Heartbreak 😱 ✡️🌻 😱 🚀🚢 💔

Death and Despair:  There have been 25 school shootings this year that resulted in injuries or death, a total of 266 such shootings since January 2018. Yesterday, one of those horrific shootings took place at the Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend, Oregon where a sixteen-year-old with a long gun probably with rapid firing capability, killed four people, leaving an additional two victims in intensive care.  Three of the dead were children, as is one of those in intensive care.  No doubt the usual cast of characters will call for prayer and more guns, while the rest of us scream and cry 💔😢 in sorrow and frustration and the affected families howl in despair.  Thousands of miles away, the Trump administration with an assist by Elon Musk is doing what they can to help Russia’s Putin ramp up some of that despair in Ukraine in the war Trump promised he’d end on day one of this administration. Nine Ukrainians were killed and thirty-five more were injured after Elon Musk’s Starlink /Starshield intentionally hindered Ukraine’s air defense and drone interception efforts in the face of continuing Russian strikes.  Musk took to X (twitter) to justify the connectivity cutback, pointing the finger directly at the US Pentagon.  This morning Reuters reported that the decision to leave Ukraine vulnerable to attack came from “someone” in the White House, that someone being Trump who continues to favor Russia, blaming Ukraine’s attacks on Russia for the war and for the rise in fuel costs that are largely due to the Iran war. It’s probably not just the attacks on Russia’s diesel facilities that have Trump weighing in on Russia’s behalf, the Ukrainians have recently taken out some of the data centers which house the nefarious Russian bot farms that spread disinformation about Democrats and the integrity of US elections.  There is no such thing as a coincidence, and also Trump who loves Putin hates Ukraine, especially Zelenskyy.

Midterm Mayhem:  Trump is really nervous about what’s likely to happen in the midterms.  In addition to coming up with monetary bribes intended to sway voters to help them cope with the affordability crisis that he insists doesn’t exist, he has the Department of Justice suing California, asking a judge to bar the state from counting mail-in ballots from people that the federal government alleges are “likely” noncitizens until their immigration status can be confirmed. The DOJ is claiming that California officials are engaging in election fraud because they failed to meet an absurd 48-hour deadline to review a thumb drive that they assert contains a list of 20,000 names of “likely” noncitizens who were sent ballots to participate in the upcoming midterms.  California’s Secretary of State says that the administration has provided no evidence to support their non-citizen claims and Mark Elias, Democracy Docket’s election lawyer/guru, says that the DOJ’s lawsuit is just more anti-election bull shittery and that the DOJ will lose in court.  What’s really happening is that Trump who has long called California’s mail-in election process fraudulent is trying to preemptively upend the midterm results by deleting California.  Forty-three of California’s 52 House seats are currently held by Democrats, as a result of California’s tit for tat redistricting, an additional five seats could go blue.  Trump’s plan is to discredit or even eliminate California’s results so that he can claim that Republicans won the midterms by a landslide, creating another January 6, one with no one playing the role of Mike Pence. In other midterm news, there were a few more debates but none for the Texas Senate race because Republican Ken Paxton refuses to debate his opponent James Talarico which is why Talarico participated in a CNN town hall.  Naturally, the media echo chamber being so bifurcated, right-wing press like the NY Post insists that Talarico fell on his face, while those on the left insist that he was charming, honest, and did a great job. One thing’s for certain, Republicans, especially Elon Must, are very nervous about both Talarico and Governor candidate Gina Hinojosa’s chances. Musk has funneled $168 million into Ken Paxton’s campaign coffers. Tesla and SpaceX are based in Texas; Musk really wants to keep all the goodies that the state has granted him because staying a trillionaire instead of a mere billionaire relies on those Texas tax incentives and polluting privileges.  In other political news, Trump has cancelled the live streaming of the firing squad execution of the Fort Hood murderer likely because it was polling bigly badly. The execution is still scheduled to take place in early December.    

Peeps 🚶‍♀️ 🚶‍♀️:  It turns out that new Press Secretary Katie Zacharia failed the California bar exam the one time she took it and didn’t try again. The California bar has a high failure rate and being a lawyer is not a requirement for a press secretary; the problem is that she’s spent years calling herself a lawyer and it’s a violation of California law to call yourself a lawyer if you haven’t passed a bar exam.  By Trump standards, Katie’s crime is a nothing burger, but it’s embarrassing for Trump that he publicly called the likely unvetted Katie a lawyer on live TV, so she’d better become very good at her new job very soon because Trump is all in firing right now.  The Kimberly Guilfoyle ouster received lots of attention but wasn’t this week’s only notable axing.  Paolo Zampolli, the Trump friend/model impresario who supposedly introduced Trump to wife Melania was also shown the door.  Zampolli who’d been serving as a Special Envoy at the State Department had gotten into a nasty email fight with Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau.  The tiff included accusations of leaks to the media and threats of defamation and involved more than a dozen administration officials.  One of those leaks concerned how Zampolli had Amanda Ungaro, the former model who is his son’s mother, deported back to Brazil. Politico reports that the blood shed has just begun, that Chief of Staff Susie Wiles head might also be on the chopping block since Trump is looking for someone to blame for what is expected to be a dismal midterm performance.  To that end, he’s been floating the idea of replacing her with Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, real estate buddy/special envoy Steve Witkoff, Housing Finance Director Bill Pulte, NY Yankee President Randy Levine , or former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.  Also, if former Trump lawyer Alina Habba has her way, Ric Grennell, Trump’s former Ambassador to Germany and former head of the Kennedy Center is about to land in hot water.  Habba who recently married a younger, very rich Turkish businessman/political operative named Turhan Mildon, is asserting that Grennell failed to account for somewhere around $6 million that her new husband donated to the Kennedy Center. We will likely get to read about some of this in greater detail as there are reports that Guilfoyle kept a burn book and Zampolli who interacted with Jeffrey Epstein knows a lot more about Trump and Melania than he’s currently saying which is largely why he was a Special Envoy in the first place.

 

The Xerox Effect 😱 ✡️🌻 😱 🚀🚢 💩

Peeps 👫:  Yesterday was newbie Press Secretary Katie Zacharia’s first day on the job.  Zacharia was nervous and had trouble reading her prepared script, not all that surprising given that she was chosen for promoting conspiracy theories and because she looks like a clone of Ivanka, albeit a copy of a copy suffering from the Xerox Effect. Zacharia who despite her weird assertion that she passed the bar in China does not appear to have ever passed a bar exam in either the US or China. Being a lawyer is not a requirement of her new job but it’s a bad sign that she keeps lying about her credentials, then again lying is another thing she was hired to do. Unlike previous press secretaries, Zacharia was rushed into service after receiving only some minimal coaching from Trump who reportedly hired her without first informing Chief of Staff Susie Wiles.  To make an opening splash, she was gifted the privilege of dropping the notable news nugget that US Ambassador to Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle had been asked to submit her resignation. It’s not clear whether Guilfoyle’s excessive grifting got her booted or whether it was timing of the articles about the grifting that got her fired, but at this point it doesn’t matter, she’s out. Before heading to a campaign stop to Alaska, another one of those reliably red states that’s looking less reliable, Trump said that he hadn’t spoken to Guilfoyle, adding that he barely knew her though he’d heard that she had once been his oldest son’s girlfriend. As he was dashing off, he also tried to recharacterize his promised purchase of Russian diesel as not a US purchase while denying he cut off intelligence sharing with Ukraine. For her part Guilfoyle tried to save her job by pushing back against the WSJ reports of her incriminating texts that included instructions she’d provided a Republican donor as to how he could “secretly” pay off her American Express bill by saying that were AI generated by nefarious anti-MAGA players.  Despite her protests, she had wonderful things to say about Trump on her way out the door. It’s fair to assume that Kimberly’s kind words will transform into a tell-all book if she doesn’t get one of Trump’s ubiquitous pardons. It’s worth noting that we haven’t heard much from Don Jr, the son Kimberly was engaged to for four years, because while Kimberly’s grifts were bad the wedding festivities that Don and his new wife Bettina were gifted by Russian oligarch Umar Kremlev were too. It’s not a stretch to believe that Don Jr who can’t be fired has been told to lay low, at least until after the midterms. 

More Peeps 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 🧑‍🤝‍🧑:  Guilfoyle wasn’t the only MAGA Republican hit by Murdoch’s WSJ this week. Yesterday the paper published an article detailing how Republican Ken Paxton, Texas’ current Attorney General and Senate candidate had spent New Year’s Eve 2024 partying in Dubai with two fugitives from US justice and a woman who wasn’t his wife. At this point everyone knows that Paxton is a sleaze so while the disclosure about the Dubai partying is new, it’s not clear that it will impact the Texas Senate race.  It’s also not clear whether the false rumors that Paxton’s camp spread about his competitor Democrat James Talarico’s flu “really” being a mental breakdown will move the needle but Paxton and Elon Musk who amplified them must think that they might, and to be fair, they could especially with VP Vance targeting Talarico with a homophobic joke intended to question Talarico’s sexual orientation. The polls show Talarico a few points ahead of Paxton, but his edge is within the margin of error and it’s Texas. Polls also show that the race between Texas’ Republican Governor Abbott and his Democratic challenger Gina Hinajosa is surprisingly close.  The most current poll shows Abbott leading Hinajosa but only by one point, well within the margin of error.  All that too close for Republican comfort polling explains why Elon Musk, is throwing somewhere north of $300 million into the midterms on behalf of Republican candidates. It’s not just Musk’s personal beliefs, it’s also all about his business interests; he needs data centers with benefits and fears that Democratic victories will make those centers harder and more expensive to come by. In other people news, on Monday agents from the Department of Homeland Security raided Democratic Representative Ilhan Omar’s Washington DC area house.  It’s thought that they were seeking proof that Omar and/or her father had lied about her age in 2000 when filling out her naturalization papers by saying she was 17 when she may have already turned 18.  The age thing, even if it turns out to be true and there’s no evidence that it is, is probably a ruse.  Trump has repeatedly called for Omar to be deported for being Muslim, for her political positions, for being Somalian, and for being from being from “fraud ridden” Minnesota.  The DOJ supposedly follows a “60 Day Rule” of not going after politicians within 60 days of elections but these days they aren’t all that into convention especially when convention stands in the way of Trump’s commands and going after Omar is one of his things. You don’t have to like Omar to view this as a very bad act but then again so is a public streamed execution and though that might not happen due to political and religious leader pushback, it still might.  Lastly on the people front, Pope Leo had a cancerous node and part of his right lung removed yesterday.  Why does it feel like bad things seem only to happen to good people these days?  😮‍💨

More 💩: Late yesterday Federal District Judge Timothy Kelly extended his order blocking the Trump administration from banning CNN, Politico, and MSNOW from the White House complex. He rejected the Trump administration’s assertion that the block was for national security purposes saying it was obvious that it was viewpoint discrimination, all about violating free speech as well as the due process rights he’d earlier cited. The judge’s ruling is a good thing but as evidenced by Trump’s cutting down somewhere north of 500 trees at the East Potomac Municipal golf course in violation of a court ruling and the continued airing of government paid Trump political ads, he and his DOJ aren’t all that interested in abiding by court orders these days.        

 

Twenty-two Days 😱 ✡️🌻 😱 🚀🚢 💩

Fuel and Mirrors:  Trump is throwing everything he can at the wall in the hope that something will stick so over the weekend he announced that the US will begin buying diesel from Russia, a sketchy effort to lower fuel prices that conveniently for Putin also sends money to cash strapped Russia.  Trump then followed up by announcing that he had negotiated an energy truce between Ukraine and Russia, one where each side agreed to stop attacking the other side’s energy infrastructure. The problem is that the US isn’t supposed to be buying oil from Russia.  We’ve penalized other countries for their purchases, and the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act that Trump signed in to law on September 16 imposes additional penalties for such purchases.  Moreover, the amount of diesel that Trump said the US will be purchasing represents a very small, almost insignificant percentage of our needs so it will do little to lower domestic prices.  Moreover, it’s not even clear that Russia has the fuel to sell us.  As to the energy truce, it takes two to tango; as evidenced by this weekend’s attacks on Ukraine it doesn’t appear that Putin has any interest in abiding by any truce and despite Trump ratcheting up his verbal attacks on the Ukraine leader, Zelenskyy would be a fool to stop attacking Russia’s energy infrastructure unilaterally and he’s no fool. In other war news, the Iran backed Houthis struck two Saudi Arabia airports this weekend, including King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh and King Fahd International Airport in Dammam. The Riyadh airport strike killed at least 12 people and wounded over 300, including an American citizen, and a follow-up attack killed one person and injured 11 more.  Saudi Arabia is responding in kind.  It’s only a matter of time before we jump in, the Saudis would like that time to be sooner rather than later and aren’t happy that the US midterms are standing in the way. In other war related news, over the weekend the Pentagon quietly updated US casualty numbers.  The military now reports that 21 US soldiers have died and an additional 865 have been wounded but not to worry because War Secretary Hegseth is checking testosterone levels and planning a live streamed execution that will make mass murderer paraplegic Nidal Hasan more of a martyr to his supporters than he already is.   

Retribution:  Though, as detailed by the NY Times, Trump’s Miami investigation into the “grand conspiracy” launched against him by the likes of former CIA Director Brennan, President Obama, former FBI Director James Comey and a host of others appears to be flailing he hasn’t given up on pursuing retribution, if anything he’s ramping up. In addition to targeting former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, he’s now going after Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook again.  On Friday he announced that the White House has formed a committee to investigate Cook and that he would be holding a hearing to consider whether to fire her over the unproven allegations that she committed mortgage fraud.  Trump’s extrajudicial “committee of inquiry” will be comprised of Trump’s deputies.  The banana republic style hearing is scheduled to take place on November 5, right about the same time that Trump will be working on overturning the results of the midterms. Trump also remains all in on banning the press that he doesn’t like.  To that end, despite court rulings that his ban isn’t kosher, his Justice Department, and it is his Justice Department because no one, least of all Attorney General Todd Blanche acts like it isn’t, is now investigating ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News and NBC, the five US TV networks that provide pool coverage for White House events for possible antitrust violations.  The networks’  “crime”: standing up for each other by refusing to provide a substitute on those days when CNN, one of the networks banned by Trump, is scheduled to perform its pool responsibilities. This is a First Amendment issue rather than an antitrust one, but details like that don’t seem to concern Trump’s DOJ.  Also on the communications front, Trump announced the appointment of Katie Zacharia, a blonde clone of many of his prior Press Secretaries as well as binky Natalie, as his new one. Zacharia previously worked for Trump Media, the Department of Homeland Security, Fox News and Newsmax. In some of her since deleted social media posts lawyer Zacharia called for the suspension of habeas corpus, the takeover of California, labeled Bill Gates a “eugenicist” for supporting the COVID vaccine, and falsely claimed that mifepristone was created by the same people who manufactured Zyklon B, the poison gas used by the Nazis. In other words, she’s perfect for her new job.  

Midterm Madness:  Early voting is underway. The polls look good for Democrats but, and it’s a big BUT, we’ve been here before.  Cook Political Report moved 18 more races in the direction of Democrats on Friday.  They are projecting that the Democrats total House pick up will be between 9 to 19 seats.  Even if they are being too conservative, the pick-up is likely to be far short of the 40 House seats that the Democrats gained during the 2018 midterms largely because so many seats are too gerrymandered to be impacted even by a wave election.  As to the Senate, pollster pundits warn that at this point in the cycle, undecided voters tend to return to their usual party when they cast their votes. Additionally, though polling in front is certainly better than polling behind, a lot of the races where Democrats are out polling their competitors remain within the margin of error meaning that those undecideds could split in a way that affect outcomes.  Pundits say that the most predictive polls are the ones from unbiased sources where one of the candidates has actually crossed the 50% threshold.  So far only Georgia’s Jon Ossoff and North Carolina’s Roy Cooper are consistently in that comfort zone. Alaska’s Peltola is too; however, Alaska has ranked choice voting so outcomes there can take a while to figure out. One more thing on the Senate front, Republicans spread a lot of false rumors about Texas Democrat James Talarico last week. Talarico was off the trail for around ten days with a really bad case of the flu, the conspiracy mongers claimed he had suffered a mental breakdown.  It wasn’t a break down; it was a bad case of the flu complicated by Talarico’s previously disclosed Type 1 diabetes.  Talarico is back on the campaign trail, he’s fine as evidenced by his jibe that while he had the flu, Republican Ken Paxton is suffering from an incurable cowardice for refusing to participate in a debate. Still that race is depressingly close and Texas is Texas.  As to the flu, it sucks, it’s making an early appearance, so far mostly in western parts of the country but it is expected to show up near the rest of us soon. Time to get vaccinated. 

 
Knitting Needles 😱 ✡️🌻 😱 🚀🚢 💩

Grifters Grift:  Kimberly Guilfoyle, the one-time fiancée of Don Jr who before cosmetic surgery turned her into a Mar a Lago meme was California Governor Gavin Newsom’s first wife, is back in the news and this time the subject isn’t her love life, it’s her grifting.  Guilfoyle is currently the US Ambassador to Greece; the consolation prize she was gifted to get her out of the way after Don Jr moved on to Bettina Anderson who he then married during an event filled Bahamas wedding partially paid for by a Russian oligarch. It turns out that the partying Guilfoyle whose term in Athens had already been marked by reports that she almost always has a Greek construction and energy firm lobbyist named Christos Marafatsos by her side during her official diplomatic meetings, has also been involved in some creative grifting.  The Wall Street Journal reports that she persistently reached out to a Trump donor and former congressional candidate named Eric Deters, pleading with him to wire $100,000 to her American Express account shortly before her Senate confirmation hearing because was concerned that having such a large outstanding balance would put her confirmation in jeopardy but that having a Trump donor discretely pay off her debt would not.  Her text chain which culminated with Deters, who was annoyed that she’d never managed to get his IRS problems resolved, saying that he couldn’t wire the money because his wife would kill him if she caught him paying off another woman’s bills are bizarrely entertaining, particularly the ones in which Guilfoyle who clearly knows that her request is beyond the pale, or would be beyond the pale if she wasn’t part of the Trump universe, begs him to stop putting their communications in writing or at the very least he move them to an encrypted app like Signal.   Guilfoyle’s behavior is outrageous but pales in comparison to yesterday’s report that Secretary of War and Testosterone Pete Hegseth has Trump’s permission to publicly live stream the scheduled firing squad execution of Nidal Hasan, who killed 13 people at Fort Hood in 2009.  The US hasn’t held a public execution in 90 years but then again we’ve never had an administration populated by twisted Fox hosts and reality TV stars before.  Hasan is a bad guy who committed a heinous crime but a publicly aired firing squad execution regardless of one’s views of the death penalty hardly qualifies as family entertainment. Perhaps if she can find some knitting 🧶 paraphernalia, Natalie “Binkie” Harp can play the part of Madame DeFarge?

More People 💩:  According to the NY Times, Chris LaCivita who co-managed Trump’s 2024 campaign and who currently acts as a senior advisor to Trump’s MAGA PAC and James Blair who was the White House’s deputy chief of staff before transitioning to the MAGA PAC where he’s been “spearheading” midterm election strategy have also been advising and receiving bigly payments from Republika Srpska, a pro-Russian self-governing territory within Bosnia and Herzegovina.  In an effort to distance himself Trump posted on Truth Social that he barely knows them, that they are just outside consultants but if all that outside pro-Russian consulting is a conflict of interest, he’ll terminate them immediately.  LaCivita and Blair will probably survive unscathed because Russia, but the same can’t be said of Cassidy Hutchinson who testified against Trump during his second impeachment hearing.  Yesterday it was reported that the Department of Justice is presenting “evidence” to a Grand Jury about how Hutchinson “lied” during her testimony.  The DOJ is using the Office of Civil Rights rather than it’s DC office perhaps because of DC US Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s reflecting pool failure.  The Civil Rights office is headed by Harmeet Dillon who doesn’t believe in civil rights, or at least in pursuing civil rights for minorities but is apparently all in on going after Trump’s enemies.  Dillon’s office has been in the news lately because of who she’s been hiring to replace the 300 attorneys who’ve either been fired or jumped ship from her division.  According to the NY Times her replacement contingent includes lawyers with criminal records, misconduct allegations, and love of conspiracy theories.  Then there’s former Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, who left the White House to spend more time with her family but maybe because she didn’t want to be around the binky lady, apparently she’s had enough with that.  Leavitt announced this week that she is joining FOX.

Even More 💩:  INS shootings are now taking place in NYC where an “undocumented” man who did have a criminal record was shot in his car in front of his five- year- old daughter who was in the back seat.  The shooting took place in a residential area near several schools because why not put lots of other lives at risk at 4 pm when so many students are out and about?  Yesterday US District Court Judge Timothy Kelly extended the temporary restraining order that’s supposed to preserve White House press access for CNN, MS NOW, and Politico while he prepares a longer-term ruling which he’s expected to deliver by Tuesday. That’s nice except the White House continues to block the three media outlets from some areas including from flying with Trump on some of his campaign trips. This morning the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to someone not named Trump.  The winner was former UN chief South African Navi Pillay who while serving as a judge on the International Criminal Court concluded that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza in part because the ICC and the UN always rule against Israel. Comments from Trump who has promised not to bomb Iran until after the election should be arriving shortly. Lastly, there were lots of Senate debates last night.  In summary: Michigan Democrat Abdul El Sayed is a radical and a terrorist, his opponent Republican Mike Rogers is a war mongering Trump stooge as is Georgia Republican Mike Collins whose son in law and staff are neo-Nazis which is okay because Democrat Jon Ossoff who is Jewish is a socialist who supports terrorist El Sayed, and Republican Susan Collins who is still all in on road salt wants us to know that despite her opponent Troy Jackson’s assertion that she votes with Trump 98% of the time, she’s only votes with him 72% of the time.  Debates are fun.        

 

Road Salt 😱 ✡️🌻 😱 🚀🚢 💩

Midterm Madness:  Trump is out on the campaign trail saying stupid things. Though his MAGA audience loves what he says no matter how crazy and meanspirited, fewer people show up to his events now held in smaller venues, but given who he is, he still gets a disproportionate amount of press coverage.  To that end, media has gone nuts over the remarks he made in Nebraska about higher gas prices being “a small price to pay for keeping the world safe….. let them take out Los Angeles; let them take out San Diego. That’s — this is a very small price to pay, and it’s going to be over with very soon.” The part about gas prices being just a bit high and worth it to keep the world and country safe was probably scripted, the add on about Los Angeles and San Diego getting nuked, more likely off the cuff, an unhinged statement from the increasingly unfiltered and demented Trump.  Whatever they were, it unsettled lots of people, particularly on the west coast, that Trump could so easily dismiss the specter, however unlikely, of Iran nuking parts of California.  Trump’s verbal diarrhea also appears to have spooked the White House communications team and a number of right-wing press outlets who have jumped to his defense, arguing that his words were taken out of context. They weren’t taken out of context; they were just stupid. We should probably be far more concerned about the less catchy remarks he made yesterday during a visit to Maryland where he called attention to Russell Vought, the OMB director who was also the main author of Project 2025, and said that he and Vought “have some big surprises coming up in another few weeks” adding that Vought is “going to be one of the very important people in the history of our country…..He's got some great things happening."  The midterms are in a few weeks, Trump is doing everything he can to disrupt them, so it’s not a stretch to assume that Vought’s big surprise has something to do with that, far more likely than Iran nuking San Diego and Los Angeles with weapons and long-range missiles they don’t currently have in their arsenal but still potentially devastating.  In other midterm news, Maine’s Republican Senator Susan Collins who is polling just a few points behind her Democratic challenger Troy Jackson, wants Maine voters to send her back to the Senate because she managed to get Canadian road salt taken off of Trump’s tariff list to which Jackson quickly responded: “what about everything else, we can’t eat road salt.” Collins also tried to distance herself from Trump by saying she’s not his favorite Republican Senator while she danced about whether or not she’d welcome him campaigning with her in Maine. It’s too early to count Collins out, she has a history of beating the polls, but it is fun watching her twist her pearls.

Viral Musings:  A lab worker at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute in Siberia died last week triggering local quarantines amid unconfirmed but very credible reports of her death being due to her accidental exposure to a strain of pneumonic plague.  Russia is playing fast and cute with the facts, not all that surprising but concerning given what China did at the beginning of what turned into the COVID pandemic. We probably aren’t on the verge of a plague pandemic, though Russia might be facing a bit of a localized epidemic.  Nevertheless, the Siberia episode highlights just how stupid it was for the Trump administration to eviscerate the parts of the Health and Human Services that focus on epidemic, infectious disease, and pandemic preparedness research and to pull out of the World Health Organization while also putting an anti-vaxxer in charge. In other health news, New York’s Governor Hochul has declared a disaster emergency over the state’s ongoing measles outbreak. NY’s outbreak isn’t as bad as the one in Pennsylvania, but the emergency declaration expands the types of medical professionals who are allowed to administer MMR vaccines, the effective shots that RFK and his cronies hate so much because they do.    

More 💩:  The likelihood of Iran nuking LA and San Diego is very low but the possibility of more conventional attacks elsewhere isn’t which explains why the US abruptly withdrew all twelve of the B-1B Lancer strategic bombers that were stationed at Fairford, England due to intelligence warning of a potential Iranian drone and terror plot targeting the base.  On the subject of intelligence or lack thereof, Trump announced that Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton’s portfolio of responsibilities now includes serving as the AI, SI, or whatever he is calling it, Czar.  FBI Director Kash Patel is now engaged to his girlfriend, the aspiring country singer who he has been flying around the country on our dime. There’s no real evidence that Don Jr has actually reimbursed the Russian oligarch who paid for some of his wedding festivities.  There will never be any evidence that his father has reimbursed the government for the money spent on his midterm ads because though, in response to push back from many including some Republican politicians, Trump now says he plans to pay for future ads by using one of his bloated PAC accounts, he says that he has no intention of refunding the $12 million taken from the Department of Homeland to pay for the ads already produced and aired. By the way, those ads are really bizarre unless you think that watching a digitally enhanced grimace-faced Trump strut around while promising to get rid of globalists, the radical left, and communists, and touting his tax cuts and the reigniting of US manufacturing is even close to normal.

 

 

Twenty-nine Days 😱 ✡️🌻 😱 🚀🚢 💩

Midterm Madness:  Less than a month remains until the November 3 midterms.  Trump is now touring the country, in the process of visiting and spreading his message across seventeen states as well as to their neighbors with overlapping media markets.  Trump’s message includes his usual unhinged rhetoric; he’s even back to reading his snake poem and doxxing fellow Republicans, sharing Senator Tom Cotton’s phone number over a day light savings disagreement, something he once did to the now departed Lindsey Graham after Graham called him an asshole. Trump’s bragging about all his amazing accomplishments. Despite Friday’s anemic hiring report, a rise in unemployment, and stubborn war related inflation, he’s claiming that the economy is stronger than ever, threatening that the country will turn into a socialist hell hole if he doesn’t win, and attacking individual Democratic candidates especially those in tight battles for seats that until this year were comfortably held by his Republican enablers. He’s so nervous about the possibility of a large Democratic wave that he’s gone from promising to send $5,000 victory checks to all adults if Republicans hold both houses to announcing that he’s sending a one-time $90 rebate payment to more than 20 million seniors enrolled in Medicare Part B to help offset their monthly premium.  For Medicare recipients who don’t pay the high-income penalty, the monthly premium for Part B is $202 so the $90 won’t even wipe out one month’s payment but money is money and it’s hard to see it, as well as his promised refund to Obamacare recipients, as anything other than a bribe. He’s also “persuaded” as in threatened “allies” to release some of their diesel reserves before the midterms to help bring down fuel costs. Ironically given his ongoing attempt to eliminate mail in voting, this weekend he told his supporters to vote now by any means possible while they pretend that his name is on the ballot.

The Battleground Races:  The Republican Senate leadership fund is no longer sending money to North Carolina, an indication that they know that there’s little they can do to prevent Democrat/former Governor Roy Cooper from beating their candidate, former RNC chair Michael Whatley. Funds are instead being directed to places like Texas and Kansas, two states that the Republicans thought they’d easily hold as well as to Iowa, Ohio, Alaska, Maine, Michigan, and New Hampshire, the last two being states where Republican could actually pick-up seats currently in Democratic hands. The polls in all of these states, including the ones that show Democrats leading, are mostly within the margin of error so while Democrats do stand a chance of regaining the Senate, it’s just as likely or maybe even more likely that Republicans keep control though with fewer seats.  Over the weekend 76-year-old Supreme Court Justice Sam Alito, said that though he has no firm plans to retire this year, retirement is something he thinks about at the end of every term.  It’s fair to believe that the Senate changing hands combined with a shove from Trump, would provide him with the impetus he needs to step down before January, allowing Trump to pull an “Amy Coney Barrett” style rush appointment. The specter of someone like Florida’s 45-year-old Aileen Cannon taking over Alito’s seat should scare the daylights out of all of us. One interesting piece of trivia, if former Senator Sherrod Brown wins his Ohio race, unseating Senator Jon Husted who was appointed by Ohio’s Republican governor Mike DeWine to replace JD Vance, he’d be seated as soon as election results were verified, likely in December rather than January.  Republicans would still hold the majority but by one less seat, more if Mitch McConnell loses what appears to be his tenuous hold on life.  The impact that Governors have on close Senate majorities shouldn’t be ignored, especially this year when quite a few Governorships are expected to switch hands. Close state races to watch include Alaska, Georgia, Nevada, Ohio, Wisconsin, Florida, Texas, Iowa, and Kansas with Kansas the only one likely to be a Republican pick up. Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley, at 93 the oldest member of the Senate, is keenly aware of the possibility that the winner of his state’s Governor’s race could be Democrat Rob Sand who is currently polling 8 points ahead of his Republican competitor.  In September Grassley whose term ends in January 2029, said that though he doesn’t plan on dying in office, if he does, he doesn’t want a Democratic governor choosing” his successor.  That fear cuts both ways, though he’s a moderate, Vermont’s governor Phil Scott who is expected to win reelection in November, is a Republican.  Vermont’s Senators, Independent Bernie Sanders and Democrat Peter Welch, are 85 and 79 years of age, respectively.  The impact that a sitting governor can have on the make-up of the Senate is something we should all think about when casting our ballots.  New Yorkers and Californians, take note, now isn’t the time to take your Governor’s races lightly.  

More 💩: Kristi Noem is gone from the Department of Homeland Security but as detailed by the NY Times she managed to spend $464 million on unneeded over-priced planes on her way out the door, benefitting of one of her Republican donors at taxpayer’s expense.  On the war front things have heated up between the Iran backed Houthis and Saudi Arabia.  The Trump administration is excluding several major allies, including the UK, France and some Baltic countries, from a NATO gathering, apparently those countries are on Trump’s “naughty” list and/or on a list of countries that Putin has told Trump to exclude possibly because in the case of the Baltic states they make up the countries he plans to target next? Rolling Stone which in addition to reporting on the music industry, also does a good job reporting on political news, has a new article out about how Secretary of War and Testosterone Pete Hegseth sidelined, and forced out former Army Secretary Dan Driscoll who’d been tasked with modernizing the army. Driscoll was in the process of making the army more adept at new modes of warfare, learning from the successes achieved by Ukraine with drones and AI during its war with the Russian behemoth. With Driscoll gone, Hegseth has turned the clock back to the old, less flexible, and more expensive methods…..and testosterone.            

 

 
Cowboys and Aliens 😱 ✡️🌻 😱 🚀🚢 💩

Deranged: A new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that only 17% of adults approve of Trump’s handling of the cost of living with just 26% approving of his handling of the economy overall; 65% blame Trump’s policies for “persistently high costs more than factors outside of his control, signaling growing weariness over his aggressive use of tariffs and continued unhappiness with the war with Iran.”  Nevertheless, Trump keeps repeating to the press and in his campaign speeches that costs are way down and coming down further and that inflation is totally under control because “we’ve done a great job.” The bigly liar is hoping that repeating his big lie will make it believable and to be fair it’s worked for him before.   In an interview with Time Magazine, he attacked any polls that say otherwise or even suggest that he isn’t still wildly popular as fake news.  He said a lot of other crazy things during the interview. He bragged about his awesome construction projects, saying that focusing on them makes him happy while also asserting that the White House and its environs needed his gold embossed clean up not that his predecessors Sleepy Joe and that Black guy Obama who didn’t know the difference between clean and dirty would have noticed. He asserted once again that he has the highest of IQs because he shares genes with the MIT professor uncle he frequently cites. That high IQ thing also means that he understands AI better than all the poor schnooks who don’t want data centers built near their homes because according to Trump they’d rather remain poor and anyway he likes hobnobbing with all the tech leaders who have high IQs too.  Those tech bros who really do have high IQs may not have much in the way of social skills and at least in the case of Elon Musk are devoid of concern for the downtrodden, know that plying Trump with flattery and contributions while constantly whispering in his ear is the way to get what they want so despite polls indicating that fear of data centers is contributing to the Republican’s poor showing in the polls, Trump remains all in on data centers and unfettered AI.  Anyway, he doesn’t believe the polls because they’re fake and he’d beat anyone running against him by 20 points, not that he won any of his elections by more than a few. Trump also regrets ever appointing Kavanaugh, Gorsuch and Barrett to the Supreme Court because despite all the things they’ve allowed him to get away with including their ruling that he’s got immunity for everything, they’re ungrateful as evidenced by the ruling that has forced the refunding of tariff proceeds to “enemies.”  That enemy part reveals that he still thinks that tariffs are paid by “foreigners” rather than US corporations and consumers because the recipient of the tariff rebates have been Walmart, Target, Amazon, and other US corporations.  If all of this sounds like a jumbled mess, it’s because Trump’s interview with Time was incoherent.  His mental state, never stable, really is deteriorating.  Nevertheless, he’s still president and won’t rule out trying to declare martial law or the sending of one of his militias to polling places to disrupt the midterms.  The polls have him spooked.  We should be too.

Who’s the Weirdo?  Trump wasn’t the only one spewing crazy.  Secretary of War and Testosterone Pete Hegseth delivered his State of the Force speech to the troops, or at least those who were svelte and impeccably groomed enough to be allowed to attend. He announced plans to slash the number of generals and admirals. Getting rid of bloat, particular overhead bloat isn’t a bad thing, it’s just that who among us believes that Hegseth who has already targeted those who disagree with him and/or senior Black and female staff for being Black and female is the right person to make critical staffing decisions at any time but especially while the country is at war? He emphatically stated that his new improved fighting force would no longer include “fatties, trannies, beardos, weirdos, wimps, or radicals” because the “ideological clowns” are out to be replaced by testosterone infused “patriotic cowboys.” As to ROTC, he plans to move away from programs at Ivy league universities instead “partnering with a new crop of premier higher institutions, including Louisiana State University [LSU], Liberty University, Tuskegee University, Mississippi State University and Hillsdale College” institutions that “understand the faith of Jerusalem.” Notably, Hillsdale and Liberty are Christian colleges which fits with his other decision to establish an office of religious affairs reporting directly to him. There’s something very special about a guy whose been married three times, with children conceived with his soon to be wives while he was still married to his disposable former ones being all in on impressing his religious beliefs on others.  So much for separation of church and state.  Worth noting that VP Vance another one all into his religion who Hegseth envisions pushing aside in his quest to become president is a beardo. Hegseth also announced that he’s appointing Elon Musk who did such a good job with DOGE; thrice married Newt Gingrich, who dumped a cancer ridden wife to marry his next one; and Palmer Luckey, former Congressman Matt Gaetz’s brother-in-law to lead a new warfare initiative.  What could possibly go wrong? Hegseth, like his fearless leader Trump, is also all in on AI, particularly scary given that the US military almost started a war during the Spring when it came close to boarding a Chinese cargo ship in the Middle East after its AI chatbot “hallucinated” a false report claiming the vessel carried nuclear weapons components that it wasn’t carrying.

More 💩:  The Trump administration has started sending $500 “refund” checks to 950,000 Obamacare enrollees to “compensate” them for “overcharges” by that evil guy Biden, at least that’s essentially what the letters accompanying the checks will say.  The reality is that the people receiving the checks have seen their health insurance premiums go up as a result of the elimination of the ended insurance subsidies and while getting $500 is nice, that amount won’t offset their premium increases or cover much in the way of health care.  Then again, Trump is hoping that those who get the checks will show their appreciation by voting Republican in November and they might.  A Superior Court judge in the District of Columbia has permanently banned Former Foxie/US Attorney Jeanine Pirro from bringing charges against the Olympic canoeist who was accused of damaging the already damaged Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.  The judge cited the exceptional circumstances around the case, as in Trump’s calling for the canoeist to be punished, as one of the reasons behind his decision to permanently put an end to the farce.  On the subject of farces, this week’s Tennessee death penalty fiasco was a big one.  Morality of the death penalty aside, at $1.5 to $3 million per inmate pursuing it takes years and costs taxpayers 2.5 to 5 times more than just imposing a sentence of life imprisonment without parole.  Moreover, as demonstrated by this week’s failed attempt to execute convicted murderer Christa Pike with two rounds of lethal injection, imposing the penalty involves a gruesome, excruciating process that sometimes doesn’t work. The failure to execute Pike wasn’t even Tennessee’s first “failed” execution. Pike, unlike some others who’ve been put to death was guilty of a grisly murder, but that doesn’t mean that our state and federal governments should be responding in kind.  One more thing for today:  everything is wrong about what happened at Cornell. For starters there’s the out-of- control frat culture that facilitated the sexual assault, the local police that shrugged it off, the university that wouldn’t even refund the victim’s tuition, and NYS’s out-of-date consent law.  There’s probably more to the depressing story than has been revealed so far, but from what we know #WTF.