“Meanwhile, early this morning somewhere near Nashville…” John Buss, repeat1968,
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
The headlines are yet another mash-up of feelings run amok and logic gone awry. Another week has passed, and I don’t regret getting rid of cable and most forms of TV news. It’s just all one big tabloid of rampant stupidity. Here’s a great headline from The Intercept about our nation’s FBI Director. “Kash Patel Got Arrested for Public Urination After a Night of Drinking. The FBI director was arrested twice in his youth for alcohol-related incidents that he said were “not representative of my usual conduct.”
It’s another sign of why Republicans never do any due diligence when running committee hearings to affirm Federal Office holders in the highest offices in the nation. They’re a psychiatrist’ nightmare.
Eventually, some independent news agency catches up to them, and we read about it on the internet news stream, which is a hash of conspiracy theories and the hard work of a few good reporters. This story is reported by Trevor Aaronson.
FBI Director Kash Patel was twice arrested in incidents involving alcohol, once for public intoxication and once for public urination after leaving a bar, he admitted in a 2005 letter about disclosures on his Florida Bar application.
The letter obtained by The Intercept was part of Patel’s personnel file at the Miami-Dade Public Defender’s Office, where he once worked. The document, written “per instructions of my employer,” describes incidents of alcohol-related indiscretions not uncommon for those in their teens and twenties.
Two decades later, as Patel pushes back against allegations that drinking is impairing his leadership of the nation’s top law enforcement agency, these arrests show how Patel’s alcohol use has been subjected to scrutiny before in his professional life.
One incident recounted by Patel occurred in 2005, about four months before he wrote the letter. At the time, he was a law student at Pace University in New York celebrating with friends.
“We went to a few of the local bars and consumed some alcoholic drinks,” he wrote.
When they walked home, they made a bad decision.
“In a gross deviation from appropriate conduct, we attempted to relieve our bladders while walking home,” Patel said in the letter. “Before we could even do so, a police cruiser stopped the group. We were then arrested for public urination.”
Patel paid a fine after the incident, he wrote in the letter.
That’s still nothing compared to the stories we heard about dead animals and RFK Jr. This is from one of last week’s editions of The Guardian. I suppose I no longer need to explain that when I write these blog posts, they are surrounded by political cartoons, not beautiful artwork or actual photos anymore. I prefer animated Scheudenfrade. “RFK Jr once cut penis off ‘road-killed raccoon’ in New York, new book reveals. Health secretary in a diary entry said his kids were in the car as he cut off animal’s genitals in 2001 to ‘study them later’.”
Don’t worry, I’ll keep this brief. Buddha bless the entire Guardian staff that had to work on this one.
Robert F Kennedy Jr once cut the penis off a road-killed raccoon in an incident that is just one of several involving dead animals that the controversial US health secretary has been involved in.
A new book called RFK Jr: The Fall and Rise was published this week and reveals a diary entry for Kennedy that describes the prominent vaccine critic and leader of the “Make America healthy again” (Maha) movement stopping his car on a New York highway on 11 November 2001.
“I was standing in front of my parked car on I-684 cutting the penis out of a road killed raccoon, thinking about how weird some of my family members have turned out to be,” Kennedy wrote in the journal.
He added: “My kids waited patiently in the car.”
Isabel Vincent, the author of the new book, told People that he took the raccoon’s genitals so he could “study them later”.
Kennedy has long had a fascination for animal bodies, especially those he finds dead which he sometimes collects and studies. Elsewhere in the book, the author notes that a journalist traveling with Kennedy in Long Island in 2001 reported that he was fascinated by dead seagull corpses.
“I’d like to pick up some of these dead seagulls for my skull collection,” the book quotes Kennedy as saying, though his schedule on the day did not allow him to pause his journey and harvest the bones.
There have been numerous stories involving Kennedy and his treatment of dead animals.
Environmental groups were outraged over a story which revealed the former presidential candidate once severed the head of a washed-up deceased whale with a chainsaw and strapped it to his car’s roof. He also once confessed to dumping a dead bear cub in New York’s Central Park, attempting to make it look like the creature was killed by a bicyclist.
Meanwhile, hardworking, competent Federal officials get the nuisance-lawsuit treatment. This is from the Associated Press. “Justice Department drops criminal probe of Fed chair Powell, likely clearing the way for Warsh.” It’s really difficult to see how normal people stay sane and hold their offices in this environment.
The Justice Department has ended its investigation into Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell, clearing a major roadblock to the confirmation of Kevin Warsh as his successor.
U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeannine Pirro said on X on Friday that her office was ending its probe into the Fed’s extensive building renovations because the Fed’s inspector general would scrutinize them instead.
The move could lead to a swift confirmation vote by the Senate for Warsh, a former top Fed official whom President Donald Trump, a Republican, nominated in January to replace Powell. Powell’s term as chair ends May 15. Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, had said he would oppose Warsh until the investigation was resolved, effectively blocking his confirmation.
Republicans praised Warsh during a Tuesday hearing even as Democrats questioned his independence from Trump, the lack of transparency around some of his financial holdings, and what they said was his flip-flopping on interest rates. Still, Trump’s previous appointment to the Fed’s board of governors, Stephen Miran, was approved by the full Senate just 13 days after his nomination.
Investigation lacked evidence, a court says
The probe was among several undertaken by the Justice Department into Trump’s perceived adversaries. For months it had failed to gain traction as prosecutors struggled to articulate a basis to suspect criminal conduct. Other efforts by the department to prosecute Trump’s adversaries, including New York state Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, and former FBI Director James Comey, have also been unsuccessful.
A prosecutor handling the Powell case conceded at a closed-door court hearing in March that the government hadn’t found any evidence of a crime, and a judge subsequently quashed subpoenas issued to the Federal Reserve. The judge, James Boasberg, said prosecutors had produced “essentially zero evidence” to suspect Powell of a crime. Boasberg branded prosecutors’ justification for the subpoenas as “thin and unsubstantiated.”
Speaking of the Republican-based press, base, and politicians peddling one conspiracy theory after another, we see that Tucker Carlson may have gone one too far. I would have never thought that possible, given their depths of depravity and idiocy. This is from The Hill. The analysis and opinions are provided by Matt Lewis.”Trump lived by the conspiracy theory — now he pays the price.” This is basically a class in Karma 101.
A truism of life — right up there with “don’t read the comments” — is that what goes around comes around. Put another way, if you live by the sword, you will eventually die by the sword.
For more than a decade, these maxims didn’t seem to apply to President Trump — a man who once strongly suggested that Barack Obama had not been born in America, that the 2020 election was stolen, and that Haitian immigrants in Ohio were eating dogs and cats, just to name a few of his whoppers.
To be sure, Trump defenders will note that Democratic conspiracy theories (“Russia-gate,” for example) have also been aimed at Trump. Yes, but Trump legitimately invited scrutiny, and credible analyses rejected the most extreme conclusions anyway — for example, the existence of a “pee tape” or the notion that Russia somehow manipulated election results or otherwise rigged the 2016 election on Trump’s behalf.
Regardless, we have entered a new and possibly ironic phase of the timeline: Trump is finally discovering what it’s like to be on the losing end of a conspiracy theory.
Trump’s failure to release Epstein files was probably the inflection point. But more recently, the conspiratorial thinking about Trump has metastasized.
After Trump cast himself as Jesus on a Truth Social post, some corners of his own political ecosystem began speculating that he might instead be the Antichrist.
Tucker Carlson, for example, went on his podcast and asked, “Could this [Trump] be the Antichrist? Well, who knows? At least that’s my conclusion: Who knows?”
Others settled on demonic possession, which in internet discourse is considered the moderate position.
Michelle Goldberg, writing for the New York Times, has the Tucker story. This from her is an Op-Ed today. “The Conspiracy Theory Behind Tucker Carlson’s Apology.” Who among us ever thought the word apology and Tucker Carlson would appear in the same headline?” He must need money or something.
Tucker Carlson, you might have heard, is sorry. Early this week he posted a long conversation with his brother, Buckley, a former Trump speechwriter, in which they tried to make sense of the wreckage of the second Donald Trump presidency.
“We’re implicated in this, for sure,” said Tucker. A few moments later, he added: “It’s a moment to wrestle with our own consciences. You know, we’ll be tormented by it for a long time. I will be, and I want to say I’m sorry for misleading people.”
For those of us who have spent the past 10 years horror-struck at the mass delusion that Trump is a great man rather than a singularly rapacious and volatile charlatan, Carlson’s words might seem cathartic.
Over the past decade, conservatives have been angrily insisting that our mad emperor is elegantly clothed rather than obscenely naked. Now, finally, there’s growing agreement about his obvious unfitness. Indeed, some former Trump superfans are suddenly wondering if he might be the Antichrist.
I’m all for embracing converts to the anti-Trump cause. But if you listen to the dialogue between Tucker and his brother, it’s clear that rather than honestly reckoning with their role in America’s derangement, they’re developing a new conspiracy theory to explain it away.
Trump, they strongly imply, has been compromised — maybe even blackmailed and physically threatened — by Zionist or globalist forces seeking the deliberate destruction of the United States. On Tucker’s podcast, Buckley described a systematic undermining of America through the George Floyd protests, mass migration and now the war with Iran.
“It can’t be a confluence of random events,” Buckley said. “It is clearly by design. It’s clearly been a long-term plan.”
Can any of you come up with an explanation or some elucidation on WTF is going on here? My vote goes for the rats are leaving the ship. So what better mission for the insane Orange Caligula to come up with during these headlines than yet another way to fuck up yet another National Monument of the utmost historical importance?
Will the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool be his next act of cultural devastation? This is from NBC News. “Trump says he’ll renovate ‘filthy’ reflecting pool on National Mall. At an Oval Office event, the president said he’s planning to pour a new surface for the 2,000-foot reflecting pool, giving it an “American flag blue” hue.” Well, at least it isn’t piss gold. Kyla Guilfoil has the lede.
President Donald Trump touted plans Thursday to coat the Lincoln Memorial’s reflecting pool in an “American flag blue” hue, one of his latest construction efforts to refashion government buildings and monuments in Washington, D.C.
Trump said he was inspired to oversee renovations after a friend visited from Germany and noted its decay.
“He said, ‘it’s filthy, dirty. The water is disgusting looking. It’s not representative of the country,'” Trump recalled during a White House event Thursday on drug prices.
He posted a video speaking about the renovation of the more than 2,000-foot-long pool on Truth Social, shortly before his White House event with reporters.
“Right now, it’s got no water in it because it was in terrible shape. It was filthy, dirty, and it leaked like a sieve for many years,” Trump said in the video. “So I actually went over, went with Secret Service and a group of people, and I took, took a look at it.”
The president said there were initial plans to remove the granite in the pool and replace the stone, but that process would have cost $300 million and taken more than three years to complete.
Once again, I sit at my desk and shake my head. It’s a good thing day-drinking was never my thing.
What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?
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Democrats scored a big win last night as Virginia voters supported a redistricting plan favoring Democratic candidates. Trump’s plan to get Republican states to redistrict is coming back to bite him.
Virginia voters on Tuesday approved a Democratic redistricting plan that could allow the party to pick up as many as four new seats in the midterm elections, NBC News projects.
With 97% of the vote in, the “yes” vote on the ballot referendum held a narrow lead of 3 percentage points.
Virginia governor Abigail Spanberger
The special election is a major victory for Democrats as they seek to gain control of the narrowly divided House this fall. Democrats have now won statewide votes in California and Virginia to redraw congressional maps as part of a mid-decade redistricting arms race that began last year when President Donald Trump urged GOP-led states to alter their district lines.
Republicans had hoped they could insulate their three-seat House majority, but the result of the redistricting back and forth may end up being close to a wash.
The constitutional amendment that was on the Virginia ballot Tuesday sought to authorize the Democratic-controlled Legislature to bypass the state’s bipartisan redistricting commission and implement a new congressional map through the end of the decade.
Democrats’ proposed map is designed to leave just one solidly Republican district out of 11 in the state. Currently, Virginia is represented by six Democrats and five Republicans in the House.
After Republicans enacted new maps last year in Texas, Missouri and North Carolina, Virginia offered a rare, seat-rich prize for Democrats — who control the redistricting process in fewer states — as they sought to respond.
“Virginia just changed the trajectory of the 2026 midterms,” Virginia Democratic state House Speaker Don Scott said in a statement. “At a moment when Trump and his allies are trying to lock in power before voters have a say, Virginians stepped up and leveled the playing field for the entire country.”
In a statement, Gov. Abigail Spanberger said she was looking forward to campaigning with candidates to win the new newly drawn congressional seats and said she was committed to returning to the state’s bipartisan redistricting after the 2030 census.
There will likely be court challenges, but for now it’s looking good for Democrats. Now Republicans are talking about redistricting in Florida, but that may be problematic.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has said he intends to call a special session of the state Legislature to draw a new map, which could net Republicans as many as four or five seats.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis
But those efforts face a big hurdle, as the Florida Constitution includes anti-gerrymandering language that prohibits redistricting with the intent to favor political parties. Changing it would require a snap popular referendum that would need to reach a 60 percent threshold — a heavy lift with time running short.
“This war is not over. Next week, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is hauling the Florida legislature back into a special session to redraw maps because Republicans know they are on the verge of an epic defeat in November,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said Tuesday night in a statement.
“If Florida Republicans proceed with this illegal scheme, they will only create more prime pick-up opportunities for Democrats, just as they did with Trump’s gerrymander in Texas.”
Some Republicans have also expressed concern about redistricting backfiring on the GOP in the state.
Alex Alvarado, in an analysis for the Civic Data and Research Institute, wrote Republicans could potentially go from four to seven competitive seats, but warned, “Aggressive redistricting strategies aimed at maximizing Republican seat count may paradoxically increase Republican vulnerability to adverse electoral conditions.”
That’s particularly true when political winds are blowing hard against President Trump and his party.
Yes, Trump’s poll numbers keep getting worse.
The Guardian: Trump approval slips as polls show warning signs for Republicans ahead of midterms.
A trio of political polls indicate public approval of Donald Trump’s management of the US economy, immigration and the Iran conflict is slipping, flashing warning lights for Trump-aligned Republican candidates with six months to go until the US midterm elections.
Polls by Reuters-Ipsos poll, Strength in Numbers-Verasight and AP-NORC had the president’s approval rating hovering in the mid-30s, at 36%, 35% and 33% respectively, which are near his lowest numbers.
The poll showed that Trump’s handling of the economy has fallen to 30% approval, down from 38% in March, while 72% said the country is headed in the wrong direction, a figure unchanged since February. Just 23% approve of how he is handling the cost of living, while 76% disapprove.
A Reuters-IPSOS poll published on Wednesday also found that Trump’s signature migrant deportation policies could harm Republicans in November’s congressional elections: 52% of Americans said they were less likely to support a candidate who backs Trump’s approach to deportations, significantly more than the 42% who said they were more likely to support such a candidate.
That poll also found division on the issue was greater on the issue among non-aligned voters, or independents, with 57% saying they prefer a candidate who opposes Trump’s deportations and 32% preferring candidates who support Trump on the issue.
A bit more from the Guardian article:
The president’s immigration policy was supported by 50% of the country in the weeks after his January 2025 inauguration. But according to Reuters, only 40% currently approve. After the clashes between immigration enforcement agents and protesters early in the year, resulting in two protester deaths in Minneapolis, the administration has slowed its detention of immigrants.
An NBC News decision desk poll separately found that Trump’s personal approval rating has hit a second-term low, with 37% of adults approving of Trump’s performance as president, while 63% disapprove. Among those, 50% said they disapprove strongly.
Despite some signs of fracturing in Trump’s base, the NBC poll found 83% of Republicans still give Trump a positive approval rating, down 4 points from earlier this year – and his handling of the economy was strongly approved by 52% compared to 58% previously.
But the challenges faced by Republican candidates to defend their twin majorities in Congress are stark. The poll found that one-third of Americans believe the country is on the right track while two-thirds believe it is on the wrong track.
It was almost exactly this time 20 years ago that the bottom began to fall out on George W. Bush’s approval ratings. And as Bush’s numbers in most polls fell into the 30s for the first time in late winter and early spring, the culprit was clear: the Iraq war.
History could be repeating itself with President Donald Trump in 2026. Just swap Iraq with Iran.
Three new polls released Tuesday showed Trump’s approval rating in the mid-30s: 36% in a Reuters-Ipsos poll, 35% in a Strength in Numbers-Verasight poll and 33% in an AP-NORC poll. They follow an NBC News poll over the weekend that showed Trump hitting a new low of 37%.
Over the past month now, eight of nine quality polls tracked by CNN have shown Trump in the 30s.
The only exception was a Fox News poll pegging Trump at 41%, but even that showed Trump with his worst numbers in its polls since 2017.
Read Blake’s in-depth analysis at CNN if you’re interested. You can also read Paul Krugman’s Substack today for a deep dive on how Americans view Trump’s economy: Bad Vibes and Broken Promises.
On April 7, President Trump posted on Truth Social that Iran’s “whole civilization will die tonight,” capping a week of increasingly unhinged posts about the war in Iran (in another, the president told Iran’s leaders to “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell. … Praise be to Allah!”). The posts have drawn sharp criticism from political and media figures across the political spectrum, including prominent right-wing voices who backed Trump in 2024. Tucker Carlson called the threats against Iran’s civilian infrastructure a war crime and now says he regrets helping elect Trump, while Alex Jones, Megyn Kelly, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Theo Von, and Tim Dillon have also spoken out.
In Congress, Rep. John Larson has introduced 13 articles of impeachment against Trump, with more than 85 House members publicly backing either impeachment or invoking the 25th Amendment. All of which raises the question: how much of the general public wants Trump impeached? If even his most right-wing supporters are breaking away, support among the broader public is presumably pretty high.
A new Strength In Numbers/Verasight poll conducted April 10-14, 2026 finds 55% of U.S. adults say the House should vote to impeach Trump. 37% oppose, and 8% are unsure. A surprising percentage of both Republicans and Trump’s own 2024 voters say they would support impeachment if a vote were held today.
That net +18 verdict puts Trump in the neighborhood of the numbers Richard Nixon saw at the peak of the Watergate scandal in August 1974 — more on that comparison below. The toplines and crosstabs for this poll can be found on the Strength In Numbers website.l [….]
Our new poll shows that 55% of U.S. adults support the House voting to impeach Trump, while 37% oppose and 8% are unsure.
As for the president’s overall approval rating, there is a strong intensity gap in responses to our poll. Overall, 45% of all adults say they strongly support impeachment, while only 30% say they strongly oppose it. That is a 15-point intensity gap in favor of impeachment — the people who want Trump out are both more numerous and more committed than the people who want him to stay.
Read more analysis of these poll results and see charts at the link above.
Trump’s war is not going well and he is handling the failures badly. He can’t control himself from constantly posting on Truth Social, and apparently, he’s not in control f his behavior behind the scenes either.
When President Donald Trump learned that two American pilots had gone missing in Iran on Good Friday, he “screamed at aides for hours” and was then “kept out of the room” while his team was given minute-by-minute updates, according to a report.
An F-15 fighter jet was shot down over Iran on April 3, prompting a high-stakes rescue mission for the missing airmen. One crew member was swiftly rescued by U.S. forces after ejecting before the aircraft went down – but the second crew member spent more than 24 hours behind enemy lines before he was safely extracted.
“Trump screamed at aides for hours” after he was informed the fighter jet had been shot down and two airmen were missing, the outlet reported, citing a senior administration official. “Images of the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis — one of the biggest international policy failures of a presidency in recent times — had been looming large in his mind,” WSJ reported.
Over the next 24 hours, Trump’s most senior aides and administration officials, including Vice President JD Vance and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, dialed into the Situation Room to receive updates.
Trump was not included in the meeting but was kept updated “at meaningful moments” on the phone, according to the WSJ, citing a senior administration official.
“Aides kept the president out of the room as they got minute-by-minute updates because they believed his impatience wouldn’t be helpful,” the official told the newspaper.
Trump’s dementia is obviously getting worse, and the mainstream media won’t come out and say it. This is from Heather Cox Richardson’s report from yesterday:
Alayna Treene and Kevin Liptak of CNN reported last night that by the end of last week, negotiators for the U.S. and Iran appeared to be on the verge of hammering out an end to hostilities before the two-week ceasefire ends on Wednesday. Then Trump took to the media to crow that Iranian leaders had “agreed to everything,” including the removal of its enriched uranium, and that “Iran has agreed never to close the Strait of Hormuz again.” He promised that Iran had agreed to end its nuclear program forever and that talks “should go very quickly.” Trump declared the breakthrough was “A GREAT AND BRILLIANT DAY FOR THE WORLD!” and asked why media outlets questioning the alleged deal didn’t “just say, at the right time, JOB WELL DONE, MR. PRESIDENT?”
Iranian negotiators said Trump’s claims were false and that if he didn’t remove the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports, they would reclose the Strait of Hormuz they had just opened. “The Iranians didn’t appreciate [Trump] negotiating through social media and making it appear as if they had signed off on issues they hadn’t yet agreed to, and ones that aren’t popular with their people back home,” a source told Treene and Liptak.
Over the weekend, Iranians closed the strait and the U.S. fired on an Iranian vessel. On Sunday, even as two senior U.S. government officials were on television saying Vice President J.D. Vance would lead a new round of talks in Pakistan, Trump was on the phone telling reporters that he wouldn’t. On Monday, Trump told a reporter that Vance was in the air about to touch down in Pakistan just minutes before Vance’s motorcade arrived at the White House.
After Iranian officials said today they were not sure they would respond to U.S. positions or go to Pakistan for talks, Vance’s trip has been put on hold. Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Esmail Baghaei, complained of “contradictory messages, inconsistent behavior and unacceptable actions by the American side,” on Iran’s state media.
Trump is making everything worse with his childish impatience and his inability to stop posting nonsense and lies.
For his part, Trump blamed the Democrats for the chaos in U.S. diplomacy. “The Democrats are doing everything possible to hurt the very strong position we are in with respect to Iran,” his social media account posted yesterday. The post insisted “it will be done RIGHT, and we won’t let the Weak and Pathetic Democrats, TRAITORS ALL, who for years have been talking about the Dangers of Iran, and that something has to be done, but now, since I’m the one doing it, belittle the accomplishments of our Military and the Trump Administration. This is being perfectly executed, on the scale of Venezuela, just a bigger, more complex operation.”
As David S. Bernstein of Good Politics/Bad Politics noted, Trump’s account this morning reposted another account claiming that Iran was preparing to execute eight women, showing AI-generated images of them. Trump posted: “To the Iranian leaders who will soon be in negotiations with my representatives: I would greatly appreciate the release of these women. I am sure that they will respect the fact that you did so. Please do them no harm! Would be a great start to our negotiations!!!” As Bernstein put it: Trump urged Iran “to start peace negotiations by releasing non-existent, AI-generated women some rando posted about on X.”
He is an idiot! We can only hope to hang on until Democrats take over the House and Senate so we can impeach and remove him. Trump was on Truth Social again last night.
President Donald Trump spent the night firing off posts on his social media platform, repeatedly taking aim at both his domestic political enemies and the leaders of Iran.
The Truth Social rampage culminated in a flurry of 14 posts in less than an hour.
The meltdown came just days after it was revealed that Trump was kept out of a crisis room where they were handling the rescue of two U.S. airmen in Iran because the president had become too agitated.
“Iran doesn’t want the Strait of Hormuz closed, they want it open so they can make $500 Million Dollars a day,” the president wrote at 8.36 p.m, before arguing that Iran only wants the Strait closed because U.S. forces have it blockaded.
“People approached me four days ago, saying, ‘Sir, Iran wants to open up the Strait, immediately,’” Trump continued. “But if we do that, there can never be a Deal with Iran, unless we blow up the rest of their Country, their leaders included!”
He also ranted about non-Iran things; you can read more at The Daily Beast link. After spewing this nonsense, Trump apparently fell asleep for a few hours, and then began posting again.
Donald Trump was back on Truth Social before dawn Wednesday, hammering out four more posts in half an hour after barely six hours of sleep.
The 79-year-old president, whose nocturnal posting habits are well documented, signed off just after midnight following a 12-hour evening binge in which he spat out 19 posts—ripping into Iran, the Wall Street Journal, Democratic strategist James Carville, 81, and even the conservative-majority Supreme Court.
Picking up his tirade shortly before 6 a.m. Eastern, Trump opened with a TikTok titled “Endgame and Final Warning,” lifted from an account calling itself @devildoggae.
The clip shows U.S. historian Victor Davis Hanson delivering a solemn warning to the camera that Iran has “walked right into a noose” militarily and economically, leaving the regime with three options—go down in a blaze of glory, accept one-sided negotiations, or surrender outright—and warning that any nuclear deal is worthless unless America is willing to enforce it.
Minutes later, Trump posted a second clip captioned “Former Navy Seal Eli Crane Lights Into Mark Kelly Over His Treasonous Stunt.” The footage shows the bearded Crane, 46, an Arizona Republican and former SEAL, leaning over his microphone to grill a uniformed witness about the duty of service members to refuse unlawful orders—the very principle Kelly had invoked….
Trump then reposted two supporters who had quote-posted his own videos back at him. One, a self-described “Proud Deplorable” who writes under the handle @thewriterme and lists her interests as “America,” asked about Hanson’s screed: “What will happen next?”
Next was a post by Sami Nathaniel, a self-styled “Trump fan” posting under the handle @NathanielSami, who demanded: “Mark Kelly needs to be held accountable! LOCK HIM UP.!!!” [….]
Trump’s pre-dawn barrage suggested Iran is also still very much on the president’s mind. Before finally turning in last night, Trump had posted repeatedly about the Strait of Hormuz, claiming Tehran’s regime was “collapsing financially,” that its forces were “not getting paid,” and signing off with a self-pitying “SOS!!!”
If people who don’t use social media could see these Trump meltdowns, his polls would likely be even worse than they are now.
That’s all I have for today. I’ll post a few news links in the comment thread. Have a peaceful Wednesday.
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Just a side note, many of these videos will take you to YouTube to play them on that app…I’m giving y’all a heads up. Also if the instagram post do not embed, try reloading the page.
It makes me cry to listen to his songs, but I get so much joy from them…like his halftime performance at the Superbowl in 2007:
Prince could cover anyone and make it sound so damn good:
From lurid pranks and late-night drives, to why playing in the Revolution was like joining the marines – Prince’s friends and collaborators recount their memories of one of the music world’s most majestic and mercurial performerswww.theguardian.com/music/2026/a…
‘He couldn’t wait to show me his room full of fan mail’
Charles ‘Chazz’ Smith, cousin and original drummer in Grand Central
It seems only yesterday that we were kids and went to see Sly and the Family Stone playing at the Parade stadium, Minneapolis. We didn’t have tickets, but they tore the fence down so we ran in and ended up on the front row, with Sly looking down on us. After that, Prince said: “We’re gonna form a band, and you’re gonna be the drummer.” He had an upright piano in his basement and a TV in the wall, and we’d play TV themes such as The Man from UNCLE. Two weeks later his dad got him a guitar and the next day he came back playing Black Magic Woman by Santana, note for note. He was obsessed with being great at guitar, writing songs, playing rock, funk, ballads, everything.
‘He understood what it felt like to be a misfit’
André Cymone, childhood best friend and bandmate
It really doesn’t feel like 10 years. Sometimes it hits me harder than others. My wife and I were in Tucson recently and suddenly in an alley there was a big mural of him. It’s just so weird because I think: this is my childhood friend. We grew up eating bowls of cereal together.
We met in junior high, talked about music and wound up jamming. Then Prince turned up on my mother’s doorstep and lived with us for seven years. His parents had split up and so had mine. He didn’t talk much – you could put Prince in a headlock and you’d maybe squeeze three words out of him – but nobody understood me as an individual like he did. We realised that our fathers had played in the same band and wanted to blow them out of the water. We were brothers in the truest sense; it was a beautiful friendship and we pushed each other. Everything was a competition: music, dancing, basketball, girls. We started the band Grand Central in the cellar. Because we were in Minneapolis we’d listen to stuff from the west coast and the east coast – funk, rock, pop, jazz, avant garde – and kinda filtered it into a unique amalgamation. I played with him until after the Dirty Mind tour, by which point he’d found his own lane, which he did exquisitely.
He understood what it felt like to be a misfit and wanted to speak to misfits around the world: straight, gay, Black, white, Puerto Rican, whatever. He had more than his share of female relationships but was bold enough to think outside the box in ways most artists wouldn’t touch because they felt it would challenge their masculinity. So he’d write songs such as If I Was Your Girlfriend. He’d say to me: “I don’t want to specify whether I’m talking to a girl or a man. I want people to wonder. To create a mystery.” He wanted people to join his philosophical army and feel like they had an artist who spoke to them.
Please read the whole article at the Guardian…some good memories there.
A decade after his death, Prince’s legacy continues to shape MinneapolisTen years after his death, a new generation is discovering Prince’s impact through the classroom, culture and community memory.mndaily.com/arts-enterta…
Image by Dilan Parekh The 100-foot mural of Prince overlooking First Avenue in Minneapolis, on April 15, 2026. For fans of Prince, Minneapolis, the artist’s hometown, is an essential destination. Above, a mural of Prince, painted in 2022 by the street artist Hiero Veiga, in downtown Minneapolis.Credit…Caroline Yang for The New York Times
In Minneapolis, Following Prince’s ‘Purple Trail’This year is the 10th anniversary of the artist’s death. We made a pilgrimage to the city where he lived and worked.www.nytimes.com/2026/04/13/t…
A big celebration is planned in Minneapolis in June:
Prince Celebration 2026, marking the 10th anniversary of the Purple One’s passing, will descend upon Paisley Park and the heart of downtown Minneapolis from June 3 through June 7…rollingout.com/2026/04/15/p…
I will post a few more songs before I end with something new.
Yesterday, the Prince estate released a new song:
On the eve of the 10th anniversary of his passing, the Prince Estate just released an unreleased Prince track called "With This Tear" along with a video. #prince #withthistear im-musicmagazine.com/f/prince-est…
Nearly a decade after his death, new music from Prince is still emerging from the vault, and the latest is arriving with purpose. Out today via NPG Records in partnership with Legacy Recordings, “With This Tear” is a previously unreleased studio recording dating back to November 1991. Written, produced and entirely performed by Prince at his Minnesota studio Paisley Park, the track has been newly mixed and mastered by longtime collaborator Chris James.
Shortly after recording it, Prince passed “With This Tear” to Céline Dion, who released her own version in 1992. This newly unveiled original offers a direct window into his early-’90s creative period, when the aritst was particularly unfiltered and self-contained. Sonically, it trades the sweeping, adult-contemporary grandeur of Dion’s take for a sparse, piano-led arrangement with soft synth textures and subtle orchestration. The accompanying video underscores that intimacy, pairing the track with a montage of archival photos and performance footage spanning Prince’s life and career.
And with that, I close this open thread. Stay safe everyone.
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“Trump’s imaginary negotiations with Iran are going well…. for some.” John Buss, @repeat 1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
Today’s headlines about the series of ongoing crises created by Orange Caligula and his Cabinet of Imbeciles continue. It’s hard to miss the chaos surrounding the Iran War. This headline from The Bulwark says it all. “Trump’s Not Paying Attention to His Own War. But then again, do we want him to be?” There’s a good explanation for that, too.
As the Iran crisis spirals back out of control, it’s a big day for the president of the United States: His official schedule suggests he will have “Executive Time” all morning until 1:30 p.m., followed by a ninety-minute policy meeting and a closed-press session to sign executive orders. Heavy is the head.
Of course, these leaves Pete Hegseth pretty much on his own. That’s not a good thing either. This is from The New Republic today. “Does the SEC Care Whether Hegseth Is Killing Iranians To Get Rich? Senator Elizabeth Warren has requested an insider-trading probe of the defense secretary.” Timothy Noah has the lede.
Last month, I considered whether Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth used what he knew about the imminence of the Iran war to expand his stock portfolio with a little blood money (“Is Pete Hegseth Killing Iranians To Get Rich?”). That was the thrust of a shocking Financial Times report, based on three anonymous sources, that said Hegseth’s Morgan Stanley broker approached BlackRock in February about making a “multimillion-dollar investment in the asset manager’s Defense Industrials Active ETF.” An ETF, or exchange-traded fund, is a financial instrument comprised of multiple stocks and/or bonds that are bundled together and sold as a single stock.
According to the FT, Hegseth’s broker’s request was flagged internally at BlackRock, presumably because it so obviously threatened to trigger an insider-trading investigation. (I’m guessing the FT’s three sources all worked at BlackRock.) Ultimately, BlackRock denied the request on the technicality that its Defense Industrials Active ETF was not yet available to Morgan Stanley clients. Whether Hegseth found some other way to profit from the Iran war remains an open question. (A Pentagon spokesperson called the FT report “entirely false and fabricated” and denied that Hegseth or any Hegseth representative approached BlackRock.)
This is a matter that demands immediate investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission, and this morning Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, sent SEC chair Paul Atkins a letter requesting him to do just that.
It says a lot about our current scandal-rich environment that the FT story hasn’t dominated the news these past three weeks. But congressional Democrats certainly didn’t forget it. The day after the story broke, the House Committee on Government and Oversight Reform’s ranking member, Representative Robert Garcia of California, and the ranking member of its Subcommittee on Military and Foreign Affairs, Representative Suhas Subramanyam of Virginia, sent Hegseth a letter instructing him to preserve “all documents, records, and communications” on his financial transactions back to November 1, 2024. Regrettably, no investigation by their committee is likely, because its chair, James Comer of Kentucky, is perhaps the most shamelessly partisan hack in the entire Republican House majority. As I write, Comer is trying to justify Pam Bondi’s evading a committee subpoena in its Jeffrey Epstein investigation despite the fact he previously voted to hold the Clintons in contempt for defying committee subpoenas in the same investigation.
Two days after the FT story broke, Warren and three other Democratic members of the Senate Armed Services Committee pointed out, in a letter to Hegseth, that even in peacetime Hegseth would be prohibited by federal law “from owning any stock in Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, Huntington Ingalls, Boeing, RTX Corporation, and L3Harris Technologies.” Stakes in all of these companies were bundled into the ETF his broker reportedly tried to buy. It would be illegal for Hegseth to buy a Defense Industrials Active ETF because—duh—these are defense companies, and Hegseth is the Secretary of Defense.
In her new letter, Warren observes that failure on the SEC’s part to investigate the FT allegations would undermine “the confidence investors around the world place on the integrity of our markets.” Granted, Hegseth’s broker was not able, the FT reported, to complete the offending insider trade. But securities law, Warren points out, doesn’t just ban securities fraud; it also bans attempted securities fraud. The relevant language is “whoever knowingly executes, or attempts to execute” (italics mine) the fraud in question.
If the FT story is true (and I think probably it is), why would Hegseth do anything so very stupid? If I’m right that the FT’s three sources were all at BlackRock, it shouldn’t be hard for a determined investigator to locate them. Also, if Hegseth’s request was flagged internally at BlackRock, that probably means there’s a paper trail just waiting for some government official to subpoena. Even if Hegseth defied Garcia and tossed all communications with his broker into a bonfire, he’d still be screwed. This is not a difficult investigation. So, I ask again: How could Hegseth be so stupid?
He just is naturally stupid as well as drunk stupid. I think we all should now that now. NPR’s Liz Landers has this headline today. “Trump tells PBS News that ‘lots of bombs start going off’ if Iran ceasefire expires.”
The statement came during a phone call with White House correspondent Liz Landers focused on the Iran war, as a U.S. delegation is preparing for more peace talks.
Here are highlights from the call.
PBS News: What happens if the ceasefire expires tomorrow evening?
Trump: Then lots of bombs start going off.
Is Iran still participating in the talks that will be happening in Islamabad? Will they still be there?
I don’t know. I mean, they’re supposed to be there. We agreed to be there, although they say we didn’t. But no, it was set up. And we’ll see whether or not it’s there. If they’re not there, that’s fine too.
What do you want from the negotiating team in Islamabad?
No nuclear weapons. Very simple. Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. Very simple.
[Jared] Kushner has a lot of business and financial interests in the Middle East region, from Saudi Arabia and other countries. Is it appropriate for him to be negotiating there, do you think?
Well, he was there before, long time before, and he’s purely negotiating for the fact that they’re not going to have a nuclear weapon. Whether you have business or not, everybody knows that’s the right thing. He’s a very good negotiator …
So you see no …
No, I mean, we’re not negotiating anything other than the fact that they will not have a nuclear weapon. And that’s pretty basic when you get right down to it. So you know, that’s it. I sent an A-team. I sent my A-Team, he’s done an excellent job. He doesn’t participate with Saudi now, as you know. He’s taken… He doesn’t do that. He has a business but he doesn’t participate now.
Today’s Trump Toady meltdown goes to Kash Patel. This report at Politico is by Cheyanne M. Daniels. “Kash Patel files defamation lawsuit against The Atlantic. Patel is seeking $250 million in damages for an article that alleges he has a drinking problem.” The photos that accompany these articles are pretty damning so I can’t figure out what he thinks he’s doing with lawsuit other than follow his leader’s examples of frivolous losing lawsuits. “Kash Patel files defamation lawsuit against The Atlantic. Patel is seeking $250 million in damages for an article that alleges he has a drinking problem.”
Kash Patel has filed a defamation lawsuit against The Atlantic, accusing the magazine and its reporter Sarah Fitzpatrick of defamation over an article that alleged the FBI director has a drinking problem.
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Monday, refers to an article published April 17 that claims Patel has a habit of “excessive drinking and unexplained absences,” among other recurring behavioral patterns.
The suit argues that Fitzpatrick’s reporting is part of an ongoing pattern from The Atlantic to “damage Director Patel’s reputation and force him from office.”
“We stand by our reporting on Kash Patel, and we will vigorously defend The Atlantic and our journalists against this meritless lawsuit,” The Atlantic said.
The article, citing about two dozen anonymous sources, details Patel’s alleged “conspicuous inebriation and unexplained absences;” claims the director is often “away or unreachable, delaying time-sensitive decisions needed to advance investigations;” and that Patel is “deeply concerned that his job is in jeopardy.”
POLITICO has not independently corroborated The Atlantic’s reporting.
Patel’s lawsuit states that the unnamed sources had “obvious axes to grind,” and highlights that the White House, Department of Justice and Patel himself all denied the allegations in the article. It also alleges that a pre-publication letter sent to The Atlantic went “ignored.”
This headline in The Nationby Jeet Heer gave me the giggles. “We Could Do Worse Than Kash Patel Being a Drunken Buffoon. If the FBI director’s alleged intoxication prevents him from carrying out Trump’s agenda, that might not be such a bad thing.
Normally, SWAT teams rely on specialized “breaching equipment” to break down the doors in an emergency where criminals are hunkered down in a heavily fortified bunker. But last year, FBI agents reportedly almost used breaching equipment not to capture a dangerous lawbreaker but to try to wake up their boss, Kash Patel.
On Friday, Sarah Fitzpatrick, writing in The Atlantic, reported that the FBI director has frequently been so incapacitated by heavy drinking that he has been unable to do his job. According to Fitzpatrick, “On multiple occasions in the past year, members of his security detail had difficulty waking Patel because he was seemingly intoxicated…. A request for ‘breaching equipment’…was made last year because Patel had been unreachable behind locked doors.”
Fitzpatrick’s article, which is based on interviews with numerous government officials who were granted anonymity, paints a detailed and troubling portrait of a senior public official prone to “conspicuous inebriation and unexplained absences.” Fitzpatrick notes,
Several officials told me that Patel’s drinking has been a recurring source of concern across the government. They said that he is known to drink to the point of obvious intoxication, in many cases at the private club Ned’s in Washington, D.C., while in the presence of White House and other administration staff. He is also known to drink to excess at the Poodle Room, in Las Vegas, where he frequently spends parts of his weekends. Early in his tenure, meetings and briefings had to be rescheduled for later in the day as a result of his alcohol-fueled nights, six current and former officials and others familiar with Patel’s schedule told me.
Both the White House and Patel have disputed the entirety of Fitzpatrick’s reporting, and on Monday morning, Patel filed a $250 million defamation lawsuit against The Atlantic over her piece. But even before the Atlantic story, there was already ample public evidence that Patel is wildly unfit for the job. He has repeatedly damaged high-profile cases, such as the Charlie Kirk murder investigation, by making premature and false statements in an attempt to hog the media spotlight. He has also been accused of using a FBI jet for private business, including meetings with his girlfriend.
There is no question that Patel is a buffoon. The only factual uncertainty is whether he is an often-soused buffoon or a largely sober one.
If I represented the Atlantic, I’d lock in the earliest deposition date on the calendar. Call Patel’s bluff. He has zero interest in putting any of this under oath.
“As we await further escalation of Trump’s forever war, one of the members of his Liquor Cabinet hits the news circuit to defend his beseeched honorable service to our nation.” John Buss, @repeat1968
I leave this post on a hopeful note. This is from the New York Times‘ Nate Cohen. “Why a Democratic Senate, Once Unthinkable, Is a Real Possibility. Helped by a favorable national environment and strong candidate recruitment, Democrats are tied or ahead in four Republican-held seats, polls show.” It’s all in the numbers
At the start of the 2026 election cycle, the Senate looked far out of reach for the Democrats. The House always seemed competitive, but retaking the Senate would require flipping at least four Republican-held seats — including at least twoseats in states that President Trump won by double digits in 2024. In today’s polarized era, Democrats would need everything to break their way.
So far, everything is breaking the Democrats’ way. With Mr. Trump’s approval rating falling and inflation rising, along with the uncertainty of a war in the Middle East, it’s not hard to imagine a Democratic tsunami in November. A blue wave is not guaranteed, of course, and Democrats would not be assured to flip two reliably Republican states even if it were. But a feasible path for the party to win the Senate is coming into focus.
In recent polls, Democrats appear tied or ahead in four Republican-controlled seats — the number they would need to take the Senate. These include Maine and North Carolina, where the likely Democratic nominees hold clear leads, as well as Ohio and Alaska, where Democrats have recruited strong candidates in states Mr. Trump won by double digits in 2024. There are also signs that Republicans could be in danger in two more states where Mr. Trump won by double digits: Iowa and Texas.
Over the last few weeks, the betting markets have shifted to make the Senate a tossup, though some analysts haven’t gonequite so far. Whether the Senate is a tossup or not, it’s clearly competitive — and that’s something that might have been hard to imagine a year ago.
In the Trump era, Democratic Senate candidates haven’t had much success at winning in red states. They failed to flip vigorously contested seats in Texas, Tennessee and Montana in 2018 and 2020. And most Democratic red-state incumbents — including those in Florida, Indiana, North Dakota and Missouri — lost re-election. Today, every Democrat in the Senate represents a state that voted for Joe Biden in 2020.
Looking even further back, no party has managed to flip two states that leaned so much toward the other party since 2008. Only one such seat (Illinois in 2010) was flipped in a regularly scheduled election; two more flipped in memorable special elections (Massachusetts 2010 and Alabama 2017). Most of these victories took extraordinary circumstances, like a criminal conviction, a child molestation allegation or a bank seizure.
This time, Democrats aren’t benefiting from anything as unusual as a criminal conviction.
Instead, they’re counting on a favorable national political environment, strong candidates and the possibility that several of these states may not be quite as Republican-leaning as they seem.
Read more on all of these items on the links. My top suggestion is the Heer article on Hegseth. It would be nice to get an actual hearing on that during the midterms, especially combined with high gas prices.
What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?
I’m adding this and basically speechless. WTF does this mean? Bibi is running our country now?
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The Sky Dancing banner headline uses a snippet from a work by artist Tashi Mannox called 'Rainbow Study'. The work is described as a" study of typical Tibetan rainbow clouds, that feature in Thanka painting, temple decoration and silk brocades". dakinikat was immediately drawn to the image when trying to find stylized Tibetan Clouds to represent Sky Dancing. It is probably because Tashi's practice is similar to her own. His updated take on the clouds that fill the collection of traditional thankas is quite special.
You can find his work at his website by clicking on his logo below. He is also a calligraphy artist that uses important vajrayana syllables. We encourage you to visit his on line studio.
That’s still nothing compared to the stories we heard about dead animals and RFK Jr. This is from one of last week’s editions of 
Meanwhile, hardworking, competent Federal officials get the nuisance-lawsuit treatment. This is from the 
Speaking of the Republican-based press, base, and politicians peddling one conspiracy theory after another, we see that Tucker Carlson may have gone one too far. I would have never thought that possible, given their depths of depravity and idiocy. This is from 
Michelle Goldberg, writing for the 
Can any of you come up with an explanation or some elucidation on WTF is going on here? My vote goes for the rats are leaving the ship. So what better mission for the insane Orange Caligula to come up with during these headlines than yet another way to fuck up yet another National Monument of the utmost historical importance?
He just is naturally stupid as well as drunk stupid. I think we all should now that now. 
Today’s Trump Toady meltdown goes to Kash Patel. This report at 
This headline in 
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