***Dave Does the Blog

Propositioning and Good Government

Wherein I rant a bit too much about ballot proposals and their need and their dangers and national political hypocrisy about them.

This is a long article on the plenitude of ballot measures Colorado voters will be facing at the polls this November — a record-breaking 15, which is even more noteworthy for this being a mid-term year.

Colorado voters will face a potential record number of ballot questions, including the ‘battle of the year’

Coming in November: a ballot measure crush, asking Colorado voters to decide thorny questions.

www.denverpost.com/2026/08/09/colorado-ballot-measures-election-initiatives/

Once the ballot is set, I’ll probably comment on the proposals being made, but I want to natter about the whole ballot measure process in general, and some weird (and aggravating) trends in it.

The idea of voters being able to directly put (by petition) changes to state law or to the state constitution is from the Progressive era, around the turn of the 20th Century. It was an attempt to break the power of state legislatures — or, rather, the power of monied interests which could easily dominate a state legislature. It was the same movement that gave us direct election of US Senators at large, rather than having that position elected by the state legislature.

It’s one of those ideas that has been messy, but, to my mind, valuable. Yes, as in any lawmaking process, results occur that I don’t like. But the principle involved, of a means of direct democracy by the voters, rather than representatives, is a valuable one.

In recent years, criticism of the ballot measure has most often come from the Right. This has been a direct result of conservative-dominated state legislatures being frustrated by popular measures on controversial culture-war subjects like reproductive rights. They’ve been especially angry about these things being installed into state constitutions where the lege has a much more difficult time thwarting them.

Well, duh. There have been far too many cases, in every state with such a process, of the voters putting forward a new law that the state lege wouldn’t, only to have the state representatives pass a new law invalidating it.

Part of the problem here comes from, in the US, our engrained two-party system. It allows for the populace to feel one way about a particular issue (say, reproductive rights), but still be voting in as representives folk who feel the other way about that issue. Voting by party becomes an all-or-nothing matter — vote for the GOP for fiscal conservatism, get social conservatism as part of the package deal (this is analagous to the Democratic side). The ballot proposition mechanism allows for a finer granularity of popular opinion — I can vote for Smith because of their position on taxes while overriding their paranoia about gay marriage through a ballot proposition if need be.

Anyway, what we’ve been seeing in recent years is the Right pushing back on the ballot proposition — either calling for it to be gotten rid of, or requiring some sort of super-majority to pass changes (particularly to the state constitution). The idea is to rein in those messy voters, though it’s usually framed as “keeping state constitutions neat and tidy” and “putting the brakes on radical proposals.” Scratch the surface, and you get arguments about how the law and the constitution are complicated things and how voters aren’t really qualified to understand tax or social policy and how ballot propositions are often sloppy in their wording and therefore have unexpected impacts and …

It all boils down to “Trust the Elected Legislature, not the Popular Citizenry. They’re qualified to vote for us (once we’ve gerrymandered the districts properly), but not to vote for actual laws and amendments. We have analysts, and legal experts, and lobbyists to tell us how things should be done; the hoi-polloi are not to be trusted, because they vote with their emotions, not based on what the party leadership dictates.”

Now, I have actually made some of those same arguments at times. Usually in complaining when folk I disagree with have put forward broad, sweeping, sloppy propositions that would do things I don’t like. Democracy (and representative democracy) is messy. And it’s true that the citizenry doesn’t have (easy) access to expert testimony and advice in these efforts. It’s true that really sloppy things that have unintended consequences get written into state constitutions. It’s true that emotional appeals to the voters (“think of the chlidren!”) sometimes lead to bad policy.

But it’s also true that these are sometimes the only way that the voters really have a voice in a particular matter. Our two-party system lacks nuance or the idea that I might like Jones for four out of five of his positions, but strongly disagree with him on the fifth, but I can’t elect just 80% of him. And while the voting population can be swayed by emotional appeals, that’s still a more legitimate basis for governance than the flood of money that washes over state governments (the federal one) from interest that want certain things, regardless of how the population feels. And, let’s be honest, elected representatives are not dispassionate icons of wisdom and justice; they seem just as likely as Joe Six-Pack to let knee-jerk emotionalism dictate their positions as lobbying money or party diktat, and none of those make for good government.

Anyway, that’s not why I started writing this.

One of the fascinating and/or aggravating things about the Denver Post article is that while the trend to somehow disarm or restrict or do away with ballot propositions has, nationally, been coming from the Right … in a very blue state like Colorado, we see the opposite. The conservative activists and organizations here see ballot propositions as the only way to advance focused-issue changes. The liberals, on the other hand, are the ones bemoaning poorly-educated voters and poorly-written proposals. The arguments are flipped, because the power balance here is different than in places like Florida or Texas or Louisiana. Change who has the institutional power, and you change the stake-holders in challenging it.

In other words, such arguments are not a matter of principle for too many of the folk quoted, left and right. They’re about expediency and interest. If I have power, I don’t want it taken away. If I don’t have power, I want to have it. If my pet issue (guns, LGBTQ rights, reproductive rights, taxation, civil rights, immigration) is not being managed the way I want, I want to be able to change it. If it is, then I want to protect it from people who want to change it.

It’s hypocritical, and therefore annoying. Because I’m naive enough to feel that we should be basing governance (including how we manage the laws and constitutions) on principles — those high-fallutin’ things we talk about each Fourth of July, like justice, and equal protection under the law, and the voice of the majority, and the rights of the minority. We should not be basing it on “how can I most get what I want”. Unless you want selfishness and self-interest as the basis of governance, and I think we have too much of that already.

I don’t want to trivialize those “pet causes” by making them out to be just about self-interest. People feel passionately about such single issues, especially when you get into culture war matters. Indeed, that’s why ballot proposals are so important, because they give an outlet to that passion that the normal course of representative government does not. And that makes things complicated and messy and sometimes very disappointing.

But saying “We want this governance mechanism enhanced because it give us what we want on issue X” and then, while still maintaining that feeling about issue X, changing to “We want this governance mechanism to be done away with because it threatens to take from us what we want on issue X” — well, that is only logically coherent and defensible if any government, in any form, that aligns with you on issue X is acceptable to you. “I don’t mind if we have a dictatorship, as long as I get what I want on issue X; I don’t care who else, including myself, gets hurt doing it, as long as we take care of issue X!”

And that’s how you get a Donald Trump. Or any other demagogue who runs roughshod over the republic and how it’s run. Or worse.

Good governance doesn’t guarantee the results you want on any particular issue. But bad governance is an even worse way, because it makes it all the more likely that a whole bunch of issues will be settled a way you don’t like. Governmental mechanisms, be they ballot propositions or direct election of Senators or how we carve up voting districts, or filibustering, or anything like that, should be based on principle, not “how do I get power,” because if nothing else, power is always shifting, and pushing for what is expedient to you today will mean someone else in power can turn it on you tomorrow … unless you plan to rig things to never let others have power again. Which is not good principle or good governance.

Movie Review: “The Odyssey” (2026)

Nolan’s masterwork lives up to his ambition as a myth for today

4.0 Acting
5.0 Production
4.5 Story
4.5 OVERALL with a ♥

So, first off, amazing effort. Just stunning visualizations, some great acting, scenes that moved me to tears — just amazing. Also an amazing way to get all my classicist friends and relative fiercely debating interpretations, cuts, twists, bends, and perspective.

This review may have some spoilers (albeit for a movie about a thousands-years-old epic).

Story

Per the credits, the movie is “based on” Homer’s tale, and yes, this is not a ine–by-line rendition or translation. Things are left out. Things are put in. Things are changed.

But, then, that’s what everyone does. The Odyssey itself was an eventual writing down of many oral traditions, long after the story of Odysseus trying to get home from the Trojan Wars was first told, alongside countless other tales of other such journeys (or, in the case of Virgil’s Aeneid, the flight of the survivors of Troy to eventually found Rome). The question’s not, does Nolan give us a documentary of the journey, but are the ties to Homer’s tale and characters apparent, and does the resulting film stand up on its own.

And the answers here are, to my mind, a resounding yes. This is a retelling of the Odyssey for an early 21st Century audience. It’s not the only way the story could or should be told, but it has integrity and vision. This is Odysseus through the eyes of the last century of wars and homecomings, of the zeitgeist of changing (and perhaps failing) civil and social conventions, of the pitfalls and pains of leadership. It works for what it is trying to be. Those who want it to be something else are free to roll their own — I’m pretty sure the source material is public domain.

I’ve seen some folk refer to the film as a horror movie, and there are aspects of that, particularly in the nightmarish sense of danger and death during the long voyage. Some of the Bad Things that happen are the fault of Odysseus, or his crew. Some of them are just Bad Things, out of their control, but subjecting them to horrific consequences. That lack of control (even while feeling a sense of responsibility) is much of the drive for the protagonist, layered atop the guilt he feels for his actions in the Trojan War.

(That last part isn’t some modern revisionism, by the way. The Romans, who considered themselves descended from the Trojans, considered Ulysses/Odysseus a major villain. Dante puts him in his Inferno down amidst the Bad Advisors for his tricky plans and war crimes. Odysseus is, as Homer puts it in the opening lines, a complex / many-sided / shrewd / shifty / wily man.)

From a more meta level of looking at the story, there’s a weird tension in the movie between the presence of magic and the mythic (e.g., the cyclops) and the lack of overt interference by the gods themselves. The movie opens with the text, “It is a time of apparent magic,” an odd phrase that sets up that conflict, and it’s never quite resolved. Indeed, aside from Odysseus occasionally seeing and chatting with, Athena, the gods are present only by reference and assumptions of Bad Things Happening because of their displeasure. As far as that goes, it’s possible to see the movie as having no actual magic, save in the hallucinatory ramblings of a PTSD veteran — all the overtly magical things that happen during Odysseus’ trip home are being told recalled by him, still half-muddled by lotus-eating, to Calypso. Are they real? Or are they the nightmarish twists and turns of memory to explain away so much death? The viewer gets to decide, and I’m fine with that.

While the magic stuff gets all the focus when people talk about the Odyssey, much of the plot in both Homer and Nolan’s tellings are around the succession battles back home in Ithaca — young Telemachus, loyal Penelope, the dastardly suitors. Nolan smooths out some of the convolutions here to keep that plot in the center of things, and (believe it or not) tones down the violence that ends that particular conflict. We do get a bit too much Jason Bourne here in the final confrontation between Odysseus and the suitors, and the decision to make Antinous the suitors’ first among equals, and a particular slime bucket, feels a bit conventional (if understandable).

Though a 3-hour film, it didn’t feel that long by the time we got to the ending — where Nolan deviates the most from the original text, though in ways that suit modern film, especially if we’re going to avoid overt godliness. I won’t spoil it, but it combines a bit of the Nausicaa/oar tale with the (less pleasant) fate Dante improvised for Ulysses in his Divine Comedy, but with a sense of resolution and satisfaction that heroes in the original Greek tales rarely attain.

Production

Nolan’s willingness to spend a lot of time and money doing amazing things with practical effects and location shoots is widely known, and it both shows here and pays off. Are there computer-generated SFX here? Sure. But their use is limited (and marvelous); cyclopes are difficult to find these days, after all, and while we can appreciate visual tricks to avoid showing cyclops schlong, doing the same to avoid cyclops face would feel cheap and weird.

Instead, we get lots of shoots in lots of locations, and if something could be built (or borrowed), rather than rendered, Nolan did it. Yes, that’s actually a viking ship recreation — but it feels like it could be Odysseus boat. Yes, that’s Iceland, not Hades — but it’s creepifyingly glorious in its otherworldliness, and feels far more real than a lot of blue screen work.

Kudos for a nifty re-envisioning of the Trojan horse. And, holy smokes, many topless towers of Illium were burned for this film.

And even when we get CG work, as noted, it’s for appropriately unearthly bits — the cyclops will be giving people nightmares for years (and change every rendition of such a creature forever). Scylla was delightfully uncanny. Even the oddly revised Laestrygonians look amazing in their activity.

Talking about production decisions brings to complaints made about historical accuracy. Well, sorry, this is not a documentary. It’s a 2026 movie based on a set of tales put in writing the 8th Century BC, and based on oral traditions about a war that happened in the 13th Century BC. The best we can hope for is verisimilitude in any “historic epic,” something that feels right and true as a backdrop for the story. If Matt Damon showed up in bright colors and wearing a boars-tooth helmet, the audience would laugh, even if that would have been more “accurate” for the period (or some period, at least).

(That said, some of the armor was … a bit sketch, enough to attract my attention as feeling off. That includes Agamemnon’s battle suit. That particular interpretation missed the mark for me.)

For folk complaining about “American accents” and language like “Dad” — it’s no less historical than having a bunch of Received English Shakespearean actors intone lines like the Bard wrote them — and the movie would probably not do well if it were scripted in Homeric Greek (or the earlier tongues that were present at the time the mythic events were supposedly set). The language and accents didn’t take me out of the film — it made the characters feel more real.

Acting

Overall, the cast does a solid job with what they are given. Matt Damon (Odysseus) gets the lion’s share here, as title character, and he ably carries the movie and the shifts of fortune for his character. He comes across well as driven, guilty, overwhelmed, dedicated, defiant. Good job. Tom Holland (Telemachus) is mostly hampered by what the role allows him to do and be beyond an impotently angry young man, uncertain how he can get Ithaca’s house in order, but he steps up to it admirably. Anne Hathaway (Penelope) is utterly believable in her whiplash shifts between loneliness, weariness, fury, and frustration. Robert Pattinson (Antinous) is a good enough sleazebag that sometimes he seems almost sincere, before demonstrating his sleaze. John Leguizamo (Eumaeus) gives us some great lines and the human side of how things are falling apart in kingless Ithaca. Samantha Morton (Circe) is creepy and dangerous and just a bit crazy, believably so.

Everyone else? They do just fine, too.

The topic, though, brings up two more areas of (in some cases, manufactured) controversy.

First, there have been plentiful complaints about the lack of actual Greeks in a film about a foundational Greek epic. I can understand that, though I’m pretty with the cast’s performance as it is, adding a token Greek actor would have been seen as tokenism, and making an all- or mostly-Greek cast would be getting us back in to the historicity debate (is it enough to have Greek faces? should they be speaking Greek? should they be speaking ancient Greek? how related are modern Greeks to the Achaeans of 3500 years ago? is the story about being Greek?). For that matter, if the argument is that the Odyssey is a cornerstone for Western Civilization, has it grown beyond being “just” a Greek story?

If this is meant to be a movie about Greek culture, it is not. But I don’t think that’s what it’s meant to be, or what I expected it to be.

The bigger (and nastier) argument has been around race, in particular the casting of Kenyan-Mexican actress Lupita Nyong’o as Helen (and her sister, Clytemnestra). An outrage, we are told! Helen wasn’t Black! Greeks weren’t Black! Homer mentions her as being blond! It’s woke tokenistic DEI casting!

I call bullshit.

First, arguing that Nolan as so incredibly “insensitive” as to shut out Greek actors from the casting, but so “woke” as to include a completely “inappropriate” Black actress as Helen seems contradictory. Get your stories straight, folks.

Second, yes, this is a movie, not a documentary. It’s a myth, not a history. The (mythic) Helen was hatched from an egg, fergoshsakes. Sure, the (mythic) Helen probably did not look like Nyong’o. The (mythic) Odysseus probably did not look like Damon. The (mythic) Telemachus probably did not look like Holland.

The key thing about Helen is not her hair color, or even her skin color. It’s her beauty. She is so strikingly beautiful that Paris is willing to risk war to kidnap her, and that Menelaus is willing to stir up a decade-long war and siege in order to get her back. She is literally (or literarily) the face that launched a thousand ships (and burned the topless towers of Ilium).

I find Nyong’o strikingly beautiful. Indeed, the skin tone contrast to most of the rest of the cast makes her even more striking. To that point, I find it perfectly appropriate casting, and am only sorry we don’t get to see more of her (in either role) during the film (though I understand why).

Her being Black does not alter the meaning of what Helen is and represents, in general or in this film.

Net-net

I had a great time seeing this movie in a theater (not IMAX, but good enough). The time flew. I don’t know how soon I’ll want to watch it a gain (it is an emotional kick in the gut more than once), but Nolan has created (or re-interpreted) something very special here. Bravo.

Do you want to know more?

(This is an expansion of my initial review on Letterboxd.)

Popes, Politics, Policy, Morality, and “Lanes”

When should a public policy item be morally judged? When can it ever not be?

Hot off of overseeing the fall of the Orban regime, failing to secure an unlikely peace with Iran, and, as far as I can tell, killing the last Pope (that one’s probably not completely true), Trump attack dog J. D. Vance is back in the news, lambasting the (new, as-yet-unkilled-by-him) Pope for not staying in his lane regarding the US war on Iran.

JD Vance defends Trump amid spat with Pope Leo: ‘Stick to matters of morality’

Catholic vice-president effectively tells Leo to stay in his lane after pope criticized the White House over the Iran war

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/apr/14/jd-vance-defends-trump-pope-leo-spat

Quoth Vance, himself a Catholic convert:

It would be best for the Vatican to stick to matters of morality, to stick to matters of what’s going on in the Catholic church and let the president of the United States stick to dictating American public policy.

Really?

For the last half-century — arguably since the founding of the US, but I’ll focus on politics-as-I-remember-it — the conservative right has been asserting, if not demanding, that morality should be and must a key component of public policy. Every discussion of sexuality, of civil rights, of reproductive freedom, has had the evangelicals, the GOP, and the Right in general demanding that morality is intrinsic to decision-making and actions. Hell, every argument still being made about gay marriage, or trans rights, or what books shouldn’t be in the library are still framed as moral issues.

And, of course, they were right.

All actions have a moral dimension to them — in how we interact with and treat ourselves, our world, and each other.

The same is true of government action. Public policy does not occur in a moral vacuum (that, itself, would be a course with moral implications). If an action affects individuals, groups, people in general, morality comes into play.

The catch, of course, is whose morality is expressed in such policy. If I want a book to be banned, that’s my moral judgment being asserted. If I want a book not to be banned, that’s founded in morality as well. In either case, I want what is “right,” what is “best for everyone” (or for “the children” or for “intellectual freedom,” or for …).

That expression of morality gets resolved at a micro level in this country through the democratic process — elected officials and (directly or indirectly) elected policy makers making decisions, passing laws and regulations, and applying those to given circumstances. At a macro level, that’s done within the framework of existing laws, up to state and federal constitutional restrictions on what government can do and why. And even that level can be changed through direct and indirect democratic processes.

In other words, Vance’s attempt to draw a bright line between the Pope handling questions of morality and the Dear Leader handling questions of public policy is nonsensical.

Indeed, the Trump administration has been explicit in trying to assert (or assume) a moral case for the Iran War. Look at Pete Hegseth gleefully foaming at the mouth as he quotes the Bible about God crushing evil-doers. Look at Trump talk in semi-coherent terms about the Iranians (or their leaders) being “not good people.”

Look at Trump pretending to be Jesus, surrounded by soldiers and fighter jets and angelic warriors …

AI figure of Trump as Jesus, reposted by Trump on social media. — “I thought it was me as a doctor,” he claimed.

I’m pretty sure morality is being expressed there. As well as a bit of blasphemy and a lot of poor taste.

Even the fundamentally lucid arguments about the war — keeping Iran from becoming a nuclear power to protect the lives of potentially millions of people — assume a moral position of “protecting (some) innocent lives is good.”

And it is good. Protecting the Middle East, and the world, and ourselves from a government that has actively used terror as a policy tool coming into possession of nuclear weapons — that’s a (defensible) moral goal. Freeing the Iranian people of a theocratic regime that has ruthlessly and bloodily oppressed its people — that’s a (fraught but also defensible) moral goal as well.

Of course, how one goes about such actions, as well as an analysis of other reasons why one pursues such a course — those are questions of morality, too. Lobbing Tomahawk missiles and sending stealth bombers to blow up Iranian military targets and anything that happens to be around them — that has obvious moral implications. Threatening, even as a negotiating tactic, to destroy civilian infrastructure, to bomb a country “back to the Stone Age,” to “end a civilization” … I’m pretty sure there are moral components there, too.

For Vance to suggest that one can (and, by implication, that his boss has) separate “matters of morality” from “American public policy,” and that the Pope should stick to the former as his lane and shut up about US military actions, is so misguided as to be disingenuous. Vance is smarter than that. Trump, maybe, can’t juggle those concepts (especially as his fundamental morality seems to be “If I want to do it, it’s okay”), but Vance knows better, including here:

The president has the prerogative to set American foreign policy, he’s got the prerogative to set American immigration policy. He has to look out for the interests of the United States of America, and that inevitably means that when the Vatican comments on issues of public policy, sometimes there’s going to be agreement, of course, and sometimes there’s going to be disagreement.

The President does, in fact, legally have the prerogative about such policy (though he is bound by law and the Constitution as to how he goes about pursuing those policies). That doesn’t mean they are independent of morality, as Trump’s very statements about them show otherwise. Pope Leo isn’t suggesting that the President of the United States must obey him, that the Papacy has authority over American policy. He’s doing his job — calling out his evaluation of the (im)morality of actions take under those policies.

After spending all that time trying to draw an artificial line between Trumpian policy and questions of morality, Vance’s conclusion?

When they’re in conflict, they’re in conflict. I don’t worry about it too much.

Hey, J. D., given your boss’ ongoing attacks on the Pope …

Trump says he won't apologize to Pope Leo and explains his reason for posting much-criticized meme

President Donald Trump is refusing to apologize to Pope Leo XIV after criticizing the pontiff's opposition to the war in Iran.

apnews.com/article/trump-pope-leo-xiv-02f6b4554ea4b83af02af15987ae1f2d

… I think he is worrying about it a bit.

The Wheels on the Spouse Go Round and Round

“Mawwiage!”

Today I celebrate my 31st wedding anniversary.

There’s a lot more gray (if not white) in the hair these days, what is left of it — that’s of course referring to me; my wife is ageless.

This anniversary is a bit of a milestone for us: we are both officially retired. Which means we are both spending a lot more time together than we used to.

So far, though, so good — no signs that we won’t make it to 32.

Brother, Can You Spare the Dime?

So much for the idea of extending an olive branch.

The Trump Regime continues to show its violent barbarism, in big ways and small.

A big way would be whipping up from practically nothing the need and action of going to war with Iran right now. Insert the caveats about the Iranian theocracy as you like, but the multitude of rationales, excuses, justifications, and reasons given by the Trumpists, none of which seem to have stuck, betray the moral and geopolitical bankruptcy that now runs the United States.

It’s the small ways, though, that will probably last the longest.

In “honor” of the Sesquicentennial of the Declaration of Independence (and, Lord, how it galls me to see that man lording over such a celebration), Trump’s US Mint has redesigned the dime.

Dime

Learn more about the dime, America’s ten-cent circulating coin. The Roosevelt design was first issued in 1946 and is being replaced for one year only in 2026 by the Emerging Liberty Dime.

www.usmint.gov/learn/coins-and-medals/circulating-coins/dime

Gone for the 250th is the Roosevelt Dime, with its obverse image of FDR. Never mind the whole “March of Dimes” / Polio connection (the Regime is too busy bringing polio back to the US). Never, even, mind that Franklin Roosevelt is anathema to the GOP and, particularly, Trump. I have every expectation that, post-250, we will not see FDR’s face on the coin again, and I fully expect that level of pettiness.

But at least FDR’s being replaced with a figure of Liberty (complete with smacks-of-revolutionary liberty cap!). Ironic, but acceptable.

(They might have used the image from the Statue of Liberty, but welcoming furriners to the US isn’t goodthink these days.)

No, more important is the change on the reverse.

The reverse of the Roosevelt dime is the torch of liberty, which would seem appropriate (better than the reverse of the previous Mercury dime, which had the fasces,, which was a bit problematic after WW2). The torch was bracketed by an oak tree branch (showing strength and indepened) and an olive tree branch (symbolizing peace).

Not any more. We get an American Bald Eagle.

Okay, you might say, we have the eagle on other coins. The classic quarter has on its reverse the seal of the US, showing an eagle. No problem. The eagle is sitting there holding a bundle of arrows — but upon some lovely olive branches. We’re ready to fight, it says, but we love peace.

Not any more, apparently.

I mean, Trump and Hegseth have both been rabid enthusiasts for war — not for any particular ideological reason, or geopolitical strategy, mind you. Indeed, Trump repeatedly played the Populist Isolationist card during his campaign (and has since half-conquered Venezuela, repeatedly attacked Iran, and threatened to attack pretty much anyone else who looks at him cross-wise).

No, they like war because it makes them look Macho. Powerful. Strong. It garners for them (they think) respect (though they’re willing to accept fear as a proxy). I mean, get the talking about wielding the power of the US military, the do everything but jump up and down and go pew-pew-pew with finger guns.

They don’t particularly like the political consequences of war. They care everything about looking strong.

So, of course, now we have this:

“What’s missing from this picture?”

Well, the olive branch, obviously. That thar eagle ain’t got no time for peace-making, pardner. He’s got a clawful of arrows (and another clawful of talons) and he’s not afraid to use them.

The U.S. Mint dropped the olive branch from the dime. What does that mean for the country? | Fortune

The eagle turned to the olive branch to show the nation's preference for peace over war.

fortune.com/2026/03/12/us-mint-drops-olive-branch-dime-peace-war/

Symbols mean things. Dropping the olive branches from the dime is a specific message being sent by the President and his people. Peace is for wussies.

The Mint says this is a redesign just for this year.

What do you want to bet the next “message” sent is even worse?

I, Tech Support

For better or worse, I have my niche in the family.

An old colleague of mine once said, regarding task assignments around the office, “Be careful what you touch — it might stick.”

So between, oh, 1991-1994, I did PC tech support for my employer. In the years following — say to about 2001, I was a manager of local office IT, so I still got involved (far more than I ever wanted, at times) with hands-on PC work: cracking cases, upgrading hardware, installing OSs and other software, dealing with networking and server stuff — nothing with a certificate or degree or classwork, just doing stuff and asking dumb questions and learning how to look information up.

After that, my career moved off into application development and support and project management, so my employers suggested that if I needed something done with my work computer — I let their IT people do it. Fine by me!

Fast Forward a quarter-century, in an era when PC technology and networking hardware are light years beyond what they were way back when … and I am still the local tech support here in our home, with my Mom, and with my Mother-in-Law. Need a software upgrade? Time to replace that old computer? Printer’s making funny noises? Mobile phone acting up? Trying to get Windows to stop doing that annoying thing? I am, apparently, your man.

Which, I guess, is fine — my brother-in-law is a critical care pulmonologist and researcher, and he still gets medical questions from the family (and very few of those have to do with the lungs). So I understand the mutuality dynamic.

Still, it’s kind of weird to me, less that I get asked, but that I still can do these things and have never made anything blow up or burst into flames or lose all its data. (Having a belt-and-suspenders approach to data security is part of it Knowing how to look up and read technical info is another.)

Case in point — a few weeks back I got a notification from NetGear that my Nighthawk cable modem / router was reaching end of support. When I looked it up, it was, wow, that old?

In the meantime, my wife was complaining about how crappy the network connectivity upstairs in her office was.

And in researching into things, I discovered that Xfinity actually had a wider pipeline to us now than our current cable modem could handle.

Which sent me into a wave of research and articles and what’s (not quite any more) state of the art for these things. And I pretty quickly determined that (a) I wanted to get a mesh WiFi system in, and so (b) I had to break out the cable modem / wireless router functionality from being in the same box.

Last weekend, I installed a new mesh system, using TP-Link Deco BE10000 equipment. I ran it as a test WiFi network for a week to make sure the coverage and throughput was good.

Today, I turned off the WiFi on the old router (which is still functioning as a cable modem) and reset the SSI and password on the TP-Link to match what we had had before (one difference being that the 2.4 and 5.8 used to have different SSIs). I then spent about an hour rebooting the home equipment that didn’t automagically connect to the new setup.

And it was all a success. Huzzah!

Next step will be getting a replacement router — one that Xfinity will recognize, and that will take advantage of our current bandwidth. That’ll be another weekend install, probably also rejiggering how it all fits in the corner cabinet where the network and A/V boxen reside. But once that’s in place, we’ll be fairly up to date with all this stuff and I can stop thinking about it for a few years.

I’m not going through all this to brag (believe me, I am still in the asking-stupid-questions of friends about a lot of this newer stuff). It’s just interesting to me that something that has seen so many technical advances (the whole “microcomputer” biz) over my professional lifetime still operates on basic principles I can recognize and use. I have no problem throwing money at problems that I don’t think I can handle, but it’s kind of gratifying that there are enough things I don’t need to hire a technician for that I don’t have to feel overwhelmed by the March of Progress.

I am sure I will (in all too few years) be the guy calling his grandson complaining about how there’s this light blinking on the black box doohickey — no, the one with the picture of a spider on the front — well, it looks like a spider to me — well, it’s been blinking red, and I think our Internet is slower, but the Netflix / WB / Xfinity guy on the phone said I’d have to pay to have someone come out, and if you have some free time this weekend, could you …? Yeah, that guy.

Until then? Well, good to know I still have it. Well, most of it.

US Government Building Big New Memory Hole for the State Department

“It’ll be the most beautiful, greatest, deepest memory hole, maybe ever.”

Want to know what sort of travel advisories a country had in the past?

What about records of meetings between State Department officials and foreign governments and organizations?

Or descriptions of diplomatic efforts and international aid programs the US led or was part of in years gone by?

Sorry. You’re Shit Outta Luck.

U.S. State Department Keeps Quiet Over Plans To Block Travelers From Social Media Content Posted Before President Trump’s Second Term

American travelers might have a hard time accessing the previously available information posted by the State Department under a new directive.

www.thetravel.com/us-state-department-keeps-quiet-plans-block-travelers-from-social-media-posts-trump-second-term/

The State Dept. has been directed to archive and delete all its social media content from prior to the Trump Regime taking power in January 2025. It will still be technically available to the public — but only with a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request.

I mean, we can’t have people knowing that the US once donated COVID vaccines to other countries now that the Trump Regime has dictated that’s a waste of money (and evil mainstream science to boot!). We can’t see records of the US offering condolences to other nations for losses in natural disasters or deaths of prominent individuals, not with the Regime redefining who’s a Good Guy and who’s a Bad Guy and that We Have Always Been At War With Eastasia. And certainly notes about cultural programming and exchanges between the US and other nations should be hidden from view, now that the Trump Regime has made it clear that only Pro-American Cultural Stuff (with lots of gilt!) is worth our paying attention to.

And certainly anything that smacks of “history of the past” must be torn down, hidden, and, maybe, someday, re-evaluated according to the Regime’s current standards, so as to avoid “a false reconstruction of American history.”

And surely we don’t need to worry about any of this, because the Regime assures us it is the most transparent and trustworthy government ever, and, if they have their way, no evidence will be available to disprove it.

You must save us from the thing we did, because it was stupid, so you need to let it happen!

The guy in charge of national security is using “national security” he’s endangered to get his own way.

Meanwhile, in Cloud-Cuckoo Land, we have this particular spectacle.

DOJ raises 'national security' concerns in legal fight over Trump ballroom

A federal judge is considering an injunction to halt contstruction.

abcnews.go.com/Politics/doj-raises-national-security-concerns-legal-fight-trump/story

So, it looks like these are the steps.

“We plan to build a ball room. We are the Unitary Executive and so can do whatever we want.”
“We didn’t have to wait for anyone to give us permission to build a ball room, so we started the project anyway, but we promise we’ll go through all the proper reviews and approvals before actually building anything.”
“Oh, also, we’re going to fire all the people who might have said no to us, and replace them with people who will say yes to us.”
“We have to get this done quickly and build the building that the architect left the project about because that was the plan all along.”
“What? You want us to wait so proper approvals can be gotten and possible violations of rules can be litigated? How can we possibly do that? We’ve torn a huge hole into the White House, and also demolished all the critical underground infrastructure, assuming we’d be able to rebuild it instantly. So you can’t stop the project now because it will be a Horrible National Security Problem!”

So .. are we talking about incompetence? Or a semi-competent scam, planned this way all along?

The one thing you can’t call it is a good-faith execution of a nationally significant capital project.

Which, actually, was damned stupid, because, in principle, everyone agrees that the White House could use better, larger-scale entertainment facilities. The one element of truth here from Trump is that every president for the past few decades has wanted to do something better than renting big tents to put on the lawn. This could have been handled as a collaborative project, following the procedures, and serving as an example of good will and unified action to the betterment of the nation.

But that might require compromise. It might require a tacit acknowledgement that Trump cannot do whatever he wants. It more show that the President needs to adhere to (gasp) procedures, to (eek!) work and play with others, and rely on collaboration to achieve nifty things.

None of which Trump would ever dream of doing. Because he’s The Omnipotent Tinpot Dictator type, and following the rules and collaborating and compromising is something only wusses do.

The bottom line is, now we are told that a project that was rushed past all the guard rails, with assurances that there was all the time in the world, now must be rushed to conclusion because Trump’s own actions have made the current situation (according to them) such that the nation is unsafe.

Run that by again. According to the Trump administration itself, we are currently unsafe because they too-quickly dismantled critical infrastructure that the country needed, because they wanted to do it faster than they knew they would be allowed to do otherwise.

Hell of a President, Donald.

Another day, another array of infuriating, stupid, and/or evil shenanigans

It’s the shotgun approach to disheartening, disengaging, and deadening the electorate.

There is a technique exercised by folk trying to deflect criticism, or confuse potential critics, or shift attention from particular wrongdoings, or even just turn off people so much they stop paying attention because it’s so bewildering, or so maddening, or so apparently-unstoppable.

It’s a technique that, knowingly or not, the Trump Regime is practicing in spades.

Day to day, it’s nigh-impossible to focus on the latest shenanigans from Trump and/or his coterie of lickspittles and proto-fascists. It’s shock-and-awe, news cycle style, where bright lights and loud noises are going off in too many directions, and changing from day to day, so that what seemed awful yesterday is forgotten tomorrow.

Just a few instances, from the relatively small to the profoundly dangerous.

National Park Service Incites Anger By Quietly Removing Banned Signs From Civil War Site

The NPS Has Removed Climate Change Signs From A Civil War Landmark

www.thetravel.com/national-park-service-removes-banned-signs-from-civil-war-site/

Trump’s ostrich-head-in-the-sand approach to climate change has the NPS removing signs from the Ft Sumter site warning that rising sea levels could destroy the location. Can’t have people thinking all those re-opened coal plants might do any harm, can we?

New York school violated civil rights law by changing name from ‘Thunderbirds’ to ‘T-Birds,’ US says

BOHEMIA, N.Y. (AP) — A New York school district is “erasing its Native American heritage” and violating civil rightBOHEMIA, N.Y. (AP) — A New York school district is “erasing its Native American heritage” and violating civil rights law by changing its team name from the “Thunderbirds” to the “T-Birds,” federal education officials say.s law by changing its team name from the “Thunderbirds” to the “T-Birds,” federal education officials say.

apnews.com/article/native-american-school-mascots-names-new-york-8f9135ac28e1c82838d9bc6cf1993b39

The long effort to get schools to stop frivolously using Native American symbols or stereotypes is now being actively opposed by the Trump Regime as somehow violating Native American rights. Bring back the “Redskins,” I guess.

UK PM, others outraged at Trump's comments downplaying NATO allies' role during Afghanistan war

Prince Harry and the British Prime Minister slammed Trump over his comments.

abcnews.go.com/Politics/uk-pm-outraged-trumps-comments-downplaying-nato-allies/story

Donald seems to get particular joy in insulting people who don’t kowtow to him properly. What better way than offending our allies and their war dead, after they joined with the US post-911 in the only Article 5 action NATO has ever taken.

He backed off today, at least regarding UK troops. It’s unclear if he simply wants to further fragment NATO unity, or because he wants to keep the UK cooperating on trade deals.

DOJ sought to probe Renee Good for criminal liability, even after her death

A judge refused an FBI warrant that proposed investigating dead Minnesota mom for suspected assault on an officer.

www.ms.now/news/doj-sought-to-probe-renee-good-for-criminal-liability-even-after-her-death-sources

First the Trump Regime yoinked investigation around Good’s killing to the FBI. Then they dropped it, trying instead to investigate Good (who is dead) as being criminally liable. That led to still more DoJ / FBI folk resigning in protest.

But, hey, who cares, since the DoJ leadership has declared, by fiat, that Good was absolutely guilty (ignore any other interpretations of the videos taken of her shooting), and so why bother with investigating the death? That would be a waste of good whitewash, by God!

Meanwhile, the latest DHS shooting (of Alex Pretti) won’t even go to the FBI — the DHS (which did the shooting) will investigate the matter itself. Gee, wonder how that will turn out?

And that’s all just a fraction of what the Regime has done in the last day or two. Who knows what they’ll do tomorrow to distract from those misdeeds, malpractice, and crimes?

And so it goes.

Oh, by the way, Donald, where are those remaining Epstein Files?

The Toddler-in-Chief

Watching a toddler throw a tantrum is sometimes amusing, often aggravating. When the toddler controls a massive military, it becomes terrifying

Another day, another example of Donald Trump shrieking his displeasure for not being given things he thinks should be his.

“I deserve the Nobel Peace Prize!” he cries out. “You Norwegians are all poopy-heads!”

“I deserve Greenland!” he screams. “You Danes are all poopy-heads!”

Never mind in all this that (a) the nation of Norway doesn’t give out the Nobel Prizes, or that (b) Norway and Denmark are long-term allies of the US, or that (c) the population of Greenland does not want to be owned by Donald Trump.

Nope. Donald wants it. Therefore Donald should have it. Therefore anyone stopping him from having what he wants should be shouted at, bullied, threatened, and punished.

(Note that giving Donald what he wants is no guarantee that won’t happen either. His quid pro quo log has a very short expiry date.)

Today’s installment:

Trump links Greenland threat to Nobel Peace Prize snub, EU prepares to retaliate

U.S. President Donald Trump has linked his drive to take control of Greenland to his failure to win the Nobel Peace Prize, saying he no longer thought "purely of Peace" as the row over the island threatened to reignite a trade war with Europe.

www.reuters.com/world/europe/trump-tells-norway-he-no-longer-feels-obligation-think-only-peace-2026-01-19/

Yes, see, for Donald, “peace” is only valuable if it gets him what he thinks he deserves. Like, say, a Nobel Peace Prize. If Norway doesn’t give him one, then obviously there’s no point in being “peaceful.”

(Again, the Norwegian government doesn’t give out the Nobel Peace Prize. But Donald, being Donald, assumes that if they really wanted to play ball with him, the Norwegian government would lean on the Nobel Committee to do so, or threaten their funding, or pass a law requiring they give him one, etc. Because that’s what government is for.)

Not that Donald has been “peaceful” during his reign. Venezuela certainly doesn’t think so. Iran certainly doesn’t think so. Any of the number of places we’ve bombed or droned don’t think so.

But Donald thinks so because, in his mind (as whispered to him by folk like Stephen Miller), if there was a possibility of a war and he said that he didn’t want it to happen, then if it didn’t happen it didn’t happen because of him. Thus his ever-changing, usually-but-not-always-growing tallies of wars he’s “stopped.” It’s magical thinking in its most twisted fashion.

The result, according to his text to Norway’s PM:

Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America.

Aside from the ridiculous claim that he “thinks purely of Peace,” the idea that not getting a Nobel Peace Prize means he should stop doing so demonstrates how trivial his commitment to “Peace” was.

Oh, and by the way, until Europe forces Denmark to hand over Greenland to him, he’ll keep imposing more and bigger tariffs. Because that’s how you’d expect a toddler to react. “Gimme what I want, or you’ll be sorry!”

Greenland has become emblematic of the Trump Regime’s sickness

When bullying is presented as, not just okay, but a moral imperative.

Something that started as a “ha ha, doesn’t he say the darnedest things?” moment years ago — the idea of the US taking over Greenland — is becoming more and more a sign of how out-of-control and downright un-American Donald Trump and his coterie of yes-men and evil genius-wannabes have become.

Let’s start here:

Trump says he may punish countries with tariffs if they don’t back US controlling Greenland

resident Donald Trump suggested Friday that he may punish countries with tariffs if they don’t back the U.S. controlling Greenland, a message that came as a bipartisan Congressional delegation sought to lower tensions in the Danish capital.

www.stripes.com/theaters/us/2026-01-17/trump-threatens-tariffs-us-control-greenland-20432348.html

Trump is a bully. If he has power over you, he will wield it. If he thinks bribes will work, he’ll offer them. If he thinks threats will work, he’ll instantly pivot and issue them. There is no principle involved, except for force.

Here we see the next step. First he muses out loud about what shiny thing he’d like to have. Then he says he hopes someone will give it to him. Then he starts issuing threats.

Trump loves tariffs (so far — there’s a vague chance that SCOTUS might actually grow a pair and say that his arbitrary imposition of them is illegal, but we’ll see). The (appear, to him) to give him money, and it lets him punish people by taking their money, so it’s a win-win for him.

There’s a significant escalation, of course, between tariffs as a means of balancing asserted economic imbalances, and tariffs as a coercion to back his latest whims.

Trump doesn’t care. Either he’ll get what he wants (support for absconding with Greenland), or he’ll get (as he sees it) a bunch more money, punish those who didn’t say nice things about his policy, and still move forward to abscond with Greenland.

If he can do it, he will. If he can’t — well, who’s ever to say he can’t?

Which brings us next to this little gem.

Miller amid Greenland push: Nations not entitled to territories ‘they cannot defend’

White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller on Friday doubled down on the Trump administration’s argument that acquiring Greenland is “essential” for U.S. national security.

thehill.com/policy/international/5694105-stephen-miller-greenland-acquisition-defense/

Stephen Miller is sort of the eminence grise of the Trump Regime — or maybe its toxic dump, always lurking in the background and leaching poisons into the surrounding land and water. Trump listens to what he has to say to an appalling degree.

In this case, he clearly expounds on his guiding principle which lines up perfectly with his boss: If we can take it, we will take it, and, in fact, we should take it. Or, framed another way, Might Makes Right.

Now, I am not so naive as to think that this attitude is not unique to Miller, or to this moment in American history. The US has always had voices whispering, “Take it! Do it! You’re powerful! You’re proud! It should be yours! Take it!”

But, at the very least, Miller, and Trump, and the rest of the gang of imperialists, have shifted to saying the quiet part out loud. If we want it, we can take it. If we can take it, we should take it.

He added that because Denmark “cannot defend” Greenland, citing weaknesses in their military and economy, that it should not have claims to the land. “To control a territory, you have to be able to defend a territory, improve a territory, inhabit a territory,” Miller said. “Denmark has failed at every single one of these tests.”

If a land is not covered with mines and factories and highways, clearly it’s being neglected, and therefore should be taken.

If a land is not bristling with fortresses and air bases, clearly it’s not being defended, and therefore should be taken.

(Never mind that Greenland has existed in its current state for many, many decades, and during much warmer conflict between the US and the Soviet Union, and yet was never invaded by the Russians, nor annexed by the US. We had more military bases there — but, remarkably, that’s not currently seen as an option now.)

The president’s political adviser claimed the U.S. was already on the hook to spend “hundreds of billions of dollars” to defend Denmark as a NATO ally. “It’s a raw deal, it’s an unfair deal, and most importantly, it’s unfair to the American taxpayer, who has subsidized all of Europe’s defense for generations now,” he told “Hannity.”

If we do something for them, they are morally obligated to give us stuff. Which is a remarkable moral stance as well.

But this is how the US government — at least the Unitary Executive — works. Kindness, compassion, even fairness — those are for wusses. Only force — threatened, then used — garners respect and obedience and profit. Why should respect and obedience and profit be given? Because we say so.

Bullying is not an uncommon human trait, sadly enough. The difference here is that the bullies themselves are asserting it as a moral imperative. They have (as they have demonstrated clearly over the last decade-plus) no shame. They will baldly point the gun, say hand me your wallet, take it, and laugh.

It certainly plays well with the The US is the greatest country on Earth, so we should be in charge crowd of jingoists that we always seem to be afflicted with — and who never question what “greatest” means beyond just “powerful”? The questions before us are, will everyone else actually recognize the dangers of the Regime’s actions and motivations … and will we actually get a chance to correct it?

Pete Hegseth thinks Stars and Stripes is too “Woke”

In Trumpland, “Independence” is something to engrave on a wall, not actually allow for anyone.

Stars and Stripes is a semi-independent newspaper published for US military personnel by an independent (by statute) editorial board.

So, of course, Hegseth needs remove any of those “independent” parts of it. He’s mandated it get rid of “woke distractions” to military personnel, and instread focus on “warfighting, weapons systems, fitness, lethality, survivability, and ALL THINGS MILITARY.”

Pentagon taking over Stars and Stripes to eliminate ‘woke distractions’

The Pentagon announced Thursday it would take editorial control of independent military newspaper Stars and Stripes to refocus coverage on “warfighting” and remove “woke distractions.”

thehill.com/policy/defense/5692054-pentagon-control-stars-stripes-newspaper/

What sort of “woke” things has Stars and Stripes been doing? Apparently, for Hegseth, “woke” means “repurposed DC gossip columns [and] Associated Press reprints.”

‘Stars and Stripes’ Responds to Pentagon Targeting ‘Woke’ Independent News

The Pentagon’s directive to refocus “Stars and Stripes” on warfighter messaging has triggered alarms across newsrooms and press freedom groups, raising questions about whether the military’s historic newspaper can remain editorially independent.

www.military.com/daily-news/headlines/2026/01/16/pentagons-stripes-shakeup-sparks-press-freedom-alarm.html

S&S has long served as a news channel for the US military, especially those serving overseas. Its mission is laid out simply:

Stars and Stripes provides independent news and information to the U.S. military community, including active-duty servicemembers, DoD civilians, veterans, contractors, and their families. Unique among Department of Defense authorized news outlets, Stars and Stripes is governed by the principles of the First Amendment.

S&S also notes:

Stars and Stripes is a service of the Defense Media Activity (DMA); the views and opinions expressed do not reflect the views of the Department of Defense, the military services or DMA. The Pentagon funding that makes up roughly half of Stars and Stripes’ annual budget is primarily used to print and distribute the newspaper to troops scattered across the globe, including in warzones. The remainder of the newspaper’s funding comes from advertising and subscriptions. Stars and Stripes is editorially independent of interference from outside its own editorial chain-of-command. It provides commercially available U.S. and world news and objective staff-produced stories relevant to the military community in a balanced, fair, and accurate manner. By keeping its audience informed, Stars and Stripes enhances military readiness and better enables U.S. military personnel and their families stationed overseas to exercise their responsibilities of citizenship.

Well, that sounds sketchy! We cannot have military personnel deciding for themselves how to “exercise their responsibilities of citizenship,” can we?

So what sort of terrible “woke” things have they been reporting on to give Hegseth a hissy-fit? Well, here are the headlines I just copied down from its front page:

Military now requires doctors to offer chaperone for sensitive medical exams
Polar Star icebreaker marks 50 years in Coast Guard service
Bill designates site for “Rosie the Riveter” memorial in the nation’s capital
Treasury and IRS say :”warrior dividend” not taxable
New Air Force helicopter flies its first ICBM security mission
VA awards disability benefits using criteria from 80 years ago, federal watchdog finds
Congress calls for expanded multilateral defense ties across Indo-Pacific
DOD commissaries expand home delivery program in 70 locations stateside
Coast Guard acting commandant Lunday officially installed in service’s top job
Navy veterans unveil monument to Filipino-American sailors on former US base
Kurdish-led forces to withdraw from contested area in Syria after US military visit
Marine Corps general tapped to lead SOUTHCOM grilled over presence in region
Navy airlifts mariner showing signs of heart attack to hospital on Guam

Those all sound like actual news, things that have happened, that might well be of interest to folk serving in the armed forces. And stories that wouldn’t necessarily show up in civilian news feeds.

But I guess there’s not enough spurting blood and roaring rockets and paeans of praise for the ~~Defense~~ WAR!! Department leadership, or something showing up there. Not in Hegseth’s eyes. If his myrmidons are not being properly propagandized with Pentagon-mandated WARFIGHTER! news items, 24×7, there’s every chance they might have (or even express) an opinion that varies from his.

Pentagon says it will ‘refocus’ Stars and Stripes content

The Pentagon suggested it would take over editorial decision making for Stars and Stripes, which has long retained independence under a congressional mandate.

www.stripes.com/theaters/us/2026-01-15/pentagon-refocus-stars-and-stripes-content-20415816.html

Stars and Stripes, which is dedicated to serving U.S. government personnel overseas, seeks to emulate the best practices of commercial news organizations in the United States. It is governed by Department of Defense Directive 5122.11. The directive states, among other key provisions, that “there shall be a free flow of news and information to its readership without news management or censorship.”

As noted, Congress mandated in the 1990s that S&S’s editorial board should be independent of the Pentagon, even while much of its personnel and budget come from there. But, as we have seen, “Independent” is as big a taboo word for the Trump Regime as “Inclusion” — anything that shows, even by law, any measure of independence from the Unitary Executive must be crushed and brought into line, filled with right-thinking ideologues and toadies, and made one more weapon in the arsenal of the Regime.

And, so far at least, legal challenges to Presidential Power have largely shown that the Sun King has a majority of supporters on the Supreme Court he has himself largely created ready to back whatever it is he wants to do — laws or principle be damned.

YOU get a Nobel Prize, and YOU get a Nobel Prize, and YOU …!

Should we all point and laugh, or stay quiet at the Emperor’s New Nobel Prize?

Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado has told reporters that she “presented” her 2025 Nobel Peace Prize to Donald Trump when they met today.

María Corina Machado ‘Presented’ Donald Trump With Her Nobel Peace Prize

María Corina Machado told Fox News that she presented the Nobel Peace Prize she won to President Donald Trump when she met with him at the White House.

www.mediaite.com/media/news/maria-corina-machado-presented-donald-trump-with-her-nobel-peace-prize/

I’m torn. Assuming Trump “accepted’ the prize (something I would wager a small amount of money that he did), should we …

Point and laugh at Trump getting a second-hand Nobel Peace Prize (and at the concept that he even deserves one), esp. since they are non-transferable and because it’s such a bald-faced attempt to curry favor?

Or stay quiet and let Trump bask in his own ego space so that maybe he will STFU about how much he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize because he has stopped two hundred wars since he came to office, and blew up some people really bigly in the cause of peace?

Greenland, Trump, and Backing Oneself into a Corner

The whole quixotic effort to annex Greenland is gonzo — but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen.

But two more thoughts about it.

First, and not at all surprisingly, Trump’s tactics here are not only alarming Americans, including what semi-responsible wing of the party is still in Congress, they are actively alienating the people of Greenland itself.

Trump wants Greenlanders to join the US. His comments are making that harder.

Even residents open to independence from Denmark have been put off by the president’s bullying tactics.

www.politico.com/news/2026/01/14/trump-greenland-residents-independence-00726696

The problem is that, for all that Trump paints himself as “King of the Deal,” his impatience, ego, and ~~cognitive decline~~ whimsy make him both a terrible negotiator and insistent on being in the heart of the negotiations. Especially since a big motivation for this efforts is Trump’s own need to seem important and powerful, he can’t help but chime in every time the subject comes up, and do so in the most arrogant and offsetting way he can.

The only way Trump negotiates these days is through bullying. “You can have it the easy way or the hard way” style of threats. “It’s going to happen [whether you like it or not]” type of rhetoric. Which is effective (in the short term) if you can actually cow the people involved. But insult and threaten some people enough, and they become more implacable opponents.

Which doesn’t help the only other tactic he and his team have lit on: that the Greenlanders can be bought. There are proposals being floating that some sort of payment — one-time, or maybe annual — will be made to every Greenlander, as long as they agree to be owned by the US.

Not surprisingly, a lot of Greenlanders consider that insulting. Trump’s transactional nature always leads him to think that everyone has a price. The idea that people might resent that assumption is, to him, incomprehensible.

But that’s where Trump’s other major character flaw — magnified in his old age — comes up: his ego won’t let him back down unless he can do so without looking like the “loser.” He will go to any degree, twist any number of arms, make any level of promises, tantalize with any sort of profit, threaten any sort of dire result, to avoid looking like a “loser.” It’s the biggest, most abusive lesson his father taught him. Backing down, or even appearing to compromise, is for losers, and being a loser is the worst thing there is.

That’s where Trump runs into even deeper trouble regarding Greenland (and runs the US into trouble along with it). Having rattled sabers, explained Greenland’s immeasurable strategic importance, promised folk behind the scenes that they will have access to great natural resources, and been told about all the proposed 51-star US flags and statues that will be raised to him and how American school children will be taught about his achievement forever, and, heck, they’ll probably rename all those parts of Greenland which are named after old Danish kings for Trump instead … he can’t back down. He backed himself (and, so, the US) into a corner that has no exit but through: he needs to show his base, the nation, and the world that he won, and he can only do that by a deal or action that effectively takes over Greenland for the US.

So even though we have all sorts of treaty rights already to expand our military facilities there, and we can right now put a ring of US Navy ships in place that would cow any imaginary Chinese invasion … that’s no longer good enough. That would mean that something he has said will happen, must happen — the US owning Greenland — didn’t happen. And then people will laugh, and think he’s weak, and call him a loser, and he won’t be able to point to King Trump Land on the map or anything like that.

That’s the most imminent danger I see. That no matter how US public opinion (or Greenlandic public opinion, or Senatorial public opinion, or world public opinion) is against use of force here, the only opinion Donald really values — the frightened little boy in his head who is terrified of his father’s disapproval — is going to tell him he must do something Forceful and Strong and Powerful and Winning.

Like a Little Kid Playing “War”

Hegseth is, frankly, a chronically insecure bro who’s frantic to show how alpha he is.

One of the defining qualities of Trump Regime v.2 is its obsession with coming across as Super Tough Alpha Male Bros who Kick Ass and Take No Prisoners. Even the few women in Trump’s orbit (looking at you, Noem) frantically try to project that killer vibe, like they just stepped out of an old Sergio Leone spaghetti Western.

Nobody exemplifies this better than Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of ~~Defense~~ WAR!! As far as anyone can tell, all Hegseth is concerned about is killing people faster, better, and more macho-ly than anyone else. Never mind if they should be killed, or if there are ways to stop whoever they are without killing them, or even if killing (or being hair-trigger ready) to kill makes things more dangerous for us ... Pete is here to tell you that he can kill (or have killed) more bigly than anyone else, and anything that gets in the way of that and how he thinks it should be done is “woke” — and he isn’t having any of that.

Which makes his whole thing about AI in the Defense WAR!! Dept. all the more concerning.

Make ‘Star Trek’ real. Hegseth vows military AI without ‘woke’ constraints

Hegseth has been outspoken about ridding the military of so-called ‘woke’ policies, including diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.

www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/make-star-trek-real-hegseth-vows-military-ai-without-woke-constraints/ar-AA1U5Awi

“We will not employ AI models that won’t allow you to fight wars,” Hegseth added. He said the department would employ AI “without ideological constraints” that “will not be woke.”
Hegseth’s comments come amid growing concern about the threats posed by AI. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres told the U.N. Security Council in September that AI needs “guardrails” and called for “a ban on lethal autonomous weapons systems operating without human control.”
Hegseth said the United States won’t be limited in its pursuit of new military capabilities. “We are done running a peacetime science fair while our potential adversaries are running a wartime arms race,” he said.

Or here:

Hegseth announces push to make US leader in AI, drones and space technology

Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth unveiled an artificial intelligence strategy for the military, aiming to make the U.S. a global leader in AI and drones.

www.foxbusiness.com/technology/hegseth-announces-push-make-us-leader-ai-drones-space-technology

“This strategy will unleash experimentation, eliminate bureaucratic barriers, focus on investments and demonstrate the execution approach needed to ensure we lead in military AI and that it grows more dominant into the future,” he said. “In short, we will win this race by becoming an AI-first warfighting force across all domains, from the back offices of the Pentagon to the tactical edge on the front lines.”

I don’t think he’s talking about AI running the HR systems at the Pentagon to make sure that all those non-male types don’t get promotions and that all those gay and trans folk are identified for dishonorable discharge. As far as I can tell from all the above and other things he’s said, I believe Hegseth’s goal is, in fact, “lethal autonomous weapons systems operating without human control” (except, presumably, from his desk).

Because that, of course, always goes so well.

Note that this has very little to do with directly protecting the US. This is about waving around a dick so big that everyone else will fall down and worship it. This is about instilling fear — not just in our potential or actual enemies, but amongst our friends and, for that matter, within our country.

This is, if not psychopathy, than a furious, frantic desire to be seen as the most powerful person(s) in existence, accountable to and restrained by nobody. It exemplifies Trump’s attitude toward everyone and everything, and it’s little surprise that he’s gathered a coterie that has the same fundamental insecurities and the same fundamental way of dealing with it.

By focusing on AI (a useful but clearly very immature technology, no matter what Elon Musk suggests) to create autonomous killing platforms (i.e., from Pete’s perspective, robots that can be told to go someplace and kill the things we want killed), I would argue that he is actually weakening America’s warfighting / defensive capabilities, in two ways:

It won’t work. Or won’t work reliably enough that he’ll dare actually deploy it. Or, more likely, won’t work reliably enough, but he’ll deploy it anyway and shrug off, deny, or downplay any “collateral damage” that comes from it.
This is assuming that it can be deployed within the timeframe of the current Regime — and I have no confidence that, even if not ready, it won’t be rushed into the field to prove how strong and macho Pete and Donald actually are. With all the tragic consequences that will follow. After all, how long have autonomous cars been being tested, and how many accidents are they still causing — or is Hegseth’s idea, egged on by Elon, that if you could just do away with all those safety settings, you could start mass production in a really short time?
In any case, it’s going to be a huge money sink (little wonder Trump the “we must cut government spending” dude, has proposed a mindboggling increase to the ~~defense~~ war!! budget). And to the degree that it doesn’t work and can’t be used, that’s money that’s been, at best, flushed down the crapper.
Note: I’m not worried about an actual Skynet super-intelligence-deciding-to-exterminate-humanity scenario — AI isn’t and won’t be that smart any time soon. I’m more worried of the opposite: stupid AI inadvertently exterminating humanity (or some chunk of it) because it thought they were a flock of geese, or because someone worded an order wrong, or because it took too many learning samples from DOOM.
If the US does it, every other nation that is worried about the US will have to do it (a number that continues to grow, by the Regime’s own design). Which takes all the concerns above and multiplies them.
Note that the answer to “Russia is definitely designing killbots” (something I have little doubt about) is not to say “Therefore we should be just as stupid.” The answer is “How do we neutralize that threat in a way that doesn’t echo all the existential threats of the nuclear stand-off that still exists today?”

Since broken (analog) clocks are right twice a day, credit to Hegseth for noting how the consolidation of the defense contracting industry has stifled innovation and driven up costs. Sure, the proposed solution sounds just like the “picking winners and losers” stuff that Trump campaigned against, but whatevs. Of course Hegseth instantly loses all that credit by leaning on Elon Musk (!) for advice on military matters.

Anyway, let’s just leave it with this reconfirms that Pete Hegseth is a menace and clearly too immature to be running the ~~WAR!!~~ Defense Department, regardless of who’s in the White House. That job requires someone who doesn’t need the job to make himself feel important and powerful and lethal and manly.

RIP, Scott Adams

It’s remarkable how big Dilbert’s creator was in my work environment. Until he wasn’t.

I was as big a Dilbert fanboy as anyone else working in white collar work (esp. tech) in the 90s and 00s. I had the wall calendars, the comic-a-day calendars, the collections … I had Dilberts posted outside my office door or my cube wall … I even incorporated Dilbert comics into (yes I feel the irony) PowerPoint presentations, always garnering laughter from the audience. It was all jolly, slightly-transgressive-toward-management fun.

Until it stopped being that.

Scott Adams, whose comic strip ‘Dilbert’ ridiculed white-collar office life, dies at 68

www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/scott-adams-whose-comic-strip-dilbert-ridiculed-white-collar-office-life-dies-at-68/ar-AA1U8lzm

Adams veering off to the zany Right (or becoming more public about it, one way or the other), made it all less fun, and invited reviewing some of those comics that had seemed just standard office humor when originally published.

But even where the humor was still funny, Adams became one of those folk for whom I chose not to spend my money any more. He was free to draw and write about whatever he wanted — but I didn’t have to buy it.

I do still have a lot of the older Dilberts saved in the Picture folder bowels of my computer, though.

While I found Adams’ political and social views increasingly repellent, I would never wish death from cancer on anyone, and I am sorry that he suffered what he did.

I’d love to look ahead a few decades (for more reasons than one) and see what Adams’ legacy is. Even now, it’s hard to think of any retrospective on office life in the 90s-00s that doesn’t have Dilbert as a touchstone for white collar concerns and frustrations of that period.

In any case, I’m sorry things went so wrong for him (by his own doing, to be sure), and that his life ended so poorly. I offer up my thanks, though, for all the chuckles he gave me during his career. RIP.

Trump’s weird obsession about wind power

Why is he so paranoid about it?

The abiding question behind almost everything Donald Trump does is figuring out why he’s doing it. Is it a grift? Is it an ego-boost? Is it political skulduggery? Is it vengeance? Or is it a weird misfiring set of synapses?

That pertains to his long-held bizarro-world views of wind power — something that produces power vitally needed by the ever-growing grid in the US.

Sure, it could be a matter of Trump rewarding fossil fuel billionaires for their donations, tied to his steadfast climate denialism. It could be a grift, concern over “unsightly” wind farms damaging the views from places like his golf courses.

Energy developers head to court as Trump says the US ‘will not approve any windmills’

Trump said his goal is to prevent any new wind farms, calling them “losers.”

www.denverpost.com/2026/01/12/trump-vs-offshore-wind/

But the way he approaches it strikes me as odd, and something beyond that. Every now and again, Trump will repeat his baseless claim that wind turbines cause cancer. Never mind the occupational danger and environmental health issues around fossil fuels — something has lodged in his brain that paints wind power as some sort of existential danger.

And, perhaps in an effort to turn “green” folk against them, he constantly brings up mass bird kills (even though wind turbines kill fewer birds, in various ways, than fossil fuels do).

Do wind turbines kill birds?

Yes—but only a fraction as many as are killed by house cats, buildings, or even the fossil fuel operations that wind farms replace.

climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/do-wind-turbines-kill-birds

He also is convinced that wind farms are “losers” economically — even though is Department of Energy still has a page on how they are anything but.

Advantages and Challenges of Wind Energy

Wind energy advantages explain why wind power is one of the fast-growing renewable energy sources in all the world.

www.energy.gov/eere/wind/advantages-and-challenges-wind-energy

At least for the moment, that page touts the positive benefits of jobs, renewable energy production, community benefits from taxes, and, ultimately, that “and-based, utility-scale wind turbines provide one of the lowest-priced energy sources available today.”

Not that Donald would ever let something like “facts” get in the way of something he’s decided is true. Admitting you were wrong is (from his point of view) for pussies.

Now, it’s easy to say, “Well, at worst, Trump is just delaying some of these projects by a few years.” But that assumes, first, that whoever comes behind him isn’t just as rabid on the topic as he is. Second, business demands stability in economics before they invest lots of money. The projects Donald is mid-stream canceling will cost many, many zeroes of lost money based on already-made investments. That sort of unstable business climate (“Can we afford to risk money in the US when in four years policy may swivel about 180 degrees”) means his actions will impact economic and clean energy production for a decade or more.

In short, he’s not only burning down these projects, he’s salting the earth so as to keep them from happening again, even after he’s gone.

Which, of course, can only hurt the US (and the world), but Donald doesn’t let that keep him up at night, as long as enough statues are erected to him in his lifetime.

Blaming the Victim for January 6

Winston Smith has a new corner office in the West Wing.

It’s classic abusive and abuse-enabling behavior. Blame the victim. “Look what you made me do to you!” “She shouldn’t have been dressed that way.” “Doing something stupid like that means you can’t complain about what happens to you.”

Now it’s top White House policy, as part of their Orwellian rewriting of history.

White House rewrites January 6 history and blames police for deadly attack on 5-year anniversary | CNN Politics

The White House rolled out a new website Tuesday with a full-blown recast of the historical record of January 6, 2021, hailing the pro-Trump mob who stormed the US Capitol five years ago as “peaceful protesters” who were provoked by law enforcement.

www.cnn.com/2026/01/06/politics/white-house-january-6-website

Trump Administration Posts False Jan. 6 Narrative on Riot’s 5th Anniversary

A new web page on the official White House site blames the Capitol Police and Democrats for the pro-Trump mob riot, absolving the president of responsibility and calling participants “innocent.”

www.nytimes.com/2026/01/06/us/politics/trump-white-house-jan-6-website.html

You see, the January 6 violent assault on the US Capitol was nothing of the kind. It was a peaceful protest by mere innocents and patriots who were righteously upset about how Joe Biden stole the 2020 election. Those guys beating up Capitol Police? They were the real victims here. Capitol police hospitalized, dead of heart attacks, suffering PTSD? They were the real criminals. Folks breaking into the building, smashing windows, threatening government officials? It’s all Nancy Pelosi’s fault.

Don’t believe your memory. Don’t believe the still-extant (for now) video recordings and photographs and eyewitness testimony from even Republicans who have since changed their stories. Believe only what the White House tells you.

Thank you for your attention in this matter.

National Security? Or Financial Security?

It sure sounds like Greenland is in the crosshairs because there’s a lot of money to be made there.

So we keep hearing from the Trump Regime about how the US must take over Greenland because it’s vital for National Security.

For example …

Trump’s Greenland threats put transatlantic alliance on death watch

“The Greenland issue does make everything even more complicated,” a senior European diplomat said.

www.axios.com/2026/01/07/greenland-trump-threat-nato-alliance

… we get statements like this:

“President Trump has made it well known that acquiring Greenland is a national security priority of the U.S., and it’s vital to deter our adversaries in the Arctic region. The President and his team are discussing a range of options to pursue this important foreign policy goal,” Leavitt said.
[…] Trump has repeated his position that the U.S. “needs” Greenland, and his claim that the Arctic island is surrounded by Russian and Chinese ships (the Danish official said that contradicts the intelligence assessments of both the U.S. and Denmark).

They make it sound like China (!) is about to launch a military invasion of Greenland. Not that this sounds at all likely (China’s navy, let alone air force, have no way of projecting power in the North Atlantic, and if Russian ships are swarming around Greenland, that’s a direct threat to the US in and of itself that I would think we would be taking action on).

That the US already has bases in Greenland makes another country invading there even less likely. Especially since pre-existing agreements let the US pretty much do what it wants in building more such bases. We can already make it into a fortress against hypothetical intrusion.

Buy Greenland? Take It? Why? An Old Pact Already Gives Trump a Free Hand.

Analysts say the Cold War agreement allows the president to increase the American military presence almost at will.

www.nytimes.com/2026/01/07/world/europe/trump-greenland-denmark-us-defense-pact.html

The problem is, as soon as any of the Trump officials finish saying anything about the Chinese/Russian menace, they keep talking, with a focus about how climate change and the reduction of polar ice (which, apparently, is okay to talk about when it comes to taking over Greenland, but not when it comes to fossil fuel policy) will make Northwest Passage-style shipping across the top of the Americas more likely.

Analysis: Why Trump wants to take Greenland | CNN Politics

America’s next conquest might become Trumpland.

www.cnn.com/2026/01/07/politics/trump-greenland-takeover-empire-venezuela-analysis

Trump says the US ‘needs’ Greenland. Here are five reasons why

The island’s strategic location above the Arctic Circle makes it a focal point in global security and trade debates

www.the-independent.com/news/world/europe/why-does-trump-want-greenland-denmark-b2895347.html

For Greenland’s Minerals, the Harsh Reality Behind the Glittering Promise

There is excitement about the potentially lucrative resources scattered around the island, especially the rare earths. But extreme weather, fired-up environmentalists and other factors have tempered hopes of a bonanza.

www.nytimes.com/2025/03/03/world/europe/greenland-minerals-trump.html

Which makes it sound like they really expect (or want us to think they expect) to be having to fight a naval war, within air base reach of the US, which is a bit bonkers.

More importantly, they go on about the vast mineral wealth of Greenland under the tundra — again, becoming more exposed by climate change (which we still don’t talk about, got it? except when we do …).

And at some point the discussion shifts from “We have to intervene to stop the Commies Russians & Chinese from taking over a valuable military location” to “Boy, is there a lot of money to be made in Greenland, we should go take it.”

Which makes it less about “national security” and more about “conquest” and “piracy” and “stealing.” The same tune playing loudly in the background as the Trump folk talk about, yeah, Maduro was an awful guy and a narco-criminal and Hey, isn’t it cool how much oil we can now take from Venezuela? Oil that belongs to the people there, except, no, it really belongs to us, because we’re running things.

Sure, sure, access to some of those minerals is of “strategic” economic importance. Wouldn’t want China to cut off our supplies of rare earths, etc. And that would be a lot more believable if we were talking about protecting Greenland for Greenlanders and simply putting in bases to make sure that the Chinese didn’t invade, and making investments in the country’s infrastructure under a profit-sharing arrangement that ostensibly benefits everyone, including the locals.

But when we say, “Cool! Mineral wealth for the US!” the whole thing sort of loses any moral high ground. Indeed, if the Chinese and Russians are, in fact, looking to take over the country and exploit it, it doesn’t sound that much different than what we’re going to do, except for the colors on the flag.

Of course, there are plenty of folk in the Trump Regime who think that’s just fine — that the only moral justification comes at the end of a metaphorical bayonet, and the moral high ground is a good place to bulldoze and build a refinery on.

“We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world, in the real world … that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world that have existed since the beginning of time,” [Stephen] Miller told host Jake Tapper on CNN’s “The Lead” earlier this week.

Might Makes Right. How very … imperial.

No Hemispheres for Old Men

The propaganda shop at State is working overtime these days.

Crikey.

I guess this is the (east-west) hemisphere we are in. But, no, it doesn’t belong to us. We have interests — political, economic, security — in what happens in this hemisphere, arguably more urgent than we do in what happens in, say, Africa, or South Asia, etc. (though the lesson of the last century, if anyone in the Regime is listening, is that pretending things over there don’t matter is more and more dangerous in our world).

But there are a bit over a billion people in North and South America, combined, of which the US makes up about a third of a billion. That means a whole lot of people in other countries, other nations, other sovereignties. They are of the US (as the Regime repeatedly points out in trying to throw them out). Asserting that, despite having no say in how the US runs, they are “ours” is building an imperial house of cards.

Can the US, militarily, dive into any other country in the hemisphere and take out (physically or metaphorically) the heads of each government? Probably.

Does might make right? Nope. And does the US have the power, and interest, and money, and will to treat the hemisphere as conquered realms. Nope.

Or, as another person put it as a new empire was being founded …

Hey, remember when George Lucas said that in Star Wars the Empire was the US and the Rebels were the Viet Cong, and a bunch of people lost their shit over how awful that was to say about the US?

Tell me that “Our Hemisphere” image doesn’t have serious Emperor Palpatine vibes.

Oh, dear Lord, please don’t let the Star Wars prequels be an insight into modern history …

And just in case you missed it, the “Our Hemisphere” and vacuous cry about “our security” being threatened isn’t just about Venezuela (or Cuba, or Mexico, or whatever other Latin American nation the Regime is threatening today). It’s clearly encompassing an actual territorial add to the Empire in Greenland.

Text by Stephen Miller's wife of Greenland, overlaid with an American flag, and the word "SOON" — That’s a post by the wife of top Presidential Voldemort, Stephen Miller

Never mind there is already a sovereign power there. Never mind that the people there seem to have no interest. The Dear Leader wants to Change The Map of the US as part of his “legacy,” by hook or by crook (or by CIA and helicopter gunships).

Model of the proposed Trump Arch in Washington DC — The real thing will have much more gilt on it.

Maybe he’ll have a steady program of ever-updating the new Trump Arch being built outside of (appropriately enough, since one can expect a lot of US military casualties out of all this) Arlington Cemetery — a different frieze for each conquest, something like that — some friezes of the Venezuela raid here, some etchings of Greenland, maybe future attacks on Mexico and Brazil, you know, good ol’ American things like that.

Yeesh.