2.Oct.2026

Actually, the dirt bag is in the Oval Office

Heather Cox Richardson's three days ago-daily does a better job of telling the story than I'm going to, and includes a link to the two page opening statement of Jack Smith, former Special Counsel of the US Department of Justice, before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary on Sept. 29.

All of the headline news should have been focused on that statement rather than the unbridled clown-show of Eric Schmitt (R-MO)'s truly lame attempt to catch Smith in a lie that was festering in Schmitt's brain. (Picture the senator stepping on an upturned rake.) The buffoons were not limited to the Senate (where they enjoy legal protection to say any stupid thing they like), but extended to the undead Charlie Kirk Show, "where host Andrew Kolvet cheered Schmitt’s attack on Smith. “Jack Smith is a total dirtbag and you caught him out on this NBA game… in Atlanta,” Kolvet said. “It was a great moment. Good for you on that.”

Ha ha. Not quite. It was not a "great" moment. "This NBA game" had no actual connection to Fulton County (Georgia) D.A. Fani Willis or her colleague Nathan Wade, nor the prosecution of Trump for his felonious attempt to change the result of the 2020 election in Georgia. Not that it matters, but Smith was at a college basketball game in Maryland. What was the subject of the hearing supposed to be?

"The investigation and prosecution of (then former) President Trump for his alleged unlawful retention of classified documents and obstruction of justice, and role in attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election and interfere with the lawful transfer of power,"

first of all. And, with my emphasis added:

"The charges against President Trump were the result of the evidence. Grand juries in two separate districts reached this conclusion based on his actions, as alleged in the indictments they returned. Rather than accept his defeat in the 2020 presidential election, President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results and prevent the lawful transfer of power. The evidence showed that President Trump attempted to induce state officials to ignore true vote counts; to manufacture fraudulent slates of presidential electors in seven states that he had lost; to force his own Vice President to act in contravention of his oath and to instead advance President Trump’s personal interests; and, on January 6, 2021, to direct an angry mob to the United States Capitol to obstruct the congressional certification of the presidential election and then exploit the rioters’ violence to further delay it. Over 140 heroic law enforcement officers were assaulted that day, a fact we should never forget."

If you have the stomach for it, you can watch the whole bloody 4½ hours of hearing. I did not, but I did note that the fully cuckolded Ted Cruz did some shouting and browbeating and insulting of Jack Smith. And Lindsey Graham's sister, playing lawyer, weakly, and having to cut off Smith's answers before he destroyed her line of argument. Oh, and Adam Schiff had a nice go at discussing all the things that have not outraged his Republican colleagues. (It's a long list.) Schiff did get to mentioning that all of the witnesses for the grand juries were Republicans.

Ok, ok, I did also watch Senators Tillis, Whitehouse (who both may good points), and Josh "first in the air" and later running through the halls Hawley perform his highest insulting dudgeon. His supposed slam dunk winner was that "we've never seen anything like it in this country before," about the prosecution. For crimes we've never seen anything like before, but he didn't get to that part. (With all due respect to Richard Nixon, he didn't come close to thug.) TWICE INDICTED THE (former) PRESIDENT is not the home run Hawley seems to think it is. He didn't really want to ask Smith anything, he just wanted to perform. (At 1.5x speed, it's a hell of a show.) Hawley did make his point that he is a dangerous, unfettered partisan, utterly lacking in integrity. But then, we saw that back in January, 2021 already.

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.

raveling

Tom von Alten