POKING AROUND AND PICKING THROUGH THE WEEKEND RUBBLE

I spent most of last evening before the news of the Pentagon coup broke writing this. The information here is still important, if only to reassure readers that Dilbert is not all-powerful, no matter how much he wants you to think so from the events last night. That’s not to say things aren’t terrible - they are terrible. Very terrible. But we are not without resources. (I am “working my sources” regarding the coup and will be posting more on that later)

From the Department of The Trumpscum Are All Traitors: The United States is officially opposed to calling Russia the aggressor in its war on Ukraine. In a Group of 7 (G7) statement, drafted to mark the historic third year anniversary of the war, U.S. representatives are objecting to any language believed to be pro-Ukraine, according to four officials from other countries involved in the assembly. The G7 allies originally adopted pro-Ukraine sentiment following Russia’s full-scale invasion. The phrase “Russian aggression” or word “aggressors” have been used in G7 statements since 2022, and the G7 group—headed by Canada—has long condemned Russia in their declarations. But only days after President Donald Trump called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky a “dictator” and claimed that Ukraine was to blame for the deadly war, U.S. officials have proposed a neutral statement that makes no reference to Russia as the offender or Ukraine as the victim. The new draft also cuts text describing the invasion as a breach of sovereignty.

From the Department of Kick These Fools To The Curb: The Unreconstructed Georgia Confederate Alleged Republican who recently told CNN that school kids should be sent to work to earn school lunches was met with outrage and fury from residents at a town hall meeting on Thursday night. Rep. Rich McCormick announced last week that he would be hosting an in-person constituent town hall at Roswell City Council. On Thursday night, lines overflowed outside the town hall, and Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter and NBC News contributor Greg Bluestein was on hand to capture the events as they unfolded. It got heated quickly over McCormick’s support for the sweeping federal budget cuts made in recent weeks by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). According to Bluestein, who posted numerous videos to X, McCormick faced boos and “catcalls” as residents pushed back on Trump’s erratic governing style. In his article for AJC, Bluestein reported “hundreds of critics” descended on the meeting and that McCormick’s staff “seemed caught off guard” by the sheer force of the pushback. Crowd members shouted “we’re pissed” and “don’t bend over,” according to NBC News. one resident questioned McCormick, saying, “It’s clear from all the writings of our Founding Fathers that our great republic was never meant to be ruled by a dictator or a king.” The comment was greeted by a large round of applause. “So you can imagine my shock and pure horror when I woke up to find that our president had given himself unprecedented executive powers and then in a few days named himself King to his followers,” she continued to more applause, before being prompted to ask a question. “Tyranny is rising in the White House and a man has declared himself our king, so I would like to know, rather, the people would like to know, what you, congressman, and your fellow congressmen are going to do to reign in the megalomaniac in the White House?” The woman received a standing ovation.In one video, a resident called out McCormick for “doing us a disservice” and “not standing up for us.” McCormick replied: “If you all are just going to yell at me, that’s not going to be an effective comment.” I dunno, you dumbass, you look pretty damn scared to me in the pix, and I think that was the purpose of the comments. I think the good Georgians here have shown the rest of us how to treat you scum.

From the Department of He’s Crazier Than A Bedbug: “The most determined ignoramus I ever met,” in the words of John Kelly, now reveals a total and complete misunderstanding of how government finance works. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has revealed on Thur sday that Dilbert plans to get rid of the Internal Revenue Service and replace it with an “external” revenue service that will somehow force the rest of the world to fund the U.S. government. “His goal is to abolish the Internal Revenue Service and let all the outsiders pay,” Howard Lutnick told Faux Snooze’s Jesse Watters on Wednesday night. Instead of the IRS, Dilbert plans to create an “external revenue service” that will “get rid of all these tax scams that hammer against America” and raise $1 trillion of revenue. The rebranding reflects Dilbert’s oft-repeated and inaccurate claim that tariffs are paid by foreign countries. FACT CHECK: Tariffs are a tax paid by American companies, with the costs passed on to consumers. They’re also collected by Customs and Border Protection, not the IRS. Dilbert continues to believe that “tariff” is “the most beautiful word in the dictionary.” I dunno, maybe it will take the guy who bankrupted two casinos following that up by bankrupting an entire country for the 77 million fuckwitted droolers who support him to finally learn that 2+2 still equals 4.

From the Department of Dilbert Still Doesn’t Have The Mandate of Heaven: After shafting the Kansas City chiefs by holding them off from scoring by his presence at the gave until it was too late for them, then bringing rain to the Daytona 500, Dilbert turned himself into a triple threat Thursday night, giving the gods another chance to send an “Uh, uh” message of disapproval by choosing to tout the US team in their game against Canada, giving them a pep talk before their game: “I’ll be calling our GREAT American Hockey Team this morning to spur them on towards victory tonight against Canada, which with FAR LOWER TAXES AND MUCH STRONGER SECURITY, will someday, maybe soon, become our cherished, and very important, Fifty First State.” The US tram lost 3-2 in overtime, giving every Canadian from PM Trudeau on down the opportunity to throw shade at King Dilbert Dumbfuck I. After the game, Trudeau posted on X: “You can’t take our country - and you can’t take our game.”

From the Department of Say Good-bye To Mail-In Voting: We now know why Louis De(No)Joy resigned as Postmaster General. WSJ reports Dilbert plans to disband the governing board that oversees USPS by executive order this week so he can take control. He’s expected to announce that the USPS will be placed under control of his Commerce Secretary. Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA): “The Constitution gives Congress power to establish the US Postal Service. Which it did, by law, during George Washington’s admin. Its status as an independent agency was also established by Congress in law. The US Postal Service is wildly popular with the American people and its service is essential and irreplaceable. Nobody voted for this. It is brazenly illegal, corrupt, and unconstitutional. Mark Dimonstein, President of the American Postal Workers Union: “Firing the Postal Service’s Board of Governors and transferring control is an outrageous and unlawful hostile takeover, essentially a raid on an independently operated public institution.” The real goal is to “efrficiently” kill mail-in voting in Blue States, setting up major problems between now and 2026, coupled with the suppression of women voting with the SAVE Act as they have to re-register for the new in-person voting that will be imposed. Sure, they’ll have elections in 2026, since they’ll know who wins.

From the Department of Reality TV Stars Are All Morons: Has-been Reality TV star masquerading as Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy was booed out of the building last night after explaining his decision to review cutting high speed rail between LA and SF. The project employs 14,000 people with strong wages, has cleared every environmental hurdle and track is already being laid. Of the $13 billion spent, $10.5 billion is from California, $2.5 billion from the federal government. Duffy was booed and heckled by outraged workers and citizens as he claimed the project was costing the federales “hundreds of billions of dollars.” You’d think a party created by lying would be better at it, but they figure everyone’s as dumb as the MAGAts.

From the Department of Reconstructed Afrikaner Ketamine Addict Still At It: The Pod Save America guys pointed out that Elmo’s “Get it? Didja get it?” act - replete with blackout sunglasses to keep private the fact that his eyeballs were pinhwheeling during his Dans Mit Chainsaw, followed by an interview with Newsmax host Rob Schmitt, during which he claimed “I am become meme,” and “My mind is a storm,” then going on about there being no gold in Fort Know - prove was higher than the chainsaw. As he struggled to form a coherent sentence, the word “ketamine” was trending on Xitter (that’s pronounced “shitter”). Too much of the drug leads to dissociative states and difficulty speaking. Josh Marshall is right, Elmo is the first for-real Bond movie supervillain. Can we send him to join Ernst Stavro Blofeld???

From the Department of The Press Steps Up In Self Defense: Paramount has apparently decided not to roll over and let Shari Redstone bribe her way to a fortune over the dead body of CBS. On Friday, CBS lawyers notified the court in Dilbert’s $10 billion defamation suit that they will be asking for discovery of all evidence of loss Dilbert has to support his claim. (Pro tip: when things get to Put Up Or Shut Up in the history of Dilbert’s Adventures In Court, he always folds and walks away, because he never has more than less than a pair of Jacks in his hand.) Also, after more than a week of being shut out of the White House and kicked off Air Force One for the crime of failing to recognize The King’s Greatness, the Associated Press filed a lawsuit against MaladministrationII officials on Friday over the decision to ban its reporters from events for refusing to use “Gulf of America” terminology. “This targeted attack on the AP’s editorial independence and ability to gather and report the news strikes at the very core of the First Amendment,” the news agency said. Does the AP have a case? The White House has pretty broad discretion to decide who it speaks to and even who gets seats during briefings, but their problem is what they are doing is retaliation based on protected free speech. This White House has created an opening for AP to claim a First Amendment issue. Eriq Gardner at Puck says, “It’s really served up the issue on a silver platter.”

Johnathan Chait wrote the following in The Atlantic yesterday, and I think it’s a good description of where things are at:

“The Trump administration is enmeshed in a long and rapidly growing list of legal challenges to the novel powers it has claimed for itself. But to try to understand the situation in terms of the individual cases, and the legal questions they implicate, is to miss the forest for the trees. The larger picture is that Donald Trump refuses, or is simply unable, to grasp any distinction between the law and his own whims.

“That conflation was on display once again today at a meeting of governors at the White House. As Trump lectured the audience on his executive order banning transgender girls and women from participating in girls’ and women’s sports, he paused to single out Maine Governor Janet Mills.

“Are you not going to comply with it?” he demanded of her. “I’m complying with state and federal laws,” she replied. To this, Trump shot back, “We are the federal law.”

“What is important about this exchange is not whose interpretation of Title IX and the Administrative Procedure Act has a better chance to win five votes on the Supreme Court. It is that Trump is treating the law as coterminous with his own desires.

“Trump then threatened Mills with the prospect of stripping away federal funding for her state: “You better do it, because you’re not going to get any federal funding at all if you don’t.” Legally, it is possible for the federal government to deny states certain funding streams under certain conditions. But Trump cannot simply cut Maine off financially because the state chooses to challenge a federal policy. Distinctions like this, however, seem totally lost on the president, who sees himself as national king—note his use of the royal we—and every other American, including each of the 50 states, as one of his quavering subjects.

“Trump has grown ever more brazen about his belief that his activities are by definition legal, and activities he opposes by definition criminal. (Or as Richard Nixon put it to David Frost, “If the president does it, that means it is not illegal.”)

“Trump recently summarized this belief by writing on X, “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.”His statement to Mills is utterly consistent with this belief: Since Trump cannot violate the law, it follows that the law means whatever he says. He has progressed from demonstrating his disregard for the law to stating it as a doctrine.

“Trump’s supporters have followed his lead. When the White House announced a spending freeze last month, Matthew J. Vaeth, acting director of Trump’s budget office, wrote, “Career and political appointees in the Executive Branch have a duty to align Federal spending and action with the will of the American people as expressed through Presidential priorities.”

“Paula White, the newly appointed White House faith adviser, has gone further, once stating, “To say no to President Trump would be saying no to God.” Far from reassuring the American people that they continue to live in a democratic republic, Trump and the White House have lately leaned into the divine-right theme with a series of social-media posts depicting Trump as a king for overruling New York City’s congestion-pricing system.

“But the larger dynamic is that Trump isn’t merely pushing to redefine the boundaries of the law or even the Constitution. He is rejecting the principle that the law constrains him at all. The existence of a constitutional crisis cannot be understood solely in terms of the discrete claims of the executive branch vis-à-vis the other two. A president who maintains that the law means whatever he wants it to mean IS a constitutional crisis.”

That’s what the facts are, right now. But if I can drop back into my military historian role for a moment, there have been moments like this before. The high tide of Japanese power in the Pacific War came at 1008 hours on June 4, 1942, when the last U.S. Navy torpedo bomber attempting to attack Kido Butai - the imperial fleet - was shot down. At that moment, everything looked to be going in Japan’s favor. Five minutes later, lookouts screamed as they spotted the sunlight glittering off the canopies of the Enterprise dive bombers as they came into view above a broken cloud deck. And ten minutes after that, the only question about Japan’s loss of the war was how long it would take for the loss to be recognized, as the heart of the fleet - the carriers - were bombed and sunk.

This time we are in now, as then, is a “dynamic moment.” Small changes will have large results.

I think “the Enterprise dive bombers” are above the cloud deck, where they cannot be seen. Yet.

My proof is thin, but I’m passing on the analyses of my friend Josh Marshall, Ron Filipowski from Meidas Touch, and Blog buddy Robert Hubble, whose finely-tuned political earthquake detectors align with those of Josh and Ron. There’s an old saying among Hollywood writers: what one person says is an opinion; if two say it, it could be coincidence; but if three say it, it’s a FACT. And here is that fact:

Josh: Against the backdrop of a month of chaos and destruction, something began to shift more or less in the middle of this week. I don’t want to overstate what it portends in the short term. Elon Musk remains firmly in the saddle. And even as many of Trump’s advisors grow concerned about the impact of Musk’s rampage, Donald Trump himself appears to be maintaining his support. The moment was captured yesterday at what are now the more or less constant CPACs where Steve Bannon tossed off a Nazi salute and Musk appeared in a “Dark MAGA” baseball cap sporting a chainsaw and basking in the adulation of the MAGA/CPAC faithful awash in the joy a certain kind of individual derives from destruction and pain. The picture itself is a key signpost in the story. Make a note of it. Musk himself posted it to Twitter, labeled with “The DogeFather” and flexing with the text: “This is a real picture.”

But there’s something else going on — not so much the tide turning as a certain battle being joined. Beginning this week, local TV stations around the country have begun running human interest stories about veterans, members of military families or Trump supporters getting fired as part of Elon’s purge. Meanwhile, we can see a growing cleavage between what congressional Republicans are saying in Washington and what they’re saying back in their districts.

The tenor of the moment first registered in a series of polls which came out midweek showing the first signs of Trump’s approval rating dipping into negative territory. I don’t think we should make too much of those poll numbers either way. What the polls did was puncture the impression within the mainstream media that political gravity has been suspended or canceled .

Ron: I truly feel, for the first time since the election, the tide is turning. House Republicans took this week off and most of them are in their districts - especially the ones who are in tough swing districts - and they are getting an earful from their constituents. The policies of Trump, Musk, Vought and Stephen Miller are affecting people in ways that they did not anticipate. Now that they are dealing with the reality of that, they don’t like what they see.

Musk’s rising unpopularity with the American people and his deranged ketamine-fueled 3:00 AM rants are like a giant anchor around Trump and this administration’s leg, dragging them under. Trump has never been popular - even many of the people who have voted for him think he has many contemptible personal qualities - so he doesn’t have the goodwill with a solid majority of the public to overcome a co-president with a 30% approval rating.

Republicans in Congress care about self-preservation first and foremost above all other considerations. That is why they don’t cross Trump - they fear that he will endorse someone in a GOP primary to unseat them. But when they get to the point where they fear the ire of voters in their districts more than they fear Trump’s vindictiveness, that is when they will start to abandon him. It will happen incrementally, and it will only happen with a small percentage of them. But that will be enough to turn the tide in Congress because they cling to tiny majorities in both Chambers.

Robert: The first signs of an electoral backlash against Trump emerged in polling that measured public reaction to Trump's four-week rolling coup and destruction derby. Republican members of Congress have found themselves on the receiving end of hostile town hall meetings and melting phone lines. Given the acceleration in Trump’s lawlessness and destruction in the last week, we must assume that the sudden increase in Trump's unfavorability ratings understates his unpopularity... those polls reveal the way forward: Rallying public opinion against Trump and his anti-democratic, anti-government, anti-people policies. We have made significant progress in four weeks—to the point that we can begin to see the outlines of a Democratic victory in the House in 2026... Four weeks in, we can begin to feel the ground shift in our favor.

See what I mean?

I wrote this last May. I think it’s more true now:

The wind has shifted. It’s at our backs and growing stronger (which is why Dilbert is making the moves he is). Like the Greek citizens of Athens in 480 B.C. who went into the ships and manned the oars and thereby won the Battle of Salamis, defeating the Persian Empire in a fight almost everyone thought the Athenians would lose, or the crews who manned the dive bombers on the three American aircraft carriers at Midway and destroyed the heart of Kido Butai, changing the entire course of the Pacific War, it’s time to do the job at hand and be heroes. Not doing so is a slap in the face to every ancestor you have who came here, despite all the difficulties, in search of a better life.

And this is still good advice:

Saving your country is hard work. But like Kamala Harris said last year, “Hard work is good work!” TAFM works every day to keep up with the shifting winds. There will be good news with bad news on top of it and you need to know all of it. Your support as a paid subscriber helps it happen. Only $7/month or $70/year.

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