A very loud voice, silenced: RIP, Roxanne Renee Kaye

 

Born some time in 2010. Died August 13, 2026

A kind and compassionate vet came out to my house early Thursday morning, August 13, 2026, and we sent my sweet old Roxanne, aka Roxy, over the Rainbow Bridge.

Roxy, who was at least 16 years old, was a beautiful gold and white foxhound coonhound mix; that's my best guess, anyway, as we never had her DNA-tested. Some of our friends thought she might have some Golden Retriever in her, and one thought perhaps there was a Black Mouth Cur in her bloodline. I'm sticking with foxhound coonhound. The important point was that she was 100 percent canis familiaris, and that's always been good enough for me.

Roxanne was wrestling with several medical issues and a significantly diminished quality of life, and… it was time. For all practical purposes, she had been on home hospice care since I moved to a new city this past November. I knew even before I moved that she didn’t have much time left, and frankly I am surprised that she lasted as long as she did. But, finally… it was time.

My very dear best friend Joan was with us, as was little Dobby, my Chihuahua mix. The cats, Orlando and Pyewacket, were hanging around too, but mostly disengaged from the proceedings.

* * * * *

Roxy had been my late husband Ron Kaye's special rescue project way back in 2012. She was about two years old when we first saw her, and a dog who looked so much like her that she had to have been her sister, on the side of the two-lane country road that ran by the ranch where we were living in rural Waller County. The dogs had obviously been dumped. Day after day they sat mournfully at the side of that road, no doubt waiting for their people to come back and get them. Their people never did. Like so many other ignorant, irresponsible humans, those folks probably figured it was okay to dump dogs "out in the country" where they could "run free."

Ron had the idea of persuading Roxy and her sister to come up to our house, after which our landlord at the time, Amy, could take them in. She had a large foxhound kennel right behind our house, and being an animal lover, she also took in strays on occasion. We had spoken with Amy and she had tentatively agreed to take the dogs, but first we had to get them off the street and into our fenced yard. That was the most important thing, because they definitely were not safe where they were.

This was easier said than done, for whenever Ron tried to approach them, either on foot or in our minivan, they would run. But they would always come back. Roxanne's sister was a little less shy than Roxy, but unfortunately she was hit by a car and killed. That's what happens all too often when dogs are let loose to "run free" -- they get run over instead.

After that it was just Roxy, still waiting by the side of the road, looking at the world with her big sad eyes. We were so scared for her.

Ron began taking a bowl of kibble every day to the end of the long private drive that ran by our house, and rather than crossing over to where Roxy was, he would set it in the grass on our side of the road. Roxy would venture across to get to the food, but she would only do so after Ron walked away. Still he kept at it, day after day, week after week, and she finally began to let him get a little closer to her. He moved the food bowl progressively nearer to our house every day. His patience was endless.

This process began some time in the fall, and it eventually paid off. As Thanksgiving approached, it was clear that Roxy was warming up to Ron, and she even started warming up to me, as I would sometimes go with Ron on his daily food bowl delivery. It was Ron who was the most dedicated to the project, though. He was determined to get this sad lovely dog off the street and safely into our yard, after which we would get her to Amy's place. That was the idea, anyway.

He was finally successful in mid-December, as the Christmas holidays were approaching. Roxanne had taken to hanging around just outside our fence, so one day Ron opened the gate... and she sauntered right into our yard as if she belonged there.

Roxanne was not overly affectionate at first, and she was still a bit shy, but she was friendly. It didn't take us long to decide that we wanted to adopt her ourselves, so she joined our growing family of four-legged companions. The year 2012 had been a busy adoption/rescue year for us. We had a big book project and were making pretty decent money, and we had lots of room at our place. Roxanne was a welcome addition.

We didn't actually settle on a name for her right away. At first we just called her "GG" for "Golden Girl." We experimented with variations, such as Golda and Gilda, but they didn't really seem to fit. For a while we played around with the idea of calling her "Cassandra," because we both liked that name. But that didn't seem to fit either.

I finally came up with the name Roxanne; I'm not sure why, but she responded to the name better than she had to the others, and, well, it seemed to fit. I gave her a middle name too, Renee, because it rhymed nicely with Kaye. (Yes, yes, some of our pets had Ron's last name and some had mine.) Sometimes when calling her, I would sing out her name to the tune of the old classic song "Roxanne" by The Police. I would like to say that this made her come to me more quickly, but I think it had the opposite effect. I never claimed to be a good singer.

From the beginning, Roxy got along well with our brindle Plott hound mix Ruger, who was also a recent rescue/adoption at the time, and with our two mini dachshunds, Lexi and Lukas, who were fairly recent shelter rescues, as well as with Layla, an elderly tri-colored hound mix whom we'd bought years before at the iconic Wabash Feed Store in Houston after her original person had to give her up. Roxy even got along fairly well with our wild-child Aussie shepherd/Blue Heeler/border collie mix, Kali, a rescue from a culvert in another rural area in Waller County.

But Roxy was a very dominant female dog, and so was Kali, and she and Kali sometimes exchanged words. They apparently had some sort of running rivalry for the position of Head Bitch. It was nothing serious until years later, when Kali was ailing, and Roxy, apparently deciding to take advantage of Kali’s extreme vulnerability, attacked her, seemingly intent on killing her. Needless to say, we separated the two.

In our early years with Roxanne, our friend Mike would sometimes bring his three dogs with him when he visited us, or we would keep them at our house when he went out of town. Everyone got along fine. As for the cats, Roxy was always cool with them too. She ignored them for the most part, and they ignored her.

For years Roxanne remained a bit of a wild child herself, often preferring to sleep outdoors at night in milder weather, instead of in the house. Even when the weather got colder, she sometimes didn't want to sleep in the house, but we didn't want her exposed to the elements, so we would put her in the attached garage, where we provided a good heat lamp. Its warm red glow always made me think of the lyrics to the song by The Police: "Roxanne / You don't have to put on the red light." The garage was her realm on many nights, but as time went by she began preferring to sleep in her large kennel in our home office.

Roxanne was a catcher and consumer of squirrels (fortunately we kept her rabies vaccination up to date), a couch eater, and an endlessly energetic girl who loved to wrestle with Ruger. She was strong and stubborn, and she was utterly fearless except during thunderstorms. Then she would cower under the kitchen table, or she'd huddle, trembling, against Ron's recliner if he was sitting in it. I suppose she thought that Daddy could keep her safe from the perilous forces of nature. After all, he had saved her from life on the street.

On October 25, 2013, Roxanne sang at our wedding, an outdoor affair at the ranch house in Waller County. Roxy and her four canine siblings had positioned themselves in a row along the fence, and just as Ron and I were making our way across the lawn to the makeshift altar that had been set up in a corner of the yard, the dogs let loose in glorious five-part harmony, exactly as if this had all been planned. Well, "harmony" is a bit of a stretch; perhaps "cacophony" is a better word. Their song lasted nearly a minute, and Roxanne's voice was the loudest one of all.

Later on during the reception, when the humans were enjoying a scrumptious feast indoors, I happened to glance out of the kitchen window and there was sweet Roxy, stretched out in the sunlight savoring a feast of her own: the butt and tail of an unfortunate squirrel were hanging out of her mouth. Several guests saw it too, but there was nothing we could do. Clearly it was too late to save the squirrel.

It wasn’t just at our outdoor wedding that Roxanne was loud. She was always loud. She sang for her supper with great enthusiasm, and was sometimes so deafening that I had to wear Ron's gun range ear protection when I was feeding the dogs. I'm not exaggerating. I would often say, "Roxy! Use your indoor voice!" But Roxanne did not have an indoor voice. She just had a voice, and it was very, very loud.

And now in this house, things are very, very quiet.

* * * * *

Roxanne outlived several of her fur siblings whom we had at the time she joined the family, and she got along with all of the subsequent adoptees and fosters who joined us over the years, dogs and cats alike. In late September of 2018, we welcomed little Dobby, also a street rescue and a mere pup barely six months of age, into the fold, and he and Roxy became pals. That's the two of them together in the left-hand picture at the top of this post. And below, there they are again, in February 2019 when Dobby was going through his obnoxious early adolescent stage. Roxanne (who, rest assured, was spayed) just looks kind of resigned here. "These kids today. What are ya gonna do?"

Dobby kissed Roxy goodbye Thursday morning as the euthanasia drugs were taking effect, and he kissed her again after she was gone. I know he misses her.

Ron and I said goodbye to sixteen fur babies in the more than three decades that we were together (and in case you're doing the math, we were together for twenty years before we finally tied the knot in 2013). Since Ron has been gone, I've had to say goodbye to three more: Ruger in July 2025, tuxedo kitty Kuan Yin on Valentine's Day of this year, and now Roxanne. Most of them left on their own, but there were a couple of times that Ron and I had to seek veterinary intervention to help a suffering soul go gentle into that good night.

But it was always a decision that we made together. I didn't have Ron to help me make this decision for Roxy, and it was incredibly difficult. I was so glad to have Joan, who said she would support me no matter what I decided. And I was also glad to have an understanding mobile vet and her kind assistant, who have obviously seen many pet parents through this difficult process. People like these women do the work of angels.

I believe I made the right decision for Roxanne. I am at peace with it. But it still hurts like hell.

* * * * *

The grief over Roxy would have been difficult enough in and of itself. But in her final week and a half on earth, when she was, as I said, under home hospice care for all practical purposes, and I was wrestling with grueling quality-of-life/end-of-life decisions, I was blessed with an extra heaping helping of crap.

One of my vigilant neighbors posted an outrage-bait message on the page of a private Facebook group I belong to that was set up for residents of my city within a city. This woman lives two houses up the street from me; I have met her and we have exchanged names and pleasantries about our dogs. She likes to walk her little elderly dog up and down the street in a stroller; the dog is quite old and has trouble walking on its own. I found this charming, and I had thought she was a really nice person; I'd even thought that we might become friends.

But on August 3 she wrote a post saying that somebody in a neighborhood that she walks through is keeping their dog in their garage overnight. She didn't mention any names or specific locations, but she described some features of the garage that pretty much pointed to it being my place, such as a fan that is mounted high up and is visible through the garage door windows. She wrote that she heard the poor dog barking whenever she walked by, and added that she “didn’t want to cause issues” but she was concerned for the safety of the pet. She asked if there were any laws against keeping a dog in a garage.

And other members of that group came out in force, with the vast majority of them urging her to report this cruelty to the city's animal control department, or to the police, or to the sheriff, and so on and so on. They were all ready to come after me with Tiki torches and pitchforks, and they didn’t even know who I was or anything about the situation.

Only a couple of folks suggested that instead of immediately filing a report, the kind and neighborly thing to do would be to knock on the person’s door and find out if they needed help. One person wrote that the fixation on reporting people for everything was exactly why neighbors in this development have a bad reputation for being scolds and busybodies. Another one asked how this poster knew that the person was in fact keeping their dog confined in the garage for the entire night, every night.

For the most part, however, the responses were expressions of righteous outrage from angry villagers. Some were saying I had no business having a pet if I couldn’t take care of it, and that I should re-home it. One person called me a POS. "Please save this dog!" several cried. They were truly on the warpath.

I stayed out of the conversation entirely; there’s no sense in engaging with bullies. But I spent Roxy’s last days dreading a knock on my door from animal control or law enforcement.

* * * * *

This experience of dread and anxiety gave me a bit of a feeling of deja vu as I thought back to the summer of 2014, when I was falsely accused not merely of cruelty to a dog but of actual canicide. Some of you will probably remember this bat-crap crazy story; I wrote about it at length back in the day, so feel free to skip right over this part if you wish.

For the benefit of those who don't know: A lunatic scammer/cancer quack/phony doctor/racist/xenophobe/alleged s_x predator/neo-Nazi named Leonard Coldwell, whom I like to call the Little Hitler of Scamworld, was big mad at me because I wouldn't stop writing blog posts criticizing him or making fun of him for...well, for pretty much everything he said and did. I had all the receipts, in the form of screen shots of his social media posts, and links to his many web sites. I wrote my opinions about him based on his public statements.

Coldwell had been trying for years to discredit me by publicly posting all sorts of juvenile lies about me, telling his followers that I was a disease-ridden former prostitute, that I was a filthy drug addict, and that Big Pharma was paying me big bucks to lie about him because they felt threatened by his amazing natural cure protocols. During the time that he was claiming I was being paid handsomely by Big Pharma to defame him, he was also claiming that I wasn't being paid for my blog and had only written bad stuff about him because I had the hots for him, had been sexually harassing him for years, and I was angry because he'd sexually rejected me.

Those were just a few of his major lies.

I laughed it all off because nobody who even remotely mattered in my life believed any of that stuff. Then Coldwell decided to try a new tack when a beloved dog of his apparently became very ill some time in July 2014, and subsequently died. He accused me of poisoning the dog. Which is absurd on so many, many levels: I'm a person who not only adores dogs and all animals -- a point made abundantly clear on both my blog and my social media posts -- but I also lived hundreds of miles away from him (he was either in South Carolina or North Carolina, and I'm in Texas), and I had no idea where he actually lived, and besides, I hadn't even been aware of the existence of the dog until he came out with his blubbering accusations.

This wasn't just another absurd but basically harmless fabrication. As a public figure, Loony Lenny, who'd originally gained some prominence as a crony of a much more popular and successful serial scammer, Kevin Trudeau, had a small but not insignificant cultish following of conspiranoids and broken people. Many reacted immediately to the announcement about the dog being poisoned. They were livid. They were foaming at the mouth. They wrote that I should be hunted down, poisoned, tortured, killed. One woman said that I shouldn't be killed but that someone should shoot me in the elbows and knees so I would be crippled for life.

What was scary was that unlike my neighbor in my current place, Little Hitler actually posted my full name, plus he doxxed me. He published my home address and even my private cell phone number, the latter of which I had never shared publicly; he could only have acquired it from a mutual friend of ours (well a friend of his, but a frenemy of mine). He openly invited his followers to "get in touch with me." Some tried. One person wrote me an email under an obviously fake name, threatening to burn down my house in the middle of the night.

In case you're wondering, I reported all of this not only to Facebook, which refused to remove most of his inflammatory posts because they "didn't violate community standards," but also to local law enforcement. The D.A. ultimately chose not to pursue the matter because of "insufficient evidence." Thanks for nothing, assholes.

And in case you are wondering why I didn't attempt to sue Coldwell for years of blatantly defamatory statements about me, a main reason was lack of money, but there was also the insanity factor: his statements about me were so crazy that, as I indicated earlier, nobody of importance would believe them. Why waste the time and energy?

But what struck me when reading the threads about me was that not one person asked Coldwell, "Do you know for sure that Connie Schmidt poisoned your dog? What sort of evidence do you have?" Apparently they were satisfied with a statement Coldwell made about me early on in the drama: "We don't have any direct or indirect proof that she did it, but who else could it be?" Apparently that was good enough for the minions.

At least on this current thread about the dog in the garage, a few folks did ask the accuser: "How do you know this for sure?" So there are pockets of sanity here and there.

* * * * *

There had been occasions lately when I put Roxy in the garage temporarily while I was cleaning her large wire kennel, which I kept in the living room. That kennel is where she spent most of her time in her last weeks, sleeping on a soft comfy bed; she would sleep all day and often into the late afternoon or early evening. When she woke up and began barking, I would let her out, sometimes to the garage, where she could walk around and do her business, after which I would clean up. And sometimes, if the weather wasn't intolerable, I would let her out in the backyard for a while.

I hated keeping this formerly energetic girl confined, but I could no longer let her have free run of the house, because she had incontinence issues as well as cognitive issues -- dementia, more than likely -- that often made her forget her house training. But I would release her from confinement for a while whenever she barked to be let out.

She was never really happy in the backyard -- unlike previous backyards she had known, where she used to love rolling around in the grass and would sometimes spend hours either basking in the sun or napping in the welcome shade of a big tree. In this yard, there are no trees for shade, and the weather is blisteringly hot now. Regardless of the weather, she just never seemed to feel at home in the new yard, and she would spend her time endlessly pacing, pacing, pacing. I understand that pacing is a fairly common sign of dementia in dogs.

In the last few weeks of her life I began taking her out in the yard at night, when it was cooler, so she could sniff and explore and do her business. I would keep her on a leash and walk with her around the yard, as her vision was getting poorer, and I didn't want her stumbling about and possibly hurting herself.

I was particularly concerned about a part of the fence where one or more of the neighborhood deer, half-crazed either by the rut or by an insane desire to get to the grass in my yard, had tried to push their way through the wire enforcement that had been installed to keep little Dobby from squeezing between the rails and escaping. This had happened months ago but I'd not yet been able to fix the problem, and there were several sharp exposed edges that could have hurt Roxy very badly, so naturally, she always seemed to gravitate towards the messed-up wire. Perhaps she perceived the gap between wire and fence and thought she could somehow squeeze through to explore what was on the other side.

So the leash was for her protection. But I know that it sometimes frustrated her, and on her last night, I released her from it and let her walk free under the stars, while I followed closely in order to guide her away from potential hazards. Around and around and around that yard we walked together, slowly, with Roxanne stopping frequently to pee or just to sniff the sweet cool breeze, which conveyed messages to her that were beyond my perception. All I could smell was the heady aroma of the purple passionflowers growing on the thick and tangled vines in the backyard planter bed, and all I could hear were the subtle sound of the breeze and the occasional buzz of a cicada, but I know Roxy smelled and heard so much more.

I tried but failed to keep the tears from flowing over the fact that this would be her final exploration of the yard that, though not ideal from her perspective, was still rife with endlessly intriguing smells and sounds: the scent of deer who were never far away, the sounds of geckos and possibly small rodents rustling under the passionflower vines, the more distant lingering smells of countless other dogs and their people who constantly pass our house during the day and sometimes stop on our yard so the dog can explore or leave a pee-mail message, the sounds of hummingbird moths flitting around the passionflowers...yes, the whole glorious messy banquet of life that pulses on this small plot of land that Roxanne would never get to walk again, on leash or off. It just didn't seem fair. It never is. Dogs always seem to get the short end of the stick.

* * * * *

And yes, as I said, sometimes I would put Roxy in the garage for a while, at various times of the day or night as needed. In her last weeks I almost always stayed with her while she was out there. And sometimes she would bark while she was in the garage, whether I was there or not. They were loud barks because she was a loud girl. No doubt my vigilant neighbor heard her at times when she was taking one of her walks.

I took care of Roxanne as well as I could, given my extremely limited resources, which had diminished significantly after Ron's death. I feel guilty for not being able to give her a better life in her final months. But I think she always knew she was loved.

So those nosy neighbors can continue to gossip among themselves if they have nothing better to do. If one of them were actually to knock on my door about this matter, I'd be glad to tell them what was really going on. But the wagging tongues -- or clacking keyboards -- seem to have gone quiet for now. Several folks have asked the original poster for a followup about the situation, but so far... crickets.

And me? I am grieving a dearly loved companion, and adjusting to a quieter house with a considerably smaller fur family than Ron and I had for many years. I cherish the ones who are still with me.

Run free, Roxanne Renee Kaye. Find Daddy. Sing for him, and sing loud. Find Ruger. Maybe even find Kali, who by now might have forgiven you for trying to kill her.

I'll miss you, my beautiful girl.

* * * * *

Related on this Whirled:
I haven't written tributes on this blog to all of my four-legged companions who have passed, only a very few, relatively speaking -- which doesn't mean, of course, that the ones not written about were any less important or loved than those who got their own posts. In any case, here's what I have:

• October 6, 2007: All the dog she needs to be
  Noelle, a miniature dachshund, was so small that she wasn't much dog at all, but as Ron always said, "She's all the dog she needs to be." I was there at her birth and at her death and at all of the too-fleeting moments in between.
  
• April 11, 2008: A piece of our hearts (or, why some days REALLY suck, Part 2
  Rex the Farting Dog was a big lovable goof of a Doberman/rottweiler/black lab mix. One night he ran away away not from home, but to home. He lived most of his life with Ron and me in the burbs, but when we fled Houston he got to be a country dog for a few short and blissful weeks. But then he had to go, and much too soon.
  
• December 19, 2010: Odd-eyed girl
  Coca Bean Kaye was a white cat with one green eye and one blue eye and one very powerful personality. Not to mention a very loud voice; I think she and Roxanne would have gotten along splendidly, but I might have become permanently deafened. Coca, abandoned by the troubled human who had her originally, came to our home from a place of deadly violence, so fair warning; this is a horror story as well as a love story. A blogging colleague of mine who is also a respected nonfiction author and a journalism professor said he shared this post with one of his college classes as an example of powerful essay writing. That made me feel good. It took a lot out of me to write it, though.
• March 2, 2024: My wild loves
  Long before Ron there was Rick, and the full-blooded timber wolf, Maya, who shared our home and ate our furniture and terrorized the neighborhood for a few years. Wolves, simply put, do not belong under the same roof with people, which is something that Rick and I should have known going in, but in we went anyway. Some lessons, I suppose, need to be learned the hard way. (But at least I learned to howl properly, so there's that.)

Related off-Whirled -- helpful resources:

How Will I Know? Assessing quality of Life and Making Difficult Decisions for Your Pet
Making the decision to humanely end your non-human companion's life is never easy. This is a link to information that might help you. The wonderful vet who facilitated Roxanne's transition shared it with me while I was still in the process of deciding what to do.

Saying goodbye to a beloved non-human friend is always hard. It's painful enough when they fade away on their own or when a fatal accident abruptly takes them away from you, but when you are faced with making a conscious choice to end their lives, this can take the pain up to a whole new level.

If your friend is obviously suffering greatly, the choice might be clear. But if you think they might be suffering but don't know for sure, it's easy to get trapped in a web of denial. If they have some bad days but some good days, and then more bad days and then maybe a good day or two, you can find yourself on an emotional roller coaster ride that I wouldn't wish on anyone. I just recently went on that ride with Roxanne, and I still haven't recovered.

The vet to whom I turned when Roxanne's condition worsened was kind and patient. She didn't try to talk me into or out of anything, but simply made some good points about quality of life, including the issue of dignity, which we arrogant humans often neglect to consider. I get it: it can be a challenge to even think about dignity in conjunction with a being who slurps water from the toilet and gobbles down cat shit if given half a chance and rolls in anything that stinks, the stinkier the better. But dogs -- and other non-human animals as well -- do have a sense of dignity. And if that dignity is compromised by dementia or incontinence or other issues, it can sometimes be as devastating as physical pain.

If you are facing a difficult decision with your beloved companion, you might find the information on the site to be very helpful. It's a good place to start. Scroll down a bit and you will see an excellent quality of life assessment chart that can be useful when making your decision or when speaking with your own vet about what to do next.

Association for Pet Loss and Bereavement (APLB):
The good news is that our society is finally waking up to the fact that for many if not most people, pets are family. When it comes to grief, there is no such thing as "just a dog" or "only a cat" -- the loss is deep and the loss is real. Yet there are segments of society that still refuse to acknowledge these facts, and for various reasons, many people might not be receiving the support they need to help them through their loss.

Your own vet might be able to recommend support resources, but if not, check out APLB, a top non-profit site that offers expert chat rooms, online video support groups, and certified counseling resources to help people cope with this painful loss. And yes, there's plenty of merch promotion as well; pet bereavement, like nearly everything else, is a growth industry. But if you're not in the market for commemorative products, look beyond the merch promos and take some time to explore the site; you might very well find something helpful.

And don't forget that your vet needs love too!
Not One More Vet (NOMV)
This is a nonprofit organization that advocates for the mental health of veterinary professionals and students worldwide, offering support and education.

Many people take veterinary care -- and vets and their staff -- for granted. But did you know that veterinary professionals experience incredibly high rates of burnout, compassion fatigue, and suicide compared to the general public? It isn't difficult to understand why. Vets and their staff are faced with heartbreaking situations nearly every day. They deal not only with the suffering of their patients but with the grief, trauma, and distress of their patients' humans.

They're vulnerable to targeted online smear campaigns or adversarial in-person confrontations when a pet has a poor medical outcome. They often have to face the heartbreak of euthanizing an animal simply because its human can't afford treatment.

And yet they have to maintain their professionalism through all of it.

What can you as a pet parent do? Well, you can educate yourself (see the link above). On a personal level, you can always go out of your way to be kind and patient with your vet and everyone who works with your vet. Say thank you to them. Write positive reviews if they are warranted. And remember that the people who are caring for your beloved friend wouldn't have gone into such a stressful and largely thankless profession in the first place if not for the fact that they love animals every bit as much as you do. 

One more thing before you leave...
With my husband Ron's passing in February 2025, I have experienced significant income loss. And now that I am facing new personal challenges, donations are urgently needed and profoundly appreciated. Here are some ways to do it:

• New: Venmo -- username @Connie-Schmidt-42. Here is a direct link to the Venmo page.
• New: PayPal -- Here is a direct link to my PayPal page.
• Old but still good: You can click on the "Donate" icon that currently appears on the right-hand side of every page of this blog on the Web version. There's also a donation link at the end of many of my older blog posts. In the case of both the icon and the links on the older posts, as well as the link in this sentence, this is also a PayPal link, but it references the email account RevRon -- which is cool, because it all ultimately goes to the same place.

NOTE: If you are donating by PayPal, please specify that your contribution is for "friends and family," which will waive PayPal's substantial transaction fee.

Whether you can donate or not, thank you for visiting this Whirled. 

Two whole decades: Whirled Musings turns 20

Today, July 27, 2026, this Whirled turns twenty. Two full decades. That's right: I've been hobby-blogging on this platform for twenty years, spewing out many hundreds of thousands of words, as well as a huge gallery of tawdry graphics to accompany those words. As I noted on last year's blogaversay post, it's been fun for the most part. At the very least, I'm keeping myself entertained with it.

I like to think I've been keeping a few other folks entertained over the years as well. I know I've angered some, which has earned me quite a few ungrammatical, marginally literate, and highly amusing verbal assaults, the occasional death threat, lawsuit threats, and even an actual failed lawsuit (or "flawsuit" as I like to call it). But for the most part these days, the larger world ignores the Whirled. And that's fine with me.

It's worth mentioning how much my little corner of the Internet has shifted since 2006 -- transitioning from the early days of lampooning the ludicrous pseudoscience and crassly materialistic McSpirituality of The Secret, to tracking real-world tragedies like those caused by the late and not-lamented James Arthur Ray, to extensive reporting on serial scammers like Kevin Trudeau (aka K.T., aka Katie on this blog), to navigating the exhausting, air-sucking era of modern politics, i.e., the Error of Trump.

It might even be said that this modest little blog encompasses a massive chunk of Internet history. If I really wanted to wallow in self-importance I would go so far as to say that I haven't just been hobby-blogging; I have also witnessed and archived a major cultural evolution. Or maybe "evolution" isn't the proper word. Maybe "devolution" or "regression" would fit better.

In any case, I have observed the Whirled birthday/anniversary/blogaversary every year, sometimes with a brief mention and other times offering a more extended rumination about the history and purpose of this endeavor. Regarding said history and purpose, the latter of which has, as noted above, evolved over the years, I have said pretty much everything that I think needs to be said, and don't feel compelled to say it all again. But for anyone who's curious, this page tells it all.

If this were a 20th wedding anniversary, the traditional gift would be china, symbolizing the delicate yet resilient beauty of a marriage that has lasted two decades, while the modern gift is platinum for ultimate endurance. The traditional gemstone for the 20th wedding anny is the emerald, and the flower is the aster. But I don't need fine dinnerware, precious metals, gemstones, or flowers, and besides, this is a blogaversary we're celebrating.

The one gift that is appropriate any time for any occasion or non-occasion is money, and after the year I've had (major move, major medical crisis) it is needed now more than ever. Here are some ways to give it:

• Venmo: username @Connie-Schmidt-42. Here is a direct link to the Venmo page.
• PayPal: -- Here is a direct link to my PayPal page.
• Old but still good: You can click on the "Donate" icon that currently appears on the right-hand side of every page of this blog on the Web version. There's also a donation link at the end of many of my older blog posts. In the case of both the icon and the links on the older posts, as well as the link in this sentence, this is also a PayPal link, but it references the email account RevRon -- which is cool, because it all ultimately goes to the same place.

NOTE: If you are donating by PayPal, please specify that your contribution is for "friends and family," which will waive PayPal's substantial transaction fee.

Whether you can donate or not, thank you for visiting this Whirled. I can't promise (or threaten) another twenty years, but I'm gonna keep it going as long as I can.

We the People vs. The Ugly Orange Stain: musings on America’s 250th

Happy 250th Birthday, America! A quarter-millennium of this grand, messy, experimental democracy is officially in the history books.

But if you're at all familiar with this Whirled, it will come as no surprise to you that reaching this milestone feels to me a bit like limping across a marathon finish line while wearing a ridiculously ill-fitting blue suit, a too-long red tie, and cheap shoes that are much too big. It's very hard to fully enjoy the patriotic fanfare when a significant portion of "We the People" remains completely enthralled by Mango Mussolini and his circus of grievances, which they have adopted as their own just because he commands it.

Watching the toxic wave of Trumpism wash over the land for nearly a dozen years has been exhausting, disheartening, and flat-out ugly, particularly during Trump 2.0. Every time we think it can't get any worse, Trump and/or his allies say, "Hold my beer." So again and again, many of us find ourselves looking around in dismay at the ruins, both figurative and, in the case of DC, literal, that litter the landscape on this momentous occasion. In that light (or lack thereof), the frantic flag-waving and grandiose expressions of patriotism we're seeing everywhere seem like little more than ostentatious virtue signaling by masses of people who, knowingly or unknowingly, are supporting efforts to tear this country limb from limb and throw it to the wolves.

I am not the only one who feels this way, of course. Millions of others in the US are similarly upset by the state of the union today, whether or not they blame Trump specifically or view Trumpism as symptomatic of a malaise that is both larger and deeper. And on the world stage, America has definitely lost its former glorious standing, with both allies and adversaries viewing the US at 250 as "a solid global citizen gone rogue," in the words of a July 3, 2026 headline for an opinion piece in The Guardian.

But birthdays are for reflection, not just complaining.

If these 250 years have taught us anything, it is that America is much bigger than any single demagogue, any single administration, or any temporary bout of national madness. This country, this flag, and this July 4th holiday do not belong to a cult of personality. They belong to all of us.

The red, white, and blue has survived deep wounds, terrible errors, and profound divisions before. A fabric this resilient can handle a stubborn, garish orange stain. It won't wash out overnight, but it is not permanent.

So today I am holding onto hope, the same hope that, hand-in-hand with my cynicism, I have consistently expressed on this blog throughout the Error of Trump. I am choosing to believe in the enduring power of our democratic experiment and the quiet decency of the people who keep it running. We are still here. We are still writing the story. Even my favorite foul-mouthed pundit, Jeff Tiedrich, took a break today from his usual Saturday "This Week In Stupid" column with this message for Americans:

today, let’s rest. tomorrow, the fight continues.

above all, do not let some tinpot fascist wanna-be spoil your day. the Fourth of July belongs to We the People.

here’s to you on this July 4th, America, you great big beautiful fucked up country.

So pass the hot dogs (or vegan equivalents), light the sparklers (but be cognizant of fire hazards, and please keep your pets safely in the house away from scary fireworks!), and let’s keep working to make this union a little more perfect.

PS ~ Here is an uplifting 250th birthday message from the president I miss the most, Barack Obama.

 

It's Pride Month, and the ignoranti are out in force

Sensitivity warning: This post contains explicit information about male naughty bits.

We're now well into June, and although I recently managed to escape rural Deep East Texas, there is, thanks to the Interwebs, no escaping the moronic pontifications of the ignoranti as Pride Month gets underway. The righteously hetero he-men and she-women are everywhere, and boy, do they ever come out in force in June.

Anti-Pride backlash has become such a thing that the sanctimonious guv'ners of some of the reich-wing states have gone so far as to obstinately declare that June is Nuclear Family Month (or, in some cases, "Fidelity Month," whatever that's supposed to mean to a political party that is firmly under the the bruised and mottled thumb of someone who wouldn't recognize fidelity of any kind if it took off its clothes and sat on his bloated orange face).

The guv'ner of Indiana even put out a splashy announcement about the Hoosier State's "Take Back the Rainbow" campaign, by way of a poster/meme stating in no uncertain terms that "one husband, one wife, and any biological, adopted, or foster children" has been "God's design for the family structure and the foundation of society since the beginning of the world." So there, pervs.

(And remember, the husband is the Head of the Household, as we're reminded in a widely-circulated bit of AI slop in which the Head of the Household has one protective manly paw on his wife's shoulder and another on the shoulder of his oldest daughter, and with yet another he is holding up a dull dark-gray cross-embellished umbrella to protect his family from the deadly vibrant colors of gayness. Yes, he has three hands. It's God's perfect plan!)

And then of course we have the usual rank-and-file (emphasis on the word "rank") culture warriors on social media, who just can't stop foaming about the atrocity of dedicating an entire month to "celebrating sin." To give but one of scads of examples, a post featuring a pic of a homophobic misinfographic popped up on my Facebook feed the other day (it's the one on the left in the graphic at the head of this post). The Texas fellow who shared the pic wrote:

Above all, Pride is a deadly sin. Thankfully, the month of June has been freed from this mental illness nonsense.

He does not specify exactly how the month of June has been "freed," but it's possible he is referencing the aforementioned nuke-fampaigns. His, of course, is far from the only anti-Pride hatepost on social media. I've seen nearly identical rants from numerous other folks, including that very same misinfographic, which appears on the "Take Back Canada" page, and more than likely you have too. But this one happened to catch my eye because the person is a member of a Facebook group I'm in that was set up for residents of my city within a city. The screed was on his personal page, but his profile is easy to access from the group page. And he's been known to inject political commentary into his posts on the group page as well.

The shared misinfographic replays, in glorious all-caps, almost the entire homophobic talking points hit parade:

No Pride In Gay Life

THE FACTS
GAYS:
1 % OF THE POPULATION
33 % OF THE CHILD MOLESTERS
67% OF ALL AIDS CASES
78% HAVE SEXUAL DISEASE

HAVE LIFESPANS 20 YEARS SHORTER THAN NORMAL
28% OF GAY MEN HAVE HAD 200 PARTNERS OR MORE
22% OF CHILDREN WHO HAD LESBIAN MOTHERS HAVE BEEN SEXUALLY MOLESTED BY A PARENT OR OTHER ADULT
RAPE AND SEXUAL ASSAULT BEFORE AGE OF 16 ARE STRONGLY CORRELATED WITH HOMOSEXUAL BEHAVIOR
GAYS BELIEVE THE BODY’S WASTE DISPOSAL UNIT IS A SEX ORGAN
THIS IS WHY HOMOSEXUALITY THROUGHOUT WESTERN HISTORY HAS BEEN CLASSIFIED AS A MENTAL DISORDER AND A CRIMINAL OFFENCE TO PROTECT CHILDREN FROM THIS DANGEROUS BEHAVIOUR
SUICIDE LEVELS AMONG GAYS ARE SIGNIFICANTLY HIGHER THAN HETEROSEXUALS
HOMOSEXUALITY IS THREE TIMES MORE FATAL THAN SMOKING OR OBESITY

THAT’S A LOT TO BE PROUD OF

This particular guy's post got quite a few likes and shares. Only one person dissented, far more subtly than I would have, writing: "That's a lot of misinformation." But most of the respondents seemed to agree, and one of the poster's FB "friends" wrote this response:

I have always felt these pride celebrations are just for attention, we don’t have straight pride Asian pride black pride celebrations and why? Because we prefer to blend into society and not ask for attention.

To which the poster responded, "Amen, my beautiful friend."

Actually, His Beautiful Friend, there have been Black Pride celebrations and commemorations for... well, gosh... decades now. And here's a well-kept secret (at least it's apparently been well-kept from you): there's even -- gasp -- an entire Black History Month.

Naturally, MAGAts don't like those either. They resent Black History Month, and they're furious about Martin Luther King Day and Juneteenth being federal holidays, and they scoffed at and spit on the whole Black Lives Matter movement. They've been whining about these issues nonstop for years and years, invariably asking -- and not always rhetorically -- why there isn't a White Pride month or a White Lives Matter movement. Moreover, the Turd Reich to which they have sold their souls has been laboring viciously, ever since Agolf Shitler regained power, to rewrite American history in such a way as to wipe out any mention of either Black achievements or America's history of systemic racism.

So maybe, Beautiful Friend, you should sit this one out. (I should also mention to the rest of y'all that a few years ago B.F. chose a closeup of her mostly exposed and very generous cleavage as a profile pic... so maybe she's not such a blender-inner who doesn't ask for attention. Nevertheless, out of courtesy to her I will not provide a link.)

As for why there's no Straight Pride month, it's really stupid that anyone is still bringing up this issue at all, but for those few who might genuinely be wondering, please allow me to quote myself, from a post on this Whirled a year ago:

...marginalized groups such as LGBTQ+ have been systematically written out of history, excluded, and made invisible. The vast majority of people in the U.S. identify as heterosexual, and their norms are widely reflected in mainstream media. The majority don't need a special day or month; every month is already by default "their" month anyway.

I know I've made this comparison here several times previously, but the constant boo-hooing from members of the default demographics reminds me of a comic strip I saw decades ago. A kid said to his mom, "There's Mother's Day and Father's Day. How come there isn't a Children's Day?" Mom of course said, "Every day is Children's Day!"

And in Trumpistan as in the world at large, every month is Straight Cisgender Month. And for that matter, every month is White Pride Month. And so forth. So let's move beyond that and take a closer look some of the "facts" that the Facebook poster I cited above so proudly shared.

Consider the source, of course, of course
If you look closely at the top of the photo on the post, you can read the name of a website, www.irishlightpaper.com. As it happens, The Irish Light is a far-right conspiracy theory "newspaper" published in Ireland, launched in 2021 and edited by two ultra-right loons named Gemma O'Doherty and John Waters (Waters in particular seems to be a dedicated homophobe). It's the sister publication to the UK-based paper The Light, which was founded by a flat-earther (yes, he really does believe that) named Darren Scott Nesbitt, aka Darren Smith, in September 2020.

Both rags, according to an AI-generated summary on Google, 'frequently promote extremist content and disinformation'—which is an extraordinarily polite way of saying they are devoted to the batshit crazy codswallop currently permeating modern life. It’s a collective brain rot infecting everything from the halls of Congress, to your social media feeds, right down to your Trumpy Drunkle Bob, who loves to hold forth at the Thanksgiving table until he loses consciousness mid-sentence and faceplants into the yams, rendering his forehead almost as orange as his Dear Leader.

As is the case with most reich-wing sources, the misinfo and disinfo spewed by The Irish Light and its sister tabloid would be merely snicker-worthy if not for the fact that they're also potentially dangerous. They are packed with Covid-19 disinformation, hate speech and antisemitism, climate change denial, and anti-vax propaganda.

And, of course, with outrageous lies about the LGBTQ+ community.

The message in the tabloid sheet pictured on the Facebook post is a laundry list of long-debunked myths and fabricated data, largely stemming from the widely discredited 1980s and 1990s work of a single anti-LGBTQ+ activist: a frothing-at-the-mouth homophobe named Paul Cameron. Cameron is a disgraced American psychologist who founded the anti-LGBTQ+ hate group Family Research Institute. His entire body of work has been aimed at misrepresenting gay, lesbian, and bisexual populations.

So let's get back to that misinfographic. Major medical and scientific organizations have consistently refuted the "facts" listed on it. I won't take the time to go down the list, claim by claim -- you can easily find this info yourself -- but a closer look at just a couple of them should provide an idea of the level of credibility of the whole wackadoodle list. Consider it a starter pack, just in case your Drunkle Bob sobers up enough to actually listen to a refutation of some of his most cherished beliefs.

1. Take the declaration that 33 percent of child molesters are gay people, a "fact" that's supposed to be particularly shocking since according to the same misinfographic, gays are only 1 percent of the population.
Setting aside the fact that even if true, this would indicate that a whopping 67 percent of child molesters are hetero, the 33 percent stat is a fabricated figure with zero basis in legitimate science. It originates from Paul Cameron, who pulled the molestation figure out of his ass during his 1980s campaign to ban gay people from becoming teachers or foster parents. The number was the end result of some deeply flawed "convenience sampling," and of Cameron's intentional conflation of homosexual orientation and pedophilia. He weaponized several small, non-random surveys, some of which had sample sizes as low as 17 people, and then threw in his own personal interpretations of old newspaper clippings. Very scientific, indeed.

As indicated above, mainstream medical, psychological, and law enforcement orgs have wholeheartedly and aggressively rejected Cameron's work for decades. The American Psychological Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics have issued statements clarifying that a person's sexual orientation is completely unrelated to a predisposition to abuse children. And decades of peer-reviewed criminological data consistently show that the vast majority of child sexual abuse is committed by heterosexual men targeting young girls within their own families or close social circles. (But I guess as long as it takes place in a nuclear family setting, or better yet in a "Christian" church, it's okay.)

Nevertheless the lies about the LGBTQ+ community and sexual abuse persist. And if you look at that shot of the tabloid page, you'll see that the homophobic graphic was placed under the heading, "Child Grooming."

2. Then there's the claim that the lifespan of gays on average is 20 years shorter than that of heterosexuals.
That has its origin in another flawed 1990s study by Cameron, who invented the statistic by gathering a couple thousand obituaries from old LGBTQ+ community newspapers printed during the height of the 1980s and early 1990s AIDS crisis. Then he calculated the average age of the people in those obituaries and declared that to be the "average lifespan" of all gay people. Demographers jeered at the study because it totally ignored how a generational epidemic -- AIDS -- artificially skewed death ages in the 1980s. Moreover it was based on a time when young people were far more likely to be out and active in urban gay communities than elderly people.

Times have changed, though. Drastically. Although LGBTQ life expectancy is a subject of ongoing research, legitimate modern census and actuarial data show that the actual gap in life expectancy between gay individuals and heterosexual individuals is roughly one year. (That's 19 less than 20, for math-impaired MAGAts.) And the consensus among public health researchers is that even this minor gap is almost entirely driven by "minority stress," which includes higher rates of mental health struggles, suicide, and lack of healthcare access caused by societal homophobia and discrimination. Nice work, MAGAts. You're helping to kill a bunch of people who have done nothing to harm you or society. Jeezus would be so proud. No, not really. But Hitler sure would.

Because his "research" relied on fabricated data, misrepresentations of valid science, and serious methodological bias, Paul Cameron was formally expelled from the American Psychological Association in 1983 for violating their code of ethics. He was subsequently condemned by the American Sociological Association, the Canadian Psychological Association, and the Nebraska Psychological Association.

The fact that Cameron's exact sorry statistics are still being printed in The Irish Light in 2026, and shared by presumably educated adults on their social media feeds, shows that modern far-right anti-LGBTQ+ propaganda is deeply dependent upon the recycling of thoroughly debunked, decades-old hate literature.

Random musings on dicks of various kinds
I was particularly amused by one statement on the Irish Light rant:

GAYS BELIEVE THE BODY’S WASTE DISPOSAL UNIT IS A SEX ORGAN

This is apparently a reference to anal intercourse. I get it. The 'phobes think it's disgusting to use the poop chute as a playground. For me, though, this just raises a question: isn't urine waste too? And don't people with penises, regardless of their sexual orientation, pee and ejaculate out of the very same organ, which technically is a sex organ? I mean, sure, the ejaculate and the urine originate in separate tubes, but they both come out of the urethra to get to their ultimate destinations.

By the definition implied in the screed in The Irish Light, anyone who uses the same organ to dispose of waste and to have sex is a pervert. So if you have a penis, and you use it both to pee and to have sex, even if that sex is with your lawfully wedded person who has a vagina, shame on you. If you want to get right with God, you gotta give up either peeing or sexing.

And speaking of dicks, can we talk about Trump for a moment? Our righteous Facebook poster reminded us that above all, pride is a deadly sin. This is a guy who praises Trump on his personal profile and has shared posts accusing anyone who criticizes Trump of having a "sheep brain" or suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome. I'm thinking, though, that perhaps our Trumpster needs to take a closer look at the fact that his Orange Overlord is the fat festering embodiment not only of pride, but also of the six other deadly sins: greed (avarice), lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth.

And while we're on the subject, let's not rule out the possibility that Trump himself might possibly be a little bit on the gay-ish side himself (not that there's anything wrong with that!). There's no denying that he is constantly obsessing over muscly, manly-looking men.

Here is a lovely montage of clips of Cantaloupe Caligula paying homage to male beauty.

And who can forget that time on the 2024 campaign trail when Trump riffed about a dead golfer's schlong?

Just saying.

* * * * *

All righty then, enough of that. It's time to get out there and celebrate Pride Month, whether you are LGBTQ+ or merely (like me) a proud ally. Love is love; embrace and rejoice in it. Fly your rainbow colors proudly. Play your Randy Rainbow reels loudly. Make those MAGAts clutch their pearls and their crosses and their Trump bibles closer to their hollow breasts as it finally dawns on them there is absolutely nothing they can do to stop the love that, after centuries of suppression, finally dares not just to speak its name, but to shout it to the stars.

Related on this Whirled:

June 2025: Celebrate Pride Month: No Kings, but bring on the queens! Last year's offering, ahead of the first No Kings march, which took place on June 14, Caligula's birthday. Good news: there's gonna be another No Kings affiliated event this June 14: Rise Up, Sing Out!.

June 2015: Love wins, but hate is still throwing tantrums over there in the corner: A celebration of the June 26, 2015 decision by SCOTUS to legalize same-sex marriage across the country. Clearly it's a right that couldn't be taken for granted back then, and is in danger now from the GOP.

Damn, I miss having a real president

He has been out of office since January 2017, but I still miss Barack Obama. Every day that some brand new atrocity is committed by #neverwasmypresident Donald John Trump and/or a member of his cartel, I am reminded all over again why I miss having a real president. And don't get me wrong; I liked Biden a lot too and I miss him as well. But Obama is the guy I miss the most.

Barack-bashing MAGAts have been insisting for years that Obama was absolutely the most divisive president America has had in modern times or maybe ever. They won't even listen to any argument suggesting that Obama wasn't the problem.

There was deep division in the US during the Obama years, certainly, but the MAGAts are looking in the totally wrong direction for blame. It wasn't Obama who did the dividing. It was the Obama haters (most of whom who later morphed into MAGAts); they simply couldn't stand the thought of a Black man in the White House -- much less a sharp, articulate Black man.

And they will argue until they're red in the face that they are not, not, NOT racists and that they opposed Barack Obama because reasons. But I'm not buying it.

Austin-based content creator and self-described public figure Allen Clifton wrote in a May 30, 2026 Facebook post that he's sick of hearing Trump supporters imply that opposition to Trump is comparable in any way to opposition to Obama. Clifton wrote:

When Obama was in office, Republicans went after him for the dumbest crap I've ever seen. I saw segments mocking him shopping for Christmas gifts for his daughter. There was one where they belittled him for wearing a helmet while riding a bike. They pushed conspiracies about whether or not he was an American that were completely unfounded. They called him a Muslim, even though he had a well-documented history of Christian church attendance — unlike Trump. Many still believe Michelle Obama is actually a man and called her a communist for trying to encourage Americans to work out more and eat healthier. You know, what Trump supporters today call "MAHA," proving, once again, that they don't really have any real values other than opposing whatever Democrats support...

And then of course there was that whole tan-suit scandal, not to mention the brouhaha when Michelle exercised her right to bare arms. Obama haters loudly jeered all of it. In many cases they were outraged. And yet nothing Trump does seems to bother them in the least.

There are so many legitimate reasons to loathe what Trump has done and continues to do that it's hard to list them all. But Allen Clifton managed to do a pretty good job of it, producing a list that illustrates that Obama's trespasses, whatever they might have been, were ludicrously minor compared to Trump's. Unlike Trump...

• Obama never publicly and personally attacked judges when they ruled against him.
• Obama didn't sue his own IRS, of which he is the executive, for $10 billion, only to have his Department of Justice "settle" the lawsuit for $1.8 billion in a slush fund he planned to personally control.
• Obama didn't name his personal attorney the acting attorney general.
• Obama didn't defend the killing of unarmed American citizens by federal agents, labeling those unarmed Americans as "domestic terrorists."
• Obama didn't sue universities that taught material that he disagreed with.
• Obama didn't sue media outlets for reporting stories about him he didn't like.
• Obama didn't gut funding for medical research.
• Obama didn't appoint his top political donor, and the richest man in the world, to a very powerful position within our government.
• Obama never tried to put his name on U.S. currency, get a new piece of currency produced depicting his face, put his face on passports, put banners of himself on government buildings, or push for the construction of ballrooms or arches he wants named after himself.
• Obama didn't even come up with "Obamacare," that was Republicans trying to slander the former president. The bill's actually the Affordable Care Act. So, even his signature piece of legislation, he didn't name after himself. But Trump did name his online prescription site and child savings accounts after himself.
• Obama didn't constantly call for media personalities to be fired for criticizing him.
• Obama didn't have his FCC go after networks for not firing those individuals.
• Obama didn't order the Department of Justice to go after his enemies.
• Obama didn't fire his attorney general for not bowing down and doing everything he told them. He damn sure didn't call files related to child predators a "total hoax," as Trump's called the Epstein files.
• Obama wasn't out blatantly manipulating the markets and engaging in insider trading.
• Obama didn't accept a $400 million plane from Qatar he then used hundreds of millions of U.S. tax dollars to fix up, which he plans to take with him when he leaves office.
• Obama didn't call elections that didn't go his party's way "rigged."
• Obama didn't order "blue states" to unethically redraw congressional maps, trying to give Democrats an advantage in midterm elections.
• Obama didn't constantly attack our allies while kissing the ass of dictators like Vladimir Putin.
• Obama didn't start a war with Iran he promised he wouldn't start.
• Obama didn't run up record deficits, he actually reduced them.
• Obama didn't try to take over the Kennedy Center and put his name on it.
• Obama didn't personally and publicly attack Supreme Court justices for ruling against his policies.
• Obama didn't pardon over 1,600 criminals who attacked our Capitol.
• Obama didn't incite an insurrection against our free and fair elections.
• Obama didn't publicly attack his political opponents with childish personal names and insults.
• Obama didn't try to politicize the United States military.
• Obama didn't publicly celebrate the death of opponents.
• Obama didn't mock the deaths of people who didn't support him.
• Obama didn't call Republicans "the enemy of the people" or Fox News "a network that hates the country."
• Obama didn't attack former First Ladies.
• Obama didn't call his predecessors "traitors" and accuse them of treason.
• Obama didn't go after and try to primary any member of Congress who voted against him.
• Obama didn't run his 2012 campaign claiming that if he was going to lose, it would be because it was "totally rigged."
• Obama didn't say of POWs, "he likes people who weren't captured."
• Obama didn't desecrate Arlington National Cemetery by staging a photo-op there he used in a campaign ad, which goes completely against the policies of that sacred place.
• Obama didn't say he deserves a Congressional Medal of Honor.
• Obama didn't constantly whine about wanting a Nobel Peace Prize.
• Obama didn't constantly demand "loyalty" and attack anyone who had stances in opposition to his.
• Obama didn't get accused by nearly 30 women of sexual assault.
• Obama didn't cheat on all of his wives.
• Obama didn't build a business reputation on screwing over small businesses and contractors.
• Obama didn't go around saying everything he's done is better than it's ever been done.
• Obama didn't constantly float the idea of trying to run for an unconstitutional third term.
• Obama didn't create a crypto business in which he has used to funnel billions into his personal net worth by donors that are completely anonymous.
• Obama didn't shill merchandise from an online store to make himself money.
• Obama didn't spend hours every day sharing conspiracies, self-serving nonsense, and personal attacks against opponents on social media.
• Obama didn't try to withhold disaster funding from "red states" when natural disasters struck.
• Obama didn't publicly state he "hated" anyone who didn't vote for and support him.

Here's that link again.

I'm far from the only person to speculate that Trump and Trumpism were in large part a massive racist backlash to having a Black man, and a Democrat to boot, in the White House. The fallout began on election night 2008, has never really let up, and may yet turn America into a failed state. So I shudder to think of the explosive reactions that would have occurred if Kamala Harris -- who's both Black and a woman -- had won the White House in 2024.

I still have what I think is a reasonable amount hope for this country, but there's one point I will state unequivocally: America needs to grow the f--k up and accept that cisgender heterosexual white males aren't the only types of humans who are fit to hold the most powerful role in America. It's too bad that this acceptance won't happen in time for the country's 250th birthday bash. But maybe it'll happen someday, and hopefully well before another half century goes by and the nation is celebrating its 300th.

This of course is assuming that the American Experiment doesn't completely collapse under the weight of Trumpism well before then. At this point, it could go either way.

As May gives way to June and we all brace ourselves for whatever fresh hell Donny Demento and his minions have in store for us this month, I will continue to miss the man in the tan suit, along with his bare-armed commie wife who dared to suggest that Americans should be getting more exercise and eating healthier diets. Millions of other folks feel the same way I do, and that fact continues to torment Donny every day of his miserable life.

Let us prey: Cheeto Jeezus wants to save the soul of 'Murica

I can't run no more
With that lawless crowd
While the killers in high places
Say their prayers out loud

~ Leonard Cohen, "Anthem" (from The Future, 1992)

Mark your calendar for May 17, Year of Our Lard 2026. For that is the day that #neverwasmypresident Donald John Trump, aka Cheeto Jeezus, aka Mango Messiah, aka Cantaloupe Caligula, has declared that he shall lead a "National Jubilee of Prayer, Praise, and Thanksgiving" on the National Mall to "rededicate America as one nation under God."

Trump first announced this momentous event back on February 5, 2026 at the National Prayer Breakfast, where he boasted about his regime's efforts to forcefully shove religion back into the public arena, whether the public arena wants it or not. (When you're a star Messiah, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab 'em by the 1A.)

The upcoming National Jubilee is intended to be part of the greater celebration of America's 250th birthday. And the MAGAts who consider themselves People Of Faith are beside themselves with bliss; they've been all over social media with words of praise for the Orange Overlord. They practically wet themselves with reverent joy over the fact that their idol sat at his desk and droned out a few passages from the Old Testament during a marathon Bible reading on April 21. And this May event has had them super psyched for months.

I have written a lot on this Whirled over the years about the cynicism and hypocrisy of Christofascist leaders who suck up to Trump, and about the gullibility or naivete or willful blindness or (in some cases) the stupidity of his followers who have apparently swallowed his religious shtick. And many millions of other words have been written by others about Trump's utter lack of biblical virtues. So I don't need to go over those points in detail; they speak for themselves. (If you want to review some of those points anyway on your own time, here, from a Bible believer and self-described Christ-follower, are just 21 of them.)

I do, however, feel a need to reiterate another oft-repeated point: the idea of Trump as any type of savior or religious leader is screamingly hilarious on one level, but dangerous on another -- at least it's dangerous if you actually believe in the First Amendment and are worried about the crass and unprecedented politicization of religion that we're seeing from the Turd Reich. That politicization began during Trump's first reign and has accelerated alarmingly since he slithered into office again.

In an April 27, 2026 editorial on The Hill, opinion contributor Svante Myrick wrote that April has been a strange month for American Christians whose religious identity is not bound up with the adoration of Trump. For instance:

We watched a president who postures as a defender of the faith pollute the holiest days of the Christian calendar by invoking God while making profane threats to commit war crimes and annihilate an entire civilization.

The same president offended Christians of all stripes by sharing an AI-generated image of himself appearing as a Christ-like figure, surrounded by prayerful and adoring supporters and carrying out a miraculous healing. Oh, yeah, and he responded to the pope’s calls for peace by rudely insulting the spiritual leader of the world’s Catholics.

We also had Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, our self-proclaimed “secretary of war” and bloodthirsty crusader wannabe, treating the U.S. attack on the Iranian regime as a holy war to be waged without mercy and with “overwhelming violence.” Meanwhile, he urged Americans to pray for American victory “in the name of Christ” — or was it in the name of Quentin Tarantino? 

Religious MAGAts will brush all of that off, saying that what's important is that Trump is returning America to the "Christian" roots in which it was founded. Oh, good lord, how many times have we heard that lame rationalization? Here's Svante Mryick again:

It has indeed been a rough year for Americans who support the religious freedom and pluralism that thrive here thanks to the constitutional separation of church and state.

Trump’s devotees claim that he was anointed by God to carry out a divine mission to save America from people they see as their enemies — secularists, feminists, gay and transgender people, non-white immigrants — and to ensure that America remains, or returns to being, their version of a “Christian nation.” 

But that’s more fantasy than history. If our country’s founders, who were unhappily familiar with Europe’s state churches, wanted to create a “Christian nation,” they could have written Christian dogma into the Constitution. Instead, they included a ban on any official national religion and an explicit ban on any religious test for public office.  

So no matter what George Washington or some other Founding Father did or didn't say about faith and God and all of that stuff, the brand of Christian nationalism that Trump is enabling is running roughshod over all of our freedoms, and not just our religious freedoms.

And Trump himself as a leader of a national prayer event? Gimme a break. The man who has spent a lifetime worshiping at the altar of his own ego is now calling on the rest of us to bow our heads in reverence. It’s a level of hypocrisy so dense it could bend light.

Those of us -- and there are many millions of us -- who don't have orange-stained noses from spending so much time rooting around in Trump's secondary mouth can see what this event actually is. It’s not a spiritual awakening; it’s a campaign rally with a gospel soundtrack. It is the ultimate branding exercise. By wrapping himself in the flag and holding a cross, he is trying to sell himself as the divinely appointed savior of the nation.

Of course he has a lot of support for that branding from the evangelical "leaders" who regularly infest what my favorite potty-mouthed pundit, Jeff Tiedrich, calls the Oval Bordello, where said "leaders" regularly gather 'round their orange savior and pray over him while he slumps at his desk with eyes closed and hands folded, looking properly humble and reverent. (Actually, his eyes are most likely shut because he's snoozing yet again. Tiedrich has often referred to him as a "narcoleptic old fart factory.") Also lending support to the con is the Christofascist wing of the GOP, which in recent years has become much more than a wing; it's practically the whole big fat stupid turkey. And naturally there are the gullible MAGAts who take everything that their Cheeto Jeezus says at face value.

And that prayer jubilee? It’s classic political theater, designed to keep Trump's base energized while the rest of us are left shaking our heads in disbelief or disgust. It's all just another way for the career grifters to prey on the gullible. I can already see the merch table now: "Make America Pray Again" hats, gold-plated Trump Bibles and gaudy, overpriced jewelry (he's an old hand at that), and maybe some commemorative holy water bottled straight from the tap at Mar-a-Lago or one of Trump's other vermin-infested golf motels (as Tiedrich calls them).

Rededicating America to God is a lovely sentiment for those who are religious, though not so much for those who aren't, or those who are of the "wrong" religion by Christofascist standards, or those who care about the separation-of-church-and-state angle of the First Amendment. And having a rededication-to-God ceremony led by a man whose entire public persona is built on pride, greed, and wrath feels less like a holy moment and more like a rejected movie script for a third-rate political satire.

So on May 17, as the crowd of the faithful gathers on the Mall to gawk at the consecrated carnival barkers who will be in the spotlight oozing their religion, I'll be here in the corner, longing for the day that America is delivered from Mango Messiah and his merry band of ersatz spiritual leaders who constantly urge us all to pray while they continue, endlessly, to prey.