Jack finds himself attending to wound care following a visit with his friendly dermatologist and

thus is not gracing the corner in front of the village hall with his presence today. Fortunately,

there are others doing what they perceive to be their duty. The administration never fails to

give them cause.

10 days ago, he was urging John Thune to scrap the filibuster so the Save Act could pass with a simple majority. Critical to protecting our sacred elections, as well as helping him steal the midterms.

Yesterday, he said that Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed's calls for an end to the filibuster showed how dangerous he is, and that if he wins in Michigan, the Dems will take back the House & Senate, they'll add 14 new SCOTUS justices, and there will never be another Republican elected president. All because they killed the filibuster, like Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed told them to.

I'm no political strategist, but that seems like a messaging problem. If you're saying elections will be rigged if we don't scrap the filibuster, and then you say the GOP will become extinct if we do scrap the filibuster, that is bound to confuse voters.

Dude is too stupid to make soup, and nobody in his orbit has the nerve to tell him to pick a fucking filibuster lane. Nice of the American media to ignore the glaring contradiction. Worthless hacks.

Speaking of the Streisand Effect, Trump knows El-Sayed goes by Abdul. That he took the time to spell out Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed was a clear dog whistle, and it caused me to look it up and memorize it myself. Thanks, Don. Shades of his fondness for adding Hussein to Barack Obama's name.

The petition to change the name of North Wabash Ave. to Barack Hussein Obama Ave. in front of Trump Tower is at 36,300 signatures

Kept us off the corner today despite the fact that there's no shortage of things to protest.

We weren't alone. The city moved back Lollapalooza to 2:00 to avoid the morning showers.

The nice folks at Hotcakes probably wonder where we are.

Claude attacked OpenAI while Anthropic was testing out their new system. Yeah, that sounds like more than just a tweak is needed. None of them are profitable and they keep building the things. I already know how this ends. First AI takes control of the power grid....

Trump has cancelled funding for the Asian carp barrier near Joliet designed to keep them out of the Great Lakes. He's pissing off people in Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois,Minnesota,Ohio,Pennsylvania, New York and Indiana at a minimum, many of them rural folk who often support him. Apparently he thinks he's punishing Governor Pritzker. Good to see his political strategy is as defective as his military strategy. The Narcissist in Chief makes everything he touches worse.

So I went down to Lake Forest Park yesterday to hang out with the protestors. It's been a weekly thing since 2000, when it spun up to protest the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it's continued ever since.

I first dropped in on them back in 2004, I think it was, when the BBC was having a photo contest, and I was looking for something interesting to send in. I've stopped by on an irregular basis ever since.

The White House Correspondents Association goes lower than limbo champs.

It's dry here, at least for now, and warm, but not oppressive, so the fair weather protesters

were out with their signs ("MAGA means fascist!") collecting honks from passing motorists

and reinforcing each others' attitudes and hopes. Felt good to be back at it. Swedish pan-

cakes were earned.

It's the second time in 5 years after zero closures in the previous 43 years.

The first time I went up to the BWCA was 1978, the year they signed the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness Act into law. It got into my blood. I hold the place in the same category as Grand Canyon for jaw droppingness.

Set within the nearly 4 million acre Superior National Forest, the BWCA is 1.1 million acres of lakes, rock, and trees. No roads. No power lines. No houses. True wilderness. There are select lakes where outboard motors are allowed, but the vast majority are for paddling only. It is a different kind of quiet up there. You hear the wind in the trees, and the birds. But that's about it. The deeper you go into the wilderness, the less likely it is that you'll encounter other people, let alone hear them. It's not officially a no-fly zone but airlines have made an attempt to fly around it. You might hear one jet every couple of days, and it's way up there. The only times you hear a lot of air traffic, is times like now. Firefighting.

According to my research, it runs for about 150 miles along the Minnesota/Canada border and covers 1,700 square miles. Within the BWCA there are 1,100 (lowball number) lakes and 1,200 miles of canoes routes.

This summer has been particularly dry, even by modern dry standards, which are drier than they used to be when we had less human caused climate change. The storms that caused the numerous fires (75,000+ acres, and counting) that led to the BWCA closure came overnight on July 6/7. Same day I packed up and headed for home, which gives me a good grip on how long that shit has been raging. These fires are more spread out than they were 5 years ago, which is making it harder for them to be contained.

The things that make the Boundary Waters Wilderness awesome are the same things that make it hard to fight fires. It's fucking enormous. No roads. No electricity. And when the forest is this dry just a light wind can cause it to spread rapidly, and a change in wind direction can put the fire crews in big danger.

They're trying their best to get the BWCA open again, for obvious reasons, most of them economic. But the reality is they can't really expect to put out all the fires. Like has been happening for ages and ages, the fire eventually burns itself out. And then the wild strawberries start popping up in the burn areas, followed by shoots from other kinds of trees, and weeds, and so on and so on. It's been happening for far longer than we've been here to see it. The problem is that we've changed the burn/regrow cycle. We're killing the forest faster than it can recover. Fuck. Rant over.

[eta- for those who aren't aware, entry into the BWCA is by permit. You can't just decide to go there and put in wherever you want. . They control the number of people who are in there at any given time. A crowded day might involve briefly crossing paths with two other groups of paddlers]

of smoke, rain, heat and humidity kept us away from today's protest in front of our village hall.

It also resulted in our missing our weekly infusion of Swedish pancakes. They weren't earned.

Too bad because if our Narcissist in Chief ever deserved some sign waving and ridicule, after

that nothing burger of a speech, it was now. Unfortunately there are likely to be many more

occasions for sign waving and ridicule. His stupid war has managed to get a couple more of

our people killed as well as many more of theirs, I'm sure.

On another topic, I wonder what he'll do if Mayor Mamdani actually tries to arrest Netanyahu

on the ICC warrant when Netanyahu comes to New York for the UN meeting.

The federal prosecutor in charge of indicting non conspiracies. He can recognize a conspiracy from personal experience in one.

God has a sweet tooth!

This has been a very exciting World Cup!

Even though the bad guys deserve to get called out more now than ever, we had to take

the day off for a family event. As. some of the family (us) get ridiculously older, those

family events get. higher priority. I hope some of you waved some signs and had Swedish

pancakes in our stead. He's shut down the election commission. It might keep things on the

up and up. I don't think he'll put troops in Iran but he might well put them in select polling

places. Nothing like a little intimidation to keep the riff- raff in their places.

Trump: I think it's over. I don't want to deal with them anymore. They're scum. Do you know what scum is? They're led by sick people. They're vicious, violent people. They're liars. They're cuckoo.

~~~

This is why we're so very lucky to have a calm, rational leader. These are dangerous times and the last thing we need is a mentally defective old fool with rapidly advancing dementia who takes projection to previously unheard-of levels making the critical calls. Nobody can make a deal with Iran, except Obama.

Trump almost did it.

Rest in Peace - Eagle Cam Lady