Dear Everybody:
The big news today was a deal with the Iranians ending the war--or not:
--This morning there was news that Iran and the US had finally made a deal to end the war, with Trump saying the deal was "largely negotiated," and Secretary of State Marco Rubio saying there was the possibility of good news "over the next few hours," though, as usual, the details were cloudy.
--According to the New York Times, the deal would include an official declaration of the war’s end followed by two months’ negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program. The Strait of Hormuz would be reopened, the US would end the blockade of Iranian ports and would release $25 billion dollars in frozen Iranian assets.
--David Shuster: "According to Al Jazeera, the Iran deal includes unfreezing billions in Iranian funds, lifting US blockade, pulling US forces away, reopening Strait of Hormuz, though with tolls to Iran, and allowing Iran to keep its enriched uranium. This would be a total US surrender."
--Another news account said the US and Iran have agreed in principle to a deal reopening the Strait of Hormuz and require Iran to get rid of its highly enriched uranium, but it doesn’t address Iran’s missile stockpile nor stipulate a moratorium on missile development, and the how and when of all this is still up in the air. (Clear as mud, right?)
--Iran said it intends to maintain control over the Strait of Hormuz. It said it will not return to pre-war status, and there will be no free passage. It also said it intends to freely sell its oil. Iran said Trump’s remarks about the Strait of Hormuz were "inconsistent with reality." It said it would allow the number of ships passing through the Strait to return to "pre-war levels," but that this would not in any way mean "free passage."
--Iran also said it wants some of the frozen assets back BEFORE making any commitments whatsoever.
--The right is NOT happy with the deal. Mike Pompeo said the deal was "not remotely America First." He told Trump, "It’s straightforward. Open the damned strait. Deny Iran access to money. Take out enough Iran capability so it cannot threaten our allies in the region. Overdue. Let’s go."
--Thom Tillis: "It doesn’t make sense to me...now we’re talking about a posture where we may accept nuclear material remaining in Iran?"
--Ted Cruz: "If the result of all that is to be an Iranian regime--still run by Islamists who chant ‘death to America’--now receiving billions of dollars, being able to enrich uranium and develop nuclear weapons, and having effective control over Strait of Hormuz, then that outcome would be a disastrous mistake."
--GOP Senator Roger Wicker: "A disaster. Everything accomplished by Operation Epic Fury would be for naught."
--Lindsey Graham: "The combination of Iran being perceived as having the ability to terrorize the Strait in perpetuity and the ability to inflict massive damage to Gulf oil infrastructure is a major shift of the balance of power in the region, and over time will be a nightmare for Israel. Also, IT MAKES ONE WONDER WHY THE WAR STARTED TO BEGIN WITH?" (caps mine)
--Iran released an AI photo of Trump kneeling abjectly at the feet of the new Ayatollah.
--Tom Nichols summed it all up: "In other words, the war is over, we’re stumbling toward some version of the JCPOA (Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran). America is out billions of dollars and lots of weapons that he didn’t need to waste, and the US is now weaker and Iran in a strategically stronger position. And for what?"
--Now this afternoon, Trump says he won’t "rush into a deal."
In slush fund news:
--The Republicans on the Appropriations Committee voted to make themselves eligible for payouts from Trump’s slush fund over objections from the Democrats.
--In the Rules Committee, they voted down forbidding compensation for convicted felons.
--The DOJ has spent the last couple of days (and nights) scrubbing every single press release about the January 6ers from their website. This includes the accounts of arrests and convictions--and Trump’s pardons--and their convictions after they were pardoned. (Stories about the J6ers and all the crimes they committed on January 6 and afterwards, particularly the child sex crimes, are causing major problems for their slush fund, so they are attempting to rewrite history right before our eyes.)
--Frank Figliuzzi: "While we slept the DOJ deleted all press releases about charges against the January 6 defendants."
--The DOJ snapped back, saying there was "nothing quiet about it. We are proud to reverse the DOJ’s weaponization under the Biden administration. We will do everything in our power to make whole those who were persecuted for political purposes. This includes stripping the DOJ's website of partisan propaganda."
--(Note: Don’t worry. There are people who are obsessed with saving every single document of the government and they immediately leaped into action. Plus, all those press releases were printed in newspapers and on websites. The DOJ can delete their own press releases, but not the information in them. Plus, that statement they just made is very revealing, don’t you think? It sounds like it could have been written by Tina Peters.)
--And speaking of Tina Peters, who Governor Polis claimed was contrite and regretted what she’d done, she’s posted a screed saying the Democratic censure of her commutation is proof they rigged the 2020 election. (So much for contrition.)
--The Colorado League of Women Voters has also censured Governor Polis for commuting Peters’ sentence. (Is that proof they rigged the election, too?)
--Langdon Grant: "The fact that Polis didn’t foresee that Peters would immediately make a fool of him for letting her walk is almost as big an indictment of Polis’s capabilities and fitness for office as the commutation itself."
In Epstein/Trump/Don Jr’s wedding news:
--An interesting sidelight to Don Jr.’s wedding from journalist Mehdi Hasan: "Don Jr.’s new wife’s father was a prominent Epstein enabler. He wrote a letter of recommendation for Epstein calling him a "gentleman of the highest integrity" to help him get tax breaks...and his island." He also said Epstein had "an excellent reputation." Bettina’s father, H. Loy Anderson is mentioned over 900 times in he Epstein files.
--Also, Kevin Warsh, the new head of the Fed, handpicked by Trump, is in the Epstein files, too, and appears to have visited Epstein’s island. He was quizzed about it and his ties to Epstein by Elizabeth Warren during his confirmation hearing and refused to answer.
--PIPS: "Sweet Jesus."
--Whole Grains: "We’re being run by the Epstein Pedophile Fraternity."
--And then there’s this: the wedding was held in the Bahamas, and the Bahamas does not allow entry into the country for anyone convicted of a felony.
Stephen Colbert hosted his final show this week after being taken off the air by CBS:
--They claimed that "financial considerations" had caused them to cancel his show, but, as the New York Times said, "Colbert’s fans smelled a rat." CBS then made the mistake of leaving the show on for almost a year, during which Colbert eviscerated Trump on a nightly basis.
--He didn’t do that with this show. He barely mentioned Trump and left the eviscerations to other, like Bring Springsteen, who called Colbert, "the first guy in America who’s lost his show because we’ve got a president who can’t take a joke."
--Colbert joked all through the show that his last guest was going to be the Pope (who he called "the white whale" of guests), but instead it turned out to be Paul McCartney (almost as good), who visited with him and then sang, "Hello Goodbye."
--The episode was repeatedly interrupted by flashes of green light emanating from a massive space-time wormhole that, as his guest Neil deGrasse Tyson explained, was caused by the logical contradiction of CBS canceling the most popular show in late night, and at the end he disappeared into the wormhole and a whole new world of opportunities. (He and his son are writing the new Lord of the Rings movie."
--Jimmy Kimmel, who also nearly got fired, graciously ran a rerun of his show and told everyone to watch Colbert’s show. Then he and Sean Meyers and Jimmy Fallon and John Oliver all showed up on the show to honor him.
--Trump, not so graciously, posted an AI video in which he walks onto Colbert’s show, grabs Colbert, manhandles him, and then throws him in a dumpster.
--He also posted: "Stephen Colbert’s firing from CBS was the ‘Beginning of the End’ for untalented, nasty, highly overpaid, not funny, and very poorly rated Late Night Television hosts. Others, of even less talent, to soon follow. May they soon Rest in Peace! Donald J. Trump." (Note: When other people post "rest in peace," they get accused of threatening assassination and get a visit from the FBI.)
--Stephen Colbert: "It’s the end of the night as we know it."
--CBS is currently going down the drain, having killed the Colbert show and 60 Minutes and making all of its journalists, like Anderson Cooper, so mad that they quit, and it couldn’t happen to a nicer network.
In Trump’s dementia/madness news:
--Trump had another night of insane posting. He posted a racist AI caricature of Dem Rep Ro Khanna with fangs, a maniacal expression, wearing a sheepskin and some sort of bizarre medallion. Trump called him a "Dumocrat" and a "sleazebag." (Ro Khanna is currently pushing really hard to get the Epstein files released--coincidence?)
--He also posted a map of the Middle East with Iran covered in an American flag and the caption, "The United States of the Middle East."
--And then he posted the White House with a golden dome covering it and missiles and drones bouncing off of it, with the caption, "Golden Dome for the White House." (Interestingly, the ballroom is nowhere to be seen in the picture.)
--The creepiest thing he posted was probably a photo of a village in Greenland with a gigantic Trump leaning over the mountains behind the village, ready to grab it, like some bizarre segment on Monty Python.
--And then today he posted a Brady-Bunch style grid with all of his enemies in the squares in orange jumpsuits: Obama, John Brennan, James Comey, James Clapper, Susan Rice, Vallery Jarrett, etc., with the title "The Shady Bunch," and the caption, "This is a bad (Sick!) group of people. Very destructive to our great Nation. Caused tremendous damage through Weaponization!"
--Frank George, PhD, has been studying Trump’s comments and behavior:
--Dr. George: "There’s no denying it. We’re entering the psychotic phase of his malignant narcissistic collapse." George lists Trump’s paranoia, magical thinking, externalizing of blame, dehumanization of enemies, and bizarre rationalizations as symptoms."
--Dr. George talks about a growing pattern of messianic and related grandiose images and statements: posting that he is the Messiah or Jesus and befriended by Jesus, and that he is greater than the Pope. He took credit for the Pope’s being elected, and said he’s above the Pope in stature because he was elected in a landslide.
--Other symptoms of grandiosity are his saying he is the President of Venezuela, that Iran had offered to make him the new Ayatollah, that they should name the Strait of Hormuz the Strait of Trump, and demanding his name be on the money, his face be on passports, and a giant arch be erected to him.
--Dr. George: "His fantasy structure has become so extreme, he wants to be the Pope and Jesus and the President of Venezuela and the leader of Iran at the same time. He wants the Nobel Peace Prize because he’s the greatest war negotiator ever. He’s put his face on a coin, he’s got banners of his face on government buildings...the pattern is happening more frequently and more severely, consistent with a progression into greater and greater delusional fantasies...Trump’s narcissistic collapse has progressed into psychotic grandiosity."
--Dr. George also talked about Trump’s increasing incidents of rage, paranoid escalation, scapegoating, sadistic retaliation, reality denial, and doubling down on his fantasies when he is challenged.
--Psychiatrist Erich Fromm; "Narcissists can become so trapped in their grandiose delusions that it becomes a psychosis."
In historical news:
--Today in 1861, with the Civil War just begun, three runaway slaves turned up at the Union’s Fort Monroe, followed by their owner, who demanded his property back. Because of the Fugitive Slave Act, General Butler was legally required to give the slaves back to him, but he refused to give them back. He declared the three slaves were "contraband" and said the owner was using his property to engage in armed rebellion against the government, and therefore the government had the right to seize his materials (arms, etc.), tools, and living property. Like horses. And slaves.
--Within a month 1000 runaway slaves showed up at Fort Monroe, saying, "We’re contraband."
--Lincoln adopted the same position toward slaves as Butler. It is considered the first step toward the Emancipation Proclamation and the eventual freeing of the slaves.
In other news:
--Another mentally ill guy opened fire at a White House checkpoint (he had showed up at the White House a year ago saying he was Jesus Christ) and wounded a bystander. He was shot by security guards and died in the hospital. Trump immediately used the incident to demand his ballroom.
--The US rejected a United Nations resolution condemning slavery.
--The Department of Defense just decreased the Army pilot flight training hours to the mandatory minimum. (During a war.)
In good news:
--The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals tossed Trump’s lawsuit against Hillary Clinton and James Comey accusing them of a racketeering conspiracy. The judge gave Trump and Alina Habba a $1 million dollar sanction for filing a frivolous lawsuit.
--Massachusetts joined California in joining the International Union for Conservation of Nature, a global network of more than 1400 governments and organizations.
--A new scientific study shows that the Moringa Tree (also known as the Miracle Tree) can filter microplastics from water as effectively as the methods used in water treatment plants.
Best comment of the day, from Anjali Deodhar: "I don’t know who the 2026 screenwriters are, but for fuck’s sake, guys...couldn’t you write even one story that sounds remotely logical."
Finally, in 1976, in connection with the American Centennial celebration, a wine expert named Steven Spurrier set up a blind taste testing in France called "The Judgment of Paris," in which French wines, considered the best in the world, competed against the new wines of Napa Valley, California. To everyone’s astonishment, except possibly Spurrier’s, the Americans won. The whole thing is recounted in a charming and not very well-known movie called BOTTLE SHOCK starring Alan Rickman and Bill Pullman, which I highly recommend. Along with a glass of Chateau Montelena chardonnay or Stag’s Leap cabernet sauvignon.
Keep calm and carry on,
Connie Willis