Tomorrow USA

Democrats need a net gain of 4 seats in order to flip the US Senate. According to the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, Dems will control the chamber if they win the 4 seats now rated as Toss-Ups. This news comes in the wake of the Center's prediction unit (called Sabato's Crystal Ball after Prof. Larry Sabato) upgrading the chances of Democrats in three close races.

Democrats’ odds of taking control of the Senate just got even better, with The Center for Politics Sabato’s Crystal Ball flipping three races blue. According to the new ratings, North Carolina’s open Senate race is now projected to flip into Democrats’ hands, with the contest now rated “Lean Democratic.”  And the Senate contests in Alaska and Ohio—states that President Donald Trump carried by 13 points and 11 points, respectively—are now rated “toss-ups.” “As we reassess the Senate playing field with a little less than five months to go until the November election, three Senate ratings move in Democrats’ favor today, and there are now enough toss-up races to give Democrats a clearer path to winning the Senate majority,” Sabato’s Crystal Ball wrote. Republicans are on shaky ground in all three of those states because Democrats not only nominated strong challengers who have won statewide races before, but Trump’s popularity is now underwater—even in states that he carried in 2016, 2020, and 2024.  Apparently, even die-hard Republicans in red states aren’t fans of Trump saying that “I love the inflation” and that he doesn’t care about Americans’ financial situations.

Trump proclaiming "I love inflation!" certainly deflates Republican chances of holding on to the Senate.

Here is the revised Senate map from Sabato’s Crystal Ball.

^^^ The states in yellow are toss-ups. Democrats need to win all 4 for Senate control. The ones in orange are leaning Republican. Those 2 are within reach. It would be nice to end up with 53 seats.

People are understandably paying attention to the price of gas. But a figure that's even more concerning is the dwindling supply of oil. What's going on in Cushing, Oklahoma is a warning of things to come.

Cushing, Oklahoma, dubs itself the pipeline crossroads of the world. The tagline is emblazoned on a giant roadside sign fashioned out of pipes on the corner of Main Street and South Stiles Road. It has a valve and everything. [ ... ] Cushing is the hub of America’s energy market. It literally provides the oil plumbing for the United States. It’s where America’s benchmark West Texas Intermediate oil is priced and warehoused. From there, it’s piped to refineries around the country. In normal times, Cushing stores around 40 million barrels of oil with capacity of up to 75 million. These are not normal times. Cushing’s current inventory is 21.6 million barrels, according to the US Energy Information Administration. That’s dangerously close to operational stress levels, the tipping point at which Cushing struggles to supply all of its customers with the oil they demand. When Cushing’s reserves get below 20 million, they effectively hit empty, scraping the bottom of the barrel of what is largely unusable sludge.

So the US is just 1.61 million barrels from being down to "unusable sludge".

The New York Times published a chart showing the rapidly dwindling global supply of oil.

This is the most rapid drop of the past seven years. The supply got lower for a while in 2023 due to the effects of sanctions on Russia for its illegal invasion of Ukraine. But the decline was slower and markets eventually adjusted. With Trump's Iran war, there's no end in sight and much more oil passes through the Strait of Hormuz than is exported by Russia.

So what is Trump doing about all this? Every week, sometimes more than once a week, he oscillates from threatening to destroy Iranian civilization to proclaiming a new peace deal. While I've not been counting, it seems like there's been close to three dozen such abrupt shifts.

As for energy sources, Trump is again championing the moribund coal industry. He's putting a QAnon conspiracy nut in charge of a new coal project.

‘This is not normal’: Trump leans on MAGA organizer to revive coal

Even if something miraculously came of this (SPOILER: it won't), it would be way too late to help with the current crisis.

Randy Rainbow musically follows up on the Stable Genius. His insertion of a commercial for his sponsor is indicated by a change in headgear.

Randy probably deserves credit for creating the word Mussoliniest.

^^^ We are within striking distance of 52 different instances of Trump being photographed sleeping in public. So a complete deck of Dozing Donny playing cards is theoretically possible by the end of the year.

It's not just that he's sleeping, he is having trouble walking. After falling asleep at the only NBA finals game the Knicks lost, he couldn't walk in a straight line at the airport.

Cardiologist questions Trump's health after JFK zig-zag walk

You read correctly. Trump now says that he LOVES inflation.

The current inflation caused by Trump Tariffs and the Trump Iran war are clearly of his own making. And since Trump feels he can do no wrong, what's not for him to love about it?

A new report released Wednesday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that America’s annual inflation rate had reached its highest levels in three years. Later, in the Oval Office, a reporter asked Trump whether the new inflation numbers concerned him. The president presented his own pathetic spin. “No, I love it. The numbers were great. You know what I really love? I love the inflation,” Trump said.

Now there's even more inflation for Trump to love.

The Producer Price Index (PPI) represents inflation at the wholesale level. If Trump loves inflation, the wholesale inflation figures probably give him orgasms.

PPI wholesale inflation hit 6.5% in May, highest since 2022

A periodic reminder that Capitol Hill Republicans could rein in Trump in a heartbeat. But they don't because they are more concerned with their political careers than they are with democracy and the economic well being of Americans.

Inflation Trumpflation continues to surge. Much of it is related to the undeclared Trump Iran war.

Soaring gasoline prices, triggered by the U.S. war with Iran, have pushed inflation to its highest level in more than three years. A report from the Labor Department Wednesday showed consumer prices in May were up 4.2% from a year ago. That's the biggest annual increase since April of 2023. Prices rose 0.5% between April and May, with higher energy costs accounting for more than 60% of that monthly increase. Gas prices have jumped by well over a dollar a gallon since the war began, strangling shipping traffic in the Strait of Hormuz — a critical pathway for much of the world's oil supply.

Food prices too.

Grocery prices showed little change during the month, rising just 0.1%. Stripping out volatile food and energy prices, "core inflation" was 2.9% for the 12 months ending in May, a slightly larger annual increase than the previous month.

Trump said he would end inflation on Day 1. it is now 506 days since Day 1 and things have only gotten worse under Trump. It began with the Trump Tariffs last year. Trump referred to the introduction of the tariffs as "liberation day". The only thing Trump liberated was your money from your pocket. The tariffs were ruled illegal, but nobody has gotten a refund from Trump for his illegal tax.

The May inflation spike for TL;DR fans...

^^^ Trump has more in common with the screwworm than with a virus. MAGA is a parasite which is sucking the lifeblood out of America.

As for the invertebrate screwworms, Trump and Elon Musk's DOGE cut funding to the government program which was monitoring and responding to the potential for screwworm infestations. With Trump and Musk, "government efficiency" means finding easier ways to channel resources to White House ballrooms and more tax breaks for billionaires.

Trump gets a taxpayer funded UFC birthday extravaganza on White House grounds while the rest of us get screwed by MAGA billionaires.

Private prisons are odious and should be outlawed.

It's ironic that the founder of a chain of private ICE prisons is an immigrant who was one of last to enter the United States at the fabled Ellis Island facility.

The founder of a private company accused of mistreating ICE detainees came to the US via Ellis Island in 1953

The founder is George Zoley who was brought here as a toddler from Greece. His prison company is known as GEO Group which is based in Florida. It operates 99 facilities, essentially a private American gulag.

Business has been great this year for George Zoley's GEO Group under Trump. Abusing immigrants is apparently quite profitable.

Few people know you better than your lawyer. So Ken Paxton's attorney is endorsing Democrat James Talarico for US Senate from Texas.

One of the lawyers who defended Attorney General Ken Paxton during his three-year-old impeachment trial endorsed Democrat James Talarico Monday in Texas’ U.S. Senate race. Dan Cogdell, a veteran Houston attorney who represented Paxton in his long-running felony securities fraud case and his 2023 impeachment, announced his support for Talarico in an interview with the attorney general’s Democratic opponent on the lawyer’s podcast. “I defended Ken Paxton for years in the impeachment trial and in state criminal cases,” Cogdell said on his podcast. “But in my view, respectfully, I think Ken has lost sight of his core mission, which is to represent the people of Texas. And unlike Ken, I believe to my core, James, that you believe in unity over division and that you know how to assemble not only Democrats, but independents and Republicans — and we need that right now.”

Crooked Ken Paxton is one of the most corrupt public officials in the US. He gives even Dementia Donald a run for his money.

This anti-Paxton ad from last month's GOP primary is still at YouTube. It was inspired by Dr. Seuss.

^^^ The Trump administration celebration of the 250th anniversary of the United States in one word.

Despite this economic and human toll, the war has achieved very little. While the president has been typically erratic in outlining the war’s aims, over the past three months he has generally stressed three objectives: eliminating Iran’s ballistic missiles, ending its nuclear program and helping the Iranian people overthrow their government.

None of that has happened. According to America’s own intelligence, the Islamic Republic retains roughly 70 percent of its prewar missile stockpile. The United States has neither eliminated Iran’s access to the highly enriched uranium that it could potentially use to build a nuclear bomb nor taken down the Islamic regime itself. Indeed, the Iranian government is arguably stronger than it was when the war began, having demonstrated its ability to cripple the global economy by restricting traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. »

— Peter Beinert writing at the New York Times.

The undeclared and unauthorized Trump Iran war has been the sort of fiasco we would expect from a dumbass loser like Donald Trump. The only good that might come out of it is that it may cause more people to see the benefits of renewable energy which is not subject to the whims of emirs, ayatollahs, or semi-literate orange billionaires.

Trump is now lying about his past campaign promises not to involve the US in new wars. Trump's serial lying is not exactly news. But for the record, CNN did a fact check which easily exposed his lies.

Fact check: Trump told NBC that he never promised not to start a new war. He did, repeatedly

His most glaring promise from the 2024 campaign...

"Under Trump, we will have no more wars, no more disruptions, and we will have prosperity and peace for all."

To paraphrase what they say in the pest control business: There's never just ONE multi-billionaire.

We may not be able to get rid of them, but we can certainly vote their MAGA pawns out of office.

^^^ Trump is in a competition with himself. He wants each new appointee to be even more unqualified than the previous one.

So the QAnon Shaman would probably fit the bill for Director of National Intelligence after Tulsi Gabbard.

Greg Bovino looks like a Nazi and sounds like a Nazi. So don't be surprised if he runs (for president) like a Nazi.

Pint-sized douche canoe Greg Bovino had a busy week. He spent last weekend hanging out with actual neo-Nazis and white supremacists at an anti-immigration conference in Portugal, where he rubbed elbows with luminaries of the world’s most racist movements. Then he told the Daily Beast he is “gearing up” to run for president in two years, presumably on the bet that the Republican Party will be so far gone by then that JD Vance and Marco Rubio will be seen by primary voters as unacceptable leftist squishes. Relatedly, we are coming up on the anniversary of Donald Trump’s ride down the golden escalator. Eleven years later, we’re looking at a 2028 GOP primary that will make 2016 look like an episode of Schoolhouse Rock!

Jared and Ivanka may have given up on Gaz-a-Lago for now, but they have now set their sights on building a humongous resort in a protected area in Albania.

Albanians are having none of it and have been protesting for days. They accuse Prime Minister Edi Rama of kowtowing to Trump and selling out the country.

Despite having to compete with wars in Ukraine and Iran for attention, the anti-Kushner demonstrations have been making news in Europe. This article from France 24 is typical.

Albanians protest Jared Kushner-backed resort plan on nature reserve

The protests against the Kushner mega-resort may be crystalizing into a full-fledged political movement. It's already being called the "Flamingo Revolution" (Revolucioni i flamingove) by some.

Tommy Vietor and Jon Lovett at Pod Save America spent the first eight minutes of this podcast talking about the Albania situation and framing it in the context of corruption and greed by the Trump Crime Family.

If I counted correctly, today is Day 99 of Trump's ∞ Special Operation in Iran.

A low intensity conflict continues despite a ceasefire.

Air raid sirens in Bahrain as Iranian missiles and drones head for Gulf neighbors