The Late "Late Show"

CBS canceled Stephen Colbert.

Colbert, the host of "The Late Show," will no longer deliver his witty, barbed comments about Donald Trump on late-night television.  It's not just Colbert that's going off the air; "The Late Show" is ending completely once Colbert is gone.

Almost as soon as the news came down, many observers quickly accused CBS, which infamously settled with Trump over a bogus lawsuit involving Kamala Harris's "60 Minutes" interview before its parent company completed a lucrative merger, of bending the knee to Trump to prevent him from further trying to extort the network by canceling Colbert.  Just like when CBS axed "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour" in 1969 to appease President Richard Nixon, who was always offended by les freres Smothers' jokes about him and their opposition to the war in Vietnam.  "We weren't canceled," the late Tom Smothers said, "we were fired!"  

Good point - if it were true.  But the actual truth is that CBS's continued endeavor in late-night programming was a drain on the network.  Colbert's ratings, as MSNBC host-turned-podcaster Keith Olbermann pointed out, had been in decline for years and the show was generating less revenue for CBS as more young people - the demographic most advertisers aim at - were tuning out and opting for streaming and the like.  Given that, it's only a matter of time before the two Jimmys - Fallon at NBC and Kimmel at ABC - follow suit.

Besides, if Colbert were being canceled because of Trump, why is he being allowed to continue on TV until his contract expires - in May 2026?  If Colbert is being given ten months to say anything he wants to about Trump, then the idea of him getting fired for making fun of Trump doesn't hold water.

Some reporters do believe this has to do with Trump.  Jonathan Alter told Al Franken on Franken's podcast that he personally believes Colbert is being let go because he is constantly making fun of Trump and the MAGA movement. What Alter, a friend of Colbert's and like Colbert a resident of Montclair, New Jersey, did not mention was that his (Alter's) wife is a booking agent for Colbert's show. 

So much for full disclosure.

Stephen Colbert isn't really going anywhere.  This time next year, he'll likely have a podcast of his own in which he'll continue to ridicule Trump.  Meanwhile, CBS will for the first time since 1993 have no late-night programming at 11:35 PM Eastern, freeing the local CBS stations to go back to airing sports-extra report shows or maybe some old movies.  Or maybe CBS will bring back older reruns of current shows that haven't had any earlier episodes syndicated yet, a practice both CBS and ABC employed back in the seventies when Johnny Carson was at his peak.  I have no idea what will happen to the Ed Sullivan Theater, but chances are CBS will sell it to some young hotshot who doesn't know who Ed Sullivan was and who will likely convert it into a sports bar.

Tear Down This House!

This one.

Okay, now that I have your attention . . . let me set things up here.  Donald Trump is planning to make a major change to the White House, something that would never have appeared on Kamala Harris' to-do list or anyone else's . . . he's going to have a new White House ballroom built, with construction set to start later this fall.

He plans to have it done before January 2029, when he's scheduled to leave office.

It would replace much of the East Wing, as seen below.

Wonder why the rendering shows it in the wintertime?

As out of scale as it looks on the outside, the planned ballroom is just plain gaudy inside, with the inevitable excessive use of gold leaf.

More opulent than elegant, this planned expansion of the White House suggests comparisons to Mar-a-Lago for many, but for me I can't help but think of Adolf Hitler's Chancellery in Berlin, with its emphasis on size and ornament, which was designed by the Führer's sycophantic court architect, Albert Speer.

The Kennedy Center has also been compared to Hitler's palace, but at least the Kennedy Center isn't anyone's actual residence.  Someone's residency, yes; someone's residence, no.  The White House is the home of the President of the United States, who, more than a famous Hollywood actor, a renowned captain of industry, or an overexposed helium-voiced pop singer from Detroit, is America to the world.  And the White House is supposed to represent our values, not one President's.  This is different from President Truman having a bowling alley installed or President Ford adding an outdoor swimming pool.  This cheapens and degrades the executive mansion!

But, at this point, I am a fully committed secessionist, and I hope to see Trump become the last President of the United States before the country goes the way of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.  Because Washington, D.C. was culled from 64 square miles of the Maryland side of the Potomac River (Virginia added 36 square miles so that the District of Columbia would be ten miles square -100 square miles - but requested it returned in 1846; ironically, those 36 square miles became the city of Arlington, which is the home of the Pentagon and Arlington National Cemetery), I had imagined that Washington would become the capital of what ever post-American republic Maryland ended up being in, or maybe become the new capital of Canada if the northeastern states became Canadian provinces, another option worth considering, but now I know that Washington can't be the capital of any post-Union country.  Trump has already sullied it with changes to the White House already, such having just had the Rose Garden lawn being paved with granite (Hitler liked granite) and having already gotten rid of the trees in his first presidential term (Hitler got rid of the trees along Berlin's grand boulevard, the Unter den Linden, which got its name from those very trees, to have more state parades).  He's already wrecked havoc on the Kennedy Center.  What does he have planned for the Capital and the Supreme Court?  And is the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial in jeopardy of being dismantled?

Therefore, I propose the following ideas once Washington, D.C, is no longer the capital of anything.  

First, return it to Maryland.  To avoid the prospect of Maryland having to rescue another failing city when it's already saddled with Baltimore, divide Washington into smaller towns and either add them to existing Maryland counties or make the old District of Columbia a new county - name it Douglass County, after famous Marylander Frederick Douglass.

Second, repurpose the government buildings for apartments or office space.  As for the Capitol, turn it into an art museum, as the Louvre palace in Paris became an art museum.  The Supreme Court can become a new performing arts complex to replace the spectacularly ugly Kennedy Center.   Wall up the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials and, once the interiors are gutted and the statues are placed elsewhere, preferably in their states of origin, turn them into four-star restaurants.  Like Maison Robert in Boston occupying the former city hall.

And the White House?  Tear it down, just as the Chancellery in Berlin was.  Expand the green space south from Lafayette Square.  Get rid of any trace of Donald Trump having ever been there.  Replace the site of the Oval Office with a monument dedicated to all of the immigrants who were rounded up in the second Trump term and never heard from again.  

(As for what to do with the Washington Monument . . . yeah, I have no idea.)

This wouldn't be the first time a city built to be a national capital would cease being one.  Bear in mind that the Russian czar Peter the Great built St. Petersburg on the Baltic Sea to be a showpiece capital for the Russian Empire and replace Moscow as the seat of government.  St. Petersburg is certainly a lovely city, but when the Bolsheviks took over Russia, Lenin decided that the city was too close to Russia's western border and moved the Russian capital back to Moscow, which would become both the capital of the U.S.S.R. and the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic.  (And during the Soviet era, St. Petersburg was named Leningrad.)   St. Petersburg, however, is still a repository for Russian culture. Washington is only a seat of government.  It has no reason to exist without a country to be a seat of government for.

Just as the country it is the capital of has no reason to exist anymore.

The Shape of Munich

I just returned from my first trip to Europe.  Yes - finally!  I got to the Old Country at last.  (I'll go back, though, regrettably, not to live there.)  I visited three major cities - Paris, Berlin (with a side trip to Wolfsburg, home of Volkswagen) and Munich.  While the former two cities, both national capitals have a lot of positive attributes, I am taking a look here at Munich, which is also the capital the German state of Bavaria. 

While in Munich, I was impressed by how the city is arranged and laid out.  In the center of Munich is the Marienplatz, the public plaza reached only by bicycle or on foot, as all of the streets that directly connect to the Marienplatz (like the one shown below) are car-free.  The stores in the downtown area are a mix of American and international chains, with a decent number of local stores as well.  The plaza itself is a magnet for street performers, people watching, and public demonstrations for one cause or against another.  The city has a good mix of traditional urban neighborhoods and some suburban-style neighborhoods reminiscent of American suburban towns developed before the postwar era.  And it's all connected by a comprehensive mass transit system that includes a subway, a suburban rapid-transit rail system that runs concurrently underground with the subway, light rail, and buses.   

Meanwhile, back at home, the Democrats are struggling for a message that they can convey to Americans that will inspire to vote for them in future elections, and not just a message that will compel them to vote against Republicans. I am tempted to offer the advice that a bicameral delegation of congressional Democrats go to Munich and see how Munchers live.  The first point of fact is that, yes, people live here.  Munich has a population of purposeful, industrious people who contribute to the economy and build up the community.  (In Munich, as in everywhere else, the economy and the community are one and the same - without one, you can't have the other.)  The comprehensive transit system makes it easier to get around than even in New York,  a city that gave up its trolleys decades ago and hasn't replaced the old elevated railways on the Upper East Side.  The corporate offices of the businesses headquartered in Munich, like BMW, are located away from the core downtown area, which was thankfully left intact and never disrupted by "big footprint" projects such as the Renaissance Center in Detroit.  Parkland is plentiful, almost as plentiful as that in Paris.  For all of these reasons and more, Munich has a high quality of life.  This is in stark contrast to many places in America, where downtown areas are dead zones, people need cars to go shopping at the malls and big-box stores that drew business away from downtown areas, the loss of the local economies that once depended on manufacturing have led to the loss of community.

So what does this have to do with the Democrats?  If a bicameral Democratic congressional delegation went to Munich or some city in Europe like it, they would see happy people enjoying happy lives.  Right now, the United States, despite being the richest nation on earth, are full of unhappy people. And many of them are unhappy because of a lesser quality of life.  Democrats could go home after seeing Munich and convey to voters a vision of how they could live and thrive like the population of Munich, in cities and towns designed for people and not for corporations, in streetscapes that don't permit cars or do permit them without letting them overwhelm the landscape.  Democrats are already trusted more than Republicans on health care, and Germany's health care system allows ordinary citizens to avoid worry about how to handle medical expenses, but with Republicans trusted more on the economy, Democrats need to show Americans how a thriving economy can be for everyone . . . and how physical communities can be crafted to allow such an economy to prosper.  

In other words, Democrats could go to Munich or any city like it (most of which are in Europe) and offer a vision based on their observations that would be superior to the corny American Dream of a house with a white picket fence in a "Leave it to Beaver"-style housing development that Republicans have long offered.

I am merely tempted to offer such advice to the Democrats, but I am stopping short of doing that.  Because Democrats are still Americans, and as Americans, they may benefit by seeing how people live in a city like Munich, but they may not thoroughly comprehend what they see.  Because they would be saddled with American biases about the quality of life - the bias toward automobile suburbia and the freedom to go where you want and when you want without having to rely on transit timetables.  And because they are Democrats, they would likely draw the wrong conclusions and learn the wrong lessons.  Centrist Democrats would go home concentrating on the major corporations in Munich that sustain the city and would continue to embrace Wall Street and its concerns, and they would find Germany's higher gasoline prices and Munich's reliance on transit too esoteric to explain to a nation of Chevrolet Suburban and Ford F-150 owners. (Münchners, as the city's residents are called, who own cars generally own compact cars or cars one or two sizes smaller.) Progressives would complain about having found nothing that would benefit specific racial and ethnic groups, as too many of them are invested in identity politics and  have little interest in anything that would benefit everyone.  

That is, Democrats are too centered on how to preserve the American way of life as it has existed for decades and can't be bothered to imagine something new based on the European cultural assumptions represented in Munich.  

Is Munich perfect?  No.  It's the most expensive city in Germany to live in.  Middle-class residents are getting priced out of the immediate area around Marienplatz. And I can say from personal experience (finally, personal experience in Europe!) that the transit system in Munich, comprehensive though it is, is rather confusing to navigate, and the route maps don't help.  Also, Munich, like most European cities, has a graffiti problem that makes the place look less than elegant.  But Munich offers Americans an example of a viable alternative to a living pattern in These States relying on high costs for shelter, transportation and energy - a living pattern that is literally driving us insane.  

The urban planning expert James Howard Kunstler, before his body was taken over by a pro-Trump MAGA pod person, once said that if we Americans made our local towns and cities better places to live and embraced a more sustainable European pattern like you find in Munich, Rotterdam, and so many other cities in the Old Country, solutions all of our other social problems would fall into place.  (Like the behavior of the police.  When I was in Munich, a police officer scolded me for having stood in the middle of Leopoldstrasse on a painted median to photograph a memorial arch from the proper angle, but he did not rough me up and take a nasty tone at me, which is how I'm sure an American big-city policeman would have dealt with me in a similar situation and how some American private-firm security officers deal with people.  And while this Munich policeman spoke to me in German - hence I could not understand his verbiage, even if I did get the gist of it - his tone, though admonitory, was not nasty.)  But in order to take a masterstroke that would alleviate our social and economic problems like designing places that make people feel good to be there, the Democrats (the Republicans? highly implausible) would have to understand the need for making such places.  If a delegation of congressional Democrats were to go to Munich to get an idea of what their message to voters ought to be, it seems highly unlikely that what they would see would necessarily inspire them - and, in turn, encourage them to inspire others - to make America a nation of better places to live in.

RIP CPB

It happened.  What Richard Nixon, Donald Wildmon, Newt Gingrich, and Mick Mulvaney all failed to do in the past, Donald J. Trump did in one fell swoop.  He forced the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to go out of business.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the somewhat makeshift entity that doles out federal funds, suddenly found itself with no funds to dole out after Trump and his henchmen succeeded in zeroing out funding for public broadcasting in retaliation for a perceived liberal bias in PBS's and NPR's news reporting.  That bias must have been a surprise to Margaret Hoover, the great-granddaughter of the thirty-first U.S. President, who currently hosts the right-leaning PBS talk show "The Firing Line," as well as to longtime viewers of PBS's "NewsHour" broadcast, which gets "funding" from such major corporations as BNSF Railway.  (After too much fluff pretending to be news, like stories on hip-hop culture and those stupid "Brief but Spectacular" essays which are neither, I stopped watching the NewsHour altogether, as you already know.) And National Public Radio tends to broadcast talk shows - many of them boring - that have nothing to do with politics of any sort.  But the "liberal bias" myth, unlike the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, endures. 

As far as I'm concerned, good riddance.  I'm glad that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is biting the dust, mainly because public broadcasting has become so unbelievably pretentious, from the miniseries set in the Regency and Victorian eras of nineteenth-century England on PBS to the Sunday-morning folk-music shows on NPR-affiliated stations that always feature Tom Chapin songs, cuts from David Crosby's solo albums, and Joni Mitchell wannabes singing about saving the whales or building more affordable housing - in other words, public broadcasting caters to the tastes of white bourgeois liberals, the same demographic that even bothers to vote on public broadcasting to begin with.  But given PBS's history with airing Lawrence Welk reruns,  John Tesh concerts, and those tiresome, tedious nostalgia concerts - public-broadcasting programming has more in common with Richard Nader than with Ralph Nader - it's a wonder how white bourgeois liberals could continue to believe that public broadcasting in These States was ever anything like the BBC.  The loss of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting pulls that mask off, but the mask was a bandit eye mask that allowed you to still determine the wearer's features.  People who thought public broadcasting was a truly independent alternative to mainstream commercial broadcasting should have seen right through that disguise all along.  Now they have no alternative but to face the truth.

We'll still have public broadcasting in some form, but now more than ever, local stations will have to rely on local funding.  Get ready for longer pledge-drive interruptions during "special" PBS programming like your local station airing the memorial concert for George Harrison for the 674,258th time.  But it's time to admit that public broadcasting in America - made possible by a grant from an oil company - is not, never was, and never will be anything like the BBC.  My observation is not a popular one, and I lost a friend who raises (raised?) money for a local public-television station by pointing this out to her, but let's face it . . .

How come National Public Radio never aired live performances of popular-music acts now considered "classic rock" and allowed them to be put out as records years after (the albums above don't really exist), as BBC Radio has done? 

Yes, it's too bad we don't have anything like the BBC in These States, but as a New York magazine writer once said twenty years ago, deal with it - there are more important battles against reactionaries to fight.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting disbands at the end of September. 

A Nickel For Your Thoughts?

Lincoln is being assassinated a second time.

The White House ordered the end of production of the penny because it literally doesn’t make a lot of cents.  It just costs more to make pennies than they’re worth.  And in Congress, there’s a bipartisan bill to eliminate the penny and have prices rounded to the nearest nickel.

I’m sorry, but I must object.  There’s no way that the private sector is going to allow the government to tell it that an item that costs $6.51 today will cost $6.50. Companies will lobby for their God-given right to, in this example, round up the price to $6.55.  Pennies should continue to be minted simply because consumers will have to pay more for goods.  Multiply a few cents by roughly three hundred million consumers, and corporations will make out like bandits.

The good news is that nobody is suggesting that pennies be demonetized.  A few weeks ago, I was in Canada, and when I tried to pay for something in cash in the amount was something like $4.22, I tried to pay exact change but the counterperson explained to me that Canada had demonetized its penny back in 2012, after Canada had stopped minting it. Prices remain in ones instead of being rounded to fives and they simply write off any extra one to four cents when the price is paid in cash.  I honestly don’t know how that could ever work here.  But there are probably so many pennies in circulation now in the U.S. that the American penny likely won’t be demonetized for a long, long time.

Personally, I’d like to see the one dollar bill replaced completely by one-dollar coins . . . but that’s another topic.

Too "Late" For the Hall

It finally happened.  Joe Cocker, who died in 2014, is finally getting inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this year.

Now, I have largely stopped commenting on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a rule, mainly because I thought it jumped the shark long ago with dubious inductions and a very, very, very loose definition of rock and roll to include dance-pop singers and to include rappers in the name of "diversity."  But I have to say that Joe Cocker's induction this year is well-deserved.  It is altogether fitting that I should say so.

It is also appropriate that I should applaud the induction of Bad Company, one of the very few rock supergroups that lived (note tense) up to the promise of and the hype over their formation.  And I do.  But the induction comes in retrospect of BadCo frontman Paul Rodgers' well-founded suspicion of the very idea of a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  When record producer Ahmet Ertegun, in 1986, helped Jann Wenner get the project going, he asked Rodgers for his support.  Rodgers, then in Jimmy Page's post-Led Zeppelin group the Firm (which was as much an embarrassing disappointment as Bad Company was not), declined the opportunity.  Rock and roll, he said at the time, wasn't something to be celebrated in a museum but instead was a living, breathing entity that had a spirit meant to be celebrated by playing the records or performing your own music rather than building a fancy temple in which to honor it.  (I'm liberally paraphrasing here.)  

Something must have happened to make Rodgers acquiesce to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's mission to honor rock and roll musicians by means other than playing a record or taking in (or putting on) a show.  Oh, right,  rap exploded and smug stars of that pop form take pleasure in seeing rock decline and fall and in seeing its younger practitioners live in their parents' basements and getting nowhere because no record label wants to sign a new rock band these days and, besides, the old veterans are still bankable acts.  In short, rock is not a living, breathing entity anymore.

Even if rock were still as relevant as it used to be and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame weren't the joke it has become, I still would be as much in favor of Bad Company's induction as I am now.  I'm only sorry it didn't happen sooner.  Bad Company guitarist Mick Ralphs, who had previously been in Mott the Hoople, died recently, leaving Rodgers and drummer Simon Kirke - both of whom had been in Free - the only surviving members of the original 1974-1982 lineup.  (Bassist Boz Burrell died in 2006.)  The belated and posthumous inductions of Joe Cocker and Bad Company's Mick Ralphs are, in a sadly ironic way, just another reason why the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame can no longer be taken seriously. 

Sing To the Fallen Eagle

It was a Philadelphia institution. It was one of the grandest department stores in the American Northeast.  Its central atrium had one of the most famous organs in the world.  In that same atrium, every December, was the Christmas fountain and light show, as much a Christmas tradition in Philadelphia as the Rockefeller Center tree in New York.  It wasn't just a part of Philadelphia; it defined Philadelphia. 

As of the end of this past March, the John Wanamaker department store, having been branded as a Macy's for over a quarter of a century, is no more.  Urban department stores are going out of style and have been going out of business for some time now, as the closing of Lord & Taylor in New York recently demonstrated.  Apparently fewer people want to go to Center City Philadelphia to shop, not even in a store big enough to occupy a whole block.  Most of the stores in Center City are small-time chain stores, no different from the stores you'd find at the shopping malls in the suburbs (which have their own problems these days). 

Shopping isn't the experience it used to be.  People used to dress in their Sunday best to go to the great urban department stores of yore - even on a Thursday afternoon.  Finding that right outfit or accessory was serious business.  You could have a fashionable, satisfying lunch at a department store eatery, even in suburban locations; Strawbridge and Clothier, another lost Philadelphia department store, had a restaurant in its suburban Bucks County location, and as a kid I'd go there with my mother for lunch.  They had the best chocolate pudding there, always served with dollop of whipped cream.  Now the old-school department store is pretty much confined to a theme park on West 34th Street in Manhattan.    It's been eliminated elsewhere, the old urban department stores in other cities reduced to either a generic Macy's or an empty hulk of a building that just sits there unloved and unwanted, like the old Bamberger's building in Newark, victims of Internet shopping and discount marts.  Then there are other empty hulks like the old J.L. Hudson department store in Detroit, which was just plain demolished.

At least the Wanamaker building won't suffer the same fate.  The former department store, an official historic landmark, where a large eagle sculpture once stood in its atrium, when Philadelphians would say to each other, "Meet me at the Eagle," is now a mixed office and retail building, which includes such elegant establishments as . . . a gym.

Pathetic.

I don't know if I'll go back to Philadelphia, my father's family's hometown, any time soon.  The corporate interests who have taken over America seem to be content with homogenizing most of our cities to the point where there's nothing special about them.  As for my father's family's hometown, there's nothing Philadelphia about it. 😞 

Music Video Of the Week - Hiatus

My Music Video Of the Week page is temporarily inactive as of today, July 16.  It will resume on August 8.

Epstein Barred

MAGA is disgusted by the memory of financier Jeffrey Epstein.  They know all about the sex trafficking of minors he was involved with, and Attorney General Pam Blondie (her last name isn't really Blondie, and that's not the only thing of hers that isn't really Blondie)  had promised to released the files that include Jeff's client list.  Now Pam Blondie is backtracking, and Trump, who promised to release the files in the 2024 campaign, has been berating reporters for continuing to ask about Jeff, even as he's now trying to prevent Epstein friend Ghislaine Maxwell from talking.  Except that now Trump insists there are no files on his good buddy Jeff.

But when pressed further on the files, he now insists that the Obama administration concocted them, just like they did with the Steele dossier.  Well, which is it?  Either they exist or they don't.  For the record, they do; some of them have been released, most of the released files being court documents from the Justice Department, from a file on Epstein dating back as far as, uh, 2006.  The big kahuna is a client list of guys that Epstein kept in order to extort favors from them, and Britain's Prince Andrew is rumored to be among the names.  And remember, Prince Andrew might today be King Andrew I of England if his older brother had been killed in a freak accident before he married and had children.  (Wow-wee - pretty scary!)

The list, of course might include and most likely includes one Donald J. Trump, whose administration would be brought down faster than Nixon's if the client list showed him on it.  I'm sort of hoping the list has, in addition to Trump, every heterosexual male in the line of presidential succession and that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant, a gay man, resigns in disgust over the scandal, which would leave Pam Blondie first in line and make her President.  Then we could impeach, convict and remove her for obstruction of justice and replace her with someone to be determined.  

Alas, you can't have everything.  And where this administration is concerned, you can't have anything.  Least of all the Epstein files. 

The Samsonov Solution

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Numbskull has been a bigger mishandler of the Texas flooding that wiped out a summer camp and led to the death of over a hundred people - most of them children - than her boss himself. 

While Numbskull has been cosplaying as a border patrol agent and posing for glamorous pictures for her official portrait as the 33rd governor of South Dakota, flooding in Kerr County, Texas that the National Weather Service could have alerted people to if only there had been the personnel and funds available has left an unimaginable death toll at a summer camp that should never have been built in a flood plain in the first place.  Trump has praised local and federal officials for doing a great job in the aftermath of the disaster.  Except for two things.  First, local officials given funds from the Biden administration to build an alert system  instead absconded the funds for raises and bonuses for themselves.  Second, when it comes to the federal response, Numbskull did not authorize a search-and-rescue mission to Texas until three days after the floods struck on Independence Day.   

Numbskull not only failed Texas and the country.  She failed her President (who is not my President).  If she were a leader, she'd take more responsibility for her failure.  It's too bad that she won't own failure like Russian World War I army commander Alexander Samsonov did.

Samsonov commanded the Russian Second Army in an assault early in the war on the frontier region of eastern Germany that is now an area within Poland.   The Russians invaded Prussia and hoped to take Berlin to bring Germany into submission, but the Russian army's antiquated tactics and messaging technology allowed General Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg to get troops to the Eastern Front quickly by rail and also intercept the unencoded messages Russian commanders were sending to each other.  The German and Russian forces met at Tannenberg (now the Polish village of Stębark) and, in short order, Hindenburg was able to delay the Russian First Army and completely destroyed Samsonov's Russian Second Army. Samsonov, in the aftermath of the defeat, cried out loud, "The Czar trusted me. How can I face him after such a disaster?"  He then committed suicide with a bullet to the brain.

Now that's integrity. 

The government is, as it should be, giving disaster relief funds to help Texas.  California is still waiting for disaster relief funds for the Pacific Palisades wildfires of this past January.

Music Video Of the Week - July 11, 2025

"Rhiannon" by Fleetwood Mac (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Beautiful Loser

I can't believe it.

I spent weeks saving all of the models' pictures from my now-erased beautiful-women picture blog, including this one of Czech model Renata Vackova (which I posted on social media), on a USB flash drive for a potential future Web site that was going to fill the gap left by my blog, and as it would be a site, not a blog, it wouldn't have to be updated or expanded so regularly.

Well . . . I lost the flash drive.

I was moving around the house a lot with my laptop.  I was alternating between my missing flash drive, another flash drive, and an a digital-camera memory-card adaptor.  I was having trouble keeping track of everything.  It was bound to happen.  

So, all of those pictures I accumulated over the course of nineteen years on my old blog . . . are lost forever.

Ahh, who cares?  I had no definite plans to start that Web site any time soon, and now, due to circumstances beyond my control  (those are the sort of circumstances I tend to deal with the most), my plans are such a Web site are no more.  I'm calling it quits.

Start over with a new site of picture of many if not most of the same models I'd planned to feature?  No, no . . . I can't be bothered to go through the Internet to look for all of those pictures all over again.  It's not worth it.  I'd only planned to start such a site because I had the pictures.  No more.  

I don't really want to start a site faced on feminine beauty anymore anyway.  There are enough of such sites and such Facebook group pages one can seek out.  I have other concerns I ought to address.  And maybe that's the lesson of trying to hold on to material from a beautiful-women picture blog that had run its course.  It's a shame I lost it all, but there it is; I'd best get over it.  There are more important things I need to take care of.

You just can't have it all . . . you just can't have it all.

Public Narrowcasting

The Public Broadcasting Service, which airs commercials between programs, airs scripted comedies and dramas imported from Europe, produces no scripted comedies and dramas of its own, has failed whenever it has tried to do so, has aired reruns of Lawrence Welk's show, has also aired productions of Andrew Lloyd Webber's awful Cats musical (ironically on its "Great Performances" series), airs a nightly news broadcast that presents hip-hop stories as "arts and culture" stories, and has aired a political talk show hosted by William F. Buckley, Jr. and then Margaret Hoover (great-granddaughter of the thirty-first U.S. President) despite complaints of its "liberal bias," and National Public Radio, which concentrates most of its programing on topical talk fare, does not have a national network of music stations devoted to one genre or another, has affiliated local stations that broadcast non-commercial music such as college-indie rock and classical music but have weak signals due to their low wattage, has never had rock bands perform live on the air or in the studio and so has never had tapes of such shows become CDs thirty years after, and, like PBS, has pledge drives to supplement its funds and meet its budget needs, are getting their federal funding cut by Trump.

Oh, boo-hoo-hoo.

Once again:  If we had a real public broadcasting network like the BBC, the cuts to PBS and NPR - public broadcasting in the United States is so chaotically organized the television and radio services go by different names - would be news.  But when their programs are made possible by grants from major corporations, it's just a tempest in a very British teapot.

Nothing to see here, folks.  But I'll certainly comment on a story of major importance - like when Kamala Harris runs out of dental floss. 

ICE Bites

One little-talked about provision of the tax and budget bill that is now law is that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) gets funded to the tune of $170 billion, $45 billion of that for detention centers (also known as concentration camps) alone.  That's actually more funding than armies in other countries get, including the Russian army.

And the new hires for ICE are all masked and anonymous foot soldiers who are prepared to go anywhere in America and arrest any Hispanic-looking or mullatoesque American on the suspicion of being in this country illegally - with no due process.  You don't know who these ICE agents are.  They could be January 6 insurrectionists.  They could be former security officers from Trump properties.  One of them could be your next-door neighbor.  Or her husband.  That's right, many of these masked, brawny agents could be women, wearing fake masculine torsos to disguise their breasts so that they appear to be men to the naked eye.  All the better to keep anyone from identifying them when any of the twelve republics that emerge from the dissolution of the United States try to hold accountable everyone that participated in the Trump roundup of undocumented immigrants - and political opponents of the regime; you think Trump is going to stop at undocumented immigrants? - and send these war criminals to The Hague.

The first such example of Trump's cruelty is the new concentration camp for undocumented immigrants in the Florida Everglades built by Florida governor and MAGA acolyte Ron DeSantis at a reclaimed airstrip surrounded by swamps infested by man-eating wildlife, particularly alligators.  Dubbed the "Alligator Alcatraz," the camp is considered inescapable, though no one would blame anyone who tired to escape.  The camp is mostly a bunch of tents with no creature comforts or climate control, food so poor in quality it makes C-rations seem like Le Cirque entrees, and few if any sanitary facilities. 

I can picture the inevitable Hollywood movie about Alligator Alcatraz that will be made long after Trump is gone and when California is an independent republic, with the mid-21st-century Latino equivalent of William Holden as one of the prisoners, and with a scene in which the commandant of the camp addresses the migrants . . . "By the way, if you have any plans of escaping, there are alligators in the swamp that would love to eat you for a meal. If you get past the alligators, you'll have to deal with the pythons who'll squeeze you to death. If you get past the pythons, you'll have to deal with the Florida panthers ready to maul yas. And if you get past the panthers . . . you'll have to deal with me. And if I get my hands on you . . . you'll wish you'd been killed by one of the others."

For now, we have Trump's version of reality, because Trump thinks his regime is nothing but one big beautiful reality show.

America - Gone, Gone, The Damage Done

It passed.  I don't know how it passed despite the odds, especially with the narrow majorities the Republicans have in Congress, by the awful Trump budget and tax bill passed.  

To say this bill is bad is a gross understatement.  It makes the 2017 tax reform bill look like New Deal legislation by comparison.  It could have gone down in the Senate, but Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) went down on Trump (yes, I went there as soon as she got assurances that Medicaid would be spared the worst cuts in Alaska.  She said the bill was awful but voted for it in hopes that House Republicans would improve it, but they were just as eager to blow Trump as she was.  (Expect more R-rated puns as this blog continues; this is the real world.  If you want wholesomeness, join the Osmond family.)  

The result is a tax and budget law far more obscene than the jokes in the previous paragraph.  It makes deep cuts to Medicaid, it decimates veterans' benefits, it practically gets rid of food stamps, and oh yeah, it also restricts the judiciary to rein in the executive branch.  And it gives huge tax cuts to billionaires who don't need them (you know their names; I won't repeat them).  This law pretty much destroys, decimates, and completely demolishes America as we know it.  And it's going to be damn near impossible to put it all back together by the time the Democrats regain control of anything in Washington (not likely to happen any time soon).

This is way I support secession.  The country is beyond repair, and it makes more sense by the day to arrange for a national divorce and spilt the Union into separate countries.   The lack of government services or anything resembling a government at all makes it all the easier.  As for me, I spent this past weekend in Montreal specifically to avoid being in Donald J. Trump's America on Independence Day.  Expect me to be out of the country next Independence Day and every Independence Day for the foreseeable future.

I've seen the needle and the damage done . . . a little part of it in everyone . . . and every failed country is like a setting sun . . ..  

Music Video Of the Week - July 3, 2025

"Anthem" by Rush  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

The Ballad of (YUCK!) Jeff and Lauren

So big bad billionaire Jeff Bezos finally married his bimbo babe . . .  just before the big bosses of the Senate gave him a tax cut as a wedding present!

And he got married in Venice, a city most Americans will die without ever seeing.  Some of them may die after losing medical care to pay for Jeff Bozo's tax cut!

I think this cartoon sums it up, but then I'm biased.  I drew it. 

Profile In Dis-Courage

Trump's big ugly, blister-faced, goateed creature of a budget bill is going through a marathon of amendments to be voted on in the Senate as Democrats try to slow the bill down enough to prevent Trump from signing the bill into law on July 4 (when this blogger will be in Montreal for an extended weekend to get out of the country during a holiday this blogger no longer believes in, hence expect a new Music Video Of the Week a day early).  The bill, which cuts spending on renewable energy and health-care access and will likely cause people to die in order to give Jeff Bezos and is new wife (yuck!) a tax cut as a wedding gift.  One Senate Republican announced his opposition to it due to Medicaid cuts that will disproportionally hurt his state - Thom Tillis of North Carolina.

Tillis had been against the Affordable Care Act because he was not convinced that people could keep their coverage and their doctors if they so chose.  He was right, and he considered that a broken promise from President Obama.  That got Tillis elected to the Senate in 2014.  Now he is lashing out at Trump because the protections to Medicaid Trump promised just aren't there, which Tillis considers yet another broken promise on health care from the executive branch - only this time it's Trump, not Obama, he's angry at.     

And Trump is angry at Tillis.  After more or less threatening him with supporting a primary challenger in the 2026 U.S. Senate campaign in North Carolina, Tillis, fearing naught for his career but likely fearing for his life, prudently decided not to seek re-election after two terms.  He'll be 65 at the end of 2025, which dovetails nicely with his impending retirement.  Progressives are loath to give Tillis any credit for standing up to Trump, since he gave up his political career rather than continue fighting, even as he voted 95 percent of the time with Trump beforehand.  But it's never too late to do the right thing.

That is, until this godawful bill passes.  Tillis's only definite company in his own party in opposition to the bill is Rand Paul of Kentucky, who loathes the exorbitant spending on the tax cuts and finds the bill distasteful and fiscally irresponsible.  Like Tillis on health care, Paul is completely consistent here.  But currently there's no sign that the two extra Republicans that the Democrats need to derail the bill in the Senate are ready to step up.  Meanwhile, Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine continues to express her "concern." 

Right now, alas, I'm afraid that passage of this budget bill is inevitable.  But then again, people said that about a Hillary Clinton Presidency, and look how that turned out.

Music Video Of the Week - June 27, 2025

"Jive Talkin'" by the Bee Gees  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Cuomophobia (Or, Hail Zohran, Our Fearless Leader!)

Not since Samuel Tilden prosecuted Boss Tweed and proved him guilty of corruption has there been a political earthquake of such great magnitude in New York City.  New York State Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, who is 33 years old and a Muslim of South Asian origin, won the Democratic nomination for mayor of New York.  Mamdani is a democratic socialist who is so progressive he makes Bernie Sanders look like a Tea Partier.  Among his policy proposals are municipally owned grocery stores for underserved communities, a "30 by '30" minimum wage increase - $30 an hour by 2030 - free bus service for the poor, and sanctuary for non-heterosexuals.

Well, all of the establishment leaders in both parties in New York State are appalled since Mamdani defeated former New York State governor and political hasbeen Andrew Cuomo - called the future of the Democratic Party by Defector columnist David Roth, who clearly hasn't been paying attention to Cuomo's past - for the Democratic mayoral nomination.  Top Democrats who supported Cuomo are second-guessing themselves and predicting impending doom for the party.  Republican leaders in New York State and in Washington, D.C. fear a hostile Islamic takeover of the city fueled by state socialism that would make the Big Apple a lemon for business owners, middle-class taxpayers, and Jewish residents (Islamophobia always takes precedence with Republicans over their own anti-Semitism).  

Progressives looking forward to the general election in New York City had better not get too confident - not yet, anyway.  Incumbent Mayor Eric Adams is still standing for re-election as an independent, and there is a precedent for a New York City mayor winning a second term as an independent after being dumped by his own party - John Lindsay, who was disowned by the Republicans but managed to win re-election without party backing in 1969.  Also, Republicans and center-right independents could pull off the same hat trick that Republicans and center-right independents pulled in Connecticut in 2006.  When U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman failed to win the Democratic nomination for a fourth Senate term that year, losing to Ned Lamont, the Republicans put up a token nominee while backing Lieberman's independent general election campaign.  Lieberman was re-elected, and Connecticut progressives who backed Lamont had to lick their wounds.  Substitute "Adams" for Lieberman and "Mamdani" for Lamont, and you get the GOP/establishment Democratic Big Apple playbook.  True, Republican mayoral nominee Curtis Sliwa, the founder of the Guardian Angels vigilante group and conservative talk-radio host, is no token candidate, but a coalition of Republicans and establishment Democrats might pivot to Adams if they think Adams can prevail in a three-way campaign.

(Aside:  Ned Lamont was elected governor of Connecticut in 2018 and re-elected in 2022.  He is the rarest of birds - a Democrat who was allowed to make a comeback after an electoral defeat.)

So what do I care, right? I mean, this won't affect the gubernatorial election in my state of New Jersey, right?  But it may.  Don't think that Republican gubernatorial nominee Jack Ciattarelli won't exploit the Mamdani nomination against Mikie Sherrill, his Democratic opponent, for his own purposes, when many commuters to Manhattan live in the state's northern counties and a Mamdani administration might have an effect on commuters through issues like congestion pricing.  Ciattarelli already has a head start by having the opportunity to ask voters to imagine a Sherrill administration working in concert with the mayor of New Jersey's largest city, Newark - Ras Baraka.  Imagine how many times Jack will mention the mayor of Newark - "Ras Bar-AKA!"  By the time November comes, Mayor Baraka will wish his father hadn't changed the family name from Jones.  So think of how Jack can exploit the name of Zohran Mamdani.  

It's very easy to demonize anyone whose surname ends in a vowel, as Ciattarelli's immigrant forbears realized when they came here from Italy.  But in New York City, the only person with a vowel at the end of his surname that got rejected was Andrew Cuomo.  Cuomo was rightly seen as an aging political warhorse out on one last pillage for power in an effort to redeem himself after his sex scandals and the COVID nursing-home scandal by asking to be elected the chief executive of five of New York State's counties (the NYC boroughs) after having been chief executive of all 62 of them.  He is a tried-and-true centrist and a transactional politician, unlike his revered and esteemed father, and he's as megalomaniacal as his brother Chris is self-important.  He offered nothing for New York City's beleaguered residents suffering from the high cost of living and the higher cost of Mayor Adams' stupidity.  Zohran Mamdani did offer something.  

It remains to be seen how NYC independents will vote in November, as New York is a closed-primary state that allows only registered party members to participate. And Curtis Sliwa will still likely garner a lot of support.  But the Democrats ought to remember that not every election campaign for office should have the same type of nominee.  Whether progressive or moderate, all Democrats are pretty much to the left of the GOP these days.  As a center-left Democrat, Mikie Sherrill, who has been blessed with extreme-right Republican electoral opponents that make her look more liberal than she is to progressive voters, is a perfect fit as the Democratic gubernatorial nominee for New Jersey.  As a Democrat more firmly in the middle of the road - so much, she can stand in the middle of the road without touching either yellow stripe with her feet - Abigail Spanberger is the perfect Democratic gubernatorial nominee for Virginia, a former Confederate state becoming more Northern than Southern thanks to an influx of newcomers from the Northeast and a growing realization of the state's geographical position north of 36°30′.  And as an arch-liberal, Zohran Mamdani is the perfect mayoral candidate for New York City, a city populated by immigrants, artists, models, photographers, progressive white women, black women, Hispanics, Asian-Americans, non-heterosexuals . . . I think I just described the guests I always meet at model Nancy Donahue's and hairdresser Harry King's annual parties.  😊

Regarding Iran - I'm Not Going To Talk About . . .

I'm not going to talk about Trump bombing Iranian nuclear-development sites despite the fact that they're so far underground they likely don't need fortified concrete ceilings.

I'm not going to talk about Pete Hegseth being the wrong man at the wrong place at the wrong time for any military operation.

I'm not going to talk about how Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu played Trump into going along with joining Israel's attack on Iran.

I'm not going to talk about Trump's threat to Iran not to attack American interests in retaliation for the bombings and how the spectacularly insufferable New York Post predicted that Trump's posturing would lead to a prospect for peace and prosperity in the Middle East - and then Iran fired missiles at an American base in Qatar.

I'm not even going to talk about the need not to impeach Trump but for Democratic states to secede from the Union.  

Nor am I going to talk about how Trump's strategy to flood the zone with policy sewage keeps making me have to talk about him - "Oh, Christ, do I have to write about this?"  - when I really want to write something about the closing of the revered Wanamaker department store in Philadelphia and the end of penny production by the U.S. Mint.

I'm only going to say this.

If, by this point, you still have a Trump flag hanging in front of your house . . .

. . . you need some serious psychiatric help. 

New Jersey: On To November

Well, the suspense is long since over.  Rebecca Michelle "Mikie" Sherrill won the New Jersey Democratic gubernatorial nomination after breaking through among Democratic voters in the final days of the primary campaign.  And, as expected, Giachino "Jack" Ciattarelli won the Republican gubernatorial election going away.

One thing is for certain: New Jersey's 57th governor will be known primarily by a nickname.

But who will it be?  Many people assume that Sherrill should have an easy time in the general election campaign because of Trump and Ciattarelli's association with him.  But Jack's got a shot.  As I noted before, he's a lifelong New Jersey resident and an Italian-American, while Sherrill is neither.  Also, many people are tired of Democratic machine politics and the high cost of living, which would give any Republican gubernatorial candidate an advantage.  Sherrill can present herself as a Trenton outsider who can bring some fresh thinking to state government, which was the angle of the campaign of former Democratic gubernatorial candidate Josh Gottheimer - like Sherrill, a U.S. House member - but the irony is that she's a Virginia native who has likely never eaten a calzone in her life, which means she's enough of a cultural outsider to turn off many a New Jersey voter.

Trump, of course, remains an albatross around Ciattarelli's neck, and Sherrill, one of those middle-aged Democratic women in the U.S. House known as the Bad-Asses, has the chops to make sure it stays there.  But first she has to make sure her Democratic base is united.  Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop came in second and third, respectively, and they as progressives got more votes combined than Sherrill did as a moderate.  However, if Gottheimer and former state senator Steve Sweeney, both moderates, hadn't been in the primary campaign, Sherrill would likely have won those votes and outpolled both progressives.

To be fair, being a Jersey boy in the truest sense of the term might not be enough for Ciattarelli to pull out a win.  Part of the reason he's the Republican nominee for governor of New Jersey yet again is because of how close he came to defeating Governor Phil Murphy.  Mikie Sherrill is a politician of a less genial and more vicious nature than Murphy is.  She knows how Ciattarelli is weak on many issues by having stands on them that are unpopular with New Jersey voters.  All of this means one thing - this election can go either way.

Music Video Of the Week - June 20, 2025

"Take It To the Limit" by the Eagles  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Iran Amok

Donald Trump returned to office promising that he would never start another dumb war.  Except if it's with Iran.

Iran has been a bugaboo for Americans for years.  Having had an Islamic republican government since the revolution that swept out the vacuous and hated Shah in 1979, it is living proof that authoritarian states can, in fact, last a long time, contrary to popular wisdom.  The U.S. had supported the Shah and had even put him back in power at the request of the British to keep a socialist prime minister from nationalizing British oil interests, yet it wasn't the British Embassy in Tehran that got overrun by Iranian militants in January 1979, it was the American embassy.  That takeover was short-lived, but on November 4, 1979, two weeks after President Carter let the Shah come to America for medical treatment, militants in Tehran overran our embassy again and took its inhabitants hostage for fourteen months.  Subsequent attempts at normalizing relations with Iran backfired miserably.

Donald Trump clearly has a particular hatred for Iran, or at least for the mullahs who run the show there.  Perhaps the paranoid Trump, who believes that all other nations are out to humiliate us, had his own sensitivities offended when, at the age of 33, he saw the U.S. Embassy get seized in November 1979.  Something about it clearly wedged into the folds of his brain.  For he clearly bought Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's overheated rhetoric about Iran being close to getting the bomb, and he even in his first presidential term withdrew from the agreement that was meant to ensure that that would never happen.  The attacks Israel has launched against Iran have given Trump the excuse he needs to pursue another Middle Eastern war as part of a clearly psychological need to punish Iranians for burning all of those American flags.

Except that even some of his staunchest supporters - Tulsi Gabbard, Tucker Carlson - have a problem with that.  Carlson was even appalled when interviewing Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) on his Internet program and Cruz demonstrated his clear lack of knowledge about the very country he wants Trump to go ahead and attack.

Adding to this is the fact that Mike Huckabee, a born-again Christian, is the U.S. Ambassador to Israel, and his only qualification for that job is his experience with evangelical Armageddon prophesies.  He wants a war in the Middle East to bring about the Second Coming of Christ to restore the Garden of Eden with Christians, along with Jews who accept Jesus as the Messiah, to be saved and Muslims, along with Jews who still reject Jesus as the Messiah, to be condemned to the fiery furnace.

Meanwhile, the General Authorities of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints will flee from Utah to the site where Mormons believe the Garden of Eden will be restored upon Christ's return - the place non-Mormons know as Kansas City.    

And wouldn't it be something it the Saints turn out to have been right all along.

I'd prefer not to find out just yet.  But it figures that I'm finally ready to travel to Europe, something I've wanted to do for 35 years, and yet one more thing might prevent me from doing so this time as well.

That thing is World War III.

Guess I'll be going to Kansas City instead.  I'm not a Mormon, but I want to hedge my bets.  Also, it's easier to get there than to the Holy Land. 

Ten Years Gone

It was ten years ago today that Donald Trump rode down his own golden escalator to announce his 2016 candidacy for President of the United States, a story that was at the time only worthy of coverage on "Access Hollywood" or "Entertainment Tonight."  And everyone laughed - it was just another silly celebrity presidential campaign, like that of Joe Walsh (the Eagles guitarist, not the former Illinois congressman) or Bozo the Clown.

No one is laughing now.

In the past ten years, Trump has pushed right-wing agendas, used his power to grift from the government, restrict civil liberties, and even used his time between his two presidential terms to wreck havoc in Washington through his congressional minions.  His cuts to various programs and agencies since returning to power in January 2025 have more damage - mostly irreversible - to America in five months than anything Trump had done in the nine years and seven months before then.  And because the damage he's done to America in the last five months is mostly irreversible, that is, again, why I am a secessionist today.

But never mind that.  Ten years of Trump's impish mischief-making have pretty much culminated in the past week in the reaping of the mean and stunted fruit that Trumpism has born.  Among the lowlights:

• Trump has tightened his grip on the California National Guard and the Marines in Los Angeles, keeping the troops in place as he appeals a judicial ruling saying that he cannot.
• Two Minnesota lawmakers and their spouses were shot, one of the couples shot to death, by a MAGA extremist.
• U.S. Senator Alex Padilla (D-CA) walked into a briefing by Homeland Security Secretary and ICE Barbie Kristi Numbskull and attempted to ask her questions regarding the ongoing mass deportation going on in his state.  Senator Padilla was then accosted and seized by federal officers before being hauled out and pinned to the floor and handcuffed.  The Homeland Security Secretary continued to talk as if nothing were happening.
• Numbskull also threatened to have the governor of California and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass forcibly removed from office.
• Israel bombed suspected Iranian nuclear-research sites, and Trump may have gotten us inadvertently involved. 
• The parade.  That damn military parade.  

But here's some good news.  The Trump birthday military parade was an unmitigated disaster.  So few people bothered to show up that empty bleachers were clearly visible along the parade route.  The soldiers dressed in fatigues rather than dress uniforms, and they don't so much march as they walked.  A quiet protest among the Army personnel for being forced into such a farcical event was plainly obvious not only by their style of dress and casual strolling but also by a tank . . .

. . . with wheels that squeak.

By contrast, the No Kings protests that were held from coast to coast attracted millions of people, like this rally in Chicago.

Anyone not at this rally was likely at the White Sox ball park to hear Pope Leo XIV celebrate Mass from Rome via satellite.

If there was a winner from all of this mishigas, it was California governor Gavin Newsom.  Newsom has always been seen as the Gary Hart of  Generation X - glib, polished, policy wonk - but more recently he's been seen as such for all the wrong reasons - dubious relationships with women, conniving, willing to take right-wingers seriously by communicating with them, too slick for his own good. This past week, however, Newsom threw caution to the wind and delivered a sharp, pointed detailed attack on Trump that more or less accused the Dear Leader of doing exactly what he's doing - attempting to assume dictatorial powers and instigating trouble in the streets of Los Angeles as part of a plan to assume more power.  In other words, he did what most Democratic politicians should do but have not.  He's had enough and he said what needed to be said. 

A week ago, I wrote that Kentucky governor Andy Beshear was the logical choice for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination - that is, if the Democratic Party hasn't been banned under martial law by then - in my argument that we need a white male Protestant.  I didn't even mention Gavin Newsom in that post.  Now I look at him anew and I'm thinking, yes, he ought to be in the running for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination as well.

There's just one little bugaboo - he's a Roman Catholic, and of course a lot of white Protestants don't want a President who might bow to an American Holy Father in Rome.  So let's keep that little detail about Newsom to ourselves. 😉   

P.S.  You might have noticed that Kamala Harris hasn't resurfaced in the past week despite her adopted hometown of Los Angeles being under military occupation.  Most likely, she's ruled out another run for the Presidency (before Democrats adhere to tradition and rule it out for her) and she is now hoping that the next Democratic President will appoint her as U.S. Attorney General - the job she should have had in the Biden administration, because she would have been more aggressive against Trump than Merrick Garland was.   

Music Videos Of the Week - June 13, 2025

"Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)" by Sly and the Family Stone and "Sloop John B" by the Beach Boys  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Primary Day

The primary election in New Jersey for Democrats and Republicans to choose their gubernatorial nominees for the general election in November is today.  Usually, it's on the first Tuesday after June 1 but Governor Phil Murphy, who is term-limited and cannot run again, signed a bill moving it back one week this year because June 3 coincided with the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, a holiday Gentiles usually don't know exists and one even Governor Murphy himself hadn't heard of before.  Shavuot doesn't allow Jews to go out and vote or do anything else.  If a similarly restrictive obscure holiday that was celebrated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints or the Nation of Islam, or the Rastafarians, coincided with primary day, Governor Murphy would have moved the election back a week for that too.  He's that kind of guy.

Be that as it may, no one knows who's going to win the Democratic primary for governor of New Jersey.  There are six candidates, each one getting about 17 percent, of one-sixth, of the vote in various polls - with no clear front-runner - while 2021 Republican gubernatorial nominee Jack Ciattarelli should win the 2025 GOP gubernatorial nomination going away against two token opponents.    

What? Jack Ciattarelli is getting a second bite at the apple after having lost the governorship in an election as close as the 2024 presidential election, yet Kamala Harris is persona non grata now?  How is that possible?  Because Ciattarelli is a Republican.  It's Republicans who get to try again after losing a close election.  Democrats get sent off to internal exile.  Also, Ciattarelli is Italian, and, well, it is New Jersey. Yo! 

I am torn about the candidacy of Democrat Mikie Sherrill, because while I think she would be a good governor, I want her to remain my congresswoman.  I have no opinion of the other candidates, except that all of them would make a better governor than Ciattarelli, who has the support of Donald Trump.  However, I am not voting for anyone today, because . . . I don't vote in primaries. New Jersey has a closed primary that does not allow independents like myself to vote as an independent. I refuse to register as a Republican because they are the party of fascism. But I also refuse to register as a Democrat because I am one of the overwhelming majority of voters who have a low opinion of the party, and also because, as Groucho Marx once said, I would not like to join any club that would have me as a member!

Let's see what happens.

Wanted: 2028 Democratic Presidential Nominee. No Women Need Apply.

I'm going to blunt and come right out and say it: The United States will not have a female President in our lifetimes.  That includes babies born today who live to be a hundred.

We need a white male Democratic presidential nominee.  Preferably a Protestant.

As a Catholic who voted for Kamala Harris, I am embarrassed by this statement, but I stand by it.  The presidential election of 2024 definitively proved that a woman can't get elected President of the United States.  Donald Trump is the second worst major-party presidential nominee of all time, surpassed only by himself when he was nominated by the Republicans in 2024 after the GOP nominated him in 2016 and 2020.  He made it clear that would govern as a fascist dictator during the 2024 campaign.  Yet when it came to a choice between a female presidential nominee - and a black female presidential nominee at that - and Donald Trump, the nation chose Donald Trump.  He won every demographic except for two - black women and white men married to black women - while many Democrats stayed home.

And when the Democrats ran a white woman - who was also a Methodist - in 2016, Trump defeated her too. 

Two highly qualified women lost to a megalomaniac con artist.  I'm sorry, but in this case, two strikes is out.

Democrats who once celebrated the fact that a black woman and an Italian-American woman sat behind President Joe Biden at presidential speeches to Congress in 2021 and 2022 have to realize that we now have two white men with Anglo-Saxon names sitting behind a lapsed-Protestant President of German and Scottish origin because the Democrats have a problem reading the room when they nominate presidential candidates.  Kamala Harris lost not just because she couldn't communicate with voters - or at least she couldn't communicate with voters once the consultants took over.  She lost because too many voters - including many black and Puerto Rican men - tried to picture Harris in the White House and just couldn't bring themselves to see it.  Democrats love nominating female candidates for President because they want to make a statement.  Statement made.  Now we have the National Guard occupying Los Angeles like the Wehrmacht goose-stepping through Paris. 

So, assuming we get to have a presidential election in 2028 in which there is more than one candidate and neither of those candidates are named Donald Trump (because if one of them is, it means that the Constitution has been terminated and the election is rigged), Democrats have to ask themselves this: Do they want to make a statement, or do they want to win?

So forget about Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar, and especially New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand (who currently runs the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee - oh, yeah, that'll help the party win back the Senate in 2026!) as the Democratic presidential nominee for 2028.  And most definitely forget about Kamala Harris - Democrats don't rerun failed nominees of the past.  

Also, forget running another black man - many white voters think Barack Obama is one black President enough for awhile.  So that rules out Governor Wes Moore of Maryland, and besides, the failed presidential ambitions of his two predecessors have proven once and for all that governors of Maryland do not get elected President.  Vice President, yes (regrettably; I'm just old enough to remember Spiro Agnew).  President, no.  

And not even every white man in the Democratic Party is right for the 2028 presidential nomination.  Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania? Jewish.  Representative Jake Auchincloss of Massachusetts?  Jewish.  Governor J.B. Pritzker of Illinois?  Jewish, and also so squat, large and heavy-set, you could show a widescreen movie on his back.  He doesn't look like a President.  No Jews.  No Orthodox Christians either, least of all Greek Orthodox, because Greek-Americans, as Michael Dukakis proved, can't get elected President.  Vice President, yes (I'll cite the late and unlamented Spiro Agnew again).  President, no.

Also, no Catholics.  John F. Kennedy faced accusations in 1960 that he would bow to the Vatican.  John Kerry lost in 2004 because it was feared that he wouldn't bow to the Vatican (then under a Curia more conservative than the Republican Party).  Now that we have an American pope who's so woke he's almost a Unitarian, there are fears once again that a Catholic President would bow to the Vatican.  We need a white male Protestant, one with executive experience (sorry, Chris Murphy) as a governor.

Andy Beshear, the governor of Kentucky?

Andy Beshear.

But then, as I am a secessionist who believes that New Jersey should leave the Union and form a new country with five or more of the other Eastern states north of the 36°30′ parallel line or become a Canadian province, that's none of my business.