Dispatches from Vilnius

To no one's surprise Donald Trump exploited his "friendly talk" with Barack Obama at the state funeral for Jimmy Carter.  I thought Barack knew better than engaging with Donald, especially after Jill Bidens' moment with Trump at the dedication to the restored Notre Dame cathedral became a  promo  for his $199 cologne. Sure, you say hello out of politeness but there he was " yukking it up " with Donald, making it so easy for anyone to put words in his mouth afterward. Words that Donald was all too glad to share on Truth Social. It seems that the principal target of this parody was Kamala Harris, who refused to acknowledge Trump.  Smart move on her part.  Who knows what her future plans are, but Governor of California seems the  most logical choice .  I don't think she wants to run again for President, assuming we have another election.  To hear Republicans talk these days, Trump will be President for Life as we move toward a more autocratic f...

What a set of overlapping stories!  As LA burns , Donald Trump Jr. flew to Nuuk to make his father's pitch to buy Greenland.  Daddy couldn't go because he had committed himself to the state funeral of Jimmy Carter, where he made small talk with Barack, whose wife Michelle was conspicuously absent.  I'm guessing she didn't want to sit next to Donald.  No one did, not even his wife .  Elon Musk used the opportunity to have a " friendly chat " with the newest leader of the ultra-right wing AfD party of Germany on his X chatbox.  The fetching Alice Weidel, which "Leon" mispronounced Veedle, is supposed to represent a moderating force for the neo-fascist party, but here they were talking about Hitler, saying he was a "communist and socialist," not a "conservative and libertarian" like themselves.  Nice dodge.  Meanwhile, unusually cold weather blankets much of the US with a freeze warning in Northwest Florida, which my old high school...

I found this meme on my timeline this morning, posted by one of my conservative "friends," wishing me a "Happy January 6."  There was little violence this time around as Democrats didn't make any attempt to block the certification of the electoral college.  Kamala Harris duly confirmed Trump as the winner, and so the MAGA movement has their president again.  Only a few peeps from former Congresspersons like Adam Kinzinger , who no longer identifies himself with today's Republican Party, calling it RINO.  I well imagine many past Republican presidents would feel the same way if they saw what their Grand Old Party had devolved into. Hard to believe this was once the Party of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt or even Ronald Reagan.  As Kinzinger stated, it is a party driven by hate, making it even harder to understand how Trump managed to win 77 million votes.  Has our society become so filled with anger that it would give this contemptible man the most vote...

I was excited about the Netflix production of One Hundred Years of Solitude .  It was a Colombian production, so I figured it would have an air of authenticity unlike that blasphemous attempt to do The House of the Spirits some years back with Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons.  No wonder, Marquez refused to let anyone make his fabulous novel into a movie during his lifetime.  I think he would have been just as disappointed with this production.  While it was in Spanish, this lavish production bore only a passing resemblance to the novel.  Just to be sure, I started reading it again.  I was stunned when I reached the 150-page mark and had come to the end of the serial.  Alex Lopez and Laura Mora had only covered one third of the epic novel in their 8 hours of screentime, basically turning it into a soap opera.   I was reminded of the scene in the novel where the town of Maconda witnessed its first movie.  Everyone was so excited.  The...

Over the years pretty much everyone has come to appreciate Jimmy Carter.  He was a man who lived a truly virtuous life, although he admitted in a Playboy interview many years ago that he had committed " adultery in my heart many times ."  To think it almost derailed his 1976 campaign.   However, his legacy as president still remains contentious.  Recently, Trump vowed to reclaim the Panama Canal, which Carter "gave" to Panama during his single term.  The treaty he signed didn't turn the canal over to Panama until 1999, which Bill Clinton ultimately followed through on .  Oddly enough, neither Reagan nor Pere Bush chose to override the treaty, despite the hostilities that broke out in Panama when Manuel Noriega came to power.  Pere Bush infamously invaded Panama with the expressed aim to bring Noriega to justice, claiming that the "generalissimo" was trafficking drugs through his country.  An action that was decried worldwide.  Neverth...

I found myself looking at remote islands like Pitcairn and St. Helena .  Pitcairn Island is probably the most famous of the two as this is where Fletcher Christian led his mutiny against the Bounty and tried to settle his merry band of mutineers far from the long arm of the British Empire.  His legacy has lived on.  I couldn't help feel a touch of envy, but as much as one tries to distance oneself from events in this crazy mixed up world of ours, the bad news still has a way of seeping in.  Elon Musk has managed to reach Pitcairn, setting the 35 permanent inhabitants up with Starlink free of charge in his effort to leave no stone unturned on this planet. Elon has brought his DOGE and pony show to Washington, determined to make government accountable by slashing unnecessary spending.  Good luck with that after Republicans pushed through a whopping $895 billion defense bill  in their last month in session. The only thing they managed to cut was funding for...

It seems like the Heritage Foundation is taking its pointers from the Kremlin as they look to consolidate power in the executive branch.  Our Constitution is a little older than that of Russia, but no reason that the ultra-conservative advisors in Trump's administration can't find a way to undercut it.  One means is impoundment, whereby the White House exercises what amounts to a line-item veto on Congressional appropriations by impounding allocated funds.  The last president who tried to use this authority ran into a brick wall , but with a compliant Republican Congress and Supreme Court who knows this time around? I still can't wrap my head around how Trump won the election after three successive electoral defeats from 2018 to 2022.  He lost the House in 2018, then the Senate and the White House in 2020, and his party was barely able to retake the House in 2022 after what many thought would be a "red wave" that would see the Republicans regaining control of both...

We were warned back in 2016.  Has it finally come to pass.   A Princeton computer science professor showed how easy it was to hack a voting machine and urged Congress to secure voting.  Less than two months later, Trump had won a surprise victory and there were deep concerns of Russian hacking.  This led then Attorney General Jeff Sessions to launch an investigation, much to President Trump's chagrin.  In Sessions' mind he was trying to assuage all the anxiety that surrounded an election in which Trump lost the popular vote by 3 million.  The rest as they say is history.  Or is it? What's interesting to me is that Trump had virtually no coattails, similar to 2016.  Republicans would have won these contested races with or without him, as Democratic senators were doomed in West Virginia and Montana and had only an outside chance in Ohio.  If there was any senator who benefited from Trump's "surprise" victory it is Dave McCormick.  He...

Like many, I didn't see that coming.  I'm sure someone will make a sculpture of this image in the months to come.   The CNN election news crew seemed disappointed when Kamala ran out of opportunities to make up the difference in Pennsylvania.  John King kept showing all the large blue dots that indicated areas that still hadn't been fully counted, but one by one the dots shriveled up and she hardly made a dent in Trump's lead.  All that was left was for Van Jones to deliver his eulogy in the early morning hours, just like he did in 2016. I guess greed and anger trump hope and joy. That's the message that has been heard around the world.  One Guardian columnist offered a snarky if accurate take on Trump 2.0 .  Yep, those who think they will gain favor in his administration are forgetting what happened to the last one. Objectively, we know what will occur given Trump's "dysfunctional relationship with power." Many thought we had learned our lesson from t...

If this Iowa poll holds true, the MAGA cult is in for a long night.  It could signal a tectonic shift in the electorate that sees many states falling Kamala's way on election evening, not just the battleground states.  It's easy to see why this could happen, as Trump has taken to climbing into garbage trucks and simulating blow jobs on microphones in the waning days of the campaign.  Oh, and threatening firing squads for political opponents.  There are no guardrails left, especially when he shows up in a safety vest to political rallies. This SNL segment sums up the campaign in a nutshell, replete with a cameo by Kamala Harris staring back at her doppelganger in the mirror.  This is her moment and Donald Dump literally paved the way for her by becoming so detached from reality that he now seems to be living inside a hall of mirrors . It's not just Iowa.  Many states are turning Kamala's way in the closing week. They were probably there from the moment she...

  It is starting to look a bit like 1973 as Donald tries to dodge the swirling allegations that he is a fascist and that his supporters aren't "garbage."  This from a man who called the United States a " garbage can for the world ."  Meanwhile, early voting is in full swing with North Carolina already reaching 50% of its registered voters and Georgia close behind.  We could easily see the same numbers in these states as we saw in 2020.  A big turn out doesn't favor Herr Trump. Meanwhile, Kamala Harris offered a more than reasonable alternative to this sad state of dementia that 46% of Americans currently find themselves in.  I read a story where a young woman voted to protect abortion rights in Arizona while at the same time voted for Trump.  Apparently, she doesn't like how Kamala is trying to use abortion to win over women like her.  So, she stood her ground. It's nice to see that Muslim Americans in Arizona are coming to their senses .  ...