Remember when the Republican Party, as a whole, absolutely revered the memory of Ronald Reagan? It really wasn't that long ago. Their devotion was so pronounced that we even took to using the term "Saint Ronald of Reagan" whenever we wrote about Republicans lauding him to the skies, just to poke fun at their deification (or at the least, canonization or beatification) of a politician that, in our humble opinion, really didn't deserve such devotion.

Jumping forward to the present, each incoming president gets to choose how to decorate the White House, which includes the art on the walls of the Oval Office. We have to say it was somewhat of a surprise to learn that Donald Trump in his second presidency chose to hang a painting of Reagan on the wall overlooking the same desk Ronnie used to sit behind. We learned this fact from the following article, which (please note) was written before what just happened in the Oval Office today:

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I start today with a bit of mineralogical history. The Washington Monument on the National Mall was built both before and after the Civil War, and was finally finished in 1884. At the top of America's obelisk sits a pyramid, with observation windows visitors can look out of. The very tippy-top of this stone pyramid (roughly 555 feet above ground -- at the time, the tallest building in the world) was capped with a small pyramid made out of metal (which doubles as the contact point for the monument's lightning rod). The metal used was one of the rarest available at the time -- so rare that it was as expensive as silver. This small pyramid weighs 100 ounces, and at the time was the largest cast piece of this metal in the world. So what was this extremely rare metal?

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There are some jobs where, if the job is done perfectly, the public is never even aware there is a person doing that job. The only time people notice them is when a screw-up happens. The job of projectionist at a movie theater is a good example. If he or she runs the projector perfectly and there are no problems, then no one in the audience gives them a second thought (or even a first thought). They are invisible -- but the movie wouldn't run without them. The sound mixer at a live concert is another good example. If the sound is mixed well and all the equipment functions perfectly, then nobody even notices them. But if something's wrong, then everyone turns around and starts yelling at them.

There are a lot of governmental jobs that fall into this category as well. Which has left me wondering what is going to happen when a whole bunch of them get fired (or quit in disgust) and then a screw-up happens?

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It's hard, as each new week goes by, not to get distracted by all of the chaos emanating from Washington. This week, we're going to begin by connecting a few dots that really need connecting, and (so far) haven't gotten enough attention (in our humble opinion).

Before Donald Trump became president again, both he and his MAGA choir spent a lot of time decrying "censorship" and wailing about their "free speech" being somehow suppressed. This was largely due to social media sites policing their allowable content, and occasionally removing objectionable or flat-out false posts and even kicking people off their platforms.

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Robert F. Kennedy Junior is now going to be in charge of overseeing the nation's health systems. This seems to be a prime example of the ironic question: "What could possibly go wrong with that?" since Kennedy is so obviously not even remotely qualified for the position, and he holds so many bizarre and conspiratorial viewpoints on health care and medicine that HuffPost ran the story with a main-page "screamer" headline: "Quack Confirmed!" If anything, calling R.F.K. Jr. a "quack" is an understatement of the reality.

But today I am in a ra

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We aren't even three weeks in to the administration of President Elon Musk, and already he has instituted an ideological purge the likes of which America has not seen since the time of Senator Joe McCarthy. Except this time they're not rooting out communists (or suspected communists, or communist sympathizers) but instead just "people they don't like." Or maybe "people who have pissed off Elon" -- that's probably closer to the reality of it.

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Secretary of State Marco Rubio made his first visit abroad this week. He went to Panama and reportedly pushed them to do something about the Panama Canal, in order to somehow appease President Trump's obsession with it. So far, they've refused to do so. Perhaps this is all just as performative as Trump's now-you-see-it-now-you-don't tariffs on Canada and Mexico -- perhaps Trump will find some way to declare victory and move on to other strange obsessions. Panama could, for instance, slightly lower the rates for ships to pass through their canal, either just for American ships or for all ships. That would probably be enough for Trump to move on.

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We begin today with an apology and a solicitation for donations. Our apology is for perhaps not doing as thorough a job of reviewing the past week as we normally do, because last night instead of doing our homework we instead watched the FireAid benefit concert for the victims of the recent Los Angeles fires. If you missed it, at least check out the fireaidla.org site, where you can donate to the cause if you wish. It was quite a show, and well worth watching (note: this review contains only a partial list of the performers...):

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I begin today by doing something I don't believe I've ever done before. Perhaps this will prove to be uninformed, since I have no real way of knowing if someone else has previously said this (or something very similar). I could just be repeating it without realizing it's not my own original thought, I will fully admit. But in watching the immediate responses to the crash of a commercial jet and a military helicopter over the Potomac River in Washington D.C., I fear I may have stumbled upon a basic natural law (at least, in this country, at this particular time). Call it "Weigant's First Law of Finger-Pointing," I suppose. Here it is:

There is no tragedy that is so awful that it cannot be made much worse by politics.

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The last time he was president, Donald Trump faced a big crisis. His response to the COVID-19 pandemic was erratic at best (and even that's being charitable). Later, he and his followers demonized the doctors and medical experts who were desperately trying to save lives with their advice and recommendations -- so threateningly that President Joe Biden felt the need to pre-emptively pardon Dr. Anthony Fauci right before he left office. Biden feared that Trump would harass Fauci via the Justice Department, so he precluded it from happening.

This time around, President Trump is pre-emptively taking a wrecking ball to the federal government's medical establishment, in what can only be called a war on medical science. It was telling, during the early months of the COVID crisis, that Trump kept complaining that we were doing "too much testing." The numbers of people infected and hospitalized and dying were shooting up dramatically, after Trump had promised the country that they wouldn't. The solution, as far as Trump was concerned, was to just stop testing everyone. That way, there wouldn't be any big numbers to alarm everyone. Hey presto! Problem solved!

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