardly a reason for South Carolina to be the first state to hold a Democratic primary, especially when it was the first state to secede from the Union to preserve the sanctity of slavery.  

Anyway, Harris is only doing well in preliminary 2028 presidential polls because of name recognition.  Her fellow Californian Mark Zuckerberg, who is easily one of the most hated men in These States, could easily run for President and get good polls numbers on name recognition alone.  Harris, as the first black woman to ever be nominated by a major party for the Presidency, has only that distinction; otherwise, she's just another Democrat who lost a presidential election, and Democrats are highly unlikely to nominate her because they need to nominate someone who can actually win.  It was Harris who said that when Democrats fight, they win, and when she lost, Trump aide Susie Wiles said that the Harris campaign was so lackluster ("I'm working on my to-do list!") that it seemed like Harris never even tried.

Harris must think she's so special that she can make a comeback, even though the last Democrat to make a comeback from an unsuccessful general-election presidential campaign was . . . umm, er, no, wait a minute . . . uh . . . uh . . . Grover Cleveland? 

And his second presidential term was a disaster. 

Right, Kamala.  You keep dreaming. 

To Hell With the Kennedy Center

Seriously.

Donald Trump can't put his name on the Kennedy Center, so he's insinuating that it must be closed and possibly demolished because of deferred maintenance.  He doesn't mention, of course, that that, through his handpicked board of directors for the performing arts venue, he's the one who deferred it.  At this point, who the hell cares?  It's an ugly building, the interior is pretentiously gaudy, and it's done its best business when it presents some of the same lowbrow and middlebrow entertainments one might find at a suburban theater in northern New Jersey or northeastern Virginia.  

And nothing underscores this fact than actress and singer Lynda Carter's appearance at the rally at the Kennedy Center on Friday to save it from potential demolition.  Now, in no way am I suggesting that Lynda Carter is not a talented entertainer.  She played Wonder Woman so well on TV in the seventies that it's hard to imagine any other actress in the role.  And anyone who remembers her TV variety specials knows she can belt out a tune - she once performed Kool and the Gang's "Celebration" on one of those specials with enough gusto to rival the original Kool and the Gang record.  But "Wonder Woman" was not Hamlet, and it would have been a scandal if Lynda Carter, talented though she may be, had tried to convince anyone that she was Ophelia.   Similarly, being able to sing Kool and the Gang's excellent signature hit song does not qualify one to sing arias.

And yet, the middlebrow shows that the Kennedy Center is known for are precisely what has drawn people to this venue in the first place.  Speaking on one podcast, commentator Alex Wagner spoke fondly of some of the touring Broadway musicals she'd seen there as a Washington, D.C.-area resident.  Alex Wagner doesn't get it.  Such events are not what the Kennedy Center was meant for.  It was supposed to be a repository of high performing arts, not a stop on an itinerary of a touring musical company.  There are plenty of theaters in Washington for that sort of thing.  But then maybe the Kennedy Center's programming toward the more pedestrian entertainments underscores just how culturally insignificant Washington really is.  New York, a city that emerged organically and over time, has numerous cultural opportunities, and though it has its own flaws as architecture, Lincoln Center (no definite article necessary) offers just the sort of highbrow performing art that the Kennedy Center barely offers and would not offer at all if not for the National Symphony Orchestra and the Washington National Opera, both of which predate the Kennedy Center.  The center itself is merely an outlet for the sort of entertainments offered in any other provincial burg, which ultimately what "the nation's capital" is. 

So yes, let the Kennedy Center get demolished.  Good riddance.  Even though Trump would violate a court order by having it razed, it would be one more crime to charge him with to send him to jail.  The National Symphony Orchestra and the Washington National Opera got along all right before the center was built; they'll get along fine without it.  And to respond to the argument that the capital of a great nation deserves a venue for great performing arts . . . well, maybe we're not so great anymore, what with the center of gravity in the West shifting toward Ottawa and Brussels. That's just one more reason to break up the United States into separate countries and prepare for a possible future where Washington isn't the capital of anything but stands as a monument to the American federation that once was.      

On the Mark

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney will likely be remembered by history as the most influential and most consequential man of the early twenty-first century.

Carney's government just signed a new agreement with the European Union, which makes Canada an associate member of the EU and a partner in international trade and common defense.  This will allow Canada to work more closely with the EU to put a check on Russia and its increasing harassment of its adversaries along with new economic incentives that will allow Canada to sell EU members timber, oil, and minerals in exchange for European goods.  

Where does that leave the United States?  Nowhere.  And that's the point.  After nearly 160 years of friendship with the U.S., Canada now treats the United States as a belligerent that cannot be dealt with in a rational manner.  This is perfectly understandable, given the high tariffs the U.S. has imposed on its neighbor to the north.  The European Union had already been turning away from the U.S. and its quixotic tariffs and trade policies.   The United States has already made it clear that it no longer wants to be interdependent with other countries and in many cases, if you consider all of the international treaties the United States has rejected over decades for reasons of "concern" over national "sovereignty," never did want to be interdependent with anyone.  Canada and the European Union are now working in concert to make sure that the U.S. is more isolated than it ever wanted to be.  

The chief architect of American isolation and decline, of course, is Donald Trump.  He and his henchmen and henchwomen did all of this.  And seventy-seven million Americans voted for this.  American voters have demonstrated quite clearly that their limited education and questionable judgment have brought all this about, even as the government that Americans elected has demonstrated clearly that it can no longer function properly, with Republicans running things into the ground and Democrats merely going along with the escapade and going through the motions.

The United States has also demonstrated with equal clarity that it can no longer be trusted or accepted as a responsible member of the international community.  I've said it before, and long before Trump came to power, but it's truer now that ever - "You and Me Against the World" should replace "The Star-Spangled Banner" as the national anthem.  Electing a Democratic President in 2028 - who will not be Kamala Harris (sorry, Kamalamaniacs, she's had her chance) - will not change that.  Because we could just as easily elect as President another right-wing nationalist in 2032 (assuming the planet hasn't been destroyed by AI by then).

And that, my friends, is yet another argument for breaking up the United States into separate countries, or at least allowing Democratic states and maybe a couple of swing states to secede from the Union and apply for admission to the Canadian Confederation.  In fact, if the six New England states have a second Hartford Convention and conclude that secession and forming a separate country is now not only plausible but also necessary, and New York and New Jersey make moves to secede and ask Canada to take them in (as they weren't taken in by Trump - get it?), that might all cause the U.S. to unravel faster than the U.S.S.R. did in the early nineties.  

In other words, Carney's new deal with the European Union may be instrumental in the fall of the United States.

Let a Republic of New England or an independent California and an expanded Canada move on to work in harmony with the rest of the world to solve the planet's problems.  The remnants of MAGA America - a Mormon State of Deseret, a restored Confederacy, a revived Republic of Texas - will merely fall by the wayside.  And they'll deserve it. 

Rise of the Machines

When I released the movie short I made with AI, a sweet little monologue film in which a young woman who performs as a French-style mime artist and steps out from behind her mime persona by removing her whiteface and talking to an unseen young man who is deliriously smitten by her, on YouTube, I responded to detractors of AI - specifically, creative AI, which many people believe is a contradiction in terms - that my eleven-minute film was not going to end the world.

But it might, it turns out, play an infinitesimal part in it.

AI entrepreneur Dario Amodei said over the weekend - a weekend during which we marked the silver anniversary of 9/11 - that, if developed too fast and not handled properly, artificial intelligence could destroy humanity.  By "destroy humanity," Amodei didn't necessarily mean the proliferation of environmentally catastrophic data centers like the one above.  He meant that AI could possibly launch nuclear missiles, instigate bioterrorist attacks, and, considering we just marked 25 years after the World Trade Center towers were blown to kingdom come, possibly hijack planes and fly them into buildings.  It would be like the scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey, where HAL kills one of the astronauts after he tries to stop HAL from hijacking the mission, albeit on a mass scale.  I might add that Stanley Kubrick's 1968 classic movie takes place in the same year that the World Trade Center towers were destroyed.

One person assessed Amodei's warning and dismissed the risk of ending humanity - Donald Trump.  That could be because he's eighty years old and doesn't care what happens after he's gone, though it probably has more to do with the fact that his two older sons are heavily invested in AI companies.  Trump isn't the only one in charge who pooh-poohs AI's risks.  House Speaker Mike Johnson, the most powerful elected Republican outside the executive branch and the man in line for the Presidency in case Trump suddenly drops dead and Vance is subsequently lynched by a panicked mob, has concurred with Trump that the government should take a laissez-faire approach to AI, which means he's fine with AI destroying humankind.  After all, he is a fundamentalist Christian who believes the end of the world is at hand anyway.

Oh yeah, did I happen to mention that Amodei says that, theoretically, AI could wipe out humanity within a decade?   I did the math, and it turns out that if that happens according to schedule,  I might not get to live past eighty, like my mother did.  I more likely only make it to 68, like my father did.  Gee, thanks a lot, thanks a bloody lot.  And Trump may live to be ninety - but just barely. 

Meanwhile . . . I've started a sequel to my movie short, as I hinted at the end of the short that my lady mime character Thelma and the unseen young man she meets in the park would become a couple.  The sequel will involve Thelma and her new boyfriend Jim talking to friends on the phone about their new beau.  I'm taking my time with it, so I have no idea when it will be ready.  I don't have a clip to show you as a sneak preview, but I do have a picture of these two attractive people as a couple.

(Aside: If you've seen my original short, you'll perceive that Thelma has more or less picked Jim up, which is pretty much the only way a white man could ever end up with a black female street performer as a girlfriend.)

I have a storyline for my attractive interracial pair that will ultimately span over five short films, and I am promising right now that there won't be a sixth.  I don't want to press my luck, both with my story and with AI.     

And contrary to popular wisdom, creative AI doesn't have to be bad.  For one thing, it enables me to be a filmmaker, something I could never have been without it.  And I should note that Paul McCartney used AI to complete a Beatles track based on a John Lennon demo that had originally been intended for Anthology 3 but was left off due to technical problems that mid-nineties technology could not have solved.  So, no, I don't think the five films I ultimately create will end the world.   Especially when I hope to have them done before AI gets so out of hand that even MAGA will support regulation.  But since I don't drink, smoke, use drugs or eat beef (at least not for awhile, thanks to chemically treated Argentine steaks), I sort of think I can make it to my one hundredth birthday, but that's not going to happen if the human race is wiped out before then.  Oh, and by the way, the gleaming futuristic world of leisure and art run by intelligently and empathetically programmed computers imagined in Donald Fagen's 1982 hit song "I.G.Y. (What a Beautiful World)" wasn't meant to be optimistic or hopeful.  Fagen was being ironic.  

Here are Dario Amodei's thoughtful observations on the matter of artificial intelligence from his own Web site.   

Stolen Valor

For those wondering when the United States would roll over and die as a result of the return of Donald Trump, the suspense ended this past Wednesday.

Trump gave a speech that was as brazen as it was untrue.  He said that he was down at Ground Zero after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks that took place 25 years ago today.  He actually suggested that he either enabled first responders or was a first responder himself.  He tried to make himself look a hero who risked his life at the World Trade Center site when suddenly two big, burly firefighters grabbed him and brought him to safety when it appeared that the U.S. Steel Building might collapse.

Trump was not down there.  He only went to the perimeter of the restricted zone on September 13, 2001 and talked about the team of first responders he'd sent from his construction sites - and that was no doubt a lie, as was his insistence that he helped in coordinating the first responders there.   Trump merely tried to hijack the attacks much like the al-Qaeda commandos hijacked the planes. 

This happens at the same time that he orchestrated a Republican national convention that more closely resembled an annual party congress in Europe, where policies are debated and outlined than an American national party convention where a presidential ticket is chosen in addition to policy debates.  Alas, there was largely no discussion of policy at the MAGA congress in Dallas, which more closely resembled a Nuremberg Nazi rally.  Trump made that clear by requiring all of the "delegates" to take an oath to promise to vote Republican in the 2026 midterms and get as many people to vote Republican as possible. 

Even if they have to cheat. 

It's time to break up the Unites States into separate counties.  Let then, the United States of America pass.

Mail Robbery

Why is the Postmaster General's picture not displayed in post offices?  Isn't that where pictures of wanted criminals are always displayed?

David Steiner (above), the nation's new Postmaster General, is completely on board with Trump's desire to restrict mail-in voting.  Having been directed to come up with a plan to do so, Steiner, who succeeded Louis DeJoy, says he is going forward with his plan and will definitely make sure it is implemented.

The backstory: Trump declared that he was going to restrict mail-in voting for the 2026 midterms to combat voter fraud.  He directed the Postal Service - ostensibly independent of presidential authority since 1971 - to root out names perceived to be illegally on the voter rolls and deny mail-in ballots to those allegedly illegal registrants based on state ledgers of registered voters.  A federal judge in Boston ruled against Trump, saying it was unconstitutional, but the Supreme Court invalidated that ruling, explaining that the case against Trump was initiated before the Postal Service had finalized a new mail-in ballot rule per Trump's orders.  Steiner has since issued his rule, the rule was challenged in court, and Trump has now appealed to the Supreme Court to uphold Steiner's rule, even though, as commentator Molly Jong-Fast noted, it "would effectively let the executive branch interfere in voting in a way that raises serious concerns about partisanship and disenfranchisement," especially when elections are run by the states, not the federal government.

DeJoy, who eviscerated the Postal Service by shutting down facilities and removing mailboxes, was probably our worst Postmaster General since Lawrence O'Brien, President Lyndon Johnson's Postmaster General; it was O'Brien who terminated mail contracts with railroad companies en masse, cutting off a vital source of revenue to the then-already-beleaguered railroads.  But Steiner seems to be eager to make DeJoy look like Cave Johnson by comparison.  (Cave Johnson, who was our twelfth Postmaster General and served under his fellow Tennessean President James K. Polk, initiated pre-set postal rates and pre-paid postage, paving the way for the United States to issue its first postage stamps in 1847, after Sir Rowland Hill in Britain did the same seven years earlier.)

So what can we do?  Not much, alas.  The only mitigating factor here is that even if the Supreme Court does rule in Trump's favor - not out of the realm of possibility despite the clarity of the Constitution's ban on federal interference in state-run elections, and a Supreme Court ruling that violates the elections clause  would be yet another argument in favor of the breakup of the United States - it would be too close to the 2026 midterms to fully or even partially implement it.  But it would be implemented in time for the 2028 presidential and congressional elections, when Trump plans to run for a third term despite the Twenty-Second Amendment's clearly enunciated term limit on the Presidency.

My solution?  Vote early.  Vote early, but don't vote often - that will only make Trump's case about voter fraud.  But do vote early.  When registered Democrats and Democratic-leading independents vote early, the local canvassers are able to determine who has already voted and who hasn't, and early voters make it that much easier for the canvassers to locate and reach those who haven't voted yet.  If you must deposit a paper ballot and you live in a county, parish (in deference to Louisiana), municipality (in deference to Connecticut, which abolished county government in 1961, even though its counties have continued to appear on maps), or voting precinct (in deference to Alaska) that has drop boxes for ballots, it is far better to use those than to mail your ballot.  And it's easy to track from the drop box.

Yeah, I'm still voting.  So long as New Jersey does not secede and try to become a Canadian province or form a new union with other Middle Atlantic states, I am going to continue to vote and do so in person and early.  But I remain a secessionist, and if my new U.S. Representative - Analilia Mejia, the first woman of both African and Hispanic origin to serve in Congress - ever has a constituents' meeting, I plan to tell her so.   

 

America the Not So Beautiful

For the second time since I've gone back to Mass, my parish closed the service yesterday with the church vocalist (our version of a cantor) lead the congregants in a singalong of "America the Beautiful."

This time I could not stand idly by.  I refused to take part in the singing or even stand, as one is expected to do for the recessional hymn.  At first I just remained seated when I turned to the hymn numbered on the wooden placard in the front of the church and saw what it was.  But then I asked myself a question . . . what would Colin Kaepernick do?

I took a knee.

I got out of the pew and genuflected with my left foot and my right knee on the floor as the congregants sang "America the Beautiful."  Anyone could see that I was emulating Colin Kaepernick.  Surprisingly, I was not accosted outside on my way to my car.

So what's wrong with U.S. Catholics singing "America the Beautiful" in church?  Quite a few things, actually, and excuse me if I repeat myself here and there from a previous post.  First of all, it's an act of nationalism in what is supposed to be a universal church - the very word "catholic" means "universal."  Catholics in Ireland or Poland would not sing "America the Beautiful" - or any of their own patriotic songs, for that matter - in church any more than American Episcopalians, as part of the Anglican Communion, would sing "God Save the King" at one of their services.  Second of all, America is not a beautiful country.  Donald Trump and his greedy band of wealthy supporters cannot sing "America the Beautiful" while they pollute our skies with smoke, poison our waters, fell our forests, and develop our farmland into tract houses, shopping centers, office parks, and now data centers.  And neither can we.  And, Trump apparently wants to sell Yosemite National Park.

Third, it's a bad look for Catholics to sing patriotic songs when so many Opus Dei members seem to be running our archdioceses and our federal judiciary.  Why do progressives love to go after the Church for being patriarchal and misogynistic when those same adjectives can be appended to a faith they increasingly defend, Islam?  Because no one outside of MAGA has ever accused American Muslims of promoting Sharia law in this country, though Opus Dei had a hand in overturning Roe v. Wade.

But fourth - and this is a personal reason - it goes against my own beliefs.  Back when Trump got voted back into power by MAGA supporters - many of them Catholics, some of those Catholics white and Hispanic working-class males with a machismo complex - I decided that I was through with this country and wanted to, but could not, leave it.  As I have said many times, I had decided that I didn't need to leave America because America had left me.  And almost immediately after Trump moved back in to the White House (and before he began remodeling it), I became a secessionist, convinced that the United States could not longer go on as a country and that its constituent states of the Union should break up in at least ten separate countries, twelve at the most.  I can't sing a patriotic song about a country I hope goes the way of Czechoslovakia.  I cannot ignore my sentiments and sing "America the Beautiful" in honor of a country I want to see come to an end.  I felt very much the same way that I did back in May, when the pastor extolled the virtues of being an American in his homily (and when I heard "America the Beautiful" sung in church for the first time). 

So, this time, I took a knee on the edge of the pew.  And trust me, I did not want to do that.  Especially on a hardwood floor, which made it painful.  But the pain I felt pressing my knee against the floor was a small price to pay for keeping my integrity.