Having not really completed anything meaningful with Venezuela, other than having tasted blood and developing fondness for it, and having gotten us into an endless war with Iran we're losing, King Donny the Mad is about to launch a war against Cuba, starting with a claim that Raul Castro, age 94, must be brought to justice over a US civilian aircraft that was shot down by the Cubans in 1996.
Oh horse poop.
Some in Demented Donnie's administration have been drooling over a chance to attack Cuba since the easily manipulated narcissist illegitimately moved back into the Oval Office. Military action against Cuba has been a desire of displaced Cubans and their descendants in the US since 1959. If the US attacked the island and removed the government, Lil' Marco would claim it as a victory attributable to him, one way or another, in the 2028 Presidential campaign he's clearly running in.
That's part of the problem. Influential "Republicans" (there are no real Republicans left anymore) like Marco and the Robot Ted Cruz would do anything for a Cuba Libre other than actually live in Cuba.
Of course, with this administrations lust for territorial acquisition, as desire expressed by some imperialist Republicans going into the Spanish American War, the annexation of Cuba with the goal of making it a state, would be the more likely goal in the short term. If Trump, or Marco, pulled that off, the irony would be that it would be solidly Democratic and admitting Puerto Rico as a state would happen immediately thereafter.
Probably the only thing that's really been holding this up has been the commitment of forces to Iran, where Iran is deploying Muhammed Ali's old "rope a dope" strategy and refusing to surrender even though King Donny assures us he won and the war is over. Actually defeating Iran will require a ground invasion that even Donny, who can choke down killing schoolgirls, can't seem to muster up the will for and which the American public doesn't want. The war itself has already achieved a level of unpopularity matched by that of the Vietnam War after Tet.
But, the thought is, this will go better. . . or at least Cuban Americans will like the result.
The threats against Castro started a couple of days ago. Within the last twenty four hours China, which Trump went to and acted like a orphaned puppy, has warned the US to knock it off.
May 22, 2026
The future of Cuba belongs to the people of Cuba is terms of how they're governed, what the system looks like and so forth, but the national security threat, that's 100% something we're going to focus on because that's about America.
Marco Rubio.
What crap.
Cuba has been a Communist country since 1959 when Fidel Castro overthrow the authoritarian government there (it wasn't obvious he was Communist at first).
They have not attacked us since then.
We have, however, effectively attacked them, landing Cuban contras there in 1961.
Rubio knows this, however. His parents were immigrants from Cuba who came over before the 1959 revolution, and who actually planned on returning to the country before the Communist nature of the revolution became apparent.
And that's part of the problem here. Cuban Americans are never going back to Cuba, but they imagine Cuba Libre with the same zeal as Irish Americans imagined a Republican Ireland. In the latter case, that unthinking zeal helped contribute to decades of strife in Ireland, and here it's contributed to decades of misery in Cuba.
Efforts to force a political change in Cuba should have ceased in 1961 when John F. Kennedy withdrew air support for the Cuban contras. There was no good reason at all other than anger not to normalize economic relations with Cuba at least by the early 1980s. That's what we should do now.
Ho Chi Minh wouldn't recognize Communism in Vietnam today and, if transported from wherever his soul went to, he's be convinced that South Vietnam had won the war and reformed itself. If we weren't keeping Cuba on the trophy shelf of failures, the same would be true for Cuba.
But we live in a dangerous age. Donald Trump is desperately searching for something for Americans to remember him by (and we certainly have plenty to recall right now). Marco Rubio has the misplaced child of immigrants probable loyalty to an imaginary paradise or imaginary would be paradise.
We're cruising right back into Havana's harbor where every American military adventure to date has been a disaster.
Donald Trump has convinced himself that somebody is sabotaging the reflecting pool because the algae is back. He's deployed the National Guard and the Park police, and the police have been issuing a few citations to people who are taking pieces of floating Rhino Lining.
A Little Science
What's going on here?
Well, it sure ain't sabotage.
In terms of the actual situation, what's going on is basic science. Any kid in advance studies in high school, or probably junior high, could have replicated the result theoretically with very little effort.
The reflecting is a large pool of pretty much stable, which is not to say stagnant, water. Still water, in other words. In warm weather, any large body of still water will develop algae and in some areas experience algae blooms. Just go to some local cow ponds and take a look, you'll see algae.
Algae is, also, a great lover of CO2. Indeed, it's a tremendous friend to humanity as its capable of sucking up so much CO2. In a distant prior era of the Earth's history there was a time when the oceans were pretty much one gigantic algae bloom. The era ended as the algae sucked so much algae out, over a long period of time, it depressed the Earth's temperature and caused a massive ice age.
As more and more CO2 gets pumped into the atmosphere temperatures get hotter and algae loves it. All the Chuck Grays weeing in their pants about climate change being a big isn't going to change it. You may not care about science, and science may not care about you. It just wrecks things when you stupidly ignore it.
When the recent Rhino Lining was done, another thing that was done was to change the water source for the pool. The water system had sourced water from the Tidal Basin, but it was switched to municipal water on the thought it would be clearer. That thought was a good one, as it should be. The Park Service had planned on doing something along these lines for years. As it is, the pool's water is circulated through piping to a building nearby and run through a series of filters and water purifiers. The Park Service had wanted to put in a "nano bubbler" to kill algae with tiny bubbles of ozone. There were a series of contractors that asked for that very job.
Well, Donald Trump became fascinated at some point with Washington D.C.'s appearance, and perhaps not without some justification. Some monuments had in fact, apparently, been allowed to become run down, and some fountains disconnected. That is in fact inexcusable and his efforts, giving credit where credit is due, have lead to the restoration of some of these features. Infamously, of course, it also lead the absolute vandalization of the White House, both in the cheap tacky crap that Trump pasted up everywhere, as well as in the ripping down of an entire wing. The cheap crap can be pulled off and tossed in the dumpster, but the demolishing of a wing is another problem entirely.
Then there's the pool.
Any smart person would have hired an engineering firm to deal with the problem if something needed to be done. Not Trump. He just had a no bid process done and sent the work to a contractor on a no bid process, something that's only supposed to be used for emergencies. Frankly, in my view, that was illegal. There was no emergency. But Trump wanted it to look purty for the 250th Anniversary of American Independence, an ironic thing as he is the very model of aristocratic dolt that the country was seeking separation from in 1776.
At a bare minimum, the water system should have been shocked to kill residual algae.
Well, the results were predictable. The Rhino Lining was put in, an abomination in and of itself, the water got hot, and algae came for the party. To compound the matter, it was decided to pour hydrochloric acid in the pool to kill the algae, which instead had the result of peeling up the fresh Rhino Lining. Trump can't admit failure, even though he has had a boatload of them, and even though a major failure, a lost war against Iran, should be his primary concern right now, he's focused on the pool, having people arrested for vandalization.
He is, in fact, the vandal.
Frontotemporal dementia, an unfortunate primer.
Trump is afflicted with Frontotemporal dementia.
I've seen Frontotemporal dementia up close in personal. I don't say that lightly.
My mother developed the disease late in her life. She was 90 years old when she died. In looking it up, I was shocked to realize that it is now just a little over a decade ago. I thought it was further back than that.
Anyhow, it's a horrible disease.
I can't really recall exactly when it became evident that she had it, and that's one of the problems with FTD. The disease is really slow moving and therefore its early manifestation may be baffling and unrecognized to those who are near the person afflicted. According to the May Clinic, it usually starts to hit people relatively early, when they are in their 40s and 50s, but may occur later. Looking back, my mother may actually have started to manifest her symptoms in the normal age range, but in her case it was masked, if it did, by another condition that was nearly incapacitating. She got in a few, but very few, good years between recovering from that and the onset of the disease.
A couple of problems with the disease is that its rare for one person to exhibit all the symptoms.
My mother was an extremely physically fit person before she fell ill, and recovered that once she recovered. This was the case even into her decline into dementia for a long time. As part of that, she had a very strong routine that helped mask and even control the decline. As it started off, you could tell that she wasn't right, but not to the extent that it was apparent what was going on by any means.
Then the obsessions came.
That's where Donald Trump is at right now.
My mother became obsessed with snow, and overweight people. We living in a snowy region, in normal years, and she came from an even snowier one. But one winter arrived and she could not stand the presence of snow. She shoveled the lawn. I repeatedly tried to get her to stop doing it, but she wouldn't.
The house became a mess, but she'd also destructively clean some thing, including things that didn't belong to her. She really went after, for example the finish on a muscle car I had at the time.
She commented on people being "fat" constantly, and lost any filter she had about it and would comment about it anywhere. Indeed, she lost her speaking filter in general.
Throughout this decline she lived on her own. It would have been impossible for a person to live with her at some point. As things grew worse I knew that I needed to do something, but frankly doing something is easier said than done. Or perhaps I was just cowardly about it. At any rate, she took up keeping spoiled meat and it made her extremely sick. That put her in the hospital, and an ER doc diagnosed her on the spot, and to her face, which was a blessing.
After that the decline just got worse and worse, but again, it was slow. I can't remember how long she was in assisted living. A few years, anyway. Eventually her heart gave out.
Where Donald Trump is at
Trump is now at that obsessive stage. He's absolutely fixated on some trivial things, those things being architectural monuments. He can get through days and even be fairly lucid, but at night it comes back. He's sick. Like my mother shoveling snow from the lawn, he can't grasp the reality of algae in a pool.
He's also lost his filter with and about women, like my mother did with overweight people. He's always had a predatory relationship with women anyhow, and this turns out to be a classic aspect of male dementia. I recall when my mother was dying of dementia reading an article by a female newspaper columnist whose father was enduring the same thing. It's a nightmare for the adult child, and she was openly wishing for the death of her father. She hated to visit him in the nursing home, and frankly I hated to visit my mother in assisted living. In her case, her very elderly father had pretty much forgotten who she was, that never occurred to my mother, but she forgot other things, had her mother died, for instance, and how to speak English on one occasion, and her father had become obsessive about sex, even asking if the daughter knew anyone who might have sex with him.
As noted that's actually fairly common in male dementia. Demented men slide into sexual depravity in some instances due to the disease. Trump arrived at sexual depravity all on his own early on, but now he's routinely calling women whom he should respect insulting names, or worse yet, pet names. He can't keep from commenting on their appearance.
This is all going to get much worse.
What's to be done?
As the few people who stop in here routinely know, I've long been of the opinion that Trump was mentally declining and now that it's obvious what he has, it's pretty apparent that he was exhibiting signs of it his first term. Indeed, you can go back to his earlier interviews and find a much different, albeit never admirable, person. The disease has robbed him of his sanity.
The people around him know this. His cabinet from his first term have been open about the horrors they experienced, although some of them leading into the last election still supported him. Susan Wiles is apparently at the exasperated point. Apparently even Scott Bessent, a complete toady, has been leaking.
Given that his condition is so apparent for those who can see it, I thought the 25th Amendment would be invoked this month. It still maybe, or maybe later, but it now appears that something else is going on.
One of the things that is going on, I suspect, is that National Conservatives are riding Trump as far as they can up to the November election. They dream of an all white, all Christian, illiberal democracy they cannot win at the ballot box. Viktor Orbán was their poster child.* J. D. Vance is their candidate. Vance can't get elected without being elevated to the Oval Office during Trump's term, but he also can't be seen doing the dirty work, much of which remains to be done. Worst of all, however, from a NatCon prospective, maybe Vance, who has had many names and been many people in his short life, might not be a NatCon after all. He has to be tested in the fire, and that fire is occurring right now.
Of course, Marco Rubio needs Vance consumed by that fire, and so far the fire has mostly been consuming him. Rubio, however, will never be the NatCon choice. His background is too suspicious. Indeed, he's been a fair number of other things in his life, and his path through it is not as linear as Vance's.
If all this sounds pretty fish, I get it. But again, I have experience with it. When a person begins to decline, you find that people will step in to take advantage of them. I had that occur as my mother declined. And other people are there to give you bad advice, often because that serves their own interest or world views. I was lucky in that I had so much help from my family, including family members who my mother had not been nice to.
In Trump's case, I don't know that there is anyone at all who is actually his friend. He doesn't appear to have any outside of his immediate family. Maybe his family are his friends, maybe. Melania Trump apparently divides her time between Florida and New York and has a reputation as being a helicopter mother over her one child, Barron. As we've posted elsewhere as recently as today, we're frankly skeptical of this match being a normal love match. Trump's 24 years older, and even bigger margin than existed between Trump and Marla Maples, who was 18 years his junior. Maples seems to be more of a real match, but I could be way of the mark. It does seem certain that her interest in her son is genuine, however. Anyhow, in Melania we don't see an Edith Wilson by a long shot.
Of course there are Trump's sons and daughters by his prior marriages. But none of them are hanging around on a daily basis making sure their father doesn't fall down and not get up.
There are the MAGA sycophants of course. Some of these people are NatCons, so they're in the NatCon camp. Others are useful idiots for the NatCons. Some are just weirdos and oddballs, or people with unique agendas. They have nowhere else to go. Should Trump slump over and fall to sleep forever today, J. D. Vance is not going to keep Bessent, Lutnik, Kennedy, Miller or Hegseth around, and they know it. They have nowhere else to go. So they are, truly, like the Germans who rode it out in Hitler's bunker. Not out of conviction, but because the 3d Shock Army is outside.
For the good of the country, the 25th Amendment needs to be invoked. Will it? Well, we thought it would, and if we're right about the NatCons, there's a chance that it will be. They have to know that if they don't invoke it, when November comes their only chance of obtaining their dream illiberal state is basically a coup. Trump can undoubtedly be talked into it, and many of the street level MAGAs can be relied upon to be Trump's SA, or put in the current zeitgeist, the king's own loyalist militia. But most people aren't going there, and the reaction would be huge.
In a very real sense, many in the thinking categories discussed above hope that Trump will just experience what Jimi Hendrix sang and that he "may wake up in the morning, to find that he is dead". He'd be off to the particular judgment in the next world and they'd cynically lament him in this, while installing J. D. as his successor, and latching on to the pliant wails of the extraordinarily easily lead MAGA masses. Indeed, if they have reason to believe that this is soon, that's the best strategy of all.
If Trump simply passes, they have their ride to the treasury made easy.
In the meantime, this is phenomenally scary, and sad. Trump's an old man with a very heavy burden of sin whom nobody is doing anything to address in an existential sense. He's raving in his dementia, mostly at night. Those advancing their own agendas, if I'm right, are comfortable with the increasing insanity and destruction this all brings.
*It's Giorgia Meloni who has actually risen over the past two years to replace Orbán and Trump as the leader of the intellectual wing of National Conservatism, but she's not an illiberal democrat.
Narva Triumphal Arch. It's green, just like Trump's Arch of Defeat should be. By Florstein - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19091231
Donald Trump, who can see the grim reaper at the door, and besides him when he goes to sleep and wakes up in the morning is desperately seeking a legacy that he won't achieve, that being some sort of serious man. As part of that, he seeks a monumental arch, while actually having just lost a war.
It ought to be algae green, just like the reflecting pool.
L'arche De La Défaite. The first monument to spectacular defeat ever erected by the loser. A fitting, if temporary, monument to the loser himself, Donald Trump.
Trump's second, and illegitimate, term is even two years old. With amazing speed, everything Donald Trump is touching is turning to shit.
Usually with dictators there's progress at first, simply because they tend to come in during a time of crisis and address that immediate thing before everything starts to fall apart, which it inevitably does. Arguably, in Trump's case that one thing was illegal immigration. Decades of high immigration had angered blue collar and lower Middle Class Americans in general, and Joe Biden lost control of the border with Mexico in his term, his failure to act in part brought about by a sense of humanity which unfortunately didn't carry over to his policies on abortion. Aided chiefly by that, but also fueled by anger over social changes that people simply didn't and don't support, Trump did the one thing he is good at, sold Trump.
But Trump was never popular with the majority of Americans, and, having no real existential or even political philosophy himself, he came with a pack of extreme ideologues will to advance their own agendas, as dictators always do, who don't care of people suffer as long as that extreme agenda is advanced. Trump's idealogues, however, actually come from two different camps to start with, far right wing Evangelical Christians and National Conservatives, who really don't see eye to eye on everything, while agreeing on some things.
And then there's Trump himself. Eighty years old and in declining mental and physical health, and unable to accept what he was, and is.
Sic transit Gloria Mundi.
Царь хороший, бояре плохие*
Giving billions of dollars to theocratic lunatics who want to murder us is not a good idea, I think the president, unfortunately, is receiving bad advice on this deal.
Ted Cruz
These fools, who think I haven’t been tough enough on Iran, when the Stock Market Just Hit A RECORD HIGH, and Oil prices are ‘tumbling’ down, are either jealous, bad people, or stupid. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!! President DJT”
Donald Trump, once again displaying his understanding of the world that if the stock markets are doing good, everybody is doing great.
The United States lost the war with Iran. It was not a war that the US should ever have been in to start with. Donald Trump was told by some of those in his own administration not to do it, but convinced by those who saw it as some sort of Evangelical Christian crusade, and coaxed along by Bibi Netanyahu, we went to war, illegally, with no plan on how to win it.
Iran won. They came out of the war stronger than they went in it, and now we're going to make them wealthier than they were before.
Some Republicans are finally actually reacting. They can see the Trump era ending and don't won't to be remembered as the men and women who paid radical Islam. Some can't quite bring themselves to do it, such as the cowardly Ted Cruz, who blames it on advisors.
Trump's not letting them do that. He's sticking to his actions and embracing the GOP with the stench of the illegal war and the dimwitted settlement to it. He's also trying to shove the final heavy lifting and excuse making off on J. D. Vance who is known to have opposed the war in the first instance. A person has to wonder about that.
Vance was supposed to go to Switzerland to sign the formal instrument of surrender. Something happened overnight, and now he's not.
Monuments to ignorance
I'm doing a great job on the Reflecting Lake. I got so into it. I've upgraded it like you wouldn't believe... It's going to be beautiful. It's going to be waterproof. It's going to be reflecting again.
Donald Trump. It's a pool, of course, not a lake. And, um, waterproof?
Algae came back to the reflecting pool immediately. It was predictable that it would, but the dark blue Rhino Lining probably increased the temperature of the water and made the water even more conducive to algae than before.
Pretty predictable.
The entire cost of the effort grossly exceeded what Trump claimed it would cost, going from seven digits to low eight digits. When the algae immediately appeared excuses were developed (it was the pipes), and the moronic MAGA conspiracy theories erupted. The algae was planted by Democrats, some truly ignorant people maintained.
Nope, it just grows in hot water.
Now, compounding the disaster, gallons of hydrochloric acid have been poured in the pool. It's removing the Rhino Lining.
That can't be ignored.
Hopefully, it's just accepted and the Tide-E-Bowl blue lining will just be allowed to rapidly peel off. A real solution that isn't something they'd use on cheap Texas hotel pool can be left for the next administration.
Perde i colpi**
She’s probably happy I talked to her. I didn’t have to talk to her. She begged me to take a photo with her. She wanted a photo with me so much. I wouldn’t have even done it, but I felt sorry for her.
Donald Trump.
Donald Trump's statements are completely made up. I am frankly astonished. I don't know why the president of the United States behaves like this towards his allies, after all, it's not the first time it's happened.
I can only say it is disappointing that he does not show the same determination with the enemies of the West and of the United States, whose leaders he instead treats with far greater indulgence. There is one thing he should remember: neither I nor Italy ever beg.
Giorgia Meloni
The serious and offensive words of President Trump towards Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni offend all of Italy. For this reason, I have decided to cancel my visit to the United States scheduled for the next 21 and 22 June.
Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani.
Trump's at the G7. They should have sent Vance to that.
Trump's mental decline is frighteningly apparent to anyone who cares to see it. He gets angry easily and says anything that comes into his declining mind. Included in that has been an increasing number of statements to and about women that are common amongst senile old men.
He has the deluded belief, it seems, that people really like him. They don't. And now people are making that plain to his face.
He probably doesn't notice. The moronic things he says on a daily basis are probably often things he really believes.
Which takes us back to the first entry. Death is hanging around Trump, but like many an old boomer for whom the Reaper is sharpening his scythe, he just can't accept that that means, but others can. Republicans are starting to finally move on. The Europeans not only have, but are starting to say "Va' a farti fottere"***.
He's not needed, except by the people who need him, and we should all be frightened by that.
On the latter, an administration tweet endorsed the insane conspiracy theory that Democrats are secretly putting algae in the pool. A person would have to be a complete moron to believe that.
Cont:
Well, Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz in retaliation for the ongoing Israeli campaign in Lebanon.
The comedy of errors in this, keeping in mind that violent death is not comedic, just won't end.
Footnotes:
*"Good Czar, bad Boyers". This was a popular excuse for Imperial loyalist as to stupid Romanov decisions. It couldn't be the Czar, it must be the Boyers.
It was the Czar.
Fanatic adherence of lunacy continually do this. "It's never been tried" is the popular one for Communist on why Communism has never worked. Not really related, but on the Communist theme, during Stalin's early reign The New Republic wrote him to inform him that some bad things were going on in the Soviet Union.
Um, Stalin knew that.
**"His shots are wasted." Applying to mental decline in Italy, a similar phrase in English for a lost cause would be "his bolt is shot", which refers to a crossbow bolt.
***"Go fuck yourself".
Cont:
Yikes.
June 21, 2026
Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and J.D. Vance is back on the plane to Switzerland, after cancelling earlier.
June 23, 2026
Both houses of Congress have now voted to end the war.
This puts Congress and the White House on a clear collision couse.
