Attribution: GRIFTING TO CELEBRATE AMERICA’S 250TH BIRTHDAY by Paul Duginski
Paul Duginski has spent a half-century in journalism, including 27-1/2 years at the Los Angeles Times, and 13 years at the Sacramento Bee. His cartoons have appeared in the L.A. Times, the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the San Jose Mercury News, the San Francisco Examiner and the McClatchy Bee newspapers in California, among other places. He was an award-winning graphics journalist at the L.A. Times.
So through the night rode Paul Revere;
And so through the night went his cry of alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm,—
A cry of defiance, and not of fear,
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo forevermore!
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,
And the midnight message of Paul Revere.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow-
Trump met with his cabinet amid his war in Iran being a mess and his approval rating being in the toilet, Hegseth got an angry phone call from Trump after he cancelled the deployment of 4,000 troops who were about to leave to be stationed in Poland, Jimmy had a brief back and forth with RFK Jr. online that caught the attention of Fox Business, Senator John Cornyn of Texas lost his primary to a Trump-endorsed Ken Paxton, he will now face off against Democrat James Talarico, and Spencer Pratt is running for the Mayor of LA.
Every now and then I would try to catch an update from the dear leaders cabinet meeting, mostly to read what nonsense the idiot would produce. The proud statements of babbling that a four year old would produce to a family room filled with adults describing a visit to the beach that never occurred.
One word has been a frequent visitor to my thoughts during the last ten years, charades. A game, a parlor game, that has a long history. Describe a word or phrase without saying it. The cabinet of fools using an array of methods all trying to get some hidden word to their cult leader.
William Thackeray provides an excellent summary of the cabinet of pretenders, “Thackeray snarked that charades were enjoyed for “enabling the many ladies amongst us who had beauty to display their charms, and the fewer number who had cleverness, to exhibit their wit”.
I think that pretty much covers what the “cabinet meeting” was all about. The idiot labeled potus, does not actually govern, but the fools he surrounds himself constantly tell him lies so as not to be pulled off the teat of power. Stupid likes it as he is the mob boss and all people like him require constant praise otherwise they find another fool to tell them the lies.
by wiki about the UWP folks with that “ride, ride, ride” song:
Up with People (UWP) is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.[2] Up with People staged song and dance performances promoting themes such as multiculturalism, racial equality, and positive thinking.[3][4] Critics, including some former Up with People performers, once accused the organization of exploiting its members and of contributing to moral propaganda and oppression.[5][clarification needed]
History Founding
UWP was born out of a split from Moral Re-Armament, a multifaith religious movement. In 1965, J. Blanton Belk dedicated his energies to creating an organization for young adults that enabled them to interact with the world through positivity and music. He created Up with People (UWP) to bring people together for the common good regardless of ideology, political affiliation, ethnicity, race, or religious affiliation. Up with People was officially incorporated as a “501(c)(3) nonprofit, apolitical, non-sectarian international educational organization”[6] in 1968 under the leadership of Belk.[7]
[…]
Criticism
By the 1990s, Up With People’s themed, musical-style spectacles were frequently lambasted by critics and mocked by television writers for being dated and seeming phony, if not outright creepy.[16] One critic opined, “Up With People didn’t lose its way because it lost the ability to control its cast members’ behavior, or because the public suddenly came to recognize that its sickly sweet songs were insufferable. Up With People declined because it became irrelevant, especially after the Cold War ended[.]”[10] Its songs were criticized as naive and childlike, with titles like “You Can’t Live Crooked And Think Straight” and “To Tell The Truth.”
Smile ‘Til It Hurts: The Up With People Story documentary
Smile ‘Til It Hurts: The Up With People Story (2009) is a documentary made by the wife of a former Up With People member, Lee Storey.[17] A water rights attorney who never had training as a filmmaker, Storey felt compelled to make the film when she discovered her husband was keeping a secret from her: he was a former UWP member. The film contains never-before-seen archival footage, and the honest reflections of former members. The filmmakers describe it as “what can happen when ideology, money and groupthink converge to co-opt youthful idealism.”SMILE ‘TIL IT HURTS – Home The documentary asserts that the organization, founded on conservative American ideals, was funded by corporate America and was deliberate propaganda to counteract the liberal counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s. Former members talk about their experiences in UWP, which ranged from positive to more cult-like regimented rules.
The documentary spawned a lawsuit against the IRS, in which filmmaker Lee Storey asserted the right to deduct her expenses in making the film, even though she derived no profit from it. Storey won the case, with the Tax Court ruling production of the film was a deductible trade or business expense.[18]
Judge allows Trump to implement mail-in voting executive order
May 28 (Reuters) – A U.S. judge on Thursday declined to block President Donald Trump’s executive order tightening rules on mail-in voting in a loss for the Democratic Party, whose lawyers argued that it could disenfranchise millions of voters.
The decision comes as Trump’s Republicans are locked in a tight battle to keep control of both houses of the U.S. Congress in the November midterm elections. Trump has for years pushed the false claim that his 2020 election defeat was the result of widespread voter fraud and has criticized voting by mail.
The executive order signed by Trump on March 31 directed his administration to compile a list of confirmed U.S. citizens eligible to vote in each state and to use federal data to help state election officials verify who is eligible to vote.
It also required the U.S. Postal Service to only deliver ballots to voters on each state’s approved mail-in ballot list, and required states to preserve election-related records for five years.
JUDGE SAYS DEMOCRATS’ CHALLENGE IS PREMATURE
In rejecting a request by plaintiffs including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York that he issue a preliminary injunction blocking the measure, Washington-based U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols wrote that the Democrats had brought the case too early because the government had not yet produced any flawed citizenship lists and the Postal Service had not yet implemented any new rules.
“Given that the Executive Order does not command Plaintiffs to do anything, and that no agency has yet acted pursuant to the Order in a way that could harm Plaintiffs, they have not suffered any harm at present,” wrote Nichols, who was appointed by Trump during his first term.
The judge said the Democrats could ask for an injunction again after federal agencies took steps to implement the executive order.
HEARING NEXT WEEK IN PARALLEL CASE
Democrats had argued that the order infringed on individual states’ rights to regulate elections under the U.S. Constitution.
They said the executive order’s direction that agencies use Department of Homeland Security and Social Security Administration data to build “state citizenship lists” risked improperly excluding lawfully registered voters because the data sources can be out of date and may include errors.
The Justice Department countered that the litigation was premature.
A coalition of Democratic states brought a similar lawsuit challenging the executive order in federal court in Boston. U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani, an appointee of Democratic former President Barack Obama, is due to hear arguments in that case on June 2.
(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; Editing by Bill Berkrot and David Holmes)
He’s $6.5 Billion RIcher, the 30-sec trailer — Today in the Diner 🍽️
The stumpers are evidently slow to realize that Mark Carney is an actual international banker. It’s kind of humorous
i.e.
Ain’t no flies on Canada.
The latest on Grey Whale Deaths
Susanne Rust. (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)
By Susanne Rust
Staff Writer
Follow
May 28, 2026 5 AM PT
Gray whales are washing up on North America’s Pacific coast in alarming numbers, again. The culprit: Starvation and a lack of food. It feels like it’s becoming a theme this year, as we watched thousands of seabirds die earlier this spring presumably from a similar problem. With a super El Niño on its way, is it just going to get worse?
It’s looking like another really bad year for gray whales.
Thus far, 23 have stranded or died along the Washington coast — outpacing the strandings recorded during the historic 2019 die-off.
The number has been more modest farther south. There have been 20 beachings and deaths in California, down from 30 as of this time last year, but up from 10 in 2024. And there have been eight in Oregon, which according to Michael Milstein, a spokesman for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is also a record.
He said a total of 122 have stranded or died this year in coastal waters from Mexico to Canada. That isn’t the highest the agency has ever recorded, but it is similar to between 2019 and 2023, when the federal government called for an investigation of the dying animals.
Early reports from the lagoons of Mexico’s Baja Peninsula, where the leviathans winter every year — birthing, nursing their young, and relaxing in the warm shallow waters — forewarned scientists. Just eight mothers and calves were spotted in Laguna San Ignacio, down from a peak of 274 in 2015, and well below the 40 seen in 2019.
The numbers suggest a continuing decline in the population of Eastern Pacific Gray whales, a species that was once on the brink of extinction due to whaling, but made a remarkable comeback in the 1970s and 1980s. For years, the gray whale was the poster child for sound conservation policies, such as the Marine Mammal Protection Act, showing that when governments intervene, species can be brought back from the brink.
But with the continued warming of the oceans, and the ensuing changes in food availability, animals such as gray whales — and as we saw, earlier this spring, sea birds — are dying.
“The common finding is malnourishment, reflecting an issue with their food supply in the Arctic,” said John Calambokidis, a senior research biologist at the Cascadia Research Collective, a whale research organization in Washington.
After wintering in Mexico, gray whales migrate 6,000 miles north along the Pacific Coast to summer feeding grounds in the Arctic and Sub-Arctic oceans. There, they find small crustaceans and amphipods in the muddy sediment of the Bering, Chukchi and Beaufort seas before they head back south, where they won’t feed again until they migrate north the following year.
But the reduction in sea ice and warming waters appears to be disrupting the availability of their mud-dwelling morsels, making them travel farther in search of food and providing less sustenance all together.
Other animals are also affected by the warming waters, as witnessed this spring when thousands of sea birds — including Brandts’ cormorants, brown pelicans, grebes and loons — died along the California coast. While researchers can’t say they all died from starvation, many of the animals appeared malnourished. And scientists say when animals don’t get enough to eat, they often exhibit riskier feeding behavior, and their immune systems become depressed — leaving them vulnerable to fungal and other infections.
Kathi George, director of Cetacean Conservation Biology at The Marine Mammal Center, in Sausalito, said researchers have spotted 16 gray whales in San Francisco Bay this year — a place where gray whales were not seen historically before 2018.
She said they appear to be feeding in the Bay, as they are in other inlets up and down the coast, looking for new places to find food. Necropsies show they are finding food, but the heavily trafficked waters put them at grave risk of entanglement and vessel strikes. She said four of the seven animals that have died in the Bay this year were likely hit by boats or ships.
Theresa Mercer, who along with her husband, Scott Mercer, founded the Point Arena Mendonoma Whale and Seal Study in 2013, said they saw 344 northbound whales this year, including seven mother-calf pairs. She said those numbers “reflect what we used to count in 7-10 days in 2014-2018!”
As scientists warily monitor what could become a super El Niño roiling in the Pacific, and a sustained marine heat wave seemingly locked in off the coast, they’re hoping these “jeeps of the ocean” — generalist whales known for their hardiness and resilience — can pull through this latest crisis.
They absolutely do not care about the mid-terms because they plan to steal them all.
What, me worry?
Trump’s $6.5 Billion Richer. Guess How That Happened.
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C-SPAN’s Howard “Extreme” Mortman in the diner shortly.
I once had a tour of the cemetery where Paul Revere is buried in Boston. The guide told us that Paul was not a very good soldier nor a terrific silversmith BUT, he did sire16 children.
So he truly was the Midnight rider
5 died in childhood, you had to play the odds back then
today’s meme…
Here’s the quiet part:
They can’t afford to lose.
meme #2…
I see Talarico is walking back some of his past comments, on Gender, God, flag, etc,. calls them “cringey”
Dr. Jill on a book tour, rekindling resentment
just go away
Anon, I so agree. We’re six months out for a pivotal election. We don’t need that.
Today in the Diner…
Trump Crypto Wealth & Texas Senate Race
President Trump’s crypto casino made him billions while retail investors lost 4.3 billion. We track the corruption ledger and the Texas Senate race.
Forget the campaign promises and just look at the ledger. Since retaking the Oval Office, the current president’s net worth has exploded, heavily padded by a deregulated crypto casino that cost retail investors over four billion dollars. We are breaking down the receipts on how insider whales and the Trump family are skimming off the top while pushing meme coins and suspicious stock trades.
Meanwhile, the Texas Senate race is heating up between James Talarico and Ken Paxton. We dive into the culture war attacks being launched in Texas, why the big three Cs of Cost, Chaos, and Corruption are the true midterm battleground, and how Jared Kushner’s Saudi billions are teeing up massive House investigations.
Plus, C-SPAN’s Howard Mortman drops by the diner to celebrate 40 years of Senate television, and we look back at the unsung hero of the Bill of Rights in today’s Echoes of America.
Live Chat: https://trailmix.cc/chat
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Alerts: https://trailmix.cc/alerts
00:00 Intro
00:18 President Trump Crypto Wealth
05:20 Thursdays with Howard Mortman
08:28 40 Years of Senate TV
18:18 Texas Senate Race Paxton vs Talarico
31:00 Culture Wars and Campaign Pivots
48:47 Kushner Saudi Fund and Corruption
56:15 Suspicious Presidential Stock Trades
01:01:29 George Mason and the Bill of Rights
feeling like it’s absurd to believe Talarico can win in TX
5 months of wasted expenditure on a likely loss inbound
his schtick might work in a purple state like PA or VA
might
would explain why i see a more concerted propaganda effort against Platner than him
Anon – I’ve been watching Talarico, and many of the folks who show up at the rallies are disillusioned, older, white folks. They don’t like tRUMP’s nastiness, and they don’t like the higher prices more than anyone else. He’s embraced the “Talafreako” label and is selling shirts on his campaign site with the “I’m a…”
label that the eighth graders running this world into the ground tried to put him down with.
Paxton admits to rejecting 2 million ballots that would’ve cost tRUMP TX in 2024. Always seemed odd that Abbott beat Beto, too.
If Hungary can evict Orban, we can evict Dumbass and company.
Oh, and there will be baby tree frogs soon. (Foam nest frogs still play the odds like Paul Revere. The ribbits are coming, the ribbits are coming.)
Ha! Repugs on Talarico:
“six-gendered” ummm, cisgendered, perhaps.
Excursion, incursion.
Groceries.
This is worth listening to for two reasons: One, to ascertain the truth, if Ken Paxton is really saying that 2.5 million people were disenfranchised in Texas in 2024 and two, to see if he’s got his eyes on the same kind of behavior for 2026, 2028, and so on.
Republicans hate mail-in ballots because they cut long lines and waiting. What kind of voter suppression does Paxton have planned for the midterms?
@RonFilipkowski • X.com
Texas AG Ken Paxton said yesterday that if he hadn’t been successful with lawsuits to block mail-in ballots, Trump definitely would have lost the election in Texas.
*Video of Paxton admitting he tampered with elections to Banananazi.
Scrubbing With C-SPAN
From today’s Digital Diner menu 🍽️
https://link.ms.now/view/57c098b772fbf286278b5670rcbfk.1dti/fb291b19
The Trump gulags from Morning Joe.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-backed-candidates-score-major-boost-deep-pocketed-ai-super-pac-upcoming-primaries
A deep-pocketed super PAC working to elect AI-friendly candidates is making major investments in upcoming Senate and House primaries ahead of November’s midterm elections.
The group’s new round of spending comes after it claimed victories in North Carolina, Texas, Illinois and Georgia, where it poured money into key primaries to elect candidates in both parties who oppose a patchwork of state AI regulations and are more supportive of the industry. And it comes as AI industry money has been increasingly shaping political primaries amid fighting over federal and state regulations.
Leading the Future, a pro-AI group with a sizable war chest that is backed by industry executives, is pledging to spend $2 million in Senate races in Louisiana, Montana and Oklahoma, with $1.5 million to be deployed immediately.
And the super PAC, which is powered by donors including Greg Brockman, president of OpenAI, and his wife Anna, in addition to venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, will dish out $750,000 in upcoming House primaries in California and Washington state.
Robert Wuhl: 1775: Boston, Massachusetts. A British postal worker, twenty-three years old, a postal rider hears that the British are invading. He gets on a horse and rides 350 miles to warn the colonists, and his name is?
Audience: Paul Revere.
Robert Wuhl: His name is Israel Bissell. Israel Bissell! Now, did Paul Revere ride? Absolutely! He went a good nineteen miles. He went from Boston to Cambridge. The only person he could have warned was the Dean of Harvard. Israel Bissell on the other hand goes from Boston across Massachusetts, down through Rhode Island, across Connecticut, down into New York, across New Jersey to Philadelphia. Guys, how chafed are Bissell’s balls at this point, on a horse? He’s on a horse! This is a long ride on Amtrak.
From my Texas cousin. What’s up with the pen-theft?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_Bissell
Israel Bissell full Wiki bio. Paul Revere’s 19 mile ride just had a better press agent and Longfellow thought Revere was an easier rhyme.
Graduation speech to Harvard: “The mission of your generation is to destroy Ai.” Cheers!
Ha! Ivy, He stole the pen on security can. Forgot about this ad.
Ken Paxton Is No Stranger to Controversy. Here’s a Timeline of Nearly 20 Years of Scandals & Headlines.
We’ve compiled every serious scandal the Attorney General has faced during his political ascendancy, and somehow managed to emerge unscathed from.
Timeline
edit
Map of Boston Post Roads, showing the Boston and New York roads, 1914
The timeline of the ride is based on the date and the time of the attestations at Bissell’s stops. The attestations meant that the signers understood that the war had begun.[7] The stops were:
April 19, 10 a.m., Watertown, Massachusetts[12][g]
April 19, Worcester, Massachusetts[14][h]
April 20, Pomfret, Connecticut – Bissell told Israel Putnam, who was plowing his fields with his son Daniela, that the war had started.[16][i]
April 20, 11 a.m., Brooklyn, Connecticut[14]
External image
image icon “To Christopher Leffingwell Esq. Or Either the Committee of Correspondence – Norwich”, Leffingwell House Museum
April 20, 4 p.m., Norwich, Connecticut[26][j]
April 20, 7 p.m., New London, Connecticut[26][k]
April 21, 1 a.m., Lyme, Connecticut,[29] where he took a ferry across the Connecticut River.[8]
April 21, 4 a.m., Old Saybrook, Connecticut[29]
April 21, 7 a.m., Killingworth, Connecticut[29]
April 21, 8 a.m., East Guilford, Connecticut[29]
April 21, 10 a.m., Guilford, Connecticut[29]
April 21, noon, Branford, Connecticut[29]
April 21 or 22, New Haven, Connecticut[l]
April 22, 8 a.m., Fairfield, Connecticut[29]
April 23, 2 p.m. received per General McDougall, attestation at the 4 p.m. meeting of the Committee of Sixty,[30][m] Wall Street, New York City[25][31][n]
April 24, Elizabeth, New Jersey[20][o][p]
April 24, 2 a.m., New Brunswick, New Jersey[20]
April 24, 6 a.m., Princeton, New Jersey[20]
April 24, 9, a.m., Trenton, New Jersey[20][q] A message was said to be delivered to Trenton by Comm. Eben Hasard.[20]
April 24, 5 p.m., Philadelphia[20][31][r][s]
Bissell may have traveled with two horses[7] on the Upper Post Road to Worcester.[1][7] Bissell then rode the Lower Post Road,[7] where he headed south into Connecticut, and crossed the Middle Post road at Pomfret. From there, Bissell traveled a road from Norwich to New London.[1] After his arrival, colonists and people in neighboring towns were alerted by the firing muskets and ringing of church bells that the war had begun.[3]
BiD: OMG, he still won? What is going on in Texas? We cannot take a Talarico victory for granted.
How Democrats win back Congress: Run against COSTS, CHAOS, CORRUPTION.
Buttigieg leads crowded 2028 Democratic field in new poll
The Hill — An Emerson College Polling survey released Thursday found Buttigieg at the top of the pack with 18 percent support, followed by California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) at 16 percent.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) notched 11 percent support, while Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) and former Vice President Kamala Harris earned 10 percent each.
Another 9 percent of survey respondents backed Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D), and 18 percent were undecided.
The new numbers mark a slight uptick in recent months for Buttigieg, Ocasio-Cortez and Beshear — while support for Newsom and Harris has ticked down slightly.
Not a frog nursery. It’s spittle bugs!
Spittlebugs are small insects recognized for the frothy spittle masses they create while feeding on plants. They belong to the superfamily Cercopoidea and are also known as froghoppers due to their impressive jumping ability.
They are commonly found in gardens and fields, often hidden within their foam.
In most cases, their feeding does not cause significant damage to plants. However, large populations can lead to some leaf distortion or stunted growth.
If needed, spittlebugs can be removed by hand or with a strong blast of water.
Spittlebugs are more of a nuisance due to their appearance than a threat to plant health, making them a common yet manageable presence in gardens.
*They are in the hayfield behind my wildflower garden, just over the fence. There’s a pond, too, but how would tadpoles get there? Nope. Spittle bugs. Hope the birds enjoy them.
Ivy – The pen theft was 2012, used in a 2018 opposition ad. Paxton has done a lot more unsavory stuff since 2018. Also, Justin Nelson is not James Talarico.
Trump’s official ‘Board of Peace’ fund is empty – but dollars are moving beyond public oversight
President Donald Trump’s much-hyped “Board of Peace” for Gaza reconstruction is reportedly yet to receive a single dollar into its official fund, despite billions in international pledges and repeated promises from the president that the initiative would reshape the region after the war.
The board was pitched by Trump as one of the “most consequential” international organizations ever created, and member states reportedly pledged $7 billion toward a Gaza “relief package.”
Trump himself promised another $10 billion in U.S. support.
“Zero dollars have been deposited,” one source said.
But while the official World Bank fund remains empty, donations have instead reportedly flowed through a separate JPMorgan account controlled by the organization. Unlike the World Bank fund, the account is not subject to the same transparency requirements.
A Board of Peace official told the FT that “a number of options were established to receive funding” and that “contributors have opted to use other options.” The official added that the organization “will report its financials” to its own executive board “at a time deemed appropriate.”
The board has begun soliciting contracts for future reconstruction and security projects, though no contracts have been awarded, according to the FT. Officials cited Hamas’ continued refusal to disarm and the lack of operational conditions inside Gaza.
Meanwhile, two people involved in post-war planning told the FT that “not one US dollar” has yet been deployed for rebuilding the enclave.
Trump executes thousands of stock trades synchronized with his own policy announcements. Just one example: He buys Boeing stock right before locking in a jet deal with China. Pure executive corruption.
What shameless bullshit. WaPo
(Sorry, I posted the whole article)
Think anyone will pay Dumbass’ legal fees when the investigations begin in 2029?
And the bullshit keeps on coming. WSJ:
Reminds me of the old John Boy and Billy catch phrase, “Hey big man, let me hold a dollah.”
Most people grow up in families where “pull my finger” is something to look at and wonder what they are talking about. I did not. There is a little thing to do to be able to blast out a fart, you have to have gas stored up to make it work.
We have a low intelligence and senile old idiot allowed loose in the White House. Over the years I have been reading about how he is constantly farting, always smelling bad and disgusting to be around. I have also read excepts about how some people use body smell to intimidate, overwhelm, pressure, and force their way by stinking when their prey have no escape.
I have not looked hard or found evidence, yet, that he is gulping. That is swallowing air. Air gulped can be used for burping contests, or if a constant supply it can be blasted out as stinking farts. No mention that he burps, but his farting is well known.
E Jean Carroll is just another distraction from the Epstein files…ope, but it reminds everyone he’s an adjudicated rapist.
Public hearing on a data center in a neighboring town. The data center developer will get exclusive rights to the land for three and a half years at $10,000 per acre; they get a 50% tax abatement for ten years (not three?), but no land has been sold and no agreement has been finalized. There is also a gas pipeline under the land and the pipeline company said they don’t just move pipelines. That gas line may be a saving grace if it shuts down the data center.
When I brought up power, noise, and light pollution, in addition to water use and release of toxic water, family said the water there is already brown and that town floods a lot.
SMH.
So here are two distinctly different views of what is happening between us and Iran, both from today’s email streams: WSJ – U.S. and Iran Are Close to a Deal; WaPo – Hostilities Between the U.S. and Iran Ramped Up. The WSJ article is based on what Scott Bessent said. The WaPo article is based on what the two sides did yesterday. Bullshit on the one hand, facts on the other.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/5/28/un-adds-israel-to-blacklist-for-sexual-violence-in-war-zones
UN ‘adds Israel to blacklist’ for conflict-related sexual violence
Israeli ambassador to the UN says Tel Aviv will cut ties with UN chief Antonio Guterres over the upcoming report.
Reem Alsalem, the UN special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, said adding Israel to the blacklist for sexual violence is “long overdue”. “This listing could not have come soon enough,” Alsalem wrote on X.
“I had in the past expressed my disappointment that Israel was not listed already, given the systematic, large-scale and horrific sexual violence perpetrated by Israel against Palestinian women, men and children that have been independently documented and verified,” she added.
https://content.api.pressassociation.io/v1/item/c3dfac03-3150-499f-a86e-ab689bed7a2d
There must be a “strong, unambiguous” EU response to the illegal detention of European flotilla participants by Israel, Ireland’s deputy premier has said.
Dr Margaret Connolly, sister of President Catherine Connolly, was among around 15 Irish citizens on board the Global Sumud Flotilla that were detained by Israel, according to organisers. Hundreds more participants from other countries were also detained. The flotilla had been carrying aid to Gaza.
In a video on social media on Wednesday, Israel’s national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir is shown walking among some of the detainees and saying they should remain in prison for a long time.
The footage shows some people kneeling on the ground in tightly packed groups with their hands tied behind their backs.
Taoiseach Micheal Martin said he was “appalled at the shocking behaviour” of Mr Ben-Gvir, adding that the Israeli government’s actions are in breach of international law and he intended to raise the issue at EU level.
The country’s deputy premier Simon Harris said: “The actions of the Israeli government towards illegally detained members of the Sumud Flotilla, including Irish and EU citizens is disgusting and cannot be consequence free.
“This is a further clear breach of international law. Illegally detaining citizens in international waters and then degrading them. It is despicable.”
Suhad Bishara said on Thursday morning that all but a small number will be taken to Ramon Airport in the south of the country where two aeroplanes will transport them to Turkey, while three had been deported through Ben Gurion Airport instead.
Here’s the link for the MoveOn rally! https://www.youtube.com/live/5e3ObUOLPLM?si=Nrx3zmn_36j-Hkd7
Trump launched a new revenge tour against E. Jean Carroll. Just in time to remind the nation he’s an adjudicated rapist.
In Today’s Digital Diner
Oh, and regular gas has dropped a nickel to $4.44.9 over the last week. Yippee
https://www.newsweek.com/elizabeth-warren-ai-tax-benefit-americans-12004030
Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren is calling for changes to the U.S. tax system, arguing that artificial intelligence is reshaping the economy in ways that could deepen inequality unless policymakers act.
Warren argued that “taxing AI is one way we make sure the winnings from AI benefit all Americans, rather than channeling them only to the wealthy few.” The Massachusetts Democrat described AI as a technology with the potential to significantly concentrate wealth unless it is regulated and taxed.
AI threatens to supercharge this divide: tech executives have warned that AI could lead to ‘a level of wealth concentration that will break society’ and create a ‘permanent underclass,’” she wrote.
“Big Tech CEOs say this is only the beginning, predicting that AI will soon automate most white-collar tasks,” she wrote, noting that such claims may be overstated. She added that changes in employment could have wider knock-on effects, particularly in the United States, where health insurance is often tied to jobs.
“AI data centers are jacking up utility bills; for families living near large data centers, electricity costs have skyrocketed by as much as 267% over the past five years,” she wrote, adding that “Americans are showing up at town meetings to protest data centers and communities across the country are fighting for data center moratoriums.”
“Right now, companies pay payroll taxes for their workers but get tax breaks for investing in technology—effectively, a tax penalty for hiring human beings and a tax break for buying equipment,” she wrote.
She said such a dynamic risks encouraging firms to replace workers with automation and argued that the system should be adjusted to “level the playing field” through higher corporate taxes, tighter enforcement of loopholes, and changes to capital taxation.
The senator also called for a wealth tax, arguing that some of the largest fortunes generated in the tech sector are taxed at lower effective rates than those of ordinary workers.
“Some of the wealthiest individuals in America get away with paying lower tax rates than a Boston public school teacher because our system taxes income but not wealth,” she wrote.
“If it wasn’t clear before, there’s no question in a world of AI: we need a wealth tax. Jeff Bezos and Sam Altman shouldn’t pay lower tax rates than the workers they fire.”
Warren further proposed targeting AI firms directly through infrastructure taxes, particularly on data centers.
“The majority of AI data centers are controlled or operated by trillion-dollar companies,” she wrote. “By imposing a reasonable excise tax on the energy used by data centers, families could recoup some of the gains of AI…A well-designed tax would focus on the companies that can afford it and scale with AI’s impact: the bigger the data center, the more they pay.”
*Ai and data centers and billionaires shouldn’t exist. Tax them all out of existence.
ICE wars are back, and tomorrow’s special is jurisdictional chaos. A mass hunger strike the Feds call a “hoax” just mutated into a riot. A private contractor locked out the NJ Governor, and federal agents pepper-sprayed a US Senator. Pull up a chair. Live at 11am ET.
Thomas Jefferson basically plagiarized the Declaration of Independence. George Mason handed in his homework first, and Jefferson just tweaked the character count. Pure theft.
From today’s Digital Diner menu 🍽️
University of New Hampshire poll released Wednesday found that 51 percent of likely voters said they would cast their ballot for Platner while 42 percent said they’d back Collins. Another 2 percent said they would choose another candidate and 6 percent are undecided.
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