Here is the thing. If you tell me that you believe that race is a biological category and that it is a guide to the objective superiority and inferiority of groups of people, I am not calling you a racist to insult you, I am calling you a racist because it best describes your beliefs.
This week's featured post is "Can Democrats take the Senate?"
Ongoing stories
- Trump's assault on American democracy. The Supreme Court again failed to defend Congress' power. It allowed the construction to continue on Trump's ballroom, which Congress has never authorized.
- Climate change. The oceans are now hotter than ever.
- Iran. The Strait of Hormuz is still closed. We're still running out of precision missiles. Trump still has no plan.
- Ukraine. Ukraine continues to hammer Russia's oil industry, which is the foundation of its economy. They're not targeting oil as much as Phillips O'Brien wants them to, but attacks are ramping up. Meanwhile, Russia is trying to knock out Ukraine's power grid for the winter, and is doing it much better now that US air-defense aid is completely exhausted.
This week's developments
This week everybody was talking about our strange foreign policy
So North Korea is good and Canada is bad. Got it?
As North Korea goes full speed ahead on building the nuclear weapons we're spending billions to keep Iran from getting, Trump wants a summit meeting with Kim Jong Un. To make himself more attractive to Kim, Trump cut short our planned military exercises with South Korea, saying that the exercises are "inappropriate and hostile" to the North, which is in the running for the most oppressive country in the world. If you're looking for some good behavior that Trump is rewarding, you won't find any.
Trump has maintained that he enjoys a "great relationship" with Kim, telling reporters on Wednesday: "He likes me".
That's all that matters. Previous American presidents didn't think having a "great relationship" with one of the world's bloodiest dictators was a worthy goal, absent some concession from the North Koreans. But Trump is focused on himself, not on the interests of the United States or the free world.
Meanwhile, we have entered into a trade war with Canada. Phillips O'Brien summarizes: The dispute is
is about far more than trade, it is about Canada’s right to exist as a sovereign state. ... Canada is faced with a USA that is now fundamentally dishonest and rapacious. Moreover, it is faced with a US government that denies its ultimate right to exist and speaks openly (and regularly) about how Canada should be annexed into the USA.
All through Trump's second term, foreign leaders have been treating him like a crazy uncle: Flatter him. Don't do anything to set him off. Don't call him on his bad behavior. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is done with that. He described the impossibility of coming to any agree with the Trump regime.
We’ve recognized from the start that America has changed. We recognize that sometimes, its signature is written in pencil.
In other words, an agreement with Trump only lasts until he decides he wants something else from you. Friday, tariffs on an estimated $20 billion of Canadian goods went into effect, and Trump is threatening 50% across-the-board tariffs on January 1.
Also, he turned up his rhetoric.
US President Donald Trump has said Canada wants "the benefits of being a state, without being one" after trade talks between the two countries collapsed late on Friday.
He has repeatedly said that Canada should be "the 51st state". How do you negotiate with that?
and control of the Senate
That's the subject of the featured post. Democrats' odds are only improved by the tone-deaf candidates Republicans are running in key states. Here, North Carolina Senate candidate Michael Whatley disparages the anti-data-center movement.
You gotta remember that this opposition to data centers is not organic. This is being ginned up.
As if the big money were against data centers rather than behind them.
and some outrage stories: Harp and the USS Trump
As I've mentioned before, I don't know what to do with stories that grab public attention, raise people's blood pressure, and maybe illustrate character flaws of certain important people, but have no direct impact on our lives. Lately, though, they've been turning up so regularly that I feel like they need their own category. Feel free to skip down to the next section.
This week we heard endlessly about Natalie Harp, Trump's closest aide. It all started with this fairly innocuous line by Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff, who is running for reelection in November.
While the sailors on the Lincoln fight his war, while he fruitlessly drains our munitions and oil reserves, the president sleeps through his meetings. He golfs and trades stocks. He doesn’t want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the emir of Qatar.
[I've added links in case you don't recognize the news stories Ossoff is referencing. They're all legitimately fact-based.]
Now, the heart of Ossoff's charge is "He doesn't want to do the job." We're at war, and we appear to be losing. The economy is beginning to stall out. Working Americans are having a harder and harder time paying for basic necessities like groceries and fuel -- not to mention health insurance. The annual budget deficit may exceed $2 trillion before the fiscal year ends next month. We're continuing to do nothing -- and even go backwards in a lot of ways -- in the face of climate change. But our president doesn't have a lot to say about any of that. If you retain anything from Ossoff's quote, that's what it should be.
But that's not what the White House responded to. Trump and all his minions appeared to take deep offense at "He wants ... to travel with Natalie."
But although Ossoff’s aside resonated with the junkies, the majority of Americans likely had no idea who this Natalie woman was, and might never have given it another thought. But then the West Wing lost its mind. And Trump did too. Their pushback was so overwhelming, so obviously coordinated, so ugly and personal that it became a story. The White House inadvertently created news, as well as a permission structure for even the most cautious, fact-based media organizations to take on the topic. Which is why the name Natalie Harp is now everywhere.
This is known as the "Streisand effect": By objecting to a fairly minor story, you turn it into a major story. So anyway, Natalie Harp is a 35-year-old executive assistant who makes around $150K a year. She is with Trump constantly, prints out flattering news stories and social media posts for him to read, and helps him post his Truth Social rants. She -- and not Secretary of State Rubio -- was with Trump in the catering truck when he ditched Air Force One in Ankara.
She is devoted to Trump in a way that does not seem terribly healthy. "You are all that matters to me" says one of her notes to him. Some people think she does -- or is trying to -- look like his daughter Ivanka.
Ossoff's flip mention of her might be interpreted as hinting that she has a romantic relationship with Trump. But he didn't exactly say that, and most of the follow-up commentary doesn't say that either. (Compared to the attacks Trump regularly dishes out -- with Natalie's help -- what Ossoff said was fairly tame.) And even if she does, it may seem a little creepy, but it's neither my business nor yours; consenting adults and all that. The far more damaging interpretation of her role -- also probably false -- is that the big bag she is always carrying contains his supply of adult diapers.
Here's the part that does matter:
- Trump often says stuff that makes you wonder what world he's widwidth=580 living in. Well, it's Natalie's World. Both her behavior and the relentlessly worshipful stuff she shows him communicates to Trump that he is a uniquely successful president who is widely admired and universally loved by the American people. Those ridiculous AI-generated images he posts of himself as Jesus or a great general -- where do you think he gets them?
- She worked for a year without a security clearance. Given her constant proximity to the president, you have to assume that she's seen or heard some of the nation's most important secrets. But she didn't have clearance because she didn't submit the appropriate forms.
- She is the most egregious example of a general trend inside the Trump regime: The sole qualification for any job -- attorney general, defense secretary, whatever -- is abject submission and obsequious flattery.
But for the most part, I think we should all feel silly for having spent this much time on her. I know I do.
Another story that is more symbolic than consequential: According to ABC News and "three sources familiar with the matter", the Navy is thinking about renaming an aircraft carrier under construction. The USS Doris Miller may be renamed for Donald Trump.
If true, this is outrageous in both directions: In the United States, we don't name things after sitting presidents. Or at least we didn't used to. Honors like these are supposed to be History's to decide. Worse, Trump has no military record, and is widely believed to have dodged the draft during the Vietnam War by speciously claiming to have "bone spurs". He's also in the process of losing the Iran War.
But as in the previous note, the Navy knows that flattery is the way to get what you want from Trump. And Trump knows (I believe) that future generations will be ashamed of him and the things that happened during his presidency. If he waits for the judgment of History, there won't be any Trump aircraft carriers or battleships or airports or performing arts centers.
The other side of this swap is to dishonor Doris Miller.
Doris "Dorie" Miller (October 12, 1919 – November 24, 1943) was a U.S. Navy sailor who was the first black recipient of the Navy Cross and a nominee for the Medal of Honor. As a mess attendant second class aboard the battleship USS West Virginia, Miller helped carry wounded sailors to safety during the attack on Pearl Harbor. He then operated an anti-aircraft gun and, despite no prior training in gunnery, officially shot down one plane (according to Navy Department records), but Miller and other eyewitnesses claimed a range of four to six.
What makes Miller's story even more inspiring is that in 1941 Black sailors weren't assigned significant combat duties. Without the chaos of Pearl Harbor, he might have spent the war peeling potatoes and ladling out soup.
But Pete Hegseth's Pentagon is doing everything it can to erase the contributions of anyone who isn't or wasn't a White man. Naming an aircraft carrier after a Black hero? Impossible!
Your life and everybody else's will go on as before, but it's hard to look away.
The ring tone of our quack HHS secretary is a quack.
When people tell you about how "far left" or "out of the mainstream" Democratic candidates like El-Sayid are, remind them of Victor Marx, the Republican candidate for governor of Colorado. In Marx's book, he describes physical battles he has fought against people possessed by demons.
His detailed descriptions include claims that one man “transformed” in front of him, developing “pointy” ears and “superhuman strength.” In another episode, Marx said a “demonized” teenage girl “turned reptilian” before his eyes.
and you also might be interested in ...
The Abraham Lincoln is now headed home, to be replaced by the George Washington.
The latest Trump regime effort to control the press: It fired Erik Slavin, the editor-in-chief of the military newspaper Stars & Stripes, as well as Middle East reporter Lara Korte.
Slavin said he was being fired “for stating in a CBS interview that hypothetical censorship of news for service members would constitute a red line." ... "I stand by the principle that Stars and Stripes must remain editorially independent, as required by law and by the department’s own policies,” Slavin said.
Korte said on X: “Today, I was informed that the Department of Defense is firing me for insubordination after I told a CBS reporter that I work for Stars and Stripes — not the Pentagon, not the administration, and not any policy maker.”
As our HHS Secretary and President keep badmouthing vaccines, kindergarten vaccination rates are headed downward. The rates vary considerably from one state to the next. Idaho is the least-vaccinated state, with only 75% of kindergarten children getting the MMR vaccine, compared to Maine's 98%.
Often this gets framed as a personal choice by parents, but it's more than that. When vaccination rates dip below the level of herd immunity, diseases can spread widely. Some children are unable to benefit from vaccinations, so herd immunity is their only protection. Each unvaccinated child creates risks for other children.
Texas is refusing to extradict an ICE agent accused of shooting a Minneapolis man through a home's front door and then lying about it, falsely claiming that the man had attacked him. TPM pulls together several examples of Trump or Trump allies preventing criminal ICE agents from facing justice.
and let's close with something aspirational
Going to a dance lesson this afternoon. Think I'll come out looking like Astaire?
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