2025 archive
And Now for a Change of Pace 0
Peggy Lee performs “Johnny Guitar.”
Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
Clearly, if we don’t talk about America’s original sin of chattel slavery, then it must not have happened.
Because that’s the way history works.
Genius at Work 0
PoliticalProf has a couple of thoughts about Donald Trump’s unilateral (that is, in the absence of Congressional action) attempt to impose tariffs on our friends and allies. He notes, among other things, that
Yeah, Right.
Countering Chaos Agents 0
Thom offers some pointers on how to deal with the flood of lies.
The Climate They Are a-Changing 0
And you can see it, if only you will look.
Here, the thermometer hit 79 Fahrenheits on the last day of January.
This is not normal. It’s not even a normal aberration.
A Tune for the Times 0
A short tune about Donald Trump’s reaction to the Washington–I refuse to call it “Reagan”–National Airport crash.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
It does rather take one aback how those “responsible gun owners” just cannot seem to resist the temptation to play with their portable phalluses.
A Legend in His Own Mind 0
Trump: I Have common sense
The Kansas City Star’s Melinda Henneberger: The evidence shows otherwise.
Pastry Passtimes 0
Many years ago, when I worked in a corporate training department, one of company’s police officers (yes, the company had its own police force) was detailed to my department. He was good cop and a good person.
If you wanted to get under his skin, all you had to do was make a crack about cops and doughnuts. He found the stereotype offensive, plus he really did not like doughnuts.
And I’m sure he really wouldn’t like the new spin the Houston police has put on cops doing doughnuts.
This New Gilded Age 0
Robert Reich sees a strategy emerging from the Trumpled chaos. Here’s a bit:
He thinks he can accomplish this by getting the rest of us so angry at one another— over immigration, LGBTQ+ rights, abortion, diversity, and the like — that we don’t look upward and see where most of the wealth and power have gone.
Now. to be fair, I’m not sure that Donald Trump is capable of thinking in terms of a such long game; he seems to live in the moment. But some of the persons behind him (think Project 2025, for example) most certainly are. Our new generation of robber barons founded those “conservative” think tanks as part of their long game to return us to the 1890s.
Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
Thom is astonished. I’m not.
All pretense is off.
The racism and misogyny of today’s Republican Party are fully out of the closet.
