Finally Friday Reads: “The thing that’s extra damaging now is the craziness.”

Posted: August 22, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: #FARTUS, #MAGAnomics, #We are so Fucked | Tags: , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Drew this last Sunday, envisioning a trump renovation of the Lincoln Memorial as he “cleans up” DC. Wake up to find South Park had the same idea. Should have posted it sooner. John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

I have to admit that my heroes have always been Nobel Prize Winners in Economics. Between hearing family stories about living through the Great Depression and my own experience of inflation and stagflation, I just totally fell into my economics major. It was practical, scientific, and consensus-seeking. I have an early copy of Keynes’ The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money that was my father’s economic textbook after the War. I also have my own copy of Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz’s A Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960. As a Financial Economist, I have strong roots as a monetarist. 

As I reached out to study Trade Theory in search of what all countries needed in place to have a stable, growing economy and financial system, I became drawn to Paul Krugman. The headline up top is straight from him. This year, I’ve watched just about everything we’ve learned since the Great Depression on how to stabilize and grow an economy, from all these wise people, being thrown to the wind. I’m opening with the current Krugman critique of the “craziness.”  It will be followed by some excellent analysis of what’s passing as policy these days, which is anything but a market economy. You can make a good case that we are moving in the direction of a Soviet-style command and Control system and heading straight into a Maoist one. This is how our regime rolls these days, and as Krugman says, it’s crazy.

I start with Thor Benson’s interview with Dr. Krugman at the Substack Public Notice.

Paul Krugman’s publication here on Substack has quickly become a vital resource for explanatory (and entertaining) coverage of Trump’s self-destructive economic policies. In fact, the Nobel Prize winner recently triggered Trump himself, with the president howling that Krugman is a “Trump Deranged BUM” in an unhinged Truth Social screed.

So with economic indicators weakening and talk of stagflation in the air, we connected with Krugman for a wide-ranging conversation about tariffs, inflation, why the AI bubble is reminiscent of the late 1990s, Trump’s teetering economy, and more.

“I think there’s a high likelihood of what we used to call a ‘growth recession’ or a jobless recovery — a situation where the economy isn’t plunging, but in fact unemployment is going up,” Krugman told us. “The economy is growing too slowly right now to generate enough jobs and there’s real weakness, which we’ve already seen in the data.”

“The thing that’s extra damaging now is the craziness. Nobody knows what the tariff rates will be in six months. Businesses making investment decisions want to know what things are going to be like over the next five years, but nobody has the faintest idea.”

The key to the crazy car is indeed tariffs.  The damage, like the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act Congress imposed in 1929, made the Great Depression what it turned out to be.  The media has pushed the idea that the current tariff regime has been limited because of the TACO craziness. Read Krugman’s thoughts on that.

Thor Benson

Why haven’t tariffs inflicted more damage on the economy already? There were a lot of dire warnings in the lead-up to Trump’s “Liberation Day” announcement nearly five months ago.

Paul Krugman

The scale of Trump’s tariffs is beyond the highest expectations people had. When he was talking about 10 percent tariffs globally, people thought, “Well, he won’t really do that.” In fact, it looks like we’re going to end up with an average tariff rate of around 18 percent, which is huge. We knew the reaction would be delayed, and it’s been even more delayed than expected, but it’s starting to show now.

The first thing to say is that, in general, protectionism is bad, but people tend to overstate the case. I’ve written about that a few times. It sounds important, because it has global effects, but it gets overhyped. Our screwed-up healthcare system does way more damage to the economy than Trump’s tariffs. Reasonable estimates of the long-run impact of these tariffs is a 0.4 or 0.5 percent cut to GDP — not trivial, but not apocalyptic.

In terms of the inflationary impacts of tariffs, there was a lot of front-running. Companies that import stuff rushed to do so earlier this year before the tariffs kicked in. To some extent, we’re still living off inventory that was built up in that period, and you can see it in the data. There was a huge surge in imports early in the year and then a huge drop after the tariffs finally kicked in. We’re still living off inventory that was brought in at much lower tariff rates.

It’s also important to note that the TACO thing is wrong. Trump did not chicken out. We’ve got 15 percent tariffs on the EU and Japan and iron tariffs on a number of countries.

The fact that people kept thinking we were gonna have trade deals and the tariffs were going to come back down meant that companies were reluctant to pass price hikes into stores, because they didn’t want to make customers mad and lose market share. It’s only now really sinking in that this is for real, and so the “let’s eat the tariffs for a while” thing is fading out.

It’s happening a little slower than expected, but for the most part we’re pretty much right in line with what economists were saying earlier this year.

Professionals are fleeing the U.S. Treasury.  “Treasury Department’s No. 2 official is leaving. Michael Faulkender oversees the department’s operations and has a broad policy portfolio that spans tax, international finance, sanctions, and financial regulation.”  The adults are leaving the room.

The rest is under a paywall, but you get the general gist of it. So, all of this tariff shit is not coming out of Congress, as it should. That is what led to this very important article in Fortune. You may read all of it. The first author, Jeffrey Sonnenfield, is a Yale University Business Professor. The rest of the authors are equally impressive.  There are CEOs of Top Companies as well as other academics, including Distinguished Professor Laura Tyson, a former chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisors, back when we really were doing economic policy. Here’s the headline, folks!  “Is MAGA going Marxist and Maoist? Trump’s assault on free-market capitalism.”

As many CEOs understandably grew horrified last month at the prospect that New York City, the capital of capitalism, is on the brink of going socialist with the mayoral momentum of the inexperienced candidate Zohran Mamdani, they were ignoring the greater assault on free market capitalism that has already overtaken the nation in the Republican Party. While we agree that Mamdani’s solutions to affordable housing and grocery prices threaten to undermine free markets by bowing to the appeal of populist anger, President Donald Trump has already begun doing so, but to suit his own grandiose political agenda instead.

Unlike any leader of any free-market economy around the world, President Trump has seized control of private enterprise’s strategic decision-making and investment policies while invading corporate board rooms so that he may dictate leadership staffing, punish corporate critics, and demand public compliance with his political agenda. This is far more dangerous to capitalism than a city-run grocery store.

Many free-market economists and business leaders who have long worshipped the free-market ideals of Adam Smith, Friedrich Hayek, Ayn Rand, and Milton Friedman should be aware that their idols would be rolling in their graves right now, as rather than pursue standard laissez-faire conservative economic policies, MAGA has gone Marxist and even, increasingly, Maoist

That sounds dour, doesn’t it?

As Greg Ip warned this week in The Wall Street Journal, “The US marches toward state capitalism with American characteristics … President Trump is imitating [the] Chinese Communist Party by extending political control ever deeper into the economy.”  Ip pointed out that in the past, crisis-driven government bailouts of the banking and automotive sectors, such as TARP, were acute, targeted assistance, with brief and bipartisan rescue aims. Similarly, government incentives to drive investments in chips manufacturing, oil exploration, space exploration, internet development, agricultural vitality, cancer detection, disease treatment, and clean energy were not ownership deals with preferred companies or corporate cronies.

Indeed, Ip’s warnings mirror our own, as we were the first to accurately, presciently warn—over a year ago—that many of Trump’s economic positions more closely resemble communism than capitalism, as part of what we called “the coming MAGA assault on capitalism.” It certainly looks like MAGA is going Marxist if not even Maoist, especially across Trump’s vicious personal targeting of individual business leaders; government crackdown on business freedom of expression; weaponization of government powers; apparent extortion of businesses; and insertion of government into an unprecedented, outsized role in private sector strategic investment, capital flows and business decision-making.

Marxism and Maoism were both, of course, expressions of the communist theory that spilled forth from Karl Marx’s pen in the 19th century, brought to life in the brutal one-party states of the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China under its leader Mao Zedong, before it evolved into “capitalism with Chinese characteristics” starting in the 1970s, around the time of President Richard Nixon’s fateful visit to Beijing.

Both Marxism and Maoism claimed to champion “ordinary people” against corrupt or exploitative elites, while both targeted intellectuals, bureaucrats, and traditionalists, and purged institutions to enforce ideological purity, especially during Stalin’s “Great Terror” and Mao’s “Cultural Revolution.” Both centralized leadership to the point of creating a cult of personality, demanding intense loyalty and the glorification of the sole figure who could fix the country’s problems. Both prized loyalty over expertise, sidelining critics and dissenters in favor of a tightly controlled political narrative. Sound familiar?

The essence of market capitalism is that owners—shareholders and the management they appoint share in the profits. These deals give share of profits to government in return for favors. Friedman said that federal government should never own anything—that it should not run a surplus because it would have funds to invest in the private sector. What strategic decision-making rights would the government have in such deals, then?

So, I have studied all of these things in both comparative economic systems and comparative political systems, as well as Russian and Chinese history courses. If you ever did any of this, you would be as scared as I am.  You may also watch the latest South Park episode, where all these institutional leaders line up and gift solid gold and silver gee-gaws to Yam Tits. Once again, dark humor mimics a dark regime.

You may read all the listed evidence at the link. This is not normal. This is heavy-handed interference in all our markets. Evidently, regulation is good if it’s the #FARTUS openly demanding he be cut in on all deals. There are so many things going on that are not normal; all alarms should be blaring loudly by now. “Trump’s FBI Raid of John Bolton’s Home Looks Like a ‘Five-Alarm Fire. Thus far, little is known about Friday’s law enforcement action against a top Trump critic. But we’re seeing an escalation of authoritarian power on many fronts that has grown unmistakable.” This is from the New Republic. It’s written by Greg Sargent.

Whatever we end up learning about the rationale for the FBI’s early-morning raid on former national security adviser John Bolton’s Bethesda, Maryland, home on Friday, there’s plainly a major escalation underway in President Donald Trump’s use of law enforcement to persecute his perceived enemies and entrench his authoritarian power. Consider the pattern:

Assaults targeting individual business leaders

Trump has a long history of targeting individual CEOs in highly vicious, personal terms for perceived offenses. This week, Trump called for the firing of Goldman Sachs’ renowned economist Jan Hatzius who accurately called the 2008 financial crisis over the economist’s concern regarding the tariff overhand on the US economy. He also attacked a top-performing financier, David Solomon, the non-partisan CEO of Goldman Sachs, telling him to quit and just be a disc jockey. (Solomon has a famous side hustle as an electronic dance music DJ, known as DJ D-Sol.)

  • The targeting of Bolton, a major critic of Trump, appears to have been personally authorized by Kash Patel. An apparently official leak to the New York Post deliberately underscored Patel’s involvement, probably to make sure it’s understood by Trump’s other enemies. Remember: Trump installed Patel as FBI director for this very purpose. Patel had openly declared in 2023 that “the conspirators,” that is enemies of Trump and MAGA, must be prosecuted, and also that more loyalists with the resolve to see this through would be recruited to carry this out. Bolton was on Patel’s enemies list.
  • Trump is now targeting Fed governor Lisa Cook, another proclaimed enemy, and he’s escalating the use of law enforcement and the manipulation of the bureaucracy to do so. Trump loyalist William Pulte, head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, is alleging that Cook committed mortgage fraud, and this has been referred to the Justice Department. Whether or not there’s anything to the fraud claims, they’re minor at best, and it’s already highly suspect that Pulte, an agency head, has taken such an active interest in investigations into individual mortgages that happen to belong to Trump’s highest-profile enemies. Given that Trump personally promoted an article about the referral of the Cook matter to DOJ, Pulte’s move looks even more suspect.
  • Tellingly, Trump also heavily promoted the news of another supposedly fraudulent mortgage held by an enemy, Senator Adam Schiff. Schiff flatly denies the charges, yet DOJ is now criminally investigating them. Here again, Trump loyalist Pulte was directly involved in the manufacturing of the pretext for this, and experts say the process employed was dubiously manipulated. The same tactic has been used against New York Attorney General Letitia James, another major Trump foe. The question now is whether the White House is directing Pulte to rummage through the mortgages of Trump enemies for material that can serve as a pretext for potential DOJ prosecutions. It’s hard to imagine something of this magnitude proceeding without the White House’s blessing.
  • After protests broke out over Trump’s attempted takeover of the Washington, D.C. police force and his deployment of the National Guard there—which is itself a major escalation—White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller expressly declared that protests would be met with a surge of additional law enforcement and/or military resources. Notably, there’s been no serious effort to reassure Americans that Trump’s militarization of the city, or of Los Angeles, is rooted in benign intentions. In fact, this week Trump suggested he would personally ride through the city with the National Guard. Though he scrapped the plan, that was probably for logistical reasons, and he plainly wants all this military activity in urban centers to be seen as affirmative confirmation of his ongoing consolidation of power.
  • Longtime Trump ally Steve Bannon explicitly declared the other day that ICE officers will indeed be employed during the 2026 midterm elections in large numbers to monitor voting booths, again floating undocumented voters as the bullshit pretext to justify it. Bannon is not in a position to compel this, of course, but it’s clear the MAGA movement now sees Trump’s militarization of cities as a precursor to the use of law enforcement and/or the military to intimidate voters in large numbers, or foment a crisis atmosphere designed to help the GOP, or both.
  • Last but not least, as we reported, a recent internal Department of Homeland Security memo outlines the hopes of senior DHS officials for substantially escalated military involvement in domestic law enforcement going forward. It even declares that military operations like the one in L.A. may be needed “for years to come.”

The raid of Bolton’s home was authorized by a court, and it is seeking to “determine whether he illegally shared or possessed classified information,” according to The New York Times. Trump told reporters Friday that he’d been unaware of the raid, but responded to it ominously.

WTF is going on? This is not normal. This is not democratic. This is not how our republic is supposed to work. Meanwhile, Donald’s dash for the Nobel Peace Prize is dashed again.  Put so played him. This is from Politico. “Trump’s peace bid flops as Kremlin says no plans for Putin-Zelenskyy summit. Moscow obfuscates again in new remarks by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.” Well, inadequate Yam Tits strike again and cost the country more of our hard-earned dollars.

Russia’s top diplomat said Friday the Kremlin is “not ready at all” for a meeting between President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, pouring cold water on U.S. President Donald Trump’s efforts to set up a summit.

Trump announced Monday on social media that he was arranging a bilateral meeting between Zelenskyy and Putin, following crunch talks with European leaders at the White House — but gave scant details.

But Moscow has since been reluctant to commit to a confab between the two leaders, with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov saying Tuesday such a meeting would need to be prepared “step by step, gradually, starting from the expert level and then going through all the necessary stages.”

He sowed further doubt Friday, claiming that Zelenskyy was the one not willing to negotiate by refusing to rule out joining NATO or concede to the Kremlin’s maximalist territorial demands.

“Putin is ready to meet with Zelenskyy when the agenda is ready for a summit, and this agenda is not ready at all,” Lavrov told U.S. channel NBC.

“Zelenskyy said no to everything. … How can we meet with a person who is pretending to be a leader?” he added.

While U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said earlier this week the Russian ruler had agreed to a face-to-face meeting, touting his supposed openness to talks as a breakthrough, European diplomats and leaders have voiced skepticism that Moscow is really interested in ending the war and willing to negotiate in good faith.

“We are forgetting that Russia has not made one single concession, and they are the ones who are the aggressor here,” the EU’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said Friday.

Zelenskyy accused Moscow on Friday of dragging out peace talks in a bid to hold off punishing American sanctions, which Trump has threatened to impose on Russia and its trading partners if the Kremlin does not participate.

#FARTUS is the most corrupt and inept president we’ve ever had. I have no idea how we’re going to survive much more of this. More things from Memeorandum to check out:

Don’t forget, Trump is destroying the Smithsonian, the entire White House, and just about every check and balance enumerated by the U.S. Constitution.  You may gag over the Oval Office Changes at Business Insider.  His future architectural destruction is outlined in USA Today. It includes the Lincoln Bedroom, and he’s specifically interested in its bathroom.  That’s a lot of gag for your buck.

We’re certainly going to get more proof that everything Trump touches dies.

I can’t watch the news much anymore. I think I’ll go watch the Disney Channel now.

What’s on your Reading, Blogging, and Action list today?

Mostly Monday Reads: Educating Donald

Posted: August 18, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: #FARTUS, Finland, Foreign Affairs, France, Germany, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United Nations | Tags: , , | 7 Comments

“Last-minute shopping,” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

Orange Caligula’s Reign of Terror and Tackiness continues. Oh, and we can’t forget that he’s busy rigging elections, ruining the economy, occupying cities, kidnapping immigrants, and fending off Epstein stories. President Zelenski is once more headed to the White House to ensure the US keeps the promises it made to the people of Ukraine. This time, Zelenski is bringing back-up from Western Europe. You’ll remember the last time he came, he brought out the bully in the childish Trump, who focused on Zelensky’s military uniform as a wartime president wearing a soldier’s uniform. Yam Tits hates to be upstaged and was hostile during that entire summit.

I don’t think that the Europeans can rescue the world from the Grandiose Narcissist, but they can make him look pathetic. As I write this, the Chancellor of the German Republic has arrived. This brief summary by AXIOS puts the occasion into perspective. Barak Ravid and Marc Caputo have this headline today. “Trump-Zelensky summit: The suit question, again.” Let’s see how he does when the premier leaders of Europe gang up on the infamous bully. Trump’s pettiness is likely to ruin the day.

Andrea Mitchell has just stated that President Zelenski is wearing a suit. Our embarrassing President is welcoming him and, of course, mentions his fetish partner, Putin. He’s thanking Yam Tits. I guess Zelenski got the message JD Dank sent him last time. And Trump’s calling Putin’s attack on Ukraine as “Biden’s War.” The man just can’t keep himself from lying. Here’s some perspective on the Trump/Putin bromance event last week in Letters from an American.

On the heels of President Donald J. Trump’s Friday meeting with Russia’s president Vladimir Putin in Anchorage, Alaska, Trump will meet with Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky Monday afternoon at the White House. According to Barak Ravid of Axios, Trump called Zelensky from Air Force One on the way home from Alaska. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and White House special envoy Steve Witkoff were also on the hour-long call. The leaders of the European Commission, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and the United Kingdom then joined the call for another half hour.

In the call, Trump embraced Putin’s view of the conflict, telling Zelensky and European leaders that Putin does not want a ceasefire. Trump indicated that he is abandoning his own demand for a ceasefire and adopting Putin’s position that negotiations should take place without one. Zelensky insists on a ceasefire before negotiations. After the call, Trump posted on social media that “it was determined by all that the best way to end the horrific war between Russia and Ukraine is to go directly to a Peace Agreement, which would end the war, and not a mere Ceasefire Agreement, which often times do not hold up.” “All” is doing a lot of work in that sentence: it appears to mean Putin, with the possible agreement now of Trump.

Key unanswered questions from Friday’s summit were why it ended so abruptly, with the cancellation of a planned luncheon and more discussions, and why Trump immediately told Fox News Channel personality Sean Hannity, “Because of what happened today, I think I don’t have to think about [further sanctions on Russia] now. I may have to think about it in two weeks or three weeks or something, but we don’t have to think about that right now.”

The abrupt cancellation could mean that U.S. officials sent Putin packing without lunch because he would not agree to a ceasefire. But it seems worth keeping on the table that Trump has recently exhibited both an inability to focus on any topic, and a need to live in a carefully constructed world that ignores reality and assures him he is the best and the brightest. A high-stakes meeting with principals about a very real situation might have been too much for him to manage for a full day.

At the press conference following the summit, NBC News White House correspondent Peter Alexander reported that what struck him was “the looks on the faces of a lot of the American delegation here. Karoline Leavitt…, Steve Witkoff, who came into the room, then left quickly, then came back in. Leavitt appeared to be a bit stressed out, anxious. Their eyes were wide, almost ashen at times.”

At 8:31 this morning, Trump posted one word, “bela,” on his social media account. California governor Gavin Newsom’s social media account, which has been trolling Trump by imitating his boastful, insulting, all-caps posts, wrote: “We broke Donald Trump.”

As of midday Sunday, there appeared to be no mention of the Alaska meeting on the State Department’s website, although it has been updated since Friday to acknowledge Indonesia Independence Day and the Gabonese Republic National Day.

What is clear from the summit, though, is that Trump and Putin badly miscalculated the nature of power in democracies.

While Trump came out of the White House to greet Zelinski, the situation was different for our European Allies. This is from The Daily Beast. “Trump Snubs Greatest Allies With Greeting From Fox News Host. European leaders arriving at the White House were met by the Chief of Protocol, Monica Crowley.”

After rolling out the red carpet for Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday, President Donald Trump did not directly greet European leaders arriving at the White House on Monday.

Seven European leaders including British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Finnish President Alexander Stubb and Secretary General of NATO Mark Rutte, have all flown to Washington to show a united front as Trump met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

A gathering of so many European leaders at the White House at one time with such little notice is unprecedented in recent times.

As they started arriving at the White House, European leaders were greeted by the Chief of Protocol and former Fox News personality Monica Crowley rather than the president.

While Trump did not step out to meet European leaders who hastily flew to Washington, he did acknowledge that their visit for the summit is a big deal.

“We have never had so many European Leaders here at one time. A great honor for America,” he wrote on Truth Social.

And Yam Tit’s speaking about himself in third person again, and how the Press underrates him. He’s also bragging about the “success” of the District occupation. Well, I can’t hear his voice without feeling like I’m going to vomit. He’s still ass-kissing and performing for the Nobel Peace Prize. He just hates that Obama got one. I just turned the TV off, and I’ll end here. We know he’s outnumbered in the brain department. Let’s just hope they can break through that Narcissistic Personality Disorder and get him to do what’s necessary for the good of all the democracies in the world.

What’s on your Reading, Blogging, and Action list today?

Finally Friday Reads: Only the Very Worst People

Posted: August 15, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: #FARTUS, Putin Alaska Summit, Trump's worst hires at work | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

“I feel safer already,” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

While we’re waiting for Putin to take what’s left of Yam Tits’ scalp in Alaska, let’s focus on what he’s trying to pass off as serious hires for all levels of the Federal Government. I’m going to start with the last target of South Park’s wonderful new season, ICE Barbie. This is from the Washington Post. “Kristi Noem is living free of charge in Coast Guard commandant’s home. A DHS spokesman said Noem must live on the military base because she had been “so horribly doxxed and targeted that she is no longer able to safely live in her own apartment.” I find it more than slightly ironic that the head of  “Homeland Security” doesn’t feel secure in her own home.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem is living for free in a military home typicallyreserved for the U.S. Coast Guard’s top admiral, officials familiar with the matter said. The highly unusual arrangement has raised concern within the agency andfrom some Democrats, who describe it as a waste of military resources.

Noem recently moved intoQuarters 1, a spacious waterfront residence at Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling in Southeast Washington where the Coast Guard commandant typically resides. She did so because of concerns over her safety after the Daily Mail, a British tabloid, published photographs in April of the area around Noem’s residence in Washington’s Navy Yard neighborhood, DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said.

McLaughlin described Noem’s time at the commandant’s residence as temporary. She did not specify how long thesetup would last or how long Noem has lived there.

Noem pays no rent to live in the commandant’s house, according to an official familiar with the matter granted anonymity to speak candidly. That’s a departure from how other Cabinet secretarieshave handled similar arrangements. Other Cabinet officials, including during both Trump administrations, have paid to use military housing that otherwise would be occupied by top generals and admirals.

Noem’s housing has raised eyebrows from current and retired Coast Guard officials, as well as Democrats, who warn that Noem risks creating the perception that she is exploiting the perks of her position as DHS secretary, in which she supervises the Coast Guard. They say her decision could set off a chain reaction that could displace other senior members of the service in a situation with limited housing.

Current and former Coast Guard members have also cited Noem’s frequent use of a Coast Guard Gulfstream aircraft as a point of tension. Agency guidelines require the DHS secretary to use a plane with secure communications for both personal and professional business, though they are required to reimburse the government for personal travel. McLaughlin said that Noem had reimbursed “tens of thousands of dollars” for the air travel, after publication of the story.

Noem faced scrutiny for her expenses when she served as governor of South Dakota. She spent $68,000 in taxpayer funds to refurbish the governor’s mansion with a sauna, chandelier and other amenities, the Sioux Falls Argus Leader reported in 2021. And South Dakota picked up the tab for at least $150,000 in campaign and personal travel for Noem related to her security when she was governor, the Associated Press reported this year.

Noem’s housing arrangement could create the impression that she is exploiting her position of authority over the Coast Guard to accrue perks for herself, said Cynthia Brown, senior ethics counsel at the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a left-leaning watchdog nonprofit.

“What are the optics?” Brown said. “And is this taking advantage of your individual position as a government official to benefit unduly?”

So, I wonder if her neighbors hide their dogs? It’s amazing to me that the law and order crowd can’t seem to actually figure out either. Let’s continue with people who don’t know how to do their jobs.  “US Attorney Pirro’s office admits grand jury refused ICE interference charges — twice. Federal prosecutors told a judge they had failed twice to secure an indictment against Sydney Lori Reid for allegedly assaulting an FBI agent during an ICE arrest.” I have to confess that I can’t listen to or watch any interviews with her. Her voice is disturbingly grating. She also looks like something out of a horror film. I pity the poor jury that has to deal with this. This much body dysmorphia in one administration is a sign of something. You may discuss that amongst yourselves. The story comes from the local news station at WUSA9.

Federal prosecutors twice sought a grand jury indictment against a D.C. woman accused of assaulting an FBI agent during an ICE inmate transfer — and were twice rejected, the U.S. Attorney’s Office admitted in court Thursday.

Magistrate Judge G. Michael Harvey revealed the denials to attorneys for Sydney Lori Reid and later granted their request to remove all bond conditions and release her on her own recognizance over prosecutors’ objections. He will resume a preliminary hearing on Friday afternoon to determine whether to dismiss the case entirely.

“Two presentations to the grand jury returned no bill both times,” Harvey said. “Suggesting the evidence is wanting, given the standard for indictment is probable cause. Suggesting the government may never get an indictment.”

Grand juries are tasked with deciding only whether there is a reasonable basis to support charging someone with a crime – a much lower burden for prosecutors than the beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard of criminal juries – and typically make their decisions after hearing evidence only from the government. At the federal level, grand juries return indictments, or “true bills,” in the vast majority of cases.

Reid, 44, was charged last month with an enhanced felony version of an assault charge that requires inflicting bodily injury on a federal officer and carries a maximum sentence of up to eight years in prison. The charge is the same offense filed this week against a former DOJ employee accused of throwing a sandwich at a U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent.

In a press release last month, U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office accused Reid of trying to impede the transfer of two alleged members of the 18th Street gang who were being arrested by ICE outside the D.C. Jail prior to transfer to the custody of the FBI.

Federal prosecutors declined to call the injured FBI agent or any of the ICE officers involved in the incident during Thursday’s hearing, however. Instead, they had an investigator with the U.S. Attorney’s Office testify about his review of video of the incident and brief conversations with the officers. The investigator, Special Agent Sean Ricardi, said he’d had no involvement in the case until he was asked to prepare for testimony Thursday morning.

Video played by prosecutors shows Reid approaching the ICE officers while holding up her phone, which she says is for her protection. She is then later seen being held by multiple officers against a wall while she asks, “How do you feel about stealing f***ing people?”

Even the first soft porn star is getting into the headlines. You know, I really hate to slut slam or pick on woman for their looks. I love Stormy Daniels. She’s as sweet as pie, and she helped feed the neighborhood animals during our last hurricane. I’m always happy to see her when she visits. But, there’s a crossed Rubicon at some point with some behavior. Melania whiffed with this one. This story is from The Guardian. “Melania Trump demands Hunter Biden retract comments linking her to Jeffrey Epstein. First lady threatens to sue Joe Biden’s son after he said sex offender Jeffrey Epstein introduced her to Donald Trump. I can’t wait to read the testimony on the Trumps explaining their relationships with Epstein, frankly.

Melania Trump has demanded that Hunter Biden retract comments linking her to the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and has threatened to sue if he does not.

Biden, the son of the former president Joe Biden, alleged in an interview this month that Epstein had introduced the first lady to Donald Trump.

The statements were false, defamatory and “extremely salacious”, Melania Trump’s lawyer, Alejandro Brito, said in a letter to Biden. Biden’s remarks were widely disseminated on social media and reported by media outlets around the world, causing the first lady “to suffer overwhelming financial and reputational harm”, he added.

Biden made the Epstein comments during a sprawling interview with the US journalist Andrew Callaghan in which he lashed out at “elites” and others in the Democratic party who he said had undermined his father before he dropped out of last year’s presidential campaign.

I’m sorry, but I just keep laughing at the “reputational harm” part. It’s not like you were “modelling” for some wannabe Picasso. We’ve seen the pictures, honey.

“Epstein introduced Melania to Trump. The connections are, like, so wide and deep,” Biden said in one of the comments that the first lady disputes. Biden attributed the claim to the author Michael Wolff. Donald Trump has accused Wolff of making up stories to sell books.

Biden responded to the lawsuit on Thursday, speaking again to Callaghan, this time from a holiday location, and in effect doubled down on his unsubstantiated claim.

Asked if he wished to apologize, Biden said: “Uh, fuck that, not going to happen.”

“What I said is what I have heard and seen reported and written primarily from Michael Wolff, but also dating back to 2019.” He cited a number of publications, including the New York Times and Vanity Fair, as sources of his information.

The first lady’s threats echo a favoured strategy of her husband, who has aggressively used litigation to go after critics. Public figures such as the Trumps face a high bar to succeed in a defamation lawsuit.

The president also responded to the issue, accusing Biden of fabricating stories to denigrate the first lady. Trump told Fox News Radio host Brian Kilmeade on Thursday morning that he had encouraged her to sue.

“I said go forward. You know, I’ve done pretty well on these lawsuits lately … and Jeffrey Epstein had nothing to do with Melania and introducing,” he told Kilmeade.

“But they do that to demean, they make up stories. I mean I can tell you exactly how it was and it was another person actually … but it wasn’t Jeffrey Epstein. “I told her go ahead and do it.”

Yes, my goodness, Yam Tits! You never tell tall tales or make up stories! I bet it hurts your virgin ears to hear that kind of talk! I mean, it must’ve been so challenging to sneak around with her behind your second wife’s back, even though you had all that practice sneaking around behind your first wife’s bank. Pete Hegseth would be so proud of you! This Guardian article on Trump begging the Norwegian Finance Minister for a Nobel prize just had me spitting out my morning tea with laughter. “Trump reportedly called Norwegian minister ‘out of the blue’ to ask about Nobel prize. The US president told Norway’s finance minister he wants the Nobel Peace Prize, according to the Norwegian press.” He just can’t stand that former President Obama got one! “Trump reportedly called Norwegian minister ‘out of the blue’ to ask about Nobel prize. The US president told Norway’s finance minister he wants the Nobel Peace Prize, according to the Norwegian press.”  What? Ruining the Kennedy Center honors and wrecking the U.S. economy wasn’t enough for you?

Donald Trump cold-called Norway’s finance minister last month to ask about a nomination for the Nobel peace prize, Norwegian press reported on Thursday.

The Norwegian outlet Dagens Næringsliv, citing unnamed sources, reported: “Out of the blue, while finance minister Jens Stoltenberg was walking down the street in Oslo, Donald Trump called … He wanted the Nobel prize – and to discuss tariffs.”

The outlet added that it was not the first time that Trump had raised the question of a Nobel peace prize nomination to Stoltenberg.

In a statement to Reuters, Stoltenberg, the former Nato secretary-general, said the call focused on tariffs and economic cooperation ahead of Trump’s call with Jonas Støre, the Norwegian prime minister.

“I will not go into further detail about the content of the conversation,” Stoltenberg said, adding that several White House officials including the treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, and US trade representative, Jamieson Greer, were on the call.

Each year, the five-member Norwegian Nobel committee reviews hundreds of candidates before choosing laureates. The committee members are appointed by Norway’s parliament according to the will of Alfred Nobel, a 19-century Swedish industrialist. Laureates are announced in October.

Trump has previously complained multiple times about not receiving the Nobel peace prize, an award which four of his predecessors, including Barack Obama, have received.

In his most recent tirade, Trump took to Truth Social in June, saying: “No, I won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize no matter what I do, including Russia/Ukraine, and Israel/Iran, whatever those outcomes may be, but the people know, and that’s all that matters to me!”

How about a little whine with that Skrei Yam Tits? So, I just had to put up this article by Mother Jones. It’s about the deluge of propaganda we get daily and its impact. “The Official Voice of the US Government Is Cruel, Gross, and Weird. What Is That Doing to Us? Joking memes about imprisonment, deportation, and death by alligator are designed to radicalize and desensitize.”

In March, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested a woman they accused of drug trafficking and entering the country illegally. Standing in a parking lot, they photographed her, weeping, eyes half-closed in anguish, her arms cuffed behind her back. And then—in a cruel innovation specific to the Trump administration—the White House’s official Twitter account used an AI tool to make a cartoon illustration of her crying and handcuffed, in the style of the beloved Japanese animation studio Studio Ghibli. The tweet got 155,000 likes, a mix of outraged and delighted responses, and, as it was designed to, a lot of attention: it’s so far been viewed 76 million times. On Twitter, many users posted positive responses declaring that the image was exactly what they had voted for.

This is, at the moment, the official voice of the US government: a rancid mixture of trolling, cruelty, propaganda, and crass jokes about the human suffering they’re creating, an effort, as Wired’s Tess Owen recently put it, to turn actions like mass deportation into “one big joke.” On Instagram and Twitter (their largest audience), government entities including the White House, ICE, and the Department of Homeland Security attempt to surf viral trends to expanded public attention: They twist memes and sounds popular on TikTok, repurpose South Park’s parodies for their own self-promotion, and blend it all with images that draw on or directly reproduce classical art and Americana paintings that are designed to stir nostalgia for an imagined past. (The use of some of this art, as the Washington Post has written, has stirred the ire of the artists themselves or their representatives; it’s not easy to extract a stern condemnation from the estate of treacly pastoral painter Thomas Kinkade, but this government managed to do it.)

A lot of the trends are specifically designed to appeal to young white men, like one that repurposes a 1970s-looking ad for a van to ask, “Want to deport illegals with your absolute boys?” Another ICE recruitment effort asks, “Which way, American man?” in front a befuddled-looking Uncle Sam gazing at a crossroads post labeled with signs including “INVASION,” “CULTURAL DECLINE” pointing one way, and, pointing the other, “SERVICE,” “OPPORTUNITY”; in Uncle Sam’s hands lies “LAW AND ORDER.” The phrase “Which way, American man?” is a barely altered reference to the phrase “Which way, Western man?,” the title of a book by white nationalist author William Gayley Simpson that’s been popularized by the far right as a meme. In this case, the white supremacist undertones are more like overtones.

While the government uses social media to bolster its philosophical choices on issues like mass deportations, it also deploys it to prop up support for deeply unpopular aspects of its plans, like “Alligator Alcatraz”—an immigration detention camp, trolling opportunity, marketing bonanza for amoral swag-sellers, including Florida’s attorney general. Before the tent prison was even officially open, Trump administration officials and their proxies in right-wing media bragged about the camp, joked about escapees dying by alligator and python, and made AI-generated images of President Trump standing alongside alligators wearing ICE hats.

Disinformation researchers and experts on propaganda have followed the sludge and bile emanating from these governmental accounts with alarm.

“What you have is this desire to get people to buy into the fun of sadism,” says Jason Stanley; he’s a philosopher, author, and professor at University of Toronto who’s in the process of leaving the United States because of, as he baldly puts it, “concerns over fascism.”

You may read more at the link. So, everyone knows that Pam Bondi is in over her Miss Clairol Fox Blonde dye job head. She’s also doing things not in keeping with the role of the Attorney General. This is from Law Dork‘s Chris Geidner. “NEW: D.C. officials sue Trump admin over Bondi order claiming D.C. police powers. D.C.’s A.G. asserts that Bondi’s order — purporting to make the DEA administrator D.C.’s “Emergency Police Commissioner” — is “unlawful.” A lawsuit followed.”

A Thursday night order from U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi caused the Washington, D.C. officials — who have responded cautiously to the Trump administration’s efforts to exert more control over D.C. — to declare that the administration had gone too far.

[Update, 11:00 a.m.: The D.C. government sued the Trump administration on Friday morning, asserting that the administration was violating the Home Rule Act, the Administrative Procedure Act, and separation of powers. D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb is seeking a temporary restraining order to block Bondi from enforcing her order.]

[Update, 11:30 a.m.: The case has been assigned to U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes, a Biden appointee, and she has scheduled a hearing for 2 p.m. Friday to address D.C.’s TRO request.]

In the order, Bondi purported to have significant control over the Metropolitan Police Department — D.C.’s police force. Most significantly, she claimed that she had the authority to announce that “Drug Enforcement Administration Administrator Terrence C. Cole shall serve as MPD’s Emergency Police Commissioner.”

She also purported to rescind a Thursday morning order from MPD’s chief of police, in addition to suspending three other MPD orders, all relating to immigration enforcement.

She also announced that D.C. police are to enforce D.C.’s law against crowding streets or sidewalks “enforce, to the maximum extent permissible by law.“

In a final section, Bondi purported also to rescind “any existing MPD directives” that conflict with her order.

You may read this along with the associated part of Bondi’s order. We’ll see how that jives with the District of Columbia Self-Government and Governmental Reorganization Act. It is also known as the Home Rule Act. Meanwhile, everyone not associated with Putin is hoping that FARTUS will not give away the farm in Alaska today due to his advanced dementia, his Putin Fan Girl status, and his basic ignorance of history and diplomacy. This is from the New York Times. “Russia and Ukraine Agree: A Trump Summit Is a Big Win for Putin. The talks on Friday in Alaska pull the Russian leader out of diplomatic isolation from the West, and Ukrainian and European leaders fear it gives him an opening to sway the American president.” Andrew Higgins and Nataliya Vasilyeva share the byline.

President Trump has spent the week setting the bar extremely low for his high-stakes U.S.-Russian summit on Friday in Alaska. Hardly anyone expects him to make much progress in halting the fighting between Russia and Ukraine, given how far apart their views of the conflict are.

But those two warring countries do seem to agree on at least one thing. Merely meeting with Mr. Trump is a big win for President Vladimir V. Putin, bringing the Russian leader out of a diplomatic deep freeze and giving him a chance to cajole the American president face to face.

“Putin’s visit to the U.S.A. means the total collapse of the whole concept of isolating Russia. Total collapse,” Kremlin-controlled television crowed after news of the hastily arranged summit broke last weekend.

For Russia, “this is a breakthrough even if they don’t agree on much,” said Sergei Mikheyev, a pro-war Russian political scientist who is a mainstay of state television.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, iced out of the Alaska talks about his own country’s future, has come to the same conclusion, telling reporters on Tuesday: “Putin will win in this. Because he is seeking, excuse me, photos. He needs a photo from the meeting with President Trump.”

But it is more than a photo op. In addition to thawing Russia’s pariah status in the West, the summit has sowed discord within NATO — a perennial Russian goal — and postponed Mr. Trump’s threat of tough new sanctions. Little more than two weeks ago, he vowed that if Mr. Putin did not commit to a cease-fire by last Friday, he would punish Moscow and countries like China and India that help Russia’s war effort by buying its oil and gas.

This editorial cartoon is by Michael de Adder .

This is another fine mess that  #FARTUS (Felon Adjudicated Rapist, and Traitor of the United States) has gotten us into. The world is expecting Putin to eat him for lunch. My favorite magazine, The Economist, has this headline. “The real collusion between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. It may be scarier than their critics long suspected.”

To DEFY Donald Trump is to court punishment. A rival politician can expect an investigation, an aggravating network may face a lawsuit, a left-leaning university can bid farewell to its public grants, a scrupulous civil servant can count on a pink slip and an independent-minded foreign government, however determined an adversary or stalwart an ally, invites tariffs. Perceived antagonists should also brace for a hail of insults, a lesson in public humiliation to potential transgressors.Vladimir Putin has been a mysterious exception. Mr Trump has blamed his travails over Russia’s interference in the 2016 election on just about everyone but him. He has blamed the war in Ukraine on former President Joe Biden, for supposedly inviting it through weakness, and on the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, for somehow starting it. Back when Russia invaded in February 2022, Mr Trump praised Mr Putin’s “savvy”.

For months, as Mr Putin made a mockery of Mr Trump’s promises to end the war in a day and of his calls for a ceasefire, the president who once threatened “fire and fury” against North Korea and tariffs as high as 245% against China indulged in no such bluster. He has sounded less formidable than plaintive. “Vladimir, STOP!” he wrote on social media in April. His use of the given name betrayed a touching faith that their shared intimacy would matter to his reptilian counterpart, too.

When Mr Putin kept killing Ukrainians, Mr Trump took a step that was even less characteristic: he admitted to the world that he had been played for a fool. “Maybe he doesn’t want to stop the war, he’s just tapping me along,” he mused on April 26th. A month later, he ventured that his friend must have changed, gone “absolutely CRAZY!” Then on July 8th he acknowledged what should have been obvious from the start: “He is very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.” Mr Trump threatened secondary sanctions on Russia but then leapt at Mr Putin’s latest mixed messages about peace, rewarding him with a summit in America.

Why, with this man, has Mr Trump been so accommodating? Efforts by journalists, congressional investigators and prosecutors to pinpoint the reason have often proved exercises in self-defeat and sorrow. The pattern seemed sinister: Mr Trump praised Mr Putin on television as far back as 2007; invited him to the Miss Universe Pageant in Moscow in 2013 and wondered on Twitter if he would be his “new best friend”; sought his help to build a tower in Moscow from 2013 to 2016; and tried unsuccessfully many times in 2015 to secure a meeting with him. Then came Russia’s interference in the election in 2016, including its hack of Democrats’ emails to undermine the Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton. Some journalists fanned suspicions of a conspiracy—“collusion” became the watchword—by spreading claims Mr Putin was blackmailing Mr Trump with an obscene videotape. The source proved to be a rumour compiled in research to help Mrs Clinton.

Nine years later Mr Putin’s low-budget meddling still rewards America’s foes by poisoning its politics and distracting its leaders. Pam Bondi, the attorney-general, has started a grand-jury investigation into what Mr Trump called treason by Barack Obama and others in his administration. The basis is a misrepresentation of an intelligence finding in the waning days of Mr Obama’s presidency. Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence, has said that because Mr Putin did not hack voting machines, the finding that he tried to help Mr Trump was a lie. The conclusion under Mr Obama was instead that Mr Putin tried to affect the election by influencing public opinion.

The exhaustive report released in 2019 by an independent counsel, Robert Mueller, affirmed on its first page that “the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome.” Mr Mueller indicted numerous Russians, and he also secured guilty pleas from some Trump aides for violating various laws. But he did not conclude the campaign “conspired or co-ordinated” with the Russians.

To wade through the report’s two volumes is to be reminded how malicious the Russians were and how shambolic Mr Trump’s campaign was. It is also to lament the time and energy spent, given how little proof was found to support the superheated suspicions. And it is to regret how little Mr Trump was accorded a presumption of innocence. In the final words of the report, Mr Mueller noted that while it did not accuse Mr Trump of a crime, it also did “not exonerate him”. One might understand his bitterness.

The puzzle of Mr Trump’s admiration for Mr Putin may have been better addressed by psychologists. Certainly Mr Putin, the seasoned KGB operative, has known how to play to his vulnerabilities, including vanity. Mr Trump was said to be “clearly touched” by a kitschy portrait of himself Mr Putin gave him in March.

Indeed, no one expects Trump to prevail in this discussion. I love to follow these things on the BBC. They’re updating live, as are most media outlets. “Will Trump achieve his aims? It remains to be seen.”  This news analysis is provided by Gary O’Donoghue.”

It has proved incredibly hard for US President Donald Trump to make any progress on the Ukraine war whatsoever.

Bearing in mind, he’s sent his envoy Steve Witkoff to Moscow five times now.

The only real thing that’s come out of that is a few pretty low level meetings in Istanbul, between Ukrainians and the Russians, some prisoner swaps – but really very little progress.

Typically with these sorts of summits, all of the work has already been done – all the preparation and agreements have been ironed out. Usually this would be a ceremonial moment.

But what is happening in Alaska is that the two countries are starting pretty much from a blank sheet of paper.

We don’t know exactly what either side is really trying to achieve here, other than President Trump saying he wants to stop the killing.

That’s a noble aim. These talks are about life and death, war and peace – these things do matter.

But, we don’t know how Russian President Putin and President Trump will get from their positions now to where Trump wants to be.I

I will try to keep the blog feed updated as we move through the day. As usual, Trump has been met with protestors.

What’s on your Reading, Blogging, and Action list today?

 

A massive show of solidarity in Anchorage today as hundreds—some estimates put numbers at around 1,000—gathered in the streets waving Ukrainian flags and chanting “Ukraine and Alaska — Russian never again!” ahead of the Trump–Putin summit. No deal for War Criminals! #SlavaUkraini 💙💛🇺🇦

— MadGreek 🧿 (@madgreek2024.bsky.social) 2025-08-15T17:31:57.797Z

Mostly Monday Reads: Are We There Yet?

Posted: August 11, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: #FARTUS, #MAGAnomics, #We are so Fucked, Economy, FARTUS, Gaza, Homeless, Israel | Tags: , , | 4 Comments

“He does have a sense of humor.” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

The top headline today from Public Notice sums it up nicely. “Crime is down. But Trump’s authoritarian power grabs are escalating. Random street crimes are being used as pretexts for repression.”  Jackie Kennedy’s Rose Garden is one big tacky cement patio bedecked with tacky patio furniture and yellow umbrellas that look like a field of dildos. The Oval Office is bedecked with gold spray-painted Baroque Cherubs and has the feel of a tacky brothel mimicking Versailles.  These changes are about as necessary as tariffs. The worst of it will be a ballroom with the same tacky aesthetic. Meanwhile, the Big Budget-Busting bill will leave people starving, ill, and homeless. I smile at a young black man with a loaded shopping cart, as he heads down Burgundy Street this morning to the various homeless encampments at the abandoned Navy Base bordering the canal and the Mississippi. Once again, VooDoo Economics takes its toll.  Then, there are the tariffs and the dearth of tourists this season.

Justin Glawe writes the story behind the headline.

The White House has seized on two unrelated incidents of street crime as a pretext for a federal government power grab at a time when violent crime has, in fact, dropped across the country.

The attempted carjacking of Edward “Big Balls” Coristine in Washington DC and a street brawl in Cincinnati are the latest cause célebrè on the American right, which has long supported Donald Trump’s plans for military and law enforcement crackdowns in largely Democratic cities. Both incidents are being used as anecdotal evidence of out-of-control crime across the country — a narrative that is necessary for Trump and Republicans to maintain their grip of fear on their MAGA base.

And it’s worked: a Gallup poll in October found that 64 percent of Americans believed crime had gone up in 2024, but new data from the FBI shows that is not the case. In fact, 2024 saw the lowest levels of violent crime since 1969, with violent crime down 4.5 percent across the country, including a 14.9 percent drop in murders.

The events being seized upon by the White House and Republicans as evidence of surging crime have little to do with one another save for the fact that the victims are white. In the case of the brawl in Cincinnati, those “victims” may not be entirely innocent: two white men faced off against a largely Black crowd on July 26, with one of the men spewing a racial slur. The other white man involved may have been a willing combatant in the melee, slapping a Black man in the face and squaring off to fight, as seen in videos circulating online. (Police have disputed that the slap was the impetus of the brawl.)

While the exact cause of the brawl isn’t entirely clear, videos of the incident have gone viral, framed by right-wing media as a “Black mob” beating innocent whites. On her show last Thursday night, Fox News’s Laura Ingraham asked a victim in the attack whether it was “racially motivated in any direction.” Neither Ingraham or the guest noted the use of the racial slur.

Vice President JD Vance and other prominent Republicans have politicized the incident, using it as an opportunity to call for everything from replacing judges to increasing funding for police.

At the same time, Trump, Elon Musk, and others have used the alleged carjacking of Coristine as justification for a federal takeover of Washington DC. Last week, Trump threatened to “FEDERALIZE” Washington, sharing a photo of a bloodied Coristine on Truth Social. Later, Trump reiterated the threat and called for juveniles to be charged as adults. He’s holding a news conference this morning to announce some sort of takeover of DC amid reports that hundreds of National Guard troops will be deployed to the city this week.

“Somebody from DOGE was very badly hurt last night. A young man who was beat up by a bunch of thugs in DC,” Trump said last Tuesday. “And either they’re gonna straighten their act out in terms of government and in terms of protection or we’re gonna have to federalize.”

This morning’s Washington Post describes Trump’s response thusly. “Trump orders federal moves on D.C. crime, takes over D.C. police. The president is planning to flex his law enforcement power over Washington, declaring that he would clear the city of homeless people and crack down on crime.” Am I the only one who sees the pandering to power in this headline?” This hardly compares to the violence, destruction, and crimes that happened on January 6.

President Donald Trump announced Monday that he was placing the D.C. police under direct federal control and will deploy the National Guard to the streets of Washington to fight crime, an extraordinary flex of federal power that stripped city leadership of its ability to make law enforcement decisions and could expose residents of the nation’s capital to unpredictable encounters with a domestically deployed military force.

The decision to take over the Metropolitan Police Department and deploy 800 National Guard troops comes as the president has been slamming America’s cities as places where crime is out of control, despite two years of declines that have brought homicide levels in many major cities to their lowest levels in decades.

The administration has already mobilized FBI agents in recent days in overnight shifts to help local law enforcement prevent carjackings and violent crime, officials said. Because the District of Columbia is not a state, the federal government has unusually sweeping powers to intervene over the objections of its residents and leaders, giving the president an opportunity to use it as a laboratory for a militarized approach to urban crime-fighting.

Trump portrayed a sweeping vision of law enforcement on the streets of Washington, declaring that federal agents, D.C. police and the National Guard would use physical force to intimidate

“They fight back until you knock the hell out of them, because it’s the only language they understand,” Trump told reporters at a White House news conference. “It’s a disgusting thing.”

“It’s becoming a situation of complete and total lawlessness, and we’re getting rid of the slums, too,” Trump added. “I know it’s not politically correct.https://www.facebook.com/ You’ll say, ‘Oh, so terrible.’ No, we’re getting rid of the slums where they live.”

Trump has portrayed crime in the nation’s capital as spiraling upward. D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) has noted repeatedly that violent crime has declined for the past two years after a sharp post-pandemic spike in 2023.

I will say this about the WAPO. The fact-checkers checked the crime statistics in the District. “Trump says crime in D.C. is out of control. Here’s what the data shows. Crime in D.C. and nationwide is declining from pandemic-era spikes. But individual incidents can shake residents and capture the president’s attention.”

 

All this is happening while the majority of Americans are like me. How the hell am I going to buy groceries this week? This headline is from Forbes Magazine. “Almost 90% of Americans Are Worried About The Cost Of Groceries. The story is written by Mary Whitfill Roeloffs.

Almost 90% of American adults say they’re stressed about the cost of groceries, a new poll out Monday shows, as the price of food rises and items like poultry, ground beef and eggs see the biggest cost jumps.

Key Facts
More than half of Americans (53%) see grocery prices as a major source of stress and another 33% see it as a minor source of stress, according to a new poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

  • More people were concerned about grocery prices than any other financial concern brought up in the poll, but more than half of respondents also said they were at least somewhat stressed about their salaries, the cost of housing, the amount of money they have saved, their credit card debt and the cost of health care.
  • The Consumer Price Index shows the price of food has risen 3% in the last 12 months—groceries have risen 2.4% while dining out is 3.8% costlier than it was 12 months ago.
  • From June 2024 to June 2025, groceries got more expensive in every category tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics: meats, poultry, fish and eggs rose in price by 5.6% (egg prices alone rose 27.3%); nonalcoholic beverages are 4.4% more expensive; fruits and vegetables rose in price by 0.7%; and both cereals and bakery products and the index for dairy products rose 0.9%.
  • At 3%, the cost of food is rising faster than the overall inflation rate as measured by the Consumer Price Index, at 2.7%.
  • After groceries, the price of housing had the highest number of people reporting it as a major stressor in Monday’s poll (47%), followed by the amount of money saved (43%), salary (43%) and the cost of health care (42%).

81 cents. That’s how much the price of chicken breast increased, per pound, from July 2024 to July 2025, according to NBC News, making it the largest price hike among the six staple items tracked by the outlet. The cost of ground beef increased 67 cents per pound, while eggs grew 64 cents more expensive per dozen.

Are we great again yet?

With American Foreign Policy out to lunch, Bibi Netanyahu has expanded his genocidal and authoritarian attack on Gaza. This is the latest step taken by the accused War Criminal. This is from The Guardian. “Anas al-Sharif, prominent Al Jazeera correspondent, among five journalists killed in Israeli airstrike on Gaza. Israel admits deliberate attack on the journalist, known for frontline coverage, in a strike on a tent outside al-Shifa hospital.” How are we falling back into 20th-century fascism when so many of us have been thoroughly educated on both World Wars?

A prominent Al Jazeera journalist who had previously been threatened by Israel has been killed along with four colleagues in an Israeli airstrike.

Anas al-Sharif, who was one of Al Jazeera’s most recognisable faces in Gaza, was killed while inside a tent for journalists outside al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City on Sunday night. His funeral was held on Monday morning.

Seven people in total were killed in the attack, including al-Sharif, Al Jazeera correspondent Mohammed Qreiqeh and camera operators Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal and Moamen Aliwa, according to the Qatar-based broadcaster.

The Israel Defense Force admitted the strike, claiming the reporter had “served as the head of a terrorist cell in the Hamas terrorist organisation and was responsible for advancing rocket attacks against Israeli civilians and IDF forces”.

It claimed it had intelligence and documents found in Gaza as proof but rights advocates said he had been targeted for his frontline reporting on the Gaza war and that Israel’s claim lacked evidence.

Calling al-Sharif “one of Gaza’s bravest journalists,” Al Jazeera said the attack was “a desperate attempt to silence voices in anticipation of the occupation of Gaza.”

Last month Israeli IDF spokesperson Avichai Adraee shared a video of al-Sharif on X and accused him of being a member of Hamas’ military wing. At the time the UN special rapporteur on freedom of expression, Irene Khan, called it “an unsubstantiated claim” and a “blatant assault on journalists”.

What passes for US foreign policy is the usual lovefest between Putin and Yam Tits. This is from The Bulwark. This story is reported by Cathy Young. “Alaska Summit: Trump and Putin Planning to Carve Up Ukraine. It’s hard to see anything good coming from the meeting of the president and his hero.”

REMEMBER WHEN, A FEW WEEKS BACK, commentators suddenly started talking about Donald Trump’s “pivot” or “dramatic shift” on Ukraine and Russia? The promises of aid to the one and scary sanctions against the other? Trump’s tough talk about the “bullshit thrown at us” by Vladimir Putin and the “nice phone calls” followed by bombings of Ukrainian cities? The fifty-day deadline to make peace or else, which then abruptly became a ten- to twelve-day deadline that expired over the last few days?

Well, guess what. The pivot seems to have fully unpivoted. We’re back to more diplomacy for dummies by Trump’s real estate pal and golf buddy Steve Witkoff, who went on another trip to Moscow and had—as Trump announced with a straight face on Truth Social—a “highly productive meeting” with Putin. So productive, in fact, that it took a while to figure out exactly what sort of deal Putin offered Witkoff, since Witkoff initially reported a garbled—and more attractive—version of the offer. (Witkoff did get to consume a monster-sized cheburek meat pie which greatly excited the Russian media, so it wasn’t a total loss. Oh, and he brought back an Order of Lenin that Putin gave him for a CIA deputy director whose son was killed in the Donbas last year fighting for the Russians. Is Putin trolling Trump at this point?)

And now, Trump and Putin are set to have a summit in Alaska (of all places!) this coming Friday. Trump’s initial proposal for a three-way summit with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has quietly fallen by the wayside; Vice President JD Vance has told Fox News that “we’re trying to figure out, frankly, scheduling and things like that” for the three to meet. So Zelensky may yet get invited to Alaska, but it’s not clear if he will ever be in the same room with Putin. At least for now, it looks like the summit will be a blatant violation of a principle repeatedly proclaimed by Western leaders, from Joe Biden to former German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg: “Nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine.” Or, in as Russian-Ukrainian political scientist Vladimir Pastukhov, currently a scholar at University College London, put it in an interview: “Two mob bosses decided to sit down and have a chat about the capitulation of Ukraine.”

Of course, we don’t know at this point what the final version of the proposed settlement will look like. Trump has talked about “some swapping of territories to the betterment of both.” Presumably, this means that Ukraine will be expected to cede territory that Russia wants but hasn’t managed to seize in exchange for other Ukrainian territory illegally occupied by Russia. But even that, it turns out, is unlikely to happen: Russia is demanding unilateral land concessions in exchange for a peace agreement or a temporary truce. Zelensky has already rejected such concessions, as he has consistently done since the invasion.

But whatever the outcome of the summit, its mere fact already hands Putin a huge win—unless, of course, Trump should decide that after Zelensky’s disgraceful Oval Office humiliation in February, it’s Putin’s turn for an internationally televised verbal beatdown. (Right. And then he’ll give Ukraine a shipment of alien superweapons from a super-secret vault in Area 51.)

I really don’t know what to make of this headline. Maybe this is how Trump plans to pay for his extensive wrecking of the White House. “U.S. Government to Take Cut of Nvidia and AMD A.I. Chip Sales to China. In a highly unusual arrangement with President Trump, the companies are expected to kick 15 percent of what they make in China to the U.S. government.”  And of course, this cost gets passed forward from the businesses to the consumers.  This is reported by the New York Times.

Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices are expected to pay the United States 15 percent of the money they take in from selling artificial intelligence chips to China, as part of a highly unusual financial agreement with the Trump administration.

The deal, which was described by three people familiar with the agreement who spoke anonymously because they didn’t have permission to discuss it publicly, comes a month after Nvidia received permission to sell a version of its artificial intelligence chips to China.

While the Trump administration publicly said a month ago that it was giving the green light to Nvidia to sell an A.I. chip called H20 to China, it did not actually issue the licenses making those sales possible.

On Wednesday, Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s chief executive, met with President Trump at the White House and agreed to give the federal government its 15 percent cut, essentially making the federal government a partner in Nvidia’s business in China, said the people familiar with the deal. The Commerce Department began granting licenses for A.I. chip sales two days later, these people said.

Though Mr. Huang has led negotiations with the White House, Nvidia isn’t the only company that sells A.I. chips to China. AMD has an A.I. chip called the MI308 and in April the Trump administration also banned sales of it to the Chinese.

There are few precedents for the Commerce Department agreeing to grant licenses for exports in exchange for a share of revenue. But the unorthodox payments are consistent with Mr. Trump’s increasingly interventionist role in international business deals involving American companies. In June, the administration approved investment by Nippon Steel, a Japanese company, in U.S. Steel in a deal that included a so-called golden share in the company, a rarely used practice where the government takes a stake in a business.

The administration is also using tariffs as a stick to bring manufacturing to the United States. Last week, Mr. Trump said that tech companies would have to pay a 100 percent tariff on semiconductors made abroad, unless they invested in the United States.

The deal agreed to last week could funnel more than $2 billion to the U.S. government. Nvidia was expected to sell more than $15 billion worth of its H20 chip to China through the end of the year, and AMD was expected to sell $800 million, according to Bernstein Research.

The Commerce Department, White House and AMD didn’t provide comment on Sunday.

Ken Brown, a spokesman for Nvidia, said that the company follows the U.S. government’s rules for sales abroad. “While we haven’t shipped H20 to China for months, we hope export control rules will let America compete in China and worldwide,” he said.

Okay, so tell me the one about “free markets” again.  I’ll end with this opinion piece in the Guardian by Steven Greenhouse. “Trump is losing his foolish trade war. This will cost ordinary Americans greatly. Trump’s trade war has pushed up inflation, slashed US job gains, slowed economic growth and caused the manufacturing sector to sputter.” I started my study of economics back on the cusp of the Carter/Reagan years. I absolutely thought we’d learned the lessons of what not to do by that time. It’s amazing that the “Voodoo Economics” of that period and the resulting stagflation is back here in the future. It’s being replayed by the same, but much older group of idiots.

The ever-bombastic Donald Trump has boasted repeatedly of his trade victories, while White House news releases trumpet his “historic trade wins”. The Wall Street Journal echoed Trump’s triumphalism with a headline saying, “Trump is Winning His Trade War”, and last week the New York Times used the exact same words in a headline. That must have been music to the president’s ears.

Forgive me for being a spoilsport, but I don’t see where the victory is or how Trump is winning. I keep reading how Trump’s trade war and tariff machinations have pushed up inflation, slashed US job gains, slowed economic growth and caused the manufacturing sector to sputter.

The rate of job growth plunged by over 70% in the three months after Trump unveiled his 2 April “liberation day” tariffs that filled corporate executives with uncertainty and dread. Trump is palpably impatient for the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates, but the higher prices resulting from his tariffs are likely to delay the rate cuts he desperately wants. So can someone please tell me where is the victory here?

Trump further proclaims that his tariffs are wondrous because, he says, they will generate trillions of dollars in revenue for the US Treasury. But those revenues will come out of the hides of tens of millions of American consumers who will pay Trump’s taxes on imports. The Yale Budget Lab estimates that the price increases caused by Trump’s tariffs will cost the typical US household $2,400 in 2025. As a result of the tariffs, the budget lab says, apparel prices will soar 37% and shoe prices 39%. What Trump boasts as a win is a loss for millions of typical Americans.

Some economists are warning that Trump’s tariffs will bring back stagflation, a dangerous combination of rising prices and slowing growth last seen in the 1970s. Pointing to signs of stagflation, BMO Economics wrote: “Economic activity and job growth are sputtering under the weight of higher tariffs, increasing inflation and rising economic policy and trade uncertainty.” Doesn’t look as if Trump’s trade war is winning there.

Trump recently said on CNBC’s Squawk Box that “people love the tariffs”, but evidently the people he’s talking about aren’t the American people. A recent Fox News poll of registered voters found that Americans overwhelming disapprove of Trump’s tariff policies by 62% to 36%. Ben May, a forecaster at Oxford Economics, said his tariffs will hurt US families because “they are obviously raising prices … and squeezing household incomes”.

Many days it seems that Trump tries to dominate the news cycle with some tariff announcement or other: 50% on Brazil, double India’s tariffs to 50%, impose a 100% tariff on semiconductors. (Even some Maga folks probably think he uses tariff announcements to distract from the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.) This week the White House dismayed the world by announcing that Trump would impose tariffs, ranging from 15% to 50%, on 90 countries effective Thursday. As a result of Trump’s tariff craze, the average effective tariff rate on imports into the US will be 18%, up from 2.3% last year – the highest level since the infamous Smoot-Hawley tariffs of 1930 worsened the Great Depression.

Yes, it’s Make the Great Depression Great Again time!

I need a few stories with a cute baby hippopotamus and a few other cuddly creatures.  It’s really hard to face this news daily. I do not understand how this lived experience isn’t hitting more people in the head. Well, the billionaires are getting a tax cut in perpetuity.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Finally Friday Reads: V is for Vendetta, Violence, Vengence, and Victims

Posted: August 8, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: #FARTUS, #MAGAnomics, #We are so Fucked | Tags: , , , , | 9 Comments

“Call out the National Guard!” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

I never thought our democracy would collapse so easily and so quickly, yet here we are.  Our supposed checks and balances have fallen to incompetence, corruption, and the fear of a tribal cult. I don’t think anyone figured that the Supreme Court would be stacked by sycophants, one of the political parties would surrender its powers to a cult of fascists, and that the executive branch and its functions would be set on destroying itself. Nothing is more symbolic of this than the People’s House being turned into some tacky version of Versailles.

Yet, here we are. The HHS Secretary is crazy and wants to kill us with Voodoo. The DOJ has turned into a vehicle for vengeance.  Homeland Security has turned on our citizens and immigrants. Other departments like Education and the EPA are being dismantled. Voodoo economics would be a kind description of the craziness that passes for economic policy.

This is from CNN. “Justice Department opens investigation into New York attorney general who won civil fraud case against Trump.”

The Justice Department has subpoenaed New York Attorney General Letitia James’ office as part of a criminal investigation into President Donald Trump’s long-time adversary, according to multiple sources, in the latest example of the Trump administration taking on the president’s perceived enemies.

Two grand jury subpoenas were issued by the US attorney’s office for the Northern District of New York seeking information about James’ investigations into the Trump Organization and National Rifle Association, the sources said.

A grand jury investigation into James has also convened in Albany, New York, according to a source familiar. The grand jury probe into James is said to be looking into deprivation of rights, which means violating someone’s constitutional rights, against Trump.

The Justice Department declined to comment on the subpoenas and grand jury investigation.

Abbe Lowell, an attorney for James, said, “Investigating the fraud case Attorney General James won against President Trump and his businesses has to be the most blatant and desperate example of this administration’s carrying out the president’s political retribution campaign.”

Lowell added: “Weaponizing the Department of Justice to try to punish an elected official for doing her job is an attack on the rule of law and a dangerous escalation by this administration. If prosecutors carry out this improper tactic and are genuinely interested in the truth, we are ready and waiting with the facts and law.”

Politico‘s Kyle Cheney questions the strategy. “MAGA world swallows a difficult truth: Arresting Trump’s opponents is easier said than done. From the Epstein saga to Texas redistricting, the far right’s bluster about criminal consequences often leads to disappointment.”  Here’s hoping he’s right.

The calls from President Donald Trump’s MAGA base are getting noisier: Texas Democrats who fled the state to derail a hyperpartisan GOP redistricting maneuver should be criminally charged, arrested and dragged back to Austin.

Now, it appears the FBI is involved in the hunt.

But those screaming the loudest appear likely to wind up disappointed. There’s no known evidence that the absconding lawmakers have actually broken any federal or state laws, despite Gov. Greg Abbott’s strained suggestion that they may have committed bribery.

It’s a familiar refrain for Trump’s second term: The far right lusts to see prominent Democrats or Trump adversaries hauled off in handcuffs, only to be let down when their revenge fantasies run into reality.

“They voted for that and now they realize they can’t have retribution because it’s not legally sound,” said Gene Rossi, a white collar criminal defense lawyer who spent 30 years at the Justice Department.

This cycle — impetuous promises of criminal consequences followed by dejection when Trump’s enemies aren’t immediately arrested — has already happened with Jack Smith, with James Comey, even with Joe Biden and Barack Obama (and their top advisers). The Trump administration has ordered investigations of all these figures, but legal experts say the probes are largely performative and unlikely to prompt serious or legitimate criminal charges.

It’s also happening, perhaps most profoundly, with MAGA loyalists’ dissatisfaction over the Jeffrey Epstein saga. The base believed Trump would vindicate conspiracy theories about Democrats and other public figures being involved in Epstein’s sex trafficking, leading to a new wave of arrests and prosecutions. That hasn’t materialized.

Brash promises and MAGA backlash

Trump, of course, has long stoked his base’s hunger for criminal reprisals, even dating back to his 2016 “Lock her up” pledge against Hillary Clinton.

He escalated that rhetoric during the 2024 campaign. “I am your retribution,” he promised his supporters.

And ever since he returned to office, administration officials and influential MAGA figures have suggested that high-profile arrests are justified and imminent, often vowing that “justice is coming.”

But both Trump and his base are learning that it’s not simple to round up political opponents, even with Trump loyalists in charge of the Justice Department.

“I want arrest[s] not DOJ people making promises on Fox News,” said Trump-aligned podcaster and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones in a recent post on X, which appended a list of MAGA-fueled scandals that have not led to any notable legal consequences.

Jones isn’t alone. A cascade of Trump’s influential backers have wondered aloud why the president and his Justice Department have not delivered the arrests and indictments they crave.

The issue flared most prominently last month when the Justice Department and FBI made the whiplash-inducing admission that the so-called Epstein files do not contain a “client list” of celebrity sex traffickers. The existence of such a list has been an article of faith among MAGA influencers for years, and Trump aides’ efforts to unwind the conspiracy theories have plunged the administration into weeks of turmoil and recriminations.

“What’s the time? Oh look, it’s no-one-has-been-arrested-o’clock again,” Elon Musk wrote in a July 7 post on X.

There’s more of this analysis at the link.  All kinds of institutions are failing to hold Yam TIts’ government accountable, even though many court cases stall and constrain him. The Administration has taken to ignoring court orders.  Back in mid-July, the Independent provided a report of this strategy. “What order? Trump team ignoring 1 in 3 major judicial rulings against them, analysis finds. Federal judges have accused the Trump administration of resisting court orders in approximately 34 percent of cases.”

Multiple federal court judges have accused the Trump administration of deliberately defying court orders by being slow to respond, misrepresenting facts in filings, and not taking prompt action as President Donald Trump continues an unprecedented campaign to expand his executive authority.

In an analysis of 165 court orders filed against the Trump administration, the Washington Post found that it was accused of resisting court orders in at least 57 of those cases – approximately 34 percent.

Since taking office, Trump has sought to implement his agenda as swiftly as possible, particularly in cases involving his immigration policies and attempts to drastically reduce the federal workforce.

Despite multiple district court judges issuing temporary injunctions to stop the administration from deporting immigrants without due process or sending them to third countries they’ve never been to, filings indicate the administration has continued its efforts.

This has, most notably, occurred in the case involving Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran immigrant who was previously granted permission to remain in the U.S. by a court. The administration inadvertently sent Abrego Garcia to a maximum security prison in El Salvador, under accusations that he was a gang member.

Multiple courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, ordered the administration to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return, yet officials made no swift efforts – leading to a judge’s admonishment.

“Defendants have failed to respond in good faith, and their refusal to do so can only be viewed as willful and intentional noncompliance,” Judge Paula Xinis, appointed by former president Barack Obama, said after the administration failed to provide updates on how it was returning Abrego Garcia.

It was just one of several immigration cases in which judges have raised concerns about the administration not following orders.

The DOJ’s arguments have not been able to breach the law. Now, the strategy is to stack the Federal Courts as badly as the Supreme Court. This is from NPR. It was published on the same day as the article above. “Is Emil Bove the face of a new MAGA judiciary?”  No wonder they also went after funding for NPR.  You may listen to the nine-minute analysis at the link. The Alliance for Justice created a huge list of reasons the man should be put on the bench. “10 Reasons Emil Bove Should Not Become a Judge (A Non-Exhaustive List).”  However, the Senate has become as bad as the House of Representatives and the man was put on the bench despite protest.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, Chancellor Palpatine shattered the Jedi by taking Anakin Skywalker, a member of the Jedi Council, as his Sith apprentice, Darth Vader. In becoming Palpatine’s apprentice, Vader relinquished his commitment to peace and justice, bowed his knee to power, and became the Emperor’s attack dog. He then used his power to ruthlessly purge Jedis from the Galactic Empire.

In the here and now, fiction may forecast reality, as Emil Bove, a partisan henchman from Trump’s inner circle, is about to be elevated to a lifelong position on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals — not because he embodies qualities that a federal judge should possess, but because he has served as Trump’s personal hit man.

A judgeship on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals is not an obscure role. The Third Circuit decides major cases on civil rights, voting, immigration, and more. Many of its decisions never even reach the Supreme Court. If confirmed, Bove will create a majority of Republican appointees on the Third Circuit, guaranteeing him many opportunities to impose his will on one of the most consequential courts in the country. And yet, the man Trump has nominated has a track record that should disqualify him outright.

Right at the top of the list is this. “He Used the Justice Department for Political Prosecutions,”  followed by “He Tramples on Free Speech and Due Process.”

Bove played a central role in turning the Department of Justice into a tool of political retribution. As a senior official under Trump, he helped orchestrate the sudden abandonment of a federal corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams — reportedly because Adams agreed to help implement Trump’s mass deportation plan. At least 10 DOJ attorneys, including some affiliated with the conservative legal movement, resigned in protest of the apparent quid pro quo.

As the acting deputy attorney general at the DOJ, Bove demanded the names of FBI agents investigating the January 6 insurrection so he could punish them for “insubordination.” He also removed experienced prosecutors from the Jan. 6 investigation when they wouldn’t bend to political pressure. That kind of intimidation does not belong anywhere near a courtroom.

He did get appointed thanks to the cowardly acquiescence of Republican Senators. Republicans in Congress are also doing nothing about protecting our Veterans. This is from ProPublica. “Veterans’ Care at Risk Under Trump as Hundreds of Doctors and Nurses Reject Working at VA Hospitals. Amid concerns about the stability of the agency, records show nearly 40% of the doctors offered jobs at the VA from January through March of this year turned them down — quadruple the rate of rejections for the same period a year earlier.” 

Veterans hospitals are struggling to replace hundreds of doctors and nurses who have left the health care system this year as the Trump administration pursues its pledge to simultaneously slash Department of Veterans Affairs staff and improve care.

Many job applicants are turning down offers, worried that the positions are not stable and uneasy with the overall direction of the agency, according to internal documents examined by ProPublica. The records show nearly 4 in 10 of the roughly 2,000 doctors offered jobs from January through March of this year turned them down. That is quadruple the rate of doctors rejecting offers during the same time period last year.

The VA in March said it intended to cut its workforce by at least 70,000 people. The news sparked alarm that the cuts would hurt patient care, prompting public reassurances from VA Secretary Doug Collins that front-line health care staff would be immune from the proposed layoffs.

Last month, department officials updated their plans and said they would reduce the workforce by 30,000 by the end of the fiscal year, which is Sept. 30. So many staffers had left voluntarily, the agency said in a press release, that mass layoffs would not be necessary.

“VA is headed in the right direction,” Collins said in a statement.

But a review of hundreds of internal staffing records, along with interviews with veterans and employees, reveal a far less rosy picture of how staffing is affecting veterans’ care.

After six years of adding medical staff, the VA this year is down more than 600 doctors and about 1,900 nurses. The number of doctors on staff has declined each month since President Donald Trump took office. The agency also lost twice as many nurses as it hired between January and June, records viewed by ProPublica show.

In response to questions, a VA spokesperson did not dispute numbers about staff losses at centers across the country but accused ProPublica of bias and of “cherry-picking issues that are mostly routine.”

Agency spokesperson Peter Kasperowicz said that the department is “working to address” the number of doctors declining job offers by speeding up the hiring process and that the agency “has several strategies to navigate shortages,” including referring veterans to private providers and telehealth appointments. A nationwide shortage of health care workers has made hiring and retention difficult, he said.

I watched the latest episode of South Park last night. At least we have them on our side. Here are two articles about the reactions from Noem and Vance.  Noem is very thin-skinned despite all the surgical and cosmetic enhancements.  This is from Daily Kos. “Poor Kristi Noem doesn’t like ‘South Park’ highlighting her awfulness.”

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is trying to play the victim after the satirical animated show “South Park” mercilessly mocked her on Wednesday night’s episode.

“It’s so lazy to just constantly make fun of women for how they look. It’s only the liberals and the extremists who do that,” Noem told right-wing podcaster Glenn Beck on Thursday night, referring to how “South Park” made fun of her obviously Botox- and filler-filled face. “If they wanted to criticize my job, go ahead and do that, but clearly, they can’t. They just pick something petty like that.”

Of course, the show made fun of more than just Noem’s looks. It also ridiculed her cringeworthy cosplaying, the fact that she shot and killed her own puppy, and that she’s one of the biggest cheerleaders for President Donald Trump’s evil immigration plan.

But more than that, Noem claiming that only “liberals” make fun of how women look is insane, given that she works for Trump, the king of making crude and disgusting comments about how women look.

Over the years, he’s made fun of pop icon Cher’s plastic surgery, called actor Bette Midler “ugly,” said Angelina Jolie is “not a beauty,” said Rosie O’Donnell has a “fat, ugly face,” and accused MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski of “bleeding badly from a face-lift,” just to name a few.

Here’s JD Vance’s response via the Independent. “JD Vance responds to South Park’s brutal takedown of Trump admin. ‘Well, I’ve finally made it,’ Vance writes on X after mini-version of vice president seen waiting on Trump in animated episode.” They can dish it out, but they can’t take it, as the old saying goes.

Vice President JD Vance took to X on Thursday morning to respond to South Park’s brutal takedown of the Trump administration.

The South Park account shared an image of Vance and President Donald Trump with the caption “Welcome to Mar-a-Lago!”

“Well, I’ve finally made it,” Vance wrote.

The second episode of the 27th season of South Park took aim at the president and many of his colleagues and supporters. At one point, a mini version of the vice president is shown waiting on the president, who’s in bed with Satan.

The episode also includes a parody of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who became known for having shot her own dog. Meanwhile, Cartman imitates conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

The episode outlines the financial struggles of Mr. Mackey after he was laid off from South Park Elementary. Mackey’s banker suggests that he join Immigration and Customs Enforcement because of their good salaries.

Mackey ends up joining ICE, watching an orientation video with Noem, which mocks the fact that she once confessed to killing her own dog.

“A few years ago, I had to put my puppy down by shooting it in the face, because sometimes doing what’s important means doing what’s hard,” she says in the episode before shooting a number of dogs during her ICE orientation speech.

Trump campaign alum Matt Mowers responded to Vance on X, saying being featured on South Park was “A key life milestone appreciated by any millennial.”

Poor Kristi Noem doesn't like 'South Park' highlighting her awfulness https://twp.ai/4ip5ur

— Tuck The Frumpers (@realtuckfrumper.bsky.social) 2025-08-08T17:30:24.000Z

Meanwhile, our foreign policy stinks as bad as the domestic policies. Both Putin and Netanyahu feel empowered to take over whatever they want.  This is from Axios. “Even Republicans have questions about Israel’s plan to occupy Gaza City.” The analysis is by Alexand Solender.

Some congressional Republicans are raising questions about Israel’s planned occupation of Gaza City as pro-Israel Democrats push back on the operation with unusual ferocity.

Why it matters: Israel’s coalition of political allies in the U.S. has become scrambled in recent weeks amid a growing humanitarian crisis is Gaza — and a coinciding drop in U.S. public opinion toward Israel.

  • Lawmakers sympathetic to Israel are warning that the plan could be a logistical nightmare and warning the country to tread carefully and avoid further alienating the international community.
  • It’s not just Democrats questioning the plan. “I’d like to know who is actually going to run it,” Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), a member of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee that oversees the Middle East, told Axios.
  • Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.), another member of the panel, told Axios: “Occupation for security also comes with the responsibility of providing humanitarian assistance and creating an economic future.”

State of play: The Israeli Security Cabinet on Thursday approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal to have the IDF “take control” of Gaza City in an effort to defeat Hamas.

  • In addition to occupying Gaza City, which is expected to take months and displace around 1 million Palestinian civilians, the IDF will also be charged with distributing humanitarian aid, Axios’ Barak Ravid reported.
  • The IDF’s chief of staff pushed back during the Cabinet meeting, arguing the plan could endanger Israeli hostages in Gaza and lead to protracted Israeli military governance.
  • President Trump, who has split with Netanyahu on allegations of famine in Gaza, is not planning to intervene to oppose the operation.

Driving the news: Rep. Brad Schneider (D-Ill.), the chair of the roughly 100-member New Democrat Coalition and a vocal pro-Israel centrist, called the plan “tactically questionable and strategically self-defeating.”

  • “If implemented, the decision is more likely to play into Hamas’s original objectives in starting this war and further unite much of the world against Israel than it is to bring home the last surviving hostages and advance the security needs of the nation,” Schneider said in a statement.

  • Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.), one of Democrats’ staunchest Israel backers, said in a statement that Israel is the “ultimate arbiter of its own security” but that “the war in Gaza is in danger of becoming a quagmire.”

Trump is still looking to solve the Russian Invasion of Ukraine, but Putin has him by the balls. This is from Bloomberg. “US and Russia Plan Truce to Cement Putin’s Gains in Ukraine.”

Washington and Moscow are aiming to reach a deal to halt the war in Ukraine that would lock in Russia’s occupation of territory seized during its military invasion, according to people familiar with the matter.

US and Russian officials are working toward an agreement on territories for a planned summit meeting between Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin as early as next week, the people said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations. The US is working to get buy-in from Ukraine and its European allies on the deal, which is far from certain, the people said.

Putin is demanding that Ukraine cede its entire eastern Donbas area to Russia as well as Crimea, which his forces illegally annexed in 2014. That would require Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to order a withdrawal of troops from parts of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions still held by Kyiv, handing Russia a victory that its army couldn’t achieve militarily since the start of the full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Such an outcome would represent a major win for Putin, who has long sought direct negotiations with the US on terms for ending the war that he started, sidelining Ukraine and its European allies. Zelenskiy risks being presented with a take-it-or-leave-it deal to accept the loss of Ukrainian territory, while Europe fears it would be left to monitor a ceasefire as Putin rebuilds his forces

And for all of Trump’s lying about it, The Daily Beast reports that “White House Did Have Secret Talks on Epstein Crisis. Trump had forced JD Vance to deny that a meeting was taking place.”  This story is reported by Erikky Foster.

Turns out the Trump administration really did huddle behind closed doors to talk about the Jeffrey Epstein files, despite JD Vance’s public denial.

On Wednesday, the vice president dismissed mounting media reports claiming he was hosting secret Epstein talks at his house.

“It’s completely fake news,” Vance declared. President Donald Trump had told reporters, “I don’t know” and redirected them to the vice president.

Yet, top Trump administration officials did convene to map out next steps regarding the files on the late convicted sex offender, CNN reported, citing a source familiar with the logistics.

The meeting was reportedly relocated from Vance’s D.C. home to the White House. Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel were also in attendance, according to MSNBC.

It’s unclear whether the talks included Vance, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who were initially reported to be joining the dinner at the vice president’s Naval Observatory mansion.

Vance’s supposed involvement in the talks had drawn criticism. Ever since Watergate, the Justice Department has kept criminal investigations separate from White House influence, to prevent any appearance of political interference.

One last story and then I’ll leave you to your weekend. This one from VOX has me screaming. “The White House has a preferred alternative to PBS. It may already be in countless classrooms. How the right-wing network PragerU could fill the void left by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s defunding.”  They’ve stuck this abomination in Louisiana classrooms, and there’s nothing truthful in any of its materials.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting announced last week that it would shut down after Congress voted to claw back over $500 million of federal funding from the organization. The announcement imperils local PBS and NPR stations around the country that have provided news and educational content for kids for nearly half a century.

Amid the stripping of these federal funds, last month, the White House debuted a new educational partner at its launch event for its new Founders Museum exhibit: PragerU, a nonprofit organization that specializes in creating right-leaning educational short videos for adults and children. Department of Education Secretary Linda McMahon introduced the partnership, followed by PragerU CEO Marissa Streit.

For the White House exhibit, PragerU created AI-generated videos of the Founding Fathers delivering patriotic accounts of the Revolution. In one, an AI-generated John Adams borrows a catchphrase from conservative pundit Ben Shapiro and tells the viewer, “Facts do not care about our feelings.”

Since its founding in 2009, PragerU has become a juggernaut in the conservative educational media space, with their videos reaching millions of followers across social media. The organization has helped launch the media careers of right-wing figures like Candace Owens. Their popular videos elevate narratives that have been sharply criticized as climate denialist, Islamophobic, and “misleading” about slavery.

PragerU’s partnership with the Department of Education is not the first time the conservative content mill has partnered with the government. Over the past few years, the organization has partnered with states and superintendents throughout the country to make their educational material widely available to public school children and teachers.

Today, Explained co-host Sean Rameswaram spoke with Laura Meckler, national education writer for the Washington Post, about how PragerU partnered with states to bring its content to the classroom and if the organization is poised to fill the educational void left by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

So, I agree with Rachel and Krugman. We’re a fascist state, and I don’t like it at all.

What’s on your Reading, Blogging, and Action List for today?

 

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