2025 Shakedown

 

This Week's Quote

Image by Anja from Pixabay

New Year’s Day now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week, you can begin paving hell with them as usual.

Mark Twain

Source:  Reader's Digest

Toodles

Image by abdullah al noman from Pixabay

Donald Trump and his cronies made 2025 hellish. From unleashing a police state on immigrants to persecuting transgender people to trashing the White House, that mob spent the year overwhelming us with actions immoral and illegal.

On the personal front, I've just been blown off by a potential romantic interest. At age 62, I thought I had a better chance of becoming a ghost than being ghosted.

2025, don't let the door hit you on the way out.

Working Theory

 

Dispiriting

Image:  Facebook

I'd hoped that on Christmas Eve Donald Trump would receive visits from the Ghost of Bankruptcies Past and the Ghost of Moral Bankruptcy Present.

Plainly this didn't occur, as the president had the time to post or repost over 100 times during the night. He wished all a Merry Christmas, including the "Radical Left Scum" trying to destroy the country. He shared calls for prosecuting Barack Obama over the 2020 election, and Nancy Pelosi for insider trading.

It was an unhinged, unseasonable, and unending grievance-fest. Trump actually out-Scrooged Scrooge. Even infinitely patient Tiny Tim would've been tempted to whack him with his crutch.

This Week's Quote

Image by Wolfgang Eckert from Pixabay

Have yourself a merry little Christmas

make the Yuletide gay

"Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas"

Source: Christmas Songs and Carols

It's Coal All Around

I spotted this sign outside of a Seattle bar. Perfect.

Here's What I Got You for Christmas

 

Technically

 

The Good Old Days

Image by Olena from Pixabay

I was looking through some old emails and stumbled on a 2016 picture of Vice President Joe Biden officiating a wedding between two male White House staffers.

A wave of nostalgia engulfed me for August of 2016, when the administration embraced gay people, Hillary Clinton looked to be heading for the White House, and her opponent Donald Trump hinted that gun owners could assassinate her.

America couldn't possibly elect someone so reckless to be president! Come on!

How innocent we were. We made Annette Funicello look like Ma Barker.

This Week's Quote

Image by ValeraRychman from Pixabay

Winter, stop pretending you’re magical. You’re just cold with good lighting.

Unknown

Source:  Sandjest

GG Tradition

I post this Kinsey Sicks video each Hanukkah. In light of the Bondi Beach shooting, I wondered if I should refrain this year, as the clip pokes fun at Jewish stereotypes.

I decided that drag and oys must go on.

Blame the Victim

Image:  Facebook

There is no terrible situation that Donald Trump can't make worse.

In response to the murders of actor/director Rob Reiner and his wife Michele Singer Reiner this weekend, perhaps at the hands of their son, Trump posted his own unique take hours after the tragedy.

Rob Reiner died "reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME, sometimes referred to as TDS."

Just when you think Trump can't get more revolting, he reaches down and attains a new circle of hell that even Dante couldn't imagine.

In Trump's reality, Reiner deserved to die because he opposed Trump. This is a potentate gone bananas.

"He was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump, with his obvious paranoia reaching new heights as the Trump Administration surpassed all goals and expectations of greatness, and with the Golden Age of America upon us, perhaps like never before," continued Trump.

Using a double murder to exalt himself. That's a dive from a springboard that even Greg Louganis couldn't have pulled off.

I can make sense of this delusional diatribe in only one way. Trump, as a narcissist, makes everything about him. Reiner was outspoken against him. I doubt Trump actually believes Reiner caused his own death by irritating a Trump supporter into homicide.

But his narcissism demands he use the deaths to his own purposes. And if he can get in the last word against an enemy, hey, that's a win.

This outcome to his minor spat with Reiner suits Trump much better than the alternatives. Otherwise he might've had to deny aid to Los Angeles, or order his attorney general to investigate all Hollywood directors, or place Scott Baio in charge of the Oscars.

Fighting Another Battle

Image:  Wikipedia

Jason Collins has a place in LGBTQ history. A tall one.

The NBA center came out as gay in 2013, which made him not just the first openly gay player in the NBA, but the first openly gay fella playing in a major American team sport.

Now 47, Collins recently revealed that he has Stage 4 brain cancer. So hold a good thought for this trailblazer. Who, as it happens, was a Hawk, a Wizard, a Celtic . . . but never a Trail Blazer.

Dancin' and Prancin'

 

This Week's Quote

Image:  Facebook

FACT CHECK: Trump’s only in America because his grandfather got kicked out of Germany for dodging military service. He begged the Bavarian government to let him stay, they said no, and he packed his bags for the U.S. The whole Trump dynasty started with a deportation notice.

Alex Cole

Source:  X

Petty Theft

Image:  Facebook

When Joe Biden nominated her to be assistant secretary for health, Dr. Rachel Levine became the first transgender person to win Senate confirmation. She led the Public Health Corps, which comes with the title of admiral.

Now the Trump administration has rewritten history and busted her down to the poop deck.

On the seventh floor of HHS headquarters, the line of photographic portraits of all the past leaders of the Public Health Corps still includes Levine—but not her legal name. Instead HHS went to the trouble, during the shutdown, of deadnaming her.

Donald Trump's people know how to be petty. They've learned from the best.

Park It

Image:  Facebook

National parks offer some fee-free days, and the Trump administration has tweaked the schedule for next year. No longer can you get in free on Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Juneteenth.

Gee, what could those two holidays have in common?

But rejoice, for one of the new additions to the fee-free calendar is June 14, Flag Day, which also happens to be Donald Trump's birthday. What a coincidence.

I suggest you and your friends visit your nearest national park on that day, wave the flag, and play rousing birthday games like pin the tail on the narcissist and Simon Says Impeach.

Bribery on the Cheap

 

Breaking Barriers Across the Pond

Image by Shafin Al Asad Protic from Pixabay

I now present you with a pair of news items from abroad. Partly because the news items from here tend to suck.

On Nov. 21, a 20-year-old musical theater student became the first out lesbian winner of the Miss England beauty pageant. Grace Richardson considered keeping mum about her sexuality during the competition, but when the interview panel asked her about overcoming challenges, "the first thing that crossed my mind was my coming out story."

We might be at that point in social evolution where the other contestants thought, "Damn! Why didn't I say that?"

Also in late November, rising Swiss tennis player Mika Brunold came out as gay on Instagram. The 21-year-old wrote that being gay means "dealing with things most people never have to think about. The fear of not being accepted, the pressure to stay quiet, the feeling of being different. But I’ve grown. And I’m proud of who I am today."

Brunold is only the second active male pro tennis player to come out, following Brazil's Joao Lucas Reis Da Silva, who did the deed last year.

An openly lesbian beauty queen and an openly gay male tennis pro. What next? An openly transgender mafioso?

This Week's Quote

Image:  Facebook

Even as his Cabinet was assembled to engage in one of his favorite activities – singing the praises of Trump – he repeatedly appeared to doze off.

Aaron Blake

Source:  CNN

Maybe That's Now an After-School Activity

 

Dec. 1, 2025

Image:  Facebook

Today is World AIDS Day, when we remember those we lost and, as Joe Biden put it last year, "we renew our commitment to accelerating efforts to finally end the HIV/AIDS epidemic."

And here in 2025? The U.S. State Department sent an email to employees reading, "The U.S. Government will not be commemorating World AIDS Day this year."

May Donald Trump wake up with dreadlocks.