WITH GOP POLL NUMBERS shifting
from grim to gruesome, this might be a good time to consider where voters stand.
According to President Trump, everyone loves him, except communists and American-hating
transgender individuals.
Plus, Democratic “lunatics.”
In reality, a place Donald
Dumpling hasn’t visited recently, we can show you the president’s poll numbers.
He’s about as popular with voters as being forced to eat liver
and onions for dinner.
That man does love his golf.
*
Trump
Derangement Syndrome spreading like measles!
As of September 23, The Dumpling
Man is drowning in negative approval/disapproval numbers:
These aren’t “fake news,”
numbers, or “rigged polls,” either. On his handling of the economy, he has an average approval
rating of 34 percent.
On taming inflation, you can probably guess, his
marks are terrible. In the latest Fox News poll, only 27.4 percent approve and 69.1
percent think Donald should quit renaming shit and focus.
In fact, he’s underwater on
every major issued polled, including his handling of the Iran War (32.68% approve, 62.5% don’t).
Another fun way to look at the growing
danger Republicans face is to look at the trend lines since Trump plunked his
lard butt down in the White House twenty months ago. At this point even “Lucious
Natalie” Harp, Trump’s favorite go-everywhere-he-goes, all-positive-all-the-time
aide, may be having trouble keeping a smile glued to her gorgeous face.
Mrs. Harp goes everywhere Donald Dumpling goes.
*
GOP
majority in House is toast.
THE SIGNS OF DANGER for
Republicans running for Congress are also multiplying. Democrats now hold an 8.5-point lead on the “Generic Congressional
Ballot.” That means 50.4% of voters want Democrats to regain control. Only 41.9
% hope Republicans keep their majorities in the House and Senate.
For a fun comparison, go back to
2018, when Democrats held a 7.3-point lead and took back 41
seats in the House.
Also, keep in mind that Donald
J. Trump, during his first term as president, swore in June that year, that there was
going to be a “big red wave.”
He was delusional then.
He was delusional in 2020.
He was delusional in 2024, even
though he won. (It wasn’t a “landslide.”) He’s keeping delusion alive now.
Again, the trend lines over the
last twelve months present a discouraging picture if you love Donald Trump,
J.D. Vance, Sen. Mitch “Back from the Dead” McConnell, and winning the Iran War
in one day.
*
The
Dumpling President may cost the GOP control of the Senate.
Until recently, it had seemed that
the GOP would keep its grip on a majority in the U.S. Senate, but recent
polling numbers look ominous if you are still the true MAGA type – if, for example,
you are the kind of person who still imagines Trump is in a happy, loving marriage
with First Lady Melania.
In Texas, a Democratic candidate
for the U.S. Senate has a 2.8-point lead in the aggregate of all the
polls taken. Even better, the danger to Republicans in the Lone Star State boils
down to the president’s insistence that GOP voters back Texas Attorney General
Ken Paxton, instead of incumbent Sen. John Cornyn. As a liberal blogger, I’m
not a fan of Cornyn; but at least he’s honest.
Paxton is a straight-up crook.
He was impeached by his own
party and ordered to pay $6.6 million in damages for retaliating
against whistleblowers who worked on his own staff. Then he somehow
convinced the Texas legislature that lawmakers should pass legislation to pay the
damages – which, of course means the taxpayers are footing the bill.
Here in Ohio, Sherrod Brown, who
lost his U.S. Senate seat in 2024, now has a 4.8-point lead in a race to win back a seat in
the same illustrious body.
In Michigan, a Muslim American
candidate for U.S. Senate, is keeping his Republican incumbent at bay, at least
so far. El-Sayed has a 2.8-point advantage. And it won’t help his
Republican opponent to know that the president has declared economic war on
Canada, doing serious damage to cross-border businesses in that state.
Maine looks ready to tip toward Democrats, where
their candidate holds a 1.8-point lead over incumbent Susan Collins. Alaska is
also in play, with the challenger leading the GOP incumbent by 2.3.
So, there are roads to a
majority for Democrats in the upper house, although the polls are close.
Unfortunately, if you love
Donald Trump, there are also gathering clouds and tornado signs in the
heartland. In Iowa, as of today, RealClearPolitics has the Democratic candidate
for Senate narrowly ahead, but very possibly surging(0.4-point
lead). Even worse, or better, if you are like this happy blogger, a Democratic
candidate for governor has a more substantial lead in the same kind of polls.
Then, consider Kansas, where the
party of Barack Obama and Joe Biden suddenly believes it might be able to capture
another seat held by a Republican. No Democrat has been elected from that state
to serve in the U.S. Senate since 1932, not long after Herbert Hoover plunged
the country into the Great Depression.
Incumbent Roger Marshall has
seen his hopes of winning another term dented, in part because two-term former
Kansas governor, Bill Graves, a fellow Republican, has endorsed his opponent.
As Graves put it recently, “For
the last six years, Senator Roger Marshall has turned his back on Kansas. In
contrast, Adam Hamilton stands as a bulwark of kindness, humility and service
to others.”
Hamilton happens to be a
fifth-generation Kansan and a senior pastor of the United Methodist Church of
the Resurrection.
(In other words, hard to paint as a communist.)
A poll taken five days ago had
Hamilton inching
ahead, 45% to 43%. Two polls earlier this month show Marshall
holding a decent lead.
As for Sen. Marshall, his real problem
is that he has backed President Trump at every turn; and farmers in Kansas are
hurting.
*
Aggregate
poll numbers are almost always accurate.
IT IS TRUMP-FAN GOSPEL, of
course, that bad polls are fake and the work of communists and hoaxers and that
beneath the surface not only Melania still loves Donald, but all patriotic
Americans, who, the blogger might argue, are mostly ill-informed white people
wearing “Make America Great Again” hats.
This blogger is white people,
himself, but he is not ill-informed. And he knows, for example, how accurate aggregated
polls have been in the last twenty years. As a Democratic supporter, I
could look at the numbers in 2024, and it was almost a certainty that Kamala
Harris was going to get cooked.
On the eve of the 2024 election,
RealClear indicated that Trump lead in five of seven battleground states; and if
those numbers were correct, it was clear The Dumpling was going to win a second
term. In the end, he won all seven. Because I am unable to delude myself, when
evidence is piled up against me, I expected the last presidential election to
be grim for our side.
And it was. The final numbers
from the seven key states in 2024:
So, imagine that you are a Trump
supporter – right now? Look at these poll numbers! Aren’t they great!
You know you are going to say
these numbers are real; and, in fact, they are!
Sadly, you believe in Trump’s
lies because you want to believe all the bad poll numbers are fake. Like
children on Christmas Eve, you wait for Santa to come down the chimney and
bring back $2-per-gallon gas.
Can you trust the pollsters?
Well, you could in January 2025, in earliest days of Donald Trump’s second term.
Those numbers above are from the
same pollsters reporting now that Donald is in a world of shit come
November.
And here’s a poll number that
should chill the spines of even Stephen Miller, Trump’s favorite white
supremacist White House aide. Among independents, only 18% approve of the job he’s doing.
THERE ARE PLENTY OF SIGNS that members
of Donald’s own party are worried. Internal polling done by Republicans shows that in one
Texas district, where Trump won by 17 points two years ago, James Talarico
leads Paxton 52 to 41.
(That’s a 28-point swing.)
Brent Buchanan, a Republican
pollster, has warned GOP candidates, including congressional incumbents,
to poll their districts to be sure they’re safe – even if they won in 2024 by
as much as fifteen points.
Suddenly, even close Trump
allies are showing signs of courage. Or maybe they only care about
self-preservation. In Iowa, a state Donald Dumpling won by more than 13 points
in 2024, U.S. Senate candidate Ashley Hinson has been sniffing the shifting political winds and smelling skunk cabbage.
Once she had promised to be Trump’s “strongest ally” if elected. In her
most recent campaign pitch, she took an entirely new approach: “It used to be
that reaching across the aisle wasn’t just OK, it was expected. Some people in
Washington forgot that. I never have.”
(Trump forgot it if you’ve forgotten.)
Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar,
running in a majority-Latino district in Florida, has also had a
come-to-Jesus-moment. Her own voters are turning against The Dumpling, as I
love to refer to Mr. Trump.
(I think our president is 270 pounds of lard encased in an
expensive suit.)
In happier times, Salazar liked to
show up on Fox News and say that the president needed a “deportation
army” to help him drive out all the undesirable illegal immigrants. Now she’s warning: “Mr. President, some of your immigration
enforcement efforts have gone too far. The same Hispanics who helped you get to
the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today.”
(Yeah, they were.)
Suddenly, the Florida congresswoman
who wants to keep her job, her perks, her good pay, and keep alive her dream of
becoming a lobbyist for fat cats after she leaves office, realizes that
deporting hard-working immigrants, with no criminal records, isn’t
selling with voters. At least not Hispanics.
Or people with shreds of
empathy.
*
Not much
hope for improvement.
AS BAD as they look currently,
the numbers are likely to look worse by the time the polls open, as voters only
now begin to pay close attention to the coming election, with Labor Day passed.
With Republican leaders in Congress losing their nerve and sending their
members home on a six-week recess – one assumes, so that they can’t make
any more stupid decisions – Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) warned that “you can’t deny what people feel.”
Prices are too high and there’s
no relief in sight. As for President Dumpling, he’s busy golfing, obsessing
about his Golden Ballroom, and his Trump Triumphal Arch, not to mention Natalie
Harp’s shapely legs and lovely lips.
Also, he’s renaming lakes! Just
what the MAGA folks voted for! Six-dollar-a-gallon diesel fuel and “Lake
America.”
A Reuters/Ipsos poll released yesterday
puts Trump’s approval at an all-time low of 32%, with even a majority of
Republicans, 51%, faulting his handling of issues related to the cost of
living.
And might we ask why the
President of the United States insists he needs that dumb arch because he wants
to put killer drones and snipers on top. The burning question becomes: Who does
he want those snipers to shoot?
“I miss the days when you used
to call, during my Talkshow days, and we’d talk about everything and nothing. I
want to get back to that synergy. We shouldn’t have to talk about work all the
time!! And please, when I fail, will you tell me? You have the absolute right
to cuss me out, if need be, when I deserve it, because no one knows or cares
about me more.”
Natalie Harp to President Trump
__________
WE DEDICATE THIS MONT’S POST to “Luscious
Natalie,” President Trump’s go-everywhere-he-goes, hot young, blonde, White
House aide. No one strokes his ego with such fervor.
The second most
famous incident involving Ms. Harp and Mr. Big Boy Don had her running after a
golf cart, during the president’s trip to Ireland, where he visited one of his
own courses.
In this letter,
Harp says how sorry she is – to have embarrassed the president.
Below, Ms. Harp shows her form. Run, Natalie, run!
The most famous Harp + Trump
incident occurred on July 10 but was not revealed until August 10. (See below.)
August 1, 2026: Trump
spends another quite Saturday at Trump National Golf Club in
Bedminster. Because that is how a studly fellow proves he is working hard for
the American people.
___
8/2/26: Donald
happily announces that a deal with Iran is “imminent.” The United
States is finally respected again. The president calls off a major attack on
Iranian targets because – well, you know.
The Iranians are “desperate” to
make a deal.
___
8/3/26: The
stock market rallies on news that the Iran War is as good as ended and the Dow rises
700 points.
Then the Iranians announce that they
are not dealing. Mr. Trump goes to Truth Social to tell the world that the
Iranians are “extremely duplicitous.” Most of the loyal MAGA faithful who
follow Donald Dumpling on Truth Social are forced to consult their dictionaries
– if they own any.
The U.S. Senate appears ready to
confirm Todd Blanche as attorney general after a deal is struck. Blanche promises
not to advance a plan to pay back all the January 6 rioters for the
legal battles they endured – just because they attacked the Capitol, injured
140 police officers, caused several million dollars in damages, and tried to
overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Posted by a loyal MAGA today on
X, an AI video of Trump leading a charge during the
American Revolution. Even painful bone spurs can’t stop this president.
Without a doubt, General Trump
is headed for Yorktown, where he will famously help George Washington capture the airports.
(Remember when Donald made that bizarre claim?)
___
8/4/26: Treasury
Secretary Scott Bessent sounds almost giddy in announcing that Iran is ready to
deal and open the Strait of Hormuz! Gas will soon be selling for 19 cents a
gallon, just like it was when this blogger was in high school! “There is a
chance we may have a deal today or tomorrow to open the Strait and move towards
a more normalized position in this conflict.”
This, Bessent insists, is Iran’s
“last chance.”
It’s also a great day for all
Epstein-associated predators! Todd Blanche now appears to have the votes
necessary to be confirmed as the next Attorney General of the United States. He
has already all but promised never, never, ever to investigate any criminals
who might be listed a few hundred times in the Epstein Files. Blanche is the
“Helen Keller” of DOJ investigators.
Ghislaine Maxwell hosts a party
in her cell at the minimum-security detention facility where she is (for no
apparent good reason) being held.
(I’m joking about the party – but Blanche did get her switched
to that prison.)
Ghislaine Maxwell in happier days.
The confirmation process
advances after the Senate Judiciary Committee votes 12-10, with all
Republicans/friends of sex traffickers voting in the affirmative. All the Democrats
correctly vote no.
*
PRESIDENT TRUMP is feeling sorry
for all the January 6 rioters – I suppose even including the sex offenders whom
he has pardoned. He claims today that twenty-two J6 rioters have committed
suicide.
Who knows! It could be as high
as 2.2 billion.
Trump doesn’t care about getting
numbers in a row and never bothers to check or double check anything he says.
Their
stories can be found, numbered as above, in the links shown.
The claim that Meacham was a
suicide was first spread by Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene;
but as far as this blogger can tell, it has never been proven. His obituary makes no mention of cause of death. All
four (or five) died in service to the president’s “Stolen Election” lies.
If their families deserve even
the slightest compensation, Donald J. Trump would be the correct gentleman to
pay.
(The clock strikes midnight: No deal with Iran, yet.)
___
Opposites
Day.
8/5/26: The
Associated Press reports that ICE agents have arrested at least
fifty spouses or parents of active-duty U.S. military personnel.
Six have been deported.
“How can I even focus on my
military career because I have to worry about how my wife is doing?” says Army
Sgt. Hedar Leonel Turcios Juarez. He was stationed at Fort Bliss when his wife
was detained outside a Walmart last month. Their 6-year-old daughter had to
watch mom get cuffed.
Make America Great Again!
And: “Thank you, for your
service.”
You could also call this
“Opposites Day,” where Team Trump enforces the law with one hand and undercuts
it with the other. The New Mexico Department of Justice has sued the U.S.
Department of Justice, to get unredacted copies of the Epstein Files. The
state boys want to open an investigation into alleged illegal activities at
Epstein’s “Zorro Ranch,” which sits near the state’s southern border.
Acting Attorney General Todd
Blanche doesn’t want to investigate anything – except Reflecting Pool vandals.
“New Mexico has a duty to
protect survivors and investigate crimes committed in our state so that
perpetrators can be held accountable,” State Attorney General Raúl Torrez explained
in a statement. “We asked the Department of Justice to cooperate by providing
access to records that may be critical to identifying victims, witnesses,
and additional criminal conduct [emphasis added] at Zorro Ranch. Their
delay is actively hurting our criminal investigation and delaying justice
Epstein survivors deserve.”
According to Torrez, Blanche and
the U.S. DOJ “have decided to stonewall, to obstruct, and to frankly conceal
for whatever reason.”
Jeffrey Epstein and his pal.
___
8/7/26: President Trump announces
from the Oval Office that he is involved in the peace talks over
the Strait of Hormuz and insists negotiations are going “very well,” and that a
deal could be inked soon.
He’s involved! The “Art of the
Deal.”
*
THE BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS announces
today that during July, the U.S. added a hundred thousand … um … well …
actually … the U.S. lost 23,000 jobs. Figures for May and June were
reduced by another 106,000.
The unemployment rate fell to
4.1%, which would normally be excellent news. Sadly, the Labor Participation
rate also declined to 61.4%, indicating that the U.S. labor force has shrunk
by 1.4 million this year.
Those are people who have
stopped looking for work.
___
8/8/26: Today,
Iranian National Security Council Secretary Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr threw a shiny
new monkey wrench into Trump’s plan to declare victory in the Iran War. With a
list of six new demands, he insisted, “until America corrects its behavior, the
Strait of Hormuz will not open.”
___
Donald
Trump grades on a curve.
8/9/26: The
president shows up on Fox News and tells Trace Gallagher that we now live in
the best of all possible worlds. All thanks to him. “I inherited very, very high
costs, and they’re all coming down now. The food, the groceries, it’s all
coming down. We’ve done a great job. You know, I think we should be given an A+
on the economy. But I think that's coming; people are starting to talk about
it.”
Credit (or shame, depending on
your perspective) for Gallagher, resisting the urge to laugh out loud.
___
Climate
change? What you don’t know can’t scare you.
If you said, “Donald Trump’s
pants every time Natalie Harp wanders past,” good guess. But no. It’s the
Arctic.
Or it was. Or to be more
precise, it still is, but the Trump Administration would prefer you not think
about it.
If you are true, red-hat wearing
MAGA, you probably won’t.
The National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration has put out an annual report on changes in the
region every year since 2006. Now NOAA will continue to gather evidence of the
growing danger. They just won’t bother to compile it and put it in a report
that people might actually … read.
It’s kind of like Donald Trump’s
sagging poll numbers. If no one tells him about them, he won’t be sad.
Every
year for the past two decades, the Arctic Report Card has provided a checkup on
the health of the region, which is heating up at several times the pace of the
rest of the globe. Sea ice has dwindled. Snow cover has shrunk. Glaciers are
thinning out. Tundra vegetation has grown more abundant, leading to wildfires
that burn through huge areas.
This president doesn’t want his
supporters (or anyone else) to worry about climate change, because he’s built
his reputation on calling climate change “a hoax.” Indeed, he and his
billionaire pals in the Big Oil and Big Coal industries don’t want you to worry
about what they blow off as “climate alarmism.”
They don’t want you to ask:
A)Why is Canada burning so much this summer that
smoke drifted across much of the Eastern United States?
B)Why does Donald Dumpling want the U.S. to have more icebreakers, to deploy in the far North?
C)How come sea ice across the Arctic is now thin
enough to break up and why can large commercial vessels make
passage where none could previously go, during all recorded history?
G)Why have the world’s oceans broken the record for the warmest temperatures
ever recorded – and how is it that humanity can heat up the waters around the
world – including the Strait of Hormuz?
H)WTF! Why is the Strait of Hormuz still not open?
Consider only, “A,” above. What
might be going on in the country to our north, where more forest has been
reduced to ashes in recent years than ever before? The worst years for fire destruction
are, in order: 2023, 2025, 2024, and 2026, with plenty of burn season left to
go. With sixteen million hectares burned in 2023, that would be equivalent to 39,520,000
acres, or almost 62,000 square miles.
That would be the same as burning
down every inch of Georgia in one year and then torching Connecticut for fun.
But sure: Transgenders in
sports.
Let’s all focus on that.
FUN FACT:
President Dumpling has ordered the U.S. Coast Guard to build 11 polar
icebreakers to plow the Arctic Ocean. The contract to build those vessels will be
worth $7 billion and was awarded on a “no-bid” basis.
Always cool, if you are a friend
of this chief executive, and you have donated to his campaigns and causes. The
first four ships will be built in Finland, the last seven in the U.S..
FUN FACT #2: This
month, South Korea has sent a container ship north, through the Bering Strait
and across the top of Russia, to test the viability of a new trade route to
Europe.
FUN FACT #3: The
continent of Europe has been more than 3.05° Celsius hotter this summer than
ever before. That’s equal to five-and-a-half degrees Fahrenheit. So, imagine an
entire summer that is more than five degrees hotter where you live.
And then imagine every summer,
going forward, similarly hotter – for your kids and grandkids.
FUN FACT #4: The
oceans of the world cover 70% of the globe. So, it takes a great deal of effort
to raise their average temperatures to the highest ever. But we did it in 2024!
Yay, humanity.
UPDATE: The world’s oceans saw a
new record on August 22, 2026, at just a shade under 70° F.
___
A
golfing fool.
8/11/26: Word
for the day: “impotence.” Republican renegades in the U.S. Senate have failed
to halt the nomination of Todd “I Put Ghislaine Maxwell in a Cushy New Prison
for No Apparent Reason” Blanche to be become Attorney General of the United
States.
Blanche will now investigate all
of Donald’s enemies, anytime he asks – such as the “vandals” who ruined the
Reflecting Pool beautification project. The Dumpling Man has admitted that there was “some “contractor error done
by rushing the job” in how the Pool was coated. On Sunday he also claimed that
though he knows vandals ruined the liner there is (how do we put this), no
evidence to prove his claim. “There was substantial other damage to the
Reflecting Pool, also but, unfortunately, there is no video or proof, other
than the damage, itself.”
At this point, no one in
Washington D.C. would be surprised if the 47th President of the United States boldly
announced that he was nominating his Imaginary Friend to be the next head of
the Department of the Interior.
Speaking of “imaginary,” it
seems we have an imaginary First Lady. Mrs. Trump has been seen at the
White House or at public events on only 38 days, so far, this year. If we count her public
appearances in 2025, starting with the second Trump inauguration, we can add 46
more.
So, we have gazed upon her
lovely visage only 84 times in 569 days. If this was a batting average, Melania
would be hitting .147.
(I suspect Mrs. Trump has had sex with Mr. Trump 0 times since
he retook office.)
Certainly, Donald is feeling
glum, regarding the Iran War, which has never really been a war, and which he
has won many times already. The obstreperous Iranians refuse to admit that they
have been crushed – and keep insisting that the Strait of Hormuz is not open.
And there are stories that the U.S. has used up most of its sophisticated missiles and we could be reduced to
throwing feces at enemy drones.
Finally, President Trump insists
that grocery prices have come way down since he took office – and any high
prices you might notice are Joe Biden’s fault – and Donald’s latest poll
numbers are the best.
Also: Donald is killing it on
the golf course – winning his 43rd club championship – even
if he does cheat.
Since the war started on
February 28, Trump has squeezed in time to visit his own courses on 42 days, twice too late to get in a round. He also
showed up at a public course in D.C. once.
The
dates he has visited his courses:
Bedminster 6/5 (too late for
golf), 6/6, 6/7, 6/8, 7/17, 7/18, 7/19, 7/31, 8/1, 8/2, 8/7, 8/8, 8/9,
Trump National L.A. 8/4
Trump International West Palm
Beach 3/14, 3/15, 3/21, 3/22, 3/28, 3/29
Trump National Doral 3/6 (too
late for golf), 3/7, 3/8, 3/9, 4/12, 5/3
Trump National Washington D.C. 4/11,
4/18, 5/8, 5/9, 5/16, 5/17, 5/30, 5/31, 6/13, 6/27, 6/28*, 7/5, 7/11, 7/12, 7/25,
7/26,
Trump National Jupiter 5/2,
East Potomac Golf Links 6/28*
FUN FACT: Not
everyone who has seen the president play golf has been impressed. Oscar De La
Hoya, the retired boxer, once described Donald’s “prowess” on the links. After the
two men played a round in 2016,
[he]
explained that penalty strokes for water hazards were conveniently left off the
scorecard, while balls hit deep into the rough somehow ended up neatly
positioned in the middle of the fairway.
“It was
unbelievable,” De La Hoya told the Associated Press, adding, “It shows
something about his character.” …
He added, “Golf is a gentleman’s sport. You don’t lie
about your score; you don’t lie about moving your ball. It goes to show what we’re
dealing with.”
Donald, however, took to Truth
Social to spout off proudly, about his big tournament win. “Thank you very much
to all of those who participated,” he humbly announced. “I won with a score of
70, and am so honored in that, unlike the rest of the field, I’m given very
little time to practice, because I’m focused on many other things. It’s called
TALENT, and I have it, and they don’t!”
FUN FACT #2: Not
only does Donald lie about golf, he lies about the terrible vandals who ruined
his Reflecting Pool.
We now know different. Forced to
go to court to charge the “worst of the worst” vandals, Michael Spence, an
assistant U.S. Attorney in the District of Columbia, admitted in court
documents that prosecutors had attempted to get “everything” from the
Department of Interior early in the process of prosecuting David Hearn.
You’d think in normal times,
prosecutors wouldn’t be rushed; but then again, they wouldn’t have The Dumpling
pushing them to indict his enemies every day. Interior, Spence told the judge, provided
“less than fulsome information” and only “started trickling information” about
problems with the initial installation after his office reached out “dozens and
dozens of times.”
(No one who wanted to keep their job at Interior dared to
undercut the president’s lies.)
___
“All
talk and no action.”
8/12/26: The
President of the United States told reporters today that Houthi rebels in Yemen,
allies of Iran, killed six people in an attack on a cargo ship in the Bab
el-Mandeb Strait. This would be an attack on the pinch point leading to the
Red Sea, on the southwest coast of the Arabia Peninsula, and threaten to
cut off even more oil shipments.
Today, U.S. forces also fired
missiles at a container ship attempting to breach Washington's blockade of
Iranian ports in the Gulf of Oman. One of our helicopter crews disabled the vessel’s
steering and propulsion. “Our Naval Blockade is being called, by everyone, ‘A
WALL OF STEEL,’ and there is nothing Iran can do about it,” the president explained
in a post on Truth Social. “Iran is all talk and no action, he added, “the Bully
of the Middle East No Longer. Praise be to Allah!”
Both sides are now demanding that
the other pay reparations, while Israel is offering a firm “no” to Trump’s blind,
deaf and dumb plan to bring peace to Gaza. When last seen, Gaza was a pulverized
hellscape and tens of thousands of Palestinians lay dead and buried in heaps of
rubble.
This blogger has always been
sympathetic to the plight of Israel, surrounded by enemies, including jihadists.
(I taught history, and in my youth the example of the Holocaust was impossible
to ignore.) At some point, however, Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-wing supporters
have stepped over the most generously defined last line, beyond which is genocide.
Had you begun counting the dead,
on October 7, 2023, when Israel was attacked by Hamas, you had one bloody
massacre and crime. More than 1,200 Israelis were massacred and another 251 (mostly
young people) were taken hostage, of whom only 168 survived.
In retribution, 73,000 Gazans have been killed, and 173,000
wounded. That, too, to most observers is a bloody massacre and a crime.
I used to explain to students that
in most human conflicts a cycle of violence is touched off. If I was an Israeli
on October 8, 2023, and my wife and children had been killed by terrorists, I
would demand vengeance. But how to separate out the killers from the general
Gaza population? And if I am a father in Gaza and my wife and children were
killed on October 9, 2023, I want Israel to pay – but not all Israelis are
to blame. Once the slaughter commences, one crime begets another.
(So far, I don’t believe any plan Mr. Trump has for Gaza has a
chance of working.)
*
Trump
claims Secret Service agents made him less safe!
SPEAKING OF BLOODSHED, we have
learned that when the president left the NATO summit in Turkey on July 7, there
was a serious threat to his safety. That danger,
posed by Iranians plotting to bring down Air Force One, was made more real by
the president’s ill-advised decision to fly to the summit on his donated Qatari jet,
which has inferior safety features.
That “free” jet has, of course,
been reborn as the newest, flying presidential limo, but someone forgot to
include all the anti-missile defenses that were built into older
versions, on which all previous presidents have flown.
It then became necessary to
protect the Commander-in-Chief by sneaking him off Air Force One, by way of a
food cart truck. This trick was kept hush-hush for more than a month, when we
learned that Donald was spirited to safety on a smaller military jet. Along
with him went Walt Nauta, famous in my reporting for helping move boxes of highly classified documents at
Mar-a-Lago to hide them from investigators – and then lying about knowing about
any boxes being moved.
Investigators had video of
Walt moving a loaded dolly.
So, Walt was going to be saved.
Also moved to safety was Ms.
Natalie Harp, the young blonde so often spied following the Mr. Trump everywhere
he goes. That decision to take Harp, and Dan Scavino, another valued toady,
meant leaving Secretary of State Marco Rubio on the targeted plane, along with at
least a dozen reporters and uniformed flight attendants. I will admit that if I
were younger – say, thirty years – and I were not married – I would be happy to
be stuck in a food cart with Ms. Harp, who I might even put my arm around to reassure
her that she was safe in my embrace. If she gazed into my blue eyes and our
lips met.
Well, I would be pleased.
But the president? At age 80 and
absolutely married to the also-lovely-but-more-or-less-missing-in-action
Melania?
Curious.
The New York Times has a
good story about how the trick was played on any would-be Iranian assassins. It’s
not fake news, either, just because it’s the Times telling the tale.
Representatives of previous presidents make it clear to Times reporters that
the safety of the man in the White House overrides all other considerations.
One can understand the president’s fears, considering the assassination
attempts he has survived – and the Times points out that those who ride
on Air Force One or travel with any U.S. president assume a certain level of risk.
See, for example, Press
Secretary James Brady, shot in the head on March 30, 1981, during an assassination
attempt on President Ronald Reagan.
But Trump’s response to
reporters on Tuesday strikes most close observers as a lie. Or, it may just
have been the president’s attempt to make himself sound braver than he was.
“I think actually the plane that
I flew on was at greater risk,” Trump offered in mitigation of his odd conduct,
“because that would be the plane I think that they would be more likely to go
for.”
If that doesn’t sound ridiculous
to you, you may need to read it again. So, Mr. President, you are saying the
Secret Service told you it was necessary to hide in a food cart truck – with Lovely
Natalie – and be put on a smaller military jet – secretly – because Air Force
One might be targeted – and the agents did so …
To make you less safe?????
Do Trump’s loyal fans believe that?
Do any of the members of his cabinet or any of his close aides?
AI generated.
(I doubt even Ms. Harp can swallow that.)
*
January
6: Let Trump, himself, make families “whole.”
ANOTHER ELECTION CYCLE concluded
on Tuesday, and Mike Lindell washed up again in the news, ready for an intra-party
pillow fight. Mike, who still insists Donald Trump won the 2020 election, and still
says he can prove it, says his defeat in the GOP primary for Minnesota
governor was:
A. Rigged
B. Rigged
C. Rigged
D. Rigged
(With Mike the answer is always the same.)
Mike was trailing, at 32.5%, in a four-way race, when the
race was called for Lisa Demuth, who led with 43.4%, and had 40,000 more
votes. But Mike smelled the same rat Mike always smells.
Frankly, if we’re going to
scream about vote-stealing without proof, I think the fourth-place finisher,
John Krhin, with 1.1% support, should be the one howling.
Speaking of election cycles, our
new AG, Todd “Jeffrey Epstein Who?” Blanche has said this about the January 6 rioters: “There were people who were
victims of a Department of Justice that was absolutely weaponized and [Trump]
feels very strongly that he would want to make them whole, as do I, but it will
not be through the anti-weaponization fund, which again was never set up.”
I have recently been checking my
blog entries on the rioters, and, for example, anyone dumb enough to thinks Rioter #510 needs to be “made whole” is too dumb to be
Attorney General, too dumb, to be President of the United States, and too dumb
to pass a seventh-grade test on American government.
Also, Trump should pay
himself to make the families of five police officers who died whole. The
first officer died by heart attack the next day, four others died by suicide in
the aftermath of the attack on democracy. Blanche can chip in out of his own
pockets if he really wants to see justice done.
*
SINCE THE TOPIC is dumb people
with a “b,” we should point out that much of the American West is in the middle
of an epic drought. Blue Mesa Reservoir, the
largest in Colorado, is a quarter full. Described as “part of the plumbing of
the West,” the water from Blue Mesa has been used in recent years to be
released to fill up Lake Powell, an even more crucial reservoir, farther down the
river.
Has Trump ever talked about what
the federal government needs to do about the drought? Almost every
scientist who has advanced past second grade believes climate change is making droughts
more common and more severe. Trump would rather focus on building his Golden
Ballroom.
In fact, he has spent more time bitching
about low-flow toilets which (and I am not making this up), he says he has had
to flush ten or fifteen times to get rid of any sludge he has just deposited.
It is GOP Gospel today that
climate change is a “hoax” and that thermometers which show it’s 118° in Forsyth, Montana must be
rigged.
Also, is that weatherperson
transgender???
Almost every climate scientist
out there is shouting warning, and in red state Utah, sensible people are
working on solutions. This past May, solar cells produced 33% of the
electricity the state required, natural gas 32%, coal 28%, and wind 2%. It was
the first time ever that solar led the way.
Donald Trump personally hates
wind power and he’s not keen on solar either. But the trends toward green
energy are continuing and even a Bonehead President can’t completely defeat
reality.
FUN FACT:
President Trump likes to call wind power a scam and says even the Chinese don’t
use wind power. They just make those giant turbines and then sell them to us
and make “a fortune.”
“They sell them to the stupid
people that buy them, but don’t use them themselves,” he insisted. It’s
hard to figure out who is feeding Trump all the bad information he then loves to
share. (I, for one, am ready to blame Lovely Natalie). According to energy
experts, China is responsible for 40% of all global wind power generation.
8/13/26: On CNN
this evening, Kaitlyn Collins, the reporter who “never smiles,” according to the
president, commented on the decision of the board of the Kennedy Center to chisel
The Dumpling’s name onto the front wall. Close observers of our favorite orange
narcissist may recall that a judge has ruled that the Center could not be
renamed without Congressional approval.
That name had been changed,
temporarily, to the Trump is the Greatest Ever/Some Guy Named Kennedy Performing
Arts Center. When the judge ruled that this change was illegal, Donald ordered the
front of the building covered up in drapery that looked like giant pants, because
he couldn’t bear seeing his cherished name removed.
Yes, ending the Iran War has
proved impossible.
Yes, the federal deficit is
exploding.
Yes, all efforts to bring down grocery
prices have failed ignominiously.
But Trump has made America Great
Again – by slapping his name on everything he possibly can.
“The president’s focus has not
just been on the Kennedy Center in terms of his broader push to remake
Washington,” Collins explained. “It’s also his penchant for branding everything
in his name. That includes the gold coins, the Trump passports,
the National Park passes,
the Palm Beach airport – I’m not
done – the banner at the Justice Department,
the new class of battleships. There
are many things, not just in Washington, but all across the nation now bearing
the Trump name.”
The Daily Beast picked up
on the theme, reminding us that there was even more narcissism involved:
Not
mentioned [by Collins] was the U.S. Institute of Peace, which Trump put his name on nearly
three months before he began the war against Iran. The 80-year-old president
will also reportedly namethe White House ballroom after himself – if the legally dubious project even
gets completed.
Trump
also wants to have the Washington
Commanders' new stadium named after himself.
As a former teacher of American
history, I might suggest we call this the “Trump Century,” in his honor. It
would mark a bitter end to what has been called the “American Century.” Never
again will this nation stand up to Fascist powers that threaten civilization.
We shall not fight authoritarians again – the communists in Russia and China
and North Korea. We shall praise their bloody-handed leaders instead. We shall
not offer refuge to those seeking basic freedoms and, instead, shall teach our
own citizens to hate and fear immigrants. The billionaire class shall prevail,
and the modern Robber Barons shall buy up members of Congress by the dozens.
Indeed, if we can’t stop this president’s rampage against the rule of law, it will
be fitting to fulfill his fondest wish (no – not the one where Melania agrees
to sleep with him again). It will be time to put his face on Mt. Rushmore; and
since he’s done so much to make America hated round the globe, and because he has
worked so diligently to destroy fair elections, it would only be fitting to blast
the portraits of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt to rubble.
Let Donald John Trump’s granite visage
glare down upon visitors for the next ten thousand years, a reminder that the
American people once voted to allow a pussy grabber to trample the
Constitution.
___
8/14/26: As we
all know, because Donald Trump says so, that prices are coming down rapidly,
and we control the Strait of Hormuz.
“TOTALLY,” Donald says.
In fact, according to Sec. of
Hair Gel Pete Hegseth, the U.S. Navy can continue to blockade the Strait in
perpetuity, or until Donald agrees to leave office, whichever event comes
first.
It’s a brilliant plan; and if
you think about it, we’re stopping supplies of oil that the world needs
to come out of the Strait. Yes, we’re hurting Iran’s economy; but we’re also
shooting ourselves in the foot.
Or feet!
In this bizarre context, plural
is better.
Today the Iranians attacked two
tankers owned by the United Arab Emirates as they tried to transit the Strait,
and a quick check shows that the average price of gas in the United States
stands at:
*
IN OTHER NEWS, President Trump
and his HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., have come up with a brilliant plan
to require roughly three million new mothers every year to get three
shots for their newborns instead of one. What could be better! Three
chances to pay the doctor, not one!
And an extra six million visits
for doctors to schedule annually, which cannot possibly go wrong.
This new plan is brought to you
by the anti-vaxxer kooks who believe the MMR vaccine (measles, mumps and
rubella) will cause your baby to turn transgender or develop a voice like Kennedy
Jr., who sounds like he’s trying to talk with his mouth full of gravel. Kids
who love shots, and parents who love to hear children wailing, are going to really
enjoy this fresh approach.
This is Junior’s plan, the man who
once snorted cocaine off a toilet seat.
That brings the total this year
to well over 24,000. Two people died recently and 740 Americans were
hospitalized with explosive diarrhea, a severe and long-lasting effect of the
infection.
Under Team Trump, with the
encouragement of Elon’s DOGE Boys, government inspections related to food
safety were curtailed this year. Thanks for all the extra pooping, Elon. Enjoy
your tax breaks.
FUN FACT: I
missed this story when it first came out; but if you are struggling to pay for
hamburger, don’t worry. All the members of the Trump family are raking in the big
bucks. So, be happy for them.
As of last October, Barron Trump
was worth $150 million. With war still raging against Iran,
don’t expect the billionaire president’s multi-millionaire son to enlist. And
dare we guess: If there’s ever a draft necessary…
Hereditary bone spurs?
Anyway, a 3% tax cut, if you
made $150 million would be equivalent to a savings of $4.5 million.
FUN FACT #2: We
learn again today what any fool who follows the news closely and with an open
mind should know. There is voter fraud and it’s usually not organized nor rampant.
Also, people of all parties, and no parties are involved:
A
Republican state senate candidate in Wisconsin is facing accusations of
multistate voting after records emerged indicating that she voted in both
Wisconsin and Georgia in recent years. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, online
voting records show that Republican candidate Michele Magadance Skinner “voted
absentee in Wisconsin in the Nov. 3, 2020, general election. Then, just 15 days
later, she registered to vote in Georgia using the address of her family’s four
bedroom lake house in the town of Dawsonville,” Wisconsin.
___
Commies
in the White House?
8/15/26: Did
you know that we already have commies in the White House. People who dream of a
day when the government takes over all businesses.
Wait? In the White House, you
say?
“Yes,” we say.
Donald Dumpling has now strong-armed
a reported 31 companies into handing over stakes to the federal government
and/or his two oldest sons, Don Jr. and Rumpelbumpkin. See, for example, rare earth materials, railroads (not yet consummated), Intel, military drones, tungsten mines, etc.
Intel, for example, is 9.9%
owned by American taxpayers, at a cost of $8.9 billion. And this guy would be
proud to know how far his core ideas have advanced.
Mr. Marx.
*
HOW IS DONALD DUMPLING doing so
far, in his second term, bringing down the federal deficit?
With Elon Musk’s backing, we
must be approaching zero new deficit spending! This is what Trump supporters
voted for …
It turns out the deficit for
July, was $432 billion. Just for one month. The deficit for Fiscal
Year 2026 is already higher than it was for FY 2025, which began when
Joe Biden was in charge – and we still have two months of red ink remaining.
In a speech Friday, The Dumpling
insisted that we should all “pay a tiny little bit more” for gasoline and remember
this is the cost of ensuring “a very evil country” can never have nuclear
weapons.
Friday evening, Donald Dumpling spent
his free time posting on Truth Social, no doubt with Lovely Natalie by his
side, typing his every thought, trying to fulfill his every wish. Natalie is very
devoted. According to the president, the people who were trying to stop him from building
his Golden Ballroom were “TREASONISTS,” and hated America, and wanted to kill
puppies with hockey sticks.
Earlier, he assured reporters, “The people that are opposing
the ballroom are people that, in my opinion, are very disloyal to our country.”
Well, it’s not all bad news at
the White House. On Monday, the First Lady appeared, as if by magic, after a month hidden from the public eye. With justifiable
pride, she announced that she and her team have reunited a 34th Ukrainian child
with his or her family – after Russian soldiers had dragged off said child (and
at least 1,200 others) during the invasion Vladimir Putin launched four years
ago.
For her next trick, she will
attempt to show her nincompoop husband that Putin is the bad guy in this war.
___
8/17/26: Does
it get any better than this! Today, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
(ICE) announces plans to spend $20 million on a
product known as G.L.O.V.E, a diabolical abbreviation for Generated Low Output
Voltage Emitter. That is: Gloves that can shock anyone you touch.
Need to grab the undocumented
immigrant mother of an American-citizen toddler – while the toddler screams?
Let the agents use G.L.O.V.E.,
and maybe give them cattle prods, too. This comes in the wake of a U.S. citizen
sh0wing an ICE agent pointing his gun in her face as she sits rather peacefully
in her automobile.
*
IN RELATED NEWS, Attorney
General Todd Blanche has warned that the federal government may send armed ICE agents to polling places during the
midterms. Don’t forget the gloves!
*
IN A REUITERS/IPSOS POLL out
today, only 33% of Americans approve of the job Donald is
doing as president.
A staggering 64% do not.
Or, as Natalie Harp – whose entire
purpose every day seems to be to prop up the Presidential Ego – would say, “All
the American patriots love you. You are their everything, their Dumpling Hero.
They love you more than chocolate chip cookies and warm milk. I love you, too,
of course, My Dumpling.”
___
8/18/26: Since
the Iran War is over, and the U.S. has obliterated Iran’s defensive and
offensive capabilities, Sec. of Mayhem Pete Hegseth decided to take time off
and head for Iowa. Rumors are afloat that he’s considering a run for president
in 2028.
God knows, by then, he may have
the military pounded into shape and standing right behind him.
WE CAN ALSO REPORT that President
Trump has gone back to the U.S. Supreme Court a second time to have the
justices throw out a $5 million award a jury granted to E.
Jean Carroll. She has said that a younger Dumpling Man once sexually assaulted
her in a department store changing room.
Donald’s bill keeps rising, for
wasted legal costs, costs he will have to pay for Carroll’s lawyers, and
interest.
The high court rejected his
request again.
In two civil cases, involving
defamation, Ms. Carroll previously defeated the president, with exactly 0 jurors in either casesiding with the Pussy Grabber. Turning to
football for an analogy, the score now stands:
Team
Carroll: 49
Team
Donald: 0
So far, federal judges are successfully holding the line against President
Trump’s worst ideas and authoritarian instincts, whereas a supine Congress,
with both houses controlled by Republicans, has spent his second term kissing
ass and telling him his posterior tastes like pizza. It is standard procedure
for the U.S. Senate to vote on Donald’s picks for judges and high government
positions, such as U.S. District Attorneys. But Donald continues to flout the
rules and appoint people on a “temporary basis,” which is supposed to allow
them to serve for 120 days. Then he hopes no one will check the calendar.
That way, senators can’t say “no,” even if almost every GOP lawmaker does want to
say “yes,” so that the president won’t hurt them in the next election.
Not for the first time, today an
appeals court has ruled that Sigal Chattah, the Trump pick for U.S. attorney in
Nevada, was unlawfully appointed to lead federal prosecutions in the
state.
Chattah, an election denier, was
appointed in October 2025, which even the MAGA faithful, counting on fingers
and thumbs, might deduce is more than 120 days ago. This is at least the fourth
time that judges have stepped in to remind the president that, yes, there are
guardrails. He can’t just appoint Natalie Harp to the U.S. Supreme Court and
buy her a sexy black robe to wear.
The U.S. Senate would have to vote
to approve her. God knows, Sen. Tommy Tuberville would vote to confirm.
(Someone seems to have filled Tommy’s head with concrete.)
Speaking of Ms. Harp, subject of
increasing gossip of late, Democratic Sen. Jon Ossof clearly touched a nerve
when he mocked President Trump for focusing on his ballroom project and
traveling “with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace,” which
traveling ended with Harp and Trump switching planes in a food cart truck (see
above: 8/10/26).
Ever a pillar of maturity, Trump
responded by calling the senator a “Peewee Herman” lookalike.
White House aides decided that crude
language would impress the loyal MAGAs. White House spokesperson Davis Ingle labeled
Ossoff a “feminine theater kid,” and a “lightweight.” White House
communications director Steven Cheung nicknamed
the senator “Jon Jackoff” and called him “the biggest cuck loser.”
(I often call Cheung, “Mr. Potato Head.” But can any wide-eyed observer
blame me?)
Trump himself has helped lower
the level of political discourse dramatically, even more so in his second term.
(His first term was terrible, too.) We have, for example, his recent threat to
“bomb the shit” out of Oman.
And we have his vow to “beat the
fucking shit” out of Iran.
And his rant aimed at Bibi
Netayahu, in which he told the Israeli leader, “You have no fucking judgment.”
FUCK! I think Donald might be
losing his shit.
AND HE
HAS NUCLEAR WEAPONS!
Then again, so does his good
pal, and blood-thirsty communist ruler of North Korea, Kim Jong-un. During an
Oval Office meeting today, Donald, who has never met an all-powerful ruler he
didn’t like, had this to say: “Kim Jong-un has always
treated me with great respect. We spent time. I understand him. He understands
me.”
He does, indeed.
Trump once threated to blast
North Korea off the face of the planet if Kim didn’t surrender his nuclear
weapons.
Kim didn’t surrender any. So,
yes. He “understands” the Dumpling Man. He understands that he’s a clueless
windbag.
Trump informed reporters that he
would reduce joint military exercises involving U.S. and South Korean
troops. This would show Kim that the United States wanted peace, and he would finally
agree to give up his nukes.
(Dear MAGA: South Korea is a U.S. ally.)
(And remember: You are supposed to hate communists, not praise them.)
FUN FACT: Kim
responded to Donald’s comments within hours – by firing a barrage of ballistic
missiles into the sea, somewhere east of Japan. Just a friendly reminder that
North Korea has missiles that can reach the U.S. mainland.
FUN FACT #2: While
The Dumpling dreams of big, beautiful ballrooms, and triumphant arches named
after him, the North Koreans have continued to increase their nuclear arsenal.
This past June, Kim announced completion of a new facility to produce
bomb-ready enriched uranium.
According to North Korean state news (kind of like Fox, without the sexy
anchors) Premier Kim and other officials toured the factory, and “confirmed the
order of priority for implementing the ambitious future plan designed to beef
up our state's nuclear forces at an exponential rate.”
___
Playing
Whac-a-Mole with Team Trump.
8/20/26: The
overworked blogger has done his best to keep up with all the crimes and idiocies
of Team Trump over this long, bleak, last decade, but it has been like playing
four games of “Whac-a-Mole” at the same time, one left, one in front, one
right, and a fourth behind.
No way can you whack all the
moles.
So, I do what I can.
Today, we offer yet another
catalogue of some of the failures of the president, aided and abetted by his
crew of sycophantic aides and officers. First, and perhaps most troubling, the
federal deficit continues to explode under this watch, passing $40 trillion this week. Barring
some kind of miracle, Team Trump will add at least two trillion dollars
to the tab we owe, just this year.
*
MEANWHILE, DONALD continues to threaten
Iran, although his threats sound increasingly like a feeble man’s bluster.
*
GAS PRICES: For consistency, I
use the station nearest to my house here in Glendale, Ohio, for all comparisons.
Yesterday, when I got gas for my lawn tractor, I paid $3.89.9 per gallon.
That was 70 cents higher than on
the day Joe Biden left the White House.
*
THE PRESIDENT’S relationship
with Natalie Harp continues to garner attention. A story has emerged that on
one occasion, Harp was set to ride with him when he went to hear the U.S.
Supreme Court arguments on birth-right citizenship. But there were no seats
available in any of the vehicles in the motorcade. After an angry shouting
match, Lovely Natalie decided to jump into the trunk of one of the SUVs.
There are even signs that other White House insiders, tired of Harp’s undue influence
over the 80-year-old president, are starting to leak damaging stories.
(See above, and below.)
A second story indicates she
worked at the White House for over a year before she bothered to complete a required background check.
Without a check, she would have had no security clearance but would have been
in close proximity to classified information. Among her many qualifications for
a job as a close Trump aide, you have her attractive legs (two reasons to hire
her). Plus, Harp once worked in right-wing TV news and has long been a rock-ribbed election denier.
Writers for The New York
Times offered this description of Ms. Harp and her devotion to
The Dumpling Man:
She
never takes a day off, not even on Sunday. She works out of the Oval Office and
she’s got a regular seat on Marine One. She texts with world leaders on the
president’s behalf. She stays up late with him drafting social media posts.
She
rarely speaks on camera and yet she is never not there, ever-present with a
wide smile and her eyes fixed on the president.
“She is a platinum blond geyser
of positivity, there to buck [Trump] up when the going gets rough.”
“Sylphlike,” is how they
describe Harp.
The story continues,
Several videos shared with The Times show Ms. Harp
sprinting across great distances to keep up with Mr. Trump’s golf cart as it
putters across his course in Scotland. “I also am sorry if I was an
embarrassment walking the course in Scotland,” she wrote in a letter to the
president that was viewed by The Times.
The letter goes on to say: “I want things to always be
right between us. I also know I’ve been distracted all week (forgetting to eat
throughout the days, and even forgetting to sleep, and only catching a couple
hours at a time).”
The letter concludes: “With all my heart, Natalie.”
It does appear the White House has learned its lesson and
Natalie now rides any course in style and heels.
(Screenshot: I would describe her as “fetching.”)
*
WE’VE ALL HEARD the president
bark about “Fake News,” of course, but the free press has a critical role in any
democracy. They work to hold the powerful to account.
Once again, the Times has
done that job. Last fall, “the Department of Homeland Security spent $464
million on a no-bid contract [emphasis added] to buy 10 used airplanes from
a firm in Northern Virginia.”
That’s a lot of taxpayer cash.
So, the “no-bid contract” phrase
should raise a red flag. But it only gets worse. DHS leaders claimed the planes
were urgently needed to haul away all those illegal immigrants who wanted to
kill good, white, American people. Then the planes pretty much … sat around. It
didn’t help that three of the aircraft were “luxury business jets,” not exactly
the aircraft one might choose to haul away people in federal custody. Indeed,
F.B.I Director Kash Patel wanted dibs on one jet for personal use.
The other seven regular jets often
sit for months at a time at an out-of-the-way airport in Louisiana.
“An internal government
document, obtained by The New York Times,” the story added, “said the agency
did not have the staff necessary to operate them.”
(A glaring flaw in any plan involving flying planes!)
The sad saga continues, with reporters
noting, “The company that received this contract, Daedalus Aviation
Corporation, is led by a chairman who had donated to a political committee
supporting the previous homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem.”
Noem, of course, is today fondly
remembered for her own flying-bedroom scandal, which lead to her ouster.
*
IT’S NOT AS BIG A WASTE, but the
Kennedy Center for Performing Arts, now completely controlled by Trump toadies,
has been ordered by a judge to pay jazz
musician Chuck Redd $252,479.70 in legal fees and costs, after he
refused to perform at the Center. Redd’s decision came after the
Narcissist-in-Chief slapped his name on the building and made sure his moniker came
first in the new name.
Trump’s pals on the Kennedy
board sued Redd for breach of contract – because the president’s feelings were
involved – and lost.
So, “We the People” must watch a
quarter million dollars of our money flushed down the Ego Toilet.
*
SEN. JON OSSOFF, of Georgia, has
been going after the president for all his money-making schemes and/or scams.
Ossoff
called out Trump’s apparent stock manipulation, an issue Trump highlighted
recently when he sold early access to his Truth Social posts for as much as
$100,000 a month. It has been widely reported that investors appear to be
making a killing by anticipating Trump’s posts as they make markets go up or
down.
“He’s
selling faster access to his tweets, and then you can bet on the markets,”
comedian Shane Gillis recently told popular podcaster Joe Rogan, “It’s
literally insider trading.” Rogan, whose support for Trump in 2024 was
important to his victory, responded: “Wait a minute, is that real? How is that
legal? Who’s telling him this is a good idea? $100K to get early tweets? That’s
literally crazy. He’s just on a grab.”
I’m going to note, that Rogan
seems a little late to the party; but the American people, generally, also seem
to be catching on.
In a recent poll, 63% agreed that it was “inappropriate” for the
president and his family to be profiting off cryptocurrency, after it was
revealed that the Trumps had raked in a cool $1 billion in just one year,
from their crypto businesses. Crypto! A financial vehicle beloved by drug
cartels and human trafficking operators.
*
THE PRESIDENT loves to tell
everyone that he has made America respected again. Alas, the Washington Post
reports today that two countries are propping up the Iranians in their fight
with the U.S.
Can you guess which two???
Since war was launched by the United
States and Israel on February 28,
[Russia
has] increased its help, providing Iran with valuable
drone and intelligence support that strengthened its
offensive capabilities. Russia has aided Iran’s campaign of attacks by unmanned
aerial vehicles by reportedly sharing valuable drone tactic and technologies tested
on the battlefield in Ukraine.
“China has not been idle, either,”
the Post continues.
For example, we know that the
Chinese supply Iran with chemicals used to propel ballistic missiles. Trump, of
course, has said that he and Xi Jinping get along great. In a meeting this past
May, Donald assured the Chinese dictator, “it is an honor to
be your friend [emphasis added].”
*
THE FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION
continues to lag, regarding food safety inspections. This week a warning was
issued for the recall of 19.2 million eggs. Don’t eat them, the FDA said.
If you did – because the warnings came too late – “serious adverse health
consequences or death” could result.
This blogger checks the report:
Some of those eggs may have been sold by Kroger, which has a store right down
the street from his house. And someone at our house has eaten four or put them
in baking.
We’re going to die!
(Thanks, Elon Musk, for slashing the jobs of 3,500 FDA workers.)
My Lord, if the eggs don’t get
us the frozen blueberries will. The FDA is also trying
to stop an E coli outbreak.
Publix has warned that berries
from Chile may be tainted and were sold in the following states: Alabama,
Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Kentucky and
Tennessee.
A Class 1 FDA recall has
been issued. What does that mean? It means, again, that there’s a reasonable
chance that consuming the recalled product would cause severe harm to
health or death.
In other news, measles continues
to come roaring back under the leadership of Robert “Mr. Measles” Kennedy, Jr.
Each week a new annual record is set, going back to 1991, and well before 2000,
when measles was considered eradicated in this country. The yearly count, as of
this week: 2,777 cases.
(Two more unvaccinated people, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, will
soon die.)
*
FANS OF PAULA WHITE, which would
include President Trump, for whom she serves as a “spiritual advisor,” are no
doubt feeling smug, however.
This past Easter, Reverend White
was selling seven specific blessings. All
you had to do to gain those seven godsends, was cough up $1,000 and mail a
check to Pastor White, to prove you were honoring God.
And let’s just say that one
of those seven would protect you from poisonous frozen fruit. That blessing
would “take sickness away from you.”
Plus, you were guaranteed to receive
a ten-inch-high Waterford cross!
I had missed this story last spring;
but it seems pertinent in this time of travail. For that pittance, that mere $1,000,
you could both honor God and be sure you and your family would never need
healthcare again.
Not even if you were bitten by a
rabid beaver.
*
THE PARTY OF BOISTEROUS
CHRISTIANITY is also running Brandon Herrara for a seat in Congress from
Texas. If he can win in the general election, Herrara will replace the last
Republican to hold the seat, Tony Gonzalez.
Tony had the backing of Donald
Trump, but a sex scandal forced him to resign his seat earlier this year.
Now, the GOP is backing Herrara,
known for his hilarious anti-Semitic, and anti-black people jokes. In
old videos Candidate Brandon can be seen describing a Nazi-era submachinegun as
“the original ghetto blaster“ and
“Hitler’s street sweeper.”
Hitler!
Always good for laughs!
Well, good news, at least on one
front: Rep. Cory Mills, who Donald said had his “complete and total endorsement
for re-election,” has lost his primary, and gone is his chance to
serve another term in Congress. Mills was just another Republican wrapped up
in a sex scandal.
Also: Texas senate candidate Ken
Paxton – Kristi Noem – Pete Hegseth – maybe Donald Dumpling himself.
FUN FACT: Hey, MAGA, who hates
voting by mail! (All true MAGA folks must raise hands or be forced to eat eggs
bought at Kroger.)
Well, I’ll be damned. Donald J.
Trump once again voted by mail in the recent Florida primary.
___
War of
the White House Robots?
8/21/26: Once
again. Today we play catchup on all the strange tales coming out of the Trump
Administration.
Clearly worried about all the
scandalous talk involving “Lovely Natalie,” the White House
rolled out the First Lady today,
after a month away from the White House, to give a little speech.
Topic? Who cares! Melania was
coming out of hibernation or maybe hiding.
Witness Protection, possibly?
Part of the fun of being a
liberal blogger in today’s world is that the right-wingers have made a model out
of spreading stupid lies and slathering on innuendo, and now, with clear
conscience, I can occasionally indulge myself. One need not even believe what they
say, if only people will click on their posts – and they can become famous
“influencers.” Since the right has gone wild for tall tales of every sort, it
seems fair to start a rumor about Lovely Natalie – who happens to be a sexy robot
–controlled by the First Lady, herself! Then I start a new rumor and reveal that
Melania is a robot controlled by Natalie Hart’s robot. Then we throw in a few
of the juiciest possible details. None of the robots want to have sex with the
president.
Not even Transgender Robot
Stephen Miller!
Robots lack empathy: Miller's defining character trait is that.
At any rate, today, the Robot First
Lady and the lumbering lout who plays her husband were seen, ostentatiously
holding hands as they walked out to what was once the Rose Garden. (Now paved
by the president.)
Robot Melania stepped up to the
podium, scanned her notes with electronic eyes, and tried to decide which of
the 47 languages that she speaks to use. Donald made a beeline for a group of
supporters twenty yards away.
He seemed anxious to put a safe
distance between himself and the possibly homicidal humanoid machine – who
knows he has cheated on her many times before.
(I do not believe Robot Harp was in the audience.)
*
DONALD WAS STILL restless long
after he went to bed on Friday, perhaps with Natalie at his bedside, encouraging
him to express his feelings. To be his big, bad self and say what he wanted on
Truth Social. “Oooooh, Donald, please, please, let me TYPE for you in big, bold
CAPITAL LETTERS!”
I think she said.
One way or another, her Dumpling
Boss came up with this love note to his former admirers:
___
We can
grow our way out of the giant deficit hole!
8/22/26:
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has been spending his time lately assuring all
who bother to let him finish his dumb sentences that we can handle the $40 trillion federal deficit. In
fact, thanks to his boss, he says deficits have “peaked.” Once the Trump Magic
takes hold, this great nation is going to be rich again!
“There’s nothing magic about the
40-trillion number,” Bessent insists. “We can grow our way out of that.”
If that sounds to you like Team
Trump is trying out a new economic message it should. On Friday, the president blew
off the deficit entirely. “It’s been a problem for 35 years,” he explained to reporters. “And what we have now … is we
have tremendous growth. And the way you take care of debt is with growth, and
we have tremendous growth. We’ve never had growth like we have right now.”
Unfortunately, the mirage of
“tremendous growth” is only visible to the president and his lackies.
Even worse, some of us remember
Donald Dumpling’s promise to erase the entire federal deficit if given
eight years. In fact, if we cut taxes, especially on billionaires, the tax cuts
would not increase the budget shortfall, because the U.S. economy would boom,
and the cuts would “pay for themselves.” Miracles of growth were promised
during the first Trump Administration. Then fresh miracles were promised as
soon as Trump took office on January 20, 2025.
This is like a pickup basketball
player, age 29, standing a shade under six feet tall, telling friends he’s
going to star in the NBA, as soon as he grows another sixteen inches. It’s just
never going to happen!
FUN FACT: I
think all good patriotic Americans will agree that we can never have too many guns, because we must be ready to
open fire on transgenders in women’s sports, and killer immigrants, such as the
crew that put a new roof on the blogger’s house this summer. In fact, who
doesn’t love it when a six-year-old in South Carolina shows up at
elementary school with a loaded assault-style pistol. That is how you represent
the importance of the Second Amendment, right there.
FUN FACT #2: That same
day, a South Carolina high school student was found with a handgun, and a
17-round clip, in his school.
FUN FACT #3: Then a
third individual, a 40-year-old mother, was arrested on school grounds, also in
the Palmetto State, with another loaded weapon. All of these events on one fine
late summer day.
Darlene Graham, who hopes to
follow her late brother into the U.S. Senate from South Carolina, has already
laid out her position regarding guns in America, announcing, “To me, gun
control is how steady you hold your weapon.”
(Tell it to the six-year-old, Darlene.)
*
TEAM TRUMP apologists today, are
claiming the Strait of Hormuz is wide open and oil is flowing like red ink in
the federal deficit.
It appears that on Thursday, a
grand total of seven ships passed through the Strait, four exiting, three
entering. In the good old days 120-140 ships per day used the waterway. About
half were oil tankers.
*
Trumpcare:
Coming the day after ….
IF GAS PRICES ARE HIGH, we can
rejoice in knowing that the Trump Administration is slashing healthcare costs …
and I, for one, anxiously await the rollout of Trumpcare, set to replace
Obamacare the day after never.
I swear, if Jesus had come down
off the cross before he died, Republicans of his era, c. 33 A.D., would have
refused him help paying doctors to repair his hands and feet and close the gash
in his right side.
(Why was he stuck in his right side with a lance?
It’s explained in the Bible, I guess.)
In a world Trump and his
billionaire buds have helped to build, Americans with workplace healthcare
coverage will pay an average of $388 more this year. That will bring costs up
to $5,297. And those are the lucky Americans – for there are many millions of
us with no coverage whatsoever.
Sadly, the Wall Street
Journal reports that 2027 is expected to be worse. Employees say they expect healthcare
plans to rise as much as 11% in cost.
But at least by then the Iran
War will be over.
I think.
(See below.)
___
The
president won’t put the war on an egg-timer.
8/23/26: The Robot
First Lady will no doubt head for bed early tonight, having exhausted herself
by showing up at the White House twice in three days. She may also have
spent the day on Saturday, which would make for highly exciting times in Mr.
and Mrs. Trump’s loving marriage.
Today, she and her doddering, potato-shaped
husband attended the Freedom 250 Grand Prix, which was run on the streets
of Washington.
*
WE SHOULD also mention what Donald
now says the MMR vaccine (for measles, mumps and
rubella) can be “quite lethal.”
This was news to doctors in
every nook and cranny of this wide country, including witch doctors. Even Dr.
Oz, now the head of CDC, had to “correct” the president’s claim, gently, of
course – rather than just come out and admit it, saying, “I’m deeply sorry. But
I work for a guy with the same level of intellectual curiosity as a person with
a head filled with pumpkin seeds.”
Even better, the president now claims that hospitals are doing “reverse surgery” on
transgender kids, on his orders. Yes, he said this week – repeating
himself, perhaps thinking his ever-loyal, red-hatted followers were too dumb to
catch his meaning – “They’re doing reverse surgery. Nobody ever heard about
it.”
This is true. No one has ever
heard of any president ordering people to have surgery of any kind, not even boob
jobs.
To put it plainly, this past
week has been boom times for stupidity, with Chief Surgeon Trump slapping 50%
tariffs on Canadian goods – while insisting tariffs will never raises costs to American
consumers – and simultaneously agreeing to import 300,000 metric tons of
Argentinian ground beef – but promising to lift tariffs on the same – because
he wants to bring down costs to consumers.
*
SUNDAY, the “alternative facts”
lady, Kellyanne Conway, showed up on Fox News, where she did her best to
explain to Americans why they should give the president a break, even though
he’s flailing to end a dumb war that he and Bibi, his Israeli pal, launched six
months ago.
As The Daily Beast
reports, Conway put it this way:
“The
president is doing what he’s doing in the Middle East to help people in the
Midwest, longer term. This president takes the long view on everything, and he
has said he – uh – I’ll say he can’t put war on an egg timer,” she continued.
“We’ve
been there for six months, everybody would like it wrapped up—it needs to be
wrapped up successfully and completely for us to feel that the next president
of the United States, Commander-in-Chief, doesn’t face a nuclear capable Iran.”
Just in case the American people
didn’t get the news, that we are kicking ass in the Middle East, that all is
well on the USS Lincoln, that Pete Hegseth is the greatest Secretary of
War since the War Department was renamed, and that you can tell we’re crushing
it against Iran, because Pete always uses the cool term “warfighters,” to
describe what’s happening overseas, we have new news.
Actually, we will have less news because Pete has fired all the top people
who ran the Stars and Stripes, a publication normally devoted to serving
as the voice of our ordinary men and women in uniform. That newspaper has for
decades been granted editorial independence – because our servicemen and women
deserve to have their true opinions and concerns more clearly known. Now we’ll
have a new publication, suited to Pete’s rigorous regard for making Pete and
Donald both sound good.
Potential new headlines:
TROOPS
LOVE PETE HEGSETH
PETE
HEGSETH – WHAT A STUD!
IRANIANS
FEAR THE WRATH OF PETE HEGSETH
PRESIDENT
KNOWS EXACTLY WHAT HE’S DOING IN THIS WAR
DONALD
J. TRUMP WILL PERSONALLY KICK THE MULLAHS’ ASSES
(Bill Mauldin would be appalled.)
___
8/24/26: After
video of what appeared to be a tense exchange between Melania and Donald at
the Freedom 250 race was aired, the First Lady was noticeably absent at a White
House meeting to talk about education. Mrs. Trump does seem to care about
children – if not necessarily her big lump of a child, Donald.
Speaking of “lumps,” a story in
the Washington Post (ipso facto, “Fake News,” according to Trump world)
says doctors are worried because Donald has gained at least twenty 23 pounds since retaking office.
Let’s just say that this photo
from two weeks ago seems to prove the Post knows what it’s saying.
At age 77, your favorite blogger
weighs 198 pounds, and stands a shade under six feet tall, but can squeeze into
a 34-inch pair of jeans if he inhales for the next six hours. Donald looks like
a guy who could go 270, and we all know he’s not getting much exercise, save
for riding around in a golf cart.
(With Natalie Harp in pursuit.)
*
IN OTHER IMPORTANT NEWS, we can
report that the White House took time to call Rosie O’Donnell, who has been
hosting the Jimmy Kimmel Show for a week, a “total slob.” You know, keeping a laser focuson what
matters to ordinary Americans.
Like the Iran War. Or the
exploding national debt. Or the costs of healthcare, gas, groceries, and home
loans.
NO FUN FACT: The
blogger would like to point out that he has never hung around with anyone who,
in a locker room, bragged about grabbing women by the p***y. He has never ridden
on Jeffrey Epstein’s jet. And no one he has posed with for pictures has ever
been arrested for sexually abusing a child.
Here’s Donald Trump, checking
that last box. Posing here with Mike Caruso, a former Florida lawmaker, we can
now explain that Caruso has “been arrested on five felony charges related
to child sex abuse, including kidnapping, lewd or
lascivious molestation, lewd or lascivious exhibition, luring or enticing a
child, and child abuse causing mental injury. The alleged victim was between 3
and 5 years old.”
Even more bizarre, Caruso had
voted for a new Florida law that would impose the death penalty for pedophiles.
*
HOW MANY AGENTS hired to work for ICE do you think should have
criminal records, for example, for domestic violence?
Or for extorting sex from
prisoners?
After digging through court
documents, the Ohio Immigrant Alliance has found …
Two?
Oh, no, no, no. Try: 152.
One may quibble about the actual
numbers, the group’s biases, methodology, and more. But 56% of the people on
their list have been sentenced. As Peter L. Markowitz, professor at
Yeshiva University’s Cardozo School of Law, pointed out, it turns out “the
worst of the worst” don’t always get deported. They often get jobs with this warped
version of the federal government.
Meanwhile, only 2% of 66,000
detainees in ICE custody are being prepared for deportation based on criminality.
In other ICE news, agents
managed to snag a dangerous illegal, Luis Manuel Aviles, 48. Originally from
Nicaragua, the arrestee has lived in the U.S. for the last nineteen years, committing
a rash of murders (I imagine) while masquerading as a handyman, ready to
perform almost any kind of work.
He was arrested Saturday as he
left his home to bring his car to a mechanic (or perhaps murder a true MAGA
believer).
Argelia, his wife, told
reporters that her husband holds a valid permit to work in the United States
and added that their son, Joshua, is currently serving aboard the USS
Abraham Lincoln, which has been at sea for nine months.
“Thank you for your service,”
young man.
We’re still going to deport your
dad, though.
This arrest looked so bad that
even the heartless folks who run ICE realized it might be wise to free the
father from custody, and on August 26, Luis was out of jail. An immigration
judge dismissed the case against him.
___
8/25/26: Lately,
Mr. Trump has been listening far too much to two people and it’s warping
his view of reality. One person is the “Luscious Natalie” (I am promoting her
from “Lovely Natalie”), the president’s favorite White House aide.
The other is himself.
With his approval numbers in the toilet, he has now
declared that the “Radical Left” is going crazy with the polls. “They’re
putting them out at levels never seen before.” Naturally, Trump says the
Democrats are making up “Demoralization Polls,” designed to discourage loyal
MAGA warriors from showing up to vote.
With all due respect to the MAGA
folks, I, for one, am a huge fan of facts, and have been checking polls
steadily since the 2000 election. Almost all the pollsters expected that
contest to be close, and it was.
Two years ago, I knew Kamala
Harris was likely to get smoked, because that’s what an aggregate of the polls
indicated.
Right now, the same polls show that Donald Dumpling is
only slightly more popular than cyclosporiasis. For the fun of it, if you don’t
like President Dumpling, check his numbers as of today.
39.7
average approval rating
57.1
average disapproval rating
*
THIS ONE’S just kind of fun. Our leaders often pass out
challenge coins as cool souvenirs to mark some important event. Someone who got
a Melania Trump coin is selling it on eBay. Only $500.
Plus, you get the bag it came
in!
We do know it’s worth more
than Melania’s meme coins. Once worth $8.49 each, soon after they were offered
for sale to her adoring fans, the coins today sell at a huge profit … Wait. … Holy
hell.
HAVING FORGOTTEN his promise to
lower prices on “Day One” of his second term as president – or perhaps having
simply given up – or maybe he lost interest – Donald gets mad at Canada.
So, he slaps 50% tariffs on
Canadian steel and automobiles.
As any fool might have expected,
the Canadian government hits back, putting retaliatory tariffs on $20 billion worth of American goods. Costs to
consumers are not coming down anytime soon.
See also: Gas prices.
___
The laws
of war.
8/26/26: IF YOU
DON’T already know, ProPublica is famous for its excellent work om exposing
the questionable actions of disreputable people in government. So, today, we
have a new report regarding Pete Hegseth.
In early 2025, soon after he was
confirmed as Secretary of Defense/War/Bombast, Hegseth polled his top
commanders on a program designed to limit civilian casualties during
combat operations.
You would think that any effort
to avoid blowing up babies would be a good idea, and even Pete would get it.
But no.
As ProPublica writes.
Hegseth
had bet senior officers would endorse his view that focusing on civilian
security was “woke” and out of step with “maximum lethality,” current and
former defense officials told ProPublica.
Instead,
every commander rebuffed the idea [of killing the program].
…
In the
poll, Hegseth gave commanders three options: cut 65% of staff but keep the
effort operational, continue with only a small centralized office in
Washington, or eliminate the program.
Nine
commanders chose the first option to preserve the enterprise as much as
possible, according to a memo reviewed by ProPublica. Leaders of two commands,
one overseeing the nuclear arsenal and the other focused on cyber threats,
declined all three options, asking to maintain the full program.
Leaders at U.S. Central Command,
which has responsibility for military action in the Middle East, pressed to
keep its full staff of 16 assigned to the task of limiting unnecessary civilian
carnage. They warned that cutting back would “result in decreased efficiency of
U.S. lethal operations due to an increased risk of target misidentification and
reduced battlespace awareness,” a memo reviewed by ProPublica said.
Gen. Erik Kurilla, then in
charge of Central Command, and several senior officers appealed to Hegseth to
keep the program. Hegseth chose to ignore them and gutted the program. He did
allow Central Command to keep one person in the office that worked to protect
innocent lives, if that helped.
As one official put it, the new
approach at Hegseth’s Pentagon was: “Bombs away!” And don’t let anyone else know
about it.
So, if you love schools getting crushed
with Tomahawk missiles, and innocent families sitting down for dinner getting
incinerated – and no military objectives achieved – then the Secretary of Death
and Destruction is your man. In the spring of 2025, airstrikes in Yemen killed
and wounded 396 civilians.
Then, in the early days of the
Iran War, a U.S. strike leveled an Iranian school, killing as many as 175
students and educators.
And it wasn’t just “woke”
liberals who questioned this cavalier attitude toward killing noncombatants.
ProPublica
continues:
Leaders
at Central Command told Hegseth’s top staff in a memo that CHMR [the program to
monitor U.S. strikes] “enhanced our precision and accuracy, making us more
lethal.” The memo added, “The operational and strategic value of this work is
widely recognized.”
At the
same time, the Joint Staff echoed the commanders’ sentiment.
Let’s finish with this. If you
are the Iranian mullahs or leaders of the Houthi rebels in Yemen, can you
recruit more easily, from among the loved ones whose relatives were killed
while attending third grade or eating a family supper?
Of course you can.
Only Pete doesn’t get it. Or Pete
just doesn’t give a shit.
If you ever wonder why U.S.
troops are instructed not to carry out illegal orders, read up on the story of
My Lai, a massacre carried out by American forces in Vietnam on March 16, 1968.
As many as 567 villagers, mostly women and children, were shot down.
On orders.
I’m more than afraid that if
Hegseth had been there in My Lai, he would have been the first to listen to
illegal orders and would have joyfully opened fire.
He’d be the guy, as one soldier did
that day, who killed two little boys by shooting through a two-year-old held in
the arms of his four-year-old brother. Sorry, but we want our troops to be
better.
“Violence
unnecessary to a military purpose is forbidden.”
I believe that phrase above, or
something close was found in the manual that recruits received at Parris Island
in January 1969, as did I, after I dropped out of college and enlisted.
I’m too lazy to dig it up in this lengthy report; but I like this introduction,
penned by one of the judges at the 1946 Nuremberg Trials.
I don’t think Trump or Hegseth
have ever heard of those trials, during which Nazi leaders had to stand trial for
their war crimes.
But I like the humanity of what
this judge has to offer:
Purposes
of the Law of Armed Conflict
There
are two reasons . . . for the preservation and enforcement, as even-handedly as
possible, of the laws of war. The first is strictly pragmatic: They work.
Violated or ignored as they often are, enough of the rules are observed enough
of the time so that mankind is very much better off with them than without
them. …
Another
and, to my mind, even more important basis of the laws of war is that they are
necessary to diminish the corrosive effect of mortal combat on the
participants. War does not confer a license to kill for personal reasons – to
gratify perverse impulses, or to put out of the way anyone who appears
obnoxious, or to whose welfare the Soldier is indifferent. War is not a license
at all, but an obligation to kill for reasons of state; it does not countenance
the infliction of suffering for its own sake or for revenge.
Unless
troops are trained and required to draw the distinction between military and
nonmilitary killings, and to retain such respect for the value of life that
unnecessary death and destruction will continue to repel them, they may lose
the sense of that distinction for the rest of their lives. …
As
Francis Lieber put the matter in his 1863 Army regulations: “Men who take up
arms against one another in public war do not cease on this account to be moral
beings, responsible to one another and to God.” [Lieber Code, art. 15]
Telford
Taylor
Nuremberg
Prosecutor
This chart, from the report on
Marine Corps doctrine, might also help:
(Hey, that’s kind of the phrase I remember in the second box,
right.)
___
8/27/26: No one
can say that Donald Dumpling isn’t focused on the issues that matter most to
Americans. On Tuesday morning, he was off to a rousing start when he posted on
Truth Social, his latest plans to bring down the price of groceries – which he
promised to do on “Day 1” of his second crack at playing Leader of the Free
World.
That was 582 days ago.
Not to worry, because #583 would
surely be the ticket.
Not even close, the petulant
child dressed up as a fat, doddering 80-year-old, had other key issues to
address. Trade talks with Canada had exploded, and the White House buffoon wanted
all his fans to know, “The United States is giving serious consideration to
changing the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America in that we don’t expect to
[be] doing much business with Ontario any longer.”
I doubt the most creative minds
in literature could have ever crafted a story line where a President of the
United States would sound so dumb.
And today, Day #585, he sounded
even dumber.
It’s hard, even for this
blogger, who has chronicled the antics of Donald Trump religiously for more
than a decade, to believe that the man can get dumber.
Yet he does.
Today, he signed an executive
order, to rename the lake. My wife went to the grocery
store soon after, to buy green beans.
Nothing had changed at the store
for the better.
With stupidity always in style
during the Trump Era, we have another example to include, namely a Republican
member of Congress who cannot, will not, take a joke. In this case a joke aimed
at his God/Hero.
On the Jimmy Kimmel show, guest
host Jelly Roll, now a much slimmer version of himself, had this to say during
his monologue, as Huff Post explains:
“Well,
Mr. President, from one fat pig to another, take it from me, that physical
fitness is very important,” he said. “And trust me, you’ll be happy to see your
penis again.”
The
singer noted he recently lost more than 300 pounds, concluding, “That means
I’ve lost an entire Donald Trump.”
Rep. Jimmy Patronis decided he
should be allowed to control the movements of American travelers, posting this:
Speaking of travel, yesterday,
the Iranians forced a tanker from India to turn around after the
vessel entered the U.S.-protected corridor through the Strait of Hormuz. That’s
the Strait the president says we control.
“TOTALLY.”
*
Disaster
foretold.
TWO THOUSAND MILES farther west,
and north of India, a disaster foretold by climate change scientists comes to
pass. A melting glacier, behind which water forms into a lake, gives way after a
landslide ruptures the land, and a massive wave is unleashed down a mountain
river valley.
In Nepal, 389 are known dead,
and 1,400 are missing, with both numbers likely to rise much higher. In some
of the narrower parts of the valley, a wall of water as high as a sixteen-story
building wiped entire towns off the face of the earth. The people in the path
of the torrent had no chance to escape. As the earth continues to warm,
it will not be the last such climate change disaster.
FUN FACT: Scientists have been
warning that climate change will lead to more hailstorms, and Illinois has now
validated a record-sized stone that fell in March this year.
Imagine what this could do to your car.
Or your head:
___
The
Greatest.
8/28/26: With a
little more than two months to plug the leaks in the sinking ship of state,
Republicans are increasingly nervous. Trump reportedly plans to spend a pile of
cash on campaign ads featuring himself. The White House believes, at least
Donald does, that voters have simply forgotten how great he is. Of
course, Donald has not forgotten. Nor has Natalie Harp.
Isn’t he the bold leader who
just renamed Lake Ontario? Who cares if the Strait of Hormuz is open!
I think you could make the
argument that even the First Lady might not vote Donald, if he was on the
ballot in November.
Polls can still shift, and polls
have a margin of error that means the headline numbers aren’t always accurate
in the end. But in Texas, which went for Trump in 2024 by …, Democratic
candidate James Talarico, running for a seat in the U.S. Senate has a lead over
Trump’s hand-picked adulterer, Ken Paxton. Paxton is
the guy who had to agree to pay $3.3 million to his own staff members
after he retaliated against them for blowing the whistle on some of his crooked
schemes.
Then Paxton decided to drag the
case out in the courts but refused to testify under oath. By the time Paxton
dropped his last appeal, in July 2025, the whistleblowers were looking at an award of $6.6 million – which Paxton, the Texas
Attorney General, managed to get the state legislature to agree to pay.
With much of the West locked in
an epic drought, many farmers are turning their fury on GOP leaders who have
been pushing to build more and more water-hogging data centers in rural areas. One
voter does not make a movement; but the words of one Texan may signal trouble
ahead.
“We’ve
been fighting this [data center] for three years,” said Texas voter Tom Weeks, “and
we realized that the Republican Party has given us nothing more than the middle
finger. I have been a staunch Republican my entire life. I’m done. I would vote
for the devil before I voted for Gov. [Greg] Abbott. I’ve been listening to
Talarico. I've been listening to, for the first time in my life, a lot of
Democrats.”
Abbott still leads in the most
recent polls, but Paxton (who was impeached by his own party) trails James
Talarico, his Democratic opponent. Even Fox News was forced to admit on
Thursday that Talarico had a 48% to 42% lead in the latest polling.
Texas voters’ number one issue:
“Affordability.”
And it doesn’t help the
Republican Party to have the clueless president roaming around, insisting that “affordability” is a made-up,
Democratic word.
*
FINALLY, let’s post the
president’s own chart of the greatest and worst presidents in U.S. history. No
surprise who he and Lucious Natalie place at the top:
___
Racists galore!
8/29/26: As a blogger
careful to adhere to the facts, I am always at pains to note that I know plenty
of Trump supporters who are good people and who aren’t racists (including one
son-in-law, two old-fashioned Republican neighbors, and at least a hundred former
students, all nice people).
But if you are a racist,
Trump is your boy.
RACIST #1: If you
are the neo-Nazi type, for example, you will fondly remember Greg Bovino, who served
as commander-at-large for the Border Patrol, earlier this year. Since losing
his post, he has called for the deportation of 100 million illegal immigrants,
equal to a third of the U.S. population. Now he tells Tucker Carlson that some
of President Trump’s pals want him dead. “Hey, Tucker, I got some gas in
the tank. If they want you gone, if those gate guards want you gone,” he said during a recent interview, “you better watch out. They’ll
come for you.”
Bovino can be seen lately hanging with the white supremacist crowd and has
launched an exploratory committee, testing his appeal as candidate for
president in 2028. If you’re a racist, I think you’re going to love his
platform.
Greg is now touting ideas like
“remigration,” where, essentially, all dark-skinned people who have come to the
U.S. and Europe (even legally) are politely convinced to go home. Or just
deported.
(I don’t think Bovino cares which.)
And he’s the guy who was giving
ICE orders when they killed two U.S. citizens who were protesting in
Minneapolis last January.
RACISTS #2-3-4-5: If one
white supremacist isn’t enough, Congressman Mike Collins, running for a seat in
the U.S. Senate from Georgia, can serve up a second, third and fourth. He makes
a fifth.
His chief of staff, Kip Talley
was recently canned after it was revealed he had enjoyed a group chat with Nick Fuentes and
Richard Spencer.
Then Collins’ office lost a
young intern, Preston Parra, who had fun festooning his X account with swastikas
and posted an AI-generated image of himself in Ku Klux Klan robes. When asked
his thoughts on race, Parra told a reporter he believed “the white race
contributes more to the world.”
Rep. Collins’ son-in-law, David
Allan Scheer II, has a lot to say about Jews (doesn’t like ‘em), Muslims (not
them either), dark-skinned people (okay, not them, at all) and Hitler’s Nazis
(he’s a fan).
(The Daily Beast offers a summary of his thinking.)
RACIST #6: As for
Laura Loomer, once thought by some to be shagging Donald, when Melania was
away, now replaced (possibly) by Ms. Natalie, yeah. She’s a flaming racist.
Here’s a post she sent in reply to Democratic candidate for a seat in the U.S.
Senate from Florida, Angie Nixon:
RACIST #7: And
we’ll always have top White House aide, Stephen Miller, whispering in Donald’s
ear every day.
*
8/31/26: August
has not been kind for President Trump with Iran and the United States suddenly trading
fire once more. Naturally, this has forced Old Man Dumpling to start spewing
threats yet again. First, he says he’s going to blast Iran, like they have
never been blasted before.
“We’re going to hit them very
hard,” he promised today.
“Iran is officially a Failed
Nation,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “IT IS DEAD! They have no Navy, they have
no Air Force, they have no currency, they are not paying their soldiers or
police, Inflation is at 300%, and their leadership is in total disarray and
incapable of properly representing the country.”
Meanwhile,
Iran's
army said it attacked the United Arab Emirates' Al Minhad Air Base with drones
early on Monday, Iranian state TV reported, citing a statement from the army.
The army
said the attack targeted locations where US forces and helicopters were
stationed at the base.
It said
the attack was in response to the killing of Iran's Revolutionary Guards and
Iranian civilians on Larak Island.
The president also decided it
would fun to threaten the free press again. This time he said he plannedto refer
Kristen Welker of NBC’s “Meet the Press” to the FCC, where she should face
“rebuke or punishment.”
And what crime had Ms. Welker
committed? On Sunday, she dared mention that Trump had had “mixed results” with
his most recent slate of endorsements.
That was one attack on the First
Amendment. How about a second, and third? The G20 is meeting to discuss the
state of the world’s economy and Donald would really like some good coverage. Why
not block admittance of reporters from three of the nation’s most important news
outlets, who had sinned against Donald J. Trump? Journalists from The New
York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Bloomberg who had all
written unflattering reports were denied a chance to attend.
A representative of the German
press group in attendance responded to the news, saying, “I believe the press
has a completely legitimate interest in reporting openly and freely on this G20
summit. I consider it unacceptable for journalists or entire editorial teams to
be excluded.”
(Someone tell the MAGA faithful
how bad it could be if the next Democratic president is an anti-free press nut,
too.)
For kicks, Donald Dumpling also blasted
Maggie Haberman, a reporter for The New York Times, as “Maggot Hagerman,”
in yet another one of his Truth Social posts. See how clever the bully in the
White House is:
We end the 588th day since
Donald took over the reins of government loosely and rode his steed right to
the slaughterhouse.
Donald is still mad because he
had to have his name taken off the Trump/Kennedy Performing Arts center – now
he’s talking about tearing the whole structure down.
Inflation remains untamed. The
war in Ukraine remains unended. Gas prices remain elevated. Canada now hates us,
as do most of our former allies around the globe. Melania is still avoiding any
sexual contact.
And the Epstein Files are still
not all released – or redacted – and the MAGA folks have all forgotten what
they said they wanted when Pam Bondi said she had a list, and Dan Bongino could
hardly wait until the arrests began. Now Congressman Thomas Massie, a lame
duck, has finished the month by reading out the names of individual he calls
“co-conspirators,” most of whom should be called to testify about what they know:
(And so, another month of D Trump as president comes to an
ignominious end.)
Or as the head of polling at U.
Mass-Amherst put it, without including the jibe about the First Lady
and the zero sex:
With no
end in sight to the ongoing war in Iran, the continued rise in the price of
gas, groceries, utilities, and housing, an escalating trade war with
Canada, and the likelihood of higher interest rates, it comes as no surprise
that Trump’s approval rating remains at a paltry 32%, a 1-percentage-point drop
since we last polled in March 2026.
That is also the lowest the
president has ever fallen in the poll – lower even than on January 7, 2021.
In other words, it sucks to be
Don.
(Only Lucious Natalie can ever make it all right.)
*
GOOD NEWS for J.D. Vance this
week – as a mentally ill man who used a hammer to smash three windows at his
home in Cincinnati is headed for jail. Twenty-six-year-old William
DeFoor has agreed to pay $28,000 in restitution, stay at least 350 feet away
from the vice president, his family members, and his homes.
He could face up to twenty years
in prison.
Fortunately, no one was hurt.
Let us all hope that none on our
side start spreading rumors, as when Nancy Pelosi’s husband was attacked in
their home, that the attacker was gay, and that a sexual encounter with Paul
Pelosi had gone awry. We don’t want to be assholes by the “influencers” who
spread tall tales on the right.
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