The Lincoln Pool is a metaphor for the Trump presidency

The algae-infested Lincoln Pool in Washington DC has been drained and it appears that the base of the pool, far from being the vivid blue color that Trump touted, now appears to nowhere close to that, being instead a blotchy gray color. Trump appears to be sensitive to how bad the pool looks and so a dark fence now surrounds it to prevent people from getting a close look at the disaster. But a photographer for the Associated Press got an aerial shot from the top of the Washington Monument. Follow the above link to see how awful it looks.

The newly drained Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool’s bottom surface has noticeably faded since it was lined with a protective coating in a color Donald Trump called “American flag blue” this spring.

An Associated Press reporter and photographer viewed the fenced-off reflecting pool on Wednesday from the top of the Washington Monument. The new liner appears grayer than when the pool was repainted and refilled with water in early June. Debris that had been visible earlier this week after the pool was drained is now largely gone, after work crews removed it.
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The interior secretary, Doug Burgum, whose agency oversees the National Park Service, said that after the water is drained and debris is cleaned from Independence Day fireworks, the plan for the pool is straightforward: “Repair the vandalism that was done. Fill it back up again.” He was speaking with conservative podcaster Katie Miller.

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Count Binface debates at the Oxford Union

The Clacton by-election that will see Nigel Farage face off (bin off?) against Count Binface will take place on August 13th. It is not clear how many other independent candidates will enter the race but all the major parties are boycotting it.

I came across this clip of an Oxford Union debate from two years ago, before the last elections in the UK and US, where Binface was designated the final opposition speaker on the proposition ‘This House will fake it till you make it”. He made some cogent points about UK and US politics.

Meanwhile, Farage continues to be dogged by the £5 million pounds he received from a cryptocurency billionaire Christopher Harbone. He had said before declaring his candidacy that he would need about one million pounds per year to make up for lost earnings if he became an MP and so the timing is highly suspicious.

Nigel Farage told senior figures in Reform UK he would need “a million a year” to cover lost earnings if he stood for parliament in the 2024 general election, sources have told the Guardian, raising further questions about why he was given £5m by a crypto billionaire.

Sources say the discussion took place in March 2024 – shortly before the undeclared gift was made by Christopher Harborne on 5 April, according to the Thailand-based crypto billionaire’s lawyers.
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These discussions about needing “a million a year” took place in March 2024, the Guardian has been told. Lawyers for Harborne have said the gift was made on 5 April 2024.

The Guardian has revealed that, according to financial industry sources, some of the £5m was not received until the end of May, just before Farage announced on 3 June that he would stand as an MP.

A true grifter, making money off public office, just like his hero Trump

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E. Jean Carroll finally gets some money from Trump

Trump was found guilty by a jury in 2023 of sexual abuse and defamation of E. Jean Carroll. But he used every legal option to try and delay or prevent the release of the money, filing appeal after appeal even up to the US Supreme Court. But they all failed and today, the judge released $5.6 million in funds that had been held in escrow.

The disbursement, made public in a 14 July entry on Carroll’s case docket, indicates that the funds were released by a court-held account on 9 July – one day after judge Lewis Kaplan ordered the release of this money.

Trump, who has been fighting against the release of this money since June after the supreme court on 29 June denied his request to hear his appeal, has denied wrongdoing.
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Jon Stewart on Lindsey Graham’s death

The late night talk shows I watch were no fans of Lindsey Graham and I was curious as to how they would treat the news of his death. They obviously would not want to make fun of it but at the same time would not want to pretend that he was an admirable person.

I though Jon Stewart managed to deal with it pretty well by turning it into a discussion of how geriatric the US Congress is.

It may be that Graham’s love of being on TV hastened his demise. When he complained on Saturday of not feeling well, people suggested that he go to the hospital but he said that he was due to be on Meet The Press on Sunday morning and did not want to miss that and would go after it. It is not clear if the tear in his aorta could have been detected and treated if he had gone to the hospital earlier.

Lindsey Graham will not be missed by me

There are many politicians who are awful because they espouse terrible policies. But there are others who are truly odious because they coat their evil actions with a veneer of smarmy smugness. I cannot bear to hear or see those people when they appear in the media which they often do because they love to be before the microphones and TV cameras and have a talent for harnessing attention. Their very appearance, voicing whatever view happens to serve their own interests of that moment, is enough for me to switch off.

Former Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman was one such person and I will never forgive Al Gore for picking him to be his running mate in the 2000 presidential election, so elevating his profile so that we could not avoid constantly seeing him uttering his unctuous moralizing.

South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham was another such person. He was a total warmonger and one of those Republicans who was a harsh critic of Trump when he first ran for the presidency but when Trump won and he saw the size of the Trump cult, he became one of his biggest ass-kissers, supporting Trump in everything, even when he reversed himself as he often did. Graham was also mean and would impugn the basest motives to his critics.

Today came news that Graham had died suddenly. We will now see the usual dreary ritual of other political leaders paying tributes to him as some kind of statesman because of the longevity of his career in the US senate and trying to find some nice things to say about one of the most unprincipled people in Congress.

I will not be one of them. When I heard this morning that he had died, my first feeling was one of relief that I would no longer have to read or hear or see him in the news as he promotes the latest views required by his sycophancy to Trump.

His passing, like that of Lieberman or Henry Kissinger, seems to suddenly make the air feel cleaner and fresher and the sun shine more brightly.

There are no good billionaires

I share with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez the belief that there are no good billionaires.

“There’s a certain level of wealth and accumulation that is unearned,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said during a May appearance on “It’s Open,” comedian Ilana Glazer’s podcast. “You just can’t earn that. You can get market power, you can break rules, you can abuse labor laws, you can pay people less than what they’re worth, but you can’t earn that.”

Her remarks caused an explosion of outrage from a lot of very rich people — and the media outlets they own — but many experts agree with her views.

“Billionaires just have too much and give back too little,” Brian Galle, a law professor at the University of California at Berkley, told me. In January, Galle published a book-length report titled “How to Tax the Ultrarich” for the Roosevelt Institute, and he has argued that a major problem with hyper-wealth is it creates unchecked power. “They control media, other key enterprises, and today the Cabinet.”

Billionaires have almost always obtained their money either by dishonorable means or by inheriting it from people who obtained it by dishonorable means and that any system that allows people to achieve this status is immoral. By dishonorable, I mean either illegally, or by using their connections to get an unfair advantage over others, or by taking advantage of all the loopholes available to exploit their employees or the resources of the Earth, or to drive out their competitors. It is the very rare person who had a good idea and then turned that into extreme wealth without using dubious methods. Hence billionaires should be considered to be people of poor character and one should never vote them into positions of any authority because they will use their power to further enrich themselves.
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The best laid schemes o’ Nigel Farage gang agley

It looks like the Reform party’s leader Nigel Farage’s sudden decision to resign from parliament and re-contest in the ensuing by-election in Clacton has backfired badly. It seem like it was too clever by half, falling under the heading of ‘things that seemed like a good idea at the time’ but then went horribly wrong. Peter Walker and Rowena Mason explain what might have been the thinking behind his plan.

Farage is a grifter like his hero Trump who seems to spends most of his time making a lot of money from various side hustles. But since becoming an MP in 2024, he has been facing scrutiny about some of those things, particularly a £5 million gift by a cryptocurrency billionaire Christopher Harbone that he claims was not a bribe but a gift freely given with no strings or quid pro quo attached. There was a parliamentary and even police inquiry into this and Farage may have thought that at least one of those might provide grounds for a Recall Petition. If it does, then if at least 10% of voters in the constituency sign the petition, the MP will lose their seat and it will trigger a by-election. Even though Farage’s constituency of Clacton is solidly right wing, he, like Trump, is very divisive and roundly detested by those who are not his fans and so there was a very good chance that the threshold of 10% would be met, forcing him out. Although he can run again, being ousted from office is never a good look.
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We’re back to square one, again and again

As with all things involving Trump, things are never stable or decided but keep changing on him whims. After touting the Memorandum of Understanding that the US reached with Iran as a major achievement in creating a ceasefire and starting the process of normalizing relations with that country, the US is now back at war with Iran and the Strait of Hormuz is once again closed, with both nations exchanging fire. So it appears that the MOU, wobbly from the beginning, is dead

Trump declared that ceasefire is over and that he has ordered hte resumption of bombing on the ‘Islamic Republic of Japan’. Yes, that is what he said at the NATO summit. He also referred to Ukraine’s president as Putin.

And then as often is the case when Trump is faced with an embarrassing setback, he creates a diversion, this time that old standby, the annexation of Greenland.
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Vote for Count Binface!

One of the appealingly quirky features of UK politics is that pretty much anyone can stand for election to a parliamentary seat, provided that they can come up with 10 voter signatures in support and pay the required deposit of £500, which they lose if they do not get 5% of the total votes cast. This has resulted in novelty candidates, such those from the Official Monster Raving Loony Party (founded by the rock musician David “Screaming Lord” Sutch) and, more recently, Count Binface, an extra-galactic being who wears a costume consisting of a trash can on his head. They serve as outlets for protest votes for people disgusted with the system. These candidates typically stand only in constituencies where there is a high-profile major party candidate which will draw media coverage because the UK system is one in which all the candidates for a parliamentary seat line up on stage to hear the vote totals at the end, so you can see them close to the major political figures. In the past, Binface has stood against Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak.

They also sometimes get interviewed by major media looking for a light-hearted take on the election. Here is Binface interviewed by Sky News during the recent by-election in Makerfield that Andy Burnham won on his way potentially to the prime ministership.


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Belgians rub Trump’s nose in the dirt after defeating US 4-1 in the World Cup

Trump managed to make the US even more disliked around the world by pressuring FIFA to suspend the red card given to their star player Falorin Balogun in the previous game that would have required him to sit out yesterday’s game with Belgium. I have not followed the games, have little knowledge about soccer, have not seen the foul in question, and so cannot judge if the red card was warranted or not. But I do know that reversing a red card ruling in highly unusual. Making it worse for FIFA was that Trump publicly bragged about calling on FIFA president Gianni Infantino to drop the suspension. Infantino, who has been sucking up to Trump in a big way, going to the extent of giving him a fake peace prize after Trump sulked about not getting the real one, is believed to have acquiesced to Trump’s wishes to allow Balogun to play.

This move caused widespread anger in the soccer world, not just in Belgium but also with the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA).
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