The LuLac Edition #5, 744, August 19th, 2026

 

WRITE ON WEDNESDAY

Our “Write on Wednesday” logo

This week we run an editorial that calls out the feckless Republican congress led by pipsqueak Mike Johnson. Worth reading when a MAGA person talks about his policies from the President. 

 

REPUBLICANS HAVE SUPERCHARGED DEFICITS. FOR WHAT?

For the 119th Congress, the answer has been simple: Tax less and borrow more. As Republican leaders ponder yet another party-line spending bill — expected to include at least $95 billion in new outlays with no offsetting revenue — they might reflect for a moment on America’s budgetary crisis in the making.

Over less than two years, this Congress has worsened the nation’s fiscal trajectory dramatically. Its main accomplishment, last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, will by itself increase deficit spending by at least $4.1 trillion from 2025 to 2034. Add another $1 trillion or so once many of the law’s “temporary” tax cuts are inevitably extended, and the US will soon be looking at annual deficits approaching $3 trillion and a debt-to-GDP ratio exceeding post-war highs.

Making matters worse, lawmakers have twice slashed Internal Revenue Service funding, by a total of about $32 billion. Estimates from the Congressional Budget Office imply that each dollar these measures rescinded from tax enforcement could lead to about $3.27 in lost revenue, meaning they’ll actually add about $73 billion in net deficits. A huge reduction in the agency’s workforce hardly helped.

What about the spending cuts Republicans have promised? Although the OBBBA’s backers touted some $900 billion in Medicaid savings, achieved largely by slashing coverage, this merely slowed the program’s annual growth rate and was dwarfed by the bill’s tax cuts. A rescissions bill also cut overseas aid and public broadcasting funding — at significant cost to national prestige and soft power — saving a grand total of $9 billion through 2035.Even these meager efforts have been partly negated by repeated splurges.

In addition to the tax cuts, the Secure America Act enacted in June included about $70 billion in duplicative funding for immigration enforcement and border security. This latest bill, as passed by the House, would add some $73 billion to pay for the war in Iran, among other things; a $12 billion bailout for farmers harmed by the administration’s trade policies; and $10 billion for dubious “election security” measures. (The Senate’s stalled blueprint would double the latter amount.)

For its part, the White House has worsened this picture at almost every turn. Its immigration crackdown alone could increase deficits by $500 billion over a decade. Its Department of Government Efficiency, created to cut spending, may have done the opposite: Its claimed savings have been largely illusory while one analysis found that the costs it imposed — from lost productivity and chaotic personnel decisions — may have reached $135 billion last year.

Perhaps most egregiously, Congress has sat by as the White House has imposed a global tariff regime, at an annual cost of $900 or so per household. It’s true that tariffs raise revenue. Yet they do so in a way that’s uniquely misguided: They tax a base that erodes over time while impeding the investment and productivity growth needed to stabilize debt in the long term. For all that, they might yield $2.1 trillion over 10 years — or less than 9% of projected deficits.

If Congress wants to get serious about these matters, there’s no shortage of available proposals. A bipartisan group in the House has recently introduced a bill that would improve spending transparency, make much-needed reforms to the budget process, establish a fiscal commission and adopt a formal goal of reducing annual deficits to 3% of GDP within a decade. Nothing revolutionary, but it’s a start.

As things stand, across nearly two years of unified government, Republicans have imposed enormous new costs on Americans with precious little to show for it.

Come November, they shouldn’t be surprised if voters say they’ve had enough

2026 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com/opinion. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

 

 

The LuLac Edition #5, 744, August 18th, 2026

 

THE GOP LIE MACHINERY IN HIGH GEAR

REPUBLICANS PORTRAY SCRANTON AS HOTBED OF VIOLENT CRIME, BUT ANALYSIS

SHOWS DECLINE

WVIA’s Borys Krawczeniuk and Sarah Cinto report that for months, Republicans have portrayed Scranton as a hotbed of out-of-control crime  and blamed Democratic congressional candidate and city Mayor Paige Cognetti for it.

Combined, U.S. Rep. Rob Bresnahan’s campaign and a national group that helps Republican congressional candidates have sent almost 30 emails since September accusing Cognetti of presiding over a crime wave.

“For years, Mayor Cognetti has minimized rising violence, limited the ability of police to enforce the law, and ignored clear warnings about gang activity and increased homicide rates,” Bresnahan campaign manager Peter Brath said in a Dec. 10 news release.

Cognetti, challenging Bresnahan for the 8th Congressional District seat, sharply pushes back. She points to the city adding five more police officers in the midst of a spike in homicides and gang violence in 2024, spending more than $5 million to upgrade police equipment and training, and plans for a new police command center next to City Hall.

“I am a mayor and a mom. I became mayor just two weeks after having my first daughter,” she said in a recent interview. “So, my life in the last six and a half years has been 24 hours a day thinking about public safety as mayor and as somebody who's raising a family here in Scranton.”

She also pointed to crime statistics.

“The stats show that violent crime is trending down in Scranton. Those are the facts, and we will keep doing our job of investing,” Cognetti said in a recent interview.

“The stats show that violent crime is trending down in Scranton. Those are the facts, and we will keep doing our job of investing,” Cognetti said in a recent interview.

WHAT CRIME STATISTICS SHOW

For purposes of this analysis, serious crimes include homicide/murder, aggravated assault, simple assault, rape, robbery, burglary, thefts from either a vehicle or otherwise, arson and human trafficking as defined by the state uniform crime reporting system. The system includes non-negligent manslaughter under murder and negligent manslaughter separately. Scranton has not reported any negligent manslaughter. The FBI considers murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny/theft and motor vehicle theft and human trafficking "the nation's premier indicator of the nature of crime in the United States."

The WVIA News analysis includes simple assaults as serious crimes because the state crime reports do and because Scranton Police Chief Thomas Carroll included them in data he provided.

Based on this definition, publicly posted FBI and state crime statistics show serious crime in Scranton down 4.1% since the beginning of 2021, Cognetti’s second year in office, through 2025, the last year with complete statistics available.

Carroll defends Cognetti’s attention to crime and says the 2021-2025 period represents the most reliable indicator of where crime stands because of potential reporting errors in 2019 and 2020, the year she took office.

If either 2019 or 2020 is used as the basis for comparison, the results differ.

If the comparison years are 2019 and 2025, the most recent year with complete data, the publicly posted statistics show serious crime dropped 39.1%.

If the comparison years are 2020 and 2025, the publicly posted statistics show serious crime up 11.2%. That’s due at least partly to record low serious crime numbers in 2020, the year of COVID-19, when crime dropped in many places. The 1,771 recorded serious crimes in Scranton in 2020 were the fewest between 2013 and 2025.

Comparing Cognetti’s first six years in office (2020-2025) and the six years before that (2014-2019), serious crimes dropped 36.6%.

Crime in the campaign

Crime has emerged as a major issue in the campaign for the 8th Congressional District seat between Bresnahan and Cognetti. That’s mainly because the National Republican Campaign Committee, which helps the party’s congressional candidates, and the Bresnahan campaign try to portray Cognetti as indifferent to rising crime. Among the crimes they highlight:

A Dec. 9, 2025, machete attack in a downtown apartment building. A man who lived in a neighboring apartment is accused of slashing two women and a service dog to death and seriously wounding another. The NRCC dubbed the mayor "Machete Cognetti" to highlight Scranton crimes.

“This tragic double homicide is not an isolated incident, but rather a pattern of conduct by Mayor Cognetti where public safety has not been prioritized,” Brath said in a news release the day after the machete attack.

Portraying her as "Paige Cripnetti" because she posed for a picture posted on Facebook with two men who operated a hookah lounge in North Scranton and were later arrested by Scranton police as part of a ring tied to the notorious gang, the Crips.

“Got Gangs?” billboards bought by Bresnahan’s campaign ask, referring to the arrests and the photo, first publicized by Breitbart, a conservative online publication.

“Charges like that (Machete Cognetti & Paige Cripnetti) are just absurd," Cognetti said. "They are coming from a person who has made dishonesty his calling card. It's been astonishing to me that Rob's name is on those himself, that he wants to associate with those types of slanders.”

Cognetti said she had no idea who the men were when she posed for the picture.

“I am the mayor of a city of 80,000 people. I go to events every single day. I get asked to take pictures with thousands of people, and as mayor, my job is to participate in the community,” she said. “Any mayor is going to take pictures with folks, and the Bresnahan campaign seems pretty desperate in making (it) a cornerstone of some of their spending.”

Cognetti pointed out the police department she oversees arrested the two men and the machete attacker.

“It is very clear what my record on crime and public safety is. I have a very long record of that at this point,” she said. “We see the Scranton Police Department solving crimes. They have the tools to do that. We cannot prevent every crime, but Scranton PD immediately responds, solves these crimes so quickly, and we've also been putting in the work over these years to bolster the partnerships that help prevent crime and to help us solve those crimes.  (WVIA News) 

 

TODD BLANCHE MAKES HISTORY

ADMITS TO BEING A LYING ATTORNEY GENERAL

Attorney General Todd Blanche fiercely argued there’s “nothing inconsistent” about his vow to protect police officers and President Donald Trump’s controversial pardons for violent rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Appearing Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” things got testy between Blanche and moderator Kristen Welker after she questioned how Trump’s decision to pardon the Capitol attackers, including 172 people who pleaded guilty to assaulting police officers, on his first day in office is “consistent with your pledge to always protect law enforcement.” 

“There’s nothing inconsistent about that,” Blanche reponded. “Any president’s pardon powers are not limited. So when I say and when this Department of Justice says and when the FBI says, like we’re saying, and every U.S. attorney is saying that if you assault law enforcement, we will prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law, that is absolutely what President Trump expects, absolutely what I expect of our prosecutors.”

He added, “That’s completely separate from any president’s ability to pardon.”

Blanche made the remarks after Welker played a clip of him swearing during an appearance with Trump at the Nassau County Police Academy on Friday that if anyone touches a federal law enforcement officer in any inappropriate manner, the Trump administration and the Department of Justice will “prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law.”  -

Welker doubled down by asking him directly if he believes it was “wrong to pardon the people who assaulted police officers on Jan. 6 given that you have vowed to protect law enforcement,” noting that Trump “did the opposite of that effectively.”

“Every attorney general vows to protect law enforcement, including me,” Blanche replied. “And so I’m not opining or in any way saying what President Trump did is wrong. Absolutely not. By the way, President Biden —”

Welker interjected, “Isn’t it inconsistent with what you said, though?”

“Absolutely not,” Blanche said. “There’s a difference —

“Is it inconstant with your pledge?” Welker asked again.

“No. There’s a difference,” he argued before telling Welker that it’s a different story if a president later chooses to issue a pardon to someone because it’s the president’s “right under our Constitution.” He then pointed the finger at former President Joe Biden.

Blanche LIED to the committee, twisting his lies into legal, self serving logic. He is worse than a dine store lawyer who is NOT serving the public but his lord and master the pig President. Why do people hate lawyers at times? 

From lying son of a bitches LIKE HIM. 

But this is the Republican way.  (NBC, LuLac) 

 

 

 

 

The LuLac Edition #5, 743, August 17th, 2026

 MONDAY MEMES

The LuLac Edition #5, 742, August 16th 2026

 

 

 

REESE’S BIG ONE

 

Reese’s is releasing a new Halloween Pumpkin Bowl exclusively on Amazon.

The 60.9-ounce container includes 110 snack-size treats, including Reese’s Pumpkins, Ghosts, Pieces, and Peanut Butter Cups.

Fans are already reacting to the Reese’s-filled pumpkin, with some saying they need it immediately.

The 60.9-ounce assorted snack pumpkin includes 110 snack-size pieces, with Reese’s Peanut Butter Pumpkins, Reese’s Peanut Butter Ghosts, Reese’s Pieces, and classic Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups all in the mix

 

 

THE PEPPER WATCH

 

On the heels of a summer surge of cyclosporiasis, health officials are investigating an outbreak of salmonella linked to jalapeños, which has sickened nearly 350 Americans across the country.

The first cases linked to the outbreak occurred in late June, and infections have now been reported in 27 states, according to an Aug. 13 update from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. At least 36 people have been hospitalized with the foodborne illness so far.

 

 

 

The LuLac Edition #5, 741, August 15th, 2026

 

 

AARON BURR

AMERICAN RASCAL

Aaron Burr Jr.  was a prominent American politician, lawyer, and military officer whose career spanned the Revolutionary War, early U.S. politics, and the turbulent early republic. Born in Newark, New Jersey, to a wealthy family, Burr lost his father at age one and was educated at Princeton, entering as a sophomore at thirteen Amazon. He served in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, notably in Benedict Arnold’s expedition to Quebec and as a hero in saving a brigade from capture during the New York Campaign

After, Burr became a leading figure in New York politics, serving as Attorney General, U.S. Senator, and eventually Vice President under Thomas Jefferson from 1801 to 1805 Wikipedia. His political career was marked by ambition, charm, and a willingness to challenge the status quo, earning him both supporters and enemies.

Burr’s reputation was forever altered on July 11, 1804, when he killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel over political rivalry Amazon+1. The duel, dramatized in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s hit musical Hamilton, remains one of the most famous in American history.

Beyond the duel, Burr is infamous for the Burr–Hamilton conspiracy — a plan to seize territory in the western U.S. and possibly the Spanish Empire to form an independent nation Wikipedia. This led to a treason trial in 1807, where he was acquitted but stripped of his office. He later went into self-imposed exile in Europe for four years before returning to the U.S.

Biographers like Noel B. Gerson portray Burr as a brilliant, charismatic, and ambitious man whose personal flaws — including ego, ambition, and questionable judgment — ultimately undermined his legacy Amazon+1. While some see him as a “great American rascal” — a man of extraordinary vitality and charm who could have been one of the greatest of his time — others view him as a dangerous political opportunist whose actions threatened the young republic

In sum, Aaron Burr was a complex figure: a Revolutionary War hero, a high-ranking political leader, and a controversial figure whose life reflects the contradictions and challenges of early American democracy.

In the 1800 United States presidential election, Burr combined the political influence of the Manhattan Company with party campaign innovations to deliver New York's support for Thomas Jefferson. That year, New York's state legislature chose the presidential electors, as they had four years earlier, in 1796, when they gave their support to John Adams. Prior to the April 1800 legislative elections, the State Assembly was controlled by the Federalists. The City of New York elected assembly members on an at-large basis. Burr and Hamilton were the key campaigners for their respective parties. Burr's Democratic-Republican slate of assemblymen was elected, giving the party control of the legislature, which in turn gave New York State's electoral votes to Jefferson and Burr. This drove another wedge between Burr and Hamilton, who had developed a rivalry with Jefferson.

Burr enlisted the help of Tammany Hall to win the voting for selection of Electoral College delegates. He gained a place on the Democratic-Republican presidential ticket with Jefferson in the 1800 election. Jefferson and Burr won New York, and tied for the presidency overall, with 73 electoral votes each. Members of the Democratic-Republican Party understood they intended that Jefferson should be president and Burr vice president, but the tied vote required that the final choice be made by the U.S. House of Representatives, with each of the sixteen states having one vote, and nine votes needed for election.

Burr remained quiet publicly, refusing to surrender the presidency to Jefferson, who was seen as the great enemy of the Federalists. Rumors circulated that he and a faction of Federalists were encouraging Democratic-Republican representatives to vote for him, blocking Jefferson's election in the House. However, solid evidence of such a conspiracy was lacking, and historians generally gave Burr the benefit of the doubt. In 2011, however, historian Thomas Baker discovered a previously unknown letter from William P. Van Ness to Edward Livingston, two leading Democratic-Republicans in New York.Van Ness was very close to Burr, serving as his second in the duel with Alexander Hamilton. As a leading Democratic-Republican, Van Ness secretly supported the Federalist plan to elect Burr as president and tried to get Livingston to join. Livingston agreed at first, then reversed himself. Baker argues that Burr probably supported the Van Ness plan: "There is a compelling pattern of circumstantial evidence, much of it newly discovered, that strongly suggests Aaron Burr did exactly that as part of a stealth campaign to compass the presidency for himself."The attempt did not work, however, at least in part because of Livingston's reversal and especially Hamilton's vigorous opposition to Burr. Jefferson was ultimately elected president, and Burr vice president

Jefferson never trusted Burr, so he was effectively shut out of party matters. As vice president, Burr earned praise from some enemies for his even-handedness and his judicial manner as President of the Senate; he fostered some practices for that office that have become time-honored traditions.Burr's judicial manner in presiding over the impeachment trial of Justice Samuel Chase has been credited as helping to preserve the principle of judicial independence that was established by Marbury v. Madison in 1803.One newspaper wrote that Burr had conducted the proceedings with the "impartiality of an angel, but with the rigor of a devi

Burr was not nominated to a second term as Jefferson's running mate in the 1804 election, and Clinton replaced Burr as vice president on March 4, 1805. Burr's farewell speech on March 2, 1805, moved some of his harshest critics in the Senate to tears. But the 20-minute speech was never recorded in full,and has been preserved only in short quotes and descriptions of the address, which defended the American system of government

When it became clear that Jefferson would drop Burr from his ticket in the 1804 election, Burr ran for governor of New York instead. He lost the gubernatorial election to little known Morgan Lewis, in what was the most significant margin of loss in the state's history up to that time. Burr blamed his loss on a personal smear campaign believed to have been orchestrated by his party rivals, including Clinton.Hamilton also opposed Burr, due to his belief that Burr had entertained a Federalist secession movement in New York.n April, the Albany Register published a letter from Dr. Charles D. Cooper to Senator Philip Schuyler, which relayed Hamilton's judgment that Burr was "a dangerous.

Burr died in a boarding home after suffering two strokes  in Port Richmond, New York, on Staten Island, on September 14, 1836, at age 80he same day that his divorce was officially completed. He died deeply in debt.The boarding house later became known as the St. James Hotel. He was buried near his father's gravesite in Princeton, New Jersey.

John Quincy Adams wrote in his diary a year after Burr's death: "Burr's life, take it all together, was such as in any country of sound morals his friends would be desirous of burying in quiet oblivion." (wikipedia, LuLac)