FRIDAY, MARCH 27, 2026
Also, the fourth question POTUS was asked: We're back to the medical mission today! There's a whole lot of sitting around involved in such an excursion.
We may post later this afternoon. In the meantime, we recommend Colby Hall's opinion piece over at Mediaite. More precisely, we recommend the important question he raises:
OPINION
We’ve Stopped Noticing That Trump’s Cabinet Meetings Are Completely Insane
Here is a partial list of subjects covered by the President of the United States at Thursday’s cabinet meeting:
The obliteration of Iran’s navy. The TSA shutdown. A woman killed in Chicago. The Federal Reserve building renovation. The cost of Sharpie pens. Venezuelan oil revenue. King Charles’s cancer. Gavin Newsom’s self-reported learning disability. Cognitive tests. SCOTUS. The Kennedy Center. California high-speed rail. NATO’s failure to send ships. A thousand-dollar pen that didn’t write. The prime minister of the United Kingdom. Caravans. Sanctuary cities. The 25th Amendment. A joint venture with Venezuela. Drug smugglers who don’t watch television.
That was one meeting. Ninety-eight minutes. A wartime cabinet briefing...
That's the way the column starts. As Hall continues, he raises a very good question about ongoing press corps behavior—a question we think we've been answering over the past many months.
(And yes, we've noticed the rather strong language found at the end of that headline.)
Hall is asking a very important question; he's raising important concerns. Next week, we plan to return to what we regard as the central question now facing this failing nation:
We refer to the basic questions which seem to be obvious concerning the sitting president's health.
As we rush out the door today, we also offer you this:
After yesterday's "cabinet meeting," the president proceeded to spend the bulk of the 5 o'clock hour on the phone—on the phone with The Five!
He came on the line at 5:14. Presumably, the children could have asked any question they pleased.
That said, attention spans are remarkably short on this dimwitted "cable news" program. Believe it or not, after a bit of towel-snapping and some joking around, this was the fourth question asked:
WATTERS (3/26/26): But let me ask you about Iran. You've kind of suggested that we'd knocked out Ayatollah Junior. Have we—and did the CIA tell you that Ayatollah Junior is gay?
Is the new Ayatollah gay? He wanted to know about Iran, so that was the fourth question asked.
(For the record, no one ever asked the president to explain the overall purpose of the ongoing war. We aren't assuming that he couldn't have explained the purpose. We're just saying that nobody asked.)
All in all, it was an instructive 46 minutes. A nation which tolerates this imitation of life without a word of comment is a nation which finds itself in a very large volume of hurt.
There's more to be said about yesterday's show. But that was one star's first ask.
Go ahead—peruse Hall's piece! We disagree with him on one point, but he's raising important concerns.
What the fuck is going on? They have to invent a new fucking trophy to give to the drooling orange fuhrer every every fucking week and you ask if there is something wrong with King Chickenshit? LOL
ReplyDeleteI particularly liked Mike Johnson presenting it like he was rewarding a toddler.
DeleteHow’s that FIFA Peace prize working out?
DeleteAnd of course it had to be made of gold, because fuck us, what the fuck are we going to do about it.
DeleteSpeaking of peace, what the living fuck is this all about. There is so much fucking corruption we can't keep up with it.
Delete******************
https://democrats-judiciary.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/ranking-member-raskin-s-opening-statement-at-hearing-on-trump-s-politicization-of-patent-and-trademark-office
Ranking Member Raskin’s Opening Statement at Hearing on Trump’s Politicization of Patent and Trademark Office
Thanks, Chairman Issa.
Thank you, Director Squires for joining us. As head of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, your job is to promote stability in the markets for goods and services by protecting trademarks used in interstate commerce. In pursuit of this mission, the USPTO has for decades been removed from partisan political intrigue and favoritism. By keeping politics out, prior Presidents and USPTO Directors ensured that applicants had a fair and honest system to rely on.
That seemed to change last year. You and President Trump injected partisan politics into the USPTO. From working to strip trademark examiners of any right to collective bargaining, a right which they’ve enjoyed for decades, and firing the members of the patent and trademark oversight bodies, to refusing to respond to Congressional requests for information, your tenure seems to be threatening the traditional integrity and nonpolitical nature of our system.
You recently took an extraordinary and unprecedented action. Earlier this year, the USPTO itself filed trademark applications on behalf of Donald Trump’s ill-defined private global pet project: The Board of Peace.
President Trump has declared himself Chairman for Life of this elusive entity. He’s promised billions of dollars in U.S. taxpayer dollars to the Board although Congress has not voted a dollar for it and he has secured billions of dollars more from mostly corrupt foreign governments, including Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, UAE, Morocco, Bahrain, Qatar, Uzbekistan, and Kuwait.
Beyond that, there’s much we don’t know about this shadowy venture: basic corporate structure, whether it’s a registered entity anywhere in the U.S., who controls the billions of dollars in its bank accounts, what country those accounts are located in, who will conduct audits and oversight of the Board, or what the President intends to do with this massive secret slush fund while he is in office—and after he leaves.
Yet when the Board of Peace decided it wanted to secure a trademark for its name and logo—a move that should have required it to identify the legal entity that actually runs it and controls its billions of dollars—you stepped in. You personally filed the trademark applications allowing USPTO to stand in as a straw trademark holder, to cover up for this international slush fund that appears to put both billions of US taxpayer funds and billions in payments from foreign governments into the pocket of Chairman for Life Donald Trump. The President set up a Board that likely violates both the Foreign and Domestic Emoluments clauses and you’re helping him run the operation.
***************
How the fuck do these guys live with themselves.
Issa! Why you old car thief! 😂
Delete"How the fuck do these guys live with themselves." Quite easily. Go eat some cake.
DeleteNothing to see here:
ReplyDelete"But someone seems to have known that Trump was going to back down exactly when he did. CNBC reported later that day that at 6:49 a.m., the S&P 500 e-Mini futures trading on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange — the world’s largest derivatives marketplace for futures and options, — saw a “sharp and isolated jump in volume.” It also happened on the Barito Renewables Energy (BREN) and West Texas Intermediate May futures oil markets, where contracts valued at $580 million were sold. Bloomberg News analyzed trading on those markets during the same period of time over the previous five days; the average trading level was around 700 contracts. In a one-minute period on Monday — between 6:49 and 6:50 — about 6,200 contracts were traded.
The market was very quiet at the time. There was no news, no public chit-chat, nothing that would give rise to such a big move, but there it was. The only explanation that makes any sense is that someone knew that within 15 minutes Donald Trump was going to announce he was backing off his threats against Iran — and that the markets would surge on the news. (A White House spokesman called the implication “baseless.”)"
These fuckers are so nakedly corrupt.
Somerby continues pushing Colby Hall and Mediaite. Influencers gotta influence.
ReplyDeleteTrump called into Fox because he knew they wouldn't ask him anything out-of-bounds, so railing at them for not asking any inconvenient questions strikes me as imbecilic. Fox is State Media, as they say at Meidas Touch. The purpose of Fox is to spread propaganda, not present news or interrogate the president.
Somerby must understand this, so what game is he still playing when he pretends to praise Colby Hall for doing something courageous? We aren't children. No one is fooled by Somerby's charade... or Fox's. And no one thinks Colby Hall is saying anything new or meaningful when he points out the obvious.
Right. Somerby is an 'influencer'. He's making a ton off this website. You really nailed it.
DeleteWhat is your explanation for Somerby's recent enthusiasm over Colby Hall and Mediaite? The content doesn't justify his praise. Plus Somerby doesn't generally praise any media, and only says he agrees with conservative opinion writers at NY Times. Did they meet at a party and become good friends? Maybe they are offering a few bucks for everyone who visits Mediaite from Somerby's blog?
DeleteColby Hall may be making a ton off his new website. The question is why Somerby is helping him when he isn't a fanboy in general.
Somerby is useless when it comes to explaining politics or the media.
DeletePretending otherwise helps nobody.
"We disagree with him on one point, but he's raising important concerns."
ReplyDeleteWe are all raising important concerns. No one agrees with anyone 100%. Duh! How does that make Colby Hall so special?
The Trump Organization filed several previously unreported trademark applications last week in connection with America’s 250th anniversary celebration, all featuring the president’s name as a centerpiece of the highly-anticipated festivities.
ReplyDeleteThe trademarks were filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office by DTTM Operations LLC, which manages several other trademarks used by Trump and his businesses, over the last several days.
the orange abomination is just a fucking flag-waving patriotic son-of-a-whore, ain't he.
Tiedrich points out the sexism in Trump's reply to Dana Perino, as several others have elsewhere on the internet. Did Colby Hall happen to mention it? Somerby doesn't say.
ReplyDelete"Dana Perino: “I think it is alarming that we have not been able to see or hear from the Iranian people, and I imagine that is because their internet is shut down, and I think there is some general worry about them … I would never ask you to tell us something that is classified, but do you have an insight as to how they are doing? do they have drinking water? do they have food? it’s upsetting.”
Donny: “do you remember when we had lunch years ago in Trump Tower? you haven’t changed. you may be even better looking, okay?”
holy shit. Dana Perino comes as close to committing an actual journalism as anyone who accepts a paycheck from Fox News is allowed to — and all Donny can do in response is flirt. ugh. gross. shut the fuck up, you malignant toad."
Poor Bob seems to have lost it. He bizarrely say, "For the record, no one ever asked the president to explain the overall purpose of the ongoing war. We aren't assuming that he couldn't have explained the purpose."
ReplyDeleteThe President has said more times than Musk has dollars that the goal is that Iran not have nuclear weapons. You may or may not agree with this goal, but it could not be more clear. How in the world can anyone question whether Trump has explained the purpose of the war?
Interesting goal, considering Iran didn't have nuclear weapons prior to the war and in fact had stopped working towards them, since we know they had stopped their uranium enrichment.
DeleteThen there's this:
Following the killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Trump stated on Truth Social, "There will be no deal with Iran except UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!".
That will be coming...any minute now?
Totally obliterated you lying cunt troll.
DeleteI thought the orange abomination was working on the drapes for his ballroom, dickhead
DeleteHector - Iran flat-out told our negotiators that they were working toward nuclear weapons by enriching uranium far beyond the level needed for power plants. Iran said they had made considerable progress in that goal by having enough enriched uranium to be closer to building several nuclear bombs. Iran said it was non-negotiable that they would not give up their goal of getting nuclear weapons.
DeleteBTW even if Iran had stopped working toward nuclear weapons, they could start again. But, do we really know that Iran had stopped working toward nuclear weapons? How do we know this?
David makes all these demands sound so vivid, one might almost think he were there in the room with those negotiators. But he mentions no names and gives no sources for these claims. That makes it sound like a fairy-tale to me.
DeleteThis is as specious a reason to attack and now invade another country, as Trump's claim that Venezuela was smuggling fentanyl into the US via fishing boats.
I think Our Gracious Host was referring to the interview that took place on "The Five." None of the "news" personalities present asked about the war's objectives.
Deletehave you ever noticed that dickhead in Cal just completely ignores the fact that Iran had already agreed to not build nuclear weapons under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) ,
Deletewhich the ignorant Orange Mussolini tore up for no good reason.
King Orange Chickenshit has extended the deadline for when he will commit war crimes against Iran.
DeleteSo we attacked them because of the nuclear weapon threat and not because, as they stated, we were obligated to after the Israelis started the conflict and placed our assets at risk. It is so confusing dealing with liars.
DeleteTotally obliterated. Don't tell me the fat fuck was lying David! Dear Leader never lies!
DeleteDiC has come here so many times with links that contradict his comments that he is as reliable a source
Deleteas the orange abomination he worships.
Quaker - I assume Bob is correct, that none of the "news" personalities present asked about the war's objectives. But, why should they ask this question, when the objectives are clear?
Delete"Believe it or not, after a bit of towel-snapping and some joking around, this was the fourth question asked:
Delete"WATTERS (3/26/26):" [Question about the Ayatollah's sexual preference]
"Is the new Ayatollah gay? He wanted to know about Iran, so that was the fourth question asked.
"(For the record, no one ever asked the president to explain the overall purpose of the ongoing war..."
David, this doesn't sound like "assuming Bob is correct":
Delete"Poor Bob seems to have lost it. He bizarrely say, 'For the record, no one ever asked the president to explain the overall purpose of the ongoing war. '"
But if the purpose has been so clearly explained, summarize it for us, why doncha?
Delete"do we really know Iran had stopped working toward nuclear weapons? How do we know this?"
DeleteFor the third time: it was stated in testimony to Congress by the Trump-appointed Director of National Intelligence. It was the official assessment of the American intelligence community.
So there was absolutely no urgency to our attack. No imminent threat That part was simply made up.
"Iran flat-out told our negotiators that they were working toward nuclear weapons by enriching uranium far beyond the level needed for power plants."
No they didn't. Remember that our representative at the pre-war negotiations with Iran was Steve Witkoff, a real estate developer. He knows nothing about nuclear weapons development and has been criticized for making numerous mistakes during the negotiations, among them:
"Witkoff claimed Iranian negotiators "proudly" boasted of having enough 60 percent enriched uranium for 11 nuclear bombs. Third parties present at the negotiations reportedly disputed this, stating that Iran was offering to "down-blend" this material as part of a deal, not boasting about it as a threat."
Donny Littlehands was specifically elected to entrust sensitive life and death negotiations to his slum lord son-in-law who couldn’t get a fucking security clearance in 2017,
Deleteand a real estate developer. Everyone knows this.
Losing a war to Iran is something only Republicans could pull off.
Delete"BTW even if Iran had stopped working toward nuclear weapons, they could start again."
DeleteSo destroy it and ruin the global economic aggregate just in case. Does your wife still wear her "I'm with stupid" tee-shirt when she's walking around town with you in tow?
"For the third time: [That Iran wasn't working on nukes] was stated in testimony to Congress by the Trump-appointed Director of National Intelligence. It was the official assessment of the American intelligence community.
Delete"So there was absolutely no urgency to our attack. No imminent threat That part was simply made up."
What is fascinating is that these irrefutable facts simply disappear -- evaporate! -- from the minds of members of the Red tribe.
Trump signature to appear on US currency, ending 165-year tradition
ReplyDeleteHow are the fucking guard rails holding out?
Madness, fucking madness.
I wonder how much it is going to cost to remove that money from circulation after he is removed from office.
DeleteAre you assumimg thd US Dollar will have any value when that happens?
DeleteThe attack by the Achaeans on Troy to retrieve Helen occurred during the Bronze Age. Troy was thought to exist in Turkey. Homer wrote the Iliad hundreds of years later (if Homer himself existed). What Somerby doesn't tell us is that following the fall of Troy, there was climate change that caused an extinction in the area, followed by a Dark Ages that lastest until Greek civilization rebounded in the time of Plato, Socrates and Aristotle, the classical age (Iron Age). That means there was a discontinuity of Greek culture and beliefs from Homer's time to Aristotle's. Somerby also skips the ancient period when people worshipped female deities who were considered part of the Earth (fertility, abundance, life). That has little to do with Somerby's selective focus on brutal male hand-to-hand combat and warfare. There were so many times and people who were important in Greece beyond the limited scope of Somerby's Homer-worship and fascination with the "sexual politics" of the Iliad.
ReplyDeleteSome readers here do not understand how much is communicated by what people selectively say and what they ignore. The modern history of Greece is about being conquered by Macedonians (Alexander the Great), being absorbed by Rome in the Greco-Roman period, becoming part of the Ottoman Empire (whose leaders were Muslim), becoming independent after WWI (with the Ottoman collapse) and forming a nation out of Northern city-states and territories to become modern Greece. All of that is way more important than the Bronze and Dark Ages that are Somerby's odd focus. It is like deifying The Flintstones.
It does not surprise me that a man who treats Greek history and culture this way cannot make sense out of current politics, here in the US or anywhere else.
"All of that is way more important than the Bronze and Dark Ages that are Somerby's odd focus. It is like deifying The Flintstones."
DeleteThe Iliad is the beginning of western literature. Comparing it to the Flinttones is not so instructive.
And saying there was a discontinuity of Greek culture and beliefs from Homer's time until Aristotle's ignores Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripedes.
Mark Jacob, author of the Stop the Presses newsletter and a former editor at the Chicago Tribune, has been sounding the alarm for a while about the need for political reporters to be more bold and ambitious in the way they cover Trump.
ReplyDelete“People in the media are journalists, not psychologists. They’re used to covering facts, not fantasies,” he wrote last October. “So they don’t know how to react when Donald Trump says or does something that’s mentally deranged. Too often, they try to fit it into a rational frame of reference even though it’s irrational.”
Of course, Trump's manipulation of the media had begun decades earlier. Nowadays, the media are manipulating themselves. Instead of describing Trump as incoherent, meandering, confused, unhinged -- which would be accurate -- they shove a square peg into a round hole and try to analyze his babbling as if it could fit some rational political framework.
Here's the question that Hall was raising:
Delete"The question is whether we [the media] are actually describing what we’re watching, or whether we’ve quietly shifted into translation mode — taking what happens in that room and rendering it into something that fits the templates we already have, because that’s easier and faster and the templates are what the traffic wants.
"I think we’re translating. I think we’ve been translating for a while now. And the thing about translation is that something always gets lost — usually the part that would require us to stop and say, out loud, in a published sentence: this is not what this has ever looked like before, and we should probably name that."
The emperor is fucking naked. The WH press will never admit
DeleteDefinitely translating. Some of it may be unintentional. Media outlets, such as NY Times, to which I subscribe, want to cover substantive issues. So, when Trump babbles incoherently and meanders all of the place, they face a dilemma: they can either quote his incoherent ramblings and admit that they can't make heads or tails of it; or they can interpret it and put it in some rational form. The former lacks substance and is not interesting; the latter is dishonest.
DeleteMaybe, like Bob is suggesting, every news report on Trump should focus on his mental health and his waning abilities to comprehend what's going on.
Mind you, Hall thinks Trump is brilliant rhetorically:
Delete"’m not saying Trump is incoherent — that’s the lazy diagnosis and it’s wrong. He is, in many ways, a brilliant talker.
"The relentless repetition, the superlatives, the constant gravitational pull back toward winning — that’s not rambling, that’s a rhetorical discipline he absorbed from Norman Vincent Peale as a young man and has never stopped practicing. He can hold a room for two hours and never lose the thread because the thread, for him, is always the same thread: him versus everyone else, competence versus incompetence, builders versus bureaucrats. The Sharpie story and the Iran story are, in his telling, the same story. That’s not nothing.
"But there’s a significant distance between 'not incoherent' and 'normal,' and we have somehow allowed that distance to collapse."
Oh horseshit, put that fucking lying sack of shit, demented old fool in front of a real reporter not afraid to ask real questions or a trained cross examiner, and let's see how long the fucking rhetorical brilliance lasts. The only reason he gets away with this bullshit is because people let him.
DeleteOur Right-wing corporate-owned media are giving Republicans a free pass, like they have for the past 45 years, but Somerby keeps forgetting to muse about it.
DeleteAnon@1:56 -- You make a fair point. However, we all know how that would go: Trump would blow up, call the reporter some ugly name, and storm off. Short of an actual trial, there's no way to get Trump to answer questions.
DeleteTrump is not brilliant rhetorically. What I will say -- and I noticed it back in 2016 when I stumbled on C-SPAN broadcasting a Trump's townhall meeting -- the way he talks has certain mesmerizing qualities to it; it's almost like he hypnotizes his audience. Now, if you listen to the actual words, it's all about himself -- either bragging or being aggrieved. If you read transcripts of his speeches, you're forced to accept that this man thoroughly addled and in the throes of dementia.
" ... [the] NY Times, to which I subscribe, want to cover substantive issues."
DeleteToo bad it wallows in both-siderism so much that it often fails.
I don't think Trump is "brilliant rhetorically" in the sense that in 150 years they'll be memorizing one of his speeches like we do the Gettysburg Address. I think what Hall means is what you mean -- Trump has the ability to mesmerize a crowd and that crowd stays mesmerized, even after they leave the stadium.
DeleteIt sounds like Colby Hall has drunk some Kool-Aid. Trump is not brilliant rhetorically. Hall is superimposing his own patterns onto Trump's rambling. Like in the film Being There where people interpreted the simple-minded gardening talk of Chauncey Gardner as wisdom and metaphor that Chauncey never intended.
DeleteApparently Somerby likes Colby Hall because he is the assigned right wing opinion writer of the week, his assignment to promote.
Trump's crowds arrive pre-mesmerized. Mesmerized means "simple minded," right?
DeleteHow can Trump's crowds be mesmerized when they start walking out of his rallies soon after he starts talking?
Here at this blog, we refer to Hall's idea of "translating" as Somerby whispering. Trump's followers do the same thing for him -- assert that their own ideas of what Trump means are what he actually said.
DeleteI watched that Cabinet Meeting. I agree with Colby Hall that a lot of time was devoted to unimportant or irrelevant matters. But, what Hall fails to mention is that the important matters were covered and explained to the American people. We did not not know a much about what the government was doing under the prior Administration.
ReplyDeleteBTW I think a lot of people evaluate Trump, not based on what he does, but based on what someone says he does. The Cabinet Meeting on available on youtube. People interested in the reality of what happened should watch the actual meeting. They should no rely on me or on Colby Hall.
Go take a flying fuck you racist bastard
DeleteNews? Who needs it? Just watch everything on YouTube!
DeleteTotally obliterated Dickhead the jagoff troll. Did they fucking explain that? No. Why do you always glom onto the next shiny lie.?
DeleteThe purpose of a Cabinet meeting is not to inform the American people of things. It is to coordinate activities among the departments. Trump uses those meetings for sleeping, being praised by suckups, and rambling about whatever crosses through his mind without filtering. It is an embarrassment to all participants.
DeleteIt is bizarre how the media these strange things he calls Cabinet meetings as though it is perfectly normal. We have to watch as each Cabinet member tries to outdo the previous one in it depraved groveling to this bag of shit.
DeleteAnother fucking bloody day on Wall Street. Marines and 82nd Airborne on their way to WW3. This is going to end well
ReplyDeleteBetween Bibi, Putin, and our felon; who will be the first to drop a tactical nuke to save face in the wars they are going to lose?
DeleteRepublicans are incapable of governing:
ReplyDeleteHouse GOP Leaders Reject Bill to Fund DHS, Likely Extending Standoff
This is great news for those who hate the United States of America so much, they pretend we can’t afford to feed, clothe, and house everyone in the world.
DeleteGood Lord, help us, I am praying.
ReplyDeleteKash Patel's email hacked by Iranian-linked hacking group, DOJ confirms
ReplyDeleteBefore the war, Iran was exporting 1.1M barrels of oil at $47 a barrel.
Right now they're exporting 1.5M barrels of oil at ~ $120 a barrel.
The art of the fucking deal. Now do you agree that King Orange Chickenshit is a business genius?
Everybody I'm talking to is saying the complete opposite.
DeleteWho you talking to? Thought so.
DeleteSwoosie Kurtz, for one.
DeleteThey're down to exporting less than 20 million barrels.