The Democratic autopsy

- Rembrandt - The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp

‘A huge omission’: Everyone is baffled by the exclusion of Gaza in DNC autopsy

[...] Multiple progressive activists said they had spoken with the report’s author about how the Biden administration’s approach to the Israel-Hamas conflict hurt former Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign, especially with younger and more progressive voters ...

Sigh :( I guess it is inevitable that the Democratic party would try to pin the blame for losing the last presidential election on Biden. They don't want to face the truth behind their failure.

Biden was right to go to Israel's aid after the terrible attack from Hamas. The fact that Muslim voters and young male voter chose Trump doesn't prove Biden was wrong, it proves how dumb those voters were.

The reason most voters turned away from the Democratic party was not because of Israel, it was because the Democratic party forgot what its constituency traditionally was - the poor, the struggling, the disenfranchised. Kamala Harris ran a campaign that was about entitlement, wealth, and imagined moral superiority. She was a bad candidate, and the party she led abandoned the lower and working classes.

That's why we lost. And if we keep lying to ourselves, we'll lose again.

Super pollutants

Trump administration says new EPA rules will save you money at the supermarket. It’s not clear they will

President Donald Trump announced on Thursday a delay to two Biden-era EPA refrigerant rules, arguing the move will cut costs for companies and save consumers money at the grocery store ....

But it was unclear Thursday whether or how companies like grocers would use those savings to make it more affordable for shoppers to fill their carts. The changes would not require grocers to take any steps to cut prices at a time when many households see their budgets stretched by soaring gas prices and years of elevated inflation.

The rules target hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, potent greenhouse gases commonly used in refrigeration and air conditioning systems that are widely accepted as contributors to global warming. Under the Biden administration, the EPA in 2023 finalized regulations aimed at cutting leaks and emissions from those systems, affecting industries ranging from grocery stores and food distribution to semiconductor manufacturing. Now, the EPA is delaying compliance by revising the 2023 rule and another regulation from 2024 ...

Read more about super pollutants at Wikipedia

More air pollution, brought to you by the worst Presient for the environment in the history of our country.

Balboa Park

Spotted: four little cheetahbros making a paws-itively adorable debut 🐆✨ pic.twitter.com/ZgYyoA5RWW

— San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance (@sandiegozoo) May 19, 2026

For a while I lived in San Diego with my sister. Almost every day I would go jogging on the trails at Balboa Park, where the San Diego Zoo lives. Afterwards I would buy one of those Chipwich ice cream sandwiches from a vender there.

Balboa Park is one of the great urban parks in the United States. At twice the size of New York’s Central Park, Balboa Park is also the sight of the San Diego Zoo, the Globe Theater, and several museums. There are 65 miles of trails and paths, and a lovely variety of lush terrain through gardens and groves ... - Great Runs

Two songs

Share your favorite The Police song! 👇🏻 pic.twitter.com/2fqW2v1nDE

— 🎸 Rock History 🎸 (@historyrock_) May 18, 2026

This ...



And this one ...

The pay off

DOJ sets up $1.8B ‘anti-weaponization’ fund after Trump drops IRS lawsuit

[...] The massive fund would give Jan. 6 rioters pardoned by Trump a mechanism to seek taxpayer payouts for their claims of government overreach. The fund could even issue “formal apologies” to people who made claims against the government, the announcement said. The fund will stop processing claims by Dec. 15, 2028, about a month before Trump’s second term is set to end ...

You know, so Trump can use our taxpayer dollars to reward his police-beating followers ...

"Democrats, where are you?"

I took a lot of history classes in school, and so this comes as no surprise. The ancient world and the middle ages are rife with antisemitism. What's depressing is that people just don't think about it. I guess they are too much in love with having a group they can "justifiably" hate.

Every Time I Think of You

The Babys. On the muzak at the grocery store today.

Horseshoe Theory

Horseshoe theory

The Anti Israel Horseshoe Theory: How Israel is Reshaping the 2026 Midterms

[...] The 2026 midterm elections are becoming the first modern American election cycle in which hostility toward Israel is no longer confined to the political fringes. Instead, anti-Israel rhetoric has become a strange meeting point between the populist extreme right and the activist extreme left. Two movements that agree on almost nothing else, yet increasingly speak a common language when it comes to Israel.

This is not merely a foreign policy debate. It is becoming a defining cultural and ideological fault line inside American politics itself.

Political scientists call this phenomenon “horseshoe theory,” the idea that the far left and far right, rather than remaining opposites, eventually bend toward one another at the extremes. In 2026, Israel sits directly at the point where that horseshoe closes ....

I've watched my party - the Democrats - become more and more anti-Israel, even though the vast majority of Jewish Americans are Democrats, trying (I think dishonestly) to link Israel to the colonialism and oppression of our own European history.

And the Republicans have always been conflicted, having some members who are pro-Israel for their own religious reasons, while also having a history of hating Jews (the KKK, etc.).

I think, at the end of the day, both the Democratic party and the Republican party have deep reservoirs of antisemitism that they refuse to acknowledge and deal with. So they deflect and it persists.

Israel isn't the bad guy (or the good guy). Israel is the litmus test Americans find easy to use for their own varied purposes.

The latest grift

Endangered Species Day

For a Coming Extinction - W.S. Merwin

Gray whale
Now that we are sending you to The End
That great god
Tell him
That we who follow you invented forgiveness
And forgive nothing

I write as though you could understand
And I could say it
One must always pretend something
Among the dying
When you have left the seas nodding on their stalks
Empty of you
Tell him that we were made
On another day

The bewilderment will diminish like an echo
Winding along your inner mountains
Unheard by us
And find its way out
Leaving behind it the future
Dead
And ours

When you will not see again
The whale calves trying the light
Consider what you will find in the black garden
And its court
The sea cows the Great Auks the gorillas
The irreplaceable hosts ranged countless
And foreordaining as stars
Our sacrifices

Join your word to theirs
Tell him
That it is we who are important

Oceana

Today is Endangered Species Day.



The Republicans don't seem to care anymore about the environment, the Trump administration only wants to exploit it for money, and even most Democrats seem to only see it as an energy topic. It's our ecosystem, made up of the plants and animals that share the world with us - I think we should be preserving it, not plundering it.

Trip to China

"My precious"

I'm shocked, shocked, I say! Of course he doesn't give a poop about our financial situations. And, come on - he doesn't give a poop about the nuclear thing either. That's just his "acceptable" excuse for starting the war. But he does care about one thing ... his precious ... the big beautiful ballroom.

War movies

Retired general Mark Hertling discusses war movies. Strange though it may seem, I have some past posts about war movies, like Ten for the 4th. It's interesting to hear a military person's opinion of some of the films.

AI Chatbots

Mother's Day

Happy #MothersDay 🦦🦊🦝🐐💕

From fluffy kits to tiny pups to miniature hatchlings, the spring season is a time when these adorable newborns steal the spotlight (or sunlight).☀️

How well do you know wildlife species and their offspring? Take our quiz 📲: https://t.co/Ectwj8m0Kq pic.twitter.com/BArnKhCCOk

— National Wildlife Federation (@NWF) May 10, 2026

California

Hosted by Ezra Klein, a discussion between Democrats running for governor of California. It was on one subject .... how to affect the affordability of housing in the state.

At first I found it kind of boring, but towards the end they started talking about homelessness ... a big concern in CA ... and it helped me zero in on who I might vote for (voting has already started).

I mentioned before that I thought I would vote for Tom Steyer, and I still like him best, I think, but I also liked what Katie Porter and Matt Mahan had to say.

One thing mentioned during the talk was the scary California Forever project. It's creepy that a guy from the Czech Republic, former Goldman Sachs employee in the UK, wh has been here just over 10 years, thinks he knows what's best for this stste....

Ezra Klein on GLP-1 drugs

I'm interested in this as I did take one of these drugs for about a year.

If I had to choose

You can bring ONLY 1 back to life! 👇🏻 pic.twitter.com/HzPDEOaF2B

— 🎸 Rock History 🎸 (@historyrock_) May 7, 2026

David Bowie :)



The Man Who Sold the World, at the BBC Radio Theatre in London on June 27, 2000.

Dark Matter

The latest science fiction book I'm reading from the library is Dark Matter by Blake Crouch.

Here's a bit about it from Wikipedia ...

Dark Matter is a thriller science fiction novel by American writer Blake Crouch .... The story is about a physicist who is kidnapped and sent to a parallel universe in which another version of his life unfolds because of a different choice he made fifteen years prior. The book draws on the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics which posits that every possible outcome of every event creates a new universe or world that runs parallel to our own ...

The book has been made into a tv series at Apple TV+. I haven't seen it, but here is a trailer of the show ...



I'm only a little ways into the book but it seems good so far.

Now it's $1 billion

Senate GOP eyes $1 billion for Trump ballroom security as part of ICE, border patrol package

Senate Republicans are looking to give the US Secret Service $1 billion to shore up security for President Donald Trump’s future White House ballroom, as part of a broader immigration enforcement package.

Two GOP-led Senate committees unveiled late Monday their roughly $70 billion package to fund US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and border patrol, which they plan to pass with only Republican votes

The Senate Judiciary and Homeland Security committees are aiming to spend roughly $38 billion for ICE and around $26 billion for US Customs and Border Patrol functions and upgrades, according to legislative text released by the panels. The funding would run through the end of September 2029.

The Judiciary Committee also tucked in the additional $1 billion in Secret Service funding that could go toward Trump’s ballroom project ...

People are losing health care benefits, food assistance, and gas is through the roof, but ... the ballroom!

Tom Steyer

It's almost time to vote in the primary election for governor of California. It's a nonpartisan or "jungle" primary and the fear is that we will end up with two Republicans to choose between.

I still haven't decided for sure who to vote for. I probably would have voted for Eric Swallwell before all the bad stuff came out about him.

I think I'll end up voting for Tom Steyer, mainly bevcause he cares about the environment, and has been endorsed by organizations like the Center for Biological Diversity.

So anyway, let's find out more about him ...

Forever war

But but but ... I thought the war with Iran had been "terminated"?

SNAP

FACT FOCUS: Why nearly 4.3 million people are no longer receiving food stamps

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins this week attributed a multimillion-person drop in the number of participants receiving food stamps through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to the tamping down of fraud and an improved economy. But experts discount those factors, saying the primary driver of the decrease was more likely new legislation that changed how the program runs ...

This would be millionaire Brooke Rollins, who has said that the only people who should be on food stamps are those who would starve to death otherwise.

How much does a person living where I do need every month for gtoceries and sundry items? According to the Google bot ...

A single person with pets in California can expect to spend approximately $150 to $250+ per week on groceries and pet supplies. While general food costs for one in CA average around $177/week, pet food, litter, and household items, plus higher costs in metro areas, often push this closer to $200-$250.

So that would mean spending about $800 to $1000 a month.

Oh dearie me - no wonder SNAP has to dump so many people off the rolls, when they must get soooo much taxpayer cash every month.

Guess how much money a person like me (elderly disabled homeowner living on social security) gets from SNAP to help pay for one month of food. $27. Yes, twenty-seven dollars.

The jewel in the crown

In the news ... Mamdani says King Charles III should give India back its diamond

What diamond, you ask? The Koh-i-Noor, which sits in the Crown of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother ...

The crown is decorated with about 2,800 diamonds, most notably the 105-carat (21.0 g) Koh-i-Noor in the middle of the front cross, which was acquired by the East India Company after the Anglo-Sikh Wars and presented to Queen Victoria in 1851 ... The Koh-i-Noor became a part of the Crown Jewels when it was left to the Crown upon Victoria's death in 1901. It had been successively mounted in the crowns of Queen Alexandra and Queen Mary before it was transferred to the Queen Mother's crown.

It would be nice if they would give it back, along with the Elgin Marbles and whatever other booty their empire "liberated" back in the day.

AI Data Centers

In the news today ... The $25 Billion Bill: The Hidden Environmental Cost of America’s Data Center Boom

And this from Business Insider ...