Donald Trump just fired Air Force General Charles Q. Brown (below) from his post as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He replaced him with an underqualified MAGA commander.
In addition, Trump fired several Judge Advocates General who advise the President on what is legal and what's not. He replaced them with MAGA-friendly military lawyers who are guaranteed to tell him what he wants to hear.
Pete Hegseth's appointment to the post of Secretary of Defense is making more and more sense from Trump's perspective. With MAGA military men at the helm of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the military legal system, Trump will be able to have the military shoot peaceful protesters against his regime and use troops to dominate the streets of not just Washington by all major cities in the U.S. And Hegseth will be at the top to ensure that no one in the chain of command turns against Trump and tries to remove him from office if he violates the Constitution. Also, a military fully controlled by Trump and Hegseth makes a good deterrent against would-be anti-Trump insurrectionists.
Oh, yeah, and if Trump declares martial law, he can use troops to guard the Canadian and Mexican borders to prevent anyone from escaping.
So what was Donald Trump's speech to Congress last night like? Well, I didn't see the whole thing, but I saw the lowlights. He bashed the Democrats for their approach to the economy, he compared himself to George Washington, he talked about how his beautiful tariffs will lead to prosperity, and he once again advocated annexation of Greenland. In short, it was like a typical Trump rally speech.
Quite frankly, the idiotic references to the economy were the most memorable lines from the speech. Of course - Woodrow Wilson addressed Congress and pledge to make the world safe for democracy; Franklin Roosevelt spoke to Congress in "the unusual posture" of sitting to lay out his post-World War II vision after the Yalta summit; John F. Kennedy announced to Congress that he was challenging the nation to put a man on the moon and have him returned safely to Earth; Trump complained about egg prices and blamed it on Biden. Of course.
it was a Trump rally speech because the event actually was a Trump rally. Democrats were a captive audience to MAGA Republicans' applause, struggling to found ways to protest, from wearing colors symbolizing resistance to Trump or for standing with Ukraine, which worked in the context of decorum in the House chamber but seemed awkward to some pundits. The most effective protest came from Representative Al Green (D-TX), who yelled out that Trump had no mandate to cut Medicaid and was summarily removed from the chamber while Republicans mockingly chanted "USA! USA!" at Green as he was being led out. (As far back as 1996, a British journalist covering the Atlanta Olympics compared the chant of the initials of the United States' official name to chants of "Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!" in Germany in the 1930s. The comparison seemed all the more apt last night.)
There was one bright side to what happened to Representative Green; only he was removed from the chamber, and not the entire congressional Democratic caucus. If that had happened, the Democrats wouldn't have just been taken out of the House chamber, they would have been . . . taken out . . . permanently. Fortunately, dissent against Der Amerikanischer Fรผhrer is not yet a capital crime.
The most effective counterpoint to Trump came not during the speech but after it, when one of the newest Democrats in the Senate, Elissa Slotkin (above), who proved to be a steely, strong tigress behind her dimpled-little-sister exterior. Senator Slotkin gave a brief yet pointed response for the Democratic Party in her takedown of Elon Musk's reckless evisceration of the federal bureaucracy and Trump's plan to decimate the middle class as well as her forceful objection to Trump's caving to Russian President Vladimir Putin over Ukraine. Senator Slotkin said she was glad Ronald Reagan was President in the 1980s and not Donald Trump, otherwise the United States would have lost the Cold War.
Aside from late-middle-age progressives who spent the eighties in college demonstrating against Reagan's Central America policy and nuclear arms buildup, most people should find favor in Senator Slotkin's remarks. A former CIA operative and U.S. House member, Slotkin proved to be an effective messenger for the Democrats. It also helped that she is a national-security expert and also the junior senator from Michigan, a state that has produced so many legendary businessmen in the auto industry - the Chevrolet brothers, the Dodge brothers, David Dunbar Buick, Henry Ford, Walter Chrysler - whose surnames became trusted brands, something the current White House occupant has tried to make of his own surname . . . in vain.
In a party struggling for leaders and leadership, Elissa Slotkin appears to have provided just that. She's probably the second most effective speaker the Democrats have. Only Tim Ryan is better, but, of course, he's a hasbeen (for now).
Other Democrats gave effective responses to Trump's the media, like when party chair Ken Martin said that Elon Musk and his DOGE boys could go to hell, or when Representative Jasmine Crockett of Texas called Trump a nightmare she was hoping to wake up from, or when Representative Katherine Clark of Massachusetts called upon Trump to resign. But not everyone saw individual Democrats taking to reporters. They all did see Trump's speech. However, I wouldn't say now that the Democrats aren't fighting back at all or aren't fighting back enough, as Chris Cuomo suggested . . . though the less said about Chris Cuomo, the better. In fact, Chris's attempt at an even-handed view of Trump and his disgraced brother Andrew's decision to run for mayor of New York City signify the most spectacular drop in credibility and prestige by any political dynasty in American history (the falls of the Kennedys and the Bushes were more gradual).
One other thing. As late as 2022, whenever you saw President Biden address Congress, you'd see two women - one black, the other Italian, both from California - sitting behind him in their respective capacities as Vice President and Speaker of the House. Now, Trump is back, and the two people sitting behind him are both white males of Anglo-Saxon origin from the nation's midsection.
Not so inspiring . . . unless you're a red-state MAGA-maniac.
He was right when he said that the Democratic National Committee's failure to concentrate on down-ballot elections in 2010 would lead to a Republican blowout. He was right when he said that Hillary Clinton could not beat Donald Trump in 2016. And when Trump won again in 2024, O'Malley must have known what was coming at the Social Security Administration - Musk firing everybody there - when he quit at the end of November and decided he was better off running for the Democratic National Committee chairmanship to help the party fight back.
But after a decade of O'Malley being out of elective office, O'Malley found out that the Democrats still don't care about him. The chief contestants for the DNC chairmanship election were Ben Wikler, chairman of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, and Ken Martin, chairman of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. Martin (below) prevailed in the election last month.
Ominously, Will Saletan of The Bulwark said that O'Malley, in addressing the DNC, gave the clearest and sharpest speech in making his case for what he felt the Democrats needed to do going forward. But, as usual, Democrats didn't want to hear it. (Unless, of course, Democratic committee members who elected the chair wrote in "Martin" because they were voting for O'Malley by his first name and the votes got miscounted for Ken Martin, but I doubt that.)
As soon as he became party chair, Martin published a memo, titled "Democrats Will Fight Against Trump's War on Working People." In it, Martin said that too many Americans see the Democratic Party as the "party of the elites" and the Republican Party as the "party of the working class." Martin also pledged to get the party out in the country and essentially follow Howard Dean's old fifty-state strategy, going on a national tour of his own that started in early February. Talking to NBC News, Martin said, "It's time for the DNC to get out of D.C. That means getting out of our comfort zone, having tough but honest conversations with voters, and showing that we're willing to fight for people." He continued, "It's time for Democrats to show up in all 3,244 counties—red, purple, blue—to make our case."
So where is he?
No, really where is he?
As far as I know, Martin is still on his tour. But I don't hear about it much - and I've been getting most of my news from anti-Trump podcasts. The hosts of these podcasts want to know where Martin is, too, and they have more access to what goes on in Washington politics than I do.
This is no small deal. The end of Joe Biden's political career and the spectacle of Kamala Harris (this is the first time I've mentioned her name here in five weeks, and it may be longer still before I mention it again) being forced into early retirement have left a leadership vacuum in the Democratic Party. That "deep bench" of Democratic talent hasn't yielded a person who could lead the party into the 2026 midterms and beyond with a positive, inspiring message. There are no governors who have shown a desire to take up the Democratic mantle. In Washington, you have New Yorkers Charles Schumer as Senate Democratic leader and Hakeem Jeffries as House Democratic leader - and even though the word "leader" is in their titles, looking to these Brooklyn bumpkins for leadership is like running up to the bridge on a sinking ship and finding out that the captain is Daffy Duck.
Therefore, Ken Martin, as the leader of the Democratic Party's national committee, is the de facto leader of the party at large. And he'd better start acting like one. Republican National Committee chairs have always acted like the chief honcho in the GOP, even when a Republican is President. As a result, people knew who Lee Atwater, Haley Barbour, Reince Priebus, and Ronna McDaniel were. The less media-savvy Ken Martin is as much a cipher as his predecessor Jamie Harrison was.
Until Martin gets his sea legs as party leader, the Democrats will have to rely on free agents among those in elective office - Eric Swalwell of California, Jasmine Crockett of Texas, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, and Jamie Raskin of Maryland in the House and Chris Murphy of Connecticut in the Senate. But the party really needs someone to lead from the front. Martin O'Malley, who knows a thing or two about that sort of thing, could have provided that leadership for the party, if not for the country as President. Bu again, Democrats weren't interested.
With the threat of Trump possibly executing dissenters under martial law, let's hope Democrats don't get bored . . . to death.
After Trump and Vance bullied and ridiculed Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office yesterday . . .
. . . it was obvious that the wrong president got kicked out of the White House.
They characterized Zelensky as an ingrate for not being thankful enough for aid to Ukraine in their ongoing war with Russia - a lie - and they insisted that he had no leverage to end the war on his terms and so therefore he had to cede territory to their overlord, Vladimir Putin. Trump says he's acting in the interest of peace. Let me remind you that even the devil himself sometimes presents himself as a man of peace.
It doesn't matter that Democratic lawmakers - who have even less leverage than Zelensky - all joined world leaders in solidarity for Ukraine and against Trump. Trump is the one in charge and, to the world, is America.
Meanwhile, Trump has been gutting Social Security (Martin O'Malley quit as commissioner in the nick of time), has been gutting the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (if New Jersey gets another Sandy, we'll find out too late), got Romania to free the Tate brothers (MAGA extremists involved in human trafficking), caused a rift between himself and the leaders of Britain and France when they visited the White House (on two separate occasions), and "released" files pertaining to his buddy Jeffrey Epstein that turned out to be phone logs put out four years earlier (I can't think of something to write in parentheses here!).
March is certainly coming in like a lion in America.
I don't know how long his blog can go on. Not because I'm afraid of Kash Patel sending a goon squad to my house to arrest me, but because keeping up my commentary here is so exhausting. ๐
1. Musk demanded that federal employees send him a list of five things they did on the job last week to prove their worth to the government or be fired.
2. Musk demanded that federal employees send him a list of five things they did on the job last week to prove their worth to the government or be fired.
3. Musk demanded that federal employees send him a list of five things they did on the job last week to prove their worth to the government or be fired.
4. Musk demanded that federal employees send him a list of five things they did on the job last week to prove their worth to the government or be fired.
5. He's just a mother-truckin' creep.
You thought my fifth thing was going to be, "Musk demanded that federal employees send him a list of five things they did on the job last week to prove their worth to the government or be fired," didn't you?
As soon as this news came out, some of us Trump-hating Musk haters and Musk-hating Trump haters decided to send nonsensical lists of the five things we did on the job.
Here's the list I sent from my regular e-mail address:
1. I ate a Crisco sandwich.
2. I had sex with a lady clown at the circus. (Field work. ๐)
3. I practiced my karate chops while jumping in midair.
4. I wore an Indian headdress to keep my wigwam.
5. I called a vegetable by name because the vegetable dreamed of responding to me.
That last thing refers to a Frank Zappa song.
Now here's the list I sent from my alternate e-mail address:
1. I squirted whipped cream on my desktop and let the office rats eat it.
2. I scratched my feet for five hours.
3. I sent rubber ducks to a contractor with the note, "Take them these here rubber ducks, we just ain't gonna pay yo' bill!"
4. I ran around the office in a chicken costume yelling "SQUAWK SQUAWK SQUAWK!"
5. I carved a likeness of Elon Musk out of soap, ate it, and crapped it out in the toilet. (Sorry, I forgot to flush!)
I need a fix 'cause I'm going down . . ..
As it turns out, most government agency and department heads are telling their employees not to respond to Musk, that it's totally unnecessary, and that it also might go against rules and regulations. National intelligence director Tulsi Gabbard told her employees not to comply to avoid the leaking of government secrets.
Dude, you know you've lost your credibility when even Tulsi Gabbard is trying to preserve her integrity.
Not so much Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who told his employees to comply. I guess he figure that if they do, he'll find out what they do . . . because as someone with no experience in transportation issues, he has no idea himself.
She was caught having made homophobic insinuations on her blog against former Florida politician Charlie Crist and tried to deflect blame for them to a nonexistent hacker.
She needled Tim Ryan for his ill-fated attempt to challenge Nancy Pelosi for House Democratic leadership and more or less accused him of ageism.
She promoted hip-hop as an essential art form to the progressive movement more than anyone she shared air time with on the same cable news channel except Ari Melber. And her defenses of hip-hop always had a smug and superior undertone to them, as if to suggest that any other form of popular music - say, classic rock - was just a bunc hof hackwork.
She also sounded smug and superior about just about anything else and made viewers feel inferior even when they agreed with her.
And then there was her voice. You think Kamala Harris has an annoying voice? This woman had a really annoying voice - the voice of a self-absorbed know-it-all.
So don't expect me to shed any tears over Joy Reid's departure from MSNBC - a channel I don't watch any more - and the cancellation of her show. Yeah, I know she was canned for trash-talking Trump, but I'm still ticked off at her for for trash-talking Charlie Crist and Tim Ryan and just generally being annoying.
Do yourself a favor, people, listen to podcasts instead. MeidasTouch is your best bet.
Volkswagen does it again. By that, I mean the brand has screwed its North American enthusiasts.
I saw the brand-new Volkswagen ID.7 electric sedan at the 2024 New York Auto Show, and even though it was the European model and the ID.7 was not due to arrive in the United States and Canada until 2026, I was immediately taken with the Passat-sized automobile. I got to sit in it. It was very comfortable inside, with controls that felt and looked modern without seeming too futuristic in an off-putting, George Jetson way. To be blunt, I loved it. The only thing wrong, of course, was that, given that it was not an official U.S. model, there was no other ID.7 available to test-drive in the auto show's indoor test track. Not that I minded all that much; I knew that it would be unlikely that I would buy one, as it is bigger than the cars I have usually owned and its asking price was expected to average about $55,000. Still, I reasoned, it would be welcome edition to VW's North American lineup, which is increasingly dominated by SUVs and crossovers.
The Volkswagen announced that plans for offering the ID.7 to American and Canadian consumers had been canceled. Apart from exports to China, the new electric sedan will be for the European market only.
Volkswagen's explanation for this about-face was due to "the ongoing challenging EV climate" in the U.S. In other words, electric vehicles aren't selling in the numbers the automakers expected despite growth in the EV market.
I mentioned this last month in my post about EVs and climate change, noting also that Elon Musk wanted Trump to eliminate President Biden's $7,500 tax credits for electric-vehicle purchases to discourage competition for Tesla. And sure enough, Volkswagen saw the electric-sedan market in the United States and feared that the ID.7 would be too expensive for Americans unable to get a tax credit, but even before the Democrats got their joyful posteriors kicked by the MAGA juggernaut on Election Day, VW was unsure of how the ID.7 could set itself apart in an midsize-electric-sedan market segment already dominated by the Hyundai Ioniq 6 and - you guessed it - the Tesla Model 3. But then there's the other inconvenient truth - American buyers still prefer SUVs to conventional sedans and hatchbacks, and that preference crosses over (no pun intended) to electric vehicles. After all, that's why VW decided to make its EV debut in the New World with the frumpy ID.4 crossover and not the Golf-sized ID.3 hatchback (which is still unavailable in North America and will likely remain so).
I give up. Volkswagen has disappointed me so many times by producing some really cool cars in Europe that ended up being forbidden fruit in North America, from the Polo to the Lupo, from the third-generation Scirocco to the incredible up! city car, and now this. Canceling the ID.7 for American customers isn't the worst thing Volkswagen has ever done - for me, that will always be dropping the base Golf from the North American market starting with the eighth generation - but it's the latest blow to an enthusiast customer base that is (or was) attracted to Volkswagen because they appreciate (or appreciated) the Germanic flavor and character of VW's products. Now, Volkswagen prefers to pander to mainstream American tastes with American-style SUVs and crossovers to attract more casual customers while alienating and offending the enthusiasts who kept VW alive on this continent in the early nineties, when it looked like the automaker might have to quit North America like Renault, Fiat, and Peugeot (which still isn't coming back) had done. Cancel the ID.7? Hah- some gratitude.
So, apart from the Jetta and the overpriced remnants of the Golf lineup, the performance-oriented GTI and R, what are we left with? An auto-company division, Volkswagen of America, that would rather play down the Volkswagen part and play up the America part than remain true to the brand's heritage, a division whose parent company is all too happy to water down its products for gabardine-suited gents in Ohio and Stepford soccer moms on Long Island. As for me, I will continue to be a Volkswagen customer, but only for parts and service to keep my 2012 Golf looking and performing as new as it did when I drove it off the lot some thirteen years ago.
Dรฉtente - that charming French word every American knew in the 1970s, which referred to a thawing of relations between the United States and the Soviet Union. While the period of dรฉtente is generally thought to have started with Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, the spirit of amicability between the two superpowers started as early as June 1967, when President Lyndon Johnson and Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin met at a summit in Glassboro, New Jersey and sought to ease tensions over the fate of Vietnam and to cool tensions in the Middle East in the aftermath of the Israeli Six-Day War. Once Nixon succeeded Johnson, dรฉtente flowered nicely, resulting in a couple of arms-limitation treaties, the Helsinki Accords, and the Apollo–Soyuz Test Project space mission. There was a reason why many of us Generation Xers didn't worry about nuclear war in the 1970s and why even a few of us didn't know anything about nuclear weapons. Dรฉtente was it.
Donald Trump came to power in 2017 in a different era. The Cold War was over, the fifteen republics of the Soviet Union had split into separate countries, and Russia - the largest Soviet republic and the republic that had more or less created the Soviet Union - had tried democratic government under Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s, but economic hardships led to the autocratic Vladimir Putin a return of tensions between post-Soviet Russia and the West. Trump had defeated Hillary Clinton for the Presidency in part because he wanted to stabilize Russo-American relations. As Trump himself said, it made sense to seek better relations with the other major nuclear power on the planet. That is, dรฉtente.
Fast forward to 2025. The current Russo-American relationship is not dรฉtente. It's more like an alliance. Trump and Putin are dealing behind and sometimes in front of the scenes to bring an end to the war in Ukraine in a way that benefits everyone but the Ukrainians, hence their absence in the talks in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia to end the Russo-Ukrainian War - a war Trump erroneously claims that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky started. The "peace plan" being framed is not a friendly gesture in the way that Apollo-Soyuz in 1975 was. It's a collaboration, and the objective isn't peaceful space exploration.
At the least, the Riyadh talks parallel the Munich Conference of 1938, in which British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was all too happy to let Hitler take over the German-speaking Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia without Czechoslovakian representatives in the talks - not to end a war but to prevent one, though Chamberlain's goal then was the same as Trump's is now - "Peace in our time." But at least Chamberlain had no love for Nazi Germany and had no desire to collaborate with Hitler to create a new European order. The deal Trump and Putin are trying to hammer out would not only give Russia the Russian-speaking Donbass area of Ukraine but entitle the United States to 50 - five-zero - percent of Ukrainian mineral rights to compensate for the money the U.S. has spent to aid Ukraine in the past three years. This isn't Munich in 1938 - this is Moscow in 1939, when German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov signed a nonaggression pact that secretly divided eastern Europe between the Nazis and the Soviets.
Trump has made it clear - he wants the United States and Russia to be allies, not just partners. Neither Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, nor Jimmy Carter, whose death two months ago spared him the knowledge of what a Trump Mark Two regime would be like, would recognize this as dรฉtente.
They would call it "sleeping with the enemy."
And Ronald Reagan, whose election not just signaled the end of the seventies but the end of dรฉtente, would call it "sleeping with the evil emperor."
The three riders of the apocalypse in the regime of Der
Amerikanischer Fรผhrer are in place. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is Secretary of Health and Human Services . . .
Tulsi Gabbard is now Director of National Intelligence . . .
. . . and, as of today, February 20, 2025, Kashyap Patel is director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Helter skelter.
So, if you hope to survive Trump, good luck. Because of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., you may have to deal with a disease that makes COVID look like the common cold. If you survive that, Tulsi Gabbard may let a Russian operative poison you for having insulted Putin when Biden was President, or maybe there'll be a contract on your life for insulting Elon Musk that escapes her watch. And if you end having to deal with Patel . . .
. . . you'll wish you'd been done in by one of the other threats.
They're coming down fast . . . yes, they are . . . yes, they are.
(Correction: The above photo is not of Kashyap Patel. The above photo is of James David Vance. I regret the error.)
This past Monday was observed as Presidents' Day, though it is officially still known as Washington's Birthday despite the fact that the third Monday of February is always Washington's Birthday even when Washington's actual birthday - February 22 - falls on a Monday, because then it's the fourth Monday of February.
Anyway, a New York Republican congresswoman plans to introduce a bill that would make another President's birthday a national holiday. Abraham Lincoln's birthday, currently only an irrelevant state holiday in the Northern states? No. Theodore Roosevelt's birthday, as he was born and raised in New York State? Nope. The birthday of Thomas Jefferson, the only other President on Mount Rushmore? No - Donald Trump's birthday!
U.S. Representative Claudia Tenney is sponsoring a bill that, noting that Trump's birthday, June 14, is already acknowledged as Flag Day, and noting that Trump is as all-American as the flag (gag me with a spoon!), June 14 should be a federal holiday for Trump.
And what would that do to Juneteenth five days later? Likely remove it as a federal holiday because Trump's birthday and Juneteenth have way too much proximity to each other on the calendar.
Ick.
Currently, George Washington and Martin Luther King, Jr. are the only Americans who have federal holidays in their honor. Let's keep it that way.
And let's keep Trump's ugly face off Mount Rushmore, in light of efforts to add him to that monument.
Having not experienced an age of antiquity, a medieval period, or a Renaissance, and having broken all ties with our mother country, which has experienced all that, the United States has long lacked the maturity or the wisdom to be a world leader. This was evident as soon as the U.S. replaced Great Britain and France as the leading power of the West in the late 1940s, when the Chinese Communists drove Chiang Kai-shek from the mainland to Taiwan and the leading paranoiacs in Washington rhetorically asked, "Who lost China?", as if a country so old even its laundry secrets date back to antiquity was ever ours to lose. The one thing that gave us legitimacy as a world leader was our values system - our commitment to the rule of law, our generosity to other countries in the form of the Peace Corps and the United States Agency for International Development, and our support for international health and education standards - but most of all our commitment to other countries fighting for their freedom and for their sovereignty. Yes, we made some blunders - overthrowing democratically elected socialist governments in Latin America, invading Iraq - but overall our commitment to freedom remained strong.
Not . . . any . . . more.
This past week, American leaders, from the Orange Man in the White House to his vice presidential lackey to the drunk running the Pentagon (replacing a brilliant black man like Lloyd Austin with Pete Hegseth to lead Defense is like a '60s oldies radio station playing Sam Cooke records switching to a '90s oldies format that plays Michael Bolton covers of Sam Cooke songs), have made it clear that they will no longer back Ukraine in its fight against Russia. Not because we can't afford it, or because we care about the carnage in the war, but because . . . we just don't want to. Our so-called leaders have decided that a commitment to a free and democratic Ukraine and a fair and just peace for Ukraine and for all of Europe is no business of ours. This is the same country that never recognized the incorporation of the Baltic States into the Soviet Union, of which Ukraine was one of the original republics (though not by choice). This is the same country that, until President Biden was gone, continued to commit to helping Ukraine in its fight against Vladmir Putin. Trump, rather than redouble American efforts to aid the Ukrainians, chose instead to have a summit with Putin for which neither Ukraine nor the European Union were to be consulted, to discuss a peace deal that neither Ukraine nor the European Union support - one that would support Russian claims to Ukrainian territory.
Oh yeah, and Americans would get the rights to half of Ukraine's mineral resources. Trump tried to get Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to sign a document to that effect, but Zelensky refused. Meanwhile, Pete Hegseth reaffirmed Russian claims to Ukrainian territory and its own regional interests by saying it was inconceivable that Ukraine regain its land from before the invasion of Crimea in 2014 and should not allowed to join the European Union or NATO. (So, even while Trump and Putin were acting like Ribbentrop and Molotov in pilfering Eastern Europe, Hegseth was appeasing the Russians for peace in our time while in . . . Munich.)
Now the Europeans, with encouragement from President Zelensky and leadership from President Emanuel Macron of France, are planning to combine their military forces to come to Ukraine's aid. Great Britain - no longer an EU member but still having an interest in Continental affairs - has committed more aid to Ukraine. The nations of Europe are banding together to help Ukraine because they no longer trust us anymore. Why should they? A plurality of us just put Trump back into the White House and he's still getting broad support in the polls. Not only is America withdrawing from its international commitments, American voters seem to be just fine - happy, even - with that. The Europeans knew that Trump's return was inevitable, largely, because they've long known what I said at the beginning of this post - Americans are not mature enough and wise enough to lead the world, and the large support Trump enjoys among voters signified to them that we were no longer committed to a value system - the one thing that legitimized as as a superpower in the first place.
When Joe Biden assumed the Presidency in 2021, he famously said, "America is back!" To which world leaders replied, "But for how long?" The answer - four years. And even if "America is back" in 2029 should a Democrat be elected President, the rest of the world won't want us back. We're too unlearned and too foolish, too mercurial and too unstable, The question is no longer whether the European Union should lead the free world . . . they must lead it! Because not only will Trump not lead it . . . he's too busy working with Musk to make sure we're no longer part of it.
Hi, it's me again. I think you know why I'm writing you today, given everything that's gone down since your fellow California girl Kamala Harris had her joyful rear end handed to her in the last (at least I hope it's not the last) presidential election. So I'll just come right out and say it - the 2028 Olympics, for which you are the organizing committee's chief athlete officer, cannot go on in Los Angeles.
Look, Janet, here's the deal. The Olympic movement is an international one, meant to foster good relations between the countries of the world through sport. And Donald Trump has managed to foster horrible relations between the United States and every other country on the planet in one short month. Right after we were in the Paris Olympics, he pulled us out of the Paris climate accord. He pulled us out of the World Health Organization. If the United Nations headquarters building weren't in New York, he would have pulled us out of the UN in a heartbeat - and given the endless real-estate repurposing possibilities for the UN's East Midtown property, he might just still do that and send the UN packing and off to Geneva. His hirsute Vice President was just in Munich admonishing European countries for refusing to acquiesce to the growing and increasingly dangerous rhetoric of right-wing populists and suggested that politicians who ignore the political concerns of the European far right are more of an enemy to American and European values than Russia or China. The only people in the audience for James David Vance's speech who applauded him were his own staffers.
Janet, how much more do you want to hear? When Trump isn't eroding human rights in America with his anti-abortion measures and his persecution of non-heterosexuals, he's starting trade wars with his tariffs. His erosion of public health standards - Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who's a health expert like I'm a jet pilot, just got confirmed as Health and Human Services Secretary - will make athletes who plan to compete in the Los Angeles Olympics much more hesitant to come here out of fear of catching something. And all of the bureaucratic elements that make a country function smoothly have just been gutted by Elon Musk. Need I say more?
Well, Janet, I will. Los Angeles and a few of its immediate suburbs just suffered some of the most catastrophic fires in the state of California's history. Even if former President Biden had been able to stay in the campaign and win re-election or if Kamala Harris had eked out a victory over Trump this past November, the fires still would have happened, and the loss of the entire Pacific Palisades section of LA merely underscores how sensitive southern California is to natural disasters - and in an era of climate change, that goes double. Given the scope and breadth of the disaster, Los Angeles, I would argue, is in no condition to host a major sporting event of any sort. And, given how the greater Los Angeles area can only sustain naturally a population of a couple hundred thousand, without all of those aqueducts, I don't see how Los Angeles County has the ability to host an Olympiad when it struggles for the necessary resources to sustain the 9.7 million people who call it home.
Look, Janet, I know it would have been cool to have a President Kamala Harris officiate at the opening of the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles, especially since it's her and her New Jersey-bred husband's adopted hometown, and no one certainly expected Donald Trump to be President in 2028. That's why LA got the 2028 Olympics and not the 2024 Olympics - I have no doubt that the members of the International Olympic Committee figured, when awarding the the Games of the XXXIV Olympiad to Los Angeles, that Trump would either serve two consecutive terms as President and be gone by 2028 or he would be lose his 2020 re-election bid and would be too politically wounded to win a second nonconsecutive term, especially since no former U.S. President had pulled that off since 1892. And, since Trump won a plurality in 2024, and since he made significant gains among black men, white women, and Hispanics of both sexes, and since Harris won solidly Democratic states by smaller margins than Hillary Clinton in 2016 or Joe Biden in 2020, the inference is that the country is moving in the direction of Trump's extreme agenda and is quite happy with where Trump is taking the country, if recent polls are to be believed. Here's something else we can infer, Janet - more Americans would rather have a racist, misogynistic, fascistic con man in the White House than a black woman with a Jewish husband.
Yes, yes, Janet, I know California is much more liberal than the rest of the country, and Kamala Harris may still officiate at the 2028 Olympics as governor of the state (though I think she's as politically dead as Albert Gore was in 2001), but holding an international sporting event in California and pretending that it's not part of the now-hated United States is like what holding international figure-skating or track and field championships in Minsk and pretending that Belorussia was not part of the hated Soviet Union would have been back in the Cold War era. In fact, to the rest of world, California means Hollywood, and to rest of the world, Hollywood is America. Clearly, under present circumstances and circumstances for the foreseeable future, holding an Olympiad in Los Angeles or in any other American city is a no-go.
Therefor, Janet, I am writing a letter to International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach - a real postal letter, not an open online letter like this one - and asking him to move the 2028 Games elsewhere while the IOC still can do so. And, Janet, given that Trump could start a world war, the LA Olympics might have to be cancelled anyway.
Sincerely.
Steven Maginnis
P.S. You know I still love you, right? Just don't tell your husband.
Last time I checked, I still don't have a country, I still have a state, and, having written a letter to my state's senior U.S. Senator, Cory Booker regarding the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico, I have since written a letter to the newly junior U.S. Senator from New Jersey, Andy Kim, about the Department Of Governmental Efficiency. That letter is below. As with my letter to Senator Booker, this isn't an open letter to the senator buts an actual letter I sent - both postally and online to Senator Kim's office.
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Dear Senator Kim:
First, let me congratulate you on your win in the 2024 U.S. Senate election. I am certain you will be a great representative for the state of New Jersey.
That out of the way, I would like to share with you my concerns about the Department Of Governmental Efficiency. I am very upset with how much the department is slashing government spending.
It should slash it even more.
I feel like our money has been spent foolishly for far too long and, if anything, General Secretary Elon Musk is not cutting expenditures nearly half enough. He should at least find another $2 trillion worth of savings.
What’s more distressing is that the savings are going to tax cuts for the wealth. Shouldn’t any savings instead be diverted to more worthy projects than geodetic surveys and development grants for children’s playgrounds. I’m 59 – what do I need a playground for? (Besides, the public playground I used to play at when I visited my grandparents in Orange was closed to drill a municipal well on the site back in 1971!) Therefore, I propose that the federal government use the money for projects that have been ignored for far too long.
First, Bigfoot. Despite photographic evidence that the hairy monster actually exists, the federal government has never investigated this reoccurring phenomenon in the Pacific Northwest. I propose that not only should the United States look for Bigfoot, but it should also do so in a joint mission with Canada, where he is called Sasquatch. It would go a long way to repair relations with our northern neighbors.
Next, infrastructure. Not only do we have so many bridges in disrepair, but there are bodies of waters and chasms that have never been spanned at all. Like the Atlantic Ocean. I support a vehicular bridge across the Atlantic that would connect the United States to Portugal on the Iberian Peninsula, and since it is due east of New Jersey, it would provide an excellent opportunity for federal money for the state to build the bridge’s western terminus. It would also provide new travel possibilities for people who are afraid of flying. Spare no expense.
And, any money left over should be used to build a bullet train to connect Hawaii with the mainland, as suggested in the Green New Deal proposal to replace all air travel with high-speed rail.
Also, there should be money to develop more environmentally friendly ways of measuring time based on solar and electric power. That’s why I support a portion of the savings General Secretary Musk has realized to go to research on electric sundials. The electric sundial is the wave of the future.
Now, about the administration of the Department Of Governmental Efficiency. General Secretary Musk has employed immature males under the age of 25 to help him in his endeavors. How are they being compensated? Is General Secretary Musk feeding them? Are their cells cleaned regularly? And when was the last time they changed their underwear? This demands an investigation by the House Government Efficiency Committee and its Senate counterpart.
Finally, General Secretary Musk himself. He has proven to be an excellent co-president in the current regime, and not since the Roman Republic has a dual executive branch worked so effectively. I propose that in the event that Mr. Trump cannot complete his term, we should combine the offices of Department Of Governmental Efficiency General Secretary and President into a new office – the Grand Potentate of the United States, and let Mr. Musk take complete control of the government upon assuming this office, which would be a lifetime appointment.
Thank you for your time. -- Sincerely, Steven Maginnis
P.S. I loved your number-one single from September 1974, “Rock Me Gently.” It’s a shame you gave up a career in music for a career in politics.
P.P.S. You realize that this letter is pure satire, right? Let me be serious, now that I have treated you to my unorthodox humor. I believe that you are right when you say that the Trump administration is engaged in lawless activity through unilateral executive branch action, and I also believe that Elon Musk and his fictitious department is a threat to our democracy and our future quality of life. Please do everything you can to reverse these awful cuts to foreign aid, medical research, and entitlements. And yes, I know of course that “Rock Me Gently” was recorded by a different Andy Kim. Thank you.
If you can't dazzle U.S. Senators with brilliance, tickle them with satire.
I didn't write these letters as an American. I wrote them as a resident of a state that happens to be in the American union who realizes that America has left him. I know you're not supposed to be sarcastic in writing to members of your state's congressional delegation, but this is a new era and a new - and scary - world. Satire is the only way out.
Meanwhile, for your entertainment, the other Andy Kim!
When the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America became reality with the Interior Department making Trump's whim official, I'd had it.
Even though I no longer have a country, I still have a state - New Jersey, which I wish would secede form the Union. But since I am a New Jersey resident and so have representation in the United States Senate, I decided to take advantage of that and write a letter to Senator Cory Booker regarding the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico.
That letter is below. This isn't an open letter to the senator. This is an actual letter I sent - both postally and online to Senator Booker's office!
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Dear Senator Booker:
noted with interest Donald Trump's desire to annex Canada and to purchase Greenland. I am writing to express my eager support for Mr. Trump's initiatives. I believe that acquiring all of North America north of the border and east of Alaska would strengthen our economy and expand our gross domestic product. Also, I am pleased that the Gulf of Mexico has now been officially renamed the Gulf of America. Having elected a president named "Claudia," Mexico deserves no respect. Also, I am greatly in favor of the efforts of Representative Earl L. Carter (R-GA) to help Mr. Trump acquire Greenland and to rename it.
However, I believe more renaming of American geographical points is in order, along with renaming some of the newly acquired Canadian lands. Contrary to popular wisdom, Canada would not become the fifty-first state if we were to annex it; it would actually give us thirteen new states, the ten provinces and the three Arctic territories. One of them is called the Northwest Territories. Not only is it a singular territory, we can't have a state with the word "territories" in it.
Therefore, I propose we rename it "Fred." It's an easy name to remember.
Also, I disagree with Representative Carter's effort to rename Greenland "Red White and Blue Land" once we make the world's largest island the 64th state. I prefer that we rename it "Alan." Why? It's an easy name to remember.
Also, we have to anglicize place names in the United States to unite the country, which means no more Spanish place names and no more French ones, either - especially in Quebec. San Francisco would become St. Francis, Amarillo would become Yellowtown, Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin would become Dogland, Des Moines would become "City of the Friars," Terre Haute, Indiana would become High Ground - you get the idea. Since Detroit's name means "strait," we should rename that North Windsor, after Windsor, Ontario across the Windsor River. Windsor is a beautiful English name.
In New Jersey, Montclair should be renamed "Clear Mountain," and Belleville should not be renamed "beautiful village." Not because it's not beautiful; it's because it's not a village. South Orange is a village. Rename Belleville "Jim." It's an easy name to remember.
Also, we have to rename Colorado. It's a Spanish name and it's a word meaning "colored," and that's a pejorative. I propose that we rename it "Bob." It's an easy name to remember. Also, now that we've named the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America, we should rename New Mexico "South Bob."
Then there's Los Angeles. Its official name is "El Pueblo de Nuestra Dama, La Reina de los Angeles." The name means "The Town of Our Lady, The Queen of the Angels." We should change that name - not because it's in Spanish, but because it clearly violates the separation of church and state. I remember that Pat Buchanan once rhetorically asked why we were more concerned about unrest in Lithuania than unrest in Burundi. Because, he said, Lithuanians "are white people. That's who we are. That's where America comes from." Now, I always thought America came from British settlements, but since we actually evolved from Lithuania, we should honor our real mother country by renaming Los Angeles "New Vilnius." Hopefully we can get that done before the 2028 Olympics. In the meantime, we should definitely abolish the Department of Education, as it has allowed too many Americans to graduate from school thinking we won our independence from Britain when in fact, as Pat Buchanan pointed out, it was Lithuania.
Thank you for your time. -- Sincerely, Steven Maginnis
P.S. There are two more pieces of legislation I'd like to propose. One is that the official language of the United States should be Lithuanian. The other is that everyone under sixteen years old is now . . . sixteen years old.
P.P.S. You realize this letter is sarcasm, right? Now that you have had a taste of my humor, let me be serious now. Please do what you can to stop Donald Trump. He is insane and does not belong in the White House.
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I'm hoping to write Senator Andy Kim on another issue.
Trump just fired everyone on the board of the John F. Kennedy Center of the Performing Arts and made himself the arts complex's director, putting himself in charge of the programming for the nation's performing arts venue.
Once again, Trump is emulating Hitler, who enforced his own artistic tastes and values by force, encouraging art to reflect classical values and be comprehensible to average people as well as aim toward the heroic and the romantic. The Nazis had detested the modern, exciting art trends of the Weimar Republic to be degenerate and distasteful, and architectural trends of the Weimar era were also held in suspicion; Hitler shut down the Bauhaus studio for its radical approach to architecture.
An example of Nazi artistic values is painter Adolf Wissel’s 1939 work Farm Family from Kahlenberg (above), depicting what was considered the ideal German family in the eyes of the Nazis - blond hair, blue eyes, stoically conservative. As art critic Ginny Dawe-Woodings has pointed out, "Militarism and male dominance were prominent themes, as was family life, often depicting strictly defined gender roles. Dawe-Woodings pointed to Farm Family from Kahlenberg as indicative of these themes. "This division of gender roles is exemplified in [this painting, a] portrait of a seemingly idyllic Aryan family. The father appears behind the rest of the family casting a somewhat detached but domineering eye over his brood, a grandmother knits, children play and, at the center, the mother comforts the youngest child."
Musical performances were no different in messaging. German musical concerts from the Nazi period tended to offer bombastic classical music to light middlebrow fare extolling the virtues of the state. "Foreign" musical ideas - American jazz, any music written by Jews - were shunned.
All that said, I really don't worry or care about a Trump-run Kennedy Center. I have noted how the building himself was criticized for seemingly emulating the work of Nazi architect Albert Speer. I have already cited the numerous middlebrow music and theater offerings at the nation's performing "arts" venue, as well as the penchant for giving its honor citations to hack entertainers, as well as American rappers and British (?) heavy-metal bands. Trump's own tastes are hardly refined - he likes the Village People, for Pete's sake - but an "arts" center programmed by Trump can't do any worse than they've been doing.
I just hope Trump doesn't take over as curator of the National Gallery of Art. Because if he does, every paining or sculpture in that museum is going to be a photo or illustration of either Trump or any of his family members.
Say what you will about noted fine-arts thief Hermann Gรถring, he had better taste in art.
I stopped paying attention to the Grammys when it became apparent that the musical crimes of white males - prog, metal, Pat Boone, Michael Bolton, yacht rock, etc., etc., etc. - finally caught up with any musician with pale skin and a Y chromosome, leading to my fellow honkies being shut out of the big Grammy awards . . . Record of the Year, Album of the Year, whatever. And this year, Beyoncรฉ and Kendrick Lamar dominated the big awards. (Who won Record of the Year and Album of the Year, you ask? Ahh, I don't give a twit.) But the Best Rock Performance Grammy winner of 2025 definitely raised my eyebrows.
It went to the Beatles for their last single, "Now and Then," from 2023.
This made quite an impression on me. Hey, why fib? "Now and Then" is a pretty nice song, even if it's more of a ballad, a song that has more in common with a Neil Diamond MOR tune than with a Neil Young rocker. And Paul McCartney's use of artificial intelligence to finish a song that was culled from John Lennon's vast accumulation of demos of songs in various states of completion (an accumulation that, thanks to AI, might one day produce a few new John Lennon solo albums), which was slated for the Beatles' 1996 Anthology 3 compilation but shelved because George Harrison had a problem with how it sounded at the time, was certainly a worthy innovation. But let's be honest. The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences actually selected a Beatles song that was recorded and mixed piecemeal over a 45-year time frame over more contemporary rock performances from current artistes who are struggling to be heard as rock and rollers in a hip-hop/R&B world. And, like the last John Lennon album released in his lifetime - his and Yoko Ono's Double Fantasy, the 1982 Album of the Year Grammy recipient - "Now and Then" is a good record that nonetheless would not have won a Grammy on its own merit if the insect (as Bernie Taupin called him) who murdered Lennon had been fatally run over by a speeding taxi on Central Park West in Manhattan on the afternoon of December 8, 1980, before he had the chance to commit his evil deed. In fact, had Lennon lived, "Now and Then" likely would never have become a Beatles song.
Or, in other words, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences would rather celebrate rock's past than even acknowledge rock's present.
It's bad enough that today's rock bands should consider themselves lucky if they can acquire a recording contract. Now they can't even win an award if a band that broke up more than half century before is their competition. Or Beyoncรฉ, who won a Rock Performance Grammy awhile back and just won the Best Country Album Grammy, so desirous is she to be represented in every musical form except classical music. (Maybe Ringo Starr's recently released country album will win next year.) Such hapless bands would include TV On The Radio or the Alabama Shakes, both black rock bands, as much as Dirty Honey or Greta Van Fleet, so the turn away from rock is not completely racial. It's mostly aesthetic. Guitar music just isn't as cool as it used to be, if indeed it is still cool at all, though part of the reason for that is that it's associated with honkies. And quite frankly, that's the fault of white male rock fans and radio programmers who wouldn't accept black rock artistes as rockers back in the seventies.
And so, as long as electric-guitar groups are perceived to be on the way out - a phenomenon Decca Records' Dick Rowe predicted in 1962 when he rejected the Beatles for a recording contract, making him far ahead of his time - the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences will continue to stress rock and roll's history because rock and roll is history.
As I write this, Beatles fans on social media are celebrating today's anniversary (the 61st) of the fabulous foursome's first performance on "The Ed Sullivan Show." That's because there's nothing current in rock to celebrate. It's not about now . . . it's about then.
Sure, everyone said about Trump, he vowed to go after his adversaries with lawsuits, he wanted a former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman executed, he vowed to indict any Democratic presidential candidate for 2028 who does better then he in the polls, and sure, he even wanted to add thirteen states to the Union by perpetrating an Anschluss of Canada - ten provinces and three territories - but, no, he's not another Adolf Hitler. Like, he wouldn't have an area ethnically cleansed for American expansion!
Then Trump announced his plans for the Gaza Strip.
He wants to deport the Gaza Palestinians - all two million of them - and send them to Jordan and Egypt so the Strip can be populated by non-Palestinians . . . and build casino resorts there.
In fact, this is not unlike the Third Reich's plans for Poland when German armies invaded and occupied that country in its quest to expand German populations into eastern Europe. The Governor General of occupied Poland, Hans Frank, went into great detail of how this land would be Germanized and cleared out for German settlement: "The Pole has no rights whatsoever. . .. A major goal of our plan is to finish off as speedily as possible all troublemaking politicians, priests, and leaders who fall into our hands. I openly admit that some thousands of so-called important Poles will have to pay with their lives. . . .. Every vestige of Polish culture is to be eliminated. Those Poles who seem to have Nordic appearances will be taken to Germany to work in our factories. . .. The rest? They will work. They will eat little. And in the end they will die out. There will never again be a Poland."
As we all know, after the Soviet Red Army liberated Poland in 1945, the borders of Poland were redrawn, and, in exchange for their eastern land being annexed by the U.S.S.R., the Poles acquired Pomerania, East Brandenburg, and Silesia from Germany. Every vestige of German culture in those regions was eliminated, as Germans were rounded up from these areas and transferred to what remained of Germany, and Poles moved into the cities in said regions. There will never again be a Breslau - only a Wrocลaw.
Hitler also had big plans for the conquered Soviet republics of Belorussia (now Belarus) and Ukraine that parallels Trump's plan for Gaza - rebuild it as a Mediterranean resort, a Mar-a-Lago for the Middle East. The Fรผhrer claimed rights to German annexation of Ukraine because the ancestors of the Germanic peoples, the East Goths, had settled there, meaning that, historically, according to Hitler, Ukraine was part of Germany already. Once the Slavs and Jews were cleared out for German lebensraum - "living space" - he would build new towns and establish new farms for the German people to settle in, with new inns to be built at interchanges along new autobahns for people traveling between the Ukrainian hinterlands and Berlin, as his court architect Albert Speer remembered. Hitler particularly wanted what we would today call a Disneyfied redevelopment of Belorussia and Ukraine - the houses would be unintentional parodies of traditional Germanic architecture, with the low-slung roofs, wide windows and shutters, and whitewashed plaster widely associated with villages in fairy tales, while the new towns would have centers that would essentially be copies of Munich. Heinrich Himmler even suggested that the new houses should have flower boxes along their windows.
Say what you will, the Nazis had better taste in aesthetics. Because you know that every building Trump will want to build in the Gaza Strip will look like Trump Tower in New York, except for those that will resemble Trump's Castle in Atlantic City.
Trump could get this country into a war if he tries to pull this off. If he does try, than the resulting war will not only end badly for the United States, it will especially end badly for Trump, who will likely be "retired" from leadership. Only question is whether it will be Congress or the people who do the retiring.
Why, why, why, why, why, why do so many people I admire ultimately turn out to be frauds, posers, or just plain horrible people in general? Gary Hart, Marion Jones, Hillary Clinton, Eric Clapton, Bill Cosby, James Howard Kunstler, Facebook "friends" I never meet in person - the list is endless. Sooner or later, of course, those people you admire appear to jump the shark, and little do you know they'd been on the wrong side of the shark all the time. And Elon Musk is the latest such person to join my list - for being a fraud (he didn't found Tesla), a poser (his "inventions" are even more useless than Beatles pal Magic Alex's prototypical products at Apple Electronics), and a horrible person (he's a Nazi).
It turns out he's worse than even all that. As the director of the fictional Department of Governmental Efficiency (DOGE?), Musk is going on a rampage through the federal government, shutting down the United States Agency for International Development and locking out it staff after accusing the agency of fraud, taking over the U.S. Treasury and putting kids fresh out of high school in charge of the computers, and getting data on the finances and bank accounts of every American taxpayer. Having direct and illegal access to our personal data, Musk can now use it to destroy someone who, oh, I don't know, speaks out against him or Trump. Up to now, he's only been able to delete X users who do so. Now he can comb through BlueSky and go after anyone there who's opposed to him (i.e., everyone there). Kash Patel won't need to use his power as FBI director to stifle opposition against the government because Musk can do it himself.
With the Treasury under his thumb, Musk can deny Social Security payments and Medicare assistance to anyone at whim - either because they've written a critical letter to the editor about him, because they've used their social media platforms (or blogs) to spread the truth about him, because they were active in the movement against apartheid in his native South Africa (Steven Van Zandt, take note!), or maybe because you bought a Lucid instead of a Tesla. He may already be looking for congressional Democrats to harass and persecute to drive them out of office (paving the way for turning Congress into a Supreme Soviet-style rubber-stamp legislature). Plus several more horror scenarios I can't fathom right now. With all of the power Musk gave himself by bullying his way into crucial agencies, no one is safe.
All I can do is to keep tell you what's going on. And while I won't qualify for Social Security for awhile, I too, as a blogger critical of Musk, have reason to fear him. And it's not because I ever said anything bad about his cars. That's what makes this so disgusting. I admired Musk for everything he did for electric vehicles. Now I look at Musk and, well, I can't believe I actually liked this guy! But, in pretending to engineer the cars he makes and in pretending to be developing pneumatic trains to get people to stop talking about high-speed rail and buy more of his cars, all while profiting from his government contracts with SpaceX (another reason he took over the Treasury), Musk has been giving America two faces for the price of one.
This is sort of a sequel to my earlier post about anarchy in America that I wrote in January.
Having seen Trump impose tariffs on China, Canada and Mexico (the latter two have been delayed by a month) and having seen him gut - or attempt to gut - the administrative state, I don't think this course he has set for the nation is sustainable or bearable. Hundreds of thousands if not millions of people will be hurt, and many will lose their livelihoods and possibly their lives. There is just no way Trump can keep himself in power when there is that much discord in the country. There will be economic dislocation and a breakdown of popular norms that will make Americans desperate enough to take action against their collective situation.
I continue to believe that Trump will not finish his term. I expect him to be deposed from the Presidency, and he will face justice for his crimes one way or another. I don't know how it will happen or when it will happen, but it will happen. I do know how it will not happen; he will not be impeached if the Democrats take back the House in 2026, because even a big swing to the Democratic Party that helps them take back the Senate will not give them enough votes to convict in the upper chamber. I still believe it will happen through, umm, extraconstitutional means. The MAGA movement will fall, but the process of MAGA's downfall will not be pretty.
Let me be blunt: There will be violence. I said that in January, and I still believe it now. I'm not prepared to say that Trump himself will survive the violent reaction to his administration. Though, if he does survive, he'll likely wish he hadn't. I think violence will be inevitable, and it may be - may be - the only way out of our current predicament. Change by the bullet rather than by the ballot remains the likelier scenario because this past November was our last chance to prevent Trump Mark Two. Change by the ballot cannot reverse Trump Mark Two, and even if we have free and fair elections in the midterms that helps Trump's adversaries, those elections are still two years off and too much damage has already been done in two short weeks.
And once he's deposed, the line of succession won't hold. The purge of Trump will be a purge of all Trumpism, because the economy and the quality of life in These States will have deteriorated that much. Vance won't be President, and neither will Mike Johnson. What replaces the regime is unknown, just as the answer to how Trump will be removed from office is unknowable. Will violence lead people in the government to take Trump out of power? Or will violence itself lead to Trump's removal?
And what will be done with him? A Nuremberg-like trial? Incarceration without trial? Exile? Internal exile? Being dragged through the streets to meet the same fate as Mussolini?
As I said in my January post, Trump will not flee Washington, and he won't take his own life in the White House. But there's going to be a big mess the second he's out, like a fire-gutted building that rubble is still falling from, or a boat run aground with a hole in its hull that needs to be repaired before it can take to sea again. People are going to have to figure out how to put America back together. As for leadership . . . well, there's going to be new leadership somehow. Maybe the military will take over and rewrite the Constitution to eliminate the ambiguities that make the undermining of civil rights possible. Maybe a bicameral council of House members and senators will take over and call for new elections to be held after a recovery period. It's likely not going to be brought about by peaceful, familiar means.
Maybe, as I've said before, the union of the states will not persist. Rather, it will go the way of the U.S.S.R. or Yugoslavia . . . and thus new American leadership won't be brought about at all.
How out of control is der Drumpf Reich after only two weeks in office? Let's examine the evidence:
Der Drumpf Reich offered buyouts to federal employees to get them to resign with the threat of being fired. This is how Chancellor Elon Musk gutted Twitter when he bought it and renamed it X.
The Reich gave Musk access to the private information of federal employees for Musk to use to intimidate them. Then the same power was given to the Treasury Department, which allows Musk access to the personal information of all Americans.
It canceled events and programs in the Defense Department related to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and recognition of all month-long or day-long celebrations of DEI. That not only means terminating events and programs related to Black History Month, Women's History Month, Hispanic History and Heritage Month, and Lithuanian-American Heritage Month (no such thing, just wanted to make sure you were paying attention) but not even recognizing official holidays like Martin Luther King Day and Juneteenth, which Trump will likely have eliminated from the federal holiday roster.
After a horrendous plane crash over National Airport on the Potomac River in which an airliner collided with a Black Hawk helicopter, the Dear Leader blamed DEI for the disaster, even though there were apparently no women or people of color at the helm of either aircraft or of the air-traffic control tower.
Musk forced out the head of the Federal Aviation Administration as payback for an FAA investigation into SpaceX.
The Reich tried to freeze on federal funds to all programs two ways of Greenwich and tried to deny that the freeze was still on to a federal judge when it in fact was. The judge placed a hold on the freeze with a temporary restraining order, which will likely lead to an injunction.
Almost as soon as Vice President Vance said that only the January 6 participants who merely went to the Capitol to demonstrate, and not the violent insurrectionists who killed and assaulted police officers, would be pardoned, the Dear Leader pardoned . . . all of them.
The Leader announced legal action against PBS for airing commercials - something PBS has had to do to balance its books since the early seventies when Nixon changed its funding formula to prevent it from becoming as independent as the BBC in the United Kingdom.
He has now imposed 25-percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico (over alleged illegal shipments of Fentanyl crossing the borders), which has caused our two neighbors to retaliate, and he has imposed a 15 percent tariff on China, which the Chinese are going to protest at the World Trade Organization.
Plus too many more to list.
I'm likely going to have to do a list like this every week for the next four years. If I live that long. Between Musk getting control of my private information and Kash Patel (below) getting control over the FBI, I am probably a dead man already. Through the feds will likely go after the Meiselas brothers first. ๐ข It's not because of what I've written about the Dear Leader since January 20, 2025; it's what I'd written about him before then. Everything I've written about him in the past several years is there for everyone to see, and even if I deleted all of it, it would still be on Blogger.com's servers. Nothing on the Internet is ever really deleted.
All right, maybe I won't get sent to Guantanamo (Spanish for Dachau), since my blog is small potatoes and I get fewer readers in a year than the Meiselas brothers get viewers in a day. And truthfully, even the Meiselas brothers won't get sent to Dachau-by-the-Sea and will likely only get bankrupted. But, even though I will continue to speak out and speak up, I have no illusions as to how this will all end. Opponents of the Reich are already calling for organizing for the 2026 midterms to put in Democratic majorities in the 120th Congress and hold the regime accountable, but the Leader probably is already working on contingency plans to have Congress dissolved and replaced with a rubber-stamp legislature that only meets twice a year and ratifies his decrees unanimously - it will even be even less democratic than the bi-annual Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints' General Conferences, where you can express yourself freely only by abstaining from voice votes. No, I continue to believe that, if the Leader is to be deposed before January 2029 - and he will be - it will be in a scenario that parallels the Russian Revolution or the fall of the Hapsburg dynasty in Austria. The military may have to step in to restore order and maybe rewrite the Constitution to get rid of all the ambiguities that allow the suppression of voting rights and the denial of gender equality - and the Second Amendment, because the National Guard units - the well-regulated militias - don't need to be constitutionally guaranteed anymore.
But restoring order and democratic norms peacefully, through the ballot box and peaceful assembly - the latter of which will probably be snuffed out by presidential fiat? Sorry. That time is past. We had our chance on November 5 of last year. Restoring order by peaceful means?
It's too late. I could be wrong, and I'd like to be, but I'm probably not. It's just . . . too . . . late. So don't ask me to join the resistance against Der Drumpf Reich to save my country because, since I don't have to leave America because America already left me, I don't have a country anymore.
(Correction: The above photo is not a picture of Kash Patel. It's a picture of Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts. I regret the error.)
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