Before I bring out the hats and horns as to the thugs leaving Minneapolis...my concern: where are they going to be redeployed? They ain't shedding the cosplay duds to return to being scofflaw hunters, bailbondsmen, truckers and bodybuilders.
There are small towns that are getting ICE attention. These should be brought to the fore, even if the people are not protesting. Damage is being done. NYT had a good article about Wilder, Idaho, having ICE/Border Control come in and essentially remove most of the Hispanic work force. This community thought that they were immune to this kind of federal action, since they are a deep-red community.
There were some small communities in MN that were getting ICE attention. I don't think that they've been less thuggish in these small towns, both red and blue. It's just that the big cities are being mentioned by Trump, so they are getting the attention. Attention regarding tactics and effects really need to be made known, regardless of where it is happening. I would bet we would see a heck of a lot more impacted areas than we are seeing now.
Outside of Fortress My Way, aka God's Own Country, people are numbed to the things going on in what was the first, and greatest, democracy in the world. "How could this happen" was one of the most common questions I have heard in the past fourteen months.
Brilliant strategy. They got chased out of blue cities like Minneapolis and Chicago, so they're going after smaller, (usually) redder towns instead, and screwing over their voters.
Dont they realize that these small towns in red states are their base. I'm not saying that the citizens care what happens to Hispanic workers, but they do care about farm labor and domestic/eldercare.
They are more excited about abusing brown people than they are about the Republican base. ICE thugs are not running for office, and they enjoy abusing brown people more than they care about anyone's base voters.
There are Los Angeles suburbs getting ICE attention, including the one I grew up in. They can toss these goons all over each of them simultaneously now.
Minneapolis and Portland have shown the way. All the other communities have roadmaps to follow. To see these kinds of protests everywhere would be just stunning.
There are red towns in CA that employ Hispanic gardeners, domestic help and medical staff for the aging affluent population. These wealthy older Republicans are going to be unhappy when they have to mow their own lawn and do their own laundry.
And I bet that in Mar Lago there are plenty of Hispanic gardeners, maids and repairman who are not legal. Is he sending ICE down there?
They're everywhere, like dog sh!t. They're less flash and bang in the city where we live but we get sight warnings from people on ND and Ring. It doesn't matter in bloody red Texas.
I wish I could tell you but after asking siblings why they support the orange one, I no longer engage with his supporters. We live in a large city 6 miles from East Dallas. Large Hispanic population. Lots of service industry jobs here don't seem affected, they mostly hit the neighborhoods. When there is a sighting reported on ND or Ring there is blowback from people that obviously support what ICE is doing. Even from people with Hispanic last names.
100% Brooks. The relief here is palpable but the celebrations are well on hold until they are fully gone. Even that relief is tempered by the likelihood that it just means someone is next. How can anyone truly feel safe as long as the paramilitary forces are still in business. Additionally, as glad as one is they are leaving en masse, there's still going to be a hundred or more operating less visibly in the shadows.
Apparently they are going to Boston? They are still in Portland, Maine, though Susan Collins has assured us that their "surge" is over. Folks are still afraid to go to work.
I read a post that said, before her reign, she said she would only want two terms. This would be her sixth. Not only can't she say no (to the Felon), she can't count.
The Republicans have invested $75 billion in their masked, violent paramilitary force. It's not as if there's going to be a draw-down--all that dirty money has to go somewhere. They are (furtively) opening up ICE centers and detention centers across the country, harassing, detaining and deporting people with the support of hard-right appellate courts, and doing maximum damage while taking the lessons learned from Minneapolis and figuring out how to avoid the cameras.
As for Minnesota, the administration has achieved one of its key objectives, crippling a blue state by doing such vast damage to the economy that it will take years or maybe even decades for the state to recover.
My thought as well. ICE has been getting blowback and resistance in every Blue state city they have invaded (yes. I use that word deliberately). Will they look at red states next thinking they will have better luck? Does Miami get invaded next?
They are trying to move in a more stealth manner in red counties in CA. “See,maga, where fine don’t believe the national media except for Fox” That PR campaign will fail as depraved nomi & miller demand more visual thuggery & quotas as they capture the workforce & break up families. Only way to document it is for Americans to keep the video going and stand up like Minnesota
Too any Hispanics. I went to Miami when I was young and the hotels and restaurants were all Spanish speaking. One restaurant customer got angry because her waiter didnt speak Spanish. She demanded another.
There's also about to be a shutdown, so the administration may be trying to lay low temporarily to get DHS funding, and then planning to escalate again afterwards. The Senate needs to stick to insisting on real limits before voting for DHS funding, and not assume there's any real de-escalation so far.
Well the germs on that toilet seat are perfectly natural, and they only enhance the buzz from that snort of coke. Chase it with a shot of beef tallow, and you are good for the night.
Just the fact that he said he used to (sure Jan) sniff it off a toilet seat leaves me gobsmacked. That whole cabinet of broken toys are lives of poor life choices. It would be amusing if it weren't real life.
What a lame brain. Pneumonia almost killed me when I was 9. A bout of really bad food poisoning had me trying to crawl under the chair in the ER waiting room, like a dying animal, and I can’t list the number of times I could have lost a leg, or arm after a wound got infected.
Not to mention all the heinous things I was immunized against that might have cut me down, or crippled me, if RFK Jr. had his way.
I keep thinking about the movie Contagion, and how bad the situation was portrayed in the film with the MEV-1 virus having a 25-30% mortality rate. Then I think how catastrophic it would be with this abysmal regime.
What else can I say? This is fucking psychopathy being allowed to run riot.
Imagine if he was in charge during Covid. We would never have a vaccine, there would be few masks and schools would not be closed. He would have argued that Covid was cleansing our country of weak people.
Dave, concerning your two parenthetical points: The Brain Worm Host is only serious about snorting coke off of toilet seats, so serious that it sounded like boasting what a stud he was.
Nothing makes me happier than knowing Stephen Miller is currently furious about Minneapolis. If ICE is forced to leave the people of Minneapolis will have won a great victory over fascism. I didn’t not think the American people had what it took to stand up for freedom anymore, I was proven wrong by these courageous people.
I really do recommend watching both the Homan press conference and the Walz one. Talk about "both sides."
Homan is his usual self. It's all face-saving.
Walz is like a guy sticking his head up out of the trench after the battle, surveying the wreckage. Walz, to me, looked like a guy who fought the good fight and emerged with his honor intact. Homan? Well, now maybe he can explain what was really going on with that $50,000 in cash he got from the FBI agent he thought was a bagman delivering him his bribe money.
Wow, all the time Lewandowski spent trying to circumvent the standard procedure for issuance of a badge and gun, he could have just gone through the proper protocols and completed the training. I guess it's more fun to flaunt your privilege and corruption than it is to do things the right way.
I was thinking the same thing! The training would've been easier and he might have even made a friend! Gotten in shape. Learned something. Can't have that! Weirdos.
Like all of us sapient beings, they are godlings that have to shit, and have to die. I didn’t make up the gods that have to shit thing, myself, but I can’t remember where I read it.
It’s in regard to how we are separate from nature due to our sapience, but still tied to it, through the weakness of biology, and our mortality.
Interesting to hear the call for restraint about people who sent an email to Epstein or who received one and then did nothing. Yes, they're "correspondents," but there's nothing nefarious there.
On the other hand...
I AM taking a certain amount of glee in seeing some of these Masters of the Universe getting called out. My favorite so far is Brad Karp, longtime chairman of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP. This guy. He was a lot more than a "correspondent" and he's no longer chairman, although he is still a partner. Paul Weiss rolled over to Trump. There needed to be some kind of price for that and maybe this is something like that. Not big, but something.
And Leon Black, another Master of the Universe, CEO of Apollo Global Management, a major Paul Weiss client, worked with Epstein when his affair with a Russian model went sideways and he had to pay her off.
These are the kinds of people that make up The Epstein Class. They're scum. They're morally bankrupt. They use their wealth to shield them from consequences. They've lost their moral compass so completely that even after they know they're dealing with a guy who'd been convicted of sex offenses, they're still dealing with him in some way.
These are the people who rolled over to Trump. These guys. Just one question for clients of Paul Weiss: Do you think these guys are focused on your interests?
Snorting cocaine off of a toilet seat seat? I mean who in this administration hasn’t done that. I am old enough to remember Nancy Reagan’s just say no, and the war on drugs which imprisoned thousands of Americans and ripped communities apart. And if you are one of the lesser people the war on drugs has never gone away. But if you are a Kennedy or any of our other elites, and you will never face any consequences, then of course you can brag about snorting cocaine off of a toilet seat, or take ketamine until you pee blood, or go to sex islands and cavort with underage girls. But hey it’s all good for these people were meant to be our masters.
Don’t be. Adolf’s approval was at about the same level as he was shoving Panzerfaust antitank rockets into the hands of children, and old men, to slow down the allied juggernaut in March of 1945.
I reckon every country has a pretty sizable amount of fascist pukes that would support anything, as long as it is murderous, racist, and hateful. In a functioning democracy, their kind are suppressed. We are not a functioning democracy right now.
Many polls show lower approval rates and he's getting killed with the Independents; they really don't like his immigration control tactics. Independents will decide the election. Hispanics have really turned on the Republicans (and no wonder).
Yes, that's what continues to depress me. 40% extrapolated is around 120 million adults who are still perfectly fine with cabinet insanity, internment of children, and murder in the streets. We can't go on as a nation flopping back and forth. We need a 1930's sea change of some kind to return to rationality and caring about each other.
Because his inflation numbers have been "revised" this morning. There is zero increase in inflation. Didn't he fire the person in charge of collating data?
It takes a lot more effort to snort coke off a toilet seat than to do it just about any other way imaginable. It also seems wasteful. If you have a dead bear lying around -and who doesn't?- snort it out of the bear's anus instead.
“Wow, my eyes are super bloodshot. Doing taxes until 3am probably wasn’t the best idea, but at
least they’re finished. *Burp* Note to self: that midnight burrito was REALLY stupid, my stomach is really burbling”
“Hey, it looks like a truly brillig morning, maybe a short whiffle through the Tulgey wood would help? It should help clear my head to get outside and check out what the bandersnatches are up to, listen to the jubjub birds singing, and maybe even catch the borogoves doing their whole mimsy thing?”
“Who’s that? It looks like that damned Beamish kid leaning up against a Tumtum tree, and OH CRAP,
he’s got a vorpal sword! Who in their right mind would give a stupid kid like that a vorpal sword! His chortling father probably. I doubt that whole violent Beamish family has ever had a single uffish thought between the entire bunch of them”
“He hasn’t noticed me yet, maybe I can just whiffle past him without any problems? Don’t make eye contact. DON’T MAKE EYE CONTACT. Oh no, he sees me. Dang, he’s galumphing toward me…”
Our Justice Department has turned into a cesspool, with Bondi periodically emerging from the sewage to spew out at her political enemies her own brand of guano. Her gross misconduct needs to be referred to her Bar Associations for disciplinary proceedings leading to potential disbarment.
This Administration is at war with the American Bar Association. It’s threatened to strip it of its status as the official accreditor of US law schools, revoked a lot of funding, will no longer give it non-public information about federal judicial nominees, and called it a “snooty’ organization of “leftist lawyers”.
Trumpists started with a longstanding conservative complaint about organizations that have some degree of leftward tilt, and turned it into a doctrine that anything short of unquestioning obeisance to a lawless, amoral psychopath is a form of "corruption" or ideological sabotage.
Trump saw that he could get a lot of political benefit from tarring his personal adversaries as part of the opposing (anti-American) side in a grand ideological battle. Thus the National Trust for Historic Preservation is called a "radical left" organization, even though 3 of 4 words in its name indicate an objectively conservative mission.
I guess, but given all that is going on, *this* is what is worth writing about?? I’d also note that while Harris didn’t ultimately meet with Epstein, if you follow the link Cathy includes to the copy of the email (from 2015!), Harris doesn’t respond to Epstein’s initial invite with a hard no - he responds “Only if we film it… :)”. And in response to the follow up question about whether he’s in NY at all, he says “No plans at the moment.” Again, this was all in 2015, so post-conviction. I don’t know about you, but if a convicted pedophile was emailing me with invites, I would block him. I wouldn’t joke around and leave open the possibility of getting together in the future. I agree that all this stuff about Harris doesn’t deserve massive outrage or a witch hunt, but I don’t think he’s the innocent person people seem to be painting him as. Which is why I think it is bizarre that a good chunk of the newsletter is focused on this topic, given all the insanity going on in the world right now.
ETA: I agree with the part about criticism of Bowles being totally misplaced. As Young pointed out, she’s a journalist considering a potential story, so that makes it totally different from the Harris situation. I still think there are better/more important stories that could’ve taken the place of all this in the newsletter.
Yes! I was thinking as I read, why is Cathy Young spending her time finger-wagging about this? Aren't there better articles to write, especially about the Epstein files? We're always going to have naysayers and dismissers and on the other end wild conspiracies, no matter what. It's the spectrum of human nature. And guess what, sometimes the most implausible sounding conspiracies have raw truth embedded in them. Like for example, when I first heard about QAnon and the global pedophile ring, I was like, "That's bananas." Turns out we can see now that it was not completely bananas. And when I first heard a YouTube commenter say that Epstein was Mossad, I was like, "no way!" But again, now the files reveal that indeed he had ties to both Russian and Israeli intelligence (and other countries too) and there seems to be a global "shadow" political engine running where his nefarious endeavors held and still hold power over many of those who call the shots around the globe.
I have no doubt you'd feel differently if you were caught having an innocuous conversation with a man who later proved to be a deeply troubled pedophile. Having to defend yourself to a bunch of people with ideological differences from you, holding pitchforks and torches, would be frustrating and exhausting. Cathy Young would be a welcome defense in that instance. Besides, there's no shortage of Epstein coverage.
That conversation happened in 2015, AFTER Epstein’s initial conviction. I know you aren’t responding to my comment, but when I was saying there are more important stories to be covered, I wasn’t actually talking about anything Epstein-related. To be clear, I am NOT calling for a Harris witch-hunt in any way, shape, or form. But I also think we should be clear-eyed and not pretend like this was a perfectly benign, innocuous interaction.
By the way, I didn’t even know about this whole Sam Harris Epstein correspondence until I read Young’s piece. I just went and searched his name in both Apple News and Google, and while I didn’t look through all of the results, nothing immediately came up about Epstein. I really don’t think he is in need of defending right now. There are far more important topics that deserve coverage and attention.
Agreed. And to the naysayers that think this is a waste of time to discuss: 1. You can always skip the article, and 2. there exists a large subset of people all too willing to turn the slightest grievances into high crimes and misdemeanors. It should be called out for what it is: unhelpful.
Yes, but we also shouldn’t be making up problems where they don’t exist or barely exist. If there was a witch hunt going on, then I would think your claims had more merit. But this is seriously a nonissue right now. This honestly feels like manufactured outrage. Almost no one is talking about Harris and Bowles vis a vis Epstein. There are far more important topics to cover.
You know it's not good for MAGA and their Orange Leader when the Wall Street Journal is reporting on all the illegal and wrongful activities of this administration.
Are they saying it's wrong? Or "much like Biden, Trump has taken personal financial advantage of his office, often, again like the Biden Family, to enrich his relatives" kind of approach?
I don't see why they'd be worried. Trump doesn't file lawsuits he thinks he'll win, he just does it for ridiculous amounts of money to feel like a big man, and intimidate people. Most of them get laughed out of court.
Before I bring out the hats and horns as to the thugs leaving Minneapolis...my concern: where are they going to be redeployed? They ain't shedding the cosplay duds to return to being scofflaw hunters, bailbondsmen, truckers and bodybuilders.
There are small towns that are getting ICE attention. These should be brought to the fore, even if the people are not protesting. Damage is being done. NYT had a good article about Wilder, Idaho, having ICE/Border Control come in and essentially remove most of the Hispanic work force. This community thought that they were immune to this kind of federal action, since they are a deep-red community.
They were causing havoc in Lindenwold, NJ, a small town in Camden County, the yesterday: https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/federal-agents-send-students-running-lindenwold-new-jersey-thursday/4351224/
There were some small communities in MN that were getting ICE attention. I don't think that they've been less thuggish in these small towns, both red and blue. It's just that the big cities are being mentioned by Trump, so they are getting the attention. Attention regarding tactics and effects really need to be made known, regardless of where it is happening. I would bet we would see a heck of a lot more impacted areas than we are seeing now.
Hortense, thanks for that insight, since over here in Europe we never get any of that, not from MSM not from TV, not from nothing.
And it is always good to hear how we are seen from outside the country. Despite Trump's best efforts, we still live in a global community.
Outside of Fortress My Way, aka God's Own Country, people are numbed to the things going on in what was the first, and greatest, democracy in the world. "How could this happen" was one of the most common questions I have heard in the past fourteen months.
Brilliant strategy. They got chased out of blue cities like Minneapolis and Chicago, so they're going after smaller, (usually) redder towns instead, and screwing over their voters.
Galaxy brains, all round.
One of their first targets was agricultural workers in deeply red Bakersfield/Kern County, CA. Definitely a Trump strong hold.
Yes! It was Bovino’s audition for the role he just lost. So early in Jan 2025 Biden was still president.
Dont they realize that these small towns in red states are their base. I'm not saying that the citizens care what happens to Hispanic workers, but they do care about farm labor and domestic/eldercare.
They are more excited about abusing brown people than they are about the Republican base. ICE thugs are not running for office, and they enjoy abusing brown people more than they care about anyone's base voters.
I agree. Im just thinking if their economy craters they'll contact their congressman or senator or no longer vote Republican.
They hit Phoenixville, PA last week.
Damn, they can't even figure out where Arizona is🤪.
Was about to post the same. Here's a source, for folks interested in reading further:
> https://whyy.org/articles/suspection-ice-confrontation-phoenixville-parking-lot-video/
Why do I not find the statement that the men were here illegally convincing?
Heck, if they were illegal, arrest them like a normal law enforcement agency. No need for the goon BS.
Here at the Jersey Shore ICE has descended...
Like cockroaches...
ICE belongs in a freezer, not on streets or shores.
They are no match for Snooki
Im sorry.
There are Los Angeles suburbs getting ICE attention, including the one I grew up in. They can toss these goons all over each of them simultaneously now.
Minneapolis and Portland have shown the way. All the other communities have roadmaps to follow. To see these kinds of protests everywhere would be just stunning.
There are red towns in CA that employ Hispanic gardeners, domestic help and medical staff for the aging affluent population. These wealthy older Republicans are going to be unhappy when they have to mow their own lawn and do their own laundry.
And I bet that in Mar Lago there are plenty of Hispanic gardeners, maids and repairman who are not legal. Is he sending ICE down there?
They're everywhere, like dog sh!t. They're less flash and bang in the city where we live but we get sight warnings from people on ND and Ring. It doesn't matter in bloody red Texas.
Can you please tell us how Trump voters where you live feel when the low paying jobs that keep everyone happy are going unfilled.
I wish I could tell you but after asking siblings why they support the orange one, I no longer engage with his supporters. We live in a large city 6 miles from East Dallas. Large Hispanic population. Lots of service industry jobs here don't seem affected, they mostly hit the neighborhoods. When there is a sighting reported on ND or Ring there is blowback from people that obviously support what ICE is doing. Even from people with Hispanic last names.
Yes, but here are the names of the ICE thugs who murdered Pretti.
Border Patrol agent Jesus Ochoa (43) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officer Raymundo Gutierrez
Ironic, isn't it. Maybe that's why they wear masks.
Its really stupid of Trump to piss off people in reliably red states.
100% Brooks. The relief here is palpable but the celebrations are well on hold until they are fully gone. Even that relief is tempered by the likelihood that it just means someone is next. How can anyone truly feel safe as long as the paramilitary forces are still in business. Additionally, as glad as one is they are leaving en masse, there's still going to be a hundred or more operating less visibly in the shadows.
They're doing what everyone thought they would: meeting their quotas in Red states where weaker communities don't defend each other. https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/ice-arrests-650-illegal-aliens-west-virginia
Apparently they are going to Boston? They are still in Portland, Maine, though Susan Collins has assured us that their "surge" is over. Folks are still afraid to go to work.
She is up for re-election...that's a way of getting back!
I read a post that said, before her reign, she said she would only want two terms. This would be her sixth. Not only can't she say no (to the Felon), she can't count.
Like the Washington Generals (Think Harlem Globetrotters) ICE will find a new city to lose spectacularly. We CAN do this.
The Republicans have invested $75 billion in their masked, violent paramilitary force. It's not as if there's going to be a draw-down--all that dirty money has to go somewhere. They are (furtively) opening up ICE centers and detention centers across the country, harassing, detaining and deporting people with the support of hard-right appellate courts, and doing maximum damage while taking the lessons learned from Minneapolis and figuring out how to avoid the cameras.
As for Minnesota, the administration has achieved one of its key objectives, crippling a blue state by doing such vast damage to the economy that it will take years or maybe even decades for the state to recover.
If Tim Walz had not run for VP opposing Trump it wouldn't have happened. Trump has the impulse control of a two year old.
BTW I believe he will be deploying ICE in blue states to "protect" the voting polls. Beware.
My thought as well. ICE has been getting blowback and resistance in every Blue state city they have invaded (yes. I use that word deliberately). Will they look at red states next thinking they will have better luck? Does Miami get invaded next?
They are making builders in South Texas unhappy: https://www.tpr.org/border-immigration/2026-02-04/construction-site-ice-raids-hurting-economy-and-building-industry (TPR is Texas Public Radio.)
Anyone in Texas deserves to be unhappy. They're the ones who gave us Abbott and Cruz and Paxton.
Of course they are. I bet they are sorry they voted for Trump. Suckers!
Yes and probably. https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/ice-arrests-650-illegal-aliens-west-virginia
They are trying to move in a more stealth manner in red counties in CA. “See,maga, where fine don’t believe the national media except for Fox” That PR campaign will fail as depraved nomi & miller demand more visual thuggery & quotas as they capture the workforce & break up families. Only way to document it is for Americans to keep the video going and stand up like Minnesota
They just arranged leases for buildings in Irvine and Santa Ana, in Orange County.
Too any Hispanics. I went to Miami when I was young and the hotels and restaurants were all Spanish speaking. One restaurant customer got angry because her waiter didnt speak Spanish. She demanded another.
Celebrate this battle. It was hard-won.
Trucking is an honorable profession. Indeed, it is essential to our way of life. Every job has worth.
Not to demean this necessary profession, but how many of these balacalva'd guys are in that noble profession?
They’re going everywhere.
https://apple.news/AP3P1xjRxQ4u6Ro8VubBJbA
Right. There will not be layoffs. I predict that we'll hear nothing until after the funding issue is resolved one way or another.
Indeed.
There's also about to be a shutdown, so the administration may be trying to lay low temporarily to get DHS funding, and then planning to escalate again afterwards. The Senate needs to stick to insisting on real limits before voting for DHS funding, and not assume there's any real de-escalation so far.
Brooks, I was going to follow you, but then I saw your musical choices. :(
RFK Jr is not afraid of germs because he doesn't believe in germ theory. (seriously) And this is the guy in charge of our health system. (seriously)
Well the germs on that toilet seat are perfectly natural, and they only enhance the buzz from that snort of coke. Chase it with a shot of beef tallow, and you are good for the night.
There's a good joke here about the germs not being safe from RFK Jr but I can't seem to wordsmith it and make it work.
Take your time…
The germs were undoubtedly safe because Kennedy had just gotten off it.
Colleen, you just made me gag a little, lol!
Just the fact that he said he used to (sure Jan) sniff it off a toilet seat leaves me gobsmacked. That whole cabinet of broken toys are lives of poor life choices. It would be amusing if it weren't real life.
The toilet seat is probably where he picked up the brain worm
I want to believe that RFKJr misspoke, he meant to say the toilet seat “cover”. There, I’m not quite so grossed out now. 🤮
Yeah, I never saw anyone pouring their coke on the *seat*. Too much chance of it sliding off into the bowl.
I never saw anyone do that either, but would suspect that someone already high might not notice the difference in gradient....
Do these people not carry keys? I guess probly not, if they don't drive themselves ever.
What a lame brain. Pneumonia almost killed me when I was 9. A bout of really bad food poisoning had me trying to crawl under the chair in the ER waiting room, like a dying animal, and I can’t list the number of times I could have lost a leg, or arm after a wound got infected.
Not to mention all the heinous things I was immunized against that might have cut me down, or crippled me, if RFK Jr. had his way.
I keep thinking about the movie Contagion, and how bad the situation was portrayed in the film with the MEV-1 virus having a 25-30% mortality rate. Then I think how catastrophic it would be with this abysmal regime.
What else can I say? This is fucking psychopathy being allowed to run riot.
Imagine if he was in charge during Covid. We would never have a vaccine, there would be few masks and schools would not be closed. He would have argued that Covid was cleansing our country of weak people.
Dave, concerning your two parenthetical points: The Brain Worm Host is only serious about snorting coke off of toilet seats, so serious that it sounded like boasting what a stud he was.
Coke was his only chance of fighting off ceremorphosis.
Obscure video game humor.
Trump picked him on purpose. First to cripple our health care system and to humiliate the Kennedy name.
It is kind of amazing that the guy has survived his storied drug usage. No wonder he thinks he's germ proof.
Nothing makes me happier than knowing Stephen Miller is currently furious about Minneapolis. If ICE is forced to leave the people of Minneapolis will have won a great victory over fascism. I didn’t not think the American people had what it took to stand up for freedom anymore, I was proven wrong by these courageous people.
I really do recommend watching both the Homan press conference and the Walz one. Talk about "both sides."
Homan is his usual self. It's all face-saving.
Walz is like a guy sticking his head up out of the trench after the battle, surveying the wreckage. Walz, to me, looked like a guy who fought the good fight and emerged with his honor intact. Homan? Well, now maybe he can explain what was really going on with that $50,000 in cash he got from the FBI agent he thought was a bagman delivering him his bribe money.
If little Stephen feels unhappy now, just wait. He really won’t like the tribunal.
Oh happy day (if it ever comes).
Even the folder on his laptop labeled “taxes” full of images of crying children can’t cheer him up.
Wow, all the time Lewandowski spent trying to circumvent the standard procedure for issuance of a badge and gun, he could have just gone through the proper protocols and completed the training. I guess it's more fun to flaunt your privilege and corruption than it is to do things the right way.
I was thinking the same thing! The training would've been easier and he might have even made a friend! Gotten in shape. Learned something. Can't have that! Weirdos.
Rules are meant for other people. Little people. Not the gods of Trump. They are truly high on their own lies.
Like all of us sapient beings, they are godlings that have to shit, and have to die. I didn’t make up the gods that have to shit thing, myself, but I can’t remember where I read it.
It’s in regard to how we are separate from nature due to our sapience, but still tied to it, through the weakness of biology, and our mortality.
"Learning" is so woke!
It’s hard being a fake tough guy like Lewondorkski. Ya always gotta wonder if you are gonna run into a real tough guy that decides to beat your ass!
Looking at you too, little punk-ass Stephen Miller!
Also, why not just go to the store and buy your own damn gun? He seems like the insecure ammosexual type who already owns more than one, anyway.
Good word, ammosexual. Hadn’t heard that one before.
He needed to power up with a 007 immunity badge. It's a separate add-on these days.
"Who—besides every economist on the planet—could have seen this coming?" How about anyone with a working brain? Spot on.
Interesting to hear the call for restraint about people who sent an email to Epstein or who received one and then did nothing. Yes, they're "correspondents," but there's nothing nefarious there.
On the other hand...
I AM taking a certain amount of glee in seeing some of these Masters of the Universe getting called out. My favorite so far is Brad Karp, longtime chairman of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP. This guy. He was a lot more than a "correspondent" and he's no longer chairman, although he is still a partner. Paul Weiss rolled over to Trump. There needed to be some kind of price for that and maybe this is something like that. Not big, but something.
And Leon Black, another Master of the Universe, CEO of Apollo Global Management, a major Paul Weiss client, worked with Epstein when his affair with a Russian model went sideways and he had to pay her off.
These are the kinds of people that make up The Epstein Class. They're scum. They're morally bankrupt. They use their wealth to shield them from consequences. They've lost their moral compass so completely that even after they know they're dealing with a guy who'd been convicted of sex offenses, they're still dealing with him in some way.
These are the people who rolled over to Trump. These guys. Just one question for clients of Paul Weiss: Do you think these guys are focused on your interests?
Snorting cocaine off of a toilet seat seat? I mean who in this administration hasn’t done that. I am old enough to remember Nancy Reagan’s just say no, and the war on drugs which imprisoned thousands of Americans and ripped communities apart. And if you are one of the lesser people the war on drugs has never gone away. But if you are a Kennedy or any of our other elites, and you will never face any consequences, then of course you can brag about snorting cocaine off of a toilet seat, or take ketamine until you pee blood, or go to sex islands and cavort with underage girls. But hey it’s all good for these people were meant to be our masters.
'Do as I say, not as I do' is our masters mantra.
The decadence is the point.
It stuns me that 40% of the country still supports this monstrous "administration"!!
Don’t be. Adolf’s approval was at about the same level as he was shoving Panzerfaust antitank rockets into the hands of children, and old men, to slow down the allied juggernaut in March of 1945.
I reckon every country has a pretty sizable amount of fascist pukes that would support anything, as long as it is murderous, racist, and hateful. In a functioning democracy, their kind are suppressed. We are not a functioning democracy right now.
Except I have a. (ex) friend who is kind, friendly and not racist who told me she loves him.
Many polls show lower approval rates and he's getting killed with the Independents; they really don't like his immigration control tactics. Independents will decide the election. Hispanics have really turned on the Republicans (and no wonder).
So have the youth vote, even our young men. Apparently Trump is no longer mog enough.
Dude is underwater with men, ffs. That surprised me more than any of the other data I've seen reported here.
Yes, that's what continues to depress me. 40% extrapolated is around 120 million adults who are still perfectly fine with cabinet insanity, internment of children, and murder in the streets. We can't go on as a nation flopping back and forth. We need a 1930's sea change of some kind to return to rationality and caring about each other.
And just this morning CNN is reporting that consumer sentiment indicates that people are HAPPY with the economy. I just don't get it.
Do they not see what these people are doing?
The older I get, the more I realize how marginal the average American intelligence is.
Hey, since their memory is a long as the Felon's ...., they have no memory of the price of eggs 16 days ago, let alone six 16 months ago.
Because his inflation numbers have been "revised" this morning. There is zero increase in inflation. Didn't he fire the person in charge of collating data?
I know. The press keeps saying Trumps polling is down, but its always the same 4 out of 10 that think he's great. And they are devoted.
BE MINNESOTA!
I'm predicting some really, really big parties in downtown Minneapolis this summer.
Walz isn't looking for a celebration. He's maintaining vigilance, but the people may have something else to say.
New Slogan for the Resistance: WE ARE ALL MINNEAPOLIS
It takes a lot more effort to snort coke off a toilet seat than to do it just about any other way imaginable. It also seems wasteful. If you have a dead bear lying around -and who doesn't?- snort it out of the bear's anus instead.
I'm not taking bets the Brain Worm Host didn't try that.
Ah David! You actually made me laugh with that. Thank you!
Twas brillig and Morning Shots quoted The jabberwocky!! love it!
I’ve always felt a bit sorry for the Jabberwock.
——————
“Wow, my eyes are super bloodshot. Doing taxes until 3am probably wasn’t the best idea, but at
least they’re finished. *Burp* Note to self: that midnight burrito was REALLY stupid, my stomach is really burbling”
“Hey, it looks like a truly brillig morning, maybe a short whiffle through the Tulgey wood would help? It should help clear my head to get outside and check out what the bandersnatches are up to, listen to the jubjub birds singing, and maybe even catch the borogoves doing their whole mimsy thing?”
“Who’s that? It looks like that damned Beamish kid leaning up against a Tumtum tree, and OH CRAP,
he’s got a vorpal sword! Who in their right mind would give a stupid kid like that a vorpal sword! His chortling father probably. I doubt that whole violent Beamish family has ever had a single uffish thought between the entire bunch of them”
“He hasn’t noticed me yet, maybe I can just whiffle past him without any problems? Don’t make eye contact. DON’T MAKE EYE CONTACT. Oh no, he sees me. Dang, he’s galumphing toward me…”
Oh frabjous day! Calloo-Callay!
There's still a frumious Bandersnatch out there, tho.
Our Justice Department has turned into a cesspool, with Bondi periodically emerging from the sewage to spew out at her political enemies her own brand of guano. Her gross misconduct needs to be referred to her Bar Associations for disciplinary proceedings leading to potential disbarment.
This Administration is at war with the American Bar Association. It’s threatened to strip it of its status as the official accreditor of US law schools, revoked a lot of funding, will no longer give it non-public information about federal judicial nominees, and called it a “snooty’ organization of “leftist lawyers”.
Trumpists started with a longstanding conservative complaint about organizations that have some degree of leftward tilt, and turned it into a doctrine that anything short of unquestioning obeisance to a lawless, amoral psychopath is a form of "corruption" or ideological sabotage.
Trump saw that he could get a lot of political benefit from tarring his personal adversaries as part of the opposing (anti-American) side in a grand ideological battle. Thus the National Trust for Historic Preservation is called a "radical left" organization, even though 3 of 4 words in its name indicate an objectively conservative mission.
Thats what you do when you hate people who are telling you the truth.
Hope is the fuel for the resistance.
Cathy is spot on that the kind of mud slinging against Sam Harris and Nellie Bowles is ultimately unhelpful.
I guess, but given all that is going on, *this* is what is worth writing about?? I’d also note that while Harris didn’t ultimately meet with Epstein, if you follow the link Cathy includes to the copy of the email (from 2015!), Harris doesn’t respond to Epstein’s initial invite with a hard no - he responds “Only if we film it… :)”. And in response to the follow up question about whether he’s in NY at all, he says “No plans at the moment.” Again, this was all in 2015, so post-conviction. I don’t know about you, but if a convicted pedophile was emailing me with invites, I would block him. I wouldn’t joke around and leave open the possibility of getting together in the future. I agree that all this stuff about Harris doesn’t deserve massive outrage or a witch hunt, but I don’t think he’s the innocent person people seem to be painting him as. Which is why I think it is bizarre that a good chunk of the newsletter is focused on this topic, given all the insanity going on in the world right now.
ETA: I agree with the part about criticism of Bowles being totally misplaced. As Young pointed out, she’s a journalist considering a potential story, so that makes it totally different from the Harris situation. I still think there are better/more important stories that could’ve taken the place of all this in the newsletter.
Yes! I was thinking as I read, why is Cathy Young spending her time finger-wagging about this? Aren't there better articles to write, especially about the Epstein files? We're always going to have naysayers and dismissers and on the other end wild conspiracies, no matter what. It's the spectrum of human nature. And guess what, sometimes the most implausible sounding conspiracies have raw truth embedded in them. Like for example, when I first heard about QAnon and the global pedophile ring, I was like, "That's bananas." Turns out we can see now that it was not completely bananas. And when I first heard a YouTube commenter say that Epstein was Mossad, I was like, "no way!" But again, now the files reveal that indeed he had ties to both Russian and Israeli intelligence (and other countries too) and there seems to be a global "shadow" political engine running where his nefarious endeavors held and still hold power over many of those who call the shots around the globe.
I have no doubt you'd feel differently if you were caught having an innocuous conversation with a man who later proved to be a deeply troubled pedophile. Having to defend yourself to a bunch of people with ideological differences from you, holding pitchforks and torches, would be frustrating and exhausting. Cathy Young would be a welcome defense in that instance. Besides, there's no shortage of Epstein coverage.
That conversation happened in 2015, AFTER Epstein’s initial conviction. I know you aren’t responding to my comment, but when I was saying there are more important stories to be covered, I wasn’t actually talking about anything Epstein-related. To be clear, I am NOT calling for a Harris witch-hunt in any way, shape, or form. But I also think we should be clear-eyed and not pretend like this was a perfectly benign, innocuous interaction.
By the way, I didn’t even know about this whole Sam Harris Epstein correspondence until I read Young’s piece. I just went and searched his name in both Apple News and Google, and while I didn’t look through all of the results, nothing immediately came up about Epstein. I really don’t think he is in need of defending right now. There are far more important topics that deserve coverage and attention.
It's all part of our outrage culture. If you're not outraged about something every second of your day, there's something wrong.
Agreed. And to the naysayers that think this is a waste of time to discuss: 1. You can always skip the article, and 2. there exists a large subset of people all too willing to turn the slightest grievances into high crimes and misdemeanors. It should be called out for what it is: unhelpful.
Outrage is money for them.
💯
Yes, but we also shouldn’t be making up problems where they don’t exist or barely exist. If there was a witch hunt going on, then I would think your claims had more merit. But this is seriously a nonissue right now. This honestly feels like manufactured outrage. Almost no one is talking about Harris and Bowles vis a vis Epstein. There are far more important topics to cover.
You know it's not good for MAGA and their Orange Leader when the Wall Street Journal is reporting on all the illegal and wrongful activities of this administration.
Are they saying it's wrong? Or "much like Biden, Trump has taken personal financial advantage of his office, often, again like the Biden Family, to enrich his relatives" kind of approach?
Hey, Hunter could at least pay for his own escorts!
Down to a person, this administration must have a schedule for the ass hat of the day.
I guess Pam Bondi's assigned day was Wednesday. And BTW, why is the BBC making Bondi seem cool in this story, describing her performance as "fiery", instead of "unhinged" or "batshit crazy"? I expect better from the BBC. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/four-takeaways-from-pam-bondis-fiery-epstein-testimony/ar-AA1Wackg
BBC is probably worried that trump would add another $10 billion to his ridiculous lawsuit.
I don't see why they'd be worried. Trump doesn't file lawsuits he thinks he'll win, he just does it for ridiculous amounts of money to feel like a big man, and intimidate people. Most of them get laughed out of court.
Yes, the BBC, I've noticed, is becoming more and more milquetoast.