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Notes and Messages

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Ａｅｓｔｈｅｔｉｃａ :: @goblockyourself

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“There's always a moment when you start to fall out of love, whether it's with a person or an idea or a cause, even if it's one you only narrate to yourself years after the event: a tiny thing, a wrong word, a false note, which means that things can never be quite the same again.”

― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

"I am his lawyer . . . was his lawyer."

July 16, 2026

"I am his lawyer . . . was his lawyer."

July 16, 2026

Robert B. Hubbell

Trump’s “success” is due in large part to his preternatural ability to identify men and women who harbor ambition, vanity, and weakness in equal measure. Trump exploits their ambition and vanity by dangling access to power, knowing that their weak characters will look past his corruption, depravity, and malignant narcissism that threaten our democracy. On Wednesday, the bitter fruits of Trump’s sordid recruiting efforts were on sorry display in the US Senate.

At some point in their lives, Todd Blanche and Jay Clayton were respected members of the bar with outstanding reputations among lawyers, judges, and clients. Todd Blanche has trashed his reputation over the last three years by representing Trump in the Manhattan hush-money trial—which ended in conviction on 34 felony counts—and in two federal prosecutions that were abandoned after Trump's 2024 re-election, a result made possible by the Supreme Court's immunity ruling in Trump v. US.

But the jury was out on Jay Clayton. Until today. The damning verdict was delivered by Clayton himself through his sniveling, evasive, shameful appearance before the Judiciary Committee. In the legal vernacular, “Clayton has drunk the Kool-Aid.”

For those not familiar with Clayton, he is currently the US Attorney for the SDNY. He previously served as the Chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). He served on the Management Committee of Sullivan & Cromwell, one of the world’s largest and most respected law firms. His financial disclosure showed he drew a salary and bonus of more than $6.7 million from Sullivan & Cromwell in the year before his SDNY nomination, lofty salary that reflects his stellar legal training, his government experience, his purported legal acumen, and his wise counsel.

But in a brief exchange with Senator John Ossof, Jay Clayton demonstrated that either (a) he is willing to lie to a Senate Committee while under oath, or (b) he is functionally illiterate and cannot be trusted to serve as the nation’s chief intelligence officer. I believe the answer is option (a), but I will let you judge after watching the video of the exchange between Senator Ossof and Clayton, below: (Press the “play” arrow at the bottom of the embedded video to watch the exchange.)

If Clayton’s testimony was truthful, he was unaware that his predecessor in the job of Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, was present at the execution of the FBI search warrant that seized the Fulton County, Georgia, ballots. Clayton claims he was also unaware that Tulsi Gabbard testified to Congress that Trump requested that she attend the FBI’s seizure of ballots in Georgia.

Gabbard’s presence at the Fulton County raid was extensively covered by the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post, and widely reported on cable news, including Fox News. So, too, was Tulsi Gabbard’s testimony that she was at the raid at Trump’s request.

Again, Tulsi Gabbard is Clayton’s immediate predecessor in the job for which he is seeking a favorable report by the Judiciary Committee. For Clayton to pretend to be unaware of the biggest controversy surrounding his predecessor is (in the words of Jon Ossof) “not credible.”

But Clayton has performed the calculus. He has weighed the stain on his reputation and the behind-the-back whispers that will follow him for life, and concluded, in his weakness and vanity, that access to power is more important than truth, honor, and patriotism.

Such are the men selected by the partners of Sullivan & Cromwell to lead their firm. It is no surprise that S&C never capitulated to Trump. It never had to; instead, it voluntarily aligned with him, serving as the White House’s favored intermediary to coerce other firms into capitulating to Trump.

And, now, Jay Clayton will be our nation’s chief intelligence officer, delivering critical briefings to a president who cannot abide bad news. Jay Clayton is the wrong man for a job that affects the safety and security of every American.

Tell your Senators that Jay Clayton is unfit to hold a position of public trust in the federal government!

As bad as Clayton's confirmation hearing was, Todd Blanche's was worse. Blanche walked into the confirmation room having protected Ghislaine Maxwell, obstructed the production of the Epstein documents, approved the bad-faith prosecutions of James Comey and Letitia James, and approved the $1.8 billion slush fund for January 6 insurrectionists and the IRS immunity agreement for Trump. It is difficult to see how it could get worse. But it did.

One of the first questions posed to Blanche was whether he was Trump’s friend. He replied, “I am his lawyer . . . was his lawyer.”

There you have it! For two seconds, Todd Blanche spoke the truth before he caught himself. But in that momentary candor, he explained why he was unfit to be the Attorney General of the United States. He views himself as the president's lawyer, rather than the lawyer for the people of the United States.

The influential New York City Bar Association filed a lengthy objection with the Chair and ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, explaining why Todd Blanche is unfit to serve as Attorney General. See City Bar Opposes Todd Blanche Nomination for U.S. Attorney General (2026).

Senator Adam Schiff released key moments of his examination of Todd Blanche. See Schiff’s notes, Todd Blanche’s Conflicts of Interest. In a key moment in the examination (beginning at the 9:30 mark), Senator Schiff got Blanche to admit that he approved the $1.8 billion slush fund.

Senator Schiff then asked,

What happened to the Todd Blanche who was a prosecutor in the Southern District of New York? What happened to the prosecutor people had respect for? What happened to the prosecutor who once respected the rule of law? What happened to the prosecutor who said “there won’t be a whiff of political partisanship” and then prosecutes the president’s enemies over seashells and making a video stating the plain law of the Constitution? What happened to the Todd Blanche of the Southern District of New York that could convert him into you, someone who is willing to say the president has both the right and the duty to prosecute his political enemies?

[The above quote is my personal transcription from the video; I tried to get it right, but the official record may differ.]

There is more, but you get the point: It was a brutal hearing for Blanche—but cowardly Republicans—like the feckless Susan Collins—will vote for a man who has proven his willingness to ignore the Constitution, federal statutes, due process, the rule of law, and human decency.

Trump reverses order for ICE to “cease non-urgent traffic stops.”

Remember two days ago when Senator Susan Collins was bragging that she had convinced DHS to order ICE to cease all non-urgent traffic stops? Well that cessation lasted less than a day. See The Atlantic, Inside Trump’s Reversal on ICE | Attacks from immigration hard-liners had the president worried about looking weak.

Per The Atlantic,

The president overruled his own administration after getting furious pushback from his MAGA base over the ICE order suspending most vehicle stops. White House officials told us that Trump had heard a litany of complaints from hard-line allies over the past day. “We CANNOT give up one of I.C.E.’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP!,” the president wrote on his Truth Social network. “Once we do, we are playing right into the criminal’s hands.”

Don't let Susan Collins lie about persuading ICE to suspend non-urgent traffic stops. Her plea to MarkWayne Mullin was immediately overruled by Trump. Perhaps she should've waited a few hours before taking credit for a major change in ICE policy. Now, she has proved that she is powerless to rein in Donald Trump.

Concluding Thoughts

Don’t believe anything Trump says on Thursday evening.

Trump will give a primetime speech on Thursday evening. According to reports, he will allege that China attempted to affect the outcome of the 2020 presidential election by attacking Trump on social media. However, Trump apparently has no proof that China affected voting procedures or vote count totals. And, of course, it is well established that Russia likewise attempted to affect the outcome of the 2020 presidential election by attacking Joe Biden.

The most important point is this: Simply because Trump claims the authority to do something does not mean he has that authority. Moreover, if he attempts to exercise authority not granted to him by the Constitution, he will be stopped by the courts.

I had an email exchange with a reader that illustrates why things that “sound bad” may be bluffs designed to frighten or dispirit us. The reader asked,

Trump has fired the remaining EAC commissioners. The EAC is tasked with the certification of voting machines. Can we predict that Trump will claim votes are invalid because machines were not certified?

Good question—and one that may be causing some people to fear that the firing of the Election Assistance Commission will lead to “chaos.” But let’s look at the facts.

1 The certification of voting machines by EAC does not impose any obligation on states to use those machines. It’s like a “Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval” on a cleaning product; you are free to purchase the store-branded, cheaper version. Some states have laws saying that they must use federally certified machines; others do not (e.g., California).

2 Once a machine is certified, it remains certified forever, unless it is decertified. Every machine that requires federal certification under state law already has it—and thus can be used in 2026. Moreover, the structure of the certification program—which delegates certification decisions to EAC staff rather than requiring a Commission vote—allows the testing and certification to continue despite the vacancies. See Just Security, What is the Election Assistance Commission With No Commissioners?

So, the answer to the reader’s question is, “No,” Trump will not be able to claim that 2026 votes are invalid because “the machines were not certified.” No federal law says anything of the sort.

On the other hand, Trump makes lots of claims that are patently illegal and unconstitutional. Can he make up a rule that, because the EAC doesn’t exist, all votes in 2026 are invalid? Sure, just like he can issue an executive order stating that he can levitate. That doesn’t mean he should jump off a skyscraper.

So, if Trump makes claims about voting machines not being certified for 2026, ignore him. The machines and software have already been certified.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

The Reptilians were both shocked and horrified to discover the truth.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Karl Wallenda, of the Flying Wallendas, starting his 5-year-old daughter, Carla, across a 20-foot high wire during practice in Sarasota, Florida; 1941 :: Photographed by Joseph Steinmetz

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“Now listen for the pines, the bloom, its glittering, the wild hacking of sea, bend in each stream, eddy of bend—listen—hear all skins raveling, unending—hear one skin clamp down upon what now is no longer missing. Here you are says a voice in the light, the trapped light. Be happy.”

― Jorie Graham, [To] The Last [Be] Human

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

July 15, 2026

Heather Cox Richardson

Jul 16, 2026

Exactly five years ago, on July 15, 2021, I wrote:

“Today Americans began to see the concrete effects of the American Rescue Plan show up in their bank accounts, as the expanded child tax credit goes into effect for one year. Through this program, the Child Tax Credit increased to $3,000 per child aged 6 to 17 and $3,600 per child under 6. All working families will get the full credit if they make up to $150,000 for a couple or $112,500 for a family with a single parent. The government sent payments for almost 60 million children on Thursday, totaling $15 billion.

“This is a really big deal. In America, one in seven children lives in poverty. This measure is expected to cut that poverty nearly in half. Studies suggest that addressing childhood poverty continues to pay off over time, as it helps adults achieve higher levels of mobility.”

The American Rescue Plan, passed in March 2021, was an early achievement of the Biden presidency, becoming a signature law as every Republican voted against it. A year later, researchers at the Brookings Institute found that the temporary expansion of the child tax credit lifted 3.7 million children out of poverty before it expired on December 31, 2021.

Family members did not stop working, as critics said they would. Instead, they used the money to cover routine expenses, decreasing their reliance on credit cards; had better nutrition; and made long-term investments in education for both children and parents.

Now, five years later, the results of the Republicans’ signature One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), passed without a single Democratic vote and signed into law last July, are revealing a very different set of priorities.

The OBBBA extended or expanded more than $4.5 trillion in tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations, while cutting more than $1 trillion from social welfare programs. It did increase the child tax credit, but less than it would have if Congress had just adjusted the credit based on inflation since it had set the amount in 2017. And, according to the nonprofit, nonpartisan Institute of Tax and Economic Policy, the benefits from the OBBBA measure went mostly to the richest fifth of Americans, dropping essentially to zero by the time they got to the poorest fifth.

The measure cut $187 billion in federal funding from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and on Monday, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reported that between the passage of the OBBBA in July 2025 and March 2026—the last month for which there is data from all states—more than 4 million people lost access to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. At least a quarter of those people are children. Those losses will mount in 2027—after the midterm elections—when states will have to assume much more of the costs of the program.

At the center of the difference between the Democrats’ signature bill and the Republicans’ is how the representatives of those parties see the purpose of the American government. Should it be used for the good of the American people, or to concentrate wealth and power among a few?

On July 9, Carol Leonnig and Ken Dilanian of MS NOW reported that Trump’s appointees in the Department of Justice are overruling the career attorneys in the antitrust division who have called for reviews of how corporate mergers and acquisitions might lead to price gouging for consumers and taxpayers. Trump-appointed officials are pushing ahead without reviews designed to protect the American people from monopoly power and, in what former assistant attorney general Bill Baer called “unilateral surrender,” are not pursuing lawsuits to enforce antitrust laws.

“Consumers are getting really screwed by all of this,” a source told Leonnig and Dilanian. “We’re talking 10 years of consumer harm that can’t be undone.”

On Friday, Trump called a select group of Republicans who sit on the House Budget Committee to Camp David to put together a funding package, primarily for military funding, that they can get past Congress through budget reconciliation, a process that will not need any Democratic votes. Even the invitation to Camp David was controversial, though: Trump extended invitations to members of the far-right Freedom Caucus, but not to the more moderate Republicans on the committee. Invitations were secret, and members’ phones were confiscated at Camp David.

Budget Committee member Erin Houchin (R-IN) told Jake Sherman of PunchBowl News that she was urging committee members to vote no on the package.

Today House Republicans released a $95 billion budget framework to provide another $73 billion for additional military funding for the war on Iran, a $12 billion bailout for farmers hurt by Trump’s tariff wars, and $10 billion to enact aspects of the SAVE America measure Trump has been unable to convince Congress to pass.

Money for farmers was part of a sweetener to try to get Democrats on board with the measure, but it does not appear to be enough to get them to agree to fund an unpopular war and voter suppression. Representative Brendan Boyle (D-PA), the top-ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee, told Kevin Freking and Lisa Mascaro of the Federal News Network, “I’m going to fight like hell to make sure taxpayer dollars are being used to lower costs and make life better for American families, not to bankroll Trump’s giveaways to billionaires and endless wars overseas.”

“This ‘America Last’ budget would add tens of billions more to the national debt to fund the most unpopular war in American history,” Boyle said.

Catie Edmondson of the New York Times noted that spending requests are usually dealt with through the bipartisan appropriations process, but Republicans are, once again, trying to maneuver around the Democrats to fund priorities the Democrats reject: an immigration enforcement surge that has led to two deaths at the hands of ICE agents in the past week, and the war in Iran.

Even Republicans don’t appear to want to throw more money at the Iran War before the midterms, especially as the Pentagon has been opaque about the costs of the war and the White House has refused to confer with Congress about it. They also don’t want to fund the unpopular voter suppression measure Trump wants, as prices for everyday Americans at the gas pump and grocery store are noticeably higher than they were a few months ago.

Representative Warren Davidson (R-OH) wrote on social media that the Republicans’ budget plan was “DOA,” or “dead on arrival.”

The deaths six days apart of two immigrants, neither one of whom was the intended target of the operation during which they were shot and killed, has rekindled the unpopularity of the administration’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants. As protest broke out in the wake of the shooting death of Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Biddeford, Maine, yesterday, Senator Susan Collins (R-ME), called for Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin to “cease all non-urgent vehicle stops.”

Collins, who is running for reelection, is the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee and was a key vote in the June measure that provided an additional $70 billion for immigration enforcement through 2029. As Margy O’Herron of the Brennan Center noted, $70 billion “is more than the budgets for all other federal law enforcement agencies combined, including the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the U.S. Marshals Service.”

ICE issued a memo yesterday ordering agents to prioritize tactics other than traffic stops, prompting praise from Collins.

But at 6:45 this morning, Trump insisted—incorrectly—that the people ICE is rounding up are “Criminals, and we have to get them out. In order to do this, we must be strong, tough, and smart, and we CANNOT give up one of I.C.E.’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP! Once we do, we are playing right into the criminal’s hands. The Radical Left Dumocrats would like to see this done, but it won’t happen on my watch. I.C.E., be judicious, fair and smart, and go back and do your very important job. Keep those Crime Stat Records coming! Remember, you are loved and respected in America.”

The Iran War is also back on the front burner.

On Monday, Trump announced he was reimposing a blockade on Iran and that the U.S. would become the “THE GUARDIAN OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT”; yesterday he reversed course, claiming that Gulf allies told him they would rather invest directly in the U.S. than pay tolls.

Last night, Barak Ravid of Axios, who often has inside information from the White House, reported that Trump yesterday held a meeting in the Situation Room with his top national security team to discuss “new plans for devastating strikes” against Iran. Those in the room included Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Dan Caine, Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe, White House special envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff and other senior officials, Ravid reported.

Before the meeting, Trump told the Fox News Channel that after the “hard” strikes this week, “[n]ext week, it gets really bad for them because next week comes the power plants. Next week comes the bridges. We’re gonna knock out all their power plants. We’re gonna knock out all their bridges unless they get to the table and negotiate.”

Attacks on civilian infrastructure are usually illegal under international law.

Nate Swanson, a former member of Trump’s negotiating team, told foreign policy specialist Laura Rozen of Diplomatic that Trump’s escalation was probably a ploy to kick-start further negotiations. “I think it is a very risky and low probability gamble, but nothing else makes sense…. I don’t see a feasible pathway towards military victory, nor do I believe that we can [militarily] open the Strait of Hormuz against Iran’s wishes.”

The more things change, the more they stay the same. When I wrote about the importance of the American Rescue Plan five years ago, I ended my discussion of it with the observation that “this huge achievement of the Biden presidency—every single Republican voted against it—has taken a backseat in the news to two blockbuster stories about the former president.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

What Will Trump Do To Steal The Midterms? Start With “The Unthinkable”--

My Reply To A Substack Reader’s Question

Lance Rosen

What Will Trump Do To Steal The Midterms? Start With "The Unthinkable"-- My Reply To A Substack Reader's Question-- Question-- ["Lance, sticking with WWII and Nazi German analogies, what are the chances that Trump will try to create tension between himself and Congress by demanding the ouster of the GA Senators (without evidence), and escalate to make a Reichstag fire event, to take away more of our rights?"] My Reply-

What Will Trump Do To Steal The Midterms? Start With "The Unthinkable"--

["The chances are too high. My perspective is to imagine the full array of the absolute worst things he might do, and then make a plan to preempt them.

We cannot limit ourselves to litigation or cybersecurity measures. We will need election lawyers in every State Capitol, but I expect Trump to use a combo of ICE agents and his far-right militias to launch massive violence and voter intimidation at the polls, and to have the FBI at the state election boards to seize ballots. He will try to conduct mass arrests and likely declare an emergency to use the National Guard in various key places under the 1807 Act.

The danger is that we could also see significant counterviolence by provocateurs sent in as a response to whatever Trump does and even armed conflict between ICE and state or local law enforcement in blue cities. Trump will use the violence to justify deploying the military under such circumstances, which is why we have to overdeploy ourselves to keep it all non-violent on our side.

I would also make sure to have a political strategy for when Trump and Johnson try to obstruct the new Democratic Congressmen and Senators from being sworn in, not just his targeting of the Georgia Senators. For example, you know that if Talarico wins Paxton will not concede and Trump will try to install him. Johnson told an audience of MAGA Congressmen at a meeting last month that if they lose, they are going to jail. He vowed to them, "I am your protection." So the plan to suspend Congress and purge their enemies on the Reichstag Fire model is live and operational.They are telling us about their intentions.

The point I have been making is that Trump knows that if they lose both Houses he will likely be impeached again, and he with all of his top cronies prosecuted for a vast number of crimes, both for those in the past and more recently. The entirety of the Project 2025 apparatus, their think tanks and legal foundations, their corporate benefactors, can thus all be rendered vulnerable.

He is prepared to launch a civil war to survive personally. There is nothing he wouldn't do. It will be a mega-January 6th on steroids in which he'll attempt to deploy a combo of military, federal law enforcement, and his armed white supremacist militias at the polls, the state houses, and in the streets. That along with canceling mail-in votes and shredding Democratic ballots.

We should be organizing for landslide victories where we can in order to remove all doubt, not winning by a hair in close races. That depends on creative new kinds of campaign outreach, expanded operations for getting people to the polls safely through a huge turnout. The logistics of bringing voters to the polls are complicated now in places like Houston due to GOP redistricting making them farther away, and we will have to be resourceful.

We will need the full gamut of election security, with the biggest possible polling place presence by volunteers nearby to work with local police to prevent voter intimidation or violence. That will depend mostly on the level of courage and commitment by the campaign volunteers and whether they get cooperation. If I were there organizing I would be visiting every police chief and County Sheriff to talk to them in advance and get a reading on where they stand, to know what we are dealing with. Law enforcement in general voted for Trump. We don't know if they will side with his goons at the polls or not, and we should find out now, not leaving it to chance. (We'll get almost no cooperation in hard red states unless the cities have blue mayors.)

We also should be laying groundwork to launch a nationwide general strike and shut the country down if he does any these things. If I were in leadership at the DNC I would be meeting with the heads of every union and constituency-based organization to make plans. Trump should fear a US market crash and financial chaos if he voids elections and refuses to swear in the Democrats who won. Especially if he tries to jail Democratic leaders for sedition because they are all “communist terrorists,” and fills up detention centers with campaign activists and protesters.

Remember, we are dealing with a literal maniac with dementia and a Hitler-level cult of loyalty in which they are fully capable of doing the worst you could imagine. There will be violence. There will also be a fracturing of both parties leadership in reaction to what he does, though Trump obviously exercises great control over the GOP. His grip has weakened recently but we can't say whether or not he will have willing accomplices everywhere. There are other Brad Raffensbergers out there.

The big question mark is will the military follow orders to shoot or mass arrest their fellow Americans? Have Trump and Hegseth succeeded in purging the disloyal ones at the top? Is there still enough opposition in our national security establishment to rein him in? We don't know, that is the honest answer.

And what will the American people do? Will they be passive and give up, or retaliate against violence with more violence, or optimally be part of organizing something as a strategy which is effective and doesn’t play into their hands.

First is generating the landslide. Second is protecting the voters. Third is legally defending our vote. Fourth will be our political response when they go ahead and void elections, including if necessary a nationwide general strike. Those are the things we can control, with the military being the wild card in all of this.

Blue state Governors and Mayors must be organized to arrest ICE agents at the polls and deploy their state National Guards to arrest white supremacist armed groups trying to act as "election integrity" vigilantes. The Governors of California, Illinois, New York, Minnesota and Pennsylvania in particular will have to lead the way on this and coordinate their actions.

GOP poll workers turning away minority voters based on race or gender must be arrested by local police.

It's not going to be an election. It's going to be a war, because they really are Nazis and their Führer, who sees roughly half of American voters as his mortal enemy, is insane. Our worst response would be to just send in the lawyers and data analysts and make that our strategy. The outcome will depend on a combination of all forms of effective non-violent and constitutional actions, driven by “People Power.”

There is no point in sugar coating any of it. You will see Trump on TV tomorrow night in all of his psychotic hallucinatory malignant glory, and he will be telling all of us what his plan is to end free elections in America, in his typical dogwhistle Trumpspeak.

Nothing, absolutely zero about this midterm election will look like anything which has come before it. We had better get our asses in gear now.

(Photo collage: top, Pickett's Charge, a painting of Battle Of Gettysburg. Bottom, January 6th)

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Enjoy the ride one life to live

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“The liberation of the human mind has been best furthered by gay fellows who heaved dead cats into sanctuaries. …” - H.L. Mencken

[Alive On All Channels]

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Star ceilings get their name from the clusters of stars painted or stamped in natural rock shelters. The stars are similar in shape, each an equal-armed cross, but may vary in size and color, black, red, or white, occasionally orange, yellow, or green. Some cave ceilings have a single star; some have a hundred imprints or more. 

The stars are concentrated in the Canyon de Chelly area, but have been discovered throughout the Navajo heartland and the Four Corners area. Bernie hadn’t heard of any near Alamo, but here it was. The very place she’d admired in the photograph on Jones’s desk. The moonlight enabled her to see the cluster of black stars against the pale rock. She stood beneath the decorated overhang and closed her eyes a moment. The place reverberated with the power of the ancestors and the prayers and ceremonies that helped them stay strong.

Stargazer (Leaphorn & Chee, #24) by Anne Hillerman

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

[photo: David Dulop]

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I hope you get old. I hope time is heavy on your bones, draped over you like an embrace from God. I hope the backs of your hands become deep maps— Of all the places you have been. Dark stains where your fingers dipped into clay and dirt and mud. I hope you get old. I hope time fills your heart with joy and triumph. I hope you have enough obstacles to teach you character and empathy and enough challenges to bestow you with uniqueness. I hope pain shows you how strong you are and the value of a true friend. I hope you’ve been alone enough to know yourself. I hope you find quiet more than you find chaos. I hope you get old. That time wraps around your legs like a desperate lover. I hope you can look into the faces of people you have loved and cherished and that you leave behind echos of grief, Because you were loved in turn. I hope you give thanks for every waking moment, For what you have and for what you have not. I hope you get old. I hope you make things that last. I hope you’ve inspired people. I hope you’ve helped someone. I hope grace rests at your feet. I hope. You forgive everything, You did. Not Get Quite. Right.

[by Jann Arden]

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

“I don’t think the robots are taking over. I think the men who play with toys have taken over. And if we don't take the toys out of their hands, we're fools.”

— Ray Bradbury

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

“The things that mean something to you are incidental to them. Life, love, family, freedom, compassion, imagination, individuality—these are not understood in the same way. They are only possessions to steal from you to exert greater control. That is how mafias operate, and you live in a mafia state in a mafia world headed for the mother of all mergers. In a global autocracy, fear and foreboding transcend borders, hovering over the world like a black cloud. The cry of “what is happening?” is as raw in the United Kingdom and Hungary and Turkey and any other country lurching into authoritarian kleptocracy as it is in the United States.”

― Sarah Kendzior, They Knew: How a Culture of Conspiracy Keeps America Complacent

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Dan Eidsmoe :: Signaling for the DoorDash delivery.

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“I see you my planet, I see your exact rotation now on my floor—I will not close these eyes in this my planet...

I don’t want the moon and the stars, I want to lie here arms spread on your almost eternal turn and on the matter the turn takes-on as it is turned by that matter—Earth—as my mind lags yet is always on you,

how huge you carrying me are—and there is never hurry— and nothing will posit you as you carry the positors—as you carry the bottom of the river and its top and the clouds on its top, watery, weak, and the clouds one looks up to to see as they too turn—” ― Jorie Graham, [To] The Last [Be] Human

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

NYC

* * * *

“Maslow was challenging the fundamental premise of modern psychology; that we can devise accurate theories about human nature by studying the mentally ill or the statistically average. Among the specific traits of self-actualizers that he listed and briefly discussed were greater self-acceptance of others, autonomy, spontaneity, esthetic sensitivity, frequent mysticlike or transcendent experiences, a democratic rather than authoritarian outlook, and involvement in a cause or mission outside oneself. Self-actualizing people, too, seemed to possess a good-natured rather than a cruel sense of humor and an earnest desire to improve the lot of humanity. In addition, they tended to seek privacy and detach themselves from much of the petty and trivial socializing taking place around them.” Edward Hoffman, The Right to Be Human: A Biography of Abraham Maslow (via sumballein) [Alive On All Channels]

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

John H. Taylor

Official Washington keeps most presidents’ national security secrets for years. But if POTUS is stupid and incompetent, declassification may occur in real time. Thanks to The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan’s “Regime Change” and their talkative top-ranking sources, we know almost everything about how Trump made his appalling decision to attack Iran. Someone even leaked the reporters seating charts for successive meetings in the White House situation room.

Haberman and Swan reveal that most knew a regime change war would probably fail. Trump’s legacy-watching minions are a little over two years from the job market. When the president has massacred thousands of people in order to make the United States’ strategic position worse, you want to make sure everyone knows you were against it. Of course they let Trump do it anyway. The world now bears the brunt of the gut-trusting ignoramus’s staggering missteps. Iran continues to confound Trump diplomatically and tactically. He is again threatening war crimes against non-military targets and publicly musing about a bloody ground invasion.

Trump was asked once to name his favorite book. He couldn't. It may be he never finished one. So I’m pretty sure he hasn’t read “Regime Change.” It’s easy to imagine that his aides haven’t told him all the details. It might make him mad how everyone’s butt is covered except his. Vance. Rubio. The director of national intelligence, John Radcliffe. The top generals. Almost everyone focused on the substance knew that a quagmire beckoned. His political aides left deep thought to others. Potty mouth PR aide Steven Cheung said that whatever decision Trump made would be the right one. Chief of staff Susie Wiles kept her own counsel and her job.

We even know how credulous Trump was when Netanyahu seduced him with promises of regime change. Trump thought it would be just like Venezuela. Rubio thought Israel’s pitch was BS. The worse the disaster, the happier Rubio will be that his curse is on the record. But Maggie and Jonathan’s sources stuck a little knife in little Marco. “Rubio did not forcefully argue his case in front of Trump,” they write. Vance gets credit for being against the war and having the guts to let Trump know it. Those tending his reputation, perhaps Vance himself, make clear that he knew Trump was underrating the risk of leaving Iran in control of the Strait of Hormuz.

Based on the text, one might guess that a major source was the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Dan Caine. The subtlety of his analysis, the stress on his not being a Trump loyalist, his observation that Trump had a tendency not to understand the nuances fully — all these details can only have come from him or someone close to him. In the days leading up to the March attack, Axios and the Times reported that Caine had cautioned Trump not to be too optimistic and had expressed concern about the war using up materiel the U.S. might need in other theaters. Those reports upset him. Yet “Regime Change” has tons more detail about Caine’s thinking. He could be protecting his reputation, protecting the military, warning us, as his predecessor did, that Trump is unfit, or all three. Either way, regime change can’t come too soon, in Iran or here. (Photo: Wiles and Caine; White House Photo)

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

John L Bush 

The Forever War Gets Scary

But I'm not talking about bombs and drones

PAUL KRUGMAN

JUL 15

The war with Iran has just reached a very scary phase, and I’m not talking about the bombs and the drones. Hi, Paul Krugman here, doing a brief podcast instead of a full post, because I actually spent the day with friends and doing other things, and this is a quicker alternative.

If you’re following the news, you know that the sort-of ceasefire with Iran has been called off. Trump has reinstated the blockade. The Iranians are back to hitting things with their drones and missiles.

The U.S. position has been wildly erratic. First, Trump said he was going to impose a 20% toll on all shipping, basically turning the Strait of Hormuz into a U.S. toll booth, which would have been wildly illegal and irresponsible, aside from being impossible. Now he says, no, he’s going to demand that countries invest in the United States, which is also actually wildly illegal. But in any case, it’s never going to happen.

And yet, this is extremely scary. The reason to be afraid is not that I think the war is going to come to America. It’s not even that I think the United States is going to seriously try to occupy Iran. We don’t have the troops. We don’t have the missiles. Trump depleted a large share of our weaponry in the course of his failed war so far. So this is likely going to be punitive strikes, maybe some war crimes along the way, but that’s all.

But what is really frightening here is that it does appear as if Trump has given up on trying to extract something that looks like victory. If we go back just a few days ago, it appeared that what was going to happen was that Trump was going to de facto pull out, give upon the project, take advantage of falling oil prices because the strait was sort of kind of open — and try to spin the story about this was truly, this was actually an American victory and the economy is great and look at the stock market.

And, you know, just it was a little bit — more than a little bit —stupid and doomed. It was also kind of amazing because a serious attempt to end the conflict would have required facing up to reality, saying, OK, this war didn’t go well, but America remains great. Sorry about that.

But that was apparently not something Trump emotionally could bring himself to do. He just cannot admit that this venture failed. He can never admit that anything failed. We’re going to be searching for the saboteurs of the reflecting pool for the remainder of his presidency.

This is a change in strategy that is ominous because what is Trump’s plan for the midterm elections? Here the idea presumably was that there would be enough economic success and people would have sufficiently short memories that they would possibly give Trump credit for opening the Strait of Hormuz, but in any case have put the gas price shock and the whole disruption surrounding the war behind them. And be ready to start admitting that this is the golden age that Trump and company keep on claiming it is.

Now that’s all off. Now it’s just we’re going to bomb Iran. No clear strategy there, but we’re not going to even pretend that things are okay. We’re going to blockade them, which actually has a little bit more leverage, but no hint that anything might be resolved in a way that would help Republican chances in the midterms. So what is going to happen?

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that just as Trump essentially gives up, not gives up in the sense of abandoning his war, but gives up on trying to achieve anything he can even spin as a positive outcome, that we now have an announcement that this Thursday he’s going to have a primetime speech, which reports say is going to be about election fraud in 2020. Some reports hinting that he might try to declare the two Democratic senators from Georgia somehow illegitimate.

Okay, that’s not going to actually work. And nobody’s going to be convinced by the claim that he actually won the 2020 election. But what is happening is that effectively he’s setting up the pretext, the groundwork for massive interference in the vote this November. That we’re basically seeing the stage set for some kind of attempt to block fair elections, maybe block elections entirely.

I don’t know how this is going to play out. But we are really now at the point where it’s pretty clear that Trump and the people around him have given up on actually winning the election. They’ve decided instead that somecombination of propaganda, misinformation, disinformation, and possibly massive illegality is their way forward.

And don’t say they wouldn’t do that. That has been famous last words every step of the way. The proposition that there were some things that even Trump and company would not do has been the best way to be wrong about everything, every step of the Trump administration.

So in a peculiar way, the fact that Trump is back to bombing Iran is really bad news, not because of the bombs. Yes, it’s terrible and all that, But not because I have any real fear that America is going to be at risk from a foreign power, but because I think it signals an enormous risk to us from our own president, our own government.

Be afraid, be very afraid.

And take care.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

David Dark

"The same reason we make babies participate in active shooter drills at their schools: because conservative white Christians have betrayed their baptism and the gospel of Jesus in order to give their full-throated allegiance to an idolatrous death cult."