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Storm is coming

Saturday, January 24, 2026

A few thoughts while waiting for the coming storm, any damage from which and any failure on the part of FEMA to respond appropriately will obviously be the fault of Joe BIden, for according to members of a certain political party everything that goes wrong is Biden’s fault.

I’ve been doing this blog now for over 20 years, as if I recall correctly, I started it sometime in January of either 2004 or 2005. I originally posted on a MAC platform which no longer exists, so the oldest posts are no longer available, but this site goes back to 2007. Of course back in those olden days I posted almost every day. Back then, even when writing about the worst things that happened, you could take a somewhat optimistic view of things, and it wasn’t hard to find something to write about where you could persuade yourself that what you were saying had some element of originality. Why, back then, even Republicans were not open and proud Nazis and they felt at least some obligation to pretend they weren’t racists. Of course, even until just recently they kept up the pretense, and they even had to abandon the anti-gay stuff and start picking on trans folks. Those days are gone now, of course. Open racism is making a comeback,so the trans folk may catch a break pretty soon.

It’s getting harder to think of things to write about because everything is so obvious that one feels there’s no need to point stuff out. For instance, does anyone really need to be told that there’s no distinction between Stephen Miller’s ICE and Hitler’s Gestapo? Okay, Miller hasn’t opened up gas chambers yet, but Hitler hadn’t either in the early days and there’s still time. Does anyone need to be told that Trump is rapidly slipping into severe dementia or that despite that obvious fact the major media, with precious few exceptions, pretends it isn’t happening? Does anyone need to be told that the anti-immigrant talk is, for most of the GOP, simply a way to distract Americans from the fact that their government, while totally controlled by said Republicans, is doing nothing for them, unless they are in the top .0001%. After all, that’s been the whole point of anti-immigrant rhetoric since the days of the Know Nothings. Does anyone need to be told that the current “Supreme” court is the worst in American history, with the possible exception of John Taney’s court and that the constitution no longer means what it says, but it means whatever John Roberts and his fellow Nazi enablers want it to mean. Does anyone even need to be told that any word coming out of the mouth of the current president, vice president, cabinet members, Trump appointed bureaucrats, Republican elected officials, or media enablers is presumptively a lie, and it’s only news when one of them accidentally lets slip the truth. Does anyone need to be told that the Democratic establishment (looking at you, Chuck Schumer) fails to understand that it’s not 1980 anymore, when there were still a few principled Republicans in elected positions.

Okay, some people do have to be told these things, but doing so will do no good, since those are the very people who believe everything they hear on Fox News, or, to be more honest about it, pretend to believe everything they hear on Fox News, as it all reinforces their bigotry and their entrenched belief that all their financial troubles, such as lack of health care, low pay, high housing costs, etc., are somehow caused not by the billionaires and their Republican enablers but by people who are worse off than they are. To bring Dylan’s lyrics up to date, they totally respond to the argument that they have “More than the [insert favorite hate target here], don’t complain”. Anyway, those people wouldn’t be reading this blog.

Back in olden times I posted a YouTube music video every week. It occurred to me that this song speaks to what’s going on today. I chose this version because I think Rhiannon Giddens is a great singer. You’ll need to sit through Paul Simon’s long introduction, but it’s worth it.

Filed in American Life, Music, Ramblings | | Comments (0)

Republicans bow down once again

Tuesday, January 13, 2026

A short while ago Trump vetoed two bills, both of which had passed the House by unanimous consent. One returned land to a Florida Native American tribe, and the other involved a pipeline project that would bring safe drinking water to rural Colorado.

There was no secret about the reasons for the vetoes, which, of course, had nothing to do with the actual merits of the bills.

The first bill was vetoed because the tribe in question had joined in a lawsuit agains the detention facility in Florida known as Alligator Alcatraz. The bill was sponsored by a Florida Republican. The other bill was vetoed because it benefited the district “represented” by Lauren Boebert, who has incurred the displeasure of our clearly not a pedophile president by supporting the release of the Epstein files. (On a side note, no one in their right mind needs much proof about Trump’s participation in Epstein’s sexual escapades. It is totally consistent with his life history.)

When he vetoed the bills it was obvious that this would be a test of the extent of any Republican resistance to Trump’s excesses, excesses that have put a lot of their seats at risk. Had each Republican that voted for the bills in the first place voted for them again, his vetoes would have been easily overridden.

As one of the linked articles notes, some Republicans actually voted to override, but of course there were not nearly enough. Given the fact that a lot of people are getting turned off by the Trump administration (for instance, some people don’t approve of ICE agents murdering people on the streets) perhaps the Democrats ought to pound away at the fact that their opponents are not standing up for the people and are treating Trump precisely the way he and folks like Hitler want to be treated: unquestioning obedience.

It goes without saying, of course, that the media will and has pretty much ignored the fact that Trump is using the veto power in order to pursue personal vendettas, rather than for policy reasons. Once again, Trump being Trump and not news. Why should the American people be told about such things and they should certainly not become major news events like they would be if Joe Biden had done them.

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New Year’s Predictions

Wednesday, December 31, 2025

I’ve done this in the past, sometimes getting things right, and sometimes getting things wrong. On the wrong side, I actually predicted, at the end of 2020 that given his recent defeat to Biden, the Republicans would consign Trump to the memory hole along with folks like George W. Bush. This year I think I’ll be mostly right, for reasons that will seem obvious when you read the predictions. So, here goes:

  1. Trump and his cohorts will continue to practice open corruption, enriching themselves at the expense of the American people. The media will treat it as Trump being Trump and therefore not worth extensive discussion.
  2. Trump will sink even further into dementia, often openly admitting, as he has been doing lately, that he is engaged in open corruption. The media will treat it as Trump being Trump and therefore not worth extensive discussion.
  3. Polls other than those done by Rasmussen will show the Democrats winning the midterms by substantial majorities. However, the outcome will still be in doubt as the Republicans will openly engage in further efforts to steal the election. The media will treat it as Republicans being Republicans and therefore not worth extensive discussion. The Supreme Court will find a way to make sure that the lower courts are prevented from stopping the thefts. I won’t attempt to predict their rationale, since they won’t attempt to spell it out. After all, what is the shadow docket for?
  4. The economy will continue to crater. The Republicans will blame the Democrats, and the media, while not specifically endorsing that narrative, will not call it out for the lie that it is.
  5. Many Democratic politicians will undermine the party’s chances by insisting on appealing to the “center”, a center which drifts endlessly to the right even though polls show most Americans supporting things to the left of that center, such as Medicare for All.
  6. The price of pardons will go up. Okay, it won’t be officially announced, but the man needs more money!
  7. If and when the Epstein files are “fully” released, we will all be amazed at how infrequently Trump is mentioned.
  8. Tonight Trump will post an ungodly number of rants on his Twitter clone, illustrating his dementia, racism, and narcissism. Of course they will be filled with lies, though who knows, he may accidentally tell the truth about something. The media will treat it as Trump being Trump and therefore not worth extensive discussion.

If I had more time I could think of more, but I have to put it up before it’s time for Item 8 to start.

Filed in The Very Stable Genius | | Comments (0)

Epstein Day

Friday, December 19, 2025

It’s my understanding that today the Epstein files, or so much of them that the Justice Department has not managed to squirrel away, are to be released. That’s what I understand. Now, on to what I don’t understand.

I don’t understand how anyone can be surprised, or fail to expect, that Trump was involved with Epstein in his exploitation of women. Yet, apparently there are MAGA types who actually felt they needed proof. Trump’s use of women was one of the things that initially brought him to public attention, as well as his one actual talent: his ability to make himself look successful, first at real estate development, when in fact he tends to fail.

Is it any surprise that he and Epstein had discussions about “how much pubic hair a particular woman had, and whether there was enough for Mr. Epstein to floss his teeth with,” or that Trump bragged about having sex with a woman on a pool table, or that Trump’s former wife warned the mother of a 14 year old that had been told to “dress sexy” at a Mar-a-Lago party that “Whatever you do, do not let her around any of these men, and especially my husband,” To be fair, Trump’s former wife issued a non-denial denial that she said those precise words, though she avoided saying that she did not give a similar warning.

The only surprising thing will be if there’s a paucity of evidence linking Trump to Epstein’s misdeeds, although that won’t really be surprising, as it is impossible to believe that Pam Bondi et. al. won’t do all they can to hide the really incriminating stuff. But they really shouldn’t worry. By next week the media will have forgotten all about it.

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Coming soon?

Thursday, December 11, 2025

I’m in the process of reading the latest issue of Connecticut History Review. This issue is an anthology of articles about women’s struggle in Connecticut for equal rights. It contains an article by Claudia Clark about women who worked for the Waterbury Clock Company (later Timex) in the 1920s. Their job was to paint radium onto the dials of self-luminescent watches and clocks. Among other things they were told to use their lips to bring the tip of the brushes to a point. In the process of doing so they ingested radium, which killed many of them. Clark describes how the company got away with it by using its political influence to, among other things, keep the victims from having recourse to the workers compensation system and other forms of legal recourse. She makes the point that they were helped tremendously by the legislature, which was dominated by conservative Republicans. She makes the further point that this dominance was at least in part,and perhaps largely, attributable to the fact that the districts that were represented in the state legislature greatly differed in population. A state representative from a city represented far more people than one from a small town, so his (they were all he’s) constituents lacked the political power of residents of a small town. Of course, the more progressive types tended to live in the cities. They may have outnumbered their rural counterparts, but their political influence was not proportional to their numbers.

This started me thinking about the so-called Supreme Court. It is now in the process of making what were independent agencies political pawns of a mentally ill president, reserving, of course, the right to restrict future presidents should they be Democrats. In order to do that it must, and will, overturn an 80 year old precedent. That same Supreme Court has ruled that, at least in Republican states, gerrymandering is a “political question” outside the purview of the courts, despite the fact that its avowed purpose is to frustrate the will of the actual majority of the people in a state.

One reason Connecticut no longer has a legislature in which a small town (say, North Stonington) has as much political influence as a large city (say, Hartford) is because back in 1962 an actual Supreme Court ruled that the manner in which a state created political districts was not a political question, eventually ruling that each voter was entitled to equal representation in legislative chambers. The case was Baker v. Carr and its progeny. The Wikipedia article gives the full story quite well.

Gerrymandering works, but going back to the days when a legislative district in a small town had as much political power as an entire city would serve Republican interests even more. One has to wonder whether that’s on the agenda. Frankly, I can’t imagine this “Supreme” Court ruling against any red state that chose to go back to such a system. It would, once again, become a “political question”, a position the Baker v. Carr court rejected. Such a system would almost certainly cement Republican control of all current red states, and, should they get a transient majority in a swing state (say, Pennsylvania), it would make such a state permanently red.

One more thing while we’re at it. I wouldn’t be surprised if the legislatures in the states that have gerrymandered or otherwise assured Republican majorities despite what the majority of voters might want will vote to do away with presidential elections in their states. Remember, the constitution does not require, or even envision, popular elections of presidents or of presidential electors. The constitution provides as follows,and this provision has never been repealed or modified by any amendment to the constitution:

Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number
of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the
State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person
holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an
Elector.

States started adopting statutes that essentially allowed the voters to choose the electors fairly early, but those statutes can be repealed at any time, and it would in fact (as opposed to most of the gerrymandering) be completely constitutional. The Founders were perhaps a bit too optimistic about the future. They must have figured that future legislatures would act in good faith.

Filed in Creeping Totalitarianism | | Comments (0)

Supreme corruption

Friday, December 5, 2025

Yesterday the “Supreme” Court blocked a lower court ruling that conclusively demonstrated that the gerrymanding that took place in Texas was illegal. Naturally, the “court” took no pains to explain its ruling, or why it chose to depart from its own precedent to further enable the rise of fascism in this country. Read more at the link.

Not giving coherent reasons for their decisions is a plus from their point of view for a number of reasons. For instance, when they choose to reverse lower court opinions upholding California’s gerrymandering, which took place in response to that of Texas, they can once again avoid giving a coherent reason that is in any way consistent with previous case law.

Given the prior history of the Supreme Court (see, the Dred Scot decision authored by an outright racist (not that the current “justices” aren’t racist, but they’re not totally outright about it. ) it’s hard to believe that we now have the worst Supreme Court in history, but they’re right up there, contemporaneous with the worst president in history, which also takes some doing.

A few weeks ago I wrote what was meant to be a satirical post couched as a Supreme Court opinion. The fact is, the logic in that post is pretty much equivalent to the logic in recent Supreme Court decisions, and who knows, perhaps we will see the court draw a distinction between thoughts and speech.

Filed in Creeping Totalitarianism, Equal Justice | | Comments (0)

A CTBlue Exclusive!

Friday, November 14, 2025

I’m pleased to announce that I’ve come into possession of a draft copy of an upcoming Supreme Court decision. Keep in mind that this decision has been written in advance of the actual case in which it will be applied, so some of the pertinent information, such as dates and names will be filled in at the appropriate time. Along with the decision I have a memo from Roberts to the rest of the fascists conservatives on the court. First, the memo:

I was recently contacted by Attorney General Bondi to let me know about an upcoming executive order to which we will need to give our imprimatur. The nature of the order is described in the draft decision I have attached. Would you please look it over and give me any recommendations you may have. I would particularly appreciate it if any of you could come up with language whereby we can later rule that our opinion does not apply if a Democrat should become president. I have had trouble finding language that leaves that possibility open that is written in such a way that we can deny that is what we are doing. Consider the language in the second to the last paragraph simply a placeholder.

The issue will come to us on appeal from the defendant, as Ms. Bondi intends to bring the case in a certain court in Florida where we need not worry about the trial judge issuing an adverse decision or a friendly jury issuing a finding of not guilty. You will also note that I have cited to a case not issued yet, the one in which we intend to agree that Trump’s executive orders all have the force of law.

The decision follows:

(Judge Roberts writing for the court) The defendant (name to be determined) brings this appeal after (her/his) conviction of thought crimes. On [date] President Trump issued an executive order declaring it a violation of the Insurrection Act to think certain thoughts, namely any thought that he did not like. On [date], in response to this executive order, the defendant orally stated that [she/he] “thought that the President was creating a fascist state”. The thought police, a newly created division of ICE, arrested [him/her}, and charged [him/her] with violating the Insurrection Act. The defendant went to trial, the Honorable Aileen Cannon presiding, and was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. Defendant brings this appeal.

[He/she] has appealed on two grounds. First [he/she] challenges the legality of the executive order issued by President Trump, claiming that he does not have the constitutional right to enact laws and that his executive order essentially created a new criminal law. This argument is now moot, as this court has previously ruled in the case of [United States vs. Defendant] that this is a political issue with which this court will not interfere, though we did expressly state that we might reconsider in 2028 depending on future events.

The defendant’s second claim has not previously been decided by this court. Defendant claims that the executive order violates the Free Speech guarantee of the First Amendment. Defendant argues that [she/he] was merely expressing an opinion, in [his/her] telling, one amply supported by the facts. The court hereby sustains the verdict reached in the trial court. Defendant’s claim that [he/she] is being punished for [his/her] exercise of [his/her] free speech rights is belied by the facts. It is certainly the case that the First Amendment protects the Defendant’s right to speak. [He/she] is not being punished for [his/her] speech. [He/she] is being punished for [his/her] thoughts. The words spoken by the defendant were merely evidence about what [he/she] was thinking. Indeed, they amount to a confession that [he/she] was thinking things that offended the president deeply. Defendant appears to claim that thoughts and speech are the same things, but they are not. There is nothing in the First Amendment that guarantees any right to any citizen of the United States to free thought. It follows therefore that the President may declare thoughts that he does not like criminal acts. An individual’s spoken words may be used as evidence as to what they are thinking, but the words themselves are not the criminal act. It is the case, for instance, that a person may make a statement that is completely different than what they think. For instance, it is widely known that politicians of a certain political party often make statements of fact completely at odds with what they know to be true. In such a case a jury should find that there has been no criminal act since the spoken words did not actually reflect what the defendant actually thought. In this case, however, there can be no doubt that the spoken words were strong evidence of what the defendant actually thought. Indeed, the evidence is such that there can be no reasonable doubt as to the defendant’s guilt. This conclusion is further supported by the fact that defendant never, during the course of the trial, denied thinking that the President was creating a fascist state. Indeed, during the trial, defendant conceded that [she/he] did think the President was creating a fascist state, testimony that itself further supports the conviction.

Defendant also claimed at trial that the case should be dismissed because what [he/she] said and thought was true. The truth or falsity of the offending statement is entirely irrelevant. The government must simply prove that the defendant has thought something that displeases the president. This has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Judge Cannon was entirely correct when she excluded evidence from experts on fascism prepared to testify as to the truth of the defendant’s statements and she was also correct when she referred those experts for prosecution since their willingness to testify as to the truth of the defendant’s thoughts was strong evidence, more than establishing probable cause, that they also thought the president was creating a fascist state.

It goes without saying that this decision may not be used as precedent on or after November 2028, depending on how the presidential election turns out.

In this judgment, all six sitting Justices of the Supreme Court concurred. Justices Jackson, Sotomayor and Kagan were unable to participate, as they are currently in detention, charged with thought crimes due to their insistence on claiming, and therefore thinking, that this president has consistently violated the Constitution and, by implication, is creating a fascist state.

There are those who doubt that this is really the product of the current Supreme Court, but is there anything about it that makes those doubts legitimate?

Filed in Creeping Totalitarianism, Orwellian | | Comments (1)

I hope I’m wrong about this

Sunday, November 9, 2025

This has come down today:

The Trump administration told states that they must “immediately undo” any actions to provide full food stamp benefits to low-income families, in a move that added to the chaos and uncertainty surrounding the nation’s largest anti-hunger program during the government shutdown.

The Democrats are already attacking it for the cruelty that it is, but at least to me it is somewhat more ominous. Lots of people who were stupid enough to vote for Trump are on food stamps, and this step will just further alienate these people from the Republican Party. Despite what the Republicans want the media to believe and/or endlessly repeat, by and large the American people blame the Republicans for what is currently happening. Trump, and by extension the Republicans generally, have reached new lows in polling and last weeks elections demonstrated that the tide is turning rather dramatically. And while I’m sure someone on Fox will come up with a way to blame Democrats for this latest bit of cruelty, even though there is no logical way you can do that, given that it is an arbitrary act on the part of a Republican controlled government, very few of the affected people will believe it.

So we have a situation in which the Republican Party is needlessly alienating its own potential voters. There are only two reasons they would do that. The first is that they are unbelievably stupid and don’t see the potential harm to their own electoral prospects.

I’d like to believe that is the reason they are doing it, but personally I think the second reason is more likely. They expect, with the help of gerrymandering, a complicit Supreme Court and other devices, to steal enough elections to keep control of the government despite what the majority of voters might want. I would hope that the Democrats in Congress and Democratic leaders nationwide would be aware of this distinct possibility and do what they can to prevent the fascists from doing away with what’s left of our democracy. They should keep in mind that the Republicans have been accusing them of stealing elections for years, and it is a proven fact by now that when Republicans make accusations they are really making confessions.

Filed in Creeping Totalitarianism, Republican Corruption | | Comments (0)

The less “religious” you are the more Christian you are

Sunday, November 2, 2025

This post at Skepchick got me thinking about one of my bugaboos, the willingness of the press and most writers, no matter how liberal they might be, to call a certain brand of fascists that are common in this country “White Christian Nationalists”, a title that confers respectability on horrible people. They are not Christians, if you define a Christian as a person who believes in the teaching of Jesus, and while they may be “nationalists” that term is not one understood for what it is by most people in our polity.

It is a fact in this country that the more a person claims to be a Christian, the more likely they are to commit what the Christian religions formally label sins and the more likely they are to be against all the things for which Christ allegedly advocated. As an example, Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, routinely lies to the press, which according to my understanding (I have an advanced degree in theology from Our Lady of Sorrows grammar school, formerly (god be praised!) in Hartford, Connecticut) violates the eighth commandment, which despite the fact that it was handed down to a Jew, is still binding on Christians. Those same professed Christians are also against things like helping the poor, sick and homeless, all things for which Christ advocated, choosing instead to make it even harder for the rich to get through that proverbial eye of the needle, by making their further enrichment their sole priority.

The post to which I’ve linked is about the fact that studies have shown what I and others who have escaped religion would have predicted: that people who move on from religion are most likely to drift left in their political views. That is, they are more likely to believe that one should actually live according to the principles for which Christ advocated than the people they left behind. I suspect this is particularly true of those, like Skepchick herself, who come from an evangelical background. As a point of information evangelicals are commonly referred to in this blog as “whackjobs”. The post also highlights the fact that more and more people in this country are replying “none” when asked about their religious preferences. This is not truly probative, but I have noticed on my Sunday bike rides that the whackjob churches I pass are generally pretty full, while the parking lots at the “mainstream” churches can be pretty empty. A number of those mainstream churches here in Groton have closed in the last few years, either replaced by whackjobs, or remaining empty, all of which supports the finding that “none” is rapidly becoming the religion of choice for many people, particularly those in the non insane (i.e., blue) states.

So, the long and short of it is that many, if not most, of the people in this country who actually believe in following the teachings of Jesus Christ are people who reject religion itself. They are the only ones who have a right to call themselves Christians. They may not believe in Christ’s divinity, but they agree with his principles.

Filed in American Life, Hypocrisy, Religion, Republicans | | Comments (0)

A Republican rebrand locally

Saturday, October 25, 2025

As I write this I am sitting in the room adjacent to the Registrar of Groton’s office. Early voting is going on in the registrar’s office, and we are taking care of new registrants in the room in which I am planted. Early voting for the municipal offices has been ongoing for a week and it’s my understanding that the turnout has been fairly good. I thought when I agreed to work some of these days that I’d be assigned to log in the folks who came to vote, but I am in fact helping to register new voters, and as you can imagine, the number of people coming in to register for the first time is far lower than those already registered who are coming in to vote. In fact, as of the time I write this, the number of new voters is in the single digit. It may be a little more busy here on Election Day itself, but it won’t be like last year’s Election Day, when I also helped register voters and we were pretty busy.

The municipal elections here in Groton may well be a test of how informed the average voter may be. Before the orange fascist came along the Republicans in Groton usually held majorities in our municipal offices and were either the majority or close to the majority in the Representative Town Meeting (RTM). That all changed after Trump’s first election. The year after he won, the Democrats won not just a majority on the Town Council (the Board of Ed and the RTM both have minority representation requirements) but, if memory serves, either all nine seats or all but one.

The Republican Party here in Groton is now a shell of its former self. Until that time years ago it was headed by fairly reasonable people. You know, people whose parents were Republicans in the olden days, who became Republicans themselves and really didn’t focus on what was happening to their party nationally. They have been displaced by whackjobs and the party itself has, this year, been unable to field a full slate of candidates. In the district in which I live, in which a fairly high percentage of Republicans reside (It contains Groton Long Point, a rich person enclave that sticks out into Long Island Sound), the party has failed to nominate a single person to the RTM, despite the fact that at least one of them would win no matter how many votes he or she got.

Realizing that their brand has fallen into disfavor, many of the whackjobs have rebranded themselves as members of the Groton Independent Party, the candidates being indistinguishable from a policy perspective from the Republican candidates. It is not the refuge of those old fashioned Republicans I described above, who have dropped out of politics and/or become Democrats. However, that is something of which not every voter is aware. We will soon be finding out how many people will blindly vote for a rebranded Republican because, after all, doesn’t voting for an Independent prove you’re not a captive of either party?

Filed in Local issues, Republicans | | Comments (0)