Oh No! Threatened with Accountability!
This morning our Toddler-in-Chief is ranting against those violent people warning officials that they will be investigated and held accountable for breaking laws in the United States.
Reuters reports Michigan Senator Elissa Slotkin is sending this message:
“I want young people coming out of school to say, ‘Should I go work for the Trump administration?’ … I want them to be like, ‘Lord, that might be buying myself a ton of problems that I don’t want. And so I might avoid participating in that,'” Slotkin said. “I want that deterrence message sent.”
LOL, the rats are already abandoning the ship; Trump is calling in his hardliners to man the barricades. Anyone in their right mind should think twice before accepting a position in his administration. Not for fear of reprisals, but for fear of the compromised values that serving Trump requires and the inevitable consequences of supporting the craziness and cruelty this president has wrought.
Dirty Tricks and Desperation
We used to scorn Richard Nixon for his Dirty Tricks, called him Tricky Dick. This week the Republicans make Richard Nixon look benign. Ramaswamy invokes an abusive mother against his opponent, Amy Acton. Trump has the DOJ file a suit saying they are going to challenge the election of Mary Peltola in Alaska., and threatening to confiscate ballots in California. Locally, candidate Ashley Hofberger sends out postcards telling her electorate her opponent is a Unitarian and NOT A CHRISTIAN who wants to turn us all into Unitarians (gasp)! If it all didn’t have such serious consequences, we would have to laugh. It gets so tiring being outraged.
When you are a party whose entire time in power has been spent self-enriching, creating Executive Orders and laws that enrich your own family, stripping environmental protections from your citizens, and corrupting the objectivity of the Justice system, betraying historical allies, cozying up to dictators, FIRING THE WATCHDOGS, and vilifying the Free Press any time they expose an inconvenient truth, of course you sink to the vilest of responses – lying, cheating, bullying and changing the rules, the tools of the callous corrupt.
Opening a Can of Worms
One thing I loved the most when I started this blog, Lo those twenty years ago, was that most of my readers were foreign, but understood and spoke English. Once you have the basics, the idioms and metaphores are a lot of fun.
We do not literally kick a dead horse, or hit the rack, or open a can of worms, but we understand what those phrases imply. We will not literally open a can of worms if the Department of Justice opens an investigation into Corey Lewandowski. We will be looking at a situation which has gone unaddressed, the use of political office for self-enrichment.
In every society I’ve lived in, there are things we don’t talk about, because once you open that can of worms, or let that cat out of the bag, you can no longer contain the problem, and you have to deal with the consequences. Many times, the consequences are unanticipated.
When asked about the Lewandowski investigation, here is what the President said:
“If they’re not going to be honest, they have to be prosecuted,” Trump warned, adding that dishonesty amounts to “stealing from me as president.”
Actually, Mr. President, his dishonesty means he is stealing from the USA as a nation. It’s kind of like ignoring the laws against buying stock when you know you are going to announce a policy that will enhance its value. It’s kind of like accepting gifts from foreign countries – it’s compromising our integrity. It’s kind of like relying on business moguls with their own agendas to regulate Starlink access in the Ukraine, having to go hat in hand to them when you need a favor. It’s kind of like disregarding Congress when you commit acts of war against another sovereign nation. It’s kind of like they could expect a favor in return, It’s kind of like robbing the USA when the Supreme Court gives you immunity and using your very best judgement, you abuse it.
When the Homeland Security Inspector General refers a case to the DOJ, he probably has a strong case. When the evidence is produced, there may well be parallels in other dealings open to the public view.
In this case, maybe letting those worms out will provide some much needed transparency as to the state of collusion and co-option within our executive branch, his appointees, and the hamstringing of the Department of Justice so that it serves the President, and not the United States of America.
And on the subject of metaphors:
Taxpayers Fund Pathetic Big Brother
According to several news agencies yesterday, an ad promoting Trump began airing this week. It says it was paid for by the government, despite a law banning taxpayer funds being used for propaganda.
I find Trump vulgar. I find his AI productions of himself as Jesus, as himself in a military uniform (applying honors to himself which he never earned), and his glowering portraits from public buildings inappropriate. Pathetic. Distasteful.
I find his fripperies and vanity projects disgusting. The man has no taste. He is erecting monuments to himself. He would destroy the Kennedy Center because he is jealous – he wrecked it.
I’m careful with my money. What offends me the most is that I am not reluctant to pay taxes; we earned government salaries, we respect the need for a government to provide services, and that good citizens pay their fair taxes. I object to paying for self-glorification, or “love-me” ads. I believe this is illegal – just as I believe our fight in Iran is illegal, was not discussed with Congress, and that the citizens paying for this war should be given accurate information, such as the tolls taken on our servicemen and women and on our installations during this war.
Why do we continue to let this fraudster operate with impunity?
He dares to put his face on the corrupts Justice Department, filling it with loyalists who submit to Trump’s policy of vengeance against his perceived enemies – those who would disagree with him.
He puts his face on the Labor Department, at a time when mortgages are once again hitting an all time high, inflation is hitting food and gas prices, and our young people cannot find jobs nor buy houses.
His vanity knows no boundaries. His ignorance is wrecking our economy. His vulgarity shreds our efforts at civility. His greed takes the food out of the mouths of the hungry, and medical care out of the hands of the sick and dying. He refuses to disperse funds already allocated to the powerless. He sells off our National Parklands, or leases off lands, for commercial exploitation, and invalidates environmental rules put into place to keep our food, water, and emergency systems in place.
In the previous entry in this blog, we see Trump and Melania glaring suspiciously at the camera, and the President of China looking at Trump with a look that appears to be pity.
Pity instead the poor taxpayers, footing the bill for this monstrous, vain, big baby.
“The Cruelty is the Point”
I was singing to the choir, complaining to my old high school friend about the tactics and strategies employed by the Trump administration, against immigrants, against the press, and against any citizen disagreeing with this administration’s viewpoint. “It all seems so intentional, so cruel,” I said.
“The cruelty is the point,” he responded. It was short, pithy, but that was weeks ago and I continue to ponder the phrase. I wondered why it sounds familiar – my friend used quote marks – so this morning, I googled it and got this very thorough AI response:
“The cruelty is the point” is a political phrase coined by The Atlantic staff writer Adam Serwer in a prominent 2018 essay. [1, 2]
Origin and Meaning
- Coinage: Adam Serwer used the phrase in his October 2018 essay, “The Cruelty Is the Point”. [1, 2, 3]
- Core Argument: Serwer argued that the policies and public behavior of the Trump administration and its supporters were not accidentally harsh or crude, but intentionally designed to cause pain to marginalized groups. [1, 2]
- The Bond: He wrote that inflicting this pain creates a powerful sense of unity, pride, and shared identity among political supporters, binding them together through common opposition to outsiders, immigrants, and minority groups. [1]
Book Adaptation
- Publication: Serwer expanded his essays into a book titled The Cruelty Is the Point: The Past, Present, and Future of Trump’s America, published in June 2021. [1, 2]
- Themes: The book examines how modern political conflicts connect to deeper historical currents in the United States, including white supremacy, migration debates, police unions, and the legacy of the Lost Cause. [1, 2]
Usage and Legacy
- Political Lexicon: The phrase became a widely adopted descriptor in political commentary to characterize populist movements, harsh immigration rules (such as family separations), and rhetoric directed at political opponents. [1, 2, 3]
- Broader Application: Analysts and commentators frequently invoke the phrase outside the Trump administration to describe political strategies that rely on outraging rivals and signaling hostility toward specific demographic or social groups. [1, 2]
The original article in The Atlantic states:
“It is not just that the perpetrators of this cruelty enjoy it; it is that they enjoy it with one another. Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to one another, and to Trump.”
I urge you to read the October 2018 essay, and the book. From the beginning of the second Trump term, from the the very first day with the horrifying Presidential Edicts, the cruelty has been increasingly woven into public policy. The policies are Anti-American, anti-immigrant, anti-women and anti-everything I was taught to believe as I grew up – That we are created and born with equal rights, male and female, black, white, yellow, red and all the glorious colors in between. “Red and yellow, black and white, we are precious in His sight.”
Our priest told us from the pulpit this week that we are “to carry the light.” Each one of us, individually and together, carries the light. We can choose to be kind. We can reflect “the light that shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
Trump and Mail In Voting
The man gave us all the information we needed to see this coming. He claimed he won the 2020 election, losing by over 8 million votes.
He was filmed telling a gathering of Evangelical Christians in the 2024 campaign that if they voted for him, they would never have to vote again. (Even then, it sounded ominous.)
Once elected, his first day in office, he fired the Election Oversight executives. Then, he fired everyone working for the federal government in his power who certified that he had lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden.
This man is corrupt. He has wrecked the guardrails that keep us from stepping over the lines of moral behavior. He has taken away penalties for law breaking. He has pardoned the very sort of people that he states he doesn’t want coming into our country.
But, most cynically of all, he works to deprive those of us who vote regularly, and vote by mail, of the very privilege he himself utilizes – voting by mail.
A selection of cartoon comments for your enjoyment:
Just Kidding!
The hot steamy Fridays of summer are always a good time to watch for the news that the Administration does not want you to know.
This week, it is the admission made by the Trump DOJ that the damage to the Refection Pool was organic, related to the poor application of the reflecting pool lining, due to the rushed contract and and the no-bid contract to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago pool guy.
The waste, the sheer waste of this President, sickens me. Embellishments, fix-ups, gilded fixtures and statues are a WASTE. Washington DC was designed with a restrained style, a colonial style, not a mix of Saudi-gaudy and Western house of ill repute. And in truth, this administration has corrupted every corner of our devastated government and its bureaucracy, has created a national confederacy of ill-repute.
And all that fraud, waste and abuse is just wires and mirrors to distract us from this inadequate man’s maneuvering to be sure he stays in political power.
It’s tempting to look away from this endless, outrageous news cycle, so full of bad surprises. And it is beneficial for your mental health to relax, breathe, and think happy thoughts for short periods every day. And then, it is of dire importance to come back, catch up on the issues and use your voice.
If you are a protester, protest. If you are a telephone caller or texter, call or text your national and state representatives and tell them to stand up to this petit tyrant. If you are a voter, please vote, and help get out the vote to put these dangerously incompetent people out of positions where they can cause such great damage to our nation.
Tightrope, No Safety Net
It is astonishing and hiliarious what you can find on the internet these days if you look. I entered “image Trump on a tightrope” and came up with more than I had hoped for.
We are in dangerous times. Our President is reckless, and leaves a trail of wreckage. All the guardrails, so carefully set up to avoid corruption, abuse, waste and degradation have been dismantled. The watchers have been fired. The laws have been weakened, if not destroyed.
The relationships with reliable allies have been demolished with bravado, as if it were a good thing not to have cooperative friends.
A civilized society operates within constraints. It demonstrates self-restraint for the greater good of all. Have you ever heard this President exhibit a single concern for the citizens of the USA? Any note indicating a desire to serve and protect? You know, like the oaths of public service require?
The safety nets are gone. ICE operates with impunity; poorly trained, without accountability, preying on the most vulnerable among us. We are told in the earliest books of our religion to “welcome the stranger.” We are told by the crooks, rapists and bad people in charge that the immigrants are “crooks, rapists and bad people.” They have little protection, and, it seems, no longer have the rights guaranteed by the court system so carefully developed.
Our president and his family skim billions from the economy and deals made on the basis of presidential power. Croneys make billions from an endless war which serves no purpose and has no credible way of ending.
Our trusted institutions teeter on collapse.
I pray for our country, as I watch with horror and anticipate the next outrageous proclamations of the president and his confederacy of dunces.
“Still, the U.S. Loss Kinda Felt Like Trump’s Fault”
The above quote is from Brian Phillips, writing for The Ringer, July 6, 2026, in an article titled: The Worst Ending to the Best U.S. Men’s World Cup Ever.
He echoes the conversations held before the match all across the United States.
“It should never have been called! It wasn’t a foul!”
“What was Trump thinking, inserting himself in this?”
“So much for sportsmanship!”
“But he shouldn’t have been red-carded!”
I’m showing my age. I was aghast to hear that the president had interfered. I was aghast that FIFA changed the ruling so that Balogun could play. The Girl Scout in me (sigh, it never goes away) was screaming that even when a ruling is unjust, you man up and play on.
The loss to Belgium was staggering. Not even close. And what has been done cannot be undone; if FIFA continues corrupt and pliable, what might have been a path toward “Peace on Earth, Good Will Toward Men” is badly damaged.
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Early Voting in Florida
