When the "Mess" is in Sending a Message
What a day it was in the hell known as TrumpLand. So, difficult to know what to write about.
It’s one thing that the House passed the budget bill. What gets me most about that, though, are all the “I draw the red line here” MAGOP deficit hawks who always cave and pass whatever budget bill Trump wants, even when it adds $3 TRILLION to the debt!! They never fail. Their empty soullessness is craven.
I take a certain among of comfort, though, in the likelihood that this will never pass the Senate, and there will be a lot of cutbacks from things that will add even more to the debt, putting these deficit hawks in even worse position. And it has to be passed by July 4 – which the news reports members of Congress say that’s very unlikely. (We’ll see. These are MAGOPs, after all, and the depth to which they can sink is almost unmeasurable.) But also, importantly, regardless of what they do, there are now all these MAGOPs in tight, purple districts who are on the record voting to cut Medicare and cut Medicaid and supporting all the rest of many things that the public HATES. While raising the debt $3 trillion to give billionaires tax cuts -- as prices will have risen from the tariffs when election day rolls around. What on earth did they think that message to voters would be?? Let them dance on the head of that pin, as they recognize that they inexplicably threw away their careers.
(And yes, I’m sure Trump and Mike Johnson put pressure on them with the threat of a primary challenge. And with Trump’s endorsement, the challenger might likely win. But -- if it’s a purple district, a MAGOP on the general election ballot would get swamped, especially this election cycle. And that’s what any purple district representative should have said to Trump or Mike Johnson. “You guys may get your candidate to run, but you’ll lose the seat. So, back off and let me do my job and try to save a vote for you in the next term.” But I guess that doesn’t work in a cult.)
Then there was the administration telling Harvard that it couldn’t enroll any foreign students. It seems ethereally weird to simply just type that sentence. Even with this Supreme Court, I have a very hard time imagining that a private university can be barred from admitting whoever it wants. So, in the end, the message this says to all voting Americans who came to the country as foreign students and became citizens is just ghastly for the party. What is the Trump administration thinking??? If “thinking” is an appropriate word.
And one can only imagine how many ketchup bottles were thrown when Trump found out that a federal judge blocked him from shutting down the Department of Education, since it was created by Congress. That should have been a no-brainer decision, so I’m not surprised by it – but very pleased. However, I don’t know exactly what the ruling means – since there would seem to be ways he can weaken it to near-inoperable without shutting it down. Perhaps the ruling had protections against that built in.
Still, though the court system has held very strong the past months, all was not great with Supreme Court. It ruled that Trump does not have to reinstate two federal officials who were in charge of agencies that enforced labor protections. (One was an agency whose mission was to make certain that federal employment decisions are not influenced by politics. The other was the National Labor Relations Board. So, gee, what could go wrong there? But hey, great message to working men and women -- especially with the Mid-Terms coming two months after Labor Day.)
On the hopeful side, those weren’t final terminations. The high court only ruled that while Trump had the authority to fire the official, the litigations in lower court over the firing could continue. So, they could be reinstated, if the lower court rules in their favor.
Still, one other story from yesterday leaped near the top of the eye-rolling list. "Secretary of State" (Trump division) Marco Rubio said in a Senate hearing that he knows nothing about Trump's dinner tonight with foreign winners of the Trump crypto grift, since today is first time Rubio said he had heard of it. Okay, so if this is actually, really, truly the first he's heard of it, he should resign for utter incompetence, along with his staff. Because I knew about it weeks ago. And did millions of others because it was widely covered on the news. Of course, the alternative is that Rubio is lying…
So…what to write about today? What to write about??
Okay, I’m going with this.
Over the weekend, the beloved Northwestern women’s golf team won the NCAA National Championship for the first time in the school’s history. They beat #1 ranked Stanford. And Northwestern went into the tournament ranked #10.
So, to end with something positive and wonderful, here’s the final putt that won the national championship for Northwestern. Dianna Lee had to make a 4-1/2 foot putt, and as you’ll see, the pressure was on her and she checked it out from every angle. And then – well, here ‘tis...
Don't worry. If you'd don't like golf, it's just one putt.
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