Category Archives: Uncategorized

I’ve been meaning to mention this a couple of days ago, but life is busy and my attention is more on Campaign Updates – although I could argue that this action, previously threatened, will impact the upcoming American midterms.

Noted on a news crawl, presumably provided by CBS News, for a local news stations, and paraphrased …

… 50% tariffs on Canadian goods including hockey sticks …

I wonder how many billions of $$ Trump thinks he’ll be reaping from that.

SHORT CYCLE

Due to the short news cycle for the South Carolina and Maine Senate races, Campaign Updates are anticipated to be issued more quickly than I had planned.

… AND LITIGATE, LITIGATE, LITIGATE!

President Trump’s continual claims that the media is against him may have come to a climax in the last few days, as the UK’s Daily Mail reports:

Major broadcast networks, including ABC and NBC, did not air Donald Trump‘s highly anticipated speech on election integrity, prompting the president to call for the revocation of their licenses.

Trump addressed the nation in televised remarks on Thursday night, announcing that the White House was planning to release documents claiming that China illegally accessed voter files to manipulate the 2020 presidential election.

Reports surfaced ahead of his speech that the topic would reignite election-interference claims, and the networks opted to air it on their streaming services rather than on their prime-time channels.

Trump called out ABC and NBC during the live remarks, claiming they decided not to air it ‘because of the fact that they don’t like the topic because they know how corrupt our system is and they don’t want to reveal it.

‘They and others in the media are part of a plot. They want to continue this fraud for whatever reason. They want to keep it going. They want to protect the radical left,’ he continued.

Unfortunately for the President and his allies in the Senate, he comes off sounding like a petulant child denied the attention he craves, not a responsible adult, and that’ll damage certain GOP Senate candidates. This’ll add to Democrats’ optimism, earned or not. Why do I say ‘earned or not’?

A Washington Post-Ipsos poll finds voters favoring Democrats by three points among registered voters overall, but the margin grows among those who are most motivated to vote. [WaPo]

Against this mob of fourth-raters, the Democrats should have a far larger margin. The fact that they don’t, as I’ve said before, suggests they haven’t got the hang of being in touch with the voters.

More on my thoughts on the President’s speech are here.

OFF TO THE RACES, ON TO VICTORY, RIGHT TO MICKEY D’S, LEFT TO YOUR HEART’S DESIRE!

Last issue is disgustingly ephemeral.

• South Carolina Senator Darline Graham (R) has been endorsed and encouraged by President Trump to run for the Senate seat she’s been appointed to in the Republican primary; as of this writing, she’s said nothing officially about doing so [Later: she has answered in the affirmative]. The primary is 11 August.Incidentally, Darline Graham is married but does not use her husband’s name, according to Wikipedia, so I’ll use Senator Graham to reference her.

  We do have a poll for the special election primary, and it’s from Emerson College Polling:
  
  So far, Senator Graham is not leading the pack, but this may be due to a lack of familiarity with her on the part of voters. The endorsement of the President, in one of the most conservative States in the Union, may move her up the ladder, although his pick for governor, Pamela Evette (R), lost in the primary, and is now a candidate for Senator Graham’s seat. The leader is Rep Ralph Norman (R), who decided to run for Governor and lost the primary, which is also true of Rep Nancy Mace (R). [Later: Rep Mace has dropped out.]

  So far, it looks like a real wild-card situation for the South Carolina GOP, and, not having an insider’s views, I don’t know that they should be able to do better. The late Senator’s death was ill-timed.

• WaPo is reporting the Maine Democratic Party is converging on Troy Jackson, a Maine legislator, as their replacement of Graham Platner. Making progress, yeah? Maybe not:
  

  Troy Jackson, a powerful Maine legislator now running for Senate, once angrily threw a water bottle in a meeting after he couldn’t persuade a lawmaker to vote his way.

  He yelled at another lawmaker, prompting her to post on social media that straight men were “too emotional” to be in politics. And he cursed and shouted in a meeting with the speaker of Maine’s state House, until she kicked him out of her office.

  During the six years Jackson presided over Maine’s Senate, until he left office in 2024, his temper was a feature of his leadership, and one that Democratic lawmakers discussed among themselves as a problem and even raised with the governor.

  Just can’t stay away from the bad boys? I’ll tell you what, if Senator Collins wins re-election, I know of an entire state Party that should be dissolved.

• Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed has picked up the endorsement of progressive Senator Warren (D-MA). Notably, the Senator said,
  

  “He’s growing a movement of working people all across Michigan,” Warren says of El-Sayed in a video announcing the pick. “Michiganders deserve a senator who will fight for you, not for special interests running millions of dollars in TV ads to buy this seat.” [MS NOW]

  Which is virtually a declaration of war, internecine war, much like that of the Republican Party’s brutal internal fights. I’ve noticed progressives tend to be out of touch with the voters and, for that matter, the ways of liberal democracies. We may eventually see the Democratic Party break in two, between moderates and progressives. The social dynamics of such a split may put the Democrats of any variety in a permanent minority.

  I put a split at a 10% probability.

  Meanwhile, rival Rep Haley Stevens (D-MI) has the endorsement of the Congressional Black Caucus. I don’t know how much weight they swing with voters.

• Senator Moody (R) of Florida leads Alexander Vindman (D) 50% – 40% and State Rep Angie Nixon (D) 50% – 42%, according to a University of North Florida poll.

Yes, there was. Next, you’re wondering where my learned analysis might be?

Well, I’m a working dude^[1] that has little patience with mendacious politicians, and President Trump is considered, by many, to be among the worse.

But I have read maybe half of a transcript of the American President’s address to the nation last week, and skimmed another quarter of it. Here’s a confession: I do not have the knowledge base to fact-check the speech. There are many fact-checks out there, so I suggest, if you haven’t read one yet, go find such a work. If you wish to be assiduous on the matter, look for a non-American source that is not obviously biased. That may be difficult, so you may have to accept an American source. Perhaps CNN because, as Daily Beast (via MSN) notes:

Ben Ginsberg, a Republican election lawyer, told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins immediately following the speech that, despite the president’s claims and references to declassified documents uploaded online, there was still no evidence of any election result being incorrect.

“What stood out to me is that there’s still no evidence of a result of any election being incorrect,” Ginsberg told Collins.

“There still was not the documents, there still was not the evidence, although we’ll see what’s produced,” Ginsberg said, before responding to a number of specific claims Trump made.

Bold mine. Mr Ginsberg may not be part of the current Administration, but he’s still characterized as a Republican, and he responds with doubt about any and all of President Trump’s claims. That is notable for the independent voter, perhaps first time voter, uncertain of what to make of a fact-check.

But, returning to the topic of speeches and transcripts, as a social media user of 40+ years, communications in and of themselves can make my ears prick and stir feelings of doubt and concern. What do I want to see in a speech such as this? The essence should be mature speech patterns, a strong attempt to deliver an information and singular message, especially of shocking nature such as claims that the election systems are permitting illegal voting.

With that in mind, here’s two consecutive paragraphs from this transcript:

The cover-up of this colossal security breach is even more disturbing in light of the additional information showing that China engaged in other election related activities to undermine my first administration and our 2020 campaign. They did not want — they just didn’t want it. They fought like hell not to have a Donald Trump win, and for good reason.

As the documents we are releasing show, CIA reporting explicitly stated, and I quote, “In mid-2018, the Chinese Communist Party’s policy was to leverage all domestic and foreign elements that were opposed to the US president in an effort to reduce the US president’s votes and make him resign or prevent his reelection.” Isn’t that nice?

Note that last sentence, Isn’t that nice? Mockery is one of President Trump’s favorite communications weapons, just like the bullies who menaced younger children fifty and more years ago. Mockery is a tactic used by those who don’t have the intellectual tools and ammunition to keep up. It introduces ambiguity and intimidates its target, while warning neutral parties that they’d better join with the mocker, or run the risk of being a target as well.

It does not enhance strong, honest communications of difficult topics in the slightest.

The tone of the speech is to boost the ego of the speaker. Consider this:

Also, in mid-2018, China was working to influence the results of the US midterm elections, and later the results of the 2020 presidential election itself. Separately, in mid-2019, the Chinese government’s strategy against The United States was focused on undermining domestic confidence in the US president. They wanted to just make you sound like your president wasn’t so hot, when actually your president has done a great job, and they did everything possible to do exactly that.

They wanted to just make you sound like your president wasn’t so hot, when actually your president has done a great job, and they did everything possible to do exactly that. It’s a tell-tale of a man begging for praise for a self-evident greatness, and it tells the parasites of a human nature how to gain his favor. But for those of us paying for Trump’s War, his tariff disaster, and all the other mistakes, it speaks to his basic dishonesty and possible mental illness.

Overall, I thought the speech was yet another ego-boost. He covered many topics, including old grievances as well as excuses for his continual ill-performance. There’s little to no focus, and his sentence structure is constructed to focus attention on himself, rather than the problem at hand. It’s not the speech of a great, or even competent, statesman.

Just about every substantive paragraph has red-flags like this, at least the part of the speech I read; I think my reader will understand my admission that I didn’t finish reading the transcript because of intellectual nausea on my part. That such a pathetic specimen of a man is permitted on stage in his current role, and all that implies, is a mistake from which the United States will take a long time to recover.

¹ For newer readers, I’m a software engineer, obsolete, and still working.

The Estate (2026) is a glimpse into the world of British privileged classes and families that have lost their collective purposes. The Wellsleys feature a matriarch, Lady Sarah, a butler, Filippo, daughters Vanora, an actress, and Rachel, son and wastrel – I think – Bob, granddaughter Anna, son of a former family devoted to them, Gary. …

Let’s stop there and recap. The family has a ‘pile,’ an old estate that is falling apart because of failing fortunes and punitive taxes, and a set of attitudes that mesh poorly with the modern world. Gary’s family may have been devoted to and served the Wellsleys, but Gary himself is a super-capitalist and very well-off. The Wellsleys have tried to link one of the daughters to Gary, I’ve lost track of which, but Gary’s more interested in business than acquiring a wife.

Oh, and there’s a dying aunt or great aunt up north who may have a fortune to will to the family. Maybe.

There’s a lot going on here, as the impact of a family, at odds with the modern world, on its own members is illustrated, from random ingestion of drugs to trying to live in the world of theatre to holding all together.

But the auction may be the big thing, as they put the pile up for sale and hope someone will want this old symbol of power in the scary new world. But what happens when that scary modern world, which they don’t understand, itself founders on the rocks of greed and simple-mindedness?

I am not sure I like the climactic scene, but I’m not sure I disliked it, either. To some extent it seemed supernatural, which I generally find annoying when used as deus ex machina, but was it really supernatural?

This movie may mean more to the British viewer than the American, but we, as Americans, did enjoy it, if we were a little puzzled by some aspects.

Robert Wun again doesn’t play by the rules. Or those formal dances are going to some real wacky affairs.

The Iranian government continues to pressure the American government:

Telematics:

Telematics is an interdisciplinary field encompassing telecommunications, vehicular technologies (road transport, road safety, etc., as part of Intelligent transportation systems), electrical engineering (sensors, instrumentation, wireless communications, etc.), and computer science (multimedia, Internet, etc.). [etc etc] [Wikipedia]

Noted in some promotional material:

Fleet management is no longer just about GPS vehicle tracking and basic logistics. [Omitted] is a tech-first telematics leader, offering businesses a complete software suite of services to improve driver safety, track physical assets, and boost operational efficiencies, resulting in better customer experiences.

I suppose I should be embarrassed that I don’t know that particular word off-hand, but, to be honest, I’ve never tried to keep up with all the pitter-patter in my field.

When the hollyhocks are getting so tall I can’t reach their tops, they’re no longer hollyhocks.

They’re Triffids.

TWO BLACK HOLES, RIPPING THEM APART

Is it an example of spaghettification? Over there, picking a direction at random, is President Trump and his influence over MAGA and MAGA-inclined voters, while some other random direction has all the other voters who might be conservatives, but are furious because of the imposition of tariffs; the obstruction of the full release of the Epstein Files; people recently shot dead, wounded, or at least improperly jailed by incompetent ICE agents, and defended by Secretary of DHS Mullin; inflation; foreign conflicts and interference, along with incompetence at same; and continual lying, boasting, and all the other nonsense that erupts from the mouths of President Trump and his minions.

In between them is an exceptionally uneasy mob of GOP Senators and Senator-wannabes, pulled one way and then the other. If they stick with President Trump then they may not attain or be reelected; if they separate from him and resume their traditional role of judging the suitability of new laws, sometimes certifying and sometimes rejecting, then the President may attack them, and it’ll be tantamount to admitting their Party put an infamous incompetent in the seat of the Presidency.

And actions they felt were safe have become nightmares. Consider Maine. Joan Sebastian Guerrero was shot to death by ICE agents in Biddeford, Maine on 13 July, and a consequence of this was a protest of the tragic incident, including of Senator Collins (R) and her vote to certify the ICE budget.

The Republicans’ association with government-sponsored murder on the streets isn’t a positive, even if we consider the consequent prosecutions of the ICE agents responsible, because those people are still dead.

Pressure on GOP Senate hopefuls will continue to intensify.

DANCING THE TIGHTROPE

President Trump, snarling imprecations, tried to avoid biting off his own tongue by not signing the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act … but not vetoing it, either. This means it became law, on 11 July 2026, not through a Congressional override of a Trump veto, which would have been interpreted as yet another sign of Trump’s eroding prestige and influence, but through Trump’s lack of action on the matter. For those voters paying attention, this may seem to be the moral equivalent; the rest may wonder if the President is becoming overly-forgetful.

Will voters notice the difference? Well, in households that watch conservative news, it’s likely that Trump’s lack of action will be downplayed or even omitted. A strongly bipartisan piece of legislation will have passed, meant to increase the affordability of housing, and that will be celebrated. Unless Fox News makes the mistake of bringing on popular Democrat Pete Buttigieg on for an interview, viewers will probably not notice.

On independent and liberal outlets there will be a higher likelihood of a mention of Trump’s frantic behavior, and if viewers are concerned with affordability or fear the SAVE AMERICA ACT, which has been characterized as a vote suppression tactic, their attraction or loathing for Trump will be in accordance with their previous inclination. Whether that will extend to GOP Senate candidates will depend on the allegiance of said candidates to Trump.

Or so I’d expect.

CAN MAGIC FLOW FROM THE MENDACIOUS MOUTH AGAIN?

President Trump has announced that he’ll address the nation tonight, probably right after I post this, so my reader may know more than I.

The subject? Beats me.

But it’s worth remembering that the President’s entire life and career has been hallmarked by mendacity. That’s been his path to whatever he calls success, and so why should he stop now? I recommend taking nothing at his word. What can be verified should be verified. Ignore the rest.

Steve Benen would have me believe the President’s addresses of the nation have been failures; I wouldn’t know as I’m invariably busy when these addresses come through, and, like most politicians, he makes my skin crawl, only moreso. Maybe tonight, though, Thursday nights are more idle than most.

But the garden needs weeding.

THE SORDID DETAILS

Starring … ummm … I know I put those notes down around here somewhere….

• Is it usual in Texas to mistake money for something important?
  

  State Rep. James Talarico, the Democratic U.S. Senate nominee, raised a staggering $30 million from April through June, his campaign announced Wednesday — more than triple the amount brought in by his Republican opponent, Attorney General Ken Paxton.

  The haul is a record total for a U.S. Senate candidate in the second quarter of an election year, Talarico’s campaign said, noting he has now raised more than $70 million from over 1.5 million donations, including 780,000 individual contributors, since launching his bid in September.

  “I’m honored to stand alongside more than 780,000 neighbors who are tired of being divided into teams — red versus blue, left versus right, rural versus urban,” Talarico, D-Austin, said in a statement. “We are uniting Texans onto one team to change this broken, corrupt political system and bring down costs for working families.” [The Texas Tribune]

  Money is flowing from out of state, which means Talarico’s collection may not be indicative of any kind of lead or popularity with relevant voters. Such is the nature of crowd-based funding for political campaigns. Perhaps there’ll be legitimate excitement when financial disclosure reports are filed.

  In other news, Steve Benen of Maddowblog believes Mr Talarico will be using Mr Paxton’s real estate holdings against him. In a time of housing shortages, the question might be whether or not someone needs eleven homes.

  I do have to wonder if the GOP is having buyers’ remorse over Paxton’s selection. It would certainly be a brazen rejection of President Trump, who endorsed Paxton, if members of the GOP suggested to the voting public that they write-in Paxton Cornyn. Remember, that worked in Alaska when the Alaska GOP got out of control.

• In South Carolina, the passing of Senator Graham (R) has set off a frenzy as politicos consider whether they want to try to move up the prestige ladder or not. In possibly not-incidental news, Graham’s short-term replacement will be his sister, Darline Graham Nordone:
  

  A mother of two who has never held elected office, Graham Nordone was a political confidante of her older brother, who helped raise her after their parents died. She often appeared in Graham’s campaign advertisements and, when he ran for president in 2015, Graham, who never married, said his sister could play the role of first lady. [WaPo]

  Her intentions concerning the next term for Graham’s seat have not been stated. At least that I know. Whoever may be Belle of the Ranch seems to think a perfectly horrible replacement candidate is possible, but that translating to a Democratic victory remains doubtful to me.

• The Democratic nominee for the Maine Senate seat, Graham Platner, is no longer that. I thought he already had repudiated the nomination, but it’s official as of 10 July. According to Politico, there are at least eight candidates to replace him as the candidate du jour; none of the names are familiar to me, and none are Gov Mills (D). Quite sensibly, the Maine Democrats are running a debate today.
• 

  On The Issues: Abdul El-Sayed (D-MI).

  Michigan’s Senator Gary Peters (D) has endorsed Rep Haley Stevens (D) to succeed him, now that state senator McMorrow (D) has dropped out. The AP, at the above link, reports the endorsement is due to increased concerns in the Democratic leadership that Stevens’ rival, Abdul El-Sayed (D), a former state health official who holds MD and PhD degrees, and has led for most of the race, is too far left for Michigan voters. To the right is the On The Issues summation for El-Sayed, and that is a far ways left, I must say. However, Rep Stevens is only marginally more conservative; both earn the moniker Hard-Core Liberal from On The Issues. Also, again from the AP report, there may be concerns that his outspoken views on the Gaza War would repel independent voters. Reading the AP report on this contest reminds me of the local-to-Minnesota commercials I see from the two primary rivals for the retiring Senator Smith’s (D-MN) seat, Rep Craig (D) and Lt Gov Flanagan (D), in which each attempts to flay the other. Not that I disapprove of vigorous campaigns, but sometimes I wonder if they recall they’re on the same side, more or less.

  There have been few polls from known & respectable pollsters of late for Michigan, and the only polls in the last couple of weeks are from unknown Tavern Research, calling it an even race within the margin of error, and WDIV/Detroit News, giving Rep Stevens (D) a remarkable lead of 48% – 41%. I don’t know if I should take these polls seriously, but it’s all I have.

• Georgia Senator Ossoff (D) continues to appear to have the advantage over his challenger, Rep Mike Collins (R), as the latter is having staffing problems:
  

  In yet another humiliation to Georgia Senate candidate Mike Collins, he is losing his second congressional chief of staff, forcing him to open hiring for a third one.

  According to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “Collins said Thursday he hired Andrew Eisenberger to lead his Congressional office. Eisenberger is a former deputy aide for Collins who most recently worked for American Waterways Operators, the national trade association for the barge, towboat and tugboat industry.”

  Collins, a MAGA-aligned member of Congress, makes the staff shakeup as he prepares for a tough campaign against Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff, who has “repeatedly labeled Collins a ‘notorious bigot, antisemite and extremist,’ citing, in part, his ties to former aides Brandon Phillips and Kip Talley,” noted AJC. [Raw Story]

  It seems Erick Erickson has this race right. Election Day is a ways off, but right now it looks like Georgia GOP officials had best find others hopes to follow.

AND ENOUGH OF THIS

I hope to have more news than that paltry bit above for my kind readers next time.

UMB was down for some unknown period of time yesterday, recovering only after 10pm. My hosting service had a notice up saying they were having problems, but have not elucidated on the matter since.

At least, unlike the old days, I didn’t have to fix it.

But my apologies, regardless.

The Odyssey (2026) brings into focus a background question that occasionally bothers me: Why remake stories?

My tentative answer is that it brings the story and its themes into closer contact with the society in which the version exists. For example, my faint memories of the the original story, translated into English, from years ago was a concentration on the fates of the kings involved in the sacking of Troy, the three principal kings being Odysseus, King of Ithaca, Agamemnon, King of Mycenae, and Menelaus, King of Sparta, as well as the King of Troy, Priam, and his luckless son, Paris, who precipitated the Trojan War.

Only Menelaus, husband of the stolen Helen, has a relatively calm post-war existence, although he lacks a licit male heir, which, for many in contemporary audiences, would have been considered a catastrophe. Agamemnon is murdered by his wife when he returns home, with the never-believed prophet Cassandra, daughter of King Priam, in tow; Priam, after seeing his sons Paris and Hector die in battle, dies knowing his city is doomed; the eponymous hero of story and movie is the focus of same.

So how is the story changed for a 21st century American audience? Although the other three kings are present, they are in exceedingly small roles, and their fates, in earlier centuries considered moral lessons, are barely touched upon in this movie. In particular, Agamemnon, who might be considered the uber-king of the bunch, is barely touched upon, as his sacrifice of his daughter, Iphigenia, to propitiate the Gods, is hardly mentioned, and the murder of his new slave, Cassandra, by his wife is not mentioned at all. The tragedy befalling Priam is trivialized because we only see bits and pieces of him, despite the importance of Troy to him.

And King Odysseus? In the original, after adventures on the trip home, including the loss of the crew of his ships, he slaughters the suitors to his wife and resumes his throne. In this version?

Who can skip a clever slaughter? But the ending is changed to make Odysseus the former King, leaving Ithaca and taking his wife Penelope away to fulfill a pledge he made to the ghosts of dead comrades. This is a nod to the current era of American hyper-individualism, wherein the importance of the preservation of the polis, the Greek city-state, is not as important as fulfilling the individual desires. It’s a failure to recognize and fulfill the responsibility a King has to their polis, as certainly Odysseus, the cleverest of men, who now has experience with other nations, other kings, and the Gods of Olympus would be a fine and dandy King.

And it’s certainly not true that Prince Telemachus, his hardly-old-enough-to-drink son, would make for a better King. But Odysseus is tired and even grief-stricken.

How’s the rest of the film? I loved the Trojan Horse, not only for its style, but its gritty realism. The sacking of Troy is not only too long, but it’s recapitulated later, which was quite tedious. The sequence featuring the transformation of crew into pigs is touching, and the sequence with Polyphemus the Cyclops, although disappointing in that Polyphemus is deprived of dialog, certainly accelerated my breathing. I do appreciate that hyper-reality was not employed in the deaths of the Ithacans on that island.

It’s certainly not a horrid movie, but it would have benefited from some clarity of thought concerning the themes in the original – and how those themes have been transmuted by societal evolution.

Imputation (American Census):

The process used to estimate missing or misreported data.

When information is missing or inconsistent, the Census Bureau uses a method called imputation to assign values. Imputation relies on the statistical principle of “homogeneity,” or the tendency of households within a small geographic area to be similar in most characteristics. For example, the value of “rented” is likely to be imputed for a housing unit not reported on owner/renter status in a neighborhood with multi-units or apartments where other respondents reported “rented” on the census questionnaire. [Census.gov]

Noted in “Federal court nixes challenge by Byron Donalds, GOP college groups to ’20 Census,” Mitch Perry, Florida Phoenix:

The Republicans alleged that a proper count would have given Florida an additional U.S. House seat and an additional vote in the Electoral College but for the “vast use” of a statistical method known as imputation. However, for the second time in six months, the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida dismissed the case, this time with prejudice, finding that any further amendment to the pleadings “would be futile.”

Here’s an interesting statement from President Trump:

The Hormuz Strait is OPEN, and will remain OPEN, with or without Iran. We are reinstating the THE IRANIAN BLOCKADE, so named because it is only stopping Iran’s ships or customers from entering or leaving. All other countries will have fair and open use of the Strait. The U.S.A. will be, from this point forward, known as “THE GUARDIAN OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT,” but as such, and as a matter of FAIRNESS, will be reimbursed, at the rate of 20% on all cargo shipped, for any and all costs necessary to do the job of providing safety and security to this very volatile section of the World. The process and formation will begin immediately. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP

That’s right, charging for passage through a natural strait. But I wonder if he’s thought this through? Oh, what am I saying.

A single example out of many: who will collect the tolls around Cape Horn, the southern tip of South America? Will Chile and Argentina arm-wrestle over it? Come to a sensible compromise?

And, adding all these straits and capes together, how much would this cost the United States? Perhaps countries collecting these tolls will adjust based on nationality, or origin of this trip? This is sounding like a rat’s nest of an idea, honestly.

And how much does it cost to put aircraft carriers in the Strait of Hormuz and fly periodic monitoring flights?

And this, the acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, is the subject that keeps on giving. Here I thought the acquisition was approved and paid for and inevitable and … no, maybe it is not.

At least some of them recognize reality.

“It’s not a real convention. The RNC hasn’t written any rules for this,” [a Republican consultant] said on condition of anonymity, citing Trump’s famous vindictiveness. “It’s just this grifter free-for-all.” [HuffPo]

This may be a grand opportunity to evaluate the Republican Party’s mass credulity, of course. A big mob would indicate there are more sheep to shear.

And if it’s a small group of critters bah-ing in sudden apprehension?

Then they need to participate in the political conversation. For example, in reaction to this …

The White House has lashed out after a news website accused Donald Trump of “taking credit” for a Walmart discount by revealing that the supermarket’s offer was already in place before he championed it.

Trump wrote on Truth Social Monday that the retail giant would be “dropping the price for a pound of ground beef by almost 15 percent,” which he said had been instigated “at my Administration’s request.”

The following day, The Wall Street Journal reported that a U.S. Department of Agriculture official had called around the big retailers urging them to lower their prices ahead of the Fourth of July weekend, relaying news of Walmart’s promotion to the West Wing and prompting the president’s post.

The Bulwark’s Catherine Rampell then reported that a company spokesperson had told her the offer was part of “one of its regular price ‘Rollback’ events,” which had come into effect “early last week – i.e., the week before Trump blasted out his claim that price cuts were imminent and would be happening at his request.” [The Independent]

… then Walmart should have an addendum to their advertising signs that says

… the rollback in prices is an annual occurrence and not in consequence of a request from the ever-boastful President.

They can leave out the gratuitous adjective if they wish.

So why? Walmart should put a prominent value on truthfulness as a way to show they’re aligned with their customers and not with the big bad business monster.

If, of course, companies are people, too.

It’s been a month, or more, since I last discussed Trump Media & Technology Group Corp (DJT), and so it seems like I should again. DJT has had an exciting ride over the last month, I suppose:

The net result is a smidgeon of growth, but that conceals the chart illustration of a company that fell to close to $7/share in value before returning to $8.54/share. DJT is abandoning its previously announced spinoff plans:

… as previously disclosed on February 27, 2026, TMTG, TAE and Texas Ventures Acquisition III (Nasdaq: TVA) (“Texas Ventures III”) have been engaged in discussions regarding a potential spin-off  o f certain TMTG media assets, including Truth Social, into a new publicly traded company that could be merged with Texas Ventures III (the “Spin-Off”) following the closing of the TAE Merger. After further evaluation, the parties have determined not to continue pursuing the Spin-Off at this time.

But the TAE merger is still on, at least officially. Notably, the TAE merger announcement juiced a jump to nearly $15/share; these days DJT’s value per share is nowhere near that number. There does not seem to be much long-term excitement for the merger.

And how about the vaunted cryptocurrency treasury? These 1 month charts of Bitcoin and $TRUMP suggest a problematic outcome for the treasury, although as owners of the latter the Trumps may be making money from sheer issuance.

Bitcoin continues a slow slide from its high of $120/coin of a few years ago.

The $TRUMP valuation must be particularly depressing for holders of same, as it continues to depress in value relatively quickly. To my eye, as a memecoin it has no intrinsic value, and its extrinsic value in being linked to President Trump is diminishing as more and more folks realize he’s an incompetent boob whose ambitions are illicit, ill-supported, and self-destructive; and who surrounds himself with similarly fourth-rate minions who value their allegiance to him over their allegiance to the nation. Finally, being an intangible construct means they are vulnerable to the same cohort of threats known for all computers, from long-term power-loss to Carrington Events. You can’t collect them and put them in colorful picture frames.

Why bother with them? But I’m just a guy with an opinion; for subjects like this, take the opinions of a professional financial advisor seriously. They may be even more vociferous.

• This morning we were met by the announcement of South Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham’s (R) sudden passing. While his recent support of President Trump was and is perplexing, this remains a sadder time than many will realize. He’d served the nation in the Air Force as a Judge Advocate General, then joined the South Carolina Air National Guard, and then the U.S. Air Force Reserve, and thus deserved respect for his military service.As a member of Congress in both the House and the Senate, he’d served for 31 years and built a reputation for expertise in foreign affairs and a war hawk. The loss of this expertise is more important than judged by those who think politics is some sort of big game from which to extract trophies and victories, regardless of political persuasion. Governance is about keeping the populace safe, and experience and expertise is one very important part of promulgating wise governance. A loss of experience and expertise is a loss for all of us.

  Senator Graham was running for re-election and had won the primary. How much impact does his passing have on that race? If you’re a Republican in South Carolina, a bit at least. WaPo reports a special (primary) election must be held in order to select a new candidate, with a filing period of 21-28 July, and the actual election on 11 Aug, plus a potential runoff on 25 Aug.

  Who might run? Here’s WaPo’s analysis, no doubt a trifle hasty:

  South Carolina has six sitting GOP House members, including Nancy Mace and Ralph Norman, who both gave up their seats to run unsuccessfully for governor this year. A person familiar with Mace’s thinking confirmed that she is strongly considering running for Senate.

  South Carolina’s crowded gubernatorial primary also included Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette, Trump’s initial pick, who lost in a runoff. Graham faced a primary challenge from the right in business owner Mark Lynch, who received nearly 29 percent of the vote in June.

  President Trump tried to tease that he has a choice, but didn’t give a name. I’ll take that to mean the perceived front-runner will receive the endorsement just prior to the election date, as that has become the President’s strategy in his desperate quest for respect.

  If you’re not a Republican then … not so much. Even if the winner of the primary is well out of step with the South Carolina Republican base and independents, it’s most likely that the nominee will still win. Just ask former Rep Joe Cunningham (D-SC).

  Rest in Peace, Senator Graham.

From former Rep Joe Cunningham (D-SC) during a South Carolina gubernatorial race in 2022:

Some might say that a Democrat such as Cunningham isn’t electable in MAGA-red South Carolina, where President Donald Trump is still the endorser in chief. Cunningham admits that campaigning was often tough. In Trump strongholds such as Goose Creek (near Charleston) or even Hilton Head, people don’t want to hear a word from Democrats, he told me in an hour-long conversation Wednesday. At least Cunningham was hearing people out as he tackled a tour of the state’s 46 counties before the governor’s race. He heard what voters cared about — not the Democratic Party’s green energy tax breaks, but grocery prices, affordable housing, education and health care. The mayor of one small town told Cunningham that residents just wanted a grocery store.

These days, Cunningham is less frustrated by his defeats than by the sorry state of the Democratic Party — the hypocrisy, disingenuousness and disconnect from what Americans generally care about. He detailed his observations in a recently self-published book, “Life of the Party,” an easy-to-read autopsy of his beloved party’s departure from reality. He takes no prisoners in these pages, as he nails and names Democrats for “chasing causes and issues that affect a very small percentage of Americans.”

“The Party’s gaze has drifted beyond the basic needs … and has settled on a culture war that includes gender identity, racial quotas, DEI, and bathrooms,” he wrote. “It has cost them swaths of voters who may never come back.” [Kathleen Parker, WaPo]

My bold. This is why I have suggested, and will keep suggesting, that the Democratic Party is, like the Republican Party, a good bet for replacement in the near future. The Republicans are, to an overwhelming extent, a bunch of fourth-raters who love power more than they love wise governance. The Democrats will, as third-raters, celebrate their victory in November, blame voters as bigots for not voting for them in greater numbers as an example of CYA, and mistakenly claim that their victory is a mandate for all the out-there positions they’ve taken.

And either the Republicans win the next election, or one of the Parties will be reduced to minor Party status. Or, at least, so I hope. Many Republicans know this is coming, and so we get report aggregations such as Professor Richardson’s report today, suggesting President Trump is trying to befoul the midterm.

Things could get dicey if Congress doesn’t dump Trump’s ass out onto Pennsylvania Ave. And then put a harness of VP Vance.

It looks like someone may have captured Cthulhu and forced it to showoff on the runway.

They seem to favor horns.

I think those bluesies are trumpets.

The Sheep Detectives (2026), as a title, is a little too painfully on the nose, honestly, for this story. The herd’s shepherd is dead, the sheep are in a tumult, and to ask a sheep to understand human society well enough to solve a moderately twisted crime just seems too unlikely.

Not that the story is uninteresting, or the acting inferior, or it all lacks a sense of humor. All of those elements are present. But there is a strain on the sense of credulity necessary to accept a story of this sort.

It may help to think of Chicken Run (2000), which faces similar straits and manages to pass through them. Does The Sheep Detectives? It may all depend on how tightly bound you are to the Earth.

Here’s two paragraphs from two different articles on the same subject from the same site:

The man is getting laughed at every day, by judges, by world leaders, by European soccer players. Most of the world is responding to him with a collective eye roll. But that does not mean we can dismiss him entirely, because when this president gets embarrassed, when he feels cornered, that is when he’s most likely to try to cling to power. [former Biden Administration Press Secretary Jen Psaki, MS NOW]

And

The New York Times reported last week:

President Trump is trying to use the levers of the federal government, along with personal influence over state and local lawmakers, to reshape the rules governing the 2026 midterms and future elections in extraordinary ways.

Many of these efforts have been blocked by courts, stymied by the Constitution or stopped in Congress. But the relentless assault by the president on the electoral process — both administratively and rhetorically — is likely to sow doubt and lay groundwork for extensive challenges to election results.

The lengthy and detailed Times report highlighted what is effectively a “whole of government” initiative, with officials and agencies from across the executive branch — from the Justice Department to the Department of Homeland Security, the intelligence agencies to the U.S. Postal Service — launching dozens of overlapping efforts aimed at tipping the electoral scales in the Republican Party’s favor months before a single ballot is cast. [Steve Benen, Maddowblog]

It’s fascinating how one characterizes President Trump as a doddering old fool, while the other suggests the President is a clever schemer.

The best conclusion I can come up with is that the President is someone’s somewhat rogue thumb puppet, signing Executive Orders when so told, but other times pursuing his own dreams of self-aggrandizement, regardless of the wishes of the puppet-master.

It’ll be interesting to see who is revealed as the puppet-master at the end of this macabre show.