Week of Trump/Musk Wrestling
Trump v Musk: the Politics of Unrequited Love,
Tariff Backfires, TACO Trump

Of course, I have a comment:

Okay, TWO comments:

From The Borowitz Report: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has offered to broker a peace deal between the two mean kids.

driftglass begins with this:

Yeah, it’s irritating.

A respondent is incredulous:
Left it as he found it? Upwards of 40% of the government is now gone (most on paid leave until a day before October 1st).

Most Americans support diversity, fear for democracy, and want government to do more.

AND more of us see a difference between the two parties.

An associated poll shows who Americans think will most benefit from the Republican Big Beautiful Bill.

Spoiler: It won’t be you or me.

tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors has some details as Trump keeps tariffs ON auto parts from China, but keeps tariffs OFF automobiles themselves.

Imported cars won’t be be taxed.
But parts not yet in cars will be taxed.

So automakers are putting together possible plans, in case Trump doesn’t chicken out, to avoid those tariffs on auto parts by moving manufacturing out of the US.
If not in the United States, where would American cars then be made?
Come on, let’s not always see the same hands.

Also Representative Madeleine Dean educates Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick that, no, We cannot build bananas in America

More important, why has the financial community come up with TACO, Trump Always Chickens Out, rather than the acronym Dave had already come up with?

Key conspiracy (shared by Trump)
There is no Joe Biden – executed in 2020. Biden clones, doubles and robotic engineered soulless, mindless entities are what you see. Democrats don’t know the difference.

Key rename (Rep. Greg Steube)
Washington Metropolitan Authority for Greater Access (get it, get it?)

Trump hates reading. So daily briefings go unread.
Trump hates paying attention. Verbal briefings bore him, so he won’t listen.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard thinks she has an answer.

She will hire Fox Network producers. So Trump will likely absorb what is presented in videos mimicking his favorite news entertainment.

Might get him to notice what’s going on in the world of national security.

Key focus of ordinary voters:
They want enough food to get through the month. They want to go to college without going into debt. They want free childcare, or at least childcare that doesn’t take half their pay. They want housing that doesn’t take most of their pay. They want a stop to the richest of the rich taking EVERYTHING.

She has a single piece of advice for Democratic lawmakers: Show up.

Even in Republican areas where Democrats never get elected. Show up.

Republican politicians are afraid of their constituents.
Now especially, Democrats should show up.

Senator Ernst seemed dismissive: We all are going to die.

PZ Myers brings us her brief apology to everyone gawdawful dumb enough to be offended, particularly those in the town hall who did not realize we are all mortal.

Key regret (Senator Ernst):
So, I apologize and I’m really, really glad I did not have to bring up the subject of the tooth fairy as well.

The actual apology is brief, sarcastic, and more than a little bitter:

Key falsehood:
Ernst blamed the “hysteria that’s out there coming from the left” for the outcry over her comments. Like other Republicans, she claims that the proposed cuts of more than $700 billion in Medicaid funding over the next ten years is designed only to get rid of the waste and fraud in the program. Thus, they say, they are actually strengthening Medicaid for those who need it.

Key reality:
They target Medicaid expansion, cut the ability of states to finance Medicaid, force states to drop coverage, and limit access to care. And the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says the cuts mean more than 10.3 million Americans will lose health care coverage.

All to arrange more tax cuts (primarily for the incredibly wealthy).

The same analysis is now available in audio format, as Richardson narrates in podcast.

Justice Neil Gorsuch insists he has read Pride Puppy, and summarizes it thusly:

Then, after an attempt to correct him:

Markus Bones provides a quick run through of the book.

We should forgive readers who conclude that Justice Gorsuch may not have actually read Pride Puppy but may instead be relying on some conservative distortion.

Imani Gandy and Jessica Mason Pieklo of Rewire News Group join in podcast, interviewing Robin Stevenson, actual author of Pride Puppy in a discussion about her experience as a target of the book banning conservative movement and the pending SCOTUS case, Mahmoud v. Taylor.

You may prefer a complete transcript (PDF).

For making this a suddenly safer world, we all are in Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s debt.

Key potential damage:
Ukraine has just carried out a stunning drone attack on four Russian military airbases, seriously damaging more than forty bombers, many of them capable of carrying nuclear weapons. It’s not yet clear whether the planes are wrecked beyond repair, but based on the video footage above, it seems likely.

Key significance:
I haven’t been able to find a reliable hard figure for how many nuclear-capable bombers Russia has in total, but the ones just destroyed probably represent a non-trivial fraction of them. This reduces a potential nuclear threat to the West, just as the Ukrainian war effort has been reducing conventional threats for years by weakening the Russian military.

Key discovery:
What I find was, having spoken to many different former apartheid leaders and many different white farmers, Afrikaners in business:
 
They were extremely shocked to discover that this was the narrative that has been played out in Washington DC, and that they wanted to assure me that this was not happening.

Key caveat:
Now…having said that, that doesn’t negate the fact that white people or white farmers are being killed, or black farmers are being killed.
 
Let’s not exclude the fact that there’s a high crime rate just in the last quarter of South Africa.

Key Senatorial pre-verdict:
She should be prosecuted. I hope she gets convicted, and I hope she gets sentenced to the maximum penalty as an example so other judges don’t abuse their authority

The good Senator is interviewed by Matt Smith of WISN Channel in Milwaukee.

Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson has questions he wishes Mr. Smith had thought to ask:

Key omission:
Smith didn’t ask what would seem to me the obvious follow-up question, would Johnson support the prosecution and the maximum penalty for an elected official who conspired to prevent the lawful transfer of power from one elected president to the next?

Key reason for understanding:
After all, Johnson was just one sessile state attorney general from facing criminal charges himself in the attempt by Trump to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

He asks a reasonable question. Can you (yeah YOU!) instantly put your hands on your own proof of citizenship?

A correspondent notes that, although immigration laws were enforced way before, ICE as an actual agency was brought into being by Congress in 2003.
Which brings up a question about restarting.

Key tragedy:
One director of a local ministry that has previously offered coastal town residents shelter during hurricanes and other dangerous weather events shared that many immigrants in her community are expressing a reluctance to take advantage of such services moving forward. This is not because they do not worry about their safety or are prone to put their families in harm’s way, but because they fear that entering a public shelter makes them vulnerable to I.C.E. harassment.

Key disgrace:
America is quickly becoming a gated community of terrified white people who believe the good fortune they’ve had of being born here is some kind of moral achievement or divinely appointed birthright.

A collateral life lesson comes into force when a horrible crime is committed. Those guilty only of sharing skin color, religion, or country of origin should not be held responsible.

Not everyone had that upbringing.

In Hackwhackers, Trump reacts to the recent Colorado shooting by banning all immigrants from Asia and Africa, and from predominantly Muslim countries.

With a few notable omissions.

Key deviation (reported by the BBC):
Trump has depicted it as a matter of national security. He cited a recent attack on members of Colorado’s Jewish community, which was allegedly carried out by an Egyptian national. Egypt itself is not on the banned list.

Key additional exceptions:
At the same time, he declines to ban travel from his business partners in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE, who have shielded home-grown terrorists.

Also from Hackwhackers:

Seems applicable.

Key absurdity:
Moreover, looking at the scriptures from a more analytic point of view, one can’t help but note that there are literally hundreds of passages that disagree with one another. What is the criteria for determining which one is correct? Personal preference?

Widespread, I’m afraid, and singularly unfortunate.

Key isolating result:
Many cradle IFB church members make it to the grave 60, 70, or 80 years later without being soiled from contact with the “world.” While people are free to live their lives as they wish, for many IFB congregants, they don’t know any other world but the IFB one.