The first three chapters of my latest book are on the Amazon webpage. (Click on the ‘Look inside’ link.) The publisher’s webpage is here and you can also buy it from any major retailer. (Note: This will be the new top post for a while. Later posts are below.)
Before Stephen Colbert started his 11-year run on The Late Show, he guest-hosted a public access local TV program in Monroe, MI called Only in Monroe. On his last show on CBS on Thursday of last week, he hinted that he might go back to Monroe.
“Tonight is our final broadcast from the Ed Sullivan Theater,” he said, prompting boos from the audience.
“No, no, we were lucky enough to be here for the last 11 years, all right? Can’t take this for granted,” he added. “Though technically our first show in July of 2015 was from a public access station in Monroe, Michigan, for an audience of 12 people. Show business being what it is these days, that’s probably where you’ll see me next.” and guest-hosted again.
And sure enough, the very next day, there he was back in Monroe.
I started watching the one-hour program just to see what it was like, thinking I would get bored and switch off after a few minutes but I was gripped and watched until the end. It was hilarious. There was something extremely appealing about this extremely low-budget show and we are reminded how Colbert can extract humor from the mundane, probably because he got his start in performing in improv that requires one to be funny while unprepared or backed by an army of writers and support staff.
Initially CBS tried to suppress the airing of the show on YouTube (corporate behemoths being the humorless profiteers they are) but then backed off after an outcry.
That Trump is a brazen grifter goes without saying. He has also used the justice department as his own personal law firm, using them to attack his enemies and reward his friends. But he may have outdone himself with his latest attempt to get money from the government to fund his grifts.
What happened was that Trump sued the government for $10 billion, charging that his rights had been violated when a private contractor leaked his tax returns back in 2019 and 2020. The idea of a president suing his own government was ridiculous enough and would likely have been thrown out. But he had appointed his own former personal lawyer Todd Blanche as attorney general and before the case went to trial, the ‘two sides’ (which are actually just one side) announced that a settlement had been reached in which the government would create a slush fund of $1.776 billion (how patriotic!) to compensate those people who had been charged in the January 6th insurrection and then pardoned by Trump. We do not know whether this was the original plan or a fall back position after the outrage that emerged at the thought of such blatant chicanery by Trump to enrich himself. If this was allowed to stand, then there was no end to how much a president could get out of the government to do with as he wished simply by suing and settling.
But this was too much for some judges and they have called for an investigation into what they see as the abuse of the judicial system.
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Nicola Sturgeon and her husband Peter Murrell were at one time Scotland’s premier power couple. Sturgeon became the leader of the Scottish National Party and the First Minister in 2014. Peter Murrell served as the chief executive officer of the SNP from 2001 until 2023. But all that came crumbling down. She surprisingly resigned in 2023, claiming ‘occupational burnout’, while he also resigned his position after being criticized for misleading the party.
But things got worse. Murrell was charged with embezzlement in 2024 for using SNP money to purchase various luxury items and last week admitted to stealing over £400,000 from party over a 12-year period and now faces a lengthy prison sentence.
[T]he lengthy indictment, which included a 119-page list of all the items he bought using the SNP’s money, disclosed that for much of that time he was pilfering the SNP’s accounts to acquire a remarkable series of luxury goods, while earning £107,000 as party chief executive.
The indictment noted that in addition to the £124,000 motorhome, which he left parked in his mother’s driveway in Fife, and the Jaguar I-Pace, he bought gardening equipment for the home he shared with Sturgeon, a £1,300 Miele coffee machine for their home, a telescope, a Sony PlayStation, Fortnum & Mason hampers and several Montblanc fountain pens.
The charge said he submitted false invoices, used the party’s credit cards, falsified the party’s accounts and in some cases claimed they were legitimate expenses to cover up his embezzlement. Several times he used credit cards taken out in the names of SNP staff who worked for him.
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He was on a tear with his opening monologue. The AI-generated clip he showed at the beginning was scaringly good in how realistic it was. Not the content of course, which was hilarious, but how the video seemed so seamlessly genuine.
Kimmel seems to be really getting under the skin of Trump and his cult members in right wing media.
Isaac Chotiner of The New Yorker interviewed Danny Citrinowicz, a non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council and an expert on the Middle East, for his assessment of the current wars in the Middle East. Citrinowicz was brutal. He says that there is no way for Trump to avoid humiliating failure over the Iran war, that Benjamin Netanyahu is also in a bind, and that it is the Iranians, especially the hardliners, who are emerging from this war stronger than before, despite all the damage from the bombing.
We have to remember what happened on February 28th—that Israel and the United States launched this campaign to topple the regime. In fact, they ended up strengthening it. Opening the strait is not an achievement, since its closing was a by-product of the war itself. The Iranians are going to get some money, and sanctions relief may come after the deal is signed, too. If they don’t get money from this, they won’t do it. So, in that regard, what we’re facing right now is a war that may have been a tactical success for the U.S., but is a strategic failure.
But I think Trump is fed up with the current situation, and I think that he’s also afraid of escalation. He could escalate tomorrow, but I think he’s afraid of having boots on the ground. And I think he might be starting to understand that even escalation won’t change the strategic situation, because the Iranians are not going to capitulate. A blockade won’t do it; hitting energy facilities won’t do it; nothing will. And they’re ready to retaliate. So Trump didn’t have any other options besides this deal.
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July 4th of this year marks the 250th anniversary of the declaration of independence and I am bracing myself for an overwhelming effusion of patriotic fervor. Given that Trump loves to wrap himself up in the flag (all while he and his family and cronies are looting the country), we can be sure that event will be even more disgustingly over the top than if someone sane was president.
As an immigrant to the US, I was struck by how so many Americans talk about patriotism and view it as an unalloyed good. Some immigrants become hyper-patriotic, perhaps to show that they really do belong here.
It is not that the concept of patriotismwas foreign to us in Sri Lanka. But it was not as pervasive. I recall that at a time of economic hardship, people were urged in the name of patriotism to grow more food and learn to live with less. As part of this movement to create patriotic feelings, movie theaters started playing the national anthem at the start. I remember feeling the pressure to stand up for it even though such gestures seemed merely performative. I now regret having done so.
I later abandoned the idea of patriotism altogether when I saw how the government used it to promote agendas that served its own interests and not those of the people at large. I now despise the entire concept of patriotism (and have written so many times in the past). I totally agree with Leo Tolstoy who wrote the following:
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After a party loses an election, it usually benefits from having an analysis of the reasons for its failure and laying out a path for the future. Of course, whether that path makes any sense depends on whether the reasons given for the failure are based on reality. After delaying and waffling for the longest time, the Democratic Party finally released its so-called ‘autopsy‘ and it was so bad that even the party chairman has tried to distance himself from it.
Richard Eskow gives a scathing review of the report.
After an extended pressure campaign, Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin finally agreed to release the DNC’s “autopsy report” on the 2024 election. It’s the first document I’ve ever read that would have been better if it had been written by AI. Martin himself said the report “does not meet my standards, and it won’t meet your standards.” That’s for damn sure. As we’ll see, however, that doesn’t let Martin off the hook.
I downloaded the document before reviewing my news feed, where I quickly learned that many like-minded people began exactly as I did: by searching for the word “Gaza.” Result? “Not found.” I then tried “Palestine.” Result? “Not found.” How about “Israel”? “Not found.”
These omissions are particularly striking since one activist group was told by report author Paul Rivera that DNC data showed that the administration’s support for the Gaza genocide was, “in their words, a ‘net-negative’ in the 2024 election.”
…Other words that can’t be found in the autopsy include “war,” “military,” “defense” (in the military sense), “peace,” “Medicare,” and “Social Security.” The report fails to address either the US’ runaway military spending or the ongoing attempts to undermine the country’s social contract.
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When I wrote about ‘looksmaxxing’ about two weeks ago, I thought that the various types of maxxing described were weird enough. But in this clip, I learn from Black that the trend takes even more extreme forms.
Israel has long abandoned civilized norms in the way that it treats non-Israelis. Like its patron, the US, it thinks that it can use its power to treat anyone abominably, abandoning civilized norms and international laws, riding roughshod over the rights of anyone that happens to cross its path. This has become apparent in the way that it treats Palestinians in general and the people of Gaza in particular. Now reports have emerged about how Israeli armed forces abused the people who were on a flotilla trying to bring aid to the suffering people of Gaza that adds support to its deplorable image. The flotilla consisted of about 50 ships with ordinary people from all over the world whose goal was to bring even a tiny amount of relief to the long-suffering people there.
The report should be shocking but given the levels of barbarism now routinely exhibited by Israel, it seems like this is now their normal behavior.
Activists released from Israeli custody after being detained on a flotilla trying to take aid to Gaza were subjected to abuse, organisers have alleged, with several hospitalised with injuries and at least 15 reporting sexual assaults, including rape.
Israel’s prison service denied the allegations, and Reuters was not able to verify them independently.
Germany said some of its nationals had been injured and that some accusations were “serious”, without giving further details. A legal source in Italy said prosecutors there were investigating possible crimes, including kidnapping and sexual assault.
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Tulsi Gabbard is the director of national intelligence, tasked with overseeing the many intelligence agencies in the US. Although she tried desperately to suck up to Trump when it became clear that he was not happy with her for some reason, it was not enough for her to keep her job and today Trump fired her. You can read the twists and turns of her weird political journey here, where, like so many others, she sacrificed what she said were her strong principles in order to kowtow to Trump.
As usual, this kind of news is released on a Friday evening in the hope that most people will not be paying attention.
The White House forced Gabbard to resign, the Reuters news agency reported, citing a source familiar with the issue. Fox News was first to report Gabbard’s exit, citing her husband’s cancer diagnosis.
Trump was asking cabinet members last month whether he should replace Gabbard, according to two people briefed on the discussions.
…Gabbard already seemed marginalized last June, when Trump endorsed Israel’s decision to attack Iran before the US joined the war by ordering the bombing of the Islamic regime’s nuclear facilities.
The decision was a public repudiation of Gabbard’s earlier testimony on Capitol Hill that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon. Trump seemed to add insult to injury by declaring he did not care what she said, and dismissing her assessment as “wrong”.
Within weeks, Gabbard made a public effort to get back into the president’s good graces by calling for Barack Obama and several top national security officials in his administration to be prosecuted, alleging that they had conducted a “treasonous conspiracy” to falsely depict Russia as interfering in the 2016 election on Trump’s side.
She is the fourth woman that Trump has fired, following Kristi Noem, Pam Bondi, and Lori Chavez-DeRemer.
The big mystery is how FBI director Kash Patel still has a job. Patel is an incompetent grifter and clown. He should thank his lucky stars that he is male, since Trump seems to give men more leeway.