The Cowards of Congress Fleeing: 2026 Midterms Edition

Update: Thanks again to Batocchio for sharing this blog at Crooks & Liars for the Mike's Blog Round-up! You you can, please do me a favor. A friend of mine from my writing circles, Sarah E. Glenn, passed away. If you can see your way to buying one of her works, and if you like it recommending it to others, would be a great way to remember her. Thank you.

You'd think with a serious midterms election cycle upcoming that the incumbent Republicans would present themselves during the last two months of their terms as competent serious legislators, doing the work of the People in order to impress their voters back home.

Instead, the House Republican leadership under Mike "What Spine?" Johnson are folding up camp and scurrying into their hidey-holes to avoid any last-minute hot potatoes they don't want left in their laps (via Lisa Mascaro at AP News):

Speaker Mike Johnson is closing up the House early, sending lawmakers home Wednesday to campaign for the midterm elections after what he claims is the most productive Congress in decades.

But not without a scathing rebuke from GOP Rep. Thomas Massie for all the unfinished business.

Massie’s resolution to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over the war in Iran and his bipartisan effort to force the release of more files in the Jeffrey Epstein investigation are all being left behind, blocked from votes.

“We’re calling off Congress? And we’re in the majority?” Massie railed from the House floor.

“I’m trying to get justice for the Epstein survivors,” he said. “I’m trying to stop a war.”

It's been noted before - starting back after the 2022 midterm results - that this is the weakest, narrowest party majority in the House in decades - and it didn't get better in 2024 when trump's coattails were worthless  - where the Republicans had between two to five seats of wiggle room at any time to get any of their wingnut agendas passed.

As a result, in spite of Speaker Johnson's big lie of "most productive Congress in decades," this has actually been one of the least productive (it's the 119th session, with only 2% of enacted bills), with a sizable number of bills getting through - including a "Release the Epstein Files" package that trump and the party leadership never wanted passed - without Johnson's control.

Johnson is refusing to keep the House open to avoid not only Massie's attempts to hold trump and his corrupt administration accountable - something that might actually benefit House Republicans in the elections as the polling suggest voters are very angry about the corruption and trump's failures - but to avoid any further embarrassments of his failure to keep his own house - metaphorical and literal - in check. He'd rather shut down, declare victory, and pretend in the million-dollar ad campaigns flooding the media markets that "ALL IS WELL".

This is just further proof that the Republican Party is not serious about doing their jobs. They'd rather take the annual six-figure salaries and goof off at fundraiser parties than serve the public trust. They'd rather hide from the disasters consuming the American voting base - the high inflation, the failed Iran/Middle East wars that a majority of Americans clearly want to end, the terrifying increase of poisoned food/water, the spread of more disease - than do anything to fix any of that.

For the LOVE OF GOD, VOTERS. Vote Democratic: at least THEY want to do the damn job and fix things.

Where The Hell *Are* The Billions Already Wasted At the Pentagon, If They're Desperate to Pilfer Even More Money?

What the HELL is going on here? According to the Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee, Hegseth's Department of Defense is about to raid the National Institutes for Health's piggy bank:

House Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro (D-CT-03) has learned that officials at the Department of Defense (DoD) are working to divert billions of dollars from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to supplement the Department’s budget.

Without notifying Congress or the American people, DoD has signed an interagency agreement that could give the Department access to billions of dollars that Congress provided to NIH for critical biomedical research. These funds were provided to support research to develop treatments or cures for infectious diseases such as influenza, malaria, tuberculosis, HIV, Ebola, and other dangerous pathogens...

We as taxpayers have witnessed billions of dollars going to Defense every budget, we've had Secretary of Steak and Lobster Dinners Hegseth come begging for even more money this summer as ammo and troops got thrown into a costly destructive war on Iran. We've seen the end results of our front-line soldiers and sailors suffering with supply woes, bad food, and lack of support from a logistics system broken under Hegseth's misrule.

Something is rotten in the Pentagon, if they're having to raid other agencies for funds. What the hell happened to the billions we already gave the Defense Department, to where they're now out of money?

There's been calls for years to have a full audit done on the DoD. This is a major red flag warning us that audit is way overdue.

It's a Breakdown. Go Ahead And Give It To Me...

A good sign of how incompetent a Cabinet Secretary is doing at the job is the high number of resignations of key persons from that Department. Just yesterday, Secretary of Defense Idiocy Pete Hegseth got a vote of no confidence with Army Secretary Dan Driscoll jumping the figurative ship (while Navy crews are literally jumping).

A worse sign of how bad it's going within a department is when leaks get out to the media. That's often coming from underlings unable to resign but desperate to cleave an exit route for themselves before the ship sinks everybody. How else to explain the release of rather classified internal briefs to the Washington Post this weekend, detailing how most of the military commanders Hegseth hasn't fired yet are issuing "non-concurrances" in opposition to Hegseth's ongoing mismanagement of unwanted wars.

Mark Hertling over at The Bulwark provides some context:

The Post reported Sunday that several of America’s senior military commanders have warned Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that continuing the current pace and scale of operations against Iran risks weakening the military’s ability to respond to crises elsewhere. The warnings appeared in the highly classified Secretary of Defense Orders Book.

The most eye-catching part of the Post story was that several senior commanders registered “non-concurs” with continuing some deployments. That sounds dramatic because it is—not because non-concurs are unusual in this process, but because of what they tell us about the condition of the force after six months of war.

The Book is essentially an operational and strategic assessment of how America’s military forces are allocated around the world. The people who assemble it are the staff for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Many sections with different responsibilities contribute: Logisticians assess the ability to move and sustain forces, strategists consider the effect on global commitments and other contingency plans, and the services and combatant commands then assess what providing or losing a particular capability means to their overall missions. The operations directorate takes all this expertise into account and prepares the Book for the chairman, who then reviews it and gives it to the secretary of defense.

The Book doesn’t just concern itself with infantry divisions, fighter squadrons, and aircraft carriers. Modern military operations depend as much on intelligence platforms, air-defense units, military police, engineers, communications specialists, medical units, transportation companies, postal detachments, and even organizations responsible for showers and laundry. Those units aren’t glamorous, but commanders can’t fight without them. Every one of those capabilities must come from somewhere. That’s why the Book is ultimately about risk...

I saw this firsthand when I served on the Joint Staff as the J7, which at the time oversaw contingency planning. We were routinely asked to assess what satisfying one combatant commander’s request would do to another’s war plans. It didn’t matter if it was an armored division, an aircraft carrier, or a single aircraft: If someone wanted it, it usually meant someone else didn’t want to give it up.

When I was in the Pentagon, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld went through these Books weekly during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, questioning units and even numbers of personnel being deployed. The discussions were often painful for the Joint Staff briefers. But his purpose was straightforward: understand the consequences before deciding...

If there's anything we've seen from trump and from his lackeys like Hegseth, those two have no understanding of anything. /headdesk

This isn’t just Pentagon competition among commanders who want more forces. The reported non-concurs are occurring after months of munitions expenditure, extended deployments, deferred maintenance, and the movement of scarce capabilities from around the world to the Middle East. The Book is doing precisely what it was designed to do: expose tradeoffs to the secretary before he makes another decision.

It is also why the leak itself is so serious.

The Book is highly classified because, taken together, its contents provide an X-ray of American military readiness. It tells senior leaders not only where forces are, but where commanders believe they are short, which capabilities are being stretched, what war plans are accepting additional risk, and where the United States might have difficulty responding to a future crisis. That’s invaluable information for America’s adversaries.

But for the Secretary of Defense, it should be something else: a warning. The Book exists to identify risks before they become vulnerabilities—and the secretary’s job is not merely to read those warnings, but to act on them.

Hegseth can't. And won't.

The Secretary of Defense Pandering can't act on the warnings because they go against the fantasy narrative his boss trump has spun: Not only about the war on Iran, but also the overall fantasy that the United States is great under his leadership. Anyone in TrumpWorld who ruins that narrative gets exiled to the 2:00 am infomercial slots on the Newsmax channel.

Hegseth won't act on the warnings because of his own rage and frustration dealing with a military chain of command he views as "woke" or unmanly. This is a guy who's highest military rank was a major in the National Guard, obsessing over a "Warrior" ethos that remains at odds with the armed forces' focus on professionalism. Half of what he's doing to the military right now is expressing that rage towards generals and admirals he now "outranks", clearing out anyone who doesn't buy into that Warrior Code - or doesn't fix his racist/sexist world-view - he's trying to infuse into the troops at the detriment of morale and discipline. 

Leaking this information - that the upper ranks of the US military are at odds with their civilian (inept) bosses - is a major red flag: There is chaos instead of organization in one of the most important departments of our federal government; and there is a good chance the lower ranks of our armed forces are going to mutiny in some form or another when - not if - Hegseth and trump push them too far.

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?

trump's Vengeance Becomes a Whimper

In the ongoing saga of trump's damage upon our nation's Reflecting Pool in Washington DC, the sound and fury of trump accusing others of vandalizing what he wrecked has signified nothing.

The key target of trump's ire - a retired Olympian arrested for destruction of property when all he did was touch the already-peeling paint job on the pool - had the charges dismissed in court today (via staff with NPR):

Federal prosecutors have moved to dismiss the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool vandalism case against former Olympian David Hearn, saying instead that damage to the pool was "the result of botched installation and not vandalism."

The botched installation by the by is what got all the experts shouting months ago.

Earlier this month, Hearn, 67, pleaded not guilty to a single count of destruction of property causing more than $1,000 in damage to the pool. Hearn has repeatedly said that he simply touched the water in the pool out of curiosity last month. But the government alleged he had ripped a piece of sealant at the bottom of the reflecting pool after it had undergone a $14-million renovation.

"This was a deliberate act to damage the reflecting pool at the National Mall that members of the National Park Service actually have worked hard to restore and have witnessed," U.S. Attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro previously said of Hearn's actions.

Pirro - more of a media hack than a practicing lawyer - had spent weeks in front of cameras claiming she had proof, insisting this was all vandalism... and now has to answer to the reality she exaggerated if not outright lied about all this the whole time. Pirro was in court claiming Hearn "forcefully pulled" huge chunks of material from the pool and now the Justice Department lawyers are saying "uh well..."

In a filing late Friday, the U.S. Attorney's Office for D.C. switched course, saying it had relied on initial reports provided by the Department of the Interior (DOI) and U.S. Park Police (USPP).

Friday's filing reads: "It was not until after the return of the indictment, that the DOI provided additional documents ... indicating that damage to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in June 2026 was the result of flawed installation by the contractor, Atlantic Industrial Coatings ("AIC") and the rush to complete the project prior to events associated with the America 250 celebration in the weeks surrounding Independence Day 2026."

After the renovation was completed, the pool's blue lining began peeling off in chunks and algae blooms turned the waters a murky green. The project has been widely criticized as a waste of taxpayer money.

Lawyers for Hearn responded to Friday's decision in a statement, saying the Trump administration owes Hearn an apology for a case that should have never been brought.

There were others whom Pirro charged with similar accusations who deserve to have their cases dropped as well. 

This all happened for several reasons.

One: trump can never admit he makes mistakes, he can never be in the wrong. he couldn't blame the bad paint job on the guy he personally paid to do this shoddy work, and he couldn't admit that painting the Reflecting Pool was a bad idea; so he has to blame it all on "vandals" and enemies to soothe his spoiled ego.

Two: trump has to make examples of those he deems enemies, by threatening to sue or actually suing others who can't afford the excessive legal fees and emotional stress of facing criminal (or civil) charges. he's aided by a Far Right conservative army of lackeys who ascribe to the philosophy of "There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect." Punching down at everyone not of their tribe is what they live for, and it's turned a legal institution like the Justice Department into a mob of MAGA bullies.

These lawsuits and criminal filings may go nowhere, but it wastes his victims' time and financial well-being. And it sends a message - which any mobster like trump enjoys doing - to others not to get in his way or make him look ridiculous.

This is where Hearn needs to follow the example of E. Jean Carroll. She was a victim of trump, she called him out, he tried to ruin and defame her, she fought back. And she won in court, securing both a legal payment and confirming the court's ruling that trump is a goddamned sex offender.

Hearn and the others wrongfully charged for vandalizing something trump already ruined need to fight back. trump will never apologize like the lawyers demand (again, trump will never admit he's wrong). trump needs to get sued in civil court for his acts of defamation towards Hearn and others. Granted, it won't go anywhere while he's still in office - the Jones v Clinton ruling applied to matters before Clinton entered office - but it'll be waiting for him the second he's kicked out (thank you 22nd Amendment). Hearn's lawyers should also pursue going after the Justice Department hacks - Pirro especially - for prosecutorial misconduct, to push back against the Roy Cohn wannabes eager to please trump.

Marcy Wheeler over at Emptywheel shared this tidbit, something even she didn't know about until today:

Lastly, in a filing I had not seen reported before, Hearn revealed that after a witness testified that there was no way to attribute the damage to Hearn, given all the pre-existing damage, DOJ sent him or her back to the grand jury to falsely claim they had proof Hearn had done $1,000 of damage.

Presenting false testimony to a grand jury ought to count for SOMETHING towards misconduct, for God's sake. Every Justice lawyer on this fiasco from Pirro on down needs to face their own criminal charges, see how they like it.

The Legacy of a Man Desperate for Relevance

Update: thanks again to Steve In Manhattan for including this article at Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up this morning. Keep on raging.

Lot of crazy political stuff to write about, but this bit of news overnight dominated today's thoughts: Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, longtime figure among the Republican leadership, died at the age of 71.

He did not leave behind a good or kind legacy: He attacked immigration policies, tried to end asylum laws, fought to end "sanctuary cities," and committed to other Far Right stances against women and minorities much like any other Republican blowhard.

This was a man who wanted to be the most important person in the room... and never could (via Mark Liebovich, at the Atlantic):

Senator Lindsey Graham, who died unexpectedly last night, was a pivotal citizen of the Washington conversation. He loved being in the mix, slapping bipartisan backs off camera, and then, when the lights came on, cracking wise, weighing in, and, yes, currying favor with a certain Audience of One.

What could be more fitting, then, for Graham—unable to be a participant on this fateful Sunday morning—to actually become the only thing better: the main topic of the news. He died as he lived...

It is perfectly on the nose that Graham’s departure would occur just a few hours before he was supposed to appear on Meet the Press. It would have been his 64th appearance on America’s longest-running public-affairs program. In the Meet the Press greenroom there used to be a prominent photo of Graham yapping away alongside his Senate sidekick, John McCain. McCain, for his part, appeared 73 times on Meet the Press, more than any other guest in history—something McCain was especially proud of.

In early 2019, a few months after McCain died, Graham joked to me that his main goal in his remaining time on God’s green Earth (or God’s greenroom) was to beat McCain’s record. He never will...

“Try to be relevant,” Graham told me in that same 2019 conversation when I asked how he became such a relentless and essential lapdog to Trump (okay, I didn’t use quite those words). This was an ongoing mystery around Washington, especially given how critical of Trump Graham had been when he (briefly) ran for president against him in 2016...

Graham was always a first-class political shape-shifter, easily darting between the smarty-pants of Official Washington and the bare-knuckled MAGA Populists of South Carolina. This dynamic extended to the on- and off-camera Lindseys: One minute, he would be chumming it up with a Democratic colleague before their “hit,” and then, when the lights came on, he would be breathing partisan fire on behalf of the White House or Trump’s supporters back home...

It is a pity - in some way - that all of that glad-handing and back-patting - and ass-kissing - never really translated into anything substantive, especially considering how trump as president undid every foreign policy objective or ignored every policy suggestion that Graham tried to support.

Anne Applebaum (also at the Atlantic) took note of how Graham identified how dangerous trump could be as president... and accepted him anyways as his lord and master:

When Donald Trump first appeared in U.S. politics, Graham recognized him immediately for what he was: the spokesman for an alien ideology, one radically different from the idealistic patriotism that Graham had practiced and preached since childhood. Trump privately mocked the military that Graham loved as nothing but “suckers and losers.” He put falsehoods, cynicism, and personal greed at the center of his politics, while expressing disdain for transparency, accountability, and democracy itself. In 2015, Graham described Trump as a “race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot” who should “go to hell.” Also as a “nutjob.”

When Trump won, Graham understood, as did so many others, that he would have to make some important choices. For a while, he went silent. In the spring of 2016, I saw him at one of those conferences in Europe. He seemed too depressed to speak.

But then, like many other Republicans—and, more important, like many other people who have lived under political occupation or experienced radical regime change—he made the decision to abandon his previous ideals, to bury the patriotism that was once so important to him, and to become, instead, a loud, opportunistic collaborator. Graham went out of his way to telegraph his closeness to the president. He played golf with Trump, made excuses for him on television, and supported him as he slowly destroyed the alliances that Graham had defended all his life, even as he undermined the institutions of democracy at home. In 2021, Graham refused to vote to convict Trump, even after he assaulted the Capitol and tried to reverse the results of the election...

The simplest thing to say about Lindsey Graham is that he sold his soul to donald trump and he sold it cheap. Whatever morals or personal values he held, he gave it up for access to power and retaining relevancy within a political party that spiraled downward into its own hell of racism, greed, and incompetency. Anything Graham could have stood for got flattened, and he never showed any sign of regret for what he'd lost.

That can be said for any of the Republican leadership that could have chosen integrity over dishonor, that is if any of the aging-out Republican leaders are still alive. We need actual proof of life regarding Mitch, you cowards.

What If They Held a 4th And Nobody Showed?

Just point and laugh, kids, just point and laugh (Edith Olmstead at New Republic):

White House staff are reportedly concerned that Donald Trump’s Fourth of July rally is a recipe for disaster—one that will send the president into yet another meltdown. 

The remarkably low turnout for Trump’s Great American State Fair has sparked serious worries that the president’s massive rally planned for Saturday will also be a dud, multiple sources told CNN Wednesday.

The rally is scheduled to take place outside on the National Mall, as temperatures in Washington are forecast to reach a stifling 100 degrees. 

One official familiar with the event told CNN that there would likely be large groups of people who reserved tickets for Trump’s address but don’t end up attending. Empty seats means that viewers are likely in for another presidential temper tantrum—a sorry sight given it will be the country’s 250th anniversary. 

The rally will be punctuated by a massive fireworks display, currently scheduled to begin at 11 p.m. Unlike in past years, attendees will not be able to bring coolers to help beat the heat. 

It's like they're intentionally working to scare your average attendees - the ones who don't want to die from heat stroke - away from the shindig.

Worse, delaying the fireworks until 11:00pm at night is recipe to make people tune out from watching on television. Traditionally, firework shows start at sundown - somewhere around 8:00pm - and wrap up in an hour so the kids won't stay up too late. People will watch the New York and Boston performances - with arguably more entertaining musicians and actors providing stirring patriotic oratory - and ignore trump's planned rally rants that will likely drone into dementia-driven idiocy.

trump's handlers could try to bus in their usual suspects of rally attendees, but you'd think they would have done that to bring in crowds to trump's State Fair event to avoid looking like a disaster this past weekend.

It might not even be a good look for them if they persist on keeping people from bringing their own coolers and drinks, and end up with a sizable number of unconscious or dying victims in the crowd.

So here we are, facing a 4th of July in our nation's capital on a major anniversary where nobody shows.

This wouldn't have happened under President Kamala.

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.

The Neverending Cycle of trumpian Failure: War With Iran Edition

I kept thinking of when and how to respond to this recent (as of June 14th) cycle of trump trying to bully, buy, and bluff his way out of his Iranian fuckup of a war; but kept stalling because new developments involving this latest "treaty" - which is actually a Memorandum Of Understanding, more of a handshake to agree on further handshakes - got worse as the week went on.

Well, it's Saturday and I've got nothing else to but laundry and waiting for afternoon thunderstorms - if any comes - so let's just go to Graeme Wood at the Atlantic to summarize how bad it is:

The Iran deal has been described as a “humiliation” for the United States, since the upshot is that America gets little that it didn’t already have before the war, and Iran gets security guarantees and a big pile of money. Donald Trump’s agreement leaves Iran a theocratic state free to arm itself with ballistic missiles and drones and to murder its own citizens. Its terms suggest that this much-despised state will, after a 60-day period of free passage through the Strait of Hormuz, have the ability to regulate maritime traffic...

Humiliation, however, is distinct from defeat. Only the United States was humiliated; both countries have experienced a catastrophic loss. The defeat for the United States is the more obvious of the two: a loss of standing and the confirmation that even a rich country cannot force its will on a poor but determined one. For Iran, the defeat is subtler. Bordering countries once considered it a problem neighbor and now know it to be an outright threat. They are arming themselves accordingly and seeking ways to bypass the Strait of Hormuz. Iran’s economy has been a disaster for about 15 years and is now a total wreck. Sanctions relief will help, but who exactly will want to invest in a country whose government is sustained by brutality and ruled according to the whims of a junta led by a mangled religious fanatic...?

The humiliation is the point. Iran got the United States to sign a document that even Americans described as degrading, mortifying, a total capitulation. Who cares if the deal never really happens, or if each part turns out to be a little less sweet than it first appears? Iran has never before won a war, and even the blows it has struck against the United States, Israel, and its own citizens have up to now been pathetic and furtive, taking the form of terror attacks and indirect action through proxies. The existence of an understanding, with humiliating terms for America, is a heap of symbolic and emotional capital that no Iranian regime has enjoyed since the Islamic Revolution of 1979.

The optics of the whole deal even as trump shouted how great it was got more humiliating - or funny depending on your sense of humor and awareness of history - when trump made a big deal of signing the MOU while he attended the G7 conference of the major economic powers while it was being held in France at Versailles.

...Yes. He really signed a terrible "treaty" at Versailles. trump never DID have a firm understanding of world history, and none of his lackeys seemed to see the problems of recreating one of the more disparaged peace treaties in European history. The only way trump and his handlers could have screwed this up more would have been signing the deal in Munich.

One of the reasons I didn't want to say anything about trump's "victory" in getting that napkin signed was because I knew - and I know many other more versed experts on foreign policy knew - this peace deal wasn't going to last, no different than all the other times trump crowed he'd gotten the Strait of Hormuz reopened or forced Iran to give up their missiles and nukes (in progress).

And, to no one's surprise except Lindsey Graham's, the Iranian government declared this morning that the Strait is closed (again) because Israel under Netanyahu - WHY did you let him back into power, Israel??? - is still bombing Lebanon as part of Netanyahu's big plan to keep warring and stay in office.

The only way this war ends is if Iran makes the demand that the US government hands over trump (and his other pro-war advisors) to them for war crimes, and the Republicans in Congress finally decide to cave on that. One hopes.

Update: the PolandBall guys on YouTube understand perfectly what this meant.

Creating Cracks In a Corrupted Coalition

It took four tries trying to get around a cowardly Republican House leadership, but there's a resolution now to end trump's failed war against Iran (via Claudia Grisales at NPR):

A bipartisan majority in the Republican-led House voted on Wednesday to end the war with Iran, the clearest rebuke yet of President Trump's handling of the conflict and the subsequent economic fallout.

The war powers resolution passed by a vote of 215 to 208, with four Republicans joining Democrats in support.

The resolution had originally been set for a vote two weeks ago, but Republican leaders sent House members home early for a May recess when it appeared the largely Democratic-backed measure had enough Republican votes for passage. However, the extended break didn't shift GOP support to kill the measure...

The vote is mostly symbolic. Democrats, despite multiple attempts, have been unable to pass a war powers resolution through the Republican-led Senate. Even if the measure passed in Congress, it would almost certainly be vetoed by President Trump, whose administration has questioned the constitutionality of the War Powers Act.

Still, Senate Democrats have been inching closer. Last month, they won support on a procedural measure to set up a war powers vote after a handful of Republicans broke ranks to join them. A final vote has yet to be scheduled.

Given how there are a number of anti-war Republican Senators - some of whom have nothing to lose going against trump's tirades and kneecapping - there is a good chance the Senate will approve the resolution.

It won't stop trump and his lackeys from pursuing more violence and stupidity against Iran, but it will put him on notice that he's not going to get help from congresscritters when (not if) he screws up even more in his overseas follies.

That Speaker Mike Johnson couldn't kill this vote outright signals how ineffective his leadership has been the last two years, and how meager a majority the Republicans control the House heading into a midterms that's screaming Blue Wave.

The voters have a chance here to ensure their anti-war, anti-tariff, anti-trump views gain position in Congress well enough to bring this corrupt trump rule to heel.

GET THE GODDAMN VOTE OUT, AMERICA, AND KICK EVERY BROKEN REPUBLICAN OUT OF OFFICE FOR GOOD.

Failing One War in Iran, Starting Another with Cuba

We're in yet another week of trump proclaiming a peace deal with Iran is in the works, and yet every sign that trump isn't going to gain concessions or any true victory the way he thinks (via David A Graham at the Atlantic):

Repeatedly over the past nine years, Trump has gotten rolled by counterparts during high-stakes exchanges. North Korea, Russia, Russia again, China, and China again have gotten the better of the United States. Trump has had to slink back to Washington without much to show except empty talk about friendship with whatever dictator has just run circles around him. He’s had some success in brokering agreements when acting as a third party (though not nearly as much as he pretends) but much less luck when his own government is a participant. The one glaring exception came when he was effectively negotiating with himself, getting his own administration to set up a $1.8 billion slush fund for his political allies.

(Absolute rage regarding that mess, but I digress)

The newest example of Trump’s artlessness is Iran. Let’s review the past few days: Trump posted on Saturday that he was close to striking a deal with Tehran that would end the war he started earlier this year and reopen the Strait of Hormuz. As the outlines of the agreement began to emerge, it looked both incomplete and bad: Trump had postponed discussing the hardest issues—matters, such as nuclear weapons, that led him to go to war—in exchange for opening the strait, which was open before Trump started the war. Hawkish Trump allies promptly criticized the deal, and despite histrionic pushback from Trump aides, the president had begun backing off claims of an imminent agreement by Sunday. “If I make a deal with Iran, it will be a good and proper one, not like the one made by Obama,” he posted. “Our deal is the exact opposite, but nobody has seen it, or knows what it is. It isn’t even fully negotiated yet.” Yesterday, in a sign that a deal might not be near at all, the U.S. military conducted what it called “self-defense strikes” against Iranian targets—directly contradicting the administration’s previous claims about having wiped out any threats to the United States in Iran.

Take a moment to notice how trump is obsessing over the nuclear deal in 2015 Obama made with Iran that trump impulsively tore up: A deal that in hindsight was working in spite of trump's refusal to accept anything Obama did as President (or accepting Obama as human, period). trump doesn't even know what the deal is, or even cares: All he cares about is that it'll be "better" than what Obama did. And trump is too clueless personally to comprehend how fucked he is:

First, Trump is unprepared. Some effective presidents (Dwight Eisenhower, George H. W. Bush) came to the White House with a history of deep engagement in public affairs and foreign relations, which made them ready to handle sensitive foreign negotiations. Others brought a formidable work ethic and a ruthless intellect (Barack Obama, Bill Clinton). Both types surround themselves with smart advisers whose input they take seriously. Trump is 0 for 3 on these conditions, which is one reason he wrote off the risk of Iran closing the strait in the first place: He both surrounds himself with less qualified aides than past presidents did and refuses to heed their counsel...

Second, as the roller-coaster weekend demonstrates, Trump is mercurial. Keeping one’s bottom line ambiguous in a negotiation is canny, but Trump doesn’t appear to have any bottom line in his own mind. He has cycled through different rationales for the war, including regime change and stopping Iran’s nuclear program, but hasn’t landed on one. Lacking a goal in the war means he also lacks a goal in the peace talks. Iran may be able to use that to its advantage, but even if its leaders are eager to make a deal, they will be understandably reluctant to agree to anything that requires a leap of faith, because Trump may change his mind at any moment, as appeared to happen amid Republican backlash in recent days.

Third, Trump is desperate for a deal, and everyone knows it. His misjudgments have led him to corporate bankruptcies and cheap sales in business, and he’s in a similar situation now. Every conflict between an autocracy and a democracy (however fragile this one may be) is asymmetric: Trump has to be concerned about public opinion, whereas Iran’s leaders have shown not only that they are indifferent to the suffering of their people; they are willing to massacre them by the thousands. But as the war drags on with no positive resolution in sight, and the U.S. economy looks shakier, Trump has become visibly more frantic to reach a peace agreement...

There is another reason that Graham doesn't note for why trump is desperate for a deal, desperate to crawl away declaring victory in a war with Iran he's clearly lost: trump wants to start another war with a visible target, one that the Far Right would be happy to see (even if most Americans don't want any wars at all right now). The likelihood of attacking - if not straight-up invading - Cuba keeps ticking higher (via Paul McLeary at Politico):

The Pentagon has spent months positioning the troops and weapons needed for the U.S. to launch a military attack on Cuba — all it needs is a final go-ahead from Donald Trump.

The president has floated an invasion of the island after economic and political pressure failed to topple the Communist government. But the Navy’s built-up presence in the region — the largest in the world outside the Middle East — would allow the U.S. to act immediately.

This is something that should get cleared with Congress, but Republican congresscritters have abandoned their role in government and so we're facing yet another unwanted war.

These strategically placed assets set the table for military action, from a capture of Havana’s leadership much like the seizure of former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, to a series of precision strikes. And they open the possibility that the U.S. throws itself into the third international conflict of the Trump administration.

Cuba is “in a lot of trouble,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Wednesday at a full Cabinet meeting. “Having a failed state 90 miles from our shores is a threat to the national security of the United States.”

Cuba is a failed state thanks to decades of American sanctions and a more recent blockade on any oil/fuel getting to Cuba to keep their lights on, but of course Rubio's not going to admit to that. It doesn't help that Rubio is a Cuban expat whose entire political identity is tied into being an anti-Castro advocate eager to invade his family's old country: Exacting revenge against the Castro regime that drove the hardline Cubans out.

I've mentioned these anti-Castro types before: I met some of the original generation - those from the 1960s - at various political functions in South Florida when I worked in Broward County and was a McCain supporter. That generation was rabid in their hatred of anything they deemed 'Communist' or favoring their demon Fidel. Given how Rubio is from my generation, that hatred has passed down to the current generation in power, and they are still fantasizing about pulling off a Bay of Pigs that won't fail.

But that's the problem: Whatever promises Rubio and others are whispering into trump's ear to get him to sign off - the promise of an easy military victory, the hope of being more manly than the wimps who failed to recapture Cuba for wingnut glory - even something as simple as staging an invasion on an island 90 miles off the Florida Coast is going to be too hard for this administration. Back to McLeary:

But the administration faces a timeline to act. Many of the biggest warships deployed in the summer are approaching 10 months at sea, far beyond the usual six to seven months. This has caused defense officials to worry about overextending crews, and adds to the stress on a naval force that is also conducting a blockade of Iranian ships in the Arabian Gulf...

“These back-to-back long deployments will add up over time,” said a defense official, granted anonymity to speak candidly about military operations. “Keeping them out there so long creates more problems in the long run when it comes to refitting and repairing those ships once they come home.”

The prolonged missions come on the back of the record-setting 11 month deployment of the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier, which ended this month after sailing from Europe to the Caribbean for the Maduro operation and then to the Middle East for the Iran war...

But the long deployments take a toll on the crews and Marines, who had planned for a normal rotation and are now months past their initial scheduled return home.

With our military troops stretched thin already, do we really have enough manpower to go into a jungle-covered, mountainous region like Cuba to try and capture their officials and occupy the lands? And the problems with logistics are already showing with the current deployed fleet: We're already aware how supplies and food under Hegseth's command at the War Defense Department are mismanaged to the point of futility (if not starvation for the front-line troops).

All Cuba has to do is the same thing Iran did: Deny trump a quick victory, make enough strikes to bloody America's nose (it's obvious Florida would be a rich target to strike ports, utilities, and key transportation hubs to disrupt the state), and survive long enough for trump's declining poll numbers to sink the whole Republican Party by the midterms. P.S. Most Americans don't want to invade Cuba, making it likely trump's approval will go lower if he decides to.

This is an administration of Far Right Republicans looking for any kind of military success to justify their Alpha Male fantasies, driven at the top by a madman who wants to win peace prizes while bombing three to seven nations at a time. This is also an administration made up of the least-qualified people for the jobs they're handling, meaning they are making bad decisions into worse policy that will lead to disaster.

And our troops are going to be the ones paying for those bad decisions. At the least. In a fight with Cuba, that is something that can come stateside far faster and far bloodier than we could ever expect.

In a trumpian train wreck bound to get worse - WE WARNED YOU, AMERICA - by every moment, this is getting seriously worse.

An Abuse of Prosecuting Power: trump's Destruction of the Rule of Law

When last I reported on the struggles of Kilmar Abrego Garcia - one man among hundreds of thousands of immigrants getting hunted, jailed, and punished by trump and his lackeys - he was facing false allegations about gang ties while the courts untangled the lies over what was or wasn't an "order of removal".

In the midst of all that, Abrego Garcia got hit with criminal charges, as part of trump's escalation having made this all a personal vendetta. If there's any good news today, it's that the judge overseeing the case dismissed all charges while highlighting that vendetta as a major reason why (via Sergio Martinez-Beltran at NPR):

A federal judge in Tennessee on Friday dismissed criminal charges against Kilmar Abrego García, an immigrant who was wrongfully deported to El Salvador.

Abrego Garcia was charged last year with human smuggling after being returned to the U.S. The charges stem from a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee. He didn't face charges then, but the Justice Department reopened an investigation into the traffic stop after a federal judge in Maryland ordered the Trump administration to facilitate his return from El Salvador.

In his ruling Friday, U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw said the actions by then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche "taints the investigation with a vindictive motive."

"The reopening of the closed HSI investigation is the source of the vindictiveness," Crenshaw said, referring to Homeland Security Investigations, which conducts federal criminal probes.

Crenshaw said the government would not have prosecuted Abrego Garcia if not for his successful lawsuit challenging his deportation to El Salvador.

"Blanche's now unrebutted public statements tying the reopened investigation to Abrego's successful lawsuit taints the investigation with a vindictive motive," Crenshaw said. "The evidence before this Court sadly reflects an abuse of prosecuting power."

One of the things about the American legal system is how much power a prosecutor wields: it's insane what DAs can get away with, and rare are the times that judges ever rein in those powers. That our nation's judges have been overruling and dismissing a lot of criminal matters brought to them under trump's broken Justice Department should tell you how inept and failing the current prosecutors are acting to serve trump's whims.

Just yesterday in an unrelated criminal case, a judge in Chicago tossed out a matter involving a group of ICE protestors - the Broadview Six - when the judge found out the AUSAs heading the prosecution violated a ton of regulations involving the grand jury. 

Marcy Wheeler over at her blog goes into more detail just how screwed up it got:

For months, the defendants in the Broadview 6 case had been trying to get the transcripts from the grand jury, arguing that DOJ’s theory that they had conspired to impede an officer whose car they were accused of blocking did not accord with the law. On April 9, Judge April Perry permitted the government to simply file the jury instructions for her review, rather than responding to the defendants’ argument. But the government actually had to get an extension before they did file the transcripts.

When Judge Perry reviewed the transcripts after receiving them on April 23, she found there were three presentments. And while the instructions on the law were problematic before the first one, it got cleaned up by the time the grand jury returned an indictment...

But she also found they were redacted, and so instructed the government to bring unredacted copies to a hearing on April 29.

The government dismissed the felony, 18 USC 372, and therefore mooted the transcript order.

The defendants, smelling a rat about the redactions, nevertheless persisted in asking for the transcripts. And after the government expressed a willingness to do so, Judge Perry got the full versions earlier this week.

She almost immediately ordered every AUSA involved in redacting the transcripts to show up to a hearing yesterday...

I can tell you on Bluesky when the legal eagles heard about that order, they knew the judge was pissed.

Perry described four problems with the unredacted grand jury transcripts:

• Vouching, in which a prosecutor invokes her own assurances in lieu of evidence
• Improper communications with grand jurors outside the grand jury room
• Dismissal of the grand jurors (one in particular) who objected to the charges
• The redaction of the transcript to hide all that

I'm not a lawyer, but I know what "vouching" is: it's where a guy is basically gaslighting you with "trust me babe, I know what I'm doing" without presenting the actual evidence for a trial that a grand jury is supposed to review. I know what "ex parte" outside communication is, which is something of a no-no. Removing grand jurors - or forcing them out - is supposed to be a huge no-no. And redacting all of that to hide it from a judge tends to make judges believe the prosecutors are straight-up lying to them.

Judge Perry said as much when dismissing the Broadview case (via Edward Helmore at the Guardian (US)):

Perry said she was “incredibly shocked” by the government’s redactions, and that she had never seen the “types of prosecutorial behavior before a grand jury that I saw in those transcripts”.

She added that “trust has been broken”.

These Justice Department officials deserve to face all sanctions and even disbarment once the dust settles. In all, a complete breakdown of ethics, professionalism, and trust. 

Which is what we expected when trump regained high office and brought back his style of bullying, vindictiveness, and incompetency.

trump truly believes the legal system is there to punish enemies, as a reaction to all the times he's been brought to court for all the actual crimes and frauds he's committed over the decades. It doesn't matter how things are supposed to be done in the legal system, trump doesn't care: All he wants are results of everyone he hates and fears suffering in courtrooms under his brand of (in)justice.

Which is why I worry still for Abrego Garcia and all the others facing these miscarriages of justice. The courts may have tossed out these attempts at prosecution, but trump will demand his Justice Department minions generate a new set of criminal allegations based on trump's fearmongering... and that won't CAN'T be proven real in a court of law. 

As long as trump is there to twist the rule of law into his law of misrule, no one is really safe.

Keep fighting. And for the LOVE OF GOD throw every elected Republican official out of office this midterms.

Eighty Sixing Forty Seven

There are several constants in the known universe. One of them is that donald trump will not stop his bullying ways to avenge even the slightest injury to his raging fear/hate.

I noted last November how trump's "Revenge Tour" - attacking everyone who exposed his ties to Russia, investigated that nation's likely involvement in the 2016 election fiasco, or refused to do his bidding to go after his perceived enemies that first go-around - was falling apart because the facts of the universe did not fit trump's fantasies of being the victim/hero. Those legal failures by his puppeteer-ed Justice Department ended up costing lackey Pam Bondi her job as Attorney General, setting up a replacement AG to do trump's dirty work pursuing vengeance on even flimsier evidence.

Which led to this past week's act of injustice when Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche filed charges against former FBI Director James Comey (again) on the pretext that Comey threatened trump's life by sharing a photo of seashells on the seashore (more details from Ryan J. Reilly, Monica Alba, Gary Grumbach and Michael Kosnar at NBC News):

The two-count indictment, posted Tuesday afternoon, alleges that a reasonable person would interpret the image of the shells, arranged to spell out “86 47,” as “a serious expression of an intent to do harm to the President of the United States."

Justice Department attorneys sought the indictment in the Eastern District of North Carolina, where Comey has a beach house and where he posted the beach scene photo. The Department of Homeland Security previously investigated Comey, who has long been a Trump target, over the May Instagram post, even subjecting him to questioning by the Secret Service.

Comey had deleted the post, saying it never occurred to him that it would be interpreted as being violent. "Eighty-six" is a term commonly used in restaurants when an item is sold out, and it's also informally used to mean "cancel" or "get rid of."

In a subsequent Instagram post in May, Comey said that he assumed the shells he saw on a beach walk were "a political message" and that he "didn't realize some folks associate those numbers with violence," adding that he opposed violence "of any kind."

Comey said in a video posted after his indictment that he was innocent, that he was not afraid and that he still believed in the independent judiciary.

"They're back," he said of the Trump administration. "This time about a picture of seashells on a North Carolina beach a year ago. And this won't be the end of it."

By the by, should we count the number of times donald trump threatened violence or wished harm on other sitting presidents like Obama or Biden? In those instances, he openly directly called for violence. trump never got charged by the Justice Department for that. All Comey did was flash a photo of "86 47", and trump's lackeys are having fainting spells across the Sunday talk shows.

The hypocrisy of this reeks.

It's also pulling what's called The Streisand Effect: By drawing attention to a minor, almost ridiculous matter, trump has instead exploded interest and willingness by a lot of other Americans and protestors to use "86 47" as a vocal protest against him.

Sales of "86 47" merch are expanding.

The actual legality of what Blanche and the rest of trump's enforcers are attempting is up for debate. It's just that a good number of experts are pointing out how stupid it all is (via Matthew Chapman at Raw Story):

Former FBI Director James Comey's indictment for supposedly threatening violence against President Donald Trump is completely ridiculous, said former FBI official and counterintelligence specialist Michael Feinberg on MS NOW's "Deadline: White House" Tuesday.

"I mean, again, [former Congressman] Matt Gaetz posted, 'We’ve now 86’d: McCarthy McDaniel McConnell; Better days are ahead...'" said anchor Nicolle Wallace. "Is there any reasonable interpretation that Matt Gaetz meant we'd killed them? I mean, is this — is this in law enforcement, an accepted phrase that is associated with threats of death?"

"No," said Feinberg. "I actually first learned the phrase when I was working the door at a bar in Chicago shortly after I graduated college, where we would use it to refer to ejecting unruly customers. So when I saw Jim Comey's post on Instagram from last year, I simply assumed it was a reference to removing the president from office."

"It is a very large leap to claim that that is a threat of violence," said Feinberg. "And because of that, I don't want the phrasing I'm about to use to make light of how malevolent and destructive of constitutional norms this Justice Department is being with this indictment. But this is the single dumbest charging decision I have ever seen in my entire law enforcement career, or in my even longer career as an attorney. This is the definition of bad faith."

The indictment isn't even likely to result in a conviction - the case is that weak - but it demonstrates trump's willingness to harass and harm his "enemies" in spite of reality (via Steve Benen at Maddow Blog):

When Comey, a lifelong Republican, went public with his concerns and criticisms about Trump, the president came to see the ousted FBI chief as one of his most important enemies, and in April 2018 he started demanding that Comey be prosecuted for crimes that Trump struggled to identify.

It took several years, but the president is seeing the results he’s long sought.

Months after Trump’s Justice Department brought absurd criminal charges against the former FBI director, in a case that ultimately collapsed, prosecutors secured a second indictment against Comey this week, claiming that he used Instagram to call for violence against Trump by way of a seashell-related code.

Though the case is rooted in an indictment of Comey, it’s actually more of an indictment of a weaponized DOJ. Legal experts are reportedly “shell-shocked” over how preposterous the case is, and for good reason: No fair-minded observer could defend or take seriously such spurious charges.

This isn't about justice, or securing the safety of a sitting president occupant of the Oval Office. This is about trump using the executive branch of government to humiliate and harass anyone who ever crossed him.

A case like this should never have gotten through a grand jury. It shouldn't stand before any judge who should see this as a legitimate witch hunt - pushed and prodded by a guy who screamed about all his criminal and civil cases being 'witch hunts' - for political (and stupid) reasons.

Every DOJ lawyer from Blanche on down involved in this farce deserve to get sanctioned and disbarred for this, along with a hundred other illegal acts trump's gotten them to commit against our nation. This is "sandwich guy getting charged with assault" levels of stupid that Justice lawyers are committing here, and it's going to end with the same (acquitted) results.

In a sane world, trump's campaign of legal terror would lead to impeachment and criminal charges.

Goddamn the Far Right partisan bastards in the Supreme Court and a broken Congress who are protecting trump from the justice he's deserved for decades.

We need to get rid of trump. Get him out of power he's clearly abusing for his own greed and rage. Flush him down the toilet like the shitgibbon he is, the way you're supposed to when you 86 something (that's how my fellow middle schoolers used the phrase back in the day).

Am I going to get criminally charged for blogging that he needs to get flushed down a toilet? Try me, motherfuckers. There's at least 60 percent of fellow Americans you're going to have to prosecute alongside me.

Hegseth: Starving Our Troops While Feasting on Steak And Lobster

Update: thank you again Steve in Manhattan for including this article in Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up! 

The USA Today headline doesn't spell it out, but the lede does and the story gets even worse from there (via Cybele Mayes-Osterman):

Dan F. was alarmed when his daughter, a Marine aboard the USS Tripoli, a warship deployed to fight the Iran war, sent him a photo of a meal served on the ship. A lunch tray, two-thirds empty, carried one small scoop of shredded meat and a single folded tortilla.

A picture of a mid-April dinner on the USS Abraham Lincoln, shared by a service member with his family, was similarly unappetizing – a small handful of boiled carrots, a dry meat patty and a gray slab of processed meat.

Dan and other military family members worried that their loved ones deployed to the Middle East are going hungry are filling boxes with items they hope could help service members ride out prolonged deployments in the Middle East – homemade fudge, Jolly Ranchers, crossword puzzle books, playing cards, toothpaste, Girl Scout cookies and fresh socks. But mail delivery to military ZIP codes across the Middle East has been indefinitely suspended as of April, and packages in transit now hang in limbo.

Dan asked to go by his first name only to protect his daughter from retaliation.

It's less about the lack of shipping personal items to their loved ones abroad, and more about the U.S. military under Secretary of Steaks and Lobsters Pete Hegseth absolutely unable to run the army in any competent fashion.

I noted this last month when word got out our military strikes against Iran were running out of missiles, ammo, and other equipment:

So the money is there - you would think - for a lot of weapons production and resources getting shipped out to our armed forces. And yet, we're getting warning signs from our own Pentagon officials that things are amiss, that they're not getting all these weapons and material to fight the wars they're being asked to fight.

This is a serious question: Just where the hell is all our defense spending going to these corporations that are supposed to be manufacturing all this shit? What happened to all the resources that are supposed to be pouring into our munitions factories to pump out the missiles and bullets and body armor and helmets and battlefield supplies?

Now we're witnessing the other failures at simple logistics - logistics, one of the most vital elements of any great army - affecting our own armed forces, unable to feed our troops and sailors at the very battlefronts trump and Hegseth want to wage their wars. The U.S. military used to be great at logistics, putting us at levels of preparedness and effectiveness that no other military on the planet could achieve.

Within two years of trump getting back into power, and within two years of Hegseth purging our armed forces over "woke" and "diversity" in ways that have clearly disrupted our chains of command and ruined morale at the worst possible time; we can't even feed our frontline people. 

There's an old saying - attributed to Napoleon, but it's probably been out there since the days of Roman military might (the guys who perfected logistics to a science) - that "an army travels on its stomach."

From the USA Today article
The only recognizable food on that half-empty tray are the carrots

You feed any army that and you are going to bring that army to its knees.

WHERE THE HELL DID THE BILLIONS IN THE MILITARY BUDGET FOR FOOD GO, HEGSETH??? YOU are starving our people, this is YOUR accountability, YOUR responsibility running the armed forces, YOU better have a GODDAMN solution for this ASAP.

Boys You Gotta Learn Not to Talk to Popes That Way

I wrote a while back that trump and his fellow Republican incompetents were starting fights they can't finish.

Well, trump went and started a fight against Pope Leo XIV and pretty much the whole Catholic Church (via Angela Giuffrida at the Guardian): 

Pope Leo said he did not fear the Trump administration and would continue to speak out against war after Donald Trump delivered an extraordinary broadside against him in which he said he did not think the Chicago-born pontiff was “doing a very good job”, while also suggesting he should “stop catering to the radical left”.

In remarks that have been widely criticized, the US president used a lengthy social media post to sharply criticize Leo while he flew from Florida to Washington on Sunday night, then continued in comments on the tarmac to reporters. “I’m not a fan of Pope Leo,” he said.

Trump made the comments after Leo suggested over the weekend that a “delusion of omnipotence” was fueling the US-Israeli war in Iran. While it is not unusual for popes and presidents to be at cross purposes, it is exceedingly rare for the pope to criticize a US leader – and for the president to respond in such a stinging manner.

“Pope Leo is WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy,” the president wrote in his post, adding: “I don’t want a Pope who thinks it’s OK for Iran to have a Nuclear Weapon.” He repeated that sentiment in comments to reporters, saying: “We don’t like a pope who says it’s OK to have a nuclear weapon.”

This actually isn't the start of the fight, but an escalation. It turned out months earlier people in trump's administration threatened Leo and the Church to play along to trump's war agenda (via Christopher Hale at his blog Letters From Leo):

In January, behind closed doors at the Pentagon, Under Secretary of War for Policy Elbridge Colby summoned Cardinal Christophe Pierre — Pope Leo XIV’s then-ambassador to the United States — and delivered a lecture.

America, Colby and his colleagues told the cardinal, has the military power to do whatever it wants in the world. The Catholic Church had better take its side.

As tempers rose, an unidentified U.S. official reached for a fourteenth-century weapon and invoked the Avignon Papacy, the period when the French Crown used military force to bend the bishop of Rome to its will.

As a student who took AP European History in high school I can confirm two things: If your mom teaches AP Euro you should NEVER fall asleep in her class; and the Avignon Papacy was a serious political mess.

Any decent scholar of history should tell you that trump's admin invoking an Avignon situation is a political threat (here's Professor Thomas Lecaque at Religion Dispatches):

But what’s getting a ton of attention is both the worst sourced, and most intriguing, piece: that an American official in that meeting invoked the Avignon Papacy. As much as I hate giving in to the speculation, that’s a particularly weird thing to invoke, unless you’re trying to—in the most Gretchen Weiners “fetch” way I can say this—make Catholic Integralism happen in America. (Holy Cross professor Mathew Schmalz defines Catholic Integralism as the belief that “religious values, specifically Christian ones, should guide government policies.”)

So what is the Avignon papacy and why does it matter? So kind of you to ask. The important thing to understand for today, is that it refers to a highly politicized 14th century stretch where a series of Popes, all of whom were French, resided in Avignon, rather than Rome. These popes were in many ways an extension of France’s monarchs...

But it matters, at this moment, because it’s easy to see how an invocation of Avignon is a (very) thinly-veiled threat of violence. Clement V didn’t move to Avignon out of nowhere. The King of France put his thumb on the scales to get him elected, after having sent his minister, Guillaume de Nogaret, to beat Pope Boniface VIII and hold him captive in retaliation for excommunicating him. 

The death of Pope Boniface VIII led to the short reign of Benedict XI, who also died very suddenly, just eight months into his reign. Clement V was, at the time, the Archbishop of Bordeaux and a friend of King Philip. To put the story in plain terms: his election was due to the intervention of France, after it had murdered a recalcitrant pope, who happened to be the king’s enemy. The move to Avignon put the Papacy where France could get to them more easily. This isn’t a random piece of medieval trivia; within the most brain-rotted neomedievalism imaginable, it’s a threat against Pope Leo XIV—but also the Vatican itself.

It hasn't just been trump and his lackeys - even "converted Catholic" VP Vance - threatening Leo and the Catholic church over trump's illegal and inept warring. Far Right pundits and elected officials have attacked the Church - which is pro-immigrant/pro-migrant - to defend trump's sadistic anti-immigrant raids across American communities. Know-nothing Sean Hannity is out there arguing that Pope Leo doesn't even know the Bible (you know, the ONE THING they teach a lot at seminary school and something most Popes can quote from memory).

A lot of this hostility is coming from the American conservative mindset that only their ideology and dogma matters. The modern conservative (Republican) movement formed around a Culture War focused on racism, sexism, and control, a reaction against the civil rights and women's rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s that threatened white male patriarchy. When the Republicans merged with the conservative - mostly Pentecostal, evangelical - Christian groups to form a coalition under Reagan in the 1980s, they worked alongside a Catholic church willing to fight against abortion rights. The religious wingnuts got used to the idea of having a large international church on their side.

Thing is, other than agreeing on "pro-life," "anti-gay," and "traditional gender roles for women", the Protestant conservatives - who are pro-business greedheads and racist towards non-whites - have little in common with Catholics who tend to oppose greedheads in defense of the poor and are more liberal (kinda) on racial equality. Now, as the American conservative ideology shifts further rightward into racism and sadism, they're finding the Catholics are no longer on their side.

Angered that the Catholics aren't backing trump, the wingnuts are lashing out; falling back on the anti-Catholicism that informed conservative views well back into the 1840s - hi, Know-Nothings! - and into the 1960s - hi, Klansmen! The Far Right still railed against the Church over the decades since, especially when the Popes and stateside bishops refused to excommunicate Democratic elected officials like Joe Biden who were still Catholic (and liberal).

Thing is, bashing Pope Leo - who is not only popular with the American Catholic population but also with Americans of other faiths on the same page when it comes to supporting immigrants, families, and the White Sox - is going to alienate a significant faction of Republican voters who aren't happy with trump's war on migrants and are more willing to stand with the priests protesting outside ICE prison camps than with the haters.

Seriously, going after a Pope from Chicago is not going to end well for trump or the other religious wingnuts in the GOP.