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