Overcast with an occasional light sprinkle of rain this near-noon Wednesday here in California’s Central Valley — another day in the life.

And that life is spiked with nasty diseases via the vile, corrupt T-Rump and all his manifestations, completely indicating the horror of his shitty, nasty, and cruel position of currently sitting in America’s Cat-Bird Seat. What astounds me is the in-your-face, don’t-give-a-shit destruction of America as a democratic country — the last 10 months have been a tell-all to the really, really shitty workings of the Orange Turd’s administration and all its pieces-of-shit actors.
Seemingly, every day there’s another open-air example of immoral, unethical, corrupt goings on in the T-Rump Wite House,not even the margins of horror, for instance, from ICE, or crazy-ass pardons for obviously guilty criminals, or some whacked-out asshole displays of really, really horrible actions. Mind blowing the obvious cruelty.

In your face, America (the Guardian):

The White House has not submitted plans for Donald Trump’s new ballroom to the federal agency that oversees construction of federal buildings, though demolition is already under way.

On Tuesday, the White House told Reuters it intended to send plans to the National Capital Planning Commission, an agency that typically approves and monitors construction on federal buildings. Demolition began earlier this week, with reporters taking video of a backhoe ripping out chunks of the White House’s exterior.

Plans for Trump’s 90,000 sq ft ballroom were made public in the late summer, with Trump saying he would personally fund the $200m construction. “Just another way to spend my money for this construction,” he said at the time.

And shit on all of us, too:

The optics of Trump building a ballroom that 99.9% of Americans will never set foot in while millions line up for food banks are worth more than any policy paper or economic proposal. This image is a visceral punch in the mouth that needs no words. It should haunt the GOP for a generation.

— Mike Rothschild (@rothschildmd.bsky.social) 2025-10-22T17:18:40.930Z

Hand-in-hand — Greg Sargent at The New Republic this morning:

This is underscored by the jarring news that Trump is demanding that the Justice Department pay him $230 million in compensation related to various federal actions against him. As The New York Times reports, Trump submitted claims in 2023 and 2024 seeking “damages” stemming from the investigation into Russian interference in 2016 and his prosecution for stealing classified documents at the end of his first term.

Now that Trump is president again, he is still demanding those payments, sources told the Times. And one of the officials who would decide the matter is Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche—one of Trump’s former personal attorneys.

Ethics experts point out that Trump now appears in a position to command his subordinates to hand him $230 million in taxpayer money. As the Times delicately put it, Trump expects this to happen.

But it gets even worse.

In an interview, Representative Jamie Raskin—who is investigating this as ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee—said his staff’s research indicates that these payments can probably be made confidentially at first, with no immediate public disclosure.

“Our reading is that, even though this is a private settlement, it doesn’t have to be disclosed anywhere until there is an accounting of where all the money has gone at the end of the year,” Raskin told me.

This is because Trump is seeking these payments via an internal DOJ administrative claims process, a spokesperson for House Judiciary Committee Democrats says, which is typically confidential. Though any payments would come out eventually in a later report to Congress, a payment could be made confidentially well before DOJ makes a public disclosure.

…

Enter Trump’s reinvention of the presidency as a Bribe Delivery System. His bad-faith threats toward law firms and universities have invited them to hand over huge sums toward causes Trump likes. His frivolous lawsuits against media companies give their corporate overlords a way to effectively bribe him—with payments to his “presidential library”—to ensure government approval for other business. And any officials who might be legally vulnerable after carrying out Trump’s orders have put themselves in a position of subjugation where displeasing him might risk losing his protection later.

It doesn’t matter where this money goes in the end. These are still functionally extortion payments, or tribute payments, being directed in accordance with Trump’s commands—payments that shouldn’t be happening in the first place. But feeding this BDS is now the cost of doing business—or perhaps even surviving at all—in Trump’s America.

Vile even, the T-Rump claims he’ll use the DOJ payout to finance that gross, shitty ballroom — yikes!

In response, the entire GOP sucks:

So the senator who is retiring condemns it and the two senators up for reelection wanting Trump’s endorsement won’t comment. Courageous and principled as always.

— Ron Filipkowski (@ronfilipkowski.bsky.social) 2025-10-22T15:00:09.813Z

America, America.

Cry, or not, yet once again here we are …

(Image out front by illustrator and portrait painter, Tim O’Brien, and can be found here.)