Weekly Wilson - Blog of Author Connie C. Wilson

Welcome to WeeklyWilson.com, where author/film critic Connie (Corcoran) Wilson avoids totally losing her marbles in semi-retirement by writing about film (see the Chicago Film Festival reviews and SXSW), politics and books----her own books and those of other people. You'll also find her diverging frequently to share humorous (or not-so-humorous) anecdotes and concerns. Try it! You'll like it!

Category: Politics Page 1 of 40

Presidential caucuses have been Connie’s specialty in Iowa as she followed the elections of 2004, 2008, 2012 and wrote the 2 books “Obama’s Odyssey: The 2008 Race for the White House.” She also continues to follow politics by avidly reading everything she can get her hands on, including “Rolling Stone,” “Mother Jones,” “Newsmax,” “Time,” etc.

John Papsidera Speaks: September 25th, 2026, Nashville Film Festival Interview

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On September 26, 2026

In Interviews, Movies, Politics, Pop Culture, Reviews

John Papsidera, Connie Wilson and Director Jason Reitman after the “SNL” Premiere in 2024,

After a thrilling film introduction with scenes from many of the 240+ films that John Papsidera cast, the Nashville and L.A. based casting director talked about his switch from acting, which he had studied, to casting movies instead of acting in them.

Papsidera remembered a long-ago casting call for a Pepsi commercial based on the original “Top Gun” and becoming aware, as he left the casting site, “I can’t do this, I didn’t have the confidence or the wherewithal to allow a camera to study me, to peer into my soul.That takes a huge amount of courage and guts to do that. And I didn’t have it, And I reaiized that.”

So, I ran restaurants for a bunch of years in New York and then moved to Los Angeles and got  into casting, “

He went on to say that casting is about saying yes.

Moderator question Q1:  “You got your start in casting huge action pictures like ‘Clear and Present Danger.’ What did casting movies like that teach you about story versus star power?”

A1: “Did it teach me anything?” (laughter) “Those were films that were very much centered on star power and very much centered around the stars. Now, Harrison Ford, I have to say, was very interested in the rest of the cast and the story of “Clear and Present Danger.” Other stars and directors, not as much. So, it gave me an insight into the politics more than anything else. It gave me an insight into how the business works, how the studio works in the nineties and the early two thousands, to a great degree.”

Q2: “In speaking of those time periods, I have to bring up ‘Austin Powers.’ Austin Powers became one of the defining comedies of its time. At the time, did it feel like you were working on something this special, or did its success surprise everyone?”

A2:  “Nobody wanted to do ‘Austin Powers.’ (audience laughter) Mike had just done ‘So I Married An Axe Murderer.’ It failed and this was his next movie after that and literally it was begging people to do the movie in a lot of ways. So, no, it wasn’t that way and then—it irritates me—the movie was a big hit and everybody signs up for two…there’s Tom Cruise and there’s Nicole Kidman—and it was slogging the first movie to really get it cast, but it was Will Ferell’s first movie and it was a lot of people’s first film that came out of SNL and came out of the improv and Groundlings and places like that.”

Q3:  “That must have been a really fun casting experience, I would imagine.

A3:  “It was fun. It was. Mike was heavily involved. Jay Roach directed that movie. And, yes, it was a very fun movie to cast, and it was also the very first film that I cast by myself. It was a unique experience.”

Q4:  In 2000, you launched your own company, Automatic Sweat.  What convinced you it was time to build your own company?

A4:  I’d never been more broke. I was partners with another casting director. She deemed it not worth her time to do Austin. She was spending all of her time on another movie that we were doing together and so I went off and did it myself. Subsequently, we then started on “Face-Off” right after that, the John Woo movie, and she came to me and said—wait a minute—well, I know why she said it, it was John Travolta and Nick Cage and she said, ‘I think I want to do this one on my own.’  I’m like, ‘That’s not how it works when you’re partners.’ So I was forced—it really forced my hand—to go and start my own company.”

Q5:  ‘Is there a story behind the name Automatic Sweat?”

John Papsidera, casting director par excellence, speaking at the 57th Nashville Film Festival on September 25, 2026,

A5:  “A homeless man said it to me. He used to hang out around my offices. He said, ‘Life ain’t anything but an automatic sweat.’ And I thought, truer words were never spoken.”

Q6:  “You’ve cast nearly every Christopher Nolan film since Memento in 2000, including ‘The Odyssey’ that many people have probably seen recently. What did that first collaboration look like?”

A6:  “I’ve said this before. It’s probably one of the easiest films I’ve ever cast. Because Chris didn’t know anybody. This is how relationships work..the same producers called me and said we have this little movie, Would you be interested? And I said I was, so they sent me the script and I had to read it three times before I understood it (laughter from the audience) And he said to me, ‘Bring me your favorite actors,” and so I did. And it was incredibly easy. Maybe 3 weeks. Incredibly fast and thrilling.”

Q7: Nolan is known for building a repertory of people across films?

A7:  We do talk about that at times. There’s a couple things that play into that. Early on in our relationship we’d talk about this and he’d say, ‘Well, we have Michael Caine.’ It kind of came out of that. As the years have passed, I’ve kind of had a different window into Chris’s mind. He is a control freak and he wants to know exactly what people are going to do, He’s not looking for people to create. He’s trying to fit the piece in the Swiss clock that is already in his head. He just wants you to be a little cog in the machine. He doesn’t want you to re-invent the machine. And so it’s a very different way of casting, So, it’s a very different type of casting than of me doing  a search and a hunt and going in search of the perfect pieces just for him that will line up with how his vision is, as opposed to a Jason Reitman, who is much more exploratory , much more of “Let’s try this; let’s improv that,”  Chris’s much more of a control freak And so, over the years, I think it becomes an easier thing for him to say, ‘Oh, yes, I can see this person doing that.”

Q8:  Over the years, have you ever seen a shift away from that, where you can see it going a different way?

A8: Going back to ‘Inception,’ Chris had not known of Marion Cotillard, and I knew her and loved her. Rebecca Hall is another one. She had done very little. She went on tape and she had done a lot. I saw Rebecca’s tape and sent it to Chris and it really started her career in a big way. We didn’t know what she would do with it. We sent it to DeCaprio and never heard back. We sent it to Joaquin (Phoenix) and he met and explained how he didn’t like, nor did he want, to make big movies. It’s ironic, because he was in one and won the Academy Award for playing the Joker. We met with Heath (Ledger). It was exhilarating and exciting and he understood that it wasn’t about trying to fill the comedic shoes of Jack Nicholson, but that the Joker was an anarchist and that he just wanted to tear it all down. And that was his take on the Joker. So, yes, there have been some examples that are exciting to me that were not in the usual way”

Q9:  You said something about when you were meeting with him it was exhilarating,

A9:  It’s hard to describe. I truly believe that it’s a magic that if you believe in the process it shows up in different ways. I’m just in the process right now, I was in L.A. this past Monday for screen tests for a huge show for Amazon and we had screen tests for the lead female. And one of them is just electric. You feel it. There’s something palpable. It’s chemical.  It is the thing that keeps me coming back. I play golf—badly—and people will say, ‘Oh, that shot will keep you coming back for 6 months.’ The idea of being in a room with the artist, those moments when you feel it, it’s indescribable and exciting. It’s a little bit about where magic meets practicality.

Q10:  With having such a long relationship with Christopher Nolan, what has that taught you about the trust that is necessary between a director and a casting director?

A10:  I think there’s always a question mark as to how much someone trusts you or not, It depends on how much you go out of the guidelines.  Chris still will not forgive me for bringing in, on “Memento, Crispin Glover. I  love Crispin Glover. I think he’s an amazing unpredictable actor, exactly the type of guy that Christopher Nolan does not like. Unpredictabiility not wanted, I’ve learned that. So it kind of depends on what you’re looking for, how you go down that road with directors, but the game is to gain their trust—at least as their confidante and they trust your opinion. I’m blessed, at this stage in my career, that I have it with many directors and I’ve done it long enough so that people will say, “What’s John think?” But that’s the job. You want them to seek your counsel.And you want them to know that you’re not just telling them what they want to hear, that you are not just being a cheerleader or a  yes-man, but you are telling them the truth. Does that answer that question?

Q11: Walk me through your process. What happens from the time you get a script until you cast a character?

A11: It’s much like being an independent casting director, I’ll read a script, I’ll see what I think about it. I’ll have a meeting with the actor or producer and talk about who I see in those roles or why. And if they get the job and if they are available, we then start a process. We’’ll start to get reads in. We funnel that to the producers and directors. And then we negotiate a deal.

Q12:  How do you judge rapport among actors, especially when you’re building an ensemble?

A12:  I think mostly this is world creation. And, in a movie, you want it to be grounded in a real world. So you want actors with like minds in that they can put ‘em together. I liken it to a painter painting a picture. Certain colors need an accent next to it, It’s really about creating a world with a certain soul.

John Papsidera interviewed onstage at the national Museum of African American Music at the 57th Nashville Film Festiva on September 25, 2026.

Q13: How much do you push back against a director?

A13:  You weigh all these variables, A studio, a director, television director has a page. I could call an executive director and say, “You’re wrong. That kid is amazing” in Scooby Doo,, It depends on relationships. Had I not done Wednesday with that director I probably wouldn’t have called. You only have so much creative freedom.

Q14:  The difference between an in-person read and a taped read?

A14:  It’s a really divided thing. I’ll start with the pros: it has opened the door to casting much more than anything else in my career. In the old format, casting calls had to get the job done and you would have a group of 40 or 5o or 100 actors and you knew they would be good. Those are the actors who have been displaced most and you hear them complain about it a lot. It’s those people who were in the small, select group and now you can look at a much broader group. We will go back and ask them to re-do, re-tape. We have years of relationships. (Richie Montgomery in Carnivale and Kingfish stands up in the audience to testify to working with Papsidera early on, ) Really having personal connections and insights into an actor in a personal way helps, but more people get seen and you have control in a taped session. You as the actor get to do it a hundred times till you get it the way you want it, so embrace the power of having it, because actors do not get the chance to be powerful often enough.

Q15:  How many of these auditions are you watching?

A15:  Fourth Wing project. We’ve seen hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of actresses and actors for the 2 lead roles. For Scooby Doo, we probably saw 600 kids. I’m working on a Christie McQuorry film that will be a smaller process. For Oppenheimer I saw a large number of people. For a Taylor Sheridan movie we see hundreds of men. They don’t build men the way they used to build men.

Q16:  Iconic ensembles…The Dark Knight…Batman Begins….Inception….

A16: I was looking through breakdowns today and I get to select actors who I like who I think are good actors. The common thread that runs through it is my taste. At the end of the day, it’s the smartest and the brightest actors who are available (and the budget).

Q17:  How do you balance known versus unknowns?

A17:  In “The Odyssey” those characters going in lived in people’s minds for a long time. They were next to God. So we wanted the super heroes of our time. So, to do that we intentionally went with the known stars. There are plenty of times when I look at movies and I look at the names to remember and there was no need for a name to be changing a wagon wheel by the side of the road. It felt like it was important in “The Odyssey”.

Q18:  Do you have a philosophy about when to cast an unknown versus these veterans?

A18:  It sort of depends on budgets, and things way out of my control. Casting a budget is the first thing we do on every project. They will just take the money, so we’ll find somebody who will do it for that. It’s a battle to try to find enough money. You try and find interesting people. So many of the Dunkirk actors have now gone on. We had so many amazing guys who have had amazing careers. It is a hugely satisfying part of the job. It take so many people to find them. That story of Lana Turner being discovered at Schwabb’s. That happens so rarely, if ever. It usually is a manager calling me and saying “I saw somebody in a  play, etc.” Yes, it’s true that I put Charlize in “Two Days in the Valley” and it was her first job, but it’s because a manager called me up saying, “You’re looking for a 6 foot Scandinavian girl. I was behind one in the bank line. Would you meet her?” And I said yes. I believe in saying yes and great people come from all kinds of places.

Q19: How do you stay confident in your choices, even when you have seen so many actors>

A19:  I don’t know. It’s really not based on ego.It’s based on a lot of different things. Honestly, now that I’m thinking about that question,  it’s  probably because I’ve looked at the 600 other people that aren’t getting it. When you’ve looked at so many other things that aren’t it, you have an incredible amount of faith that that IS iit. And so I think that’s probably where that passion comes from.  I don’t know how to do it, other than being passionate about it,  So, I say to people all the time, if you want an opinion, ask me, because I’ll give you one.I’ve got plenty of opinions, but I think that is my job. To not have an opinion and to not help guide and create you’re abdicating your job I you don’t have an opinion and if you don’t take a  position, you don’t campaign for what’s best.

Q20:  You’ve had such an amazing career, over 240 films, I’m curious if you have one that sticks out to you because it was an amazing experience, or that sticks out to you for reasons that might not be so obvious?

A20:  I mention ‘Dunkirk,’ I love Dunkirk, if only because of finding so many guys and it was very un-Chris-like, even though it was told in 3 different time frames, because he can’t help himself. I read it, and the process with Chris is that I’m one of the first people to read the script when he finishes. He’ll call and tell me to come over and read the script, I do, and then he comes in afterwards and says, ‘What do you think?’and “Who do you think?’ And when he walked in after ‘Dunkirk’ I said to him, ‘It’s a sweet love letter to England,’ and he said, ‘Yeah. It is.’ It’s a very different emotional thing for Chris to write that. “Inception’ I love. I love ‘The Offer.” I’m really proud of ‘The Offer, ‘ the mini-series that he did about the making of ‘The Godfather.’ I think it’s cast really, really well, and we tried not to just do ‘The Sopranos’ casting, So, we worked a lot of different ways to do that.  Always Sunny in Philadelphia.” I’d known all those guys since college. They called me and said, “We shot this little thing on a video and we’re going to try to make a pilot. Will you help us?” I said, ‘Yeah, Sure.”  So I was in the first season of “Sunny.” I love “The Madison,” something very emotional that Taylor doesn’t really write all the time. He’s a very masculine writer, not necessarily writing women. In fact, when you ask Taylor Sheridan how he writes women, he’ll say, ‘I write them just like men.’  And I think “The Madison” is very different, and I love it. Because I’m proud of all of those casts. I had a different relationship with each of them. “Life Itself” is another movie that nobody talks about—a Dan Fogelman movie—I thought it was very beautiful, and it got no love. But that having been said, my relationship with all of my movies is to employ actors and watch them do what they do. And helping a director create art.

Q21:  This is really my last actor question:  Are there one or two pieces of advice you could offer for the actors here who are doing those self-tapes?

A21:  At Florida State I taught a class about acting for the camera and after the semester was over and I thought about it, I thought, ‘If there was one thing I could give those student actors, it would be confidence.’ It’s telling that I started this interview with a story about how I didn’t have confidence, myself,as an actor, but if there’s one thing, it truly is confidence: it separates the wheat from the chaff. You feel it in the room. I used to tell my students that, before an audition, they ought to go in the bathroom and do a Superman pose in the mirror: whatever it takes for you to feel confident when you walk in the room. Producers feel it. Directors feel it. They don’t want Nervous Nelly on the set with them.And it doesn’t mean being cocky. It means finding that peace within you that you’re confident. If it’s something that you love to do, take any opportunity to do it. I think that’s it. Certainly be smart about choices; certainly make choices. Certainly have multiple choices in your head. I’ve always found it alarming that actors will come in and they’ll be given the grace to do it again and they’ll do it exactly the same way. It’s not about doing it differently from A to Z. It’s not about being a weirdo.  It’s about being smart and a professional. Choices and confidence is what I would give everybody as advice.

Q22:  Beyond casting, you’ve created an art facility, The Salon at Automatic Sweat, I’m curious if collecting art and curating art is sort of curatorial.

A22: I think so. I guess so. I think back to where that even came from, It’s fascinating to me. Most of my collection, if they are portraits, the faces blur and I think it is an off-shoot of seeing so many tapes all day long. I love the idea of it. In my collection, it’s like the memory of a face, but the faces are almost eradicated. (His wife pointed it out.) I think it speaks to so much of my inner life. So much of what I do all day long is judge, judge, judge. It’s very hard to turn it off and a piece of art that I love, I don’t have to judge it, I can enjoy it. And I think that’s the same when I show artists, which is seeking out stuff that I enjoy,

Q23:You split your time between Nashville and L.A. Do you find that splitting your time that way gives you a different perspective, and what do you make of Nashville’s growth in those areas?

A23:  It certainly has changed my perspective of the business. Again, they might like to hear it; they might not. The rest of the world does not care about the things that L.A. and the business, per se, has prioritized. And that is hard to break through, to get them to hear that, because they are surrounded by it. When I live here, they hear Chris Nolan’s name and they don’t care. They hear Taylor Sheridan and they say, “You do what?” I think that’s the reality of the world, and you are creating entertainment for everybody and the demographics of ‘you gotta have this’ and “you gotta have that’ (in a movie) and I say, “Guys: the rest of the world doesn’t give a shit about this.”  And so it’s changed my perspective a lot about that.  I’m thrilled for Nashville trying to embrace the business and grow, I think it’s a sad reality that California has lost so much of the entertainment business.  I’d rather see business go just around the United States and not to Canada or England just because of tax credits and opportunities.

 

Q24 (Audience):  In the casting of Elliot Page in “The Odyssey” was it you or was it Christopher Nolan saw something there that would benefit the movie?

A24:  I’m glad that you thought it was a positive…I’m assuming that. It’s sad to me that this world is in a place where it’s at where an artist gets attacked, and not only Elliot, or Lupita, but Chris as a filmmaker. We’re making art. We’re making paintings, We’re not making political statements. The nonsense that it should have been this or it should have been that.  Are you going to walk by the Mona Lisa and say, “Oh! She should have been smiling.” It’s insane, and I think it’s a divisive statement of our times which is not fair to anybody. Elliot came up—I’ll give credit where it’s due—Kelly Bush is his publicist and she asked, ‘Is there anything for Elliot in the movie?’ And we all thought about it for a minute and then it struck us that Sinon was the weakest among the characters in the story, and that he didn’t want to go to war. (I’m going to get emotional about this) And he went.And we thought there was something really special about Elliot playing that role. I said a couple of weeks ago, ‘I wish it were a tad more emotional.  I wish he were screaming in pain outside of that Trojan Horse, but I thought it was a lovely moment and I just cast it,

A.I. 

The last audience question was about the use of A.I. in movies. Papsidera came out in favor of live characters, saying “It’s innate.” He added “I think that replacing human beings with computer images mimicking human beings is not something I want to see. But, then, I’m not a big cartoon guy, I’m a grown ass man. “ He admitted that he didn’t know enough about it. “It’s a horror in some ways. It’s a horror in a lot of ways. It started at camp fires with cavemen telling stories. It’s why we go into a dark hall with flickering images telling stories.” Papsidera did acknowledge that there might be budgetary advantages.

MOST HOPEFUL ABOUT THE INDUSTRY?

Audience question:  What are you feeling most hopeful about?

Answer: “Do you know me? I tend to be a half glass guy. I am hopeful that maybe stories break through and people return to personal stories in independent films and that we see the last of…I don’t want numbered films…I don’t watch a lot of 2’s, 3’s and 4’s. (sequels). I hope that it turns to storytelling and less product being made, but they’ve opened the gates to the guys who care about data and algorithms and not really telling stories that shape your lives. I hope that people will return to telling stories that matter and thatshape our lives. Those are things that shape human beings. I don’t find that in Avengers #6.”

“It’s Complicated” Screens at HollyShorts Film Festival 2026

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On August 16, 2026

In Editorial, Movies, Politics, Reviews

Iman Karram as Yara in “It’s Complicated,” screening at the HollyShorts Film Festival.

The 17’ 42” short “It’s Complicated”, executive produced by Zoe Saldana, is an Iman Karram one-woman show. Written, produced by and starring Iman Karram, It’s Complicated follows Yara, “a Palestinian-American screenwriter in Los Angeles, whose online Arabic lessons with Hana (Dina Shuhaiber), a poet and teacher living in Gaza, blossom into a profound friendship built on shared ambition, humor, and sisterhood. Mainly, we learn about Hana as she attempts to tutor Yara via Zoom, helping her to master speaking Arabic.”

CAST

Besides Iman Karram and Dina Schuhaiber as the pregnant tutor from afar, Liz Charky was the Director of Photography and Tarek Yamani contributed an original score. Darine Hotait co-wrote with Iman Karram. Amongst those thanked as supporters, in addition to Zoe Saldana, were Charlie Day, Alison Brie, Pedro Pascal, the Arab Film and Media Institute and the Islamic Scholarship Fund.

IMAN KARRAM

“Iman Karram is an Arab American actress, writer, and producer from Washington, D.C. …She spent her early years dancing competitively, interning on Capitol Hill, and performing in regional theater before earning degrees in Cultural Anthropology and Film at UCLA.

She recently starred opposite Michael Angarano and Michael Cera in the Tribeca-premiering feature “Sacramento”. Her project “Like The Tide”, was written, produced, and led by Iman. Celebrated for both her comedic instincts and her athletic background, recognized by LeBron James and the LA Rams, Iman brings a dynamic physicality and emotional intelligence to every role she takes on.”

Writer/Director/Actress Iman Karram of “It’s Complicated” at HollyShorts Film Festival.

The above 2 paragraphs, quoted from IMDBPRO,  explain who Iman Karram is. I did not notice any “dynamic physicality” in her role as Yara. Yara’s conversations with the distant Hana,  who is pregnant and awaiting the birth of a child, were  not very dramatic, given Hana’s situation.  We hear Yara attempting to master Arabic and cooking. While interesting, it seemed to skirt the very real life-and-death issues enveloping the Gaza Strip.

THE BACKDROP

With all the recent publicity involving Israel and Palestine and the Gaza Strip, a great deal of drama was omitted from this short that could have informed us about the ongoing Gaza Strip situation. That message was not driven home with any forcefulness. We see Iman cooking and chatting with Hana, but the short is largely lifeless regarding the visceral issues laid bare after the assault on Israel by 6,000 Hamas warriors on October 7, 2023, leading to the deaths of 1,200 Jewish civilians and the abduction of 251 hostages to Gaza (what has been dubbed “the deadliest single day for Jews since the Holocaust.”)

THRUST/COUNTER-THRUST

That invasion of Israel by Hamas triggered the right-wing government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to strike back at Gaza. There are estimates of 73,000 direct deaths, 463 famine death, and 10,000 presumed buried under rubble in the Gaza Strip, according to Wikipedia.

At least 173,900 Palestinian Arabs have been injured. Gaza now has the most child amputees, per capita, of any nation in the world, with more than 21,000 children disabled and 50% of casualties  being women and children.

As of May, 2024, 84% of Gaza’s health centers had been destroyed or damaged, as had all 12 of Gaza’s universities. Eighty-five per cent of Gaza’s population were forcibly displaced and the government of South Africa instituted proceedings at the International Court of Justice alleging a violation of the Genocide Convention.

CONCLUSION

There was definitely an engrossing story that could have been told to add to the viewer’s knowledge of what is going on in the Gaza Strip.

This wasn’t it.

David Letterman Guests on Stephen Colbert’s “The Late Show:” May 14, 2026

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On May 15, 2026

In Editorial, Essays on Politics: Best Political Essays & Ideology, News, Of Local (Quad Cities') Interest, Politics, Pop Culture, Reviews, Television

David Letterman and Stephen Colbert atop the roof of the Ed Sullivan Theater on May 14, 2026.

Tonight, May 14th, 2026, Stephen Colbert—approaching the beginning of his last week in what was  David Letterman’s late night television show—had Letterman, himself, as one of his final guests. Dave showed up with the unattractive Father Christmas long white beard he has worn since leaving the air. (Lose the beard, Dave.)

It was a night of nostalgia, with Colbert paying tribute to Dave’s  stewardship of The Late Show 33 years prior. Now, thanks to a president of the United States who is so thin-skinned that he cannot stand any criticism or mockery, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert is going to be replaced with the late night comedians who previously followed in the wee hours (and were never that funny).

It’s a loss to late night show fans, whether you preferred Stephen  Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyer or John Oliver (some might include Jon Stewart) and may signal the demise of late night shows, in general, as unscripted reality shows or late night comedians perfecting their routines is  cheaper to put on the air. And we, the audience, are the losers, while DJT gets to further boost his extremely fragile narcissistic ego by killing one of the shows calling him out on his undemocratic and unpatriotic actions as president. [God help us all!]

Dave displayed photos of his new puppy, Doc, mentioned his son (who is graduating from college) and, after inquiring about the blue chair on which he sat, asked who owned the furniture. Stephen, of course, acknowledged that the chair Dave sat upon (and a duplicate blue one) were CBS property, as was Stephen’s own chair, which was an Eames. The Eames classic chair is “extraordinarly expensive” and vintage versions of the chair go for well over $10,000. “It is an expensive chair,” said the originator, who compared it to a well-worn baseball glove.

David Letterman and Stephen Colbert tossing watermelons off the roof of the Ed Sullivan Theater on May 14, 2026.

 

Viewers got to see David Letterman and Stephen Colbert toss the two blue chairs and Stephen’s Eames classic host’s chair off the roof of the Ed Sullivan studio in New York City. They also tossed watermelons and Dave saluted Stephen, thanking him for all he was doing for the country in pointing out the gap between reality and fantasy that the current administration tries to foist on the public daily. (Remember: it’s not a war, it’s an “excursion”—which is probably a misuse of the term “incursion” by the dunderhead using it.)

LATE NIGHT WIth DAVID LETTERMAN

Many years ago I was in New York City for one of the Thrillerfest conventions. This was so long ago that Letterman was still sitting in the host’s seat. I did not have tickets purchased in advance. In fact, I had given no thought at all to attending a taping of “The Late Show,” but I wandered out of the formerly owned Trump hotel that is attached to Grand Central Station to take a walk in NYC.

At a traffic intersection I was approached by someone who wanted to know if I watched David Letterman’s The Late Show, and when I answered in the affirmative, I was told that—if I could answer a question correctly—I could attend that night’s show. The question was for me to give the name of the deli owner whom Dave frequently visited in person. Although my mind went temporarily blank regarding Rupert’s Deli, I was given so many helpful hints that I ended up queued up in the lobby entryway of the  studio, being grilled on how to demonstrate appropriate enthusiasm when the host and guests appeared. This went on for a good half hour while we all patiently stood in the long queue, not much different than approaching the TSA agents at the airport.

A memento of my visit The Late Show with David Letterman (cursor pad).

My seat turned out to be about 10 rows from the left front portion of the theater–not too far from where Letterman and Colbert came to rest tonight in the audience, after 6 men removed all of the guest and host chairs to the roof. The night I attended, the guest  was Eva Longoria, who tottered out on very high heels. I don’t remember much about the rest of the program, except that the studio was chilly, as has  been pointed out. We were warned not to go downstairs to the women’s rest rooms that were  located there, because the building was  old and dipalidated and the plumbing might not be up to snuff.

From the remarks that Colbert made to Letterman while they were seated in the audience, that last bit of information is out-dated, because Stephen explained how ALL of the audience seats were replaced when he took over The Late Show in 2015. They widened the seats from nineteen inches to twenty-four inches. I would speculate that the downstairs rest rooms also received a facelift, because, as Letterman pointed out, the theater ceiling also had an extensive make-over, which Dave compared to the very ornate Bellagio ceilings.

I’m  going to miss Stephen Colbert’s Late Night Show from the Ed Sullivan Theater, a venue of historic importance now being run into the ground by its owners at CBS.  Courtesy of Wikipedia:  “Colbert’s work as a correspondent on Comedy Central’s news-parody series The Daily Show gained him wide recognition. In 2005, he left The Daily Show to host The Colbert Report. Following The Daily Show‘s news-parody concept, The Colbert Report was a parody of personality-driven political opinion shows including The O’Reilly Factor, in which he portrayed a caricatured version of conservative political pundits, earning Colbert an invitation to perform as featured entertainer at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner in 2006, which he did in character. This event led to the series becoming one of Comedy Central’s highest-rated series. After ending The Colbert Report, he was hired in 2015 to succeed David Letterman, who was retiring as host of the Late Show on CBS. Colbert hosted the 69th Primetime Emmy Awards in September 2017.”

David Letterman thanking and congratulating Stephen Colbert on his career helming The Late Show, which Letterman originated 33 years prior on May 14, 2026, one week before the show ends.  CBS has buckled under to DJT in a clear violation of Freedom of the Press and the freedoms granted to Americans by our Constitution, which are being attacked daily by sycophantic followers of the current POTUS.

I will really miss the gentlemanly humor and intelligent repartee of Stephen Colbert. I would like to join David Letterman in thanking him for doing his best to defend our First Amendment Freedom of Speech in the face of the autocratic and bullying tactics of the MAGA crowd and Donald J. Trump. I pray that patriotic Americans will wake up to the damage being done to our Constitutional rights and freedoms by the current administration and some of them will grow a spine and stand up to the man who has, at the moment, perched the world on the edge of WWIII.

San Antonio, Texas, on February 28th, 2026

By

On March 2, 2026

In Editorial, Essays on Politics: Best Political Essays & Ideology, Movies, Of Local (Quad Cities') Interest, Politics, Pop Culture, Texas

Elise Wilson on Feb. 28, 2026.

On Saturday, February 28th, 2026, we journeyed to San Antonio to watch granddaughter Elise play in a volleyball tournament. The tournament featured the CTX (Central Texas) team, not the school team, but the short snip of Elise playing with her Valor School team at the bottom of the page will give you an idea of what the past three years have meant for her as volleyball player/Captain of her school team (and for us as spectators and fans). We really enjoy seeing her play. I’m so lucky that volleyball was the game of choice, as my enthusiasm for soccer, hockey, et. al., is not nearly as high.

As senior year approaches, we will miss watching Elise do so well as a team member of two volleyball teams. She played very well again on Feb. 28, 2026. I’m sure she will benefit from everything she has learned about teamwork during these last three years. Another tournament in Reno beckons in May. 

View from our Mariott AC hotel in downtown San Antonio.

San Antonio is about an hour’s drive away. The location of the tournament was quite a long way from the downtown Alamo tourist spots. After the last two games ended, (which Elise’s team won), we checked into a Mariott downtown with the name AC (which instantly made me think of Air Conditioning).

As my husband went to check us in, he left me in the car with the window open. I was sitting there minding my own business on this balmy night when a woman with a group of passers-by began telling  me “Jesus loves you.” I responded, “Good.”

A few more of the group began “chatting” (if that is the right term) with me through the open window ( I am IN the car, waiting for the spouse to check in; the group of 10 is on the sidewalk). I was not in any way indicating that I wanted or needed a sermon right from the streets of San Antonio, but that is what I got.

After the religious talk ceased slightly, I suggested that  the members of this random group vote in the March 3rd primary election (They seemed harmless, but later that night, in Austin, a gunman shot and killed 2 people on 6th Street and wounded 14 others, so...). James Talarico is squaring off against Jasmine Crockett to see who runs against a GOP opponent in November. The MAGA crowd is much more concerned about a male opponent than a Black female friend of Kamala Harris’s. Likely MAGA candidate will be incumbent John Cornyn, so we may be witnessing another Beto O’Rourke moment. Or not. Who knows?

Dining along the Riverwalk.

If Texas continues to attract voters from other states because of its beautiful winter weather and its reasonable cost of living, could it represent ALL Texans, including new ones from other states? [Assuming we have fair elections that aren’t rigged and that aren’t called off because of a power grab from the top.]

Maybe some day we could have a few Democrats in office other than just GOP Trump-friendly folk? Is it time to loosen  the GOP stranglehold on this very red state? Maybe we could have a different governor than Abbott, who has been in a wheelchair for years from a long-ago accident when  a tree fell on him while he was jogging.

Abbott brags about how he went to work every day  with the sole purpose of lodging lawsuits against Barack Obama during Obama’s two terms. There seems to be a lot of anger that we elected a Black President who did a good job, tried to help the average citizen with a Healthcare program, and whom most people liked. A God-fearing happily married husband and father who represented us articulately abroad, but was castigated for not wearing a flag pin on a tan suit, as though that were grounds for impeachment. And please get rid of Texas’s Kenneth Paxton. His own party seems to have  disowned him. His whistleblower staff outed him. His wife divorced him. (Etc., etc., etc.)

Riverwalk.

Maybe don’t vote for the guy who  brags that he has voted with DJT “99% of the time.” (Cornyn) Maybe don’t vote for the guy who puts MAGA in the middle of his campaign slogan (Middleton) and is totally down with things going on in places like Minneapolis or Venezuela. (I did not say “Or Iran” because we can debate Iran’s nuclear ambitions and their stated national goals, but now we’ve martyred their 37-year leader at a time when the experts say there was no “imminent” danger of nuclear weapons being feasible. How popular will we be with Iran’s devoutly religious average citizen whose cities we are busy blowing up?) 

It seems that the goal for the incumbent 47th President is to leave a huge mark on the U.S.—and an equally huge mark on the world scene— by throwing U.S. military weight around as  bullies and barbarians at the gate, an image that we spent over 60 years trying to undo. ($20 million a day just to float around off the coast of Iran; the need for an excuse to cancel elections and distract from the Epstein files really loomed large.) Plus, there’s the tacky gold redecorating and the proposed Arch de Triomphe that would dwarf the Lincoln Monument (not to mention the embarrassing pleas for trophies and the Nobel Peace Prize and that FIFA monstrosity.)

DJT seems to be arbitrarily instigating decades of war to re-emerge, despite such world wars in Europe involving the U.S. being dormant  (because of NATO and negotiating and diplomacy) since 1945 (Remember: Now it’s not the Secretary of DEFENSE; it’s the Secretary of WAR. And it’s not the Gulf of Mexico, either, if you want to rewrite history. Which seems like the goal here.)  Putin is  pleased that, as a nation, we are repeatedly shooting ourselves in the feet.

Tearing everything down was always the goal of the corrupt Steve Bannon (guilty of fraud) and his interview with Errol Morris should be required viewing if you love our democratic norms  and  the Constitution that DJT tramples on daily.  [2018 Steve Bannon interview  “American Dharma”] It’s the blueprint of Project 2025, which DJT always claimed he knew nothing about—until he began following it to the letter.

A good Christian candidate in the Democratic primary March 3rd for Senator is Democrat James Talarico, who is studying to be a Presbyterian minister. His grandfather was a Baptist minister. If Jesus/God loves us (me, anyway, according to the woman on the sidewalk) why did She let the current occupant of the White House wrest power back in 2024? [THAT was a bad move!] Why select a convicted malignant narcissist racist misogynistic felon with pedophile tendencies who has appointed only incompetents and enriches his friends and family while doing little for the rest of us? As another huckster (P.T. Barnum) once said, “There’s a sucker born every minute.”

DJT has appointed Cabinet members like Howard Lutnick, Secretary of Commerce. Lutnick was also linked to Jeffrey Epstein and admitted to having lunch with Epstein on his island (and he took his wife and kids!). And THAT guy is still around and showing up in international negotiations, sadly. Or RFK, Jr., who is bringing back measles and whooping cough and shutting down research on mrNA vaccines and childhood cancer. Or the woman who shot her dog (Ice Barbie, Krsti Noem, former Governor of South Dakota) who is now supervising the group (ICE) that is shooting citizens in places like Minneapolis. Or Crazy Eyes Kash Patel, widely considered an incompetent buffoon within the FBI/CIA ranks–with good reason. The list goes on and on.

Trump’s kakistocracy (look it up) doesn’t inspire confidence. Makes me less positive about the Deity’s judgment, but nevermind. Talarico believes in the separation of church and state and so do I. I also believe in the Constitution, which is being completely trampled on at the moment on so many levels.

I’m not cool with alienating all of our allies and bombing boats and countries, even if the countries, themselves, as Lindsey Graham has long believed, needed a good old-fashioned bombing. Cutting off the oil to Cuba and China sounds good until you realize that China, if it seizes Taiwan, will be controlling all of the high-end computer chips that our technology must have to function. (We have ignored this warning for years about  Taiwan making 90% of the high end computer chips.) And what if the Chinese were to start in on our currency situation, as Michael Moore warned about in his 2009 documentary “Capitalism: A Love Story.” I suggest you watch it, too. (Too many documentaries; too little time.)

 

Downtown San Antonio from our hotel.

The bombing of Iran will not only keep MAGA from continuing to ask those pesky questions about DJT’s best friend, Jeffrey Epstein (or so he hopes) but will probably cause Trump to try to suspend mid-terms for a “national emergency” that he totally created, since there is data to support the position that Iran was already tottering on its damaged feet and incapable of using nukes  against us (too far away). I’m okay with bombing the nuclear sites, but didn’t DJT tell us they were “completely obliterated” quite a while ago? Apparently not, if you need a distraction from the Epstein files.

And let’s not forget: anything to seize power and install friends and family in positions of leadership if you’re Donald John Trump.  You want a pardon? Hit him up—for a fee. How about the money Melania pocketed for her quasi-fashion-documentary? (No corruption here—right?  And I haven’t even mentioned the Qatar jet plane.) And now the GOP faithful, falling into line behind DJT and spending pots of money, has set their sights on buying up media (CBS, etc.) and distorting our ability to receive real news, just like in Russia, where Putin set about putting the media under his thumb to seize and keep power. (*Note to Fox fans: when lawsuits were underway recently, Fox News claimed to be an entertainment channel, not a news channel, as a defense.) We have already seen Stephen Colbert bite the dust and the Washington Post is dying in broad daylight, rather than in darkness. Can Jimmy Kimmel and Seth Meyer be far behind?

Soon we may have WWF wrestling on the lawn of the White House to celebrate the years since 1976 to 2026, our Semiquincentennial (250th birthday). Trump’s already ruined the Kennedy Center, so there goes any U.S. claim to culture [with more downgrades to come.] Remember when Pablo Casals played at the White House, November 13, 1961? No? Well, I do.  Casals played in the East wing (now torn down by Trump without any permission and with LOTS of money pouring into Trump’s hands from “donors” to build—the wall?).  I was  16 years old and JFK’s time in office was the epitome of class and culture for the Presidents I have known, which go back to Truman. And Donald James Trump represents the tackiest and least competent President—even eclipsing “W” of all time. (Which is going some!)

External audio
audio icon You may hear Pau Casals performing Antonín Dvorak‘s “Cello Concerto” with George Szell conducting the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra in 1937 Here

Under Trump, for culture, you have to content yourself with a third-rate country singer or Kid Rock or KISS–except that one of them recently died and KISS retired but got the Medal of Honor along with hate-monger Rush Limbaugh— so, yes, DJT is old, as well, and hardly “cutting edge” regarding culture in the U.S.

We may well have Vince McMahon of the WWE putting on a wrestling tournament on the White House lawn, instead. After all, Trump has already appointed McMahon’s wife, Linda, to be in charge of the SBA (Small Business Administration.) Linda McMahon: another member of the kakistocracy. (How very presidential of DJT.)

Netanyahu and Trump are a lot alike in continued clinging to power and favoritism (and pardons) for their cronies. Yes, the avowed Iranian post-Shah mantras were (1) Death to America (2) Death to Israel (3) Women must wear head garb and never have a say in government. So, not waiting until the already 86-year old died of natural causes probably looked like a good idea (especially since there were many more like him to come), but will the Iranian people agree? It isn’t as though this administration, which unleashed DOGE on us, surgically figured out a way, Maduro-like, to off the Ayatollah. Not at all–thanks to the influence of the Lindsey Grahams and the Benjamin Netanyahus, we are still bombing Iran.

Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran’s oldest son, in 2025.

It appears that the Shah’s son—long gone from Iran after Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s overthrow in 1979—may be being groomed to return to Iran and rule. In a “60 Minutes” interview tonight the Shah’s son denied any desire to be a King or a President. He just wants to be a “transitional leader,”since 48 Iranian leaders were killed in the very recent bombing. Of course, the Shah’s now-grown son also admits to consulting with the White House and being in touch with Congress. Hmmmmm…

Meanwhile, San Antonio beckoned. Good idea to get away.

We had a lovely meal at an outdoor venue, enjoying the eighty-degree weather. It’s hard to believe that we are going to have weather this warm for the next two weeks with nothing lower than seventy degrees.  And yet when I turn on my television, I see blizzards in the Northeast, temperatures in the single digits in places like Minneapolis (the “nice” neighbors in Minnesota who are standing up for their Constitutional rights while they still have them), and not-very-warm readings in cities and towns like Cedar Rapids, Des Moines, and Independence (Iowa). But the worst of the weather has been the massive amount of snow in places like Central Park (NYC) and Massachusetts and even the cold temperatures in Florida. (“But there’s no global warming,and all of the brakes on carbon emissions have been kicked to the curb.”)

So, enjoy volleyball while we all wait for the other shoe (or bomb) to drop. Here are my two lovely 17-year-old twin granddaughters, Elise (blonde, left) and Ava (brunette, right) eating ice cream on the Riverwalk.

Elise & Ava in San Antonio.

San Antonio Riverwalk.

 

Text of Mark Carney, Prime Minister of Canada, at Davos

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On February 1, 2026

In Editorial, Essays on Politics: Best Political Essays & Ideology, Politics

  • This blog contains the full transcript of a special address by Mark Carney, Prime Minister of Canada, delivered at the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting 2026 in Davos.
  • Carney emphasized the end of the rules-based international order and outlined how Canada was adapting by building strategic autonomy while maintaining values like human rights and sovereignty.
  • The Canadian PM called for middle powers, such as his own, to work together to counter the rise of hard power and the great power rivalry, in order to build a more cooperative, resilient world.

This transcript was produced using AI and subsequently edited for style and clarity. The edits do not alter the substance of the speaker’s remarks.

Thank you very much, Larry. I’m going to start in French, and then I’ll switch back to English.

[The following is translated from French]

Thank you, Larry. It is both a pleasure, and a duty, to be with you tonight in this pivotal moment that Canada and the world going through.

Today I will talk about a rupture in the world order, the end of a pleasant fiction and the beginning of a harsh reality, where geopolitics, where the large, main power, geopolitics, is submitted to no limits, no constraints.

On the other hand, I would like to tell you that the other countries, especially intermediate powers like Canada, are not powerless. They have the capacity to build a new order that encompasses our values, such as respect for human rights, sustainable development, solidarity, sovereignty and territorial integrity of the various states.

The power of the lesser power starts with honesty.[Carney returns to speaking in English]

It seems that every day we’re reminded that we live in an era of great power rivalry, that the rules based order is fading, that the strong can do what they can, and the weak must suffer what they must.

And this aphorism of Thucydides is presented as inevitable, as the natural logic of international relations reasserting itself.

And faced with this logic, there is a strong tendency for countries to go along to get along, to accommodate, to avoid trouble, to hope that compliance will buy safety.

Well, it won’t.

So, what are our options?

In 1978, the Czech dissident Václav Havel, later president, wrote an essay called The Power of the Powerless, and in it, he asked a simple question: how did the communist system sustain itself?

And his answer began with a greengrocer.

Every morning, this shopkeeper places a sign in his window: ‘Workers of the world unite’. He doesn’t believe it, no-one does, but he places a sign anyway to avoid trouble, to signal compliance, to get along. And because every shopkeeper on every street does the same, the system persist – not through violence alone, but through the participation of ordinary people in rituals they privately know to be false.

Havel called this “living within a lie”.

The system’s power comes not from its truth, but from everyone’s willingness to perform as if it were true, and its fragility comes from the same source. When even one person stops performing, when the greengrocer removes his sign, the illusion begins to crack. Friends, it is time for companies and countries to take their signs down.

For decades, countries like Canada prospered under what we called the rules-based international order. We joined its institutions, we praised its principles, we benefited from its predictability. And because of that, we could pursue values-based foreign policies under its protection.

We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that trade rules were enforced asymmetrically. And we knew that international law applied with varying rigour depending on the identity of the accused or the victim.

This fiction was useful, and American hegemony, in particular, helped provide public goods, open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security and support for frameworks for resolving disputes.

So, we placed the sign in the window. We participated in the rituals, and we largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality.

This bargain no longer works. Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.

Over the past two decades, a series of crises in finance, health, energy and geopolitics have laid bare the risks of extreme global integration. But more recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited.

You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration, when integration becomes the source of your subordination.

The multilateral institutions on which the middle powers have relied – the WTO, the UN, the COP – the architecture, the very architecture of collective problem solving are under threat. And as a result, many countries are drawing the same conclusions that they must develop greater strategic autonomy, in energy, food, critical minerals, in finance and supply chains.

And this impulse is understandable. A country that can’t feed itself, fuel itself or defend itself, has few options. When the rules no longer protect you, you must protect yourself.

But let’s be clear eyed about where this leads.

A world of fortresses will be poorer, more fragile and less sustainable. And there is another truth. If great powers abandon even the pretense of rules and values for the unhindered pursuit of their power and interests, the gains from transactionalism will become harder to replicate.

Hegemons cannot continually monetize their relationships.

Allies will diversify to hedge against uncertainty.

They’ll buy insurance, increase options in order to rebuild sovereignty – sovereignty that was once grounded in rules, but will increasingly be anchored in the ability to withstand pressure.

This room knows this is classic risk management. Risk management comes at a price, but that cost of strategic autonomy, of sovereignty can also be shared.

 

Politics Resurfaces: Views from Around the Globe

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On February 1, 2026

In Essays on Politics: Best Political Essays & Ideology, Politics

I’ve been reporting on Sundance non-stop for the past week.

As the stated topic(s) on WeeklyWilson are movies/TV AND politics, it’s time to condense for you some world views of the situation with our current administration, as articulated by various international political commentators.

With close friends in Minneapolis (who have an adopted South Korean son who now has to carry his naturalization papers with him at all times, for fear ICE will harm him), I’m  upset by what is going on in our country. There should not be federal troops in ANY American city, and most definitely not simply to intimidate and punish

Killing two citizens and then trying to blacken those citizens’ reputations by portraying them (inaccurately) as trouble-making terrorists is inexcusable and a technique that would only be employed by an administration led by someone without any ethical or moral center. Since that is the very definition of the man and the Trump administration, it follows that Trump will try to “spin” the truth to benefit himself, without any regard for reality. After all, that’s how he got elected.

ICE agents are responsible for 2/3 of the murders in the city of Minneapolis this year (2 out of 3). Sending more ill-trained troops simply to terrorize and punish the populace for being a blue state is the very definition of bad government and divisiveness. Greg Sargent in The New Republic put it this way: “This is a campaign of deliberate terror designed in part—yes—to encourage illegal migrants to self-deport. But mainly it’s to send a warning to ordinary Americans that if we resist Trump’s agenda our citizenship will give us no more protection than it did Renee Good.”

Here are the views of world leaders on the heels of the Davos Conference in Switzerland, where Trump repeated his plans to take control of Greenland. Addressing a packed conference hall at the World Economic Forum Trump repeatedly referred to Greenland as “Iceland.” Nations including Britain, France and Norway sent troops to Greenland in support of Denmark. In Denmark’s capital of Nuuk some of the 57,000 residents of the island  demonstrated, chanting “Yankee, go home!”

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney (whose full speech should be required viewing here in the U.S.) received a standing ovation for his speech in which he declared, “We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.” (For a translation of Carney’s remarks, I will append it in a second post tomorrow.)

Trump seemed to reverse his constant messaging about owning Greenland, one way or another, but, as Eli Stokola and Diane Nerozzi wrote in Politico, “So while the immediate crisis may have been averted, Trump’s retreat did little to reverse a deep-seated sentiment among Europeans that they can no longer consider the U.S. a reliable ally.”

Lauren  Aratani in “The Guardian:”

Trump’s semi-retreat from his previoust repetition of how he planned to take over Greenland came after his tariff threats alarmed Wall Street and Europe, which said they refused to be blackmailed and that they might have to unleash a trade bazooka that would further damage U.S. economic interests. Bloomberg, in an editorial, said “lasting harm had been done.”

Said  Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. in the Wall Street Journal, Greenland is “Trump’s white whale, calling his obsession with taking over Greenland “foolish” and a sign that “he needs more therapy.” Jenkins also said that it may be a sign that Trump is “flirting with cognitive decline.”

Paul Krugman said, “To read Trump’s unhinged text to the Norwegian prime minister, full of false claims, self-aggrandizement is to see hard evidence that America’s president is deeply unwell and getting sicker…America and the world are being held hostage to the whims of a petulant, violent, and deranged individual.”

Andrew Sullivan (Substack) wrote: “The imposition of one man’s will on an entire policy with no checks, balances, or even reasons cited to back him up” is insane. “A U.S. takeover of Greenland is an insane idea that no Greenlander wants and that three-quarters of Americans oppose. Trump himself has given no coherent rationale for wanting it.” He’s spoken of the “psychological” benefit he’d derive from “owning” the territory. “Essentially, he’s upended the Western world out of pure solipsism and pursuit of personal glory. That’s really all this is.”

Jack Blanchard (Politico): “Even if Trump’s step back from the brink holds, something much bigger and unstoppable is now underway…For 80 years allies have viewed American military protection and U.S. respect for a rules-based order as articles of faith. Even if Trump’s Greenland adventure ends without a hostile takeover, that illusion has been shattered and there’s no going back.”

Donald J. Trump & Ghislaine Maxwell.

From The Guardian:

“Less than two weeks before Jeffrey Epstein’s death in jail, his lawyers and Manhattan federal prosecutors met and discussed his potential cooperation, several documents within a cache of newly released investigative files state.“On July 29, 2019, FBI and [prosecutors] met with Epstein’s attorneys, who, in very general terms, discussed the possibility of a resolution of the case, and the possibility of the defendant’s cooperation,” an FBI document titled “Epstein Investigation Summary & Timeline” stated.”

To sum up, here’s what Kevin D. Williamson wrote in The Dispatch: 

“Donald Trump aspires to be the sort of man Xi Jingping is, the sort of man Vladimir Putin is, the sort of man Li Peng was when he ruthlessly suppressed the Tiananmen Square demonstrations—a vicious act of repression that Trump has spoken of admiringly. The acts of unjustifiable violence and extralegal threats carried out by his agents are, manifestly, to Trump’s taste. He is fundamentally totalitarian. And he seems to desire violence. Why wouldn’t he? He has the guns and the gun thugs. Where there are genuine acts of violence being perpetrated against federal agents, those carrying out the acts are giving the Trump administration what it desires: a pretext for escalation.”

Donald & Melania Trump , Jeffrey Epstein & Ghislaine Maxwell,

To that end, Minnesota (and, particularly, Minneapolis residents) keep on keeping on in the admirable way you have behaved in the face of  ruthless and unprincipled behavior perpetrated on the pretext of making us “safer” from our neighbors and friends who came into this country years ago (and have been model citizens ever since, in most cases.) The world and the majority of Americans salute you and stand with you. ICE in Minneapolis is NOT the way we aspire to behave in the United States of America I’ve lived in for eight decades. It is un-American behavior on the part of the corrupt administration of a convicted felon and probable pedophile.

Don’t take the bait organized by the Steven Millers of the world. You’re better than that. I, for one, am proud of your Minnesota Nice behavior in looking out for your neighbors.

 

“American Doctor” Screens at Sundance 2026

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On January 29, 2026

In Editorial, Essays on Politics: Best Political Essays & Ideology, Mexico, Movies, Politics, Pop Culture, Reviews

A still from American Doctor byPoh Si Teng, an official selection of the 2026 Sundance Film Festival. (Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by Ibrahim Al Otla.)

“American Doctor” is a Sundance documentary that follows three physicians grappling with the unbearable gap between what they’ve witnessed in Gaza volunteering at Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Yunis and what the world is willing to acknowledge regarding the reality of what is going on in Gaza. As I watched this documentary I recognized the familiar feeling that, when those in power lack human morality and compassion, the real life crises you are witnessing feel  hopeless. The doctors’ concern that their efforts are futile is just one more battle to be fought.

It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about senseless violence in the Ukraine, Gaza, Iran or Minneapolis, the feeling is the same. As articulated at one point by one of the doctors in this powerful documentary: “There’s an institutional trend to silence and speaking out about this. From the boards of every single university, from the boards of hospitals: they just don’t care at what cost this is achieved…Most American physicians are horrified, but they are too frightened to speak up….”  Consider that documentary statement as it relates to January 6th, Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, and  victims of senseless violence in any  ongoing war:  “They don’t give a shit about anybody else as long as they kill the person they’re after.”

CINEMATOGRAPHERS

Director Poh Si Teng keeps the cameras closely focused on the work of three American doctors in Gaza at the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Yunis, letting the doctors’ exhaustion, anger, and quiet despair speak louder than any narration. Cinematographers include Ibrahim Al-Otta, Ramzy Haddad, Arthur Nazaryan, Chris Rentaria,  and Poh Si Teng, with editing by Ema Ryan Yamazaki and Christopher White.

The result is a film that radiates a specific kind of helplessness — not the helplessness of uninvolved bystanders, but of experts who have seen the consequences of violence up close and personal and still can’t get anyone to listen to them. We see the physicians returning to the United States to speak to representatives at Chuck Schumer’s office, John Cornyn’s office, Ted Cruz’s office—all for naught. This feeling of tilting at windmills is so widespread, so ubiquitous, that you walk away from the experience of this film  overwhelmed by the realization that Kelly Ann Conway’s “alternative facts,” when truth is what is required in society, has contributed mightily to the mess we are all now mired in.

THE DOCTORS

“The American” doctors followed in the Sundance documentary are (l to r) Dr. Thaer Ahmad, Dr. Mark Perlmutter, Director Poh Si Teng and Dr. Fereze Sidhwa. (Photo from AFT)

The doctors are Dr. Fereze Sidhwa, a trauma surgeon from California and a Zoroastrian who actively wonders whether his inability to let the injustice of this genocide go on without protesting proactively in perpetuity is what is keeping him from finding the girl of his dreams. Dr. Mark Perlmutter: a Jewish orthopedic surgeon from North Carolina. As a Jew, he is more at liberty to speak out against the repressive far right regime of Benjamin Netanyahu, and he does so. He also shares that his father was a physician who helped concentration camp survivors in World War II, upon arriving with U.S. forces. The third doctor is Dr. Thaer Ahmad, a  Palestinian-America from Chicago who is an Emergency Room doctor in real life with a wife and two darling children.  He encounters more hassles than the other two doctors just to be allowed to enter Gaza as a volunteer, often being left at the border by red tape just hours before  entry. (“It’s a degree of inconvenience that’s essential. The Israelis choose to notify you that you are not being allowed in literally the night before.”)

All three are risking their lives to go into Gaza and attempt to treat dire injuries under the most primitive conditions. Since the Israeli Army intentionally targets hospitals, there is nowhere for the trapped populace—especially the children—to seek care. The doctors banded together to write an opinion/editorial entitled “As Surgeons We Have Never Seen Such Cruelty Like Israel’s Genocide in Gaza.” The X-ray machine at Nasser Medical Complex has been broken for 11 months; there are only 2 operating rooms.

THE TASK

The three weary doctors are followed amongst their colleagues in Gaza through the halls and operating rooms  of the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis. In the 1 hour and 33 minute film, the hospital is hit by Israeli forces three times. In the film’s finale, a rocket hits the second floor men’s surgical ward, incinerating a 15-year-old boy whom the doctors had just saved. We see two little boys, aged 2, dead and brought in carried in their grieving father’s arms. A ten-year-old has no pulse in her left arm and shrapnel injuries to her foot.  If she survives, she is going to lose both legs and her left arm. Early in the film, the doctors remark on the number of children brought in with gunshot wounds to the head, which they say cannot be simply accidental. The killing of children here is 600 times that in the Ukrainian conflict.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest  civil rights and advocacy organization, has called for streaming platforms in America to carry this documentary, saying: “This important documentary shows, through the eyes of three heroic Americans, the reality of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.  All Americans should see this film.  We urge all streaming services in the nation and worldwide to host and promote the film.”

POLITICS ASIDE

Poh Si Teng, director of American Doctor, an official selection of the 2026 Sundance Film Festival. (Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by Marcus Yam.)

After Dr. Ahmad appears with Dana Bash on CNN, he received a particularly hostile e-mail cheering for “Hamas to renege on the hostage deal before the Sunday deadline so that Israel can finish the job of eliminating the presence forever of every single Palestinian member of Hamas. Chew on that, Doctor.” The Israelis have protested that the Palestinian Hamas forces often hid their headquarters under hospitals, to avoid detection. Israel used that as their justification for bombing hospitals. We are all aware of the precipitating event when 251 civilians in Israel were kidnapped by Hamas on October 7, 2023.

Dr. Ahmad’s response is: “I’m not a spokesperson for anybody. I’m not ‘pro’ anything. I’m a Palestinian who wants to see babies that look like my babies not being killed any more.” Over 1700 health care workers have lost their lives in Gaza since Israel launched its retaliatory attack on Gaza. 94% of the hospitals in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed, including the Nasser Medical Complex.

The U.S. has provided $21.7 billion in military aid to Israel since October 7, 2023, when Hamas attacked Israel and took 251 hostages, according to a report by Brown University’s Watson School of International and Public Affairs.

EMOTIONS UPON DEPARTURE

At the end of the film, on March 18, 2025, when most of the Nasser Hospital seemingly collapses after bombing, the doctors must leave; they feel guilt. “When you leave, you really feel that you have no right to leave. You get this feeling of a kind of shame,” says Dr. Fereze Sidhwa. “I don’t feel like I should have left, because nobody was there and nobody was coming in to replace me. I think it would have been better to have stayed on. I had some access to media and to people who could write about these things.” Also articulated is this thought: “The people in Gaza told us that we have to advocate on their behalf.  None of us wants to, but we all feel a sense of duty.”

  • Peer-reviewed analysis in The Lancet estimated 64,260 traumatic deaths in Gaza by June 30, 2024, rising to over 70,000 by October 2024.
  • Demographics: Studies indicate that 59.1% of these deaths in Gaza are women, children, and the elderly.
  • Over 100,000 Palestinians have been injured.

CONCLUSION

A companion piece for “American Doctor” is 2024’s “No Other Land,” a film made by a Palestinian-Israeli collective that shows the destruction of the occupied West Banks’ Masafer Yatta by Israeli soldiers.

“American Doctor” is a very powerful firsthand account of what has happened and is happening in Gaza, told by those who have made multiple trips there to try to help. As the “Vanity Fair” Sundance team that wandered into this one when they couldn’t get into “Shitheads” said, “It’s the most powerful thing we’ve seen at Sundance, so far.”

“American Doctor” underscores the need for people of good moral fiber to stand up against and speak out against  injustice anywhere, whether in a place far from home or on our own doorstep. If it is wrong and the PTB have presented a “truth” or rationale  built on lies, that must be called out by people of good conscience.

From “American Doctor:” “First responders and journalists are being attacked. Every aspect of life has bee destroyed.  There’s been no accountability. Who is going to bring the perpetrators to justice?  Who is going to prosecute them?  Who is going to confront the perpetrators in a way that they cannot rest without seeing us. It’s the only way that we can achieve accountability and justice.”

Do those words from “American Doctor” apply in other settings?

Yes, they do.

Let’s all act like we get the message that might does NOT make right and we must unite,as Minnesota has, to stand up for our neighbors and the sanctity of human life.

ROB REINER REMEMBERED

By

On December 15, 2025

In Essays on Politics: Best Political Essays & Ideology, Movies, News, Of Local (Quad Cities') Interest, Politics

Rob Reiner, as he appeared on “All In the Family.”

The senseless murder of actor/director Rob Reiner, apparently by his son Nick, is some of the worst news of the year.

I met Rob Reiner on two occasions.

The first time I met him was when I was a “Deaniac” during the run for President of Dr. Howard Dean, back in the “sleepless summer” of 2004. Dean was an unsuccessful candidate for the Democratic nomination in the 2004 presidential election. Later, Howard Dean’s implementation of the fifty-state strategy as head of the DNC is credited with the Democratic victories in the 2006 and 2008 elections. Afterward, he became a political commentator and consultant to McKenna Long & Aldridge, a law and lobbying firm.

Because I paid for a large ad in our local newspaper (the Quad City Times), advertising Howard Dean’s upcoming appearance at Davenport’s West High School (ad approved by the Des Moines Dean headquarters), I was introduced to Rob Reiner, who was also pulling for Howard Dean and was present at a rally in the capital city of Des Moines. Reiner gave me a warm hug. We shook hands and exchanged a few pleasantries. He was warm and gregarious, like a large teddy bear. A “huggy” kind of person, as you might expect from his television appearances as Michael ‘Meathead” Stivic in “All In the Family.”

Rob Reiner
Rob Reiner

• 1971–1979
FILM PROMOTION

Later, in Chicago in 2014, Rob Reiner showed up to promote “And So It Goes.” I was part of the Press at the showing of “And So It Goes.” He was just as warm and friendly and gregarious when I met him on the Red Carpet for that film. I mentioned our previous meeting in connection with the Howard Dean campaign, then 10 years prior, so obviously not someone he would remember (Ha!)

And So It Goes is a 2014 American comedy drama film directed by Rob Reiner and written by Mark Andrus. The film, which stars Michael Douglas, Diane Keaton and Sterling Jerins, was released on July 25, 2014. It received mostly negative reviews from critics, and performed modestly at the box office. The film was the second collaboration between Reiner and Douglas, after The American President (1995). This film was also Frances Sternhagen‘s final feature film role before her death on November 27, 2023.[4]

MY IMPRESSIONS

Reiner was like a sweet, cuddly, out-going teddy bear. The idea of Rob Reiner and his wife being stabbed to death by their own son is  heinous and tragic. What is even more tragic is the response from Donald J. Trump, who had to make it all about him and said (among other totally inexcusable things), “I wasn’t a fan of his at all. He was a deranged person.” Rep. Don Bacon (R, Nebraska) commented that this remark about the tragic death of Rob Reiner was “something you’d expect from a drunk guy at a bar. Can the president be presidential?”

The answer is, “No. DJT cannot be presidential. He needs to BEE GONE, as soon as possible.

 

 

From Substack: This Will Hold

By

On October 29, 2025

In Editorial, Essays on Politics: Best Political Essays & Ideology, Politics

Evil on Steroids

To be clear, when we say “Trump,” understand we’re talking about the Heritage Foundation’s agenda. Trump and his tigers, elephants, and giraffes are not the ones steering this country, although it’s evident he’s enjoying the cruelty. The infrastructure behind him—ideological, financial, and operational—is what’s actually in control.

Elon Musk and the DOGE boys served as the slash-and-burn team, generating the chaos and distraction required for the early stages of Project 2025 to move forward. Trump is simply the vehicle the Heritage Foundation used to gain power.

Do they really intend to deport all brown immigrants, including birthright citizens? They’re certainly trying; the Supreme Court has the case on its docket. And if they succeed, who will work the agricultural jobs? Well, what happens when millions are unemployed, hungry, and sick? Crime rates increase.

So why the new prisons and camps? To house the “new criminals.” And what happens to those criminals? They become “free labor” in the fields.

The Heritage Foundation and the tech bros are building their own fiefdom. Sound far-fetched? More than 40 million Americans are about to lose their SNAP benefits. 13.8 million have already been laid off under Trump’s administration. The uninsured population could climb to 31 million or more by 2026. And when enhanced ACA subsidies expire on December 31, 2025, premiums are projected to increase 114% for 22 million Americans.

Now add the ridiculous tariffs designed to skyrocket the cost of living, along with every other heinous policy meant to push the American people to the brink of despair.

How will they control all these people? With the “law enforcement” they’ve created to report to the Executive Branch, of course.

The ICE Budget for Weaponry

Puppy-killer Kristi Noem received two luxury jets valued at $200 million, and ICE is flush with cash like a hog at the trough with a $170 billion budget. It’s as if torment and cruelty are now line items in America’s priorities.

In 2019 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) spent just $5.7 million on the “small arms” category through October 18; during Trump’s first administration the government averaged about $8.4 million per year. In 2025, ICE has increased that weapons spending by 600 percent. In the last nine months alone, they have spent $71,515,762 on purchases listed as “small arms, ordnance, and ordnance accessories manufacturing.”

Think about that: the MAGA Big Budget Bill made ICE the largest federal law enforcement agency in the nation’s history, with a budget larger than most of the world’s militaries and a 600 percent increase in weapons spending.

This is a domestic enforcement agency—not going to war “over there,” but here: in our streets, against our people.

Blonde and Blue Jesus Forgives Them

I listen to pundits ask, “Why? Why would Republicans give up all their power? Aren’t they concerned about legacy? Why have they abdicated all authority to this Epstein-adjacent convicted felon?”

In short: The GOP has spent more than forty years twisting, remolding, and regurgitating Christian nationalist rhetoric until this moment feels like their long-awaited “crusade.” In their worldview, all one has to do is believe that a white Jesus was the Son of God—and their eternal elevator will come equipped with an “up” button.

Yes, Jesus is their get-out-of-Hell-free card—because in their version of Christianity even Hitler is forgiven. And what is “legacy” when the people destroying history are the ones holding the pen—what does it even mean to be on “the right side” of it?

“Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” – George Orwell, 1984

The Republican Party of fiscal responsibility and rule of law is dead. In its place stands a movement that made a deal with the devil: fall in line behind Trump and his whims, or be destroyed in a primary. And as we’ve seen over the past year with Elon Musk, the DOGE boys, and the election data, it’s no longer just the voters deciding who wins—at least not in elections large enough to cross a certain vote-count threshold.

Their recreational depravity is evil on steroids, and I feel it every time I scroll the news or check on a friend who’s barely hanging on. You probably feel it too. Or you’re trying not to. We watch as Trump’s sycophants hack away at the agencies that keep us alive, leaving them bleeding and gasping for air.

This is how they break the spirit of the American people.

To act as if this is just “Trump being Trump” is to underestimate their underlying agenda.

“Can’t you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something?” Trump to former SECDEF Mark Esper in 2020.

This quote is disturbing, but it’s 2025 and we’re nowhere near the civil unrest of the 2020 Floyd protests—unless they’re able to create it.

The Manufactured Flashpoint

I think about the families in North Carolina—maybe you do too. One storm. One night. And suddenly they’re living under a tarp in the hills, shivering, staring at the mud where their home used to be. They waited for FEMA. They prayed for FEMA. And then came the denial. Trump said no. Just… no. No aid. No lifeline. No reason. Try telling a child huddled beside you that the government of the richest nation on earth just shrugged. DESPAIR.

Or the mother who did everything right—every well-check, every vaccine—until the lies and poison from RFK Jr. made her second-guess what she once trusted. Now she sits beside a hospital bed, watching her child fight a disease we had already beaten. She carries the guilt. Her child carries the consequences. HOPELESSNESS.

Then there are the farmers who voted for Trump with their full chest, now watching as the slashing of USAID and the illogical punitive tariffs decimate their businesses. Meanwhile, Trump handed Argentina a $40 billion bailout, cut a deal to purchase their beef, and in return Argentina struck new agreements to sell soybeans to countries that once bought from U.S. suppliers. All as JD Vance and his AcreTrader investors scour the country for farms on life support, ready to swoop in and rob hardworking American families of what they spent generations building. ANGUISH.

And then there’s the veteran I can’t stop picturing—perhaps because I am one, and this visual occupies space in my brain and heart that I can’t turn off. It’s reality for too many. Trump’s tariffs were supposed to help the economy and the American people; that’s what they were told. Instead, prices exploded. Jobs disappeared. The VA slashed support. Some were hit twice, never realizing that “eliminating DEI” also meant eliminating programs that kept women in the workforce. Now they stare at stacks of bills no one with PTSD should ever have to face. They’re a month away from losing their home, and SNAP benefits are days away from a hold-status until the government reopens.

An unnecessary government shutdown that could have been avoided if Speaker Johnson would just release the Epstein files. They’re confused and crushed. Fox is on in the background, reporting that Trump is building a $300 million ballroom. For who? The billionaires? The oligarchs? RAGE.

Bannon’s Firehose of Maximum Outrage

And now we have the beginnings of the uprising that Putin, Trump, Steve Bannon, the weak-ass tech bros with their pre-built bunkers, and the Project 2025 Nazis have been engineering—by slashing and burning the people’s lifelines.

This is the architecture of despair:

He tore down the fucking White House—our White House.

It’s the methodical destruction of our sacred institutions and the places we turn when we are scared, sick, or desperate. It is the breaking of the American spine by men drunk on unearned power, men who enjoy watching people crawl.

And that is why $170 billion to ICE matters. Because once you break people, you need an army to control the pieces. An army they plan to have in place by the spring, before the midterms.

Mother Jones & Union Activism in the U.S.

By

On September 16, 2025

In Editorial, Education, Local, News, Of Local (Quad Cities') Interest, Politics

Activist and organizer Mother Jones.

We’re on the way to the 56th Nashville Film Festival. Driving 7 hours to Paducah, Kentucky was the start.

On the way, we stopped at a rest stop in Southern Illinois, where I communed with Mother Jones, patron saint of the magazine for the reasons you can read here for yourself. Mother Jones was a union organizer and activist. So was I. Mother Jones formed the United Mine Workers, hoping to stop the exploitation of underage minersand the habit of taking advantage of immigrant labor that still exists.

I led the 3-year charge to unionize (organize) the SEA (Silvis Education Association) and I  worked hard and long, as, I’m sure, Mother Jones did. My efforts were once scorned by a dinner partner who tried to assign malign characteristics to unions, when, in fact, they are one of the reasons that American workers  began to be paid a living wage and treated fairly.  This particular critic didn’t like the NEA (National Education Association) and was a white male who was, no doubt, during his working years, a managerial type.

Union Organizing by Mother Jones

When I started teaching in Silvis, Illinois, in 1969 unions were the farthest thing from my mind. We had an education association, which was basically a milk-and-cookies type after-school meeting with no power at all. There had been no recognition of the organization as representing the teachers who taught in Silvis, who numbered about 50 souls in grades K through 8.  The SEA had been in existence since 1962, a time period when I was still in high school.

It wasn’t until at least 10 years after my employment began in Silvis that I became aware of the fact that every other school district around us had representatives who sat down with the school board to discuss issues like salary, class size, and work hours, while we had nothing. We read our new year’s salary in the newspaper and it rarely went up.  I started teaching in Silvis for $5,280 a year and, out of that, paid for pre-school supervision for my then-one-year-old son. If you think that sounds like a paltry sum for working a full year, you are right.

In defense of the hair do that looks like it was beaten by an egg-beater, I had my sun glasses on top of my head until a few moments before this picture was taken.

I remember saying, to our then-principal, “They should never have rattled my cage,” which had to do with the administration taking my one day of personal leave when my son was hospitalized with double pneumonia and I was told to go right to the hospital from work. I was gone one day. The district took advantage of my necessary absence due to the ill health of my then 2-year-old son, showing absolutely no sympathy to the first-year teacher. (I remember being asked, “Is he going to die?” to justify leaving after I got the call that he was in the emergency room.)

So, I began finding out what it took to unionize our milk-and-cookies organization. It would require a vote supervised by the League of Women Voters and the next 3 years were a blur of finding out how to achieve this. The days of a powerless organization that had no discussion rights with the administration and had to content itself with reading next year’s salary in the local newspaper were gone.

It took me three years of P.R. efforts and going door-to-door in the Silvis neighborhoods, while my two best friends, Linda and Judy went off to Egypt and rode camels during Easter break.  But not me.  I worked on finding out how to get our group recognized by a recalcitrant school board and administration for 3 years and later was asked to lead workshops elsewhere by the IEA (Illinois Education Association) because we chose to run three candidates at once rather than do the “bullet voting” that the IEA recommended. I defended myself against dogs that ate the buttons off my coat and endured teetering on the brink of blasted-out concrete porches (no idea why the center portion of one house’s porch looked like it had been Ground Zero for an explosion, but it did).

We won the vote and, as far as I am aware, the Silvis Education Association still has negotiating rights with the Silvis School Board. In order to get that right, our organization had to interview and then back new candidates for the school board. We campaigned for our endorsed candidates, whom we interviewed at the local library, and put up billboards. I organized a phone tree to contact local voters. We won, but it took three years of work.  We elected four members of a seven member board. Unlike DJT, we were not out for revenge. We just wanted what every other school district’s  employees had: collective bargaining rights.

That is what Mother Jones helped miners to achieve and I’d recommend reading what the rest stop monument informed us about her life and achievements.

I may not have single-handedly made Silvis teachers rich (or rich-er), but we established a Sick Leave Bank into which employees could contribute a day (or more) of their unusued sick leave towards someone with a catastrophic illness. I know that it came in handy for Marion Gray when she was out a lengthy period recovering from a mastectomy. We were able to secure some other benefits for the underpaid Silvis employees, and, most importantly, we opened the door to the SEA being treated as a representative organization for future teachers in the Silvis School District.

And that’s your history lesson for the day.

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