Tag archive: Whitehouse

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Aster-Obit:  Dick Cheney

On the evening of 3 November 2025, former US Vice President Richard “Dick” Cheney passed away at his home in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, of complications related to pneumonia and vascular disease.  He was attended by Lynne, his wife of 61 years, their daughters Mary and Liz, and other family members.

Cheney’s career in politics spanned decades, from his early work in the late 1960s as an aide to Donald Rumsfeld, later Defense Secretary, to his stint as Chief-of-Staff for President Gerald Ford; U.S Representative for Wyoming; Defense Secretary for President George H. W. Bush; and Vice President for his son, George W. Bush.  He made a brief foray into the private sector as CEO of Halliburton, a Fortune 500 company, during the Clinton administration.

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James Comey Indicted

Donald Trump’s 2025 Retribution Tour kicked into hyperdrive on September 25th, with the two-count indictment of former FBI Director James Comey, a frequent Trump critic whom the thin-skinned president blames for the “Russia hoax” investigations in 2017.  Out on the stump in 2024, Trump was fond of stating that retribution would come in the form of his success in office.  Perhaps, with Americans’ cost of living on the rise, his tariffs adding to consumer burdens, and his failure to end, or even ameliorate, the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, he figures, ‘Screw it, I’ll just do payback.’

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Cosmic Grab Bag:  Summer 2025 Edition

Stories frequently cross the digital transom that catch my eye, but don’t necessarily merit a full article on their own.  But the celestial correspondences are worthy of notice, so from time to time I compile these unrelated stories into an asteroid omnibus bill, if you will. In this edition, we’ll tackle a challenge to same-sex marriage, a disturbing melding of government with the private sector, a Senate grilling for a Cabinet Secretary, and a record-making Royal visit.

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The Trump Follies: July 2025 Edition

Keeping up with the latest Trump-related mishigas is a fulltime job these days, as the Distractor-in-Chief writhes and squirms in the white-hot spotlight of the Epstein files debacle.  Like vermin desperately crawling from beneath an overturned rock, stunned by their exposure to sunlight, Trump is throwing everything he has at the wall, hoping something – anything – will stick long enough to shift focus from the dumpster fire that is the MAGA rebellion to his Attorney General’s assertion that the Epstein case is closed, with no further revelations of elite pedophile wrongdoing to come.

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Tesla:  Out of Gas?

OK, Tesla makes electric vehicles, which don’t run on gasoline, but you get the idea.  Once valued in excess of a trillion dollars, Tesla Motors stock has plunged in 2025, shedding some $380 billion in value since January, which, not coincidentally, is when founder Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, began his stint with the second Trump administration, as head of the now notorious DOGE, Department of Government Efficiency.  The extra-governmental task force, with no statutory authority beyond the President’s fiat, attempted to trim $2 trillion from the federal budget, but came up a bit short. 

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Donald Trump’s 79th Solar Return

US President Kim Jong Don will be celebrating his 79th birthday on Saturday, 14 June, 2025, with a North-Korean-style military parade in the nation’s capital, while simultaneously, 3000 miles away, US National Guard and Marines patrol the country’s largest city, ostensibly to quell “insurrectionists” protesting his administration’s immigration policies.  The dual displays of military power, both unprecedented and controversial, well encapsulate the leading feature of Dear Leader’s Solar Return, which occurs the day before:  a square between Mars, planet of the military, violence and war, and Uranus, planet of shocks, upsets, controversy, volatility, and extreme reactions.

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