Canada smoke sunrise.

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16 years!

Another milestone.

"Why is he allowed to use the word 'GOD' when describing himself? Can anyone imagine the uproar there would be if I used that nickname?"

Wrote Donald Trump, railing, at Truth Social, against Charlamagne Tha God.

It's funny that he looks at the moniker Charlamagne Tha God and his first thought is What about me? Why can't I call myself a God? Trump the God, yeah, that's great, but those idiots will come for me. They'll call me a narcissist!

By the way, Mr. Trump, you're allowed. Go ahead!

"Going back to our childhood homes as adults is inevitably a collision. This collision is kind of fun for some of us: We get to alienate our partners by regressing a bit..."

"... while enjoying the indulgence and shared eccentricities of our families. Others experience this collision as disorienting and lonely. Was I ever really at home here? Do these people know me at all?... There are very often new people living with our aging parents, people we sometimes don’t know very well. Even as adult children, it can feel odd to spend time with our parents in houses that can’t accommodate us anymore. It can be tempting to feel sorry for ourselves, as if something that was promised us is being withheld.... "

Writes Kathryn Jezer-Morton, in "Do Your Parents Really Want Your Family to Come Visit?" (NY Magazine).

"In a couple of weeks my family is making our annual pilgrimage to my mother-in-law’s place, but she won’t be home for at least half of our visit. She’s written a play that will be performed in another city and has rehearsals to attend. We are all thrilled for her, and proud. And also, in a childish way, disappointed.... I wonder if some of what makes having aging boomer parents hard sometimes is that we no longer lean on these old reliable — if limiting — expectations about how old people 'should' behave. Sometimes I suspect my friends and I expect elders to behave like old-school grannies and grampies while also wanting them to be fully actualized independent people...."

I can't believe I read "Prince Andrew and Donald Trump’s Sick ‘P***y’ Conversations Revealed"...

 ... a Daily Beast "Royalist" column by Tom Sykes.

But I read it and now you don't have to. I read it because I wanted to find an actual "pussy" quote from Trump. Short answer: There isn't one!

There's a new book, by Andrew Lownie, "Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York," and "pussy" is Lownie's word. If 2 men are having a conversation about sex with women, in Lownie's style, it's a conversation about pussy. Maybe the men used that word too, but I'm not seeing any quotes, and also, what difference does it make?!

"And on his head, where a swooping red beret has sat almost every day of his adult life, there was only a cap-shaped tan line and balding pate...."

"In a city rich with sartorial symbols, few have been more memorable than [Curtis] Sliwa’s ruby red headpiece. It helped the Guardian Angels, his subway patrol group, gain notoriety in the 1970s; was his uniform for a career in television and radio and provided an unofficial motif for his unsuccessful first run for mayor in 2021. Yet as he takes a second, seemingly more viable run at City Hall, Mr. Sliwa, 71, is beginning to show up without it... 'For some people, the beret is a defining issue,' Mr. Sliwa said, volunteering that it could evoke a certain Che Guevara-style revolutionary look. 'Guys and gals, I get it. If taking my red beret off will help you just to listen to me, no problem.'... Mr. Sliwa makes a point of wearing his beret underground — he tries to campaign in the subway two hours a day ('It’s the only way') — and on the streets. It makes him more visible.... Mr. Sliwa said he has six berets in rotation. On hot summer days, the wool can create its own small heat dome. 'I don’t mind shvitzing, but my wife does,' he said. 'She says, "oofa, this beret, it can walk on its own by the end of the day."' He is also hearing from friends who think it is worth more on than off.... 'First, I was all for taking his red hat off,' Mr. Dietl said. 'But now I think when Superman came to save everyone, he didn't take his cape off.'"

From "Curtis Sliwa Wants to Be Mayor. He’s Taking Off His Beret to Prove It. The Guardian Angels founder and Republican nominee for mayor has long been a New York curiosity. Can he become a serious contender?" (NYT).

You know who wore a hat? Lincoln. As Trump likes to say, responding to critics who call him insufficiently presidential: "I would say I can be more presidential than any president in history except for possibly Abe Lincoln with the big hat." And by the way, Trump has a damned distinctive hat and it worked for him. 

If the question is how can you be serious in a hat I think we have the answer, and Sliwa made that beret so much a part of his persona that it's the only thing recognizable about him. Without the hat, he's a generic old guy. It's too late to de-hat. He has to convince people he's serious, without de-hatting.

 

Should Curtis Sliwa prove his worth by going without the hat?

No, it's too late now.

No, the hat is good.

Yes, it's a barrier to being taken seriously. Crucial to de-hat.

Yes, but don't concede that it wasn't serious. Take control of the expression.

Who cares? This clown can't win. Move on to Cuomo or Adams.

 

pollcode.com free polls

Sunrise — 5:48, 6:20, 6:20.

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“A Fish Falls From the Sky and Sparks a Brush Fire in British Columbia.”

“Officials say a flying osprey dropped its catch, which then struck power lines, causing sparks that ignited dry grass.”

NYT. 

"Think of us as the 'Inglourious Basterds' of the House Democrats. We will do anything to win this."

"Trump has fundamentally changed the rules of political engagement in this country. If they attack, you attack back."

Said Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-California), quoted in "Blue-state Democrats face hurdles countering Texas GOP’s new election map/Democratic leaders in California, Illinois and New York are exploring retaliatory measures to offset the creation of more safe red seats. Moving as swiftly as their GOP counterparts will be difficult" (WaPo)(free-access link).

I saw the movie "Inglourious Basterds," but I don't remember what the characters did other than that they felt justified in doing it because they were fighting the Nazis, so I sought out help from Grok —  How unscrupulous and awful were the Inglourious Basterds?

From Grok's answer:

Maureen Dowd knows what guys want.

I'm reading Maureen Dowd's new column (NYT):

It was one of the most erotic things I ever heard. A man I know said he was reading all the novels of Jane Austen in one summer. 

At first, I figured he was pretending to like things that women like to seem simpatico, a feminist hustle. But no, this guy really wanted to read “Northanger Abbey.”

How does she know what this guy wants?! Maybe he's good at pretending. Maybe he wants it as a means to an end and it's the end that is really wanted. He wants you to think that he wants what you want him to want. 

"Some people seem so obsessed with the morning/Get up early just to watch the sun rise...."

So begins the song Spotify chooses for me after it comes to the end of the album I'd chosen and as I am emerging from the overgrown forest path and looking back to see the sun has finally emerged above the smoke on the lake. 

That's a little too on the nose, Spotify. If you're really following me that doggedly you ought to act more nonchalant.

The album that was my choice — the soundtrack for my sunrise walk/run — was "New Morning." I'd picked it because as I drove up there was a "rabbit runnin’ down across the road" — as Bob sings in the title song. Yes, Bob, like Chuck Schumer, drops his G's.

I got back home and assembled my coffee-and-peanut-butter breakfast and then got a late start blogging because I became quite involved testing whether Grok would replicate my hypothesis about the progression of songs on the "New Morning" album. Seriously, I'm not going to bother you, the blog reader, with the details of my hypothesis about the alternating 5 themes. I'll just say I was surprised that Grok found "One More Weekend" to be "possibly... sinister." Oh, really?! We — Grok and I — got fixated on the first line "Slippin' and slidin' like a weasel on the run." Grok:

"Ya know, it keeps gettin' worse...."

Did Chuck Schumer always drop his G's like that?

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) blatantly lies and says DOGE cuts are being used to pay for the $200M White House ballroom.

In reality, President Trump and private donors are paying for the ballroom.

All Schumer does is lie, lie, and lie.pic.twitter.com/KeQ04qxwOH

— Paul A. Szypula 🇺🇸 (@Bubblebathgirl) August 1, 2025

"They're gonna spend 2 effin' hundred million dollars" — yeah, 200 effin' million dollars of donated money.

There are 4 more dropped G's in that clip and it's only 26 seconds long. 

"The Russiagate scandal has long been one of the most convoluted, hard-to-follow news stories of all time...."

"Those of us who covered the story from the start had a difficult time explaining to audiences what it was, as we ourselves didn’t know. Now we do.... Finally, it seems, we can explain.... It wasn’t the start of a corruption story about Trump, but the cover-up of a still-unresolved Hillary Clinton scandal. This is purely a Clinton corruption story.... With the help of the declassified Durham material, we can explain the whole affair in three brushstrokes. One, Hillary Clinton and her team apparently hoped to deflect from her email scandal and other problems via a campaign tying Trump to Putin. Two, American security services learned of these plans. Three — and this is the most important part — instead of outing them, authorities used state resources to massively expand and amplify her scheme.... Hillary Clinton got in a jam, and the FBI, CIA, and the Obama White House got her out of it by setting Trump up. That’s it...."

Writes Matt Taibbi, in "No Doubt Left: Russiagate Was a Cover-Up/The most infuriatingly complex scandal of all time has just been reduced to a page or two, thanks to another declassified release" (Substack).

More from Taibbi at "The New York Times Can't Stop Sucking/How many times can one newspaper screw up a story?" (Substack).

ADDED: This post is really a place-holder. It marks my own nonfollowing of the story. Notice what I am quoting — Taibbi's acknowledgment that the story is too hard for people to follow. And it's not as though he's solving the problem for us. The quoted material is conclusory assertion. For someone who isn't already pro- or anti-Trump, you still have no way to sort out what's true. I also read The New York Times, and here's Taibbi telling me The New York Times is systematically screwing it up. Maybe. How am I supposed to know? 

Sunrise — 5:33.

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Bonus: Water lillies at sunrise:

"Ms. Maxwell cannot risk further criminal exposure in a politically charged environment without formal immunity."

"Nor is a prison setting conducive to eliciting truthful and complete testimony. Of course, in the alternative, if Ms. Maxwell were to receive clemency, she would be willing — and eager — to testify openly and honestly, in public, before Congress in Washington, D.C. She welcomes the opportunity to share the truth and to dispel the many misconceptions and misstatements that have plagued this case from the beginning."

Said David Oscar Markus, Ghislaine Maxwell’s attorney,  quoted in "Ghislaine Maxwell quietly moved from Florida to Texas prison as lawyers seek Trump pardon" (Independent).

And there's this from Trump: "Well, I’m allowed to give her a pardon, but nobody’s approached me with it. Nobody’s asked me about it."

I want to be good at spotting iterations of trends that I don’t already know about. I don’t want to be the out-of-it blogger...

... who criticizes something for being off or weird when it’s actually a thing. I want to get out in front of it, recognize it as a thing, and criticize it from a savvy position, or at least know to shut up about it.

I don't know how good my skill is, because this one might be too dumb and obvious to be tricky....