The bipartisan whitewashing of Dick Cheney is as much of a perversion of US history as Trump's eliding any mention of the horrors of slavery, the internment of Japanese-Americans and the genocide against the indigenous population of the US from national parks and museums.

Dick Cheney speaking at the AIPAC Policy Conference in 2006. Photo: White House.

The poor sometimes object to being governed badly. The rich always object to being governed at all.

– G.K. Chesterton

  • Dick Cheney told the deadliest lie in American history: “Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt that he is amassing them to use them against our friends, against our allies, and against us.” He paid no price for orchestrating this still-unfolding catastrophe and upon his death was celebrated by political elites and the mainstream press as a “patriot” and “devoted public servant.”

  • Democratic Party leaders like the Clintons, who have scorned Mamdani, have heaped praise on Dick Cheney. And they wonder why they poll worse than Trump…

  • The bipartisan whitewashing of Dick Cheney is as much of a perversion of US history as Trump’s eliding any mention of the horrors of slavery, the internment of Japanese-Americans and the genocide against the indigenous population of the US from national parks and museums.

  • As Andrew Cockburn reports in his scathing obituary for Cheney, the Yale dropout and former electrical lineman from Wyoming once discounted ethical and legal concerns about torturing people by waterboarding them until they nearly drown as a mere “dunk in the water.”

  • Trump isn’t smart, but he possesses shrewd, if crude, political instincts. He knew that Cheney was the dead-eyed face of a war most Americans had long ago turned against. Unlike Kamala Harris, a political illiterate, who doomed her faltering and aimless campaign by refusing to condemn the genocide in Gaza and aligning herself with the most ruthless and unrepentant neocon of them all, Dick Cheney.

As a “devoted public servant,” Cheney helped steal an election, shot a man in the face and covered it up, lied the US into a war, set up a black ops unit inside the White House to run kidnappings and torture sessions, authorized mass surveillance of Americans, and steered long-term no-bid contracts to his former corporation, which is was still deeply invested in…

  • Biden has always considered himself an “institutionalist,” which is another way of saying a member of the elite political class that runs the permanent government. As such, Biden and Cheney circled in the same orbit for nearly 50 years, more often in synchronous alignment than not. When Cheney needed help, Biden was usually there to give it. In 2001 and 2002, when Cheney wanted the Authorization for Military Force (AUMF) and the PATRIOT Act sped through Congress, Biden was there for him. When Cheney wanted to go to war in Iraq, Biden helped to stifle Democratic resistance in the Senate and push it through. When Obama briefly considered pursuing charges against some Bush officials, Biden advised against it. This is what Biden means when he praises Cheney’s devotion to “public service,” though he was well-compensated for his “sacrifices.” Cheney’s compensation package from Halliburton: $12.5 million in salary, $18 million in stock options, retirement $20 million, deferred compensation $2.4 million, bonuses $1.45 million. Total $54.5 million.

  • Clinton’s affinity for Cheney can be explained by the fact that Clinton transformed the Democratic Party into an interventionist neoliberal operation much like the Republican machine that Cheney played such a key role in engineering and fine-tuning from his time in the Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Bush I White Houses. What Clinton calls Cheney’s “sense of duty” included having his Deputy Chief of Staff, Scooter Libby, out a CIA officer (Valerie Plame) in retaliation for her husband (Joe Wilson) writing that the Niger yellowcake story promoted by Cheney to justify invading Iraq was a hoax.

  • This kind of bi-partisan garbage is a big reason why we ended up where we are: The Democrats ran three presidential candidates who voted for Cheney’s manufactured war on Iraq and then, when Obama, who opposed the war, had a chance to hold Cheney, brashly asserted the unitary power of the vice presidency, and his repellant crew accountable, he appointed Iraq war supporters to be his VP and run the State and “War” Departments and then shrugged it all off with: “I guess we tortured some folks.”

  • “Impact” = 4.5 million deaths in the Forever Wars Cheney instigated.

  • ABC’s Jonathan Karl provides a prime example of the courtier press at work, just as two decades earlier Tim Russert, who Alexander Cockburn described as being “always there with his watering can to fertilize myths useful to the system,” nodded his head as Cheney told America on Meet the Press that “US troops would be greeted [by Iraqis] as liberators.”

  • Back in 2000, Al Gore–the man who first invoked Willie Horton against Mike Dukakis–was so desperate to find something similar to fling at George W. Bush that he actually put Newt Gingrich in a campaign ad to attest that “Dick Cheney is even more conservative than I am.” (As Cockburn and I revealed in our biography of Gore, Gingrich and Gore had been pals in the 80s, when the two young southern guns considered themselves the leading “futurists” in Congress.)

  • One of the worst after-effects of Trump’s radioactive personality is that he is so reviled by many Americans that he has softened the reputation of one of the most evil and destructive figures in American history: Dick Cheney.

  • I often think about the fact that Cheney received a heart transplant that could have gone to someone who wasn’t a war criminal, a liar about matters of life and mass death and a traitor to the US Constitution…

  • Erin Ryan: “Now that Dick Cheney is dead, I can finally re-register as an organ donor.”

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  • Some quotes from Zohran Mamdani’s victory speech (the full-text can be read here), which began by quoting Eugene Debs, later referenced Nehru and showed no signs of retreat.

“Whether you are an immigrant, a member of the trans community, one of the many black women that Donald Trump has fired from a federal job, a single mom still waiting for the cost of groceries to go down, or anyone else with their back against the wall—your struggle is ours, too.”

“New York will remain a city of immigrants, a city built by immigrants, powered by immigrants, and as of tonight, led by an immigrant.”

“I wish Andrew Cuomo only the best in private life, but let tonight be the final time I utter his name.”

“Donald Trump, since I know you’re watching, I have four words for you: Turn the volume up.”

“We can respond to oligarchy and authoritarianism with the strength it fears, not the appeasement it craves.”

“I am young, despite my best efforts to grow older. I am Muslim. I am a democratic socialist. And most damning of all, I refuse to apologize for any of this.”

  • Here, in sum, is the advice of the New York Times’s editorial board gave to the victorious Zohran Mamdani: Renounce everything you campaigned on and become Michael Bloomberg…

  • Mamdani won 33% of the Jewish vote in New York City, which is remarkable given the high-pitched histrionics for the last five months…

  • The allegation, which always seemed ludicrous to me, that Mamdani couldn’t appeal to Black voters proved specious…

  • The New York Post, which has slimed Mamdani for months, knows how to sell papers. And this one’s bound to sell out and end up on refrigerators from Harlem to Bedford-Stuy…

  • The GOP has been calling neoliberal Democrats, like Clinton, Obama and Harris, Marxists, for so long that when a real middle-of-the-road Marxist finally got elected, the charge that he’s a Marxist lost most of its political sting.

  • CNN: Hakeem Jeffries was asked this morning if you’re the future of the democratic party. He said no.

Mamdani: Good to know.

CNN: Do you have a response?

Mamdani: No. I’m focused on the next two days.

CNN: Do you think you’re the future of the Democratic Party?

Mamdani: I don’t dare predict the future. That’s why I’m out here canvassing…

  • After smearing Mamdani for “dishonest” campaign promises, April Spanberger, the Democrat just elected Governor of Virginia, told CNN that perhaps Mamdani “should join the Democratic Party.” He is, of course, already a member of the Democratic Party and had won his party’s primary. If this is the kind of “intelligence” Spanberger was providing during her years in the CIA, it’s no wonder the US kept wading deeper and deeper into the quagmire of its own making in the Middle East…

  • Leave it to Mayor PeteBot to bury the lede so deeply it isn’t even mentioned…

  • Asked about Republican attacks on Mamdani, Democratic Congresswoman Debbie Dingell sniffed: “I’m going to focus on the election of Abigail Spanberger, who is clearly a moderate, as is Mikie Sherrill. Both women who had strong military and national intelligence backgrounds…” The Democrats are basically the party of drones and mass surveillance, the true inheritors of Dick Cheney’s legacy.

  • Jonathan Schwarz: “National Democrats must not look at Mamdani and make the mistake of nominating more young, energetic candidates who people like.”

  • Al Franken: “I voted for Mamdani. I like him. He was the first to jump on affordability and the rest of the country kind of followed him. This city needs to get more affordable for people.”

  • Trump struggling to explain Mamdani’s victory: “They have this new word called ‘affordability.'” If this keeps up, Trump’s vocabulary will top 1,000 words any day now.

  • For the right candidates, the class politics that can be asserted over this demographic alone should work everywhere: 1 in 4 New Yorkers live in poverty, while another 1 in 24 New Yorkers are millionaires. Do the math.

  • A Message from the Boys: NBC News exit polling of young men (18-29) in VA, NJ and NYC.

NYC: Mamdani +40 VA: Spanberger +14 NJ: Sherrill: +10

Surprise! Looks like they’re not all misogynistic, protein powder snorting, trad-wife seeking incels after all!

  • FOX on the New Jersey governor’s race, which the GOP believed they were going to win: “The reason for their vote, those who said that they wanted to oppose the sitting president, 71% of them. So this is really what led to the outcome tonight.”

  • Owen Winter, The Economist:

In our polling with YouGov, since the start of his second term, Donald Trump’s net approval has fallen 17 points among white Americans (+17 to -1), 28 points among Hispanic Americans (-9 to -37) and 38 points among black Americans (-36 to -74).

  • Trump’s Job Approval Among 18-29 Year Olds (% Change from Feb 4, 2025):

Disapprove: 75% (+38) Approve: 20% (-22)

YouGov / Oct 27, 2025

  • Trump to 60 Minutes: “I think I’m a much better-looking person than Mamdani, right?” From the perspective of snapping turtles in heat?

  • Has this been scheduled yet? Time? Network? Better fire up the TiVo (See below.)

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  • On October 10, ICE launched an armed raid on the West Town neighborhood of Chicago and began abducting landscapers as they worked on lawns. Soon, car horns began sounding up and down the block, as residents warned people that ICE had invaded their neighborhood. Local residents began pouring into the street, shouting at the masked officers to “get the hell out.”

Finally, the ICE raiders were chased back into their cars. As one of the ICE vehicles sped away from the angry crowd and down the 1600 block of West Hubbard, it crashed into a car driven by Dayanne Figueroa, who was driving to get coffee before going to work.

Almost immediately after the collision, the ICE agents spilled out of their unmarked car with their guns drawn and pointed at Figueroa, who is a US citizen. ICE agents forced open her door, grabbed her by the legs and yanked her from the car. Then they dragged Figueroa to a red minivan, stuffed her inside and drove off, as someone in the crowd yelled: “You hit her! We have it on video!”

The agents never identified themselves or presented a warrant for her arrest. They left her car in the middle of the street, the keys still in the ignition. Figueroa was held in an ICE facility for several hours without being told why she had been abducted or being allowed to call a lawyer or her family. She was released several hours later without any charges being filed. DHS later blamed Figueroa for the entire incident.

  • Around 6:30 in the morning on October 30, as ICE agents were interrogating a driver they’d pulled over in Ontario, California, Carlos Jijminez, who lived just down the block in a mobile home park, pulled up near them in his car and warned them that they were near a school bus stop and that children would soon be gathering in the area. Instead of taking Jiminez’s advice, a masked ICE agent responded by first pointing his pepper spray at Jiminez and then opening fire on his car, hitting the 25-year-old father of three in the back. The bullet lodged in his right shoulder.

ICE eventually arrested Jimenez and charged him with assault on a federal officer. The ICE agent who shot Jimenez claimed that when Jimenez put his car in reverse to return home, the officer feared that he was going to run him over.

Jimenez’s lawyer, Cynthia Santiago, told the LA Times: “He was telling them, ‘Excuse me. Can you guys please, you know, please wrap this up.’ And immediately, the masked agent pulls out a gun and exchanges some words. He’s also shaking his pepper spray. He’s in fear, and Carlos’s trying to get out of the situation.”

This was the second shooting of civilians by ICE officers in California in the past 10 days. Last week, ICE agents fired at Carlitos Ricardo Arias in South Los Angeles, whose car had been boxed in. Aris was struck in the elbow and a deputy federal marshal was hit by a ricocheted stray bullet. Again, ICE agents claimed that Arias was trying to run them over, even though his car could barely move.

  • 60 Minutes: “Americans have been watching videos of ICE tackling a young mother, tear gas being used in a Chicago residential neighborhood, and the smashing of car windows. Have some of these raids gone too far?”

Trump: “No. I think they haven’t gone far enough.”

Not far enough? How about deporting a young woman and her child back into the arms of the man who brutally abused her?

  • Last summer, Carmen’s husband came home drunk, again. He began pounding and kicking on the door, threatening to kill her if she didn’t let him in. Her young son stood next to her, trembling in fear. She called the cops and soon got a restraining order against him. Both Carmen and her husband were undocumented. A few months later, he broke the terms of the restraining order, entered the house and savagely beat her.

Carmen (whose last name has been redacted for her safety) cooperated fully with the police and immigration officials to have her husband arrested and deported. She was advised to apply for a U-Visa, which allows crime victims to reside and work legally in the US. But this June, when Carmen went for her scheduled immigration check-in, she was detained by federal agents. After spending two months in detention, she and her 8-year-old son were put on a plane and deported to her home country, where he brutal husband was awaiting her arrival.

  • Last Monday, Berenice Garcia-Hernandez was at home in Gresham, Oregon, when she learned from a Facebook post that ICE agents had gathered at a nearby Chick-fil-A. The person who made the post said they were too frightened to take photos of the ICE vehicles, so Garcia-Hernandez got into her fiancé’s car, which carried government license plates, drove to Chick-fil-A, ordered a lemonade at the drive-thru window and began taking photos of the license plates of the immigration agents’ cars.

After seeing her take the photos, the ICE officers followed Garcia-Hernandez as she drove away. When she stopped at a traffic light, one agent got out of his vehicle and started recording her on a camera. He refused to identify himself. When the light turned green, the 25-year-old Garcia-Hernandez pulled away. After a couple of blocks, she hit another traffic light and came to a stop. That’s when the ICE agents hit their flashing police lights and surrounded her car. One agent broke open the window of the passenger door and dragged her out of the car. She was cuffed and taken to the ICE detention facility in South Portland. One of the agents told her she “was in so much trouble.”

Garcia-Hernandez is a US citizen. It is not illegal to photograph federal agents or their cars and license plates. She was held for seven hours without charges. ICE confiscated her cell phone and her engagement ring, which, a week later, they had yet to return.

  • Still, she remains undaunted. “I think that we should continue to use our voices and continue to warn others about what’s happening because it is not OK how our people, our community, is being treated,” she told The Oregonian. “And me as a U.S. Citizen, I ended up being treated this way just because I was taking pictures and videos of (them) to warn the community. They were mad because they were getting exposed.”

  • On October 25, ICE arrested Rev. James Eliud Ngahu Mwangi on his way home from work at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and sent him to the ICE detention prison in Conroe, Texas, where he has been held ever since. A native of Kenya, Mwangi is an Episcopal priest and has a permit to live and work in the US. DHS has refused to say why Mwangi was arrested and jailed. “The Episcopal Diocese of Texas stands firmly for justice, dignity and compassion for every person,” C. Andrew Doyle, the Bishop of Texas, said in a statement. “This priest has served both the church and the state of Texas faithfully. We are praying for his safety, for his family’s peace of mind, and for fair and humane treatment as this case moves forward.”

  • Charging that federal government officials lied during their sworn depositions and that the use of violence by immigration agents in Chicago “shocks the conscience,” Federal Judge Sara Ellis has issued a sweeping injunction against the use of force by ICE and Border Patrol during its “Operation Midway Blitz” raids in Chicago. Ellis said from the bench: “I find the government’s evidence to simply not be credible.” She emphasized that the accounts of numerous Border Patrol agents on what took place before they deployed tear gas on protesters to be undermined and contradicted by audio and visual recordings of the encounters. She zeroed in on the false testimony of self-aggrandizing Border Patrol commander Dan Bovino, who she tersely noted “admitted that he lied about whether a rock hit him before he deployed tear gas at Little Village.”

  • “Mommy, mommy, Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!” This was the reaction of a two-year-old girl in Chicago after being doused with tear gas by immigration agents as she played in a public park, which the child’s mother described as being turned into “a war zone.”

  • The Justice Department has been purging immigration court judges with defense backgrounds, especially immigrant defense.

  • Internal federal figures show that the number of individuals in ICE detention centers reached 66,000 this week, a new high. ICE’s detainee population has increased by nearly 70% since January. ICE now has enough detention beds to hold 70,000 detainees at once, up from its 41,500-bed capacity at the beginning of the year. The number of beds is expected to increase dramatically next year, when ICE receives $45 billion to expand detention levels.

  • Trump’s deportation Czar Thomas Homan: “Others are in the country illegally but may not have a criminal history, but guess what? They’re coming too. ICE is no longer turning a blind eye to illegal aliens in this country.”

  • In response to ICE’s refusal to allow detained Catholic migrants in the Chicago area to receive the Eucharist, Pope Leo from the Southside called on President Trump and Vice President Vance to respect the dignity and religious liberty of migrants in the United States: “The authorities must allow pastoral workers to assist with the needs of these people. Many times they have been separated from their families and no one knows what happens.”

  • More than 100 federal judges have now shot down the Trump administration’s policy to jail nearly everyone facing deportation, including 12 judges appointed by Trump. Just two judges have sided with ICE.

  • Last month, the FBI issued a bulletin to law enforcement agencies across the country warning that criminals posing as US immigration officers have carried out robberies, kidnappings and sexual assaults in several states.

  • When Russell Hott, director of ICE’s Chicago Field Office, was asked in a deposition in a federal lawsuit challenging ICE’s use of force whether he believed it was unconstitutional to arrest people for expressing their opposition to ICE’s Midway Blitz, Hott answered, “No.” Meanwhile, Border Patrol Chief Gregory Bovino testified that he “has instructed his officers to arrest protesters who make hyperbolic statements in the heat of political demonstrations.”

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  • CNBC reporter on the October jobs numbers: “This one was a doozy. The most job cuts for any October in more than two decades, going back to 2003. Companies announced about 153,000 job cuts last month, which was almost triple the number during the same month last year.”

  • In 2015, the 10 richest people on Earth had a combined net worth of around $557 billion. Today, the ten richest people have more than $2.4 trillion.

  • In its report on inequality in America, Oxfam warns the gap is about to widen even further, given that in 2027 the top 0.1% will see their taxes fall by around $311,000, while the lowest earners, including those making less than $15,000, will see tax increases.

  • According to Oxfam, over 40% of the U.S. population—including 48.9% of its children—is considered poor or low income. An economy that’s the envy of the world!

  • Craig Fuller, CEO of Freightwaves, to CNBC:

We should be worried. Certain portions of the goods economy are collapsing right now. Year-over-year trucking volume is down 17%. When you look at the industrial sectors, we’re down 30% year-over-year, which is Great Financial Crisis levels of concern.

  • Bloomberg reported that US factory activity fell in October, marking an eighth straight month of decline, “driven by a pullback in production and tepid demand.”

  • Starwood Capital’s billionaire CEO Barry Sternlicht was brought on to CNBC to gripe about Mamdani:

We have a big office here ourselves … but the team in New York is for the first time saying maybe we should leave … The unions have to be more accommodative on their work laws and the wages and everything else.”

As always, the working-class must compromise to appease the super-rich.

  • With growing signs the AI bubble may be about to burst, taking the economy down with it, Open AI’s Sam Altman calls for a pre-bailout “ When something gets sufficiently huge … the federal government is kind of the insurer of last resort, as we’ve seen in various financial crises … given the magnitude of what I expect AI’s economic impact to look like, I do think the government ends up as the insurer of last resort.” Marxism for billionaires who go bust!

Average gas price at the pump January 2025: $3.11 per gallon Average gas price at the pump this week: $3.079 per gallon (Source: AAA)

  • Thomas Piketty on the shriveling of public assets: In recent decades, the public share of total assets has declined. Net public assets (i.e., assets minus liabilities) in major European countries have fallen to just above zero (from 20-30% in 1978), while private assets have risen to >6 times GDP.

  • Trump on the cost of a Thanksgiving meal at Walmart: “I don’t know if they care about that in Saudi Arabia, but here it means a lot. We got the princess here from Saudi Arabia. She’s got a lot of cash.”

  • New Mexico is the first state to offer free child care to all residents. Under the new program, all families, regardless of income, can get their child care fees covered.

  • On Monday, Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens ordered an immediate pause on residential evictions and water shutoffs as the federal lapse in SNAP funds takes effect.

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  • Obviously, not “our” people, so no cause for alarm…

  • Since 1997, there’s been a 2.7% decline in annual rainfall in the US, while extreme flooding events have dramatically increased, according to new research from AccuWeather.

  • According to a study by researchers at the World Inequality Lab, the wealthiest 1 percent of the global population accounts for 15% of all emissions attributed to consumers, but when their carbon footprint is measured by the assets they own, their share jumps up to about 40 percent.

  • A new paper published in Energy Research and Social Science found that the 2022 energy crisis drove record global profits for fossil fuel companies: “We estimate that globally, the net income in publicly-listed oil and gas companies alone reached $916 billion in 2022, with the US the biggest beneficiary, with claims on $301 billion, more than US investments of $267 billion investment in low-carbon energy economy that year.” Half of profits went to the top 1 percent, mainly through stock ownership.

  • CNBC: I could see a Democratic president declaring a climate emergency to tax countries with high CO2 emissions. Does that concern you at all what Democrats might do with this type of tariff power?

Scott Bessent: I would question whether there’s a climate emergency. It’s all been proven wrong.

  • Elon Musk, disputing Trump’s assertion that solar energy is “a scam to make your country fail”: “Just with solar alone, China can, in 18 months, produce enough solar panels to power all the electricity of the United States.”

  • Though fossil fuels still dominate, the percentage of the planet’s energy derived from fossil fuels edged down again in 2024 and is now at the lowest level since the 1960s.

  • Battery capacity by power grid in the US:

CAISO (California): 14,609 MW ERCOT (Texas): 10,982 MW PJM (Mid-Atlantic): 441 MW

  • Since April 13, 2025, Nepal has recorded 4,597 weather/climate-related disaster incidents nationwide. A total of 335 people have died, 41 are missing, and 1,264 have been injured, according to the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority.

Lyndi Stone, a principal corporate counsel for Microsoft, on the problem with siting data centers:

Nobody really wants a data center in their backyard, I don’t want a data center in my backyard…. Data centers, once they’re operational, don’t bring a lot of jobs.

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  • In a sobering investigation by the the indispensable StatNews into the chaotic condition of the FDA under RKJ, Jr and Vinay Prashad, where the atmosphere is described as “rife with mistrust and paranoia,” an FDA staffer told reporter Lizzy Lawrence: “In the current FDA environment, it is impossible for dedicated career FDA staff to responsibly regulate new products, conduct groundbreaking research, and manage FDA’s resources on behalf of the American public. The situation is not salvageable.”

The story quotes an intimidating email sent by Prasad to George Tidmarsh, the head of the FDA’s CDER Division, who was recently placed on administrative leave for not being deferential enough to a Southern California health care executive. Prasad:

Let me be clear. If you continue to choose not to do what I tell you. I will spend all of my political capital get [sic] you fired. Do not take people from my team. When I ask you to ask the reviewers a question you will do so.

  • Americans waste nearly $400 million in food each year.

  • Mehmet Oz: “We thought it was 125 million pounds. Our estimate is Americans will lose 135 billion pounds by the midterms.” Yeah, that tends to happen when you put 46 million Americans on a starvation diet.

  • Pfizer’s antiviral drug Paxlovid costs $15 to make. It retails for $1500.

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  • As 46 million people are about to lose their access to food, Trump decided to hold a Great Gatsby-themed party celebrating their exuberant excesses (or what Ezra Klein calls “abundance”) in his private club at Mar-a-Lago.

  • Not sure Daisy Buchanan, Jordan Baker and the other flappers did it like this, which makes me wonder whether there will be pole dancing at the new White House ballroom…

  • One more scene from Trump’s Gatsby Party: This one’s for you, Franklin Graham!

  • Odds Trump has read The Great Gatsby: 1 in 10,000.

  • F. Scott Fitzgerald: “There is no confusion like the confusion of a simple mind…”

  • Meanwhile, back at the White House, Trump’s remodeling of the Lincoln Bathroom at the White House, proves once again that the wealthier you are, the worse aesthetic taste you’re likely to possess and inflict on others. In this case, the marble-encased bathroom looks like you’d be taking a crap in a tomb. Check out the gold trash can. No bathroom is complete without one…See Freud (on “filthy lucre” and “the shitter of ducats.”

We know that the gold which the devil gives his paramours turns into excrement after his departure, and the devil is certainly nothing else than the personification of the repressed unconscious instinctual life. We also know about the superstition which connects the finding of treasure with defecation, and everyone is familiar with the figure of the “shitter of ducats” (Dukatenscheisser). Indeed, even according to ancient Babylonian doctrine, gold is “the feces of Hell.” Thus in following the usage of language, neurosis, here as elsewhere, is taking words in their original, significant sense, and where it appears to be using a word figuratively, it is usually simply restoring its old meaning.

“Brown Gold,” from “Character and Anal Erotism.”

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  • An ebullient Lindsey Graham ranting at the Republican Jewish Coalition about Trump the Bomber: “I feel good about the Republican Party and where we’re going as a nation. We’re killing all the right people and we’re cutting your taxes. Trump is my favorite president. We’ve run out of bombs. We” didn’t run out of bombs during World War II.”

  • From AS Dillingham’s essay for the LRB, Murder at Sea:

Over the last month, the US government has launched at least eleven strikes on boats in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific. The Trump administration has claimed, without providing evidence, that the boats were transporting illegal drugs. The strikes have killed at least 57 people. These are summary executions without trial. Amnesty International has called it a “murder spree”.

  • Trump: “Every time we hit a narco-trafficking vessel, we save 25,000 lives.”

There have been at least 16 strikes on alleged “drug boats” (none of them capable of reaching the US) in the Caribbean and Pacific, which would mean that Trump has “saved” 400,000 lives–a figure that is six times more than the total number of drug overdose deaths last year.

But Venezuela doesn’t produce the drug that Trump is talking about: fentanyl, most of which comes into the US from Mexico or Canada. Pentagon officials told Congress last week that they’ve “not recovered fentanyl in any of these cases. It’s all been cocaine.”

  • Latest update on Trump the Isolationist: Bomb Iran, lob cruise missiles at the Houthis, declare war on LA, Chicago, and Portland, sink fishing boats in the Caribbean and Pacific, threaten Nigeria and now prepare to invade Mexico? “US troops in Mexico would mainly use drone strikes to hit drug labs and cartel members… the administration plans to maintain secrecy around it and not publicize actions associated with it.”

  • Trump is threatening a “fast, vicious and sweet” attack on…Nigeria.

  • Trump: ”Christianity is facing an existential threat in Nigeria. The United States cannot stand by while such atrocities are happening there, and in numerous other Countries. We stand ready, willing, and able to save our Great Christian Population around the World!”

Onward Christian, drones, Buzzing off to war, With bombs from Boeing to drop on Natives from afar. Trump, the royal master Points to the heart of darkness Watch the MAGA banners soar! But he’ll stay in his gilded ballroom His bone spurs are sore.

Q: “Would you support U.S. Troops going into Nigeria?”

Sen. Tuberville: “You bet I would. It wouldn’t be like going into Russia, China, North Korea, or Iran. This would be helping innocent people.”

  • “Mistah, Kurtz. He dead.”

  • Nobel “Peace” Prize Laureate María Corina Machado insists that Maduro rigged the 2020 US elections against Donald Trump!

+ 60 Minutes: “What does that mean — ‘send more than the National Guard?”

Trump: “Well, if you had to send in the Army or the Marines, I’d do that in a heartbeat. We have a thing called the Insurrection Act. I could use that immediately and no judge can even challenge you on that. If I wanted to, I could.”

  • Trump also vowed this week to intervene in Israel’s prosecution of Netanyahu: Trump on Netanyahu:

I don’t think they treat him very well. He’s under trial for some things. We’ll be involved in that to help him out a little bit because I think it’s very unfair.

  • Trump: “Israel attacked first. That attack was very, very powerful. I was very much in charge of that. When Israel attacked Iran first, that was a great day for Israel.”

  • Interesting back-and-forth between Trump’s Solicitor General and Justice Gorsuch on whether Trump can seize the Constitutional power to impose tariffs from Congress…

Gorsuch: “The President has inherent authority over tariffs in wartime; does he have inherent authority over tariffs in peacetime?”

U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer: “No.”

Gorsuch: “What’s the reason to accept the notion that Congress can hand off the power to declare war to the president?”

Sauer: “Well, we don’t contend that.”

Gorsuch: “You do, you say it’s unreviewable…you’ve backed off that position?”

Sauer: “Maybe that’s fair to say.”

Gorsuch: “Could the president impose a 50% tariff on gas-powered cars and auto parts to deal with the unusual and extraordinary threat from abroad of climate change?”

Sauer: “This administration would say it’s a hoax.”

Gorsuch: “I’m sure you would.”

  • It looks like Nancy Pelosi will stop at 85 and not attempt to go for the full Di-Fi…

Reporter: “Do you have a statement on Nancy Pelosi’s retirement?”

Trump: “I think she’s an evil woman. I’m glad she’s retiring. I think she, uh, did the country a great service by retiring. She was a tremendous liability for the country. And I thought she was an evil woman who did a poor job to cost the country a lot of damages and in reputation. I thought she was terrible.”

  • Misogynistic invective, aimed at someone who outfoxed him numerous times, aside, why couldn’t one high-ranking Democrat say something similar about Cheney, instead of mourning his death as if he were an American Chou En-Lai, instead of the malevolent miscreant he was?

  • The woman hatred is real and it pervades the chauvinistic forces of the New Right that Trump commands.

  • MAGA pastor Dale Partridge is calling for repeal of the 19th Amendment, saying: Dale Partridge calls for repealing the 19th Amendment: “Nearly every legalized moral atrocity of the last 100 years was made possible by the female vote.”

  • Here’s the bizarre excuse Trump gave to the American Business Forum on Wednesday for boycotting the G20 Meeting in Johannesburg slated for November 22-23:

For generations, Miami has been a haven for those fleeing communist tyranny in South Africa. I mean, if you take a look at what’s going on in parts of South Africa. Look at South Africa, what’s going on. Look at South America, what’s going on. You know, I’m not going there. We have a G20 meeting in South Africa.South Africa shouldn’t even be in the Gs anymore. Because what’s happened there is bad. I’m not going.

They’ll almost certainly be more productive without him.

+++

  • Here’s the full transcript of Trump’s 60 Minutes interview, in which Norah O’Donnell–allegedly Bari Weiss’s new favorite to anchor CBS News– throws him 90 minutes of softballs, which he awkwardly flails at, of which they aired 28 minutes…

  • 60 Minutes chose not to air this part of the interview with Trump. Wonder why?:

And, actually, 60 Minutes paid me a lotta money. And you don’t have to put this on, because I don’t wanna embarrass you, and I’m sure you’re not– you have a great– I think you have a great, new leader, frankly, who’s the young woman [Bari Weiss] that’s leading your whole enterprise is a great– from what I know. I don’t know her, but I hear she’s a great person. But 60 Minutes was forced to pay me– a lot of money because they took her answer out that was so bad, it was election-changing, two nights before the election.

  • 60 Minutes: Changpeng Zhao pled guilty in 2023 to violating anti–money laundering laws. Why did you pardon him?

Trump: Okay, are you ready? I don’t know who he is.

A day after this aired, a reporter as House Speaker Mike Johnson the obvious question: Last week, you were very critical of Biden’s use of the autopen & pardons. But Trump admitted on 60 Minutes to not knowing that he pardoned a crypto billionaire who pleaded guilty to money laundering. Does that also concern you?

Johnson: “I don’t know anything about that. I didn’t see the interview. I’m not sure.”

+++

  • Re-reading Gatsby for about the 20th time after Trump’s bacchanalia last week and jotted down this gem in my Moleskine: “I’ve been drunk for about a week now, and I thought it might sober me up to sit in a library.” Libraries are, of course, one of the last refuges for the houseless, the lonely, the abandoned in a grinding economic machine that has left them behind.

  • Day after day, the same stories, told over and over again, more and more incoherently, like some perverse remix of a senile Sheharazade…Trump:

The only thing I got from the UN was a blank teleprompter. Remember, I went up there, princess. I’m looking at the teleprompters and I have all my friends sitting out there. 158 leaders, some in beautiful silk white robes, others in bad shirts, bad ties, and some in beautiful shirts and ties, but they’re all the leaders. I’m looking at the teleprompter, stone cold blank. They did it on purpose. It wasn’t a great feeling. I’m trying to walk slowly because I see it’s not working. They did it on purpose, but it worked out okay. Not great.

  • Seth Harp, author of the compelling investigation into drug trafficking and impunity among special forces units, The Fort Bragg Cartel: “Typical psych profile of a tech oligarch: Born rich but with below average intelligence. Anxious, anhedonic, antisocial, disagreeable, humorless, disliked by others. Bland on the surface, but driven by an implacable mania and shrewd aptitude for making money. Entirely amoral.”

  • Trump: “Thank goodness for TiVo or something thereof. Right? TiVo. We love TiVo. We love TiVo. One of the greatest inventions in history.” (Does anyone still use TiVo? Unlikely, since TiVo is defunct: “TiVo is a discontinued line of digital video recorders developed and marketed by Xperi and introduced in 1999.”)

  • At one of their early live gigs together, Jackson Browne introduced Warren Zevon as “the Ernest Hemingway of the 12-string guitar.” Zevon replied: “No, Jackson — the Charles Bronson of the 12-string guitar.’”

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