Monday, October 26, 2026

Who’s To Say?

 Anthony Scaramucci thinks Trump will go the way of Nixon.

Anthony Scaramucci, one of Trump's press secretaries during his first administration, predicted during a new episode of "The Daily Beast Podcast" with host Joanna Coles that Trump could be asked to leave office after the midterms. The risk of him being asked to leave will become even greater if Trump agrees to sit down with Russian President Vladimir Putin and China's Xi Jinping to discuss an end to Russia's war of aggression in Ukraine, he added.

"If that meeting were to happen, then I would tell you that the Republican Party is completely dead," Scaramucci said. "We'd probably have to get a tombstone out, and you tell me the date that meeting and I will chisel into the tombstone."

"Trump should be very careful with that, because he's going to push the envelope where he may be asked to leave the presidency," he continued.

Scaramucci added that Democrats don't have to win the Senate for the scenario to be plausible.

"People say, 'Oh, that's crazy. [It's] not crazy because the Democrats are going to take the House. Let's say they split and they go 50-50 [in the Senate]. You need 17 Republicans who have had enough of him," he said. "They hate his guts."
Trump has wrecked the U.S. economy. He’s weakened the world economy. He’s turned most of the country against the GOP. He’s all but destroyed our relationship with NATO. He’s hell bent on establishing America as a vassal state to Russia. He’s the most racist president since Woodrow Wilson. And he’s a blithering idiot.

They also clung to him like barnacles these last two disastrous years.
But they aren’t going to flagellate themselves. So they’ll take it out on Trump. 

It’s not like he doesn’t deserve it. 

“Great” Americans Do What Trump Does

Three guesses, first two don’t count. Lame duck. Believe it!

Sunday, October 25, 2026

The Week Ahead 🗓️ 🎃🎄

 Comes now the change in the year. No, not the weather, or the end of DST (Hooray! I call it the return to “God’s Time” because I really despise DST. It’s fun being old enough to be cranky; though I’d prefer “eccentric.” But you can’t claim that, it has to be granted you.)  My eccentricity is for the last two months of the year, and first days of the next, that period that begins with All Hallow’s Even, and ends with Epiphany (it should end with Ash Wednesday, but our culture descends from English Puritans, so that’s that). All that meant to be prelude for the next seven days of blogging.

What you’ll get, soon enough, is what’s been said before; this time with minor emendations where needed to keep them current, and with some smoothing of transitions to make them a more coherent whole. I could mash them in one giant post, but I’ve been told I have higher than normal graphic index, so I’m more comfortable with slabs of type than most. I dunno. I just know I’d do better  by my audwith shorter sentences and more paragraphs. So the great mash-up is probably not the best idea. The alternative is to edit as if they were one essay, but present them as a connected handful. If I don’t get around to it, imagine that I did, anyway.


I used to lament Xmas overtaking Hallowe’en. In 2024 I complained that stores had Xmas decorations out by early November.

How quaint.

Last year I had an epiphany, and realized Hallowe’en is, and should be, the gateway to Christmas. Besides, Advent is virtually the raison d’etre of my blogging year. This year I even hope to have a theme for Advent. If I can remember it long enough to get four weeks (well, once a week) of material. Without slacking, I mean. Not that I haven’t tried that before. I actually hope to achieve it this year.

Hope springs eternal.

Sort of like I’m doing this week, through Sunday, although I’m just retreading some old tires, again. . We’ll have to see about Advent.

🧻

Speaking of toilet paper:
Lots to unpack here but Trump says Bill Maher is an unfunny loser pothead/drunk and the recent dinner was a waste of time.

TRUMP: Let's talk about this COMPLETE AND TOTAL LOSER, Bill Maher.

When I became President, I agreed to meet, after the first one, and the last one, but never agreed to do his show, which he wants me to do, DESPARATELY

I believe he lied to me when I asked him, with all the applause and laughter he gets after almost everything he says, about thing that aren't funny or even any good, what Laughter Machine does he use? People can't think he's funny.

Bill was very nervous. He asked for a drink. He was very insecure, and he had a seriously bruised eye and nose area, as though somebody had just beaten him up — But it wasn't me!

No sooner had we had that first dinner at the White House, which is a very seductive and beautiful place, especially now that I have fully renovated and fixed it in the style which it deserves, Bill wanted to come back.

Also, I wanted to tell Bill that he's a major POTHEAD. He's got to stop, it's very bad for his health. He looked like hell this time. Bill was drunk and had alcohol in his hand as he walked through the White House. Stephen A. Smith and Kid Rock came along with him.

I learned nothing, and felt it was a waste of time. After the first dinner, Bill Maher was friendly, I guess, everyone walked away pleased.

After the second dinner, Bill's "show" was far worse than the first. He went crazy! He's gutless, because he enjoyed every minute.

Also, I am not a building a swimming pool in the White House Briefing Room, and never had any intention of doing so.
Doesn’t he have a ballroom to build? Or a reflecting pool to repair? Or a helicopter pad to admire?

He’s been down this road once or twice before. The last paragraph is the only way to know this is current rather than archive.

🦏

A stunning defeat for a Trump-aligned right-wing leader in Europe.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić, whose government cultivated close ties with Donald Trump and his family, has conceded defeat to a student-led opposition movement in a historic parliamentary election.

Trump's son Donald Trump Jr. personally met with Vučić, while Jared Kushner pursued a major luxury real estate project with his government.

Now, after nearly two years of massive student-led protests against corruption and authoritarianism, Vučić's ruling party has been defeated at the ballot box.

The student-backed movement is projected to win a parliamentary majority, ending more than a decade of dominance by Vučić's party.
Meanwhile:
EL-SAYED: I get that the President takes personal offense to my first name. He doesn't mind as much when it's the Saudis who are funding his son-in-law's private equity. Doesn't seem to mind as much when it's the Qataris who are giving them a $400 million private jet. He just seems to have trouble pronouncing it when it's my name.

I don't care how he pronounces my name. I don't even care that he remembers my whole name. Because he can just go on and call me senator after November.
El-Sayed: In my Neurology unit, I would have to give that MOCA exam, that cognitive test he's so proud of… The only people you give that test to are people who you worry may have cognitive deficits. By definition, if you’re taking one of those tests, something is wrong.

And you know the doctor who gave it to him was like, I just want to see how smart you are, sir. And he's like, me too.

He brags about having taken it. He's like I remembered the rhinoceros. You're like Habibi, everybody remember the rhinoceros.

And the funny thing about it is, you know, he's taken it multiple times. So he's not even bragging about the first time he took it. He's like, I took it the 1st time and then I took it the 2nd time. So with Donald Trump, you can't blame him for this, he's just dumb.

But for Mike Rogers, can you imagine how small of a human being you have to be to know that he has real deficits and to just nod your head approvingly at the most ridiculous shit that the man proposes?

Huh

Pictures. A thousand (empty) words. Which wins?

The REAL Cheesecake Factory*

This is actually a condescending view of working-class people. I grew up in a working-class immigrant family and we ate at Red Lobster and The Cheesecake Factory for "fancy nights out." But even we understood that the White House should not look like the inside of a Red Lobster. Working-class people are not culturally illiterate just because their experiences are shaped by their limited means.
(Trump lives at his own resort, and has probably never been in a Cheesecake Factory in his life. And I notice nobody is picking up the Saddam Hussein side of Obama’s comment.) *Full disclosure: I have never been to a Cheesecake Factory, so I don’t have a dog in this fight. If I did have a dog, I’d just wonder why I didn’t get another cat. Besides, Obama may well have been using “cheesecake” as a derogatory aesthetic term, not the restaurant chain. Anyway, it was a damned good line. “Listen to yourself.” I have been to a Rainforest Cafe. Once. For my daughter, when she was young enough to enjoy it. Never again. Way too expensive. And crappy food.

Memories Of January 6, 2021

When people invaded the Capitol, beat police officers, trashed the building, and shit on the floor…

…light the corners of my mind.

Trump pardoned all those people.
Yup.

Nobody will call it a “pivot,” though. If anyone remarks on it at all  Any of it.
Would he say a Jewish candidate wanted Mosaic law? No more cheeseburgers, 🍔 for one thing. Somebody is gonna respond to the Pearl Harbor gaffe. The racism, of a Muslim? 🦗🦗🦗 This will probably draw a mild rebuke, cloaked in concern about anti-semitism. Which is ironic (etymologically, I mean). "The past isn’t over. It isn’t even past.” But it’s showing its age, and it’s pretty worn out. I’m betting this guy is on Social Security and Medicare, and thinks he’s “entitled.” But he’s not so sure about you.
Trump: If Abdul and the Democrats win, they will create a nightmare of terror until you cannot even have a Christmas—remember when I started the war on preserving Christmas? We’re saying Christmas again. Remember when the stores were afraid to put up Christmas trees. Now, they are all saying Merry Christmas again.
Nobody remembers that, Grandpa, because it never fucking happened. All we know is Hallowe’en’s not here yet, and the stores are already putting up Xmas trees.

Can you make that stop? ✋ 

And last I checked, Jews don’t generally celebrate Xmas either. Should we be worried about Jewish politicians? Or is that racist? Hey, I guess it is! Huh.🤔  Did you put the fucking country on autopilot while you fly around doing two-a-days? (BTW, Talarico’s still winning, Ossoff’s still winning, El Sayed’s still winning, and even Mississippi is in play. Great job, Gramps!)

“Stupid” Is Defined By The Lowest Common Denominator

Or the stupidest person in the nation. (No, Virginia, what Trump said is not a legal argument. But yes, I’d pay to see the DOJ make it in court.)

A reminder that we stopped requiring literacy tests for voters a long time ago. Although maybe we should require them for Presidential candidates.
The cry of the child on the playground who lost the game. Trump keeps making ads for the Democrats. Title that one: “TRUMP IS ON THE BALLOT.”
OSSOFF: If you’re late with your rent, the machinery of late fees and eviction is very efficient. But when you tell your landlord about the black mold in your daughter’s bedroom, nobody comes for four months. And then, when you’ve got to take her to the hospital for her asthma attack, you get a $3,000 bill for the ambulance.

Life was already hard enough before Donald Trump lied us into war, before his tariffs made everything more expensive, and before he doubled your health insurance premiums and slashed Medicaid.

It costs more today than ever before in American history to fill up your truck, to stock your fridge, to power your home, to go to the doctor.

Meanwhile, and you’ve seen it, the president and the first family line their pockets to the tune of billions of dollars.

The time has come to wield the power granted to us by our Constitution and rebuke this obscenity.
BTW:
OSSOFF: If you’re late with your rent, the machinery of late fees and eviction is very efficient. But when you tell your landlord about the black mold in your daughter’s bedroom, nobody comes for four months. And then, when you’ve got to take her to the hospital for her asthma attack, you get a $3,000 bill for the ambulance.
The law favors property over people. Feature, not bug. QED.

And Abbott is a man who has never had to worry about turnout in his political career:
ABBOTT: We saw high voter turnout among Democrats the first couple of days of early voting. However, now that Republicans and our fellow Texans are seeing the crazy ideas that Democrats stand for on the ballot, they realize it is time to go vote. And that's exactly what we're working on as we close out this election.
Now he desperately hopes those rural voters will forget about the massive AI centers being built next to their houses.
Ooga booga!👻

“Leo XIV was involved with this for months.”

This is totally dishonest. The White House didn’t work with Pope Leo XIV on securing this temporary ceasefire.

Leo XIV was involved with this for months.

Even while he was in the hospital recovering from lung cancer surgery, he called Putin and then Zelenskyy.

The pope wasn’t a supporting actor. He was the protagonist.
In today’s essay, I trace how Pope Leo XIV pressed Vladimir Putin on Oleshky from his hospital bed, and how that work began on his first Sunday as pope, when he asked that Ukraine’s children be returned to their families.

The White House waited a week and then gave the credit to Melania Trump. With the midterms 10 days away and Trump’s approval among Catholics at 30 percent, it’s easy to see why.
This is the sleaziest form of “stolen valor” imaginable.
Pope Leo XIV phoned Vladimir Putin on Friday, Oct. 16, from Rome’s Gemelli Hospital, three days after surgeons removed the lower lobe of his right lung.

He had one request. Leo asked the Russian president to halt the fighting in Oleshky, an occupied city on the Dnipro River where roughly 1,700 civilians, 47 of them children, have been cut off from food and medicine (the count comes from Danielle Bell, who leads the U.N. Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine).

Moscow answered within hours. “The Vatican’s intention to help create the conditions necessary to ensure the safety of the town’s population and to organise vital supplies has been supported,” the Kremlin said, adding that “it has been agreed to cooperate on this matter.”

One week later, the White House announced that the truce belonged to Melania Trump.
Pope Leo began working on this initiative upon his election to the papacy.
On May 11, 2025, three days after his election, he used his first Sunday address from the loggia of St. Peter’s to tell the world, “I carry in my heart the sufferings of the beloved Ukrainian people.” Then he made a demand that has defined his diplomacy ever since: “Let all the prisoners be freed and the children return to their own families.”

He phoned Volodymyr Zelensky the next day, and the Ukrainian president said afterward that they discussed “the thousands of Ukrainian children deported by Russia.”

After his inauguration Mass on May 18, Leo received Zelensky in person; the Ukrainian president gave him an icon of the Mother of God painted on a piece of an artillery box from Izium, a gift he said stood for the children Russia had taken.

On June 4, Leo called Putin and urged Russia to make “a gesture that would favor peace.”
Leo was carrying forward the work of Pope Francis.
Pope Francis began this work before him. On Feb. 25, 2022, the day after Russia launched its full-scale invasion, Francis went to the Russian Embassy to the Holy See and spent half an hour there to express his concern about the war. In May 2023, he named Cardinal Matteo Zuppi his envoy, and Zuppi’s trips to Moscow focused on reuniting deported Ukrainian children with their families and on prisoner exchanges. Vatican News has reported that a number of those children made it home through the channel Zuppi opened.

His funeral carried the same work forward. On April 26, 2025, Trump and Zelensky sat face to face on two chairs inside St. Peter’s Basilica, their first meeting since their Oval Office blowup in February, and Zelensky said afterward that it could prove historic.

Zuppi stayed on the job under Leo.
And then Melania heard about it. Or someone in the White House did.
The cardinal describes the mission as one “entrusted to me initially by Pope Francis and subsequently confirmed by Pope Leo XIV,” and he flew to Moscow a third time from Sept. 28 to 30, where he met Ukrainian prisoners of war for the first time. That was the same month Mrs. Trump’s office says Oleshky first came to her attention
Leo announced his cancer diagnosis on Sunday, October 11. 
The Vatican said he resumed his duties on Thursday, and the call to Moscow came the next afternoon. Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the secretary of state, told reporters the call was Leo’s initiative; a senior Vatican source told America that the Holy See placed it. Putin, for his part, wished the pope a speedy recovery.

Leo walked out of Gemelli on Saturday without help. Before getting into his car, he stopped to talk with a Ukrainian family, and a 13-year-old Ukrainian girl handed him a stuffed toy.

On Monday, Oct. 19, he called Zelensky — their third phone conversation of the pontificate. He raised the “grave situation” in Oleshky and briefed the Ukrainian president on the request he had put to Putin. “We are preparing decisions,” Zelensky said afterward.

The order of events is plain
Plainly stolen, that is, by the White House.
The pope moved Moscow first, from a hospital bed, and he had Kyiv on the phone two days after his discharge. Two days after that, his doctors said he needs no further cancer treatment.
The White House announced on October 23 that Melania had been working on the agreement for months, although it also said she only heard of the situation in Oleshky in September. But Putin had committed to the Okeshky plan on October 16th.

I would say Leo is wise not to lower himself to Trump’s level (it’s clear he gave his wife credit so he couldn’t be questioned about it, and she won’t be). Christopher Hale has a slightly different analysis, one I don’t disagree with:
Jesus warned his disciples about the hypocrites “who love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on street corners so that others may see them” (Matthew 6:5). He told them to give alms in secret, where only the Father sees.

Leo has kept that instruction through this whole episode. He held no press conference from Gemelli. The Vatican put out a brief statement, Parolin answered a few questions from reporters, and the pope went back to his recovery.

His 17 months of quiet work on Ukraine have followed the same pattern, as did the three years Francis gave the cause before him. The beatitude Jesus gave the peacemakers has no clause for whoever issues the press release.

If the guns fall silent in Oleshky on Oct. 29 and the trucks get through, that is good news whatever name sits atop the statement. The families trapped there will not care who gets thanked. (emphasis added)

American Catholics heading to the polls on Nov. 3 should care a great deal, because the administration courting their votes just tried to take the pope’s work and hand it to the president’s wife.

Leo did this with part of one lung gone and a cancer diagnosis less than a week old. The least the White House owes him is his name.
For Trump, giving at all is for suckers, and giving in secret is just an opportunity to take credit. There really is no bottom to this administration.

We Bombed In State Court

Blanche on CBS says his suit against Alaska is "asking the court to step in where the Alaska Supreme Court didn't, which is to look at federal law and if necessary to allow a process for Alaska to decide who should be certified as the winner."

(So, the voters won't get to decide. Got it.)

Does federal law have a different standard of “confused voters” which the Alaska Supreme Court failed to apply? And does that standard create a process the Alaska Court failed to recognize?

I’d say he’s so full of shit his eyes are brown, but…

BRENNAN: The DOJ lawsuit demands the Alaska result not be certified if voters are confused. The confusion is defined as Sen. Sullivan not winning.

BLANCHE: That's not what it says

BRENNAN: I'm quoting from it. You are telling them not to certify it. What right does the federal government have telling a state not to certify?
Brennan beat me to it, with the critical question: what right (i.e., legal basis) does the federal government have telling a state not to certify?
Is there anything quite as breathtakingly brazen as watching top administration officials insist on camera that they wouldn't dream of interfering in an election, while their own legal team is concurrently filing federal court papers demanding to do precisely that?

When Attorney General Todd Blanche stepped up to assure Brennan that it was "never our intention" to improperly interfere with state election certifications, the ink was practically still wet on the Department of Justice’s complaint in Anchorage.

Because right there in black and white the complaint explicitly asks a federal judge to step in and block Alaska from certifying its U.S. Senate results if incumbent Republican Dan Sullivan loses a tight race where votes for the other Dan Sullivan could have tipped the balance.
As I’ve said before: extraordinary relief requires an extraordinary showing.  And “Our guy lost because someone else had the same name,” ain’t extraordinary. It’s stupid. 

When the Supremes decided Bush v Gore, they didn’t rule on who won, they ruled on the deadline imposed by the Electoral Count Act. Even then it was a per curiam opinion, because it meant they had effectively elected the President. But that power goes to the people, not the person with the most lawyers. So the Supremes not only didn’t sign it, they declared it non-precedential. And they had clear grounds, based on the Act, for their ruling.  Blanche ain’t got shit; but Trump is making demands, and we, the people, are footing the legal bills.

Is this a great country, or what?

Lagniappe:
I just wanted a piece of Blanche’s Twitter argument. This is BS, and Todd knows it. What he claims to be asking for here is what Alaska already does (preserve records). He’s implying a separate action if they don’t like the outcome (hence, preserve the records), although the complaint seems to question the outcome preemptively. So the DOJ position depends on who you asked last. Todd is keeping the elephants away: DOJ is interfering directly. It’s all my balls to set up a complaint in the press after the counts are finished. Trump is going to do that anyway, but the crucial questions are: 1) who cares?; and 2) what does that get him?

Answers: 1) nobody; 2) nothing.

Blanche To Alaska: “You’re Stupid!”

Really stupid:
BLANCHE: Because of ranked based voting, voters write not just one, but multiple names on the ballot, and so there are a number of scenarios where it could be obvious that a voter was confused by the way they wrote down candidates

BASH: But that will be at your behest

BLANCHE: Why is this controversial?
Then present those scenarios to the court if you can show that happened. The controversy is that you’re acting preemptively without facts. And if you don’t know that, surrender your law license. And yet the Complaint only identifies the prelude to the law, which is not the law, so no law has been “broken.” Although you’re trying hard with this argument. He’s not doing any better than Blanche.

Greetings From Texas

Saturday, October 24, 2026

📽️

That was Trump. In his first term. He invited two Russian government officials (IIRC) into the Oval Office, then squired them around the West Wing, violating all manner of security protocols.

Speaking of disinhibitions:

Nope

Double nope:
President Trump violated federal law by seizing control of the California National Guard last year and deploying troops to the streets of Los Angeles during immigration protests, a federal appeals court ruled on Friday.

With the midterm election less than two weeks away, the ruling could provide an extra layer of legal assurance on the limits a president faces in using the military on American soil.

Mr. Trump’s top military adviser has said there are no plans to deploy troops to polling stations for the midterm elections. But Mr. Trump has said in the past that he regretted not ordering the National Guard to seize voting machines after the 2020 election. And in recent months, he has taken unusual steps to disrupt voting procedures in several states.

“To the extent people were concerned that he could try to federalize Guards, try to send them to polling places, I think this clearly says no, you can’t,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the law school at the University of California, Berkeley.
And an "oops." None of this 👇 is true, either.
Trump: "Our country is making hundreds of billions of dollars on oil. and then on top of it we have Venezuela, and we have Greenland! 'Cause Greenland has a lot of oil. We're making trillions of dollars. But my people said 'please don't mention that, sir, because people are paying a little higher' ... we're making a frickin' fortune"
And “we” in that sentence does not include John and Mary Q. Public. Oh, that “we.”

All The Way Down

Correct.

Using Starlink, a civilian commercial service, for offensive drone strikes to kill people has never been allowed, nor should it be.

Starshield, a different system, is controlled by the US government. What they decide to do is up to them.

Ukraine military violated Starlink terms of service and used it for offensive drone strikes to kill people. That loophole was closed last week.

Starlink remains critical to the defense of Ukraine, as it is the only system that cannot be jammed or blown up, at least for now. Were Starlink to be turned off, the Ukrainian front line would collapse immediately. This is NOT a threat, it is simply a statement of fact.

Starlink was also crucial to preventing Russia from overrunning Ukraine in the early days of the war, as all other means of communication were destroyed or jammed by Russia.

SpaceX has done more to defend Ukraine than any private company on Earth BY FAR.

That said, I have nothing but UTTER CONTEMPT for the virtue-signaling evil warmongers who push for endless slaughter and offer no realistic solution to the conflict. May you burn in hell.

End of story.
Questions still abound, like why it took so long to “close the loophole.”  And what “realistic solution” to the conflict is Musk proposing, besides making it harder for Ukraine to defend itself by making it harder for Russia to continue the war? (In war, “offensive” and “defensive” are often matters of perspective.) Dems in dissaray:
Obama: Folks say, 'Well, Abdul didn't like some of the things you did as president.' Let me tell you something. We are not gonna agree on every detail of every issue. You know who else didn't agree with everything I did? Michelle Obama. I'd say about 5 times a day she's like, 'You knucklehead! Why you do that?'
Trump in dissaray: The entire controversy is over the quality of the reference. Trump has repeatedly stated he knows nothing about that, and doesn’t want to know. Because his head is stone.

Pounding Snow In Alaska ☃️

That explains what’s wrong with it..
Walter Olson of the libertarian Cato Institute said the suit "is abusive in intent and nearly frivolous in argument, and should fail on the merits."
In other words, it has no merits.
Stan Brand, who represented top Trump allies in January 6 congressional and criminal proceedings and once served as the House's top lawyer, was just as blunt. "This is a political document," he said, calling it another of the administration's "ploys to try to confuse people, distort the process and intrude into something that's the exclusive prerogative of the states."

Brand also pointed to the DOJ's own manual, which limits the department's election role to investigating and prosecuting federal election crimes and warns against interfering in how states tally and certify votes.
"This is a political document” is pretty much the end of the legal analysis. The law requires extraordinary grounds to grant relief in this situation. Two people with virtually the same name, are not extraordinary enough.

Evangelical Xianity Is About Secular Power…

... not the basileia tou theou.

Dear Elmo: Nobody Cares What You Think.

Or how you spend your money. Signed: Texas
. @JamesTalarico : They may have the money, but we have the majority.

The most powerful people in the world know they can’t defeat our movement with the truth, so they’re attacking us with AI deepfakes, foreign bots, and conspiracy theories. They’re trying to make this election about anything other than their corruption.

You should believe our movement can beat their money because they sure do. On November 3rd, we are going to do the unimaginable: flip this seat in Texas, defeat the most corrupt politician in our state, and elect a servant leader to the United States Senate who’s going to fight for all of us.
P.S. You’re a carpetbagger.

Still Unclear About The Concept

🤡🎪 Now I’m Convinced She Had Nothing To Do With It

We know the Pope contacted Putin and Zelenskyy, and we knew that happened shortly thereafter. A week later, along comes this clown.
Put a clown in the palace, you don’t make him a king. You turn the palace into a circus. 🎪 🤡

Friday, October 23, 2026

Feral Cunning

Is This What Homan Meant?

Homan said he knew “stuff.” Is this it? Or part of it? ‘Cause I gotta say: “Pretty weenie.”

Probably came off the Intertoobs, too.

Upstaging The Pope?

But evidence is thin on the ground.
WAIT A MINUTE: Melania Trump is now being credited with brokering a ceasefire in Ukraine by the White House—just one week after Pope Leo personally called Vladimir Putin to push for the SAME THING.

On October 16, Reuters reported that Pope Leo had called Putin to request a ceasefire in the Russian-occupied Ukrainian town of Oleshky to allow desperately needed humanitarian aid and food to reach civilians.

The Kremlin confirmed Putin had agreed to cooperate. The Vatican made clear the initiative came from the Pope himself.

Fast-forward to today.

The White House is now announcing that Melania Trump brokered a ceasefire in Oleshky, claiming SHE initiated discussions with Russian and Ukrainian leadership.

The Associated Press is reporting the White House's account without mentioning the Pope's earlier intervention.

So why is the White House taking credit for an initiative Pope Leo was publicly pursuing a week ago?

🚪

Q: Now that you know the backstory about Amy Acton and her stepfather and why she hasn't talked to her mom in so long -- her stepfather was indicted for rape -- do you change your mind about the ad?

TRUMP: No. No. It's a mother speaking badly against Amy Acton. You don't know anything.
Everyone knows the background story except Trump. And he can’t stand that.
YIKES 😳 Trump snaps at a reporter asking him about why he's dismissing sexual abuse allegations 👇

WOMAN REPORTER: Do the sexual abuse allegations mean nothing to you, sir?

TRUMP: Wait. Wait! Wait wait wait. Slow down. Who are you with?

REPORTER: NBC, sir. But they are very serious sexual abuse allegations

TRUMP: Quiet! Isn't she a fresh person? You're a horrible little reporter, aren't you?
He opened the door. Does he realize it swings both ways?

Who’s On First?

What's on second. I Don’t Know’s on third.
Q: Do you think it's right for the richest man in the world to have so much power over what goes on in a war because Russia and Ukraine?

TRUMP: Well, I don't think he does. First of all, he's a very good person. He's not gonna do anything wrong. Elon will never do anything wrong.
And nobody knows who is in charge. But everyone is denying responsibility.

The Crisis We Are Supposed To Fear

There are two Daniel Sullivans on the ballot for U.S. Senator in Alaska. One of them is the GOP candidate; the other ran against him in the primary, winning over 4000 votes. The winner garnered over 68,000 votes. Both are on the ballot because of Alaska’s ranked choice voting system. Mary Peltola is the Democratic candidate. Trump is afraid his candidate will lose to Peltola, so he’s sued to prevent that.

No, seriously.

The DOJ has sued to challenge the results if the Republican loses. Again, no, seriously.

[The suit] alleges that the presence of a candidate named Daniel J. Sullivan could confuse voters and wants a court to potentially delay the certification of the election if Sen. Sullivan is defeated next month.
The problem is not the request, which on its face is almost ludicrous (the facts that would have to be shown to justify the remedy requested are, frankly, unimaginable), it’s ludicrous on the legal basis for the request:
The lawsuit points to the preface of a federal law setting guard rails on states’ voter registration procedures – a preface that explains the law’s goals of protecting the “integrity of the electoral process” – as giving the court the power to intervene.
A prelude, like the Preamble to the Constitution, for example, is effectively dicta: commentary on the law that may provide guidance, but has no legal force. Dicta in a judicial opinion is not binding, but it can be an argument picked up later. Preludes to laws are similar; perhaps guidance to interpretation, but not law themselves. IOW, relying on the prelude to a law to make a claim in a civil suit, is the kind of mistake a first year student shouldn’t make in a moot court. If that’s all you’ve got, you really got nothing.
The lawsuit is based on a “strange and unusual” legal theory, said Derek Muller, an election law professor at Notre Dame Law School. It’s also unclear, he said, on a practical level, how a court could even intervene in the way the Justice Department proposes.

...

“They’re just plucking from the preface and saying this gives them a free-wheeling right to enjoin operations in a state, and I just don’t think a court is going to buy that,” Muller said.
These are the great legal minds of the DOJ we’re supposed to be afraid of. And all challenges to the electoral outcome, even the Twilight Zone theory that Johnson will conspire to deny the seating of New Democrats, will still go through the courts. The courts still require evidence, and law. Trump’s DOJ seems to be consistently short of both.

Starshield Is Controlled By…

Apparently not controlled by Trump. Speaking of Ukraine and not controlled by Trump….
Ukraine’s Starshield access was still limited Friday despite President Donald J. Trump saying Musk restored it, according to the Wall Street Journal. U.S. officials told the Journal President Trump called Musk Wednesday and asked him to lift the restriction. Trump told reporters Thursday: “I don’t want to comment on it, whether I called, or whether somebody else called. The bottom line, he put it back.”

Ukrainian accounts are mixed. Some units tested drones at 200 km/h Thursday, mostly near the Black Sea, but late Thursday and overnight most of the military reported connections failing again above about 161 km/h. Zelenskyy’s spokesman Dmytro Lytvyn wrote, “We see the same limit. So as for now—nothing has changed.” A Zaporizhzhia pilot said failures are now random, and five of ten drones were lost on one mission Thursday night.
According to a release from the office of First Lady Melania Trump, she and her team have secured a localized ceasefire for the city of Oleshky in Ukraine between Ukraine and Russia. Per the release, technical teams between the U.S., Ukraine, and Russia have worked to facilitate the safe evacuation of remaining civilians, primarily the elderly, between October 29 and a yet unspecified date. In addition the this, an impartial team of U.S. media will document the ongoing venture and both Ukrainian and Russian non-military personnel will work with residents to facilitate the evacuation.
Reuters confirms, in part:
Ukraine's top negotiator David Arakhamia said on Telegram a ceasefire ​would be established in Oleshky soon, as would an operation to establish permanent humanitarian corridors ⁠for evacuations and food deliveries.

He did not provide additional details on the operation.

Russia did not immediately confirm the ceasefire.

The ​Kremlin said earlier this week that work was underway to ease the humanitarian situation in Oleshky after Russian President Vladimir ​Putin told Pope Leo he was ready to cooperate on the issue.
Yeah, what are those two clowns doing?