Dumb and Dumber 😱 ✡️🌻 😱 🚀🚢 💩

Idiocracy:  Yesterday was one of those truly stupid days which says a lot given how stupid so much has been lately.  For some unfathomable reason, instead of addressing something relevant like the high cost of everything, the Senate Judiciary committee held a hearing featuring former Special Counsel Jack Smith.  The committee’s objective, or at least the objective of its Republican members, was to “prove” that Smith was a “dirt bag” who’d unfairly targeted Republicans in an effort to bring down their MAGA hero.  Instead, in an incident now being referred to as Schmitt’s as in 💩’s creek, Missouri Senator Eric Schmitt, one of Trump’s biggest fanboys,  actually called Smith a dirtbag while accusing him of committing perjury for denying that he’d attended an Atlanta Hawks basketball game during an alleged visit to Atlanta when he supposedly was colluding with Fulton County prosecutor Fani Willis on how to take Trump down.  The problem for Schmitt, is that Jack Smith wasn’t in Atlanta, he didn’t attend an Atlanta Hawks game, and he’s never met or colluded with Willis. It turns out that Schmitt’s embarrassingly inept staff had erroneously interpreted a reference to “Hawks” in one of Smith’s texts.  Smith wasn’t in Atlanta at an NBA game on the referenced date or any other date during his tenure; however, he was in Maryland at an Iowa Hawkeyes college game watching Caitlin Clark who was then a college basketball star.  It wasn’t just that Schmitt’s staff’s incompetence had set him up for an epic faceplant, they also appeared to have previewed what they thought was their “gotcha” moment with the right-wing echo chamber because shortly after Schmitt made the perjury/dirtbag accusation, several right-wing apparatchiks took to social media with posts featuring Schmitt’s accusation as did Fox’s Sean Hannity.  Most of those social media posts were subsequently removed though Schmitt, who fancies himself as a possible Republican VP contender barely backed down.  Instead, he tweeted “who knew Jack Smith was a women’s basketball fan.”  For his part Jack Smith who appears to be incapable of lying, repeated the conclusions of his investigation: that Trump had committed multiple criminal acts in an effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election adding that the reason he’d obtained call logs from so many Republican politicians was because Trump called so many of them, rather than Democrats as part of his effort to overturn the election.  The Schmitt debacle was only the tip of the stupid.  Having renamed a Great Lake and a gulf, Trump has now signed an executive order directing all federal executive branch agencies to replace the term "artificial intelligence" (AI) with "Super Intelligence" (SI) because apparently renaming the technology eliminates the possibility of it running amok. Not that we are supposed to be concerned about AI going rogue because the billionaires running all the AI companies and the ones manufacturing the chips that are their lifeblood promise to do their best to make their errant bots behave and Trump says that they can be trusted because they like him love the country.  Trump who earlier promised to send $5,000 checks (AKA bribes) to all adults if Republicans manage to maintain control of the House and Senate after the midterms is now promising to send bonuses to people who allow data centers to be built in their communities, not that he’ll admit that the reason so many towns don’t want the data centers isn’t because they hate him or even fear progress but because their local electric grids and water systems don’t have the capacity to support data centers’ substantial utility needs.  Trump who probably doesn’t understand what AI is because really who does, is mostly concerned about what will happen to the equity markets and his substantial personal technology portfolio if AI companies and chip manufacturers aren’t allowed to move full speed ahead.  He’s right to be concerned because a major market dive before the midterms would turn the anticipated blue wave into a blue tsunami, one that could result in both houses turning deep blue.

More 💩:  Things are going about as well as expected at the FBI considering that FBI Director Kash Patel is a right-wing social media pundit who prioritizes flying on his government funded jet and attending his girlfriend’s concerts to actually doing his job.  Andrew Bailey, FBI co-deputy director who when he was hired last year was viewed as a potential successor to FBI Director Kash Patel, has resigned.  By current standards, Bailey was viewed as a somewhat competent, serious person, though that’s probably a bit of an overstatement given that he participated in this year’s Fulton County ballot grab.  Apparently, he never got along with Patel and finally lost it when two of his respected FBI counterterrorism agents who’d been tasked with investigating harassing phone calls being made to Stephen Miller’s wife/podcaster Katie Miller were “reassigned” for failing to aggressively pursue the threatening caller(s), a function that usually falls to local police rather than to the FBI. On the subject of terrorism, something is hinky about the alleged terrorist event that took place in the UK this week outside of a US airbase.  The five suspects, all British nationals in their twenties, who’d been picked up have been released on bail because no explosives were found in their vans 🤷‍♀️ 🤷‍♀️.  Lastly, for today, Trump is running taxpayer funded campaign ads touting his accomplishments.  That’s not normal, the ads aren’t public service announcements and paying for campaign ads violates the Hatch Act but it’s not like 👑Trump has to worry about following the law which also explains why he’s illegally rescinding $810 million of Health and Human Services funding appropriated by Congress.

 

Thirty-Six Days 😱 ✡️🌻 😱 🚀🚢 🐼 

Iran, Iran, China: Trump is all over the place on Iran.  Some days he says he might obliterate the Republic after the election, other days he says he might do that now, and sometimes he promises there will be a peace deal after the election.  He’s pushing for Iran to make nuclear concessions that they have no interest in making since he tore up their last nuclear deal and he insists that the Strait of Hormuz which is not open is open. So basically, nothing much to report except that an attempted terrorist attack, details still not disclosed, on a US base in Southern England from which US bombing raids have originated was foiled over the weekend.  Although there was lots of pomp and circumstance during Trump’s meeting with China’s President Xi, Trump achieved little, although Zoo Atlanta is getting two cute pandas 🐼 🐼 named Ping Ping and Fu Shuang. Some tariffs were postponed, but Trump has a habit of doing that.  China did not agree to stop aiding Iran but, according to US Ambassador David Purdue, contrary to long term US policy, Trump offered to sell Xi some US weapons, particularly notable since he’s been holding up delivery of weapons promised to Taiwan.  Trump did show Xi his unfinished new ballroom though he probably didn’t point out that its first architect, James McCrery II, resigned in October 2025 over disagreements about complying with fire safety and building code requirements with Trump insisting that those annoying requirements didn’t apply because as king he gets to write his own code, fire safety be damned. Maybe to show Xi that he too can suppress news coverage, Trump is still playing games with the US press corp.  Though he finally allowed CNN, MSNOW, and Politico back into the White House on Friday morning, over the weekend he refused to let CNN, which was scheduled to provide pool coverage, onto Air Force One.   

Midterm Madness:  The midterms are only 36 days away.  Trump’s polls continue to deteriorate which is why a few Republicans in competitive races, including some which shouldn’t be competitive but now are, have begun wiping him from their websites, backing off from supporting the Iran war and/or his deportation policies. Florida gubernatorial candidate Byron Donalds, running neck and neck with David Jolly, the moderate Democrat who used to be a Republican, went the wipe route while Representative María Elvira Salazar of greater Miami ran an ad criticizing Trump's deportations, saying that his efforts have "gone too far,” likely because some of her constituents have seen family members shipped overseas while a few others have lost their gardeners. Trump reacted as expected with a few scathing Truth Social posts.  On the legal front, SCOTUS finally put the Missouri mishigas to bed.  At least for the midterms, Missouri will be required to stick with their old map, the one that keeps the Kansas City area in Democratic hands.  While that’s good news for Democrats, SCOTUS’ other decision wasn’t.  By a 6 to 3 vote, the Justices ruled that the Trump administration can use its revamped SAVE (Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements) database to check voter citizenship. The SAVE system was originally built in 1986 to check the immigration status of people applying for public benefits.  Trump expanded it to include a link to Social Security records, something that lower courts ruled violated federal privacy laws and the Social Security Act. As if those violations aren’t bad enough, as constructed the database is inaccurate; it quite frequently misidentifies citizens as noncitizens.  The somewhat good news is that federal law prohibits the purging of voter databases within 90 days of an election, the not so good news is that Trump’s crowd is pushing for a reinterpretation of that law. Still, it’s likely that there won’t be enough time for SAVE related purges to take place before the midterms.  However, the voter purge crowd are playing the long game, gearing up to implement the SCOTUS suppression ruling in time for the 2028 presidential elections.   

More 💩: OpenAI admitted to the US government that a swarm of its bots went rogue, bypassing security controls and successfully pulling data from government websites including from the Commerce Department, the Education Department, and the SEC. While asserting that the swarms haven’t done any damage, OpenAI “admitted” that it hasn’t been very good about reporting its “invasions.”  In other AI news, on Friday an Appeals Court ruled that it was okay that the Pentagon had labeled OpenAI’s competitor Anthropic a national security risk after the company had pushed to block the Pentagon from using its Claude system for autonomous weapons or mass domestic surveillance.  So apparently it’s okay for Pete Hegseth and the Pentagon to use OpenAI, rogue bots and all, but it’s not okay for Anthropic to try to limit Claude? Nothing to worry about here because the buck stops with Trump and he says he’s a genius.  While AI, and its dangers have been getting lots of attention, no one should ignore what Measles spreader RFK Jr has been up to. He’s shifted $12 million that was allocated to minority health to pay for his security detail.  Moreover, while continuing to financially benefit from his former organization’s anti-vaccination efforts, he is working to overhaul the federal agency that shields vaccine makers from frequently frivolous lawsuits.  The legislation that created the agency had been enacted to ensure that pharmaceutical companies didn’t stop manufacturing vaccines.  Not only does RFK want to eliminate the protections but he also wants autism to be included among the allowable reasons to sue even though there is no evidence that vaccines cause autism.    

  

Hopium 😱 ✡️🌻 😱 🚀🚢

Pooling:  The press pool is back or at the very least should be.  Overnight, US District Court Judge Jim Kelly, the same judge who reinstated Jim Acosta’s credentials after they were canceled by Trump in 2018, said that the White House must lift Trump’s ban on CNN, MSNOW, and Politico.  Judge Kelly’s ruling wasn’t a surprise since Trump’s rationale for stripping the three media outlets had no merit.  It certainly didn’t help that Trump said that he stripped them of access to “his” house because of all the mean things they’d said about him.  The judge didn’t buy the DOJ’s attempt to pivot Trump’s pathetic rationale from personal petulance to national security and military concerns.  It certainly didn’t help that one of the DOJ’s examples of the faux national security risk was Politico’s use of an unnamed source for an article about Iran when the source was a presentation made by Veep Vance in a meeting where the White House asked Politico and the other media outlets in attendance to cite Vance as an unnamed source rather than to identify him by name.  Because the UN has its own press pool, Trump’s depressingly awful speech to the General Assembly yesterday was broadcasted far and wide yesterday.  During that speech he threatened to annihilate Iran if they didn’t concede to his demands while also changing the name of Artificial Intelligence to Super Intelligence. It’s not clear why Trump thinks that renaming things and places is a solution to anything, but he does so AI is now SI, Lake Ontario is Lake America, and the Gulf of Mexico is the Gulf of America.  Whatever.

MAHA Not:  It’s also not clear why JD Vance and Mehmet Oz think that bragging about stripping Vice President JD Vance announced that the Trump administration is removing roughly 750,000 to 760,000 enrollees from the Obamacare exchanges in the run up to the midterm elections where the chances of them faceplanting continues to grow makes sense by claiming that all of them were either improperly enrolled or do not exist, they did.  Spoiler alert, it’s highly unlikely that most of the cancelled individuals were committing fraud, but the administration that pardons billion-dollar fraudsters loves citing peons for fraud and according to Dr. Oz, anyone who hasn’t filed an insurance claim obviously doesn’t exist. Apparently the multi-homed wealthy Oz doesn’t understand or doesn’t want to understand that healthy people without vast financial resources frequently view health insurance, particularly policies with high deductibles, as something they only use when facing expensive health crises. In other health news, at least for now the White House has shelved a plan for Trump issue an executive order that would have established a commission with the power to block government funded research grants if the work funded by those plans didn’t align with Trump’s political agenda, not because Trump and Budget Director Russel Vought who would have had a prominent role on the commission don’t want to move forward with the order but because there was intense bipartisan pushback.

Midterm Madness: Despite Trump’s efforts to gerrymander away a midterm loss of the House through aggressive redistricting something that is still playing out in Missouri where the 9^th District Court is fighting with SCOTUS, it’s likely that the Democrats will regain control of the House, assuming of course that Trump and his MAGA abettors at the Department of Homeland Security and the DOJ don’t send troops to the polls, otherwise disrupt the elections and/or refuse to swear in the winners.  The Senate is a different story.  For most of this year the assumption has been that while it might be possible to hold Jon Ossoff’s Georgia seat while picking up North Carolina and/or Maine, it would be near impossible for them to regain control.  However, something appears to be happening in more than a few Senate races in reliably red states perhaps because voters are growing increasingly concerned about inflation and rising energy prices and maybe, just maybe are beginning to realize that their Orange MAGA god is more interested in enriching himself and his family than improving their lives.  If the blue wave is big some races that are close or shouldn’t even be close might go blue or independent.  Offsetting that, a lot of Republican billionaire and PAC money is now being thrown into the mix. In no particular order, these are the states to watch:

Georgia: Incumbent Senator Jon Ossoff appears to be leading his Republican competitor Congressman Mike Collins by anywhere from 5 to 10 points.  Ossoff is the Democrats newest darling.  Collins hasn’t been helped by a scandal involving a former senior staff member who was into all things Nazi.      

North Carolina:  North Carolina Republican Senator Thom Tillis is not running for reelection in part because he lost Trump’s support and in part because it didn’t look like he could win reelection against former Governor Roy Cooper who is the Democrat’s candidate for the seat he’s now vacating.  The popular Cooper is facing off against former RNC chair Michael Whatley.  Polls indicate that Cooper is leading by 5 to 15 points.  North Carolina will be a Democratic pick-up unless the midterms go haywire.

Iowa: Current Senator Joni Ernst announced she wouldn’t be running for reelection shortly after dismissing her constituents concerns about Medicaid cuts by saying “everyone dies.” The Iowa race is between Republican Congresswoman Ashley Hinson and Democrat State Representative/Para Olympian Josh Turek.  Iowa hasn’t gone for a Democrat since Obama but as of now Turek is polling as much as 8 points ahead of Hinson. That’s good news but there was that infamous Iowa poll that showed Kamala Harris trouncing Trump in 2024 so while optimism maybe warranted it’s too soon to put Iowa in the category of Georgia or North Carolina.

Kansas:  Kansas, a reliably red state isn’t supposed to be in play. However, recent reports about incumbent Senator/OB-GYN Doctor Roger Marshall’s history of sending his patients’ accounts to collection agencies for debts as low as $100 appear to be hurting his brand.  While he is still leading, the Cook Political Report has shifted his race against Democrat Adam Hamilton from solid Republican to lean Republican. Ricketts will probably win but Republicans now have to allocate some money to holding Kansas.

Alaska:  Former Democratic Congressman/native Alaskan Mary Peltola is leading incumbent Senator Republican Dan Sullivan in quite a few though not all of the polls.  Alaska uses ranked choice voting, and the other Dan Sullivan is still on the ballot so it’s hard to tell who is really leading but Peltola stands a good chance of coming out on top.   

Ohio:  Ohio is another one of those states that has become increasing red over the years.  Former Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown who lost in 2024 to current Republican Senator Bernie Moreno, father-in-law to wife abuser/Congressman Max Miller,  is making a comeback bid.  He’s currently polling 3 to 4 points ahead of incumbent Republican Jon Husted who replaced JD Vance when he became VP.  If any Democrat can pick up a Senate seat in Ohio, it’s Brown, a populist whose appeal historically has crossed party lines.   

Maine:  Maine is supposed to be one of the Democrats’ best pick-up opportunities.  However, incumbent Senator Susan Collins is well liked in the state and has a history of outperforming polls. It doesn’t help Democrats that her opponent Troy Jackson got off to a slow start after their first choice, Graham Platner, the Nazi tattooed oyster farmer and accused rapist, was ousted. Depending on the poll, Collins, despite a lot of people not forgiving her support of Justice Brett (Beer) Kavanaugh’s confirmation, is running neck and neck with Jackson.  Yesterday, ProPublica published an article detailing how, through her PAC, Collins received a campaign contribution from Novatek, a Hawaii based defense company in what looks a lot like a payoff for her support for them getting a lucrative government contract. The grift was being investigated by the DOJ’s anti-corruption unit but the investigation was called off after Trump took office. Of course, Collins denies everything.  Given the timing of the story and Collin’s habit of winning it’s not clear that voters who should care will care but maybe they will helped by rising energy costs and the Canada mess.  

Michigan:  Michigan has an open seat because Democratic Senator Gary Peters is retiring.  The race in the state is between Democrat Abdul El-Sayed and former Republican Congressman Mike Rogers.  Senator Peters won his last election by only 1.7 points and Michigan’s other Senator Elissa Slotkin, who ran against Rogers in 2024, won by only 0.5 points so holding the Michigan seat was never going to be easy.  At first it appeared that El-Sayed who eked out his primary win despite polling that had indicated he would easily win would be the underdog against the relatively normal for a Republican Rogers.  However, Michigan is one of the states most affected by Trump’s Canada shenanigans and rising fuel prices.  Sayed is now polling ahead of Rogers in most polls. 

Nebraska:  Nebraska is another reliably Republican state and incumbent Senator Pete Ricketts who is facing Independent Dan Osborn will probably hold his seat, but the state has lots of disgruntled farmers who have been hurt by Trump’s tariffs and rising energy costs.  Polling has been all over the place with some polls showing Osborn leading.  There’s a chance, albeit a small one that Osborn ekes out a victory even though he shouldn’t be able to.

New Hampshire:  New Hamphsire is another one of those states where the Democratic incumbent, this time Senator Jeanne Shaheen, is retiring.  The race is now between former Senator John Sununu, not to be confused with the more popular former Governor Chris Sununu, and Democratic Congressman Chris Pappas.  Pappas who only recently won his primary got off to a slow start and had been lagging Sununu in the polls, but he now appears to be in the lead.  New Hampshire is another state where high energy bills could sway voters blue.

Texas: Texas’s Republican Senate candidate Ken Paxton has repeatedly cheated on his wife; he’s an awful person and is so corrupt that he was impeached by Texas’ Republican House.  He won his primary against incumbent Senator John Cornyn only because he got a huge lift from the corrupt guy in Washington.  Paxton is running against squeaky clean Democrat, State Representative James Talarico who is up by a few points in most of the recent polls but it’s Texas and Texas rarely fails to disappoint.  As proof of that yesterday, Paxton’s estranged wife who is suing him for divorce on biblical grounds urged voters to stick with him because she’d rather a flawed Republican than any Democrat. Still, hope or as political guru Tim Miller calls it “hopium” abounds so maybe just maybe this time Texas Democrats, buoyed by some disgruntled Hispanic voters who didn’t realize that Trump’s aggressive anti-immigrant push would put targets on their backs and some ranchers who are suffering will vote for Talarico or stay home.   

 

Gold Kryptonite 😱 ✡️🌻 😱 🚀🚢

Pressing Buttons:   The Houthis have ramped up their attacks, interest rates are up, gas and food prices are rising, and recent polls indicate that Trump’s approval rating is down with Reuters/Ipsos showing it at 32% and the American Research Group showing him breaking through 30% to 29%.  Egged on by surrogate wife/binkie Natalie, Trump’s solution to all the bad news was to announce on Friday that he would be banning CNN, MSNOW, and Politico from the White House and from participating in his traveling press pool.  Over the weekend, he implemented his ban while also asserting that no one is more of an advocate for free speech than him; his definition of free speech, including speech that reports his greatness rather than the “fake” news reported by the outlets he banned and some others like the NY Times and the Washington Post who he threatened to add to his “no White House for you” list. Trump’s impetuous announcement came as a surprise to most of his staff, or so they say, including Chief of Staff Susie Wiles but then again, most who aren’t his binkie, including Wiles actually go home at night.  CNN, MSNOW, and Politico are now suing to get their access back.  Their case has been assigned to District Court judge Timothy Kelly,  the same Trump appointed Judge who previously ordered that then CNN reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials be reinstated after Trump stripped his away so it’s likely that theirs will be reinstated too.  The judge who Trump is already badmouthing, scheduled a preliminary hearing for Wednesday morning. CNN was due to run the White House press pool this week meaning that their cameras were supposed to provide and share live footage with the rest of the White House pool, however since they’ve lost, or at the very least temporarily lost their credentials, their camera teams were also subjected to Trump’s ban. In an unusual show of solidarity, ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC, the other four networks that make-up the White House’s camera pool, all refused to assume CNN’s spot in the pool rotation.  The White House and Trump still have press coverage but that coverage including the first flight into and out of Trump’s new toy, his White House heli pad, went off without professional video coverage and an audible feed because though Trump tried to fill the void with Trump TV, his network wasn’t up to the task. Though Trump’s schedule of United Nations meetings will be covered by the press, with the exception of his General Assembly speech which will be broadcast by the UN, most won’t have the level of camera and audio coverage that he feeds off of, kind of like “Superman” Trump is now traveling with his own form of kryptonite.  Although his Tuesday afternoon meeting with NYC’s Mayor Mamdani was broadcast cleanly, that was only because Mamdani invited the “banned” outlets to participate at their meeting which was held on his Gracie Manson turf.  Score one for Mamdani who at 5’11” appeared to be the same height as the 6’3” Trump.  🤷‍♀️ 🤷‍♀️

The AI Conundrum:  Hugging Face 🤗 🧸 which was acquired by chip maven Nvidia in September, isn’t just an emoji, it’s the name of an online platform and community where developers and researchers build, share, and collaborate on artificial intelligence and machine learning models.  Over the summer it was reported that in May and June OpenAI models running a Hugging Face cybersecurity evaluation started communicating among themselves making changes that were not initiated by humans.  As a result of what is now being called the Huggy Bear incident, the fear of AI running amok is now being taken seriously.  That fear which has been percolating within the tech community was further heightened after Jacob Coxon, a researcher who previously worked at both OpenAI and Anthropic, announced his resignation from Anthropic, accusing top AI labs of racing toward self-improving superintelligence and "gambling with our lives.” As a result of Coxon’s warning and the Huggy Bear incident, which was just the tip of the iceberg, there’s been increasing pressure to slow down AI development until some guard rails, possibly in the form of a national and/or international regulatory agency can be put in place, something along the lines of the way that the proliferation of atomic weapons has been limited, or somewhat limited.  Trump’s first response, likely influenced by some of his tech bro donators and chip manufacturers is that no outside regulator is necessary because he’s a genius and anyway we need to stay ahead of China, to whom he as chief genius sold the advanced chips that they need to advance their AI aspirations. He’s now saying that he’ll create an AI force with an AI czar whatever that means.  What to do about AI development is now a political football, one with lots of anti-regulation money being thrown into the midterm elections. That Trump thinks he’s the genius who can determine what is and isn’t allowed, should scare all of us into believing that some rational framework and regulation is required.  Will we get there before AI gets us, maybe we should ask ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or Copilot?  Then again, maybe they like Trump aren’t the right decisionmakers. 🤷‍♀️ 🤷‍♀️.  

More 💩:  Trump announced that his planned Arc d’Trump will be a “top grade military complex” that will include drone and sniper capability. That is utterly ridiculous however, by saying that his triumphal arch is a military installation, he believes that he’ll be able to get the courts, especially his SCOTUS abettors, to sign off on it much the way that they signed off on his East Wing project when he added an assertion that his ballroom was a military installation in drag. On the subject of drag, Secretary of War and Beer Hegseth appears to be back to ensuring “his” male troops really are male and that they have adequate levels of testosterone.  To that end, in addition to checking that their waist measurements conform to his standards, he’s asked troops over 30 to report on their “spontaneous morning erections.”  Hegseth hasn’t weighed in on bestiality, but FBI Director Kash Patel has. Kash who needs to hire more FBI Agents to replace the ones he fired wants to eliminate a history of engaging in bestiality as an automatic disqualifier because sometimes the bestiality is the beast’s fault? He’s also okay if new recruits have engaged in prostitution or hired a prostitute as long they only did so three times more than ten years ago. On the subject of stupid acts, reports are that Don Jr has agreed to reimburse the oligarch who paid for some of his wedding festivities. That sounds like the right thing to do but there is no proof that he actually has paid him back or plans to do so.  Lastly, Trump has declared victory in his war with Denmark over Greenland, but what he’s really accomplished is the updating of a pre-existing long-term arrangement, something that could have been accomplished without offending allies and scaring Greenland into believing they were about to be invaded.    

 

   

Strict Body Composition 😱 ✡️🌻 😱 🚀🚢

War:  On Tuesday, CBS News published photos showing extensive damage to US military bases across the Middle East, including but not limited to bases in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Oman, Qatar, and Kuwait.  The damage is the result of Iranian missile and drone attacks.  The photos which were provided to CBS by active-duty members of the military who asked to remain anonymous reflect destruction that the Pentagon has not shown the American public.  Other major news outlets have since reported on the accuracy of the CBS story. Yesterday, after asserting that this year’s Congress had been the most productive ever, Speaker Mike Johnson sent the House home early, they won’t be back until after the midterms. Though he didn’t say so, it’s widely believed that he sent them home to avoid having to take a vote on Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie’s resolution to impeach Secretary of Defense/War/Beer Pete Hegseth and also to avoid voting on the release of more Epstein files.  To state the obvious, this Congress has not been the most productive ever, in fact it’s barely ever in session because Johnson keeps sending its members home to avoid taking votes, the war is not going well, and Johnson had every reason to believe that while the vote on Hegseth might not have led to his impeachment, it was going to be embarrassing.  For his part Hegseth, who at least for now isn’t moving forward with his plan to test troops testosterone levels has been focused on other similarly ridiculous things. The Wall Street Journal reports that he’s notified commanders that only service members who meet “strict body composition, fitness, and appearance benchmarks” including somewhat meaningless waist to height ratios, will be considered for attendance at his upcoming “State of the Force address” scheduled to take place on September 30.  Does that mean that the Commander in Chief with the chunky ankles won’t be invited?  The less photo ready soldiers get to remain in harms way in the Middle East, as punishment for being dumpy and/or genetically challenged while Trump, if he’s excluded will just play another round of golf.  In other diplomatic news, Trump is now threatening to go to war with Canada and to impose more tariffs on the EU’s member countries in retaliation to the possibility that our neighbors to the north might join the EU as its first associate member, an option that is only on the table because of the miserable way Trump’s been treating them.        

The Economy:  Yesterday, in an effort to control “stubborn” inflation, the Federal Reserve, now Chaired by Kevin Warsh who despite being known as an inflation hawk, was appointed by Trump to replace his previous appointee Jerome Powell who he pushed out for refusing to lower rates, unanimously voted to raise the benchmark interest rate by one quarter of a point. Trump is not happy; he responded to the Fed’s move by once again asserting that interest rates in the US should be lowered to 1% while also reupping a threat to cut trade “with every country that we have a Deficit with, which is most of them.”  It’s not clear what he was doing during his days at Wharton but it clearly didn’t involve attending Economics classes. Not only is Trump’s threat to cut trade “shoot in the foot” stupid, but it’s his Iran war and its impact on gas prices combined with his tariffs that are  causing the “stubborn” inflation that led to the Federal Reserve Board’s action, not that Trump would ever acknowledge that his actions and policies are anything less than brilliant. Perhaps in response to everyone pointing out that Warsh was his appointee, last night Trump said he still supports his new Fed Chair, asserting that the rate increase wasn’t Warsh’s fault, that he had been “forced” to raise rates by all the other members of the Federal Reserve Board, a weird take on Warsh’s action and his accompanying statement that the rate increase was necessary to combat inflation but then again, given the source, not all that shocking.    

Polls:  On Tuesday, the NY Times reported that the Democrats have a “clear advantage” going into the midterms.  Their conclusion is based on national polling undertaken by the Times together with it’s polling partner Siena University.  The Times/Siena polls are well respected so their conclusions are nothing to sneeze at.  Their polling suggests that Trump is seriously underwater across almost every metric and as a result is a drag on his party.  As a result Democrats have a 9 point advantage going into the midterms.  In prior elections an advantage of that magnitude would indicate that a big blue wave was coming, but given that Republicans won the gerrymandering war and have a bigly funding advantage, it remains unclear just how large the predicted blue wave will be.  That’s not to say that Democrats aren’t expected to take over control of the House but the number of seats they pick up, and the size of their majority are likely to be smaller than they would have been absent all the redistricting shenanigans.  Democrats also stand a chance of regaining control of the Senate, but that hill is harder to climb.  To come out on top they need to hold all their contested Senate seats, including Georgia which given incumbent golden boy Jon Ossoff’s increasing popularity looks like a done deal but also in Michigan and New Hampshire where polls show Democratic candidates El Sayed and Pappas neck and neck with their respective Republican oppoments, Rogers and Sununu, while also picking up four more.  Although Democrats are currently running ahead of Republicans in lots of the states they need to pick up like North Carolina, Maine, Texas, and Ohio as well as in a few others like Iowa, and Alaska where until recently they didn’t think they’d have any chance of winning, with the exception of North Carolina where former Democratic Governor Roy Cooper is likely to coast to victory their leads mostly fall within the margin of error. Moreover, if we’ve learned anything by now polls can be depressingly wrong:  Maine’s Susan Collins has a history of outpeforming hers; Texas is Texas; and that Iowa poll completed by then respected pollster Ann Selzer that showed Kamala Harris winning the state in 2024 by 3 points was off by 16 points. 

More 💩:  Keep an eye on the Kennedy Center.  After a court ruled that Trump can’t have his name etched on its façade, its Trump appointed board voted to shut it down temporarilly as in forever because Trump, bigly mad that he can’t get his name on the Center’s walls, is holding up $257 million that was previously allocated for its rehabilitation and repair.  Yesterday, Trump’s minions began putting up a fence around the Center, and many fear that Trump who has threatened to tear down the Center’s building might do that, replacing it with an amphitheater.  A few members of the Kennedy family have expresed their outrage, but not RFK Jr, he’s too busy pretending that the measles outbreak in Pennsylvania where there more than 700 cases of measles have been confirmed and four deaths have occurred, is just fake news.  Trump has been busy too, not just with his war and his golf game, but also stock trading.  He’s traded 24,000 times since the beginning of this term, quite a bit more than his predecessors Bush, Obama, Clinton, and Biden whose grand total number of trades was 0. It’s fair to assume that some of Trump’s trades involved Data Center and AI related companies but nothing to see there because while lots of people including the heads of Anthropic and OpenAI think it’s time for some regulation, Trump says that since he, the genius whose uncle was a brilliant MIT professor, knows all, is in charge, who needs any regulation, anyway?  Besides, odds are that he won’t be around in ten years when AI takes over possibly killing the rest of us.           

  

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.