8/22/2026

 Saturday, August 22, 2026

1953 Shah of Iran Mohammad Reza Pahlavi returned to Tehran

1964 Fannie Lou Hamer spoke at the Democratic National Convention about her terrifying experiences with voter registration as a Black woman in Mississippi

2024 Vice President Kamala Harris acceptsed the Democratic nomination for U.S. President

2025 Four Israeli airstrikes against Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, Gaza killed 22 people, including five journalists working for Reuters and AP, according to Palestinian authorities.  Hassan Douhan, a journalist for newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, was fatally shot by Israeli forces in Khan Yunis.

2025  Donald Trump signed an executive order instructing the Department of Justice to prosecute flag desecration, contradicting constitutional protections by the First Amendment as affirmed by Texas v. Johnson and United States v. Eichman, as the the order acknowledged. 

In bed at 9:30, awake at 4:35, up at 4:50; 0505 204.0 118/70/63 115; 63/77/62, sunny day ahead. 

Morning meds at 7:30 a.m.  Entresto at 6:30 a.m. and p.m.  I'm thinking this morning of how much my life is lived in cycles: daily cycle for my morning fistful of pills and capsules, twice daily cycles for my heart meds, weekly cycles for my Trulicity injections, bi-weekly cycles for filling my pill boxes. daily cycles for writing in my journal/blog.  What am I missing?  That I am such a creature of habit is hardly surprising.  I remember though my pre-retirement cycles of getting up each morning, showering, shaving, going to work, and my academic life cycles of class schedules, academic calendars, etc.

The idol and the idol-worshipper at Turnberry golf course in Scotland

(Poseted on FB) Natalie Harp. I'm loving all the attention that is being devoted to the sick relationship between Donald Trump and his $150,000/year sychophantic aide, Natalie Harp.  The attention focused on this couple when Natalie was one of the few people who accompanied Trump in the catering truck in Ankara, Turkey, after the NATO summit meeting in July, in response to a threat of an Iranian attack on Air Force One.  Trump left the Secretaries of State and Treasury on AF1 as decoys, while he and Natalie flew out secretly on another military aircraft.  Attention increased with the widespread attention paid of Sen. Jon Ossoff's gibe impaling Trump about his war on Iran:

While he fruitlessly drains our munitions and oil reserves, the president sleeps through his meetings. He golfs and trades stocks. See, he doesn’t want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the emir of Qatar.

Attention further increased with the publication of personal letters sent by Natalie to boss, hero, and idol, Donald Trump, making clear that Natalie is suffering from delusions about Trump and a self-subordinating, obsessive idealization of Trump as her "Guardian and Protector in this Life."  Pathetic, sick behavior.  She reminds me of the "shmoos" in the old Li'l Abner cartoon strips, described in Kurt Andersen's recent novel, The Break-up, thusly: 

Resembling cute sea lions, shmoos asexually reproduced like mad, loved humans and wanted only to serve them, ate nothing, but were delicious to eat, and yearned to be eaten and to have their pelts used as leather or building materials.  When Li'l Abner discovered the shmoos just outdie Dogpatch, he that that "wif these arund, noboady won't nevah havta work no more!" 

Maureen Dowd devotes her weekly New York Times column to the Donald-Natalie relationship this morning, titled her piece "Natalie's Magnificent Obsession," called the relationship pathological, "something really dark and deranged at the innermost circle of Trump’s White House." 

The daughter of a devoutly Christian real estate broker who died by suicide during the pandemic, Harp idolizes Trump with a rare fervor. As one of his social media facilitators, she is with him most of the day and often evenings, and she never takes a day off. The Times’s Maggie Haberman calls Harp the “binky” of the man-child president. . . 

But the troubling thing was the tone of Harp’s adoring letters to the man she addresses as “Mr. President,” released by The Daily Beast, in which she talks about her fragile emotional state — forgetting to eat or sleep and getting hurt by others’ critical remarks.

“I want things to always be right between us,” she writes, adding, “I’m sorry I lost my focus. You are all that matters to me. I don’t want to ever let you down. Thank you for being my Guardian and Protector in this Life.” 

 Harp quotes a line from “Pride and Prejudice” to say that it would have been hard to lose her father if she had not had someone so “worthy” to turn to in Trump. “And, I will add,” she signs off, “it is I who is unworthy.”

It’s a perfect (taxpayer-funded) relationship. She thinks he’s amazing. And he agrees.

How sick.  How pathetic.  And this guy is the Commander-in-Chief of our soldiers, Marines, sailors, and airmen.  Is it any wonder that our nation has become a (feared) laughingstock of the world. 

The Break-Up, by Kurt Andersen.  I started reading it last night.  I only got about 40 pages into it, but so far it's seems pretty plausible and is very readable.  I'll write more about it later.