Friday 7 August 2026
Mike this morning: Didn’t we just do Friday?
Me: Yes.
It is indeed Friday and cleaning day. No matter how much I love having the house cleaned, I dread it with every fiber of my being. We finally got Eddie to eat yesterday afternoon. For those who weren’t with us yesterday, Eddie is the gray and white autistic kitty who just had a tooth removed. He is still extremely skittish, but at least he ate. He came and rubbed heads with me in the middle of the night.
The rest of the kitties are outside this morning. Mike didn’t let them out yesterday and Sam, especially, was on a rampage all day. He was bouncing off chairs and (literally) the walls. It takes a lot of hours and a lot of activity to wear Sam out. But the good news is that he stayed with me almost all day. I loved that.
Lisa Murkowski has announced that she will not vote for Todd Blanche. The Congress is on the verge of a five-week vacation. God, those people never work. It’s amazing. No wonder they fight so hard to keep their jobs. All they do is show up for a vote now and again and get their money-making side hustles going.
NEWS NOTES
LIFE AND NEWS NOTES FROM AN OVER-EDUCATED, CHILDLESS, CAT LADY (AS PER J. F…ING D. VANCE) BEAVERING AWAY IN ONE OF THE SUB-BASEMENTS OF THE MINISTRY OF SNARK.
· Murkowski’s announcement about Todd Blanche leaves Trump dependent on Bill Cassidy’s vote. Why Cassidy would vote for Blanche I have no idea. Trump endorsed a challenger that cost Cassidy his primary this year.
· Late afternoon yesterday I heard “Ukraine: the Latest” a podcast put out by the Telegraph, talking about a bomb, an explosive bomb found in a German airport. It’s obvious that it’s another of Russia’s attempts to push, to see how far they can get. But on the legacy news in the U.S., I didn’t hear a word. Not one word. Pathetic. It is as if the war against Ukraine wasn’t even going on even though my friend and her children are being bombed almost every night.
ARTICLE: Sabbagh, Dan (8/5/26) The Leipzig drone bomb marks a dangerous escalation for Europe. The Guardian.
· As the Guardian reports, “the initial evidence points firmly towards a Russian-orchestrated plot.”
· The drone with explosives did not go off but it was found inside the airport a few meters from a Ukrainian cargo plane. The German media reported that the bomb was made of PETN and Semtex plastic explosive, the second, Semtex, is the munition that exploded inside Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie. A faulty detonator prevented the bomb from exploding.
· Plastic explosives of any kind of typically only available to militaries or well-established terror groups, not amateurs.
· NATO only stated it was aware of the situation, but it is notable that “the western alliance appears to have not been able to prevent drones from flying into and over a strategic airport.
· The presence of the Ukrainian planes indicates that the airport may have been being used as transport or as a “node for supplies to Kyiv.”
· There has been a string of drone incursions into Europe over the past year. Around 20 unarmed Russian delta-wing Gerbera drones crossed into Poland last September. A US thinktank concluded last month that the Kremlin was behind a concerted drone surveillance campaign that targeted US airbase at Lakenheath and other key military sites in France, Belgium and the Netherlands. Nato jets have not been able to shoot down the drones.
True to form, the Trump administration tries to dilute the effectiveness of one of the most successful federal programs in existence, Head Start.
ARTICLE: Carrillo, Sequoia (8/6/26) “Trump administration moves to deregulate Head Start opening door for sweeping change.” NPR.
· “The move would diminish the program’ federal standards and give states and parents more control.”
· Limiting items like administrative costs, not only saves money, it prevents individual programs from bringing in teachers to deal with students with special needs.
· The changes leave quality dependent on the zip code within which the child lives.
· The message in Project 2025 is clear, eliminate Head Start. The decrease in standards is seen as the first step in eliminating the program.
ARTICLE: Swaim, Barton (8/6/26) “El-Sayed’s deflected bigotry.” Wall Street Journal.
· A Wall Street Journal opinion piece assumes that El-Sayed is bad news for the country and will probably lose in November.
· El-Sayed wants to get big money out of politics and there is noting that illustrates big money better than AIPAC, which gave an enormous amount of money to his challenger, Rep. Haley Stevens.
· The Journal criticizes El-Sayed for campaigning with podcaster Hasan Piker who it says makes his antisemitism explicit. I have no idea who Piker is. And the Journal takes as evidence of the lack of concern of Democrats for antisemitism the fact that 750000 Michiganders voted for El-Sayed at a time “when violent assaults on Jews and synagogues crowd the headlines.”
· And, the Journal notes that “The succession. Of progressives who’ve won Democratic primaries in New York, New Jersey and Colorado road to victory on the strength of their anti-Israel tirades.”
RUSSIA
ARTICLE: Seligman, Lara and Yoko Kubota (8/7/26) “U.S. Intel finds Putin could test NATO’S resolve with limited incursion.” The Wall Street Journal.
· A U.S. intelligence report notes that Putin could try to test NATO’S resolve with a limited assault on an allied country in the next few years. The possible scenarios range from cyberattacks to small-scale land incursions.
· The projection that Russia might try something like this even before fighting ended in Ukraine changed because analysts see Russia under pressure for a victory of some kind. Probing attacks (like that at the german airport) to test NATO’S resolve include “Russian. Cruise missiles that have landed in Poland and drones flown into Romania.” The goal of these attacks would be to fracture the alliance.
· The possibilities are outlined as cyberattacks on a NATO country, a limited incursion on the alliance’s eastern flank. The likelihood of a limited
RECOMMENDED PODCASTS
POLITICAL THEORY
Guerrilla History Podcast
https://guerrillahistory.libsyn.com/
Episode: Free Speech and Michael Fox (This is a fascinating podcast episode. Don’t miss it.)
https://guerrillahistory.libsyn.com/the-battle-for-free-speech-w-michael-fox
DSR Daily: Episode Russia and US
https://thedsrnetwork.com/the-dsr-daily-for-august-6-russia-and-us-hold-talks-on-ukraine
UKRAINE
Ukraine the Latest, the Telegraph
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/ukraine-the-latest/id1612424182
Episode: Moscow blamed for the Drone in Germany
ISRAEL
Haaretz
Law, Power, and Justice 
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