This, That, and a Whole Lot Less

The worst thing about 2025 coming to an end is the knowledge that 2026 will be worse.  But not as bad as 2027.

As 2025 lurches to a close, I ought to tend to some unfinished business . . ..

First, the inevitable update on two folks named James - a woman named by her father and a man named by his mother.  Letitia James and James Comey were both indicted by the Injustice Department as part of Donald Trump's retribution campaign, but both cases were dismissed in court.  The details of their indictments are moot, so I won't bother with them here.   John Bolton, Trump's former national security adviser, is still under indictment on eighteen counts related to the mishandling of classified documents, and as much as liberals would love to see Bolton go to the slammer (liberals are against the chair), he's clearly being indicted for all the wrong reasons. 

Meanwhile, Jennifer Welch (above), co-host of IHIP, the I've Had It Podcast, seems to have had a change of heart about Roman Catholics.  She recently told fellow podcaster Tara Palmeri that she actually admires Catholics for their devotion to their faith and their constant study of their faith and the Gospels, adding that if she were believer of God, which she is not, she could never be a Catholic not because of a patriarchal priesthood but because of all of the constant study involved.  She also says that Catholics are nice people who, unlike evangelicals in her home state of Oklahoma, don't try to convert anyone so aggressively.  So, I guess that means I ought to go back to listening to her and Angie Sullivan's podcast.

I write this blog post, meanwhile, with the knowledge that Brigitte Bardot just died at the age of 91.  Social media has gotten to the point that you don't even need to check news sites online or television news programs to find out that someone has died.  When Facebook friends who don't know each other from Adam and Eve simultaneously post pictures of a French actress and sex symbol who hasn't been culturally relevant since Renault stopped making the Dauphine, you can put two and two together.  No, those were not pictures of Claudia Schiffer.  The death of the woman her fans famously called B.B. fellows the death of another European movie star and glamour icon known as C.C., Italian actress Claudia Cardinale.  (Note: For those who have started following my blog just recently, no, my girl cat Claudia is not named for either Claudia Cardinale or Claudia Schiffer.)  I hope both of them are remembered for their earlier films, and hopefully not the spaghetti western they did together in the early seventies.  (I saw about five minutes of that movie; that was all I could take.  Both actresses were celebrated as icons, but you'd never have known it from this particular movie.)  

I was never incredibly enamored with Bardot or Cardinale, but their respective passings this year is still a bitter reminder that the era of European cinema and culture that they represented died long before they did.  And going into 2026, it makes me fear for the health and well-being of France's Catherine Deneuve, 82, and Italy's Sophia Loren, 91.  The European Union ought to seriously consider some protective measures for both actresses - put fences around them, maybe, declare them Continental treasures, perhaps get UNESCO to grant them World Heritage status - just so we can at least keep them around a little longer. 

Summer Reading

Trump had been trying to stop it, but John Bolton's new book is going full tilt boogie, and the bombshells are dropping and detonating like napalm-filled incendiary devices, threatening to defoliate Trump's leadership veneer and expose the emperor as having no clothes. 

My, I'm getting poetic here!

In his book "The Room Where it Happened," Bolton has revealed many embarrassing things about the current White House occupant,  For one thing, he asked Chinese President Xi Jinping to by more soybeans and wheat from American farmers to help him win re-election, and he had no problems with Xi putting the Muslim Uighurs of Sinkiang in northwestern China in concentration camps.  Bolton also says that Trump asked if  Finland was a part of Russia (it was, actually, until 1917) was ignorant of the fact that Great Britain is a nuclear power, and has obstructed of justice as easy as breathing.

The Justice Department's attempts to book the book will likely come to nothing, since much of the most damning information Bolton has on Trump is already out.  But Bolton is hardly a hero; he sat on this information and teased about being able to testify in Trump's impeachment trial but held back so as to ensure that these facts would only come out with his book and enable him to make a ton of money.  In which case, I would recommend checking it out of your local library - assuming it's not closed due to COVID-19.  And even if Bolton does make a lot of money from this, his earnings may likely be confiscated if there is any classified information in his book, as the Justice department claims.   

Bolton's failure to come forward during the impeachment trial still has a lot of Democrats angry, but it's better this information about Trump comes out this way than not at all.  And the Democrats can impeach Trump again and get Bolton to testify - Lord knows Trump has done more than enough since December 2019 to warrant a second congressional indictment.

Waiting For Release

Here's an update on a story I commented on back in April, the remaining two episodes of a CNN documentary plus John Bolton's book:

So far, it looks like Bolton's book blowing the lid off Trump's reckless foreign policy and how his reelection campaign drove said foreign policy will finally come out on June 23, though, as I always, I would be stunned if it did.  I'm disappointed but not so stunned about the latest turn of events with the remaining two episodes of CNN's documentary about the British royal family.  The last two episodes were scheduled to be aired tonight, June 14.

Ain't happening.  The ongoing fallout from the George Floyd murder and the equally ongoing COVID-19 pandemic have caused CNN to pre-empt them once again in favor of, first, a town hall with leading black female mayors, and then a documentary on how bats spread coronaviruses.  I wouldn't hold out for a third scheduling of these final two episodes of CNN's documentary being the charm, as cable news channels are and must be committed first to cover two major stories that will not go away any time soon or any time later.

And I don't hold out any hope for those unaired episodes of CNN's documentary series of presidential elections in U.S. history ever being aired either.  Ahh, who cares?  The History Channel is airing the first part of a three-part documentary on Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin tonight, and I'd rather see that anyway.  The CNN Royal Family documentary has been off the air so long, picking up where it was let off would be like going back to a D.H. Lawrence novel four years after you last read any of it.  Oh, wait: That's me!

Forget CNN's documentaries.  We'll sooner see Mal Evans' Beatles memoir published.  I know it was lost in the mail, but with the post office about to be liquidated, maybe someone will find the missing manuscript - mailed from Los Angeles, I believe - in a postal storage room somewhere.  

No Release

Before the coronavirus pandemic hit, CNN was showing two six-part documentaries on Sunday nights - one about the British royal family, the other about presidential elections in U.S history. The final two one-hour episodes of both series were to be aired on the last two Sundays of March, but they were pre-empted - indefinitely- by coverage of the pandemic.  And not always for live coverage - in some cases, they've been pre-empted in favor of repeats of earlier reports on the virus.  

This, of course, has irked viewers following the two documentaries, who have demanded that CNN air the remaining episodes to give them a break from 24/7 coronavirus coverage.  CNN, which apparently finds 22/7 coronavirus coverage for just two Sundays to be a dereliction of duty on its part, still hasn't aired them.  It hasn't even put the two remaining episodes on any on-demand television services, as some viewers have suggested, and no explanation as to when they will be aired is forthcoming.  

We're just going to have to face facts and concede that the two remaining episodes of these documentaries will likely never be aired.  And this wouldn't be the first time CNN has pre-empted a documentary indefinitely.  A planned documentary from CNN reporter Bill Weir about Trump's use of Twitter kept getting pre-empted by breaking news - much of which was made by Trump himself  - to the point where CNN never bothered to air it.  (I managed to see it surreptitiously on YouTube, and I honestly don't know it got on there, nor do I remember what YouTube channel I found it on.)  

And there are several other TV series, movies, books, and records that have remained unreleased never to be experienced by the general public.  The list of finished movies never released theatrically or even direct-to-video could rival the Dead Sea Scrolls or a Tolstoy novel for length,  and this article lists a few of them.   

More recent are the cases of John Bolton (above) and Woody Allen.  Bolton, you will recall, was preparing a book that was going to blow the lid off the inner workings of the Trump White House, particularly regarding the effort by Trump to entrap Joe Biden and his son in a possible scandal in Ukraine.  The book, which Bolton promoted with teases of unfulfilled promises of testimony in the Trump impeachment trial, was due for release this past March 17, but government vetting for classified information delayed its publication.  By the middle of March, the coronavirus pandemic was in full swing and the impeachment trial was all but forgotten.  Now with a scheduled May release, Bolton's book, "The Room Where It Happened," may not happen at all.

Woody Allen's planned memoir has even less of a chance of getting out.  The publishing company that was about to put it out suddenly realized that Allen was an unredeemed child molester and that no one wanted to have anything to do with him, and so it unceremoniously dropped the book from its roster.  And, if I may also point out, A Rainy Day In New York, likely to be his final film, remains in a vault somewhere with no hope of getting even token direct-to-video release.

Maybe Bolton and Allen can start a two-man book club to discuss their respective works.  They can call the club "The Old Schmucks."

And then there was Reagan aide Michael Deaver's planned diet book "The Deaver Diet," intended for release in early 1983 - at a time of domestic-program budget cuts and 10 percent unemployment - which was also never published.

And then, on the flip side, there's the sad story of former Beatles assistant Mal Evans, who was just about done with his memoir about working for the band.  He mailed it out just before he was killed in a shootout with the police while living in Los Angeles with his girlfriend of the time, having been in a despondent, intoxicated state and holding what turned out to be an air rifle while making threats to his girlfriend and his editor.  The manuscript for his Beatles memoir, meanwhile, somehow got lost in the mail, never to be recovered. :-(

No, some works of television, cinema and literature are fated never to see the light of day, and so don't be surprised if CNN forgets about the remaining two episodes of its aforementioned documentary by the time this pandemic is over. 

But hey, at least be thankful that "The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus" was finally aired 28 years after it was filmed.

Impeachment: Perception Versus Reality

Perception:  The Senate had a chance to hear witnesses in the impeachment trial because several Republican senators were retiring and the Democrats only needed four votes.

Reality: The Democrats only got two votes, those of Mitt Romney of Utah ad Susan Collins of Maine.  They were never going to get four votes, because Lisa Murkowski of Alaska found the badgering of the Chief Justice by Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts to be highly politicized (nice going, Liz!), while Lamar Alexander of Tennessee thought there was enough evidence already to convict on an offense he didn't consider impeachable anyway.

Perception: The Senate is the world's greatest deliberative body.

Reality: The Senate ain't even the world's greatest smoking club.  Republicans and Democrats in the Senate hate each other, and they can't even bear to be in the same committee room with each other.  There was no way they could run a fair-minded, sober impeachment trial.

Perception:  John Bolton's book is going to reveal so much about Trump's dealings with Ukraine that he will be found guilty in the court of public opinion.

Reality:  Are you talking about the same public who thinks that John Bolton is the guy who sang "Love Is a Wonderful Thing"?  Even if people are paying enough attention to make an informed decision about Trump, Bolton's book will never see the light of day apart from the passages that have already been leaked, because the White House will block it from ever getting published.  We have a better chance of seeing what is likely Woody Allen's last movie released first.    

Perception:  People will remember what the Senate did on Friday and they will exact revenge on the Republicans in November.

Reality:  People can't even remember how "This Is Us" ended last week, and it's being pre-empted by the State Of the Union address this week, so it's a wonder anyone will pick up the storyline of "This Is Us" next week.  I won't, but then it's just about the only current scripted show I ever watch anymore.

Perception:  The Democrats will remind everyone what Trump did all the way through November.

Reality:  The Republicans will shut them up and shut them down.  If you're a Republican, you prevent any discussion of an issue that doesn't work in your favor from happening.  It's what you do.  If you buy car insurance from Geico, you save 15 percent or more.  It's what you do.

Perception:  Democrats will win in 2020 by talking not just about impeachment but also about kitchen-table issues like health care.

Reality:  What did I just say?

Perception: Now that the impeachment trial is nearing its end, Joe Biden will benefit from not having to hear about Burisma anymore.

Reality: The only thing Republicans do better than shutting down discussions of stuff they don't want to talk about is amplifying and perpetuating stuff  they do want to talk about.  Expect Burisma to be the new Benghazi, and expect the mention of one Robert Hunter Biden as well.  In fact, despite his absence from the campaign trail, Bernie Sanders has been gaining in in Iowa, and he will likely win tomorrow's presidential caucuses and leap his way to the nomination.  And, as the Democratic nominee, he will likely lead the party to a crushing defeat so bad that it will take them until 2032 to recover if they're lucky.  Did I happen to mention that Sanders isn't even a Democrat?

Perception: The impeachment trial sham will encourage young people to follow the lead of young progressive leaders like Sanders supporter Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and get to the polls in droves in the fall.

Reality:  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has turned out to be more of a show horse than a work horse.  She has since joined Beto O'Rourke as one of this century's Great American Phonies.  And I am sorry I, even in jest, proposed marriage to her on this blog.

Perception:  The United States will survive the Trump Presidency.

Reality: How do I break this to you?

Perception:  The American people have a lot of questions about how this trial was conducted and what answers about Trump's misdeeds.

Reality:  Yeah, right.  The only question Americans have right now is, "Who's going to win the Super Bowl tonight?"

Perception:  Democracy is important to Americans.

Reality: But it won't save you money on car insurance!

*

Why haven't you called Geico? :-p 

Bolton Loose

Why is this man smiling?

And, may I add, he may be the only Republican that is smiling right now.

The New York Times reported earlier this week the John Bolton is saying in his forthcoming book that Trump told him this past summer that he wanted military aid to Ukraine to remain frozen until Ukrainian officials could assure Trump that they would aid until officials there pursue investigations not just into the Bidens, but also into Democrats in general.

All I can say is, that's one hell of a promotional stunt!

The book was leaked from the National Security Council office, where Bolton's book is betting, umm, vetted.

Democrats are now demanding that Bolton be called in as a witness in the Trump impeachment trial, and even some Republicans, such as Mitt Romney of Utah, would like to hear friom Milk Mustache Man.  This trial is getting interesting.  We all know how it's going to end, but we don't know how it's going to get to the end.   

Talibonkers

Donald Trump made a smart decision this past week, but of course any smart decision Trump makes is more by accident than by design, and the accident that prompts it is usually a disaster of his own making.

Trump had allowed American diplomats to negotiate with the Taliban in Afghanistan in an attempt to get U.S. troops out of the country that has ended many an empire (we're next).  The Afghan government objected to Trump's gambit, fearing that it would be shortchanged.  But after the Taliban bombed an American installation, Trump said he was canceling not only talks with the Taliban in Afghanistan but also talks with Taliban leaders at Camp David that were to be secret . . . until Trump let the secret out.

Let me let you in on a secret: Trump gets no points for his smart decision because he should never have made the dumb decision of inviting the Taliban to Camp David in the first place.  Trump probably had delusions of grandeur by achieving the same sort of foreign-policy coup that Bill Clinton (Trump is obsessed with all things Clinton) had when he got PLO leader Yasser Arafat to come to America to negotiate peace with Israeli Prime Minister Yihtzak Rabin.  But the idea of having the guys who gave shelter to Osama bin Laden to plan his attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon - and for all this to come out around 9/11! - is so boneheaded that I needn't say any more.  Except to say that Arafat, once deemed a terrorist, never perpetrated an attack on Americans - indeed, 9/11 sickened him.  On September 11, 2001, when I was stranded in a railway station in Wilmington, Delaware, someone said to me that Arafat was a good man who couldn't control the radical elements under his leadership.  Somehow, I couldn't imagine anyone saying that about the Taliban chieftains.

The only good thing that came out of this is that John Bolton has been fired as national security adviser.  Now there won't be a war with Iran.  Don't expect Trump to answer for his blundering; he'll find another shiny object to distract us. 

The Return of Milk Mustache Man

He's back! :-O

The greatest super-villain of all time, the all-American bullet-headed Saxon mother's son - the evil, the merciless Milk Mustache Man!

He's back to fight the forces of good.  He's not interested in talking - he's here to kick your ass!  He has access to the President of the United States; he's his new national security adviser!  Now Milk Mustache Man is going to tell the President to go after any foreigner who gets in America's way . . . Russians, Chinese, Iranians, North Koreans - no, make that all Koreans! - those fruity Britons and Frenchmen, and if we have to attack Canada, Milk Mustache Man is going to make sure we do that too!  The nuclear deal with Iran? Forget it - bomb 'em!  North Koreans got  nukes?  Milk Mustache Man will nuke them - and tell them to go nuke themselves!  Milk Mustache Man's desire is to take over the world for an evil international syndicate - known as the Trump Organization - and he plans to shoot first and ask questions never!  He's got no time for talk, he's gonna start World War III right here and now!  Milk Mustache Man will not rest until his enemies - including the Europeans - are completely annihilated! And he's starting with the Democrats!

Who can save us now?     

No, not Flash Gordon.  Because Milk Mustache Man isn't a comic book character - he's for real!  And he has access to the man with the nuclear football!  We're doomed!

(It has been rumored that Milk Mustache Man is sometimes disguised as a foreign policy expert named John Bolton.) 

John Bolton Is A @#**! Idiot

No sooner than Bill Clinton return from North Korea triumphant in bringing home Laura Ling and Euna Lee than John Bolton urinated on his shoe. (I could say he rained on Clinton's parade, but this is a reactionary Republican we're talking about.)

Bolton, who served as Bush the Younger's United Nations ambassador in a recess appointment and amazingly alienated us from the rest of the planet even more than Bush had, complained that Clinton only legitimized North Korean leader Kim Jong Il by going to Pyongyang and pleading for Ling and Lee to be released and rewarded the practice of illegitimately arresting and detaining them in the first place, which was tantamount to hostage taking. Even worse, Bolton complained, Clinton negotiated with nothing to offer, putting himself in a position of weakness and making it easy for American journalists abroad to be captured. This sounds like an extreme rightist opinion, and it is, but the Newark (N.J.) Star-Ledger, which published Bolton's op-ed piece, even chided Clinton for allowing Kim to bully him the same way a Chicago ward boss would.

Neither the Star-Ledger nor Bolton seem to be concerned with the fact that the welfare of two women were involved, not nuclear weapons. As for Clinton legitimizing Kim, Kim doesn't need for the former President's help. He's already legitimized by having the fourth largest army - which could invade South Korea the day after tomorrow - in the world.

To think that Bolton was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Having a xenophobe like Bolton in that position makes about as much sense as making Willie Sutton a prison warden.

I want to hear John Bolton pontificate on international diplomacy as much as I want to hear Michael Bolton sing.