Week of the Non-Productive Summit
Epstein Respite, Attack Homeless, Attack Cities, Attack Obama, Attack Immigrants

Key gap:
And here’s our problem with Trump diplomacy in a nutshell–he wants some deliverable to make himself look like a Nobel Prize winner, but is truly uninterested in things like facts or outcomes, because he makes up both as easily as he breathes and lives in an echo chamber where no matter how wrong he is–he gets told he’s right.

Ted begins with wisdom, obvious wisdom, from the Washington Post:

As Tommy Christopher tells it, the story has Trump lashing out at Epstein victims and their families attacking them as Democrats trying to make him look bad as if what he did with Epstein was somehow wrong.

The denied report is that Trump sees himself, not the involved youngsters, as the real victim.

She ends with Trump’s orders to cheat in the coming Congressional elections as Texas state legislators follow instructions to gerrymander more seats.
The ALL CAPS response from Governor Gavin Newsom’s office in California mimics Trump’s infamous late night boastposts on social media.
A good laugh is had by all.

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

Key evil Democrats (Quoting Jesse Waters)
The Democrat Party has waged unrelenting political warfare for three decades. The president’s been shot, spied on, arrested, impeached twice. We’ve been de-banked, censured Republicans. Homes have been raided. Republicans have been shackled, investigated, abused. The country was invaded. Our tax dollars are being stolen by their nonprofits. Their schools are indoctrinating our children. They’re conducting sick operations on them. They’ve corrupted athletics, staged coups, been caught, ballot harvesting.

That Democrats organized an attempted assassination is a new one for me, aside from MAGA fringes.

Key Trump heroics:(Jesse Waters again)
It’s been a bloodthirsty battle for power. And we haven’t even been fighting until now. Finally, Trump’s fighting back. And this time, he’s not fighting for his own political survival. The Democrat Party is.

Key ad for ICE (Waters again)
If you believe in America first, join ICE. You get a $50,000 bonus and you get to jump out of a van and tackle illegals with Superman.

Fox also revives from their archives an older scandal: how Joe Biden, as President, insulted American manhood by actually eating ice cream from a cone!!!. This was brought up over several episodes on the network.

And this:

Texas congressional representation does not precisely follow what voters choose.
Republican candidates for Congress last year got 58% of the votes.
They got 66% of the seats. That’s 25 out of 38.

Not fair, but that’s the way representative government often works.
Democratic voters in Texas are concentrated into fewer districts.
That, plus some gerrymandering, reduces Democratic representation.

But now Republicans are worried.
Voters are incensed at Republican complicity in Trump’s Epstein cover-ups.
Trump’s firing of those who would have notified local officials of coming floods caused needless death and destruction.
The economy seems close to a nosedive after Trump tariffs explode.
Immigration as an issue has been overwhelmed by television images of needless cruelty against peaceful residents.

Trump has ordered Republicans to overcome voters turning against them by forcing the congressional seats held by Democrats from 13 down to 8.
Redistricting is to be advanced from the normal scheduled 2030 to …well… right away.

Democrats are keeping all this election fixing from happening by boycotting the Texas legislature to keep a legal quorum from happening.
Extremist Republican Attorney General Paxton is sending Texas law enforcement after the Democrats. Trump has ordered the FBI (the FBI?) to help chase them to other states.

@Silkgengar brings us the wonderful Texas Congressional Representative Jasmine Crockett to perform painful vivisection on Paxton.

The always tightly reasoned Infidel753 condemns the Democratic counter‑mid‑census move as wrongheaded and immoral at its core.

Essentially, he objects to an ethic that says if the opposition will eliminate accountability to their voters we will counter by essentially disfranchising our voters.

I dunno. The aspect I think Infidel under emphasizes is that we are discussing a national legislature. A voter in Maryland is affected by voting misrepresentation here in Missouri.

As Infidel points out, if both sides escalate that may tell some voters, maybe even most voters, that both parties are the same.

Or maybe not.
If one party wants to make the unfairness illegal and the other side opposes that restriction, that difference is a difference that makes a difference to me.

Key recruitment:
Trump’s Homeland Security recruitment ad for ICE reads, “Serve your country! Defend your culture!”

Key historical parallel:
“In this world human culture and civilization are inseparably bound up with the existence of the Aryan. His dying off or his decline would again lower upon this earth the dark veils of a time without culture.”

Key historical source:
Adolf Hitler – “Mein Kampf”

Key indictment:
This isn’t just about Trump. Doug Burgum, Pete Hegseth, Pam Bondi, and several other Republican low-life fascist goons gave speeches extolling their plan to round-up, rough-up, and relocate innocent people. Fundamentally, Republicans hate America.

At least the ideals that America represents.

Crime has been going down in each of them? Nope, that’s been reported.
The Trump takeover is not legal? Nope. That’s well known.
It’s another try of distracting from the Epstein files? Uh, uh. Same thing.

Give up?

Frances provides a possible reason for that, one which may have occurred to others among us.

She also provides us with an obviously frustrated Charlie:

Hackwhackers finds a study by researchers in the University of Northern Texas that correlates politics with these personal characteristics. They find that, for the most part, MAGAfolk are not like the rest of us.

Key correlations:
Study: MAGAts Score High On Malevolence, Low On Compassion

Key traits:
Compared to those who did not support Trump, Trump supporters reported lower affective empathy (less emotional concern for others) and higher dissonant empathy (greater enjoyment of others’ suffering).

Key oddity:
While that isn’t exactly breaking news to anyone who has been paying attention, it is outside of the political lanes that Fox News generally straddles.

Key news (Fox op-ed headline)
Trump Breaks ‘Day One’ Promise to Lower Costs as Prices Surge Across America in First Six Months

Did you know this?
Trillions of Dollars are being taken in on Tariffs, which has been incredible for our Country, its Stock Market, its General Wealth, and just about everything else…

Or this?
It has been proven, that even at this late stage, Tariffs have not caused Inflation, or any other problems for America, other than massive amounts of CASH pouring into our Treasury’s coffers.

Both must be true. Our President has said so his own self. In fact, those are his very words!!

Nan’s Notebook asks the unthinkable:

What if, and we all know it’s a silly thought, but what if the Federal Reserve, Goldman Sachs employed experts, and every credible economist is right, and Trump, for the first time in his entire existence as a mortal, is wrong?.

He goes on to relate a painful incident with a beloved parent who thinks humor from an anti‑gay comedian is uncommonly wise.

He has criticisms of knee-jerk progressives and reflexive moderates, but he presents careful evidence rather than an automatic both-sides premise. His central thesis seems to be that moderation produces an election advantage, but it is much less than political strategists generally assume.

Key conclusion:
All else equal, in a close head-to-head race, you’d rather be the more moderate candidate.

Key caveat one:
All else is never equal

Key caveat two:
A candidate’s perceived moderation is a function of much more than just their issue positions.

He presents five specific proposals for Democratic victories.

Key gratitude (Headline):
August Is National Purple Heart Month. However, the Time to Remember and Honor its Recipients Knows no Calendar

What they all have in common is that they were obvious accidents, innocent mistakes springing from unfamiliarity with service weaponry or tradition. Could have happened to any of us without a military background and with a certain degree of carelessness.

This one is different.

tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors has Trump’s proposed replacement for the fired head of the Bureau of Labor statistics giving video interviews with a backdrop of a WWII Nazi battleship.

Another mistake? Well, no actually.
Trump nominee EJ Antoni is asked about it and defends the photo, boasting that Hitler’s warship sank several allied ships, including the British battlecruiser HMS Hood.

He actually says that out loud, in front of God and everybody!

For the rest of us, the 1960 film Sink the Bismarck! remains a classic about sending EJ Antoni’s honored Nazi battleship to the bottom of the North Atlantic.

One pharma company “is banking on a continuing decline in vaccination rates to fuel a need for measles treatments—and in turn, more investor interest”

Legal expert Imani Gandy has an out-of-the-box idea RFK Jr might want to consider

Key endorsement:
Hegseth boosted the interview on social media, adding “All of Christ for All of Life.”

Yeah, he really said it, and Hegseth really promoted it.

Key personal note:
I am disappointed in, appalled at, The Bulwark for producing this trash, M. Bouffant for linking to it, and myself for laughing and laughing for 19 minutes and then posting about it.
So ashamed!!

Key wear:
I’m trying to make sure I stay a loving person, opposing things that make me angry, and not a perpetually angry person, but it’s difficult to tell when you’re swimming in so much malice every day.

Key desire:
I want to leave a legacy of kindness, a compassionate wake in the waters of this world, so that other people who are similarly fatigued by the hatred they encounter here find rest in me.
 
Maybe that’s all any of us can do: perpetuate decency and goodness and generosity in the infinitesimal space of the next choice in front of us.

Key hope:
If we make this world a little bit more loving in the small and the close and the here and now, maybe the ripples will eventually reach the big and the distant in the future.

Key tagline:
Glorify God with your online search

Key mission:
The hope was that this collision would alter the trajectory of Dimorphos around its parent asteroid Didymos and so demonstrate that similar collisions could, in theory, save the Earth from being hit by (other) hazardous asteroids.

The results are mysteriously different from what was expected.

Key essential:
The thing is, there is no #1 cat in the house. Unless it’s ME.