The week in review - June 20, 2025
Only 1,310 days to go...
“If we're looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn’t test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power.” ~ P. J. O'Rourke
Living through these times…
What Happened to Please -Please is a way of indicating that you are NOT taking another person for granted.
Jung’s Five Pillars of a Good Life - Jung’s ideas about happiness and his five pillars of well-being stand up solidly to modern research findings.
Finding the humor…
Donald Trump Birthday Celebration ... White House Says Listing Is 'Fake News'
An ad posted to Craigslist calling for seat-fillers for the U.S. Army's 250th anniversary parade -- AKA President Trump's birthday bash -- has gone viral ... but it has all the makings of a total hoax.
My Super-Special 79th Was Not Super Special
I wanted the kind of tank parade that is made in China or North Korea. I don’t want a special American tank parade where our soldiers are waving and smiling out of the tanks. I want one like my friends have…My parade was just awful. It was all about the Army, which, okay, is turning 250, but only in the literal sense. Trump ‘Reamed Out’ Hegseth for Flop Birthday Parade: Trump wanted a “menacing” show of force to celebrate the Army’s 250th anniversary and his 79th birthday on Saturday—but got a “festive” parade instead.
President Trump’s Approval Rating: Latest Polls
Thought for the day in honor of her birthday…
“Cynicism is an unpleasant way of saying the truth.”
~ Lillian Hellman
Must Read Articles:
These enormous demonstrations against Trump were closely connected to what occurred in the days before. This kind of chaos wears on people. Whenever Trump does something provocative, such as the Los Angeles escalation, during the middle of an already negative news cycle, some pundits are quick to label it an attempt at distraction. Perhaps that’s the goal, consciously or not, but it’s not politically effective, and a big reason is that the distraction is almost always politically damaging. If you shift public attention from one unpopular thing to another, you’re not gaining anything. And a growing pile of data shows that Trump’s actions in Los Angeles are unpopular, just as he is personally unpopular; the One Big Beautiful Bill is unpopular; and Americans disapprove of his handling of most issues…Trump’s ambitions and the danger he poses may have expanded in his second term, but in many ways he’s the same old Trump—and voters still don’t like it.
Trump confronts rare MAGA purity tests on Iran and immigration
The big picture: Some MAGA influencers see the Iran and immigration flashpoints as inextricably linked.
Bannon warned on his "War Room" podcast that getting "sucked into" a prolonged war in the Middle East would distract from Trump's most important domestic priority: mass deportations.
Other Trump supporters view the two issues — helping Israel attack Iran and deporting unauthorized immigrants — as part of the same fight to preserve "Western Civilization."
The bottom line: For all the infighting over ideological purity, MAGA remains a movement built around one man. That's why Trump is confident he can bend the base long before it breaks.
Highlights
Jury finds leading proponent of ‘The Big Lie’ defamed former voting equipment employee
A jury found Monday that MyPillow founder Mike Lindell defamed a former employee of a prominent voting equipment company by calling him a traitor, telling Lindell and his online media platform to pay $2.3 million in damages. The decision came after a two-week trial involving one of the biggest proponents of the myth that the 2020 election was stolen, a lie that still dominates national politics. Other such cases have ended in settlements before they could go before a jury.
The MAGA Coalition Has Turned on Itself
The MAGA movement usually displays remarkable unity in attacking the left. But Israel’s military assault on Iran has splintered President Donald Trump’s coalition, as rival factions fight over the true meaning of an “America First” foreign policy.
Right-wing figures have descended into vicious debate over whether the White House should take a more active role in Israel’s bombardment of Iran—one that, with American help, could dismantle Tehran’s nuclear program or even lead to regime change.
Quote of the week:
“In our competitive society, where it seems that only the strong and winners deserve to live, sport also teaches us how to lose. It forces us, in learning the art of losing, to confront our fragility, our limitations and our imperfections. It is through the experience of these limits that we open our hearts to hope. Athletes who never make mistakes, who never lose, do not exist.”
~ Pope Leo XIV
Lowlights
Doctors at Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals nationwide could refuse to treat unmarried veterans and Democrats under new hospital guidelines imposed following an executive order by Donald Trump. Medical staff are still required to treat veterans regardless of race, color, religion and sex, and all veterans remain entitled to treatment. But individual workers are now free to decline to care for patients based on personal characteristics not explicitly prohibited by federal law. Language requiring healthcare professionals to care for veterans regardless of their politics and marital status has been explicitly eliminated.
Just as I predicted in “This Land Was Made for You and Me.”…. The Senate Announces Plan to Sell At Least 2,100,000 Acres of Public Lands
Adding this all up, the budget proposal from the Senate’s Energy & Natural Resources Committee means that we’ll loose at least—at minimum—2,190,000 acres of public lands. Congress is making more than 250 million acres of public lands available for sale. The bill’s process for selling off lands runs at breakneck speed, demanding the nomination of tracts within 30 days, then every 60 days until the arbitrary multi-million-acre goal is met, all without hearings, debate or public input opportunities. It gives the secretaries of the interior and agriculture broad discretion to choose which places should ultimately be sold off.
MAGA Madman Also Shot Slain Democrat’s Rescue Dog
The alleged MAGA assassin shot murder victim Melissa Hortman’s beloved pet dog so badly it could not be saved. Children of the victims had to take Gilbert, their beloved golden retriever, to be put down.
The Housing Market Was Supposed to Recover This Year. What Happened?
“There isn’t any urgency to buying right now — if anything it feels more risky to put a down payment into a home when you might not have a job six months from now.”
Real estate agents across the country report a chilled environment, with sellers unwilling to lower their prices and buyers reluctant to make a big purchase as the economy flounders and the costs for a mortgage, insurance and property taxes rise. Even in markets where prices have fallen and inventory is piling up, like Austin, Texas, homes are sitting on the market for months. In fiercely competitive areas, like the New York City suburbs, where prices are still rising and homes sell fast, properties that would have gotten a dozen offers a year ago now get two or three.
EPA says power plant carbon emissions aren’t dangerous. We asked 30 scientists: Here’s what they say
…30 different scientists, experts in climate, health and economics, about the scientific reality behind this proposal. Nineteen of them responded, all saying that the proposal was scientifically wrong and many of them called it disinformation.
“The relationship between CO2 emissions and global temperatures has been well established since the late 1800s, and coal burning is the single biggest driver of global CO2 emissions, followed by oil and gas. It is utterly nonsensical to say that carbon emissions from power plants do not contribute significantly to climate change.”
The giant Trump Republican bill now before the Senate — Trump’s so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill” — This would make it more regressive — harming low-income Americans while benefiting high-income Americans — than any major tax or entitlement law in many decades, if not in history, according to new estimates by the Congressional Budget Office.
The senator has failed, undeniably and spectacularly. One new appointee, Robert Malone, has repeatedly spread misinformation (or what he prefers to call “scientific dissent”) about vaccines. Another appointee, Vicky Pebsworth, is on the board of an anti-vax nonprofit, the National Vaccine Information Center. Cassidy may keep insisting that he is doing all he can to stand up for vaccines. But he already had his big chance to do so, and he blew it. Now, with the rest of America, he’s watching the nation’s vaccine future take a nosedive.
Trump remakes the White House with new flagpoles
He’s already updated the Oval Office, adding gold accents, more portraits and a copy of the Declaration of Independence. Workers have begun paving over the grass in the Rose Garden, and there are plans to construct a new ballroom somewhere on the White House grounds. The changes bring the iconic building more in line with Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s private club in Florida.
What I’m listening to…
What I’m watching…
What I read every day…
