Mousetrap 😱 ✡️🌻 😱 🚀🚢 🎇

Vote, Vote, Vote:  Yesterday evening in an unsigned one paragraph statement, the Supreme Court rejected the Trump administration’s efforts to have the Postal Service suppress voter turnout in the upcoming midterms. A majority of the Justices concluded that it was unlikely that the government would succeed on the merits of its challenge to a District Court’s preliminary injunction barring the implementation of the Postal Service’s new regulations.  Justice Brett Kavanaugh concurred with the majority's decision, saying “that even if the agency has the technical authority to enforce such rules, doing so this close to an election is unfeasible.”  However, just as he did in the birth right citizen case, he hedged, leaving Trump an opening to proceed with his anti-mail-in crusade by saying that “there is at least a fair prospect that the final rule falls within the Postal Service’s statutory authority.”  In other words, at a future date Kavanaugh would be open to joining his righter than right wing Trump abetting colleagues Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas who both disagreed with the majority’s decision since they thought that it would be fine for the Postal Service to implement Trump’s voter squelching regulations now, midterms or any future elections be damned.  The Court’s decision is a very good thing for those who care about democracy and free elections, but it doesn’t mean that Trump’s efforts to limit voter participation have been put on hold.  Yesterday, via a whistle blower it was revealed that the Department of Homeland Security has been violating state laws by inappropriately using state data bases to “test” whether some voters are really citizens eligible to vote.  Noncitizen voting is extremely rare, and the illegal effort has turned out to be for naught.  And there’s still the specter of INS troops showing up at “blue” polling places on election day.   

🎇 🎇 🎇: Score a big one for ProPublica.  Yesterday in a story that has now been confirmed by other news outlets, they reported that Don Junior’s Bahama’s wedding to Bettina Anderson wasn’t the intimate close family and friends affair that he said it was.  In fact, a few Russians were in attendance, fair since one of them helped plan and then footed the bill for some of the festivities. That “foot” included paying for a wedding weekend party at a nearby private island and for some fancy fireworks.  In all it’s estimated that Umar Kremlov, the current name of the Russian oligarch and friend of Putin in question, coughed up somewhere in excess of $100,000, maybe even a multiple of $100,000, to fete his “good friend” Don Jr.  Little Don doesn’t deny that Umar gifted him the party and accompanying fireworks, nor does Bettina.  They both defended their “grateful” acceptance of Umar’s largesse, saying that’s what good friends do for each other even for people like Donny who is reported to be worth $300 million. In addition to being a good friend of Donny, Umar frequently travels with Putin.  He is also sanctioned by Ukraine, something to do with his “charity” which has been credibly accused of kidnapping Ukrainian children.  It’s fair to assume that Umar didn’t gift Donny and Bettina out of the goodness of his heart because there’s no such thing as a free ride, or as Russians put it “free cheese is only in a mousetrap.”  Hunter Biden and his dad probably have a lot to say about this. One more fun tidbit in the story: in preparation for his wedding or maybe for a future run for president, Don Jr had his chin shaped to look more chiseled.     

More 💩 :  It turns out that reports of Mitch McConnell’s death were greatly exaggerated.  He’s wheelchair bound, and looking Weekend at Bernie’s level fragile but he’s back and ready to cast Senate votes.  Bo French is alive too, though some Texas Republicans running for office probably wish he’d go into witness protection.  French is running for Texas Railroad Commissioner, not a position that ordinarily gets a whole lot of attention outside of Texas.  However, French is now front and center because over the weekend he tweeted out a picture of a crowd of Asian students at a University of Texas football game saying that he’d heard that “UT graduation ‘looked like this,’ adding that the problem was ‘far worse than anyone imagined.’ In another post, he wrote that Americans are being “displaced by foreigners.”  Texas Republican candidates, already facing competitive races, have now been put in the position of having to condemn French’s xenophobic comments or endorse them with their silence.  Fun. Then there’s Macklemore who is outraged that a lot of people think his showing up in an intentionally hateful and disparaging costume, one that included a sterotypical big nose, while making “pro-Palestine” chants and displaying “imagery” at an Ed Sheeran concert was okay. He’s now been banned from several venues and will no longer be accompanying Sheeran.  To be fair, Macklemore’s entitled to say what he wants however he shouldn’t be surprised that attendees of what was supposed to be a family fun Ed Sheeran concert were not “receptive” to his vitriole and found his obviously meanspirited costume repellant.  Naturally, Maklemore whose anti-Israel screeds long predate the events in Gaza is blaming “that Jew” Robert Kraft  for having him banned. In response, Kraft issued a very impressive and nuanced statement last night in which he talked about his ongoing fight against anti-Semitism as well as the resources he has contributed to support Palestinians.  Ed Sheeran has not commented publicly, but has not so bravely let leak that he wasn’t pleased with Macklemore’s shxtshow.  Pink, who did criticize Macklemore for his hatefilled screed has gotten all kinds of hate thrown in her direction.  Being Pink, she can handle it because at the end of the day she’s Pink and she’s great.    

 

 

50 Days 😱 ✡️🌻 😱 🚀🚢

🍀 🍀 🍀 :Fresh off the Trumpapalooza midterm convention, Trump traveled to Ireland this weekend.  In theory he went to the Emerald Isle to promote relations with Ireland, but the real reason he went was to attend the Irish Open taking place at his Doonbeg Golf Club because with him personal business always comes first, second and third.  Naturally, he brought his usual entourage of hangers on with him, including binky/printer girl Natalie who received first lady treatment, fitting because Melania, who has mostly checked out opted not to join the traveling squad. While in Ireland Trump came close to reigniting the Irish Troubles by calling for the immediate unification of Ireland and Northern Ireland because what’s another war, or as he likes to call them, skirmish, anyway? Proving that his tariffs are bunk, he removed the one he’d imposed on Irish Whiskey as a parting gift before departing.  As to wars, the Iran “small potatoes” one is getting worse. The Strait of Hormuz which Trump insists is open is not open and now due to attacks by the Houthis, one of those nice Iranian surrogate groups that we were told the Iranians would no longer have the resources to fund but that they apparently are still funding maybe because they are getting some strategic assistance on targeting US assets from China, the Saudis’ work around route is no longer safe.  That’s bad news for the price of oil, which is bad news for inflation and interest rates, though Trump would prefer that we all hold Ukraine responsible for any diesel price increases because apparently it’s their refusal to concede to Russia’s land grab that is the problem, not the war that Russia started or the Iran disaster.     

Midterm Madness:  Most of us know that Trump will not be sending us $5000 checks if the Republicans hold on to their House and Senate majorities after all the Midterm votes are counted, assuming they are ever counted.  Nor do most of us expect to ever receive the tariff or DOGE dividends that Trump promised but he doesn’t need most of us to believe him, he just needs to convince more MAGA voters to show up on election day even though his name won’t be on the ballot while also convincing a few delusional swing voters, the same ones still waiting for free IVF, to buy into his faux promises. It’s Trump’s preference that his voters actually show up in person because though he votes by mail, he doesn’t want the rest of us to do the same.  On the mail-in front, we’re still waiting for the Supreme Court to weigh in. The fact that SCOTUS hasn’t opined yet, is either a good thing or a truly bad thing.  Good because, even if they don’t rule now that Trump’s Executive Order is unconstitutional, deciding instead to kick the can forward, the onerous new Post Service ballot requirements won’t apply to the midterms.  Worse than bad, because if they do rule in favor of Trump’s Executive Order, an outcome which should be inconceivable except for the fact that this Court has done inconceivable things, they’ll inject more chaos into the midterms elections since ballots have already been printed and in some cases have already been mailed out and will do immeasurable damage to election results by squelching votes.  In any case, keep checking your news alert because something will pop up shortly.  One indication that Trump is getting nervous about the elections is that he, like his abettor Elon Musk is finally sending some of the buckets of cash that he’s been hoarding onto Republican candidates.  Not all of it, just some of it because having seen pictures of Obama’s library, Trump wants to save some to make his biglier, while also setting aside some to operate his Qatari plane that only the most delusional believe he won’t continue using after 2028.  As to the elections, retired Conservative Judge Michael Luttig, is raising alarms.  He’s concerned that the “decisive test may not come on Election Day, but on January 3, 2027, when duly elected members of the 120th Congress could be denied their seats, raising a fundamental question for our democracy:  Will the will of the people as expressed at the ballot box be honored?” Judge Luttig is concerned that current House Speaker Johnson who has repeatedly shown himself to be nothing more than a Trump tool will refuse to seat any newly elected Democratic members of Congress and that there will be no Republicans like former VP Mike Pence willing to say no to Trump’s orders. Not seating the election winners would be litigated and eventually overturned but the damage to democracy would be immeasurable.  

More 💩:  Last week Joseph DiGenova, a former US Attorney and a long-term Trump ally, resigned from the Department of Justice.  He’d been leading the “grand conspiracy” investigation taking place out of the DOJ’s Miami office.  That investigation has been tasked with prosecuting people like former CIA Director John Brennan, who Trump holds responsible for looking into his “alleged” election canoodling with the Russians.  DiGenova was being pressured to hand down indictments of Brennan and other Trump “enemies” but apparently had not found the dirt he needed.  He defended his work, and the lack of indictments saying "I make cases the old-fashioned way: witnesses, evidence, etc. That takes time.’ He added that “rushing indictments without proper evidence creates an ethical problem.”  Indictments could still happen, because Trump and AG Todd Blanche aren’t all that concerned about ethics and will just pressure someone less “ethical” and/or stupid to move forward.  It says a lot about the legitimacy of the Miami investigation, nothing good, that someone as dedicated to Trump as DiGenova couldn’t find it within himself to move forward.  Back in DC, the Trump administration position is that the Kennedy Center will have to file for bankruptcy if the courts won’t allow Trump to emboss his name on its walls.  Their legal filing actually says that if Trump’s name isn’t etched in, he won’t approve financing for the Center.  Breathe deeply now because soon you won’t want to. The EPA is on the “verge” of eliminating limits on the amount of pollution that gas and coal plants can release into the environment because apparently despite global warming and erratic weather, we’ve got nothing to worry about.  On the AI (Artificial Intelligence) front, everyone including the leaders of Anthropic and OpenAI, but not Trump is concerned that Hal’s increasingly errant children will soon destroy us.  Speaker Johnson is concerned but doesn’t have time to deal with it mostly because Trump doesn’t want him to find the time.  Lastly, in one piece of good news, the Supreme Court once again refused to allow Missouri to move ahead with the redistricting that would have eliminated one of its two Democratic House seats.         

 

 
Chaos Theory 😱 ✡️🌻 😱 🚀🚢 🍎 🍯

💰 💵 💰 💵:  The Iran war continues to escalate with Iran shooting missiles at US ships in the Strait of Hormuz and at US bases in Jordan.   Trump says that he’s not trying to negotiate an end to the “small potatoes” war right now but that it will mysteriously end right after the midterms which is also the time that he promises gas prices will return to normal levels.  In an effort to drum up attention for the Republican’s weird midterm convention master manipulator Trump who wants voters to pretend he’s on the ballot promised to send every American adult a $5000 check if Republicans win both the House and Senate in the midterms. Estimates are that Trump’s giveaway would cost more than $1 trillion.  He provided no details about how he would fund the giveaway, whether he’d issue more debt or whether he’d zero out something else like maybe Social Security or Medicare.  Then again, Trump who has a habit of bankrupting his companies appears determined to do the same to the US economy. In any case, it’s fair to assume that his promise is just a campaign ruse, one that some voters will fall for, but that’s the point. On the subjects of weird and attention getting, Pennsylvania’s Democratic Senator John Fetterman appeared via video at Trump’s shindig.  Fetterman continues to insist that he has no plans to change his party affiliation, reminding everyone that he mostly votes with Democrats, but since he really likes his fellow Pennsylvanian Senator Republican David McCormick and hates socialism, he was happy to appear.  Points to McCormick and a few other shrewd Republicans like Alabama’s Katie Britt for figuring out that the emotionally fragile Fetterman responds well to hugs, tea and sympathy and that the unending criticism, warranted or not, that he’s been getting from some in his party is a sure way to push him into their arms.  Fetterman has always been odd, these days he’s also unpredictable, a Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema mash-up in shorts and a sweatshirt.  Neither Manchin or Sinema are still in the Senate, it’s fair to assume that Fetterman won’t be able to win a Democratic primary when he comes up for reelection in 2028 and will be a one term Senator, at least as a Democrat.

Ballot Box 🗳️ Chaos:  Yesterday was primary day in Rhode Island.  Proving that at the end of the day politics is a local affair, sitting Democratic Governor Dan McKee lost his primary to business executive Helena Foulkes. McKee wasn’t ousted by a socialist uprising, rather he was tanked by his mishandling of repair work on Providence’s Washington bridge, the major east-west traffic artery that carries roughly 100,000 vehicles per day.  After next week’s Delaware election, primary season will be over.  Some states have already mailed out ballots for the November midterm election. Despite that, Trump and his anti-mail in ballot fight continues.  The Supreme Court is expected to rule shortly on his efforts to have the US Postal Service insert itself into the election process by refusing to deliver ballots that don’t meet Trump’s “standards.” Even a few Republican states are on record opposing Trump and the Post Office’s efforts, not because they don’t want to make it more difficult for Democrats to vote, but because a lot of their Republican constituents vote by mail and also because there’s not enough time to implement the Postal Service’s screwball and untested new voter system.  Few legal pundits expect SCOTUS to give the Trump administration the signoff it’s seeking, though if we’ve learned anything by now predictions about how this Supreme Court will act are frequently proven wrong.  It’s more likely that instead of ruling on the constitutionality of Trump’s plans, SCOTUS will opt to kick the ballot box ball down the road, leaving Massachusetts District Court judge Indira Talwani’s stay in place. That would prevent the Postal Service from implementing Trump’s Executive Order through the midterms, leaving the bigger issue of the constitutionality of the federal government interfering in what are supposed to be state run elections until after the November elections.  Regardless of what SCOTUS does, Trump has already introduced uncertainty and chaos into the midterms. As to chaos things are getting increasingly nuts in Missouri right now where Republican efforts to redistrict away one of the state’s two Democratic districts remain in limbo. Last week, Missouri’s Supreme Court ruled that the new Trump-backed Republican map could not be used in the midterms because of a citizen backed petition demanding a statewide vote on it. On Tuesday, US Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh let stand that decision ordering that the state’s old districts be used for the upcoming midterms but then a Trump appointed federal district judge in Missouri issued a contradictory order, temporarily blocking the state from using the old map, saying instead that the state should use the new Republican one that gerrymandered away the Democratic seat.  The decision about which map should be used is now back in court. If this sounds nuts it’s because it is. Chaos is the point.  

More 💩: Saying that AI (Artificial Intelligence) has a more than 10% chance of killing all humans and that AI companies “are gambling with our lives” Jacob Coxon, a respected AI researcher who has worked at both Anthropic and OpenAI resigned from Anthropic yesterday.  His stunning announcement follows recent reports that AI models have been talking, coordinating, and even conspiring with each other autonomously without human supervision. Yikes.

Shana Tovah 🍎 🍯

 

 

 
Goodbye Summer 😱 ✡️🌻 😱 🚀🚢 🦱

Summer Breeze: Labor Day weekend is now in the rearview window. Most of us spent the holiday enjoying the waning days of summer, not Trump.  While he played his usual amount of golf, with the help of his ever-present human printer/gal Friday Natalie he posted increasingly demented missives on Truth Social, including a “holiday” message to “all including the Radical Left Lunatics, Communists and Democrats who will do anything possible to destroy our Country.” In a pot calling the kettle black moment, he went on to call anyone who didn’t recognize that he was the best president ever “deranged” while asserting that he was going to win the midterms.  He probably won’t legitimately win the midterms, but he likely will disrupt them as much as he possibly can. In contrast, in his holiday message Joe Biden thanked workers and the middle class.  It wasn’t just Trump’s holiday message that was bizarre and crass, Trump and/or Natalie shared a few dozen more, that included maps and memes in which he changed the name of New Mexico to New America; included Canada, Mexico, Iceland, Greenland, and Iran as a part of the US; claimed the moon as a US territory; asserted victory in Iran; depicted himself as the evil killing Green Lantern; and showed himself wrestling Hulk Hogan to the ground. We’ve mostly grown used to his aberrant behavior; we shouldn’t.  Nor should we be used to son in law Jared and real estate buddy Witkoff serving as his designated “peace” negotiators, but they are.  The two compromised and inept ones spent part of their weekend visiting with Putin before meeting with Ukraine’s Zelenskyy where Jared delivered the message that to achieve “durable” peace Ukraine would have to give up land to those nice Russians who’ve invaded his country.  The nice Russians stopped bombing long enough to allow Kushner and Witkoff to safely travel in and out of Russia, but they’ve now resumed attacking Kyiv. Nothing good to report out of Middle East either where we’ve been exchanging fire with Iran and Iran-backed Houthis launched a major wave of missile and drone attacks on Saudi Arabia, wounding at least 73 people, damaging energy facilities, and driving global oil prices higher. 

Walking on Sunshine:  On the political front, sans Melania, Trump is off to Texas to for his midterm convention/money grab.  Reports are that while a lot of the usual suspects will show up for his self-celebratory party, many Republicans, especially those facing tight races will not be attending and some that do will have the exorbitant attendance fees waived to get them to fill seats.  Those staying away will miss the opportunity to hear Trump use his two primetime speaking spots to ramble on endlessly about how great he is, how great the economy is, how he won in 2020, and how the Democrats are all communists. The point of the “convention” is to drum up enthusiasm for the midterms, encouraging Trump voters to vote as if he’s on the ballot. Some will, but assuming the polls are anywhere close to correct, quite a few voters, particularly those who consider themselves Independents despite voting for Trump at least once and many of the Hispanic voters who shifted his way during the 2024 race, are expected to vote blue or stay home turning some of the Republican gerrymandered districts into dummymanders.  As to election predictions, assuming Trump doesn’t pull a militia or two out of his hat or get the frequently disappointing Supreme Court to sign on to his anti-mail-in scheme, Republicans are likely to lose the House, but the Senate remains in play. To that end, today is primary day in New Hampshire where the Senate seat being vacated by retiring 79-year-old Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen is up for grabs. In all likelihood, Republican John E Sununu will win the Republican Senate primary where he is facing one time Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown while Congressman Chris Pappas will win the Democratic primary although he is facing an insurgent challenge from progressive Karishma Manzur.  The November race, likely to be between Sununu and Pappas, is looking more and more like it could be a toss-up.  That’s a problem for Democrats who can’t afford to lose the seat to stand a chance of retaking the Senate. Republican Sununu has loads of name recognition in New Hampshire because, though he’s never been Governor, he’s related to two people who were.

Hot Fun in the Summertime:  The Wall Street Journal has been on a tear of late.  Last week they ran a hit piece on Pennsylvania’s erratic Senator John Fetterman.  Fetterman, who walked in his trademark shorts to the beat of a different drummer even before his health struggles, appears to have lost the “man of the people” crown that previously helped him win statewide elections.  He’s also very pro-Israel which has earned him the wrath of the progressive and Hamas sympathizing parts of the Democratic Party. Over the weekend the WSJ paper shifted its focus from dooming Fetterman to trashing Corey Lewandowski, providing details about how he leveraged his relationship with former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and his longer-term friendship with Trump to monetize his advisory position with companies seeking DHS contracts.  It’s long been suspected that Lewandowski was grifting but given the buckets of money that DHS received from Congress, the extent of his grift appears to have been even larger than was previously known. The WSJ’s tear didn’t stop with Fetterman and the Lewandowski/Noem duo, over the weekend the paper’s Editorial Board went with a scathing rebuke of Trump, listing all the ways he’s screwing up and how (🤞🤞) he might be responsible for the Senate going blue in the midterms. They are calling for him to change course and to free up all the money he’s greedily sitting on to help out Republican candidates.  Hopefully, other than changing his hair dye from orange to some version of pukey brown, Trump will continue showing his true colors.  Regardless, it’s fair to assume that the Murdochs who pissed off Trump with last week’s firing of the 💰 🍯, got a few very irate and threatening calls over the weekend.

 

 

No Money No Honey 😱 ✡️🌻 😱 🚀🚢

Gaslighting: Yesterday, while acting as stand in Press Secretary, VP Vance said he wouldn’t call the Iran war a war because it is just a conflict and anyway the conflict is over since all the recent back and forth attacks that took place this week are nothing more than the kind of “flare ups” that happen during a conflict that’s not a war. In a moment of uncharacteristic candor, he admitted that he didn’t know when the four to five-week conflict that’s morphed into a six-month plus war will be over.  He also said that he’s sticking by his good friend Tucker Carlson, because despite his criticism of the Iran war that’s not a war and that he keeps blaming everything bad on “the Jews” Vance likes him, a lot. According to Commerce Secretary Lutnick one of the remarkable achievements of the Iran “conflict” is that there has been no loss of American lives, surprising news for the families of the 18 US soldiers who’ve died during the war that’s just a conflict not to mention the 750 others who’ve been injured. When questioned on his idiotic and callous remark, Lutnick said he’d confused Venezuela with Iran, an easy mistake to make since both countries have oil. Keeping up with his Trump colleagues’ buffoonery, Treasury Secretary Bessent blamed the increase in gas prices on Ukraine because everything that’s not the fault of “the Jews” is due to Ukraine, but definitely not Putin. The Wall Street Journal reports that Trump is considering announcing that the war, that’s just a conflict, is over, news to Secretary of War/Beer Hegseth who is extending Mideast deployments into 2027.  That’s the same Hegseth whose Pentagon posted guidelines this week about the implementation of his planned testing of testosterone deficiency in troops 30 years and over only to rescind them and then delete them from the Pentagon’s website. Also, the Strait of Hormuz is fully open and under US control even though it’s not.

Ballot Box 🗳️:  Yesterday, in an emergency filing intended to skip the normal appeals process, the administration asked the Supreme Court to lift the freeze imposed by a federal district court on implementing Trump’s executive order in order to allow the US Post Office to resume its efforts to restrict mail-in voting in the lead-up to the midterms.  The administration wants the Justices to permit the immediate implementation of a new rule that would prohibit the Postal Service from delivering ballots to voters in states that do not share the voter data that they ordinarily do not share because elections are run by states rather than the federal government. The new rule would require the Postal Service to review ballot envelopes for compliance with new standards before sending them on to voters.  Indira Talwani, the Massachusetts based District Court judge who imposed the freeze, said that in addition to likely being unconstitutional the implementation of the new Postal Service rules would introduce chaos into the midterm elections but that’s a feature not a bug to the Trump administration who’ve seen the polls and fear that legitimate elections will be disastrous for Trump and the Republicans. North Carolina, where voters are likely to replace retiring Republican Senator Thom Tillis with a Democrat, former Governor Roy Cooper, is set to begin sending ballots out today.

💰 🍯: Yesterday, Fox announced that it was parting ways with former 💰 🍯 Maria Bartiromo. The Twitterverse and the Kalshi prediction site immediately assumed that Bartiromo was exiting Fox to become Trump’s next Press Secretary.  Though it remains possible that she will become Press Secretary that’s not the reason that she’s gone from her far more lucrative Fox spot.  It turns out that Bartiromo, who has been off the air since August 9, was axed for sharing an internal Fox memo with the White House.  The shared memo included guidance instructing senior Fox News employees to “steer clear of giving credence” to the claims Trump made in his July 16 prime time speech, specifically the ones where he pushed old, debunked conspiracy theories about the 2020 election that he lost. Apparently Bartiromo, whose spreading of misinformation (as in lies) about voting machines flipping votes from Trump to Biden contributed to Fox’s decision to cough up $787 million to Dominion Voting Systems, shared the internal Fox guidance with the White House to explain why no one from Fox had amplified Trump’s regurgitated misinformation on their programs.  Worth noting, Bartiromo is also cited in the long simmering, still not settled lawsuit against Fox by voting machine company Smartmatic.

Other 💩: On Wednesday, the sculpture known as Blue which has stood in front of the Kennedy Performing Arts Center since 2019 was taken down because it’s not Trump’s cup of tea, possibly because it was blue and not covered in gold leaf. In other esthetic news, the Trump administration is moving forward with the building of the oversized Arc D’ Trump even though it’s expected to interfere with flight patterns over the Capitol city.  On a more positive note, a federal judge in Maryland issued a preliminary injunction blocking Trump’s newest attempt to restrict birthright citizenship,

Enjoy your Labor Day holiday!

 

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.