Of course I have thoughts on this week's further unravelling of Trump's Russia Russia Russia issues, but little time, and, frankly, do I have anything to add which can't be seen by two eyes?  Thankfully Jon Stewart is here of brevity.



 

There's been worse weeks recently.

As of this morning though, Trump appears to be dampening some of the excitement about watching Hegseth get kicked out on his ass like he's in some small town Colorado police department.  Obviously, it is not ultimately Hegseth's fault for the Iran war - he was following orders - and since he's too stupid to realize how out of depths he is at running any government agency, much less the largest and most lethal department, then it reasons that the true fault must lie with those who put him in that position in the first place.  (More on that in a sec.)  Likewise, I see where it's being reported that Trump has been privately blaming Stephen Miller (now being openly described in the press as the "architect" of Trump's mass deportation policy) of having "gone too far".  Again, whether any of this results in Miller stepping away from the White House, it does at least show the cowardly inclination of Trump to start blaming everyone else for his failures, and possibly further exposes the vulnerable Republican party (those stalwarts who have supported both ICE and Hegseth) for running interference.  At least that's a large piece of my interpretation of Tuesday's vote, not simply a rejection of Trump but a rejection of the dissembling dishonesty in the party which chose to support Trump over conscience and principle.  (Needless to say, I still have not exactly recovered my sympathies for those '24 Trump voters who are pretending that anything we've seen in the past two years wasn't completely predictable by what Trump said we was going to do in '24.  Oh, did he start a war?  After renaming it the Department of War?  After all of the "Crusades" rhetoric of the Christian Nationalists, from whose support Hegseth was recruited?  

The mainstream media failed to cover these Christian Nationalist movements or their integral position within MAGA because race/religion has become a third rail of criticism against conservatives.  Unless you're James Talarico, then you're just kind of weird, right?  Another issue which has been ignored at least in American domestic news coverage concerns the other recent elections, in Israel, and a major defeat against Netanyahu's coalition.  This would (it seems!) be a pretty major factor on any settlements either in Gaza or Iran, right?  I was under the impression that American attitudes about these conflicts weighed pretty heavily on Tuesday's election?  Like a story we should keep in context on whether Israelis (like Americans!) still have the ability to shape the direction of their country away from these authoritarian tendencies?  It certainly provides some interesting leverage in terms of conditioning military aid, if'n when that's something Trump intends to actually implement.

Trump seems strangely conciliatory this morning.  Is he starting to get an inkling?  Is this Don playing possum?  Or, worse thought, could Trump simply be responding to what appears to be a pre-emptively conciliatory Democrat leadership?  There appears to be some media effort to discourage talk of a "mandate" (despite being collectively the biggest Democrat gains in over 50 years, since 1974), and coddling towards "cooperation".  I see.  You billionaires should be scared.  I see where even Reed Hoffman is now for overturning Citizens United.  You're welcome.  We'll get to see how effective this emergent Democrat party can be if we embrace the fact that Bernie is still the most popular Democrat in office, and his anti-oligarchy platform can easily be said to have influenced voters in this election far more than either Chuck or Hakeem.  But Sanders is mostly missing from the after-parties.

Anyone worried about the incipient Sharia communism represented by this new crop of candidates should look to Mamdani, and the evaporation of controversy he's overseen.  Even the DSA turned against him (after turning against AOC and Nithya Raman, before coming right back to both), just as the far left is likely to turn against El-Sayed eventually.  He's probably not actually evil, folks.