President Trump has ordered all federal workers back to the office. On the one hand, I know of specific instances of the remote work option being absurdly abused.  On the other hand, there can be some efficiencies if the option is well thought out.  For selfish reasons, I kinda liked the COVID era when roads on commuter routes were sparsely used, and I had Metro cars almost all to myself.  I never stopped going to my downtown DC office, with the sole exception of a DC government-mandated shutdown period early in the pandemic.  The thought of everybody suddenly coming back downtown is not a happy one for me.

At present, commuter traffic and Metro use drops noticeably on Fridays, presumably a popular day to “work from home.”  I wonder if something like that will continue.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

“No, we said it was all the hallmarks of Russian information operations, including the dumping of accurate information, which is what we said in that letter.”  [link]

There is no doubt in my mind that had Trump won in 2020, we would not be seeing any of the amazing events that are happening right now. And everything that has happened to Trump since 2021 (the lawfare threatening ruination and prison, the boundless accusations, even the assassin’s bullets) has only served to make him (and all of his supporters) more convinced and hardened of the righteousness of their cause. Events are progressing at warp speed.

And it all came to be as a result of the last 4 miserable years. The hardships Trump – and honest American people – have suffered over the past four years have served to burn off whatever residual credence we used to give to talking heads or nattering nitwit nabobs. Nobody who is now in power gives a fig when some media figure tries to stir up nonsense over an exuberant hand in the air. Because we can see clearly now.

January 20, 2025, the two oldest men to ever be sworn in as President of the United States were within less than ten feet from each other. Despite their sharing advanced years, one truly represented the determined transition in the culture of governance at the federal level. The other represented an old-guard approach centered around an elite political class. The latter one sat in his chair as the man who was both his predecessor and successor outlined not just the abject failures of the old guard but an aggressive commitment to a change in both direction and method.

The casual observer might have thought the first individual was speaking only about himself and his new political moment in the sun. But they would have missed the true image of what the speaker intends. Election after election we have listened to promises of “change,” sometimes sprinkled with a little “hope” or even “joy”. But the promisers of either party had few changes in mind that would benefit anybody but the government itself.

Trump has taken the US out of the Paris Climate Accords (take that, Lurch!). He also took America out of the World Health Organization (take that, Fauci, Xi, and Tedros!). Could he achieve a policy Trifecta, alongside his political Trifecta of House, Senate, and White House in Republican hands?

What would the policy Trifecta be?

When Simon Cowell was one of the judges on American Idol, he would sometimes characterize an egregiously bad performance as “self-indulgent”. The first time I heard him describe a performance that way, it surprised me a bit. It wasn’t a characterization that would have occurred to me. But as time went on, and the more he continued to characterize performances that way, I began to see what he meant. There were just some performances in which the singer came across as performing for themselves more than for the audience or the enjoyment of the music itself.

I thought of Simon’s critique as I watched this woman, Mariann Budde, hijack the Inauguration National Prayer Service and put it in service to her own progressive hobby horses.

The media cultists and pundits, whose duty it is to explain the doings of the world to a much more simple-minded citizenry, are having a hard time translating the Second Coming of Trump in a way that they are comfortable with. It was not hard for them the first time around. It is never hard for them to talk down to us, knowing we will never quite grasp the insight they patiently but condescendingly share. I believe that they had in their collective mind visions of Andrew Jackson’s first inauguration, which saw a wash of back-woods types end up partying in the White House in their dirty shirts and muddy boots. But for fear that we common types were not well-read enough to know the reference, they just stuck with crude, rude and Russian collusion.

This time it is much harder to discount the election results as a stunning, one-off upset due to right-wing trickery, some easily fooled serfs in backward fly-over territory and, of course, Russian “disinformation”. There was, of course, no whiskey-fueled trashing of the White House as in Jackson’s time. As before, formal balls stretched well into the night.

With the most recent images coming out of Gaza, the four Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT), Donatello, Michelangelo, Raphael and Leonardo, have announced a class-action lawsuit against Hamas for copyright infringement. The lawsuit seeks $4.3 billion dollars in punitive damages for immeasurable reputational damage.

Exhibit A from the lawsuit

I think the opportunity we’re maybe missing in all these pardons – or preemptive pardons – even is how useful they’ll be in providing transparency for investigators. A pardoned person no longer has a 5th Amendment protection, since they’re not at risk of prosecution… So drag them into Congress (or even grand juries) and ask for the allocution. What exactly have you been pardoned for? And with whom have you committed these crimes? And let’s see all the documentation in regards to the activity you’ve been pardoned for.

I don’t think it’s important to prosecute Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton or even Dr. Fauci … But it is vitally important to get their minions and co-conspirators to understand what they conspired to do.

For an awkward 1 minute 50 seconds, Carrie Underwood and the rest of America waited for the music to play at the inauguration. It started for a moment, then stopped. And it didn’t come back. The sound technician apologetically came up to Carrie and said something. She responded, “Let’s sing.”

Carrie asked the crowd to back her up and proceeded to belt out a beautiful a capella rendition of “America the Beautiful.” You could hear the crowd joining in.