[ Posted Friday, June 20th, 2025 – 19:09 UTC ]
Maybe Donald Trump missed his calling in life. Maybe he secretly dreams of running a car dealership lot. Previously, he turned the White House lawn into a showroom for Teslas (as he showed his tenuous grasp of the English language, saying: "It's all computer!"). Now he has erected two very tall flagpoles on the White House grounds, complete with the sort of giant flag one usually sees from a highway to signify an auto dealership. Which means our title this week pretty much had to be based on the maxim: "Let's run it up the flagpole and see who salutes!"
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[ Posted Wednesday, June 18th, 2025 – 16:37 UTC ]
Today Donald Trump was asked whether he had made the decision to attack Iran's nuclear sites or not. He answered with perhaps the truest words he has ever spoken: "You don't seriously think I'm going to answer that question. You don't know that I'm going to even do it. You know, I may do it. I may not do it. I mean, nobody knows what I'm going to do." It's hard to disagree with that, really.
But the subject deserves more than just snark, since it is a serious decision Trump has to make -- and it would be an equally tough decision for any U.S. president to have to make. Entering the country into a war is always a serious decision, and it should be treated as such by all concerned.
The stakes are high. There are valid arguments to be made on both sides of the issue. Whatever Trump decides, it will come with some degree of risk -- both for the country and for him politically.
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[ Posted Friday, June 13th, 2025 – 17:55 UTC ]
It has been a week of dangerous precedents being set -- and it's not over yet.
One precedent that didn't get much media attention (but which is truly disturbing) was Donald Trump giving a nakedly political speech to American soldiers in uniform, where he pre-screened the crowd for both looks and ideology. One memo sent out before Trump arrived specified: "No fat soldiers." Another stated: "if soldiers have political views that are in opposition to the current administration and they don't want to be in the audience, then they need to speak with their leadership and get swapped out."
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[ Posted Thursday, June 12th, 2025 – 16:20 UTC ]
The most important battle over immigration policy isn't being fought on the streets of Los Angeles right now, but rather over the airwaves. This is the fight for public opinion, and it could go either way. If the public largely sides with Trump's immigration tactics, it will strengthen his hand. But if the public decides the tactics go too far then it will weaken him in the long run. How the events of this week are ultimately seen by the public could be the deciding factor. Is Donald Trump and his administration doing what the voters elected him to do, or is he vastly overreaching in a dictatorial fashion? That's the entire rhetorical battle in a nutshell.
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[ Posted Wednesday, June 11th, 2025 – 16:21 UTC ]
The Beach Boys were one of those rare iconic bands that pretty much everyone loved to some extent or another. To put it another way, you could play their songs at any random party and it'd be rare than anyone objected. There aren't many such bands around (Creedence Clearwater Revival, the Beatles, maybe the Steve Miller Band and a handful of others) and their rarity is due to their being able to create music that was pretty universally appreciated. It's pretty hard to hate a song like "Good Vibrations," right? Their harmonization was second to none as well. Their music was dated, to be sure (it arose from the surf craze of the 1950s), but it was the best of the era (although Jan and Dean fans might quibble with that statement, to be fair). For the most part, it just made people happy to hear it. Which is exactly why Brian Wilson will indeed be missed.
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[ Posted Friday, June 6th, 2025 – 18:31 UTC ]
The world's richest man and the world's most powerful man got into an online fight yesterday, which began when Elon Musk tweeted out: "Donny Trump is a poopyhead!" -- to which Donald Trump immediately responded: "No YOU'RE the poopyhead Elon!!!"
Well, no. That's not actually how it happened. But it's not that far from the reality, sad to say.
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[ Posted Thursday, June 5th, 2025 – 16:52 UTC ]
While I do realize that a very entertaining playground fight between the world's most prominent schoolboys is currently raging, I am going to exercise a monumental amount of restraint and not address the dustup between Elon Musk and Donald Trump today. Besides, by tomorrow, there'll probably be several more amusing developments to talk about, right?
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[ Posted Friday, May 30th, 2025 – 17:43 UTC ]
This week, Wall Street figured out something about Donald Trump (that Vladimir Putin has known for quite a while now) and gave it a catchy name: "TACO." This stands for: "Trump Always Chickens Out."
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[ Posted Thursday, May 29th, 2025 – 16:59 UTC ]
Donald Trump may accomplish one big thing as president, in his second term. He may speed up the judicial process to the point where its decisions are still actually relevant when they are handed down.
I say this after the legal whiplash of the last 24 hours or so, as first two federal courts ruled (independently of each other) that Trump's worldwide tariffs were illegal, and then today an appellate court temporarily halted the injunction (which would have erased all the tariffs Trump announced on "Liberation Day"). So we're now (temporarily, at least) back to where we were before yesterday's rulings, as the appellate court has asked both the plaintiffs and the Trump administration to file their responses in the next two weeks. They could issue a final ruling on the appeal at any time after that. Obviously, no matter which way the appellate court rules, this case seems destined for the Supreme Court in the end, but nobody knows how fast they'll rule on it (if they followed their normal schedule, it'd take at least six months or so for a final ruling, but they may well expedite the case).
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[ Posted Friday, May 23rd, 2025 – 17:57 UTC ]
Once again, the Republican Party has laid out its real agenda, in the form of a federal budget. And once again, they have proven what their real priorities are: cutting taxes on the wealthiest Americans no matter what -- no matter who has to pay for it, or how.
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