Campaign Promises, Jeffrey Epstein, and Failed Results

 George Bush stood before the assembled crowd. Bush was running for office, and seeking to continue the policies of Ronald Reagan. During his speech, he sought to lay aside the fears of the audience when he proudly proclaimed “Read My Lips…No New Taxes.”

It was a promise that he couldn’t keep, and in the 37 years since, Bush’s vow became a punchline. Despite being a popular president early on, the bottom fell out of the U.S. economy. Unemployment rose, taxes were raised, and the cost of living began to skyrocket. All of this a product of the misguided economic plan of the Reagan era, which inflated the economy on a weak base. Seeking re-election, Bush lost to a brash, younger political rival, Bill Clinton from Alabama. And it ended being Clinton that rescued the failing U.S. economy.

Flash forward to 2025. Donald Trump made releasing the Epstein files a campaign promise. His allies and conservative social media influencers began to salivate. Trump even went as far as to invite many of the social media influencers to the White House for a staged photo opt. They all stood, waving official looking binders, vowing the truth would come out.

The only thing that happened is that several people were left with egg on their face. Trump reversed quickly his promise to release as many documents as possible. Trump seems to be set on trying to get the general public to forget that Jeffrey Epstein ever existed.

Now this would be the part where most would proclaim the walls are closing in, and Trump’s support from his own political party is starting to wane. However, this is the modern Teflon Don. A man that got elected despite advocating for office Roy Moore, a know pedophile. A man that took victim shaming to a whole new level, rallying his base to attack anyone that dared to accuse him of anything. A man that once proclaimed that there were “good people” on both sides of a rally. Let’s be honest, Trump could take a piss on the 9/11 memorial, and his base would applaud him for it.

The Epstein issue is proving to be a test. Many in his own party are forming alliances with Republicans to get the papers released. This despite Trump crying to the press, saying “Epstein, why are we still talking about that creep.” In many ways, I’m reminded of something George Bush Jr once said. When asked after a presser if the U.S. was any closer to capturing Bin Laden, Bush Jr responded, “Bin Laden? He’s the furthest thing from my mind right now.”

Now Trump still has his supporters. Social Media influencers like Laura Loomer, Catturd, and Charlie Kirk have all vowed undying support for Trump. They believe it’s the deep state, of which they now accuse Pam Bondi of being a part of, still trying to railroad their innocent dear leader. Trump went from wanting to release the files, to being quite guarded about them, even downplaying his relationship with Jefferey Epstein.

It could very well be that for the first time in his life, Donald Trump is afraid of the fallout. Or hell, maybe we learn it wasn’t Donald that received special favors from Epstein, maybe it was another Trump. There actually appears to be a sense of fear from Trump regarding the fallout if those Epstein papers actually do see the light of day.

 

In the abstract, it’s never going to matter to his core base, they’ll always support him. Trump’s support of Bam Bondi isn’t for her benefit, it’s for his. He’s going to try and starve the Epstein scandal as long as possible. He’s hoping that the general public will simply forget about it. Once his World Cup fiasco and he’s recent announcement on tariffs on the coffee industry.

No ghost can haunt you like the words you say when seeking higher office. Trump never had any intentions of releasing the Epstein files. Just like Nixon never had any intentions of releasing the White House tapes. And it took a court order for those, just like it may take a court order to get the Epstein files released. Of course, if that did happen, Trump would just try and order the judge to be primaried and accuse them of being a “activist judge”.

This could go one of two ways. Trump, knowing defeat is near, could claim health issues cause him to vacate the office, which leads to JD Vance becoming president. The papers end up being released, and they indict Trump for having sex with underage girls. Then, comes the bombshell, JD Vance, citing Trump’s age, issues him a full pardon. Don’t laugh, Ford did that to Nixon and managed to piss off Republicans and Democrats at the same time.

Option two. The files simply vanish. Perhaps, they are shredded by accident by some nameless clerk. Which of course, will fuel speculation for decades regarding Trump’s involvement.

Yep, these could be some interesting times indeed.

 On July 14^th, 2025, roughly around 10PM, X, formerly known as Twitter, crashed. If you tried to log in, you received an error message. If you were already logged in, you noticed lags in post, likes, and messages. A few short years ago, a crash like this would have been corrected by Twitter’s support team. However, some wealthy young lad who felt he knew everything about everything, went in, and took a hatchet to Twitter’s staff. He re-branded it as X, and just after a few short days, proclaimed that the platform was running better than it ever had.

It wasn’t long before reality set in. Users noticed various glitches starting to appear. Musk reinstated of users like Alex Jones, Laura Loomer, Andrew Tate, and many others with checkered past. Jones proudly proclaimed that everything from Sandy Hook to the West Webster assault that killed two firemen were all actually false flag events. Laura Loomer, never one to pass up a fine conspiracy, echoed Jones’ lies. Then comes Andrew Tate, currently facing multiple felony charges. Tate verbally attacked every from the LBGT community, to women. All three were reinstated and their past was wiped clean. Advertisers fled, not wanting to be associated with some of the mess going on. So Musk, instead of cleaning up the website, sued those companies, and demanded that they be forced against their will, to run ads on his platform.

Which brings us to July 14^th, 2025. At one time, Twitter had a fully staffed IT department that could have cured the crash in moments at best, a few hours at worse. Instead, the crash lasted well into the next day. Musk has defended his staff cuts, even though the evidence has shown time and time again, that cutting a staff to the bone might make fiscal sense, but it fails in reality.

 

Which leads us to the recent supreme court decision that has given President Trump the power to fire as many employees from the Board of Education as he sees fit. Elections have consequences. And one of those consequences is that Trump has stacked SCOTUS with judges friendly to Trump’s desire to acquire more and more power as president. Yeah, there have been a few push backs. However, as soon as Trump’s minions on social media and in the media as a whole grumbled, SCOTUS went right back to giving Trump whatever he desires.

The cuts in the board of elections are going to effect Tap and Pell grants, funding for school for students with challenges, and essentially the educational system as a whole. Early morning breakfast programs for children from poor families? That’s out. Next! Programs to help children with learning disabilities? That’s a goner. Properly staffed school to help your child? Sorry, maybe next time.

Linda McMahon has already stated her desire to attempt to do away with the board as a whole. She wants the states to foot as much of the bill as possible. And then toss up a Hail Mary and hope that the penny-pinching government can toss them a few bucks. Funny how there is  always money for defense spending under a Republican government, but very little for education and helping the poor.

Over the next few years, parents are going to express frustrations over lagging time in approving educational grants. Teachers will continue to be underpaid, and staff vacancies will go unfilled because the district simply can’t squeeze another cent from an overly extended state budget. Some students will be unable to go to college. Others may have to drop out of school Instead of being helped with their disability, they’ll quite and get a job to support their family. Well, let’s be blunt, Republicans have always preferred they do that anyways.

We already have dangerous lag times with the VA because of Trump’s cuts. And as he continues to cut the size of the government, he’ll boast that he’s saving tax payers billions of dollars. Of course, leaving out that “savings” will be offset in many aspects, as many states may have to raise taxes in order to keep schools open, To keep hospitals open, and to fix roads.

Trump’s hostile immigration policies have already led to what experts call a severe “brain drain”. Meaning that instead of coming to America to further their education, many are choosing to stay in their homeland and attend schooling there instead. With some schools actually advising students against coming to America to further their education. Because those schools are run by smart people who grasp that Trump loves to deport people.

Which brings us full circle to the proposed education cuts and the impact they will have. Quality of education in American schools will decline even further. Something the country can not afford. America is already behind almost every other industrialized nation when it comes to math. We rank 12^th in science, and 8^th in the world when it comes to students completing their general education.

It won’t be long before the fallout of these policies have the U.S. ranked at the bottom of most list. And as America stumbles with the fallout, every other country would have bolted past us, knocking us off the world stage. America will no longer be looked at as a world leader. It will be looked upon as a empire that crumbled because of a dictator with delusions of godhood. A man who simply cut programs not because he wanted to save the tax payers money. Nay, it was because he simply didn’t like them

Americans may think they are going to benefit by the millions saved in reduced staffing. However, they are going to pay for it with lost education, and perhaps, many, many lost lives. 

List, Failed promises, and Red Hats

 As Donald Trump broke protocol and danced on stage with the cup, MAGA was miles away still seething. Despite multiple requests from stars such as Cole Palmer, who openly asked “Aren’t you going to get out of here?”, Trump continued to do the awkward dance that makes everyone assume he’s experiencing a full-blown body seizure. And all while Trump was making himself the center of attention, MAGA was seething.

Pam Bondi may have made one of the biggest blunders of all-time when she claimed the infamous “Epstein List” was on her desk. Compounded that gaff with that infantile photo opt when she handed out binders to right-wing social media influencers who held them high, smiling for the cameras. While this was going on, every single Trump supporter was beating their chest on social media, proclaiming how Trump was right about it again. In grand school-yard fashion, they pointed their finger at those across the aisle and proclaimed “I told you so!” Such influencers like @MillaLovesJoe, who never misses a chance to post falsehoods and outright lies, fantasized at what names could be on the list. Catturd proclaimed this would be the end of Bill Clinton. MAGA dreamt of every single Democrat in the U.S. being marched off to prison.

Then, the bombshell.  Pam Bondi claimed that there was never a list. Offering the very weak excuse that when asked about the infamous “list”, Bondi sought to clarify she merely met the file was on her desk. Dan Bongino, a man who used his time in the secret service to make himself a podcasting darling for MAGA, has considered resigning from his position at the FBI over the DOJ’s handling of the “Epstein Files”. While noble sounding, I’m sure Dan has realized he could revive his podcast career. He could make more money spouting nonsensical conspiracy theories to an audience insatiable for such nonsense.

It didn’t matter to MAGA that Trump once proclaimed he’d date his own daughter. Or that he once had her pose with him in some very questionable poses when she was still a minor. Not even the fact he bragged about how he got a thrill walking in on half naked 13-year-old girls at one of his beauty pageants simply because as owner, he could “inspect what ever he wanted.” Hell, it didn’t even bother MAGA that Trump was buddy/buddy with Ted Nugent. Nugent is a man who has proudly boasted about having sex with underage girls, and in 1984, tried to release a single a song called Jail Bait, which is about a man professing his love for a 13-year-old girl. Those fellows are quite okay by MAGA standards.

No, MAGA wanted Pizzagate to be real. They wanted to see the Clintons in jail, they wanted to see Obama in jail. Hell, they wanted to see every liberal in America in jail. Without evidence to back it up, they proclaimed that liberals were all groomers and that Clinton was a regular on the infamous Epstein Island. And now it appears that everything was just a giant conspiracy that lived only in their tin foil wrapped brains. Trump played into that hard and fast. And after his gaff of proclaiming he’d release the Epstein files if elected president, MAGA couldn’t race out to the polls fast enough.

Now they feel let down by Pam Bondi, who is assured to by lead by Trump and fed to MAGA as a sacrificial lamb. Trump is never to blame in the eyes of MAGA. Even when the mistake is clearly made by dear leader, they seek others to blame. Amusement can be had at the sight of those videos. Videos of MAGA burning that red hat which has become a symbol of their movement. Trump already has their money; they can burn as many hats as they desire. Of course, social media will vilify them, and bully them into returning to the fold. And they’ll buy new MAGA hats, at a generous mark-up of course.

It doesn’t matter who’ll replace Bondi. They’d be forced to admit the same thing Bondi has. Or, perhaps, Trump will bully them into creating a fake list with names on it. Trump would go that far because he knows he’ll never be made answerable. He’s never been answerable to everything he’s done in his life, so why start now.

MAGA loves Trump more than they love that hippy fellow named Jesus who preached peace, love, acceptance, and helping others when they are down. I’m sure if Jesus did come back today, MAGA would ask to see his papers. And upon being unable to produce any papers, they’d demand Jesus be deported to El Salvador.

No, MAGA didn’t have some awakening this weekend. They were let down. They sought the release of papers that are never going to see the light of day. At least until Trump is no longer in office, or he’s exited the mortal coil. Trump had years of business dealings with Epstein. It’s not out of the realm of possibility.

In reality, Trump needed the Epstein fiasco. The economy is suffering. Business are losing money, and unemployment is sure to rise. Maybe, just maybe, Trump needs people to keep talking about that creep. Less they stop and realize that Trump has failed to keep any promise, and is slowly but surely, destroying America’s standing in the world from within the White House.

When is a Third Party Not a Third Party?

 The bromance of Elon Musk and Donald Trump is seemingly on life support. To the point where Musk as teased creating a third party, called the American Party. Musk, who much like Trump, is a wealthy man thanks in part, to the work of his father, is claiming that his party will offer a fresh alternative to the current system.

Let’s examine that defective line of thinking. First, we’ve already had an “American Party”. This party was an offshoot of the Whigs and the Know-Nothings. The American Party had some pretty clear mandates. Immigration to America was to come to a halt. Nativism was quite high on the list. As was keeping slavery alive and well. Oh, and if you weren’t a Catholic, they pretty much wanted nothing to do with you either. Maybe Elon should have researched his party name a little more. Or maybe he just felt that by slapping the name “American” on it, it would trick people into feeling a little more patriotic. As we’ve seen the past, slapping the American flag on something really helps sell the product. Allen Jackson and the late Toby Keith milked that for all it was worth. Lee Greenwood fashioned his entire career off of it, coasting on his “Proud To Be An American” song.

However, we must look at third parties and view why they’ve been a complete failure, and why Musk’s modern version of the American Party is doomed to be an epic failure. There have always been third parties. Every election you can see some third-party candidate. If you subscribe to Duverger’s Law, third parties mainly split votes away from the two main parties. Examples of that being 1844, 2000, and 2016. The dire effects of 2016 being that even though one could see Duverger’s Law in effect, Jill Stein, a third-party candidate, was either too dense, or too arrogant see the damage her campaign was inflicting on the election. In a sense, one could argue that Jill Stein played a major role in getting Trump elected to his first term.

The Green Party, Libertarian Party, Constitution Party, and many others nominated candidates, but often struggle to get said candidates on ballots across the country. Often times, they can’t get enough signatures to get on the ballot, so the candidate will encourage their followers to write them in. Other times, the third party is just underfunded. They don’t have the backing to buy commercial time, and to make their candidates polices a matter of public record. How times have you the voter gone into the booth during election time, only to be faced with third party candidates you’ve never heard of, and will never see again? And other drawback is that many times, these candidates have policies that are not, and perhaps, will never be accepted by the mass of the population.

Third parties sound good on paper. You’re finally getting a choice. No longer do you have just two options. The reality is they are just doomed to fail. American voters have long since been conditioned that there are only two sound choices. And even that being said, as stated earlier, sometimes a third party can lead to disaster, and you end up with a wholly unqualified candidate getting into office. Donald Trump is a perfect example of that. Trump has shown himself not to be a fan of the constraints laid upon him by the U.S. Constitution, of which he has a frosty relationship with. He prefers to rule by edict via social media. He finds any challenge to his policies unacceptable. He even coined a new term, “Activist Judges.” Any judge that dares upholds the constitution at the expense of Trump’s policy is an “Activist Judge”. Trump’s own press secretaries have openly lamented that judges have no right to challenge anything that Trump does.

While it’s safe to say that Trump will follow the rules and not run again, the Republicans will run a Trump approved clone in his place. It could even be his own son that runs for office. Enter Musk and his third party. Either the American Party is going to take enough votes away and the Democratic candidate gets in office, or some how we have a repeat on 2016, and America continues its trek to becoming an Authoritarian state. I don’t warmly greet the idea of a third party for many reasons. One being Musk, and his love affair for tyrannical rule akin to Trump. Second being the aforementioned risk of a repeat of 2016. Or that the third-party candidate gets enough votes that it throws the entire system into chaos when none of the three reaches the threshold to claim the White House.

Thanks to the isolationism that has become a growing movement in the Republican Party, as well as it’s bigoted views towards immigrants and the LBGT community, America cannot afford a third-party candidate that gives a repeat of 2016. Especially when that so-called third-party candidate is funded by a wealthy elitist like Elon Musk. Unholy war chest of funds for the GOP and the Democrats is what muddied the water in the first place. With Citizens United still in place, and Musk’s willingness to spend with ever is needed to buy the White House, one has to ask themselves this question.

Is this a true third-party, or just an expansion of Republican policies with a re-branded name?

Trump and the continued false promises

 There comes a time where the dog will turn on its master. After years of dangling the Jeffrey Epstein carrot in front of MAGA, the White House announces that there is no log book, no smoking gun. Pam Bondi has essentially said she “misspoke” when on Fox News and Newsmax, she claimed that the Epstein book was “sitting on her desk”.

The Jeffrey Epstein book saga made for great theater. It was amusing to see the MAGA talking heads play a guessing game as to which Democrat was in Epstein’s magic book. In a strange way, it felt like the Heidi Fliess situation all over again. Some of you younger readers may have to google her.

Let’s be real about a few things, even if there was a magic book filled with names of influential people the odds of it ever being released were slim to none. It gave Donald Trump one hell of a distraction from his terrible policies. His policy of alienating every ally we’ve had for over a hundred years, and replacing them with countries led by cruel men who feel once shall not speak ill of dear leader. His obsession with tariffs, which not shockingly, is paid for by the consumer. Though Trump has taken to his soapbox to demand that companies eat the cost and not pass it on. Only that those companies have shareholders to answer to, and push comes to shove, the company isn’t going to eat the cost. They’ll absorb it by,cutting employee hours, hiring freezes, or just cutting staff. They aren’t going to eat the cost in the manner of which Trump claims they will.

Let’s get back to Jeffrey Epstein, It doesn’t matter to MAGA that there are countless hours of video of Trump and Epstein acting like BFFs. Or that Trump is alleged to have visited the infamous Epstein island countless times. Not even the sworn grand jury testimony from two young women who stated that when they were 12 and 13 respectively, they were forced to perform oral sex on Trump. None of that mattered to MAGA. He spoke to their innermost bigot, and that’s all that mattered.

Watching MAGA meltdown over the last 72 hours has been quite amusing. I will admit, some of the things they’ve said about Pam Bondi has been disgusting, and I’m sure law enforcement will be securing a visit with some of these fine folks in the near future. There have been calls for Bondi to be fired and put in prison. I saw one truly brainless MAGA supporter demand that Bondi be deported.

Anyone who thought that any information other than what has been put out there was going to be released, was fooled. No smoking gun, no magic bullet. The Epstein Files Trump claimed the FBI had never existed. He outright lied in order to get their vote. And since he can’t run again, and he knows his base will never blame him, as long as he has others to shift the blame upon.

All of this played out the way that others like myself said it would. If there were any Epstein files, Trump would never release them. Sad thing is that MAGA is never in their lives going to acknowledge that they got conned by the Don. However, if there is anything history has taught us, eventually frustration will mount. And dear leader will find himself the focus of his base. However, instead of loyalty, they will come after him with rage. Humpty Dumpty is about to have a great fall.

Texas Floods and Lessons not learned

 No one could have predicted it. No one saw it coming. It’s a hundred-year storm, one proclaimed. Others claimed they were let down, that incoming data was shaky at best. One beat his chest, and in a true grandstanding moment, proclaimed that an investigation needed to be started. It all made for great theater.

This folks, is the aftermath of flooding that struck Texas. A flood that claimed so many lives, that I dare not put a figure here. For if I do, the figure would most likely updated before the completion of this sentence. And if the results hadn’t been so brutally tragic, this would feel like we were living a farce.

However, to understand the underlining tragedy of what happened in Central Texas and at Camp Mystic, we just have to turn back the clock to a few months ago. DOGE, led by Elon Musk and has band of evil Dick Graysons slashed the budgets of many agencies, including NOAA. NOAA stands for National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In sort, this is the agency tasked with helping your local weather person accurately predict the weather. This is the agency that helps determine how strong a hurricane born over the Atlantic is going to be. Or how brutal an incoming winter storm is going to be. Or even how rains could affect an area by, for example, causing flooding. They accomplish this by launching weather balloons. They are also launching planes that document storms and their patterns. In short, all of the information your local weather forecaster needs to do their job and keep you safe, comes from NOAA. Not exactly an agency you want running on an overly lean budget.

Ted Cruz, natures answer to what would an enema would like in human form, called what happened “Every parent’s nightmare.” Gov. Greg Abbott proclaimed they’d never give up the search. Not to be outdone, Lt. Gov Dan Patrick, who once demanded that Americans save the economy by “Sacrificing grandma.” Said that relentless rains caused the flooding and that there were 700 children at the camp. There’s something all three of these men (and I use that term loosely) have in common. All cheered the budget cuts at NOAA. Patrick has in the past gone further, demanding FEMA, the agency that comes in after a disaster and helps rebuild, be disbanded altogether and that the states and the states alone handle recovery.

I want to stress at this point that I’m doing all I can to keep calm as I compose this blog. I have great anger at those men, and the MAGA movement as a whole. Because they need to accept the blame on this one. Donald Trump, who spoke with no emotion over the loss of life, just seemed to shrug it off, as if he was searching his barely functioning brain for a reason to blame Biden for what happened in Texas. Trump’s first response wasn’t to reach out to anyone in Texas. It was to retire to the White House, and continue his fake social media war with Elon Musk. And to use some of that time to post another edict on social media regarding tariffs. Trump isn’t clueless about what happened in Texas, he just doesn’t care. He is pledging help from FEMA, the very agency he called wasteful and unneeded a few weeks ago.

Many of us predicted that something, if not this exact event, would happen. Which led to the MAGA megaphones on Twitter to poke fun of, and declare that people needed help for their Trump Derangement Syndrome. The area of Texas that was affected is known as “Flash Flood Alley”. Now, had NOAA’s budget not been cut, perhaps leadership in Texas would have been armed with the information that could have saved lives.

It makes it worse that this area was a known flood risk. It makes it worse that the notion of evacuating people was considered, and then dismissed. Cruz asks if there are tools in place that could have helped. Well, for one, there are, but you cut funding to the agency that uses them. Second, the flood area saw water rise way too fast. So, the inaction of the leadership in Texas, has again cost lives, the lives of children.

You know Trump is going to offer praise to Gov. Abbott and Ted Cruz for their efforts in helping the citizens of Texas. Even though it was their ineptness that helped cause all of this. And it was Trump and MAGA and DOGE that played a huge role as well.

Look, if you’re expecting a cheerful ending, the notion that this could serve as a lesson, you’re sadly mistaken. Though I’ve always found it interesting how little as a species we try and head off danger. We just let tragedy strike and figure it has taught us a lesson. None of the men I mentioned above learn lessons. They just blame others for their shortcomings and move on. And the season is still young. There’s another tragedy out there, waiting to happen. And we’ll be having these same conversations all over again. 

It's Now Or Never

 Hakeem Jefferies made a stand today. Deep down, we all knew it was a futile gesture, but he had to do it. He had to delay it. He had to take a stand even though he’d lose, and end up the butt of jokes on conservative media outlets.

Today, MAGA cheered cuts to Medicaid, SNAP, and other programs they relay on. Tips are still going to be taxed to a certain extent. As will be social security. The Middle class will have to take up the slack to pay taxes. Taxes that fund road work, SNAP, Medicaid, and those wars that always seem to help with GOP morale.

I’m going to try my best and table the emotions. Which is why I’ve delayed doing this blog for so long. I’ve been pissed off all day. Pissed off at seeing what MAGA has done to Republicans. Pissed off that Americans cheered the lose of their benefits. Pissed off that this all could have been avoided if America had just refused to make the same mistake twice.

They ran Biden out of the race, and ran Kamala. Nothing wrong with Kamala, you don’t make a change that late in the race. Everyone told them not to, and they did it anyways. And this is where we are.

Right now, America continues to freefall into a fascist state. I.C.E continues to kidnap people off the streets. Millions upon millions were spent on a facility that in a few years, will be remembered as a huge mistake. Funny, can’t fund SNAP, can’t fund Medicaid, can’t fund programs for the homeless. Goddamn we can spend money to build a concentration camp. That’s the new America.

 "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

 

That has been replaced by “Get Out!” Been replaced by the modern version of the brown shirts will come into your homes, schools, and places of work and kidnap you.

Honestly, this is not the time for a visit to America. In fact, until we can cleanse the country of the MAGA, it might be best to not come here. In fact, let’s teach the America First crowd a lesson. Seize the time to build your nations. So that when Americans finally wake up to the damage the America First/MAGA movement has done, it will be stuck in a generations long game of catch-up. Now is the time for the Euro nations to replace America on the world stage.

I’m still pissed off, but this blog has been a cathartic release. I needed this. I’m still pissed, still utterly 100% embarrassed to be an American. However, my mind is coming into sharper focus. Now is the time to set our sights on the MAGA movement, and bulldoze them aside, and relegate them to the history books. Let future generations learn of the MAGA movement the same way they learned about 1930’s Germany.  We better focus. There’s no other choice. If we don’t fix this mess, the America we knew will be dead and buried. It would be as if the Confederacy won the Civil War.

The Rights of Transgender Athletes and Terrible Agreements

 There’s a scene in the movie 42 where a baseball reporter proclaimed that within a few years, there’d be no more white ball players. He based his assumption on an unproven theory that a longer shin bone gave black athletes an unfair advantage over white ball players. After Jackie Robinson hits a home run, another reporter, annoyed at his colleague’s racist remarks, asked “Was that because of his long shin bone.” He then operates his teletype machine while everyone gets a good laugh at the ignorant reporter.

Fast forward to 2025. Arguments alike are being made about transgender athletes. Men transitioning into women have an unfair advantage they say. They toss out an unproven theory to back their point. Talent doesn’t matter to them. They see a man pretending to be a woman in order to get an unfair advantage. They say allowing transgender harms “real women”.

Riley Gaines has been the leading voice against transgender athletes. Gaines is a second-generation athlete who managed to make the swim team at University of Kentucky. After a promising Freshman season, Gaines, like many before her, soon discovered she was no longer a big fish swimming in a little sea. Faster, stronger, and more talented swimmers from across the country were proving themselves better than her. She parlayed her Freshman season into a spot on the second team in the SEC all swimming team. Makes a great sound bite, and looks good on paper. Essentially what is means is that Gaines wasn’t the best of the best. She was just good enough to be their back-up. Second string.

Enter Lia Thomas. Thomas faced off against Gaines, and in the end, they both tied for fifth place. Instead of accepting defeat, Gaines pouted, whined about transgender athletes being allowed to compete, and thus began her campaign to have a secret agreement in place. Not unlike the so-called “Gentleman’s Agreement” created by Cap Anson in the later 1880’s to bar African-Americans from playing major league baseball. Anson, a card-carrying member of the KKK, used his role as the top star in baseball to browbeat owners into agreeing to his demands. His protest started because of a game in Toledo. Toledo had a catcher named Moses Fleetwood Walker, who in 1884, became the first African-American to play in the majors. Anson was incensed and refused to allow his Chicago ball club to take the field unless Walker was “Removed from the field and deleted from the Toledo roster.” Charlie Morton, Toledo’s manager, was ready for Anson. He said he’d agree to Anson’s demands, upon one condition. Anson would forfeit his part of the gate. Visitor’s gate was how many teams made money on the road. Anson could get his way, but then he’d have to tell his players they weren’t getting paid. Anson dropped his demands and played the game under protest. However, this planted the seeds for what would become a dark blight on baseball.

Flash forward to now. Riley Gaines, a decent, but somewhat average athlete, has used social media and the current climate to get her way. To succeed where Cap Anson failed. Lia Thomas has since had every one of her records stricken from the books. And Gaines has used unproven theories and outright lies to spread fear and to essentially ban transgender athletes from all sports.

Now, comes the irony of Gaines’s hellbent drive. In 1973, Bobby Riggs, who had been one of the greatest tennis players of all-time, proclaimed women’s tennis inferior. It was a gimmick, he said. He challenged Margaret Court, who was the number ranked player in the world, to a battle of the sexes. Riggs easily won the match. He then faced Billie Jean King. King studied every aspect of the match with Court, and bested Riggs in their match,

However, women’s sports still faced a decades long challenge for respect. College programs were barely funded, and pro sports leagues failed as quickly as they started. While as head coach of Auburn football in the 1990’s, Tommy Tuberville (who Gaines gushingly sings the praises of) lamented that he couldn’t get more funding for the football team’s weight room because of the money the school had to “throw away” on the women’s programs.

Gaines continues to make her claim that the transgender athletes could injure or severely hurt the women they compete against. Well, that can happen when women compete against women as well. What’s next, banning a woman because she has a more muscular body that the women she competes against? Being more muscular doesn’t make you a better athlete. Being transgender doesn’t make you a better athlete, nor does a “longer shin bone”. You either have talent or you don’t. Sports tend to be a human crash course. You’re going to get hurt.

However, you don’t get to use fear, bigotry, or hurt feelings to bar others from competing. Agreements based on those concepts, are best left relegated to the past. 

Fake Social Media Wars, Shiny Beads and Shallow Flattery

 

There’s controversy ahead for the Trump administration. His “Big Beautiful Bill,” that is going to slash funding for Medicaid and take away medical care for hundreds of thousands of Americans. He’s bungled and botched the Israel/Iran affair with the expertise of a Keystone Cop. He’s been forced to rebuke his own intel community regarding the success of the strikes. His anti-immigration policies have proven unpopular with everyone outside of his MAGA cult. I.C.E. operates under a cloak that leaves them answerable to no one. Reports have risen about men impersonating I.C.E attempting to abduct people off the streets. Recently, authorities under Trump’s command ran rough shot over peacefully pretesting priest and church members who called Trump’s treatment of immigrants. And J.D. Vance, forever looking to put his foot in his mouth, proclaimed that cuts in Medicaid were “Immaterial” and smugly proclaiming that instead of feeding the poor that in the long run, it’s better to use that money to fund I.C.E. As Vance continued to spread the falsehood that millions of illegal immigrants were collecting welfare. Even though doing so would expose them to law enforcement and assure deportation, Vance, with zero facts to back up his statement, continued to parrot a debunked MAGA talking point.

So, what is a disgraced leader of a nation to do when things go haywire? Stage a phony social media war with Elon Musk! It’s worked before. Trump has shown in the past he’s not above staging entertaining social media wars and other events to distract from everything falling around him. Musk, who may or may not have legit grievances regarding the “Big Beautiful Bill”, has threatened to personally fund candidates to run against anyone who votes for the bill. Trump, not to be outdone, has proclaimed he will rally his base to vote out anyone who votes against it. And meanwhile, Republicans flounder around, asking what they should two. With these two opposing forces in motion, they are damned if they do, and damned if they don’t. Now, if only any of them had a backbone.

Hey, this is America, and Americans love theater over everything else. They love the sizzle if not the steak. Americans are just so easily distracted by shiny beads and swallow flattery. So, Musk and Trump will continue their staged spat, making it more outrageous with each passing day. They’ll get the news media and social media influences to gobble it up, and they’ll chat on the phone with each other, marveling on how easy it was to work the crowd.

And while the focus is on what two multi-millionaires are saying and threatening each other with, everything else will be easy. Americans will lose rights without knowing it. The poor will be made worse off by this fascist administration, the middle class will get stuck with the bill. And the wealthy 1%, they’ll buy another yacht or sixth home with the money they’ll save with the newest tax breaks. Hey, grandma needs surgery on her kidneys? Sorry, that’s no longer covered under your plan. Better start that Go Fund Me page. Wait, you mean small children have lost funding for their breakfast program before school? That sucks, but hey, it won’t hurt the kids to miss a meal or two…. or three…. or four. Starvation will help them build character. Quite the interesting take from the pro-life crowd.

All jokes aside. The “Big Beautiful Bill” will cut $186 billion from food programs, and $1.1 trillion from Medicaid over the next decade. This to offset the $2.2 billion in tax cuts that Musk and others are going to receive during that same time frame, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation and the non-partisan (a term Trump doesn’t know the meaning of) Congressional Budget Office.

It’s always interested by that when it comes time to cutting from the budget, it’s always the poor and middle class that lose out. They’re sold the lie that taxing the rich is a form of punishment, yet are made blind to the fact that so-called “punishment” is being inflicted on them. In reality, Republicans believe that wealth relieves you from the burden of having to pay taxes. And hey, if you continue to pay taxes, maybe one day, you’ll win the lotto and be rich, and not have to pay taxes anymore. Amusing that when it comes to budget cuts, you don’t see any elected leader saying that they should take a pay cut. Tom Brady never took a pay cut, per say, but he deferred monies and never sought to be the highest paid player in the league. His cap friendly mentality (and the fact he knew he could make that revenue up doing commercials) played a huge role in the New England Patriots have a near 20-year dynasty.

Elected officials are never taking pay cuts, the wealthy will never pay their fair share, and the middle class will bare the burden of everything. And it will be that way as long as Americans are distracted. Distracted by staged social media wars, shiny beads, and shallow flattery. 

Big Beautiful Bills and a Fragile System

 Well folks, we sit and we wait. Wait to see the final outcome of the BBB, the Big Beautiful Bill. A bill that will shift further the tax burden to the middle class and give the wealthy elite a chance to buy a fifth or sixth home, or perhaps, just go out and buy a dang yaht.

For the last 90 days, Trump and his cronies have bragged about the bill, and downplayed its serious shortcomings. It would not add to the deficit, they claim. Or will it? Or will it dent an already fragile economy?

The middle class, not the rich and wealthy, drive the economy. They always have. Just as its usually a middle class that are job creators, just as it’s the middle class that are typically the inventors. If Elon Musk creates a company that sells widgets, and those widgets sell because the middle class is buying them, that allows Musk to open new widget stores, creating new jobs. Thus, the middle class has played a serious role in creating new jobs, and giving more people purchasing power to participate in the economy. Now, if those widgets fail, that company shuts its doors, the test jobs go away. If the middle class mis taxed to the point that they can’t buy the widgets, the widgets fail, and there’s no job growth.

Recently, the CBO has revised their numbers, and have predicted that the “Big Beautiful Bill” will increase the deficit by $2.4 trillion dollars over the course of the next ten years. The current U.S. debt as I write this is $36.21 trillion dollars, with $28.88 trillion held by the general public. Add the “Big Beautiful Bill” to the mix, and all of a sudden the so-called conservative budget hawks have America almost $40 trillion in debt. Other groups have adjusted the CBO numbers by more than a trillion dollars. Every who is an expert is calling the bill an economic disaster

That hasn’t stopped Trump from spending Speaker Johnson on a lying tour, claiming that Trump had the greatest economy ever (numbers don’t lie, as none of his claims could be validated). That seems to be one of the hallmarks of Trump. Every president before him was terrible and did everything wrong, and that in 349 years, he’s been the only anything right.

Trump will do anything to get this bill passed, even if that means returning to the place he’s clearly most comfortable, the bully pulpit. He’s forced Republican senators to announce they won’t run again. He’s demanded that only Republican that doesn’t vote for his bill be primaried and thrown out of the party in disgrace. Not shocking for a man that once suckled at the teat of mobster John Gotti. Trump wants his bill passed and he wants it passed right now.

Over the last year, Trump has engaged in trade wars with, well, everyone of our traditional trading partners. He’s imposed tariffs, which are passed to the consumer. Though Trump has demanded (there’s that word, again) that the companies eat all the cost of the tariffs, and not raise prices. They could do that, in theory. Though shareholders might have a say in that. And it could cost millions of Americans their jobs. Not good at a time in which the American government is going through a period of contraction, and Trump is actually bragging about increasing the unemployment numbers in America. Doesn’t matter that many of those people had to be hired back because they were fired illegally by D.O.G.E. D.O.G.E is the finest example of irony. An agency that claims its mission to be rooting out bloated government, when itself is an example of bloated government.

If the “Big Beautiful Bill” passes, it’s not going to be because the Republicans (well, some of them, anyways) backed it. It’s because they were bullied into supporting it, at the very risk of losing their jobs. Look, it’s long past time that true Republicans actually stood up to Trump. He’s bullied them into submission, happily sending his MAGA minions after them. They, along with some Democrats, have to seriously grow a set, and combat MAGA as the domestic menace it truly is. If they don’t, and they allow this bill to pass, there may not be much of an America left to fight for.