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[Note]: Health is improving, albeit more slowly than expected. Two appointments next week and a host of time‑consuming but necessary exercises. I’m doing my best to keep up blogging, but the only guarantee is I’ll keep trying.
- In Nan’s Notebook, she discovers a comment that may explain Trump’s world view.
It’s a form of solipsism. Nothing and nobody exists except himself.
- In Letters from an American, historian Heather Cox Richardson examines the new strange interest by leaders on the right in the writings of a Nazi theorist, and how those writings eerily predict actions by the Trump administration.
Schmitt opposed liberal democracy, in which the state enables individuals to determine their own fate. Instead, he argued that true democracy erases individual self-determination by making the mass of people one with the state and exercising their will through state power. That uniformity requires getting rid of opposition. Schmitt theorized that politics is simply about dividing people into friends and enemies and using the power of the state to crush enemies.
The same analysis is now available in audio format, as Richardson narrates in podcast.
- In Hackwhackers, Trump support has sunk to a level that is way, way, low, low.
Those aren’t even Viktor Orbán numbers; they’re Nicolae Ceaușescu numbers.
From a “No Kings” protest last October in Atlanta /Alyssa Pointer, Reuters:
- Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger brings us more than a dozen mainstream polls from July that have one thing in common: Americans just don’t like Trump.
- If a picture is a KiloWord, Dave Dubya presents several thousand words worth as he illustrates Trump’s damage to the nation and its people.
Beginning with:
He also follows up with actual words that carry a unifying message as we taught in school when those words were not considered a controversy.
Beginning with:
Much of the Declaration of Independence is relevant today: - M. Bouffant at Web of Evil relates one of many reasons a large majority of Americans are coming to loath Trump. He so hates the notion that immigrants are employed as truck drivers, he intends to reduce required training for those wishing to replace them.
Not exactly Safety First!
- While I was in and out and in and out of surgery, I missed SilverAppleQueen pointing out that the disruption and harm Trump and his confederates impose on the lives of ordinary people is not confined to the USA.
- Julian Sanchez has this aspect of Trump damage about right:
The most irreversably damaging geopolitical harm Trump has inflicted is proving to the world that America is untrustworthy and unreliable. Not his administration, but the American people. open.substack.com/pub/matthewy…
— Julian Sanchez (@normative.bsky.social) July 30, 2026 at 6:32 AM
Trump was a kindergarden-level civics test the American electorate failed miserably, and the rest of the world now quite rightly regards us collectively as a toddler stumbling around with a Glock rather than an adult one can deal reasonably with.
— Julian Sanchez (@normative.bsky.social) July 30, 2026 at 6:37 AM
- Michael J Scott examines who might be departing from the truth when it comes to the war/not war with Iran.
- Military strategy based on poor impulse control produced the Attack‑On‑Iran disaster.
Turns out poor impulse control as a legal approach can be just as bad.
News Corpse chronicles how Trump’s suit against Britain’s BBC for a news report that bruised his delicate sensibilities has produced a legal requirement he very much wants to avoid.
Headline says it:
Legal Genius Trump Sued the BBC for Defamation and Now Must Turn Over His Financial RecordsQuoting Meidas Touch News:
“Donald Trump just suffered another brutal courtroom defeat—and this one could force one of his most closely guarded financial entities to start handing over sensitive records.
A federal magistrate judge in Florida has ordered the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust to begin producing financial documents sought by the BBC in Trump’s sprawling defamation lawsuit.” - tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors lists middle of the night rage-posts and self-glorification posts from Trump in just one night.
Note: It won’t fit on just one screen.
- driftglass previews a typical state of the Trump speech as reviewed by stars of Star Trek.
- In Canadian satire, The Beaverton has Trump National Park featuring anti‑woke plants and animals.
For too long, good American wildlife have had their place in this country stolen by illegal migratory species, DEI plantings, and escaped transgenic pets…
- Journalist Marcy Wheeler at EmptyWheel reports on the soon‑to‑be even more famous Reflecting Pool charges.
Most of us, at least those of us obsessed enough to depart from our daily lives to read up on it, know Donald Trump just couldn’t admit he screwed up in trying to remake the great Reflecting Pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial into another monument to himself. The new lining not only looks awful, it’s falling apart.
So, of course, Donald ordered all hands on deck to find someone, anyone, to charge with sneaking around and damaging the pool.
They came up with one time U.S. Olympic canoeist David Hearn, who touched a deteriorating part of the pool.
Former Fox Network personality, current Prosecutor, Jeanine Pirro was asked how they would prove the Olympic star had actually caused any damage:
“With an expert,” the prosecutor who face-planted with a case about a flying Subway sandwich boasted. “Come to the trial,” she said, before saying something that was a big tell: “He damaged the pool”…Sure enough there was an expert…who said the damage had already been done before the curious Hearn even got there.
On the contrary, he or she did more damage to Pirro’s case than Hearn is accused of doing to the reflecting pool.Think it couldn’t get any worse?
Marcy Wheeler reports the expert witness never actually testified before the grand jury.
Instead, an investigator told the grand jury, as best he could, what he had heard from the expert witness, adding that none of it was under oath.
[Update]
Prosecutors have now admitted the accusations were bogus and that the damage to the pool had already been done. They have moved to drop all charges.My thought repeated:
Those leading the Justice Department do give me hope.
Perhaps I too can get a law degree by sending in box tops.— burrland01.bsky.social (@burrland01.bsky.social) April 28, 2026 at 10:54 PM
- Max’s Dad reviews the Republican Senate hearing designed to trap Anthony Fauci. He pours scathing hot opinion over each of several legislators, saving a flow of molten steel for Rand Paul.
- North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz explains why those on the right incessantly attack Dr. Anthony Fauci. He has committed a mortal sin:
Antony Fauci has sinned against their God.
He had the heretical audacity to oppose their unhinged orange MAGA messiah, and that is not something religious zealots tolerate. - I’m generally a support-your-local-police kind of guy. But sometimes, as with most human institutions, you just can’t.
Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit has an example from Texas that is truly sickening. - In Disaffected and it Feels So Good, a retired police officer gets angry at ICE excuses for killing folks, especially one explanation in particular:
As a Police Officer, I heard and read all manner of euphemisms to justify blatantly illegal actions by Officers and Departments. But, I never heard a justification of an unconstitutional extrajudicial killing as being based on “fearing for public safety”.
It’s a disgusting amorphous phrase based on total bullshit. It’s like trying to claim a disorderly conduct authorizes deadly force. But, in fact it’s even worse. - Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson posts what strikes me as a fair summary of what we know so far about a police shooting in Madison Wisconsin.
James begins:On Wednesday, a young man resisted arrest in Madison, WI, fought four officers, did not succumb to a taser, and was fatally shot by one of the officers. According to police, the suspect pulled out a knife and injured an officer before being shot.He points out two important facts.
– Police in Madison do not wear body cameras.
– Police shootings, by law, are investigated independently by an outside agency.As might be expected, protests erupted.
Unfortunately, rather than wait for the investigation to be completed, and Madison being Madison, protesters immediately took to the street calling for the arrest of the police officer.Most public officials, Democrats and Republicans, express sympathy and urge the public to await actual facts.
James points out one exception:
State Rep. Francesca Hong, a Democratic Socialist who is currently the leading contender for the Democratic nomination for governor, couldn’t stay away from the protests.
And he quotes the frontrunning Democratic candidate, highlighting the most incendiary sentence:
This state sanctioned violence was an execution.Sheeesh!
- From The Borowitz Report, Pete Hegseth freaks out after testing positive for estrogen.
- Batocchio is back as Vagabond Scholar (Yay!), this time taking conservative self‑parody to the movies.
Pete Hegseth hilariously wants to man up the US military with manliness injections of testosterone…
…which reminds Batocchio of Dr. Strangelove and General Jack D. Ripper…
…insecure and obsessed about his virility, and paranoid that the Soviets have been polluting the “precious bodily fluids” of him and other Americans.Much of which the fictional general does share with our Secretary of
DefenseWar.That movie brings to mind another cinema prize, Melania…
…a puff piece on First Lady Melania Trump that was pretty transparently a bribe by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos to curry favor with Donald Trump.Which bring to mind corruption and Orson Wells in Citizen Kane.
Along the way our host provides reviews, insights, and fun of a tragicomedic sort.
- Taylor farms has contributed mightily to Trump campaigns. Now they are asking for a delay in recalling possibly infected lettuce.
At The Onion, profits are soaring for Taylor Farms as they rebrand as biological weapons.
- Libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara is back, has been for a few weeks while I was semi-gone. This week he is angry about New Jersey’s John R. Lewis Voter Empowerment Act, designed to protect voting rights, with special attention given to traditional targets of voter suppression, such as minority groups.
He objects to any emphasis on protecting classes of people:
The Left has snuck in a sinister gimmick—switching the concept of voting rights from the individual to the collective. Reread the summary of the NJ law. There are no, and cannot be, “protected classes” in the United States of America. America is explicitly a nation built on the unalienable rights of the individual, not the group, and for which our government is legally bound to secure equally for all.The idea that when some folks are targeted they should be shielded from attackers offends him.
If some folks are under attack, just defend everyone. - PZ Myers reports on a sculptor who produces a statue of the late murdered Charlie Kirk, presumably in the hope of making some money from its sale. Sadly, nobody wants to be the buyer, and the sculptor ends up holding the bag as well as the statue.
Professor Myers somehow manages to restrain his empathetic grief.
Ugly man, ugly statue - CalicoJack in The Psy of Life points to the political pattern in effect since I was youngster:
When folks are ticked off at the IN party, give the opposite party a chance.
Jack suggests this year is different. Voters have an entirely new reason to be mad as hell.
We are in real danger of needing to think for ourselves, and we’re pissed off about it. - In Rural Missouri, Jess Piper has spent decades traveling the state, talking with, and listening to, ordinary people.
She takes exception to political consultants who don’t, and to the campaigns who rely on them rather than getting direction from people themselves.
So many consultants are ignoring the people who actually know the issues to win in rural America, and candidates are paying for that mistake. - For all of us who wonder how the Republican party will evolve after Trump, Jason Linkins thinks it’s more interesting to speculate about the post-Sanders future of the new left.
He suggests moderates may be freaking out for no reason.
Everyone involved will find this process frustrating. And if Democrats win with thin margins, it’ll be especially frustrating for progressives, who may find themselves with the same weak hand they held in 2021, when Joe Manchin refused to meet them in the middle.
But it’ll be normal politics.Room for hope and expectation:
And if Democrats don’t repeat the big mistakes of the past 18 years—if they abolish the filibuster and expand the court—they’ll accomplish a lot more than they did in Biden’s term, in a much more lasting way. - Author and educator Amanda Nelson is angrily impatient with progressives who don’t go to the American South to Black voters because Black voters are too establishment to reach:
- Right Wing Watch brings us Harrison Smith explaining that, in order to save the Constitution from those who hate it (presumably hateful hippies like …well… me), the right must violate the Constitution
- Infidel753 explains the many ways a lifetime of wealth distorts human nature.
A disruption of sight:
The great irony is that many billionaires, being exactly the kind of arrested-development types who never grow out of taking Ayn Rand seriously, believe themselves to be producers of wealth and imagine that society is dependent on them. This ignores not only the fact that most of their wealth was produced by others whom they have positioned themselves to exploit, but also the more fundamental reality that such levels of wealth, the very concept of a billion dollars, can exist only in the context of a large, complex society with institutions like the rule of law, property rights, secure large-scale exchanges of value for value, and the belief systems and enforcement mechanisms that keep all those things running smoothly — not to mention all the millions of workers who produce the yachts and mansions and private jets and miscellaneous giant trinkets on which they spend their money.Always a few exceptions:
There is a tiny category of billionaires who do actually earn what they have — the most successful artistic creatives. A person like Taylor Swift or JK Rowling does employ a few people in various capacities, but the value of the work those people do does not contribute a substantial part of the creator’s wealth. (Indeed, on her recent tour, Swift paid every worker a bonus of $100,000 out of her own funds, thus actually compensating them at more than the value of their labor, rather than exploiting them by skimming off value as most employers do.) Book royalties and concert ticket sales genuinely do represent direct payment by consumers for the value of what that one individual creates, rather than for goods or services provided by the labor of employees. But of course such cases are very rare. - At The Moderate Voice Editor Joe Gandelman goes to writings by the founders, and to the Bible, to find warnings that the power of government rulers must be limited.
- Dave Columbo explains Republican objections to casting a Black woman as Helen of Troy
- Brian Beutler explains what conservatives get wrong about Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, the war it portrays, about war itself, and about the nature of myth and reality.
- Legal expert Imani Gandy explains satire. Winning an argument, in a sense, lends credibility to an otherwise ridiculous view. Satire, by making fun, poses a question.
Why are we treating these freaks like serious people in the first place?You may prefer a complete transcript PDF
- In The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser, Bruce remembers preaching about creationism, considering whether dinosaurs walked the earth during Noah’s time, and recounts his own evolution in thought.
- The Propaganda Professor gets tired at the occasionally repeated assertion that religion is a necessity.
One component of religious arrogance is the precept that religion is essential, that it is indispensable, that it is required for moral vigor and societal stability, that an individual who does not indulge in it will be savagely penalized by God Himself.
He offers 6 Ways We Know Religion Is Optional.
- In Happiness Between Tails da-AL describes childhood sexual abuse by those who should have protected her, the family and social pressures that keep victims silent, and how she reclaimed her voice.
Abuse thrives on fear and secrecy. By breaking my silence, I’ve stopped protecting those who harmed me and those who enable them. When we speak out, we let others know they aren’t alone, and we begin to break generational cycles.
- In Scotties Playtime, Scottie opens up, explaining a painful past, marking the death of a sibling entrusted with his care as a small child, who arranged for abuse that included multiple rapes.
- My long time very conservative friend Darrell Michaels once more digresses from the political fray to bring us photos of singular beauty, both archeological and natural, from his travels around the world.
- The Louisville Leopard Percussionists, 4th through 6th graders, demonstrate talent and practice:
- Dave Barry goes to the dentist. It does not go well for the dentist, causing Dave to go through the history of post‑WWII dentistry as practiced on television.
And so, Dave digresses:
Spoiler alert: a happy ending is eventually achieved when said dentist finds a way for Dave not to be there in the same sense that I wasn’t there for my recent surgery.
So a good time is had by all.
Even better, the experience inspires Dave to find a solution to the Hormuz crisis, which is actually not dental in nature.
- @whiskeywhistle98 provides the definitive demonstration of angry clean cursing:
- In Georgia Baseball, The Savanna Bananas turn a successful dance into a successful pitch:
- This brightened a recent painful day:
Suggestion made to one of my doctors:
Even though there were complications this time, for this surgical procedure you should refer any patent who insults you or your family.
A TikTok personality going by RememberTheMaine helps us remember something else: The mass appeal of Donald Trump:
More from our usual patriotic internet suspects:
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