Thursday, July 31, 2025
More stock market manipulation?
Will he have withdrawn that by August 7?Actually, I'm not sure the market pays any attention to his tariff claims any more.
Pot, meet Kettle
And quite directly picking their pockets, ripping them off peddling junk merch upon junk merch.
This is a perfect lead in to a Mark Twain quote: I don't know if we're being governed by imbeciles or by smart people who really mean it. I think it's imbeciles who really mean it.
At least somebody followed up. Kudos to that reporter.
He's a sociopath with an enlarged path.
Still coveting a Nobel Prize.
And, it's Nobel, Karoline, not Noble.
They're eventually going to get Social Security privatized
And, yes, it WOULD be a game changer if "all of a sudden you have hundreds of thousands of dollars for your retirement," but privatization will not make that happen.
Habba the Nutt*
You know where this is going. Trump doesn't have to acknowledge any court other than SCOTUS (and that hasn't yet been tested).Alina Habba is Trump’s former personal lawyer and a MAGA influencer, who was installed as interim U.S. attorney for New Jersey about four months ago, despite no prosecutorial experience. She immediately politicized the office, opening investigations into the sitting governor and attorney general and charging Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-NJ) with assault for an incident at a Newark ICE detention facility. She has said in interviews that her role as a federal prosecutor would be to help “turn New Jersey red.”
But Habba had a problem: The Federal Vacancies Reform Act (FVRA) only gave her a 120-day window to perform the duties of the office in an interim capacity. Though Habba was nominated on July 1 to serve permanently as U.S. attorney, New Jersey’s senators have thus far blocked her from consideration. As last Friday’s deadline approached, Habba petitioned a three-judge panel to allow her to stay in the position. But the judges used their authority under the vacancy laws to reject that request and instead appointed Desiree Leigh Grace, the first assistant U.S. attorney.
Prospect
It's not over, though.The administration then maneuvered to keep Habba in the job. The law prevents someone from being an acting U.S. attorney and nominated for the post at the same time. But Habba resigned as interim U.S. attorney, and Trump withdrew her nomination for the post. Then, Attorney General Pam Bondi fired Grace and hired Habba as first assistant U.S. attorney in her place. Therefore, under the vacancy rules, Habba could become the acting U.S. attorney in New Jersey for another 210 days.
That doesn't seem right. But, hey, litigate away.[Julien Giraud Jr.] had a criminal trial set in New Jersey for August 4 on federal gun and drug charges. But his attorney, Thomas Mirigliano, filed a motion seeking to dismiss the charges on the grounds that Habba isn’t the real U.S. attorney.
“Ms. Habba’s re-appointment directly violates the FVRA, which explicitly prohibits individuals whose nominations have been submitted to the Senate from serving in an acting capacity for the same office, regardless of subsequent withdrawal of the nomination,” Mirigliano wrote in the filing.
Not great. But I want to see a lawsuit brought by the three-judge panel that declined her petition to stay in office.The case is now in the hands of a judge in Pennsylvania. Obviously, if one defendant succeeds in getting his federal case thrown out in New Jersey, every subsequent defendant will try the same tactic. While the courts might ultimately rule that prosecutorial authority is not diminished by breaking the vacancy rules, at the very least thousands of cases could screech to a halt for months.
*Sorry, I don't remember who I stole that from.
Wednesday, July 30, 2025
Josh Hawley's time may be up
Aside from the rambling rant and the oddly capitalized words, he's now adding quotation marks around random words.
Have I mentioned that Donald Trump is batshit crazy?
Disgraceful and dangerous
I should hope he will be watched under a microscope. Judges can be impeached.
Not by Republicans, of course.
The Epstein jail video is problematic
Other discrepancies that look like a possible coverup are identified in the assessment, including the 3-minute gap in the film is analyzed to actually be 8 minutes, and several lies guard Noel told investigators. She could be lying to cover her mistakes, and she could be lying to cover someone else's activity.While brief movement is occasionally visible on the stairs when someone is walking up the left side, the area remains mostly obscured throughout the recording, making it impossible to determine if someone may have entered the SHU through the primary entrance and accessed the staircase without ever being captured on the recording.
[...]
Without visual evidence, the case relies on the word of staff members [Tova] Noel and [Michael] Thomas that no one entered. At one point the Justice Department noted both of them appeared to have fallen asleep, although Noel denies this.
Jim Stafford, a video forensics expert, reviewed the footage and the inspector general's report and told CBS News, "To say that there's no way that someone could get to that — the stair up to his room — without being seen is false." Four other leading video forensics experts interviewed by CBS News concurred.
CBS
There are videos from other cameras that have not been released.
This is not going away.
True, but...
I wouldn't be so quick to blame this particular capitalist/communist program on Trump. The government has been doing this for decades, and Big Ag has been reliably the beneficiary. Small farmers have been dying out since the 60s, at least in part because of these subsidies to farming corporations.
We have no shortage of other things that can be legitimately blamed on Trump.
The most incompetent administration in history
By design.
Actually, I think RFKJ is in charge, but I take the point. This clown heads the FDA.
Tuesday, July 29, 2025
Tulsa, Slocum, ...
This wasn't in my educational curriculum either...
UPDATE 07/30/2025:
Ignorant white racists are the scourge of the planet and are nowhere more prevalent than in the US.
Hostile takeover
Hmmmmm...Dobbs? CASA?Last week, the White House released an “AI Action Plan” and three executive orders on artificial intelligence: “Accelerating Federal Permitting of Data Center Infrastructure,” “Promoting the Export of the American AI Technology Stack,” and “Preventing Woke AI In the Federal Government.” The overall goal is to develop AI as fast as possible by removing bureaucratic impediments and export controls on chips and other equipment, placing data centers on federal land, promoting energy production to power them (as long as it isn’t renewable energy), and integrating AI systems into the federal government. All that’s asked of the AI companies themselves is to make sure their large language models (LLMs) promote a Trump-friendly view of the world.
[...]
“So from this day forward, it'll be a policy of the United States to do whatever it takes to lead the world in artificial intelligence,” he said. “Such an important thing happening. This is really something that nobody expected. It just popped out of the air, and here we are.”
And of course, Trump contrasted his approach with that of President Biden, about whom he said, “You would've spent a lot of money and you wouldn't have been able to win. They didn't allow you to win. But we have a plan which only admires and respects the winners.”
[...]
“If you are operating under 50 different sets of state laws, the most restrictive state of all will be the one that rules,” he said. “So you could have a state run by a crazy governor, a governor that hates you, a governor that's not smart, or maybe a governor that's very smart, but decides that he doesn't like the industry and he can put you out of business because you're going to have to go to that lowest common denominator.”
Public Notice
Proof by assertion.Trump also endorsed the AI companies’ desire to utilize copyrighted works without compensating the authors.
“You can't be expected to have a successful AI program when every single article, book, or anything else that you've read or studied, you're supposed to pay for. ‘Gee, I read a book. I'm supposed to pay somebody,’” he said. “And we appreciate that, but you just can't do it because it's not doable.”
Isn't that non-neutral in itself? Sorry, I keep trying to insert logic.But the really good stuff — at least as far as Trump and his movement are concerned — is in the “Preventing Woke AI” executive order.
In order to stamp out “pervasive and destructive” DEI ideology, the order insists that AI models must be free of “incorporation of concepts like critical race theory, transgenderism, unconscious bias, intersectionality, and systemic racism.” Only banishing those ideas will demonstrate a sufficient “commitment to truth” and ensure “reliable AI.” The order does note that its ambitions are limited: “While the Federal Government should be hesitant to regulate the functionality of AI models in the private marketplace, in the context of Federal procurement, it has the obligation not to procure models that sacrifice truthfulness and accuracy to ideological agendas.” It also insists that “LLMs shall be neutral, nonpartisan tools that do not manipulate responses in favor of ideological dogmas such as DEI.”
This leaves AI companies with a choice: Either create two sets of AI systems — one for general use, and a right-wing version for government — or just make all their systems Trump-compliant.
Only in America
The Trump regime is rounding up and deporting immigrants, most of whom have no criminal record or only minor civil charges, on the pretext of making us safer, but they won't do a damned thing about guns.
Who knew you could pile shit as high as Chuck Grassley?
OK, we all did.
The account he thinks is not disqualifying is Bove telling attorneys they would have to tell the courts "fuck you" and ignore any orders that went against Trump.
There are now three whistleblowers offering this evidence.
And, Thom Tillis, the one GOP senator people still had hope for, is going to vote to put Bove in a lifetime position on a federal court. Shame on him.
UPDATE 07/30/2025:
UPDATE 08/01/2025:
Monday, July 28, 2025
Resistance fight in courts
If you can, please donate today to support Public Citizen’s work standing up to the Trump regime.The Trump administration is unilaterally, unconstitutionally, and unlawfully dismantling the federal government — our government — from Cabinet-level departments that have their own stately buildings here in Washington, D.C., to smaller agencies that go largely unnoticed as they do the routine, unheralded work that makes for a functioning country.
Public Citizen is doing everything we can — within our modest means — to fight back at every turn.
[...]
This Job Corps case is one of 17 lawsuits we have filed (so far) against the administration since Trump returned to power.
[...]
In 1964 — as part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s “War on Poverty” — Congress created the landmark Job Corps program to provide vocational and academic training to low-income young people.
For six decades, Job Corps has helped millions of at-risk youth by providing job training, housing, and assistance with GEDs.
The Job Corps program has continued with ongoing bipartisan support in Congress — even when President Richard Nixon wanted to shrink it and President Ronald Reagan wanted to eliminate it altogether.
But then Donald Trump was reelected, and tried to do what Nixon and Reagan couldn’t. In May — in flagrant defiance of the law — the Trump regime announced that it was suspending the Job Corps program and closing all 99 Job Corps centers nationwide.
Public Citizen — with Southern Poverty Law Center as co-counsel — filed a class-action lawsuit in federal court challenging the Trump administration’s unlawful decision to close the Job Corps centers.
Last Friday, the court ruled in our favor and put on hold the Trump regime’s decision to close the Job Corps centers.
The judge wrote that the administration’s actions were “unprecedented” and that it “unequivocally” acted “unlawfully” in its scheme to kill the storied Job Corps program.
Public Citizen newsletter
Asshole in Chief
He's saying this standing with the EU President and the UK Prime Minister. Such a dick. Both Trump and Starmer, actually.
You're going to have to imagine it. It's not going to happen
Continue reading for the analysis.Trump and EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced the deal for a 15% tariff on U.S. imports of EU goods at the U.S. leader's golf course in Scotland on Sunday.
But more important than the 15% tariff rate was the apparent commitment by the EU to massively ramp up energy imports from the United States.
The agreement calls for EU imports of U.S. energy, which currently are mainly crude oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG), of $250 billion a year for three years.
This is a delusional level of imports that the EU has virtually no chance of meeting, and one that U.S. producers would also struggle to supply.
Even if the EU did manage somehow to boost its energy imports from the United States to the $250 billion a year mark, it would also prove massively disruptive for energy flows around the rest of the world.
Reuters
Markwayne is still a useful idiot for the Trump regime
They're going full bore on Obama now. I'm guessing that's because the black guy as president is still a sore point for MAGA, so it's seen as their best chance to move MAGA off the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.
Rupar always puts the worst spin on the Gop in his clip summaries, so you have to actually listen to them. His summary here makes it seem as though Mullin is saying Obama was in office in 2008. He doesn't say that. What's left off that last "Obama was in office" is that he repeats it happened in 2009.
At any rate, Tapper is right.
Sunday, July 27, 2025
Another Bove whistleblower
Former DOJ attorney in the Office of Immigration Litigation.
UPDATE 08/01/2025:
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