Sunday, August 02, 2026
Public Occurrences August 2, 2026
Illiterate White House Criminal: "Perimeters" of (New! Improved!) Iran Deal Reached: "This would include the Immediate, Complete, and Total OPENING OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT, and an end to Iran’s nuclear threat."
Do you want to bet, you fucking human bowel drainage tube, that Iran does NOT open "THE HORMUZ STRAIT" and does NOT end its "nuclear threat", whatever that means?
Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
The U.S.A. is locked and loaded and ready to go against the Islamic Republic of Iran, at levels of Military Terror, Strength, and Power not seen since World War II. Despite this, we have just been asked by Iran, and other Middle Eastern Countries, to hold off any attack in that the perimeters of a deal has been agreed to. This would include the Immediate, Complete, and Total OPENING OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT, and an end to Iran’s nuclear threat. Based on this request, I have agreed, for the future benefit of the WORLD and, likewise, the survival of a successful and prosperous Iran, to cancel the attack, subject to being able to rapidly make a DEAL. The Country of Israel joins me in this commitment. Get to work, everybody, and get it DONE. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP
Aug 01, 2026, 10:05 PM
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If a tree falls, & etc
This is the first sentence:
Tarik Skubal is headed to the Los Angeles Dodgers!
Yeah? Wow. ...Um, who's that?
Saturday, August 01, 2026
😂👏
NY Times Pitchbot
@nytpitchbot.bsky.social
(https://bsky.app/profile/nytpitchbot.bsky.social)Follow
Democrats lose because the purity police on the left won't vote for moderate establishment candidates. Here's why I refuse to vote for Abdul El-Sayed in the general election in Michigan.
12:18 PM · Jul 31, 2026
Everybody can reply
New Political Movement in Toilet Nation
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"The movement has begun"
The Bowel movement! OH NO, LET ME GET MY RAINCOAT!
Those seven are the "movement". Thomas Massie (defeated ex-congressman), Tucker Carlson (fired right wing bloviator), Marjorie Taylor Greene (resigned member of congress) (and new husband), and whatever, I don't know who the rest are. Under an elaborate chandelier of cuckold horns. Sounds right.
Public Occurrences August 1, 2026
Trump blasts Pirro after she refutes his claim that Reflecting Pool was damaged by vandals
External reality not his reality. 🤷
The president, without providing any clear new evidence, continued to allege on Saturday that the majority of the damage to the pool was caused by vandals.
No evidence needed to his mind.
"...Trump’s botched renovation was responsible for the damage — not Davey Hearn” ...the administration was to blame, [Hearn's] legal team said in a statement.
Him "botching" something? Him to "blame"? "I don't take any responsibility at all", for COVID", remember? March 13, 2020
8:15 am:
In Iran, the U.S. Appears Headed for a Strategic Defeat, Allies Fear
With none of President Trump’s aims accomplished and the Strait of Hormuz closed, U.S. allies see dysfunction and vulnerability from the war.
To America’s allies, President Trump’s war in Iran, now in its sixth month, seems headed for a strategic defeat.
They worry that the inability of the United States to turn military superiority into a sustainably changed Iran has displayed a vulnerability that Russia and China will welcome. In addition, Mr. Trump’s goals remain unmet, and the U.S. military is running short on key armaments that it needs for global reach.
For the moment, Iran is seemingly resolute under a more radical government, its nuclear and ballistic missile programs are degraded but not destroyed, and the Strait of Hormuz is effectively under its control. The war has left both the United States and Israel in weaker positions — and blaming each other for the mess.
...
With Mr. Trump’s aims shifting, Washington is losing credibility both militarily and diplomatically, analysts said. Its conduct in the war underscores the impression that the United States is an unpredictable instrument of global disorder, they said.
The war may evolve, but so far the result has been “a strategic loss and an embarrassment,” said Robin Niblett, a former director of Chatham House, a think tank in London. “For U.S. allies and those who rely on the U.S. for security, this is confirmation that you can’t trust the United States.”
...
European allies remember Mr. Trump’s vow to seize Greenland from a NATO ally and his threats to leave the alliance unless other allies met his spending goals. Middle Eastern allies see their own security undermined by this war, even if they are too committed to Washington to abandon partnerships with the United States. But they are already hedging, looking for repaired ties with Iran and better relations with Europe, China and Russia, said Ali Vaez, the Iran project director for the International Crisis Group.
...“Now America has confirmed itself as a force of disorder and everyone is drawing lessons from it, and trying to be less dependent,” he said. “No one wants to be subject to a whipsaw foreign policy that doesn’t know its limits, and that is a strategic defeat.”
“The Saudis do a nuclear deal with Trump that he walks back in 24 hours,” Mr. Vaez said. “This is the crisis of credibility of the U.S. Neither its military prowess nor its diplomatic promises can be trusted.”
...
...Washington finding a sufficient reason to cut its losses and go home.
...the conflict “has undermined U.S. deterrence and credibility, antagonized America’s allies and delighted its adversaries,” said Aaron David Miller, a former American negotiator and now a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “And if the Strait of Hormuz falls under Iran’s leverage and control, it will constitute nothing less than a strategic defeat.”
A severe shortage in crucial air-defense munitions like Patriot missiles is having a secondary effect in Ukraine and showing Russia and China — as well as NATO — that the United States will be less capable for years at least to both resupply its allies and fight a lengthy war.
The war has also badly damaged the vital alliance between the United States and Israel, said François Heisbourg, a French security analyst.
...Netanyahoo...overly optimistic while convincing Mr. Trump that the war would be quick and decisive.
Added to already negative views of Israel and Jews more generally stemming from the long conflict with Hamas in Gaza, which some call genocide, this war has increased antisemitism in the United States and beyond, some polls show.
...
“This may be the end of the law of the sea as we’ve known it,” said Mr. Heisbourg. Freedom of the seas has been an American vital interest from its founding...
...
“Iranian leaders have become intensely pessimistic about what diplomacy with the Trump administration can achieve,” he said. He noted that many of them view Mr. Trump as erratic and have a hard time seeing how they could reach a deal with the United States when it has undercut its own allies.--Esfandyar Batmanghelidj of the Bourse & Bazaar Foundation, a research institution focused on economic diplomacy.
Washington has started a war it does not seem to know how to win or end, while Iran is mistrustful that any deal reached will be implemented. The coming weeks are likely to see a continuing cycle of ad hoc truces and escalation, Mr. Vaez said, a new form of forever war.
###
Mr. and Ms. Toilet Nation got exactly what they voted for and are being flushed into the sewer where wretched refuse goes.
Trump Iran
The reporting today by Steven Erlanger of the New York Times is devastating. A comprehensive yet compact article, nary an extraneous word, every sentence, paragraph after paragraph, defeat in every way, none of Trump's goals met, a strategic defeat, an economic defeat, a geopolitical defeat, a stronger Iran, a weakened and depleted U.S. and Israel, comprehensive defeat in every way.
Trump cannot deal with this. I am concerned that he is just going to move on, not try to win, not pull out, just move on and let it run on autopilot. We've seen this before in Trump. It got to a point where Trump just ignored COVID when he couldn't stop it and said (40 times in 2020) it would just go away. He already has shown this on Iran. On May 20, that's over two months ago now, he blithely stated that the Strait of Hormuz, the geopolitical defeat, "at a certain point, it'll open itself".
Trump has an ego defense mechanism that enables him to ignore bad reality for the narrative inside his head, e.g. 2018, 2026. Just as he did with COVID, he has said many times that he took care of the Iran problem, that he had "totally obliterated" its nuclear capacity, that the U.S. had won the war in the first forty-eight hours; many, many times he has claimed to have defeated Iran.
He didn't. Iran, like COVID, is continuing to bite back. Just the other day, he denied that Iran was biting back, said Minnesota and seven other states had cyberattacks on their water systems from...Minnesota and Gov. Tim Walz. How could he be expected to believe that Iran could cyberattack the homeland when they have been completely defeated?
That is the danger. I am not pro-Iran anymore than I was pro-COVID. Both are deadly. Trump lived in his own mind bubble that COVID would just go away. It didn't. Over a million people died. Now, knowing how his mind works, we hear him saying the identical things about Iran: defeated, Strait will miraculously open itself.
Iran is not going away. Trump is walking away. People are going to die.
Oh my goodness
Over 8M pageviews (all-time), not eleven days after hitting 7M. 221,000 TODAY and still four and one-half hours to go. God, friends, readers, Publoccians--thanks, wow.
Friday, July 31, 2026
Public Occurrences July 31, 2026
It's "Trump Claimed Without Evidence" Day!
Trump Blames Minnesota, Not Iran, for Cyberattack, Despite Initial Investigation
🤣
President Trump claimed without evidence that Minnesota’s Democratic government was “behind” a cyberattack on the state’s own water systems. Investigators believe Iran is likely responsible.
The New York Times reported Thursday that U.S. and Minnesota state officials believed Iran was likely responsible for the cyberattacks on water systems. The F.B.I. said late Thursday the hackers had targeted water facilities in at least seven states.
Mr. Trump dismissed that assessment in a freewheeling cabinet meeting on Friday, saying: “I don’t think so. I think Minnesota is behind it,” adding, “I think the governor’s behind it. I don’t think there was an Iranian cyberattack.”
The president’s baseless claim, contradicted by investigators’ statements that other states had been targeted and their water systems were “degraded” by the attack, appeared aimed at downplaying the threat of the increasingly unpopular war with Iran inside America’s borders. Mr. Trump instead shifted blame to Mr. Walz, Kamala Harris’s running mate in 2024, and his state government, continuing a pattern of trying to punish Minnesota and its Democratic leadership, particularly over the issue of immigration.
7:18 pm:
After Arresting Several, Trump DOJ Says Trump Reflecting Pool Job "Botched", Drops Case Against Former Olympian
All of those arrested should sue Trump for false arrest.
He [David Hearn] was one of seven people facing charges in connection with what President Trump had claimed, without evidence, were efforts to sabotage his administration’s renovation of the pool.
...
In a statement on Friday, lawyers representing him said that the charges should never have been brought.
“Its dismissal today does not erase the abuse of government power in arresting and charging a patriotic American who did nothing wrong. The government’s approach was ready, fire, aim. The administration owes Mr. Hearn an apology,” [ed. Big Bucks] the statement said.
Blue Shift
Yesterday was a BEEG day for the political fortune tellers, pollsters and cognos. Sabato's Crystal Ball has shifted thirteen House races in the direction of BALLOO, Charlie Cook has moved the Georgia Senate race from "lean Demo" to "likely Demo", and polls across the land show the wind blowing Left.
In Texas, James Talarico has a five-point lead on uniquely odious Jim Paxson.
For the state house in Austin, incumbent Greg Abbott leads Gina Hinojosa by one little peepy percentage point.
And in Jawja, Jon Ossoff is distancing himself from white wing challenger Mike Collins.
Thursday, July 30, 2026
USMLE Today
*Update
Medical terms learned today:
Ampulla of Vater
Sphincter of Oddi
11:13 am:
Second Pass (first step ?), blocks of twenty questions, timed, is INFINITELY more stimulating and interesting that First Pass, the "learning phase", where you should answer within three minutes and spend no more than an additional nine mins learning, i.e. reading the UWorld explanation, going the First Aid, etc. Second Pass-- </= 90 secs answer, research after you're done with the entire 20-Q block. I found, and I think Dr. Ana too, that in First Pass the first question set the tone for the day. If you got it right, you were motivated, but if you got it wrong, you were on a downer.
Ana is right there with her colleagues in her correct scores. Nobody, not Ana or her colleagues, have quite hit the 65% mark that you shoot for yet, but all the real med students are getting closer.
As for the non-med student--well, I had my best day!, 35% correct😒. My three-day average, 27%, right where I predicted.
BRAVO ANA, REAL STUDENTS!
Have you looked at these recently?
No other Gods. Why is it always about you?
No adultery. There goes half of your constituency! Come on God, get with the times.
Taking the Lord's name in vain? What, are you Jewish? Don't be so touchy.
Honor thy father and mother? ALL the time???
There's still a few of the original left for Judgment Day.
Though shalt not Insider Trade: I think that would be a good update.
Taking the Lord's name in vain? What, are you Jewish? Don't be so touchy.
What is this fixation you have with my neighbor? Out of town rules apply you know. I think you're projecting. You've seen my neighbor's wife. And his car.
Honor thy father and mother? ALL the time???
There's still a few of the original left for Judgment Day.
Though shalt not Insider Trade: I think that would be a good update.
You gotta adjust, Mo'. And if you want to be impo'tent enough to COMMAND, you gotta look impo'tent. Get a haircut for crissakes. Oops.
You're welcome.
You're welcome.
Wednesday, July 29, 2026
Publoccians and Nons...
Sebs Duran, Sebastián Durán, is a Chilean immigrant who, in his own words, has "lived under a rock most of my life, so a lot of things are new to me." What better life to prepare him to be a "reactor"? Never heard of that niche, but he plays American pops songs that he has never heard before, by artists that he is unfamiliar with, and records his instant reactions live. It's actually a brilliant concept. He takes recommendations from members (of which I am one) of his YouTube channel. In his day job, Sebs works in sales in a music store, I believe. and plays music on the side.
I first came across his reaction vids at the time that I was recording my own version of Macarthur Park, MY FAVORITE SONG OF ALL TIME! Sebs did a reaction vid to that one (the original, not mine). I have checked in on him occasionally since.
This year is an anniversary of the legendary Jim Croce's death and I have a blog post set to publish on the date. Sebs has a moving reaction vid to the poignant, painful "Operator", which i watched. Sebs' reaction vids go from Dean Martin to Perry Commo to Gordon Lightfoot, the Eagles, you name it, from the '50's to the '70's and '80's. Anyone in early middle age or older will be charmed by this young man's reactions to our "Golden Oldies," to him, new discoveries. Take a look at his inventory of songs and choose your favorite and listen to a new generation react to them. You won't be disappointed.
Public Occurrences July 29, 2026
Iran Sneak Attacks U.S. Forces in Jordan After Agreeing to Cease Fire; U.S.-Saudi Forces Hit Back
I don't know what Iran is doing. They cannot be trusted.
9:24 am:
Man, Trumpie is going to start accusing Iran of election interference if they keep this up.
I don't know what Iran is doing. They cannot be trusted.
9:24 am:
Senator Call In😂
McConnell Should Call In For TV Interview or Go On Camera, Kentucky Gov. Says
The undersigned is an odd bird. He understands that. Why, to break his fast this morning he took the most sensual, delicious delight in nourishment consisting of Pepperidge "Hearty White" bread dipped in leftover wonton soup, washed down with a Llave colada. (I was typing this post when I wondered where Eleven was and turned my head and noticed her transmogrification into gargoyle.)
Tuesday, July 28, 2026
Well, I have just laughed for ~ 15' straight...
...while Elevenish and I played our nightly game of "I'm gonna get that kitty", she writhing in her best imitation of Uriah Heep as I emerge from hiding, then segued to brushing my teeth to get ready for bed--cue for her to jump on the toilet water container, onto my shoulders and up onto the shower stall railing where her go-to act is to utter the woeful, forlorn noises of a female cat in distress, plaintively imploring me, who was just trying to "get" her, to rescue her from her predicament, adamantly refusing the six-inch leap onto my shoulders and safety even as she has made a flying cat leap from that height while I stood three feet away and who has defied death by making the Great Leap from that height onto the bathroom floor when I have left her stranded there (as I often have done). But tonight I find it mirthful to listen to the Drama Queen's comical wails before lifting her Daintyness onto my shoulders and to the solid safety of the floor.😂
😂
Exchange with a friend, who accuses Mayor Mamdani of "virtue signaling" for his desire, but not power, to arrest War Criminal Netanyahoo:
Me: ah, i see. okay. i'll take pains never to virtue-signal again.
Him: You haven’t
You don’t
At least I haven’t seen it
Me: do i vice signal?😂
Him: Many times
And I love you for it
Me: 😂😂😂
Public Occurrences July 28, 2026
3:10 PM · Jul 28, 2026
7.9K Views
😋
Kentucky governor demands that McConnell prove he is fit to serve or resign
“I am calling on you to directly and verbally address the people of Kentucky and provide proof of your capacity to serve, or resign,” Gov. Andy Beshear (Democrat) wrote to McConnell.
Beshear made the demand in a letter after McConnell’s office said Monday that the 84-year-old senator had not yet been medically cleared to leave the rehabilitation facility where he has been undergoing physical therapy. The office said he would miss a major Kentucky political event and upcoming Senate votes.
USMLE Today III
I finished with 25% right answers, so don't go to me for a doctor. One time in print I estimated how many answers I would get correct on the actual test and if memory serves I estimated 25%-30%, that is random dart throwing plus maybe 5%. The usual UWorld question has five answer choices, so a 20% chance of getting it right if you just guessed. Twenty percent was my score yesterday. Some questions have six or more answer choices. At six, your random chance is 17%. We have had a few of the 6+ these first two days.
All in all, my cumulative score is 22.5%, about what I predicted. So yeah, I'm not opening up a practice lolol. Fun day, fun two days.
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