Yer Captain has been under the weather this week and hasn’t felt like writing, or much of anything else.

I believe we have what is clinically referred to as a “Man Cold”.

I’ll be penning my obituary next.

Speaking of obituaries, the local funeral homes are apparently using AI to write obituaries now. Because yer Captain is a preacher too, I read a lot of them and they’re all starting to sound alike:

“Robert Leroy Smith, affectionately known to family and close friends as ‘Robert’, passed away on Saturday at the age of 86…”

As noted above, I’ll be writing me own, thank you very much.

So, since the Captain has been homebound for a few days, I’ve been able to partake of all the news that is news, and then some.

Despite the sniffles, yer Captain did stand with 1,500 other “No Kings” demonstrators this past Saturday afternoon. After being labeled all kinds of nasty things by Trumpf administration officials, with so many of them predicting “typical Democrat violence” like we saw on January 6 – no wait, that was them! – more than 8 million people gathered in rallies across the nation to protest the growing tyranny of the current president. 

And not a single No Kings participant was arrested, there was no violence… except from a few MAGAts trying to incite shit!

THEY were arrested.

The president’s response to 8 million citizens protesting him: he released an AI video of himself flying a fighter jet over the No Kings crowd and dumping a load of feces on them.

That pretty much says everything you need to know about this president.

The Captain found the half dozen or so counter-protesters in our community just a wee bit confused. One held a sign that read, “There is no king but Jesus”, which made me think she should have been on our side of the street.

Another sign read, “Commies make me sick!” Again, possibly standing on the wrong side of the street.

In other related news, the president has declared “open season” on any suspicious-looking boats in international waters. So far, on his order, the Navy has destroyed eight such boats, claiming they were transporting fentanyl to the U.S. 32 people have died in these attacks, with all evidence laying on the ocean floor. 

The president has declared a "war on drugs", which makes these deaths "enemy combatants". Tom Homan, White House Border Czar, wants to declare Fentanyl a "weapon of mass destruction" (WMD).  

The President of Colombia spoke out against one attack, insisting it was simply a Colombian fishing boat. In response, the Trumpf administration released an intentionally misleading photo taken in 2024 of a Spanish boat loaded with drugs.

In response, Admiral Alvin Holsey, head of the U.S. Southern Command in charge of these operations, resigned his commission, saying he could no longer stomach the president’s questionably illegal and immoral orders.

Surprisingly, two people survived a recent attack, were rescued by the Navy, then reportedly returned to their respective nations – never to be heard from again.

What could they have possibly told us?

It has been more than a month since the outspoken Right-Wing podcaster Charlie Kirk was shot dead on a college campus in Utah. Supposedly the shooter was captured – turned in to authorities by his own family – but the early findings could not connect him to any Left-Wing cause.

And suddenly, no one is talking about this anymore.

CAPTAIN’S NOTE: I found a brief piece, likely untrue, that says the bullet that struck Kirk came from a different direction and the slug remained lodged in his neck, suggesting that the captured shooter was not the real guy. Other conspiracies also suggest that Kirk is not really dead.

Don’t know.

Don’t care.

What the Captain does care about is that now Turning Point USA is trying to get established on high school and even middle school campuses in an effort to start grooming the next generation of young voters.

Parents, wake up and pay attention!

The president’s tariffs have created a crisis for soybean farmers as China, our biggest buyer of soybeans, has turned to other countries for their beans. And Trumpf recently announced he would bring down the price of beef by opening the door to imported beef from Argentina, which would effectively drive American beef producers out of business and still NOT lower prices.

CAPTAIN’S NOTE: I remember when Mitt Romney was running for President. His supporters argued, “We need a businessman, not a politician, to run the country like a business.” They thought they had that in businessman Donald Trumpf. 

How’s that working out for you?

The government has been shut down now for 22 days as the Democrats are remarkably holding fast to not approving a Republican Continuing Resolution that does not include money for the Affordable Care Act. The House is in recess as the Senate has voted 11 times to not re-open the government until the ACA is secured. Senator John Thune, the Majority Leader, tried to convince Democrat Senator Chuck Schumer to get his party to approve the Republican continuing resolution with a promise they would immediately take up the ACA issue once the government was re-opened.

But Schumer wasn’t born yesterday.

So, many federal offices are closed and those who are working are doing so without pay. The president has said he will not negotiate with the Democrats until they re-open the government.

So here we are.

Meanwhile, the administration is taking this opportunity to lay off more federal workers and the American people continue to suffer.

All of that is background material for what I write to you about today, my fellow shipmates.

While the rest of the nation suffers, the president has forged ahead with his plan to build a $250 million ballroom attached to the White House.

The nation looked on in horror as images leaked out yesterday of cranes tearing off portions of the East Wing.

CAPTAIN’S NOTE: The East Wing was built in 1902 and enlarged by FDR in 1942 to provide office space for the First Lady (at the time the famous Eleanor Roosevelt) and her staff.

The president told us the new addition would not affect the current structure; it would stand nearby but not attached.

“Nobody loves the White House like I do,” he crowed.

UPDATE: The cost is now projected to be $300 million and the entirety of the East Wing will be demolished. Trumpf claims "world-renowned architects" have studied it and there is simply no other way. 

But seriously, what builder starts a project without knowing exactly where the footprint of the new construction will be? (My comments following, originally written as sarcasm, are becoming an even greater possibility every day.) 

The president boasts that every president over the last 150 years has asked for a ballroom of this magnitude – 90,000 square feet that will accommodate 900 guests – and he’s been the only one to deliver!

A questionable claim typical for this president.

The $250 $300 million price tag is supposed to be covered by private donations – and at least one bit of extortion from YouTube. He even implied that some of the money would come from him.

With his track record, that is extremely doubtful.

Now a thinking man might ask, "Captain, how did this come to be?"

A very good question, mate.

The president wrote an Executive Order.

And apparently the person he put in place at the National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC) has interpreted the rules in such a way that the NCPC only has to approve new construction… not demolition.

Stupid. I know. 

So has the NCPC approved the construction of the new ballroom?

No.

We don’t know who drew up the plans.

We don’t know who will do the actual construction.

CAPTAIN’S NOTE: I am reminded of the U.S. Embassy we tried to build in Moscow in 1980. The building was so riddled with Soviet listening devices installed during construction that the whole structure was razed.

Trumpf officials assure us they will file the necessary paperwork soon.

Meanwhile, the NCPC office is not open due to the government shutdown…

…which means the construction will probably begin without the NCPC’s consent.

Then there is the National Parks Service, the U.S. Commission for Fine Arts, the Office of Management and Budget, and the White House Chief Usher / Facilities Management Office that also need to weigh in…

… but probably won’t get the chance.

The 90,000 square foot edifice will completely dwarf the 55,000 square foot White House.

One can only imagine Trumpf then tearing down the remaining structure to rebuild the White House more to his awful taste. 

We can rest assured that all of this will be done on the up-and-up though, as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has ordered the nearby Treasury Department employees to refrain from taking and sharing photos of the demolition and future construction.  

 As we have learned over the past nine months, Trumpf is going to do what he is going to do. No one in Washington apparently has the balls to stand up against him.

But the optics couldn’t be worse. As the citizens of the United States struggle to pay their bills and put food on the table, we are outfitting an airplane – “gifted” by Qatar for the President’s use – at the price of nearly $1 billion; we are paying for – not one but – two private jets for Christie Noem’s Department of Homeland Security; and Trumpf is building himself a vast golden ballroom, which most of us will never see or be allowed to dance in.

CAPTAIN’S NOTE: Frankly, aren’t “Balls” just a little bit anachronistic? Yer Captain doesn’t even own a tux! And the First Mate wouldn’t be caught dead in a ball gown!

Trumpf even wants to erect a Paris-style “Victory Arch” on the National Mall. 

So Trumpf fiddles while America burns.

And it seems like no one cares. 

Even those who are on fire still cheer him on.

For those of you who voted for him, I hope you are happy. You got what you deserve.

 

 

Happy Whatever You Celebrate Today!

Faithful shipmates may recall back during the ill-fated 2024 Biden-Trumpf debate, the Captain wrote about Trumpf’s debate technique known as “Gish Gallop”. Coined in 1994 by the anthropologist Eugenie Scott, it is named after the American Creationist Duane Gish, who was dubbed the technique's "most avid practitioner".

The Gish Gallop is a rhetorical tactic in which a debater overwhelms an opponent by making a rapid-fire series of arguments, with no concern for their accuracy or strength. The sheer volume of false, misleading, or specious points makes it impossible for the opponent to refute them all in the allotted time, creating the illusion that the person making them has "won" the debate.

During that fateful debate, President Biden stood by, befuddled, unable to keep up with Trumpf’s lies. 

Biden was quickly replaced on the ballot.

What we’re seeing in American politics today is the Gish Gallop on a far larger scale. Mass lay-offs of government employees, the unprecedented deployment of National Guard and U.S. Marines in American cities based on lies, yet another government shut-down due to the Republicans’ failure to pass a budget or even a continuing resolution, the assessing-then-rescinding of outrageous tariffs and the accompanying lies about who pays the tax, lies about reducing costs of goods and pharmaceuticals by numerically-impossible thousands of percents, the unilateral sinking of foreign vessels in international waters without proof of wrongdoing, the on-going flurry of Executive Orders and the usurpation of the role of Congress in all of this – not to mention that most of this is illegal and is slowly wending its way through an overwhelmed court system – it’s hard for the average American – and the Captain – to keep up. 

And while the president keeps us occupied / distracted with all of that, much more sinister deeds are being perpetrated on the American people.

Humans are capable of only so much outrage before we surrender to the lies.

Yer Captain will never surrender – that’s just not in my blood. But only nine months in, I am growing weary of it all.

The Captain wakes up every morning to a Facebook page filled with outrage.

CAPTAIN’S NOTE: Yes, I have purged most of the MAGAts out of my FB feed with no regrets, but my liberal-minded friends continue to rage about the daily pronouncements of the president.

I am sick and tired of seeing the president’s ugly mug every time I open FB or my news apps or even when I turn on the Today Show. I have a couple openly-MAGA neighbors who wear their gear proudly, which I try to ignore. The Nightly News is filled with more Trumpf nonsense, and the late-night talk shows just beat the day’s news like a dead horse.

Is there nothing else left to talk about in this world? Can we not go for a single day/hour/minute without him invading our consciousness?

I yearn for a return to the day when my feed was filled with cat posts!

I’d even settle for the return of that annoying Farmville!

Since Trumpf lost the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize to a Venezuelan actually working for democracy and peace in her country, others are trying to assuage the man-baby. Israel is considering giving him a made-up Israeli Peace Prize for his “peace through strength” attitude.

CAPTAIN’S NOTE: The announced cease-fire between Israel and Hamas (who was not included at the negotiating table) has not been signed by Hamas, although I understand today the hostages have been released. I don’t expect the fighting to end.

And because today is Columbus Day – a day Liberals recognize instead as Indigenous People Day in opposition to the mythology of Christopher Columbus – Trumpf issued edicts for his minions to reclaim Columbus Day, for which the National Italian-American Federation publicly praised him.

CAPTAIN’S NOTE: Although they did not give him the prestigious “Meucci Award for Italian-American Man of the Year”, which they gave to Michael Corleone in 1979 (a Godfather 3 reference). 

So, instead of Trumpf, today let’s talk a little about Christopher Columbus and why the U.S. recognizes Columbus Day.

Christopher Columbus (1451-1506) has long been hailed as the one who discovered America; we were all carefully indoctrinated from grade school on up. An Italian-born explorer and navigator, he developed a plan to seek a western sea passage to the East Indies, hoping to profit from the lucrative spice trade. He convinced the Spanish (Catholic) monarchs, Isabella I and Fedinand II, to sponsor his voyage with three ships.

Thus, “In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue”.

CAPTAIN’S NOTE: Recent DNA research suggests that Columbus was a Sephardic Jew, so sailing under a Catholic banner strikes yer Captain as odd, but I guess it pays the bills.

Columbus knew the Earth was spherical (as did most educated people of his time), but he sorely misjudged how large the Earth is. Three months after setting sail, he landed on an island in the Bahamas – only 8,300 miles off-course! – on October 12, 1492, claiming the populated island for Spain and the Roman Catholic Church.

Because he thought he was in the East indies, he called the native people “Indians”.

He made his way through Cuba and Hispaniola and established a colony in Haiti, spreading European diseases, murdering and enslaving the native peoples along the way. By his own accounts, he was brutal toward the native people, and when he returned to Spain in 1493 he brought captured natives along with him. 

Columbus made four such journeys to “the new world”, and for a time was appointed colonial governor of what would be renamed the West Indies. Word of his violent treatment of the native people made its way back to Spain and he was recalled in 1499.

In all this time, he never set foot on what today constitutes The United States of America or its territories.

So why the big deal? Why a federal holiday in his honor?

In 1866 the date was celebrated by Italian-Americans as an Italian heritage festival, not so much about Columbus.

In 1892, after the lynching of 11 Italian immigrants in New Orleans, President Benjamin Harrison declared a one-day Columbus Day celebration in hopes of ease tensions between the U.S. and Italy. Teachers used the occasion to teach their students about patriotism, citizenship, and loyalty to the United States.

In 1934, after much lobbying by Italian-Americans, Congress encouraged the President to officially recognize Columbus Day. President Roosevelt did so, but that did not make it a federal holiday.

During WWII, 1,881 Italian immigrants were put in internment camps as “enemy aliens”.

In 1942, FDR removed that designation, and offered citizenship to 200,000 elderly Italian immigrants who could not pass the citizenship test due to, among other things, illiteracy. 

The interned Italians were not released until 1943 following Italy’s surrender.

More lobbying followed and President Lyndon Johnson formalized the day in 1968 – to begin as a federal holiday in 1971.

So, in short, we celebrate Columbus Day due to the lobbying efforts of Italian-Americans.

CAPTAIN'S NOTE: It should have been Antonio Meucci Day, who actually did invent the telephone a year before Alexander Graham Bell. 

Many years ago, when I was an up-and-coming Captain, the local mayor proposed erecting a giant cross where the town’s main street meets the Ohio River. Attempting to evade questions of the Establishment Clause, she declared it was to commemorate Christopher Columbus’ discovery of America. Throwing caution to the wind, yer Captain put pen to paper and challenged her proposal in the local newspaper: Columbus did NOT discover America, did NOT set foot on American soil, and most importantly, did NOT navigate the Ohio River to our fair town. Why would we honor him?

The proposed cross was never raised.

Columbus Day has lost its luster in recent years - perhaps because the Italians let us believe that Olive Garden was authentic Italian cuisine?

Whatever the cause, the it has been relegated to “just another day” in many states and municipalities. It was replaced with “Indigenous People Day” in Berkeley, CA in 1992, acknowledging the thousands upon thousands of native peoples killed or displaced by the colonialism that built America. That idea has caught on and it is this "Liberal mindset" the president railed against last week in his proclamation.

As for today, the only thing I could tell that is different today is that the mail did not run.

Or was it mis-delivered?