TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 2026
Also, goodbye Kennedy Center: True story!
Last Friday, we never made it to the medical mission. Making a long and frigid story short, we were wrong when we assumed that it doesn't snow in the subway.
Once they determined that no trains would be running, further chaos ensued.
As a result, we're to the mission today on a makeup assignment. We won't be posting today, not even about this essay in the Washington Post:
The grave risk of Trump’s Kennedy Center shutdown
Last fall, workers at the Kennedy Center slapped a coat of white paint over the gold-hued columns that connect its upper terrace to its plaza, apparently at the direction of the man who effectively appointed himself chair of the center’s board, President Donald Trump.
It was a seemingly small intervention from a man who fancies himself a connoisseur of architecture, but of course, it made no architectural or visual sense. Now, the all-white columns disappear against the building’s white marble cladding, and so too the lovely symbolism of the narrow, modernist metal supports, which look more like the strings of a musical instrument than the traditional, heavy stone supports of a classical structure.
Now there is grave concern from artists and patrons that the institution itself may disappear. Sunday night, Trump announced a two-year closure for renovation beginning in July, which sounds ominously like a complete rebuild of the structure. Trump added Monday that he wasn’t “ripping it down” but then went on to describe a process that could tear the structure down to its steel framing.
Given Trump’s sudden demolition of the White House’s East Wing in October, and the mix of vague promises and bombastic language in his social media post, which promises “a new and spectacular Entertainment Complex,” it certainly seems possible that the 1971 building, designed architect Edward Durrell Stone, could be partially or completely erased...
And so on from there.
The column was written by Philip Kennicott, the paper's long-time art and architecture critic. A letter expressing a similar concern—"Watch for another wrecking ball"—has been published by the New York Times. The letter comes from a former chief editor of Architecture Magazine.
Is it possible that these fears are well-founded? We don't have the slightest idea. We can tell you this:
These peculiar events will keep occurring until we're prepared to discuss what seems to be sitting there right before us. Of course, these peculiar events would almost surely continue to happen even if we did decide to have that discussion.
This is the silence we've chosen. All in all, it seems like the best we can do.
No one has been silent about Trump’s behavior. There have been protests about the Kennedy Center.
ReplyDeleteAlthough the Kennedy Center has been the venue of many terrific artists and presentations, I don't think the federal government should be in the auditorium business. It obviously violates the tenth amendment.
ReplyDeleteRight, Trump shouldn’t have taken over the board or had any involvement.
DeleteFuck you, dickhead, you fucking trump lick spittle asshole fascist freak
Delete@8:05 - I could not agree more. Trump is already overly busy dealing with difficult, challenging, very important domestic and international issues. He should not be giving a single millisecond's thought to the Kennedy Center
DeleteGo take a flying fuck, dickhead, the only thing king chickenshit is dealing with is selling out our country to line his pockets, you fucking asshole
DeleteIt violates the tenth amendment? Do national parks also violate it? The museums in DC? I’m what way is the government enjoined from operating a theater or park ir museum? You’re ridiculous DiC.
DeleteIf Trump lined up people and shot them all, he would be an innocent compared the whole of the Democratic party so filled with lying, cheating, freaks with no
Deletemorals becoming millionsires and monsters at the expense of taxpayers.
I will continue, with all my heart, to support Donald Trump until the day that he has been proven to have sodomized a girl under the age of 13.
DeleteThe girl’s word is not enough (combined with independent testimony of so many others and his conviction for libeling E. J. Carroll when he called her a liar)?
DeleteThe flipside of David's point: Trump is only fucking up the Kennedy center, instead of sending the entire world into the abyss. I am all in favor of Trump messing up buildings. It's the least amount of damage he can do.
DeleteOh, and the Kennedy Center is in DC . What does it have to do with the 10th amendment?
DeleteHe could have used it to run a continuous loop of that masterpiece "Melania". About the woman who speaks 9 languages, none of them English. She's lived here for how many decades and can barely complete sentence in proper English.
DeleteThe federal government has no business being in the border security business.
DeleteDavid in Cal,
DeleteGood luck getting Trump to not spend a millisecond, or hours upon hours a day, thinking about Ivanka's vagina.
Epstein Island is what you get when you won't let Republicans fuck their own children.
DeleteI recall a few weeks ago educating David, who is a foreign troll unfamiliar with US laws and customs, about the 10th amendment because he clearly knew nothing about it.
DeleteSo this is pretty rich.
DeleteDavid is right: the feds have no business running concert halls.
Retarded Democrats don't know what they're talking about. As usual.
Defense, international affairs, interstate trade. That's quite enough.
Trolls aren't effective when they are so ignorant of how the US operates, but still, they provide a decent chuckle.
DeleteLegal Status as a Federal Bureau
DeleteThe Kennedy Center was created by federal law to provide a space for the performing arts and to serve as a memorial to President John F. Kennedy. Legally, the center is established as a bureau within the Smithsonian Institution. This setup allows the institution to function with its own dedicated leadership and mission while remaining a part of the nation’s broader network of cultural institutions. The center’s mission is defined by its role as a bureau, requiring it to maintain the physical memorial and provide a diverse range of artistic programs for the public.
The Role of the Board of Trustees
A Board of Trustees is responsible for directing and maintaining the center. This board is made up of a mix of private citizens and high-ranking government officials to ensure the institution serves the public interest and remains accountable. The membership of the board includes...
This was from the old days before The Felon fucked everything up.
Go eat a bag of dicks you useless fucking troll David.
Delete“ This is the silence we've chosen.”
ReplyDeleteDespite the lack of silence about Trump’s actions, Somerby is talking very specifically about the silence about the the idea that Trump is mentally ill.
I think.
Why does Somerby think this would make any difference?
It is hard to prove that someone is mentally ill who can correctly identify the cartoon of a giraffe. Of course, we have only Trump and his doctor to verify he got that correct. Trump with 40,000 lies and counting, and his misfit physician who claims him to be remarkably healthy, cankles and all.
DeleteDemocrats need to admit their mistakes.
Delete11:05. You first, MAGAt.
Delete11:05,
DeleteI apologize for not realizing the Republican Party is a global pedophile ring sooner.
5:27,
DeleteYour bigger mistake is not saying out loud sooner.
I apologize for not realizing Elon Musk rigged the last election.
DeleteIf Somerby does make sense to you, then you're probably a right winger.
DeleteYou wouldn't use that Montreal Cognitive test with the giraffe question to detect mental illness. It is specifically for dementia. Somerby never mentions Trump's likely dementia. His silence on that is puzzling.
DeleteLifelong failure at businesses would maybe relate to his abnormal stupidity.
DeleteHyman Roth : “This is the business we have chosen “ Godfather Part II
ReplyDeleteJasmine Crockett has a Senate seat all but locked up.
ReplyDeleteI don't know about that. It's Texas; she's black and has 2 X chromosomes. That said, Texas has spoken loud and clear this week in two state races, and it's looking pretty grim for the Republican party in November. Couldn't happen to a more deserving party.
DeleteCrockett has already shown that she can get elected from TX.
DeleteThat illiterate cow will be nowhere near the Senate
DeleteI think you may be thinking of a different Jasmine Crockett. I'm talking about a person, not cattle. (You never know who men are hanging out with in TX).
DeleteLawyer smarts, razor sharp wit, beautiful. Be very afraid knuckle draggers, you can't handle her awesomeness.
DeleteIn the giant scheme of things, as offensive as Trump's usurpation of the Kennedy Center is, it doesn't even make the list of 10 shittiest things he has done.
ReplyDeleteIt’s a distraction of the things he hasn’t done. Such as raise a single finger to help the middle class.
DeleteIlya - Trump did a lot for the middle class. There are two ways the government can help a group of people: It can have a program where the government uses tax money to give this group what the government decides they want. Or, they can make this group wealthier, so the people in this group can use the extra money for whatever they choose. Trump made the middle class richer.
DeleteUnder Biden, wages didn't keep up with the cost of living. Under Trump, wages grew faster than the cost of living. Also the middle class benefits from paying less taxes. The entire middle class is better off.
Go take a flying fuck , dickhead. Biden had to clean up the economic dumpster fire the orange left us in
DeleteThese claims are debatable because they depend on who you mean by middle class and which segments of the middle class or working class you are talking about. Under Biden, wages did increase but there was a perception that inflation also increased (largely due to covid). By the end of his term, Biden had inflation under control.
DeleteAI says "Many analyses suggest the majority of net tax benefits in 2026 will go to the richest 5% of Americans, with the middle class seeing smaller, or potentially negative, impacts when factoring in cost-of-living increases."
I believe AI over anyone on the right, because AI doesn't have inherent biases like self-serving Republicans do, especially the MAGAs. Trump could raise taxes 100% on everyone with below $100K in income and the right would still say his tariff-driven economy is good for working people.
We won't know how the economy is doing until the dust settles on Trump's manipulations. Meanwhile, given that Trump has taken control of what used to be independent reporting of economic indicators, we cannot trust anything said about Trump's economy. It is all lies now.
David is a foreign troll, he hasn't a clue about the state of the middle class in the US.
DeleteIn the US the middle class started disappearing under Reagan, and Bush and Trump have only accelerated that (and Clinton and Obama did not help resist this - this is the real reason to blame Dems for our current state, not Bob's phony fretting over how to properly diagnose Trump's mental decline that we all see and have been shouting about for years).
Primarily due to neoliberalism, starting around 1981 $50+ TRILLION has been redistributed from the bottom 90% to the top 1%, one of the most significant, and disastrous, wealth transfers in history.
This could have been somewhat ameliorated by adjusting marginal tax rates, returning them back to near where they were during our greatest expansion of the middle class - the 50s-70s.
Instead Republicans chose to double down and lower taxes on the rich. And they got many Americans to go along with this by using sexism, racism, and xenophobia.
Largely agree with you 12:47.
DeleteFuck u David.
DeleteIf there wasn't a Republican voter who wasn't a bigot, the Right would still come here and pretend there was one.
ReplyDeleteRemember when David in Cal used top come here and pretend he knew something about economics, so he would write that he was concerned about the deficit, every time the Democratic Party tried to use the government to help poor people?
ReplyDeleteI miss those particular lies, from David.
Oh for the halcyon days of quoting that world class economist, Thomas Sowell.
Delete@10:34 - Do you mean the Thomas Sowell who graduated from Harvard, Masters Degree from Columbia, and Doctorate from the University of Chicago? The Thomas Sowell who was a professor at Cornell, Brandeis, and UCLA, and who wrote nearly 50 books?
DeleteQuoting Sowell's bio is not the same as quoting Sowell, but we really don't need either here, David, or you. Somerby went away. You can too.
Delete@6:10 - Stein's law applies: If something cannot go on forever, it will end.
DeleteInterest on the National Debt rises as the National Debt rises. It's now the largest item in the budget -- exceeding military spending at $1 trillion per year. The deficit is projected to remain at $2 trillion or more indefinitely, so interest on the national debt will grow without limit.
Interest on the national debt is now over 20% of income taxes collected. That leaves only 80% to spend on all government programs. That 80% will shrink each year. At some point our taxes will go to pay interest.
Clearly this is not going to happen. Something drastic will happen first.
Go take a flying fuck, dickhead, you fascist freak.
DeleteSomething drastic? Like you fucking fascists raising taxes on billionaires? LOL - never happen
DeleteWell, it depends on the interest rate.
If it was to go down to zero, for example, then interest on the national debt (why capitalize those words?) would be zero. Zilch.
Also, raising taxes is not the only ways to pay down the debt. The debt could be made insignificant by high inflation. Or, the government could sell something; some territory or some natural resources on federal land.
Trump's big beautiful bill didn't help. Get rid of Trump and our economy will magically improve! It should be something we can all get behind.
DeleteTrump blew up our deficits in his first term, alone adding around 1/3 to 1/4 of our entire debt that has been accumulating for a couple hundred years.
DeleteQuite the feat!
And now Trump is back and again blowing up our deficits/debt.
"Interest on the national debt is now over 20% of income taxes collected. That leaves only 80% to spend on all government programs. That 80% will shrink each year. At some point our taxes will go to pay interest."
DeleteNeed to put the petal to the metal in fucking over the poor and what remains of the middle class, right, Trump fluffer?
I remember checking out one of Sowell's books, where he explained that multi-trillion housing bubble losses were due to the CRA, Community Reinvestment Act. It wasn't unrestrained trade in Credit Default Swaps, Sowell explained to us! It takes a truly great mind and out-of-the-box thinking to realize that it was the poor people who were responsible for trillions and trillions in losses. Just remarkable!
DeleteIf someone had written a paper like that for their freshman economics class, they would've flunked.
pedal not petal
DeleteThey actually blamed it on Gary, IN. You know, where the Ni-Clang be stealing all the white peoples money and futures. Seriously.
DeleteFuck u David, go away creep.
Delete
ReplyDeleteAs a Democrat, here's what I know: America is a Nation that can be defined in a single word: Iwuzindfutmhmafut!
And that's ALL I know!
“the horrors of MAGA aren’t dividing us anymore. they’re uniting us. they’re uniting Americans against the tyranny of Donald Trump. Senate Democrats were right to block ICE’s funding, but it’s not enough. Kristi Noem needs to go. Stephen Miller needs to go. the monsters responsible for unleashing this havoc on cities — whether they were firing at civilians in the streets, or calling the shots from their cushy offices in Washington — need to be investigated and prosecuted. they need to know they will be held accountable. if we want our nation to remain a constitutional republic, this is the moment for courage.”
ReplyDeleteJ.B. Pritzger
"LONDON (The Borowitz Report)—King Charles III of the United Kingdom announced on Tuesday that he was cancelling his upcoming trip to the United States and would send his disgraced brother, Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, in his place.
ReplyDeleteCharles gave no reason for the abrupt cancellation, saying only that Andrew was a “better fit” for a visit to Donald J. Trump.
“I’m sure they’ll have plenty to reminisce about,” Charles said. “And if they run out of activities, Trump can always give Andrew a Sharpie and put him to work redacting those bloody files.”
We know this is fake because we watched Charles lll roll out the most lavish, majestic welcoming royal splendor for our President Trump.
DeleteHis visit to the US has not been confirmed yet.
DeleteBREAKING: In a stunning blow to Democrats, 76% PERCENT of BLACK Americans want nationwide voter ID — in other words, the SAVE America Act
ReplyDeleteWhite voters: 85% want it
Latino voters: 82% want it
Cue the Democrat racists. "They're too stupid to know!"
We’re a republic, fuckface
DeleteAside from the fake numbers, SAVE does not have the votes to pass in the Senate.
DeleteRecent poll shows 95% of people quoting poll results are idjits.
DeleteAn ICE vehicle was seen endlessly doing laps around a traffic circle in Minnesota, distracting leftist activists while the rest of the ICE convoy moved on to the next target
ReplyDeleteArrests were then made uninterrupted.
WELL PLAYED, ICE!
People are getting sick of these obstructing agitators. The key is video and audio of their shrieking and badgering. Bonus we get rid of the women's vote.
DeleteI believe that ICE may be getting sick of the agitators but driving around and around in a traffic circle is not the height of cleverness.
DeleteWELL PLAYED, ICE! This is something to root for? ICE getting stuck in a traffic circle?
DeleteIt is sad to see the attempts at copium from these loser trolls.
ReplyDeletewomp womp
Their desperation has gone up a notch. Makes one feel warm and fuzzy.
DeleteFor Somerby:
ReplyDelete"Set your Blogger comment settings
1. Sign in to Blogger.
2. In the top left, select a blog.
3. From the menu on the left, click Settings.
4. Under “Comments,” adjust your comment settings:
Comment location: To allow responses to your post’s comments, select Embedded.
Who can comment: To restrict anonymous comments, select Users with Google Accounts or Only members of this blog.
Comment moderation: If you want to approve comments, select Always or Sometimes. If you don’t want to approve comments, select Never.
5. Click Save."
Someday don't play in his horrible comments.
DeleteFrom the NY Times:
ReplyDeleteWhile President Trump and the White House regularly circulate imagery altered by artificial intelligence, including demeaning and racist deepfakes, it is usually so over the top that the goal seems more about cartoonish mockery than outright deceit.
The photograph of Ms. Levy Armstrong was different. It has the hallmarks of brazen disinformation from the top level of government: smearing and humiliating one citizen in order to influence public opinion, while sending a warning to other critics to beware of crossing the administration. And it adds a new, social media-era dimension to Mr. Trump’s long record of distortions and lies in the service of his policies and political standing.
Even the Times is beginning to speak plainly, instead of putting a spin.
I will leave it to our resident Dr. Pangloss to explain why the best of all possible administrations treats citizens like that, and that it could not be different, for we are led by the wisest of all leaders.
This is just like the ICE agents driving around and around a traffic circle, supposedly to distract protesters but more likely because they don't know how to exit:
ReplyDelete"
MSNOW, Project 47, Ryan Teague Beckwith: Just because
In a famous 1978 study, Harvard University psychologist Ellen Langer had volunteers try to cut into a long line to use a copy machine.
Some just asked if they could go first. Some added that they were in a rush. And some asked if they could cut because they needed to “make some copies.”
On its face, that last line is ridiculous; everyone is in line to make copies, after all. But it sounded enough like a reason that most people let those volunteers go before them.
What happened here is a simple rhetorical feint, one long used by advertisers to convince distracted consumers that their product is worth buying. President Donald Trump has long used the same trick to get out of a jam.
In fact, Trump so predictably deploys this strategy that back in November, I correctly predicted what Trump would say when the Epstein files were eventually released. If he followed the playbook of his responses to the investigation into Russian election interference, I wrote, “the next argument is clear: pretend he was exonerated.”
On Saturday, Trump was asked about the latest release of files.
“I was told by some very important people that not only does it absolve me, it’s the opposite of what people were hoping, you know, the radical left,” he said.
Reader, he was not absolved."
Fuck the pigs. "The obvious answer is that there isn’t any strategy. These people aren’t evil masterminds — evil, yes, but masterminds, no. They’re just thugs too crude and undisciplined to control their own thuggishness. They were caught off guard by the strength of the resistance because the very concept of citizens standing up for their principles is alien to them, and they still can’t believe it’s real."
ReplyDelete