6 Aug 2026
Demo in front of Senator McCormick’s office about Haitians.
The big story since my last photoessay continues to be Iran. Trump is clearly lost and flailing. He’s now trying economic sanctions, but there’s no indication they’ll be any more successful than anything else that’s been tried. Trump has mid-term elections to worry about and citizens are already annoyed at his failure to rein in the cost of living.
The price of electricity has risen significantly — almost 7% higher than a year ago. Housing, medical care, and tuition and child care are up by close to 3% year over year. Overall groceries and clothing are up by almost 2% each.
The Iranians have no such problems. They can credibly blame any economic problems on Trump and they don’t have any really organized opposition.
Had Trump ever truly explained what the war was about and what we were hoping to achieve by it, then the war might be considered more tolerable. If the purpose was, as Vice-President Vance has suggested, simply to extract oil from the region, then well, that would be even less tolerable! Getting oil out of occupied territory has become the purpose in Venezuela as Secretary of State Rubio has apparently become the de facto ruler there. Revenue from petroleum exports goes directly to the US Treasury and then Rubio decides how the money can be spent.
Really good explanation of why the US is running short on advanced missiles: The Patriot PAC-3 interceptor missile is one of the few weapons that can stop a ballistic missile that travels up beyond the atmosphere and back down again. The US just used about 50 PAC-3s in a day. Worse,
Iran used course-changing missiles to force heavy expenditure and deplete scarce Patriot stocks.
…
A complete waste. Trump has lost to Iran, but since he can’t admit it without experiencing extreme narcissistic injury, we’re stuck in Schroedinger’s war. So the US will continue to deplete its stocks of PAC 3 interceptors, continue to burn through other precision and non-precision munitions, continue to just chew up the crew of the Lincoln Strike Group, as well as the ships, same with the two MEUs they’ve dispatched, continue to run US Navy, Marine, and Air Force flight crews, technicians, mechanics into the ground while burning through aviation fuel, continue to kill or wound civilians, and continue to get US service members killed or wounded in action. All so Trump doesn’t have to admit he lost to the Iranians.
A look at the effects of continued use of the aircraft carrier USS Lincoln. The carrier has spent over 260 days on deployment.
The families say that their loved ones have described food shortages and standing in line for the ship’s store for an hour or more, and that the store often lacks basic supplies like toothpaste, soap and deodorant. Families said there have been times during the deployment when the Lincoln was rationing portions.
…he has told her about days when the showers were locked and laundry was closed, and about food shortages on board that meant his meal was half a cup of rice and two tortillas.…
Reportedly, there have been two suicide attempts onboard the Lincoln. The Pentagon denies that there have been any such problems. The Pentagon has also said that another carrier will relieve the Lincoln, but wasn’t clear about when. According to crewmember’s relatives, morale about the carrier is absolutely terrible. Sailors are burnt out and miserable.
Frickin’ draft dodger!
“Have the deployments gone on too long?” the reporter followed up.
“No, no, no,” Cadet Bone Spurs replied. “Not nearly long enough.”
Very interesting comparison/contrast between Russia/Ukraine and Israel/Gaza. Trump puts out a negotiating position, Ukraine and Gaza accept. Russia and Israel are supposedly run by Trump’s “good buddies” Putin and Netanyahu, then reject the position! Trump’s reaction seems to be “Oh. Hmm. Well, okay. I guess the plan wasn’t good enough.” Trump then puts absolutely zero pressure on his good buddies to reconsider their position and to perhaps make some concessions to the other side!
Israel continues to attack and occupy refugee camps in the West Bank.
Israeli forces entered Qalandia after sealing it off and proceeded to arrest dozens of Palestinians and conduct field interrogations, while distributing leaflets threatening Palestinians with arrest if they take any action against Israeli forces.
…
Since 2021, Jenin, Tulkarem, and Nur Shams refugee camps were hubs of local armed resistance groups, but a harsh Israeli crackdown on the groups culminated in the camps’ wholesale depopulation.
Demo run by the folks at Peace, Justice & Sustainability NOW! at Lockheed-Martin near the King of Prussia Mall.
Is the US trying to take over Greenland via an oil drilling company? It’s hard to see why it would illegally move equipment into a far North territory otherwise. The company that owns the drilling equipment says that they’re now scheduling the Winter of 2027/28 as opposed to 2026/27 in order to get the permitting and regulatory approvals. The piece did not include any comment from the governments of Denmark or Greenland.
So what do you say when you’ve got nothing to say? Bigotry! A woman of Fox News, one of the Outnumbered women, denounces the Michigan Democratic candidate for the US Senate Abdul El-Sayed for, well, essentially being Muslim, claiming that he’s just fundamentally anti-American. He was born in Michigan, is a Rhodes Scholar and a Doctor of Medicine and was Executive Director of the Detroit Health Department for two years. But yeah, he’s Muslim, so he’s suspect.
From Axios: “GOP midterm strategy: Make it a ‘hate election’” Why?
“There’s broad GOP frustration that Trump has made challenging midterm elections worse by not focusing heavily on pocketbook issues…”
Trump’s focus on the SAVE Act has failed to excite right-wingers, but it’s convinced liberals that he’ll do anything to win!
I think the real beginning, where Democrats really felt the public dissatisfaction with current incumbent Democrats was with the House Oversight Committee. The first fellow to become the Ranking Member in the 2025 Congress (in a committee that Democrats didn’t control) was Representative Gerry Connolly, a perfectly nice fellow who made absolutely zero news while he was in that position. When Connolly died in May 2025, he was replaced with Representative Robert Garcia, who has been getting in the news quite a bit by working on the Epstein issue (The graphic for their website is a picture of Trump and Epstein, both facing the camera and smiling).
In September 2025, Democrats began to realize that the public wants Democrats to fight, not just to occupy comfortable seats and get reelected until they were too old to walk unassisted. The public said that protecting the New Deal and Great Society programs, Social Security and Medicare, along with other health care programs (By which is likely meant the ACA/Obamacare) were the number one priority. That’s rather sad because we’re worried about defending programs that have been in place for decades because we feel those programs are under siege. Despite the Trump Administration pressing immigration as an issue, only 22% of the public thought that was the number one issue.
If I’ve had a hero lately, Senator Ossoff would be it. His interrogation of Postmaster General DeJoy was classic. I can see why folks claimed that they understood why DeJoy quit before he faced Ossoff again. Again, in questioning Jay Clayton, Trump’s nominee to be the Director of National Intelligence that would replace Tulsi Gabbard, Ossoff established that Clayton was utterly untrustworthy. These are questionings that move the needle and get results. Instead of asking half a dozen questions ranging all over the place, Ossoff focuses in on just one question until he either gets an answer or until the person shows themselves to be of no use to citizens. Ossoff’s specific viewpoints aren’t the issue. The reason he’s good is that he’s focused on achieving specific goals. This is the kind of politician Democrats need right now.
Yep, those are prop hats, the woman in the blue outfit is wearing a “Golden Dome” that Trump wants to build. I did a college paper on Reagan’s “Star Wars” and I can assure you we still don’t have the ability to make such a system work. Again, “Golden Dome,” “Star Wars” and other such programs are and will always be, far mor impressive on paper than they ever will be in real life.
Trump appears to be a senile old coot who’s well into his sunset years and is fading fast. Trump “claims he spoke to a sailor who had positive things to say about steam catapults.” He never forgot the conversation (if it was indeed a real conversation with a real person) and is now insisting that the Navy spend billions of dollars to re-engineer, tear out and reinstall equipment in order to “fix” a nonexistent problem.
Is this an isolated problem? Unfortunately, no. NY Times columnist Jamell Bouie examines an Atlantic piece by David Brooks, describing a “purge” of right-wing college professors and the “stifling orthodoxy that stamped out dissent.” This persecution is completely imaginary and never happened. What’s the motivation for Brooks to pretend it exists? Well, the right-wing in this country sure seems to be working VERY hard to purge the left wing from all sorts of areas and to enforce a stifling orthodoxy of right-wing ideas!
RLGardner.net
Archived Photoessays 
Leave a comment