9/12/26: The
Republicans understand that they are up against serious headwinds in the coming
midterms. So, the drumbeat story they continue to try to spread is that the
Democratic Party is now made up of nothing but Satan-worshipping communists and
people who hate America.
I’m not sure most MAGA loyalists
could explain what communists believe; but I’m here to help. In a communist
system, everyone is supposed to be treated equally, there are no poor people,
and there are no rich. Communism has worked at times on a small scale – for
example, with religious groups, like the Shakers.
The Shaker flaw was not in
living communally – their flaw was banning marriage and sexual relations, as
they waited for Jesus to return.
Jesus didn’t.
And the Shakers died out.
We also know that Karl Marx, who
supplied the founding ideas for a broader movement, considered religion
an opiate for the masses. Promise the downtrodden a place in heaven and keep
trampling them in the dirt. So, to be clear, you can’t be a communist and, for
instance, a practicing Catholic, Presbyterian, Latter-day Saint or Muslim. You
can’t even worship the Aztec gods.
The biggest problems (and I
would say there are quite a few) include the need for a communist government to
take charge of the existing economies – and break down opposition from those
who have (shall we say) acquired perhaps more than their fair share, and often
by unfair means.
For example, the Robber Barons
of the early 1900s, or, I would say, the folks like Elon Musk, today.
In any case, communist
governments have, so far, managed to take power over the economies of various
nations – the old Soviet Union, East Germany, Cuba, China and North Korea, for
example. To run entire economies means putting immense power in the leaders’
hands. This has never gone well, stretching back to the dawn of human history.
Warlords. Oligarchs. Kings and Queens. Communists. The Super Rich.
So, it seems odd to me, that
Trump supporters are not a little upset when he tries to stick his nose into
all kinds of corners of the U.S. economy and order people around. As an example, Mr. Trump has
been ordering coal-fired power plants to remain open, even though the owners
want to close them down.
Solar power, wind power, and a
huge increase in natural gas usage have made coal a poor choice economically.
Trump doesn’t care. He’s got the
power. So, he sent out Energy secretary Chris Wright at the start of this
second term, and had Wright tell everyone that the coal-fired, 64-year-old JH
Campbell Generating Plant in Michigan had to remain open. According to
Sec. Wright, the plant was needed to ensure reliable electricity in the region,
and the federal government used its emergency powers to keep it operating. As The
Guardian noted earlier this week, “Environmental groups and three states
– Michigan, Illinois and Minnesota – went to court to
try to overturn orders keeping the plant online.”
The U.S. Court of Appeals for
the District of Columbia has ruled that the order was invalid, since there was
no emergency, within the meaning of the law. This decision may also affect
other plants, in multiple states, that were ordered to keep burning coal.
This blogger is well-aware of
the long battle for decent wages, safety protections, and secure employment,
involving the coal miners of Kentucky and West Virginia, in particular. In
fact, one reason this blogger is a Democrat, is that he knows how unions had to
battle the Big Coal companies to get fair treatment years ago. Did you know,
for example, that before the federal government and the union organizers
stepped in and demanded new rules, more than 2,000
miners died every year? And if you don’t believe the Coal
Barons abused their powers, read up on “company towns,” and then read up on the
fight for miners to be compensated if they developed black lung.
You can argue that communists
are a threat because of the way they accumulate power.
You can argue that Big
Government is a threat for the same reason.
There is a reason, however, why
President Theodore Roosevelt once spoke of the Robber Barons as “malefactors of
great wealth.” You have to be almost purposely ill-informed not to understand
that the billionaires of today have acquired too much power, by a factor of at
least ten. A communist takeover of the U.S. is not coming if Democrats win
the midterm elections. It’s not coming in 2029, no matter who sits in the
Oval Office. It’s probably not coming for the next half century, if ever.
Meanwhile, the super-rich are
having their way.
(See, for example: The Epstein Files.)
(Or the Big Data center folks.)
(Or the Sackler family, who pushed oxycontin – and said the
product was safe.)
FUN FACT: The
First Lady has made it clear that she has “no plans” to
travel with her husband to Ireland today. Mr. Trump is going to attend the
Irish Open and maybe think happy thoughts about the Iran War while he’s there.
Will Lucious Natalie be
traveling with the President of the United States, the man who just gave her a $45,000
bonus for her fine work.
TBD.
These next facts are “fun” only
if we like to know how the Iran War is really going, without the government
totally filtering out bad news. As a huge fan of the advancement of human
rights, in every corner of the globe, this blogger would love to see the
theocratic crazies in Iran lose their iron grip.
(I doubt President Trump has any interest in really advancing
their cause.)
Anyway:
FUN FACT #2: The
Houthis, Yemeni fighters allied with Iran, have captured an important island that
may allow them to choke off or at least slow the flow of Saudi oil through the Bab
al-Mandab Strait.
(The blogger – human rights again – is no fan of the Saudi royal
family, either.)
FUN FACT #3: The
Acting Secretary of the Navy, Hung Cao, has admitted that Iranian attacks “blew
the hell out of” a key U.S. base in Bahrain. Our troops and their dependents had to be evacuated on short notice, once
the shooting began – and they were unable to take many of their possessions
before leaving.
FUN FACT #4: A
large percentage of Americans probably cannot find the Red Sea on a blank map.
Ditto: Iran. Or Yemen. Or Bahrain. (That last one includes me – although I’m
pretty sure it juts out into the Persian Gulf.)
I had to look it up myself.
FUN FACT #5:
Iranian drones blew a hole in a main Saudi oil pipeline earlier this week. And
in this country diesel fuel now sells for a record-high $6.06 per gallon.
Really, this is no fun at all.
FUN FACT #6: On
further review, we learn that the drones or missiles that forced a shutdown of
the Saudi pipeline originated from Iraq, fired by pro-Iranian Shiite Muslim
allies. Trump fans: You need to look up the differences between Sunni and
Shiites. (I doubt Donald even knows.)
 |
The Bab al-Mandab Strait runs between Djibouti and Yemen. |
 |
The Middle East. And I was right about Bahrain! |
 |
Well, what do you know! Natalie Harp, in green, did accompany her boss to Ireland. |
___
John
Husted aide liked to play pretend Nazi.
9/13/26: Boys
will be boys, and in this case the boy – an aide to a U.S. senator running for
reelection in Ohio – likes to play Nazis.
As in, he’s a Nazi.
As The Daily Beast explains, by way of the Washington Post:
A
Republican in a critical Senate race has been exposed as hiring a top aide who
once made a photo of SS soldiers his Facebook profile picture.
Stephen
Woytek, 25, was hired as Ohio Sen. Jon Husted’s political director in August,
but a bombshell report by The Washington Post suggests that the campaign
overlooked glaring details in Woytek’s background.
Woytek’s
public Facebook profile shows that he follows a military reenactment group
whose members dress as the Waffen-SS, the Post revealed Friday. Another photo
from the group shared on Flickr appeared to show Woytek as a teenager in an SS
uniform, the paper reported.
The Post
also found that Woytek “recently” added songs celebrating Rhodesia—a defunct
White-minority-ruled nation often venerated by white supremacists—to a public
playlist.
Husted’s
campaign says that Woytek has since been fired.
___
Plan
your Trump-funded vacation now!
9/14/26: The
self-proclaimed “Greatest President in American History,” who has already added
more national debt to the pile than any other man to sit in the Oval Office,
insisted yesterday that his promised $5,000 checks to every American adult are
“100 percent” going to happen.
I think this means that my wife
and I, our four adult children, two sons-in-law, and one boyfriend, will
combine our $45,000 and go to Europe on vacation next spring. I can hardly wait
to get my hand on that Trump Check.
(You know he’s going to name
those checks after himself – and slap his picture on them, if he can.)
Okay, sure.
It’s going to balloon the federal
deficit by another $1.2 trillion; but that’s only a problem for un-adult
Americans and generations unborn.
*
“Cum
trophies” and racism.
IN OTHER Republican-themed news,
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson says he still supports Brandon Herrara.
Brandon is running as a candidate from Texas, hoping to join Johnson in Congress.
Herrara is famous for having
said this, in an online video he posted in 2023, about Texas mothers – and
their children.
The fact
that you kept your cum trophy [child] doesn’t make you any less wrong about the
dumb shit that you say. Being a mother doesn’t make your opinion any more or
less valid. Just because you let somebody creampie you doesn’t mean I have to
give a shit about your political opinions.”
Yes, indeed, ladies, “Vote
Herrara” on November 3. He will then ignore your concerns regarding affordable childcare
for your “cum trophies” and grocery prices, since you are required to feed your
“trophies.”
Known as the “AKGuy” online, you
can be sure Brandon won’t give a shit about school shootings, either.
In related news, even Texas
Republicans are condemning a candidate for the State Railroad Commission, Bo
French.
French initially shared a screenshot of a post on the social platform X
that showed darker-skinned South Asian students at the University of Texas, and
a caption that said, “Bollywood University.”
Then good ol’ Bo went with a
similar image with the caption: “I heard UT graduation this
year looked like this. I didn’t believe it. The problem is now obviously far
worse than anyone imagined.”
So, Bo proved he was a racist
and a hater. Then he doubled down on racism and hatred and tried to raise
campaign funds by talking about how “radical Leftists” had attacked him for his
racist and hateful posts.
___
The case
of the missing vandals.
9/15/26: Our
first topic today is imaginary vandals, like imaginary friends, only prone
to destruction.
Donald Dumpling continues to
insist that the lining he ordered installed in his Big Beautiful Reflecting
Pool in Washington D.C. was cut to shreds by American-hating traitors with box
cutters or switchblades.
Maybe weedwhackers.
So, The Dumpling Man ordered his
top people at the Department of Justice to turn up all the evidence of
vandalism they could find – and, so far, no one has been successfully
prosecuted, because even the people at DOJ have had to admit that the
“evidence” they’ve found is rather thin. This made Donald mad, so he attacked the free press again this weekend, insisting
that reporters for The New York Times, continued “to avoid doing any
real reporting on all the vandalism.”
What the Times did do was
look at actual government documents, including reports submitted by Atlantic
Industrial Coatings, which painted the granite bottom of the Pool. Here’s how reporters
summed up what they found:
Because
of “human oversight,” workers in some areas did not spray enough of the primer
that made the layers of the liner stick together, Atlantic said in the
documents. But the bigger problem, the company said, was that the repair plan
laid out in the contract called for the layers of liner to include two
chemicals that turned out to be incompatible.
The
chemical on top reached a temperature hotter than what the compound underneath
could withstand, and the heat caused the bottom layer to blister and come
loose, the documents show. The contractor said it had not expected that outcome
because it was very uncommon to mix the two products in that way.
The
failure illustrates the consequences of the Trump administration’s rushed effort to renovate the pool this spring. In a
hurry to finish the work before the nation’s 250th birthday on July 4, the
government bypassed competition and gave Atlantic a no-bid contract to carry
out an untested approach designed in part by the general manager of one
of Mr. Trump’s golf clubs.
If you haven’t already figured
this out, here are the three critical issues related to this story:
First, Trump demanded that his flunkies at DOJ indict David
Hearn, the worst of the imaginary vandals, for multiple felonies, which could
have sent Hearn to prison for a decade.
Then Donald’s flunkies looked at
their own case – a steaming pile of presidential feces – and dropped it before
it even began.
(Trump fumed and said his prosecutors “choked.”)
Second, Trump’s continued
attacks on the free press every time reporters do the kind of work that we need
the free press to do, should scare all Americans. We do not want the next
president, very likely a Democrat, to be able to silence the free press. We do
not want any president to do so.
Third: We, as taxpayers, paid
$14.7 million for that Reflecting Pool paintjob and we might expect the people
who were hired to do the job right.
*
TAXPAYERS also paid a princely
sum to fly Trump to Ireland this past weekend so that – basically – he could attend the Irish
Open,
held Saturday and Sunday at Donald’s own golf resort in Doonbeg.
We can also report that Lara
Trump and her family got to fly on the government plane (I think we can assume
for free). Her son Luke, seen below with Grandpa Dumpling, got to celebrate his
ninth birthday overseas.
And, as already mentioned
previously, Natalie Harp went along with her Dumpling Dreamboat.
FUN FACT: Did
you realize our government is run by zombies? Well, it is. Specifically: Zombie
Joe Biden. Today Donald Trump whined again about how he’s just the president
and what can he do!
Prices are high. Zombie Joe did
it!
FUN FACT #2: By
comparison, if anything good happens anywhere in the world, Team Trump will
take the credit. For example:
___
MAGA midterm
outlook looks grim.
9/18/26: Donald
J. Trump has suffered through another terrible week, adding to the gloom
settling over the White House.
With voter opinion polls
shifting dramatically in favor of Democratic candidates in even some of the
reddest areas of this country, U.S. senators up for a new term starting in
2027, have been complaining loudly to the White House. Sen. Susan Collins, whose
seat is ripe for picking, has suggested that Congress pass laws that “actually
help regular Americans [emphasis added].”
(One would hope.)
An anonymous Republican senator
warned that the White House was “putting a noose around all of our necks” by
going to war with Canada over tariffs. It was just another element of
unnecessary economic chaos.
Here in Glendale, Ohio, when I
stopped for gas yesterday, a gallon was going to cost me $4.59, and if I were a
truck driver, diesel was going for $6.59. That last price is the highest on
record, and the increased costs of transporting goods will soon ripple through
the entire economy.
Chances are that the next report
on inflation, which will cover September, will be terrible. And that’s the last
report before the election, and unlikely to offer any good news for the
Republican brand.
*
WE MUST ALSO REPORT the sad
news, for all MAGA faithful, that the U.S. Supreme Court has put the kibosh on the
Dumpling President’s plan to make mail-in voting as difficult as possible. Only
two of nine justices supported his dream; and at this point, you don’t have to
guess who those bozos would be.
First, Samuel Alito.
Second, Uncle Thomas.
Neither justice seems to
understand that the U.S. Supreme Court is meant to act as a brake on the
executive and legislative branches, if they violate the Constitution. This is even
more important when we have a president who is, frankly, increasingly nutty.
I’m not sure Uncle Thomas would reject a Trump plan even if the president signed
an executive order to have Natalie Harp as queen.
Naturally, Donald exploded again, blasting both the High Court
and the people he appointed to it. On Truth Social, he fumed, “The Court’s
inability and unwillingness to do the right thing for our Country will go down,
in a very negative way, in the annals of History.”
If you haven’t noticed, no one
who disagrees with Trump ever has good reasons. Donald continued to rant: “This
Supreme Court is bullied and cajoled by the Radical Left into making decisions
that have set America back at least a hundred years.”
As for Alito and Clarence “Uncle”
Thomas, the president called them both “legends.” Not so much, the three
jurists he appointed during his first term – Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett
and Brett Kavanaugh. “These are not the people I interviewed to serve on the
United States Supreme Court, they are merely a shell of their original selves,”
Dumpling Donald howled. In addition, he insisted, the Supreme Court was “costing
the United States Trillions of Dollars with shockingly bad [tariff] rulings
that are of such magnitude that it won’t be easily possible for our Country to
recover or heal.”
*
IN LESSER NEWS, but still indicative,
the president has announced plans to close the John F. Kennedy Center for the
Performing Arts and fix it up beautifully. Yay!! But he will only fix the
building if he is allowed to slap his name upon it. Otherwise, he has
threatened to bulldoze the place.
Boo!
And yes, he’s that pathetic.
Maria Shriver, niece of the late
President Kennedy, for whom the building was named, offered blunt assessment:
And so
here we are. This statement from Trump blows my mind. That a sitting president
would not let any renovations to a public building go on unless he gets to
first put his name in the said building… What a sad state of affairs. What a
tragedy. Actually, how small minded, how narcissistic [emphasis added,
unless otherwise noted].”
She went on to add, “Imagine
spending your days focused on this, while a war rages under your leadership.”
*
IN FACT, IT WOULD BE NICE if
Donald was thinking about the war at all and giving the American people an
accurate assessment of how it’s going. ABC has released footage, provided by American
servicemembers, showing extensive damage to U.S. bases across the Middle
East. And all of this comes in a war that we have already won! After all, who
can forget this grandiose claim made by President Trump, while celebrating
his 80th birthday in June:
As for Defense Secretary Macho
Pete, he has admitted that sometimes our air defenses fail to
intercept every enemy missile or drone. “Every once in a while you might have
one, unfortunately we call it a ‘squirter,’ that makes its way through,” Hegseth
told reporters recently.
For a full view of the damage,
go to ABC for the story. It appears there have been several “squirters” we
haven’t heard about.
*
SADLY, THE CRAZY MEMBER of the
Kennedy clan, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s man heading the Department of
Health and Human Services, is making headlines again. Yesterday, Secretary
Kennedy announced that his agency would be looking into the dangers of “chemtrails.”
That is, he would be deploying valuable
federal assets in an effort to placate the nincompoops who believe in the conspiracy
theory that airplanes at high altitudes, creating white trails of crystalized water, are destroying the manliness of
all American males.
Amy McGrath, a former U.S. Air
Force pilot, responded to this news with the kind of sarcasm it merited:
So
apparently it’s time for some middle-school science:
Jets fly
high. It’s REALLY cold up there. Hot, moist exhaust hits cold air. The water
condenses and freezes into tiny ice crystals. That white trail behind the
airplane? It’s called a contrail.
We’ve
known how this works for a very long time.
In other HHS news, the Trump
folks in charge at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention are taking a
page out of the RFK Jr. playbook. With measles exploding across the country, state
officials in Pennsylvania, where a massive measles outbreak has been spreading
among the Amish and Mennonites, have warned that four unvaccinated individuals have died. Trump’s
new choice to head up the CDC has decided to sit this threat out. That allows
RFK Jr. to continue to argue that Pennsylvania health authorities are making the story up – and we can expect Bobby to claim
that the four dead were killed by chemtrails.
(Sorry, that’s my little joke.)
So far, this year, 3,471 cases of measles have been reported, giving
Donald the distinction of having presided over the three worst years since
2000, when the disease was declared “eradicated” in this country.
Third worst year 1,274 cases (2019)
Second worst 2,289 cases (2025)
First worst Total rising steadily (2026).
Joe Biden 414 cases total (2021-2024)
*
He’s not
kidding.
IF YOU ARE A FAN of “checks and
balances,” essentially the main concept that animated our Founding Fathers, you
might be alarmed if you listened to President Nutjob, campaigning in North Carolina this week. Trump was in
the state to bolster the campaign of Michael Whatley, running for a seat in the
U.S. Senate. Having lost any filter he ever had, now that he’s a crotchety old
man, Donald bragged that he had gotten the state $2 billion in FEMA funding. That
would be fine if he stopped there, but this was Trump, and of course he couldn’t
help himself. If Whatley were to lose in November, the president announced, he wasn’t
going to send all that money to people in the state.
Even in a crowd of his most
loyal supporters, that idea didn’t elicit any enthusiasm – since he’d also be
screwing them. Trump seemed to sense he had gone too far, and added quickly, “No,
I’m only kidding.”
Only we know that he’s not. The
Dumpling Man has been routinely turning down ordinary requests for federal
disaster aid, in cases where such requests come from blue states.
If you are a loyal MAGA, you
have probably forgotten (or never knew) that the Founding Fathers wisely put
the “power of the purse” in the hands of Congress, and specifically in
the hands of the House of Representatives. If the House wasted tax dollars, we
could vote the dopes out every two years. As I used to explain to my seventh-grade
students, the President of the United States does not control a dime, if
Congress refuses to approve his funding requests.
A president isn’t supposed to
hold back money, already approved by the legislative branch, just because the
people who need it didn’t support him.
*
Yay, pay
the credit card companies even more money!
SPEAKING OF MONEY, for the first
time in three years, the Federal Reserve has raised the interest rate banks must pay to borrow, by a
quarter percent. This, in turn, will raise the interest rates we pay if we carry
credit card balances, hope to finance a new truck, or buy a first home.
The president is furious and
says the Fed should charge 1% interest, not 4%, as it will now, because we are
doing fabulously under his steady leadership.
The Dumpling fired the last Fed
chief, Jerome Powell, because “Dumps” demanded rate cuts, and Powell
refused. Now his own choice to lead the Federal Reserve, Kevin Warsh, has not
only NOT cut rates, but raised them. The problem is the stubborn inflation
rippling through our economy.
Which Donald continues to insist
is the fault of evil Joe Biden.
It’s only a matter of time
before the president labels Warsh a “traitor,” or a banker who “hates America.”
FUN FACT – NARCISSISTS: If you
missed this minor story, it fits nicely into our worries about President Trump
and his current priorities. During an Oval Office meeting earlier this week he
asked the governor of South Dakota to add his face to Mount
Rushmore. First, Donald Dumpling should focus on winning the Iran War. Second,
Dumpling Man should focus on high prices for everything.
Third President Nitwit should
already understand that a governor can’t alter a national monument, just
because the Nitwit-in-Chief asks him to.
___
9/21/26: On
this fine Monday, at the start of fall, we have a grab bag of stories to
highlight, as we often do.
First, let’s look at what Mr.
Cranky Pants was up to in the wee morning hours. At 1:06 a.m., the president
posted an AI slop video, making it clear that he was proud of his attempt to
crush the free press. As of now, he has banned CNN, NBC Now and Politico
reporters from all press gatherings at the White House.
(We know “Lucious Natalie” helps
Donald post – and so she was there at his bedside, we must assume?)
We also know that Donald
Dumpling added to his growing tally of “Days I Spent Golfing as
President.”
He was at his private club near
Washington on Friday and then had so much fun he was back on Sunday.
Yesterday, the president admitted on Fox News that he was in a “deciding mode,”
regarding Iran. He said that “very big things are going to be happening in the
not-so-distant future.” He was trying to answer this question, regarding Iran,
to his own nitwit satisfaction: “If and when do I blow the entire nation up?”
According to Fox News, Donald
Dumpling said there were three choices on the table as far as he was concerned.
First, “wiping Iran out.”
Second: “Letting them rot
economically.”
Third: “Making a deal.”
Then, Donald added, “‘My
question is if and when do I blow the entire nation up? They better behave.”
This morning, the British
military is reporting that an “unknown projectile” struck a
tanker entering the Strait of Hormuz.
Two members of the crew were
injured.
*
I FORGOT to mention this story when it first broke; but it’s just too good
to miss. As we all know, the Republicans are “confused” when it comes to
immigration. For example, Jim Pillen, the governor of Nebraska, has long made
it clear that he supports the immigration policies of President Trump.
Essentially, that means kicking
all the illegals out of this country – and maybe having ICE shoot a few of them
first.
The only problem is this: The Flatwater
Free Press, a local Nebraska newspaper, in conjunction with The New York
Times, has learned that Mr. Pillen, whose family-owned company runs twenty
large hog farms, has hired all kinds of illegals himself. Like Donald Trump, who
has a history of hiring the undocumented, Governor
Pillen has reaped the profits all businesspeople reap when they hire illegals.
How so? The illegals, who
realize they are unprotected if they should complain, cannot demand or expect:
Sick leave
Paid vacation
Overtime pay
Healthcare
Enforcement of safety
regulations, etc.
That means guys like Pillen and
Trump will tell you the illegals are the problem, while they laugh at
your gullibility all the way to the bank.
FUN FACT #2: This
story goes all the way back to the 1980s, when Trump hired
undocumented workers from Poland. They helped him build Trump Tower New York
and then he tried to screw them out of pay.
(A court eventually forced Donald to pay the workers what they
were owed.)
___
9/26/26: Donald
Trump has 38 days left to save his sinking ship, if he hopes to avoid a midterm
massacre.
Still, he’ll always have Natalie
Harp.
This afternoon, The Dumpling attended
the Tennessee-Texas football game. And who should join him but the lovely First
Lady. I don’t mean she did. Melania stayed home. But she should have joined
him.
Instead, the president’s
favorite White House aide, “Lucious Natalie,” was right there in his box, showing him something flattering
on her ever-present laptop. Also, in her short white skirt, she showed him her
shapely legs.
So, how are we doing, America?
Are we winning now?
Gas is still high. Near
Granville, Ohio, on Thursday, I spotted diesel selling for $6.99 per gallon.
We can also report that Donald’s
poll numbers are floating in the outhouse. A
record 50% of voters saying they “strongly disapprove” of the job he’s
doing. That breaks the previous record – which Donald (of course) set in 2018,
when 45% strongly disapproved. I assume the people who still love him include
neo-Nazis, hermits, and people who like to ride unicycles to work.
Even worse, if you are a
Republican running for office, only 9% of independent voters strongly approve
of the numbskull leading your party, whereas seven times as many (56%) strongly
disapprove, and would like to see the president run off to Greenland with
Natalie and never come back.
That may include Melania, at
this point.
*
IF YOU FOLLOW the news
religiously, you may know that in July, the president and Secretary Markwayne
Mullin, head of the Department of Homeland Security, had a huge announcement to
make. They proudly reported that they had identified 270,000 non-citizens on
state voter rolls in the following four states: California, Nevada, New
Jersey and Pennsylvania.
That was a huge number, and the
MAGA faithful were stunned and started loading their guns. Yet, on careful
review, reporters noticed that the official letters sent to the four states by
the federal government qualified that claim. State election officials were told
that “there may be as many as” 270,000.
(Or there might not.)
For example, the Department of
Homeland Security said it found 15,903 noncitizens registered to vote in
Nevada. That number made Mullin so mad he threatened to toss Nevada election officials
into jail if they didn’t clean up the mess. Eventually, DHS zeroed in on 185
individuals it said had been “confirmed” to be registered illegally and fired
that list off to the Silver State.
Nevada authorities – no doubt
hoping to avoid time behind bars – began checking their records and discovered
the horror of …
Nothing.
All 185 individuals identified
by DHS turned out to have proof of citizenship.
___
Days remaining
until the midterms:
37
“Radioactive.”
9/27/26: The
clock is ticking on Donald Trump’s wild tenure as President of the United
States. First, the Iran War continues. This is day 212 of the war we launched
– along with Israel.
Iran recently offered a seven-day plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and
sent a list of conditions.
Trump rejected that idea and
said not to worry, he would win the war (which he has said he already won) after the midterms.
The Washington Post spoke
with six officials recently, who said the Pentagon was keeping the true American body count secret. Five
said there had now been at least 22 service member deaths.
The sixth put the figure at 23.
Sec. of War Pete “Hair Gel”
Hegseth insists the toll is still 18, which Donald J. Dumpling said was “small
potatoes.”
The Pentagon did add one death to the toll last week, and
updated the list of wounded, adding 37 without explanation, bringing the total
to 861.
*
IN RELATED NEWS, fear grows
among Republicans with each passing day, as signs of trouble in the midterms
multiply. The influential Cook Report recently moved fifteen more congressional
races in the direction of Democrats. That doesn’t mean they’re going to win all
fifteen. Some have moved only from “safe Republican” to “lean Republican.” But
the contagion may be spreading.
One gloomy Republican strategist
told Charlie Cook the situation for his party had gone from bad to
“craptastic.”
Cook, himself, has warned that, “In the last 90 days, President Trump’s
political standing has transitioned from very unpopular to toxic and now to
radioactive.”
“While many have long predicted
that Democrats will enjoy a ‘blue wave’ election,” Cook told reporters last
week, “I think of it more as a ‘red undertow,’ which will pull many Republicans
under and significantly trim the [winning] margins for many others.”
*
HERE’S A FUN ONE, kind of. Out
West, where men are still men, and women like men wearing chaps and cowboy hats,
ranchers have awakened to a sad new reality. Those who once cheered Trump’s
efforts to kick out all the murderous illegal immigrants – billions of whom
were supposedly voting for Democrats every time an election was held – can no
longer find enough workers to watch the cattle.
See their plea for help, below:
*
WE MUST ALSO NOTE that the
president’s war on the free press continues. His fans may love the attacks, but
last week the five major networks, responsible for “pool reporting” on a
president’s doings, boycotted the White House. Fox (yes, Fox!) joined ABC,
CBS, NBC and CNN as they announced they would not be carrying live feed of the
president, after he banned CNN reporters from the White House.
(Also banned in that move were reporters from MS NOW and Politico.)
In fact, the President of the
United States is currently angry with pretty much every news organization you
could name. That would include “the Woke and Dying USA Today,” as he calls the
paper, Newsweek, The Guardian, The New York Times, the Washington
Post, and Forbes magazine.
In a recent Truth Social post,
Trump exploded and suggested the kind of remedy that could
kill the First Amendment. “The Fake News Media [has] been doing this for years,
I call them out, they should be called out by the Courts and should not be
allowed to enter the White House premises … Something must be done about it.
The Courts must allow us to stop this totally dishonest form of Politics.”
Meanwhile, Donald has been
cuddling with authoritarians, having provided a state dinner for President Xi. This comes even
though reports earlier this month indicated that Iran had used Chinese satellite
imagery while firing missiles and sending drones to attack U.S. bases – and
our troops – in Jordan.
Also, Team Trump keeps warning
us about communists – Xi being the most powerful communist on earth and current
President for Life in China. (Trump once joked that perhaps we should try that
“President for Life” idea here.)
For real fun, we could also
watch Trump take the communist leader for a walk around the White House, where
Donald went out of his way to make fun of his predecessor,
President Biden. He has a gallery of portraits for all his predecessors – one
assumes created with taxpayer dollars. Biden’s “portrait” is simply an autopen,
and Trump wanted his commie buddy to know that he, Donald, had nothing but
contempt for the man who sat in the White House between his two terms.
This president is, of course, an
insufferably petty human being. Had he been inclined, he might also have
pointed out the plaque that hangs in the same gallery, with words he no doubt chose
himself:
Not to be outdone, Elon Musk showed up on Chinese state television and
called Xi a “great leader.” How could Elon tell? During a recent visit to China,
he walked around and saw growing prosperity – in the parts of China he was
allowed to see.
“Under his tenure, China has
prospered immensely,” the richest (most clueless) man in the world crowed.
(Elon, of course, got to sit with Donald Dumpling at the state
dinner for Xi.)
*
NEXT, WE KNOW that Trump has
invited Vladimir Putin to visit the U.S. for the G20 summit to be held in
Florida in December.
Maybe he can take Vlad golfing,
and they can talk about Putin’s ideas for stifling dissent – such as having
secret agents steal a critic’s baggage from a plane and lace his underwear with
deadly nerve agents.
Let’s be real. If Trump thought
he could get away with poisoning Kaitlyn Collin’s panties, he’d at least
consider it.
I personally believe Donald
lusts after the young CNN reporter, and that he can’t express his lust in any other
way than by insulting her regularly.
He’s like a seventh-grade boy, teasing
one of his classmates, just because he knows he will have her attention.
FUN FACT: During
President Xi’s visit to the U.S., Trump adhered to his decision to kick out
American reporters from the White House state dinner, while Chinese
government-affiliated “reporters” were allowed to attend.
Speaking of
“government-affiliated,” we know that on X, a number of “influencers” are being
paid to shout the company line. That is, the Trump line. On an account
run by “Tara,” no fan of Mr. Trump, she has collected examples of voices
spreading the approved talking points, regarding gas prices:
(I was
thinking about following “Tara,” but she’s an anti-vaxxer, so I’m not.)
FUN FACT #2: If you
like Nazis, you might enjoy knowing that the lawyer at the
Department of Justice who wrote the defense of President Trump’s decision to
ban CNN and two other news organizations from the White House is Michael
Velchik. I had never heard of him before, but he was mentioned on X.
Since X is often a cesspool of
misinformation, I decided to check. Yes, Michael is a Harvard grad. And, yes,
in an email he wrote to a fellow student in 2013, he wondered, “is it bad that
my favorite class at harvard was nietzsche and my favorite book i’ve read this
year is mein kampf?”
He summed up Hitler in another
email to a peer, this time while he was at Harvard Law: “He certainly excelled
as an orator, and his writing reflects oratory.… Understands the importance of
propaganda. Thought that the timing of a speech was important: better late at
night!”
FUN FACT #3: Trump’s
ban on CNN, MS Now and Politico lasted only as long as it took for an emergency
appeal to be considered by a federal judge. Timothy J. Kelly of the U.S.
District Court in Washington quickly granted a 14-day restraining order and
told Team Trump they must “immediately return, reinstate, and restore” the
press credentials held by employees of the three outlets.
And let them do their jobs.
(Judge Kelly is a Trump appointee to the bench, during his first
term.)
FUN FACT #4: The
litigious president has suffered a string of losses in court recently, largely
because judges almost always follow the U.S. Constitution in determining what
is right and legal, and what is wrong.
For example, Donald sued the Des
Moines Register over a poll which showed Kamala Harris leading in that
state in 2024. As Politico explains such an attack on the free
press would come with a steep cost:
“Allowing a legally faulty claim
like this to proceed carries a cost that an ordinary case does not, because
defending it can discourage others from reporting on and debating public
affairs,” Judge Scott Beattie wrote in a 64-page decision. “Erroneous statements are
inevitable in free debate and must be protected if the freedoms of expression
are to have the breathing space they need to survive.”
___
“Talking,
often nonsense.”
9/28/26: If you
don’t like Donald Trump, and you have expressed it publicly, as I often have,
you have probably been accused of suffering from TDS. That is: A mythical
condition called “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”
In MAGA World, “TDS” means your
hatred for The Dumpling Man makes you blind to the truth, that Donald is the
greatest president in our nation’s history. So let me be clear. I don’t hate
Trump. I spent half my life trying to teach students that hate is always a
blinding emotion.
No, no, no. I don’t hate Trump.
I do find him repulsive; and I firmly
believe he is a walking, talking, conniving threat to the U.S. Constitution.
In fact, I don’t like the man
for all kinds of reasons that make perfect sense, even reasons that used to
upset good Republicans. The deficit, for example: Trump has blown it up like a
balloon for a kid’s birthday party.
How about protecting Taiwan?
We’re supposed to fear the rise of communism in this country, right? I don’t
because I’m not a doofus. I know that the number of hardcore communists in this
country couldn’t fill an NFL stadium on Sunday. I’m also old enough to like the
idea that we blocked the communist takeover of half of Korea, helped save half
of Europe after World War II, and have long offered a shield to Taiwan.
Trump wants us to think he’s
against the rise of communism, but his ambassador to China, David Perdue, said yesterday, in an interview with Fox News, that
his boss had offered to sell U.S. weapons to the Chinese.
“President Trump continues to
say, ‘Hey, we sell arms to other people around the world.’” Perdue explained. “He
actually asked President Xi if he would like to buy some, at one point,” he said.
The Fox News anchor, Shannon
Bream, did not ask a follow-up question, perhaps because, in her shock and
surprise, she had just soiled herself.
Are some of the president’s followers
blind to plain reality. I would say yes. On X, recently, a “Nia” posted this:
Above the photo, she wrote, “Do
you think America needs soldiers like Trump? Brave, passionate, patriotic,
sharp, smart, intelligent, discipline [sic] and Best Soldier.” I like the way
she even used her hero’s style of random capitalization.
But holy shit.
She also posted this:
In another post, she includes a
picture of Trump, younger by fifteen years, and asks, “Name something Trump is really
good at.”
Almost all the responses are negative,
like mine would have been, had I taken time to respond. I do not believe in
insulting others on X, however. I call it “electronic cowardice.”
So, I will quote John Hall, who
replied simply, and without calling names, “Talking, often nonsense.”
Certainly, the 47th President of
the United States is hitting a rough patch, except with Natalie Harp.
He’ll always have Natalie, for
sure.
Nationally, a CNN poll shows
that Donald’s support among young voters, 30 and under, has dropped from -7 in
2024, to a stunning -47 as the next election looms.
If you think all negative polls,
regarding Trump, are “fake” or “a hoax,” we should note that in 2024, CNN had
Trump at a +11 mark over Kamala Harris, when it came to handling the economy.
Today, his net approval on that matter stands at –62.
“Wow,” as CNN’s polling expert
puts it.
Indeed.
WOW!!!
In Texas, a new poll indicates that James Talarico, the Democrat,
continues to lead Ken Paxton, Donald’s hand-picked choice to fill one of a
hundred seats in the U.S. Senate. Paxton’s main problem?
He’s a crook.
Now, 15% of Trump voters in
the poll say they plan to vote for the Democrat.
In Vermont, new polling shows the Democratic challenger for
governor leading incumbent Phil Scott by six points, despite Scott’s 74%
approval rating, dragged down, it would seem, by the very fact he’s a
Republican.
In Iowa, a state Donald won by
13 points in 2024, Conservative radio host Steve Deace has spooked Republicans by
warning that anyone in a +10 district in that state can now be assumed to be “underwater,”
as voter anger percolates. This midterm cycle, he says, could be worse than the
2006 wave that crushed the GOP.
The situation is grim enough for
Ol’ Sen. Chuck Grassley, 93, to quip that he has no intention of dying in office
but if he did, he hopes Iowa won’t have a Democratic governor who will have the
power to replace him.
In fact, recent polling indicates that Rob Sand, the
Democratic candidate for governor, has a solid lead, and that the Democratic
candidate for U.S. Senator, Josh Turek may be slightly ahead.
And did we mention, Grassley
is really old?
Nevertheless, Chuck is not ruling out running in 2028, meaning that,
if elected, he would serve until January 2035, making him 101 years old by the
time his term ended. That would break Strom Thurmond’s record for oldest
U.S. senator ever propped up in his or her seat. We can also report that
Grassley has been winning seats in various legislative bodies since 1958, a
rather lengthy political career.
Ah, Strom Thurmond! A man who
could smell the political winds as they shifted. When Southern Democrats
dominated in a segregationist South, Thurmond was a Democrat. When the national
Democratic Party started acting forcefully to expand civil rights, in 1963 and 1964,
he did what most racist Southern Democrats did. He became a Republican and
lived happily ever after.
All the while, he hid the fact
that he had a bi-racial daughter, sired with his family’s 16-year-old
domestic servant, an African American, when Strom was 22, and sewing his wild KKK
oats.
*
YOU MIGHT argue that foreign
tourists are weighing in on President Trump by continuing to decline in numbers as they
decide not to visit the United States. Two million fewer visitors have
arrived this year, year-over-year, and the numbers have dropped from 79 million
in 2019 to what will likely be 68 million this year.
“We’re the only major country in the world losing
visitation,” Geoff Freeman, president and CEO of the U.S. Travel Association,
told Axios.
“It’s mind-boggling.”
 |
The happy president and the equally happy First Lady. |
