He's getting better. Enjoy: ~~~
Everything Definitely Is Not Going Very Smoothly. From the pinned item on the New York Times liveblog of developments in the Iran war, as of 4:45 pm ET (also linked earlier today): “A U.S. Navy destroyer on Sunday attacked an Iranian cargo ship that defied an American blockade of Iran’s ports..., [Donald] Trump said, posing a fresh threat to the fragile cease-fire that is set to expire this week. Mr. Trump announced the attack hours after a White House official said the U.S. was dispatching a high-level delegation including Vice President JD Vance to peace talks in Pakistan, even as Iranian state media said Tehran had not yet agreed to a meeting. The guided missile destroyer USS Spruance fired on the cargo vessel in the Gulf of Oman, Mr. Trump said on Truth Social, 'blowing a hole' in its engine room before Marines seized the vessel. The president said the ship was under U.S. sanctions because of a 'history of illegal activity' and that U.S. forces were 'seeing what’s on board!' Mr. Trump did not say whether there had been any casualties. Iran’s semiofficial Mehr news agency reported that U.S. forces had fired on an Iranian merchant vessel, but said naval units from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps had forced the Americans to retreat.”
Cheyanne Daniels of Politico: “... Donald Trump on Sunday announced the U.S. will continue peace talks with Iranian representatives in Pakistan on Monday — even as he continued to threaten striking civilian infrastructure in the region. In a post to social media, the president accused Iran of violating a ceasefire and striking multiple European ships in the Strait of Hormuz. Now, Trump said, 'many' ships are headed to the U.S. 'to load up.... We’re offering a very fair and reasonable DEAL, and I hope they take it because, if they don’t, the United States is going to knock out every single Power Plant, and every single Bridge, in Iran. NO MORE MR. NICE GUY!... They’ll come down fast, they’ll come down easy and, if they don’t take the DEAL, it will be my Honor to do what has to be done, which should have been done to Iran, by other Presidents, for the last 47 years.,' he continued. 'IT’S TIME FOR THE IRAN KILLING MACHINE TO END!'”
Alexander Willis of the Raw Story: "Amid the ongoing U.S. war against Iran..., Donald Trump considered awarding himself the Medal of Honor [link fixed], the most prestigious military award issued by the U.S. government, White House insiders claimed in a report published Saturday evening in the Wall Street Journal." He also went into screaming fits after Iran downed a U.S. fighter jet. MB: Most people who are warped enough to work for Trump deserve all the crap he throws at them, but I would not put up with such a hostile work environment.
Only the Shadow Knows. Until Now. Jodi Kantor & Adam Liptak of the New York Times: A one-paragraph ruling in February 2016 “marks the birth, many legal experts believe, of the court’s modern 'shadow docket,' the secretive track that the Supreme Court has since used to make many major decisions, including granting ... [Donald] Trump more than 20 key victories.... The New York Times has obtained ... 6 pages of memos, exchanged in a five-day dash..., showing how the justices talk to one another outside of public view ... [and] bringing the origins of the Supreme Court’s shadow docket into the light.... In the Trump era, [Chief Justice John Roberts] and the other conservative justices have repeatedly empowered the president through their shadow docket rulings. By contrast, the papers reveal a court wielding those same powers to block Mr. Obama....
“Read a decade later, the memos suggest that none of the justices fully appreciated what they were doing: embarking on a questionable new way of operating.... Even as they debated the Obama [clean-air] plan’s possible burden on the power industry, in the entire chain of correspondence obtained by The Times, not a single justice, conservative or liberal, mentioned the dangers of a warming planet as one of the possible harms the court should consider.” Do read on. The link is a gift link. MB: BTW: Justice Kagan, IMO, seemed to know what was up. AND John Roberts is a sneaky bastid.
Joyce Vance elaborates on "Justice According to Trump." She contrasts the way the Trumpy DOJ is going after former CIA Director John Brennan (story linked below) with its effort to vacate the convictions of the worst insurrectionists.
~~~~~~~~~~
The New York Times is liveblogging developments in the Iran war. From the pinned item at 5:00 am ET: “Conditions in the Strait of Hormuz remained volatile early Sunday after Iran said it was once again closing the vital waterway and two ships reported coming under attack. Just a day earlier, Iran’s military had declared the strait open to commercial ships after the start of cease-fire between Israel and Lebanon. But Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps said Saturday that the strait would shut down in retaliation for President Trump’s decision to leave in place a U.S. blockade on ships from Iranian ports. The instability seemed to already be affecting vessels moving through the narrow passage, a conduit for a significant share of the world’s energy. On Saturday, India summoned the Iranian ambassador over what it called 'a serious incident' involving two Indian-flagged ships that came under fire.... Even as tensions flared in the waterway, the two sides maintained a cease-fire agreement reached last week, while Iran said it was reviewing new U.S. proposals submitted through Pakistan, which hosted peace talks last weekend.”
Barak Ravid of Axios: Donald "Trump convened a White House Situation Room meeting on Saturday morning to discuss the renewed crisis around the Strait of Hormuz and negotiations with Iran, according to two U.S. officials."
Paul Krugman: "When you’re losing a war, but it’s not an existential defeat, your country, your government can continue pretty much as before. Aside from the humiliation, there’s a well-established technique, which is to declare victory and pull out. But it appears that Trump can’t even pull that off.... We basically have to cut our losses by making a deal that leaves the Iranians with some stuff that they didn’t have before. He can’t seem to do that. But if he doesn’t do that, then the Strait of Hormuz will remain closed.... We are led by people who not only can’t plan a war right, they can’t even successfully execute a surrender. And that’s a really bad omen, not just for the Iran conflict, but for everything else." ~~~
~~~ Heather Cox Richardson touches on some specifics that are going against Trump's "victory." Here's one that is important and is only vaguely suggested in today's NYT liveblog on the war: "The Institute for the Study of War assesses that Iranian political officials are not the ones controlling decision-making. Instead, it appears the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the primary force of the Iranian military, is in charge. Benoit Faucon of the Wall Street Journal writes that disagreements about what’s happening in the Strait of Hormuz suggest divisions in Iran’s leadership."
Rachel Chason of the Washington Post: “Across the world, public opinion of the United States has plummeted since Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided to launch a war against Iran, according to experts, local reporting and available public surveys.... Meanwhile, love for [Pope] Leo, whom Trump has criticized sharply in recent days, seems to be overflowing as he undertakes a 10-day trip to four countries in Africa, where the Catholic Church is experiencing its fastest growth.... In Luanda, [Angola's capital,] Catholics expressed love and admiration for Pope Leo ... but not so much for ... [Donald] Trump because of the war in Iran.”
Maureen Dowd of the New York Times: “... watching the saintly pope school the amoral president is a blessed sight.... In a puerile fit of apparent retribution on Thursday, Trump canceled an $11 million federal contract with Catholic Charities in Miami to house and feed migrant children coming to America alone. (Even my Trump-indulging sister found that disgusting.) It’s hard for the president to give the pope the respect that he deserves because Trump clearly thinks that he’s the Messiah.”
Marie: In case you missed the ironical substance of Pete Hegseth's prayer from the Gospel of Tarantino (and I'll be you didn't), Josh Marshall of TPM lays it out.
Lauren Aratani of the Guardian: “Sixteen bets made $100,000 each accurately predicting the timing of the US airstrikes against Iran on 27 February. Later, a single user would make over $550,000 after betting that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would topple, just moments before his assassination by Israeli forces. On 7 April, right before Donald Trump announced a temporary ceasefire with Iran, traders bet $950m that oil prices would come down. They did. These bets and other well-timed wagers accurately predicted the precise timing of major developments in the US-Israel war with Iran, creating huge windfalls and raising concerns among lawmakers and experts over potential insider trading.... [An academic] paper notes that informed traders face fewer legal constraints by trading on platforms like Polymarket or Kalshi because these markets still operate in a legal gray area.”
Zach Montague of the New York Times: “A federal appeals court on Friday allowed construction on ... [Donald] Trump’s ballroom project to proceed through early June, pausing, for now, a lower court’s order that construction stop after next week. The overnight decision was procedural: An administrative stay gave the court around seven weeks to consider the case more fully. But it was the latest in a series of careful extensions by courts that have each allowed the president to keep building for short stretches as a lawsuit fighting the project proceeds.... The appeals panel set arguments for June 5, to consider whether to block construction anew. Because of the intermittent extensions, the president has yet to run into a deadline or temporarily bring construction to a halt.” The AP story is here.
⭐Trump DOJ Establishes a Kangaroo Court. Charlie Savage & Alan Feuer of the New York Times: “As a sprawling inquiry expands into whether former federal officials committed crimes in investigating ... [Donald] Trump, two unusual factors could ease the way toward securing the indictments he craves. A former lawyer for Mr. Trump’s campaign, Joseph diGenova, has been selected to lead the inquiry after a career prosecutor in Miami was removed from that post this week, a senior law enforcement official said on Saturday. And at least part of the investigation appears to be using a grand jury based in Fort Pierce, Fla., overseen by a federal judge, Aileen M. Cannon, who issued rulings favorable to Mr. Trump during the classified documents case against him....
“In another unusual move, Christopher-James DeLorenz, who worked as a law clerk for Judge Cannon during the documents case and later served as an aide to Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, was sent ... to [the Miami U.S. attorney's] office earlier this year and is working on the portion of the inquiry that is focused on [former CIA Director John] Brennan[, one of Mr. Trump's targets].... The Justice Department has also given [Jason] Reding Quiñones [, Miami's U.S. attorney and a Trump loyalist,] special authority under a statute ... that would enable him to bring indictments in jurisdictions where he is not the U.S. attorney.... Together, the moves show how the Justice Department under Mr. Trump’s control has been willing to embrace politically charged tactics and unorthodox personnel decisions in its efforts to satisfy his demands to prosecute his perceived foes....” Read on. The link is a gift link. This assemblage of hacks is a walking travesty, an open conspiracy to mock U.S. justice. It's appalling.
A CBS News story, mostly about the diGenova appointment, is here.
Rhian Lubin & Josh Marcus of the Independent: “White House officials are 'openly discussing' who will be the next FBI director amid a bombshell report about current leader Kash Patel’s alleged excessive drinking and other concerning conduct. Patel has threatened to sue The Atlantic after journalist Sarah Fitzpatrick's report alleged the FBI director is deeply paranoid about being fired and often drinks to excess, alarming officials at the agency and beyond. Fitzpatrick responded that she stands 'by every word of this reporting' and told MS NOW: 'We have excellent attorneys.'”
Paul Schwartzman & Kadia Goba of the Washington Post: “D.C. police were about to arrest Rep. Cory Mills (R-Florida) after a woman accused him of assault last year, but a lieutenant ordered them not to when she changed her account after appearing to talk to the congressman, according to body-camera footage and documents obtained by The Washington Post. The next day, police reversed course, asking then-interim U.S. Attorney Ed Martin, an appointee of ... Donald Trump, to sign off on a warrant to arrest Mills, a request the prosecutor denied. The Feb. 19, 2025 incident is part of a broad House Ethics Committee investigation into Mills, now seeking a third term with Trump’s endorsement.”
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New York. Alisha Gupta of the New York Times: “On sidewalks and subway cars, posters began popping up this week urging New Yorkers to boycott this year’s Met Gala over the tech billionaire Jeff Bezos’ involvement in the event. In February, Mr. Bezos, the founder of Amazon, and his wife, Lauren Sánchez Bezos, were announced as the lead sponsors and honorary chairs of the gala, a starry fund-raiser for the Metropolitan Museum of Art that is traditionally held on the first Monday in May. For many, the so-called party of the year, with its celebrity guests and carnivalesque red carpet, had long since come to epitomize the country’s yawning wealth inequality. But the sponsorship from the Bezoses, who have aligned themselves with the Trump White House, struck some activists as a particular outrage.... The postering campaign was organized by an activist group called Everyone Hates Elon, according to one of the group’s founders.... Mayor Zohran Mamdani, has said he will be skipping the event to focus instead on 'making the most expensive city in the United States affordable,' breaking with a tradition of past mayors’ attending the gala to show support for the cultural institution.”
Emma Fitzsimmons of the New York Times: “A group of preschoolers at a child care center in the Bronx gathered on a rug for a memorable story time on Saturday with Mayor Zohran Mamdani and former President Barack Obama. The pair sang an animated rendition of 'Wheels on the Bus,' read a picture book about the importance of community and ribbed each other about whose city had the better pizza. Mr. Obama read aloud about building a sand castle and stopped to ask: 'Who has made a sand castle before?' Many tiny hands shot up, and Mr. Mamdani took the opportunity to plug his affordability agenda, the centerpiece of his campaign last year. 'We’re trying to build more housing in New York City,' the mayor said. The event — Mr. Mamdani’s and Mr. Obama’s first public appearance together ... — brought together two stars of the Democratic Party to showcase a critical part of that affordability agenda: universal child care.”
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Venezuela. Anatoly Kurmanaev & of the New York Times: “U.S. Special Forces brought down President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela swiftly and publicly. Now, the people who kept him in power are being purged gradually and inconspicuously. Some have been fired or detained, and others are anxiously looking over their shoulders, worried they might be next. Oligarchs close to Mr. Maduro’s family have been snatched from their homes. His political allies have been summarily removed from their posts. His relatives have been sidelined from business deals and barred from media appearances. The housecleaning is being carried out by Mr. Maduro’s former vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, who is running the country under instructions from the Trump administration. The detentions and leadership purges have unfolded without public explanation, but often with the approval — and sometimes at the urging — of the White House, according to people close to Ms. Rodríguez’s government....
“The overhaul of national leadership, combined with sweeping new laws and her alliance with ... [Donald] Trump, is reshaping Venezuela and its management of one of the planet’s largest oil reserves, just as the world grapples with the energy turmoil caused by war in the Middle East. In the three months since Mr. Maduro’s capture, Ms. Rodríguez has changed 17 ministers, replaced military commanders and installed new diplomats. She has also overseen the detention of at least three businessmen tied to Mr. Maduro, fired several of his relatives and cut off most of his family from oil contracts.”
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The weeks rush by. Sermon time again.
Part I
THE OTHER WAR
The two-week ceasefire in our war with Iran, with both sides claiming victory and no peace deal reached, might be a good time to turn our attention to another war, one we’ve been fighting for decades here at home.
For the last fifty years Americans have been engaged in an economic civil war over who and how much people should pay in taxes. Since the Reagan tax cuts in the 1980’s, most Americans have been getting trounced.
Not only has the national debt ballooned since Reagan’s two terms, but the scale of the nation’s wealth has also tipped so far in one direction that the top ten percent now owns nearly 90 percent of the stock market, and the top one percent possesses as much as the bottom ninety percent of Americans.
Reagan’s taxing and spending policies nearly tripled the national debt during his time in office. That debt is now a whopping 40 trillion dollars, a number so large that nearly 20 percent of the yearly federal budget goes to interest payments on it (pgpf.org). Clinton was the only president since Reagan to run a surplus, which he did in his second term. Every other administration has, for its own reasons, expanded the debt.
Necessity is a good reason to borrow, of course. We borrow to buy things we could not otherwise afford. We buy a home on credit to have a roof over our head, while hoping to invest in something of growing value. When we need a car and don’t have the ready cash for one, we borrow to buy it. Nationally, we go into debt responding to disasters like the 2008 Bush II economic crash that brought business to a standstill or the Covid pandemic that struck the nation in late 2019.
But there are also bad reasons for a nation to borrow. One is the habit we’ve developed of going to war on the cheap, putting our wars on the nation’s credit card The Iraq War cost taxpayers $2-3 trillion (wikipedia.org), and so far, our Iran adventure is running $1.3 billion dollars a day or more in direct costs. Some experts predict the total might reach one trillion (hks.harvard.edu). Those numbers, of course, don’t account for the massive war penalties American consumers are paying due to the Iran war induced inflation, most obviously and painfully in higher gas and diesel prices.
Keeping taxes low on the immensely wealthy is another very bad reason. Seventy percent of the 2025 Tax Act’s benefits go to the top 20% of earners, increasing the national debt by between 4 and 5 trillion dollars over the next ten years (americanprogress.org). The top one percent will save at least one trillion dollars in taxes over that period. In other words, our national debt will pay the richest among us one trillion dollars for the privilege of being extremely wealthy.
Part II
On the other hand, those not so wealthy often have to borrow to survive. Nearly half of American households cannot count on meeting monthly expenses (urban.org). For them, credit cards are one option (bankrate.com). In the fourth quarter of 2025 America’s credit card debt reached a record $1.28 trillion. We paid $250 billion in credit card interest on that debt, an average of 714 dollars for every man, woman and child (newyorkfed.org). Though not everyone paying that interest is poor; in today’s United States being poor has, like many other things, become even more expensive.
Over the first year of Trump’s second term, “affordability” became a buzzword for many reasons. Inflation persists. The job market in 2025 was essentially flat. Hiring was at its lowest ebb since 2003 (hiringlab.org). New work requirements imposed by the Big Beautiful (tax cut) Bill removed 2.5 million from SNAP food benefits and yanked health insurance away from millions. Sixteen million are slated to lose health insurance by 2034 (cbbp.org).
Meanwhile, the regressive tariffs Trump has used to extract personal and political favors (rethinktrade.org) are taking a bite out of American pocketbooks. His tariffs are estimated to cost the typical household $1230 in 2026 (taxfoundation.org).
Americans know our economy is not working well for the majority. What many haven’t noticed is how we got here over the years. The wealth concentration our tax policies allow has greatly expanded the political power of people like billionaires Jeff Bezos and Howard Shultz, who recently fled to Florida to escape Washington State’s new millionaires’ tax, where they will join another Floridian, our president, who said not paying taxes makes him “smart.” Such “smart” people serve only themselves.
There is no ceasefire in the wealth war. That war never stops.
Trumper, Traitor, Ass-kiss Guys
Heather Cox Richardson’s piece pointing to possible divisions in the Iranian leadership and questions about who exactly is in charge call to mind the plot of John le Carré‘s novel “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” which follows the implosion of the British intelligence operations and the investigative smarts of the Sherlockian spy master, George Smiley. Smiley has been dismissed along with key intelligence personnel after a botched operation. But Smiley smells a rat.he pulls together the experts who had been booted to find out what was really going on. Key among that group were analysts like Connie Sachs who ran the Russia desk for decades. Turns out they were all let go by a traitor who realized it was better to get rid of the really smart people and surround himself with flunkies and yes men.
This is exactly what’s going on in this country. Experts on Iran (and everywhere else) who had a much better chance of reading the tea leaves and offering serious and educated opinions on Fatty’s war of whim, were fired and replaced by morons like Drunk Pete, Witkoff and Kushner. And make no mistake, all of this was set in motion by a traitor, the Fat Fascist.
With the experts out of the way, he had no one to tell him how stupid this idea was, but he also has no one now to explain what’s going on inside the IRG.
And unfortunately for us, there is no George Smiley to put things alright. We are left with the traitor and his moronic ass kissers.
In The Atlantic, Alan Taylor edits a collection of soothing images for a Sunday morning Out Among the Cherry Blossoms
Please pretend he knew what he was doing the whole time.. The press laundering FH lies and instability again.
"President Trump reportedly adopted a strategy of intentionally acting unstable and insulting towards Iran, in the hopes that it would push the U.S. adversary to negotiate an end to the war. The unorthodox tactics were reportedly behind a string of controversial posts the president made this month about the vital Strait of Hormuz, administration officials told The Wall Street Journal."
"Hundreds of Fake Pro-Trump Avatars Emerge on Social Media
In a third post, a redhead is with a group at a basketball court. “If you support Trump, you just made a friend,” she says. Each video features an identical, grammatically awkward caption: “I’m new here and love God, America,and Trump!!” All are the work of artificial intelligence.
In the months leading up to the midterm elections, hundreds of accounts have emerged on social media featuring A.I.-generated pro-Trump influencers posting at a rapid pace about the “radical left” and “America First.”"
RAS,
Yeah, the Pretender is a master at having it both ways. I meant to act crazy, some say he said, so it was all part of some grand plan, but no matter, he still acted crazy.
Reminds me of the times students who used racial epithets in our not all-white school said no biggie, I was just kidding. Think I've heard that one from the Pretender, too.
It all comes to taking responsibility for nothing, ever.
But the ploy works only if the audience is willing to be taken in, and the Pretender does have a very willing audience. Some are on Congress and sit on the Supreme Court.
@RAS: Yeah, this is another "how dumb are newspaper readers?" trial balloons. In that same WSJ article where we're told "the end of civilization" threat was some clever technique to get Iran to negotiate, there comes this sentence: "Trump screamed at aides for hours." And the clever purpose of screaming at aides for hours was ... what???
So let me get this straight. Trump considers it an honor to be commit war crimes. Is that one of his genius ploys that we who are too stupid to understand his clever moves don't appreciate?
Yair Rosenberg, in The Atlantic, urges that People scrutinizing influencers for their views should also hold them to account for their facts.
"Last week, Pod Save America, the popular podcast founded by former Obama-administration staffers, hosted the influencer and leftist provocateur Hasan Piker. A charismatic and pugnacious socialist streamer, Piker has become a flash point in a broader debate among Democrats over how far their party’s big tent ought to extend. Unsurprisingly, Piker’s hourlong interview generated controversy.
....The streamer’s cavalier characterization of the views of American Jews, living and dead, and his failure to genuinely reckon with what they think, help explain why some feel that Piker fosters anti-Jewish animus. But one need not reach a conclusion on the anti-Semitism question to arrive at the simpler determination that he speaks confidently about things that he does not know much about. And this phenomenon is not unique to Piker. It’s characteristic of the new-media landscape, which now includes smashmouth streamers and podcasters of all political persuasions who talk about everything but are experts in nothing, and whose incentives run toward incendiary virality rather than accuracy. Often, this means that these talkers leave listeners less informed than when they came in, as is the case here."
On the shadow docket's origins:
In short these are pronouncements, not decisions., Absent argument, edict replaces reason.
And that's the way dictators like it, whether they wear black robes or think they're Christ or not.
Whether the conservative justices knew what they were doing or not, they, like the Pretender, own it. They have made a mockery of law, let alone justice.
The Times article on the nefarious and aggressively hyper-partisan shadow docket states that "...the logic behind the Supreme Court’s pivotal 2016 order has remained a mystery. Why did a majority of the justices bypass time-tested procedures and opt for a new way of doing business?"
This is a question? Clearly, the wingers on the Court led by the snickering slime ball, John Roberts, had had enough of pretending to be non-partisan umpires who simply, in Roberts' own words, call balls and strikes. They were ready to dispense with the notion that they were anything more than water carriers for whatever Party of Traitors wish list line item was before them.
As the article makes clear, for all their animosity toward precedence, the rule of law, and the Constitution, neither Thomas nor Alito are as blameworthy as Roberts in destroying democracy and titling the court to its present position of being the house legal department for the Republican Party.
The article deserves a deeper dive, but just let me point out the jaw dropping hypocrisy of Roberts, et al, who were OUTRAGED that President Obama seemed to be pushing the envelope on powers of the Executive branch. Roberts' rationale for shadow docketing Obama's environmental rules was that this was some kind of world shattering, national security thing that couldn't wait for the usual careful discussions and back and forth, he needed to destroy it toot sweet and not look back.
Of course once their guy got in, they forgot all about that chin stroking concern for pushing the envelope on powers of the executive. They started a bonfire and burnt the envelope then pissed on the ashes.
Worst court in US history. And I'll tell you what, if Alito and Thomas decide to retire in time for Fat Hitler to appoint two more democracy crushing Nazis who would debase the Court even further for the next 30 years, and should Democrats take the Senate in the mid terms, they should absolutely apply the McConnell rule which says the next president gets to decide who will be appointed to the Court. Likely this will never happen if Schumer is still in charge, but one can always hope.
Another right-wing criminal whose actions they are trying to vacate.
"Jordan Moves To Expunge Trump’s 2019 Impeachment"
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