Week of Eric Schmitt’s Fumble and FallMAGA Slips, GOP Slides, Trump Tumbles, Voting Rights Are Right, Iran, Putin, Monuments, Corruption, Dinosaurs, Armadillos

(Running for Governor)

(Running for reelection to Congress)

The last 10 seconds may be startling as this message appears on screen:

Paid for by the U. S. Government

That’s right.
You and I are now Republican donors; our taxes used for campaign ads.

Here is the message we are sponsoring:

The Trump administration denies that this, along with other ads, are in support of political campaigns.
The messages are purely for educational purposes.

You know: to keep citizens informed.

And, of course, FCC’s Brendan Carr has a word, as quoted by NBC:

…government-funded Trump ads are ‘normal’ and ‘don’t raise any red flags’…

Well…
That was bracing!

Now we climb the mountain of internet wisdom for a word from our usual suspects:

In Missouri, we are amazed (Well… a couple friends and I are amazed) at how our Senator, Eric Schmitt, tripped and fell on his face in front of God and Country, because he refused to do his homework on the names of basketball teams.
Julian Sanchez takes a look at levels of wackery involved:

Worth emphasizing that there are several layers of nuts here. If Smith had gone to an NBA game in Atlanta, that wouldn’t indicate he’d met with Willis. (Why would anyone go to the trouble, rather than just having a phone call?) And if he had met with Willis… that wouldn’t be any sort of scandal.

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— Julian Sanchez (@normative.bsky.social) September 30, 2026 at 6:40 PM

Prosecutors looking at the same defendant do, in fact, coordinate sometimes to avoid stepping on each other’s toes. There wouldn’t be a gotcha here even if Schmitt hadn’t comically bungled the facts.

— Julian Sanchez (@normative.bsky.social) September 30, 2026 at 6:44 PM

Like, your brain really does have to be uttely broiled in conspiracy juice to imagine this elaborate ruse to provide cover for an in-person meeting that would have been totally normal to do as a Zoom call.

— Julian Sanchez (@normative.bsky.social) September 30, 2026 at 6:48 PM

But they would have been in the SAME STATE. Illuminati confirmed!

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— Julian Sanchez (@normative.bsky.social) September 29, 2026 at 8:33 PM

And then there is the item that totally enraged at least a couple of the inquisitors:
Was there an investigatory violation of Senatorial privilege?

Others join in wonderment at the myopia:

"Why should I, a government official, have to subject myself to the indignity of a criminal investigation"

— Benjamin Wimmer (@wimmerben.bsky.social) September 29, 2026 at 1:46 PM

Will voters be enraged at the intrusion into congressional privacy?

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— Julian Sanchez (@normative.bsky.social) September 29, 2026 at 1:53 PM
Dave Dubya covers the vile, but comically inept, Republican attempts to capture Jack Smith in a perjury trap, but then quotes Smith’s own eloquent testimony about ongoing threats to freedom.

History teaches that the rule of law is rarely destroyed all at once. It is often weakened by attacks on the institutions and public servants sworn to uphold it. Since January 2025, we have witnessed precisely such an effort, including the vilification of the career prosecutors, FBI agents, and support staff who served on my team, simply because of their unwavering commitment to the fair and impartial administration of justice without regard for any personal costs.

I myself have been threatened with jail by the President of the United States.

I remain confident, however, that the rule of law will endure because so many continue to uphold it faithfully each day.
Brian Beutler sees the Eric Schmitt debacle as a fast motion replay of a national figure from 70+ years ago.

His impunity made him feel invincible. He became drunk with power (and booze). And, eventually, everyone just got tired of it. His efforts reached a crescendo in 1954 with the Army-McCarthy hearings, which put a huge national spotlight on his conduct. People were not impressed. Joseph Welch famously burst the bubble—“at long last….” Public opinion turned against McCarthy, and within six months, he was a pariah, censured by a vote of 67-22.

Yeah, we’re talking Joe McCarthy.

In the speed-run version, like air coming out of a balloon, Schmitt began the day as a contender to run for vice president with JD Vance, and ended it a laughingstock.

Eric is iconic in the sense that he demonstrated in a few minutes what is happening nationally to a movement and its leader.

Republicans are trying to find footing wherever they can. But they’re so desperate and hurried that they keep falling on their faces. The Schmitt fiasco got the most attention, because it was televised.

And blind loyalty itself begins to crack:

But the way the analogy really operates in my head isn’t in the raw and fairly obvious comparison between McCarthyism and GOP conduct in the Trump era. It’s in how the people who enabled or “normalized” McCarthy (out of loyalty and fear) behaved when they sensed his grip had slipped.
From The Borowitz Report Americans react to this week’s stunning performance of Missouri Senator Eric Schmitt.

Millions of Americans were still in a state of shock on Wednesday after discovering that Lindsey Graham’s sister Darline was not the stupidest member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

C-SPAN
Hackwhackers starts another list of political cartoons. This time the Whacker starts with several more ways to make fun of Missouri Senator Eric Schmitt.
OH!

and a couple more here.
It’s been life as we know it throughout my life. Even as a little kid in rural America, I was aware of the fear and loathing neighbors routinely voiced toward minorities.
Eastern Europeans and Catholics were thought to be strange and a little menacing. But Black people were easily identified, lived in more distant urban settings, and so were more consistent targets.

It wasn’t hard to see the results in education funding, employment practices, poverty, and simple hostility.

When news coverage became common, showing the nation poplar trees decorated with the bodies of children who hadn’t known their place, some degree of mitigation entered consciousness and conscience.

But those we euphemistically called racial conservatives had a constant cudgel, a trusty sword on which they could count.

Conservative Republicans have, for as long as I can remember, used welfare stereotypes as a weapon against Black people.

It allowed a racial message with deniability. Not quite racist. More racist/adjacent.

Political ads, occasional television dramas, and backyard fence gossip had a dependable commonality.

M. Bouffant at Web of Evil brings us something different.

It seems former Trump Press Sec and current Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, made an attempt at the familiar culture war welfare target, but moving a little further away from racism. She posts an ad attacking welfare, but showing a more typical white guy as the lazy‑as‑all‑get‑out recipient.

And conservatives are furious as hell, and then some, at her.

M. Bouffant quotes the headline from Rolling Stone:

Right-Wingers Are Mad Anti-Welfare Ad Isn’t Racist Enough
Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson confronts a growing acceptance and embrace of racism in the Republican Party.

Pro-homogenous Christopher Rufo (left) and Johnathan Keeperman (right)

His headline is a fit beginning:

Homogeneous Is the New Long Word for White
Being pro-homogeneous is a choice

And it is reintroduced as policy:

Heck, our government is profiling them and having ICE agents beat them up on the street, citizens or not, because America is a Christian nation. Which means white, or homogeneous, depending on which podcast interview you’re listening to.
Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger looks at the numbers. Corruption has become a more important issue to voters, leaping ahead of pretty much everything else.
In Rural Missouri, Jess Piper reflects on her 2022 run for state representative.
She lost that race, but points out that it was a valuable run.
Increasing citizen participation, including contesting previously uncontested seats, provokes debate.
Debate provokes thought.

Continuously presenting a valid case, aside from having its own value, can result in an eventual win.

She notices a trend:

We fight for democracy by showing up, not just where winning is easy, but where someone has been told not to even bother.

I ran in one of those places, and I lost, but the next Democrat won’t have to start from scratch. Now imagine what happens when we do that in every district.

And, we are doing it. Finally.
News Corpse has a few gleeful caps and recaps as
Fox News is SHOCKED By James Talarico’s 7 Point Lead over Ken Paxton for the Senate in Texas.
Our next-door neighbor, Illinois has a Republican candidate for governor who runs a creationist school. Darren Bailey just can’t bring himself to admit that dinosaurs and humans did not walk the earth at the same time.
Oh my…
So the campaign of his opponent, incumbent JB Pritzker, has been shadowing him with dinosaurs.

PZ Myers brings us video of an interview and, of course, of the dinosaurs.

It has always surprised me that the faith of some of my coreligionists would depend on The Flintstones being a documentary.
Annie Asks You shows how the Republican majority on the Supreme court have wavered between activism and acquiescence in allowing Trump attempts to derail democracy.
She points to the overused Shadow Docket, with very brief, usually unsigned rulings, that release justices from having to offer detailed reasoning for their decisions.

She details the many and varied creative ways the Trump administration is trying to limit voting and, when that is not enough, to insulate Republicans from the results.

But that’s not all.

It turns out there is more effort, and more energy, from more sources that are dedicated to preserving democracy and the right to vote.

She doesn’t mince headlines:

We Won’t Let the RADICAL SCOTUS SIX Help Trump Derail This Election!

However, we do have to …you know… actually vote!
It’s against the law for the administration to take over the running of elections. That’s a function of state governments.

Journalist Arturo Dominguez documents how the Trump administration has gone beyond nibbling around the edges of Constitutional legality, and only barely maintain a thin surface veneer of deniability as they threaten local officials of the consequences of refusing Trump help.

From threatening to arrest election officials to creating systems that all but federalize control over U.S. elections, democracy is on the brink…

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin gets specific:

CISA has previously provided states support in securing election infrastructure. However, the new plan attempts to integrate the federal government into local and state elections, where it has no constitutional authority. The implementation of this supposed “voluntary” program is being carried out through coercive invitations. According to Mullin, noncompliance with the Trump administration’s highly dubious measures could be
treated as criminal acts.
Author and educator Amanda Nelson narrates another terrible week for Trump, with a quick flash from one disaster to the next.
Well, THAT’s creative.
We do know the beginning of this chapter.

tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors has details as Trump temporarily bans news organizations who report polls he doesn’t like. Like those showing most voters don’t like him. Don’t like him a lot!
Other news organizations temporarily stop with pool coverage Trump craves.

So Trump has the White House post its own news app. Give the people what ~~they want~~ Trump wants.

Here’s the creative part->
tengrain reports that, once users download it, the Trump app will spy on them.

He quotes coverage by The Washington Sun:

“The bottom line is this app is just not very stable or secure,” said Joseph Gera, a former Apple App Store developer and senior platform engineer. “It’s asking for your location data in real time. It also asks for personal information to access your financial data, to access your messages, to access all kinds of information.”
Remember Davey Hearn, the Olympian athlete the Trump administration accused of vandalizing the Reflecting Pool?

Bottom of Reflecting Pool is falling apart

Journalist Marcy Wheeler at EmptyWheel has details as prosecutors admit the charges were brought without evidence. The judge dismisses the case, but does so in an unusual way.
With prejudice means the charges can’t be reintroduced no matter what.

The judge makes clear that Hearn needs protection from Donald Trump.
In the interest of fairness, Dave Columbo admits that Trump really nailed a question on gas prices and the war with Iran:
Things seem not to be going well for Putin in Ukraine. So he’s turning toward Europe, threatening military action.
Congress responds with defensive military aid for European countries threatened by Putin.

In Letters from an American, historian Heather Cox Richardson details Trump’s response.

The administration is taking those funds that Congress authorized for Europe and sending the money to support right-ring government in Latin America.

So much for multi-dimensional chess.

The same analysis is now available in audio format, as Richardson narrates in podcast.
In Canadian satire, The Beaverton has Trump becoming the only object on Earth exempt from the Canadian urge to apologize.
driftglass sees Trump’s monumental obsession with monuments as involving more than monuments. It is an attempt to rework how Americans in the future will view history.

Every monument is making an argument, and every brass plate on every bench and building is an editorial. These are votes being cast in favor of a particular version of history. So if one generation has the authority to fill the landscape with propaganda, the next generation has exactly the same authority to haul it to the dump.

driftglass has advice:

If that’s the future, Democrats need to come ready to play hardball. Not to memory hole the record of the worst president in history, but to preserve the memory forever — in parks, and statues, and piles of roped-off rubble — that he was the worst president in history, that his collaborators in Congress and the media did betray this country, and that, driving all of it, was a mob of MAGA bigots and imbeciles.
Jason Linkins is perplexed and disturbed by a recent survey. Most folks who want to get rid of Trump favor healthy ways, at least healthy for the Republic.

Yuri Gripas/Abaca/Bloomberg/Getty Images

But 31%, almost a third, a disastrous way to be free of him and the administration.

If the Latin American nation is any guide, once you start having military takeovers, you tend to keep having them.

On the other hand:

Now the reason I’m not completely disassociating is because the ways respondents answered the other choices were more rational: Impeachment was by far the favored choice of removing the president, at 80 percent net sentiment, followed by removal via the Twenty-Fifth Amendment at 77 percent, and “dying peacefully in his sleep” at 40 percent.
At The Moderate Voice retired U.S. Air Force Major Dorian de Wind suggests AI is dangerous, not only because of the harm it can do if unchecked, but that we may have lost the capacity to check it.

By Schot, politicalcartoons.com. To Moderate Voice courtesy of Cagle Cartoons

Even before the term “Artificial Intelligence” was in vogue, there was no shortage of debate over whether a computer could “think” — or would one day be able to think — over cybernetics, self-organizing-machines, “thinking machines,” autonomous system, machine learning.

Part of the debate were concerns over what the consequences would be if man lost control over the machines.

One of the comforting suggestions at the time was that one could always “pull the plug” if a computer misbehaved.

But can we pull the plug in time?
Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit briefly explores the official position of the Trump administration that those using Obamacare to help with insurance, but don’t actually get medical care, are themselves evidence of Medicare fraud.
She’s right about this:

That is beyond stupid It shows a basic lack of understanding how insurance works.

My thought:

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— burrland01.bsky.social (@burrland01.bsky.social) September 23, 2026 at 6:51 PM
Legal expert Imani Gandy hosts Portia Burch, on an imaginary trans problem in women’s basketball.

There’s no trans woman in the WNBA. And still, Sophie Cunningham, Enes Kanter Freedom, and a fresh crop of Caitlin Clark “fans” are acting like the league’s about to collapse. In the last episode, I said this fight is really about who owns the league. This week, Portia Burch, anti-racism and decolonization consultant, 30-year WNBA fan, and my girlfriend, explains why my theory’s right—but too small. We get into the myth that Clark saved the league, the career moves hiding behind the manufactured panic, the Black and queer cis players catching transphobic strays.

Imani also provides a complete and accurate transcript(PDF).
Right Wing Watch brings us a brief presentation at Calvary Tucson Church as religious activist Seth Gruber becomes increasingly excited at the prospect of exacting punishment against women who obtain abortions. He shows enthusiasm at the idea of killing all women who get abortions.
He gleefully assures his audience that there will not be that many executions. After all, the prospect of death will be a deterrence.
But his eyes seem to light up as he describes the vengeance that will occur.

We don’t do the ceremonial laws in the Old Testament anymore, but the moral law is still there. Live by the sword, die by the sword, tooth for tooth, eye for eye; that kind of stuff still stands.
In The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser, Bruce examines the idea of Hell.

Bruce is skeptical.

Hell is a cudgel used by Evangelical preachers to keeps asses in the pews and money in offering plates. If threats of Hell are removed, would Evangelicals still attend church, give money, or evangelize unbelievers? Heaven is the carrot, but Hell is the stick.
North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz has a couple of observations about the Christianity JD Vance boastfully displays.

He wears his religion openly, brandishing it at every opportunity in performative piety and finger-wagging condescension, while justifying the harboring of pedophiles, the rolling back of human rights, and the indiscriminate assaults of brown-skinned people by government-funded, masked mercenaries.

Pavlovitz has a suspicion about the reaction of Jesus:

I don’t imagine Jesus was the litigious type, but if he were on the planet right now, I’m pretty sure he’d sue JD Vance for false association or identity theft.
At the very least, he’d violently flip the tables of the entire Trump Administration and him along with it.

I have expressed my view before:

A segment of most any faith will turn away from compassion and a search for spiritual truth to a sort of tribalism.

In our faith this brings some of our Christian brethren to reject the teachings of Jesus.

MAGA indignation:
What the hell does Jesus know about Christianity?!!

— Burr Deming – @BurrLand01@mastodon.world (@BurrLand01) July 3, 2026
I suppose I’ve developed a sort of unconscious ethic about religious criticism or humor about faith.
I’m at ease with jokes about, or even attacks on, my own beliefs. They make me think. Sometimes I’ll direct that sort of humor at myself, or at my less tolerant fellow religionists.

I’m good with attacks on beliefs when violence or hatred has those beliefs as the base.
From a television drama years ago:

And that’s where he encountered the most danger creature on Earth: a man with a gun who knows that God is on his side.

I’m good with attacking religion or belief in God as a generality, I suppose since I pretty much find my own faith included.

My early environment must have something to do with it, raised as I was in rural America. I was born in a village with a substantial minority population of Catholics and Eastern Europeans, whom many in the majority feared and loathed.

Paraphrasing as accurately as I can recall an adult resident in a neighboring small town:

I’m not prejudiced against anyone. I’m really not!
But I’ll tell you who is prejudiced.
It’s those goddamn Irish Catholics!

Generally, I’ve discovered that I’m more comfortable with anti-religious comments the closer the beliefs being attacked are to my own.

It’s a personal quirk.

A criticism or attack on a person simply because of membership in a religion has been, for me as long as I can remember, anathema.

Which brings me to the problem I have with Infidel753. I confess, he seldom strays over my underdeveloped guidelines.

But when he does, he is unfailingly well reasoned and occasionally witty. It’s awful!

And he succeeds in making me think. Gah!!

So I end up looking forward to his next attack.
Mea Culpa.

But he is so very good at it.
So Mea Minima Culpa.

One old person phrase:

I said all that so I could say this.

I said all that because my friend and occasional mentor Infidel, although under the weather with an old joint-inflammation problem celebrates what for him is a special annual event:

International Blasphemy Day — a day for denigrating, mocking, and denouncing deeply-held spiritual beliefs of every kind!

He provides a brief list of links to four of his best attacks.

One reminds me of a comment by the late great Madalyn O’Hair (from memory):

If it wasn’t for Christianity, we would have landed on the moon in 400 AD.

Another, mostly about Hypatia of Alexandria, makes me mad as hell about the many murderous oppressions committed in the name of the faith I embrace.

Infidel is one of the most accomplished writers on today’s internet.

Forgive me, Father, for I have read his posted links.
Mea Culpa.
Avid readers of Happiness Between Tails may be relieved.
da-AL combined eloquence with what comes across as terrible post-operative experience (many multiples of may own) and finds she kind of, sort of, does not have cancer.

Seems it may technically be, but only in Urologist-speak, not as lay people understand it. It’s a non-aggressive lesion that could turn into cancer in a small percentage of cases, so it needs monitoring.

Yay!!

As is her practice, she guest hosts, this time with fellow blogger Kiki Fikar.

Kiki is gifted (afflicted?) with an imagination that constructs possible life stories from the thousands stray encounters with fellow humans.

A sort of Schrödinger’s quantum blogger. (My interpretation)

She also details what it might be like to take different turns in life. Left to the airport, rather than right to home.

Lots of unopened boxes with dead and alive cats.
Scotties Playtime, Scottie, hobbling about with a cane, experiences a moment of determined kindness, and decides it’s important enough to post.
He’s right.
SilverAppleQueen goes out with a couple who like to bar hop, and is happily surprised when the two decide to bar skip instead.
Her pictures of sleepy cats get turned sideways, which apparently required no imbibing.
At The Onion, California’s DMV explains why a highway chase has been added to the standard road test.

We’ve found drivers really struggle to complete a 180 while drifting beneath an 18-wheeler in order to reverse direction, but it’s important people master such skills before we issue them a license.
Josh Johnson travels a bit and, in this instance, gets called out by TSA:
Sarah Cooper guides Melania Trump as Melania guides the American public on a bumpy ride through the Criterion Closet
Dave Barry writes about adventures with dogs and occasional other pets, the others belonging to neighbors, friends, and people along the waterway with their friendly dogs who aren’t afraid to face off with alligators.
Having lost their dog (a sad event shared by many of us), Dave and family wait a couple years for a new beloved puppy.

Dave seems a bit intimidated with the beloved at first.

Here’s what Lucy’s portrait photo looked like:

This image is a re-creation, but it’s not an exaggeration. Lucy’s coat was jet black; dogs like her do not photograph well. Her portrait was essentially a pair of glowing red orbs. The rescue organization had given her the name “Monaco,” but it might as well have been “Hellhound.”

But they make friends, and it’s on to dog adventures along with occasional other pets and gators.
If, like me, you have wondered whether armadillos can provide a clue about human individuality, The Journal of Improbable Research finds a study by researchers at Yale.

It seems the nine-banded armadillo…

…is a unique organism for the study of how inter-individual differences are expressed in the mammalian brain.

What that means is that our brain structure is unique to each of us.

Whew!