Closed For Repairs?

Donald Trump has announced that the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts will be closed for "renovations" beginning July 4, 2026.

He promises that it will be better and more beautiful than before.  And Broadway star Patti LuPone, among others, are weighing in on Trump's as-yet unseen plans, with LuPone, below, worried that Trump might tear the building down, and -- 

Wait, what?

Patti LuPone actually wants to see the current Kennedy Center preserved?  Ha ha, that's the funniest thing I've heard all week!

As I have noted before on this blog, the Kennedy center is considered one of the monumentally horrid examples of the the grandiose and pretentious examples of  post-war American architecture, known for its pompous corridors and its oversized theaters, while the performing "arts" events staged there are the sort of middlebrow entertainment that would never be allowed in halls like the Paris Opera House or la Scala.  And there's that really, really ugly - and huge - bust of John F. Kennedy that looks like someone threw mud on a wire model of a human skeleton until the image looked like JFK, at least just a bit.  The surest sign that no architectural standards exist in These States in these days is that people actually find no objection with the design of the current performing arts complex, a building that has sat like a giant warehouse with eaves defiling the eastern bank of the Potomac.

I rarely reproduce entire articles on this blog, but when I do, it's to make a serious point.  And so I do so now, reprinting architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable's bashing of the Kennedy Center's architecture in a review published in the New York Times on Tuesday, September 7, 1971, a day before it officially opened to the public.  It is quite trenchant.

*

This capital city specializes in ballooning monuments and endless corridors. It uses marble like cotton wool. It is the home of government of, for and by the people, and of taste for the people - the big, the bland and the banal. The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, opening officially Wednesday, does not break the rule. The style of the Kennedy Center is Washington superscale, but just a little bit bigger. Albert Speer would have approved.

It has apotheosized the corridor in the 600‐foot‐long, 60‐foot‐high grand foyer (the length of three New York City blockfronts), one of the biggest rooms in the world, into which the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles could he cozily nested. It would be a super-tunnel without its saving Belgian gift of mirrors.

The corridor is “dressed up,” in the words of the architect, Edward Durell Stone, by 18 of the world's biggest crystal chandeliers, with planters and furniture still to come. There is enough red carpet for a total environment.

There are two other flag-hung, polished marble-walled, red‐carpeted, 250‐foot long and 60‐foot high corridors called the Hall of States and the Hall of Nations. They are disquietingly reminiscent of the overscaled vacuity of Soviet palaces of culture. They would be great for drag racing.

The two halls separate the three theaters that are the structure's raison d'être: the Opera House, the Concert Hall and the Eisenhower Theater. The grand foyer is the entrance to them all.

The building itself is a super-bunker, 100 feet high, 630 feet long and 300 feet wide, on the Potomac. One more like this and the city will sink.

Because it is a national landmark, there is only one way to judge the Kennedy Center - against the established standard of progressive and innovative, excellence in architectural design that this country is known and admired for internationally.

Unfortunately, the Kennedy center not only does not achieve this standard of innovative excellence; it also did not seek it. The architect opted for something ambiguously called "timelessness" and produced meaninglessness. It is to the Washington manner born. Too bad; since there is so much of it.

The center sets still another record—for architectural default. What it has in size, it lacks in distinction. Its character is aggrandized posh. It is an embarrassment to have it stand as a symbol of American artistic, achievement before the nation and the world.

The interiors aim for conventional, comfortable, gargantuan grand luxe. This is gemütlich Speer.

The Opera House, a 2,200‐seat hall with superior sightliness and equipment, looks like one of those passe, red-padded drugstore candy‐valentines.

Its dark red fabric walls are buttoned down with rows of gold knobs and its Austrian crystal lights suggest nothing so much as department store Christmas displays. To this observer, it is singularly depressing.

The 2,375‐seat Concert Hall, its acoustic wood walls painted white, has red seats and carpet and is buttoned down with Norwegian crystal fixtures. This at least is cheerful and suggests 1920s-modern.

Restaurants on the top terrace floor are in expense‐account French by way of Austria, and nearly Scandinavia. They are red.

There are two ways of defending the center's design. One, already popular, is to say that it doesn't really matter and that the only things that count are those badly needed performance halls and how they work.

But nothing justifies wrapping those halls in nearly $70 million of tasteful corn and 17,000 tons of steel -all a conscious design decision - and ignoring it. If you could ignore it, which is hard.

To say that everything else about a landmark structure of this stupefying size is irrelevant is nonsense. The emperor, unfortunately, is wearing clothes. And the world is looking.

The second defense is simply to accept the fact that the center probably represents the norm of American, taste. But it is a fallacy to equate the great middle common denomination of popular taste with the country's actual and potential level of creative achievement.

From this point of view, however, it is almost an interesting building. If Mr. Stone has been aiming for an architecture that all America can love, he has found it This is architectural populism. He has produced a conventional crowd pleaser. It is a genuine people's palace.

People have been pouring in, before the opening, through every available crack, in T‐shirts and sneakers, hot pants and Bermuda shorts, barefoot and bare-bellied, backpacking babies, tracking across the red carpet and under the chandeliers. The pre‐opening charge of elitism because of all that lush decor was rubbish. They are obviously loving it and perfectly at home.

Because it so lacks the true elegance of imagination, it does not put them off at all. They are awed by the scale and admiring of the decoration, which is a safe, familiar blend of theatrical glamour and showroom Castro Convertible.

Stringent economies have made saving simplicities, but the popular style is loud and clear.

For the more architecturally sophisticated, it is hard to admire a failure of vision and art. And it did not have to be it is not easy to commission creative courage in Washington, but it can be done, as proven by the current plans for the National Gallery extension.

It is particularly hard to know that the one creative design for a new kind of experimental theater remains an unfinished shell within the building, lacking funds.

The center was probably wrong from the start. It was conceived as a giant economy three‐in‐one package. If it hasn't cost more than three separate buildings, it certainly hasn't cost less, and it has had formidable construction problems as a result of the "simple" concept.

The three houses have had to be separated and insulated from each other for vibration and sound inside and jets outside, and from other floors and functions.

Suspension and soundproofing have been achieved through incredibly complex and expensive concrete and steelwork that belies the apparent logic of the plan. Structurally, the achievement is considerable, and economically, it is almost a bargain.

The giant steel trusses hidden behind the scenes are far more impressive, than the truly awful, gold‐epoxy‐paint-steel columns that run visibly through the building, which add decorative aluminum fins along the facades.

Environmentally, the center has been severely criticized for its setting and isolation from city life. But many Washingtonians like the idea of driving to a “safe” bastion of culture. Again, it's what people really want.

As completed, the center's plusses include its public amenities—its entrance plaza, riverfront promenade, eating facilities and outdoor terraces with views. And credit as well as sympathy must go to the dedicated and hardworking sponsors who have actually brought three major performance halls to Washington.

May all the performing arts flourish. Because the building is a national tragedy. It is a cross between a concrete candy box and a marble sarcophagus in which the art of architecture lies buried.

*

In other words, it's the perfect populist palace for a performing "arts" complex where honors go to female rappers who got their start in show business making percussive noises with their mouths on the streets of Newark and clown-faced electric-guitar players whose band name is an accidental acronym for their "musical" style - "Keep it simple, stupid." 

Note that Albert Speer - still alive in 1971 - got mentioned twice in Huxtable's appraisal, and yes, he probably did approve.

So, yes, I say, tear it down, especially in light of the fact that the last person to judge the architectural quality of the Kennedy Center is a theater actress who made a name for herself playing a fascist concubine in a musical written by Western civilization's worst composer.  But at least, Ms. LuPone only played a fascist concubine, which is certainly a whole lot better than being one, one now celebrated in a documentary no one wants to see.

But there's the thing.  As horrid as the Kennedy Center looks from the outside (to be fair, the interior has been renovated in the past, though I hardly see how it could be better now than when it first opened), it's probably better to wait to tear it down and replace it with something that Ada Louise Huxtable would have liked until Trump is out of office, because if he does tear it down, the new performing arts complex will probably look something like this.

In fact, it could end up being worse than this.  How?  I don't let myself think about it.    

More Epstein Files

Three million more documents from the Epstein files have been released.

As far as I can make out, it's all sound and fury signifying nothing . . . yet.  There are too many new names to list are mentioned here, but Trump is mentioned over a thousand times in them, particularly where it pertains to allegations (unproven, but all worth investigating) that Trump was involved in sexual activity with minors.  And Harvard University is represented by enough allegations toward people associated with the higher-learning institution that ne'er-do-wells hoping to impress impressionable single women will start pretending that they're alumni of Yale.  Or even Stanford.

At first glance - and maybe at subsequent glances - there doesn't seem to be much in this latest file drop that most of us don't already know or haven't already figured out.   Why would anyone have had reason to believe that Steve Bannon wasn't involved with Jeffrey Epstein?  The smoking gun that prove Trump's sex crimes is likely in the files - another three million - that haven't been released.

Not much to say today.  Sorry.

(Note: Don Lemon was not arrested in Minneapolis.  He was arrested in Saint Paul.  I correcrted the original error.)

Independent Media Blackout

Two independent journalists were arrested in St. Paul, Minnesota recently.

Both of them are black, and one of them is gay.  The other is a woman.  Hardly a coincidence, you'll agree (and you'd better agree, punk!)

You've heard of one of them . . . former CNN newsman Don Lemon.

The other is local Minneapolis-St. Paul figure Georgia Fort.

Both Lemon and Fort were arrested while they were covering a protest against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and interviewing people after the demonstrators entered a church to continue their protest.  Lemon and Fort were not among the protestors, of course, they were just covering the protestors and following them around to get the story.  But ICE arrested them for the same reason the faceless (literally) agency deemed illegal - that demonstrators and reporters (and others) who disrupt a legitimate service in a house of worship are breaking the law.

There is such a law protecting religious freedom, but from all of the evidence, the "service" at this particular church, which is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention (a Southern Baptist church?  In Minnesota??), was more likely leading a civic meeting in what happened to be a house of worship.  The pastor just happens to be a local ICE officer.  And yet, veteran journalists like Al Hunt, who are supposed to know better, are condemning the protestors for intruding on a worship service, whose participants were more likely using Our Lord and Savior as a human shield.

Lemon and Fort were arrested to send a warning to anyone else who even thinks about investigating ICE, but both pan to continue their investigatory work.  Meanwhile, I think I ought to retire from covering public affairs completely.  It's too dangerous.  Besides, I always did want to be an arts and entertainment critic.

Although that too is being politicized . . .. 

Playing Post Office (And Other Games)

Apparently, voting by mail can now be hazardous.

The United States Postal Service, under the control of Trump cronies, changed how and when it postmarks the mail. Mail is no longer postmarked on the day you drop it in the mailbox but on the day it's processed at the regional sorting center.  That means it may not be processed for three, four, maybe five days.

At least, it could be annoying for folks who still send birthday cards and bill payments by mail and need to get them to their intended destinations in time.  But it also means that mail-in ballots will now be postmarked when they're processed, which wouldn't be so bad if not for the fact that, because processing a ballot can take days, a ballot mailed on time can still be marked late and thus not be counted.  It's a clever and sneaky way to throw out a lot of Democratic mail-in ballots.

While Democratic voters may be smart enough to fill out and mail in their ballots the second they get them, and seniors who vote Republican, who vote by mail more often than anyone, may end up having their ballots thrown out, that's only the least of it.  The Trump regime is already working on ways to circumvent the election results in November, going so far as to confiscate the 2020 ballots from Fulton County, Georgia, where Atlanta is located, to "prove" that he "won" the state and the 2020 election, when in fact he was sending a clear message to Georgia and to other states that Democratic victories will not be tolerated.  

Why do you think Tulsi Gabbard, America's top spy, accompanied the Federal Bureau of Investigation officers who seized those ballots?

The special election in my U.S. House district to fill Mikie Sherrill's old seat may very well end up being the last free election in the U.S.in my lifetime. 

The Triumph of the Whore?

Ugh, there's so much going on as January 2026 crawls and slithers its way to a close, and I'll address as much as I can in due time.  But in the mean time, the reviews are in . . ..  Critics across America are raving about Melania!

Melania (★½ out of four) doesn't quite work as a documentary, as [the director] fails to offer a compelling glimpse into the first lady's life, instead presenting an extremely flattering view with little new information." - Brian Truitt, USA Today

"[Melania is so] orchestrated and airbrushed and stage-managed that it barely rises to the level of a shameless infomercial." - Variety

Melania is a level of insipid propaganda that almost resists review; it's so expected and utterly pointless." - Kevin Fallon, The Daily Review

"Some of this is undeniably watchable simply because of who and what she is, but the scenes of [French American designer Hervé]  Pierre et al fussing as Mrs. Trump models soon grow tedious. More striking, though, is her fastidious attention to detail when it comes to how she appears. Her gaze never looks more intensely focused than when she’s posing before a mirror, checking all the angles with near-clinical detachment." - Manohla Dargis, the New York Times

"[Melania] is a purportedly serious film that plays like a mockumentary. If you were making a movie that parodied the current first lady of the United States, I’m not sure what you’d do differently." - Joy Press, Vanity Fair

And those are the most positive reviews.

But the premiere and the Trump-Kennedy Center was a runaway success.

The name of the director is Brett Ratner, whose only previous connection to the Presidency is that he was born on the same day that Dwight D. Eisenhower died.  He's directed the Rush Hour films, which finally made Jackie Chan a household name among people who do not follow martial arts, but he's also known even more for being blacklisted from Hollywood because of sexual assault charges against him.  Ratner is one of the earliest victims of the Me Too movement of the early days of Trump's first term.  No doubt Ratner got the job to film this thing because Trump sympathized with his plight, but the only way Melania was going to be a success was if Ratner treated it as a comedy, not a serious documentary.  If the reviews of the film - a look at the twenty days before Donald Trump's 2025 inauguration - are to be taken at face value (and why wouldn't they be?), it's a comedy, alright, but the comedy is unintentional.

Joy Press also added in her review that Ratner is no Leni Riefenstahl, and as that great American humorist Earvin "Magic" Johnson once said, man, that's cold.  Even though Leni Riefenstahl and her American counterpart, David Wark Griffith, are likely in purgatory for their racist attitudes and affiliations, they at least gained recognition for their technical proficiency in moviemaking.  D.W. Griffith, for example, may have made Birth of a Nation, but he also gained acclaim for freeing the cinema from merely being filmed plays with his innovative camera angles and elaborate sets.  Brett Ratner doesn't even have that going for him.  In a word, he's a hack.  

And its his name on the film.  Several people who were involved with it had their names removed from the credits, so Ratner clearly owns this one.  As does Melania.

Get back, Melania, your mommy's waiting for you.

The most obscene thing about Melania is all the money Jeff Bezos spent on this film, $75 million in production and promotion just to secure government contracts, meaning he'll make back that money in a jiffy - just not at the box office.  Even worse, this movie is being distributed by MGM, since bought by Bezos' Amazon This is the same studio that lifted to stardom, among others, Judy Garland, Greta Garbo, Jean Harlow, Elizabeth Taylor, Gary Cooper, Gene Kelly, Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn. Joan Crawford, Myrna Loy, Mickey Rooney,  Donald O'Connor, Robert Mitchum, and the King of Hollywood himself, Clark Gable.

Not to mention Shorty the kitten, the star of Bad Luck Blackie.

Rest in peace, Tex Avery. 

But unlike these stars, and the movies (and cartoon shorts) they starred in, Melania will be forgotten.

Likely by next Tuesday.

Right . . . back in a flash with more trash.

Music Video Of the Week - January 30, 2026

"Run With the Pack" by Bad Company  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

It's Only a Movie

At a time when ICE is murdering people in the streets of Minneapolis and threatening to take their road show, Donald Trump is promoting the allegedly long-awaited documentary on his wife.

Melania Trump is particularly in a bad mood because of what is happening in Minneapolis, and not because two people have been brutally murdered.  She's upset because all of the brouhaha there is overshadowing to the premiere of her documentary this week.

I've seen other examples of heartless callousness before, but this takes the kremšnita.

Melania, it must be remembered, is as much a grifter as her husband is.  And like Donald, she only cares about her self and has only one purpose, to make as much money as she can before she dies.  The only reason this documentary exists is because Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, looking to mend fences with her husband, offered $40 million to produce such a film.  In exchange, Bezos expected from Trump - and got - relief from Trump's threats to raise postal rates that would affect Amazon's bottom line, and - more important to Bezos - a chance to get some really lucrative contracts (*cough cough*, Blue Origin, *cough cough*).  Bezos ended up spending 75 million simoleons on the movie, with the additional $35 million for marketing.

Now the movie is premiering nationwide tomorrow, and it's already a flop.  Tickets for advance sales have sold so poorly, the theaters can't even give them away.   People are posting on social media things they'd rather do than watch Melania, such as prepare for a colonoscopy, have their wisdom teeth taken out, or watch the 1978 Sgt. Pepper movie twice (and I've already done all three!).  Melania is likely to be the be the lowest-grossing  gross even less money than Zyzzyx Road, a 2006 thriller that only took in thirty dollars in a very limited theatrical release.  But then, it starred Katherine Heigl. 

Melania, by all accounts, is likely to win a Razzie award for playing herself.  As for Jeff Bezos, he got what he wanted, and the $75 million he spent to get influence Trump is just pocket change for a multibillionaire like him.   In the meantime, following a private screening at White House this past Sunday, Melania has its world premiere tonight at the Trump-Kennedy Center.  A slew of D-list celebrities are attending, and this premiere is likely to have all of the glamour of a home movie being shown in the family den, but who cares when all that mattered is to provide an outlet for lower-middle-class entertainment for the undereducated to appreciate?  That, of course, is nothing new for the Trump-Kennedy center, which was a second-rate showbiz venue long before Trump added his name to it.

All that notwithstanding, Melania is sure to close in the theaters faster than a storm window in the current brutal cold snap that is currently gripping the Northeastern states (which still haven't seceded like I'd hoped).

Trump Is Our Own Damn Fault

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We have met the enemy, and he is us.

Michael Cohen, Phony

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

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

Then the roof caved in. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alex Pretti

 Say his name.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Music Video of the Week - January 23, 2026

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

Trump's Greatest Hits

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You know the real story by now. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Governor Sherrill

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yes, Virginia, There Is a Joe Shlabotnik

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ein Führer

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

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

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

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

Music Video Of the Week - January 16, 2026

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

Fed Up

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

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

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

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

Neil Diamond - Moods (1972)

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Last Walz

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

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

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

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

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

Music Video Of the Week - January 9, 2026

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

Murder In Minneapolis

 

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

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

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

Buzz Off

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

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

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

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

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

Buick.

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