A belated happy Easter. It didn’t quite sneak up on me, but it also kinda did. Kate, her boyfriend two other friends came over for brunch. One of us was a vegan, so that was a challenge, but extra-firm tofu can be dressed up a million ways. I made frittatas for the five non-vegans, a bunch of sweet potato hash with the tofu, fried potatoes, a nice Meyer lemon cake. It was fine. Food is never the most important part of a party; the company is. It was good company, and we had a nice time.
I did, anyway.
But I did fall asleep on the couch after everyone left, or at least dozed while watching “Michael Clayton” for the twelve thousandth time.
God, I remember holidays when they were the occasion for a genuine unplug, especially one that falls on a weekend, but we can’t do that anymore, can we? Not if you want to be a conscientious citizen:
That guy could ruin… anything. I don’t even have a metaphor. And yet, here we are, surrounded by cowards and toadies and hand-wringers, and somewhere out there is a monster who will assume the weight of that straw and, back broken, start planning — or stop planning and start implementing — a plan to damage as many Americans as possible. But the shithead will be cosseted behind layers of security. Someone else will suffer, and he won’t care. It’s just how he is.
So I don’t have much for you today. Let’s wait for Real Spring to arrive and hope for the best.
Jeff Borden said on April 6, 2026 at 8:40 am
It’s always pissed me off that the people who blunder into a nuclear apocalypse will be safely in a luxury bunker while the proles dine on roasted cockroaches in the hell scape above ground.
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Icarus said on April 6, 2026 at 10:23 am
Jeff, that is literally the plot of Fallout, a video game that has been turned into a TV series on Amazon Prime. Good show, scary premise.
I clicked over to The ‘ho Show on Today in nn.c history and wow, so many commenters that have faded away.
I’ve followed this site since Eric Zorn shared it on his now-defunct Change of Subject blog, but didn’t start contributing until many years later. At first, it wasn’t my cup of tea, but as I got older, well, guess what.
Easter turned out fine for us. My wife’s side are Trump voters (though not diehard supporters; they wouldn’t vote for a Democrat if their lives depended on it), but we managed to avoid politics.
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Deborah said on April 6, 2026 at 10:36 am
Icarus “if their lives depended on it” could be closer than we think.
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Mark P said on April 6, 2026 at 10:53 am
I think maybe the end-times people are right. Trump is not the antichrist, he’s the second coming:
“ Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”
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Dorothy said on April 6, 2026 at 11:08 am
Michael Clayton – I inwardly groaned with pleasure when I saw you mentioned the movie. It’s the best. When Tilda Swinton drops to her knees in stunned and speechless reaction to Michael’s speech to her – it’s just tremendous. The only bad part is that you have to wait til the end of the movie to see it. I’m not complaining. It’s worth the wait.
Pea-brained Putrid Pussyman never ever considers what the consequences of his actions could be. Just once I wish something would come back to bite him in the ass, in his crotch, in his fingers so he can’t type anymore, in his face so we don’t have to see it anymore. I’m not wishing bad things on anyone in his family, I promise, but wouldn’t it just be fitting if something did? And even then he would not connect the two.
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Julie Robinson said on April 6, 2026 at 12:16 pm
Fallout was mentioned yesterday by a couple of our guests. There’s now a second season and it was praised as better than the first.
Tubby didn’t even go to church yesterday. (Does he ever?) Instead he was driven around DC, no doubt planning more destruction and rebuilding monstrous, gold-encrusted monuments to himself. Then to the golf course.
Dorothy, Barron Trump is 20, perfect age for the military.
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Peter said on April 6, 2026 at 12:34 pm
Except for the country falling apart around us, we had a great Easter. Delicious food, family over, the White Sox inexplicably winning, cool but clear outside – who could ask for more.
What I don’t understand about General Bonespurs is that he could have easily joined the Navy or Air Force and not worry about winding up in the jungle. Which I would also think would apply to Too Tall Barron Trump. Our next door neighbor when I was a small child was a Navy recruiter, and the day after the lottery ball drop he had all the recruits he could handle.
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Dave said on April 6, 2026 at 2:42 pm
My father, who was in the Navy and always was proud and enjoyed his Navy experience, totaling about ten years, told my brothers and I to join the Air Force. After the lottery, with a 219 number, I never considered it again.
I don’t understand these people who support him, the two Indiana senators this backward state put in, Banks supports him regardless of what he says or does and Young seems less vocal about it. Banks is awful.
Icarus points out that a lot of people have faded away from here, a couple were evicted, and does anyone hear from LA Mary, I hope she’s doing ok.
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nancy said on April 6, 2026 at 5:36 pm
I’m wondering if I should check on my traffic, because I’ve noticed that, too. Maybe it’s time to close up shop.
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Sherri said on April 6, 2026 at 6:02 pm
Why would Trump go to church? He just had his pet ministers come to him the other day and Paula White said he was just like Jesus!
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Suzanne said on April 6, 2026 at 11:32 pm
No, Nancy. Don’t close up shop!
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Minnie Fleming said on April 6, 2026 at 11:50 pm
Some of us have been stunned into silence here by the goings on of the last year or so. I do come here to read and am reassured by the conversation. I hope you keep this site open.
Though I can’t march any more, I put a “No Kings” sign on the front door and have left it up. Dog walkers and carriage pushers with better vision than mine can read it from the sidewalk.
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Dorothy said on April 7, 2026 at 7:17 am
I’m friends with l.a. mary on Facebook. I think she’s doing just fine. I would be bereft if this site went away. But I also understand how life works. And things evolve. For the time being let’s all keep enjoying each other’s company.
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Jeff Gill said on April 7, 2026 at 7:50 am
Speaking of our shared history here: I was navigating yesterday from my Ohio home to my Indiana birthplace, to examine for myself a very expensive piece of granite I’d had carved & placed here (it was fine), but Fort Wayne was a navigation disaster — construction, flooding — so I veered off 469 & trusted long out of date memories & vague instinct to cross town by city streets. At one intersection I looked up, and almost stopped to take a picture.
The cross street was Goeglein Road.
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Julie Robinson said on April 7, 2026 at 8:37 am
Goeglein Road, home of Goeglein’s, where seemingly every Lutheran banquet and wedding took place, all of them featuring sauerkraut and poorly flushing toilets.
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alex said on April 7, 2026 at 9:16 am
Julie for the win!
This community means more to me than any and losing it would hurt just as much if not more than it’s hurting to lose our democracy. I’d be a better participant if I didn’t feel so beleaguered.
As many have shared, all of us want to get back to enjoying our lives without the constant nagging worry about our world being destroyed by nincompoops.
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Deborah said on April 7, 2026 at 9:31 am
Nooooooooooo, please don’t take this island of sanity away from us, not now.
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Mark P said on April 7, 2026 at 10:28 am
Nancy, I hope you keep going for many years. This is the only blog I still read. Hell, it might be the last blog that exists for all I know. I feel like I have gotten to know a lot of people here, and I want to keep up with not only their opinions, but also their lives.
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Sherri said on April 7, 2026 at 1:17 pm
I know it’s small beans compared to Trump’s promise to destroy Iran’s civilization tonight, but doesn’t it seem kind of, I don’t know, weak, that the Vice President is off in Hungary campaigning for Orban? Is the GOP paying for this trip or are the taxpayers? (Silly question, of course, we’re paying for it, this whole administration is about taking our money for their use.)
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Dexter Friend said on April 7, 2026 at 2:23 pm
Peter, I understand your comment; my dad urged me to join the US Navy as well, to avoid the jungle. Like VA math today, things weren’t at all like many assumptions.
I was drafted into the US Army, and only encountered US Marines in air bases as they choppered in from the field; I missed by 3 days of being drafted into the Marines.
The Navy Swift Boat crews were in much more danger than I was, as I treated injured and sick and drug addicts in an old wooden building, with occasionally being pressed into duty on the DustOff helo rescue calls, only a few times: out to an LZ, pick up some wounded GIs, rush off to Cam Ranh ASAP.
I also drove an old deuce and a half ambulance when needed.
I wasn’t around many USAF men, but my friend George was; he was always in danger of SAM rocket fire as he was in flight crews.
Yes, the only reason I was not sent to the 199th Light Infantry Brigade in the jungle/Highlands was because monsoons prohibited my flight from Bien Hoa Airbase for 9 days. When I finally got a transpo out, the plane was forced down by fierce downdrafts and the plane hit hard, the plane skidded sideways in the mud and a wing was stuck in the mud, several GIs were injured, I was not. We had to spend 3 days in survival mode before trucks could safely get to us. The truck s took us to Cam Ranh for re-assignment. A jeep arrived to pick up medicine for the little unit in Nha Trang. The clerk asked the drivers if they could use any medics…so I and another guy were told to get in the jeep and that’s how I avoided being an infantry field medic and the dangers I encountered were “only” terrifying rocket and mortar shell attacks.
I got out in 1971, started school at IUPUFW, got a little job as a shipping clerk, met a secretary, and 54 years ago today, got married. Biggest misstep of my life. That did not last long, only a couple years.
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Sherri said on April 7, 2026 at 3:14 pm
I’d say that JD is busy leaking to make sure it’s clear he wasn’t on board with this war: (gift link to the big NYTimes story on the decision to go to war)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/07/us/politics/trump-iran-war.html?unlocked_article_code=1.ZFA.deed.KTP-qvjmNs9j&smid=url-share
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nancy said on April 7, 2026 at 3:45 pm
Sherri, I’m working my way through that piece, too, and it’s obvious the main source is JD, with an assist by Susie Wiles.
OK, my fan base has spoken. Not hanging it up yet, although I think Mark is right — this may be the last blog in existence. I guess Jim Lileks is still at it, one I used to like, then hated, then started reading out of grim fascination when his career, and then his personal life, went sideways. (He lost his column [ big whoop] and his marriage is kaput [a rough row to hoe at 67 or so].) He doesn’t seem to have any sense of perspective about the former, which is maddening, but I don’t wish a gray divorce on anyone.
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Peter said on April 7, 2026 at 3:50 pm
António de Oliveira Salazar was prime minister and de facto leader of Portugal from 1932 to 1970.
In mid 1968 he had a stroke, and later fell into a coma. Portugal’s President figured he wasn’t going to make it, and he had the vice prime minister take over.
But Salazar eventually DID recover – sort of. Didn’t have much movement in one arm, drooled a lot, didn’t speak very coherently.
It was decided that he would stay on, but the vice prime minister actually ran the country – Salazar would be driven from his home to the office, and do a full day of “work”, which consisted of meeting with visitors and department heads who were actually staff members; different staff members would be brought in as reporters for a news conference; some would dress up as Army officers for inspection, all done to avoid telling him that he wasn’t in charge anymore.
This went on for almost two years until he died.
No reason for mentioning this today.
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Dexter Friend said on April 7, 2026 at 3:56 pm
2 $100M planes blown up for security as part of the big rescue. 144 aircraft deployed to rescue the colonel in the crevices of a mountain…thousands of personnel hours involved.
Trump brags how his rescue was so great.
Trump, that bastard from hell, who said he didn’t like pilots who got captured, John McCain the most remembered. This current pilot was about to be captured, then would have Trump said “oh fuck that loser, that sucker, fuck him, let the Iranians have the dumb ass.” ?
Trump has crossed into dementia. We know that, everybody knows it. But the sycophants prop him up. I can write ‘fuck’ here, big deal, but no President should use it in an international threat against an enemy.
Oh…my mowing , my grass cutting days are over. It’s going to be about $840 for the season but I realize I am a fall risk and also my arthritis makes it imperative to hire it out. The young man just finished up mowing #1. Nice job, even trimmed it all really nice.
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Dexter Friend said on April 7, 2026 at 4:11 pm
Now I am wondering, which is worse, the “gray divorce”, meaning the death of a marriage, or the death of a spouse.
My first marriage started today, 54 years ago, married to a Fort Wayne woman in that downtown Fort Wayne Lutheran chapel; it lasted 2+ years, but I was young and remarried 3 years later.
My point is , if the people who divorce so late in life are those who can’t stand living alone, it could be tough, mentally.
My old HS basketball coach lost his wife in old age to disease, then re-married, she then died, and he now lives single at age 99.
Many oldsters use those dating apps. This never appealed to me after Carla Lee died 5+ years ago. Everybody has baggage, and I could not deal with another family. My social media and my phone keep me in touch with family and I want to avoid the nursing home route. I would not fit in living with a bunch of old people. I would just argue and bitch about everything.
“Fairy tales can come true
It can happen to you
When you’re young at heart…”
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Deborah said on April 7, 2026 at 4:41 pm
I had the same thought that Vance probably leaked that info to the NYT for the article, but he wasn’t there for the first meeting that’s described so maybe Rubio helped, they both want to be president next, but why would they whelp each other? Probably Susie Q helped and who knows maybe Trump himself leaked so he could brag about himself, because in his mind it was all about him. I wouldn’t put it past him. Of course if in the end it’s a complete and total disaster he’ll just say “fake news”.
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susan said on April 7, 2026 at 5:01 pm
Nancy, you are not the last one standing/writing! I still read blogs, because I have always enjoyed them. More than half-a-dozen OG blogs I check every day (including THIS HERE one!).
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Mark P said on April 7, 2026 at 5:24 pm
I’m kind of finding out about what it’s going to be like living kind of alone. My wife and I have always had a contentious relationship, but at least she was there to talk to. Now, since her head injury a couple of months ago, her dementia has progressed to the point that she is sometimes confused about who I am and where we are. I have been trying to teach her how to use Siri to make calls because she has trouble using the phone now, but she is no longer able to follow anything more than the simplest instructions. I am dealing with a transition to acceptance that I can no longer have a meaningful conversation with her. And I am looking into a pretty bleak future for us. I mean even aside from the shithole hellscape that the MAGAts are marching us towards.
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Suzanne said on April 7, 2026 at 7:16 pm
Slight correction to the above discussion. Goeglein’s reception hall (or Goeglein’s Barn as it used to be known) is not on Goeglein Road but on Maysville Road. I know this because my wedding reception and that of my parents was at Goeglein’s but no sauerkraut was served. I actually lived on Goeglein Road in my youth.
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Sherri said on April 7, 2026 at 7:25 pm
Fortunately, TACO.
I, for one, am really tired of these ubermensch who seem to believe they should be allowed to operate without any constraints, from Trump to Musk to Thiel to Sam Altman.
I don’t know if this is paywalled, but here’s the massive New Yorker piece on what a lying liar Altman is: https://apple.news/AuaEiB2A9RdCMXHktCmKFWA
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Julie Robinson said on April 7, 2026 at 8:13 pm
Suzanne, I stand corrected, I’m starting to forget the geography around the Fort. However did you avoid sauerkraut? (Which by the way, always seemed be very popular, ptui.) And did the toilets flush that night?
I remain skeptical if the cease fire will hold and the Hormuz will really open.
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Suzanne said on April 7, 2026 at 8:38 pm
When I got married, the standard reception fare was a buffet line of cold meat or cheese sandwiches, potato salad, chips, pretzels, and “relishes” which were carrots, celery, pickles, olives, and the like. No dip for these things back then. No sauerkraut 🙂
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alex said on April 7, 2026 at 9:57 pm
I think today may go down in history as TACO Tuesday.
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Mark P said on April 7, 2026 at 11:16 pm
The Trump-endorsed Republican has won the runoff for Marjorie Taylor Greene’s House seat. It’s a disappointment but not a surprise, given how many shithole MAGAts live in this district. The Democrat got 44%.
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susan said on April 7, 2026 at 11:54 pm
44% voting Democratic is pretty amazing for that district, though.
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Sherri said on April 8, 2026 at 12:33 am
Trump won that district by 37 points, so that’s a huge swing, even if not a win.
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David C said on April 8, 2026 at 6:35 am
Chris Taylor won the Wisconsin Supreme Court election by a 20 point margin. Dems now hold a 5-2 majority. In the last two Supreme Court elections, the Democrat won with 10 point margins. These elections used to be nail biters. I can see a Democratic trifecta coming so they can finally undo all the damage from Scott Walker. I’m proud of my former home right now.
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Jeff Borden said on April 8, 2026 at 12:13 pm
While details of the proposed “peace plan” with Iran remain murky, it’s safe to say that Iran emerges in better shape, despite the massive destruction it has endured. The Strait of Hormuz, which until Lumpy and Bibi started attacking was free to pass through, will now generate $139 million per day for the mullahs. Ships carrying oil will be charged $2 million, while others will only have to pay “only” $1 million, which is estimated to generate about $80 billion for Iran. Meanwhile, the U.S. has lost something in the neighborhood of a half-billion dollars in destroyed aircraft, military bases and equipment, not to mention 16 dead service members and an unknown of wounded. The destruction of an AWACS plane on the tarmac of an air base in Saudi Arabia alone cost taxpayers more than $500 million.The world has seen a very poor nation –already an international pariah– fend off the mighty American military with cheap drones and missiles. The mullahs are still in charge and may well be even more brutal in its treatment of the Iranian people. Relations with our allies are at an all time low. So, all in all, great job all around Lumpy and Co.
Who made out like a bandit? Those with insider knowledge of this “administration.” The market manipulations during this war of choice have been astonishing to see. A handful of people are getting extremely rich betting on what these smug, arrogant fools will do next.
America First is a sick joke.
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