LET’S ALL EAT RIGHT DAY UPDATES
Which May Be Tough, As It Is Also National Chocolate Covered Nut Day
-One of the hallmarks of the first Trump regime was the infighting within the White House, MAGA, and whatever is left of the GOP. Reportedly it is something Trump himself loves – survival of the fittest and all that BS – even as it hamstrings all the evil and idiocy he always wants to inflict. As we continue to build our resistance muscles, events of the last few days are helping us be reminded that Team Trump’s rake-stomping is part of their design that we must encourage as we work to fight him on other fronts.
-To wit …
-The first spot of infighting that has erupted came from President Elon Musk, who used one of the oldest and dumbest Bad Boss trick in the book as the catalyst. Recall that on Saturday (because that’s when Bad Bosses do their baddest bad stuff) Musk sent out an email missive demanding every Government worker to send back a list of five things they accomplished in the past week – OR ELSE LOSE YOUR JOB (BOM BOM BOOOMMM!)!
-Unfortunately for Apartheid Boy, at least half the government basically told their workers to blow Leon off – the Military because it blows up their chain of command, various other departments because Musk isn’t their boss, and new FBI/ATF Director Ka$h Patel because he thought it would be a good arse-kiss to his hero Trump (ew). And, apparently, Trump himself recommended that the President back off on the order, what with all the spam emails being sent in bursting the volume of emails and the lawsuits piling up about what BS it is and (probably) it was finally a chance to push back and assert some kind of control over the President.
-Musk is not happy with the backing off. His own social media posts have been a mix of defensive backing-down and promises that no, the emails should still be sent since he intends to use his trusty Grok AI system to scan and deduce which workers are naughty and which workers were nice (and is this a bad time to remind the class that Musk tried to by OpenAI two weeks ago and was told to go pound algorithms?). The episode is the first pushback, and whether the world’s richest drug abuser dysfunctional man-child dude who clearly is not a tenth as smart as he thinks he is person chafes at the friction remains to be seen.
-More internal conflict centers around the aforementioned Patel, who was looking for a person to be his right hand at the FBI. Tradition and the nature of the job says to pick someone with a ton of internal knowledge of the organization, and with Patel’s goals of turning the FBI into Trump’s Stasi reforming (don’t laugh back there!) the FBI and his utter lack of experience at it, someone who knows the place would have been really useful to show his boss how much he adores him.
-Unfortunately, Patel forgot one of the cardinal rules in dealing with Trump: unless you are Vladimir Putin, and ONLY if you are Vladimir Putin, Trump will throw you under the bus the second you show a whiff of disloyalty. So rather than take a recommendation from Ka$h, Dear Leader went to the Intertoobz to find the biggest mouth-breathing joke of a candidate for Assistant FBI Director that he could possibly find.
-Enter one Dan Bongino, a tight-shirt wearing former Secret Service agent turned podcaster fond of super-tough-guy talk about liberals and women and looking the part of a MAGA Macho Uber-Male Man Alpha Dudebro. Only … IMHO, there are very few people Trump could have selected for any role in in the Putz Parade that could be so clownishly and ineptly awful that the only proper reaction to the appointment is not terror or frustration, but unabashed and deep belly laughter.
-You see, Dan BingoBongo is an Internet Warrior for MAGA – one that is remarkably thin-skinned. Dan BongoBongo is such a ditz that his M.O. is to start flame wars, get consistently pantsed for his lack of humor or wit or common sense, block people from his feeds, and then strut around claiming he OWNS DA LIBZ! Admittedly, that has gotten Danny BongBong far, as he was given a chance to take the time slot of a former right-wing talk show host named Len BoughRush or something like that – I forget – only to lose it within months because of being bad. Even more hysterically, Bing-Bang-Bong then went on to be a host on a now-shuttered YouTube channel for the National Rifle Association, only to lose THAT gig because he was too boneheaded and boring FOR THE NRA! So of all the appointments made so far, the one we can openly laugh at comfortable that it will help sabotage much bad he wants to do, it is Dan Bongholio.
-Want more Trump friction? All you have to do is look into Congress, and look at it today, especially. True, the Senate has rubberstamped all of Trump’s Cabinet nominees and so far have sat on their hands so the South African goofoff can data farm and plant malware in as many computer systems as he can, but we are now up to the money, and the fissures between Team MAGA, Team Cowed, Team Dimwits and Team CrazeePantz are starting to show.
-A budget resolution is being discussed, and with it an extension of the debt ceiling for the one legislative thing Republicans have become known for: huge tax cuts for the mega-wealthy. Recall that the Senate passed a resolution earlier in the week with a looming deadline for budget resolution – like, today - and moved it to the House. That is bad protocol, as traditionally government finance legislation starts in the House.
-But the Senate got impatient with Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Jay-EE-Zuz!, LA) because Johnson, having got to ride with the Kool Kidz like the Trump failsons, RFK Jr., and President Musk to a UFC match (because ALPHAS, amirite?!), is now trying to assemble a “big beautiful (budget) bill” that would allow MAGA to destroy Medicaid and food grants to kids in exchange for the megawealthy tax return.
-The problem is, as of this writing Johnson does not have the votes for the $880 billion Medicaid killer, what with GOP House members hearing earful after earful after EARFUL of WTF with this Medicaid crap before moving on to the hundreds of thousands of jobs lost because of the scam known as DOGE. MAGA wants deeper cuts, moderates want to save a bit of Medicaid, Democrats are saying to expect no yes votes unless and until Congress tells Apartheid Boy to F all the way off – and if it does pass, the resulting economic plunge will make even Team Trump have their work cut out for them by blaming it on Joe Biden (and yes, that’s what’s in the works, at least according to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent (who calls the underlying economy “brittle underneath,” aka Blame Biden – who, if you forgot, B OLD!).
-The vote is tonight. Call your Congresscritters and tell them to hold their ground and not vote to help MAGA out – even if it turns into a government shutdown – unless MASSIVE concessions are given (and even then, y’know …)
-Want even more division and friction? SURE YOU DO!
-That brings us to Ukraine, where the third anniversary of RUSSIA INVADING UKRAINE was marked by Trump’s continued bending of the hips and undoing of the trousers towards Vladimir Putin. At the United Nations, America officially sided with the baddies by voting against condemning the aggressors and siding with Putin (along with charmers like North Korea and Sudan), while doing everything Trump can to also divide NATO and give Putin literally the only way he has to “win” the war given the savage losses and punctured reputation as a competent fighting force that Ukraine has inflicted since the ill-fated invasion began.
-But the Putin calculation of an American abandonment of NATO leading to the crumbling of the alliance appears to be backfiring. Great Britain has promised to increase defense spending to shore up defenses and continue to support Ukraine’s fight. The incoming German Chancellor, having fended off the pro-Putin pro-Musk pro-Nazi AdF party, openly advocated to do the same. And at the White House. French President Emmanuel Macron made Veep Trump all grumpy and sad by not only openly contradicting Trump’s Putin talking points about how it was Ukraine that started the war, but again stopped Trump from that stupid dominant-handshake thing Trump likes to do, turning the tables and making MAGAts who like to think of France as femme have to use their self-ignorance skills to block what the rest of the world sees (along with that massive bruise at the top of Trump’s right hand – what’s up with THAT?!?!).
-Most Congresspeople are, as they should be, pro-Ukraine, and that along with the mass civil service firings and continued sky-high price of eggs and overall melting away of the aura of tough masculine masculinity that Trump and MAGA and the Heritage Society apparently genuinely though would melt opposition instead sparking fury and anger and earfuls of REPUBLICAN voters showing up in town halls is adding to the bully-boy pressure that really is all the stock in trade trick Trump has.
-So, SLAVA UKRAINI!, and while disturbing details still are piling on – from the abuse of career prosecutors at the Department of Justice that 60 MINUTES documented to definitely disturbing accounts that Erik Prince’s vile Blackwater mercenary group is now vying to get a slice of the deportation pie Trump and company are baking – keep the calls flowing for tonight’s budget vote and prepare the economic spend-nothing protest on Friday!
-In news media news, MSNBC continues to receive brickbats over the cancellation of Joy Reid’s show, which ended last night and was followed by a blistering criticism by Rachel Maddow over the decision and its effect on the for-sale and beleaguered commentary channel. That criticism may have had an effect, as an announced “cancellation” of shows by other prominent commentators of color were supplemented by announcements that no, Jonathan Capehart and Ayman Mohyeldin will lose their individual shows but will co-host morning and evening weekend shows as part of a panel along the lines of the trio of Alicia Menendez, Symone Sanders, and Michael Steele, who will collectively take Reid’s slot weekday afternoons. A third commentator, Katie Phang, will not have her show renewed but will stay at the network as a legl correspondent.
-Finally, I haven’t gotten to the Associated Press, so I want to give them a shout-out as they work to get their reporters back to covering the White House. They have been banned by Team Trump for the aposty of insisting that the Gulf of Mexico is STILL the Gulf of Mexico, because it IS The Gulf of Mexico, NOT the misnaming Trump is insisting all newspeople call that body of water because if those ‘news outlets’ want to keep being able to sit downwind of Vice President Stench and listen to his garbleblab, they must call things the way they call them. The AP isn’t – and neither, by the way, is MapQuest, which is the only GPS app still calling the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of Mexico, in case you want to adjust your settings for the awhile – and while one court case did not restore their seat in the press room, there’s a group fighing the fight that needs to be fought. GO AP GO! (And perhaps you want to have a vacation in the Gulf of MEXICO – the water is warm and you’ll annoy a MAGAt when you do!)
-TO THE TRIVIA FOR THE DATE!
-NEWS ON THIS DATE: In 1957, Buddy Holly and the Crickets record “That’ll Be The Day.” In 1964, Muhammad Ali – then known as Cassius Clay – won the World Heavyweight Championship for the first time, knocking out Sonny Liston in seven rounds. In 1986, Ferdinand Marcos left the Philippines, ending his dictatorial rule and paving the way for Corazon Aquino to assume the Presidency. In 1987, Southern Methodist University’s football program was suspended one year for rampant corruption.
-DEBUTS ON THIS DATE: A wedding in the White House (1828), the dollar bill (1862), the first African American Congressperson (Hiram Revels, Senator from Mississippi, 1870), the Income Tax (1913), the National Hockey League on television (1940), YOUR SHOW OF SHOWS (1950), SONGS FROM THE BIG CHAIR (1985), THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST (2004).
-HAPPY BIRTHDAY: Pierre Auguste Renoir, Enrico Caruso, John Foster Dulles, Meher Baba, Bert Bell, Zeppo Marx, Millicent Fenwick, Gert Frobe, Jim Backus, Anthony Burgess, Bobby Riggs, Andy Pafko, Larry Gelbart, Tommy Newsom, Bob Schieffer, Tom Courtneay, Billy Packer, Ron Santo, George Harrison, Anne Beatts, Neil Jordan, Cesar Cedeno, John Doe, Kurt Rambis, Mike Peters, Davey Allison, Paul O’Neill, Tea Leoni, Sean Astin, Chelsea Handler, Rashida Jones, and Joakim Noah.
-REST IN PEACE/REST IN POWER: Mark Rothko, Tennessee Williams, James Coco, Jersey Joe Walcott, Haing S. Ngor, Peter Benenson, Darren McGavin, C. Everett Koop, Bill Paxton, and Dick Versace.
-FEED THE WORMS: Cult leader Sun Myung Moon, profoundly unfunny prop “comic” Carrot Top, and the aforementioned Ka$h Patel entered Earth on this date. Bugs Moran and Hosni Mubarak bought it on this date.
-Sally Jessy Raphael and Ric Flair were born on this date. Elijah Muhammad died on this date. You decide if they get a Happy Birthday/Rest in Peace/Power or if They Feed the Worms.
-TODAY’S MUSIC INTERLUDE: Released on this date in 2014!