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.
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:
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
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To The November 3, 2026
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One Response to What Smart People Are Saying
Kirk Landers June 28, 2026
The evolving theory in my age-addled brain: Trump and his henchmen have modeled this term after Putin’s dictatorial rule in Russia, from the graft and corruption to the elimination of competent government and military leaders. Then, like Putin, Trump engaged in a war he couldn’t win, even though victory seemed inevitable before the first shots were fired. To the arrogant and stupid, it seemed like shooting boaters on a pond.
If we ever survive this shitstorm, the one thing posterity will be able to thank Putin and Trump for is proving that invasive warfare is, for now, doomed. In Ukraine and Iran, priceless, high-tech weaponry is being defeated by cheap drones, hordes of which overpower cutting edge defense systems like so many rocks flung from David’s sling.
To be sure, the princes of war will develop counters to cheap drone warfare, but hopefully the current generation of humanity won’t be threatened again by invading forces fighting for the glorification and enrichment of their masters. That wish could be further enhanced if we try, convict, and guillotine every miserable bastard who helped orchestrate this treasonous version of American values and morality.