unraveling

28.Sept.2026

Stab from the past

In yet another wan attempt at tidying the juggernaut of my Inbox, I did trim a stack of 50 (or was it 100) messages, searching on one particular (political) name before slipping into the rabbit hole of history in the making. In this case, it was Heather Cox Richardson's September 17, 2023 Letter from an American, reaching back further to her two days' earlier 4th blogiversary. So, seven years and two weeks-ish. It started as "a roundup of what I thought was going on in the government" posted to Facebook.

"I wrote a review of Trump’s mental decline amidst his faltering presidency, stonewalling of investigations of potential criminal activity by him or his associates, packing of the courts, and attempting to use the power of the government to help his 2020 reelection. And I added: “None of this would fly in America if the Senate, controlled by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, were not aiding and abetting him.”

“This is the story of a dictator on the rise,” I wrote, “taking control of formerly independent branches of government, and using the power of his office to amass power.”

Mid-September 2019 was when wet-behind-the-ears and acting director of nation intelligence Joseph Maguire was found to be sitting on a whistleblower complaint, after the intelligence community's inspector general (remember those?!) "determined the complaint was credible and urgent," and Congress needed to see it. Maguire refused. Something that no DNI had ever done.

The previous DNI, former Senator Dan Coats (R-IN) who had "earned Trump's wrath in 2018" by confirming that the US "intelligence community had concluded that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election."

"Trump fired Coats just three days after the phone call that had sparked the whistleblower complaint: the phone call in which Trump had asked Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky to “do us a favor” before the administration would release the money Congress had appropriated to help Ukraine fight the ongoing Russian presence after its 2014 invasion....

"Within months the fight over the whistleblower complaint had become an impeachment. The evidence against the president was so overwhelming that Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) said: “Out of one hundred senators, you have zero who believe you that there was no quid pro quo. None. There’s not a single one.”

And yet. The Senate Republicans stonewalled accountability then, and to this very day. America's dictator has risen, taken control of formerly independent branches of government, and with the help of the feckless Supreme Court has amassed power.

And is busy razing (the East Wing of the White House) and lowering (the reflecting pool) monuments to himself. His demented vision has expanded to include a trumphal (I assume will be his preferred spelling) arch, adding "and Military Observation Deck" to supposedly squelch congressional objections, with drones, snipers, and ammo storage to make sure opponents keep quiet.

25.Sept.2026

Torque me

It's a beautiful day where we live, so far, why spoil it with political opinions? Let's talk about cars for a moment. You know, those often indispensible bundles of technology that (checks notes) get us from place to place, traffic and road work permitting. And that take $5 a gallon or more if you're still in the gas-powered realm. If you're driving diesel, I think there's something something about your first-born.

The occasion for my reflection is an utterly gratuitous emailed advertisement to "Take Another Look at Highlander" from Toyota. (I was just out front, and did have another look at my car still in the driveway, thanks.) BIG, BOLD headline inside, 60 pt font, give or take, is THE NEXT STEP. First impression from the picture, it looks about the same, 4 years on. Next hed:

Drive with purpose. Arrive in style.

As if purpose were something beyond A to B? The photo is of a mountain lake, and imagine-me is towing a motorboat? Ick. Proven technology, it says (I would hope so, by now), "a confident drive" that "puts you and your crew in position to elevate your adventures." Almost broke my wink, wink, nudge nudger with all that. Buzzwords and ® and ™ and footnotes, a financing offer, a big red button, but what grabbed my eye was the 2.4-liter (hmm 2.4 dash liter?) turbocharged (oh BABY) engine producing 310 lb.-ft. of TORQUE. Just imagine what you could do with 310 lb-ft of torque!

More offerings follow, but they're not so torquey. The RAV4 is "Capability with character," hmm, and the Prius, "A quantum leap," touting its 0-60 in seven seconds (footnote 5). Wow! (They said "Wow!" not me. But I'm not so old to have forgotten the excitement of off-the-line torque 0 to whatever in just seconds.)

The subtext, of course, is AREN'T YOU READY FOR A NEW CAR BY NOW? They know a tiny bit about my history, but not really that much. They've got cars to sell, you know? They don't know how satisfied I was with that 1995 Ford Windstar for 25 years until my mechanic said "don't bring this back any more" and I had to go look for a replacement in the depth of the pandemic and rather ghastly health just then.

They don't know about the driving excitement (which was mostly motorcycle riding excitement) that ignited my teenage years, but they still hope one of their motor vehicles could strike my fancy, and open my wallet. Not today, though. Maybe not ever again! I'm still happy to apply my own torque when I can.

22.Sept.2026

Incredible

We thought we were really special. The exceptional nation. The essential nation. All other nations revolved around us. We saved Europe in WW II. And we won the Cold War. Sort of. After Korea, and the Bay of Pigs, and Viet Nam, and Grenada, Panama, and the "Gulf" Wars. (So many Gulfs of America.) This is not a complete list. There are complete lists, e.g. for the 20th century, and for the 21st century (with seven or eight "ongoing").

Mistakes were made. Intentions were good, sometimes. War is hell, always. There is an old man, who is now doddering and demented, who does not know more than the generals, and who has never know the hell of war personally because he always had someone else fight for him. He said that "dating" in the 1980s was his "personal Vietnam," so there's that.

It's no longer easy to determine who "the most powerful man in the world" is, but it used to be said about the president of the United States. The president still has remarkable powers of destruction, but the remnants of Mutually Assured Destruction ("MAD") are still kicking around. Remember the Doomsday Clock? It's still ticking, with not quite a minute and a half to midnight. 85 seconds, as of January, according to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, "the closest the Clock has ever been to midnight in its history." (It's not just nuclear weapons, now.) Under the video there, "recent highlights" [sic] include thug "just started a dangerous, pointless war against Iran."

In 1947, when the "clock" idea started, it was 7 minutes to midnight. After the Cuban Missile Crisis was resolved it was set back to 12 minutes. In 1991, after the Cold War supposedly ended, it was pushed back to 17 minutes from midnight. In 2020, they started going by seconds, rather than minutes.

Now that our "president" is weighing whether or not to "annihilate" a country, and a civilization with 90 million people, give or take, something that, insanely, he has the power to do, if he feels like it, the clock may need another update. WW II deaths totaled "only" 60-75 million, including those who died from deprivation, famine and disease.

Like my life flashing before my eyes between the flash and the shock wave blowing the building to bits, I thought about all that when reading Mary Geddry's account of our thug's latest, more embarrassing than ever before, appearance at the United Nations meeting in New York.

"Donald Trump returned to the United Nations yesterday to report, once again, that virtually everything is historic, unprecedented, incredible, record-breaking, never-before-seen and quite possibly the greatest thing ever witnessed by mammals with opposable thumbs.

“The numbers are absolutely incredible.”

“No one thought that was possible.”

“More than ever before.”

“The biggest deal ever made.”

Absolutely incredible.

"Associated Press describes the U.S.-Iran conflict as nearing its seventh month. Most of the Iranian delegation walked out during Trump’s remarks as he recounted the damage inflicted on their country.

One year ago: "I ended the Israel-Iran war."

Yesterday: "I believe we will make a deal."

"Reality keeps forcing amendments to the press release."

19.Sept.2026

Picture yourself in a car at the station

Timothy Snyder's part 1 of 2, A Meditation on Gas Stations. I remember the halcyon days of fill 'er up, check the oil and clean the windshield for you. I don't have any experience to match the war in Ukraine, "Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine [which] has been going on for longer than the First World War, and many of the soldiers are in trenches or tunnels."

"It has been going on for longer than the Second World War, at least as the Russians count it, ignoring the two years when the USSR was allied with Nazi Germany. The Russian aggressor uses the fascist language of that war, in which Ukraine was also the major prize for both sides. Drawing support from real and aspiring dictators around the globe, Russia’s invasion resembles a Third World War. It’s just that the Ukrainians are fighting it all alone."

Back in the day, thug thought there was something in it for him, but that didn't work out so great for him. And led to the full-scale escalation four and a half years ago.

"This has become a total war on the Ukrainian people. Every element of such a war is criminal. Every single strike on every single gas station, and all the rest. The kidnapping of children and the murder of activists in occupied zones. The torture of prisoners of war. The invasion itself."

Did you see that thug "called on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to halt strikes on Russian oil refineries and other infrastructure used to produce and distribute diesel, saying the attacks are causing a global shortage"?

I imagine Zelenskyy would like to know what have you done for me lately? And also, thanks for the intel, and letting us know it's working.

Please clap

Heather Cox Richardson's latest Letter from an American chronicles the rapid decline of the fortunes of the thug-led Republican party. Take your pick: diesel hitting $6.44/gal, JP Morgan announcing they're flying blind, Saudi Arabia's oilflow to European refiners drying up, and thug apoplectic about "fake media," reporting inconvenient facts. So many inconveniences. Including "three scoops" about an AI-misled naval intercept that "almost started a war," F-35 fighter jets gone missing, and more Iran war dead, unreported by the Department of Defense.

Thug-PAC is scrambling to push cash into "+8, +9, +10, +12 districts" and writing off the +3 +4 +5 as Republicans are starting to think they might have backed the wrong elephant. Stuff about cleaning stables, that's going to be a big dig. But my headline is from the "All-In Podcast" this week, with Veep Jay Dee asking voters to "Give us another chance." SRSLY?

“Or give us another couple of years to continue to work on the amazing things that we’ve been doing for the past two years.”

Holy elephant turd-polishing, Batman, that's a lot more pathetic than Jeb Bush's 2016 campign plea for applause. There's no question that some "amazing things have been done." What, are they going to tear down another wing of the White House? Find another global shipping chokepoint to get choked? Bring back polio? There's a counter-offer out there:

"Iran’s news agency reported today that a political advisor to Iran’s Supreme Leader said Iran would not reopen the Strait of Hormuz until President Donald Trump and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu are removed from power."

HCR has a link to a related substack in her references, and it's a dark look at the extreme right's adventure in greater extremity. The Midwestern Führerbunker Driving the Right Off the Cliff by Erick-Woods Erickson. BSU's (and the Claremont Institute's) professional misogynist, Scott Yenor makes an appearance.

17.Sept.2026

Time for some new faces in Idaho politics

Just regular people, tired of our state government focusing on micromanaging flags, bathrooms, "while real problems are getting ignored." So, they decided to run for office. Against the Senate and House majority leaders, Lori Den Hartog and Jason Monks, as it turns out. Why not go right to the source of the problem?

"Karlie said a lot of people might conclude that a lesbian couple running in Idaho is going to be on the extreme left. They are both Democrats, she said, but they believe in common sense, local solutions and compassion.

"As a lifelong Idahoan, she grew up with a “live and let live” Idaho mentality. People took care of their neighbors, looked out for each other, did their best and respected each other.

“We are not looking to change that at all,” Karlie said. “I’m looking to get back to that.”

I'm old enough to remember when politics in Idaho were more 50-50, and common sense, local solutions and compassion often ruled the day. Before extremism became the major selling point for one of our parties. How's that working out for us?

Thanks to Betty Richardson and Louise Seeley, and Idaho Women Forward for the encouragement, and to Idaho Education News for the coverage.

The Easleys may not have the big bucks on their side, but they've got TikTok. Check 'em out. Or at EasleyForIdaho.com.

16.Sept.2026

Perversion of justice

The rot starts at the top, and hoo boy, but it's also trickling down all the way to the bottom. The Boise School District will pay $34,000 to a former student who twice encountered a transgender classmate in the girls’ bathroom last year. The specifics of these "encounters" and the terms of the settlement “are confidential and will not be disclosed or publicized,” the public administrator for the schools tells us, but $10,000 for the supposedly aggrieved Jane Doe, and $24,000 for the lawyers apparently seemed a better deal than going to trial next year.

Doe was represented by The Idaho Family Policy Center, "a Christian, conservative lobbying group with a legal team," led by the statehouse regular and carpet-bagging Blaine Conzatti, who has pushed various culture war bills through our amateur legislature. This new feather isn't in his bio yet, but the IFPC's presser announces their victory lap. They were "honored" to "secure" the settlement.

John Doe—Jane's father—claimed she endured "a breach of her privacy." The latest news tidily depersonalizes the claimed classmate, but Idaho Ed News covered the incident in great detail two months ago. You have to wade through a lot to find out that a Boise HS student group, the Sexuality and Gender Alliance intervened in the legal process, but dropped its lawsuit in May, "in May, after Davis [the transgender student in the case at hand] graduated from Boise High and after the other transgender plaintiff had died by suicide."

We don't have any words from the historical Jesus about "Christian," conservative lobbying groups with legal teams persecuting restroom users, but it's easier to imagine IFPC being driven out of the temple then palling up with their "Savior."

15.Sept.2026

Utah womenfolk get uppity

It's right there in the group name: Mormon Women for Ethical Government. All the powers that be in Utah are like, slow down girl! But in the NYT's reporting from SLC and Orem, get a load of this mission statement:

Emma Petty Addams, the co-executive director of Mormon Women for Ethical Government, quoted church doctrine on the proper exercise of power to explain her group’s mission:

“We have learned by sad experience that it is the nature and disposition of almost all men, as soon as they get a little authority, as they suppose, they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion.”

And who knew, not even we next-door neighbors, that "the state’s Supreme Court, with its first female majority, consistently and unanimously sided with the women." I also did not pay close enough attention to see that the Republican (and Mormon)-dominated other branches quashed that majority by expanding the court (hmm, good idea), and finding thin cover to fire one of the women, and then standing up a new, "constitutional court" to hear any complaints about their malfeasance. The supermajority are doing their damndest to prove the unrighteousness of their dominion.

Crybaby

Give thug credit for bottomless certainty that whatever he says is the way it should be, or else, you know, death, destruction, and ignominy. It's a funny (not ha ha) attitude for someone who is so steadily wrong, crooked, lacking in self-awareness, dishonest, and blundering.

There were warning signs. He bankrupted a casino, remember? Tried to battle a hurricane with a Sharpie®. And was such good friends with that Epstein fella. Whatever happened to Jeffrey, anyway?

Now that our Supremes have finally found 14 back legs to stand on and delivered an especially fat "no" to the big guy who wanted to go next level on rigging an election, he's having a sad. A "blistering" slam upon the court over their mail ballot ruling. Judging by the short shrift from Tyler Pager there, it's a succinct one, too.

“These are not the people I interviewed to serve on the United States Supreme Court,” he wrote on social media, referring to Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Brett M. Kavanaugh and Neil M. Gorsuch, for rendering a “horrible, highly political” opinion against his malfeasance. The horror is anyone saying no to him, he thinks.

What we think is the horror is that so many sycophants and nearly the whole of what's left of the Republican Party have been so unable to say no, no, a thousand times no to him when they should have. Or "yes" to convict him those two times he was impeached, and so richly deserved being barred from any office of trust for the rest of his life.

It's not all bad thug news, though. He nodded to Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Clarence Thomas for dissenting in the case, calling them “legends both,” because they sucked up to him. We have too many such "legends."

In other news hinting at a possible return to sanity, Democrats Gain Edge as Trump Drags Down G.O.P., New Poll Finds. For health care, immigration, the deficit, the economy, the cost of living, foreign wars, the Israeli-Palestian conflict, the poll says Democrats would be trusted to do a better job by 7 to 24 points. The only tie was "Artificial intelligence," with 18% don't know and D(40) and R(42) within the margin of error.

Also, federal district Judge Christopher R. Cooper said Thug's Name Must Stay Off the Kennedy Center, so that's nice. Too bad we couldn't all be at the board meeting when Rep. Joyce Beatty called him "ignorant" and (rightly enough) blamed him for the center's financial problems.

The last refuge of our scoundrel and his lawyers seems to be to either declare bankruptcy (ever and anon), or to tear it all down. We're at the two-year-old smashing blocks state of play. This, for the last word:

"At a court hearing ahead of the judge’s order on Tuesday, William S. Jankowski, a Justice Department lawyer, said it was possible the center could end up approaching bankruptcy if it continued to operate with reduced revenue.

"Judge Cooper asked if it was possible for a charitable trust to declare bankruptcy; the Justice Department lawyers did not have an answer."

10.Sept.2026

So many tells

The wrapping up of the "sad, unnecessary spectacle that achieves nothing" (as Jonah Goldberg's LA Times headline writer dekked the op-ed) featured the weirdest, most corrupt man to ever in habit the White House attempting to lead the crowd in a pledge, to vote.

Easy-peasy, right? There's a simple script to follow. But our thug is not a man to follow a simple script. And as he strutted off it and did his best to work the crowd into some kind of frenzy, he revealed himself.

"I'm gonna try to cheat like hell like they do." "There's never been bigger cheaters, they don't care."

That wasn't on the script, you know. Just the riff. About cheating, something he knows a lot about. After the first whack went wacky, he gave it another go.

"Are you ready?"

For dementia? To pledge fealty to a madman? "I don't want to waste the words" ha ha. The crowd cut him off mercifully at one point with a chant of "VOTE VOTE VOTE"

The big line that's supposed to unite them (if not us) is to Defeat the Communists. Demolish the extremists. Just beat the crap out of my straw man, ok?

"Honestly, there's something wrong with them."

9.Sept.2026

Mystery meat

The reign of error under thug 2.0 promised us cheap gas, cheaper groceries, and hoo boy, how's that working out for all y'all? After the mitigation attempt of the "Freedom Fuels Network" appears to be straight-up theft, the next thing on the agenda is near and dear to thug's own clogged arteries: hamburger. How's that working out? Sounds like another late-stage capitalism bad billionaire joke: A Brazilian Meat Billionaire Walked Into Trump’s Oval Office. What Happened Next Should Terrify Us All…

"In Monday’s New York Times, Eric Schlosser — the guy who freaked out a nation with his book Fast Food Nation a quarter century ago — published an article that kicks off with a simple observation: if you buy a T-shirt at the Gap, federal law requires a label that tells you where it was made and what it’s made of.

"The same is true for automobiles, appliances, television sets, every fresh or frozen fruit and vegetable sold at the supermarket," Schlosser continues. But somehow beef and pork are excepted?! Why Did Trump Order Up 660 Million Pounds of Mystery Meat? If Melon Usk had done this, I suppose he would have made it 666 million pounds to "enhance" the joke.

"The cuts of meat covered by Mr. Trump’s proclamation aren’t fresh sirloins, rib-eyes and filets. They’re lean beef trimmings that will be added to fattier American cuts to make ground beef. They’re small chunks of frozen meat that could have been kept in cold storage overseas for years. They are the quintessence of generic industrial meat, imported here to be subsequently processed in massive grinders that combine pieces of tens of thousands of cattle from multiple countries, mainly into fast food hamburgers."

So that's pretty unsavory. Tom Hartmann's piece includes a longer view of food (un)safety, from The Jungle through to the 2008 Congress adding mandatory country-of-origin labels for meat, to the 2010 legalization of bribery by "five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court" (aka Citizens United), to "Congress quietly repeal[ing] the labels for beef and pork by tucking that repeal into a 2,000-page omnibus spending bill" in December 2015.

"And then there’s Bob Kennedy, the onetime heroin addicted lawyer with no medical or scientific training whatsoever who promised to Make America Healthy Again. In April of last year he announced 10,000 layoffs across federal health agencies, including 3,500 at the FDA.

"The Associated Press reported that the fired staff included both the lab scientists who test food samples for contamination and the communications specialists whose job is to alert us, the public, to food safety recalls....

"Welcome to the result of 45 years of Republican deregulation, based on claims that “government is the problem” and “the market knows best.”

4.Sept.2026

Whatcha gonna do?

A damn chilling episode of Hope for America by Heather Delaney Reese: Today I became part of the story. It was posted to Facebook around 2am, so, yesterday, at 8 in the morning:

"I became part of the story. Just after 8:00 this morning, while I was still in my pajamas and working on my computer, I heard a crashing sound and men screaming right outside my bedroom window. I struggled to understand exactly what they were saying, making out only that they were demanding that someone “come out immediately,” followed by threats about what would happen if they didn’t. Before I could even process what they were saying, my daughter came running into my room absolutely terrified, telling me there were men with guns surrounding our house...

"There were masked men everywhere. Unmarked vehicles surrounded our house and spilled into the streets, and armed men carrying what appeared to be tactical rifles were moving around outside. There was even a massive armored vehicle that looked like something you would expect to see with a SWAT team during a violent conflict."

Unlike a bad episode of Fox's COPS (now in its 37th season, FFS, along with The Simpsons), the "masked men everywhere" were not police out in San Diego county. They were domestic terrorists from the federal government, definitely not "here to help"; Stephen Miller's sadistic goons, with a quota. Fortunately for Delaney Reese, they weren't after her. This time. She was just a witness to terror. (They might have gone after her, and her family... maybe because of whoever previously lived at her address, or because they had the wrong house.)

"[W]e have seen before what happens when governments normalize masked men and unmarked vehicles moving through neighborhoods, taking people away while everyone else is left wondering who they were, where they went, and whether those cars might come back tomorrow. And the men carrying it out this time are not fundamentally different from the men who have carried it out before. They enjoy the fear their power creates without understanding that the power was never really theirs. They are being used by rich and powerful men who will remain safely removed from the cruelty they have ordered others to carry out. History is filled with men like this. Men who mistook proximity to power for power itself, who believed the uniform or the weapon made them important, and who learned far too late that authoritarian regimes have always considered men like them expendable...."

It's a hell of a read.

3.Sept.2026

Bizarro world

Feels like the blog is bordering on moribund here, but I'm still ticking, as we face the end of the republic. I'm not taking it (too) personally, even though it grieves me, deeply. If our "president" is not a Russian asset, how could we tell? Why doesn't he have a negative word for Vladimir Putin when the Russian president has been supporting Iran in the war thug started?

With all the criminals on the loose (and in leadership), unleashing war, murdering people in boats, abducting and killing anyone who looks like an "immigrant," and closer to home, offering to "host" nuclear waste for a federal government run amok, it's a bit outrageous to convict a peaceful protester (who, ok, was too frightening for our governor to face directly). But here we are. I'm proud to have the Rev. Sara LaWall as my minister at the Boise Unitarian Universalist Fellowship. September 1 news:

Jury finds Idaho faith leader guilty of trespassing in protest of anti-trans bills. "Rev. Sara LaWall said her possible prison sentence would be less than judges can hand out for violations of state’s criminal transgender bathroom ban."

raveling

Tom von Alten