You Can't Spell Leave Without Leavitt

 Karoline Leavitt is stepping down from her post as Information Dispersal Officer for the Second Trumpreich. To her credit, she has outlasted Kristi Noem and Tulsi Gabbard. Lori Chavez-DeRemer and Pam Bondi. If these names don't ring a bell, you may not have been paying attention to the exodus of people leaving the White House. Or what's left of it. Jeanine Pirro has taken to walking around with most of the stuff in her office boxed up just in case she "chokes" again. Once again I feel the need to point out the similarities behind all of these departures: A Y chromosome. 

Ms. Leavitt says that she is ending her tenure as the Orange Worst's mouthpiece because she wants to spend more time lying directly to her family. The family she started back in the dark days before the election of 2024, and added to in May of this year. The demands of generating a steady stream of fabrication while raising a toddler and an infant seems to have become too overwhelming for Karoline. 

If you're a fan of the way the convicted felon treats the press, you're going to miss Ms. Leavitt. Like the time she argued with Associated Press reporter Josh Boak about her boss' focus on tariffs, culminating with, "I think it's insulting that you're trying to test my knowledge of economics, and the decision that this President has made. I now regret giving a question to The Associated Press."

Or maybe it was the time she went after reporter Jasmine Wright's inquiry regarding protests, asking Karoline to "clarify what kind of protest President Trump does support or find acceptable." Karoline shot back, "Of course the President supports peaceful protests. What a stupid question."

How about the time she abruptly ended a press conference after being asked about the former game show host's support of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. The same guy who earlier that same day told a Senate panel that he had visited the private island of the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in 2012de, spite the fact that he had previously claimed to have ended his relationship with Epstein years before. Ms. Leavitt wound things up by insisting, "I will just point out that there are a lot of wins in the news this week that people in this room have not asked about because you continue to ask questions about the same subject so let me point them out for you." After mentioning gains in the stock market and a few other trifles, she closed her big book of lies. "So," she said when she walked off the stage, "we're going to get back to business. The President is very busy today and you will see him all tomorrow at the event in the East Room touting his Administration's energy policy."

In January of this year, a week after Renee Good was murdered by ICE goons, a reporter questioned how this could have happened if the ICE goons had been "doing everything correctly." Karoline's respsone? "Okay, so you're a biased reporter with a leftwing opinion. Because you're a leftwing hack. You're not a reporter, you're posing in this room as a journalist. And it's so clear by the premise of your question. And you and the people of the media who have such biases but fake like you're a journalist—you shouldn't even be sitting in that seat. You're pretending like you're a journalist, but you're a leftwing activist," she continued. "The question that you just raised and your answer proves you're biased. You should be reporting on the facts."

The facts.

Karoline Leavitt is leaving her job. That's a fact. My opinion is that the weight of all those lies were finally too much. Woman. New Mother. Man. Doesn't matter. That sort of thing will crush one's soul. 

Big Deal

 I know. We're supposed to stand in awe of the deal-making prowess of the convicted felon squatting in the ruins of the White House. He got elected, twice, on this illusory power of negotiating and generating transactions that would create the kind of economy that only seems to exist in his tiny little mind.

That being said, the most recent revelation of the twice-elected and coincidentally twice-impeached very stable genius' business acumen caught me a little off guard. German energy company RWE has said it will abandon its offshore wind projects in the United States after reaching a 1.2 billion dollar payout deal with the Second Trumpreich's  Department of the Interior. Pardon me for just a moment as I muse briefly about the fact that the department that deals with the stuff in our country that is outside is called "Interior."

I digress. 

Instead of wind, RWE said that it will now reinvest that great big wad of cash  into conventional gas projects, including nine hundred million dollars in a liquified natural gas export terminal project in Louisiana. This switch will no doubt please the knuckle-draggers in the fossil fuel business, who have been ever-so-pleased to rake in record profits as a result of the Epstein Files distraction disguised as a war with Iran. 

More opportunities to make money from dead dinosaurs. Meanwhile, China continues to embarrass us with their willingness to build and switch over to renewable forms of energy. Their onshore and offshore wind farms currently supply ten percent of their country's energy. 

The former game show host is paying companies not to do just that for the United States. RWF is not the only being paid to switch from wind projects to more "conventional" forms of energy such as liquified natural gas. Coincidentally, those massive data centers that seem to be popping up everywhere are often run on (wait for it) natural gas. As of 2017, gas emissions from stationary sources led to more deaths than coal in at least nineteen states. 

While we're struggling to gather the seventy dollars it takes to fill our gas tank, and watching as our utility bills continue to spiral out of control, the Orange Worst is paying companies to make our lives more expensive. That's what the tiny brain that bankrupted his own casinos four times came up with. High crimes and misdemeanors? I'd say this is yet another batch of evidence for the third impeachment. 

Look Out, 'Cause Here It

 There seems to be a lot of concern these days about the looming specter of communism. This is a lot easier to manage than the looming specter of socialism. After all, we have embedded in our fiercely anti-communist society little reminders of things like Social Security. And public schools. And a great many other programs that seem to have been created with the citizens of our nation in mind. Public health care, food relief, and a great many things that have "care" somehow connected to them by implication or in the title. Which is why the conservatives cling to the name "Obamacare" instead of the Affordable Care Act, since it gives them a chance to double down on their hate. 

This is the big threat to our way of life, the MAGAts will tell you: Communists. This brought me back to my seventh grade geography teacher, Mister Clements. He passed out to his class a piece of paper titled "Isms Defined." 

• Fascism: If you have two cows, you keep the cows and give the milk to the government; then the government sells you some milk.
• Nazism: If you have two cows, the government shoots you and keeps the cows.
• Socialism: If you have two cows, you give one to your neighbor.
• Communism: If you have two cows, you give them to the government and the government then gives you some milk.

Back in 1974, this seemed completely adequate to describe conditions on the planet, with the kicker being that Democracy was supposed to allow everyone, including the cows, to live and thrive in peace. Which is essentially what the oligarchy we have now continues to push at us as the narrative we should believe. 

Except that none of us down here seem to own cows, and the corporations who do seem completely invested in the idea that we will pay just about anything for a quart of milk. Or a steak. 

Meanwhile, these folks calling them democratic socialists have started to show up as a stark contrast to the establishment. Most notable in this wave is the new Mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani. In the first eight months in office, he has secured state funding and rollout plans for universal child care for two-year-olds, won thirty-four million dollars in tenant settlements and repairs from landlords, securing nine  million dollars in worker and small business restitution, and filled one hundred thousand potholes across the five boroughs. 

No word on what's happening to New York City's cows. 

Exit Strategy: Here's The Door

 Her boss says that vandals were responsible. 

She has come to the conclusion that it was a "botched installation." As for those vandals,  "it is difficult to attribute the widespread damage to the Reflecting Pool to vandalism, let alone to establish that fact beyond a reasonable doubt." The fact that former Olympian David Hearn's case was dropped after being indicted by a grand jury back in July is not a surprise. The fact that this voice of reason is coming from longtime MAGA sycophant and former Faux News celebutroid, Jeanine Pirro, is the shocking part. 

Ms. Pirro was, after all, one of the loudest voices amplifying her channel's insistence that the 2020 election was stolen. None of that blathering required any specific evidence beyond the parroting of talking points delivered by a convicted felon. The manipulation of facts in this case eventually resulted in her old boss, Rupert Murdoch, being saddled with a seven hundred eighty-seven million dollar judgement to be paid to Dominion Voting Systems. Back then, even the folks at Faux News referred to Jeanine as a "reckless maniac." Who better, then, to appoint to the office of U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia?

This is an administration that already has its share of reckless maniacs: Pistol Pete Hegseth, Stephen Naziferatu Miller, and the previously mentioned convicted felon in the big office. What makes this rather high-profile embarrassment different than, say, starting a war in the Middle East without provocation or exit strategy, is the fact that Jeanine Pirro shares something in common with Second Trumpreich members Tulsi Gabbard, Krist Noem, Pam Bondi and Lori Chavez-DeRemer: a Y chromosome. 

The reality that has risen up to shove these women toward the door does not seem to affect the boys in the club, and certainly the qualifications Ms. Pirro brought to her appointment were always a little suspect, but since when has being qualified have anything to do with getting a job with this administration? Her current boss insists that she "choked" and "folded like an umbrella," while promises of  a quick end to the war in Iran sit out there as shining examples of incompetence from the testosterone side of the room. 

Firing a woman in an administration that insists that DEI should be abolished, doesn't come as any sort of shock, but it does make you wonder who will take the blame once all the women have been let go. 

Parting With Part D

 The Second Trumpreich wants to end Medicare Part D Premium Stabilization Demonstration at the end of 2026. This temporary program was termed a "bailout" by the weasels in the ruins of the White House, with the assurance that, "Premiums will go up by less than ten dollars for most ⁠Medicare recipients, with many even seeing lower premiums." 

How about that? Just before I get to dip my toe into all that Medicare goodness. All those phone calls in the middle of the day, asking what plans I have: A, B, C and D? I have cruised along for most of my adult life with pretty solid health care coverage, thanks to my employers. Now as I begin to ponder life out from under that protective wing, I have to consider what life will be like on a "fixed income."

Meanwhile, the orange sack of protoplasm skips off to Walter Reed for a cognitive test and proof of his continued existence every time he breaks wind. Paid for by you and me. The guy who has grown his personal fortune by more than two billion dollars in the past year and a half pays nothing out of pocket. 

Nothing. 

Zero.

Zilch. 

Nada. 

Eighty years old and billions in the bank, how is this thick slab of meat ever going to understand that a change of "just ten dollars a month" could mean a meal or two? Not that this slob ever seems to miss a meal or the nap that seems to follow shortly thereafter. 

Of course, two billion dollars raised from a sketchy bit of crypto business would go a long way toward solving this shortfall, but I guess that's just not the way these things work. 

Is it? 

Sum Zero

War, we have asked here before, what is it good for?

Well, if you happen to be in the business of selling arms and munitions and missile defense systems, then the answer would be "our bottom line." These would be canonically known as "war profiteers." These are the folks whose business is injure, maim and kill other human beings, preferably in large numbers so as to further the spread of an ideal. Currently that ideal comes under the heading of nuclear non-proliferation, but is often short-handed to "Democracy." 

Profits. 

Oops. How did that get in there? 

The War Pigs have recently been selling us this idea that the soldiers who have been killed in and around Iran were making a "sacrifice." Chief among these aggro voices is the Chief War Pig, Pistol Pete Hegseth who used the opportunity to memorialize those who died by saying, "Godspeed, heroes. Their sacrifice only stiffens our resolve." Feel free at this moment to insert your own joke about the phrase, "stiffen our resolve."

Additionally, we were told by the convicted felon who never bothered to serve because of his made-up bone spurs, “They said, and all of them said very strongly, ‘We can’t let, we cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. They won’t have a nuclear weapon.’” Yes, Dear Leader, I am certain that is exactly what they all said. In unison. As they consecrated the oath of obedience. 

You may not have heard about the three billion dollar federal and Pentagon investments made to 1789 Capital, a venture company run by the son of the convicted felon. This is separate from the two billion dollars daddy has raked in since he returned to squatting in the ruins of the White House. The families of the fallen soldiers will not see any part of that. They will, most likely, be stuck arguing with the folks at the Veterans Administration about the compensation they are due for their deceased sons and daughters. The two thousand dollars they get for burial "benefits." 

That's what war is good for.

Absolutely nothin'. 

Say it again.  

Gender Affirming Care

 Hey folks, just a reminder that these United States are currently at war with Iran. 

To that end, the Secretary of War, "Pistol" Pete Hegseth has decreed that all service members over the age of thirty will be screened for testosterone deficiency. "As we know, the modern battlefield is brutal and unrelenting. It requires and demands maximum psychological and mental readiness, and by addressing these health markers early, we're keeping you on the leading edge of lethality, and giving you the same level of support that you give this nation – the absolute best."

It's probably just me, but I'm thinking that keeping a group of human beings "on the leading edge of lethality" is pretty much what got us into this fracas in the first place. The eighty year old convicted felon lives on a lot of edges, dementia for one, but his bloodlust is not something that gets the attention it truly deserves. As for the rest of our enlisted "Warfighters" (Pistol Pete's term), if you fall below that killing level of testosterone, you are eligible for hormone replacement therapy to get us back to berserker levels. 

My guess is that the adjudicated rapist and former game show host would like his soldiers to be every bit as bloodthirsty as his secret police of ICE goons. We have become familiar with the arrest quota to which these goblins are charged, but l suspect there is probably a body count goal hidden just out of public view. 

Except we can see it. We have a much better window on the killing fields here in America than we do in Iran. After the initial casualties were announced, including the one hundred sixty-eight school girls were murdered at their school in Minab and the first wave of US military casualties, there hasn't been a lot to report in terms of human loss. 

All the more reason, it would seem, to get those soldiers in the field all juiced up for the purpose of taking lives. Maybe now would be a good time to bring up the other edicts made regarding our armed forces by the Second Trumpreich: No "Beardos," which includes no further exemptions for religious reasons or for medical conditions that make shaving difficult or painful. Interesting, since facial hair is one of the most significant signs of "proper" testosterone balance. And as far as hormone replacement therapy goes, the Orange Worst has declared that trans soldiers are no longer allowed in his army. Which seems to necessarily include those transitioning to male in hopes of living life on the leading edge of lethality. 

So I'll just toss this out there: A study published in the National Library of Medicine found that testosterone levels of your average rapist or child molester fell within the "normal limits." High levels of testosterone were found in inmates who were jailed for homicide. 

No mention of facial hair for any of those. 

Not Right Now

I got the news from my cousin from Kansas while he was out visiting after doing a cross-country road rally. He told me that he had stopped reading this blog because "of all that Trump stuff." After a few minutes he went on to echo many of the sentiments expressed here on a frequent basis, including the mess made in the Reflecting Pool and the illegal war in Iran. 

He didn't disagree with what I was saying. He had simply grown tired of reading my frequent if not daily rehash of events and how I didn't seem able to move off the point. That moved the conversation further down the path that had him confiding his surprise that there are "still folks who are behind this guy one hundred percent."

It was apparent to me that he was feeling the same or similar distress with the way the country was moving. I listened and considered, not for the first time, my own voice crying out in the wilderness. What was I doing aside from the obvious preaching to the choir? How could I not see myself as sitting on the other end of the seesaw that was still "behind this guy one hundred percent?"

I told him that I appreciated his commentary on my commentary, but I also politely suggested that without some sort of equal and opposite reaction from the other side, the outrage might continue and then I would never be able to get back to writing more frequently about kittens and funny things kids say. 

It continues to be a battle, and it pains me that I feel I have to give my hundred percent to poking holes in the directives coming out of Washington. 

Can't I think of anything else to talk about? 

Not right now. 

Born At Or Near The USA

 The convicted felon and adjudicated rapist masquerading as a leader of the Free World is considering a ban on visitors to our country who happen to be pregnant. This was the somewhat ridiculous and draconian response he arrived at after the Supreme Court decided that the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution was, in fact, already settled business. Section 1 reads: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

Looking for the gray area? This is "birthright citizenship," and this is the reason for the Second Trumpreich to keep pregnant tourists from visiting the land of the free and home of the brave. Apparently we are currently experiencing a freedom and bravery deficit and we just don't want to run out. "Birth tourism" is a rare enough occurrence, but since we are having a particular challenge staying free and brave here in the moderately United States, 

A couple years ago, the convicted felon and adjudicated rapist wanted us all to be afraid of the murderers and rapists being unleashed on our shores by other countries. 

Very afraid. 

Now we are being asked to be afraid of pregnant women who happen to find themselves within our borders, especially when they're obviously here simply to land a sponge here that will soak up all those glorious resources we offer all our rightly born American babies. Stephen "Nosferatu" Miller made his terror be known to Jesse "Holdyer" Watters on Faux News: "So, you have mothers that come in fully pregnant, have a baby, go home, and that baby gets Medicaid and that baby gets welfare and that baby gets cash assistance. They'll leave the baby with a cousin, a relative, whatever, then send welfare checks back home. You can support a whole family in the third world."

Since "birth tourism" is already illegal, the fright described by the undead minion of the convicted felon is already covered. And since it has been the policy of the Second Trumpreich to kick children and families off any and all kinds of assistance programs anyway, this just serves as one more egregious effort to make us all believe that the United States doesn't have enough money to take care of its children. 

Which may go a long way toward explaining how we ended up bombing that girls school in Iran. 

Yay

 Just a reminder as you're taping those red, white and blue streamers to your front porch and preparing to feast on the grilled hot dogs you could afford to buy instead of the steak that you wanted for the bit Fourth of July barbecue: The forty-fifth and forty-seventh President of the United State is an adjudicated rapist. 

Yay. 

This ruling was essentially upheld this past week when the Supreme Court of the United States declined to hear the convicted felon's appeal to overturn the decision that said that he had sexually abused and defamed E. Jean Carroll. Oh, and the forty-fifth and forty-seventh President of the United States is a convicted felon, which I believe we covered just a moment ago. 

Perhaps I should also clarify that the forty-fifth and forty-seventh President of the United States is the same "person." The same convicted felon and adjudicated rapist who says that he does not think about your financial situation. And he loves inflation. 

Same guy who threw a party for himself on the front lawn of the ruins of the White House. Same guy whose name appears more than thirty-eight thousand times in the Epstein Files. To give you just a little flavor for that last number, Jesus's name appears approximately one thousand two hundred times in the bible. 

Yay. 

This convicted felon and adjudicated rapist whose name appears more than thirty-eight thousand times in the Epstein Files started a war with Iran, he says, because his son-in-law who is a real estate agent told him it would be a good idea. You know: location, location, location. 

Or distraction, distraction, distraction. 

In an effort to celebrate himself rather than the country for which he was nominally elected to lead he has painted things gold and blue and attempted to get anyone but himself to pay for it. Like the people who he was nominally elected to lead. He's going to have McDonald's for lunch on the Fourth of July because he doesn't have to pay for it. You're going to have to pay for it. Yours and his. 

Meanwhile the convicted felon and adjudicated rapist is committing war crimes and getting rich on insider trades while the rest of us are just trying to live out a sliver of the American Dream left to us: The part where we no longer have to worry about an adjudicated rapist in the White House. 

Yay. 

Bargain Hunting

 Hey guys! Great news! I just won the lottery. 

Yes, you read that right. I will be paying the state of California three hundred billion dollars.

So, doesn't that seem ridiculous? 

Not if you're a convicted felon whose mental facualties are slipping as fast as his approval numbers. If you can explain to me how opening the Strait of Hormuz, which was open before we started blowing things up in Iran, is a selling point for this "deal," please feel free to explain. The memorandum of understanding details exactly how much each side is giving up, and though I notice a "promise" on Iran's part not to create any nuclear weapons, there is nothing in this document that A any kind of assuranc beyond a diplomatic pinky promise. Which, according to the "very stable genius" who signed our copy of the understanding is okay because, "If I don't like it, if they don't behave, we'll go right back to dropping bombs right smack in the middle of their head."

And doesn't that make the rest of this months-long distraction from the Epstein Files feel like it was worth it? Three hundred billion dollars could fully fund Universal Pre-K for all American children for about 15 years, construct thousands of miles of high-speed rail, or provide over nine hundred dollars for every single person in the United States. Or it could go back into the pot of money that we said we didn't have for USAID. For fifteen years. 

And so on. 

The war itself cost, in long term effects, one trillion dollars. So, I suppose in that case this "peace plan" is a win if it only costs us three hundred billion dollars. Which also seems like a bargain if you're a deranged orange psychopath trying to stay out of jail. 

Summer Camp

 It is quite possible that what with all this fuss about war and inflation and the petulant slob inviting himself to basketball games to nap that you may have missed the continuing saga of ICE detention centers. 

You remember ICE, don't you? They are the ones who got their boss fired because they couldn't make the excuses for killing American citizens stick? The masked goons who terrorized the streets of Minneapolis, Portland, and Los Angeles over the past year, just to name a few of the municipalities that experienced the occupational force of the poorly trained posse of Stephen Miller's schock troops. 

Perhaps you thought that since they spent a couple months without being paid for that their mission had been blunted in some way. Maybe they got tired of abusing the rights of Americans and went back to playing Superman on TV or simply quit after their puppy-killing boss was let go.

Nope. 

They're still out there, trampling on the Constitution. A recently released report from theNo  Government Accountability Office outlined a myriad of problems and abuses found in the largest Camp East Montana, oddly located in Texas. Three detainees have died there in the past six months, and in one case the evidence regarding the death of a fifty-five year old Cuban migrant who was being held down by ICE goons went missing. Justice for Renee Good and Alex Pretti has been painfully slow, but at least there were witnesses and cell phone video to contradict the "official narratives" put out by the goons. 

Inside Camp East Montana, this kind of oversight has been tough to come by. Construction of the tent city was rushed by all accounts while contractors made millions without ever providing safe and sanitary facilities for the detainees. One such error in oversight had inmates filling out a written questionnaire to check for tuberculosis, rather than an actual medical test. This resulted in an outbreak because someone carrying the infection into the general population. No effort was made to accommodate those in wheelchairs in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act, which I assume can only have happened because in the goons' accounting these were not Americans, wheelchairs or not.

So, you can rest assured that while the rest of the country continues to fall apart, Immigration and Customs Enforcement is doing everything they can to uphold the pathetic standard set by their convicted felon of a boss. 

Sleep tight, America.

Palace Revolution

 Where are the Epstein Files?

Where is the peace agreement between Ukraine and Russia?

Where is the replacement for the Affordable Care Act?

Where is that cap on credit card interest rates?

Where are those tariff rebate checks?

Where is all that affordable housing?

Where is the reduction to the country's deficit? 

Instead of those things, we've been given a flurry of construction projects designed not to improve any of the infrastructure of this country, but to pad and glorify the boor who needs constant validation to prop up his fragile ego. We have another installment of war in the Middle East. We have the repeal of the Voting Rights Act. We have a real estate agent in charge of National Intelligence. 

Seventy-seven million Americans voted for a convicted felon to be their "president," to end the war in Ukraine in twenty-four hours and to Make America Great Again. They bought the red hats. They drank the Kool-Aid. Now they are waking up and discovering just like the Whos down in Whoville that no Christmas is coming. The Grinch has stolen Democracy, and even if they gather together hand in hand and sing along with Lee Greenwood at the top of their lungs, they aren't going to get what they were promised. 

Instead we get a daily dose of social media rants and threats. We get more footage of the former game show host falling asleep during his own meetings shortly before he wakes up long enough to berate a female reporter or two. 

We'll keep reading about those voters who cast their ballot for damaged goods in 2024 who now regret their decision, but that ship has sailed. If we want our Democracy back, we're going to have to take it back. 

Hey, think the time is right
For a palace revolution
'Cause where I live the game to play
Is compromise solution

Suckage

 Did she jump or was she pushed? 

This past week, Tulsi Gabbard gave up her seat in the clown car as she resigned from the former game show host's cabinet. The former Director of National Intelligence can now spend more time perfecting her Capoeira technique. 

And trying to figure out where she went wrong. 

Some might point to the moment when the convicted felon was furiously planning an invasion of Venezuela and Tulsi was busy posting photos of herself on a beach in Hawaii. She really should have known that in this administration the only approved conspicuous waste of time allowed is golf. 

Or maybe it was when she insisted that Iran was not trying to create a nuclear weapon in spite of her boss' insistence otherwise. 

Perhaps she never got fully comfortable being a "recovering Democrat" in a cage full of MAGA chimps. She called her former party an "elitist cabal of warmongers."

What about that time that she got caught lurking around the FBI raid on Fulton County's ballots from 2020? 

She says that she will be leaving her post at the end of June to support her husband who is battling bone cancer. 

I think the most likely reason is that distinct lack of a Y chromosome. The four departures from the Orange Worst's cabinet during this Second Trumpreich have all been women. For those of you keeping score at home, you've got your Bondi, Noem, Chavez-DeRemer, and now Gabbard. 

And you're just going to have to believe me when I tell you that the boys in that band are every bit as bad at their jobs as the girls. They just happen to have the Bro Code working in their favor. Why none of these morons have been let go only goes to show how precisely bad off we are in terms of a leadhership vacuum. 

To wit: it sucks. 

Renovation

 An "American Flag Blue" coat of paint on the bottom of the reflecting pool between the Lincoln and Washington Monuments. 

A helipad on the South Lawn of the White House, or rather what is left of the White House, apparently the new models of Marine One have downward facing exhaust and could scorch the grass. Currently, the older models are being used to ferry the Orange Worst to the nearest Air Force base where he can be shoveled into the cargo bay of Air Force One. 

The helipad stands in contrast to most of the other wild hairs that the convicted felon seems to obsess on daily. 

Paving over the what-was-once-a-rose-garden seems to be another such project.

Or gilding every available vertical surface with which the former game show host might come in contact.

How about the two hundred fifty foot "Victory Arch" that Jeffrey Epstein's pen pal wants to erect near the Arlington National Cemetery, featuring gilded ornamentation, four lion statues, a winged figure crowning the top and the inscription “One Nation Under God” emblazoned across its facade. If plans go ahead as scheduled, this monstrosity will loom nearly one hundred feet taller than the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. 

Because bigger is always better. No matter what Stormy Daniels would tell you. 

Which brings us to the ballroom. The focus of all his faux-highness' attention while he ignores the peasants rioting in the streets. Just like Paris. Only bigger. 

I am referring to the unrest. 

And the ridiculous ballroom which seems to be a product of a childhood spent with a large golden spoon shoved in his mouth. Suddenly, even some Republicans are starting to question the adjudicated rapist's priorities. He says himself that he does not think about American's financial situation, "Not even a little bit." Why should he? Up until now, he barks and the rest of the clown car leaps into action, sparing no expense. Joe Biden loves golf. It cost taxpayers nearly eleven million dollars over the course of his administration to keep him on the links. The Orange Worst has frittered away more than thirty million dollars in the first year and a half of the Second Trumpreich. 

He should be thrown in jail not just on principle, but as a money-saving alternative to the HGTV plague he has visited upon us all. 

What's His Deal?

 The big fluff about the Orange Worst was that he was some sort of brilliant businessman, and that he would "run the United States like a business." 

What they failed to mention that he might just end up running the United States like one of his businesses. 

On this spot, I have made the point many times that this is a guy who managed to bankrupt not one, not two, but five of his own casinos in Atlantic City and Gary, Indiana. If this is the first you've heard of a casino in Gary, Indiana, you are not alone. My guess is that the former game show host probably found out that he had a casino in Gary shortly before it closed down. Maybe he gave away too many King Crab legs at the buffet. Or maybe he just couldn't figure out how to make a business that should print money work. As he has done his entire life, he leaves one smoking heap of wreckage for the next potential failure. 

Now he's doing this with house money. Our house money. Just this week he has decided to "drop" the ten billion dollar lawsuit he filed against the Internal Revenue Service for failing to keep his tax records safe, after never bothering to release his financials ahead of any of the presidential elections in which he has participated. In the modern era, this failed casino owner is the only major candidate not to do so. The fear, it seems, is that if we ever saw the unholy mess this "deal artist" has made of his family fortune, we might not think as highly of his business acumen. 

Slide this right up next to his ongoing obsession with creating monuments to himself across our nation's capital. The ballooning estimates to complete the wreck he started by tearing down the East Wing of the White House in favor of a glitzy, bulletproof ballroom and bingo parlor continues to embarrass members of his party as well as confound even those who were sure he needed such a monstrosity. 

Right behind that is the very expensive spray painting of the reflecting pool between the Lincoln and Washington monuments and the Arc De Trumpf that will interfere with air traffic in the area, and you have the tip of the iceberg. 

What lies beneath is the destruction of our American economy. The war with Iran has done little to solve the unrest in the Middle East, but has made inflation jump to critical levels while the deficit grows not unlike the giant grasshoppers in a fifties science fiction movie. Billions of dollars are being spent each day not to achieve our diplomatic or military goals, but to keep firing missiles at another country's military that was supposed to be "obliterated." 

Once the Oval Office started to look like the bathroom, we should have noticed. There is no art in his deal. 

Does Not Work And Play Well With Others

 The convicted felon continues to abuse women. Mostly reporters at this point. He took the opportunity to rail on Norah O'Donnell about a 60 Minutes interview back in April while talking to his lapdog Sean Hannity. He began to answer Seanity's question about progress in talks with China, then began to wander. See if you can catch where things went off the track: “Yeah, I mean, it is progress, but I also tell people that, you know, I was in an interview with a very bad, you know, stupid reporter. She works for CBS. You saw that ’60 Minutes.’ Stupid person. Just an average person. You could take anybody off the street, and it’d be as good as she is. You know, just, very average.”

Which, for the adjudicated rapist is mild compared to his treatment of another woman reporter who dared question the doubling the size of an already unnecessary ballroom. MS NOW’s Akayla Gardner was the target of the Orange Worst's most recent outburst. Most of the exchange has been jettisoned in order to show the misogynist in Chief in all his gory glory. Here is the question Ms. Gardner asked in advance of the spiteful response from the "alleged" pedophile: “You wanted Jerome Powell fired for cost overruns,” Gardner pointed out to Trump, referring to the Fed’s ongoing renovation project of its Washington headquarters. “How is that different than your ballroom and the reflecting pool?”

If you haven't visited our nation's capital recently, you may have missed the terrible mess his pool guy has been making out of the reflecting pool located between the Washington and Lincoln Memorials. He's got a bunch of confused individuals spray painting the bottom of the pool "American Flag Blue," according to his bulginess' wishes. It is quite a sight. 

And besides subverting the calm aesthetics of the original architecture, in comes the former game show host's "vision," the kind that tends to paint things and attach gold bric-a-brac as costs go unchecked. All the while, a war rages on in Iran in spite of the insistence that there is a somewhat meaningless cease-fire. Gas prices climb ever higher as the Worst's approval numbers reach historic lows. Which might explain his continued frustration with the press, who seem to be aware of this. Of course, this does not keep him from making the following statement: “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody."

With that one possible exception. 

What a stupid person. 

Fifty-One

 Anybody else out there wondering how Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia are doing?

It seems like a war ago that the U.S. Armed Forces invaded Venezuela and kidnapped its president. Compared to the quagmire that has become the "Expedition to Iran," the military operation in Venezuela seems positively quaint by comparison. Sure, shots were fired in anger, but no girls schools were harmed during that incursion. 

Now the convicted felon is musing once again aloud about how he believes that Venezuela would make a nice fifty-first state. Assistant press secretary Olivia Whales announced on behalf of her boss, "As the President has said, relations between Venezuela and the United States have been extraordinary. Oil is starting to flow and large amounts of money, unseen for many years, will soon be helping the great people of Venezuela."

Oil and money are flowing. Don't you worry your pretty little heads about economic and political stability. 

Which raises certain questions for me: Does a military invasion count as a path to statehood? If this is the case, how worried should the citizens of California and New York be about Federales rolling into their historically blue settlements? Or if the adjudicated rapist follows through with his plan for Venezuela will he just be guaranteeing yet another blue headache? 

Of course, all of this requires some mild forward thinking and planning. The quagmire in Iran suggests that this is not the strong suit of the current administration. Running out of missiles and time, the oil and money in that corner of the globe doesn't seem to be flowing in the direction the twice-impeached Orange Worst had in mind. And all of that Venezuelan money and oil doesn't seem to have found its way to the American consumer, who are experiencing the worst inflation in three years. 

Meanwhile, former president Maduro and his wife are living a life of relative calm and safety in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn until their case can be tried. As for that whole fifty-first state fuss, the rules concerning that sort of thing are laid out in the U.S. Constitution. Which, for this group of idiots, means that they don't have to worry about the details. Not right now. 

We've got a ballroom to build!

Voices Crying Out In The Wilderness

 As the realization that perhaps electing a convicted felon who had been impeached twice in his first term begins to dawn on America as a whole that it may have been a bad choice, the rest of the world nods in affirmation. 

America as a hole. 

"This isn't what I voted for." 

Really? You believed all the spin and hype that came tumbling out of the former game show host's mouth? Now you're questioning your choices?

I'm looking at you Marjorie Taylor Green. 

And you, Tucker Carlson.

It was all fun and games while the bloated sack of protoplasm was taking wide swings at those things that you hate. Then he started chopping up the White House. And starting wars to cover up the facts hidden in the Trumpstein Files. All of a sudden, there is a rush by some of those big mouths that had once hung out with the would-be-king at his golf resort. That was before they "realized" that maybe all wasn't well in that dark space between his ears. 

Poor Marge. "I wanted so much for President Trump to put America First. That’s what I believed he would do. All I heard from his speech tonight was WAR WAR WAR," wrote the former congressperson from Georgia after the Orange Worst's April 1 address to the country. "Nothing to lower the cost of living for Americans. Nothing to reduce our near forty trillion dollars in debt. Nothing to save Social Security, which goes bankrupt in just a few years. Nothing to lower the cost of insurance. Nothing to address jobs for Americans. Nothing about education for our children. Nothing about our children’s future. Nothing for America’s future."

Poor Tucker. “You know, we’ll be tormented by it for a long time – I will be,” Young Tuck said. “And I want to say I’m sorry for misleading people. It was not intentional, that’s all I’ll say.” But of course it wasn't really all. Speaking with his brother on his podcast, “In very small ways, but in real ways, you and me and millions of people like us are the reason this is happening right now.”

Even now as thirty-some percent clings to approval of the way this monster has shredded the Constitution and turned our system of government into a Demock-racy, we look to those mildly sentient beings left in positions of authority who might bring an end to this charade. Tucker is a podcaster, for heaven's sake, and Marge is an ex-congressperson. Not exactly our first line of defense. 

But then again, they never really were. 

Worst

 “I will not enter into debate. The things that I say are certainly not meant as attacks on anyone. The message of the Gospel is very clear: ‘Blessed are the peacemakers.’” This is how the first U.S. born Pope chose to respond to the vitriolic attack by the convicted felon currently taking refuge in the ruins of the White House. 

In case you missed it, the convicted felon took to his social media to insist that “Pope Leo is WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy. I don’t want a Pope who thinks it’s OK for Iran to have a Nuclear Weapon.” This came from the same account that threatened to destroy an entire civilization a week ago, and had also included an image that depicted the aforementioned user in white and red robes with one hand resting on the forehead of a sick man while the other emanated light. 

So, first of all, posting horrendous things online is not a crime, per se, but one does wonder how it is that any respectable social media platform would allow that kind of ugliness. 

Unless the social media platform in question was being run by a thirty-four time convicted felon. Currently holding steady at twice impeached, adjudicated rapist owner of a social media platform named, as ironically as possible, Truth. 

What is Truth? Some would tell you that truth is that which corresponds to reality. Given the haphazard nature of the Orange Worst's views on the world including sharks, windmills and other living things, one could probably make a case that he wouldn't know truth if it walked up and handed him a subpoena. 

The Vice President, Jimmy Duggan Vance, is a practicing Catholic who already had the distinction of killing a Pope. He is currently trying to figure out how his eternal future will be affected by serving a boss who seems to care so little about other humans and peace on this plane. The sins of the Orange Worst are already written down, annotated and ready for release as soon as the Department of Justice starts following the law signed by (checks notes) the Orange Worst. 

Meanwhile, any actual judgement awaits for the Worst. 

Have your popcorn ready.