A Quarter-Century

I'm not revisiting this topic. I've written enough on it. Go read what I wrote in 2010 and 2011 and 2017. Or this, which wasn't posted on an anniversary.

The shame now is that we have a president who is so miffed that he can't deliver one of his hate-filled speeches at the Ground Zero Memorial that he's skipping marking the day in NY. Because it's not about the attacks in his mind, it's all about his cowardly ass.

You may remember this:

Memorial Day

Today, May 30th, is the traditional day for Memorial Day, formerly known as Decoration Day, for the flags that were put on the graves of deceased veterans. It was meant to be a day of mournful reflection, with, at most, parades to commemorate the fallen.

Hundreds of thousands of Americans have died and continue to die in defense of this country and its interests. Many die years and decades afterwards from illnesses and wounds suffered in combat and even afterwards.

Why can't we have a day to remember them without it turning into a festival of commerce?

Feckless, Heedless, Incompetence: Hallmarks of the Trump Administration

He seems to have launched into his Big Beautiful War with no thought of the consequences for the global economy. This is from an opinion piece that is not paywalled:

Trump neither sought nor received congressional approval, much less international support, for his war. But perhaps the most shocking thing about his cavalier approach is that he seems to have had no idea that the Gulf would be a target. In an interview with CNN on Monday, he professed that Iran’s attacks on American allies in the Gulf were “probably the biggest surprise” — despite the fact that just about every country in the region had warned his administration that Iran would surely attack them in retaliation for an American assault.
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It is unsettling how often Trump affects astonishing indifference, as though the most powerful man in the world were merely a spectator to events he himself has set in motion — and who in any case has little investment in the outcome. But that curious passivity reveals a darker truth. Trump seems to believe that he, like his fantasy America, exists on a different plane, utterly untouchable by the swirl of global events. The devastating consequences of his actions are not just someone else’s fault. They are someone else’s problem, too.

Since Trump is big on "feelings" (he launched this war because he had a feeling, not hard intel or evidence), I'll give you one of mine: The natiional average for gasoline will be $4/gal by the end of the month, if not St. Patrick's Day. By Memorial Day, if not sooner, it will be over $5/gal. Those who have Priuses and other hybrids will look across the island at the gas station, as some guy cries about filling up his giant SUV or pickup truck and think "fuck your feelings".

Meanwhile, Trump and his minions are trying to shrug off the fact that his buddy Putin is helping the Iranians to target and kill Americans. One has to wonder why people still don't get that Trump, Gabbard, and Witkoff, among others, are owned by Putin. Republicans are basically cowards, just totally fearful of Trump and his stochastic MAGA terrorists.

And if Biden had said this, the Right would be screaming that he needs to be removed:

Trump: "Finally, we honor one more American soldier, a fallen warria of world. Of wars. And really, terra.” pic.twitter.com/7Ih78Rwdcp

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 2, 2026

Another Day, Another Solemn Event Defiled by Trump

So not only did he wish people a "Happy Memorial Day" (kind of like wishing someone a "happy yahrzeit"), he then used part of his speech that traditionally is made to honor the fallen to launch into his usual litany of personal attacks and grievances. I'm only surprised that he didn't end it with a plug for his crypto grift.

What saddens me the most is all of those self-styled conservatives, the people who usually pride themselves on being patriots and honoring those who died in the service of this country, are so utterly silent at spectacle of the Short-fingered Vulgarian verbally rubbing shit all over the Tomb of the Unknowns.

But it's what I have come to expect of them. Loyalty to Trump über alles is their SOP.

Fewer and Fewer People Want Teslers (as the FLOSS calls them)

Tesla told Austin workers on its Model Y and Cybertruck lines to stay home for the week of Memorial Day, three workers told Business Insider.

The break is unusually long, the workers said. Production lines were up and running during the same period last year, they said.
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In April, Elon Musk's carmaker reported a 13% drop in deliveries year over year. During the first quarter, Tesla reported it produced nearly 26,000 more EVs than it delivered, even after a drop in production of nearly 100,000 vehicles compared with the previous quarter.

Whether or not EVs are a good thing and whether or not the WankerPanzer in particular deserves its repuation as an expensive piece of garbage, it's a shame that the workers are paying the price for Musk's successive decisions to become so identified with the brand and then to go on full Nazi with the FLOSS.

But it is what it is. One of the few ways that people have to openly show their disapproval of him is to not buy his shitty cars. And so they are.

What If the Situation Was Reversed?

A friend asked me what would happen if it had been Biden who had been shot at. Would Trump be as gracious as Biden has been?

I think the answer is "not likely." Trump is motivated by two things: Greed and revenge. Everything he does fits into those two boxes.

For example, if you feel up to it, go look at the holiday messages he has sent out on his personal social media accounts (not the official messages when he was in office). Veterans Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Christmas, any day whatsoever. Even if they start out with the sort of platitudes one might expect from anyone else, they all end up as screeds against his perceived enemies or personal attacks or generalized nastiness. He revels in making fun of disabled or handicapped people.

Trump is just a nasty, juvenile, piece of work. He has the social maturity of a seven-year-old and he proves it, every day of his adult life. Those in his orbit, including politicians who once may have been decent men and women, have debased themselves to Trump's level of immaturity. The rest of them in the formerly-grand old party have closed their eyes and ears to Trump's gutter behavior and his racism (looking at you, Mitch McConnell, Mitt Romney and others).

So no, I would expect Trump would not have been gracious, not at all. Nor do I expect him to think about that he could have died on Saturday with a reputation of being a racist, bigoted and hateful excuse for a man. That won't cross his mind for an attosecond.

Memorial Day

This is the traditional day for Memorial Day, formerly known as Decoration Day, for the flags that were put on the graves of deceased veterans. It was meant to be a day of mournful reflection, with, at most, parades to commemorate the fallen.

Hundreds of thousands of Americans have died in defense of this country and its interests.

Why can't we have a day to remember them without it turning into a festival of commerce?

A Day of Greed and Sloth is All That Today Really Is

Memorial Day was once a day to remember those Americans who died in service of this nation. It was not meant to be a shopping extravaganza, a kickoff for summer vacations and a day for parties and other such bullshit.

But you know that in a capitalist society (or half-capitalist, since the airlines, banks and such all get rescued with government money when they get into trouble), greed is a cardinal virtue and anything that facilitates getting consumers to go more deeply into debt is a sacrement.

So, as I've ranted before, to satisfy the greedy fuckers, Memorial Day was changed from a somber day of reflection to a floating holiday to make for a longer weekend.

Every holder of a "Memorial Day Sale" should be regarded as a bottom-feeder who is enriching themselves from the memories of those who did the hard work of fighting and dying.

So, on this fake holiday, I say to you:

Spend Nothing!

Memorial Day

Let's open with the Andy Rooney bit that I've used for years:

There will continue to be new people to remember on future Memorial Days. America may be at relative peace for the first time in decades, but it will not last. Sooner or later, our military will be called upon to defend our nation or those of our allies, or to defend our national interests. Even without another war, people will continue to pass from service-connected injuries.

And families will continue to mourn.

Tomorrow is Memorial Day. Not Today.

This is a dead horse that I have been whipping for the last fifteen years.

The lesson is that greed will debase everything. There is far, far more coverage of people traveling for an extended weekend and what's on sale than there is about the men and women who lost their lives in the service of this country. Everyone who runs a "Memorial Day sale" has, in my hopes, guaranteed themselves a nice hot spot in Hell.

Memorial Day

By my reckoning, this is the third time since I began this blog that the Memorial Day holiday has fallen on the day it was originally intended to occur, before it was co-opted by the greedy fucks in the retail and tourism industries. So my usual rant is on hold until next year, Lord willing.

We ought to dispense with the phrase "they gave their lives". Few willingly set forth to die in combat. The intention, then and now, has been to serve one's country and, at least for now, to defend freedom.

Unfortunately, war goes on. National leaders continue to believe that they can achieve policy goals by conquering other nations and subjugating them.[1] There are those who believe that the answer to aggression is not fighting back. I am not aware of a single time when an invasion of one country by another was defeated by pacific resistance.

As long as politicians think that war is the answer to a diplomatic problem, then we will continue to send young people into combat, continue to add graves to military cemeteries and continue to have more honored dead to remember on Memorial Day.
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[1] George W. Bush and Vladimir V. Putin come quickly to mind.

The Dirksen Rule in Effect

("When I feel the heat, I see the light."-- Everett Dirksen)

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene apologized Monday for affronting people with recent comments comparing the required wearing of safety masks in the House to the horrors of the Holocaust.

“I’m truly sorry for offending people with remarks about the Holocaust,” the Georgia Republican told reporters outside the Capitol, saying she had visited Washington’s U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum earlier in the day. “There’s no comparison and there never ever will be.”

Color me unconvinced. She's not sorry for saying it, she's sorry for offending people. And she hasn't completely got off the crazy train:

But the Georgia Republican declined to walk back other controversial statements she has made, including one in which she compared the Democratic Party to Hitler’s party, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party.

I'll be more impressed if Greene visits The Legacy Museum, The National Memorial for Peace and Justice and The National Museum of African American History and Culture to learn something about racism, Jim Crow and the struggle to gain the right to vote for minorities (and she can take Rand Paul with her). Then she can go over to the National Air and Space Museum and learn that there is no such thing as Jewish space lasers. After that, she can go over to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History and learn that the Earth is not flat and that it isn't the center of the Universe.

It's a sad thing that some Georgian Republicans have to be elected to Congress in orer to learn some basic facts about history and science.

This Should Not Be Memorial Day

(My usual rant, going back a dozen years.)

I know, I know. I beat this subject like a rented mule, every year. Actually, twice, on every year where the holiday of Memorial Day doesn't fall on the 30th. Maybe you're tired of it.

Too fucking bad.

We're losing the veterans of World War Two at a great clip. Those men and women were everywhere when I was a child. Now they're becoming as rare as veterans of the Spanish-American War were back then. The Korean War vets are not far behind them

When the last veteran of each war dies, please, let's not turn our backs on honoring them the way that fucking John Boehner did for the veterans of the Great War. But we will, if either the Majority Leader of the Senate or the Speaker of the House is as much of a worthless pissant as Boehner was.

Meanwhile, if you're doing any of the holiday shit today, spare a thought for those who paid the price so that you could.

And if you own a business that is holding a Memorial Day Sale, you know what you can go do with a rolling doughnut.

Memorial Day

I've timed this post for nautical twilight, which was a customary time to attack a position. (That was about the time that the Redcoats wanted to arrive in Lexington, but they were late.)

Originally Decoration Day, Memorial Day was the day to clean up and put flowers and flags on the graves of Americans who fought for (and against) the country. It was a solemn day, marked by parades and services on town greens.

But a little over fifty years ago, the chuckleheads in Congress changed the date itself from May 30th to the last Monday of the month. That transformed Memorial Day from a solemn event into a day for cookouts and travelling, making it the unoffical start of the summer vacation season. That was done because the fucking unpatriotic greedheads in the tourism and retail industries sought to monetize it, as they do everything else.

They did the same to Veterans Day, but the veterans complained and Congress moved it back in 1978, But nobody seems to speak as loudly for the dead, so Memorial Day has been corrupted ever since.

Remember those whose lives were taken in service of this country.

The Doughboy was Joseph F. Ambrose, Sr. His son, Clement, was killed in action in the Korean War.

Caturday- Memorial Edition

Bella, 2004(?)-2021

My roomie adopted her in 2007. At the shelter, they called her "Momma", as she had been taken in while raising a litter. Once her kits were weaned, they were also adopted out. At the shelter, Bella was very friendly, wanting to be held. Once into her forever home, that was enough of that shit. But she loved being petted and lap time. And she loved her treats; the spooky catnip treats Temptations made for Halloween were her favorite. Every evening, I would call her by saying: "Bella, pets," and she would come to me for a scratching session. Then she would go into her roomie's bedroom to lay on her lap and help her read.

Bella has had a chronic problem that may have been neurological, because everything else was ruled out.

She needed a steroid shot monthly. She was given mirtazapine to boost her appetite; first a half a pill a week, then the interval tightened up. Recently it's been every other day, then daily. When that didn't work, anymore we gave her a full pill to see if it would jump-start her appetite. It didn't work and, over the last few days, she began drinking a lot of water.

The last photo of Bella, taken ten minutes before her final trip.

Letting her go into kidney failure wasn't an option.

So earlier today, she took a stroll over the Rainbow Bridge.

Fair winds and may your prey be easy to catch.

Trump on the Military: Just Fucking Despicable

If you are serving this country in uniform, or have ever served, Trump regards you as a loser and a sucker.1

A new report details multiple instances of President Donald Trump making disparaging remarks about members of the U.S. military who have been captured or killed, including referring to the American war dead at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery in France in 2018 as “losers” and “suckers.”

Trump said Thursday that the story is “totally false.”
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Staffers from the National Security Council and the Secret Service told Trump that rainy weather made helicopter travel to the cemetery risky, but they could drive there. Trump responded by saying he didn’t want to visit the cemetery because it was “filled with losers,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to discuss it publicly.
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The Defense officials also confirmed to The AP reporting in The Atlantic that Trump on Memorial Day 2017 had gone with his chief of staff, John Kelly, to visit the Arlington Cemetery gravesite of Kelly’s son, Robert, who was killed in 2010 in Afghanistan, and said to Kelly: “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?”
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The magazine said Trump also referred to former President George H.W. Bush as a “loser” because he was shot down by the Japanese as a Navy pilot in World War II.

If you want to know in how much regard Trump holds the military, his niece has something to relate:

President Trump and his ex-wife Ivana Trump said they would disown and disinherit their son Donald Trump Jr. if he joined the Army, a new book by the president's niece claims.

"Donny was going to join the army or some bullshit like that, and Donald and Ivana told him if he did, they’d disown him in a second,” the book recounts the president's brother, Robert Trump, telling Mary L. Trump, the book's author.

Sure, That is entirely consistent with how Cadet Bone Spurs has approached his entire life: What's in it for him, never a thought for anyone else, let alone his country. Joining the military means that one puts the need of their country ahead of one'sown life, a choice that, to a grifter like Trump, is utterly inconceivable.

General Kelly has to be a paragon of self-control, for it's hard to see how a reasonable jury would have convicted a father for strangling a man who had stood in front of the son's grave and called the kid a loser for joining the military during a time of two wars.

The funny thing in all this, if there is a funny thing, is that Trump, a man who has told tens of thousands of documented lies as President, a man for whom all news operations (except Fox) have had to fact-check him in almost every story printed or aired these days, is swearing that this story isn't true.

Trump lies. He lies about everything. Why on Earth would any rational person take him at his word?
_______________________________________________
1. One would have to conclude that he has the same low regard for civilians who run towards the danger: police, firefighters, paramedics and the Secret Service. For only a loser and a sucker would lay down his or her life for Donald Trump.

Today is Memorial Day (Or It Should Be)

Men and women have paid with their lives for the defense of this country, in wars that ranged from being just to being exercises in damned foolishness. Even when they disagreed with the war or its aims, they did their jobs.

I will raise a glass to the memories of my father and most of my uncles, all of whom are gone, now, but who served in World War Two and the Korean War. I will drink to the memory of the son of a shipmate, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This is Not Memorial Day

It shouldn't be. (Track back my usual rant, going back a dozen years.)

We're losing the World War II servicemen and women, along with the millions who went into the factories and shipyards, by the thousands each day. The children who helped raise nine million tons of produce in Victory Gardens a year are not much younger.

The day that we remember what they did should be a solemn day. It should not be a day devoted to barbecues, traveling, shopping, and driving while intoxicated.

I know it'll never be moved back to the 30th. The travel and retail lobbyists would throw fits (and cash campaign donations). Those critters only offer lip service to those who have died in service (or after serving) to our nation. Those venal snakes don't give a shit about anything else.

But it's wrong and as long as I'm doing this blog, expect something like this post each year.

P.S., Don't be a chucklehead and thank living veterans for their service. Memorial Day honors the dead, not the living.

WW2 Vets: Let's Not Repeat the Mistake From the Great War Vets (In Lieu of My Usual Screed About Memorial Day)

Stickied for the day, newer posts follow..

(The usual screed)

You may remember Frank Buckles. He was the last living American doughboy from the First World War. When he passed away, eight years ago, there was a movement to have him lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda to honor all of the veterans of the War to End All Wars.

That request was denied by the then-Speaker of the House, John Boehner, in one of the pettiest political acts in modern memory.

We should not repeat that mistake. There should be a law that when the last living veteran of the Second World War goes west, whomever he or she happens to be, that person gets a state funeral, including lying in state in the Capitol, to honor the millions of men and women who served in the war. It should not be left to the whims of whatever gasbags are the Speaker of the House and the Senate Majority Leader at the time.

I once knew a man who was born in 1930 and who was a combat vet in the war. He had signed up when he was fourteen. When he wrote his father from boot camp to ask his dad's help in proving his that he was too young, his father wrote back: "Boy, you got yourself into this mess, you get yourself out of it." (He did, when he retired after thirty years of service.)

I've long ago forgotten his name. I don't know if he's alive. But there were probably other kids who did that. They answered the call at a time of great peril; the veterans of WW2 have richly earned such a final honor.

So we may have time to make sure that this honor is enshrined into law. But we shouldn't dawdle.

Trump Apparently Thinks Americans Don't Celebrate the Fourth of July

President Donald Trump says he’ll host a July Fourth celebration at the Lincoln Memorial. And though the event he’s calling “A Salute to America” is months away, he’s boasting it’ll be one of the city’s biggest Independence Day gatherings--ever.

Right. Holding a Fourth of July celebration on July 4th-- that's some real outside-the-box thinking, there.

Every Fourth, there is a concert by the National Symphony Orchestra and one of the Army bands on the west lawn of the Capitol. It's televised, live, by PBS.

It's been going on for thirty years. I gather that nobody has bothered to inform Cadet Bone Spurs of this.

He really needs somebody on his staff who isn't a sycophantic twit.