Navy to Build “Golden Fleet” of Battleships. Happy New Year! It Must Be 1941.
In October’s piece about Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and the President lecturing the military's top brass summoned from around the world to Quantico, Virginia, we mentioned Trump saying,
“I think we should maybe start thinking about battleships, by the way… your secretary likes it and I'm sort of open to it…I tell you, it's something we're seriously considering.”
We scoffed,
”This in the new age of drones and anti-ship missiles. Battleships are entirely outmoded, a realization that became apparent even toward the end of World War II.”
It was a mistake to discount what seemed only to be musings, because this is a president who gets whatever he wants, and uses our tax money to get it. Just days ago along came the startling announcement that,
”President Donald Trump has rolled out plans for new large surface combatants for the U.S. Navy."
Yes, his battleships. The Navy's ships of like designs are called a "class" and the new battleships are to be named — needless to say — the “Trump Class":
"I look at different ships in the old pictures. I used to watch 'Victory at Sea'. I love 'Victory at Sea'. And I look at those ships, they came with the destroyers alongside of them and, man, nothing was going to stop, there were 20 deep and they were in a straight line and there was nothing going to stop them.”
To the admirals at Quantico, he had said,
”And I'm not a fan of some of the ships you do... I don't like some… Read More »
Says He Inherited Biden’s Inflation. What About His Own Contribution?
Over ten months into his second term, President Trump has paid no attention to fulfilling the campaign pledge that is believed to have won him the election: the promise to bring down inflation and prices.
Until this week. Perhaps urged by aides that “affordability” has become the hot button issue for America’s families struggling to pay their bills, he staged a rally in Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains. He had previously said, “The word affordability is a con job by the Democrats” and “a Democratic hoax”. But at the rally he was expected to execute a volte-face and acknowledge that, yes, there is a problem, and to announce a vigorous plan to battle high and rising costs.
But he didn’t. As someone for whom there’s never been a moment in his life when he’s lacked for money, he cannot make the transition into the lives of ordinary Americans. He fraternizes with other billionaires, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who of like mind said on “Face the Nation” last Sunday, ”The American people don't know how good they have it.”
So Trump continued to spoof the word ‘affordability’ at the rally:
”I say it and I said it the other day and a… Read More »
After National Guard Killing, Trump Doubles Down on Afghan Betrayal
Biden’s disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal left thousands behind in the original betrayalWithout any of the careful deliberation we should expect from a president, Donald Trump instantly reacted to the National Guard shootings that killed a young woman and left another soldier in critical condition with a tweet:
“I will permanently pause immigration from all Third World Countries to allow the U.S. system to fully recover, terminate all of the millions of Biden illegal admissions, including those signed by Sleepy Joe Biden’s Autopen.”
Crowd below offering clearance papers to American troops above in hopes of boarding planes to U.S. at Kabul Airport August 28, 2021.
He continued elsewhere that he would “end all Federal benefits and subsidies to noncitizens of our Country and denaturalize migrants who undermine domestic tranquility.”
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced,… Read More »
The Rightwing’s Chokehold on American Media Is Tightening »
Sep 26 2025Many voices across America during the past week insisted on the safeguarding of unabridged free speech after the cancellation of Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show and after no less than the attorney general, Pam Bondi, 
declaring that the Justice Department will “will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech”. That’s the very speech the amendment protects. “Pam Bondi Needs a Free Speech Tutorial” was the title of a Wall Street Journal editorial.
But there is the looming question of where we will be able to hear free speech other than populous ideology and propaganda as ever more media outlets are scooped up… Read More »
"I subscribe to Let's Fix This Country (http://letsfixthiscountry.org) for their reporting and think you might want to subscribe too."
We rely entirely on word of mouth. Yours would be greatly appreciated.
mental illness
Suffering Through Trump’s Insufferable Narcissism
Dec 27 2025
For ten years we have been subject to the inanity of Donald Trump's rampant narcissism, but his recent act of self-adulation is a contemptible act of vandalism: his adding himself to the Kennedy Center. This is a memorial to our assassinated president John F. Kennedy revered worldwide and yet the current president believes we should honor him still more, even to the extent of not just listing his name first on the title of the cultural center, but above Kennedy's. Trump called the change he had demanded of the Center’s board “a surprise”; 
his name was on the building within 24 hours. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt astonished:
"Congratulations to President Donald J. Trump and likewise congratulations to President Kennedy because this will be truly a great team long into the future."
Going well beyond the usual puerile bragging about himself, Trump has here crossed a line with a physical act intended to subordinate another president. It shows him to be a narcissist well beyond what we've known him this decade and that was already narcissism beyond what was thought humanly possible.
We've seen his self-infatuation from the beginning. He told us,
"I went to an Ivy League school. I'm very highly educated. I know words. I have the best words."
That was of course met with derision as was an early reaction to comments about his erratic conduct,
"My strongest thing is my temperament I think I have the best temperament or certainly one of…
Read More »
For ten years we have been subject to the inanity of Donald Trump's rampant narcissism, but his recent act of self-adulation is a contemptible act of vandalism: his adding himself to the Kennedy Center. This is a memorial to our assassinated president John F. Kennedy revered worldwide and yet the current president believes we should honor him still more, even to the extent of not just listing his name first on the title of the cultural center, but above Kennedy's. Trump called the change he had demanded of the Center’s board “a surprise”;
his name was on the building within 24 hours. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt astonished:
"Congratulations to President Donald J. Trump and likewise congratulations to President Kennedy because this will be truly a great team long into the future."
Going well beyond the usual puerile bragging about himself, Trump has here crossed a line with a physical act intended to subordinate another president. It shows him to be a narcissist well beyond what we've known him this decade and that was already narcissism beyond what was thought humanly possible.
We've seen his self-infatuation from the beginning. He told us,
"I went to an Ivy League school. I'm very highly educated. I know words. I have the best words."
That was of course met with derision as was an early reaction to comments about his erratic conduct,
"My strongest thing is my temperament I think I have the best temperament or certainly one of… Read More »
news briefs
Murdering the Shipwrecked and Other News Items
Dec 1 2025
This isn’t meant to be a newspaper, but to ignore the torrent of news that bombards us daily runs the risk of seeming clueless. So here are a few items from the last ten days or so to show we've stayed tuned:
Washington post says hegseth ordered war crime
As surveillance aircraft closed on the first alleged drug boat that the U.S. was about to destroy on September 2nd, “The order was to kill everybody” given verbally by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth according to two involved in the operation, The Washington Post reported Friday. When two survivors were spotted clinging to the burning wreckage, “The Special Operations commander overseeing the attack… ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s instructions” and “the two men were blown apart in the water” that, according to a person who had seen the second video not released to the media, “people would be horrified” to see.
Hegseth dismissed the Post’s investigation as ”fabricated, inflammatory, and derogatory reporting”.
There were eleven people on that September 2nd boat and the next day Hegseth said on Fox News:
"I watched it live. We knew exactly who was in that boat. We knew exactly what they were doing. And we knew exactly who they represented and that was …
Read More »
This isn’t meant to be a newspaper, but to ignore the torrent of news that bombards us daily runs the risk of seeming clueless. So here are a few items from the last ten days or so to show we've stayed tuned:
Washington post says hegseth ordered war crimeAs surveillance aircraft closed on the first alleged drug boat that the U.S. was about to destroy on September 2nd, “The order was to kill everybody” given verbally by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth according to two involved in the operation, The Washington Post reported Friday. When two survivors were spotted clinging to the burning wreckage, “The Special Operations commander overseeing the attack… ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s instructions” and “the two men were blown apart in the water” that, according to a person who had seen the second video not released to the media, “people would be horrified” to see.
Hegseth dismissed the Post’s investigation as ”fabricated, inflammatory, and derogatory reporting”.
There were eleven people on that September 2nd boat and the next day Hegseth said on Fox News:
"I watched it live. We knew exactly who was in that boat. We knew exactly what they were doing. And we knew exactly who they represented and that was … Read More »
morality
What Explains the Sadism of Trump World?
Nov 21 2025
The Trump administration’s battle to withhold food aid, especially with so many going without a paycheck during the government shutdown, made for yet another ugly display of a theme that runs throughout his presidency: cruelty. “We have the greatest economy we’ve ever had", Trump says, but he sees no further than corporate America and the booming stock market and dismisses the difficulties people have in paying their bills. “I don’t know that they are saying that. I think polls are fake”.
Some 42 million families rely on financial assistance provided by SNAP (Supplemental Food Assistance Program, formerly referred to as food stamps) to pay for food, yet during the shutdown, the Trump administration refused to draw upon $5.6 billion set aside for just such emergencies. That was deliberate cruelty.
Two federal judges ordered the administration to tap the contingency fund, but the Department of Agriculture, which administers SNAP, claimed the funds were not "legally available" even though Congress had created the fund specifically for SNAP and just such emergencies as the shutdown. The $5.6 billion wasn't enough to fully fund the $8 billion outlay needed for November was the next excuse, despite the White House showing little difficulty shuffling funds around for other purposes, such as paychecks for the military and the agencies conducting mass deportation.…
Read More »
The Trump administration’s battle to withhold food aid, especially with so many going without a paycheck during the government shutdown, made for yet another ugly display of a theme that runs throughout his presidency: cruelty. “We have the greatest economy we’ve ever had", Trump says, but he sees no further than corporate America and the booming stock market and dismisses the difficulties people have in paying their bills. “I don’t know that they are saying that. I think polls are fake”.
Some 42 million families rely on financial assistance provided by SNAP (Supplemental Food Assistance Program, formerly referred to as food stamps) to pay for food, yet during the shutdown, the Trump administration refused to draw upon $5.6 billion set aside for just such emergencies. That was deliberate cruelty.
Two federal judges ordered the administration to tap the contingency fund, but the Department of Agriculture, which administers SNAP, claimed the funds were not "legally available" even though Congress had created the fund specifically for SNAP and just such emergencies as the shutdown. The $5.6 billion wasn't enough to fully fund the $8 billion outlay needed for November was the next excuse, despite the White House showing little difficulty shuffling funds around for other purposes, such as paychecks for the military and the agencies conducting mass deportation.… Read More »