I wake and exclaim, it’s Thursday and I don’t have anything! It’s been a relatively busy week so far so this makes me happy.
My immediate next thought: we’re on the fascism train.
And it’s left the station.
Feel free to skip the rest. Go outside. Take a walk. Read Mary Oliver or Robin Kimmerer. Have a nice bowl of yogurt and strawberries. But I need to place a marker this morning. As long as this is, it is in no way comprehensive.
On Monday Maddow highlighted another purge, this time of upper level intelligence and military personnel. Yesterday, Trump fired the CIA expert on Russia, who was at the Alaska Summit. The government, briefly took over the Amtrak station in DC. The occupation there, ongoing. Tyranny experts talk about the importance of controlling the Capitol, meaning it’s not just a distraction. It’s not just a scare tactic.
(And I’m with Tim Miller here: can we stop talking about “distractions” already? It’s a journalistic waste of breath and also misses the point that things can be both ugly, scary power grabs AND distractions and by distractions, lately, of course we’re talking about the ongoing cover up of trump’s crimes with cohort and bestie, Epstein).
Trump is targeting Lisa Cook, who sits on the board of governors of the Federal Reserve. In the history of that agency, not one single president has ever ousted one single serving economic expert. Not one. No surprise she’s a Black woman. It’s also abundantly clear he’s attacking her because he cannot yet risk trying to get rid of Jerome Powell.
Trump lacks the authority to fire Cook without cause and according to the NYTimes, the voluminous material produced by the Trump appointee at the Federal Housing agency fails to outline a crime (mortgage fraud. See also Adam Schiff and Letitia James).
The head of the CDC has been fired. The recent cancellation of vaccine research, the revamping of vaccine guidelines along non-scientific, conspiratorial lines is recent history. Threats to sue the American Pediatric Association for issuing their own (sane) vaccine recommendations came not long after. (Covid is not included in the vaccine liability law so the government cannot do this). It’s not a stretch to imagine that free Covid vaccines might be a thing of the past — maybe available for people 65 and over maybe not.
Meanwhile, the press continues its flaccid coverage. Sanewashing trump’s delusional and incoherent statements, for instance. People around the president know he’s declining. People who track down recordings and listen to Trump (MeidasTouch) know he’s more off the rails than ever. He looks like shit. Online debates about how far progressed his congestive heart failure is can be a great time waster but obviously everyone invested in America’s future wants to know: when is this fucker gonna drop dead?
On the subject of succession, it’s clear to many that the scary anti-democratic billionaires and others are busy behind the scenes getting ready for a JD presidency. Vance is often away when some of the worst things are going on, for instance, distancing himself from the administration.
Every single thread about Trump dropping dead has someone piping up, but JD Vance will be worse!
The most recent take on that, a view supported by what I know about Peter Thiel and Curtis Yarvin, suggests that it really won’t matter who’s president next given the unitary executive approach to governing which the Supreme Court has had no small hand in ushering along.
In other words, the absence of a cult following may not matter as much as we hope. Same with Vance’s across-the-board unlikeability.
I can’t follow what’s happening to the Palestinians right now. It throws me over a ledge. But even scanning headlines delivers outrageous news: targeting journalists and lying about it seems about par for the course for the raging war criminal at the helm.
And by “targeting” I mean slaughtering. By “war criminal at the helm” I mean Netanyahu.
We’ve got vocal brave fighters now. Newsome, Pritzker, Wes Moore. Others. That’s not nothing. There was an amazing special election result in Iowa this week, bolstering Robert Hubbell’s opinion that results matter more than polling or registration numbers (this candidate won by double digits in a state that Trump won by double digits).
So for now, I will continue to pin my hopes on the 2026 midterm elections.
For now my online porn will continue to be watching Republicans being yelled at and booed in town halls attended by very fed up constituents.
Reminder: it would only take a handful of Republicans to make a lot of this stop.
What happened to the Republican Party remains one of the most unanswerable and confounding issues of our day.
The sun has moved off the armoire and there’s coffee waiting for me downstairs. Time to rise and shine, in other words.
Check out this iteration of the turtle theme on the scrap-holding side of the pin board. Its chaotic clutter speaks to this moment better than any of the studied compositions.
Yup, all of that
You’re funny. Thanks for making me laugh.
😂
Each morning as I make my breakfast and then sit down at the table with the morning newspaper….I wonder why we are so quiet? why we aren’t shouting? Why people are going about their business calmly???? They will come for us eventually……no one is really safe.
The quiet. The denial. The euphemisms. The dumb equivocations. It’s all dismaying. On TOP of what is alarming.
when is this fucker gonna drop dead?
Not soon enough.
I pin may faded hopes on the midterms also.
Egad, as my mother used to exclaim.
( I miss her greatly, but thank goodness she is not here to witness this)
I’m going to clean and garden and try to breathe today
Sounds like a plan. I’m glad my parents aren’t around to witness this shit either.
Hmmmm
I am leaning toward the unexpected spectacular denouement. Alien abduction would be too much to ask. I’ll settle for mass food poisoning at Bedminster.
Of course I waste buckets of time dreaming up scenarios that would likely get me arrested, but then again I’m certain that the first time I see an armed redneck in camo here in Georgia (the shitheel governor just got off his knees and said it was a Go) I am going to lose it in a very loud and spectacular way.
Let me take a breath…..the turtle quilt. What I meant was your color and pattern preferences and the way you organize them is not something you should fight against or with. You won’t get a picture or a theme from this piece because the dark energy, the echoes of the past, the earthtones and earth shapes are all Yours. Make it serve.
I love the way your mind works.
And thanks for the clarification about the quilt. Makes a lot more sense to me now.
One third I broke off and it’s staying broken off but I’ve rejoined the remaining by two pieces (after eliminating the warm-toned band in the mid-section). I’m having to add some width to make it work, so it’s a bit from being done, but I’m excited about it again.
How many times I’ve thought it can’t get worse … everyday proves me wrong. But know that I do love your posts!!
Yes it gets worse in a terrifyingly accelerating pace. But tune out for a bit! Enjoy Hawaii! I’ll be over on FB to see some pics.
Yesterday, a funny encounter at the grocery store, a Kroger affiliate. The checker asked how did I find things so I told her that prices had gone up, as expected on most things. She gave me a long look and said, “but we were promised that prices would go down on day 1”. Now I can usually read people pretty well, and this comment seemed off so I decided to hold my tongue and I just smiled. She went onto say how lucky we were to have our Senators and Congressional Reps who believed in the side of what was right so of course that opened my flood gates. In a serendipitous moment, she told me that she was a child of immigrants, one grandfather from Spain, the other from France, who had settled in New Mexico and married Native American women Well, you could have knocked me over with a feather and I told her that I too am a child of Spanish immigrants. As I walked back to y car, I wondered if my Dad were coming to this country now, would they even let him in with a last name of Martinez and if they did, how long would he be able to remain…
Sounds like she could be a friend! I don’t see many Trump supporters in the wild so I’m not sure I guard myself in quite the same way. My recent exchange with a store clerk had me suggesting she use a stool (she was shorter than I and not availing herself of the belt-roll button for some reason, so constantly reaching for this or that piece of produce or wedge of cheese). She pointed to her foot which I then saw was in a boot. She said, “it would hurt too much.” Then we had a brisk exchange about how one of the worst aspects about medical care was how long it took together an appointment. Turns out she has some Lymphic disorder (couldn’t get an appointment for four days and had to work all those days) and was working with a weeping wound. “And then there’s the smell,” she complained. I thought (but did not say), “oh I thought you were incontinent.” Just gross though. And around food! I mean gross for the customer and really gross for her to not be able to get the care she needed. She might’ve been older than I, so there was that too.
it’s all just way too weird, Animal Farm, 1984, Mania, Don’t Look Up have not prepared me for the complete craziness that is happening every single day! Not just US politics, here in my once-so-stable country The Netherlands as well: our 4 party-coalition cabinet, became a 3 party caretaker cabinet a few weeks ago, elections are to be held in October and last week yet another party chickened out, so we are left with a minority 2 party-caretaker-cabinet with hardly any mandate from our parliament, to be honest for quite some time now politicians with any relevant experience have left or are leaving. I can’t blame them: they are, especially women, vilified on a daily basis.
I myself have no desire to get involved in any kind of politics, it’s all very disheartening, to say the least.
Politics these days seem to boil down to horrible tweets aimed at polarizing everybody against each other, or self-promotion, never about society and what we all need.
Where will it end?
I had no idea things were shifting so radically (and for the worse?) in Holland.