The days dwindle down

 If you want to know why Generals Kelly, Milley, Mattis and McMaster came to despise Trump, it's because his response to aggression is surrender.  On Fox & Friends he told a ten-year-old named Daniel that he would not have fought back after the Confederacy attacked Fort Sumter ("I've always said why wasn't that settled").  He thinks Ukraine should respond in the same way to being invaded by Russia, of course, and the sooner Palestinians get out of the way so Gaza can be developed for tourism, the better.  I wish some ten-year-old would ask him about Pearl Harbor.

Putin's army might be doing better if they didn't have to abandon their golf-carts personnel carriers and go looking for the eighteen North Korean soldiers who deserted as soon as they arrived in the front line.  They were only four miles from the Ukrainian border, so they're probably renting apartments and enjoying the local cuisine by now.

Maureen Dowd is furious at Cardinal Dolan for not only inviting Trump to the Al Smith dinner but posing for pictures with him.  She wanted him to bring the "jokes" to a halt by invoking Joseph Welch -- "Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?"  It doesn't sound like Dolan, who couldn't be happier about the loss of Roe.  "It is the church's job, after all, to teach right from wrong," Dowd concludes, oblivious to decades of pedophilic revelations and the unfolding horrors of "Indian" schools.  Maureen, didn't you notice he was wearing a red hat?

"They wrote some jokes and for the most part I didn't like any of them," Trump said when asked if Fox had contributed to his hate monologue.  Fox is denying it and you can't blame them.  With everyone but Dolan he bombed like the Enola Gay.

Trump is enraged that News Corporation, a for-profit enterprise, takes money to allow "negative" ads by the Harris/Walz campaign to run on Fox News.  He's not the only whiner, of course.  Ron DeSantis and his surgeon general Joseph Ladapo have sent cease-and-desist letters to Florida television stations to prevent them running ads in support of Amendment Four, a ballot initiative which favors access to abortion.  Yesterday U.S. District Judge Mark Walker told them to knock it off:  "To keep it simple for the State of Florida, it's the First Amendment, stupid."

What could be stranger than Trump running out of gas and "dancing" for 39 minutes?  How about Trump roaming around the stage in silence for 17 minutes after his microphone quit in Detroit?   After being given another mic he responded as he has to every wrinkle of the past fifty years, by threatening to "sue the ass" off the company hired to provide sound equipment.  In the past week he has bad-mouthed Detroit, auto workers and unions generally.  I can't imagine why it didn't run smoothly.   At least the teleprompter he doesn't use was working.

Incompetent nepo businessman Elon Musk, still reputed to be the planet's richest mammal, has offered a measly $47 bribe to voters in Georgia, Nevada, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin and North Carolina who will refer a friend to his bullshit "petition" in support of the Constitution and other things he doesn't actually understand or care about.  (It's more than the five bucks Paypal keeps offering me to bring them fresh prospects but the answer is still no.)  Now Pennsylvania voters can get a life-changing hundred dollars if they help get a million people to support "free speech and the right to bear arms," which is as far as their Constitution goes.  This week Musk will address New Apostolic Reformation, one of these Christofascist outfits that wants to turn the whole country into Kansas.  I can't find out who is supposed to be petitioned; presumably the goal is to collect information which he can sell or use to facilitate violence and abuse.  Not even for a million and get off my lawn, musk sac.