Saturday, July 19, 2025

Live By The Bubble, Die By The…

 


The Atlantic, via Emptywheel.

One wonders if Trump thinks the sun rises to shine on him, and if he resents the clouds when they get in the way.

Groundbreaking

Abbott sent the National Guard to the Texas Border, a few years back. They got so bored some went AWOL (i.e., home), and some attempted suicide. I’m sure it was quite the recruiting mission. “Join the Guard! Go sit on the border!”
Six members of the Guard — including infantrymen, officers and two officials in leadership roles — spoke of low morale and deep concern that the deployment may hurt recruitment for the state-based military force for years to come," reported Shawn Hubler, shielding their identities to protect them against military rules prohibiting discussing active deployment. "All but one of the six expressed reservations about the deployment."

Many of the members "said they had raised objections themselves or knew someone who objected, either because they did not want to be involved in immigration crackdowns or felt the Trump administration had put them on the streets for what they described as a 'fake mission,'" the report continued.

“The moral injuries of this operation, I think, will be enduring. This is not what the military of our country was designed to do, at all,” one member of the Guard told The Times.

A number of Latino soldiers were uncomfortable with what they were being asked to do, the report continued.

"In one incident that several soldiers said occurred early in the deployment, 60 troops were awaiting transport to planned immigration raids in Ventura County when a Latino soldier approached officers in charge of the mission. He told them that he strongly objected, and he offered to be arrested rather than take part in the operation. Eventually, they said, he was reassigned to administrative tasks. Officials at the military’s Northern Command declined to comment about the incident."

Additionally, the report noted, many of the soldiers called up to the Joint Forces Training Base in Los Alamitos in Long Beach didn't end up doing much.

"Mostly, they said, they lounged in warehouse-sized tents, listening to music and playing games on their cell phones. Only about 400 of the 3,882 deployed Guard members had actually been sent on assignments away from the base, Guard figures showed."
You see, the problem with democracy is that it’s like the fabled mills of God: it grinds slowly. But it grinds exceedingly fine. Trump’s stunts with immigration have both failed spectacularly, and driven over 3/4’s of the country to think favorably of immigrants. Overcoming American xenophobia, by making Americans sympathize with the immigrants? Who but Trump and Miller could pull that off?

And wrecking morale from the DOJ to the DOD? I mean, I get it that ICE is 99% thugs, but I don’t think that’s changed.  What does seem to be changing is the ground Trump thought was underneath his feet.

“When You Start A Fire, You Want It To Burn.”—John Dominic Crossan

Funny thing:
On Truth Social, he wrote: "I have asked the Justice Department to release all Grand Jury testimony with respect to Jeffrey Epstein, subject only to Court Approval."

However, he was not done and continued by ranting, "With that being said, and even if the Court gave its full and unwavering approval, nothing will be good enough for the troublemakers and radical left lunatics making the request. It will always be more, more, more. MAGA!"
Trump undeniably started this fire.

Maybe he should have raked the forest, first.

And that concluding “MAGA!” Is he trying to rally them to his side? Or shaking a raised fist at them?

The Parade Of Meat

This video is making the rounds: young women (some only 14) parading around a room of fully clothed adults, so they can be assessed and graded like pieces of meat. It reminds me of the picture of Roger Vadim in a Playboy article: he was sitting, fully clothed, surrounded by naked women. Nobody reading the article really wanted to look at Vadim, anyway.

The clear point of publicizing this is to show Trump 34 years ago, ogling barely dressed children, along with the Guardian story about his actions there (no surprise. It’s already known he sponsored a “Miss Teen USA” pageant just so he could walk into the dressing room freely.). This isn’t porn, there’s nothing especially lewd about it. And I understand the political purpose of posting it.  But then we have this:
We know that Bondi’s carefully crafted memo claiming that there is no Epstein “client list” — the quotation marks are in the memo— is also nonsense. There might not have been a “client list” in the FBI’s Epstein files, but the FBI certainly has compiled a list of clients.

When the FBI raided Epstein’s New York mansion, they seized a vast amount of material. In a court memo filed on July 8, 2019, two days after his arrest, the Department of Justice outlined some of the evidence they had seized. This included stacks of compact disks labeled “Young [Name] + [Name].” In short, Epstein kept a carefully curated library of videos showing various people having sex with underage women. Even if Epstein was not actively blackmailing anyone, he sure seems he had plenty of insurance at the ready.
"Insurance”? What did it insure Epstein against? It makes the suicide a more likely explanation, because this stuff is child pornography. Whether or not Epstein imagined it was blackmail material (i.e., “insurance”), he knew it cooked his goose.

And release them? First we have to think of the victims.  How do we ptotect them? Can their identities be deduced from circumstantial evidence? Will they be? Will the wrong people be identified? Is there justice in that? There are actual privacy law issues here; and there should be.

Trump got himself into this shit with his insane conspiracy theories, built on his blunt stupidity. And I have no problem seeing him hoist on his own lies. But MAGA wanted this “client list” exposed because that’s the way it works in the movies, and their connection to reality is tenuous already. In movies, crimes only affect the guilty; or at most leave corpses behind. Murder mysteries classically reveal secrets of everyone touched by the crime, but they all deserve the revelations, and in the end the survivors are better off for it.

Reality is a great deal messier, and besides, the victims won’t be better off for being exposed as the children in those home porn videos.

Bad enough we’re reviewing them parading around for the leering approval of a 45 year old man admiring half-naked children.

“A Foolish Consistency Is The Hobgoblin Of Small Minds”

 The really unfortunate reality:

The unfortunate reality is that SCOTUS already gave Trump all the tools he needs to fire Jerome Powell, and saying "please please please don't do it!" isn't going to stop him.

With @dahlialithwick.bsky.social on the majority's incoherent, self-defeating jurisprudence here: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/07/supreme-court-trump-chicken-jerome-powell-fed-chair.html
...is that the Supreme Court stopped explaining its actions a long time ago. So they don’t need to justify their decision to protect the Chair of the Fed from reprisals. They can just refuse to intervene on the inevitable DOJ appeal of the equally inevitable injunction staying the dismissal and leave the matter for the lower courts until Trump’s term has expired.

Or Powell’s term has expired; whichever comes first. Either way, Trump won’t get to fire Powell, and the Supremes can continue with their “We’re the Supreme Court, bitches!” jurisprudence.

Because honestly, their opinions have just become legalistic dog shit disguising that plain assertion of authority for some time now. And they use the shadow docket to just cut to the chase and save themselves the trouble.

Friday, July 18, 2025

Remember When DOGE Was Going To Fix Everything…

 …because they were smarter than government employees? And all they did was fuck things up?

Since February, his administration has deported 14,700 people per month on average, according to NBC News," Zakaria wrote. "That’s far below Obama’s peak in 2013, when he deported 36,000 per month. And it’s not even close to the Trump administration’s reported goal of deporting 1 million people in a year."---

The perception of Trump's immigration policy as a massive success comes down to two things, according to Zakaria: Trump is simply "louder and meaner" about it.

"Trump’s deportation dragnet is less effective than those of his predecessors because it is chaotic, theatrical and detached from the systems that work," Zakaria wrote. "Rather than effectively coordinating with local law enforcement, following rules, laws and norms, or expanding and expediting legal processing, Trump has prioritized optics over outcomes. What his administration lacks in strategy, it tries to compensate for with spectacle — sweeping up schoolchildren, targeting families, broadcasting raids on social media."
And DOGE was really popular, too:
He warned, "this is a rare case of Trump’s Teflon wearing thin. Immigration was once his strongest issue politically. Today, it is fast becoming a vulnerability," as a recent Quinnipiac University poll showed Trump’s approval on immigration "dropped sharply, with 55 percent disapproving and only 40 percent approving."

"A recent Gallup poll showed that the number of Americans who view immigration as a good thing has risen from 64 percent in 2024 to 79 percent now, a record high. Even more telling is the erosion of support among independents, many of them suburban voters who had once been sympathetic to a tougher border stance but are now recoiling at scenes of cruelty and overreach," he added."

The lesson is clear, he said: "Americans want immigration to be managed with competence and decency, not bombast or cruelty.
You might even call it a “political cudgel”:
But Zakaria wrote that Trump may be more interested in using the immigration issue as a "political cudgel" rather than coming up with an actual solution for immigration reform, as evidenced by his "torpedoing" of a bipartisan Senate immigration deal when he was between terms.

Zakaria argued that true reform must honor America's laws as well as the immigrants themselves.
 
"It is finally time to replace fearmongering with solutions, and to turn away from performance and toward policy," he concluded.
Where is DOGE now? All that performance, and nothing got better. Almost as if DOGE didn’t know what it was doing.

Nixon Thought His Foreign Policy Chops…

...would save him from Watergate. Gotta admit, Nixon never tried blaming the autopen. How many times can he contradict himself in two minutes? Wholly unremarkable. Right?

IOW… 🍒 🥧

 I’m going to try to post this in one piece. The immediate context is not important here (you can guess it readily enough):

/2 The clergy-penitent privilege was familiar in common law and is protected by statute in almost all American jurisdictions. It just says that if you consult a spiritual advisor in private for religious advice they can’t be compelled to disclose what you said.

/3 Traditionally that’s a Catholic priest in confession, but it applies to other faith traditions as well.

Note that ALL THIS DOES is prevent the state from compelling the religious advisor from disclosing a specific private communication.

/4 In form it’s like the attorney-client privilege: it just allows private communications with a particular kind of advisor.

But the American sentiment is that if any potential piece of evidence of a crime exists, not allowing the state to use it PROMOTES THE CRIME.

/5 Americans would likely support using torture to compel testimony if Dick Wolf phrased it right. Americans pay some limited lip service to rights but in general are prone to treating any limitation on state power whatsoever in the criminal context as pro-crime.

/6 Note that this decision does not say “a priest can threaten a kid not to testify against a parishioner.” It doesn’t allow anyone to destroy evidence. It doesn’t allow any attack on a victim. It doesn’t immunize the conduct. It doesn’t reduce a penalty.

/7 All it does is say “this particular narrow human communication can’t be used as evidence.” But to the American mindset, that’s the same as endorsing crime. That is the thinking of a people who have embraced the totalitarian mindset.
IOW, the “totalitarian mindset” is as American as violence and cherry pie. It’s just a matter of who is protecting us from them. Because I don’t trust anyone but me and thee; and I’m not too sure about thee.

A Hint…

 …of what I’m getting at:

“According to information my office received, the FBI was pressured to put approximately 1,000 personnel in its Information Management Division (IMD) … on 24-hour shifts to review approximately 100,000 Epstein-related records in order to produce more documents that could then be released on an arbitrarily short deadline,” Durbin wrote to Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel, and Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino.

“This effort, which reportedly took place from March 14 through the end of March, was haphazardly supplemented by hundreds of FBI New York Field Office personnel, many of whom lacked the expertise to identify statutorily-protected information regarding child victims and child witnesses or properly handle FOIA requests,” the letter continued.

“My office was told that these personnel were instructed to ‘flag’ any records in which President Trump was mentioned," Durbin added.
No, not flagging Trump’s name (quelle surprise 🤷🏻‍♂️), but following privacy laws, among other things. I mean, there may be adults named in those documents who had nothing to do with Epstein’s sexual activities. And there is the protection of minors (who may be adults by now, but still…), that has to be honored.

Durbin is on the right track:
Durbin, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, pointedly asked Bondi to explain why she had claimed on Feb. 21 that Epstein had compiled a "client list" that she had sitting on her desk, when the DOJ released records just six days later saying such a list did not exist.

"Aside from the negative backlash you received over the February 27 record release, what was the purpose of placing almost 1,000 FBI IMD personnel on 24-hour shifts to review Epstein-related records over the course of a two-week period in March?" the senator asked. "Who made the decision to reassign hundreds of New York Field Office personnel to this March review of Epstein-related records?"

"Why were personnel told to flag records in which President Trump was mentioned?" Durbin added.
He is certainly asking the right questions. Ultimately, this has less to do with Trump being embarrassed (which is where I think the Epstein trail ends), and more to do with his Administration being thoroughly incompetent. And corrupt.

That’s what brought down Nixon. And that didn’t happen before public opinion decided Nixon was incompetent (Watergate did start with a “third-rate burglary”), and then saw he was also corrupt. Nixon didn’t have MAGA, but he won in ‘72 with the largest total electoral victory in U.S. history.

It could still happen.

Thinking Is HARD!

 It’s not that the details aren’t out there:

A mindbending thing to me about the Epstein story is that I could publish stuff I did years ago now and it would come off as fresh because despite all the attention paid to it, the people most interested in it have never really been very interested in the details.
It’s that details are complicated:
If I were a Politics Editor, I'd be assigning Epstein timelines, explainers, etc etc etc. Almost everyone has missed/forgotten almost everything about this story along the way. I'm extremely online and just read dude's Wikipedia page for the first time last night, realizing I knew like 10% of it
Which is why conspiracy theories are so appealing to stupid illiterates like the current POTUS.

Most of what’s publicly known about Epstein blows up the conspiracy theories Trump traded in during the last campaign. But even reasonable people still speak as if the “client list” might actually be hidden in a mayonnaise jar inside a pumpkin in a cornfield in Iowa somewhere. Well, some people say…

I fully expect the same people to say unicorns do exist, and the earth really is flat. Although the proof against that is, if it was, cats would have pushed everything off by now.

Still, the persistence of acceptance that the existence of an Epstein client list is still open to debate, is just proof that few people pay attention to news stories, and really only follow narratives around.

Because thinking is HARD!

I’m Going To Go Out On A Limb…

 …and say almost none of this is covered by the term “grand jury transcripts:”

The only newly-released document in "phase one," which received little public attention, was a three-page catalog of evidence that appears to be an accounting of evidence seized during the searches of Epstein's properties in New York and the U.S. Virgin Islands after his arrest in 2019, and a search of his Palm Beach mansion a dozen years earlier.

That little-noticed index offers a roadmap to the remaining trove of records that President Donald Trump's administration has declined to release, including logs of who potentially visited Epstein's private island and the records of a wiretap of Maxwell's phone.

The three-page index is a report generated by the FBI that lists the evidence inventoried by federal law enforcement during the multiple investigations into his conduct. According to that index, the remaining materials include 40 computers and electronic devices, 26 storage drives, more than 70 CDs and six recording devices. The devices hold more than 300 gigabytes of data, according to the DOJ.

The evidence also includes approximately 60 pieces of physical evidence, including photographs, travel logs, employee lists, more than $17,000 in cash, five massage tables, blueprints of Epstein's island and Manhattan home, four busts of female body parts, a pair of women's cowboy boots and one stuffed dog, according to the list.

The unreleased evidence notably includes multiple documents related to two islands Epstein owned in the U.S. Virgin Islands, Little Saint James -- where his compound was located -- and Greater Saint James. According to the index, the files include a folder containing Island blueprints, photographs and other documents.

Some of the documents could shed light on who visited the island. According to the index, the files also include a Little Saint James logbook as well as multiple logs of boat trips to and from the island.

The evidence also includes multiple lists, one vaguely described as a "document with names" and an employee contact list. Investigators also recovered pages of handwritten notes, multiple photo albums, an Austrian passport with Epstein's photograph and more than a dozen financial documents.
Not that I don’t think there are serious legal and ethical issues involved in throwing all this stuff into the public maw, but…

Trump stirred this hornets’ nest as hard as he could. I have no problem with him now getting stung by them.


Why AI Sucks

 


I am not a Shakespearean scholar. But I taught “Othello” for several years in Brit. Lit. Survey, which means I re-read the play every time I taught that course.

There is no such line anywhere in the play. Not even close. And it’s neither iambic nor pentameter. (It’s trochaic tetrameter.)

Emil Bove A Lifetime Appointment, But…?

...Alina Habba, nothing?

😵‍💫

Make it make sense.

Visualize Whirled Peas

 Trump doesn’t doodle:

Trump, himself, has boasted about his artistic benevolence, and in a 2010 book titled, Trump Never Give Up: How I Turned My Biggest Challenges into Success, he wrote: “Sometimes being a giver will open you up to new talents. Each year I donate an autographed doodle to the Doodle for Hunger auction at Tavern on the Green. It takes me a few minutes to draw something. … Art may not be my strong point, but the end result is help for people who need it.”
So he couldn’t have made that “bawdy” drawing on that birthday card to Jeffrey Epstein in 2003.

It’s in a scrapbook Ghislaine Maxwell assembled for Epstein. In 2003. I guess Obama commissioned it; while he was a first term Illinois Senator?

The man’s mind is a Waring Blender set permanently on high speed.

🐊🐊🐊

 Here’s where the Epstein story does real damage:

It's pretty clear there is no client list," Aronberg said. "The people closest to this say there is no client list. Jeffrey Epstein's former lawyer, Alan Dershowitz, says there is no client list, but there are files, documents, images that have not been turned over to the public, in part because of privacy rules. But the reason why this is not going away is that the Trump administration officials, namely Dan Bongino, Kash Patel, Donald Trump's son, they have all been perpetuating this myth. They've been using this lie as a way to help their own careers, and now it's biting them in the butt."
Even if there was, do you publish it, and prove guilt by association? Is that in anyway justice? Can we all agree justice is not what MAGA is after?

But there is no such list, so it’s fine, right?
Ahead of the weekend, Trump took to Truth Social, asking, "If there was a 'smoking gun' on Epstein, why didn’t the Dems, who controlled the 'files' for four years, and had Garland and Comey in charge, use it?"

He added, "BECAUSE THEY HAD NOTHING!!!"
There we are: there’s nothing there, so release the files. (No, that’s not what Trump means. But then, he’s old. Oh, wait! George Clooney hasn’t said that yet.)

Except:
I mean, this is what happens when you continue to feed the alligator," the ex-prosecutor added. "The alligator is always hungry, and eventually it's going to bite your face off, and so this is a problem of their own making, and their base is not going to be satisfied by these grand jury records, and not only will they be redacted, the Trump administration says they're only going to request and release the pertinent ones. What's pertinent? Well, it's in the eye of the beholder, so this issue is not going away."

It's not clear a federal judge in New York, where Epstein was investigated, will release the transcripts, which are kept secret as a general rule, but Aronberg noted that the Trump administration has thus far shown great enthusiasm for shattering norms.

"They can release the files," Aronberg said. "Now, it would go against DOJ policy. It has been a tradition that the Department of Justice will not release the names of people who are uncharged, unless you are charged, you're not going to be put out there, and that is something that's been the policy of the Department of Justice for years."

"But, you know, if there's anything this administration does, it's break norms, break rules," he added. "But this is the one rule they're abiding by, and the fact that that birthday card is out there makes people believe, well, maybe that's the explanation for not turning over these files to the public. Maybe they just don't want the president to be embarrassed by his relationship with Epstein. The truth is, though, is that it's been well-documented that Trump has been friends with Epstein. There's no evidence that Trump has been part of a child sex trafficking ring, but they don't want to keep this smoke around any further. But they're not going to get rid of it by putting their head in the ground. They're going to get rid of it by transparency. After all, they fed this beast from the beginning."
The alligators are eating their faces, now. Why not give the alligators something else to eat? Like the names of people who just happen to be in some document somewhere in the material now loosely being called the “Epstein files”? What harm could it do, besides undermine the most basic tenet of our criminal justice system? I’m sure we’ve done that before. One more time won’t hurt, right? 

That’s the thing with Trump: it can always get worse. And this is what democracy demanded. Because eggs cost too much; or Joe Biden was old. Or something.

Thursday, July 17, 2025

Does He Imagine This Makes Sense?

Trump: If there were any truth at all on the Epstein Hoax, as it pertains to President Trump, this information would have been revealed by Comey, Brennan, Crooked Hillary, and other Radical Left Lunatics years ago. It certainly would not have sat in a file waiting for "TRUMP" to have won three Elections. This is yet another example of FAKE NEWS!
Or this? He's a public figure. How does he prove malice? Or damages? Because he knows the court won’t release it any time soon. Also, too, as well:
The grand jury transcripts means the written transcript that the court reporter takes of whoever went into the grand jury and testified. So already you are leaving out tons of documents. Most witnesses don't even go into the grand jury. They just talk to you in a conference room, not in the grand jury. So we're talking about a 1%, 2%.
Grand jury testimony is just enough to get an indictment; not enough to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

So this will keep going awhile…

“Put Me Through Some Changes, Boy…

...sort of like a Waring Blender.”
"The letter to Epstein bearing Trump’s name is bawdy. It contains several lines of typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman, which appears to be hand-drawn with a heavy marker. A pair of small arcs denotes the woman’s breasts, and the future president’s signature is a squiggly 'Donald' below her waist, mimicking pubic hair.

The letter concludes: 'Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.'"
Or: Visualize Whirled Peas. Eh. I remember the GOP standing beside Nixon. Well, until John Dean broke the dam and that eventually became impossible. 7 years later we had two terms of Reagan, and one of GHWB. So it’s not like I think there’s a glorious future waiting when America finally discovers itself. Fehrlengetti wrote: “I am waiting for someone to really discover America/and wail.” He meant “wail” in the jazz performance sense. But by now, I think the traditional sense is the best we’re ever gonna get.

Nobody’s going to save us, and we damn sure aren’t going to save ourselves. I believe in Christian (in-metaphysical) salvation. The salvation of Isaiah’s Holy Mountain.  Salvation is still a live option, IOW. But salvation in democracy? As Pogo said (though I think it was Porky Pine): “We gotta make democracy safe for the world!”
The letter bearing Trump’s name, which was reviewed by the Journal, is bawdy—like others in the album. It contains several lines of typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman, which appears to be hand-drawn with a heavy marker. A pair of small arcs denotes the woman’s breasts, and the future president’s signature is a squiggly “Donald” below her waist, mimicking pubic hair.
Watergate redux; before the dam broke. This, by the way, is the content of that letter:
Gotta say, it’s no “grab’ ‘em by the pussy.” Trump's brain is a rat in a can. A sealed can. His mind is whirling like a smoothie in a blender. And whether this story goes anywhere, or not, he’s not going to get better.

I Was Wondering When They’d Get Around To This

Is it also out of Trump’s control to ask a judge to review and release the files?

Or does it turn out that already happened under Biden?

Is the problem that the files have already been released, and Trump has nothing new? Or is the problem that there’s information Trump is hiding? And how does he prove it, either way? He’s lied about everything. He’s lying now.

Where does he go from here? To MIT?
This is amazing. Yesterday Trump claimed he talked to his uncle about how brilliant the Unabomber was when the Unabomber was a student of his at MIT.

The Unabomber never went to MIT, he was identified in 1996, and his uncle died in 1985.
Which was pretty clearly a response to the Epstein problem. The response of a malignant narcissist intent on protecting his “ideal self” at all costs. Are his lies catching up with him? At long last?

😈

Dept. of…Just-Us?

 But which Justice Department…:

Mike Pence has the courage!

"Release all of the files regarding Jeffrey Epstein's investigation and prosecution. ... Anyone who participated or was associated with this despicable man ought to be held up to public scrutiny."

https://www.cbsnews.com/video/mike-pence-says-time-has-come-trump-administration-release-epstein-files/q
...do you want?
Maureen Comey, prosecutor of Jeffrey Epstein, to her former colleagues at DOJ.

“Anyone who participated or was associated with this despicable man ought to be held up to public scrutiny." Except that’s not what prosecutors do. “Innocent until proven guilty” means we don’t hold people up to public scrutiny just because it satisfies our need to condemn someone. Some of the Epstein files were released under Biden, subject to approval by the court and objection by anyone named in the files.

There can be reasons why these files were not released, are not released, cannot be released. Trump, being an ignorant asshole, wanted to ignore all those reasons.

Frankly, I’m more concerned about “without fear or favor,” than with what’s in the Epstein files; or what isn’t. I’m not objecting to making Trump eat his own conspiracy theories. But we don’t need to cheer Pence and act like MAGA. I certainly don’t want to see the DOJ go that way.

Wednesday, July 16, 2025

Imagine…

Turns out all these pictures were photoshopped by Obama and Biden right before Epstein was arrested by Trump’s DOJ.
Sure, why not? It’s a robot Trump being controlled by Vance because they murdered the real Trump and buried him under the White House bunker.

If Trump Came In Soaking Wet…

...and told you it was raining outside, you should still stick your hand out the window.

Or just treat him as an unreliable narrator incapable of telling the truth. You’ll never go wrong that way.

Make Coke Coca Again!

High-fructose corn syrup can be American grown. (Is it the major source of supply? I have no idea.)

Cane sugar comes largely to this country from Mexico and Brazil.  So…Trump wants to raise the price of Coke, and hurt American farmers even more?

Besides…MAHA?

🪢

Boy, we sure put on over on MAGA and Q-Anon, didn’t we? Even suckered Trump into it, for a while.
This idea that he’s a “non-factor”—well, why were you hanging around with non-factors, Mr. President? What was that about?

I think he’s making it worse now that he’s seemingly privy to everything in the files—and suddenly doesn’t want to release them. When he was on the outside, I guess he just wasn’t confident in the investigations and didn’t think there was anything that necessarily linked him.

He is, overall, a creep. Like—we know he’s a creep.

The question is: is he also a criminal in that way?

And the fact that he’s so adamant about not releasing the Epstein files—I think that kind of answers the question.
There’s a lot to be said for not playing the conspiracy game back against MAGA. But this? This pretty much raises the right “When did you stop beating your wife?” question. (My position is, Trump can’t release the files because there IS nothing there. But if he shows that, it’s a whole new coverup. In fact, that’s how the first coverup conspiracy started. And if he doesn’t release the files, it’s the same old coverup. Hoist on his own conspiracy theory. It was bound to happen. 😈 I want to say the torture memos left him this way; but I’m pretty sure he was thus way already, and the torture memos were just a byproduct. "Sure sound like socialism to me, little lady. And Gawd hates socialists! It’s in the Bible!” Yale lawyer, so: 

He’s actually this stupid.

He doesn’t care, it’s just all about having power and not being grounded to the Naval Observatory for four years.
I think he really believes this. And if he doesn’t, what’s the difference?
After Epstein's death, New York judge Loretta Preska ordered a list with names of more than 170 Epstein associates to be unsealed on January 1, 2024. Anyone on the list had until January 1 to appeal to have their name removed.

During the presidency of Joe Biden, many right-wing figures hypothesized of a list of Epstein's clients not disclosed by the Biden administration. Kash Patel, who was not the director of the FBI at the time, claimed that the FBI was keeping Epstein's "black list", and encouraged a potential administration of Donald Trump to release them if he were to be elected. During the Turning Point Action convention in June 2024, Donald Trump Jr. accused the Biden administration of keeping the list secret to protect pedophiles. In October 2024, JD Vance said "we need to release the Epstein list".

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi was asked in February 2025 by Fox News journalist John Roberts on whether the Justice Department would be publishing "the list of Jeffrey Epstein's clients", to which Bondi responded: "It's sitting on my desk right now to review. That's been a directive by President Trump. I’m reviewing that." On July 7, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Bondi had been referring more generally to the accumulated evidence against Epstein, stating: "[Bondi] was saying the entirety of all of the paperwork, all of the paper, in relation to Jeffrey Epstein's crimes, that’s what the attorney general was referring to, and I’ll let her speak for that".

Lawyer and law professor Alan Dershowitz said in an interview with Sean Spicer on March 19, 2025, that he knew the names of individuals on such a list and unreleased files relating to Epstein, adding that "I know why they're being suppressed. I know who's suppressing them" and that he was " ...bound by confidentiality from a judge and cases, and I can't disclose what I know". Dershowitz had been part of the legal team that negotiated a non-prosecution agreement for Epstein in 2006.

During the Trump–Musk feud, Musk claimed that Trump was in the Epstein files and that this "is the real reason they have not been made public", though it is unclear if he specifically meant Epstein's client list.

In a July 7 memo, the Department of Justice stated it would not release any more documents relating to Epstein. At a cabinet meeting, as Trump criticized reporters for focusing on the Epstein case, Bondi clarified when she said “it’s on my desk” that she meant he was in possession of child pornography.
Let 'em have all the rope they want. That tree’s still gonna be taller’n their rope is long.

“I Just Supplied The Zyklon B Per Contract “

 


“I never asked what they needed it for. That was beyond my purview.”

📺

 
As someone who was worn glasses since the first grade, gave them up for contact lenses almost as soon as they were available (and as comfortable as glass saucers; thick saucers, and nearly saucer size), and finally had to go back to glasses in middle age…I call bullshit.

Nobody wears glasses 🤓 if they don’t have to. 😎 That just proves me right. Zuckerberg is pushing this because NOBODY saw the “smart phone” becoming the ubiquitous internet portal it is now, until it was. BlackBerry’s and Palm Pilots were supposed to fulfill that role. iPods were supposed carry our music, and phones MIGHT be useful for GPS. If the GPS wasn’t prone to driving you into a lake. Zuckerberg wants desperately to sell the next smartphone, since those silly AR goggles games gadget worked so well….

So how do “smart” glasses work? Do we remove them and plug them into our cars, the way I do my phone now? That’s how I use GPS while driving, or access music, or take phone calls. I can operate that by voice commands so I’m not distracted by the screen. Removing glasses to drive would be mandatory, but then so is hands free phone access behind the wheel. Yet I see drivers with one hand to their ear all the time.  Imagine they don’t take their “smart glasses” off.

And instead of walking down a sidewalk or through a store with one hand before them, staring at their palm, now they gaze blankly ahead, not really looking ahead, but at the display before their eyes. Or driving that way.

And real glasses are expensive enough, even at Warby Parker. What if I grow weary of the style of my fake iGlasses? What’s that gonna cost me? And if they’re real glasses, do I recharge them every night? The battery in my phone is much larger than anything I’d be comfortable with in eyewear, and that needs charging every 12 hours or so.

Not to mention the weight. Glasses have improved over the decades. Lenses are polycarbonate, lighter than glass, and able to be shaped more thinly, too. My old glass lenses were thick coke-bottle bottoms, and heavy enough to make my nose sore after 8 hours. One reason I went to contacts was the sheer weight of my glasses. Even the flyweight models I wear now get tiresome in the later hours. And while the phone I type on right now is lighter than earlier models, it’s still a lot of weight to transfer to the temples of a pair of specs.
Which is the other place eyeglasses hurt: the ears.

Zuckerberg wants “the world [to] become our screen.” Really? Or does he just want to sell us something? I have the same problem with the rush to adopt and market AI. From what I’ve seen of Grok and Google AI search summaries, I don’t see the advances. Musk has GIGOed Grok into full Nazi, which at least teaches us not to trust AI. And Google search has not been improved one jot. Don’t get me started on the utter lack of composition skills in ChatGPT. Or tell me how AI is going to ruin the ability to write by replacing it. I read the internet: even the “pros” are mostly terrible writers. The few great writers humanity has ever produced, in any field, are the exceptions that prove the rule: Give the rest of us unlimited time and paper, and we still couldn’t compose a decent argument, essay, or simple communication, if it meant we could then live eternity with whatever idea of perfection tickles our individual fancies as the reward. The majority of us are suck writers, and AI is never going to take that away from us.

What is AI going to accomplish? Something, I’m sure; but not what the marketers of the intertoobs promised us. I remember when social media was “Table Talk” at Salon. It was going to recover the French salon culture of Proust, as we all had the fully democratized ability to prove our own genius for conversation. It quickly became what social media became through blogs and then Facebook and then Twitter and ever outward: the monkey house of Vonnegut’s story, where the monkeys play with themselves and shriek and fling poo. I assume in captivity they get bored and act that way; or maybe not. Either way, it’s a metaphor. Facebook was sold as a way for people to connect. Now it’s a locus for conspiracy theorists and as open sn agora as FoxNews is. Twitter is for Nazis. Nobody reads blogs (Hi!👋). The internet is mostly for “influencers” and other marketers. In short, we did for the internet what we did for radio; and movies,; and TeeVee. Commodified it to death. Only with the internet it didn’t take as long.

And now we’re gonna hang that in our face, so we can never escape our escape from reality, wherever we go?

Sounds like a Ray Bradbury story; or an episode of “Black Mirror.” One more version of a nightmare, in other words. Fortunately, I really don’t think it’s marketable.

Let’s Be Honest

Democrats did that to themselves. The media are stenographers and bullhorns for the GOP; but George Clooney had to rush to his publicist to tell tout le monde how concerned he was about Biden.

Where was Kevin Sorbo or Jon Voigt when Trump cancelled a campaign rally speech and just danced to a bad soundtrack? Or babbled absolute nonsense, as he so often does?
Of course, imagine if Biden had done this 👆

The Daily Report From The Bubble

The consumer price index, a key inflation barometer, rose 2.7% in the 12 months through June, up from 2.4% in May, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said Tuesday.

Economists said they expect the full impact from the Trump administration’s tariff agenda to raise consumer prices more in the months ahead — but they said trade policies have already started to noticeably affect inflation.
Hence the increase in June over May.

“..Who Died In A Jail Cell While I Was President.”

"...which is further proof it is all a hoax by Obama and Biden and Comey.”  (Except Comey had been fired before Epstein was arrested.)

Financial Crisis On Line Two


 

A) The Supreme Court has already said he can’t do that.

B) Powell doesn’t set interest rates; a committee of Federal Reserve bankers does that 

C) Rumors are that Trump has loans coming due and he needs to refinance at lower rates. Those rumors are beginning to seem more plausible.

D) He’s going to wreck his chances at cheaper re-financing if he even tries this (if Powell doesn’t sue to keep his job/maintain the independence of the Bank, I expect the Bank will). The repercussions in the market would be huge. Jamie Dimon is already warning about that.

E) Trump is talking to House Republicans. As I said: the bad guy never really acts alone; and the people supporting him (IRL) are happy to do so. Those clowns telling Trump “Yes, wreck the financial system!” aren’t afraid of a primary. They think this is a good idea.

F) Maybe I need to move my money into gold, after all.

The Other Interesting Thing About “Superman”


This was pointed out to me in an article, and set me to thinking about expectations and analysis.

Lex Luthor is the “bad guy” of the movie. But, unlike previous iterations of the villain on film (or in the comic books, IIRC), Lex has supporters and eager participants who help him carry out his plans. A roomful in one side, a camp full on another. And all happy to be doing the job. Cheering supporters who rejoice in their victories. They aren’t working out of fear. They want to be a part of the project(s).

Now pivot that to reality. Conditioned by movies where Alan Rickman is a bad guy commanding minions ready and willing to die but otherwise just cannon fodder, we think the bad guy rules alone, and at best his “gang” are just willing employees. Luther’s people are active participants wanting the outcome, not the robbery payoff. So it’s insistently not Luthor alone. Indeed, how could it be? That’s not the way the world works.

But we apply the lesson of action movies and comic books to reality, and assume Trump is acting alone or terrifying Congress to do his will. But maybe even Murkowski actually agrees with Trump; or thinks her voters do. It’s far more reasonable to think the GOP Congress is wholly supportive of Trump than that they are responding out of fear. Especially the way the OBBB moved through Congress despite all the reports about the support the bill didn’t have; until it clearly did.

We tell ourselves stories about reality based on the stories we call fiction. A lot of conspiracy theories are just tropes from fiction, most of them no more realistic than the action Twain mocked brutally in the Natty Bumpo stories of Fenimore Cooper. But while we all admire Tom Sawyer and the lesson of the white washed fence, or the adventures if Huckleberry Finn, what sticks in our mind are the improbable exploits of the Deer Slayer, and the absurdly incompetent Native Americans who try to get on that flatboat in the scene Twain dissects, being slowly towed down a canal. But it’s not the absurdity we remember, it’s the danger to white people Cooper describes. No surprise, really. Even a Tarantino movie shows “Hollywood” damage from gunshots or samurai swords; not the spray of viscera and bone and organs such weapons would produce. We like our reality neat, tidy, and simple. Leave the awful reality of GSW’s to the ER’s, where we don’t have to see it.

And leave the evil that people do to one person’s actions, the easier for us to think we would never fear an alien immigrant like Superman; only Lex Luthor alone would ever be that bad. So much more comforting to think the bad guy is, in the end, always alone.

OR…

…there is no “there” there, and Trump is trying to not say that (much as he quit complaining about Obama’s birth certificate, which, come to think of it, the media never said he was lying about. Even though he plainly was. But Trump finally abandoned it, and his gullible followers just moved on.)

AND…

He’s a malignant narcissist who can’t stand that his followers are not obeying his commands and are questioning his authority.


Tuesday, July 15, 2025

Some Must Die So Trump Might Live

Some must die so Trump might live. It was a better country with only white men in it. See? Old conspiracy theories can always be renewed, right? But would they use their powers for good? Fact check: True. (Jennings is wrong.)
Eggs US rose to 2.89 USD/Dozen on July 15, 2025, up 4.43% from the previous day. Over the past month, Eggs US's price has risen 7.61%, and is up 23.87% compared to the same time last year, according to trading on a contract for difference (CFD) that tracks the benchmark market for this commodity. source: USDA
The postponed cuts in the OBBB are not going to save Republicans from inflation tied to tariffs. Even if the courts deny Trump’s ability to impose them. The uncertainty can be enough for markets, for retailers, for people, trying to plan for Xmas. Or Presidents Day sales; or next summer. Enough to make them hold back; or raise prices.

Going to be interesting to see Trump blame Biden. And Obama; and Comer. Because you know he will.
So, the “essentials” are going down. Airline travel; hotel rates. Sounds to me like a contraction in discretionary spending.

A Lesson I Learned Very Early In Life

 


After All, That’s As Much As Trump Can Do

Maybe even a bit more.

Life Comes At You Pretty Fast

 JMM, catching up with the news:

Ahhh hadn’t caught this. I guess Charlie Kirk has now announced its time to move on from Epstein because Trump called him and said bitch it’s time to move on.
Charlie Kirk saying he never said ”Move on."
This is a total obsessive hoax," Kirk said of the media coverage on Tuesday. "And even some people were emailing me, Charlie, why are you not talking about Epstein? Why are you saying to move on? I never, ever, ever said move on, ever!"

"I didn't whisper it. I didn't think it. I didn't say it," he continued. "But let me say this again. You know my opinion about Epstein. The messaging fumble."

But on Monday, he said, "Honestly, I'm done talking about Epstein for the time being. I'm gonna trust my friends in the administration, I'm gonna trust my friends in the government to do what needs to be done, solve it, ball's in their hands."

Kirk said he was making "an addendum to what was said yesterday."

"We're going to keep on talking about it," he insisted. "You see, but what's so disappointing, not disappointing, to an extent I get it, is that the MAGA base is so fired up about this. And that's why I didn't take a lot of this seriously. Is that, you know, people were incoming, Charlie, why are you moving on? No one's saying that!"
So, you know, Trump is absolutely in control of MAGA. Or somebody is. Or somebody thinks somebody is. And MAGA has fallen back into line.

Or somebody thinks it has. Will. Wants to.

Forget It, Jake. It’s Immigration Court.


 Immigration Court is not Art. III court. It’s part of the Administration; like the Roberts Court. This judge is undoubtedly following Administration orders. Or he can be fired and replaced.

Not an Article III Judge.

Yes, this is a problem. Yes, we need immigration reform. Yes, it has been this way a long time. Yes, there are flaws in the system. Yes, reform is almost always needed, and certainly always late.

Let There Be Spoilers


Alright , “Superman” is now “woke.” That’s the rap on the film from MAGA. And frankly, their opinion is beneath consideration; but it does expose something about them.

So Superman, as ever, is from Krypton, and he thinks his biological parents sent him to earth to help the people there. Basically, (in line with all the other “Superman” movies with an origin story, he’s Jesus, or, less accurately (because the term comes from literary criticism, and doesn’t mean what you think it means), he’s a Christ figure. He thinks this because his parents included a video message in whatever form of transport sent him to earth.

But the message was damaged, so he only knows the first part, the part that tells him he’s been sent earth for the people there. Bad guys recover the whole message, and it turns out his Kryptonian parents wanted him to be Elon Musk: rule the world with his superpowers, and fuck as many women as possible, to recreate the Kryptonian race. White people rule, IOW, with Kal El as their progenitor and overlord. A Tech Bros dream.

The dream of Elmo, for one.

It gets better: Lex Luthor is uber rich and has the technological genius Elmo only imagines he has. And, we find out, he really hates aliens; or any other meta human (the rest of DC’s superheroes), because they are “better” than him. Mostly he hates Superman because he’s stolen the world’s attention, that should rightly be on Lex. And Lex proves he’s willing to destroy the world to destroy Superman and reclaim his place on the world stage.

Yup. Lex is Donald Trump. Or close enough for highway work.

The central point of the plot, the point the story resolves on, is that Superman cares, and that he’s trying to do the right thing (not as easily accomplished as it is in the comic books or lesser movies). He is, in other words, fully human (I’m not doing that part of the story justice; but it’s the rest of the movie). In other words, he wants to do good. Lex doesn’t; Lex is as narcissistic as Trump. Kal El’s parents wanted an ubermencsh to supplant humanity. The classic sci-fi alien invasion scenario. They embody Musk’s raison d’etre. Enough, I suppose, to condemn the story as “woke.” But the joke is on MAGA. Because the movie is really about how Superman is a good man.  A decent man who thinks of others more than himself. Not a Christ figure, but someone struggling to embody fundamental Christian teachings: to be last of all, and servant of all.

No wonder it drives MAGA crazy. Coming or going, this story confronts their selfishness, their narcissism, their disdain for anyone they consider “NOK.” Because the good guy in this movie is the dead opposite of everyone they admire most in the world.


Monday, July 14, 2025

🎶This Land Is Your Land/This Land Is My Land🎶

 


"This land belongs to/white people only!”*

*New government approved lyrics.

I was always bothered by the title “Department of HOMELAND Security.”

A Long, Long Time Ago

We chose the word “dog” to mock God, too.

We’ve been doing this for millennia.

BWAH-HAHAHAHA! 😈

Marbury v Madison v Justice

Professor Vladeck explains what the Court did today:
As folks may recall, the student loan case first reached the Court on a pair of emergency applications from the Biden administration—to vacate nationwide injunctions against the program that had been imposed by the Eighth Circuit (in a suit brought by a number of red states) and the Northern District of Texas (in a suit brought by private plaintiffs), respectively. In both cases, one of the administration’s central arguments for emergency relief was that the government was likely to prevail on the merits because the plaintiffs lacked Article III standing (that is, they weren’t injured by the policy they were seeking to challenge)—and that the standing obstacle was reason enough to allow the government to continue to implement its policy.

In both cases, the Court deferred its resolution of the applications while it considered the merits of the government’s appeals—rulings that had the effect of keeping the program on hold for an additional 6.5 months. After argument, the Court held (unanimously) that the private plaintiffs lacked standing; and it held 6-3 that one of the states had standing (in analysis I heavily criticized at the time). In other words, the Court kept a controversial Department of Education policy initiative paused for 6.5 months while it sorted out whether anyone had standing to challenge it—rebuffing the President’s request that the policy go back into place in the interim.

Contrast that with Monday’s ruling. In asking the justices to stay the district court’s injunction against the mass firings and restructuring of the Department of Education, the Trump administration’s principal argument was not that those measures were legal, but that the plaintiffs lacked Article III standing to challenge them.* The best explanation for Monday’s ruling is that a majority of the justices agree that the government is likely to prevail on its standing argument—and, as has been the case so often in the Court’s recent approach to emergency applications, gave short shrift to the equities.

If that’s true, then we have this rather obvious contrast—where serious standing objections were not enough to justify emergency relief when it was the Biden administration looking to put its student loan debt relief plan back into effect, but where (to my mind, weaker) standing objections were enough to justify allowing the President to effectively strangle a critically important federal agency (and to defeat the various acts of Congress standing that agency up and giving it responsibilities it will now struggle to discharge). Perhaps there is a good explanation for why the standing concerns were sufficient to justify a stay here but not in the student loan cases (where, again, the Court unanimously agreed that the private plaintiffs lacked standing). I’ll confess that it’s possible such a distinction exists. It’s also possible that a majority found the government’s other arguments in support of a stay in this case persuasive—although there’s a reason why the government didn’t lead with them (and, in any event, Justice Sotomayor’s dissent seems to make quick work of them).

But to go back to a post I wrote a few weeks ago, that’s yet another reason why the Court needs to explain itself when it grants emergency relief—not just to provide guidance to lower courts and the relevant government actors (to say nothing of the public), but to rationalize what, at least at first blush, sure look like alarming inconsistencies in the Court’s behavior that seem best-explained not by a legal principle, but by which party controlled the White House (and, through it, the Department of Education) at the time of the Court’s ruling. Now, more than ever, that ought to be an impression the justices are ill-inclined to reinforce.
The good professor is too circumspect to state the obvious: this court is deeply, and nakedly, political. He makes that point by drawing the picture. But he won’t state it openly, so that the conclusion isn’t dismissed as “political.” I’m not saying it isn’t, nor that that’s a bad thing. But it leaves his analysis with enough “plausible deniability” to let his analysis stand as an objective one.

Which it is. It is objectively plain that this court is thoroughly political, and nakedly so.

My title is a bit misleading. This is not a constitutional issue, it’s an equity issue. It’s also a plain issue of law.  And it induces a plain constitutional crisis. As Justice Sotomayor writes:
Only Congress has the power to abolish the Department. The Executive’s task, by contrast, is to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” U. S. Const., Art. II, §3. Yet, by executive fiat, the President ordered the Secretary of Education to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department.” Exec. Order No. 14242, 90 Fed. Reg. 13679 (2025). Consistent with that Executive Order, Secretary Linda McMahon gutted the Department’s workforce, firing over 50 percent of its staff overnight. In her own words, that mass termination served as “the first step on the road to a total shutdown” of the Department. Dept. of Ed., Press Release (Mar. 11, 2025); infra, at 7.

When the Executive publicly announces its intent to break the law, and then executes on that promise, it is the Judiciary’s duty to check that lawlessness, not expedite it. Two lower courts rose to the occasion, preliminarily enjoining the mass firings while the litigation remains ongoing. Rather than maintain the status quo, however, this Court now intervenes, lifting the injunction and permitting the Government to proceed with dismantling the Department. That decision is indefensible. It hands the Executive the power to repeal statutes by firing all those necessary to carry them out. The majority is either willfully blind to the implications of its ruling or naive, but either way the threat to our Constitution’s separation of powers is grave. Unable to join in this misuse of our emergency docket, I respectfully dissent.
The professor is right:, dissent should be read in whole. But neither of them states the obvious, which needs now to be stated: this Court has abandoned all claim to being a third branch of government, standing apart from the other two as the third leg of the stool. It is wholly an arm of this Republican administration.

And that, at last, is a Constitutional crisis. If anyone is paying attention.


*This is the Court order in toto:
The application for stay presented to JUSTICE JACKSON and by her referred to the Court is granted. The May 22, 2025 preliminary injunction entered by the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts, case No. 1:25–cv–10601, is stayed pending the disposition of the appeal in the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and disposition of a petition for a writ of certiorari, if such a writ is timely sought. Should certiorari be denied, this stay shall terminate automatically. In the event certiorari is granted, the stay shall terminate upon the sending down of the judgment of this Court.
Curiously, there is no mention there of standing as an issue (or at all), and the dissent doesn’t raise the issue, either.  It was argued by the Administration; was it considered by the Court as equitable grounds to issue the stay? If so, why didn’t the Court say so? I know I’m repeating what Professor Vladeck said, but I’m trying to clarify his argument for non-lawyers. Equity, like general law, works by rules. What has happened to those rules is not explained by this Order; but it appears those rules no longer matter because of the person in the White House. At the very least, the courts, and the public, have no guidance at all from the Supreme Court. And that makes it even harder to offer any argument that this Court is not now plainly, and indeed wholly, political.