I have this image of whole families who harbor anti-Trump sentiments sitting around the RCA Victor, waiting for word about the damning evidence in the Epstein files, but that evidence never comes.

Well, it comes, but it doesn’t make any difference. It’s just another hurdle Orange Jesus somehow manages to negotiate and emerge from unscathed.

You have to figure, though, that something is being hidden, that the efforts to foot drag and avoid release of documents means that there’s something in those documents that Trump and his supporters really don’t want us to see.

You’d think by now they would have had time to redact and disappear the bad stuff, wouldn’t you?

At this point, I don’t feel as though there’s anything that could bring him down, other than his own health and mental acuity, or a well-deserved mutiny.

Daily writing prompt

What part of your routine do you always try to skip if you can?

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I don’t really have a routine, other than at the Y, and I maintain that with a certain zeal and consistency. I might skip out on certain leg exercises if my knee is bothering me.

Actually, I do have a first-thing-in-the-morning routine that I try not to ever skip: up at 5, coffee, then writing, then breakfast. That much of my day has been happening for eight years now. The rest of it is up for grabs.

What is happening at SNL? It’s not funny anymore. The premises for most of the skits this season are sophomoric and stilted, and it seems like the writing staff has been taken over by a bunch of high schoolers. The tongue-in-cheek edginess is gone for the time being.

Weekend Update is still OK, but even that doesn’t deliver the same punch. Maybe when enough players leave, the dynamics and chemistry change and it takes a while for the new cast to find their stride? I don’t know, but right now, it’s just a cheap late-night product hardly worth watching.

I really hope they aren’t looking over their shoulder for Trump.

Who does that? Who thinks this way, besides a demented, aging egomaniac?

Oh, I get it. Trump is still trying to outrun the whole Epstein thing. So why not get the media to traipse down another rabbit hole, pushing and shoving each other in the crush to run a story about how he wants the new Commanders football stadium to be named after him. That oughtta occupy ‘em for a couple days.

What’s next? Will we find out that the new “ballroom” will be more than just a place for dignitaries and wannabes to hang out and be seen? What’s gonna be built underneath it?

It’s really rich, and the height of political theater, for John Thune and Mike Johnson and other Republicans to vomit Broadway caliber drama and over-the-top outrage over Democrats not yielding on the health insurance premium increases that will result from this latest CR, as government operations are held hostage yet again in another shutdown.

Thune and Johnson stand before colleagues and press and enemies across the aisle, lambasting Democrats for holding their ground in the midst of excessively harsh and severe (i.e. draconian) legislation that begs for revision or removal. It has me wondering if all of this isn’t just more tactical stonewalling to keep the media off the scent of the Epstein files. Could it all be in service of yet another distraction?

What a filthy, sad lot the Republicans have become—protecting a criminal, endangering public safety, letting the economy crater, offering up legislation that has the patina of some sort of fiscal conservatism but in reality is just a cudgel to be wielded with no regard for the millions left foundering in its wake.

This is ugly politics, calculated villainy, and just more evidence for the many who feel like they’re watching America implode. There’s money for a useless ballroom from equally useless billionaires, but it’s time to scrounge when it comes to lending a hand to fellow citizens.