Tag archive: Washingtonia

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Trump 2.0: Crazy Like a Fox

Donald J. Trump’s second administration, taking power at noon on 20 January 2025 (by constitutional fiat, whenever the oath itself is taken), is likely to be a replay of the first term, only more so.  In 2017 when he first assumed office, Trump was a newbie novice to the Washington scene; he appointed persons with experience and relative competence to help him run the government, individuals who had a respect for its institutions and norms, who served as guardrails on Trump’s wilder, wackier impulses.

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Aster-Obit: Jimmy Carter

On Sunday, 29 December 2024, former US president Jimmy Carter passed away peacefully at his home in Plains, Georgia; at age 100, he was the longest-lived chief executive in US history.  Carter had been in hospice care for nearly two years, since February of 2023, and had lost his wife of 77 years, Rosalynn, that November.  He also enjoyed the longest post-presidency, which was viewed, rightly or wrongly, as considerably more successful than his administration, with the Carter Center promoting democracy, advancing human rights and assisting disease eradication globally.  Jimmy and Rosalynn also partnered with Habitat for Humanity in an annual home-building blitz, which the Carters joined personally.

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Barbarians at the Gaetz

Donald Trump’s post-electoral Retribution Tour hit a snag on November 21st, when Attorney General nominee Matt Gaetz suddenly withdrew from consideration in the wake of some GOP-generated heat in defiance of his candidacy.  Withdrawal is something Gaetz knows a bit about, with the primary scandal in which he’s embroiled involving his attendance at drug-fueled sex parties with underage partners.

Trump nominated Gaetz, himself a subject of a years-long federal criminal investigation and a House Ethics Committee report, on November 13th, along with a spate of controversial nominees, such as Fox & Friends weekend anchor Pete Hegseth for Defense; Bashar Al-Assad and Vladimir Putin apologist Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence; and vaccine skeptic and conspiracy theorist extraordinaire Robert F. Kennedy Jr to head Health and Human Services.  If these choices seem “out-of-the-box,” consider that asteroid Troemper 2813 at 11 Leo (our celestial referent for The Donald) is currently travelling arm-in-arm with asteroid Pandora 55 at 10 Leo, noted mythically as the hapless naif who, against good advice, opened a box containing all the evils of the world, thus releasing them.  Archetypally, there are no cosmic accidents.

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US Election 2024 Postmortem

And postmortem is a good word for it, with many Americans and others across the globe feeling like they’ve died and gone to hell.  For whatever reason, on November 5th, more than half the US voting electorate chose to once again turn over the keys of the White House to Donald Trump, a convicted felon awaiting sentencing on 34 criminal counts, with three more criminal cases pending, an individual adjudicated guilty of fraud, liable for sexual abuse and defamation, a serial sexual predator who has declared bankruptcy multiple times, who spews hate, racism, invective and misogyny with every breath.  And this time, Trump achieved a feat he hadn’t before – he won, not just by the antiquated machinery of the Electoral College, but with an outright majority of votes, having lost that measure by three million votes in 2016 and seven million votes in 2020.  Shame on us.

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The Trump/Harris Debate

From the moment she stepped on stage at the presidential debate held at Constitution Hall in Philadelphia, PA on September 10, 2024, Kamala Harris dominated, striding purposefully across the platform to force Donald Trump to shake hands with her as an equal.  Trump had been evading that moment (as indeed, he avoided even glancing her way throughout most of the debate), but she walked directly into his space and demanded compliance with the time-honored norm.

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2024 US Election Preview

Perhaps no US election has been more fraught with consequences for the nation and the world than will be the 2024 presidential contest.  It’s true that 2020’s election was pivotal as well, but the depths to which Donald Trump was willing to sink to maintain power weren’t apparent until he sent an armed mob to the Capitol to challenge those results, two months later.  Now, with full knowledge of his depravity, abuse of power, and contempt for the Constitution, reinstalling this felon in the Oval Office is unthinkable.  And yet, here we are.

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