And no way should Congress allow him to tear it down. It isn't his.

He has no guardrails and is going to do whatever he wants and no one will stop him.

To stop the demolition in its tracks.

but Congress did nothing to stop that piece of shit and his **** wife from desecrating it.

Maybe he thinks we'll learn our lessons and start bowing down to him. He doesn't understand how most of humanity works.

Whatever is unfortunate enough to be occupying the spot where he plans to build his “I don’t have stubby fingers!” Arch of Overcompensation.

After he razes the Kennedy Center (with no notice and no official* attempts at preserving artifacts), the next time the hole in his soul starts itching he’ll start construction on the arch, without permits or even a blueprint beyond a sketch in a stained cocktail napkin….


*I would bet good money, though, that some people sneak in the night before to purloin some pricey (or at least pricey looking) objects that will later be written off as “lost in the rubble”. You know the same thing happened when the East Wing was demolished ….

Did that happen or is this conjecture?

bulldozed the East Wing?

Expect more of the same.

Although predictions are more GOPers find their voice once primary season ends. We will see.

“As Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times recently wrote, “The only thing Trump and his allies know how to do is use the coercive force of the state.” It seems the president really did think he could just remake the Kennedy Center in his own trashy image, and that people would, like zombies, continue to book shows and buy tickets there. Instead, he got his stink all over the place, and now no one wants to be associated with it”

No one wants to sit in a gaudy decorated no-class building except suck-up sycophants.

Amanda Marcotte's column on Salon.

And this column is a masterpiece.

The rage that follows the humiliation - when they realize most people haven't bent over guffawing at fart jokes since middle school

Is it too much to ask to promote liberal authors and commenters?

If it were some damn NeverTrumper who spent their career building the road to Trump, someone like Rick Wilson or Charlie Sykes, you can bet that their name would be right in the subject line. But liberals who've been calling the shots accurately for years? Apparently they don't have names.

...with the intellect of a 5 year old.

IS HE DEAD YET???????????????

My granddaughter presently 5 going on 6 in 3 weeks surprises me regularly how perceptive and insightful children can be.

Trump is a mentally defective narcissist there is no age bracket for his type.

meaning they'll all be reduced to serving hamburders, fish filet sandwiches, fried chicken and "American" fries.
Fine dining at its best.

have done everything to literally kill and destroy the Kennedy legacy—JFK Jr. included.

A few years ago, QANON et al were literally mocking JFK Jr. claiming he was joining the Republicans and wasn’t dead. Now they are doing a 180 and coming out to profit on some new movie about JFK Jr. And of course we know which party assassinated JFK.

The inability to let go of hatred and to believe that others can be great too is a hallmark, small minded, narcissistic trait of the Republican Party long before Trump came aboard. I say this because when Trump goes these things will seem to go away but they won’t unless people realize more than Trump’s behind this.

The text reads:
This manifestation of his deep psychological issues reflects a major resentment that fuels the larger MAGA movement: anger at the larger culture for not dumbing itself down to placate their own pedestrian tastes and bigoted blind spots.

Let's pull that apart and look at the way the MAGA movement arose in the first place. First, I will state that I am a 'member in good standing' of the so-called professional-managerial class, whose job it has been, heretofore, to prop up the wealth creation machine of the Pax Americana - the American empire.

The problem is the MAGA people:
a) Watch Fox 'news' in their leisure time.
b) Listen to right-wing talk radio any time they aren't watching Fox.

This is where the culture wars came from - they are wedges pounded in with the specific purpose to create polarization, because they are couched in such a way as to brainwash listeners with things that don't matter. So as a result, the MAGA people have begun to really dislike the professional-managerial class because they perceive that we:
a) talk down to them.
b) make fun of them.
c) do not address or even care about their issues, which include a deck that is stacked by Wall Street against EVERY WORKING AMERICAN, but the MAGATs have instead been manipulated to pick the wrong enemy. This is why they say things like, "I live to drink lib-rul tears!" Seriously. I have heard that time and again.
d) when racism enters the mix, then we see a perception on the part of the MAGAts that white men are an endangered species and that brown skinned people are getting preferential treatment, filling quotas, destroying opportunities that rightfully should go to supposedly better qualified white guys.
e) when homophobia and transphobia enters the mix, we see a big hue and cry about women's sports.
f) when xenophobia enters the mix, we see a similar hue and cry about immigrants, and the narrative equates them to brown-skinned people. So they get rounded up.

Why? Because these people got their lives ripped out from underneath them when NAFTA came along in the 1990s with third way Democrats and Republicans towing the Wall Street line. We arguably lost >800K jobs, mostly across what is now called the Rust Belt of the US. It began earlier, of course, in the 1980s when Wall Street fund managers began pressuring C-Suite officers of publicly traded companies to generate higher profits by laying off workers because Wall Street considers labor a liability.

So now, some of the most fervent Trump supporters are from areas in this country that have been economically depressed for decades. There is a book that talks about this called Dying of Whiteness, in which the author says that these people are quite willing now to forego affordable healthcare themselves as long as it hurts brown-skinned people and lib-ruls. Seriously.

Why? I'm sorry because I fear some may disagree with me here, but the Democratic Party's institutionalists have long acted to prop this system up while the right-wing propaganda machine brainwashes its listeners and viewers to believe that no one, and I mean no one cares about them in a system they correctly perceive (as do I and many of my economist colleagues) as being stacked against working people.

Because our system IS stacked against working people. I have been experiencing a deepening disappointment with the Democratic party because it talks about rights all the time, but is focusing on things that have little to do with MIDDLE CLASS kitchen table issues. I mean, I have to be honest. I spent the four years of Biden's administration being told (and amplifying that message for my own data customers) about how absolutely GREAT the economy is doing.

In the meantime, I was squeezed by inflation, especially pernicious with health care COSTS, and the result is that I spent that period carrying $10K in HEALTH CARE DEBT. I just spoke at length with a guy who wants me to caucus for a retired rear admiral who has raised $7million to run against Lauren Bobert. When I mentioned Medicare for all Americans, he said she, "Agrees that healthcare should be affordable." I said, "Wait a minute, the ACA was SUPPOSED to make my healthcare more affordable but why then did I get a 19.2% PREMIUM INCREASE this year, along with HIGHER COPAYS? And why do I have HEALTH CARE DEBT???"

So you know what? I'm fucking TIRED of the party telling me we have to get rid of the Republican MAGATs, making fun of them, telling each other how superior we are, because BOTH parties have been so corrupted by big dollar super-pac donors that no one really seems to care about MIDDLE CLASS KITCHEN TABLE ISSUES:
1) Healthcare.
2) Safe Social Security.
3) Better low- and no-cost childcare solutions.
4) Free or debt-free college for kids and grandkids.

Because THOSE ARE THE THINGS, IF ANY DEMOCRAT WANTS ANY MONEY FROM ME, THAT THEY HAD BETTER BE POUNDING ON. Right now, that ain't happening.

And what about the fucking Epstein files? Because I have daughters and granddaughters and I don't fucking care one little teeny tiny bit about WHO is on that list. They ALL need to be held accountable. So here is my question for my party's leaders:

Merrick Garland and Biden knew about these files that entire four years. Why in the hell weren't they much, much more aggressive about getting it out in the open??? Because Epstein demonstrably worked with Vladimir Putin to set up Trump with compromat, and to ship Eastern European girls over into this sex trafficking ring to obtain compromat on billionaires, politicians, and others.

And the Russian troll farms are working in overdrive to keep pounding the wedge on social media. See? I am honestly afraid that both parties, at the national level, have become so corrupted by these libertarian billionaires who want America to have a CEO (Thiel, Musk, Zuck, Bezos and others) because they know any kind of democracy is inimical to oligarchy and certainly Christian nationalism.

That's where we ARE right now, and it very much bothers me. I have been a public servant for nearly 40 years - it is all I have ever wanted to be, and I have been watching everything we should stand for being undermined for decades as Wall Street financiers and billionaires have steadily eroded our moral compass to the point where this society is so profoundly materialistic that we are literally destroying the habitability of our sacred earth.

We need to wake up to the urgent need for humanity to live in harmony with the earth, each other and God - and you don't have to agree with me about God. I'm not asking you to. But we sure as heck need to be living in harmony with the earth and each other and we need to impose just a basic moral compass - treat others the way you want to be treated. Because that is NOT how we've been operating.

One last thought. We are all now members of a 'Political-Industrial Complex.' I get dozens of texts and emails daily asking me to donate. They go something like: Here is an issue that should cause you outrage! We want to fight for you! Give us money!

Sorry, but I'm done giving anyone money. The middle class in this country has now been virtually squeezed to death by Wall Street greed, which is insatiable, and until I have universal healthcare, have cleared my HEALTHCARE DEBT, and can be confident the government gives enough of a shit about whether I live or die to FIX the fucking Social Security program so it doesn't run out of money, I'm done.

Nt

Last edited Thu Feb 5, 2026, 06:27 AM - Edit history (1)

for this most concise, articulate round up of what I've been trying to express for years. My frustration with triangulating, third-way, so-called representatives has been growing and I'm certain we wouldn't be in this current horrific state without the acqiescence you have explained.

Editing to add that all the points you've made have been what I've been struggling to express, not just the frustration with our representatives.

on labor force availability, strength of training pipeline, economic development strategies and how policies affect these things. So I know my shit. I've been doing this upwards of 20 years.

According to the Economic Policy Institute, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) resulted in the displacement of over 879,280 U.S. jobs by 2002. This was largely driven by a growing U.S. trade deficit with Mexico and Canada, which prompted firms to move manufacturing production, especially in the auto and electronics sectors, to lower-wage regions. And again, the agreement provided incentives for U.S. manufacturers to relocate production to Mexico to take advantage of lower labor costs.

See, that is how incentives work. Wall Street knows this so they worked to get Reagan elected, then HW Bush. NAFTA was conceived by the Reagan administration, negotiated by George H.W. Bush, and enacted by Bill Clinton in 1993, with strong backing from economists, multinational corporations, and key leaders in Canada and Mexico. It aimed to eliminate trade barriers, creating a free trade zone to boost economic integration. So it was spoon fed to us as a noble effort to create a worldwide middle class.

But that was actually bullshit, because Wall Street wanted to get away from American labor unions which they felt drove up labor costs excessively. With NAFTA they could move operations to Mexico where workers made pennies on the dollar American workers did.

Cost of goods sold did it. That's a line item in corporate SEC filings, you know. And it is important in every business because every business needs to earn a profit to survive. The problem here is that Wall Street operates on the doctrine of shareholder primacy, which was established in a 1919 MI Supreme Court ruling against Henry Ford in favor of the Dodge brothers, who sued Ford when he gave his workers big raises on the basis that it deprived them of profits to which they were entitled as shareholders. They won, and thus was born the legal doctrine of shareholder primacy.

This means that according to Wall Street fund managers, the 'right thing to do' was to pressure C-suite officers in publicly traded companies to cut cost of sales to boost PROFITS for shareholders. The problem is this is imbalanced because without workers there can be NO profits. But labor is considered a liability, hence the Wall Street fad of driving layoffs to artificially boost quarterly profits.

When NAFTA came along, it forced the market itself to offshore good jobs from America to places like Mexico and other nations further afield. So lots of good jobs in America disappeared over time, replaced by service industry jobs that do not pay nearly as well.

This is why, if you go into the Bureau of Labor Statistics and look at the productivity curve against wages, you will see that heavy automation and technology drove productivity way up while wages remained stagnant.

So, yes NAFTA did in fact hurt the American middle class. Big time. This is why Trump told his supporters that we need tariffs to level the playing field for workers. He was lying of course, but this is why. It was a compelling campaign slogan for people whose fathers and mothers lost their jobs as high-paying middle class jobs in manufacturing went away and they had to take serious downgrades in pay year after year, while prices went up and decreased their purchasing power.

It's the old Wall Street SQUEEZE and it is terrible because greed never rests. This is why we're so fucked now. Wall Street slowly corrupted our politicians so that corporations now pay around 9% of the government's tax revenue while we individuals pay over 80%. In pre-NAFTA days, pre-Reagan Chicago School trickle down economics, this ratio was around 35% corporations to 45% individuals. These policies have shifted the cost of running the American empire squarely on the shoulders of individual taxpayers, while policymakers at the federal level have slowly worked at Wall Street's behest to deregulate, privatize and gut New Deal programs like Social Security. They genuinely believe the market will take care of itself and should be unregulated and 'pure.' The only legitimate reason for the Federal Government to exist is to provide for the common defense. That's it.

Those are the people in power now.

So yes, NAFTA accelerated the demise of America's middle class on the heels of 1) the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, which diluted the power of unions to strike in sympathy with other unions, 2) Lewis Powell's essay, An Attack on American Free Enterprise, which he wrote in 1971 at the behest of the US Chamber of Commerce, and which lays out the plan for a corporate takeover of the republic, which has happened, 3) NAFTA and 4) corporate tax cuts that have proven very damaging to our government's ability to function and certainly to enact and fun policies that actually HELP the middle class.

These idiots have run up a national debt of $35 trillion because you cannot cut taxes for a few rich people and corporations, which limits tax revenue and at the same time fund domestic programs that actually help Americans. That is why we are now being told we cannot 'afford' things like Social Security and Medicare.

I could go on, and in fact could teach a graduate level course on this stuff. NAFTA was not the sole culprit in the killing of the middle class. Rather, it is part of a toxic Wall Street mix that has made the rich richer by stacking the deck against all American wage earners.

learning.

MAGAt culture is rape culture, plain and simple.

1,000 words and bupkis. What’s the lesson the KC “taught” Trump? What did he learn from it?

... rather than embrace the rhetorical flourishes, we should instead (in unison) demand to know "exactly how could their ass be handed to them without it being surgically removed?" or we should mock the effort with a resounding "oh yeah? where's the new ass?"

I guess every great rant is a target for a wet-blanket critique, eh?

and everyone else was already up to speed.

I also really liked this from Jack Schlossberg on the tearing down of the John F Kennedy Center For the Performing Arts..

Powerful statement by John's grandson. Thanks so much for adding that, Cha.💙

This is an Excellent Example of Attitudes and Inspiring Words that keep me going.

💔☮️🌺🌻🕯️🕊️💜