Hey! I Put Out the Fire! (I started)

Let me start with a traditional fashion magazine question. Who wore it better?

We are seeing an absolutely tone deaf version of Louis XVI, as if the original wasn't tone deaf enough.

After tearing down the east wing of the White House to build a Dollar Store version of Versailles, with food benefits ending Saturday for 12% of the American population, President Trump displays a redone bathroom at the White House in marble with gold-plated fixtures and then flies down to Mar A Lago for a Halloween party with a "Great Gatsby" theme.

This comes after the new budget bill cuts Medicaid and food benefits for a big chunk of those folks, folks like JD Vance's family he wrote about in his book "Hillbilly Elegy."

Vance himself relied on SNAP as a child when his mother battled opioid and heroin addiction. In his memoir, Vance whose real name is James Donald Boman, wrote about his tough childhood growing up in poverty, the son of a nurse who would steal medication from her place of employment to feed her addiction but didn’t earn enough to feed her children. The family relied on welfare programs which are now being sacrificed on the alter of Project 2025.

But in our new "I got mine, good luck on yours" world, what better time for a F. Scott Fitzgerald-style soiree than now?

And JD is catching a bit of flack for saying publicly he wishes his Indian-born wife Usha would just drop that Hindu nonsense and become Catholic. This was before he got a full-body hug from Erika Kirk, the widow of Charlie.

In his defense, in those tight leather pants, he may have mistaken her for a couch.

Now, look. After months of devoting my weekly drivel to this crowd, like a coyote in a trap, I'd rather gnaw my foot off than do it again. But this stuff just never stops.

The President just got back from a trip to Asia, where the leaders of Japan and South Korea knew the drill. Kiss up like your economy depends on it. China though, not so much.

The Koreans gave him a big medal and, oh the irony, a replica gold crown. No, really.

Japan's new Prime Minister promised she'd recommend him for that Nobel Peace Prize he keeps blowing up boats to get.

But when it came to China, President Xi Jinping agreed to remove export controls on rare earth minerals that he imposed after Trump levied tariffs. He also agreed to start buying soybeans from American farmers, which he stopped when Trump imposed tariffs. And Trump agreed to lower tariffs. So, basically, we are back to where were before the whole tariff thing began.

While declaring this a "great deal," Trump has essentially gone around the world to arrive next door. We are back to things as they were under Biden.

But please don't tell him that. It'll screw up the whole thing.

No matter, we are seeing inflation start to move back up, and hiring is frozen in its tracks for fear of what is coming. And what is coming may only be one cranky, late night outburst away.

But forget inflation, look over here. We are blowing up boats that may be carrying drugs. And now we are talking about invading, wait let me look, oh yeah, Nigeria. Nigeria?

My favorite author said it well.

The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists.
-ERNEST HEMINGWAY

But forget all that, look over here! Check out this bathroom, will ya!

Before long the whole place will have all the taste and sophistication of a pair of Trump sneakers.

The Department of Justice has fired people for having the temerity to charge the January 6th rioters with rioting on January 6th. And now, they are indicting anyone who ever gave Trump the side eye.

Colleges, for the most part, are genuflecting in the direction of Washington. I am particularly disappointed in the response from the head of the University of Texas Board of Regents to a letter from the administration with a list of demands and a proposed "compact," in return for more funding.

I know Kevin Eltife well from his days in the State Senate, and have always liked him. But his response to this demand letter was more than a bit sniveling.

"We enthusiastically look forward to engaging with university officials and reviewing the compact immediately," Eltife said.

Thank you, sir. May I have another.

Now, I touched on this last week, but I am amazed at how the only thing that Trump voters can hang their hats on is that he is roughing up and kicking out brown people.

This woman, by the way, has been here for 20 years, had a work permit, ID and vehicle registration, but couldn't recite her Social Security number by heart, and was arrested. The 16-year-old daughter was left on the curb to find a way home.

Prices at the grocery store are higher, Medicaid and the ACA healthcare plans are about to be cut or made unaffordable, we are back to racking up debt at a record clip, and we are about to start blowing up nukes again.

Putin is having his way with Ukraine still, but Trump is convinced President Xi won't make any moves on Taiwan, because he pinky-swore he wouldn't.

Meanwhile, political pundit and fish-stick heir, Tucker Swanson McNear Carlson, had a guy named Nick Fuentes on his podcast, which substitutes for the TV show he lost.

Most of you probably know as much about this guy as you did about Charlie Kirk before he was beatified. Fuentes is an anti-semitic, Holocaust denying, Hitler-defending little schmuck who is now snaking his way into MAGA acceptance.

Don't believe me? When Carlson got a lot of flak for having the guy on, the head of the conservative Heritage Foundation, you know, the Project 2025 guys, defended him.

It's getting weird out there, kids.

All this, and we didn't get a single trick or treater on Friday, leaving me with a bag of butterfingers and a dilemma. But to make up for it, I was awakened Saturday morning by a couple of Jehovah's Witnesses.

Why is it never these guys: