Week of the Epstein Everlast
Dodging, defending, Fox ignoring, more Trump creepiness, lies, loathing from the public, gerrymandering, racism, ICE

News Corpse points to Greg Kelly of Newsmax fame as one of several MAGA personalities now coalescing around Maxwell as a victim and is having none of it.

I dunno, Greg. After an extensive investigation, she was finally arrested in July 2020. The court proceedings and the trial went on for almost a year and a half. After she was found guilty, her lawyers appealed and delayed and argued for months. She was finally sentenced in June 2022.

23 months does not strike me as a rush to judgment. And she was not convicted of associating with Epstein. She recruited scores of victims as young as 14 and even participated in their sexual abuse.

Now This Impact brings us more as Kelly goes on to suggest that there’s a hell of a lot of evidence that she’s innocent, the victim of a deep state plot. He preemptively congratulates Trump for standing by her. After all, just because Epstein did horrible things, that doesn’t mean Ghislaine is also guilty:

Her lawyers had almost two years to discover and present that hell of a lot of evidence that you claim to know about. She wasn’t convicted on the basis of being pals with Epstein.

Victim after victim testified about being rounded up as kids, recruited by Guislaine Maxwell, seduced with promises, then sexually exploited. Far from a deep state plot, she was convicted because she went hunting for kids in their early teens for extensive sexual abuse. And she found them. Many, many of them.

Judge Allison Nathan at sentencing:
The evidence at trial established that Ms Maxwell directly and repeatedly and over the course of many years participated in a horrific scheme to entice, transport and traffic underage girls, some as young as 14, for sexual abuse by and with Jeffrey Epstein. I will pause on those words for a moment, ‘by and with Epstein.’ It is important at the outset to emphasize that although Epstein was, of course, central to this criminal scheme, Ms Maxwell is not being punished in place of Epstein or as a proxy for Epstein. Like every other participant in a multi-defendant case, Ms Maxwell is being punished for the role that she played in the criminal conduct. As to that role, the trial evidence established that Ms. Maxwell was instrumental in the abuse of several underage girls and that she herself participated in some of the abuse.

Uh oh. The schedule leaked. The meeting’s off!!

Um… How about just moving it around? And this time NO leaks!
The meeting’s ON!!

Aw crud! It leaked again.

Key facts:
A much-anticipated meeting between Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel, Vice President JD Vance and others was moved from Vance’s residence to the White House Wednesday night after intense media coverage, a source familiar with the logistics told CNN.

Key cover story:
Vance and his office denied on Wednesday that a meeting on Epstein was taking place.

Key exception:
It seems Fox News had no way to spin the story other than manufacture outrage about what it called the woke mob and an advertisement involving a double entendre of genes for jeans featuring a blonde‑haired blued‑eyed actress.

Key totally not creepy:
She’s become a star. It’s that face. It’s that brain. It’s those lips. The way they move.

Watch, but hold your nose:

Not on any of it.
Not even a little bit.

On some issues, they’re even becoming super‑stressed.

Key example:
Putin’s decreed there will be no recession, so the way he’ll do that is to tell everyone there’s no recession.

If Trump’s fantasies are that inflation has been conquered, and actual real measurements show increases across the board, the solution is to fire the person in charge of measuring stuff.

So now economic measurements will be coming from a guy who thinks it’s realistic to boast that prices have dropped more than 100%

Key reductions (quoting Trump):
Trump: You know, we’ve cut drug prices by 1200, 1300, 1400, 1500%. I don’t mean 50%. I mean 1400, 1500%

The rest of the gang join in as Trump’s chief economic advisor lets us know the latest jobs numbers are great if we don’t count the latest jobs numbers.

In each case, what Trump wants to be true collides explosively with what is actually true.

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

This time, Republicans are using saturation: the echo of the same falsehood from multiple directions at once.

Key reasons:
This debility is partly of their own making, partly a consequence of the poor-but-idiosyncratic decisions of individuals, and partly attributable to bad luck.

Key flawed politics:
An important contributing factor was that, as political media became ubiquitous, Democrats made the fateful decision to retreat. To be as invisible and inoffensive as possible. To Do The Work, and let The Work speak for itself—ideally in the pages of the New York Times.

Key scorn:
If you want to know why so many people who protest kings also hold the Democratic Party in contempt, I believe it’s stuff like this. Too many Democrats run scared from righteous truths, because they lack confidence in their ability to win easy arguments. They’d rather allow evil to flourish unchecked than get even slightly crosswise with the median voters in their districts. And leadership has their backs.

In Rural Missouri, Jess Piper visits the coast, watches a bucket of crabs, learns a little about MAGA folk, then discovers from personal experience that similar lessons can apply to Missouri Democratic politicos.

Apparently, an effort to win in rural Missouri goes against party expectations:

Key temerity:
How dare I attempt to get out of the bucket and pull my community out with me?

Key what about Epstein
Now, I come from a controversial school of thought that holds that a political party can, and even should, do two things at once.

Hard to argue against him. MAGA politicians are finding voters reluctant to choose them. So, instead, MAGA politicians try to choose their voters.

Key basic tactic:
Now, we are at the precipice of arguably the most blatantly racist redistricting efforts in decades. The only way to create five seats, like Trump wants, is to create more white majority districts by dividing Black and Latino districts.

Texas Republicans are horrified to discover they have accidentally redrawn the map to rejoin Mexico

Is this the passenger who, on a bad day, will get irritated at some overlooked slight? Will she call ICE and have the immigrant removed on some pretext?

For the effort and extraordinary skill it took to achieve that unexpected success, he became the first person of African descent from any country to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

That brings back memories.

I was a little kid when Ralph Bunche learned that his son had been denied permission to join the Westside Tennis Club in NYC, where he had been taking tennis lessons with friends. The white friends were welcomed as members. Bunche was told that, had he himself applied, he also would have been rejected because of his race.

Key account (In the New York Times):
Dr. Bunche said: “Since you assure me I wouldn’t be welcome, I am not likely to make an application.”
 
Dr. Bunche said Mr. Burglund replied: “You put it very bluntly.”
 
“But very accurately.” Dr. Bunche answered.

I haven’t found the exact quote or to whom it should be credited, but from my own imprecise memory:

That I can remember the incident, and that former slaves were still living during my own life, both tell me something.

Key observation (stolen from William Faulkner)
The past is never dead. It’s not even past.

And Julian Sanchez on why it’s an absurd argument:

Imani Gandy and Jessica Mason Pieklo of Rewire News Group are joined by guest Law Professor Elizabeth Sepper of the University of Texas to talk about how SCOTUS is determined to rewrite the 1^st Amendment.

You may prefer a complete transcript (PDF) or the podcast format.

Professor PZ Myers briefly (Thank God!) makes fun of Joseph Martin’s hysterically confident description of genitalia.

John has two nits to pick: He never said the quote. The picture isn’t him.

Well…
…yeah, there is that.

Many of us can relate from personal experience the slowing down, the vague dismissal of uncertain pain that may become indicators of something more serious.

She talks of trying to change lifelong habits, changes that are much harder than writing, or reading, about them.

When carbohydrates have become a comfort, and drinking a support companion, fighting the aging process can become a time of denial and despair.

She ends with hard won hope, and that’s a bonus.

Worth a read.

She concludes with a poem of hope from guest blogger Dawn Pisturino.