Damn, I miss having a real president

He has been out of office for nearly nine and a half years now, but I still miss Barack Obama. Every day that some brand new atrocity is committed by #neverwasmypresident Donald John Trump and/or his flying monkeys (no offense intended to monkeys or to flying creatures of any type), 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. But 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 up Trump's ass 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 foul-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 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.

March marches into history and the Whirled marches on

Trump just couldn't stay away from something that was about him...

Once again, I missed tons of opportunities this month to hold forth here on some of the jaw-dropping number of atrocities that continue to flood the zone in accordance with Slovenly Steve "Three Shirts" Bannon's master plan. There was so much to write about, and I did so much not-writing. Go ahead, call me a slacker. I can take it.

This time my lame excuse was an alarming and, frankly, life-threatening emergency due to a hemoglobin level that had dropped way down to 4.8 (trust me, that is very bad). After my new PCP literally begged me to go to the ER, my best friend/sister-by-choice took me, and I was admitted to the hospital for two days for multiple blood transfusions and iron infusions and... well, I won't bore you with the details right now, except to say that more than one provider at the hospital expressed amazement that I was still up and walking around. Also, my years-long suspicion that I had severe iron deficiency anemia was spot-on, though tests also uncovered a few other conditions that were most likely either caused or exacerbated by the increasingly serious anemia.

The bottom line is that I seem to be on the mend, but am girding up for a deluge of hospital and individual provider bills that I will not be able to pay due to lack of insurance and money (you can help out with the latter if you're so inclined, see note at the end of this post).

But the Whirled goes on, and I certainly have every intention of going on myself. And even while I was reclining in my hospital bed hooked up to the blood transfusion apparatus, I was following the news, as I've also been doing since I returned home. Doomscrolling never takes a holiday. Indeed, there are countless things to inspire anger and despair as the ruthless American Reich regime marches on -- in recent times, most notably, the illegal, immoral, and totally stupid war in Iran, initiated by the self-described "Peace President" and his buddy Bibi in Israel. One of the latest newsbits is Trump's blatant threat to commit war crimes if he doesn't get his way.

And MAGA is all, "Yeah, baby, bring on the End Times. We're going to end up in Paradise with Jeezus, and anyone who doesn't agree with us will be burning in hell."

But even as we teeter on the edge of the End Times, there is still reason for hope, as symbolized most powerfully in this past weekend's No Kings mass marches and demonstrations, which by most accounts drew record numbers of protesters who, as in the past two No Kings events, are NOT being paid by George Soros or any other real or imaginary reich-wing scapegoat, but are perfectly happy to justifiably hate Mango Mussolini and his cohorts for free.

(Not that you'd ever, ever convince Faux News and its willfully blind MAGA-cult audience that the millions of protesters are expressing genuine sentiment: no, in FAUX World, even if they're not being paid directly, those marchers are being ruthlessly manipulated by a bunch of rich, Murcia-hating commies. Which means that all of their signs and costumes and marches and demonstrations really mean nothing at all; they don't represent the Real America.)

My favorite foul-mouthed commentator, Jeff Tiedrich, posted some words, accompanied by lots of pictures, the day after NK3. His coverage included pics of solidarity demonstrations that took place across the globe. People all over the world hate Trump, also for free.

Tiedrich also noted, with a couple of comical pics to back up his claim:

huge crowds were everywhere — except for one place: the CPAC conference in Texas.
while millions of people were protesting the fucked-up reign of Mad King Donny, CPAC couldn’t even fill one small room.

The next day, in addition to further documenting the Mad King's madness (e.g., his obsession with tacky Corinthian columns on his gaudy gilded ballroom/bunker cover), Tiedrich posted more coverage and pics from the No Kings events. Some of the signs are true works of art.

I wasn't able to attend the NK demonstration in my town, but my bestie did, and the crowd was pretty substantial for the seat of a still-deep-red Texas county. So, as crazy as it might sound to anyone who is on the verge of giving up, as this turbulent month marches into history, I am renewing my commitment of clinging to hope as long as there's even a tiny speck of it.

And I think that you, and everyone who cares at all about the survival of democracy, should do the same. MAGA jeered and sneered at this latest No Kings event, as they did at the first two. It was their way of whistling past the graveyard, stubbornly refusing to face their own fears and doubts about the demented orange man-child they continue, against all of the evidence that he's a POS, to worship. My sense is that the only way they can go on ignoring what they know in their hearts to be true is to pretend that dissenters are either being handsomely paid or cynically manipulated or both... or that there just aren't that many of us. But the truth is that we are everywhere. We're not going away.

These past few months -- well, actually, these past two years -- have been, to say the least, a serious trial for me. But after dealing with a very stressful move and then, shortly after, facing a potentially fatal medical outcome, I think that I am finally beginning to hit my stride again. And I'll be back next month with more.

Thank you as always for visiting my Whirled.

Before you leave...
While money cannot make some nightmares go away, be they political or personal, it can make them far easier to bear. With my husband Ron's passing in February 2025, I have experienced significant income loss and have been scrambling to find more work, but in an industry increasingly being taken over by AI, it has been a challenge. 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.

February out, March in, and the Whirled will come back to life

Damn, Feb flew by. Well, it is a short month, after all... But enough with the excuses. Once again another month has gone by with little of substance on this Whirled, but I do finally have my infrastructure set up at the new place, and I will be ready to pound the keyboard again in March. And there's a lot to pound about, as the orange blob in the White House -- and his fascist cartel -- continue to wreck the country and the entire globe. So stay tuned, and thank you as always for stopping by.

Belated happy new year

The new(ish) year is off to a roaring start, but I am not — not yet, anyway. But soon. I just wanted to keep my commitment to posting at least once evey month: a tradition I have been keeping since this blog was born nearly 20 (!) years ago. 

After numerous additional delays, I am just about ready to jump back in full force, and I will have plenty to say. 

Meanwhile, thanks for sticking by me, and I will be back soon.