Kim Iversen welcomed former congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green (R–Georgia #14).
This is a worthwhile interview. It was published to YouTube Sunday, April 5, 2026.
I like, for example, how Green explains the overwhelming members of Congress.
The timing of this interview is good for my the next blog topic. It will be titled, “Election 2026: Six Months Out.” It was publish Friday, May 1, 2026.
The new 2026 Major League Baseball season is now in its first full week.
I was sorry Milwaukee Brewers, which has been in only one World Series, as the American League pennant winners for 1982, did not make it into the 2025 World Series. Since their move to the National League, with expansion in 1998, they have not won any pennants in the NL.
I was bitterly disappointed in the 2025 Detroit Tigers. They won 59 of 93 games (.634) and, after receiving no meaningful July 31, 2025/Trade Deadline Day player upgrades, won 28 of the season’s remaining 69 games (.406) and even blew their AL Central division. They eked out a wild card slot.
I am a lifelong resident of Michigan. I have just one area MLB home team. The American League Detroit Tigers—the World Series-winning team in 1935, 1945, 1968, and 1984—are it.
I am not a sports fan, in general, so I have not been following since my childhood. But I would like to see my area National Football League team, Detroit Lions, finally in the Super Bowl. (They are an embarrassment given the franchise was established all the way back in 1930 and is one of just four NFL teams to have never played in one given Super Bowl. The first Super Bowl, won by Green Bay Packers, was in 1967.) I would like the MLB Detroit Tigers to win a fifth World Series while I am still alive. (I turn 55 in August.)
I don’t think my position is unique. The past World Series champs with the longest drought are Cleveland Indians (I hate their changed name Guardians). That was in 1948. Since 1979 there are several teams forty or more years also with a drought: Pittsburgh Pirates (1979), Baltimore Orioles (1983), Detroit Tigers (1984), and New York Mets (1986). I can also extend sympathy to Oakland (currently in Sacramento) Athletics (1989), Cincinnati Reds (1990), and Minnesota Twins (1991). Of all these teams, only Detroit Tigers and New York Mets have played in any Fall Classics since their last World Series championships.
An interesting understanding of the business are with these following videos. In fact: They motivate me to not give too much of my personal time to live-viewing MLB games here in 2026.
The first video is from a radio station in Detroit. Published to YouTube on October 15, 2024, just after that year’s Detroit Tigers were done with their postseason, “The Valenti Show with Rico” co-host Mike Valenti offered up some historic statistics which should not be ignored.
The second video is from More Perfect Union. It was published March 25, 2026. It gives focus to how Major League Baseball became changed with the use of, and reliance on, data. (And there is even more to the business model.) This was a change which catapulted the 2004 Boston Red Sox to their first World Series title since 1918.
I will post these videos below.
Sunday, March 15, 2026 is the date for the 98th Academy Awards.
Ceremony will be on ABC.
In 2029, Oscar moves to YouTube.
I was thinking about how these showbiz awards have gone through changes.
The Oscars were invented in part to appease actors. Serve their egos. When they arrived on television in the 1950s, they were also designed to have viewers tune in—year after year—for a star-studded event which was built up to feel exciting and important.
Other big awards ceremonies followed.
In calendar order:
• Grammy Awards are for music.
• Academy Awards are for movies.
• Tony Awards are for not just theater—that is not specific enough—but for Broadway.
• Primetime and Daytime Emmy Awards are for the television.
Most of this used to be considered prestigious.
Over the last generation or so…U.S. citizens became less engaged.
The Oscars, Tonys, Emmys, and Grammys now remind me of the mall. The indoor mall. These big awards cermonies, for these different mediums, are like the anchor department stores for a huge indoor mall. The other store are less prestigious, some not particularly relevant, but existing for entertainment. Filler.
What is the trend of indoor shopping malls? What is the trend for these showbiz awards ceremonies? Well, just like with indoor malls—and what has become of them—there isn’t an interest, a use, and a need. Not for how people live. There are fewer music stores, movie theaters, and people have their personal setups at home…to accommodate what they do take in. Convenience.
I have given thought about how music, movies, and television is not all that great. But for what people do enjoy…they are glad to have something. There isn’t much—in art—that is memorable and in need for being celebrated.
Tuesday, March 3, 2026 will give us Uniter States Senate primaries in Texas.
The primary on the Republican side is whether unpopular incumbent John Cornyn, first elected in 2002, will pull through or become unseated, via this primary, by the state’s attorney general, Ken Paxton. A third person is also in the hunt: congressman Wesley Hunt.
The primary on the Democratic side is between congresswoman Jasmine Crockett and state representative James Talarico. (They are pictured above as the two debated in January 2026.)
One may think, “What does it matter—the Republican wins.”
There are people who assume Texas is Safe Republican. Not anymore.
Since the 2000s, Texas has trended away from the GOP: It was their party’s No. 10 best state for U.S. President in 2000 and 2004; No. 15 in 2008 and 2012; No. 22 in 2016; No. 23 in 2020. It moved up for the Republicans to No. 20 in 2024. From 2000 to 2020, a period of 20 years and 6 election cycles, the state trended favorably for the Democrats to rank as their Nos. 41 to 36 to 29 to 28 best state. (No. 31 in 2024.) The average number of states carried by United States presidential winners, since 1992, has been 29. That is…30 for winning Republicans and 28 for winning Democrats.
Can the Democrats, under the circumstances that they are prevailing party in a given election cycle, carry Texas?
Yes.
It will be difficult.
Democrats have not won a statewide race in Texas since 1994.
Given the abysmal polling numbers for Republican-incumbent United States president Donald Trump, we will find out if this may materialize here in 2026.
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Bombing of Iran
This blog topic was written prior to the United States and Israel having attacked Iran. (The news arrived on Saturday, February 28, 2026 at around 03:00 a.m. ET.) Comments section is available for the topic. I will mention that I, of course certainly do not agree or support this move. And I do not think or feel anything favorably, from this action, for what it means especially for this nation and its people.
February 15, 1976—which was fifty [50] years ago from this blog topic’s publishing date—also fell on a Sunday.
It turned out to the beginning of a serial killer running loose in Oakland County, Michigan, targeting prepubescent children, in a case which is commonly known as The Oakland County Child Killer. (This case will hereafter will be abbreviated as the OCCK.)
I wrote about and posted the topic here: Remembering the Children.
It was on this blog’s date, fifty [50] years ago, the OCCK abducted and, four days later, murdered the first known victim.
His name was Mark Stebbins. He lived in Ferndale, Michigan, a city in Oakland County, along M–1 which is known as Woodward Avenue. The Woodward Avenue Corridor.
The embedded video, although some details are not 100-percent accurate, examines this period. It is two hours. Last month, I wrote of three Detroit-area teenaged girls murdered within the first twenty [20] days of 1976. So, this was a disturbing and dangerous period in the history of at least Greater Metro Detroit. This certainly had impact on how parents raised, and allowed freedom for, their children.
The OCCK is “unsolved.”
Now that February 2026 has arrived…we are nine months from the general election for the 2026 United States midterm elections.
Due Dissidence co-host Keaton Weiss—as did co-host Russell Dobular—offered his predictions for 2026 with its year-end special.
(I was not available for the livestream.)
Weiss predicts, with the 2026 midterm elections, and thanks to how unpopular is Republican incumbent U.S. president Donald Trump, both the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate will be won over as pickups for majority control by the Democrats.
If both houses flip…I find it necessary to anticipate the 2026 Democrats may also win over a majority number of the nation’s 50 states’s governorships.
Since the 1910s, the decade of the 17th Amendment (direct elections of U.S. senators by states’s voters), there have been 28 midterm election cycles from 1914 through 2022.
Five of these cycles resulted in White House opposition-party switches for control for both houses of Congress.
In all such outcomes, a higher percentage of seats were established with winning over the U.S. House vs. U.S. Senate.
It also turns out that, with all five such midterm elections cycles—with party switches for both houses of Congress—the White House opposition party entered those years as the minority and then flipped for majority the nation’s states for governorships.
The above chart shows theses past midterm elections.
“H-v.-S” is the percentage spread, in seats, between the lower-vs.-upper chamber of Congress. Gubernatorial outcomes are shown last.
I will be taking this into account for when it is time to write and publish my predictions. That is…whether I think just the U.S. House or that both houses of Congress—along with a majority number of states’s governorships—will switch from Republican to Democratic.
Election Day is Tuesday, November 3, 2026.
(Next blog topic: Sunday, February 15, 2026.)
Next Tuesday, January 20, 2026, will mark one year since Donald Trump returned to office.
I am not going to write an assessment on Trump Part II, because so much of it writes itself, and so many others [content creators] beat me to the punch, but I have reached a conclusion.
Trump—who is not MAGA but is, instead, MIGA— is not a U.S. President who intends to improve the lives of the people here in the United States.
He is, quite frankly, doing the opposite.
In terms of quality, for what he has done so far (while in office), I have written off Trump.
This may also be applicable with a sufficient number of U.S. citizens.
The [Sunday,] February 1, 2026 Progressives Chat will be an update on the 2026 United States midterm elections.
