With the midterm elections coming up, I thought it was a good idea to assess the State of the Union in my former homeland, and lo and behold, the Founding Fathers provided me with the perfect assessment tool: the preamble to the U.S. Constitution.

The Founding Fathers listed six big-picture objectives in that preamble that define what they wanted to achieve for their new country. I find it odd that presidents aren’t required to structure the State of the Union address around those goals. After all, if those objectives are essential to realizing your fundamental purpose, such an approach would provide a more insightful and informative report card than the usual political blah-blah-blah. Since the current occupant of the White House is incapable of an honest assessment, I’ll have to do it myself.

To form a more perfect union (press play)

Not even close. The country is hopelessly divided between red, blue, and purple states in a permanent state of value conflicts due to the dangerous mingling of politics and religion—and value conflicts are nearly impossible to resolve. Both major political parties bear responsibility for the divide, but only those in the GOP have expressed the desire to execute their opponents.

Establish justice 

When you have a convicted felon running your country who freaks out at the slightest hint of dissent, you shouldn’t be surprised that he would weaponize the Justice Department to go after his political enemies, threaten the freedom of the press, hush up the Epstein investigation, eliminate protections for LGBTQ people, and pardon anyone who participated in his attempted coup (several of whom have committed crimes after their parole). The U.S. justice system has always favored the rich who can pay for high-class lawyers and expert witnesses while the poor get stuck with a Public Defender who is already struggling with an overwhelming caseload. The Supreme Court further empowered the wealthy with the ridiculous notion that money is a form of free speech in its Citizens United decision.

Insure domestic tranquility

“Therapists in the U.S. say they have seen a rise in politically-related anxiety under the Trump presidency. Though a condition has not been officially named, therapists and patients have referred to it as “Trump Anxiety Disorder,” according to a report from Canada’s CBC News. Elisabeth LaMotte, the founder of the D.C. Counseling and Psychotherapy Center in Washington, D.C., told CBC that there is a “collective anxiety” among her patients related to President Trump’s rhetoric and policies.“There is a fear of the world ending,” she said. “It’s very disorienting and constantly unsettling.”

Provide for the common defense

I’m sure that Americans feel much safer with a fucking idiot in the White House who installed another fucking idiot to lead the War Department. These geniuses were smart enough to deplete their missile supplies, raise the U.S. debt to record levels, and send gas prices through the roof—and are in complete denial that a mid-level power outsmarted them. Voldemort is still talking about annihilation, even though Iran is not a serious threat to the United States. Worst of all, Voldemort has alienated most of America’s allies with his stupid tariffs and unpredictable behavior, making it highly unlikely that they will lend support to American adventurism. I’m sure the sailors on board the USS Abraham Lincoln deeply appreciated such competent leadership.

Promote the general welfare 

While Voldemort and his cronies get richer, the average American gets poorer. With RFK Jr. in charge of health care, the CDC in a state of collapse, the loosening of environmental protections, and thousands losing their health insurance, Americans will get sicker. AI remains unregulated, and thousands lose their job every month in an already weak job market. Meanwhile, the president is more concerned with putting his name on buildings and policies, bribing the electorate, and branding his opponents as dangerous left-wing radicals. Chuck Schumer is a radical? That’s news to me!

Secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity 

Hmm. That must be a typo. Let me fix it.

Secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity the Trump Family and the billionaires.

Warren Harding fans can breathe a sigh of relief that his administration is no longer considered the most corrupt in history. “President Donald Trump has made it clear that favorable treatment from his administration is readily available — for a price. This pay-to-play relationship is a defining feature of how Trump’s second administration is operating, by embracing unprecedented levels of unabashed political corruption. Multimillion-dollar checks get political donors appointed to the presidential Cabinet; seven-figure corporate donations are rewarded with support for legislative and policy positions; and hefty inaugural fund donations make federal investigations disappear.” (Campaign Legal Center) I had to laugh at the GOP senators who accused Jack Smith of going after the entire Republican Party in his investigation of Voldemort’s corruption. Their accusations were bullshit, but the truth is that the GOP-led Congress aided and abetted the corruption and deserves to be under investigation. Essentially, the morons gave some future prosecutor a chance to look into their complicity. The Republicans have made Lord Acton’s warning, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” their modus operandi.

Report card grade: F-minus.

If Americans want to raise that grade a few notches, the midterms are their only chance to restore checks and balances—and the way to do that is to vote heavily for Democrats and Independents and take both the House and Senate from the GOP. I have to confess that I’ve never been an ardent fan of the Democrats, but when I was a citizen, I always voted for them because I knew they would protect the environment and stand up for civil rights. Right now, the Democrats and Independents are all that stands in the way of the USA becoming an authoritarian state.

For the first time in his life, Karl Rove, the man responsible for placing the stunningly incompetent Bush II in the White House, finally said something I agree with.

Longtime Republican political operative Karl Rove said his party is being taken over by “Nazis” and railed against the moral failings of U.S. Senate candidate Ken Paxton during a one-on-one interview at the Texas Tribune Festival over the weekend . . . “My party is being infiltrated by people like Bo French,” Rove said. “Nick Fuentes goes to Dallas and meets with a bunch of Republican leaders. This guy is a Nazi. We’ve got all these people getting on their little podcasts and so forth, saying: ‘We’re just asking questions about the Jews.’” Rove added that welcoming people such as French and far-right podcaster Fuentes into the Republican Party will hurt conservatives in the long run. “We didn’t labor in the wilderness to build a conservative party that was inclusive and welcoming … to see it taken over by a bunch of bigots,” Rove said. (San Antonio Current)

That edition of the Current led with a story on the American Gestapo:

Women detained in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers are being subjected to sexual assault, a top immigrant-rights advocate testified during a congressional field hearing Friday in San Antonio. Texas Immigration Law Council Director of Policy and Legal Services Kristen Etter made the accusation during a hearing at the San Antonio Central Library organized by U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro. The Alamo City Democrat organized the gathering to hear testimony on ICE’s plan to open an immigrant detention site on the city’s East Side. “We actually got a call from a sexual assault nurse examiner last year who had done a rape kit on a woman that had said she was sexually assaulted in an ICE detention facility,” Etter told the panel. “But the local prosecuting authorities would not accept it because they said they did not have jurisdiction over that particular ICE facility that was operated by private contractors.”

Just following the lead of the “grab them by the pussy” guy.

American women have a lot to lose if the country goes total fascist. The pussies who inhabit the manosphere have aligned with American Christian nationalists and far-right Republicans in an attempt to turn women in their childbearing years into a more fruitful generation of June Cleavers who provide sex on demand. “Conservatives long promoted a politics of sexual prohibition. Now such morals have been shed in favor of male domination.” (Moira Donegan, The Guardian) The penis-holders who have argued that the world’s declining birthrate is a harbinger of a potential disaster are talking out of both sides of their mouth. Moguls like the Muskrat claim that if we don’t halt the decline in births, we face a future of labor shortages and broken economies. Then again, those assholes have no problem eliminating jobs by the thousands by turning things over to AI and destroying economies by bribing legislators to pass tax laws that preserve the unequal distribution of wealth and screw the poor and middle-class. The rich and their toadies also fail to grasp that there are plenty of sensible, logical reasons why Gen Zers aren’t having more babies. A 2025 study by the United Nations Population Fund revealed that “Young people overwhelmingly report worries and uncertainty about their futures. Many expect to experience worse outcomes than their parents did. Their concerns about climate change, economic instability and rising global conflicts will be reflected in the choices they make about raising families.” The report concludes that “The real solution to the crisis of reproductive agency we are facing is to build a more equitable, sustainable and caring world that supports individuals to have the families they aspire to: a world that we can be proud for the next generation to inherit.”

“Be fruitful and multiply” was good advice when the human race was just getting started. The infant mortality rate was off the charts, and families needed more bodies to gather and grow food to survive. “Be fruitful and multiply” is flat-out fucking stupid in a world of 8.3 billion people with the Doomsday Clock set to 85 seconds before midnight. The bottom line is that the macho men of the right wing (and their brainless bimbo allies) are after much more than eliminating abortions. They want women to give up the Pill, forget about any career expectations, and become stay-at-home, obedient baby producers and no-cost prostitutes. These losers never made it past adolescence and are terrified of smart, confident women who want to forge their own paths in life.

Taking control of Congress will halt some of Voldemort’s worst tendencies, but you’ll still be stuck with the guy for a couple of years. There is no way in hell that the Democrats will gain enough seats in the Senate to convict him if they go the impeachment route, so they should just forget about it. That said, the evil one may declare a state of emergency and cancel the midterms, and we all know the sorest loser of all time will never accept the results if he loses Congress.

The outcome is uncertain, but I will say that people all over the world are rooting for Americans to rein in this asshole. To help you in that fight, I plan to fill the home page for the next seven days with a series of published reviews of protest albums, along with one soothing album to lower your cortisol production and restore your mental health. This will prepare you for my review of the Dropkick Murphys’ 2025 release, For the People. Yes, I know I’m breaking my three-years-before-reviewing rule, but these are desperate times that demand rule-breaking.

I’ll leave you with a timeless song that Joni Mitchell likely hoped would never become timeless, but here we are.