During the Revolutionary War, George Washington ordered his troops inoculated against Small Pox.
This week Pete Hegseth lifted the requirement that troops be inoculated for influenza for "religious" reasons.
The current GOP is heavily anti scientific.
Opposition to vaccinations has been in American history largely a thing of smaller Christian and non Christian sects which are fairly anti scientific, as opposed to the majority of Christians who have no objection to vaccination. However, when the far right of the country started to turn weird, listening to such medical lights as boob model Jenny McCarthy, that began to change a bit. Covid really made it worse as a significant portion of the country turned anti vax under the leadership of Donald Trump, who got the vaccine, but who recommended some really lethal approaches to the crisis as well.
Troops who don't get inoculated ought to just be given dishonorable or less than honorable discharges. That's what should have occurred to those who refused the Covid vaccine.
April 24, 2026
The war department stands ready for what comes next. Locked and loaded. May God continue to breast—bless our warriors each and every day and on each and every mission.
Hegseth.
Breast?
Okay, I get that it's a slip of the tongue, um, well, but it's an odd one.
May 12, 2026
The Aryan Nation, the Nazis, and the KKK are not far-right organizations. Those are far-left organizations, and they always have been. The KKK was created and started by the Democrats in the United States to prevent blacks from being able to participate in the political arena, if you will. So, I'm going to say they've never been associated with the right, they've always been associated with the left.
Harriet Hageman.
Hageman's no dummy and she knows this is crap, or has drank so much of the Kool Aide she'll spout stuff that's absurd.
Every one of these organizations is from the far right and any claim to the contrary is patently absurd. The claim about the Nazis, which I've seen before, comes from the party's very early, and frankly pre Hitler, days and its name, the National Socialist Party. The absurdity of that claim fails to realize that "socialism" in the context of nationalist parties doesn't necessarily mean Marxism, but "for society". In the case of the Nazis, way early on their did espouse Socialism but by the time they'd come to power they'd abandoned it in favor of autarky and the early socialist in the party were sidelined or expelled.
And the claim about the KKK being founded by the Democrats and therefore left wing completely ignores that originally the Republican Party was the left wing party, and the Democrats were a right wing party. The Democrats didn't evolve into the political left until the 20th Century and in the American South remained the conservative party into the 1980s. Hageman herself is old enough to have voted in Reagan's first run for the Oval Office and therefore should be well aware of that.
This is totally reprehensible.
Cont:
Reporter: What extent are Americans’ financial situation motivating you to make a deal?
Trump: Not even a little bit. I don't think about Americans’ financial situation.
May 13, 2026
So it turns out that Trump's advisors uniformly told him not to launch the war against Iran, but he did anyway, and the advisors, not wanting to be blamed for his stupidity, leaked. He wants them prosecuted for treason, and sycophant Todd Blanche is looking to to it.
The real crime here is Trump's, who launched an illegal war. With no declaration of war, every single Iranian killed in it has been the victim of some sort of crime, and every American who has died has been the victim of some sort of crime ultimately attributable to Trump as well.
Blanche is pathetic. When this is over, and it will be, his careers should be flushed down the toilet.
And then there's this:
PabloReports: Ted Cruz called you a parasite and disparaged your work as a bartender.
AOC: I think it’s funny that he’s been taking a government paycheck for 23 years but has the audacity to criticize someone who has come from a family that had to work their way up and earn their place here.
This is really becoming a Republican specialty around here. We get retired servicemen who come in after sucking on the government tit for 30 years, retire, and then start sucking on the other government tit, and then run for office on the "I hate the government" ticket.
In that sense, the Democrat running against Collins in Maine is really refreshing. He's given a speech about his combat service and then noted how he can't figure out how that's relevant to being a Senator. It isn't.
Recently I saw somebody post something in favor of Brent Bien here in Wyoming, noting that he's served in combat or dangerous conditions all over the world, and how that will make him ready to lead. Yeah, lead troops, not a state government.
We have a whole host of candidates from the He Man Government Haters Club running locally. They have a right to run, but while they're doing it, they shouldn't be draining their mommy. It's hypocritical.
June 22, 2026
Unqualified for her office Jeanine Pirro, U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, said her office would prosecute individuals caught vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.
That would mean prosecuting Donald Trump, which should be done for a variety of reasons.
June 24, 2026
The ideology of the Mooslims is slightly different than the ideology of the Catholics. We have the Catholics and the Mooslims. Slightly different. But Venezuela has been great and Iran has been great.
Donald Trump.
Insulting in the extreme.
The ideology of Catholics, of which I am one, is the ideology of Christianity, as Catholicism is the first and original Christian religion It's more than "slightly different" than Islam.
This provides a good reason for those Catholics who support Trump to really question what they are doing.
A President who is a rich New Yorker who is constantly concerned with the stock market, who is a serial polygamist, who didn't serve when he was of military age, and who hardly reads anything, is going to visit the opening of a Presidential Library of a President who was a rich New Yorker, who was aggressively vigorous, who was a war hero, who was verging on the brink of Socialism at the time he died at age 60, and who was so concerned with his personal morality that he felt guilty after remarrying after his first wife died.
From left to right: Tirso Espinosa, Gildardo Magana, M. Mejia, Abram Martinez, Jesus Jauregui and Rodolfo Magana; seated: Eufemio Zapata,Emiliano Zapata and Proculo Capistran at the Hotel Coliseo, Mexico City on June 24, 1911.
A mere thirty days after the Creek National Council had ratified an agreement to cede its land to the Federal government, oil was struck on those lands in Oklahoma Territory at Red Fork.
The gusher would be responsible for the transformation of Tulsa into a major city.
Philippine General Juan Cailles surrendered to the United States along with 650 of his men.
American nurse Clara Maass, serving in Cuba, volunteered to be bitten by a malarial mosquito as part of medical research. She'd contract the disease and die. She was 25 years old.
The 7th Cavalry halted at where Busby Montana presently is. Knowing that the Sioux were somewhere in the vicinity, scouts were sent ahead to the Crow's Nest in the Wolf Mountains. The command then married a further fifteen miles at night towards the location.
Keeping in mind that sundown occurs in this region on this day at about 9:00 p.m., this means the already exhausted command was making a difficult night march.
Not all that far off, the Sioux/Cheyenne camp was holding the Dying Dancing Ceremony in which teenagers vowed to lose their lives in battle to defend the camp.
Terry's command was ferried to the southside of the Yellowstone near the mouth of the Big Horn to proceed up the river's valley with the goal of reaching the mouth of the Little Big Horn by June 26. It was hoped that Custer's command would have maneuvered to the south of the camp by the 26, which was an approximate date, allowing the camp, which was known to exist somewhere in the area, to be trapped. As it was, Custer had maneuvered to the southwest of the camp by the late night of the 25th.
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.
