Daniel Borunda of the El Paso Times: "... Donald Trump — whose approval ratings continue lagging — posted a social media image suggesting renaming the state of New Mexico as 'New America.' The White House reposted Trump's 'New America' image depicting a map of New Mexico with an 'X' over 'Mexico' and replaced by 'America' on Sunday, Sept. 6, during the Labor Day holiday weekend.... The "New America" map was previously posted on Sept. 1 on the parody account Daily Noud, which posted a fake image falsely claiming Trump had signed an executive order renaming New Mexico. Daily Noud account on X states, 'These are fake stories.'"
There once was a crazy old man,
Who said with his Sharpie in
hand,
“Today there’s
no doubt,*
“New Mexico’s
out.
“Now, time to dispose of Greenland.”
* Not many people know there's a "b" in "doubt."
Abbie Van Sickle of the New York Times: “The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court yet again on Sunday to allow its plans to restrict mail-in voting before the midterms, setting up what will likely be the final legal showdown for the president’s push to impose limits on mail voting in the weeks before the midterm election. In an emergency application, lawyers for the administration urged the justices to clear the way for new U.S. Postal Service rules to go into effect, changing the way the agency handles mail-in ballots. Each day that passes makes it less likely that the Trump administration can clear the legal and logistical hurdles it would need to put the new rules in place by the midterms. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who handles emergency applications from the region of the country where the case originated, set a schedule that signaled the court would handle it on a swift, but not immediate, timeline.” The link is a gift link. ~~~
~~~ Marie: What? You mean Justice Jackson might be using a stall tactic? Who would do that? Oh, Trump. That's why he's not sitting in jail right now.
Peter Eavis & Jenny Gross of the New York Times: “After more than six months of war, analysts said the [Strait of Hormuz] remained in a lethal stalemate. 'The strait is neither fully closed nor fully opened,' said Eugene Gholz ... of ... the University of Notre Dame.... 'Iran can’t close it completely, and the U.S. can’t open it completely.' The U.S. tanker protection effort, which involves intercepting Iranian drones and missiles before they hit ships, has helped get millions of barrels of oil out of the Persian Gulf each day and provided a measure of relief to oil markets. But attacks from Iran have continued to deter many tankers from operating in the strait.... Iran has managed to keep hitting vessels. Iran struck 12 ships in August, up slightly from 11 in July.... The amount of oil going through the waterway is still significantly lower than it was before the war, analysts said.” The link is a gift link.
This is the sort of thing Trump called "small potatoes" the other day: ~~~
~~~ Alex Horton & Joyce Lee of the Washington Post: “The Pentagon is investigating the high likelihood that an explosion in southern Iran that destroyed a home hosting a wedding celebration was caused by a U.S. bomb that missed a nearby target, a person familiar with the operation said. U.S. forces launched an airstrike in the coastal town of Kuhestak that targeted a communications complex, a U.S. official said. The complex, which included a small building at its base, sat in a civilian area but was believed to be utilized in part by Iranian forces to conduct operations, the person familiar said. Six bombs dropped by U.S. Navy jets traveled on a tight pathway toward the tower and all struck the site except for one, which appeared to go astray, said the person.... An explosion tore into the roof of the home approximately 440 feet from the tower, according to visuals verified by The Washington Post.”
David French of the New York Times: “... [Donald] Trump ... is making our nation more vulnerable than it has been at any time since the cloudiest days of the Cold War.... From the top down, Trump is replacing the highly imperfect meritocracy of American public service with an idiocracy, and his corrupt idiocrats are creating profound short-, medium- and long-term harms to American national security. The short-term damage is serious enough. Even just to achieve what is at best a stalemate in the Persian Gulf, the administration has created a critical shortage in interceptors that can shoot down missiles and drones and in other precision munitions.... At the same time, to maintain the stalemate against Iran, the United States is drawing resources from other, more dangerous theaters of potential conflict.... All of this is taking place against the backdrop of terrible self-imposed wounds to America’s alliances.... Our allies learned an important lesson from Trump’s second election. It’s not just that Trump is mercurial and unreliable, it’s that the American electorate is mercurial and unreliable.” The link is a gift link.
~~~~~~~~~~
Mohamad El Chamaa & Sammy Westfall of the Washington Post: “The U.S. military said Saturday it hit three Iranian oil tankers, including one near Kharg Island, the country’s main oil terminal, after Iran launched missiles toward two U.S. Navy warships. U.S. Central Command, which oversees operations in the region, said in a statement that the U.S. strikes disabled an oil carrier off the coast of Kharg Island and another off Jask, and it destroyed a third one in the Gulf of Oman. 'Let the message to the IRGC be clear: If you shoot at two of our ships, we will impose an even higher economic cost — taking out three of yours,' said Adm. Brad Cooper, Centcom commander, referring to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.” A NOTUS report is here. The New York Times report is here; the link is a gift link.
I like that this design appears to show the birth date of liberty as 1776, and its death as 2026 https://t.co/sXinZjEP9m
— Catherine Rampell (@crampell) September 2, 2026
~~~ Thanks to RAS for the link. Via digby.
Fat Hitler Indeed. From hitler-pics.com: "Arguably Adolf Hitler’s greatest passion and pastime outside of his quest for world domination was his obsession with architecture and urban design. So much so that he not only had grandiose plans for a total revision of Berlin but also had extensive plans for the redesign of just about every major city in Germany. Below are a large series of photographs of him intently developing and revising his plans for Munich, Nuremberg, Bayreuth, and Weimar as well as his hometown of Linz in Austria. He wanted his new buildings and monuments to demonstrate the determination, strength and power of his rapidly expanding Reich." Thanks to RAS for the link. MB: This is eerie. The difference between Trump & Hitler here is that Trump hasn't gotten around to redesigning, say, Cleveland.
Marie: At about 384 feet, Hitler's planned arch, pictured here, was taller than Trump's (250 feet, and that includes the golden statue on the top) and more substantial. And it's not all about himself: "Hitler gave [architect Albert] Speer a drawing of his concept for a Triumphal Arch that he had sketched out in 1926. The arch was to have a height of 117 meters and be completed by 1950. More than 2 million names of WWI soldiers would be immortalized inside the structure."
Finya Swai of the Hill: “A portion of the ceiling inside the Kennedy Center’s Grand Foyer collapsed Friday evening as heavy rain swept through the Washington, D.C. area, prompting officials to temporarily close the main building. No one was injured in the collapse, according to the Kennedy Center, which released photos from the scene showing chunks of the ceiling and dust scattered across the foyer’s red carpet.... Kennedy Center spokesperson Roma Daravi pointed to the collapse as evidence of the need for extensive renovations at the performing arts complex in a statement to ABC. She said the ceiling failure 'stems from decades of neglect and deferred maintenance by the previous leadership.'... The administration threatened to demolish the building if a judge were to block the center’s closure for repairs, and has repeatedly referred to the center as being in a 'decrepit' condition in court filings.” ~~~
~~~ Sean James of Mediaite: The Kennedy Center sent out a tweet with stills & video of the damage. The message: "... Decades of deferred maintenance made this inevitable. Chairman President Trump has been right: America’s cultural center needs to close, renovate, and be restored — now." ~~~
~~~ Marie: Aaah, I'm sure it was vandals. Trump probably sent Natalie up a ladder with a hammer.
Mary Ilyushina, et al., of the Washington Post: “U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Saturday, in a visit aimed at reviving peace talks with Ukraine after nearly eight months of deep freeze. The talks on Saturday with Witkoff and Kushner, which lasted more than three hours and ended close to midnight local time, were “substantive, constructive and extremely candid,” Putin’s foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters, though he shed little light on whether the visit had achieved any movement toward a truce.” The New York Times story is here; this is a gift link. More on Ukraine linked below.
Coral Davenport of the New York Times: “The Trump administration is moving to allow married couples with a stay-at-home spouse to collect child care subsidies, a policy championed by Vice President JD Vance, using funds from a federal program intended to assist working parents.... The change would create the only federal subsidy to pay parents to stay home and raise their children, one of the most significant efforts to date by the Trump administration to harness federal funds to promote a traditional view of families.... Officials are seeking to use a Health and Human Services Department fund that was created in the 1990s to help low-income and working-class parents afford child care.... Parents who stay home with their children could benefit from the program, which typically provides about $9,000 per child each year.... The move could end up redirecting money away from working parents and their child care providers, causing some to raise their rates or even close, critics said, potentially worsening what many experts say is a child care crisis in the country. About 80 percent of the 870,000 families who currently get the child care subsidies have single working parents, most of them mothers, according to Health Department data.” The link is a gift link. ~~~
~~~ Marie: Well, we do know single mothers are sinners. Look, they either never married the fathers of their children or they left the fathers to have a good time. So what if Congress determined these funds should go to them? It's wrong to reward them for their wanton behavior.
Nathaniel Weixel of the Hill: “The Pentagon is attempting to divert billions of dollars from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to bolster the agency’s budget, according to the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) in a statement Thursday said Trump administration officials only recently disclosed to Congress that the Defense Department signed an interagency agreement that could give the Pentagon access to billions of dollars meant for biomedical research.” Thanks to RAS for the link.
Marie: I had to "join" Instagram AND Threads to get this video, but it was worth the hassle I'm sure is in the offing because, thanks to RAS, I found out how very nice "Canada nice" really is. And now you can, too: ~~~
View on Threads
~~~~~~~~~~
New Hampshire Senate Race. Toljaso. Jesse Bidgood of the New York Times: “In recent weeks, a tide of anxiety has risen among Democrats in the Granite State who are concerned that a party with big dreams of expanding its map could let the seat left open by the pending retirement of Senator Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat, slip from its grasp. The matchup that is widely expected to emerge from the state’s primary on Tuesday would pit Representative Chris Pappas, 46, a four-term congressman from the swingy First District, against former Senator John E. Sununu, who is the brother and son of two former governors. A recent poll by the University of New Hampshire showed Mr. Pappas running narrowly behind in such a contest. Mr. Pappas himself is raising the alarm and underscoring the national implications of the race. He put it bluntly in a fund-raising email on Friday morning: 'We’re losing.'” MB: Not that Sununu is charming -- he isn't -- but Pappas is the most boring and unconvincing candidate imaginable. I have seen Pappas's ads probably hundreds of times, and they are completely meaningless. Also, I was stunned to see he was 46 years old; he doesn't look old enough to run for Senate.
Texas Senate Race. Alexei Koseff of the Washington Post: “... Donald Trump’s super PAC has made a $10 million ad buy in the Texas Senate race, its first major spending for the November midterms, where nervous Republicans hope Trump’s political war chest can boost their sagging prospects. As the final sprint to the election begins, MAGA Inc. on Saturday filed an expenditure report with the Federal Election Commission for $5 million in TV and digital advertising to support Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the state’s Republican Senate nominee, and another $5 million to oppose his Democratic opponent, state Rep. James Talarico.” The Texas Tribune's story is here.
~~~~~~~~~~
Ukraine. Andrew Kramer, et al., of the New York Times: “Secret military audits reveal a military procurement system riddled with mismanagement.... Seven of Ukraine’s top 10 military contractors won new business despite open criminal investigations for fraud, failures to deliver on earlier deals or the arrest of chief executives for corruption, according to the government audits obtained by The Times, court records and Ukrainian news accounts. Confidential reviews by the State Audit Service and an internal Ministry of Defense auditing department reveal a military procurement system riddled with mismanagement. Warning signs go unheeded, the records show, and there are seldom consequences for overcharging or failing to deliver. Companies won contracts without demonstrating that they could supply the weapons, or without licenses to deliver them. Auditors identified 18 companies that signed deals despite defaulting on previous agreements. Six of those companies failed to fulfill a single contract. The internal government audits showed that in 2024 alone, Ukraine lost about $1.2 billion to fraud, waste and mismanagement.” The link is a gift link. ~~~
~~~ Here's a related New York Times story; this is a gift link.
17 comments:
Sunday Sermon, Part I:
OUR GOLDEN AGE
President Trump just announced we’re about to enter the Golden Age of Space Transportation. Since we’ve been told repeatedly that we’re living in the Golden Age of America (nytimes.com), I was not surprised to hear that our Golden Age now extends into space. I wonder what it will mean.
My own strong interest in space travel began in the 1950’s about the time Sputnik startled the world by puncturing the heavens. With millions of others, I watched Sputnik course across 1957’s clear October sky. I built plastic models of first-generation rockets and guided missiles, clipped news articles of Vanguard's launch failures, cheered when our own Explorer I finally achieved orbit, and memorized the names of the first seven American astronauts selected to follow the Russian astronauts into space.
I read about the history of rockets, the secret operation that brought Werner Von Braun and his V-2 rockets to the United States following WW II, studied how rockets worked, and joined forces with a fellow high school nerd to build and fire a few primitive rockets of our own. For me, that period of my life was space travel’s golden age.
Those fond memories of space travel reminded me of one of my favorite movies, “October Sky.” Last week I watched it again. “October Sky” is a mildly fictionalized story of a boy growing up in a small West Virginia coal-mining town in the 1950’s who also dreamed of space. His father (memorably portrayed by Chris Cooper) was a mine foreman who devoted his entire life to mining coal. His son Homer, though, saw rockets and space travel, not coal mining, in his future. Conflict between father and son ensued.
With a teacher’s encouragement Homer Hickam and a few of his fellow students overcame the social, cultural, and adult forces arrayed against them, built rockets and entered and won first place at a local science fair. Science fair success at the national level and college scholarships followed. Homer eventually worked for NASA, training Space Shuttle astronauts. He also wrote the wonderful books about his youth on which “October Sky” is based. Though they are shadowed by the darkness of coal dust and black lung, Hickam’s life story and the movie made from it are golden, too.
Human accomplishment, especially in the face of difficulty, is always golden. In high school I learned of the Golden Age of Greece. Following its victory over Persia in 480 BCE, the Athens city-state flowered for a short eighty years, gifting the next two thousand years with philosophers like Socrates and Plato, the orator and civic leader Pericles, the playwright Sophocles, the stunning architecture of the Parthenon, and a revolutionary democracy that allowed its male citizens a direct voice in establishing its laws.
In a time when our own democracy is being undermined by attacks on voting rights and by the flood of money influencing elections, with a record $11.6 billion projected to be spent on this year’s mid-terms (adimpact.com), it seems reasonable to question how “golden” our own age really is.
Part II
Its finances are definitely not golden. Despite the president’s claims, the numbers would say it is quite the opposite. The most recent Federal Reserve economic data tell us we’re not imagining higher inflation, higher prices and declining wages. All those things are very real. Additionally, the government’s revised employment report shows that the last two years have had the nation’s weakest job growth since 2008. This year, the nation’s Gross Domestic Product has declined, interest rates have risen, and we are now proud owners of a record $40 trillion national debt.
All the gold leaf being applied to the government buildings and monuments in the nation’s capital, and Trump’s self-aggrandizing construction projects offer a glaring contrast to the sad state of the economy. Opinion about taste, timing, and expense of these “beatification” efforts is mostly negative (washingtonpost.com).
Public opinion on other elements of our present Golden Age is equally so. Only thirty five percent of American approve of Trump’s tariffs (yahoofinance.com), and that number has continued to fall. Nearly two-thirds of Americans polled disapprove of ICE’s immigration enforcement techniques. Only about forty percent approve of immigration policies so obviously designed by the administration to inflict pain as it incarcerates and deports millions of the black and brown people it wants out of our country (apnorc.com). And ICE’s recent purchase of 6000 pairs of shock gloves hardly helped its public image (apnews.com).
So, are we living in a Golden Age or not? If we’re heavily invested in the stock market, perhaps we are. Otherwise, it’s very much open to question.
I’m glad I already had my golden age of space transportation.
7 cool science stories
Plastic cookies may be in our future.
No Raking Needed
"The Goat-Cow Is Spain’s Wildfire-Fighting Secret Weapon
Small, nimble cows are being deployed in Galicia to lower wildfire risk by doing what they do best: eating."
Research
"US Forest Service closing 23 research facilities as part of reorganization under Trump"
Tariffs - Trump's understanding of the economy
"Their Logic Is Perverted
Tom Sullivan
Not just mean-spirited but sadistic
It’s widespread, the notion that the only measures of worth are wealth and power. The only reason for doing anything is acquiring more of both. It’s why MAGA foot soldiers cannot imagine that people who take to the streets to protest Nazis in their midst and in defense of neighbors they don’t know is that they’re being paid by George Soros. As Richard Murphy of Funding The Future puts, their logic is perverted.
Murphy is specifically talking about elite players with machine minds forever supporting the notion that the poor must pay for the failures of neoliberalism. Murphy was reacting to an editorial in The Financial Times on rising bond interest rates in England."
"You Don’t Have a Right to Safe Drinking Water, US Court Rules
A Trump-appointed judge also said Americans have no “constitutional right to truthful information” during a public health crisis.
On Friday, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the dismissal of a lawsuit against the city of Jackson, Mississippi, which alleged the city knowingly let residents drink lead-contaminated water.
The lawsuit, first filed in 2022, says the contamination violated Jacksonians’ constitutional right to bodily integrity. Donald Trump-appointed judge Kurt Engelhardt disagreed. “The Constitution does not provide redress for every governmental wrongdoing,” Engelhardt said. “Defendants’ actions allegedly deprived Plaintiffs of clean water and guileless information. These deprivations, while grievous, do not infringe upon any deeply rooted constitutional right.”"
Of course right-wing judges think the government should be unaccountable for abuses of the people.
In Texas Observer, Ben Sargent depicts the Master of Puppets
The Jackson, Mississippi lawsuit ruling goes hand-in-hand with advertisements I have seen recently, I think in Florida, for a company that will happily deliver your favorite brand of bottled water to your doorstep. Isn't a safe, readily available water supply one of the fundamental things we pay taxes for?
What kind of warped, sad, cruel dipshit wants to pay lots of money to a private company to deliver water from another private company in order to pay a bit less in taxes and stick it to the poor people who, in their opinion, don't deserve clean water?????
Ken,
Your mention of rocketry (and "October Sky", a wonderful film) reminded me of this little Tom Lehrer ditty about Wernher von Braun.
"... talks on Saturday with Witkoff and Kushner, which lasted more than three hours and ended close to midnight local ... '
It is totally not believable that Putin spent three hours on a weekend night with those two duraks.
Patrick,
This is the kind of things they spent those hours talking about,
Memories from a jail, hopefully
Witkoff: "President Putin, thank you so much for having us. We were sitting outside just now, me, Jared, Kirill, Yuri, and we were talking about, when we retire, we'll have all these incredible stories and memories, and yours will be right at the top of it all."
Akhilleus,
Thanks for the Lehrer. Might have mentioned we proudly ruined the lives of our two sons by feeding them a steady diet of Lehrer and M.A.S.H. reruns...
Democratic Ohio Governor Candidate
"Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine confirmed that Amy Acton was uninjured after a man lunged at her during a campaign event near Youngstown on Sunday.
This comes after an earlier statement put out by Acton's campaign said that an armed individual had rushed at Acton while she was at the Canfield Fair in Mahoning County, resulting in the injuries of multiple people who were nearby.
Two handguns and a set of brass knuckles were found on Havas's person, according to Ricciutti. However, Havas reportedly did not brandish the weapons or remove them from their holsters."
Waiting to see how the Pretender acknowledges/celebrates Labor Day...
Ken,
You mean America Day? He'll probably trot out a few corporate bigwigs to tell everyone how lucky we are for the privilege to be part of their capitalist machine. And warn everyone to keep their heads down unless they want to be replaced by AI...earlier.
Jesus-- I guess it is a horror that the insane prez of the US of A has been shot at, but it's fine to threaten a Democratic woman candidate-- being a Democrat and a woman, meh... I flaming hate these stupid violent MAGA cultists...Don't tell me anything about this guy-- I don't care. He can simply go to hell right now.
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