Tomorrow USA

Happy Canada Day! 🇨🇦 Bonne fête du Canada !

It must be nice to have a rational leader who isn't the head of a dodgy crime family.

Elbows up!

[ ... ]

The Great American State Fair is exactly what you’d expect from Donald Trump. It’s a real life manifestation of Trumpland. An attempt to buy goodwill with more bread, and more circuses. He’s slapped together some cheap, gaudy crap and then thrown a giant flag on top to hide the glue and tape for the chumps and suckers. »

— Dominic Gwinn at Wonkette reporting on his visit to Trump's tacky fair at the National Mall.

Any real state fair is better than Trump's depressing shit-hole in DC. Here's are some of the best...

Top 5 State Fairs

There's a good reason most state fairs are not held during the hottest weeks of summer. Here's the weather for the next few days at the DC MAGA Fair:

Extreme Heat Watch URGENT - WEATHER MESSAGE National Weather Service Baltimore MD/Washington DC

An excerpt...

IMPACTS...Heat related illnesses increase significantly during extreme heat and high humidity events. Hot temperatures and high humidity may cause heat illnesses.

On Tuesday the US Supreme Court just barely upheld the right of birthright citizenship. It doesn't get any closer than a 5 to 4 vote at SCOTUS.

At least for now, the Donald Trump-Stephen Miller vision of an ethno-nationalist US lies in ruins. But don't think they won't try this again in some form.

After Chris Hayes denounced the Trump-Miller assault on the US Constitution, he spoke with constitutional scholar Sherrilyn Ifill.

^^^ Trump wants "American flag blue".

If we work for the next 18 weeks, we can give Trump more blue than he could ever imagine.

Trump's fair on the National Mall is doing so pathetically poorly that they had to edit out the sunglasses of a guitarist who was performing there.

The reflection from the sunglasses revealed that there were fewer than a dozen people in this gigantic space who were attending a concert there.

When word spread about the tiny number of people there, the organizers cropped the photo to exclude the guitarist's sunglasses.

First of all, they basically confirmed that Donald Trump is a rapist.

Supreme Court Rejects Trump’s Latest Attempt to Avoid Paying E. Jean Carroll

The Supreme Court has issued a raft of recent decisions benefiting Donald Trump. But on Monday, the justices rejected his latest effort to avoid paying E. Jean Carroll millions of dollars a jury awarded her after finding Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation. Carroll had accused Trump of sexually assaulting her in a department store dressing room in the 1990s. Carroll successfully sued him in 2023, after he not only denied the allegation—calling it a “hoax” and a “conjob”—but mocked Carroll as “not my type.” A federal jury found Trump liable for $5 million in damages in May of 2023, after which Trump immediately denied the assault and once again mocked Carroll, leading to a second similar lawsuit, in which a jury quickly found that Trump owed an additional $83.3 million. Trump appealed both jury decisions, but a federal appellate court ruled against him in 2024. He took the initial case to the Supreme Court last summer. On Monday, the court declined to hear the case, leaving the initial judgment in place.

On a much different matter, SCOTUS ruled that location data on mobile devices is protected by the US Constitution.

Justices say Constitution protects people’s location history

The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that people have an expectation of privacy from the government as their mobile devices track them throughout their daily activities, even when that information is shared with companies like Google and Apple. The 6-3 decision in Chatrie v. United States extends Fourth Amendment protections to data that people hand over to tech companies, meaning police need a warrant to obtain it. Justices Samuel Alito, Amy Coney Barrett and Clarence Thomas dissented. The Trump administration argued that users did not have an expectation of privacy after voluntarily sharing their location data with companies like Google.

The Australian Labor Party is arguably the most successful center-left party in the West today. It's won two general elections in a row, the last one gave them a thumping majority in Parliament.

Earlier this year the One Nation Party, roughly similar to far-right Reform UK, had been making inroads. One Nation surpassed Labor in a couple of polls. But the latest poll puts Labor back out in front. And in two-party preferred polling, Labor is ahead of both One Nation and the Liberal-National Coalition (center-right despite the name). The Greens have also gained a couple of percentage points and could eventually tie the floundering Coalition before long.

Pauline Hanson is the leader of One Nation. After a xenophobic outburst, she was criticized by Australian legend Paul Hogan.

Paul Hogan has reportedly called Pauline Hanson a ‘pelican’. Please explain?

In one swift rhetorical blow, Crocodile Dundee has disarmed Pauline Hanson’s latest attack on multiculturalism. But his weapon of choice has left some scratching their heads. Australian politics has spent a week recovering from the rightwing One Nation leader’s attempt to explain her controversial concept of “Australian monoculture”, first introduced at this month’s National Press Club address. On Wednesday, in a Senate speech, the One Nation leader said: “Bring back Paul Hogan and Norman Gunston. These are the essential features of Australian monoculture, and there’s nothing remotely exclusionary about them.” In response, Crocodile Dundee star Hogan, tracked down by the Australian Financial Review to Venice Beach, California, reached for a bird metaphor. “She’s a pelican, yeah,” he reportedly said (adding that Hanson “sounds very much like this stupid boofhead over here, Trump”).

Can't say I ever heard "pelican" used in this context. Though I do recall "boofhead" being used to describe Joffrey Baratheon when Game of Thrones was in production.

So going back to “pelican”, what does he mean exactly? Well, Hogan has prior form. In 1986’s Crocodile Dundee itself, his titular character tells a New York driver: “Get on the right side of the road, ya pelican!”

No matter which time frame you use for measuring it, heat is the leading cause of weather fatalities in the United States. (source of chart)

One estimate put the death toll during Chicago's 1995 killer heat wave at 734.

This is a timely stat because of an extreme heat event which will affect much of the US later this week.

A 'heat dome' is driving dangerous heat across the U.S. into the July 4 weekend

Extreme heat this week will blanket a majority of American states through the July 4 weekend, according to forecasters. The National Weather Service on Sunday said "dangerous to record setting heat will expand across the eastern two-thirds" of the country. In areas including Ohio, parts of North Carolina and Washington, D.C., the extreme temperatures and humidity will be especially threatening for people with respiratory issues and the elderly. "With the combination of high humidity, heat indices may reach 100-110 Degrees," said the NWS. "Much of the central and eastern U.S. is under a Moderate to Major HeatRisk, which can pose health impacts on those without hydration or cooling." [ ... ] Heat exhaustion, heat rash and heat stroke are a few types of heat-related illnesses, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Nausea, headache, confusion and dizziness are each possible symptoms. New York City Health Commissioner Alister Martin on Saturday said heat strokes are "fast, deadly, and almost always preventable." "As an ER doctor, I watched heat stroke come through the doors on days exactly like the ones ahead," Martin wrote in a social media post.

This comes as a similar hot spell has been frying Western Europe.

The hot spell will continue through the weekend before letting up a bit.

This vid provides an excellent explanation of heat domes.

h/t carrie44smith

That meme is probably more realistic than any "evidence" we're likely to get from Trump or his mouthpieces.

Trump is now fulminating about "criminally made algae". Seriously.

'Our president is insane': Critics ridicule Trump's rant on 'criminally made algae'

We can imagine Trump minion Kash Patel concocting a plot featuring an antifa algae factory in Takoma Park, Maryland.

^^^ Another way of thinking about what a trillion represents.

A sequence of photos from the New York Times shows the removal and re-installation of the nanobubblers.

How the Reflecting Pool Turned Green: Missing ‘Bubblers’ and a Rush Job

The nanobubblers had to go. It was early June, and the Trump administration was planning an event at the Lincoln Memorial on June 12 to promote President Trump’s Ultimate Fighting Championship birthday celebration at the White House. Dotted around the perimeter of the memorial’s Reflecting Pool were the nanobubblers, the temporary water-purification machines meant to keep the pool clear of algae. Encased in black fencing and powered by large generators, the machines were something of an eyesore. Before the event, the National Park Service asked Greenwater Services, which won a $1.7 million no-bid contract to install the nanobubblers, to remove them, according to two people briefed on the decision. The people asked for anonymity because they feared retaliation from the administration. The Park Service did not provide a reason for the removal, but it coincided exactly with the promotional event, which drew crowds to the Reflecting Pool.

Did Trump think that the nanobubblers would make more noise than his MMA gladiators? It's difficult to make sense out of his actions.

But by the time the algae appeared, it became too pervasive for the nanobubblers to deal with when they were brought back.

Once the algae started growing, it proved difficult to eliminate. Even with the nanobubblers back online, Park Service workers tried dumping jugs of hydrogen peroxide into the water to clear the algae more quickly. But the peroxide largely dissolved before it could reach the large clumps in the middle of the basin. The result was a Reflecting Pool that stayed green and murky for about a week because of the residual chlorophyll — a highly visible symbol of one of Mr. Trump’s pet projects gone very wrong. The decision to remove the water-treatment systems, which has not previously been reported, was one of several missteps that have plagued Mr. Trump’s $16.4 million renovation of the Reflecting Pool. There have been no-bid contracts, peeling strips of waterproof coating in Mr. Trump’s handpicked shade of “American flag blue,” and even a dead duck floating in the water (though it is not clear if the renovation had anything to do with the duck’s demise).

As for the blue coating, it was another disaster waiting to happen.

That coating, known as Rhino Pipeliner 5000, may be peeling off because it is not stretchy or flexible enough, said Anthony Flett, the chief executive of U.S. Coating Specialists, a Florida-based company that specializes in waterproofing substances. “They used a hybrid polyurea, and they really should have picked a pure poly,” Mr. Flett said, adding, “There’s people in the pool industry whose whole life is polyurea, and they should have been called in.”

So a MAGA influencer named Gian Rachtelli (AKA: "Manny"), dressed somewhat like Uncle Sam, got arrested for masturbating at Trump's failing Great American State Fair. The Bulwark's Tim Miller and Will Sommer provide full details – albeit in a PG-13 way. The puns in the YouTube comments are fun.

Also on the MAGA crime beat, Students for Trump founder Ryan Fournier has been in jail after multiple arrests this year. SAD!

^^^ Trump is a self-inflating hot air balloon. And as such, he is raising the chances of Democrats winning the midterm elections.

Capitol Hill Republicans have aided and abetted Trump since his return to power. They must share the blame for the inflation, the undeclared wars, the vanity projects, the incompetence, and rampant corruption.

Nobel economics laureate Paul Krugman details why almost everybody outside the broligarchy dislikes and/or distrusts AI.

First, we fear that AI will do terrible things because the companies selling it told us it would do terrible things. Last year, for example, Anthropic CEO Darius Amodei declared in an interview with Axios that AI could wipe out half of entry-level white-collar jobs and drive overall unemployment as high as 20 percent within 1 to 5 years. [ ... ] Second, many ordinary people view AI negatively because they feel that it is being forced on them. It’s true that many people are voluntarily using large language models for personal convenience or as a business productivity tool. But a significant part of AI use isn’t voluntary. [ ... ] Third, datacenters are a highly visible reminder of AI’s costs. Datacenters occupy huge tracts of land — one proposed site in Utah will be twice the size of Manhattan. They guzzle electricity and water. When they generate some of their own power, they create major local pollution. Not surprisingly, there is intense opposition to datacenter construction. According to a Reuters Ipsos poll, 57 percent of Americans — two-thirds of Democrats and half of Republicans — would oppose a datacenter in their neighborhood. Only 14 percent would support one. Fourth, even before the advent of AI, tech companies had lost the public’s trust. Over the years Pew has regularly surveyed the public for its views on technology companies, asking whether they have a positive or a negative effect “on the way things are going.” In 2015 public opinion of tech companies was overwhelmingly positive. By 2022, the year ChatGPT was released, that goodwill had evaporated. [ ... ] Finally, AI is tightly linked in the public mind with the tech oligarchs who are pushing it. There is widespread awareness of the growing concentration of wealth and power at the top and how this is distorting our politics and harming our society. Aside from the MAGA faithful, Americans overwhelmingly favor government policies to reduce wealth inequality:

Dr. Krugman's article at Substack is not behind a paywall. It includes charts and more details. He also takes a look at the anti-AI backlash. Check out the entire piece.

There are additional reasons why AI apparently has an even lower approval rating than Donald Trump.

As we posted on Friday, AI is creating a chip shortage which is driving up the price of electronics. We are paying more (or soon will) for phones and gaming consoles so that weirdos can have conversations with chatbots.

And AI slop is turning our internet experiences into eyesores. It's no accident that low IQ Donald Trump is an enthusiastic generator of self-serving slop. Trump is enshittification personified and is naturally drawn to anything connected with it.

Donald Trump is using National Parks money to fund his own fetish projects. He claims that the money is his – but of course he's lying as usual.

Most people are unaware of his White House walkway replacement. It has gotten less attention than his reflecting pool debacle. Trump is a an incessant avalanche of corruption.

This is from a gift article from The Atlantic.

Budget documents from the National Park Service that I obtained show that the walkway replacement cost taxpayers $689,232, and is part of a $1.3 million project that included repairing adjacent stone and masonry and providing new hardware for nearby doors. A year earlier, in a separate “Rush project at request of POTUS,” the Park Service spent $347,503 to remove and replace the stucco on the colonnade wall, a project that cleared the way for Trump to affix gold frames and plaques mocking some of his predecessors. This previously undisclosed spending is part of an enormous shift of taxpayer cash away from national parks around the country and into the Washington area. In order to pay for the president’s projects, the parks have had to cancel needed repairs, slash their budgets, and operate with fewer employees. Taxpayer spending on projects in the National Capital Region has increased 92 percent over the past year, according to the budget documents. The windfall draws on revolving maintenance accounts and more than $100 million in fees collected almost entirely from national parks elsewhere. Trump has ordered the refurbishment of fountains, the lining of the Reflecting Pool, and a $1.6 million Fourth of July fireworks display on the National Mall. He has requested billions more from lawmakers, who thus far have refused. [ ... ] “The president is prioritizing D.C. at the expense of parks throughout the country,” Emily Douce, a lobbyist for the National Parks Conservation Association, told me. “There is $24 billion of maintenance needs throughout the National Park Service system, and adding these new vanity projects just adds to the need.” The dozens of pages of budgetary documentation show an $854 million, or 68 percent, decrease in spending on projects in park regions outside the Washington area in the first eight and a half months of fiscal year 2026, compared with the full prior fiscal year. That includes a $235 million decrease in spending in Pacific West parks such as Yosemite, a $254 million decrease in the Intermountain Region parks such as Yellowstone, and a $33 million decrease in Alaska. During that same period, spending around Washington increased by about $100 million, not counting about $310 million in donations that the Park Service received from allies of the president, most of which is going to fund a new White House ballroom. Park Service staff have been told, in some cases, that their 2026 projects are being defunded because the Trump administration has prioritized America’s 250th birthday and other programs. A Park Service employee who was not authorized to speak publicly told me that some parks and projects have had “nearly 70 percent of their approved anticipated project funds pulled back,” forcing them to delay making crucial repairs to historic structures, hiring interns, and ensuring that trails are wheelchair accessible.

The reflecting pool fetid concrete pond is just the tip of the iceberg.

National Parks staff are being brought to DC to help with Trump's July 4th MAGA fest.

Earlier this month, about 400 staff from approximately 180 parks had been redeployed to the Washington region for various tasks related to the nation’s 250th celebrations, according to documents that I obtained. By this week, it had grown to about 450 staff from more than 200 parks. The cost of this deployment was not calculated in the documents. But under the park system’s policies, home parks continue to pay for the eight-hour work days of their redeployed staff, while additional costs such as transportation, overtime, hotels, and a per diem are shouldered by other service accounts. That loss of staffing comes as many parks are already operating with fewer employees. The Park Service has lost nearly a quarter of its staff since Trump returned to office in 2025, because of terminations, early retirements, and a federal buyout initiated by the Trump administration, according to the National Parks Conservation Association. The Interior Department spokesperson did not dispute the  major staffing cuts but attacked the National Parks Conservation Association, a nonpartisan group that advocates for increased national-park funding, for not donating a greater share of its revenue directly to the park system and for its current CEO’s public support of Vice President Harris in the last election. Trump has proposed reducing the staff at national parks even more. His 2027 budget proposes cutting 3,967 full-time employees, a 31 percent reduction from the 2025 staffing level. The proposal is not popular on Capitol Hill, and unlikely to make it into law.

My excerpts just scratch the surface. Read the article for the rest.

Trump's corruption and misuse of public funds do not get the attention his inflationary tariffs, his undeclared wars, and his voter suppression do. But corruption is a key part of what drives him.

Electronic devices, including those for gaming, are getting more expensive because of AI.

Apple hiked iPad and MacBook prices on Thursday, saying it could no longer shield customers from soaring memory and storage chip costs driven by the AI industry's data centre buildout. “The consumer electronics industry is facing an unprecedented challenge,” Apple said in a statement to CBC News. “We have never seen a ​component price increase this much, this quickly.” The company has shielded customers from increases thus far, it said. "But we have now reached a point where we need to begin raising prices on a number of products, including today's increases for ​iPad and Mac."

Glad I bought that iPad Mini last year. Those data centers are hungry for chips.

Certain critical components in everything from Apple computers to Nintendo gaming systems are being bought up by artificial intelligence companies, leaving less supply for consumer devices, and that's driving up prices. Random access memory, or RAM, is a critical component in most electronic devices. As AI companies race to build out data centres, Micron, Samsung and SK Hynix — the world’s major memory manufacturers — have pivoted more of their production capacity away from consumer memory. They are now prioritizing orders from AI chipmakers like Nvidia, helping them earn record profit but leaving little supply ​for electronics makers. [ ... ] "These AI data centres are pulling a whole bunch of resources out of the supply chain. And it's having a far reaching impact," said retailer (Jeff) Townsend, who said even after decades at London Drugs he hadn't seen anything like this before either.

AI is blamed for job stealing and higher electricity costs. Now we can blame it for skyrocketing prices of electronics.

Know anybody in NY-21? It's a sprawling district in Upstate New York which includes the Adirondacks and straddles the Canadian border.

It's currently represented by by loyal MAGA follower Elise Stefanik. Though she may be a tad less loyal these days since Trump abruptly decided to withdraw her nomination for UN ambassador last year. She has decided not to seek another term in the US House.

This week, GOP voters in NY-21 nominated batshit crazy Anthony Constantino to run for Stefanik's seat. In so doing, they may have turned a safe Republican seat into a toss-up seat.

A new internal poll shows a Democratic House candidate is in a dead heat with his Republican challenger in an upstate New York district President Donald Trump won by 20 points in 2024. The poll, commissioned by Democratic candidate Blake Gendebien’s campaign and conducted by the left-leaning group Impact Research, found Gendebien trailing Republican Anthony Constantino by just one percentage point, 45-44, with 11 percent of voters undecided. [ ... ] Constantino, the CEO of a sticker company who’s self-funding his campaign with $10 million, earned Trump’s endorsement in April, a blow that proved fatal for (Robert) Smullen’s primary campaign. Constantino is an eccentric and passionate supporter of the president and recently recorded an adulatory rap album titled “Thank You President Trump.”

The cautionary note is that it is an internal Democratic poll. Regardless, it's doubtful anybody expected such a close result.

To make matters interesting, the NY state legislator who lost to Constantino in the GOP primary, Robert Smullen, could choose to run in November under the banner of the New York Conservative Party. This would split the Republican vote in November though Smullen may get a small number of votes which might otherwise go to Democrat Blake Gendebien in a Gendebien-Constantino match-up.

Unexpectedly, NY-21 may become one of the more interesting US House races this year.