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[Note of gratitude]
- Julian Sanchez notes that not all conspiracy theories are equally suspect:
I don’t know if we ought to conflate “people who think there’s something fishy or being covered up around Epstein” with the fully unhinged alternate reality of QAnon. It’s a gradient, but the former is compatible with being generally more or less tethered to reality.
— Julian Sanchez (@normative.bsky.social) July 13, 2025 at 6:35 AM
Ok, now I’m CERTAIN he’s in the Epstein files.
— Julian Sanchez (@normative.bsky.social) July 12, 2025 at 4:52 PM
- In Letters from an American, historian Heather Cox Richardson sees a pattern in Trump’s meritless conspiracy peddling to successfully get to the White House. Now, faced with the Epstein scandal, the familiar pattern just can’t work. Each attempted distraction becomes worse than inept. They become comically bumbling.
The same analysis is now available in audio format, as Richardson narrates in podcast.
- Brian Beutler notes that Epstein speculation justifiably targets Trump, but that the web of failed lies should bring down the entire bad faith enterprise.
Key subheadline:
Trump is the main target, but the war should be against the whole right-wing deception machine.Key illustration:
(Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images) - @Silkgengar says MAGAfolk are disillusioned by pictures, videos, and reports of Trump running for cover on Epstein:
- driftglass goes to non-ancient history to point out that the Epstein tape gaps, corrupt aides, and clumsy denials are a lot like Watergate, but a lot less intelligent.
- Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit watches the Trump dance turn into the Trump squirm with multiple failed distractions, beginning with this one:
- tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors looks into the Epstein list‑that’s‑not‑a‑list‑ and watches Trump squirm.
- Infidel753 applies his typically meticulous research to explain why, although Epstein is dead, his ghost is far from quiet, and why we shouldn’t be either.
- Tommy Christopher brings us the segment of CNN in which Wolf Blitzer reads aloud the weirdly graphic birthday message Trump sent to his friend Jeffrey Epstein in 2003, and manages to express a bit of shock (shock that a transcript can’t capture) when he has to describe Trump’s drawing of pubic hair.
- In Rural Missouri, our own Jess Piper has been talking to MAGA voters and has a different prediction. The entire Epstein scandal will fade to nothing and Trump will emerge unscathed.
Key timeline:
Here’s the deal: they will stop talking about it. Give it a month. - Dave Columbo has helpful, although unsolicited, advice for Donald Trump about his Epstein responses:
- Frances Langum brings us newsmax host Greg Kelly who assures us that we can trust Trump about the list because Trump knew Epstein.
- Right Wing Watch brings us pastor Shane Vaughn who explains to the MAGA flock why they must leave Trump alone about Epstein:
Key immunity:
Don’t you think God appointed him? Then leave him alone! - Again?
The Pope wasn’t the first?From The Borowitz Report, a bombshell revelation that JD Vance was the last person to see Epstein alive.
- In Canadian satire, The Beaverton reports as Trump struggles with temptation, knowing he can’t release the Epstein files but so loving to see his name in print.
- In Australian satire The Shovel reports as Netanyahu warns Trump that Iran is days away from releasing the Epstein files.
- At The Onion, Trump invites Jeffrey Epstein on stage to explain there is no conspiracy.
- At News Corpse, Trump Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt gets into the act, stumbling through a disjointed defense of Trump. She can’t quite bring herself to deny that Trump is named in the Epstein files.
- Juliet at Decoding Fox News reviews the network’s befuddled approach to the Epstein scandal. Trump’s documented history with women, including young women, (explored in some detail) doesn’t help.
Various Fox shows finally go with pretty much ignoring the entire story, with the exception of Laura Ingraham (where – boy howdy!!)
Audio contains more, narrated by Juliet herself! Worth any small number of seconds random sampling for those who hesitate at the investment of an hour.
- Desi Lydic talks about everything media outlets should be talking about on the Epstein files
- Max’s Dad resorts to wisdom, pointing out that the Colbert cancellation is just the latest evidence of something much more sinister in media.
- Colbert has been canceled and Ant Farmer’s Almanac helpfully provides the five stages of cancellation grief
- In Scotties Playtime, blundersonword relays the backlash. Amid death and devastation in Texas, a pediatrician despairs that voters who are now suffering could have voted for such incompetent boobs. So, of course, she loses her job.
Key questions about questions:
But once again people have died, children have died, destruction and despair are gripping our nation, and the cause of that horror is not open for discussion? It’s being political in a time of national mourning? It’s insensitive? - At The Moderate Voice David Robertson links to multiple stories with multiple pieces of the same Texas flood puzzle: Why the hell was a summer camp operating in a flash flood zone in the first place?
Key news investigation:
That is a question that Associated Press personnel Ryan J. Foley and Christopher L. Keller are trying to get an answer to. - Sarah Cooper has Trump explaining deporting immigrants into foreign prisons:
- Grung_e_Gene, at Disaffected and it Feels So Good, finds surveillance video capturing what masked ICE agents do in a school parking lot when they think nobody is looking. Gene sees an obvious analogy to what is being done to the country.
- A federal judge has ruled that ICE excesses in southern California have to stop.
Well…
Stop temporarily until the Trump administration can appeal.
Meanwhile, the practices can continue everywhere else in the country.In Hackwhackers, we discover what some of those excesses entailed. And the picture is horrific.
Key abuses named by the Judge:
…raiding Home Depot parking lots, car washes and other places where they expect to find immigrants looking for day work or who are working. The Judge said that the Government had offered no evidence that they weren’t making arrests on any basis other than targeting “brown skinned people in Southern California.”Raiding …uh… parking lots? To arrest and hold dark skin people who may be immigrants?
In the land of the free and the home of the brave?
- Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger has numbers. Trump seems to think he can revoke the citizenship of at least some of those born in the US. The percentage who agree is vanishingly small, even among Republicans.
- Early on, Trump issued an Executive Order attacking Sanctuary Cities.
Journalist Arturo Dominguez explains just what sanctuary policies involve and why over 50 local governments are suing to overturn the attack.
- Imani Gandy is interviewed by Lauri Daniel Favors on one vital hidden trap in the Republican Big Bad Bill: the seeds of what may become a nationwide ban on abortion
- Author John Scalzi looks at price differences and sees more than an indication that price gouging has become the norm.
- Jason Linkins sees the winner of the NYC Democratic primary successfully running on actual NYC concerns.
these guys really make great ads
— Jason Linkins (@dceiver.bsky.social) July 11, 2025 at 2:14 PM
Establishment Democrats are scared of being identified with leftish proposals, and move to act against the new candidate. Jason suggests their biggest problem:
"the only problem is that we suck and no one likes us and no one wants to run under our banner and our ideas are toxic and we're starting to suspect that we may come off as nakedly cynical shitheads"
www.wsj.com/politics/pol…
— Jason Linkins (@dceiver.bsky.social) July 11, 2025 at 12:02 AM
Well, yeah…
There is that… - Michael J Scott is not a fount of optimism. He examines the latest polling and tells us the Democratic Party is doomed.
Key tedium:
This is a crisis of leadership. This is a crisis of identity. The Democratic Party isn’t fighting like a party that wants to win in 2026. It’s not even fighting like a party that wants to be remembered.Key lack:
Where is the charisma? Where is the figure who can rally a room, light up a crowd, and make people feel something other than resignation? Voters don’t need a technocrat. They need a champion. Someone they would follow into a fight. Someone they would believe in. - In Michigan, John Hiner of MLive Media Group urges us to calm down. While he acknowledges these times of hardship and peril, he suggests they are matched by other times from which Americans emerged and recovered.
He quotes the late Paul Harvey:
In times like these, it is helpful to remember there have always been times like these.Dave Dubya isn’t having it. Not any of it.
He lists the ways we are living without precedent, beginning with this:
Key point of dispute:
No. Mr. Editor, I vehemently disagree. We have definitely NOT been here before. - Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson takes a look at Trump’s relentless badgering the Nobel Committee to at least give him the same Peace Prize they gave Obama.
Note: James is a true blue conservative who doesn’t think Obama should have gotten it either.
But Trump?? - Much debate continues about the slaughter of civilians in Gaza, with blame fixed on Hamas for targeting Jews then hiding as cowards among innocents, on Netanyahu with apparent indifference to the killing of civilians (they were in the way, so stop obsessing), on occasional Israeli soldiers acting on their own.
Not much attention is paid to the West Bank.
M. Bouffant at Web of Evil links to more reports of militant settlers targeting Palestinians (for existing) and attacking occasional journalists (for reporting) with extreme violence, with little accountability.
- In The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser, Bruce applies the Biblical scripture Isaiah 10: 1‑3 to Trump and fellow travelers.
- I confess. Since it first aired, my favorite 10 seconds of The Simpsons has been Homer at prayer:
PZ Myers has mostly abandoned the juvenile joys of DC Comics, but notes the moral message was sound. Superman was always woke, although a bit goofy.
Today, the best thing for the country is that the newest movie super annoys MAGA fanatics.
- The Propaganda Professor gives his weekly Bubblegum Crucifix Award to a Christian pastor who is not guided by empathy or sense. He hates gay people because he knows of scriptures that tell him to hate.
Naturally, the prof asks about other passages that could apply to Pastor Justin Zhong.
I confess to also wondering how much Pastor Zhong will get for selling his daughter into slavery, as instructed by Exodus 21:7‑8.
In fact, I would inquire a little more deeply, so to speak, than the ever so polite professor. Should the good pastor offer a money‑back guarantee, as Exodus provides, if the new owner is not sexually satisfied by the new slave?
After all, as this ancient scripture teaches, fair is fair. - @whiskeywhistle98 learns, as do we all, the one essential for a happy marriage:
- North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz speaks to those for whom faith is a vital part of their experience, but who feel faith slipping away.
Key plain truth:
If you’re in that place right now, I won’t pretend there’s any easy way out or a simple path back to faith. I can’t even promise that you’ll ever find your way back, at least not to what you used to call belief. It may be a very different experience in the future.Key possibility:
Maybe it’s about asking yourself what you still know to be true; about the goodness of people, about the things that matter to you, about the gifts you’ve been given, about the kind of person you want to be in the world.Key adequacy:
You may have indeed lost your faith, or you may have just lost your way a bit. Either way, this might be a good time to breathe, look around, and find joy in what is beside and around you as you travel.
If that is all the faith you can muster right now, let it be so.
Be encouraged. - Vincent at A Wayfarer’s Notes continues to deal with serious medical conditions. He now makes plans for a memorable posthumous non-funeral party.
- In Nan’s Notebook, Nan continues her slow, painful healing. An arm injury can be more debilitating than is generally recognized (My own experience lends a bit of empathy). Nan still manages a bit of humor.
- At last, the answer to a problem that has kept me awake so many nights.
The Journal of Improbable Research digs in and discovers a 1962 study by Duke University revealing why dogs pant at certain frequencies.
- CalicoJack in The Psy of Life moves from work to retirement, from Cambodia to Canada, and discovers it isn’t an easy journey to start.
- In Happiness Between Tails da-AL comes back home with lots of cool, and some humorous, and some touching, pictures from Norway.
- SilverAppleQueen has cats with a sensible approach to stifling weather.
- The Savanna Bananas can keep a kid interested in baseball
Special thanks to those who link to us:
Long time friend Infidel: With his always entertaining Link roundup
tengrain at MockPaperScissors: with his Special mentions.
and
Steve in Manhattan at Crooks&Liars
Carson Peters is 20 now. This interview was back when he was playing church socials:
Let’s go to our wired rivers of wisdom:
2 responses to “Week of Epstein, Inept Epstein Answers, Harsh Questions
Cover-up Uncovered
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Thank you for all you do, and thank you for linking Scottie’s, Burr. Great column today.
Howdy Burr!
Elected Republicans think they’re beyond accountability either at the ballot box or in the courts. One of the key factors they rely on is the firehose of falsehood to keep the 24-hour news cycle flowing, so none of the big stories will grow legs and come back to haunt them later. That the Epstein story hasn’t been pushed off is a bit of an anomaly, but not a great threat to their overall oligarchical designs. They know they just have to give illusory explanations and it will eventually be gone like so many other stories that should’ve ended Trump’s political career.
As for where are the question of where are the charismatic Democratic leaders, has the firehose of falsehoods already flushed the Sanders-AOC MAGA tour down the memory-hole? We are ripe for another populist in the FDR vein to appear on the scene. AOC seems like as gooda candidate as any to fill the void.
Blog On, Sibling!
Jack
PS Thank you for the link and for remembering us.