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Mike Rounds says Republicans just want to make you show your document with a yellow star in order to vote

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-02-17T21:34:21.804Z

I know I don’t need to explain this but I will anyway because it’s hard to believe anyone could be this dumb:

on September 1, 1941, Reinhard Heydrich decreed that all Jews in the Reich six years of age or older were to wear a badge which consisted of a yellow Star  of David  on a black field to be worn on the chest, with the word “Jew” inscribed inside the star in German or in the local language. This applied to all German Jews and Jews in Germany’s annexed territories: Alsace, Bohemia-Moravia and the Warthegau (the German-annexed territory of western Poland).

In German-occupied western Europe, attempts to introduce the badge were met by varying degrees of opposition by the local population, officials, and even the German military.

German occupiers imposed the badge in Belgium and the Netherlands in the spring of 1942. The German military commander in France ordered all Jews over six years of age to wear, on the left side of the chest, a yellow star  the size of a person’s palm, with the inscription “Juif” inside. This ordinance was issued on June 7, 1942, although bureaucratic resistance on the part of French officials meant that a similar measure was never applied in Vichy France, even when German forces occupied those regions of France in November 1942.

In Denmark, the “Jewish badge” was never introduced. There is no truth to the much-repeated story that Danish King Christian X wore a yellow star  in solidarity with the Jews. This myth may owe its origins to a remark the king is said to have made to his finance minister, Vilhelm Buhl, that if the Germans introduced the star in Denmark, “perhaps we should all wear it.”

In Norway, the badge was never introduced, although after January 10, 1942 all Jews had to carry identification cards stamped with the letter “J.”

There were more variations but I think we all know that the yellow star is a very specific Nazi icon. Granted, he’s suggesting that all American citizens must carry an ID featuring the yellow star to prove they can vote but the fact that its a yellow star of all things, just makes it mind-boggling.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see something like coming down the pike for the massive camps they’re building all over the country:

Jews incarcerated in camps were marked with two yellow triangles forming a Star of David.  Made of fabric, these were sewn onto camp clothing. Other categories of prisoners were identified by the red triangle (political prisoners), green (criminals), black (asocials), brown (Sinti-Roma, originally black), pink (“homosexual” [“homosexuell”] offenders), among others.

These categories could be further refined by combining them. Thus, a Jew incarcerated for political reasons would have a red triangle superimposed on a yellow triangle. For non-German nationals, a letter denoting the country of origin was placed inside the badge, such as a P for Polish prisoners.

This is exactly how Stephen Miller and his accomplices are identifying their enemies.

As for the actual voting issue, it’s worse than you think. The Brennan Center lays it out:

The three versions of the SAVE Act would go into effect either immediately after enactment, or within the next year or two, depending on the specific provision. Such a rushed implementation of massive policy changes would wreak havoc on election administration, unleashing confusion that will itself undoubtedly prevent some American citizens from voting.

Though all versions of the SAVE Act would block millions of American citizens from voting, the new bills each contain unique additional obstacles. The anti-voter provisions in the House’s new version, formally titled the Make Elections Great Again Act, are so numerous that they require a bullet-pointed list:

• The bill not only requires proof of citizenship, but also proof of residence in order to register. This could block even more Americans from voting. Roughly 9 percent of the population has moved within a state in the past year, but many will not update their driver’s licenses until they expire.
• The bill would require photo ID to vote, providing a narrow list of acceptable IDs more restrictive than the voter ID laws in every state but Ohio. For example, the bill prohibits the use of student IDs (even those issued by state universities), and accepts tribal IDs only with an expiration date, even though many tribal IDs do not contain them.
• The legislation would mandate voter roll purges every 30 days, placing enormous burdens on election officials and ending the 90-day quiet period that protects voters from being mistakenly thrown off the rolls right before Election Day.
• The bill would prohibit universal mail voting, requiring all mail voters to submit an application in order to receive a mail ballot. This would end the longstanding principal method of voting in eight states and Washington, DC.

The House bill appears to create an exception from the “show your papers” requirement for states that require full Social Security numbers to register, but only three states are allowed to require such data because of privacy protections in federal law.

The other new SAVE Act bill, the SAVE America Act, also comes with its own add-ons. The Senate’s version of the SAVE America Act not only requires voters to show documents such as a passport or birth certificate to register — it requires them to do so again when they cast a ballot, unless their state has been regularly handing over its voter rolls to the Department of Homeland Security since June of 2025 for comparison with the agency’s citizenship verification tool (confusingly named the SAVE program). Meanwhile, the latest House version of the SAVE America Act takes a different approach by simply directing states to run their voter rolls through the DHS SAVE program.

By the way:

All available evidence, including from the Trump administration itself, indicates that only American citizens vote and the exceptions are vanishingly rare. States that have combed through their voter rolls looking for illegally cast votes — like Louisiana and Utah did recently — have repeatedly confirmed that fact.

And studies over many years have also proved that there is no systemic voter fraud. However, the right has been pushing this canard for decades for the same reason they instituted poll taxes and literacy tests during Jim Crow. They know they can only win repeatedly if they can keep their opponents’ supporters from voting.

I wonder, however, if they’ve thought this through. The coalitions have shifted in recent years and the more educated voters are now voting for Democrats which means that they now have to rely on the less educated who tend not to vote if it’s difficult. Good luck with that.

Whether any of this come to fruition will depend on the Senate and then the Supreme Court which will be the ultimate arbiter of whether the federal government actually has the power to do all these things. I would bet they’ll think they do. One would hope that they consider the fact that Democrats might just be able to eke out wins in spite of all these roadblocks and then use this power to disenfranchise Republicans which would make them think twice but I doubt they will. They know that Democrats are far less likely to do it in the first place but if they do the Court can always find reasons why their usurpation of states’ rights is completely different.

I don’t think they can truly keep Democrats from voting but I do think that the combination of this SAFE Act, stacking the election boards in the states, using the ICE gangs to intimidate people and using the courts to contest every loss could make a difference at least on the margins. In a wave election they can’t get it done. In a close election it could easily tip the balance.

By the way, this isn’t a Trump thing, oh no. Republicans have been pushing this stuff for a very long time and it’s no surprise that they’re finally getting it done. Don’t think that Trump’s pushing of the voter fraud myth isn’t something they don’t support and are just going along with out of fear of MAGA. This is right up there with tax cuts for fundamental GOP priorities.

Brian Beutler takes up an important issue that I wish more Democrats would focus on. He cites the otherwise excellent Jon Ossof speech for an error too many of them make:

“This is the most corrupt administration of all time. And everybody knows it. Everybody knows it.”

I say the error is surprising not because I’m surprised it slipped past the people on Team Ossoff, but because it will strike most readers of this newsletter as counterintuitive.

In our world, in the world of high-information voters, the statement is true. Indeed, it is a statement of the obvious. Democrats know it. Republicans know it. Democrats know that Republicans know it, and Republicans know that Democrats know that their apologetics for Trump’s corruption are delivered in bad faith. If you watch a cable-news panel featuring a Republican plant like Scott Jennings trying to muddy corruption questions, or lash out angrily at supposed corruption on the left, that person knows they’re lying, and any co-panelists who engage as if it’s a good-faith debate are also playing a kind of make believe.Because in this echelon, this is the most corrupt administration of all time, and everybody knows it.

But if you pick a person at random in the country and ask him or her, which of the two major parties is most corrupt—a question that’s easily answerable if you already know that “this is the most corrupt administration of all time”—he or she will likely as not say “Democrats.” Or at least say both parties are similarly corrupt.

That is a (to me) infuriating but consistent finding in the data: Trump has at least fought the corruption issue to a draw—and may actually be winning it.

Grrrr!

Yes, all of politics is corrupt to some degree. Wealthy people have an outsized influence, politicians spend too much time listening to lobbyists and there’s always been self-dealing. There are an awful lot of rich people in office. But as Beutler writes:

Let’s allow that this phenomenon at least contributes to the problem. But does it explain the whole thing?

I don’t believe it can. Or if it does, it reflects a significant failure of imagination on the part of Democrats and liberals. The extraordinariness of Trump’s corruption is a fact. Quantifiable. Empirical. A simple truth, and a simple binary. There’s Trump, who is the most corrupt, and there’s every president who came before him, who was less so. In a world of perfect information, pollsters would ask which party is more corrupt, and Republicans would “win” 100-0. The median voter may have this other view, that corruption is simply endemic in all politics, but then that person is misinformed. And the misinformation persists for a reason.

If politicians never pointed fingers at their opponents’ corruption, you might imagine this misperception persisting as a kind of folk wisdom. Another way for regular people to signal independent thinking. Like “throw the bums out.”

But we live today in an unusually bleak epistemic moment. In a world of spin and lies, of casting blame and claiming credit, and all the things that make politics icky, magnified tremendously by artificial intelligence and algorithmic social media.

This information environment is teeming with accusations of corruption, but the simple truth is not getting through. Republicans have evidently done at least as good of a job blurring what’s obvious as Democrats have driving it home.

As he says, Democrats convinced themselves that Trump’s corruption didn’t matter in the first term so they haven’t really bothered with it in the 2nd. But, as Trump himself would say, there’s never been anything like it. The corruption in this term in epic and should be a massive scandal every single day. Between the Trump family, the cronies, the crypto, the selling of the presidency to the highest bidder (as often a foreigner as an American) we are watching presidential graft on an unprecedented scale. And yet the right continues to vomit up the name of poor, fucked-up “Hunter Biden” as if he was the one literally stealing billions. It’s intensely frustrating. Think “Crooked Hillary” and you can see how much more Trump and his henchmen have succeeded in tarring Democrats as the corrupt party than vice versa.

Brian points out:

Democrats not only fail to match this energy, they treat the whole sphere of public integrity as politically inert. As if there’s nothing to be gained from an opponent’s immorality or hypocrisy or shadiness, and there’s no cost to being accused of wrongdoing. As if every politician in the world wouldn’t much rather run against a corrupt opponent than an ethical one. As if corruption scandals didn’t end political careers all the time.

If you came to this question blind, with no prior knowledge of our two parties, and formed your opinion based only on the sum total of claims and counterclaims made by political actors, you’d have to conclude Democrats were more corrupt, because they are subject to the most high profile accusations of corruption.

Read the whole thing. He’s right on.

I would just add a couple of points. First, there are many lefty types who also insist that Democrats are just as corrupt as Republicans, often even more so. It’s a reflexive hatred of the party establishment that literally makes no sense in this environment. Yes, the whole system is corrupt but here is only one party filled with people literally lining their personal pockets with billions of dollars right out in the open.

The other thing is Epstein. We are in the midst of a massive scandal that implicates powerful, wealthy (mostly) white men in a secretive, elite cabal of immoral and corrupt behavior. Donald Trump is actively trying to cover it up and everyone does know it. (The polls are lethal on this point.) We are at a moment of high interest in corruption and Democrats can place Trump right in the middle of it. Using the term “the Epstein class” is a good start.

Some talk about Trump's floor of support… I'm not sure he has a floor!

His net approval is at a term 2 low across a number of pollsters.

Trump's now in worse shape than he was at this point in term 1 or where Biden was at this point in his one term.

He's way underwater. pic.twitter.com/djVTFzztSq

— (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) February 16, 2026

Just to remind you what a coarse, ugly brute he is and why so many people loathe him with every fiber of their beings:

That’s his idea of a generous tribute —it’s all about him.

I worry a lot that this behavior is becoming so standard (look at Bondi’s freak show last week) and that too many Americans now believe it’s normal to be this egotistical, stupid and crude, especially young people who have only seen this grotesque role model celebrated and rewarded. He is the quintessential Ugly American come to life and I’m afraid we’re going to be plagued with many more like him in the future.

Let’s hope the better angels of our nature continue to assert themselves as they have in Minneapolis. It’s our only hope.

Most presidencies have at least one iconic moment that makes the history books. It may not be fair or legitimately representative, but it’s usually an image that people remember if they recall nothing else, like Ronald Reagan in Berlin — “Mr.Gorbachev, tear down this wall” — or Bill Clinton falsely claiming “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.” One of the most indelible images in recent memory was George W. Bush’s misguided aircraft carrier stunt in which he donned a flight suit and landed on the ship in a fighter jet during the early days of the Iraq War in 2003 to give a speech before a banner that proclaimed “Mission Accomplished.” The war would go for another eight years.

That image of Bush has become a meme — a symbol of presidential hubris that any leader with a drop of sense would seek to avoid at all costs. But Donald Trump apparently didn’t get the message. 

Hubris is Trump’s middle name. He is so defined by ego and narcissism that he declared the affordability crisis to be over; the president has apparently fixed America’s economy once and for all. In an interview for the Super Bowl, Trump told NBC News, “The one thing that they don’t say anymore is ‘affordability,’ because I fixed the problem that they created. I’m very proud of it.” 

Trump is a reflexive braggart and a hype artist, so his claims of success where none exists are so common as to be unremarkable. But this time, he may have stepped on Bush’s landmine. Even former president Joe Biden, who was punished for his inability to fully tame inflation while maintaining his insistence on touting impressive jobs numbers, didn’t go that far. And Trump’s dismal approval ratings show that most Americans are anything but convinced. 

“Affordability” is a concept that really reflects how people feel about the cost of living and their ability to get ahead. Polls phrase the questions differently, often in ways that obscure more than they reveal. But generally large numbers of people still feel that prices are going up, and that they are unable to buy the things they need or desire. 

A recent YouGov poll found that 53% of Americans said the economy is getting worse. Twenty-one percent believed it is getting better, while 19% said it was about the same. Most believe, though, that their own personal finances will get better or remain the same, so this is a generalized feeling about the economy-at-large. Still, the poll found that “79% say the price of food has gone up a lot (54%) or a little (24%), while only 9% say it’s gone down.” A whopping 72% reported that housing costs have “gone up a lot,” versus 47% who said a little and only 6% who responded that rent or mortgages have declined. 

These are things that average people deal with all day long. But Trump, living in his gilt mansions in New York, Washington, D.C., and Florida, believes that the rise of the stock market — which experts say is due to the artificial intelligence bubble and not great economic fundamentals — is the avatar of a soaring economy. He continues to believe that the manufacturing boom that only exists in his imagination will convince people they aren’t seeing what they say they’re in fact seeing. 

Economist Paul Krugman knows a little bit more about how the economy actually works than Donald Trump, and he recently quoted another economist, Paul Samuelson, who famously joked that the market had predicted nine of the last five recessions. In other words, the stock market is an unreliable indicator of the country’s economic health. Beyond that fact, the American market is not doing nearly as well as the rest of the world’s market; our economy is anemic by comparison. As Krugman noted, “Inflation remains stubbornly elevated. Despite one good month, employment growth has shriveled. And it keeps getting more difficult to find a job.”

Having people such as Attorney General Pam Bondi declare that Americans should be celebrating the stock market instead of worrying about the massive pedophilia scandal surrounding Jeffrey Epstein that has enveloped some of the world’s decadent elites — including Trump and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick — is tone deaf on virtually every level. Not only aren’t people in a celebratory mood about the markets, they are downright sour on the future. That affects consumer spending, business start-ups — everything. 

Back in December, the White House announced that Trump was planning to hit the road to sell his economic accomplishments, with the thinking apparently being that if people can just see the president saying it in front of enthusiastic rally goers, the country will go along. His first foray into Pennsylvania was, as Salon’s Sophia Tesfaye noted, a dud. In between his usual forays into windmills and racism, the president lied repeatedly about the economy claiming, for instance, that he had obtained $18 trillion in investments when the reality, as reported by Politifact, is that the number was closer to $9 trillion, and most of the projects were “aspirational, multi-year goals that may not come to fruition.”

Trump claimed inflation was way down from when he took office. In reality, it’s right about the same: elevated. (The number declined a bit in January, mainly due to lower gas prices, while other energy costs went up substantially.) Health care premiums are through the roof, and the president’s TrumpRx website certainly isn’t going to solve that problem. The administration has also made false claims about the Big Beautiful Bill’s tax cuts in hopes they will appease the masses into believing that their ship has finally come in.

Interestingly, beyond a couple of small-scale events, there hasn’t been much talk of sending him out on the road again. Perhaps the White House is realizing the limited utility of bringing more attention to the fact that the president is either lying about people’s lived reality or is completely out of touch. Either way, his poll numbers have been cratering for the last two months. 

Ahead of the midterms, Democrats are gearing up for a fight on the economy. Trump made big promises during the presidential campaign that, despite his claims to the contrary, have not come to pass — and he’s actually made things worse. Democrats hope to hang Trump’s failures around his neck, and it’s likely the GOP will fare even worse than Kamala Harris did in 2024, largely due to his unfulfilled economic promises.

But there’s more to it than just that. The president’s insistence that the economy is great despite the public’s feeling otherwise is contributing to a general sense that the country is hurtling out of control on Trump and the GOP’s watch. That sense, combined with his horrific mass deportation policy and violence in the streets, his weird obsessions with unnecessary White House renovations and the Nobel Peace Prize, military incursions and threats of imperial seizures of sovereign territory, and public health being dismantled, signals to the American people that we are in a period of overwhelming chaos. 

Republican pollster Whit Ayres recently observed in POLITICO that “there’s a sense that this is a pretty chaotic administration and it seems to remind people of the pandemic period in the first term.” It’s all of a piece — and if Democrats can find a way to synthesize this into a message that voters need to give them a congressional majority in November, the country will begin to at least some sense of relief. Between a bad economy and the escalating violence, people are simply yearning for a break from Trump’s chaos.

Salon

Colbert is not going quietly

It’s AI slop day here at ye olde blog (above, and my earlier post).

Stephen Colbert is done with the “Late Show” in May. He’s not going quietly. Via Raw Story:

Stephen Colbert went off on Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr after he pressured CBS into scrapping the broadcast of an interview with Texas state Rep. James Talarico, who is running for the U.S. Senate.

The “Late Show” host instead posted his interview with the Democratic candidate on the program’s YouTube page and addressed the FCC’s threat to revise the equal-time requirements for hosting political candidates on late-night talk shows.

“[Talarico] was supposed to be here, but we were told in no uncertain terms by our network’s lawyers, who called us directly, that we could not have him on the broadcast,” Colbert said. “Then, I was told, in some uncertain terms, that not only could I not have him on, I could not mention me not having him on, and because my network clearly does not want us to talk about this, let’s talk about this.”

Colbert explained the equal time provision and Carr’s threat to waive an exemption the FCC has long recognized for news programming, which the agency notified broadcasters might not apply to talk shows, and he took a shot at President Donald Trump’s nominee.

“Carr said… some of [the talk shows] were ‘motivated by partisan purposes,’” Colbert said. “Well, sir, you’re chairman of the FCC, so FCC you.”

After punctuating his FCC you to Brendan Carr with an AI-generated “tasteful nude” of Carr (or was it old-school Photoshop?), Colbert made sure to alert viewers to where they could find his Talarico interview online: at “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” YouTube page.

I don’t know if he can win a Senate seat in Texas, but it seems the Party of MAGA worries he might.

Grifters all the way down

President Shitposter cannot find time to work at lowering the cost of your groceries or your rents. Donald J. Trump is too busy having his boots licked, issuing overnight extortionist threats by “truths,” suing people (including the government he leads) for damages, and taking bribes. In his spare time, he’s finding even more creative ways to turn his public office into private profit. It’s a pastime enjoyed by many members of the federal government, but most are discrete about it. Not Trump the Shameless. He may not be the Antichrist, but he’s certainly earned “the anti-George Washington.”

Heather Cox Richardson noticed:

On February 13 and 14, President Donald J. Trump’s representatives filed three applications with the United States Patent and Trademark Office to trademark his name for future use on an airport. As trademark lawyer Josh Gerben of Gerben IP noted, the application also covers merchandise branded “President Donald J. Trump International Airport,” “Donald J. Trump International Airport,” and “DJT,” including “clothing, handbags, luggage, jewelry, watches, and tie clips.”

Because of the trademark filing, Gerben notes, any airport adopting the Trump name would have to get a license to use the name, potentially paying a licensing fee. Gerben emphasizes that while it is common for public officials to have landmarks named after them, “never in the history of the United States” has “a sitting president’s private company…sought trademark rights” before such a naming.

You’ll recall, as Richardson does, that Trump has cut off funding for new tunnel construction under the Hudson River. Because DEI, something-something, and until you rename Dulles Airport and New York City’s Penn Station after oh, marvelous me.

In 1789, when George Washington took the oath of office as the first president of the United States of America, no one knew what to expect of leaders in a democratic republic. Washington understood that anything he did would become the standard for anyone who came after him. “I walk on untrodden ground,” he wrote in 1790, the year after he assumed the office of the presidency. “There is scarcely any part of my conduct w[hi]ch may not hereafter be drawn into precedent.”

After watching colonial lawmakers under royal rule demand payoffs before they would approve popular measures, Washington rejected the idea of profiting from the presidency. In his short Inaugural Address, he took the time to state explicitly that he would not accept any payments while in the presidency except for an official salary appropriated by Congress.

Washington noted that the support of the American people for the new government was key to its survival. He hailed the pledges of the new nation’s lawmakers to rule for the good of the whole nation, not for specific regions or partisan groups. He also predicted that the power of the government would come not from military might but from its determination to serve the needs of the public. He promised “that the foundations of our National policy will be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality; and the pre-eminence of a free Government, be exemplified by all the attributes which can win the affections of its Citizens, and command the respect of the world.”

[We pause for those who did a spit-take to wipe the coffee off your monitors and keyboards. ]

Fifty-odd years ago, Richardson reminds readers, “Republican senators warned Republican president Richard M. Nixon that the House was about to impeach him for obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and contempt of Congress.” Not these Republicans. All but a tiny handful lick his boots and smile meekly. The anti-Washingtons read the first U.S. president’s Farewell Address as a how-to manual for undoing 250 years of government of, by, and for the people, and the unsteady expansion of human rights and dignity. They’ve turned America’s temple of democracy into a den of thieves.

Washington presciently warned the new nation against the temptations of power:

The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more
formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation on the ruins of public liberty.

A wise people would shun that temptation. Such a faction would surely agitate “the community with ill founded jealousies and false alarms.” It would kindle “the animosity of one part against another,” foment “riot and insurrection,” and open the door to “foreign influence and corruption.” Thus, Washington warned, “the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another.”

But modern Americans are not a wise people. “Washington’s dire warnings have come true,” Richardson laments.

In fact, Americans remember and revere Washington because of his reluctance to promote himself, not in spite of it. John Trumbull’s portrait of him resigning his wartime commission after negotiators had signed the Treaty of Paris ending the Revolutionary War hangs in the U.S. Capitol as a moment that defined the United States: a leader voluntarily giving up power rather than becoming a dictator. Then, when voters made him president of the new United States in 1789, he refused a second time to become a king, emphasizing that he was the servant of the people and then, after two terms, voluntarily handing power to a successor chosen not by him but by the people.

As Washington predicted, the presidents Americans revere despite their faults—George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt—are those who used the enormous power of the U.S. government not for their own aggrandizement but to secure and expand the rights and the prosperity of the American people.

Trump has made no secret of wanting his image carved onto Mount Rushmore in South Dakota, where sculptor Gutzon Borglum carved the busts of Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln in the Black Hills of the Lakotas. Beginning his sculpture in 1927, Borglum chose President Washington because he had founded the nation, Jefferson because he had launched westward expansion, Lincoln because he had saved the United States from destruction, and Roosevelt because he had protected working men and helped fit democracy to industrial development.

The anti-Washington, would-be fifth head on Mount Rushmore, is a walking atrocity, a shit stain on everything Americans and presidents before him achieved. He may yet order construction of a colossus of himself to stand astride New York harbor as the fabled sun god Helios once did on the island of Rhodes. It’s a wonder Trump I hasn’t thought of it already.

Bush Jr. steps up (a little bi)t for a change. In a President’s Day essay he discusses Washington’s stellar character and leadership qualities — which are obviously the polar opposite of the 12 year old bully-boy in chief’s:

Bush waxed poetic on several of George Washington’s qualities, but paid particular attention to ones that are currently in short supply. Those included “humility,” a deep appreciation for history, a reverence for knowledge superior to his own, and an unwillingness to retain power “for power’s sake.”

“Our first president could have remained all-powerful, but twice he chose not to,” Bush wrote. “In so doing, he set a standard for all presidents to live up to.”

Bush also dissected Washington’s commitment to a code of conduct that was considered, at the time, to be the “gentlemanly arts.” Washington, according to Bush’s research, “schooled himself” by copying “the 110 maxims from Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation,” a text authored by French Jesuits in the late sixteenth century.

“Many of the qualities that came to be associated with Washington’s leadership, from self-control and courteousness to modesty and diplomacy, can be traced to that short book on manners,” Bush wrote.

Washington’s repeated decisions to step down from power were critical lessons for the nation, according to Bush, who argued that Washington’s decision to step down as commander of the U.S. Army after the Revolution, and his later decision to end his presidency after two terms,  “ensured America wouldn’t become a monarchy, or worse.”

[…]

“Our first leader helped define not only the character of the presidency but the character of the country,” Bush wrote. “Washington modeled what it means to put the good of the nation over self-interest and selfish ambition. He embodied integrity and modeled why it’s worth aspiring to. And he carried himself with dignity and self-restraint, honoring the office without allowing it to become invested with near-mythical powers.”

Those used to be the character traits everyone taught their children and aspired to themselves. Today, our leaders model dishonesty, brutality, ignorance, immaturity and vainglory. You’re a sucker if you care about anything but self-aggrandizement.

The only thing I’ve ever heard Trump say about Washington is that he should have named Mt. Vernon after himself so people would remember him.

By the way:

An exhibit about nine people enslaved by George Washington must be restored at his former home in Philadelphia after President Donald Trump’s administration took it down last month, a federal judge ruled on Presidents Day, the federal holiday honoring Washington’s legacy.

The city of Philadelphia sued in January after the National Park Service removed the explanatory panels from Independence National Historical Park, the site where George and Martha Washington lived with nine of their slaves in the 1790s, when Philadelphia was briefly the nation’s capital.

The removal came in response to a Trump executive order “restoring truth and sanity to American history” at the nation’s museums, parks and landmarks. It directed the Interior Department to ensure those sites do not display elements that “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living.”

U.S. District Judge Cynthia Rufe ruled Monday that all materials must be restored in their original condition while a lawsuit challenging the removal’s legality plays out. She prohibited Trump officials from installing replacements that explain the history differently

History is very woke. The only way to restore truth and sanity is to lie about it.

Li’l Marco gave a big slurp to Trump’s wingtips today:

BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Monday enthusiastically endorsed Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán ‘s bid to serve a fifth straight term after upcoming elections in April, emphasizing during a visit to Budapest the strong personal relationship between the nationalist leader and U.S. President Donald Trump.

Orbán, who has led Hungary since 2010, is one of Trump’s most vocal supporters in the European Union, and has actively curried the U.S. president’s favor leading up to the April 12 vote in which he will face the toughest challenge of his last 16 years in power.

Rubio was in the Hungarian capital for meetings with Orbán and his government where he signed an agreement on U.S.-Hungarian civilian nuclear cooperation that includes the possible purchase of compact nuclear reactors — known as small modular reactors or SMRs — as well as U.S.-supplied nuclear fuel and spent fuel storage technology.

Jesus.

At a news conference in Budapest, Rubio said U.S.-Hungary relations — which both he and Orbán described as experiencing a “golden age” under Trump — go beyond mere diplomatic cooperation.

“I’m going to be very blunt with you,” Rubio said. “The prime minister and the president have a very, very close personal relationship and working relationship, and I think it has been beneficial to our two countries.”

“That person-to-person connection that you’ve established with the president has made all the difference in the world in building this relationship,” Rubio continued, addressing Orbán. “President Trump is deeply committed to your success because your success is our success.”

It seems like only yesterday that he thought Orban was an undemocratic, Russian stooge:

Every last one of these people are absolutely worthless lackeys. It is unthinkable that this whore could ever become president.

The latest revelation:

EPSTEIN: Hell of. Year.   Next will be biblicl

BANNON: We either own 2019 or it will surely own us

EPSTEIN: Im back in the f and b biz only

BANNON: F and B director

EPSTEIN: No it does not stand for f*ck and bl*w

EPSTEIN: Spoke to my dems. This weekend. Boy are emotions running high

BANNON: Going to blow him up right our of the box– WH has zero plan to punch back– Fort Apache with no cavalry enroute

EPSTEIN: And no soldiers in the fort.    He really is borderline.  Not sure what he may do.

BANNON: I think it’s beyond borderline — 25 amendment

Now he ‘s telling everyone that Trump is running for a third term and he is for it.

Bannon is something else. I want to see the movie made about him. Jesse Plemons is the guy to play him. He’ll be about the right age when Bannon is finally out of the picture.

Better late than never:

If Joe Rogan is any indication, February 2026 may go down as the month that the Epstein files saga cemented itself as a lasting political liability for President Donald Trump and Republicans. The podcaster has spent the last week discussing the disjointed release of files by the Department of Justice, analyzing emails and redactions, and concluding that a myriad of conspiracies might actually be true.

And what is he saying? That the slow-walked and highly censored presentation of information by the Trump administration is “the gaslightiest gaslighting shit I’ve ever heard in my life,” that “none of this is good for this administration,” and that “this is not a hoax…if you’re not protecting victims…then who are you protecting?”

Rogan is representative of a large swath of voters who delivered Trump his 2024 victory: distrustful, low-propensity, and anti-system voters. And what he and other spokespeople for this suspicious segment of America — Tim Dillon, Shawn Ryan, Andrew Schulz — are saying matters: it suggests that these anti-system voters, who were once thought to be a permanent part of the new GOP coalition, are nothing of the sort.

Those voters tend to skew politically moderate, independent, and, perhaps most importantly, young. They don’t tend to follow the news or know too much about Trump or politics. They get informed through nontraditional avenues like podcasts and social media, and aren’t wed to a political party or identity.

In 2024, all of this created an opportunity for the Trump campaign — to promise to release the so-called Epstein files. But what these Americans are hearing and thinking now is very different. They feel like they are being lied to again, being gaslit, and seeing another cover-up happen in real time.

I will hold my tongue about the extreme naivete of these people. If they are having their minds opened by Trump and the GOP’s obvious cover-up, that’s all to the good. The fact that most of them (not Rogan who’s almost 60!) have only vaguely paid attention to politics before mitigates in their favor. Gotta live and learn. Hopefully this lesson will stick.