Monthly Archives: June 2026

Nicholas Grossman comments on the latest war strikes in the Strait of Failure Hormuz:

This isn’t a return to full-scale war, but it isn’t peace either. It is a new phase in the conflict: the fight to control Hormuz. The United States already lost the fight Trump started; it failed to achieve his declared goal of the Iranian regime’s unconditional surrender, or, barring that, Tehran’s acceptance of stringent nuclear restrictions. Now the conflict is over whether Iran controls Hormuz and can charge fees, or if the U.S. can restore the pre-war status quo, with ships transiting freely.

The two sides are making incompatible claims about the MOU’s contents. Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said that under the agreement, Iran has sole responsibility for the strait. Meanwhile, the Trump administration asserts that the U.S. will not allow Iran to “illegally control an international waterway.”

The MOU itself is ambiguous enough to allow for either interpretation. But that’s the problem: this core issue was never worked out. The MOU was essentially a negotiated agreement to negotiate an agreement, punting all major points of contention to future talks. [MS NOW]

This is the sort of loose-ends that I’d expect arrogant amateurs, telling themselves for years that their predecessors were overstaffed and underqualified, to leave behind. Now putting innocents in danger, needlessly expending munitions.

It’s a bad sign for the Strait of Hormuz and all the nations in the area. Well, except for Iran. Whatever you think of theocracies – I despise them – it doesn’t keep them from developing expertise in the areas of diplomacy and negotiation.

The summer blooms bleating for attention.

Tiger lily, lurking for prey.

Waiting for the de-icing fluid.

The Three Stooges plus manager.

Another in the line of waving hands frantically for attention:

President Donald Trump in recent months has cultivated a side project: counting the number of trees in a public park across the street from the White House.

Under Trump’s plans for Lafayette Square, which he has previously described as “the entrance to the White House,” the public park would feature 47 trees, matching his status as the nation’s 47th president, according to two people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to detail the administration’s plans for the park. The trees would all be maples, a favorite of the president’s. [WaPo]

Sure, that’s congruent with the President claiming you have to slap your name on things if you want to be remembered, if one accepts 47 as an alternate name, or symbol, for Trump. But it’s also a way to get the attention of the Divine, as mentioned earlier in this thread. Self-glorification, for the fools who’ll believe it, will get the Divine’s attention as much as achievement, or, at least for Christians, service to the unfortunate.

This may seem a bit single-minded, but the President does have that reputation, an example being the Central Park Five incident, in which he insisted on the guilt of five boys in a violent assault incident, even after they had been exonerated.

But it is what it is: a symptom of a mental illness inappropriate in an American President.

From March, Scott Hodge has a suggestion for covering our annual deficit:

The menu of solutions to close this gap is just as depressing: slash benefits and services or raise taxes. But one option could generate substantial revenue while making the tax system fairer: ending the tax exemption for America’s massive nonprofit business sector.

Many “charities” have become big businesses. While numerous benevolent charities do wonderful work, the industry is dominated by some of the top companies in America operating largely free from the tax obligations that burden their for-profit competitors. The commercial revenue generated by these nonprofits totaled $2.8 trillion in 2023, nearly three times the amount nonprofits receive from donations and government grants.

The warning signs were there in 1909 when Congress exempted charitable organizations from the corporate income tax. Although lawmakers intended to protect small fraternal societies providing insurance to widows and tending to the poor, they also exempted enterprises such as mutual lending and insurance companies, thus opening the door to exempting other business-like entities. [WaPo]

This is the sort of thing where the initial and continuing evaluation approach are attempts to discredit it. To me, the problem requiring a lot of thought is how to reliably distinguish between charitable and non-charitable revenue streams.

But I think it’s worth at least investigating further, and to ask whether or not charities really should not be paying taxes.

Kinism:

Kinism is the belief that Christians have a duty to prefer the members of one’s family – and by extension, one’s ethnic group – and should preserve racial differences in “racially homogeneous families, congregations, and in distinctive social and perhaps even national spheres.”^[1] The term is often used to refer to a “movement of anti-immigrant, ‘Southern heritage’ separatists who splintered off from Christian Reconstructionism to advocate that God’s intended order is ‘loving one’s own kind’ by separating people along ‘tribal and ethnic’ lines to live in large, extended-family groups.” [Wikipedia]

Not being Christian, I suppose I shouldn’t comment, but that doesn’t sound like any sort of Christianity of which I’ve ever heard. Noted in “Christians, Pay Attention to This,” Erick Erickson, The Erick Erickson Show:

This entire community, which seemingly found each other on social media, is trying to spread throughout reformed denominations and infest them with kinism, racism, and ethno-nationalism. One cannot say they lack discernment, which is what some people want to charitably do. They intentionally avert their eyes relying on Christian grace and charity to excuse them of their behaviors.

It’s the kickoff for the Trump Administration’s idea for bringing Americans together, the Great American State Fair^[1], headlined by the President himself. How far did he kick the ball? Let him describe it:

The Crowd was incredible last night, packed to the brim — At least 45,000 people were there, with a huge Television and online audience. I wish we were able to have an even larger area, which we will be able to do on July 4th when I’ll be speaking again. The airplane flyovers and music were fantastic. Everybody stayed right until the end of my Speech because they loved hearing about a truly successful America. See you again on July 4th! President DONALD J. TRUMP

Sounds lovely! But the President has a small reputation as a self-promoter, so let’s check a few other sources:

Roughly half of those in Wednesday’s crowd of more than 1,000 wore Trump’s slogans or likeness on their clothes. For them, America’s 250th birthday was secondary to an opportunity to see the president. [NBC News]

Well, I suppose, technically, more than 1,000 is congruent with 45,000, but that’s only if implied societal agreements about using inexact numbers, such as rounding down to the nearest thousand, are ignored.

The President also made a point of saying his crowd was riveted. Yet,

¹ Here’s a fair description:

The event, organized by Freedom 250, a public-private partnership created by Trump that labels itself as a nonpartisan nonprofit organization, marked the beginning of the 16-day exposition, envisioned as a modern-day world’s fair to celebrate America’s 250th birthday. [NBC News]

Why make a remark like this?

Vice President JD Vance on Thursday expressed sympathy for former president Richard M. Nixon, suggesting that Nixon was wrongly forced out as president in 1974 and comparing his political travails decades ago to those facing President Donald Trump now.

“As I joked … backstage, if Watergate happened tomorrow, it would be like a 12-hour news story,” Vance said in remarks at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in California. “The idea that it would have taken down a presidency is crazy.” [WaPo]

A couple of explanations that come to mind.

1. It’s part, even the consequent of, an attempt to normalize the repugnant behavior of an American President. By so doing, they normalize the behavior of President Trump, not only legally but socially. That social normalization I see as basically a defensive maneuver as the Republicans attempt to make President Trump’s behavior acceptable to doubtful members of the Party.
2. Vance is trying to be cool, like a younger kid trying to be cool with the older kids through imitation. He doesn’t really get it; he’s marinated in the culture of victimhood for long enough that even the remark, You can hear him suborn perjury on the tapes. He’s telling an intermediary, what to tell someone who’s about to be interviewed by the FBI, what to say and what not to say, by Presidential historian Timothy Naftali, doesn’t penetrate the repeated message.

All this doesn’t reflect well on the Republican Party. A key part of governance is the ability to recognize and comprehend basic realities. He doesn’t seem to have that ability, which makes the thought of a Trump resignation disturbing.

Suborn:

1. verb (transitive)
   to bribe, incite, or instigate (a person) to commit a wrongful act
2. criminal law
   to induce (a witness) to commit perjury [Collins Dictionary]

Noted in “Vance dismisses Watergate scandal, says ‘deep state’ went after Nixon,” Dan Diamond, WaPo:

“You can hear him suborn perjury on the tapes. He’s telling an intermediary, what to tell someone who’s about to be interviewed by the FBI, what to say and what not to say,” said Naftali, who oversaw the Nixon library’s Watergate exhibit. “You can hear Nixon being told that money had been found to hire teamsters to go and break the bones of demonstrators. That’s all illegal.”

Suborn perjury is itself a phrase I ran across in legal contexts.

Since I write this blog primarily to blow off steam, let me take a secondary target today and critique some bad writing. Understand, folks, I’m not a stylist, nor do I pretend to be. I’m an obsolete software engineer who still writes a lot of code, and, as most software engineers will affirm, I have a literalism mechanism running in the back of my mind most of the time. It dings when something I’m reading descends into masked gibberish, into contradictory statements which have no value in being contradictory, into cliched expressions that writer-wannabes throw onto the page in the belief that this’ll mark them as writers, but do not advance the story, but even inhibit the story, and a few other types of writing crimes.

That mechanism was triggered several times today while reading Maddowblog’s Mini-Report of last night, 24 June. Please note this is not a condemnation of Maddowblog, because the editor, who’ll remain unnamed for good reason, is merely copying the prose of other writers – uncredited. That latter is somewhat execrable, although they at least leave a link to follow.

I do this because I feel it helps readers to think more slowly and deeply, which, in today’s data-ridden social environment, is a necessity for those who wish to gain an understanding, rather than mere social standing. We’ll begin with …

* Sometimes, suppressed truths reach the public anyway: “A study on COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness has finally been published after being blocked from a government health journal. The vaccine was found to be about 55% effective against COVID-19-associated hospitalizations, and reduced COVID-19-related trips to emergency departments and urgent care clinics by 50%, according to the study published Tuesday by JAMA Network Open.”

A vaccine is a preventative, not a cure. On a third reading of the above, I can see the writer was trying to be clever, but they have a horse and wagon problem in their writing, because administering a vaccine does not reduce hospitalizations that have already occurred due to COVID-19.

* The state of the U.S. refugee program: “Under Mr. Trump, the program has effectively become a whites-only path to life in the United States, a culmination of the president’s longstanding antipathy toward immigrants and his embrace of the concept of ‘reverse racism’ as a guiding principle in his administration.”

This makes sense only if immigrants cannot be white, which is not true. Perhaps a word or two was inadvertently dropped by the writer or that mythical creature, the copy-editor.

* The push for a data center moratorium picks up a notable advocate: “House Energy and Commerce ranking member Frank Pallone of New Jersey on Wednesday called for Congress to impose a nationwide data center moratorium. Pallone is now the most powerful congressional Democrat with jurisdiction over energy and environment issues to support such a policy in the face of public backlash.”

… in the face of public backlash usually refers to an opinion opposite to that of the general public on some issue. In this case, the issue is the mass construction of public data centers to support the build out and operation of artificial intelligence (AI) services, in particular generative AI. Public city council meetings on the matter are facing protests here in Minnesota, according to the news, and national news sources report similar protests in some other parts of the country.

From this, I’d expect Pallone to be on the side of the builders of the data centers, but no: he’s asking for a moratorium.

And three writing blunders in a single post is way too much when coming from alleged writing, or reporting, professionals, even if their sources isn’t where they appeared here. They’re misleading, jarring, and betray a lack of thought that really can lead to conclusions that are unjustified.

And now back to your regularly scheduled imprecations, improper allegations, and impulsive accusations. Enjoy.

The only surprise has been the relatively light load of these:

S. 4692 was introduced in the Senate on June 4, 2026, by Senators Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) and Mike Lee (R-UT). The bill seeks to ensure “continued consumer access” to homeopathic products by amending the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FDCA). As CFI knows from our many years of opposing homeopathy, S. 4692 would give health care fraudsters the ability to mislead and endanger medical consumers.

Put simply, homeopathy is a multi-billion-dollar health care fraud, an industry that relies on pseudoscientific and illegitimate health claims. Annually, American patients are cheated out of billions of dollars per year and sold fake medicine for real medical problems. [from an email from Committee for Inquiry (CFI)]

Tuberville? Check. Lee? Check.

To be complete, a few Democrats have also supported fraudulent medicine over the years, some Senator from Iowa if memory serves. But I think he was in earnest, while neither one of these Republicans has done anything impressive in their time in the Senate.

CFI’s request?

We urge every CFI supporter to contact their Senator and call on them to vote against S. 4692.

It’s Tuesday and it already feels like Trump is flopping about like a salmon cornered in the shallows of the spawning river by a hungry bear. From important news such as

Trump keeps claiming Iran made concessions. Iran keeps denying them

and

Congress votes to rein in Trump on Iran in rare rebuke

and

Todd Blanche hit with state bar complaint backed by 101 former judges

not to mention the DNI debacle, now with sequels, or simply noting his entire Cabinet is not made up of the “best,” as he promised oh so long ago, but the worst. Moving on to relatively obscure failures, we have ducks dying as a consequence of his gross and possibly illegal mismanagement of the repair of the Reflecting Pool, the stock market slumping with the NASDAQ down 2.21% today, shrinking oil and munition stockpiles, and … oh, stop there?

Sure.

Look, maybe Trump has the patience of a saint, but I doubt it. Following the trail of squirrel-chewed baked goods into the forest, let’s ask the bleeding obvious:

What will he do to relieve his feelings of failure and inadequacy?

He has nuclear strike capability.

So, if Trump decides to take Tehran off the map, what will happen?

Will someone in that Cabinet try to stop him?

How about in the military?

Will Vance finally step up?

I think the answers here are No. But I think what might happen is this: Countries with nuclear missiles and surveillance capabilities will note the launch and the impact, and a few minutes later one, or more, of them will hit D.C., or Mar-a-Lago, or wherever Trump is located, with their own nuclear strike.

Because Trump will have demonstrated that he is insane, and, out of self-defense, they’ll take him out.

Or the American military will arrest and execute him after a summary court-martial.

Let’s hope this doesn’t happen. Oh, Mr. Vance, you really do need to pursue 25th Amendment proceedings with vigor.

No doubt my reader has heard a bit of the Reflecting Pool debacle, in which President Trump handed a favored company to fix some long-standing problems with this national memorial and only made it worse.

But then this occurred:

Jailbreak:

Jailbreaking is defined as the process of removing or bypassing limitations set by manufacturers of the device, developers of the operating system, or the application store. It is a process that empowers end users to have the right to install unauthorized software, access system features that are not visible, and modify system behavior. For instance, iOS jailbreaking enables iPhone users to change or add new applications, tweak fundamental settings, and download new modifications not available in the App Store. According to statistics, jailbreak solutions make up to 10% of the applications in some third-party stores, pointing to steady demand among geeks. However, such changes are accompanied by increased risks associated with the use of stolen accounts or the presence of viruses in the distribution network. [SentinelOne]

A morality-neutral definition. Noted in “The White House said Anthropic’s powerful AI was ‘jailbroken.’ Here’s what that means.,” Kevin Schaul and Nitasha Tiku, WaPo:

ADMIN NOTE

No more brevity, as the brace came off as anticipated, and the surgeon was pleased with the healing progress. I think I’m back to typing at my old speed, which is no great shakes but still better than hunt & peck, aka the seek and ye shall find technique, as my Dad used to call it.

VALUING INDEPENDENCE

For those voters who understand and value the importance of Senators being independent of Party directives, also known as the gibberish of President Trump, in our form of government, it may be cheering to see Senate Majority Leader Thune (R-SD) orchestrating some counter-moves to President Trump’s foolishness with regard to Trump’s War, tariffs, and nominations.

As to the latter topic, Trump’s designation of Bill Pulte as Acting Director of National Intelligence (DNI) certainly needed a rebuke, since the only qualification Pulte possesses is championship-level sycophancy towards Trump; he has no national intelligence experience. Since Trump values loyalty and physical appearance (“right out of central casting”), not merit or competency, above all else, he selected Pulte, who has used his previous and still-current position of Director of Federal Housing Finance Agency to attack Trump’s political enemies, such as now-former Fed chairman Powell.

Thune wants a proper DNI, as do the Democrats, and reauthorization of the controversial Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) is being held up as a leverage tool. Presumably, word reached Trump that Pulte was unacceptable, and persuaded him to nominate US Attorney for SDNY Jay Clayton, but then he withdrew the nomination and is letting Pulte run the agency until the Senate approves a voter ID bill of which Trump is overly fond.

So far as I know, Clayton also lacks qualifications required by law, so this all may be a moot machination. However, Clayton has not caught my attention for stunts on par with Pulte’s clumsy bluster.

All that is to note that GOP Senators up for reelection do seem, at least in part, to be trying to separate themselves from the incompetent President.

ALIENATION?

Still, they need to worry about alienated voting groups, like this:

The last time President Trump faced a midterm election, in 2018, congressional Republicans were dragged down by his unpopularity and lost more than three dozen House seats.

But even in defeat, the bottom never truly fell out for the Republicans that year — the party actually gained ground in the Senate — as working-class white voters largely kept their faith in Mr. Trump’s economic know-how.

Today, that once-deep reservoir of good will has largely evaporated.

Blue-collar white voters are, for the first time, seriously doubting Mr. Trump’s handling of the economy. A review of polling by The New York Times shows an extraordinary swing on that issue among white voters without college degrees between his first midterm election and now. [The New York Times]

I’ve seen similar reports for farmers as well. The relevant GOP Senators may have to campaign aggressively in rural areas, and have prominent disagreements with President Trump, to break that association of the President and his persistent foolishness with the Senators. But what to do for blue collar workers in general is not so clear. There’s little time for cleaning up the economy.

FOLLOW THE TRAIL OF BREADCRUMBS

Here’s some.

• The 16 June primary runoff elections in Alabama yielded Everett Wess as the winner of the Democratic primary, defeating Dakarai Larriett. Mr. Wess appears to have little electoral experience.
  

  On The Issues: Rep Barry Moore (R-AL).

  The Republican side of the primary season has been a raucous affair as inexperienced Jared Hudson was seen by some pollsters to be leading Rep Barry Moore, but in the end Rep Moore won rather easily, 55.8% – 44.2%, although I suspect many observers were shocked that even a primary was necessary. So it’ll be Wess vs Moore, with expectations being an easy victory for Moore. President Trump’s endorsement of Rep Moore should be a light burden in Alabama.

  Further, Moore is a favorite of the cryptocurrency industry, whose super PAC is spending $9.8 million on pro-Moore ads. I’ll skip the joke about printing money to give away, I’m sure someone would howl that it’s not true. Yes, I do have vague concepts on cryptocurrency implementations.

  Notably, while Democrats saw 339,903 votes in the primary election, only 89,585 made the effort for the runoff. Comparable Republican numbers are 481,952 and 310,529, suggesting much greater enthusiasm. Which way will independents lean? Probably Republican.

• 

  On The Issues: Rep Collins (R-GA).

  The 16 June primary elections in Georgia gives Erick Erickson some reflux as Rep Collins defeats former football coach Derek Dooley in the Republican primary for the Senate seat, 55.9% – 44.1%. It’s not a bad showing by Mr Dooley, but given the Senatorial performance of Senator Tuberville, another former football coach, and the babblings of failed GOP nominee Herschel Walker in 2022, neither of whom had any experience in elective office, the Georgia GOP voters showed some wisdom in picking someone with experience, even a far-right candidate like Collins. But that’s a very small amount of wisdom, as this strategist emphasizes:

  “If you went to a laboratory and tried to create the worst general election candidate for this state and environment possible, you couldn’t do better than Mike Collins,” a prominent Georgia Republican strategist, granted anonymity to speak candidly, told MS NOW.

  “He has a ton of personal baggage and won’t be able to raise money. He possesses the unique ability to offend female voters with that personal baggage but also with the hardest right abortion stance you can have. He will lose the Atlanta metro in unprecedented fashion, and we have to hope he doesn’t take everyone else down with him.”

  Or go read Erickson. I suspect that, absent black swan events, Senator Ossoff’s (D-GA) seat is now safe.

• 

  On The Issues: Rep. Kevin Hern (R-OK).

  The 16 June primary elections in Oklahoma yielded Rep Hern (R) as the Republican nominee for the to-be-open Senate seat of appointed Senator Alan Armstrong (R-OK), garnering 67.3% of the Republican primary vote. The Democrats had a less definitive result, as nurse N’Kiyla Thomas, with 45.2% of the Democratic vote, and lawyer Jim Priest, with 23.9% of the vote, advanced to a primary runoff to be held 25 August. Neither appears to have elective experience. The Libertarian candidate will be Sevier White, although whether he will fill a key role in this election is not yet clear, and may not be clear until after the general election is finished.

  Rep Hern (R) should be considered the odds-on favorite for the general election in November.

• I didn’t anticipate writing about the Massachusetts Senate primary, but now Suffolk University has released a poll which shows Senator Markey (D) leading likely Republican primary winner John Deaton (R) 55% – 30%, and Markey’s primary rival, Rep Seth Moulton (D), leading Deaton by even more at 54% – 26%.I confess I’ve not been paying attention, since I see Massachusetts as safe for the Democrats, and so it remains. But is Senator Markey safe, or, having been in various elective offices since 1973 and being 79 years of age, is he burned toast? Is Moulton making inroads with his questions about transgender rights when it comes to sports? For primary voters, that seems unlikely – but we shall see.
• In Michigan pollster Mitchell Research, fairly respectable in 2024, gives Democrat Abdul El-Sayed a 42% share of the Democratic primary election for Senator, while fellow Democrat Rep Haley Stevens has a 33% share, and Mallory McMorrow, who disavowed Party leader Senator Schumer a few weeks ago, has been reduced to a 6% share. I noticed the number of participants in the survey is a relatively low 409, resulting in a margin of error of a largish ±4.85. The primary is 4 August, a long ways off.
• SurveyUSA was a highly respected pollster in 2024, with a 2.4/3 FiveThirtyEight rating, so this KSTP/SurveyUSA^[1] poll of Minnesota voters is of interest:
  

  Former sportscaster Michele Tafoya is easily in front right now in the Republican primary for U.S. Senate.

  Tafoya received 36% of the vote today, far ahead of the 15% for Royce White and 7% for GOP-endorsed candidate Adam Schwarze. However, 27% are still undecided.

  That Mr Schwarze, the candidate endorsed by the attendees of the GOP convention, is failing this badly demonstrates a potential gap between GOP devotees willing to give up a weekend to attend a convention, and the more casual member of the Minnesota GOP base.

  Results for Democrats in the same poll …

  [Rep Angie] Craig garnered 41% of the vote, ahead of the 36% for Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, who won the DFL endorsement. Roughly 18% of respondents are still undecided while 6% support another DFL candidate.

  I appreciated the demographic breakdown:

  • Craig received nearly half the vote from men while Flanagan leads slightly among women.
  • Younger voters favor Flanagan slightly while older voters, especially 65+, skew toward Craig.
  • Unsurprisingly, more liberal voters are backing Flanagan while moderates favor Craig.

  Can Rep Craig maintain her appeal to moderates? Independents will mostly skew moderate. Lt Governor Flanagan and Rep Craig have been going at it hammer & tongs in commercials, seems to me as a Minnesotan who doesn’t seek out politics but has them thrust upon him, and there will be some damage to whoever wins the nomination.

  And then the general election result? Let me draw an analogy, again from the same poll …

  MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell is ahead of the field in the Republican primary for governor.

  The businessman and staunch ally of President Donald Trump is getting 27% of the primary vote today. House Speaker Lisa Demuth garnered 22% of respondents’ votes, with GOP-endorsed Kendall Qualls at 17%. Roughly 24% of likely Republican voters are still undecided.

  Lindell is a conspiracy theorist and gabbling lunatic who appeals to those from the victimhood cult. If that characterizes much of the Minnesota GOP, it’s quite likely some portion of the GOP portion of the electorate will stay home on Election Day, convinced either that the dark powers have deprived them of their chosen candidate, or that the candidate is unrepresentative of their views.

  Minnesota primary election day is 11 August, and don’t mistake the limited number of candidates listed above as the totality; both sides have more than these listed. And, no, I don’t recognize any of those names, but I come from an age of pseudonymous social media, so my lack means little. Good luck to all of them, and I hope they accomplish whatever it is they’re trying to accomplish, so long as it’s not illicit.

• In Montana the left’s hopes to turn back Kurt Alme’s (R) bid for the Senate seat may have suffered a setback:
  

  When Alani Bankhead, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Montana, announced that she would hold a news conference Monday afternoon, many fellow Democrats hoped she would announce that she was dropping out.

  The idea was to make way for an independent candidate, Seth Bodnar, who is seen by many as more electable than Ms. Bankhead in a heavily Republican state.

  Ms. Bankhead did not play ball.

  “If dropping out was the right move to pave the way for a better candidate, I would absolutely do it,” Ms. Bankhead said in a defiant speech. “But Seth Bodnar is absolutely the last person on the face of the Earth I would ever drop out of this race for.” She added: “I am never dropping out. Ever. Ever.” [The New York Times]

  Ms. Bankhead finds her offense in … two-year-old news that the university had settled a sex-discrimination lawsuit during his tenure. Mr. Bodnar had “established a pattern of dismissing and discriminating against women,” and he should “read the room and back out,” Ms. Bankhead said.

• Maine’s Senator Collins (R), up for reelection against oyster farmer and former Marine Graham Platner (D), regrets nothing, apparently:
  

  NEWS CENTER MAINE: This is the first reelection campaign that you’re run since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. I was hoping you could talk to me a little bit about your vote to confirm Kavanaugh and whether you regret that?

  SUSAN COLLINS: I do not regret that vote.

  Do Mainers dislike Justice Kavanaugh? Or is this an irrelevancy?

• Is this, net, good or bad for Nebraska Senate candidate Dan Osborn (I)?
  

  On Friday [19 June?], CNN’s KFile team reported that Dan Osborn, the Democratic-backed independent Senate candidate from Nebraska, recalled calling ICE on replacement workers hired after his union went on strike in 2021, despite heavily criticizing the agency throughout his campaign. [Mediaite]

  Independent voters who are against mass migration may approve Osborn’s behavior, along with union members and moderate Republicans; progressive Democrats may disapprove, but moderate Democrats may approve. Scabs, the colloquialism for replacement workers, seems a problematic topic in left politics.

• In Wyoming, the Democrats have a second candidate running in the Democratic primary, Billy Benavidez. He does not appear to have experience with elective office, and is using the well-worn I’m new around here approach to the election.

  For the record, Rep Hageman (R), the presumed favorite in the Republican primary, has four competitors. There are no polls in this race, as of yet.

ON THE MARQUEE

The next Senate voting opportunity comes on 27 June for Louisiana’s primary runoffs for both Republicans and Democrats, followed by Colorado’s primary election on 30 June.

¹ KSTP is the Twin Cities ABC network affiliate.

Recent headline, like so many:

I’m a couples therapist. Here’s how to have a better relationship.

Time for a new headline.

I’m a grifter. Here’s why you should believe what I say.

CNN supplies the article title, article itself paywalled:

Trump threatens Iranian delegation while Vance holds talks with them

And will the Iranians have any concerns?

Of course not. They’ve endured, and quite possibly won, a war with Trump. So Trump is mouthing off. Why?

Well, it’s more than It’s what Trump does. No, there’s more going on, and it has to do with Trump supporters needing something to point at, pick up off the ground, and chew on. They can point at it and claim it’s part of Trump’s master strategy.

But in the end, it does little. It’s just the failed President running his mouth once again, and embarrassing the United States in the process.

More of the prancing dance, isn’t it?

Trump doubles down on feud with Italian Prime Minister Meloni, insisting she asked for G7 photo  [CNN, paywall]

Yep, more hand waving, please don’t look at … this:

Strait of Hormuz is closing again. Few ships were leaving the waterway anyway  [CNN, paywall]

That’s right, Trump’s much touted peace-treaty, in progress, is hitting rocks and sinking as Iran claims both Israel and the United States are violating the cease-fire. Meanwhile, Trump is busy with, frankly, sleazy implications concerning the prime minister of Italy, claiming she begged for a picture with him.

Seems unlikely, even for the leader of a far-right Italian party.

And how about that Reflecting Pool debacle?

Algae, peeling blue material, conspiracy theories: Reflecting Pool takes national spotlight [CNN, paywall]

Could it be deliberate? Sure, it could be, although I have no way to prove one way or the other.

And there’s other news, but look for the news that’s important, news that invalidates claims of military glory. Trump’s failures such as the Reflecting Pool renovation will generate outrage from some, but the real threats to his Presidency are the Epstein Files and Trump’s Lost War. He wants you to think Meloni adores him and the Pool was sabotaged, rather than consider the possibility that his name is quite popular in the files of a pedophile, and that a war he chose to initiate because he desires gratification above all, that is causing inflation crippling to many citizens he’s supposed to protect, is being lost due to his incompetence.

No, governance is never easy, and if you think it is, you’re a schmuck or quite young.

For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.
– H. L. Mencken

Antimacassar:

An antimacassar is a small piece of fabric placed over the back or arms of chairs and sofas. At first glance, it may seem like a simple decorative cloth, but it actually has a very practical origin. In the past, people used hair oils that could easily stain furniture, and antimacassars were created to protect upholstery from these marks.

The idea began in the 19th century, when a popular hair product called Macassar oil was widely used. This oil left greasy stains on furniture, especially on headrests. To solve this problem, households started placing removable cloth covers on chairs, which could be washed or replaced easily. [The Styles Magazine]

I was discussing protection of my computer room chair arms from the desk with my Arts Editor when she used the word antimacassar, and I had to ask what it meant. I’m not sure the delicate lace fabric depicted at the link will be adequate, but my previous chair suffered significant damage from the desk, over maybe fifteen years.

This warning caught me off-guard:

“I said I want juniper berries on my pizza!” he snarled. “Not olives! And stop that sniggerin’!”

Running Time (1997) is a surprisingly well-written story about a flash-gang of thieves, by which I mean a criminal gang assembled, on a moment’s notice, as a plan comes together. The jailed leader, Carl, has just been released from prison, out early for good behavior, and the first thing he does is set in motion his next heist, planned over five years, in partnership with good old dependable, didn’t-get-jailed, buddy Patrick.

Who sweetens the deal with a prostitute, Janie, for Carl.

Patrick, who delegated responsibilities to the wrong person.

Yes, this is a salutary tale of why thieves sometimes keep on thieving, giving the audience a taste of the thievish culture of immaturity and flawed understanding of how things work. It’s nicely done.

But the real charm of this story is that it’s told as if it were done in one long take, from Carl being picked up outside the prison by Patrick to Carl’s pell-mell escape, not only from the cops, but arguably from his old life of consorting with failures to a new one. The only break that I recall comes when Carl passes out once or twice. The old Greeks had something similar called the theory of the three unities, and it ties the theatrical elements together.

I won’t recommend Running Time, as there’s a lack of sympathetic characters that leads to a certain puzzlement over why the audience should care, but if you’re looking for something comprehensible, noir, and a bit off-kilter, you could do worse. Enjoy the wordplay. But be careful about watching the sex scene, it just about gave me a crick in the neck.

Back in late January / early February, President Trump was rattling his cage with his cries for lower interest rates from the Federal Reserve, in the belief that such an action would rev up an economy that was sputtering, as the news stylists like to say. As Fed chair Powell’s term was coming to an end, Trump nominated a new chairman, Kevin Warsh, with the obvious hopes that Warsh would reverse the Fed’s policy of higher interest rates, which was in place in hopes of controlling inflation.

Into this interlude I’ll insert an old memory of running across a piece of spam – not email, but real life paper mail – that promised that President Bush, that’s #1, not #2, would be re-elected because Fed chairman Alan Greenspan would ensure a roaring economy for Bush. And this would hike up certain stocks, and you should buy them, yada yada.

President Bush, for the record, was not re-elected; instead, the rascally Bill Clinton won the election. Fed chairmen are independent of the President for a reason, and that’s to formulate monetary policies that benefits the nation – not necessarily the President.

Back to the story, Fed chairman Warsh ran his first meeting yesterday, 17 June, and did not dictate the lower interest rates Trump demands. Indeed, he doesn’t appear to have tried:

Warsh deflected repeated questions about why the Fed held rates while so many officials signaled hikes ahead, citing his opposition to “forward guidance.” The decision to hold was unanimous, and the Fed didn’t consider hikes at its meeting, he said. [WaPo]

And for those betting on lower interest rates at the next meeting?

Nine of the 19 officials who participate in Fed policy meetings penciled in at least one rate increase by the end of the year, up from zero in March, when most Fed officials still anticipated cutting rates.

The Fed is an example of distributed design, the hallmark of which are decisions made not by a central authority, but by the responsible local, or autonomous, node. The isolation serves to mitigate the influence of non-germane factors on the decision-making process, even in the face of stacking the deck, to use an old euphemism for sometimes illegal manipulation of starting conditions and complexities. Trump selected Warsh as Warsh is known to favor lowering interest rates in general, but Warsh did not come through.

But, and more importantly, this is yet another loss for President Trump, blatant evidence that he doesn’t understand how American government, politics, and economics works, and that he’s convinced that he does.

He shouldn’t listen to himself.

While I don’t expect this particular failure to be followed immediately by him being chased out of office, it is certainly another brick in the wall – and it’s very hard to know when MAGA will reform itself and realize that its only way back to respectability will be via participating in the removal of Trump from office. It’s best to think about this in a time series of probabilities; as it becomes clear that Trump’s War may have resulted in an Iranian victory, as many conservatives have begun to mention, I expect the probability of Trump leaving office, probably on a Trump airliner heading out of the country, will jump.

And then comes the rebuilding of our politics phase, as his minions, both in the White House and in Congress, start having to make decisions about policy.

Today the brace came off my right hand and I can almost type normally; the post-surgical swelling is slowing me down a little, but this is a welcome step forward and, having gone through this with the left hand, I’m confident a full recovery, or so close it doesn’t matter, will be coming in the next month or two.

What does this mean for my readers? I’ll be a trifle more prolix, or chatty, but the impact is really on the other side of the keyboard, where I’ll be writing much more quickly.

Some headline writer needs their head examined:

Trump beats a longtime adversary with a late Georgia endorsement, and other election takeaways [CNN]

This is a reference to Rep Collins defeating former football coach Derek Dooley in the Georgia primary runoff. Governor Kemp (R-GA) had endorsed the latter, while President Trump endorsed the former.

Except Trump didn’t. Not until 14 June. The primary date was 16 June.

Endorsements are traditionally a manner in which one political participant, whether it be a powerful individual such as a (ex-) governor or a union leader, confirms the ideological congruency of the endorsee to the endorser, and that the endorsee is competent to the job. Governor Kemp has been campaigning for Dooley since August of 2025, when he endorsed Dooley.

President Trump has replaced that definition with a definition that feels like a weapon, because he has proclaimed many times, on many occasions, that those he endorses win, and win by a landslide. This is false, of course, with his endorsement of failed Iowa gubernatorial candidate Randy Feenstra (R-IA) as just one example. But it does result in Republicans often doing the dolphin dance, looking for that faux-magical endorsement by putting themselves in front of the camera, often at Fox News, in order to catch and hold

So this was a clash of a callow President’s “philosophy,” if sops to his ego combined with ties binding winning candidates to his ankles qualifies as a philosophy, with the old definition of a politician simply saying he likes a candidate’s ideology, competency, merit, and bona fidēs.

Obviously, the two should not be compared; when Trump is pushed out of office, his definition should be discarded by everyone, no matter how much he trumpets its importance.

And CNN really blew it with that headline.

Remember the Sunday UFC event at the White House?

World Liberty Financial will play a key role in UFC^® FREEDOM 250 as the Presenting Partner of a new $250,000 Performance of the Night bonus pool, which will be awarded to UFC athletes selected for standout performances during the event.

The bonuses will be paid in USD1, World Liberty Financial’s U.S. dollar-backed, compliant stablecoin and one of the fastest-growing stablecoins on the market. USD1 bonuses will be awarded in addition to the traditional Performance of the Night bonuses presented to athletes by UFC President and CEO Dana White following the event. The USD1 payout will be awarded independently of the previously announced Crypto.com $1 million bonus pool, which goes to the two athletes who compete in the Fight of the Night. [businesswire]

I hope the fighters, or whoever is in charge of their financial planning, immediately converted the cryptocurrency to dollars. Yes, yes,  I know: stablecoins … but …

Despite the name, stablecoins are not necessarily stable. Stablecoins rely on stabilization tools such as reserve assets or algorithms that match supply and demand to try to maintain a stable value. [Wikipedia]