MAKING A FINAL STOP IN KRAYZEETOWN

There are 74 days until the midterms. (This is coming early since I have a morning with three appointments over at the VA - nothing serious.)

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent unexpectedly unveiled a stunning plan yesterday to stabilize the bond market through a $4 billion long term debt buy back. However, it didn’t work, providing only a fleeting relief. After investors flooded into gold and cryptocurrencies, the dollar sank and stocks barely budged; the ten and 30-year yields on Treasury bonds rebounded past 4.70% and 5.24% - a level near recent multi-year highs. Investors judged the buybacks to be a temporary fix and continue to demand higher returns due to structural concerns over a $40 trillion national debt pile and heavy federal deficit spending, prompting Bessent to hint at even larger interventions beyond the announced spending of up to $4 billion at a time, to occur at several points between Sept. 9 and Nov. 4, the day after Election Day. Joe Brusuelas, chief economist at the audit and consulting firm RSM US, wrote to investors on Wednesday that Bessent’s “interest is purely short term and is organized around the upcoming election and not a return to price stability.” Bessent’s desire to lower yields (to bring down prices) appears to be at odds with the Fed’s growing focus on raising rates to bring down inflation. Analysts note that targeted repurchases treat the symptoms rather than the root fiscal imbalance, and potentially doubling down on buybacks risks shifting more government borrowing into short-term bills which increases the load.

The aircraft carrier meant to be named after Doris, “Dorrie” Miller - a Black sailor who was awarded a Navy Cross as a ship’s steward (one of the few Navy jobs open at the time to Blacks) who manned a machine gun when Japanese planes attacked his ship in Pearl Harbor although he had received no training in the use of the weapon and was credited with shooting down an attacker, who then stuck to his post and rescued wounded crewmembers until his dying Captain ordered all hands to quit the stricken vessel - is inexplicably now rumored to being renamed... for Donald Trump. In addition to the horrid politics of doing so after the ship’s name was announced on Martin Luther King Day in 2020, this would be a violation of the rule that Navy ship cannot be named for a president while he is still in office. (Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao has been looking into changes to the official guidance on who ships can be named after.) Two unnamed sources cited by CNN late Thursday said there have been internal discussions in Maladministration II about renaming the carrier to honor a two-time Vietnam draft-dodger whose supposed excuse has been proven and admitted to have been a fraud, who has done his best to destroy the United States domestically and internationally. The move to rename the carrier has been quietly in the works for several months, with the ship referred to only by its hull number in internal documents. Trump’s executive order on shipbuilding last week also referred to the ship by its hull number, CVN-81, rather than its originally intended name. The Navy might instead name a different warship after Miller. He is also being recommended for a (long overdue) Medal of Honor, which would require final approval from Trump himself. As someone who served in the Southern Plantation known as the U.S. Navy 60-plus years ago, THIS STINKS. Even worse than Dilbert’s normal Eau de Shitbird stench.

White House legislative affairs director James Braid is out. His entire job was building bridges between the White House and the razor-thin Republican majority in Congress. He only lasted 19 months. The timing could not be worse for Trump. Trump’s War could be a big reason for Braid’s departure. Now even top Republicans are refusing to fund it as it’s dragged on far longer than the president initially promised. A new poll has his approval rating at 30%, down from this week’s Reuters/Ipsos Poll that had him at a dismal 33 percent, tying the lowest point of both presidencies. Two-thirds of Americans say they don’t trust him at all. Trump losing his key legislative liaison is the last thing he needs right now.

What happens when you lose local news in Flyover country: Fifty White nationalists attended a meeting at the headquarters of an Italian neo-fascist organization to discuss how to grow their ranks in the United States. Nashville reporter Phil Williams broke the story for the Confront the Hate Substack. Far-right activist Kevin DeAnna told the audience that vanishing local newsrooms in rural America meant there’s no one left to hold local elected officials accountable, and told the crowd they should find that development exciting. DeAnna specifically called on attendees to run for county sheriff, leaning on the widely debunked “constitutional sheriffs” theory that a sheriff can somehow disregard both state and federal laws. He added that organizing in rural communities gave racists the best return on investment, since there’s less scrutiny from the media and fewer reporters left to call attention to their activities. The meeting also served as a fundraising strategy session. One attendee at the summit floated the idea of finding a sympathetic billionaire to fund their movement. Another pitched directing money toward lawsuits designed to bankrupt their opponents in legal fees. This is all happening while Northwestern University’s Medill School has identified 213 “news deserts,” which it defines as counties with no local newspapers.

Molly and Corky

Trump recently stood next to crypto executives at the White House and told everyone that if he were a local elected official, he’d be first in line to greenlight data center development because of the jobs and the tax revenue. (Trump’s financial disclosures also show that he personally has roughly $25 million invested in construction companies that build data centers.) While Trump’s remarks may sound fine to a bunch of suits in a corporate boardroom, it’s absolutely poisonous on the 2026 campaign trail. This is common for both Democratic and Republican candidates in both red and blue states. The GOP’s own Senate campaign arm warned that data center backlash could cost them a Senate seat in reliably red Ohio. Communities are furious about sky-high utility bills, strain on freshwater resources, constant and excessive noise and tax breaks handed to companies that build facilities larger than football stadiums while somehow also only providing a negligible number of permanent jobs. Democrat Sherrod Brown is hammering incumbent Republican Jon Husted with ads branding him “the face of data centers in Ohio.” Local residents are organizing for a statewide ban. The NRSC’s own memo called data centers a “sleeper issue” and said if Husted loses, it will signal to politicians everywhere that data centers are a political loser and that everyone should avoid them like the plague. This is playing out in other states as well, like Nevada, Texas and Wisconsin. Governors who once bragged about landing big AI investments are now promising tougher rules, fewer tax breaks and stronger protections for water and power supplies. Trump is continuing to double down, even telling Governor Hot Wheels that going against data centers is “a mistake.”

The beleaguered crew of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier will finally get a break after the arrival of the U.S.S. George Washington on Thursday. The approximately 5,000 sailors and Marines aboard the ship have been at sea for more than 200 days without a port call, and have complained of no working toilets, dysfunctional laundry facilities, meager food and mail delays stretching on for days. When asked about the length of the deployment, Trump said he felt the deployment hadn’t gone on long enough. MS NOW reports that there are no announced plans to relieve the gthree destroyers that have escorted the Lincoln since last November.

Max D. Lederer, who has been the publisher of the military newspaper Stars and Stripes for multiple decades, is now stepping down from his role, citing fundamental differences with the TrumpDOD. Lederer’s exit comes just months after the paper’s ombudsman, Jacqueline Smith, was fired. Smith was in charge of making sure the paper had proper editorial independence and minimal interference from Pentagon leaders. Sean Parnell, a spokesperson for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, wrote on social media earlier this year that Stars and Stripes would soon return to its “original mission” of “reporting for our warfighters” while steering content away from “woke distractions.” Stars abd Stripes was originally created in World War II to be a voice for enlisted men that was independent of any “government involvement.”

After a wave of severe storms rocked Indiana, residents of poverty-stricken Gary, southeast of Chicago, are finally expected to have their power turned back on after nine days of darkness. The majority-Black city of roughly 65,000 residents have been contending with food pantry shortages and a lack of federal resources in the wake of the storms. Public schools in Gary have been closed all week.

Trump has warned that not even the Supreme Court will be able to halt construction of his ballroom project because he built it with indestructible concrete that can’t be taken down. (FACT CHECK: there is no such thing as “indestructible concrete”; this is further proof of how desperate he is.) The court is expected to rule today whether the project should go ahead, after a federal judge declared this month the president did not have the authority to unilaterally demolish parts of the White House without approval and funding from Congress. Buried in a court filing from the administration is an extraordinary revelation: that the ever-expanding project - which now includes an underground military complex complete with bomb shelters -was deliberately built with material used in nuclear power plants that would be “virtually impossible to deconstruct.” The filing reads: “The materials used, both in concrete and steel (and even glass), are meant to stop bombs, rockets, missiles, and even nuclear blasts. It is, in a very large way, a ‘safe room’ for the Presidency and the continuity of government. The concrete, for example, is the hardest and strongest concrete there is, the type used in nuclear power plants - it is impermeable, and virtually impossible to deconstruct.” (FACT CHECK: We have seen plenty of nuclear power plants “deconstructed.” )

Trump’s fellow shitbird “yard punk” - Vladimir Putin - has deployed Russia’s National Guard to gas stations as the country’s fuel crisis spirals into street brawls and scenes of public outrage.

With only enough gas and diesel for roughly 28 percent of gas stations across the country, according to a local monitoring site, more and more ordinary Russians have begun to sound the alarm publicly, only to quickly be arrested or hit with fines. Five people were detained in Volgograd after filming a public appeal to federal authorities over the fuel shortage, while another man was detained and fined in Perm for planning a public protest. The unrest is a result of Ukraine amping up its attacks on Russian energy infrastructure in a bid to force negotiations to end Putin’s years-long war. Russians have faced massive gas shortages in recent weeks after long-range drone strikes hit oil refineries, with some drivers waiting in lines as long as 30 hours or more to fill their tanks. Last month, it was reported that the shortage had spread to at least 78 of Russia’s 83 regions, affecting some 50 million people, the Telegraph reports. Meanwhile, Putin has responded by deploying the National Guard (Rosgvardia) to patrol gas stations outside Moscow, amid local reports of fights breaking out at the pumps as drivers race to fill up before supplies run out. (As always, going back to the days of “social solidarity” Russian officials have reportedly been comfortably filling up their own tanks.) At the same time, major fuel suppliers have reimposed limits on gasoline purchases, contradicting assurances from Putin and other Kremlin officials that the country’s fuel crisis was easing. Also this week, Sochi, a Black Sea beach resort favored by Putin, was battered by a Ukrainian counter-offensive. Now, the formerly pristine waters are laden with fuel, and the beaches, once packed with tourists, are deserted. Russians are reportedly pulling billions from their bank accounts over fears that Putin could grab their money to fund his war as the tide appears to turn. Depositors have pulled out nearly $3.4 billion in just the first two weeks of August, on top of a staggering $11.8 billion yanked in June and July.

Mauschwitz the Maus Haus strikes again: Fucking Disney - the worst goddamned place in the world, the creation of avowed fascist fanboy Unca Walt, the (not so) benign police state - strikes again: Newly-anointed Disney C.E.O. Josh D’Amaro is putting on a magical show - here’s the reality at the company: More than 200,000 employees were just notified that starting in 2027, they can no longer enroll their spouse on the company insurance plan if that spouse has a job that offers any kind of healthcare (even if it’s much crappier). The move effectively kicks thousands of people off the Disney plans, many to inferior coverage, a shift that will likely impact lower-paid workers and hourly employees most. It’s just one of several changes coming to the “Happiest Place on Earth” via its so-called “Total Rewards,” which sounds like a casino loyalty program but refers to Disney’s internal perks and compensation system. Why? “Like many companies, we’re navigating a number of factors, including rising healthcare costs, evolving employee needs, and shifts across our industry,” an internal communication reads. Translation: Stop whining, Eeyores - you’re lucky you have a job. And Disney’s only the richest goddamn company in entertainment - if their C-suite wasn’t so damn greedy, this wouldn’t be happening. Heil Mickey!

Here’s a bunch of bad news for the MAGAts:

Republicans were hit with a brutal warning sign with less than two and a half months to go before the midterms, as the ratings for two states that Donald Trump easily won in 2024 have been shifted in Democrats’ favor. The Cook Political Report moved the Texas Senate race from “lean Republican” to a toss-up as Democrat James Talarico faces off against scandal-plagued Republican Ken Paxton for the seat. They also shifted the Texas governor race from “Solid Republican” to “Likely Republican” and the Iowa Senate race from a toss-up to “lean Democrat.” It’s a remarkable shift after Trump won both Texas and Iowa by more than 13 points each in 2024. While the Cook Political Report acknowledged Republicans maintain a structural advantage when it comes to the two Senate races, they wrote, “it’s increasingly hard to ignore both public and private polling showing them to be more competitive than the Lean category reflects.”

The Moms for Liberty Stronghold Is No More: Voters flipped control of the conservative- dominated school board in Sarasota County, Florida, on Tuesday. Megan Tennimon and Beth Mayberry won the two conservative-held seats. Tennimon won with 55% of the vote, and Mayberry, backed by the local Democratic Party, won with 57%. Bridget Ziegler - the “threesome curious” MAGA sex pervert who co-founded Moms for Liberty, the group that’s pushed for book bans in school districts across the country - chaired this school board for years. She didn’t run for re-election this time (all that publicity about the threesomes), and neither did the other two conservatives on the board. The board has five seats. Conservatives had three of them. Tennimon and Mayberry won two of those three on Tuesday, and the conservative majority was gone that night. This was supposed to be their stronghold. On Tuesday, it collapsed.

Democrat Brandon Dukes beat Republican Scott Timko by 97 votes, winning the special election last Tuesday to fill Pennsylvania’s 12th House District. The seat’s been red since 1999 and Trump won the district by 18 points in 2024. The Republican who held it won by an even larger margin of 30. Registered Republicans outnumber Democrats in the area nearly two to one. “We made history,” Dukes said to his supporters as the votes came in. He wasn’t exaggerating. Democrats now hold a 103-100 majority in the Pennsylvania state House. Provisional ballots are already counted, and the county confirmed no automatic recount applies. Two-to-one on paper lost by 97 votes last Tuesday. November is coming.

Remember, you are not the crazy ones, and we were made for these times. Regardless of what you may feel right now, act as if you believe that and redouble your efforts.

“Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government, nor of dungeons to ourselves. Let us have faith that right makes might; and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty, as we understand it.” - Abraham Lincoln

Creampuff and Sebastian

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