In the last 10 months, one might think it’s easy to blog about politics. Just so much to write about, right? While it is true there’s a lot going on, sometimes trying to decide what to write about is like trying to drink from a firehose.
Now, I am a Gen Xer, and given our weird pride in drinking from hoses as kids, you might think I enjoy drinking from the Trumpian hose, but often trying to be informed feels like trying to get a little sip from the torrent of news roaring out of our screens on a daily basis. I feel, going with the metaphor, sometimes like I am being blasted across the room when I try to think about a subject for this blog. With that in mind, I’ll just offer a taste of the chunk-style high-pressure flow of news from the 2025 political firehose and not focus on a single drop(subject). Here goes.
I’ll start with the Former Everyone’s Favorite Oyster Farmer, Graham Platner. Hoo boy. Look, I’ve listened to two interviews with the guy and I think his ideas are great. I will write about this at some point, but the Democratic Party really should work on reaching working-class voters, and his other positions are solid. Janet Mills has been a great governor but her age is absolutely a factor, and I worry that her statements about the filibuster mean she won’t be fully on board with all of the measures Democrats will need to take back the country whenever we get power back. But that tattoo…
Platner’s tattoo, along with his past statements on Reddit, gives one pause, and honestly, it makes me back off on supporting him. First off, there have to be other Democrats with his ideals that do not have Nazi tattoos. I know he covered it up (and the 1919 stuff is not another Nazi tattoo but related to an Appalachian climbing club founded that year). But I’d recommend he go away for a while and work on a redemption story where he asks for forgiveness and then maybe run for the House or something like that. We really don’t need a candidate who has to explain his Nazi tattoo 156 times a day, which is not ideal when running for office.
Moving on to another subject, someone needs to tell some of our nation’s elite political thinkers this:
yes. this has basically been one of the themes my column for the last few months!
This seems to be due to the Very Serious Minds of the Great American Discourse turning to “vibes” worship. It doesn’t matter that Trump won by just over 1.5% and didn’t crack 50%; it’s the vibes, man, that means more than reality. At some point, something in these people’s brains broke because even with the huge No Kings protest and falling approvals, the Very Smart People won’t let this go. My goodness, just listen to Ezra Klein’s podcast interview with Te-Nihisi Coates, which Klein booked in response to Coates’ takedown of his ridiculous column about Charlie Kirk. Along with looking like he has no real values at all, Klein seemed oblivious to Coates’s trying to get him to understand that Trump’s unpopularity has grown greatly since he was elected. It’s really disturbing, in my opinion.
An update on what Cassandra covered this week on the surprise renovation, er, destruction of the DAMN EAST WING OF THE WHITE HOUSE. Similar to how this went from “won’t even be connected to the White House so it won’t affect anything” to “tearing down the facade of the East Wing” to “we’re gonna just rip down the whole thing because we can,” the price tag is changing. It was 250 million greenbacks, then it was 300 million smack-a-roonies, now Trump is saying 350 US foldin’ doughs (that’s dollars for you non old gangster movie fans). There is also this: “At this moment in time, the ballroom is really Donald Trump’s main priority.” – White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.
Good thing nothing major is happening.
I’ll end with a new Trump pardon. Adrastos this week has already covered the pardon of Grifting Creep George Santos but since then, Trump has pardoned ANOTHER flat-out crook. The lede at The Wall Street Journal says it all:
President Trump has pardoned Changpeng Zhao, the convicted founder of the crypto exchange Binance, following months of efforts by Zhao to boost the Trump family’s own crypto company.
One of the things that really perplexes me about the last 10 months is that, about every 48 hours, Trump does something that, in normal times, would be a massive scandal, at the very least hurting an administration. But not now.
The last word goes to Scandal, appropriately enough, with an appropriate song about how we all feel about Trump.
on the subject of “Trump 2028”, the Supremely Deplorable Court, in their ruling about how the 14th Amendment “no insurrectionists!” didn’t apply, did a typical bit of weaseling.
In that “no enforcement legislation, so we’ll ignore that part of the Constitution”.
Of course, legislation they could easily toss as being “unconstitutional”, so that’s not exactly a solution (Voting Rights Act, 15th Amendment).
There’s no “enforcement legislation” for the 22nd. OR the “Prez age limit” OR the “Natural-born citizen requirement” also, too.
Those naive, Olde Founder Dudes thought they could just put stuff in the Constitution and it would be obeyed. Now we find out otherwise. And, of course, no criminal Admin. is going to do “enforcement” of stuff they don’t want, and John “lawless” Roberts and his deplorable crew, as well.
My plan, which is mine, is to add enforcement provisions to the Constitution (for the 22nd, 14th, 15th, emoluments, etc) of the form “Any asshole Preznit who violates this may be SHOT DEAD BY ANYONE, WITHOUT PENALTY. This also applies to any asshole judge that attempts to evade this provision.”