Today’s Zoom talk is with Ed Wexler, who draws for Cagle Cartoons. Join us as we talk about cartoons, art supplies, caricatures, SoCal weather, and Duck Tales.
(The Zoom chat is on the page, linked at “Read On Substack” above. It’s an hour & 15 min.–A.)
On Tuesday, it was announced that the Trump Regime, which is a petri dish of conspiracy theories, is canceling almost $500 million in contracts to develop mRNA vaccines to protect the nation against future viral threats.
The federal Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA, which is also the noise Pete Hegseth makes when throwing up in a back alley dumpster), which oversees the nation’s defenses against biological attacks, is terminating 22 contracts with university researchers and private companies to develop new uses for the mRNA technology, because the Health and Human Services Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is not a doctor or medical expert, but a conspiracy-theorist whack job.
Lunatics who believe vaccines cause autism and come with tracking chips so the Deep State Illuminati baby-eating reptillians can keep track of you are ecstatic. Actual scientists, doctors, and public health experts, not so much.
Showing evidence that the brain worm may have eaten more than we first believed, RFK Jr. said, “Let me be absolutely clear: HHS supports safe, effective vaccines for every American who wants them. That’s why we’re moving beyond the limitations of mRNA vaccines for respiratory viruses and investing in better solutions.”
This is like when Trump tried to get rid of Obamacare with “something better.”
The first COVID vaccine was developed during the first Trump regime, but that administration never had a plan to roll it out to the public. They were planning to hide it all behind a toilet at MAGA-Lardo. Thankfully, Joe Biden won the 2020 election and made the vaccines effective. Now, the same regime that took credit for the vaccine is trying to destroy it.
Michael Osterholm, who runs the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said, “This may be the most dangerous public health judgment that I’ve seen in my 50 years in this business. It is baseless, and we will pay a tremendous price in terms of illnesses and deaths. I’m extremely worried about it.” He’s worried.
Every single MAGAt who yelled “Go get another booster, soy boy” during a losing argument responded with, “Yee-hay, yee-haw, yee-haw.”
Mary Holland, the president and CEO of The Children’s Health Defense, said, “While we believe the mRNA vaccines should be taken off the market, the announcement is a positive move towards protecting public health.” By the way, the Children’s Health Defense was founded by RFK Jr, but I’m sure the people running that organization are totally credible (insert rolling eyes here).
I had a feeling it was bad to make the nation’s top health official a guy who believes in chemtrials and likes to tool around town in a car with a whale’s head strapped to it. (snip-MORE, and it’s good/not good. Clay’s commentary is what’s good; the news is not.)
August 8, 1974 President Richard M. Nixon resigned from office, the first U.S. president ever to do so. The House Judiciary Committee had, with bipartisan support (the Democrats and one-third of the Republican members), voted for three articles of impeachment: obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and contempt of Congress.A week later, one of the White House tapes was finally made public, showing the President’s direct involvement in the Watergate scandal cover-up: “…call the FBI and say that we wish, for the country, don’t go any further into this case, period…” – Nixon to Chief of Staff Haldeman, June 23, 1972 (six days after the Watergate break-in) He officially left office August 9, and was fully pardoned one month later by his successor, President Gerald Ford. Asked years later about some of his administration’s questionable activities, Nixon said, “Well, when the president does that, it isn’t illegal.” The headlines in Washington that day
August 8, 1999 A 53-mile peace walk commemorating the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended near Clam Lake, Wisconsin, at the site of the U.S. Navy’s Project Elf (extremely low frequency) submarine communications transmitter. Twelve of the demonstrators were arrested for trespassing, adding to the nearly 500 previously arrested for sit-ins, Citizen Inspections, blockades and disarmament actions at the transmitter site in Ashland County.
After a little nuclear rhetoric from former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, Trump decided to reposition two nuclear submarines. He told Newsmax while on his way to play golf…again, that he “sent them to the region” and that “they’re closer to Russia.”
Medvedev has fallen from being president to being less useful to Putin than the caddy is to Trump, who kicks his golf balls closer to the green.
Medvedev made comments about Moscow’s capability to deliver a nuclear strike on America, even if everyone in Russia is dead. And then he tweeted to Trump an emoji of laughter through tears and the nuclear threat, warning Trump of the dangers of the “Dead Hand,” while also making references to the TV “The Walking Dead.” Medvedev was totally trolling Trump, and somehow did it without mentioning Epstein.
The Kremlin walked back Medvedev’s rhetoric and assured the world that only the head of state can make nuclear decisions, though that head of state, Vladimir Putin, has previously threatened to use nukes in Ukraine.
Trump gave Putin a 10 to 12-day deadline to do something something about a peace deal with Ukraine, or there will be more sanctions placed on Russia. That deadline is in two days, or maybe four, or whenever Putin says so.
Trump has been using some tough talk with Russia, but don’t make any mistakes about it. He’s still Putin’s puppet. The deal he’s offering Russia is still slanted in their favor. Trump is also trying to have a trilateral meeting with Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, but wants a private meeting with Putin first. The trilateral meeting will probably end up like Zelensky’s last visit to the Oval Office.
Trump’s “peace deal” includes giving Russia half of Ukraine and a guarantee that Ukraine will never be a member of NATO.
You know that when you see a man in a muscle car or a monster truck, that he’s overcompensating for a tiny ding dong. Trump is basically doing the same thing with submarines. ‘
I think Trump has watched too much UFC, WWE, and Rocky III. Or was it Rocky IV when he fought the roided-up Russian?
I’m worried that if Trump says he wants a fight, even if he’s bluffing, that he might get one. (snip-MORE)
This is hugely pertinent to our interests. And the history callback of Dobbs/Roe is spot on!! This needs we the people’s work sooner rather than later. The story linked within is important background for working on this. Seriously: pick one or two (or more!) rights organizations and do what you can with them, now, while it’s not still too late, and stick with it until the other side is defeated. Please don’t wait until this is in court. Then:
A very sound scheme is to check in with your states on their legislative websites, see what the laws are right now, and what’s in the chute. Overturning Obergefell can’t/won’t change state laws regarding marriage, just as overturning Roe didn’t change state laws regarding repro rights. But knowing what could be coming, especially in red states, is imperative for getting ourselves protected, and protecting others. If your state is safe, well, pick another state that isn’t, and help them out. If your state has no law at all, lobby hard to get one, ASAP. And thanks!-A.
Some of Trump’s judicial nominees have refused in confirmation hearings to acknowledge that the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, striking down state bans on same-sex marriage as unconstitutional, was correctly decided. According to an analysis by JP Collins at the legal website Balls and Strikes, Eric Tung, who Trump nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, said only, “the Supreme Court granted such a right.” William Mercer, a nominee to the U.S. District Court for the District of Montana, said Obergefell is “binding precedent,” but declined to “grade the Supreme Court.”
As Collins points out, these verbal gymnastics to avoid saying the case was correctly decided mirror those of Trump’s first term Supreme Court nominees who said Roe v. Wade was precedent but would not say it was correctly decided — and then voted to overturn it.
One might say marriage equality is different from abortion. Obergefell is just 10 years old, and Roe was decades old. But the most important feature that both decisions share is the enmity of the Christian right, and its determination to overturn them, no matter how many years or decades it takes.
Even before the court decided Obergefell in 2015, the Christian right was already planning to treat it just like Roe. The Supreme Court’s 1973 decision, they argued, was not the end of the abortion issue but rather the beginning. They used money, media, political might, religion, and relentless organizing to use abortion to drive politics and shape the judiciary. Their plans for Obergefell and LGBTQ rights are no different.
Photo by Astrid Riecken For The Washington Post via Getty Images
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)
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)
(original hanging in the Hay-Adam’s Off the Record bar)
My colleague KAL has also a post about the coasters he, Matt Wuerker, and I created for the bar.
(Note from A: Click through on KAL’s-you’ll love it!)
Irritating Screechy Blowhole by Clay Jones
Look, Europe! Our president (sic) is a raving lunatic Read on Substack
It’s one thing for Donald Trump to display his deteriorating mental state here at home, like ranting about lightbulbs or batteries so heavy that they sink boats to waiting sharks, but it’s another thing for TACO to go overseas and reassure our friends and allies that the United States of America has an insane racist at the helm (he howled about immigration into Europe).
While sitting next to European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen, Trump went on a rant about windmills…again.
Trump said in a long-winded rant, “And the other thing I say to Europe, we will not allow a windmill to be built in the United States, they’re killing us. They’re killing the beauty of our scenery, our valleys, our beautiful plains. And I’m not talking about airplanes, I’m talking about beautiful plains, beautiful areas of the United States, and you look up and you see windmills all over the place, it’s a horrible thing. It’s the most expensive form of energy; it’s no good. They’re made in China, almost all of them. When they start to rust and rot in eight years, you can’t really turn them off, you can’t bury them, they won’t let you. But the propellers, the props, because they’re a certain type of fiber that doesn’t go well with the land, that’s what they say. The environmentalists say you can’t bury them because the fiber doesn’t go well with the land; in other words, if you bury it, it will harm our soil. The whole thing is a con job.”
Keep in mind, Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency is fighting its own power to fight Climate Change. Talk about a con job. (snip-yadayada [Trump] I mean MORE)
Are Good Pierogis the only pierogis you’ll ever need? Yes! Drive to Martha’s Vineyard and eat them. Tell them, “Alan Dershowitz ain’t got no panties on.” We don’t know if they’ll give you a discount, but they might laugh.
If there’s one thing anybody knows about famed lawyer Alan Dershowitz’s life and career, it’s that he has panties on, except for all the times he’s being a nudist, which by definition implies the absence of panties. One time he definitely always had panties on? When he was getting a massage at Jeffrey Epstein’s Haus of Naked. That’s a five-alarm-panty-party for Alan Dershowitz, he has always assured us.
Another time Alan Dershowitz is always wearing panties — at least as far as we’ve heard — is when he’s having his civil rights and his bill of rights and his human rights violated by the evil shopkeepers and librarians of Martha’s Vineyard, where nobody will invite him over for dinner because they hate his guts, avec ou sans panties. Apparently the Jewish Democrats on Martha’s Vineyard really loathe El Chico Desnudo. Also everybody else on Martha’s Vineyard hates him, all the other liberals, and this makes Alan Dershowitz feel lonely and, well, naked. They won’t let him come to brunch, and it’s definitely not because he’s naked and won’t stop dipping his balls in the hollandaise, why would he dip his balls there, that’s not where Alan Dershowitz’s balls go. They won’t let him do his world-renowned standing-room-only readings and lectures at the meeting room at the library, it is an outrage, it is a seven deadly sins, it is a violation of the Geneva Conventions. Larry David doesn’t invite him over, Barack Obama skips his birthday parties, and now he has to sue a Martha’s Vineyard farmer’s market vendor because they wouldn’t give him a dumpling.
A pierogi, to be specific. The vendor wouldn’t give him a pierogi, so now he has to show them his pierogi.
WITH PANTIES ON.
Dershowitz explained what’s going on in exhaustive detail on his Rumble show, but first here’s a tweet:
OK, so here’s the situation, here is Alan Dershowitz’s Yelp review for “that guy at the farmer’s market with the pierogis.”
“There was the pierogi place,” he said. “They’re Ukrainian, Russian delicacies. And I had gone there a few times before, and I bought the pierogi. They were ok. They were not my grandmother’s pierogi, but they were ok.”
Alan Dershowitz just wanted some pierogis, even though they weren’t that good, just OK.
BUT THEN HERE’S WHAT HAPPENED, ALAN SAYS:
DERSHOWITZ: Can I have six pierogi?
“BIGOTED VENDOR”: No.
DERSHOWITZ: Oh, you’ve run out of pierogi? Too bad.
“BIGOTED VENDOR”: No, no, no. We have plenty of pierogi. I just won’t sell them to you.
DERSHOWITZ: What do you mean you won’t sell them to me?
“BIGOTED VENDOR”: I won’t sell them to you because I don’t approve of your politics. I don’t approve of who you’ve represented. I don’t approve of who you support.
DERSHOWITZ: What is it about my politics that you don’t–
“BIGOTED VENDOR”: I’m not gonna tell you. I just don’t like your politics.
Love it when vendors at the farmer’s market are like “Forsooth, I don’t approve of you! I forsake you! You shan’t have six pierogis today, not to put in your belly, not to eat with panties on, not to slather in your Alan Dershowitz ball-ondaise sauce and save for later!” It’s just how farmer’s market vendors talk.
“The clear implication was that he opposed me because I defended Donald Trump on the floor of the Senate,” Dershowitz added. “I think that’s illegal.”
Alan Dershowitz is a very famous lawyer.
It gets better, because there’s video of at least part of the situation, or at least the aftermath, don’t worry it’s safe for work. Dershowitz was also filming, because he is a serious lawyer and we imagine he knows that sometimes cops and ICE agents and pierogi vendors are full of lies.
Therein, you can see the cop gently explaining to Alan Dershowitz The Very Famous Lawyer that according to his own understanding, restaurants can refuse service, but if he wants to pursue it further, he can pursue it civilly. Oh yes, Alan Dershowitz says! He is going to put this on the internet too, Alan Dershowitz says! That’ll be the end of this reign of terror for this pierogi seller whose pierogis are OK but not like Alan Dershowitz’s grandmother’s pierogis!
If you’d like to listen to Dershowitz debate the cop for one hundred hours on whether it’s OK for people to discriminate against Alan Dershowitz based on his protected class of sucking so much, that’s in that video. You can’t discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation or race, so how is it fair to discriminate against Alan Dershowitz on the basis of fuck that guy, we hate him? He asks to speak to the manager. The cop explains that actually he’s in charge right now. Dershowitz explains he’s lived here for 53 years and nobody has ever sent him home without pierogi in his belly. He accuses the extremely patient cop of “silencing” him. The cop gently explains that he is causing a disruption, that multiple people have complained, and that no, he may not stand next to the pierogi stand and tell people not to go to the pierogi stand. Alan Dershowitz explains that he would like to get some lemonade.
The user who posted the video says:
“I met Allen Dechowitz [sic] today. I stopped him from harassing a vendor who wouldn’t serve him pierogi at the farmer’s market on Martha’s Vineyard.”
The pierogi person, or the person who is presumably the pierogi person, replied, “Hey, thank you so much!”
Again, Dershowitz rushed to get on Rumble and talk about all of this, and he did so wearing a Martha’s Vineyard Farmer’s Market T-shirt. If you choose to subject yourself to this, skip to 3:54 or so in the video. He talks for a LONG VERY LONG TIME, about how the farmer’s market is on QUASI public land, and he pronounces QUASI like SWAYZE.
He explains that he really wanted to go to the farmer’s market that day because it was corn day, and he got there early, because corn day. He says corn day wasn’t supposed to be until August 1, but he had “insider information” that told him corn day would be this weekend instead.
So that’s insider corn day trading, by his own legal admission, somebody should sue Alan Dershowitz for tortious corn day.
In the Rumble video, Alan Dershowitz is much more agreeable than he is on the video with the cop, so we can only imagine what the actual encounter with the pierogi vendor was like. He does mention that when he was told that the pierogi vendor identifies as non-binary and uses the pronoun “they,” Alan Dershowitz responded, “I’ll use whatever language I choose to use, that’s a matter between me and my grammarian,” and when he said “grammarian,” it was like he was gesturing to the Great Grammarian in the Sky, so that might have also contributed to why Alan Dershowitz did not receive any pierogi, for himself or for his grammarian.
In the video, Dershowitz creates his own new metric for whether it’s OK to discriminate, based on the categories of “race, religion or politics,” which is, legal factcheck, not what it is. (The nice cop also tries to explain that to him.)
Dershowitz says he wrote an op-ed about this, he has sent an email to Sean Hannity — yes because the pierogi person was mean to him — and then, having babbled for over 10 minutes about this, starts explaining other times he’s faced discrimination on Martha’s Vineyard, just for being Alan Dershowitz too much. He’s discriminated against by the book fair, he’s discriminated against by the library, he’s discriminated against by the synagogue — he says they hate Israel — and blah blah blah blah blah Alan Dershowitz.
And then we turned off the video.
If you, like us, don’t want to watch the whole video, here is a screengrab of Alan Dershowitz making an Alan Dershowitz face while he complains.
So that is what has happened. Everybody on Martha’s Vineyard still hates Alan Dershowitz and Alan Dershowitz did not get a pierogi, therefore SUING.
Cannot hardly wait for Pam Bondi’s press conference on how she’s filed charges against the pierogi stand for discrimination and anti-semitism and also probably announcing that she found the real Epstein files in the pierogi stand’s fryers, they were there the whole time. (snip)
Republican Sen. Josh Hawley introduced legislation Monday to provide tariff rebate checks of at least $600 per adult and child to American families, similar tothe stimulus checks the government distributed during the Covid pandemic.
“Like President Trump proposed, my legislation would allow hard-working Americans to benefit from the wealth that Trump’s tariffs are returning to this country,” Hawley said in a statement.
Hawley, who championed stimulus check legislation with Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., during the Covid pandemic in 2020, put forward his new bill to echo that past effort. The program would be set up as a refundable tax credit, with the government sending checks this year should the bill advance through Congress and get Trump’s signature. The bill would ensure that each adult and dependent child would get at least $600. It would also allow a larger rebate per person should tariff revenue exceed projections.
The bill would reduce the rebate by 5% for joint filers who have adjusted gross income in excess of $150,000, a head of household whose income exceeds $112,500 and an individual taxpayer whose income exceeds $75,000.
The Treasury Department reported this month that customs duties totaled about $27 billion for June, an increase of about $4 billion from May. But June also saw inflation tick up slightly as Trump’s wide-ranging tariffs started to work through the U.S. economy. The independent Tax Foundation projected that Trump’s tariffs would raise $2.5 trillion in revenue over the next decade, but that, through price increases, they would effectively increase taxes on the average U.S. household by nearly $1,300 this year and nearly $1,700 in 2026, should they remain in full effect.
Hawley’s bill has a long road ahead of it before it could become law. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., poured cold water this year on different proposal to send direct checks to Americans. Johnson’s comments were in response to the idea of a “DOGE dividend” check, in which the government would send part of the savings created by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency directly to U.S. taxpayers. But DOGE fell far short of then-leader Elon Musk’s projection of as much as $2 trillion in savings, and Musk has broken with Trump after he left the administration in May.
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