THIS STUFF ACTUALLY HAPPENED:
Streamkilling in Texas. To show how tough the US military is, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has arranged for an Army soldier convicted of murder to be executed by firing squad at Ft. Hood, Texas, on December 3. The military will livestream the event so American families can enjoy some wholesome entertainment. The firing squad seems too gentle, however. Why not a beheading? Or draw and quarter the guy? We expect a high-T guy like Hegseth to at least mount the corpse on a pike at the Ft. Hood entrance as a warning to all who enter.
The convict, Nidal Hasan, was an Army psychologist who went on a rampage at Ft. Hood on November 5, 2009, killing 13 and injuring 32. A court-martial convicted him in 2013 and sentenced him to death. But it didn’t say the military should murder him in barbaric fashion or air a snuff film teenagers might want to emulate. That’s all Hegseth, with the apparent blessing of his boss, President Trump. They are manly men doing manly killings in manly ways. As Arlo Guthrie said, Kill. Kill! KILL!
The new money, honey. Trumpworld figure Kimberly Guilfoyle, who is the highly qualified US ambassador to Greece, asked a lesser Trumpworld figure to pay off her $100,000 American Express balance so her finances would look clean when she appeared before the Senate for her confirmation hearing in 2025. “Honey please,” she texted the man, Eric Deters, of Kentucky. If he paid, she promised to get him some favors from the Trump administration, including help from the IRS over a tax dispute.
Deters never forked over the money. But the whole story is delightfully weird. First, Kimmy G was engaged to Trump’s son, Donald, Jr., for four years. They broke up in 2024 and Trump Jr. married somebody else this year. But President Trump kept Guilfoyle in the crime family by making her ambassador to Greece. It’s not clear what she did to alienate Deters, who provided the material to the Wall Street Journal and other news organizations.
Was this a crime? Maybe not, if no money changed hands. But add it to the long list of graft and graftlike incidents perpetrated by Trumpers that Democrats will dig deep into if they win one or both houses of Congress in the upcoming midterm elections.
Lisa Cook witch hunt. Trump is appointing three of his lackeys to “investigate” whether Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook committed mortgage fraud. Trump already tried to fire Cook from her Fed job, hoping to replace her with somebody more to his liking. The Supreme Court stopped that earlier this year.
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But the court didn’t rule on the mortgage fraud question, so Trump is now planning a probe. Trump claims Cook listed a vacation home as a primary residence to get a better mortgage deal. Cook says she mistakenly checked the wrong box on a form and never got preferential treatment, anyway. We’d welcome a legitimate investigation that either clears Cook or recommends some kind of censure.
This won’t be that. The three investigators are all Trump appointees known for blind allegiance to the boss. They’re sure to find Cook guilty of something. Then there will be more litigation to determine whether Trump’s sham tribunal has any actual authority. If it does, how about investigating Guilfoyle?
Trump snoozewatch. Here’s Trump nodding off in front of the cameras again at a White House event on October 7. By one count, Trump has fallen asleep at public events with cameras rolling 29 times during his second term. That has to be a record in the presidential TV era.
Diesel prices will be coming down fast! That’s what Trump said on October 9, thanks to some sort of deal he made with Russia to export more of the pricey fuel. He’s promised lower energy prices many times before, so it’s probably bunk.
Trump will ease some sanctions on Russia in exchange for Russia exporting more diesel. But the amount at stake is small and Russia is facing its own energy crisis as Ukraine pummels its energy infrastructure. Diesel prices are around $6.28 per gallon, up 61% since the Iran war began in February. Trump is desperate to convince voters something good will happen before they vote in November and doesn’t seem to realize that people actually look at prices when they buy stuff.
Food safety is now political. New polling by Gallup finds that confidence in the safety of food at stores has dropped from 81% in 2019 to just 65% now. Gallup did the survey while the cyclospora outbreak responsible for “explosive diarrhea” was underway, so that may have been a factor. That parasite may have gotten into lettuce or other types of produce.
There’s now a big difference in the view of food safety by political party. In 2024, when Joe Biden was president, 80% of Democrats felt grocery store food was safe. Under Trump, that’s down to 66%. Republicans, meanwhile, are more likely to think food is safe now than under Biden.
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Democrats think the Trump administration is doing a terrible job enforcing food safety, while Republicans think it’s doing a great job. Maybe there should be different produce aisles for Democrats and Republicans.
Your Trump tax. We now know just how much inflation Trump has imposed on the country. Research by the New York Federal Reserve found that Trump’s tariffs have pushed the total inflation rate higher by as much as 2.9 percentage points. That’s momentous. The current inflation rate is 3.4%. The new findings imply it would be under 1% without Trump’s tariffs. If inflation were less than 1%, the Federal Reserve would see no inflation problem and it wouldn’t be raising interest rates, as it just did last month, and may do again. Trump wouldn’t be mouthing off about the Fed because it would actually be doing what he wants, either holding rates steady, or cutting them.
Trump’s tariffs only apply to goods, and goods account for only about 36% of all consumer spending. The rest is services, which is something Trump hasn’t tried to tariff, thank god. Services inflation is 3.1%, while goods inflation is 3.9%. With no Trump tariffs, goods inflation would be slightly negative and the only inflation problem would be the higher energy prices Trump’s Iran war caused. It’s too bad Trump doesn’t sleep more, and do less.
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