Tuesday, September 29, 2026

🫥🍔

Grassley's opening statement said:
This hearing will highlight the committee's investigation into the special counsel's political work and weaponized conduct," Grassley said after thanking Smith for appearing. "Today, the special counsel's own record and those of his staff will tell the tale."
He proceeded to question Smith without reference to any of those documents, only introducing records into the record between the question time of Senators on the committee. Such records probably as valuable as the text messages Schmitt misread and tried to hide (maybe some staffer read them as the poster went up).

Grassley did introduce the record of checks Smith subpoenaed.
But criminal investigations always involve the principal: “Follow the money.” And making a political donation is not a private act which cannot become evidence in a criminal proceeding. Anyone who watches murder mysteries, or reads them, knows that serious crime turns over all the rocks.

Grassley was just throwing rocks. It’s what people do in congressional hearings. But it doesn’t constitute evidence of anything. Even Trump’s DOJ has so far tacitly declined to investigate a perjury charge against Smith for his prior House committee testimony. Schmitt tried to crank that up by literally accusing Smith of perjury for denying he went to Atlanta while he was investigating Trump. An allegation Schmitt couldn’t sustain.

This hearing is the nothing burger everyone expected it to be.
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My Favorite Part Of The Jack Smith Hearing So Far…

... is Eric Schmitt getting pantsed and spanked in public. Schmitt alleged Smith went to an NBA game in Atlanta, as cover for meeting with Fani Wallis when she was trying to investigate Trump. Schmitt wouldn’t share a copy with Smith, who testified he’s basically never been to Atlanta, and ended his time berating Smith, declaring he (Schmitt) was a former prosecutor and so could say Smith is a “dirtbag” who deserves to be remembered in infamy.
holy shit -- turns out Jack Smith went to a Hawkeyes game in Maryland but Schmitt's team is so reckless they concocted a conspiracy theory that Smith was actually in Atlanta seeing a Hawks game and colluding with Fani Willis. Klobuchar points out to Schmitt, "you have your teams wrong."
Smith said he remembered going to a game in Maryland to see Caitlin Clark play, and Clark is mentioned in the text messages.
🤡 Eric Schmitt beclowns himself during Jack Smith hearing 🤡

Schmitt concocted an elaborate conspiracy theory that Smith traveled to Atlanta to go to a Hawks game and collude with Fani Willis, and briefly displayed his "evidence" on a poster board before accusing Smith of perjury. There's just one problem -- Schmitt's facts were totally wrong. Smith was actually in Maryland at a Hawkeyes (not a Hawks) game and never met Willis. As Klobuchar told him, "You have your teams wrong."

Here's the whole deeply embarrassing sequence:
Definitely the highlight of the hearing. Reports are Schmitt is standing by his debunked allegations. He went back to his office to kill some staffers, no doubt.

Klobuchar, following Schmitt’s questioning, said she was a former prosecutor, and Schmitt owed Smith an apology for calling Smith a dirtbag, and for getting the allegation laughably wrong.

Nobody’s holding their breath.
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Monday, September 28, 2026

Do They Hear Themselves?

Or are they simply incapable of reflection? Let’s see, Trump promised:

No foreign wars 
To lower inflation 
To remove only dangerous, criminal immigrants 
To end the Russian/Ukraine war 
To lower prices 

(360 degrees? Isn’t that a full circle?⭕️ Does she mean they consider all points?)
DOGS AND CATS! LIVING TOGETHER!! MASS HYSTERIA!!! The DNC would happily fund that trip, if it would help.
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Biblical Grounds

Maybe Paxton shouldn’t talk to people. And this, is chef’s kiss. 😚 
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A Sign Of A Problem

The wonder is the media dutifully playing stenographers and “gotcha!” as if that is real journalism. Although they do get frisky if you don’t let them into the White House. They do love to talk about themselves.  We could debate the distinction between “literally” and “genuinely,” but the real question is: if he wasn’t psychotic, would it make a difference? Even if we dare not call it “insane” or “psychotic,” can we at least ask why an 80 year old man is doing this? A man who is also POTUS? And by “we,” I mean the public discussion. The one carried out in print and on TV Abby officeholders. Yup. Or, so long as he says it, it’s true. To him; and he’s all that matters. Yes, that is the essential problem. He’s not necessarily changing reality. He’s just insisting that he gets to define reality. Well, yeah. And we’re back at the journalistic question: why can’t we state the obvious? 🤷‍♂️  Getting harder and harder to argue with that.
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“He’s Always Working!”

He’s diligently checking his eyelids for holes. Always keeping busy.
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October Surprise

He’s going to declare victory in October and hope nobody notices it’s what we had in 2018 before Trump tore up the JCPOA (because, Obama), and that he got back only after a multi-billion dollar war, and doing more damage to the world economy than Covid did.
According to the unnamed U.S. officials, Trump is willing to unfreeze Iranian funds and offer sanctions relief in exchange for major nuclear concessions. The admission comes as a fresh round of talks is expected to take place this week in New York between U.S. and Iranian negotiators, done by proxy through Qatari and Pakistani mediators.

During his first term, Trump famously tore up the Iran nuclear deal brokered by former President Barack Obama — a deal built on sanctions relief and the release of frozen Iranian funds. But in June, Trump warmed to those same concessions, agreeing to lift all U.S. sanctions on Iran and release all of its frozen or restricted funds.
He walked away from it, but now he’s back. The only question is: will Iran do him a solid in October?
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Why Trump Wants $88 billion Now And $1.5 Trillion For DOD Next Year

"Follow the money.”
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About That…

The White House revealed Sunday evening that President Donald Trump will deliver an announcement Monday at 2 p.m., followed by a print interview shortly thereafter, setting off a flood of predictions about what he plans to say.
What happened? That clearly wasn’t it.

It was going to be the announcement of a steel mill in Iowa. That could still happen, sometime. But not at 2 pm EDT today.

The White House announced this. And then it didn’t happen. Does it matter?
“We’re going to win.”  Who is “we”? Three guesses; first two don’t count. And let’s talk again about what matters.

Sorry, he did announce it:
And then talked over it so much nobody even noticed it.
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THE BROWN PEOPLE ARE COMING! THE BROWN PEOPLE ARE COMING!!

Just in time for the midterms.  But it’s okay! Football players will protect us!

Just the way God intended. 😎
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🗳️👑🇨🇦

But he is a xenophobe. Old man mutters to himself in a room full of people. If he says it, he thinks it is so. Yeah, it’s only the polls that are fake. We don’t need Canada, but doesn’t Canada realize they need us?
Trump: How is the governor treating you because I freed up the iron ore and I said I absolutely won the election, but they cheat like hell…

“We were there only 10 days ago actually to initiate the mine..”

Trump: We can supersede the state, right? If we can supersede the state, it's good, otherwise the state will never be good.
"Fuck state sovereignty.” And winning elections now means he is king. 👑 
Trump: Because of tariffs, we are taking in hundreds of billions of dollars of profits. It's one of the reasons I can offer, if Republicans win the House and the Senate, $5000 to every adult. And we can do it and the Democrats can't because the Democrats don't have any income and they're going to drive us into a depression.

(As many have pointed out, tariffs wouldn’t cover the cost and he has made similar promises before without following through)
"Profit”? And this “income” belongs to Republicans, who will only share it as a bribe for votes? Is he talking to the guys behind him? Confidence building.... They’re counting on that $88 billion package passing to replenish what you wasted in Iran in just a few weeks. I look forward to the resolution in the next Congress affirming that the lake is “Lake Ontario,” and the gulf is “the Gulf of Mexico.” Sometimes it’s just the little things. Grandpa needs a nap. And his anti-psychosis drugs.
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The People V. The Rich Guys

Somebody in Texas owns that property; or lives on it, or near it.

But the real question is: why is Paxton throwing away the rural Texas voters? That’s where the GOP strength is. Paxton’s talking like what he is: a rich city boy. But the cities are where the Democrats are.
Talarico: So many of our Latino neighbors across Texas supported the president in 2024 because they thought he was going to lower prices. They thought he was going to end the forever wars. They thought he was going to drain the swamp and release the Epstein files.

A year into this administration, we've seen the president do the exact opposite. So I'm extending an open hand to all of our Latino neighbors who supported the president.
The people v. the rich guys.
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“My Death, Is It Possible?”

Not that I mind mortality as an incentive to act (or not act, in this case), but maybe somebody should tell the Senator that if he dies in office, he won’t be around to care who replaces him.

(My father left rather explicit, and detailed, directions about what NOT to do for his funeral; like no funeral procession. Ironically, the last one I drove in was for my mother’s younger brother, about a year ago, now. In a very small community in the Dallas suburbs. And it was a short trip from the church to the cemetery. I told my father he wouldn’t be around to complain. He said he’d come back and haunt us. In the end a family friend arranged an honor guard, because Dad was in the Navy at the end of WWII. The honor guard was six very patriotic bikers. Also almost as old as the man being buried. It was perfect. And not something he’d included in his objections. Or probably ever imagined. No funeral procession, though.)

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“But We’ve Got To Continue What We’re Doing”

Culling the herd. And no, that’s not the most pathetic thing Mike Johnson said today. This is: Granted, the day is young.

🎶 “Tomorrow, tomorrow, I love ya, tomorrow!”🎶
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It Won’t Lower The Price Of Diesel…

... , so it won’t fix the major problem farmers, and everyone else face in Iowa face right now. It won’t lower inflation or food prices, either! It won’t even lower the interest rate.

And the plant, if construction is finished on time, won’t start producing steel until 2030. So hang in for four  more years, Iowa! The sun’ll come out tomorrow in 2030, and everyone in Iowa will have a job in the steel plant! In the meantime, you can all be construction workers! 👷‍♀️ 

Now you have to vote Republican, or Tinkerbelle will die!

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Or, We Could Just Lower Tuition In State Schools

When I entered college in the ‘70’s, I paid more each semester for textbooks than I did for tuition. IIRC, state university tuition was $4 a semester hour. The most I paid in one semester was $72, when I took 18 hours. (I was young and foolish.) Fees increased that bill usually by 100%, but I still paid more for books. I took three postgraduate degrees (and here I am), two at private schools (one on a full scholarship. Not merit, just a fund to encourage students to attend seminary.
A noble effort that really didn’t solve the denomination’s problems.). My daughter learned CAD at a community college. She paid more in tuition in two years, at a public college, than I paid for my undergraduate and MA degrees.

There’s something wrong with this picture.

I had student loan debt for a decade or so after law school (private school). My daughter took about that long to pay off her student loans.

It doesn’t have to be this way. The whole purpose of public universities was to be affordable. The Lovely Wife’s father died when she was an infant (she doesn’t remember him). She, and her older sister, got their degrees at the same state school I did. Social Security survivor benefits paid for it.

It should be that way. It shouldn’t be this way.
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To The Man With A Hammer 🔨

So it is artificial, but it’s not intelligence? If intelligence was an engineering problem, we’d have solved the problem of Trump and the Trump voter by now.

Might I suggest computers have no intelligence at all, and simply run programs. Yes, the problem is the program; but maybe we don’t need to create the program or the problem at all, until we’ve thought this thing through.

Building nuclear weapons, after all, was an engineering  problem. Using them, was not. And we’ve successfully contained their use since Nagasaki, although I was assured for about the first 30 years of my life that couldn’t be done. We didn’t really need nuclear weapons, and I’m not sure we need AI.  But we can surely contain it while the “engineering problems” are solved. Or just abandon it, if engineering fails us. After all, the major contributions of AI so far are bad videos, bad advice, and bad military operations information. 

I’m pretty sure we can make things worse without the expense and burden of AI.
AI hacked his programming. That’s not a conspiracy theory. I really believe that.  🤖
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Sunday, September 27, 2026

The GOP’s Winning Issue

... in one tweet.
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The Whole Concept Is Unsustainable

Well, to be accurate, Baby Boomers were too young to give themselves colleges that were tuition free. Almost tuition free, actually. I paid more for the dorm and my textbooks than I did for tuition (well, my father funded it, but I wrote checks every semester). But my parents’ generation gave us that. We also let them tear it down, pretty much for the reasons AOC states. It’s the same reason Boomers and the children of Boomers are trying to give public money to private schools. Which is not really working out. The ordinary people who thought they’d win, at least here in Texas, are finding out tuition is only part of the cost of private school. Those vouchers are going to the people who don’t need them. It’s an issue in the governor’s race; and Abbott is not winning. Thinking is hard! Most people can’t be bothered to really do it. Which, no disrespect to AOC, is why we think AI is cognitive. Oh, she’s right about why we are told AI is inevitable (by the people trying to sell it to us), and that AI actually a form of intelligence (will someone please tell me, concretely, what that is?). I even agree that AI (not Trump’s fantasy factories, which are NOT bringing manufacturing back to America, where the costs would be so high no one would buy what the factories made. We like cheap labor. It means cheap stuff. Ask Walmart.) is the bubble supporting the financial bubble of the economy. But mortgages did that once (see, e.g., “The Big Short,” and we survived only because Herbert Hoover was proved decisively wrong, and Keynes decisively right). It’s gonna happen again, with AI. We’re stupid like that. But not stupid enough to accept the need for a data center in every pot. Or backyard. So “pop” go the weasels.

Let’s let go, this time. I don’t think they’re going to take our housing market with them. Just their power, which we’re taking back from them, anyway.
AOC: What the elite want—and they’re already planning for it—is to hoard all of the resources for themselves as the world gets more and more physically unstable.

And in an environment of AI, they want to wipe out all of our livelihoods. They want to make sure none of us have jobs, and they want to keep all the spoils of those riches while consuming and burning energy at a pace that is completely unsustainable.
The whole concept is unsustainable. The story is that Henry Ford paid his workers enough to afford his cars. Nobody would believe that story about Elmo. The rich ride on our backs. Every once in a while it’s a good idea to shake them off. They need us far more than we need them. In the end, this is Omelas. We all depend on the misery of at least one other person, somewhere in the world, to keep our society going. Except, unlike Omelas, we don’t even acknowledge that. Until we do, we’re going to just keep going around and around in this circle.

But that doesn’t mean we have to. Thinking is hard, but we can reasonably reason our way out of this.
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Not Making “Fetch” Happen

“Mr. Trump’s cabinet of curiosities wears matching $145 Florsheim Oxfords, gifted by the president himself. They’re reportedly eating the same “living diet,” which consists almost entirely of hunks of meat and globs of sauerkraut. (Adherents are said to include: Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, Vice President JD Vance, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. himself). Mr. Trump’s favorite aide, Ms. Harp, passes the president positive news coverage and good polls like she’s the “Mean Girls” gossip Gretchen Wieners. Other White House staffers and cabinet members have begun to emulate the president’s leggy blond echo chamber cultivator, so much so that the White House has been overtaken by a kind of sycophancy Olympics; members of Trump’s inner circle never miss the chance to praise him in televised cabinet meetings.”
Nothing for, or against, Florsheims, but $145 was an expensive shoe back in the day (Trump is stuck in the ‘70’s). It’s the price of cheap sneakers, today. 

Of course, this is a guy who invited a basketball team to the White House, and fed them cold McDonalds food. So that seems pretty on point.

My only question is: why do these people want their jobs this badly? Is the White House just filled with sociopaths and losers? Is is shockingly low self esteem, covered by a thin shell of braggadocio and sheer ignorance?
"At long last, sir, have you no shame?”
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