If One Can Hope For a Big Enough Wave (w/ Update)

If the Far Right Republicans were in control of everything heading into the midterms, they wouldn't exactly be panicking like this (via David A. Graham at the Atlantic (paywalled)):

Representative Maria Elvira Salazar, a Florida Republican whose district Trump won by 15 points in 2024, recently released an ad critiquing the administration’s immigration enforcement, saying that Hispanic voters feel “betrayed.” Byron Donalds, the GOP’s nominee for governor of Florida, scrubbed most references to Trump from his website—a notable move considering that the foundation of Donalds’s entire career has been fidelity to the Donald. The Senate contenders Mike Rogers of Michigan and Ashley Hinson of Iowa are both calling for an end to the Iran war. Tom Tiffany, the Republican candidate for governor of Wisconsin, has even suddenly changed his mind and now believes that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election.

The number of prominent Republicans distancing themselves from Trump has accelerated, or at least reached a critical mass, in the past 10 days. The shift is interesting—first, as an indication of what information GOP candidates are receiving privately about the president’s unpopularity and its drag on them, and second, because public critiques of Trump from Republicans have been vanishingly rare, no matter how unwise, outrageous, or unpopular his actions have been.

But the defections are perhaps better understood as a sign of normalcy, even in a deeply abnormal context. A president’s party almost always loses seats in a midterm, a result of the pendulum effect in elections. And the dynamics of this race are especially challenging for Republicans because Trump is historically unpopular, outpacing even his own poor ratings in 2018, when Democrats dominated the midterms. Trump is now presiding over persistent inflation, exacerbated by a failing war of choice in Iran. All of this predicts that GOP candidates would be wary of Trump...

Thing is, this time it feels different. After massive gerrymandering to make more congressional districts "safe" for Republican incumbents, the polling - if the New York Times numbers are accurate - is showing massive shifts - ranging from +11 to +31 (or more) - in favor of Democrats across far too many districts.

Texas and Florida would become ground zero for a possible Democratic tsunami, with the party’s chance at a large congressional majority potentially hinging on whether it could break through Republican gerrymanders in those states. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/22/u...

[image or embed]

— Eric Michael Garcia (@ericmgarcia.bsky.social) September 22, 2026 at 7:06 PM

In case the skeet disappears,
a screenshot of Garcia's observations

The thing that proved advantageous to trump and the Republicans in 2024 - a shift of (mostly male) Latino/Hispanic voters who supported trump over Harris - is now abandoning the Far Right thanks to the odious deportation attacks trump and his lackeys at DHS/ICE are inflicting on Latino communities even in must-need-their-votes states like Florida and Texas. This would explain Rep. Salazar's desperate ad pretending to oppose trump's anti-immigration policies... when everyone knows she and her fellow Republicans in Congress supported those policies and are doing nothing today to stop him.

As much as Donalds and Salazar and numerous other Far Right GOP candidates/incumbents act or say in public, they are tied to the hip with trump and his destructive ways: They never held him accountable to every constitutional violation and ethical breach he's done, not in his first term and clearly not in his second. If voters are paying any attention - and the polling suggests they are - the Republicans can't hide from their culpability in trump's crimes.

For all the conspiracy theorizing of how the Republicans - especially as trump and his lackeys at Justice and Homeland Security and the Post Office are working to disrupt the upcoming midterm voting - could just rig the results and "win" by their form of cheating (extreme gerrymandering, blocking voters at the polls above all, tricking voters to not show, those sorts of things), if they felt they could pull that off then they wouldn't be panicking like they are now. The campaigns tend to have more resources for their own internal polling work - number they don't share to the public - and whatever it is the Republicans are seeing from their own numbers have them terrified they're losing more than the US House or a couple of state governorships.

The polls may say one thing, but what matters above all is actual voter turnout. Elections always matter - I wish more people understood that - and in spite of every Far Right attempt to deny everyone else their power to vote, people need to show up in droves this October during Early Voting weeks - arguably the safest time to do it - and show up no matter what by Tuesday November 3rd for Election Day itself. 

If you're angry about how bad things are, if you're angry about inflation killing you at the gas pump and grocery store, if you're angry about unwanted wars and a military getting decimated by idiocy from trump's people mismanaging it all, if you're angry about your communities under attack by trump's masked thugs kidnapping your neighbors and their kids, you have a way to express that anger the right way.

Show up at the ballot box and vote every corrupt and inept Republican bastard out of office.

Update: Spotted this Axios report from Marc Caputo, Hans Nichols, and Alex Isenstadt where the "Oh Crap" GOP settings are at DEFCON-2.

It's looked bad for Republicans all year, but this week felt different — like the political environment was disintegrating in real time, one ominous data point after another.

Most worrisome for the GOP, there's virtually no chance the war ends, inflation cools, interest rates fall, consumer confidence rises, and economic optimism surges before the Nov. 3 election.

That's why Republicans fear the undertow imperils so many candidates once deemed safe...

The problems for the GOP are everywhere. In the battle for the Senate, once ruby-red Texas looks more in play than ever, and Florida isn't far behind. Nor is Alaska. North Carolina and Georgia look lost. Maine is problematic.

The Senate GOP campaign arm is begging donors for another $8.9 million to defend Senate seats in three states that Trump won by double digits two years ago — Alaska, Iowa and Ohio.

"We're having problems just getting Republican voters to respond to polls," said one national Republican pollster. "At what point do we think these guys aren't showing up at the actual polls on Election Day?"

As I've said, turnout matters. As much as getting Democrats invested in showing up, as much as getting Independent voters to show up in favor of Dem candidates, having Republican voters tune out is just as important. Granted, it's hard to get anyone to answer to polls - I admit, I've been sending every phone text request this year to BLOCKED - but even in normal circumstances you should find enough people to respond. THIS midterms, Republican voters refuse to even pretend to pollsters to back their own party.

It's hard for a partisan voter to flip to the other party - when people buy into a brand (tm), they're faithful until the brand betrays them personally - so the next-best thing is that they refuse to show, as a means to express their anger. In the gerrymandered districts the Republicans carved for themselves in Red states, even two percent of your voter base failing to show could be devastating: It's looking like five to ten percent of the GOP base won't vote.

We can't tell for certain what turnout will look like this November, because the primaries that happened earlier in the year are so poorly attended to begin with. It's one of the unspoken failures of our electoral system, that barely a quarter of registered voters show up for that stage of the process when you're choosing the candidates to represent your own party. If more people showed up for that, we might have a better idea of which way the November turnouts will go. Alas...

Political Gravity At Last Is Kicking In

It's gotten to where I don't normally trust the political polls, but good news is good news (via Tara Suter at The Hill):

President Trump’s approval rating has dipped to a historic low with the midterms only about six weeks away, according to a new poll.

In the Reuters/Ipsos poll, Trump’s approval rating was sitting at 32 percent, the lowest of his second term and, according to Reuters, a record low for his entire political life. The fresh approval rating marks a 15-point slide from the 47 percent approval rating he had at the beginning of his second term in the same poll.

I don't think trump has ever polled well with most Americans - I've never seen him go above 50 percent approval, he might have at one point, I just didn't see it - but he's rarely slid under 40 percent during his first term mostly because the Republican voting base never abandoned him. At least until now:

The Reuters/Ipsos poll also pegged Trump’s disapproval rating at 66 percent, up 25 percentage points from the start of his second White House stint...

In a polling average from Decision Desk HQ, Trump’s approval rating was 38.8 percent Monday evening, while his disapproval rating was 59.7 percent.

A recent New York Times/Siena University poll also found Republicans trailing Democrats on the issues of immigration, healthcare and the economy.

The Reuters/Ipsos poll took place Sept. 17-20 among 1,277 people and had 3 percentage points as its margin of error.

You might notice this poll happened after trump's midterms convention stunt, designed to get his approval numbers bouncing back, because rallies are his thing babe.

But his numbers are finally - FINALLY - declining among the Republican base he's trying to rally. That Reuters/Ipsos poll found that his approval among Republicans fell from 82 percent to 73 percent.

I've noted before way back in 2017 that as long as the party base - the ones who would defend their brand (tm), their standard bearer, their demagogue - remains favorable, the polls are going to skew in trump's favor more than they should. What I wrote then:

Notice the polarized numbers between the three factions of Democrats to Independents to Republicans. Of course the Republicans disapproved of the Democrats - harshly so after 1992 when the partisanship started its avalanche - for Clinton and Obama, and of course the Democrats disapproved of the Republicans from Reagan onward, and while they approved their own guys with high marks. That's not surprising...

But that's unimportant for this argument. What matters is that 87 percent approval Republicans have for Trump.

As long as Trump has that much support among the party base, there is not a damn thing the Republicans in Congress or in the Establishment can do to toss him overboard...

The polarization of polling numbers is a given: Democrats are going to favor Democratic leaders and Republicans will favor Republicans. It's a question of how skewed it gets, and staying within statistical norms. There's always going to be a fraction of party voters who don't approve, but they'll always be a significant sliver - usually around 8 to 10 percent - often made up of people angry their guy isn't partisan enough.

For trump to slide from that comfort zone of 85 percent or so of Republican voters - that he's at 73 percent and sinking - suggests that a growing faction of the regular base of the party are souring on him (and the rest of the GOP). trump and his party allies can afford to lose 10 percent of their base: they can't afford to lose 25 percent, especially as the midterms is about a month away.

All of the political issues - above all the economy, something that most voters trusted them with since the 1970s - that had been winners for the Republicans aren't in their favor now, and there's nothing trump is doing that looks to change those trends. trump's not about to give up his tariffs wars that most Americans hate, trump can't solve this mess he made in Iran and the Middle East, and trump won't admit there's a problem with inflation. 

The question now is: How does this translate into actual votes this November 2026? The answer depends on A) every Democratic voter showing up to vote Democratic, B) every Independent voter showing up and flipping votes Democratic, and C) if the Republicans pissed at trump decide to either stay home (likely) or flip Democratic (which is honestly hard to do: voting against your brand (tm) is like tearing off your own arm).

Here's hoping the answer is with massive Blue Waves sweeping into both the House and Senate seats, and enough state governments electing Democrats as Governors and State Attorney Generals to hold trump and his cronies accountable.

Elections matter. Make this unpopular trump suffer at the polls, America. Prove to him he's crashing to the ground at long last.

Are We Winning Yet? Nope.

trump's war on Reality Iran took a nasty turn this weekend when the quagmire expanded and made things worse (via the AP Newswire at NPR):

Yemen 's Iranian-backed Houthi rebels captured the island of Mayun at the entrance of the Red Sea, a key alternative for shipping Saudi oil and other exports since Iran has been targeting vessels in the Strait of Hormuz.

The island's seizure was confirmed by a senior military official with Yemen's internationally recognized government and a Houthi official. Both spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to journalists.

About 12% of the world's goods are typically shipped through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait at the southern end of the Red Sea. It's especially important to Saudi Arabia, a key U.S. ally.

Combined with the possible shutdown of another trade route, Iran's allies in Iraq punched Saudi Arabia at another key chokepoint:

Saudi Arabia said Friday it had shut down a major, cross-country oil pipeline as a "precautionary measure" following attacks the day before. The Saudi Energy Ministry did not say who carried out the attacks.

The East-West pipeline has been vital to Saudi Arabia continuing oil exports in the months since the Iran war has disrupted shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.

In a statement early Saturday, the Iraqi government said Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi ordered an investigation into the operations command in Maysan province and dismissed its commander after authorities determined that attacks targeting Saudi Arabia were launched from a site in the province.

Based on other reports I've seen on social media, the Houthis had been considered a "non-factor" the past month and that the Saudis had them contained. Now, the insurgents pulled off a Tet Offensive of their own, demonstrating how vulnerable the global trade markets still are and giving trump and his regional allies huge black eyes (via Barak Ravid at Axios):

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) called President Trump twice Thursday, urging him to launch strikes against the Houthis as the Iran-backed group closed in on a vital Red Sea chokepoint, two U.S. officials told Axios.

Trump declined, and U.S. officials stressed the administration has no plans to intervene directly against the Houthis for now...

The midterms are coming, trump - or at least his handlers - has come to realize that any further escalation on his part in the region would only anger the voters here at home opposed to his unsanctioned war, and hurt the Republicans' chances of keeping both parts of Congress. So trump is doing as little as possible - publicly at least - while claiming 'victory' and 'we're winning' in spite of the facts.

Gasoline prices are fluctuating here in the U.S. for now for regular consumption, but diesel - the fuel needed for trucks and transportation - has skyrocketed, meaning costs are going up for goods everywhere in the next week or so. These Houthi raids are also underscoring how little control the United States has in the Middle East after decades of mishandling the Global War on Terror.

trump started a war he can't finish, based off of wars that Bush the Lesser couldn't finish, which couldn't get finished by Obama or Biden because they inherited these messes and there were no good answers for any of it.

The Attack on the Midterms Began This Weekend

There is a lot of other craziness going on to report, but this from last week's trump-Fuhrer Fest ought to horrify people (via Hafiz Rashid at New Republic):

President Trump led his fans in a bizarre pledge at the Republican midterm convention in Dallas Thursday night.

“Please raise your right hand. I pledge, to the greatest president in the history of the United States, that loves us so much he can’t even breathe, that I will go out with my family, my friends, I’ll do it any way, I don’t care if I’m registered or not, I’m gonna try and cheat like hell like they do, there’s never been bigger cheaters, they don’t care. I am gonna go out and I’m going to get my friends and family and we are going to vote on November 3rd, or we are going to vote before that!” Trump had the whole crowd repeat after him.

It was blatant, cultlike behavior, and Trump’s MAGA base seemed to eat it up. The “cheat like hell” line proves that Trump’s rants about election fraud have always been self-serving, as he doesn’t care about any laws as long as he wins...

As much as this echoes every fascist rally where Dear Leader demands fealty from his devoted cultists, this is more terrifying because trump is directly attacking the upcoming midterm voting turnout. trump is basically encouraging his MAGA base "to cheat", either by rigging fake votes or disrupting the real ones trying to take place.

And it's all based on big fat lies. trump accuses Democrats of cheating, but in every attempt by election deniers - not just trump these past ten years, but an army of Far Right agitators that have been claiming voter fraud before him - to prove mass voter fraud, they've never proven it.

What Republicans call "cheating" is that there are groups allowed to vote they don't want to vote. Republicans know they're politically in the minority - there are more registered Democrats than registered Republican nationwide - so they want to cull the Democratic advantages as much as possible. It fits well into their conservative world view that only they - mostly propertied rich white males - should have the power to vote, a power that's been diluted down since they opened up the vote to all white males, then the vote to Black (and Latino, and Asian) males, then the vote to women, then the vote to college kids. The Far Right looks at all those voters - a good number of them skewing Democratic - and calls it "cheating" because there's no other way they can contend with that.

So trump has gotten his mob - arguably the same assholes who rioted for him when he committed insurrection back on January 6th 2021 - riled up to view the Democrats as "cheaters" on his say-so, with no evidence but with every bit of anger and venom he can stir up in them.

The risks to voter safety at the polls this November have gone up. It doesn't help that trump will likely use ICE agents to raid precincts in key states to disrupt turnout, use the Postal Service to shut down mail-in ballots (which ironically hurts Republican turnout), and use the FBI to raid elections offices to steal ballots like they do in third-world countries.

Stay safe. Plan ahead. Vote early if you have to (it's unlikely they'll send ICE to early ballot locations where too many white people will witness it). And defend your constitutional power to vote, everybody.

Trying to Find Some Peace On a Tragic Anniversary

Back in 2020 I dreaded the possibility of donald trump still being President for the 20th anniversary of the tragic 9/11 attacks. I didn't realize then he could return for the 25th anniversary and the risks of him messing that all up with his self-aggrandizing me-me-me bullshit.

The good news is that the New York City remembrances make it a policy preventing people from speaking during the memorial services, denying trump the chance to turn a somber gathering into a twisted celebration of his own "greatness".

So he did it instead during an earlier event this week, during which he invented a new 'heroic' story for himself being at Ground Zero; when in fact he was in New Jersey watching the devastation from a distance - later lying that he witnessed Muslim residents cheering the attacks - and going on talk shows to brag about how he now owned the tallest building in Manhattan (which also was a lie, and the worst time to brag about that).

All that rage I'd normally have at this shitgibbon, well I'm letting it out now and then stepping away.

Today, I would rather encourage the various readers of this blog to find some peace within yourselves, find some good things to do for others this day and even this weekend, and try to revel in the small joys and calm comforts we can achieve for ourselves and each other.

Stay safe.

trump Himself IS the Derangement Syndrome

Wanted to share this Michael Tomasky article at the New Republic I read a few days ago:

The Venezuela announcement tracks with a very well-worn pattern. Trump raves that the deal in question is the greatest in the annals of history. It will deliver scarcely imaginable benefits. It will cost nothing. And it all happened because of Trump’s genius.

It’s been a lie every time. The tariffs were going to help farmers. Nope: Farmers are furious at Trump, giving Democrats their first potential political opening in rural America in ages. The tariffs were going to allow for elimination of the income tax. Remember that one? The war in Iran was going to take a month. The Reflecting Pool, ruined by Trump’s predecessors, was going to be thing of unparalleled beauty.

It’s tempting to call these lies, and they surely were in the sense that Trump just says everything he does is the greatest without the slightest bit of analysis or conscience entering into the equation. But they’re not just lies. They’re delusions. And delusions, in a way, are even worse than lies.

Why? Because while a liar can change course, a delusional person cannot. Trump is sitting in the mid-to-low 30s in approval. If he were merely a liar, he could try to correct course and do some things differently. He could realize, for example, that the war he started has been a disaster and is massively unpopular and, without exactly admitting it directly, sue for peace and cut his losses. A liar can acknowledge, eventually, that maybe he screwed up a little on the Reflecting Pool.

But a delusionist can do none of those things because the delusionist can’t accept that he’s done anything wrong. And he surrounds himself with people who understand that their only real job, whatever their actual specific responsibilities may be, is to keep the delusions alive and the Emperor happy.

So: A normal president two months out from what’s shaping up as a devastating midterm election would try to do things a little differently. I’m not sure in this case what exactly that would be; releasing some of the petroleum reserve, bringing beef producers to the White House and pressing them to lower prices for a period. Anyway that’s Trump’s problem, not mine. The point is that he won’t do these things because he doesn’t think anything is wrong. In fact, his plan right now is to make himself the centerpiece of the GOP’s midterm message, and to that end he will reportedly redirect part of a $400 million kitty to “television advertisements about his own record.”

That record is delulu. He mocks affordability. He says the bad polls are fake. He blames everything on Joe Biden. He tells people the economy is roaring, everybody says so (yes, everybody at Mar-a-Lago probably does say so). He boasts, as he did at that rally 10 or so days ago, that the last 19 months have been the greatest first 19 months of any administration in history.

His aides must echo every word of this palaver or risk censure or termination. Ditto Republican elected officials, as Salazar no doubt learned swiftly and loudly after her first tweet. And ditto Republican office seekers, like the Senate candidate in Minnesota (net worth: between $17 and $33 million) who says people concerned about gas prices should “take one less trip to Starbucks.”

The GOP lives in a cocoon, woven by the gossamer threads of Trump’s fantasia. Reality does not penetrate it. It’s funny to watch. But it’s tragic because it’s affecting people’s lives. People are struggling and suffering. But to say that in the Emperor’s presence is to prove only that you’re a deep-stater or a stooge or a RINO.

So, no—none of this is fixable. The economy will get worse. More and more innocent people, very much including children, will be rounded up and held in detention centers in the kind of hideous conditions we associate with a right- (or hard-left-) wing dictatorship, not the United States of America. The jaw-dropping corruption will continue and will get worse and more desperate, as indeed it has nearly every month of this administration so far. The attempts to rig and steal the midterms will only get more blatant. And next year, the hideous aspects of the Big Ugly Bill, the ones they intentionally delayed until after the midterms, will kick in, like the massive Medicaid cuts, and poor people and those in nursing homes, among many others, will suffer even more...

All trump knows is the con: Selling junk as though it's gold and profiting from the suckers who buy into it. The thing is, the con he's selling his himself: As a Great Businessman, As a Great Leader, As a Great Dealmaker, etc. That's the junk he's selling, and it's costing the rest of the world dearly.

Tomasky is bringing this all up in the context of that big Midterm Rally (tm) trump is hosting in Dallas this coming week. It's rare for a political party to hold a convention in an off-presidential election cycle - at least in the modern era, maybe back in the 1800s before the telegraph and telephone they had to meet more often to stay organized - to promote themselves, but for trump any rally is where he gets to rave and rant about himself with the delusion that the rest of the world is applauding him.

Granted, the Far Right media outlets - which now includes the broken CBS News - will try to offer wall-to-wall coverage, but the haters are likely to tune out, and the disgruntled Republican voters back home are likely going to be busy at their city halls fighting to stop another data center getting built in their neighborhoods. I don't believe trump's last set of nationally televised appearances were all that good in the ratings (trump of course will insist they were "great"), and I doubt he'll get many viewers for this.

As much as Tomasky argues that the Republican elected officials are stuck pandering to trump's delusions, it's already out there that many of the GOP candidates this midterm are avoiding this Rally (tm) like the plague. trump's approval numbers are so terrible that getting associated with him - especially in districts and states hammered hard by his tariffs and migrant deportations - is toxic. They'll support everything trump is saying when they appear on the Sunday talk shows because they know he's watching, but they dare not stand next to him for any unwanted photo ops.

trump himself doesn't care for the damage he's inflicting on others, even the ones supposedly on his side of the fence. All he cares about is branding himself the Greatest Who Ever Lived while planning to bulldoze down most of Washington DC to get his garish ugly monuments to himself built.

There's your derangement syndrome, Beltway Media. I hope you're happy.

Addendum: As I worked on this, Tomasky did a follow-up article at TNR about the potential Blue Wave coming this midterms in spite of trump and the GOP's efforts to rig the election. We can hope... and we SHOULD turn out in droves to make that Blue Wave flip the House AND Senate this November. Want to break trump's delusions? Defeat him.

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 Sound and Fury of trump's Trade Wars, Signifying Nothing

It's not so much that trump decided to go back to yet another trade war with Canada this past week. We have to realize by now trump will never give up his belief that tariffs work the way he thinks (nor the belief that trade wars are easy to win). What's unsettling is how much of an asshole trump is being about it (via Adam Gabbatt at The Guardian):

...But not Donald Trump, who in a “hold my beer” moment this week demonstrated that he, at least, finds it easy to resent Canadians. The US president called the country “difficult and unreasonable”, and in a particularly hysterical moment, threatened to rename a lake, after trade talks collapsed...

Gabbatt is referring to trump's childish idea to rename Lake Ontario to "Lake America" much in the same way he tried to relabel the Gulf of Mexico. As though something as useless as a lake's map designation would trigger Canadians into tearful begging for mercy.

Instead, Trump and his team demonstrated the art of collapsing the deal, as trade talks fell apart due to what Canada said were unreasonable, last-minute demands from the US side.

It meant that the US tariffs duly came in on Saturday, applied to various Canadian exports including hockey sticks and tongue depressors, but if Trump expected Canada to bow to his demands – the president was seeking more favorable terms on things like steel and aluminum – he was disappointed.

The last-minute demands trump insisted upon were a) ending the French language rights of Quebec, and b) forcing Canada into an exclusive trade deal with the U.S., insisting that Canada cannot start their own trade deals with other nations: Essentially turning Canada into a vassal state suffering from whatever economic whims fancied trump on any given day. No rational leader of another nation would have voluntarily accepted such bad-faith changes.

Anyone with any understanding of Canadian history and culture will tell you pissing off Quebecois is a bad idea - it took decades for the English-speaking Canadians to get them pacified with Kraft dinners - and anyone with any skill at diplomacy will tell you insisting on gutting another nation's sovereign powers would lead to (trade) war.

Add onto this trump's constant mocking of Canada as a 'terrible neighbor' and 'one of the worst nations to deal with,' along with trump's insistence on turning all of Canada into the 51st state - something that terrifies and angers Canadians who like their own nation the way it is eh - and you have a guy who is going out of his way to be a clueless, raging bully.

But why? What does trump - and his Republican buddies - gain out of aggravating people like this? The likelihood of compelling Canada - or any other nation - into annexation is impossible, not without force that trump can't afford to use at the moment. Making demands that violate Canada's own national identity would drive that nation to push back and refuse all compromise, ensuring no deals can get done.

It could be that trump is playing a longer game here, except we've seen over the decades trump's inability to think past the second - or even first - step. Other than wanting Canada's economy to collapse under the burdens of a trade war - which may not happen fast enough to satisfy trump - there's no other reason behind this madness.

The only remaining rationale is an irrational one. What we're seeing is trump in full imperial presidency mode: Fully convinced he can do whatever he wants on foreign policy and trade, trump would rather bully and harass his opponents into giving him more of what he wants without giving up anything in return. This is trump the mob boss: reveling in whatever cruelty he can inflict on others before they give in and surrender.

Hence the constant beratements, the constant mockery. Hence the annoying insistence on the whole '51st State' routine. trump wants to keep bullying what he sees as a weaker, smaller nation just waiting for his victim to punch back; so he can claim 'oh I'M the victim here' to anyone who'll believe him - which right now is the Beltway Media - and justify any further escalation (which may include massing troops at the border to trigger an even bigger international reaction out of the UK Commonwealth and NATO).

If there's any justice in the world, it's that trump's tariff war backfires on him through his own idiocy, to where the loss of goods and services we'd normally be getting from Canada triggers even worsening inflation, shortages, possible collapse of our bonds market, and nationwide panic (we're already facing the likelihood of another run on toilet paper).

All of trump's bullying isn't going to work if the target isn't going to roll over and play dead. And trump still doesn't understand how this isn't going to end the way he wants.

Can't Trust the Food Under trump and RFK Jr

Update: Thanks again to Batocchio for sharing this blog on Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up! Just remember to get out the vote this midterms for every Democratic candidate, and for the love of GOD overcook that mystery meat trump is dumping on our markets!

I honestly cannot recall the last time we have SO MANY different food recalls and warnings at the same time. Edith Olmstead over at the New Republic is tracking the atrocities:

In the last week alone, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has recalled twelve different products—a rate four times higher than the same week a year ago.  

In the past week, the FDA has discovered salmonella in granola, salad dressing, jalapenos, and animal food; glass in fruit popsicles; and metal in sourdough—just to name a few. 

Just yesterday they upgraded a recall on the frozen blueberries sold in my local Publix stores: it had been just a handful of places back in July but now they're worried the E Coli contamination spread to eight other states. Back to Olmstead:

Between August 14 and 20, 2025, the FDA recalled only three products. In the same week in 2024, the FDA recalled only two, according to the FDA website. 

It’s not immediately clear whether the increase in recalls can be attributed to increased enforcement or more hazardous food—but the rapid recalls really make you wonder, is this what making America healthy again looks like? 

This week of many public health announcements follows a national cyclospora outbreak that has sickened more than 13,000 people and caused two deaths. Last week, the FDA finally dispatched investigators to the facilities linked to the outbreak—nearly a month after linking the parasite to Taylor Farms. Before any of this, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. reportedly cut back on parasite monitoring.

Speculate all you want, but the evidence is right there: the federal government under RFK Jr's oversight is slow to respond, and understaffed unto uselessness.

This is the end result of various factors, all of them based on conservative Far Right dogma: The idea that deregulation saves money and reduces bureaucratic demands; the need to gut federal agency staffing to allow businesses - especially large corporations - to do whatever they want; and the libertarian-leaning belief in "enlightened self-interest" that would "encourage" those businesses to self-regulate so that they don't poison people and lose customer bases.

I once got into an online argument with a libertarian over a joke I posted on Twitter (that was another country, and besides the site is dead), which went "three people walked into a libertarian bar and died from toxic bacteria in the drinks. /rimshot" (I was on my pro-bear anti-libertarian rampage at the time) The guy took offense to that, arguing fervently that "enlightened self-interest" of keeping repeat customers would ensure the bar owner would serve only safe drinks. I pointed out the reality that without outside influences - either regulations enforced by law, or a local competitive bar serving their own drinks - a toxic owner will keep serving toxic drinks because a) he will make his profits however he can which means cutting corners and serving high-risk product, and b) because his customers will have nowhere else to go. 

(You may notice - as part of the big deregulatory push by Republicans since the Reagan years - a lot of the businesses getting caught with poisoned foods are part of Big Agriculture, which is turning into one monolithic cartel of a handful of corporations in dire need of anti-trust breakups. I digress.)

Well, here we are witnessing as a nation the sudden and dangerous increase of toxic poisoned food products, within two years of a more dangerous and toxic trump presidency that has gutted regulatory agencies - thanks, Elon and Russell Vought! - and allowed an anti-science buffoon like RFK Jr. to wreak havoc across our nation's collective well-being. There IS no "enlightened self-interest": There is only profit margins, and short-sighted self-interest also known as greed.

This IS what deregulation - wide-ranging, reckless, and absolute - looks like, America. And this is the end result, as Josh Johnson highlights:

Alas, the way things are going we are going to need a recall on the Choco Tacos...

The Coward of Mar-A-Lago

Apparently, on an overseas trip this past July to Turkey to meet with regional allies over the chaos and destruction of his war on Iran, trump got caught in a rather embarrassing security dilemma (via Marina Dunbar at the Guardian):

Donald Trump switched aircraft before departing Turkey earlier this month after US officials determined there was a credible threat from Iranian proxy forces targeting him and Air Force One, according to a new report from the New York Times.

The threat surfaced while the US president was attending the NATO summit. He had arrived in Ankara onboard the new Qatari-donated Boeing 747-8, an aircraft that Trump acknowledged does not have the same advanced defensive systems as the older Air Force One.

According to the anonymous sources who spoke to the Times, after US officials detected the threat, the Secret Service recommended that Trump change aircraft before leaving the country. He later announced he would depart on the older Air Force One instead.

The embarrassment originally involved the uselessness of trump's gift grift airplane being unfit for security purposes.

Over the past weekend however, more news reports got out about how trump made the move from his gaudy airplane to the older practical one: By hiding like a coward (via Katherine Faulders with ABC News):

President Donald Trump reportedly underwent an elaborate plan to hide his flight from Turkey to the United Kingdom last month using a catering food truck and a military aircraft, according to the Washington Post, amid threats against him from Iran.

The secret mission, according to the Post, was carried out without the knowledge of the traveling press and even some White House officials aboard the decoy flight, all while the White House was saying Trump was aboard the old Air Force One jet...

The president was seen boarding the aircraft on July 8, but according to the Post, after boarding, Trump was transferred to a catering cart typically used to load food and beverages...

On the flight that was believed to be carrying Trump, reporters on board were told that the windows needed to be closed the whole flight and that it was a mandate from the Secret Service. Air Force One, despite the president not being on board, according to the Post, had its transponder turned off.

So not only did trump not fly on the backup AFOne, he left the entire press pool and most of his aides to fly on it as decoys to risk getting shot down. According to reports, trump brought with him Natalie Harp, Dan Scavino, Walt Nauta, and Defense Dumbass Secretary Pete Hegseth. Notable losers officials stuck on the target plane were Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Treasury Scott Bessent, so they have to be thrilled at the realization of how much trump values their meager existence.

This is trump in his true form: Always the blustering bully who declares himself the bravest man alive and immediately hiding from the first whiff of danger.

The details of this latest incident hit social media like a firestorm, churning out mocking images of trump cowering under a serving cart or hiding under frozen chicken dinners. Comrade Misfit over at her blog rounded up a few cartoons and AI-spawned photos, so I direct you to visit her place and leave comments and suggestions for more mocking tidbits aimed at trump.

This is from Mike Luckovich

Ashlie D. Stevens at Salon is unforgiving:

Perhaps it is because I’ve been nursing a slight and recent obsession with zany detective movies of the 1960s... but when I first heard that President Donald Trump had reportedly escaped Turkey in an “airport catering cart,” the scene arrived in my mind already blocked and costumed: a white-tableclothed trolley, steered by a nervous waiter in a bow tie, perhaps topped with a silver cloche. Beneath the linens, taking care that his shoes did not give him away, Trump crouched while he was wheeled past a succession of unfriendly eyes, their owners somehow oblivious to the president concealed at knee height...

It is worth considering why this particular image struck such a chord. In another context, a president being quietly transferred between aircraft in a service vehicle might register as little more than a piece of security choreography — unusual, perhaps, but hardly ready-made for farce. Trump in a catering truck was different. For years, he has made food part of his political stagecraft: something to display, serve, pose beside and use as shorthand for abundance, familiarity and a particular vision of American life. 

The exquisite comic reversal of the Turkey episode was that, this time, he was no longer directing the tableau. He had been swallowed by the scenery...

There is, of course, nothing inherently funny about a catering truck, much less about the security concerns that reportedly put Trump inside one. But political imagery is not entirely under the politician’s control. Spend enough years standing behind pyramids of hamburgers, posing at fry stations and inserting yourself into the iconography of American restaurant chains, and eventually the props begin to accrue meanings of their own...

Which may explain why, when news broke that Trump had been spirited between planes in a catering truck, the internet required almost no time to dress the scene. The hamburgers were already there. So were Ronald McDonald, Colonel Sanders and the Burger King. Trump has spent years directing the food theater. The catering truck was funny because, for once, he disappeared backstage.

Tom Nichols at the Atlantic is taking the news more serious:

Meanwhile, military officers, enlisted staff, and several American civilians were left on a plane that was deemed too dangerous for the president. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, according to reports, was waiting for Trump on the C-32A, but Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent were on the original 747, and they were aware that Trump was on the other, secret plane. Several White House aides were reportedly on the decoy flight, including Stephen Miller, Steven Cheung, and others. The pool report from the 747, however, says that there were “no visitors to the press cabin” during the flight from Turkey to the United Kingdom.

The commander in chief is the most important person on any American aircraft, and his safety must take precedence over all other concerns or interests. If the Secret Service wanted Trump spirited out of Turkey for his security, then no one should second-guess that decision. But now that we know that Trump was getting shuttled around a Turkish airport in a food-supply crate with three of his courtiers, we also know more about this White House—and about the war in Iran.

One immediate question: If the situation was that dangerous, why send up the first 747 at all—and with two men fairly senior in the line of presidential succession aboard? Perhaps the threat wasn’t quite so dire, or its parameters were not well-enough defined, and the Secret Service acted out of a superabundance of caution. Or perhaps the president thinks it’s acceptable to send up an airplane full of innocent Americans as a decoy to draw fire so that he can evade enemy action.

This is where trump cannot shake the coward label, ever.

The way the Great Food-Truck Escapade unfolded—including who Trump chose to take with him—also reveals much about the president’s priorities. And why didn’t Trump take the press into his confidence, even if he couldn’t take them all on the safer plane? Granted, the president seems to resent most of the media, so maybe he just didn’t care about their fate, but what about his staff? Not only was it morally appalling to keep so many people in the dark about the threat; it was politically inept, on two levels.

First, imagine if something had actually happened to the decoy. Trump would later end up either having to lie or having to explain that he’d known that such a disaster was possible, and that he’d sent Air Force personnel and several American civilians—possibly including two Cabinet secretaries—to their death to cover his own escape.

And second, Trump missed a major opportunity. Had he brought a few reporters with him, they could have told the story of a clever evasion. The 747, meanwhile, could have been temporarily held and its passengers delayed until Trump emerged in Britain, when the Iranians would find out they’d been had.

That’s not how this White House works. Trump and his people operated under the kind of paranoia and callous disregard for military and civilian lives that have characterized the president’s time in office. The White House might argue that it cannot trust the media, but John Kirby, the retired rear admiral who served as a spokesperson in two administrations, noted yesterday on MS NOW that he often took the press into his confidence on similar classified matters and was never, in his word, “burned” by the decision to keep the American people informed.

The simplest explanation is that trump didn't care what happened to everyone else - save for the inner circle he needs to sustain his delusions and his cruelty - and was more intent on saving his own skin over any other practical matter.

As a result, the image of trump hiding - cowering, shivering under a tablecloth - should haunt him and his lackeys for the rest of their days.

Ever See the Caine Mutiny? We're Going to Learn How Hegseth And His Buddies Are Worse Than Queeg

An update on how our Naval force in the Persian Gulf fighting Iran is holding up since last taking note back in April:

It's getting worse. (via Nicholas Slayton at Task and Purpose):

Sailors and Marines aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln are dealing with food shortages, moldy showers and poor morale, according to military family members concerned for their well-being. It’s the second time this year that an aircraft carrier on an extended deployment has seen poor conditions.

The poor situation on the Lincoln was reported this week by MS Now, citing conversations with a dozen family members of sailors and Marines on the ship, as well as recordings of meetings between family and Navy leadership. According to them, the crew onboard the aircraft carrier is worn out from the length of time at sea and long shifts as the carrier continues to take part in the war with Iran. Meanwhile, they are dealing with food shortages, long lines for meals, broken toilets and hygiene issues.

Roughly 5,000 sailors and Marines have been serving at sea aboard the Lincoln for nine months. The carrier spent 208 continuous days at sea, more than any other carrier in the modern era...

A lot of this is due to the extended deployment: My understanding from being in a Navy family is that these deployments should last six months, and the Lincoln has gone past that at nine months and counting. According to the report, the carrier has only been back to port in June, and obviously not long enough to undergo repairs and resupply.

Family members also expressed concern over how those conditions and operational pace could affect performance and lead to accidents on the ship. According to one of the military family members MS Now talked to, a Navy veteran himself, holes have been spotted on the carrier’s flight deck from wear.

In a statement to MS Now, a 5th Fleet spokesperson denied reports of holes on the flight deck and said that the Lincoln “remains fully capable of meeting all mission tasking...”

The Lincoln is the second carrier in recent months to suffer issues affecting sailors’ quality of life. The USS Gerald R. Ford sailed to the Middle East from the Caribbean, as part of a record-setting deployment that took it from participating in the January attack on Venezuela to Operation Epic Fury. During that deployment, the ship’s toilets kept failing, with sewage often overflowing and spilling onto the floor. During its time in the 5th Fleet area of operations, a fire broke out in the laundry room, causing enough damage that the Ford went to port for repairs.

This week, families of the sailors and Marines on the Lincoln met with Navy officials, including the acting secretary. MS Now, citing accounts of an in-person meeting and audio and video recordings of a virtual meeting, said that military families confronted Navy leadership over the matter Thursday night. During that meeting, per the recording, Navy leaders acknowledged issues with the ship’s toilets and said they are working to address shower concerns. They also admitted to a backlog of supplies of food and mail, saying that it was difficult to get supplies from Bahrain to the ship, due to the war.

This is where the fault is with the chain of command: The breakdown of basic logistics - our ability to get supplies to anywhere in the world as fast as possible - is all on a trumpian regime overseen by Secretary of Defense War Dumbass Hegseth that's more focused on gutting our armed forces leadership than on getting the job done.

What's striking now is how the report flags the phrase "low morale" in a way I honestly haven't seen since the unwelcome failures of Bush the Lesser's Iraq campaign as part of the post-9/11 response. By 2006, our occupation of Iraq had turned into a quagmire with glaring torture/human rights abuses and an ill-advised "stop-loss" deployment measure - due to the fact the U.S. went in with not enough troops in the first place - that kept too many frazzled troops on the front lines for years instead of months. 

trump and Hegseth are making similar mistakes, augmented by their mutual failure to take war seriously enough to prepare better. trump can't comprehend how things work period, and Hegseth is too obsessed with a toxic world-view of manly "warrior" conduct to realize true military leadership requires patience, long-term thinking, an eye on detail, and genuinely making sure the lower ranks are supplied, trained, and treated better than mere cannon fodder.

What our government is telling our sailors and marines in the field of combat is that they're not important enough to get proper food or work in safe conditions to ensure their jobs get done. They're getting taught that they don't matter except to "obey" and "kill" on command.

It's the kind of thinking that destroys any respect our troops could have for their officers and government officials, that in turn creates a breakdown in command.

We're running the risk of turning the Iranian quagmire into something worse: An American remake of the British Navy's worst mutinies - I'm thinking Spithead and Nore, but there's been others - at a time our nation can't afford this kind of breakdown.

Knowing trump - and understanding the foolishness of Hegseth - they are going to double down on the beatings until the key to the storage locker is found and the strawberries thieves punished.

This is not going to end well.

Update 8/13: oh ye gods, the morale is so bad on the Lincoln that crews are literally jumping ship (via Natalie Oliverio with Military Times):

Annabelle Loma has spoken with her husband only a few times since he attempted to jump overboard from the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln during his current deployment.

Communication has been difficult to come by, and he is now on medical hold.

Loma, who lives in San Diego, said her husband had been repeatedly overextended before he tried to jump from the carrier.

“He’s scared,” Loma said. “He thinks he’ll get a dishonorable discharge, and just because he was burnt out, his 13-year career is ruined, just like that. That’s not fair, that’s not right. That’s not what he should be worrying about right now...”

Separately, Stars and Stripes reported Tuesday that sailors described an incident in which watchstanders stopped a crew member from jumping overboard. Stripes reported that the crew was informed about the incident through a shipwide announcement...

The Navy did not provide a precise number of sailors who have attempted to go overboard or engaged in self-harm aboard Lincoln during the current deployment.

There's roughly 5,000 people on board a carrier that size. If you consider how one in five have serious depression/anxiety issues and how this crew is under serious stress, we might be talking about 1,000 people dealing with a lot of serious shit, especially as conditions on-board deteriorate. This is why you don't force extended service on people expecting just six months a rotation, especially in a war zone.

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 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.