BREAKING: It's the third Friday of the new cycle!

 FEIDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 2025

Gabriel Conroy's thoughts: Yes, it's the third Friday of the new and improved "every third Friday" medical cycle.

Despite that fact, we thought we'd be able to sneak away, at 10 a.m., to continue our look at Joyce's treatment of (metaphorical) "paralysis" and (metaphorical) "death." But given how way leads on to way, a minor, time-consuming complexification arose.

We do believe that Dubliners can help us contemporary Americans see ourselves as we currently actually are. We'll return to that task, most likely tomorrow, as we continue to ponder what Gretta Conroy's husband said, even if only internally:

The air of the room chilled his shoulders. He stretched himself cautiously along under the sheets and lay down beside his wife. One by one they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age.

That passage appears two paragraphs from the end of the final story in Dubliners, the widely acclaimed near-novella, "The Dead." But what could we learn from pondering that internal monologue? 

Also, where's the (metaphorical) paralysis here in our own Blue American world? From the Blue perspective, the Achaeans are coming over the walls again, as they first did in the days of the Iliad. What can we learn from Joyce's portraits of his era's (metaphorically) paralyzed Dubliners?

We need to see ourselves more clearly. Sometimes we can learn to do such things through the intercession of books!

Also this: Hey! We're typing as fast as we can!

THURSDAY: The revolt of the furious students, on Fox!

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 2025

The furious gentleman's tale: Personally, we wish that Governor Walz would stop making unhelpful comments.

To appearances, the comments are meant to be amusing. They help the pro-MAGA side.

We also think that Blue America should be aware of the way the Fox News Channel is changing the shape of the public discourse within the "cable news" realm.

Yesterday, the furious children on The Five were unhappy with Governor Walz. Inevitably, resident silly boy Jesse Watters teased the program's second segment with this sad remark:

WATTERS (9/3/25): Up next, Trump's not dead—and Tampon is upset.

At this point, he doesn't even call him "Tampon Tim!" To this silliest of all American children, his name is simply "Tampon."

On the nation's most-watched "cable news" program, the gentleman's name is now "Tampon." When it came time for Greg Gutfeld to speak, the angry lad went with this:

GUTFELD: What can you say about Tim Walz that hasn't already been said in Deliverance? 

[LAUGHTER]

The guy is a creep. He is a blubbering eunuch.

The Dems really messed with America before Trump returned, but one of the worst things they did was introduce us to this—I was going to say "retard," but I can't say that—this asshole to a wider audience. 

We were so better off not knowing who he was. And now that we know that he exists and that he just plays to an audience, he's a loser and he's a scumbag.

The furious fellow couldn't say "retard." So he went with "asshole" instead!

Increasingly, the children traffic in news analysis of that type, in which the disfavored person is a retard, an asshole, a scumbag. In this way, as we've noted before, Gutfeld's unregulated fury is being transferred from his own gruesome TV show down to the world of The Five. 

Experts now refer to this sort of thing as "The revolt (or the revenge) of the D-minus students." They've been angry for a long time, and Fox is now letting them vent.

For the record:

The Fox News Channel no longer BLEEPS the analytical term, "asshole." On the brighter side, no one said that Walz is gay on yesterday's program, unless "eunuch" and Deliverance count.

This seems to be who these children are. This seems to be what they have.

Dana Perino laughs it off. She's there to create an impression.

THE DEAD: What might a modern "paralysis" look like?

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 2025

Plus, his strangest behavior yet: Way back in 1914, James Joyce's collection of fifteen stories began with thoughts of "paralysis."

The collection bears the sacred name, Dubliners. Boasting a youthful, first-person narrator, the first story started like this:

The Sisters

There was no hope for him this time: it was the third stroke. Night after night I had passed the house (it was vacation time) and studied the lighted square of window: and night after night I had found it lighted in the same way, faintly and evenly. If he was dead, I thought, I would see the reflection of candles on the darkened blind for I knew that two candles must be set at the head of a corpse. He had often said to me: “I am not long for this world,” and I had thought his words idle. Now I knew they were true. Every night as I gazed up at the window I said softly to myself the word paralysis. It had always sounded strangely in my ears, like the word gnomon in the Euclid and the word simony in the Catechism. But now it sounded to me like the name of some maleficent and sinful being. It filled me with fear, and yet I longed to be nearer to it and to look upon its deadly work.

That's the first paragraph of the young Joyce's sacred first book. "Paralysis" is sitting right there, marked by its "deadly work.".

As it turned out, Father Flynn had died "a paralytic," felled by his third stroke. The paralysis introduced here had delivered him to the ranks of the (literally) dead.

Way back in 1906, the very young Joyce—he was just 24—had written to a timid, slightly paralyzed publisher, describing the intention behind his unusual book:

"My intention was to write a chapter in the moral history of my country and I chose Dublin for the scene because that city seemed to me the centre of paralysis."

At any rate, the cycle of stories started right there, with the literal death of the literally paralyzed Father Flynn. It ended with the longest story in the collection, the near novella which bears this famous title:

The Dead

The young Joyce wasn't playing around, even at age 24!

As we present-day Americans seek to understand the death-in-life of our own failing nation, we might consider abandoning the 24-second news cycle which now defeats our understanding. We might consider replacing it with certain similarities which may be lurking inside Joyce's first published text.

Last night, the garbage was general over the Fox News Channel. There seems to be very little "paralysis" over there.

Within the elites of Blue America, the situation may seem to be different. Consider the headlines one can see, this very morning, on the web site of the venerable Washington Post.

A bit more than fifty years ago, the Washington Post exploded into major prominence with its investigation of the "Watergate" matter. 

It's a different paper today. This morning, at 7:45 a.m., these were the first ten (10) headlines seen on the front page of its web site. Each of these headlines offered readers a link:

The Washington Post 

Trump officials ask Supreme Court to quickly allow sweeping tariffs

Inside the Trump team’s conflicting efforts to mend ties with India

RFK Jr. drives a wedge between red and blue states on vaccines

The case of the stolen pigeons:
Chinese tycoons turned pigeon racing into one of the world’s most lucrative sports. Then the thefts began.

House GOP weighing bills to remove elected D.C. attorney general, overhaul justice policies

At D.C. Superior Court, a system up at all hours under Trump’s order

National Guard deployment in D.C. expected to be extended for months

Plastic exposure before birth can leave babies with lifelong fertility issues

What’s the best frozen pizza brand? Our taste test found a clear winner.
The supermarket freezer aisle is awash in ready-to-bake pizzas. We found a clear favorite.

This foliage map tells you when to see peak colors across the U.S. 
This year’s map forecasts an early arrival of colors in the Northeast, while the West Coast and Southeast may experience foliage delays.

In this age of the flooding of the zone, most of those headlines linked to serious news reports about actual news topics. The stolen pigeons and the best frozen pizza were possibly included just for fun. Plus the foliage map!

At any rate, there they sat—the newspapers top ten headlines! After that, as we continued to scroll, we encountered this array of eight (8) "stories" which offered us even more news:

More top stories

Texas moves to allow anyone to sue abortion pill prescribers, distributors

Death toll rises to 17 after Lisbon’s popular Glória funicular derails

Trump administration rescinds protected status for 250,000 Venezuelans

Trump ordered strike on suspected drug boat to send a message, Rubio says

D.C. can predict who will get into car crashes but can’t stop them

Heard on a hot mic: Xi and Putin discuss living to age 150

House Republicans form new subcommittee to reinvestigate Jan. 6 attack

Putin may live to 150? A Post subscriber may have to live that long to encounter reporting about the topic for which we were searching this day!

We'd now encountered links to eighteen (18) different news reports. At this point, as we scrolled on, we encountered a section bearing this name:

Latest from The Post

The section included eight (8) additional offerings. Two of the eight were these:

Analysis / Mark Maske 
NFL primer: Can the onside kick be saved? Plus, the top games in Week 1.

Analysis / Neil Greenberg
Predicting win-loss records for all 32 NFL teams

The count was now 26. After that came the day's "Better Living" section. Links were offered to four (4) more reports, not excluding these

Column / Ellie Krieger
Pear overnight oats show why this breakfast has stood the test of time

The health risk linked to scrolling too long while on the toilet

By now, we subscribers had been directed (or misdirected) to thirty (30) offerings. Now we came to another section. Its featured report was this:

Politics & Government

Judge rules Trump administration cannot withhold funding from Harvard

That was a perfectly serious topic. By now, our roll stood at 31.

As we'd scrolled down the Post's front page, we'd been invited to click on 31 links. Finally, we reviewed a set of six additional reports in that same Politics & Government section

This subset was offered in smaller print. Finally, though, we saw the topic for which we'd been searching. The link to it read like this:

Epstein accusers join lawmakers to push for full release of documents

At long last, there it stood! 

Yesterday, this event had been widely featured on two of the three major "cable news" channels. Perhaps a bit paralytically, perhaps driven by deference to power and by a bit of fear, the Washington Post had managed to squeeze it in at number 32 on today's play list:

That placed it below the discussion of onside kicks, and below the news report about the danger of excessive toilet scrolling. We've reported, now you can decide!

As decent people, we whispered a silent prayer of thanksgiving. We thanked the God of all Irish Catholics for the fact that the ambitious young Joyce never had to see this version of what might be a form of a type of moral "paralysis."

As for our youthful analysts, their souls swooned slowly as they heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead. 

(We're borrowing from the closing paragraph of The Dead as we bring you that report.)

Yesterday, there they were, the survivors or victims—take your pick—of Jeffrey Epstein and Gislaine Maxell, a pair of convicted criminals. 

Yesterday, they told their stories in a press event outside the Capitol Building. On CNN and MSNBC, this was treated, throughout the day and on into the evening, as a major news event.

On the Fox News Channel—no paralysis there!—the various messenger pigeons found a different array of topics with which to fills their hours. Various targets were slimed again when Greg Gutfeld took to the air.

It was a major event on two news channels, almost wholly avoided on one. This morning, at the Washington Post, the event had barely occurred.

The New York Times did somewhat better. In this morning's print editions, the report appears inside the paper, on page A14. 

It didn't make the paper's front page. It's listed as the fifth of eighteen news reports in the online "National" section.

It appears right below the fourth report. As seen in print editions, here are the headlines in question:

Brewery Owner in Maine Joins Push to Unseat Collins

G.O.P. Leaders Thwart Epstein Disclosure Bill as Accusers Plead for Files

Accusers had been pleading for files, the headline said. Here's the headline which appears online, along with the opening paragraphs:

G.O.P. Thwarts Epstein Disclosure Bill as Accusers Plead for Files

With the Capitol towering behind them, several women who said they had been among Jeffrey Epstein’s victims shared harrowing stories of sexual abuse, pleading with members of Congress to demand that the Trump administration release all of its investigative files in the case.

Lawmakers in both parties stood behind them, vowing to keep the pressure on for the disclosures.

Even one of Mr. Trump’s closest allies, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, said the files must come out.

None of it appeared to be enough to outweigh the pressure from Mr. Trump and Republican leaders, who have moved quickly to squelch legislation that would require the Justice Department to quickly and completely release what it uncovered about Mr. Epstein, the disgraced financier and convicted sex offender who died in prison in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

Momentum was flagging behind an effort by Representatives Thomas Massie, Republican of Kentucky, and Ro Khanna, Democrat of California, to force the House to vote on the measure, after most Republicans who initially said they would back it fell in line with the president’s exhortations to let the issue die.

We aren't saying that report is wrong, though the BBC said that the "several" women were actually nine in number. We're saying that a bit of "paralysis" may have infested the treatment of this topic at the Washington Post.

Meanwhile, here's something you may not get to read about at the Post or at the Times. Under present arrangements, you have to go to Mediaite to learn about bizarre behavior like this:

Trump Goes on Bizarre, Digitally-Altered Posting Bender About His Political Enemies

President Donald Trump unleashed a torrent of Truth Social posts featuring digitally altered videos of some of his political enemies on Wednesday night. The posts featured some of his favorite targets, including California Governor Gavin Newsom and Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA).

After publishing boilerplate posts about the Social Security Administration and his meeting with the president of Poland earlier in the day, the president’s timeline got weird, even by his posting standards.

Intriguing! Just how "weird" were the president's posts? Was his bender really "bizarre?"

We're going to say that it very much was—that it was the most bizarre yet. Michael Luciano's report continues along as shown, but you'll have to click over to his report to actually see the apparent illness which might seem to be involved here:

The bizarre bender began with a post about Rosie O’Donnell, who moved to Ireland after Trump won last year’s election. (Screenshots of the president’s posts are posted below instead of embedded posts, as Truth Social’s embed feature seems to be non-functional with some content management systems):

“As previously mentioned, we are giving serious thought to taking away Rosie O’Donnell’s Citizenship,” Trump wrote. “She is not a Great American and is, in my opinion, incapable of being so!”

This would be the last post in the series that included text. The rest were AI videos or videos that had been otherwise altered in some way.

They included a video of Schiff with an elongated neck...

And so on from there. 

The president had started with a suggestion that Rosie O'Donnell's citizenship might now be revoked. That was high sanity compared to what came next. 

You'll have to click to Luciano's report to see those altered photos. Incredibly, this is what the president has apparently posted concerning Senator Schiff.

Is something wrong with President Trump? We've asked this fairly obvious question again and again, noting that any such situation would of course be tragic state of affairs.

We've asked and asked and asked. You'll have to turn to the extremely strange visuals at Mediaite to encounter what seems to be an answer to that question.

"Silence invaded the suburbs," the poet Auden said, in honor of the poet Yeats. 

("Earth, receive an honoured guest: William Yeats is laid to rest...")

Has a type of paralysis, in the form of a silence, invaded the Washington Post? 

Regarding the victims of Epstein and Maxwell, yesterday's open air presser had seemed to be a fairly substantial event. It was virtually disappeared by the Post, given somewhat limited play at the Times. 

More broadly, these newspapers refuse to discuss the possible state of the president's mental health, with respect to which we would strongly suggest that you look at the visuals which appear at Mediaite via the Truth Social site.

Our question:

Might we see portraits of our current Blue American selves in the page of Dubliners? In its final story, The Dead? 

Are we Blues possibly trapped in a form of walking death, in a form of moral paralysis? If we want to see ourselves more clearly, should we perhaps step back from the current news cycle? Might we try to look inside such honored writing instead?

Tomorrow: Additional language from The Dead:

The air of the room chilled his shoulders. He stretched himself cautiously along under the sheets and lay down beside his wife. One by one they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age.

WEDNESDAY: There's little sign of paralysis...

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2025

...from Red America's messaging persons: Has anyone ever changed as much as JD Vance weirdly has?

We're speaking about the two Vances:

The thoughtful, humorous JD Vance who published Hillbilly Elegy in 2016, then sat for a series of high-profile interviews in support of the widely praised memoir.

The JD Vance who exists today—the JD Vance of the ugly "the Haitians are eating Ohio's pets" claim of the 2024 campaign.

How did the first person turn into the second? At Mediaite, Colby Hall offers the latest dope about that second person:

JD Vance’s Warning About Trump ‘Death Bed’ Misinformation Was… Misinformation

Vice President JD Vance just pulled off a very 2025 trick: warning about fake news by making some up.

Following a few days of bizarre and baseless rumors—primarily from far left social media trolls and influencers—about President Donald Trump’s health, Vance logged onto X and wrote:

“If the media you consumed told you that Donald Trump was on his death bed because he didn’t do a press conference for 3 days, imagine what else they’re lying to you about.”

It’s a neat line. Punchy. Timely. But also false. No credible outlet—not The New York Times, not CNN, not Fox, not even the most fringe clickbait—reported Trump was on his death bed. The story existed only in rumor mills and the viral, self-feeding algorithms of social media, mainly on the cesspool that X has become...

And so on from there. 

In fairness, the new Vance can hide behind the ambiguity of the slick and useful term, "the media." But today, at the age of (just turned) 41, is there any bogus claim this once genial fellow isn't ready to peddle?

This week, we're searching the early stories of Joyce, focusing on the theme of societal "paralysis" and metaphorical death. Among the messaging agents of Red America, there's little sign of any "paralysis" at the present time.

In our view, those messaging agents are characterized by their apparent inability to regulate their anger and their endless sense of grievance. Paralysis isn't them!  As an example of what we mean, consider what happened last night, when Suzanne Scott pried the lid off the can at 10 p.m. (7 p.m. out on the coast) and Greg Gutfeld came slithering out.

He was supported by four flyweight guests. There was little sign of "paralysis."

If you're willing to watch this angry, dimwitted child, you can see him pursue his favorite targets and themes in his opening two or three minutes of jokes:

Themes of opening jokes: September 2, 2025
Favorite target Greta Thunberg has an unsightly haircut.

Favorite target Rosie O'Donnell allegedly has herpes—and she got it from a toilet seat!

Favorite target Rashida Tlaib has an unsightly mustache.

Little "paralysis" is evident in the behaviors of this emotionally crippled child. (He turns 61 next week.) Needless to say, favorite target Jerry Nadler also turned up in a set of jokes which featured the standard perspective:

GUTFELD (9/2/25): Representative Jerry Nadler announced he is retiring after 34 years in Congress.

AUDIENCE: [Cheering, applause]

GUTFELD: He is citing a need for change, referring to his trousers.

I'm not going to say he ruins a lot of pants, but his dry cleaner did kill himself. 

But if I know Nadler, we haven't heard the last from him.

[Sounds of a flushing toilet]

That's the first time we've used sound effects in a joke, and I think it went really well.

Judged by any recognizable standard, something is wrong in this strange fellow's head. The paralysis starts when Blue America's timorous elites agree that they should refuse to report or discuss his behavior.

Other favorite targets were soon hit in Gutfeld's "issue monologue." That included favorite target Taylor Swift, who is typically derided on this prehuman, braindead show because she's "just a 5."

For the record, the little guy opened his program with a favorite unsupported rumor about favorite target Ilhan Omar. For PolitiFact's fact-check of the tired old rumor, just click this. For the Snopes fact-check (rating: Unfounded), you can just click here.

Very little paralysis holds this nutcase back. Paralysis enters the world of our dying society's failing discourse when Blue America's timorous tribunes all agree that his braindead, destructive behavior must, at all costs, be ignored.

He starts with poop, slides downhill from there. We do advise you to pity the child, but he and his nitwit "cable news" guests make it quite hard to do that.

Suzanne Scott pries the lid off the can. This stupid, sad garbage slides out.

THE DEAD: The analysts screamed when Stephanie Ruhle...

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2025

...tried to perform a fact check: It's increasingly painful to observe what sits in the place of our failed American discourse.

Last night, for example, Stephanie Ruhle was back from a late summer absence. Sadly enough, reality forced her to deal with these statement by the sitting American president:

PRESIDENT TRUMP (9/2/25): Chicago is a hellhole right now. Baltimore is a hellhole right now...

We'll, we're going in [to Chicago with federal troops]. I didn't say when, but we're going in...

We have the right to do it, because I have an obligation to protect this country. And that includes Baltimore...

 I’m very proud of Washington. It serves as a template. And we’re going to do it elsewhere. But Chicago is certainly going to be high.

Baltimore, "what they need is housing." No, they don’t need housing. They need is to get rid of the criminals.

We're showing you the snippets that Ruhle ran. "In the wickedness of the times" (Plato), we know of no place where a citizen can see a transcript of the president's full remarks. 

In the next day or two, the invaluable Rev may produce such a transcript. Or then again, possibly not.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but our discourse is barely breathing. Before we elaborate on that remark, we offer a minor aside:

We ourselves just spent a glorious weekend in one of the hellholes in question. The weather was astoundingly good, as was the glorious walking.

The longer weekend, mixed with the broadcast of several intriguing football games, produced a fugue-infested weekend here on the streets where we live. We recall what sacred Thoreau wrote in Walden, at the start of the chapter called Solitude:

Solitude

This is a delicious evening, when the whole body is one sense, and imbibes delight through every pore. I go and come with a strange liberty in Nature, a part of herself. As I walk along the stony shore of the pond in my shirt sleeves, though it is cool as well as cloudy and windy, and I see nothing special to attract me, all the elements are unusually congenial to me. The bullfrogs trump to usher in the night, and the note of the whippoorwill is borne on the rippling wind from over the water. Sympathy with the fluttering alder and poplar leaves almost takes away my breath...

No, it wasn't quite that good. But we were out and about, in glorious weather, inside an American hellhole. 

No hellhole is visible on the streets where we live. There may well be hellholes elsewhere in "fair Baltimore, the beautiful city"—in particular neighborhoods, on particular streets, within particular homes.

There may be hellholes elsewhere here. That said, the rantings and the rage of this disordered man won't likely be helpful at any point—and Ruhle was soon trying to fact-check his statements.

More specifically, she tried to offer a fact-check of this Truth Social post by the ranting commander in chief:

CHICAGO IS THE MURDER CAPITAL OF THE WORLD

In the end, such ranting won't likely be helpful. 

It was still just 11:01 p.m. when Ruhle tried to perform a fact-check. The analysts groaned, then tore at their hair, when they saw her say this:

RUHLE (9/2/25): For fact's sake, Tijuana, Mexico has the highest homicide rate in the world. And despite Chicago being the third biggest city in America, its murder rate falls below red state cities like Jackson, Mississippi; Birmingham, Alabama; and St. Louis, Missouri.

Sad. According to FBI data, Chicago's murder rate is, in fact, far lower than the murder rates of quite a few American cities. But sad! 

The size of a city isn't directly connected in any way to its murder rate! Please don't ask us to explain this remarkably bone-simple point.

Is Chicago "THE MURDER CAPITAL OF THE WORLD," in the predictable way President All Caps decided to rant? This morning, we traveled across the pond to The Times of London in search of clarification.

As usual, the Times of New York is glossing—seems to be disappearing—President Trump's "hellhole" remarks. By way of contrast, The Times of London was actually willing to speak:

Trump to send National Guard to ‘hellhole cities’ in governor showdown

[...]

Trump has so far deployed members of the National Guard, a state-based reservist force, to Los Angeles and Washington, citing the high crime rates. On Tuesday morning, Trump wrote on Truth Social: “CHICAGO IS THE MURDER CAPITAL OF THE WORLD!”

However, the three cities that had the highest murder rates in the US last year are all in Republican states, according to the latest FBI data. Birmingham in Alabama, St Louis in Missouri and Memphis in Tennessee recorded more than 40 murders per 100,000 people.

The next two cities with the highest murder rates in the US—Baltimore and Detroit—are in states with Democratic governors. Chicago recorded 17.5 murders per 100,000 people last year.

In fact, according to the FBI data, Chicago's murder rate is dwarfed by those in Birmingham and St. Louis. It's less than half the murder rate found in Memphis. 

That said, none of this has much to do with the desire to address the horrors of violent crime. Neither does the incessant clowning of the clown-car sitting president.

The analysts screamed at the statistical illiteracy Ruhle introduced into her program. Soon, her producers were flashing her standard, embarrassing slogan as she introduced her first panel of guests:

LET'S GET SMARTER

By the time they were forced to see that silly slogan flash on the screen, the youthful analysts were openly weeping. In our minds, we returned to the themes of paralysis and (metaphorical) death found in the fifteen stories of Joyce's famous collection, Dubliners.

You may think we're picking nits when we complain about Ruhle's bungle. If you have some such reaction, we're forced to report that you're wrong.

With respect to the young Joyce's collection of stories, the question to which we return is this:

In some way, can we modern Americans see ourselves reflected somehow in his early stories? In the stories about the spiritual paralysis he though the saw within the Ireland of the early twentieth century?

Blinded by the flooding of the zone and by the speed of the modern news cycle, we Americans need to learn to see ourselves with more clarity. Can we possibly see ourselves in the early Joyce's first stories?

Was their "paralysis" our paralysis? Joyce described his intention in letters to the timorous publisher who kept refusing to publish Dubliners.

The publisher wanted certain parts of the stories to be softened, thrown away—disappeared. Joyce described his purpose thusly:

JOYCE (May 5, 1906): As for my part and share in the book I have already told all I have to tell. My intention was to write a chapter in the moral history of my country and I chose Dublin for the scene because that city seemed to me the centre of paralysis...I have written it for the most part in a style of scrupulous meanness and with the conviction that he is a very bold man who dares to alter in the presentment, still more to deform, whatever he has seen and heard. I cannot do any more than this. I cannot alter what I have written. 

JOYCE (May 20, 1906): You cannot see anything impossible or unreasonable in my position. I have explained and argued everything at full length and, when argument and explanation were unavailing, I have perforce granted what you wished, and even when you didn’t ask, [sic] me to grant. The points on which I have not yielded are the points which rivet the book together. If I eliminate them, what becomes of the chapter of the moral history of my country? I fight to retain them because I believe that in composing my chapter of moral history in exactly the way I have composed it I have taken the first step towards the spiritual liberation of my country. 

Joyce had just turned 24 when he wrote those letters. He believed that he had composed a "moral history of [his] country." 

Rightly or wrongly, he believed that the Ireland of his youth was trapped is a form of "paralysis"—and the lengthy story which closed the collection bore this famous title:

The Dead

He believed he saw a type of paralysis gripping his nation back then. Is our own failing nation tapped in a type of paralysis now?

Unfortunately, there's little "paralysis" in the caterwauling emerging from the tribunes of Red America on a round-the-clock basis. If some such paralysis exists, it's found over here, with us Blues.

The analysts screamed when Stephanie Ruhle introduced that bone-simple bungle. The Times of London has already critiqued what the president said. As with other presidential screeds, it's being hushed up over here.

At any rate, the weather was beautiful, all weekend long, here in the heart of a hellhole. Children were attacking the sidewalks with chalk. Click here to enjoy a forgotten old song, the song called "The Baltimore Fire."

This afternoon: It came from the garbage can

Also, the lyrics: As sung by the New Lost City Ramblers:

"Fire, fire" I heard the cry
From every breeze that passes by
All the world was one sad cry of pity.

Strong men in anguish prayed
Calling out to heaven for aid
While the fire in ruins was laying
Fair Baltimore, the beautiful city.

TUESDAY: When the president went there again...

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 2025

...none of the friends said a word: Is there a type of "paralysis" infesting come significant portion of our failing nation's population? Could some of the people so infested be thought of as "The Dead?"

We took the crazy gamble this morning of flirting with such questions. 

We're starting our new narrative year with the speculative possibility that we Americans are trapped in some sort of "collective paralysis." That certain segments of the society are, metaphorically, among the spiritual dead.

Who might we have in mind? It's hard to attempt an analysis of the American discourse without citing the endless profusion of events such as this:

Trump WH Roasted For Wild $8 Trillion Whopper: ‘Amazing–And Insanely Wrong!’

The Trump White House sparked a wave of condemnation after Labor Day Weekend with a social media post boasting it had taken in a whopping “$8 trillion in tariff revenue.”

The White House posted an image of Trump and the caption, “President Trump’s protectionist trade policies have helped drive more than $8 trillion in new U.S. investment, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs.” The image also included the caption, “$8 TRILLION IN TARIFF REVENUE, HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF NEW JOBS.”

Critics were quick to point out obvious, glaring errors in the post—and others made over the weekend. The conservative Manhattan Institute’s Jessica Reidl shared the post and added...

You can click to see what Riedl said. Reason's Nick Gillespie offered this:

“Amazing–and insanely wrong! Trump claims ‘$8 trillion in tariff revenue.’ In all of 2024, total imports came to $3.7 trillion.”

There our tribunes went again, using the language of mental health—but using it only in a colloquial manner.

For whatever reason, the White House seems to have issued an astonishing howler. Because its presentation dealt with tariff revenue, we thought back to the early moments of Monday's Fox & Friends program—to the magic moments we briefly mentioned, then passed over, in this morning's report.

Yesterday morning, in real time, we were struck by how quickly the propaganda starts on Fox News Channel programs where everyone on the panel will agree, by force of law, with everything that everyone else has said. You may remember who the three friends were this day:

Fox & Friends: Monday, September 1, 2025
Lawrence Jones: co-host, Fox & Friends
Emily Compagno: co-host, Outnumbered
Johnny Joey Jones: Fox News contributor

There they sat at 6 a.m., ready to advance the various mandated messaging points. At 6:03, Compagno enthusiastically offered this about the amazing economy:

COMPAGNO (9/1/25): The president himself is weighing in, putting this on Truth Social...

With that, she read the president's post. It involved the miracle of tariffs. Here's the text of what she read:

"Prices are ‘WAY DOWN' in the USA, with virtually no inflation. With the exception of ridiculous, corrupt politician-approved ‘Windmills,' which are killing every State and Country that uses them, Energy prices are falling, ‘big time.' Gasoline is at many-year lows. All of this despite magnificent Tariffs, which are bringing in Trillions of Dollars from Countries that took total advantage of us, for decades, and are making America STRONG and RESPECTED AGAIN!!!"

There the fellow went again! Try to ignore the other claims, including the claims about windmills. But with respect to the magic of tariffs, there he went again!

Once again, there he went, seeming to say that tariff revenues are submitted to the treasury by foreign governments or other foreign entities. Tariff revenues are free money! The president said it again!

Nothing seems to stop him from making this groaning misstatement. Presumably, Jones or Jones or Compagno herself must have known that the president's representation was bogus.

Did Jones and Jones and Compagno know? We'll assume that at least one of them did! But Compagno politely read the text of the president's post—and none of the friends said a word.

Has a paralysis affected these players? Could they possibly be thought of as the (metaphorical) dead?

At this site, we think of them as messenger children, but also as "Unrecognizables." We'll have more on this type of conduct as the week proceeds, but we're thinking of a different group when we encounter Joyce's language—his language from Dubliners, culminating with The Dead.

There the president went again! Meanwhile, how odd:

Red America's corporate "friends" refuse to talk about President Trump. Meanwhile, Blue America's progressional journalists refuse to talk about them!

We regard the friends as "Unrecognizables." What can we say about the people who refuse to report or discuss the various things they say and do?

It was 6:03 on Monday morning. Compagno tread the text of the howler and she and her friends moved on!

THE DEAD: The Stupid is general over the culture!

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 2025

Also, perhaps, the dead: Last week's endless "cabinet meeting" brought an earlier event to mind.

The "cabinet meeting" ran a full three hours and seventeen minutes. It opened with President Trump orating for 48 minutes. 

At that point, the president threw to "Bobby"—to his frequently criticized Secretary of Health and Human Services. Thanks to the invaluable Rev, you can peruse a transcript of all that transpired—of every word that was said.

A somewhat peculiar exchange between the president and the secretary brought the earlier event to mind. In this news report, the New York Times recalled the earlier incident:

How the Trump-Kennedy Alliance Is Pushing the Boundaries of Public Health

Before he began his remarks on health care policy at a White House event earlier this summer, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. first felt the need to praise one of President Trump’s passion projects.

Mr. Kennedy said that Mr. Trump’s new Oval Office décor had “transformed” a White House that comparatively looked “drab” when his uncle, former President John F. Kennedy, filled it. “Under your stewardship, it looks extraordinary today,” Mr. Kennedy said as Mr. Trump nodded in approval. “So thank you, Mr. President.”

During a three-hour cabinet meeting this week, it was Mr. Trump’s turn to support Mr. Kennedy’s endeavors: researching any link between vaccines and autism, a theory that many medical professionals and studies have debunked....

And so on from there. 

For the record, the earlier White House event took place on July 30. Before discussing health care policy on that earlier occasion, Kennedy had apparently felt the need to blather on like this:

KENNEDY (7/30/25): Thank you very much, Mr. President and I just want to begin by making a comment that is irrelevant to what we're gathered here today to talk about. 

But I've been coming to this building for 65 years and I have to say that it has never looked better. And I've spent some time—I've spent some time in the Oval Office, which really has—it's been transformed.

And I was looking at a picture of the Oval Office the other day when I was there, when I was a kid with my uncle and it was an extraordinary—it's always an extraordinary to go into that sacred space. But I have to say that it looked kind of drab in the pictures, and they were black and white pictures but looked drab, and it looks the opposite of drab today.

[Addressing reporters] And I think—I know all these portraits. I hope you get a chance to look at them when you go out there, that they were hand-picked by the president. And many of them hijacked from other agencies that were trying to keep them.

But I mean, you know, my uncle, my Aunt Jackie, who were deeply committed to design, to beauty and who understood that it's important to have our public buildings be beautiful because it inspires us, it elevates the human spirit. It's one of the—it's a template, it's an exemplar for democracy, the releasing through freedoms of the creativity of the human spirit and this building, of all buildings, should look beautiful.

And under your stewardship, it looks extraordinary today. So thank you, Mr. President, for that. 

That earlier event had started with the president orating for more than ten minutes. When Kennedy was finally asked to speak, he burned away two additional minutes with that "irrelevant comment."

Even Aunt Jackie couldn't match the president's mastery of design and beauty, the admiring secretary admiringly said. 

As he did, he enhanced his branding as a Trump-admiring Kennedy, while orating within an increasingly peculiar realm. Some observers have begun to think that the realm in question might be North Korea adjacent!

The spectacular dumbness of the secretary's remarks in July has become a bit of a trademark. Leaders from around the world seem to have decided that the only way to approach the sitting president is with words of fawning praise.

To appearances, Russian patriot Vladimir Putin has become a master of the technique. Today, he continues to add to the dead of Ukraine, weeks after President Trump applauded him as he disembarked from his plane at Alaska's subarctic summit.

The president applauded the strongman that day, back on August 15. In a recent interview, he now seems to have said he got fooled by his Russkie darling and friend during the ballyhooed meeting.

"I thought I had it done" that day, the president somewhat oddly said, during a lengthy interview with a very young journalist from the very pro-MAGA site, The Daily Caller.

The young journalist who conducted the lengthy interview is three years out of college (Hillsdale College, class of 2022). She may go on to become a truly outstanding journalist. Also, there's no law requiring her, or anyone else, to be anti-MAGA.

For now, rightly or wrongly, she may be very pro-MAGA. She seemed to enjoy the president's sense of humor when he "announced a new piece of art in the White House—a portrait of former President Joe Biden’s autopen." 

The sheer stupidity of such events never ends at this point. Here's the start of Mediaite's report on that bit of news from the sitting president:

Trump Mocks Biden’s Autopen With a Portrait in the White House: ‘This Is Going To Be Very Controversial’

President Donald Trump has announced a new piece of art in the White House—a portrait of former President Joe Biden’s autopen.

The president shared the detail in an exclusive interview with The Daily Caller, which published the full transcript of Trump’s conversation with reporter Reagan Reese on Monday.

“We put up a picture of the autopen,” Trump told Reese, who responded, “Oh, that’s hilarious.”

It is not exactly clear where the portrait will hang. The Daily Caller’s transcript said Trump showed Reese multiple versions of the picture and what it “will look like in the Rose Garden,” but portraits are not typically displayed in the outdoor space. Either way, Trump said the painting will be unveiled in about two weeks.

And so on, oddly, from there. All in all, the beautification of the White House continues, as does the support of journalistic admirers. Under present arrangement, no matter what the president does, the troops are there to support him.

At this site, we regard that "portrait of the autopen" plan as an example of sheer stupidity. Others will assess it differently.

That said, the cheerleading conduct extends through the days at the Fox News Channel. Yesterday morning, we were struck, as we often are, by how quickly the spread of propaganda starts.

It was 6 o'clock on Labor Day morning. A trio of friends had been assembled to message on the weekday show, Fox & Friends.

Given that it was a holiday, two of the friends were substitute friends. The lineup looked like this:

Fox & Friends: Monday, September 1, 2025
Lawrence Jones: co-host, Fox & Friends
Emily Compagno: co-host, Outnumbered
Johnny Joey Jones: Fox News contributor

The propaganda—and the comical misstatements of fact—started with remarkable speed.

Given how way leads on to way, we may never be able to get back to the stream of silly remarks uttered by those corporate messenger children. That said:

At 6:07, the analysts came right out of the chairs when Compagno chided observers from the liberal world who like to weigh in with their views "in a siloed fashion." And yes, she actually said it!

There is no way to keep up with the steady stream of inanity which now defines the successor to the American national discourse. But as the aforementioned Russkie patriot continues to add to the ranks of the dead, you can be sure that you'll never see any friends on that "cable news" channel offer anything resembling fair and balanced coverage of our sitting president's exploits.

Long ago and far away, Joyce published a famous story—a story called The Dead. It was part of the collection called Dubliners. 

Joyce had written all the stories by 1907, when he was just 25. It took him seven more years to get someone to publish the famous collection.

The Dead is the longest and the final story in Dubliners. According to the leading authority on the story, "T. S. Eliot called [it] one of the greatest short stories ever written in English." It may seem dry as dust to the contemporary reader, since most of us will have little idea of the context within which it was written.

As we recently noted, that leading authority says that The Dead "offers a critique of a society that has been gripped by a deadening paralysis of the spirit." In its treatment of the Dubliners collection, that same authority tells us this:

Dubliners

Dubliners is a collection of fifteen short stories by James Joyce, written from 1904 to 1907. First published in 1914, Dubliners presents a naturalistic depiction of Irish middle-class life in and around Dublin in the early twentieth century.

The stories were written when Irish nationalism was at its peak, and a search for a national identity and purpose was raging; at a crossroads of history and culture, Ireland was jolted by various converging ideas and influences. Joyce felt Irish nationalism, like Catholicism and British rule of Ireland, was responsible for a collective paralysis—a theme permeating much of the work. He conceived of Dubliners as a "nicely polished looking-glass" held up to the Irish and a "first step towards spiritual liberation."

The young Joyce felt that Ireland was in the grip of a deadening paralysis. He might have been right or he might have been wrong, but could that analysis possibly hold a mirror up to us—to the metaphorical dead of our own failing society? 

It sems to us that we all need to step outside the "operation warp speed" of our current imitation of a national discourse. We may need to seek ourselves out with the help of various works of literature. 

Is some collective paralysis of the spirit possibly here among us? Who among us, Red or Blue, might be part of the collective paralysis—might perhaps be identified as the walking and talking dead?

We need to put our warp speed away. The blinding speed of our imitation of discourse is only going to fail us.

Tomorrow: The paralysis is Us?

MONDAY: Tomorrow starts a new narrative year!

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2025

Michael Palin, but also The Dead: There are various types of year.

The calendar year starts on January 1. The fiscal years starts three months earlier, on October 1.

Within our own experience, the school year always started on the Tuesday after Labor Day. Southern and southwestern states often started earlier than that.

Tomorrow, we'll be starting the new narrative year. We'll be trying to define the state of play here within our own split nation as the existing United States continues to come undone. 

We've described the ongoing circumstance as a "revolt from below." By our own reckoning, this involves an ongoing war which we denizens of Blue America have quite possibly already lost.

Tomorrow, we'll start to try to sketch that scenario with greater clarity. We'll continue along with this award-winning premise:

To understand the ongoing situation, we need to step back from our failing culture's 24-second news cycle.  Instead, we need to understand the nature of the current warfare through portrayals which already exist in the pages, and in the verses, of pre-existing literature.

Borrowing from Frost, we need to step "back out of all this now too much for us"—back out of that bewildering flooding of the zone. 

That's our prescription for a fuller understanding of what has already occurred. For the record, we know of no reason to think that any such strategy might allow Blue America to withstand the ongoing "night assault."

Along the way, we've worked from various literary texts. Readers groan when these titles reappear:

The Iliad: Homer
The Plague: Camus
My Antonia: Cather
humanity i love you: Cummings
People: Yevtushenko
I Pity the Poor Immigrant: Dylan
The Gift Outright: Frost

Also, we've frequently cited this text—the most ignored text in the cosmos:

Too Much and Never Enough: Mary L. Trump, Ph.D.

This week, we'll be adding two titles to the list:

The Dead: Joyce
Michael Palin in North Korea: Palin

Michael Palin in North Korea? The leading authority on the program tells us this about that:

Michael Palin in North Korea

Michael Palin in North Korea...is a travel documentary presented by Michael Palin and first aired in the UK in 2 parts on Channel 5 on 20 September and 27 September 2018.

Program history

The program was made by ITN Productions, who had proposed a North Korean documentary to various channels under the title Let's All Go To North Korea. Channel 5's Director of Programs Ben Frow was not interested in the project at first, but after Michael Palin was hired to front the program, he changed his mind and decided to commission it for the channel.

Michael Palin in North Korea recorded viewing figures of 4.5 million viewers and was nominated for two BAFTAs...

International airings

The documentary aired on 30 September 2018 in North America on National Geographic with the title North Korea From the Inside With Michael Palin.

Episodes

In the first episode Palin arrives in North Korea on a train from China. He is greeted by his guides, a woman named Li Soo-young and a man named Li Kyung-chul. Palin's guides bring him to sites across Pyongyang, including statues of the first leader of North Korea, Kim Il-Sung, and his son and the DPRK's second leader Kim Jong-il.

In the second episode Palin celebrates his 75th-birthday in North Korea, and travels to the Demilitarized Zone that divides North and South Korea, the ancient Korean capital at Kaesong, Mount Kumgang, and the coastal city of Wonsan. Palin then flies from Wonsan to Mount Paektu on the border with China before returning to Pyongyang, where he visits members of the North Korean national taekwondo team.

The synopsis omits the core of the program—Palin's friendship, and his barely disguised romance of the heart, with his charming young North Korean minder, Li Soo-young (spelling uncertain). Late in Episode 2, that narrative backbone culminates in the scene which YouTube presents in full:

Michael Palin: North Korea—Criticizing The Leaders Is Criticizing Ourselves

It's part of the way we humans are wired. For ourselves, we're inclined to see Brother Palin as smart and very wise.

At some point, the program migrated from National Geographic on to PBS. When the program re-aired on a local PBS channel this weekend, we sat there and watched it, fascinated, for the second time. 

It seemed to us that it gives us a way to describe the furious foot soldiers who are currently waging war from within the "hermit kingdom" ruled by President Trump. 

(We're speaking here about employees of the Fox News Channel and other such figures. We are not talking about the tens of millions of neighbors and friends—and fellow citizens—who voted for President Trump.)

Online, you can watch the entire program—through the auspices of National Geographic—simply by clicking this.

What's actually happening here at home, within our failing nation? We think Palin's fascinating program starts to provide a bit of the language with which that question can be answered. 

Starting tomorrow, we'll also be returning to The Dead to describe the "paralysis" which infests our own Blue American nation. We'll be moving past Gretta Conroy and on to Joyce's apparent view of her husband, Gabriel.

According to Camus, the citizens of his fictional Oran weren't up to the task of recognizing and addressing a plague which had come upon them. Here at this incomparable site, we see that same problem infesting us in Blue America as a furious group of angry foot soldiers keep coming over the walls in an endless night assault.

Tomorrow we start a new narrative year! Knowing how way leads on to way, we think it may be late for any such effort to help.

Tomorrow: "Paralysis," he said

That one additional text: We should have listed the account by Professor Knox of the death of sacred Troy. 

We've cited that portrait again and again. We think it's highly instructive.

SATURDAY: We show you again what the poor fellow said!

SATURDAY, AUGUST 30, 2025

We advise you to pity the child: This morning, we want to show you, once again, what the "poor fellow" said. 

Before we do, we'll offer five words:

Temecula Valley Unified School District

You'll hear about it soon enough. For today, we'll only say this—this story helps explain why the messengers on the Fox News Channel can never be totally wrong.

(For the Snopes fact-check on the matter at hand, you can just click here.)

Also this:

With Labor Day approaching, last night was an evening of substitute hosts on the Fox News Channel. This helped produce an evening of astonishing claims, many of which (though not all) had been captured at Mediaite by the time we arose this morning.

We'll try to list the astonishments on Monday, before we start the new narrative year on Tuesday, September 2. For now, we'll only say this:

The Achaeans are coming over the walls again. Sacred Troy met its death in the original iteration.

With that, we move to today's main point. 

We want to show you, once again, what the "poor fellow" said. We refer to the furious Greg Gutfeld, spilling with rage about who the monsters turn out to be and about what the monsters do.

We think it's important to see what he said. On Thursday, viewers of The Five had learned these things about the monsters, but also about who the A-holes and assholes are, by 5:04 p.m.—2:04 out on the coast.

For additional context, see yesterday's report. Accepting a throw from the inexcusable Dana Perino, the furious fellow spilled with this:

GUTFELD (8/28/25): This is why none of these A-holes can lecture anyone on compassion. 

The most compassionate people on the planet are trying to stop the trans delusion. The least compassionate are the people in the media, academia and politicians who enable this hysteria of horror. 

What is so glaring about the trans cult—apparently, your identity is the only thing that matters until you do something awful. Then it's the least important variable. Then you look at everything else. You talk about guns. But suddenly, it is like all of a sudden we can't talk about that—what was it? The other trans shooter that hid her identity. 

In this manifesto that this creep wrote, he said he was tired of being trans, and that he wished he had never brainwashed himself. What more do you need, straight from the monster's mouth?

Politicians, activists and teachers—you built this! You could have listened to the warnings. We were talking about this on this show for years. You amplify the hysterical—a hysterical, literally hysterical phenomenon that was going no place good.  

You created a poisonous program that twisted young minds for destruction, a nihilistic place to be when you deny biology and they have nowhere to go. So all of these media arguments, what you are seeing there among those people, it is to escape their own culpability and the reality they created. 

So forget the layer of mental illness and gun control. The origin of the evil, the evil lies in the creation of a mindset that indulged a delusional self, ruining connections with fellow human beings 

So that trans, by ascribing extreme aggrieved mentality, then gets directed against society. So this person feels justified in killing children. His killing resulted from that ideology. And if you don't believe that, you're one dumb asshole. 

Excuse me.

We regard that as ugly, stupid, murderous, strange. Did we mention the fact that the Achaeans, once again, are coming over the walls?

With respect to Gutfeld himself, we advise you to pity the child. 

His Serra High sits one mile down the Alameda—down the Alameda de las Pulgas—from "our dear Aragon, stately and serene." (We're quoting what the school song said on the day the school opened.)

On the one hand, it's sad to think that such a poisonous mentality could have emerged from such a sunny land. On the other hand, we've read snippets and clips in which Gutfeld describes certain aspects of his experience, both as a high school student and then in later life. 

On that basis, we advise you to pity the child. We also advise you to wonder why Blue America's major elites are prepared to avert their gaze from the poisonous behavior of the adult—of his corporate channel's $9 million man.

With apologies, we think you should read, and contemplate, what the furious fellow said. We regard it as ugly and poisonous and horribly stupid, but massive death and destruction occurred the first time these angry Achaeans breeched those towering walls.

One last point:

On yesterday's edition of The Five, this angry fellow put the pathetic practice on display again.

We refer to the practice known as Tarlov Interruptus. You see, Master Gutfeld does a very poor job regulating his anger and his vast sense of grievance.

The nation's most-watched "cable news" program starts as four against one. Before long, one or several of the furious four start interrupting and overtalking as they shut down the one.

That's what "fair and balanced" has come to mean on this corporate messaging channel. Yesterday, the interruption of demon Tarlov started at 5:08 p.m.—2:08 out on the coast.

You can see the fellow doing that here. The four get to speak in polite, perfect silence. By the antique rules of the prehuman game, the one has to be shut down.

Also this: What's the correct definition of love? As the culture is being torn down, David Brooks thinks he may have the answer! 

(As we noted yesterday, we've long admired his work.)

THE DUEL: "Typical chick," the cable star said!

FRIDAY, AUGUST 29, 2025

Before that, he gave us our monsters: The new column by David Brooks appears beneath a touchy-feely headline. 

Brooks has become our new whipping-person at this vaunted site. His column appears in today's print editions, and it begins like this:

The Wrong Definition of Love

The time I used to spend on Twitter I now spend on Substack, and my life is much better for it. There are a lot of interesting, eclectic writers in the world. This week, for example, I stumbled across a post from Antonia Bentel, who asked six strangers and friends about how they fall in love.

One woman responded, “I fall in love when someone sees me in a way I didn’t know I could be seen.” A young man answered, “Falling in love is like seeing yourself reflected in someone else’s mind.” Another woman said, “I fall in love when I don’t feel like I’m performing competence.” She added that love happens “when someone sees you in the absolute mess of it—your pain, your pettiness, your unpaid parking tickets.” Another man replied, “Falling in love is like entering a room you didn’t know existed in your own house.”

Bentel makes it clear that this is far from a scientific survey, but what struck me about these answers is that they all had a common definition of love—that love blooms when somebody else makes you feel understood and good about yourself.

That's how the column starts.

We have a lot of respect for the work Brooks has down in the years since he switched his focus, moving away from standard politics and toward an attempt to clarify values.  In the current column, he ends up saying that Antonia Bentel's recent work involves "the wrong definition of love."

"Given the wickedness of the time" (Plato), it seems to us that a column like this may involve the wrong idea of appropriate journalistic inquiry. It seems to us that a ship is sinking, and that people like Brooks are up on the deck as the band plays on.

It seems to us that Brooks is hiding. Consider what happened yesterday on the Fox News Channel "cable news" program known as The Five.

The Five is the most-watched program in American news. Yesterday, a makeshift panel had been assembled as the Labor Day weekend approached:

The Five: Thursday, August 28, 2025
Trey Gowdy: host, Sunday Night in America
Jessica Tarlov: rotating co-host, The Five
Johnny Joey Jones: Fox News contributor
Dana Perino: co-host, The Five
Greg Gutfeld: co-host, The Five

Two or three regulars were on hand, depending on how you were counting. Gowdy sat in the Judge Jeannine chair, which remains unfilled on a permanent basis. Seemingly as a mercy, Jones was sitting in the Jesse Watters chair.

There they sat, arrayed in the standard fair-and-balanced format, in which four pro-MAGA panelists will gang up on the one Democrat. And let the word go forth to the nations:

The correct definition of love would not be on the docket this day! Meanwhile, did we mention a salient fact?

This is the most-watched program in the American "cable news" firmament. Here are the relevant viewership numbers from Monday, August 18:

Total viewers: Monday, August 18, 2025
The Five: 3.85 million
The Rachel Maddow Show: 2.01 million
The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell: 1.46 million
Deadline: White House: 1.15 million
The Beat with Ari Melber: 1.04 million
The Arena with Kasie Hunt: 695,000

Rachel Maddow still puts up a fight on a Monday-only basis. Other than that, The Five basically triples the score on the most-watched MSNBC programs. On that particular day, it more than quintupled the score on CNN's most watched program.

Also this: On that same evening, Jesse Watters Primetime and the Gutefld! show each attracted more than three million viewers. The Fox News Channel is basically lapping the field.

For better or worse, The Five is powerful "cable news" medicine! It also represents an assault on the very possibility of maintaining an American discourse or a modern American nation, definitions of love to the side.

We can't begin to cover all of what happened on this degraded program last night. For starters, let's turn to co-host Greg Gutfeld, the first person called upon to discuss, or to pretend to discuss, the program's initial topic.

Cast in her role as the program's den mother, Dana Perino had introduced the topic. She played the standard, extremely brief bits of videotape, allegedly from "the media who think that prayer in this moment is useless."

"This moment" was Wednesday morning's mass shooting in Minneapolis. Perino had also played videotape of Jacob Frey, the Minneapolis mayor, saying this:

"Anybody who is using this as an opportunity to villainize our trans community, or any other community out there, has lost their sense of common humanity. We should not be operating out of a place of hatred of anyone. We should be operating out of a place of love for our kids."

There would be no discussion this day of why Frey might have said that. But now, Perino threw to the endlessly furious Gutfeld—and when she did, the endlessly furious jack-a-napes angrily traveled a rather dark road.

To watch the videotape, you can just click this:

GUTFELD (8/28/25): This is why none of these A-holes can lecture anyone on compassion. 

The most compassionate people on the planet are trying to stop the trans delusion. The least compassionate are the people in the media, academia and politicians who enable this hysteria of horror. 

What is so glaring about the trans cult—apparently, your identity is the only thing that matters until you do something awful. Then it's the least important variable. Then you look at everything else. You talk about guns. But suddenly, it is like all of a sudden we can't talk about that—what was it? The other trans shooter that hid her identity. 

In this manifesto that this creep wrote, he said he was tired of being trans, and that he wished he had never brainwashed himself. What more do you need, straight from the monster's mouth?

Politicians, activists and teachers—you built this! You could have listened to the warnings. We were talking about this on this show for years. You amplify the hysterical—a hysterical, literally hysterical phenomenon that was going no place good.  

You created a poisonous program that twisted young minds for destruction, a nihilistic place to be when you deny biology and they have nowhere to go. So all of these media arguments, what you are seeing there among those people, it is to escape their own culpability and the reality they created. 

So forget the layer of mental illness and gun control. The origin of the evil, the evil lies in the creation of a mindset that indulged a delusional self, ruining connections with fellow human beings 

So that trans, by ascribing extreme aggrieved mentality, then gets directed against society. So this person feels justified in killing children. His killing resulted from that ideology. And if you don't believe that, you're one dumb asshole. 

Excuse me.

We did our best to transcribe that angry presentation. Some of it was a bit hard to follow.

At any rate, it was now 5:04 p.m. Eastern, 2:04 out on the coast. Millions of viewers had already been told that "none of these A-holes can lecture us any more." 

They had also heard that, if you don't agree with this furious man, that means that "you're one dumb asshole." You're a dumb asshole too!

"Excuse me," he then thoughtfully said. So it went in the first four minutes of this failing nation's most-watched cable "news" program as the holiday weekend approached.

Perino didn't bat an eye. Instead, the den mother simply threw to Gowdy, placidly saying this:

PERINO (continuing directly): Trey Gowdy, great to have you on the show...

These A-holes can't lecture us any more, the furious Gutfeld had said. Also, If you don't agree with my presentation, that makes you one dumb asshole!

Amazingly, the presentation by Johnny Joey Jones during this segment may have been just as striking as Gutfeld's overwrought rant. Below, we'll show you the way Gutfeld ended the second segment of yesterday's show—a segment during which he staged the latest serial interruption of Tarlov as she tried to make a perfectly sensible point.

We don't have the strength today to try to present a full critique of Gutfeld's angry presentation about the poisonous, nihilistic and evil "trans cult." We'll only say that the phenomenon which we now call "transgender" has been visible around the globe, within the world' many cultures, since roughly the dawn of time.

In that sense, he seems to be part of the "biology" that Gutfeld's God created. It wasn't invented by Gutfeld's teachers at Serra High, or by the politicians for whom he doesn't vote.

It wasn't invented by the liberal and Democratic women he constantly compares to horses, cows, pigs and whales on his own demented 10 p.m. "cable news" program. Also, we'd recommend this obvious fact to this overwrought fellow:

The vast majority of mass shootings are committed by people who are what is now sometimes called "cisgender!" Gowdy himself had noted this obvious fact on Wednesday afternoon's Outnumbered program, triggering fury through parts of the Fox News world.

With respect to yesterday's show, we blame Perino more than Gutfeld. Transparently, he seems to be crazy; she isn't. Presumably, she's there for the money—and the money is large.

She has long accepted the den mother role on this astonishing program. She's been assigned the task of creating the debatable impression that the pro-MAGA panelists on the program aren't all out of their minds.

That said, the longing to create an entire class of "monsters" and "creeps"—an entire class to demonize—seems to be deeply bred in the bone. 

In the 1950s, Tailgunner Joe sought the Communists out. Today, Gutfeld demonizes those who belong to the "trans cult"—but so does the New York Post, whose front=page headline on Thursday morning pathetically said this:

DEMONIC
Transgender maniac shoots up Catholic school morning Mass, killing two kids

To see that front page, just click here. You'll never seen a headline like this from this Murdoch newspaper in one of the far more numerous cases:

DEMONIC
Yet another straight white male shoots up [insert rest of headline]

You'll never see a headline like that—nor should you, of course. But again and again, the Murdoch empire takes us back to Salem Village, and people like Gutfeld are prepared to cast themselves in the leadership role.

Jones' presentation in that first segment may have been even more startling than Gutfeld's. The second segment of yesterday's program dealt with a different topic—in this case, with a pseudo-topic. One of the chyrons beneath the clowning said this:

NEWSOM GOES ON DERANGED ANTI-TRUMP RANT

In all honesty, Newsom hadn't gone on a deranged anti-Trump rant. But if you click the link and continue to click, you can see a common phenomenon on this program—you can see the practice by which Tarlov is aggressively overtalked and interrupted as she attempts to state her point.

Yesterday, it was Gutfeld performing this corporate service as the permissive den mother looked on. The segment ended with Gutfeld derisively saying this about Tarlov, scoring the segment's last word:

GUTFELD: Typical chick!

For the record, Tarlov is smarter than Gutfeld is. What a disordered man!

Greg Gutfeld is 60 years old! But so it goes on this demonic "cable news" channel. As it does, David Brooks is typing away on a mountaintop, writing about the correct way to try to be loved.

David, listen up! The American nation, such as it ever has been, is now being eaten alive. When are you going to put the Fox News Channel on and tell readers what you've seen?

What we saw yesterday at 5 p.m. was a furious "revolt from below."  We've called it "the revolt of the D-minus students," but it's only one part of the current ongoing duel. 

It's enabled by "the haplessness of the elites"—by the silence of David Brooks, by the silence of so many others.

They won't search for the truth about President Trump. They won't mention The Five at all.

THURSDAY: "Troubled times had come..."

THURSDAY, AUGUST 28, 2025

Mayor Scott speaks with Ana Cabrera: We've admired Ana Cabrera's calm demeanor dating back to the CNN days.

We think she pretty much did the right thing on yesterday's MSNBC program, speaking to Mayor Scott. There is no perfect thing:

MSNBC Anchor Reminds Mayor His City Has One of the Highest Crime Rates After He Snaps Back at Trump

MSNBC anchor Ana Cabrera reminded Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott (D) that his city suffers from some of the highest crime rates in the country after he celebrated a 50-year low in recorded homicides in response to President Donald Trump.

Scott joined Cabrera on Tuesday, where he responded to the president’s insults against Baltimore. Trump called it a “hellhole” after Maryland Governor Wes Moore (D) invited him to walk the streets with him. Moore’s comments were to push back on Trump’s suggestion that he could deploy National Guard troops to cities like Baltimore to crack down on crime, as he has already done in Washington, D.C.

Scott argued that he is already leading the effort to reduce violent crime in Baltimore, referencing programs focused on rehabilitation and the targeting of illegal guns.

[...]

As Cabrera also pointed out, there have also been dozens of homicides in Baltimore this year. As of August 1, the city has seen 84 homicides this year, a drop from 111 during the same time in 2024.

And so on from there.

At present, Baltimore is on pace to record roughly 150 homicides this year. Would that represent a 50-year low?

Sadly, yes—it would. Let's take a look at the record.

We came to Baltimore in September 1969. We stopped being a college senior, instead becoming a fifth-grade teacher in the Baltimore City Public Schools.

According to Wikipedia's numbers, Baltimore recorded 237 homicides hat year. According to Wikipedia's numbers, that represented 26.2 homicides per 100,000 residents, while the nationwide homicide rate that year was only 7.3.

From there, the numbers bounced around—sometimes below 200, more often over. As happened almost everywhere, the big jump came in the early 1990s:

Homicides / Homicide rates, Baltimore City
1990: 305 (41.4)
1991: 304 (40.6)
1992: 335 (44.3)
1993: 353 (48.2)
1994: 321 (43.4)

As was the case elsewhere, the numbers eventually began to recede, dropping to 196 (31.3) in 2011. Then they went up again. For whatever reason, they didn't fall back from Covid-year levels until the past few years:

Homicides / Homicide rates, Baltimore City
2020: 335 (57.1)
2021: 337 (58.3)
2022: 333 (58.4)
2023: 261 (46.0)
2024: 201 (34.3)
2025: 150, projected

Yes, those numbers are dropping. That said, in 2023, the national homicide rate was only 5.5, as opposed to Baltimore's 46.0. 

Mayor Scott was elected mayor in November 2020. For whatever reason, the numbers have plainly dropped on his watch.

Who dies in all those homicides? At least two of our former fifth graders, back in the 1980s and 1990s. Also, NAME WITHHELD, under whose barely perceptible coaching we played alongside Marvelous Marvin Webster in the Baltimore Neighborhood Basketball League in the summer of 72.

(Even with Webster, we only went 9-9 that summer.  Wes Unseld was the citywide association's hands-on commissioner. Years later, we were told that our coach, a very genial person, had been murdered while driving a cab.)

It largely depends on where you live, or possibly on what you have to do to earn a living. Also, Wikipedia's entry says this:

Homicides in Baltimore are heavily concentrated within a small number of high-poverty neighborhoods. According to a 2016 Baltimore Sun investigation, around 80% of the city's gun homicides are committed in 25% of the city's neighborhoods...

Gang-related crimes are usually clustered in drug territories and mostly affect people involved in drug dealing, particularly narcotics and rival gangs.

Elsewhere, homicide rates are lower. In 2017, London's homicide rate was 1.6 per 100,000. (For Montreal, click here.) The high rate of homicide in the U.S. is something we Blues sometimes like to discuss, though mainly in certain contexts. 

In large part, the ultimate story behind all this tragedy stretches back into our nation's history, as everyone surely knows. 

On a nationwide basis, the first big jump in homicide rates seems to have started in the late 1960s. Bruce Springsteen described one part of that situation in "My Hometown:"

Two cars at a light on a Saturday night
In the back seat there was a gun
Words were passed, then a shotgun blast
Troubled times had come
To my hometown.

"Troubled times had come," he said. Has any song in the annals of popular music ever been more tightly written?

THE DUEL: The dumbest children in the world...

THURSDAY, AUGUST 28, 2025

...performed on three "cable news" programs: We start with a statement of gratitude to the invaluable Rev.

The invaluable site seemed to have taken a hike in the past few weeks. As of yesterday, it was back to providing an invaluable service—it was once again publishing transcripts of such events as the bizarre "cabinet meeting" which took place two days ago.

The "cabinet meeting" ran for three hours and seventeen minutes. The invaluable Rev lets you read the statements of its various players, but especially of President Trump.

Given "the wickedness of the times" (Plato), that's an invaluable service. We expect to sample the president's endless orations at that event over the next several days.

For today, we move on to a basic question. At present, is a duel really taking place—a duel of this description: 

The Revolt of the D-Minus Students v. The Haplessness of the Elites?

For starters, is there really some such thing as "a revolt of the D-minus students?" For those who would doubt the things we say, we take you to this report from Mediaite:

Jesse Watters and Brian Kilmeade Discuss ‘The Most Attractive First Lady Ever’

Fox News hosts Jesse Watters and Brian Kilmeade debated on The Five, Wednesday about who was “the most attractive first lady ever.”

Reacting to a report which claimed a Vanity Fair editor had threatened to walk out of the company with half of her staff if First Lady Melania Trump was featured on the cover, Watters questioned, “Was Jill [Biden] on the cover?”

“Twice, I think,” replied Kilmeade.

The conversation continued...

Full disclosure! Yesterday afternoon, we ourselves had the misfortune of watching this inanity as it occurred in real time. 

Were Watters and Kilmeade once D-minus students? We can't answer that question.

That said, their imitation of a conversation was taking place on the nation's most-watched "cable news" program! As they continued, the well-matched pair of corporate dimwits proceeded to discuss the nation's news in the following manner, with guest co-host Kennedy, the former VJ, trying to make the boys stop:

WATTERS (8/27/25): She was on the cover twice?

KILMEADE: And then you have—

WATTERS: Was Michelle Obama on the cover?

KENNEDY: Three times.

KILMEADE: Three times.

WATTERS: Okay. Do you think those two women are prettier than Melania Trump?

KENNEDY: You’re not gonna answer that. Not gonna answer that! Not gonna answer that!

WATTERS: No, do you think they’re prettier?

KILMEADE: No, no. Melania—

WATTERS: Is it not about pretty? Is it about fashion? Because Melania’s also more fashionable.

KILMEADE: Right. She is—she’s the most attractive first lady ever. Let’s be honest. I have not seen Martha Washington.

WATTERS: Martha Washington?

KILMEADE: I have not seen her.

WATTERS: She’s not your type?

KILMEADE: The problem is, when you have portraits instead of pictures—

WATTERS: You can’t really get a good look.

KILMEADE: Thank you.

WATTERS: What about Jackie O?

KILMEADE: All right, what’s your point? Why am I [inaudible]—

WATTERS: What’s my point? What’s your point? You said she [co-host Kennedy] is going to start dating somebody...

And so on, inanely, from there. Videotape is included at Mediaite's report.

"What's your point?" the one nitwit finally said. Did we mention the fact that this imitation of a discussion was taking place as an imitation of human life on the American nation's most-watched "cable news" program?

In fairness, we must say this. This imitation of a discussion was nowhere near as stupid as a discussion which occurred, two hours later, near the start of the same "cable news" channel's Ingraham Angle program.

Three hours after that, the second half of last night's Gutfeld! program was raw stupidity as raw and as stupid as raw stupidity ever gets. Greg Gutfeld himself wasn't present last night, but these imitations of humanity were:

Gutfeld!: Wednesday, August 27, 2025
Tyrus: former professional "wrestler"
Michele Tafoya: former sideline reporter
Kat Timpf: acting moderator
Jamie Lissow: comedian
Tom Shillue: comedian

Their discussions last night were jaw-dropping. We expect to expose you to those transcripts in the course of the next several days. But make no mistake:

The manicured dumbness of these discussions is the lifeblood of the programming on the current Fox News Channel. The channel's CEO, Suzanne Scott, hires the flyweights in question to offer this service, even paying them for their labors.

https://archive.org/details/FOXNEWSW_20250827_210000_The_Five/start/2580/end/2640

Also, in fairness, this: 

The flyweights on The Five were attempting to discuss this exclusive news report from the tabloid, The Daily Mail:

Vanity Fair staff erupt in fury over proposed Melania Trump cover with foul-mouthed meltdown

In fairness, if the exclusive report was accurate, we'd be inclined to regard its contents as the latest example of "the haplessness of the (Blue American) elites." 

The silly children on The Five were enjoying their silly fun. Later that evening, the bloated blowhard who performs as "Tyrus" extended a standard practice on the Gutfeld! show, offering the latest oration on the theme of what an unattractive dog Taylor Swift really is.

It's hard to overstate the sheer stupidity this corporate channel provides, or the throwback nature of its sexual content. But this is all part of what we mean when we refer to "the revolt (or revenge) of the D-minus students"—when we refer to the way their D-minus culture is seizing control of our flailing nation's culture.

A version of that destructive culture was on display in the "cabinet meeting" transcribed by the invaluable Rev. Though Blue elites preferred to focus on the conduct of the cabinet members, it was the endless orations of the sitting president which put this problem on its most vivid display.

Thanks to the invaluable Rev, it's possible today to revisit one of the endless strange claims which emerged from the sitting president's endless array of rambling, self-glorifying filibusters. In yesterday's report, we briefly sampled the claim in question. 

With the transcription now complete, we can offer the presentation at greater length. The oration concerned "my darling Vladimir." We hope you have plenty of time:

REPORTER (8/26/25): On Alaska, you had mentioned that there would be severe consequences if Vladimir Putin did not agree to a ceasefire. After that summit, that was rolled back, given the negotiations. Is he back on the clock now?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: I want to see that deal end. It's very serious what I have in mind if I have to do it, but I want to see it end. 

I think that in many ways he's there. Sometimes he'll be there, and Zelenskyy won't be there. It's like, who do we have today? I got to get them both at the same time. But I want to have it end. We have economic sanctions. I'm talking about economic, because we're not going to get into a world war.

I'll tell you what! In my opinion, if I didn't win this race, Ukraine could have ended up in a world war. We're not going to end up in a world war any more, but it would've ended up possibly in a world war. That would have been a, that would have been a— 

They were ready to trot. But just like India and Pakistan were going to end up in a nuclear war if I didn't stop them. 

It was sort of strange. I saw they were fighting, then I saw seven jets were shot down. I said, "That's not good." That's a lot of jets. $150 million planes were shot down. A lot of them. Seven, maybe more than that. They didn't even report the real number. And I'm talking to a very terrific man, Modi of India, and I say, "What's going on with you and Pakistan?" Then I'm talking to Pakistan, on trade. I say, "What's going on with you and India?" And the hatred was tremendous.

Now, this has been going on for a hell of a long time, sometimes with different names, for hundreds of years. But I said, "What's going on?" I said, "I don't want to make a trade deal." 

"No, no, no, we want to make trade deal." 

I said, "No, no, I don't want to make a trade deal with you. You're going to have a nuclear war. You guys are going to end up in a nuclear war." And that was very important to them. I said, "Call me back tomorrow, but we're not going to do any deals with you. Or we're going to put tariffs on you that are so high." 

You were there, Howard, right?

LUTNICK: Yep.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: We're going to put tariffs on you that was so high, I don't give a damn, your head's going to spin. You're not going to end up in a war. 

Within about five hours, it was done. It was done. Now, maybe it starts again. I don't know. I don't think so, but I'll stop it if it does. We can't let these things happen. 

The Russia-Ukraine situation. Last week, 7,012 soldiers—seven thousand oh twelve—soldiers died. They were Russian, they were Ukrainian, they weren't American. So a lot of people would say, "What do you care? They're not American." I care. 

Over the last couple of weeks, over 12,000 people died in two weeks. We're talking about crime where somebody's killed here? Think of it:

You have your son leaving Russia, leaving Ukraine, their little house, wherever they live with their parents. They're waving goodbye, just like our parents would wave goodbye. And they're waving, "Goodbye, son." And then a week later, his head's blown off in a stupid war by a drone. A whole new form of military problem.

So no, I'd like it to stop. I want to get it to stop. And it will not be a world war, but it'll be an economic war. And an economic war is going to be bad and it's going to be bad for Russia, and I don't want that. 

Now I have to also see, because not everybody—you know, Zelenskyy is not exactly innocent either OK? You know. It takes two people to tango, and I say it all the time, you got to get them together. I get along with Zelenskyy now, but we have a much different relationship because now we're not paying any money to Ukraine. I stopped that. We're paying money to ourselves. What's happening is NATO is buying all of the equipment and paying in full.

But even with that, forget about that. I want to get it stopped because it's a lot of lives that are being lost. Every week it's seven thousand, five thousand, six. I get the reports and I see battlefields. I'd rather not see them. And you read about Gettysburg, and you see those thousand, 600,000 people, but in that war in particular was really bad. Like 150,000 or something. Just dead bodies. 

I'm seeing the same. I see pictures, I see satellite pictures of heads over here, arms over here, legs over here. And this is like a modern age? It's no different than the worst wars that I've ever seen. And if I can stop it because I have a certain power or a certain relationship? I had a very good relationship with President Putin. Very, very good. That's a positive thing, again. 

And I think I'm probably the only—Steve Witkoff would tell you I'm the only one that can solve it. I don't know. He's told me that a few times. Unless he was saying that just to build up my ego, but it's not really. I have no ego when it comes to this stuff. I just want to see it stop. 

Thousands of young people, mostly young people, are dying every single week. If I can save that by doing sanctions, or by just being me, or by using a very strong tariff system that's very costly to Russia or Ukraine or whoever we have. But I stopped seven wars and three of those wars were going on for more than 30 years. 

You know, if you look at Congo, if you just look at any of them, almost all of them were going on for extended period of time. Now interestingly, one had just started, it was two days old and you know that one. That we did that one when we were in Scotland negotiating, it was two days, but there were two thousand dead bodies laying on the border, and I got that one stopped too. And I'm very honored by that. 

But I still—the one that I thought would be the easiest is turning out to be the hardest. That's President Putin and President Zelenskyy, but I think I'll get it done.

REPORTER: Why do you think—

PRESIDENT TRUMP: You never know, it's war. With war, you never know, right?

War's very tricky, very horrible. But with war, you never know. Things change. 

People go into war, think they're going to win the war, and then they get their asses kicked and they lose their country and they lose millions of lives. 

Nobody goes into a war thinking they're going to lose. They go in—I'm sure that Ukraine thought they were going to win, It's going to be, you know, "We're going to win." You're going to beat somebody that's 15 times your size? Biden shouldn't have let that happen. Biden shouldn't have—I mean, the man was grossly incompetent. He should have never been there. That would've never happened. But you don't go into a war that's 15 times your size.

Videotape of the whole event is available thanks to C-Span.

So went that oration. As the three-hour mark approached, the rambling disquisition consumed a full seven minutes, complete with a set of tales about the seven wars the president says he has brought to an end.

One of his miracles took only five hours! He has already stopped quite a few world wars.

The original question was never answered—the question about whether his darling, Vladimir Putin, was once again "on the clock" concerning a possible ceasefire. Last night, his darling bashed downtown Kyiv with a massive new set of attacks. Arms and legs and heads were everywhere, but the sitting American president can't seem to quit this man.

At the end of that wandering, occasionally ghoulish oration, we had heard about the arms and legs and the severed heads of the people who die in Ukraine. 

We had heard about the deaths at Gettysburg. The president still hadn't offered an assessment of his good friend, Vladimir—and he ended with that puzzling statement about the way Ukraine had somehow chosen, decided or agreed "to go into this war."

As we've watched videotape of this "cabinet meeting," we've thought that something seems to be visibly wrong with its principal participant. That would, of course, be a human tragedy, but it would also be a serious national problem.

Over here, our Blue American elites preferred to mock the cabinet members, who struggled to keep their eyes from closing as this very strange man droned on. He thinks he's probably the only one who can stop it—or at least, that's what Witkoff constantly says.

Is something wrong with President Trump? In Monday's report, we linked to the leading authority's lengthy report on the clinical term, "Grandiosity." But over here in Blue America, our tribunes don't know how to discuss that type of question, and they've agreed that they must never try.

Tomorrow, we'll tell you what we mean by that. Also, we'll visit more of this Tuesday's wandering orations. 

To see some pushback to the odd claim that Ukraine somehow chose to go into this war, you can peruse this additional report from Mediaite. But as the Fox News Channel keeps dragging the D-minus students out onto the air, they keep saying that Taylor Swift is really just a 5. They're extremely limited children.

Thye keep saying that Swift is a 5. Over here, in Blue America, our tribunes don't know how to discuss that part of their revolt either.

Tomorrow: Discussions of mental health