Dear Everybody:
The big news today is bad–the networks, who were bravely (I thought) boycotting Trump because of his ban on CNN, MS NOW, and Politico, have caved:
–Four of the five major networks: ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC–will resume video pool coverage on Sunday. The New York Times called it a “climbdown” by both sides, but they definitely caved.
–The networks said they “will decide whether to replace CNN when it’s their turn.” And they said the boycott could resume at any time, but it sounds like an empty threat after this.
–I’m trying to look on the bright side. First, the case is still ongoing and the judge hasn’t made a ruling yet, just a temporary injunction. Second, although I HATE the idea of the press caving, I want every single crazy word Trump says out there on TV and the internet because every time he opens his mouth he sounds nuttier than ever. Case in point, this morning, when Trump said, “We have the best, uhh, I guess you could say, poverty.”
–Reed Galen: “Out of the mouths of morons.”
–Arturo Dominguez: “Poor white people would like a word.”
In Iran War news:
–The Pentagon quietly added 31 service members to their wounded tally, which now stands at 861. No details were given.
–Trump official Jonathan Burke toured the Middle East last week telling countries they have to choose between Iran and the US. (First rule in court: Never ask a question you don’t know the answer to.)
–Trump said Iran wants to make a deal but he’s not interested. He also said Iran outsmarted itself by blockading the Straits of Hormuz before the US blockaded it. He posted another map labeled Trump Strait.
–Ron Filipkowski: “According to Trump, Iran wants to make a deal badly and is begging to surrender to him because they are completely destroyed but he doesn’t want to accept that so the war must continue and he will bomb them again very strongly and powerfully right after the midterm elections.”
–Senator Mark Kelly: “The president got into this without a strategic goal, without a plan, without a timeline, without an exit strategy. He’s stuck. I think what the president would love to do is get back to where he was before he started this thing…the thing has been a disaster and it’s been a mistake, and it’s because of the failed leadership of the president.”
–The New Yorker: “President Trump is deeply unpopular and trapped in an unwon war of his own choosing. A reckoning–one far harsher than was expected, even a few months ago–seems imminent.”
–Greg Sargent: “Total collapse. 70% says his Iran war has hurt the US. 75% say he has no plan for the war. 76% say the war isn’t worth the costs.”
–Meanwhile, the Republicans continue to gaslight us. Scott Bessent: “Iran’s economy will collapse probably within the next two weeks. The straits are open.”
The government has released another pro-Trump ad at our expense:
–This one is in black and white and shows Trump walking ominously toward the screen while the voiceover of one of his speeches plays one of Trump’s speeches: “This is the final battle. With you at my side we will demolish the deep state, we will expel the warmongers from our government…we will rout the fake news media,” etc., etc., ending with “we will liberate America from these felons once and for all.”
–Agustin: “All paid for by the US government.” (Which means we the taxpayers paid for it.)
–Aaron Rupar: “Absolutely demented–like a scene from a horror movie.”
–This ad and the previous “Love Me” ad which the government posted as propaganda and which caused so much outrage since taxpayers footed the bill apparently was done just to calm the president because he was mad at Republicans who’ve been trying to distance themselves from him.
–Zeteo: “Two sources with knowledge of the situation say that Team Trump made sure to get the ‘Love Me’ ad on Fox and in the Washington, DC media market, so that the president would see it on the TV in the White House and therefore not ask why he wasn’t seeing it on TV.”
–Zeteo said they pulled a similar stunt in the 2020 election cycle, running ads in the Washington, DC area to “ease the boss’s anxieties,” as the Daily Beast put it. (Trump has almost no support in the DC area, so the ad was a total waste of money.)
–One source told Zeteo Trump wanted the ad to go everywhere.
–The song “Love Me” by JMSN, was used without permission.
–Redheadedlady: “There’s no reason anyone should have to ‘calm down’ a freakin’ president. They should, in the real world, be mature enough not to get riled.”
–Mark Baker: “So basically…Trump is the crazed dementia patient that they’re trying to manage.”
–Pixie: “Much like his father. They used to give Fred stacks of meaningless papers to sign to keep him calm.”
–GOP Senator John Kennedy actually spoke out about this: “I don’t think any public official, including Trump or Noem or John Kennedy should spend public money on private ads for themselves…I may end up with a sombrero on my head, but I also think he ought to have a rule that no politician can have a building named after him when he’s alive.” (Note: In case you don’t get the reference, he’s talking about Trump putting AI sombreros on Hakeem Jeffries’ and Chuck Schumer’s heads to mock them.)
–Kennedy has been speaking out against a lot of Trump policies lately. But as Rich Swinton says, “The rats are fleeing the sinking ship. Too late.”
In other Trump dementia/madness news:
–Trump posted the speech he was finally forced to make late in the afternoon on January 6th, telling the insurrectionists to go home, but when he was asked about it, he seemed to not remember that at all. Reporter: “On Friday, you posted a video from January 6 asking the rioters to go back home. What was the message?” Trump: “Who?” Reporter: “The rioters of January 6.” Trump: “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
–Mark Jacob: “It’s a scandal that the President of the United States is out of his damn mind. It’s also a scandal that major news media aren’t telling you that, loudly and often.”
–David Rothkopf: “Could someone please have an honest discussion about what is happening to this man? Like medical professionals.”
–simoninfinite: “He had a stroke, or multiple ones, at some point in the last few years. That goes with the droopy face, dragging his leg, and problems with the right arm. Top it with dementia (I personally think FTD) and huge circulatory problems and you have a good overview.”
`–Watchdog Progressive: “His medications are kept a secret. We can only speculate what they might be. When those meds wear off, we see this. He was very jacked up at the convention which leads me to suspect he is taking a stimulant of some kind or steroid.”
–And at nearly every rally, he has gone off about there being a “b” at the end of “dumb,” a fact he claims nobody knows except him.
In Just When You Thought the Monster was Dead news:
–Former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem (before she got fired) and Border Patrol head Greg Bovino (before he got fired) are back, and they are talking about running for president, saying, “We are running for America.”
–Kristi “The Dogkiller” Noem, famous for shooting her puppy, posted bloody photos of the elk she’d killed earlier this week, and today she and Bovino posted photos of themselves posing with all the pheasants they’d killed.
–Kristi Noem: “This is our native South Dakota bird, our state bird–chief, thank you for helping us kill our state bird today.”
–Greg Bovino: “At least we don’t have to deport them this time.”
–Moto: “So the state bird is an immigrant?”
–AJ: “Sure, I want to vote for those two failures, especially when they are so proud of killing state birds. They are reading the American public so very well.”
In AI news:
–Australia said an OpenAI agent hacked a government website, obtaining unauthorized access to the medical statistics portal of Australia’s Medicare program.
–Trump thinks changing the name of Artificial Intelligence to Super Intelligence is the answer to the entire AI problem, well, that, and not regulating it at all. But especially changing the name.
–Trump: “I don’t call it Artificial Intelligence anymore. I call it Super Intelligence because it’s a much better name. It’s a much more accurate name, because when you say the other, that means it’s fake. Artificial means it’s fake and it’s not fake. It’s just very strong intelligence. It’s much more elegant.”
–Also Trump: “The use of the word Artificial makes Intelligence fake. it makes it sound fake, and it is not fake.”
–Jake Tapper: “Was anything else agreed to regarding AI?” Mike Waltz: “We’re going to Super Intelligence now, Jack.”
–The US and Russia gutted a pact on AI weapons needing to be supervised by humans at the UN.
–If you’re wondering why Trump is so gung-ho about AI, Open AI’s president and wife gave Trump’s PAC $25 million dollars and 3 months later he withdrew a federal rule requiring AI companies to disclose their most dangerous experiments.
-This is a losing issue for Trump. The net favorability of AI has fallen 17 points, from plus 8 to minus 9 (42% favorable to 51% unfavorable) and people especially hate data centers.
–AG Todd Blanche: “The answer is not to just all of a sudden try to regulate AI.”
–Also Blanche: “AI has a lot of benefits. The fact that AI is able to understand what you want, where you want to shop, you don’t know it, but you actually benefit from that.” Reporter: “I don’t want that.” Blanche: “I know you think you don’t, but it’s not all bad.” Reporter: “I don’t want my government spying on me.”
In other other Trump dementia news:
–Changing AI’s name to SI (Sports Illustrated?) isn’t the only name change Trump has talked about. He changed the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, Lake Ontario to Lake America, and has talked about changing the names of the oceans.
–And at nearly every rally, he has gone off about there being a “b” at the end of “dumb,” a fact he claims nobody knows except him.
–He also went off on a riff about names to the UK’s PM: “You call it UK, Britain, they call it sometimes England. They go back to the old. It’s got more names than any other place in the world.”
–Human: “Well, Donald, England is a country. Great Britain is an island that doesn’t include Northern Ireland, and the UK is the sovereign nation that includes all four. You get a Dumb with a B in 4th grade geography.”
–(My theory is that as he sinks more and more into dementia, he is having more and more trouble with the names of things and that his obsession with all these names is part of that.)
In historical news:
–Today in 1822, Jean Francoise Champollion announced that he and other linguists (including English physicist and mathematician Thomas Young) had “solved the riddle of the Sphinx.” He was talking about the Rosetta Stone, which after over 20 years they had managed to decipher.
–The Rosetta Stone had been found in Egypt by Napoleon’s soldiers in 1799. It was a stele with the same edict (think executive order) chiseled in Greek, demotic (the lay language of Egypt) and ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, which up to that time no one had been able to decipher, since there was no one alive who spoke it or read it. But people did read and speak Greek and demotic, so they were able to use those two languages to decipher the third.
–It was an earth-shattering discovery which made it possible to decipher messages on the pyramids and in the tombs of ancient Egypt and unlocked the key to understanding their culture and history. And “Rosetta stone” is still used today to mean a riddle that is nearly impossible to solve.
In other news:
–The main Kremlin party retained its majority in Russia’s totally fixed Parliament election. (Surprise, surprise. The election excluded opposition candidates.)
–In their meeting, Trump asked President Xi if he wanted to buy weapons systems from the US. (Great idea! What could possibly go wrong?)
–Trump is planning to hold a rally in Mobile, Alabama in October. (Note: Alabama is blood red and not in contention at all.)
–“Obama adviser Amisha Cross: “There’s crazy and then there’s straitjacket crazy. He is at the straitjacket level. Trump’s usual approach of making things up and trying to make people believe or change their reality has stopped working, so he is heading to friendly territory.”
in good news:
–A federal judge ruled West Point cannot limit what its faculty say and write in public.
–The wind farm company, Revolution Wind, has finally completed construction of a 65-turbine wind farm off the coast of New England, in spite of Trump throwing up constant obstacles, playing endless dirty tricks, and, in one instance, ordering them to halt development.
–The Buffalo Bills asked Canadian band Bare Naked ladies to sing ‘Oh, Canada’ at the beginning of their game against the Detroit Lions to show solidarity with the Canadian fans (and to show the world not everyone in America is for Trump’s insane trade war with Canada.)
In Something to Look Forward To news:
–On Tuesday Jack Smith will testify IN PUBLIC to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
–He previously testified to them behind closed doors, and apparently his testimony was DAMNING. According to the New York Times, Republicans quietly conceded that Smith handled himself well behind closed doors and that a public platform would be a serious threat to Trump.
–This is just what Jack Smith has wanted all along. Stay tuned…
In funniest internet exchange of the day:
–Kazuo 3 challenged users: “I bet you can’t make a sentence without the letter A.”
–Ren answered: “You thought you did something, didn’t you? Well, sorry to burst your bubble, but numerous sentences could be constructed without employing the first letter of the English lexicon.”
–tzumi’s answer was way better. And shorter: “Fuck you.”
Today is Jim Henson’s birthday. The creator of the Muppets and all the Sesame Street characters left us far too soon. He said, “My hope is to leave the world a little bit better for my having been here.” It most certainly is. What would we do without Kermie and Miss Piggy and Bert and Ernie and Oscar the Grouch and Gonzo and Rowlf and all the rest of his wonderful critters–including my favorites, Rizzo the Rat and Pepe the Prawn. “Hokay?”
Best comment of the day, from Kermit the Frog (with some help from Paul Williams): “I’ve heard it too many times to ignore it. It’s something that I’m s’posed to be. Someday we’ll find it, the rainbow connection, the lovers, the dreamers, and me.”
Keep calm and carry on,
Connie Willis
