I guess you heard that Mitch is back. Sort of. Going by this report at The New Republic he is breathing but doesn’t appear to be all there mentally.

Trump’s current obsession appears to be demolishing the Kennedy Center because judges won’t let him put his name on the building. See Photos Spur Speculation About Possible Demolition of Kennedy Center by Shawn McCreesh at the New York Times. Since taking it over last year Trump has just about destroyed it anyway, but if he leaves the building standing there’s always hope it can be a real cultural center again. But if he doesn’t get h is name on the building he’s going to rip it down. A judge has ordered the administration to give he court 30 days’ notice before doing anything to the Kennedy Center, but you know he will ignore that order.

The man destroys everything he touches. But the Kennedy Center also appears to be what is consuming his attention these days. It’s even crowded out the Marie Antoinette ballroom from Trump’s head. Not the war in Iran. Not the economy, except for being on the lookout for a quick fix to his oil prices problem. Can we all admit this isn’t rational?

Over the past several months I’ve read a lot of opinion pieces about how Trump has peaked and it’s all downhill for him from now on. I read these with a grain of salt. But I think  now he does seem to be losing it. His old trick was to figure out what people wanted and promise to give it to them. But now he’s lost touch with popular opinion on anything. He’s telling people the economy is great and everybody wants data centers. Um, no. His core base of around a third of voters is still with him. But He’s lost independents. And this appears to be impacting midterm races. See Republicans Reel on the Midterm Map as Deep-Red Areas Come Into Play at the New York Times.

I want to call your attention to Pennsylvania’s Measles Outbreak Is Enormous by Tom Bartlett at The Atlantic. Pennsylvania is getting slammed.

Four deaths in roughly four weeks suggest that the state is in the midst of an enormous outbreak. The Pennsylvania health department lists total cases at 693, with 99 in the past week. But considering that measles kills about one to three of every 1,000 children it infects, the actual number is likely much larger. Milder cases are going unreported. Many who fall ill, particularly in the Amish community, aren’t getting tested; the Amish parents of the infant who died with a ruptured spleen told me that their 13 living children had all caught the virus, but they never got swabbed.

RFK the Lesser’s response is to ignore the problem.

Tomorrow, Kennedy is scheduled to be the keynote speaker at the annual conference for Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vaccine organization that he founded before becoming health secretary. Children’s Health Defense has a long history of ginning up fears about the vaccine for measles, mumps, and rubella while downplaying the seriousness of the diseases. Kennedy does, too. In July 2021, Kennedy told attendees at an Amish country fair in Pennsylvania, “The cure for measles is chicken soup and vitamin A.” In fact, no known cure for measles exists; vitamin A has shown some promise in people with severe vitamin A deficiency, which is exceedingly rare in the United States. Since becoming health secretary, he has stated publicly that vaccination is “the most effective way to prevent measles infection,” but as I’ve reported, he also undercut that message by telling the father of a girl who died in West Texas that “you don’t know what’s in the vaccine anymore.” Kennedy has been a stronger advocate for measles itself, which he’s falsely credited with boosting resistance to cancer and cardiac disease, than he has for the vaccine that prevents it.

Some weeks ago I was reading about a measles outbreak in Utah, and people were saying that measles was much worse than they’d been told. They thought people just got a few spots and got over it in a couple of days. That’s true of Rubella, German measles, for most people, but measles can be worse an unpredictably dangerous. I understand rates of vaccination have gone way up in Pennsylvania. Especially as school is starting, the kids really need to be vaccinated.

As I was writing this the Supreme Court issued a decision that slaps down Trump’s scheme to take over mail-in voting to rig the midterms. The decision was 7-2, Thomas and Alito dissenting. However, I’m hearing this decision only stops the scheme for the midterms but leaves a door open to re-activate it in future elections. I haven’t had a chance to read it myself.

Earlier today there were stories that federal agents may have broken state laws in their search for voter fraud.

Investigators may have broken state laws under the direction of top Homeland Security leaders as part of an expansive effort to find noncitizens on the nation’s voter rolls, according to a federal whistle-blower’s account released on Monday.

The authorities also required agents to examine at least 40 voters each day, the account said, suggesting a rushed pace that raises questions about the thoroughness of the investigation. The effort has relied on questionable data, and has likely improperly flagged U.S. citizens who are eligible to vote, the whistle-blower said in a nearly 30-page report.

The first news headline I noticed this morning was E.P.A. Expected to Erase Limits on Climate Pollution From Power Plants in the New York Times.

The shift by the Environmental Protection Agency would complete the administration’s erasure of the most consequential climate policies of Presidents Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Barack Obama. If the move survives expected legal challenges, it could also prevent future administrations from regulating greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.

Also in the Ny Times, I saw U.S. Health Officials Move Quickly to Deploy Medical A.I. Despite Concerns.

The Trump administration is accelerating efforts to make artificial intelligence an integral part of medical care in the United States, throwing the resources and support of the federal government into projects that deploy A.I. agents to diagnose and prescribe treatments to patients..

Paul Krugman has a must-read substack column headlined The MAGA Plot(s) to Destroy Humanity: On AI and climate, it’s the same story of mass destruction. Yeah, pretty much.

My impression is that Trump got it in his head that AI is going to make a lot of money. On his first day back in office he overturned a President Biden executive order that called for a whole-society effort to mitigate its dangers.

I’ve been something of an AI luddite all along and believe everybody is rushing too fast to cash in on the big bucks everyone thinks will materialize. I think it was rolled out too soon. It makes mistakes, and they don’t call it “AI slop” for nothing. No way would I accept medical treatment from an AI agent. And AI is being integrated into a lot of military operations. What could possibly go wrong?

Another must read is Judge Michael Luttig’s piece at The New Republic, The Final Battle for American Democracy. And I haven’t had a chance to read it myself, but I understand Anne Applebaum’s MAGA Is Making the World Safe for Corruption at The Atlantic is very good.

I thought you’d get a kick out of this headline on the CNBC site.

I’m sure Trump sees many things. And of course CNBC published Trump’s “vision” with no editorial comment.

But speaking of Iran — this is from CNN, headlined ‘A f***-up of epic proportions’: Blame game begins after Iran-backed Houthis’ lightning advance down Red Sea coast:

The desperate pleas for air cover from Yemeni generals started coming mid-morning on Thursday. An advance by the Iran-backed Houthis toward Yemen’s strategic port city of Mocha was in full swing, and backup support from chief ally Saudi Arabia was nowhere in sight.

“The Houthis committed everything they had – waves upon waves of fighters … along with their available ballistic missiles and weapons,” a senior Yemeni source attached to their military forces told CNN. The source said he contacted the United States Central Command (CENTCOM) and was assured the US was “watching the situation closely and that Saudi air support was coming.”

“But the air support never came,” the source said. “And Mocha has now fallen.”

Hours later, on Friday, the Houthis captured another key coastal asset, Perim Island, at the mouth of the Red Sea. The island splits the Bab al-Mandeb Strait in two, giving Tehran de facto control over another key shipping route.

That doesn’t sound good.

And then there’s the coming AI Apocalypse I’ve seen headlines about. “The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade,” it says here. Okay, so we should probably be taking this seriously, even if we (speaking for myself) don’t entirely understand it. And then there’s this:

Dario Amodei, the chief executive of Anthropic, called for a global slowdown of artificial intelligence development in a 3,800-word essay on Saturday, just days after one of the company’s employees quit over concerns about the safety of the technology.

The leaders of two other top A.I. companies quickly signed on to the effort. Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, and Elon Musk, whose SpaceX rocket company has been ramping up spending on A.I., said in social media posts that they agreed on the need for a slower pace.

So the people who have been hell bent to cover the earth in data centers and charge ahead, no holds barred, with AI tech are saying they need to slow down. I think much of the public saw that some time back. So while I still don’t understand any of this, there does appear to be reason for concern. See also AI Is Running Laps Around Our Political System by Toluse Olorunnipa at The Atlantic.

And here are a couple of more good reads — Michelle Cottle at the New York Times, Trump Catastrophically Miscalculated in Georgia; and Alexandra Petri at The Atlantic, A Recap of a Surreal Midterm Convention.

I didn’t watch the ceremonies, but it appears no anti-Mamdani protesters showed up in NYC to disrupt them. I’m guessing there was enough of an NYPD presence that they didn’t dare. So that’s a relief. And from what I can see from some distance, Mayor Mamdani did not put a foot wrong this week.

I want to call your attention to an article at TPM, How 9/11 Conspiracy Theories Are Still Shaping Our World by Mike Rothschild. This is fascinating stuff, and a lot of it I didn’t know. I wasn’t tuned into right-wing nutjob media in those days. Or ever. But it shows how the (extremely inaccurate) alt-narrative of the day spun by Truthers was being crafted even before the dust cleared. The character in this bit is named Bill Cooper.

Cooper seemed to know a lot for someone complaining he didn’t know anything. Just 40 minutes into his first hour on the air, Cooper declared that whatever the media and government will say about the Towers will be a lie. The buildings could not have collapsed solely due to being hit by a 737. He knew, without a doubt, that the government did it and would pin it on someone else, because it was the same thing that happened in Oklahoma City in 1995 — an act he claimed was carried out by the FBI and pinned on the innocent members of the militia movement, as an excuse to arrest and purge them. 

And more than anything, he knew it because it was obvious to anyone with a brain.

“The core of the building being blown out” could have only happened thanks to shaped charges that were “placed on the main structural members” of the buildings, Cooper announced, referencing the steel reinforced concrete pillars holding the building together that never could have simply crumbled.

“Airplanes didn’t bring those buildings down,” Cooper thundered. “And if you think they did, you have air between your ears.”

I remember that on September 13, 2001, I visited Union Square Park in Manhattan to see what was going on, and there was one young man there standing a few feet from the George Washington statue and yelling that 9/11 was an inside job. I realize now that pretty much the whole conspiracy theory and most of its variants were already spreading everywhere. And the culture that supported this nonsense is still alive and well and continues to undermine the connection between U.S. citizens and reality. The many Covid conspiracies and the irrational belief that Dr. Fauci somehow caused the pandemic come to mind.

And my commemorative September 11 essay over at Patheos, I Watched the Towers Fall. Here’s What You Missed, could have been subtitled It Didn’t Happen the Way The Truthers Say It Happened.

It’s been a while since I’ve communicated with them, but so much of what Truthers believed just wasn’t true. The towers did not neatly collapse into their own footprints but sent debris and bodies and dust flying everywhere, over considerable distance. The other five buildings of the seven-building World Trade Center complex were all destroyed by flying debris, much of which was on fire, as were at least a couple of buildings that were outside the World Trade Center. No explosions such as what you see in a controlled demolition were visible before the towers collapsed. The billowing light gray plumes one sees in the photos is dust, not smoke. And if you really want to know how the towers fell, read the comprehensive report from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). It matches what I saw.

In other news — it might gratify you to know that the two-day Republican Trumpapalooza Convention was a ratings flop. Fox News, one of the few networks that aired the whole thing, actually got fewer viewers for Trump’s big second-night speech than they usually get in that same time slot. See also “Doesn’t Give a Sh*t”: What the Convention Revealed About Trump by Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling at The New Republic. In brief, Republicans are growing disillusioned with Trump.

There are a lot of stories today about how money is pouring in to “save” the Republicans in the midterms. Republican candidates are starting to outspend the Democrats. I’m guessing most of these will be negative ads, as Republicans literally have nothing to run on. So we’ll see how it goes.

Today’s big yuk was Trump’s offer to pay every American $5,000 if the voters keep the House and Senate in Republican hands. A lot of people sincerely believed they’d get a $5,000 DOGE check, or else the $2000 tariff check. I encountered a couple of people who were checking the mail every day waiting for that check. Will voters believe him this time? The Washington Post editorial board thinks not.

This would cost an estimated $1.2 trillion next year, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. The money would need to be borrowed on top of the $40 trillion national debt — and paid back with interest.

Of course,  no way it’s going to happen.

But don’t count on checks in the mail. Trump has repeatedly promised payments that never materialized, including from savings that the U.S. DOGE Service was supposed to identify before its failure. Last November, Trump called for a $2,000 check funded by tariffs. (On Thursday, Trump separately announced that nearly a million Americans will receive $500 rebate checks before the election after being overcharged for their Obamacare plans.)

Yeah, don’t hold your breath. I have a hard time believing that anyone would take this seriously.

I understand my congressman, Mike Lawler, is a speaker at the Republican Trumpapalooza Convention today. I’m a bit baffled as to why he’s even there. My district takes in all or part of four counties, and I understand some of those other counties are more conservative that where I am. But the district has a long history of mostly voting for Democrats, including Kamala Harris in 2024. Lawler has represented the district since 2023, and while he won fairly easily in 2024, I don’t see that he’s all that loved and admired. There were some issues going on with the Dem candidate that I don’t entirely understand but which appear to have cost  him a lot of votes. It may have been a case of the Democrat losing more than Lawler winning.  And getting closer to Trump will do Lawler no good in these parts. Maybe he’s hoping Trump will give him more campaign money.

Regarding Trump’s attempt to take over mail in voting — a group of state election officials. including several Republicans, filed a brief with the Supreme Court arguing that it’s too late to change the mail-in voting rules. Mail in voting has already started in some places, I understand. I got a form for requesting a mail ballot in yesterday’s mail, but I prefer to vote in person

Also under the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, election officials are supposed to finish any program for systematically removing ineligible voters 90 days before Election Day in federal races. We’re well within the 90 days.

This just got reported at the New York Times:

The Department of Justice sent threatening letters to at least 30 top election officials across the country, expanding its efforts to gain access to private voter data and election records.

The letters warned states not to destroy any records related to the 2024 election, explaining that their chief election officials“are currently under investigation” and subject to “ongoing litigation.” The notices come amid a barrage of efforts by President Trump and his administration, which have been fruitless so far, to find evidence of widespread voter fraud.

It is not clear what the department is investigating, nor whether its probe is criminal or civil in nature. The letters do not cite any criminal statutes. Instead, they point to some of the same claims made previously as part of the administration’s ongoing effort to identify fraud in the nation’s elections, including machine anomalies and noncitizen voting. In court, the Justice Department has tried to force states to hand over unredacted voter lists, including personal information like driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers.

The Justice Department has sued 30 different states for this data. They’ve lost 23 of those cases and have won none. Decisions are pending in the rest.

There was no other purpose for this than intimidation.

Here’s a fun read — All the Places Trump Was on 9/11 by Marie-Rose Sheinerman at The Atlantic. I doubt Trump was in any of those places. But the question is, does he know he’s lying? Or is his brain so degraded he really can’t tell fantasy from reality?

See also Donald Trump’s Nephew Pokes Holes in President’s Claims About His 9/11 Aid, Saying It ‘So Offends Me That I Need to Speak Out’. Among Trump’s claims is that he sent one of his building crews to Ground Zero to help out. But the nephew has said that Trump had no building projects going on at the time.

“The only crew he claimed to bring to the site would have been secretarial and accounting employees from Trump Tower,” wrote Fred, the son of the president’s eldest brother.

He added, “I knew many of them, and pretty sure they were not capable physically to help (if they could, I am sure they would try).”

Also, I understand there are reports that AI is going to get us all killed. I’ll try to look into that tomorrow.

In between doctor’s appointments (getting old is not fun) I’ve been working on a September 11 retrospective just published at Patheos. See I Watched the Towers Fall. Here’s What You Missed. I think it turned out pretty well. And now I have two whole weeks until the next doctor’s appointment. So look for something longer here tomorrow.

My biggest worry for the week is that some jerks will show up at the New York City September 11 observance to protest Mayor Mamdani. On social media one cannot mention Mayor Mamdani without attracting hoards of bigots, often saying that NYC “forgot” 9/11 when they elected a Muslim mayor. In their minds all Muslims are personally responsible for 9/11, it seems.

Note that Zohran Mamdani was nine years old and enrolled in elementary school in upper Manhattan on the day the towers fell. And he is a Shia Muslim. The perpetrators were from a radical Sunni faction that doesn’t get along with many other Muslims. I don’t think the Mayor was in on it.

Mayor Mamdani has accomplished quite a lot in just eight months. He approved a rent freeze for one- and two-year leases on rent-stabilized apartments. He won $34 million in repairs, settlements, and judgments from bad landlords. He upgraded over 6,000 apartments through tenant enforcement actions. He got new rules adopted to speed up the removal of scaffolding. (That may not seem like a big deal, but scaffolding that goes up and never comes down is a big issue in Manhattan.) He secured $1.2 billion in funding to expand free child care for low-income families. He’s providing free child care seats for toddlers in partnership with the state. 100,000 potholes were filled. He created a dedicated park repair team to fix broken playground equipment, basketball hoops, and sports courts. He got public sports facilities, including tennis courts in the Bronx, resurfaced and renovated. He closed an inherited city budget deficit. His administration recovered $9.3 million for workers and small businesses affected by wage theft or infractions. There’s a lot more in the works, but that’s the stuff that can be checked off. He’s like the Energizer Bunny of mayors.

Of course, a lot of people just can’t get past his being Muslim. So they are certain he’s a fraud. I suspect a lot of these people are the same ones giving Trump his 33 percent approval rating.

One issue that comes up a lot is that Mamdani inherited a $12 billion budget deficit spanning fiscal years 2026 and 2027 from former Mayor Eric Adams. The budget has been balanced for 2027. I understand New York City has received about $5.5 billion in financial assistance and gap-closing support from New York State this year. This set off screams of “other people’s money!” and “Just wait until the bill comes due!” They are predicting NYC will go bankrupt.

However, for many years taxes from New York City have provided New York State with about 55 percent of its total revenue. Last year NYC and its taxpayers gave the state $68.8 billion. To a large extend the city has been subsidizing the state for a very long time. $5.5 billion to keep the cash cow healthy seems a good investment.

There’s a massive amount of wealth in NYC. New York City has 384,500 millionaires, the most resident millionaires of any city in the world. And no, they aren’t moving out. It has the New York Stock Exchange and the North American headquarters of about every major bank and financial institution on the planet. It’s the bleeping galactic capital of capitalism, for pity’s sake. It seems to me a small tax hike on the big shots would be less expensive for them than moving their long-established operations elsewhere.

Anyway, a recent Siena College poll found that 69 percent of New Yorkers approve of Mayor Mamdani. I’m not sure 69 percent of New Yorkers have ever approved of anything. But I just hope a bunch of bigoted jerks don’t show up at the memorial observance.

In other news — Canada’s counter-tariffs on U.S. goods go into effect at midnight tonight. It might be a good time to stock up on toilet paper.

Interesting read: Neo-Nazis and the Impotence of Trumponomics by Paul Krugman.

This is just a quick note to let you know I haven’t evaporated and advise you to rest up tomorrow for the rest of the week. Among other upcoming events will be the Republican midterm convention featuring Peak Trump. I will not be watching if it’s televised. There’s to be a Charlie Kirk memorial on September 10th that I intend to entirely ignore. (See MAGA Is Mourning Charlie Kirk With Ridiculous AI Slop Merch) And then Friday is the 25th anniversary of September 11. Plus midterm mail-in ballots are already being mailed to voters in some places, even as Trump frantically and unconstitutionally is trying to take over the mail-in voting process so he can throw out Democrats’ votes.

Try to enjoy Labor Day, anyway.

I’m reading about the first-ever Republican midterm convention to be held in Dallas next week. There’s a Wall Street Journal headline about it that mentions “Trump fatigue.” I don’t subscribe, unfortunately. But I found this by Lisa Needham at Daily Kos:

According to the Wall Street Journal, photos with Trump during the convention will cost $88,600, a number that seems weirdly arbitrary until you realize that $44,300 is the current Federal Election Commission contribution limit for donations to national party committees. 

So, presumably, half would go to the National Republican Congressional Committee, and the other half would go to the National Republican Senatorial Committee. 

But that hefty sum is a bargain compared to what you’d pay for the “roundtable” with Trump on the first night of the convention, Sept. 9. That will run you $250,000, as Trump continues to creepily conflate his existence with the 250th birthday of our nation. 

Who wouldn’t want to pay a quarter of a million dollars to hear Trump rant about how schools are forcing our children to be transgender, that he has already won the war in Iran eleventy times, and that the economy is terrific? 

If Trump plans to televise the roundtable on September 9, he’ll be competing against the first NFL game of the season on ESPN. The Seattle Seahawks will be hosting the New England Patriots. Check your local listings for time.

I assume Trump chose Texas to give Ken Paxton a boost in the race for Senate. But if Trump is so all-fired concerned about Republican election campaigns, why is he sitting on millions of dollars of Super Pac money? See Republicans fear Trump will keep super PAC money and not spend on the midterms at WaPo.

Trump’s political advisers have been assuring anxious allies that MAGA Inc., the president’s super PAC that had more than $400 million on hand as of July 31, will come to the rescue during the peak campaign season after Labor Day. But Republicans are increasingly skeptical andsuspicious that Trump — who must personally approve the spending — has other ideas.

Of course he has other ideas. They may not be legal, but he has them. And Republican candidates had better not count on getting any of that “photos with Trump” money, either.

It’s all about the grift. I was remembering back in 2017 when Rachel Maddow was pointing out that Trump collected a whole lot more money for his inauguration than he could possibly have spent. Where that extra money went was never uncovered. During Covid we went through a phase orchestrated by Jared Kushner in which the Regime appeared to be engaged in profiteering with medical supplies. I don’t think anyone ever got to the bottom of what was going on with that.

In Trump 2.0, after the January 3 military raid that deposed Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, the U.S. in effect was in control of Venezuela’s oil industry. What happened with that? See the Council of Foreign Relations, The U.S. Took Over Venezuela’s Oil Industry. Where Has All the Money Gone? Something slick (ahem) seems to have gone on with oil and money and Trump, but it’s hard to say what. And of course all kinds of special interests have learned that donating to Trump’s pet projects, like the Marie Antoinette ballroom, is key to winning Trump’s favor. Yet somehow a lot of tax money is going into that ballroom, too. Hmm. One wonders if the donations to the ballroom are going somewhere else.

So the new scam seems to be raising money for Republican candidates that somehow isn’t getting spent on Republican candidates. Because Trump has other ideas. I read somewhere today that some donors have stopped giving to Trump’s Super Pac because they can see the money isn’t getting spent. And as Trump gets closer to the end of his term the easy money is likely to dry up. No point bribing a lame duck. Trump’s got to rake in all the money he can now.

Still, even Trump ought to be able to recognize that if Republicans do badly in the midterms he’s likely to be leashed. Do see Donald Trump is acting like he *wants* to lose the midterms by G. Elliott Morris and David Nir at Strength in Numbers.

I also understand that Elon Musk is throwing a lot of money into some key races. Leftie activists are organizing around the battle cry “Don’t let Musk steal this election.” And don’t forget his debacle in Wisconsin.

Also

I want to thank everyone who donated to my fundraiser. I’ve gotten more than I asked for, and I’m not going to ask for any more. I am very grateful.

This week  has been busy  Yesterday I had my annual Medicare physical, which for some reason was exhausting. The most strenuous thing I had to do was pee in a cup, and yet I was just wiped out. Today my son came to help me with some things in my apartment. Tomorrow I have to go back to the dentist for more work, fortunately all pre-approved by the insurance company this time. But that will take up a big part of the day. So if I don’t post for a couple of days — and I’m not saying I won’t — I’m just getting some rest.

If anyone really wanted to start a war against the U.S., or a war involving a U.S. interest, now would be the time. The U.S. military is a mess, thanks to Trump and Hegseth. I recommend Hegseth’s Pentagon Lurches off the Rails by Tom Nichols at The Atlantic.

It’s gotten so bad that some top brass warned Hegseth that the Iran war cannot continue as it has for much longer, as it’s draining the military to a ruinous degree. “Hegseth’s response to this story was to send his spokespeople out to castigate the press for revealing classified information,” Nichols writes.

Hegseth has purged many top-ranked, seasoned officers in favor of people who are loyal to him. The result, as we’ve seen, is a military that can’t even manage basic logistics. The Iran debacle has depleted the nation of weapons and oil. Assets have been pulled away from other parts of the world and sent to Iran, leaving areas especially vulnerable to other powers, such as China. It’s a terrible mess.

The result of all this is that the United States is losing a war to a third-rate power in the Middle East. The Russians, meanwhile, are continuing their rampage in Europe and apparently considering things so perilous that the CIA director had to fly to Moscow just to warn the Kremlin off of whatever it was thinking of doing. The Chinese are watching as Trump and Hegseth have stripped the Pacific theater of its only American aircraft carrier. In the midst of this chaos, Hegseth does chin-ups while he ponders calling all of America’s admirals and generals back to another mass meeting so he can again carp at them about fat soldiers and bearded sailors.

See also Military Officers Can’t Look Away From This Any Longer by Frank Kendell in the New York Times. Kendell was the secretary of the Air Force from 2021 to 2025, and he. says too many officers are still trying to pretend that everything is normal, as if clinging to the appearance of normality will save them.

Many lower-level officers I have spoken with are privately appalled but afraid to challenge what they are seeing. The collective hope seems to be that if they can all just go on as if nothing unusual is occurring, that this time will pass and nothing bad will happen to them — no loss of position, no demotion or forced retirement, no loss of reputation, no removal from a promotion list by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

I question whether this state of denial or whatever it is can last for 28 more months, to the end of Trump’s term, without major breakdowns. Indeed, we’re having some breakdowns already.

Meanwhile, Mary Ilyushina reports in the Washington Post that Putin pledges support to Iran, rallies leaders to challenge U.S. Will Trump notice and respond to this? I’m not holding my breath. Trump is still pretending that Putin is his good buddy. He even invited the Russian finance minister to a G20 meeting this week, much to the outrage of the rest of the attendees. For that matter, China is still buying Iran’s oil and keeping Iran’s economy from total collapse. And Trump is still pretending that Xi Xinping is his good buddy, too. Is there any precedent for this? That the U.S. is at war with some other country but acting as if the enemy’s allies are our BFFs? It’s just so … odd.

Elsewhere — as my fundraiser is kind of dying I will talk it up some more. I don’t like to complain about being poor, but today was the day I got a free ride to a grocery store, courtesy of a local government program. But I’m a couple of days away from my social security deposit. So I was a bit nervous about whether I could afford groceries. But by being very careful I managed to not overdraw what’s left in my bank account. This is my life. But I won’t starve, anyway.

I’m having a small fundraiser because I have a couple of medical bills Medicare/Medicaid didn’t cover, totaling $180. A bigger bill is for an identity protection plan I took out a couple of years ago after someone made charges on one of my credit cards. The bank caught it, so I didn’t lose any money, but I was rattled enough to want help. But it’s due for annual renewal soon at $200. If I have to cancel it so be it, but I’d like to keep it. Later this month I have an appointment to audition for a local community chorus, because singing is one of my favorite things, but if they accept my I’ll have to pay $150 in dues for the semester. Plus I’ve got a ton of doctor’s appointments this month and no car, So I’m anticipating transportation expenses. And I’m trying to not run up the credit cards in case of a dire emergency, such as my aging laptop crashing. I am hoping to scare up a little extra to get me through the month, and then I should be good for a while. And as you can see I have no advertisements and don’t ask people to subscribe. Here is a GoFundMe link, or you can use the donate buttons on the top right-hand column of the home page. Thamks for all  help.