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.         

 

 
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.  

 

 

Peak Stupid 😱 ✡️🌻 😱 🚀🚢

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

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

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

Be A Dolly 😱 ✡️🌻 😱 🚀🚢 🗳️ 👱‍♀️

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

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

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

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

 

 

Happy Meals  🍔🍔   😱 ✡️🌻 😱 🚀🚢 🗳️

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

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

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

Twister 😱 ✡️🌻 😱 🚀🚢 🗳️

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

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

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

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