Glee Violette

Trump has built up such an edifice of bullshit it looks intimidating to many. Certainly intimidating to Congress, but that body never has had a preponderance of SPINE. Sometimes I get discouraged at what Trump seems to be getting away with. But is he really going to skate scot-free? Unlikely. A lot of what Trump is doing is barely hanging on by a thread. A strong push one way or the other is enough to get this bully to back down and cave. He may try an end-around and push again, but we the people have to be ready. That's not just regular citizens. It's everyone: lawyers, bankers, truck drivers, carpenters, teachers, accountants, judges, law enforcement, musicians, ANYONE who has a vested interest in stability and peace.

Another independent voice I discovered online is Glee Violette. People are popping up all over. 

BREAKING - NOW HE SAYS HE DOESN'T WANNA.

by Glee Violette

Excuse me while I while I hurl every filthy, nasty obscene term I know in the direction of a certain bloated, decayed, somewhat human-shaped creature. The one that recently erected a golden idol of himself, and dedicated it in his own "honor" - a word he uses often, but which does not mean what he thinks he means.

ONE MORE TIME, this slimy creature has destroyed something, and then slithered away, leaving the REST of us to clean up his mess. And pay for the damage.

YES. We are talking about The John F Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts in Washington DC.

Which this abominable creature closed for TWO YEARS of renovations. After first FIRING the people who turned it into the gem of the nation, and putting himself and his cronies in charge. After turning its premier entertainment schedule into a pathetic lineup of his handful of washed-up one-hit wonders, and boring religious indoctrination films. After banishing our National Symphonic Orchestra and our National Ballet and Dance Companies.

And most despicable of all, after putting his OWN shameful name ABOVE that of the REAL President that our National Arts Center was built to TRULY honor, as a living memorial to his memory.

Today, Friday, a federal judge ruled he could NOT rename the Center OR close it for renovations. unless CONGRESS approves the plans.

And this is what he posted this evening in retribution:

"Unless I am free to do what I do better than anyone else, bring this Institution back, physically, financially, and artistically, I have no interest in continuing what could only be a hopeless journey into "NEVER NEVER LAND"

"Therefore, based on the fact that the Radical Left Democrats care more about opposing your favorite President, ME, than saving a dying Performing Arts Center, almost all of which lose large amounts of money throughout the Country, we are going to be working with Congress to transfer this failing Institution back to them so they can make a determination as to what to do with it," he posted.

"Transfer BACK"??? WHAT, he thinks he OWNS the place???

Excuse me. I have thought of a few more words to yell out my window, in the direction of Washington DC.

I hope it rains like HELL on June 14th. And never mind it raining locusts and frogs. May there be a plague of wasps and snakes. Not the harmless baby Black Racers that RFK Jr just made a big show of molesting. The kind of snake that junior's BOSS recited about at rallies.

As for HIM, he is not even a TRUE snake, at all. Just a shape-shifting FAKE creature. A disgusting, ugly and USELESS creature that needs to slither back under its rock. And STAY there.

via Facebook

Dominique Alexander

My being an atheist doesn't mean I won't even listen (now and then) to what ministers/ preachers/call 'em whatever you wanna call 'em have to say. Lord knows there are plenty of charlatans masquerading as true believers that are in it to win it and fleece the flock of whatever they can get. I think Dominique Alexander is in it for the right reasons: to help people. 

Dominique Alexander

Texas, we must prepare ourselves for what is coming. The moment Ken Paxton became the Republican nominee for the United States Senate seat, the same political strategy immediately returned: fearmongering, division, and misinformation. We are already hearing the same recycled attacks targeting transgender kids in sports, dishonest narratives about energy, and misleading statements designed to distract Texans from the real issues impacting our communities every single day.

This is not leadership. This is a calculated political tactic used to divide people, create outrage, and manipulate voters through fear instead of facts. Texans deserve better than politicians who build campaigns on confusion, deception, and culture wars while families struggle with rising costs, failing infrastructure, public education challenges, healthcare access, and economic uncertainty.

We must rise up across this state and commit ourselves to truth, transparency, education, and voter engagement. We cannot allow lies to go unanswered. We cannot allow fear to define the future of Texas. Every community must be informed, every voter must be educated, and every voice must be empowered heading into November.

The lies will come. The attacks will come. The misinformation campaigns will continue. But our responsibility is greater than their politics. We must organize harder, educate deeper, and mobilize stronger than ever before. The future of Texas depends on people who are willing to stand on facts, defend democracy, and fight for a state that works for everyone not just political extremists chasing power.

November is bigger than politics. It is about the soul and direction of Texas. Let’s organize. Let’s educate. Let’s mobilize. And let’s make sure every Texan is informed, prepared, and ready to vote.

via Facebook

Jochum, Pt 2

When I try to write columns for release in the wild, I struggle. I have a decent vocabulary and a fairly good sense of history, but something keeps me from finishing the column. Myself, I guess. I find myself writing things that I have perhaps recently heard, not exactly plagiarism but drifting toward it. Writing paragraphs that don't bear much relation to earlier paragraphs. Spending hours looking up quotes to include, only to have trouble finding just what I want. So....on this blog, I tend to not publish much myself, but highlight those with opinions I can relate to.

You just never know. I have a collection of incomplete writings that I might just be able to put together into a sensible whole. Or not. 

Meanwhile...

Fools Paradise

by Michael Jochum

I saw the writing on the wall in 2016. I really did. I assumed, naively, as it turns out, that four years of Donald Trump would function like an inoculation. That Americans would witness the chaos, the narcissism, the corruption, the relentless lying, the casual cruelty, the degradation of the office itself, and collectively say, well, that was a national fever dream, let’s never do that shit again. I figured he’d drift into obscurity like a musical one-hit wonder with a bad spray tan and a grievance addiction. Instead, America handed him an encore.

And here we are.

What I did not fully appreciate then was that Trump was never the disease. He was the symptom. The loudest, ugliest, most shameless manifestation of something darker that had apparently been fermenting beneath the floorboards of this country for a very long time.

What we’ve witnessed in these first sixteen months is not governance. It’s a smash-and-grab operation dressed up in patriotic cosplay. A fascist improvisation with flags as props and the Constitution treated like an inconvenient suggestion. Due process becomes optional. Human beings are detained as political theater. The emoluments clause might as well be cocktail napkin copy for all the regard this administration appears to have for constitutional boundaries. The poor are told to tighten their belts while the already obscenely wealthy are handed bigger forks.

And then there’s the grotesque vanity project of it all. Plastering his name, figuratively and spiritually if not always literally, across institutions and symbols patriotic Americans have long held sacred, as though the presidency were not a temporary stewardship but a licensing agreement for his personal brand. Remodeling the White House to suit his gold-plated ego, turning the people’s house into some gilded monument to insecurity and self-worship. Always with the underlying sense that the man who dodged service with bone spurs needs a bunker nearby when the turbulence of his own making inevitably arrives at the front door. It would all be darkly comical if it weren’t so serious. Decimating the arts, politicizing cultural institutions, treating places meant to elevate the American spirit as props in his endless reality show performance. Every institution becomes either a mirror or a target.

And I sit here now on the outskirts of Omaha, Nebraska, looking out at a stretch of American heartland I genuinely love, and I cannot shake the feeling that millions of decent people are being conned by one of the greatest con men ever to occupy the Oval Office, a Cohn man in every sense of the phrase, carrying forward the cynical playbook of Roy Cohn with all the empathy of a casino foreclosure notice. That’s the maddening part. Not just the corruption itself, but the astonishing durability of the con.

Because authoritarians always come for the press.

A free press is not an annoyance to democracy. It is democracy’s immune system. And what does Trump do? He attacks journalists, vilifies reporters, restricts access, weaponizes language against those whose job it is to ask inconvenient questions. But his particular contempt for women in the press has always carried its own special stench. Women who challenge him. Women who refuse to smile on command. Women who don’t package their intelligence in deference. Women who insist on facts rather than flattery. In Trump’s world, women who do not bow become enemies. The pattern is unmistakable: if he cannot dominate you, he will attempt to demean you.

Because that’s always been the formula.

Anyone Trump perceives as inferior becomes a target. Reporters. Democrats. Immigrants. Minorities. Political opponents. Independent women. Anyone unwilling to genuflect before the altar of his endless emotional need.

If you continue to actively support this attack on democratic norms, constitutional governance, and basic human decency, then this is no longer some abstract policy disagreement over marginal tax rates or regulatory philosophy. This is moral territory. You are not merely voting differently than I do. You are endorsing conduct that places people I love—and people you should care about—at risk.

My family.

My friends.

My grandchildren.

Your neighbors.

Because this stops being politics when cruelty becomes policy. It stops being ideology when vengeance becomes governance. It stops being patriotism when dissent is recast as treason by a wannabe strongman wrapped in a flag he fundamentally does not understand.

There are days I feel like a man without a country. That’s a painful thing to admit, because I love this country. Deeply. Imperfectly. Fiercely. I believe in its highest aspirations, even while watching its institutions be hollowed out by a malignant narcissist who mistakes domination for leadership and wealth for virtue.

But Trump is still only one chapter in a much larger American reckoning.

The sentence that may explain all of this is brutally simple: “He says the things I’m thinking.”

And if that’s true, then perhaps that is the most terrifying revelation of all.

Who knew tens of millions of Americans were carrying around this much grievance? This much resentment? This much hostility toward fellow citizens? Toward women who refuse submission? Toward minorities demanding equality? Toward expertise? Toward compassion? Toward democracy itself?

Who knew that beneath decades of supposed progress there remained this much emotional dry tinder, waiting for a demagogue with a microphone and no conscience to strike the match?

Maybe we were living in a fool’s paradise.

Now we aren’t.

And so I come back, again and again, to the same exhausting question: What is it going to take?

Because rationally, you would think the answer would be: all of this. The corruption. The cruelty. The constitutional contempt. The performative wars. The assaults on institutions. The degradation of public discourse. The normalization of authoritarian behavior. Surely somewhere in the cumulative weight of the last eighteen months lies the tipping point.

And yet here we are.

As we approach the midterms, I’m trying to remain cautiously optimistic. I have to be. Cynicism is easy; action requires hope. But optimism without honesty is delusion, and the honest truth is that we still have a tremendous amount of ground to cover.

Opposing Trump is not, nor has it ever been, a political decision.

It is a moral one.

Michael Jochum

Author of Not Just a Drummer: Reflections on Art, Politics, Dogs, and the Human Condition

Veteran drummer, writer, observer of the absurd, and still foolish enough to believe truth matters.

on Facebook

Taylor Swift

And now for something completely different. Taylor Swift! Gotta mix it up now and then and turn away from the orange parasite. This is a good story I remember hearing a little while ago, but it is real, and it bears repeating. It's great to see wealthy people generously spreading their wealth around, even if it is only to her team. Not many like Taylor around. Can't say I love her music that much, but I don't hate it like I do some genres.

It was a Monday in early August 2023. The exhausted truck drivers of Taylor Swift's Eras Tour thought they were heading to a routine production meeting before the Los Angeles shows.

They had no idea what was coming.

Scott Swift walked in. Taylor's father didn't say much—he just began handing out envelopes. When the drivers finally peeked inside, some thought the check said $1,000. Others read $10,000. The third driver stared at his and said out loud: "This has to be a joke." It wasn't.

$100,000.

Each driver. Nearly 50 of them. The industry standard bonus from the biggest stars? $5,000 to $10,000. Taylor had given them more than ten times that.

But here's what made it matter most: these drivers weren't wealthy. They lived in truck cabs. They hadn't seen their families in 24 weeks. They were people who would never own homes—until now. Until that envelope.

That moment of shock and tears? It was just the beginning.

Across the entire Eras Tour, Taylor quietly handed out $197 million in bonuses. The dancers. The band. The riggers. The lighting and sound technicians. The caterers. Every single person who built the show—they got bonuses, handwritten notes, and wax-sealed letters. When dancers opened theirs on camera in her docuseries, they broke down crying. Some couldn't believe she was real.

"If the tour grosses more, they get more," she explained simply. These people work hard. They deserve it.

But the crew bonuses weren't the only quiet revolution happening.

Starting in March 2023, in every city where the tour touched down, a call came to local food banks. Taylor wanted to donate. No press conference. No announcement. No photo op. One donation fed 75,000 meals. Another provided hundreds of thousands of pounds of fresh produce. Across the tour, the total reached millions of meals—possibly more—all delivered in silence.

She never posted about a single one. And it wasn't new for her.

In March 2020, when the pandemic locked down the world, Taylor scrolled through social media posts from fans who were breaking. A photographer about to lose everything. A person staring down eviction. She sent direct messages with rent money—$3,000 here, $13,000 there. Some fans got enough for months of bills. She read the Washington Post. She noticed the names. She helped.

She never announced it.

Years later, in October 2025, a two-year-old named Lilah—fighting a cancer so rare that only 58 families in America had ever known it—was filmed by her mother dancing to a Taylor Swift song. Lilah called Taylor her friend. A few days later, the GoFundMe received a $100,000 donation.

The note said: "Sending the biggest hug to my friend, Lilah! Love, Taylor."

Mike Scherkenbach has worked with the wealthiest people in music. He's seen the bonuses. He's seen the behavior. He's watched billionaires guard their money jealously. What he saw with Taylor was different.

The biggest tour in history grossed $2 billion. The artist behind it became a billionaire from her own songwriting. And then she signed her name onto hundreds of envelopes by hand and sent enough money back to the people who built her dream that they cried opening their letters.

That isn't strategy. That isn't a publicity stunt.

That's what happens when someone, somewhere along the way, remembered what matters.

No attribution.

Emily Solberg

This whole $1.776 BILLION dollar slush fund is an insult to and an assault on our democracy. Maybe now the GOP will stand up and say WTF? Are we really going to allow millions to be paid out to the J6 terrorists who attacked our Capitol on 1/6/21? They deserve to be still in jail. Trump says the J6 terrorists were treated "so badly" by Biden. Well, fuck yeah, they tried to overturn the 2020 election. And obviously Trump belongs in jail too, but the entire machinery of the government has been taken over/captured by this gang of criminals aka the Republican Party.

Ya know, I didn’t think it could get much worse than a ballroom.

Using OUR taxpayer dollars for a G-D ballroom when people can’t afford gas or groceries is Marie Antoinette-level egregious, but I think this may just take the cake.

Now we have a president who sued his own IRS, then negotiated a deal with his own DOJ and dropped the charges, but only on the condition that they NEVER investigate ANY tax claims related to him, his family, or his businesses up to the date of the settlement. Lest we forget, this is the same guy who was convicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records. But hey, nothing to see here!

Oh—the attorney general who oversaw this entire charade? Just the president’s former personal lawyer. Totally unbiased and nonpartisan. 

As part of this deal, the president also gets a formal apology from the United States for hurting his feelings ANDDDDD—*drumroll please*—a $1.776 BILLION slush fund for victims of “lawfare,” aka, allies and loyalists, including but not limited to the darling insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

How patriotic.

Roughly 1600 people faced federal charges for their involvement on January 6th. If every one of those people files a claim, that amounts to what?

Only a smooth $1.1 MILLION per person.

For some perspective, wanna know how much the federal government pays in a death gratuity for service members who die on active duty?

$100,000.

So you’re telling me the people who sh*t all over the Constitution (literally, they spread feces all over the Capitol building) are rightfully entitled to TEN TIMES the compensation allotted for service members who sacrificed their LIVES defending the same Constitution??

Raise your hand if, instead of ballrooms, and shady deals, and AI data centers, and tax cuts for billionaires, and senseless wars, and million-dollar immigration ad campaigns with horses and make-up, and road trip reality shows, and private scuba excursions in Hawaii, and locker room Olympic parties, and steak and lobster for cabinet members . . .

You want YOUR hard-earned tax dollars to go to healthcare, national parks, cancer research, science, clean air and water, food for the hungry, veterans, education, mental health initiatives, social safety nets, and more amazing NASA moon missions.

And raise your hand if you are sick and tired of the most corrupt, incompetent, nepotistic people in this country getting to make the choice for you.

from Facebook