Wednesday, April 2, 2025
Meet De Pressing
Tuesday, April 1, 2025
Olympic Response
This is not an April Fool's joke.
Dear Mr. Maginnis:Thank you very much for letter addressed to the IOC. We have taken note of your opinion.
The IOC, of course, is respecting the democratic decisions of the citizens of the United States of America.
Uhh . . . yeah.
The International Olympic Committee awarded the 2028 Olympics to Los Angeles back in 2017, when the thinking was that Trump would be long gone by then. The committee members got exactly the situation they had hoped to avoid.
Respecting the democratic decisions of the voters, eh? The IOC awarded the 1936 Games to Berlin before the 1932 national elections in Germany and before President Paul von Hindenburg named Adolf Hitler chancellor, By the end of 1935, all opposition parties had been dissolved, the Dachau concentration camp had opened, the Night of the Long Knives had taken place, the Nuremberg Laws were handed down, and President Hindenburg had died, allowing Hitler to combine the duties of the German presidency with the chancellorship and create the office of Führer. He used the Berlin Olympics as a showcase for National Socialist values, and despite black American track stars Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe, Germany won more medals than any other country at Berlin. Hitler was pleased with the outcome.
I understand that the IOC respected the results of the 1979 Soviet legislative elections and went ahead with the 1980 Olympics, awarded to Moscow in 1974, which was full of cheating by Olympic officials, as well as crippled by the U.S.-led boycott to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The results of the 1979 elections were decisively in favor of the Communists, which should have been expected, given that the Commies ran unopposed.
Speaking of boycotts, Canadians and Europeans are boycotting American tourism, mainly because they're afraid of getting picked up by the authorities for saying anything bad about Trump in public and getting arrested by Kash Patel's FBI, the new secret police. If the IOC won't move the 2028 Games out of America, other major industrialized nations - even the British, who have never boycotted an Olympiad ever - may choose not to send teams to LA. I'm not going to advocate that, however. I think it would be inappropriate for me to urge foreign ambassadors to the United States to relay the idea of a 2028 Olympics boycott to their leaders back home. What to do about sending teams to the U.S. to compete in the Los Angeles Olympics under Trump is a decision only those leaders can make. Besides, Elon Musk might have me arrested.
Monday, March 31, 2025
No Longer "Beautiful"
Sunday, March 30, 2025
Not Out Like a Lamb
The end of March used to be a quiet time as winter made the transition into spring and the weather calmed down. Not anymore.
The map above shows a NAM projection for 8:00 P.M. tomorrow. While it seems that the worst of the storms will hit the Washington, D.C. area, there's also a clear line of likely potent storms bearing down on the Greater New York area from northwestern New Jersey. This March will not go out quietly . . . though the power outages this storm front may cause might silence millions.
Saturday, March 29, 2025
The Wheels Come Off
Trump just announced a 25 percent tariff on all imported cars beginning this coming Wednesday.
Well, there goes my hope of buying an Audi this year!
Now, I kid, as I am not in the market for an Audi, but that is going to make motor vehicles - already too expensive because of the trend toward large SUVs and all of the unnecessary technology the automakers are putting into motor vehicles, be it due to customer demand or government regulations -almost completely out of reach for the average consumer.
Oh yeah, for the record, a base Volkswagen Golf costs the U.S. equivalent of $26,291 and would cost about the same with Trump's tariff as a Golf GTI without the tariff . . . if you could buy one in These States.
Trump appears to be counting on American consumers opting more for American-made motor vehicles, including those made at factories of foreign companies such as Volkswagen (great, more Altases on the road!), Toyota, Honda, and Hyundai . . . but with GM, Ford, and the Stellantis brand group that used to be called Chrysler reaping the most benefits. So what if the Big Three own plants in Canada and have domestic-branded vehicles brought over from north of the 49th parallel - long considered domestic vehicles - and these tariffs will make their Canadian-made vehicles more expensive as well? But they will reap the benefits of the tariffs - they'll pass the cost onto the consumer.
That's assuming anyone can afford Detroit's wares. A Pennsylvania Chrysler Group dealership in the Philadelphia suburb of Glen Mills told a TV reporter that a Ram pickup (not a Ford Ram pickup, as Michael Cohen has called it - Ford makes the F-150), which normally would go for $80,000, will go for roughly $100,000 under Trump's tariff. A lot of people are trying to fathom the ludicrousness of offering a pickup truck for sale at $100,000. I'm trying to imagine why anyone would pay even 80 grand for a pickup truck. Hello? It's a pickup truck! It's meant to carry bales of hay and half a ton of loose topsoil! What's up with the leather seating and walnut accents in that damn interior?
I'm also trying to imagine why anyone would want to buy a Tesla Cybertruck.
Friday, March 28, 2025
Music Video Of the Week - March 28, 2025
"Space Captain" by Joe Cocker (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)
Thursday, March 27, 2025
Got the Signal?
The operation against Houthi militants Yemen was a success. American firepower was able to repel the Houthis and do serious damage to their positions, weakening their ability to attack Israel with long-range missiles and harass shipping lanes in the Red Sea. And when the attack occurred over a week ago, reporter Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of the Atlantic, was following the developing attack from home, rooting for the success of the attack.
Goldberg was given top-secret information in advance when national security adviser Mike Waltz inadvertently logged him on to a Signal chat in which Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, CIA Director John Ratliff, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, and Vice President Vance discussed attack plans for strikes on the Houthis in Yemen and put national-security secrets on an online chat that anyone could have hacked into while it was going on - emojis and all.
Goldberg knew all about these secrets in advance - kudos to him for sitting on the information until after the attack was carried out. By releasing details of the chat after the operation, Goldberg has not only preserved national security (not part of his job description), he's made the incompetency of the White House advisers the story. The national insecurity officers chatting on this Signal conversation blamed Goldberg for the story, insisting that it was a smear campaign against the Republican administration . . . even though the chat has been verified as having actually happened.
Once Mike Waltz came clean about having added Jeffrey Goldberg - one of his media contacts - by mistake, he explained that he was trying to sign on someone else based on initials - JG - because, that, apparently, is how you store names on Signal. Waltz was trying to add another administration official, Jamieson Greer. Who? I looked up Jamieson Greer, I was left wondering why Waltz would invite onto a chat about war plans . . . the United States Trade Representative.
So why didn't these people discuss plans to bomb Yemen on a more secure line? Apparently they thought it was better to go on an app that the Kremlin could tap instead of going on an ultra-secure line that the President would be privy too. That was it - they didn't what the orange blob in the Oval Office to know about the particulars.
Even the White House national insecurity staffers don't want the boss to know what's going on because they're afraid he's going to louse things up more than they already are!
Which may explain why Jamieson Greer was supposed to be invited.
Oh yeah, the Houthis just fired more long-range missiles into Israel again. Guess that operation wasn't a success after all.
Tuesday, March 25, 2025
Cyberflop
In 2017, when Trump began his first (but, alas, not only) term as President, I was still in the afterglow of having driven a Tesla Model S at a special event sponsored by the brand. It was at that time that the shark that Tesla would eventually jump started swimming around the company, as Elon Musk began undermining what had been the biggest success story in American auto manufacturing for a new company since Walter Chrysler founded the company that bore his name.
In 2017, Musk unveiled the second generation of the Tesla Roadster, and he started taking orders for the car immediately, with a thousand people paying $250,000 for a new car. That totals to $250 million, a quarter of a billion bucks, that Musk pocketed. To this day, no one who paid for a Mark 2 Roadster has received a car; it's never been produced. Instead, Musk focused on entering the truck market with a newfangled pickup that was styled to look like a television remote - the Cybertruck. What? A truck designed to resemble a futuristic vehicle in a Hollywood movie? Why not freshen up or redesign the cars in the rest of the lineup? Nah, too boring.
Monday, March 24, 2025
Paranoia Strikes Deep (State)
Sunday, March 23, 2025
Kamala Down, Tim Up
Saturday, March 22, 2025
Gavin Newscum
Friday, March 21, 2025
Music Video Of the Week - March 21, 2025
Thursday, March 20, 2025
Promises, Promises, Promises . . .
Not too long ago I said that Tesla enthusiasts and owners who wanted to save the brand from Elon Musk should try to buy enough stock to make Musk a minority stockholder. Uhh, yeah . . . there's just one thing wrong with that strategy - Elon Musk already is a minority stockholder.
How does the Musko Man stay at the top at Tesla? How does he remain CEO of the company? Well, you know how's always talking about how features on Tesla cars like self-driving technology are coming soon? And then it doesn't happen? That's Musk's game. He's been promising that these wonderful and fantastic features will be available for Teslas next year for over half a decade. Because he keeps promising how these features will soon be available, as early as next year, he leaves the board of directors no choice but to stick with him. Except that, like Paul McCartney's mythical grandfather in A Hard Day's Night, he'll cost you a number of breaches of promises.
But maybe it won't be Musk's decimation of the federal government or his unfulfilled promises that do him in. Maybe the thing that does him in will be one of his own products - a product he's actually delivered.
Wednesday, March 19, 2025
Schumuck
Now that I think of it, I do have a few words of my own about Charles Schumer's decision to give Donald Trump and Elon Musk what they wanted by supporting a continuing resolution for the rest of the 2025 fiscal year's budget with severe cuts and with full presidential authority on tariffs. Let me be as succinct as possible.
Schumer, as Senate Democratic leader had two choices, both bad. He could either support a continuing budget resolution sent over to the Senate from the House crafted by Republicans with House Democrats frozen out despite the Republicans' paper-thin House majority, a resolution that ceded most if not all power over the budget and other issues to Trump and Musk, or he could have rejected it and let the government shut down, which would have given Trump and Musk just as much leeway to impose their collective will on the federal government as with a continuing resolution - if not more so - and ultimately seen Trump and Musk get their way, but in the latter scenario, the Democrats still would have gone down fighting. In other words, Schumer had to choose between caving and fighting a losing battle. He chose to cave. When the 2026 budget is debated later this year, he will fight a losing battle. If, indeed, the Democrats have any more opportunities left to fight. Schumer may have squandered the last one, plus any leverage Democrats may have had in the minority in both chambers.
Monday, March 17, 2025
Saturday, March 15, 2025
Up Chuck
But it turns out that former Obama aide Dan Pfeiffer made the argument for me.
Friday, March 14, 2025
Music Video Of the Week - March 14, 2025
Wednesday, March 12, 2025
Donald Trump, Car Salesman
Tuesday, March 11, 2025
America: Let's Call It a Day
I need to post this map again.
Monday, March 10, 2025
It Don't Matter To Me
It took seven weeks, but the Trump administration finally did something I actually agree with.
It forced the city of Washington, D.C. to dismantle and remove Black Lives Matter Plaza just north of the White House.
For those who haven't followed my blog for awhile, let me explain. Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser ordered the painting of the words BLACK LIVES MATTER in big yellow letters on two blocks of Sixteenth Street Northwest just north of Lafayette Square in response to Trump clearing out with heavy-handed force peaceful protesters demonstrating against the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. The two blocks were named "Black Lives Matter Plaza" and the big yellow letters were eventually made permanent, with a few cobblestones and bollards installed to make it look like a real plaza.
From the perspective of wanting to use public art to make a statement about police brutality, the whole idea of Black Lives Matter Plaza was asinine. Painting a slogan in huge letters on a public street is an act of heavy-handed gigantism, the effect having all the subtlety of a fist in the jaw to make sure observers Get It. The letters themselves are so gargantuan and oversized that they're best visible from a helicopter. Maybe Mayor Bowser wanted to get Trump's attention when he was airborne in Marine One, but the effect of this stunt sort of lost its resonance when Joe Biden became President and the message Mayor Bowser was sending was an act of preaching to the converted. The method of messaging overshadowed the message, much like Trump's reaction to the protesters a few days earlier overshadowed the message of law and order that Trump was trying to convey . . . and contradicted it.
Oh yeah, when the Black Lives Matter movement against police brutality first started in the mid-2010s, there was the suggestion that their slogan should be "Black Lives Matter, Too," the addition of that fourth word meant to suggest that black Americans were a part of our society rather than a people separate from it. The idea was rejected. Yeah, that worked out, didn't it?
Mayor Bowser said that the two blocks of the former Black Lives Matter Plaza will be replaced with new murals. Good, hopefully, they'll be more colorful, more universal, and also more creative that painting giant letters from a cookie-cutter traffic-control font.
Saturday, March 8, 2025
Little Marco
Friday, March 7, 2025
Music Video Of the Week - March 7, 2025
"Young Americans" by David Bowie (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)
Thursday, March 6, 2025
La Junta
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.
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.
Good luck, my fellow Americans . . .
Wednesday, March 5, 2025
The Donald Trump Show
Sunday, March 2, 2025
Where's Ken?
Saturday, March 1, 2025
Doom
After Trump and Vance bullied and ridiculed Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office yesterday . . .
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. 😟