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 by 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 rom 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.

Trump Goes Ape Over the Obamas

This is a picture of Barack and Michelle Obama. 

A lot of people have been posting pictures of the Obamas over the weekend.  And I am posting on here on my blog.  We're posting such pictures to get back at Donald Trump for posting an unfunny, inappropriate, just plain sick video meme showing the Obamas as apes in the jungle.  Which he did for . . . no apparent reason.

Well, actually, I think there was a reason.  Trump is tanking in the polls so badly that even his supporters are abandoning him.  The economy is tanking.  American arrogance toward the rest of the planet, long a leitmotif of U.S. foreign policy, has become officially enshrined as doctrine by Trump with the blessing of Marco Rubio's State Department.  ICE is committing crimes against humanity and getting away with it.  MAGA acolytes are still waking free despite their mentions in the Epstein files - and Trump is mentioned in them at least 38,000 times.  All Trump had to do to regain his base, or so he figured, was to remind supporters whom they hate more than anyone else - black people.

What Trump forgot, apparently, was that while all racists are Trump supporters, not all Trump supporters are racist.  And while non-racist Trump supporters may have disliked Trump's bigotry but still voted for him because their dislike for the Democrats was even greater, this stunt was too much for them to bear.

Which is unfortunate, because Trump's previous racist social-media stunts - not to mention his racist  policies, his racist statements, and his racist behavior, as well as his chief of staff Susie Wiles' racist attitude (she said that a mixed-race First Couple, as Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff would have been had Harris won the 2024 election, was "too much" for some people) - should have soured non-racist Trump supporters on the MAGA movement long ago.  The mainstream media are framing the reaction to the Obamas video meme from Republicans in Congress as a sign that Trump has gone too far this time.  Oh, really - after Trump had gone too far too many times to count, they're suddenly offended now?  Representative Mike Lawler (R-NY) expressed his disgust over the Obamas video meme and added that, since Trump took the meme down (but not before Trump-haters took screenshots of the evidence), we should just move on from it and go forward.  But go forward to what? A video meme from Trump depicting the Obama sisters as a chained pair of orangutangs?  (I know, I shouldn't give Trump ideas - but if I could think of something so offensive, Trump may be able to think of something far more so.)  Senator Tim Scott (R-SC), who is black, said he is appalled by Trump's racism.  Even though Scott once said that America is not a racist country and apparently never noticed Trump's previous racism . . . or never noticed the racism of other Republicans, such as when ancient white woman and U.S. Representative Virginia Foxx (R-NC) once told black ABC-TV reporter Rachel Scott (no relation to Tim) to "shut up" after Rachel Scott asked a question that Foxx didn't like. 

Trump supporters who say they now have seen the light and do not support him anymore in fact have thrice voted for Trump and had simply preferred to overlook his bigotry and his other unsavory qualities.  Vote for him once, in 2016?  Okay, Hillary Clinton was no prize, and no one knew how Trump would fare as Chief Executive.  Vote for him a second time, in 2020?  Okay, Trump made a lot of unforced errors handling COVID, but so did other countries, like Sweden, the failing economy wasn't his fault, and not even President Martin O'Malley - 😉 - could have handled the pandemic without a few stumbles, though he, Hillary Clinton, or Bernie Sanders certainly would have done better.  But vote for Trump again in 2024 - after all of the top-secret files he took back to Florida, after he was convicted for business fraud, after he was indicted for election interference in Georgia, after all of the continuing racism - and after January freakin' Sixth??  Now you're appalled by him?  

Another reason  these Trump supporters are deserting him is because his policies didn't personally affect them in any adverse way.  It's like the independent feminist women who supported President Ronald Reagan's re-election in 1984, which John Belushi's brother Jim parodied with a "Saturday Night Live" white woman's rap he wrote for a skit - "I'm liberated, I joined NOW, I voted for Reagan anyhow, because his tax and budget cuts will hurt other people - but not us!"

I don't doubt the sincerity of those who voted for Trump and say they turned against him because of his racist attitudes.  But another reason they turned against him is because Trump's tax and budget cuts, which had hurt other people, now hurt them.  And Trump supporters who are racist are deserting him for that reason alone.  I wouldn't buy a used car from any of them.  But then they probably would only have a used SUV to sell anyway. 

Milan Meh and Cortina Ennui

So, how do I think Team USA is going to do in the 2026 Winter Olympics, which just opened officially?  Quite frankly, I don't give a twit.  Minneapolis is still under siege, Jeff Bezos' lack of business sense or ethics is destroying Hollywood and one of the nation's great newspapers simultaneously, Steve Bannon is promising voter intimidation to secure Republican victories in the midterm elections in November, it's so cold outside that I feel like I live closer to the Hudson Bay than the Hudson River, and my skin is so dry that my left heel feels like someone rammed a pickax through it!

But hearing how the Vice President of the United States got booed at the opening ceremonies at the Winter Olympics makes me feel a little bit better.

The Winter Olympics continue their march toward the pompous grandiosity that the regular Olympics  achieved a long time ago, the Winter Games this year being held in both Milan, for the indoor events, and Cortina d'Ampezzo, for the outdoor events.  When the Winter Olympics were held in Cortina seventy years ago, the world was a different place and the Winter Olympics were a different sporting event.  Winter Olympic opening ceremonies didn't yet have the blast of bombast that Adolf Hitler introduced in the regular Olympics in Berlin in 1936 (though even Hitler didn't make a big spectacle out of the 1936 Winter Olympics, held in the Bavarian town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen).  The Winter Games were held in a shorter time frame.  Only athletes from naturally snow-prone and ice-prone countries competed.  And everything was held in one place, whereas these Winter Games are held in towns about 245 miles - oops, excuse my ugly Americanism, 400 kilometers - apart.  This is Italian logistics in action?  No wonder the only way Italy could win both world wars was to change sides. 

It's almost 11:30 in the morning on the American East Coast as I type this, and I haven't yet watched a moment of Winter Olympic coverage, but I plan to, given how bitterly cold it is outside and how I have no desire to go out except for a couple of necessary short trips.  I just want to lie on the bed and cuddle up with my cats as I watch the downhill and slalom runs and the bobsled races (and some speed skating, please!).   And this time I hope I don't fall asleep watching the events.  But, given the raw sewage Steve Bannon and the rest of MAGA are flooding the zone with, I doubt I will be able to deliver in this space the sort of savagely witty commentary on these Games, because the whole Olympic movement, sadly, has gone a long way toward satirizing itself.

And no, I still haven't gotten a reply from International Olympic Committee president Kirsty Coventry about moving the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics to a city in another country, like, say, Toronto, but that Olympiad looks to be a major disaster - expect boycotts of American World Cup matches this year as a dry run for what could happen in 2028.  Remember: The 2028 Olympics were awarded to Los Angeles back in 2017, when Trump was in the first year of his first term in the White House, and, given what the International Olympic Committee understood about American politics, people figured that Trump would be long gone by 2028 - either he'd be a one-term President who would be gone by 2021 or a two-term President who would step down by 2025.  No one ever imagined Trump pulling a Grover Cleveland on everyone and possibly still being in office in 2028.  Or maybe Vance will be President then, in which case, he'll be booed a second time if he shows up for those Games.  Or maybe the United States will indeed split into separate countries by then, or maybe California will at least be an independent republic by then even if the U.S. doesn't split up, and then the opening ceremony of the Games will be officiated by California Republic President Eric Swalwell - yeah!

Ahh, who cares?  I've gone past the point of caring myself, having just turned sixty and having seen the athletes of my generation retire from competitive sports and move on to other things.  The Olympics aren't my Olympics anymore.  They belong to a new generation.  I call upon to the youth of the world to have a good time at the Games in Italy, and that includes fans as well as athletes.

Just remember that, if you're planning to attend both indoor events and outdoor events, it's a six-hour trip between the arena and the slopes.  😝

Music Video Of the Week - February 6, 2026

"Nowhere Man" by the Beatles  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

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 skull 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 a theater actress who made a name for herself playing a fascist concubine in a musical written by Western civilization's worst composer is the last person who should judge the architectural quality of the Kennedy Center.  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 it's 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.)