All week we had a big buildup to the Putin-Trump Lovefest.
So what did we actually get?
It played out like an episode of VEEP …
Then again perhaps the Alaska meet delivered a bit for both. The war criminal Putin got the red carpet, and Trump got a distraction from Epstein. For everybody else it was nada.
So yes, the war criminal successfully played the convicted felon …
… and he really is now gaslighting for the Nobel prize …
- As both you and I are aware, the actual number is 0, but MAGA will lap it up.
- His actual long-term goal is clear, and so he will happily screw over Ukraine to get it. Obama got it, so he also wants it, and thought he could get Putin to roll-over for him.
- The Prize committee do perhaps appreciate that if they actually gave it to him then they would be rendering their award as meaningless.
So what else has been happening?
Martial Law Cosplay
- They claim to be centrist, but they are very clearly not. News Nation is just Temu Fox
Tackling the Homeless in DC … by arresting them …
Multiple layers of Lunacy and utter incompetence
The $200 million White House ballroom …
- Scary thought: You don’t just build a $200 million ballroom if you know that you are planning on moving out of the White House in three years.
Actual economists are unimpressed with EJ Antoni, Trump’s pick to give him his jobs numbers he likes — regardless of the reality
If you are wondering who E.J.Antoni is, then I’ll simply drop this NBC story here …
- White House is now claiming that he was just an innocent bystander – We can of course all agree that everything the White House claims is “truth”.
- In the words, the Heritage Foundation dude who promoted Project 2025 *just so happened* to be milling around the Capitol on that grimy, early January day when he accidentally stumbled upon a pro-Trump riot mob … right?
As for the real Job Statistics …
“Draining the swamp” …
Budget Deficit is rapidly ramping up …
TACO … again, as predicted by many …
Also, as predicted, inflation is back …
We’re not getting there. We are there. www.nbcnews.com/politics/whi…
Tech Bro bun fight of the week – Elon is still being Elon, but Sam from OpenAI was pushing back …
Guilty of the hideous crime of … *checks notes* … throwing a sandwich (shudders, oh the horror) …
- Assault by sandwich is a serious crime. It’s at least a first degree deli-ny offense, if not attempted mustard. Not as bad as ketchup slaughter though.
Always with the hypocrisy, and thankfully some call it out …
We are now in a golden age … for criminals …
Tariffs
It’s going rather well (if you only listen to propaganda and ignore reality), but Spencer can see that it is all BS …
- You would need to be incredibly stupid to believe …. no wait, that was on Fox News and was for MAGA, so yes, quite normal then.
Gerrymandering Updates
The Fascist Party’s Game plan …
Here is verification for the above …
Reminder: HR1 had national fair districting. Every Dem supported it. Every Republican opposed it. www.brennancenter.org/our-work/ana…
ICE Gestapo updates
This past week ICE engaged in direct political intimidation …
- Link to NYT article here (paywalled) – limited num of free article if you give them an email (Hint: Apple devices enable you to generate an email that will forward to your real email, and you can then toss it later)
- The “neighborhood” for the above incident is Little Tokyo. The video of the CBP Agents even shows the grounds of the Japanese American National Museum… …you know, the Museum commemorating the last time we locked up Non-White Americans up because we felt like it, despite the Constitution. And that particular spot is Democracy Plaza. The presser was in the Democracy Center. So it was an attack on Democracy in more ways than one.
- I should also add that the NYT themselves are not innocent bystanders, they played a very distinct role in enabling all of this.
MAHA – Alternative “Science”
Just a couple of political cartoons to highlight some of the consequences of putting a clown into a position of power.
Gaza Update
US Arabs for Trump need to come to terms with their choices …
- Link here
- To quote one commenter: “I don’t begrudge anyone’s frustration with Biden/Harris on Gaza but if you actively campaigned for Trump on the premise that he would be *better* for Gaza you are a moron or a plant.“
More brutal murder by Israel as a consequence of its ongoing campaign of Genocide …
Israel is not fighting terrorism, they have become “terrorism incarnate”, they are now literally a rogue terrorist stage
Meanwhile in the US …
- If you are wondering who he is referring to, it is Laura Loomer. See here for the degree of influence this nut job has.
Seriously, it really was her decision – “Trump cuts off Medical Visas from Gaza after Laura Loomer, the right-wing provocateur, freaked out over a video of children from Gaza coming to the U.S. for medical care…” She is not an elected official, yet apparently she gets to decide US policy now www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol…
- Rumour has it that she gives Trump Blow jobs, hence the influence. (I’m not making that up, some of her friends have reported that she brags about this to them).
Christian Nationalists
The nuttier right-wing religious fanatics within the MAGA cult are as always doing their thing, and so here are a few samples from this past week …
- Pastor Joshua Haymes declares that feminism must be defeated because “feminism is wrong, bad, evil, untrue, destructive, & fundamentally anti-Christian.” — (His message to all women, “go home to the kitchen and cook, that’s your place“)
- Eric Metaxas proclaims that “Donald Trump is God’s Alpha Male Warrior answer to the satanic Jezebelic Spirit that’s been destroying the West.” — (His “Alpha Male Warrior ” is indeed rather renowned for sexually assaulting women, there are many fully documented examples, and that includes some who were underage).
- Right-wing pastor Ché Ahn explains how an invitation to the White House confirmed that he had been instructed by God to run for governor of California: “You can’t make this up. And I said, ‘OK, Lord, OK, that’s a sign.‘”. — (An invitation to the White House is a “Sign”, but not a good one)
- Oklahoma’s Superintendent of Education Ryan Walters says that he’s implementing a process to require any teacher who has moved from a blue state to pass a test before being allowed to teach in Oklahoma in order to protect students from California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s “woke indoctrinators.” — (“woke indoctrinators.” = cares about students, and Walters simply can’t have any of that going on)
- Rick Green urges Congress to completely take over Washington, DC: “Wipe out the entire DC government. Start over from scratch.” — (After Trump is done, we really are going to have to start over from scratch after he has burned most things to the ground)
- Christian nationalist Lance Wallnau grows increasingly unhinged as he explains how God is using Trump to give right-wing Christians control over the “Seven Mountains” of culture — (Lance merges theology with an overt political strategy to seize cultural control — using Trump as both a symbol and a vehicle. While his supporters might see this as fulfilling God’s will, his critics (including many Christians) see it as increasingly conspiratorial, authoritarian, and corrosive to democratic pluralism.)
- Eric Metaxas declares that holding members of the Obama administration responsible for is “a moral test for America“: “With this kind of filth, you cannot have the America that was given to us by God through the founders. It needs to be cleaned out. We need to have the equivalent of the Nuremberg Trials.” — (Eric, along with the 80% of evangelicals that support the corrupt felon and sexual predator, have literally failed one of the easiest moral tests going)
- Seth Gruber believes that birth control is part of a plot constructed by the “globalist, eugenicist, depopulationist, Bill Gates, one world government, neo-Malthusian [Margaret] Sanger demons.” — (Apparently every sperm is sacred)
A few deserve a bit of time in the spotlight.
Far-right Christian Nationalist Doug Wilson gets a bit of media attention
Doug Wilson claims that the criticism he has received in the wake of CNN’s recent profile is evidence that “a lot of what passes for political discourse in our day is just a bad combination of drug-addled thinking, mental illness, hot garbage, and demon possession.”
- Reminder: He is not fond of women having the vote, that’s why he got his 15 minutes
- Not sure Doug appreciates that if the nation really did adopt the actual teachings of Jesus as law, then it is his specific variation of cultist belief that would be banned.
- There is a line that has crossed. If people wish to join his church and play by their rules with their sandbox, that’s their choice. The problem here is that Doug, and all the other variations of Christian Nationalism yearn to dictate how you should live your life – that’s why this is a problem.
- Reminder: The US Secretary of Defense supports and openly promotes this religious fascism, and nobody challenges him about it.
So where has Joel been? Yep, still out there being who he is:
Joel Webbon asserts that if America is going to survive, it must become distinctly Christian, patriarchal, anti-Zionist, and “race-realist.”
- The term “Distinctly Christian” simply means his rather bizarre variation of “Christian” belief, one where all other variations of Mainstream Christianity are heretics. If you had a go at guessing what he means by “race-realist”, then you would not be wrong.
Joel Webbon also this past week admits that he never attacks anyone to the right of him because in a year or two he might find that he actually agrees with them.
- I’m honestly struggling to believe that there are people even further to the right than he currently is.
Oh and harking back to the “feminism is evil” claim by Pastor Joshua Haymes that we opened this week’s section with, this was Joel running with that same weird “gospel” this past week …
Weirdest of the Weird
Some, like the previous nuts, most probably say weird stuff for attention, click$, and power. Others, like Tim Barton (below), reach deep down into the core of who they really are, and the rise triumphant clutching gross hypocrisy as a trophy that they are then proud to spotlight.
While blasting Texas Democrats for their effort to prevent Republicans from gerrymandering the state to help President Donald Trump, Tim Barton insisted that when Republican legislators in Oregon refused to show up for weeks to prevent Democrats from passing laws they didn’t like in 2023, it was praiseworthy because they did it for a “greater moral good.“
- Tim Translator: “It’s fine when my team does it, but when the other team does the same, I deem it to be evil“. So yes, Hypocrisy is indeed an Olympic Class sport these days.
- You might have been tempted to think that European history teaches us to be wary of electing religious fanatics into positions of political power, but apparently not, we have forgotten all that.
- We have an actual case study of what happens from modern Brasil – Time (July 14) – Netflix’s Sobering Apocalypse in the Tropics Depicts the Rise of Evangelical Christianity in Brazilian Politics – These fanatics propelled the deeply corrupt Bolsonaro into power. The prosperity gospel also thrives there, they literally worship wealth. Quote1: “This portrait is not just a reflection of siloed far-right movements. What we are seeing is how fundamentalist movements in different countries are sharing ideas and practices, forming alliances and acquiring immense global impact,” … Quote2 “Brazil has become increasingly fragmented, amplified by a widespread subscription to hateful doctrines, culture wars, anti-intellectualism, disinformation on social media, apocalyptic messaging, doomsday conspiracy theories, and ethno-religious identity politics.” – does any of this sound familiar?
- Side note: This past week Ché Ahn was also explaining how an invitation to the White House confirmed that he had been instructed by God to run for governor of California: “You can’t make this up. And I said, ‘OK, Lord, OK, that’s a sign.‘” – – – (“You can’t make this up“, says the guy who literally made it up)
- When he loses, which he will, he will not give up. These folks are pathologically arrogant about what they think that a God is telling them they deserve.
Even More Political Cartoons from the past week
As always, there are many excellent cartoons.
Media Sane-washing of Tyranny
Kara Swisher shaming the @washingtonpost for platforming Trump regime lies. (And teaching us new words. #Codswallop)
Biden stutters a bit and we get it spotlighted 24×7; Trump babbles utter nonsense – crickets …
Pushing back
Talerico is a star …
This is how that interview ended …
Gov Newsom’s official twitter press office account is trolling Trump (yes it really is his official press office account, and yes they really are trolling you-know-who) …
- Any MAGA criticism of this communication style will need to consider that this is exactly how Trump “communicates”.
To be clear, the above was not just one tweet, there are many, and they time it such that these tweets went out in the middle of the night …
- The only pushback here that Trump has is perhaps Copyright infringement.
- This is exactly the bold, unfiltered energy Democrats need. Stop playing polite while the other side bulldozes democracy. The post uses Trump’s own style…caps, jabs, exaggeration, to make a serious point: gerrymandering is voter suppression
Will MAGA get it? Hell no, they are just too thick to make the leap …
Republican Rep. Carl DeMaio hung a curveball over the fat part of the plate and Newsom’s crew was waiting on it and hit it into the Pacific Ocean …
Here’s @mehdirhasan.bsky.social asking the question we’ve been asking for a week The Sunday shows ignored it, and Hegseth just stood next to Trump for an hour and nobody asked…
Finally
His cognitive decline is real …
Sadly the pandemic of raw stupidity persists …
Our favourite pranksters have been assisting with ICE recruitment …
