Category: Crime

Open Windows, Clay Jones

Supersized Winning by Clay Jones

Tariffs are taxes Read on Substack

The Treasury Department reported that Trump’s tariffs brought in over $28 billion in revenue last May. Naturally, this got MAGAts hyped up and excited as they think this is “winning.”

Hey, it doesn’t matter that Trump’s tax cuts for asshole billionaires will lead to even larger deficits, we’re getting all this revenue from foreign nations. They got more “winning” last week when the European Union agreed on a tariff on their goods of 15 percent. Holy Wowzers. That’s a lot of winning.

What MAGAts don’t realize is that the $28 billion wasn’t paid for by China, Mexico, Canada, or even Penguin Island. They don’t understand that the 15 percent on EU stuff won’t be paid for by the EU. American consumers pay for the tariffs. Even if you suck at economics, and it’s a hard subject, learning how tariffs work can be easy.

In easy terms, a tariff is a tax. While Donald Trump is cutting taxes, he’s also raising them.

Let’s say I live in Denmark and I sell wooden shoes. That’s Denmark, right? Or was it Holland? I just looked it up, and it’s Holland. The shoes are called “Klompens,” probably because you klomp around in them. Anywaysies, I’m in Europe and I sell stupid shoes. When I sell them to stores in the United States, Trump forces me to pay a 15 percent tariff. How do I make up that 15 percent, because I don’t want to eat it. I raise the price of my Klompens by 15 percent. The store doesn’t want to eat that 15 percent either, so guess what they do. They raise the price of the shoes they bought from me by at least 15 percent. That means American customers of those stupid, ugly wooden shoes pay the tariffs.

The way this can hurt me is that people may not want to purchase my stupid, ugly wooden shoes, and will tell me to get the klomp out of here. Fortunately, American consumers may not even notice the price increase. We still purchase iPhones even though every new version costs more than the last one, and the only changes are that they come in more colors and with “enhanced” AI, like we need more of that shit. Siri doesn’t let me talk to myself anymore. I’m sticking with my 12 until it dies of natural causes or I accidentally murder it deliberately. So far, it’s fine, knock on Klompens. (snip-MORE)

Trump is rewriting history by Ann Telnaes

He wants you to forget the truth Read on Substack

Grey Poupon When You Get Your Limo On by Clay Jones

Why don’t I have a job where my travel’s paid for and it’s all first class? Read on Substack

This cartoon was drawn for the FXBG Advance.

The Advance wrote with today’s cartoon: Reporting this past week by Adele Uphaus that a member of the Fredericksburg School Board took a first-class flight to a conference in Atlanta, had school division transportation personnel shuttle her to the airport in Richmond, and was traveling with School Board clerk Angie Roenke’s credit card which was shut down due to “possible purchase card usage issues” drew a great deal of attention. As did Uphaus’ reporting on July 8 about travel to Hawaii by another Board member. Yes — Clay Jones noticed.

I have covered this subject not just once but twice before. This is the third version, and it’s based on some new reporting by Adele Uphaus.

I know that if I ever flew first class on my last employer’s dime, I would have some ‘splaining to do. After every convention, the editor who managed expenses would call me into her office and review everything on my expense report, which typically had very low expenses. The editor’s presumption with each review was that you were trying to steal from the company. It was about as enjoyable as a body cavity search, unless you’re into those kinds of things.

Anyway, I don’t get how a school board member is flying first class and getting away with it while teachers are buying their own school supplies. (snip-MORE)

Whistleblower: 10-year-old Palestinian boy ‘gunned down’ after receiving food aid

Former US Green Beret says Israel committed war crimes at Gaza food distribution site | BBC News

Peace Ribbons & More, In Peace & Justice History For 8/4

August 4, 1964
The Pentagon reported a second attack on U.S. Navy ships in Vietnam’s Gulf of Tonkin [see August 2, 1964]. But there was no such activity reported at the time by the task force commander in the Gulf, Captain John J. Herrick.
One of the Navy pilots flying overhead that night was squadron commander James Stockdale, who was later captured and held as a POW by the North Vietnamese for more than seven years, and became Ross Perot’s vice-presidential candidate in 1992:
” I had the best seat in the house to watch that event and our destroyers were just shooting at phantom targets — there were no PT boats there . . . There was nothing there but black water and American firepower.”
Nearly three decades later during the Gulf War, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Sydney Schanberg warned journalists not to forget “our unquestioning chorus of agreeability when Lyndon Johnson bamboozled us with his fabrication of the Gulf of Tonkin incident.”
August 4, 1964
FBI agents discovered the bodies of three missing civil rights workers buried deep in an earthen dam near Philadelphia, Mississippi. James Chaney was a local African-American man who had joined the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner had traveled from New York to heavily segregated Mississippi that year to help register voters with the support of CORE.

Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman
At the time, fewer than 10% of eligible black Mississippians were registered to vote.
The three young men and many others were part of Freedom Summer, a massive voter registration and education project organized by the Council of Federated organizations (COFO), an umbrella group of major civil rights organizations.
Watch a video 
Here is a transcription of what was written on the chalkboard (photo below) this August day in 1964:
Yesterday – Negro woman arrested in Hattiesburg for refusing to give her bus seat to a white woman.
• 400 attended mass meeting in Marks.
• Tallahatchie Co. – 24 people tried to register to vote in Charleston; at least one man told he would lose his job as a result.
Today – 6 youths arrested in Greenwood while singing in front of a store. One boy reported beaten.
• Local girl missing since Sunday in Natchez
• $200 each bond paid by 2 SNCC workers arrested in Anguilla (Sharkey Co.) yesterday for passing out vote leaflets.

This is a close-up of the chalk-board beside the front door of the COFO headquarters building in Jackson, Mississippi. (Transcript just above.)
Read more 
August 4, 1985
Peace Ribbons made by thousands of women were wrapped around the U.S. Pentagon, the White House and the Capitol. Twenty thousand people participated, and the 27,000 panels making up the ribbon stretched for 15 miles.


Maggie Wade, who traveled to Washington, DC from Indiana with her daughter,
sitting at the Pentagon with her embroidery panel of the Ribbon Project.
Photo © Ellen Shub

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryaugust.htm#august4

In Gaza, hunger forces impossible choices as Hamas releases propaganda video of hostage

Ruined Afternoon Swim

sigh.

A Trans Woman and Her Friends Were Violently Assaulted at an Austin Swimming Hole

The incident is being investigated by police as a possible hate crime.

By Samantha Riedel

A transgender woman and several friends were harassed and assaulted in Austin, Texas last weekend, and one bystander who stepped in to defend them was hospitalized, in an incident police are investigating as a possible hate crime.

On July 26, the trans woman — who has requested anonymity during the ongoing investigation — and several friends visited Barton Springs, a public swimming hole in Austin’s Zilker Park, as Chron reported Wednesday. During their visit, three men they didn’t know flirted heavily with members of the group, the woman told Chron, but soon began harassing and pointing at her, making remarks about not “support[ing] that lifestyle.”

The three men then reportedly began shoving members of the group and poking the women “near their breasts,” according to a Reddit user who posted about the incident on Monday, claiming to be a friend of one of the victims. At that point, a bystander — identified as Jarod — intervened, and was attacked himself.

“The three men then proceeded to get violent and aggressive, yelling at us and getting in our faces until one of them decided to start swinging and punched Jarod in the jaw, knocking him unconscious,” the anonymous trans woman told Chron. “I quickly ran over to him in an attempt to help Jarod out but was then punched in the face by the assailant in the orange shorts.” The men then shoved another of the women to the ground and left the scene soon after, according to video footage of the incident posted to social media.

The Austin Police Department (APD) released a statement on Tuesday stating that the alleged assault was under investigation and could be declared a hate crime by the city’s Hate Crime Review Committee. “APD remains unwavering in its commitment to fostering a secure and inclusive Austin community,” the department stated. (Community leaders called for APD to be investigated for excessive force in March this year, after videos circulated online that appeared to show officers throwing a trans woman onto the ground during an arrest.)

Austin-area drag performer Brigitte Bandit posted about the assault on Instagram Monday, asking locals for help identifying the attackers. In a follow-up post the next day, Bandit stated that the men had been identified and the information had been shared privately with the victims. “I will not be posting their information without consent of the people involved in the attack,” Bandit wrote, adding, “[l]et’s let them decide which routes they decide [are] best.” (snip-MORE. Also embedded tweet. Then, if you click through, you’ll see they’ve gotten the suspects ID’d.)

Doctor Gives Eyewitness Account Of Gaza Horrors| Dr. Ambereen Sleemi | TMR

ICE is thugs targetting brown people who are US citizens, detaining them, taking their ID and not returning it, assaulting them, then making up charges against them.

https://www.tumblr.com/reagan-was-a-horrible-president/790723408167092224

Clay Jones

Kill The Messenger by Clay Jones

Dictators fire people for bad news Read on Substack

Firing people for delivering bad news is a fascist move. It was popular with the likes of Joseph Stalin, Saddam Hussein, and dare say it, Adolf Hitler. Trump and Hitler both fired generals they didn’t trust.

Sometimes it would be a census taker telling Stalin that his famine was reducing the population. He wouldn’t just be fired, but shipped off to a gulag, or even murdered. The first thing to go in a dictatorship is a free press.

Yesterday, the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), Erika McEntarfer, delivered a negative jobs report. Trump, our Dear Leader and Fascist in Chief, didn’t like those numbers, so Hair Fuhrer fired her.

TACO said, “I’ve had issues with the numbers for a long time. We’re doing so well. I believe the numbers were phony, like they were before the election, and there were other times. So I fired her, and I did the right thing.” OK, Shitler.

Russia and China manipulate their economic numbers. Like Trump, they take apolitical agencies and politicize them. Yes, the BLS will now be politicized. People who don’t want to lose their jobs will only report happy news to Cheeto Mussolini. The government will be less informed. The American people will be lied to.

It will be like people in North Korea being told there is plenty of food while they’re staring at empty shelves in their markets. You’re not starving. Who are you going to believe, Kim Jong Un or your lying growling stomach?

Trump doesn’t want us to believe our lying eyes either. He’s lied about vote totals, crowd sizes, tariff formulas, and even weather forecasts. Remember when he tried to change a hurricane’s direction with a Sharpie. I can do a lot with a Sharpie, you’ve seen it, but I can’t move a hurricane with one. (snip-MORE)

Clay Jones

Stolen Women by Clay Jones

Trump thinks women are property…his property Read on Substack

If you are aware of a pedophile, and you enable that pedophile, then you’re as bad as a pedophile. So, what did Trump know? What did Trump do?

There is a video of Trump seeing a young girl going up an escalator in 1992, maybe she was a preteen, and he comments that he’ll be “dating” her someday. It’s creepy. It’s creepy like when he said he’d be dating his own daughter if they weren’t related. On another occasion, he said what he and Ivanka have in common is their love for sex. I just shivered.

I know relationships are different, but what father wants to talk to his daughter about his or her sex life? Ew. The most I ever talked to my mother about sex was shortly after my separation from my wife, and she said she hoped I wouldn’t fall in love with the first woman I slept with. I told my mother, “I haven’t fallen in love with either of them.” And she said, “TWO? TWO? I’m so ashamed and proud of you.” Unfortunately, my father wouldn’t shut up about his past exploits.

Trump is a creeper. When he endorsed Roy Moore for the Senate, he already knew about allegations of pedophilia against Moore. Trump’s defense was, “He said he didn’t do it.” That’s the same defense he used for Putin’s election meddling.

Whenever it’s a he-said-she-said situation, Trump will always go with he-said. (snip-MORE)

Some News Of The Day

Senate Democrats Estimate DOGE Caused Billions of Dollars In Government Waste by TPM
Read on Substack

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.

What DOGE Cost Us

Democrats on the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations yesterday released a jaw-dropping report attempting to document the scope and scale of financial waste, personnel upheaval, and human suffering caused by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency and Elon Musk’s giddily uninformed strike force of Peter Thiel acolytes. In all, the Democrats, led by Richard Blumenthal (CT), estimated DOGE cost the government $21.7 billion.

“DOGE-generated waste could also have easily funded monthly food assistance for the 5.3 million families losing an average of $146 in monthly food security assistance ($9.3 billion per year) under the new budget; or it could have been used more broadly to support the 40 percent of taxpayers that will see a net increase to their taxes as a direct result of the Trump tax plan,” the report contends.

Major news coverage focused on the cost of the government paying over 150,000 federal workers who accepted the Trump administration’s deferred resignation incentives, under which they had to stop working but are continuing to be paid through September or even December. The minority’s report, which estimated that 200,000 workers took these buyouts, calculated that paying workers for not working cost the government $14.8 billion.

Neither the buyouts nor paying workers while on administrative leave (costing an additional $6.1 billion) increased government efficiency, as was always obvious and predictable. The report details many other costs, from the petty and pointless (millions of hours of wasted employee time writing the Musk-required email listing their weekly accomplishments) to the catastrophic (the elimination of the United States Agency for International Development, “projected to cause millions of additional deaths globally while simultaneously endangering domestic public health by reducing essential medical staff and programs.”)

As it rampaged through the government, DOGE destroyed valuable assets, wasting money already set aside to be spent, or depriving the government of income-generating programs. Product spoilage of USAID supplies of food and medicines cost the government nearly $10 million. DOGE’s elimination of the Internal Revenue Service’s Direct File program, the report estimates, wasted a more than $33 million investment in it, not to mention that taxpayers no longer have a free electronic filing option. DOGE caused the loss of more than $263 million of interest and fee income by shutting down Department of Energy loans from a program to modernize the electricity grid. The actual cost of the mass cancellations of medical research grants at the National Institutes of Health has yet to be fully calculated.

This summary represents a fraction of the entire report, and much is still not even known about the scope of the DOGE destruction. Yesterday, Blumenthal wrote to the inspectors general at 27 agencies, requesting they “initiate a comprehensive review of DOGE’s activities within your agency in order to determine the full scope of costs that DOGE’s careless actions have imposed,” particularly “the financial impact of the reorganization of federal agencies through mass layoffs, the canceling of grants, contracts, and other projects for partisan reasons, and the stifling of income-generating activities.”

Is MAGA Turning on Trump over Israel?

I spotted two stories this week in the inside-the-Beltway press, one in Politico and the other in Axios, suggesting MAGA is turning on Trump because of his continued support of the Netanyahu regime and its assault on Gaza that even Israeli human rights organizations have called a genocide. The Axios piece even suggests a “GOP realignment” on the issue may be underway. The Politico piece is more measured on that possibility, but neither piece mentions the critical role of Christian Zionists — that is, evangelicals who vigorously support Israel’s far right, like Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee — in the Trump coalition.

It is hard to know now this possible coalitional split will play out. In the meantime, can we talk about how the MAGA figures turning against Israel are saying things that have gotten foreign students detained and universities’ funding cut off?

(snip-MORE, + other subjects)