Flock You 😱 ✡️🌻 😱 🚀🚢

Escalators:  The Iran war appears to be in escalation mode again. After Iran attacked two tankers leaving the Strait of Hormuz the US launched a “barrage” of airstrikes which then prompted another Iranian retaliation.  The most recent kinetic tit-for-tat follows last weekend’s exchange of missiles and drones.  In response to all of the hullabaloo, global oil prices rose $4 yesterday, settling in at a five-week high. Also yesterday, Trump’s BFF Vlad Putin met with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian to affirm his support for all that the IRGC and Mullahs are doing.  That meeting of likeminded friends followed the appearance of Russia’s sanctioned Finance Minister Anton Siluanov at Monday’s G20 economic meeting in North Carolina. Siluanov was invited by the Trump administration; his unusual appearance did not please most of the other attendees given Russia’s Ukrainian endeavors then again it’s not like Trump cares much about Ukraine or maintaining civil relationships with allies, or soon to be former allies.  It’s not just the diplomatic front where things aren’t all that copacetic, the flood of reports about what’s going on at the Pentagon continue to be concerning.  Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, who’d long been on the outs with War/Beer Secretary Pete Hegseth, resigned on Monday.  Before leaving he met with Trump to express his concerns about the future of the Army under Hegseth.  Axios reports that Trump was “surprised” when Driscoll told him how many generals and other top officers Hegseth had fired, pushed out, or passed over for promotion. Trump was either being very disingenuous or really is suffering from dementia because as President and Commander in Chief, he had to have been in the loop for all the Hegseth generated disruption and in any case, the firings have been widely covered in the press. With Driscoll gone, and his Deputy Undersecretary Dave Fitzgerald following him out the door, the military’s largest service is left without a top civilian leader, a Senate-confirmed top general, a confirmed Army general in charge of operations, or a confirmed commander of Army troops in Europe. Perhaps Trump’s been too busy destroying the East Wing, ruining the Reflecting Pool, and putting gold leaf on everything to pay attention to what’s going on at the Pentagon during the war that he started?  Or maybe he really is Putin’s pawn? As to the East Wing, the Supreme Court gave him the go ahead to continue tearing the White House apart, with all the conservative Justices, including Justice Amy but excluding Chief Justice Roberts ruling that those opposing Trump’s extreme renovation plans lacked standing.   

The Ballot Box 🗳️:  Yesterday was primary day in Massachusetts.  There were no upsets. In their infinite wisdom, the Bay State’s Democrats decided to stick with 80-year-old Senator Ed Markey, despite his age, ignoring the Mitch McConnell situation while also forgetting that when Senator Ted Kennedy died while in office, the special election for his replacement was won by Republican Scott Brown, putting the passage of Obamacare in jeopardy. Buoyed by endorsements from former President Biden and VP Kamala Harris, something that still counts in Massachusetts, Dan Koh won the crowd election to fill the seat being vacated by Markey’s failed challenger, Congressman Seth Moulton.  The Massachusetts elections ran smoothly but fears about the midterms are growing.  Connecticut Senator Blumenthal revealed that a US Postal Service whistleblower provided his office with details about how the USPS is rushing to put in place the infrastructure to implement Trump’s anti-mail-in voting executive order. Putting aside that Trump’s mail-in order is supposed to be on hold pending Supreme Court review, his new Federal Ballot Mail Portal is seriously flawed or intentionally devious, or both, because as currently designed it would reject any bundle of mailed in votes if just one vote in the bundle was determined to be out of compliance with Trump’s onerous requirements; that could result in the disqualification of tens of thousands of votes.  Keeping with that voter squelching scheme, Republican officials in Tarrant County, Texas dramatically cut the number of voting sites for the midterms yesterday, reducing the total number of sites from 316 to 224.  Tarrant, Texas’ third largest county, includes Fort Worth and neighbors Dallas; it’s an area chock full of Democrats.  The intent of the polling site shrinkage is to make it harder for James Talarico, the Democratic candidate for the Senate who has been polling ahead of his Republican rival Ken Paxton, to get the votes he’ll need to pull off a victory.   

The Big NIMBY: The AI boom has generated an outsized need for more electricity because AI needs lots of data centers and those data centers need lots of electricity.  There was a time when politicians welcomed the building of data centers in their states but that was before voters woke up to the strains that those “ugly” data centers place on local electrical and water infrastructure.  Data centers are now the NIMBY that could influence the outcome of elections. Despite the increase in voter pushback, Trump who hates “ugly” electricity generating windmills, is all in on data centers. Democrats, including some who thought that the centers would create lots of jobs, are increasingly opposed to them, or at the very least want to be more judicious about where they’re built in part because it turns out that in addition to taxing local utilities, the centers mostly provide only short-term construction jobs rather than long term employment.  It’s not just data centers, Flock cameras, the automated license plate reading systems built by the Flock Safety company have now joined the midterm political discourse.  Civil libertarians and anyone who hasn’t figured out by watching a whole bunch of FBI and Law and Order episodes that little we do is private anymore are concerned. It’s not just that the increasingly ubiquitous Flock cameras help local authorities catch speedy drivers and “bad” guys, functions that are acceptable to many, it’s that the Flock cameras can also be set to send data to federal entities like ICE, those nice people who’ve been sending the Afghans who helped US troops back to the Taliban, Cubans refugees to Africa, Haitian law abiding workers back to the violent places they fled, while also accidentally deporting a few brown US citizens. 

More 💩:  The Met Gala will not be celebrating John Galliano on Holocaust Remembrance Day or any other day.  By a vote of 413 to 2, North Carolina Republican Congressman Chuck Edwards who is not seeking reelection was censured for harassing his female staff.  Milo Yiannopoulos, the right wing confrontational political commentator and operator who among other things spoke out against illegal immigrants overstayed his visa and has been deported back to the UK.

 

 

Sixty-Five Days😱 ✡️🌻 😱 🚀🚢

Oil, War, Maps:  The White House periodically sends out mass emails detailing Trump’s accomplishments. This weekend’s missive announced that the administration had secured majority control of 65 billion barrels of Venezuela’s oil, that the US controls the Strait of Hormuz, and that Lake Ontario has been renamed Lake America.  Putting aside the ethics of glomming onto another country’s oil, the 65 billion barrels that Trump claims to have secured are mythical at best since those barrels will only become accessible at some future day after major investment in Venezuela’s infrastructure takes place meaning that the White House’s assertion the stolen oil will immediately augment the US’s strategic reserve, currently at its lowest level since 1982, is bogus. The strategic petroleum reserve is at historically low levels due to the festering Iran mess where, despite the White House’s assertion, the US does not control the Strait of Hormuz.  Before the war 100 to 140 ships passed through the Strait daily, currently the daily volume is 10 to 14 ships, hardly an indication of US control. Yesterday’s attack by US forces of two Iranian rocket launchers trying to place sea mines into the Strait followed by Iran’s overnight retaliatory strikes on a US base in Jordan provides further evidence that the administration’s control claim is just more fiction. Even worse, the Washington Post reports that the US’s top military leaders formally pushed back against the continuation of military operations, including the moving of more carriers into the Middle east, warning War/Beer Secretary Hegseth that doing so threatens the US’s global military readiness. Naturally, Hegseth who can’t figure out why his efforts to restrict press access has done little to restrict accurate reporting and how, after he fired so many generals and admirals and ordered testosterone shots for “his” troops, he is still getting pushback, called the report fake news.  Giving credit where credit is due, Trump really did rename Lake Ontario.  That he renamed the lake in a fit of pique is pathetic, Google Map’s decision to go with its “new” name is embarrassing, more evidence of how low some US corporations will go to keep in Trump’s good graces.  In any case renaming a Great Lake does nothing to solve the affordability problem, but then again Trump keeps saying that affordability is a word invented by radical left wing Dumocrats and he’s got access to billions of federal funds for his pet projects, and he and his kids keep getting richer so he doesn’t really care.

Midterm Madness:  Today’s NY Post, generally reliably pro-Trump,  reports that aggregate polling data show Republicans trailing in eight battleground Senate races:  “down 2 points in Alaska, 7.5 points in Georgia,  2.3 points in Maine, 1.8 points in Michigan, 2.6 points in Ohio, 2 points in New Hampshire, 8 points in North Carolina, and 1.9 points in Texas.”  In addition, the polling data indicate that Republicans are only up by 1.4 points in Iowa.  With the exception of North Carolina and Georgia, these polls are within the margin of error and if we’ve learned anything by now, polls are frequently wrong and in the Trump era often underestimate Republican strength. That said, the polls do go far to explaining Trump’s ongoing efforts to limit mail-in ballots and otherwise squelch voting.  Michigan Democrat Senate candidate Abdul El Sayed who barely won his primary despite polls that showed him way ahead of his competitor is now working to bolster his lead by reaching out to his state’s skeptical Jewish voters, to convince them that his earlier comments, like one where he expressed sympathy for the bomber of a suburban Detroit, may have been a bit insensitive.  However, since he’s still unwilling to throw shade on the left’s current anti-Semitic darling Hasan Piker whose position is that pro-Israel Jews are responsible for the increasing number of anti-Semitic acts, it’s hard to see his outreach as anything more than a hollow political move.  The affinity for Hasan Piker, and the debate as to whether Democratic candidates should keep him by their side is hard to stomach, providing evidence that anti-Semitism is a both sides problem.  And it is a both sides problem, as evidenced by the June and July X (twitter) posts of swastikas, racial slurs, "white power" references, and an image showing himself in Ku Klux Klan robes that Preston Parra who was then an aide and campaign fundraiser for Georgia’s Republican Senate candidate/Congressman Mike Collins shared for all to see.  Collins is running against incumbent Senator Jon Ossoff who is Jewish, a point that Parra was likely trying to hammer home to voters who miss the days when white robes were in vogue.  Speaking of vogue, style not the magazine, it’s hard to understand why the Metropolitan Museum’s Fashion Institute has decided to honor designer John Galliano at its next Met Gala currently scheduled to take place on Holocaust Remembrance Day Yom HaShoah.  Apparently it’s okay that Galliano’s anti-Semitic rants mostly occurred when he was drunk. Alcohol loosens inhibitions it doesn’t turn you into an anti-Semite or a racist unless you are one. What’s next, honoring Nick Fuentes and David Dukes on Martin Luther King day?  Tomorrow is primary day in Massachusetts, where 80-year-old Democratic Senator Ed Markey is expected to easily beat    his Democratic competitor 47-year-old Congressman Seth Moulton because apparently we need to keep another 80-year-old in office?  Has anyone seen Mitch McConnell lately?     

Literally More 💩:  To save money, the US Department of Agriculture is shelving cyclospora research projects despite the fact that more than 17000 have been sickened by cyclospora this summer.  

 

 

Peak Stupid 😱 ✡️🌻 😱 🚀🚢

HOMES:  HOMES is right there with SOH CAH TOA, one of the acronyms that most of us learned to help with the memorization of the names of the five Great Lakes.  The good news is that SOH CAH TOA hasn’t been banished from trigonometry class.  The bad news is that HOMES will no longer do it for geography because to punish our Canadian neighbors for failing to concede to his changing trade demands, yesterday petulant binky baby Trump issued an executive order changing the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America and HAMES, a real word defined as the two curved pieces of metal or wood attached to a draft horse's collar, just doesn’t cut it.  It would be nice to believe that we’ve reached peak stupid, but sadly Trump who is growing increasingly panicked about the midterms has nothing but stupid left in his addled brain.  A lot of the stupid concerns voting, not what Trump can do to appeal to more voters, but what he can do to disrupt the upcoming elections.  Though Trump votes by mail he doesn’t want anyone likely to vote blue to do the same.  Late yesterday, Massachusetts based federal district court judge Indira Talwani issued a new temporary restraining order against Trump’s order to the Postal Service that it sit on ballots that he doesn’t want delivered and counted. Talwani’s ruling, which applies to all the states, sets the stage for consideration of the legality of Trump’s Executive Order by the Supreme Court whose earlier ruling allowing Trump’s voter squelching order to remain in place was only about the appropriateness of the Court ruling before the Postal Service had issued its final regulations, not about the substance of the Executive Order. With only 63 days left before the midterms, less when you count early voting, and with ballots about to be sent out, there’s not much time left for the Supreme Court to upend the midterms, not that some of them, but hopefully not a majority, won’t try. 

MAHA Not:  The US has reported 2,777 confirmed measles cases so far this year, the highest annual count since measles was declared eliminated in the US.  Those are just the reported cases; the actual case count is probably higher. This week it was reported that two Pennsylvanians, both unvaccinated, one an infant, had died after contracting the preventable disease.  Taking a page from the anti-vax playbook he authored, Health Secretary RFK, is now challenging whether those deaths were really from measles and not from something else like pneumonia or Trump derangement syndrome.  Don’t be fooled by RFK’s rhetoric or his attacking of Pennsylvania Governor Shapiro, something else that he’s been doing,  the deaths were measles related. Moreover, since one way that measles kills is by causing brain inflammation, it’s likely that there will be a few more deaths related to this year’s outbreak, some of them showing up years from now. Not that Senator Darline Graham cares much about that.  Fresh off of her primary win, Lindsey’s sister was out campaigning against universal health care, saying that her “parents worked long, hard hours to make ends meet…. If they were sick, they had to get up and go to work.” A strange talking point for someone whose financially stressed parents, who couldn’t afford health care died when she an adolescent; right up there with Iowa Senator Joni Ernst’s dismissing one of her constituent's concerns about Medicaid cuts leading to deaths by responding, "Well, we all are going to die.” Not long after making that remark, Ernst announced that she would not be running for reelection. Iowa’s Senate race between Republican Congresswoman Ashley Hinson and State Representative Democrat Josh Turek is now rated a “toss up.”  Unfortunately, it’s unlikely that the Trump endorsed Darline will follow suit or that South Carolina’s seat will fall out of Republican hands.  Turning back to RFK, recently released communication indicates that he lied to Congress when he said that the trip where he dissed vaccines to vulnerable Samoans wasn’t related to vaccines, not that lying to Congress gets Republicans into trouble anymore. In other health related news, COVID which never really left is back, doing its late summer thing.  New shots for the newest strain were approved by the FDA this week and should be available at your local pharmacy shortly.  

 More 💩:  The Iran mess is still a mess, and the Ukraine war is still a war.  CIA Director John Ratcliffe has just returned from a secret, unusual trip to Moscow.  Trump wants us to believe that Ratcliffe’s trip was routine.  It wasn’t, CIA Directors don’t make routine trips to Moscow.  The mostly likely reason for Ratcliffe’s trip is that despite Trump’s insistence that Putin is a nice guy, he isn’t.  Russia is getting more dangerous and reports are that the administration wanted to warn Putin against escalating, and by escalating think maybe dropping a nuke on Ukraine or invading a small Eastern European country or both.  There’s fraud news out of Florida, not surprising given that Trump resides at Mar a Lago and Senator Rick Scott’s association with the largest ever Medicaid and Medicare fraud.  The most recent news involves the leaking of grand jury testimony about how Governor Ron DeSantis’ wife Casey received $10 million from a state Medicaid settlement.  The money was supposed to go to her Hope Charity but was instead diverted it to the Governor’s anti marijuana legalization political campaign. Senator Ashley Moody who DeSantis appointed to replace Secretary of State Marco Rubio is implicated in the scandal as is his former chief of staff James Uthmeier, who he has since appointed state Attorney General.  The Grand Jury did not charge anyone, not because they didn’t believe there was corruption but because none of the people implicated were willing to talk.  Finally, there is one piece of positive news in an otherwise bleak weak that saw us lose Dolly Parton and Tim Curry.  The father of one of sailors on the US Lincoln who had been arrested by ICE has been released from custody, probably because someone figured out that the optics of grabbing him was bad. That’s good for him but the same can’t be said for lots of others including some very young children who’ve been rounded up even though none of them, adults or children, are dangerous.         

Be A Dolly 😱 ✡️🌻 😱 🚀🚢 🗳️ 👱‍♀️

The World: Yesterday Treasury Secretary Bessent detailed the onerous new sanctions intended to “cripple” Iran that the administration plans to impose on Iran, its trading partners, and complicit financial institutions.  He then said that the new sanctions wouldn’t be imposed immediately because the US does not want to "blow up" or crash the global financial system 🤦‍♀️. China which buys 80% of Iran’s oil exports responded by denouncing the threatened sanctions, calling them illegal while warning that it would retaliate, taking “all necessary measures” to protect its national interests. So much for solving the Iran crisis that Trump created and forcing the opening of the Strait of Hormuz through “crippling” sanctions rather than the kinetic warfare that has already failed to achieve the desired results.   As to bombing Iran to achieve regime change, the WSJ reports that before he made the decision to attack, Trump was warned by some of his military advisors and then DNI Tulsi Gabbard that bombs wouldn’t achieve his objectives,  that instead they would harden Iran’s resistance and could lead to the closing of the Strait. That’s not much of a bombshell, so it’s fair to assume that some of the sources for the WSJ article include people surrounding Veep Vance, who wants us all to know that he was one of those most skeptical of embarking on the Iran “skirmish.” With the midterms soon to be in the rearview window, Vance is starting to do a Trump distancing jig, prepping himself for 2028. Unfortunately, that jig doesn’t include crossing Trump on Canada.  Vance has been out and about defending Trump’s insane anti-Canada actions, even going so far as “accidentally” referring to Canada as a state.  Our neighbors to the north who, despite Transportation Secretary/Reality guy Sean Duffy’s assertion otherwise, have long been a loyal military ally, have now unleashed retaliatory sanctions. Canada is unlikely to forgive us anytime soon even if we are lucky enough to someday replace Trump with someone sane. Hopefully, voters in the state’s most affected by Trump’s Canada sanctions understand who is responsible for their pain.         

Elections 🗳️: On the domestic front, the Supreme Court issued another one of its shadow docket rulings on Monday, allowing the Trump administration to begin implementing the mail-in voting restrictions that Trump announced by executive fiat earlier this year.  That’s bad news, but not as bad as it sounds because SCOTUS justified its ruling by saying that it was premature for them to rule on the legality of Trump’s restrictions until the US Postal Service issued its final regulations.  Also, there is another lower court order that continues to stay Trump’s Executive Order. Adding to the confusion, the Post Office actually has issued final regulations but somehow or other SCOTUS hit the button to release it’s ruling without first checking its inbox. The bottom line is that at least for now, nothing has really changed and some states will be sending out absentee ballots for the midterms shortly. Additionally, states opposing Trump’s voter squelching Executive Order have already filed new lawsuits. That’s not to say that we shouldn’t be concerned but it’s unlikely that this order will be the thing that topples the upcoming midterms, which isn’t to say that something else like troops at polling places won’t.  As to elections, lifted by Trump’s endorsement and further helped by his weekend campaigning, Darline Graham defeated her opponent Congressman Ralph Norman in yesterday’s South Carolina Senate runoff.  As a result, she will be the state’s Republican’s Senate nominee and likely November winner. She’s obviously unqualified but it’s not like Norman, an extremist and an election denier was such a good option either.  For South Carolina’s voters it was slim pickings. And anyway, with Tommy Tuberville still in the Senate, at least until January when he’s likely to become Alabama’s Governor, she’s not the least qualified Senator around.

More 💩:  The DOJ is now threatening that Trump will demolish the “structurally and financially unstable” Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, replacing it with a large outdoor amphitheater, if he doesn’t get to close it for two years for the “renovation” that only he with his real estate and construction skills is capable of doing.  They also insist that he must be allowed to keep his name emblazoned on its wall.  The USS Abraham Lincoln is on its way home but unless someone in the administration develops a conscience, sailor Joshua Aviles’ father won’t be there to greet him because he’s been arrested by ICE.  Aviles’ father who has a legal work permit and has been in the US for 19-years was arrested by ICE over the weekend because that’s how we reward a parent whose son grew up to be a member of the US military..

RIP 👱‍♀️:   Dolly Parton was the best of us. Her legacy extends far beyond her music. Her charitable endeavors, estimated to amount to $600 million, included providing books to children, funding scholarships, donating to hurricane and flood relief, quietly funding uniforms for minority bands, and helping finance the Moderna COVID vaccine. Eighty years of Dolly wasn’t enough.

 

 

Happy Meals  🍔🍔   😱 ✡️🌻 😱 🚀🚢 🗳️

O Canada!  Trying to make sense about much of what the Trump administration does is a fool’s errand, so understanding why, with the midterms looming, we’re in a trade war with Canada is hard to fathom.   Last week it looked like a tariff deal with Canada had been worked out, at least until Friday night when Trump posted that the war was back on and that he was imposing 50% tariffs on $20 billion of Canadian goods including alcohol, clothing, personal goods, sports equipment, and holiday items.  Among the goods impacted by the tariffs are Canadian whiskeys, anoraks and overcoats, hockey sticks, and Christmas decorations.  Both sides are pointing fingers at each other for the deal falling apart, with American negotiators claiming that after the deal was essentially set the Canadians asked for more concessions and the Canadians saying that internal US disagreement sunk what they thought was a done deal. Reports are that the Canadians have it right because apparently the problem was an internal disagreement between the American negotiating team led by US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick who at the last minute put the kibosh on the deal over the components of trade that fall under the Commerce Department’s jurisdiction. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced that Canada will begin imposing retaliatory tariffs on US goods on September 8.  Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew summed up the situation by saying that Trump is "not to be trusted" because you "you can't make a good deal with a bad person.”  The war with Canada is on though it will probably be resolved, or partially resolved, before the war with Iran is because that one continues to fester.

Where’s the Beef:  Trump who is looking chubbier everyday doesn’t appear concerned about what his fight with Canada will do to affordability, but he is hyper focused on hamburgers 🍔🍔.  On Friday he announced that he will allow for up to 300,000 metric tons of ground beef to be imported into the US tariff free. He said that he will sign his new beef agreement in two weeks (it’s always two weeks), and that the imported beef, which will mostly come from Argentina, will be sold into the US at a 25% discount. US cattlemen whose profits are already down and will now be down even more weren’t consulted and aren’t happy about Trump’s deal.  Trump’s response to them is that those nice Argentine cattlemen are suffering so he needs to help them out, especially if helping them out brings down some of the inflation that he’s caused with his Iran war, not that he admits to there being affordability issues and anyway if there are any, they’re Biden’s fault. It is a bit weird that Trump appears to be angering Texas and Michigan voters with his trade policies in the run up to the midterms given that the two states have competitive Senate races that could impact who controls the Senate next year but then again he’s doing everything he can to make it harder for Democratic leaning people to vote so maybe he just wants to bring down the cost of his Happy Meals 🍟 🍔and hates Canadians?  

More 💩 :  Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts gave Trump the go ahead to keep building his East Wing ballroom/military installation while the whole Court considers whether his building project is legally permitted. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that SCOTUS will ultimately rule in his favor possibly justifying its ultimate decision by saying that the project is a fait accompli.  A few more 🐀s have announced plans to leave the Trump ship though not all of them are going far, as a few, like former Press Secretary Leavitt are just moving to campaign jobs with pro-Trump political entities. The soon to leave crowd includes Ed Martin, the election denying Director of the DOJ’s Weaponization Group, who was at one point an unconfirmable Acting US Attorney for Washington DC.  Martin is going to a pro-Trump law firm where he’ll be focusing on undoing election results that Trump doesn’t like. Reports are that Army Secretary Dan Driscoll will be leaving his role at the Pentagon at the end of the year.  He’s a part of Veep Vance camp who has been involved in a “turf war” with Secretary of War and Beer Hegseth.  Word is that Hegseth wants Driscoll ousted because he fears that if Driscoll’s nearby when Trump needs someone to hold responsible for the Iran mess, Driscoll will be Hegseth’s replacement. Not leaving, or at least not so far, is comfort binky Natalie whose love letters to Trump are even weirder than first reported and who managed to avoid getting security vetted for a year.  Kudos to Face the Nation’s Margaret Brennan for staying focused on Trump and RFK’s vaccine idiocy.  She backed Dr Oz into a corner, getting him to say that the MMR vaccine is not lethal despite Trump’s claim otherwise. It was kind of fun watching Oz squirm as he tried hard to avoid answering Brennan’s repeated question.  Tuesday is runoff day in Georgia and South Carolina and primary day in Oklahoma.  The South Carolina runoff is for Lindsey Graham’s seat. Trump who has recently seen a few of the candidates he endorsed lose, campaigned over the weekend for Lindsey’s sister Darline, not because the South Carolina seat won’t stay red regardless of who wins the runoff but because he’s nervous about another one of his endorsement recipients losing.  Proving that elections, even the local ones that don’t get much national attention matter, last week the Democrat’s hold on the Pennsylvania House got a little less tenuous after a Democrat flipped what had been a Trump plus 18 points/Republican plus 30 points seat. Another warning about polls, it turns out that some recent ones weren’t just statistically junky, they were totally fabricated. The faux polls which were produced by a previously unknown organization Median Strategies include one that showed Wisconsin Governor candidate Francesca Hong up by over 20 points in the race that she ultimately lost to David Crowley and a more recent one that showed LA Mayor Karen Bass leading her opponent Nithya Raman by roughly 12 points.  Ignore the polls and vote!

Twister 😱 ✡️🌻 😱 🚀🚢 🗳️

War and Debt:  With bombs and missiles not doing the job, Trump has pivoted to threatening to destroy Iran’s economy, by taking “the MOST CRUSHING ECONOMIC OPERATION EVER TAKEN AGAINST ANY COUNTRY.”  His Truth Social post is being echoed by Treasury Secretary Bessent who says that the threatened economic action will begin on Monday which sounds an awful lot like a version of Trump’s “in two weeks.” Bessent, who also said that he doesn’t understand the spike in oil prices and that fewer jobs are okay because we’ve deported so many workers, is either very stupid, really disingenuous or both.  It’s not just oil prices that are spiking; long term Treasury rates are too, they’ve reached levels not seen since 2007.  To quote economist/Wharton professor Mohammed El-Erian who called the rise in Treasury yields “breathtaking,” the rate increase is due to “stubborn” inflation,  government debt ballooning to $40 trillion and fiscal deficits, and the “sting of higher gas and diesel prices due to the war in Iran” combined with the “staggering” growth in borrowing by technology companies and the “diminished appetite” for Treasuries by traditional international purchasers. In layman’s term, Trump’s tax cuts plus war plus the enormous funding requirements to build AI infrastructure plus fewer Treasury buyers equals higher borrowing costs, including mortgage rates.  Remember when Trump said that he’d eliminate the national debt, lower interest rates, get rid of “Biden’s” inflation, and that his Iran war would be over in four to five weeks. Forget about it.    

Peeps: In 2003 Barbra Streisand sued a photographer for sharing an aerial view of her Malibu home. Prior to her lawsuit only a handful of people had downloaded the photo, as a result of her lawsuit it went viral and thus the term Streisand Effect entered the vernacular.  Trump aide Natalie Harp, who one media outlet is now referring to as one of his “peroxide blonds” and who the NY Times’ Maggie Haberman calls his binky is experiencing her Streisand moment, the result of Trump’s minions protesting far too much about the stories concerning her uniquely bizarre behavior as Trump’s current it girl. It’s not clear who has been leaking all the details about Natalie to the press, some have suggested that the source is his peeved outgoing Press Secretary Leavitt, but the leaks are oddly funny, particularly her running alongside Trump’s golf cart and the over the top love notes she gives him not to mention her jumping into the trunk of his SUV and the printer she always carries slung over her shoulder while teetering on her de rigueur nude colored heelers.   Possibly in an effort to push back against all the attention Natalie has been getting, Trump rolled out the infrequently seen Melania yesterday who judging by her comment that she’s heard she was missed, is in on the joke. While Natalie doesn’t appear to be going anywhere, Trump has lost another senior staff member. James Braid who’d served as the director of legislative affairs has joined the other 🐀 🐀 abandoning the ship.  On the subject of ships, the Navy is “considering” changing the USS Doris Miller’s name to the USS Donald Trump.  The ship is the first air force carrier named after a Black soldier, a hero of Pearl Harbor, while Trump is someone who had faux heel spurs.  In other people news, former Congressman Eric Swalwell’s home was searched by the FBI which left with a number of his electrical devices and Democratic Congressman Jimmy Gomez is being investigated for sexual harassment by the House Ethics Committee.  Then there is Lindsey Graham’s sister Darline, the Trump endorsed interim South Carolina Senator.  She flubbed a question about Taiwan during a Tuesday debate with her Republican primary runoff opponent Ralph Norman saying that she wasn’t “informed on national security” because it isn’t her thing. She may know nothing about international affairs, but she certainly knows a lot about Republican priorities because on Wednesday during an appearance on Fox she said her flub didn’t matter because South Carolinians are more concerned about boys playing girls' sports than about tensions between "enemy" China and "friend" Taiwan.

MAHA Not:  Trump has nominated White House advisor Dr Heidi Overton to be the next head of the FDA.  Overton has questioned the safety of “medication abortion,” saying that the FDA was wrong to allow mifepristone to be prescribed by telehealth. An RFK acolyte, she called Trump’s executive order changing the childhood vaccine schedule a “historic action” (historically stupid?) and backs his call to break up the MMR shot. Dead Man Walking Senator Bill Cassidy whose support she’ll need for confirmation has “reservations” about her but then again he had concerns about RFK and about Todd Blanche and ultimately voted to confirm both even though he knew he shouldn’t.  We may be about to see another one of those “we know she’s awful, but Trump wants her” votes with Susan Collins getting an election year pass and Lisa Murkowski walking to the beat of an Alaskan drum.

More 💩:  ABC/Disney is suing the FCC for trying to take away some of its broadcast licenses for failing to adequately kowtow to Trump’s whims.  After a too long stay at sea, the USS Lincoln which Trump said wasn’t at sea long enough is on its way home. Secretary of War/Beer Hegseth insists that all was hunky-dory aboard the ship, but it wasn’t.  It wasn’t just low morale, there really was a supply shortage, the result of Iran’s attacks on the Navy’s storage facilities in the region, something that Hegseth doesn’t want to talk about.  On the election front, assuming we have elections, the Cook Political Report has moved Texas’ and Iowa’s Senate races from Lean Republican to Toss-Up.  They’ve also moved Texas’ Governor race from Solid R to Lean R and Iowa’s from Toss-Up to Lean Democrat.   😊 🤷‍♀️ And maybe in an omen of things to come, there was a tornado on Long Island last night.  

 

 

 

Harps, Heart, and Trunks 😱 ✡️🌻 😱 🚀🚢 🗳️

Quagmire Chronicles:  Remember the sixty-day memorandum of understanding with Iran that was supposed to be the beginning of the end of the Iran war, well forget about it because the MOU has expired.  Trump who continues to insist that the Strait of Hormuz is open even though it isn’t, said on Tuesday that there is no ongoing dialogue with Iran to end the war, and no discussions scheduled and son in law Kushner, Trump’s not so qualified special envoy, reported that Iran is "not showing any interest" in striking a deal that "makes sense" for the United States.  According to the Wall Street Journal, it’s not just that Iran isn’t showing any interest in a deal, they viewed the ceasefire that accompanied the now expired MOU as an opportunity to prepare for a longer war with the Revolutionary Guard using the time to consolidate its control and bolster the regime’s supply of missiles and drones while also tightening its grip on the Strait of Hormuz. Trump has now threatened to bomb Oman, saying that its independent efforts to cut a deal with Iran to open the Strait is getting in the way of the US making a peace deal. Trump isn’t going to bomb Oman, but his outrageous threat which should but won’t provoke a 25^th Amendment removal, provides further evidence of how much he’s flailing.  His attempt to reignite his love affair with North Korea’s Kim Jung Un is a further admission that his Iran adventure is a festering failure.  He needs to distract with a new shiny object, so what if that object destabilizes South Korea and our Asian allies.  The WSJ reports that Trump is now pushing for his aides to schedule a meeting with Kim Jong Un, to “convince him to abandon his nuclear program” because he’s so good at getting countries to give up their nukes?

The Ballot Box 🗳️:  It turns out that very few Alaskan voters found the presence of an extra Dan Sullivan on their ballot confusing.  The “faux” Dan received only 2% of the votes, while the “real” one, incumbent Republican Senator Dan Sullivan, received 43%, coming in second to Democrat Mary Peltola who received 48% of the vote.  Incumbent Dan and Peltola will advance to the November election which is likely to be close with Peltola standing a chance of picking up a Senate seat for the Democrats, maybe.  In Florida, place saver incumbent Republican Senator Ashley Moody who Governor DeSantis had appointed as Marco Rubio’s interim replacement easily won her primary, She’ll face off against State Representative Angie Nixon who easily beat Alexander Vindman.  Much is being made of Nixon’s victory because she’s a “progressive” who recently changed her affiliation from Democrat to Democratic Socialist.  However, the odds of her beating Republican Moody in November aren’t great and her “socialist” affiliation probably won’t help her in Florida. The November Governor’s race in Florida might be much closer.  MAGA Congressman Byron Donalds easily won the Republican primary but failed to get 50% of the vote despite Trump’s endorsement.  With 61% of the Democratic vote, David Jolly the former Republican who is now a moderate Democrat, cruised to victory in his primary. Though Democrats haven’t won a statewide race in Florida since they won the Commissioner of Agriculture seat in 2018, Jolly stands a chance of beating Donalds in the fall partly because Donalds is a divisive candidate but also because it’s not clear that some reliably red voters, particularly those in the Panhandle area will show up for a Black candidate and Donalds is Black. Continuing with the racial theme there was lots of noise about Democrat Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a victim of Republican redistricting, having the nerve to run in the majority Black district she ran in, but the long-term Congresswoman ran there anyway, and won and is expected to win again in November. To be clear, the Congressional Black Caucus doesn’t oppose her politics, she’s long been a reliable ally, it’s just that they’re frustrated by how many of their members have been gerrymandered out of their seats.  The District’s prior representative Democrat Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick had earlier resigned as the result of a scandal. Despite being challenged by an anti-Israel Democratic Socialist, incumbent Jared Moskowitz won his race too.  Moskowitz’s November race will be a tough one since his new South Florida district has been gerrymandered to advantage Republicans.  On the anti-Semitic front, much to the relief of the Republican party, Nazi loving, pro-Hitler candidate Dan Bilzerian lost his primary, that’s a good thing, but not so good is that the party’s victor in his race is incumbent Randy Fine, an extreme Islamophobe.  Despite being endorsed by Trump, embattled incumbent Cory Mills lost his reelection bid.  That’s good news for those who believe that men who beat up the women in their lives shouldn’t be in Congress,  

More 💩:  Georgia Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff who is up for reelection and doing remarkably well according to the polls, for what that is worth and in his case his 7 points lead over Republican Mike Collins is likely worth a lot.  His polling position is particularly notable since his seat was supposed to be an easy pick-up for Republicans.  Ossoff, who is really good at staying on message, is living rent free in Trump’s head.  Quite a few of his Trump slamming speeches have gone viral in a good way, and this week he went where few have been willing to go, mocking the “draft dodging, crook” Trump for “only wanting to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie.” The Natalie in question is Natalie Harp, the 35- year-old Ivanka clone who previously was best known for being Trump’s human printer. Harp was one of those who Trump took on his decoy plane when he snuck out of Turkey. She is so attached to Trump that Chief of Staff Susie Wiles became concerned about the adoring ❤️ notes she shares with him. Reports are that staying close by is so important to Harp, and presumably Trump, that she sleeps in the women’s locker room when he’s at his Bedminster club, and once jumped into and rode in the trunk of his SUV when there was no room for her inside the vehicle. While Harp isn’t going anywhere, another woman, Emily Underwood who as top deputy to Stephen Miller was a senior policy strategist, is exiting.  Rats 🐀 leaving the ship. Money is leaving the ship too. SCOTUS refused to hear Trump’s last ditch bid to overturn the $5 million, now $5.6 million awarded to E Jean Caroll meaning the money is finally hers.  Trump is still appealing the much larger $83 million that was awarded to her after he continued to trash her.  Lastly, count yourself smart and a bit richer if you are long Moderna stock.  This morning the company announced that it and Merck’s mRNA shot for melanoma showed positive results in a late-stage trial. Further evidence that the mRNA technology that the RFK crowd likes to slam is a good thing.