I was up very very early Tuesday, for a lifeguarding shift. There were caddis flies hatching everywhere, and I didn’t think my camera would catch them, but it did:
They’re fine. Don’t bite. Hatch out of the lake, fly around and die. The fish go crazy for them.
Afterward I swam. The morning was cool, the water heated. It was…heavenly. At least four of the other swimmers had caught the Grosse Pointe stop on the Barbara McQuade book-a-palooza, and were impressed by how great it was, how smart she was. We wondered where we are as a country. Then we swam some more.
I can’t tell you how much I resent having this asshole in my brain for, what? A decade now. And I suspect that even if he bites the big one tomorrow, it’ll be another decade, or longer, flushing him out of the nation’s system.
But that’s no way to start a pleasant Tuesday, is it?
I keep watching the Saga of the Reflecting Pool. As of late afternoon Tuesday, it appeared workers were putting fencing? Around the pool? And cops were rousting anyone who even went near the actual water. Josh Marshall with a few thoughts:
We’ve discussed in the past Donald Trump’s penchant for creating spurious backstories to justify his various building projects. We were told last year that presidents and executive branch officials had been complaining for decades — or centuries! — about the need for a White House ballroom. “For more than 150 years, every President has dreamt about having a Ballroom at the White House to accommodate people for grand parties, State Visits, etc,” he claimed at one point. And it took him to finally create it.
Rinse and repeat: these absurd fairy tales are always part of the Trump sales job. With the Reflecting Pool it’s apparently been in crisis for the last century. Only Trump is going to be able to fix it for good.
Everyone wanted abortion returned to the states too, remember?
Man, these Ukrainians are some tough dudes:
For several months last year, a Ukrainian housewife, 35 and lonely in a marriage that had gone cold, traded WhatsApp messages with a Chechen commander, Achmad, stationed somewhere in Ukraine’s occupied south. They wrote about their days, their disappointments, what they hoped to do when the war ended. She asked about the front. He told her.
“Send me a picture,” she said. “I want to see your life.”
One afternoon, he obliged—a photograph taken inside the barracks, of himself and another soldier grinning for the camera. Behind them, pinned to the wall, was a map of the compound showing the unit’s position.
The housewife did not exist. “She” was a middle-aged officer named Serhiy working for Ukraine’s military-intelligence directorate, part of a concerted effort to draw secrets from the men sent to occupy his country.
“Serhiy was great at flirting,” his commander told me. “Guys in our team started asking him for dating advice.” Shortly after Achmad sent that photograph, the coordinates it revealed were struck by a Ukrainian drone.
Well, when the United States abandons you, sometimes you gotta choose a new path.
Another night of rough sleep last night, so I’m going to hit the hay while the sun still shines. Not hard to do around the solstice. A good summer lies ahead, I hope, for everybody.
Mark P said on June 24, 2026 at 1:24 am
A few months ago one of our dogs had diarrhea on one of our area rugs. It was one that I liked, so I took it outside and tried to clean it. I used detergent and a pressure washer. I thought it was clean, but after it dried it still stank of dog shit. Our country is like that rug, and Donald Trump is the shit stain.
316 chars
Jeff Gill said on June 24, 2026 at 10:23 am
Happy happy fat fish. Gotta have the hatch to feed them! “The cirrrrrrcle of liiiiiiiife….”
93 chars
Jeff Gill said on June 24, 2026 at 12:48 pm
I am slowly, piecemeal, working my way through the long 1997 article by the late Mark Singer about a Queens real estate mogul, Jersey casino owner, and Florida resort promoter. This paragraph I had to copy/paste here:
“The most direct but not exactly most serene way to travel to Mar-a-Lago, I discovered one weekend not long ago, is aboard Trump’s 727, the same aircraft he gave up during the blip and, after an almost decent interval, bought back. My fellow-passengers included Eric Javits, a lawyer and nephew of the late Senator Jacob Javits, bumming a ride; Ghislaine Maxwell, the daughter of the late publishing tycoon and inadequate swimmer Robert Maxwell, also bumming a ride; Matthew Calamari, a telephone-booth-size bodyguard who is the head of security for the entire Trump Organization; and Eric Trump, Donald’s thirteen-year-old son.
The solid-gold fixtures and hardware (sinks, seat-belt clasps, door hinges, screws), well-stocked bar and larder, queen-size bed, and bidet (easily outfitted with a leather-cushioned cover in case of sudden turbulence) implied hedonistic possibilities—the plane often ferried high rollers to Atlantic City—but I witnessed only good clean fun. We hadn’t been airborne long when Trump decided to watch a movie. He’d brought along “Michael,” a recent release, but twenty minutes after popping it into the VCR he got bored and switched to an old favorite, a Jean Claude Van Damme slugfest called “Bloodsport,” which he pronounced “an incredible, fantastic movie.” By assigning to his son the task of fast-forwarding through all the plot exposition—Trump’s goal being “to get this two-hour movie down to forty-five minutes”—he eliminated any lulls between the nose hammering, kidney tenderizing, and shin whacking. When a beefy bad guy who was about to squish a normal-sized good guy received a crippling blow to the scrotum, I laughed. “Admit it, you’re laughing!” Trump shouted. “You want to write that Donald Trump was loving this ridiculous Jean Claude Van Damme movie, but are you willing to put in there that you were loving it, too?”
2130 chars
alex said on June 24, 2026 at 7:31 pm
Got a good chortle out of “inadequate swimmer Robert Maxwell,” whom everybody suspects was pushed overboard at sea by KGB operatives.
133 chars
Sherri said on June 24, 2026 at 9:37 pm
It’s taken longer than I would have hoped, but it looks like reality is finally starting to assert itself over Trump. The reflecting pool is the funniest way, and the loss to Iran the most significant.
Now, a damaging earthquake in Venezuela, which Trump has claimed to be in charge of. Somehow I don’t see him thinking that his responsibility extends to offering significant aid to Venezuela, which will make it harder for his puppet to hold power.
458 chars
Jeff Gill said on June 25, 2026 at 6:27 am
I can’t stop; remember, this is in 1997:
“The list of superpower leaders and geopolitical strategists with whom Trump has engaged in frank and fruitful exchanges of viewpoints includes Mikhail Gorbachev, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Bush, former Secretary of Defense William Perry, and the entire Joint Chiefs of Staff. (He’s also pals with Sylvester Stallone and Clint Eastwood, men’s men who enjoy international reputations for racking up massive body counts.) In 1987, fresh from his grandest public-relations coup—repairing in three and a half months, under budget and for no fee, the Wollman skating rink, in Central Park, a job that the city of New York had spent six years and twelve million dollars bungling—Trump contemplated how, in a larger sphere, he could advertise himself as a doer and dealmaker. One stunt involved orchestrating an “invitation” from the federal government to examine the Williamsburg Bridge, which was falling apart. Trump had no real interest in the job, but by putting on a hard hat and taking a stroll on the bridge for the cameras he stoked the fantasy that he could rebuild the city’s entire infrastructure. From there it was only a short leap to saving the planet. What if, say, a troublemaker like Muammar Qaddafi got his hands on a nuclear arsenal? Well, Trump declared, he stood ready to work with the leaders of the then Soviet Union to coördinate a formula for coping with Armageddon-minded lunatics.”
Mark tried to tell us.
1511 chars
Jeff Gill said on June 25, 2026 at 8:33 am
Dear Lord. 1997, for pity’s sake.
“The clear purpose of Lebed’s trip to America, an unofficial visit that coincided with the second Clinton Inaugural, was to add some reassuring human texture to his image as a plainspoken tough guy. Simultaneously, his domestic political prospects could be enhanced if voters back home got the message that Western capitalists felt comfortable with him. Somewhere in Lebed’s calculations was the understanding that, to the nouveau entrepreneurs of the freebooter’s paradise that is now Russia, Trump looked and smelled like very old money.
Their rendezvous was scheduled for midmorning. Having enlisted as an interpreter Inga Bogutska, a receptionist whose father, by coincidence, was a Russian general, Trump decided to greet his visitor in the lobby. When it turned out that Lebed, en route from an audience with a group of Times editors and reporters, was running late, Trump occupied himself by practicing his golf swing and surveying the female pedestrians in the atrium. Finally, Lebed arrived, a middle-aged but ageless fellow with a weathered, fleshy face and hooded eyes, wearing a gray business suit and an impassive expression. After posing for a Times photographer, they rode an elevator to the twenty-sixth floor, and along the way Trump asked, “So, how is everything in New York?”
“Well, it’s hard to give an assessment, but I think it is brilliant,” Lebed replied. He had a deep, bullfroggy voice, and his entourage of a half-dozen men included an interpreter, who rendered Inga Bogutska superfluous.
“Yes, it’s been doing very well,” Trump agreed. “New York is on a very strong up. And we’ve been reading a lot of great things about this gentleman and his country.”
[edit]
Trump introduced Lebed to Howard Lorber, who had accompanied him a few months earlier on his journey to Moscow, where they looked at properties to which the Trump moniker might be appended. “Howard has major investments in Russia,” he told Lebed, but when Lorber itemized various ventures none seemed to ring a bell.
“See, they don’t know you,” Trump told Lorber. “With all that investment, they don’t know you. Trump they know.”
Some “poisonous people” at the Times, Lebed informed Trump, were “spreading some funny rumors that you are going to cram Moscow with casinos.””
2362 chars
Jeff Gill said on June 25, 2026 at 8:40 am
Okay, I’ll stop with this, because I think the point is clear, is it not, tovarishch?
“Laughing, Trump said, “Is that right?”
“I told them that I know you build skyscrapers in New York. High-quality skyscrapers.”
“We are actually looking at something in Moscow right now, and it would be skyscrapers and hotels, not casinos. Only quality stuff. But thank you for defending me. I’ll soon be going again to Moscow. We’re looking at the Moskva Hotel. We’re also looking at the Rossiya. That’s a very big project; I think it’s the largest hotel in the world. And we’re working with the local government, the mayor of Moscow and the mayor’s people. So far, they’ve been very responsive.”
Lebed: “You must be a very confident person. You are building straight into the center.”
Trump: “I always go into the center.”
Lebed: “I hope I’m not offending by saying this, but I think you are a litmus testing paper. You are at the end of the edge. If Trump goes to Moscow, I think America will follow. So I consider these projects of yours to be very important. And I’d like to help you as best I can in putting your projects into life. I want to create a canal or riverbed for capital flow. I want to minimize the risks and get rid of situations where the entrepreneur has to try to hide his head between his shoulders. I told the New York Times I was talking to you because you are a professional—a high-level professional—and if you invest, you invest in real stuff. Serious, high-quality projects. And you deal with serious people. And I deem you to be a very serious person. That’s why I’m meeting you.””
Just for context, in 1997 Putin was a senior staffer for Boris Yeltsin in economic development, and finishing up his doctorate in economics going back and forth to St. Petersburg.
1851 chars
Sherri said on June 25, 2026 at 1:52 pm
Retatrutide, the next generation weight loss drug by Eli Lilly, is currently in clinical trials. Lilly has granted compassionate use access to a single person, who was 79 at the time of application. From STAT (article is paywalled):
STAT does not know who the patient is. But given the patient demographics and the unusual nature of the application, STAT asked the White House multiple times whether the patient was President Trump, who turned 80 a week ago, is overweight, and has expressed interest in obesity drugs.
White House spokesperson Kush Desai directed STAT’s inquiry to the Health and Human Services Department. In response to STAT’s question about whether Trump has obstructive sleep apnea and pulmonary hypertension, Desai said a White House memo detailing Trump’s most recent medical evaluation “covers this.” The memo makes no mention of obstructive sleep apnea or pulmonary hypertension.
After this story was published, Desai said on X that the application was not for the president.
HHS spokesperson Emily Hilliard did not address the retatrutide application or the patient’s identity when responding to STAT’s questions.
1173 chars
Mark P said on June 25, 2026 at 5:56 pm
Oh thank goodness, Trump has his out in the reflecting pool disaster — the Park Service says someone cut it with a knife or razor. I can’t wait to see the video. I mean, surely the surveillance state has cameras on the mall and around the pool. And it would have taken quite a while to cut the lining, and it would have been pretty obvious, what with the necessity to get into the pool to do the cutting.
408 chars
Jeff Gill said on June 25, 2026 at 5:58 pm
All of which would, if it is Trump, point towards pulmonary hypertension, which is a bastard of a health syndrome to treat. But would explain the tendency to doze off when seated, increased fogginess & confusion, and swelling of the feet & ankles.
255 chars
Sherri said on June 25, 2026 at 9:11 pm
Yep, it sure fits with what we’ve seen of Trump. They can repeat all they want how healthy he is, but he sure doesn’t look healthy. I’ve never thought that CVI was the cause of his swollen ankles; I’m not a doctor, but I also know that my doctor (and my kidney doctor) always want to see my ankles because I have high blood pressure. It would seem more likely that something like hypertension or congestive heart failure would be producing that.
Sure would be interesting to know what medications he’s on, including whatever it is that they’re infusing via IV in his hand. (No, I don’t buy the handshaking explanation for the bruises on the back of his hand, either.)
685 chars
Sherri said on June 25, 2026 at 9:15 pm
Also seems more likely that if the reflecting pool surface was damaged (other than by the hydrogen peroxide they dumped in), it was damaged by driving the presidential motorcade on it than by a vandal with a knife.
214 chars
Mark P said on June 25, 2026 at 9:34 pm
Trump has been photographed with makeup (apparently applied with a putty knife) on both hands. Maybe he’s been doing the double-handed handshake as well as the two-fisted jerkoff dance.
187 chars
susan said on June 25, 2026 at 9:41 pm
DuckDuckGo’s AI Feature Is Telling Users That Trump Died of Rabies Earlier This Month
Such a sweet hallucination!
250 chars
Sherri said on June 25, 2026 at 10:10 pm
I’m out of words to describe the awful decisions coming out of SCOTUS, so I defer to Lewis Carroll:
“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.”
450 chars
Mark P said on June 25, 2026 at 10:59 pm
There are so many things that should have been done in Biden’s first two years. Prosecuting Trump, of course, but expanding the Supreme Court for sure.
153 chars
Julie Robinson said on June 26, 2026 at 11:08 am
An EMT posits that Trump has not just congestive heart failure, but also an abdominal aortic aneurysm. I posted his Substack at the end of the last post. Whatever it is, it’s obvious he’s a very sick man
203 chars
ROGirl said on June 26, 2026 at 11:34 am
If he had an abdominal aneurysm they would have to remove it surgically.
72 chars
ROGirl said on June 26, 2026 at 11:40 am
My father had an abdominal aneurysm, due to coumadin. It was removed, but he had more internal bleeding and they had to do more surgery on him. He went downhill quickly after that and died in the hospital after they took him out of intensive care, 2 weeks after the first surgery.
280 chars
Mark P said on June 26, 2026 at 3:02 pm
I didn’t realize until recently that Trump seems to be right about the reflecting pool being vandalized. I guess I have not been keeping up with the news, but the vandals were actually caught on video and the video has been shown. Back in May, after the blue liner was applied to the pool, Trump had a motorcade out to inspect it and bloviate some, and then his motorcade drove right down the middle of the pool. Vandals indeed.
430 chars
Dexter Friend said on June 26, 2026 at 4:09 pm
I have been paying attention to THE BOOK, you know which one. It’s back ordered everywhere in its third printing so far. Haberman and Swan obtained tapes of the wildest stuff from The White House. Regime Change. Eventually I’ll buy it when I see it available.
261 chars
Deborah said on June 26, 2026 at 5:36 pm
My husband had an aortic abdominal aneurism Which he had surgery several years ago, but his Drs knew about it for years before that and didn’t perform surgery until it got to a certain size, golf ball diameter size as I recall. It was serious surgery but he flew through it, stayed only one night in the hospital. He had cankles for a while and high blood pressure but that went away fairly soon after. It is deadly if they don’t know it’s there and it gets too big. If it bursts you’re pretty much done for immediately.
My husband never smoked or had much to drink, and is trim and eats well and exercises so it wasn’t from his lifestyle.
643 chars
Deborah said on June 26, 2026 at 7:44 pm
Something has been happening when I’m on Chrome, I keep getting pop-ups now, it’s very irritating. So I googled how do I stop getting pop-ups, I followed the directions but it’s still happening. This just started yesterday, so what in the heck is going on? Is this more shitification by Google or what? I’m about to ditch Chrome and go back to Safari. Has this happened to any of you?
384 chars
basset said on June 27, 2026 at 1:13 pm
And… the soccer team lost but they’re still in it? How does that work? Not real clear on that, or stoppage play, or most of this soccer business.
Replaced knee is doing pretty well, good range of motion… took a fall this week and landed on the other one. ER, wraps, pain meds, etc. but we’re coming back from that one too.
331 chars
Deborah said on June 27, 2026 at 5:43 pm
Ouch Basset, that made me cringe.
I managed to get off of Chrome and set up on Safari to become my default browser and block pop-ups, I also made Duck Duck Go my default search engine. I don’t really want to get a different email account so I don’t use gmail anymore but the thought of changing my email address again is painful. I changed it to gmail because I got hacked in my previous one.
I got a really confusing email from Google today before I did all of this with info about terms of service or whatnot. I have no idea what they were asking me to do.
564 chars
Sherri said on June 27, 2026 at 6:54 pm
Basset, the US Men’s soccer team lost a game that didn’t matter. 48 teams make the World Cup, and they’re divided into groups of four to play among each other. The first and second teams after this proceed to the knockout round, along with the top 8 third place finishers among the groups. Then those 32 teams play a single-elimination tournament. The game the US lost to Turkey had no impact on their standing in the group, because they had already clinched the top spot in their group.
The next time they lose, they will be eliminated.
Extra time is added to each half at the referees’ discretion. Soccer uses a running clock, which doesn’t stop for any delays (like video review, or an injured player.) The referee makes an estimation of time lost to delays, and declares that much extra time when the clock hits 45’ (first half) and 90’. The teams continue to play until the referee declares the half is over, which is usually some time after the allotted extra time has passed (in other words, extra time usually has some additional time to make up for delays during the extra time. The teams don’t know exactly when the half will end.
1162 chars
Jeff Gill said on June 27, 2026 at 7:38 pm
For all you Fort Wayne folk here:
https://x.com/literateindy/status/2070912129318719553
90 chars
basset said on June 28, 2026 at 6:51 am
Seems like a strange way to do it, but what do I know… so play just continues till the referee stops it, or are the teams told at some point how much time is left?
Watching indoor soccer was fun back when we lived in Wichita forty-plus years ago but I can’t get interested in the outdoor game at all.
Did a dog run yesterday, helped carry a rescue from east Texas to Vermont… another driver handed her off to us about an hour west of Nashville and we took her into the city. she stayed the night with a volunteer,,and going by the texts I’m getting she’s approaching Bowling Green, Ky. right now.
606 chars
Deborah said on June 28, 2026 at 8:59 am
The first sentence of Heather Cox Richardson’s letter today (but represents yesterday when she wrote it):
“Observers are noting that the reflecting pool fiasco, in which Trump created the idea there was an emergency, ignored experts, bypassed normal procedures to give a wildly inflated contract to a crony, bragged about his success, ignored the problems, claimed his enemies had sabotaged him, and finally stationed troops around the landmark he had turned into a swamp, represents the Trump administration perfectly.”
523 chars
Jeff Gill said on June 28, 2026 at 9:05 am
Basset, first, sorry about your other knee!
Yeah, stoppage time is one of the deep mysteries of soccer/football. It goes on as long as the ref decides it goes, and the teams & coaches can estimate it, but it might be 6 minutes, it could be 9, you don’t know until the ref blows that final whistle.
304 chars
nancy said on June 28, 2026 at 1:38 pm
I always found it somewhat pathetic that Carole Lombard loomed so large in Fort Wayne. She was born there, true, but moved to Los Angeles with her mother at the age of six and, to my knowledge, never returned, except to maybe sell war bonds on one of those barnstorming tours.
276 chars
Sherri said on June 28, 2026 at 1:46 pm
I’m not much of a fan of soccer, but my husband likes to watch it. Our daughter played it recreationally all the way through high school, so I’ve learned the rules more or less.
I will say I thoroughly enjoyed the two World Cup games I attended back in 1994 at Stanford Stadium. The crowds were fun and joyous, unlike the often drunk crowds you get at American football games. I know that’s not universally true of soccer crowds, soccer hooligans being a well-known phenomenon, but it was true then.
Seattle is a soccer-crazy area, so there are huge watch parties all over the place for the World Cup, and the games being played here are huge events.
664 chars
alex said on June 28, 2026 at 2:27 pm
Other than Carol Lombard, the only other person who ever gave Fort Wayne any bragging rights was Bill Blass, and he ditched the place just as soon as he could way back when. We also had the guy who invented TV but I forget who that was.
236 chars
Suzanne said on June 28, 2026 at 3:09 pm
Philo Farnsworth is the tv guy.
I had always heard that Bill Blass wouldn’t return to Fort Wayne for love or money or anything in between. But then I came across this: https://www.journalgazette.net/living/bill-blass-returns-to-city-for-fashion-show-in-1971/article_e7f235a2-3fb2-5c88-bb30-6c090ab05292.html
He did return in 1971. If you can’t read the article, this part made me smile “His hometown never seemed to be his favorite place. Asked once by the Washington Post about why there were many fashion designers from the Hoosier state, he replied, “I guess we mainly wanted to get out of Indiana.””
620 chars
Julie Robinson said on June 28, 2026 at 3:19 pm
Don’t forget Shelley Long, yet another actor who was lucky enough to be in a hit sitcom, and thought it was all due to her. So she left early and her career since has been…huh, all I can think of is Troop Beverly Hills.
221 chars
Jeff Gill said on June 28, 2026 at 4:01 pm
This might amuse Basset, from a guy I know on Xwitter:
Soccer refs: We 3D-scanned all 1,248 players before the tournament, track every limb 50 times a second, and can confirm you are offside by a toenail. No goal.
Soccer refs: Added time? I’m thinking… seven minutes. Actually, ten. Could be twelve. Hard to say really.
327 chars