Space4Time3Continuum2x

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	A statue of Trump and Epstein appears in D.C., Reuters

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"A child, a moron, a failure, and a psychopath. Quite a little team you've put together."
"What do you want, Brunt?"
"I’m here to sign up."
DS9, 6.10

On the campaign trail, 2024

1:09:43: Purse lips, cue violins, read off teleprom .... look right, look left, dang, the teleprompter isn't prompting, keep pursing lips, keep pursing lips, read off teleprompter: and here comes the stream of lies. Banks collapsing, begging Venezuela for oil. We just recently heard that Saudi Arabia and Russia will repedoing - ahh - will be reducing their oil production, so sad. We are a nation that is consumed by the left screen new deal. (The new deals on the right screen are better?)

Woohoo - picking up speed

Shark attacks, boats so heavy they can't float, "nobody ever asked this question, and it must be because of my relationship to MIT, very smart", shark biting off a young lady's leg, and electrocution by battery (41:12–44:40). Getting lost while reading "The Snake" (29:51) for the umpteenth time: "'I saved you, cried the woman, and you're so tender and so nice. But you know that if I hadn't taken in, your skin would not look so good and you would've bitten me. But why you bit me? Why did you bite me? Please, please tell me. Why did you bite me? You know your bite is poisonous and now I'm going to die.' 'Shut up, silly woman said the reptile with a grin. You knew damn well, I was a snake before I took you in.' And this is what is happening at our border."

Ted Kennedy was a friend of mine

(39:15–40:05) We have higher poll numbers now than we’ve ever had. Too big to rig. That’s what we want, too big to rig, too big to rig, too big to rig. That's what we want. I have higher numbers than we’ve ever had. We're leading this crooked thief of a president, and I would never have said that before. I didn’t speak glowingly. He’s a lousy president anyway, but I would never have said he’s a corrupt, very dumb person. He’s a low IQ individual, and he always was. This is an age. He's worse now than he was 10 years ago. But if you go back 30 years ago, he was considered the dumbest person in the US Senate. Ted Kennedy told me that himself, who was a friend of mine, which is shocking, shocking that he was a friend. He was of a slightly different persuasion Marjorie."

Say what, Shakespeare?

Soup's on — Hale and Hearty meets hail fellow well met. September 23 rally in Indiana, PA, 40:39–41:33:

He didn’t mean Iowa. I mean the whole thing. But I said, you know, if you were Winston Churchill and you make a mistake as to location, like I’m here with you. And if I say it’s great to be in the great state of Illinois, can happen. No matter how great your speech is, you could make the greatest speech in history and people will go, “That was a disaster.” Right? He did it all the time, but she’s worse than him. I’m telling you, watch. She’s not as smart as him. He’s not smart. He never was smart. He wasn’t smart 40 years ago. Always he was a hale and hearty guy, well-met. Did you ever hear Shakespeare? He was hale and hearty and well-met, but he wasn’t a smart person. But she is a very dumb person. And we can’t do that. We can’t do that. I don’t want to be rude. I don’t want to be rude.

Hunter's supermoon tonight

David Rothkopf on X, 8:22 PM, Oct 15, 2024: "The past 24 hours seem to have been a dividing line in the Trump campaign...and in Trump. He went from being periodically adrift and sporadically demented to being 24/7 unfit and in need of permanent medical attention. He's one cloudless night away from baying at the moon." Space4Time3Continuum2x🖖 18:05, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

Huh: the Wayback machine crawled the tweet (post, whatever) on December 2 but captured [a white page]. The post was about the Oaks, PA, townhall where Trump stopped taking questions and swayed to his playlist for 39 minutes.

Undecided

To put them in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. “Can I interest you in the chicken?” she asks. “Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?”

To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.

...

I wonder if, in the end, the undecideds aren’t the biggest pessimists of all. Here they could order the airline chicken, but, then again, hmm. “Isn’t that adding an extra step?” they ask themselves. “If it’s all going to be chewed up and swallowed, why not cut to the chase, and go with the platter of shit?”

Ah, though, that’s where the broken glass comes in.

David Sedaris, Undecided, October 20, 2008

Shit with bits of broken glass it is.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. George Santayana, The Life of Reason.

Eek

On coping

It is unfair that Americans chose someone like Donald Trump over someone like Kamala Harris, and I fear the nation and the world will regret that decision. I’m going to be angry and frustrated. But I’m not going to spend all my waking hours stewing over the fact that Trump is going to be president. I’m going to follow the news ... but I won’t take his nonsense personally. I’m going to find a better politics-life balance and catch myself when I start obsessing over the latest outrage.

Eugene Robinson, How I’m coping with a Trump win, Washington Post, November 6, 2024

The transition

The cowbells make it work: Roland Hedley reporting

Priorities

Hours after Trump was inaugurated on January 20, 2025, former Joint Chiefs of Staff chair Mark Milley's official portrait was removed from a Pentagon corridor where the portraits of all former chairs of the Joint Chiefs of Staff are displayed. A U.S. official told the New York Times that "the White House" had ordered the removal. On January 29, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth withdrew the authorization for Milley's security detail, suspended his security clearance, and ordered a review of his actions as Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff with a view to demote him in rank.

Oh, goody,

what a relief — 21st century coup delayed by 20th century software. Nathan Tankus: To be clear, I 100% believe that the primary barrier to Elon Musk gaining control of the Treasury payments system is COBOL.

Running government

like a business enterprise

Celebrating K9 Veterans Day, Doge-style

Conan, take a bite out of crime!

Wharton, practical application of

17 times 6

Pardon my pardons and the giant, beautiful store ending the war in Ukraine on Day One, figuratively spoken

I am this giant store. It's a giant, beautiful store, and everybody wants to go shopping there. And on behalf of the American people, I own the store, and I set prices, and I'll say, if you want to shop here, this is what you have to pay and other stuff ...

Trade deal, duress version

Less a trade deal "than a hostage negotiation. Pay Trump what he feels he's due, and you get your economy back in roughly the state it was before, though missing a few fingers and probably traumatised."

Thinking big, trophy wives, a big yacht, and never mind the Whites-only policy

2025 West Point commencement speech (starting at 36:55): Think big. Third though, you gotta do this. Uh, brainpower you have to have, potential you have to have, but to be really successful, you're always going to have to work hard. … Fourth is don't lose your momentum. Momentum's an amazing thing. Keep it going. I tell a story sometimes about a man who was a great, great real estate man.⁽¹⁾ … And he became very rich, became a very rich man, and then he decided to sell. … And they gave him a lot of money, tremendous amount of money. More money than he ever thought he'd get. And he sold this company and he had nothing to do. He ended up getting a divorce, found a new wife. Could you say a trophy wife? I guess we can say a trophy wife. It didn't work out too well. But it doesn't -- And that doesn't work out too well, I must tell you. A lot of trophy wives doesn't work out, but it made him happy for a little while at least. But he found a new wife. He sold his little boat and he got a big yacht.

⁽¹⁾ William Levitt, builder of Whites-only Levittowns

In memoriam: The Boy Scouts speech in 2017, also featuring Levitt, a yacht, and gallivanting in the south of France. Big news in 2017, Levitt got nary a mention in 2025.

Who's your daddy? "My father would go and he’d pick up the sawdust and he’d pick up the nails, the extra nails, and he’d pick up the scraps and he’d use whatever he could use and recycle it in some form or sell it," Mr. Trump said Thursday in a speech to the National Association of Home Builders. Levitt'd scour the sites for nails, and sawdust and small pieces of wood. And they cleaned the sites so when the workers came in the next morning, the sites would be spotless and clean". "[T]he company that bought his company was a big conglomerate, and ... they didn’t know anything about picking up the nails and the sawdust and selling it, and the scraps of wood. ... they were losing a lot with it".

Drinking the night away

with the royals. The entertainment included the Duchess of Edinburgh’s String Orchestra playing the Rolling Stones' "You Can’t Always Get What You Want" (Diet Coke?)

Cancel culture, National Park Service edition

On September 23, 2025, an anonymous group of artists had installed a statue of Trump and Jeffrey Epstein entitled "Best Friends Forever" on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The 12-foot tall, bronze-sprayed statue depicted Trump and Epstein holding hands and dancing. A plaque underneath it read, "We celebrate the long-lasting bond between President Donald J. Trump and his 'closest friend,' Jeffrey Epstein". The group had a permit for an art installation from September 23 to September 28 for artwork "to demonstrate freedom of speech and artistic expression using political imagery". By the next morning U.S. Park Police had removed the statue, later saying it was not in compliance with the permit. A White House spokeswoman said in a September 23 email to the Washington Post that "Liberals are free to waste their money however they see fit — but it's not news that Epstein knew Donald Trump". The Washington Post, The New York Times

No sirree, only the best, definitely not a DEI hire

I asked Trump where [the resident Mar-a-Lago spa physician, a recent chiropractic-college graduate] had done her training. "I'm not sure," he said. "Baywatch Medical School? Does that sound right? I'll tell you the truth. Once I saw Dr. Ginger's photograph, I didn't really need to look at her résumé or anyone else's. Are you asking, 'Did we hire her because she'd trained at Mount Sinai for fifteen years?' The answer is no. And I'll tell you why: because by the time she's spent fifteen years at Mount Sinai, we don't want to look at her." (Mark Singer, Trump Solo, May 12, 1997, The New Yorker)

One of the wettest we've ever seen, from the standpoint of water

Trump, 2018, on Hurricane Florence's landfall in the Carolinas.

We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security

(Trump, January 3, 2026), and I figured out why after watching Greenland.

Renée Good and Alex Pretti

Trump, February 5, 2026: Two people. It's bad. I hate it. I hate even talking about it. Two people out of tens of thousands, okay? And you get bad publicity.
Gremlins 2: We can't let them get away. All they have to do is to eat three or four children and there'd be the most appalling publicity!

The White House Parthenon

Plans for a yuge ballroom approved on February 19, 2026.

The Board of Peace

Introducing the members, courtesy of Led By Donkeys, January 23, 2026

War / conflict / preemptive strike / pre-preemptive strike / regime change / limited combat operation / because Netanyahu said so / excursion / skirmish / mini-war / Project Freedom / military exercise / using the military a little bit — TBC

Programming: "We originally wanted Bob Hope. Turns out, he won't come." "Why not?" (02:12) "He doesn't play police actions, just wars. Bob likes a big room, sir." "That's not funny." "How about if it escalated?" "How about if what escalated?" "The Vietnam conflict." Good Morning, Vietnam

Welker: Is the United States at war with Iran?
Trump: Well, they’ve been largely decapitated. And I call it a military exercise because people would rather have it called that. It’s not a big war for us. It’s not. We have the most powerful military in the world. I built it, frankly. I built it in my first four years. And I’m using it a little bit in my second four years. Meet the press, June 7, 2026

Thank you for your attention to this matter!

Re Talk:Donald Trump#RfC: Transgender persecution?

Guy in bar: Did you know that they're now letting transgender women play women's volleyball?
Rat: Did you know that while you were focused on that, one American has amassed as much wealth as that of 170 million Americans combined?
Guy in bar: Don't tell me that person's trying to play volleyball. Pearls before swine, March 17, 2026

MEOW

From Paul Krugman's substack newsletter: I remember the 70s. ... And I remember the 55 mile an hour speed limit ... It inspired Jimmy Carter ... [to] call[] for energy conservation ... and he called it the moral equivalent of war. He had really bad acronym advisors because that came out as MEOW.

Sounds a lot better than the current Operation Epic Fubar (also courtesy of Krugman).

History repeating

'Feeling based on fact': Robin Williams explaining what the Office of Homeland Security is: Every so often, Rumsfeld comes out and goes, "I don't know where, I don't know when, but something awful is going to happen. That's all for today, no further questions." What is it, the Central Intuitive Agency? "I'm getting a feeling of a man wearing a shoe that hisses."

Stigma

All of which points to one more indelible bequeathal: the stain on America left by the record. Voters in this country twice elected a president with no ethics, no empathy and no end to his narcissism. Thomas Edsall, April 21, 2026

But it wasn't a Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly

"SpaceX’s Starship reached it’s final destination — the Indian Ocean — despite some engine trouble, before erupting in flames upon impact. That last part was not unexpected, according to SpaceX." (AP News, May 23, 2026)

Ditched

Iran MOU: I get Trump reflexively calling critics bad and stupid, but jealous? Who exactly is jealous of Trump right now? The man just got globally humiliated by two different bodies of water. Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, June 21, 2026, 09:00

Gutfeld — still not funny. Meanwhile, three antisemitic leftists endorsed by New York city mayor Mamdani won their Democratic primaries, and they're already getting to work. They're planning to replace the New York Marathon with the running of the Jews, with image of guys being chased by bulls. Pot calling the kettle black much? Thanks (?) for sharing, New York Times, June 25, 2026, 0:35.

Pool news, Freedom250 edition

A dead duckling floating in a pool of slime is something that everybody can see. ... I have to say, I particularly like these kinds of face-plants of his, because they’re farce instead of, say, tragedy or horror, which is what we usually get from him. ... This is much more, to my mind, the kind of way you undermine his whole get-things-done/I’m-supercompetent and just have-the-will-to-dominate. I mean, he can’t even dominate a pool of algae. Michelle Cottle, York Times opinion, June 27, 2026

MAGA aesthetic

"How can we do this in a way that will make other people mad, that will make our enemies mad? How can we make our enemies mad today?" ... It really does seem to be an absolute communications priority of this administration to just go ahead and decide to tick people off on purpose, as long as it’s the right people. David French, York Times opinion, June 27, 2026

Whatever you think of his politics, it's all about ticking off the elites, which is hilarious because he is an elite of sorts. He's just an elite who's always had a chip on his shoulder and has never really fit in. Michelle Cottle, same NY Times source.

elites here are defined in a purely cultural, nonmaterial way. ... if you are [] a barista with an English degree, making $15 an hour, you're an elite because Netflix producers like to make shows for you sometimes. Whereas if you are a billionaire buying pardons for your buddies, you're not an elite, because the cultural tastemakers supposedly look down on you. It's a very self-aggrandizing vision of who constitutes an elite, and one that allows people with actual wealth and actual power and actual influence to obscure that under cultural grievances. ... grow up. Don't be a snowflake ... Don’t have this victim mentality all the time. Jamelle Bouie, ditto

Schrödinger's Strait

Open, closed, both? Don't look now. Or do look.

Alternate history

World Cup edition I

Trump did not call Infantino, Balogun stayed on the bench, the U.S. team lost, Trump said "rigged", levied a 90% tariff on Belgian waffles, invited the team to the White House, and awarded them purple hearts in a ceremony in the full-sized plywood mock-up of the ballroom.

World Cup edition II

Trump did not call Infantino, Balogun stayed on the bench, the U.S. team won and went on to win the world cup. Trump invited the team to the White House and awarded them the Presidential Medal of Freedom with Distinction in a ceremony in the full-sized plywood mock-up of the ballroom. The FIFA World Cup Trophy was last seen at the awarding ceremony when, according to unverified media accounts, Infantino handed Trump the trophy as a gift for his presidential library.

History — anchors awhat?

Trump called Infantino, Balogun played, the U.S. team lost. Three days later Trump asked the Supreme Court to reconsider ending birthright citizenship, Stephen Miller proposed gynecologic checkups of women of childbearing age at the border, and Rep. Andy Ogles was adrift on the high seas with his Anchor Away Act. I ran out of Jim Beam, but not to worry: wrote copy for a small startup and got paid in 92 proof product.

FBI investigation

of ~~10 fatal ICE and CBP shootings~~ allegations of vandalism at Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. Priorities ...

Counting

547 days down, 914 days to go
2026 Iran war: Day 1 plus 142

On depravity

"[D]epraved men are intensely vulnerable to scrutiny, so they hate inquiry and accountability. They’ll create secretive institutions that zealously guard their privacy and autonomy. And when accountability comes, it’s treated like martyrdom. Instead of facing justice for their misdeeds, they act as if they’re the victims of a hostile, unbelieving world.

The media becomes the enemy. So does anyone who challenges the leaders, including even sex abuse survivors." David French, May 14, 2026

Chatting with the chat bot

Good talking to you

Me: For a few days now, whenever I log in with my email and password, I receive the message that my account has been accessed from multiple devices which is not the case.

...

Me: I use MacOS and Firefox, no VPN. I clear the data manually but, even when I don't, Firefox clears it when I power down after each session. I don't know whether it's possible to exempt cookies/site data for (website).

Bot: Yes—Firefox auto-clearing cookies/site data is very likely what’s triggering the repeated one-time code. Would you like the steps to exempt (website) from Firefox’s automatic cookie/site-data deletion on macOS?

Me: Yes.

Bot: Does the information provided so far answer your questions, or would you like further assistance regarding Firefox's cookie settings or your account verification prompts?

Me: I hope this will do it.

Bot: Thank you for your patience. If you have any other questions in the future, feel free to reach out.

Me: So, what are the steps to exempt (website) from Firefox’s automatic cookie/site-data deletion on macOS?

Bot: I don’t have the steps available to provide for exempting (website) from Firefox’s automatic cookie/site-data deletion on macOS, and I don’t want to guess and send you the wrong instructions.

Me: Then why did you ask me whether you should tell me the steps?

Bot: You’re right to call that out — I asked if you wanted the steps, but then I couldn’t provide them because I don’t have a documented procedure available here that lists the exact Firefox macOS steps for creating a site exception for cookie/site-data auto-deletion. What I can do instead is help you reduce the repeated verification prompts by focusing on what’s triggering them (cookies/site data being cleared on exit). What else can I help you with today?

Me: What else? You "think" you helped me?

Bot: It sounds like one of our Customer Care Advocates will need to help you with this! I'm just going to ask you a few questions so I can pass along some key information to our team: What is your first name?