When Wingnut Hypocrisy Is On-Brand

I don't think I've posted much about this guy here, and it's been some time since I shared any schadenfreude, so here's a report making the rounds of one of the extremist anti-immigrant wingnuts on the Far Right getting hit with his own cruelty (via Nicole Acevedo with NBC News):

Milo Yiannopoulos, a self-described libertarian and professional internet troll who became known for his controversial right-wing political views, is in ICE custody.

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security told NBC News that ICE arrested Yiannopoulos, a United Kingdom national, on Thursday at the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport in Kenner, Louisiana.

You might think a guy well aware of his own brand - making money off of hatred and bashing Muslims, women, anyone not White And Male - would discreetly make sure his own paperwork and legal status would be secure so he wouldn't get caught in the same dragnet he's cheering on, but ignorance about their own hypocrisy is actually part of the wingnut brand so...

The DHS spokesperson said Yiannopoulos legally entered the U.S. on May 14, 2019, through New York City, but then “chose to overstay his welcome in violation of our nation’s laws.”

Yiannopoulos was taken into ICE custody Thursday after “failing to show up for his immigration hearing” on July 22, prompting an immigration judge to issue a final order of removal against him, according to the spokesperson. “He will remain in ICE custody pending removal,” the spokesperson added.

Not that showing up for his hearing back in July would have saved him: ICE thugs are happily arresting legal migrants at the hearings anyway.

I can't speak for Milo, but I'm willing to bet he operated on the belief that as a high-profile Far Right Influencer, he was untouchable. Wilhoit's Law - the conservative group-think that "There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect" - on full display: Milo thought himself part of the In-Group that the law would protect while attacking Latino and other dark-skinned people who make up the Out-Groups.

He must not have gotten the memo that Stephen Miller - a higher-ranking anti-immigrant hater - wants his quota of 20 million migrants deported, which means ICE and DHS are also rounding up anyone in the Eurotrash ethnicity just so they can claim to the media "oh hey, we're not THAT racist!"

It's likely that someone in trump's administration will intervene at some point, give Yiannopoulos some face-saving act of mercy to let him out and flee to a friendlier European nation that won't bar him from entering. Going through the whole deportation process - the humiliation, the chains, the black site airflights to nations where the migrants don't even belong in order to prevent them from re-adjusting to strange locales - could expose the Far Right's cruelty to their own audiences if Milo gets to a smartphone and reaches his core followers to complain. Update: Never mind all that, the news is already reporting that Yiannopoulos was deported back to the United Kingdom today. Wow. He's really lost his friends in high places.

In the meantime, enjoy the "Leopards Eating People's Faces" moment for what it is.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Can't Trust the Food Under trump and RFK Jr

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

trump and Republicans, Selling Us Out To the Crooks Every Day

Put a corrupt businessman in power, expect the only ones to benefit from that to be the other corrupt bastards ripping us off (via David Frum at the Atlantic): 

So it is with the news that the Department of the Treasury has ended ownership-reporting requirements for U.S. businesses and purged the existing database of ownership information. This seemingly technical-sounding change is a huge gift to financial crooks, who can now store and launder dark money in U.S. financial institutions with less risk of detection. But the gift comes at the direct expense of banks, mutual funds, insurance companies, and other financial institutions, which now have to shoulder the burden of verifying customer data themselves.

The Treasury advertises the measure as deregulatory, lifting burdensome red tape from business owners. But the relief to honest business owners is tiny. The added burden on the financial sector is huge. The real winners here are shady business owners. In 2021, Capital One, the Trump Organization’s then-bank, closed more than 300 of the Trump Organization’s accounts on suspicion that they violated anti-money-laundering rules. The action just taken by the Treasury may best be understood as payback for those who tried to enforce the law against Donald Trump.

After the 9/11 terror attacks, Congress took action to prevent terrorists and other criminals from using the U.S. financial system to move money around undetected. Congress enacted laws requiring U.S. financial institutions to “know your customer.” If someone tried to open an account for a shell company, perhaps owned by another shell company, the financial institution had to pierce the layers of concealment to know the human beneficial owners of the account...

Financial institutions have clamored for years for some relief from the tangled mess of reporting imposed on them. In 2020, Congress attached a new Corporate Transparency Act to the 2021 Pentagon budget, which imposed an obligation on most businesses operating inside the United States to report their ownership directly to the government. The Corporate Transparency Act authorized the Treasury to establish a database of this information. At first, the database would be accessible only to law enforcement, but the plan was to open the database to financial institutions too. If a financial institution sensed something amiss, the federal database would assist its investigation. The goal was less to exclude criminals from the banking system than to use “the banks to track the money and find the criminals,” Aaron Klein, an expert in banking regulation at the Brookings Institution, explained to me.

By destroying the database, the Trump administration has removed that help from financial institutions and foreclosed an essential avenue for tracking crooks.

Despite the Treasury’s claims that this purported deregulation of financial information “is a victory for common sense and American small businesses,” in the words of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, the change provides scarcely any benefit at all to honest businesses. They still have to report the relevant names, addresses, dates of birth, and government-ID numbers every time they transact with a financial institution. That burden remains the law. They have been relieved only of the slight additional chore of filing the same information with the federal government—a chore that lowered their costs of doing business. Those costs are now destined to rise...

This isn't as much about costs or burdens as it is a loss of accountability, the lost of faith in institutions to do honest business with the vast majority of us who aren't crooks.

This isn't capitalism, at least not the way it evolved in the 20th Century with regulatory guidelines to keep our global economy from crashing every 20 years. This sure isn't socialism, not as "government control of the means of production" as much as trump is forcing businesses to kick him a piece of their action like a mob boss.

This is a rebirth of the economic conditions Mercantilism that created the corrupt East India Company: a small circle of political and business elites raging across the landscape using monopoly power and brute force to vacuum up every cent they can. It's the Five Families, the shakedown artists, the identity thieves who keep stealing our parents' and grandparents' debit card numbers.

Goddamn them. Goddamn the entire Republican Party for defending their only constant constituents: thieves and greedheads. Be honest to yourselves, voters: The modern Republicans have betrayed your trust with their economic malaise, destruction of communities, and desire to sell every inch of America to twisted techbros eager to consume our resources and privacy. 

We need to do better, America. We need to STOP voting for a Republican Party of the crooks, by the crooks, and for the crooks.

Looking for the Small Victories In a By-Election Gone Wrong

Regarding the by-election in the United Kingdom between Nigel "How Much Is 5 Million In British Money" Farage and Count Binface that happened this week...

Sigh. GODDAMMIT CLACTON VOTERS, YOU HAD ONE JOB (via Alexandra Topping with The Guardian (UK)).

Dawn had long broken in the Essex town of Clacton-on-Sea when the results for the byelection came in. After a gruelling count, an atmosphere of deep exhaustion had settled over the room. Even the man with a dustbin on his head looked weary.

As it was declared that Nigel Farage had won, as expected, there was no cheering in the room, which had been boycotted by the Reform UK leader and his supporters; instead there was only an overwhelming sense of futility.

Farage forced the byelection at the start of July in an attempt take control of a narrative tide that had turned against him. After the Guardian revealed he had received a £5m personal gift from Christopher Harborne, a Thailand-based crypto billionaire, in April 2024, he had been dogged by questions about his financial backing. Other revelations followed and questions mounted...

And while the people of Clacton did back Farage again, it was no overwhelming victory. He won 22,239 votes, 63.34% of the vote. Convincing, yes, but significantly short of the 72% won by David Davis in 2008 when he resigned his seat and stood again as a protest over the issue of civil liberties.

With no other mainstream options, the parody candidate Count Binface, was Farage’s nearest competitor, winning 9,455 votes, or one in four of the votes cast. In his “victory speech” posted on X, he noted that this was a 10,000% increase on the 95 votes he managed against Andy Burnham in the Makerfield byelection. “A new dawn has broken, has it not?” he wrote, echoing Tony Blair’s 1997 victory speech. “Literally, because it’s past 6:30 in the morning here in Clacton-on-Sea.”

If there's any good news, it's in the "At least Farage suffered" category. A better measurement of how poorly Farage did this by-election is to look at the results of the more formal election that happened in 2024: In that election Farage secured 21,225 votes, which means he barely garnered a thousand more voters (22,239) who showed up this time around. It's a meager increase in a field where the only legitimate electoral threat was the court jester wearing the trash can. 

The overall vote count in 2024 was 45,958 people showing up, a better turnout than what showed for 2026 with 35,111. Farage did not prove himself a greater draw nor a good incumbent: Indeed, a large chunk of voters refused to show up for what was basically a circus. Without the major parties - Labour, Tories - and the viable third parties like Lib Dems and Greens to give Farage any targets, all he had going for him was a bland, racist campaign against "The Establishment" which exposed the reality that in this by-election he was the Establishment candidate.

The by-election also didn't save Farage from the fate he was facing when he resigned and forced this whole farce. He's still under investigation for his alleged financial misdeeds (from Rowena Mason and Peter Walker, also The Guardian (UK)):

Nigel Farage’s attempt to draw the sting from inquiries into his financial affairs appeared to have backfired on Friday as the standards watchdog reopened its investigation and MPs from all sides condemned the needless byelection.

The Reform UK leader declared victory in the Clacton vote as he was returned with an increased majority and gained more votes than in 2024, saying he had “stuck two fingers up at the entire political establishment”.

However, parliament’s standards commissioner immediately reopened an investigation into whether he should have declared a series of gifts provided to him shortly before the last general election.

These include a £5m personal gift from crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne, first revealed by the Guardian, and further financial support from his friend and convicted fraudster George Cottrell.

I'm not a political expert on how elections work in the UK, but I doubt they are going to let Farage resign again and force another by-election so soon. From what I've read, the investigation can lead to his suspension from Parliament (not outright removal or criminal arrest) and if it's longer than 10 days it would trigger a recall petition and if successful another by-election. However, in this scenario he won't control the by-election, he'll be publicly exposed for his sins, and the major parties will jump in with better odds - probably for the Tories - to defeat him then.

It might depend on how severe the investigations against Farage would go, if it's bad enough for the legal system to charge him criminally (given Farage's arrogance and knee-jerk reactions to the matter, he's hiding something worse). He could try to make himself a political martyr and run again for the seat in a borough that's "safe" for him, but Farage has made so many political enemies across the landscape that he'll likely lose.

In sadder news, the world could have had an elected trash bin in the British Parliament. Millions are mourning the lost opportunity. /weeps

The Coward of Mar-A-Lago

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is from Mike Luckovich

Ashlie D. Stevens at Salon is unforgiving:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is not going to end well.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In Florida, the Exemption Amendment Will Get Too Costly

When the Florida Republicans have lost Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd, you know DeSantis and his lackeys really f-cked up (via Bay News 9 Spectrum staff):

Polk county Sheriff Grady Judd is urging voters to reject Amendment 3.

He came out against the measure Tuesday during a news conference.

Judd argued that the Florida House made significant changes to the proposal Gov. Ron DeSantis initially made. He says the legislature then passed the measure without doing a proper financial analysis of the effect it would have.

"It's going to affect response times. It does not protect law enforcement, fire emergency services as earlier editions of it supposedly did," Judd said. "It doesn't provide for money to fix roads adequately, to clean stormwater adequately. It doesn't do any of that. It says what you can fund. It doesn't talk about libraries or parks. It's a train wreck."

Judd also suggested that for smaller counties, Amendment 3 could eliminate nearly half of their taxes, saying he would recommend voters reject the measure and instead called on lawmakers to revisit property tax reform that is "reasonable and responsible."

Judd - well-known among Floridians for hogging the spotlight whenever possible - normally is a staunch conservative figure in local politics... and yet here he is talking about paying for county/city services and defending the need for taxes like a New Deal liberal.

To provide some background: Florida is one of those states that does not have its own income tax to build revenues. The state relies on a statewide sales tax (at 6 percent) and separate corporate tax (at 5 percent, boooooooo hiss, they pay a lesser rate than us residents boooooooo), and then for the counties (and cities) a property tax that covers the local needs.

Thing is, at the state level - controlled by hardcore anti-tax Republicans since the late 1990s - they can interfere with property taxes by creating and expanding homestead exemptions. If you own one residence and call it home, you get a base $50,000 exemption: Say I own a house or condo worth $500,000, I will only be on the hook with the county/city for $450,000 when they apply millage rates to various expenditures like roads, water/sewage, trash pickup, libraries, fire rescue, law enforcement, etc. It's a way of reducing my tax burden as a resident.

Over the decades, the Florida GOP has pushed very specific exemptions - for veterans, widows of veterans, select classes of persons - through state amendment referendums to give those groups - many of them the Republican voting base - extra tax cuts. I've never really agreed or supported them over the years if you've ever kept track of my bi-annual "For the Love of God" election previews, but a lot of them still passed because most Florida residents didn't see the overall harm those exemptions caused for their local public services.

This latest amendment could seriously cause more damage to our state counties/cities than any hurricane ever would. It raises the exemption amount to $150,000 for 2027 and then $250,000 by 2028, with increases tied to inflation starting in 2029. It doesn't apply this exemption to new residents (or will that be new homeowners?) - only to those here for five or more years - who'll end up carrying a greater tax burden. 

All of a sudden, our counties and large cities could lose tens of millions in revenues. For example, Orange County (Orlando metro) one of our heaviest populated counties with millions rolling in from tourism and other major industries recorded $58.5 million in property tax for 2023/24, a huge chunk (81 percent!) of their overall $71.7 million intake.

Screenshotting this so I don't lose it

Just to keep county/city services the same as previous years, Orange County and the others would have to increase their millage rates to counterbalance... except this Amendment gives the state power to limit how the counties can spend their money on public services. The implication here is that the governor and legislature - currently in the grip of Far Right Republicans eager to prove their anti-tax bona fides - can stop the counties from adjusting their millage rates, or trying to maintain any ability to pay for any public services at all. 

The wingnuts in Tallahassee are determined to force spending cuts on social services wherever they want (mostly in any Democratic-friendly metros or minority-heavy rural counties: I doubt they want to anger their voting base in the Villages, the Panhandle, Naples, etc.). I wouldn't be surprised if their ultimate goal is to force all Florida residents - by squeezing local governments - to accept their Culture War bullshit against our own beliefs and existence.

As a Florida homeowner, for me that boost to a $150,000 exemption would be a boon... except for the fact that from that point on, my make that our roads won't be paved, the drinking water won't be clean, the trash won't get picked up, the fire department won't stop all the wildfires (we're in a drought right now and wildfires are a serious problem), my neighbors' kids are at greater risk of abuse, animal control won't keep up with rabid ferals, and Grady Judd won't be able to send out the sheriff cars to the surrounding rural areas where they're blowing up meth labs and running sex trafficking rings. I really will NOT save all that much from what I will pay in property taxes. These services matter. 

And as a city employee for a public library, if this amendment passes a lot of my co-workers (and maybe myself) are going to be out of jobs. In terms of essential services at the city and county levels, libraries and parks/recreation get hit with cuts first and hardest. You think libraries are just checking out books? Libraries provide public computer access, activities for kids and adults, means of doing your own work (we get a lot of self-employed people using our study rooms as temp office space), taking care of a lot of personal needs, above all a community hub. I wrote this back in 2018: You get a greater return on investment with public libraries than a lot of other privatized services out there. DeSantis' Amendment 3 will kill all of that, statewide. Mass unemployment just as half of everything goes to shit.

There is no goddamn way I am supporting this Amendment. I sure as hell do not want any of my fellow Floridians voting for this disaster, because it's going to hurt us all a lot more than any money you think you're saving from an unjustified and painful tax cut.

This is what Florida Republicans have wanted for decades: a tax-free "utopia" to gut any help for the poor people, and where the local communities won't be able to fight back against any Far Right social agendas - hurting gays, hurting women, hurting Blacks and Latinos, and shoving their toxic brand of Christianity down our throats - they wish to impose.

But I've noted this before: Utopias don't work. Tax cuts don't work. What the Florida Republicans - under DeSantis and other extremists - will get is a state falling apart faster than Mississippi, recreating that wonderful libertarian experience in New Hampshire of no functioning government and rampaging bears.

It's not a tax cut, Floridians: It's a massive expense you're going to have to pay in other ways. PLEASE VOTE NO on this.

Addendum: I just realized something - although someone better versed on the issue can explain otherwise - one thing that could happen with the increased exemptions is that the county property appraisers could scale the value of properties higher to compensate. A rundown house honestly worth less than that $150,000 exemption could get reappraised to $200,000 just so there's something to tax. This would have the effect of ruining the housing market across the board as property values skyrocket to unjustified values. I doubt the state-level Republicans will care much if houses get more expensive because their buddies the land developers could see more money out of it. But it's going to make it harder for anyone to buy a house - especially low-income first-time buyers - and it's going to make it harder for some to sell their houses if the appraisers make them too expensive for middle-income people. And if the property values go up, so do the insurance rates, which are pretty high in Florida already thanks to hurricane and flood risks.

It feels similar to how homes in California are over-valued to where there's a serious housing crisis in that state. Florida can well see the same problem.

The Dumbest War Since The One With Jenkin's Ear

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How's that for a war plan, donald?

Who Owns What, When It's All Debt?

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

P.S. I am waiting at home this morning to get new toilets installed, so while I'm sitting here I'd like to promote my book Notice a Trend to help pay the bills uh encourage more man reading! And women reading! And sentient rock creatures who travel through space! And...

This is something Comrade Misfit posted over the weekend, and I wanted to delve into this nightmare a little more (by Victor Tangermann at Futurism):

AI companies are pouring untold billions of dollars into enormous data centers in their efforts to sustain increasingly complex and resource-intensive AI models.

It’s an extremely costly undertaking built on seemingly bottomless hype — and a mountain of debt. As Japanese financial newspaper Nikkei Asia found in a recent investigation, just five US tech giants — Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, and Oracle — are hiding an estimated $1.65 trillion in debt that doesn’t appear on balance sheets. That’s even more than the $1.35 trillion in debt the five companies officially reported in their financial data for the most recent quarter.

This is the sort of thing that screams FRAUD. And nobody's doing anything about it except let it pile up.

Meta alone has amassed around $420 billion in off-balance-sheet debt, according to Nikkei, highlighting how precarious the AI industry’s steep investment in AI has become, and inspiring comparisons to energy company Enron, which collapsed in spectacular fashion in 2001 because of similar debts hidden behind shell companies. Like Enron, they’re using special purpose vehicles, or off-balance sheet arrangements such as legally distinct subsidiaries, as a way to make their financial reporting look healthier than it actually is — often a glaring sign that something is deeply amiss behind the scenes...

That none of these accounting tricks - those shell companies or "special purpose vehicles" - were outlawed when we had the chance spells out just how broken our federal government is when policing the uber-rich megacorps that are "too big to fail."

For the love of God, in my own lifetime we've witnessed financial collapse - the bankrupting of Savings and Loans - after financial collapse - the era of Enron and other tech companies collapsing under their own greed - after financial collapse - the mortgage industry meltdown of 2007-08 that led to a near decade of unemployment and housing woes. That last one directly affected me and my poor parents when I lost my job in 2008, and spent four years looking for a job and unable to sell my home to afford relocating to places where jobs were available.

I've learned a lot from that last economic collapse. For starters, I learned that we shouldn't bail out the CEOs first, we should bail out their victims - us - first, and then send those goddamn bastards to jail for their incompetence and greed. 'Cause one of the things I guarantee you is that these tech companies are getting us to pay in some form or another to cover for the massive costs they're adding up to keep their bubbles afloat. We've seen what happens when those bubbles pop: us taxpayers foot the goddamn bills (again).

I've also come to wonder why these businesses are allowed to accrue so much debt in the first place. My basic understanding of economics tells me debt is bad, and too much of it is very bad. I understand that in the complexities of running a business, companies may borrow loans to cover for expenses today on an understanding that in the future they will have more money to be able to pay off such debts. That they can use those debts to obtain more loans and add more debt to where they have more debts than money on hand is where things start looking insane IMHO.

This is where something like regulations and laws should be in place demanding that businesses hold themselves accountable to some degree: To prevent them from building up too much debt in the first place. You know, some sort of debt cap that says "whoa there, pay this off first before you go putting yourselves into billions more in debt." Without those regulations in place - and we've seen the damage when we've deregulated financial systems like Savings and Loans and the securities/financial markets - those corporate idiots can't stop themselves, spiraling into an ongoing cycle of borrowing and debt all because they're hoping their ship of gold-pressed latinum reaches port that big tech breakthrough pays off.

And this begs the question "WHO is lending these greedheads more and more money to put them further into debt?" The large international banks, obviously, but you have to ask them "At what point do you call in those debts? At what point do you stop lending to these guys - these techbros addicted to their AI hopes - when it's clear they're not going to deliver on any profit?"

In what way is all of this debt any good? Who benefits from this?

Because debt leads to one thing: Control. Any person - or business - deep in debt to another person has to obey the creditor. Otherwise, you lose your business, your car, your home, your livelihood, your very identity.

Debt is another form of slavery.

And if the megacorps collapse under debt, that cascade of financial ruin spreads out: Every other person doing business with them loses money and goes into debt they can't pay, which spreads out even further. A lot of us fell into debt after the housing crisis almost 20 years ago (!), and a lot of us are still paying that off.

Who owns all that debt? We don't, and yet we're the ones who are going to get stuck paying for it (again).

Goddammit. This cycle of economic short-sightedness and greed needs to end.

trump's Vengeance Becomes a Whimper

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This all happened for several reasons.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Only Truth That Is Also A Fact: The Republicans Are Beyond Saving

Over on Bluesky I reposted this skeet, because it spells out in easy terms why the Republicans cannot be redeemed.

This is an apt descriptions of Republicans now.

[image or embed]

— migas7.bsky.social (@migas7.bsky.social) July 25, 2026 at 10:11 AM

In case the embed fails

The modern Republican Party defends no virtue, performs no service to others, provides no leadership to our nation in any way.

In every respect, the Republican Party is still dead as a functioning political force. It is now an occupying army, treating other Americans - other humans - as targets for their greed, fear, and hate. Anyone in that party that can claim any rational capability cannot be turned around as a force for good: They have had a DECADE of trumpism to walk away, deny any support of such criminality... and they refused. They are too beholden to "owning the libs" that they cannot break from a corrupt, destructive faction.

This is why I've been screaming to the nation FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, STOP VOTING REPUBLICAN. There is nothing there to vote for, only against (against Blacks, against women, against Latinos, against gays/lesbians/trans, against fiscal sanity, against vaccines, against foreign allies, against holding any person of power/wealth accountable for their crimes).

I'm not taking crazy pills. The Republican downward spiral has been going on for decades now, and it's dragging the United States - and the world - down with it.

Just stop pandering to any Right-leaning faction you think you can appeal to. The Republicans killed the better angels of their nature ages ago. They'll just waste your time (and take your money). Just stop that. There's millions of Democratic and Independent voters to reach for to get them motivated to vote. There's millions more who aren't even registered to vote - and who can - that the Dems and other center-Left forces need to reach to get them in enough numbers to drive the corrupt GOP out of power at the state and federal levels.

Those are the Americans we need to stand up for the nation. Go talk to them, get them on board. Save the true Republic, Dems.

The Ongoing Monotony of the Same trump Traumas

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hiding From the Reality of trump's Unwanted War

Update: Hello to everyone from Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up! Thanks to Batocchio as always sharing this blog. I should note that since this article posted, the Defense Department did update their casualties report to try and justify what they did (hiding it under a generic "Overseas Operations" tag) as well as expand the number of wounded from Iranian strikes. This is messier than the GOP wants to admit. /rage

As every con artist is a bad liar, the trump administration is trying to hide the reality their war against Iran is getting our troops killed (via Robert Mackey at The Guardian (US)):

The Pentagon’s official online list of service members killed in the ongoing Iran war does not include the four soldiers who died during renewed fighting over the weekend, despite the fact that their names were included in a Pentagon press release on the formal transfer of their remains back to the United States on Wednesday.

A review of the current list on the Pentagon’s Defense Casualty Analysis System website shows that, despite having been last updated on Wednesday, the number of US military personnel killed during Operation Epic Fury, the Pentagon’s name for the US-Israeli war on Iran that Donald Trump launched on 28 February, remains at 14...

According to a New York Times report, the Pentagon website listed 18 American service members as having been killed during the war on Iran on Wednesday, but was changed on Thursday to exclude three service members killed last Friday, Saturday and Sunday as Iran retaliated for new US strikes with an attack on a base used by US forces in Jordan. The list also excluded a fourth soldier who was killed during a controlled detonation of an Iranian drone at Erbil airbase in Iraq...

Three military officials told the Times that “one reason behind the change was that the Trump administration decided to remove four service members killed this past weekend from the list … because their deaths occurred after President Trump declared a cease-fire in the war in April”.

A Pentagon spokesperson disputed that contention, telling the Times that the decreased total of service members killed was due to “temporary data disruptions” that would be quickly fixed.

The Pentagon did not immediately return the Guardian’s request for comment.

trump and his lackeys want to pretend that his "cease-fire" back in April - much like all the other failed "peace deals" - was the end of military operations against Iran... in spite of the reality that we're still essentially fighting the same damn war. This is because trump and crew are avoiding the legal restrictions of the War Powers Act - which requires them to petition Congress for authorization for any prolonged military action - so they can pretend the ongoing war are brand new military actions.

This is insane. The entire goddamn planet knows this is all one big war instigated by trump's ego and fueled by Netanyahu's ambitions. trump is dodging any accountability - anything that should reign in an illegal presidency - and daring the Republicans in Congress to do something to stop him (they won't).

This is why every voter needs to get out the vote this midterms and kick every Republican congresscritter from the House and Senate from office. Elect a Democratic supermajority as best as possible in Congress to bring goddamn trump to heel.

Before he sends more of our troops into harm's way and ignore their deaths like he's doing now.