Week of Trump Damage Damaging Trump
Tariffs, Money Laundered, ICE, War & loss & victory & loss, Catered Escape

Those ideologues, having dug in, now intimately familiar with policy minutia, are deeply rooted:

But the public continues to feel economic punishment as they pay the increased costs for pretty much everything.

Quoting economics expert Kent Jones, writing in Salon.com:

So Trump officials have to refund the tariffs. The amount of tariff money Trump collected from US families totaled 166 billion dollars. That’s a lot that has to be refunded.

And Trump officials have started to send the money back!
(Yay!!)

Turns out there is one thing…

Quoting columnist Dan Pfeiffer:

So ordinary consumers (that would be you and me) won’t see any of the cash we were illegally taxed by Trump at the checkout counter.

First came the canceling of accounts:

It involved a whole lot of Trump associated accounts that forensic accountants at the financial institutions saw as engaging in money laundering schemes.

Then came the federal law enforcement response:

So Trump’s Treasury Department outlawed the rule used to find criminal accounts.

From former Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-NJ), a lead sponsor of the tracking rule:

He suggests that his experience reflects that of millions of others lacking the means to challenge unjust circumstances.

Division amplifies the inequity:

One example:

He sees a glimmer of hope:

With other points of unity:

And more:

This…

…becomes a compelling portend of this:

Headlined:

Previous victory boast aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln (May 1, 2003):

Long time attitude:

Predictable result:

Current Attitude (via ABC News):

driftglass includes with the Mission Accomplished speech a bit of historic centrism:

I must agree with what I see as the intended main thrust of his argument.

The reflexive labeling of such criticisms as an attack on Jews is simply wrong.

One of his strongest arguments is in support of calling things by their right names:

He doesn’t directly object to carrying definitional exactitude into the pedantic. He does include this common quote as a seemingly deliberate missing of a tragic point:

He is correct in that an objection to the use of genocide is sometimes used to dismiss, without further examination, the killing of civilians, including children.

My friend begins going off course in his use of Zionist, as in:

We can see it as a needless expansion of a definition. As Zionists, we simply support the existence of Israel. To transform the definition to mean those who support evil plays into the hands of those who support evil because they see it as intrinsic to Israel’s survival. The ambiguity also plays to those who see Jews themselves as intrinsically evil.

There is another reason, a stronger reason, to avoid that definitional distortion.
It’s real wrong.

I have a bit of additional advice. Continually attacking our unnamed fellow blogger for not engaging in direct debate can easily devolve into trolling.

It’s a judgment call, of course. Sometimes, not always, making an important attack on a widespread idea works better than attacking a single individual who holds it.

Richardson demonstrates Judge Luttig’s opinion. She documents one case after another as Blanche races into the dark side of Trump World.

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

That sentiment seems to be shared by Trump and much of his administration.

Which is a huge reason he doesn’t think Wisconsin voters should trust Republican candidate for governor, Tom Tiffany

And it turns out Tiffany had more to do with the conspiracy than is generally recognized.

Imani includes a complete transcript (PDF)

As applied to Trump:

Brian suggests we also apply the tactic aggressively to promote ideas and people advocating those ideas who are too often dismissed, without consideration, as extreme.

He illustrates the feeble way it is employed by our current legislative leadership:

Brian explains:

He wants Democrats to reclaim normalization:

For example:

Real people echo shortsighted fictional characters:

Occasionally, James has gotten into legal trouble. In one case, he pretended to be a human trafficker and tried to entice a representative of ACORN, an advocacy group for low income people. Sure enough, the video showed the representative agreeing to help import illegal immigrants.

One problem: It turned out the ACORN employee had immediately contacted law enforcement about the mysterious trafficking fellow. They encouraged him to play along while they investigated. O’Keefe was eventually informed and his ruse ended.

Still, the videos seemed, falsely seemed, to show criminal activity. The misrepresentation by O’Keefe was deliberate.

And so his life has continued along the same video pattern.

PZ Myers brings us the latest escapade. For some reason, O’Keefe convinced himself that huge masses of Muslims in Minnesota had falsely registered and voted.

Minnesota has strict penalties for voter fraud, including up to seven years in prison. So O’Keefe anticipated getting officials arrested by recording himself successfully pretending to be a Muslim non-citizen and being allowed vote.

Turned out Minnesota enforcement is more effective than James anticipated. He was caught.

PK Myers has a suggestion:

In Scotties Playtime, Scottie goes to his own painful childhood, the very personal pain which still haunts him, to communicate something important to those of us in the faith his very personal reasons for his own personal anger..

On free will:

My thought: Perhaps we should invest less time trying to refute atheism.
Maybe devote more effort to listening and understanding.

The Professor of Prop deconstructs the entire fever dream.

They had it right, except for:

Headline:

He explains the name under which he posts. The Infidel part seems obvious. He is consistently hostile to religion.
His adoption of 753 relates to something I did not expect.

Most important to those of us whose reading time is enriched by his thoughts, he promises to continue.