Random Thoughts 4/27/26: More Ballroom!

I was up too today.  We have the loudest cat in the history of domesticated felines, and she doesn't take my "stop yelling!!" instructions seriously, at all, at any time of day, particularly during the wee hours of the morning. 

After getting up and trying to appease her with her favorite cat food (which she didn't want to eat today) and getting myself some coffee, I scrolled through the latest news about the White House Correspondents Association (WHCA) dinner, which I'm sure by now everyone knows was interrupted and ultimately canceled because a lone gunman who had issues with the FOTUS and/or members of his administration decided Saturday night needed some violence to shake things up. 

While there have been lots of stories about the bad guy's 'manifesto' and about the security and how close he didn't actually get to anyone in the room, and some 'tales from the crypt' from reporters who were there, I spent my time trying to wrangle my random thoughts on statements from the FOTUS and the CoolAide Cabinet (that's the MAGA influencer horde) about how the incident at the WHCA event was a reason why we need the One Big Beautiful Ballroom the FOTUS is dead set on having, whether anyone likes it or not, into something at least somewhat coherent. So, without further ado,

Just THINK of the many benefits that would flow to ALL Americans if we were able to host conventions at the new White House Ballroom and Casino!! Oh, crap - sorry, that last part is top secret. Pretend we're in a Satirical Comedic Information Facility (SCIF).

We NEED a giant ballroom at the White House - what a wonderful way to get Americans into 'our house! I mean, most of us will never get to make a separate trip to take the tour because of our social media history, or our voter registration info (Wrong Party? No Tour for You!), or (especially for the married ladies) the mismatch between our birth certificates and our LinkedIn 'Yes, that's really my resume, not one I pulled off ChatGPT' profiles. 

Now that I think about it, the way things are going, I soon won't know a single person who could pass a security check - and damn proud of it, frankly. But I digress; that's the nature of random thoughts.

Back to the task at hand: think of the activities that could be held there, if only they made the darn thing big enough! A YUGE ballroom is what we need. I mean, if the billionaires who are donating to pay for access to the administration - er, sorry, I meant to proudly pay for the facility - want more ballroom (don't they all?), they just need to spring for a bigger ballroom!! Not this four- or five-story-tall, 90,000-square-foot thing that's proposed, but one that has five, six, or even 1000% more floorspace! Just think of it!

A bowling convention, with temporary lanes, hundreds of teams, and weeks - yes, weeks! - of activity, bringing REAL Americans to the People's House! Or, the NCAA's March Madness Final Four, with boatloads of gamblers who could spend their downtime in the casino wing - darn it, pretend I didn't say that. If I'm not careful, I'm gonna end up in trouble!

CPAC! TPA! NRA! The Union of Out-of-Favor Dictators! Huge Crypto-TikTok-National Security Conferences! The Association of Former White House, Pentagon, and Local News Correspondents! The Billionaire Boys Club - their membership is growing by cheats and bounds, almost daily! Plus, they could probably help out with bunker design! Big Pharma - those conventions are massive, and I've heard they give out lots of free samples! Research Scientists - they don't have anything else to do anymore... why not let them convene at the glorious facility to commiserate, instead of having to do that via Zoom from their basement labs? Gatherings of white South African farmers, or Scandinavian Trump Card holders! The possibilities are endless!

Farm equipment displays all over the White House lawn, and inside the ballroom, especially those from Case and New Holland; after all, they make stuff in red and blue, true American colors! Sorry, John Deere, that green and yellow just don't cut it anymore - Bad Boy Mowers can handle it from here, as long as nobody brings any of those electric and battery models - just the good old 'drill baby drill' kind (insert that famous John Dean scream here). Heck, we could even have a real Tesler car sales floor, not just a couple of cars! And how could I forget military equipment? We have the best of the best, once we replenish our supplies - and we could even have the Trump family drones on display! My patriotic heart is practically beating out of my chest! 

Boxing matches! UFC cage fights! Cornhole Championships! Heck, we could even bring back Jarts, in celebration of our country's glory days when kids were kids and ERs were plentiful! And what a wonderful place to hold the new annual Congressional Paintball Tournament? Much safer than that outdoor baseball tournament, right? 

And medal presentations, in a room full of gold!! The FIFA Peace Prize! The Trump Epstein Prize! The Melania Einstein Prize! And what better place to host ceremonies for Olympic Gold Medals Won by Men! Maybe even the Noble Prize folks would want to come here for their annual festivities! And, oh, for heaven's sake, I almost forgot Pardon Parties! Woo hoo!

And just think of how cool the State of the Gold-Plated Union speeches would be! Lots of political speakers; patriotic music (yes, Kid Rock and Lee Greenwood, I'm talking about you!); miniature statues and representations of some of our wonderful national parks and monuments; merch tables - can you even imagine?! Dozens of DoorDash Grannies, legally-present farmworkers, many more relatives of crime victims, and so much more! And don't forget the Democratic and Republican Party conventions! How fun!

Between the room rental, banquet setup, media setup, catering and bar fees, entrance fees, and the money spent in the casino (oops, I said it again...), we could probably fund Social Security for another few years, or shave a few thousand percentage points off the National Debt! Not to mention that we'd need thousands of low-paid AMERICAN workers to staff the facility, and if we just hurry up and build the darn thing, they won't have to pay taxes on their tips, OT, or Social Security - honest!

This is a brilliant idea - we REALLY need that ballroom, dammit! Let's end the lawsuits, end the petty bickering, think way more bigger, and get this thing built! 

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER.

A Future Tale (Part Two)

Part One of this Future Tale began with a woman wandering around her small city, observing and describing the places and people she saw. Here's how that chapter ended.

The old iron gate at the head of the alley looked as if it hadn't been opened in years. Weeds, garbage, broken glass, and more encased the bottom. It was heavy with generations of handprints, rust and dust, soot and exhaust, bird droppings, coffee and alcohol, and who knows what other human or animal excretions. Layered upon layer upon layer, a challenge to the forensic experts, the anthropologists, the historians who might one day try and make sense of it all. 

I stopped by the gate, which stood chest-high and strong. It, too, offered a dare, like the building nearby. "Try me - go ahead, give me a push."  

I looked left and right; nobody was paying any attention. I gave the gate a shove; it didn't move. 

I pushed, harder, then as hard as I could, struggling against time, and weeds, and trash, and crud, and slowly, creakily, it opened. 

I snuck into the alley.

And now, we rejoin our storyteller for Part Two.

I tugged the gate closed behind me; I don't know why, really, but it seemed the right thing to do. Given the difficulty I had getting it open, I was surprised by how easy it was to push it closed. I saw my handprints and fingerprints, which formed the newest layer in the gate's long history; my footsteps would soon be added to those that had already smoothed the grimy cobblestones that made up the alley floor.

Narrow, and long - confusingly long, to be honest - the alley had a curtain of vines hanging over it several feet away from the gate, reminiscent of the beaded ‘curtains’ we used to hang back when I was in college. Or, more in keeping with the mood of the day, reminiscent of the giant spiderwebs we used to accidentally run into playing in the woods as kids; we'd struggle, half screaming half giggling, trying to get the spider's handiwork out of our hair and off our faces. Taking a deep breath, I walked toward, then under the vines.

I slowly picked my way forward, letting my eyes adjust to the uncharacteristic mid-day darkness, trying not to slide on the slippery cobbles under my feet. I walked for what felt like several minutes, dodging the spindly sumacs and scrub maples that popped up randomly, as if testing my mettle. “Does she have what it takes? Can she handle the truth?” I felt the questions, and I resolved to stick it out.

Eventually, I could see faint spots of light up ahead, not way high on the buildings, but at a more human level. I stopped, and after my eyes adjusted, I recognized that I was seeing deeply shaded lights above doorways or recesses in the alley, and I understood that I was nearing what I had been called here, by someone, somehow, to see. 

Tentatively, I walked up to the first light. In the recess, there was a chair, with a dingy hand-lettered sign resting on it: safe abortions performed inside. I paused, startled by the seeming contradiction between the sign's messiness and its promise, and by recollections of the horrible history of back-alley abortions. I was confused; where was I? Had the alley taken me into the past, or was it giving me a glimpse of the future? Was that sign old, or new? I had no idea.

I turned slowly away from the source of my confusion, and looked down the alley. A few feet away, on the other side, was a dim light, bugs flying around it. I was tempted to turn and head back towards that darn iron gate, the thing that drew me here in the first place, but I felt compelled to keep going. 

As I moved across the alley, I saw another sign, this one professionally painted but still dirty, hanging from a nail on the door: Books you can’t read anywhere else. There were several names original to the sign: Angelou, Orwell, Vonnegut, Morrison, Lee, and more, names I recognized. There were others, too, that I had never heard of: Evison, Thomas, Alexie, Spiegelman, Craft, scrawled on the sign with different colored markers. A mix of old and new, another yesterday-today-tomorrow quandary. 

Every recess in the wall, every dirty lightbulb, every door I encountered, brought more of the same.

Our real history

Medical care - no patients refused

Judgment-free zone 

All words welcomed here

Free hot meals

A bed for a night

There were a few more doors, offering only more confusion, until there was only a giant screen hanging in front of me, above my head, filled with images, wonderful and horrible, a cacophony of voices and music and noise, piercing the quiet that had surrounded me in the alley. It was my history, my lifetime, and histories and lifetimes before mine, all jumbled together. Good and evil, love and war, despots and dictators, politicians and orators, their words almost physically assaulting me, surrounding me, deafening me. 

I wanted to get away, to escape, to avoid what was playing out in front of me, but the cobblestones were damp and slimy as I tried to run, the trees were hitting me in the face and arms, and the din moved with me with me as I slipped and slid down the alley, tears and grime streaming down my face. 

Town Hall Questions for the Candidates

As you know, we were supposed to have a town hall-style debate tonight, but then the president got COVID, went to the hospital, went for a ride, went home, and such. And so, we were going to have a virtual debate instead of a joint town hall. 

But the president thought that was stupid, so he refused, and the debate was cancelled. But then he was cured of COVID, and decided that he'd have a town hall opposite the one that Joe Biden decided to have once the debate was cancelled. So, Biden's on ABC from Philly, and Trump's on NBC from somewhere in Florida. 

No one asked me what I wanted to ask them, but regular readers know that I don't really worry too much about stuff like that. Heck, if I waited for someone to ask me what I thought, we wouldn't be having this conversation, would we?

So, without further ado, here are my questions, first for Joe Biden:

1. What is your highest immigration policy priority, and what specifically would your administration do to address it?
2. Do you believe that public education funds should be given to parents, directly or through tax breaks, to help cover the costs of sending their children to private elementary or secondary schools?  Please explain your position.
3. Would you work to re-open negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, to try and come up with a two-state solution? If yes, how would you approach this? If not, why not?
4. Would you support a 21st century Works Progress Administration and Civilian Conservation Corps to help put Americans to tackle infrastructure projects and maintenance in our national parks and forests? If not, why not?
5. What are three things (other than filling Cabinet and other key positions) a Biden/Harris administration would focus on in the first 100 days?

And for Donald Trump:

1. Many people think you are a bully, obnoxious, and a bad role model for young people. Looking back on your behavior throughout your first term, what if anything would you do differently to help change that impression of you, and what if anything will you do differently should you be re-elected?
2. How much money has the United States charged Mexico for the border wall, how much of that has been paid, and what are your plans to collect any outstanding balance from the Mexican government?
3. Who is your favorite dictator, and why?
4. What specific steps has your company taken to ensure that you no longer hire undocumented workers at your properties, and should other companies be required to take the same steps?
5. If you weren't talking about yourself all the time, who would you be talking about?

I don't expect we'll hear anything like this during the town halls tonight, but hey - you never know.

Sidebar: The Irony Board: Free Speech

In Thursday's Irony Board post, we heard from Mitch McConnell that even the esteemed author Salman Rushdie is uncomfortable with the silencing of speech in America. According to McConnell, 

Rushdie recently signed an open letter with other intellectuals, many liberals, sounding the alarm on this cultural poison. 

It might surprise McConnell to learn that Rushdie is uncomfortable about several other things, too. In an op-ed last month in the Washington Post, he spoke of seeing "several dictators rise and fall" and, and defined for us the 'dictatorial cast of mind."

Extreme narcissism, detachment from reality, a fondness for sycophants and a distrust of truth-tellers, an obsession with how one is publicly portrayed, a hatred of journalists and the temperament of an out-of-control bulldozer: These are some of the characteristics.

Hmm... sound familiar? There's a reason for that.

President Trump is, temperamentally, a tinpot despot of this type. But he finds himself in charge of a country that has historically thought of itself — by no means always correctly — as being on the side of liberty. So far, with the collusion of the Republican Party, he has ruled more or less unchecked. Now an election looms, and he is unpopular, and flails about looking for a winning strategy. And if that means trampling over American freedoms, then so be it.

A tinpot despot? Ruling with the collusion of his party? Trampling on our freedoms? Who knew?

Rushdie also spoke of that infamous Bible photo op,  pointing out that the man "... whose inflammatory language full of racist dog whistles has played a significant role in unleashing white-supremacist bigotry upon us all," stood in the Rose Garden expressing a desire to protect peaceful protesters, while "just down the street, his security forces, some of them on horseback, are attacking a peaceful protest with tear gas and rubber bullets." I'm sure the protesters felt safe, wrapped in the protective arms of tinpot despotism that day, wouldn't you agree?

And, Rushdie noted,

We are so inured to the behavior of this man, so used to his lies, his inexhaustible self-regard, his stupidity, that maybe we are tempted to think of this as just another day in Trumpistan. But this time, something different is happening. The uprising that began with the killing of George Floyd is not fizzling but growing. The man in the White House is scared, and even, for a time, takes refuge in the basement and turns out the lights... 

If left to his own worst instincts, unchecked by his party, what comes next?

If he is allowed to use the actions of a tiny minority of criminals and white extremist infiltrators to invalidate the honorable protest of the vast majority against the murder of Floyd, the violence of the police toward the black community and the entrenched power of American racism, he will be on his way to despotism. He has threatened to use the Army against American citizens, a threat one might have expected from a leader of the former Soviet Union, but not of the United States. 

Rushdie, the intellectual, the freedom-loving American citizen, closed his op-ed with a warning.

In my most recent novel, “Quichotte,” I characterized the present moment as the “Age of Anything-Can-Happen.” Today I say, beware, America. Don’t believe that it can’t happen here.

Do you hear him now, Senator McConnell?  Are you listening, America?

Wondering on Wednesday (v211)

Ready... Set... Wonder!

So, the wondering tonight is all on the same theme:  what if we didn't talk about stuff. Here's an example of what inspired the wondering:one of the many Morgan Freeman memes which are so prevalent on social media. 

For example, it seems the president and his Coronavirus Task Force have decided to pretty much stop talking about the pandemic, and according to one report I saw, they're now asking governors to focus on reopening, not on, you know, people dying or anything.

So, if ignoring the pandemic can make that go away, and ignoring racism can make that go away, what else can we ignore and fix?

• How about poverty... Can we ignore that? I mean, we've been talking about it to some degree for quite a while, just like we've been talking about racism in some way, shape or form for some time. Maybe with a concerted effort, we can ignore the living daylights out of it, and make it go away?

• Or cancer... Let's ignore that, instead of trying to treat people into remission, instead of spending all that money on research and trying to drill down into treating various cancers based on genetic markers and what not - we can just stop that, and we'll stop cancer, right?

• Despots and dictators... We've engaged our soldiers and sailors and Marines, we've engaged our diplomats and our spies, we've engaged Congress and presidents for years, decades, trying to take these bad guys down, in whatever ways we can, and yet they keep popping up.  Maybe we should just ignore them, and they'll go away?

• Those pesky gay people who think they deserve to be married just like the rest of us... Let's just stop talking about them, dammit, and they'll just poof into thin air!

• Religious persecution... More wars have been fought, more punishment meted out, more terrorism committed in the name of religion that we can count, right? And even today, the United States is fighting against persecution of Christians around the world (while, notably, still trying to persecute LGBTQ folks who might be religious here at home, but hey, we're not going to talk about them anymore) and I think we can really save a ton of time and money - and solve the problem - if we just stopped talking about it.

• Police brutality... Because the last thing we want to do is have any more of that, even if it's the kind that doesn't end up in someone being dead for a minor offense. So I'm thinking, if we just don't talk about it, that would just go away, too, right? 

• Communism... No one likes that, right? It's cruel, and mean, and communist countries start wars and viruses. Let's ignore all of that, too. 

• Immigrants... Other than the ones we need to hire as valets and bartenders and housekeepers and stuff, and the genius supermodels and other similarly situated people who will do good things for us, even if it means that Americans don't get jobs,  we should just stop talking about them. And stop building a wall, of course. Because that won't be necessary anymore. 

Gee, this is fun wondering tonight don't you think? Instead of having to work on making the kind of lasting change that we need to make, we can just stop talking about stuff, stop worrying about stuff, and watch it magically disappear. 

And of course, that's a ridiculous concept, isn't it? Almost as ridiculous as the president suggesting that if we stopped testing for the coronavirus, we'd have a lot fewer cases.  And that leads me to one last bit of wondering:

If we just stop talking about Donald Trump, will he simply go away?