Trump Is Our Own Damn Fault

Some people claim that there's a woman - Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris - to blame.  

A lot of people insist that once Trump is gone, a new President, particularly a new Democratic President, can reset the nation's agenda and get us Americans back in the world's good graces - assuming we ever were in the world's good graces to begin with (but that's a topic for later).  But it's not going to be that easy.  More likely, it will be impossible.  

See, when Trump was returned to the office he's currently desecrating, the rest of the world squarely blamed the American electorate and the American so-called justice system for letting it happen.  After the January 6, 2021 insurrection, Trump should have been prevented from being in a position to stand for office ever again.  But Mitch McConnell did not bother to get enough Senate Republicans on board for a conviction in the wake of Trump's second impeachment trial, and Attorney General Merrick Garland avoided prosecuting Trump to avoid looking political - and prosecuted Hunter Biden for the same reason.  Jack Smith hit the ground running in his investigations of Trump's two federal indictments for planning an insurrection and stealing boat loads of classified documents, but he eventually just plain hit the ground, because he got a late start, Garland did not have his back, and a certain judge in Florida, where the documents case was set for trial, blocked and checkmated Smith's every move.  Smith testified before a House committee last week that he had more than enough to convict Trump in both cases and would have if a trial for either had ever gotten off the ground.   

And then there are the voters, who knew that Trump was a crook and, as a result of the fraud case in New York City, a convicted felon.  But they voted for him and gave him a plurality over Kamala Harris in 2024 anyway.  Pundits poured nothing but scorn and derision on the Democrats for running a presidential campaign as compelling as milquetoast, and those criticisms were valid - or they would have been, if not for the alternative to Harris and the Democrats.  The commentariat should not have focused so much on the Harris's lackluster policy proposals and focused more on the lack of intelligence and integrity on the part of the voters.  After all, Trump was telling us precisely what he would do as President in a second term and Harris was warning voters to heed the threat of a second Trump administration, but all the voters cared about was . . . the price of eggs?  But then, blaming the voters is no way to keep those same voters tuning into cable news.

The voters' choice of Trump would have made more sense if they felt that President Biden and Vice President Harris had failed their expectations to create a better and more equitable economy for all.  In fact, they did feel so.  That, however, should not have been their motivation.  Other Western countries, like Great Britain, had thrown out their incumbent leaders in favor of the opposition for economic reasons as well, based on a sluggish post-COVID economy that had affected the world.  But the British had a right to reject the Tories for Keir Starmer and Labour, because Prime Minister Starmer, last I checked, is not a convicted felon who tried to overthrow the king.  We had no right to do so.  Our alternative to Harris was Trump.  Voting third-party was not an option like it had been in 2016, when everyone assumed incorrectly, based on polling, that Hillary Clinton was going to win, as opposed to the dead heat the polls remained in for 2024 to the bitter end.  The criticism of the Democrats for how they approached the general election campaign was not valid.

Then again, maybe it was.  Harris may have had problems beyond her control, but she made a lot of unforced errors that made her defeat more likely with each passing day.  Too many Democrats acted like they knew it all, and many of them seemed more interested in rewriting the rules for American English ("Latinx?" pronoun choices?) than offering positive proposals as solutions for the economy.  And once Trump was sworn in, what happened next?  Democrats did nothing to fight Trump - or made strongly worded statements about Trump's actions, which was worse than nothing.  This, coupled with the capitulation to Trump from the legal, business, and higher-education sectors, only convinced foreigners that Americans were just fine with a wannabe dictator who is now quickly becoming one.  People in other countries know that, without Trump being held accountable for his crimes, another Republican President could try to bully and extort other countries in the future. 

The recent efforts to stop ICE funding in the wake of Alex Pretti's murder and an impending government shutdown may convince Canadians and Europeans that Americans may have backbones (but not necessarily brains) after all.  But there is no turning back; people who voted for Trump threw away the United States' credibility and integrity, and they made America a place no one should visit and Americans a people no one can trust.

And that, my friends, is yet another reason why we need to break up the United States into separate countries.  An intellectual New England, a laid-back California, and a common-sense federation of the states of the American Midwest could join NATO and enter the United Nations and achieve trust and credibility with little effort, even if a revived Confederacy or a restored Republic of Texas could not.  Different regions of the U.S. would likely function better as separate countries, given the cultural and political differences between them.  But as one nation indivisible . . . no.  Those days are gone forever, over not so long a time ago.

We have met the enemy, and he is us.

Michael Cohen, Phony

Like Vladimir Putin and Elon Musk before him, Michael Cohen has been giving people two faces for the price of one.

When Cohen testified before Congress in 2019 after pleading guilty to helping Trump, as his fixer, commit all sorts of crimes - like intimidating Trump's mistresses from coming forward about their relationships with Trump and intimidating Trump's detractors to prevent them from speaking out about him (like former Republican operative Cheri Jacobus), he expressed anger and regret for ever having gotten involved with the business mogul.  He described with great passion how his misdeeds cost him so much because he believed in what Trump was doing (whatever that was) and how he felt he had been taken like so many Trump "University" graduates stuck with diplomas that had all the validity of a certificate from Ace Obedience School.  After serving time in prison for his violations of the law, he went full tilt boogie on bashing Trump, going on all sorts of media outlets and doing his own podcast on the MeidasTouch Network.  This not-so-nice Jewish boy became a symbol of a widely-held belief among Roman Catholics, the power of redemption.

Then the roof caved in. 

When investigative reporter Tara Palmeri, digging more deeply into the case of noted sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein, asked Cohen about his and Trump's connections to the late financier, he got bitterly defensive and lashed out at her as if she had just asked him to pull down his pants.  And Palmeri wasn't the only reporter Cohen blew up at over the Epstein question.  He'd done that with at least three other reporters.  Soon and sure enough, Cohen all but recanted his testimony to New York State Attorney General Letitia James and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, saying he had been "coerced" to provide selective information relevant to their cases against Trump. 

Cohen didn't find redemption because he converted to Catholicism (for the record, he didn't) or because he suddenly saw the light in a manner reminiscent of the end of a sitcom episode (guest starring Joyce Bulifant).  He found redemption because he was caught.

And this phony redemption allowed Cohen to make lots of money going after Trump like the attack dog people wish Chuck Schumer or Hakeem Jeffries were.  He was embraced by a bunch of white bourgeois liberals who should have known better.  And it was all a lie.  He didn't publicly turn against Trump because of conviction.  He publicly turned against Trump because he was convicted.   But playing the wronged Mafia lawyer who's since gone straight is a lucrative business.

Or, rather, it was.  Cohen was fine so long as someone didn't ask him about Jeffrey Epstein, because it's becoming more obvious by the nanosecond that he knows a lot more about Epstein than he's willing to admit, and what he knows likely involves personal dealings with both Epstein and Trump.  By insisting that Letitia James and Alvin Bragg coerced him into giving selectively parsed testimony, Cohen not only revealed himself as an unrepentant grifter (sorry - not sorry), he revealed himself as someone who wanted to get back into Trump's good graces.  And he apparently did.  Trump has pledged to investigate James and Bragg and place them where Cohen used to be - behind bars.

I listened to some of Cohen's podcast rants when I started relying on podcasts for news in place of the bankrupt legacy media, but his schtick wore very thin very quickly, and I stopped listening to him because I was tired of his loud-mouthed Long Island accent.  I stopped listening to him for all the wrong reasons; it never occurred to me that he had knowledge about Jeffrey Epstein that he likely never would have divulged, or that until someone thought to ask him about it, he was safe from having to divulge it and could make bakeries full of dough for as long as no one did.  It never occurred to the Meiselas brothers at MeidasTouch, either, until they dropped Cohen once his statement about James and Bragg came out.  They did not explain why they dropped Cohen.  They didn't need to.

But then, it never occurred to a lot of people, particularly people in the New York or Washington social scenes, that Cohen had privileged information about Epstein he was prepared to take to his grave - something an intelligent primary school student in the north of England could have figured out.

Michael Cohen did, though, ultimately see the error of his ways.  Except that the error was dissociating himself from Trump.      

Alex Pretti

 Say his name.

Alex Pretti, an intensive-care-unit nurse at the veterans' hospital in Minneapolis, was peacefully protesting Immigration and Customer Enforcement agents in the city when he saw about half a dozen of them beating up a female protestor.  Pretti quickly moved to help her and shield her from the ICE agents, who noticed the holster on his person and disarmed him of his gun by force.  Then they beat him up when he tried to shield the woman further and then shot him nearly eleven times.  He may have already been dead from the blows he sustained before they fired a single bullet.

The Department of Homeland Security refused to let local law enforcement investigate the killing of Pretti and labeled the dead man a "domestic terrorist."  Pretti, in an eerie coincidence, was the same age as Renee Nicole Good - 37.   

If the killing of Renee Nicole Good was seen as an isolated incident, and if it didn't make clear to enough people that this the new reality in America, than this killing certainly did.  If it wasn't obvious before, it's obvious now: Donald Trump has made dissent a capital offense.  He's just foregoing the ritual of show trials and public hangings.

This has to end.  Not just ICE killings, not just ICE itself, but the entire Trump administration.  Alex Pretti was doing a very Christian act by coming to the aid of a stranger in the tradition of the Good Samaritan, and he was legally permitted to carry the gun he had on his person (a gun he never brandished), meaning he was illegally disarmed.  He was brutalized and murdered with the sort of violence that is commonly associated with 1980s action movies.  Now ICE hopes to go after the people who got the Pretti murder on video, because Homeland Security counts them as "domestic terrorists."  Even the woman Pretti was trying to help fears for her life because she is afraid that she could be eliminated as a witness.

It's time for the Democrats to step up. Some of them already have.  Several moderate Democrats in the U.S. Senate who had been considering ICE funding in the appropriations bills that need to be passed to avert a government shutdown are now planning to vote against .  The seven House Democrats that already did vote for ICE funding are likely to regret it now - as they'll likely get primaried.  If the Democrats don't join the people in fighting back against Trump, they'll live to have even greater regrets.

And, given what is happening now in Minneapolis and what unfolded in Davos last week, and given that so many people are outraged that Trump has even lost the National Rifle Association because his ICE storm troopers violated Alex Pretti's Second Amendment rights, it's clear that the United States cannot go on.  Once again, I call for the dissolution of the United States.  I remain a secessionist. 

Reason #235,278,384 to Secede From the Union

Well, it looks like we won't invade Greenland after all.  Trump announced that a framework for a deal the benefits the United States was established with NATO that will make a war with Denmark over Greenland unnecessary,  I guess that means that, for now at least, I can plan my next trip to Europe after all.  But with every move Trump makes, it is becoming more likely that I will have to do what I should have done when I was in France and Germany last year - stay in Europe and send for my cats.

Trump didn't really want Greenland.  He just wanted to upset the apple cart.  As Rick Wilson of the Lincoln Project said, the mere power play Trump perpetrated against Denmark only ruptured NATO, which was what Trump wanted.  It was never about Greenland.  Just as likely Trump doesn't want to annex Canada.  He wants to disrupt the relationship between Canada and the United States and sever the ties between the two nations.  He doesn't want peace, although he campaigned for the Presidency against forever wars in other parts of the world.   He wants more power over the Western Hemisphere, as his attack on Venezuela proved.  He wants hegemony over as much of the globe as he can acquire.  Quite, bluntly, he wants to do what Madonna (another Madge-Trump comparison) told Dick Clark on "American Bandstand" what she wanted to do - "Umm, I want to rule the world."

At Davos this week, other nations made it clear that they were not pleased with Trump.  Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney made that much clear when he said that his nation would continue to preserve and protect its values and its commitment to human freedom and dignity in the face of a more belligerent American foreign policy, meaning that Canada and other second-tier powers had to stand up to superpowers like the United States.  Trump swatted away Carney's comments, insisting that Canada owes its existence to the United States (actually, Canada owes its existence to the British Commonwealth, but that's another story).  But Trump's direction is clear.  The trade wars he has started against Europe and Canada with his tariffs, coupled with his decisions to use hard power to enforce American priorities in not just Latin America and the Middle East but in other Western nations, make Trump and the United States a danger to the planet.  Which is precisely why Prime Minister Carney entered a new trade deal with China that freezes out the U.S.  And seventy-seven million people in the U.S. voted for all this in 2024.

Oh yeah, I ought to tell you about Trump's interview with Fox News' Maria Bartiromo, who, according to breaking news, still can't talk.  He told her that the United States has always carried the weight of defense in NATO and not only said that the U.S. doesn't need the military backing of its allies but added that their participation in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  That came as a shock to British, German, French, Lithuanian, and yes, Danish soldiers who lost their lives coming to the aid of Americans after 9/11.  (Denmark lost more soldiers in Afghanistan than any other nation per capita.)  Is Trump aware that the United States is responsible for only 39 percent of NATO's defenses?  Is he aware that, even though the U.S. spends more on defense than it should, 39 percent is still less than half of NATO defenses?  I'm sure he is, because he's asked for a 50 percent increase in the already-bloated military budget, which would compensate for the loss of NATO support if the alliance becomes only a Canadian-European pact but would also starve America's already-emaciated social programs.

No sane politician at the state level, at least no sane Democratic politician at the state level, should want to be part of such a nation.  As for what the United States used to be, well, I'd like to recall what Kamala Harris said a year and a half ago: "We're not going back."  (Ironic, no?)

Oh yeah, don't forget Harris' post-election assurance that turned out to be a lie: "It's gonna be okay."

For my state and for several states in the Northeast, the Great Lakes region, and the Pacific Coast to remain in the Union is suicide.  It's time to get out.  And hopefully, a wave of secession can break up the U.S. into separate countries so that no one post-U.S. nation can ever achieve the hegemony that the U.S. has long since had.   I am for the dissolution of the Union.  I am a secessionist.

Music Video of the Week - January 23, 2026

"Golden Years" by David Bowie  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.) 

Trump's Greatest Hits

Here are some of the craziest stuff Donald Trump said this past week.  Among the comments from his press conference marking the first anniversary of the Trump Restoration:

"After the war, we gave Greenland back to Denmark. How stupid were we to do that?"

FACT: When Germany invaded Denmark on a Tuesday morning and occupied it by Tuesday evening, the Roosevelt administration signed a deal with the Danish government-in-exile for the United States to protect Greenland from an Axis attack (Denmark, by the way, was the first country to be invaded and occupied by Germany after Poland).  The United States also vowed to resist German attacks on French and Dutch possessions in the Caribbean and in South America.  The U.S. never owned Greenland. 

"After 12 months back in the White House, our economy is booming. Growth is exploding. Productivity is surging. Investment is soaring. Incomes are rising."

FACT: The economy is in a period that's more funk than funky, and, given that Governor Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey, Governor Abigail Spanberger of Virginia, and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani were all elected on the affordability issue, no one with a brain would say that incomes are rising - unless you mean the income of Trump's billionaire buddies (and, coincidentally, himself).

"Other Presidents have spent, whether foolishly or not, trillions and trillions of dollars on NATO and gotten absolutely nothing in return. We've never asked for anything. It’s always a one-way street.""

FACT:  That would be news to George Walker Bush, who along with Barack Obama should be speaking out against Trump (Bill Clinton and Joe Biden are persona non grata at the moment, for reasons to random and complicated to explain here).  The United States is the only nation in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization that ever invoked Article 5 of the NATO Charter, which means that it was the only nation ever attacked - on September 11, 2001, when hijacked jet airliners blew the World Trade Center to kingdom come (and almost turned the Pentagon into a quadragon).  Invoking Article 5 meant that all other NATO members came to the United States' aid by participating in the Afghan war against the Taliban.  One nation lost more military personnel than any other per capita - Denmark.  Also, Lithuania sent troops to Afghanistan, and Lithuania didn't even join NATO until three years after 9/11.

"There are windmills all over Europe. There are windmills all over the place and they are losers. One thing I’ve noticed is that the more windmills a country has, the more money that country loses and the worse that country’s doing."

FACT: Wind power is actually less expensive to generate and less costly to maintain than fossil-fuel-based electricity generation.  While Trump has tried - successfully, alas, in many cases - to curb development of renewable energy sources, Governor Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey is still planning to push ahead for wind energy to reduce costs.

Now here are Trump quotes from his speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos:

"I won [the 2024 election] in a landslide, a giant landslide, won all seven swing states, won the popular vote, won everything."

FACT: This claim is only half right.  He did win all seven swing states and won the national popular vote, but it was hardly a landslide; Trump defeated former politician and fallen star Kamala Harris by a margin of 1.5 percentage points nationwide with an electoral vote victory of 312 to 226.  In terms of the popular vote, by the way, Trump is a minority President, having won 49 percent of the vote, which meant that more than half of the nations voters rejected him in favor of Harris or minor-party candidates who may or may not have been spoilers.   

"[The Ukraine war] wouldn’t have started if [the 2020 U.S. presidential election] "weren’t rigged . . ..  People will soon be prosecuted for what they did. It’s probably breaking news, but it should be. It’s a rigged election."

You know the real story by now. 

"We paid for, in my opinion, 100% of NATO.”

FACT: The United States pays for 63 percent of NATO's costs and 16 percent of its organizational costs in particular.

"Our stock market took the first dip yesterday because of Iceland.  So Iceland’s already cost us a lot of money."

FACT:  Trump confused Iceland with Greenland, though the stock market did take a dive because of Greenland - not because it appeared that the Danes would give in to Trump's demand for it but because Trump made the inexcusable and inexplicable demand in the first place.

That's enough.  I don't want to be here all day.

Trump's press conference and his Davos speech were the worst presidential performances in history, at least until next week. It's clear that his brain is deteriorating and his dementia is going full tilt boogie.  It's time to take Trump out of the White House and into an old folks' home.

Maybe Kristi Noem can visit him every week on therapeutic-dancing night.

Governor Sherrill

Rebecca Michelle "Mikie" Sherrill will be inaugurated as the fifty-seventh governor of the state of New Jersey, and she plans to hit the ground running with an energy emergency declaration to cut utility rates, invest more in solar energy, make housing more affordable, and improve the motor vehicle office.

That is all good and fine, but just because we in New Jersey will have a center-left governor who will pursue more humane policies than what's coming out of Washington doesn't mean we will be safe from Donald Trump.  Minnesota governor Tim Walz, who is more progressive than Sherrill is,  has ICE agents overrunning his state and is being investigated for obstructing federal authority even as Trump threatens to send the Army in.  The end. 

It doesn't take much for something to happen in New Jersey to give Trump an excuse to send federal troops or agents to New Jersey, particularly our cities, most of which have been down on their heels for so long that there are generations of New Jerseyans who don't remember a time when Newark or Camden were places people wanted to go to.   Trump sending troops to our cities, where brown people are a majority, would be a calamity.  U.S. Representative LaMonica McIver, who is black, was arrested for trying to investigate an ICE detention center in Newark that housed Hispanic migrants, as was Mayor Baraka; McIver has since been charged and three felony counts of assaulting, resisting, impeding and interfering with a federal officer, and the case is still set to go to trial.  What better way for Trump to divide the mostly black and Hispanic cities against the white suburbs and rural areas (yes, we have some)?

You know where I'm going with this.  As a secessionist, I feel compelled to promote my arguments for secession whenever and with whomever I can.  Therefore, once Governor-elect Sherrill is sworn in, I am writing a letter to her to advocate for New Jersey to secede from the Union and hopefully encourage other Democratic states - like Minnesota - to follow.  (Personally, I hope that Minnesota secedes first, and I have not ruled out writing Governor Walz to say that Minnesota to do so.)  I am making the argument to Sherrill that a soft secession - withholding New Jersey's federal tax revenue, for example - is not enough and that it is time for the United States to split into separate countries.  I am also making the argument to her that if enough states pull out of the Union, it can lead to a negotiated national divorce that effectively dissolves the Union and creates new countries without a shot being fired. 

I still support the dissolution of the Union.  I am still a secessionist.

(P.S.  Here is revised map of my idea for a post-United States North America.  I decided to put West Virginia into the Middle Atlantic republic of Lenapia instead of the Midwestern republic of Heartland, because it would be awkward to have a state of the Midwestern republic on the opposite side of the Ohio River.  I added to Heartland Montana, Wyoming and Colorado and cleaved off the western ends of the latter two state by setting the border between Heartland and the State of Deseret along the Continental Divide through the Rocky Mountains.  Gran Colorado has been eliminated; Arizona and New Mexico became a Republic of New Mexico.  The original New Mexico Territory that was established in 1850 then included the bulk of both the modern states of New Mexico and Arizona.  Click on the map for a better look.)

Yes, Virginia, There Is a Joe Shlabotnik

Several old "Peanuts" cartoons have been appearing on social media.  A "Peanuts" strip like this one alerted someone on Instagram to the name of one Joe Shlabotnik, who was Charlie Brown's favorite baseball player.

Now, Joe Shlabotnik, it must be understood, was the worst baseball player of all time.  He was constantly getting sent to the minor leagues and was prone to pop up when he tried to hit a home run.  He briefly managed a minor-league team but was fired after one game for calling a squeeze play when there are no men on base - and no, it wasn't a women's baseball league.  When Charlie Brown, his dog Snoopy, and Linus Van Pelt went to a sports banquet at the end of 1969, they bought tickets and got seats at Joe Shlabotnik's table.  As it turned out, Shlabotnik was the only missing athlete.  He didn't show up because he had marked on his calendar the wrong date, the wrong city and the wrong event. 

Anyway, someone on Instagram asked if Joe Shlabotnik is a real baseball player.  Here's what I replied:

"Yes, Virginia, there is a Joe Shlabotnik. He exists as long as failure and ineptitude exist, and you know that they abound to give life its pitfalls and pratfalls. Joe Shlabotnik is everywhere. He is the 1962 Mets. He is the 1964 Phillies. He is the 1972-73 Philadelphia 76ers. He is the 1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers. He is the United States men’s national soccer team in almost any year. He is the United States men’s national field hockey team in every year. As long as there are losers in sports or in anything else, Joe Shlabotnik will always exist."

And I'd like to expand on that.  Joe Shlabotnik is me.  Joe Shlabotnik is you.  I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.  We are all Joe Shlabotnik.  We lose a few, probably more than we win.  And we Americans are and always will be Joe Shlabotnik.  Our President is Joe Shlabotnik  He's turned his supporters and the American elite into Joe Shlabotnik.  Joe Shlabotnik is our health care system.  Joe Shlabotnik is our transportation system.  Joe Shlabotnik is our popular culture.  Everyone in America is Joe Shlabotnik.  No Joe Shlabotnik?  That would be like saying there is no Virginia.  Or no West Virginia.  Joe Shlabotnik, like violence, is as American as cherry pie.  

Joe Shlabotnik is a true American hero. I come here to bury, not praise, Joe Shlabotnik.    

Ein Führer

Donald Trump is nothing like Adolf Hitler.  No, of course not.  Just because he appointed white nationalists to government positions, just because he ordered the United States' withdrawal from various treaties and global organizations, just because he's set up a secret police, just because he's persecuting racial and ethnic minorities, just because he's set up concentration camps in inhospitable locales, just because he's enabled his secret police to assassinate anyone who shows and disrespect to them, just because his regime has put out posters celebrating the American worker that look like this . . .

. . . just because the Department of Homeland Security is promoting white-nationalist propaganda, just because Trump has suggested canceling the 2026 midterms, just because he's tried to remake the landscape of Washington with oversized monumental structures, just because he's threatened to use the nation's military machine to take control of places like Greenland and Canada without a shot being fired, just because he's sent forces to the once-demilitarized state of Minnesota . . . oh no, nothing like Hitler, right?

But of course, we must remember the significant differences between the two dictators that make it clear that it's unfair to compare Trump to Hitler.  Like I said, Hitler was a decorated war veteran who loved dogs.  And . . .  

. . . say what you will, Hitler had better taste in music. 

Music Video Of the Week - January 16, 2026

"Show Me the Way" by Peter Frampton  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.) 

Fed Up

There have been many cracks in the wall of Fortress Trump, but this crack is serious.

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell learned, along with the rest of us, that he is under investigation from the Injustice Department for cost overruns in the renovation of the Federal Reserve building.  He could have quietly hired a lawyer, but instead he took to the video camera and declared that Trump and Pam Bondi were after him as an act of retribution for refusing to set interest rates at Trump's desired levels.  Powell added that what Trump and Bondi are doing is interfering with the independence of the Fed.

Trump is clearly having Powell, whose term as Federal Reserve chairman ends in May, prosecuted to send a signal and a warning to Powell's successor.  Powell spoke out in bold, declarative sentences against what is happening in order to control the narrative and to make it clear that he is wrongfully accused of malfeasance.  He's right - cost overruns happen all the time.  This is a shot across the bow of the Trump regime, and while there may be more shorts across that bow before the not-so-good ship Trump is bombarded and sunk, this is an important step toward that moment.

By the way, if cost overruns of federal buildings constitute a federal offense, how come no one's after Trump for his White House ballroom addition? 

Neil Diamond - Moods (1972)

There's an old saying in show business that when you put on a show, you have a hell of an opening, coast for awhile, and have a hell of a close.  Moods, Neil Diamond's eighth album and final LP before leaving Uni Records for Columbia, seems to have been concocted on that premise.  It opens with "Song Sung Blue," an introspective expression of how a song develops and evolves, and it closes with "Morningside," an achingly beautiful elegy of an old carpenter's death whose handcrafted table is a legacy bequeathed to his ungrateful children.  Much of everything in between, however, is Neil coasting.

Moods is crafted like a song cycle, and it shows a great deal of care and ambition with some beautiful orchestral arrangements and intricate acoustic guitar riffs, but too many of the songs are burdened by simplistic lyrics and asinine subject matter.  Tunes like "Porcupine Pie," which imagines a dinner of the roadkill main course complemented by vanilla soup (a double scoop, please, and don't forget the chicken ripple ice cream!), and "Gitchy Goomy," a bit of nonsense Neil wrote for his then two-year-old son with aimless words that don't make sense but are meant to sound fun (but only do sound fun if you're a two-year-old), don't even have memorable melodies.  (And there's nothing really cute about the Native American name for Lake Superior.)  Diamond's attempts at soul and gospel are equally inept; "High Rolling Man" and "Walk On Water" don't benefit from the choirs backing Diamond's lead vocals, as the words to both ditties are thinner than the paper they were written on. Ain't it right?  I said, ain't it right? Ain't it right?  (And the less said about his bilingual "Canta Libre," the better.)

Geez, what does it say about an LP whose best cuts include a pair of brief instrumentals, "Theme" and "Prelude in E Major," the latter being the lead-in into the aforementioned "Morningside?"  It's easy to understand, after listening to Moods, while everyone thought Clive Davis was crazy to spend $4 million to bring Diamond over to Columbia.

There are two standouts in the middle of this LP.   "Captain Sunshine" takes advantage of the neo-classical music around which Moods is centered to create a dreamy ballad worthy of comparison to Rodriguez's "Sugar Man," and the much-maligned "Play Me" - forever cursed to be identified as the song about the songs she sang to him and "brang" to him - is actually a charming number that looks at the yin-yang of human relationships through the metaphor of composing music.  The music itself is an irresistible repetitive acoustic guitar riff (provided by session man Richard Bennett) supporting a beautiful string section.  If Diamond had changed the words or the verb tenses and maybe hadn't sweetened the sound so much, "Play Me" would rank as one of his greatest achievements.  Because even though Neil Diamond got and may still get derision for inventing a new past-tense word that no Delta bluesman would be given a hard time for (critics would have celebrated a blues lyric like "She done brung me a song" as profound), he's even had fans come up to him and say they wish he'd worked more on the song's words.

While Moods has its defenders, the best evidence of Neil Diamond as a pop singer-songwriter with classical flourishes can be found elsewhere.  In fact, it can be found on his follow-up album, his Columbia debut - the eponymously titled soundtrack for the movie Jonathan Livingston Seagull, which was successful as the movie itself was not, vindicating Davis' then record-setting $4 million deal with Diamond.  And despite some fine moments, Moods is still a weed in Neil Diamond's underrated and impressive career.  Bob Dylan had Self-Portrait, Elton John had Blue Moves, Neil Young had Everybody's Rockin' . . . every garden grows one.                   

(This is my last review for awhile, as there's too much going on in the world right now for me to bother with record reviews.  I just hope we're not at war with Denmark by the time you read this.)  

The Last Walz

Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, had been planning to run for a third term to his office.  This week, bowing to political realities, he announced that he would not run for re-election.

Minnesota has become embroiled in a series of scandals involving fraud schemes over federal money given to state-administered social services programs, most notably  a nonprofit group that claimed to be providing meals to children during the pandemic.  Other state-run social services have been affected, the most recent example being social-services fraud occurring at day care centers and health care companies run by Americans of Somali (or Somalian) origin, which right-wingers have used to discredit the entire Somali-American population, which mostly lives in Minnesota.  Walz is under too much pressure to get to the bottom of all this even as Republicans in Congress plan to get to the bottom of all this even more, even as Walz has defended his Somali-American constituents from being painted with a broad brush by the right for racist reasons.

Walz made the announcement that he would step down at the end of his term on January 6 - one day before Renee Nicole Good was murdered by ICE in Minneapolis, so now he has to deal with that as well.  He thinks he could have won a third term - maybe he could have - but he has decided that he can't do his duties as governor of Minnesota and run for another term at the same time.

Walz owes his national reputation to having been selected as Kamala Harris's vice presidential running mate, but it turned out that he was a few spaces down the list.  He got the job by default for having called Trump and Vance "weird" and for his avuncular image . . . and he did geographically balance the ticket.  But he did not come from a state that was seriously in play - Minnesota has been reliably Democratic in presidential elections since 1976 - and Harris passed over more logical choices for reasons that boiled down to political incorrectness.  Harris thought that Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania, was likely toxic due to his support for Israel and his own Jewish heritage, and she thought that Pete Buttigieg, her first choice, would not be accepted in an office a heartbeat away from the Presidency because of his sexual orientation.  Walz turned out to be a first-rate second-rate man, and his Minnesota niceness reassured no one in his debate with Vance.  His biggest asset - calling MAGA weird - was toned down, and Walz toned down his "weird" rhetoric unwillingly; Democratic consultants - the only Democrats who made out better after the 2024 election than before, thanks to the high fees they command - told him to cut it out.  Walz even lacked the grit of the most famous Minnesotan to occupy the Vice Presidency, Hubert Humphrey.     

I think it's safe to say that, come January 2027, when Walz's term expires, both he and Harris will be political hasbeens.  Anyone who still has a Harris-Walz campaign button in mint condition is likely to own a real collector's item, because such buttons are bound to be rare.  But they won't be worth anything despite their limited quantity.  The only reason there'll be so few of them is too many former Harris supporters will have long since thrown out their Harris-Walz campaign buttons out of bitter disappointment. 

Music Video Of the Week - January 9, 2026

"I Am a Rock" by Simon and Garfunkel  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Murder In Minneapolis

 

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers in Minneapolis caused trouble in a neighborhood in the city's southern side near Powderhorn Park when they went through the the neighborhood looking for illegal migrants and causing  a traffic jam on the street.  Renee Nicole Good (above), a 37-year-old woman, sat in her SUV and waved by the officers, who were trying to get their car out of the snow.  As one officer approached her and told her to get out of the car while another told her to get out of the area, and, unsure of what to do, Ms. Good chose to drive away as quickly as possible.  An ICE officer quickly fired his weapon thrice into her face, killing her almost instantly.  The Vice President of the United States and the Secretary of Homeland Security both praised the ICE officers - the ICE officers - for handling their situation professionally against a domestic terrorist (!) who tried to run over one of the officers.

No.  This was murder.  There is no evidence that Ms. Good was engaged in a protest against the ICE officers, even though others in the neighborhood apparently were.  All evidence points to Ms. Good being no more than an innocent bystander who happened to be there at the wrong time.  She did nothing to provoke any of the officers.  The officer claimed that she ran over his foot; the video taken of the incident showed that she did nothing of the sort. If the officers thought Ms. Good was a threat, they could have easily gotten the license plate number of her SUV as she was driving away. Firing at a departing vehicle is not proper procedure in any circumstance for any law enforcement officer.  ICE shot Ms. Good, a poet, a singer and a mother of three, to make an example of her to anyone who even thinks of protesting the presence of ICE anywhere in America.

ICE murdered Renee Good.  Pure and simple.  ICE should be defunded.  And the so-called President who expanded the agency should be forced out of office. 😡

Buzz Off

The Volkswagen ID. Buzz is no more in North America.  At least for now.  

Volkswagen has announced that the electric retrograde minivan will not be available in the 2026 model year, though it could return for 2027 or later.

The most obvious reason for the cancellation of the ID. Buzz is the tariff Trump placed on products form the European Union, of course, but there was another thing that doomed the Buzz's fate - the price.  Excluding taxes, title fees, destination charges, dealer charges, and all that rot, an ID. Buzz had a base price of $60,000.  In 1968, the year the second-generation VW Transporter vans debuted in the United States, sixty grand in today's dollars was $6,442 - and the price of a Volkswagen passenger van in 1968 was about $2,500.  In other words, a van like the ID. Buzz would have cost in 1968 twice and half again what the then-new VW Bus cost.  The electric motor is no doubt the reason for the hefty price of the Buzz, but other factors like the dollar being worth less than the euro and the higher wages for German autoworkers also have to be considered.  Not to mention Trump's tariffs.

Now consider this:  Volkswagen was betting its future on electric vehicles, and the United States was part of that gambit.  The plan to turn Americans on to electric VWs (remember the "Voltswagen" name change joke?)  was doomed from the start.  The ID.3 was the same size and style as the Golf, so then-Volkswagen of America CEO Scott Keogh, recognizing the Golf's lack of popularity here, refused to bring it over.  The ID.4 crossover's performance in the ten-day sales report has been incredibly meh.  The ID.7 sedan was coming here . . . until it wasn't.  And Trump, who hates any EV that's not a Tesla, canceled the federal EV tax credit in the meantime.  Now this.  Meanwhile, as I've already noted, Keogh is running the Scout electric-SUV brand, and before one Scout has even been available for the automotive press to review, the brand announced that its vehicles will be hybrids instead.

So, if you live in the New World, you can have any electric Volkswagen you want, so long as it's the ID.4.  The gasoline-powered lineup for Volkswagen in North America, meanwhile, is wanting - just five models (unless I'm supposed to count the Golf twice because the Golf GTI and the Golf R, the only Golf variants offered here, are counted as separate models).  Three of them are SUVs, and only one non-SUV, the Jetta, is priced for the people as a people's car should be.  And the current Jetta is in its eighth model year.   As for the next Golf, the ninth-generation model will be electric, which means it's all but certain that we won't get it in any form, but VW currently has plans to start producing the current Golf in Mexico, which suggests that the base eighth-generation car could finally be available in North America at last.  But VW's current cash crunch, coupled with Trump's saber rattling against Mexico, means that this is all wishful thinking at best.  And it's a safe bet that if the Golf doesn't survive on this continent in any form, the Jetta will disappear as well.  That will be it.  That will really be it.  Even if Volkswagen stays in this market, it will basically be just another SUV-only brand like . . . Buick.

Buick.

I'm holding on to my sixth-generation Golf until I can't drive it anymore - when it's no longer operable or when I'm too old to drive and someone needs to take away my car keys (if they can find them), whichever comes first.

We Just Conquered Venezuela

I think Trump may have just started World War III.

Trump's invasion of Venezuela doesn't make sense on the surface.  He made it clear that it was about oil.  In fact, there's no strategic advantage to an American occupation of Venezuela.  But there's no economic advantage to taking control of their oil either. at least not in the foreseeable future, because there's a global supply of oil clearly bigger than the demand, and the demand may lessen as industrialized countries other than the United States pursue renewable energy.  But when you realize that Venezuela is just the first step in imposing an American sphere of influence on the entire Western Hemisphere, even as American oil companies can go in and take over the petroleum infrastructure, then it begins to make perfect sense.  Manifest destiny.

It also puts us on Trump's agenda.  American domination of the Western Hemisphere is what he wants to talk about - not about Jeffrey Epstein, not about health care, not about a runaway Supreme Court . . . and so we're going to discuss Venezuela instead.  Trump is already looking at hoping to expand into Canada and still trying to figure out how to acquire Greenland for all of the various resources they have, and Greenland has rare-earth minerals in abundance, more than any place outside China . . ..  We won't need them, because Trump has more or less made it impossible to sell electric vehicles in this country, but other countries will.

Progressive commentators insist that Trump has turned his back on his own followers, the forgotten men and women of the industrial heartland who wanted him to focus on Americans first and that they will, in turn, turn their back on Trump.  Not so fast.  Many of Trump's supporters are comfortable and well-employed and well-fed (though Steve Bannon isn't well-groomed or well-bathed), and they're all in on this escapade.  They'll immediately point out that Nicolas Maduro, the Venezuelan dictator, was despised not just by the Venezuelan people but by the whole world - not unlike Trump - and no one is shedding tears for his arrest and extradition.  Like, how can you argue with that?  You can't.  And Trump himself will quickly point out, if he hasn't already, that Maduro has been charged with narco-terrorism and cocaine importation, and that means one more drug runner out of business.  Such an argument would have more resonance coming from a President who did not pardon the drug-running former Honduran president for sending enough tons of cocaine to the States to kill as many "gringos" as possible.

And who will be running Venezuela in the time it takes for the Venezuelan people to establish a new government on their own?

These guys.

Gee, what could go wrong?

I suppose I could send the White House a strongly worded letter about this, but who do you think I am, Charles Ellis Schumer????

Americans don't want any more foreign invasions or nation-building.  I don't have much hope, however, for those who go out to protest this invasion.  Yes, it's about oil.  At least Trump, dishonest as he usually is, is honest enough to admit it.  But, as with the war in Iraq twenty years ago, if you are against wars for oil, don't show up at a demonstration in a large SUV unless it runs on electricity.    If you do have a gasoline-powered SUV with a "War Is Not the Answer" bumper sticker on it, I propose that you either remove the bumper sticker or convert your vehicle to run on biodiesel. 

Byrds (1973)

An eight-year period is a blink of an eye in the big scheme of things.  Yet a lot can happen in eight years.  It's the time it takes to go from being a pre-med college freshman to graduating from medical school and being ready to begin a hospital residency.  It's the lifespan of a two-term U.S. Presidency.  And in rock and roll, an eight-year period is an eternity.  Times change, the music changes, and those who last eight years are far removed from where they were eight years earlier - sometimes for the worse.  And that's where the reunion album of the original Byrds comes in.

When the Byrds debuted in 1965, their sound was a sprightly Southern California blend of British Invasion rock and roll with the lyrics of Bob Dylan and other folk legends, as well as some inspired original songs.  By 1973, when the Byrds had broken up with Roger McGuinn as the last original member of the band, and with his former original bandmates between projects, the quintet, having had their disagreements, buried the hatchet, reunited, and recorded an album that, quite frankly, showed how eight years had changed the dynamic between them - and not in a positive way.

The original Byrds were no longer the young folkies enthralled by the Beatles' movie A Hard Day's Night and newly converted to rock and roll when McGuinn, David Crosby, and Gene Clark first got together, recruiting Chris Hillman and Michael Clarke soon after.  They were seasoned veterans who had no hope of recapturing the magic that made them so wonderful in the first place.  They had all become more traveled in their experiences, be it McGuinn keeping the Byrds going, Crosby joining forces with Stephen Stills and Graham Nash, or Hillman forming the Flying Burrito Brothers with fellow Byrds alumnus Gram Parsons and later joining forces with Stephen Stills in Manassas.  The chemistry that brought them together was gone, and it shows here in the listless playing, the mediocre originals, and the poorly arranged covers.  

To be fair, the Byrds did not try to regain their original sound but instead aimed for a new sound based on their own varied experiences since leaving the band for other endeavors or, in the case of McGuinn, redefining the Byrds after the others had left.  The wealth of diversity in the music from these experiences - especially Hillman's tutelage with Stephen Stills - should have been, on paper at least, the basis for an incredible listen.  Instead, the sound that resulted on Byrds was more diffuse than diverse.

Highlights - I use that word loosely, with some irony -  include the dull and lackluster country ballad "Sweet Mary," which McGuinn wrote with occasional Dylan collaborator Jacques Levy, Crosby's unwieldy "Long Live the King," about the uneasy heads that wear crowns (yet another one of Crosby's political diatribes not good enough for a CSN album), and also Hillman's original song "Things Will Be Better," a lightweight pop ditty apparently about Chris resuming his solo career.  Even Hillman admitted that the song wasn't one of his best, a song he deemed unworthy for a solo album, but McGuinn's "Born to Rock and Roll" makes Hillman's song sound like "Like a Rolling Stone" by comparison.  Only Gene Clark's "Changing Heart" is at the Byrds' high standard.

The covers are even more embarrassing, especially when Crosby sings them, such as a clunky, blues-based remake of Joni Mitchell's "For Free" that sounds like the band was half asleep when they recorded it.  Crosby even had the Byrds remake his own "Laughing," a highly philosophical song that was originally done - and arranged much more imaginatively and intriguingly - on his debut solo album two years earlier.  Here Crosby tries to recast it as a heavy raga-rock number when it had worked so well as a wistful ballad on his solo record - and with Jerry Garcia guesting on guitar.  Alas, Garcia was nowhere to be found as a guest artist on this LP, and he could have been useful in sparking interest in the Byrds' Neil Young covers - for example, they try to re-imagine "Cowgirl In the Sand" as a bluegrass ballad (wrong!) with a false ending.

Still, Byrds has a certain charm about it.  Some of the playing is occasionally inspired, such as most of Hillman's mandolin lines, and McGuinn's guitar still sparkles intermittently.  But the overall sound lacks cohesion, and David Crosby, who produced this album, wasn't able to communicate with his bandmates in order to add substance to their style; he reportedly tried to be what Italian-Americans would call "da bigga da boss."  Crosby isn't even good at getting anything out of himself, never mind the others.  Even his solo work, which had its occasional flaws, offered more heart and depth that what Crosby can produce or compel others to create on this record.

It goes without saying that I'd rather hear a Byrds reunion album a dozen times than hear a Duran Duran reunion album even once, but there's more to musical quality than arranging songs for instruments you don't need a computer science degree to play.  There was far better country rock being produced by other artists in 1973, which is why this album was a flop in the first place.  Byrds exists mainly as an argument against band reunions, though few have heeded its warning. And while there may be those who defend the Byrds for at least striving for a new, fresh sound that was still as seasoned as that hypothetical 26-year-old medical school graduate who began pre-med studies when their cover of "Mr. Tambourine Man" was first released, consider this.  In his 1988 autobiography "Long Time Gone," David Crosby and his editor Carl Gottlieb provided an ostensibly complete account of every record Crosby had ever performed on or produced up to that point, but one record was left unmentioned.  Guess which record.

More Of This and That

The Democrats are expected to do very well in not spectacularly well in the midterm elections this year, but it will be more likely due to Trump's own ineptitude than anything the Democrats are doing right.  As long as the Democrats keep stepping on each other's toes (and their own), a Democratic victory in November won't mean that the Democrats will have won.  It will only mean that the Republicans will have lost.

As I type, Americans will have either seen their health insurance costs double or their policies slip away completely because the Republicans allowed Affordable Care Act subsidies to expire after enough Senate Democrats agreed to reopen the government for the promise of a vote on  Affordable Care Act subsidies that never happened.  Washington insiders claim that the Democrats won the fight over the subsidies by allowing the government shutdown to happen, but the only folks who are buying that argument are . . . other Washington insiders.

As for the redistricting fight . . . let's just say the Democrats lucked out, dudes.  They seemingly blew it when Texas Democratic legislators returned to Austin from Chicago to give the Republicans a quorum to redistrict the state and create five new Republican U.S. House districts, but thanks to Gavin Newsom (above) and California voters, Republicans got outplayed and lost their net advantage from the redrawing of the Texas maps.  Then Trump tried to have more GOP-friendly districts in Ohio and Indiana only to meet with fierce resistance from . . . Republicans.  Especially in Indiana.  Hoosiers (whom Trump acolytes from outside the state have referred to as "Indianians") don't like being told what to do by outsiders.  It's that stubborn Indiana independence that had long made Hoosier Republicans logical running mates for Republican presidential nominees, from Schuyler Colfax to Mike Pence (though their collective record has been mixed at best) and also produced one of the few memorable Democratic Vice Presidents, Thomas Marshall, whose wit and humor made his role as a liaison between the Wilson administration and Congress more interesting than it would have been (you know that quote "What this country needs is a really good five-cent cigar"? him).  

But California and Newsom notwithstanding, Democrats have benefited more from Republican mistakes than their own aptitude.  They're going to have to do better than how they've been doing unless they want to win Congress by default.

(As this blog post was "going to press," I heard that Trump invaded Venezuela and took custody of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.  I'll address that story as soon as I absorb it sufficiently.)   

Music Video Of the Week - January 2, 2026

"One More Cup of Coffee" by Bob Dylan  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Nothing To See Here, Folks

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) has conducted an autopsy on the 2024 presidential campaign (thus, it simultaneously conducted an autopsy on Kamala Harris' political career) to see what went wrong, aside from everything.  The report is now completed and awaiting review.

Except for one thing: DNC chair Ken Martin (below) won't release it to the public.

Martin is trying to rebuild the Democratic Party after it lost a great deal of credibility with voters in 2024 and he should be doing the opposite of what Trump does by calling for full transparency in how to run things.  Yet, Martin, the de facto leader of the Democratic Party, won't share with anyone his committee's findings on why Harris lost in 2024. 

Maybe he's afraid to admit to anyone that, yes, perhaps it was a mistake to nominate a black woman with a Jewish husband to run for President.  More likely, he found a damning defect in the party's messaging that might offend a key demographic in the party's coalition - say, that the party shouldn't have campaigned so much on the rights of non-heterosexuals when more people wanted to hear about the economy.  And short of this report being leaked, we'll never know just what the main finding was.  But it takes a lot of gall to lead a party demanding the release of the Epstein files (which I support) for the sake of transparency while keeping the DNC 2024 autopsy report under wraps. 

As for Martin's tenure on running the Democratic National Committee and thus, by extension, the Democratic Party, I can't evaluate how well he's been doing his job, because I frankly can't find any evidence that he's doing anything.  He's not out there answering Trump's lies, and he's given candidates for office minimal, almost token support.  Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey and Abigail Spanberger in Virginia owe their gubernatorial election victories to themselves and to their talented campaign teams, not Martin, and I think I can safely assume that Martin and the DNC gave no genuine support to Zohran Mamdani in his New York City mayoral campaign.  Releasing the autopsy report on the presidential election that broke America is one of the many things, in fact, that Martin has not done.

Once again, Martin O'Malley, Maryland's sixty-first governor, has been vindicated for his warnings despite the fact that no one seems to care.  (Wait - did I just type "seems to"?)  O'Malley had been calling for a hands-on approach to down-ballot elections ever since he was in his first gubernatorial term in Maryland, warning the DNC back in 2009 - 2009! - that the Republicans were already doing the groundwork necessary to gain more power in state legislatures, as well as win congressional seats and governorships, with the knowledge that those who control the state legislatures control congressional redistricting. O'Malley's advice went unheeded, and in 2010 the Republicans won up and down the ballot all over the country.  Then-DNC chair Tim Kaine was deposed, but his successor was Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, whose role in screwing up the 2016 presidential campaign you already know about.

Anyway, O'Malley ran for DNC chair in early 2025 after quitting his job as Social Security Administration commissioner (before Trump could fire him), and he'd already shown what it takes to win elections for every available office, given his Win Back Your State (WBYS) political action committee's success in helping to flip fourteen state legislative chambers to the Democrats in 2018 . . . success that the mainstream press and even The Nation declined to acknowledge.  Given all that - and given that Democrats likely confuse WBYS with an AM radio station in a little Illinois town southwest of Peoria with those same call letters - O'Malley finished a distant third in a three-person field (sound familiar?) in his bid for DNC chair, mainly because no one knew who he was (sound familiar?).

Times may change, but one thing remains constant - no matter how many times Martin O'Malley shows how hip he is to the Democratic Party's troubles, all Democrats hear coming from him is a faint buzzing.  And rather than listen to what he has to say, the Democrats would rather try a different guy to run their party because he has a more impressive CV in party operations.

Martin ran the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor party for fourteen years beginning in 2011 and has a record of success in Minnesota, having gotten the state party out of debt and won numerous elections.  When you realize that Minnesota hasn't elected a Republican U.S. Senator since 2006, hasn't elected a Republican governor since 2006, and hasn't been carried by a Republican presidential candidate since 1972, though, it's hard not to think that, at the time of his elevation to DNC chair, Martin was already coasting. 

2025 and All That

The best way to understand how I and my fellow Trump-haters feel about the current condition of These States is to compare where we are now to where we could have been now.  Not that where we could have been would have necessarily been all that much better.  But it would undoubtedly have been better just the same.

To make that comparison, I can't go back to a year ago this time, because this time last year, Trump was already President-elect.  I have to go back to fourteen months ago this time, which, by pure coincidence, was Halloween.  On October 31, 2024, five days before what will likely be the last American presidential election with more than one candidate, Kamala Harris had at least a 50 percent chance of winning the Presidency.  In the event that Harris won, I expected nothing more from a Harris administration than what President Biden had delivered, which was okay enough.  Not exactly a ringing endorsement, but knowing everything Trump was going to do if he won - because he told us - I was happy to vote for Harris.  I did.  I voted early.  And I knew what her victory would have meant.  It would have meant the election of the first woman - not just the first black woman, the first woman, period - to be elected President of the United States, which have been an even greater and more gigantic leap for America than Barack Obama's election to the Presidency in 2008.  It would have been proof that, despite its shortcomings, America really was for everyone.  While President Biden nudged the United States into a more progressive direction, it was still just a nudge, and I was under no illusion that a Harris administration wouldn't accelerate the move toward a more progressive future, I knew that she was preferable to Trump.  And she would shatter multiple glass ceilings - for women, for women of color, for interracial couples, for interfaith couples.  We were on the cusp of embracing true diversity, equity, and inclusion.

All of that hope for at least such a step forward - and, as far as I'm concerned, the soul of America - died the day Trump won and Harris was forced into early retirement from public life.  Instead of an era of diversity, equity and inclusion, we've entered a period where all three have been eliminated from the body politic.  Instead of nice things like sustainable energy, bullet trains for Amtrak, paid maternity leave, or support for unions - all things the Biden administration was at least taking baby steps toward - we've gotten more tax breaks for the wealthy and programs and amenities slashed to the point where anyone affected is out of luck.   Instead of prosperous, healthy citizens, we've become serfs living on borrowed time and borrowed money who should consider ourselves fortunate if we can afford medical bills or get a vaccine without paying out of pocket - and even vaccines not covered by insurance may be unavailable soon.  

Granted, the four years under President Biden weren't exactly a new Era of Good Feelings (and even the original Era of Good Feelings under President James Monroe two hundred years and change ago had a recession caused by a bank panic).  But even a Harris administration providing minimal improvements would have been preferable to a time in which good things go bad and bad things get worse.

And then there is that new birth of freedom we let slip between our fingers.

This is the cover of the New Yorker that was planned for the November 18, 2024 edition of the magazine in the event of a Harris victory in the presidential election.  Created by Kadir Nelson, it shows Harris dressed in a coat showing images of all of the people throughout history involved in the advancement of civil rights in the U.S. that led step by step to the ultimate culmination of the fruits of their labors - a black woman as the leader of the nation.  Needless to say, a different cover ran - one showing Trump as an ominous storm cloud.  Although the November 18, 2024 edition of the New Yorker came out ahead of the actual date, it was the perfect coincidence that that was the date that Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski revealed on the air their supplicant visit to Mar-a-Lago.  So much for freedom of the press.  

The United States, because of voters who discounted the danger Trump posed to the nation and the world because they either didn't want a black woman running the show or thought that Trump could really bring back prosperity (not that he would have if he could have), has slipped into darkness and despair faster than at any time in its history.  Even Germany took more time in 1933 to move from a democratic republic to a National Socialist state.  One week before the election of 2024, Harris represented a renewal of possibility for the United States.  Seven weeks into this administration, I decided that America was finished as a country.  

And that is when I became a secessionist.  That is when I began my efforts to promote the breakup of the United States into separate countries.  

The surprise was that it took that long.  

The United States has been on the wrong track for forty-five years.  There were times when I saw a modicum of hope for a better and happier future - the first Clinton budget and the push for health care reform after the fall of the Soviet Union, the way Americans came together after 9/11, the election of Barack Obama to the Presidency, the start of the Biden Presidency . . ..  No more.  I no longer have any hope in any positive trend that only turns out to be fleeting.  I've had it with with getting my hopes up only to see America go back to being America.  I no longer live for an era of national renewal.  And on November 5, 2024, the United States didn't go back to its previous incantation as a nation of belligerent ignoramuses.  It flat-out died.  For my home state or any other state where decency and intelligence are still showing pulses to remain in the Union is anathema to me.  I believe one of these states should withdraw from the Union and hopefully start the process of arranging a peaceful separation.

I want out.  I want a divorce.

I'm not going to wish anyone a happy new year.  No one in the fifty states that make up the Union is going to be happy until the United States of America ceases to exist once and for all.  And not only will we former Americans be happy, so will the rest of the world. 

Swum and Sunk

One of the most galling things about the outcome of the 2024 presidential election - a topic I will return to with much more vigor and vitriol tomorrow - is that, given that the United States about to co-host the World Cup with Canada and Mexico, celebrate a quarter millennium of nationhood, and host the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles, we could have had Kamala Harris, a woman of Jamaican and South Asian descent with a husband of Eastern European Jewish origin, presiding over all of this from the White House - a White House with an intact East Wing - and demonstrating that the United States had truly become an international nation.  Instead we put a xenophobic, provincial, undereducated real estate developer from Queens back in charge.  And Trump not only knows he has the World Cup, the semiquincentennial celebration, and the Olympics happening under his reign of error, he brags about it.

Instead of a Jamaican-American President, we got once again a President from Jamaica Estates.

Because he's in like Flynn - Michael Flynn - with FIFA, the World Cup games in These States will go on as planned, at least with the teams that don't lose any members to Immigration and Custom Enforcement custody.  The semiquincentennial, however, is likely to be a disaster, because I already see less promotion, interest, or hype around it than that which surrounded the bicentennial fifty years ago.  CBS - now being denigrated by the Ellison family and Bari Weiss - can't even be bothered to air "semiquincentennial minutes."  And then there is the unpleasant subject of the Olympics.

Back in early September, I wrote about how I sent a letter to newly installed International Olympic Committee president Kirsty Coventry (above) urging her to have the 2028 Olympics moved out of Los Angeles and out of the U.S. entirely.  At first I wasn't going to write Chief LA28 Athletic Officer Janet Evans make my case for the same because I had no postal address . . . until I found one.  And thus I went ahead and wrote both swimming legends, addressing them in their current capacities,  and subsequently waited for replies.

It's been nearly four months, and I haven't heard from either of them.

I'm not going to write them again.  I've had enough trying to convince the powers that be - and my Olympic heartthrob - of the need to stop the Los Angeles Olympics from happening under MAGA.  Even if Kirsty Coventry wanted to move the Games to another country - say, her own, Zimbabwe - she's need the support of the full committee membership and is unlikely to get it.  And Janet Evans?  She's just the athletic officer, she's not involved in location-related logistics.  These two women must get so much correspondence as it is, my letters probably never reached them . . . and even if they did, they probably had no time to read them themselves.  Besides, Janet Evans has a son who's a high school senior now, and she's probably helping him choose a college to attend (University of Southern California, no doubt), with no time to read a letter from little ol' me. 

It is what it is, and it ain't what it ain't.  All we can do right now is hope Trump and his entire administration are removed from power (consult Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution for more on that) before July 2028 (and hopefully before July 2026!).  I'm not going to get my knickers in a knot over Kirsty Coventry's failure to acknowledge my letter.  As for Janet Evans, I could never, ever be upset with the dear woman. 😊 

I am, however, upset with her 1996 Olympics swimming teammate Amy Van Dyken, who recently said she went back to church because she was inspired by what a wonderful guy Charlie Kirk was in the wake of his assassination.   

I don't want to talk about it . . ..

Anyway, the 2028 Olympics might not go on as planned.  Given Chinese saber-rattling against Taiwan, Iranian saber-rattling against everyone (but especially Israel), and the war between Russia and Ukraine grinding on, and given Trump's cavalier attitude toward all of this, we're likely to have a third world war anyway.

This, That, and a Whole Lot Less

The worst thing about 2025 coming to an end is the knowledge that 2026 will be worse.  But not as bad as 2027.

As 2025 lurches to a close, I ought to tend to some unfinished business . . ..

First, the inevitable update on two folks named James - a woman named by her father and a man named by his mother.  Letitia James and James Comey were both indicted by the Injustice Department as part of Donald Trump's retribution campaign, but both cases were dismissed in court.  The details of their indictments are moot, so I won't bother with them here.   John Bolton, Trump's former national security adviser, is still under indictment on eighteen counts related to the mishandling of classified documents, and as much as liberals would love to see Bolton go to the slammer (liberals are against the chair), he's clearly being indicted for all the wrong reasons. 

Meanwhile, Jennifer Welch (above), co-host of IHIP, the I've Had It Podcast, seems to have had a change of heart about Roman Catholics.  She recently told fellow podcaster Tara Palmeri that she actually admires Catholics for their devotion to their faith and their constant study of their faith and the Gospels, adding that if she were believer of God, which she is not, she could never be a Catholic not because of a patriarchal priesthood but because of all of the constant study involved.  She also says that Catholics are nice people who, unlike evangelicals in her home state of Oklahoma, don't try to convert anyone so aggressively.  So, I guess that means I ought to go back to listening to her and Angie Sullivan's podcast.

I write this blog post, meanwhile, with the knowledge that Brigitte Bardot just died at the age of 91.  Social media has gotten to the point that you don't even need to check news sites online or television news programs to find out that someone has died.  When Facebook friends who don't know each other from Adam and Eve simultaneously post pictures of a French actress and sex symbol who hasn't been culturally relevant since Renault stopped making the Dauphine, you can put two and two together.  No, those were not pictures of Claudia Schiffer.  The death of the woman her fans famously called B.B. fellows the death of another European movie star and glamour icon known as C.C., Italian actress Claudia Cardinale.  (Note: For those who have started following my blog just recently, no, my girl cat Claudia is not named for either Claudia Cardinale or Claudia Schiffer.)  I hope both of them are remembered for their earlier films, and hopefully not the spaghetti western they did together in the early seventies.  (I saw about five minutes of that movie; that was all I could take.  Both actresses were celebrated as icons, but you'd never have known it from this particular movie.)  

I was never incredibly enamored with Bardot or Cardinale, but their respective passings this year is still a bitter reminder that the era of European cinema and culture that they represented died long before they did.  And going into 2026, it makes me fear for the health and well-being of France's Catherine Deneuve, 82, and Italy's Sophia Loren, 91.  The European Union ought to seriously consider some protective measures for both actresses - put fences around them, maybe, declare them Continental treasures, perhaps get UNESCO to grant them World Heritage status - just so we can at least keep them around a little longer.