Tag Archives: news

And So It Goes

Today is Monday, December 8, 2025. We’re back from our sojourn to New England this weekend, visiting with friends “Laura” and “Richard.” I would say we had a very lovely and yummy time with Elliot’s Amherst friends. Laura prepared a very delicious dinner for us and one other couple on Saturday evening consisting of lamb shanks and mashed potatoes and a great dessert she baked herself like a blueberry galette. We also brought up our own banana bread that we baked on Friday. She made breakfast for us on both Sunday and Monday morning. On Sunday, she prepared pancakes with blueberries, and on Monday, she made a great spinach and bacon quiche.

The highlight was attending a dance class in swing dancing at a music venue in Easthampton, Massachusetts, called the Marigold Theater on Sunday. The lesson was provided at 3 and it ran an hour. After 4, a band came on stage called the Butterfly Swing Band and played for the next two hours. Therefore, Elliot and I swayed on the dance floor as long as we could before Elliot had enough. At times, I even picked up other partners after Elliot left the dance floor. I also danced with Laura several times when her husband, Richard, sat it out. After this workout, we drove back to Amherst for a delicious Italian meal at a local Italian restaurant called Pasta E Basta near their home. I had bruschetta and chicken parmigiana as my entree.

Returning to national news, I now refer to the White House arsonist being directly called out on CBS News’ 60 Minutes, where Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene criticized this hugely unpopular president who now calls his former MAGA booster “traitor.” In an online Independent article entitled”MTG accuses Trump of ‘directly fueling’ death threats against her son by calling her traitor,” by Josh Marcus and Joe Sommerlad, the piece covers the long-ranging interview with Lesley Stahl. During the interview with Stahl, Greene accused the president of “directly fueling” death threats against her family.

Stahl asked the congresswoman who announced her intention to resign from Congress in early January about her decision “not to stay and fight” when Grump began to attack her on “Truth” Social last month, labeling her “Marjorie Traitor Brown.” Such an infantile response from an infantile man!

Greene stated, “After President Trump called me a traitor, I got a pipe bomb threat on my house. And then I got several direct death threats on my son.” The former MAGA cheerleader has two sons, aged 22 and 26, but she did not say which one was targeted. She did say that the president did put her life in danger with his inflammatory rhetoric. Stahl emphasized, “You say the president put your life in danger.” Greene responded, “The subject line for the direct death threats against my son was his words – Marjorie Traitor Greene.” She added, “Those are death threats directly fueled by President Trump.”

When Greene informed the toddler in chief and Vice President JD Vance about it, the latter promised to look into it, but the president said something along the lines of that “wasn’t very nice.” Which is a shitty remark, if you ask me! It’s obvious that this shit bag couldn’t care less now that Greene has received death threats since it was his own language that spurred the crazies out there to reach out to Greene in a very terrible way.

During the interview, Greene said she considered herself “America First” rather than MAGA, which she called “President Trump’s phrase,” and accused the Orange Turd of failing to deliver on his promises to voters by siding with corporate allies over regular Americans.

Suggesting that Dump has his priorities wrong, Greene said, “Those are the areas that are still getting everything they want, while the people, we’re still out here saying, ‘We want to see action on areas for the American people, not for the major industries and the big donors.'”

Throughout the year, the populist has hammered Dump and split with her party on a variety of issues, including surprisingly siding with Democrats to support extending Obamacare subsidies during shutdown negotiations and backing a bipartisan effort to force the government to release more of the Epstein files.

Greene even criticized her own members for actually mocking the Fat One behind his back but now pretending to be supporters out of a combination of political opportunism and fear of reprisals. She commented on how her colleagues went from making fun of him to now “kissing his ass” and deciding to put on a MAGA hat for the first time.

Greene made no promises as to her pursuing any kind of political ambitions in the near future. She told Stahl that she has “zero desire” to seek the White House in 2028, adding that she would “hate” being in the Senate and is not running for Georgia governor, as originally thought. She admitted, “I’m not your politician with a whole itinerary of plans or political ambitions.”

As for her split with Dump over the Epstein files, she recalled conversations she had with the toddler in chief over the Epstein scandal and where Dump claimed he wanted to prevent the release of those files because he said it would “hurt people.”

Providing the right answer to the president, Greene said, “These women were the ones who were hurt. They were raped at 14. They were raped at 16. I watched them stand in front of the press trembling, their bodies shaking as they were telling their stories, many of them for the first time.” She concluded, “These women deserve to be heard.”

It’s difficult to say what to think of this once robust Drumpf booster who has now received death threats because of her very dramatic severing of ties with him. I must say this once reviled Representative who spewed her own inflammatory rhetoric all throughout the first Dump presidency does have gumption in announcing such a public split with such an odious fellow. At the very least, we can admire the fact that she seems to have changed her views when she saw this president veering way off course from his own agenda and was not reluctant to air her opposing views when it became necessary to do so. The rest of America wishes more repugnicans like her could grow some balls to register their true contempt for this guy before it’s too late!

And so it went!

And So It Goes

Today is Friday, December 5, 2025. The Orange Turd has been hit by more bad news as a new poll of MAGA voters are souring on the delusional “leader.” In an online Daily Beast article by Adam Downer, terrible news is delivered by this new poll in the article entitled “Poll Shows Even MAGA Voters Now Want to Dump Trump.”

Thus even his most “diehard supporters are souring on the idea of four more years of him in the White House,” according to the article.

That poll, released by The Economist/YouGov outlets, found that among voters who backed the demagogue in 2024, 45 percent oppose the president running for a third term in 2028, even though he’s unable to do so constitutionally. Only 43 percent supported the idea – which is large in my eyes – and 11 percent were unsure.

Though a third term is illegal under the 22nd Amendment, which limits presidents to two terms, the idea has gained some steam in part thanks to sycophantic Trumpican reps, official Dump merchandise trumpeting 2028, and former White House chief strategist and arsonist Steve Bannon saying there is a “plan in place” to give Grump a third term. He’s as delusional as the Orange Turd here, and is just engaging in more distracting techniques to cover up how awful this second term is for his darling racist.

Knowing instinctively how bad he is, both physically and mentally, Dump himself is souring on even suggesting a third term. Just on Tuesday, he acknowledged “it’s not gonna be me” in 2028 while suggesting that one of his incompetent Cabinet members could be the next Republican nominee. God help us! I think by then the country will be so soured on his entire Cabinet that if any of them ever attempt to run, they’d be outgunned by any Democrat who decides to run against them.

The poll results underscore Dump’s loosening grip on the repugnican party. Boston University politics professor Thomas Whalen said to Newsweek, “MAGA is not immune to the law of political gravity. It is a spent force at this point, bereft of ideas and urgency. I suspect Trump may want to run again, but he runs into a major roadblock known as the U.S. Constitution. There can be no third terms. Also, eight years of Donald Trump is enough drama for even the most devout MAGA supporter,” he concludes. He didn’t mention the roiling drama of just 11 months of his second term that is chock full of chaos already that is causing everyone a massive headache for those who follow the horrible news.

The president’s contentious second term – putting it mildly – is rife with scandal and extremely unpopular policies that have led to his sliding approval ratings which are literally in the toilet. Every pollster paints Dump with a negative approval rating.

High prices have also fueled MAGA’s break with their Supreme Leader. Americans are blaming him for the country’s cost-of-living crisis that he exacerbated with his damn tariffs, with 37 percent of Chump voters saying things have never been worse than they are right now. Democrats are definitely taking advantage of this perception, using an “affordability” message to make massive gains in special elections. And the jerk in the White House had the temerity to mock Democrats’ message on affordability, failing to recognize the harm he’s caused to millions of Americans!

This sets the stage for a 2026 midterm election cycle where Dump will undeniably be a liability for Trumpican candidates, barring a dramatic shift by November. Which hopefully won’t happen! Considering how awful he’s conducted himself in the Oval Office these last 11 months, the likelihood of Dump turning his record around to positive figures is highly unlikely. He would have had to have a massive stroke of empathy and decency and that ain’t going to happen!

I’m cutting my blog short tonight since Elliot and I are driving up to Massachusetts tomorrow to spend some time with Elliot’s dear friend, “Laura,” and her husband, “Richard.” This weekend was planned for some time now and it’s already here. We’re returning on Monday, December 8, sometime in the late afternoon or early evening, so I might not post my blog until the nest day if I’m too exhausted.

Have a great weekend then.

See you sometime next week.

And so it went!

This is the banana bread that Elliot and I baked today to bring up to Laura and Richard. The picture is a little blurry, it seems; sorry.

Here’s a better picture of our creation. Can’t wait to try it.

And So It Goes

Today is Monday, December 1, 2025. An optimistic online article for AlterNet by Lesley Abravanel entitled “‘Signs everywhere’ that America’s MAGA ‘nightmare’ is almost over” appears today in which the author forecasts the inevitable demise of this American nightmare called “MAGA.” To me, the acronym really means that “Morons Are Governing America” from an early protest sign carried aloft in one of the “No Kings” rallies in Midtown. But, no, this slapdash political movement that has resulted in so much despair and ruin upon the American landscape will be celebrated when the movement is destroyed forever. So there is some room for hope delivered in this article that predicts the movement’s destruction when its stupid Supreme Leader is no longer on the scene.

Former pastor John Pavlovitz writes that “all brutal empires fall,” and the MAGA movement is no different, as signs of its inevitable demise are “everywhere.”

Pavlovitz writes, “Every time the pendulum has swung wildly toward barbarism in a society, it has invariably come back with even greater opposite force to bend the arc of the moral universe back toward justice again.”

The former pastor states that “our brutal national nightmare is likely in its final hours.”

He presciently writes, “Few cults survive the passing of their leaders, and MAGA will not outlive the departure of Donald Trump from the White House or from this earth, whichever comes first.”

Pavlovitz notes that Grump’s “physical attrition and mental degradation can no longer be hidden or distracted from. His body is rapidly breaking down, laboring with simple tasks, hemorrhaging energy, and riddled with the unmistakable tells of a man whose systems are failing.” No matter what bullshit the White House releases about his “exceptional health.”

Pavlovitz delivers a harsh assessment of Drumpf’s weakening hold on his party in this statement, “His already hate-addled mind is becoming more and more clouded in an ever-thickening haze of deterioration, drugs, and almost certain dementia. His outbursts have grown more impulsive, his decisions have become more desperate, and the once indestructible facade of strength is steadily crumbling. The strongman is withering.” Amen!

The former pastor calls Grump a lame-duck president already and states, “His once fierce death grip on political power is giving way to neutered impotence and growing irrelevance.” What has built him up is starting to collapse, he notes.

There are voices of dissent now emerging, Pavlovitz mentions. “The rapacious brutality of his regime is being exposed and condemned. The groundswell of public opposition is growing louder and more organized.”

“The defections from his party are accelerating, their unwavering allegiance weakening. His cockroach accomplices are scattering in the raking light of coming accountability,” Pavlovitz writes.

Pavlovitz surmises that Chump is on the verge of political expiration, writing, “He has peaked as a galvanizing presence, and there’s no GOP spin doctoring that can change that.”

Thus when Grump is gone, so will MAGA bite the dust, but, he says, they won’t “suddenly awaken from their cultic stupor and join the rest of us in benevolent and interdependent humanity.”

Even if MAGAts will not immediately rally to “wokeism,” Pavlovitz notes, they will “never again have someone who embodies the zeitgeist of grotesque impulses the way Trump has.” I say if for some reason, that pig JD Vance becomes president before Grump serves out his second term, he will never have the backs of the MAGA movement. He’s too despised by them.

These MAGA supporters may become “more violent, more desperate, and more committed to destruction,” Pavlovitz writes. But they know their time is short.

What will bring a smile to our faces is Pavlovitz’s assertion that “the end of MAGA is near.” He concludes, “And the dawn of the promise of America will break once again.”

I hope all of what Pavlovitz writes here does come to fruition. To me, MAGA is a stain on America created by the worst president ever to occupy the Oval Office, Donald J. Grump. It has been our national nightmare for so long – at least nine years. I would love to see a new dawn coming, wouldn’t you?

Tomorrow is my gay men’s reading club meeting at 6:30, so I probably won’t be here tomorrow night if I decide to have a nonalcoholic drink at Julius’s after the meeting.

See you on Wednesday then.

And so it went!

And So It Goes

Today is Sunday, November 30, 2025. Finally, lawmakers are finding their spine in the wake of this regime’s firing on alleged drug traffickers at sea in which 80 people have been killed in military strikes against the vessels carrying them. In an Associated Press online article by Kevin Freking entitled “Lawmakers voice support for congressional reviews of Trump’s military strikes on boats,” the situation is reported on where lawmakers have initially voiced concern about these unlawful strikes.

Thus lawmakers from both parties said today that they support congressional review of U.S. military strikes against vessels suspected of smuggling drugs in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean, citing a published report that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a verbal order for all crew members to be killed as part of a September 2 attack.

The lawmakers said they did not know whether last week’s Washington Post report was true. Though there are still some repugnicans who are skeptical of this report, but they did say that attacking survivors of an initial missile strike poses serious legal concerns.

Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA) said, “This rises to the level of a war crime if it’s true.”

One skeptical repugnican, Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH), when asked about a follow-up strike aimed at people no longer able to fight, said that Congress does not have information that happened. However, if Hegseth is found to have issued orders to kill defenseless individuals, Turner said, “Obviously, if that occurred, that would be very serious and I agree that that would be an illegal act.” At lest this putz did agree that this action could constitute an illegal act.

In the meantime, this murderous regime says the strikes in the Caribbean were warranted since they were aimed at cartels, some of which it claims are controlled by Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. Now this so-called “peace” president is weighing whether to carry out strikes on the Venezuelan mainland, thus possibly dragging us into another armed conflict that is totally unnecessary.

Rep. Turner said there are concerns in Congress about the attacks on vessels that the Grump administration says are transporting drugs, but the allegation regarding the September 2 assault “is completely outside anything that has been discussed with Congress and there is an ongoing investigation.”

Now that Grump has made comments saying that the airspace “above and surrounding” Venezuela should be considered as “closed in its entirety,” an assertion that raised more questions about the U.S. pressure on Maduro, Venezuelan’s government is accusing this country of making a “colonial threat” and seeking to undermine the South American country’s sovereignty.

As would be expected, the unfit Hegseth defends his organization’s actions during this conflict. He averred, “Our current operations in the Caribbean are lawful under both U.S. and international law, with all actions in compliance with the law of armed conflict – and approved by the best military and civilian lawmakers, up and down the chain of command.” Let’s hope this beast would comply then with a subpoena to testify before the Armed Services Committee if it ever came to that.

So far, repugnican Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and its top Democrat, Rhode Island Senator Jack Reed, said in a joint statement late Friday that the committee “will be conducting vigorous oversight to determine the facts related to these circumstances.”

Rep. Mike Rogers of Alabama and the ranking Democratic member, Washington Rep. Adam Smith, issued a joint statement saying the panel was committed to “providing rigorous oversight of the Department of Defense’s military operations in the Caribbean.”

Another repugnican, Don Bacon (R-NE), asked about the September 2 attack, said Hegseth deserves a chance to present his side. So subpoena the bum, Rep. Bacon, and get him to offer his objective perspective on what happened on September 2. Bacon did say, “We should get to the truth. I don’t think he would be foolish enough to make this decision to say, kill everybody, kill the survivors because that’s a clear violation of the law of war.” No one said this jerk even knows what the law is in that regard. He should never have been confirmed by Congress. Everyone knows that by now!

Let’s hope then that this article signifies now that there is some tentative opposition to what this horrible administration is doing at the present moment.

Now it’s getting late since Elliot and I watched a great true-crime documentary called Girl in the Picture from 2022. It’s an hour, forty-eight-minute depiction of sexual assault, violence, and murder of innocence in the guise of one convicted felon known by several aliases who kidnapped a young woman and brutalized her over a period of decades forcing her into working as an exotic dancer, eventually kidnapping her son, and was later convicted of murdering another woman years earlier. The tale was very long but fascinating. Only toward the very end does the viewer know who this woman really was. Her identity had not been known for about 35 years. She was known for many years as Sharon Marshall, but that was not her real name. I wholeheartedly recommend viewing this even though it’s quite difficult to watch at times.

I also spent some time with my son earlier when Elliot and I picked him up at his mother’s house in Hollis Hills and took him out to dinner at a Greek restaurant on Northern Boulevard called Mythos. We had a very delicious dinner consisting of Greek salad and avgolemono soup for me, and my sharing souvlaki skaras with Elliot, while “Joshua” ordered the same entree. We asked Joshua to drive our car which is a year old today back to his mother’s house since Elliot forgot to bring his driver’s license in his wallet. Of course, I drove home.

It’s another week and the first week of December. Wow! Have a good week then.

And so it went!

And So It Goes

Today is Saturday, November 29, 2025. In the wake of the National Guard shooting, the divider in chief’s hate-filled rant on the eve of Thanksgiving is getting a lot of negative backlash from all quarters. His inflammatory rhetoric is detailed in an online The Guardian article by Maya Yang entitled “Trump’s hate-filled rant ignores facts on immigrant crime and economic benefits.”

His rant slammed immigrants for crime, “social dysfunction,” and economic hardship that is easily refuted by a wide range of immigration statistics which clearly show that immigrants dramatically bolster the U.S. economy and commit crimes at far lower rates than people born in this country.

Who could forget this “president’s” lying rant in which he condemned immigrants in a broad and vicious invective, painting them as “illegal and disruptive populations” and attacking “those that hate, steal, murder and destroy everything that America stands for”? Wouldn’t you say this jerk is a little hyperbolic here and is lying through his fat ass? I didn’t even go into this on Friday since I didn’t want it exposed here even because it’s patently untrue. But this is what a president has put out, and is it even worth mentioning if it’s the rantings of a madman as Chump really is? But it’s one thing to ignore this jackass, it’s another to witness the campaign of terror that this sad shooting incident has spurred which is to possibly block all migration from “third world countries” as a result. This is what Grump has vowed to do as a consequence of one Afghan going “nuts,” in his third-grade parlance! Take vengeance on all Afghan immigrants! It’s totally absurd.

The Afghan national who carried out this heinous act actually assisted the U.S. military effort in Afghanistan, as records show, and was evacuated to this country after the American military withdrew.

The incident has sparked even more anti-immigration rhetoric from this cruel regime, which has indicated it will further intensify its crackdown on immigrant communities – already a focal point of fierce opposition from civil rights groups, Democratic lawmakers, and even the public.

Chump, ever the fascist, has promised to conduct a comprehensive review of asylum cases and green cards issued to people from certain countries.

Despite Grump’s total false claims in his post, in which he claimed incorrectly that 53 million people in the United States – “most of which are on welfare, from failed nations, or from prisons, mental institutions, gangs or drug cartels” – are contributing to “high crime,” economists have found that immigrants are 60 percent less likely to be incarcerated compared to individuals born here. This trend has been consistent for the past 150 years, and yet, this fucking president continues to cling to unsubstantiated garbage.

Actually, it’s immigrants, Mr. President, that have contributed to the falling of crime rates in this country. Not increased them! “According to an analysis by the American Immigration Council (AIC), the immigrant share of the U.S. population has more than doubled since 1980, rising from 6.2 percent to 13.9 percent in 2022. During the same period, the overall crime rate dropped by 60.4 percent, from 59,000 crimes per 100,000 people to 2,335. This includes a 34.5 percent decrease in violent crime and a 63.3 percent reduction in property crime.”

Chump’s absurd statistics about immigrants being an economic albatross in this country are flatly contradicted by data showing immigrants are significant contributors to the country’s economy. “In 2023, undocumented immigrant households contributed $89.8bn in federal, state and local taxes, while holding $299bn in spending power, according to the AIC.”

Asserting with particular malice, Grump stated that “this refugee burden is the leading cause of social dysfunction in America.” There is dysfunction in America right now, but it’s not coming from immigrant communities, it’s wholly coming from the Trump regime and its fucking horrible policies, no doubt about it!

Little Donnie also cruelly described Minnesota as being taken over by “hundreds of thousands of refugees from Somalia.” Not fucking true! He falsely asserted that “Somalian gangs are roving the streets looking for ‘prey.'” He then ridiculed Ilhan Omar, a Somali American and member of Congress from Minnesota, as someone “always wrapped in her swaddling hijab.” This couldn’t be more openly racist than if you just yelled fire in a crowded movie house. Grump then bizarrely suggested that Omar had married her brother. If I were her, I would sue the administration for defamation of character.

Minnesota does boast a large Somalian population, but Somalians have emigrated to the city fleeing famine and civil war, but this president couldn’t care less why they’ve settled in this midwestern city.

What’s even worse with this 1984 regime is the terrible reality of his wholesale immigration raids that are allegedly targeting only criminals across the country. They are not! A new study from the Cato Institute found that 73 percent of people detained by ICE have NO convictions. It also found that nearly half had no criminal conviction nor even any pending criminal charges and that only 5 percent had a violent criminal conviction. This is not what the majority of Americans wanted and this will result in terrible consequences for the people within Chump’s inner circle of misfits and incompetents.

Now I must get back to watching a British thriller from 2024 called Restless. It’s a story everyone can identify with: the plot details the terror a single middle-aged woman goes through by having a terrible neighbor who booms music into her attached house during all times of the night and how she responds to the young man’s continuous barrage of loud music over a period of seven days. The film stars no one I especially know, but it seems quite good. It is streaming on Amazon Prime.

Have a good Sunday.

And so it went!

And So It Goes

Today is Friday, November 28, 2025, one day after Thanksgiving. As I mentioned in yesterday’s blog, I was going to take a break for the holiday. Elliot and I had a marvelous time with our friend “Patricia” having a bounteous Thanksgiving lunch at her West Side Tennis Club, in Forest Hills. I know we are quite privileged in being able to do this when so many families are experiencing food insecurity right now in the richest country in the world. So I’m aware of the situation and I know that costs associated with the holiday have risen because of the idiot in chief’s terrible tariffs. This situation, as everyone must be conscious of by now, is that this inflationary spiral swirling around prices that people have to pay in order to sit down at the dinner table with family members they’d rather not be associated with for more than several days of the year is the work of one man: Donald J. Grump. It’s the economy, stupid!

Some information on that “incendiary” video that prompted the despicable Secretary of Defense (I won’t use the new designation here: “War”) Pete Hegseth to call for Senator Mark Kelly’s court martial. It’s because Hegseth was actually following illegal orders to murder people as Secretary of Defense. This is the program in which the Dump administration gave the orders to murder 80 people so far in those boats in which allegations were made that these individuals were drug traffickers and that there was no direct evidence linking these people to the charges. That’s why Kelly and five other Democratic lawmakers made that video. They were focusing on Hegseth’s direct orders to fire on those “drug” vessels.

This situation is given full coverage in a MeidasTouch column by Ron Filipkowski from November 28. Filipkowski cites a Washington Post article in which the Defense Secretary was overheard giving a spoken directive, “The order was to kill everybody” on board those vessels. One of those missile strikes killed 11 people, but as the smoke cleared, it was apparent that there were two survivors. They were clinging to the smoldering wreck. However, a Special Ops commander overseeing the September 2 attack ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s instructions. Afterward, the two men were blown apart in the water.

In the wake of these illegal attacks, some current and former U.S. officials have said that the Pentagon’s lethal campaign is unlawful and may expose those most directly involved to future prosecution – people like Hegseth and Chump, indubitably. It’s clear that these alleged traffickers pose no imminent threat of attack against the United States and are not, as the Chump administration has tried to argue, in an “armed conflict” with the country. A former military lawyer who advised Special Ops forces at the height of the U.S. counterterrorism campaign, Todd Huntley, said that because there isn’t anything like a legitimate war between the two sides, killing any of the men in the boats “amounts to murder.”

Huntley also said that even if the United States were at war with the traffickers, which it isn’t, an order to kill all the boat’s occupants if they were no longer able to fight “would in essence be an order to show no quarter, which would be a war crime.” Huntley is now director of the national security law program at Georgetown Law. The elite counterterrorism group SEAL Team 6 led the attack.

Army combat vet and congressional candidate Fred Wellman said, “This is insanely illegal. When you ask what the Democrats were talking in their video about the kind of orders that are illegal . . . this is it. It’s against the law to kill wounded prisoners. Period. This is monstrous.”

Who even heard the jerk’s Thanksgiving Day message? I know I had no desire to hear it, but I’m now reading about what this unhinged maniac spoke about on his social platform. All I know is that in a long, rambling piece of garbage, the idiot in chief called Minnesota Governor Tim Walz “retarded.” What a fucking thing to say? This is totally ridiculous and wholly inappropriate coming from a president’s supposed Thanksgiving message.

Then the idiot in chief held a press conference at Mar-a-Lago after golfing. The subject was supposed to be about thanking U.S. service members on Thanksgiving. Instead, it turned into this where the monumental narcissist talked about winning 38 championships without having to practice very much. Then he rambled on about winning them legitimately (even though people have said he does cheat). Is this the damn message people wanted to hear from their commander in chief to honor a federal holiday? I would dare say, “Hell no!” Who fucking cares about his golf game? Let him play golf in Heaven (?) already!

I’m reading now Grump’s whole Thanksgiving message that was printed in Filipkowski’s column and it’s fucking as unhinged as they come. The message behind it was so negative that it could be called “Trumpian” in scope: nothing good, nothing honorable, nothing positive. This guy is a fucking sob queen, it’s so pathetic!

Just another day under this madman. Hopefully our day will come next year.

Have a great weekend.

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 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!