St. Patrick's Day 2026

Happy St. Patrick's Day! 😊

Who Wears These Shoes?

There is nothing necessarily wrong with Florsheim shoes.  True, they are known for being cheap, stiff, and plebian, but they can be a reasonable and affordable choice to wear once in awhile, which sort of makes them the working man's dress shoes. A typical blue-collar guy probably has a pair of Florsheim shoes in his closet to go with the suit he wears to weddings, funerals, and lodge banquets.

But when Donald Trump wears them in the Oval Office, it only shows how cheap and tawdry the executive branch of the U.S. government has become.  It is the footwear equivalent of the Chevrolet SUVs Trump has ridden in.

So why is every dude in Trump's Cabinet wearing them?

Just because Trump wears Florsheims. you might think, that doesn't mean that his Cabinet secretaries have to wear them.  But it does mean they have to wear them.  And they do.  Trump, dissatisfied with the high-class luxury shoes his Cabinet secretaries sported, decided that if Florsheim shoes were good enough for him, they were good enough for men who work with him.  So he doled a bunch of pairs out to his flunkies and more or less made it clear that if they knew what was good for them, they would wear their new shoes.

And so came the greatest footwear story in American politics since George Walker Bush was in Baghdad and had a pair of shoes thrown at them by an Iraqi national ticked off at Bush for starting the Iraq War.

Working for Trump is like taking a wedding vow.  You must promise to love, honor and obey.  That is, if you want to remain in Trump's good graces - or employment.  And if he gives you Florsheims to wear, you wear them, if only to express your gratitude to the Dear Leader.  Crockett & Jones? Bruno Magli? Paul Evans?  No go, Joe - when you work for The Donald, you do what he says.

Especially if you're Marco Rubio, and you want to be Trump's heir apparent in 2028, even if the Florsheims your boss got you are three sizes too big, because Trump guessed your shoe size and was off by a country mile.

If you ask me, Trump's minions (despicable them) are acting their shoe sizes - certainly not their ages.

And so we now raise a toast to America's new war with Iran, and or wartime leader, Donald J. Trump!

Euch! Blecch! Blecch? Yuck! AUGHHHH!!!!!!  GAGAGAGAAUGHHHH!!!!!!

Gas Up . . .

 . . . before gas is up.

Trump's war on Iran has caused gasoline prices to start climbing, and the Iranians have closed the Strait of Hormuz that separates the Persian Gulf from the Arabian Sea.  This strait, one of the narrowest maritime bottlenecks in the world, is the only way Arab oil can get out into the world because that's where the Persian Gulf is from where the Gulf states ship their oil exports.

Which is very inconvenient for people who own a Ford Expedition.

Or just about any other sport utility vehicle on the market today.

Of course, if you have a Honda Civic, you'll get off easier.  Maybe not by much, but you'll still be able to drive by a gasoline station and honk your horn in merriment while some guy is blowing 140 bucks to fill the gas tank in his Chevrolet Tahoe.  

But if you prefer to try to save money on gasoline, no matter what vehicle you own, you'd better be prepared for spending more money on gas and liking it, because mass transit, never very comprehensive in most of These States, has been contracting and cratering of late.  As I noted on this blog, it's almost impossible to take a bus into new York City from parts of northern New Jersey.

No matter . . . given how long and protracted this oil shock will be - because even though the U.S. is a leading oil producer, the closing of the Strait of Hormuz raises oil prices everywhere, because it's a global commodity, and they won't drop for a long time even if the war in Iran is over tomorrow - that means that the era of the sport utility vehicle and the daily-driver pickup truck is almost over.

It's too bad that General Motors and Ford don't have any existing car platforms, especially in the compact segment, to replace the light trucks and crossovers that are suddenly going to be even more hard to sell than they already are.  Stellantis may be able to retool its American factories with cars based on Opel and Peugeot platforms. 

And I have one question to ask of Volkswagen . . .

VW?  Can we have the Polo here now?  Pleeeeeeeeeeeeez???? 

Music Video Of the Week - March 13, 2026

"Breezin'" by George Benson  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

They Just Might

Former Vice President Kamala Harris is still considering a political comeback.

Asked if she would run for President in 2028, she said that she just "might" do so.

To those who think she should try for the Presidency again, let me refresh your memories.

How many primaries and caucuses did she win in her 2020 presidential campaign?  Zero.

How many primaries and caucuses did she actually compete in in her 2020 presidential campaign?  Zero.  She had to end her candidacy in 2019.

How many swing states did she win in the 2024 general election?  Zero.

How many Democratic presidential candidates other than Harris have lost the popular vote in the past twenty years?  Zero.

Well, at least she has a perfect record.

You know, it's really galling to hear Harris say she might run again after losing to Trump in 2024 and not see her being ridiculed en masse when Martin O'Malley, who showed a real feistiness in going after Trump when he ran for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, got laughed at when he said that he might run again in 2020 after he lost to Trump in 2016, and . . . oh, wait, that was Hillary Clinton!

Good luck with another run for the Presidency, Madam Former Vice President.  The Democrats, as repeatedly noted here, are notorious for shunning and turning away failed presidential nominees.  They don't get to make comebacks.   They don't get a second chance.  They don't even get a lousy speaking slot at the next Democratic National Convention.  They are complete . . . losers.

And that certainly includes Harris.  In fact, she's even less popular than Donald Trump.  Seriously.  In an NBC News poll released this week, Donald Trump - who has led the country into another unjust war in the Middle East, destroyed the economy, sicced ICE on native-born U.S. citizens - including journalists - suspended civil liberties, dismantled federal government services, and has taken away people's health insurance - had 41 percent of people surveyed respond favorably to him.  Harris had a 36 percent favorable response.

Is it any wonder why advertising genius Donny Deutsch laughed at the Democrats on television two days after Trump forced Harris into early retirement? 

Oh, and lest you think I'm being a nasty ol' white man beating up on a woman of color, I'm also here to tell you that Gavin Newsom, Harris's fellow Californian, is even less popular; he only got a 27 percent favorable response.  It's not really surprising.  Newsom has trolled Trump and ridiculed him every chance he gets and has been instrumental in bringing Donald's poll numbers down.  But that should not be construed into thinking that Newsom himself is popular.  In fact, he has been held in great - and justified - suspicion among progressives, who have noted that Newsom does not want to tax billionaires because of the wealth they benefit for the economy, he started a podcast because he apparently has too much time on his hands as governor of California, his podcast included guests such as Steve Bannon and the late Charlie Kirk, and, while talking with Kirk, he agreed with him that it is "unfair" in allowing transsexual women to compete in women's sports.

Gavin Newsom is not the savior of the Democratic Party, people.  He's a smooth-talking technocrat who takes superficially liberal positions and hopes his suave demeanor and his perfect hair will compensate for his lack of substance.  In other words, he's the Gary Hart of California.

I hope Democrats don't get sold on Harris or Newsom in 2028 simply on name recognition alone - or because they're not Vance or Rubio (or Trump, who's already plotting on how to stand for a third term).  As for whom the Democrats should nominate for President in 2028 - assuming there'll be two candidates for th3e office - they must remember Smokey Robinson's mother's advice.

They'd better shop around.  Just not in California.     

What Has Trump Done?

 When I was a kid, my sister and I had to spend occasional weekends with my maternal grandmother, because my mother had to work overtime on Saturdays.  It was not fun, because my maternal grandmother lived in an inner-city neighborhood in which there was no sign of grass.  Even her entire backyard was paved.  Anyway, one weekend there, I did something incredibly and spectacularly wrong.  I won't say what it is, but when my grandmother called my mother and told her what happened, my mother demanded to speak to me.  When I took the receiver and said hello, the first thing my mother said was, "What have you done?"

If the White House Correspondents Association (WHCA) had the same directness and indignation as my mother had in that moment she spoke to me, they would be asking Donald Trump the same question about the war he started against Iran.  But WHCA president Eugene Daniels, apparently, is a wuss, and so are the other correspondents, so no one is asking him that.

But I'll answer that unasked question.  What Trump has done is spark a regional war that includes attacks on Iran from Israel, whose leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, is a war criminal who is continuing his crackdown on Gaza.  Iran has retaliated not just by attacking American military installations but attacking civilian targets in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and several other Middle Eastern countries with drones.  Trump and Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth are responsible for having destroyed a girls' school in Iran in which nearly 170 students were killed.  Oil prices are going through the roof.  (That's the one good thing that has come out of this war; maybe Detroit will revert to making small cars - Ford has said it has the ability to do so in short order - and Americans will dump their sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks, and maybe Volkswagen will finally sell the Polo in America and maybe Honda will bring back the Fit.)  An explosion at the U.S. Embassy in Norway - whose capital, Oslo, is the site of the accords that tried to establish peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians - may have been  an Iranian terrorist attack and could be a portent of things to come . . . not just in Europe but here in the U.S.  

And as if that weren't enough, Christian nationalist commanders in the military, no doubt with Hegseth's tacit approval, have declared that this war is the prelude to the End Times, when Christ returns to judge the living, the dead, and likely the undead - including MAGA zombies.

Well, that's going to ruin my summer vacation plans!

And as if that weren't enough, Russian leader Vladimir Putin - supposed Trump's best bud - is giving intelligence on American military positions to the Iranians! 

You know, when Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, the war that began was, at first, a minor conflict over the status of Poland., with the Third Reich claiming it as living space and the British and the French fighting to help Poland preserve its independence.  Unable to send troops to Poland, Great Britain and France occupied land along the German border with France, and both sides exchanged harmless volleys,  leading to the war's original name, the "phony war."  (The Winter War, which began with the Soviet invasion of Finland in November 1939, was a separate conflict.)   In April 1940 the phony war became real as Adolf Hitler attacked and occupied Denmark and Norway, followed by a major blitzkrieg that result in the Nazi occupation of the Low Countries and the fall of France, prompting Italy to enter the war and prompting Japan, already at war with China, to join what then became known as the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis.   By 1941, even before the Japanese attack on Peral Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt began referring to the conflict as "World War II."

My point - and I do have one - is that we are likely at the beginning of World War III, but it may take a year or two before that becomes apparent.  Such a war will likely redraw national borders at least, ,and end millions of lives at worst, and possibly wipe currently existing countries off the map.

Like the United States.

Oh yeah, that horrible thing I did at my grandmother's house?  It turned out to be no big deal in the end.  My mother would later laugh about it, though, I remembering the terror I felt at the time, did not.  And no one will look back in 2026 years from now and laugh.  They won't even have the urge to chuckle. 

The 2026 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Nominees Explained

There's a group of racial extremists who fellow a tenet of faith generally downplayed by mainstream media.  This group believes that white men are the greatest villains on earth. They believe that white men were the result of a botched experiment from the days of creation, the experiment conducted by a wicked deity.  They charge that the white man is guilty of cultural colonialism and they repeatedly declare that they find the white man guilty as charged.  These people believe that white men were given domination of the earth but that a time would come when, after seventy years, the white men would lose their domination of the earth and be condemned to a richly deserved downfall and be forced to pay for their sins by being forced to accept everything that is anathema to them before they would be finally wiped from the face of the earth.

These people are called . . . pop-music critics. 

Not an original thought, I concede - I read it in either Blender or Spin - but when you look at most of the non-rock-and-roll acts being nominated for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (and Jethro Tull have been snubbed again) and you recall that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's board is dominated by  pop-music critics . . . 

. . .the list makes total sense.

Brought to you by the same people who inducted Madonna the second she became eligible two years before they inducted the Hollies, who had been eligible since 1964.

It's 2026 - seventy years after Elvis Presley became a star.

That is all. 

Another One Bites the Dog

Dog-killer and and death-squad chief Kristi Noem was fired as Secretary of Homeland Security on Thursday. 

Trump fired her ostensibly over the money she was spending on the latest ad campaign for the agency, but ICE Barbie was in trouble already because of ICE abuses in Minneapolis and other cities and her increasingly obvious affair with Republican operative Corey Lewandowski, with whom she spent a lot of time in airplanes and in the bedroom . . . sometimes at the same time.  At what turned out to be her last congressional hearing, Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC), not running for re-election this year and free from the fear of receiving death threats, castigated Noem for having killed her 14-month-old dog Cricket and cited his own experience as a pheasant hunter who trains hunting dogs and his knowledge of how to handle young pups who act up, making Noem look even more pathetic than she already is.  She was fired not because of her most severe crimes but because her lavish spending and her idiotic persona had grown so bad it had become a public relations problem.

Beware, though - we might start to miss Noem if Trump gets the Senate to confirm his choice for Noem's successor.  He's chosen Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, which, like Noem's home state of South Dakota, is not a border state and is a state whose residents have little if any experience with border issues.  Least of all Markwayne Mullin.  On to of that, he is not a lawyer, not a security expert, has no experience as a manager, and is prone to outbursts, like when he threatened Teamsters president Sean O'Brien at a 2023 Senate hearing and challenged him to a fist fight, much to the chagrin of Senator Bernie Sanders, who was chairing the meeting.  O'Brien, apparently afraid of getting beaten up, endorsed the appointment of Mullin, a man so stupid he makes Alabama senator Tommy Tuberville look like Aristotle.  He's so stupid, he can't spell his two Christian names without a space between them.  Mullin is the only current Senate member without a bachelor's degree.  (To respond to the inevitable complaint that Abraham Lincoln didn't have a bachelor's degree, he never served in the Senate.  He lost both of his tries for a Senate seat.) 

Mullin is likely to be confirmed not because Republicans want to appease Trump but because Mullin is such an embarrassment to their caucus - and they have several embarrassments - they're eager to get rid of him. 

Noem, by the way, isn't going anywhere.  She will become the new "special envoy" to the Shield of the Americas", which Trump defines as a new organization of Western Hemisphere nations to combat drug cartels.  Sounds like a Marvel Comics league to me.  Such a job is as obviously redundant and unnecessary as being vice president in charge of dress code enforcement.  It's the sort of job you expect someone else to take care of.

Someone like the Secretary of Homeland Security. 

Oh yeah, you're likely to see her back on Capitol Hill in 2027 - answering (or pretending to answer) questions from a House committee probing Trump's corruption if the Democrats take back power this November.

Music Video Of the Week - March 6, 2026

"Laughter in the Rain" by Neil Sedaka  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Iran: Armageddon It

I just returned from the bizarro universe in which Kamala Harris was elected President of the United States. Having spent her first year checking off her to-do list by helping first-time homebuyers afford a house and expanding child care, President Harris faced a new crisis when, in her effort to negotiate a new agreement with Iran to prevent further enrichment of uranium, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu started bombing Iran, causing the Iranians to suspend talks with the United States.

Secretary of State Susan Rice, addressing reporters at the White House after conferring with President Harris, explained to the press that the Harris administration knew that Israel had been planning this attack and that the President had been concerned how that might affect U.S.-Iranian talks.  Secretary Rice added that the real reason Vice President Walz was sent to Israel was not to go on a goodwill tour but because he was on a mission to go to Jerusalem and convince Netanyahu to back off.  Secretary Rice let the Iranians know what Walz was up to.  She conceded that Walz had been unsuccessful, but she added that she received a communique from the Speaker of the Iranian Parliament assuring her that Iran would not attack U.S. interests in the Middle East and concentrate strictly on defending itself from Israeli attacks.

So you can bet your sweet candy bar that I was dismayed when, back in the real world, I learned that Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that, having been aware that Israel was going to attack Iran, he decided that, rather than try to convince Netanyahu not to go ahead with the attack, it was necessary that the United States attack Iran first before Iran attacked U.S. interests in the Middle East.

Marco Rubio is a diplomat like I'm a jet pilot.

Apparently that was the real reason - a reason that don't even make good nonsense - that Trump started bombing Iran, because I thought it was about causing the Islamic Republic to fall and for the Iranian people to gain their freedom.  But that couldn't have been it, seeing as Trump hates freedom.  More likely, some say, it's because Trump is paranoid about the Ayatollah Khamenei killing him in revenge for the 2020 American assassination of General Qasem Soleimani and so decided that he had to take Khamenei out first, so that's what he did.  But he and Netanyahu are still bombing Iran.

So what is the reason we're bombing Iran?  I think your answer is right here.

But this  war isn't going to stop Americans from demanding transparency on Jeffrey Epstein.

Incidentally, if you're wondering why top brass in the military have followed Trump's illegal orders, it's because in part that no fewer than sixty high-ranking military officers believe that Donald Trump was sent by God to become President of the United States and instigate Armageddon by attacking Iran and bringing about the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, in which Christians will be venerated, Jews will be saved, and Muslims . . . well, I assume they'll get food packages for the journey to the fiery caverns below.

In America, anyone can become President.  It's one of the risks we take.  In America, anyone can become a military commander.  That's another one of the risks we take.  I'm only sorry we don't have an educated, highly trained Prussian-style officer class that reads of books of strategy instead of the Book of Revelations.

Texas Two-Step

After tomorrow's Texas Democratic U.S. Senate Democratic primary, the party nominee for the seat currently held by Republican John Cornyn will be either State Representative James Talarico . . .

. . . or U.S. Representative Jasmine Crockett.

As far as I can discern, Talarico and Crockett agree on basic Democratic Party orthodoxy, but of course they are stylistically different.  Talarico is a teacher who holds a master's degree in divinity, while Crockett is a civil rights lawyer who doesn't suffer fools gladly.  Oh - is one of them a white man and the other a black woman?  I didn't notice.  

Yeah, right.  Texas Democrats certainly have.  Moderate Democrats obviously feel comfortable with Talarico and his righteous indignation toward Trump and Texas Republicans, while progressives see  Crockett as an angry warrior who loves to take MAGA down several notches, as she did in trading insults with then-U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene over physical appearances.  And race certainly has to do with this.  Progressives in Texas see Talarico as just another polite white boy - too eager to seek cooperation in Congress - while mainstream Texas Democrats think that Crockett will be seen as just another angry black woman who's out to humiliate anyone who disagrees with her on the most trivial differences.

I don't have anything against Jasmine Crockett, but I have a feeling that she would have had a better chance of getting elected to the Senate from Missouri, her native state, instead of Texas.  Similarly, Talarico, despite his obvious political talent and his equally obvious knack for connecting with people, looks to be another conventional liberal who is going to fall short of wining a Senate seat from Texas if he is the nominee.  The reasons for my doubts are one and the same for each - it's Texas.

I think I can say without fear of contradiction that a black woman can't get elected to the Senate from Texas.  Texas is far different from Delaware and Maryland, which, respectively, elected black women Lisa Blunt Rochester and Angela Alsobrooks to the U.S. Senate.  Texas voters are still rigidly conservative (read bigoted) and oppose Crockett's Big Government agenda (read "are greedy bastards").  But whenever I hear Talarico be described as a once-in-a-lifetime political talent in the manner of Barack Obama or Bill Clinton, I remember that the same thing was said about Beto O'Rourke, and look what happened to him.  Nothing.

The polls are close, but right now, Talarico seems to have the edge.  The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) certainly thinks so, as it banned an interview Stephen Colbert conducted with Talarico on his soon-to-be-defunct late-night talk show from being aired because it did not offer equal time to Crockett.  FCC Chairman Brendan Carr knows that the seat is much more winnable for the Republicans if the Democrats choose a nominee who rubs too many Texas voters the wrong way, and he thinks Crockett is it.  Talarico, he seems to believe, would likely be in a better position to win, so he made sure that no one would see his interview with Colbert.  Except for one thing - Colbert released the Talarico interview online and it quickly went viral . . . and raised lots of cash for Talarico just as quickly.

All things considered, if Democrats nominate Talarico, they may still lose in November.  If they nominate Crockett, they likely will already have lost.

And the Republican nominee is likely not to be Senator Cornyn but Ken Paxton, the intolerable state Attorney General who's so corrupt, he was impeached (but not convicted) by state legislators in his own party.  Which means that he is only a couple of easy steps away from serving in the U.S. Senate alongside Ted Cruz.

Good luck, Texas.  You're going to need it.  

 

CBSNN

We'd better get used to that acronym.

Netflix and Paramount-Skydance, as you might recall, had been in competition for taking over Warner Brothers-Discovery, the parent company of CNN, whose ratings have slipped dramatically since Trump returned to power in early 2025 - most likely because of Scott Jennings and Jake Tapper.  Both companies expressed a desire to take over Warner Brothers-Discovery and CNN and seek to improve its stand in the increasingly irrelevant cable-news sweepstakes.  Then Netflix capitulated and withdrew its bid for Warner Brothers-Discovery.

So?  So, David Ellison and his father David - the benefactors of both Donald Trump - own Paramount-Skydance.  Paramount-Skydance owns CBS, which is run by Ellison beneficiary Bari Weiss.  

This news came out a day before Trump decided to blow up Iran.  So of course not too many people noticed.  But I did, and I credit former New York TV newswoman Sheila Stainback for bringing the news to my attention.  Note the word "former."  Sheila Stainback, who used to be an anchorwoman on the ten o'clock newscast on WPIX-TV in New York, quit the news business and turned to acting.  I learned about this news from her because I follow her on both Instagram and Threads.

These days, of course, a former TV journalist has more credibility than current TV journalists, and even non-journalists like actress Andrea Thompson, who was a CNN Headline News "anchor" for nine months, have more credibility than noted non-journalist Bari Weiss, who will likely become the editor-in-chief for the entire CBS-CNN news enterprise.  Given her inability to know the difference between reporting and editorializing (why else would CBS News anchor Tony Dokoupil verbally salute Marco Rubio on the air?), the potential for misinformation across two massive platforms (CBS News also included the CBS News 24/7 streaming channel) should be spectacularly gargantuan.

The combined news outlets will control, I have been led to understand, roughly two-thirds of  news reporting on legacy media.  And with a war between The U.S. and Israel and Iran well underway - which has led to the assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei - you can expect the Ellisons, one of the country's most wealthy Jewish families, and that yenteh Weiss to slant the news in favor of Trump and Netanyahu, two septuagenarians who cling to power to avoid going to prison, and frame the narrative to present the two globally isolated leaders as being quite noble.  I don't mean to be anti-Semitic in my characterizations of Weiss and the Ellisons, because, quite frankly, painting Trump and Netanyahu as the good guys in a war against a Muslim theocracy that is as wretched and as murderous as people say is not only a good way to rouse MAGA and Christian nationalists anticipating the Second Coming; it's also good for business.  They would have covered the Troubles in Ulster with a bias toward the British if they'd thought they could make a profit from it.

Also, you can expect more favorable coverage of Trump's tariff policy and immigration policy, less coverage at all of the Epstein files, and plenty of shady deals in the Middle East. Oh yeah, did I happen to mention that the Ellisons are being supported by significant investment from Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds, including the Qatar Investment Authority?  Everyone involved in this merger, like every defense contractor involved in this new war, is poised to make lots of money while the American people are poised to eat lots of crap.  After all, the only people that get hurt in situations like these are the innocent.

I haven't been able to write or report for the hyperlocal news site I worked for until this past June, which suits me just fine, and I don't care if I never work as a straight reporter ever again.  I'm comfortable mouthing off right here.  And I am please to join my fellow Fourth Estate alum Sheila Stainback into early retirement. 

War With Iran

Trump just began World War III. 

Early this morning, he commenced a full-scale missile and aerial attack on Iran with Israel.  The attack has nothing to do with getting Iran to give up its nuclear program.  

Iran has responded with counterattacks by firing missiles into Israel and every regional Gulf State except Oman.

And you can bet the gasoline prices are going to go up back home, and I feel sorry for anyone who owns a large SUV or a truck.  Not!  The switch back to smaller cars is the one likely good thing that can come out of this.

Oh yeah, Trump, in an effort to distract people from the Epstein files, is a war criminal now.  Now that he is a war criminal, who needs the Epstein files, really?  We can get him for war crimes instead of sexual assault, the same way they got Al Capone for tax evasion instead of bootlegging.

Music Video Of the Week - February 27, 2026

"Tuff Enuff" by the Fabulous Thunderbirds  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.) 

Tariff and SOTU Update

Okay, I noted a couple of days ago that Trump defied the Supreme Court by instigating new tariffs - first 10 percent, then 15 percent - based on a loophole.  That loophole is Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, which the Shapiro logistics company explains as follows:

Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 is a U.S. trade law provision that gives the President temporary authority to address serious balance-of-payments deficits or significant declines in the value of the U.S. dollar. It is designed as a short-term economic safeguard tool, allowing the administration to respond quickly to international financial instability or trade imbalances.

Unlike other trade enforcement mechanisms that target specific countries or unfair trade practices, Section 122 can be applied more broadly and is primarily focused on macroeconomic concerns rather than individual trade violations.

You know what's funny?  I'll tell you.  The plaintiffs in the Supreme Court tariff case used Section 122 as their argument against the tariffs Trump had implemented.  Now, the new tariff imposed under this very section of the Trade Act of 1974 could be subject to a new lawsuit.  And even this tariff stands, it is only supposed to last 150 days, after which Congress is required  approve any new tariffs, which, as Joseph Brusuelas wrote on The Real Economy Blog wrote, "will prompt businesses and households to either pull forward planned purchases, or simply delay them until the tariffs expire."  That's not good for the economy, nor is the uncertainty created by the prospect of more litigation that will delay the refunds to business the Court ordered Trump to give to businesses affected by the earlier tariffs - refunds averaging about $153 billion. 

As for the State of the Union address . . . yeah, of course I didn't see it.  I personally think we should go back to when the White House sent a message to Congress as a letter instead of delivering in it person.

In fact, both Presidents George Washington and John Adams delivered State of The Union addresses in person, but President Thomas Jefferson started the tradition of written messages to Congress in 1801 for two reasons.  First, he felt that delivering the State of the Union message in person would make him seem like a king.  Second, Jefferson had a stammer and abhorred public speaking.  James Madison would continue Jefferson's practice of delivering written messages to Congress when he became President in 1809, and it was not until 1913 when President Woodrow Wilson (above) resumed the practice of delivering the State of the Union address in person, which he did to demonstrate how serious he was about his agenda, particularly his New Freedom economic agenda.  There were fourteen instances after 1913 when Presidents reverted to a letter to Congress, most notably when Franklin Roosevelt sent letters to Congress during World War II.  Jimmy Carter sent the last message to Congress by letter in January 1981 as a lame-duck President, right about the same time Styx released as a single a song that itself made for a perfect State of the Union address for the beginning of 1981, the deliberately ironically titled "The Best of Times": "I know you feel these are the worst of times, I do believe it's true."  The Iran crisis, a sour economy, John Lennon having just been murdered . . . you get the picture.

And given Trump's apparent inability to resist breaking out into a fascist groove thing at the podium, rumor has it it's the end of paradise. 

Winter Olympic Meltdown

Overall, the Winter Olympics in Milan and Cortina were more enjoyable than the 2022 Beijing Winter Games, but then the Chinese Communist Party didn't exactly set the bar high.  But of course, leave it to members of Team USA to ruin whatever enjoyment we viewers managed to derive from watching the competition.  Back in 1998, when women's ice hockey debuted at the Nagano Winter Games, it was believed that men played ice hockey and women couldn't.  The American teams proved that, here in the U.S. at least, the opposite was true.  The women's team, having won the gold medal that year, got to meet President Clinton at the White House; the men's team, the first one staffed by National Hockey League professionals and having been eliminated from medal contention, wrecked their rooms at the Olympic village in Japan like British rock stars playing the Tokyo Budokan would wreck their hotel rooms. They were bad losers.

In 2026, they were bad winners.  After their win over Canada for the gold medal, the American men's ice hockey team partied hearty in the locker room and received a phone call from Donald Trump. Trump invited them to the White House and added that he had to invite the women's team, who won their gold medal in a game with the Canadian women, otherwise "I do believe I probably would be impeached."  The men laughed uproariously and delivered salutatory dittos while FBI Director Kash Patel (WHAT?????) downed a bottle of beer in their company.  

Trump didn’t invite the women's ice hockey team to the White House, despite his insistence that he did, but they saved him the trouble by declining an invitation.  The men's team not only showed up at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, they showed up at the State of the Union address to be celebrated as representing the best of America.

Yes, the U.S. men's national ice hockey team represents and embodies America - literal locker room talk, misogynistic attitudes, toxic masculinity, and overall boorishness.

And by the way, we have no business to celebrate the U.S. men's ice hockey team's recent achievements.  David Rothkopf pointed out something quite disturbing.  The last time the men's team won the Olympic gold medal, Rothkopf noted, they defeated the Soviet Union for a berth in the gold-medal game, and their victory was sweet because it marked the triumph of a country that stood for freedom over a country that stood for tyranny.  Today, the U.S. victory over Canada in the gold-medal men's ice hockey game marks the victory of a nation representing authoritarianism over the country fighting to save freedom - Canada, meaning that, whereas the Americans won the gold medal in men's ice hockey in 1980 as the good guys, this time they won it as the bad guys.  The same would hold true for the American women's victory over the Canadian women, except for one thing - the American women aren't part of Trump's vision of an America made great once again.  I think he just made that well understood.

Meanwhile, I found out one thing about the Milan and Cortina Winter Games that is, in fact, worthy of satire.  The medals minted for the top three finishers in each event are of lesser quality than medals of previous Games.  In other words, they break off their ribbons and break in two when they hit the floor.  For all the money spent on the Olympics, you'd think the International  Olympic Committee would have spent more on quality control for their prize hardware.  Alysa Liu had her team-figure skating gold medal break on her, and she had to return it for a new one.  So, everyone is pleased as punch that the American men's ice hockey team won the gold medal, though . . . when you get right down to it, here we have a bunch of NHL pros with a bunch of booby prizes as fragile as gold-wrapped chocolate Hanukkah shekels.   

Meanwhile, looking forward to 2030, one of the leaders of the organizing committee for the 2030 Winter Olympics in France stepped down because he didn't play well with others. Among the committee members, their left hands don't know what their right hands were doing.  This should be interesting . . .. 

Trumpety Bumpety

Trump got a rude awakening when the Supreme Court rule 6 to 3 against Trump trying to establish tariffs unilaterally, based on a 1970s law that allowed tariffs to be established by the executive branch for  national security reasons.  Chief Justice John Roberts gave Trump a chance to dial back the tariffs, but Trump apparently found a loophole to declare a comprehensive 10 percent tariff on all imported goods.  Hours later, he increased it to 15 percent. 

Whatever.  I'm sick and tired of following Trump's import-tax antics.  

Anyway, I'm sure he'll explain his stupid tariffs - and how the 2020 election was rigged in favor of Joe Biden - when he gives his State of the Union address to Congress tonight.  Al I can think of is how I wish my state of the Union, New Jersey (see what I did there? double meaning) would secede from it.

I can't be bothered to watch.  I have to finish a video for my YouTube channel about a topic having nothing to do with Trump.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to get a nice, chewy piece of salt water tariff. 😝

Oh, Are the Winter Olympics Over?

Even though the U.S. men's hockey team (below) won the Olympic gold medal for the first time since 1980, and even though Team USA won eleven Winter Olympic Gold medals at these just-concluded Games in Milan and Cortina in Italy, including Alysa Liu's figure-skating gold medal, one cannot deny - and some folks are certainly trying to - that these Winter Games were a snooze fest.  The intimacy and the modesty of the Winter Games that existed when a bunch of college kids defeated the Soviet Union in ice hockey at Lake Placid 46 years ago has long since gone, and the Winter Olympics have just become one more Big Event in multimedia programming.  

I only watched these Winter Games sporadically, and even though there were many victories worth celebrating, I actually watched Jordan Stolz win a gold medal in the men's 500m speed skating event (or was it the 1000m?) and watched Elana Meyers Taylor win the gold medal in the women's single-person bobsled event and felt nothing.  No patriotic pride, no joy . . . nothing.  And that's a good thing, good for Stolz and Meyers Taylor and good for me, because they're the only ones who should feel anything about their victories.  I wasn't the one skating or sledding.  And it's hard to feel any sense of patriotism in an American victory at the Winter Olympics when the country the athletes represent is a 3.8-million-square-mile wasteland of measles epidemics and masked secret policemen shooting civilians, all run by a demented ex-real estate developer and a bunch of tech robber barons.

Figure skating is pretty much ruined, especially after ice dancers Madison Chock and Evan Bates won only the silver medal in their event because a biased French judge underscored their performances to help a pair representing France win the gold.  Any interest I had in seeing Amber Glenn skate was killed when I learned ahead of time that she would be skating to a Madonna song - and NBC aired the video message Madge sent to Glenn thanking her for choosing her song to skate to (typical of Madge to jump at every opportunity to promote her mere continued existence).  So of course I didn't watch it.  (Which song was it?  Come on, they're all awful, does it really matter?)  I didn't watch Alysa Liu either.  Besides, the skaters' choice of music was so lame, I pined for the days when figure skaters all performed to the music of dead Austrian and Russian classical composers.  The music they skate to today is almost enough to make me hate sound.

The U.S.-Canada gold-medal hockey game?  Ahh, I didn't watch that either.  But who cares?  The college kids who used to comprise the men's national ice hockey team have been replaced by crack professionals who play for the teams of the National Hockey League, which shut down so that their pros could compete in Milan.  Big deal. 

And if I was bored with whatever event NBC was showing, like freestyle skiing (since when did skiing become an art form?),  there was always its sister channle USA, which showed . . . curling.

Fiendish thingy. 

Given the overcommercialism of the Winter Olympics, the empty nationalism, and the increasing scandal and tawdriness surrounding the athletes themselves, I don't care if I sound like an aging white guy cursing the elements, because, well, I am a sixty-year-old male Caucasian.  And I have several reasons to curse the elements - I got over a foot of snow, I have no idea when the guy who's supposed to clear it will get here, and I'm in no condition to remove from my driveway entrance a snowbank longer and higher than the Dolomite Alps that Mikaela Shiffrin skied down to win the women's slalom at the just-concluded Winter Olympics (and I wanted to see that, but I missed it!).  But, I guess my fellow Americans should still celebrate U.S. victories at these Winter Games.

After all, by the time the 2030 Winter Olympics open in France, there probably won't be a United States, thanks to Trump.  But come 2030, Team New England and Team Cascadia should have a lot of potential gold-medal-caliber contenders.

Man of the People

When Jesse Jackson first ran for President in 1984, he was considered a symbolic candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, because President Reagan was a shoo-in for re-election.  When he ran for the Democratic presidential nomination again in 1988, he was running to win.  Not necessarily win the nomination - establishment Democrats, who have historically screwed things up for the party in the past four decades, had established the idea of "superdelegates" to prevent that, as Jackson's peer and brother in arms Bernie Sanders would later find out - but to win a better future for America.

Jesse Jackson, who died at 84 last week, was never going to win the Presidency - not because he was black, but because he espoused policies that had fallen out of favor with mainstream America, such as federal aid to urban areas, single-payer health care, and affirmative-action benchmarks for employment (which has since morphed into diversity, equity and inclusion).  Progressive policies had fallen out of favor in the 1980s at the expense of a supply-side economic policy of incentives for corporations to produce more goods and employ more people, free-market competition, and deregulation of financial institutions.  All of that failed.  Which is why, ironically, Jackson was also ahead of his time.  He was a harbinger of the early-twenty-first-century movement spearheaded by Bernie Sanders.

Jackson was fully committed to civil rights long after the movement faded in the 1970s in the mistaken assumption that the heavy lifting had been done and moderation in the pursuit of incremental progress was all that was needed going forward.  Jackson was prescient enough to know that much more was needed to be done still, and he never wavered from that.  But, in his campaign for economic justice through his group People United to Serve Humanity (PUSH) and for reconciliation with the nation's adversaries (he famously embraced Yasir Arafat and helped free an American serviceman by negotiating with Syrian dictator Hafez al-Assad), Jackson expanded beyond the Rainbow Coalition, which he called the political operation representing his core supporters.  When he established the Rainbow Coalition in 1984, it represented only a single hue - black.  By 1988, he'd added white and brown to his color chart, attracting white farmers in Iowa facing foreclosure, Mexican-American fieldworkers in the corporate farms of California, and Puerto Rican domestic workers in East Harlem, as well as a multiracial assemblage of industrial workers in the Rust Belt who'd seen the desire for corporations to make more money and reward shareholders instead of employees lead to their jobs going overseas.  The 1980s ended as unhappily as they'd begun - George H.W. Bush locked Reagan's conservative revolution in place - but Jesse Jackson inspired people to dream bigger, he got more minorities to register to vote, he ran a pair of presidential campaigns that cleared the path for Barack Obama to win the Presidency, and he encouraged people to "keep hope alive."  (The Rainbow Coalition and PUSH ultimately merged, becoming the Rainbow-PUSH Coalition.)

Jesse Jackson never tired.  He fought back against one wave of right-wing activism after another, be it the Gingrich revolution, 2001 and 2003 George W. Bush tax cuts, or the Tea Party movement.  Now, with MAGA beginning to falter and the movement Jackson nurtured and Sanders assumed breaking through, it seems like we as a people could soon get to the Promised Land..  The Reverend Jackson obviously won't get there with the rest of us, but he was in the fight long enough to make it possible for the rest of us to get there.  Unlike his mentor Martin Luther King, Jr., Jackson found that longevity had a place for him.

I never supported Jesse Jackson for President for one simple reason - I felt that, having held no previous elective office or had no previous military service, he was not qualified.  (Alas, those two deficiencies failed to stop Donald Trump in 2016.) But I did support what he stood for. I still do.  RIP. 

Blizzard and Blitzkrieg

I can't think straight tonight.  Mainly because a run-of-the-mill snowstorm for my area forecast for tomorrow night is in fact going to be a blizzard. 

My area is expected to get an average of sixteen inches of snow with wind gusts of over 40 mph, and even though areas closer to the coast are likely to fare even worse, that's hardly any comfort.  In fact - no pun intended - it's cold comfort. 

In the meantime, though, a similar blow may be in the works against Iran.  Trump is reportedly planning to attack Iran and possibly aim to depose the Supreme Leader after having promised to bomb Iran to save demonstrators against the Islamic government there.  He's about three weeks too late for that.

But he's still likely going to go in - as soon as the Winter Olympic torch in Italy gets put out. In ancient times, whenever the Olympic Games commenced, wars were temporarily stopped in a truce for sport.  The 1916, 1940, and 1944 Olympics - all canceled by the two world wars - have shown that the opposite is true today, and ongoing regional conflicts during any modern Olympiad don't stop just because of a huge international sporting event.  Ask any Ukrainian athlete. 

Between the blizzard and the war Trump plans to start, I prefer the blizzard.  At least I know the blizzard will stop and the snow and wind are both eventually going to go . . . away. 

Music Video Of the Week - February 20, 2026

"Lowdown" by Boz Scaggs  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

It's A Miracle!

No one ever thought it would come to this.

Not one person ever believed it was possible.

But today, it happened.

Alysa Liu became the first American woman to win the Olympic gold medal in women's figure skating in 24 years!

And oh, yeah, the former Prince Andrew was arrested in Britain.  He's been charged with doing nasty things and committing various forms of misconduct connected to Jeffrey Epstein.  His arrest is one of several acts of men associated with Epstein and his pedophilia racket.

No one's been arrested in the U.S. yet, although Brad Karp, the chairman of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, resigned hos post over an association with Epstein, and talent agent Casey Wasserman - the same Casey Wasserman who is running the organizing committee for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics - is in hot water for his Epstein connections.   But as soon as the Brits can get His Former Royal Highness to start singing like Beverly Sills, you can bet your sweet candy bar that he'll be dropping the dope on one Donald J. Trump.

Given that there is ample reason to believe that Trump used the beauty pageants he owned as fronts for grooming young women and girls for Epstein's operations, we haven't heard the last of Trump's crimes.  Fox News viewers who haven't heard the first of it.

In the meantime let's think happy thoughts about Alysa Liu . . ..

Washington Post-Mortem

The Washington Post is gone.  What's left is merely a penny-ledger version of its former self.

The once-proud newspaper cut 30 percent of its staff, eliminating its book-review section when it became apparent that people in Washington, D.C. don't read (it's never been what you would call a literary town), and, in an admission that its major-league teams suck, eliminating the sports pages.  The Post tried to put the best face on the fileting of the staff.

"If anything, today is about positioning ourselves to become more essential to people’s lives in what is becoming a more crowded, competitive and complicated media landscape," Matt Murray, the Post’s executive editor said. "And after some years when, candidly, the Post has had struggles."

Yeah.  Right.

Jeff Bezos (above), who famously brought the Post in 2016 and hoped to make it a showcase for how a newspaper would and could thrive in the digital age, but given how artificial intelligence has rendered his original plans useless and given also how the media landscape is becoming ever more fragmented as more people move toward independent media, it's clear that saving the only prestigious newspaper in the nation's capital (the far-right Washington Times is run by the Moonies) was never a priority for Bezos, who demonstrated his loss of interest in it when he refused to let the paper endorse Kamala Harris for President in October 2024 and turned his attention to Blue Origin and other endeavors in the hopes of keeping lucrative contracts with the government under Trump. 

Democracy hasn't yet died in darkness, but the Post died in broad daylight.  It has lost so many employees as a result of these cuts, it will have to strive for years just to reach the quality of an exurban Gannett newspaper.

Maybe letting billionaires whose interest in journalism wanes when their priorities and interests change buy media outlets wasn't such a good idea.

I'm going to have to rethink my association with Amazon now.  I've been a Prime member for a couple of years, ordering only items that I need when I need them, but when I don't need anything, I still pay for a service that guarantees overnight delivery that I'm not using.  Why should I line Bezos' pockets even more?

Oh, that's right . . . because more often than not, when I do need an item, I can't find the item I need anywhere else! 

Compact discs?  I don't have much room for more, and I think I'll start collecting albums on a flash drive from now on.  

Block the Vote: 2026 Edition

The Republicans are at it again. 

The House of Representatives, for the second time in the First Reichstag (formerly the 119th Congress), passed the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, a bill that is as committed to safeguarding American voter eligibility as North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, is committed to democracy, people, or republicanism. 

But this bill is certainly connected to Republicanism.  (Not capital letter.)

The SAVE Act would ban registration by mail and require Americans to present proof of citizenship when registering with photo ID, such as passports, in every state and would require birth certificates, if presented in lieu of passports, to show names given at birth. It would also order states to remove non-citizens from the voter rolls.  Well, what's so bad about that?

Quite a few things, actually.  First of all, a large number of Americans don't have passports, mainly because they don't - or mor likely, given how vacation time and discretionary money are both in short supply these days, can't - travel abroad.  

Second, most people don't know where their birth certificates are and many of those people who would need birth certificates the most would be married women - because their current IDs usually bear their husbands' surnames, and birth certificates are required to provide their maiden names.  It would also require converts to Islam, not so coincidentally, to show their birth certificates with their original names, because many converts to Islam, such as basketball players Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (formerly Lewis Alcindor) and Muhammad al-Raouf (formerly Chris Jackson), adopt Arabic names upon their conversions.  

Third,  it is totally unnecessary to remove non-citizens from the voter rolls.  There are none.  Migrants and residents who are not eligible to vote are not going to waste their time registering.  Especially when it's illegal.

These changes to voting laws in the United States will likely not become law any time soon, because it still has to clear the Senate, where Democrats can use procedural measures to block it.  One of the first senators, if not the first senator, to oppose the bill, is a Republican - Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who called the bill "federal overreach."  The Constitution, of course, gives the states the rights and responsibilities of holding elections to prevent the very sort of federal intervention this bill threatens to implement.  But when did constitutional violations ever stop MAGA before?

Oh yeah, even if the Senate does block it like it did in 2025, Trump is already prepared to counteract that.  He plans to issue an executive order requiring voter photo ID, and there have been indications that he plans to send ICE to polling places for the 2026 midterms, particularly in the fifteen states he and MAGA have identified as trouble for their movement. 

This plan to suppress may backfire, because Democratic women are more likely to get passports now. You know who likely don't have passports? MAGA Republicans! They think they don't need passports because they don't need to leave the U.S. because "this is the greatest country in the world!" Yeah? How many countries have they been to in order to make that determination?  

Oh yeah, it would also restrict if not completely eliminate voting by mail in addition to banning registering by mail, and MAGA Republicans are more likely to use the mails as well. 

Even if the bill doesn't reach Trump's desk and he tries to issue an executive order, necessitating a court battle, the groundswell of voters ready to vote MAGA Republicans out of office is likely to be so large that Democrats could win a landslide creating impregnable majorities both houses of Congress.  At that point, Attorney General Pam Bondi - who already tried and failed to blackmail Minnesota Governor Tim Walz into surrendering state voter registration data as a prerequisite for getting ICE out of his state - will send authorities to state capitals like Trenton to collect voter registration data.  At which point, maybe Governor Sherrill will finally realize that it's time for my home state of New Jersey to leave the Union.

Music Video Of the Week - February 13, 2026

"My Wife" by the Who (Go to the link in the upper-right hand corner.)

Polythene Pam

There have been plenty of unforgettable and unforgivable moments of public spectacle in Washington.  There was Joe McCarthy's meltdown at the 1954 Army-Communist hearings.  There were the 1985 Senate Parents' Music Resources Center hearings on popular music with dirty song lyrics, which was more embarrassing for the senators than for witnesses John Denver, Dee Snider and Frank Zappa.  There was also the infamous 1994 House hearing in which tobacco company executives all testified that nicotine is not addictive.  But nothing - not even the much-deserved humiliation that Zappa delivered to the Senate Commerce Committee - can compare to the spectacle Attorney General Pam Bondi made out of herself when she "testified" on the the subject of the Epstein files before the House Judiciary Committee.

Bondi gave a combative and fiery - and extremely inappropriate - performance that involved stonewalling and deflecting in a form of what should be called unrighteous indignation.  When ranking Democrat Jerrold Nadler of New York asked her how many Epstein associates her department - you know, the Justice Department? - had prosecuted, she took umbrage and wasted everyone's time with double talk.  When Kentucky congressman Tom Massie, one of the very few Republicans pursuing the Epstein case with forceful diligence, complained about information from among the Epstein files that had been removed from the Justice Department's Web site, Bondi responded that it was reinstated forty minutes after it had been removed; Massie responded by saying that it was reinstated forty minutes after she'd been caught trying to suppress it.

It was really something.  Bondi defended Donald Trump for his "transparency" by having signed the bill requiring the release of the Epstein files and conveniently overlooking the fact that documents have been selectively released and that the names of the perverts preying on little girls have been redacted.  She maintained her arrogance through questioning over one Jared Wise, a former FBI agent now in the employ of the Justice Department as a senior advisor.  He took part in the January 6 insurrection and was later charged for his involvement, only to receive - you guessed it - a presidential pardon from Trump. Bondi also defended Trump from insinuations that he was involved in pedophilia, and she most likely lied under oath by insisting that he had not been identified as a prime suspect.   And when Democrat Jamie Raskin of Maryland pushed on the Epstein issue, Bondi cited irrelevant news about the booming stock market under Trump's economic stewardship and addressed Representative Raskin as "Raskin," without a salutation.  Her hot and heavy stage show, likely the most tasteless display of self-righteousness by a bottle-blonde Italian since Madonna last "performed" in public, was compared by anti-Trump activist and ex-Republican advisor Rick Wilson to a fake orgasm - “"loud, theatrical, sweaty, and meant to trick just one man [Trump] into keeping her around by flattering his ego."    

And watching from her office on television, Kristi Noem is rumored to have said, "I'll have what she's having."

But the worst moment came when Democratic congresswoman Pramila Jayapal of Washington State asked the people in the gallery who had been abused by or because of Jeffrey Epstein to stand up and raise a hand if they had not been able to meet with anyone in the Justice Department.  Every Epstein survivor in attendance did so.

And Pam Bondi refused to even acknowledge them.

See why I have no time to comment on the Winter Olympics?  MAGA is flooding the zone with sewage, and this piece of sewage named Pam Bondi is serious stuff. 

Pam Bondi is a woman of great distinction, though not the sort of distinction anyone would care to assume the mantle of.  The best her supporters can say about her is that she acts like a man, as if she has a Y chromosome hidden in her DNA, just like an Uncle Tom Negro like Clarence Thomas might have white blood that makes him act like a nasty Caucasian.  At worst, she makes John Mitchell look like Robert F. Kennedy, Sr. by comparison.  And hopefully, when this regime is over (or should I say "if"?  MAGA may have the supernatural ability to perpetuate its hold on the federal government after Trump is finally gone), she'll join Mitchell as one of the only two Attorneys General to go to jail.

Don't pass go, Pam.  Don't collect your $200 retainer.  

The Italian Job

The Winter Olympics in Italy? I'm not feeling it.

I don't mean I'm not enjoying the Winter Games.  I mean I can't find anything insightful or witty to say about them.  I watched the men's figure skating program and I actually enjoyed it without irony.  I particularly liked Ilia Malinin (above) in his short-program routine.  He is the Quad God!   And I also got to see some luge, skiing, and curling, though not a lot of speed skating just yet.  

But so far - and I don't expect this to change, really - I haven't seen one moment or event worth satirizing, ridiculing, or even highlighting with wry commentary.  The most trenchant comment I could make is that there are an astonishing number of American male figure skaters such as Malinin, as well as Canadian Stephen Gogolev, who are sons of emigre athletes from the former Soviet Union.  Hardly earth-shattering news or relevant to the Winter Games, though I guess you could write a serious article about that.  But no one's paying me to do that, so what? 

Maybe it's because I just turned sixty, or maybe it's because my generation is so far removed from competing in the Olympics (Generation X more or less dominated the Games from 1984 to 2000), but I'm just not looking for satire.  No, I'll qualify that.  I never look for something to satirize; I let something worth satirizing present itself.  You consciously look for something to make fun of, then it sounds forced.  Perhaps I've gotten too old to recognize satire-worthy moments in sports.  Or maybe it's the culture; with the Super Bowl having just concluded, I've heard plenty of commentary about the halftime show, starring one Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio, and the counterprogrammed half show staged by Turning Point USA, starring one Robert Ritchie.  But the game itself?  Not a word.

Also, there are more important things to talk about, like Jeff Bezos gutting the Washington Post, which I have to talk about, and will, as soon as I feel like it.  Oy.  I've recently been spending time correcting typos and factual errors on previous blog posts - what would be called "curing" in counting provisional election ballots - and I'm down about this whole writing thing right now.  I'm on call at the news site I once wrote regularly for since a new editor took over, but in fact I haven't written for it since June.  I think I'll just chill out for now (very easy to do in the bitterly cold Northeast) and enjoy thew Winter Olympics..

And as soon as these Games are over, I have to write the International Olympic Committee again to get them to move the 2028 Olympics out of the United States.

You Are Not Free To Move About the World

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has a nice program for frequent international travelers who regularly use their frequent-flyer miles. It's the PreCheck and Global Entry system.  Having PreCheck and Global Entry privileges means you get to skip the lines at airports and go through with little if any trouble at all because you have proven that you are a  low-risk traveler someone who is not likely to set off a bomb in your shoe onboard the plane or hijack the plane and fly it into Mar-a-Lago. 

However, PreCheck and Global Entry is a privilege, not a right, and you can have your privilege revoked if the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) decides that you're an elevated risk to the safety of other travelers than previously believed due to violations of regulations, new criminal charges.  This means you have to go back to shuffling through standard security lines, though you can appeal DHS's decision.  In the meantime, should you travel abroad and return, you are not entitled to fast-track re-entry and you must have your travel papers processed through the standard lines.  Your traveler profile is no longer considered "low-risk" by federal authorities and you are subject to increased scrutiny.

And what could someone do to lose their low-risk traveler status?  Say something that offends Trump.  That's what happened  to Chris Krebs, who was Trump's director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in Trump's first term.  He had his travel privileges revoked this past April, and Trump ordered the revocation personally.  Why? Because Krebs declared in late 2020 that the presidential election that year, which Joe Biden won, had been fair and cleanly run, and that Trump lost fair and square.  Now whenever Chris Krebs travels abroad, getting back in the U.S. is much harder than it is for for others - that is, others who haven't posted a blog entry, a social-media meme, or a YouTube Video ridiculing Trump that Trump himself found while surfing the Net late at night.

Maybe when Krebs travels abroad again and gets stranded in Copenhagen or Vienna or some nice foreign capital like that, he should just rent himself an apartment, apply for asylum, and get himself a job cleaning offices.  Sort of like what happened to one Pyotr Vasilievich Mironov, a Russian diplomat who represented Czar Nicholas II in London in early 1917 and was in the middle of negotiating an arms deal with the British government when he and his family were stranded in England in the Russian Revolution.  Mironov and his family never returned to Russia; when it became apparent that Lenin was in charge and was preparing to take Russia out the ongoing war in Europe, the Mironovs stayed in London and Pyotr Mironov became a cab driver.  His son Vasily had a daughter, Ilyena, who was born in 1945.  You might know Pyotr Mironov's granddaughter by her anglicized name . . . Helen Mirren.

As long as Trump is in charge of These States, I can imagine several stranded American travelers abroad staying where they are elsewhere in the world, because cleaning offices and driving taxis are increasingly becoming preferable to high-level jobs in der Amerikanisches Reich.  For now, though, Trump has merely made it difficult for Americans traveling abroad to return home, not impossible.  Once he makes it impossible, the only thing left for him to do will be to make it impossible for people to . . . leave.

And that's when the fun begins.