U.S. Secretary of State James F. Byrnes rejected the Japanese acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration as it contained the proviso that the Imperial Household would not be disturbed.
The war, therefore, was still on.
Having said that, the US was now engaging in semantics, with there now being room for the preservation of the Imperial throne, if the Japanese people wished it. This took a step towards a democratic resolution the question, very much in the spirt of Franklin Roosevelt, even if the administration knew right form the onset that the Japanese people, who contrary to the widespread mythin did not regard the Emperor as a god, would wish to keep a monarchical sovereign.
The latter was also now clearly influencing the US view.
And the Soviets were advancing.
By Kaidor - Own work based on [1] and [2], CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24319997
The Red Army commenced the invasion of South Sakhalin, a direct assault on territory long contested between Japan, China, and Russia. The southern half of the large island had been held by Japan since the Russo Japanese War. This is still a matter of contention between Japan and Russia, showing how much certain old claims survive, in this case, through two successive Russian regimes and on into a third, and through two Japanese regimes.
Of note, the wikipedia entry on this regards the conflict between the Soviet Union and Japan as a "minor" part of the World War Two. The Japanese didn't regard it that way. The entry of the USSR into the war was ripping into their imperial holdings at lightning speed. The Soviet entry into the war mattered a lot more than the US has traditionally been willing to admit. With the Soviets entering the war, Japan had lost Manchuria and any hope it had of hanging on to anything on the Asian mainland were gone. Moreover, not only was a looming American invasion of the Japanese home islands now inevitable, the specter of a Russian invasion of part o fit was as well. There can be, frankly, little doubt that Japan had to be worried that the USSR would take Honshu.1
This, then, creates an interesting topic of "revisionism". The Soviet declaration of war on Japan mattered a lot more than Americans are willing to credit it with, while the Red Army's effort in Europe was helped much more, indeed on a level of magnitude hardly appreciated, by the West, than they're willing to admit to. The Red Army was, at the end of the day, an armed mob, which would have never achieved what it did, and may have well lost the war, with out the US and UK's support. And the Western Allied effort in Europe was much more significant winning the war than the USSR could have ever conceded, even if it knew it.
Indeed, at the end of day, it was the UK and British Dominions that won the war.
Mopping up operations on Mindanao were completed.
On the Philippines, General MacArthur stated that the atomic bomb was unnecessary since the Japanese would have surrendered anyway.
He was correct, and also thereby added his voice to the growing number of military figures, now forgotten in their views, that criticized the U.S. war crime.
The Kraków pogrom, the first anti Jewish pogrom in post war Poland, took place. 56-year-old Auschwitz survivor Róża Berger, shot while standing behind closed doors. The event was based on the absurd rumors of blood libel but was heavily influenced by the return of Jewish survivors of World War Two to the city. The participation in locals in the Holocaust, even when they were under heavy repression themselves, is something Eastern Europeans have never been willing to really admit or deal with.2
"3 elephants are being used by the 30th Div., 1st Army, on their march south thru the village of Pa-Tu on the road to Nanning. 11 August, 1945. The elephants are used for emergency work such as pulling out bogged down trucks and other heavy labor which can not be done by mechanical power or other livestock. Photographer: T/3 Raczkowski."
"One of the elephants that are being used by the 30th Div, 1st Army on their march south thru the village of Pa-Tu on the road to Nanning. The elephants are used for emergency work such as pulling out bogged down trucks and other heavy labor which can not be done by mechanical power or other livestock. 11 August, 1945. Photographer: T/3 Raczkowski."
Footnotes:
1. While not exactly on point, but related, I was accused of revisionism elsewhere the other day for suggesting that the atomic bombing of Japan was unnecessary. Well, revisionist or not, it was.
I'm open to the same charge here, I'm sure. The Soviet declaration of war is typically treated as opportunistic, even though the US very much encouraged it. Missed in this, the Japanese decision to take the "southern route" and to attack the US, and UK, in 1941 was a calculated decision to use the Japanese Navy rather than Army, which the considered "northern route", an attack on the Soviet Union, would have required. The Japanese Army had already tasted battle with the Red Army in the Battle of Khalkhin Gol in 1939 and were well aware that they were not up to fighting the Red Army. Believing they had no alternative between the two, they took on the US and UK, which they thought a better bet.
Figuring into this, the Japanese government was very anti Communist and there was likely some belief that no matter how horrific, from their prospective, an American occupation would be, it wouldn't be as bad as a Soviet one. On that, they were correct, and post war history demonstrates that the Japanese in fact very rapidly accommodated themselves to occupation, even to the extent of cooperating with the US during the Korean War.
All of which is really uncomfortable with the majority American view of "we had to nuke them".
2. All of this raises an entire host of uncomfortable issues concerning Eastern Europe. I'm not going to try to go into them all. You'd be better off reading Blood Lands.
What I will note, however, is that violent antisemitism had been a feature of Eastern European culture for a very long time. Eastern Europe's Jewish population had been the target of violence nearly everywhere for eons. This really only changed, in terms of violence, after World War Two, although anti semitic prejudice runs through the entire region and into Western Europe to the present.
The Polish example is an interesting one in that no nation suffered more in World War Two than the Poles. The Germans were murderous towards the Poles since day one, and a huge percentage of the Polish population died during the war. The Catholic Church in Poland was massively attacked, with simply being a Polish priest meaning that such a person had a high likelihood of being murdered. None the less, Poles participated in the German barbarities directed at the Jews, as did Ukrainians, the later of which also directed murderous prejudice at the Poles.
100 is a big round number, and as a culture that uses a base ten system for math, we like big round numbers. So I should use the 100th anniversary of our "Cliffnotes" series, which we're now correcting to what it should have been, CliffsNotes, for something profound.
And, profound or not, I know what I want to post on this, but it's one of those things where its so broad, or difficult to define, that I don't really know how to do it.
So I'll start with this.
The US is in phenomenally stupid times, with our stupidity actually amazingly reduced in various ways to the person claiming to be President, and who most have accepted as the same.1 That would be, of course, the profoundly self centered, weird, demented, and dumb, Donald Trump.
The Trump regum is profoundly altering everything to such an extent that he's not only harming the US, but the entire world. When he leaves office the world is going to be profoundly different, and the US might quite frankly never recover from the vandalism of his administration. He's given rise to the worse instincts in our culture, and revived ways of thinking and acting that haven't been acceptable in our society for decades.
Worse yet, perhaps, the antiscientifisim of his followers is going to kill people and is harming the planet.
All of which, ironically, would get me branded by some of his acolytes as a "radical lefty", such as those like Chuck Gray look under their beds at night as the monster of their childhood dreams.
One thing that I've had a hard time explaining, but I can do here now, is that in fact I'm an actual conservative.
I've always been opposed to abortion, which would place me in the social conservative camp in and of itself. I'm not keen on gun control either, although I'm not in machinegun in every closet camp. I don't believe transgenderism is anything other than a mental illness. I believe that marriage can only occur between a man and a woman, and beyond that I don't think divorce should be recognized, or at least easily. I feel that a man who helps bring a child about should be responsible for that child's upbringing and if he's not married to the mother at the time of the child's birth, a common law marriage and all that entails should be legally imposed. I'd revive the "heart balm" statutes. I'm extremely leery of the government taking over what I regard as parental and familial obligations, such as the feeding of children simply because they are at school.
All of which should place me in the populist camp, right?
Not hardly.
Well what about the NatCon or Christian Nationalist camp then?
Definitely not.
How so?
Well, that's where I've had a hard time smithing my words to fit my thoughts, but I'll give it a try here.
I think you can, as a conservative, conserve the structure of societal norm, but I don't think you can force your beliefs on anyone. Indeed, the liberal attempt to do just that with gender norms caused, at the end of the day, the rise of one profoundly immoral man, Donald Trump.
And beyond that, I think that people who waive the bloody banner of the culture wars have to go right to the source in order to argue for their cause, and that's something most can't do. The American Civil Religion, in which you can have six wives, as long as it isn't more than one at a time, and a girlfriend on the side, and still go to Jim Bob's Do It Yourself Evangelical Church doesn't comport with that, or frankly Christianity.
I also frankly am horrified by the anti scientific nature of the populists and the NatCons. Yes, transgenderism is a horror, but because its an anti scientific movement that doesn't comport with science. By the same token, denying Global Warming is being caused by humans is also an anti scientific horror. Admitting poth of those need not be political in any fashion, nor need they be based on religion in any fashion, but if religion motivates and informs your beliefs ti would demand that you oppose them both and accept the science both.
And yet we're denying reality in spades. If populists get that transgenderism is a fib, on climate change and medicine they're full bore into fiction. The fact that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has a health role in the government, or that Dr. Oz does, would be comical if it was not so horrific.
Nor does being a real conservative mean that every expenditure of the government on medicine and foreign aid can morally be cut off. Lethal sins of omission are not conservative, they're gravely evil.
Which in turn gets us to the topic of expenditures themselves.
Every since the The Great Depression conservatives of some stripes have lamented what occured in the New Deal and have detested Franklin Roosevelt. But here's the thing. Government expenditures in and of themselves are not wrong, let alone morally wrong, simply because they are.
Rational people would apply principals of subsidiarity to this and look to see what necessary or beneficial expenditure are best undertaken by the government, and at what level. The simple claim "the government spends to much" means utterly nothing whatsoever. It is clear that the government is wrongfully not collecting enough in revenue to cover what it spend, but the mere assumption that it spends too much is simply nonsense without something to back it up. The real question, which hasn't even been asked, is what should it be spending money on? Many of the things that were cut were things the American public clearly supports or needs. Conversely, ontoing spending on Trump golf weekends or airplanes for Trump go on, when clearly these are expenditures which do not pass muster.
That leads us, of course, to the fact that Americans are undertaxed. They hate to admit it, but they simply are. Rich Americans are particularly undertaxed. Indeed, whether a society should even tolerate the uberwealthy is a question that should be asked, but isn't. It's clear that vast wealth has not been a good thing, by and large, for many who have it, or society as a whole. Trump, Bezos, Epstein, and Musk are all good examples of this. Greed isn't good.
So here we find ourselves, due to reasons we've discussed before, not where so many on the right claim, but at an enshrinement of a certain sort of trash culture. The trailer park come to rule.
Are we doomed?
We may in fact very well be. It might be the case that the United States as a great nation has run its course, and we're going to take our place with nations like Russia that have lapsed into right wing squalor But maybe not.
There may be some reasons for hope.
One of those reasons might be the National Conservatives themselves. When it first got rolling National Conservatism in the form imagined by Patrick Dineen, Rod Dreher or R. R. Reno was a product of despair. They looked at the state of the country under late liberals, such as President Obama, and felt that the cultural rot had set in so deep there was no recovery from it. That brought about views like Dreher's The Byzantine Option which, while Dreher now denies it, basically advocated for holing up for generations until sanity returned at some future time. Not everyone felt that way, and NatCons took over the Heritage Society, where they may have always been in strong numbers anyhow.
The Success of the Federalist Society in the first Trump administration may have been a bit of a roadmap for them, but more than that, the Heritage Society relied upon Trump's laziness which allowed them to insert themselves into his campaign. They even managed to get a major fellow traveler, J. D. Vance, in as Vice President.
The reason that this might offer some hope is this. NatCons may be thick in the Trump administration, but frankly they almost certainly regard some members of his administration as de facto thick. It's unlikely that the NatCons think much of Kennedy, Noem or Oz, for example. But they also know that they never could have been influential on their own. They may be gambling, and it is a gamble, that Trump will burn everything down, and then, when they push him out, which they will do, they'll seem so much more reasonable in comparison.
There is historical precedence for things like that. Many nations have gone through terrible cataclysms, including social cataclysms, to be relieved by some sort of normality which didn't fully match what had come before. The Reformation through England into turmoil to the point where it ulti9mately came unglued, resulting in the English Civil War. The restored monarchy was a welcome relief from the forces of Calvinism and it ultimately set England towards the path which lead to the modern parliamentary democracy.
Another example might be provided by our own Civil War, which saw forces very much like those in the Republican Party today, including some real fire breathing nuts, try to take half the country out on its own to form a white racist republic. It's failure resulted in a return to normalcy which has only now unraveled.
There's a real risk to this strategy, however, which frankly is the only strategy that NatCons have or are going to have. Their shotgun marriage to Trump not only hitched them to somebody loathsome, and whom some of them no doubt loath, but he was the only suitor in town. It was, that is, a marriage of convenience for both of them.
The risk is that like somebody married to a bad person, it becomes hard for that taint to wash off. The longer the marriage lasts, moreover, the more that's the case. The NatCons can't openly dump Trump as the populists will turn on them. They need to allow him to reign long enough, moreover, that he wreck what they want wrecked, but not so long that they're permanently associated with the wreckage. And right now, the first really bitter fruits of Trumpism are beginning to be felt. If they wait too long, they'll had the House of Representatives, then the Senate, and the the Oval Office, back to the Democrats.
That's the second real possibility.
Right now the Democrats do not have their act anywhere near together. The party is still controlled by the Clueless Old who just don't know what to do, other than, like Robert Reich, insist that they hold on to the policy positions that tanked them. That'd be a stupid strategy. It might work, however, if the NatComs fail to abandon Ship Trump by replacing him too late.
If that occurs, everything that the populists brought about will evaporate overnight. Newt Gingrich like, most populists believe that they're burning things down so that they can't be rebuilt. They can be. Like Trump's stupid plaza replacing the rose garden, a legislative Kubota can come in and tear it out, and the roses, like them or not, be back in place overnight.
The thing is, however, that this would also be a massive change. The very things that caused the populist revolt would triumph. There's a very real chance of that.
But that's not the only possibility. A third one, even if the NatCons come into power, and even if the Democrats do, but not strongly, is also possible. That example might be provided by mid 20th Century France.
The 3d Republic was in terrible shape with politics ripping it apart before World War Two. The republic technically endured into the Second World War when forces very much like the NatCons took control of it while it was under the Third Reich's heel. There was serious Allied thought to actually continuing the 3d Republic and even retaining Marshall Petain but the forces that had sided with the Allies clearly did not want to do that. That gave rise to the 4th Republic, and then in 1958, the 5th, under DeGaulle, a right wing Catholic monarchist who restored the country to one in which all sides could seriously work and cooperate.
That latter example may offer the best hope. The NatCons, like the French right wing, cooperated in the Trumpist nightmare and may very well find themselves discredited by it. People like Vance may find themselves in the dustbin. In may take some time, but this might, perhaps, be a watershed moment from which the country emerges a sane new country, not the one that tore itself apart like the 3d Republic, and not one that reflected its late totalitarian stage under a Petain, or in our case, a clown like Trump.
We can only hope so.
Footnotes
1. Donald Trump does not legally occupy the Oval Office and there's a good argument that everything he is doing might end up simply being voided as null as a result.
The Japanese government announced that a message had been sent to the Allies accepting the terms of the Potsdam Declaration provided that it "does not comprise any demand that prejudices the prerogatives of the Emperor as sovereign ruler."
The US press correctly and immediately interpreted this as an offer to surrender, albeit with a condition.
A Japanese protest against the use of the Atomic Bomb, delivered through neutral Switzerland, was delivered to the United States.
The US and Royal Navy bombarded Kamaishi from the sea.
The U.S. Air Force hit targets on Honshu.
The Red Army had already advanced 120 miles into Manchuria.
Note they are using bait casting reels.
The Chinese Civil War resumed with the beginning of the Opening Campaign by the Nationalist Chinese.
The resumption of the civil war was inevitable. The outcome, however, wouldn't have been predicated the way it came out at all. The Red Chinese had never done particularly well in combat against the Nationalist, and oddly enough their material support from the Soviet Union had been thin. The Nationalist were now well equipped due to US support during World War Two.
I wrote you in my letter not to associate with immoral people, not at all referring to the immoral of this world or the greedy and robbers or idolaters; for you would then have to leave the world.
But I now write to you not to associate with anyone named a brother, if he is immoral, greedy, an idolater, a slanderer, a drunkard, or a robber, not even to eat with such a person.
For why should I be judging outsiders? Is it not your business to judge those within?
God will judge those outside. “Purge the evil person from your midst.
St. Paul to the Corinthians..
The Wall Street Journal reports that Trump 2003 birthday wishes to Jeffrey Epstein, part of a book compiled for Epstein's birthday by his paramour and fellow procurer Ghislaine Maxwell included a Trump made drawing of a naked woman, with "Donald" written over the figure's genitals and apparently somewhat mimicking pubic hairs.
I'm not going to post the drawing.
Of course, Trump, in Trump fashion, has declared it to be a fake. And now he's suing the Wall Street Journal.
This all followed an increasingly desperate effort on Trump's part to divert attention from this story. Rather than try to set out the reasons that the story won't go away, I'll just link in this analysis with Ezra Klein, with which I agree.
Trying to get ahead of this, and I think that he'll find by suing the Journal he set himself behind, he's also ordered the release of the Epstein grand jury testimony.
Not the supposed "Epstein files", but the grand jury testimony. That's frankly not what people have been asking for, but its offered out as red meat for the dogs in hopes that they'll satiate themselves and go away.
It doesn't look like they will.
His most loyal supporters, of course, have simply built this into their conspiracy theory, although in a way in which the logic train derails pretty quickly. Trump isn't hiding anything. . . it was the Democrats. . . .
Um, okay. . .
I have a feeling the 25th Amendment schedule has been moved up.
The simple fact of the matter is that Donald Trump has a forty year history of hanging out with kiddy diddling creeps. That didn't start with Epstein. Maybe you could hang around in a pornographic atmosphere for 40 years and not inhale anything, but it wouldn't be easy. And once the rot sets in, and the poison is available, it tends to corrupt.
Hugh Hefner was always a creep. But he was married when he started off on his path of dissipation. He wasn't rapey at first.
And its been clear for a long time, for those who have cared to look even a little, that Trump is a deeply immoral man, and he's surrounded himself, in many instances, by those who are likewise deeply immoral.
Trump has 5 kids with 3 women.
Elon Musk has 14 kids with 4 women.
Pete Hegseth has 7 kids with 3 women.
Linda McMahon is being sued for enabling child sexual abuse.
Trump's affinity for young women has been denied by his defenders, but his own words convict him. Trump, with Howard Stern on the topic of a teenage Lindsay Lohan, stated:
TRUMP: What do you think of Lindsay Lohan?
STERN: She's hot.
TRUMP: I've seen a close-up of her chest. Are you into freckles?
STERN: Imagine having sex with this troubled teen?
TRUMP: She's probably deeply troubled—and great in bed.
From the same interview:
TRUMP: How come the deeply troubled women, deeply deeply troubled.
STERN: Right.
TRUMP: They're always the best in bed. For some reason what I said is true. I mean they're just unbelievable.
STERN: I can tell.
TRUMP: You don't want to be with them for the long term—but for the short term, there is nothing like it.
How is it that this administration, lead by a serial polygamists, who hasn't given any indication he's reconsidered the morality of his conduct, and who is now floundering like a fish on the deck on the Epstein scandal, can be seriously regarded as some sort of Christian leader?
Well, that was always baloney in the first place. Nobody can identify a Christian denomination that Trump is actually a member of. He was a Presbyterian growing up, but he's disavowed that religion. He's sort of generic American Evangelical at best, which makes sense as by and large American Evangelicalism has dumped a lot of Christianity, particularly in the sexual area. . . as long as its conventional.
Populist right wing America has long accommodated itself to deep sexual immorality, but only of a conventional kind. Far less than a century ago it was difficult for Americans to obtain a divorce, and divorce was looked down upon. Now people who have repeat marriages, or who are living together outside of marriage, have no problem identifying themselves as right wing American Evangelicals. St. Paul may have cautioned people about all sexual immorality, but in the American Civil Religion, that doesn't apply to sex between a man and a woman, apparently.
Unless, it turns out, that woman is under 18 years old. That, it turns out, is a bridge too far.
Of course, there's no reason to believe that Trump ever saw any lines as blurred, or any lines at all. Maybe he didn't bed teenage girls, but he hung around with those who did. That alone is wrong.
But we don't know, of course, what we don't know. If we were detectives, and assigned this as a set of facts to investigate, we'd sure suspect that quite a bit of kiddy diddling was going on in this circle of very wealthy "pals". Indeed, their money alone would make it easy for them to get away with things for a long time, or perhaps indefinitely.
It'd make a great film noir, albeit a creepy one.
If it all feels like something deeply fake has been and is going on here, it's also now admitted that Trump's constant claims to perfect health are fake. He has chronic venous insufficiency. It won't kill him or anything, but it doesn't suddenly appear either. He is an old man, with an old man's disease. He's had it for awhile.
Old, and under stress, Trump's rambling "weave" has become so normal that people don't even pay attention to it anymore. On Tuesday, Trump interrupted an energy and innovation event in Pennsylvania to “brag” about his uncle, John Trump, claiming that the at MIT professor had been particularly impressed with student Ted Kaczynski.
Dr. Trump died in 1985, before Kaczynski was identified as the Unabomber. And Kaczynski didn't go to MIT.
Trump went after Fed chair Jerome Powell and was upset that Biden appointed him. . . except he didn't appoint him. Trump did.
Trump's routinely claiming that petroleum prices have gone way down at the pump. They haven't.
Okay, what's this have to do with the 25th Amendment? Well, it's that bridge too far thing. I've long predicted that Trump would be removed from office under the 25th Amendment before the November, 2026 election. I think this speeds that up. Trump's utility to the NatCons is almost done with. The Big Ugly Bill was passed, and spending on things the NatCons disapprove of has been cut. ICE and the Border Patrol are getting a massive funding boost, and that's going to see mass deportations really ramp up.
Of all of Trump's supposed agenda items, the ones that NatCons really care about have been pretty well advanced. None of them have achieved what might be regarded as full success, but they've gone a lot further than they had a right to hope for. Trump's ongoing association with them, however, isn't going to advance them any further. Indeed, as people begin to feel the impact of funding cuts, they'll start to get angry. If it turns out that Trump was fishing in the shallow end of the female pool, it's completely done with.
In fact, the best thing that could possibly happen for the NatCons would be if Trump turns out to be a Dirk Diddler with an eye for girls who should be looking for prom dates.
Eh?
Well, here's why.
I've always maintained that Trump has no real allegiance to anything other than Trump. NatCons certainly do, however. NatCons have always known that their vision, which is relatively new in American politics, had very little chance of rapidly advancing as they had no chance of finding a Francisco Franco who could get elected. They're smart, and they also realized that they could coopt populist discontent, something that ironically the Democrats had a chance of doing with Bernie Sanders. And right wing populism legitimately shares some common goals with National Conservatism, which is nationalistic, ethno-nationalistic, and isolationist.
Where the two depart, however, is that populism is always a very shallow stream. Most populists would be happy if "Mexicans" were sent home, and everyone had to be a "Christian", in a fashion that didn't include the Apostolic Faiths, and which didn't really make you "go to Church" on Sundays, or which held that the spouse you married three spouses ago is your real spouse. NatCons, however, have much more intellectual view on everything, and they espouse "traditional values" in the fashion that Franco, or if you prefer, Belloc, would have recognized, and they'd legislate towards that end.
That man isn't Donald Trump, it's J.D. Vance.
The rest of the NatCon agenda is dead in the water if the Republicans don't hold the House and the Senate in 2026. It can't be cemented if Vance isn't elected in 2028. The GOP won't hold the House, at a bare minimum, if the "Trump agenda" becomes any more unpopular than it already is, and it will. It's becoming increasingly likely that the Republicans will lose the Senate. There's no way on earth that Vance can win the 2028 election as a stand alone Presidential candidate.
But if Trump were to go after the impact of the current legislation starts to sink in, the taint might stick to him. That would give the GOP a chance, albeit only that, to ride things out until 2028. And Vance might have a chance if he became President due to a Trump removal. And, the way things work, that might given NatCons a fellow traveler in the Oval Office for a solid ten years, as Vance could complete the last two years of Trump's term and eight years of two terms on his own.
In terms of "removal", I mean that. That's what will have to happen. Trump isn't going anywhere voluntarily. And hence, the 25th Amendment comes in.
Gosh, we'll hear, the stress of things just caught up with the old fellow.
Or gosh, we didn't know he was a diddler.
July 20, 2025
Not too surprisingly, women with a connection to this story have resurfaced, including Stacey Williams, who was a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model featured in the pornography, um, swimsuit, issue at some joint in the 90s. She was also Epstein's girlfriend in the early 90s, showing some bad judgment on her part.
Anyhow, she states that Epstein took her up the Trump tower where Trump groped her while he and Epstein talked, liking it to “some sort of sick bet or game” between the two “close friends". Several of her friend corroborated the story and she offered to take a polygraph tests, although such tests are frankly worthless.
Trump predictably denied this, but it's worth remembering that he has been convicted for the sexual abuse of E. Jean Carroll.
It's also worth remembering that starting in the last decade it became common to support the women making these difficult accusations. And there are others against Trump. Williams doesn't seem to fit into the category of somebody we'd instantly doubt.
At what point will people take this seriously?
July 21, 2025
The president is trying to present himself as if he’s doing something here and it really is nothing,
* * *
It’s not going to be much, because the Southern District of New York’s practice is to put as little information as possible into the grand jury.
Sarah Krissoff, former Epstein prosecutor, regarding the release of the Epstein Grand Jury material.
This material, which may be as little as 60 pages in length, is not the same as internal FBI or prosecutorial files, and therefore is unlikely to satisfy the demand for what the government has on Epstein. Indeed, it's more likely an effort to simply end the controversy by doing very little.
Trump's current mental state, in my view, is heavily impacted by advancing dementia, although he's never been a good guy. What Tommy Tuberville's excuse is, however, I don't know.
Tuberville stated this past week that Trump's chronic venous insufficiency might be due to "battling radicals".
Is Tuberville actually that stupid?
At least in terms of what he says that hits the press, Tuberville says some really remarkably idiotic things. Maybe he's just one of those guys that says dumb stuff without thinking about it, making him seem dumber than he really is. Be that as it may, with Marjorie Taylor Green and Tuberville both in Congress right now, the GOP has a couple of figures that are just stunningly unqualified for their jobs intellectually, if what they say is what they actually think. Tuberville, for his party, gives unintended evidence for the worst stereotypes of football coaches, particularly for somebody like me who doesn't like football.
cont:
Apparently Donald Trump is posting a random video of a girl in a bikini catching a snake on social media.
Oh, that's not weird. . .
July 23, 2025
Mike Johnson sent the House home for an extra long vacation rather than make them face a vote on the Epstein files.
Like that's not odd . . .
Well that must mean that nothing is embarrassing in them, right. . . right?
Oh, some of these folks will have "town halls" on their month plus long break. . . it'd be a shame if they were asked about the Epstein files.. .
Apparently Sen. Lummis doesn't agree with the recess.
She wants them to stay in session so they can make appointments that haven't been made. While I'm not at all happy with the illegitimate Trump Administration, she certainly has a point. Six months in and there's still hundreds of unfilled offices. This will be a huge problem by next year, if it keeps up, for Maga's as the next Congress is going to be Democratic.
Trump's talking up his latest nutty conspiracy:
Barack Hussein Obama is the ringleader. Hillary Clinton was right there with him and so was Sleepy Joe Biden, Comey, Clapper. They tried to rig an election and they got caught. And then they did rig the election in 2020. And then because I knew I won that election by a lot, I did it a third time and I won in a landslide.
There must be some sort of statute of limitations on blaming Obama for everything. And by this point, isn't this thin gruel for Republicans? Literally everything is Obama's fault, according to Trump and the satellites in his orbit.
This is somebody nobody else can do. I can get the drug prices down… 1000% 600% 500% 1500%. Numbers that are not even thought to be achievable.
Donald Trump.
Those numbers aren't thought to be achievable as that would mathematically mean pharmaceutical companies would have to pay you to take drugs.
On Jerome Powell:
He has these think tanks. The build buildings for people who think. It’s really not thinking. It’s a little bit of a combination of thinking. It’s something you sort have or don’t have… He ought to raise interest rates.
Donald Trump.
July 24, 2025
It appears that the Wall Street Journal learned a lesson from the tactic deployed by The Atlantic, and held stuff back from its first report on Trump and Epstein. At least one insider is indicating that there's a lot more to come, which if true, would explain why Trump is currently bouncing off the walls.
Yesterday the WSJ revealed that Bondi had briefed Trump on what's in the Epstein files back in May and that his name does occur frequently. The files also reportedly contain child pornography which is why, reportedly, Bondi determined not to release the information as she did not wish to reveal the names of the victims.
This doesn't mean that Trump is associated with child pornography, and we'd note again that so far what Epstein seems to have dabbled in was ephebophilia, not pedophilia, which doesn't mean that he wasn't, as Trump has indicated, a "creep". But things just keep looking worse and worse for Trump.
Indeed, Jon Stewart hilariously noted this on his show, comparing the situation to the most recent Top Gun movie, which I have not seen, with fighter countermeasures being deployed.
I haven't looked, but if there aren't new variants of the bunker scene in Downfall circulating, I'd be amazed. Those in fact would be apt as Trump is desperately pulling out everything to deflect attention from the Epstein story, even suddenly going after the Washington Commanders, demanding that they go back to being called the Redskins. His most dangerous action, however, is now a serious attempt to go after former President Obama on some wild conspiracy theory.
That latter move is not only desperate, it's dumb. Trump is now setting a precedent that prosecuting a former President is perfectly legitimate. . . with it being obvious that if he lives through his term, which is unlikely due to his advanced old age, he could be prosecuted as well. That increases the incentive, we'd note, for him to try to advance an excuse that he can run for a third term in order that he can attempt to guaranty that he'll die in office.
A move to prosecute Obama, it should be noted, is a full blown step from democracy into fascism and its impossible to pretend otherwise. I've resisted the claims that we're now in a fascist state, as we're not, but at that point, we are. Trump appears perfectly willing to take us there.
This also ramps up the 25th Amendment pressure. Trump is in a full on panic. His loyal lieutenant, Wilhelm Keitel, oops, Mike Johnson, seems willing to stay in Berlin, oops, loyal to his Leader, and do whatever is necessary to hide what's in the files even up to the extent of sending the House home so it couldn't vote in releasing the files, but this drama isn't going away.
The files should be released. Yes, that will reveal the names of young women who were defiled by the rich, but the fact of the matter is that keeping their names secret is protecting their abusers at this point. And that reemphasizes that Trump's female accusers have, for the most part, been silenced as well.
So, as a final matter, what is in these files and who is being protected? The conclusion that nobody is, is impossible. Trump is clearly panicked, and we now know his name shows up multiple times, but in what context.
Whatever it is, it's impossible to not conclude that Trump himself is being protected due to proof of a grossly immoral act or character, or that some very wealthy and powerful people are being so protected.
Frankly, it's also impossible not to conclude that these files are going to be scrubbed. Congress may be in recess, but the Administration isn't. That would be a crime, but the current administration doesn't have much of a problem committing crimes. If whatever is in these is bad enough to attempt to prosecute a former President, it's bad enough to take the lighter fluid and Zippo to.
July 25, 2025
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche met with Ghislaine Maxwell yesterday on the renewed Epstein scandal.
Maxwell was the "girlfriend" and then assistant procurer of Jeffrey Epstein. The relationship started off when she was in a period of financial distress, but never developed to what she seemingly likely hoped, a marriage, as Epstein was frank that he liked teenage girls for sex partners, and that wasn't going to change.
Which does, frankly, bring up the creepy "enigma's never age" line of the Trump birthday wish poem.
At this point, if Maxwell comes out and says that Trump had no interest in the high school and junior high set, it won't matter, as people will believe that the politicized Department of Justice is doing Trump's bidding. And she's not going to say otherwise, would be my prediction.
Jerome Powel somewhat gently took Trump to school in a public meeting at which they were both present, with Trump floundering like a fish on the deck when Powell corrected him on a building under construction, and mostly complete, whose budget was approved, apparently back in 2015.
August 4, 2025
What the crud?
Okay, I know what the Sweeney jeans ad is, as I looked it up due to all the news about it. But I was clueless on the Jaguar ad. I'm now aware of it, as I looked it up.
And then there's this weird obsession with Taylor Swift.
Trump is almost 80 years old. I'm nearly 20 years younger than he is and I don't know what's going on in advertising most of the time. That Trump seems to, and that he cares, is weird.
And while Sweeney is hot, Trump pointing it out is just creepy. As for her party affiliation, I'm also a registered Republican and obviously completely disrespect Trump. I don't have any idea what Sweeney's political views are, and neither does Trump, who spent most of his life in the Democratic Party.
August 6, 2025
I've been fighting with them for a long time about allowing the water to come down from the pacific northwest. We actually opened up that water pretty strongly, we got a lot of opposition from the governor. We opened it up anyway and the water is coming down ... they've gotta allow full water.
This statement is simply amazingly stupid.
And speaking of stupid:
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) today announced the beginning of a coordinated wind-down of its mRNA vaccine development activities....
This will result in deaths.
August 10, 2025
There's beginning to be some signs that people have had enough of King Donald. Just bits and pieces, here and there.
I'm not the only one who thinks this:
The discussion on ICE recruiting is interesting here. ICE is undertaking a full scale recruiting effort to hire 10,000 employees. They're not going to get it done.
Ice recruiting poster. Oddly, these dudes aren't wearing masks like real ICE agents.
No age cap? Every Federal law enforcement agency has an age cap, normally.
Joining ICE right now is probably beginning to have the same appeal that joining the Gestapo would have in 1945. I had that thought before I noticed this counter poster:
Interestingly, it was the Epstein affair that started to get it rolling, and then the moronic ballroom, the latter of which caused this very well done, and inflammatory, AI video:
The radical Texas gerrymandering effort is also really drawing attention.
And that is, I think, quite enough for this edition.
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