JD Vance likes to tell those “useful lies,”
The ones guaranteed to draw the media’s eyes.
His whoppers about cat-eating Haitians
He peddled to a disbelieving nation,
Kind of like “Hillbilly Elegy,” the memoir he fictionalized.
Trump seems susceptible to wingnut Laura Loomer,
Who has too much influence, say the doom-and-gloomers.
Did she tickle his hate
Before his disastrous debate?
And should she be cut from the campaign like a cancerous tumor?
The 2024 Ig Nobel Prizes have been announced, and once again prove that science can be funny, which only sometimes gets in the way of it being good.
Highlights this year include research comparing the movements of live and dead trout, and sober and drunk worms. Apparently, being drunk may harm a worm’s capacity for movement more than being dead interferes with trout’s.
The Ig Nobel awards each year honor (or dishonor) research that “first makes you laugh, and then makes you think.” One such discovery won this year’s Ig Nobel for Medicine with the revelation that side-effects may make medicine more effective. How did the authors discover this important information? They gave people placebos (ie fake medications with no ingredients targeted at their condition). The capacity of the human mind to heal ourselves, at least partially, when given a treatment we think will work is remarkable, but requires some sort of belief.
Ryan Routh won’t get the thanks of half of a grateful nation,
After not wasting even one round of ammunition.
Would-be killers like Thomas Crooks and Routh
Just aren’t in the league of Oswald and Booth,
They just seem determined to be the “ass” in “assassination.”
A new ABC News/Ipsos poll finds Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump among likely voters nationwide, 52% to 46%. It’s the same margin as before the debate which voters say Harris won by 58% to 36%.
“You look at Haiti, you look at the demographic makeup, you look at the average I.Q. — if you import the third world into your country, you’re going to become the third world. That’s just basic. It’s not racist. It’s just fact.”
— “Donald Trump Jr. suggested on Thursday that Haitian immigrants were less intelligent than people from other countries, and claimed that there was demographic evidence to back this up. He provided none,” the New York Times reported.
“We admire Taylor Swift’s music but I don’t think most Americans, whether they like her music or fans of hers or not, are going to be influenced by a billionaire celebrity who I think if fundamentally disconnected from the interests and the problems of most Americans.”
— Vice presidential candidate and Trump running mate JD Vance, as reported by the Daily Beast
From Trump’s “stolen election” lies, we can’t get no relief,
He carps on about stolen votes, but he never names the thief.
Somebody needs to tell this guy
Americans aren’t buying his lies,
And that he’s turned us into the United States of Disbelief.
“If you are committing fraud against the American people, all of us in public leadership should be trying to stop it and throw you in prison for enriching yourself off the American taxpayer.”
“We are done, Americans are done with endless conflict in the Middle East, spending trillions of dollars, American lives… this is insane and we have to call it for what it is.”
“The U.S. State Department announced on Monday that it has revoked more than 175,000 visas during President Donald Trump’s administration so far,” Fox News reports.
President Donald Trump is asking for $1,500,000 million for the military for next year. That’s close to $600 billion (adjusted for inflation) more than we were spending on the military in fiscal year 2025, before Trump took office, Alternet reports. This increase is huge by any measure. It comes to around $4,600 per household. It is around 8% of the total budget.
A new Emerson College survey of likely 2026 voters finds the Democrats with an 11-point advantage over the Republicans on the generic congressional ballot, leading 53% to 42%. President Trump holds a 39% job approval rating, consistent with the past two months, whereas his disapproval increased another point, to 57%.
A new American Research Group poll finds just 30% of Americans say they approve of the way Donald Trump is handling his job as president and 67% say they disapprove.
Wall Street Journal: “Around 40% of voters in the 2024 election said the economy was their top issue, far outstripping any other matter. And those voters favored Donald Trump by 60% to 38%. Many say they were moved by his pledges to tame inflation, rebuild U.S. infrastructure, cut red tape and trim government waste. … About a year and a half later, more voters disapprove of Trump’s handling of the economy than approve, 61% to 35%, an average of polls by the Cook Political Report found this month.”