Writing in 2025 comes with major challenges. In the radically changed communications world in which we live where is the tipping point? How many words on any given subject will be a turn-off? So here are some quick takes on disparate subjects that briefly made the headlines last week.
“Big, Beautiful Bill”
President Donald J. Trump’s so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” is projected to add $2.5 trillion to the national debt over ten years. We need to subtract, not add, and adding to the national debt is not conservative.
Winner of Five Oscars
The film Anora just won five Oscars. One critic has described it as genre-bending. Parts of it are riotously frantic and funny. But for those who are considering watching it, the film also incinerates guardrails that have previously protected or deflected audiences from the visceral side of sex clubs.
Under the Bus
DJT did not get elected to end US support for Ukraine. Nor, to join in voting at the United Nations with the tyrannical set of nations targeting the US in world affairs—Russia, China, North Korea and Iran. This abrupt departure of geopolitical sense has and will continue to cause harm to the US and compromise Ukraine by shoving them not to the table but under a very big bus.
The National Pastime
Baseball is struggling. On the major league side, the Los Angeles Dodgers have a talent payroll of $303.9 million, while the Miami Marlins spend $43.63 million. The mean is $152.7. And comparatively, the game moves more slowly than other pleasant distractions.
Baseball’s leadership is now trying new gymnastic moves in an effort to protect the financial well-being of its product and its owners. Wake up; baseball needs fewer games and more intra-season suspense. The current schedule is for 162 games. My suggestion: divide the season up into four 40-game series, with the winners from those series playing each other in a year-end World Series face-off.
Crypto-Currencies
Finally, President Trump signed an Executive Order establishing a strategic bitcoin reserve. According to press reports, the president has a $20 million investment in cryptocurrencies.
If crypto-currencies are to receive the imprimatur of the White House, there should be a substantial effort to enlighten the public on this move and, more broadly, what role these currencies will play in our country’s financial strength.
Conclusion
Finally, here’s an invitation: Pile on, post to one or more subjects of interest, and tell the Spy what you would do.
Al Sikes is the former Chair of the Federal Communications Commission under George H.W. Bush. Al writes on themes from his book, Culture Leads Leaders Follow published by Koehler Books.
James Milner Dean says
I’d impeach the SOB a third time. You know what they say, “The third time is always a charm.”
James Nick says
On Crypto-Currencies
Mr Sikes says that if crypto-currencies are to receive the imprimatur of trump’s Imperial Palace, there should be a substantial effort to enlighten the public on this move and, more broadly, what role these currencies will play in our country’s financial strength.
Surely Mr Sikes jests. Enlightening the public on the minutiae of crypto-currencies would be about as successful as trying to explain quantum mechanics. Crypto is technologically dense and financially obscure… by design. Because it defies any kind of experiential, or even intuitive, understanding by ordinary citizens, crypto is the perfect vehicle for the very kind of fraud and abuse trump claims to be stamping out.
Just a few years ago, trump called cryptocurrency a scam. Then a bunch of rich bitcoiners raised $25 million for Trump during his campaign. Like a moth to a flame, trump instantly did a 180 and promised them he would deregulate the crypto industry and make the US the crypto capital of the planet. He will do anything for money – one definition of a prostitute.
The crypto industry is basically a giant offshore casino. The US government has no business speculating with our money in crypto. Not only that, the trump family started its own crypto business called World Liberty Financial. Now, other malign actors, both foreign and domestic, will invest in these assets in order to curry favor with trump.
Meanwhile, the MAGA-verse seems perfectly fine with this kind of corruption that is happening in plain sight. It boggles the mind!
On Ukraine
Mr Sikes states that the “abrupt departure of geopolitical sense has and will continue to cause harm to the US and compromise Ukraine by shoving them not to the table but under a very big bus.”
By saying that trump is throwing an entire country under a bus just doesn’t capture what’s going on here. trump is, right now, denying the weapons and intelligence Ukraine needs to defend itself while at the same time giving succor to the very country that invaded them. He literally has blood on his hands because of all the defenseless people now dying under indiscriminate Russian bombardment. All this because trump has a personal grudge to settle with Zelensky. It’s a level of pettiness and narcissism that is as breathtaking as it is unforgivable.
Practically overnight trump has reversed over a century of US policy towards first, the Soviet Union, and now Russia. We now find ourselves aligned with the Evil Empire and the Axis of Evil. Again, the MAGA-verse seems to be just fine with this turn of events. But in my opinion, trump should be arrested and tried for treason and human rights violations just because of his Ukraine policies alone.