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.