unraveling

28.May.2026

Thug life: smash and grab

Prison to Pardons to Payouts: Jan. 6 Rioters Are Elated at Trump’s $1.8 Billion Fund: "The possibility that people who ransacked the Capitol could get money from the government they attacked is the latest head-spinning twist in President Trump’s effort to rewrite the history of Jan. 6." His relentless efforts to whitewash the events of one of the most despicable acts of mob violence in the nation's history, as the NYT wrote about on the eve of thug 2.0.

There is no "art of the deal"; there is only artless stealing, for generations of thug now, and metastasizing through most of our political systems, a moral rot that will take at least another generation to be rooted out, starting when—and if!—the entrenched accessories ever come back to something we could call "law" or "order."

“This is the UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE acknowledging the possibility that Americans were targeted through political abuse of government power,” Tommy Tatum, a Mississippi man who was charged with civil disorder for interfering with the police on Jan. 6, wrote on Monday in a post on social media. “That is historic.”

Yeah, except it's not THE UNITED STATES Department of Justice that has ever before existed. It's the DONALD J. TRUMP DEPARTMENT OF JUDICIAL THUGGERY with his ugly mug draped down the façade, a Roy Cohn-arama of raw power currently headed by one of thug's innumerable "criminal defense attorneys," turned fixer. There was not a bona fide lawsuit against the IRS; there can not be a "legal settlement" for a nullity. There is only corruption.

Corruption on a scale the world has hardly seen before. Unprecedented, unfathomable corruption with one scandal followed by another, and another. "The level of corruption on display right now is so profound that historians will spend decades writing books about this period. The problem is we’re living in it in real time, which means we’ve lost our sense of scale," writes UNFTR's Max on the Meidastouch Network.

Far less consequential scandals ended careers and administrations. Never mind cancer on the presidency; we've all got the cancer now. Read it and weep.

"In just the past couple of weeks, there have been three separate instances of such unfathomable corruption that any other normal presidency wouldn’t have survived a single one of them. Let alone all three.

"Confirmed insider trading — not by someone in the administration, but by the sitting president of the United States. A literal slush fund to help criminals who are allied with the administration. And a finance scheme so monumental it has the potential to set up Donald Trump and his family as one of the wealthiest dynasties in the world."

23.May.2026

On average

The NYT News Quiz is one of my weekly pastimes. Sometimes my misses are my fault, sometimes they're the writers' selection of weird trivia, and sports and celebrity tidbits I don't care about. No sports this week, one question about The Late Show that was within my ambit. I missed the "pick 2 from 5" for what thug's envoy to Greenland, Louisiana's Governor Jeff Landry, tried to give as gifts for local children when he visited the island’s capital this week. (All choices were banal or inappropriate, naturally.) And what the locals nicknamed the celebrity humpback whale stranded off the coast of Germany this week.

Anyway, I got 8 of 11, maybe a bit less than I'm used to, but after a bad showing last week, they tell me it was "close to [my] recent average," over a histogram that shows my average at 8.0 to the nearest pixel. Very close, then.

My expectations weren't high; I do keep track of the "the news" even when we've got other things going on, as we've had the last couple weeks. I was thinking a lower score might be healthier than a high one. Judge for yourself.

Update
You're on your own for their Flashback Quiz, but I enjoyed this first old-timey item (without an expanding hyperlink, alas):

"A Sumerian priestess, Enheduanna, becomes one of the world’s first known writers. In one hymn, she describes an early form of writer’s block."

It's no big deal on a free-wheeling blog, you just come back later, but I do remember the feeling from when I wrote a weekly column for the University of Idaho's Argonaut back in the day. (Not all the way back; they brag it has been "For, Of and By the Students Since 1898.") My 45 yo writer's block column is probably in their archive, still. Once you've succumbed, you see it from other columnists, and I can't help but think, "ok, they're about done" when I see one.

20.May.2026

Thug 2.0 vs. United States: no bottom to the swamp

There is plenty to read on the topic of the day (more links below), but Sherrilyn Ifill provides a good place to start: Thug's Insurrectionist Payout Scheme Violates the 14th Amendment. Literally. Section 4 says:

“But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States….”

So far aided and abetted by the reactionary right majority of the Supreme Court, which obviated the Section 3 provision barring those who particpated in insurrection from serving in public office on thug's behalf. That was after the state of Colorado removed him from the 2024 ballot, and the Colorado Supreme Court upheld the lower court finding that thug had participated in an insurrection on January 6th, 2021. The speciously supremacist majority said Section 3 is "inoperable without additional congressional legislation." As Sergey Viktorovich Lavrov liked to say, You are kidding! You are kidding! Ifill continues:

"[T]he ideology at the very core of [thug’s] presidency is a confrontation with the protections and promise of the 14th. From the Administration’s anti-DEI thuggery, its attack on birthright citizenship, the racist dismissal of Black public servants in positions of authority in the military and throughout the leadership of federal agencies, the attack on history and recognition of the contributions of Black people to this nation - all are policies undertaken in naked defiance of the language and spirit of the 14th Amendment’s guarantees....

"The 14th Amendment is the constitutional tool designed to constrain the very abuses of power that we are confronting at this moment. It was forged in a time of national fracture, widespread white supremacist ideology, and insurrectionist fervor. In other words, its provisions were uniquely created for such a time as this."

Do the Republicans in Congress have any spine to resist a dictator, or will they all go along with this grotesque ride?

Heather Cox Richardson: this isn't a "settlement" (never mind the "SETTLEMENT AGREEMENT" headline) for the cocked-up thug family suit against the IRS, which they withdrew, without any such thing.

It would be a gigantic slush fund, with an unaccountable (to anyone save thug) gang of five deciding—confidentially—to grant or deny claims. Signed off by "Stanley E. Woodward Jr., who has been a key defense attorney for people in Trump’s orbit accused of committing crimes... Then, today, the plot got even thicker." A faux-settlement addendum to the original faux-settlement.

"A document—this time signed by [Acting AG Todd "Carte"] Blanche himself—amended the previous agreement to add: “The United States RELEASES, WAIVES, ACQUITS, and FOREVER DISCHARGES” Trump, his sons, and the Trump Organization, “and is hereby FOREVER BARRED and PRECLUDED from prosecuting or pursuing, any and all claims” that, as of yesterday, “have been or could have been asserted” by the IRS against them or “related or affiliated individuals” or companies. In other words, Blanche is asserting a blanket promise to stop all IRS audits of Trump’s taxes and not to prosecute any crimes Trump, his family, his businesses, or his associates might have committed that crossed the IRS."

A self-"pardon on steroids for Trump, Trump’s family, and Trump businesses," as Joyce Vance put it. Signed off by the front-runner for most corrupt (acting) Attorney General ever.

"The optics of this are so bad that it’s hard to believe Trump would expose himself to their consequences unless he really needed this deal. The protection it offers must be essential in some way we are as of yet unaware of. The Supreme Court has already given Trump immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts, but paying taxes, personal business transactions, and a whole host of other activities fall outside of the scope of that protection. And the unusual waiver of the government’s ability to pursue civil claims could cover a whole host of possibilities, anything from recovering unpaid taxes to suing for unpaid White House meals that a president pays on his own. Beyond that, there is the protection for virtually everyone connected to him—”any of the plaintiffs or related or affiliated individuals,” an incredibly broad provision."

At the end of Cox Richardson's Letter, she notes thug called a "suddent, urgent press conference" as Blanche was being grilled by a subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee yesterday, to... drool about how he's turning our White House into his personal fortress.

Describing the ballroom, he said: “Between the drone-proofing, the missile-proofing, we have ah, and the drone capacity upstairs, we can have all sorts of military—I hate to use the word snipers—but we have great sniper capacity. It’s built for our snipers, not enemy’s snipers, our snipers. And because of the height we get a very clear view of everything all over Washington.”

Every accusation is a confession. Every word he "hates to use" is one that thrills his criminal psychopathy.

19.May.2026

Kleptocracy

Regular readers have seen the term here many times. Searching my archive, I see it first popped up in 2005, when George W. "Bush administration political appointees offered to overpay a major Florida republican donor and real estate developer at least three times the value of his Everglades swampland. This happened just two weeks before First Brother Jeb Bush announced he was seeking re-election as governor of Florida." What a coincidence! My link was to TomPaine.com, which I now see went moribund 20 years ago. Tempus fugit. The Wayback Machine still has it, under the title kleptocracy.gov, and the link to the Bloomberg original (which I couldn't find searching on Bloomberg works, too. It's not clear if the skeevy deal ever went through, but the Collier family made a fortune selling ads on New York City street cars more than a hundred years ago, and used it to buy up Florida swampland, and yada yada yada, citrus, real estate, oil and gas. Maybe a $hundred million scandal? For not much more than a $hundred thousand campaign investment? That was a lot of money back then, but it never really made headlines in the midst of our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and all. It wasn't the last of the family shenanigans, I see. Here's the June, 2024 story on WGCU News, Federal suit alleges Collier family sold contaminated land to state, so the beat went on.

From November 2016 to this month on Mother's Day, my monthly editions have 15 hits for the kleptoword. No need to work the Wayback Machine for my stuff: the mid-November item, Signs of the times noted that post-truth had been declared the word of the year. Thug's ghostwriter, Tony Schwartz opined that "complete chaos" was coming, and Paul Krugman's multi-tweet and my Magic 8-Ball pointed to kleptocracy in the running for the word of 2017. Back when memories of Italy's kleptocrat, Silvio Berlusconi was still an avatar of corruption. All of those predictions checked out.

Bringing it up to date, with the same word for headline, Joyce Vance's latest:

"When everything is bad, nothing is bad. People get desensitized. They can no longer keep track of it all. It’s all so awful that none of it gets processed anymore.

"So I need you to hear me when I say tonight: This is bad. Really, really bad. MS Now’s Ari Melber called it “worse than Watergate”. He was right."

Watergate is kind of worn out as a scandal, though. Sure it was so bad that Nixon had to resign in disgrace, but that was when a credible threat of impeachment, and conviction with plenty of members of his own party were enough to tip the scale of justice. Now we have an utterly complicit cabal of Republican Senators who thought soliciting campaign monkeywrenching from Ukraine was no big deal, and couldn't even muster GUILTY for a full-on attempted insurrection on January 6, 2021, after thug and Mike Pence lost to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

"Here’s the bottom line. Donald Trump wants to take $1.8 billion dollars of money that taxpayers like you and me have paid to the government, and he wants to give it to his most hardcore followers, the people who stormed the Capitol on January 6. Trump calls them victims of Joe Biden’s weaponization of the Justice Department. It’s corruption. Corruption in plain sight. Trump is going to give his supporters taxpayers’ money.

"One of the most troubling things about Trump’s second presidency is that fraud and corruption have been completely normalized."

Since we're celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Indepence and all, not quite the founding of the republic, but the start of it, thug and the fully cuckolded "Department of Justice" signed on to $1,776,000,000 worth of "settlement" for the cocked-up lawsuit thug pointed at the IRS, after a glimpse of his tax returns supposedly "unfairly tarnished [the] business reputations" of him and the boys and the crime family org. That's a a lot of work for "unfairly" to perform for felon and his sub-felons.

To put the big ask in perspective, that would be enough to pay out a million dollars apiece to thug's favorite one thousand, seven hundred seventy-six insurrectionists.

Mother's Day, 2026

The -ocracy debacle

It's been a dizzying devolution since thug 2.0 kicked in, spinning through kleptocracy, kakistocracy, idiocracy. What next? What the hell? Professor Timothy Snyder breaks it down for us: On Superpower Suicide. It's a brutal, detailed look in the mirror right now.

"The United States has just spent billions of dollars to lose a war that enriches its oligarchs, impoverishes the citizenry, sabotages its alliances, and strengthens its enemies. As justification for the self-destructive mindlessness, the White House gestures towards Jesus and genocide....

"Empires have risen and failed before, but to my knowledge no state has ever chosen to kill its own power, and succeeded with such rapidity."

8.May.2026

From Hoover to Boozer

Last month, Sarah Fitzpatrick's piece for The Atlantic was a shot across the KA$H bow. We can't call it an "open secret," because it's not secret. The FBI Director Is MIA. "Kash Patel has alarmed colleagues with episodes of excessive drinking and unexplained absences," the story went, based on her "interviewing more than two dozen people about Patel’s conduct, including current and former FBI officials, staff at law-enforcement and intelligence agencies, hospitality-industry workers, members of Congress, political operatives, lobbyists, and former advisers."

As summarized by MS NOW reporters Ken Dilanian and Carol Leonnig, "Patel was known to drink to the point of intoxication, [Fitzpatrick] reported, adding that on occasion his security detail had trouble waking him in the morning."

Patel's response was to file a $250 million defamation suit, and launch a criminal leak investigation. (An FBI spokesman denied that any such investigation exists.) Patel made a first go at suing for defamation last year, against former FBI official Frank Figliuzzi, who said on Morning Joe that the FBI director had “been visible at nightclubs far more than he has been on the seventh floor of the Hoover Building.” That suit just got tossed out of the Southern District of Texas on April 21.

I suspect this isn't breaking news to you, but Fitzpatrick's next article fired for effect: Kash Patel’s Personalized Bourbon Stash. Our first-ever "merch forward" FBI director, and his "great deal of affection for swag" (including, but not limited to "hats, socks, and other items depicting the comic-book character the Punisher") are featured with high resolution images of one of his personalized bottles of bourbon that the magazine obtained from an online auction. ("The person who sold it to us did not want to be named, but said that the bottle was a gift from Patel at an event in Las Vegas.")

Fidelity, bravery, and integrity aren't what they used to be.

7.May.2026

Door knock of the day

Today's headline is an homage to District 15's Steve Berch, the best and most indefatigable door knocker I know.

The sign by the doorbell said NO SOLICITORS, and DON'T RING, and DON'T EVEN KNOCK and DON'T MAKE IT WEIRD. Given that I don't want annoy people, I gave a sad chuckle, and bent down to tuck a primary election information card under the mat, but then I heard someone opening the door. She was the person on my list, in fact, big smile and cheerful, and stepped out into the afternoon sun to hear what I had to say, with enthusiastic welcome and interest. Being a friendly neighbor is actually not that difficult, and we were both happy to meet one.

Her daughter, 7 or 8 years old, was shyly clinging to her side, and wondered quietly to her mom, who is this? "You can go ahead and ask him," she told her, and I was happy to repeat my name (just the three letter version). She had a question on her mind: "Can we get a better president?"

Hoo boy. Her mom's eyes went a little wide in surprise, as she said, sort of confidentially to me, "we don't really talk about..." But there's something in the air, even 2 years and a primary away from the conventional problem solving opportunity, even at early grade school.

I had to say "not this time, but we're working on it."

6.May.2026

Can you believe this guy?

Asking rhetorically, because of course you can't. That session with the school kids in the Oval Office, Oh. My. God. Late Night Cringes at Trump's Chatter in Front of Children, and Early Morning does, too. You can't watch any of that without asking yourself, what is wrong with him?

It's no secret. We'd be talking about car keys if it weren't for the fact that the only thing he ever drives is a golf cart. So, nuclear codes, can we talk about those, instead? How Does Dementia Affect Executive Function? First of all,

"Executive functions are active cognitive processes that enable individuals to respond appropriately to environmental stimuli. In dementia, executive functions, including memory, emotion, and behavior, are particularly affected. These functions, including planning, organizing, and completing tasks, can be challenging for those with dementia."

In case a three sentence paragraph is too much reading, there's also a handy infographic from Pixabay.com, showing the top 5 indicators, which yes, we're hitting on all five cylinders now.

Three and a half weeks ago, Jonathan Rauch and Peter Wehner had a NYT guest essay with a hell of a declarative statement for the headline: The Trump Administration Is in a Psychotic State.

"It has been clear for a long time that President Trump is a person with a disorganized mind and a disordered personality. What the past few months and especially the past few weeks have brought into focus is how his pathologies have cascaded downward and outward through his administration. They have become institutionalized. The reason the administration so often does not act coherently is that it cannot. The world faces something new and baffling and frightening in Mr. Trump’s second term: a psychotic state."

They tap danced around diagnosing anyone in particular, but this judgment from the facts on the ground, over the sea, and in the air:

"[T]he administration as a whole lacks a consistent attachment to reality and the ability to organize its thinking coherently. Mr. Trump’s grandiosity, impulsivity, inconsistency and outright breaks with reality have become state policy."

Ah, for example? For example:

"The Trump administration chose to wage a war without deciding on its aims, mapping out a strategy, planning for contingencies or even being able to explain itself."

With no guard rails. No emergency meeting of the cabinet to discuss invoking the 25th amendment. A bobble-headed Speaker of the House who can not consider a third impeachment for an ever-growing list of high crimes and misdemeanors, and a quisling caucus in the senate who would just acquit him again.

As bad as the last decade has been, the hardest and most painful (and most expensive) lessons about psychosis and psychopathy are still ahead of us.

May the Fourth, 2026

Monuments to psychopathy

One of the things I like about Heather Cox Richardson's Letters from an American, is her succinct description without illustration (as much as I do like photos, see here). She provides links, and all can be found now, but in her latest, May 3 edition, for example, the list of thug's Friday night fussilade of imagery from 11:03 to 11:45pm is somehow more satisfying (and less soiling) left to one's visual imagination. And there's this, which I had not heard:

"The president appeared to have been triggered by graffiti that appeared in the reflecting pool Friday morning: “86 47” spray-painted across it in a message that was about 15 feet by 30 feet."

Bravo to that person or team, who must certainly be the FBI's new Enemy #1? Never mind the ubiquity of 86 47 and 86 46 merch.

"[T]he host of NBC’s Meet the Press, Kristen Welker, ask[ed] Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche if other people who shared that meme would also face charges. He said no and suggested that there was other evidence in Comey’s case, although he did not explain what that was and the indictment only talks about the seashell post."

It seems thug's "popularity has sunk to new lows," and so his desperation to remake Washington DC into "a monument to himself" is ramping up, up, and away. If you must see, the pool party of thug, three of his top toadies, and an AI babe in a bikini is on the Daily Beast, with thug's head atop the 30-something body he never had. And sitting in an inflatable chair, because standing is hard for him, even with AI.

Among the most vile of his plans (it's not a competition, people!) is to first shut down the heavily used, low-cost East Potomac Golf Links, to turn it into "a championship golf course," with a thuggish National Garden of American Heroes nearby. The "top 250," you know. So subtle.

"The plans have not yet been made public, nor have they been approved by Congress or gone through the federal review process. The new golf course would erase the area’s public bike paths and open recreational space."

I've been to DC three times in my life, and have reveled in the bike paths, recreational space, national monuments, and museums every time. Thug is trying to soil it all in service to his insatiable need to honor himself. Someday soon, we will be honored to remodel all his tacky damage, and restore our democratic republic to better than the "before."

May Day, 2026

Old man shouts at cloud

Have you checked your spam bucket lately? If it's anything like mine, there's a wave of CLOUD STORAGE trying to reach you about your account being full, or suspended, or whatever, and wouldn't you like 100 GB of free storage, or maybe some rain?

In 2026, cloud shouts at old man (and woman). Also, there's the insanity of our kakistocratic kleptocracy and the kabal of racists, including the six blackest robes in the land, who all showed up (with spousal units) for the state dinner with King Charles III and Queen Camilla, because of course they did. 'Twas "the night before they heard an important case about Mr. Trump’s immigration policies," as Adam Liptak pointed out on the NYT.

"It was not clear whether the missing justices had been invited. But the picture created by the partisan split, with every Republican appointee in attendance and every Democratic one missing, seemed at odds with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.’s oft-stated message that the court he leads avoids even the appearance of political splits.

“We do not sit on opposite sides of an aisle,” Chief Justice Roberts said in 2018, during the first Trump administration. “We do not caucus in separate rooms. We do not serve one party or one interest. We serve one nation. And I want to assure all of you that we will continue to do that to the best of our abilities, whether times are calm or contentious.”

You don't say. Oh, the golden dinner with the king and queen was also just after those six justices struck down Louisiana's congressional districts, "saying that a second majority-minority district constituted a racial gerrymander," and prompting the state's governor to "pause" the state's May primary already underway while they get an "emergency" partisan gerrymander that will also serve as a wink, wink, nudge, nudge racial one into place. Along with other southern states who used to have to answer to the Voting Rights Act, but no longer do, thanks to the Roberts court and its project of more than a decade, starting with the 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision.

When this court agreed to rehear Louisiana v. Callais last fall, Fair Fight Action predicted it could lead to the loss of 19 or more Democratic House seats. Mother Jones:

"The hypocrisy of the Roberts Court is simply astounding. The GOP-appointed wing of the court is clearly inventing one set of rules to approve maps that favor white voters and Republicans while using another set of rules to block maps that benefit racial minorities and Democrats."

The updated forecast is for an "Era of Endless Redistricting Wars." "The expected flood of new congressional maps is likely to produce fewer competitive districts, fewer ways for voters to hold elected officials accountable and more polarized politics." Joyce Vance: What the Court Did in Callais—And Why It Matters.

"Gerrymandering is an ugly race to the bottom, but Democrats will have to find an effective way to push back because you cannot save a democracy that has already been lost and Callais is a perilous step in that direction. Take the threat seriously, and remember that because gerrymandering only impacts district-wide, not state-wide races, your civic engagement at the state and local levels is more important than ever. Turnout will be the ballgame."

Which is to say, if your vote weren't so vitally important, they would not be working so goddamned hard to take it away.

raveling

Tom von Alten