Author Archives: ronqueens

And So It Goes

Today is Wednesday, November 26, 2025, one day before Thanksgiving 2025. Sadly, we learn today – just a day before this national holiday – that two National Guard members were shot in an ambush-style attack in Washington, D.C., this afternoon. This breaking story is covered online by CBS News in an article by Cara Tabachnick entitled “2 National Guard members shot in D.C., suspect in custody, officials say.”

The two Guard members are in critical condition, but it was erroneously reported that the troops had died by West Virginia Governor Patrick Morrisey. He has since cited “conflicting reports” as an explanation for the error.

The Metropolitan Police Department said the crime scene was secured and a suspect is in custody. Police said the suspect was wounded and was taken to a hospital.

Now that suspect has been identified as a 29-year-old Afghan national who entered the United States in 2021, multiple law enforcement sources confirmed to CBS News. Law enforcement believes he has acted alone.

The shooting took place near the Farragut Metro stop, a few blocks from the White House, at 17th and I Street NW.

Eyewitness accounts suggest the gunman waited in concealment before striking as they stood outside a Washington, D.C., metro station. Multiple Guard personnel inside the metro station ran out to assist after hearing shots.

The attack, meanwhile, is prompting some concern among officials about the widespread deployment of National Guard personnel for domestic security. The shooting has been described to CBS News by several law enforcement officials as “devastating” and “cautionary.”

Of course, the idiot in chief did not offer words of consolation to the families who have been affected by this tragedy, but only stoked more fuel for the fire, saying the shooting was “an act of terror” and “an act of evil, an act of hatred.” He also decided to deploy 500 more National Guard troops to the area rather than pulling back as a result of this shooting. Let’s not forget who is responsible for deploying these troops to American cities in the first damn place? None other than Donald J. Grump and, it’s my belief, he shares some responsibility in this heinous act.

In addition, this cruel and irrational regime is now asking a federal appeals court for an emergency stay of an order from a federal judge to remove the National Guard from Washington, D.C. Last week, the judge ruled the deployment was unlawful.

Possibly, the only silver lining amid all of the terrible news coming out of Washington is a special election being held next Tuesday in all places, Tennessee, which is formerly a Grump bastion, but is now exhibiting remarkable progress made by a progressive Democrat who is running against Republican Matt Van Epps in a special election to fill the seat vacated by Republican Rep. Mark Green. The Democrat’s name is state Rep. Aftyn Behn and she is running almost neck to neck with her opponent. Van Epps is leading Behn by just two points, 48 percent to 46 percent.

The substantial closing of the gap suggests an even nastier political climate for Republicans than previously anticipated heading into next year’s midterms.

However, the expectation among strategists is that Behn will not win anyway, but her strong performance so far in a deep red state means that next year’s elections will be an uphill battle for repugnicans overall. This is music to my ears!

Dump’s approval in the district is completely underwater, a new poll shows. After winning the state by double-digits, only 47 percent approve of his job performance while 49 disapprove. The change has been driven by Independents, with 59 percent disapproving.

I urge everyone to keep their eyes peeled in next Tuesday’s race in Tennessee to see if there could be a surprising upset there.

Anyway, it’s time to wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving. I hope you can enjoy the holiday with your loved ones without arguing about trivial and not-so-trivial matters. It’s time to bury our differences and be more understandable of others’ differences across the holiday table.

Tomorrow Elliot and I will be guests at our friend “Patricia”s West Side Tennis Club, in Forest Hills, for Thanksgiving. There will be a buffet around 1:30 and we’re going to meet her in the Club’s front room. We were her guests last year and everything was fabulous. It’s great not to have dishes to wash and no mess in the kitchen after hosting either one or two guests. So the same will be true this year, as well.

I’ll be with you on Friday evening.

And so it went!

And So It Goes

Today is Tuesday, November 25, 2025. The uproar over that video that six Democrats recorded in which they urged military service members not to follow unlawful orders, but what the criminal in the White House has laughingly called “seditious,” is getting more steam as it was announced just the other day that the Pentagon is investigating “serious allegations of misconduct” against one of the lawmakers, Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona, who is married to former Rep. Gabby Giffords who was incapacitated during an assassination attempt in January 2011 just outside of Tucson. This disturbing story comes out of CBS Politics on my smartphone in an article written by Joe Walsh entitled “Accusations of ‘sedition’ spark uproar after video on refusing illegal orders. Here’s what the law says.”

All of the Democrats – unlike the Orange Turd – have served in the military or worked for U.S. intelligence agencies.

Last week the insane president posted an unhinged rant on “Truth” Social stating that these Democrats should be arrested and put on trial. Days later, the Pentagon announced that it was conducting a review of these allegations against the six Democrats. The one who is at the most peril is Kelly who may be recalled to active-duty status for “court-martial proceedings or administrative measures.” The drunkard who is U.S. Secretary of “War,” Pete Hegseth, later said that Kelly was the only lawmaker who falls under Pentagon jurisdiction since the others either worked for the CIA or didn’t retire from the military.

The other five lawmakers said today that the FBI had notified them of an inquiry.

Despite this threat to their liberty posed by this vengeance-ridden president, they have stood by their statement and condemned Grump for posting such garbage against them, and for now being exposed to more threats of violence against them. The six Democrats argue the video’s goal was to bring attention to some uses of the military floated by Drumpf over the years that they view as illegal, like his 2016 assertion to kill the families of terrorists or his threat – still legally contested – to send troops to Chicago.

In the meantime, Hegseth has argued that the video “sows doubt and confusion – which only puts our warriors in danger.”

Dump consistently referred to the lawmakers’ statement as “seditious behavior,” even though he himself engaged in truly seditious behavior on January 6, 2021. This will not be raised in light of the president’s declining cognitive faculties.

Many experts when interviewed all stated that this is nonsense and these lawmakers could not be prosecuted for expressing First Amendment rights when releasing the video. Naturally, this corrupt regime feels the criminal in chief has not issued illegal orders, which is laughable, considering how downright illegal they truly are.

One critic of the president’s allegation here is George Washington University law professor Laura Dickinson who said the Democrats appeared to be correct on the law. She said that members of the military must follow legal orders, but they aren’t required to follow unlawful ones, and in certain cases when orders are “manifestly unlawful,” they are required to disobey them. Other legal experts point to the fact that the six Democrats encouraged service members to refuse to follow “illegal” orders – not lawful ones.

With this latest outrage from this president, wouldn’t you say this is enough drama and outrageousness coming out of this administration? We have to actually endure this nonsense for the next three and a half years? Boy, how will we have the stamina to withstand this daily barrage of absurdity coming out of the worst administration ever in the White House?

I’m now hearing a great video from veterans who have come out attacking this stupid president and are vigorously defending Senator Mark Kelly who is a distinguished and decorated war hero. Kelly himself has said he’s not intimidated by this campaign of terror by this regime. I still say that Grump is doing this to continue to deflect from not releasing the Epstein files. Don’t be fooled by this distraction!

Today Elliot and I had a 1 o’clock appointment with our Subaru service department to get our car serviced after 6,000 miles (the mileage was much less than this when we brought it in) and to get a new state inspection sticker. We left around 12:10 and got to Woodside a little before 12:30. The manager said he could take us even though we were about a half hour early. We left the car in the front of the maintenance floor and I walked into the office to sign a release form. The manager – whose name was “Clifford” – said the car could be ready in an hour or 90 minutes and that he would text me when it was ready, so I decided to walk to Jax Inn Diner for some lunch, while Elliot was content to sit in the waiting room.

The service department was on 57th Street, and I had to walk to 73rd Street where the diner was located, so it was quite a walk. This represents a 16-block walk. I could see why Elliot preferred to stay behind. I was happy to finally see the awning that fronted the diner ahead of me.

As I was eating my tuna salad melt, I did get a text before 1:30 stating that the car was indeed ready, so I asked my server to pack the uneaten part of the meal so that I could rush back to the Subaru service station. I did return a little after 1:30 and all I had to do was wait for the car to be driven to us by Clifford. The only charge I had to pay was $10 for the inspection, which was quite nice.

We then drove home where Elliot left the vehicle to run some errands and I called my good friend “Harold” after parking the car in front of our building. We spoke so long together on the phone (over an hour) that I was able to catch Elliot walking down the block toward the building. He had finished whatever he was doing. I then finished my conversation with Harold and wished him a happy Thanksgiving.

And so it went!

And So It Goes

Today is Sunday, November 23, 2025. As Americans sour on the economy and the direction of the country during Grump’s second term, the sitting president still leans on unreality and “alternative facts” as he faces an enraged populace close to the 2026 midterms. An online MS Now (new name of MSNBC) article by Steve Benen entitled “As Americans sour on Trump and the economy, the White House moves the goalposts” details how delusional this president is when confronted with the awful truth.

When sitting down with Fox “News'” Laura Ingraham for an interview last week (which I’m sure most of us would rather watch reruns of the Beverly Hillbillies instead), Grump asserted that the current U.S. economy is “as strong as it’s ever been.” What numbers is he referring to here? But the host did ask a follow-up question: “Why are people saying they’re anxious about the economy?”

Instead of directing his response to that poll, he questioned the premise instead. “I don’t know that they’re saying that; I think polls are fake.” He then retorted, saying, “We’ve had the greatest economy we’ve ever had.”

However, the evidence to the contrary is overwhelming. As the president’s second term crosses the 10-month mark, the unemployment rate is worse; inflation is worse; the national debt is worse; and even the trade deficit is worse.

As a political strategy for dealing with these trends, the president just turns a jaundiced eye to the terrible realities of his policies being implemented at the moment. He prefers to simply tell Americans everything is great – just like Tony the Tiger from Frosted Flakes cereal fame. This horrible strategy is failing for Grump in many predictable ways. Here the latest Fox News poll, for example, found that a whopping 76 percent of voters have negative views about the state of the U.S. economy and that a plurality believe the White House’s agenda has made things worse, not better.

Grump’s approval rating has suffered immensely since he became president. His approval rating on the economy has dropped to a woeful 36 percent.

“The data suggests playing make-believe and trying to sell the public on an alternative reality in which Americans ‘have the greatest economy we’ve ever had’ was a losing proposition.” Finally, voters now aren’t buying what Dump is selling – because their own life experiences are squarely at odds with the president’s hollow talking points.

As the clock ticks down on 2025, the repugnican regime is rolling out a new pitch that will not make any new fans since it’s also based on false truths: Things will be better next year.

To further deliver on this future message of future prosperity, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Fox News that he’s “very optimistic” about the “accelerating” economic growth that Americans will see in the third quarter of 2026 (covering July, August, and September).

This was stated last Thursday. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick took a similar message to Fox Business, predicting that the public will see job growth “in the second half of next year” that will “blow you away.”

Considering how terrible this administration has already been on the economy, it’s quite reasonable to have some healthy skepticism over these overconfident predictions of future success. Not only because the repugnican regime’s economic agenda is a mess, but also because some of us can remember the last time these officials offered similar assurances.

In August, for example, Bessent boasted to a national audience that the U.S. economy is “really going to pick up in the fourth quarter” of 2025. Now that we’re currently here in the fourth quarter, most Americans are thoroughly dissatisfied.

In early September, Lutnick said during a CNBC interview that Americans will see robust growth “six months from now.”

Almost three months later, the same Cabinet secretary has pushed out his forecast, apparently aware that the Grump economy will not meet Lutnick’s rosy forecast.

Even Mascara Vance suggested to the citizenry that success is still on the horizon. He asked the American people to have patience during his remarks. What he failed to indicate was that the public was told that it wouldn’t have to be patient since Grump as a candidate said he would deliver results on Day 1. Those results have yet to be fulfilled, as American still have not seen great results by the end of 2025, and now they have been cautioned to wait until 2026! What fucking nonsense!

If there is one thing we’ve learned from this administration is that everyone in it lies through their teeth and the American people are now recognizing it and are fed up with it as the truth is brutally exposed to show them up. Boy, do we need better leaders here after 10 months with this clown in the White House!

As the week looms over us, I must write that Elliot and I will be having dinner tomorrow with my Manhattan cousins “Rivka” and “Dillon” at another Italian restaurant on 83rd Street and 1st Avenue called Botte UES. I will most probably be absent from this page then since we’re first meeting at 7.

Have a good week and see you on Tuesday.

And so it went!

Here is the program and my slippered feet (sorry) of the Big Apple Comic Con from yesterday that I forgot to post.

And So It Goes

Today is Saturday, November 22, 2025, 62 years after the assassination of our 35th president, John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Kennedy was the third president to be assassinated in office since Abraham Lincoln and the first since President McKinley in 1901.

Today I did attend the Big Apple Comic Con Show at the New Yorker on 34th Street and 8th Avenue. I left the apartment around 11:15 and took the E directly to 34th Street, where I had breakfast at the Tick Tock Diner.

I entered the lobby of the New Yorker around 11:45 a.m. and was now on my way to the show and to my avowed intention to sell about 37 comics. I basically had no notion as to what to ask for the comics; I didn’t think any of the dealers would be interested in any of them. After going to one dealer and showing all of the books to him, he showed only interest in one, a Silver Age Batman. He asked me what I desired for the book; I said $20 off the top of my head, and he consented to pay me that amount.

I then went around to more dealers in the room. Most of them declined to buy any of the books – until I got to the other end of the room. I then found myself at another dealer who allowed me to show him the books. I was shocked when he offered to take the older books off from me for $60. When I showed him the more recent books, he offered me $15. I had emptied all of my books at this point. I couldn’t believe it! I had made $95 in less than an hour. This far exceeded what I made last year, when I only could sell a few books for only $5.

I felt buoyed by this success, so I went around other dealers and bought just five new comics. I tried not to spend too much money on any book since some books went for big bucks. Some of the prices being charged were insane!

After a while, I then left the site to have a bite at McDonald’s across the street. I had my blue band around my wrist, so I was able to return to the hotel anytime after lunch.

I waited for 3 to attend a lecture on Wonder Woman. There were two women speakers, Amy Chu and Alitha Martinez. After speaking for a while, it was evident that these two women were not really speaking about the drawing or genesis of Wonder Women. They concentrated on their careers in a male-dominated industry. They spoke about how they have carved their own special niche in an industry not known for being that progressive. One characterized her job as that of a writer, while Martinez stated that she was more of an artist/illustrator. I stayed for the whole lecture, even though it didn’t fit the description of the topic, in my opinion.

After this lecture, I stayed in the room for the next one, scheduled for 4. This one was moderated by one person, author Danny Fingeroth, who has written a biography of Jack Ruby, the killer of Lee Harvey Oswald, the assassin of JFK. This was more intriguing to me since I have some memory of that terrible day on November 22, 1963. I even asked the speaker, Fingeroth, a question concerning whether Ruby worked for someone who wanted to silence Oswald before he could spill the beans about whether he had accomplices in the killing of JFK. Americans sure love a conspiracy and this cataclysmic event 62 years ago illustrates that beautifully. Fingeroth then spoke about the type of man Ruby was. Of course, I didn’t know much about him. So his elucidation of Ruby’s character was quite interesting.

This time I spent more time at this event than any other occasion. I left the show at 5 and then walked to 47th Street to decide to see a play. I now became more exhausted from being at the show for so long. So, I resolved to just have dinner than see a show; it was also late. Most shows now begin at 7, not 8, on a Saturday night. I didn’t get to 45th Street until 5:15 or so. I thought I wouldn’t have time to both have dinner and see a play, so I abandoned the idea of seeing one.

I then walked to 45th Street and 9th Avenue to have dinner at the Westway Diner. I read my book A Life of My Own, by Claire Tomalin, while eating my chicken salad melt and cup of chicken noodle soup. I actually finished the book before leaving the diner. It is so satisfying to be able to finish a book, I feel. And this memoir was so fascinating. I’m sure none of you have even heard of this writer; I know I hadn’t heard of her until I saw her book at the Vanderbilt Bookstore in Nashville. In more than 300 pages, she discourses on her colorful life growing up in England and of her genesis as a biographical writer in her 40s. In the 70s and 80s, she wrote biographies of such diverse characters as Thomas Hardy, Charles Dickens, Jane Austin, Samuel Pepys, and Mary Wollstonecraft, the mother of Mary Shelley, the creator of Frankenstein, at the tender age of 18. She is married to writer Michael Frayn and has had so many tragedies in her life that would cripple someone less resilient than her. She has endured those calamities as stoically as anyone could in her circumstances; some of those events include the death of a child, the death of her first husband in a military accident, and the disability of one of her children, who has been suffering from spina bifida all his life. That’s enough heartache for an entire life, wouldn’t you say?

Now I still have to finish my gay men’s reading club selection for December: Disorderly Men. That might take some time since the book is a long-form paperback. I have read over 200 pages already, though.

It’s getting late, and I do want to read the comic books that I bought.

Have a good Sunday.

And so it went!

To me, this is the best costume, lightsaber down!

Here is speaker Danny Fingeroth on the events of November 22, 1963.

Fingeroth presented this page from a Superman comic that came out before JFK was assassinated.

And So It Goes

Today is Friday, November 21, 2025. Yesterday Elliot and I hosted one of our adopted “nieces,” “Rebecca” and her fiancé “Taylor,” who arrived at our door at precisely 7. We expected them to arrive later, but they surprisingly didn’t. So we hied to the living room where we sat for a little while hoping to see Atticus. Eventually, he did come up from the bedroom to make an appearance in front of Rebecca and Taylor. Taylor tried to pet him and it seemed as if he liked it. We discussed going to dinner and Taylor and Rebecca mentioned that they wanted to go to Tuscan Hills, the Italian restaurant only about five minutes away.

What distinguished this dinner with Taylor and Rebecca was Taylor’s insistence to pay for our meal. We couldn’t believe it, but Taylor freely expressed the reason why: that we have been very generous to them in the past and that they wanted to repay that gesture. So the meal was quite good anyway, even if our young charges didn’t cough up the money to pay the bill. We chose two appetizers: Fiori di Zucca (zucchini flowers filled with cheese over marina sauce and olives) and calamari fritti. For my main dish, I ordered the melanzane alla parmigiana. This was quite good. For a change, we eschewed dessert and coffee or tea.

We invited both Taylor and Rebecca back to our house for coffee or tea and our chocolate fudge cake which we still have since last week. It still got high marks from both of our guests which made us quite pleased. We talked for a little while longer and by about 10, Taylor and Rebecca started to leave. Taylor called an Uber and we hugged and kissed goodbye. Taylor accompanied me last year when I went to the New Yorker for the Big Apple Comic Show, but sadly, this year, he had to bow out since he’s leaving for Pennsylvania today. So, I will be going tomorrow to the show by myself.

As for what to focus on during this chaotic news cycle, it’s hard to concentrate on one salient story. So much is thrown at us daily that it’s hard to grasp what’s going on and to breathe, even. I am just hearing tonight that former Dump loyalist and QAnon believer Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) is actually resigning as of January 5, 2026. This comes as a shock to me. No one saw this coming, I can tell you! I wonder what her motivation truly is for resigning here. Could that explain her defiance displayed recently of her Supreme Leader over the Epstein matter? Because she always intended to resign and she doesn’t now give a fuck, basically. In an extensive announcement of her resignation, she says that repugnicans will probably lose in the midterms. I hope she is totally correct here! She also says that Democrats – should they win the House and even the Senate – will conduct impeachment proceedings against Drumpf and here she’s correct again.

I was going to write about the Orange Turd’s recent pronouncement concerning the six Democrats who made a video telling military personnel not to obey illegal orders which was definitely directed toward Dump’s recent spate of unlawful commands directed to the military. This enraged the despot in the White House who called their actions “seditious” and “treasonous.” He then said they should be put to death. Can you believe this shit? This recent story is covered in an MSNBC online opinion by Zeeshan Aleem entitled “Six lawmakers warned the military about Trump – and then he proved the point.” The six brave Democrats who released the video are Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ), Senator Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO), Rep. Chris Deluzio (D-PA), Rep. Maggie Woodlander (D-NH), and Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-PA). All of these senators have served their country in the military and they know what they were speaking of.

The reaction from the right was unsurprisingly extreme, as the president’s deputy chief of staff, or really, the true president, Stephen Miller, wrote on social media that “Democrat lawmakers are now openly calling for insurrection.” The cowardly speaker of the House couldn’t condemn Drumpf’s terrible words; he just said that the president was simply “defining the crime of sedition.” What a jerk!

Of course, the Democratic lawmakers were not seditious at all. The Orange Turd was enraged just because they were telling the truth. And this didn’t prevent his regime from responding in a very unhinged way.

This newest insane barrage of comments coming from the Alzheimer’s patient in the White House is just an example of the kind of rhetoric he engages in to stir people to political violence. Look what he ultimately did on January 6, 2021. After this insurrection, he issued pardons for its participants. Mark Esper, who served as defense secretary during Drumpf’s first term, wrote in his memoir that as protesters gathered near the White House after the murder of George Floyd in May 2020, Drumpf asked him: “Can’t you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something?”

The Democratic lawmakers were engaged in protected speech and were not calling for a violent overthrow of the government. But this madman has chosen to suggest that they should be incarcerated or murdered for expressing themselves. Aleem concludes, “Trump’s response – seemingly calling for violence in response to free speech – only confirms that lawmakers are right to be concerned about whom this president would deploy the military against.”

As I indicated earlier, tomorrow I will be attending the comic book show at the New Yorker and if I’m not exhausted from it, I might see a play via TKTS. If I do that, I’ll be absent from this page until Sunday. I won’t know until later in the afternoon tomorrow.

Have a good weekend.

And so it went!

And So It Goes

Today is Wednesday, November 19, 2025. It’s already late here because I’ve just returned from my very first meeting of Forest Hills Indivisible at a nearby church and also having a quick bite outside since I was unable to have dinner at home before the 7 p.m. meeting. This happened because I found myself waiting at my local ophthalmologist’s office for more than an half hour in order to be seen by a physician’s assistant before actually being seen by the eye specialist. My appointment was at 4:30, but I didn’t see (no pun intended) anyone until 5:15 or so. I actually got up at least twice to ask when I was being treated. Both times I was informed that the doctor would be seeing me in a few minutes and it still took awhile before I was called into an office.

But that’s not the reason I’m writing this. I wanted to provide some details about the anti-Dump meeting I attended right here at a church within five minutes of my house. I was very heartened to discover that the meeting was attended by about 40 people; all of the pews were occupied by people of all stripes – young, old, female, and male. When I entered the sanctuary before 7, I meekly asked if this was where the Forest Hills branch of Indivisible would be meeting. I was greeted by a well-dressed, bearded older gentleman who said, “Yes.” I entered the church and found a seat.

Soon more individuals walked in and took seats. I recognized a young man from my own building who lives in the adjacent section of the cooperative. However, he didn’t acknowledge me. I just knew him visually since I’ve seen him enter the Alden part of the building in times past.

A very large part of the meeting was devoted to listening from a representative of some immigrant rights group who talked very movingly about how this regime is illegally taking people off the streets. She stated that she herself is an immigrant – after emigrating to the country at age 6 from Mexico. She provided the group with details about recent ICE raids of various neighborhoods throughout the city and also handed out a small flyer covering what our rights are and what steps activists could take when ICE agents are observed lurking around. Basically, what we could do is just blow a whistle and take videos of their unlawful actions. This young woman also passed around pictures of men caught in an ICE raid on Canal Street. She also took questions from audience members before yielding the stage to one of the organizers who is friendly with our friend “Patricia.” Her name is “Joan.”

Joan then began speaking about strategies the group could adopt in lieu of having massive demonstration after demonstration. One such plan she talked about was having small groups of people ring doorbells of home owners in the neighborhood to give them a lawn sign that is clearly anti-ICE in essence. What Joan is encouraging us to do is engage in conversation with these individuals and see if they wouldn’t come over to our side. She also mentioned the possibility of holding signs aloft on pedestrian overpasses to get our message across to motorists. Joan did say that signs would be provided; we wouldn’t have to design our own.

The last speaker was the man who greeted me at the beginning of the meeting. His name was “Ian.” He mentioned that he would like for us to provide the group with our own ideas as to what next steps to take. Instead of coming up with their own ideas, people just asked Ian more questions.

In conclusion, Joan stated that the group will send out emails to those in attendance. The meeting was adjourned a little after 8:30 and some of us stayed talking about the asshole in charge of the government. One woman named “Dora” said she is involved with another group called Beacon that meets in front of MacDonald Park every Thursday for an hour at 4. I’m not sure what this group does, but I wouldn’t want to get involved with too many groups and spread myself too thin. I’d rather just stay with Forest Hills Indivisible and see if it meets my activist needs.

One funny moment came when the guy from my adjacent building made a case of using social media more frequently. At that point, the room was scanned for the white heads of both males and females sitting there until one older woman chimed in, saying that she could handle the social media aspect of getting our message out to a broader cross section of the population.

After the meeting, I walked to Queens Boulevard with someone from the group. She said her name was “Betty,” and she was from Ridgewood, Queens. She said she was a member of the Ridgewood chapter, but still wanted to attend the meeting here tonight. I informed her that I had to eat dinner out since I had no time to dine home before the meeting. We said our goodbyes near the subway station and I made my way to Shake Shack for a hamburger and fries.

As I type this, Lawrence O’Donnell is conversing with Boston’s Mayor Michelle Wu about the outrage caused by a fucking ICE raid at a Boston car wash. ICE is this president’s equivalent to Hitler’s Schutzstaffel, or SS. The more we grasp this reality, the more we can push back against this.

Tomorrow Elliot and I are meeting with “Rebecca” and “Taylor” at 7. Again, I might not be posting here tomorrow night, depending on how late we stay out with these two young individuals.

Have a good Thursday.

And so it went!

And So It Goes

Today is Tuesday, November 18, 2025. Today was supposed to be a none-too-exciting day, with Elliot undergoing Mohs surgery on his scalp at 10 a.m., but who would have thought that both the House and Senate would deliver surgical strikes against this unfit president in their voting to release the Epstein files. This was done on the same day – right after the House almost unanimously approved legislation that would force those documents into the open. Hours after the House overwhelmingly passed a bill to force the exposure of the Justice Department’s investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, the Senate moved to approve the legislation by unanimous consent – sending a clear message to the buffoon in chief that his party has abandoned him in his hour of need. This measure is covered in an online MSNBC article by Kevin Frey entitled “Senate suddenly passes the Epstein bill just hours after it cleared the House.”

“Speaking on the Senate floor shortly after 5 p.m., Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) pushed through the Epstein Files Transparency Act using unanimous consent, a maneuver that allows the chamber to bypass normal procedural hurdles.”

Schumer thundered, “Donald Trump has tried to cover up for Jeffrey Epstein long enough,” before asking to pass the bill. “It’s time that the Senate finished the job to finally compel the Department of Justice to release the Epstein files.”

The move was so swift that the Senate hadn’t even formally received the bill from the House. Schumer asked that once it arrives, it be automatically “deemed as passed” – an unusual step underscoring the urgency and political momentum behind the contentious issue.

This quick passage is sure to anger MAGA Johnson, the unqualified Speaker of the House, and many House repugnicans. But fuck them! We all know these repugnicans spent months denying Democrats a vote on the bill and Johnson, the pusillanimous Clark Kent of the House, was forced to give the legislation a vote only after four intrepid repugnicans joined all Democrats on a discharge petition.

Following the near-unanimous vote in the House, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) signaled that his chamber might move quickly, without changing the bill. And, boy, did it!

Thune countered, “I’m not sure there’s going to be a need for or desire for an amendment process over here,” which bristled the House Speaker to no end.

Schumer also stated for the record, “This isn’t about Democrats versus Republicans or about Congress versus the president. This is about giving the American people the transparency they’ve been crying for.” Schumer added, “This is about holding accountable all the people in Jeffrey Epstein’s circle who raped, groomed, targeted and enabled the abuse of hundreds of girls for years and years. The American people have waited long enough.” Amen, Minority Leader Schumer.

Now that the Senate has passed the bill, it will soon be on the president’s desk. It will be difficult for Donald Dump to not sign the bill, particularly after the House passed the measure 427-1, and the Senate passed it with unanimous consent.

That doesn’t mean that the Chump administration could not hold back information in the files, however. The bimbo Attorney General has broad authority to withhold information that could imperil future investigations – as the Justice Department has recently announced that it will open some phony investigations into some Democrats mentioned in the files – note how only Democrats are being investigated by this con artist.

So could the American people receive the full look into these documents that lawmakers have intended? If it’s obvious that the Dump regime is still obfuscating the truth, this will gloriously backfire on the clueless president and harm him for years to come!

In the meantime, the crude and vulgar president rebuked a female reporter who questioned him about the Epstein files, calling her “Piggy” as she pressed him on his past relationship with the late convicted sex offender.

What a fucking low life in the White House, folks! This boor told the reporter, “Quiet. Quiet. Piggy.” Talk about the pot calling the kettle black in this instance, where the fat pig was actually sitting on Air Force One! An even braver female reporter pressed the fat pig over his embrace of the Saudi prince who had journalist Jamal Khashoggi murdered while at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018. This president had the gall to say “Things happen” when confronted with his death at the behest of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. What a jerk! And he’s president of the United States?

Today, then, was a sweet victory for hundreds of Epstein survivors who pushed and pushed this country to this day. This country owes them a debt of gratitude.

By the way, Elliot did well today with his Mohs surgery which ended after a few minutes. We actually sat far longer in the waiting room with many other bandaged patients to wait for biopsy results of Elliot’s procedure which came back negative, thank God. Elliot still has a white bandage on his head, which he can take off tomorrow at some point. There was a woman, most probably in her seventies, who reminded me of the comedian Elaine May. She began talking to me as I tried to read one of the books I brought with me to the doctor’s office. She asked how long would the wait be; I answered that I couldn’t tell her. I was not a patient here. I then returned to reading Disorderly Men, my gay men’s reading selection for this month.

I think we were finished a little after 11, so we walked to York Avenue and 86th Street to have breakfast at a diner called The Mansion. We woke up today at 7:30 a.m. and left the apartment at 8:45. We got down to 86th Street close to 9:30, so we darted into Paris Baguette for a coffee. For me, of course.

After breakfast, we parted ways. Elliot went home, while I took the crosstown bus to Broadway where I searched for the Westsider Rare & Used Books store, located on 80th Street and Broadway. Since I sold a few books the other day at this bookstore in the Village called Codex, I justified buying one book called Hollywood’s Eve about Eve Babitz, who was a cultural icon of the scene in 1960s and 1970s Los Angeles. She has quite the biography, it seems. She is the goddaughter of Igor Stravinsky and a graduate of Hollywood High. She posed in 1963, at age 20, playing chess with the French artist Marcel Duchamp. She was nude; he was not. She designed album covers for Buffalo Springfield and the Byrds. She has seduced prominent men like Jim Morrison and Harrison Ford. At the age of 30, she was discovered as a writer – by no other than Joan Didion, the chronicler of her time. She would go on to publish seven books, usually billed as novels or short story collections. They were always more autobiographical in nature and definitely more confessional. I was then drawn to this personage’s colorful life, so that’s why I bought the book.

Tomorrow is the meeting of Forest Hills Indivisible at this nearby church, so I don’t know if I’ll be here. You’ll see me or you won’t. That’s all I can say.

Have a good Wednesday then.

And so it went!

This is my new addition to my ever-expanding library.

And So It Goes

Today is Monday, November 17, 2025. Epstein fever is in the air, as the House isthissclose to voting to release the sexual trafficker’s infamous files tomorrow. Today the pedophile in chief capitulated on his stand against releasing the files which definitely shows his weakness in the wake of this ever-engulfing scandal. It is comparable to Nixon’s Watergate imbroglio, I believe, and this is Drumpf’s own Waterloo, in my opinion. An analysis by Aaron Blake for CNN reveals how Dump has been rendered vulnerable by this sordid scandal in his piece entitled “Trump’s Epstein files capitulation betrays a rare weakness.” He discusses the implications of Dump suddenly changing his mind regarding the measure of releasing the files which he has vociferously been blocking up to now.

Blake states, “But regardless of how it [the Epstein files saga] shakes out, the drama around the files has punctured Trump’s aura of invincibility within the MAGA movement in a way few, if any, things have before. And it has proved a massive unforced political error by Trump.”

He also cites this sobering fact of how this man has dominated his awful base all these years – but not at this moment. “The man who has for a decade dominated his base and told it what to care about has backed down when that base decided its priorities didn’t align with his own,” Blake points out. He concludes, “That’s a remarkable political moment – and an inauspicious one for Trump, particularly right now.”

Trump’s reversal now, Blake contends, “suggests he is throwing in the towel on something he’s fought for months.”

Just last week, Drumpf and his bulldog fool Speaker of the House MAGA Johnson have fought relentlessly against the discharge petition that ultimately forced this vote. Drumpf threatened Republicans last week who signed on to it, calling them “stupid” and accusing them of playing into Democrats’ hands. The Epstein files were the central issue in Dump’s recent rift with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia. Who would have thought that this formerly Dump loyalist would split with him so forcefully on this one issue and that she is actually sounding normal for once in her pronouncements against Drumpf’s handling of this crisis?

The Epstein files saga has shown that the base’s willingness to abide Drumpf has its limits – or at least, it does when the base feels strongly enough and when the president’s political capital starts to wane.

This is what I love hearing: “The context of all of this is the apparent fracturing of the MAGA base,” according to Blake. Music to my ears!

Some within this seemingly unified base, but is now fracturing day by day, are expressing unease over Dump’s “America First” agenda, especially when they see him for no reason bailing out Argentina and threatening to go to war with Venezuela. Others within the base are concerned with his cozy ties with Big Tech.

Drumpf’s squabbling with Greene right now is proving to be a bigger headache for the wanna-be autocrat because she is boldly bucking him head on and not meekly fading away. She’s also doing so from a position of credibility within the base.

Over the weekend, there were a number of prominent MAGA and MAGA-adjacent influencers on social media who started to distance themselves from their Supreme Leader’s agenda. This represents a seismic crack in MAGA world without a doubt.

Republican losses on Election Day this month reinforced Drumpf’s looming lame-duck status and crystallized the party’s very real problems in a post-Dump political world.

This scandal has also been spurred by many ordinary Americans who are expressing their disproval of this administration’s handling of the crisis, where 77 percent want all of the files released. That’s some majority, folks.

I say it’s about time that a vigorous resistance movement starts to rise up against this peculiarly virulent anti-American president. And it appears it’s happening right now.

In light of this breaking situation, I’m considering attending an in-person meeting of Forest Hills Indivisible this Wednesday at 7. It’s being held at some church near our apartment building. I won’t state the location since agents of Drumpf might be reading this.

Tomorrow I’m accompanying Elliot downtown for him to have Mohs surgery on some squamous cell carcinoma on his scalp. He’s expected to have the procedure at 10 and it’s being done on an inpatient basis. I intend to bring my gay men’s reading club section with me to read tomorrow if I have to wait a long time for him. I just started reading it a day or so ago and I’m already 100 pages into it. The book’s name is Disorderly Men, and it’s by Edward Cahill. It’s his first book. I find it very fascinating, as it details the lives and sorrows of a group of gay men living in New York in the early 1960s when acting out one’s homosexual impulses could get you jailed, fined, and even fired from your job if details of your arrest ever appeared in newspapers.

And so it went!

And So It Goes

Today is Sunday, November 16, 2025. As I indicated on Friday, I was going to be absent from this page on Saturday because I had a playdate with my longterm friend “Jake,” who has been my friend since high school. As expected, Jake and I had a very lengthy playdate beginning as early as 1:30 p.m. and ending almost 12 hours later, at 12:35 a.m. You must wonder how we spent this time together: well, there was a lot to catch up on since we last saw each other way back in June. Over snacks and ginger ale, the two of us spent several hours reviewing what occurred in each other’s lives during that time and then we discussed seeing Bugonia, the new film starring Emma Stone and directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, who has directed the star in several blockbuster films of late. Jake hadn’t heard about the film, but he certainly knew of Stone. He agreed to go with me to the Kew Gardens Cinema at 4:15 to see the 4:45 show.

I took Jake to the car parked on 112th Street and drove to the movie house. I asked if Jake had driven in our new car which is not so new anymore: it will mark a year with us on November 30 which is not that far into the future. I can’t believe it’s almost a year old myself. Like I can’t believe I’m a septuagenarian as of November 8.

Anyway, we got to the cinema close to 4:45, and we missed a few of the previews. Now to the movie that is quite a thrill ride. Emma Stone plays a Forbes list big pharmaceutical chief executive who is kidnapped by raging conspiracy theorist Teddy Gatz, here played by a more streamlined Jesse Plemons. Teddy is given reluctant assistance by his too-soft-for-the world cousin Donny to kidnap Stone’s Michelle Fuller. I’m not sure if the actor himself, Aidan Delbis, as Donny, is on the spectrum, but I just checked and discover that he really is.

Therefore, Teddy strongly believes Stone to be an alien from the Andromedan species, covertly controlling humanity and killing the bees. Teddy, by the way, is an amateur apiarist who keeps bees on his dilapidated farm. Teddy is also an employee of Stone’s firm, working on the factory level as a wrapper.

Once the pair steel themselves for the object of seizing the pharmaceutical executive, they abduct her from her worksite and bring her to their house where they shave her head to prevent her from communicating with her intergalactic peers. They then lock her in the basement and insist she arrange a meeting with her Andromedans before a lunar eclipse allows an invasion of earth.

The rest of the film consists of Stone and Teddy squaring off in pyschological person-to-person combat in which Stone first denies she’s an alien and that she’s responsible for the damage to the planet that Teddy accuses her of and that he’s just enwrapped himself in Internet conspiracy theories, which I believed was Lanthimos’s critique of our very divided political climate of the moment. But this turns into much, much more as the plot develops to its shattering climax that I won’t divulge here.

We soon learn another reason for Teddy’s anger directed toward Stone as Fuller: flashbacks reveal that Auxolith – Michelle’s pharmaceutical company – recruited Teddy’s mother as a test subject for one of their drugs, which left her in a coma.

All I’ll say is Jake didn’t enjoy the film as much as I did. Actually, I’m still wondering if I did enjoy it, given the shocking conclusion. I did throughly enjoy the acting of the principals: Stone, Plemons, and, even, Beldis, in his very first role, as Donny, Teddy’s cousin. Plemons is very believable in his crazy thinking until it isn’t; and Stone is magnificent as a hostage who uses psychological manipulation initially and then accedes to the fantasy that is supposedly at the core of her captor’s mindset. Go see it and tell me what you think of the denouement.

For those of you who are as curious as I was about the origins of the title of the film, I looked it up on Google. Thus “bugonia” refers to an ancient Greek term for the belief that bees spontaneously generated from the carcass of a sacrificed ox. It’s seen as a symbol of death and renewal, with the idea that new life could emerge from death. If you do see this film, you will see manifestations of this in the very last image displayed on the screen. You’ll be all “abuzz” that you saw this very controversial film with a very talented cast.

After the film, we walked to the Village Diner for dinner. We mused over the film one more time and then scanned the menu to choose something to nourish our bodies. Jake ordered a chicken souvlaki, while I ordered a cup of chicken rice soup and then meatloaf as my entree. Of course, I had coffee with my meal.

When we left the diner, rain started to fall, so we walked briskly back to the car. I drove back to the building, having to park in our garage. I took my blue umbrella from the Subaru back to the apartment building.

Upstairs, I offered Jake milk and a slice of the chocolate fudge cake I baked on Friday. He pronounced the cake “very good” and asked for a second slice. I heated some water for tea.

We met Elliot who was home and had mentioned that he saw Bugonia at the same theater, but at 2. He gave the film a thumbs up and then settled back into the bedroom, while I entertained Jake in the living room.

The rest of the night was spent watching another film on Hulu, one that I saw before, but I was willing to rewatch it: Longlegs starring Nicolas Cage as the most deranged, bizarre serial killer there ever was.

Again, Jake was not too impressed even with this film. From there, I turned off the set and we chatted until almost 12:30 when I announced it was late already. Jake got the hint and began bundling himself up for the ride home. I walked him to the elevator and bid him adieu.

Now that Jake has departed, I’m left with snacks I don’t need like potato chips and Tostitos. Anyone want some?

Since it’s the weekend, I won’t go on a rant against this brutal regime, but just wanted to remind everyone that pressure is building for this “dys”-administration to release the Epstein files immediately. Hell, even former Dump loyalist Marjorie Taylor Greene has aligned herself with Democrats who are forcefully pushing for its release, and that must be bad for the adjudicated sexual predator in the White House! Maybe the cracks are appearing in the MAGA fortress, finally. Let more of these MAGA lawmakers abandon ship before 2026! This will be great for us- and for democracy as a whole.

Have a great week.

And so it went!

And So It Goes

Today is Thursday, November 13, 2025. The damn Epstein scandal does seem to be gaining momentum and it appears it will not go away anytime soon! Aaron Blake provides an analysis of the affair for CNN in “The political danger of the Epstein files for Trump.” It provides commentary on the growing damage it could cause the Drumpf presidency if nothing is done about it in the near future.

Even though the Teflon Don II hasn’t been accused of any wrongdoing in connection with the convicted sex offender, Dump sure is “doing a great job of looking suspicious,” Blake avers. Blake contends that this stand on the part of the sexual offender in the White House “could be a political problem in and of itself – regardless of whatever ultimately comes from the Epstein files.”

A batch of newly released Epstein emails yesterday added details about Drumpf’s past relationship with the disgraced financier, “but no smoking guns.” However, those emails in of themselves cast a doubtful eye on the culpability of the White House occupant. In one of those emails from 2011, Epstein expressed surprise to accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell that Dump’s name hadn’t surfaced amid accusations involving Epstein. The convicted sex trafficker added that at one point Dump spent hours with Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre at Epstein’s house. Could they have been discussing modern art perhaps?

And in 2019, Epstein appeared to signal Grump was quite aware of Maxwell recruiting girls from his Mar-a-Lago resort in the 2000s, saying “of course he knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine [sic] to stop.”

If this does not provide certain proof of Grump’s complicity in what Epstein was darkly doing to underage girls, it’s quite notable what his White House was preoccupied with just the other day: orchestrating a pressure campaign to thwart a House discharge petition that would force a vote on releasing the full Epstein files.

Despite this campaign to change their votes on the petition, thank God no repugnican conceded to the president’s wishes. So, no repugnicans removed their names from the petition, and Speaker MAGAt Johnson quickly said he would schedule a vote for next week on compelling the Justice Department to release the full documents.

Even if the measure passes in the House, that’s not the end of the story. The GOP-led Senate would still need to take it up, and Grump would still have to sign it. So it would be doubtful that Grump would release information that could torpedo his own disastrous presidency.

The more he and his awful lackeys continue to dodge, delay, and deny what seems to be almost overwhelming evidence of some wrongdoing on his part, the more Americans grow disgusted with this administration’s apparent lack of transparency. Grump has contributed to people’s believing there’s a conspiracy behind everything, and wouldn’t it be wonderful of this piece of shit cannot persuade voters that there has been no conspiracy with regard to Epstein. He will be undone by his petard. And it’s certainly about time – that his own very loyal supporters finally turn on him.

Really, should this country continue supporting a possible pedophile in the White House? Boy, have we devolved into pure depravity if this situation were allowed to continue? Where is the move to impeach this president?

People should be outraged over how Ghislaine Maxwell was transferred to a minimum-secuirty camp that she didn’t appear eligible for without a waiver. And that this convicted sexual predator was interviewed extensively by Grump’s private attorney. Hmm, doesn’t this in itself smack of interference on the part of the president in something he shouldn’t be even involved in? To me, this is very suspicious; this monster has even been allowed more perks than other inmates, it’s being reported. She is getting special treatment then; tell this to the many victims of Maxwell and Epstein. This is quite troubling, to say the least.

All I can say is I hope this will finally bite the fat ass of the Orange Turd in the very end. (No pun intended!)

Have a good Friday.

And so it went!