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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I'm only going to say this.

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

. . . you need some serious psychiatric help. 

New Jersey: On To November

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

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

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

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

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

Music Video Of the Week - June 20, 2025

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

Iran Amok

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That thing is World War III.

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

Ten Years Gone

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

No one is laughing now.

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

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

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

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

. . . with wheels that squeak.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Music Videos Of the Week - June 13, 2025

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

Primary Day

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

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

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

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

Let's see what happens.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So, assuming we get to have a presidential election in 2028 in which there is more than one candidate and one of those candidates is not named Donald Trump (because if one of them is, it means that the Constitution has been terminated and the election is rigged), Democrats have to ask themselves this: Do they want to make a statement, or do they want to win?

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

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

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

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

Andy Beshear, the governor of Kentucky?

Andy Beshear.

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

Blood On the Rise is Following Us

This is how liberty dies . . . 

. . . with the use of force.

Trump just federalized the California state National Guard unit and sicced the troops on protesters demonstrating against ICE removing immigrants from various locations in Los Angeles.  Innocent bystanders have been arrested along with demonstrators.

Suddenly, going to the No Kings Day protests coinciding with the big Army parade in Washington doesn't seem like a good idea.  

But it is.  And anyone who can go should.  Anyone who can't go should be there in spirit at least.  Because if Los Angeles - the scheduled sight of the 2028 Olympics (it may be time for my to write another open letter to my Olympic heartthrob Janet Evans!)  - isn't safe, what locale is?

If we're not in an Amerikanisches Reich yet, we're certainly close.

When the Reichstag moment does come, prepare for martial law and curfews.  Prepare for suspension of the Bill of Rights and for executions of dissenters.

Prepare for sham elections in which Democrats - if they're not completely banned - may be allowed to field candidates but will lose in a rigged system.  Prepare for women's rights to be obliterated, and prepare for gays to wear pink triangles and for Muslims to wear yellow crescents in public.

Prepare for all art, music, cinema and books critical of the leader - or even any classic pop music, movies or literature or classical music that the leader has a problem with - to be banned as non-patriotism-promoting.

Prepare, in other words, for the entire country to become Utah.

Prepare also for separatist and secessionist movements to emerge.  The Constitution clearly means nothing anymore.  It's time to dissolve the Union and break the U.S. up into separate countries.  As soon as we get the chance. 

One Big Beautiful Feud

Remember when I said that Elon Musk wasn't really leaving the Trump regime, that he would still be around in some honorary form? I said that last week. I was wrong. What a difference a week makes. 

A very public argument between Trump and Musk erupted over the budget bill - the asininely titled "One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (note redundancy) with back-and-forth social-media bleats.   Musk, who spoke to CBS reporter David Pogue on "CBS Sunday Morning" - hardly a hard-hitting news program - said that Trump's budget proposals had too much spending and needed to be drastically cut.

Trump responded by saying that Musk, who, last time I checked, still owns Tesla, was upset because the "big beautiful bill" eliminated electric-vehicle tax breaks and added on his Truth Social platform that Musk "just went CRAZY!"

Musk used his personal account on his own platform X to declare that Trump would not have defeated Kamala Harris without his money and proportional efforts (sorry, Harris supporters, that's not enough to give her a reason for a comeback, Democrats do not let failed nominees have comebacks); Trump meanwhile,  threatened to cut Musk’s government contracts, and he ironically made a very valid point; even then-President Joe Biden hadn't tried to cut Musk's government contracts.  As for Musk, he claimed that Trump is indeed in the infamous Jeffrey Epstein files,  and then he reposted a comment on X calling for Trump’s impeachment. "Yes," Musk replied to the original commenter. 

And I thought that Musk was still in solid with Trump.  When I make a mistake, it's a big, beautiful one.😂

I think our new pope just performed his first miracle.  He hadn't even been in the shoes of the fisherman for three weeks, and chaos is already ensuing in the Trump regime.  Whatever the cause of the Trump-Musk split, this is far more entertaining and eye-opening that than split between President William Howard Taft and former President Theodore Roosevelt in 1912 must have been, because Taft and Roosevelt had been close friends, and the two eventually reconciled.  Trump and Musk had a friendship born out of convenience, mutual self-aggrandizement, and an irrational fear of an America headed by a black woman with a Jewish husband.  Their enormous egos are cancelling each other out and will hopefully make it that much harder for either of them to turn the United States into Der Amerikanisches Reich.

So let's sit back and enjoy the show that is the Trump-Musk feud. 

Just when I tried to stop eating so much popcorn . . .. 😂

Music Video Of the Week - June 6, 2025

"Rock and Roll Hoochie Koo" by Rick Derringer with the Edgar Winter Group  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Disappearing Trump

Where is Donald Trump?

That's a rhetorical question.  I don't care where he is.

But no one seems to know where he is.  He hasn't been seen since this past weekend, when he was - yeah, big surprise - playing golf.  IN this intervening time, Ukraine just destroyed 30 percent of the Russian air force with a stealth drone attack, and that big beautiful mess of a bill is stuck in Congress.

It seems that, after Trump has made so many undocumented migrants disappear . . .

. . . the tables have turned. 😀

Psychos. Killers.

Donald Trump has a new theory involving Joe Biden.  He thinks that Biden was executed in 2020 after a military tribunal and was replaced with an animatronic robot.  He apparently found out after studying the cover of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and concluded that it was Biden's hand being extended over Paul McCartney's head.  

And also, he found the smoking-gun clue by listening to the 2021 fiftieth-anniversary remaster of the Doors' L.A. Woman at a speed two semitones lower than the proper pitch.  At the lower semitone, Jim Morrison, instead of singing "Mr. Mojo risin'" on the title track, is actually singing, "We killed old Joe Biden."

Also, if you listen closely to Ray Manzarek's extended organ solo on "Riders On the Storm," Morrison can be heard whispering in the background, I'm faking my death in Paris and moving to Johannesburg."

Meanwhile, U.S. Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) defended cuts to Medicare and Medicaid at a town hall in Iowa, during which a constituent expressed fair that, without necessary health care, people were going to die.  Ernst replied that, eventually, we are all going to die.  (In the long run, we are all dead.  Sounds familiar.)  Ernst later apologized - well, not really - saying in a video taped in a cemetery that she "made an incorrect assumption that everyone in the auditorium understood that, yes, we are all going to perish from this earth . . ..  So I apologize, and I’m really, really glad that I did not have to bring up the subject of the tooth fairy as well."  And then she revealed her own health-care plan: "But for those that would like to see eternal and everlasting life, I encourage you to embrace my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ."

Jesus Christ is reported to have said in response, "Oh, Me." 

Personally, I think Joni Ernst was killed in a freak accident in England in which a stone from the Tower of London got dislodged and fell on her head and she has since been replaced by a wax figure at Madame Tussaud's.  

In a normal country - say, Finland - a President believing in conspiracies about replacing dead people with robots and a lawmaker whose solution to a longer, healthier life is embracing the promise of eternal life after death would be a reason for dissolving the government and calling for new elections.  The Constitution doesn't have a provision like that, of course, mainly because Washington and Franklin never dreamed that people in the government would be this stupid. 

I'm now going to listen to Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the U.S.A." backwards.  Maybe I can find out what happened to Jimmy Hoffa. 😀

Pictures of a Beautiful Autopsy

Model Rachel Williams was the last original subject, barring an unidentified model whose picture I found in an old Sears catalog published online, that I featured on my beautiful-women picture blog. 

Except for one thing.  I forgot that I had posted a decade earlier a picture of Rachel Williams with three other models from Revlon's "Most Unforgettable Women" ad campaign.

This is one of several reasons why my blog had to end.  It had gotten to the point where I couldn't keep track of or remember whom I had featured on my blog and whom I'd never featured before.

My blog is now dead.  I deleted it this past Saturday as I promised I would, and when Blogger.com gave me the option to permanently delete it, rather than keep it on file for up to three months should I change my mind, I couldn't press "PERMANENTLY DELETE" fast enough.  My mind was made up.  The blog had gotten problematic with too many women from professions where good looks mattered either little or not at all, and I thought I was actually doing womanhood a favor by including Lisa Masterson, a black female doctor who only became a household name because she was a co-host of a daytime TV medical talk show.  Right.  Because if you go to a lady doctor for care, her looks should be just as important as her medical expertise.  For TV, of course, Dr. Masterson's looks were important.  In the real world that Dr. Masterson otherwise participates in, however, her looks shouldn't matter.  Dr. Masterson, meanwhile, became culturally irrelevant when "The Doctors" (yes, that's what the show was called) was canceled and her fifteen minutes of fame were up.

When did the rot in my blog begin to set in?  Certainly not with actresses I featured early on, because these actresses were actresses whose movies I knew like song lyrics.  Certainly not with models or dancers I featured in the beginning, nor even with on-camera meteorologists for The Weather Channel, as the ladies on that cable channel have and had fan clubs started by smitten males (I belonged to a Vivian Brown fan club on Yahoo).   The rot might have set in when I featured for the first time a hard-news reporter - NBC's Rehema Ellis, whom I probably featured because I was going through a round of new subjects from A to Z and I needed a surname that began with the letter E.  Or maybe it was when I did my first series on beautiful athletes and featured tennis player Jennifer Capriati, who is a gorgeous woman but is still a tennis player, and I myself am not a tennis fan.  But it certainly started eating away at the foundation of my blog when I started featuring television actresses who were either unknown to me until twenty minutes before I featured them, disappeared after their sitcoms got canceled with their fifteen minutes of fame up, or both.  It was my reliance on fly-by-night starlets and TV newswomen (*cough cough*, Kristen Welker, *cough cough*) that ultimately doomed my blog, culminating with the dustup with the fellow who runs the RETROCirq channel on YouTube.

Oh, and also adding Katy Perry to my blog.  I never should have included Katy Perry.  Tyler Perry in drag would have made more sense.   

I also have a confession to make.  While I had a page of written rules and criteria for who could be featured on my blog, I had a couple of unwritten, secret rules.  One was, no Scientologists.  I consider myself pretty tolerant when it comes to religion, accepting Muslims as part of the American fabric (but not progressives who delight in bashing Catholicism but rush to defend Islam despite Islam being similar to the Church in its cultural conservatism), and even accepting Mormons as Christians, but Scientology is not a religion.  It's a cult.  And its celebrity members are annoyingly bad missionaries for their "faith."  So if you followed my beautiful-women picture blog and wondered why I never included Anne Archer or, when she was alive, Kirstie Alley, that's why.

Another rule was not to include lesbians.  I have nothing personally against lesbians, and I joke that I could be friends with any lesbian because we have one thing in common - we both like women.   But I didn't want to take the chance of featuring, say, Portia de Rossi and having homophobes leaving nasty comments on my blog.  So I didn't post pictures of Portia de Rossi.

But I did post a picture of Canadian actress Ellen Page, who was a lesbian - I posted it without being aware of her sexual orientation.  Once I found out she was a lesbian, I did not remove the post - I preferred to let it be.  Surprisingly, though, no one left any nasty comments on my Ellen Page post.  Then, out of nowhere, Ellen Page symbolically died and was reborn as Elliot Page.  Faced with the reality of having featured on my blog a woman who was now a man, I confronted the issue head-on.  In a new post, I defended Page's gender transition, saying that she - now he - had every right to become a male and that I was certain he was happy in his new identity and his new life, and I wished him well.  I did not give into fear of transsexuals and remove my post of Ellen Page now that Elliot Page had replaced her.  I stood up for something.  I was proud of that.  I still am.  I suppose that's why they call this month of June "Pride Month."

Overall, though, I'm not really proud of my beautiful-women picture blog in retrospect.  The subject was all wrong for a blog, and over time, it became difficult to sustain indefinitely.  And that's partly why it stopped being fun.  And to be honest, I should have ended it sooner.  But it doesn't matter now.  I have ended it.  

And I'm free.  Free from having to maintain the blog, free from having to come up with new subjects for posts, free from having to keep a second blog going even as I keep this one going.

Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty (and the "PERMANENTLY DELETE" button) I'm free at last.

Musk Is Gone. Not.

Elon Musk served his long-awaited last day as a special government employee.  He gave a press conference from the White House explaining how he made changes to how government works and is accountable, and Trump praised him as having a great impact on government, a greater impact than anyone before in America history.

Alas, this is true.  Musk may be stepping down as director of the "Department" of Government Efficiency, but he will still most likely pull strings from the outside, and the "agency" he and Trump founded is more or less still in place, and it has all that personal data on every American it mined in the interim.  He is still a threat, and he is still a danger.  And with Tesla on the rocks, he has plenty of time to continue his assault on America as a private citizen.

As for Musk's black eye . . . apparently, he got into a row with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent that got violent, but that's probably a rumor more than anything else.  Classic-rock fans may remember when the Doors appeared on "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour" and guitarist Robby Krieger, having worn sunglasses for their performance in the first half of the show, turned out to have a black eye when he went sunglasses-free for the Doors' performance in the second half.  The story was that Jim Morrison punched Krieger in the eye during rehearsals at CBS Television City for the Smothers Brothers' show, but in fact, Krieger got his black eye from a car crash he'd recently been in.  So I don't really think Bessent punched Musk any more than I believed Jim Morrison punched Robby Krieger.  But however Musk got his black eye, he deserved it.

Musk joked that he hadn't been to France, but the French aren't the only ones who would want a crack at Musk.  Pretty much all eight billion-odd people on the planet are suspects in this assault case.  Especially Tesla owners and former admirers.

Music Video Of the Week - May 30, 2025

"Venus and Mars / Rock Show" by Paul McCartney and Wings  (Go to the link in the upper-right hand corner.)

Unwarranted Optimism

I identify with Kyle MacLachlan these days.

The actor first came to people's attention in 1984 as the then-unknown star of the first attempt at a movie version of Dune, sci-fi writer Frank Herbert's book series, which was directed by the late David Lynch. As it was one of the most eagerly anticipated movies of 1984, prospects for its success were so great that MacLachlan signed a contract committing to appear in four Dune sequels.  

It was an example of unwarranted optimism.  The film was a huge flop.  MacLachlan more or less disappeared for awhile after that. 

I identify with MacLachlan because of my own unwarranted optimism regarding my decision to stay where I was and how much time and money I spent to settle myself into my new life after my mother died in January 2024.  Having lived with my mother for decades and never struck out on my own, I chose to remain in my childhood house and spent money to freshen it up - a fresh coat of paint in one room, several pictures on the wall, a new bow window for the living room (the old one had leaks, and my mother was wrongly told that it couldn't be replaced).  I also spent a small fortune on my car, repairing damaged trim and getting my driver's seat re-covered.  I did all of this because I expected to stay in my childhood home with my two newly adopted cats for the rest of my life.

Then, on my fifty-ninth birthday, Trump was voted back into power.

And since January 2025, I have come to realize that everything I did to settle in in 2024 was based on unwarranted optimism in the outcome I hoped for in the election - that Trump would lose.  And 2025 under Trump has turned out to be far worse than I imagined it would be, and I imagined mass executions for people vocally opposed to Trump.  

This past weekend, I was reminded of just how foolish I was to invest in staying in my house - that is, staying in America - with no expectation that Trump would actually be voted back into the White House.  The Department of Health and Human Services and the Food and Drug Administration just issued "guidelines" regarding COVID vaccines that are really gospel.  The Musk-emaciated agencies declared that COVID vaccines are to be restricted to seniors and to people under 65 years of age with underlying health conditions.  Having been given clean bills of health for the past few years and not yet sixty, I meet neither of those requirements.  I was prepared to pay out of pocket for another COVID shot if I had to - as much as a couple hundred dollars - but the shots may, in fact, simply be unavailable for those who don't meet the new requirements, no matter what I'm willing to pay.  

Also, Trump has issued disastrous mandates regarding the environment.  Democratic states, having seen Trump and Musk trash the Environmental Protection Agency and withdraw from any and all international environmental agreements, have been prepared to handle their own environmental policy and still honor the terms of the Paris climate accord.  Ignoring the Tenth Amendment, Trump is forbidding the states to do anything regarding the environment that overrides federal policy and has U.S. Attorneys - including the insufferable Alina Habba in my own state of New Jersey - ready to make states pay for their defiance.  Trump has also gutted the National Weather Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, meaning that if New Jersey gets another Sandy, we may not find out about it until it's too late.  My mother and I rode out Sandy because my mother didn't want to leave.  As my own man, I now have the freedom to, whenever a hurricane or a similarly destructive storm is forecast to bear down on my area, get my cats in their pet carriers and drive to another part of the country out of the storm's path.  Trump's decision to render the weather bureaus unable to track such storms may very well have taken that freedom away from me.

And, he's already been trying to take away other freedoms, like the freedom to speak out against him, the freedom to advocate for anything he disagrees with, and, quite possibly, the freedom to travel outside the United States.  He hasn't declared martial law yet, and I still expect to travel to Europe this summer for the first time ever in my whole life, but thanks to his and Musk's emaciation of the Federal Aviation Administration and my own regional airport being the locus of the current air-traffic control crisis, he's already making foreign travel dangerous.  We're free to travel elsewhere, but we also know that we're taking a much more dangerous risk than we would have this past January 19.

Now I get it.  I shouldn't have spent so much money on a house I would have to sell if I have to leave the country for good.   I also shouldn't have spent so much money on my car, seeing as I couldn't take it with me if I moved to Europe.  I probably couldn't take it with me if I moved to Canada - for some idiotic reason, my Volkswagen doesn't have a metric readout on my speedometer.  (I think I mentioned that here before.)  That's a moot point, as the rules for emigrating to Canada are so strict that I might as well move to Ireland, which is much easier - but a major storm that hit that island country earlier this year demonstrated that that might not be a good idea.  

And because I didn't hedge my bets before Kamala Harris got her butt kicked by MAGA voters, I'm in a very precarious position.  But, as I noted before, it was most likely unfeasible to try to leave the country all along.

Unwarranted optimism.

So we all know what happened to Kyle MacLachlan.  He collaborated again with David Lynch in 1986's Blue Velvet and his career turned out fine after that, and he and Lynch would work together as regularly as Martin Scorsese has with Robert DeNiro and Leonardo DiCaprio.  Dune, in the meantime, was made as a movie again and has since become the successful film franchise that everyone thought it would be in the eighties.  Things worked out for MacLachlan.  And Dune.  For me - and America in general - I'm not so sure. 😰  

One Big Beautiful Disaster

Trump's "big beautiful bill" passed the House late last week, and it gives extremely generous tax cuts to the wealthiest people in the country (including Trump himself) while cutting spending on Medicare and Medicaid to the bone. 

Oh yes, and it also permits the President to ignore court orders by removing the right of the judiciary to charge him with contempt of court.  It would also give the executive branch more power over federal elections to rig the vote in favor of his party.  This is the closest thing to an Enabling Act that the House has passed so far.

Speaking of political parties, how did this bill get past House Democrats?  House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries was counting on the narrow margin the GOP had in the lower chamber to allow Democrats peel off enough Republican votes to prevent any extreme MAGA legislation from getting through, but the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (yes, that's what it's officially called), slipped through by one vote - one vote - because Trump was able to (likely literally) twist a few arms while the Democrats were counting on Republican divisions to sink the bill.  It might have failed if Jeffries and his "leadership" team had done more to keep wavering Republicans from Democratic-leaning regions of the country from going with MAGA.  Congressional Democratic leaders aren't fighting for us.  They're trying to keep their rear ends clean.

The bill still has to get through the Senate, and it might not be so easy there.  But not impossible, so the jury is still out.  And any bill that allows Trump to skirt charges of contempt of court will mean that the jury is to be dismissed.  I'll be back later. 

Music Video Of the Week - May 23, 2025

"Someone Saved My Life Tonight" by Elton John  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Rockin' Trump

Bruce Springsteen made a powerful statement against Donald Trump and his dictatorial actions - you've already heard it, I won't repeat it - at a concert he performed in Manchester, England. 

To be honest, I would have preferred that he make that statement in Manchester, New Hampshire, not in a foreign locale, but as Trump got upset over it, it was worth it.

Trump is now threatening to investigate Springsteen, as well as pop stars like Taylor Swift, Beyoncé Knowles, and Paul Hewson, the artist familiarly known as  Bono . . . although, as an Irish national, Bono probably shouldn't be subjected to what is apparently the very, very long arm of the law.

Especially when he didn't participate in the 2024 presidential campaign, he being an Irish citizen and all.

Apparently, Trump believes that Springsteen's and Knowles' appearances at Harris campaign events and the appearances of other high-profile appearances of celebrities like Oprah Winfrey amounted to a "MAJOR AND ILLEGAL CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTION" (capital letters his), and that they were paid to appear.  In fact, they were not, and even if Harris had paid them, giving money to campaign supporters is perfectly legal, as is any campaign contribution Bruce or Beyoncé might have given the former future President.

Bruce . . . Beyoncé . . . Taylor Swift . . . They may all be singing the same song -  "Trump Is a Dictator" - but in the future, they may have to take the advice of Rubber Soul #14.

All Tapped Out

Jake Tapper's new book, co-written by Alex Thompson, chronicling the so-called cover-up of Joe Biden's lack of fitness to run for another term, reminds me how much I've disliked Tapper (below) since 2017, when he made fun of former Maryland governor Martin O'Malley's tweet comparing the MAGA movement to the Klan and to Nazis and calling on people to fight.  Tapper's and Thompson's book makes the argument that Biden more or less gave the Presidency back to Trump by insisting on running again in 2024 and denying rank-and-file Democrats the chance to find another candidate to take his place, with Democrats in Washington, D.C. concealing his deteriorating physical and mental condition.

In no way am I suggesting that Biden was correct in choosing to stand for re-election in 2024.  I'm not even suggesting that Biden was wrong to do so; given the dearth of appealing candidates who could have competed for the chance to be the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee (Gretchen Whitmer, who loves to hide her face behind a binder in embarrassing moments?  Josh Shapiro, who had just been elected governor of Pennsylvania and had no track record yet?  Gavin Newsom, the Gary Hart of Generation X - all style and no substance?), Biden likely felt he had no choice but to run again.   But even though I did believe that he should have stepped down and concluded that he must have known what he was doing once he chose to do otherwise, and therefore I was all in for him until he decided he wasn't all in for us and let Kamala Harris take the reins, none of what Biden did do or should have done has no bearing now.  Tapper and Thompson are only putting out this book to please Tapper's corporate bosses at CNN, who have been making it clear for quite some time that they want to be in solid with Trump, whose own dementia and involuntary napping has been on display for the past four or five years.  Yet no one in the mainstream media seems to want to talk about that.  Since the mainstream press is too busy normalizing Trump, they (and not just CNN in this case) are all too happy to please Trump and MAGA by picking on Biden.

So you can imagine my reaction when it was reported yesterday that Biden has an aggressive form of prostate cancer and can do no more than manage it to keep himself alive.

My sorrow for Biden is only matched by my sense of schadenfreude toward Tapper and Thompson.  They wanted to get in on the lucrative pastime of picking on Joe Biden for making a decision he clearly felt was the right decision at the time - running for a second presidential term in 2024 (and, again, given the possibility of a Newsom nomination, who could blame Biden for his decision?) - and just as their precious book is going to press, Biden's cancer diagnosis makes their book look more like a cynical, venal, disrespectful cash-in than it already did (and was).  Even more so, it makes Tapper and Thompson look unseemly and kind of cretinous.

But, seeing as I don't watch cable news anymore and turn instead to independent podcast media, that's none of my business. 

I wish Joe Biden the best.  Excuse me for not wishing the same to Tapper and Thompson.

Gimme A Minute

The fifty-eighth season of "60 Minutes" ended this evening, and the reporters for the news-magazine show - and yes, Lesley Stahl will be back - are already working on stories for a fifty-ninth season starting in September.  The most astonishing thing about another season of "60 Minutes" is that there will be one. 

"60 Minutes" has been one of the few news programs on American television which has taken a critical eye to the Trump regime, with stories about Trump's migrant policy and Elon Musk's "Department" of  "Government Efficiency."  Given all that, you'd think "60 Minutes" has the complete trust and confidence of CBS's corporate bosses.

You'd think wrong.  While "60 Minutes" hasn't had any of its stories censored or shelved, Paramount - CBS's current owner - has been keeping a watchful eye on the program's staff and editorial activities the same way a security officer at Bloomingdale's might keep an eye on some dude with green hair and a nose ring.   This was too much for "60 Minutes"'s executive producer Bill Owens (below), who resigned his position.  Owens cited the pressure from Paramount - looking to complete a merger with another media company and wanting to get approval from the Trump regime - not to push Trump too far when speaking truth to power as a reason for his resignation.

What does this mean?  It probably means that when "60 Minutes" returns with all-new stories in September, it will probably mean more celebrity profiles and more nature travelogs from Anderson Cooper.

Meanwhile, CBS's reboot of the old 1980s series "The Equalizer," starring the rapper legally known as Dana Owens (no relation to Bill) in the title role, has been cancelled.  The official reason? Declining ratings, likely.  The real reason?  Airing a series in which a heavy-set black woman beats up a dozen white men in rapid succession at a time when a racist and misogynistic honky is in the White House (also known as the Honky Château) is not a smart thing to do.  For her part, Dana is already promising a new project that she "can't wait to share with" everyone.  Uh, Dana?  Please don't.  Your "projects" in the past thirty-odd years have included two failed daytime talk shows, movies in which you make honky doofuses like even dumber than they already are, and of course your records, which, being rap records, have contributed to the ongoing problem of noise pollution.  Not to mention that Moonie-style mass wedding you officiated on the 2014 Grammy Awards with Madonna as a witness.  Dana, you've made your millions already, now please get thee to a mansion in Short Hills and enjoy your wealth in blissful retirement.

And having just written all that, I think I'd better get myself into hiding.  You know the reason; I won't enunciate it.  😉   

As for CBS's compromised broadcasting standards, the late great Andy Rooney said it best and for all time. CBS, which used to stand for Columbia Broadcasting System, stands for nothing anymore.  They're just corporate initials now. 

 Though they could stand for "compromised broadcasting standards . . ." 😉 

Music Video Of the Week - May 16, 2025

"Hair of the Dog," Nazareth  (Go to the link in the upper right-hand corner.)

Pictures of a Beautiful Mess

On my beautiful-women picture blog, I took pleasure in posting pictures of models who were better known to the general public by sight than by name - women who were not household names and were superstars only within the modeling profession itself.  One such woman is Deborah Bremer.

Another such woman is Deborah Brener.

"Hey, Steve," you must be saying right now, "those two women look awfully similar - and their names are only one letter apart?  Weird!"  No, it isn't weird at all.  They're the same woman, and her name is spelled properly the second time - "Brener," not "Bremer."  

How did this happen?  In 2020, I posted two pictures of Deborah Brener on my blog, with her surname properly spelled for the file names but spelled wrong in the title and text of the post.  Then in 2024, having forgotten about this post, I posted three more pictures of this woman,  but this time, I got the surname right.  And as that great American philosopher Billy Joel once said, getting it right the first time is the main thing; getting it right the next time is not the same thing. 

Alas, this isn't the only time I screwed up.  In 2017, I found pictures of this really gorgeous 1980s model by the name of Susan Smith, and of course, I posted them to my blog.  Here's one of them.

Then in 2024, I found a picture of another 1980s model by the very common name of Susan Smith, a monochromatic sepia exposure.  I posted that.

Nope - it's the same Susan Smith I featured seven years before.

I screwed up with even the big names in modeling that everyone knows about.  Earlier this year, I posted a picture of Angie Everhart, presenting her as a new subject on my blog, a woman I hadn't featured before.   In fact, I had featured her before - in 2014.   This, of course, helped screw up my ongoing count as to exactly how many different women I celebrated on my blog.

All of this sloppiness surfaced as I went from month to month through my blog's archives, revealing not just these mistakes but also misaligned paragraphs, typos that escaped my attention, and the same potboiler dishwater text to describe actresses I'd only heard of twenty minutes earlier ("_____ is another up-and-coming star in Hollywood").  But sloppiness regarding the pictures is probably my biggest regret.  I posted a black-and-white picture of Dutch actress Famke Janssen and a color photo of French actress Catherine Deneuve relatively recently, thinking they were great shots and wondered why I hadn't posted these pictures of the two European actresses sooner.  In fact, I already had!  I regularly repeated subjects, which I would call a "retrospect" post, but in these two instances I actually posted the exact same two pictures twice each! 

I'm actually looking forward to taking my blog down at the end of the month at this point.

I let myself cave to the pressure of maintaining a blog by feeling the need to post on a regular schedule, once every three of four days, and always having to come up with new names and faces to keep my audience engaged and coming back for more.  The sloppiness I just described is easily the worst by-product of such pressure - for keeping a blog that used to be fun - by a wide margin.  The sloppiness - which I tried hard to avoid and thought I had - couldn't continue, and there was too much of it to repair.  Blogs are immediate, and blog posts are ephemeral.  Correcting a blog post weeks, months or years after it's been originally published hardly matters after all of the people who were ever going to view it already have done so.

Perhaps the most ironic mistake I made was when I featured actress Jessica Chastain in March 2018.  On the post for her, I wrote, "Jessica Chastain is an actress who specializes in playing strong women with flaws. But there's nothing flawless about her acting." Oops! I meant to say that there was nothing "flawed" about her acting, and a friend of mine, embarrassingly, noticed the error before I did.  I fixed it only a couple of hours or so after my friend alerted me to the error, but I was still embarrassed.  Finding these more recently surfaced errors just embarrasses me even more.

Given all of that, that guy from the YouTube channel who made me take down pictures of actresses he had worked with and made me decide that I couldn't go on with the blog did me . . . a huge favor.

*

I just finished culling pictures of every model I ever included on my blog onto a flash drive for a future model-oriented Web site I hope to start.  Many of these women were models who were completely unknown to the public, the kind of models who posed in print ads or in pictures that came with the picture frames one might buy at Target.  I also found that there were 217 - 217! - models I posted at least three pictures of over time.  For those who want to know . . . the model I posted the most pictures of was German model Margrit Ramme.  I posted 80 of them, one of which is shown here. 😍

Karen Graham, the legendary Estée Lauder model, came in second at 79 photos, while beauty-product model Catherine Roberts was third with 78 pictures.  Pretty close.  Beverly Johnson was in fourth place with 61 pictures, while Nancy Donahue was in fifth place with 46 pictures. 

While I'm not surprised that there are more pictures of Beverly Johnson on my blog than any other black model, by the way, she is not the black model I posted the most pictures of.  Sheila Johnson (no relation) had until early 2023 been the most ubiquitous black model on my blog - with 66 pictures.  But as I explained back in March, I had been a friend of hers on social media and, as it turned out, she accused me behind my back of invading her privacy for the unforgivable sin of posting on her Facebook timeline lots of pictures of her that I'd found.  She should have been the black model I posted the most pictures of on my blog, but I had to take all of those pictures down and delete more pictures I'd planned to post.  I was hurt and infuriated by what she did to me.  Sheila Johnson was one of those black women in the modeling profession that I had always revered for her beauty and her grace.  Along with Beverly Johnson, she opened my eyes to how beautiful a woman of what used to be called the Negro race could be, and this Caucasian male always regarded her as a standard of black feminine beauty.  To have been proverbially slapped in the face by a woman I once celebrated was a huge blow.

It is in this situation, this whole mess of a blog I created, that I am more than eager to erase it.  As for the Web site I plan to create in its stead, don't hold your breath waiting for it to launch; it's going to take me a long time to put such a project together. 

And I don't even plan to start right away.

I need a break from all of this beauty.

I'm Pamela, Fly Me

Trump is replacing the current Air Force One with a new jet airliner with a gold-plated interior given to him by the State of Qatar, that polyp-shaped peninsular country known for funding radical Islamic groups.  Does Attorney General Pam Bondi know about this?  Absolutely - she apparently approved it!

But then, if you were an Attorney General who once worked as a foreign agent for Qatar for the really cool salary of $115,000 a month - not a year, a month - you'd approve this obvious violation of this emoluments clause in the Constitution too! 

I was still trying to figure out what to see about Trump's idea of reopening Alcatraz to put the worst of the worst criminals in.  He apparently got the idea from a TV screening of the Clint Eastwood movie Escape From Alcatraz, about the real-life breakout of three Alcatraz prisoners who likely drowned in the Golden Gate.   Then this happens.  Now, I always thought that the best idea for Alcatraz was to give it back to the Indians, who took it back for nearly two years beginning in 1969, as it would be too unfeasible to reopen Alcatraz as a prison.  But then I got to thinking - why not keep it open as an historic site and just keep Trump and Bondi there?

That would be a terrific tourist attraction. 

His Holiness Pope Leo XIV

I announce to you a great joy; we have a pope who scares the hell out of the MAGA movement!

Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost is now His Holiness Pope Leo XIV.  And his elevation to the papacy is the Roman Catholic Church's way of challenging Donald Trump and the more reactionary elements of the American Church - perhaps the most socially conservative national Church within Catholicism - with a new Holy Father who will remain faithful to Pope Francis' mission for the Church to be more welcoming to the ostracized and shunned elements of society, more committed to preserving the environment and saving the planet, and providing charity and comfort to migrants.  Pope Leo is for all of these objectives; MAGA is for crushing them.  Leo also took his name in honor of the previous pope of that name - Leo XIII (1878-1903), the former Gioacchino Pecci, who in his 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum argued for social justice for industrial workers, the right of workers to organize, and the right to a living wage. 

And MAGA is really pissed off about that! 

Furthermore, Leo is an American, and he is likely to preach his message of fairness and charity directly to American Catholics and sympathetic non-believers, which is an obvious threat to the American reactionary power structure created by Trump and his confederates.  Leo is in a position to stoke the flames of resistance to MAGA, and he is likely to foster a new covenant between American Catholics and migrants from Latin America, rooted in what he learned from parishioners of his ministries in Peru. 

Leo's election is an acknowledgment that the United States is no longer so powerful that the world would fear an American heading a Church of 1.4 billion followers.  It's a statement that the United States, long a colossus of unilateralism and unfettered strength, is merely a paper tiger that must be humbled by one of its fellow countrymen.  Leo, as the priest-king of Vatican City, is yet another world leader who has been chosen to oppose Donald Trump in the aftermath of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney's election and the return of Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to office.

Leo is likely to use his position to urge American Catholics to continue to resist Trump and the MAGA movement without violence, and he could purge the more conservative elements of the American clergy.  The Church is now an instrument to pull at the thread of MAGA and have the whole enterprise unravel.  The last pope to have such an impact on a similar threat to world peace, John Paul II, was able to encourage his homeland of Poland and other Catholic populations in eastern Europe to stand for their faith and their rights in resisting communism; the resistance he fostered ended up bringing down the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics without a shot fired in anger.

All American Catholics with a conscience should renounce Trump and accept Leo XIV, the Holy Father, the sovereign of the Vatican papal state, as their one and only leader.  There are only two followers they can choose from.  One is the Holy Father, the representative and voice of God on Earth, and he points the way to a fair and just life in the light of goodness; the other, as described in 2 Thessalonians, is the lawless one, "the one destined for destruction. He opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, declaring himself to be God."

Donald Trump is not my President, and he never will be.  My leader is the Holy Father, His Holiness Pope Leo XIV.

And once Trump put out an AI picture of himself as the pope, it only makes sense that the Vatican would deliver swift and severe punishment.

Music Video Of the Week - May 9, 2025

"Alcatraz" by Leon Russell with the Gap Band  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.) 

The Untied States of America

Donald Trump's proposed federal budget - which cuts domestic spending to the bone and in some cases the marrow while increasing spending on deportations - is probably the best reason so far for the Democratic and Democratic-leaning states to secede from the Union.  The proposed federal budget severely cuts spending on cancer research and weather forecasting while zeroing out altogether programs like Head Start and agencies like FEMA.  Presidential budget plans are meant to be a statement of values.  This budget blueprint was completely unnecessary; we already know what Trump's values are.  He has none.

Meanwhile, Trump concedes that the tariffs he imposed on China will make Christmas gifts such as toys much more expensive this December, but the Donald thinks that maybe a little austerity would be good for us after having promised his voters to be able to live the good life like he does.  Maybe only two dolls for little girls instead of dozens - funny how he never said that little boys should have only a couple of toy cars.  

And while all of this is going on, Trump is extending his tariffs to foreign films - which won't do much for Hollywood but will certainly shut down the very few remaining art houses in Manhattan.  Trump is actually less concerned with keeping a 2026 seventieth-anniversary American re-release of And God Created Woman, starring Brigitte Bardot (though his evangelical base might be), than he is at getting Hollywood studios to shoot fewer films on location abroad.  Well, that should finish off the James Bond franchise!  

Aside from forcing us to pay double to see the Palme d'Or winner at Cannes, Trump and Elon Musk have devastated the Federal Aviation Administration so much that Newark Airport can barely function amid its numerous delays and cancellations.  Now I get it.  Trump won't try to prevent us from leaving the country by banning us.  He's doing it by making fights to London and Paris impossible.  At least out of Newark.  JFK is next.

It is in this milieu that the Met Gala, a fashion party for rich celebrities with terrible taste in clothes that shuts down the Metropolitan Museum of Art to tourists with only one evening in New York City who are denied the opportunity to see the painting of Washington crossing the Delaware 😡, was held.  As usual, female pop stars unfamiliar to fans of classic rock dominated this event, which manages to be both elitist and vulgar, with their space-cadet threads, but the star of the show was a female pop singer classic rock fans, through their affinity for Motown, are familiar with - Diana Ross, who arrived in a gown that could have clothed all three Supremes, with a train longer than a BNSF freight coming into Chicago.

Oh yeah, another female pop-culture figure was at the gala - Kamala Harris!

The former Vice President and former future President, aware that her political career is over, chose to spend her down time to attend this ode to vulgarity by showing up in a dress that was clearly inspired by the black and white cookie!

Seriously, her dress is making me hungry.

The fact that Harris would rather attend this ode to vulgarity in a dress that is clearly too big for her than join Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (to whom I now offer anew a proposal of marriage) on their anti-oligarchy road show offers prima facie evidence that top Democrats have no connection to the middle and working classes they purport to represent.

Least of all, Senate Democratic "leader" Charles Schumer, who, in response to Trump's trashing of the Constitution, has vowed to issue a strongly worded letter to Trump in protest.

Not gonna work, Chuck.  Trump can't read.

Right, I have to return to my secessionist activities . . ..