Finally Friday Reads: False Ethos and Pathos rule the Media and Politics

Posted: April 24, 2026 | Author: | Filed under: Foreign Affairs, Republican politics, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , | 11 Comments

“Meanwhile, early this morning somewhere near Nashville…” John Buss, repeat1968,

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

The headlines are yet another mash-up of feelings run amok and logic gone awry. Another week has passed, and I don’t regret getting rid of cable and most forms of TV news. It’s just all one big tabloid of rampant stupidity. Here’s a great headline from The Intercept about our nation’s FBI Director. “Kash Patel Got Arrested for Public Urination After a Night of Drinking. The FBI director was arrested twice in his youth for alcohol-related incidents that he said were “not representative of my usual conduct.”

It’s another sign of why Republicans never do any due diligence when running committee hearings to affirm Federal Office holders in the highest offices in the nation. They’re a psychiatrist’ nightmare.

Eventually, some independent news agency catches up to them, and we read about it on the internet news stream, which is a hash of conspiracy theories and the hard work of a few good reporters. This story is reported by Trevor Aaronson.

FBI Director Kash Patel was twice arrested in incidents involving alcohol, once for public intoxication and once for public urination after leaving a bar, he admitted in a 2005 letter about disclosures on his Florida Bar application.

The letter obtained by The Intercept was part of Patel’s personnel file at the Miami-Dade Public Defender’s Office, where he once worked. The document, written “per instructions of my employer,” describes incidents of alcohol-related indiscretions not uncommon for those in their teens and twenties.

Two decades later, as Patel pushes back against allegations that drinking is impairing his leadership of the nation’s top law enforcement agency, these arrests show how Patel’s alcohol use has been subjected to scrutiny before in his professional life.

One incident recounted by Patel occurred in 2005, about four months before he wrote the letter. At the time, he was a law student at Pace University in New York celebrating with friends.

“We went to a few of the local bars and consumed some alcoholic drinks,” he wrote.

When they walked home, they made a bad decision.

“In a gross deviation from appropriate conduct, we attempted to relieve our bladders while walking home,” Patel said in the letter. “Before we could even do so, a police cruiser stopped the group. We were then arrested for public urination.”

Patel paid a fine after the incident, he wrote in the letter.

That’s still nothing compared to the stories we heard about dead animals and RFK Jr.  This is from one of last week’s editions of The Guardian. I suppose I no longer need to explain that when I write these blog posts, they are surrounded by political cartoons, not beautiful artwork or actual photos anymore. I prefer animated Scheudenfrade. “RFK Jr once cut penis off ‘road-killed raccoon’ in New York, new book reveals. Health secretary in a diary entry said his kids were in the car as he cut off animal’s genitals in 2001 to ‘study them later’.”

Don’t worry, I’ll keep this brief. Buddha bless the entire Guardian staff that had to work on this one.

Robert F Kennedy Jr once cut the penis off a road-killed raccoon in an incident that is just one of several involving dead animals that the controversial US health secretary has been involved in.

A new book called RFK Jr: The Fall and Rise was published this week and reveals a diary entry for Kennedy that describes the prominent vaccine critic and leader of the “Make America healthy again” (Maha) movement stopping his car on a New York highway on 11 November 2001.

“I was standing in front of my parked car on I-684 cutting the penis out of a road killed raccoon, thinking about how weird some of my family members have turned out to be,” Kennedy wrote in the journal.

He added: “My kids waited patiently in the car.”

Isabel Vincent, the author of the new book, told People that he took the raccoon’s genitals so he could “study them later”.

Kennedy has long had a fascination for animal bodies, especially those he finds dead which he sometimes collects and studies. Elsewhere in the book, the author notes that a journalist traveling with Kennedy in Long Island in 2001 reported that he was fascinated by dead seagull corpses.

“I’d like to pick up some of these dead seagulls for my skull collection,” the book quotes Kennedy as saying, though his schedule on the day did not allow him to pause his journey and harvest the bones.

There have been numerous stories involving Kennedy and his treatment of dead animals.

Environmental groups were outraged over a story which revealed the former presidential candidate once severed the head of a washed-up deceased whale with a chainsaw and strapped it to his car’s roof. He also once confessed to dumping a dead bear cub in New York’s Central Park, attempting to make it look like the creature was killed by a bicyclist.

Meanwhile, hardworking, competent Federal officials get the nuisance-lawsuit treatment. This is from the Associated Press. “Justice Department drops criminal probe of Fed chair Powell, likely clearing the way for Warsh.” It’s really difficult to see how normal people stay sane and hold their offices in this environment.

The Justice Department has ended its investigation into Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell, clearing a major roadblock to the confirmation of Kevin Warsh as his successor.

U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeannine Pirro said on X on Friday that her office was ending its probe into the Fed’s extensive building renovations because the Fed’s inspector general would scrutinize them instead.

The move could lead to a swift confirmation vote by the Senate for Warsh, a former top Fed official whom President Donald Trump, a Republican, nominated in January to replace Powell. Powell’s term as chair ends May 15. Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, had said he would oppose Warsh until the investigation was resolved, effectively blocking his confirmation.

Republicans praised Warsh during a Tuesday hearing even as Democrats questioned his independence from Trump, the lack of transparency around some of his financial holdings, and what they said was his flip-flopping on interest rates. Still, Trump’s previous appointment to the Fed’s board of governors, Stephen Miran, was approved by the full Senate just 13 days after his nomination.

Investigation lacked evidence, a court says

The probe was among several undertaken by the Justice Department into Trump’s perceived adversaries. For months it had failed to gain traction as prosecutors struggled to articulate a basis to suspect criminal conduct. Other efforts by the department to prosecute Trump’s adversaries, including New York state Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, and former FBI Director James Comey, have also been unsuccessful.

A prosecutor handling the Powell case conceded at a closed-door court hearing in March that the government hadn’t found any evidence of a crime, and a judge subsequently quashed subpoenas issued to the Federal Reserve. The judge, James Boasberg, said prosecutors had produced “essentially zero evidence” to suspect Powell of a crime. Boasberg branded prosecutors’ justification for the subpoenas as “thin and unsubstantiated.”

Speaking of the Republican-based press, base, and politicians peddling one conspiracy theory after another, we see that Tucker Carlson may have gone one too far.  I would have never thought that possible, given their depths of depravity and idiocy. This is from The Hill. The analysis and opinions are provided by Matt Lewis.”Trump lived by the conspiracy theory — now he pays the price.” This is basically a class in Karma 101.

A truism of life — right up there with “don’t read the comments” — is that what goes around comes around. Put another way, if you live by the sword, you will eventually die by the sword.

For more than a decade, these maxims didn’t seem to apply to President Trump — a man who once strongly suggested that Barack Obama had not been born in America, that the 2020 election was stolen, and that Haitian immigrants in Ohio were eating dogs and cats, just to name a few of his whoppers.

To be sure, Trump defenders will note that Democratic conspiracy theories (“Russia-gate,” for example) have also been aimed at Trump. Yes, but Trump legitimately invited scrutiny, and credible analyses rejected the most extreme conclusions anyway — for example, the existence of a “pee tape” or the notion that Russia somehow manipulated election results or otherwise rigged the 2016 election on Trump’s behalf.

Regardless, we have entered a new and possibly ironic phase of the timeline: Trump is finally discovering what it’s like to be on the losing end of a conspiracy theory.

Trump’s failure to release Epstein files was probably the inflection point. But more recently, the conspiratorial thinking about Trump has metastasized.

After Trump cast himself as Jesus on a Truth Social post, some corners of his own political ecosystem began speculating that he might instead be the Antichrist.

Tucker Carlson, for example, went on his podcast and asked, “Could this [Trump] be the Antichrist? Well, who knows? At least that’s my conclusion: Who knows?”

Others settled on demonic possession, which in internet discourse is considered the moderate position.

Michelle Goldberg, writing for the New York Times, has the Tucker story. This from her is an Op-Ed today. “The Conspiracy Theory Behind Tucker Carlson’s Apology.”  Who among us ever thought the word apology and Tucker Carlson would appear in the same headline?”  He must need money or something.

Tucker Carlson, you might have heard, is sorry. Early this week he posted a long conversation with his brother, Buckley, a former Trump speechwriter, in which they tried to make sense of the wreckage of the second Donald Trump presidency.

“We’re implicated in this, for sure,” said Tucker. A few moments later, he added: “It’s a moment to wrestle with our own consciences. You know, we’ll be tormented by it for a long time. I will be, and I want to say I’m sorry for misleading people.”

For those of us who have spent the past 10 years horror-struck at the mass delusion that Trump is a great man rather than a singularly rapacious and volatile charlatan, Carlson’s words might seem cathartic.

Over the past decade, conservatives have been angrily insisting that our mad emperor is elegantly clothed rather than obscenely naked. Now, finally, there’s growing agreement about his obvious unfitness. Indeed, some former Trump superfans are suddenly wondering if he might be the Antichrist.

I’m all for embracing converts to the anti-Trump cause. But if you listen to the dialogue between Tucker and his brother, it’s clear that rather than honestly reckoning with their role in America’s derangement, they’re developing a new conspiracy theory to explain it away.

Trump, they strongly imply, has been compromised — maybe even blackmailed and physically threatened — by Zionist or globalist forces seeking the deliberate destruction of the United States. On Tucker’s podcast, Buckley described a systematic undermining of America through the George Floyd protests, mass migration and now the war with Iran.

“It can’t be a confluence of random events,” Buckley said. “It is clearly by design. It’s clearly been a long-term plan.”

Can any of you come up with an explanation or some elucidation on WTF is going on here? My vote goes for the rats are leaving the ship. So what better mission for the insane Orange Caligula to come up with during these headlines than yet another way to fuck up yet another National Monument of the utmost historical importance?

Will the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool be his next act of cultural devastation? This is from NBC News. “Trump says he’ll renovate ‘filthy’ reflecting pool on National Mall. At an Oval Office event, the president said he’s planning to pour a new surface for the 2,000-foot reflecting pool, giving it an “American flag blue” hue.”  Well, at least it isn’t piss gold. Kyla Guilfoil has the lede.

President Donald Trump touted plans Thursday to coat the Lincoln Memorial’s reflecting pool in an “American flag blue” hue, one of his latest construction efforts to refashion government buildings and monuments in Washington, D.C.

Trump said he was inspired to oversee renovations after a friend visited from Germany and noted its decay.

“He said, ‘it’s filthy, dirty. The water is disgusting looking. It’s not representative of the country,'” Trump recalled during a White House event Thursday on drug prices.

He posted a video speaking about the renovation of the more than 2,000-foot-long pool on Truth Social, shortly before his White House event with reporters.

“Right now, it’s got no water in it because it was in terrible shape. It was filthy, dirty, and it leaked like a sieve for many years,” Trump said in the video. “So I actually went over, went with Secret Service and a group of people, and I took, took a look at it.”

The president said there were initial plans to remove the granite in the pool and replace the stone, but that process would have cost $300 million and taken more than three years to complete.

Once again, I sit at my desk and shake my head. It’s a good thing day-drinking was never my thing.

What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?

 

Monday Reads: Still No News Fit to Print

Posted: April 20, 2026 | Author: | Filed under: Foreign Affairs, U.S. Politics, Afternoon Reads | Tags: , , , , , | 4 Comments

“Trump’s imaginary negotiations with Iran are going well…. for some.” John Buss, @repeat 1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

Today’s headlines about the series of ongoing crises created by Orange Caligula and his Cabinet of Imbeciles continue. It’s hard to miss the chaos surrounding the Iran War. This headline from The Bulwark says it all. “Trump’s Not Paying Attention to His Own War. But then again, do we want him to be?” There’s a good explanation for that, too.

As the Iran crisis spirals back out of control, it’s a big day for the president of the United States: His official schedule suggests he will have “Executive Time” all morning until 1:30 p.m., followed by a ninety-minute policy meeting and a closed-press session to sign executive orders. Heavy is the head.

Of course, these leaves Pete Hegseth pretty much on his own. That’s not a good thing either. This is from The New Republic today.  “Does the SEC Care Whether Hegseth Is Killing Iranians To Get Rich? Senator Elizabeth Warren has requested an insider-trading probe of the defense secretary.” Timothy Noah has the lede.

Last month, I considered whether Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth used what he knew about the imminence of the Iran war to expand his stock portfolio with a little blood money (“Is Pete Hegseth Killing Iranians To Get Rich?”). That was the thrust of a shocking Financial Times report, based on three anonymous sources, that said Hegseth’s Morgan Stanley broker approached BlackRock in February about making a “multimillion-dollar investment in the asset manager’s Defense Industrials Active ETF.” An ETF, or exchange-traded fund, is a financial instrument comprised of multiple stocks and/or bonds that are bundled together and sold as a single stock.

According to the FT, Hegseth’s broker’s request was flagged internally at BlackRock, presumably because it so obviously threatened to trigger an insider-trading investigation. (I’m guessing the FT’s three sources all worked at BlackRock.) Ultimately, BlackRock denied the request on the technicality that its Defense Industrials Active ETF was not yet available to Morgan Stanley clients. Whether Hegseth found some other way to profit from the Iran war remains an open question. (A Pentagon spokesperson called the FT report “entirely false and fabricated” and denied that Hegseth or any Hegseth representative approached BlackRock.)

This is a matter that demands immediate investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission, and this morning Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, sent SEC chair Paul Atkins a letter requesting him to do just that.

It says a lot about our current scandal-rich environment that the FT story hasn’t dominated the news these past three weeks. But congressional Democrats certainly didn’t forget it. The day after the story broke, the House Committee on Government and Oversight Reform’s ranking member, Representative Robert Garcia of California, and the ranking member of its Subcommittee on Military and Foreign Affairs, Representative Suhas Subramanyam of Virginia, sent Hegseth a letter instructing him to preserve “all documents, records, and communications” on his financial transactions back to November 1, 2024. Regrettably, no investigation by their committee is likely, because its chair, James Comer of Kentucky, is perhaps the most shamelessly partisan hack in the entire Republican House majority. As I write, Comer is trying to justify Pam Bondi’s evading a committee subpoena in its Jeffrey Epstein investigation despite the fact he previously voted to hold the Clintons in contempt for defying committee subpoenas in the same investigation.

Two days after the FT story broke, Warren and three other Democratic members of the Senate Armed Services Committee pointed out, in a letter to Hegseth, that even in peacetime Hegseth would be prohibited by federal law “from owning any stock in Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, Huntington Ingalls, Boeing, RTX Corporation, and L3Harris Technologies.” Stakes in all of these companies were bundled into the ETF his broker reportedly tried to buy. It would be illegal for Hegseth to buy a Defense Industrials Active ETF because—duh—these are defense companies, and Hegseth is the Secretary of Defense.

In her new letter, Warren observes that failure on the SEC’s part to investigate the FT allegations would undermine “the confidence investors around the world place on the integrity of our markets.” Granted, Hegseth’s broker was not able, the FT reported, to complete the offending insider trade. But securities law, Warren points out, doesn’t just ban securities fraud; it also bans attempted securities fraud. The relevant language is “whoever knowingly executes, or attempts to execute” (italics mine) the fraud in question.

If the FT story is true (and I think probably it is), why would Hegseth do anything so very stupid? If I’m right that the FT’s three sources were all at BlackRock, it shouldn’t be hard for a determined investigator to locate them. Also, if Hegseth’s request was flagged internally at BlackRock, that probably means there’s a paper trail just waiting for some government official to subpoena. Even if Hegseth defied Garcia and tossed all communications with his broker into a bonfire, he’d still be screwed. This is not a difficult investigation. So, I ask again: How could Hegseth be so stupid?

He just is naturally stupid as well as drunk stupid.  I think we all should now that now. NPR’s Liz Landers has this headline today. “Trump tells PBS News that ‘lots of bombs start going off’ if Iran ceasefire expires.”

President Donald Trump told PBS News on Monday morning that if the ceasefire with Iran expires Tuesday, “then lots of bombs start going off.”

The statement came during a phone call with White House correspondent Liz Landers focused on the Iran war, as a U.S. delegation is preparing for more peace talks.

Here are highlights from the call.

PBS News: What happens if the ceasefire expires tomorrow evening?

Trump: Then lots of bombs start going off.

Is Iran still participating in the talks that will be happening in Islamabad? Will they still be there?

I don’t know. I mean, they’re supposed to be there. We agreed to be there, although they say we didn’t. But no, it was set up. And we’ll see whether or not it’s there. If they’re not there, that’s fine too.

What do you want from the negotiating team in Islamabad?

No nuclear weapons. Very simple. Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. Very simple.

[Jared] Kushner has a lot of business and financial interests in the Middle East region, from Saudi Arabia and other countries. Is it appropriate for him to be negotiating there, do you think?

Well, he was there before, long time before, and he’s purely negotiating for the fact that they’re not going to have a nuclear weapon. Whether you have business or not, everybody knows that’s the right thing. He’s a very good negotiator …

So you see no …

No, I mean, we’re not negotiating anything other than the fact that they will not have a nuclear weapon. And that’s pretty basic when you get right down to it. So you know, that’s it. I sent an A-team. I sent my A-Team, he’s done an excellent job. He doesn’t participate with Saudi now, as you know. He’s taken… He doesn’t do that. He has a business but he doesn’t participate now.

Today’s Trump Toady meltdown goes to Kash Patel.  This report at Politico is by Cheyanne M. Daniels. “Kash Patel files defamation lawsuit against The Atlantic. Patel is seeking $250 million in damages for an article that alleges he has a drinking problem.” The photos that accompany these articles are pretty damning so I can’t figure out what he thinks he’s doing with lawsuit other than follow his leader’s examples of frivolous losing lawsuits. “Kash Patel files defamation lawsuit against The Atlantic. Patel is seeking $250 million in damages for an article that alleges he has a drinking problem.”

Kash Patel has filed a defamation lawsuit against The Atlantic, accusing the magazine and its reporter Sarah Fitzpatrick of defamation over an article that alleged the FBI director has a drinking problem.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Monday, refers to an article published April 17 that claims Patel has a habit of “excessive drinking and unexplained absences,” among other recurring behavioral patterns.

The suit argues that Fitzpatrick’s reporting is part of an ongoing pattern from The Atlantic to “damage Director Patel’s reputation and force him from office.”

The Atlantic on Monday defended its reporting.

“We stand by our reporting on Kash Patel, and we will vigorously defend The Atlantic and our journalists against this meritless lawsuit,” The Atlantic said.

The article, citing about two dozen anonymous sources, details Patel’s alleged “conspicuous inebriation and unexplained absences;” claims the director is often “away or unreachable, delaying time-sensitive decisions needed to advance investigations;” and that Patel is “deeply concerned that his job is in jeopardy.”

POLITICO has not independently corroborated The Atlantic’s reporting.

Patel’s lawsuit states that the unnamed sources had “obvious axes to grind,” and highlights that the White House, Department of Justice and Patel himself all denied the allegations in the article. It also alleges that a pre-publication letter sent to The Atlantic went “ignored.”

This headline in The Nation by Jeet Heer gave me the giggles. “We Could Do Worse Than Kash Patel Being a Drunken Buffoon. If the FBI director’s alleged intoxication prevents him from carrying out Trump’s agenda, that might not be such a bad thing.

Normally, SWAT teams rely on specialized “breaching equipment” to break down the doors in an emergency where criminals are hunkered down in a heavily fortified bunker. But last year, FBI agents reportedly almost used breaching equipment not to capture a dangerous lawbreaker but to try to wake up their boss, Kash Patel.

On Friday, Sarah Fitzpatrick, writing in The Atlantic, reported that the FBI director has frequently been so incapacitated by heavy drinking that he has been unable to do his job. According to Fitzpatrick, “On multiple occasions in the past year, members of his security detail had difficulty waking Patel because he was seemingly intoxicated…. A request for ‘breaching equipment’…was made last year because Patel had been unreachable behind locked doors.”

Fitzpatrick’s article, which is based on interviews with numerous government officials who were granted anonymity, paints a detailed and troubling portrait of a senior public official prone to “conspicuous inebriation and unexplained absences.” Fitzpatrick notes,

Several officials told me that Patel’s drinking has been a recurring source of concern across the government. They said that he is known to drink to the point of obvious intoxication, in many cases at the private club Ned’s in Washington, D.C., while in the presence of White House and other administration staff. He is also known to drink to excess at the Poodle Room, in Las Vegas, where he frequently spends parts of his weekends. Early in his tenure, meetings and briefings had to be rescheduled for later in the day as a result of his alcohol-fueled nights, six current and former officials and others familiar with Patel’s schedule told me.

Both the White House and Patel have disputed the entirety of Fitzpatrick’s reporting, and on Monday morning, Patel filed a $250 million defamation lawsuit against The Atlantic over her piece. But even before the Atlantic story, there was already ample public evidence that Patel is wildly unfit for the job. He has repeatedly damaged high-profile cases, such as the Charlie Kirk murder investigation, by making premature and false statements in an attempt to hog the media spotlight. He has also been accused of using a FBI jet for private business, including meetings with his girlfriend.

There is no question that Patel is a buffoon. The only factual uncertainty is whether he is an often-soused buffoon or a largely sober one.

If I represented the Atlantic, I’d lock in the earliest deposition date on the calendar. Call Patel’s bluff. He has zero interest in putting any of this under oath.

— Andrew Weinstein (@andrewjweinstein.com) 2026-04-20T15:57:20.934Z

“As we await further escalation of Trump’s forever war, one of the members of his Liquor Cabinet hits the news circuit to defend his beseeched honorable service to our nation.” John Buss, @repeat1968

I leave this post on a hopeful note. This is from the New York Times‘ Nate Cohen. “Why a Democratic Senate, Once Unthinkable, Is a Real Possibility. Helped by a favorable national environment and strong candidate recruitment, Democrats are tied or ahead in four Republican-held seats, polls show.”  It’s all in the numbers

At the start of the 2026 election cycle, the Senate looked far out of reach for the Democrats. The House always seemed competitive, but retaking the Senate would require flipping at least four Republican-held seats — including at least two seats in states that President Trump won by double digits in 2024. In today’s polarized era, Democrats would need everything to break their way.

So far, everything is breaking the Democrats’ way. With Mr. Trump’s approval rating falling and inflation rising, along with the uncertainty of a war in the Middle East, it’s not hard to imagine a Democratic tsunami in November. A blue wave is not guaranteed, of course, and Democrats would not be assured to flip two reliably Republican states even if it were. But a feasible path for the party to win the Senate is coming into focus.

In recent polls, Democrats appear tied or ahead in four Republican-controlled seats — the number they would need to take the Senate. These include Maine and North Carolina, where the likely Democratic nominees hold clear leads, as well as Ohio and Alaska, where Democrats have recruited strong candidates in states Mr. Trump won by double digits in 2024. There are also signs that Republicans could be in danger in two more states where Mr. Trump won by double digits: Iowa and Texas.

Over the last few weeks, the betting markets have shifted to make the Senate a tossup, though some analysts haven’t gone quite so far. Whether the Senate is a tossup or not, it’s clearly competitive — and that’s something that might have been hard to imagine a year ago.

In the Trump era, Democratic Senate candidates haven’t had much success at winning in red states. They failed to flip vigorously contested seats in Texas, Tennessee and Montana in 2018 and 2020. And most Democratic red-state incumbents — including those in Florida, Indiana, North Dakota and Missouri — lost re-election. Today, every Democrat in the Senate represents a state that voted for Joe Biden in 2020.

Looking even further back, no party has managed to flip two states that leaned so much toward the other party since 2008. Only one such seat (Illinois in 2010) was flipped in a regularly scheduled election; two more flipped in memorable special elections (Massachusetts 2010 and Alabama 2017). Most of these victories took extraordinary circumstances, like a criminal conviction, a child molestation allegation or a bank seizure.

This time, Democrats aren’t benefiting from anything as unusual as a criminal conviction.

Instead, they’re counting on a favorable national political environment, strong candidates and the possibility that several of these states may not be quite as Republican-leaning as they seem.

Read more on all of these items on the links. My top suggestion is the Heer article on Hegseth. It would be nice to get an actual hearing on that during the midterms, especially combined with high gas prices.

What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?

I’m adding this and basically speechless. WTF does this mean? Bibi is running our country now?

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