Another one-off pleasant time this near-noon Wednesday here in California’s Central Valley — a cool breeze with low temps, creating a livable environment for a summer day. Reportedly, we’re supposed to go back up into triple digits next week.
Enjoy while we can.

And in turn, I’m also enjoying the shit out of the escapades of all things T-Rump – and the news cycles in the last few hours has multiplied with shit on the asshole’s activities, from an FBI raid on T-Rump’s Mar-a-Lago residence on Monday (he was actually in NJ), and the next day, a federal appeals court upheld the right of a House committee to his tax returns. A pitiful, though dangerous, whine erupted from MAGA world. There is absolutely no shame or any understanding of irony in the entire Republican party.
And the howl starts at the top and oozes downward. T-Rump blistered the FBI and DOJ with bullshit, and just about every asshole GOPer added their two cents worth of lies, self-conceit and idiocy. Add to the mix, cries for violence from the gun lovers due to the raid, and even calls to defund the FBI.

Just to outdo himself in public trashing, Trump this morning acted the legal dumb-ass when he appeared in a scheduled deposition as part the New York AG’s civil investigation into his family real estate business, and then claimed 90-or-so minutes later that he had invoked his Fifth Amendment protection against testifying against himself, supposedly answering no questions. Not only is he a cruel, heartless monster but a really, really dumb person.

In sarcasm galore, this made me laugh out loud (h/t tweet tengrain):

I very strongly and powerfully took the 5th, everyone says it was the most amazing 5th they've ever seen, one of the prosecutors, huge guy, real man, came to me with tears in his eyes and said "Sir, no one's ever taken the 5th like that, it was incredible, I want to thank you"

— Paul Waldman (@paulwaldman1) August 10, 2022

A righteous view. All against previous Fith Amdndmant history from out of the T-Rump — from New York Magazine this morning:

Trump has suggested on many occasions that people who invoke their right against self-incrimination are guilty.
“You see the mob takes the Fifth,” Trump said during a 2016 rally in Iowa. “If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?”
The line was a jab at his opponent, Hillary Clinton, whose aides had invoked the Fifth in a congressional investigation. Trump used similar attack lines so many times that MSNBC was able to put together a compilation video earlier this year.

While Trump often refuses to acknowledge his own hypocrisy, this time he (or whoever drafted his statement) felt it was such an egregious turnabout that it had to be addressed.

“I once asked, ‘If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?’” the statement says. “Now I know the answer to that question. When your family, your company, and all the people in your orbit have become the targets of an unfounded, politically motivated Witch Hunt supported by lawyers, prosecutors, and the Fake News Media, you have no choice.”

He added that the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago earlier this week, which is unrelated to the civil investigation led by New York attorney general Letitia James, convinced him that many prosecutors “have lost all moral and ethical bounds of decency.”

A take still not explaining the concept of ‘If you’re innocent.’
And he was full of shit today and long, long before:

Meanwhile, earlier Monday before the FBI raid shocked the world, another T-Rump escapade had exploded into the news cycle — excerpts from “The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021,” co-written by New Yorker staff writer Susan Glasser and New York Times correspondent Peter Baker, displayed the horror of T-Rump in relationship to military generals and the history of reality.
I’m sure you’ve read about it, especially the part where T-Rump asked then-White House chief of staff John Kelly, ‘“You f—ing generals, why can’t you be like the German generals?”‘ T-Rump sought loyalty and fealty but is too stupid to understand real, actual history.

The excerpt is at The New Yorker — go read the whole piece, which is emotionally dramatic in revealing the gosh-awful horror of the T-Rump and the military, concluding with this:

That night, waiting for Congress to return and formally ratify Trump’s electoral defeat, Milley called one of his contacts on the Biden team. He explained that he had spoken with Meadows and Pat Cipollone at the White House, and that he had been on the phone with Pence and the congressional leaders as well. But Milley never heard from the Commander-in-Chief, on a day when the Capitol was overrun by a hostile force for the first time since the War of 1812. Trump, he said, was both “shameful” and “complicit.”

Later, Milley would often think back to that awful day. “It was a very close-run thing,” the historically minded chairman would say, invoking the famous line of the Duke of Wellington after he had only narrowly defeated Napoleon at Waterloo.
Trump and his men had failed in their execution of the plot, failed in part by failing to understand that Milley and the others had never been Trump’s generals and never would be.
But their attack on the election had exposed a system with glaring weaknesses.
“They shook the very Republic to the core,” Milley would eventually reflect.
“Can you imagine what a group of people who are much more capable could have done?”

Despite the cruel ignorance and cruelty, the reality of that is dark.

One lie away maybe, but here we are once again…

Image out front is my favorite of the T-Rump mugs, though, ‘favorite‘ does not mean in any form or fashion, as in, ‘my favorite movie,’ or ‘my favorite song.’ It’s more of an anti-appreciation/like.

And aptly titled, ‘Basic Shapes,‘ by caricaturist/illustrator Chong Jit Leong (and found here), it’s an image that displays the elemental form of a purloined sociopath — a bloated profile of flatulent bile and arrogant ignorance.