cage match

What Smart People Are Saying


POST 1294

Your Sunday Review of Commentary

From Inae Oh of Mother Jones:

Anyway, back to negotiations with Iran—and the Obama-era inspections that Trump broke and are now apparently returning. Anyone else see a theme here?

The big mouth spews his demeaning accusations, he spews his lies, then he at last finds out he really can’t do any better. Or he makes things far worse. For some reason he doesn’t spew that.

Also from Mother Jones is a piece by Dan Friedman and Amanda Moore explaining the fetid pond apocalypse besetting the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, Trump Is Losing His War On Algae. This is a truly astonishing piece displaying Trump’s finest skill: everything he touches dies. Maybe we should wrench his little hands off our country.

As if that isn’t enough bad news about Trump’s “my name on everything” mania, read the piece from the Washington Post entitled, A dead duck was seen in the Reflecting Pool. Then two more were found nearby. That Trump Reflecting debacle is yet another of his “Fire, Ready, Aim,” narcissistic and thoughtless acts, just like putting his name of the Kennedy Center.

Now he claims that “radical left lunatics” vandalized the Reflecting Pool. He always needs a villain to blame for his constant failures and he’s handling this one just like he handles his 2020 election loss. He and his critical-thinking-impaired fawners still claim that the election was stolen by fraudulent votes of immigrants, voting machines that switched votes and the rest. The voting loss and the Reflecting Pool disaster are the same, in that he makes fantabulous accusations and never offers any evidence to support his hollow claims because there isn’t any.

This is exactly like his brain-free war against Iran. No forethought, no plan. no reason. He just blasts away and lets the destruction reign supreme. Watch for his long list of people to blame for that war failure, too. He has the vermin, his imaginary far left terrorists, the worst of the worst brown skin immigrants and more to cruelly blame. He just can’t show any of them to you or connect them to his failure, again because there aren’t any. Like Inae Oh asked, “Anyone else see a theme here?”

Speaking of no forethought, plan or reason, read this from Thom Hartmann’s Post of June 23.

On the morning of February 28th, the first day of Donald Trump’s war on Iran, the children of the Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school in the southern Iranian town of Minab were at their desks a little after ten o’clock when the missiles arrived. The name of the school means “The Good Tree.”

By the time the dust settled, as many as 175 people were dead, most of them girls between the ages of seven and twelve. Iran’s confirmed count came to around 155, and the list its state broadcaster released documents dozens of dead little boys, dozens of dead little girls, more than two dozen dead teachers, several dead parents, a dead school bus driver, and a dead pharmacy technician from the clinic next door.

Not oddly, I have not heard an apology from the Murderer-In-Chief for his killing of those little girls and the rest. What Trump did say when questioned about what happened was, “I don’t know about that. Maybe ask Pete.” That’s Pete Hegseth, his blundering Secretary of Defense. If you have evidence of an actual apology from Trump, an acknowledgment of his mistake, any form of accepting responsibility for the murders of those little kids, please post a link to it in the Comments section below. I don’t expect much help with that request.

Now from Rick Wilson’s post, Trump Trashes Washington:

The once beautiful Ellipse. It’s your park. Click to see a full perspective on Trump’s destruction.

President’s Park South [i.e., the Ellipse]. The same patch of ground he packed in 2021 with the crowd of angry and deluded Trumphadis that he aimed at the Capitol like a loaded weapon. When the [gladiator] party left [last Sunday], it left the park looking like Woodstock ‘99 in a drought, a brown wasteland with a few sad islands of green hanging on. Scotts’ Miracle-Gro tossed in a million bucks and a “proprietary grass blend,” which is corporate for “we’ll figure it out.”

The Park Service paperwork about hauling off the [gladiator stadium] equipment somehow forgot to mention restoring the lawn. Nobody has said who fixes the Ellipse, or when, or with what. It just sits there, scorched, a public park burned down for one night of an 80-year-old man watching younger men hit each other for his amusement.

You really should read Wilson’s entire piece for a full perspective on what actually happened.

Finally, read Morgan Freeman’s (yes, that Morgan Freeman) post, Trump’s $500+ Billion Surrender Disguised as Victory: The Man Who Keeps Losing While Taking Victory Laps.

Since this war began, Trump has been on an endless victory lap. He told us Iran had “no military left.” No navy. No air force. No anti-aircraft capability. “Totally wiped out.” Then Iran attacked ships in the Strait of Hormuz anyway. [Trump] said the Strait was under total control. Then they hit vessels and threatened the critical shipping lane again. He said the war was finished. Then reality laughed in his face.

This is the Trump pattern: Start a war with maximum chest-thumping, declare victory 20 times, then act surprised when the enemy he claimed was destroyed keeps fighting. How many times can one man claim he “won” the same war before even his own supporters get tired of the bullshit?

Reminds me of Dubya’s “Mission Accomplished” banner when the “mission” would not be completed for almost 9 more years. That’s a lot of warring and a lot of phony bluster without the mission being completed.

Trump is unable to apologize, accept accountability, say he was wrong, back up or back down. That isn’t leadership; it’s cowardly insanity. Read Freeman’s post.

All of Trump’s ruination could have and should have been checked by those with the power to stop it, including the enslaved legislators missing their backbones and millions who, perhaps blindly, voted for it.

Conservatism is just this side of dead, all but a sliver of it murdered by the selfish and the violent. There remain only a few lame and gravely wounded conservatives, straggling along, leaning on tree branch crutches like the remnants of the Confederate army after the shooting stopped. We actually need the decent and honest ones among them to come home. We need them to step up to help save this shaken and endangered experiment in freedom, this last, best hope.

If you look hard to the horizon, maybe squint just a bit, you can see the possibility still glowing. It’s time to saddle up and ride to it, to capture it and bring it home. While we still can.

The time for action is NOW!
Keep standing up,
speaking out
and taking action

Did someone forward this post to you? Welcome! Please subscribe – use the simple form above on the right. And pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!), because it’s going to take ALL OF US to get the job done.

And add your comments below to help us all to be better informed.

The Fine Print:

  1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not necessarily mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
  2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
  3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine, but I do wish that I could blame someone else. Glad to have your corrections.
  4. I am neither offered nor do I accept funding of any type from candidates, online blabbers, organizations with or without any position or opinion or from any other origin other than from my own meager resources.
  5. Book links to Amazon or Barnes & Noble are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.
  6. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source material.
  7. Do not look to these posts for “both sides” idiocy. I don’t have life to waste on such foolishness, such disingenuous nonsense and you shouldn’t either. You can find “both sides” misdirection in any cowardly publication. I post what I believe to be true, sarcasm and snark sometimes excepted. I make no pretense nor allow any space for the idiocy of insisting views to be somehow balanced for reporting or opinion presentation fairness, because doing so would be grossly unfair and of no value.
  8. If you disagree with anything I write, if you think I’m inappropriately biased, puff up your courage and put it in the Comments section. But see Point #9 below. On the other hand, let’s agree that I, like you, am biased.
  9. Comments offered by readers, whether in agreement with my opinions or opposing, are encouraged and greatly appreciated. All comments are reviewed prior to going live. I reserve the right to edit for readability, punctuation, typos, voluntary idiocy and to exclude those comments I deem inappropriate or offensive solely for someone taking the opportunity to be offensive. It’s my post, my rules.
  10. We do not sell, give away, lend, share or otherwise allow the disclosure of the identity of our subscribers or of their information. Never have, never will. That should not have to be said, but the times have taught us that the words do need to be declared. At the last, all we can cling to is trust in one another.
  11. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine. Unless it’s a guest essay, in which case, blame the guest.

Click me

JA


Copyright 2026 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

You Need To See This


POST 1290

See It Now

Most of us are primarily visual creatures which can lead to missing important things that we can’t put our eyeballs on, so let’s start with something that is visual.

Here’s a pair of pictures I found in Steve Schmidt’s post of June 1 of the dignified before and the dreadful now of the White House.

.

Here is how Schmidt described Trump in this context:

He has debased the People’s House with the aesthetic sensibilities of a pimp turned bankrupt casino operator and reality television performer, who confuses excess for greatness and spectacle for dignity.

The classically noble East Wing is gone. Jackie Kennedy’s beautiful rose garden is gone. Instead of the grand sweep of the White House lawn there is a slab of pavement and a structure for crude and violent cage matches that goes far beyond offensively stupid. We see all that.

There is tasteless gold leaf all over the Oval Office. There is a tasteless, useless, ostentatious ballroom being built to dwarf and debase the greatest symbol of freedom and democracy in the world. All dignity is gone.

We see all that and more. It’s visual. But what about the parts of America that are being desecrated and for which there is no specific visual that alarms us to the harm being done?

Can’t See It Quite as Well

Like the wanton cruelty of ICE thugs, those violence dispensers, rounding up our citizens and immigrants like cattle. We see that much of their savagery, but we don’t see the brutality done to people inside those hideous, for profit prisons.

Like the self-debasement of the Department of Justice.

Like the gutting of our national security agencies that have kept us safe.

Like the stripping and contamination of our public healthcare system and of our food safety system, putting every one of us in danger.

Like the incalculable brutality done to our moral compass.

Those aren’t as visual but they are here and abasing us and our nation nonetheless. They are as real as Trump’s galactically stupid war, which, again, we don’t see but is as damaging to us as anything we do see. It’s up to us to keep them in focus and to be actively on the right side of all those issues.

We are easily distracted from what’s important by spectacle, but there are still over a thousand women who were once little girls who were raped and trafficked and scarred for life and for whom there is scant justice. Trump was in the thick of the criminality, but there are few visuals and scant attention given to that sordid, illegal pit of wanton brutality. So far Trump’s cover up and his manipulated, spineless sycophantic Department of Justice has protected him and his distracting spectacles have blinded the eyes of most of us.

Trump has done over 3,700 insider stock trades just this year (about 25 per day) and has made billions from his soon-to-be-worthless crypto coin scams and his influence peddling grift. He’s caused major companies to cower and obey and has done permanent damage to the right of free speech. The only visual we have of that is the absence of Steven Colbert from late night television. But the harm is as debilitating as anything we can lay our eyes on.

The point is that there is an endless supply of harm being done to America, to our place of leadership in the world, to We The People and and to this “last, best hope of Earth.” Some is easy to see and some is much more difficult to eyeball and comprehend, but it’s no less awful than a deeply offensive gladiatorial cage match on the White House lawn.

What We Must See

You and I need to see all of it, because this violence to our values and our to our trust is systematically under assault. And at root, all we have to keep us strong, what we can cling to in this dangerous and threatening sea, is our invisible trust in one another.

The time for action is NOW!
Keep standing up,
speaking out
and taking action

Did someone forward this post to you? Welcome! Please subscribe – use the simple form above on the right. And pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe (IT’S A FREEBIE!), because it’s going to take ALL OF US to get the job done.

And add your comments below to help us all to be better informed.

The Fine Print:

  1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not necessarily mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
  2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
  3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine, but I do wish that I could blame someone else. Glad to have your corrections.
  4. I am neither offered nor do I accept funding of any type from candidates, online blabbers, organizations with or without any position or opinion or from any other origin other than from my own meager resources.
  5. Book links to Amazon or Barnes & Noble are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.
  6. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.
  7. Do not look to these posts for “both sides” idiocy. I don’t have life to waste on such foolishness, such disingenuous nonsense and you shouldn’t either. You can find “both sides” misdirection in any cowardly publication. I post what I believe to be true, sarcasm and snark sometimes excepted. I make no pretense nor allow any space for the idiocy of insisting views to be somehow balanced for reporting or opinion presentation fairness, because doing so would be grossly unfair.
  8. If you disagree with anything I write, if you think I’m inappropriately biased, puff up your courage and put it in the Comments section. But see Point #9 below. On the other hand, let’s agree that I, like you, am biased.
  9. Comments offered by readers, whether in agreement with my opinions or opposing, are encouraged and greatly appreciated. All comments are reviewed prior to going live. I reserve the right to edit for readability, punctuation, typos, voluntary idiocy and to exclude those comments I deem inappropriate or offensive solely for the opportunity to be offensive. It’s my post, my rules.
  10. We do not sell, give away, lend, share or otherwise allow the disclosure of the identity of our subscribers or of their information. Never have, never will. That should not have to be said, but the times have taught us that the words do need to be declared. At the last, all we can cling to is trust in one another.
  11. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine. Unless it’s a guest essay, in which case, blame the guest.

Click me

JA


Copyright 2026 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

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