SATURDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2025
Yesterday's report: The world isn't going to come to an end because the East Wing is no longer standing.
It's also possible that the replacement ballroom, if it really gets built, will come to bs seen as a valuable addition to the White House property.
This is also true:
Destroying the East Wing in the way the president did was a remarkably strange thing to do. Again, the reason for that assessment is obvious:
As president, he doesn't own the White House. Indeed, he doesn't even pay rent. The East Wing didn't belong to him, at least under current understandings.
But then again, so what?
We still owe you a reaction to Michelle Goldberg's recent column for the New York Times. Headline included, the column started like this:
Trump Posted a Video of Himself Dumping Excrement on Our Cities. It’s a Glimpse of His Deepest Drives.
This weekend, I was surprised to learn that Donald Trump seems to see himself in the same way I do: as a would-be monarch spraying the citizenry with excrement.
On Saturday, perhaps stung by the enormous nationwide “No Kings” protests, Trump posted an A.I.-generated video on Truth Social that inadvertently captured his approach to governing. In it the president, wearing a crown, flies a “Top Gun”-style fighter plane labeled “King Trump” above American cities crowded with demonstrators, dumping gargantuan loads of feces on them. Amplifying it on social media, the White House communications director Steven Cheung gleefully wrote that the president was defecating “all over these No Kings losers!”
That column principally concerned the videotape the president posted—the videotape in which he's dropping excrement on the heads of us the American people. We think she may have "taken the bait" in one way. We think she nailed something else.
First, the president posted that videotape. After that, the East Wing came down. Our advice to you would be this:
We advise you to look again at yesterday's report.
We'll have more on these topics next week. If the leading authority can be trusted, medical science has even identified the gene or genes by which this journalistically undiscussable state of affairs can be passed from parent to child.
Who the fuck is this Trump character Bob keeps going on about?
ReplyDeleteSomerby's reactions to Trump's activities is a big "so what?"
ReplyDeleteThe rest of us, who care about our Constitution and want a well-run country in which Americans can prosper, are far from Somerby's shoulder shrug over Trump's behavior.
Somerby says: "As president, he doesn't own the White House. Indeed, he doesn't even pay rent. The East Wing didn't belong to him, at least under current understandings.
But then again, so what?"
Let's try that with some other problematic news:
1. The govt has declared protesters and dissidents "domestic terrorists" and it is arming ICE to take us on. People may be killed without due process for exercising their first amendment rights.
But then again, so what?
2. Trump has so much money extorted from his supporters to fund the ballroom, that he is going to use some of it to construct his "arc" he says, in the same breath as he calls the President of Colombia a "drug dealer." He has moved the European fleet into the Caribbean to threaten Venezuela and Colombia, without Congressional authority, as he casually kills people in fishing boats.
But then again, so what?
3. Somerby keeps quoting Professor Knox about Troy needing to oppose Achaean force with their own greater force, or perish. Meanwhile other scholars of ancient Rome say that the downfall of the Republic was that foreign campaigns brought too much wealth into Rome, creating billionaire oligarchs similar to our own times. Those guys like to use their money to rule others, threatening our own democracy in the process.
But then again, so what?
This may be sarcasm, but Somerby never signals his intent in his essays. In a stand-up show, his tone of voice would make it clear he was being sarcastic. On the page, literal messages are possible unless ruled out by an explicit statement. Somerby has been so nihilistic that it is possible he no longer cares when happens to our nation. If so, I suggest he seek counseling. Meanwhile, the rest of us care and would benefit more from a serious discussion of what we can do about Trump and his odd behavior.
Anonymouse 12:48pm, Bob has suggested that Trump’s treatment of the East Wing is commiserate to his crapping on America in the No Kings video. Actually, he’s going beyond that. He’s suggesting that the ballroom may be one big awful f-u to all of us.
DeleteI understand that you must fit Bob’s daily remarks within your pre-contrived harangue, but you go way too far with your shoehorning.
More odd word usage today. Commiserate is probably supposed to be commensurate. Why doesn't Russia hire trolls who are competent in English? I am flattered that Cecelia borrowed the word "shoehorning" that I suggested last week.
DeleteWhat would it matter when a comment is written? What matters is what it says. I tried to explain that it is more work to write an essay last night and then try to revise it to fit whatever Somerby has said this morning, but she no doubt doesn't write well and doesn't understand what she is talking about.
Somerby would say that is not her fault -- pity the child who never learned how to write. She does have the same first amendment right as all of us, but she isn't very persuasive with this implausible complaint that doesn't even seem worth any effort. If I write all my Christmas Cards in July, then mail then in December, does it matter to the recipients?
I give Cecelia's current nonsense an A+ for absurdity.
Anonymouse 2:30pm, I give you an A+++ for your honesty in defending your habit of writing your screeds the night before the actual posting of the TDH blog that you’re critiquing. About time.
DeleteI said that I do not write anything the night before because it is more work than doing it the next morning, after Somerby has posted. And no, I am not being dishonest when I contradict your theory. I have told you several times now that I do not write as slowly as you do, being a native speaker of English and an educated person, so I do not need to spend the night before writing anything, nor do I reuse my words the way Somerby obviously does.
DeleteI am tired of you, so I am going to do something more useful with my time now.
Cecelia, that lost soul troll of a man pretending to be a woman, has zero credibility, there is no need to respond to him, nothing is accomplished. Just label him a troll and move on.
DeleteYou have to wait for Bob to reveal what the "Right-wing Grievance of the Day" is, before you can respond to it.
DeleteAnonymouse 2:51pm, yes, you did admit that you’ve learned that preemptively writing a post in response to a blog yet to be written is more work than responding to an actual blog post…. Thank you very much for admitting that— to the extent that this finding has actually changed your pattern. Now you’ve launched into calling me a Russian agent, just as you do Bob (and he writes well). You are an organized coven operative, but I don’t attribute your lot to the Russians or any other foreign government. You’re garden variety liberal women, on someone’s payroll, and if you weren’t here, you’d be doing screeching videos on X.
DeleteFuck off
DeleteCecelia,
DeleteThe whole Epstein Files thing never made sense. There was always something fishy about Republicans having a problem with child rape.
Trump knows that no one is going to build him a monument after he is gone (either from office or life), so he wants to build one for himself. This reflects his other musings about whether he will go to heaven (spoiler: not a chance). He is thinking about his legacy and concluded that he will have to build his own monuments because too many people hate him to do it as a people's homage. The consequences are catching up to him and soon he will be the new Herbert Hoover. It is unavoidable because he has ruined the economy. I believe his desperation is pushing him forward with these physical markers of his time on earth.
ReplyDeleteIt makes me wonder if his grasping for more wealth is for his family, to keep them comfortable after he is gone. It may be that someone has had a serious talk with him about his realistic prognosis and focused him on wealth-management Trump-style. He won't be the first megalomaniac whose fear of death plagued a society.
The good news is that maybe this means he won't be around much longer, either in assisted living or buried next to Ivana at his New Jersey golf course.
It's going to take people on the Left and Independents to be disappointed in Trump ruining the economy, because the Right doesn't care enough about the economy to know how it works.
DeleteDoctors are giving Trump maybe 18 months.
DeleteIt would be better if Trump survives his term, because otherwise Vance could establish a foothold, whereas Vance just running as a candidate has no hope, he has no charisma, even for most Republicans.
JD Vance will be a great President.
DeleteToo late.
DeleteHe already got eaten by Haitian immigrants.
(Not really, but you get the point.)
"If the leading authority can be trusted, medical science has even identified the gene or genes by which this journalistically undiscussable state of affairs can be passed from parent to child."
ReplyDeleteWikipedia is not medical science. There are, to date, no psychopathy genes. Just genes occurring in all people that regulate the reward system.None of Trump's siblings is a psychopath/sociopath. If heritability is 50-80% as some people suggest, you would expect more than 1 out of 5 psychopaths (including Trump) out of 5 siblings. If nurture is resonsible, you would expect more of his sibs to turn out badly because they all had the same parents. If you want to claim that Trump's mother's illness was causal, why didn't it affect his younger brother, Robert?
Somerby wants to use these factors to excuse Trump, to paint him as blameless because he didn't choose his genetics or parents. But the problem with that is that most people in similar situations do not become psychopaths but learn to cope and show resiliency to become functioning adults. Trump fucked up his own life. He didn't have to be the kind of person he is. He grew up in the age of therapy so he could have gotten help to be a better person. So why does Somerby work so hard to shift blame off Trump's shoulders and onto everyone else? Why does Somerby lack empathy for Trump's many victims?
My theory is that he identifies with Trump and by exonerating Trump, he excuses himself for his own similar mistakes in his life.
Well, Somerby does vacillate between "bred in the bone" and "trauma".
DeleteThere is speculation that the heritability of ASPD is perhaps as high as 30%, but that is an inference made from studies with questionable methodology and low re test reliability.
That aside, your theory is likely on the nose.
Your theory blows.
DeleteYour theory blows - Part II
DeleteSomerby clearly disapproves of Trump; that's why he constantly asks whether ‘something is wrong' with Trump and why he injects terms like 'sociopath' and 'mental disorder', and 'increasingly erratic behavior' into discussions of Trump.
So to posit that Somerby 'identifies' with Trump is the wrongest kind of psychobabble.
But you also say Somerby wants to hold Trump ‘blameless’. And it’s true Bob constantly suggests that Trump qualifies as having some psychological affliction such as Anti-Social Personality Disorder and that such terminology tends to undercut the notion of personal responsibility.
But is it fair to conclude Somerby wants to hold Trump ‘blameless’, i.e. that he should not be punished for any crimes he’s committed, or not voted out of office for his tyranny?
It’s more reasonable to say we don’t know exactly why Bob insists we view Trump through a psychological lens than to suppose Bob to be excusing the behavior of a man whose moral soundness he so often calls into question.
Will this distract us from the Epstein Files?
DeleteYou have to have read Somerby during the impeachments and his criminal fraud trial. Somerby was opposed to impeaching and trying Trump.
DeleteCalling someone’s psychological soundness into question is not the same as calling them morally unsound. Somerby doesn’t discuss Trump’s morality.
I’m still waiting for David and Cecelia to come to their senses and defend the poop video.
ReplyDeleteDavid and I have verified nyms. Unlike you, we put our names on what we defend or do not defend.
DeleteThere is no such thing as a "verified" nym. On blogspot, you can type in any fake data you want, including to get a consistent nym (that shows up in green). No one checks to see if what you've written is true or not or whether you are a real person, a Russian operative, a MAGA troll, or even working for the White House, as those recent Bluesky trolls were.
DeleteSelby had a verified nym but that didn't stop you trolls from calling him "Slabby". Why would anyone do you the courtesy of adopting a nym when you behave like that?
DeleteAre you arguing that verified nyms are useless because people can sign up for a new one every day? They can, but how likely is that, especially within the cohort of people who have bothered to post under a consistent name? That’s an especially useless take in the context of an anonymouse referencing posts where David and I were both specifically asked if we supported the dump vid.
DeleteAnonymouse 1:46pm, I’ve been called a plethora of takeoffs on Cecelia and you’ve manage to glean that the reference was to me.
DeleteSo, you are saying that there is no benefit to making it easier for you trolls to identify who you are talking to, so why should we do it?
DeleteCecelia, if you don't want to respond to a commenter, just ignore them. Why are you making everything about you?
DeleteAnonymouse 2:06pm, I’m responding to anonymices who have made remarks about me.
DeleteSure you are...
DeleteAnonymouse 2:05pm, no, I’m saying that you shouldn’t act as though obvious plays upon verified nyms are in the same league as addressing David or me as “Tyrone”.
DeleteWhat's wrong with the name Tyrone?
DeleteAnonymouse 2:24pm, more irony— the only way you can accuse me (or David) of any sort of posturing is because we use a consistent verified nyms. .
DeleteAnonymouse 2:32pm, it’s not a discernible play on Ceeeceelia ..,
DeleteYou have gotten people to waste their time with you for over 1/2 hour now, without saying anything important or relevant to any real topic. Go away.
DeleteAnonymouse 2:39pm, I responded to a post that referenced David and me in particular. That’s what generated the response that you wouldn’t know how either of us felt about the crap video if we were anonymouse. Yeah… you don’t like to see it… but there’s the answer to your relevance question.
DeleteFuck off
DeleteNeither David nor Cecelia are who they pretend to be here, nothing they say is genuine, which is why they have no credibility here.
DeleteBest to just ignore these sad people, sure, they are desperate for attention, but responding to them only enables their worst traits.
I would have never known ethic cleansing of entire populations was a tenet of the Jewish faith, if the TDH poster who calls themselves "David in Cal" hadn't informed me.
DeleteThese comments ignore the point of the original message. David and Cecelia are still withholding their support for President Trump’s poop video. He needs them, and they’re nowhere to be found.
Delete3:25, it looks like you’ve never read the Book of Joshua.
DeleteAnonymouse 3:29pm, or Tucker Carlson.
DeletePsychopathy is a form of neurodiversity. So is autism. So is the idea that there are male brains and female brains, and the idea that some people are extraverted and others are introverted. Genetics and neural functioning are not destiny. Trump is not an imbecile and he is responsible for his life choices, as are Republican voters.
ReplyDeleteIs being born stupid a form of neurodiversity? It seems like it must be.
DeleteThere are differences between male and female brains, but they are of little consequence; in essence there is no significant difference between male and female brains, nor their capabilities.
DeleteAs more research is done, less and less credence is given towards heritability, we primarily are the sum of our experiences.
Saying Trump is solely responsible (which people may not be saying) is inaccurate and ignores root causes, which is unwise since it can impede societal progress.
Genetics and neural functioning are irrelevant. Human beings have free will.
Delete"President Donald Trump’s plans to construct a 90,000 square-foot ballroom where the White House’s East Wing once stood appear to be ever-changing and done in “a hurried process,” with one design document showing the project to have a staircase leading to nowhere, according to a report Saturday from the New York Times.
ReplyDelete“Architects and historians say that it is not unusual for designs to change during a project like this, but that Mr. Trump has not followed the typical process for White House renovations, which normally involve reviews by organizations like the National Capital Planning Commission,” the report reads. “And the various plans Mr. Trump has shared have suggested a hurried process.”
Trump revealed more details on the plans for the proposed ballroom this week, including new design renderings of the facility’s exterior. The Times, however, noted in its report that there were “some mistakes” in at least one of the design renderings, including a staircase “leading up to no clear landing,” and “colliding windows.”
The reporter is kind to suggest that this was a rushed process. I can imagine Trump telling the architects "I want a staircase here (points to the blueprint) and the architect saying "but sir, there's no landing there," and Trump responding "You work out the technical details," and the architects saying "yes sir, whatever you want sir."
These projects are likely rooted in Trump's angry reaction to his unpopularity, and as a way for those who are really running things (Stephen Miller, Russell Vought) to keep Trump distracted.
DeleteMaybe it's all just AI slop.
DeleteThings you can do to resist Trump and save the country:
ReplyDeletehttps://thewhitepages.net/p/thirty-lonely-but-beautiful-actions
A mismatch
ReplyDelete-- Trump and his Administration spent months building support among Arab and Muslim nations. They designed a complex peace plan. If the plan works, it could end 75 years of warfare. If the plan fails, many thousands will die, including many innocent Palestinian women and children
-- Trump spent 30 seconds re-posting a crude cartoon. There are no consequences to this cartoon.
So, how has Bob allocated his time and column space? Thirty seconds for Middle East peace and many days for that cartoon.
Trump and his Administration (Jared Kushner, Steve Witmer) spent months bribing Arab and Muslim nations. FTFY
DeleteTry circulating a similar meme of Trump dropping feces on those Arab countries and see whether there are any consequences to it.
Note that there is not Middle East peace yet. We all hope it will become that, but right now there is a fragile cease fire that is being violated by both sides, something that has occurred many times before.
Why does that "cartoon" matter? Because Trump is explicitly denigrating, offending, his own constituents, the people he was elected to serve. It is a big F.U. to those who expressed their displeasure with the current direction of our country. Trump is supposed to be responsive to the needs of the people, not give us all the middle finger.
This attitude on Trump's part is worrisome and surely worth more than 30 seconds discussion.
David in al,
DeleteIn your opinion, should the public have any say on how the country is being run?
If so, what's with the voter suppression?
So peacenick David in Cal is all in on good press for President Peace, but wants no bad press on the unhinged idiot who can't blow up enough shit. Fuck you fascist David. You're just phoning it in now you worthless creep. PS - did you know Venezuela has the world's largest oil reserves? They are so obvious in their criming aren't they?
Delete"If the plan fails, many thousands will die, including many innocent Palestinian women and children"
DeleteBut who's going to make them die, David? I'm reliably assured that Israel is scrpulously careful to avoid civilian fatalities.
"There are no consequences to this cartoon."
DeleteOnly if you have a coarsened soul.
"Thirty seconds for Middle East peace and many days for that cartoon."
DeleteThe explanation is simple: the US consistently tries to bring about peace in the Middle East. The Trump admin's efforts don't stand out in any way from prior efforts going back to the Camp David Accords of the 1970's. It's what we expect an administration to do.
Whereas the president being pleased to depict himself as dropping shit on non-violent protesters is indicative of a mind growing morally unmoored. It is not what we expect a president to do.
This is interesting:
ReplyDeletehttps://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2025/10/crazy-racist-billionaire-illegally.html
It says that the $130 million donated by Timothy Mellon would fund the military for less than 1 day, about $100 per soldier. It also describes the other very large donations made by Mellon to Trump's PACs and RFK Jr.
Fortune says that Mellon was fascinated by the disappearance of Amelia Earhardt and funded an expedition to investigate. He was unsatisfied with the expedition and developed his own theories about what happened to her, nutcase ideas that were the source of lawsuits. That may be why Trump inexplicably released all of the govt documents about her death. That seems likely to have been a quid pro quo to maintain his financial relationship with Mellon.
Steve M. says:
"Rich head cases like Timothy Mellon run our country. We're required to defer to their whims. And now that we have a president who's effectively dismantled the non-punitive parts of the government and created a culture of government by large donation, the country will be run according to rich lunatics' whims more than ever before."
Can you smell it?, that's the smell of fascism baby. And the stank is only gonna get worse.
DeletePublicly-funded only election campaigns, FTW!
DeleteIf a billionaire cuts the check it must be for a good cause.
Delete4:42 Ask Chengpang Zhou.
DeleteAre people really criticizing Mellon for a gift to the government of ONLY $230,000,000.00?
Delete$130 million. It would not plausibly cover military payroll so what is it for?
DeleteBob, you quoted Goldberg saying "the White House communications director Steven Cheung gleefully wrote that the president was defecating “all over these No Kings losers!”
ReplyDeleteJournalists shouldn't sanewash these people. Steven Cheung literally wrote "Shitting all over these no King losers." He didn't say "defecating". The public needs to know what these people really say.
For want of a blogger who muses on the media.
DeleteQuotation marks, how do they work?
DeleteDrug addicts are trading with the enemy. Donald Trump, Pam Bondi, and Kash Patel are failing to prosecute them and should be removed from office.
ReplyDelete