Trump uses American citizens as bait for an attack.

Would someone please tell Iran that I have heel spurs. Please!

(And oh yes, we completely destroyed their military.)

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

As they have no moral base, the tech companies always cave to power. Here is one of Google’s cowardly examples:

So we wonder what the cowards at Google will do about this:

Trump Fires Off Deranged Threat to Ally in Morning Meltdown:The president has resurrected his beef with our northern neighbors. Leigh Kimmins. Reporter, Published Aug. 25 2026 7:09AM EDT

President Donald Trump has floated renaming one of the Great Lakes in a petty dig at Canada.

The 80-year-old started his Tuesday morning in cranky fashion, loading up Truth Social at 7 a.m. to tell the world he is still ticked off at our northern neighbors.

And he intends to act on it. “The United States is giving serious consideration to changing the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America in that we don’t expect to doing much business with Ontario any longer,” he said, ending with his regular sign-off, “Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP.”

The name “Ontario” comes from a Wendat (Huron) word meaning “great lake” or “beautiful water.” European missionaries began recording the name for Lake Ontario in the 1640s, and it gradually became the lake’s established name. The province later took its name from the lake when Ontario became a province of Canada in 1867.

But Trump is ready to rewrite history because of his escalating trade war with Canada. Trump said Monday that tariffs on Canadian cars, trucks and auto parts will double from 25 percent to 50 percent, starting Jan. 1.

But he loves North Korea, which has threatened us with its nuclear arsenal and intercontinental ballistic missiles. And he hates Ukraine, a nation fighting for freedom, because he loves communist dictator Putin.

Can America survive another 28 months, and will the damage ever be undone?

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

 

First Thing: Supreme Court threatens midterms mail-in voting as it backs Trump plan

Martin Belam

 Good morning. The US Supreme Court has sided with Donald Trump in his effort to crack down on mail-in voting, though it is unclear whether or not his administration will be able to take action before the midterm elections in November.

The court’s justices voted 6-3 along ideological lines to lift an injunction that a judge in Massachusetts had placed in June on an executive order issued by the president.

But a second injunction remains in place, and the ruling leaves room for legal challenges.

Trump has repeatedly likened voting by mail to cheating, despite his own use of it and overwhelming evidence that the system is secure.

In March he ordered the government to create a “state citizenship list” of eligible voters, requiring that mail-in ballots only be delivered to people on that list. He also directed the justice department to prioritise investigations and prosecutions of state and local election officials who issue ballots to people deemed ineligible to vote in federal elections.

What did the dissenting judges say? In a blistering dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote that the decision “needlessly injects chaos and uncertainty into the upcoming midterm elections”.

This was yesterday’s decision, Trump v. California, and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote a remarkably sharp 23-page solo dissent. 

The majority’s basic position was procedural: the states had challenged parts of Trump’s March executive order concerning mail voting too soon. Because some of the administration’s proposed actions had not yet been implemented, the states had not yet demonstrated the concrete injury necessary to sue. Importantly, the majority expressly did not decide that Trump’s directives were lawful.

Jackson’s response, stripped of the legalese, was essentially:

You’ve created an impossible Catch-22. The states are in the middle of preparing the November elections. The President has ordered federal agencies to take actions that could interfere with how those states distribute mail ballots. Yet the Court tells the states:

You can’t challenge this yet because nothing has happened.

Jackson’s problem was that election cases have also repeatedly been told: You can’t challenge this now because the election is too close and changing the rules would cause disruption.

She described the resulting situation as a “Kafkaesque nightmare”: sue early and you’re too early; wait until implementation and you risk being told you’re too late.

She was particularly scathing about what she regarded as the contradiction in the government’s position. The administration argued that its planned mail-voting changes were too speculative and distant for the states to challenge—but simultaneously told the Supreme Court that it needed emergency relief immediately so that it could implement them.

Jackson wrote that the majority was: “Taking its eye off the ball” and was missing what she considered the government’s actual objective: obtaining the Court’s approval for an effort to “foment chaos ahead of the November elections.”

Her larger objection was practical as much as constitutional. States have the constitutionally assigned responsibility of administering elections. They’re already preparing the 2026 election. In her view, telling them they haven’t been injured sufficiently to challenge federal directives aimed directly at those election procedures was artificial reasoning disconnected from what was actually happening.

And she ended with the point that probably best summarizes her dissent: “States administering elections and the voting public that relies on them to do so deserve clarity, not caginess or confusion.”

Her conclusion was that the Court’s ruling “needlessly injects chaos and uncertainty into the upcoming midterm elections.”

One important qualification: Jackson did not merely disagree with the majority about mail voting policy. Her central complaint was about the Court’s use of standing, ripeness, and its emergency equitable powers. She thought the Court was using procedural doctrines in a way that prevented states from obtaining a timely judicial answer to an extraordinarily important constitutional question.

And the constitutional question remains unanswered: Does the President have the authority to impose these election rules on states in the first place? Even the six-justice majority explicitly said its decision did not establish that measures implementing Trump’s order would be lawful.

How have rights organisations reacted? The president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Derrick Johnson, said: “Let this ruling be a reminder that democracy is never, ever guaranteed. We have to fight for it, we have to fight to keep it and we have to protect the rights we do have within it … they are trying to do everything they possibly can to make it difficult for you to vote.”

Henceforth, it should be referred to as:

The Trump Court

The six, right-wing, political toadies on the Court observe only Trump. Chief Justice John G. Roberts is irrelevant and virtually non-existent, except as an obedient servant of Donald Trump.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

I was listening to the radio this evening, and I heard a cattle rancher being interviewed. He said he had supported Trump, but now “was disappointed and felt betrayed” by Trump’s policies.

All I could think was, “Where have you been the past ten years?” Did you really believe the guy who screwed the workers who built his failed casinos — the guy who has stabbed in the back everyone who once helped him, the guy who cheated on three wives, the guy who told more than 30,000 documented lies in one year — did you really believe that guy would not stab you in the back?

Do you also feel “disappointed and betrayed” that the moon still circles the earth and the tides roll in and out? Do you also feel disappointed and betrayed that tariff taxes raise your costs, and that Trump’s very rich pals get tax breaks while you struggle?

Perhaps you feel “disappointed and betrayed” that winters are cooler than summers, and that the climate change “hoax” is negatively affecting your herd and grasslands.

I’m sitting here wondering what it is it about Trump’s history that made you think he gives a damn about you?

And, oh yes, Biden was “worse, and he’s a communist,” except Biden was much, much better and it’s Trump who loves communist North Korea’s Kim, and communist Russia’s Putin, while he hates our traditional allies like Canada and Britain.

Do you feel “disappointed and betrayed” that Trump tore up an agreement with Iran that actually was working, and now Iran is creating nuclear bombs and keeping us out of the Strait?

Do you feel “disappointed and betrayed” that the guy started an unnecessary war, when he promised never to, and replaced our best military people — generals having a West Point or Annapolis education, and many years of experience — with a damn fool, inexperienced, low IQ, suck up TV announcer?

Do you feel “disappointed” that a poorly educated guy who claimed he “loves the poorly educated” would start wars with some of our best universities, like Harvard, Yale, Columbia and others?

Do you also feel “disappointed and betrayed” that the guy who was close friends with the sex monster Epstein, and who bragged about grabbing women at the crotch, and who went into the naked women’s dressing room at the Miss America contest, and who lost a multi-million dollar suit for attacking a woman, is now all-but separated from his wife and is playing footsie with his blonde assistant? Really, does that disappoint you at all?

Are you “disappointed and betrayed” that under Trump, you are struggling financially while he rakes in billions of dollars in unprecedented conflict-of-interest scams?

You really didn’t know that Trump feels no moral obligations, as he deports millions of good, hard-working undocumented families for no reason at all?

I guess, being a religious, God-fearing man, you felt that was OK, so long as it wasn’t your children who were being sent to hell.

I only can shake my head in wonderment that any intelligent person actually could say they feel “disappointed and felt betrayed” that a rattlesnake could bite them, because the snake maybe, sort of promised not to.

And what really is amazing is the realization that you probably will continue to support the snake.

The next bite will be even more painful. Will you feel disappointed and betrayed? Again?

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell