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The Felon/GOP Are Running Out of People to Blame

A year and a half into the Felon's second regime - after campaign promises to lower consumer prices and no foreign wars - prices and interest rates remain high, oil prices are surging again, and economic growth has slowed.  Meanwhile, America finds itself trapped in the Felon's war of choice with Iran with no exit strategy other than surrender. The other alternative is an endless war. In the face of their own disastrous policies, the Felon and his bootlickers in the GOP accept no responsibility for what they have wrought and seemingly can only blame Joe Biden and/or claim Democrats are communists. Insanely, one cabinet member this week expressed surprise at gasoline prices, ignoring his boss' war of choice as the obvious cause and leaving one to conclude that the individual is either stupid or a liar.  In addition, the Felon has just levied more tariffs against Canada (which will retaliate) that will only serve to drive prices even higher.  Given the Felon's abysmal poll numbers, sane Republicans - admittedly a rare species nowadays - are flailing in the blame game and are simply running out of others to blame for way the economy has been damaged.  A piece in Salon looks at the desperate position of many in the GOP:

Now that Donald Trump no longer has a White House press secretary with a ready cherubic smile and a ton of snark, we can all see that the paint is peeling off his delusional presidency.  I’m not just talking about the Reflecting Pool.

Republicans like Rep. Byron Donalds, now the GOP nominee to succeed Ron DeSantis as governor of Florida, has habitually and enthusiastically repeated and amplified Trump’s whims and still claims with a straight face — as he did on Fox News this week — that Democratic policy and the actions of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are responsible for the horror under which we currently live. Never mind the fact the Democrats currently hold no power in Washington and can’t implement any policies of any kind.

At least Republicans are finally, if obliquely, admitting that things aren’t so good in the country. Trump, however, isn’t ready to concede that. . . . We hear many in and out of government saying that his [the Felon's] presence ensures the outcome he predicted the Democrats would visit upon us all.  Like I say, the paint is peeling. 

On Wednesday, Trump was seen on the South Lawn praising a brand of fertilizer made by a company that, as he noted, had given him a sizable campaign contribution. Trump says it’s great stuff. Hey, they paid. He played. Very often, he is exactly as transparent as he claims to be. At the end of this live commercial he said that this fertilizer made for “happy grass.” He sounded like he’d been smoking some of that stuff. 

On the one hand, this is incredible corruption, but if you’re a CEO, having the president push your product directly in front of the White House isn’t a bad thing. You can’t blame business for doing what business does. You can blame the rest of us for not stopping it before it got this bad.

To overcome the absence of departed pep secretary Karoline Leavitt, Byron Donalds and the rest of Trump’s puppets have been dancing long and hard lately. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson told reporters the economy had taken off and was on its way into the stratosphere until we experienced this little detour “called Iran.” You could say he unwittingly justified every American’s anger over a pointless, useless war that is making all our lives more difficult and more expensive. He was trying to back up his leader, but accidentally threw him to the wolves. But was it really accidental? 

The key point here is that the GOP has been in charge in D.C. for more than a year and a half. Republicans control the Senate, the House, the Supreme Court and the presidency. They vowed they’d fix the economy and have only moved the needle backward. . . . Republicans are screaming about socialism ruining the country while those so-called socialists are pushing free healthcare. Who do you think the American public will listen to? The GOP’s pitch was, roughly speaking, that they could use extreme methods to take care of the cleanup on aisle seven. They have obviously failed. . . . If you got elected to fix the system and nearly two years later everything is much worse, then it’s time to hire a new plumber — and not the Richard Nixon type.

Making a sale to the electorate as a Republican this year is a difficult task indeed. Even the disorganized Democrats might be able to crawl over that low bar. We can’t say a GOP victory is impossible, but it seems conditional on a variety of narrowing possibilities, especially considering the accused criminals, domestic abusers and otherwise morally bankrupt candidates they are offering us. Then there are the Democrats. All the Republicans can do is accuse the party that’s out of power of somehow wielding the power, and doing so as part of a sinister communist conspiracy.

Trump’s gift in the past was the ability to sell an alternate reality. He now does that very poorly, and by asking the proper questions we might be able to clarify this country’s predicament — as if many of us haven’t already come to the conclusion that we’re terminally screwed.  

What could be more symbolic of the depths of depravity we’ve hit than a president literally giving a paid testimonial on the White House lawn for fertilizer? While the punchlines write themselves, I never had that on my bingo card. I never even imagined such a possibility. It’s a criminal act and an empty and meaningless prostitution of the office. It demeans the entire nation, and adds to the instability in the world.

And what can your average White House reporter do? Not much, beyond watching the turgid, disconcerting vomitorium we call politics with a jaundiced eye, careful of the manipulations and machinations of those who are out to feed their own greed while screwing the rest of us into the ground. It helps if we can laugh about it.  As we can clearly see this week, the paint is peeling and we have no way to fix it.  

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The White House Freak-Out Over Natalie Harp

Likely every White House administration has had some share of fluffers and sycophants who lack any true credentials or expertise, but the current regime of the Felon is a whole other matter.  Now, the regime consists of cabinet secretaries and other officials that owe their positions solely to having given large campaign contributions or loyalty to the Felon. Competence and detailed knowledge on a host of issues is lacking, if not viewed as a liability.  Giving flattery to the Felon and playing on his obsessions and prejudices are what truly count.  Which brings up the subject of Natalie Harp - who seeming does not have security clearance - a constant companion of the Felon who carries a portable printer so she can, at any point, dash out a paper copy of poll or news story that will please the Felon.  A Daily Beast piece has the following:

Natalie Harp’s intimate letters to Donald Trump are being revealed in full for the first time—showing her spilling her heart and saying she is “unworthy” of him. “You are all that matters to me,” Harp writes to Trump, “I don’t want to ever let you down.” The Daily Beast is publishing them amid swirling questions over the national security implications of 35-year-old Harp’s status as 80-year-old Trump’s most significant gatekeeper, even being used as a conduit to the president by foreign leaders.

Perhaps not surprisingly, when the Felon abandoned Airforce One in Turkey and left the press pool and a number of senior aids and cabinet secretaries as decoys for a feared Iranian attack, Harp was among the handful of people who snuck away in the catering truck. All of which prompted Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff to mention Harp at a campaign event.  The White House reaction has been borderline unhinged and has only served to make Harp more of a news story.  A piece at The Atlantic looks at the new media scrutiny:

You are reading this story only because the White House didn’t want you to.

I’ll explain. This past Sunday, Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff—who has become quite good at delivering viral campaign sound bites, slickly filmed by multiple cameras—unleashed a blistering indictment of President Trump’s leadership. Ossoff, a former documentary filmmaker who is generating 2028 buzz, denounced Trump’s handling of the Iran war this way: “While he fruitlessly drains our munitions and oil reserves, the president sleeps through his meetings. He golfs and trades stocks. See, 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.”

It was a pithy and well-structured attack, but not so different from the broadsides delivered daily by Democrats on the campaign trail or on MS NOW. But one new word stood out: Natalie.

The line got a knowing laugh from a handful of observers in the room, and it electrified a subset of political obsessives on social media, who took to their favorite platforms and group chats with some version of “Oh, he went there!” or “I can’t believe he did that!” 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.

In Trump’s second term, his White House is populated by true believers. And no one believes more truly than Harp, whose devotion to Trump is unparalleled. A cancer survivor who credits the president with saving her life, the 35-year-old aide seems firmly glued to his side, an adoring smile stretched across her face. Harp has become an Oval Office gatekeeper, a ubiquitous travel companion, and one of only a few people with the keys to the president’s social-media account. She’s become one of the most unlikely powerful people in the administration . . . . Harp largely stayed out of the headlines even as she became the subject of Washington gossip and some West Wing grumbling.

But things changed because of a Turkish catering truck. The Washington Post reported last week that Harp was one of a handful of aides chosen to join Trump when he was furtively whisked off Air Force One at the Ankara airport earlier this summer because of Secret Service concerns about a threat from Iran. The questions were immediate: Why did this young aide, whose official responsibilities remain murky at best, hide with Trump in the truck as the president secretly boarded a different aircraft, even as the secretary of state and the secretary of the Treasury were left on board what became, in essence, a decoy plane? . . . But it was the White House that pushed the story into the national discourse.

This White House rarely does things subtly—just look at all of the gold in the Oval Office or the maps depicting Canada as the 51st state. And when it comes to pushing back against a story aides don’t like, the two options are usually a) scorched earth or b) total obliteration. But even by that over-the-top standard, the outsize reaction was eyebrow-raising.

Suddenly, the story had life. A few hours later, the press pool was invited into the Oval Office for a photo op as Trump honored a heroic California lifeguard. The president prides himself on his accessibility to the media and took a few questions. Kristen Holmes of CNN asked, “Jon Ossoff said that you’d rather travel with your aide Natalie Harp than build the ballroom and do your job as president. What is your response?” Trump responded with his standard, 1980s-vintage insult about Ossoff—he called him “Pee-wee Herman”—and then, well, he proved the senator’s point by launching into a several-hundred-word defense of the ballroom.

Meanwhile, White House aides and Trump allies began an all-out shielding of Harp. One of the president’s sons defended her, as did a Cabinet member and a congresswoman. With some prodding from the White House, a whole bunch of conservative media members and MAGA influencers joined them, I was told by one of the people who’d received a nudge.

If the goal was to shut down talk about Harp, it backfired spectacularly. Suddenly, media outlets that had ignored her felt the need to write about her. Questions about her security clearance came up, along with this one: When was the last time First Lady Melania Trump was seen in public anyway? (July 19, at the World Cup final.) And as more stories were written, West Wing aides got angrier, taking their cues from a furious president, . . . .

That furor, in a way, underlines Harp’s importance in Trump’s world. She is the president’s constant companion on Marine One, at Mar-a-Lago, and at summits across the world, those familiar with her position told me. They added that the president has described her to them as “my Natalie.” She’s also been nicknamed the “human printer” because she totes around a portable printer so she can, at any point, dash out a paper copy (Trump’s preferred form in which to read things) of a poll or a news story. . . . Some aides have quietly grumbled to those I spoke with that Harp is too inexperienced to have such unfettered access to the president.

Each item she prints, whether a positive poll of dubious origin or an attack on a political foe, reinforces Trump’s worldview. In Regime Change, a new book by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, Trump is depicted explaining to people that Harp is the only aide who loves him as much as his family does.

[T]here is no expectation that, despite the whirlwind week, Harp’s role will change; a senior official told me that Harp was “upset by the unfair attention” but would not allow it to deter her from her duties. But those in the West Wing are bracing for more scrutiny. And, it just so happens, Melania Trump chose today to make an appearance in public.

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Americans Are Starting to See the Truth About the GOP

For decades far too many voters have believed the myth that the Republican Party is better at handling the economy and fiscal responsibility.  If one looks at the actual data especially from Reagan forward, the actual reality is that the economy thrives more under Democrats, plus Democrat presidents don't get the nation embroiled in endless wars. Be it job growth or handling the deficit, Democrats out perform their Republican rivals who in truth only offer up warmed over versions of trickle down economics where the rich get richer and pay ever less in taxes while everyone else sees stagnation or worse. In the 2024 elections many voters for the Felon said they trusted him to handle the economy better and to bring down prices.  Of course, the exact opposite has been the case and inflation continues, oil prices continue to rise thanks to the Felon's war of choice, and the Felon's tariffs have further increased prices. A related myth is that Republicans care more about our men and women in uniform although I suspect those serving currently in the Middle East might beg to differ.  A piece in the New Republic looks at these false myths and the GOP's ability to use propaganda more effectively than Democrats.  Here are highlights:

It was heartening to see a couple of polls come out recently showing that, for the first time in a long time, Americans trust the Democrats more than the Republicans on the economy. It’s insane that this can come as a surprise, and that these two parties are even running as close to one another as they are is absurd. Trusting the Republicans more on the economy at this point is like trusting Sean Combs to be your babysitter.

For decades now, the Republican Party has built its electoral success on myths and lies. Ronald Reagan was the last Republican president who your average person would say left the country better off than he found it. I wouldn’t say that, for a range of ideological reasons, but I’m a liberal. I’m ready to admit, however, that your average person would say that about him.

But that’s a long, long time ago now. You have to be in your fifties at least to have any memory of it. But the last three Republican presidents—Bush, Bush, and Trump—have been disasters. The first Bush oversaw a double-dip recession and a massive savings and loan scandal that looted the treasury. The second Bush started a costly and tragic war based on lies and nearly brought the global economy to its knees. Trump, you know about—corruption, fascism, and staggering incompetence.

That’s four decades of failure. In fact, it goes back much farther. I got an email a couple of weeks ago from my friend Simon Rosenberg, who has for years paid careful attention to the performance of the economy under Democratic and Republican administrations. In this email, he had a chart showing that going all the way back to Franklin D. Roosevelt, monthly job growth has averaged 176,000 under Democratic presidents, and 59,000 under Republican ones. Trump’s average over both terms, because of the job loss during the pandemic, is actually in the red, minus 7,000. In his current term, Trump averages 44,000 a month. Joe Biden, you wonder? He averaged 336,000.

From 1989 to 2026, we’ve had Democratic presidents for 20 years and Republicans for 17.4 years. Care to hazard a guess as to the number of jobs created under Democrats vs. Republicans? Answer: It’s 49.8 million versus 1.9 million. That isn’t a typo. Fifty million to two, basically. Democratic presidents have also done far better than Republicans on median household incomes, GDP rates, the Dow Jones index, and even deficit reduction. Dramatically so on deficit reduction.

So why do people usually believe the Republicans are better for the economy? Three reasons.

First, the GOP benefits from being the party of big business, which just leads people to assume that they must have a better handle on profits and loss (they certainly do on the latter). People see that nearly every Wall Streeter and corporate honcho is a Republican, and they take their cues from that.

Second, the Republicans and their media propagandists are extremely skilled at reinforcing the above lazy misperceptions. When a Republican is president, they find the one piece of good economic news and flog it endlessly.

Third and I think most important, the Democrats do an awful job of talking about all this. To begin with, I’m not even sure most of them know just how wide the divergence on the economy is. I remember talking to a group of Democratic House members a few years ago. I started rattling off some of these statistics, and several of them grabbed a pen and a scrap of paper and began scribbling them down. I could tell by the looks on their faces that this was news to them. That’s just indefensible—a total failure of the national party and congressional leadership.

Democrats and their consultants seem to have this belief that they shouldn’t bother attacking the perceived strengths of Republicans.

But that doesn’t mean the right line of attack and a pile of cash can’t change that. If you’re old enough to remember 2004, you remember what “Swift-boating” was. In July, the country saw John Kerry as a war hero. Three months and $22.4 million later, half the country thought he was a traitor or a coward or a little of both.

This is a lesson the GOP takes to heart: They went right at his strength, and they changed perceptions of him. When done right, it works. Democrats need to get this. And of course, they were lying about Kerry. And it still worked. But the Democrats just have to tell the truth.

In the current case, Democrats haven’t really done much to drive Trump’s approval down. They haven’t had to. Here, observable reality is doing a lot of the work. But between now and November 2028, it will be up to the Democrats to finish the job.

They have to start telling the country the actual story of the American economy over the last four decades—that every Republican president has left a mess that the Democrat had to try his best to clean up, and that every Democrat has left the country better off economically than he found it, usually far, far better. They should make sure every American knows the numbers 49.8 million and 1.9 million.

And by the way, another GOP strength they have to go after directly—this idea that the GOP is the pro-military party. Tell that to the mothers of the sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln. Can you imagine if what’s happening on that carrier had happened under President Kamala Harris? First of all, it wouldn’t have, because whatever her good and bad points, she would not have been stupid enough to start this stupid war because Benjamin Netanyahu put stupid ideas in her head. But if somehow it had, Jim Jordan would be screaming about impeachment, and Fox News programming would consist of little else . . . .

Add to that Trump’s utterly baffling announcement last week ordering the Navy to revert to old, steam-powered catapult systems on some carriers. (Where does he come up with some of this stuff?) Experts say these systems are badly outdated, less effective than the electronic systems currently in use, and will cost billions of dollars to install. To give credit where it’s due, I did like what Democratic Senator Mark Kelly had to say on this one: “He’s a marginally failed real estate developer with multiple bankruptcies. He shouldn’t be weighing in on systems, on aircraft carriers.”

The Republican Party is not good for the economy. They screw it up every time. And the Republican Party is not pro-military. The last two Republican presidents have started completely unnecessary wars, gambling with the lives of service members. The next Democratic presidential nominee—moderate, socialist, man, woman, whatever—better say these things bluntly and repeatedly. And every Democrat needs to join them.

Thursday Morning Male Beauty

 

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Pete Hegseth -The Felon's Favorite Incompetent

The Iran war debacle continues with oil prices inching higher every day as the Felon issues threats - including against an American ally - and growing reports of horrible conditions on Navy ships stationed around the Persian Gulf and surrounding areas get more and more news play.  Pete Hegseth's response has been to basically accuse servicemembers and their families of lying and the Felon stated that the deployment of the carrier Abraham Lincoln was not long enough.  With the Felon's war of choice going badly and very unpopular on the home front, one has to wonder how Hegseth remains in the Felon's good graces, indeed within the Felon's favored inner circle.  A piece at Salon suggests Hegseth remains in favor with the Flon for several reasons, not least among those are (i) his willingness to lie to and attack the news media, (ii) his ability to flatter the Felon's delicate ego and to tell him what he wants to hear, and (iii) his relentless attacks on female and minority military officials and officers.  Hegseth with his flattery of the Felon and bluster  over rides the counsel of generals and admirals.  One is left wondering how bad things need to get before Hegseth is shown the exit.  Here are article highlights:

The tale of Donald Trump sneaking off Air Force One in a catering truck captured public attention for many reasons. It was a reminder that, for all his tough talk, the president harbors a sense of fear. Hiding away in a glorified ice chest would also have been a blow to the 80-year-old’s dignity. But the charade, which was first revealed by the Washington Post, also gave us insight, as political scientist Scott Lemieux wrote, “into who he considers his actual inner circle.”

Left behind on the decoy plane were Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller and other administration officials and aides. The only people deemed worthy of saving from Iran’s reported threat were people whose full-time jobs are tending the president’s body and, more importantly, his ego: Natalie Harp, who writes Trump love letters, and whose main job is showing him flattering social media posts. Body man Walt Nauta. Dan Scavino, Trump’s former golf caddie. Oh yeah, and Pete Hegseth. 

The defense secretary’s inclusion on this list does not suggest he is an especially well-regarded or important person, especially when other prominent Cabinet members — not to mention White House reporters — were left vulnerable to the rumored assassination threat. On the contrary, his inclusion in Trump’s flock of flatterers is another sign that Hegseth’s main skill is fluffing up the narcissist-in-chief. It helps explain how Hegseth — unlike former Cabinet members such as former Attorney General Pam Bondi or former Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem, who recently lots their jobs — seems in no danger of losing his job, even as his manifest incompetence is a big part of the reason Trump is losing the war with Iran. He may be bad at running the military, but Hegseth is good at lying to (and attacking) the press and stroking his boss’s ego, which are the only skills that count in Trump’s White House. 

Recent news about the ongoing disaster aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln is another reminder of why Hegseth may indeed lead the highly competitive race to be the most hated man in Washington. Both Stars and Stripes and the Military Times reported that multiple service members had attempted to jump off the aircraft carrier, which has been deployed for over eight months without any real breaks. Sailors are reportedly “struggling with exhaustion and declining morale, including reports of suicidal thoughts,” explained Alison Bath of Stars and Stripes.

The details coming from family members offer a chilling illustration of how little regard Hegseth has for the actual well-being of service members, even as he releases videos implying they have low testosterone levels or berates them for being “fat” or “beardos.” Sailors have reported being fed “rotten” food or barely being fed at all, and desperate family members have been begging the Navy for relief.

Hegseth, though, is shrugging off the concerns, telling reporters the issue is “completely misrepresented” and that the service members have “everything we can provide them at every single moment.”

Trump was even more callous and dishonest about the suffering of the sailors, saying that the deployment was “not nearly long enough,” even though, at over 260 days, it has set a record for the longest deployment.

Trump and Hegseth clearly share a disregard for the lives of the very service members they are asking to wage war on Iran. But the debacle also reveals how Hegseth’s twisted priorities appear to have endeared him to his boss, seemingly above every other sycophant surrounding the president. Beyond operating in the Northern Arabian Sea to aid in logistics and serve as a deterrent to Iran, it seems like the reason the USS Lincoln is being held in this Kafkaesque hell is to shore up the illusion — or perhaps even Trump’s delusion — that the war with the Islamic Republic will be over soon.  

The president, desperate to keep stock markets afloat and MAGA voters on the hook, has been playing a game for months where he announces a “deal” with Iran to end the war, usually timed to the market’s opening bell, buoying stock prices. But the news invariably turns out to not be true. The danger for Trump is that investors might finally wise up and stop falling for false promises.

Swapping out a major aircraft carrier deployed in the Middle East, as the Pentagon is now planning to do, could blow the whole game up, as it is a tacit admission that the war is not ending in the next few days, as we’ve been told is happening for months. Sunday’s news, reported by the Wall Street Journal, that Iran is secretly planning to “escalate the war” will also not help matters.

This pattern suggests Hegseth is far more concerned about his boss’s fixation on stock prices and media coverage than he is about listening to the advice of admirals, who have been bearing the brunt of complaints from families of service members over the USS Lincoln. Even by the low standards of Trump appointees, Hegseth has shown an eagerness to back up the president’s every lie and delusion, not matter the cost.

The secretary may be in Trump’s good graces, but in the real world, his reputation — which was never good to begin with, since he was comically unqualified for this job — is in the toilet. The American public loathes Hegseth. As CNN’s Harry Enten recently explained, at 22 points under water, Hegseth’s approval ratings are “the lowest of the low.” 

Hegseth is likely to stay, though, even as Trump posts on Truth Social that he’s “extremely happy with the job that Pete Hegseth is doing,” including “getting rid of DEI.” Sure, the secretary has mismanaged the military to the point that sailors are reportedly attempting suicide. But he has blocked the promotions of talented leaders who annoy MAGA by being women or Black, and that’s what really counts.

One sailor who reportedly jumped overboard is only 19 — practically still a kid. The terror and trauma Hegseth is inflicting him and his fellow service members in this losing war points to a man with no moral character at all. No wonder Trump loves him. 

Wednesday Morning Male Beauty

 

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Iran Threatens Expanded Conflict Abroad

The supposed cease fire between the USA and Iran has ended and the price of oil has moved higher over night to the highest level in over a month.  Meanwhile, a new poll shows the Felon's approval has fallen to an all time low:

[The Felon's] Trump's approval rating fell to the lowest level of his presidency, ‌with an overwhelming majority of Americans concerned the U.S. war with Iran will last a long time, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll that concluded on Monday. Just 33% of respondents in the four-day survey said they approved of Trump's performance in the White House, while 64% disapproved. Trump's approval rating, down from 35% in a poll that closed earlier this month . . . 

In this setting, Iran is threatening to expand the war and the Felon, in another insane move, has threatened to bomb Oman, an America ally. As noted numerous times, there is no face-saving exit for the Felon from a debacle of his own making even as the mid-term elections bear down on a panicked Republican Party. It would seem the Iranians fully recognize that the war has become toxic in the minds of most voters and that perhaps the best way to drive the Felon either back to the negotiating table or into simply walking away.  They recognize that either an expanded war or one involving US ground troops will only drive the Felon's approval level even lower as other Republicans fear a blood bath in November.   A piece in the New York Times looks at Iran's calculations:

After almost six months in hiding, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, has offered the clearest window yet into his vision for ruling the country, appointing a string of hard-line, veteran military commanders to top security roles.

The overhaul, which took place this month, signals that he plans to keep the nation on a war footing, analysts say — ready for open-ended confrontation with the United States and for keeping a lid on dissent at home among Iranians suffering the economic brunt of the conflict.

The appointments also reflect a leadership that is still struggling to devise a sustainable strategy for deterring Washington, analysts noted, as Tehran seeks a way to end the war without giving up the strategic leverage it has gained, most notably through control over the Strait of Hormuz.

The new security leaders will first have to navigate a period of limbo in the conflict. . . . The overhaul also included a new general staff of the armed forces, a new head of the Revolutionary Guards and a commander of the Revolutionary Guards’ naval forces — a critical role as the Strait of Hormuz has become so important.

Moderates in the government, like President Masoud Pezeshkian, say Iran should take advantage of its effective control over the Strait of Hormuz and reach a deal.

Hard-liners, however, want to hold out for more concessions and prefer maintaining an aggressive stance that would discourage the United States from launching new military interventions. They note that the last two wars launched by the United States and Israel, in June 2025 and in February this year, began while they were in negotiations with the Trump administration. They also point to the 2015 nuclear deal that Iran agreed with Washington, which President Trump withdrew from in 2018. . . . “The hard-liners gained immense traction, arguing — and history seems to have backed them — that the West is fundamentally untrustworthy.”

Ayatollah Khamenei, observers say, has surrounded himself with figures who seem as ready to negotiate, if they deem conditions right, as they are willing to prolong the war when they do not. That is a break with the approach of his father and predecessor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. . . . . Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei has shown a greater willingness to initiate conflict with Washington, some analysts say, pointing to Iran’s decision to start the last round of military skirmishes.

“Iran is willing to engage in negotiations to end the war,” he added, “but is also prepared for a long conflict rather than accept an incomplete or temporary settlement that leaves it vulnerable to renewed U.S. pressure or attack.”

The Iranian leadership is apparently gambling that it can do that because Tehran can withstand the economic pain longer than [the Felon] President Trump can endure the fallout of the war in the United States.

This strategy has serious implications for Iran’s roughly 90 million people, who are struggling with an economy in free-fall and trapped by the constant risk of a return to all-out war.

Ayatollah Khamenei called on Mr. Taeb to strengthen the Basij’s “public intelligence network” when he announced his appointment last week, a move that experts say indicates that the group will have an expanded role in domestic surveillance and repression.

“Mojtaba may be willing to take risks in confronting the United States that even his father avoided in his final years,” Mr. Memarian said. “The question is whether Iran’s political system — and, more important, Iranian society — can absorb the consequences of that gamble.”

Tuesday Morning Male Beauty

 

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Trump Punishes South Korea For His Iran Humiliation

The Felon continues to demonstrate on a daily basis his unfitness for office and daily erodes the United States' standing in the world and by the time his misrule ends the nation and the world will be far more unsafe.  Meanwhile, at home medical research has been canceled, health initiatives ended, and environmental protections and safe water and clean air are threatened, in the case of the latter to benefit the fossil fuels lobby.  On the international front, the Felon has no face-saving way to exit from the Iran war that he chose to launch despite warnings that he would face the exact situation that now confronts both the US and the global economy.  And with the Felon, one thing that is certain is that he will never take responsibility for his own actions and foolish decisions.  Someone else is always to blame, be they American citizens accused of vandalizing the Reflecting Pool rather than admit the Felon's crony who did the work was incompetent to blaming allies for the Felon's own Iran debacle. His ego and narcissism will never let him accept responsibility. The latest target in the Felon's blame someone else effort is South Korea which wisely opted to decline the Felon's after the fact request that South Korea somehow bail the Felon's ass out in Iran. A piece at The Atlantic looks at the Felon's destructive actions:

Last winter, Donald Trump plunged recklessly into war with Iran. The United States is now losing that conflict. Iran remains defiant, much of the world economy is more threatened now than it was six months ago, U.S. military resources are overextended, and munition stores are dangerously depleted. Trump and the United States have suffered one embarrassment after another; last week, he had to sneak away from the region on a backup plane because of a possible assassination threat from Tehran.

And so the [Felon] president of the United States has taken the logical next step: He is punishing South Korea, a loyal American friend, and tempting U.S. enemies to doubt America’s will to defend its allies.

Early Sunday evening, Trump instructed the Defense Department to “substantially reduce” its participation in an annual joint military exercise with the South Koreans. He did this, he said in a post on Truth Social, in part because such activities are expensive, but worse, they are insulting to his friends in North Korea, a country that has been “unthreatening and respectful” while he’s been in office.

More to the point, he complained that the South Koreans have not helped him defeat Iran: While somewhat unrelated (?), I recently asked the President of South Korea if they would like to join us in the Denuclearization of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and they said, “No thanks!”

When Trump makes the effort to say something is “unrelated” to his actions (and then adds a coy question mark) it usually means it is completely related—and probably his central motivation.

Scaling back the exercise is, of course, an insane decision, which does nothing but hurt an ally, and tempt an adversary to think—correctly—that American leadership is feckless. You could be forgiven for wondering why South Korea and the rest of the free world must pay for Donald Trump’s failures. Such confusion is understandable, except that in Trump’s world, every loss, every defeat, is a personal insult. When things go wrong, someone must be held responsible—and that someone is never Donald Trump.

America and the rest of the world are now witnessing a public exhibition of narcissistic rage. Trump embarked on a war for personal glory, and what he got instead was ongoing humiliation. He clearly finds it all unbearable.

Trump both fears and respects the autocrats who rule Russia, China, and North Korea, and so he dares not cross them. Instead, he is seeking to assuage the psychic injury of his loss in Iran—including the American public learning of the shameful conditions to which he has subjected U.S. forces—by kicking America’s allies, the nations he can punish without fear that they will kick him back.

The Iran war was not the president’s failure, you see. Others failed the president. . . . . because Trump is unable to subdue Iran, unable to replenish stocks of U.S. weapons he should never have expended in this war, unable to take care of the service personnel he has put in harm’s way, someone is going to pay. The most convenient target he could find, at least for the moment, was South Korea.

At a better moment in American history, an enraged Congress would step in and demand answers about such dangerous idiocy. They would rush to the White House, talk to the press, hold hearings, and in general act like responsible stewards of American power. Those days, at least among legislators of the president’s party, are long past.

Our allies might for the time being similarly ignore Trump’s tantrums, but they have power and agency of their own, and even now are likely planning for a world in which the Americans are no longer men and women of principle who stand by their word and by their friends.

The Chinese and the Russians and the North Koreas are certain to draw the appropriate lessons from this deranged policy. They have been shown, yet again, that when Trump fails, he hurts those he feels safe hurting. Already, North Korea is dispatching missiles and thousands of soldiers to aid Russia in its war on Ukraine. If a conflict should break out in the Pacific or on the Korean peninsula, or if the war in Europe spreads further West, the world’s dictators might well count on Trump to focus American wrath not on the enemies of the free world, but on the nations that have always pledged to stand side by side with the United States in a mutual defense of freedom.

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The Problem Causing Trump’s Supporters to Turn on Him

As the 2026 mid-term elections approach, the Felon has a huge problem - actually several Problems - that are causing even some his Kool-Aid drinking cultists to turn against him, namely high gasoline prices here at home in America.  The polls are showing the Felon far under water with historic levels of disapproval.  Even Fox News is unable to ignore the horrific poll numbers which are turning the Felon into an albatross around the necks of congressional Republican candidates. The New Republic reports on this reality: 

An intriguing pattern is developing in Fox’s polling of the Senate races this summer: Just about all the Democratic candidates are significantly outrunning the favorability of their party. While the party’s standing—which is pretty bad—can’t be shrugged off, Fox’s polls do show that most of these Democrats are not getting dragged down by association with the party.

Meanwhile, all these polls show [the Felon] Trump deeply underwater—including in states he won by double digits. To wit: Fox’s latest poll in Ohio finds Democrat Sherrod Brown leading GOP Senator Jon Husted by eight points, 53 percent to 45 percent. That’s despite the fact that only 42 percent view the Democratic Party favorably. The rub is that only 44 percent see Brown as too close to the Democratic “establishment,” while 55 percent do not. Turns out a lot of voters who don’t like the party support Brown.

Surrounded by bootlickers and sycophants, the Felon is likely being shielded from information he does not want to hear.  Indeed, this week the Felon more or less told Americans to stop whining about gas prices and to simply pay more for gas, ignoring, of course, the fact that the higher prices are directly due to the Felon's war of choice with Iran.  A second New Republic piece looks specifically at the gas price revolt:

[The Felon] President Trump has hit the highest national disapproval rating on gas prices in recorded history, as 79 percent of Americans—and a whopping 52 percent of Republicans—feel negatively about how he’s handled skyrocketing gas prices. 

“No president has been hated more when it comes to gas prices,” CNN’s Harry Enten said during a Friday segment. “79 percent ... that is the highest disapproval rating for any president on record.”  Former Presidents George Bush, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden, who each had their own struggles with gas prices, never eclipsed a 75 percent disapproval rating on the issue. 

“Donald Trump takes the cake as these $4-plus gas prices continue to give us pain at the pump. The American people are taking their anger out on the President of the United States,” Enten said.

The poll’s party line breakdown is even more devastating, as 52 percent of Republicans disapproving may put Trump-backed candidates at risk in their November elections as they have to answer for his decisions—especially in swing states. 96 percent of Democrats disapproved, along with 85 percent of independents. 

These are startling numbers that [the Felon] Trump can’t convincingly blame on decisions Biden made three years ago. Gas prices are high—and will continue to be high—because Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu started bombing Iran and Lebanon, and Iran closed the crucial Strait of Hormuz in response. That’s why your gas is $4 for the third time this year—something else that has never happened before.

Another factor that could harm Republican candidates, especially in tight races like the one for Virginia's 2nd congressional district is the Felon's complete lack of concern for America's service members as underscored by his statements about conditions on the aircraft carrier, Abraham Lincoln.  Norfolk is home to the world's largest naval base and there are many service members and their families across the Hampton Roads region. In close races, service members and their loved ones could decide that the Felon and his party are no friends to them. The above New Republic piece looks at the Felon's uncaring statements:

[The Felon] President Donald Trump denied reports Friday of horrific conditions onboard the USS Abraham Lincoln—and suggested that the U.S. servicemembers should stay at sea for even longer.  

Trump offered a shockingly callous response while taking a question about the aircraft carrier that’s been deployed since November. 

Asked whether he believed that the servicemembers had been deployed for “too long,” Trump had a similarly heartless reply. “No, no, no. Not nearly long enough,” Trump said. . . . Clearly, the president couldn’t care less about U.S. servicemembers or their families. 

One can only hope this callousness will cost candidates like Jen Kiggans who puts the Felon above her constituents.

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Republicans Are Trying to Hide Their Health Care Cuts

The United States is the only advanced industrial nation without some form of universal health care coverage/access, instead leaving American citizens to either get coverage through their jobs - typically at high cost - or at the mercy of the rapacious for profit health insurance like United Health Care. The Affordable Care Act ("ACA") sought to improve access to coverage, but the Felon and his bootlicking congressional Republicans are making cuts to support for the ACA and throwing millions off of Medicaid. Compared to European nations where life expectancy is still rising, in the Felon/GOP's America, life expectancies are falling, particularly in red states (the difference in life expectancy in say Massachusetts versus West Virginia is nothing short of shocking). Only in America are average citizens treated as disposable garbage while the ultra-rich are showered with massive tax-cuts.  With the mid-term elections approaching, voters need to realize the cuts are about to get worse, cynically timed to take effect after the mid-term elections.  Obviously, the GOP views much of its base as too stupid to realize they are getting screwed over yet again so that the very wealthy can live ever more opulent lifestyles. A main editorial in the New York Times shouts out about the Felon/GOP's insidious cuts.  Here are highlights:

One of the federal government’s great achievements this century was making health insurance affordable to millions more Americans. In 2010, nearly 18 percent of people under 65 lacked insurance. By 2024, the rate had fallen below 10 percent, thanks to the Affordable Care Act and later legislation that built on it.

[The Felon] President Trump and congressional Republicans are working to dismantle that achievement. They have effectively cut subsidies for the Affordable Care Act’s marketplaces, making it harder for people who do not receive insurance through work to afford a plan. This year, the subsidy cuts led three million people to lose their health insurance. In Ohio, nearly a third of previous marketplace enrollees lost their insurance.

The situation stands to worsen next year. In addition to reducing the marketplace subsidies, [the Felon] Mr. Trump and congressional Republicans enacted sweeping cuts to Medicaid, which expanded under the Affordable Care Act. They will take effect after this year’s midterm elections. (Yes, that timing is deliberate.) By 2034, the combined cuts will most likely erase about half of the gains from the Affordable Care Act, causing 14 million Americans to lose insurance.

Politicians from both parties have talked up affordability in the run-up to this year’s elections. Republicans, however, are taking deliberate steps to make health care less affordable. Many middle-class and poor Americans will struggle — even more — to afford important medical care as a result.

Americans have good reasons to be disappointed in their government. Progress on health care, imperfect though it was, represented a positive counterexample of the government working to genuinely improve people’s lives. The president and Congress are trying to ruin that success story.

Republicans’ attacks on affordable health care have taken two forms: one more passive, the other more direct.

In the passive approach, [The Felon] Mr. Trump and congressional Republicans allowed the expiration of enhanced subsidies for the Affordable Care Act’s marketplaces. The Obama administration and congressional Democrats created the marketplaces for people who fell through the cracks. These people did not receive coverage through their jobs, and they were not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid.

In 2021, President Joe Biden and Congress increased the size of the subsidies, but they set them to expire in 2025, which mitigated their impact on the federal debt. . . . The federal debt is a genuine problem, having soared in the 21st century relative to the size of the American economy. But taking away people’s health insurance is not the answer. Repealing [the Felon's] Mr. Trump’s foolhardy tax cuts, which benefit mostly the wealthy, would have a bigger fiscal effect than his health insurance cuts.

Those health insurance cuts led premiums and deductibles to spike this year. As an example, a middle-income, middle-aged couple with two children could see their premiums more than double, costing an additional $3,500 a year.

In the more direct approach to cutting health care coverage, Republicans targeted Medicaid, the program focused on the poor and disabled. Last year, the federal government enacted what Republicans call a work requirement. In reality, it is a paperwork requirement — one that forces Medicaid enrollees, most of whom are working or have a valid reason for not working, to file repeated documents proving they have a job or a valid exemption.  . . . About two in three enrollees who will lose health insurance should, in fact, be eligible for it, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimated.

Arkansas enacted a version of this policy before the federal law passed, and it was a failure: Work force participation did not rise, and eligible people lost their insurance because of paperwork problems.

The Affordable Care Act was a triumph of government, and it is justifiably popular. Mr. Trump and other Republicans once promised to repeal the law, but they have largely stopped making such statements. Instead, they have sought to weaken the law — partly out of an ideological aversion to government, partly to finance tax cuts for the wealthy — and hope that voters do not notice.

Democrats should not let the president get away with this subterfuge. They should make the health insurance cuts a central piece of their midterm campaign and, as important, offer voters a vision that includes other improvements to the nation’s costly, rickety health care system, both to continue expanding access and to reduce costs. The Affordable Care Act also happens to be a model on costs; it meaningfully slowed growth in health care prices over the past decade.

Congress should be looking for next steps, not moving backward. The Affordable Care Act demonstrated that progress is possible.

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Trump Wants to Cut Taxes for the Rich. Again.

The federal deficit has hit an all time high, with a disproportionate amount of the debt piled on under the Felon's two regimes. So what does the Felon and his billionaire sycophants want to do? Give even more tax breaks to the wealthy, of course, further pursuing the Republican Party's effort to create a new Gilded Age, with even more tax burden shifted to the less than wealthy. It's all part of the GOP's long established reverse Robin Hood agenda. Should more tax cuts for the wealthy be enacted,  the deficit will balloon even more, likely driving up interest rates and making things more expensive, not more affordable. Decades of evidence shows that tax cuts for the wealthy never pay for themselves and that "trickle down economics" has been a fraud since the Reagan era. But in the up is down and down is up alternate reality of the GOP and far right, why worry about facts and objective reality.  Meanwhile, the super wealthy, who put lower taxes above all else, are spending millions on the mid-terms to elect pro-tax cutting Republicans to Congress.  Concerns about bankrupting America are nowhere on the radar screen.  A piece at The New Republic looks at this latest round of irresponsible tax cut for the wealthy proposals.  Here are excerpts: 

It’s election time, so the White House, according to Bloomberg’s Katy O’Donnell and Caitlin Reilly, is weighing whether to give the rich more tax breaks. Republicans! They just can’t help themselves!

Cutting taxes on the rich is a uniquely unpopular idea. Since 1939, Gallup has been asking, “Do you think our government should or should not redistribute wealth by heavy taxes on the rich”? In 1939, 54 percent said “should not” and only 35 percent said “should,” even though the Great Depression was raging and the New Deal was well along. Since 1939, though, the should nots have been falling and the shoulds have been rising. Today, a 52 percent majority say the government should redistribute wealth by taxing the rich heavily, and a 47 percent minority say it should not.

If you put the question in a manner more appetizing to moderates—do the rich pay their fair share?—61 percent say no, according to an April Pew Research Center poll. Fully 81 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaners also say no, along with a not-inconsiderable 41 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaners.

Given these realities, the White House, if it endorses a tax cut, will try to sell it as a middle-class tax cut. The Democrats have tax-cut proposals of their own that target lower-income people. I’ve explained previously that I prefer the alternative approach of cutting payroll taxes at the low end and eliminating the Social Security tax ceiling at the high end

On Tuesday, National Economic Council director Kevin Hassett and Larry Kudlow, who held that post during Trump’s first term, discussed on Fox Business the two tax proposals Trump is contemplating. One is to index the capital gains tax, and the other is to exempt from capital gains tax home sales below $2 million. (Currently the exemption goes up to $500,000.) The first of these is a more obvious giveaway to the rich. The second mimics the Obama administration’s strategy of shielding the haute bourgeoisie when it hikes taxes on the rich. . . . . In Trump’s version, the context for cutting taxes for the haute bourgeoisie is a tax cut for richer folks, too.

The dialog between Kudlow and Hassett conveyed that particular air of unreality characteristic of Fox World. (It was on Kudlow’s Fox Business show, which is called Kudlow.) Kudlow began by noting that the Congressional Budget Office had just projected this year’s budget deficit to be $2.1 trillion, up from February’s estimate of $1.9 trillion. “The budget deficit for the first ten months of the year is $1.8 trillion,” Kudlow said. “I’m not sure I understand why.”

Kudlow was baffled because he actually believes, contrary to 45 years’ evidence, the GOP’s propaganda that tax cuts pay for themselves. They do not. The tax cuts in last year’s budget reconciliation bill, for instance, slashed federal revenue by an estimated $570 billion.

In Fox World, as opposed to the real world, it is not thought illogical to follow a lamentation about government insolvency with a plea for tax cuts. Kudlow cited a McLaughlin & Associates poll that said 62 percent of voters approved of indexing the capital gains tax to inflation. . . . . Why not index capital gains taxes, too?

Because capital gains are already taxed at a lower rate than labor income. The top capital gains rate is 20 percent. The top labor-income rate (which is also too low) is 37 percent. Get back to me when you’ve eliminated that differential—and when you’ve also eliminated the “angel of death” loophole that lets assets escape capital gains tax when passed on to heirs—and we can talk. But if we ever do index capital gains like we do income-tax brackets, we’ll have to figure out some way to capture lost revenue—because remember that $2.1 trillion deficit? You don’t want to make it $3 trillion. According to the Yale Budget Lab, indexing capital gains would cost $170 billion over 10 years if it applied only to assets purchased after 2025, and almost $1 trillion if it applied to all assets.

Then there’s the distributional impact. People making less than about $100,000 would receive virtually no benefit, according to the Yale model (and would likely pay more income tax to cover the lost revenue). People making more than about $3 million, on the other hand, would save $350,000 in taxes. If McLaughlin & Associates had bothered to furnish voters with that information, its poll results would have been quite different.

If Trump endorses these tax proposals, he’ll say they’re an affordability play and argue that lowering capital gains tax will encourage more people to sell their houses, thereby lowering prices. But Democrats should answer that these are just two more Trump giveaways to the wealthy, most especially the indexing of capital gains. There are many ways to reduce the cost of housing: zoning for higher density where appropriate; investing in infrastructure; eliminating tariffs on lumber, steel, and aluminum to lower construction costs; subsidizing low-income housing; and so on. Throwing money at millionaires and billionaires is the most regressive way conceivable to lower housing costs, and there’s no great reason to believe it would even work.