If Trump Gets His Way Residents and Tourists Will Be Unable to See the White House

You better take a quick trip to Washington D.C. if you want to see the White House and take a photo or two.

Trump is planning to fence off parts of Pennsylvania Avenue outside the White House, shutting down a historic space for political protests. 

The Washington Post reported that the regime and the Secret Service plan to put fences where Pennsylvania Avenue crosses 15th and 17th streets NW, allowing them to close pedestrian access if they decide there are security risks.

What do you want to bet any protests will be viewed negatively? If not a protest, then just at the whim of the big baby in the Oval Office if he's feeling insecure. Easy access will be a thing of the past.

The concealment of the people's house will also extend to Lafayette Square (a public park across from the White House and another historic protest space) where the regime is going to put up permanent fencing. 

Trump's plan is to plant 47 maple trees in Lafayette Park to make sure the White House will be further obscured to visitors and foreign tourists.

The fences on Pennsylvania Avenue will affect multiple organizations that are located on the street, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum's Renwick Gallery and the Milken Center for Advancing the American Dream.

The new fencing will cut off the public's view of the White House and deter, if not outright ban, pedestrians from getting through. The irony is thick. Americans will be deterred from pursuing the American Dream.

To put a cap on it, Trump doesn't give a damn about the public's opinion on his ravaging of Washington D.C.s monuments and the White House itself because he's remaking the city in in his own hateful image.

As it Stands, a paranoid convicted felon and sexual abuser is making the White House HIS HOUSE and so far, he's getting away with it. 

Dying from Laughter?

There's nothing like a good laugh, right? 

Laughter is generally beneficial for your health, promoting stress reduction, improving your mood, and boosting your immune system.

In describing how hard someone laughed you may have heard the phrase, "He was dying from laughter." It's often used hyperbolically but what if there was some disturbing truth behind that phrase.

The fact is you can die from laughing. Death from laughter is a rare form of death, usually resulting from either cardiac arrest or asphyxiation, that has itself been caused by a fit of laughter. Dying from laughter has been recorded in ancient Greece right through modern times.

Three Recorded Examples...

Chrysippus, also known as "the man who died from his own joke," was a 3rd-century Greek philosopher who reportedly died of laughter after he saw a donkey eating his fermented figs; he told a slave to give the donkey undiluted wine to wash them down, and then, "having laughed too much, he died," according to Diogenes Laertius a local scribe.

Ole Bentzen was a Danish audiologist who found a scene in the movie A Fish Called Wanda so sidesplittingly funny that his heart rate rose to an estimated 250-500 beats per minute, leading to a heart attack as he laughed his way into the afterlife.

Alex Mitchell, from King's Lynn, England, died on March 24, 1975, laughing while watching the "Kung Fu Kapers" episode of The Goodies. After 25 minutes of continuous laughter, Mitchel slumped on the sofa and died from heart failure.

Three examples In Fiction...

"The Three Infernal Jokes," short story in The Last Book of Wonder (1916) by Lord Dunsany, is about three jokes "which shall make all who hear them simply die of laughter." 

"The Stand In," was an episode of the American comedy Seinfeld, which featured Jerry Seinfeld telling a joke to a hospital patient who then suddenly dies from laughter.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit, a 1988 fantasy comedy, had a scene where the weasels of the Toon Patrol literally die laughing.

So now that we have determined laughter is not always a good thing in large doses, we can take the necessary precautions although I don't know what that would entail. Stop laughing? I don't think so. Check with your doctor before going to see a comedy? Not practical. 

As it Stands, when you think about it dying from laughter may not be such a bad way to exit this life. I can certainly think of worse ways. 

A Mitch McConnell Mystery: Is He Dead or Kicking Back in a Hospital Bed?

I would love to see Mickey Spillane's take on the McConnell mystery.

 

The famous crime novelist has been called the "king of pulp fiction" and is best known for his character Mike Hammer.

What would Hammer say about the longtime senator's silence? His investigation would begin with McConnell's sudden hospitalization on June 14th when he was found unconscious in his home and reportedly suffered a cardiac arrest. No one has heard from him since.

McConnell's staff keeps claiming the 84-year-old is "continuing to improve." That's it. No evidence. On Wednesday two top Republicans, Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Sen. John Barrasso claimed they actually talked with McConnell on the phone for 20 minutes each. "He's eager to come back to the Senate," both men assured reporters.

Hammer would have called bullshit on both Trump cronies. For starters he'd ask why McConnell can't speak to the press if he was able to hold two twenty minutes conversations with his fellow senator's? You know. Proof of life. Not another MAGAified cultist who is trying to hide something.

Even Kentucky's governor publicly asked McConnell to share his health status. 

On top of Hammer's list would be the suspicion that the ruling regime is trying to avoid any political insatiability. Under Kentucky law, if a Senate vacancy occurs, the governor cannot directly appoint a replacement. That means a special election must be held. MAGA is afraid it could lead to a long, drawn-out political or legal fight.

Hammer would also have known the critical date of Aug 3 is approaching. If McConnell is dead, brain dead, or otherwise not able to continue to serve, they have to turn his resignation in to the Senate. That means a special election where MAGA fears ousted congressman Thomas Massie could win it.

However, Mike Hammer, being an inquisitive sleuth, would have delved deeper into the mystery. Like why McConnell's wife Elaine Chao decided to go to China three days after her husband's hospitalization? It seems odd for a loving wife. She met with Chinese Vice President Han Zheng on June 17 in Beijing according to Chinese state media service Xinhua. What they really talked about is anyone's guess.

Why was Chao, who plays no role in the government, there to suddenly talk about "further efforts to strengthen the relationship between the U.S. and China?"  Hammer would have noted Chao had a good relationship with the Chinese elite and urged her husband to make concessions to the Communist nation for decades.

As it Stands, it doesn't just take a fictional character to suspect something's rotten in MAGA land. The truth is out there.

Why Autonomous Vehicles Suck

Just the idea of sitting in the passenger seat or back seat with no human driver makes me shutter. 

Sitting in the driver's seat with no control is about as dumb as you can get.

There's just no way I'll trust my life with a robot in charge. I'm uneasy when someone else is driving. My wife is the only exception but I digress.

The very idea is ridiculous and too over-the-top for me and millions of other Americans.

It seems autonomous vehicles are going to be here for a long time despite their many flaws.

If you happened to be in San Francisco for the 4th of July fireworks you probably saw a bunch of stationary Waymo vehicles blocking traffic. Their batteries all died waiting in the congested traffic as a high volume of travelers contributed to the gridlock from hell.

People were getting out of their cars, yelling and screaming at the stalled Waymos obstructing traffic. It was a bizarre scene as angry drivers expressed their wrath at the driverless cars. The fact is Americans hate those driverless vehicles with their technical glitches, regulatory hurdles, and economic anxieties.

Companies like Alphabet's Waymo, Amazon's Zoox, May Mobility, Cruise, and Nuro are struggling to carve out a place on America's roads. The challenges run from erratic traffic disruptions, mapping and software glitches, weather and environmental blindness to their inability to improvise.

Private driverless cars offered in the U.S. are Tesla, General Motors, and Ford. There are numerous other models available to Americans from throughout world.

I checked out the data for self-driving car accidents in the U.S. (updated in 2026) and there's been 5,202 autonomous vehicle accidents reported last year. There's no statistics on fully autonomous vehicles. That technology is currently unavailable to consumers.

It's important to differentiate between self-driving cars and ADAS2 vehicles. The ADAS2 vehicle is not a fully self-driven system. It helps with some driving tasks. A surprising statistic (at least to me) is as of April 15, 2026, there were only two fully self-driving vehicle deaths this year. That's opposed to the ADAS2, which are not fully automated and have resulted in 56 deaths thus far.

It's hard to draw any definitive conclusions based solely on these numbers since we do not know the total number of each company's cars on the road.

As it Stands, setting all this scientific gooblygook aside, I don't trust autonomous vehicles. To me it would be akin to watching an oncoming train and not being able to avoid it.

Americans Still Want a 'Square Deal'

More than a hundred and twenty years ago, Teddy Roosevelt stood up for what Americans wanted for a very long time and called it the Square Deal: a fair shot for the worker, the consumer, and the "honest businessman" against the trust and railroad barons who'd swallowed the economy whole.

The framework for the New Deal was built by Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson finished it with the Great Society. For about 30 years the middle class in the postwar years grew faster and richer than any middle class in the history of the world. 

We were hot. Trump likes to claim we are today, but the reality is the country is divided and embroiled in cultural wars that are spreading out worldwide like a plague. 

Oh, by the way... the economy is collapsing under the grift coming from Trump's lackeys and corporations have resumed the power they once had 120 years ago.

The age of Trump has been a renaissance for the wealthy and connected in Washington D.C. 

When Trump visited the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library in Medora, North Dakota for the grand opening, he made a series of surreal moments treating an AI generated projection of Roosevelt like a real-life encounter with the former president. 

His handlers just smiled and tried to pretend he wasn't acting crazy.

Trump profusely praised Roosevelt for his bravery and toughness saying he lived "a freakin' wild life." I can't help thinking what Roosevelt would have thought about Trump if he met him. I suspect he would have beaten the bone spurs off of Donny and called him a coward and a traitor.

Some things never change.

As it Stands, middle class Americans are still fighting for their rights guaranteed by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.  

Another 250 Years of Democracy? Hmmm...

After watching Trump take over the 4th of July celebrations this year it's crystal clear what Americans have to fear.

Future holiday celebrations will be big money makers for Trump and cronies. They'll be about promoting ideology and harvesting donor data through controversial shadow LLCs designed to siphon donor's money away from legitimate organizations.

This 4th of July was the blueprint for future holidays. Because Trump wanted to warp the holiday into another vehicle to make money and a showcase focused upon him, he backed a private LLC called Freedom 250 to take over all the events celebrating America's 250th anniversary, despite the fact that there is already a bipartisan organization called America 250 that's been planning events for a decade.

There's a congressional investigation surrounding the funding and takeover of the 250th events. House Democrats allege that Trump allies illegally redirected millions of dollars in federal funds away from the congressionally approved America 250.

The 55-page interim report accused the Trump-backed Freedom 250 LLC of potential wire fraud and deceptive fundraising of the nation's 250-anniversary events. The shadow organization was created inside the National Park Foundation and re-routed donations from federal funds allocated by Congress for America 250.

The result was predictable.

Activities planned by Freedom 250 have been disasters. The organizers put together a 4th of July salute to Trump and the country that has further divided the United States of America. We can expect future events to be dripping with white nationalism and praise for dear leader. While there's no way around that there are ways of fighting back with counter events and protests.

Come November we can show what we think of this authoritarian regime by voting against Trump's handpicked lapdogs and regaining the House and possibly the Senate setting the stage for investigations into the massive grifting by Trump and his billionaire buddies.

As it Stands, as cliche as it sounds, we must never stop fighting for our freedoms from those who would take them from us.