I’m getting a late start today after a night of tossing and turning. The news is depressing, as usual. Crazy Grandpa Trump is making an complete ass of himself on his Asian trip, where he’s temporarily left behind all the messes he’s left us with here.
People walk along a road during the passing of Hurricane Melissa in Rocky Point, Jamaica, on Tuesday. Matias Delacroix AP
Before I get to the politics news, here’s a brief update from CNN on the devastation Hurricane Melissa is leaving in her wake.
• Severe damage: Melissa hit Jamaica as one of the strongest Atlantic hurricanes on record, caused major damage to public infrastructure and left most of the island without power. The full extent of the devastation there is unclear with some areas inaccessible.
• Deadly storm: Twenty five people have died in Petit-Goâve, Haiti, after a river flooded by Melissa burst its banks, the local mayor said. Three people were killed in Jamaica during storm preparations, and one person died in the Dominican Republic.
Hurricane Melissa made landfall in Jamaica Tuesday as the strongest storm in the island’s history. The Category 5 hurricane tore a path of destruction across the island, causing major flooding and power cuts. Prime Minister Andrew Holness declared the country a “disaster area.”
The massive storm swept through Cuba early this morning as a Category 2 hurricane. Over 750,000 residents were evacuated ahead of the storm. Melissa is now carving a path towards the Bahamas.
The intense winds have diminished in Jamaica, but the National Hurricane Center warns that heavy rains and flooding might continue.
And this is a monster of a storm that meteorologists say will be in the history books. Only six other Atlantic storms have done that since record-keeping began.
Click the NPR link to see more photos.
We’re expecting stormy weather from Melissa here in Massachusetts on Thursday night and Friday. I hope it won’t interfere too much with kids’ Halloween plans.
Some lowlights from Trump’s embarrassing foreign trip:
You probably saw this video of spaced-out Trump being guided around by the new Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi.
Trump in Japan.He has no idea what's going on, just wanders off.His brain is cooked.This is insane.
President Donald Trump treated his time in Japan on Tuesday as a victory lap — befriending the new Japanese prime minister, taking her with him as he spoke to U.S. troops aboard an aircraft carrier and then unveiling several major energy and technology projects in America to be funded by Japan.
By the end of the day, Trump — by his administration’s count — came close to nailing down the goal of $550 billion in Japanese investment as part of a trade framework. At a dinner for business leaders in Tokyo, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick announced up to $490 billion in commitments, including $100 billion each for nuclear projects involving Westinghouse and GE Vernova….
It was not immediately clear how the investments would operate and how they compared with previous plans, but Trump declared a win as he capped off a day of bonding with Takaichi.
Because they are probably fake “investments.” There’s more at the link.
President Donald Trump rarely has anything negative to say about the men and women of the U.S. military, but he made an exception on Tuesday to offer a rare criticism of America’s fighting forces: They may be too “good-looking” for his tastes.
Trump was in the midst of an address to sailors aboard the U.S.S. George Washington, the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier that is semi-permanently based at the American naval base in Yokosuka, Japan, when he paused an attempt to praise the assembled service members to rant about their excessive attractiveness.
Speaking on the second day of a multi-day, multi-country trip through Asia that will conclude after a planned summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Thursday, Trump said the Navy’s “ultimate strength” comes from “the men and women of the rank and file,” calling his uniformed audience “incredible people” and “good-looking people.”
After a beat, he said there were “too many good-looking people” present.
“I don’t like good-looking people,” he continued, as the sailors laughed at their commander-in-chief’s bizarre remark.
“I never liked good-looking people, I’ll be honest with you … never admitted that before,” he said.
Trump: You take a little glass of water and you drop it on magnets. I don't know what's going to happen.
Donald Trump went on a deranged rant about the power of water to destroy magnets during a rambling address to the U.S. Navy just off the coast of Japan.
Speaking aboard the USS George Washington aircraft carrier during his tour of East Asia, the president appeared to suggest—in a largely incoherent speech—that he is pushing for aircraft carriers to use “steam for the catapults” and hydraulics for elevators, while wrongly claiming that water can disable magnets.
The elderly president was talking about the magnetic catapults used to launch planes from the latest Navy super carriers, the USS Gerald R. Ford class, and the electromagnetic elevators used to move weaponry to the flight deck. Both systems double the speed with which planes can be armed and launched but slowed the delivery and commissioning of the $13 billion flagship of the class.
“You know, the new thing is magnets. So instead of using hydraulic that can be hit by lightning and it’s fine. You take a little glass of water, you drop it on magnets, I don’t know what’s going to happen,” Trump said.
“So, you know, the elevators come up in the new carriers—I think I’m going to change it, by the way—they have magnets. Every tractor has hydraulic, every excavator, every excavating machine of any kind has hydraulic. But somebody decided to use magnets.”
The 79-year-old president then stumbled over his words and failed to complete a coherent sentence before moving on and asking the watching troops whether they preferred hydraulics or magnets.
Trump then called out to a “top-ranking general” in the crowd for his opinion before continuing his tirade against the 2,000-year-old technology.
“I’m going to sign an executive order. When we build aircraft carriers, it’s steam for the catapults and it’s hydraulic for the elevators. We’ll never have a problem,” Trump said. “He agrees. Everybody agrees. But, ahh, these people in Washington.”
President Trump told American troops assembled in Japan on Tuesday that he was prepared to send “more than the National Guard” into cities to enforce his crackdowns on crime and immigration, further escalating how he has talked about using the military at home and abroad.
Trump “dances” for the troops in Japan.
Speaking to thousands of military service members aboard an aircraft carrier at the Yokosuka Naval Base in Japan on Tuesday, Mr. Trump delivered a partisan speech that resembled the raucous rallies that made him an ascendant force in U.S. politics.
But throughout his nearly hourlong speech, his usual ramblings about the physical appearances of audience members and steam-powered catapults were laced with dark warnings about how he might choose to deploy military forces.
“We have cities that are troubled, we can’t have cities that are troubled,” Mr. Trump said. “And we’re sending in our National Guard, and if we need more than the National Guard, we’ll send more than the National Guard, because we’re going to have safe cities.”
Legal disputes over what troops under federal control may be used to do on domestic soil — like a bar on using them to enforce the law, except when there is an insurrection — treat National Guard troops under federal control and active-duty troops as the same.
Mr. Trump also defended the U.S. military’s strikes against what the administration has said are suspected drug smugglers. The tactics have drawn widespread rebuke from experts who have said it is illegal to use the military to target civilians — including criminal suspects — who are not directly participating in hostilities.
Mr. Trump has increasingly used speeches to the military to air his grievances and bolster his accomplishments. Still, the scene was striking: an American president defending war and military deployments on U.S. soil, and employing partisan talking points on the global stage.
It’s a lot more than “striking,” IMHO.
Next stop for Trump: South Korea.
They all know how to play him. It isn’t difficult. bsky.app/profile/acyn…
GYEONGJU, South Korea, Oct 29 (Reuters) – South Korea welcomed U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday with a replica gold crown and awarded him with the “Grand Order of Mugunghwa”, the country’s highest decoration, the presidential office said.
Trump landed in South Korea on the final leg of a trip through Asia that also saw stops in Malaysia and Japan, with high-profile trade talks expected with South Korean President Lee Jae Myung and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
U.S. and South Korean warplanes escorted Air Force One on approach, and on the tarmac a South Korean military band greeted Trump with a rendition of “YMCA” and guns fired a salute.
Lee is hoping to win concessions from Trump in drawn-out negotiations aimed at lowering U.S. tariffs on South Korea, and has wooed the U.S. president by praising his outreach to North Korea.
Lee’s office said that in recognition of Trump’s role as a “peacemaker” on the Korean peninsula, he was awarded the “Grand Order of Mugunghwa”, which is named after South Korea’s national flower, a pink hibiscus also known as the Rose of Sharon in English.
They really know how to suck up to Trump.
Trump was gifted a replica of the golden Cheonmachong crown. The delicate original, which was found in a tomb in Gyeongju, features towering gold prongs and dangling leaf shapes.
“This symbolizes the history of Silla, which maintained a long-term era of peace on the Korean Peninsula, and a new era of peaceful coexistence and common growth on the Korean Peninsula that the United States and South Korea will work together for.”
The leaders had a working lunch that included Thousand Island salad dressing, in what Lee’s office said was a nod to Trump’s “success story in his hometown of New York.” The meal also included local specialties “according to President Trump’s preferences.”
On the menu were “mini beef patties with ketchup”, a “Korean Platter of Sincerity” featuring U.S. beef and local rice and soybean paste, and grilled fish with a glaze of ketchup and gochujang, a red chilli paste.
The lunch was capped by a “Peacemaker’s Dessert” consisting of a brownie adorned with gold.
A gold crown, junk food and being lauded as a “peacemaker.” What more could Trump ask for?
Donald Trump gushed over Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the most cringeworthy way possible on Wednesday, describing the leader as “the nicest-looking guy” and then attempting to impersonate him.
The elderly president went there at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Gyeongju, South Korea, during his tur of East Asia. He was bragging again that he single-handedly brought a swift end the four-day armed conflict between nuclear rivals India and Pakistan earlier this year by allegedly threatening both nations with 250 percent tariffs.
Indian officials have publicly rejected Trump’s repeated claims that he mediated the ceasefire. Sources told Bloomberg that Modi skipped the entire summit in Malaysia this week because Indian officials were worried Trump would once again repeat his self-proclaimed role in ending the conflict. They probably didn’t anticipate the accent.
“I’ll tell you what, Prime Minister Modi is the nicest looking guy,” Trump said, adding Modi looked like someone “you’d like to have as your father.”
“He’s tough as hell,” Trump said, before launching into a Modi impersonation, complete with what sounded like an attempt at an Indian accent: “No, we will fight!”
“I said, ‘Whoa, is that the same man that I know?’” Trump told the room.
Trump then took credit again for ending the escalating crisis, a claim disputed by officials in New Delhi. He said it wouldn’t have been resolved “if it wasn’t for the tariffs.”
“After a little while, and they’re good people, and after literally two days they called up, and they said we understand, and they stopped fighting—isn’t that amazing?”
The White House on Tuesday fired all six members of the Commission of Fine Arts, an independent federal agency that had expected to review some of President Donald Trump’s construction projects, including his planned triumphal arch and White House ballroom.
“On behalf of President Donald J. Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position as a member of the Commission of Fine Arts is terminated, effective immediately,” reads an email reviewed by The Washington Post that was sent to one of the commissioners by a staffer in the White House presidential personnel office.
The commission, which was established by Congress more than a century ago and traditionally includes a mix of architects and urban planners, is charged with providing advice to the president, Congress and local government officials on design matters related to construction projects in the capital region. Its focus includes government buildings, monuments and memorials. White House officials have traditionally sought the agency’s approval.
President Joe Biden appointed the six sitting commissioners to four-year terms, several of which would have extended through 2028. Their termination comes as the White House gears up for several Trump construction projects, including his planned $300 million White House ballroom, and seeks to install allies on key review boards.
A White House official confirmed that the Commission of Fine Arts members had been terminated.
“We are preparing to appoint a new slate of members to the commission that are more aligned with President Trump’s ‘America First’ policies,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters.
I guess Trump will get approval for his tasteless ballroom and Hitler arch then.
Democrats are expanding their probes into President Donald Trump’s demolition of the East Wing and construction of his planned ballroom, with lawmakers pressing the White House and outside companies to explain the project’s finances and what was promised to contributors.
Sen. Adam Schiff (D-California), a frequent critic of President Donald Trump, is opening a probe into the president’s planned White House ballroom. (Demetrius Freeman, The Washington Post)
Sen. Adam Schiff (D-California) and colleagues on Tuesday demanded that the White House provide a “complete accounting” of how it is paying for the ballroom, including any terms for donors. Trump said Friday that he had raised more than $350 million to pay for the project, and the White House has said that at least three dozen companies and private individuals have helped fund it.
“The opaque nature of this scheme reinforces concern that President Trump is again selling presidential access to individuals or entities, including foreign nationals and corporate actors, with vested interests in federal action,” Schiff wrote to White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles in a letter shared with The Washington Post. Schiff, a frequent critic of the president, also sent his request to the Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan watchdog that conducts oversight of the executive branch.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) separately sent letters Tuesday to contractors involved in the White House construction project, including McCrery Architects, Clark Construction and engineering firm AECOM, questioning the “rapidly changing and secretive terms” of Trump’s planned ballroom. The letters were also shared with The Post.
Trump said in July that the ballroom would cost about $200 million and hold 650 guests, estimates that he increased last week to $300 million and nearly 1,000, respectively. The ballroom donors include defense and tech companies including Amazon, Apple, Google, Lockheed Martin and Meta, which frequently have business before the administration. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Post.)
Lawmakers said they were frustrated that the White House had neither consulted Congress nor received approval from at least two relevant federal commissions before rapidly demolishing the East Wing last week.
Five Senate Republicans voted with Democrats on Tuesday night to pass a resolution terminating President Trump’s emergency authority to impose steep tariffs on Brazil, one of the biggest exporters of coffee to the United States.
The Senate voted 52 to 48 to pass the resolution sponsored by Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) to terminate Trump’s 50 percent tariffs on Brazilian imports, such as coffee, oil and orange juice.
Paul, speaking on the Senate floor, called the tariff a tax on U.S. consumers.
The Kentucky Republican argued that the Constitution requires that “taxes must originate in the House” of Representatives.
“Yet, these taxes are originating with the White House,” he said.
McConnell, in a statement, said that Trump’s tariffs are hurting Kentucky businesses and farms.
It’s symbolic, but still could be a positive sign.
I guess this post is kind of disorganized–I’m just not that with it today. But that’s all I have for you. I hope there’s something here worth reading/watching.
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“No one said it would be easy.” John Buss, @Repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
Once again, we’ve been treated to the overtly unconstitutional view that Orange Caligula can run for a third term. Somehow, Steve Bannon managed to get airtime again, and the legacy media has gone wild with speculation. We’re also listening to more insane chatter about how mentally “healthy” #FARTUS is now that he’s had a supposed MRI at Walter Reed. All of these sideshows are undoubtedly trying to get the focus off the Epstein files, bombing hapless fishermen off coasts in South America, and the incredible price inflation in food, gasoline, and everything.
Can you believe this is our reality now? Here’s the headline from the New York Times from the story by Katie Rogers. “Trump Says a Recent M.R.I. Scan Was ‘Perfect,’ and He’d ‘Love’ a Third Term. President Trump made the comments on the second day of his trip to Asia. The Constitution limits presidents to two terms, but Mr. Trump has suggested he might try to circumvent it.”
President Trump said that he underwent magnetic resonance imaging earlier this month, telling reporters aboard Air Force One on Monday that the results had been “perfect” but declining to say why his doctors had ordered the scan.
Mr. Trump also reiterated that he was interested in serving a third term, saying that he “would love to do it” because of his popularity with his supporters. Mr. Trump, who spoke to journalists for about 30 minutes on a flight to Tokyo from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, during his almost weeklong trip to Asia, seemed intent on presenting himself as fit to lead, if not run for the presidency again.
The Constitution sets a two-term limit for presidents, but Mr. Trump and his supporters have increasingly floated the possibility of finding a way to circumvent the 22nd Amendment, which states that “no person shall be elected to the office of the president more than twice,” regardless of whether the terms are consecutive.
In discussing his health, Mr. Trump offered a small new detail about the tests that the White House physician, Dr. Sean P. Barbabella, said the president had received during a recent visit to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
“I gave you the full results,” Mr. Trump said, mischaracterizing the summary that was released by his physician. The summary did not say that Mr. Trump had an M.R.I. scan and had few details on what testing the president had undergone. When asked why he had undergone an M.R.I., the president said, “you could ask the doctors.” Magnetic resonance imaging, a noninvasive technology that creates detailed images of the inside of the body, is often used for disease detection and monitoring, or to detect bone or joint abnormalities.
Even the ladies on the view have a better handle on this nonsense than most of the news media. This is from MediaITE. “Trump’s 3rd Term Flirtation Triggers Five-Alarm Panic on The View: ‘Damn if He Isn’t a Dictator!’” I wouldn’t be so damned worried about this if it weren’t for the corrupt Supreme Court.
The co-hosts of The View sounded a full five-alarm warning on Monday over President Donald Trump’s musings about running for an unconstitutional third term.
Whoopi Goldberg began Monday’s show by declaring, “Well, you-know-who told us he was going to be a dictator on day one and, damn, if he isn’t a dictator!”
Goldberg referred to former Trump advisor Steve Bannon’sclaim that Trump is “going to get a third term.”
On Air Force One on his way to Japan Monday, Trump gave a nebulous answer to a reporter’s question about whether he would pursue a third term.
“Am I not ruling it out? I mean, you’ll have to tell me,” Trump said.
Alyssa Farah Griffin said, “There’s certain people in Trump’s orbit who, when they tell you what they’re going to do, I listen. And I would put Steve Bannon on the top of the list. He has been one of the most senior advisers to Trump the first time he ran, predicted the events around January 6th, the efforts to overturn the election. And I feel crazy because I feel like a conspiracy theorist talking about this!”
Sunny Hostin said that Trump’s ballroom project indicates that he doesn’t plan to leave the White House.
“He is hooking up the White House because he doesn’t plan on leaving it. I don’t think he plans on leaving,” Hostin said.
“I told y’all that years ago, that he had — he was not going anywhere,” Goldberg added. “He said it. He said, ‘I want to be president for life.’ I heard him say it, I watched his lips move, and I thought, he means this!”
Ana Navarro claimed, “This is a guy who has got authoritarian envy. He goes around to these countries and he loves — he wants the parades, he wants the arches, he wants the ballrooms, he wants to be an emperor, he wants to be an authoritarian. Paying no attention to the Constitution, that’s the way Ortega does it, the way Chavez did it, the way Maduro does it, Putin does it.”
Perhaps we need a national GoFundMe for relieving Trump of his duties due to mental deficiencies. I always look to Ruth Ben-Ghiat for some rational and data-based explanations of our situation. Her blog, Lucid, is a very good place to start. “TINA (There Is No Alternative) and the Leader as “A Vehicle of Divine Providence, and my video on covering corruption and violence with an aura of holiness.” If there ever is a fascist movement, you can rely on the hyper-religious to be behind it.
In January 2016, when I forecast that Donald Trump would develop a formidable personality cult along the lines of Vladimir Putin’s and Silvio Berlusconi’s if he won the GOP presidential nomination, people called me an idiot and a clown. But Trump has developed a leader cult that conforms to my description from nine years ago:
Here’s the trick to cults of personality: the leader has to embody the people but also stand above them. He must appear ordinary, to allow people to relate to him. And yet he must also be seen as extraordinary, so that people will grant him permission to be the arbiter of their individual and national destiny.
Autocrats are always looking over their shoulders for rivals, and the claim of uniqueness is also designed to insulate the leader from the idea that others could do or have done his job better. It also silences dreaded talk of successors.
The history of autocrats suggests that the more corrupt, violent, and hated they become, the more they use TINA messaging as they seek to stay in office indefinitely. In 2008, when Putin was still consolidating his power, he agreed to have someone else (Dmitry Medvedev) serve as president, while he served as prime minister, due to a constitutional ban on an individual serving three consecutive terms. By 2020, following the large 2019 public protests over corrupted Moscow elections, vacating the presidency was no longer an option. So Putin staged a referendum to amend the constitution to stay in power until 2036. His argument? That looking for successors would jeopardize the stability that only he could offer.
Americans got a taste of TINA messaging on Oct. 19, the day after an estimated 7 million people participated in No Kings protests. Trump responded by posting an AI-edited video that advocates for him staying in office in 2036, 2048, and…forever (“Trump4Eva”).
There is no better way to give TINA traction than to proclaim the leader as in office by the will of God and spin his every action as the fruit of divine intention. This idea has the most credibility if religious leaders circulate it. Dictator Benito Mussolini, an atheist, knew this: he made the Lateran Accords with the Catholic Church and was rewarded by Pope Pius XI proclaiming him to be a “man of Providence.”
I really don’t want to be making you have nightmares tonight, but there needs to be some bud-nipping about his virality, sanity, and a third term right now. I’m getting tired of propaganda driving decisions for this country. Here’s some more news that should make you shiver. This is from AXIOS and written by Emily Peck. “The economy is in uncharted territory.” Literally.
Data went dark this month. The government shutdown is halting the collection and release of statistics tracking the job market, public health and crop production, as well as other economic indicators.
Why it matters: The numbers are critical for understanding what’s happening in the U.S., particularly at a moment of rapid change in both government policies and in the job market.
How it works: Businesses use gold-standard government data, like the jobs report, to set wages and make hiring, pricing and investment decisions.
Investors watch the numbers so closely that they can drive big stock reactions. Policymakers use the data to set minimum wage standards and increase food assistance or other important benefits.
Where it stands: Since the shutdown began on Oct. 1, government agencies have stopped collecting or releasing information about:
The labor market. The Bureau of Labor Statistics didn’t release a September employment report and hasn’t collected any data in October.
We don’t know the unemployment rate or how many jobs businesses are creating. Few companies appear to be hiring, and job anxiety is skyrocketing.
Public health. Weekly numbers that track how many Americans are coming down with the flu, RSV or COVID-19 haven’t been updated.
Local governments, doctors and Americans are in the dark about illnesses that lead to hospitalizations and the deaths of tens of thousands every year just as respiratory virus season typically kicks up.
Agriculture. The USDA’s weekly export sales report and daily sales announcements, and its monthly World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates aren’t coming out. Farmers and commodity traders are left with little information at the peak of the harvest season and at a time when tariffs are driving much angst, Reuters reports.
Demographic information. The 2024 American Community Survey Public Use Microdata Sample was supposed to be released on Oct. 16.
It’s one of the few publicly available datasets that allows for measurement of economic, demographic and housing trends across small geographic areas and small population subgroups.
Between the lines: This isn’t an all-inclusive list.
And though these should be temporary stops, there is other data that the Trump administration has walked away from permanently: on food insecurity and weather disasters.
Reality check: Some information was too important to skip. On Friday, the BLS released its Consumer Price Index, covering inflation in September — a measure tied to Social Security’s Cost of Living Adjustment, which the government said would be 2.8% next year.
But no data on October has been collected.
This is no way to run a modern economy. We’re now on the IMF warning list. This is via MSN but originally published at Euronews. “US borrowing expected to rival Europe’s most indebted states, says IMF.” This story is reported by Una Hajdari.
Global public debt is rising faster than at any point in modern history, and this time, it is not just the historically large spenders driving it.
The International Monetary Fund’s latest Fiscal Monitor warns that the public finances of major powers, led by the United States, have become a systemic global risk.
“Although the number of countries with debt above 100% will be steadily declining in the next five years, their share in world GDP is projected to rise,” the report stated.
This means that the collective or “global public debt is projected to rise above 100% of world GDP by 2029,” it said. In such a scenario, public debt would be at its highest level since 1948.
According to IMF calculations, this trajectory “reflects a higher and steeper path than projected before the pandemic”, signalling that governments have failed to stabilise their debt despite the recovery of global growth.
The US marks the steepest rise
The United States will see the steepest increase among major advanced economies when it comes to debt-to-GDP ratio, according to the IMF.
From 2023 to 2030, general government gross debt will climb from 119.8% of GDP in 2023 to 143.4% in 2030.
The institution noted that the United States will, for the first time this century, surpass Italy and Greece on this front — long viewed as the developed world’s most indebted states.
I’m not the least bit a deficit hawk, but this is really not good. You may read the analysis at the link.
"There is a clear mental health crisis going on in the Oval Office right now. He is detached from reality. Every politician and pundit, every journalist…knows this. It should be the biggest story in our media. But, shamefully, it isn’t."Me for 'First Draft':
This is from Mehdi’s Monday morning round-up, which can be found at the above Bluesky link.
Who was the president of the United States in 2020? Donald Trump, right? Obviously. We all know that.
Except perhaps… Donald Trump himself. For years now, Trump and his supporters have bizarrely behaved as if the first Trump presidency ended in 2019. They like to brag about the amazing state of the economy in 2019, while ignoring the soaring unemployment they left behind at the end of 2020. They complain about the COVID lockdowns in 2020, as if the president behind the lockdowns wasn’t… Donald John Trump.
On Friday, Trump went one step further. In fact, the president took a full step right into Crazytown with this post on his Truth Social website:
Got that? The president of the United States thinks ex-Special Counsel Jack Smith and former Biden DOJ alums Merrick Garland and Lisa Monaco “cheated and rigged the 2020 Presidential Election.” Back in 2020, to be clear, Merrick Garland was an appeals court judge, Lisa Monaco was a lawyer in private practice, and Jack Smith was the chief prosecutor at a war crimes tribunal in The Hague.
How, then, did they “rig” the 2020 election when they weren’t in government? Or did they, upon joining the Biden administration in 2021 and 2022, take a time machine and travel back in time to November 2020?
And, on Saturday, the mad king in the White House took a further step into Crazytown. He increased tariffs on Canada by 10% over current levels because – I kid you not – the Canadians hurt his feelings with a television ad. Yes, really!
“Canada was caught, red handed, putting up a fraudulent advertisement on Ronald Reagan’s Speech on Tariffs,” he declaimed on – where else? – Truth Social, adding: “The sole purpose of this FRAUD was Canada’s hope that the United States Supreme Court will come to their ‘rescue’ on Tariffs that they have used for years to hurt the United States.”
How is this not a parody? How is this even legal? Does this sound like a sufficient national security argument for Trump bypassing congressional authority on tariffs? American families will now have to pay even more in taxes – as that is what tariffs are! – because their president got really mad over a foreign television ad. An ad which, as the New York Times pointed out, “faithfully reproduces Reagan’s words” from 1987, in which the Gipper denounced tariffs.
On Sunday, the King of Crazytown continued his demented and dangerous all-caps ranting online, insisting pregnant women not take Tylenol unless “ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY” and telling parents to avoid the MMR shot.
None of this is remotely normal. There is a clear mental health crisis going on in the Oval Office right now. He is detached from reality. Every politician and pundit, every journalist in the White House press corps, knows this. It should be the biggest story in our media.
But, shamefully, it isn’t.
I so miss Mehdi and Joy! I’m glad they can be found writing important things like this while the old school media folds to the Trump Regime like paper airplanes from Qatar.
Anyway, that’s enough depressing us for one day.
Is he dead yet?
What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?
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Leandro M. Velasco (b.1933), Blonde in Red with a White Cat
I’m still focused on Trump’s demolition of the White House East Wing. Lately I’ve been wondering what happened to all the furniture and art work.
Was any of it saved, or was everything destroyed along with the building? Has anyone reported seeing moving vans outside the White House that could have been removing some of the valuable items and putting them in storage? If not, could all these things be stored in the White House itself? I doubt it. Why aren’t journalists asking these questions?
I don’t trust Trump to preserve anything of historical value. I would not be at all surprised if he simply demolished the building and all of its contents. After all, he destroyed the Rose Garden and replaced it with a pavement and tacky tables with attached umbrellas. And Trump has a history of carelessly destroying important art works.
With Donald Trump demolishing the White House’s East Wing to make room for a 90,000-square-foot ballroom, the president is returning to the playbook from his Trump Tower days—move fast, build big and leave preservationists fuming.
Key Facts
In October 1979, New York City’s Planning Commission approved a special permit for Trump to build a 56-story mixed-use tower on the site of the Bonwit Teller department store on Fifth Avenue.
Trump later wrote in “The Art of the Deal” that in December 1979, a representative of the Metropolitan Museum of Art asked him to donate two 15-foot-tall Art Deco bas-relief sculptures of semi-nude goddesses and a 15-by-25-foot nickel-plated grill from the condemned building’s facade.
“I said that if the friezes could be saved, I’d be happy to donate them to the museum,” Trump wrote in “The Art of the Deal”; he later confirmed the deal in writing, according to Preservation News, a publication of the National Trust for Historic Preservation of the United States.
In June 1980, however, the “sculptures were smashed by jackhammers” while the grillwork, which was supposed to be shipped to a New Jersey warehouse, went missing, Preservation News reported at the time.
Trump said he had the friezes torn down after being told their weight would require “special scaffolding for safety’s sake,” delaying the project by several weeks.
“I just wasn’t prepared to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars to save a few Art Deco sculptures that I believed were worth considerably less, and perhaps not very much at all,” he wrote.
“We are certainly very disappointed and quite surprised,” Ashton Hawkins, vice president and secretary of the Met’s board of trustees, told the New York Times, which ran an article about the destruction on the front page. “Can you imagine the museum accepting them if they were not of artistic merit?”
Read more details about Trump’s path of destruction:
The White House Family Theater, the movie theater which first came to be in 1942 when a cloakroom was converted into a screening room, was demolished this week as part of the destruction of the East Wing to make room for President Donald Trump’s planned $300 million ballroom.
By Lina Rivo
From sporting events to film screenings, the theater provided entertainment and enjoyment to presidents and their families since the latter part of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency.
According to The White House Historical Association, Roosevelt enjoyed watching World War II-era news reels in the former cloakroom in the East Terrace at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, “and took special interest in the battles fought in Europe and Asia.”
The 32nd US president demonstrated an understanding of the importance of pop culture, including movies.
“Entertainment is always a national asset,” Roosevelt said in 1943 as the United States was engaged in WWII. “Invaluable in time of peace, it is indispensable in wartime.” [….]
Later presidents greatly enjoyed showing movies in the theater, and the George W. Bush Library detailed that film screenings would run the gamut from official events with members of the public invited as guests to “private events and intended for the enjoyment of the President, his family, and his close friends and staff.”
“The best perk out in the White House is not Air Force One or Camp David or anything else,” said former President Bill Clinton. “It’s the wonderful movie theatre I get here, because people send me these movies all the time.”
I suppose Trump could have saved the vintage chairs with footrests, lights, and decorations, but I’m sure he didn’t.
Satellite images show President Donald Trump’s project to build a $300 million grand ballroom has appeared to take down at least six trees on the White House grounds — including two historic magnolia trees commemorating Presidents Warren G. Harding and Franklin D. Roosevelt.
The satellite images released on Thursday provide the fullest picture yet of the extent of the demolition work on the White House’s East Wing and its effect on the surrounding parkland — changes made without consulting the government commission established by federal law to ensure the preservation and integrity of government buildings in D.C., according to former commission officials who spoke to ABC News.
Visible construction work on the new ballroom appears to have begun more than three weeks ago, according to satellite images of the White House complex taken over the last month. An image taken on Sept. 26 shows preparations for the construction, including the removal of multiple trees in President’s Park.
The Jacqueline Kennedy Garden — established by first lady Edith Roosevelt as the Colonial Garden in 1903 adjacent to the East Wing — was also leveled during the demolition, according to satellite images. Earlier this year, Trump also paved over the Rose Garden, which was designed by the same architect who designed the Kennedy Garden.
President Donald Trump says he has no plans to name his $300 million White House ballroom after himself.
Speaking to reporters in brief remarks while departing the White House on Friday evening for a trip to Asia, Trump denied an earlier report that he was likely to add his name to the new ballroom.
“I don’t have any plan to call it after myself,” Trump said. “That was fake news. Probably going to call it the presidential ballroom or something like that. We haven’t really thought about a name yet.”
Earlier, senior administration officials told ABC News that some in the administration were already referring to it as “The President Donald J. Trump Ballroom” and that that name was likely to stick….
Before Friday, Trump had not publicly said what he intends to name the ballroom, but he is known for branding his construction projects after himself.
When asked by ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Mary Bruce on Thursday if he had a name for his ballroom yet, Trump smiled and said: “I won’t get into that now.”
Manfred W. Juergens, The Girl with the Cat
Give me a break. Of course he’ll name it after himself. He’ll probably put a huge “Trump” sign on it–like the one on Trump tower. And I expect his name will also be on the Hitler arch he’s planning that will overshadow the Lincoln Memorial.
President Donald Trump is accepting anonymous donations for the grand ballroom he is currently having built at the White House, an aide told NBC News on Friday.
While the Trump administration has released a list of donors for the project that has become a fixation for the president (which includes NBCUniversal’s parent company, Comcast), the aide said that some may contribute anonymously.
“We will, and have so far, released names of donors and companies who wish to be named publicly. Donors also have the option to remain anonymous and we will honor that if that’s what they choose,” said the aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to candidly discuss the undertaking.
The White House would not commit to publicly releasing the amount of money each donor gives to the project, with the aide saying similarly that the administration “will honor the wishes of the donors of what they want publicly shared.”
Trump claims he won’t accept foreign donations, but how would we know? He’s a fucking liar; you can’t believe anything he says.
The 123-year-old East Wing of the White House, the home of offices for every first lady for almost half a century, is now a pile of rubble. After Trump said in July that the historic building would not be touched, it was stealthily bulldozed to make way for a $300m ballroom. According to Trump, there was a teeny little change of plans “after really a tremendous amount of study with some of the best architects in the world”.
While the likes of the National Trust for Historic Preservation are upset about the destruction of a “National Historic Landmark, a National Park, and a globally recognized symbol of our nation’s ideals”, some large corporations appear to be looking on the bright side. Trump has said the new 90,000 sq ft ballroom is going to be “paid for 100% by me and some friends of mine”. Now the world’s CEOs have a wonderful opportunity to prove just how friendly to Trump they are….
By Jane Wood
National history aside, this sudden demolition of the first ladies’ headquarters raises a lot of questions. If I lived in a house that I didn’t own – one that I was scheduled to move out of in January 2029 – I probably wouldn’t start an enormous and extremely controversial construction project. Why is Trump doing this?
The short answer is: because he wants to. As I think we all know by now, the president does whatever the hell he feels like regardless of norms, conventions, or silly little laws. And, increasingly, there’s nobody there to stop him. The only checks that Trump cares about are the ones made out to him and the only balances he is interested in are those of his bank accounts.
Trump has given a few rationales for the project that go beyond ‘because I want to.’ He’s argued that the old East Wing was no longer fit for purpose and a much larger space was needed. There are some people out there who agree with him. Gahl Hodges Burt, for example, who was social secretary for three years under President Ronald Reagan, told the New York Times that tearing down the East Wing to make space for the ballroom was unfortunately necessary and overdue.
Beyond practical issues, there’s also ego. Trump’s big boy ballroom will be a big shiny monument to him long after he’s gone.
Still, you’ve got to wonder whether this mega-project means the president is not actually planning on going anywhere anytime soon. Particularly since Trump doesn’t seem to be the sort of person to start a large project he won’t have a chance to personally enjoy. The US Constitution’s 22nd amendment makes it very clear that a president cannot have more than two terms. But that hasn’t stopped Trump from repeatedly teasing the idea that he might serve a third term. In March he told NBC News he was “not joking” about the idea and there were methods for doing so.
Read more at the link.
According to Nancy Walecki at The Atlantic, Trump may be planning to use the rubble and dirt from the East Wing teardown to upgrade a golf course (gift link). My Quest to Find the East Wing Rubble.
I’d heardthat the dirt from the East Wing demolition was being deposited three miles away, on a tree-lined island next to the Jefferson Memorial called East Potomac Park. So yesterday I drove around until I saw trucks and men in construction gear. They were congregating at an entrance to the public East Potomac Golf Links, where rounds of golf carried on as usual, except every few minutes, dump trucks entered the green.
By Giovanni Parlatto da Massaquano
The trucks would cut across the course to a cordoned-off site in the middle, where the grass had been torn away and replaced with piles of dirt. It did not look like much, but several employees at the site confirmed: This was not just any dirt. This was White House dirt. The precursor to the East Wing was constructed during Theodore Roosevelt’s administration in 1902 and updated during Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration in the ’40s. Maybe this was not just White House dirt but Roosevelt-era dirt. I gazed upon the golfers going about their games. Do they know, I wondered, that they are in the presence of such particularly American soil?
I asked one employee what the plan was for all this dirt. “Oh, they’re gonna turn it into another hole,” he said. Other reportershave heard the same. But when I asked a different employee about it, he demurred; his boss drove by and said, “No comment” before my colleague Grace Buono had even asked him a question. Donald Trump has reportedly been considering rebranding East Potomac Golf Links as the Washington National Golf Course and giving it a makeover. He even mocked up a new golden logo for it that’s nearly identical to those of the courses he owns. I suppose the East Wing demolition is an excellent source of soil. (The White House did not respond to my request for comment. It told CBS News that wood and plants from the site could end up being recycled for garden nurseries.)
Use the gift link to read more if you’re interested.
This might be a dumb question, but where will all those hundreds of people going to the ballroom park their fancy cars and limos? Maybe Trump is planning to knock down the entire White House and replace it with a parking lot?
Meanwhile, thanks to the government shutdown, the “big beautiful bill,” and Mike Johnson’s keeping the House from meeting, millions of Americans will soon be facing hunger and lack of health care.
While Republicans have sought to blame Democrats for the potential loss in benefits that people who make little money rely on, those who work in the food-insecurity space say that is misleading because Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act already eliminated almost $187bn in funding for Snap through 2024, according to a congressional budget office estimate.
Should funding run out at the end of the month, “we will have the greatest hunger catastrophe in America since the Great Depression, and I don’t say that as hyperbole”, said Joel Berg, CEO of Hunger Free America.
Snap supports working families with low-paying jobs, low-income people aged 60 years and older and people with disabilities living on a fixed income, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
Snap participants generally must be at or below 130% of the federal poverty line. The average participant receives about $187 a month, the center reports.
The Department of Agriculture recently sent a letter to regional Snap directors warning them that funding for Snap will run out at the end of the month and directing them to hold payments “until further notice”.
More than 200 Democratic representatives have urged the USDA to use contingency funds to continue paying for Snap benefits.
“There are clear steps the administration can and must take immediately to ensure that millions of families across the country can put food on their table in November,” a letter from the lawmakers to the USDA states. “SNAP benefits reach those in need this November would be a gross dereliction of your responsibilities to the American people. We appreciate your consideration of these requests.”
The Trump administration won’t tap emergency funds to pay for federal food benefits, imperiling benefits starting Nov. 1 for nearly 42 million Americans who rely on the nation’s largest anti-hunger program, according to a memo obtained by POLITICO.
USDA said in the memo that it won’t tap a contingency fund or other nutrition programs to cover the cost of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which is set to run out of federal funds at the end of the month.
By Gurutze Ramos
The contingency fund for SNAP currently holds roughly $5 billion, which would not cover the full $9 billion the administration would need to fund November benefits. Even if the administration did partially tap those funds, it would take weeks to dole out the money on a pro rata basis — meaning most low-income Americans would miss their November food benefits anyway.
In order to make the deadline, the Trump administration would have needed to start preparing for partial payments weeks ago, which it has not done.
White House and Trump administration officials warned earlier this week they were unlikely to shift funds around to avert SNAP lapsing for 40 million low-income Americans in November — instead blaming Democrats for the pending lapse.
Premiums for the most popular types of plans sold on the federal health insurance marketplace Healthcare.gov will spike on average by 30 percent next year, according to final rates approved by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and shown in documents reviewed by The Washington Post.
The higher prices — affecting up to 17 million Americans who buy coverage on the federal marketplace — reflect the largest annual premium increases by far in recent years. The higher premiums, along with the likely expiration of pandemic-era subsidies, mean millions of people will see their health insurance payments double or even triple in 2026.
The premium spikes, mirroring the rising cost of private-employer-sponsored plans,arrive during a protracted and bitter congressional battle over health insurance costs that prompteda government shutdown Oct. 1.Democrats have urged an extension of enhanced subsidies for plans sold through the Affordable Care Act to soften the blow of rising insurance costs, while Republicans have said the additional assistance was never meant to be permanent.
The spike in premiums will become visible to more Americans on Monday, when the Trump administration is expected to open Healthcare.gov for window shopping to browse the price of plans ahead of the Nov. 1 start to open enrollment.
But Trump will get his ugly ballroom.
I’ll end there, and add some links in the comment thread. What do you think about the Trump’s destruction of the East Wing? What else is on your mind today?
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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.
You can find his work at his website by clicking on his logo below. He is also a calligraphy artist that uses important vajrayana syllables. We encourage you to visit his on line studio.
Even the ladies on the view have a better handle on this nonsense than most of the news media. This is from 
Perhaps we need a national GoFundMe for relieving Trump of his duties due to mental deficiencies. I always look to Ruth Ben-Ghiat for some rational and data-based explanations of our situation. Her blog, 
I really don’t want to be making you have nightmares tonight, but there needs to be some bud-nipping about his virality, sanity, and a third term right now. I’m getting tired of propaganda driving decisions for this country. Here’s some more news that should make you shiver. This is from AXIOS and written by Emily Peck. “The economy is in uncharted territory.” Literally.
This is no way to run a modern economy. We’re now on the IMF warning list. This is via
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