Greenwatergate.

      It can be said that the stupider a person or administration is, the likelier they'll inevitably reach a supreme irony or a perfect delineation of their stupidity. With that theory in mind, I give you the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

     Back in 1973, when my family took me to tour Washington DC as a 14 year-old boy, we saw the reflecting pool. Back then, it looked like a swamp. Algae infested the pool, it was covered with leaves. The water looked as disgusting as that on the boat rides at amusement parks. The Nixon administration plainly never gave it a single thought. With Watergate blooming like algae on a hot summer day, they plainly had bigger things to worry about.

     I left the Reflecting Pool feeling pretty underwhelmed.

     But what the Nixon administration didn't do was waste taxpayer dollars on a quick fix that was guaranteed not to work, especially after failing to consult with experts who actually knew what they were talking about. Nixon didn't dispatch the National Guard and multiple police departments to arrest people for touching the paint flakes that were floating to the surface. Nixon didn't choose that particular hill to die on.

     That's what Watergate was for.

     But the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, one of the most revered monuments in Washington DC and anywhere in the country, is the hill that Trump wants to bravely die on. He decided he wanted to improve it. And when Trump decides to try his hand at improvements, well... We all know by now what happens.

     American Flag Blue was the color he settled on (Any expert can tell you that dark colors absorb and radiate heat more effectively than light colors). So he gave a no-bid contract to a guy who's a friend of his in Palm Beach, a guy named John Cafaro who runs a company that had gotten just one government contract. Cafaro had donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Trump and got a $1.7 million contract to install a nano bubble device that's supposed to kill algae. It was installed by Cafaro's company, one named (God, you just can't make this shit up) Greenwater Services.

     Cafaro also has a rather checkered past. Among other things, according to Cleveland.com, "In 2021, he pleaded guilty to bribing former Congressman James Traficant Jr., an Ohio Democrat, and was expected to testify against him, the Times reported. In 2020, he pleaded guilty to a campaign finance crime..."

     Of course, Trump is attracted to criminal figures like algae in a shallow, stagnant pool of water during a heat wave. Naturally, such a crook, and a generous one, at that, would get a plum contract even though he had no such relevant experience. What was supposed to be a mere $1.7 million expenditure turned into a nearly $15 million boondoggle that yielded few if any results aside from algae blooming like wildfire right after they turned the water back on.

     Within a day or so, the water turned green. Yes, the guy who'd promised to "drain the swamp" wound up giving us a new one.

     So, what did they do? They sent workers to the Reflecting Pool to pour gallons of hydrogen peroxide into it. Now, hydrogen peroxide is a great disinfectant when you have an open wound but it also does other things. For one thing, it oxidizes things like paint and acts as a stripper. Days after the hydrogen peroxide was poured into the water, the "American Flag Blue" sealant that had coated the bottom of the Reflecting Pool began peeling off and floating the surface like a mob hit in the East River.

     Naturally, Trump wasted no time in blaming the left. He got on Truth Social and raged that saboteurs had somehow jumped into the pool and cut a 250 foot-wide swath with a knife (while remaining invisible to video cameras). He accused the left of pouring corrosive chemicals into the Reflecting Pool (like hydrogen peroxide?). Basically, he blamed everyone but himself (of course).

     Now the Park Police, the DC Metro police and the Park Service are keeping guard over the pool and fighting a passive losing battle over a single-celled organism. A three time Olympian had reached into the water and pulled out a piece of paint and was promptly arrested and charged with... something. Trump uncovered a vast conspiracy, crowed about many arrests. Jeanine Pirro vows to throw the book at such dangerous left wing terrorists.

     Everything Trump touches dies, according to Rick Wilson. Everything, that is, except algae.

A Bribe With Wings

 

      On Juneteenth, Trump decided to commemorate the day not with celebrating the announcement of the end of slavery. No, perish the thought. Trump obviously thinks of the scourge of slavery with bittersweet fondness. No doubt, if he was in the White House, he would've immediately tried to make a deal with the slave-owning states because there would've been very fine (white) people on both sides.

      No. instead, Trump deliberately stole Juneteenth's thunder by rubbing our faces into his biggest violation of the Emoluments Clause in the Constitution: His $400,000,000 luxury jet gifted to him by the Qatari government. And, let's call it what it is: A bribe with wings.

     It's been described as a White House on wings. Trump called it a plane "for our country" although when reporters were given the ten cent tour, no cameras or photographs were allowed  because Trump and the psychopaths that surround him knew the optics would be horrible. The belt buckles all have the presidential seal on them as well as gold accents (of course). 

     The Air Force has spent the better part of the last year refurbishing the plane so that it meets all the requisite security standards for Air Force One. Aviation experts have estimated it cost the USAF a billion dollars or more so our government could ferry Trump's bloated carcass in even greater luxury than he'd hitherto enjoyed.

     As proof that this is indeed America's plane, it's already been mutually understood that when that merciful day comes when he's no longer in office, he gets to take the plane with him (or to his presidential library foundation, ha ha), despite the American taxpayer having spent one billion dollars or more on its refurbishment. 

     So, what can the Qataris expect for this naked $400,000,000 bribe? Well, some preferential treatment, obviously. Perhaps they don't want us looking too hard into their long, heinous record of human rights abuses. But here's something we all should be looking hard at:

 

Let's Talk About Alani Bankhead

      In any election cycle, including this one, Montana never gets mentioned with the states that are legitimately in play. In 2026, Democrats speak hopefully about North Carolina, Maine, Texas and other purple or red states that could realistically flip to Democrats. But Montana for years has been a solidly red state. Just recently, Jon Tester, a Blue Dog Democrat, lost his Senate seat.

     But for some reason, no one is talking about this year's Senate race to replace retiring Montana Senator Steve Daines. I'm not getting any indication that Bankhead's landed on the DSCC's radar or is getting any help from them at all. In fact, the one biggest weakness in her campaign is her accepting $4,000,000 in PAC money despite railing against PACS since her campaign began in January.

      But setting that aside, Bankhead has solid credentials. She's third generation military and is a retired Lt. Colonel who'd spent part of her career as a counterintelligence agent, federal law enforcement officer and as a bodyguard. She's no AOC. She has strong beliefs that people coming across the southern border have to do so legally. But she also decried the Trump administration's incalculably cruel policies and actions against migrants and even American citizens. She understands that there are serious problem in our for-profit health care system.

     She won her Democratic primary on June 2nd against a field of four other Democrats and only got serious competition from Reilly Neill, a former Montana state rep and publishing executive. That placed her in a head-to-head matchup against Kurt Alme.

     Alme got Trump's endorsement immediately after filing to run for the Senate with eight minutes to spare. He has Republican endorsements stacked to the ceiling. He also has solid credentials and, unlike virtually all of Trump's other endorsed candidates, has avoided scandal and fiery polemics his entire career. He's not only a former US Attorney with a proven track record prosecuting drug traffickers and has been a fixture in Montana politics for decades.

     In other words, a solid Republican who seems to have a "passion for service."

     He also got about 4000 fewer votes in his primary than Bankhead got in hers. 

 

      That same night, this was the result of the GOP primary..

 

     Again, it's always a slippery slope trying to predict general election outcomes by primary results. Everyone knows primary voter turnout tends to be significantly lower than that of general elections. And, let's face it, even in a state with a population of just over 1.1 million, 32,000 primary votes is nothing to brag about.

     But the number don't lie and if the DSCC was smart, they'd be putting some oomph behind her campaign because Democrats are going to need to pick up every state they can in these Senate races.

Short Man Syndrome is Back With a Vengeance!

 (By Cyril Blubberpuss, Conservative-American)

Well, I've finally hit the big time. I've just been named by future president Greg Bovino as his 2028 campaign manager! Granted, the learning curve is high as I've never run a campaign at any level, much less a major presidential campaign. But that didn't stop Roy Cohn, who doubled as both Joe McCarthy's legal counsel and as my father Ambrose's campaign manager when he successfully ran for Congress in 1952. 

     Admittedly, that was kind of an uneasy alliance as Cohn set father's teeth on edge by occasionally showing up at campaign strategy meetings wearing nothing but a short bathrobe and followed by several young, effeminate men speaking with lisps. During his illustrious quarter term in Congress, father would say Cohn was "squishy but the little cocksucker gets the job done."

      The first order of business is organizing and coordinating fundraisers. This requires reaching out to groups with colorful red and black flags and featuring very passionate young men with affected German accents. One of those groups is Patriot Front, an up and coming organization of other young, passionate men who huddle closely together in U-Haul trucks so they can march together in khaki cargo pants only to get chased out by soccer moms and paraplegic retirees.

      It's brilliant branding and no doubt they will give the Bovino campaign their valuable marketing insight. For now, our national campaign headquarters is in the basement of the Fourth Reich Army Surplus store in El Centro, California where Commander Bovino buys his entire wardrobe. In fact, we just cleared out the German munitions locker and are temporarily repurposing it as a phone bank so we can cold call patriots.

 

     My kid brother Cecil is also on board with Bovino's campaign or at least he was until yesterday. Cecil volunteered to man the phone banks until we started getting irate calls from angry parents complaining that a strange man was calling them up and asking their prepubescent sons if they had boyfriends. The way I look at it, Cecil was doing his job in being ever-vigilant against the homosexual agenda. God knows we don't need that element in our campaign. Cecil's entreaties to be reassigned to an authority position over the Bovino Youth League (nicknamed the "Tender Age Commanders") fell on deaf ears.

     It doesn't surprise me that many of our initial donations are coming in from Europe, such as from the AfD in Germany as well as from Italy and Argentina. This, to me, is proof positive that Commandeer Bovino's appeal is rapidly spreading across national borders and is becoming a movement.

      We've also started sending out fundraising emails in which campaign contributors are classed in tiers according to the size of their donations. Those donating $5-$25 are called Bunker Dwellers, $26-$50 gets you Rat Liner status and those contributing $51 and up will earn you the coveted ICE King designation. Let's see Elon Musk and Peter Thiel turn that down!

     Our organization and campaign is small and nascent so there's nowhere to look but up, which is a common position for Commander Bovino. But, mark my words, the day will come when President Bovino draws himself up to his full height and looks other world leaders square in the belt buckle and show them who's boss!

The Art of the Deal

     Don't let the mainstream media or the government breathlessly lie to you. There is no peace deal. Not really. Certain conditions have to be met. Vance said that before a deal is finalized, Iran has to modify its nuclear program, including oversight. But those who have seen this so-called deal say that no such precondition is in its language. This isn't a real, permanent peace deal, no actual ceasefire. It's a framework deal only. It's the deal before the deal.

     Essentially, Iran gets to keep every atom of its fissionable uranium. There will be no oversight, no weapons inspectors will be allowed in, no limits, even, as to how much they can enrich it.

     In order to make a viable nuclear warhead, a nation must enrich its uranium to at least 90%. When President Obama struck his historic deal with Iran, the ceiling for enrichment was a mere 3.67%.

     With this idiotic deal, there apparently is no limit, so now Trump is so obsessed with getting out of this war, he's no longer concerned about Iran getting a nuclear weapon, after all. Likewise, he's no longer talking about regime change or the pro-democracy protesters or their executions. And, after telling everyone the Iranians wouldn't get a wooden nickle from us... Well, let's talk about that for a minute.

     Remember when right wingers were screaming themselves hoarse (and some of them still are) about Obama "giving" Iran "billions of dollars"? Here's what President Obama did: He'd merely unfrozen Iran's assets, some $1.7 billion. In other words, he gave Iran back its own money as part of the deal.

     Under Trump, he's poised to give Iran $25 billion. That's approximately 15 times what they got out of Obama, which was, again. their money to begin with. This $25 billion is coming right out of the US Treasure. But that's just the rotten tip of the iceberg.

     Part of the deal also involves giving Iran $300,000,000,000 for reconstruction. To put that into perspective, that's 500 to 600% of Iran''s annual budget or 100% of its GDP for a year. Just to pay for all the shit that we'd bombed back to the Stone Age (including over 160 little schoolgirls). Israel got in on the action, also bombing Iran, but you don't see Israel coughing up a single shekel, do you?

     So what did we get in return? Iran has agreed to open the Strait of Hormuz... which was already open before we decided to bomb the shit out of Iran.

      This means that, just to get things back to a semblance where they were before, we'll have to pay Iran reparations costing us $300 billion, pay them an additional $25 billion, we have no limits on how much they can enrich their uranium and it only cost us 13 American lives. Oh, and Iran destroyed all of our Middle East bases.

     The art of the deal, ladies and gentlemen.

     And, of course, Trump will declare it better than any deal struck by either Biden or Obama and he'll strut around like the proverbial pigeon that knocks over the chess pieces and shits on the board and pretending it won.

It's Flag Day, Not His Birthday

      I'm probably taking tomorrow off. I'm a political blogger. I don't write running commentaries on right wing meatheads pounding each other senseless in metal octagons.

      But Donald Trump is going to force much of the nation to witness this spectacle that's literally Idiocracy on anabolic steroids. It will take place tomorrow on Flag Day but anyone with a working eye and a few functioning synapses can see that it has absolutely nothing to do with our 250th anniversary as a nation but to celebrate Trump's birthday. If he really cared for this country as much as he does Russia, he'd have his pathetic spectacle on the fourth of July, not his birthday.

     And it'll take place in a weird state of transition. Down the street from this 90 foot-tall monstrosity nicknamed "the Claw", the Kennedy Center is currently removing Trump's name off the building's facade. Federal judges all over the country are a striking down Trump's agendas on a near-daily basis. Trump is settling into the phase of being a lame duck "president". While still appearing to call the shots, hiss toxic influence is already beginning to fade from Washington, DC. Despite hints of making the Claw a permanent fixture of the White House (Heaven forfend), this, too, shall pass.

     And holding this idiotic event, from which he will benefit to the tune of millions of dollars, Trump is giving people the impression of a nursing home resident clapping together action figures, only using real, live human bodies. And, in a way, it's perfectly consistent and even understandable that Trump's megalomania has ballooned to such cartoonish proportions that he's literally supplanting the 250th anniversary of our nation's independence for a gaudy celebration of his 80th birthday with the lowest of low brow entertainment this planet can offer.

     And that's the problem and the danger. That we're willing to write this off as Trump just being Trump but without any meaningful followup. That we're willing to accept that, yes, of course, Trump is doing this, that it's all very understandable and consistent. We've almost assuaged ourselves that its comforting that, with Trump, some things never change and it's business as usual.

     We've literally lost the forest for the trees. We've lost our sense for the absurd, like Trump putting his name before President John F. Kennedy's on the Kennedy Center, like repainting the Reflecting Pool so it immediately looks a sickly shade of green, like putting up a $1.4 billion ballroom that will be done, if it ever is, just before he leaves office, after tearing down the East Wing.

     Business as usual.

     Yet we've lost the capacity to even appreciate the sheer scale of his corruption that even his exponentially growing dementia cannot blunt much less to take steps to stop it in its tracks. And the fact that so many federal judges, even some of Trump's appointees, are proving the only meaningful bulwark against his lawlessness shows in unmistakable terms just what a criminal he truly is.

     And tomorrow, he's going to "celebrate" our independence, the 250th anniversary of it, by pitting meatheads against each other would give the Founding Fathers cardiac arrest.

     My God, people. Aren't you alarmed by this? 

Bad To the Bone

Even in Pyongyang they must be looking at this and wondering WTF https://t.co/ssAEfGWQPE

— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) June 11, 2026

"Donald Trump is the best thing to happen to this country in a hundred years. He was born a very special baby. I bet the doctors said, 'I can tell this is a very special baby'.”

     So, according to cultist Troy Nehls, Donald Trump was born 80 years ago as the subject of a George Thorogood song.

President Bovino Will Not Figuratively Come Up Short!

 (By Cyril Blubberpuss, Conservative-American)

Dear Mr. Bovino (https://www.bovino2028.com/contact):

    I have learned to my joy that you have thrown your German WWII helmet in the ring and are running for president in 2028. Just because that hasn't been picked up by the liberal news media, it doesn't mean it's not true. After all, your website, Bovino2028.com says so!

      Your very candidacy shows guts, and I don't mean the kind that distends Trump's girdle every day. It shows guts because you'd be taking on the mighty machine of the quasi-Trump-endorsed Rubio/Vance ticket (or the Vance/Rubio ticket- No one's decided which one will actually run for president until one or the other wins the weeks-old thumb war). This would tackle the age-old question not of, "Who would you rather have a beer with?" but, "Can we have a man in the White House who wouldn't be allowed to get on a roller coaster?"

     I say, Hell yeah!

     Secretary Markwayne Mullin, the world's most dangerous Munchkin, recently said of you, "I never met the guy. He's irrelevant to me. I don't know who he is." No doubt he was showing his modesty and refusing to name drop your fine name.

     Incidentally, many of us remember when you got hounded out of a Target in St. Paul, Minnesota last January in between ICE homicides. That was unforgivable disrespect but still pales in comparison to Target management renaming the child's urinal, "The Greg Bovino Memorial Commode". They'll pay for that when you get elected.

 

     And allow me to commend you for this AI-generated picture on your campaign website with the caption, "Men Fight Back". Indeed, it is the duty of men who are hard-wired to confront and deal with threats such as good-natured soccer moms who had just dropped off their kids at elementary school. We in the patriotic community know how quickly such types can get radicalized.

     Can subversive petitions and bake sales be far behind?

     And, let me add, Commander, that there are no hard feelings over how we parted company at the last CPAC when I had the temerity to ask you how you planned on deporting 100,000,000 people, or a third of the nation. At the time, I never stopped to think that, despite there being no more than 12,000,000 illegals aliens in the country, there are, at bare minimum, another 88,000,000 illegal alien sympathizers that we could do without.

      At the very least, we could make their citizenship conditional by putting them to work in the fields picking produce that migrants are too lazy and cowardly to harvest. I hear that fellow Mighty Mite Stephen Miller is already drafting out such a plan.

 

     But I am not the only member of the Blubberpuss household who is supporting your candidacy. My kid brother, Cecil, is also prepared to campaign on your behalf. My suspicion is he's attracted to you on account of your junior high-class diminutive size but I'm sure there are other reasons he's excited about your campaign. 

     Cecil doesn't seem to harbor any animus toward illegal aliens but when he ran the world's first sex chat room, www.cecilsprays.com, he was careful to keep his Eastern European talent in Eastern Europe and not bring them over here. It was a brilliant move that's been commended by President Trump and Melania, whose younger brother was part of Cecil's stable of talent that was acquired, often at night, from youth hostels.

 

     You seem to have assembled a crackerjack team of professionals, including the admirably self-loathing Yovana Alvarez, aka The Bovino Queen, who, hopefully, is better at running a campaign than she is at taking selfies.

 

 

     Then there's Jacob Engels, who looks like every guy in the back seat of a car taking a disgraced mobster for the Last Ride. Indeed, Mr. Engels is being persecuted by Biden lawfare as he was arrested just weeks ago in Wisconsin on possession of meth charges. Hopefully, the president's personal law firm, aka the Department of Justice, will get those specious charges thrown out.

 

     And then there's former Florida GOP chair, George Riley, whose clean, bulbous head seems tailor-made for a black SS hat. All he needs is the requisite facial scar.

 

     So, Commander, I look forward to January 20, 2029 when you step onto that soapbox and take the podium to greet with a not-Nazi stiff arm salute a nation that will hopefully get whiter and sparser as your administration progresses. Indeed, why shouldn't we roll back the population to where it was in 1969? In a nation where Biden inflation is now at 4.2%, the fewer people we have buying goods and services, the lower inflation will get. Supply and demand, after all (You can look it up on Wikipedia).

 

     Incidentally, I was not amused by this heavily-circulated AI picture purporting to show you at your command center in Minnesota last winter. We all know you were never that cute and America doesn't need a cute president.

B(oo) Ball

 

     Thank goodness the original Manhattan Project wasn't as big of a clusterfuck as Donald Trump's tonight. The "president" decided to crash Game 3 of the NBA Finals between the Knicks and Spurs. He showed up like a conquering hero, as if taking credit for the Knicks making the finals for the first time in 27 years, dressed not like a fan but in his typical bad, boxy suit that makes him look like a corporate cunt with seriously challenged fashion sense. 

     One sense he has that's unerring is his ability to seize on a moment regardless of whether it has anything to do with him and making it all about him. His sociopathic disregard for the lives of others was on full, flagrant display tonight. Fans had to wait at Madison Square Garden for two hours before being allowed in. The Knicks had to institute a No Bags policy and watch parties outside MSG had to be cancelled because of Trump.

     And, even though the venue was Manhattan, the city's residents couldn't wait to give him the Bronx Cheer as his motorcade drove past the stadium. Why wasn't he greeted with the crotch-grinding, back-rubbing hug he expected? Well, maybe it has to do with the fact that Trump was never a Knicks fan, has bad-mouthed the NBA for years and New York City in general.

 

     Well, maybe it also has something to do with the fact that Trump didn't even get 18% of the Manhattan vote in the 2024 election (No doubt, he still thinks he won bigly in New York County). Or that he no longer lives in New York City, a fact that I'm sure makes millions of New York residents happy and grateful.

     But the booing that Trump got both outside and inside during the national anthem was met with the most fake and disingenuous smile as he had no choice but to grin and bear it. No doubt, after he gets back to Washington tonight, he'll be yelling and screaming about how horribly he was treated by his fellow New Yorkers.

     It was a clear repudiation of that ridiculous AI slop that he posted on D-Day (during which he never once mentioned D-Day) that featured an AI-generated rap song about how everyone loves Donald Trump. Well, not in Manhattan, asshole. Not even close.

Raining On His Parade of Lies

     It's no secret that Donald Trump really, really hates female journalists. Just recently, he bullied CNN's Kaitlan Collins for not smiling. Earlier this year, he attacked Maggie Haberman of the Times and threatened to sue her and the paper. And, while I don't consider them journalists, he's even attacked Megyn Kelly and insulted Laura Ingraham when she tried to give him a rare dose of reality. Does "Quiet, Piggy" ring a bell?

     And then there was his aborted interview with Meet The Press's Kristen Welker.

     As rain pelted the metal roof of a barn at Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, Welker tried to do her job as Trump defaulted to his usual boorish behavior consisting of impatient interruptions, blatant lies, talking over people and spewing a nonstop fire hose of lies. The conversation turned to the recent California primary elections.

     Trump pounced on the fact that California is still counting its mail in ballots, which shouldn't surprise anyone considering California is the most populous state, one with 39.5 million people. Trump declared it as evidence of a "rigged election" without, of course, providing any proof. 

     "You play right into their hands with this stuff. You know that these elections are rigged. Your elections are crooked and you're crooked, and 'Meet the Press' is crooked. You're a one-sided crooked network." Then he announced that he was terminating the interview.

     This is a tried-and-true tactic by Trump when he finally meets that rare journalist who won't accept his lies or take his insults. He did the same thing to Lesley Stahl on 60 Minutes five and a half years ago. He cuts and runs like a guy with fake bone spurs trying to evade the draft.

     But it was how he got up to walk away. After calling Welker, "Darling"  as if he was in Mad Men episode, he lurched to his feet and put his right hand on her left shoulder as if to steady himself. Then he lumbered off with his back bent at nearly a 45 degree angle. It was almost a reprise of the so-called White House Correspondence Dinner shooting in which Trump had to be lifted to his feet by the Secret Service only for him to fall seconds later like a 300 pound sack of manure.

     Once again, the spirit was willing but the flesh was weak.

     The whole spectacle exposed Trump as a weak, snarling fool. It's one thing to take pot shots at the press when a journalist is just trying to do their job countering lies and conspiracy theories. But Trump will be 80 in a week and his age shows. When Trump insults the media and specific journalists and can barely lumber off after cutting short an interview, it makes him look feeble and pathetic.

Why Democrats Are Likely to Retake the Senate

     Up until about six months ago, if anyone told a Republican on Capitol Hill that the Democrats had a better than even chance of retaking the Senate, they would've been laughed out of the building and for good reason. But six months is a long time in the political continuum. A lot has happened in the last six months, most notably Trump stupidly getting us into a seemingly endless proxy war in Iran that's already cost us nearly $100,000,000,000, 13 American lives and the armaments with which we'll need to defend ourselves should the need for them arise. 

     For the folks at home, the consequences of that war are landing on our dinner tables. When the war began on February 28th, the national average for a gallon of gas was at $2.98. Now, Americans are paying at least $4.50 a gallon with gas stations in some states, such as California, rising over $8 a gallon. The price of diesel has also skyrocketed, which causes hardship for farmers all over the nation as their farm equipment runs on diesel. The price of fertilizer, too, has sharply risen upward, also hurting farmers.

     You don't need to be a Nobel Prize-winning economist to know that when energy prices jump, that affects virtually everything else, including food. By last month, inflation had risen to 3.8%, matching pandemic levels. With the price of health care also spiking, the last thing middle class and poor families need is to make a choice between food and medicine or gas.

     Republican voters are feeling the pinch just as much as Democrats and Independents. After all, we all go to the same gas stations, the same supermarkets, deal with the same HMOs, insurance and utility companies. We're all in the same boat and the boat has sprung a serious leak. And the media have been driving the same point home for months now- That It's the Economy, Stupid 2.0.

     It's the one abstract issue that affects those of us not in the top 10%, the thing that unites us.

     Republicans, Democrats, Independents, Green Party and libertarians, MAGA and Democratic socialists.

     And Americans voters from one end of the political spectrum to the other are pointing their fingers in the same direction: At Trump and incumbent Republicans. The national economy is always the Great Equalizer, the thing that affects us all. Polls after poll this year has shown that the economy, affordability, is the number one issue concerning voters. And Trump didn't do his party any favors when he recently said he doesn't think about how much Americans are hurting. All we see is a guy who invests more time and energy into his vanity projects than he does the economy.

     A recent Fox poll showed that incumbent Senator Jon Husted is trailing former Senator Sherrod Brown by 8 percentage points in the Ohio Senate race. 8 points is obviously well outside the margin of error. Brown's favorability rating is also at 53%, 12 points higher than Husted's 41%. In a deep red state like Ohio, that should be positively frightening to Republicans.

     It's always dangerous pointing to one state's straw and push polls and trying to make it a synecdoche of the mood of the entire nation but it's tempting to do so when it comes to a red state like Ohio. And this turning red state trend is popping up in other red states like Alaska, Iowa, Maine and Texas (Texas!).

     Yes, Democrats have a better than  even chance of flipping the entire US Senate but that's contingent on the Democratic incumbents hanging on to their seats. But, with poll results coming in from red states, I think for once Democrats have just cause for feeling optimism for this November's midterms.

America 250 Stargate Opens Portal to Alien Dimension, Hundreds Perish

      Dateline- Washington, DC-Mysterious Alien Dimension

     The America250 "state fair" spearheaded by Donald Trump suffered a setback today when the semi-circular lighting structure suddenly glowed white and opened a portal into another dimension. Before the alien beings dressed like ancient Egyptians crossed the interdimensional threshold, witnesses glimpsed on the other side giant pyramids and even larger spaceships flying above them.

      "It was the most terrifying yet most beautiful thing I ever saw," said Vice President JD Vance just moments before a spear tip exploded from his chest and he was hoisted into the Potomac River by a giant skeleton wearing armor.

     The massacre began swiftly as Nubian soldiers on golden chariots fired sharp arrows into the eyes of the construction crew and curious onlookers filming video for their ultimately meaningless podcasts. One worker was in the middle of the octagon when his torso suddenly bristled with arrows then dismembered by large dogs looking amazingly like the Egyptian god Anubis.

     "Well, it only goes to show," said outgoing Rep. Thomas Massie as he watched the spectacle from across the National Mall, "if you fiddle with nature, nature fiddles back. I tried to warn Susie (the White House Chief of Staff) not to hook up the scaffolding to that ion generator."

     After 15 minutes, the lawn of the White House was littered with bodies and body parts while blood spatter covered a significant portion of the White House facade. Deputy Chief of Staff Steven Miller ran out of the West Wing loudly proclaiming his fealty to the "true evil overlords" before being turned into a cockroach by a priestess and crushed underfoot, said Aaron Rupar on Twitter, "with a satisfying crunch."

     Not knowing that his immigration policy architect had just met a horrible fate, Donald Trump zig-zagged out of the Executive Mansion, iPhone in hand, and made his final Truth Social post:

     "I'm going to ask them if they can play music and if they can help me with Iran. That'll own those radical left..." before the president vanished in a puff of ash and smoke, the Apple device landing on the blood-soaked lawn.

     At press time, the alien Egyptian invaders demanded Kash Patel, "for our transient amusement." The executive branch, run by now-President Mike Johnson, is currently negotiating the FBI Director's surrender.

The Sick Man of North America

     Like many other Americans, I wake up every morning, check the news and, as I do, silently offer up a prayer that consists of, "Oh, God, please tell me today is the day." Then, disappointed, I gird myself for the grim task of commenting on Trump's latest nightmare.

     All my life, I've been an atheist. I do not believe in the existence of a God, a Devil or Heaven and Hell. But, as Trump is just two weeks away from turning 80, sometimes I'm tempted to believe that there's a Devil somewhere out there that is using supernatural dexterity in keeping that bloated, orange homunculus alive just to spite the human race.

      Just recently, Trump was driven to Walter Reed and underwent a medical examination for the third time in 13 months. The exam took up almost half the day, which alone is cause for alarm. Presidents have annual checkups and they generally don't take up half a day. And, until recently, I think we've been given an accurate reporting from the White House about the state of the president's health.

     Since January last year and especially this year, we've seen and heard things that should send markets into a panic. We've seen Trump dozing off at countless functions, including the Oval Office. At the last 9/11 commemoration, he not only appeared to be sleeping, the right side of his face was drooping as if he was having a stroke.

     He's incapable of standing up straight, as David Pakman's video above shows and he can't even walk in a straight line. If he was given a sobriety test by a cop, he would've immediately been taken into custody. And then there's his Halloween hands with the swelling and bruising that he tries to cover up with makeup. There's the swollen ankles, the rash on his neck. The list goes on.

     And no matter how many times Steven "Oddjob" Cheung screams and curses at reporters, it's not going to change the reality that Trump is falling apart in real time. We need to know that the guy in the Oval Office is able to take that phone call at three in the morning and not be found, instead, putting out vile, nasty messages on Truth Social.

     We're in the middle of an unnecessary and illegal war in the Middle East. We're in the middle of an economic crisis and people are still being rounded up by murderous, masked thugs all over the country like something out of dystopian nightmare.

     The last thing we need in the White House is an addled fool who can't even stand up from a chair or use one hand to drink from a glass. And then there's his "weaving". Has no one else noticed that Trump these days has long since reached the point where he cannot make a public statement and make sense? He can't talk to kids appropriately, he snipes at reporters, he lives in an alternate reality and the sycophantic idiots grin and applaud when he still insists he won the 2020 election.

     Hell, he still brags about acing the MoCA, the diagnostic tool used to check for signs of dementia, one his doctors thought necessary to give him three times. The very fact that Trump thinks it's an intelligence test alone proves that there's something very wrong with him. 

     We deserve better. But we're getting the impression that the 25th amendment doesn't even exist anymore, that it's not a viable remedy where Trump is concerned. 

Top 10 Things Scott Bessent Wrote to Himself

 

     Earlier today, Reuters photographer Evan Vucci photographed notes that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent wrote to himself during today's Cabinet meeting. Among the things he'd written to himself were things like "Resilience" and "Operation Economic Fury." But those weren't the only things the secretary wrote to himself. What were the other things Bessent wrote?

10) Put newspaper in shoes POTUS gave me.

9) WTF is up with these red hats? So gauche.

8) Fewer women than ever. That's good.

7) Need to ask Pete how he gets his hair to look like galvanized rubber. 

6) God, I hate dog shit.

5) Running out of show tunes to sing to myself.

4) Tariff refunds a no-go. Slush fund- Go MAGA! 

3) Was Judy Garland a lesbian?

2) I wonder if Linda can introduce me to some hunky wrestlers? 

1) I wonder what the president's semen tastes like? 

Ken Paxton is Texas Toast

      For once, the pollsters were right. In the runup to last night's runoff election, they said Paxton had as much as a 21 point lead over John Cornyn.

 

     As you can see, Paxton won by 27.8%, proving once again that Texas voters are the stupidest ones on the planet. This tees up a November 3rd general election face-off between Paxton and James Talarico.

     Democrats who know how to read the tea leaves were salivating over the prospect of a Paxton-Talarico match up and for good reason. You could've lived in a cave these past six or seven years and still known about the stench of corruption that wafts in billows from Ken Paxton's pores. He used the TX AG's office to sue other states that didn't go for Trump in 2020. He was impeached by the TX House for corruption and, like Trump, he avoided being thrown out of office by other crooked, scumbag Republicans in the Senate.

     His own ex wife, one of those Texas state senators, divorced him immediately thereafter on account of him not being able to keep it in his pants, or what she called "Biblical reasons" (Read: adultery).

     But from a purely numerical standpoint, Democrats are hopeful to flip a Senate seat that hasn't been owned by Democrats since 1988. Paxton is that weak. Despite his resounding victory in last night's runoff, Paxton still took in fewer than 900,000 votes in the country's second-largest state by population. Talarico, on the other hand, in the earlier Democratic primary, collected 1.2 million. And that was in just a primary.

     Even Jasmine Crockett got over a million votes.

     And, are Texas voters going to vote for Paxton a third time? Never underestimate the power of voter fatigue.

     Plus, Paxton is a notoriously weak fundraiser (except when lining his own pockets: Even though he's still drawing a government salary, Paxton's personal wealth has ballooned to over $12,000,000 since getting elected AG).

      Now, I'm not a big fan of Talarico and its going to take a fuck of a lot more than him attaching a capital D after his name to get me to sing his priases. Talarico, a guy who looks less like a potential US senator and more like a hyper-realistic, exquisitely-made ventriloquist dummy, is what I call a radical centrist. But he, and Texas, represents one of the most realistic hopes that Democrats have of flipping a red seat blue (the others being Maine and North Carolina among others). Plus, in just three months, Talarico raked in $27,000,000, which is high even by today's standards.

     Prediction: Talarico wins by at least 9-10 points. 

Pederasts for Paxton

 

     Today in Waco, Texas, a pederast and pedophile is being released on the streets. He is a convicted child molester but will not have to register as a sex offender. How did this happen? Well, it's almost enough to say that it's Texas but there's a lot more context to this disgusting and disturbing turn of events. 

     This pedophile, one Adam Hoffman, was recently charged and tried in the 54th District Court. His crime was in repeatedly molesting his son's friend from the age of 6 or 7 and continuing the abuse for at least three years (He even pleaded guilty to doing so in his first trial). The child eventually reported Hoffman's sexual abuse when he was 10 years-old.

     Hoffman was an attorney in the Waco area, therefore in a position of power and trust that he'd obviously violated. You'd think his first trial would have been a slam dunk with the boy's testimony. But it ended in a mistrial.

     The second trial was a circus, to put it mildly. The juvenile victim decided he didn't wish to testify in the retrial and to have to go through that trauma all over again, which is perfectly understandable. To complicate matters, the judge who would have presided over the retrial recused herself for the simple reason that Hoffman had previously tried cases in her court. The prosecutor also had recused themself from the matter because of a prior relationship with Hoffman.

     That's when Ken Paxton valiantly waded into the fray. Yes, the Attorney General of Texas insinuated his office into what should've involved district authorities.

      Paxton's prosecutors, Brenda Cantu and Dorian Cotlar, quickly realized that, without the boy's testimony, the prosecution had no case. So Kenny boy engineered a sweetheart deal that would've made Jeffrey Epstein drool with envy. 60 days in jail, minus time served, no sex offender registration necessary because he was allowed to plead down to two misdemeanors.

     Oh, and he also gets to reapply for his law license in five years.

     The 60 days is up today.

     Hoffman's defense actually had the balls to demand no jail time and no forfeiture of his law license. Hell, I'm surprised they didn't demand that the victim's family hand him a key to their home and the floor plan leading to the boy's bedroom. Then 30 days in jail was floated but that upset the visiting judge, Roy Sparkman, and he threw the book at Hoffman: 60 days for molesting a little boy who, after six and a half years, is still in therapy.

     You think Paxton would've rushed to the rescue if Hoffman was a registered Democrat?

     Elsewhere in the country, people are rotting away in places like Rikers Island for years without charge and without trial for things they didn't even do. In Texas, IOKIYAR and you can get away with anything. Hell, Kenny Boy is proof positive of that.

      So a pederast is loose on the streets of Waco and most of the citizenry don't even know about it. With no sex offender registration, the citizens can't even look him up on a database. Hell, he could wear nothing but a raincoat and troll elementary school playgrounds with impunity.

     Well, Hoffman's joke of a "conviction" didn't sit well even with some Republicans. Texas state Rep. Jeff Leach, a Republican who was endorsed by Trump, has been very vocal about the outcome (Not surprising, since he's backing Cornyn against Paxton in the Senate race).

     So now that he's released a child sexual predator on the streets of Waco, Paxton's office is being inundated with calls and letters demanding answers as to why they'd done so. With typical Republican opacity, his office is not addressing why or even why his office barged into what was a district case.

     Grand Old Party? With the foot-dragging Trump's DoJ has been doing on the Epstein files now this, GOP should stand for Gang of Pedophiles.

It's Still the Economy, Stupid.

      

Say Goodbye to Big John? Not So Fast.

 

     John Cornyn seems to have aged a decade just in the last month.

     In the 11th hour of the Texas Senate Republican primary, Trump threw his support behind Cornyn's primary opponent, the rabidly insane and spectacularly corrupt Ken Paxton, the Texas Attorney General. It wasn't as if Cornyn wasn't given ample warning. People must have been whispering in his ear these past several weeks that Trump would do this. And yet, Cornyn was still caught unawares, like a dog thinking it's going for a nice car ride only to find out they're being taken to the vet.

      In a way, one almost has to feel sorry for Cornyn. He was a dull but loyal foot soldier for Trump since his first stolen term going back to when he was the majority whip. He voted for Trump's insane demands nearly every time. He's spent three terms in the US Senate without having a single major piece of legislation with his name on it. John Cornyn was the very delineation of the typical spineless Republican who's utterly incapable of upsetting or bucking party leadership and that especially applies where Trump is concerned.

     But, as stupid as he is, Trump is still able to read poll numbers. Proving the inevitable fallibility of pollsters, and Trump's willingness to accept the approval ratings of others not named Donald Trump, most if not all the polls leading to tonight's GOP primary election showed Paxton leading Cornyn.

     Then a funny thing happened on the way to the polls: Cornyn beat Paxton tonight by 1.2%, thereby advancing to the runoff election since neither hit the 50% threshold to avoid a runoff. Trump threw Cornyn to the wolves simply because Paxton was seemingly ahead and, as we all know, Trump hates being associated with "losers" and doesn't want that loser ambience to rub off on him.

     That's not to say Cornyn is a lock to win the runoff election on May 26th. After all, his margin of victory tonight was just over one percent. But it certainly puts a ding in the MSM's mantra that Trump continues to exert a stranglehold on the GOP. Like Alabama voters, Texas voters are stubbornly independent and don't like being told what to do and for whom to vote.

     John Cornyn may be an empty suit but he's still popular with Republican Texas voters. But in terms of popularity, here are some numbers that are making Texas Republicans shit boulder-sized cold bricks:

 

     Cornyn, at this point in time, had received 907,000+ votes tonight. Not bad, right? But look at how well the top two Democrats did earlier this year in the Democratic primary:

     

     The Democratic nominee, James Talarico, easily avoided a runoff election by securing 52.4% of the vote. He got over 300,000 more votes than Cornyn or Paxton. Even Jasmine Crockett, finishing a relatively distant second place, got 1,068,387 votes, still far more than either Republican. Does that mean Talarico is a shoe-in? Not necessarily. Voter turnout is historically lower for primary elections than in general elections. But the numbers don't lie.

     Democratic voter engagement in the Democratic primary was considerably higher than on the Republican side tonight. Much higher.

     Ladies and germs, Texas is in play for the first time in decades.

Another Scalp for Trump?

 

     The primary results from KY-4 are in and Ed Gallrein beat Thomas Massie by about 10 points or just over 10,000 votes. The lazy, reactionary mainstream media, of course, is quick to assume this proves Trump's ongoing dominance over Republican voters, especially after five targeted Republicans in Indiana lost their primaries and Sen. Bill Cassidy lost his Senate primary in Louisiana.

     In fact, far from strongman Trump still exerting a stranglehold over the GOP, other indications show it's actually slipping and that it's just a coincidence that the politicians Trump is targeting in his ongoing jihad over disloyal Republicans are just a coincidence. Don't forget, the New York Times recently released the results of a poll that showed Trump's favorability rating is at an alltime low of 38%. That seems to show that if Trump could run for a third term this November, he'd lose to a flour sack with Barack Obama's or even Kamala Harris' face scrawled on it.

     It could be that the voters in these states and districts were simply sick and tired of these politicians and want a change. Maybe the reason why Bill Cassidy came in last in a three Republican primary is simply because the voters didn't want him in the Senate anymore. Does anyone seriously think that if Trump had endorsed him that he would've automatically won his primary?

     So Gallrein won tonight and in decisive fashion. Trump cynically endorsed him because he was the major Republican front runner opposing Massie in KY-4. But one must factor in that this was the most expensive House primary race in history, with $25.6 million being spent, mostly from outside groups that couldn't forgive Massie for his polemics against Trump and Israel.

     Massie is virtually the only Republican in Congress who's been unceasing in his criticism of Israel and its ongoing genocide in Gaza. Massie was also the Republican who partnered with Ro Khanna in drafting the discharge petition that led to Congress forcing the DoJ to release the Epstein files in their entirety (at least, it was supposed to).

     Trump saw him as a threat because Massie was ready to move heaven and earth to release those files that mentions Trump over 1,000,000 times, Trump knows he's a filthy pedophile who loves to fuck little girls and he was outraged that Massie would want to call him out on that.

     Massie, of course, could still run as an Independent like Lieberman or as a write-in like Lisa Murkowski after both senators lost their primaries.

     But Trump's supposed death grip on the GOP is only absolute in the Supreme Court that could've been  assembled by Hitler himself. He's still running into serious headwinds in the House and Senate regarding his proposed trillion and a half dollar defense budget or his ballroom that will also cost about a trillion and a half. He;s also getting some flak from Republicans who have been criticizing him and Hegseth over his losing war with Iran.

     So, yeah, it looks as Gallrein will represent that inbred district in KY-4 (Democrat Melissa Strange, in her primary, got barely over half the votes that Gallrein got). But just because a bleacher bum screams the loudest during a game, it doesn't mean he actually changes the game's outcome.

Virtually Godly

Trump: pic.twitter.com/G2n0P14m7G

— Acyn (@Acyn) May 17, 2026

     If one still needs any further evidence of the rank hypocrisy, stupidity and gullibility that cripples this nation, then look no further than any "Christian" evangelical government shindig. There was one earlier today on the National Mall, the Rededicate250 spectacle that promised to restore "God’s presence in our national life throughout 250 years of American history."