From the Halls of Montezuma

Take a good look at the picture above. We have never seen anything like it.

It comes from the web site of the British news service Reuters. It is a still image taken from about a minute of video. The video and the accompanying reporting should set off warning alarms across the United States. Read the Reuters article and see the full video here. I’m ready to nominate the Reuters’ team for a Pulitzer Prize.

Reuters says the video shows U.S. Marines deployed to Los Angeles detaining an American citizen. This, it is believed, has never happened before.

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Two Megalomaniacs Walk into a Bar……

The bromance that brought Donald Trump and Elon Musk together seemed like an unlikely combination from the start. The real estate mogul turned politician, and the technology entrepreneur turned richest man on the planet both tended to absorb all the oxygen in any room they inhabited. It was hard to envision that both could occupy the same space at the same time for long.

Still, the speed and violence of the inevitable explosion of the relationship was breathtaking. In the space of a single day, the man who wreaked havoc on the federal government, and the man who encouraged him and gave him the authority to act in violation of law and Constitution were calling each other names on their respective social media sites and threatening retribution.

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Trump Transcripts

The White House has decided to stop publishing transcripts of Trump’s public statements. They have also removed transcripts that were already posted and replaced complete videos of Trump speeches with excerpts, obviously edited. Why you might ask? The White House says the abridged video and audio provide a more complete representation of the president’s words and communication style. Yes, and I have a bridge I’d like to sell you.

While the political wags seem mesmerized by a book which contains the “shocking” revelation that President Joe Biden was showing his age as the 2024 election approached, I’ll have more on reporting that obvious after the fact revelation in a future blog, the Trump administration is doing everything it can to obscure the fact that their head man is “cognitively challenged” himself.

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President Musk II

Elon Musk has been making the rounds of Washington, giving exit interviews as he steps back from his Trump ordained role of destroying as much of the federal government as possible in the shortest amount of time. No one, perhaps not even Elon, knows why he is leaving a role he so obviously relishes.

Who else would gleefully prance around a stage carrying a chainsaw and celebrating “feeding the United States Agency for International Development into the woodchipper?” That act alone left poor people around the world to starve while food already purchased by USAID from American famers rotted in warehouses. What kind of a monster does something like that and cheers about it?

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He don’t know

On Meet the Press NBC’s Kristine Welker asked Donald Trump, “don’t you need to uphold the Constitution of the United States as president?”

“I don’t know,” Trump replied.

Excuse me while I reach for my bottle of Excedrin.

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The Trump Recession

The Trump Recession is upon us. Not officially, that could take months. But the handwriting is on the wall. Just as clear as it was one year ago when every creditable economist warned Donald Trump’s plans for trade tariffs and government layoffs would knock the Goldilocks economy of Joe Biden off its feet. Seventy-seven million voters didn’t believe it. Or didn’t care. Now they can care. Or not. It’s hard to tell.

The latest GDP report shows that the U.S. economy contracted by 0.3% in the first quarter of 2025, marking a sharp downturn from the 2.4% growth in the final quarter of 2024. This decline was largely driven by a surge in imports ahead of Trump’s newly announced tariffs, which widened the trade deficit and negatively impacted GDP calculations.

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Hip hip for Harvard

Whether it was a high school football game on a Friday night or a college matchup you have probably all participated in a roaring cheer at one time or another. Anyone who has been following these posts for a while knows that I earned a bachelor’s degree from Princeton many years ago where I cheered on many a Princeton team. The college cheer was in fact heard for the first time at the famous first ever college football game between Princeton and Rutgers in 1869.

I write that preamble so that you get the significance of my rousing cheer for Harvard, Princeton’s rival among rivals in the league of elite universities. It is special when a Princeton tiger is moved to compliment people who wear crimson robes. Harvard does have a mascot I am told. But it appears to be an inanimate statue of the school’s founder, which must look strange along the sidelines. I digress.

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