And I thought no one was supposed to be above the law.

That’s how society works. Cross the line and you might get fined, assuming you’re caught and someone has enough money, power and wherewithal to hold you to account.

But what if you act in plain sight? Thumb your nose at the system, believe you’re untouchable?

That’s what we’re confronted with today.

Did Meta, et al, target tweens? That’s being debated in court as I write this.

Does Donald Trump have the right to tear down the East Wing and build a ballroom?

Well, he doesn’t seem to care what anybody thinks. Irrelevant of starting a “brief” war sans approval that appears to be endless with no good exit, the U.S. being lucky to walk away with its tail between its legs, worse off than it started.

We can debate welfare. We can debate health care. You might have an opinion on either side of the issue.

But we were never asked our opinion on the ballroom, or the arch. They weren’t even on our radar screen.

Rather, we woke up one day and the White House was being torn apart and a hole was being dug…

Sure, presidents have changed the interior of the building, but the exterior? What next? A lengthening of the Washington Monument? A closing down of Arlington National Cemetery?

Now I know that in tech you act first and ask for permission later. However, in many cases this is done off the radar screen and the system is not equipped to address these breakthroughs. Actually, that’s a big problem in Congress. How can you ask people to legislate about that which they have no knowledge?

This is why we need a digitally-savvy body, to meet the problems of the twenty first century head-on.

But when Trump acts with impunity, doing whatever he wants, what the hell am I supposed to do?

I don’t drive a hundred miles an hour and then rip up the ticket after being cited by police. I don’t refuse to show up to court. And if I do, I don’t blame the police person. And, if the judge renders a verdict, I obey it. Otherwise the penalties are too heinous.

But the Supreme Court decided that Trump is not liable for any crimes while in office. So, what’s to stop him?

Once again, this isn’t about left and right, this is about a changing of the rules.

Imagine if one team had to gain ten yards for a first down, but the other never had to move the ball an inch in order to garner four more plays. How would that work? How could the other team win?

Sure, people bend the rules in sports, and even in business. But at least there are rules, and they always do it surreptitiously, they hide their actions, hoping not to be found out. But Trump? He rubs the dirt in our eye.

So what do we know… No one is going to stop him from building his ballroom. If for no other reason than he’s got teams working 20 hours a day and…

“Trump’s Ballroom Is Rising at Breakneck Speed: 20 Hours a Day, 7 Days a Week – Although the fate of the ballroom is tied up in court, the Trump administration argues that the project is too far along to be stopped now.”

Free link: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/18/us/politics/trump-ballroom-construction.html?unlocked_article_code=1.6lA.hjeC.9lmaMbE2jKp_&smid=url-share

That’s the nature of life. Getting started is the hardest part. And once you have, you’re rarely impeded. Especially when you’ve got a rubber-stamp Congress.

That’s right, we’re going to spend nearly a billion dollars on the ballroom and then tear it down? Not gonna happen.

Now when a kid gets caught red-handed he lies, but the parent knows the cookies didn’t disappear all by themselves, and the child is punished.

Trump lies and is not punished. And in some cases, lives are at stake.

Once again, this is not a Republican/Democrat issue. There are not two sides. There is only the law. We have to obey it, why doesn’t he?

And if you blindly pay fealty to Trump, support everything he does… Is it the substance or the fact that he’s the leader of your team?

Americans are uninformed. This is what you learn on TikTok. Political questions are asked and true believers come up with such cockamamie stuff.

But the ballroom. This is binary, black and white, built or not. You can see it with your own two eyes.

Now the interesting thing is that all those protesting in the street, the No Kings people, have crawled back into the holes they came from and are now silent. In truth, many are waiting for the results of the midterm elections. We’ll see how that goes down. Then again, you’ve got Trump saying mail-in voting must go, yet he just used it in Florida. Talk about cognitive dissonance.

“Trump Votes by Mail Again in Florida – The president also voted by mail in 2020 and in a Florida special election in March, even as he has railed against the practice and equated it to cheating.”

Free link: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/17/us/politics/trump-mail-vote-florida-election.html

But the No Kings protesters… They see that their efforts made no difference. Trump ignored them or doubled-down. As for elected officials on the left, wimps you’d never bring to a bar fight.

Honestly, I feel powerless, and I’m not the only one.

But this is unlike anything I’ve seen in my lifetime. We hated Nixon, but he ultimately paid the price, he had to resign. There have been a lot of politicians’ whose policies I’ve disagreed with. But dem’s the breaks. They were duly elected. But this? Trump acting willy-nilly, doing whatever he wants, even ignoring legal rulings?

This is new. This is demoralizing. This is indefensible.

But this is what happening.

There’s a moral rot in America, and the nation stinks from the top. And until we rein in Trump, we’re barely different from Venezuela, all these nations whose governments we want to change. If we’re not a democracy, how do we expect those outside our borders to take our efforts seriously?

They don’t.

Just know that you are not alone in your frustration.

And the next time you see a member of society breaking the rules, ask yourself why they should obey them, when the President doesn’t.

Morning in America?

The sun sank long ago.

Have you watched “Keeping Faith”?

I’ll watch anything with Eve Myles in it.

She’s not a movie star, she’s an ACTRESS!

That’s the change we’ve been experiencing in the modern era. You hear about all these movie stars dipping into TV… It’s really about those who’ve been working on both the small and big screens, even on stage, for years, building a résumé. Movie stars pass on scripts, work infrequently, actors work on a regular basis, knowing that image is subsidiary to the performance.

But that does not mean these new talented actors are unknown.

We just finished watching “Gone” on BritBox. It’s got a 100/68 rating on RottenTomatoes.

You probably know David Morrissey from “Sherwood,” which has a 96/63 RT rating (but I always take the audience rating with a grain of salt). In “Gone” he plays a different role, he’s completely internalized, he’s anything but warm and huggable.

And if you’re a regular viewer of the small screen, which isn’t so small, you’ll know others from the cast, this is especially true in English projects, actors tend to appear regularly.

But what put me over the top, what sealed the deal, made me pick up the remote and watch “Gone,” was Eve Myles.

First and foremost, she’s not an ingénue… The media keeps telling us to pay attention to wet behind the ears actors based on their physicality. Skills, chops, are irrelevant. A pretty face is key. Never mind most of these youngsters end up fading away anyway.

Eve Myles is not unattractive, but she’s not stop you in your tracks beautiful. And she’s got that space between her teeth… What is appealing is not her looks, but her personality in these roles. The way she encompasses so many characteristics and moods.

In “Gone” she plays Detective Annie Cassidy. She isn’t in charge, but she’d like to be. She’s constantly bumping up against authority.

And she’s dipping her toe into reconnection with her husband, who left Annie for a younger woman. All her friends tell her not to go back, but the force keeps pulling her in. We live in a world of billions of people, but the attraction to ones we’ve been involved with is almost unbreakable, it’s hard to resist.

But Annie can be manipulative. She wants to do her job, succeed, solve the crime.

But she doesn’t always know what is going on.

Eve as Annie does not always react in the same way, she employs different facial expressions, you marvel at her ability to do so, but it’s not like Meryl Streep, she doesn’t supersede the role and draw attention to her skill…no, it all seems natural.

To tell you the truth, I ultimately found “Gone” a little disappointing, the buildup was fantastic, the tension was palpable, but the ending just didn’t live up to what came before.

But Eve Myles?

She was a 10!

If I read one more story that the movies are back…

You might be surprised to discover that “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” has grossed 50% more than “The Odyssey,” the supposed talk of the summer.

That’s right, “Spider-Man” has a domestic gross of $785,831,670 compared to “The Odyssey”‘s $504,680,370, and “Spider-Man” has been in release two weeks less!

Furthermore, “The Odyssey” gross has been boosted by IMAX screenings/attendance, which cost 20-60% more per ticket and represent 30% of the film’s overall gross.

So why are we subjected to endless reams of hype celebrating the success of “The Odyssey” and at this point barely hear crickets re “Spider-Man”?

Because the press likes the story. Another “Spider-Man?” Meh. But some big, new extravaganza from one of the few directors who can sell a picture by name alone? Based on a Greek classic that the great unwashed have never read?

What is sold as mass is not.

And what have we learned from the above two successes? That movies have become an event business, a land of a couple of successful moonshots, this is not evidence of a healthy business, this is representative of a business that has lost its soul and has no time for that which is not a mega-success, if for no other reason than marketing for the cheap movie costs as much as that for the expensive film.

Looking at the year-to-date chart…

There are only 18 films that exceed $100 million in domestic gross. And only eight of those flicks are originals. And in the top ten, besides “The Odyssey,” one of the originals is “Michael,” which grossed far more than expected, but still was akin to a sequel, the studio was not starting from scratch with an unknown quantity.

As for the other originals in the top ten… You’ve got “Obsession” and “Backrooms,” which are definitely hits, but from outsiders. This is where a renaissance in the health of the business could grow from. But other than horror, no one wants to distribute a low budget movie. Hell, film festival sales are down.

In order for the movie business to recover, people have to get into the habit of going to the theatre on a regular basis, knowing that something good will be playing every weekend. But this is not the case, we’ve got a few hits and a bunch of dreck. But the somnambulant movie press refuses to address the fact that its cheese has been moved, that the audience has moved online, to streaming, and that the theatrical business is moribund with less of a future than ever.

Yes, the film business depends on new product, out of the box, risky stuff that titillates the audience. Despite the success of “Spider-Man,” superhero sequels are no longer doing boffo at the b.o….

As for something new and different… Streaming is where you get it. Netflix is derided because it doesn’t release almost any of its movies in theatres, but Netflix makes 25-50 films a year, and viewership is through the roof, because friction is nearly nonexistent. You’ve already paid, you don’t have to pay attention to press, you just log on and see the new product that appeals to you on the homepage.

But this isn’t sexy enough for the so-called auteurs, who believe that every film must be seen in a theatre.

But the truth is the number one platform is YouTube. Because it’s cutting edge and innovative.

Meanwhile, Hollywood has its knickers in a twist, fearful that the Paramount/Warner Bros. Discovery will result in fewer productions.

Theatrical business is like Vegas. There are no DVD sales to prop up grosses, never mind video stores. A film either opens big or does not, almost nothing grows.

And the marketing cycle is all off. Windows make no sense to the audience in an on demand world where if you’re aware of it now, you want to consume it now. You mean I’ve got to wait weeks for VOD and then months for it to trickle down to a service I pay for? By that time, with the tsunami of product, I no longer remember the movies of even a few months ago.

But, but, BUT! If Netflix drops a movie or a complete series… It’s out of cycle with the press. The press likes something dripped out week by week so they can write about it. Otherwise, it’s one and done.

But the press is out of touch with the public. The public doesn’t care about the endless stories, the updates in the paper, they want it all now, they binge it and move on to something new. You don’t try to artificially slow down the cycle…

Meanwhile, Netflix is adding games and podcasts trying to catch up with YouTube and Hollywood is arguing over how many films Ellison is going to make when people have gotten out of the habit of going to the movies on a regular basis.

You can’t stop progress.

Then again, if I read one more fakokta article about the return of physical product in the music business… How about those inane articles about cassettes coming back?

Bottom line, the true bottom line, is that streaming accounts for 84% of revenue. And, physical sales are usually accounted for on a retail basis, whereas streaming is inherently wholesale. And people buy vinyl who don’t even have turntables.

Buy all the discs you want, but if you think physical is coming back, you’ve probably still got a CD player in the dashboard of your car, never mind a cassette deck!

So until we can agree on a narrative, we cannot march forward.

Then again, disruptors have eaten the lunch of the establishment over and over again. Netflix succeeded in plain sight.

Meanwhile, we keep hearing that more films need to be made for theatrical release. Why not release the album exclusively on vinyl first? And make it so it doesn’t hit streaming services for month. Those records would be dead on arrival, because access is everything.

The audience will show up for an event picture.

But they will not show up for more pictures on a regular basis and they are never going to again.

But all the talk is about the Paramount/Warner Bros. Discovery merger and the theatrical business.

The general public doesn’t care. Even Zaslav wants out, so he can get his big paycheck before the entire enterprise sinks.

But don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story.

Movie Syncs/Best Opening Track/Best Song Not The Single

Tune in August 15th to Faction Talk, channel 103, at 4 PM East, 1 PM West.

If you miss the episode, you can hear it on demand on the SiriusXM app. Search: Lefsetz