10/01/25

Good morning! It’s Wednesday, October 1st.

International Coffee Day

Again?

I… I don’t know why.

It’s also CD Player Day. Kids, CD players were these things that… I actually don’t know how they worked. But they played music, were easily scratchable, and skipped if you took too loud of a breath near them.

They were awesome!

And now, the news.

Money Please

-via NY Times

Starting with the national budget. And I’m gonna tell you the same thing I tell myself every single time I go onto bookshop.org – we have no budget.

That’s right. I’m recording this before midnight (well, I’m writing this before midnight but I’ll still end up recording it before midnight… though only just barely because I’m burning the candle at both ends – which is where I thrive!) but as I write this, there is no hope of getting out of a shutdown.

Tuesday saw back-to-back Senate votes, one in support of the Democrats’ budget and one in support of the Republicans’ budget. They both failed. The Senate then decided eh, good enough. We tried, and they packed it in for the night, with the White House Office of Management and Budget issuing a memo to executive branch agencies telling them to, “execute their plans for an orderly shutdown.”

I want to remind you that no one came into Tuesday in a good mood, ready to party, negotiation-style, because Trump posted a racist A.I.-generated video of Jeffries and Schumer, and then, in response, Jeffries posted an actual picture of Trump and Epstein and said, “This is real.”

Today is day one of the government shutdown – let’s see what happens from here.

Trump and Hegseth Address the Troops

-via MSNBC, The Hill, The Hill, and The Slate

And moving to Quantico, where Pete Hegseth called generals and admirals from all over the world to… fat shame generals and say thank goodness they’re not doing woke anymore.

Phew!

Where to start, where to start?

Well, I don’t cuss on this show, so my options are limited. And isn’t that super classy?

He talked about how bullying is back, baybee.

Apparently, words like “toxic,” “hazing,” and “bullying” have, “been weaponized and bastardized.”

“No more frivolous complaints, no more anonymous complaints, no more repeat complaints, no more smearing reputations, no more endless waiting, no more legal limbo, no more sidetracking careers, no more walking on eggshells.”

"For too long, we’ve promoted too many uniform leaders for the wrong reasons — based on their race, based on gender quotas, based on historic so-called firsts."

"No more identity months, DEI offices, dudes in dresses, no more climate change worship, no more division, distraction or gender delusions," he said. "As I’ve said before and will say again, we are done with that…” stuff. I’m sure it’s stuff.

And don’t worry! Make America Safe Again – They’re getting back to male-standards.

“At my direction, each service will ensure that every requirement for every combat MOS [military occupational specialty], for every designated combat arms position, returns to the highest male standard only, because this job is life or death, standards must be met…”

If women can make it, bummer… No, no. Well, almost… “If women can make it, excellent. If not, it is what it is. It will also mean that weak men won’t qualify — because we’re not playing games. This is combat. This is life or death.”

Yeah… that’s what training is for! To make sure you’re able to serve. You didn’t come up with some radical idea. You are just adding hate on top of a system that was working and now probably won’t work as well.

We’re also back in the business of war crimes? “We unleash overwhelming and punishing violence on the enemy. We also don’t fight with stupid rules of engagement. We untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt, and kill the enemies of our country. No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement.”

I’m getting heated just writing this. I hate it.

Because listen… have these thoughts. Whatever. I don’t… whatever.

But that’s for a political convention. You don’t get to spend my money to fly admirals and generals from all over the country, put our country at risk by putting everyone in one place and telling the world about it, all to do a political speech and advocate for doing illegal and unethical war crimes.

Trump also spoke at this convention. I mean listen – it was a 75-minute speech and I could go on and on about what dumb things he said. The wars he claimed to have settled. The dunks on Democrats. The thing about how everyone loves his signature… he was rambling and incoherent.

In many ways, it’s what we call a classic from the leader of our country (bummer) but in many ways it was a standout. And I promise, I’m gonna try and find a way to put the ol Here’s What’s Happening spin on it anyway (whatever that means), but first we gotta do the ol Here’s What’s Happening serious voice.

Because it’s serious that Pete Hegseth told the troops that war crimes are back. But what Trump said, the vision he laid out… is actually genuinely chilling. It’s sinister. It’s straight out of a How to Be an Authoritarian audiobook.

He told the group to treat American cities and training grounds because there was “a war from within.”

Literally, this is a quote of him talking about American cities: “They’re very unsafe places, and we’re going to straighten them out one by one. And this is going to be a major part for some of the people in this room. That’s a war, too. It’s a war from within.”

He also said, “America is under invasion from within. We’re under invasion from within. No different than a foreign enemy, but more difficult in many ways because they don’t wear uniforms.”

Trump - Whose father paid to get him out of serving in Vietnam; who has called soldiers that died fighting for this country suckers and losers; who questioned why someone would even sign up for the military in the first place, asking “what’s in it for them?”; who doesn’t want Wounded Warriors in the first few rows of his events because “nobody wants to see that;” – that is the guy who stood before hundreds of career servicemembers and told them that there is a domestic enemy who they are at war with. Who these career servicemembers must now fight.

Terrifying.

But please understand.

Trump is temporary. I know it doesn’t feel like it, but this moment is not forever, and this man is not forever. He will pass. And while some of the people in attendance on Tuesday may have voted for him, they also took a vow to uphold the Constitution.

Their loyalty lies with the Constitution. Not a political party.

The oath is to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, bear true faith and allegiance to the U.S., and obey the lawful orders of the President and other appointed officers.

LAWFUL orders.

Trump is many things. He is a joke. He is a buffoon. He’s got that big loser energy stored in those long ties (maybe that’s why they gotta be so long!). However, the more he does things like he did on Tuesday, the clearer it becomes that he poses a domestic threat to this country.

Yes, he is their dictator-in-chief. And yes, there are many who appear to have taken an oath to Trump.

But these military members did not.

And as we continue down this very dangerous road, have faith in this… There are many great things about this country. And you can feel however you need to feel about specific wars and actions of our military in certain eras, but when push comes to shove, the protection of this nation, at the times when we have needed it the most, when our lives have depended on it, we have always been the ones who have saved ourselves.

And part of the way we’ve done that is our military.

Trump is temporary. This moment is temporary.

Here’s the deal – tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. All those tomorrows are going to come anyway. And we can choose optimism or not. It’s your choice.

But if we choose optimism, it makes the fight easier.

And if we’re choosing optimism, if we are choosing to have faith – Have faith in the people who signed up to be of service to this nation. To spend their lives in service of something greater than themselves within an organization built with the belief that this country is great, its tomorrow’s worth enough, to protect.

Have faith that on Tuesday, when they watched a man who paid to never have to serve his nation, ask them to turn against American citizens, they recognized that absolute small, petty, pathetic man for who he is, remembered their oath, and thought to themselves…

Nooooo thank youuuuuu

And that’s it. That’s the news.

I’m proud of our servicemembers. I certainly wouldn’t have been able to sit through a speech that long by Trump OR Hegseth. Let alone both of them.

I’m not strong enough to be a servicemember.

In many ways! That’s one of many examples.

I’m also proud of CDs.

Much less proud! Let’s be real clear about that! Big gap!

I was trying to think about the last CD I bought and I don’t know what it is but then I was real weird thinking about how you never know when something’s going to be the last time you do something and… here’s the thing. No matter what – no matter how many times I say it, there will never be a max and there will never be a last time I say…

I’m proud of you.