Friday, September 18, 2026

Science post (Saturday's International Observe the Moon Night)

Another science grab bag post.  Sorry, I'm just not in the mood for legal discussions.  Andrew Paul (POPULAR SCIENCE) reports: 

The moon may look desolate and calm, but a lot happens on that dusty landscape. With zero atmosphere, space rocks of all sizes regularly bombard the lunar surface. Most of the debris is microscopic, but astronomers estimate around 140 coffee table-sized asteroids and comets also slam into our moon every year. When they do, the impact is powerful enough to produce a 30-foot-wide crater.

Every so often, however, a monstrous visitor arrives. And based on observations from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), one of those much rarer rocks gave the moon an impressive new battlescar. As researchers recently reported in Science Advances, an asteroid or comet the size of a three-story building has generated a crater measuring the length of two football fields on the moon’s eastern edge. As the largest newly formed crater ever spotted in the solar system, it presents astronomers with a once-in-a-century opportunity to study the immediate aftermath of such a sizable impact.
The discovery occurred during a standard data-quality review of images collected by the LRO between April 11 and May 22, 2024. Since launching in 2009, the LRO has helped astronomers pinpoint at least 1,000 newer craters, as well as 100,000 lunar surface changes formed by either direct impacts or secondary strikes from flying debris. But when image-processing specialist Robert Wagner noticed a huge bright circle encased by a darker halo on October 24, 2025, he immediately knew it was unlike anything he’d previously seen.


On the above, NASA notes:

It started as a routine data-quality check. But as Robert Wagner, a scientist with NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), scanned a giant Moon map on his computer screen, an unusually large bright spot circled by a dark halo caught his eye, as it implied that surface material in that area had been shaken up.

“I just stopped, dropped everything, and started looking into what that spot was,” said Wagner, an image-processing specialist from Intuitive Machines who works with data from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) system.

By comparing before and after images of the Moon, Wagner realized he had discovered the largest, newly formed crater ever found in the solar system, as scientists reported Wednesday in Science Advances. This discovery highlights the value of NASA’s Moon orbiter data in studying a dynamic landscape as the agency advances a sustained human presence and expanded scientific and commercial activity on the Moon.

Two nearly identical black-and-white images appear side by side, separated by a vertical black line. Each shows a dark, uneven surface with scattered small circular depressions and several larger round formations with bright, raised rims. In the left image, a thin white circle marks a small, white spot near the center; there is no circled, white spot in the the corresponding area in the right image.
A zoomed-in view of McGetchin crater, circled on the left, next to a “before” image on the right. The panel on the left is made from images captured by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Wide-Angle Camera in summer 2025; the right panel was made from images taken in spring 2011. The white spot is not the crater itself, but rather material flung out of the crater, which formed when a rock, possibly this size of a three- to six‑story building, crashed into the Moon between April 11 and May 22, 2024 – a once-in-a-century event, as scientists reported on Sept. 15, 2026, in a pair of papers in Science Advances. The area shown in the images is 38 miles wide.
NASA Goddard/Intuitive Machines/Robert Wagner

Officially named McGetchin after pioneering lunar scientist Tom McGetchin, the crater formed on the Moon’s eastern edge sometime between April 11 and May 22, 2024, after a comet or asteroid the size of a three- to six-story building hit the surface.
 
The crash left a crater, 728 feet wide, that spans the length of two football fields. And at 141 feet deep, the crater could fit three vertically stacked yellow school buses.
 
Scientists estimate that an impact of this magnitude happens on the Moon about once in a century or even longer.

Moon takes some hits

For more than 17 years, LRO has been circling the Moon and using its seven instruments to map the topography, surface composition, temperature, and radiation environment there. The spacecraft’s team has identified at least 1,000 new impact craters throughout the mission and flagged 100,000 more surface changes from an object smashing into the Moon or from the debris that flung out after.

With no atmosphere to slow them or burn them up, space rocks and other objects easily reach the lunar surface. Most are much smaller compared to the object that carved out McGetchin crater. The smallest craters scientists can distinguish from LRO images are about 30 feet wide, the length of a three-story building laid on its side, made by rocks about 43 inches wide, the size of a monster-truck tire. Scientists estimate that impacts of this scale produce about 140 new craters across the Moon each year. But most new ones are made by microscopic projectiles that leave holes too small to identify in orbital images.

With its numerous instruments, the spacecraft can observe changes to the lunar surface that aren’t apparent in the LROC images alone. After the crater was discovered, scientists working with LRO’s thermal instrument, Diviner, made follow-up observations of the site. They found a 4-mile-wide area around the crater that is about 16 degrees Fahrenheit cooler at night than its surroundings.

Animated temperature map that alternates between two images. A vertical strip through the center blinks on and off, revealing a dark blue circular area surrounding a small white spot near the middle. The pale blue map also contains scattered yellow, orange, and red spots and rings, including a large, curved red-and-yellow feature near the lower center. A 5-kilometer scale bar appears at lower left, and a color key ranges from 90 kelvin in dark blue to 130 kelvin in dark red.
This animated image set shows an area on the eastern limb of the Moon before and after McGetchin crater formed there sometime between April 11 and May 22, 2024. The post-impact image was constructed using data taken by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) thermal instrument, Diviner, between Nov. 15, 2025, and Feb. 18, 2026, after scientists discovered the crater in visible-light images taken by LRO’s Wide-Angle Camera. Pre-impact temperatures are from the Diviner Global High-Resolution Mosaics (GHRM). The crater formed on the Moon after a comet or asteroid, possibly the size of a six-story building, hit the surface in a rare, once-in-a-century collision. The dark blue strip that flashes into view reveals a 4-mile-wide “cold spot” around the crater that is about 16 degrees Fahrenheit cooler at night than its surroundings. This cooling happens because an impact fluffs up regolith around a crater, making it less dense and therefore less able to retain heat. Scientists on the Diviner team reported this finding in a paper published on Sept. 16, 2026, in Science Advances. The red and yellow spots indicate areas typically associated with rocks excavated by long-ago impacts which, though still at cryogenic temperatures like their surroundings, remain slightly warmer at night.
NASA Goddard/UCLA/JHU APL

Reporting in a second paper Wednesday in the same journal, researchers say that the cooling happens because the impact fluffs up the regolith around the crater, making it less dense and therefore less able to retain heat.

The large extent of this “cold spot” is striking, scientists say, because it shows that impacts can modify the Moon’s surface far beyond the crater itself. These physical changes could affect how rover wheels interact with the surface, for instance.



Still on the Moon, Zachary Folk (FORBES) reported this week:

A new research paper published in the Frontiers in Space Technologies journal found that the water present on the moon is only capable of sustaining a large city there for about 100 years—casting doubt on Elon Musk’s plans for building a “self-growing” city of millions of lunar settlers.
[. . .]
Researchers estimate about 34 million tons of water exist on the moon. However they also noted this estimate might be “low” and used a 1 billion ton baseline to make their predictions. “A moon village or small town of 10,000 people won’t run out of water for thousands of years,” Dr. Martin Elvis, one of the lead authors of the paper, told Forbes in an email. However, Elvis also noted that their baseline estimate of 1 billion tons of available water was “generous,” and the actual amount of water on the moon could be 20 to 30 times less. With only a 30% recovery rate, a town of this size would only be sustainable for about 100 years, Elvis said. “Clearly a lot of prospecting is needed before construction of a lunar town,” he added. The researcher also noted NASA is planning “several missions” into the moon’s permanently shadowed craters, but “to get a good inventory will take quite a lot more.”

Ice can be found in massive craters around the moon’s poles, according to researchers. These craters contain what are sometimes referred to as the “pits of eternal darkness,” as they have not had sunlight in about 4 billion years. They form “cold traps,” which never reach temperatures higher than -261.67 degrees Fahrenheit. NASA’s planned Moon Base will be located on the moon’s south pole, according to the space agency.

Imagine that, Musk got it wrong.  Like he does so many times.  Lastly, Saturday is International Observe the Moon Night.  Greg Redfern (WTOP) reports: 


Saturday night is the annual “International Observe the Moon Night,” where observers and lovers of the moon worldwide will be looking at the moon and sponsoring moon-watching events.

The night is sponsored by Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and the Solar System Exploration Division of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, with support from many partners.

As stated on NASA’s International Observe the Moon Night webpage, the goals of International Observe the Moon Night:

  • Unite people across the globe in a celebration of lunar observation, science and exploration, and provide information and a platform.
  • Raise awareness of NASA’s lunar science and exploration programs.
  • Empower people to learn more about the moon and space science and exploration, using Earth’s moon as an accessible entry point.
  • Facilitate sharing of moon-inspired stories, images, artwork and more.
  • Inspire continued observation of the moon, the sky and the world around us.
  • Support all people who are interested in learning more about and connecting to the moon.

In the D.C. region this year, there are 22 International Observe the Moon events.


"The Snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS): 

Friday, September 18, 2026.  46 days until the midterm elections and Chump -- who begged voters to make the election all about him -- is not doing well.



Shawn Harris is running for Congress.  He writes in a column for NEWSWEEK:

I raise cattle in northwest Georgia. So, when President Donald Trump announced that the United States would bring in over 661 million pounds of foreign beef over 90 days with lower tariffs, I took it personally.  

I recently told CBS News that this decision could push ranchers like me out of business and it won’t do anything to lower prices at the grocery store. I wasn’t exaggerating.

I’ve got beef with Trump’s plan because American farmers are paying the price. I’ve got beef with NWGA’s Representative Clay Fuller because he’s remained silent on an issue deeply impacting our communities. 

America’s herd is at its lowest level in decades. Ranchers have been hit by droughts, high input costs for feed, diesel, fertilizer and other supplies. Raising cattle takes planning, money and years of work. Farmers don’t make decisions one week at a time. When prices become unpredictable and the cost of keeping cattle keeps climbing, farmers may decide they cannot afford to keep as many animals. That would make our cattle shortage even worse.

It's 46 days until the midterm vote (early voting begins in Minnesota, Virginia and South Dakota today).  46 days.  


As diesel and gas prices soar in the United States amid the war with Iran, Americans across the country are making tough decisions as they continue to cope with the heavy strain of inflation.

“You have to manage your bills. You have to manage the food you bring in. You have to manage how you pay your bills … everything has to be budgeted,” said Betsy Rosado, a 47-year-old mother who lives with her husband and five of their children in Spring Hill, Florida.

Rosado said her business degree has helped her manage household finances. But for others, the budgeting agony “could bring somebody to the point of depression, and it could bring somebody to a mental collapse, especially when they have kids.”
Rosado said her toddler, who has significant developmental and respiratory issues, requires treatments multiple times a week. She has had to cut back on therapy sessions because of rising gas prices.
“We had to switch to, unfortunately, virtual therapies. And with my daughter with disabilities, we are stopping occupational therapies,” she said.

These are the kind of troubling issues Americans are dealing with as they watch inflation rise, the economy tank and remember that things were not this bad in 2024 or 2023.  46 days away from the midterms. 

And the GOP which has overseen the destruction of the US economy is asking what?  Adam Lynch notes:

“Give us another chance or give us another couple of years to continue to work on the amazing things that we've been doing for the past two years[,” Vice President JD Vance declared.]

“Well, there's a bumper sticker for you: Give us another chance,” said [Jake] Tapper Wednesday night, turning to Republican strategists Shermichael Singleton and Kristen Soltis Anderson. “… It sounds like a desperate boyfriend, frankly.”

A desperate boyfriend?  These are not signs of optimism for the GOP in the upcoming midterms -- especially not when Chump has asked voters to make the midterms all about him.  


Rising living costs have been a persistent concern for Americans. Now, President Donald Trump is once again claiming that prices are coming down — but the latest inflation data tell a more complicated story for your wallet.

During remarks in Ohio on Aug. 11, Trump said that “prices are dropping fast,” while also touting the stock market and employment (1). The comment came as the latest government data showed inflation had eased slightly in July.
But there’s an important distinction between inflation slowing and prices actually falling. The latest data show that while the rate of inflation has cooled from its pandemic-era highs, the overall price level is still rising.

The Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose 3.4% in July from a year earlier, down slightly from 3.5% in June but still well above the Federal Reserve’s 2% target. Prices also rose 0.1% from June to July (2).


46 days and reality slaps Chump right across his lying mouth.  Kendall Blythe (MONEY TALK NEWS) notes:

President Donald Trump won a second term promising fast relief on the cost of living. “Starting on Day 1, we will end inflation and make America affordable again,” he told a Montana rally in August 2024. Twenty months in, the bills Americans actually pay have moved in several directions at once.
[. . .]
The sharpest promise was gasoline. On the campaign trail, Trump vowed to get gas “below $2 a gallon” and to cut energy prices in half.

It never reached $2. It did fall to about $2.83 in January, a substantial decline, and he took the credit. Then fighting around the Strait of Hormuz pushed crude toward $90 a barrel, and the national average climbed to $4.33 by mid-September, according to AAA, more than a dollar above a year earlier.
Homeowners felt it beyond the pump. Over the year through August, gasoline was up 27.4%, fuel oil 52%, electricity 3.8% and natural gas 4.4%. Fuel oil is a sliver of the national Consumer Price Index basket, but that jump lands hard on households that still heat with oil, many of them in the Northeast. Gasoline alone accounted for more than a third of the month’s rise in the overall index.

Let's note this stupidity:

Spokesman Kush Desai defended administration policies, noting that President Donald Trump “pledged to end Joe Biden’s generational inflation crisis, and the Administration has been laser-focused on delivering since Day One with a proven supply-side economic agenda.”

The Biden generational inflation crisis?  

From 2017 to 2020, inflation was above 2% each year.  Joe Biden wasn't president in those years, Chump was.  Chump destroyed the economy in his first term.  Biden came into office a year into the pandemic and still managed to address the economy.  Chump's back in and inflation is worse than it was during his first term.  But every year Chump was in office during his first term, we had an inflation rate of at least 2%.  That's 8% higher when he left in January 2021 than it was when he was sworn in on January 20, 2017.  8% higher when he left in 2021.  

That's reality.  Reality is also that we are 46 days away from the midterms.  Appearing on CNN's ERIN BURNETT OUT FRONT yesterday was Iraq War veteran Paul Reickhoff. Adam Lynch reports:


“Here's what's real — and maybe the good news,” said Rieckhoff. “It feels like the system is actually pushing back, right? You've got the fed rate hike, you've got the Supreme Court, you've got [Rep. Thomas] Massie (R-Ky.) Congress [voting to impeach Trump’s secretary of defense], and it feels like the body politic is actually activating its white blood cells to fight against the authoritarian virus that is Trump.”

“It’s like, finally, hooray for some patriotism,” Rieckhoff continued. “People who are putting the country first, our economy, our national security, our best interests, first. And Trump doesn't like it. It makes him feel very uncomfortable. But that might be his new normal for the next couple of months.”

Burnett noted House Speaker Mike Johnson “circling the wagons as quickly as he possible” to protect Trump secretary of defense to avoid “a catastrophe for Trump,” but Rieckoff said this won’t deter Trump from realizing that his grip is slipping.

“He's obviously lost control of the war in Iran. He's lost control of the economy. He's lost control of the Supreme Court. He's lost control of congress. You've got somebody like Massie who could … even leave the Republican Party and be a formidable opponent, and I think we have this this new normal where Trump can't control everything, especially the narrative on things like the economy and the Iran war, which continues to be a sucking chest wound for our military and our economy,” said Rieckoff.

46 days until the midterms and things are not looking good for Chump.  Dan Gooding (NEWSWEEK) reports on a new ad taped by US House Rep Maria Elvira Salazar, a Republican:


Maria Elvira Salazar, who represents Florida’s 27th Congressional District covering a large part of south Miami, has advocated for immigration reform alongside some Democratic colleagues in the House. While Trump and the wider GOP have advocated for tough immigration policies, some Republican lawmakers covering areas with large immigrant populations have found themselves in a difficult position.

In the video ad, which appeared to have been shot outside the White House, Salazar warned Trump to “be careful” over what his advisers were telling him, adding: “The same Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today.”

The day after the 2024 election, Salazar said in an interview she didn’t believe the incoming administration would target undocumented immigrants with no criminal record.




How things change -- especially when midterms are closer.  46 days. 

Immigration, the economy and the war are the three most pressing issued on the minds of voters right now.  On Wednesday's THE DAILY BLAST WITH GREG SARGENT, Greg discussed the Iran war with Nicholas Grossman:
 

Sargent: Right. It never hurts to remind people that Trump is abusing his power in every conceivable way that he can. CBS News just published extraordinary photos of U.S. equipment and positions in the Middle East that have been badly damaged by the war. The pictures are powerful. There’s aircraft that’s been blown up, buildings reduced to rubble. It’s much worse than we knew. But here’s the kicker: U.S. service members anonymously sent these pictures to CBS due to restrictions on communicating with the media. As one service member told CBS News: “This is major damage to our bases that hasn’t been communicated to the American public. We’re standing there with our eyes closed, getting punched in the face.”  Nick, Pete Hegseth’s propagandists suppressed this info about what’s happening to United States interests and assets, and it’s getting leaked right around them. Your thoughts on all this?

Grossman: Right. It’s really bad. And I think we’re going to keep finding out about additional damage that this did, because the Trump administration’s main foreign policy priority has been lying to the American people. And so when the war did not go well—which started, I mean, really before it started, but it was clear that it wasn’t going well within a few weeks—and they’ve been still stalling and flailing and trying different things the entire time.  And while they’re doing this, because they can’t admit their own failure, they are then trying to cover up all this damage. Because instead of correcting the problem, or instead of addressing the problem in the first place, they are trying to just keep it from the public. And they can’t. It’s too big.  It’s too many bases that are not being defended. This is too much money, too many people involved. And the way they’ve tried to keep it out of the media—we can see, especially in the internet age, that you can’t keep images from getting to the public.

Sargent: You know, those photos really reminded me of Trump’s 2016 ads, in which he tried to demonstrate what he called “American carnage.” There were pictures of, you know, rusted-out factories through the Rust Belt. A lot of these pictures almost look like that. They’re like these American bases which are just have been bombed, they’re falling apart, their windows are broken, they’re deserted.

Grossman: Yeah. The United States has bases all throughout the Middle East, and this is the big geopolitical architecture that is changing. Trump has lost the Gulf. He’s lost freedom of navigation. It seems like he’s losing Saudi Arabia and losing the Middle East. And it’s not clear where the chaos of it will go, but it’s clear that they do not have a handle on it at all.  And the damage to the American bases—on top of that, there’s all the munition shortages, the fact that they used a lot of the best stuff without really thinking through a plan beyond that. And there’s all the damage, various injuries to troops, that keep on coming out, more than to U.S. allies and to U.S. interests. And we’re seeing this come into politics now more and more because it is increasingly unignorable.  It’s something where they were never in control of the situation, but now they have really lost control of it, and it is spilling over in all directions.

Sargent: You can almost look at these images, which are really quite striking—I want to underscore how striking the imagery of these bombed-out American bases really looks. It’s haunting stuff. You can almost see it as kind of symbolic of American decline, in the same way Trump used rusting-out factories to symbolize his critique of American decline, right?

Grossman: Yeah, I think that’s a good point. And now that you mention it, I’m trying to think of when the last time there were a bunch of American military bases damaged, and photos of, like, American aircraft in pieces and American facilities in rubble. That wasn’t something that happened during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. It was more the sort of thing that we would see at one isolated location from a terrorist attack.  Even if you think of the images out of Vietnam, it’s the withdrawal, the helicopter on the roof of Saigon. It’s not these large military defeats in which there’s all sorts of damage.  So yeah, it looks like the United States is no longer that number one global power. I mean, still, of course, the U.S. has the biggest military, biggest economy, but is no longer acting like it, exercising the powers like it, the responsibilities and benefits of it—and being seen, I think definitely internationally, but increasingly domestically also, like this is a problem. There were a lot of advantages for the United States being the world’s premier power and being seen as such, and the responsibilities and benefits that go with it. And giving that away—I mean, it really was a choice, which really sucks.  But while the American people might not care about foreign policy often, they do when things go really bad. And, you know, you can think of the 2002–2004 elections, foreign policy was a serious issue. I might say in 2024, you know, it wasn’t the number one issue—things like inflation were—but certainly Middle East, Gaza, Israel-Palestine were issues in the election. And now that it is reaching out into economic damage to everybody, with no end in sight, and compounding other economic damage Trump is causing, politically it seems unignorable.

Sargent: Well, the polling here has become absolutely crippling and completely underscores your point. The latest Quinnipiac survey found that approval of Trump’s handling of foreign policy is 33 percent to 60 percent disapproving. That’s 27 points underwater. On Iran specifically, approval of Trump’s handling of it is 29 percent to 65 percent disapproving—36 points underwater. And on the Russia-Ukraine war, Trump clocks in at 28 percent to 61 percent, or 33 points underwater.  I mean, that’s just extraordinary stuff. It’s extraordinary failure, and an amazing repudiation of Trump’s handling of the commander in chief role, or whatever you want to call it. Donald Trump really campaigned as the guy who was just American military power personified. Trump’s strong, opponents weak. And he’s just falling apart across the board. It’s almost amazing to see, isn’t it?








[T]he list of terrible Trump Cabinet appointees (and other positions) is as endless as the number of jobs themselves — though that's to be expected when the first, maybe only, requirement is unrequited love, along with unwavering and public support of Donald Trump as president and person.

Bessent, Blanche, Patel, Noem — one could go on and on. And yet the worst still holds his job, perhaps because Trump doesn't fire white males, perhaps because Secretary of Defense Peter Hegseth actually does efficiently and perfectly perform the real task before him — pandering to Trump and persecuting those he believes deserve it — while failing at all others.

Despite the perfect overlap with Trump's Secretary of Defense job description (it is not the War Department until Congress changes it), the country and Donald Trump needed Hegseth fired long ago. He endangers American lives, ruins morale among our best, blows up our relationship with former allies, miscounts or lies about tools left to blow things up, minimizes or lies about the damage to American personnel and assets, and fails to recognize that war in 2026 doesn't align with war in 2016, even.

Hegseth's list of failures rivals Trump's list of horrific appointments. And yet, he may have barely scratched the surface of the damage he can do to this country and the world.


The United States could be guilty of war crimes for a pair of deadly strikes on Iran, including one on a school, a new report has found.

Investigators said they found reasonable grounds to believe U.S. forces were behind an attack on the Shajareh Tayyebeh Primary School in the city of Minab, where more than 150 people were killed, including around 120 schoolchildren, according to Iranian officials.

Investigators reached a similar conclusion about a second strike on a sports center in the city of Lamerd, which damaged nearby homes and a school and killed or injured 22 civilians.
The findings come from the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran, a body examining the conduct of both the United States and Iran during the war that began in February, in a report set to be submitted to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, according to Reuters.

[. . .]

As questions mounted over the strike that killed dozens of students, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth bragged about the campaign’s firepower.

“We fight to win” and “We don’t waste time or lives,” he told reporters days later. “As the president warned, an effort of this scope will include casualties. War is hell and always will be,” he said, adding that the U.S. was “unleashing the most lethal and precise air power campaign in history.

We're the United States, we aren't supposed to target children. We're also not supposed to have an entire administration of incompetents but that's what we have thanks to Chump.  Hegsteh may be the worst of the worst.  Susan Greene (DAILY MAIL) reports:

Burner phones. Pay phones. Borrowed devices. Whatever it takes to reach us without being traced. 

Pentagon staffers are risking their careers to blow the whistle on the disarray and discontentment consuming the Department of Defense under Secretary Pete Hegseth.

'People should know what a mess it is,' one Army officer confided. 'Things have gone from bad to worse. It's unbelievably chaotic and demoralizing.'

A civilian staffer put it even more bluntly, calling their message to the public 'an urgent SOS.'

Six insiders – each with at least six years inside the military's headquarters – spoke with the Daily Mail about working for a man they call the least qualified, most explosive defense secretary in American history: a former Fox & Friends host who rebranded the agency the 'Department of War' and, they say, is now running it like a personal fiefdom.

In other bad news for Hegseth, the Bari Weiss insisted upon profile of his 'heroics' which aired on Sunday's low rated episode of 60 MINUTES?  It's already getting the kind of criticism The Water Cooler Set avoided.  The Water Cooler Set are TV writers for American publications who claim to be critics but are not.  They run with the herd and they're all about 'safety' and having 'safe' opinions.  Ava and I've battled against them at THIRD for years now.  So Lesley Stahl did a strong report -- though not on the Chump administration -- and Norah did a kiss ass 'report' and The Water Cooler Set tried to play like this made for a great episode.  No.  Norah's not a reporter.  She's never been a reporter.  Everyone who's worked with her knows that. Poor Gayle King has to work with Norah again.  

And The Water Cooler Set could have noted that.  But they have no back bone and the 'safe' thing to do was to say "60 MINUTES is still 60 MINUTES!"  No, it's not.

Lesley went after petty crooks who take money to get pardons from Chump.  This had nothing really to do with Chump.  It was con men who tell their clients, "Pay me X and I'll get you a pardon."

Lesley could have done a report on Chump's pardons.  That's not what she did.  

What Norah did?

Norah did the thing that Lara Logan did and that got Lara fired.  She did what Bari wanted which was not journalism.  And it was weak and weakly sourced and beyond stupid.  One of her sources?  His name wasn't given.  He's talking about the crash in April in the Iran War and claimed to be in it but he couldn't reveal his identity.  

What a load of nonsense.  

It was about glorifying Hegseth and the stories were questionable.  Nick Hilden notes questions are being raised:

On Tuesday, a decorated Army general declared that the story of a shot-down pilot’s rescue during the war with Iran “could not be true.” The general’s statement came in response to an installment from the latest episode of 60 Minutes, decried by some analysts as "propaganda," which featured Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and a rescued airman relating a tale that retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey found literally unbelievable.

The 60 Minutes segment focused on an American F-15 pilot who crashed in Iran shortly after President Donald Trump launched the war nearly seven months ago. After the episode aired, McCaffrey — recipient of three Purple Hearts — took to social media to express his thoughts, posting, “Very strange story. Could not be true. US Army stops parachute ops with wind speed of 15mph. I’ve jumped with higher wind speeds, and it feels like a train wreck. 100 mph sounds like all bones in body broken and limbs torn off.” This came in response to a post that ran down the details of the 60 Minutes piece, explaining, “So the story is that a guy with codename dude bravo survived a free fall to the ground in Iran after his F-15 was shot hitting the ground at speeds of close to 100 mph. He then ran 20 miles and found a cliff that was 7000 feet high and climbed that cliff and was extracted in a two day period.”



Again, Norah's not a reporter.  No one considers her a reporter.  It's segments like the one that aired Sunday night that have ensured she will never, ever be seen as a reporter. 


And violating domestic laws?  Hegseth's accused there as well over his campaigning for a Republican running for Congress in Iowa.  Zachary Oren Smith (STARTING LINE) reports, "The Steady State, a nonpartisan group of former national security officials, filed a complaint Friday, asking the US Office of Special Counsel to investigate whether Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth violated the Hatch Act by headlining a ticketed campaign fundraiser for US Rep Zach Nunn at the Iowa State Fair on Aug. 17."  Tom Barton (GAZETTE) adds: 

The ticketed event at JR’s SouthPork Ranch benefited Team Nunn, a joint fundraising committee that includes Nunn’s campaign, his leadership political action committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee. Admission ranged from $26 to $3,500, with the two highest tiers including access to a VIP reception.

The complaint asks federal investigators to determine whether Hegseth used the authority or influence of his office to affect the November election and whether government resources used for his trip were properly paid for or reimbursed.

Hegseth endorsed Nunn from the stage while discussing his work leading the Pentagon.


Hegseth is not the only Cabinet Secretary accused of breaking the Hatch Act.  Charlie Savage (NEW YORK TIMES) reports:

Attorney General Todd Blanche has repeatedly participated in campaign events and spoken in partisan terms about the coming midterm elections since his confirmation last month, despite criticism that he violated a longstanding Justice Department principle of steering clear of electoral politics.

This week he waded again into those waters — twice.

Since August, Mr. Blanche has come under fire for making campaign-tinged public appearances and comments. Last month, at a rally-style event on Long Island, he praised Bruce Blakeman, the Republican candidate for governor of New York. Last week, Mr. Blanche delivered remarks at the Republican Party’s midterm convention.

On Tuesday, he stood at the White House podium and disparaged Democratic lawmakers while invoking the coming election, dismissing their concerns about artificial intelligence as “nothing but an effort to influence the midterms.”

And on Wednesday, Mr. Blanche spoke at a campaign rally for Michael Whatley, the Republican Senate candidate in North Carolina. Echoing his convention speech, he portrayed crime rates, which continued a long-term downward trend to reach new lows in 2025, as “President Trump and Vice President Vance delivering on a promise.”

Worries about the Justice Department abandoning its long-held commitment to appear apolitical in order to maintain institutional credibility may seem beside the point. Since January 2025, dozens of judges have viewed its representations with suspicion, eroding the traditional bonds of trust, known as the “presumption of regularity,” that the courts typically grant the department.

The second Trump administration has also unabashedly destroyed the post-Watergate norm of Justice Department independence from the White House in investigative decisions. Early on, Mr. Blanche’s predecessor, Pam Bondi, declared, “We are so proud to work at the directive of Donald Trump.” Last September, after Mr. Trump publicly demanded that she charge several perceived adversaries, the department pushed through short-lived indictments of two of them.

Still, Mr. Blanche is dismantling another post-Watergate principle: that Justice Department leaders stay away from partisan politicking.

Joseph Tirrell, the Justice Department’s senior ethics official until the Trump administration dismissed him in July 2025, earlier this week criticized Mr. Blanche’s participation in the Republican convention. He called the attorney general’s comments at the White House briefing “borderline” unethical, and his participation in the North Carolina rally “terrible.”


Chump has never been a good leader.  He has destroyed our country's standing on the global stage.  He is an idiot, a raving lunatic, who keeps talking of, for example, annexing this place or that -- Canada, Greenland, you name it.  This is not normal.  This is not rational.  These are the remarks of a psychopath, of a Hitler storming through Europe and trying to take over countries.  That's what it is. And America is loathed for his remarks and for his tariffs and for his prissy personality.  Heather Digby Parton (SALON) observes of Chump:




Donald Trump recently claimed that when he goes to international gatherings, all the leaders stand up. Supposedly, they do this as a sign of respect for him personally: “They didn’t stand up for our last president; they didn’t care about him … they laughed at him. But our country is respected again.”

He’s been using versions of that line ever since he was first inaugurated back in 2017. But he’s always portrayed America as a disgusting hellscape seen by the rest of the world as a laughingstock — except when he is president, when we magically enter magically a “golden age” in which the entire planet turns to him as its undisputed leader.

Needless to say, this is utterly delusional. Foreign leaders do not stand at attention when he enters the room. The footage of such meetings is public, and we know that they do not see themselves as vassals to this president. He’s just making that up. And neither they nor the people in their countries “respect” America again. In fact, the opposite was clearly true during Trump’s first term, and people around the world respect the U.S. even less the second time around.

Which is completely understandable. The man who proved his incompetence in a global crisis and then incited an insurrection to overturn the election after losing his re-election campaign was returned to leadership once again four years later by the American people. As George W. Bush famously said, “Fool me once, shame on me; fool me twice … won’t get fooled again.”
Last spring, Pew Research Center released its annual survey comparing how Americans and others around the world view the United States’ global role. It wasn’t pretty. They reported, “In most countries, majorities say the United States does not promote peace and stability around the world and does not take other countries’ interests into account on matters of international policy.” Views within America’s traditional allies, the countries whose leaders Trump claims “stand up” to honor him, are particularly negative. The Pew poll registered huge declines in the belief that the U.S. is a reliable partner since Trump took office for the second time.


These are facts and Chump doesn't care for them.  



He lies and lies again hoping to exhaust everyone with his lies so they just stare ahead blankly and don't correct him.

It's too bad for him that it's only MAGA who has the reflex reaction of "I must humor Chump."  The rest of us don't.  We don't give a damn about his hurt feelings, we don't give a damn about his out of control ego which exists because deep down inside he knows he's awful and a lousy leader.  



The president has frequently bragged about his intelligence, often citing his results on the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) as proof. In May, for example, he claimed to have gotten a “perfect” score, which he said shows his “extreme intelligence.”

Just one problem: The MoCA is not an intelligence test. 

It’s the infamous “Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV.” test, and is used to check for signs of cognitive decline and dementia. Doctors say the fact that he’s taken it at least three times now is cause for concern.
You can try it yourself with this sample test.


It is cause for concern.  You know what's even more concerning though?  That he's bragged about this to begin with.  It's not an IQ test.  And it's obvious that it's not.  I get it, he lies to make himself look and sound better -- he lies all the time.  But to lie about this test which is so clearly not an IQ test?  To claim that this test which clearly exists only to see if you are bare minimum aware of your surroundings is something you've scored "excellent" on?  



Chump was best buds with Jeffrey Epstein for decades.  It ended when Epstein died in jail in 2019.  Though dead, the sex trafficker remains in the news.  Mira Bhakta (THE HILL) reports:

A federal judge gave Attorney General Todd Blanche a deadline to comply with court orders Wednesday regarding the release of certain information in the Epstein files, threatening contempt charges for failure to comply. 

U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan stated in a Wednesday opinion that Blanche and his office were not following court orders concerning redactions in requested documentation related to the activities of the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell.

He gave the Department of Justice (DOJ) until Sept. 24 to provide the records or explain to the court why its orders were not “clear and unambiguous” — finding the attorney general’s argument against the records' release to be “without merit.”

Sullivan noted in his opinion that “a civil contempt finding at this juncture would be premature” but did not rule out the possibility if the deadline is not met.

The lawsuit was filed by attorney and independent journalist Katie Phang, who alleged that the DOJ has violated the Epstein Files Transparency Act (EFTA) by withholding information.








Let's wind down with this from Senator Elizabeth Warren's office:


Warren: “Was Secretary Kennedy lying when he said he would make those deals available to us?”

Warren: “Show me the receipts.”

Video of Exchange (YouTube)

Washington, D.C. — At a hearing of the Senate Finance Committee, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) questioned Chris Klomp, President Trump’s nominee to be Deputy Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), on President Trump’s secret deals with drug companies. 

President Trump has bragged about the administration’s Most Favored Nation (MFN) agreements with pharmaceutical companies, claiming that it has reduced prescription drug prices by as much as 600%, which Senator Warren noted would “mean companies should be paying you to take their drugs.” But the deals for prices on that website have still not been released by President Trump or by Big Pharma.

In April 2026, at a hearing of the Senate Finance Committee, Senator Warren pressed HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on the deals struck with pharmaceutical companies. When pressed on whether he would publicly disclose the deals, Secretary Kennedy — with Mr. Klomp sitting right behind him — confirmed, “I’m happy to make the deals available.” But Secretary Kennedy has broken this promise. 

“Mr. Klomp, was Secretary Kennedy lying when he said he would make those deals available to us?” asked Senator Warren. When questioned about Kennedy’s failure to share these deals with Congress, Klomp refused to explain why the contracts have not been released.

“Show me the receipts,” said Senator Warren. “Five months ago, the Secretary promised that he would deliver those contracts. It’s been five months, and we don’t have them.”

Senator Warren noted that pharmaceutical companies that have made these agreements have represented them in earnings reports as unlikely to affect their financial outlook. Earlier this month, the biotech company Insight Corporation wrote that it does not expect its deal with the Trump administration to “have a material impact on its future financial outlook.” One analyst described Pfizer’s deal as “immaterial,” and Novartis and Roche have made the same representations about their own deals. 

The senator also questioned what giveaways Big Pharma companies may have received in exchange for striking these secret deals with the Trump administration. “I want to know what was given away in these contracts,” stated Senator Warren, including whether drug companies received tariff relief, exemptions from drug pricing demonstrations in Medicare, fast-track FDA approval, and higher prices abroad instead of lower prices in the U.S. 

“I want to see what the deal is, and until then, you can stop telling us it was all great for the American people, but you just refused to show us the receipts. That’s not how oversight works,” concluded Senator Warren.

Transcript: Hearings to examine the nominations of Gerard Klomp, of Utah, to be Deputy Secretary, and Ge Bai, of Virginia, to be an Assistant Secretary, both of the Department of Health and Human Services, James Gadwood, of Maryland, to be Chief Counsel for the Internal Revenue Service and an Assistant General Counsel in the Department of the Treasury, and Andrew A. De Mello, of Virginia, to be a Judge of the United States Tax Court for a term of fifteen years.
Senate Finance Committee
September 15, 2026

Senator Elizabeth Warren: Last year, President Trump and the Republicans slashed health care for millions of Americans. It caused premiums to skyrocket. Americans are now paying the price. And President Trump’s one answer is to say, “Check out the Trump RX website” and the supposedly great deals that he has made with big pharma. So I want to take a look. These deals are secret, but from what we can see, they don’t look so great. That’s why in April, when Secretary Kennedy was here, I asked him if he would make the deals available to the committee. And Mr. Klomp, since you were the Secretary’s chief counselor, you were sitting right behind him when he said, “I’m happy to make the deals available, except for proprietary information and trade secrets.” Now that was five months ago. Since then, I have sent two letters to Secretary Kennedy, asking him to make good on that commitment, but he has not kept his word. 

Mr. Klomp, was Secretary Kennedy lying when he said he would make those deals available to us?

Mr. Klomp: Senator Warren, I do not believe he was lying. I believe that we need to make an important distinction between operative policy and internal deliberative materials. The principles of the deals, the frameworks, the results of them, in fact, from a pricing perspective, are fully available—

Senator Warren: I’m sorry, let me just start here. You signed a contract with each of these pharmaceutical companies, right?

Mr. Klomp: Correct.

Senator Warren: I taught contract law for 30 years. I want to see the contracts, and that is what I asked the Secretary for, and the Secretary said he would deliver those contracts. He might cross out certain proprietary information, trade secrets. I’m fine with that. I want to understand the numbers, and the only way I can do that is with the contracts. So where are the contracts?

Mr. Klomp: Senator, the numbers, for example, are freely available. You can see exactly the results of every contract on TrumpRX today.

Senator Warren: No, there are no contracts that are available that I can see who made how much money on what deal. I have your general summary, but that’s not what I asked the Secretary for, and it’s not what the Secretary promised to deliver. In fact, HHS continues to keep every one of these deals secret at the same time the president brags that he has lowered prices by 600%, which would mean, of course, that companies are paying you to take the drugs. Aside from that outlandish claim, if these deals were in fact so good, so profitable for the United States, then I would expect that they would lower Big Pharma’s profits. But what executives are telling their investors is not so much. Earlier this month, the biotech company Insight Corporation wrote in its earnings report that it does not expect its deal with the Trump administration to “have a material impact on its future financial outlook.” An analyst described Pfizer’s deal as “immaterial.” And Novartis and Roche have said the same thing about their own deals. 

Mr. Klomp, you and Secretary Kennedy are keeping these pharma deals secret, the companies are saying they are immaterial, and you still want the American people to believe that they are somehow a really great deal for our country? That we’re getting great prices here?

Mr. Klomp: Senator Warren, billions of dollars have already been saved in out-of-pocket transactions through GLP-1s—

Senator Warren: Then show me the receipts.

Mr. Klomp: —infertility, or otherwise.

Senator Warren: Show me the receipts. Why are you hiding these contracts?

Mr. Klomp: We’re not hiding anything. In fact, in the Inflation Reduction Act, you inserted the same provisions as Congress, recognizing that if trade secrets, proprietary information were to be shared, that would compromise the government’s ability to negotiate anything. 

Senator Warren: I’m sorry, let me just stop you right there. You say you’re not hiding anything. Five months ago, the Secretary promised that he would deliver those contracts. It’s been five months, and we don’t have them. I would regard that as hidden. So where are the contracts that are so great and going to show how much money you have saved?

Mr. Klomp: Senator Warren, I know that you care deeply about lowering prescription drug prices for Americans. 

Senator Warren: I do.

Mr. Klomp: I agree with you strongly on this point. I know that you wouldn’t want to do something that would compromise the U.S. government’s ability to continue negotiating, which we are actively negotiating with other countries—

Senator Warren: No, these are contracts that are already written that I want to see. 

Mr. Klomp: But our negotiations— 

Senator Warren: And that Kennedy sat there, said he would do. You sat right behind him. Everybody nodded, and nobody did it. Look, I want to know what was given away in these contracts. I want to see whether these drug companies got tariff relief. Did they get exemptions from drug pricing demonstrations in Medicare? Did they get fast-track FDA approval? Did they get the U.S. government not pushing for lower prices here but for higher prices in other countries? I want to see what the deal is, and until then, you can stop telling us it was all great for the American people, but you just refused to show us the receipts. That’s not how oversight works.

Senator Warren has led efforts to push back against Big Pharma and use every tool available in government to lower drug prices:

  • In August 2026, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) slammed Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for his refusal to release the Trump administration’s secret pricing deals with drug companies and for breaking a promise he made to Warren in a recent hearing. Senator Warren also released a new response from Secretary Kennedy that raises doubts about the accuracy of the Trump administration’s claims of cost savings from the secret pharma deals.
  • In May 2026, Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), alongside Representatives Diana Harshbarger (R-Tenn.) and Jake Auchincloss (D-Mass.), reintroduced the Patients Before Monopolies (PBM) Act with expanded bipartisan support, indicating growing momentum for a policy that will prohibit joint ownership of pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) and pharmacies, a gross conflict of interest that enables these companies to enrich themselves at the expense of patients and independent pharmacies.
  • In April 2026, Senator Elizabeth Warren pressed Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on multiple commitments she secured during an exchange in a Senate Finance Committee hearing.
  • In April 2026, at a hearing of the Senate Finance Committee, Senator Elizabeth Warren pressed Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on TrumpRx, revealing how President Trump’s marquee drug pricing effort often provides higher prices for Americans while boosting Big Pharma’s bottom line.
  • In April 2026, Senator Elizabeth Warren, a member of the Senate Finance Committee; Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Ranking Member of the Senate Finance Committee; and 18 Senate Democrats introduced new legislation to force the Trump Administration to disclose the terms of deals signed with more than a dozen of the largest pharmaceutical companies and conduct an independent analysis to determine whether American families will see lower prices from the deals.
  • In February 2026, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) introduced the Break Up Big Medicine Act to address rampant consolidation in the health care industry that drives up prices, squashes competition, and fuels corporate greed.
  • In November 2025, Senator Elizabeth Warren, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), and Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) led 25 Senate Democrats in slamming the Trump administration for its failure to address rising health care costs for American families.
  • In June 2025, Senator Elizabeth Warren, a member of the Senate Finance Committee, and Representative Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) wrote to AbbVie, Pfizer, Amgen, Merck, and Johnson & Johnson, calling them out for taking advantage of tax loopholes created by President Trump’s 2017 tax bill and lobbying for even more tax giveaways.
  • In March 2025, Senator Elizabeth Warren, along with Senate Finance Ranking Member Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Ranking Member Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), pressed Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on his promises to “clean up corruption” and “stop the revolving door between industry and government,” following reports that Kennedy attended multiple “million-dollar” dinners with Big Pharma executives at President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club.

###



The following sites updated:




Posted by at

Thursday, September 17, 2026

Science post -- extreme weather

Doing a science grab bag post.  Climate change is real and it is a danger that threatens us all.  REUTERS reports:


Climate change is highly likely to have contributed to the catastrophic glacier collapse that flooded parts of Nepal and Tibet in late August, killing around 1,400 people and leaving thousands still missing, scientists said on Thursday.

Rapidly warming temperatures in the region have caused glaciers to thin and have melted ice and permafrost buried deep in the bedrock of the Himalayas, according to the World Weather Attribution (WWA) group of researchers.

• While it is difficult to ascertain the precise role played by climate change in the collapse of around 2 sq km (0.8 sq miles) of rock wall and glacier ice on the Langtang Lirung mountain last month, soaring temperatures created the preconditions that made it more likely, researchers involved in the study said.

• "There's absolutely no doubt that human induced climate change played a role here in the preconditioning of the disaster through permafrost thawing, through thinning of the glaciers, through having more rainfall instead of snow," said Friederike Otto, a climatologist at Imperial College London.

Still on the flooding in Nepal, Laura Paddison (CNN) notes:

But why did the avalanche happen in the first place?

The team of glaciologists and climate scientists with World Weather Attribution, or WWA, a network which examines the role climate change plays in extreme weather events, released its analysis Wednesday in a comprehensive attempt to answer the question.

The disaster was not triggered by a single extreme weather event, but rather by a slew of processes acting together, compounded by decades of climate warming caused by fossil fuel pollution, according to the report, which used peer-reviewed methods but is not yet itself peer reviewed.

The scientists found the mountain may have been preconditioned for collapse by a 7.8 magnitude earthquake in April 2015, which triggered a rock and ice avalanche from the south side of the mountain, potentially weakening the slope. Since then, the mountain has experienced increased rates of landslides, the report found.
The scientists then looked at the role climate change could have played and found several processes acting together.

Climate change is pushing up the “zero degree” line, the point in the atmosphere where temperatures hit 0 degrees Celsius (32 Fahrenheit), by more than 320 feet a decade in the Himalayas.

Rising temperatures are weakening the permafrost in Nepal’s high mountains — the mix of ice, rock, sand and soil that can act like glue — especially around the elevation where the collapse happened, the report found.

Thawing permafrost “reduces the rock strength and allows more water to penetrate into the slope,” Immerzeel said.



Three people died after being swept away by floodwaters in the Navajo Nation community of Newcomb, New Mexico, after heavy monsoon rains inundated parts of the reservation, authorities said Sept. 16.

The Navajo Police Department said officers from its Shiprock District responded to a possible drowning at around 12:30 a.m. local time Sept. 16 after receiving reports that people had been swept away in a flooded area near Newcomb, about 40 miles east of the Arizona state line. The incident occurred as widespread thunderstorms moved through the region, bringing a significant flood threat.

Emergency crews searched the area and found two adults and a child who had drowned. All three were pronounced dead at the scene, according to tribal police.

[. . .]

Communities across the Navajo Nation have experienced significant rainfall this week, resulting in flash flooding that has damaged roads. In the community of Dennehotso, about 30 miles east of Kayenta, Arizona, the Navajo Department of Transportation reported severe damage to multiple areas along Dennehotso Loop Road.

Flooding in Chinle, Arizona, also has been extensive. Some residents along Highway 191 in Chinle, as well as those in other low-lying flood-prone areas, were encouraged to evacuate on the evening of Sept. 15, following recommendations from the Chinle Police Department. Schools were canceled for Sept. 16.



A lightning strike caused the Lucas Fire to break out in Northern California last week, Cal Fire's Sonoma-Lake-Napa Unit announced Wednesday. 

The wildfire, which prompted evacuations, road closures and a red flag warning, has spanned 4,128 acres near the Lake-Medocino county line and was 46% contained as of Wednesday morning, Cal Fire said. 

Cal Fire became aware of the wildfire last Thursday at 9:18 a.m. after an AI monitor on an ALERTCalifornia camera detected the fire and alerted the department's local emergency command center, authorities said. 

Cal Fire's investigation into the cause of the Lucas Fire confirmed a "cloud-to-ground" lightning strike occurred the morning of Sept. 10, the department said. All other possible causes of ignition were ruled out, according to Cal Fire. 

Be sure to check out Ann's "A ruling against grifter Chump" from last night, by the way.

"The Snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS): 

Thursday, September 17, 2026.  Pete Hegseth is on the prowl for a few good men, hard numbers and facts on Chump's war with Iran, Speaker of the Closet Mike Johnson sends the House into recess yesterday to avoid the House voting on impeachment, Chump's planning a huge gift of weapons to Israel, and much more. 



February 28th, Chump started the Iran War.  It has long since gone beyond -- well beyond -- the two weeks he thought it would last.  It's 11 days away from, in fact, from eight months.  Nik Popli (TIME) reports: 

The war with Iran has cost the U.S. government around $38 billion and contributed to growing inflation, according to a new analysis by the Congressional Budget Office, the nonpartisan agency that provides economic and budget estimates to Congress. 

The estimate, which covers the war’s direct costs through Aug. 1, is in line with the Pentagon’s most recent public accounting from July, when Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told Congress that the war had cost $37.5 billion. A later report from the Defense Department's inspector general determined that conflict cost an estimated $33.4 billion between February 28 and June 30.

But the new CBO analysis finds that the price of the war is continuing to rise, estimating that the government will spend another $2 billion to $3 billion each month the conflict continues. It also notes that the war has significantly depleted U.S. munitions, including air-defense interceptors, potentially reducing the military’s capacity to respond to another major conflict.






So the war's costing a fortune and "significantly depleted US munitions" and Chump's doing what?  Blaise Malley (RESPONSIBLE STATECRAFT) notes:

As government watchdogs warn about dwindling U.S. stockpiles of major weapons systems, the Trump administration is moving ahead with billions of dollars in new arms sales to Saudi Arabia and Israel, adding further demand to U.S. weapons production lines.

Earlier this month, the State Department approved a $5 billion military sale to Saudi Arabia, including five thousand 2,000-pound bombs.

Then on Tuesday, the Washington Post’s John Hudson reported that the administration was also readying a $2.8 billion package of weapons for Israel, which will also reportedly include some 40,000 2,000-pound bombs, which can spread shrapnel in an area up to 400 yards. Experts have found Israel used such weapons repeatedly during their brutal campaign in Gaza, including for some of the worst attacks on Palestinian civilians.

Chump might see it as a done deal; however THE ARKANSAS PUBLIC ADVOCATE notes objections from all over:


The proposal has drawn criticism from political figures with different party affiliations, though their objections do not establish broader opposition from either party.

Former Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene criticized the reported plan in a social media post highlighted by Raw Story. She argued that voters had not authorized the transfer and objected to U.S. weapons and tax dollars being used in Israeli military operations.

“We did not vote for this,” Greene wrote before asking, “My God, what comes next?”

Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., said she would work in Congress to block the transaction and future weapons sales while Israel continued conduct that she said violated international humanitarian law. Jayapal characterized Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide, a description the Israeli government rejects.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., separately told The Washington Post that he intended to build support against the package. He focused his criticism on the use of American funding and Israel’s continued military operations in Gaza and Lebanon.

Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson also condemned the arrangement, calling it a taxpayer-funded gift. His objection reflects growing criticism of U.S. support for Israel among some prominent media personalities, but it should not be treated as evidence of a unified position among Republican voters, lawmakers or the party as a whole.

The reactions differ in emphasis. Greene and Carlson centered much of their criticism on U.S. spending and opposition to overseas military involvement. Jayapal and Van Hollen focused more directly on civilian casualties, international law and the use of American weapons by the Israeli military.


And REUTERS notes, "U.S. Representative Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, said on Wednesday he would not support the sale of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel over concerns the munitions would not be used in accordance with international law." Others -- on both sides of the aisle -- will likely join Meeks on this issue. 


Still on Chump's war of choice, Michael Peck (DEFENSE NEWS) reports: 

Iranian strikes have damaged hundreds of U.S. military and diplomatic buildings, according to a new report by the Department of Defense Office of the Inspector General.

U.S. Central Command told IG investigators that "Iranian strikes damaged and destroyed hundreds of buildings and structures at U.S. bases in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Oman, and Jordan during the conflict."

While the report provided no details on damaged military facilities, it did include specifics on damage to U.S. diplomatic facilities.

The State Department told investigators that "U.S. diplomatic facilities in four countries suffered physical damage from Iranian strikes, with an estimated total cost of about $184 million."

U.S. diplomatic sites in Iraq suffered more than 600 attacks, while the embassies in Kuwait City and Riyadh were also hit.

Chump is rumored to be ditching Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth after the midterms. This would take place so that Chump could blame the war on Iran on the bad advice he got from Hegseth. Such a move would negate any effort to impeach Hegseth.  Sarah Davis (THE HILL) reports:

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) said Tuesday he kept his resolution to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth a secret from Republican leaders because he did not want to "show his hand."

The Kentucky Republican, who has been a frequent critic of the Trump administration’s military operations in Iran, introduced his resolution on the House floor Tuesday afternoon. 

“I didn’t want to show it to anybody,” he said during an appearance on CNN’s “The Source” later that evening. “I was afraid that they would do something to subvert me getting on the floor for an hour and 20 minutes and reading these articles."

Massie told host Kaitlan Collins that he had "not heard" back from House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) about his resolution, noting the GOP leader has “48 hours” to call a vote. 

“This is a hot war,” he said. “This could become a nuclear war, and in the interim, even if it doesn’t, there are civilian casualties that are racking up greater than they would have otherwise because another one of my articles of impeachment shows that Peter Hegseth has degraded the ability of the DOD to minimize civilian casualties.”

But there will be no vote today.  THE HILL explained yesterday, "House Republican leaders are cutting short the final legislative week before the midterm elections, announcing Wednesday that lawmakers will leave Washington after votes." 

US House Rep Melanie Stansbury taped the video below yesterday.



Speaker of the Closet Mike Johnson is fond of pulling stunts like that when he wants to avoid doing what he's actually required to do.



  




In other news, Hegseth loves his men good looking and well suited.  That's all you have to do for him to form a man crush on you.  The press has begun to notice his adolescent crushes on other men.  Kathryn Wilkens (MEDIAITE) reports: 

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is seeking fit, well-groomed troops to attend his upcoming “State of the Force” address — and potentially join him for a workout — according to The Wall Street Journal.

The Pentagon has asked military commanders to put forward service members for the Sept. 30 event who meet specific fitness and appearance standards, the Journal reported, citing emails it reviewed.

One such email, sent to Army commanders Tuesday, said potential attendees must pass the Army fitness test and satisfy its waist-to-height ratio, while maintaining “impeccable grooming and uniform standards (no exception).” Officials told the outlet that other military commands received similar instructions.

Wow, it reads like an ad in the personals:  Flabby man child seeks satisfaction with males possessing  waist-to-height ratio and impeccable grooming -- must be dom tops, no vers needed or wanted.


Matthew Chapman (RAW STORY) adds, "The event follows Hegseth's controversial gathering of the nation's top generals and admirals last year at Marine Corps Base Quantico, where he stunned senior officers by declaring the military would no longer tolerate what he called 'beardos' or 'fat generals'."




Speaking of grooming, Hegseth's psoriasis -- the reason he needs a make up salon at the Pentagon and the reason he wears so much foundation -- is spreading.  It's showing up on his neck now which he has previously ignored but will probably now have to also cover with make up.   


The war on Iran is one of the three biggest Chump actions that have destroyed the economy.  The other two?  The war on immigrants and his tariffs.  On the last one, Sasha Rogelberg (FORTUNE) reports: 

“The whole reason the president imposed these tariffs was to try to reshore, affect our massive imbalance in trade that we’ve experienced over many years because of China, Vietnam, the EU and others,” [United States Trade Representative Jamieson] Greer said. “If the companies are going to get this windfall, they should pass it along to their workers as a bonus or a raise, because that’s the purpose of the program.”

It appears the tariffs had the opposite effect in reshoring, with manufacturing jobs in the U.S. actually shrinking by more than 100,000 during the first year of Trump’s second term. Laura Ullrich, director of economic research at the Indeed Hiring Lab, previously told Fortune tariffs and the uncertainty surrounding maintaining supply chains, could be a reason for this dip.

“Oftentimes when there is heightened uncertainty, it’s just difficult for businesses and people to make decisions in real time,” she said. “And so that slows down employment. It slows down all those processes.”

In addition to hiring constraints, tariffs may have also suppressed wage growth, according to Pantheon Macroeconomics analysts Samuel Tombs and Oliver Allen, who argued companies slashed raises in order to maintain or take back margins when the IEEPA tariffs were in place. It’s one reason why companies may feel compelled to give workers back some cash from the duties, the Tax Foundation’s Durante suggested.

Instead of lowering prices or offering refunds to consumers amid ongoing tariff uncertainty, “what are some better ways we can retain our employees and incentivize them to want to stay with us or to want to want to work for us?” he said.

Tariffs, after all, have likely had an impact on workers’ retirement plans, at least indirectly. Though markets have recovered from Trump’s previous threats to impose sweeping import taxes, economists have found evidence tariffs will have longer-term reductions in stock prices, from about 7.33% to 10.13% across indices within the next couple of years. Lower stock prices means fewer returns for employees with retirement money in the markets.

“It is the case, absolutely, that tariffs do impact capital, and thus the equity markets,” Durante said.



U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement likely violated the Constitution when agents delivered a warning notice to a man in Rochester, New York, over a caustic email he had sent the agency’s leader months earlier, a federal judge ruled late Tuesday.

David Streever sued the Department of Homeland Security in July after two federal agents came to his home seeking to have him sign an unusual warning letter saying his email could be a crime. They then tracked him to a hotel in New York City where he was staying with his 7-year-old daughter after returning from an overseas trip.

Streever accused the agency of infringing on his right to freedom of speech. U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras ruled Tuesday that Streever’s claim is likely to succeed and issued a preliminary injunction blocking DHS from making further threats to Streever.


In a 43-page opinion issued Tuesday, Judge Rudolph Contreras of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia found that plaintiff David Streever was likely to succeed on his claim that ICE officials improperly threatened him over constitutionally protected political speech. The judge concluded that a warning notice delivered to Streever’s home could reasonably be interpreted as demanding that he stop criticizing ICE leadership and warning him of potential prosecution if he continued.

“Mr. Streever has a right to express his political views through non-threatening speech, however degrading the speech might be,” Contreras wrote. The judge said the notice likely infringed on that right by threatening consequences if he did not stop criticizing government officials.


The Guardian on Tuesday published a report, citing government data, that showed ICE stopped recording data on miscarriages in October after 18 women lost their pregnancies during the first nine months of the Trump administration.

The Department of Homeland Security first told the outlet that while it wasn’t publishing data on lost pregnancies, it was tracking miscarriages in internal monthly reports, but later admitted even that data doesn’t go past October 2025.

The acknowledgement marks the first time DHS has ever admitted it lost count of miscarriages, even when U.S. senators asked the agency for the data, and comes less than a year after the American Civil Liberties Union called on the agency to address its systemic neglect of pregnant women.

In a statement to Forbes Tuesday, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said the report was “FALSE” and said the agency does track and report miscarriage data on a monthly basis, but did not respond to a request to share the information with a reporter.

[. . .]

It’s impossible to attribute a miscarriage solely to the conditions in immigration detention, but multiple reports from whistleblowers and civil rights organizations say it’s clear detained women aren’t getting the medical care they need. The ACLU said it has found widespread neglect of pregnant women, including being served “inedible” food and having no access to prenatal vitamins. One woman told the nonprofit she told agents about heavy bleeding when she was two months pregnant, and medical staff “took her to a small room and left her bleeding alone without providing her any food, water or pain medication.” She was later taken to a hospital and required a blood transfusion because she had suffered a miscarriage. Pregnant women have also disclosed that they miscarried while detained or were hospitalized for pregnancy complications but received no follow-up care while in the custody of ICE, even when they experienced ongoing pain and symptoms.


Chump no doubt misses his roll dog Jeffrey Epstein.  The two men tore up the night for decades. If Epstein hadn't been arrested for sex trafficking and died in jail, they'd probably still be roll dogs.  Daniel Villarreal (LGBTQ NATION) reports:

On Wednesday, the DOJ announced the discovery of over 1 million documents about Epstein and promised to work to redact and release the files. The DOJ violated federal law by refusing to release all of its files on Jeffrey Epstein by the required December 19 deadline. The department now says its release will take months — Congress members are considering legal consequences for the DOJ’s noncompliance.

 In an unprecedented message, the DOJ has said that its newly released files contain “untrue and sensationalist claims” against Trump.

Among the other newly released files is a letter that Epstein wrote to fellow serial child molester Larry Nassar just before his death that said that Trump “shares our love of young, nubile girls.”

“Our president shares our love of young, nubile girls,” Epstein wrote in the 2019 letter. “When a young beauty walked by he loved to ‘grab snatch,’ whereas we ended up snatching grub in the mess halls of the system.”

In other Epstein news, who prevented the files from coming out?  It was Chump and one of his former confidantes has stepped forward to say so.  Jon Michael Raasch (THE DAILY MAIL) reports: 

President Donald Trump directly ordered the cover-up of the government's Jeffrey Epstein files, ex-Fox News host Tucker Carlson claimed in a stunning interview. 

Speaking with Vanity Fair, Carlson, 57, said that he warned the president about the political ramifications of withholding the files in the summer of 2025 when Trump was facing overwhelming scrutiny for his administration's handling of the late offender's files. 

'My position from the beginning with Trump, I said it to Trump, was, 'I don't understand why you would ever keep any of this stuff secret.' And I got like a bunch of different answers,' Carlson told the outlet. 

'I don't feel any need to cover for Epstein,' the pundit and podcaster said, recounting his conversation with the president. 'So I said, 'You shouldn't either.' In the end, it came from Trump directly.'

Though a deluge of reports has detailed the West Wing's reaction to the Epstein fallout, including meetings on the topic in the Situation Room, Carlson is the first to claim the order to throttle the release of the files came from Trump.   

'The order to cover it up came from Trump,' the former Fox News host said. 'I asked him why. And he gave me this long, very emotional explanation that this was all a plot against him, like Russiagate.'

So he lied to Tucker the same way he lied to the American people by insisting he didn't know, that he barred Epstein from Mar-a-Lago, that he broke off contact with Epstein in the mid '00s, etc, etc, etc.  Alexander Willis (RAW STORY) notes:

A House-led effort to release more information about convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein is gaining traction — and spurring serious concerns within the White House, according to two GOP lawmakers.

In July, Reps. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Ro Khanna (D-CA) filed a successor to their successful Epstein Files Transparency Act (EFTA), the bill that forced the Trump administration to release millions of files.
Their new bill is designed to force the Justice Department to release additional files that it's been accused of withholding unlawfully, despite the passage of the EFTA last year.

Like the original EFTA, this new discharge petition was filed to force a vote on the new bill, which requires 218 signatures to move forward. On Saturday, 106 House members had signed the petition. By Monday night, that number had climbed to 160, with its 218th signature now within reach, Khanna said — and against a fast-approaching deadline.

As noted earlier in the snapshot, Speaker of the Closet Mike Johnson announced yesterday that the House would shut down yesterday allowing members to return to their districts and campaign while also allowing Johnson to shut down any votes on Hegseth's impeachment or on the new Epstein act.   Caitlin Yilek (CBS) reports on a vote that took place Tuesday:

The House Oversight Committee voted 41-0 to recommend holding billionaire investor Leon Black in contempt of Congress for defying subpoenas as part of its investigation into the late Jeffrey Epstein. 

Black, a former business associate of the convicted sex offender, did not comply with subpoenas to appear before the committee on Sept. 3 and produce nondisclosure agreements. Black is challenging the subpoenas in court, and his attorneys called the move to hold him in contempt "a complete abomination."

The contempt resolution now advances to the full House for a vote on whether to recommend the matter to the Justice Department for possible prosecution. Any charging decisions are up to the Justice Department.

It's unclear when the House plans to vote on the matter. It's the House's last week in session until after Election Day. 

GOP Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, the committee's chairman, issued the subpoenas after Black, the co-founder of Apollo Global Management, abruptly left a closed-door, voluntary transcribed interview with the panel in June after refusing to answer questions about nondisclosure agreements.




Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released the following statement:

Today, Rep. Robert Garcia, Ranking Member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, released the following statement after the House of Representatives voted to hold Leon Black, billionaire and benefactor to Jeffrey Epstein, in contempt of Congress after defying two Congressional subpoenas.

“This vote is an important step towards justice and accountability. Leon Black has continued to defy two congressional subpoenas and we need to know why he gave Jeffrey Epstein $180 million dollars. We will continue to center the survivors in our fight to hold those responsible for these horrific crimes. We are just getting started,” said Ranking Member Robert Garcia.

In September 2026, the House Oversight Committee voted unanimously to hold Leon Black in contempt of Congress after defying two Congressional subpoenas. In September 2026, Ranking Member Robert Garcia called on Leon Black to be held in contempt after defying two Congressional subpoenas. In June 2026, after Black walked out of his transcribed interview with the Committee when asked about non-disclosure agreements, Ranking Member Garcia demanded he comply with the Committee’s investigation after being subpoenaed.

 
###



That was Tuesday.  Yesterday?  Alison Durkee (FORBES) reports: 

House Oversight Chair Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., introduced legislation Wednesday that would allow victims of sexual abuse to speak out even if they signed a non-disclosure agreement, a bill borne out of the committee’s Jeffrey Epstein investigation that could be used to expose the financier’s high-profile associates—and fight billionaire Leon Black in court.
The Survivor’s Voice Protection Act, if passed, would void any NDAs that prohibit a victim or other people from disclosing incidents of sexual abuse, and would apply retroactively to NDAs signed before the legislation was passed.

It would also establish a legal definition of “grooming” for the first time, defining the practice as “a course of conduct … directed at a minor that is intended to establish an emotional connection with a minor” in order “to facilitate future acts of sexual conduct.”

Fiduciaries—meaning “a guardian, trustee, executor, administrator, receiver, conservator, or any person acting in any fiduciary capacity for any person”—would also have a legal duty to report any instances of grooming of a minor that they witness, and the victim of the grooming or the government could bring a lawsuit against the fiduciary if they do not.

Comer said Wednesday the bill was a result of the committee’s Epstein investigation, as an unknown number of Epstein associates reportedly signed NDAs with victims of the financier’s alleged abuse.


Let's wind down with this from Senator Patty Murray's office:


Murray: “We have a bill today that could actually save families thousands of dollars. All we need is for Republicans to join us, stand up to Trump, and pass this bill that will end Trump’s deranged trade wars.”

ICYMI: Murray Introduces Bill to End Trump’s Trade War with Canada & Lower Costs, Slams Trump’s Latest Tariffs as “Economic Arson”

***WATCH: Senator Murray’s full speech***

Washington, D.C. — Today, U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), Vice Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, spoke on the Senate floor urging Republicans to pass her End Trump’s Tariff Tax Act, legislation that would end Trump’s global tariffs and 50% tariffs on Canada, and stop him from waging his unilateral trade war.

Following Murray’s speech, Senate Republicans blocked a request by Democrats to pass the bill through unanimous consent, despite Trump’s tariffs costing the average family nearly $2,000.

Senator Murray’s remarks, as delivered, are below:

“In the face of the skyrocketing prices Trump has caused with his own policies, he has been trying to sell voters a new empty promise about $5,000 checks that everyone knows are never coming.

“But we have a bill today that could actually save families thousands of dollars. All we need is for Republicans to join us, stand up to Trump, and pass this bill that will end Trump’s deranged trade wars. It is quite literally a bill to cut taxes—so Republicans should be all for it.

“And it will save families big time. After all, we know Trump’s tariffs cost the average family nearly $2,000 last year. Two thousand dollars! Think about that. That is money families should have in their pockets. It could help with months of groceries, or cover rent. It could help fund home or car repairs in a pinch. It could be a family vacation.

“But instead—that money got burned up by Trump’s trade war.

“Now, I hear from folks back in Washington state about this about every time I’m home. They have not been shy about saying just how damaging Trump’s trade war has been. Business owners cannot build a long-term plan around a trade policy and tariff rates that change every time the President stays up too late posting online. Families cannot budget for their groceries, when prices keep rising higher every week, or when Trump is outright banning things like milk from Canada.

“Trump’s recent escalation with Canada is especially absurd. This is our ally! This is our neighbor! It is Canada for god’s sake.

“Why is Trump forcing higher costs on our families, just to stick it to Canadians? How is that worth it?

“Congress needs to put a stop to this and leave this money where it belongs—with our hard working families. So today, we are going to try and pass a bill that will revoke Trump’s latest Canada tariffs and end his ability to continue these trade wars.

“Today we are forcing the question: Do Republicans really think they need to let Trump jack up prices on their constituents just because he is mad at Canada? Do Republicans really think the average family is happy paying $2,000 in new taxes because Trump’s ego is hurt?

“Is Trump’s ego really that important to Republicans?

“Well, we are about to find out.

“And you better believe families are watching this debate today, just as they have been watching prices go up all year long, and they are keeping close track of who is putting Trump first, and who is putting our families first.”

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The following sites updated: 


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