Public Occurrences August 21, 2026

The Message Behind Trump’s Threats of ‘Economic Warfare’ Against Iran

President Trump’s threats of an “economic D-Day” carry a clear signal to Iran that he does not want to go back to war.

nytimes

The Times gets it exactly right. That is exactly what that means. Trump "doesn't have the cards", he's down on missiles and materiel, pulling carriers from around China, not accomplishing his objectives in either theatre, all in service to his bombast as "Guardian of the World" and his theatrical shows "Operation Midnight Hammer" and "Operation Epic Fury." He could have had it all. All he had to do, he and Vassal Leader Netanyahoo, was keep bombing nuclear facilities and offing nuclear scientists. But no. He wanted Unconditional Surrender, he wanted Regime Change. He got Operation Epic Futility, sanctions, which will target our friends, hurt Western economies, further fray security and trade alliances, deepen America's pariah status, inflict more pain on 93 million Iranian prisoner-civilians of a medieval state and yes, heap pressure on the Islamic Republic state. Bet the IRGC doesn't run out of bullets as Trump has missiles.

Democracy in America and the Rise of Democratic Socialism

Some perfectly fine Democrats have been defeated in primaries by Lefties. These are loyal, cobalt blues, nothing purplish about them, in Congressional Districts safe from challenge by Grand Old Phascists, in entire states where the Democrat would be favored to win the Senate seat. In some cases these Democrats have been incumbents. They have proven their nous time and time again, including in Trump's two impeachments in the House. They wore their impeachment votes as badges of honor. Still they were primaried from the Left, in some cases lost. Why would that be? Let's hear from an incumbent Dem.:

"Members now realize that it's [impeachment] not that big of a deal. It's old hat...Especially when you can't deliver."

You don't get an "A" for effort any more; "Resistance" doesn't cut it any more. You need to win. After Trump's second presidential win, some incumbent Resistance Democrats faced angry constituents who demanded "blood in the streets", even their blood when they went back to their districts. The impeachment incumbents were shocked.

What this means is that many American voters of both major parties have lost faith in democratic theory, where the democratic process legitimizes the outcome; in fact, it is the only legitimizing process. Republicans from 2016 to present have totally abandoned democratic process for a focus on results. Small d democratic theory is that you can't win every time, you have to compromise, and you have to accept the results of free and fair votes. As Hubert Humphrey once stated, "Dukakis thinks as long as the pipes are shiny it doesn't matter if shit comes out". That was an American-context rejection of democratic theory. Sheepish political scientists would point to broader examples, such as the elections in Germany in the 1930's. No, the Nazi Party never won a majority of seats in the Reichstag, but like in Germany at the time, like in Israel throughout its history, close counts in horseshoes, hand grenades and parliamentary democracies. The theory in parliamentary democracies is that pluralities force compromise and you get a muddier, but better, representation of the whole electorate. So, although political scientists don't like to mention it, Adolph Hitler and Benjamin Netanyahu were the results that proved that democracies work. You can see why poli sci's don't like to talk about that.

Coming back to America, we have a quasi first-past-the-poll representative democracy. At the presidential level you do have to win a majority of electoral votes, but to accommodate the smaller, slave-holding states, you can win the electoral college and the presidency without winning a majority of the popular vote. Voila! Donald Trump. The pipes were shiny in 2016 and 2024. We still got shit. And, like in Germany and present-day Israel, shiny democratic pipes may result in the death of Democracy in America.

When "you can't deliver", the focus becomes on the process of democracy as the culprit. Donald Trump would not have accepted the legitimizing democratic process in 2016 had he lost the Electoral College (he did lose the popular vote); Trump, and a majority of congressional Republicans, did not accept the democratic process in 2020; they would not have accepted it in 2024; they might not except it in 2026. To him and them, only the result mattered. 

When one side doesn't accept democratic process and the other side does, you have an unfair fight. That is what DSA, the broader Left movement in America today, and increasing numbers of Democratic voters realize. DSA wants to abolish the Electoral College, Democrats of all shades are fed up with the unfair fight, Resistance isn't enough, "especially when you can't deliver."

Public Occurrences August 20, 2026

Netanyahu posts Mamdani’s face alongside Middle Eastern enemies list in campaign push

Lede by The Independent

"They Want Netanyahu to Lose, Don't let them Win."

Iran's Mojtaba Khamenei (wounded in U.S.-Iz assassination of father), New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani in front, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem

AIPAC Makes it C.T.E. Again, Loses Again

Aisha Wahab, NOT a Democratic Socialist, won former Rep. Eric Swalwell's seat by 6% over fellow Democrat Melissa Hernandez.  

At a candidate forum, Wahab was asked if Iz' actions in Gaza were a genocide and answered (correctly) "yes", while Hernandez said Iz had "gone too far" (lol). That was enough to draw AIPAC's dollars ($6.3M)  and ire.

AIPAC was founded in 1954 explicitly as a pro-Israeli genocide org.

That's over $42 million AIPAC has spent in just two losing races this season, $36M against Abdul El-Sayad in the Michigan Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate and now in California's 14th Congressional District.

Manitoba Premier: TACO a "bad person"

“Everybody knows the American president by now, he’s erratic, he’s irresponsible, and he’s not to be trusted. And this is the person that we were supposed to make a deal with, and we’re going to make additional concessions for it. That’s why I say you can’t make a good deal with a bad person, because who’s to say it’s not going to be undone?

"I think we should fight. I think Donald Trump is very weak. I think America is weaker around the world today than it was a year ago. He’s about to get slaughtered in the midterms and the cost of living is the number one issue and he’s completely out of touch with the cost of living of Americans.

"We’ve got the upper hand. They are back on their heels right now. They are coming to us for a deal right now."

[Wab Kinew, Manitoba Premier] said he preferred to keep fighting, noting the U.S. Republican president’s tendency to levy extremely high import taxes and then retreat. He mentioned what’s known as “TACO”, an acronym...that stands for “Trump Always Chickens Out.”


9:08 am:

                                                           Fantasy:

Reality:

Fantasy:

Reality:

Fantasy:

Reality:

                                                                             Cause:

                                                                           Effect:

Here is the latest:

• Oil prices rise.
• Stocks slip on Wall Street.
• Bond rally fades.
• Gasoline prices tick up.

 Twee T.

“We’re always in survival mode in Gary."

Shatiya Hardin, Gary Ind. resident 25 years  Gary has been without power for nine straight days after an August 11 storm. 🥹🫶

Dipshitz of the Day

 

Public Occurrences August 19, 2026

US gross national debt tops $40tn for first time

The Guardian lede

Impeachable, lynchable, assassinationable if done under a Democrat.

President Trump’s promises to restore fiscal order and reduce the amount of America’s debt burden have been undercut by spending on the Iran war, tax cuts and tariff refunds.

Whether the mounting debt load is a problem to be solved or a function of America’s economic strength remains a matter of debate. Deficits are also a point of political gamesmanship, with Republicans most passionate about eliminating them when they are out of power.

...

Both Republicans and Democrats are responsible for America’s borrowing burden. 

...

When he first ran for the White House in 2016, Mr. Trump said he would eliminate the national debt within eight years by making new trade deals and jump-starting economic growth. Since then, the national debt has doubled.

...

In his second term, Mr. Trump’s biggest initiatives to cut spending and increase revenue have failed to materialize.

new twee times

As a percentage of GDP, the debt topped out at 133% in 2020, the last year of Trump Parte Uno and the first year for the COVID epidemic.

3:02 pm

This is THE Top Story in Google's Aggregated News

11:17 am:

Israeli military launches criminal probes into killings of Hind Rajab and Palestinian paramedics

Both the killing of Rajab and her family, trapped in a vehicle and pleading for help by phone in February 2024, and the killing of 15 medics in May 2025 drew international outcry. Independent experts from the U.N. Human Rights Council have said Rajab’s killing might constitute a war crime. Rights groups have filed war crimes complaints to the International Criminal Court and requests to indict soldiers they identified as involved in the killing.


Rajab’s grandmother, also named Hind Rajab, told the AP by phone that the Israeli investigation is not enough, and called for an international probe into the killing of her granddaughter and all of the hundreds of children killed in Gaza during the war.

AP

It is not enough. Israel has been targeting and massacring Palestinian civilians since its creation. It is state policy. Ariel Sharon was a war criminal. Benjamin Netanyahoo is a war criminal. Netanyahoo should be indicted and taken to The Hague to stand trial.

The Chicken Backed Down on 50% 

Tariffs on Canada

9:17 am:

Welcome to Florida, the Democratic Socialist State 🙄

Every day is magic around here

But today even more so. It is the birthday of my daughter-in-law and USMLE study buddy DR. ANA!

Dershowitz of the Day

 

Sound on. Off my triumph a half hour earlier, Eleven was spoiling for a rematch with war-like tunneling under the bed covers. But when I gave it to her, 11:05, she was so skittish, owing to my new strategy of not giving her advance warning with ominous knocks and finger drumming, that she folded like a paper suitcase and gave me a pitiful white flag meow. In the second at 11:08 she holds her position till I jump out and then she skedaddles. She'll get on to me. She's the most fun I've had in years and years.

Public Occurrences August 18, 2026

Seven years ago, President Trump failed to disarm North Korea and walked away. Could the same thing happen with Iran?

The last time President Trump vowed to halt a country’s nuclear weapons program, he held three face-to-face meetings with Kim Jong-un of North Korea, declared that the two men had developed a “great relationship” and walked away empty-handed.

That was in Mr. Trump’s first term. Not only did the diplomatic effort fail, but Mr. Kim immediately hit the accelerator on his program and today possesses roughly 60 nuclear weapons, by some estimates, as well as missiles that appear capable of reaching the United States — exactly the combination Mr. Trump had vowed to dismantle.

For months now, proliferation experts have questioned whether Mr. Trump could also end up walking away from his efforts to check Iran’s nuclear program — especially now that he appears to be more focused on getting the Strait of Hormuz open [see immediately below] than on dealing with Iran’s stockpiles of uranium, which are buried under rubble after the United States bombed them in June 2025.
...

[In 2018] having labeled Mr. Kim “Little Rocket Man,” Mr. Trump met the North Korean leader in Singapore. After their encounter, he told a New York Times reporter that he expected that the North would dismantle its program fast. “It’s going to go very quickly,” he said after the summit. “I really believe that it’s going to go fast. And it is a very substantial arsenal. There’s no question about it.”

...[The meetings with Un] went down in history as a diplomatic failure. A second summit, in Vietnam, ended with a collapse of the talks. Mr. Trump went into the sessions ill-prepared, his national security adviser at the time, John R. Bolton, said later, and the effort fell apart when Mr. Kim refused to dismantle facilities outside the main enrichment and reprocessing center at Yongbyon.

...“Fallout: The Inside Story of America’s Failure to Disarm North Korea.”--Joel S. Wit, a former State Department diplomat who was involved in early talks with the North...

...

Trump defended his approach to North Korea in the Oval Office on Monday. Asked by a reporter whether he was prioritizing the interests of U.S. adversaries over allies, [BALLSY BY THE PENCIL! 👏] the president shot back [The only thing Trump shoots these days is blanks.]: “I’m making it much safer.”

David E. Sanger, new twee times

Nataleee! Check the time.

10:08 am:

Trump approval falls to 33%, lowest of his presidency, Reuters/Ipsos poll finds

Reuters

Natalie will never leave him.

Eleven and I just got done playing our nightly "I'm gonna get that kitty" surprise game and she was MAD at me because I won. I changed my routine and she really was surprised! After we were done I lay down on the bed. She came into the bedroom and GLARED at me. 🤭No fake, I laughed so hard my back hurt.🤣

Trump, pregnant with Natalie Harp's child

 

We Are Penn State

👏There is a God.

 

I'm a day late. Sorry, baby :( I love you to bits and pieces.

This is not going to end well

                             There needs to be an intervention

Early in his second term, Trump told his team that Harp "was the only one who loved him as much as his wife and his kids," according to Regime Change, a new book by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan.

“All of you will go off and make money,” Trump said, according to the book. “She’ll never leave me.”

Haberman and Times reporter Jonathan Swan also wrote in their book “Regime Change,” released in July, that Harp left “adoring” and “intimate” letters to Trump that “raised the eyebrows of the Secret Service during the campaign,” Swan told CNN last month. 

Harp's closeness to Trump was underscored last week when it was revealed that she was among the select few aides who accompanied him on a military plane out of Turkey after he snuck off Air Force One in a catering truck amid an Iranian assassination threat.

Other top officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and top White House aide Stephen Miller, remained on the "decoy" Air Force One.

Preston [Harp, brother], 38, who now lives in Nicaragua, said he believes his sister sees Trump as "a kind of father figure" because their real father,  (https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/natalie-harp-brother-says-trump-105252843.html) Robert Harp, who died by suicide in July 2020, had moved away from what Preston described as the "doctrine of U.S. exceptionalism." [Preston said Natalie's relationship with Trump was] "very unhealthy". 

Mr. Trump has dismissed concerns about Ms. Harp, whom he calls “sweetie” and treats like a daughter, according to people close to him. 

Donald Trump's executive assistant Natalie Harp is the woman behind his overnight Truth Social sprees, The Wall Street Journal (https://www.wsj.com/politics/trump-truth-social-late-night-posts-167cb47a) reported Tuesday.

Once, when Mr. Trump was playing golf in Scotland, she ran behind his cart to keep him up to date with positive stories and social media posts.

In 2023, Ms. Harp sent a series of letters to Mr. Trump that unnerved people around him, according to a half-dozen people with knowledge of them.

"You are all that matters to me,” she wrote in one of the letters, which were seen by The New York Times. The letters’ authenticity was confirmed by two people with direct knowledge of them.

“I don’t ever want to let you down,” Ms. Harp wrote, thanking Mr. Trump for being her “Guardian and Protector in this Life.”

In another letter, she told Mr. Trump that she wanted to get back to “that synergy” she used to have with him, where “we’d talk about everything and nothing.”

“I want to bring you joy,” she wrote, “to feel like we can get through a day without ever having to talk ‘work.’”

Above cropped to show only Harp.

And, the saddest. I'm still not resizing it.

No, I'm not shrinking it, I want it that big.

The Saddest Photo

Natalie Harp, aka The Human Printer, a desperate, troubled young woman, standing all alone as the "only thing that matters to me" walks away.

Public Occurrences August 17, 2026

Trump is Losing His Marbles

As Iran Truce Expires and Options Shrivel, Trump Lashes Out

President Trump took aim at Oman, a U.S. ally that has been mediating the talks, as efforts to end a war he started have faltered.

As a crumbling truce with Iran officially collapsed on Monday, President Trump signaled his frustration at his inability to resolve a war that he started but cannot seem to end.

In an interview with Fox News, the president lashed out at an American ally, Oman, that has been trying to mediate negotiations with Iran.

“If Oman gets in the way, we’ll bomb the shit out of them,” Mr. Trump said in a phone interview, according to Fox News’s Trey Yingst.

...Oman... has facilitated talks between the United States and Iran for years and maintains that it is still a neutral mediator...

“I think, ultimately, his threats against Oman are just a reflection of his frustration with the situation he’s created, where he has no good options. He’s just reflexively lashing out, and this time Oman got in the cross hairs.”--Nate Swanson, of the Atlantic Council’s Iran Strategy Project."

Hostilities have now stretched past the six-month mark in a conflict that began with the United States and Israel launching strikes across Iran in February. Administration officials pledged at the time that the war would be over in four to six weeks.

“The tragic part here is that the United States is clawing to try to get back to the state of the Middle East before the war started."--Justin Logan, Cato Institute

Trump called reports of food shortages on the [U.S.S. Lincoln] “fake news.”

Mr. Trump also said the United States could declare the Strait of Hormuz a territory of the United States.

“We control it with the blockade, and I like the idea of declaring it a territory,” he said.

But it was Oman that received the president’s fury on Monday. Iran has said it has been holding talks with Oman on temporarily reopening the strait.

“I don’t think they behaved very well,” he said of the U.S. ally, “but we’d handle them very easily, just like we do other things.”

It was the second time this year the president has threatened the country. In May it emerged that Oman had discussed working with Iran to charge fees for ships to pass through the strait.

“Oman will behave just like everybody else, or we’ll have to blow them up,” Mr. Trump told reporters then. “They understand that. They’ll be fine.”

New Twee Times

Are we going to SURVIVE two more years of this?

Trump threatens to bomb US ally Oman as Iran agreement expires

Noodles

5:52 pm:

Trump calls concerns about conditions on USS Lincoln ‘fake’

AP

9:41 am:

Trump blames vandals for damaged grass in the same spot where he held his big July 4 celebration

AP

8:42 am:

Memorandum of Misunderstanding Kaput: 60-Day Period for Full Agreement With Iran Expires

The White House Criminal is incompetent in everything except crime.