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
Pundits say that Trump’s $5,000 midterm bribe was an overreach,
And they agree that if lies were a crime, he’d be impeached.
Despite all the dividend promises he’s made,
The fact is, not one has ever been paid,
So even before the midterms, he already owes us $8,000* each.
*$5000 stimulus checks via “DOGE dividend”; $2000 stimulus checks via a “tariff dividend”; $1000-plus checks via “savings” from expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies
“The man is afraid of the voice of the people and that the people understand and know what he’s doing. He’s trying to stifle the ability of journalists to let the people of America know what’s really going on with their government.”
— “Kamala Harris called President Donald Trump’s ban of CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House ‘absolutely abhorrent,’” The Wrap reports.
“Not one of them is trained in technical skills. Not one research PhD, as opposed to China, where half the cabinet is science and technology PhDs. We’re led by grifters and fools.”
— Columbia professor Jeffrey Sachs, on X, on President Trump’s 35-person cabinet.
“Mr. President, some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far… The same Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today.”
— Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL), breaking with President Trump in a direct-to-camera video.
“Donald Trump made over a thousand stock sales and purchases worth between $79m and $270m in July,” The Guardian reports. “His two largest sales were of Amazon and Microsoft stock, selling between $5m and $25m each on 20 July. That same day, he also sold up to $5m worth of Oracle and Costco stock, $500,000 to $1m in Nvidia, and bought up to $5m worth of shares in Intuit and Salesforce, among dozens of other transactions.”
“The unprecedented spate of mid-decade redistricting for the U.S. House has changed the congressional districts for one-tenth of Americans and significantly altered the makeup of at least one-fifth of districts, according to a new study,” the Associated Press reports.
A new Fox News Poll finds 71% of voters think the Trump administration lacks a clear strategy for ending the Iran War, including 95% of Democrats, 83% of independents, and 43% of Republicans. Sixty percent say U.S. military action against Iran was the wrong decision, while just 37% say it was right.
“The Trump administration last year spent $9.5 billion on paid administrative leave for federal workers as part of its plan to shrink the government and save taxpayers money, according to a new estimate by a congressional watchdog,” CNN reports.
Reuters has documented at least 470 targets of retribution under Trump’s leadership – from federal employees and prosecutors to universities and media outlets. The list illuminates the sweeping effort by the president and his administration to punish dissent and reshape the government.