- Robert Reich on how Trump thinks he’s winning, but isn’t;
- Matt Gaetz thinks the US Army is engaging in an alien hybrid breeding program;
- How some pardoned Jan. 6th rioters have engaged in crime sprees;
- Paul Krugman wonders why Trump’s behavior doesn’t deserve the label ‘treason’;
- How anything is forgiven if you accept Jesus, according to Franklin Graham; John Pavlovitz responds;
- How Trump’s threats to Iran suggest that America is abandoning morality;
- Christian presumption in Texas and Indiana;
- Radiohead’s “There, There”
Once again, conservatives seem to lives guided by wishful thinking, rather that grasping reality.
Robert Reich, today: Trump’s Magical Thinking, subtitled “He says he’s winning in Iran. He’s losing bigly.”
Mr. Trump, may I have a word?
Bad enough for you to insist — in the face of all evidence to the contrary — that you won the 2020 election.
But it’s another thing for you to pretend — in the face of mounting deaths and injuries, ballooning expenses, and rising prices — that you won, or are winning, the war with Iran you began on February 28.
“Let me say, we’ve won,” you told a rally in Kentucky on March 11.
“I think we’ve won,” you said on the White House South Lawn on March 20.
“We’ve won this war. The war has been won,” you said in the Oval Office on March 24.
“We are winning so big,” you told a fundraising dinner on March 25.
“We’ve had regime change,” you told reporters three days ago. “The one regime was decimated, destroyed, they’re all dead. The next regime is mostly dead.” Iran has now moved onto its “third regime,” and American negotiators are now speaking to “a whole different group of people” who have “been very reasonable,” you said.
You’re making all this up. In fact, you’re losing your war. And so is America and much of the rest of the world.
Continuing with details. Do MAGA folks ever hear any kind of fact-checking of Trump? Or just agree cultishly with whatever claims Trump makes on any particular day?
You can’t pretend, sir. This isn’t reality television. This is for real. And the reality is Americans are worse off now and less secure than we were when you started this.
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And this kind of thing, as I keep suggesting, is not much different than the previous item.
AlterNet, Nick Hilden, today: Disgraced Trump ally claims US Army has alien ‘hybrid breeding programs’
This is about Matt Gaetz.
According to former congressman Matt Gaetz, the United States Army is crossbreeding aliens with humans. Appearing on the show of far-right podcaster Benny Johnson, Gaetz claimed he was approached by a senior enlisted Army officer with some unbelievable revelations to share.
“I had someone come and brief me,” said Gaetz, “who was in a military uniform and works in the United States army…on the locations of hybrid breeding programs where captured aliens were breeding with humans to create some hybrid race that could engage in intergalactic communication.”
As a shocked Johnson looks on, Gaetz said the source explained that the military had 6-12 sites scattered across the U.S. where they take living aliens and “humans that had been abducted from war zones and even the caravans of migrants” for breeding purposes.
“Nonhuman biologics? Interracial alien mating?” said Johnson. “What the F is going on?”
These things are not happening. To think that they might be is to confess ignorance about everything that is known about the world, and how the world actually works.
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Do Trump fans have any moral scruples at all? Beyond cultishly supporting everything their Fearless Leader says and does?
NY Times, Editorial Board, today: The People Trump Pardoned Are on a Crime Spree
The Constitution grants sweeping pardon powers to the president, which means that public opinion has historically been the only check on that power. The risk of a backlash is the reason that presidents have waited until their last days in office to issue many pardons and commutations, especially dubious ones to family members (like Hunter Biden) or political allies (like Caspar W. Weinberger, whom George H.W. Bush pardoned). The potential for a backlash also made presidents cautious about the number of pardons they issued. They understood that there could be an outcry if somebody who received a pardon later committed a new crime. The pardon system has also relied on the decency of American presidents.
President Trump has abandoned this approach. His self-serving pardons are so numerous that public attention cannot keep up with them. It is a version of the strategy that his former adviser Steve Bannon has described as “flood the zone”: Do so much so fast that people cannot follow the consequences.
With many examples, including drug dealers and everyone who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
The results have been disastrous. At least 12 of the pardoned rioters have since been charged with other serious crimes, including child molestation, assault, harassment, murder plots and charges related to a vicious dog attack. The outcome was predictable. Critics, including this board, had warned that Mr. Trump’s pardons would embolden the rioters by signaling that crime has no consequences. One does not have to be a criminologist to predict that people who commit a violent act and are absolved of any punishment might become repeat offenders.
Then with details about each of the 12 who’ve committed serious crimes since their pardons and release. Then, how his cronies aren’t challenging anything he does. Ending, illustrating the moral bankruptcy or the Republican party:
Yet Mr. Trump still supports the rioters and lies about what happened that day. Congressional Republicans, for the most part, back him up. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said, referring to the blanket pardon, “I stand with him on it.” Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio has complained about the unpleasant nature of life in prison for the rioters before the pardons. Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado said she wanted to give the rioters a guided tour of the Capitol. Other Republicans, including the Senate majority leader, John Thune, have avoided answering questions about the pardons and said they involve “looking backward.”
The violence that the pardoned rioters continue to commit puts the lie to that weak excuse. The Jan. 6 pardons undermined the law, and they undermined public order. They were an affront to police officers everywhere. Mr. Trump has a constitutional right to pardon whom he chooses. The rest of us have a right to hold him and his enablers responsible for their actions.
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Similarly. Treason.
Slate, Mary Harris, today: Economist Paul Krugman Has a Dark Theory About the Iran War
Last week, President Donald Trump did a funny two-step on Iran. He began by threatening to “obliterate” Iranian power plants unless the Strait of Hormuz was safely opened back up. He gave a 48-hour deadline. Then, right before that deadline hit, Trump pulled back on his ultimatum. But a few minutes before he did that, the oil markets saw a massive spike in activity—a spike so huge that it seems clear that somebody knew something.
It sure looked as if closely guarded national security information was being used to make a quick buck. As Nobel Prize–winning economist Paul Krugman reasons, if a spy were giving our adversaries this kind of info, we’d certainly call it treason. So why not use the same language now?
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And again, similarly.
Friendly Atheist, Hemant Mehta, 30 Mar 2026: Franklin Graham told Trump he can still get into Heaven. That’s the problem. subtitled “The evangelist’s letter, shared by Trump, highlights how faith can excuse even the worst behavior”
Yesterday, Donald Trump posted a letter on Truth Social sent to him by evangelist and MAGA enthusiast Franklin Graham assuring Trump he could get into Heaven if he accepted Jesus into his life.
If mumbling a few words to “accept Jesus” into one’s life forgives *anything*, then Christian morality is meaningless.
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John Pavlovitz responds.
John Pavlovitz, 30 Mar 2026: Franklin Graham is Going to Hell.
“I love Donald Trump.
We’ll never get another president like Donald Trump.
That is why it’s important we do everything we can to try to get him re-elected.”A Republican Congressperson didn’t say this a few days ago.
A Fox News anchor didn’t say it.
A Nazi content creator didn’t say it.
Your racist neighbor didn’t say it. (Well, maybe…)
Franklin Graham said this.
One of the Evangelical world’s most influential preachers did.
Son of the esteemed and certainly wildly spinning in his grave, Reverend Billy Graham did.
Going on with his reasoning.
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MAGA seems not to have any principles, only allegiance to their authoritarian leader, who can do no wrong.
NY Times, opinion by W.J. Hennigan, 30 Mar 2026: America Is Abandoning Morality
As many Americans prepared to start the workweek, President Trump announced his intentions to destroy Iran’s electricity-generating stations and water-purifying plants should the regime fail to lift its blockade in the Strait of Hormuz.
…
The president’s ultimatum is a contemptible departure from the restraint that most wartime presidents have strived for. The bombing campaign Mr. Trump described holds the potential to affect millions of Iranian civilians, inflicting long-term consequences on their access to water, electricity and other necessities. Such an attack order should never be given — in public or private.
His proposal, if acted upon, would almost certainly amount to a war crime. One of the central tenets of the laws that govern modern conflict is that the targeting of civilians is off limits in military campaigns. Customary law of war principles would prohibit infrastructure providing essential services to civilians from targeted obliteration.
And yet, once again, most MAGA folk support Trump through everything.
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There’s an arrogance and a presumption about Christians.
Friendly Atheist, Hemant Mehta, today: Texas’ new “Religious Liberty” committee is another Christian power grab, subtitled “Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick handpicked lawmakers who want conservative Christianity embedded in public life”
Recently, in another desperate attempt to assure Texas that it’s a state welcome only to Christians, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick announced the formation of the “Senate Select Committee on Religious Liberty.” It’s basically a replica of what Donald Trump created at the federal level—a group that pretends to care about religious liberty for all but actually cares only about advancing conservative Christianity.
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And,
Right Wing Watch, Kyle Mantyla (who writes so many of the site’s articles it might as well be considered the Kyle Mantyla blog), 30 Mar 2026: Indiana Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith Is Making Up Christian Nationalist Nonsense
Since taking office in 2024, Indiana’s far-right Christian nationalistLt. Gov. Micah Beckwith has repeatedly used his position to spread baseless claims about the nation and its founding. This tendency was on display last week when Beckwith spoke ata TPUSA “Pick Up The Mic” eventheld at Purdue University Northwest.
During his remarks, Beckwith claimed that the doctrine of the separation of church and state was something concocted by Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black in the 1940s because he did not like that Catholics were criticizing the Ku Klux Klan.
…
The doctrine of the separation of church and state, Beckwith concluded, was created out of whole cloth by “a Supreme Court justice who was a KKK sympathizer and member who wanted to get the church and godly people out of the way.”
As usual, Beckwith’s interpretation of events is wildly inaccurate.
Again and again, what does it mean that religious arguments like this are so easily demolished by objective review of the historical facts? It means that these arguments are prime examples of motivated thinking: know what conclusion you want to reach, and twist the evidence to support it. They’re all casuistry and wishful thinking and cultish behavior. They’re desperate to claim everyone into their way of thinking and remove any threats to their limited sense of reality.
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But the best Radiohead album is Hail to the Thief, from 2003. It retains the trademark Radiohead musical style, including some spooky introspective songs, with a newly discovered political sensibility. It was the era of George W. Bush. Thus the title.
The best song might be “There, There”. Here’s a video with lyrics.
Just ’cause you feel it
Doesn’t mean it’s thereThere’s always a siren
Singing you to shipwreck
Steer away from these rocks
We’d be a walking disasterWe are accidents, waiting, waiting, to happen.
I’ll link another song from the album next time. The Gloaming, I think.
