Increasing prices of goods…. increased the prices of goods? THAT cant be right.
How about this?
As Americans continue to struggle with high costs and looming tariffs, 5.1% of those with auto loans are delinquent on at least one account as of the first quarter of 2025. By state, that figure ranges from 3.2% to 9.8%.
And:
Egg prices are down from last year (when we had a bird fly emergency), however, and that’s all that matters.
I still can’t believe that I’m positively quoting Bill Kristol but when he’s right, he’s right. And he’s more right about Trump and the threat he poses than some of my erstwhile allies on the other side who are more interested in pursuing their personal political vendettas than facing down fascism. (I’m not interested in that right now. I’ll join the circular firing squad when the AR-15s pointed at my head have been disarmed.)
Any and all critics of the administration are now at risk of legal assault. Following up on their earlier executive order and national security memorandum, the administration and its allies routinely claim that peaceful protests are controlled by “antifa”—which they in turn claim is a criminal and terrorist conspiracy. And they assert that such speech is a cover for and an incitement to violence. The administration is thus laying the groundwork for subjecting speech critical of it to suppression and prosecution. There are indications that new crackdowns on dissent, on dissenters, and on the institutions that employ them and their funders, are imminent.
It’s of course comical when President Trump says, as he did yesterday, that
You see people holding this gorgeous sign with beautiful wood, beautiful cardboard, wood, everything, everything’s perfect, paint job, and they’re all the same. There are thousands of them, you know, that they weren’t made in the basement out of love. They were made by anarchists.
Beware of the well-organized anarchists at work!
It really is too funny.
He goes on to urge people to join the No Kings protest this weekend, ruefully admitting that some of his old friends find it hilarious that someone such as him would be endorsing protests against the government. But he does it, saying rightly:
… what’s not comical, what is in fact sinister, is the assumption here that there would be something wrong if protest signs weren’t being made in basements but in print shops; and that it would be wrong to attempt to organize others who agree with their message. This is all protected speech. But the president and his administration barely conceal any longer that they want to suppress both free speech and free political activity.
There is no doubt about it. In fact, they seem to be preparing to provoke violence at the DC protest at least and I wouldn’t be surprised if they do it elsewhere. Look at this:
Kristol writes:
The Founders tried to construct a government that featured all kinds of guardrails to protect liberty: separation of powers, federalism, and checks and balances. They didn’t want to count too much on uncommon courage or wisdom from the people. As Federalist #51 puts it,
A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions. This policy of supplying, by opposite and rival interests, the defect of better motives, might be traced through the whole system of human affairs…These inventions of prudence cannot be less requisite in the distribution of the supreme powers of the State.
But the “auxiliary precautions” that were to supply “the defect of better motives” haven’t proved, in this crisis, up to the task. We do ultimately depend on the common sense and common courage of the people. “No Kings” is an expression of protest. But it is also an affirmation of responsibility. We the people ordained and established our free government. It’s up to us to keep it.
I seriously hope that many millions show up this weekend. If people become too frightened to make their voices heard we may already be lost.
As the new Rose Garden patio was coming together, Trump interrupted an Oval Office meeting with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to show off the new outdoor Bang & Olufsen sound system being installed (same brand as at Mar-a-Lago).
- “We have a great speaker system,” Trump, microphone in hand, boasted on Sept. 5 when he inaugurated the new “Rose Garden Club.” The guest list consisted of trusted Cabinet secretaries and advisers, and lawmakers who are reliable votes for his plans.
- “You are the ones that I never had to call at 4 o’clock in the morning,” he said.
“He’s stamping his legacy on the presidency and on the White House forever,” one senior adviser said. “No one can get rid of the ballroom. It will be difficult to take all of the gold away. Who would even do that?”
- “President [George W.] Bush liked to paint. Trump likes to build and design. This is his artistic outlet,” a White House aide said, describing the “perfectionist” tendencies of the Luxury Resort Owner-in-Chief.
Bush didn’t spend his time painting while he was still in the White House.
Trump is semi-retired. Miller and Vought are calling the shots domestically and, God help us, I think Hegseth and Rubio are doing it internationally. Trump steps in if it’s a pet project, maybe to knock some heads or lobby for the Peace Prize, but other than that he’s only half there at best.
I mean:
He’s devoting more and more time to this stuff. I wrote about his dream of a 250 anniversary celebratory Arc de Trump the other day. And then there’s the ballroom:
- Trump also 3D printed models of the ballroom on a diorama of the White House grounds that he fidgets with in the dining room during meals.
- “The tenser things are, the more he moves the [diorama] pieces around in his spare time, or he takes a break and thinks about the marble he wants or the columns, whether they’re going to be Corinthian or not,” a White House official said.
Another aide said Trump “worked every single detail you can think of … from where the bathrooms and plumbing are, to how many people will be able to sit in the ballroom, what material to use for the floor and the walls. How big the windows will be. He is literally the project manager.”
There’s more:
- Trees on the South Lawn: He hated the look of some of the newer oaks, birch and maples and began replacing them with trees that have broader canopies and that, to him, are more aesthetically pleasing.
- The Palm Room: Late last month, Trump redid the hall connecting the front of the White House to the Rose Garden and West Colonnade by ripping up the tiles and replacing them with statuary marble. He insisted on “bookmatching” the new tiles so that the marble veins line up and make the floor appear as if it’s one giant slab. He replaced the overhead lights with two Schonbeck chandeliers.
“This is all the president’s baby,” one of the advisers said. “It’s the Trump White House.”
He’s apparently also giving hour long White House tours to his MAGA visitors and getting their opinions on the tile.
This is not a president who is engaged in the presidency. He’s a part-time, semi-retired set decorator who dabbles in politics in his spare time.
Also, he’s got severe encroaching dementia.
Update —
He is also losing his hearing.
You may have heard that the Democrat running for Virginia Attorney General wrote some texts wishing violence on his political enemies a few years back. He’s been roundly condemned by the Democratic Party and there’s every likelihood that will lose his race. He’s an idiot. Anyone in politics should certainly know better.
And there’s there are the racist, Hitler-loving Nazi Young Republicans who were revealed yesterday to be such disgusting human beings that it’s genuinely shocking, even today, to read what they said.
JD Vance has thoughts:
I guess firing some school teacher or soldier for merely repeating Charlie Kirk’s own words is speaking truth to power. Interesting. Recall:
The First Amendment protects a lot of very ugly speech but if you celebrate … Charlie Kirk’s death, you should not be protected from being fired for being a disgusting person,” Vance told Fox News. “If you are a university professor who benefits from American tax dollars, you should not be celebrating Charlie Kirk’s death and if you are, maybe you should lose your job or your university should, should face a loss of funding.”
Vance added, “If you are the kind of person who thinks that Charlie Kirk was justifiably murdered, sometimes the government can’t do anything about that. But you know what can — is, is civil society and I’ve actually been gratified to see all these people standing up and saying, ‘Yes, we have free speech and yes, we have free debate, but if you’re, if you’re celebrating the death of a young father, you ought to pay some consequences for it.’”
Young Republican activists celebrating Hitler and chattering about ovens and gassing their political rivals is just college hijinx. No need to “clutch your pearls” over any of that.
I know that even mentioning hypocrisy or double standards is a waste of breath with today’s Republican Party but it’s become so common and is so blatant that I feel as if I have to make note of it once in a while so we don’t become so inured that we don’t notice it anymore.
Get a load of this one:
You can’t make this shit up.
Vance meanwhile, is defending his people. As Brian Beutler notes about the future leaders of the GOP whom Vance defended:
This is, in essence, a private virtual gathering of the right-wing hordes senior administration officials like Vance mingle with online. The extremists they seek to please with gutter rhetoric and real-life violence…
The administration is a content factory for people like that. It explains the state-sanctioned violence and attendant propaganda, but also the Trump campaign’s slandering of Haitian immigrants as people who eat household pets. It’s why the White House finds the racist Hakeem Jeffries In A Sombrero deepfake so useful.
And if they are not reined in by checks and balances and protest movements and journalism, it will soon explain much graver atrocities.
He’s right. Just look at what the next generation of Republican leaders were “chatting” about.
“It’s getting worse.” Not to raise an alarm or anything, Bill Kristol writes, but, “the Justice Department, Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel have abandoned all pretense that they are interested in something so old-fashioned as the rule of law.”
And it’s not just Donald Trump’s insistence on getting revenge on perceived enemies by prosecuting them when “sound grounds for legal action don’t exist.” This administration is moving against any and all its critics.
Kristol explains, “the administration and its allies routinely claim that peaceful protests are controlled by ‘antifa’—which they in turn claim is a criminal and terrorist conspiracy. And they assert that such speech is a cover for and an incitement to violence. The administration is thus laying the groundwork for subjecting speech critical of it to suppression and prosecution.”
We are in “off with their heads” territory. Trump is gunning for protected speech. His agents have conducted another military strike against an alleged small vessel off the coast of Venezuela:
Trump said, “Intelligence confirmed the vessel was trafficking narcotics” and “was associated with illicit narcoterrorist networks …” was in “International Waters” and that “six male narcoterrorists aboard the vessel were killed in the strike.”
How long before summary executions for alleged drug smugglers becomes executions for alleged “criminal and terrorist” protesters?
Kristol admits to the irony that popular mobilizations like No Kings are actions he once opposed. But this administration is not only pursuing unpopular activities and, in the case of slaughtering alleged drug dealers, illegal. Murdering alleged drug dealers landed former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte in prison in The Hague. A consummation
devoutly to be wish’d for Dear Leader.
Kristol concludes:
“No Kings” is an expression of protest. But it is also an affirmation of responsibility. We the people ordained and established our free government. It’s up to us to keep it.
* * * * *
No King’s One Million Rising movement – Next national day of protest Oct. 18
50501
May Day Strong
Freedom Over Fascism Toolkit
The Resistance Lab
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions
Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense
A reader with “exactly zero artistic ability” asked for a post on how I’m creating protest signs readable from passing cars. (I take my cue on readability from Patrick Randall, the Freeway Blogger. He’s still out there.)
I have no artistic ability either. What I do have in stock are a supply of corrugated plastic yard signs left over from past political campaigns. (After each election, local art teachers ask us for signs that won’t be reused.)
The sign above is the size I use on an overpass. It’s 36×22. The message facing the highway changes each week. The other side (shown above) is visible by pedestrians. The signs I use at street level are 36×12. (I tend to sandwich two smaller ones together so they bend less in the wind.)
To be easily readable from cars passing by at 35 mph, the letters need to be 3-1/2 to 4 in high. At 4 in, the message is readable by expressway drivers from 75 to 100 ft away.
I use Microsoft Publisher. (Engineers tend to work in the MS world.) I create a custom page size to match the backing board and craft a message that will fit the board. One side faces the expressway on the overpass. At street level, the full message tracks across two sides. I rotate overhead every few seconds so drivers coming both directions can read the full message. We’re talking about 4 to 6 words. Roughly 400-point type.
Once that’s done, rename and save the Publisher file, then reset the page size to 8-1/2×11 (landscape). Cram as many letters as will fit comfortably on that page size (what my laser printer will print; don’t try this with an ink jet!).
Insert a duplicate Publisher page after each letter set, edit, and repeat the process until the entire message is spread across however many pages it takes. (Uses up a lot of black toner, but we’re saving the country, aren’t we?)
After printing out all the pages (letters), use a cheap plastic paper trimmer and a straight edge to line them up in order, then simply Scotch tape them together. Then Scotch tape each line to the corrugated plastic backing board.
Cheap, fast, down and dirty. I’ve been rained on and the signs are still usable after they dry. Deciding on a message sometimes takes longer than assembling the sign itself (maybe a half hour).
My preferred overpass doesn’t have chain link fencing like a pedestrian overpass. There is a risk that a sudden gust of wind could tear the 36×22 sign out of my hands and have it tumble onto passing cars. Not good. As a safety measure, I installed a couple of eye bolts through the sign (seen at top) and connected them with parachute cord. The cord, cinched with a plastic spring cord lock, goes around the wrist.
It all looks very professional from a distance. People ask where I get them made up.
Freeway Blogger paints white latex onto corrugated cardboard bicycle boxes. He mocks up his message on a computer, then uses a digital projector to project his message onto the white cardboard. He traces the letters in pencil, then fills them in with black paint using a foam paint brush. He uses cheap bungees to fix them in place on chain link fence at overpasses and along the interstates, then walks away.
I hold mine with just my hands during rush hours to get reactions from passing drivers. Seeing someone out there (bravely, they think) and making eye contact encourages them (I hope) to get off their couches. Really, they need to see us out there.
Materials:
Used corrugated plastic campaign signs
8-1/2×11 paper
Laser printer
Scotch tape
Cheap paper cutter
Software:
Microsoft Publisher or similar
* * * * *
No King’s One Million Rising movement – Next national day of protest Oct. 18
50501
May Day Strong
Freedom Over Fascism Toolkit
The Resistance Lab
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions
Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense
The State Department said it has revoked the visas of at least six people for their comments on the death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
The agency revoked visas from nationals of countries including Argentina, South Africa and Mexico, the department said in a social-media post Tuesday. The department didn’t say if the people were in the country at the time their visas were revoked and didn’t specify what kinds of visas they held or when the visas were revoked.
In one screenshot shared by the agency, a person identified as an Argentine national said Kirk “devoted his entire life spreading racist, xenophobic, misogynistic rhetoric.” A German national wrote “when fascists die, democrats don’t complain,” according to the post.
“The United States has no obligation to host foreigners who wish death on Americans,” the department said.
You may wonder if the State Department has assigned people to go through the social media feeds of every visa holder, which actually wouldn’t be surprising. But no. They don’t need to:
Christopher Landau, the deputy secretary of state, said the day after Kirk’s death that he had directed consular officials to “undertake appropriate action” after seeing social-media posts that glorified violence.
“Please feel free to bring such comments by foreigners to my attention so that the @StateDept can protect the American people,” Landau said in a post on social media.
They’ve got American citizens informing on their neighbors just like the Stasi. It’s a money saver.
Axios reports on the few, the brave few, who are starting to feel something stiffening in their spines:
- Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia: Once one of Trump’s most loyal and outspoken supporters on Capitol Hill, Greene (along with Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie) has been vocal in calling on the White House to release the Epstein files. And Greene has seemed to echo Democrats in chiding GOP congressional leaders over the shutdown.
- “I’m carving my own lane,” Greene posted on X last week, adding that she was “absolutely disgusted” that health insurance costs for millions of Americans would soar if the GOP-led Congress doesn’t extend the tax credits Democrats are demanding to end the shutdown.
2. Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt: He told The New York Times that he disagreed with Trump’s decision to send Texas National Guard troops to Illinois as part of the president’s crackdown on crime. Stitt, like scores of Democrats, called it a violation of “states’ rights.”
- “Oklahomans would lose their mind” if Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D) “sent troops down to Oklahoma during the Biden administration,” Stitt said.
3. Utah Gov. Spencer Cox: He took to X over the weekend to express his unhappiness about the Trump administration canceling North America’s largest solar power project, saying, “This is how we lose the AI/energy arms race to China.”
4. Vivek Ramaswamy: The former GOP presidential candidate, now running for Ohio governor, made clear he disagreed with the administration’s pressuring of ABC that led to the brief suspension of late-night TV host Jimmy Kimmel, a frequent Trump critic.
5. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas: He compared FCC chair Brendan Carr’s implied threats to broadcasters such as ABC to mafia tactics, calling them “dangerous as hell.”
- Cruz said he plans to introduce a bill to make it easier for people to sue the government for censorship.
6. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine: The senator, who’s up for reelection next year, criticized White House budget director Russ Vought last week over his decision to permanently lay off thousands of federal workers during the shutdown.
- “Regardless of whether federal employees have been working without pay or have been furloughed, their work is incredibly important to serving the public,” Collins said.
Check out Marge and Joe:
How about this guy?
I don’t know if any of this adds up to something bigger shifting. But it’s interesting especially coming from Greene, Cruz and Stitt. They’re true blue MAGA.
Foreign Policy provides some needed clarity on Gaza:
More than 20 world leaders gathered in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, on Monday for a summit focused on ending the war in Gaza. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi described the conference as bringing “a single message to mankind: Enough war. Welcome to peace.”
The summit followed a landmark hostage and prisoner exchange. Yet the emotional scenes as people returned to Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank represent only the end of the initial phase of U.S. President Donald Trump’s 20-point peace plan. (“The phases are all a little bit mixed in with each other,” he conceded in Egypt.) At the end of Monday’s gathering, Trump signed a document with the leaders of Turkey, Egypt, and Qatar—though there weren’t any Israeli and Palestinian representatives present and it is unclear what the document said.
What comes next is even hazier. Michael J. Koplow writes that the deal forces three reckonings that will shape Israel’s future. For Gaza, which lies in ruins, the damage is hard to comprehend: More than 67,000 Palestinians were killed in 700-plus days of war. Just before the cease-fire began, FP’s John Haltiwanger spoke with Mathieu Bichet, a deputy medical director at Médecins Sans Frontières, about the myriad challenges of reconstruction.
Trump remains central to the question of governance in Gaza—if frustratingly opaque as to his intentions. The U.S. president is nominally director of the so-called Board of Peace proposed by the cease-fire agreement, but on Monday, he seemed to hedge, noting that he has many other commitments. As major issues such as Hamas’s disarmament remain unresolved, Palestinians face a dilemma, Omar H. Rahman writes: “Every concession made by Hamas is irreversible, while every concession made by Israel can be undone.”
He said he spoke with Hamas today and they’re totally ready to disarm so it’s all good. Trump Gaza Resort is on the way!
I’m sure they had tears in their eyes.
Ah, the young GOP. Our future is in such good hands:
Leaders of Young Republican groups throughout the country worried what would happen if their Telegram chat ever got leaked, but they kept typing anyway.
They referred to Black people as monkeys and “the watermelon people” and mused about putting their political opponents in gas chambers. They talked about raping their enemies and driving them to suicide and lauded Republicans who they believed support slavery.
William Hendrix, the Kansas Young Republicans’ vice chair, used the words “n–ga” and “n–guh,” variations of a racial slur, more than a dozen times in the chat. Bobby Walker, the vice chair of the New York State Young Republicans at the time, referred to rape as “epic.” Peter Giunta, who at the time was chair of the same organization, wrote in a message sent in June that “everyone that votes no is going to the gas chamber.”
Giunta was referring to an upcoming vote on whether he should become chairman of the Young Republican National Federation, the GOP’s 15,000-member political organization for Republicans between 18 and 40 years old.
“Im going to create some of the greatest physiological torture methods known to man. We only want true believers,” he continued.
Two members of the chat responded:
Everyone that votes no is going to the gas chamber. And everyone that endorsed but then votes for us is going to the gas chamber.
🔥RH
BW
When do we start bullying dude?
AK
We have a solid 3 people who can prob have them want to jump
BW
If they vote for us why would they be gassed?
AK
When do we bring that side out?
PG
Im going to create some of the greatest physiological torture methods known to man.
in reply to
“If they vote for us why would they be gassed?”
We only want true believers.
🔥RH
JM
Can we fix the showers? Gas chambers don’t fit the Hitler aesthetic
❤️PG🤣AK
AK
I’m ready to watch people burn now
JM
We gotta pretend that we like them. “Hey, come on in. Take a nice shower and relax”. Boom – they’re dead
They’re so fun and smart. And they show the kind of good judgment we need in our young leaders.
The 2,900 pages of chats, shared among a dozen millennial and Gen Z Republicans between early January and mid-August, chronicle their campaign to seize control of the national Young Republican organization on a hardline pro-Donald Trump platform. Many of the chat members already work inside government or party politics, and one serves as a state senator.
Together, the messages reveal a culture where racist, antisemitic and violent rhetoric circulate freely — and where the Trump-era loosening of political norms has made such talk feel less taboo among those positioning themselves as the party’s next leaders.
“The more the political atmosphere is open and liberating — like it has been with the emergence of Trump and a more right wing GOP even before him — it opens up young people and older people to telling racist jokes, making racist commentaries in private and public,” said Joe Feagin, a Texas A&M sociology professor who has studied racism for the last 60 years. He’s also concerned the words would be applied to public policy. “It’s chilling, of course, because they will act on these views.”
The dynamic of easy racism and casual cruelty played out in often dark, vivid fashion inside the chats, where campaign talk and party gossip blurred into streams of slurs and violent fantasies.
There’s a lot of talk among the Democrats about the need to turn the page and make room for a new generation of leadership. I think that’s right. But keep in mind that the Democrats aren’t the only ones. Look what’s coming down the pike on the other side.
They have learned a lot from Trump. When confronted, many of them said that they thought the chats were doctored. So we have the whining and blaming to look forward to as well.