Winging It

From Darwinfish 2:

This week’s Big Distraction from Releasing the Epstein Files is brought to you by the Destruction of the East Wing of the White House. (Sponsored by Meta, Google, and many, many more.)

It appears that the “designated excuse” that was issued to supporters is that “other presidents have also made updates to the White House, especially Obama, (who they breathlessly can’t wait to point out that he installed a basketball court, as if it were a watermelon garden.)

Every argument I’ve seen supporting this demolition has been rife with lies. They equate one renovation with another, like tearing down an entire wing with putting some lines on a basketball court, or spending “millions” to “replace a few pipes,” when in reality, an entire rewiring was needed and authorized, for safety reasons.

Yes, other presidents have made alterations. I’ve seen the list. You can knock off about half of them (pre-Roosevelt) because they go all the way back to George Washington. The White House wasn’t exactly a historical landmark yet; it was just the place they had just built for the president to live.

And yes, Roosevelt made major renovations. But he also obtained the necessary approvals.

As have other presidents who followed. A law was passed in 1971 that established the approvals needed. At this point, the White House is a historical landmark/museum, so there is a process in place to go through before altering it. All preceding renovations have followed the established process. There are at least five different reviews required, including environmental impact, preservation of important relics/materials, and Congressional approval.

TFG has done none of that. He lied about his intentions and sent in the bulldozers. At first, the East Wing wasn’t going to be touched. That changed to they might take a little off the end, but do no major harm. And by now, we can see that that was 100% bullshit, because the East Wing is gone. Just, gone.

I also understand that this wing was built when asbestos was the standard in fireproofing. Tearing it down might well unleash a torrent of cancer and serious breathing problems, because there has been no mitigation of airborne particles at all. The whole building should have been netted off before destruction, but TFG doesn’t believe in environmental safety (just as long as it’s someone else who’s suffering for it.)

One angle I haven’t seen yet is the fact that the First Lady’s staff operated out of the East Wing. I know the current First Lady wants nothing to do with the role, but this action affects every subsequent First Lady and their staff. They will literally have no office from which to work. Granted, that may suit future MAGA administrations just fine, as they prefer the little wives to stay busy creating and tending to more babies rather than to worry their pretty little heads about doing any work from an office.

His apologists try to bring up the fact that it’s being paid for by the private sector. That does not relieve my suspicions at all. That just means that the Grift House is open for business. If you’ve seen the list of “donors,” you can see that just about everyone has had or will have business before the administration. “You want your project approved by my government, you have to pay.”

They might as well call it the Olde Quid Pro Quo Room.

Now, when all this started to bubble up, my first thought was, “Why would he care so much about a mere ballroom? The White House has been hosting fancy dinners for foreign dignitaries for decades. Why not just put up a couple of giant portraits of the would-be king, himself, slap some gold shit around the edges, and call it a day?”

No, there had to be more. Since he was having it all rebuilt from scratch, I figured there would have to be some secret “special rooms,” something he’d need to be off the books. Something like a protective bunker, something built with today’s best tech, where he could hide out indefinitely, all the while being able to surveil his domain and keep track of what’s being shown on TV. Maybe even have a studio in there from where he could get himself onto Fox and Friends. He could install a special safe to hold the Epstein files that only he could access. And, of course, his own McDonald’s.

Then over the weekend, posts began to appear on social media describing that very thing. What I didn’t know was that the East Wing was already home to the existing emergency bunker, from which he hid out during various riots and uprisings.


Now it all made sense. He knows he’s about to screw with the next elections (if not postpone them indefinitely) and that it would be too unpopular, even with Republicans. He’d need a place to ride out the storm, but in the style with which he is accustomed. (“Bring in some more gold shit! And let’s set up that hotline to McDonald’s!”) He’ll also need it to be impenetrable, so that neither angry mobs nor his own disgruntled troops could easily drag him out of it.

I hope the next non-MAGA president, whenever that will come to pass, will make it his mission on Day One to knock that fucking thing down and build something proper. Something fun and useful. Something everyone can get behind. Like… the People’s Taco Bar! Step right up and have a taco. Unlimited toppings, too! Whether a tourist, local resident, or homeless veteran, free tacos for everyone. Maybe some soft-serve for dessert, too.

At least, it will serve a worthy purpose rather than appease a spoiled child’s ego.

A Question For The Hive Mind

Is there a browser out there that doesn’t absolutely suck on a Mac?

I’ve generally stuck with Safari over the years ecause, well, it’s “native.” I keep Firefox on hand for those numerous websites Safari looks at and says, “Nope, not gonna open that. Not gonna give you a reason, either.” But I can’t drag-and-drop photos from the web into my blog composition page like I can with Safari. I like how Safari and Firefox can auto-fill the TFA login confirmations automatically.

I hate the thought of giving Google any more info, but at this point I think they already know all there is to know about me, so I’m experimenting with Chrome.  It seems to do 98% of what I need it to (I’ve run into a few glitches and it doesn’t do the auto-fill).

I’ve tried Brave, Edge, Opera, and even a few more very obscure ones whose names I can’t recall at the moment.

So Mac users…what do y’all use?

I don’t know if this is true or not, but it would certainly explain a lot.

Modern Problems Require Modern Solutions

Ice agents are complaining that every time they go out wearing masks in unmarked cars with no uniforms or identification as law enforcement to abduct people, protesters keep dumping pounds of glitter on them so that everyone can tell they’re ICE for days afterward.

Boo hoo.

A Gift From A Friend

I wasted no time loading them all onto my favorite format

The Hot Tracks 15th Anniversary Collection.

Lots of great tracks here, but some of the remixes are absolute train wrecks. Even the friend who sent me these admitted as much. I transferred tham all onto MiniDisc but have yet to make it all the way through the collection.

that’s all, folks. it’s over and done. the once-stately East Wing of the White House has been completely reduced to a pile of rubble.

here’s another thing that’s now a pile of rubble: our Constitution. masked ICE thugs trample over it every day on the streets of our cities.

want more rubble? just look at our tariff and trade policies, and our relationships with our allies. they can’t trust us to be honest — or even coherent — about anything.

does any sane person believe any of the fairy tales our government has been spewing about the fishing boats they’ve been blowing up, without providing one scrap of evidence? our credibility is also a pile of rubble.

hey, you know what else is a pile of rubble? Preznit Fuckwit’s poll numbers — because everything fucking sucks right now, and none of this shit is popular.

Harry Enten: “Donald Trump’s doing absolutely awful in the minds of the American people. what are we talking about? we’re talking about new lows for Donald Trump. he’s hit new lows for himself. Trump’s economic net approval rating hits lows with these pollsters. CNBC, look at this: down now minus 13 points in the net approval rating on the economy. you come to this side of the screen, it’s minus 19 points among Quinnipiac, and keep in mind, we’re talking about hitting record lows for Donald Trump in either his first term or his second term. the bottom line is that Donald Trump is at the lowest point ever in either of his terms…. Donald Trump is beating himself in the way you don’t want to beat yourself: record lows.”

Preznit Fuckwit is the least-popular president since Preznit Fuckwit.

Donny’s been praising himself to high heaven these days, bragging about how the price of everything has gone down by all the percents. thousands, maybe even millions. low prices like no one thought possible. sir! sir! how do you do it?

Donny can lie all he wants, but his pungent mouth-farts only float so far. people still have to go shopping. they know first hand that the price of everything has been skyrocketing lately.

oh, and this just in from The New York Times, as I’m writing this post.

and that doesn’t even factor in health insurance premiums, which are on their way to going through the roof.


we don’t yet have poll numbers on Donny’s desecration of East Wing, but you know that none of what’s going is likely to be popular.

even the White House knows this fuckery is radioactive. yesterday, they sicced their goons on reporters covering the destruction.

“Look away! New: US Secret Service has closed access to the Ellipse park where journalists had been capturing live images of the East Wing demolition. CNN had a photojournalist capturing live images of the demolition at the time. Reuters was also ushered out of the park.”

what a good look for this fascist administration, closing a public park and ejecting the press. they really don’t want We the People to find out what they’ve been doing to our House, do they?

too late, you fuckfaces. the photos are already out there.

gone. just fucking gone. all that beauty, all that history.

destroyed, just so that a broken-inside narcissist can build his tscky dance hall for billionaires.

what a fucking travesty.

our next Democratic president is going to have a lot of cleanup work to do — but one of the many things they must campaign on is a vow to put all this shit back the way it was before Cankles McRottinghand assaulted it. not just the Epstein Ballroom, but also the parking lot where our beloved Rose Garden used to be.


tell me, does Sundowning Grandpa Befuddlepants’ inability to remember who he’s pardoned lately make his ass seem demented?

Kaitlin Collins: “today you pardoned the founded of Binance. can you explain why you chose to pardon him, and did it have anything to do with his involvement in—”

Donny: “who is that?”

Collins: “the founder of Binance. he has an involvement in—”

Donne: “the recent one? yes, the— uh— I believe we’re talking about the same— because I do pardon a lot of people. uh, I don’t know. he was recommended by a lot of people. a lot of people say that— are you talking about the crypto person? uh, a lot of people say that he wasn’t guilty of anything, and he served four months in jail. they say that, uh, he was not guilty of anything. what he did— well, you don’t know much about crypto. you know nothing about— you know nothing about nothing, you fake news.”

Donny’s such a charmer, isn’t he?

come on, media, be fair. Donny’s been springing a shitload of convicted criminals from prison. how can you expect him to keep them all straight?

imagine that a reporter had asked Joe Biden about someone he’d pardoned, and his answer was ‘fuck if I know, I just sign whatever they put in front of me.’

Jake Tapper would have spontaneously orgasmed right then and there, and started writing ten new books. but have you heard a peep out of him now?

let’s refresh Dear Leader’s memory. here’s why you pardoned the founder of Binance, you thieving old kleptocrat.

The pardon of Zhao, widely known as CZ, came two months after The Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump family’s own crypto venture, which has generated about $4.5 billion since the 2024 election, has been helped by “a partnership with an under-the-radar trading platform quietly administered by Binance.”

oh, was that wrong?

because Donny has to plead ignorance on this thing. because if anyone had said anything at all to him when he first started here that that sort of thing was frowned upon…

I’m so old, I remember when Tricky Dick’s veep, Spiro Agnew, resigned after he got caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

Spiro’s crime was bribery and tax evasion, to the tune of twenty nine thousand dollars. seriously, that’s all? twenty-nine large? that’s chicken feed. Tom Homan won’t even pick up the phone for less than fifty.

but Spiro’s real crime was being born fifty years too soon. if he was around today, Donny would pardon him in a heartbeat — and then completely forget who Spiro was, and get pissy with the first reporter to ask him about it.

twenty-nine grand. what a laughably minuscule sum. Donny’s ripping us off for billions — and he’s pardoning all of his accomplices.


what is even going on in this next clip? is Donny claiming credit for popularizing the f-word?

“they’ve even now started imitating me, of all people. the want to imitate me, and they start using foul language. but they use too much of it. you can’t use the f-word seven times in one sentence. it doesn’t work. it might work once every seven news conferences, but you can’t do it— you can’t do it seven times in one sentence.”

fuck you, you fucking fuck. don’t you fucking tell me how fucking often I can fucking say fuck.

dude, am I right?


here’s your hero of the day: Polka Dot Lady.

a couple of days ago, masked ICE thugs showed up in lower Manhattan to round up Chinese street vendors who were guilty of the dastardly crime of selling cheap knock-offs — and our anonymous hero was having none of it. apparently out for a lunch-hour stroll, she saw what was going on, and she was all this fuckery ends now.

here she is, giving a New York welcome to an armored military vehicle.

look at her mix it up with law enforcement, while wearing business clothing. talk about being dressed for success.

Polka Dot Lady is fearless.

we have no idea who this brave woman is, and we have no idea if she was one of the five people arrested for assaulting officers.

Polka Dot Lady, whoever you are, wherever you are — we salute you.


this is going to be my closing message for the foreseeable future:

practice self-care. do what you need to do to keep sane. if that means you need to disengage with my daily posts for a while, I get it. this community of ours will still be here when you return.

to all the people who have signed on in the days since the election, welcome aboard. settle in as we all try to deal with the shitfuckery that’s ahead of us.

we are all in this together, and we are all here for each other.