Coping or Copping Out

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Attribution: Reality According to My Psychologist. by Arcadio Esquivel, Costa Rica

[Arcadio Esquivel is a Costa Rican cartoonist and draws for several newspapers and magazines all over the world, including La Prensa, Courrierinternational and Al Día.]

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47 thoughts on “Coping or Copping Out”

  1. merriam webster:

    The phrase “copping out” refers to the act of avoiding responsibility or commitment. It often implies that someone is not following through on a promise or obligation due to fear or reluctance. The term has evolved to signify an evasion or escape from facing up to something. In idiomatic usage, it can also mean to fail to assume responsibility for one’s actions.

  3. coping?
    https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-peace-talks-drone-attacks-0c2e0a4aeccd86c3fe18edf5cc73b250

    ISTANBUL (AP) — Delegations from Russia and Ukraine gathered in Turkey on Monday for their second round of direct peace talks in just over two weeks, although expectations were low for any significant progress on ending the three-year war after a string of major attacks over the weekend.
    Ukraine said Sunday it launched a spectacular surprise attack on five Russian airbases thousands of kilometers (miles) apart, ranging from air bases close to Moscow to targets in Russia’s Arctic, Siberia, and Far East. The targets were more than 7,000 kilometers (4,300 miles) from Ukraine.
    More than 40 Russian warplanes were destroyed, Ukraine claimed, in what Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called a “brilliant operation” that involved more than a year of planning.
    Meanwhile, Russia on Sunday launched the biggest number of drones — 472 — on Ukraine since the full-scale invasion in February 2022, Ukraine’s air force said, in an apparent effort to overwhelm air defenses.
    [continues]

  4. that Ukraine david-goliath analogy always brings to mind this old (very old) phil harris’ ditty line “lord, if you can’t help me, for goodness’ sake don’t help that bear”


    Phil Harris performing “Preacher and the Bear” (1961)
    from the Stardust Hotel in Las Vegas.

  9. Wall Street Journal’s daniel michael story today not gonna sit well with DODO and his puppeteer:
    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/ukraine-s-stunning-assault-upends-russia-s-global-military-strategy/ar-AA1FV891?

    KYIV, Ukraine—Ukraine’s unprecedented drone strikes on Russian air force bases weaken Moscow’s ability to wage war on its smaller neighbor and undermine its capacity to threaten more distant rivals such as the U.S. and China—a shift with potentially far-reaching geostrategic implications.
    The coordinated attacks Sunday on Russian airfields housing strategic Tupolev bombers damaged or destroyed a sizable portion of the fleet Moscow uses to launch guided-missile attacks on Ukraine. They are also the planes Russia would rely on to strike adversaries in the event of a nuclear war.
    Russia no longer produces the decades-old Tupolev planes, meaning it has lost a cornerstone of its ability to project military power beyond its borders. Newer Russian planes are more modern and agile but lack vital characteristics of the destroyed bombers, most significantly their range and the quantity of munitions they can carry. The attack also apparently destroyed a rare Antonov plane Russia uses for airborne command-and-control, another capability vital to modern warfare.
    Of more than 100 Tupolev bombers that Russia is known to have, Ukraine said it had damaged or destroyed more than 40. A full assessment will take time, but open-source intelligence analysts counted at least 14 damaged aircraft using satellite images and video posted online. It is unclear how many of the Tu-22s and Tu-95s were operational before the strikes.
    Russia confirmed some losses at the air bases, saying it repelled part of what it called a terrorist attack. It offered no evidence of repelling the strikes.
    Lt. Gen. Vasyl Maliuk, head of Ukraine’s main security and intelligence agency, the SBU, said Monday that the order to destroy the warplanes had come directly from President Volodymyr Zelensky.
    “The enemy bombed our country from these planes almost every night, and today actually felt that ‘payback is inevitable,’ ” Maliuk said.
    In the short term, Russia will be forced to rethink how it operates, stores and defends its remaining strategic-bomber fleet. Russia, like the U.S., often leaves long-range bombers parked outside and easily visible, both for operational reasons and as part of nuclear-disarmament agreements with Washington around the end of the Cold War.
    Moscow has already been compelled by Kyiv’s steady drone strikes inside Russia to relocate most of the planes to bases far from Ukraine. Indeed the remoteness of the bases hit Sunday is part of what made the carefully planned strikes so unexpected. The most distant is roughly 3,000 miles from Kyiv.
    Keeping planes far from Ukraine has meant that Russian bombers must take long flights to reach targets, giving Ukraine and Western intelligence agencies chances to observe and prepare for their movement, also adding complexity to Moscow’s attack plans.
    Russia now will need to devote more resources to protecting bombers and other valuable military assets. The country has a vast air-defense system that it has expanded in recent years, but it lacks sufficient equipment to cover the entire country and protect against all dangers, from long-range missiles to small, slow drones like those used Sunday.
    Zelensky said Sunday that the attacks on four bases had been prepared and launched inside Russia. The intelligence feat will sow fear within the country and likely prompt Moscow to tighten internal controls and repression.
    Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is seen by many Western intelligence analysts as deeply paranoid, is likely to grow more concerned about internal enemies and take harsh measures in response to the public humiliation. Close-to-home intelligence failures around the world generally prompt purges and upheaval in security services, and Russia has already undertaken many since its initial large-scale invasion of Ukraine in early 2022 failed.
    Russia has used the warplanes to relentlessly bombard Ukraine with bombs, missiles and drones, hitting a range of civilian targets and killing or wounding thousands of civilians.
    The planes Ukraine hit fill a role in Russia’s air force fleet roughly comparable to America’s B-52 and B-1 bombers, both of which are more modern and more consistently updated than the Tupolevs. The U.S. also has stealthy B-2 flying-wing bombers and is developing a successor, the B-21. Tu-95s, which first flew in the 1950s, are so old that instead of jet engines—which the Soviet Union hadn’t yet mastered at the time—they use four engines, each with a pair of propellers that rotate in opposite directions for speed.
    Both countries’ bombers represent vital parts of their ability to deliver nuclear weapons in a war. The other two legs of the so-called nuclear triad are submarines and land-based missiles. Russia’s navy has struggled in recent years to maintain and modernize its equipment. The readiness of its land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles and their launch silos is difficult to gauge.
    Kyiv’s success hitting Russian bases from nearby comes atop a string of Ukrainian long-range attacks on Russian military and energy facilities. Ukraine last year destroyed a Russian early-warning radar antenna that had been built to detect a potential U.S. nuclear attack.
    In 2023, Ukraine severely damaged the Kerch Strait Bridge using naval drones, following a truck-bomb attack in 2022 that created a spectacular fireball. The explosion, which ignited fuel cars on a passing train, closed for many months a causeway that Putin had built with great fanfare following his seizure of the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine in 2014.

  10. That Russell fellow was a pretty keen observer.

    And “…and that’s when I first saw the bear…”

    Somehow comedy is different than it used to be.

  11. Zelensky didn’t cop out.
    Ukraine didn’t cop out.
    You know what else they didn’t do?
    Detail their battle plans on an unsecured group chat.

  12. As O pointed out this morning, success of the Ukrainian operation was probably due solely to the fact that the current administration was unaware of the planning.

    Ignorant, so to speak
    Out of the loop.

    Ukes:
    “New phone. Who dis?”

  16. And the whale said to Jonah, “Ain’t no little bitty nothin’ like you gonna hip me—the king of the dip—to what the lick is.”

    —Lord Buckley, from “Jonah and the Whale”.

  18. Kessler takes Mikey J to task for getting it wrong when he says the CBO is getting it wrong. His intro paragraphs sum up the piece nicely.

    “They’ve [Congressional Budget Office] always been off. By way of example, they were off on their projections of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in the first Trump administration by $1 trillion. The problem is they do not use what we call dynamic scoring. What that means in layman’s terms is they don’t give us any credit for the extraordinary economic growth that will be spurred along by this bill.”

    — House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana), interviewed on Fox News, May 29

    The CBO is a nonpartisan agency that provides official forecasts on the impact of legislation. (The current director, Phillip Swagel, served in the George W. Bush administration.) Lawmakers love to cite it when it gives them a number they like (as Johnson did only a few days before this interview) and attack it when the number causes political problems.

    In this instance, Johnson is upset that the House’s main legislative vehicle — the One Big Beautiful Bill of tax and spending cuts — was deemed to add trillions to the national debt. President Donald Trump and White House officials have also attacked the CBO for its estimates on the bill, which are produced with the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation.

    But the CBO is not alone. Similar conclusions have been reached from right- and left-leaning organizations, including the Tax Foundation, the Penn-Wharton Budget Model, the Manhattan Institute and the Center for American Progress.

    We’re going to focus on Johnson’s claim that the CBO blew its forecast on Trump’s 2017 tax bill. It’s a nonsense claim that somehow dings the CBO for failing to predict a pandemic, the resulting sky-high inflation and an immigration surge.

    Johnson is also wrong that the CBO does not do dynamic scoring in its forecasts. At the request of Congress, it does — but that analysis of the bill has not been delivered yet. He may not like that result either. Penn Wharton’s dynamic scoring showed an even bigger increase in the deficit than its conventional score, in part because it determined the bill would encourage higher-income workers to work fewer hours, resulting in lower tax revenue.
    …

    Smarmy little weasel.

  21. Hi,
    Beautiful here…. Looking at Falmouth Harbor.

    I see Tacoman is still alive…. Nuts!

  22. He’s over the border of plain nuts…on the couch.

    “THE SCIENCE BEHIND DONALD TRUMP’S DANGEROUS PERSONALITY DISORDER
    by Vince Greenwood, Founder of DutyToInform.org
    I’m a clinical psychologist specializing in forensic evaluations. That’s the background I brought to the political arena in 2020 when I tried to contribute to the efforts of politically active mental health professionals who felt they had a duty to warn the public about specific psychiatric vulnerabilities in Donald Trump that could pose a threat to the Republic. With his defeat, we thought we had put the threat to rest, but it has come roaring back. Some of us in the mental health community felt our findings should have had a more significant impact. After all, many of us had spelled out psychological disturbances that demonstrated Trump was unfit for office, clinically dangerous, and really was and is an existential threat.
    My goal in this article is to describe the scientific underpinnings that inform our duty to warn that Trump is a clear and ever-present danger. I hope this information can provide an additional vantage point, an additional plank in our argument, one with empirical support, to possibly influence persuadable voters.
    Let me start by observing that Trump certainly is a unique character — flamboyant, politically incorrect, and enthralling to his supporters. He is the central protagonist in our current political crisis. Strikingly, he is unmoved by the wrath directed at him by his political opponents. This defiance, coupled with his ability to ‘troll the libs,’ is a central part of his appeal. Supporters and detractors would agree that he is riveting and seems to operate in a realm of his own making.
    However, as I will argue, he is anything but unique. He is a garden-variety example of a particular and precisely delineated psychiatric condition. He is, sadly for him and dangerously for the rest of us, a prisoner of his psychopathology, a puppet on the strings of a set of destructive personality traits that dictate his behavior. He is at the mercy of those traits, and, by extension, so are we.
    As mental health professionals, we have an ethical duty to not only inform but to warn: even with all he has done and all he has threatened to do, because of his condition, we are on solid scientific grounds to warn you that we are underestimating the danger he poses. We hope that this disturbing message can raise awareness of the threat that Trump, saddled with this condition, represents and mobilize us to do whatever we can to defeat him at the ballot box.”

    https://drvincentgreenwood-89455.medium.com/the-science-behind-donald-trumps-dangerous-personality-disorder-49b3f8e416de

  23. “Let’s start with a bit of history on this dangerous disorder. This condition has been with us from antiquity through medieval times to the present. Descriptions from Greek and Roman mythology, the Bible, and classical literature are remarkably consistent in revealing the presence of a small group among us that are intellectually coherent but lack the capacity for moral reasoning. Such individuals do not seem to experience emotional suffering — there is no psychosis, no anxiety, no depression — but seem impervious to punishment. They display a constellation of personality traits frequently associated with immorality and criminality but also, in some cases, socioeconomic success, even if that success is gained through dishonest means. No culture or station in life is immune from this condition. It is described across all of written history, and we find it among the wealthy and the impoverished.
    It wasn’t until the 19th century that the condition was named and attached to the small group of individuals in society who are devoid of moral sensibility. The term used comes from the German word psycho-pastiche, which translates to ‘suffering soul.’ The English word is a psychopath.”

    https://drvincentgreenwood-89455.medium.com/the-science-behind-donald-trumps-dangerous-personality-disorder-49b3f8e416de

  24. “Our understanding of such individuals took a quantum leap in the 20th century due primarily to the work of two men. Hervey Cleckley, an American psychiatrist from Georgia, devoted his career to studying this condition and published his insights in a book titled The Mask of Sanity in 1941. Considered one of the great works in the field of psychopathology, it depicted the psychopath as an individual, while appearing to be a perfectly average person, indeed often a charming person, who nevertheless displays a particular set of traits which inevitably lead to menacing behavioral patterns that are harmful to others. The harm maifests itself at times in criminal acts, but always in exploitive behavior, marked by arrogance, cunning and deceit. Cleckley identified 16 such traits and behavior patterns. Examples include untruthfulness, lack of sincerity, superficial charm, inability to feel remorse or shame, and limited insight into their personality.
    In the 1970s, Robert Hare, a Canadian psychologist, and his research team developed a checklist to diagnose the condition. This measurement tool enabled us to develop a detailed and scientific understanding of the condition since it generated many studies. As a result of that groundbreaking development in defining and objectively measuring the condition, we can now say that clinical psychopathy is one of the most thoroughly validated and best-understood conditions in the field of psychopathology.”

    https://drvincentgreenwood-89455.medium.com/the-science-behind-donald-trumps-dangerous-personality-disorder-49b3f8e416de

  25. “Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (HCL-R)
    1. Glibness/superficial charm — 2
    2.Egocentricity/grandiose sense of self-worth — 2
    3.Proneness to boredom/need for stimulation — 2
    4. Pathological lying and deception/gaslighting — 2
    5. Conning/lack of sincerity — 2
    6. Lack of remorse or guilt — 2
    7. Shallow affect — 2
    8. Callous/lack of empathy — 2
    9. Parasitic lifestyle — 0
    10. Poor behavioral controls — 2
    11. Promiscuous sexual behavior — 2
    12. Early behavior problems — 2
    13. Lack of realistic long-term goals — 1
    14. Impulsivity — 2
    15. Irresponsibility — 2
    16. Failure to accept responsibility for own actions — 2
    17. Many short-term marital relationships — 1
    18. Juvenile delinquency — 1
    19. Revocation of parole — 0
    20. Criminal versatility — 2
    Total = 33
    Trump receives a score of 33. The diagnostic process to assess clinical psychopathy demands thoroughness and objectivity. This rating reflects a fair-minded effort to call balls and strikes. Donald Trump passes the threshold for a formal diagnosis of clinical psychopathy.*”

    https://drvincentgreenwood-89455.medium.com/the-science-behind-donald-trumps-dangerous-personality-disorder-49b3f8e416de

    (PS: his advancing dementia might continue driving some of these scores up.)

  26. “What has come out of the empirical wash with these solidly-built statistical techniques is the clarity that the psychopath is ruled by three distinct clusters of traits (known as the “three factor model” of clinical psychopathy). The three core, governing traits of the psychopath are:
    (1) Impulsivity — characterized by the inability to inhibit impulses or grapple with any issue that doesn’t serve the psychopath’s immediate, egocentric needs
    (2) Remorselessness — characterized by an utter lack of conscience, linked to an inability to experience states of guilt, shame, and fear that might curb immoral behavior.
    (3) Drive to dominate — characterized by a one-dimensional focus on “winning” in all relationships, fueled by an arrogant, manipulative, and deceitful mode of behavior.
    All of the behavior and all of the choices of the psychopath flow from these three governing traits.”

    https://drvincentgreenwood-89455.medium.com/the-science-behind-donald-trumps-dangerous-personality-disorder-49b3f8e416de

  27. Glad the chicken TACO nickname is sticking…
    but don’t forget they have everyone’s data AND we are paying them to have Peter Thiel (Palantir) aggregate it from various sources to be used to control us…
    and there’s a provision in the budget bill that would make tRUMP (or someone) to be king/dictator…
    and sometimes AI does fun things, but mostly it will make humans evermore expendable to the billionaires.

  28. “The research findings about these three central and unyielding traits enable us to understand and explain Trump’s destructive behavior. As an example let’s take his disastrous response to Covid-19. Studies indicate that 40% of the 1.1 million who died in America were due to The Trump administration’s mishandling of the crisis (more needless deaths than all of the deaths in WWII, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War combined)
    Trump’s impulsivity trait guaranteed a botched federal response to COVID-19. The crisis demanded discipline and hard work. Trump didn’t attend coronavirus task force meetings, and became bored with the daily press conferences as soon as it became clear they were hurting his poll numbers. The crisis demanded a set of executive skills to develop a detailed and comprehensive response. Trump’s impulsive nature precluded that.

    In theory, Trump could have delegated authority to others who were capable, he could have collaborated with public health officials, or consulted any number of think tanks that had detailed plans on how to manage a pandemic. After all, it would have made him look good. But the drive to dominate trait ensured that was never going to happen. Collaboration is anathema to the psychopath. The psychopath is like a leopard who rejects traveling in a pack and relies solely on their cunning to seek out their prey.
    From the outset, Trump treated the crisis as a media spectacle that he was driven to dominate. By instinct, he did not view the crisis as threatening the country but as a way to promote his brand of “stable genius.” His primary mode was to tell a story about the crisis that made him look good rather than actually manage it.
    Lacking any gear of compassion, Trump barreled forward in the only gear he possessed: win-at-all-costs-political-domination. He refused to wear a mask and mocked those who did; he tweeted out support to protestors who flaunted social distancing guidelines; he doled out ventilators and protective equipment to governors based on their political leanings and loyalty to him; he peddled exaggerations about the administration’s achievements; he promoted bogus treatments; and he conducted rallies and White House events that became super-spreader events.
    And his destructive response to Covid was platformed by his hard-wired trait of remorselessness. Trump had no moral fear of the consequences of his neglectful and divisive behavior. Feelings of shame and guilt are totally foreign to him. A psychopath does not have the emotional infrastructure to care about overflowing morgues or peddling false claims to an anxious and vulnerable public.

    America’s response to COVID-19 left the world stunned. I would contend it was not simply the result of a “bad” or incompetent president but a “mad” president, the madness being the psychopathology of clinical psychopathy/malignant narcissism, especially the traits of impulsivity, drive to dominate, and remorselessness.”

    https://drvincentgreenwood-89455.medium.com/the-science-behind-donald-trumps-dangerous-personality-disorder-49b3f8e416de

  29. “In conclusion, like any diagnosed psychopath/malignant narcissist, Donald Trump has had to suffer a life devoid of love, depth, conscience, or any hope of self-discipline. It is a life incapable of developing a caring obligation toward others, incapable of remorse for callous or immoral behavior, and incapable of pursuing anything beyond his immediate self-interest.”

    https://drvincentgreenwood-89455.medium.com/the-science-behind-donald-trumps-dangerous-personality-disorder-49b3f8e416de

  30. PS: he’s only getting worse now that there’s nothing left to stop him or slow him down.*

    Red America has only itself to blame. His doom is now our doom.

    *Impeach and put into a straitjacket.

  31. Beware: We Are Entering a New Phase of the Trump Era

    The United States in the last four months has felt like an unremitting series of shocks: executive orders gutting civil rights and constitutional protections; a man with a chain saw trying to gut the federal government; deliberately brutal deportations; people snatched off the streets and disappeared in unmarked cars; legal attacks on universities and law firms. -M. Gessen

    https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/28/opinion/trump-danger-normalization-shock.html

    “The swiftness of this administration to dismantle and corrupt multiple systems and institutional foundations has been breathtaking. Trump has an impressive amount of assistance: a complicit Senate, the Heritage Foundation, Project 2025 architects, Supreme Court devotees and a substantial amount of the electorate too apathetic to vote.”

    M. Gessen commented May 28
    “@Annessey And please let’s not forget a largely passive, disjointed Democratic Party.”

    (Note: Impressive set of letters in the comments and M. Gessen replied to a number of them.)

  32. The letters from readers (smarter than me) are the primary reason I subscribe to the New York Times.

    Calif Dreamin’
    “I appreciate the need to generate an effective political response, but while it’s a terrible time, it’s not the end of the world. This is hardly the civil war, and there have been political parties disappearing (or radically morphing) previously.
    Elections are gerrymandered, mostly by Republicans, but there will be elections now through 2026 and 2028 and beyond. We will have elections, and they will be consequential.
    Make no doubt: While the Democrat response has been neutered because of Republican control, everyone needs to recognize and shout to the hilltops that the Republicans fully own this situation. Unless there is some economic or foreign policy miracles arising out of this chaos, the majority of the electorate is unlikely to want a continuation of the MAGA destruction that is only getting worse day by day, regardless of the weariness of it all..
    The Courts will try to uphold the rule of law, but only an electoral backlash will start the course correction. But the course will only be corrected if Democrats have a vision and a plan and govern responsibly without overdoing the desire for there on revenge. And this must have some who can carry and proclaim that banner effectively.
    While you chastise (rightfully) the Democrats, you also need to highlight who will lead a truly conservative, not radical, change get the Republican (or a new party?) back to responsible politics.”

  33. M. Gessen
    Opinion Columnist
    May 28
    @PTNYC I couldn’t agree more. Words are my instrument, and I do believe they are essential – but they are not enough. If there is one thing I have learned from living in an autocracy, it’s that we are never aware of how much possibility for action we have until we lose some of this possibility. Right now, all forms of resistance are still possible in the U.S.: legislative, legal, protest, rhetorical, artistic. That may not be the case for long, and we should be using what we have, right now.

  34. On the subject of the day, something interesting from my morning newsletter read. The quote is from a Wall Street Journal article, I’m not a subscriber to the Journal so I don’t have a direct link.
    It seems the law firms that cut a quick deal with Trump are losing business. My favorite is McDonalds switched law firms just as a lawsuit was going to trial.
    To sum it up. If you haven’t got the balls to defend yourself…
    Who would have thunk it.

    Copied from Daniel Drezner’s newsletter

    Support for the law firms that didn’t make deals has been growing inside the offices of corporate executives. At least 11 big companies are moving work away from law firms that settled with the administration or are giving—or intend to give—more business to firms that have been targeted but refused to strike deals, according to general counsels at those companies and other people familiar with those decisions.

    Among them are technology giant Oracle, investment bank Morgan Stanley, an airline and a pharmaceutical company. Microsoft expressed reservations about working with a firm that struck a deal, and another such firm stopped representing McDonald’s in a case a few months before a scheduled trial.

    In interviews, general counsels expressed concern about whether they could trust law firms that struck deals to fight for them in court and in negotiating big deals if they weren’t willing to stand up for themselves against Trump. The general counsel of a manufacturer of medical supplies said that if firms facing White House pressure “don’t have a hard line,” they don’t have any line at all….

    The agreements were supposed to buy peace and allow the firms to move on, but in the weeks since they have caused rifts between partners, alienated some younger associates and created problems with some longtime clients.

  35. https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-database-palantir-dystopian-alarm-2079688

    On Friday, the Times reported that the White House had contracted Colorado-based data analytics and technology firm Palantir, co-founded by longtime Trump backer Peter Thiel, for assistance in compiling a database of personal information on American citizens.

    Citing unnamed government officials and Palantir employees, the newspaper said the company had been in talks with various government agencies regarding the project, including the Social Security Administration (SSA) and the Department of Education.

    When approached by Newsweek for comment on the report, White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said, without explicitly confirming the report: “President Trump signed an executive order to eliminate information silos and streamline data collection across all agencies to increase government efficiency and save hard-earned taxpayer dollars.”

    *BS! It’s to monitor, control, and punish folks.

    Palantir has been deepening its partnership with the government in recent years, its software being employed by the U.S. Army and, last year, through a co-partnership with Microsoft delivering its AI-powered data analytics capabilities to the intelligence community.

    Cody Venzke, senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, told Wired in April: “The ultimate concern is a panopticon of a single federal database with everything that the government knows about every single person in this country. What we are seeing is likely the first step in creating that centralized dossier on everyone in this country.”

    *This is the government declaring war on citizens, IMO. I’ve already called my three members of Congress this morning, and told them as much. Also, if allowed to go forward, this will be global sooner than later.

  37. I don’t believe anyone else in the administration has the psychopathy that Dodo has, but I think they are emulating it and learning to exploit the skill set.

  43. It’s great. Gives a little Imus-vibe (to me, at least) while true to its own Trail Mix roots. Thank you, Craig.

  44. https://www.axios.com/2025/06/02/iran-nuclear-deal-proposal-enrich-uranium

    The nuclear deal proposal the U.S. gave Iran on Saturday would allow limited low-level uranium enrichment on Iranian soil for a to-be-determined period of time, Axios has learned, contradicting public statements from top officials.

    Why it matters: White House envoy Steve Witkoff and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have said publicly that the U.S. will not allow Iran to enrich uranium and will demand the full dismantlement of Iran’s nuclear facilities. The secret proposal shows far more flexibility on both points.

    *A steady diet of TACO. The art of the meal.

  45. Oldie that popped up…

    “A day in the life of Sue the Trump supporter…

    Sue gets up at 6 a.m. and fills her coffeepot with water to prepare her morning coffee. The water is clean and good because some tree-hugging liberal fought for minimum water-quality standards.

    With her first swallow of coffee, she takes her daily medication. Her medications are safe to take because some stupid commie liberal fought to insure their safety and that they work as advertised.

    All but $10 of her medications are paid for by her employer’s medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance – now Sue gets it too.

    She prepares her morning breakfast, bacon and eggs. Sue’s bacon is safe to eat because some girly-man liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry.

    In the shower, Sue reaches for her shampoo. Her bottle is properly labeled with each ingredient and its amount in the total contents because some crybaby liberal fought for her right to know what she was putting on her body and how much it contained.

    Sue dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air she breathes is clean because some environmentalist wacko liberal fought for laws to stop industries from polluting our air.

    She walks to the subway station for her government-subsidized ride to work. It saves her considerable money in parking and transportation fees because some fancy-pants liberal fought for affordable public transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a contributor.

    Sue begins her work day. She has a good job with excellent pay, medical benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some lazy liberal union members fought and died for these working standards. Sue’s employer pays these standards because Sue’s employer doesn’t want his employees to call the union.

    If Sue is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed, she’ll get a worker compensation or unemployment check because some stupid liberal didn’t think she should lose her home because of her temporary misfortune.

    It’s noon and Sue needs to make a bank deposit so she can pay some bills. Sue’s deposit is federally insured by the FSLIC because some godless liberal wanted to protect Sue’s money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the Great Depression.

    Sue has to pay her Fannie Mae-underwritten mortgage and her below-market federal student loan because some elitist liberal decided that Sue and the government would be better off if she was educated and earned more money over her lifetime.

    Sue is home from work. She plans to visit her father this evening at his farm home in the country. She gets in her car for the drive. Her car is among the safest in the world because some America-hating liberal fought for car safety standards.

    She arrives at her childhood home. Her generation was the third to live in the house financed by Farmers’ Home Administration because bankers didn’t want to make rural loans. The house didn’t have electricity until some big-government liberal stuck his nose where it didn’t belong and demanded rural electrification.

    She is happy to see her father, who is now retired. Her father lives on Social Security and a union pension because some wine-drinking, cheese-eating liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Sue wouldn’t have to.

    Sue gets back in her car for the ride home, and turns on a radio talk show. The radio host keeps saying that liberals are bad and conservatives are good. He doesn’t mention that Republicans have fought against every protection and benefit Sue enjoys throughout her day. Sue agrees: “We don’t need those big-government liberals ruining our lives! After all, I’m self-made and believe everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have.”

    – Kay Dee

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