Mookie and Dino do NOT enjoy the 4th of July:
This is a tough holiday for many pets. My cats are troopers but they really don’t enjoy the noise.
Here are some tips for you from the ASPCA if you’re new to all this.
Meanwhile, here are some zoo animals enjoying some treats for the holiday:
Another insane promise bites the dust:
More than three years since he launched a full offensive on Ukraine in a land grab, Russian counterpart has repeatedly dragged his heels over any proposed peace talks with his beleaguered neighbour.
Since Trump was sworn into office in January, he has tried to negotiate any kind of deal – even offering terms very favourable to Putin.
But Russia has repeatedly come up with a long list of conditions to delay any truce.
So it was a notable moment when US president admitted to reporters overnight: “I didn’t make any progress with him [Putin] today at all.”
He said he is still “not happy” about the war in Ukraine after they discussed it on their “pretty long call”, reportedly lasting more than an hour.
Trump said: “I’m very disappointed with the conversation I had today with President Putin, because I don’t think he’s there. I don’t think he’s there, and I’m very disappointed.”
He added: “I’m just saying, I don’t think he’s looking to stop, and that’s too bad.”
Trump, who once promised to end the war in 24 hours, described the conflict as “Biden’s war” which he claims to be “stuck in the middle” of.
If only Trump were president this wouldn’t be happening.
By the way:
According to the Kremlin, Trump and Putin did not discuss the US’s decision to halt weapon shipments to Ukraine.
The US president told the press: “We’re giving weapons, but we’ve given so many weapons. But we are giving weapons, and we’re working with them and trying to help them.
“Biden emptied out our whole country giving them weapons and we have to make sure that we have enough for ourselves.”
You’ll be shocked SHOCKED! to learn that this is a lie:
The Defense Department held up a shipment of U.S. weapons for Ukraine this week over what officials said were concerns about its low stockpiles. But an analysis by senior military officers found that the aid package would not jeopardize the American military’s own ammunition supplies, according to three U.S. officials.
The move to halt the weapons shipment blindsided the State Department, members of Congress, officials in Kyiv and European allies, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the matter.
Critics of the decision included Republicans and Democrats who support aiding Ukraine’s fight against Russia. A leading House Democrat, Adam Smith of Washington, said it was disingenuous of the Pentagon to use military readiness to justify halting aid when the real reason appears to be simply to pursue an agenda of cutting off American aid to Ukraine.
“We are not at any lower point, stockpile-wise, than we’ve been in the 3½ years of the Ukraine conflict,” Smith, the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, told NBC News.
Smith said that his staff has “seen the numbers” and, without going into detail, that there was no indication of a shortage that would justify suspending aid to Ukraine.
Suspending the shipment of military aid to Ukraine was a unilateral step by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, according to three congressional aides and a former U.S. official familiar with the matter. It was the third time Hegseth on his own has stopped shipments of aid to Ukraine, the sources said. In the two previous cases, in February and in May, his actions were reversed days later.
WTF is going on at the pentagon? Is he drinking again? Yikes.
How else will they be able to enforce new rules like this?
President Trump signed an executive order Thursday calling on the national park system to charge higher entry fees for foreign visitors.
It instructs Interior Secretary Doug Burgum — who oversees the National Park Service — to “develop a strategy” to hike entrance fees and recreation pass fees for non-U.S. residents at any national park that currently charges for entry.
“To fund improvements and enhanced experiences across the park system, I’ve just signed an executive order to raise entrance fees for foreign tourists while keeping prices low for Americans,” Mr. Trump said in a Thursday evening rally in Iowa. “The national parks will be about America first.”
He really wants to cripple tourism in this country, doesn’t he?
From yesterday’s rally:
9,982 people out of 10,000 are autistic. Who knew?
I know you probably don’t want to hear him today. But I think it’s probably important to document his utterings since what he says is getting more nonsensical by the day. A few highlights of the rally he held yesterday for no particular reason:
The man who is marauding through all of American higher education allegedly to root antisemitism said today that he didn’t know it was an antisemitic trope. Could be. He just thinks that stereotypes of greedy Jews are the simple truth. He can’t be an antisemite himself because Sheldon Adelson’s wife Miriam loves him.
Meanwhile:
“You know, when I did the 250, there was nothing I could do. It was 250. It was 250. So I can’t see — that was my baby. The country happened to be 250 years old. But what I did do is during my first term, I got the Olympics, and I got the Great Soccer. You know that whole deal, right? I got — we call it soccer. They call it football. I got them both. I got the Olympics. First, I got the Olympics, and I got it. I was president. And I said, you know, it’s a shame. It’s a shame. I got the World Cup, and I have the Olympics, and I did it. And you have no idea. President Obama didn’t want to make a call to the Olympics. You know why? Because he went to Switzerland or wherever, and he said, you know, if a president goes to get the Olympics, you have to have a deal. You have to be chosen. He went there, and he came in fourth, so he hated them, I guess. And he was unwilling to make a call, and they called me up. The Democrats called me up, actually, from Los Angeles, and I said, I’ll do it. I made the call, and I couldn’t get the people off the phone because they were so starved for love, because nobody would call them from — anyway, we made a deal. I got the Olympics. Then we got the World Cup with Johnny. We got the World Cup, and I got them both, and I looked at my people. I said, isn’t it a shame? I got these two, but it wasn’t in the next four years. It was right after that, and the one after that. And I got the Olympics, and I got the World Cup, and we also have 250, so that’s a pretty wild term. But I got these two things that are incredible. Nobody else could have done it. I’m telling you, everybody wanted it. Nobody could have done it. And I said, and I won’t be president, because I’ll be president for four more years, but it won’t be — and then they cheated and rigged the election. They rigged — you know, they don’t even turn off the cameras when I say that now, because now they know it’s true, too. But they knew it was true before. Remember, the cameras used to immediately turn off. You see all those beautiful red lights go off. Now I can say whatever I want, because then they know it’s true. But they knew it was true before. It’s fake news. That’s why they call it. But you know what? This term is much more consequential than if I had done it the more traditional way. This was slightly harder, believe me. It’s slightly more dangerous, because they’re criminals on the other side that tried to put your president in jail and went after him, just like they do in third-world countries. And we all beat em together. We beat em because our level of popularity was so high.”
It clearly doesn’t have to make any sense. In fact, it’s better if it doesn’t. It’s like a form of hypnosis for the people who are susceptible to it. After all this time I think they find it comforting and it makes them trust him all the more.
It’s the rhythm of the speech which is reminiscent of earlier fascists. But the American version has an even bigger group of hated enemies than they did:
Just don’t call them deplorable. That would be rude.
That chart is from G. Elliott Morris who writes:
According to the polls, the only bill more unpopular than this year’s GOP budget bill is the 2017 Republican health care bill, which would have killed the funding mechanism for the Affordable Care Act, cut $800 billion from (basically eliminating) Medicaid, and slashed taxes on high earners.
The current GOP budget is even more unpopular than the 2008 bank bailout. That’s pretty terrible! And it’s far more unpopular than the Affordable Care Act, which only squeaked by Congress to become law in 2010.
Finally, note that the top three most unpopular legislative policies/policy proposals in the past 30 years have all been introduced by the Republican Party under a Trump presidency. The president’s core priorities are not designed for the average person, but for an intense base of supporters that constitutes a solid minority of Americans. This is despite Trump’s claim to be representing “the will of the people” and the typical archetype attached to Trump of a populist ruler looking out for the interests of the working class and “real America.” Trump may have won the popular vote, but that doesn’t mean what he’s doing is popular.
I would also point out that the most popular bills are ones that Trump and the Republicans plan to repeal or have already done so.
I think we should know by now that policies are not the driving force behind politics. (Trump would never have been elected if they were.) But the Republicans putting together something stupidly called the One Big Beautiful Bill (very easy to remember) and larding it up with tax cuts for the rich while cutting all kinds of vital programs to the bone has provided one Big Fat Target for the Democrats.
The front row at the Inauguration:
Not feeling much like celebrating our country today? Yeah, me neither.
Tom Sullivan’s lovely wife Sarah sent this piece from Anne Lamott along to cheer me up and it did so I‘m passing it along to you with a gift link. It’s hopeful.
Anyone paying close attention to the news might well ask themselves what on earth there is to celebrate this Fourth of July. But we must celebrate, or they win, in the paranoid sense of “they.” They want the day, but we can’t let them have it. Independence Day is America’s day. Sure, we bleeding-heart nervous cases are teetering on the edge of despair, but that is exactly why I am calling for us to move into a new phase of resistance: hope and joy. In ghastly times, these are subversive.
No, no, come back. Hear me out.
Read it. And then enjoy your day, MAGA be damned.
In May, Judge J. Michael Luttig (retired) cited Thomas Paine’s Common Sense (1776): “For as in absolute governments the king is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other.”
The respected conservative judge published his reflections on the Declaration of Independence this week. He reformatted the colonist’s 27 incictments against King George III for modern ears and for our present, sorry circumstances. They will sound very familiar unless you are a Republican congresswoman from South Carolina. Luttig tells The Ink that he finds “astonishing parallels between the 27 grievances of the American colonists” and what he sees in Donald Trump’s Republican misrule.
With initiatives in his first 100 days, Luttig tells The Ink, Trump “is consciously and deliberately acting contrary to the Constitution and laws of the United States, that portends the end of the rule of law in America.”
Being a judge, Luttig indicts not just Trump but the Roberts Supreme Court for its presidential immunity ruling. Luttig calls it “the single worst decision in American history from the Supreme Court, even worse than Dred Scott and others for the reason that it did structural damage to the Constitution of the United States, unlike and in a different way than any of the prior abhorrent decisions of the Court had done.”
Roberts himself is presiding over “the end of the rule of law in America.”
That’s twice. You don’t need a weatherman or a retired federal judge to know which way that wind blows.
Can you hear Donald Trump whining and declaring it fake news? Have you seen an entire national political party chasing his limousine like teenage girls clutching copies of Tiger Beat? Mewling sychophants lead us, and that’s on us.
Not to leave you on that grim note, here’s a sermonette: July 4th in the Face of Fascism
As bad as things are, we cannot forget that others faced worse with less resources than we have. We are not the first Americans to face a power-drunk minority in public office, determined to hold onto power at any cost. This was the everyday reality of Black Americans in the Mississippi Delta for nearly a century after the Klan and white conservatives carried out the Mississippi Plan in the 1870s, erasing the gains of Reconstruction and enshrining white supremacy in law.
And overcome they did. May we all.
* * * * *
Have you fought dictatorship today?
Good Trouble Lives On (July 17, in memory of John Lewis)
The Resistance Lab
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions
Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense
I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be celebrating today. The past, I suppose. It’s not our police state future.
I don’t do “angry” well. It’s not in my nature. But I’m practicing. Is there a blue pill for it?
And that bigly bill Trump will sign today?
I had a convo with a good friend Thursday. He emphasized that what we’ve got left is local community. And we need to hold it tighter than ever. Go and do.
God, we’re all so old.
Underneath it all, we are here together!
* * * * *
Have you fought dictatorship today?
Good Trouble Lives On (July 17, in memory of John Lewis)
The Resistance Lab
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions
Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense
Tom Friedman is right about something. This is what happens when you elect a president who thinks he can resurrect the world of 50 years ago and a political majority that is solely organized around their tribal identity:
The Chinese simply can’t believe their luck: that at the dawn of the electricity-guzzling era of artificial intelligence, the U.S. president and his party have decided to engage in one of the greatest acts of strategic self-harm imaginable. They have passed a giant bill that, among other craziness, deliberately undermines America’s ability to generate electricity through renewables — solar, battery and wind power in particular.
And why? Because they view those as “liberal” energy sources, even though today they are the quickest and cheapest ways to boost our electricity grid to meet the explosion of demand from A.I. data centers.
It is exactly the opposite of what China is doing. Indeed, Beijing may have to make July 4 its own national holiday going forward: American Electricity Dependence Day.
Don’t worry. Trump is bringing back coal and gas guzzlers and that will make America great again.
There’s a lot to hate in this disastrous legislation — the suffering from the cuts to the safety net and the terror of the impending police state are horrific. But the dismantling of scientific research and the energy industries of the future is the most destructive in the long term. The country will be vastly behind our competitors, for sure. But we will also be hastening climate change in ways that are going to be impossible to reverse and destroying our own ability function in the future.
And it’s all because these Trump thinks windmills aren’t solar farms are ugly and the cretins running our government think they are “liberal.” (Also they are very stupid people of low character.)
Masked agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal agencies jump out of unmarked cars. They wear masks and are often irregularly uniformed, in a slapdash assemblage of jeans and security vests. Some may have labels reading POLICE. Some may have badges. Others dress in t-shirts and baseball caps. They often refuse to identify themselves or produce warrants.
These squads are snatching individuals off the streets, and out of federal courthouses, and wrestling them into vehicles to be spirited away in a spectacle that even a U.S. senator has likened to “being kidnapped.” This anarchic authoritarianism is playing out in isolated pockets, for now. But if the budget reconciliation legislation known as President Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” becomes law, the horror will spread nationwide.
“This bill is a force multiplier for ICE,” Nayna Gupta, Policy Director of the pro-immigrant American Immigration Council tells Rolling Stone. “It allows them to hire 10,000 more agents around the country,” she says, “while simultaneously deputizing state and local police departments to do things like interrogate, arrest, detain and deport immigrants.”
The Senate’s version of the bill steers an astonishing $130 billion into immigration enforcement, detention, and border security, according to the American Immigration Council’s tally, which includes funding for Trump’s border wall. In the buildup to passage in the Senate, this funding became the central MAGA sales pitch. “Everything else” — including the bill’s staggering cuts to the social safety net — “is immaterial compared to the ICE money and immigration enforcement provisions,” Vice President J.D. Vance posted on X Monday night, Vance’s post preceded, by hours, his casting the tie-breaking vote in the Senate.
Republicans have a lot of reasons to love this bill. They get their sacred tax cuts. They get to cut health care and punish poor people, all conservative movement goals for decades.
But this is what turns on the Trumpers in the White House:
Get ready for the police state.