No if’s, vote accordingly. Bring oversight of the most corrupt administration ever back, in numbers too big for Elmo and his high-tech bros to manipulate. Make America Great Again By Neutering Trump! John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
I hope you’re having a great day with whatever plans you’ve got! Labor Day has always been one of my favorite holidays because it’s really about We, the People. It doesn’t involve spending a bundle just because it’s been hyped into a merchandising event. It’s about breaking bread with others and just taking a day off. It’s celebrating the people who do all the work, not gobbling up all the money. There are still many of those gobblers out there that still look for child labor, or hiring or paying people on the basis of something other than their skills. We have movements now to counteract that, and we need them more than ever.
The first set of suggested reads today has to do with Germany. It’s time to bring up one of the most used quotes ever. That would be this one from 1905 and the great mind of George Santayana. “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” There are always people who want to rewrite and blur history. Orange Caligula does this daily. It pains me to read headlines like this in The Guardian today.”The AfD’s win in Germany is a dark day for Europe. Time is running out to stop the far right. This party is among the most extreme in Europe. To protect our democracies, liberal parties must urgently change their tactics.” Cas Mudde has the report.
The far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) narrowly failed to secure an outright majority in state elections in Saxony-Anhalt. But nobody should take comfort from that. The party still won by a landslide. Decades of far-right election gains have made them seem normal to the point where only the biggest victories are deemed newsworthy. But 44% of the vote for a party that is officially classified as “extreme right” is not normal. It is a black day for European democracy, even if it occurs in a small east German state.
While Saxony-Anhalt (and Germany itself) may have dodged the worst outcome because the AfD won’t automatically fulfil its ambition of forming the first far-right state government in Germany since the Nazi era, there is no reason to assume it will be so lucky at the next election. Neither will other German states, such as Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in two weeks’ time, or other countries, such as France next year. No country is immune from the far right and, perhaps even more worryingly, no far-right party or politician is too extreme for political success (as the US has shown). We must therefore update our analyses and strategies.
Although Saxony-Anhalt, and east Germany in general, is an extreme case, it reflects similar trends in the rest of Europe. Far-right parties are going from strength to strength, with old dominant parties decimated, and party systems fragmented. Consequently, coalition formation is becoming increasingly complicated, particularly if we want to keep the far right out of power. In many countries, provinces and cities, most democratic parties are having to govern together to exclude the far right. This often leads to inefficient and unstable coalitions, in turn feeding yet more political dissatisfaction and far-right support.
Sunday’s results will only intensify an ongoing debate in Germany about the so-called Brandmauer (a firewall maintained by mainstream parties against cooperating with the AfD). Actually, Germany is one of the few EU countries to still have a far-right cordon sanitaire. Throughout Europe, from Italy to Sweden, far-right parties have been normalised and integrated into the political mainstream. In most cases, the (rightwing) parties that collaborate with the far right claim that the latter have moderated and are now “conservative” – a claim that is factually wrong, but increasingly popular with the electorates and members of these parties, and much of the media.
This will remain almost impossible to claim in Germany. The AfD is among the most extreme parties in Europe, and its most successful branches, including the one in Saxony-Anhalt, are among the AfD’s most extreme. This will not prevent some rightwing politicians from claiming that the AfD is less of a problem than the left, and there is even a fear that some parliamentarians from the conservative CDU in Saxony-Anhalt will defect to give the AfD a majority in the state. On the other side of the political spectrum, calls for an AfD ban will become even louder, and while this might be legally possible, it could create a massive popular backlash, going well beyond Saxony-Anhalt.
Both approaches share a too-limited interpretation of the problem. The idea of maintaining the Brandmauer is that the only (or main) problem is outside the system. Yet the system is falling apart as it is. Yes, the AfD (and the far right in general) is a fundamental threat to liberal democracy, but so is the fact that a sizeable and growing part of the population no longer feels represented by its politicians. While many still come out to vote for democracy, they increasingly vote against a party rather than for one.
As usual, both my degrees and fascination with History and Economics lead my interests. This next one is from Dr. Paul Krugman’s SubStack. “Neo-Nazis and the Impotence of Trumponomics. Crude economics doesn’t explain what just happened.” Of course, Elon Musk plays a role in this. I’m horrified.
Neo-Nazis — no point in euphemisms — just won big in the rough equivalent of a state-level election in Germany. America’s leading neo-Nazi — again, no point in euphemisms — congratulated the AfD (in German) on the result, and in return received “thanks for your support” from the AfD’s lead candidate.
In the days and weeks ahead there will be many analyses of the results and its implications from people who, unlike me, know something about German politics. For now, let me do something more parochial, and write about what the Sachsen-Anhalt election might teach us about U.S. political economy.
So, about America: Make America Great Again meant different things to different people — racism, of course, being a key component. But in Donald Trump’s mind it also clearly meant trying to bring back “manly” jobs. He would do this by imposing tariffs to eliminate trade deficits, which, in his garbled version of economics, would end huge U.S. “giveaways” to surplus nations. And this would, in turn, lead to a huge revival of U.S. manufacturing employment.
Why is Germany relevant to this story? Because in terms of both trade balances and manufacturing Germany is, in effect, the anti-America. Where we do indeed run large trade deficits, Germany runs huge surpluses. And while Germany, like every other advanced economy, has seen the manufacturing share of employment decline over time, it remains a more industrial nation than the U.S. has been since the 1980s.
Indeed, relative to the size of its economy, Germany runs trade surpluses and retains large-scale manufacturing employment to an extent that lies far beyond the wildest dreams of Trumponomics.
And none of this appears to make a bit of difference to the resentment that underlies right-wing extremism on both sides of the Atlantic.
Take a moment to let that sink in. We know the prior stated grievances of Trump and is ilk have never been the real agenda. However, now, the agenda is flying it’s flag full staff. Just look at the no-good that Pete Hegseth and his Department of War (sic) has been up to. The agenda is could not be more evident in every action. Racist, Sexist, Full on Right-wing Christianity supporting Israel so their rapture fantasy can be fulfilled and ruthless idiotic endless wars. These roads lead back to Elon Musk who has the where withal to change the world, and rewrite history with all his kindred grievance-filled white man.
This is from The Guardian, again and not surprisingly. “Far-right AfD win in Germany is ‘grave moment’ for Europe, politicians warn. Mainstream politicians express alarm while lead candidate in Saxony-Anhalt welcomes congratulations from Elon Musk.”
Spain’s socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, told a party gathering in Madrid on Monday that the result showed that “the extremist threat, largely thanks to the surrender of the traditional right, is gaining ground in Europe and in the world”.
France’s finance minister, Roland Lescure, said it “clearly sends out a very, very worrying signal … This shows that we face a major challenge in the face of a populist wave which is spreading around the world today and which we must resist.”
Lescure’s comments echoed similar remarks on Sunday evening by France’s European affairs minister, Benjamin Haddad, who posted on social media: “To see the far right prevail in the German regional election marks a very grave moment for Europe.”
Haddad added: “We must listen with humility to the anger, fears and worries and duly respond to these concerns. But nationalism and xenophobia will never be the answer. We cannot forget our history.”
Poland’s foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski, said on Monday the AfD’s win was “a very worrying sign”. Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, said on Sunday night in Poland: “Only idiots or traitors can rejoice at the triumph of the AfD in Germany.”
Italy’s foreign minister, Antonio Tajani, described the election result as “terrible news … because it concerns a political force that is antithetical to liberal and western values”.
The reaction was not limited to Europe. Elon Musk congratulated the far-right party on its election victory with a “Well done!” on his social media platform X, prompting Ulrich Siegmund, the AfD’s lead candidate in Saxony-Anhalt, to thank the nativist US tech billionaire for his support.
We all know that the last thing Elon Musk would be off doing today is helping his adopted celebrate Labor Day. This is from The Economist with a shared link. “Elon Musk’s praise for the far right infuriates most of Germany. A controversial op-ed may have set the terms of the election campaign.” This was what was going on in January of 2025. We should’ve seen it coming.
Alice Weidel could hardly have hoped for better publicity. With federal elections due on February 23rd, Ms Weidel is running for chancellor as co-head of the hard-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. In an op-ed on December 29th in the Sunday edition of Welt, a conservative paper, Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and a confidant of Donald Trump, called the AfD “the last spark of hope” for Germany. The country, he claimed, is “teetering on the brink of economic and cultural collapse”. He had a right to speak out about German politics, he said, because he has invested heaps of money in the country. (A multibillion-dollar plant in Brandenburg producing cars and batteries for Tesla, his electric carmaker, opened in 2022.)
The AfD is polling at 19%, putting it second behind the centre-right alliance of the Christian Democratic Union and Bavaria’s Christian Social Union, at about 30%. It is not the first hard-right European party to attract Mr Musk’s support: earlier in 2024 he praised Giorgia Meloni, the Italian prime minister. Mr Musk said she was “even more beautiful on the inside than she is on the outside”. She in turn called him a “precious genius”. He is said to be considering a donation to Britain’s anti-immigrant Reform UK party.
Mr Musk’s love-note to the AfD may have been counterproductive. It certainly incensed Germany’s leaders, already anxious about Mr Trump’s second term in office. “I can’t remember a comparable case of interference in the election campaign of a friendly country in the history of the Western democracies,” said Friedrich Merz, the CDU leader and chancellor candidate, on December 29th. Olaf Scholz, the current chancellor and candidate for the Social Democrats, noted in his New Year’s Eve speech that Germany’s fate is decided by its citizens, not “by the owners of social media”. Mr Musk owns X, a social-media platform. His recent posts there have been childishly offensive: one called Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the German president, an “anti-democratic tyrant”; another called the chancellor “Oaf Schitz”.
The op-ed editor of Welt, Eva Marie Kogel, quit in protest after Mr Musk’s article was published. The piece had been accompanied by a rebuttal by Jan Philipp Burgard, the paper’s incoming editor-in-chief, calling Mr Musk “fatally wrong”. The rebuttal’s headline calls the AfD “partly xenophobic and antisemitic”; Mr Burgard also blasts its anti-Americanism and its endorsement of leaving the European Union. Yet like Ms Kogel, many Germans found it wrong to have run Mr Musk’s piece at all.
Mr Musk’s op-ed was poorly argued. Yet the furore around its publishing seems unexpectedly to have shaped the early phase of the campaign. In the long run this may not prove terribly important: social-media algorithms, misinformation and Russian influence campaigns could have far more impact, as Michael Hanfeld, a German pundit, argued in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, a daily. But for the moment, the affair has had the odd effect of aligning the AfD with an American oligarch, making the Alternative for Germany seem slightly un-German.
“Sound and fury, signifying nothing” in the end. But, remember what a lot of money and propaganda can buy.
Josephine Walker’s latest at Axios truly shines life on life during Orange Caligula’s regime. “America’s expensive groceries are getting less safe to eat.”
Plenty of Americans feel like they’re forking over a fortune for groceries—only to get hit with a recall notice that forces them to throw that expensive food out.
Why it matters: While grocery prices are driven by complex trade and energy costs, the safety net meant to keep them safe to eat is fraying, creating a dual crisis of affordability and safety.
The average American household pays more than $10,000 on groceries every year, and two-thirds of Americans think they’re spending too much.
Prices have increased by more than 18% since 2022, although some foods have seen sharper or smaller increases.
What they’re saying: “It can be really, really scary out there,” Lauren Borsheim, a food policy analyst at Food & Water Watch, tells Axios.
“The Trump administration since 2025 has really just dismantled many of the fundamental protections we need to keep our food supply safe.”
“We have people that are really afraid that the U.S. is not doing a good job regulating our food supply. It’s definitely a concern out there that as people are spending more money on their food, they are also fearful that that same food is going to cause them to get sick,” Borsheim says.
By the numbers: Recalls are relatively on par with normal levels this fiscal year, according to FDA data.
So far, 5,504 products have been recalled in 2026. That’s up slightly from the 5,461 products recalled last year, but down from the 6,524 products recalled in 2024.
Yes, but: The FDA recently hit a record 19 simultaneous outbreak investigations, covering everything from infant formula to jalapeños.
Between the lines: Mega-corporations and corporate consolidation can turn single-suppliers’ errors into multi-state panics, as seen with the Cyclospora outbreak linked to iceberg lettuce.
“The U.S. food safety system has gotten hit so hard over the last year and a half,” Christopher Barrett, an economist at Cornell University, tells Axios.
Zoom out: Food-safety advocates are concerned about declining federal surveillance after the Trump administration eliminated or pushed out thousands of workers across the CDC, FDA and USDA.
Those cuts prompted federal officials to say they plan to do fewer inspections.
“When you cut corners, and you’re not seeing the inspectors show up very often, then more stuff gets out the door. You get more episodes of foodborne illness. You have expensive recalls. That just adds to companies’ costs, which gets turned into higher prices for us, and it’s a vicious cycle,” Barrett says.
So, this is not the world or country I want to leave to children and animals all over the world. I seriously hope this Labor Day motivates every one to vote like their lives depend on it. Because, I truly believe it does.
Happy Labor Day!
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“George Washington, he ain’t. “John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
How can you spend a springtime in the District without marveling over Cherry Blossom season? How do you repeatedly ignore the history and laws of the most historically significant places in the country? Orange Caligula, narcissist supreme, has done it again. This happened a few days ago. No one stopped him. He has a long history of destroying things only to replace them with something disgusting. The Jackie Kennedy Rose Garden and the Oval Office were only the beginning. He ignores we, the people and the law.
This was the CNN headline. “Par for the course: Trump forging ahead with DC golf course makeover without input from oversight agencies.” Sunlen Serfaty has the lede. The man is an international menace. No living thing is safe with him alive.
Whenever President Donald Trump gets an idea for a major project or renovation in Washington, DC, a pattern has emerged: move forward and ask questions later.
Public sagas over Trump’s proposed “triumphal arch,” the East Wing ballroom construction and the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool renovation have followed this playbook – provoking outcry and numerous legal challenges.
Now, the greenways of a manmade peninsula just south of the National Mall is next on Trump’s quest to remake the nation’s capital in his style, and they’re poised to be made over in a way that’s par for the course for this president.
The administration is on track to push ahead with turning the 300-acre East Potomac Park and its public golf course into a championship course without firstgetting approvals from two key agencies that have oversight of DC public spaces.
Neither the National Capital Planning Commission nor the Commission on Fine Arts have received any golf course plans from the Trump administration to review, officials from both told CNN. Neither agency meets in August, and ground is supposed to be broken by the start of the following month.
And based on what has been publicly reported, a project of this complexity and ambition would typically require months of regulatory reviews to examine environmental impact, questions over historical preservation, planning and design, the officials at each agency said.
On Friday, the administration provided a federal judge overseeing a legal challenge to the project with new information about the venture. It included a disclosure that the government did not finish testing soil from the demolition of the East Wing that was deposited onto the golf course before deeming it was safe.
The revelation opens the door to allowing plaintiffs to question administration officials under oath.
The DC Preservation League and two local golfers are pressing US District Judge Ana Reyes to issue an order that would bar the Trump administration from moving ahead.
Critics worry that proper approvals and legal battles have hardly handicapped the president before.
“There is really this ability to ignore regulatory guardrails, rules and protocols that have existed in the past. And we just see it again and again, and the golf course, sadly, is yet another example of that,” said Charles Birnbaum of the Cultural Landscape Foundation, which has filed lawsuits against several other Trump projects.
Those historic trees plus others could be removed to make way for Trump’s plan to turn the public East Potomac Golf Links into a “championship” venue capable of hosting major tournaments such as the PGA Championship and Ryder Cup.
No one ever stops this pathetic, destructive, personality disorder-ridden man. The warnings were clear back on July 13th. He just won’t ever do the right thing, work through the process, or listen to anyone. This article is from back on July 13. It’s from a local Ohio paper, the Ohio Capital Journal,and somehow, none of this reached the establishment national media covering our sicko president. Now, it’s too late. Acres of beautiful, mature cherry trees gifted by Japan are gone.”President Taft descendant, former Ohio Gov. Bob Taft, slams Trump plan to devastate D.C. cherry trees.” Alan Johnson reports the story.
A plan that threatens some historic Washington, D.C., cherry trees to make way for President Donald Trump’s planned golf course is “very unfortunate,” said the great-grandson of William Howard Taft who received the Japanese trees more than a century ago.
“I don’t understand the idea of a championship golf course near the nation’s capital. There are already world-class golf courses there,” said former Ohio Gov. Bob Taft, who served from 1999 to 2007. He is the great-grandson of William Howard Taft, the 27th president.
“Now is not the time to devastate cherry trees that have an important role as part of the cultural alliance between the United States and Japan … It’s very concerning.”
Taft, a Republican as is Trump, is an avid outdoorsman and golfer. He said chopping down cherry trees is an afront to his family heritage and a threat to the beauty of Washington as an international tourist attraction.
“They are a United States institution,” Taft said. “People from all over the world come to the Cherry Blossom Festival.”
Cherry trees were given by the Japanese to former President Taft and his wife, Nellie, who had ambitions to beautify the nation’s capital. She admired the flowering trees when her husband was the presidentially appointed Governor General of the Philippines.
The plan would also eliminate a riverside bike trail and other public recreation areas. Trump toured the course June 28 with government officials and golf course planners. The project could begin as early as Sept. 1.
The Ohio connection to the threatened Japanese cherry trees goes back to 1912-1913 when 3,020 saplings from the banks of the Arakawa River in a Tokyo suburb were planted along the Tidal basin.
He’s willing to destroy everything and everyone to make it all about him. At the top of his list is making sure a lot of us can’t vote. This is from today’s New York Times. I’m no longer surprised but will be forever appalled. Adam Sella and Nick Corasaniti share the lede. “More Mail Ballots Are Arriving Late This Cycle, and They’re Getting Tossed. State officials say they worry about the Postal Service’s ability to deliver votes this fall. They are urging voters to mail their ballots early or use drop boxes so their votes count.” We’re a Banana Republic.
The rate at which mail votes have been rejected for arriving late has ticked up in primaries this year and general elections last year in roughly a dozen states, prompting election officials to worry that the U.S. Postal Service is ill-equipped to deliver ballots in the fall midterms.
The states studied by The New York Times include some of the most critical battleground House and Senate seats where control of Congress will be determined, as well as key races for governor and secretary of state. The Times obtained data from California, Colorado, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Nebraska, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Utah, Virginia, Wisconsin and Washington.
In Wisconsin, which hosts an open race for governor, a competitive House election plus contests for both chambers of the state legislature, lateness accounted for about 5,000 rejected mail ballots in the spring primary this year, or 78 percent of all tossed ballots. During the last spring election, in 2023, the figure was roughly 2,300, or 47 percent of all tossed votes.
The increase is particularly striking when comparing primaries in 2024 and this year. In Michigan’s primary earlier this month, more than 10,000 mail ballots were rejected for arriving after the state’s deadline of 8 p.m. on Election Day. That is nearly double the number of ballots rejected in 2024. In Washington, the number of late-arriving mail ballots increased from about 16,000 to more than 20,000 in the same period.
The rise in rejected ballots comes at a time of immense upheaval at the Postal Service, where a budget crisis has prompted widespread complaints about delivery delays. The increase also comes as President Trump and his allies are trying to transform the 251-year-old agency into a central player in their quest to restrict mail voting and otherwise overhaul the nation’s elections.
I can feel this in my backyard, as there’s been a huge push to actually shut down my local post office. There are next to no Republicans in my ward and precinct. It’s basically a neighborhood with many black, GLBT, and single women like me. I can understand why they’d like my massive blue dot in a blue city to get as little ability to vote as possible.
Meanwhile, back in pathological liar land, The Independent had this headline that could only happen under Orange Caligula. “Trump’s fake AI video of Kharg Island ‘attack’ leaves US military scrambling to explain President’s very realistic AI slop video, posted to his official Truth Social account, forces Pentagon to step in with a denial.” Andrew Feinberg has the story.
But a U.S. official said no such attack had taken place, with Kharg Island not being among the locations targeted overnight in what has been the first exchange of fire between American and Iranian forces in weeks.
Additionally, the head of National Iranian Oil Co, Hamid Bovard, said on Monday that the president’s post was “laughable” and described conditions on Kharg Island as “calm and appropriate.”
Trump — whose White House has repeatedly stated that his Truth Social posts count as official statements from the commander in chief — also hit out at Iran again in a separate Truth Social post on Monday, writing that it was “officially a Failed Nation” and “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. The only thing they have is FAKE NEWS from the USA, a willingness to kill their protesters (now over 100,000 people dead,” he said.
Iranian media outlets did report explosions near Larak Island in the Strait of Hormuz, where an American official said Tehran had been preparing to launch mine-laying rockets as part of the country’s bid to choke off the key waterway and hamstring the American economy in response to Trump’s war, which has now passed the half-year mark without end in sight.
Here’s an FYI.
In my state and others, small and large communities are fighting to prevent Data Centers from causing irreparable damage to water supplies, the environment, animals, and communities. Here’s Trump’s response to us all via Politico. “Trump: Communities that reject data centers will end up ‘backwards and poor’. It’s the president’s latest line of support for data centers despite growing bipartisan concerns over the cost of such projects.”
President Donald Trump on Monday again championed the spread of data centers despite growing bipartisan backlash ahead of the midterms in November.
In a post to Truth Social, the president insisted data centers will lead to richer, more successful Americans and criticized those who object to them.
“The only reason that communities throughout the U.S.A. should not want Data Centers is if they want to end up being backwards and poor,” Trump said. “If we kill the Golden Goose, you will only have yourselves to blame.”
Data center expansion has become a critical component in the leadup to November’s midterms, with polls showing a majority of Americans oppose them being built in their communities. Republicans and Democrats alike have expressed concerns over data centers, with lawmakers and state leaders warning about overloaded power grids, strained water systems and the level of noise the projects create.
Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott this month instituted new regulations on data centers despite expressing broad support for them over the last year on the campaign trail. Michigan Republican Senate nominee Mike Rogers and Pennsylvania GOP nominee for governor Stacy Garrity have both urged for a temporary halt to some projects.
But Trump, who has met with some of the world’s leading tech giants on numerous occasions, is adamant that data centers are critical to staying ahead of China in the artificial intelligence race — a point he made in a recent interview with his former fixer Michael Cohen and which he reiterated on Monday.
“China could not be happier with this anti Data Center movement. Actually, they can’t believe it is happening!”
If only we were following China’s example. This is from Wired. “China Opens World’s First Wind-Powered Underwater Data Center. With an initial capacity of 24 megawatts, the innovative data center uses seawater as a natural cooling system.”
China has become the first country in the world to operate an underwater data center, or UDC, powered by wind. Located off the coast of Shanghai, the complex represents a significant advance in the country’s strategy to secure energy supplies in the face of the accelerated growth of artificial intelligence, reduce dependence on fossil fuels, and reduce the environmental impact of its technology infrastructure.
The initiative is the result of a collaboration between private company HiCloud Technology and state-owned China Communications Construction, which involved an investment of 1.6 billion yuan, equivalent to about $236 million.
With an initial capacity of 24 megawatts, the facility is submerged at a depth of 10 meters in the Lin-gang Special Zone, within the China Pilot Free Trade Zone in Shanghai. This location allows seawater to be used as a natural cooling system, reducing the proportion of energy used to cool the infrastructure to less than 10 percent.
This feature solves one of the main energy consumption challenges of conventional data centers, where air conditioning systems typically account for 40 to 50 percent of the total electricity required to operate.
The thermal efficiency of the UDC is directly reflected in its power-usage effectiveness, or PUE. This metric is used by the industry to evaluate the energy performance of a data center; 1.0 represents the maximum theoretical efficiency. In its first phase, the Lin-gang facility is designed to achieve a PUE of no more than 1.15, a figure considered state-of-the-art within the industry.
Under this same cooling principle, HiCloud opened the world’s first commercial underwater data center in 2023 in Hainan, an island located in southern China. However, the Shanghai complex marks a milestone as the first to operate using offshore wind power.
Construction of the UDC was completed in mid-October last year. According to the Chinese government, “compared to traditional onshore data centers, the project is designed to use more than 95 percent green electricity, reducing energy consumption by 22.8 percent, and water and land use by 100 percent and more than 90 percent, respectively.”
The opening of the complex is an important step in China’s efforts to optimize energy supply through renewable sources and, at the same time, sustain its leadership in computing capacity linked to AI development.
The difference is that China isn’t trying to kill off its people and natural resources and it’s not relying on fossil fuels which are dirty, nasty, require fracking, and kill off living things. Trump also doesn’t want any regulation on the damn things. Here’s some information on that from The New Republic. “This Data Center Is Everything That Everyone Hates About AI. Utah’s Stratos Project is showing how everyone loses in the unregulated rush to build these Big Tech behemoths—even investors.” Luke Barnes has the analysis.
Big Tech firms are now keenly aware of the need for their data centers to have at least some environmental protections and community considerations built into development plans. Microsoft, for instance, announced its “Community-First” AI infrastructure plan in January 2026, shortly after it was forced to cancel a proposed data center in rural Wisconsin. The plan calls for covering the grid and electricity costs its data centers create, minimizing and replenishing local water use, and paying its full share of local property taxes rather than seeking the tax breaks data centers typically negotiate. OpenAI has called for significant investment in renewables to help modernize the U.S. electrical grid and make data center build-out more sustainable, while Anthropic has pledged to cover the grid infrastructure improvements and electricity cost increases that are generated from the data centers it uses.
These actions from both big business at one end and state actors at the other are a recognition of the problem. But they are the inverse of the kind of investment that the Stratos Project represents: rushed ad hoc investment on one side of the coin, and reactive ad hoc regulation on the flip side.
What’s more, both actors have fundamental limitations. Data centers are a footloose industry, meaning if one state is deemed to be overregulating, investors can easily shop for a friendlier jurisdiction. And while Big Tech firms might talk a good game, they are also subject to severe market pressures that could make them put their plans for equitable, environmentally friendly data centers on the back burner.
What’s needed is a concrete set of enforceable federal standards that can slow down the ad hoc gold rush in favor of equitable (and ultimately faster) long-term build-out. But here, the Trump administration is doing the exact opposite. In its July 2025 executive order, the White House moved to ease regulatory burdens on data centers costing at least $500 million, while compressing review windows and streamlining environmental evaluations meant to identify those burdens, and saying nothing about the water consumption or community frustration driving the backlash.
Lousyana is the perfect example of how not to let your crazy Republican Governor go wild on these things. We now not only have an AI center in process. We have a SpaceX project that will likely ruin the ecosystem and lives of people living on and near the Gulf of Mexico. We are so fucked it’s not even funny. One month ago, this showed up in the New York Times. (I’ve gifted the links, btw.) “How Meta Got Everything It Wanted in a Secret Louisiana Data Center Deal. A Times examination details how the Silicon Valley giant used private talks with local officials to start a project big enough to cover nearly six square miles.”
Mr. Turner had helped land the largest development in Louisiana’s history: a $50 billion data center for the Silicon Valley giant Meta that planners say could cover about six square miles and use seven times as much energy as New Orleans.
Meta wanted the rebate to build its data center in Richland Parish, an impoverished farming community in Louisiana’s northeast corner. The tech company also needed a secret deal done quickly, and state officials were eager to oblige.
Rewriting the bill was a critical part of a nine-month process that Meta used to cut deals behind the scenes, avoid local opposition and offload financial risk, according to interviews with more than 40 people and a review of corporate filings, tax records, property records and meeting transcripts.
The secrecy was agreed to by nearly everyone involved, from utility executives to the governor’s office to a local elected official who knew about the talks with Meta and sold 300 acres of his own property for the project.
The upshot was a deal that was nearly ironclad for Meta because everyone else took on most of the potential downside. Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, also gave his company an escape hatch to get out of it years before its partners.
Those partners include Entergy Louisiana, the state’s largest power company, and Blue Owl, a Wall Street investment firm, according to public statements from the companies and investor documents. If Meta should pull out of the project because of a natural disaster, Blue Owl and its investors could be stuck with tens of billions of dollars in debt. Should Meta exit its lease early for other reasons and pay high penalties for doing so, Entergy and its customers could wind up saddled with higher costs.
Adding to their risk, insurance companies would not fully insure Meta’s facility because of its size and location in the Louisiana Delta flood plains.
The New York Times’s examination shows for the first time how Meta used secrecy and speed to pave the way for its giant project, which it calls Hyperion. At a pivotal moment for the A.I. boom, Hyperion could be a blueprint for other companies intent on avoiding local opposition in order to get massive data centers built fast.
Google, Amazon, Microsoft and others are expected to spend more than $1 trillion on data centers in coming years, but some communities are pushing back because they are worried about water use, higher electricity rates, disruption by construction and the endless hum of giant computing centers running throughout the night.
We’ll not be the Sportsman’s Paradise between that and the Musk project. All living thing are likely to perish in the parish at this rate. Landry is a mini Trump and very much a part of the brotherhood of sociopaths. This is from The Hill. “Louisiana governor ‘not concerned’ about environmental impact of Gulf Coast SpaceX facility.”
Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry (R) brushed aside fears Wednesday morning about possible negative environmental impacts from SpaceX’s planned $100 billion launch facility in the state.
He told CBS News on Wednesday that he was “not concerned about the environmental impact” of the new spaceport, which will be constructed along the Gulf Coast on a former Exxon property in Vermilion Parish, La.
“What I am concerned about is the lack of economic opportunity on the coast that continues to basically rob us of opportunities to rebuild our coast,” the governor said.
The spaceport will be the company’s fourth and largest launch site, and it will serve as the main facility for Starship, SpaceX’s in-development reusable rocket launch system.
SpaceX got into hot water over its operations at its first launch site in Boca Chica, Texas.
In 2024, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality found that the company violated environmental regulations by repeatedly releasing pollutants into nearby bodies of water.
This followed an earlier warning by the Environmental Protection Agency Region 6 office, which oversees Texas, that SpaceX violated the Clean Water Act with these actions.
Elon Musk’s company said in a statement that it was committed to working with federal and state agencies and conservation groups “to protect shoreline, restore wetlands, and support the wildlife and recreation that depend on them” in Louisiana.
And if any one believes Musk will do that I have several bridges over the Mississippi River I’d like to sell you.
So, I end with this thought. WE ARE SO FUCKED.
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“The new White House Press Secretary is a hoot!” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
I’m pretty sure this craziness with our neighbors to the north is more tap dancing to get our minds off the Epstein files, the failed Israeli/US war on Iran, and basic affordability. Look at dat! Look at dat! Look over there with jazz hands isn’t flying with most of us. Who the hell still believes all this? But it tends to distract the mainstream media, which is really bad. Very bad stuff is hiding behind all of this. Let me show you today.
If you’ve known me long enough, you know I have a serious love affair with our nation’s National Parks. I’ve camped and hiked around more than I can remember, but that’s only because some of the big ones are so amazing they took this little girl’s heart to the point she still reminds me what it means to see wild animals in the wild and breathtaking views. As I got older, my sketchbook filled with every place we camped and explored. They also remind you of our indigenous peoples and the glory of endless wilderness.
That’s why my blood pressure took off when I read this. “Trump’s Quietly Working to Give Part of Yosemite to a Private Developer. The National Park Service is under pressure to make an unprecedented deal that cedes a quarter-mile strip of the park.” The article can be found atNOTUS and is written by Anna Kramer. Yosemite is one of the nations’ oldest and most glorious examples of American landscapes. He’s totally dedicated to the idea of selling stuff off to support his Trumpify every historical place in the District.
For more than a year, the National Park Service has been quietly working to fulfill an unprecedented directive from Trump officials: Parcel off a corner of Yosemite National Park to give to a private developer.
National Park Service staff in California and Washington, D.C., are trying to arrange a land exchange between a Nevada-based company and the federal government, according to four people directly familiar with discussions, as well as agency documents reviewed by NOTUS.
Since the spring of 2025, the Trump administration has been looking into ways it could cede a roughly quarter-mile strip of land inside Yosemite to a company that, through a web of limited-liability companies, is operated by real-estate developer and investment firm Kingsbarn Realty Capital. Officials are proposing the Park Service give up the land or “interest” in the land in the form of an easement, and in return receive land of equal value somewhere in California that has yet to be decided.
The private developers own an 83-acre plot of land just outside the western boundaries of Yosemite, about five miles from one of the park’s defining ancient sequoia groves. Jeff Pori, the CEO of Kingsbarn, wants to build a short road connecting the property to one of Yosemite’s central thoroughfares. The new road would give the land exceptionally rare private access to a park that is otherwise almost entirely buffered by national forests.
The property’s current access road is more than 10 miles from an entrance to the park, and much further from Yosemite’s most iconic sights. Without a new road, visitors to the property — whether it be developed into a hotel, resort or private residence — would need to drive an hour and a half in a circuitous route to reach the popular Yosemite Valley.
This is an unprecedented move and a dangerous one.
If the deal goes through, the Trump administration would be breaking with 150 years of American precedent at the birthplace of the national park system. The federal government has historically strived to expand the crown-jewel national parks, not give up land within them.
“The national park idea started in Yosemite with Abraham Lincoln’s preservation of Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove of giant sequoias,” said Cicely Muldoon, a 40-year veteran of the Park Service who served as Yosemite’s superintendent for about five years. Muldoon retired from Yosemite shortly after President Donald Trump took office in 2025.
“Our basic purpose in the national parks is to preserve these places unimpaired for future generations, not letting go of that for the purpose of private profit,” she said Interior’s advocacy for the deal is a significant reversal of a pledge Secretary Doug Burgum made in his 2025 confirmation hearing: “The national parks, absolutely we need to support and protect every single inch of those,” he said.It also contravenes the presidential message Trump shared on Aug. 24 of this year, to announce the beginning of National Park Week: “My Administration is committed to protecting every acre of our lands and preserving the cleanest air and water in the world.”And it goes against the agency’s past position on this specific piece of land. The Park Service has received this privatization request before, and it has rejected it repeatedly for over two decades.
Don’t even get me started on Trump trying to rename Lake Ontario. But you don’t have to take my word on it try this at Business Insider. The internet has gone into full meme mode over Trump’s Lake Ontario name change. The story is reported by Joshua Nelken-Zitser.
President Donald Trump renamed Lake Ontario as Lake America, and it’s making waves on the internet.
After tense trade talks between the US and Canada collapsed and the US imposed new 50% tariffs on billions of dollars’ worth of Canadian goods, Trump turned to another tool in his arsenal: rebranding.
On Thursday, Trump issued an executive order to rename Lake Ontario, one of the Great Lakes that straddles the US-Canada border, as Lake America. As the Canadian Prime Minster Mark Carney wrote on X, the name predates the Confederation of Canada and the US Declaration of Independence. “The name Lake Ontario comes from the Wendat word Ontari’io, which, appropriately, means ‘”the lake is beautiful, the lake is big’,” he wrote.
The name change follows a similar move Trump made last year when he renamed the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America, a change that Mexico and other countries, including the UK and China, have refused to adopt.
After Thursday’s executive order, it didn’t take long for the internet to respond with memes. Here are the 10 best.
Go check them out!
Trump tries over and over again to remove all the settled cases against him. Most courts remain firmly on the side of the settled case based on settled law. Here’s yet another Trump failure to ditch responsibility for all his crimes. This is from local TV station Spectrum News NY1. “Trump loses again in bid to erase his N.Y. hush money conviction.” You may remember that this is the payment to Stormy Daniels.
A federal judge on Friday once again spurned Donald Trump’s effort to erase his hush money conviction, rejecting the president’s bid to move the state court case to federal court and have it dismissed on presidential immunity grounds.
Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein reiterated his earlier finding against Trump, saying that the reasons Trump cited for renewing his request were “neither new nor legally sufficient.”
The judge added: “He has failed to show good cause and diligence.”
It is the third time Hellerstein has blocked Trump from having the U.S. District Court in Manhattan seize control of the case from the New York court where he was tried and convicted.
And, like before, Trump will appeal, according to a spokesperson for his legal team who called Hellerstein’s ruling “baseless and lawless.”
“The Supreme Court’s historic decision on Immunity, the Federal and New York State Constitutions, and other established legal precedent mandate that the Witch Hunt perpetrated by the Manhattan DA be removed to federal court, and immediately overturned and dismissed,” a statement issued on behalf of the legal team said. “President Trump will be filing a powerful appeal, and will continue defeating Democrat weaponization at every turn.”
The guilty verdict, reached in May 2024 while Trump was between terms, made him the first former — and now current — U.S. president to be convicted of a crime. Trump is also challenging his conviction through the state court appellate process, which is pending.
Hellerstein’s decision came after a federal appeals court last year ordered him to reconsider his prior denial. The judge previewed his ruling during oral arguments in February, slamming Trump’s lawyers for legal maneuvers that amounted to taking “two bites at the apple.”
State prosecutors did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Stormy and E. Jean are high on my list of tough and amazing women for see these cases through. We can only hope we get the Epstein files released and we see more women damaged by Trump receive justice and compensation. And speaking of the Stormy case, this headline yesterday from Raw Storyis an eye opener. There most be a line as wide as big as the country itself of co-criminals waiting for Trump Pardons. “Explosive motive unmasked by DOJ insiders as Michael Cohen crawls back to Trump: report.” Travis Gettys has the story.
The Department of Justice has discussed using former attorney Michael Cohen – who has seemingly come crawling back – as a witness to build new criminal cases against President Donald Trump’s legal adversaries, according to a new report.
Zeteo’s Asawin Suebsaeng, who has a personal history with Cohen, the president’s longtime personal attorney and fixer, reported that Trump administration officials are hoping to leverage his testimony to bring criminal prosecutions against New York Attorney General Letitia James and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg – both of whom successfully battled Trump in court.
“Bragg’s case, of course, is the reason Trump became America’s first felon president, a label Trump bitterly resents,” Suebsaeng wrote.
That’s why the president wants revenge against them both, Suebsaeng said, and he’s apparently dangling a pardon to Cohen as leverage for his testimony.
“Cohen had previously posted on Substack that he felt ‘pressured and coerced’ to be those prosecutors’ star witness against Trump, though Cohen has been publicly very coy about claiming whether he was ‘coerced’ to give false testimony,” Suebsaeng wrote.
DOJ does have the authority to charge prosecutors with coercing false testimony, although that almost never happens, but Trump officials are considering it now.
The headlines from independent media sources never fail to amaze. Even local government officials have trouble with Trump’s ignorance of how things are done in American. He abuses his position and ignores well-settled law over and over.This is from the New York Times. “Wyoming Governor Objects to ‘Very Odd’ D.O.J. Election Monitoring. Governor Mark Gordon, a Republican, said he was concerned by the behavior of election observers who visited a polling station in Cheyenne.” This story comes from the keyboard of Tim Balk.
Mr. Trump has often returned to such conspiracy theories in his second term, arguing that widespread fraud could affect this year’s elections. As president, he has deployed the resources of the federal government, notably the Justice Department’s, to investigate his unsubstantiated claims, sowing more doubt in the nation’s elections and raising alarm among state officials about whether he will try to intervene if Republicans lose their congressional majorities in November.
Governor Gordon, a low-key, term-limited Republican who leads one of the country’s most conservative states, said at a meeting with state election officials on Wednesday that he had been concerned by the behavior of the election observers.
“I feel very strongly about the federal government coming in and taking our guns — I don’t like that,” Mr. Gordon said at the meeting. “And I don’t like the federal government coming in and taking our votes, either.”
The monitors ultimately visited six polling places, showing their credentials only when asked for them, Mr. Gordon said in the interview, describing their behavior as “very odd.” He said he had asked the state attorney general, Keith Kautz, to investigate the matter.
The observers had cited statutes related to the Americans With Disabilities Act and the Civil Rights Act, Mr. Gordon said.
This year, the Justice Department’s observers have visited polling places in other states, including politically tense regions such as the Minneapolis area. The agency said on Tuesday that it had sent 80 monitors to seven states during primary season.
But the requests to interview voters and gain access to machines in Wyoming were unusual. And they come at a moment when the Justice Department has been locked in an intense legal battle with roughly 30 states, demanding their private, unredacted voter rolls in a hunt for evidence of noncitizen voting.
Despite evidence to the contrary, Trump is still convinced that noncitizens vote. Most allegations turn out to be baseless. There has to be something sketchier in Trump’s election interference. It’s more likely he’s trying to ‘monitor’ polls to intimidate certain classes of voters not known to vote Republican. He is hot for voter suppression.
This is my favorite headline for the day. It comes via from Public Notice. “Are voters finally realizing GOP presidents are disasters? Michael Tomasky makes the case that they are.” I could make the case easily for their economic policy. I’m pretty certain that others in other areas could do that as well. Aaron Rupar and Thor Benson share the lede.
“Trusting the Republicans more on the economy at this point is like trusting Sean Combs to be your babysitter,” writes Michael Tomasky, editor of The New Republic, in his recent piece headlined, “At Long Last, Americans Are Starting to See the Truth About the GOP.”
“For decades now, the Republican Party has built its electoral success on myths and lies,” Tomasky adds. “Ronald Reagan was the last Republican president who your average person would say left the country better off than he found it.”
One could quibble about the legacy of George H.W. Bush, but it’s hard to dispute that the last two Republican presidents easily rank among the worst in American history. Their successors have each been handed a flaming bag of economic and cultural ruin and did commendable jobs putting out the fire, only to hand the reins to the man who will unequivocally go down as our worst president of all time (so far!), Donald J. Trump — whose second term is shaping up to be even more disastrous than the one that ended with mass death amid a pandemic he badly mismanaged.
Tomasky argues Democrats are missing a golden opportunity by not campaigning more aggressively on the obvious truth that from the presidency on down, the Republican Party has a cataclysmic record when it has power, especially in the 21st century. But messaging aside, he says he’s heartened by recent polling showing voters may finally be seeing the light.
“Jobs are just one factor. The performance of the stock market under Democrats is much, much stronger than under Republicans. The increases in median household income and amount by which they’ve reduced the deficit are much greater,” Tomasky told Public Notice. “The comparisons aren’t close, but you never hear any Democrats talk about it.”
“Why this is changing now is really simple and straightforward: The economy is bad, and there’s a Republican president,” he added.
Trump has basically wrecked the idea that Republicans are better at foreign policy and wars. There’s no way any of his health policies via the nuts he put in Health and Human Services can be seen as anything but charlatans. And, the DOJ is a laugh. So much for law and order. Since the Republic party continues to enable all of this mess, I can’t understand that anyone other that a member of the Orange Caligula Cult could tolerate what’s going on these days.
Okay, this is my last suggested read for the day. It comes from Balls and Strikes and is written by Jay Willis. “The Trump DOJ Is Running Out of Ways to Humiliate Itself In Public. Another week, another argument from your federal government that would be kind of embarrassing if a high school sophomore tried to make it.” Sounds about right.
For some time now, I have been tracking the Justice Department’s alarminglyrapidtransformation from one of the legal profession’s most prestigious employers into a clubhouse for semiliterate dunces whose primary qualification for the job is a willingness to sign their names to legal filings that resemble lightly edited Truth Social posts. This week’s addition to the canon comes in the course of President Donald Trump’s relentless pursuit of what is somehow among the highest-priority items on his second-term policy agenda: slapping his name on the Kennedy Center before his time in office runs out.
The legal fight began back in December 2025, when the Kennedy Center’s Trump-aligned board of trustees first tried to shoehorn the words “THE DONALD J. TRUMP AND” above existing Kennedy Center signage. A federal court ordered the removal of Trump’s name in June, but the board remains committed to fulfilling the president’s wishes. Its latest proposal would append a “RENOVATED AND RESTORED BY PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP” inscription to the side of the building, beneath the Kennedy Center signage this time around. The board also wants to name the grounds on which the Kennedy Center sits the “President Donald J. Trump Plaza,” like an enterprising NFL team selling a secondary set of stadium naming rights to whichever corporate behemoth is desperate enough to pay for it.
In a new court filing, the Trump Justice Department is warning about what might happen if its client does not get his way: According to Brantley T. Mayers, a lawyer in the Civil Division, prospective donors will not open their wallets unless the renovation plans include “prominent recognition” of Trump’s involvement. And without those renovations, Brantley says, the “dilapidated” and “crumbling” Kennedy Center will “deteriorate further into an unsafe, decrepit structure,” and may even have to be “taken down” in order to avoid “collapse or calamity.” In other words, the Justice Department’s official position is that without the addition of an (apparently load-bearing) “RENOVATED AND RESTORED” inscription, the Kennedy Center will be at risk of falling down and killing everyone inside.
“The Board recognizes that President Trump’s efforts and prestige provide the sole hope for the Center’s financial survival, and structural renewal,” Brantley writes. “The Trump Administration, and President Donald J. Trump, should, therefore, be given the respect and dignity of acknowledgement.” (All weird comma placements in original.)
How is this even a legal issue? Anyway, this country is so fucked-up under Trump that it’s hard to recognize. That’s my opinion and I’m sticking to it.
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“Shouldn’t the new US Attorney General be prosecuting Reflecting Pool Vandals instead of spinning on the Sunday News Shows?” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
Regurgitating the past is so Trumpian. He’s the very model of a relic, an anachronistic trope. This week was full of reminders of how detached he is from reality. Once again, Orange Caligula tried to get the case brought by E. Jean Carroll overturned. Even the Supreme Court didn’t buy it. He may be able to control many of the folks he appointed to executive office, but his manipulation of U.S. democracy still only goes so far.
This is from NBC News‘ Lawrence Hurley. “Supreme Court turns away Trump’s latest bid to block E. Jean Carroll award. President Donald Trump filed an unusual request asking the justices to reconsider a decision they made not to hear his case several weeks ago.” E. Jean and her attorney, Roberta Kaplan, are real American heroes.
The Supreme Court on Monday declined for a second time to take up President Donald Trump’s bid to overturn a jury verdict that awarded $5 million to writer E. Jean Carroll for alleged sexual abuse and defamation.
In an unusual move, the president had asked the court to reconsider its decision from June that rejected Trump’s initial appeal. The court almost never grants such requests.
The case arose from a federal lawsuit Carroll filed in New York City alleging that Trump sexually assaulted her in the dressing room of a department store in 1996. The defamation claims relate to statements he made about her after his first term in office, in which he described her claims as a “con job” and “hoax.”
Trump has denied any wrongdoing and has said he does not know Carroll.
Trump has a separate appeal at the Supreme Court concerning a different defamation case in which Carroll won an $83 million judgment. That case concerns comments Trump made as president during his first term and has been tied up in litigation over whether he can claim immunity.
The court is not set to act on that appeal until later this year.
Good news. E. Jean Carroll spent a decade in court fighting one of the most powerful men in the world.She fought with tenacity and grace — and she won. She is one of my personal heroes.We owe her a debt of gratitude.https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/17/trump-supreme-court-e-jean-carroll.html
And of course, he argued presidential immunity. This is from Politico.
Trump’s Supreme Court challenges to both verdicts argued in part that the verdicts were flawed because they relied on statements Trump made in 2019 about Carroll while he was serving as president and those statements should be considered immune from legal liability under the high court’s 2024 ruling granting presidents immunity for many acts they take while in office.
I wonder when the new AG is going to jump wily-nily into the case? I wrote a lot on Monday about the current treatment of the US Service members deployed to the Iran-Israeli/US war and their deplorable conditions. I mentioned that historically, Orange Caligula has shown mostly contempt for anyone who served in the military, voluntarily or not. My family has served this country since the Revolution, and I really don’t take kindly to the implications that my dad, uncles, or cousins, or any of the others that fall into the multiple greats, did so because they’re “suckers and losers”.
Public Notice‘s Noah Berlatsky takes on his constant denigration of the many who served. This happened after a Fox News “journalist,” Joey Jones, earned this headline from The Independent. “Fury erupts at Fox host who blasted ‘weak’ sailors on USS Abraham Lincoln: ‘Put him on that ship’. The former Marine Corps staff sergeant compared the carrier crew’s living conditions to his own deployment in Afghanistan.” The outrage over this continues. Here’s the take from Berlatsky: “Suckers and losers” as policy. The plight of the USS Lincoln lays bare Trump’s disdain for the troops.”
The Navy Times reported last week, based on interviews with family members, that multiple sailors have recently tried to jump overboard from the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln — a ship has been deployed for 250 days as part of President Trump’s war of choice against Iran.
Food is deteriorating and being rationed, there are water shortages, the laundry facilities are broken. And the psychological toll has been brutal.
Trump started a war without provocation and has prolonged it because he does not want to admit he lost. But when questioned on Friday about conditions on the Lincoln, he responded not with compassion or regret, but with callous vindictiveness.
Asked if the deployment had lasted too long, he replied, “No. Not nearly long enough.”
Q: The family members of US service members are concerned about the conditions on the USS LincolnTRUMP: No they're notQ: Has the deployment gone on too long?TRUMP: No no no. Not nearly long enough.
Trump also claimed that a carrier was moving to the Middle East to relieve the Lincoln. That appears to be true. Still, his belligerent denial of the suffering of service members is shocking.
“Shocking,” though, does not mean surprising.
Over the last decade, Trump has consistently insulted and mocked US troops. His defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has made clear that he sees service members as props in his endless battle to win culture war accolades from Nazi bloggers and right-wing talking heads.
The fact that real men and women are experiencing mental health crises and are dying in service of their ill-informed and vindictive whims doesn’t trouble Trump or Hegseth. It should more than worry everyone else though.
In yet another deranged Orange Caligula moment, we see his priorities. This is from the AP. “Trump blames vandals for damaged grass in the same spot where he held his big July 4 celebration.” WTAF? Is this paranoia or some odd brain fart? He’s done more damage to the District than the British ever did!
President Donald Trump on Sunday said vandals are to blame for large swaths of dead grass on the National Mall near the World War II Memorial — in the same spot where Trump had a stage built and hosted crowds for his July 4 celebration.
Trump made the accusation in a social media post without saying why he believes it’s the work of vandals instead of trampled turf from the Independence Day festivities. He posted a photo showing a once-grassy area by the World War II Memorial, now patchy and brown across much of the sprawling turf.
“Look what VANDALS did to the grass connecting the vandalized World War II Monument and the vandalized Reflecting Pool, which will be opened again, and better than ever, shortly,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform.
“Anybody who thinks the Reflecting Pool wasn’t vandalized should go back to Law School!” he added.
Trump has been obviously obsessed with World War II and its generals recently. Does he want to be Eisenhower now? Does he really think starting WW III would be a terrific idea to cement his place in history? I just don’t get any of this. Can someone please stop this madman before the country declines beyond repair?
In a truly bizarre move, Trump decided joint military exercises with South Korea should be ended because he’s such a good friend of the bizarro leader of North Korea. This is from the New York Times‘ Helene Cooper. “Trump Orders Pentagon to Curtail Military Exercises With Ally South Korea. In a social media post, the president scolded South Korea for not helping denuclearize Iran, and also praised North Korea and its leader.”
President Trump said on Sunday that he had instructed the Pentagon to reduce joint military exercises with South Korea, a longtime U.S. ally and a linchpin of America’s national security strategy in the Asia-Pacific region.
The announcement may heighten growing worries among Asian allies over what the United States is now willing to do to deter China, given the enormous distraction and resource drain of the U.S.-Israel war against Iran. The United States is running low on critical weapons and has been moving military resources out of Asia to the Middle East.
In a convoluted social media post, Mr. Trump complained that Seoul did not “join us in the Denuclearization of the Islamic Republic of Iran.” In the same post, he said that North Korea under Kim Jong Un had been “unthreatening and respectful” while he has been president.
In his post Mr. Trump did not mention a rift in relations in 2017, when the North Korean leader called him a “mentally deranged dotard” after Mr. Trump delivered a speech at the U.N. threatening to “totally destroy” North Korea if the United States had to defend itself or its allies.
Now Mr. Trump is speaking only of what he on Sunday called his “very good relationship” with North Korea and its leader. In his post, he said that because of those ties, he was “not happy with the fact that the United States has, long ago, agreed to participate in Joint Military exercises with South Korea.”
“These exercises are not only costly, with much of these costs paid for by the United States of America (as usual!), but send a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile, to a Country that, as long as Donald J. Trump has been President, has been unthreatening and respectful,” Mr. Trump said in his post.
Mr. Trump said that because it was too late to cancel the exercises entirely, he had asked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to “substantially reduce” U.S. participation.
The U.S. and South Korean militaries have held joint exercises for more than 70 years, since 1955, after the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean War.
The South Korean Defense Ministry confirmed that the joint military exercises had begun on Monday as scheduled. In a statement last week, the allies emphasized that the 11-day annual Ulchi Freedom Shield exercises were “defensive in nature” and aimed at enhancing the countries’ readiness and capabilities by “incorporating realistic threats, including lessons learned from recent conflicts.”
But North Korea’s Foreign Ministry on Friday had reiterated its condemnation of the drills, branding them “a rehearsal for an aggressive war.” In response, the country conducted two ballistic missile tests off its east coast this month, vowing to “respond to a new level of a threat with a new level of a deterrent.”
I don’t know about you, but I think having a President so totally located in a completely different reality, in charge of things — especially the military — is an extremely dangerous place to be.
So, let’s end this on hope, a wing and a prayer. This is from Axios‘ Mike Zapler and Ben Berkowitz. “Even some Republican voters sour on Trump.” I would hope they could. How can you live in this country today and afford anything? How could you have draft-age children or grandchildren and not be worried?
High prices, a persistent war and anxiety about corruption are quickly eroding President Trump’s support among Republicans, a warning sign for the White House with less than 80 days to the midterms.
Why it matters: Democrats look likely to take control of the House already, but Trump’s weakness could cost Republicans more seats and further endanger the Senate.
The loss of one or both chambers would guarantee two years of scrutiny and gridlock for the end of Trump’s presidency.
By the numbers: Three surveys out in the last week paint a clear picture of growing dissatisfaction among the president’s base.
📉 An Economist/YouGov poll out Tuesday had Trump’s approval rating among Republicans at a second-term low of 79 percent — a decline of 12 points from shortly after he took office.
In that time, the percentage of Republicans who “strongly approve” of Trump’s performance has dropped more precipitously —by 20 points (from 68 to 48 percent).
Trump is barely above water among non-MAGA Republicans, who make up about 30 percent of the party. Only 51 percent approved of his performance, vs. 47 percent who disapproved. The positive rating among non-MAGA Republicans fell 13 points in one week.
⬇️ A Financial Times poll out this weekend had Trump’s net approval rating among Republicans off 8 points from just a month prior.
💰 Republican consumer sentiment fell 9.5 points in August from July, per the University of Michigan monthly survey out Friday — one of the largest declines the decades-old project has ever recorded. The Republican decline was more than double the overall headline number.
Driving the news: It’s no secret what’s behind the numbers: the war in Iran, high gas prices and stubborn inflation.
These recent findings come on the heels of polls that show rising Republican skepticism of the war and GOP wariness over whether Trump is using his office for personal profit.
The intrigue: Trump’s political strength has long derived from outsized loyalty among Republicans, so even a slight slippage could be consequential.
I also was under the delusion that Republicans were deficit hawks. But, I guess that was just another gaslighting session. If you have time, check this one out by Max Boot from the Washington Post. Too bad it took some of these assholes so long to figure things out. “I’m a hawk. I’m shocked by a $1.5 trillion defense budget. The request would top World War II spending while funding boondoggles and sweetheart deals.”
So, anyway, it’s another hot, humid Monday down here in New Orleans, and I have to go water the small patch of sod that is now the middle of my small backyard. I’m still trying to teach folks economics and finance, but nothing fits the reality these days. The entire Data Center thing and the supposed “financing” of it are totally outside my realm, as a PhD in Financial Economics. Call me churlish, but this looks more like the Command-and-Control economics and policies of the old Soviet Union than those of the United States. Then there’s this, which is so far outside the bounds of legality I can’t even think straight about it. “Trump family crypto business World Liberty gets preliminary approval to establish a bank.” The flunky he appointed as Comptroller of the Currency has already approved it. Let’s see how he manipulates the Federal Reserve System and the SEC! Don’t even get me started on RFK Jr’s latest romp through medicine and the vaccines that have saved so many people.
As usual, more at the links.
Anyway, I can’t believe what’s going on. I really can’t. None of this should be happening. Let me know what you think. As usual, more on any of this can be found at the links.
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“We all know why Todd Blanche was sworn in as the U.S. Attorney General behind closed doors in the Oval Office.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
As we continue Joint Operation Chaos with Israel in the Middle East, it’s becoming apparent that more money and thought are going into Project Glitz up the White House than into taking care of our all-volunteer army. The headlines this week and today have been disgraceful. The latest weird decision by the peerless leader, which put others’ lives in danger as he escaped in a food cart to a different plane, is to spend billions of dollars on the US Navy to restore old technology.
It’s also becoming apparent that almost all the ships at sea have deplorable living conditions. Trump has never had respect for those serving in the military, but this is over the top. It goes beyond calling them all “suckers”. It endangers their lives. Senator Mark Kelly has a lot to say about this today. This report is at The Hill and covered by Finya Swai. “Mark Kelly on aircraft carrier catapult order: ‘Donald Trump knows nothing about this stuff’.” I hate to think that the U.S. Military is one of the things Trump touches that dies.
Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) blasted President Trump on Thursday for ordering the U.S. Navy to revert to older catapult systems on its aircraft carriers, arguing the change would be costly while questioning Trump’s qualifications to make such a call.
“He’s a marginally failed real estate developer with multiple bankruptcies,” Kelly said in an interview with MS NOW. “He shouldn’t be weighing in on systems, on aircraft carriers.”
Trump earlier Thursday directed the Navy to return to steam-powered catapults and hydraulic systems on its Ford-class aircraft carriers, ditching the newer electromagnetic technology.
The order would require changes to future carriers, including the USS Doris Miller, which is currently under construction and already slated to use the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS).
Kelly, a former Navy combat pilot and NASA astronaut who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, warned the move would force the Navy to redesign ships that are well into development and are “probably going to cost billions of dollars.”
The Arizona Democrat has said that despite his own experience in hundreds of career takeoffs and landings, his degree in aeronautical and marine engineering and his work as a test pilot, he still would not tell Navy engineers how to design a carrier.
“Donald Trump knows nothing about this stuff,” the senator continued in the interview. “Not in any world would I suggest to the Navy to change the design of some system on a ship at this point.”
He added, “I mean, does the guy know nothing about the way our government is supposed to work and how it’s supposed to be managed?”
As usual, Orange Caligula is always thinking like it’s still the late 20th Century. This is from the AP. “Trump orders the Navy to return to an older system of launching jets off aircraft carriers.” It’s reported by Konstantin Toropin.
President Donald Trump is ordering the U.S. Navy to remove the advanced system used to launch fighter jets from its newest type of aircraft carrier and return to using older steam catapults that he has long said he prefers, according to a directive issued Thursday.
The new mandate would likely cost billions of dollars and revert the Navy’s most advanced ships to a system that takes more sailors to operate and is more difficult to maintain.
The memo directs the Pentagon and the Navy to present Trump with plans to remove the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System, also known as EMALS, within two months. It also says the Ford-class carrier’s electromagnetic weapons elevators should be replaced.
The move comes after years of Trump railing against the new, magnetically powered catapult system that shoots fighter jets off the deck of the carriers. It also comes at a time when the U.S. military is trying to find funding from Congress for all its desired equipment and as the Navy is struggling to fill its ships with enough sailors.
Trump’s memo directs the fourth Ford-class carrier, the USS Doris Miller, to be the first ship to include the new changes. That will leave the USS Gerald R. Ford, as well as the forthcoming USS John F. Kennedy and USS Enterprise, untouched.
However, redesigning an already finalized ship for such a major system change will not be an easy task.
MS NOW interviewed the wife of the sailor who recently jumped ship. “‘The boat is finally getting to me’: Wife of USS Abraham Lincoln sailor who jumped overboard shares texts. The sailor’s wife told MS NOW her husband expressed his mental health concerns to leadership during his long deployment on the aircraft carrier in the Iran war, but was brushed off.” Lindsey Pipia and Priya Sridhar share the lede.
The wife, who was granted anonymity to describe sensitive mental health issues, said she was not contacted by Navy officials about the incident until four days after her husband jumped off the ship on Aug. 3.
“I think that it was handled very poorly because they didn’t inform me and they didn’t want me to know, and they’re just trying to cover this up,” she told MS NOW as she awaits her husband’s arrival back to San Diego after he was medically evacuated off the ship.
She learned about what she described as a suicide attempt after one of her husband’s friends on the ship messaged her that someone from his squadron went overboard, she said. Later, that friend told her it was her husband, according to messages reviewed by MS NOW. Unable to reach him, she reached out to the ship’s ombudsman in hopes of receiving more information.
Her account contradicts what Navy leadership told family members of the sailors and Marines serving on the Lincoln during tense in-person and virtual town hall meetings last week. Navy officials said they could not comment on the medical records of individual service members, to protect patient privacy.
Many family members are concerned about potential exhaustion, low morale and the mental health of those on board, as the aircraft carrier’s deployment at sea appears to have been extended twice during the ongoing Iran war, with no clear end in sight.
MeidasTouch continues to investigate the conditions on the USS Lincoln and has expanded its research to other ships. This is the report by Aaron Parnas. “Not Just the Lincoln: Families Describe Human Waste, No Food, No End in Sight Across Multiple Ships.” Well, that certainly isn’t a good approach to maintaining morale.
One parent whose son recently returned from eleven months aboard the Lincoln, after finishing five years with an F/A-18 fire squadron known as the “Top Hatters,” described conditions that had deteriorated badly by the time he got off the ship.
Early in the deployment, the ship’s water system went down entirely, leaving sailors unable to shower or wash their clothes. When the system was eventually restored, showers had to be tightly rationed. Supplies ran low repeatedly, made worse when resupply ships were unable to bring materials back to the carrier. By the time this sailor left the ship, the parent said, toilets had backed up and overflowed, leaving roughly half a foot of human waste across restroom floors used by around 200 sailors at any given time.
There are many more stories included in the lengthy piece. It’s basically horrifying. Meanwhile, Cadet Bonespurs is threatening Iran again. This is from Reuters. “Hormuz traffic slows further after US threatens more economic pressure on Iran.” The lede is shared by Jonathan Saul, Phil Stewart, and Idrees Ali.
Transit through the Strait of Hormuz appeared to grind to a near standstill on Friday after two more ships were attacked there and the United States said it could maintain a naval blockade of Iran indefinitely.
A senior Iranian source said on Wednesday that there had been no progress in talks to build on a June agreement to end the war. Since the ceasefire renewed in the June deal broke down, Iran has resumed attacks on ships it accuses of trying to transit the strait without its permission.
The United Arab Emirates’ Abu Dhabi National Oil Company said two of its vessels were attacked transiting the strait on Thursday evening. The UAE government blamed Iran, which made no immediate comment.
Two vessels passed through the narrow waterway on Friday, according to analysis from ship tracking firm Kpler: a grain ship entering Iranian waters and an empty dry bulk ship going in the other direction.
A separate empty liquefied petroleum products tanker was sailing into the Gulf via the strait, the data showed. There were no crude oil shipments visible on Friday.
Nine vessels passed through the strait on Thursday, up from five on Wednesday but below the average of 12 for August.
I’d say there’s no Nobel Peace Prize for Cadet Bonespurs this year. So, what exactly are Trump’s priorities? Lawrence Hurley at NBC Newshas this report. “Trump asks Supreme Court to allow White House ballroom construction to continue’. The president wants the justices to act before a court ruling that would block construction goes into effect.”
President Donald Trump on Friday asked the Supreme Court to allow him to continue construction of a sprawling ballroom adjacent to the White House.
The emergency application follows an Aug. 7 ruling by an appeals court in Washington upholding a federal judge’s decision that would block abovegroundwork on site while litigation moves forward.
“If allowed to go into effect, the injunction would wrongfully install a single district judge as sole arbiter of what further construction is ‘strictly necessary’ to protect the safety of the President, his family, staff members, and visitors to the White House, including foreign dignitaries, and presidents and prime ministers of other countries,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer said in the filing.
The appeals court decision has yet to go into effect, meaning construction continues while the Supreme Court decides what to do next. The deadline for the justices to act is Aug. 21, with Sauer asking the court to act immediately.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld an injunction issued by U.S. District Judge Richard Leon.
Leon said that the White House could move forward with below-ground construction of security and medical facilities, but not the ballroom itself.
The administration immediately appealed, and his ruling has not gone into effect.
One key issue in the case is whether the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which brought the underlying lawsuit, has legal standing to sue based on its members being harmed by construction of a building they object to on aesthetic grounds.
Well, the same agenda as ever. He wants to build himself a Wonderland of monuments and buildings in the District. He wants his name on everything. He wants freedom to grift at will. He wants to live forever in the White House. We need to stop all of this, now!
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The Sky Dancing banner headline uses a snippet from a work by artist Tashi Mannox called 'Rainbow Study'. The work is described as a" study of typical Tibetan rainbow clouds, that feature in Thanka painting, temple decoration and silk brocades". dakinikat was immediately drawn to the image when trying to find stylized Tibetan Clouds to represent Sky Dancing. It is probably because Tashi's practice is similar to her own. His updated take on the clouds that fill the collection of traditional thankas is quite special.
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As usual, both my degrees and fascination with History and Economics lead my interests. This next one is from Dr. Paul Krugman’s SubStack. “Neo-Nazis and the Impotence of Trumponomics. Crude economics doesn’t explain what just happened.” Of course, Elon Musk plays a role in this. I’m horrified.
Take a moment to let that sink in. We know the prior stated grievances of Trump and is ilk have never been the real agenda. However, now, the agenda is flying it’s flag full staff. Just look at the no-good that Pete Hegseth and his Department of War (sic) has been up to. The agenda is could not be more evident in every action. Racist, Sexist, Full on Right-wing Christianity supporting Israel so their rapture fantasy can be fulfilled and ruthless idiotic endless wars. These roads lead back to Elon Musk who has the where withal to change the world, and rewrite history with all his kindred grievance-filled white man.
We all know that the last thing Elon Musk would be off doing today is helping his adopted celebrate Labor Day. This is from The Economist with a shared link. “Elon Musk’s praise for the far right infuriates most of Germany. A controversial op-ed may have set the terms of the election campaign.” This was what was going on in January of 2025. We should’ve seen it coming.el, quit in protest after Mr Musk’s article was published. The piece had been accompanied by a rebuttal by Jan Philipp Burgard, the paper’s incoming editor-in-chief, calling Mr Musk “fatally wrong”. The rebuttal’s headline calls the AfD “partly xenophobic and antisemitic”; Mr Burgard also blasts its anti-Americanism and its endorsement of leaving the European Union. Yet like Ms Kogel, many Germans found it wrong to have run Mr Musk’s piece at all.
Josephine Walker’s latest at Axios truly shines life on life during Orange Caligula’s regime. “America’s expensive groceries are getting less safe to eat.”
He’s willing to destroy everything and everyone to make it all about him. At the top of his list is making sure a lot of us can’t vote. This is from today’s New York Times. I’m no longer surprised but will be forever appalled. More Mail Ballots Are Arriving Late This Cycle, and They’re Getting Tossed. State officials say they worry about the Postal Service’s ability to deliver votes this fall. They are urging voters to mail their ballots early or use drop boxes so their votes count.” We’re a Banana Republic.
I can feel this in my backyard, as there’s been a huge push to actually shut down my local post office. There are next to no Republicans in my ward and precinct. It’s basically a neighborhood with many black, GLBT, and single women like me. I can understand why they’d like my massive blue dot in a blue city to get as little ability to vote as possible.
If only we were following China’s example. This is from Wired. “China Opens World’s First Wind-Powered Underwater Data Center. With an initial capacity of 24 megawatts, the innovative data center uses seawater as a natural cooling system.”
The difference is that China isn’t trying to kill off its people and natural resources and it’s not relying on fossil fuels which are dirty, nasty, require fracking, and kill off living things. Trump also doesn’t want any regulation on the damn things. Here’s some information on that from The New Republic. “This Data Center Is Everything That Everyone Hates About AI. Utah’s Stratos Project is showing how everyone loses in the unregulated rush to build these Big Tech behemoths—even investors.” Luke Barnes has the analysis.
Lousyana is the perfect example of how not to let your crazy Republican Governor go wild on these things. We now not only have an AI center in process. We have a SpaceX project that will likely ruin the ecosystem and lives of people living on and near the Gulf of Mexico. We are so fucked it’s not even funny. One month ago, this showed up in the New York Times. (I’ve gifted the links, btw.) “How Meta Got Everything It Wanted in a Secret Louisiana Data Center Deal. A Times examination details how the Silicon Valley giant used private talks with local officials to start a project big enough to cover nearly six square miles.”
We’ll not be the Sportsman’s Paradise between that and the Musk project. All living thing are likely to perish in the parish at this rate. Landry is a mini Trump and very much a part of the brotherhood of sociopaths. This is from The Hill. “Louisiana governor ‘not concerned’ about environmental impact of Gulf Coast SpaceX facility.”
That’s why my blood pressure took off when I read this. “Trump’s Quietly Working to Give Part of Yosemite to a Private Developer. The National Park Service is under pressure to make an unprecedented deal that cedes a quarter-mile strip of the park.” The article can be found at NOTUS and is written by Anna Kramer. Yosemite is one of the nations’ oldest and most glorious examples of American landscapes. He’s totally dedicated to the idea of selling stuff off to support his Trumpify every historical place in the District.
This is an unprecedented move and a dangerous one.
Don’t even get me started on Trump trying to rename Lake Ontario. But you don’t have to take my word on it try this at Business Insider. The internet has gone into full meme mode over Trump’s Lake Ontario name change. The story is reported by Joshua Nelken-Zitser.
Stormy and E. Jean are high on my list of tough and amazing women for see these cases through. We can only hope we get the Epstein files released and we see more women damaged by Trump receive justice and compensation. And speaking of the Stormy case, this headline yesterday from Raw Story is an eye opener. There most be a line as wide as big as the country itself of co-criminals waiting for Trump Pardons. “Explosive motive unmasked by DOJ insiders as Michael Cohen crawls back to Trump: report.” Travis Gettys has the story.
Despite evidence to the contrary, Trump is still convinced that noncitizens vote. Most allegations turn out to be baseless. There has to be something sketchier in Trump’s election interference. It’s more likely he’s trying to ‘monitor’ polls to intimidate certain classes of voters not known to vote Republican. He is hot for voter suppression.
Trump has basically wrecked the idea that Republicans are better at foreign policy and wars. There’s no way any of his health policies via the nuts he put in Health and Human Services can be seen as anything but charlatans. And, the DOJ is a laugh. So much for law and order. Since the Republic party continues to enable all of this mess, I can’t understand that anyone other that a member of the Orange Caligula Cult could tolerate what’s going on these days.
And of course, he argued presidential immunity. This is from Politico.
In yet another deranged Orange Caligula moment, we see his priorities. This is from the AP. “Trump blames vandals for damaged grass in the same spot where he held his big July 4 celebration.” WTAF? Is this paranoia or some odd brain fart? He’s done more damage to the District than the British ever did!
Trump has been obviously obsessed with World War II and its generals recently. Does he want to be Eisenhower now? Does he really think starting WW III would be a terrific idea to cement his place in history? I just don’t get any of this. Can someone please stop this madman before the country declines beyond repair?
As usual, Orange Caligula is always thinking like it’s still the late 20th Century. This is from the AP. “Trump orders the Navy to return to an older system of launching jets off aircraft carriers.” It’s reported by Konstantin Toropin.
There are many more stories included in the lengthy piece. It’s basically horrifying. Meanwhile, Cadet Bonespurs is threatening Iran again. This is from Reuters. “Hormuz traffic slows further after US threatens more economic pressure on Iran.” The lede is shared by Jonathan Saul, Phil Stewart, and Idrees Ali.
y at NBC News has this report. “Trump asks Supreme Court to allow White House ballroom construction to continue’. The president wants the justices to act before a court ruling that would block construction goes into effect.”
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