The Downward Spiral of an Unwell Mind

Update: Many thanks to Tengrain for including this article at Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up! Stay safe this Thanksgiving season and remember to avoid turkey drops around the Cincinnati metro...

As a follow-up to the earlier observations about the overwhelming Blue Wave election cycle a few weeks back, there's been more stories in a number of Beltway Media outlets about donald trump's overall behavior since then.

None of it looks good. (via Elyse Wanshel at HuffPost)

On Thursday’s episode of Shane Gillis and Matt McCusker’s podcast, the comedians compared the president to his predecessor, former President Joe Biden, while discussing Trump’s cognitive state.

“You think he’s getting dementia?” McCusker asked his co-host Gillis about Trump.

“I mean, I don’t know. He just seems a little slower than usual,” Gillis responded. “There’s speculation that T-Dog might be rocking Biden brains,” McCusker added.

“He’s definitely not at Biden brains yet,” Gillis replied. “But he’s circling the drain...”

The comedians’ remarks about Trump were prompted amid a longer conversation regarding the president telling Bloomberg reporter Catherine Lucey to be “quiet, piggy” onboard Air Force One earlier this week. Trump said this to Lucey after she asked him a question about the Jeffrey Epstein files...

Regarding trump's insulting behavior last Friday, Rachel Leingang at The Guardian noted how the response outpaced the mainstream media's tepid underplaying of it:

It wasn’t the first time – not even the hundredth time – the US president has attacked the media. And it’s hard for any storyline to break through the administration’s “flood the zone” strategy, much less one like this. Nothing seems to stick. But the “quiet, piggy” clip has taken off, several days after the admonishment occurred on Air Force One last Friday, and without much help from the media itself...

Trump is going through a string of losses: Democrats dominating in off-year elections, having to reverse course on the Epstein files, Republicans refusing to get rid of the filibuster to end the shutdown, a faltering economy. There’s a possibility that he’s losing his air of impenetrability, and his grip on the right could maybe, just maybe, be loosening.

The anger he displayed in the clip could be a sign of someone on the back foot, overreacting to a question Bloomberg correspondent Catherine Lucey was asking about why Trump was fighting against releasing the Epstein files “if there’s nothing incriminating in the files”. The files related to the child sexual abuser released so far by Congress show that Epstein communicated regularly, and derogatorily, about women with a host of prominent friends...

It's not so much that trump was losing control of keeping the Epstein scandal under a tighter wrap. It's not so much that trump is walking back some of his beloved tariffs as their impact on goods worsened the economy for most Americans. It's not so much that trump is angry with the legal system pushing back against his deportation agenda, against his eagerness to deploy troops into our own cities, and against his attempts to charge his perceived enemies - such as former FBI Director James Comey - that are falling apart due to prosecutorial screw-ups (serving his whims, no less). 

It's that there's this unsettling realization that everything in TrumpWorld (tm) is falling apart, and breaking into pieces faster than anyone thought it would (via Kyle Cheney at Politico):

But the extraordinary rebukes and headwinds the president is now facing — much of it from within his own party — are revealing a GOP beginning to reckon with a post-Trump future. That dynamic crystallized after voters surged to the polls to support Democratic candidates for statewide races in New Jersey, Virginia, Georgia and Pennsylvania, shattering expectations of close contests and signaling that even Trump can’t defy political gravity forever.

Trump has spent the days since recycling old grievances, berating members of his own party and choosing sides in a burgeoning intra-MAGA debate about antisemitism and bigotry within the GOP coalition...

A year ago, the idea that a Republican-led Congress would vote overwhelmingly in favor of anything Trump opposed would have been fanciful. Enter the Epstein files.

Trump’s coalition has long viewed the FBI’s trove of records related to the late convicted sex offender and disgraced international power broker to be a holy grail of sorts, one that could shed light on a grander sex trafficking conspiracy implicating world leaders and politicians. But Trump, a longtime associate of Epstein’s until they fell out more than a decade ago, spent the summer leaning on congressional Republicans to cease their search for records. Trump has denied wrongdoing and no evidence has suggested he took part in Epstein’s trafficking operation...

The problems with trump's denials are 1) There is too much physical and eyewitness evidence that showed trump and Epstein close enough for trump to be aware of - and revel in - the shocking number of young girls in those circles; 2) trump himself expressed far too often an "appreciation" for young women that included allegations he spied on Miss Teen contestants in their dressing rooms; and 3) the reality now established that Mr. "Grab 'Em By the Pussy" is a court-confirmed sexual predator with dozens of other sexual assault claims still out there.

That trump used the Epstein scandal in the 2024 campaign to attack Democrats was just another brazen Deflection strategy that the Far Right have perfected: Accuse the Democrats of committing those crimes you yourself are committing, and turn that weakness into a strength. But trump promised to "expose the truth" about Epstein's sex trafficking of girls to the one group - his own QAnon conspiracy base - he shouldn't have, and they wanted trump to fulfill that once he got back into the White House. Problem was, trump's solution wasn't to release more documents but rehash the ones already released and pretend that was it... which only made things look worse for him and his lackeys for "covering up".

trump's attempts to control that narrative - one that kept painting him and his Republican allies as "pro-Sex Offender" - kept failing, because once his gaslighting fails he's got nothing else to go by:

What happened next was perhaps the most stinging intra-party rebuke of Trump’s presidency. Trump tried and failed to pressure Republican lawmakers to pull the plug on a vote demanding the Justice Department turn over the full library of Epstein files. An intense pressure campaign against Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) in particular went nowhere.

The fallout also claimed the relationship of Trump and Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, whose refusal to flinch led Trump to brand her a “traitor” and attempt to turn his coalition against her. Greene has responded by saying Trump’s attacks have endangered her life...

While trump's press people are defending him for "his honesty and transparency" nobody's going to forget how trump fought this for months. And no amount of scrubbing the files before release is going to hide the reality that trump and Epstein were two peas in the same vulgar pod.

Trump’s inability to cajole Congress into his preferred course of action on the Epstein files came at virtually the same time the president and his allies failed to move Indiana Republicans to redraw their congressional boundaries to net Republicans another seat in the 2026 midterms.

Trump had been pressing for a Hoosier redistricting measure for months, but state GOP leaders signaled they simply lacked the votes to make it a reality, drawing a threat from Trump to endorse some Republicans’ primary challengers. Countermeasures by Democrats in Virginia and California could make Trump’s nationwide push a wash.

It's not helping trump that the earlier successful attempt to gerrymander Texas - on trump's public orders - is falling apart in the courts as well. trump's inability to win in the courts is hurting him on other key issues like his beloved tariffs policy:

Trump has long proclaimed that wielding tariffs against foreign governments is the key to negotiating favorable trade deals. Never mind that business and Republican orthodoxy has long considered tariffs as a backdoor tax on Americans.

But the Supreme Court appeared skeptical of Trump’s approach, with justices he appointed sharply questioning whether the president can leverage emergency powers to tariff foreign governments at will. By all accounts, the argument was a drubbing for Trump’s side. And the president seemed to discover that reality when he vented at the court in a pair of Truth Social posts last week.

It’s folly to predict how the high court will rule, even when the justices send clear signals during the arguments. But Trump appears to be bracing for defeat that could have devastating consequences for his economic agenda. His administration has repeatedly emphasized the centrality of tariffs to the recent spate of trade deals he’s made around the world.

trump arguably can craft economic / trade deals across the globe without the threat or use of tariffs anyway. What's hurting him is how he worships the idea of tariffs: trump genuinely believes tariffs can work, and that he needs them as tools to bully / enforce his will upon others. Of any potential legal defeats trump is facing in the White House, this could well be the one that angers him the most.

It's that anger - that rage trump carries with a scowl and a sneer, always driven by slights imagined and real, the willingness to lash out in public without concern or civility, the open cruelty towards those he views (Women, Blacks, poor) his lessers - that's troubling. trump's never had much self-control over his Id, his narcissistic drive to humiliate others, even during his first tenure as President National Destroyer of Norms and the Rule of Law. Five years later, he's gotten older and gotten worse (via Tom Nichols at the Atlantic):

Presidents often lose control over their agenda, or the policy process, or pieces of legislation. Sometimes, they even lose control of their party. But Donald Trump seems to have lost control over the one thing every person, and especially those with immense power, should always maintain control over: himself. Yesterday the president called for the arrest and execution of elected American officials for the crime—as he sees it—of fidelity to the Constitution.

It would be easy merely to note, yet again, that the president is a depraved man and a menace to the American system of government. As remarkable as it is to say it, however, the outbursts of this past week are different, and were likely triggered by Trump’s panic over the release of files about his former friend, the dead sex offender Jeffery Epstein. No one should treat this new phase in the president’s aggression against democracy as just another episode in the Trump reality show...

The president was already showing strain before his attack on the legislators. Last Friday, he lashed out at a female journalist who asked about the Epstein files, calling her “piggy.” (Trump seems to revel in getting away with speaking to women as president in ways that would land him on the sidewalk back in Queens.) On Tuesday, as he sat next to the Saudi crown prince, a man credibly accused by U.S. intelligence of murdering an American journalist, he lashed out at yet another female reporter: He called Mary Bruce of ABC “insubordinate”—a rather telling choice of words—and threatened to use the FCC to attack her network. Tuesday, of course, was the day the Epstein Files Transparency Act passed the House by a vote of 427–1. The next day, it passed the Senate by unanimous consent, and a humiliated Trump signed the bill into law.

Yesterday, Trump seemed to lose the last bit of his grip on his emotions as he fired off a fusillade of Truth Social posts. (“Trump must not have slept well Wednesday night,” Bill Kristol and Andrew Egger of The Bulwark observed today.) “This is really bad,” the president wrote, “and Dangerous to our Country. Their words cannot be allowed to stand. SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR FROM TRAITORS!!! LOCK THEM UP???”

“Lock them up” is a favorite Trump chant, but he did not end with this classic demand. He went on: “Each one of these traitors to our Country should be ARRESTED AND PUT ON TRIAL. Their words cannot be allowed to stand - We won’t have a Country anymore!!! An example MUST BE SET.” The charge, according to the chief executive? “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!” He also reposted a comment that said: “HANG THEM GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD !!”

Anyone with a basic understanding of U.S. history would remember George Washington never hanged political opponents: when he was rebuffed by the Senate the one time he visited Congress, Washington merely stormed out and swore to never go back. But this is trump raging at us today: Terrible at history, and desperate to lie that other great figures in history would do what he'd want to do.

Trump’s posts risk putting the lives of American lawmakers in danger, and he almost certainly knows it. Many people who have publicly criticized the president have found themselves getting death threats from his most fervid followers. (Like many Trump-critical writers, I started getting them years ago.) As Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a former MAGA doyenne from Georgia whom Trump has now marked as a heretic, wrote on X last week, “A hot bed of threats against me are being fueled and egged on by the most powerful man in the world.” Senator Elissa Slotkin revealed that she is now traveling with a security detail because of what she called “a huge spike” in threats that came to her office after Trump’s eruption yesterday.

This is the same trump who stirred up MAGA supporters to riot at the Capitol on January 6th, the event that trump and his lackeys would like to erase from history, but an act of violence that trump himself would love to revisit on the nation again and again.

A lot of this turns back on that earlier observation from the podcast bros openly wondering "is trump falling into dementia?" It's a serious concern, and it's one a lot of Biden supporters shouted back at the media when they went after Joe for his slowed delivery of speeches and lapse of memory. trump wasn't that much younger than Biden, and in spite of all the public announcements that trump is the "fittest smartest human being of all time" (uh, no) a lot of people could see by 2024 he'd gotten more unsteady on his feet and more prone to brain farts on stage.

There's been more speculation than usual in the past few months that there's serious health concerns: a questionable MRI exam six months after getting one; a missing weekend where trump came back with odd bruising on his hands; trump wandering away during a visit to Japan; falling asleep during an Oval Office presentation, during which someone else collapsed and trump failed to take notice of it at all.

Far be it to speculate or cast rumors, but there is too much growing evidence that trump's questionable lifelong habits - and time itself - is racing up to claim his ticket. It doesn't help that a number of actions trump is ordering on the hurry - such as bulldozing down the East Wing to build his own ballroom, or the insistence of getting a Peace Prize in spite of his bullying tactics, or the release of a new dollar coin (which historically never worked out for Americans) with HIS face on it - a blatant middle finger to the unwritten rule to avoid putting a living person on American money - are obvious clues that he wants to enjoy all of this - fake symbols of his "greatness" - before he no longer can.

You can feel a sense of panic, of things not going well behind the scenes, with this administration this time around. More than just the level of idiocy and ineptitude from the actions they've taken to break the Constitution and the nation for their own interests.

It doesn't help that as I'm typing this, trump's Defense Dept (fuck the name change, Pete) is staging naval and air maneuvers off the coast of Venezuela. They're making more public calls to strike drug cartel locations - not just Venezuela but also Mexico - as part of an "anti-terrorist" campaign that they can't prove. Like as though trump wants a military victory and another half-assed parade before his mind gives out altogether.

And nobody in a position to do anything about it - not the Democrats because they're out of power, but the Republicans in Congress and in the Cabinet - will lift a finger, because they dare not face the rage of a rabid MAGA base. They're perfectly content to let this farce play out, and carve out whatever they can get in the ensuing chaos.

Stay safe, America. Keep protesting in the streets against trump's war on anyone dark-skinned. But be ready for the craziness to hit DEFCON-1 sooner than expected.

The Fall of Florida's Higher Education Under Far Right Republicans

As part of Ron DeSantis' ambitious agenda - for his insane presidential hopes - in 2023 to "fight Wokeness" in Florida's educational system, we witnessed the Sunshine State's schools fall under the merciless attentions of Far Right wingnuts eager to purge "diversity" and any genuine standards at every level. As I wrote back in February 2023:

 Not only are the classrooms at our public schools been emptied of every book so that DeSantis' foot soldier censors can refuse whichever titles they fear, but DeSantis is happily plugging in conservative political hacks into leadership roles at every major state university...

This is essentially a hostile takeover, not just by DeSantis but also by Far Right Republicans obsessed with dismantling higher educational systems they fear are too liberal...

DeSantis is essentially saying that things like civil rights and Title IX protections won't be upheld at state universities. Segregation and racial discrimination, sexual harassment, hostile workplaces, hostile classrooms... all of this will become the norm in DeSantis' Florida.

This is all echoed in DeSantis' efforts to shut down ANY discussion of "Critical Race Theory" essentially meaning our state cannot teach one iota of Florida's history regarding racism, slavery, Jim Crow, Civil Rights marches, all because Republicans are terrified that White People's Feelings (tm) will be hurt if we teach the facts that Yes Goddammit racism happened and keeps happening. He's just making sure that college students will be kept ignorant as much as our K-12 students.

(Christopher) Rufo is, by the by, a wingnut conservative hack actively campaigning to shut down public education of any kind in an obsessive desire to privatize something for greed and racism. DeSantis, desperate to win over 2024 Republican primary voters, is giving Rufo the opportunity to wreak havoc on Florida's educational system...

So it's been two years since then, with DeSantis' presidential hopes all dashed while Florida's educational standards sank into the swamps. In the meanwhile, we had situations like political hack Ben Sasse - Far Right Republican dragged in from another state - causing massive administrative and financial damage to the flagship University of Florida. We keep witnessing Republican leadership at the state level fail our kids and families when it comes to high school success and getting prepared for colleges. The state's budget for education across the board is disappearing, forcing more cuts that shouldn't be happening.

And DeSantis' takeover of New College? How is that turning out? Let Nate Weisberg's report at Washington Monthly educate us:

As Chris Mullin wrote recently in the Washington Monthly, DeSantis exploited Florida’s unusually centralized system of higher-education governance to insert political control directly into the classroom—stacking boards, replacing presidents, and rewriting curricula. His boldest gamble has been a complete takeover and ideological makeover of ​​New College of Florida, a small public liberal-arts college on Sarasota Bay known for its experimental pedagogy and progressive-left campus culture. Charging poor performance and ideological bias, DeSantis announced plans in early 2023 to transform the school into a “Hillsdale of the South”—a reference to the small, selective, conservative-leaning Michigan college that eschews government funds and focuses on teaching the classics. The governor appointed six new conservative trustees to New College, including activist Christopher Rufo, ​who then ​fired its President, Patricia Okker, and replaced her with former Florida House Speaker Richard Corcoran ​at more than double Okker’s salary​. Within months, the new board abolished the gender​ studies program, dismissed faculty and administrators, created athletic teams, and secured tens of millions in state funding.

Two years later, the picture looks grim. New College’s four-year graduation rate has plummeted from 58.3 to 47.4 percent. The school’s U.S. News & World Report college ranking has fallen by nearly 60 spots, from 76th among national liberal-arts colleges in 2022 to 135th this year. Faculty and staff have fled, and students have followed them out the door. “It’s kind of like a Ponzi scheme,” one professor told Inside Higher Ed. “Students keep leaving, so they have to recruit bigger and bigger cohorts.” Spending​ at the college​, meanwhile, has exploded. ​In Tallahassee, there is now open talk of either privatizing New College or shutting it down completely. 

DeSantis’s justification for the takeover was that New College was an educational disaster—a failed experiment in left-wing academic culture. Though the school ​had its problems (it struggled​​, for instance,​​ to reach its enrollment goals, as do many small, less-selective colleges around the country) and ​was indeed ​​left leaning, it was far from a disaster. In fact, by most objective measures, it was a model of what a small public liberal-arts institution could achieve. As Aalia Thomas reported in the Washington Monthly in 2023, New College consistently ranked near the top of the magazine’s l​ist of l​iberal​ ​arts ​colleges ​​for upward mobility, research, and service. ​​Its graduates earned PhDs at rates higher than many of the nation’s most prestigious private liberal arts colleges. Its curriculum mixed ​​postcolonial theory with Aristotle and Voltaire. The college charged about $7,000 a year for low-to-medium-income students—a bargain compared to most similar liberal arts colleges. It enrolled a high share of Pell​ ​​Grant recipients and produced civically engaged graduates—​​92.6 percent of its students were registered to vote in 2020. Far from failing, New College embodied many of the qualities conservatives say they prize in public higher education: affordability, rigor, civic virtue, and upward mobility. 

​​The governor’s appointees arrived convinced they were rescuing a failing school. ​​They replaced New College’s narrative-evaluation system with traditional grades. They bragged about making the college more “selective” (instead, the percentage of new students with a 4.0 or above high school grade point average decreased from 55.1 percent in 2022 to 42.1 percent in 2024)​.​ They recruited athletes and ​​self-described “normal” students to reshape the culture, ​​many of whom quickly transferred out. ​The campus began to change in telling ways: the reopened campus café, operated by a vendor tied to Corcoran, now serves coffee in cups printed with Bible verses, and the college has commissioned a statue of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk to stand on campus in honor of “free speech​.​​​” ​All this change has been financed by ​​an ​​eye-watering ​​boost​​ in ​​spending​​. The college’s budget has grown from​​ ​$53,232,164​​​​ ​​​​the year before the overhaul ​​​​to​​​​ ​​​​$93,043,119​​​​ ​​​​today​​​​—a​​​​ 75 percent​​​​ increase​​​​.​​​​ ​

​​​​​​​​Even DeSantis allies are turning on the project. “There can be no question anymore about what the numbers really are,” said Eric Silagy, a​​ DeSantis-appointed​​ member of the state Board of Governors. Nathan Allen, ​​who served as ​​​​vice president of strategy​​ for New College ​​during the conservative takeover but has since resigned​​, ​suggested where the blame for those numbers should be placed​: “​​New College is not a House or Senate project … It’s a Ron DeSantis project.”​​ ​​​Corcoran himself has said, ​​if New College doesn’t produce something different, “then we should be closed down.”

That Corcoran - a political hack hire who didn't deserve the job in the first place - is looking for the exit is a telling sign of how screwed up New College under Rufo and the other wingnuts turned out. And as much as this is all on DeSantis - pushing a political agenda on our state's schools - all of the state-level Republicans who backed DeSantis' efforts on this need to answer for their own corruption and incompetence here.

Look at the waste in dollars at New College: almost doubling the spending with reduced results, arguably funneling that money into wingnut ideas that aren't working out, if not funneling that money into their own pockets. Remember what happened at UF under Sasse: He hired in 'consultants' and lackeys at double if not triple the pay for no-show jobs and no-show results. It was... it is a huge grift for these greedheads.

For the Republicans, this was never about improving the educational standards of Florida. This was about viewing public education as a cash cow, a means of filling their own pockets with state money while the system breaks down. It was about playing into the hypocrisy of accusing our schools and colleges of being 'broken' and 'corrupt', while being the ones in charge breaking it all and using their own corrupt urges to make it worse.

We've had almost 30 years of constant Republican (mis)rule in the state of Florida, a straight line of crooked behavior by our elected officials and their shady business allies. Why the hell should they be allowed to retain any office after these decades of deceit and destruction?

Observations of the November 2025 Elections

So there were a number of elections across the United States - in what is an off-year between the 4-year presidential cycle and the congressional midterms - this November 4th 2025, involving city, state, and a few special federal elections that tend to indicate the overall mood of the American electorate heading into the 2026 midterms.

At the top of the list were key elections in Virginia and New Jersey for governorships and other state officials, a retention vote for Democratic judges in Pennsylvania, a special election in Texas' US House 18th district, a referendum in California that would grant the Dems in control there to gerrymander against the Red state gerrymandering attempting to rig the 2026 House districts for Republicans, 

And the top observation - considering how the Democrats and mostly liberal-leaning referenda won the votes across nearly the entire country even in Deep Red Republican places! - is: Wow, a lot of voters are PISSED at the Republicans.

Via Stephen Fowler at NPR:

Democrats flipped two seats on Georgia's statewide Public Service Commission by wide margins, one of many surprise victories for the party Tuesday up and down the ballot in the handful of races across the country.

Polling shows the Democratic Party is historically unpopular, but at polling places this year voters have helped the party overperform in elections against the backdrop of President Trump's even less popular policies.

Beyond the blowout victories in the New Jersey and Virginia governors' races, Zohran Mamdani winning a majority of votes in New York City's mayoral election and California voters approving a plan to temporarily redraw the state's congressional districts to add Democrat-leaning districts, the party continued its trend of electoral success in the 2025 general election...

In terms of blowouts, the governor wins for Abigail Spanberger in Virginia and Mikie Sherill in New Jersey were around 13 percent over their Republican opponents. In this age of polarized voting bases, getting to double-digit wins means A) your own base (Democratic) of voters showed up in droves, B) their base (Republican) failed to show, and/or C) the independent voters that tend to go 50-50 (at best 60-40 leaning to one party) really hated everyone and everything the Republicans were offering this time around.

But those results alone don't describe just how overwhelming the Blue Wave was this year, even when you throw in how Democrats in Virginia secured control of both houses of the state legislature. Back to Fowler:

In Georgia, Peter Hubbard and Alicia Johnson will be the newest members of the state's five-person public utility regulator after earning roughly 60% of the vote. It's the first time Democrats have won a nonfederal statewide office there since 2006 and one where soaring energy costs and displeasure with incumbents dominated the race.

Pennsylvania voters chose to retain three state Supreme Court judges that were first elected as Democrats after millions of dollars in outside spending driven by conservative billionaire Jeff Yass' efforts to reshape the state court's politics. Democrats also won special elections for a seat on Pennsylvania's Superior Court and a seat on its Commonwealth Court.

Also in Pennsylvania, Democrats swept the top "row offices" in the purple-hued Bucks County, electing the county's first-ever Democratic district attorney and defeating an incumbent Republican sheriff a year after Trump narrowly won there. Democrats similarly notched commanding victories in county executive races in Erie, Lehigh and Northampton counties, all bellwether counties in recent presidential elections.

At the state legislative level, Mississippi Democrats have broken a GOP supermajority in the state Senate after flipping two seats in that chamber plus another pickup in the state House. A federal court ordered lawmakers to redraw 14 total House and Senate districts after finding the maps drawn in 2022 discriminated against Black voters...

In many local races across the country, Democrats touted victories that will reshape their communities, like the flipping of all three city council seats in Georgetown, S.C., the unseating of the last remaining Republican city council member in Orlando, Fla., and winning back mayoral races in Connecticut...

I knew things were really skewing well for Democrats when I heard about those Georgia state committee wins. In a Deep South state heavily dominated by Republicans, and where any Democratic wins in the past decade were down to the wire, getting over 60 percent of statewide voters in blowout wins is a huge sign of anger by voters towards the Far Right GOP.

An opinion piece by Rex Huppke at USA Today spells it out:

Polling had already shown how much Americans broadly dislike everything the Trump administration is doing. But in the first election of Trump’s second term in office, voters in red, blue and purple states made clear they aren’t buying the smug cruelty and king-like behavior the president and his lackeys are selling.

In the most high-profile races – for mayor of New York City and governors of Virginia and New Jersey – Democrats fended off millions of right-wing dollars and relentless Islamophobic and anti-transgender fearmongering to win all three offices convincingly.

What happened in New York City where the Far Right, the billionaire elites, and even the mainstream media attacked winner Zohran Mamdani for his Muslim heritage underlined the racism and fear that drives the Far Right. And in Virginia, the Republican candidates' open transphobia - in an attempt to build on the DEI fearmongering that propelled outgoing governor Youngkin in 2021 - ignored the voters' ongoing concerns about cost-of-living/affordability issues that are still hampering a majority of Americans in this post-pandemic world.

In short: the Republicans were too desperate to mudsling their Democratic opponents to remember that most voters still care about their financial and familial well-being. They were able to lie about the price of eggs in 2024 to ruin Biden/Harris' and the Democrats' chances to win, but with the GOP in full control of the federal government - and responsible for the economic downturns happening under that control - they couldn't fearmonger their way out of this election cycle. As Huppke notes:

This is the kind of ballot-box walloping that’s earned, highlighting the simple fact that Trump has gone to great lengths to anger and outrage Americans since his second term started in January.

Consider this multitudinous array of deceptions, blunders and outrageous acts:

After promising to lower food prices and inflation on Day 1, food prices are increasing and inflation has risen every month since April and is now higher than it was in January.

The U.S. government is in its longest-ever shutdown because Republicans want to do away with Affordable Care Act subsidies and Democrats won’t agree. Health insurance premiums are skyrocketing, and now food aid is in limbo because the Trump administration is delaying funding to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, putting millions of Americans in danger of going hungry...

Also in short: trump and his Republican allies are acting like assholes. That may impress the mainstream punditry - who always misinterpret arrogance for leadership - but it doesn't impress most voters.

The night before SNAP benefits expired, Trump posted a slew of photos showing off his fancy marble remodel of the Lincoln Bathroom, then he attended a "Great Gatsby"-themed Halloween party at his Florida resort.

Trump demolished the East Wing of the White House to make room for a massive ballroom that nobody asked for, thumbing his nose at the optics of desecrating a historic building and erecting a monument to opulence while Americans struggle to afford meat.

The GOP has secured tax cuts for billionaires while slashing Medicaid and putting a squeeze on rural hospitals...

None of this is popular. None of this has made any regular American’s life better. None of this has brought down grocery bills, made housing more affordable or provided better health insurance.

Perhaps a president who gleefully shows off a video of himself wearing a crown and flying a jet that drops poop on the heads of protesting Americans is a cool thing inside the MAGA bubble. Maybe anti-transgender hate and cruelty against immigrants bring the good kind of tingle to a small subset of the population.

But as the Nov. 4 blue wave demonstrated, most Americans don’t find Trump’s childishness cool. They don’t get off on cruelty. And they aren’t, in any way, shape or form, feeling the good kind of tingle.

While it's good news that a sizable plurality of American voters across the whole nation are wising up to how bad the Republicans under trump are performing, the bad news is that past experience with Republican setbacks is that these assholes will double-down on the ineptitude, cruelty, and graft. Especially trump: he can never admit he is in the wrong, that his conduct is offensive, or that his policies aren't working (and will never work).

It's going to take the 2026 midterms and the other state-level elections that year for most American voters to hold the Republicans and this crooked trump accountable for the ongoing damage they're committing and threaten to make worse. That is, if the Republican-controlled Supreme Court will let us have fair elections next year... /rage

Keep resisting, America. This isn't over.

The Shadow That Was Dick Cheney

The big news today has been the passing of former Vice President (and administrative tone-setter) Richard "Dick" Cheney.

The best thing I can say about this was already said back in 2014:

Considering the former Vice President's recent hypocritical and vile comments about Obama's handling of the Iraqi mess Cheney left behind, about the prolonged history of Cheney's lies and distortions, about the thousands of lives broken and killed under his orders, there is only one thing to say:

Arrest the son of a bitch for war crimes and shove his goddamn criminality back into his goddamn face.

That's all that needs to be said now and forever.  No more television interviews.  No more speaking events.  No more book deals.  Send him to jail, put him on trial.  Make him answer for the torture regime, the lies about WMDs, the war-profiteering, the folly of waging two wars with massive debt and without end.

I also said a few things in 2013, when I reviewed Bush the Lesser's presidential tenure, noting how the real power in that White House flowed through and from the Veep's office:

So if Bush the Lesser was really a Passive-Positive at heart, something that Ivins points to, why was Dean so convinced that Bush was really an Active-Negative?

Because much of the Bush administration was a disaster of obsessive secrecy, reckless war-making, and abuse of powers that one regularly sees in an A-N administration.

Mind you, Passive-Positives preside over scandal-plagued tenures - Reagan's was chock-full, as was Harding's and Grant's - but for different reasons than an Active-Negative's such as Johnson or Nixon.  Pass-Pos' scandals are due more to the nature of such Presidents allowing their cronies free range to embezzle and indulge, whereas A-N's scandals stem from the President's own personal faults and obsessions...

It might help to understand that a Passive-Positive President is by nature too trusting of his allies and cronies: Harding is a perfect example.  It's often noted in a Pass-Pos administration the tenor of the office defined more by an underling or group of underlings (much like Franklin Pierce's seemed more dictated by his Southern Democrat allies, and Reagan's with regards to the Iran-Contra scandal).  With that consideration, also note that during Bush the Lesser administration we had the most politically-powerful VICE President our nation ever saw in Dick Cheney...

Cheney was different.  Cheney seemed to dominate Bush the Lesser's administration the minute he was given any authority by Bush, and that even began during the 2000 campaign.  Entrusted as a family friend of his father's, Bush put Cheney in charge of finding his Vice Presidential ticket balancer.  There seemed to have been a review process but in the end the selection was... Cheney himself, which puzzled people then but makes more sense when you look at Cheney more closely...

This was a man who was perfectly willing to tell a fellow politician on the floor of the Senate to "go fuck yourself."  Granted, this wasn't a full-on assault with a walking cane, but certain rules of decorum apply (you're supposed to save that for the parking lot).  This was a guy who told a fellow Secretary of Treasury that "deficits don't matter (regarding more massive tax cuts that even the Secretary felt were unneeded).  This is our due."

This was a man who chaired the secretive energy policy meetings.  This was a Vice President who had his office and had his friends in the Defense Department set up a competing "investigative office" to undercut CIA intelligence that didn't fit their "Iraq Has WMDs" narrative.  This was a Veep whose Chief of Staff "Scooter" Libby was indicted for his role in revealing the classified identity of a CIA agent whose husband had publicly questioned the WMD story.

This was a Vice President who used his unprecedented level of authority to ignore standard procedures on a regular basis.  When confronted by the National Archives' Information Security Oversight Office - the ones who handle and store classified materials on a daily basis, mind you - about refusing to turn over materials starting from 2003 into 2007, Cheney did his best to eliminate that part of the National Archives altogether.  Cheney's argument?  As Vice President serving both Executive and Legislative duties (as President of the Senate), he was exempt (the "Fourth Branch" of government argument).  Basically claiming he didn't have to answer to anybody.  Not even to the President.

In short: Everything nasty, vulgar, illegal, and corrupt about the modern Republican Party evolved entirely from whatever dark template that spawned Dick.

That Cheney came to openly despise donald trump - his true heir to the Far Right regime Cheney engineered over the decades - is mostly due to how he viewed trump as too self-serving and stupid to be the Forever Dictator of a Republican-ruled America.

There are a number of obits today burying Cheney for the sins he'd committed while he sat in power, so I'll offer a number of links here so you can get a more informed understanding of how soulless that person was.

Mark Danner at Salon: Dick Cheney's Dark Legacy

David Frum at Atlantic: There Was Only One Dick Cheney All Along

George Chidi at The Guardian: Dick Cheney Remains Divisive In Death

Eoin Higgins at The Intercept: Dick Cheney Doesn't Deserve Your Heartfelt Eulogies

When you consider how the only one more hated was Henry Kissinger, Cheney is leaving a foul legacy indeed.

P.S. also sharing Stonekettle's simple observation on Bluesky:

Well, hell. Looks like I'm going to need to drink more coffee. Dick Cheney died and I'm going to need a full bladder for the funeral.

— Stonekettle (@stonekettle.bsky.social) November 4, 2025 at 8:44 AM

Just sayin', 2 liter bottles of Mountain Dew pass through much faster...

 

A Truly Lawless War By a Lawless White House

I can't see how U.S. relations with other countries will ever get better whenever trump and his Republican lackeys are driven from power, as long as this corrupt administration is openly committing war crimes like bombing fishing boats in international waters (via Heather Parton at her Digby blog):

(Quoted from the Task And Purpose website) “Don’t let them make you break the law,” read new digital billboards on expressways near U.S. Southern Command headquarters in Doral, Florida, where the U.S. military’s ongoing operations in the Caribbean Sea are being overseen

The billboards were put up in response to the ongoing military strikes ordered by President Donald Trump’s administration, in what the White House and Pentagon have described as a concerted campaign against “narcoterrorists.”

The strikes are illegal and immoral. They aren’t even war crimes because there is no war. They’re just straight up mass murder.

The veterans behind the billboards at Win Without War and About Face: Veterans Against The War, describe it differently, calling them “ongoing lawless strikes on boats near the South American coasts...” 

It’s even worse than we knew. Per Politico:

Defense Department officials do not know precisely who they have killed in multiple military strikes against alleged drug smuggling boats in the Caribbean that have claimed the lives of at least 57 people, according to Democratic lawmakers who attended a classified House briefing on the issue Thursday.

The meeting with members of the House Armed Services Committee — which comes amid bipartisan requests from members of Congress for more legal justification for the deadly strikes — was conducted by department policy officials but no military lawyers, who were pulled from the briefing shortly before it started.

Lawmakers at the briefing said they were not given an explanation for the change and were left frustrated over the lack of clarity on the justifications for the military actions...

They don’t know who they are murdering and they don’t care. And now we know that they’re killing them on the basis of some “connection” to a “terrorist organization or affiliate.” We have no idea how they define any of that. What’s a connection? What’s an affiliate? And what fucking authority allows them to kill people based on any of this???

I’ve seen the government use the U.S. military to do some heinous things in my time, but this may be the most blatantly illegal without even the fig leaf of a believable rationale.

We've had our leaders lie us into wars before - as far back as the Mexican-American War over the Texas border with Mexico - and we're still coping with the dissemblers from the 2003 Iraqi Occupation never held to account for lying about WMDs and then lying about their torture regime. 

But we're at the point where trump and his Far Right warhawks don't care what the facts are regarding anything. All they want is to justify their war on Latino immigrants, by tying it to a 50-year-old War On Drugs that would involve violating other nations' sovereignty - either with illegal missile/bomb strikes across their borders, or escalating further with "regime change" via a ground war - in such ways that even our closest allies in NATO and North America - if any remain by that point - would side against us.

Adding to the madness is how trump is doing this without the constitutional requirements that Congress has to sign off on any extended military action. Even Dubya had to lie to the legislature to get authorization to invade and occupy Iraq. With government officially in Shutdown mode thanks to Republican incompetence (AND arrogance, AND unwillingness to fund SNAP to feed our families, AND terrified of a pending House to release the Epstein Files exposing a lot of trump's sins) trump and his warmongering buddies like Hegseth and Miller believe they can do anything they want with our armed forces.

This is not a good thing if we're heading into war with Venezuela - or Nigeria, or Mexico, or Canada, or Denmark - much like the dangers of going into a war with Iran: Again, our nation is not unified to fight an overseas war (and with the Far Right insisting on absolute loyalty, they will turn violent against any anti-war protests that will rise up); we will not have allies siding with us and in fact will see other nations side against us; and the leadership that will put themselves in control of any planned war are buffoons and idiots who've convinced themselves they're military geniuses when they pretty much can't even plan out parades.

We're being led into an illegal unjust war at this point, where the only thing stopping trump is his own inability to focus on anything at any particular time. But sooner or later, that chaotic bubble he and his lackeys are in will pop, and then everything else will explode.

Gods help us.

Republicans Ruling Over the Ashes: 2025 Edition

Update: Thank you Steve in Manhattan for sharing this article on the Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up! Just to let you all know, I spotted a church with its parking lot full on a Monday morning. It's a church I drive by all the time going to work, and I've never seen the parking lot full on a Monday morning. It's also a church I know offers a weekly food bank, and my first thought was "is that a run on their food bank?"

I didn't write much about the latest Republican-backed government shutdown during this long month of October, only because it'd be me repeating the same line of "why the fuck do people keep voting in Republican assholes who don't want government to work in the first place?"

Still, what's happened this 2025 has been one of the longest federal government shutdowns in modern times, and at least this time around most Americans know who to blame (via Julianna Bragg at Axios): 

As the government shutdown stretches into its 30th day, more Americans blame President Trump and Republicans than Democrats for the impasse, according to a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll.

Why it matters: More Americans are growing deeply worried about what is now the second-longest government shutdown in U.S. history — one that will soon cut off food stamp benefits and has already left more than a million Americans without a paycheck...

By the numbers: Almost half of Americans — 45% — say Trump and the GOP are responsible for the ongoing shutdown, while 33% blamed Democrats and another 22% say they're not sure who's responsible...

Yes, but: 63% of Americans say they disapprove of Trump's management of the federal government, while only 36% approve...

Context: The Senate failed to advance a bill to end the shutdown for the 13th time Wednesday, even as disruptions impact air travel and hundreds of thousands of federal employees remain furloughed.

As much as the Republican leadership - Speaker Mike Johnson especially - are trying to blame the Democrats for refusing to surrender forever for sticking to their agenda of reducing health care premiums to the ACA, there are enough observers who note that as the Republicans control both the House and the Senate, they could pass their own budget and get around any filibuster the Dems could threaten.

Except the Republicans don't want to. They know damn well that their current fiscal plans will gut social services for their own Red State voters and hurt millions of (White) American families who'll finally realize those trumpian tax cuts for the uber-rich were bad for the rest of the nation their own. So they want the Democrats to "compromise" on a "bipartisan deal" that the Far Right media can blame on Democrats when that "deal" nukes the countryside.

(as a side note, Speaker Johnson doesn't want to reopen the House for business because he'd be forced to seat a newly elected Democrat filling a vacant seat that would put in motion a vote to release the Epstein Files filled with trump's dirty deeds)

As much as we've stumbled through October without major disruptions to the United States' well-being - if only because some of the damage from DOGE gutting our agencies already caused disruptions - we're getting to that point in the GOP Shutdown where the emergency efforts behind the scenes by whatever's left in charge can't keep this house of cards standing. We're getting into the winter holidays of Thanksgiving and Christmas, massive economic cycles for our food and retail businesses now starting to see trump's tariffs squeeze them in painful ways. We're getting to the point where the community organizations struggling to fill the gaps in the social safety nets aren't going to keep up. 

We're staring into the dark abyss of a painful unhappy winter season for the United States, all because the Republicans hope to burn it all down so they can rule the ashes.

And yes goddammit, we warned you all this would happen. And the bills for all that cruelty, ignorance,  and greed is coming due - again - faster than you all realize.

The Desecration of America Under trump

Update: Thank you once again to Batocchio for including this article at Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up. I apologize for the mess, I need to vacuum the place.

With all the madness happening over the past few weeks no make that a month actually it's the whole damn year - from the Republican government shutdown for all the worst reasons, the escalation of bombing fishing boats on the shores of South America, the growing hostility of ICE thugs towards not only legal immigrants now also children and protestors - the one bit really standing out in my current outrage is the wanton (arguably illegal) destruction donald trump is inflicting on the nation's most visible symbol of power The White House (via AP and NPR):

The White House on Monday started tearing down part of the East Wing, the traditional base of operations for the first lady, to build President Trump's $250 million ballroom despite lacking approval for construction from the federal agency that oversees such projects.

Dramatic photos of the demolition work showed construction equipment tearing into the East Wing façade and windows and other building parts in tatters on the ground. Some reporters watched from a park near the Treasury Department, which is next to the East Wing...

The White House has moved ahead with the massive construction project despite not yet having sign-off from the National Capital Planning Commission, which approves construction work and major renovations to government buildings in the Washington area...

It was unclear whether the White House had submitted the ballroom plans for the agency's review and approval. The White House did not respond to a request for comment and the commission's offices are closed because of the government shutdown...

trump's doing this now so that there's no interference from Congress - even from a handful of Republicans who would question the wasteful spending - from indulging in one of his worst vices: his overwhelming need to shove his vulgar tastes in everyone's faces.

Trump insists that presidents have desired such a ballroom for 150 years and that he's adding the massive 90,000-square-foot, glass-walled space because the East Room, which is the largest room in the White House with an approximately 200-person capacity, is too small. He also has said he does not like the idea of hosting kings, queens, presidents and prime ministers in pavilions on the South Lawn.

Given trump's personal obsessions with gaudy oversized architecture, I'm pretty sure he's the only occupant of the White House who'd ever considered getting a massive arena-sized ballroom to indulge his fantasies of having the biggest and brightest things to show off. Adding to the illegality of tearing down the East Wing is how trump plans to pay for all this: through direct contributions of the wealthy elite. A massive public quid pro quo with the billionaires trump wants sucking up to him.

There are other reasons why trump is doing this aside from his love of hideous décor. At the top of that list is trump's personal belief that he's not going anywhere. trump keeps pushing the false idea he can "run" again for the presidency in 2028 in spite of the 22nd Amendment saying "uh uh TWO TERMS IS THE LIMIT." Considering how he's looking to use the Insurrection Act - or some self-declaration of war without congressional approval - to declare a national emergency and suspend every election to usher in his dictatorship, trump wants to turn what's supposed to be a temporary residency for a temporary leader into a garish memorial of his (supposed) eternal rule.

This is trump's way of saying "the White House is MINE now, no one can take it away from me," and he's treating it much like his other properties. trump would love to turn the whole building into Mar-A-Lago North.

In the meantime, this photo is a perfect representation of what trump and his Far Right lackeys are doing to the whole nation:

from the Washington Post

It is going to take generations to undo this destruction.

General Disarray Heading Into October

My paranoia about this next stunt by trump and his lackeys is getting the worst of me this week (via Steve Inskeep and Tom Bowman at NPR):

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has called top military officials from around the world to a meeting in Virginia (this Tuesday). The reason for this unusual gathering isn't known.

INSKEEP: How much do you know?

BOWMAN: Well, again, not too much. We're talking hundreds of generals and admirals who will meet on Tuesday at Marine Base Quantico just outside Washington. The Washington Post was the first to report on this meeting. In a statement, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said, quote, "the secretary of war will be addressing his senior military leaders early next week." And he was using the term secretary of war, which both President Trump and Defense Secretary Hegseth prefer, instead of defense secretary.

INSKEEP: Have you heard of a meeting like this ever in your decades covering the Pentagon?

BOWMAN: No, absolutely not. This is - on this scale, never. At times, you know, they'll bring in combatant commanders - those who oversee military operations around the world - bring them to the Pentagon for annual meetings. But this is far different in the numbers. Now, Secretary Hegseth has talked about reducing the number of admirals and generals - who stand at more than 800 - reducing that number by 20%. And he talked about that during his confirmation hearing and also put out a video statement back in May once again referring to this...

The rumor mill right after that notification spun in a number of directions, especially at the possibility Hegseth was going to stage a public purge among the flag officers to put the Fear of trump in those remaining. Military analysts believe it's tied into the projected National Defense Strategy where trump's administration will reportedly shift the military focus to "homeland security" meaning "arresting immigrants and civilians - maybe even killing them - on Stephen Miller's whims." 

It later got out that Hegseth plans to give a "motivational speech" about the "warrior ethos" he wants to see in our armed forces: He wants to see more rah-rah blood knight enthusiasm towards committing war crimes "being warriors" wherever the battlefield is set.

Throw into this the last-minute announcement that trump himself is going to attend this "lecture" and a clearer understanding emerges: This is going to be a goddamn staged spectacle of the crassest kind.

As a lot of observers are noting, this whole thing could have been an email. Tom Nichols over at the Atlantic is noticeably vexed:

...I was not, however, a senior officer in charge of a major command, with responsibility for thousands of people and millions of dollars of weaponry. Those folks are busy, which is why the DOD has very advanced—and very expensive—teleconferencing equipment designed to obviate the need to move people around the world for a chat.

But Secretary of Defense/War/Lethality Pete Hegseth isn’t going to use that technology. Instead, he recently decided that some 800 generals and admirals needed to come, in person, from every corner of the planet to a Marine base at Quantico, Virginia, reportedly to listen to their boss, a former TV host, lecture them on the “warrior ethos”—and, for some reason, personal grooming. The Tuesday meeting will feature not only Hegseth but also a last-minute addition: the commander in chief himself.

Hegseth has had a lot of bad ideas, but this one is disruptive and even somewhat dangerous. All of these men and women have real jobs they should be doing. Even if Hegseth is calling this meeting to discuss serious issues of national defense—and so far, the Pentagon has given no such indications—few things are important enough to justify the security risk of putting the entire top U.S. military command, the secretary of defense, and the president all in the same room.

It is possible, of course, that Hegseth is convening this jamboree because something genuinely terrible is afoot. Perhaps he wants all of America’s top officers in the same room when he tells them, for example, that the United States is on the brink of going to war, or that the Pentagon has been deeply compromised by spies and all of our military secrets are now in Moscow or Beijing. But if America is heading into a crisis, then Hegseth’s call for a meeting is even more irresponsible, because in a time of danger all these people should be at their posts, not in an auditorium in Virginia.

The other rumors spinning out there cover some of the fears Nichols points to, especially the part about going to war to serve trump's growing rage towards the rest of the world that won't give him a Peace Prize. There's been a lot of saber-rattling towards Venezuela, especially the unjustified attacks on various boats in international waters that trump's administration keeps claiming were smuggling drugs (but which they also refuse to present evidence to back those claims). trump has been public in his demands to go to literal war against drug cartels, refusing to recognize how that would violate other nations' integrity, and arguably dragging the United States into yet another quagmire that would waste lives and money and end up changing nothing.

No matter what this speech will bring, it's also happening on the eve of yet another Republican-backed government shutdown that's scheduled to implode once October 1st clocks in. Just the logistics of bringing in every general and admiral to one location is a headache: Just imagine what those officers are going to go through if the money isn't there for their transportation back to their command posts? This is another reason why people fear this meeting is going to be a purge, with the shutdown as an excuse to gut the military of its leadership.

Every foreign power aligned against us - not only China and Iran but also Russia (so eager to watch a rival superpower collapse into civil war) - have got to be laughing at the United States tonight, and drawing up a number of plans to cause chaos while our military leaders are stuck in an auditorium listening to maniacs scream at them and demand utter obedience. 

No matter what, this is not going to be a fun week.

Quick Observation About That Disastrous trump Speech to the UN

Update: Thanks again to Batocchio for including this blog in the Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Roundup! P.S. So far the AI traffic has reduced but I need to take the next step in blocking the scavengers. Alas, this is what corporate obsession with technological shortcuts brought us to...

You know, that speech where trump goes up to the podium and basically insults every nation, lies about the United States' financial status, demands he be awarded the Peace Prize for wars and border clashes that haven't ended or were calmed by their own people, while threatening more tariffs and mocking climate change renewable energy agendas as a "con job". 

My observation is this: How the hell didn't every other nation at that UN assembly just pack up and recall every ambassador to end diplomatic relations with the United States, as well as ending every trade talk with us, and also issuing travel boycotts and financial sanctions on banks and corporations still trying to do business with us?

I know stuff like that would cause global economic chaos. But... I mean, goddamn, how bad does it have to get before whatever's left of our allies and enemies admit in public that trump is a goddamned self-serving idiot who needs to get publicly humiliated every hour of the day?

This is classic trump behavior acting like a bully. Do you know what you do with bullies? You punch him in the nose and get all your friends together to point out he's outnumbered and outclassed.

trump's entire game plan is to get others to cave before he gets exposed as the bankrupted racist sexist asshole he is. You fight back, he and his rolls over. Yes, he'll come back a few months later pushing the same stunt, but you punch him again and make him retreat again.

To the AI Bots Raiding My Blog

In the past few weeks, I've noticed an insane uptick in traffic to this blog. Normally I'd be thrilled that more people are finding my ramblings to be coherent and plausible (yes I'm an influencer at last) except that I have no idea where the traffic is coming from. 

At least until I saw one source was ChatGPT. 

Crap.

The onslaught by our tech overlords to insert their Artificial Intelligence bots into every crevice of the Internet - Gemini on Google, Copilot on Microsoft products, whatever the hell they call it on Apple devices - is creating an environment where anything posted on the Internet can get vacuumed up by these AI bots as use in someone else's work. Without citing sources or providing links to the original work, and in the case of artists and musicians (and even professional writers) failing to pay them for their work. Violating copyright laws left and right.

So let me state here, loud and clear.

I did not give consent, I DO NOT give consent, I WILL NOT GIVE CONSENT TO HAVE MY WRITINGS USED WITHOUT CREDIT TO MY EFFORTS.

I'm not making any money off this blog, so I can't claim loss of revenue. But I do claim my rights as the person who wrote this junk to get cited by others referencing what I've written. These are my thoughts and opinions and I'm damn well entitled to defend them.

What bothers me is how these AI systems could well go after my published writings, the stuff I have as ebooks. THAT is a source of revenue, I should get paid for what's on the market, and if anybody steals "Road Trip to Vegas" or "The Brides of WiFi" I will be very vexed indeed.

I'm reading up now on how to block AI scavengers from this blog. I've gotten as far as "robots.txt" but I have no idea how to apply to a Blogger site. If anyone's got pointers, please help.

And to the Silicon Valley thieves who think they can take everything and leave us with nothing: Please die in a fire. It's the least YOU can do to save the world from your greed.

My Thoughts and Prayers This September 11 2025

I'm going to accept that all of the US flags will be at half-mast this day in memory of the thousands of victims killed by the terror attacks on September 11, 2001, and NOT for that racist misogynist wingnut that died yesterday. 

A Tale of Two Shootings

There were two major shootings today. This one you most likely saw on the news (via Juliana Kim at NPR):

Charlie Kirk, a right-wing activist and an ally of President Trump, died after a shooting at an outdoor speaking event at Utah Valley University on Wednesday, according to Kirk's organization Turning Point USA and Trump.

At a press conference on Wednesday, Utah Governor Spencer Cox called Kirk's death a "political assassination."

"This is a dark day for our state. It's a tragic day for our nation," he said.

He added that a "person of interest" was being interviewed and it was not the same person who had been detained, then released earlier in the day. Law enforcement do not believe a second person was involved in the shooting, according to Cox.

Beau Mason, commissioner of the Utah Department of Public Safety, said a single shot was fired around 12:20 p.m. local time at the campus event featuring Kirk. Mason added that Kirk was quickly taken to a hospital, where he later died.

The suspected shooter was dressed in "all dark clothing" and fired from a long distance, potentially on a roof, according to Mason. He added that investigators are reviewing closed circuit TV footage.

I may have mentioned Kirk at this blog once or twice, noting primarily how he was an agitator calling for violence towards other Americans who leaned Left-Liberal on the political spectrum. Kirk was often defending the spread - like a plague - of guns across America as "our" price "we" have to pay for the Far Right's power to shoot anybody they want uphold a twisted understanding of the Second Amendment.

Speaking of the Far Right, they're using Kirk's assassination to paint the entire Democratic party as "the party of murder" even though far too many Republican wingnuts are killing Democrats and threatening more violence towards their objects of fear/hate on a near-daily basis.

In the meantime, here's the other major shooting you're likely not seeing on the major networks (via  Yesenia Robles and Alejandro A. Alonso Galva with Colorado Public Radio):

A shooting at Evergreen High School this afternoon hospitalized four students — three with gunshot wounds, including the suspected shooter.

The students with gunshot wounds were treated at CommonSpirit St. Anthony Hospital in Lakewood. After treatment, two of the three — one being the suspect — are still in critical condition.

The third victim has non-life-threatening injuries.

The sheriff's office confirmed in an evening update that the suspected shooter sustained a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

We as a nation are now numb to the near-constant gun violence happening at our schools, in our public places, across our communities. In any other sane nation, we'd have done something to stop the easy access of firearms, to reduce the daily count of the dying and wounded. But we're not sane, are we?

We're held hostage by an extremist ideology of the Far Right obsessing over their right - no one else's - to own enough firepower to overthrow any agency, execute any political opponent, to doom an entire nation to suffer to their hates and fears. And with this gun violence now claiming one of their own, they're bound to get worse.

The cycle of violence and stochastic terrorism being inflicted on America - and this isn't new, we've been drowning in this bloodshed since the 1850s - will spiral deeper into the pit until we are in open warfare against each other.

Gods help us. Seriously.

Brief Thoughts About Hegseth's Craven Urge to Rename the Department of Defense

Update: Thanks again to Steve In Manhattan for including my blog on the Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up. 

P.S. I am noticing an insane uptick in visits to my blog even though I can't see where the traffic is coming from. I'm worried the new traffic is coming from AI vacuuming up all Internet content. Anyone got suggestions on how to block that AI? Please comment below or skeet me at Bluesky @paulwartenberg.bsky.social

Hegseth and trump - and other chickenhawk Republicans - want to rename the Department of Defense to the Department of War mostly because the Ministry of Peace (MiniPax) was already copyrighted.

As Tom Nichols at the Altantic notes, this is all ego-stroking and a waste of time (paywalled):

Last month, when the plan was still just a hypothetical, the president was asked why he favored it. He said that Department of War “just sounded better” and that it would be a callback to the name under which U.S. forces fought in the two world wars. But the change is also a reflection of how much Trump and Secretary of Defense (his title for now) Pete Hegseth think of themselves as tough guys, real fighters who will no longer trifle with silly names about “defending” things. Hegseth in particular is obsessed with “warfighters”—a clunky Pentagon term that’s been around for far too long—who will engage in “warfighting” with great “lethality.”

Both men seem to think that wimps cower and defend, but real men go on the offensive and whack the bad guys...

It is almost impossible to overstate the inanity of this move. The United States has a Department of Defense for a reason. It was called the “War” Department until 1947, when the dictates of a new and more dangerous world required the creation of a much larger military organization than any in American history...

These leaders understood that America could no longer afford the isolationist luxury of militarizing itself during times of threat and then making soldiers train with wooden sticks when the storm clouds passed. Now, they knew, the security of the country would be a daily undertaking, a matter of ongoing national defense, in which the actual exercise of military force would be only part of preserving the freedom and independence of the United States and its allies.

Defense is a serious job for a nation to uphold, and these clowns can't accept it. Gods help us.

Update: Ron Filipkowski knows exactly why Hegseth is so giddy about being a warmonger.

And there it is …

[image or embed]

— Ron Filipkowski (@ronfilipkowski.bsky.social) September 5, 2025 at 6:09 PM

We are being led by five-year-olds eager to throw punches at the world and making us take the body blows. Considering the recent violation of international waters and the ongoing harassment of nations over tariffs and bullying Denmark over Greenland, we're going to be in a shooting war sooner rather than later. And the US military is going to get mismanaged into disaster after disaster.

I keep saying this: We are royally fucking screwed. 

State of Plague

Just when you think things can't get any dumber in the Sunshine State, the crazed Republican leadership that's been pretty much in charge since 1999 prove they can dumb down even further.

The GOP Morans are playing to their conspiracy-driven anti-vax MAGA base by deciding to end vaccine mandates for public schools (via Greg Allen at NPR): 

Florida's governor said he'll be asking the state Legislature to repeal a statute that requires children to receive vaccines for polio, diphtheria, measles and mumps before entering school. If it passes, Florida will be the first in the nation to eliminate all vaccine mandates for children and adults.

Other vaccines, including those for chickenpox, hepatitis B and strep infections, are mandated by the state health department, as opposed to Florida's Legislature. The state's Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo said his department will soon issue rules repealing those requirements too.

"People have a right to make their own decisions," said Ladapo, who joined Gov. Ron DeSantis for the announcement on Wednesday. "If you don't want to put whatever vaccines in your body, God bless you. And I hope you make an informed decision. And that's how it should be."

These are, by the by, the same assholes whose anti-abortion stance is to take away all health care choices by women period, so where the "make their own decisions" defense then you bastards.

Public health and child health professionals condemned the move. Dr. Aileen Marty, an infectious disease expert at Florida International University, said, "This will cause havoc."

"It will cause problems for funding free vaccines for the impoverished and issues with vaccines to the rest of us due to insurance-related issues," Marty said. "It is clearly against empirical evidence of what is safest for individual children."

It's more than just the children at risk. It will be the teachers, the parents, the communities at large. Schools can be super-spreaders, which we saw happen during the beginnings of the COVID-19 Pandemic.

And here's the thing: COVID is not over. It's still out there, and not just in Florida.

And it's not just COVID, or "regular" influenza.

We're seeing the re-emergence of measles as an infectious threat after decades of thinking our nation had finally seen an end to it. But after all those decades of our medical and scientific leaders successfully promoting and encouraging vaccinations to reduce the risks, we're now in an age when medical frauds are in charge of our nation's health care and are actively shutting down every agency and means to combat infectious diseases.

It is factual to declare that Robert Kennedy Jr., that sonofabitch, is on the side of the viruses making us sick or dead.

And Florida's elected leaders like DeSantis are happy to assist RFK Jr and the other anti-vax frauds to wage war on our children and families all because their anti-science ideology convinces them their ignorance is superior to decades if not centuries of proven medical practice.

Republicans would rather have thousands of Floridians die than admit their anti-vax stances was poor pandering to their conspiracy-driven MAGA base. We're all going to pay for inept, insane leadership by a party that won't lead towards honest-to-God better health and safety for our communities.

Observations of the Occupation

During my emotional break(down) away from political blogging for most of this month, trump declaring a "crime emergency" in Washington DC to abuse presidential powers pretty much dominated the news traffic I read.

Deploying various National Guard units and other federal agencies to take over the metro's local law enforcement, trump issued lie after lie justifying his power grab that for all intents is his first big step into authoritarian rule that he will never leave (via Daniel Dale at CNN Politics):

President Donald Trump delivered a barrage of false claims about crime in Washington, DC, during a series of Monday comments defending his takeover of the police force and deployment of the National Guard in the nation’s capital.

Touting an ongoing 11-day period with no reported murders in Washington, Trump falsely claimed it had been “many years” since the city had previously had a murder-free stretch of even a week; in fact, Washington had three such periods since late February of this year, one of them 16 days long. Trump falsely claimed Washington now has not only no murders but “no crime” at all; while reported crime is down during his takeover, there have still been hundreds of offenses. (personal note: including the illegal use of a sandwich, but we'll talk about that a bit later)

Trump falsely claimed Washington had been at an “all-time” high in crime at the end of the Biden administration; in fact, it had been nowhere close to the violent peaks of the early 1990s. And Trump wildly overstated Washington residents’ support for the takeover, baselessly putting it at “95%” even after a poll showed overwhelming local opposition...

It's during this crisis that I look back at the window of opportunity that the Democrats had between 2021 and 2023 when they controlled the House and Senate and the Presidency to where Biden could have pushed for statehood to DC (and Puerto Rico) to avoid these kinds of abuse the federal government can inflict on the locals. Statehood is a serious thing for what is one of our nation's biggest population centers suffering under an outdated fear of the nation's capitol being under attack by its own residents. trump's own attempt at insurrection on January 6th proved it's not the locals that's the problem, it's the partisan agitators from the Republican Party side of things.

And it's still the Republicans pandering to their worst fears and biases, aimed at "urban" metros that Fox Not-News and other Far Right media outlets depict as wretched hives of minorities and liberals. You'll notice all the media attacks aimed at DC, New York City, and Chicago while the metros in Republican-controlled states like Houston and Memphis TN are suffering higher crime rates (per 100,000 people as of 2024). Speaker Mike Johnson can't admit the main city in his Louisiana district - Shreveport - has a higher crime rate than DC.

In the meantime, with all the federal officers and National Guard units deployed across the city the biggest observation is that these extra law enforcement people are... just standing there (via Benjamin Wittes at Lawfare):

I can’t say I found them threatening, though I am admittedly not an undocumented immigrant living in fear of ICE. While a few were armed, they weren’t arresting anyone or pursuing anyone or, actually, doing much of anything. They were all, well, just standing around. 

I am not the only one who has captured photographs of this deployment of National Guard being really boring.

A friend, jogging on the Mall today, noticed this gaggle of them at the World War II Memorial. Notice all the crimes they are not stopping...

The common theme here is that this deployment isn’t really about doing anything. It’s not going to do anything about D.C.’s crime problem, though I’m sure the president will make up whatever numbers he needs to to claim otherwise. And while I’m sure it is creating fear among Washingtonians who have reason to worry about immigration detention and deportation, I don’t think it’s really about that either...

The answer, I think, is nothing more or less than chest-thumping machismo. It’s a dog and fire hydrant thing. Putting troops on the streets, even bored troops who aren’t doing anything except helping people navigate public maps, is a form of dominance...

This is part of the Far Right obsession with Alpha Male status, of using power not to affect change or improvements but just to show off how manly - even the conservative women that love to pose with guns and brag about killing puppies - they are. This is vice signaling to their racist MAGA voting bloc that they are "owning the libs" and making life miserable for all the Blacks, Latinos, Asians, and "deviants" they fear existing in our major cities.

In the meantime, the Real Americans serving in our Guards are stuck outside in DC during the hot and humid month of August picking up trash because they're not really doing anything else except play to trump's dictatorial fantasies.

Even the DC residents - the ones who would be most affected if there were actual crimes taking place - know the whole thing is a staged act, and arguably violations of their own civil liberties while the "crackdown" imposes more curfews and limitations of their rights. The locals are doing what they can with civil protests, but also with more direct efforts to give trump's Justice Department lackeys serious headaches (via Quinta Jurecic at the Atlantic (paywalled)):

It’s rare for grand juries to refuse to indict. It’s even rarer for grand juries to refuse to indict multiple times in a single month—in significant part because prosecutors usually know better than to present shaky cases that might not gain jurors’ approval.

But Donald Trump’s desire to crack down on crime in Washington, D.C., seems to have come at the cost of that good judgment. Over the past month, federal prosecutors in D.C. have failed at least five times to persuade a grand jury to indict a D.C. resident for allegedly attacking federal law enforcement. These are not the only embarrassments suffered recently by federal prosecutors in the District, and judges have begun to lose their patience over missteps and sloppy cases. Despite the president’s promise to “take our capital back,” his law-enforcement surge is struggling in court.

The most recent rebuke by a grand jury involves the case of Alvin Summers, who allegedly scuffled with a U.S. Park Police officer after driving his car onto the Mall. Before that came a grand jury’s refusal to indict Sean Charles Dunn, the man now memorialized as “Sandwich Guy,” who hurled a salami sub at a Customs and Border Protection agent early in Trump’s federal deployment across the capital. The three grand-jury refusals before that all came in a single case: that of Sidney Lori Reid, whom prosecutors charged with a felony—potentially punishable by eight years in prison—over a tangle with FBI and ICE agents while Reid was protesting an immigration arrest. The agents pushed Reid up against a wall, they said, and the resulting scuffle produced a few scrapes to an FBI agent’s hand.

Even the common people who make up these juries know damn well that a Subway BMT footlong is not a lethal weapon (well, unless the gluten count is too high). The infamous saying of "a grand jury can indict a ham sandwich" now has a notable exception.

These juries know this all isn't about "cracking down on crime." They know this is all about the conservative urge to inflict cruelty on the Outsider groups they fear and hate, that this is all performative political bullshit on trump's part to justify his iron-fisted rule from the White House. They see the minor infractions getting enlarged to federal felonies and refuse to play along. They know who's inflicting the harm here - trump's street thugs - and won't accept trump and his lackeys' excuses.

What happens from here depends on the courts - at the district and appellate levels going against trump's power grabs - and on a Republican-controlled Congress now facing the growing discontent of a majority of Americans - even in their own states - who are not enjoying the preening and posing of trump as a strongman while issuing more economic hardships with inflation and disappearing jobs.

While trump is only supposed to issue these "emergencies" as temporary powers, you can see him and his legal cohorts arguing to keep such powers permanent... and to spread such powers further out across America to Blue States and Blue Cities in violation of the Constitution. It's not going to stop with Los Angeles, not with DC, not with what he's planning to do to Chicago next. There is hope that the courts can and will overturn these efforts and rein in trump's abuses... except for the fact that the Roberts Supreme Court have demonstrated they are willing to roll over and beg for anything trump wants to do to the rest of us.

This won't end until trump is out of power and all of his handlers and minions are sitting in jail cells for all the crimes they're committing in his name (at this point, I doubt trump will ever see the inside of a prison ever, goddamn him).

Keep fighting, America. It's not exaggerating to say everything is at stake here.

Fighting the Fear in Florida

It's hard to keep track of all the atrocities trump and his thugs are inflicting on the United States, but this one back in June really stood out as they were pulling this shit in my backyard: 

Pandering to the harsh anti-immigrant war on our American communities, Governor DeSantis and his cronies are fast-tracking a migrant detention center in South Florida (via Rachel Treisman at NPR):

Despite resistance, Florida officials are turning an airfield in the Everglades into a migrant detention center, which they've nicknamed "Alligator Alcatraz" due to its proximity to the apex predators.

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier proposed the project last week, saying in a video posted to X that, in support of the Trump administration's crackdown on illegal immigration, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis had asked state leaders to identify places for temporary detention facilities.

"I think this is the best one, as I call it: Alligator Alcatraz," Uthmeier said, referencing the infamous prison island in San Francisco Bay...

If anyone's paying attention to the overwhelmed ICE "detention facilities" right now, there are serious overcrowding, food availability, and wellness problems to where people are dying in custody. Even this horrific attempt to alleviate crowding at existing facilities won't stop this new prison - it's not a detention center, trust me - from being overcrowded itself. Stephen Miller wants his fucking quotas filled, and doesn't give a damn about treating his and ICE's victims with any basic decency or civil rights.

From what people can see happening at the airfield - there are already protestors gathering, bless them - it's looking like a bunch of portable classrooms getting converted into barracks, which I guarantee you will not be adequately air-conditioned. I doubt there will be any serviceable water or sewage considering that abandoned airfield would need months of dedicated construction efforts to make it genuinely livable.

This isn't going to be a safe or healthy place to get imprisoned...

And it turns out I - and the environmental and civil rights activists as well - was right about that hellhole being unsafe, unsound, and inhuman. Last week, federal judge Kathleen Williams gutted the anti-immigrant bastards for their sins (via AP News / NPR):

U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams' injunction formalized a temporary halt she had ordered two weeks ago as witnesses continued to testify in a multiday hearing to determine whether construction should end until the ultimate resolution of the case...

The judge said she expected the population of the facility to decline within 60 days through the transferring of the detainees to other facilities, and once that happened, fencing, lighting and generators should be removed. She wrote the state and federal defendants can't bring anyone other than those who are already being detained at the facility onto the property. The order does not prohibit modification or repairs to existing facilities, "which are solely for the purpose of increasing safety or mitigating environmental or other risks at the site.,"

The preliminary injunction includes "those who are in active concert or participation with" the state of Florida or federal defendants or their officers, agents, employees," the judge wrote in an 82-page order.

The judge said state officials never sufficiently explained why the facility needed to be in the middle of the Florida Everglades. "What is apparent, however, is that in their haste to construct the detention camp, the State did not consider alternative locations," Williams said...

DeSantis and Uthmeier never explained why they put the concentration camp there because they didn't want to repeat under oath their gleeful desire to "witness alligators eating any detainees trying to escape." Cruelty may play well on Fox Not-News but not in a courtroom.

While the legal ruling focuses mostly on the environmental impact of the camp, it helps stall the ongoing efforts by the Far Right under trump and Stephen Miller to incarcerate every dark-skinned person they can find in majority-Democratic cities/states. With any luck, it'll at least end that tasteless and profane merch industry that sprang up promoting "Alligator Alcatraz" like it was fcking Disney World.

If there's any good news right now, it's that ICE and the Florida AG aren't ignoring this court order: reports are that camp is emptying out and should be cleared in a few more days.

The bad news is: Where the hell are those poor detainees - most of them honest working people, family members, not at all the criminal rot the fearmongers insist upon - going? There is no way these haters are going to give up the targets of their fear/rage: ICE is most likely shipping these people to the other concentration camps they've been setting up in other Red states across the country. 

This is all going to turn into a sick and cruel game of "hot potato": moving immigrant prisoners from state to state dodging the lawsuits that will get filed in response to any legal abuses the Far Right leaders across those states will inflict on their victims.

If only we had a working Congress that would use its' constitutional powers to rein in a lawless, vulgar, monstrous president shitgibbon. 

Keep fighting. Keep protesting. Stop every concentration camp from getting built. Stop these hatemongers.

Time for More Woodstock Reminiscing As the World Burns

Yeah, I'm still here. Struggling to focus on any particular outrage at the moment, so I'm going to think of happy thoughts instead.

Edit: Thank you Steve in Manhattan for sharing this at Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up. And to the National Guard people getting shipped away from their families and work in order to invade DC on the Shitgibbon's orders, you always have the option to quit the Guard so you won't attack your fellow Americans.

Ever since I learned of Woodstock as a lad, I remained intrigued at the confluence of events, the tiny miracles, the realization that for the most part the people who attended were in good spirits and enjoyed the experience. I found a YouTuber sharing slides where they had attended in person:

 

The music was a key part of the festival, but the people who were there made it historic.

...okay enough said, here's more Santana!

The One Crook Who Didn't Go To Jail

At least in Brazil they know what to do with corrupt ex-presidents who stage insurrections to stop elections (via Tiago Rogero and Tom Phillips with Guardian US): 

A Brazilian supreme court judge has ordered the house arrest of former president Jair Bolsonaro for allegedly breaching “preventative measures” which were imposed amid concerns the far-right leader might abscond to avoid punishment over an alleged coup attempt.

According to the ruling on Monday by Justice Alexandre de Moraes, Bolsonaro breached a ban on using social media which was imposed last month, when he was also ordered to wear an electronic ankle tag.

Moraes wrote that as demonstrators took to the streets in several cities across the country on Sunday in support of the former president, Bolsonaro used the social media accounts of allies to share messages containing “clear encouragement and incitement to attack the Supreme Federal Court, and overt support for foreign intervention in Brazil’s judiciary”.

“There is no doubt the precautionary measure was breached,” Moraes wrote...

The arrest order is part of an ongoing supreme court case in which Bolsonaro is accused of leading a plot to overturn the results of the last election, in which current president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva defeated the former army captain.

The trial is expected to conclude later this year, with Bolsonaro facing a potential sentence of more than 40 years in prison.

Many of those protesters urged the US president Donald Trump – who recently hit Brazil with 50% tariffs in retribution for the alleged “witch hunt” against Bolsonaro – to take further action to help save their embattled leader...

Of course trump would attempt to bully the Brazilian people in order to get a fellow corrupt bastard out of legal hot water. trump admires the dictators across the globe as the only humans he'll ever respect. That he's disrupting any foreign relations not just with Brazil but with the rest of South (and Central) America doesn't matter to him and his America First cronies.

trump should have answered for what he did - stirring up rioters to storm Congress and disrupt the electoral count on January 6th - in a court of law, but Biden and his attorney general didn't understand the urgency and took their time, allowing trump's lawyers to delay delay delay until the 2024 election, during which he and his allies in the mainstream media lied and bluffed their way back into the White House and negating any chance of justice.

It remains frustrating to me and millions of others who knew trump was a monster and did everything we could to keep him out of power and yet too many other Americans didn't care - or worse didn't care to know - and made the monster president (again).

What the hell, America. And now the whole world is paying for the crook we wouldn't put in jail.