The Dumbest War Since The One With Jenkin's Ear

Did you see CNN's report this morning about trump's not-so-smart war effort against Iran? (via Katie Bo Lillis and Zachary Cohen)

The request from a senior officer at the US military command carrying out President Donald Trump’s war with Iran came in an email: We need ideas.

“We are looking for new creative and unconventional ways to pressure and punish Iran,” an officer in US Central Command’s intelligence branch wrote in a message sent Wednesday to a broad group of military analysts, according to a source familiar with the message. A second source also said that a senior US military officer sent the message last week soliciting new ideas for how to deal with Iran.

The crowdsourcing-style query, which military officials said was unusual over email, is one sign of the limited — and potentially unpalatable —options available to Trump to force Iran into a deal on his terms. Hoping to find an alternative, the official at CENTCOM kicked off the brainstorming session via email to see if anyone had a better idea. The second source said CENTCOM is looking at everything, acknowledging it needs to reevaluate the strategy.

Granted, in previous wars we've never really had the technology to get instant feedback from the troops, but even *asking* for brainstorming sessions in the middle of a firefight is insane to contemplate.

I admit I am a novice at war - the closest I ever got was applying for a ROTC scholarship to please my dad - but even I understand the strategic necessity of planning your wars BEFORE YOU START THE DAMN THINGS.

trump jumped into this fiasco with ego inflated and eyes closed: Tempted by the glory of being a wartime mob boss president (even as he insists on getting Peace Prizes), and by promises from Netanyahu who needed the United States to inflict regime change on Iran. trump honestly does not understand how to manage wars, and refuses to realize that wars aren't just bombing targets and waiting for the other nation to beg for mercy. Because Iran isn't about to beg, and Iran was in stronger strategic position - control of the Strait of Hormuz - than trump understood.

The real strategists in the armed forces - the guys and gals at our war colleges and defense think tanks - would have warned trump, Hegseth, and the rest of the Republican neocon warhawks - and they likely did before Hegseth kicked them out of the Pentagon - that we needed more resources lined up by February of this year, and a plan already in place to keep that strait opened to deny Iran any bargaining power. A chastened trump administration - reaching out now for the experts to brainstorm - is already too late: Iran holds the high ground at this stage of conflict, and it is going to take more resources and manpower - a call for enlistments if not triggering a draft among 20-something men who didn't want wars, getting more money out of a Congress angry they hadn't been consulted or briefed, getting our industries on a war footing that most of them aren't set to handle - that our nation can't offer.

It's telling that trump's officials are asking their ideas people to come up with plans to "punish" Iran: Always thinking in the mindset of the bully, and unable to realize there is nothing trump and his lackeys can do to hurt Iranians more than they're doing now. All Iran has to do is wait, endure the ongoing cycles of "peace plans", threats of decapitation, bombing of civilian infrastructure, and outlast trump to where different people are sitting in the White House who aren't going to be murdering assholes.

How's that for a war plan, donald?

The Ongoing Monotony of the Same trump Traumas

Jason Linkins over at the New Republic pretty much describes the mood most of us are in heading into the 2026 midterms: 

Times have changed. Whereas TNR’s Matt Ford once famously compared Trump’s first term to the episode of Battlestar Galactica where the Cylons attack every 33 minutes, its second iteration has become a dull monotony. Just about everything this White House does is rooted in the president’s desire to get revenge on his perceived enemies, his quest for self-aggrandizement, and the extreme limitations that arise when your best days—from a pure cognition standpoint—are well behind you. Nowadays, there are only really seven types of Trump story, and they’re all bad.

Linkins notes each of trump's calamities, starting with tariffs:

Of all the kindnesses that the Supreme Court has bestowed on Trump, its February decision to strike down the president’s retaliatory tariffs stands out as advice that should have been heeded: “Hey, don’t do this, you are screwing up the economy.” Trump forsook this wise counsel and continues to wake up on random mornings with the yen for imposing tariffs willy-nilly. This week he imposed 50 percent tariffs on a slew of Canadian goods because our neighbors to the north had the temerity to fight back in the trade war Trump started. He followed that up with an announcement that he was going to put a ten percent tariff on 80 other nations. It’s always impossible to gauge whether Trump intends to stick with a tariff fight. After all, it’s in this arena that “Trump Always Chickens Out” was born...

trump would back down from some of the tariff plans he intended to unleash since April 2025 from time to time, but he keeps going back to imposing tariffs because he genuinely believes tariffs work for him. trump revels in the idea of trade wars because he thinks they're "easy to win". And it fits so well into his mob-boss world-view of extorting everybody else to pay up.

trump doesn't care how unpopular his trade wars are, nor does he care about how unpopular his real wars are, such as the ongoing nightmare involving Iran as Linkins notes:

...Trump’s decision to wade into an unwinnable foreign war after limply cosplaying as The One Guy Smart Enough to Do That was born from the fact that he’s a dumb asshole who needed a distraction from a cratering economy and the daily effluvia of the Epstein news cycle. But even I thought that the backslappery that arose from the Memorandum Of Understanding that briefly put an end to hostilities might be a sign that the administration understood it had a much-needed off-ramp. Color me naïve: We’re now back in the big muddy, talking about war crimes and taking over Kharg Island, as the president recoils from public inquiry and his congressional allies fret about their political futures. The only question left is the one asked by TNR contributor Joe Cirincione: Can Trump lose the same war twice?

trump of course will never admit he's losing. trump will - unfortunately - keep repeating the same mistakes, because he's convinced only the suckers among the armed forces will pay the price for him.

The other major trauma point for Americans has been trump's - and the Far Right's - war on immigrants, with reemerging signs of ICE violence across more of our communities:

Too many members of the media treated the exile of Greg Bovino and Kristi Noem as a credible sign that the administration had overreached in its violent assault on American cities. But the White House’s bloodthirsty deportation machine suffered little if any lull, and ICE is back to its wanton ways, with new high-profile killings at the hand of Trump’s goons in Texas, Florida, and Maine—the latter of which may prove to regalvanize support for Senator Susan Collins’s future Democratic opponent. As TNR’s Melissa Gira Grant reminds us, the violence is a feature, not a bug. And now, Trump’s FBI has decided to turn a blind eye to investigating those responsible. Far from a drawdown, this looks like the administration is giving carte blanche to the agency to kill at will.

Another growing trumpian scandal is the most obvious and yet the one nobody is in any current position to do anything about it: trump's open graft and money-grabbing in clear violation of the Emoluments Clause and a hundred other laws against insider trading, fraud, and foreign influence:

Trump spent last year becoming a world-class kleptocrat, on the back of self-dealing exploits too numerous to recount (though I did offer readers what I thought were the worst of the bunch). Estimates as to how much his bread got buttered by all the grift and graft are nearly as varied. The New York Times totaled up about $1.4 billion in takings, but this is the low end—financial disclosures released at the end of June put the total at $2.2 billion, while Democratic researchers on the House Oversight Committee estimate that this figure rises to “$9.7 billion when the value of Trump’s digital assets is factored in” to the equation. Regardless, Trump is still lining his pockets, with new schemes including Kazakh tungsten, Pentagon baksheesh, and what appears to be a pay-to-pardon scheme.

Leading into Linkins' next trauma of note: trump's threats to derail democracy altogether this midterms.

When Trump isn’t trying to steal your money, he’s well-nigh obsessed with stealing your vote, a subject that was supposed to serve as the (very) loose framework for his recent prime-time ramble. The president’s monomaniacal desire to see the SAVE Act—his signature voter suppression bill—pass muster has peppered the headlines with updates on the latest weird scheme to somehow enact it over the objections of all the Democratic lawmakers and not a few of their GOP colleagues. Not long ago, Trump was trying to sneak it through the reconciliation process; now Republicans have backdoored voter ID restrictions into a congressional stock-trading-ban bill. It’s clear that Trump would love to rig the upcoming midterms, though it’s not clear how he will accomplish this...

With all of those ongoing acts of criminality and madness, the next one Linkins mentions seems the most frivolous but is in fact one of the more serious and soul-breaking things trump is doing to our nation: Fucking with our monuments and national landmarks.

Millions now living may not recall that it was once possible to go several years without thinking about the Reflecting Pool. Thanks to Trump, we’re now getting daily updates about algal blooms, phantasmal vandalism, and dubious criminal cases that only show how the administration’s Stasi-like authoritarianism can be extended almost everywhere. The real vandal, as TNR’s Michael Tomasky wrote, is Trump, whose desperate efforts to leave a mark in D.C. have led to a demolished East Wing, a hollowed-out Kennedy Center, and an Oval Office decorated with Temu (note: the KMart to Amazon's Target, if you understand the reference) gold wall appliqués...

That's not even going into the unwanted triumphal arch trump wants erected - not for any given war or national accomplishment, but for trump's twisted ego - and the horrors trump wants to inflict on our museums like the Smithsonian. This is stuff that affects the mental psyche / awareness of many Americans, and trump's playing with all that to mess with our heads (and he knows it, he revels in that kind of sadism).

All leading up to the seventh trauma trump's administration is inflicting upon the American people: literal sickness.

Trump’s second term isn’t without its success stories—if you are the measles virus, anyway. As Axios reported this week, the “U.S. measles case count for this year has surged past last year’s total and now stands at 2,295—a level that hasn’t been seen in 35 years, according to a Johns Hopkins University tracker that compiles state and local health data.” This news comes hard on the heels of another public health crisis that also serves as a metaphor for the Trump presidency: the record number of cyclospora infection cases that have turned this into Explosive Diarrhea Summer. This is part and parcel of the long tail of DOGE’s effort to denude the government of its public health capabilities; we see this manifesting in our struggle to contain New World screwworm at home and Ebola abroad. And let’s remember: In the event of a Covid-style pandemic, the adults who were in the room during Trump’s first term have been replaced by quacks like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who make the titular character from “Storm”—Tim Minchin’s seminal song about pseudoscience—look like C. Everett Koop.

When the 2024 election turned for trump, a lot of observers knew he was going to bring in the worst of the worst to demolish federal agencies from within, and his hiring of known anti-vaccinations kook RFK Junior was seen as a prelude to this current wave of viral and parasitic infections decimating America. Well, look upon Kennedy's works, America: Along with measles - which is a serious childhood calamity causing deaths and long-term health woes - we're coping with EXPLOSIVE diarrhea (lemme share the Josh Johnson standup routine to give you an idea how to say "EXPLOSIVE" properly).

Everything Linkins mentions, it's literally the crap a lot of us have had to deal with since 2024 2016: the absolute utter nightmare of an idiotic bully ruining our world on his whims on a daily basis. This is why I complain about being unable to blog every day: Sometimes, there's too much of this shit to cope.

If there's any good news, there is a simple solution to all of this: This is a midterms year, and in spite of trump's (and Republicans') efforts to suppress the vote or skew the results there are good odds that a large voter turnout for Democrats - a Blue Wave larger than the one we saw in 2018 - will flip the US House control away from a Republican Party unwilling to enforce the checks and balances of the Legislative branch. The Senate is iffy at this moment, but if the polling gets worse for Republicans the seats for Ohio, Iowa, Maine - even Texas, Alabama, and Florida - could be in play.

This all depends on voter turnout: Every registered Democrat showing up at the polls this November, casting votes in anger against the daily nightmares our nation's been enduring; Every registered Independent showing and refusing to give Republicans any relief; and Enough registered Republicans deciding to either not show up, or flipping their votes to favor Dems out of frustration of all the damage their own party has inflicted on them.

There is hope. We as a nation must act to protect and promote that hope.

Voters, for the LOVE OF GOD, OUR FAMILIES, AND AMERICA: Throw the Republican bums out. It is THE ONLY WAY TO HOLD trump ACCOUNTABLE FOR THE DAMAGE DONE.

Always the Dollars, Always the Fcking Dollars with trump: 4th of July Edition

The 4th of July celebration that trump hijacked for himself was never about celebrating America, it was about trump and his buddies milking it for every penny they could get (via Josh Kovensky at Talking Points Memo): 

I visited the Great American State Fair on several days over the past week. Yes, it’s empty. Security is extremely tight, with no clear reason as to why. Federal marshals, Oklahoma state troopers, and others roam the area, providing a mini-museum of cops. The mini-arch is as half-assed as everyone says it is.

But President Trump’s Freedom250 project and the Great American State Fair is really a corruption story. And, in true MAGA fashion, there’s no real effort to hide the graft here: it’s all playing out in front of you. The fair itself showcases different forms of the rampant conflicts of interest and grifting that is coming to define the second Trump administration. On MAHA Monday, I stopped by the “Freedom stage” and listened as a doctor who runs a network of clinics pitched a top administration official on having Medicare and Medicaid cover a controversial scan that his business offers. It was hot, so I went inside an air-conditioned tent; firms funded by Don Jr. had booths on display. Government contractors like Lockheed Martin, SpaceX, Northrop Grumman, and others had exhibits in the tents and around the area. A Truth Social representative tried to sell me on creating an account with a video service that the president’s company is launching. 

People have compared the fair to a Potemkin Village. But my experience was more akin to stumbling upon a scam, more like Fyre Festival combined with a turbocharged form of D.C. pay-to-play. It’s eerie: the fair is mostly empty. The parts that are supposed to be for visitors are either falling apart or dramatically fail to deliver. The only real activity appears to come from large businesses using the fair as a vehicle to gain favor with the president.

Congress originally created a bipartisan America250 commission in 2016. Planning started under the first Trump administration, and continued through the Biden years. In 2024, former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush agreed to serve as the Commission’s national co-chairs.

When Trump took office a second time, he first installed a 25-year-old former Fox News producer, Ariel Abergel, and Trump campaign officials to direct it. The commission fired Abergel in September, in part over his efforts to make the celebration about Trump rather than the country’s 250th birthday. In December, Trump dispensed with the bipartisan commission entirely: he announced Freedom 250. It’s a limited liability company that exists within a congressionally chartered nonprofit, the National Park Foundation. It’s the official fundraiser for the National Parks Service. 

In November, Trump added his campaign co-manager, Chris LaCivita, to the nonprofit’s board. At one point, he reportedly asked Congress to give America250 $150 million instead of $100 million; the extra $50 million was to go to the White House. Per a report from House Democrats, Freedom250 ended up capturing the majority of the funding.

Every bit of those details deserve note. What had been a bipartisan affair turned into another trump grift.

Follow the money - Old Vulcan Proverb

Freedom 250 reportedly offers personal access to the president for those who contribute $1 million or more; $500,000 gets you “V.I.P. access.”

With any access buying, the direction of travel is often unclear from the outside. Is a firm or person purchasing a way in? Is the company there in order to maintain access? Or, in this case, are they only present in response to an existing tie to the Trump administration...

There was another, uniquely Trumpian, example of this kind of messiness. On MAHA Monday, I went to the “Freedom Stage,” where Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Director Dr. Mehmet Oz was interviewing a psychiatrist named Dr. Daniel Amen.

It was over 90 degrees and sunny outside during this interview, in which Amen showed a slideshow to a small crowd of people that featured the brain scans of people suffering from various forms of mental illness. The pitch, Amen said, was that these scans could diagnose psychiatric disorders. At the end of the presentation, he and Oz produced a blender and made “brain healthy hot chocolate” in the sweltering heat.

Around halfway through, Amen mentioned to Oz that “CMS should start covering scans,” telling him, “I bet I could save you billions of dollars. This is the MAHA moment.”

It wasn't a public forum on health, it was a goddamn late-night informercial.

As for Dr. Amen, Kavosky noted "Amen also runs a network of clinics that offer the scans, known by their acronym SPECT, for people experiencing a range of psychiatric and relational issues. It’s controversial: the American Psychiatric Association found in 2012 that this kind of neuroimaging impacted neither diagnosis nor treatment."

And we're paying this alleged quack with taxpayer money.

It’s not clear exactly how much money went from the federal government to the fair.

The National Park Foundation received a $68.3 million grant from the Department of the Interior for “semiquincentennial events.” Beyond that, it’s not clear how much money went to the fair...

It’s hard to overstate the mismatch between the tens of millions of dollars that have gone to Freedom 250 and the result on the ground (Freedom 250 is putting on other events around the country). American flags branded on a white Freedom 250 background appear to have been made out of a thick pillowcase material. The canvas that covers the tents sags; air conditioning barely works to keep the inside areas cool.

At one point, I strayed into a concessions tent. There, I found a woman who had spent $5 on a bottle of water before staff realized that they had run out. The customer was becoming increasingly irate as the staff refused to provide a refund.

This is all JAC. Just Another Con.

When sanity regains control of the federal government, every single one of these grifters deserve jail. Even if trump tries to pardon them beforehand, fuck the rules (why not? trump and his Far Right buddies do) and jail 'em anyway. This is criminal bullshit and we're stuck paying the bills for it.

And in the meantime, the tacky and cheap way it was all put together is going to get people hurt or killed. Look at this:

Whatever glue they used to put it together is melting in the heat wave. Gods help the people stuck in the middle of this.

The Un-Celebration Of Our Nation Happening Now

Update: Thanks again to Batocchio at Crooks & Liars for sharing this article at Mike's Blog Round-Up! Remember everyone, stay safe this 4th of July weekend, party with friends as best you can, and pray that DC gets hit with monsoons all Saturday long. (we need the rain)

It's heartbreaking to talk about this; but we're heading into the big week of the Fourth of July this Saturday, and on what should be celebrated as a joyous 250th birthday of the nation's independence is instead turning into a wet blanket.

Having an aggrandizing, self-serving, moronic person in charge like donald trump would do that.

Not only hijacking the Kennedy Center to put his name on it when he didn't earn it, not only desecrating the White House with his dirt hole of a ballroom, not only turning the National Mall's Reflecting Pool into an algae-filled swamp... trump also hijacked the planned 250th celebrations - something in the works for years originally overseen by the Smithsonian Institute as a nonpartisan event - and turned it all into, well, unwanted eyesores and worse.

Edith Olmstead at the New Republic documented how bad it looked at the start of this weekend:

Somehow President Donald Trump’s Great American State Fair keeps getting worse.

As temperatures topped 80 degrees Thursday, the festival’s food hall lost power, causing all the ice cream to melt, according to Fox 5 DC reporter Homa Bash.

The food hall wasn’t the only attraction affected by power outages. The much-hyped Ferris Wheel temporarily stopped running Thursday due to generator issues.

Much like that ungodly UFC fight stage set up on the White House lawn, this was a poorly-planned, poorly-prepared carny event you tend to find in a Walmart parking lot on the outskirts of Ocala.

The Great American State Fair was already off to a rocky start Wednesday evening when dozens of attendees were seen flocking toward the exits in the middle of Trump’s address, which was meant to kick-start the two-week event.

The line for admission appeared to dwindle on the festival’s second day.

Also on Thursday, Pennsylvania joined nine other states to pull out of the Freedom 250 gala on the National Mall, including Oregon, Washington, Massachusetts, Illinois, Connecticut, Maine, Rhode Island, North Carolina, and Vermont.

A stall celebrating Maine remained empty Thursday, as the state did not send a delegation to Trump’s festival. Connecticut, too, was just “chairs,” according to Bash.

In spite of Fox Not-News shilling for the event lying about "thousands showing up," almost nobody wants to attend this "state fair". Half the displays are poorly put together. The wooden mockup of trump's planned triumphal arch looks pitiful and reportedly falling apart. Granted, this is just a replica, but how bad does it echo all of the other grand trumpian architectural plans that also fall apart or turn into boondoggles?

It's pretty much a given that the DC locals will not turn out for ANY trump-led event, but it's not looking like a lot of other Americans across this nation are making vacation plans to go visit our capitol to partake in any of this. Not even the cultists among the MAGA crowds seem eager to show up, arguably because they've got families for the 4th holidays - other travel plans already set - to be with instead.

Still, you would think if this had been a more bipartisan, non-political affair; not designed to promote trumpian fantasies like what we're getting now... If this had been any other person in the White House - even another Republican - do you think our 4th of July would turn into something this tasteless, gaudy, and broken?

Things will get worse as we get closer to this Saturday the 4th. trump wants to turn the day into his own personal rally (again), and gods help us how ugly that is going to get.

I'd rather celebrate our 4th of July in other ways... Hopefully Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce will get married in New York City and we can all celebrate that.

Addendum: A sense of what we lost.

I know the list is endless but I genuinely think trashing the legitimate congressionally chartered org for celebrating the 250th to instead hijack our national assets and taxpayer funds for his personality cult grifter crap should, in and of itself, be fully sufficient to merit removal from office.

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— Andy Craig (@andycraig.bsky.social) June 28, 2026 at 12:19 PM

The Race By a Corrupt Selfish Power To Evade The Inevitable

Social media was abuzz yesterday about a report from the STAT website about a special approval on an experimental drug that went to a secret recipient (via Lizzy Lawrence):

Millions of Americans with obesity are eagerly awaiting a powerful new drug from Eli Lilly called retatrutide, which has demonstrated bariatric-surgery levels of weight loss. Some aren’t even waiting for approval from the Food and Drug Administration, instead racing to acquire it through sketchy means.

But STAT has learned that Eli Lilly and the FDA have allowed one person to gain access to the drug through the FDA’s “compassionate use” program, a pathway that gives patients with serious and immediately life-threatening medical issues access to experimental treatments. 

That means they exempted the rules for someone facing near-death urgency.

This person was a 79-year-old man at the time the request was made in April, according to three sources familiar with the matter. Those sources, who requested anonymity due to fear of reprisals, said it drew the interest of top health officials, suggesting the person receiving this drug was well connected.

Just those two facts - the age of the person and the fear of reprisals - points to the likelihood trump was that person (he was 79 back in April and he will send his lackeys on a rampage if anyone leaks his real health status).

The speculation that trump is dying right here and now has been ongoing since his return to power back in 2025. The past few months of him being near-collapse - falling asleep, showing more signs of dementia, the recurrent doctors' visits - have fueled the rumors.

Rather than force trump into retirement, rather than trigger the 25th Amendment clause to put trump on hiatus for three weeks until there's evidence he's healthier, rather than confront the reality of his mortality... his handlers are pumping trump full of every drug they can find to keep him upright until there's nothing left to do but call the morgue.

trump himself is deliriously hanging on to power: railing about conspiracies over the algae-infested Reflection Pool he blames on everyone else, saber-rattling (again) over seizing Greenland or Cuba (or Gods help us both, again), threatening to blow up Iran (again). he's eager to turn the upcoming 4th of July celebrations - meant to honor the 250th year of the Declaration of Independence and our nation's official birth - into his own trump rally; during which he could go off the rails on a rant towards the entire world, or worse collapse altogether.

These are dark days, and the corrupt powers in high places are racing to finish their works before their king trump can't cover for them anymore.

The Neverending Cycle of trumpian Failure: War With Algae Edition

This all for the record started back in April of this year when trump - high on his own narcissism regarding the desecration of the East Wing, and decades believing his own architectural tastes were above reproach - decided out of nowhere to have the great Reflecting Pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial get its surface painted blue.

As Collin Binkley reported for AP News back then: 

President Donald Trump is having the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool coated in a swimming pool surface hued in “American flag blue,” covering up a decades-old granite surface that he said was “leaking like a sieve” and would take years to replace.

The president announced the renovation at an Oval Office event Thursday, saying the coating had already begun. He was inspired to tackle the project after a friend visited from Germany and lamented that the water was filthy and looked disgusting, Trump said.

I don't think trump ever mentioned who the friend was - one of the many faceless "brave strong types" who come up with tears in their eyes calling trump "sir" in eternal gratitude - and I don't believe trump ever pointed to any official study into the pool's condition as justification for getting this done. I am firmly convinced trump decided to get the reflecting pool painted because he got it confused with "swimming pool," which is a different type of pool altogether.

The project is one more makeover refashioning the nation’s capital to Trump’s liking, following others such as the demolition of the White House’s East Wing to make room for a new ballroom...

In Trump’s telling, the reflection pool project is a case study in business acumen. The president said he scrapped plans to have the granite replaced, which he said was estimated to cost $301 million and would take at least three years.

Instead, Trump said he called a few pool contractors he knows from past real estate projects — “I have a guy who’s unbelievable at doing swimming pools up the road,” Trump said.

The guy in question turned out to have gotten a no-bid contract for $1.7 million or so (and cost overruns no surprise ballooned to $13 million), and that the guy once bribed Democratic congresscritter James Traficant Jr. back in the day. You can't make this shit up.

trump bulldozed ahead on this project in spite of people warning him that painting the pool surface would cause rapid algae growth. Because it turned out, yes it did (via Jenna Lee at Washingtonian):

The Trump administration’s renovations of the Reflecting Pool on DC’s National Mall held up for about a week.

Construction crews spent weeks painting the more-than-2,000-foot-long pool “American Flag Blue” at Donald Trump’s request, ahead of the country’s 250th birthday. Although the shallow Reflecting Pool has long been plagued by algae growth, a pool renovation expert told Washingtonian that the color of the paint could be exacerbating the problem.

On Wednesday, a day after the basin was refilled, workers were seen cleaning out clumps of algae—which have transformed the pool’s signature reflection to a mossy green. The algae resurfaced by Friday morning...

Steve Goodale, a Canadian swimming pool specialist who goes by “Swimming Pool Steve,” said the darker blue of the renovated pool may worsen the pool’s existing algae problem absent other mitigation efforts, because the darker color will absorb more sunlight and increase the water temperature, making the pool ripe for more algae blooms. 

“If we change nothing else except the color, and we go from a lighter color to a darker color, absolutely you’re going to have more prolific algae growth,” Goodale said. “It’s a foregone conclusion.” 

This wasn't a case study in business acumen. This was a case study in self-aggrandizing stupidity, driven by an ignorant asshole who thinks he's smart and classy and nowhere near either.

The locals have seen algae in the reflecting pool before, but by most accounts on social media they've never seen it bloom as quickly or thoroughly as it has with the painted surface.

Making things worse is that the paint isn't working: it's peeling away in chunks highlighting how cheap and ill-done the whole job had been (via Sahil Kapur and Sophie Ziedalski at NBC News):

President Donald Trump’s makeover of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool ahead of America’s 250th anniversary celebrations is not going according to plan...

Then, the new Trump-branded “American flag blue” color was short-lived as algae turned the pool green, causing the administration to send crews to dump hydrogen peroxide into the expansive pool to deal with the problem.

In recent days, NBC News spotted some blue paint chipping off the surface, with strips of it peeling away and floating atop the pool for visitors and passers-by to see as the busy summer tourist season in the nation’s capital gets underway.

Not a good look at all for trump, is it?

Which is why trump's response isn't so shocking: Rather than admit a screwup, trump is blaming everyone else as "vandals" and having police - some of them from other states??? I need verification on that report - go around the pool arresting people. For example, this former Olympian (via Bailey Richards at People (yes, they've actually been doing solid reporting on trump's failures)):

Former Olympic canoeist David Carter "Davey" Hearn was arrested for destruction of government property at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, hours before President Donald Trump claimed it was vandalized following its recent renovation. Hearn claims he was just touching a piece of detached liner.

United States Park Police officers arrested the 67-year-old — who competed in the canoe slalom in three Summer Olympics — on Friday, June 19, after he stopped to look at the newly renovated Washington, D.C., pool in the midst of a 52-mile bike ride, according to The Washington Post.

Hearn told The Post that after noticing a piece of liner that was partially detached from the pool, which was painted "American Flag Blue” as part of its more than $14 million renovation, he reached into the water to see what the piece felt like — and just moments later, he was being arrested.

While preparing to leave and continue his bike ride, the U.S. Park Police officers arrested and detained the former Olympian on a misdemeanor charge of destruction of government property, per The Post. Hearn claimed to the newspaper that his detainment at a Park Police facility lasted for nearly five hours, and he was allowed to leave at around 9 p.m. local time.

If the police are going around arresting people for "destruction of government property," they need to go arrest trump for how he fucked up the reflecting pool in the first place (as well as what he'd done to the East Wing of the White House).

And Hearn is not the only one: Social media is displaying other arrests going on around the poolside over the weekend. Given how trump is using the Justice Department to go after his enemies, I wouldn't be surprised of any escalation of arrests so that trump can shift blame onto any locals and tourists his thugs can grab along the Mall.

trump is desperate to have everything "look perfect" for his glorified attempt to hijack the 250th birthday of the nation this 4th of July, even if it means putting National Guard troops - they're still stuck in DC on trump's orders - around the Mall to prevent anyone getting close enough to see how algae-clogged our national landmark is. Never mind the physical damage left behind by trump's bloated and unpopular UFC staging on the White House lawn - NOW it looks like a landfill, thanks trump! - which will cost millions to landscape: Just add that to the ugliness of the pit trump has dug into the ground for his ballroom vanity project.

In the meantime, the algae keeps growing back, thanks to trump's deluded beliefs he alone can make things better.

Gods help this nation. 77 million of us elected a vain moron, and the damage is becoming more clear even without a reflective pool to show us.

One Word Description of trump's Hideous UFC Toxic Masculinity Birthday Display

 (deep inhale)

...

ASSHOLES

...

Alas, there is more. Via Ewan Palmer at the Daily Beast:

Donald Trump’s surreal UFC event on the White House grounds finally came to an end after a delayed start and a series of embarrassing moments.

The final bout finished just after 1 a.m. ET on Monday, with Justin Gaethje pulling off a major upset by defeating Ilia Topuria to become the UFC’s undisputed lightweight champion. Gaethje shook Trump’s bruised and make-up-covered hand moments after winning the fight...

Most notably, heavyweight fighter Josh Hokit launched a vile insult at former first lady Michelle Obama after defeating Derrick Lewis in the second round of their fight.

“Michelle Obama is a man! Am I right America?” Hokit said, prompting a mixture of laughter and boos from the crowd.

Podcaster and UFC commentator Joe Rogan made no mention of the remark during a post-fight interview in the Octagon. According to CNN, Trump “appeared to show a half-smile” after Hokit attacked Obama during the event on the White House grounds.

Even before a fight took place, the tacky UFC event was an embarrassment suitable only for marking Trump’s 80th birthday...

Not even the inside of the historic complex was safe from the preparations. On Sunday, the White House’s official X account shared photos showing how the Eisenhower Executive Office Building had been transformed into a makeshift locker room for the event.

The event also continued the president’s tendency to grift while in office, with his eponymous cryptocurrency among the sponsors and his Truth Social platform sponsoring one of the fights...

They paid the fighters in crypto rather than actual US dollars, which is surprising to me that trump didn't try to pay them in Bison dollars the $250 bill with his ugly mug on it.

They forced Marines in parade dress to escort each fighter to the cage match. trump's people made certain to include Medal of Honor winners to each escort forcing the other troops in attendance to salute (as though they were honoring the UFC fighters).

It's a pity God did not strike the event with displays of righteous lightning or hail. I do hope the streaming viewership numbers are less than anyone watching the Grapefruit Spinning On a Plate channel.

/headdesk x infinity

Update: thank you Steve in Manhattan - trump JINXED GAME 3, WE KNOW IT - for including this article at Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up! Seriously, folks, if you have any suggestions for my next podcast please leave a comment below or skeet me at Bluesky!

The Delay... Again

So at the last minute trump pulls off another TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out) with his Iran War, by staging a "third party" offer from Pakistan to hold a "cease-fire for two weeks" in order to let the markets calm down and give trump a chance to pretend none of this really happened. 

But Tom Sullivan over at Digby's Hullabaloo has it right: What the hell happens next?

You can stop ducking and covering for now. Politico’s landing page this morning announces “World exhales — a little — as US, Iran agree to ceasefire.” It’s a two-week ceasefire in the illegal war Donald Trump threatened on Sunday to turn into civilizational genocide. Two weeks? That’s enough time to roll out the “terrific,” “phenomenal” and “fantastic” new health care plan to replace the Affordable Care Act he’s been promising in two weeks since taking office in January 2017.

It’s also enough time for Trump’s accelerating mental decline to worsen. Or for him to attack Cuba.

It's that madness, that chaotic uncertainty underlining every act trump and his lackeys have staged up to this moment. We have no idea what will trigger trump's ire within the next week, next day, hell within the next hour. For all we know, all those planes and troops gathering for Iran are going to flip around and invade Greenland.

Secretary of WAR! Pete Hegseth just completed a press conference focused heavily on how many bombs the U.S. dropped and on a partial list of targets hit with no clearer definition of U.S. strategic aims...

Why are we bombing Iran exactly? We still don’t know. But “Hegseth just called President Trump ‘a president of peace.’”

The question remains: What will Trump do when in the interim demands renew for a full release of the Epstein files? He’ll need another flashy distraction.

Given how trump's latest Acting Attorney General Todd "Good Name For a White Boy" Blanche is acting like the whole Epstein case is closed (when it's clearly not), we can expect blowback on that scandal to drive trump to lower depths of insanity.

We are still damned, America, thanks to every asshole who voted for this (and YES, you DID vote for this).

I want one day without a CNN alert that scared the hell out of me! - Cecily Strong in an SNL Skit back in 2017 (yes, it STILL hasn't stopped)

This Remake Isn't Any Better

There's a thing about the first 100 days of a presidential administration that's supposed to signify the successes - and failures - pointing towards how that presidency is going to turn out.

I'd like to refer to Maha - who's also quoting a few other observers - over at her blog to describe just how badly trump's second go at driving America over the cliffs is going: 

Okay, so where was I? Much of the news over the past few days has been about Trump’s falling poll numbers. He’s not just historically unpopular; with the exception of “border security” his “policies” are underwater as well. The majority do not like his handling of the economy, or of immigrants, or anything else. Yet  he’s not getting the message. Jennifer Rubin writes that Trump is doubling down rather than backing off.

Whether it is court decisions, nominees, or taxing everyday American consumers, Trump seems so wedded to boneheaded ideas that he might continue insisting on upping the ante rather than cutting his losses. In doing so, he will likely wipe out a table of Republicans who have stood by him but will soon have to stand for reelection.

It’s becoming increasingly easy to understand how he bankrupted all those casinos.

Josh Marshall writes that Trump has already lost.

I see the signs all around. He’s doubling down on things people don’t like. He’s fomenting a growing political backlash. The more signs we see of the limits of Trump’s power, the more people show signs of bucking that power. All power is unitary. We see signs of it everywhere. You simply cannot impose an autocracy if a clear majority of the country opposes what you are trying to do at the outset, when you are trying to do it.

They are now reacting to initial resistance by doubling down on things that are not popular. They appear to be upset that they’ve managed to have fewer deportations during Trump’s first hundred days in office than Biden had in his last hundred. Now they’re going to crack down on local officials and are threatening more indictments of judges and other officials who get in their way.

Good luck getting 12 jurors to convict any of these people. 

Nobody is saying that the administration is going to collapse soon. It’s going to be a couple of months before the effects of the tariffs hit the retail stores, and consumers...

Not surprisingly the U.S. economy shrank in the first quarter. Not surprisingly, Trump blamed Joe Biden.

“This is Biden’s Stock Market, not Trump’s,” Trump posted to his Truth Social platform after the economic news dropped, and markets braced to open lower.

“I didn’t take over until January 20th. Tariffs will soon start kicking in, and companies are starting to move into the USA in record numbers.

“Our Country will boom, but we have to get rid of the Biden ‘Overhang.’ This will take a while, has NOTHING TO DO WITH TARIFFS, only that he left us with bad numbers, but when the boom begins, it will be like no other. BE PATIENT!!!”

But most economists are telling us there is no way the economy will get better as long as Trump refuses to completely change course. It’s probably not too late to salvage a decent economy out of the mess, but Trump is unlikely to let that happen.

So there we are...

I've noticed some of these things already. When confronted with the facts his actions aren't working, are unpopular, or both, trump will refuse to admit his mistakes and double down on them until someone with the power to tell him no steps up and stops him... at which point he'll blame everyone else - including the ones who stopped him - for the screwups.

Always remember this about trump: trump views the world as made up of Winners and Suckers/Losers, and he must never admit to being a Loser.

As trump's tariff wars keep starting and delaying - except for the ones on China, which are now taking effect - he refuses to admit how his chaotic actions are unsettling the global economy to where he's triggered the start of a world-wide recession, and he's threatening to keep up with that chaos until he gets the trade deals with other nations - which they won't cooperate bending towards - he wants.

As trump's anti-immigration policies are scaring away legitimate tourists and college students, he doesn't want to admit the warrantless overkill arresting law-abiding migrants and students is breaking any laws, and he's insisting everyone he's shipping - illegally - to El Salvador are hardened gang members by flouting manufactured "proof" nobody else can take serious.

trump can never admit he's wrong... which is why the things he's doing wrong will get worse.

It'd be pretty to think that the end result of this would be a broken, mostly dead Far Right Republican power base that can never rise again to any political control of the United States. But that should have happened the FIRST TIME AROUND, when trump's failures and the GOP's inability to rein him in should have ruined their reputation with a majority of voters and doomed them for a generation or three. Instead, this miasma of disinformation and short-term memory failure - and the Democrats' refusal to throw trump and his lackeys into a courtroom for guilty verdicts and prison cells - allowed trump to come roaring back into office where his greed, rage, fearmongering, and idiocy would doom us again.

Only this time, he's been granted more power than before, and there's NOBODY in a position to delay his obsessive agenda to burn it all down - so he can rule the ashes - or else cushion the damage getting done.

A lot of people are going to lose their livelihoods - their lives - because this trump sequel is darker and dumber than the plotline that came before. And there's a serious question if we're going to recover anything out of what's to come.

The Idiocy, It Burns (The Defense Dept)

Update: Oops, halfway through Friday before finding out Steve in Manhattan added this article to Crooks & Liars' Mike's Round-Up today. Sorry I didn't clean up more, and the lack of cake...

This is what happens when you put national intelligence under the control of the nation's dumbest idiots (via Quil Lawrence and Tom Bowman at NPR):

Embattled Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth pushed back Tuesday on the latest revelations that he shared military attack plans on his private phone with his wife, brother and personal lawyer...

But the details he shared, two hours before airstrikes hit in Yemen, almost certainly were classified, according to retired Marine Lt. Col. Mick Wagoner, who was a military lawyer for 17 years and deployed to four war zones.

"A launch of an attack there is just no-way, no-how, that an American military operation starting off is going to not be classified for Lord's sake," he said.

And Hegseth's defense also tacitly confirms that he shared those details with people, like his wife, he knew were not authorized to have the information...

This isn't any better than the FIRST TIME Hegseth got caught with loose lips.

According to a U.S. official not authorized to speak publicly, after CENTCOM commander General Erik Kurilla sent Hegseth details over secure communications about impending military operations on March 15th, Hegseth shared that information, verbatim, with two separate chat groups on Signal. One was made up of top Trump administration officials — and inadvertently included journalist Jeffrey Goldberg. But the other chat group included people with no clear reason for receiving the sensitive information.

"The last time he was wrongly using an insecure communications device, and he mistakenly thought he was speaking only to security clearance holders," said Kevin Carroll, who served 30 years in the Army, then in the CIA and then the Department of Homeland Security in the first Trump administration. Security breaches like what happened in the Signal group chat are called "spillage" by the military, but this is more, says Carroll.

"Here he's knowingly using an insecure communication device and he's knowingly giving classified information to people who are not security clearance holders so it's really more than a spill," Carroll said. "It really gets more to the sort of willfulness that is typically prosecuted by the Department of Justice."

Except the Justice Department - thanks to the corrupt Idiot-in-Chief trump looking to surround himself with lackeys who will never challenge his ineptitude - will never pursue charges because Attorney General Pam Bondi's job is to prevent Boss trump from ever looking bad in public.

Just to get an idea of the severity of the situation that involved Goldberg, go read his article at the Atlantic as long as you can get past the paywall. The one thread woven throughout his description of what he witnessed behind the scenes - through communications intentionally trying to avoid federal guidelines - was how things were under the command of people who didn't know what they were doing, other than that what they DID do was illegal:

I have never seen a breach quite like this. It is not uncommon for national-security officials to communicate on Signal. But the app is used primarily for meeting planning and other logistical matters—not for detailed and highly confidential discussions of a pending military action. And, of course, I’ve never heard of an instance in which a journalist has been invited to such a discussion.

Conceivably, Waltz, by coordinating a national-security-related action over Signal, may have violated several provisions of the Espionage Act, which governs the handling of “national defense” information, according to several national-security lawyers interviewed by my colleague Shane Harris for this story. Harris asked them to consider a hypothetical scenario in which a senior U.S. official creates a Signal thread for the express purpose of sharing information with Cabinet officials about an active military operation. He did not show them the actual Signal messages or tell them specifically what had occurred.

All of these lawyers said that a U.S. official should not establish a Signal thread in the first place. Information about an active operation would presumably fit the law’s definition of “national defense” information. The Signal app is not approved by the government for sharing classified information. The government has its own systems for that purpose...

The only logical reason to go onto Signal to avoid regular channels was to avoid future repercussions of what they were doing, which could fall under war crimes considering they could have bombed civilians in Yemen. And even then trump's staff were all idiotic enough to not verify just who the hell were joined in their "little chats," because they had invited a reporter who had obligations to report the facts of possible wrong-doing.

This is kakistocracy on crystal meth. All of this, not just including unvetted people but also mishandling national security classified documents in ways that get other people thrown in jail. 

Hegseth is out there defending himself from these accusations by how he's the one ending "woke" and DEI measures in the armed forces. All he's doing is highlighting the damage done by mediocre unqualified white guys like himself.

Remember, Hegseth's major qualification that got him the Secretary of Defense job was that he was a talking head pundit on Fox Not-News: Brought on as a "national security expert" during trump's 2016 campaign - the irony, it burns as well - got hired to promote his toxic world-views during trump's first train wreck. Hegseth was someone who agreed with trump that the military should be a tool for violence, and pushed for trump to pardon several soldiers from the Iraqi/Afghani wars of occupation who had committed war crimes against civilians. 

Everything else about Hegseth highlighted how far out of depth he was doing anything else. His own military career was in the National Guard, although during the Iraqi/Afghani occupations that did see him deployed to three tours. His highest rank was major, which is often an office job; and yet here he is ordering generals around (this is like promoting the Assistant Circulation Librarian of a small branch to Head of a County Library System). He supposedly ran two non-profit groups for veterans but both of them shut down while he faced accusations of mismanagement, misogyny, and alcoholism.

This wasn't a guy who was qualified to oversee the largest department in the federal Executive branch. Hegseth is there because he was a media personality who played to trump's vanity, and he's still behaving like a gossiping media insider who doesn't understand the severity of the job and the importance of national security.

Gods help us. THIS is the moran trump is counting out to organize any military operations in the works against Mexico... and Canada... and Panama... and Greenland... and anybody else trump wants to bully and punish into submission.

The entire Defense Department is in chaos right now because they're being led by an idiot more focused on his TV makeup than on overseeing logistics and keeping the generals and admirals in line.

The idiocy is burning but it's going to set fire to the whole nation if not the whole planet.

One Sentence Thought About trump's Big State of the Disunion Speech Tonight

Oh gods, he's going to declare war on Mexico and Canada and then activate the selective service draft to make every white guy under 25 into his cannon fodder while surrendering every tank and artillery we got to Russia so BFF Putin can finish off Ukraine, isn't he? 

The Bank Alarms Are Going Off, But Will Anyone Stop Musk's Raids?

This is how chaotic things are going with President trump Elon Musk taking a sledgehammer to the federal government (via Jeff Stein, Isaac Arnsdorf, and Jacqueline Alemany at the Washington Post, so it may be paywalled):

The highest-ranking career official at the Treasury Department left the agency after a clash with allies of billionaire Elon Musk over access to sensitive payment systems, according to three people with knowledge of the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private talks.

David A. Lebryk, who served in nonpolitical roles at Treasury for several decades, announced his retirement Friday in an email to colleagues obtained by The Washington Post. President Donald Trump named Lebryk as acting secretary upon taking office last week. Lebryk had a dispute with Musk’s surrogates over access to the payment system the U.S. government uses to disburse trillions of dollars every year, the people said. The exact nature of the disagreement was not immediately clear, they said.

Officials affiliated with Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” have been asking since after the election for access to the system, the people said — requests that were reiterated more recently, including after Trump’s inauguration...

Typically only a small number of career officials control Treasury’s payment systems. Run by the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, the sensitive systems control the flow of more than $6 trillion annually to households, businesses and more nationwide. Tens, if not hundreds, of millions of people across the country rely on the systems, which are responsible for distributing Social Security and Medicare benefits, salaries for federal personnel, payments to government contractors and grant recipients, and tax refunds, among tens of thousands of other functions.

The clash reflects an intensifying battle between Musk and the federal bureaucracy as the Trump administration nears the conclusion of its second week. Musk has sought to exert sweeping control over the inner workings of the U.S. government, installing longtime surrogates at several agencies, including the Office of Personnel Management, which essentially handles federal human resources, and the General Services Administration, which manages real estate...

With the kind of control Musk is seeking, you have to question by what authority Musk can do any of this. He's not a Secretary of the Cabinet, he's the head of a non-approved advisory committee that Congress never budgeted or signed off on. Yet he's out here doing the things a Cabinet member would be doing, and without any accountability to anyone except trump. And even trump might not be in control of this train wreck.

This is what's scaring the experts and people in the know:

The executive order Trump signed creating DOGE also instructed all agencies to ensure it has “full and prompt access to all unclassified agency records, software systems, and IT systems,” which would appear to include the Treasury payment systems.

It is unclear precisely why Musk’s team sought access to those systems. But both Musk and the Trump administration more broadly have sought to control spending in ways that far exceed efforts by their predecessors and have alarmed legal experts.

Musk is going after the money: Either to shut down spending in part or in whole - which is unconstitutional and would crash the economy - or to funnel moneys into his and others pockets - which would be the largest bank heist in history and also crash the economy.

All of this is happening on the whims of a person whom NO ONE ELECTED to any office. Musk does not have the approval of the voters, he does not have confirmation from the Senate, he does not have any established legal authority outside of trump's executive orders. What he's doing ought to be illegal as hell.

And yet, thanks to the President First Felon in the White House, all of the checks and balances from the legislature or the judiciary might not be able to hold Musk - or trump - to account here.

If any advocacy groups outside of the federal government have the power to fight these corrupt acts, for the love of GOD do so, please and thank you.

Otherwise, the nation drowns in Grover's Elon's bathtub.

I Need to Blog Something to Open This Month of November So...

I don't want to stress.

I don't want to stress.

I don't want to stress.

I don't want to stress.

(grabs a Gatorade and guzzles it all in one gulp)

via GIPHY

I DON'T WANT TO STRESS.

I AM PERFECTLY FINE.

via GIPHY

ALL THE EARLY VOTING REPORTS AND FINAL WEEK OF POLLING, I DON'T CARE ABOUT ANY OF THAT.

(stops self from writing a prolonged blog essay freaking out over the post-election scenarios)

I AM AN OASIS OF CALM.

I'M FINE. I'M PERFECTLY FINE.

GODDAMMIT WILL WE JUST CONFIRM KAMALA HAS 99 MILLION VOTES ALREADY AND BE DONE WITH THIS?!

(slap)

via GIPHY

Okay. Okay. Whew. Better now.

(grabs the edge of the computer monitor to scream at the nine blog readers here) GET THE DAMN VOTE OUT FOR KAMALA AND EVERY DEMOCRAT ON THE BALLOT! GET IT DONE! 

via GIPHY

As Spock would say, "Party hard, you Vulcan motherf-ckers."

We're gonna need ALL the Romulan Ale by Tuesday night.

trump Off The Rails But Will The Beltway Even NOTICE?

Something weird has happened to this Darkest Timeline to where the only way to describe the craziness is simply copy/paste the AP News headline:

I felt it was necessary to include a photo of his hand gesture

I haven't dared check to see how the New York Times tried to "sanewash" - yes, that is a word now, and ironically it was aimed at liberals back in 2020 - trump's increasing public displays of dementia and idiocy.

Remember how angry I was at the mainstream media for how they went after Joe Biden's increasing signs of aging and mental fatigue? trump had been showing similar signs, with public displays of meandering thought, failure to keep names straight, open angry outbursts that were one N-Word drop away from becoming blatant five-alarm fires: And yet the major news outlets - the Times especially - were going out of their way to clean up trump's ramblings to make him appear functional and coherent (via Jon Allsop at Columbia Journalism Review):

As applied to Trump, the idea is that major mainstream news outlets are routinely taking his incoherent, highly abnormal rants—be they on social media or at in-person events—and selectively quoting from them to emphasize lines that, in isolation, might sound coherent or normal, thus giving a misleading impression of the whole for people who didn’t read or watch the entire thing. In her column, Molloy called out CNN for sanitizing a Trump screed about tomorrow’s presidential debate and the New York Times for omitting an allusion to a conspiracy theory about vaccines and autism from its summary of a Trump pledge to tap Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to help make health policy; since then, she and others have applied the same analysis to coverage of Trump’s incoherent remarks—particularly around the costs of childcare and a proposed Elon Musk–led “efficiency commission”—at an economic forum in New York. “This ‘sanewashing’ of Trump’s statements isn’t just poor journalism,” Molloy wrote. “It’s a form of misinformation that poses a threat to democracy.”

The threat being a dementia-riddled trump in the White House will act even worse than how trump behaved between 2017 to 2021, and rely even more on handlers and lackeys who will get free rein to commit their own atrocities with trump's rambling racist seal of approval.

But these were signs cropping even back then - Recall how trump tried to redraw literal maps to cover for his brain farts - and it should have been the mainstream media's duty to highlight trump's growing dementia and failures to prove himself capable of leadership.

The presidency is not a horse race: It's not about who wins or who loses. It's about who LEADS the nation, and that requires a level of coherence and competency to ensure a majority of Americans - and most of the free world - are safe and secure in their persons and livelihoods.

trump's inability to even pretend - allowing his mind to ramble off in directions it really shouldn't go - should be a massive warning sign to Americans - especially those of us who are voting - that he and his Republican allies can't be trusted with high office.

For the LOVE OF GOD, America. trump's brain is toast. Do NOT vote for him.

Refreshing the Charges Against trump

Oh, and in case you missed it - and you likely did because the New York Times didn't even put it on the front page like they did with Hillary's emails in 2016 /rage - Special Prosecutor Jack Smith re-indicted donald trump for his role in the January 6th insurrection.

David A Graham at the Atlantic has some of the details (paywalled):

When the Supreme Court ruled last month that presidents are immune from prosecution for anything done as an official act, many observers reacted with immediate horror. They warned that the ruling would allow future presidents to act as despots, doing whatever they like without fear of accountability. And in the immediate term, they predicted doom for the federal case against former President Donald Trump for attempting to subvert the 2020 election.

The effect of the ruling on future presidents will not be clear for some time. But Special Counsel Jack Smith, who is prosecuting Trump for the Justice Department, isn’t acting too rattled by the Supreme Court’s decision.

Smith obtained a superseding indictment today in the case against Trump, whom he had previously charged with four felonies. The new document is a little more concise and changes some language, but it keeps the same four felony charges and most of the same evidence. After taking a few weeks to review the Supreme Court ruling, Smith has apparently concluded that it doesn’t change much about his case at all.

Roberts and his conservative buddies on SCOTUS can try to warp reality all they want, but what trump did was criminal and by GOD he needs to answer for it.

In addition to some slight rephrasing here and there, Smith makes two notable changes. First, he takes out all references to Trump’s attempt to involve the Justice Department in his subversion. Trump, who has spent much of his current presidential campaign warning about the “weaponization” of the federal government, attempted just that as he sought to stay in office. The then-president asked the department to issue a letter saying the election was corrupt and then “leave the rest to me and the R[epublican] Congressmen,” according to meeting notes taken by a DOJ official. One of Trump’s confederates was Jeffrey Clark, a Justice Department official whom Trump tried to install as acting attorney general to further the scheme, before fierce resistance from DOJ and White House lawyers stayed his hand.

But the Supreme Court ruled that “because the President cannot be prosecuted for conduct within his exclusive constitutional authority, Trump is absolutely immune from prosecution for the alleged conduct involving his discussions with Justice Department officials.” The superseding indictment thus takes out references to Trump’s conversations with these officials. It removes Clark from a list of co-conspirators. And it deletes a section of the initial indictment that explained how Trump tried to enlist the department to help solicit slates of false electors from states.

The fact that Smith and his team were able to re-indict trump to basically the same four charges underscores just how much dirt they still have on trump that the Supreme Court can't wash away (for now).

If I can refer to Marcy Wheeler at Emptywheel to get her take on this:

Altogether, the changes incorporate not just SCOTUS’ immunity decision, but also the DC Circuit’s Blassingame decision deeming actions taken as a candidate for office are private acts, and SCOTUS’ Fischer decision limiting the use of 18 USC 1512(c)(2) to evidentiary issues.

The logic of Blassingame is why Jack Smith included these paragraphs describing that Trump and Pence were acting as candidates.

1. The Defendant, DONALD J. TRUMP, was a candidate for President of the United States in 2020. He lost the 2020 presidential election.

[snip]

5. In furtherance of these conspiracies, the Defendant tried–but failed–to enlist the Vice President, who was also the Defendant’s running mate and, by virtue of the Constitution, the President of the Senate, who plays a ceremonial role in the January 6 certification proceeding.

As I’ve said repeatedly, it’s not clear that adopting the Blassingame rubric will work for SCOTUS, even though they did nothing to contest this rubric...

The decision to supersede this indictment may have turned what could have been an immediate dispute about the viability of the indictment at all into an evidentiary dispute to be managed later...

At the very least, Jack Smith suggests he has something viable on which to arraign Trump (and Trump’s Xitter wails treating this as a real indictment suggest he may believe that)...

This should serve - again - as a reminder to the general American voting public that trump is dangerous, that he's not pursuing the presidency for some lofty purpose: trump is running for President to keep his orange ass out of jail. It's not only the criminal charges trump is still facing - not only in DC but also in South Florida as Smith appeals to the appellate level to reinstate the classified documents case Cannon dismissed, and in Georgia with the state fake electors case - but also the criminal matter in Manhattan where he sits with 34 jury-confirmed felonies (with the presiding judge ruling mid-September on what happens next).

And those are the criminal charges and convictions. trump's civil trials found him liable for business fraud, defamation, and sexual assault (that the judge rose to the level of rape).

We've never had a major national party stoop so low as to have a convicted felon and confirmed sex offender like trump running for the highest office in the land (remember, Debs was a minor party candidate who never had a chance).

Every registered voter in America needs to understand how horrifying and criminal that is, and make certain that trump never gets within 100 miles of the White House again.

For the LOVE OF GOD AND JUSTICE, America, STOP VOTING trump.

Everything Changed Today

So I woke up today to this stuff getting posted in Bluesky Social, but because I haven't figured out how to embed those posts into this blog I went to Twitter (fuck you, Elon, it's not X) to do this:

Aaron Sorkin published an op-ed in NYT this morning that calls on Democrats to nominate a Republican in place of Pres. Biden next month at the convention, specifically Mitt Romney. For real. Don't click on it. Don't read it. I promise you ain't missing anything.

Parody has died. pic.twitter.com/Ricu3sjIJE

— Charlotte Clymer 🇺🇦 (@cmclymer) July 21, 2024

"I FEEL LIKE I'M TAKING CRAZY PILLS" times infinity.

It case the tweet goes bad, I screen-captured:

This? This is what you get when you think
quoting the HMS Pinafore all the time makes you smart.

I did read it just to see if it's as bad as Clymer says, and Gods yes it's terrible. Sorkin's idea of a unity candidate is - get this - going for a Republican candidate... Mitt Romney.

MITT FCKING ROMNEY?!

Not only is it offensive to suggest the Democrats have to roll over and take a REPUBLICAN on their ticket, but to go with Romney whose sole objective running - and losing - in 2012 was to get a massive tax cut for the rich. Never mind the reality that Mitt is opposed to most things - unions, abortion rights, immigration reform - that the Democratic voting base supports. It's like these so-called "liberal elites" - the pundits, the "actively engaged" celebrities, who are pulling in six-figure incomes where the rest of us are struggling around $35k a year to survive - don't give a damn about the millions of primary voters who happily re-nominated their incumbent President for a second go.

So here I was for most of the morning, putting this blog article together to tear Sorkin a new one when by 1:00 PM... everything changed.

pic.twitter.com/RMIRvlSOYw

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) July 21, 2024

I had to go off to one side and rant for a couple hours after that bombshell. I've calmed a little, but I'm still at the LIVID stage.

Livid and angry towards the goddamned Beltway media - especially that godforsaken rag the New York Times - that were beating the drums to get Biden to drop out. Angry at the Right-of-Center Democrats like Joe Manchin kneecapping any party unity that was needed for the upcoming convention this August. Well, congratulations you sons of bitches, you got your scalp.

If there is any good news from this announcement, it's that Biden openly supports his Vice President Kamala Harris to take over the campaign for him. Running now on their administration's legacy of job growth, infrastructure investment, debt forgiveness for tens of thousands of Americans, and financial reforms. Harris in particular has been touring the nation campaigning against the Dobbs ruling and the Republicans who are working to deny women their basic rights (not just abortion but their right to divorce, their right to work, their right to get education, their right to live).

But those buzzards are still circling. The likes of David Axelrod are complaining that Harris didn't get "vetted" by the primaries - ignoring that she was part of Biden's ticket at the time, and that she's got years of experience in the Executive branch already - and are demanding "an open convention" where the goddamned special interest factions - backed by billionaires that had been funding this anti-Biden effort - will try their best to return to the "smoke-filled backrooms" of power brokering to force an unpalatable pro-business / anti-tax candidate on the Democratic base.

At a moment when the Democratic Party needs to unite behind a standard bearer - be it Biden or be it Harris - we still have these corrupted factions still looking to sabotage it all and let the likes of trump and his Republican hacks steal their way back into the White House.

Goddamn them.

This is an open call to every Democratic and Independent voter I know. Ignore the haters. Focus on what matters. The Democratic Party is the one thing standing for our American democrat-republic institutions and way of life. We got 81 million people to vote for Biden and Harris in 2020 and we can do that again for Harris and whomever she picks to stand as her Vice President. 

We need to stand for women's rights, we need to stand for the good jobs at good wages Biden and the Democrats have brought to us, we need to stand for a future where the uber-rich oligarchs don't decide our fates, we do.

For the LOVE OF GOD AND COUNTRY, do NOT vote for that convicted felon and sex offender donald trump. Do NOT vote for the Republican Party that has surrendered to his greed and his Id.

Elections always matter. Get the vote out for Harris and the Democratic Party across every seat across every county across every state. 

Do not let Joe Biden down, people. He's counting on US to secure his administration's legacy.

Update: What, NOW Sorkin regrets his bullshit?!?! /rage

Are The House GOP *Ever* Going To Govern Themselves?

Update: Thanks again as always to Batocchio for sharing this article at Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up. Also, waking up this morning to the news about the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse in Baltimore. Oh my God, to everyone up there, I am so sorry...

It had to happen. The minute the Republican-controlled House of Representatives actually does something, the Freedom Caucus rises up to knee-cap the entire system with another purity purge. In response to the current flavor of the month Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-Mosesville) agreeing to bring appropriations bills to the floor for votes, major wingnut Marjorie Taylor Greene filed the latest Motion to Vacate (via Deirdre Walsh and Lexie Schapitl at NPR):

Greene and other hardline conservatives had expressed anger with Johnson's handling of the six remaining appropriations bills for fiscal year 2024. The package of those bills – totaling $1.2 trillion – passed the House Friday morning with more Democratic support than Republican support. It now heads to the Senate. Working with Democrats to avoid a shutdown is also what triggered the push to oust then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy last year.

"This is not personal against Mike Johnson. He's a very good man. And I have respect for him as a person. But he is not doing the job. The proof is in the vote count today," Greene told reporters Friday. "The Republican speaker of the House handed over every ounce of negotiating power to Chuck Schumer and the Democrats and went ahead and funded the government when this was our point of leverage..."

For Greene to accuse Johnson of "not doing the job" plays into the Far Right mindset that there should never be compromise with Democrats, only the abject surrender by Democrats to every Republican wish.

For all the Beltway media obsession with the idea of bipartisanship, it ought to horrify them that the modern Republicans can't even spell the word, even among their own ranks. And yet, there's no outrage or disappointment from the punditry as they sit there wondering why the Democrats won't come to the rescue of the opposition party when the GOP are clearly refusing the lifelines.

Never before in our nation's political history have we seen the controlling party in the US House self-immolate itself like this on an almost monthly - arguably daily - basis. Ever since the House Republicans gained a narrow majority in the 2022 midterms, instead of uniting behind a coherent and achievable policy agenda they've been backbiting over how to force Democrats - both in the House and Senate - to agree to draconian legislation like a harsh immigration bill. And then reject their own bills because they feared Biden and the Dems would claim those accomplishments for their own.

In the process, instead of uniting behind a Speaker of the House to gain them legislative victories, the extremist Irrational factions - the Freedom Caucus, the Tea Partiers, anyone to the Right of Grover Norquist - among the Representatives are using the Motion to Vacate tool they forced their First Round Speaker Mike McCarthy to accept - and then used on himself - to now remove their Second Round Speaker Johnson for exactly the same reason: To sow chaos.

This shouldn't be happening. The way it's set up in the Constitution and in centuries of rules and traditions, the Speaker is supposed to be one of the most powerful offices in the land (at times outclassing the Presidency). Back in the earlier days when Congress held more power - and responsibilities - than it does now, being Speaker was one of the most coveted jobs out there. And GODS, it was powerful. Men like Henry Clay, Thomas Reed, Joseph Cannon, Sam Rayburn, Tip O'Neill, and yes even the first woman Speaker Nancy Pelosi... They established and influenced national policies, and wielded the kind of control that would have lesser congresscritters hiding under the tables.

And yet, here we are: Those lesser congresscritters are now tearing at the ones who are supposed to be their leaders, all because those leaders are "failing" at shutting down the federal government on the extremists' terms. All because those Speakers - not just Johnson and McCarthy, but John Boehner and Paul Ryan who were driven out by these same backbench rioters - realized once in office they were responsible for actually getting work done in spite of the shutdown demands.

You'd think after all these years of trying and failing to get a Republican Speaker to accede to the Far Right fantasies of burning the entire federal government down in order to get rid of social safety nets -  like Medicare, Social Security, ACA, safety regulations, clean water/air acts, etc. - that the wingnuts would dial it back a little. But they can't, because they don't see any consequences to their actions: Even within their own ranks, there has rarely been any payback. Even as they're on the brink of triggering yet another prolonged job hunt for a replacement Speaker should Johnson get kicked out.

This was how it went last time in October: Failed vote after failed vote of trying to find a palatable candidate that both the Rational and Irrational - remember, there are no Moderates left in the GOP, just different levels of Conservatives - could accept. I wrote this after the third - or was he the fifth - potential compromise candidate in Steve Scalise got shot down:

There is some schadenfreude to be had here as we watch a political party that's risen to power through partisan bullshit tears itself apart applying that partisan bullshit to themselves. However, there is little joy to savor. This is all happening as the planet faces multiple global crises - not just the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East but also increasing climate change disasters and also economic instability with China - that creates an urgency to fill the Speaker's role so that our government can function and respond to these crises.

Which is exactly what the Freedom Caucus / "Government Is Bad" / pro-Russian / racist-sexist bastards want to prevent. They WANT government to fall so they can build their Utopia on the ashes.

Greene - and Gaetz, and Jordan, and Gosar, and many other extremists - genuinely believe they can pull these stunts and there will never be any punishment for it. Even though they're exposing the possibility of forcing a handful of Rational Republicans to do the "unthinkable" and put the Democratic caucus leader Hakeem Jeffries in as Speaker to spite them.

This scenario is getting more likely by the day, as various Republicans are "retiring" from their seats at just the right moment where their offices remain vacant well into the November general election, reducing the magic number needed for Democrats to flip majority control of the House.

But none of that matters to the Far Right. They will Rule or Ruin, either the House or the whole Congress or the entire United States. If they lose the House this term before November, they'll scream bloody murder and scheme out other ways to delay all meaningful legislation, and yell on Fox Not-News every minute of the day how they're the victims of an "illegal takeover" of Congress.

All for the attention, and the deep-pocket money from their PACs (whatever trump can't vacuum up through his control of the RNC), and the ability to rile up their MAGA followers to spill "bloodbaths" when the time comes.

The Republicans can't govern America. They keep proving that the last 20 years. Today, they can't even govern themselves.