Sunday, May 24, 2026

Doom Report (Week 70: Hello, Goodbye)


Nearly 16 years ago, I wrote a blog post to mark the occasion of The Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear.  People at the time—and since—didn’t understand the point of the rally, of course: they didn’t “get” it.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard the event described as a confused mess; or that people were protesting, but they didn’t know what they were protesting; or that there was no clear message.  Bullshit: there was a crystal clear message.  They even made a T-shirt.  The message was: I disagree with you, but I’m pretty sure you’re not Hitler.  Now, some have accused this event of not aging well.  I suppose the message may not have aged well, in the sense that I’m pretty sure at least some of the people I disagree with now are, in fact, Hitler.  Or at least Hitler-curious.  And, hey: if we can forget the horrors of World War II, which happened over 80 years ago, we can damn sure forget a one-day rally that happened a mere 16 days ago.

But I still remember it.  At the time, I mostly focussed on Stewart; I only mention Colbert once in that entire post.  And that’s because Colbert was doing something quite different than Stewart ... at the time.  His satire of a rightwing nutjob pundit was biting, and excoriating, but, at least for me, it didn’t hit the same as what Stewart was doing.

Still ... still, I watched every episode of The Colbert Report, just as I watched every episode of The Daily Show.  And, when Colbert shut down the show to go and, of all things, replace David Letterman—who of course had been vying with Jay Leno to succeed Johnny Carson, and some would argue ended up being Carson’s spiritual successor—I was surprised.  The idea of Stephen Colbert doing a talk show, after the funny, often absurdist, bits on The Daily Show, and 9 years as a bloviating caricature on The Colbert Report ... it boggled the mind.  And I don’t actually like talk shows, so I wasn’t too keen on this change.  But I figured I should give it a fair shot.  After all, Letterman had been funny, before he went mainstream (inasmuch as he did, which was at least a little), and there were still funny bits even in the later years.  And Colbert had proven himself: at that point I’d been watching him for 17 years, which was longer than my eldest child had been alive.  I figured I’d watch the first couple of shows and then probably get bored.

Except ... I watched the first several shows, and then a few more, and then some more, and I just ... never stopped.  For 11 years, he did a talk show that was actually entertaining, and relevant, and his monologues were topical, and trenchant, and he was funny.  The bits were funny, the guests were usually funny, and the political satire was excellent.  As it turned out, Colbert was every bit as talented as Stewart had been before him: in the lean years, when Stewart was gone entirely, Colbert was a lifeline; after Stewart came back, first at Apple TV, and then back to The Daily Show once a week, and then reviving the vibes of his Apple show with The Weekly Show—even then, I was still glad to have Colbert: always smart, always funny, never afraid to skewer the corrupt and speak truth to power.

This week, Stephen Colbert aired his final run of shows.  Was he tired of it all, just ready to call it quits?  Not at all.  He just got caught up in some corporate bullshit and Trump flexing his new (at the time) dictatorial muscles.  I won’t repeat all the details here—if you need a refresher, hop back in time to week 26 and reread the conclusion—but the idea that CBS cancelled the late night show with the highest ratings among all late night shows for purely “financial reasons” is so ludicrous that we needn’t give it any more credence than that.

The entire week of shows was really very good, and you should watch them all.  For particular highlights, I’ll call out the extended version of Stephen himself being administered the Colbert Questionert (I have a fondness for the Questionert; I even administered it to myself once), and his final musical number, which not only brings back original bandleader Jon Batiste, but also throws in Elvis Costello and Paul McCartney, which ain’t too shoddy, if you ask me.  But you should watch them all: he’s lambasting the current regime right up to the bitter end.

A bunch of touching tributes to the loss, from Robert Reich, from Jimmy Kimmel, from Adam Conover, and from Adam Kinzinger (see below for that one).

But I brought up the Rally to Restore Sanity because it’s emblematic of how little most of the media has been able to understand what Colbert (and Stewart, and Kimmel, and Meyers, and Oliver, and a host of others) do.  It’s usually referred to as “fake news”—The Daily Show even refers to itself that way—but this is completely inaccurate.  I watched TDS before Stewart came along, and what Craig Kilborn was doing was in fact fake news: they were absurdist stories, done in the style of news, about things that had never happened.  The “news” was completely fake.  But, when Stewart came in, he established a new tradition: the stories they reported on were entirely real, and the fact they could make us laugh while doing so didn’t make it any less true.  There is no artificiality; only humor.  “Funny” and “fake” are not the same thing at all.  And, while I give Stewart credit for starting it, there can be no doubt that Colbert became a master at the craft, and his loss will be felt for a while.

Until he finds something new to latch on to.  Will it be Monroe, Michigan public access?  Probably not.  But I’m eagerly anticipating whatever comes next.

Other things you need to know this week:

  • The big news this week, of course, is Trump’s multi-billion dollar slush fund for ... well, whoever the fuck he wants.  Devin Stone covers it, in only the second Legal Eagle video I’ve ever seen with no ads (the first was the Alex Pretti video, which I covered back in week 53).  It covers, in a concise but impassioned manner, the unlimited nature of the fund (turns out the $1.776 billion number is just a smokescreen), and also touches on the IRS “immunity” deal written into it for Trump.  And his businesses.  And his children.  Forever.  Just stunning.  More coverage on this from Adam Kinzinger and Strict Scrutiny.
  • Adam Kinzinger had quite possibly his best day in review ever on Friday: he talks about Tulsi Gabbard’s “resignation,” the Trump regime’s attempt to declare that half our voting machines are “invalid,” Marjorie Taylor Greene’s warning that Trump may try to use the Iran war as a pretext to cancel elections (duh), and the aforementioned fairly touching tribute to Colbert.  A total banger this time.
  • More Perfect Union is still at it, exposing the scams of corporations and billionaires.  It’s the latter this time around, as they talk about the “illegal immigrant voting” scam and how it helps billionaires stay in power.
  • The main Some More News show this week was about all the war stuff Trump is doing, including the incredible information that both Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio claim they hate communists because their families were persecuted the Cuban government ... and yet both were actually persecuted by Castro’s predecessor: a puppet dictator installed by the US.  Every time you assume you can’t be surprised by more hypocrisy, you find that you’ve been mistaken.
  • Hey, remember back in week 67 when I said that I was starting to think Trump might be gay?  Secretly gay, granted—deeply, deeply closeted gay—but, still: gay.  Well, Ronnie Chieng agrees with me!  And also other good stuff from one of this week’s Daily Show episodes.

I usually try to end with a note of hope.  Although I note that I didn’t bother doing so the week Colbert got cancelled—I ended with the story of the cancellation, which I called a note of defeat.  This week also feels like that, a little.  Actually, fuck that: more than a little.  But I choose to believe that, in the end, good will triumph over evil, democracy will triumph over autocracy, and American values will triumph over racism and corruption, even if our founding fathers were pretty fucking racist, and maybe even a little bit corrupt.  But the principles they espoused are still solid, and inspiring, and worth fighting for.

Earlier tonight I had to explain to my 14-year-old (my youngest child) why I wouldn’t be watching Colbert any more, and how Kimmel or John Oliver (or both) could be next, and even The Daily Show’s continuance is not a sure thing.  I had to explain how Trump, like all aspiring autocrats, had been co-opting the media, and the universities, and the big law firms.  And some had gone along, and some were fighting.  And my child said to me, “Well, at least the guys you watch are quitting.  ‘Cause that’s better than staying and going along with whatever Trump wants them to do.”  And, you know what? they’re right.  Quitting is better.  Quitting with your integrity beats rolling over any day, every day, all day long.  I’m going to miss Stephen Colbert, for sure, but the fact that he’s walking out with his head held high and his principles intact, that means something.

And that’s what I’m holding on to right now.









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Sunday, May 17, 2026

A Fred Story


Here’s something I wrote earlier.  For full context, Fred is our eldest cat; he’s an old man now, and is probably not long for this world.  If you want to hear my voice when you read, it might help to know that I follow the Stephen Fry Jeeves and Wooster precedent and pronounce “valet” as rhyming with “mallet” rather than “ballet.”  A small detail, but then small details matter.


section break


When I came out just now to perform my kitty valet duties, I wasn’t sure if Fred actually wanted to come in, so I just stared at him for a while, waiting to see if he’d paw at the door.  And, being Fred, he just stared back at me for a bit, then looked away and stared off into the distance for a bit, and, while I was waiting for him to make up his mind, I noticed a large bug flying around above and behind him a bit, and I wondered if he would turn around and try to grab it, and then I looked closer and realized it wasn’t a bug at all: it was a hummingbird.  A hummingbird, hovering maybe two or three feet off the ground, surely no more than three feet away from our oblivious cat, flitting side to side in that way that hummingbirds and dragonflies do: zipping a few inches then stopping dead still again, but of course they’re not still at all, because their wings are beating at lightning speed to keep them up in the air, but they’re also beating so fast that you can’t really see them.  And I wished I had my phone so I could take a picture, but I didn’t, and I didn’t bother to try to get it because I knew the moment couldn’t last, so I just watched, just for a few seconds, and then Fred pawed at the door and the hummingbird flew away and I went to let the cat in.









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Doom Report (Week 69: Nice)


On Even More News this week, Katy, Cody, and Jonathan are joined by guest comedian Mary Houlihan.  It’s a great show, focussing on the reflecting pool debacle, the LA mayoral race, and especially affordability, and you should totally watch the whole thing, but there’s one part I wanted to call out.

You know how Trump was asked this week how much he cared about Americans not being able to afford things, and he said “not even a little”?  Well, okay, that’s a slight exaggeration; here’s what he actually said:

Reporter: To what extent are Americans’ financial situations motivating you to make a deal?
Trump: Not even a little bit.  The only thing that matters when I’m talking about Iran, they can’t have a nuclear weapon.  I don’t think about Americans financial situation, I don’t think about anybody.  I think about one thing.  We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon.  That’s all.

Oh, I guess he actually used the exact words “not even a little” ... so not exaggerating at all, really.  And, a few minutes later, Cody says this:

Inflation all over.  Prices are up a lot over the past year.  And most of the high prices we’re seeing right now still aren’t because of what’s going on.  Like, that is yet to come; this is just other stuff.  Some of it’s like climate related and like weather related, where like certain things can’t be grown as easily—shipping and stuff.  Some of it is just like general inflation.  Some of it’s tariffs: specifically tomatoes are specifically because of his tariffs against Mexico.  And so all this stuff that was like “oh, prices are really high now because of this war”—it’s actually not yet because of the war.  It’s going to get so much worse.

To which Jonathan responds:

Everything with Biden was because, you know, everyone thinks the president has a “lower prices” button or a “lower inflation” button, which they don’t, really.  You know, you pass some legislation, you try to do some things, they got it under control.  The president doesn’t really have a lever to pull to do that.  But the president does have a few “make prices go up” levers to pull.  And Trump has pulled them all in the last year and a half.  He’s pulled the tariffs one, he’s pulled the start the war—zero inflation levers he has not pulled.

Gee, thanks Cody: being all truthful and incisive and shit and bringing us down.  Because, as Jonathan so rightfully notes, the president of the United States can only do so much that will cause prices to come down—and, to be clear, Trump has done none of that—but he has a shit-ton of things he can do to make prices go up, and he’s doing all those as fast as he can manage.  And it’s super-important for us all to remember how much price increases tend to lag behind their causes: Cody is, again, 100% correct in pointing out that our current shitty prices (except for the price of gas, which is tied much more directly to its inciting incident) are not because of the current idiotic thing Trump is doing in Iran—they’re because of the previous idiotic things Trump’s been doing, like imposing random tariffs and deporting half our immigrant workforce and making the other half too scared to show up for work.  By the time our prices start reflecting the fact that there’s a fertilizer shortage and the trucks that bring whatever produce is left to the market can’t afford fuel, Trump will be well onto the next idiotic thing.

It’s tough to find a silver lining in all that, but I’ll posit one anyway: even if Trump stops the war in Iran tomorrow—which seems ridiculously unlikely, as he’s making too much money off it—prices will still be terrible when it comes time to vote in the midterms.  Now, if only the Democrats can get their act together and connect the dots the way Magyar did in Hungary ...

Other things you need to know this week:

  • The Supreme Court’s gutting of the Voting Rights Act continues to be a big story; this week Brian Tyler Cohen gives a more forceful discussion of the Court’s hypocrisy.  A lot of BTC videos tend to fall into the category of “impotent rage,” and I don’t recommend him nearly as often as I watch him for that very reason, but in this case the rage is justified, and, impotent or not, we all need to be on the same page about it.
  • And, in even more Supreme Court coverage, Last Week Tonight featured even more on the Shadow Docket.  I didn’t think John Oliver was quite as informative as all the previous sources I pointed you at (mostly two weeks ago, but also at least one last week), but, as always, he’s damned entertaining.
  • Charlamagne tha God is back on The Daily Show’s “In My Opinion” segment, this time talking about Trump’s third term.  People keep saying it’s just a joke, but I have doubts, and apparently Charlamagne does too.
  • Adam Kinzinger is now doing breakout videos of his day in review videos; sort of the “shorts” version, or a highlights reel.  But it’s basically just one story out of all the stories he mentioned in the longer video, which is nice, if that one story is the main thing I wanted you to watch the longer video for anyhow.  For Monday’s day in review, the breakout story is that Stephen Miller is, potentially, getting sidelined.  I’m not sure I’m too optimistic yet personally, but I had to chuckle when Adam introduced the story with this quote: “I’m not smiling; you’re smiling!”  Too real.
  • I picked up on Gabe Sanchez, I believe, at the same time I discovered Brian Tyler Cohen: it was the writer’s strike, and I needed new entertaining takes on the news.  Sanchez was funnier than BTC, but not as informative, so I didn’t continue watching faithfully after the strike was over, and anyway Sanchez disappeared for while: posting hiatus, I suppose.  But I think he went and got himself a journalism degree while he was gone or something, because his video this week on Trump’s reflecting pool scam was really well-researched (and also pretty funny).  My one quibble: Sanchez seems to think Trump is using the racism as a distraction from the corruption, whereas I think he’s just getting less and less capable of keeping the racism in the closet as he gets older.
  • On The Weekly Show this week, Jon Stewart interviews Ben Rhodes from Pod Save the World, mostly talking about Iran.  In this show in particular, Jon says some really smart shit, and, despite his protestations, he really tends to jump out at one as a potential candidate for office.  Look, Jon, if you want people to stop asking you if you’re running for President, you’ve got to stop sounding smarter than all the other potential candidates.  Besides, the fact that he keeps saying he doesn’t want it makes him even more perfect for the job: as Douglas Adams famously wrote in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, “anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.”  Which only leaves us with those people who absolutely don’t want it.
  • Hasan Minhaj interviewed Jennifer Welch this week.  If you don’t know her, Welch is an Oklahoma wine mom who was, in her words, radicalized by Kamala’s loss, and is now a pretty far left progressive.  Her background gives her some really great perspectives on what the Dems are doing wrong and how to fix it.  Long interview, but totally worth it.
  • If you follow UK politics as closely as I have been lately, you’ll appreciate SNL UK’s cold open this week.  (And, if you don’t, you almost certainly won’t.)

Is there hope this week?  I mean, in the sense that there’s always hope, I suppose.  Like Kat Abughazaleh, Graham Platner is demonstrating that, even if he loses, his candidacy will have accomplished something.  Over on Legal Eagle, Spencer the Scowl Owl posits that Kash Patel’s charges against the Southern Poverty Law Center will likely go down in flames like almost all the cases from this DoJ seem to.  Kinzinger seems to think that Trump’s gerrymandering plans will not be as successful as he hopes, and, while I’m not sure I’m on board with all that—the South Carolina victory, for instance, didn’t last long—it’s a pretty dream to live in for a bit.

My state’s primary is here, and there may be some candidates in there that give me some hope.  Haven’t had the chance to really dig into it yet, but I continue to choose to believe that there will be, until the moment I discover that there aren’t.  And that moment may never come: indeed, one might say that, hopefully, it won’t.  If you have a chance to look around at candidates in your state, see what hope you can find there.  There’s still some good people out there.  Find them, and vote for them.









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Sunday, May 10, 2026

Doom Report (Week 68: A Court with Sour Cream and Tomatoes Would Actually Be Way Better)


The rank hypocrisy of our Supreme Court has reached peak levels.  I thought that Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham refusing to confirm Merrick Garland eight months before an election on the grounds that it was “too close,” and then 4 years later confirming Amy Coney Barrett after early voting had already started—I thought that was pretty bad.  But now the Supreme Court, which had previously said that April before a November election was “too close” to allow changes—which had even claimed December before an election the following November was too close—has now told Louisiana that it can throw out votes that have already been cast in order to change their districts.  Brian Tyler Cohen and Mark Elias break down the details; it’s pretty rank.

If the shit your party is doing is so bad that the only way you can win an election is to cheat this much, that might be a sign that you’re on the wrong side of history.  While it does seem clear that, on a level playing field, the Democrats would completely destroy the Republicans in the upcoming midterms, it also seems pretty clear that we’re not going to get that level playing field.  The story of Hungary (see week 64) still provides a modicum of hope, but let’s remain sober as to the amount that the Republicans are trying to rig the game.

Other things you need to know this week:

  • Speaking of legal stuff, Legal Eagle’s Cristian Farias has even more on the gutting of the Voting Rights Acts, including my favorite quote about this, from Ruth Bader Ginsburg: “throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.”  Plus, despite the numerous videos I pointed you at last week, Cristian has the best overall explanation of what actually happened.
  • Adam Kinzinger has switched from doing the week in review to doing a day in review every day (I think this is another sign of our current hellscape).  They can’t all be winners, of course, but there were a couple of good ones this week: his Cinco de Mayo update talks about Trump’s billion-dollar ballroom being voted on while rural hospitals close, and another update covers paying for pardons and more info on rising oil prices.
  • Another banger SNL cold open: to Colin Jost’s excellent Pete Hegseth and Aziz Ansari’s spot-on Kash Patel, host Matt Damon brings a damn fine Brett Kavanaugh.

If you’re looking for some hope, there was a very successful set of local elections in the UK this week: very successful for the progressive left, that is.  Now, to be fair, it was also a fair bit successful for the Reform party, which is the UK equivalent of our MAGA Republicans, but in the end Reform did not win nearly as much as was predicted: the Greens dominated in England, and Plaid Cymru (pronounced “Plad Cumree”), the Welsh Nationalist Party, did the same in Wales.  If you want full details, Owen Jones has a predictably gleeful breakdown of the results.  And, again, to be completely fair, these are local elections: sort of the equivalent of our statewide elections.  But I think we’re learning in our own country that these local elections end up having an outsized effect on our national elections, so I’m choosing to view this news as a sign that things are changing from the bottom up, at least in the UK.  And I continue to believe that gains in the UK can portend gains in the US.  Am I right?  No clue, yet.  Perhaps in November we’ll find out.









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Sunday, May 3, 2026

Doom Report (Week 67: Big, Strong Men with Big, Hard Muscles)


So, I’m watching Zeteo this week, and Mehdi Hasan is interviewing Naomi Klein, and, while talking with her about unlikely alliances between progressives and rightwing nutjobs, he brings up the infamous Mamdani-Trump meeting in the White House.  And this is not really an “alliance” ... but on the other hand Mamdani did get something out of it, so the characterization is not wholly unreasonable.

But what actually struck me was this offhand comment from Mehdi:

I mean what’s so interesting about that—apart from the fact that Donald Trump looks at Mamdani the way he looks at no one else.  Mela—he doesn’t look at Melania the way he looks at Mamdani.

And a little bomb went off in my brain, and I instantly thought about how I’d heard people poking fun at this comment of Trump’s, from his 60 Minutes interview after the attempted shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner:

I also saw a lot of very strong, uh, physically strong, really attractive law enforcement people come through those doors.  And frankly, it made me feel very safe.  Very, very safe.  There’s nobody going to get by them.

“Really attractive”?  I mean, at the time I didn’t think that much of it—this is, after all, a recurring theme with Trump.  Remember when he said that ICE agents “just happen to have much larger, and harder, muscles than most”? or when he spoke about deploying the National Guard into DC by saying “we have very big, strong, good-looking soldiers standing around, and I think they make the place look better”?  Many people have commented on how much Trump focusses on appearance, and the consensus seems to be that this is typical narcissist behavior: focus on the skin deep, ignore the deeper stuff.  So this was just more of that ... right?

Except that now all sorts of explosions were going off in my head: this guy hates women—I mean, really hates women—and even his own female supporters will admit that.  And it seems like he’s always going on about how attractive men are.  Sure, he supposedly had sex with a porn star, but the main thing we know about that encounter was that he wanted her to spank him.  Sure, he has children, but then so did many men in the European monarchies who are, in retrospect, considered to have been gay.  What if ...

Like, what if Trump is secretly gay?

And, yes: I know I’m slandering gay men by even suggesting such a thing.  But, hear me out.  What if he is so deeply closeted that his sexuality is a secret even to himself?  His urges so deeply repressed that even he dare not look too closely at them.  That might explain his interest in women primarily as exploitative, primarily for the shock value: that perhaps he thinks of women as arm candy, that he expresses interest in them only because that’s the thing men are supposed to do.  And I’m not trying to imply that all gay men hate women, but I do believe that, in order to want to oppress a group, you first have to have a disinterest: an ability to see them as less than human.  Somehow I feel like we were one trauma away from knowing the name “Donald Trump” as one of our most prolific serial killers.  At the very least it would explain all the drooling over other men’s rock-hard abs.

So that’s my revelation for the week.  Probably nothing to it, but it’s a weird possibility to ponder—a real brain-bender.  And, just to add synchronicity to epiphany, Michael Che made this joke on last night’s SNL “Weekend Update”:

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said she thinks it’s possible that America has already had a gay president.  And, here’s a guess: maybe it’s the one obsessed with ballrooms and the Village People.

So if the worst thing you can say about my insane idea is that I’m on the same wavelength as Michael Che, I’ll take that.

Other things you need to know this week:

  • Some people feel that the shooter at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner was a staged event.  That seems doubtful, but it’s completely understandable to think it.  For one thing, the flurry of coordinated messages that went out about the ballroom immediately afterwards is insane.  Cody Johnston covers this in Monday’s Even More News, where he notes: ”... we know that there’s this built-in apparatus where you have like 50 to 100 MAGA accounts on like these group texts, with people in the White House coordinating messaging.  So, when this happens, the message goes out: ballroom, we’re doing ballroom today.  And so, they all do it.  And so it seems very coordinated, because that part is ...”  Seth Meyers also covers it in a “Closer Look” segment this week, if you want a shorter version.
  • SNL has an amazing cold open this week, with Colin Jost reprising his excellent Pete Hegseth and a surprise spot-on impression of Kash Patel from Aziz Ansari.
  • Look, I understand that Ben McKenzie (who I mentioned both last week and the week before) is hawking his new movie, and that’s why he keeps showing up everywhere, but, damn: he’s good, every single time.  This week, he shows up on the Coffee Klatch, with Robert Reich and Heather Lofthouse.

This week, King Charles paid a visit to the US, and spoke to Congress and in various other venues.  Josh Johnson covers this on The Daily Show, and Seth Meyers did yet another “Closer Look” on the topic, but the truly incisive coverage this week was, I think, from Brian Tyler Cohen.  What Charles said was this:

The US Supreme Court Historical Society has calculated that Magna Carta is cited in at least 160 Supreme Court cases since 1789, not least as the foundation of the principle that executive power is subject to checks and balances.

And BTC follows that up with this:

First of all, the irony is not lost on me that even a literal king is more democratic than the president of the world’s oldest continuous democracy.

And, at the end of the day, that sort of says it all.  Oh, sure: there’s plenty to make fun of when it comes to the British royal family—certainly SNL UK had some fun spoofing Charles and Camilla in this week’s cold open—but even the King of England knows that our madman is a bridge too far.  Here’s hoping we work it out soon as well.









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Sunday, April 26, 2026

Doom Report (Week 66: What Evil Lurks in the Hearts of Men? The Shadow Docket)


If you don’t know what the “shadow docket” is, you probably should.  See, sometimes our Supreme Court just issues a ruling: no trial, no arguments, and—most crucially—no explanation.  The most we get is the count of how many justices concurred and how many dissented, and sometimes the dissenters will write up a little “this is bullshit!” screed so that we observers know it’s not us who’s crazy for thinking this entire process is kinda skeezy.  Ostensibly, the purpose of the shadow docket is for emergencies: situations where a full hearing would take too long and the situation needs an immediate decision.  In practice, this particular court often uses it to agree with the Trump regime without having to explain itself.  Better yet, since the media tends to focus on the flashy trials with all the belabored arguments, shadow docket decisions can often fly under the radar.  Just a quick vote among the rightwing nutjob justices, give the mad king what he wants, and move swiftly on to an issue where they can say “no” to Trump (e.g. tariffs, birthright citizenship) and preserve their aura of “independence.”

So I know what it is, but I always thought the shadow docket was this thing that had always been around, and this court was just perverting it for their own sleazy agenda.  But, no: turns out that the shadow docket was, in fact, entirely invented by our very own current Chief Justice, John Roberts.  And, according to a new exposé on the origin of the shadow docket, it was, in fact, invented because Roberts didn’t care for something Obama wanted to do.  Quick! the government is about to favor real people over corporations in this one, very narrow case!  This is an EMERGENCY!

You can get full debriefs on the New York Times story from either Takes by Jamelle Bouie or Strict Scrutiny’s Leah Litman and guest Steve Vladeck (or preferably both), but definitely don’t sleep on this further example of how the rightwing nutjobs are twisting our institutions to their whims.

Other things you need to know this week:

  • Ben McKenzie is everywhere.  You may recall that I mentioned last week that the actor-turned-economist was on The Weekly Show; well, this week he shows up on The Daily Show for a shorter chat with Michael Kosta and also on Hasan Minhaj Doesn’t Know, where Hasan has a chat with him that is every bit as informative (and as long) as the Jon Stewart interview, and maybe even a bit more entertaining to boot.
  • The Some More News crew republished a highlight from an old episode that breaks down Stephen Miller’s weird origin story.  If you missed it the first time around, you should definitely check it out (and, even if you saw it way back when, it might be worth a refresher).  Dude is a very creepy, very weird, not-quite-human racist of the highest caliber.  Not that high-caliber racism is something to be proud of.  Although Stephen Miller likely would be.

As I write this, the attempted shooting of Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner is too new to have much coverage of it in the channels I frequent.  Brian Tyler Cohen has a pretty decent take on it here, and he notes that the primary fallout seems to be Trump saying, “see? this is why I have to have a ballroom.”  Which ... no.  It’s so inordinately ridiculous that it is (once again, as Mehdi Hasan is fond of saying) a thing that if proposed in the writer’s room of a political comedy—much less a political drama—would be shouted down for being too outrageous to be believed.

Some seem to want to view Trump’s apathy towards the multiple people who want to kill him as a sign of how tough he is, how resilient in the face of opposing odds.  I don’t know, man: I kinda think that when your response to “this person wanted you dead, sir” is “great! now how can I turn this to my advantage?” ... that might be a sign you’ve got some deeper issues.  Like maybe you’re one of those psychopaths who believe that other people don’t actually exist, so obviously you can’t be killed.  Or maybe you’re one of those people who think they’re living in a simulation.  Or maybe it’s just that your pervasive narcissism won’t let you consider anything that doesn’t benefit you.  Whichever way it is, it doesn’t seem like it’s something we should be admiring.

I’m sure we’ll hear more about the attempted shooting next week.  In the meantime, if you want to feel relieved that our country has not yet succumbed to political violence at the highest level, that’s a laudable emotion to cultivate.  And, if you also want to allow yourself a brief moment to think that these half-assed morons trying to kill our president need to get a bit more competent ... well, I won’t tell anyone.









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Sunday, April 19, 2026

Doom Report (Week 65: Actually, "Transformers Angel and the Generic Government Buildings" Would Be a Pretty Cool Band Name)


Sometimes I ask myself: is Trump the result of the failure of the two-party system?  Is it the case that the Republican party is only going along with Trump because they’re facing an existential crisis?  Because, remember: as recently as two years ago, many of the state Republican parties were on the verge of bankruptcy.  Nationwide, in the states which release such data, registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans by significant margins, peaking in 2021 when there were 35% more Ds than Rs—not to mention that, sometime around 2015, the number of registered independents exceeded the number of Republicans for the first time, making the Repubs a third party in our two-party system.  Can the Republican party survive the inevitable Trump meltdown?  After January 6th, they lost tens of thousands of voters, and this year is set to be the one with the second highest number of Republican Congressional retirements since 1930 (the first? that would be 2018 ... during Trump’s first term).  So, sometimes I look at all that and wonder if the Republicans grabbed onto Trump the way a drowning man will grab onto any piece of wood that floats by ... even those which obviously cannot support their weight.

On the other hand, Brian Tyler Cohen has another theory: Trump just hates Obama.  And, while BTC (somewhat overly generously, in my opinion) frames this as one man hating another, younger, more handsome man, I can’t help but wonder: is it just the racism?  Because the fact that he’s racist isn’t really in question—there’s literally a Wikipedia article entitled “racial views of Donald Trump” (hint: they ain’t good).  From the 1973 DoJ case against Trump Management where the rental agents admitted to marking the paperwork of Black applicants so that they could be summarily denied, to his comments in January of this year that, as a result of the Civil Rights Movement, “White people were very badly treated”—if you know any racists, you’ll easily recognize the behavior.  And, trust me: I’m not here to excuse any racists.  But I have quite a few in my family, so I kind of understand how their brains work.  And, in my experience, they’ve all been told from a very young age that black people (and brown people, and Asian people, and Jewish people, and gay people, and women, and ...) are just not as good as them.  That they are naturally superior, and it’s not the black people’s fault, necessarily—it’s just God’s will, or evolution, or whatever—and being the superior race is just a burden they must all bear.  And when you have that kind of fundamental prejudice baked into your very bones, you will go to extreme lengths to tear down the accomplishments of black people (and brown people and Jewish people and women and ... it must be exhausting, really).  Because if a Black person actually does something better than you could, that shakes your very worldview, your very sense of identity.  This is a threat to your sense of self.  So when people wonder why Trump tore up the Iran nuclear deal that Obama made and never bothered to replace it, I don’t wonder: it’s simple.  That was a deal made by a Black man, so it must be terrible.  And he never replaced it with anything because he couldn’t.  Like any sleazy used car salesman, he’s not nearly as slick as he thinks he is, because he “succeeds” by taking credit for successes (even those of other people) and, when he fails, he just lies about it and calls that a success too.  And that’s why we’re currently fighting the stupidest, most unpopular war in our history, and actually losing, and getting screwed over on the price of oil while Trump says we’ve already won (again and again and again) and says we don’t even need the Strait of Hormuz anyway.  Because he can’t stand to be upstaged by someone with more melanin than him.

It’s kind of sad, when you think about it.  And also very, very fucked up.

Other things you need to know this week:

  • If you want prime coverage on Pete Hegseth quoting Pulp Fiction as the Bible, both Alex Wagner and Stephen Colbert give you some side-by-side comparisons.
  • After a couple of weeks of subpar “week in review” segments, Adam Kinzinger is back with another pretty good one.
  • On this week’s Weekly Show, Jon interviews actor-turned-economist Ben McKenzie about cryptocurrency.  Commissioner Gordon from Gotham seems an unlikely choice to talk about crypto, but he actually has a degree in economics, so it’s not as crazy as it sounds initially, and I actually found him to be pretty articulate on the topic.  He exposes the scams of crypto while still acknowledging the things it can actually be good at, so even though he’s pretty negative on the industry overall, I still found it a pretty balanced discussion.
  • On this week’s Some More News, Cody asks the question “So, Donald Trump Can’t Cancel Elections ... Right?”.  The answer, as you might expect, is “right, but ...”  Or, as Cody and the SMN writers put it so eloquently: “It seems like they’ve realized that they can just do things, and by the time the consequences catch up, it’ll be too late.  The tariffs, for example, have been ruled illegal long after Trump implemented them, but the damage is apparently impossible to reverse: all the DOGE cuts, the ICE detentions, all these blatantly illegal and unconstitutional actions that we’re still trying to untangle after the fact.  Meanwhile, people have died and will not un-die.  Not without a tome and some candles, at least.”  Worth thinking about.

While it’s not strictly hope, sometimes you just watch a thing and have to raise your fist and say, “preach on, brother!”  This week, that comes from Zeteo.  Now, if you know Zeteo, you know that there are four main correspondents.  Founder Mehdi Hasan is the fast talker with the biting wit.  John Harwood is the knowledgeable but unexciting one.  Swin Suebsaeng is the passionate one.  And Prem Thakker is the calm, friendly one.  So when Prem goes off, it’s worth listening to.  On Zeteo’s weekly Q&A this week, Mehdi and Prem discussed Trump’s “doctor” picture—a.k.a. the “Doctor Jesus” image—and it led to this exchange:

Prem: I mean, look, I’ll just say, very quickly:  I’m a spiritual and religious person myself, and I think of—even for those who are not, who are atheist, agnostic, many of them at least carry themselves in such a way that, you know, a lot of their standards is that, no matter what higher power is out there, I believe that if I get to the pearly white gates and they see someone that led a life of good faith, of someone who is earnest and sincere, that that would be enough.  This guy, who purports to be some kind of Christian: the guy’s a tax cheat.  He started his presidential campaign with a tape that showed him saying he wants to grab women by their genitalia.  He’s insulted every community.  He looks at working people—your neighbors—with the most disdain and disgust possible.  He thinks we’re all hogs.  The thing is, is that we are run by a class of pedophilic, rapist, racist, parasitic, bloodthirsty people.  And atop that class is this guy whose legacy will be killing children and covering up files related to the most infamous pedophile on the planet!  And he, he—
Mehdi: Prem, I’ve never seen you this worked up.  I didn’t know Donald Trump made you this—I didn’t know this image would make you so worked up.
Prem: He’s just not going to make it through the pearly white gates.  That’s all I’m saying.  He’s not going to make it through.

And, you know, being one of those atheist/agnostic people myself, and hearing how Evangelicals and Catholics are too often Trump supporters, I sometimes forget how deeply offensive some of this is to genuine people of faith.  When I see Trump posting a picture of himself as Jesus, with 1940s Nurse and Transformers Angel and the Statue of Liberty in New York standing in front of Generic Washington DC Government Building, I’m just laughing at the complete ridiculosity of it all.  But there are people out there who see it and feel like their entire theology is being mocked, and Trump’s furious backpedaling and claiming that it’s supposed to be him as a doctor and only the fake news could think otherwise is not really soothing their outrage.  Nor should it.  They should be incensed, and I’m glad to hear that reaction from even some of Trump’s most ardent supporters.  Maybe he finally crossed a line.  Seems so unlikely, after a decade of never wavering from the full embodiment of the garbage person he’s always been, but, hey: there has to be some limit to what people will put up with, and maybe this is it.  And, while, honestly, I would have been happier if the limit was seeing all the brown people getting killed by ICE or the trans women being brutalized after their illegal transfers into men’s prisons, I’ll take what I can get.

So, I dunno—maybe that’s some hope after all.  In a very small way.









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Sunday, April 12, 2026

Doom Report (Week 64: Most Vagy Soha! Now or Never!)


Remember in week 58 when I talked about the Gorton and Denton by-election in the UK?  Well, Garys Economics is back from hiatus, with a deeper dive into the impact of this Green Party win.  And he covers why this one little election is both meaningless and explosive, because it’s a thing that, in his words, should have been impossible.  Now, I don’t agree with him entirely—for instance, note that he keeps on insisting that the British system has been designed for 250 years to force elections into the shape of two-horse races, but he never mentions that one of the parties he’s considering to be one of those horses didn’t even exist 10 years ago, which pretty much puts the nail in the coffin of that theory.  Plus, I find his desperate pleas to Labour (who are, in my consistent analogy of US to UK politics, the equivalent of the corporate Democrats) somewhat amusing.  Remember, Gary isn’t really a member of Labour in the same way that BTC or the Pod Save America guys actually are Democrats: he just wants his ideas to win, and he thinks Labour is his best chance of achieving that goal.  But his description of how the Greens were able to capitalize on the failures of Labour are pretty inspirational: if Reform can replace the Conservatives in the same way that MAGA took over the Republican party, then maybe the Greens threatening Labour is a sign that progressive Democrats have a chance of taking over the Democratic party.

Worth considering, in any event.

Other things you need to know this week:

  • If you need to understand why the Supreme Court isn’t being “reasonable” when it seems poised to hand Trump a defeat on birthright citizenship, the ladies of Strict Scrutiny, as always have you covered.  Plus, a lot of glee over Bondi’s firing, which is always fun to listen to.
  • Even More News had a pretty great Friday episode, with Dr. Kaveh Hoda (who happens to be of Persian descent) talking about our demented President’s actions in Iran.
  • Wondering how California’s proposed “billionaire tax” would work?  Let Robert Reich explain it to you.

Often I write these reports on Saturday for posting the next day, so, if good news shows up on Sunday, you’ll never hear it from me: it arrived too late.  But, occasionally, I don’t get around to the writing till Sunday, and, even more occasionally, that happens to align with the arrival of some hope.  Today is one of those rare Sundays.

Today, Viktor Orbán lost re-election in Hungary.  And not by a little: in Hungary’s 199-seat Parliament, Orbán’s party is likely to retain only 55.  This was a blowout.  And maybe that portends something for our own situation.  Because there’s a very good reason that I’ve mentioned Orbán multiple times in these Reports (weeks 5 and 31 in particular): Hungary has been the template for how to do a rightwing takeover of a liberal democracy.  We share some of the same political consultants with them, even.  Hell, JD Vance even visited Budapest to urge Hungarian voters to support the now-defeated would-be dictator.  Could it be that Vance and the rest of the Trump regime are scared of what this defeat might mean for them?  Brian Tyler Cohen and Ben Rhodes (cohost of Pod Save the World) seem to think so.  They posit that Hungary will, perhaps, follow the example of Brazil and start holding some people accountable, and then that will, perhaps, be an inspiration to the Democrats, should they ever get their shit together sufficiently to win another Presidential election.  This may all be wishcasting, of course—and I continue to believe that the Democrats are a poor, poor substitute for the political party that we actually deserve—but it’s a pretty fantasy, and at least the first step in that long road has been taken.  That’s worth celebrating, I’d say.









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Sunday, April 5, 2026

Doom Report (Week 63: Same Ol' Story)


Happy Easter, for those that celebrate; happy Passover, for those that celebrate; and happy day-for-hiding-eggs-for-your-children-to-find, if your family, like ours, is primarily celebrating that.  And possibly day-for-overindulging-in-chocolate.  Day-for-being-inundated-by-small-egg-themed-toys, mayhap?  One or more of those, for sure.

On The Weekly Show this week, Jon interviews Heather Cox Richardson, who is always a good time: she’s articulate, extremely knowledgeable, and is quick with a historical perspective.  Early in the interview, they compare our “ship of state” to both the Titanic and the Pequod (from Moby-Dick).  For me, I feel like it’s a combination of both.  Trump is a bit like Captain Ahab spotting the iceberg and shouting “there’s the white whale: ramming speed!”

At one point, Jon points out that the founding fathers could not have foreseen “that political parties might abdicate all responsibility of power just to hold on to power.”  And, to me, that just exposes the absurdity of it all.  It reminded me of this extended quote from Mark Twain:

There are people who strictly deprive themselves of each and every eatable, drinkable, and smokable which has in any way acquired a shady reputation.  They pay this price for health.  And health is all they get for it.  How strange it is.  It is like paying out your whole fortune for a cow that has gone dry.

Likewise, if you give up all your power in order to maintain your grip on power ... what do you actually have?

Other things you need to know this week:

  • Or, if you prefer longer videos less often, Strict Scrutiny is generally an hour a week, thought they sometimes have shorter videos when there’s breaking Supreme Court fuckery.  As there was this week: Leah Litman and guest Shannon Minter, legal director at the National Center for LGBTQ Rights, cover the Court’s bonkers decision on conversion therapy.

I suppose the major news this week was Pam Bondi getting fired.  My favorite coverage of this was, once again, from the Even More News crew, though Alex Wagner also had a good show on it.  But I think the best take came from Cody and Katy and Jonathan (and their guest, Some More News head writer David Bell), who noted that Bondi was only the second high-profile firing this time around, after Kristi Noem, and that Trump is already making noises that he might need to replace press secretary Karoline Leavitt, and there are now rumors that he’s questioning Tulsi Gabbard.  And what do all these people have in common?  Jonathan comments: “Kelly Loeffler at the Small Business Administration has to hope that Trump does not remember who she is” (to which Cody responds “I promise you that he does not”).  But Katy really captures the essence of the issue thusly:

Katy:  And we’re going to be talking about this more in an episode in the future.  About the dynamic of MAGA women.
Cody: Is it good?
Katy: No!  You get these ladies out here and trot them out to carry water for this administration while they’re working against their own best interests and they are the first to get thrown under the bus.  It is, I mean ...
Cody: Predictable?
David: A pattern?
Katy: It’s predictable, it’s a pattern, it’s pathetic—I don’t have sympathy or empathy, but if they were any other type of people, I’d be like: you’re victims of this machine!  But you are perpetrating this machine.

And I feel like Katy was channeling my own feelings on Noem from back in week 57.  You can never have sympathy for these people, because you can never excuse them for the horrific things they’ve done.  But you could almost see the shape of who they might have been, if they had not taken a wrong turn somewhere along the line.  Now, personally, I’m even less of a fan of Bondi than I am of Noem, even though rationally that makes no sense.  Noem is personally responsible for ruining hundreds if not thousands of lives, including several outright murders.  Bondi, meanwhile, has been coldly inhuman to the Epstein survivors, and she has tried to make lives miserable for people like James Comey and Letitia James and Jerome Powell, but that latter group at least is composed almost entirely of public figures, and they had to accept a certain amount of mistreatment when they agreed to do their jobs.  And Bondi is probably not directly responsible for any murders—certainly not at the scale that Noem can lay claim to.  And yet ... somehow I feel that the Bondi biopic will not be nearly as interesting as the Noem one.  Not sure what it is about her that rubs me the wrong way, but something surely does.  I think perhaps there’s a fanatic’s light behind her eyes that I don’t see in Noem’s.  I think Noem’s guilt mostly stems from her ability to close her eyes to the suffering she’s causing, but I feel like Bondi is staring directly into it ... and smiling.  All of this is just projection on my part, I’m sure: I don’t know these people.  But, vindictively, I feel much better about Bondi’s firing than Noem’s.

And, should the rumors turn out to be true and Lee Zeldin is Trump’s pick to replace Bondi, then we will continue our pattern of not only firing all the women, but inevitably replacing them with men.  And that is the real tell, I think.  It says to me that Trump never wanted these women around in the first place—and, in my mind, the word “women” is spoken with a tone of utter disdain—and he’s only too happy to finally get rid of them all and replace them all with men.  White men.  Of a certain class.  Who look like they’re from “central casting.”

But I’m not sure anyone should be surprised at this point.  We know how Trump feels about women: he keeps on telling us—over, and over, and over again.  Was there ever any doubt that the MAGA women, from Marjorie Taylor Greene to Pam Bondi and beyond, would be first on the chopping block?  Well, some of them seem surprised, I suppose.  But for the rest of us, it’s misogyny as usual.









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Sunday, March 29, 2026

Doom Report (Week 62: A Twelve-Year-Old with a Phone)


This week, Trump set an ironclad deadline of 48 hours for Iran to stop restricting ships from the Strait of Hormuz (presumably he meant US ships, since Iran isn’t restricting anyone else).  About 40 hours later, he came out to say “I’ve actually been talking to a top guy in Iran—I don’t want to tell you who he is; he lives in Canada, you wouldn’t know him—and now I’ve extended the deadline.  The new deadline is right after the stock market closes on Friday.”

Just another TACO Tuesday.

Other things you need to know this week:

  • Legal Eagle is having another great week.  Anna Bower covers the insanity that is the DOGE bros deposition footage.  Then, Liz Dye breaks down the even more insane, utterly brilliant saga of the NJ “triumvirate”.  It’s brilliant because of the one NJ federal judge who got so fed up with their bullshit that he became an absolute rockstar by having one lippy government lawyer forcibly removed.  When you get to the part in the video where Judge Quraishi tells the laywer, Mr. Coyne, that he’s not allowed to speak, freeze frame it on the court doc.  Liz doesn’t read this part, but you can:  Coyne: “I would ask —”  Court: “No.”  Coyne: ”— that the Court allow me to speak.”  Court: “Nope.”  Fucking. Rockstar.
  • I don’t often link to the Armageddon Update, because you have to be in the right mood for Christopher Titus’s particular brand of pissed off (and often offensive) takes on things.  But this week’s is not to be missed.  He’s literally the only  source (among those that I regularly watch) to point out that apparently, our country is now insolvent.
  • Last week we got the legal take on the Afroman defamation case.  This week we get Josh Johnson’s take.  Very different perspective; just as funny.

This week on The Weekly Show, Jon Stewart interviews Alastair Campbell, a British journalist and former speechwriter for UK Prime Minister Tony Blair.  His podcast with fellow Brit Rory Stewart (who was also interviewed on this show back in week 14) is a bit like Pod Save America, but if one of the Obama guys had, instead of starting a podcast with 2 or 3 other Obama guys, chosen a Bush guy for contrast.  It’s a good interview, and you should totally watch it, but, as is often the case, the good stuff happens after the interview is over and Jon is talking to his producers Lauren Walker, Brittany Mehmedovic, and Gillian Spears.  Here they reference a point that Alistair made where he claimed that (Canadian Prime Minister) Mark Carney is now receiving more phone calls from Trump than he’s making:

Gillian: It was interesting what he said about Carney, too, which is that—I mean, whether or not it’s true—that Trump has been calling him more than he’s been calling Trump since he showed a little bit of courage.  And, I don’t know, it’s kind of similar to what you said about Kaitlan Collins once, which is that maybe he kind of has respect for people that push back a bit.
Brittany: Mamdani.
Lauren: Exactly.
Jon: Yeah.  That’s exactly right.  Those are three very good examples.  And I do think that there is some of that.  And I can believe it because Donald Trump is, if nothing else, a 12-year-old with a phone.

And I thought to myself at this point: there’s something to that ...  But I would say it’s more like the mean girl in high school who has utter disdain for her sycophants, but anyone who doesn’t give a shit whether or not she likes them must be so cool she just has to get to know them.  And you might think, that’s a pretty shallow take on the guy who is currently running our country, to which I would respond ... well, yeah.  Obviously.  Welcome to the presidential cabinet of Heathers.  Now we’re just waiting for our Veronica to arrive.  How very.









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Sunday, March 22, 2026

Doom Report (Week 61: A Worthless Pile of Shit)


You know, when I described the conversation that started these Doom Reports, the one where my friend explained all the reasons why “some” people would have voted for Trump, I never mentioned the whole going-to-war thing.  That’s because that post was primarily me trying to detail all the things my friend said that I thought were wrong ... and, when my friend said that Trump would keep us out of wars in the Middle East where Kamala wouldn’t, I actually thought he was right.  I mean, I had some hope that Kamala would be better on Palestine than Biden had been, but I was under no illusion that she was anything more than an establishment Democrat: a younger one than most, perhaps; one with a more fiery disposition and more apt to want to shake up things than most, perhaps; and not an old white man, like most, which can actually go a long way towards making a difference.  But, still: an establishment Democrat, and, at the end of the day, establishment Democrats always side with Israel.  Whereas, based on Trump’s first term, he didn’t seem particularly inclined to invade places even when the opportunity presented itself; plus there was all that rhetoric about being the peace president, etc etc.  Not that I believe anything that comes out Trump’s mouth, for the most part ... still, even the most prolific liars tell the truth sometimes, and this seemed like it might be the one thing he was actually sincere about.

More fool me.

So far, 13 American service members have died because the last person to speak to Trump that particular day, apparently, was Lindsey Graham.  And, since Trump always does whatever the last person in the room suggests to him was his own brilliant idea, and since the only two things that seem to excite Graham are putting ultra-conservatives on the Supreme Court and killing people in the Middle East, we’re now at war in Iran.  Or, excuse me: we’re at excursion.  Many people theorize that Trump just misheard the word “incursion” and no one around him is brave enough to correct him.  This makes sense—they’re all such chickenshits that they’re wearing the wrong size shoes (and note that Graham is also on that list).  But Graham is positively giddy with warmonger-fever, and he’s echoing Trump’s threats (or Trump is echoing his) that Iran is only the beginning.  Well, I suppose Venezuela was the beginning, not even counting all the places he bombed that didn’t rise to the level of being news enough for us to notice.  Point being, Cuba is apparently up next, and who knows if he’ll even stop there?  Good thing we didn’t elect the hysterical woman, eh?

Other things you need to know this week:

  • On Legal Eagle, Spencer the Scowl Owl breaks down the Afroman defamation case.  You may have not have heard of this case yet, but, trust me: you need to.  It’s priceless.
  • Kat Abughazaleh lost her primary, though she came second by only about 3 points.  It’s disappointing, but Kat outlines all the reasons she still considers this a victory.

If you haven’t seen the viral clip of the Pennsylvania Trump voter’s current opinion of her candidate, you have to watch it.  Once you’re done with that clip, you can back up and watch the whole Closer Look segment if you like—it’s a pretty good one—but that clip is required viewing.  Seth responds “you know what, ma’am? I’m gonna go out on a limb and say you’re actually a hero, and we should all take a page from you” and he’s absolutely right.  This woman, and all the people like her—and I sincerely hope my friend is among them—are what is giving me hope this week.  Because, to quote Piglet, sometimes things seem like really good ideas and aren’t.  And people figuring that out is worth celebrating.









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Sunday, March 15, 2026

Doom Report (Week 60: He Wishes They Had More?)


This week, our moron-in-chief tried to claim that Iran somehow got some of our Tomahawk missiles and then used one of them to bomb themselves.  This somewhat implausible story came in this speech, wherein he was attempting to deflect the accusation that we bombed a girls’ school in Iran.  Specifically, he said:

Well, I haven’t seen it and I will say that the Tomahawk, which is one of the most powerful weapons around is used by, you know, is sold and used by other countries.  You know that.  And whether it’s Iran, who also has some Tomahawks, they wish they had more, but, uh, whether it’s Iran or somebody else, the fact that a Tomahawk, a Tomahawk is very generic.  It’s sold to other countries, but that’s being investigated right now.

Oh, they’re very generic, are they?  Well, I suppose that, except for the part where they’re only manufactured in the US at a cost of $2.5 million and can only be sold to foreign countries through a complicated legal process ... yeah, super generic.  If you want reactions to this speech, you could have the “Armageddon Update” one (short but crude), or the Have I Got News for Your Ears one (longer, but ... well, honestly, still kinda crude).

The funny part is, when I first heard this part of his speech, I thought he’d said ”... Iran, who also has some Tomahawks, I wish they had more ...”  Which would have been insane.  But I didn’t question it.  The man is so dementia-coded at this point that it’s hard to try and make sense of anything he says any more, so you can pretty much believe he’d say anything.

Other things you need to know this week:

  • Kat Abughazaleh turns all the attack money coming in from AIPAC into a stand-up routine.  I hope she wins this thing—she has certainly fought the good fight.
  • On this week’s Coffee Klatch, Robert Reich and Heather Lofthouse interview E. Jean Carroll.  Reich fawns over her a bit, but she really is quite remarkable in her ability to handle what happened to her and turn it into victory.
  • Normally, when I talk about the Some More News crew, I’m pointing you at Even More News, their twice-weekly show covering current events (it used to be only once per week, but then, you know: Trump).  Their main show, however, is more of a deep dive into a particular topic (similar to what John Oliver does on This Week Tonight).  This week’s Some More News is a profile on Laura Loomer.  And it explains so very, very much.
  • Another pretty decent week in review from Adam Kinzinger.  He’s still way more hawkish on the war than I’m comfortable with, but at least he recognizes how moronic it was that Trump never bothered to convince the American people that it was a good idea.

And that’s where I’ll hang my hope this week.  Fun fact: this is the only war (since we started tracking such things) where a majority of the American public didn’t support the war at the beginning of it.  Even Vietnam, apparently, was at least somewhat popular when we first went in.  But not this one.  Because even when Trump tries the wag the dog strategy, he still can’t help but fuck it up.  As many people have said (including Elie Mystal, W. Kamau Bell, and Jamelle Bouie), our one saving grace is that we have incompetent fascists.  If we were being run by competent fascists, we’d be toast by now.









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