WEDNESDAY: Commander gives voice to an undisguised con!

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 5, 2025

Needs context, one newspaper says: In the aftermath of the president's joint address, the New York Times tried to conduct a fact check.

The lack of sophistication put on display was little short of amazing. Even at the highest levels, our journalists just aren't super sharp.

In fairness, let's be fair! Before you can score a statement as True or False, you have to be able to discern what the speaker in question has said. 

Inevitably, many of the statements fact-checked by the Times were so fuzzy that it's hard to get clear on just what the commander was saying. The fact-checkers betrayed little awareness of this problem, and their work spiraled downward from there.

For today, let's look at one of the president's most striking presentations. In her fact check for the Times, Linda Qiu whittled a much longer presentation down to this:

“1.3 million people from ages 150 to 159, and over 130,000 people, according to the Social Security databases, are age over 160 years old.”

As presented, that cherry-picked jumble of words barely qualifies as a statement. 

Within the context of Trump's longer presentation, it's fairly clear what the commander was trying to say or suggest. But the tiny fragment selected by Qiu makes no discernible sense on its own.

At any rate, according to Qiu rates Trump's statement in a peculiar way. She says his statement "Needs context." 

She goes on to offer her own jumble of statements about the Social Security program. Her statements are almost as hard to sort out as was the fragmentary claim she fact checked.

The commander's full presentation is truly one for the ages. What was the president saying and why did the president say it? This was his full presentation:

PRESIDENT TRUMP (3/4/25): The Government Accountability Office, the federal government office, has estimated annual fraud of over $500 billion in our nation. And we are working very hard to stop it. We’re going to. 

We’re also identifying shocking levels of incompetence and probable fraud in the Social Security program for our seniors, and that our seniors and people that we love rely on.

Believe it or not, government databases list 4.7 million Social Security members from people aged 100 to 109 years old. It lists 3.6 million people from ages 110 to 119. 

I don’t know any of them. I know some people who are rather elderly but not quite that elderly. 

3.47 million people from ages 120 to 129. 3.9 million people from ages 130 to 139. 3.5 million people from ages 140 to 149. And money is being paid to many of them, and we are searching right now.

In fact, Pam [Bondi], good luck. Good luck. You’re going to find it. 

But a lot of money is paid out to people, because it just keeps getting paid and paid and nobody does—and it really hurts Social Security, it hurts our country. 

1.3 million people from ages 150 to 159, and over 130,000 people, according to the Social Security databases, are age over 160 years old. We have a healthier country than I thought, Bobby [Kennedy].

Including, to finish: 

1,039 people between the ages of 220 and 229. One person between the age of 240 and 249—and one person is listed at 360 years of age. More than 100 years—more than 100 years older than our country. 

But we’re going to find out where that money is going, and it’s not going to be pretty. By slashing all of the fraud, waste and theft we can find, we will defeat inflation, bring down mortgage rates, lower car payments and grocery prices, protect our seniors and put more money in the pockets of American families.

It's easy to see what's being suggested. The commander says, three separate times, that "money" or "a lot of money" is being paid to millions of people who are impossibly old. 

"According to government databases," Trump suggests that checks may be going to people who range from 100 years old all the way up to 360! Adding his population numbers, he seems to be suggesting that more than 20 million "Social Security members" are somehow involved in this matter.

The commander says his team has been "identifying shocking levels of probable fraud in the Social Security program." Quite a few weasel words are involved in his presentation, but it's abundantly clear what this man is suggesting.

As for the weasel words, let's get started with this:

What exactly is a "Social Security member?" For the record, the term was not in widespread use until the commander started using it in recent years. 

That said, what is "a Social Security member?" Presumably, it's not the same thing as a Social Security recipient, or the commander would have used that term. But the use of that slippery, amorphous term is where this fellow started.

Clearly, the commander was suggesting that Social Security is riddled with a giant amount of fraud. In the picture he was painting, checks are apparently being sent to tens of millions of people who are no longer alive. 

Presumably, this means that the money is being received by some other used. "Money is being paid to many of" these long-deceased people, we're rather murkily told.

("Many" is a highly imprecise term.)

Question! Is the Social Security Administration really sending monthly checks to tens of millions of such deceased people? Our answer to your question is this:

In theory, everything is possible. In reality, most things aren't.

What kind of term should come into play when a public official stands before the American nation and gives voice to a clown show like this? With incompetence that is hard to believe, the New York Times is telling readers today that the commander's ridiculous presentation "Needs context."

In truth, a serious journalist would have to invent new fact-check language to come to terms with a gong-show so vast. The New York Times seems to be eager to run from that that difficult challenge.

With that, we'll send you to CNN. For Daniel Dale's fact check of this presentation, you can start by clicking here.

Simply put, we Blues just aren't up to the challenge! Our tribunes have frequently gone to the finest schools, but we're not always sure what they did there.

One last minor irony:

Twenty-five years ago, the New York Time spent two years pretending that a Democratic presidential nominee was making crazily inaccurate statements on a regular basis. Now, a president is doing that very thing—and the Times refuses to say so!

This is the shape of one long-standing problem—a new "problem we all live with."

A WEEK: Are we trapped in a Week That Was?

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 5, 2025

Inquiring minds want to know: Are we Americans trapped in a Week That Was—in a week which may change the world's history?

Inquiring minds now suspect that we are. They suspect that the week may have started last Friday with the Oval Office debacle.

Inquiring minds have long memories. They can even remember this part of a 1992 speech from a future American president:

Just remember what the Scripture says: "Where there is no vision, the people perish."

I hope nobody in this great hall tonight, or in our beloved country, has to go through tomorrow without a vision. I hope no one ever tries to raise a child without a vision. I hope nobody ever starts a business or plants a crop in the ground without a vision. 

For where there is no vision, the people perish.

Inquiring minds are curious about these points:

Do we the alleged American people have a vision today? Also, do we still qualify as "a people?" Are we now "a people" at all?

Last night, the current president delivered an address to a joint session of Congress. We were struck by what we found when we perused the attempt by the New York Times to fact check the president's speech.

At this time, do we the people have enough skill to fashion an actual vision? Here's what we found when we fact-checked the New York Times' attempt at a fact-check:

For starters, eleven different writers were involved in the fact-check of the longest such speech ever delivered by an American president. We're going to say their names:

Writers involved in the New York Times fact-check:
Nicholas Nehamas, Colby Smith, Ana Swanson, Coral Davenport, Linda Qiu, Lisa Friedman, Apoorva Mandavilli, Eileen Sullivan, Jan Hoffman, Julian E. Barnes, Julian Barnes.

For the record, those are two different people named Julian Barnes. But as you can see by clicking this link, those eleven people fact-checked twenty-five different passages from the president's lengthy speech.

This president is known for his factual groaners—but good lord! Out of those twenty-five fact-checks, those writers declared only two (2) of the president's claims to be "False!"

Really? In a 100-minute address by the most disordered president in the nation's history, Blue America's leading publication found only two claims which were false?

Who knows? That may reflect some rules set down by the newspaper's editors. But as an organization, the New York Times has nuanced itself out of existence if eleven writers can watch this president speak for a hundred minutes and can find only two (2) statements which they're willing to score as "False."

Are we the people equipped for this task? Are we equipped for the assignment of creating a vision which can direct us in the challenging task of self-governance?

Given the size and the shape of our sprawling nation, we'd be inclined to say that the answer is no. As a people, we simply don't have the analytical skills to navigate the interactions which will exist within such a giant nation.

Only two statements were "False"—just two, over the course of a hundred minutes! The denatured scribes of the New York Times produced that somewhat peculiar result—but then, our own Blue America has been failing in its critical missions for a very long time now.

More on inquiring minds below. For now, let's turn to a more instructive bit of analysis, one which emerged from only three (3) writers at the HuffPost. 

Headline included, the passage in question reads like this:

Five Takeaways From Trump’s Joint Speech To Congress

[...]

Social Security Appears To Be In Trump’s Sights

Trump went on at great length about the supposed scourge of the Social Security Administration wrongly paying retirement benefits to people listed in the agency’s system as well over 100 years old. 

“A lot of money is paid out to people because it just keeps getting paid and paid and nobody―it really hurts Social Security and hurts our country,” Trump said. “1.3 million people from ages 150 to 159 and over 130,000 people, according to the Social Security databases, are over 160 years old. We have a healthier country than I thought.”

The super elderly Social Security recipients myth got heavily debunked last month after Elon Musk misread a chart, prompting even Trump’s acting Social Security commissioner to say, “These individuals are not necessarily receiving benefits” in a statement on the SSA’s website. 

The fact that Trump still plowed ahead with the bogus story in his address to Congress and said Social Security is full of “probable fraud” could be a bad sign for the popular retirement program, which Trump has usually said he would never touch even as he calls for massive cuts to much of the rest of the government. 

Full disclosure! In that passage, the scribes misquote what Trump said. This afternoon, we'll post his full, extremely lengthy statement on this cockeyed topic.

At any rate, "Trump still plowed ahead with the bogus story," the three HuffPost writers said. To their credit, they were prepared to say bogus.

Over at the New York Times, Linda Qiu quoted part of the relevant passage from the president's speech. She ruled that his sprawling claims about very old people and Social Security "Need context."  

(In our view, the presumably well-intentioned Qiu seems to have disappeared into a cloud of nuance.)

By the way, is it true? Is it true that President Trump "has Social Security in his sights?" 

We can't answer that question! Regarding the error-plagued genius Musk, we can tell you this. In her official Democratic Party response, Senator Elissa Slotkin said this about Social Security:

SLOTKIN (3/4/25): [The president's] tariffs on allies like Canada will raise prices on energy, lumber, cars—and start a trade war that will hurt manufacturing and farmers.

Your premiums and prescriptions will cost more because the math on his proposals doesn’t work without going after your health care.

Meanwhile, for those keeping score, the national debt is going up, not down. And if he’s not careful, he could walk us right into a recession.

And one more thing: In order to pay for his plan, he could very well come after your retirement—the Social Security, Medicare, and VA benefits you worked your whole life to earn. The President claims he won’t, but Elon Musk just called Social Security “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.”

So said the error-plagued genius as he spoke with (who else?) Joe Rogan. Are we possibly trapped in a Week That Was—in a week which has signaled a set of changes, at home and abroad, which could go astoundingly wrong?

Inquiring minds want to know many things, but inquiring minds also feel sympathy for the members of suffering humanity. They know that severe mental illness, like severe physical illness, represents a tragic loss of human potential.

Is something "wrong" with President Trump and with the error-plagued Musk? An inquiring mind would want to know. By rule of law, the New York Times has agreed that questions of that type must never, ever be asked.

Where there is no vision, the people perish? In closing for this morning, we'll once again ask you to flash on the Oscar-nominated film, The Sixth Sense.

Our question would be this:

Is it possible that we as a people have already perished, but we just don't know it yet?

This afternoon: "Believe it or not, government databases list 4.7 million Social Security members from people aged 100 to 109 years old."

So said President Trump as part of a much longer presentation. 

This afternoon, we'll post the full text of his fuller statement.  If a people doesn't want to perish, how should such statements be scored?

THE DISAPPEARED: "Could it be Satan?" the Church Lady asked!

TUESDAY, MARCH 4, 2025

This may be a Night Which Was: With apologies, all in all, we've had a challenging day.

Briefly, let's be honest. It was a challenging first world day. 

People are struggling all over the world with much more serious challenges. That includes the people of Ukraine, who are, or so it would seem, currently being abandoned.

Today, we returned from our participation in ongoing medical science. Not too much later, our internet service went down.

When our Internet Service Provider goes down, you're never real sure it will ever come up. Once again, we'd call this as a first world problem. 

Elsewhere, as Lawrence O'Donnell described last night, children are starving around the globe because of the apparent mental illness of the fellow named [NAME WITHHELD].

Does anyone doubt that we the Americans may be caught in a web of some version or versions of mental illness ("mental disorder")? Granted, our "journalists" won't discuss this apparent state of affairs—but does anyone really think that this circumstance doesn't exist?

At this site, we've been rereading the 2020 bestseller by Mary L. Trump, PhD—a detailed and thoughtful book about the upbringing of her uncle, Donald J. Trump, and his four brothers and sisters.

We have said, again and again, that (severe) "mental illness/disorder" is, like serious physical illness, a tragic loss of human potential. We've been struck this week by the very sad story Mary Trump tells in her book.

(Pity the child, we've long suggested. Pity the child, even as you try to disarm the adult.)

That said, why did we ever go with "The Disappeared" as our tagline for this week? We were thinking of the disappeared clowns of the Fox News Channel, who our Blue elites have agreed to leave unreported and undiscussed. 

We were also thinking of the disappeared (possible) explanation for the sitting American president's ongoing assault on the world. He makes us flash on "The Boxer," we've said.

As of tomorrow, we expect to change our tag for the week to something derived from "The Week That Was." Yesterday, this is what the president said he plans to do tonight:

“TOMORROW NIGHT WILL BE BIG. I WILL TELL IT LIKE IT IS!”

Was that a promise or was that a threat? Needless to say, it arrived in nothing but capital letters. We advise you to pity the child.

As we noted yesterday. last Friday's Oval Office debacle was likely the start of a Week That Was. It had the look of the start of a week which might change the history of the modern world. 

Tonight, we'll see what the president says. As for us Blues, remember this:

In an array of deeply unfortunate ways, we worked hard to earn our way out.

Also, two key points: It's the greatest thing anyone has ever done in the realm of cable news. We refer to Lawrence O'Donnell's work with the good, decent kids of Malawi.

(Also, with their families.)

In our view, Lawrence has been extremely strong in the current unfortunate circumstance. Other children, children like those in Malawi, will be dying of starvation around the world.

Also this:

"Could it be Satan?" the Church Lady asked. Our answer, of course, is a no. In our view, the actual, unfortunate story seems far more tragic than that.

That said, we had planned to work with that framework today. We may revisit it by the end of the week. For today, the collapse of our ISP briefly hauled us down.

BREAKING: We won't be posting until a bit later!

 TUESDAY, MARCH 4, 2025

Meanwhile, riddle us this: We're off very early this morning to address The Surgical Wound Which Would Not Heal.

For that reason, we won't be posting until this afternoon. Meanwhile, riddle us this news report in the New York Times:

What’s Behind Trump’s Love-Hate Relationship With Canada

[...]

As Mr. Trump prepares to push ahead with a new round of tariffs on the United States’ neighbors to the north and south, he has expressed a special brand of loathing for Canada. The bullying of a country whose most prominent stereotype is that its people are “nice” has led to political upheaval in Canada and created both consternation and speculation about why Mr. Trump wants to engage in a trade war with one of America’s biggest trading partners.

“I can’t quite figure it out,” said Stephen Moore, the Heritage Foundation economist and former adviser to Mr. Trump. “Whether it’s some kind of strategic leverage, I don’t know.”

Noting that there is “no love lost” between the president and Mr. Trudeau, Mr. Moore added: “With Trump, politics is personal.”

Mr. Trump has threatened to hit Mexico and Canada with 25 percent tariffs on all imports on Tuesday unless the countries do more to prevent migrants and drugs from flowing into the United States. On Saturday, the president picked another trade fight with Canada, this time over lumber.

Intrigue abounds in Canada about why Mr. Trump has repeatedly belittled a neighbor and threatened to destabilize its economy with tariffs, a process that has brought relations between the two countries to a low point not seen in decades.

Stephen Moore can't figure it out? That may not be a shocker!  But even Moore is prepared to admit that the behavior in question doesn't quite seem to make sense!

In fairness, has the commander really "expressed a special brand of loathing for Canada?" We don't know if he actually has—but in all the strange taunting of the past few months, it isn't real clear that he hasn't.

That Times report fashions Trump as a person engaged in "the bullying of a country whose most prominent stereotype is that its people are 'nice.' "

Is there something strange about that stance? Also, is there a possible (type of) explanation for this behavior—a possible type of explanation which has been disappeared?

What might be going on with President Trump? And have our journalists agreed on this rule of the road:

With respect to one obvious possibility, don't ask—and by all means don't tell!

Why would someone be gripped by a loathing for Canada? Has an obvious type of possibility joined the ranks of The Disappeared?

This afternoon: Our Week That Was seems to get worse

MONDAY: From zero to fury in a matter of moments!

MONDAY, MARCH 3, 2025

What happened in the Oval: Are we in the midst of a Weeke That Was—an historically serious moment?

Concerning that, time will tell. As to what actually happened last week in the Oval, we think a lengthy report by CNN included an admirable degree of detail.

For the record, the actual session on the Oval Office lasted almost exactly 50 minutes. We thought this part of CNN's report was basically accurate, and we found it especially striking:

Inside the 139 minutes that upended the US-Ukraine alliance

[...]

For the first 40 minutes of their talks, Trump did not evince outward bitterness toward Zelensky, instead discussing the minerals deal they were planning to sign later in the day.

Indeed, upstairs in the East Room a long wooden table had been prepared for the signing ceremony, with four chairs ready for the signatories.

It was never to be.

Ignore the time frame stated in the headline. "139 minutes" is the amount of time which elapsed from the moment Zelensky arrived at the White House to the moment he drove away.

As for the Oval Office meeting itself, that lasted almost exactly 50 minutes. You can confirm that fact on the videotape which appears at C-Span's actual site—a piece of tape which didn't seem to be working correctly when we linked elsewhere on Sunday.

At any rate, right there in its lengthy report, CNN says this:

For the first 40 minutes of their talks, Trump did not evince outward bitterness toward Zelensky.

Truer words were never spoken! In fact, we think that passage actually understates the mellow of the ongoing situation that day, along with the suddenness with which the Friday event melted down:

For the first 40 minutes of their talks, Trump didn't evince outward bitterness toward Zelensky? In fact, we'd say the actual number was higher than that, and we'd say that President Trump didn't seem to display any discomfort at all. 

Looking at the C-Span tape, we'd say that President Trump shows no discomfort of any kind until the 43-minute mark.  In fact, it's Vice President "JD" Vance who jumps in at the 40-minute mark with the first sign that someone is unhappy with the way the event is going. 

At that point, Trump says there will be one more question—and just like that, up jumps Vance! By the 41-minute mark, Vance is visibly angry. He's now scolding and lecturing the visiting president about what he perceives to be Zelensky's vast amount of disrespect.

As for President Trump, he doesn't jump in until the 43-minute mark. Only then does he seem to be angry, although he does keeps getting louder and angrier from that fatal moment on.

Repeating:

Right through the first forty-plus minutes, we see no sign that President Trump is unhappy with President Zelensky's attitude or behavior. He doesn't even seem to be bothered by all the eyerolls—by the deeply disturbing eyerolls which in fact never occurred.

The two presidents were, in fact, adopting different points of view about one significant matter. Zelensky was saying that Ukraine will need security guarantees from Europe and the United States to guard against Putin's inevitable decision to violate any ceasefire.

In real time, Trump didn't seem to want to do that. But for 43 minutes, there was no indication that he was about to blow his stack. He's emotionally normal through 43 minutes—and then, the volcano erupts.

To our eye, that's strange and oddly aberrant behavior. But then, what else is new?

Our question would be this:

What could possibly lie behind such erratic behavior? 

What lies behind such behavior? You'll never see a certain type of possibility examined within Blue America's press. Those orgs and those journalists have all agreed that a certain obvious possibility must never be discussed or explained or evaluated.

The behavior by Trump struck us as erratic. Why does this happen with such regularity?

Within the press, the watchword is clear:

Whatever you do, don't ask!

THE DISAPPEARED: What lunacy lies in the heart of man?

MONDAY, MARCH 3, 2025

We're now in a Week That Was: "What evil lurks in the heart of man? Only The Shadow knows!"

In fairness, that wasn't exactly the slogan. The slogan in question belonged to a long-running radio show, way back in the days before TV came along.

The radio show came to be called The Shadow. The leading authority on such shows offers a thumbnail backdrop:

The Shadow

The Shadow is a fictional character created by American magazine publishers Street & Smith and writer Walter B. Gibson. Originally created to be a mysterious radio show narrator, and developed into a distinct literary character in 1931 by Gibson, The Shadow has been adapted into other forms of media...

The Shadow debuted on July 31, 1930, as the mysterious narrator of the radio program Detective Story Hour, which was developed to boost sales of Street & Smith's monthly pulp Detective Story Magazine...

On September 26, 1937, The Shadow, a new radio drama based on the character as created by Gibson for the pulp magazine, premiered with the story "The Death House Rescue", in which The Shadow was characterized as having "the hypnotic power to cloud men's minds so they cannot see him." In the magazine stories, The Shadow did not become literally invisible.

The introductory line from the radio adaptation of The Shadow—"Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!"—spoken by actor Frank Readick, has earned a place in the American idiom. These words were accompanied by an ominous laugh.

The radio show came to an end in December 1954. It sounds like it was good solid crackpot fun, a bit like our contemporary political / journalistic discourse.

At present, we Americans seem to be locked in what will turn out to be a major Week That Was. That turn of phrase comes from the name of a TV show, That Was the Week That Was, which was hot for a couple of years back in the mid-1960s.

This nation's current probable Week That Was got its start last Friday. On that occasion, President Zelensky's incessant eye-rolling, along with the way he sat in his chair, caused two major American officials to melt down as TV cameras rolled.

As we noted yesterday, that story was told by Karoline Leavitt, but also by an assortment of tools on the Fox News Channel. 

Full disclosure! When we examined the videotape, we couldn't see the many eyerolls. 

In fact, we didn't see even one! That only suggests how slippery President Zelensky was as he engaged in this conduct.

"What evil lurks in the heart of man?" For ourselves, we'd suggest staying away from such triggering terms as "evil." We'd suggest a transition to a slogan like this:

What sources of incomprehension lie in the hearts of us humans? What sources of possible mental dysfunction?

As it turns out. we humans aren't "the rational animal" at every turn of the wheel. Especially at times of vast tribal division, we may tend to believe the darnedest things, if we might be allowed to steal a phrase from that other old TV show:

House Party (radio and TV show)

[...]

The show's best-remembered segment was "Kids Say the Darndest Things," in which [Art] Linkletter interviewed schoolchildren between the ages of five and ten.

Five-year-olds used to say the darndest things. Today, we American adults are strongly inclined to believe such implausible statements!

We adults are inclined to believe the darndest things! As it turns out, that's even true in Red America, as it is over here with us Blues.

We Blues were sure that President Biden was still just as sharp as a tack. We didn't bat an eye when our leaders told us that the southern border was secure.

Those costs of living were all in our heads—or perhaps in the heads of The Others. We even managed to cruise right through the least plausible manifestations of the cultural impulse which came to be known by the unflattering term, "Woke."

Some of those manifestations proved an indisputable point:

There is no apparently good intention which can't be unwisely pursued.

Surely everyone understands that—but at the time, we plowed on through. We Blues couldn't see what everyone else was able to see. 

Last November, we paid the price, with Candidate Trump squeaking out a narrow win, despite his historic lack of popularity among the electorate.

Sources of incomprehension are widespread within the hearts and the heads of us humans! That doesn't mean that we're bad people. According to an array of experts, it means that we're people people, wired as humans are.

Last Friday, right there in the Oval, the latest episode flared. And sure enough, here's what happened next:

As of Saturday night, Joey Johnny Jones was willing to tell viewers of The Big Weekend Show that it was the incessant eye-rolling by Zelensky which triggered the meltdown by Trump and Vance.

Did Jones really believe what he was saying? When Lisa Boothe rushed to agree, did she believe what he'd said|?

We can't answer those questions! But millions of people will believe that the eyerolls did it, in part thanks to what they saw Jones say.

It used to be the butler who did it. Last Friday, to prove our larger point, it turned out that the eyerolls did!

Our larger point is this:

It isn't just we Blue Americans who believe the darnedest things. Over there in Red America, our enemies are inclined to traffic in apparent incomprehension too!

That brings us to the current apparent Week That Was, which got its start last Friday. It started with the meltdown caused by The Body Language Which Wasn't. 

Tomorrow night, right there in the House chamber, the week will continue along with President Trump's major address. It won't be called The State of the Union Address, but that's what it basically is. 

What's the president going to say at that time? Only The Shadow actually knows, but we'll guess that he may not play nice.

In the course of this week, we ourselves are going to focus on The Disappeared. By that, we refer to the disappeared possible explanations for the serial acts of apparent madness which now crowd the American scene.

To what acts of apparent incomprehension do we refer? We refer, of course, to reports about the eyerolls which didn't seem to occur, but also to such acts of apparent madness as these:

Sad! As reported by Mediaite, Joe Rogan has now suggested that CNN aired the speech by Candidate Trump in Butler, Pa. because CNN somehow knew that he would be shot at that day.

Yes, that's what he suggested. What impulse in favor of incomprehension lurks in the heads of us humans? This level of impulse:

This same musclebound flyweight is now one of the leading "influencers" on the American scene! And no, it doesn't end there:

When Rogan suggested that CNN knew, Elon Musk seemed to agree. After that, along came the perpetually furious and wealthy Bill Ackman, and he bought into it too!

These people are all extremely "successful." Beyond that, there seems to be very little they won't suggest or even believe.

In other words, it isn't just Us! The humans over in Red America believe the darnedest things too!

Many parts of the story from last Friday haven't yet appeared on the scene. For example, this:

What was actually in the (revised) minerals deal Zelensky and Trump were supposed to sign that day? 

That seems like an amazingly basic question. As is the norm in our highly sub-rational journalistic discourse, we've seen few attempts to spell that out. For a detailed report from one think tank, you can just click here.

That question has largely been disappeared and so has the possible answer. In our view, though, the principal disappearance involves the answer to the question Scott Pelley asked last night.

Hollywood was offering its annual low-IQ presentation as 60 Minutes aired. Some of Americans, Red and Blue, still watch that annual drivel.

At 7 p.m. in the east, 60 Minutes was competing with the preternatural childishness of Tinseltown itself. But here's one of the questions Pelley asked, along with what he was told:

PELLEY (3/2/25): In these last two weeks we've heard [President Trump] call Zelenskyy a dictator, we've heard him say it was Ukraine that started the war. What is going on?

MCMASTER: Well, President Trump, as we all know, has a tendency to say outlandish things. Sometimes that's to shake the situation up and create some sense of change. But often times what he doesn't consider is how his words could impede his own agenda, or how his words actually can cut against U.S. interests or be received abroad in a way that's much different from the way his political supporters will receive those words in the United States. And so those words were damaging, damaging to the psyche of the Ukrainians. You know, war really is a contest of wills, and I think what you're seeing is Donald Trump delivering a series of body blows to the Ukrainians in a way that could affect, you know, their will to continue to fight.

"What's going on?" Pelley asked. Marvin Gaye is no longer with us, but you can see the way McMaster answered Pelley's question.

For the record, not everyone will agree with that answer. But as Pelley had already explained, here's who he was speaking with:

PELLEY: H.R. McMaster knows. He was national security adviser in Trump's first term. He's a retired Army general, senior fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution, and a CBS News contributor.

That's what Pelley said. In this case, it isn't just The Shadow.  According to Pelley, McMaster also knows!

You can see how General McMaster answered Pelley's question. All this week, we're going to muse on the basics of alleged modern medical science which were absent from what the general said.

We humans! We're actually rather primitive thinkers. All in all, in many arenas, we aren't "the rational animal."

What sources of possible incomprehension may lurk in the minds of us humans?

These sources seem to be widespread on the left and even on the right. These sources are routinely disappeared in our modern discourse, but we disappear them at our own peril.

For the record, none of this is going to change. It's much too late for that,

Meanwhile, w may have embarked on a Week That Was at the present moment. Everything you read and hear will have been edited so you won't be required to think about the possible factors which have been disappeared.

We humans believe the darnedest things. Some people may possibly understand why we do, but by common human agreement, those people have been disappeared.

"What's going on?" Scott Pelley asked. One perfectly plausible answer has been disappeared!

Tomorrow: Though later in the day: One caller to C-Span sounds off!

SUNDAY: Fox News says he should apologize...

SUNDAY, MARCH 2, 2025

...for the way he sat in his chair: Bright and early, at 6:07 a.m., Peter Doocy gave voice to the mandated messaging of his corporate owners.

In his normal role, Doocy serves as the Fox News Channel's "senior White House correspondent." This morning, he was serving as the (temporary) third friend on the four-hour corporate messaging program, Fox & Friends Weekend.

Five minutes into the program, Doocy delivered the mail on behalf of his owners. Perhaps a bit remarkably, this is what he said:

DOOCY (3/2/25): Nothing is going to happen until he apologizes for the way that he acted in the Oval Office. Nothing!

And he keeps— He's now on a world tour where he will not just stand there in front of a microphone and say, "I apologize, I accept responsibility, for my actions in the Oval."

Thus spoke Peter Doocy; the other friends quickly agreed. Thus spoke the senior correspondent—and so speaks the Fox News Channel.

Pull out his eyes, apologize—but Zelensky refuses to do it! For many people, a fairly obvious question might arise at this point:

We're told that Zelensky needs to apologize—but apologize for what? For what specific "actions in the Oval" is he supposed to acknowledge his guilt?

Yesterday, we actually spent a chunk of time trying to puzzle that out. For the record, it seems that the White House has settled on the answer, as described by CNBC in this news report:

Trump objected to Zelenskyy’s tone and body language in Oval Office clash, White House says

President Donald Trump found the tone and body language of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenksyy objectionable during an Oval Office meeting that exploded into a loud argument on Friday, the White House told CNBC.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said there was not a specific thing that Zelenskyy said in the Oval Office to Trump or Vice President JD Vance that the president objected to, but the tone and manner in which he said it.

Leavitt said Friday that Zelenskyy—whose country was invaded three years ago by Russia at the direction of its president, Vladimir Putin—was folding his arms, rolling his eyes and sitting in a way that indicated a lack of respect.

Leavitt also pointed out that Zelenskyy called Vance “JD,” instead of “Mr. Vice President,” during the fiery exchange, which was televised in front of reporters in the Oval Office.

As it turned out, it wasn't some specific thing Zelensky actually said. It was the gentleman's body language, including the way he sat in his chair.

Zelensky had been rolling his eyes, plus he'd been folding his arms. It was these elements of his body language which eventually set Trump and Vance off. 

 If you believe CNBC, that's what Leavitt said. Anthropologically, we would offer this:

When we humans reach "peak tribal war," almost any negative characterization of The Oher will do. An authority figure's characterizations will be accepted as convincing—indeed, as gospel—by the furious members of the angry tribe.

Full disclosure! According to CNBC, Leavitt said that Zelensky had signaled his disrespect in several other ways. The report continues as shown:

The clash occurred when Zelenskyy challenged the idea that Russia could be trusted to honor the terms of any peace deal that would be reached through diplomacy. Vance then accused the Ukrainian leader of being “disrespectful” by “trying to litigate” the terms of such a deal in the Oval Office.

Press secretary Leavitt said that White House officials were also annoyed that Zelenskyy did not wear a suit during his visit Friday, which abruptly ended with a scheduled news conference and meal both canceled after the Oval Office blow-up.

When CNBC noted that the White House did not appear to have a problem with top Trump advisor Elon Musk recently appearing in the Oval Office next to the president wearing a t-shirt and a baseball cap, Leavitt said that was different because the billionaire Tesla CEO is not the leader of a “sovereign nation.”

Trump earlier Friday had greeted Zelenskyy outside the White House by saying, “Oh look, you’re all dressed up.”

Muskwear YES, Zelenskywear NO! At times of peak tribal division, almost any distinction will do.

Yesterday, messengers on the Fox News Channel recited Leavitt's messaging. Last evening, at 7:06 p.m., it fell to Joey Johnny Jones to perform the reading of script.

Jones was co-hosting on The Big Weekend Show, one of the dumbest programs in the history of TV "news." The program features four co-hosts, each of whom will agree with every word the other co-hosts have said.

The program is so preternaturally dumb that Fox has now made it a two-hour show. Early in last night's second hour, Jones told viewers this:

JONES (3/1/25): Zelensky still hasn't apologized for what Trump calls "disrespect." But according to someone inside the room, what really set the fireworks off was Zelensky's body language. Apparently, thirty minutes of head-shaking and eye-rolling was just too much for President Trump and V.P. Vance. 

"According to someone inside the room," Trump and Vance had managed to tolerate "thirty minutes of head-shaking and eye-rolling" from their horrible guest. 

Finally, though, the body language turned out to be "just too much!" It was just too much even for them!

That's according to someone inside the room. As he continued, Jones explained why some people mistakenly thought that Trump and Vance behaved rather badly as the session neared its end:

JONES (continuing directly): Lisa [Boothe], I don't know if you've gone back and looked at the whole forty minutes. I had to do it, because people on X started pointing out that the majority of people in this country that are reacting to this strongly only saw that last ten minutes, maybe, of a forty-minute press conference where Zelensky was eye-rolling, body language, the whole time.

The people who thought Trump and Vance behaved badly hadn't seen the full event! They hadn't seen the initial thirty minutes of incessant eye-rolling, as Jones apparently did when he went back looked at the full tape for himself.

Instantly, Boothe agreed. As she did, here's what the chyron said:

BAD BODY LANGUAGE
ZELENSKYY DISRESPECTED PRESIDENT TRUMP & VP VANCE

Mandated message delivered! Quickly, let's summarize:

According to Jones, many people were reacting to the last ten minutes of Friday's event—to the part of the event where Trump and Vance finally melted down.

According to Jones, those people hadn't seen the first thirty minutes of the event—the part of the session where Zelensky engaged in "eye-rolling" and "[bad] body language" the whole time.

For the record, Jones is very "down home." At one time, he struck us as instinctively honest.

Last night, we were struck by his presentation. Here's why we were surprised:

In fact, we had already watched the videotape of the entire event. We'd been looking for all the eye-rolling that was described in CNBC's report. 

We'd already watched the whole forty minutes—and we hadn't spotted a single instance! On this C-Span videotape, you can give it a try yourself.

Pull out his eyes, apologize! As we noted yesterday, this scary demand was initially made of the very young James Joyce. Over the past forty-eight hours, every messenger in the Fox News / Trump White House universe has been insisting that Zelensky should apologize too.

Zelensky needs to apologize—but what should he apologize for? Right there on the Fox News Channel, Jones and Doocy spelled it out, and the other tools all played along.

He should apologize for his body language—for the way he sat in his chair! He should apologize for the thirty minutes of eye-rolls—for the eye-rolls which don't seem to be there!

Go ahead—search the tape! See if you can spot a single instance where Zelensky rolls his eyes.

 According to Jones, he did it all through the lengthy event. Finally, it was just too much, even for Trump and Vance! 

Has Joey Jones sold his soul to the gods—to the people who sign his checks? In answer to that sensible question, we will only say this:

This bullshit flows all day and all night on the Fox News Channel. Can a very large modern nation really expect to survive this system of corporate deception?

We're inclined to think that the answer is no. That said, Blue America's elites refuse to report or comment on this behavior.

It's a gong-show at the Fox News Channel—an imitation of life. It's a remarkable act of avoidance by the well-schooled elites Over Here.

SATURDAY: The war is over, and the war has been lost!

SATURDAY, MARCH 1, 2025

The Vances were already present: Sometimes, cultural schisms come into being—cultural schisms which cut too deep to be resolved in any short-term way.

These schisms may lead to wars. Sometimes the wars are military in nature. Sometimes the wars are political or cultural. 

As of this very morning, we'd say the ongoing war between the Red and Blue American nations is at long last officially over. We'd also say that our own Blue America has lost. 

We lost the war last November when the "landslide" numbers shown below came in. For the record, we Blues had been doing our best to lose this war for several years before that:

Nationwide popular vote, 2024
Candidate Trump (R): 77,302,580 (49.80%)
Candidate Harris (D): 75,017,613 (48.32%)

Those seem to be the official numbers. They're offered by the FEC. At its own site, the leading authority agrees.

No, that isn't a landslide! As far as we know, the winning candidate has actually stopped using that inaccurate term. On the other hand, he didn't win "by millions and millions of votes," the claim he made yesterday right there in the Oval Office. 

In our view, yesterday's claim is also bogus. But to the victors go the spoils, and the war which was being fought within this country was a war of The Information Age.

That war was, and that war remains, an information / Storyline war.

The commander won by less than 1.5 points, but the fact is, he did win—and on that day, the die was cast. It led to yesterday's event in in the Oval Office. It also led to this summary  by Rachel Campos-Duffy, offered at 6:18 this morning on an official show of Red America, Fox & Friends Weekend:

CAMPOS-DUFFY (3/1/25): In the end, I think what's remarkable is that we have a president who's willing to bring about world peace. Man! If he doesn't get the Nobel Peace Prize after this, that thing means nothing.

Peter Doocy quickly agreed. At that point, it was on to a different topic.

That account strikes us as daft—almost as a form of madness. But the other side won the war.

The other side did win! As a result, the winning candidate is now dismantling large parts of the federal government. He's also dismantling large parts of American policy. 

As one example, in all likelihood, NATO is on the way out.

In Blue America, we worked hard, in the past four years, to generate this outcome. It started with the election of President Biden, which seemed to be a reprieve at the time.

At the time, it seemed to be a reprieve. But things spiraled downward from there.

For today, we want to advance one basic point. Here it is:

At a certain point, a schism will have become so vast that it can't be "discussed," negotiated or resolved between the warring parties in anything like the short run.

At a certain point, one side has won and the other has lost! It's pointless to continue to think that differences in viewpoint and messaging can still be resolved. 

At some point, one side has lost! After yesterday morning's events, that's plainly where matters stand. 

"The day of his death was a dark cold day." That's what Auden wrote.

To our reckoning, yesterday was also a dark cold day. But with respect to Auden's assertion, W. B. Yeats was still dead.

With respect to yesterday's events, Red American characterization of those events strike us as something akin to a type of madness. In the larger sense, we think of the deal which lay at the heart of yesterday's dispute in the following simplified way:

A guy was prepared to pay a certain price for a security guard to be positioned outside his hardware store. 

But when he actually signed the contract which obligated him to pay that price, he learned that there would be no security guard involved in the deal!

That's roughly the way it looks to us. Spokespersons in Red America are going to tell the story in a vastly different way—and their agents are currently in full control, especially on the international front. They're changing so many things so quickly that no one can hope to keep up.

Citizens in Red America are going to hear that other account of yesterday's events. At this late date, there is no point in trying to reach some sort of agreement, across the two Americas, as to what "really" occurred.

On Blue America's cable news channels, they won't be telling us that. As is the case with the Fox News Channel, those channels still have a product to sell. 

On the other hand, it's also true that many people at Blue America's channels may not realize that our own side has lost

In The Sixth Sense, the Bruce Willis character doesn't yet know that he's dead. At present, that's pretty much the way it is here in our own Blue America. 

According to experts, we humans are wired to have a hard time understanding that wars have been lost. Also, when very unusual events occur, we humans will often have a very hard time seeing what has happened. 

So it was in The Emperor's New Clothes, and so it is in the current situation.

At such times, we may be helped to see more clearly if we can find parallels in the works of literature:

Over the course of the past year, we've suggested that you consider the cataclysmic "night assault" which is prefigured in the Iliad. We've also noted Camus' account of the way the fictional townsfolk of the fictional Oran fail to see that a plague is underway in their city, even after the visible signs are entirely clear.

Regarding yesterday's Oval Office events, we'll offer two parallels from literature. To be clear, these scenes from literature capture the way those events looked to us. There is no point, at this late date, trying to influence Campos-Duffy or the people who stand in her thrall.

We start with the scene from the film Goodfellas where the Joe Pesci character returns to a bar to settle a score with a character by whom he feels he has been insulted. 

He attacks the guy and knocks him down. As soon as he has his victim on the ground, the De Niro character joins in. Two (2) guys are now kicking the victim as he lies on the ground!

For us, we flashed on that famous scene as we watched yesterday's events. That's how it looked to us.

This morning, we also thought of the opening page of James Joyce's autobiographical novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

Yesterday, to our eye, an officious vice president jumped in to insist that President Zelensky apologize for an imagined offense.  That's how it looked to us.

Meanwhile, are we all just toys of the gods? When we turned to Joyce's novel, we were surprised by one part of the passage we had flashed on. 

In this early passage, Joyce is characterizing his life as a very young child. Presumably, "Dante" is the way the very young child understands the name of his aunt.

You can peruse the full passage here:

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

[...]

Uncle Charles and Dante clapped. They were older than his father and mother but uncle Charles was older than Dante...Dante gave him a cachou every time he brought her a piece of tissue paper.

The Vances lived in number seven. They had a different father and mother. They were Eileen’s father and mother. When they were grown up he was going to marry Eileen. He hid under the table. His mother said:

—O, Stephen will apologise.

Dante said:

—O, if not, the eagles will come and pull out his eyes.—

Pull out his eyes,
Apologise,
Apologise,
Pull out his eyes.

Apologise,
Pull out his eyes,
Pull out his eyes,
Apologise.

We Irish! But so it allegedly went.

Pull out his eyes, apologise! That's a scene which flashed for us in the course of yesterday's tag-team mugging.  

That's a scene which flashed for us. There's no point in trying to convince Campos-Duffy or the other friends that something like that occurred. 

By now, our own Blue America has plainly lost the messaging / narrative / information war. The other side is very much in power. 

What do you do when a war has been lost? First, you have to train yourself to see that the loss has actually happened.

Meanwhile, are we all just a joke of the gods—a stage play constructed for their amusement? 

We certainly didn't remember this fact. But when we looked at the opening page of Joyce's novel, "the Vances" were already present!

The Vances were already there, even way back then! The Vances were already present as a mob ganged up on Joyce and tried to make him apologize for having done nothing wrong.

Are we secretly just a joke of the gods? As we seek the comforts and the insights of literature, did Homer get that part right?