-
This does pretty much summarize Trump Tariff economics:
- Max’s Dad remembers Dolly for her skill at being an authentic human. He remembers part of the amazing amount of good she accomplished.
Christ, Dolly funded the Covid vaccine, she funded libraries and free books for kids, she supported Black Lives Matter (you think our little white asses are the only lives that matter she said), she supported victims of Tennessee fires who had lost everything, she supported schools that were underfunded and mostly black, she told Missouri to fuck off when they defunded her books in school libraries project and funded it herself and she refused to accept the Presidential Medal of Freedom when Trump was in office.
- Hackwhackers bids farewell to a beloved American icon, and links to some of her acts of humanity.
Rest in peace and power. - driftglass has one of his thousand-word pictures of Trump’s latest 5th Avenue victim
Notable headline:
And Crown Thy Good With Brotherhood - Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger looks at how people see Trump’s job performance and it’s bad, really bad, and getting worse.
When broken down by issue, it looks even more horrible.
Disapproved on every topic. - tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors gets a little snarky as Trump plans to campaign for Republicans by focusing on his own awesomeness.
Beginning with this:
I’m shocked that Trump’s plan to help Republican candidates in the midterms is to spend millions on ads promoting Trump. I’m sure they are thrilled with that announcement. Who could’ve seen that coming?
— Ron Filipkowski (@ronfilipkowski.bsky.social) August 26, 2026 at 5:11 AM
tengrain watches the strategy permeate the Republican experimental midterm convention, quoting Associated Press quoting the Republican National Committee:
…a primetime showcase for President Trump’s success, candidates, and causes that have propelled the 2026 midterms to unprecedented focus.Quoting The Atlantic quoting a staffer quoting Trump:
…he suggested that the ad makers mine his own on-camera statements as building blocks. “Go look at the clips,” the president told his team, according to this person. “I cite accomplishments all the time.”tengrain reacts, reasonably:
It’s always all about himself. He thinks everyone is as infatuated with him as he is with himself.
I hate having to sympathize with today’s Republicans.
Instead of ads trying to help GOP candidates get above water, Trump will buy a bunch of Ain’t-I-Pretty commercials.
Kind of a trickle down campaign.
- The Onion posts the latest manifestation of Trump’s increasing need to be the center of attention:
Prompting widespread concern among fans and followers, President Donald Trump uploaded a disturbing video of himself Friday rapidly twirling while holding knives. - News Corpse reports that, yes, it’s true. Trump says that if he’s not allowed to put his name on the Kennedy Center, he will demolish it.
- Well… this next is a new one.
Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit covers the latest legal buffoonery. A think tank does a statistical analysis and publishes a report. They conclude that Trump’s use of National Guard troops into select cities had no effect on crime. Crime was already going down. Crime declined at the same rate as cities without the troops.
So Trump sues the think tank for defaming him, hurting his reputation, and harming him financially.
Comrade Misfit has a couple of observations.
The outrageous nature of the lawsuit:
Criticizing Government Policy is Now Defamatory to the Orange Blowhard?The unintelligent nature of the lawsuit:
One thing Delusional Donnie hasn’t yet grasped: Claiming “financial harm” means that a victim of Trump’s lawsuits gets to do financial discovery of Trump’s affairs.We’ll stay tuned.
- Interesting what facts can be found by active journalists willing to read court documents.
Journalist Marcy Wheeler at EmptyWheel finds that Trumper Stephen Miller used Homeland Security tactics authorized for use against drug cartels instead to follow a guy in a pickup truck with ICE Out signs.
National Security threat:
Legal Reasoning:
They justified using teams trained to fight drug cartels in part because of those “shields,” and in part because Stephen Miller had Trump sign a memo declaring people carrying these “apparent shields” terrorists, based on fabricated claims of assault and fabricated claims of doxing.Threatening Signs:
- Juliet Jeske at Decoding Fox News watches for 21 hours (bless her sacrifice) and reports on Fox filling in the many blank spaces, in order to keep from covering the disasters near and far caused by Trump whimsies.
Fox News took things to another level last week in the network’s attempts to avoid talking about Trump’s disastrous war in the Middle East, high gas prices, a sluggish economy and the president’s obsession with his gilded building projects.
She breaks down what, in her 21 hours, Fox did cover:
More detailed information is presented by Juliet in a 50-minute entertaining podcast.
- M. Bouffant at Web of Evil watches Trump try for peace by naming the Strait of Hormuz an American Territory.
M. Bouffant has an opinion about our leader’s mental acuity and emotional well-being, although less delicately expressed.
- Disaffected and it Feels So Good has figured out Trump’s Iran war plan: Attack Canada!
- In Canadian satire, The Beaverton has more on Trump Trade Wars as the author of The Art of the Deal is unable to secure a deal with the friendliest nation on the planet.
“For years those Canadians have been ripping us off,” Trump added about CUSMA, a deal he himself authored and signed, while referring to a nation that has routinely sent firefighters to combat American wildfires. - From The Borowitz Report, Trump demonstrates his seriousness about going to war against Canada by getting a medical note from his new podiatrist.
- PZ Myers sees Trump trying to rename Lake Ontario and remembers his history, as another figure showed contempt by offering to name his horse to the Senate.
Caligula has not fared well in history. Historians can argue down to this day that Caligula was the worst Roman emperor of all time, for his capriciousness, his venality, his narcissism, his greed, his ineffectiveness as a leader.
Does that sound familiar?Will future maps carry the change?
No one except brain-dead MAGA clowns are going to call it “Lake America”.There you have it!
- At The Moderate Voice editor Joe Gandelman has a punny (a couple of them, anyway) take on the next crisis in Trump’s trade wars:
TURN THE OTHER CHEEK? U.S.-CANADA TRADE WAR MEANS HIGHER TOILET PAPER PRICES
- Author and educator Amanda Nelson points out that local people in Alaska depend on local fisheries. Those folks are getting desperate as giant out‑of‑state corporate trawling entities are driving them out of business. So, they can depend on their U.S. Senator, right? Well, guess who Republican Senator Dan Sullivan is going all in for!
- Julian Sanchez takes a glance or two at grand jury findings and reminds us that corruption does not confine itself to the White House.
How does one misspend 10 million dollars?
— Molly Jong-Fast (@mollyjongfast.bsky.social) August 27, 2026 at 7:33 PM
Administrations “misspend” funds all the time. The DeSantis administration stole public money and gave it to the Florida Republican Party via a series of shady proxy transfers that would make Saul Goodman blush.
— Julian Sanchez (@normative.bsky.social) August 27, 2026 at 9:03 PM
- Jason Linkins notices a long time Republican message becoming explicit:
new Republican midterm messaging just dropped
newrepublic.com/post/214782/…
— Jason Linkins (@dceiver.bsky.social) August 26, 2026 at 2:53 PM
forget Medicare for All, try "working while sick and leaving your children orphaned as you drive yourself to an early grave" instead
— Jason Linkins (@dceiver.bsky.social) August 26, 2026 at 1:15 PM
After all, my folks had it hard…
- Dave Columbo explains why Natalie Harp and the National Debt are legitimate news concerns
- Infidel753 dives into two populist issues that unite ordinary voters against the elite, and how Democratic leaders seem excessively reluctant about them.
All across the country, ordinary people of different political views have been coming together to fight data centers. Both right-wing and left-wing blogs and sites are cheering on the campaign against surveillance cameras, and that campaign is at work in both deep-red and deep-blue communities and everything in between.
It isn’t just political leaders dropping the ball:
Practically every MSM story I found about the anti-data-center resistance early on, and to some extent even now, tried to frame it as a “controversy”, something with two sides among the broad public rather than a mass uprising against tech-bro billionaire power and arrogance — even though the only people they could ever find to quote in support of the data centers were business people and local politicians.Infidel suggests that catching leaders off guard with groundswell movements is how democracy is supposed to work.
Warning to politicians — the public is in no mood for you getting all nuance-y and yes-butty about data centers. We want them stopped. - Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson looks at pre-primary polling that went spectacularly wrong in that state.
He looks at selection errors, demographic imbalance, the inability of a representative sample to accurately predict their own choices in advance, and other unpredictable factors that can make predictions …well… unpredictable.
He makes another point that our MAGA friends may want to take in.
Instead of judging a poll’s credibility by the actual election results, unscrupulous partisans and a gullible public can be led to believe that we should judge the credibility of an election by the poll results.He predicts a possible near-future reverse conspiracy theory, if late polling shows the Democratic candidate for Wisconsin Governor ahead of the Republican:
The irony will occur this October when the polls start showing Crowley ahead of Tiffany. Then the Republicans will claim the polls are rigged. - Brian Beutler examines the tension between Democratic moderates who want the party to move to the right to obtain the super majority needed for the country to recover from Trump damage, and those on the left who want more activism in order to recover from Trump damage.
Brian suggests moderates are right in pushing for larger majorities, but may be in danger of talking themselves out of wielding what power they achieve.
But I reject this stipulation—that we’re doomed without a supermajority—as much too defeatist.He argues that even a bare majority, a majority without Manchin/Sinema renegades, would be enough to get a start.
To restore pluralistic democracy, Democrats need just enough power to:- Abolish the filibuster;
- Expand the Supreme Court;
- Create at least two new states (but ideally more) out of existing territories of disenfranchised American citizens.
That’s it. This wouldn’t be the end of the project. But it’s the threshold. What’s necessary, but not sufficient. It can be done without a supermajority.
- Dave Dubya applies critical thinking to …well… critical thinking: what it is and what often prevents it.
Dave is not above a bit of insightful snark, where he sees it as deserved:
I’m sure to the MAGA mob mentality it’s some kind of insidious form of Marxism or “wokism”He interrupts that fitting shoe with, introspectively, another.
Rational and civil discourse becomes impossible with cults and the willfully ignorant.
And the problem is it isn’t always just them.
He dives into wit from Twain, wisdom from Bonhoeffer, definition from the National Council for Excellence in Critical Thinking (I had no idea), and step by step suggestions from motivational speaker Brendon Burchard.
He manages an entertaining piece that skims a lot of surface without becoming superficial.
Dave ends up with a challenge:
We finally arrive at the “prime directive” and core value of critical thinking.
“Willing to change our minds with evidence”.Enjoyable.
Worth the read. - There is in the human psyche an unfortunate tendency toward collective judgment.
Among many sad variations of they-have-it-coming aimed at targets of hate are themes intrinsic to anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim bigotry.
I don’t see how anyone with even a cursory acquaintance with history can fail to possess sympathy with Zionists. Thousands of years of targeting of Jews because they are Jews documents a need for a homeland. Jews cannot depend on other cultures to support the protection of Jews. That’s a horrible fact.
I don’t see how anyone who pays the slightest attention to news stories can fail to possess sympathy with civilians in Gaza and the West Bank. Do we really need to argue about whether wholesale slaughter of civilians, including children, is tragic?
Count me as a pro-Palestinian Zionist.
As a Zionist, I am amazed at occasional Jews-brought-it-on-themselves arguments.
As one who is outraged at reported atrocities directed at Palestinians, I am struck by similar arguments aimed at child victims.That individuals are responsible for the bigotry they hold should be a non-controversial proposition.
- On October 8, 2023, a pro-Palestinian march was held in New York City. In an unfortunate juxtaposition, it was one day after the October 7 massacre by Hamas.
It should have been postponed. It wasn’t. Some brought-it-on-themselves sentiments found their way into what seemed to be the theme. It was later widely thought, with good reason, to be a pro-Hamas march.
Future Mayor Zohran Mamdani condemned the event. His frequent ally and occasional rival Brad Lander went further, canceling his membership in the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), one of the organizations sponsoring the march.
DSA Co-Chair Megan Romer was asked about it. Had she lived in the city, she said, she probably would have participated. She called the Hamas attack inevitable.
Ugh. Not exactly they-bought-it-on-themselves, but close enough.
Libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara finds another extreme statement from that same Megan Romer and employs it as a sort of hidden agenda that unites Democratic Socialists.
From Megan Romer:
We will win by making conditions so intolerable to the ruling class that they would rather give in to our demands than live with the disturbance we cause until we are able to fully seize power ourselves.As Michael A. LaFerrara translates:
This is not a call to persuade voters, win honest debates, or pass legislation through the normal democratic process. It is a declaration that socialists intend to deliberately make life intolerable until people surrender to their demands.
That is what socialists do.Michael has developed a consistent view that is reflected in much of his writing.
Liberals are the same as socialists.
Socialists are the same as communists.
Communists are Stalinists.William F. Buckley once observed that those on the fringes often share a common weakness. It is an inability to discern ideological distinctions.
His example was a photo in some leftist publication in the days following the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy in 1968. It showed a photo of the dying Kennedy on the hotel floor, photoshopped to replace the Senator’s head with that of a pig.
Michael LaFerrara’s conclusion in this case is less picturesque:
This dispels the notion that Socialism is “only about the economy.? That’s why there has never been, and philosophically and logically never can be, anything but one-party totalitarianism under Socialism, democratic or otherwise. - Right Wing Watch brings us Texas State Representative Andy Hopper, with creative ideas of how government can make life very hard for Muslims.
Courts might object, but legislators can get around all that freedom of religion stuff by redefining religion:
- Sarah Cooper teams up with Richard Sarvate for an adventure in workplace sexual harassment.
Entertaining in an angering sort of way: - At Scotties Playtime, Scottie asks those in trouble from hidden violence to use a simple hand signal to ask for help. He instructs the rest of us on how to recognize it and how not to ignore it.
Please learn and watch for this. The person you might saved could have been me.
A one-minute video illustrates how it works, and how we can safely react to make it work.
- North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz warns of more bad days ahead:
As we find ourselves fully engulfed in the Category 5 shit storm that is a second Trump term, two things are irrefutably clear: it’s much worse than we thought it would be, and it’s gonna get much worse before it gets better.
And he makes it personal:
Friends, these days will kill you if you’re not careful.He presents a modest proposal:
Radical Self-Care in a National NightmareSelf-care is not always easy:
Even if you are somehow able in this disorienting, perpetual state of national emergencies and existential crises to actually keep a strict regimen of sleep, good nutrition, hydration, exercise, meditation, prayer, time in nature, relational connection, artistic pursuits, therapy, and limited media exposure—you might still feel like you’re about a millisecond from completely losing it in any given moment. (I know that I am.)
Now, you definitely don’t want to abandon the above practices, as they’ll surely help tether you to health and sanity, but I want to suggest that you might want to philosophically make other alterations in light of the gravity of these days; some new daily commitments you can make to yourself to navigate the nightmare.
He suggests a few additional steps to take toward essential self-care.
- SilverAppleQueen has a comfort cat who serves as a rescuer from depression.
- @whiskeywhistle98 give helpful advice on who to avoid:
- Dave Barry explores the miracles of modern technology, and what is projected for the future.
Current Miracle (one of several):
Modern technology is truly a miracle. A hundred years ago, if you wanted to travel from New York City to Chicago, the fastest way was by train, which took a minimum of 20 hours. Whereas today, thanks to technology, you can simply go to an airport, and in less than three hours you will be notified that your flight has been canceled.Possible future:
Possible use:
PASSENGER: Bob, I hate to do this, but can we stop at a gas station? I really have to use the bathroom.
DRIVER: No need for that. (Shouting:) Activate toilet!
(The toilet slides out.)
PASSENGER: Never mind. I’ll just poop my pants.
DRIVER (shouting): Activate exhaust fan! - Josh Johnson explains the common, but unreported, trauma of getting stopped by TSA:
Still, we weather the storm, seeking wisdom from the usual suspects.
Leave a Reply