James V Bresnahan

10/13/2026

Foreign affairs journalist Anne Applebaum wrote today in The Atlantic that Trump’s dropping of sanctions against Russian oil looks like “an abrupt, Hail Mary attempt to force Ukraine to surrender and to save the Russian economy, perhaps in order to finally complete the multiple business deals that the Russians are known to have discussed with American negotiators and others in Trump’s orbit.”

10/13/2026

Liars
An even more extreme meltdown took place over the weekend as MAGA tried to insist that Texas Democratic candidate James Talarico had suffered a mental breakdown and had been admitted to a treatment facility in Ohio. As Will Sommer and Andrew Egger of The Bulwark explained yesterday, MAGA influencers Nick Sortor and Rhein Amacher claimed they had proof that Talarico had been at the Lindner Center of Hope in Mason, Ohio. They claimed they had a tape of a Lindner employee telling them over the phone that Talarico had just been released.
With Musk pushing it, Sortor’s social media post alleging that “proof” garnered millions of views in hours.
But, predictably, the story fell apart fast. Neither the logic (why would Talarico go to Ohio for medical treatment rather than stay in Texas?) nor the timeline (Tararico was out in public in Texas during the time Sortor suggested he was in treatment) made sense. Then Sommer and Egger got access to the full recording of the alleged “proof.” It showed Amacher lying to the Lindner employee to get her to expose private health information. It also showed her repeatedly denying that anyone named James Talarico was in the system.
On Sunday night, the Lindner Center publicly announced that Talarico had never been treated there. Talarico himself posted a laughing emoji beside the information that he has never even been to Ohio. To a reporter, he added his own assessment of his opponent’s health, “I’ve heard credible reports that Ken Paxton has a serious medical condition that causes clinical levels of cowardice,” and noted that Paxton has refused to debate Talarico about actual issues.
Sommer and Egger note that while HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, says medical providers can’t disclose patients’ information, it also penalizes individuals who try to get that information improperly, imposing heavier penalties for those who commit that offense “under false pretenses.” Those who access that information “for commercial advantage, personal gain, or malicious harm” can be fined up to $250,000 and be imprisoned for up to ten years.
Amacher later told Jesse Singal that he did not do “any after-the-fact fact-checking work and pointed to the fact that he’s a political advocate, not a journalist, and is therefore held to different standards.”

10/13/2026

As Morgan Trau of WEWS wrote in a piece reprinted by the Ohio Capital Journal, an ad paid for by the Senate Leadership Fund featuring a woman who accuses Ohio Senate candidate Sherrod Brown of “pushing transgender surgeries on minors ‘like her,’” and who, in another ad, claims she had “surgery without my parents’ consent” as “a kid,” actually shows a woman from Texas who had gender-affirming surgery in that state as an adult. She has no connection to Ohio, where such surgery on minors is illegal.
Brown’s statement on healthcare was that he believes families and their doctors, not politicians, should make healthcare decisions.

10/13/2026

right-wing radicalism was on full display this morning, when agents from the Department of Homeland Security conducted a predawn raid on the Washington, D.C., home of Representative Ilhan Omar (D-MN). According to the Fox News Channel, which appears to have been read into the raid ahead of time, the Justice Department claimed that the search “stems from a criminal fraud investigation” over immigration paperwork filled out by her late father in the 1990s when Omar was a child.
Not only is it unlikely that evidence of a potential crime committed when the congresswoman was a child would be in her Washington, D.C., residence decades later, but also, as legal analyst Joyce White Vance noted: “To state what’s obvious to prosecutors here, we are within the period before an election where [the Department of Justice] doesn’t take overt steps in an investigation that might influence its outcome. Another hard norm out the window.” More to the point was the comment by Mark Jacob of Stop the Presses, who noted: “This search was conducted by the Homeland Security Department, where lying and harassment are routine.”
Indeed, this latest attack on Omar follows Trump’s social media post of last Thursday, when he urged “[t]he people of Minnesota” to “fight back!” against Minnesotans of Somali heritage. Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota, a MAGA Republican, promptly echoed Trump, referring to Somali-Americans as “enemy combatants” and complaining that Democrats were not “rounding them up [and] putting them in jail.”
This new attack on a Democratic representative is the second attempt of the administration to cow Democratic representatives. It has an ongoing case against New Jersey representative LaMonica McIver, whom it accuses of assaulting immigration agents in a skirmish outside of Delaney Hall detention center, in which no one was hurt. If McIver is convicted, she faces up to 17 years in prison. Both Omar and McIver are women of color. The attempt of the president to arrest and imprison his political opponents in the legislative branch is a direct assault on our democracy.
Indeed, the administration is trying to make their opponents live in fear. The latest target of their ire is Cassidy Hutchinson, the former aide to Trump’s first-term chief of staff Mark Meadows. Hutchinson was working in the White House in the weeks when Trump was trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election, and she testified before Congress about Trump’s behavior during that time. Federal prosecutors are trying to get a grand jury in Washington, D.C., to indict her for perjury.
As the attack on Omar shows, in their attempt to grasp complete control of the country, Trump and his loyalists are working hard to divide the American people along the old culture war lines that worked in the past. But Americans are concerned primarily about the economy as the war on Iran drives prices upward, so Republicans are becoming more and more extreme in their actions and their ads.

10/13/2026

October 12, 2026 (Monday)
Billionaire Elon Musk has already funneled at least $366 million into the midterms to try to make sure voters elect Republicans. Theodore Schleifer of the New York Times reported today that Musk has put more than $276 million of that money into groups and political action committees just since July. More than $76 million has gone into his own super PAC, which is focused on seven Senate seats in battleground states, and more than thirty House races.
Schleifer notes that this is just the money that law requires must be disclosed; sources told Schleifer that in both this election and in 2024, Musk has made seven-figure donations to candidates through so-called “dark money” groups: ones that aren’t required to disclose their donors.
Adam Wren, Meredith Lee Hill, and Will Steakin of Politico report that Trump’s super PAC, “MAGA Inc.,” is coordinating with other super PACs to try to salvage the Republicans’ control of the Senate. The Republican Senate Leadership Fund has poured close to $100 million into Ohio alone to defeat former senator Sherrod Brown and is expecting to dump close to $200 million into Texas to defeat James Talarico. It’s also throwing money at Iowa to defeat Josh Turek, at Alaska to defeat Mary Peltola, at Michigan to defeat Abdul El-Sayed, and even at Kansas, to defeat Adam Hamilton.
Among other projects, Musk’s money is producing literature accusing Democrats of being radicals.
And yet the real radicalism in American politics today comes from those like Musk, those on the right who are consolidating the power of the government and the money of the American people into their own hands: Musk’s businesses depend on government contracts, after all, contracts a Democratic-run Congress would likely revisit.

10/06/2026

All because he didnt like Obamas' nuclear deal

The Saudi-backed government of Yemen on Sunday announced a major military campaign against the Houthi militia, a key Iranian ally, plunging the Middle East deeper into war.

The new operation threatens to open a new front in the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran and further entangle the United States in the widening regional conflict that it began more than seven months ago.

10/04/2026

Trump Warns Iran To Accept His Ultimatum Or Face Wrath Of Next Ultimatum https://theonion.com/trump-warns-iran-to-accept-his-ultimatum-or-face-wrath-of-next-ultimatum/

10/02/2026

The U.S. labor market added just 29,000 jobs in September, while the Bureau of Labor Statistics revised August and July lower.

10/02/2026

How about the fine for false prosecution?

BREAKING: A judge dismissed the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool vandalism case against former Olympian David Hearn with prejudice.

Read more: https://abcnews.visitlink.me/ruV862

10/01/2026

Life gives people different positions.

Some are born with advantages. Some build wealth, power, status, and influence. Others live quietly, work ordinary jobs, and may never have their names remembered by the world.

But time has a way of stripping every title away.

The crown does not make a person immortal.

Money cannot negotiate with time.

Status cannot stop age.

And power cannot change the final destination.

That does not mean achievement is meaningless. It means achievement should never make you forget your humanity.

The person standing below you today is still a human being worthy of dignity. The position you hold today is temporary. The things you own will eventually belong to someone else.

So compete if you must. Build something meaningful. Become successful. Chase the life you want.

Just remember that the game eventually ends.

And when the pieces return to the same box, what matters most is not whether you lived as the king or the pawn.

It is what kind of person you were while you were on the board.