Finally Friday Reads: False Ethos and Pathos rule the Media and Politics

Posted: April 24, 2026 | Author: | Filed under: U.S. Economy, Foreign Affairs, U.S. Politics, Republican politics | Tags: , , , , , | 11 Comments

“Meanwhile, early this morning somewhere near Nashville…” John Buss, repeat1968,

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

The headlines are yet another mash-up of feelings run amok and logic gone awry. Another week has passed, and I don’t regret getting rid of cable and most forms of TV news. It’s just all one big tabloid of rampant stupidity. Here’s a great headline from The Intercept about our nation’s FBI Director. “Kash Patel Got Arrested for Public Urination After a Night of Drinking. The FBI director was arrested twice in his youth for alcohol-related incidents that he said were “not representative of my usual conduct.”

It’s another sign of why Republicans never do any due diligence when running committee hearings to affirm Federal Office holders in the highest offices in the nation. They’re a psychiatrist’ nightmare.

Eventually, some independent news agency catches up to them, and we read about it on the internet news stream, which is a hash of conspiracy theories and the hard work of a few good reporters. This story is reported by Trevor Aaronson.

FBI Director Kash Patel was twice arrested in incidents involving alcohol, once for public intoxication and once for public urination after leaving a bar, he admitted in a 2005 letter about disclosures on his Florida Bar application.

The letter obtained by The Intercept was part of Patel’s personnel file at the Miami-Dade Public Defender’s Office, where he once worked. The document, written “per instructions of my employer,” describes incidents of alcohol-related indiscretions not uncommon for those in their teens and twenties.

Two decades later, as Patel pushes back against allegations that drinking is impairing his leadership of the nation’s top law enforcement agency, these arrests show how Patel’s alcohol use has been subjected to scrutiny before in his professional life.

One incident recounted by Patel occurred in 2005, about four months before he wrote the letter. At the time, he was a law student at Pace University in New York celebrating with friends.

“We went to a few of the local bars and consumed some alcoholic drinks,” he wrote.

When they walked home, they made a bad decision.

“In a gross deviation from appropriate conduct, we attempted to relieve our bladders while walking home,” Patel said in the letter. “Before we could even do so, a police cruiser stopped the group. We were then arrested for public urination.”

Patel paid a fine after the incident, he wrote in the letter.

That’s still nothing compared to the stories we heard about dead animals and RFK Jr.  This is from one of last week’s editions of The Guardian. I suppose I no longer need to explain that when I write these blog posts, they are surrounded by political cartoons, not beautiful artwork or actual photos anymore. I prefer animated Scheudenfrade. “RFK Jr once cut penis off ‘road-killed raccoon’ in New York, new book reveals. Health secretary in a diary entry said his kids were in the car as he cut off animal’s genitals in 2001 to ‘study them later’.”

Don’t worry, I’ll keep this brief. Buddha bless the entire Guardian staff that had to work on this one.

Robert F Kennedy Jr once cut the penis off a road-killed raccoon in an incident that is just one of several involving dead animals that the controversial US health secretary has been involved in.

A new book called RFK Jr: The Fall and Rise was published this week and reveals a diary entry for Kennedy that describes the prominent vaccine critic and leader of the “Make America healthy again” (Maha) movement stopping his car on a New York highway on 11 November 2001.

“I was standing in front of my parked car on I-684 cutting the penis out of a road killed raccoon, thinking about how weird some of my family members have turned out to be,” Kennedy wrote in the journal.

He added: “My kids waited patiently in the car.”

Isabel Vincent, the author of the new book, told People that he took the raccoon’s genitals so he could “study them later”.

Kennedy has long had a fascination for animal bodies, especially those he finds dead which he sometimes collects and studies. Elsewhere in the book, the author notes that a journalist traveling with Kennedy in Long Island in 2001 reported that he was fascinated by dead seagull corpses.

“I’d like to pick up some of these dead seagulls for my skull collection,” the book quotes Kennedy as saying, though his schedule on the day did not allow him to pause his journey and harvest the bones.

There have been numerous stories involving Kennedy and his treatment of dead animals.

Environmental groups were outraged over a story which revealed the former presidential candidate once severed the head of a washed-up deceased whale with a chainsaw and strapped it to his car’s roof. He also once confessed to dumping a dead bear cub in New York’s Central Park, attempting to make it look like the creature was killed by a bicyclist.

Meanwhile, hardworking, competent Federal officials get the nuisance-lawsuit treatment. This is from the Associated Press. “Justice Department drops criminal probe of Fed chair Powell, likely clearing the way for Warsh.” It’s really difficult to see how normal people stay sane and hold their offices in this environment.

The Justice Department has ended its investigation into Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell, clearing a major roadblock to the confirmation of Kevin Warsh as his successor.

U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeannine Pirro said on X on Friday that her office was ending its probe into the Fed’s extensive building renovations because the Fed’s inspector general would scrutinize them instead.

The move could lead to a swift confirmation vote by the Senate for Warsh, a former top Fed official whom President Donald Trump, a Republican, nominated in January to replace Powell. Powell’s term as chair ends May 15. Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, had said he would oppose Warsh until the investigation was resolved, effectively blocking his confirmation.

Republicans praised Warsh during a Tuesday hearing even as Democrats questioned his independence from Trump, the lack of transparency around some of his financial holdings, and what they said was his flip-flopping on interest rates. Still, Trump’s previous appointment to the Fed’s board of governors, Stephen Miran, was approved by the full Senate just 13 days after his nomination.

Investigation lacked evidence, a court says

The probe was among several undertaken by the Justice Department into Trump’s perceived adversaries. For months it had failed to gain traction as prosecutors struggled to articulate a basis to suspect criminal conduct. Other efforts by the department to prosecute Trump’s adversaries, including New York state Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, and former FBI Director James Comey, have also been unsuccessful.

A prosecutor handling the Powell case conceded at a closed-door court hearing in March that the government hadn’t found any evidence of a crime, and a judge subsequently quashed subpoenas issued to the Federal Reserve. The judge, James Boasberg, said prosecutors had produced “essentially zero evidence” to suspect Powell of a crime. Boasberg branded prosecutors’ justification for the subpoenas as “thin and unsubstantiated.”

Speaking of the Republican-based press, base, and politicians peddling one conspiracy theory after another, we see that Tucker Carlson may have gone one too far.  I would have never thought that possible, given their depths of depravity and idiocy. This is from The Hill. The analysis and opinions are provided by Matt Lewis.”Trump lived by the conspiracy theory — now he pays the price.” This is basically a class in Karma 101.

A truism of life — right up there with “don’t read the comments” — is that what goes around comes around. Put another way, if you live by the sword, you will eventually die by the sword.

For more than a decade, these maxims didn’t seem to apply to President Trump — a man who once strongly suggested that Barack Obama had not been born in America, that the 2020 election was stolen, and that Haitian immigrants in Ohio were eating dogs and cats, just to name a few of his whoppers.

To be sure, Trump defenders will note that Democratic conspiracy theories (“Russia-gate,” for example) have also been aimed at Trump. Yes, but Trump legitimately invited scrutiny, and credible analyses rejected the most extreme conclusions anyway — for example, the existence of a “pee tape” or the notion that Russia somehow manipulated election results or otherwise rigged the 2016 election on Trump’s behalf.

Regardless, we have entered a new and possibly ironic phase of the timeline: Trump is finally discovering what it’s like to be on the losing end of a conspiracy theory.

Trump’s failure to release Epstein files was probably the inflection point. But more recently, the conspiratorial thinking about Trump has metastasized.

After Trump cast himself as Jesus on a Truth Social post, some corners of his own political ecosystem began speculating that he might instead be the Antichrist.

Tucker Carlson, for example, went on his podcast and asked, “Could this [Trump] be the Antichrist? Well, who knows? At least that’s my conclusion: Who knows?”

Others settled on demonic possession, which in internet discourse is considered the moderate position.

Michelle Goldberg, writing for the New York Times, has the Tucker story. This from her is an Op-Ed today. “The Conspiracy Theory Behind Tucker Carlson’s Apology.”  Who among us ever thought the word apology and Tucker Carlson would appear in the same headline?”  He must need money or something.

Tucker Carlson, you might have heard, is sorry. Early this week he posted a long conversation with his brother, Buckley, a former Trump speechwriter, in which they tried to make sense of the wreckage of the second Donald Trump presidency.

“We’re implicated in this, for sure,” said Tucker. A few moments later, he added: “It’s a moment to wrestle with our own consciences. You know, we’ll be tormented by it for a long time. I will be, and I want to say I’m sorry for misleading people.”

For those of us who have spent the past 10 years horror-struck at the mass delusion that Trump is a great man rather than a singularly rapacious and volatile charlatan, Carlson’s words might seem cathartic.

Over the past decade, conservatives have been angrily insisting that our mad emperor is elegantly clothed rather than obscenely naked. Now, finally, there’s growing agreement about his obvious unfitness. Indeed, some former Trump superfans are suddenly wondering if he might be the Antichrist.

I’m all for embracing converts to the anti-Trump cause. But if you listen to the dialogue between Tucker and his brother, it’s clear that rather than honestly reckoning with their role in America’s derangement, they’re developing a new conspiracy theory to explain it away.

Trump, they strongly imply, has been compromised — maybe even blackmailed and physically threatened — by Zionist or globalist forces seeking the deliberate destruction of the United States. On Tucker’s podcast, Buckley described a systematic undermining of America through the George Floyd protests, mass migration and now the war with Iran.

“It can’t be a confluence of random events,” Buckley said. “It is clearly by design. It’s clearly been a long-term plan.”

Can any of you come up with an explanation or some elucidation on WTF is going on here? My vote goes for the rats are leaving the ship. So what better mission for the insane Orange Caligula to come up with during these headlines than yet another way to fuck up yet another National Monument of the utmost historical importance?

Will the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool be his next act of cultural devastation? This is from NBC News. “Trump says he’ll renovate ‘filthy’ reflecting pool on National Mall. At an Oval Office event, the president said he’s planning to pour a new surface for the 2,000-foot reflecting pool, giving it an “American flag blue” hue.”  Well, at least it isn’t piss gold. Kyla Guilfoil has the lede.

President Donald Trump touted plans Thursday to coat the Lincoln Memorial’s reflecting pool in an “American flag blue” hue, one of his latest construction efforts to refashion government buildings and monuments in Washington, D.C.

Trump said he was inspired to oversee renovations after a friend visited from Germany and noted its decay.

“He said, ‘it’s filthy, dirty. The water is disgusting looking. It’s not representative of the country,'” Trump recalled during a White House event Thursday on drug prices.

He posted a video speaking about the renovation of the more than 2,000-foot-long pool on Truth Social, shortly before his White House event with reporters.

“Right now, it’s got no water in it because it was in terrible shape. It was filthy, dirty, and it leaked like a sieve for many years,” Trump said in the video. “So I actually went over, went with Secret Service and a group of people, and I took, took a look at it.”

The president said there were initial plans to remove the granite in the pool and replace the stone, but that process would have cost $300 million and taken more than three years to complete.

Once again, I sit at my desk and shake my head. It’s a good thing day-drinking was never my thing.

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

 

Mostly Monday Reads: Mercy Me!

Posted: January 12, 2026 | Author: | Filed under: #FARTUS, #MAGAnomics, ICE raids | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

“This was the plan all along. Authoritarianism has arrived and is on full display. Can’t wait to hear the “this is what I voted for” crowd crying when they are executed on the streets protesting the confiscation of their guns. But hey, there are no men in women’s sports!” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

Yet another start to a week in the cruel and vulture-ridden world of Donny J. His obsession with his own self-interest continues to plague the country with problems we don’t need, didn’t ask for, and most of us know they ruin our way of life. The most ridiculous aspect is that all these grudges have evolved into bizarre legal actions, which have been disrupting nearly every process and institution that we rely on. Today, stocks are falling because Trump just has to have someone to blame for his rotten economy.

Richard Nixon FAFO’d with the Fed back in the 1970s and learned exactly how international financial and monetary markets are massively disrupted by politicians meddling with these markets. This is a journal article that you can read if you’d like. (How Richard Nixon Pressured Arthur Burns: Evidence from the Nixon Tapes, Burton A. Abrams, Journal of Economic Perspectives, vol. 20, no. 4, Fall 2006.)

A more updated analysis can be found at NPR. This is from February 2025. “What happened when Richard Nixon wanted more control over interest rates? This is a tale of a president pressuring the head of the central bank for political reasons. Burns fights it, then capitulates, and it lays the foundation for later inflation.” I lived through this as I was actually studying to be an economist. It has significantly shaped many of my perspectives on why politicians should refrain from certain functions. I can also offer testimony that everyone — including me at one time — who has worked for the Fed holds Fed independence as a sacred trust to the American People.

Whether the Federal Reserve raises, lowers or maintains baseline interest rates is one of the most important economic decisions it makes. And that decision is made outside of presidential control, at least theoretically. Kenny Malone and Mary Childs from our Planet Money podcast had the story of what happened when one president wanted more control over interest rates.

MARY CHILDS, BYLINE: In 1971, President Richard Nixon began secretly recording basically everything.

KENNY MALONE, BYLINE: Thirty-three years later, virtually all of those tapes were publicly available.

BURTON ABRAMS: Well, everyone else was interested in Watergate. I was interested in monetary policy.

CHILDS: Economist Burton Abrams drove down to the National Archives.

ABRAMS: They were available on reels, and then you had to put on earphones and try to make out the garbled conversations that existed.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

RICHARD NIXON: Arthur, how are you? (Inaudible).

CHILDS: Arthur, how are you? Nixon says to Arthur Burns, chairman of the Federal Reserve.

MALONE: Nixon was one year away from reelection, and unemployment had been rising.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

NIXON: So this will be the last conservative administration in Washington.

MALONE: This will be the last conservative administration in Washington.

CHILDS: Nixon seems to tell his Fed chair to let more money flow through the economy, which generally helps unemployment but risks inflation.

MALONE: Arthur Burns seems to push back and also seems to tap on the table to make this point.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

ARTHUR BURNS: I don’t want to see interest rates exploding (inaudible).

ABRAMS: Burns is making an appeal to Nixon that he doesn’t want to stimulate anymore. He’s still holding out. Yep.

MALONE: So I assume Nixon is not super jazzed about that meeting.

ABRAMS: No, so I suspect that behind the scenes, pressure is still to give Nixon the monetary policy he wants.

MALONE: According to Arthur Burns’ personal diary, he was warned that White House operatives had their bayonets out for him and that Nixon was threatening to pack the Fed board and completely take control.

Economist Mark Zahn explains it all. This is from ABC. “Stocks fall after Trump’s DOJ opens criminal probe into Fed Chair Powell. Powell rebuked the probe as an effort to undermine the Fed’s independence.”  It’s not nice to fool your major donors. We continue the Magical Misery tower with whatever this brand of “conservatism” claims to be. Republicans only want the government out of business when it suits them.

Stocks slid in early trading on Monday hours after reports that the Department of Justice had opened a criminal investigation into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell centered on the central bank leader’s remarks to Congress about an office renovation project.

Powell, who was appointed by Trump in 2017, issued a rare video message rebuking the investigation as a politically motivated effort to influence the Fed’s interest rate policy.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 290 points, or 0.6%, while the S&P 500 fell 0.4%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq declined 0.3%.

Gold and silver — safe-haven assets often seen as a hedge against the stock market — moved higher on Monday.

The selloff on Monday also appeared to include reaction to a social media post from President Donald Trump advocating for a 10% cap on credit card interest rates for one year. Shares of several major banks fell in early trading.

The DOJ’s criminal probe follows a monthslong influence campaign undertaken by Trump as he has frequently slammed the Fed for what he considers a reluctance to significantly reduce interest rates.

The criminal probe appears to center on allegations of false remarks made by Powell about a renovation of the Fed’s headquarters during a congressional hearing in June.

Trump has repeatedly denounced Powell for alleged overspending tied to the central bank’s $2.5 billion renovation project. The Fed attributes spending overruns to unforeseen cost increases, saying that its building renovation will ultimately “reduce costs over time by allowing the Board to consolidate most of its operations,” according to the central bank’s website.

Federal law allows the president to remove the Fed chair for “cause” — though no president has ever done so. Powell’s term as chair is set to expire in May, but he can remain on the Fed’s policymaking board until 2028. Powell has not indicated whether he intends to remain on the board.

It’s sincerely hypocritical to me to watch a convicted and well-known lifetime felon try to trump up charges on some of the most ethical government servants we’ve ever had. Powell has released a statement through the usual Fed channels.

I have deep respect for the rule of law and for accountability in our democracy. No one—certainly not the chair of the Federal Reserve—is above the law. But this unprecedented action should be seen in the broader context of the administration’s threats and ongoing pressure.

This new threat is not about my testimony last June or about the renovation of the Federal Reserve buildings. It is not about Congress’s oversight role; the Fed through testimony and other public disclosures made every effort to keep Congress informed about the renovation project. Those are pretexts. The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the President.

This is about whether the Fed will be able to continue to set interest rates based on evidence and economic conditions—or whether instead monetary policy will be directed by political pressure or intimidation.

No rational, studied, normal economist would disagree with his statements. However, sell-outs for money, power, and greed will always pop up to empower evil intent.

ICE is now using AI to make human hunting easier for them thanks to Palantir.#FuckICE #ICE #Palantir #Pinks #ProudBlue #Resist

— SaltyBitchables (@saltybitchables.bsky.social) 2026-01-12T16:19:11.238Z

ICE continues to be a rogue organization with no respect for the law or for human life. Judd LeGume’s blog’s Popular Information has some great perspectives on the ICE Raids today. The inhumanity of their actions shows intent, organization, and planning. “Kill, smear, cover-up.”

“The known facts do not support the official federal government narrative of Renee Good’s killing. Now, in an unusual move, the federal government is excluding state law enforcement from the investigation.

Initially, the FBI and Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) agreed to conduct a joint investigation of Good’s death. This is standard procedure. But this agreement was quickly rescinded. The BCA says it has lost “access to the case materials, scene evidence [and] investigative interviews necessary to complete a thorough and independent investigation.” As a result, the BCA believes it will not be able to conduct a thorough investigation that will ensure “accountability and public confidence.”

Instead, the investigation will be led exclusively by the FBI, which is run by Kash Patel, one of Trump’s most partisan supporters. Patel wrote a series of children’s books that referred to Trump as a “king.”

“What are you hiding?” Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison asked. “I mean, if you feel that you’re — that the ICE agent operated within the law, then let there be an investigation so that that can be revealed.” Ellison said that the federal government was undermining “a fair, transparent investigation” by excluding state investigators. According to Ellison, the FBI investigation “will look simply like a whitewash… covering up… what could well be nefarious, bad activity.”

“Let’s call a spade a spade,” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said. “Kristi Noem watched the videos and doesn’t want an impartial investigation because she knows her narrative about domestic terrorism is bullshit.”

After an officer-involved shooting, it is standard protocol for the officer and witnesses to remain on the scene to be interviewed. Further, nothing should be removed from the scene. But in this case a video shows “several agents, including the agent who opened fire, get in their vehicles and drive off, apparently altering the active crime scene.”

ICE policy requires “officers and agents… to activate body-worn cameras at the start of enforcement activities and to record throughout interactions.” But no body cam videos have been released.

Since the federal government has asserted control over the investigation, it has selectively leaked evidence to ideologically friendly publications. A 47-second video of the incident, for example, was shared with Alpha News, a right-wing outlet in Minnesota. It was then amplified by Vance. It was released by the DHS the next day.

Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty announced she was conducting her own investigation and urged the public to submit evidence directly to her office. Vance told reporters on January 8 that Ross has “absolute immunity” for Good’s killing. Moriarty said that is not true.

Moriarty revealed that federal law enforcement removed Good’s vehicle from the scene before state investigators could examine it. Good’s car is a key piece of evidence because it could help definitively establish if Ross was struck in any way.”

Joyce Vance warns us in her SubStack that “Tonight’s column is far longer than I like to run, perhaps the longest one ever. But please don’t give up on it. Although I’d planned to write about developments we expect this week in various lawsuits, these are the times we live in. The situation with ICE is critical right now. I’ve packed a lot of information you’ll need this week as the situation in Minneapolis develops into this post, but don’t feel like you have to read it all at once.” 

We head into the coming week in an unsettled moment where the administration has blood on its hands. It would have been fair for the administration to call for time to investigate what happened in Minneapolis the morning Renee Good was shot and killed by an ICE agent. But that’s not what ICE’s leadership, the DHS Secretary, or the White House has done. They blamed the victim. They criticized her for exercising her rights as an American citizen. They called her a terrorist. None of this suggests the administration has good intentions. Vice President Harris told us this would happen and now it has.

Sunday morning, CNN’s Jake Tapper showed DHS Secretary Kristi Noem video of the mob attacking the Capitol on January 6.

Tapper: “I just showed you video of people attacking law enforcement officers on January 6. Undisputed evidence, and I just said, President Trump pardoned all of them. You said that President Trump is enforcing all the laws equally. That’s just not true. There’s a different standard for law enforcement officers being attacked if they’re being attacked by Trump supporters. We just saw that.”

Trump’s September 2025 Presidential Memo titled “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence,” (NSPM-7) spelled this all out. It divides the country into good guys and bad guys. If you’re for Trump, you’re a good guy. If you’re against Trump, you’re a domestic terrorist. The rules that apply to the two groups are different. Attack the police in support of Donald Trump (January 6), and you get a pardon; stop to watch what an ICE agent is doing, and it’s a death sentence.

Trump attributed the need for NSPM-7 to dramatic increases in “Heinous assassinations and other acts of political violence.” He cited “the horrifying assassination of Charlie Kirk” and called out people who “adhered to the alleged shooter’s ideology, embraced and cheered this evil murder while actively encouraging more political violence,” as the justification for the memo. He also cited the 2024 murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson and “the 2022 assassination attempt against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh” as further justification, along with the two assassination attempts on his own life and what he calls “riots” in Los Angeles and Portland that were a “1,000 percent increase in attacks on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers since January 21, 2025, compared to the same period last year.” He also wrote that “Separate anti-police and ‘criminal justice’ riots have left many people dead and injured and inflicted over $2 billion in property damage nationwide.”

Trump claims the recent “political violence is not a series of isolated incidents and does not emerge organically.” He says it’s the “culmination of sophisticated, organized campaigns of targeted intimidation, radicalization, threats, and violence designed to silence opposing speech, limit political activity, change or direct policy outcomes, and prevent the functioning of a democratic society.” No evidence is offered to support this. But that doesn’t seem to matter in the rush to a conclusion: “A new law enforcement strategy that investigates all participants in these criminal and terroristic conspiracies — including the organized structures, networks, entities, organizations, funding sources, and predicate actions behind them — is required.” Although at first this seemed targeted toward civil society and civil rights groups that advocated and litigated on behalf of Americans and their rights, now, it seems to be turned against anti-ICE protestors who are doing nothing more than exercising their First Amendment rights.

This list  is horrifying.

NSPM-7 identifies “common threads animating this violent conduct” as:

  • anti-Americanism;
  • anti-capitalism;
  • anti-Christianity;
  • support for the overthrow of the United States Government;
  • extremism on migration, race, and gender; and
  • hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.

If you have any of these tendencies, or if the administration believes you do, one of the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTF) is directed to investigate you.

There are about 200 JTTFs across the country. They are the nerve center of the federal government’s efforts to ensure potential acts of terrorism are detected before they can be committed. Agents and prosecutors from federal and state agencies meet to review cases and ensure nothing important is swept aside. The work can be intense and urgent. Now, Trump has ordered that the JTTFs “shall investigate” an exhausting laundry list of potential infractions committed by people who oppose his views. In Trump’s view, Americans exercising their First Amendment and other rights are violent domestic terrorists.

But it’s all one-sided. Just like Noem’s failure to recognize the crimes committed by January 6 defendants in the question from Tapper that we started out with tonight. It’s all a thinly veiled mechanism for criminalizing innocent behavior by anyone who opposes this administration. Hence the characterization of Good, who was unarmed when she was shot and killed by a law enforcement officer, as the “terrorist.”

I have one more topic today that I find horrifyingly short-sided and cruel. This is all in the name of keeping women out of the workforce.  This is from AXIOS. It’s reported by Emily Peck. “Trump funding freeze could stretch child care to a breaking point.”

Child care providers, already under financial strain, face their greatest test yet as the Trump administration imposes new rules and restrictions on funding.

Why it matters: Federal money underpins the entire industry — vital to millions of parents trying to manage work and family, across all income levels.
Driving the news: A federal judge on Friday temporarily blocked the administration from freezing more than $10 billion for five blue states, claiming widespread fraud.

  • The administration, meanwhile, is also asking all states to provide more information to justify and support spending on care, a requirement that some state officials and advocates say is onerous and could delay funding.

The big picture: Even before the freeze, states were scrambling to make up for the loss of pandemic-era child care funding.

  • “There hasn’t been a full-on collapse, but it’s just been a kind of slow-moving deterioration,” says Matthew Nestler, an economist at KPMG who tracks the sector.

Zoom out: Child care providers, mainly small businesses on tight margins, are struggling to stay afloat.

  • Wait lists for child care are growing in some states, and prices are rising — that often means a parent needs to make a tough choice, and could leave the labor market entirely. Typically, that’s mothers.
  • So many workers depend on child care that any policies that reduce investment in the sector have big knock-on effects for the entire economy, Nestler says.

Zoom in: Colorado froze new child care enrollments in some counties last year because of state budget constraints, coming on top of the pandemic pullback.

  • That’s been devastating for Westwood Academy, a preschool and child care center in Denver, where two-thirds of kids, about 20, were on federally subsidized tuition at the start of 2025.

  • Now, the program is down to just four of these kids, says RB Fast, who started the center in 2022 when pandemic funds were flowing. Last year, the center lost about $70,000. (Typically, she turns some profit.)

  • She’s planning to open a second center in a wealthier suburb, where she’ll charge $2,200 a month for a full-day toddler care. In her current center in Denver, she charges $1,747.

  • The upshot: “High quality child care is increasingly becoming a luxury good,” she says.

  • In Indiana is facing similar struggles.

It’s hard to look daily at all the things this regime is doing to make our lives worse-off. Many are focused on harming the least and most vulnerable among us. I know all these grudges Trump holds impact his actions as does his level of greed, need for attention, and seemingly needless compulstion to be cruel.His brain is fed by the likes of Stephen Miller and some backward notion that life was better in previous centuries. But, the man has serious mental issues and personality disorders. Why don’t so many of his followers see that? Why doesn’t the Republican Party do something? They’re empowering the worst in humanity to destroy everything this country has every stood for.

The struggle continues.

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

Finally Friday Reads: Felon leaves jurisdiction

Posted: July 25, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: #FARTUS, #We are so Fucked, Alligator Alcatraz, Breaking News, kakistocracy, Trump is the new Saddam | Tags: , , , , , | 3 Comments

“There you have it, MAGA. Stinky has set the record straight. Move on from Epstein.” John Buss, @repeat1969

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

This week’s adventures in Bad Presidenting contained some whoppers. First, a misfired gotcha at Fed Chair Jerome Powell over supposed overspending on construction work on buildings included costs of a building that was finished five years ago. I wonder which accounting genius was responsible for that. This is from CNBC.  “Trump spars with Powell over renovation costs during Fed visit, but backs off firing threats.” This entire thing continues to tweak my economist mind.  If the citizenry is complaining about inflation, why would you push a policy that would make it worse?  Since Trump bulldozes historic buildings rather than handles restoring historic buildings in historic districts where materials used are either part of the restoration or replaced by materials that aren’t asbestos, he seemed destined to look stupid. Here’s Fortune‘s take. “Here’s how the Fed’s renovation budget ballooned to $2.5 billion.” The reporting is by Lily May Lazarus.  Remember, the Fed cannot use shortcuts like not paying undocumented workers, or just destroying the historical edifice like Trump did with Fifth Avenue Landmark, the Bonwit Teller building.  My house is in a historic district, and you have to have permission to change the edifice. In the French Quarter, you can’t even pick your own paint color, let alone mess with the building’s facade.

The Federal Reserve’s long-planned renovation of its Washington, D.C. headquarters has turned into a $2.5 billion political flashpoint. Initially estimated at $1.9 billion in 2021, the cost of overhauling the Fed’s historic Marriner S. Eccles Building and its adjacent Federal Reserve East Building has jumped by over 30%, drawing fire from President Donald Trump and his allies, and raising questions about fiscal oversight at the nation’s central bank.

The project, which began planning in 2017 and broke ground in 2022, aims to bring the aging buildings into compliance with modern safety and accessibility codes and add office space while preserving their historic architecture. But that effort has come with growing pains and costs.

Renovating the Fed was never going to be an easy task. In fact, Fed Chair Jerome Powell admitted the renovations would likely stoke controversy. “No one in office wants to do a major renovation of a historic building during their term in office,” he said in June. But Powell sees the project as necessary.

According to the Fed’s information page on the project, neither the Eccles Building nor the East Building has ever been fully renovated, despite having been built nearly a century ago, with some major mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems dating back to their construction and containing lead and asbestos.

The original budget underestimated several now-familiar forces: pandemic-era inflation, soaring construction costs, and unexpected infrastructure challenges. Prices for structural steel and other materials spiked in 2021 and 2022 as supply chains tightened and demand for large-scale projects rebounded. Labor shortages in the construction industry, namely mechanical, plumbing, and electrical trades, further drove up costs. These price inflationary factors were noted in the Fed board’s 2025 budget.

On-site, several environmental factors have also added to the renovation’s cost. Workers uncovered asbestos and several water-table issues resulting from the swampy DC soil. These complications added complexity and price costs, to excavation and foundation work—especially since strict D.C. building regulations cap building heights—forcing deeper builds underground. The difficult excavation work even earned the company working on the Fed’s foundation and underground aspects a 2025 award for “excellence in the face of adversity” from the Washington Building Congress.

And the best Trump could down was stick in the costs of a building finished five years ago to inflate the final costs.  He was easily finished off by the Central Banker, who deals with far more sophisticated math than that. The visit was likely a distraction from the ongoing Epstein situation, from which he cannot extricate himself. That didn’t go as planned, as the release of a new South Park episode ate up the airwaves at the end of the week.  I managed to find a place where I could watch it outside the graph of Paramount, which just got its wish to sell itself to Sky Dance. (No relationship to us and an insult of a name to dakinis on all planes of existence. “Sermon on the ’Mount” (South Park Season 27 Episode 1) is the funniest satire I’ve seen in years.

So, it couldn’t be better timing, but a terrible waste of funds to go bother Scotland, whose people hate Trump more than the Canadians.  This is from the. New York Times.   “Trump Flies to Scotland, Leaving Chaos Swirling in Washington. The five-day visit will be a mix of personal business and golf with some diplomacy thrown in.” What a brilliant waste of time.  Plus, isn’t this all supposed to be in a government trust that he’s not supposed to involve himself in?

President Trump headed to Scotland on Friday for a five-day visit, hoping to leave behind the chaos of Washington and the persistent questions over the handling of the Epstein files for what will be a mix of personal business and diplomacy.

Mr. Trump will celebrate the opening of a new 18-hole course — the MacLeod Course — at Trump International Golf Links outside of Aberdeen, named after his mother, Mary Anne MacLeod, who was born in Scotland. He also plans to play rounds at the Trump Turnberry course, which Mr. Trump bought in 2014, on the other side of Scotland.

The president has some business on the agenda, as well. He plans to meet with the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, who has spent months nurturing his relationship with the American president.

Mr. Trump’s reception in Scotland may be rocky.

The Scots are generally not fans of Mr. Trump, and protests are already planned. A group called “Stop Trump Scotland” said it is organizing a “festival of resistance” against Mr. Trump during the trip and has called on John Swinney, the first minister of Scotland, to decline to meet with him.

“The people of Scotland don’t want to roll out a welcome mat for Donald Trump, whose government is accelerating the spread of climate breakdown and fascism around the world,” the protest group said in a statement.

A survey in February by the research firm Ipsos found that 71 percent of those polled in Scotland had an unfavorable opinion of him, versus 57 percent of the broader British public.

The authorities said they were prepared for the demonstrations.

It’s all enough to make me do a Highland Fling in the middle of this wretched heat and humidity. I’ll just settle by singing Scotland the Brave. However, all the fun may be here as we look forward to the midterm elections. This is from AXIOS. “Scoop: DNC targets vulnerable House Republicans with Epstein ads.” The thing that still worries me the most is that the poor women who were the child victims of Epstein have to see all this.

The Democratic National Committee will target MAGA voters with ads about Jeffrey Epstein in a dozen GOP-held House districts at the start of the August recess, Axios has learned.

Why it matters: Democrats, after suffering debilitating losses in 2024, have found their mojo in pushing for the release of the Epstein files.

  • Democrats are pitting squeamish Republicans eager to move on from Epstein against MAGA voters who want validation of theories around the late financier’s sex trafficking operation, its clientele and his 2019 death, ruled a suicide.

Driving the news: The ads will run before videos on right-wing YouTube and Meta channels like those of Fox News, Charlie Kirk and Ben Shapiro – target-rich audiences for the voters fixated on Epstein.

  • “Call your representative. Demand they release the Epstein files,” says the ad, while hitting House Republicans for going on August recess without having cast a floor vote to release more Epstein details.
  • One video ad features Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) deeming Epstein a “serious issue.” Another includes video of President Trump with Epstein. It’s long been known that Trump knew Epstein, and the president has not been accused of any wrongdoing related to his operation.

The ad will run for five days, starting Friday, in the districts of 11 Republicans the DNC says are vulnerable in the 2026 midterms:

  • Reps. Tom Barrett (Mich.) Gabe Evans (Colo.), Brian Fitzpatrick (Pa.), Ashley Hinson (Iowa), Young Kim (Calif.), Mike Lawler (N.Y.), Zach Nunn (Iowa), Andy Ogles (Tenn.), Chip Roy (Texas), Bryan Steil (Wisc.) and Derrick Van Orden (Wisc.).
  • It’s also running in Rep. Virginia Foxx’s (N.C.) district. Foxx is not viewed as particularly vulnerable, but she chairs the powerful Rules Committee, which determines what legislation receives votes on the House floor.

What they’re saying: The DNC is seeking to reach up to a million Americans with the five-figure ad campaign.

It’s times like these when I’m glad my new TV is going on its third year in the box it came in. ProPublica has uncovered an American Scrooge. “His Former Company Got Caught Employing Undocumented Workers. Now He’s Profiting Off an Immigrant Detention Camp. Disaster Management Group is one contractor behind the nation’s largest detention camp, to be built at Fort Bliss. It’s run by Nathan Albers, who previously co-owned a company that pleaded guilty to a scheme to hire and conceal undocumented workers. ”  Isn’t this what America is all about these days?

On Monday, the Department of Defense announced that it had awarded a massive new contract to build the nation’s largest migrant detention camp on the Fort Bliss military base, a facility that will play a key role in the Trump administration’s deportation plans.

Unmentioned was that one of the subcontractors slated to work on the project, Disaster Management Group, is owned by Nathan Albers, who previously co-owned a company that pleaded guilty in 2019 to a scheme to hire undocumented workers and conceal them from immigration authorities. Albers is a big-time Republican donor who has spent time at Mar-a-Lago.

Two people with direct knowledge of the award and two familiar with the company told ProPublica that Disaster Management Group would help build the new facility, receiving a substantial chunk of the more than $1.2 billion the government has allocated for the project.

“The idea that you could use illegal labor and then sell services to ICE, the irony is thick,” said Scott Shuchart, a former official with the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement during President Donald Trump’s first term and later under President Joe Biden, referring to the immigration case involving TentLogix, the company Albers once co-owned.

In response to questions from ProPublica, a spokesperson for Disaster Management said that Albers and Disaster Management had been dropped from the DHS’ investigation of TentLogix and exonerated. Upon learning of illegal actions by TentLogix’s co-founder, the spokesperson said, “Mr. Albers parted ways as a minority and non-operating owner of TentLogix.”

The spokesperson didn’t directly answer questions about Disaster Management’s role in the detention camp at Fort Bliss, saying only that the company “is proud to support projects of national importance for nearly 20 years.”

The White House didn’t answer questions about Disaster Management or Albers, referring ProPublica to the DOD and DHS, neither of which provided comment.

The new migrant detention camp near El Paso, Texas, is expected to hold up to 5,000 people. The prime contractor is Virginia-based Acquisition Logistics, and people with direct knowledge of the work at Fort Bliss told ProPublica that Amentum, a major engineering and technology services contractor, will be another subcontractor.

Neither Acquisition Logistics nor Amentum replied to questions from ProPublica about the project.

Disaster Management specializes in building temporary structures. Since 2020, it’s won over $500 million in government contracting work, mostly to construct lodgings for a U.S. program to resettle Afghan refugees.

We’re getting details about the last Trump exchange of prisoners, and it’s about par for the course for Trump to have a murderer sent back to us. This is from the New York Times. “Convicted Murderer Released by Trump From Venezuelan Prison Is Free in U.S. At least some American officials knew that Dahud Hanid Ortiz had been convicted of a triple murder when he was put on the plane to the United States.”  Well, isn’t that special?

He killed three people in Spain and fled to Venezuela, where he was sentenced to 30 years in prison, court documents show. Then last week, the Trump administration negotiated his release as part of a large prisoner swap, and he arrived on American soil.

Now, the convict, Dahud Hanid Ortiz, 54, a U.S. Army veteran, is free in the United States, according to two people with knowledge of the case. One said he was in Orlando, Fla.

When the Americans put Mr. Hanid Ortiz on a plane on Friday back to the United States, at least some people in the Trump administration knew of his criminal past, according to a third person.

Mr. Hanid Ortiz was among 10 Americans and U.S. legal permanent residents extracted by the United States from detention in Venezuela on Friday. In exchange, the United States agreed to allow the release of 252 Venezuelan men it had sent to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador.

The Trump administration claimed all the men were members of the Tren de Aragua gang and had to be removed to protect the security of Americans.

Trump’s homegrown murderers and rapists get deals.  This brings me to Gislaine Maxwell, who is suddenly getting a lot of visitors looking for something or another. This is from NBC News. It’s just breaking and is reported by Chloe Atkins and Dareh Gregorian. “DOJ’s Maxwell questioning done for the day, her attorney says.”  Do you suppose it was a merry meet?

Maxwell attorney David Oscar Markus said the deputy attorney general has finished his questioning of Maxwell for the day.

“We started this morning right around 9 o’clock, and went to now lunchtime, and we’re finished after all day, yesterday and today, Ghislaine answered every single question asked of her over the last day and a half, she answered those questions honestly, truthfully, to the best of her ability. She never invoked a privilege. She never refused to answer a question,” Markus said.

“They asked about every single, every possible thing you could imagine. Everything,” Markus said.

It was unclear whether Blanche intends to question her further. Markus said he did not know whether the discussions would have any impact on her case.

“We don’t know how it’s going to play out. We just know that this was the first opportunity she’s ever been given to answer questions about what happened and so the truth will come out about what happened with Mr. Epstein, and she’s the person who’s answering those questions,” he said.

Prosecutors and the judge who oversaw her 2021 trial have said that Maxwell had made multiple false statements under oath and failed to take responsibility for her actions. She’s serving a 20-year sentence after being convicted of sex trafficking minors.

“People have questioned her honesty, which I think is just wrong,” Markus said.

Asked if she’d got any offer of clemency from the government, the lawyer said no offer had been made.

 

What exactly has happened to our country in the last few months? I don’t recall any of this stuff being something that would be normalized by even Richard Nixon. I know it could’ve been different.

Aid organizations report that thousands of children in Gaza are at risk of starvation while trucks full of food sit waiting across the border. The full flow of humanitarian assistance must be restored immediately. news.un.org/en/story/202…

— Hillary Rodham Clinton (@hillaryclinton.bsky.social) 2025-07-24T17:17:08.911Z

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

This is artist Amy Sherald’s take on the Statue of Liberty. You may remember she did the official portrait of First Lady Michelle Obama. She quit a big show over the possible censorship of this painting.  It’s a Trans Woman.