If 25% of the population believed that a creature called ‘Glonzo’ caused high power prices by chewing through transmission lines, any competent politician would be negligent in not trying to find a way to exploit this. This doesn’t mean that these people wouldn’t be fucking morons.
— William B. Fuckley (@opinionhaver.bsky.social) November 8, 2024 at 7:01 PM
===
this isn’t “we are going send the marines to kill glonzo” it is “we are going to release glonzo into dallas next to the book depository”
— GOLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachine.com) July 17, 2025 at 7:17 PM
===
it is *maximally* designed to drive the cranks completely fucking insane
— GOLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachine.com) July 17, 2025 at 7:17 PM
Excellent Substack post on “The Glonzo Strategy: Sometimes You Just Need to Win”:
Sometimes you have to fight your way into handicapping your political adversaries. It takes large-scale mobilization of energized activists who relentlessly press their interests to win over less committed voters—a long and tiresome trek toward sapping your opposition of political capital.
Othertimes your adversaries promise the voters Glonzo’s head. Then they promptly deny that Glonzo ever existed. I mean honestly, why are you even asking about Glonzo? Glonzo is boring. Also the Democrats made him up.
In this instance Glonzo happens to be files related to Jeffrey Epstein…
Honestly I could care less about the Epstein stuff. I’ve never particularly cared about this as an issue and it has always seemed relatively shut and closed to me.
But the voting public? Oh man. The voting public cares quite a lot. At this point it feels like they care more about the Trump administration’s response to the files than they do about the files themselves…
The shambolic Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein affair is an opportunity for anyone opposed to Trump to drive a stake into the heart of their political coalition.
Maybe it’s slightly misaligned with the platonic ideal of civic republicanism to resort to pressing your political rivals over matters that likely amount to little more than a conspiracy theory—but the consequences of the MAGA movement continuing their march through our institutions is unconscionable.
They’ve cut USAID support to foreign countries that will kill millions. They’ve dismantled the Education Department. Billions in dollars have been cut from scientific research. They’re sending masked men into our cities. Our alliances are being undermined around the world. Hospitals around the country will be forced to close. Ukranians see their military aid cut and restored on an almost daily basis.
If you want to see this all stop, breaking apart the coalition that supports Trump is the only way forward. You need to make Republicans remember that he is a lame-duck President and that they need to look towards their own political survival. You can only worry about reconstructing what is deeply broken in our political community if you actually gain power…
If you want some serious journalism, here’s the Atlantic transcript of an interview with Julie K. Brown [gift link]:
Julie Brown: This is gonna be like the [John F. Kennedy] assassination. Long after you and I are gone, there’s gonna be people that are gonna be writing and looking at this, and writing books about it. I just know it.
LaFrance: That’s Julie K. Brown. She’s an investigative reporter at the Miami Herald, and she probably knows more than anyone in the world about this case. In 2018, Julie published a series of deeply reported stories about Epstein that led to the effective reopening of the case. The next year, Epstein was indicted on federal sex-trafficking charges. Then a month after his arrest, he was found dead in his jail cell.
LaFrance: Let me start by asking you about last week. Are you surprised by all of this drama? Or have you been basically waiting for this moment, where Trump world says, Oh, just kidding. Nothing to see here?
Brown: I’ve been waiting for this moment. I could see this like it was a train wreck that you can’t take your eyes from, because you know what’s going to happen, and this does not surprise me. What would’ve surprised me is if they had really released files, because I really didn’t think they were going to…
LaFrance: Well, let’s establish some of the basics. I find myself watching all of this unfold, and beginning to sort of lose sight of what actually is true, what is speculation. Talk about what Epstein was accused of, what he was indicted for. What do we know for sure?
Brown: Well, let’s start with something that almost no one really starts with in this whole scandal that’s been happening over the past week, and that is the victims.
Jeffrey Epstein abused probably at least 200 young girls, some of them reportedly as young as 12 years old, over a span of decades. He also sexually abused young women who are in the area of 18 to 25 years old. But this is a case about a man who used these women as pawns to further his own ambition and finances, in that he used them not only for his own sexual gratification, but also for the sexual gratification of others that he had hoped to do business with. And this was all part of the sex-trafficking operation. He had several different offices, so to speak, with this operation. He had a whole staff that helped him with this. He had legal people that helped him with this. So this was just not Epstein having sex in his mansion with a couple of underage girls. This was a whole operation.
And I think people sometimes lose sight of the fact that he was able to continue doing that because our federal government and our criminal-justice system failed these victims, and never really pursued this case with the seriousness and intensity that they should have from the very beginning. And that’s why he got away with it. It’s why he was released way back in 2009, and he was able to continue doing the same things all over again after his release from this plea deal that he initially negotiated two decades ago with the federal government…
===
everyone saying that the base will just ignore this too has not been paying attention to the base over the last couple weeks, this is a disaster
— GOLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachine.com) July 17, 2025 at 7:11 PM
===
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
(It’s Glonzo)— Vituperative Erb (@vituperativeerb.bsky.social) July 17, 2025 at 7:45 PM
===
The cover-up continues…
— Clean Observer (@hammbear2024.bsky.social) July 17, 2025 at 2:13 PM
On The Road – otmar – Ljublana 2021
Baud
One of the reasons that their base is so invested in this is that they were promised that Bill Clinton (and maybe Hillary) would be exposed. So now Trump is (in their minds) aligned with them.
mappy!
It all reads like a Roger Stone disinformation campaign gone bad…
Rusty
At this point I’m guessing they will go with the special prosecutor who will deliberately slow walk this thing until Trump is out of the White House. They will spend the first year and a half picking the carpet for the office and the next two claiming they are reading rhe files. Will this satisfy the howling mass of conspiracy lunatics? Who knows, but it takes off the immediate heat.
MattF
FYI.
Baud
Geoduck
@MattF: So anybody named Tom Koch can be used, or do you need to track down one specific guy?
Baud
MagdaInBlack
@Baud: ……. and one stuffed dog.
( made me laugh)
Baud
@MagdaInBlack:
It’s almost the 12 days of Christmas
Baud
Good timing, via Blue sky
MagdaInBlack
@Baud: ok….THAT made me really laugh out loud, no little lol for that =-)
catclub
The best case to drive his supporters away from him is to keep giving nothing.
There is nothing in there that is even as bad as the Hollywood tape of him bragging about sexual assault.
Why do I know? If there had been, the Bush crime family would have used it to kill his campaign in 2015.
Chief Oshkosh
@Baud: I hope that MJ article gets more exposure, especially in MAGA circles.
Chief Oshkosh
@catclub: You know who disagrees with you on that?
Trump.
Otherwise, he would have released it all, and to hell with Grand Jury and administrative niceties.
ETA: But yes, I agree that continuing to not give the rubes anything will continue to drive them bonkers.
Suzanne
This is a moment of public insanity that intrigues me. It is clear that, as absolutely deluded as they are, there are thousands (tens? hundreds of thousands?) of people who genuinely believed all this shit. And yes the media sucks, but it isn’t to blame for this. This is off-the-map kind of shit.
I don’t have the hole in my heart that can only be filled with mysticism, so I cannot really comprehend it. But it is something to witness.
Deputinize America
Yah, but…
…these commentators are whistling past the graveyard.
MAGA faithful may PRETEND to care about this, but they’d have never abandoned their Golden Jackass if it meant that a Democrat (much less “one o’ them uppity coloreds, specially a WOMAN uppity colored”) would win.
Deputinize America
@Suzanne:
Your answer is in the opening sequence of “Cabaret”.
lowtechcyclist
@catclub:
You keep saying this. I’d like some evidence that the Bush family operated as a ‘crime family’ in the past thirty years. Closest thing I can come up with is Bush the Elder’s pardoning of all his Iran-Contra associates in 1992, and that had nothing to do with his family.
Baud
@Suzanne:
To me, the abuse conspiracy theories make more sense than others.
A lot of these people were abused or know someone close who was. And a lot of these same people grew up with the canon that Democrats are categorically a worse people than Republicans.
Put those things together and it makes some sense that they would fall for conspiracy theories centered around “Democratic elites” doing horrendous things to children.
Trump stepped into all that with his actions. Or see my comment 1.
Librettist
Glonzo is the Twilight Zone monster materializing from MAGAs collective unconscious. They know they got hustled, and don’t like being shunned by friends and family.
Keep receipts because this is going to be like a Hangover movie.
Baud
@Deputinize America:
The majority of his base cares about bigotry. But he doesn’t have to lose all of them to have an effect on politics.
JWR
Thursday afternoon’s Background Briefing with Ian Masters had a good interview with Will Sommer on the Epstein case. At one point, Masters reads from the Maxwell case file, and boy, I don’t remember it being so graphic. (And am I ever shocked that Trump doesn’t want MAGA reading already published dirt on Daddy!)
The last interview on the page is with Lisa Graves, who talks about everything, from the Dems walkout to everything in between. She’s one of my favorite guests:
Librettist
Bondi is offering up some weak sauce from the grand jury proceedings, but Glonzo does its own research.
MagdaInBlack
@Suzanne: JoyceH made a comment on the Betty’s earlier post that this was their “Foundation Myth.” Qanon did truly believe trump would expose the global elite pedo ring.
Their foundation is crumbling plus they have a whole new conspiracy to unravel.
p.s. I am more than happy to enjoy their dismay and anger.
EarthWindFire
@Librettist: There have been many articles written about the Trump presidency being a trauma response. The unresolved subconscious of MAGA must be uglier than I imagined and that’s saying a lot.
Fuck your boss’s feelings, KKKaroline.
Another Scott
@Baud: The first MoJo link gave me an error (but I see the later ones work). While there, I saw this good piece.
In short – Epstein’s address book has been out for years.
Worth a click.
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Suzanne
@Baud: I know that I don’t have to repeat here all of the incredibly heartbreaking statistics about children being abused primarily by those they know and trust: family members, coaches, clergy. And the evidence of everyone’s senses should make anyone skeptical that thousands of children are missing or being trafficked. In the kinds of numbers that these people are talking about, that would imply that kids have disappeared from every neighborhood in this country. I don’t even know how the Wayfair thing began or grew legs.
But you touch on something that is likely a component of this, which is that there is probably a ton of trauma that underlies this belief.
PAM Dirac
@catclub:
I’m not so sure. It might be a case of mutually assured destruction. The rot is wide spread enough that it is almost impossible to bring down a target without also bringing down allies. The sleazy plea deal happened long before anyone worried about the orange fart cloud’s power. The focus may be on drumpf now, but I’m sure there are many other elites that have been protected and are still being protected from facing responsibility for their role in this travesty.
Librettist
Anyway, nice of the Village to point at his cankles while ignoring the Edema swelling his face since… shit. Since the COVID whacked his kidney function.
p.a.
My comment from the 5am thread:
Ironic that the stupidest part of his coalition, the ones that really believe in this massive worldwide conspiracy (if it’s massive it’ll never be a successful conspiracy) are the ones to shake his new reich, while the ones who are smart enough to know the theory was just used as a political weapon are in the crosshairs.
From facebook: You don’t need the files if you believe the women.
Nettoyeur
@Librettist: Not an expert, but suspect Grand Jury rules will complicate this, leading to what the Nixon WH called a “modified limited hangout”, which back then only fed chum to the sharks.
Suzanne
@Librettist: I try not to look at him, as I find it (very) mildly triggering….. but I will say that I caught a glimpse a couple of weeks ago of him speaking, and I gasped aloud. He looked really, really bad. Notably different and worse.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone😊😊😊
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
satby
@Baud: Yep. I’ve always been surprised at how ready the conservatives I know are so positive that child sex trafficking is rampant. But then I grew up and learned how many kids were and still are abused in churches and youth groups, subject to incest in their homes, and/or are emotionally abused into stunted, fearful individuals who gain a sense of control by believing in conspiracy theories.
And now “God’s imperfect vessel” who was going to expose and destroy all the evildoers is hiding the evidence, and protecting them instead. A betrayal so big they may inch towards the truth of what he is too. Whatever the fuck works.
Geo Wilcox
@Rusty: They should hire Eric Garland, he is a master at the slow walk…
JiveTurkin
IMO a large part of the focus of the Epstein issue has to be that Trump has a history of obsessing about “young” when it comes to women. This stands out:
There is video evidence from 1992 where Donald Trump, then 46 years old, made a comment about dating a young girl in ten years. During an “Entertainment Tonight” Christmas special filmed at Trump Tower, Trump can be heard saying, “I am going to be dating her in 10 years. Can you believe it?” after asking a young girl if she was going up the escalator. This incident has been documented and referenced by multiple sources.
He also used to wander around backstage at the Miss Teen USA pageant when he owned it. Where 15-year-old girls were getting dressed. He is, and was, a perv. And it matters, just like he being corrupt matters.
Michael Bersin
I covered two Good Trouble demonstrations yesterday.
The first, in the rain:
Good Trouble – Henry County Courthouse – Clinton, Missouri – July 17, 2025 – 10:00 a.m.
The second, thirty miles to the north, in better weather:
Good Trouble – Johnson County Courthouse – Warrensburg, Missouri – July 17, 2025 – 12:00 noon
prostratedragon
@Baud:
Worth putting out there just for recurrent proclamations of
FIVE MASSAGE TABLES!!
Matt McIrvin
There’s a big difference between this and QAnon, or any other MAGA conspiracy obsession: At the heart of it is a true story. It’s surrounded by layers of bullshit and fantasy, but Epstein’s pedophile sex trafficking ring was real. And one of the biggest bullshit things about it was the idea that Donald Trump was clean!
This is the perfect time for our side for it to break, too. We’re regrouping and trying to find a way forward after rock bottom. If it does implicate a bunch of Democrats, who cares? Those are the ones we want to get out of our movement.
So, yeah, go hard on it. But emphasize the reality.
I think the reason people have a hard time believing this will really be bad for Trump is that this story isn’t new–MAGA successfully used Bill Clinton’s dealings with Epstein against Hillary Clinton even in 2016 when Epstein was still on the loose, and his connections to Trump were already pretty well-known. But Epstein’s death really ratcheted up the drama, I guess.
Michael Bersin
Both events had fewer participants than previous demonstrations. But, both events were scheduled during business hours on a weekday in the center of town. The audience for each demonstration was much larger than previous weekend ones.
One of the Warrensburg organizers quipped that the average age of those in attendance was 70. He was probably close.
Matt McIrvin
@satby: The biggest lie about widespread child sexual abuse isn’t that it’s happening, it’s that it’s the Other who’s doing it. Anyone who seems weird or has a nonstandard gender or sexual identity. Not normal people like us.
Same with opioid abuse, same with other kinds of crime.
Matt McIrvin
@Michael Bersin: Yeah, I sadly couldn’t make it to this one, for that reason. I guess we need a mix of weekend and weekday demos to keep people energized.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Same story with the Clinton Foundation vs the Trump Foundation. MAGA was successful because they were aided by the media and the misogynists.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
It’s always projection with the right.
Citizen Dave
@Another Scott: S Watched a Jordan Klepper Daily Show segment. He pointed out there were 14 numbers for Trump in Epstein’s little black book.He also mentioned that epstein introduced Melania to trump, and the first time they had sex was on the plane. (Barron, did I ever tell you how I met your mother?)
So we all come here on another day to commune and see if today is the day that Bullshit Mountain erupts.I keep thinking of the Bill Cosby saga. This of course is much bigger, and is our history. This morning I remembered a long ago hope that I’m around long enough to see trump’s name taken off every single one of his buildings and anywhere else it appears. And their company to implode into scraps. This kind of zeitgeist can go a long way.
hueyplong
@Deputinize America: Maybe the most logical response to you is to acknowledge that the loons would never vote for a demonrat and the goal, instead, is hurt their desire to vote at all due to a loss of faith in their team/leader. Once the decision is between perceived pedos and pedoprotectors on one side and demonrats on the other, perhaps they tire of the voting game (“what’s the point?”).
Hey, I’m just kind of tap dancing here in a world devoid of logic, but, “logically,” the only way for them to change their view of the god king is for them to think that they themselves got to the bottom of it. It’s got to be their own discovery and not something librulz pointed out to them.
So far, so… good?
Suzanne
@Matt McIrvin:
Agree.
There’s a ton of speculation about Bill Clinton, and of course HRC by proxy….. and I just really do not care about Bill Clinton. I’m not old enough to have voted for him.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
That letter the WSJ is published is basically a confession from Trump that that he was part of Epstein’s scheme. Reads like the two of them convinced themselves that are special snowflakes, because they were messing with underage teens. It oddly supports the argument Epstein killed himself, because in Epstein’s eyes, a life without underage teens to rape isn’t a life worth living.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Even with good will, releasing stuff about Epstein would be complicated. The SDNY prosecutor (Comey’s daughter) wanted some things withheld because it might interfere with Ghislaine Maxwell’s appeal proceedings. And I gather there are photos of some of the victims. You don’t want to victimize them again. So the mob is unlikely to be satisfied.
That being said, I still can’t shake the notion that they’ll get over it. Trump never pays.
prostratedragon
@PAM Dirac:
That is some of what’s under the passage of the Julie Brown interview AL posted that jumped out at me:
This was an operation that was not just an end in itself, and not only for the pleasure of JE and others, but also was bound up with other business. It is the likliest explnation to me for why it went on for so long and even, getting conspiratorial for a moment, how it got off the ground in the first place. I mean, the guy was first brought into Dalton for cryin’ out loud.
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne:
I sure am! I even think that in many ways, he was a good President! But not a good man; we already know that.
Let those chips fall where they may.
Baud
@Suzanne:
I don’t care if Bill Clinton is actually implicated.
I care if his name appears somewhere in the files for some random reason and the media and social media (including libs) obsess over it rather than over Trump.
Suzanne
@Baud: I agree with that. My point is….. I would rather expose everyone, even if that entails some Democrats.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Deputinize America: Before Trump, The Base was all into GW Bush as the Greatest President Ever until he wasn’t and they never heard of him
hueyplong
@Suzanne: I’d like to think there is general agreement here about that.
Soprano2
Yes, plus all the other prominent Democrats and Hollywood insiders that they hate. They were promised these files would lead to all their enemies being put in prison for being pedophiles, and now FFOTUS is trying to say “Haha, fooled ya, there’s nothing there, quit talking about it”. This kind of thing won’t go away.
Soprano2
The more you deny them, the more they believe there’s something there.
I wonder why Bondi didn’t release a list with all their “faves” on it, just to make them happy. Perhaps she realizes that would cause her a world of hurt in the real world.
Trivia Man
The story about underage women on the floor of his casino in the late 80s is interesting. T &E brought 3 women onto the floor of his casino, the next morning the state inspector told the casino manager, “im a tennis fan and i recognized one of them. She is ranked #3 in tge world and i know for a fact she is 19.” No fine or punishment but the casino was warned.
I did a little verification, in 1989 Gabriella Sabatini from Argentina was ranked #3 and was also 19. Someone should ask her directly.
JWR
Up at #22, I wrote that, “At one point, Masters reads from the Maxwell case file”, but he was actually reading from a book by Julie Brown, and was from an earlier lawsuit, (since quashed by $$$), claiming some pretty sordid goings on with both Trump and Epstein that might be okay among consenting adults, but not with a child.
Suzanne
Since this is an open thread, about social media….. I will take a turn here and note that the incident that went viral yesterday with the Astronomer CEO’s affair being exposed at the Coldplay concert is goddamn comedic gold.
From CHH on Xhitter:
PAM Dirac
@prostratedragon: Yes, this is exactly what I was thinking. It wasn’t just an Epstein thing, it wasn’t just an Epstein/drumf thing, it was much broader and thus framing it as a question of how we can use it topple drumf is too narrow a question. The question is whether we want to work to hold anyone and everyone that either participated in or aided and abetted these crimes accountable no matter how much money they have or how much we like them.
Gin & Tonic
@Suzanne: That incident just pointed out to me how fast you lose game. I used to know who was who and what was what in tech, because of work reasons. Four years retired, I see this story, and realize I’ve never heard of this guy or his company.
Matt McIrvin
@Soprano2: A sidelight: Jeffrey Epstein seems to have fancied himself an intellectual and liked to draw prominent scientists and science popularizers into his circle, so people I admired for reasons completely unrelated to politics ended up being tangentially connected. Yeah, bring it all out.
I do think that when it comes to “client lists” we may not learn a lot we don’t already know.
Doug R
@Baud:
Except Bill doesn’t like em that young.
That being said, if he committed stat rape then he deserves some prison time too.
Gin & Tonic
@PAM Dirac: Your proposal is acceptable.
Matt McIrvin
@Gin & Tonic: Man, I’m still in it and I could never keep track of this stuff. Just makes my eyes glaze over.
Another Scott
@Matt McIrvin: +1
Plus the 1980s was the time when one of the biggest porn stars was a minor (Traci Lords). Epstein and 47 weren’t 6 sigma outliers. There was too much approval of this child abuse stuff by far too many for far too long.
Grr…
Best wishes,
Scott.
Doug R
@Rusty:
I’m thinking the Comey daughter that just got fired might want to share Epstein’s proffer with Leticia James.
zhena gogolia
@Citizen Dave: If only the NYT could devote half or one tenth the effort to this that they did to Harvey Weinstein, who held no public elected office, we might have a chance.
Not to mention Biden’s age.
mappy!
@Matt McIrvin:
The most effective way to render an issue harmless, the Roger Stone approach as it were, is to blame the opposition for the same. Swift Boat… Dubya went AWOL four times.
So, if there was a Democratic Party pedo ring ascribed to Hillary, you know where it’s coming from and probably where to look for evidence of the actual ring.
When facts don’t support the claim, follow the lie back to who it tries to protect.
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
Maybe some prominent NYT people are on the list. 🤞
Matt McIrvin
@Another Scott: This is one of the prime reasons I laugh ruefully when people refer to the era of my childhood and youth as “a simpler, more innocent time”. It was the golden age of skeeze!
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Nominated!
ETA
Also too, fake nostalgia, which is cross-idealogical, is destroying this country.
Trivia Man
@Suzanne: the cherry on the sundae – next to them on camera was the brand new VP of HR. Next staff meeting was a hoot no doubt.
Great Linked In parodies already circulating. “I regret my actions, but here is what it taught me about successful B2B marketing and taking a company forward into uncharted waters.”
prostratedragon
@Matt McIrvin: Bob did it.
piratedan
it’s that beautiful ironic symmetry that MAGA inherently understood, the only way to bring down the Democratic Swamp, a morass of pedophilia and corruption was to bring in a successful businessman who shared their outrage, spoken in their own vernacular who promised to put an end to all of this. They looked no further than the media patina painted for him by Rupe and his buddies and the real movers of the darker hemispheres quickly understood that he was a tool, means to an end.
Now many of those very same MAGA peeps that have been touched by the sexual abuse and have severe trust issues as those with money and power always appear to be just beyond the reach of justice put their absolute faith in THIS charlatan and now that bill is coming due.
I have no idea on how this will play out, but if these folks have had no issue harassing the Clintons for decades and attempting to blow up pizza parlors that are identified as part of the sinister plot, then I hope that there are a few in the 47 administration that have firing synapses to realize that the boomerang is returning back to the thrower.
Matt McIrvin
@mappy!: Yep! It’s Karl Rove’s playbook too: attack the other side preemptively for YOUR guy’s biggest weaknesses. Traditional political strategy says this is the last thing you want to do, because what if you get exposed as a hypocrite? But that doesn’t matter. It works.
For a time.
Soprano2
@Matt McIrvin: There’s a lot of speculation that the Gates’ divorce was caused by Bill refusing to break off his friendship with Epstein. It’s funny how we know Bill Gates was involved with Epstein, but he’s rarely mentioned when these discussions happen. It seems obvious to me that Epstein was protected for so long because of who his “clients” were.
snoey
@Matt McIrvin: That seems to be a large part of Epstein’s MO. Schmoozing to the max, be known as a player who can hang at Harvard and give ex-presidents a lift on the plane. Lots of lists and connections and plenty of cover for who went to this party and not that party.
Soprano2
QFT. I guess memory is a funny thing, people remember all the good stuff and forget all the bad stuff. It’s easy to be nostalgic for your childhood, when you didn’t have to worry about paying bills and all the other stuff that comes with being an adult. That doesn’t mean everything was great then! The 1950’s were a turbulent decade, but most people get their idea of what it was like from Happy Days.
Chip Daniels
People are often trying to find some hidden strategy, some 11 dimensional chess to Trump. But what he has demonstrated over and over is that he is a political moron and utterly incapable of assembling a successful coalition.
He has one trick, being the avatar of white male privilege. That’s it, that his one tool, his only strategy, tactic, and operation.
That is enough to get elected because the market for that is tremendous. But it isn’t enough to be durable, especially when he also is incapable of rewarding or protecting his own constituency from grifting and corruption.
hotshoe
@Matt McIrvin:
The proximate cause of this MAGAt uprising is Pam Bondi’s unforced error of stating that the Epstein case was closed.
The Q-adjacent MAGAts, the whole swamp of them, had been marinating in hatred and wanted to burn those whom they were sure must be on the unreleased “Epstein list”. (Especially wanted to burn Bill Clinton; dumb dude, shoulda known better than to pal around with Epstein.) They felt they had been promised bloody justice against the sexually-corrupt elites. (Against Dems, naturally, but party affiliation was/is not as significant a factor as “purity” affiliation).
Epstein’s death in 2019 didn’t break that implied promise. Their targets were still alive: all it was going to take was a righteous prosecutor once they got Trump back in office. Their identity as haters was sustainable.
That is, until Bondi broke their brains by claiming there was no list.
Funny thing is, Trump and Bondi together must have figured that closing the Epstein case was the best thing for Trump and other RePug predators. Perverts in high places would simply not be charged with any crime they had committed: child rape, other sexual abuse, the financial crimes which funded the island and the planes etc … it wouldn’t matter that Trump is on “the list” when the list is buried in a closed case. Funny that it backfired so spectacularly!
Well, the Trump-y politicians are still going to get away with every crime, but at least now some of their supporters might become former supporters, angry at being fooled and cheated.
Matt McIrvin
@Soprano2: Trump’s superpower was always shamelessness. The media’s post-Watergate mantra was “it’s not the crime, it’s the coverup.” So don’t cover anything up! Just brag about your crimes and the people who matter will decide they’re not crimes. You’re just being smart!
It’s interesting that he’s not bragging about this one. If he’d come out and said “hell yeah, I screw 12-year-olds! It’s the national pastime!” would that fly? Who knows.
Suzanne
@Trivia Man: So I worked for a firm where the head of HR was married to the head of IT. They had met at work, and the HR head was very professional about it, and had offered to resign to maintain an appearance of neutrality. The CEO declined her resignation and life went on.
Fast forward a couple of years, and there’s an incident in IT. Someone who worked in IT wrote something absolutely awful about one of their coworkers in an email, and — yep of course! — had accidentally included the entire office on the email. And then, OF COURSE, the head of IT had hit reply all and written “LOL!” to this terrible comment.
I understandably never found out how anyone involved in this episode was disciplined, but this is yet another reason that HR shouldn’t be involved with employees!
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: Oh, yeah, it was also the golden age of fake nostalgia!
Aaaaayyyyyy!
zhena gogolia
@Chip Daniels:
So true.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@Matt McIrvin: Similarly, it wouldn’t surprise me that a lot of the people Epstein schmoozed with weren’t party to his crimes, but rather invited to give him cover – there’s a saying I ran across: “Abusers don’t just groom their victims; they groom their character witnesses as well.”
Geminid
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: I could see why Jeffrey Epstein might have killed himself. It wasn’t just the prospect of being denied access to underaged women. That guy led a very luxurious and pampered life. He knew it was over, and that he would spend the rest of his life in prison.
Also, I think Epstein did not see his arrest coming and did not prepare himself mentally.
I’m not saying somebody else did not kill Epstein. He was a danger to powerful people and the circumstances raise suspicion. But I think he had plenty of motivation to do the deed himself.
satby
Exactly. He was able to stay in business by assembling a group of high profile rich folks who gave him plausible deniability for years, until it stopped working.
schrodingers_cat
Our descent into hell has been rapid. Is there a historical parallel to our current situation.
Matt McIrvin
@Chip Daniels: I also think that, while it relies on bigotries, resentments and hypocrisies that are way bigger than Trump, MAGA is very much a personalist, hero-worshipping movement. Trump’s dumb animal cunning is enough to give him a successful aura. But the movement always underperforms when the Big Man isn’t on the ballot.
This isn’t a problem unique to Republicans. It was the problem with the Obama coalition too. The part of it that’s a personality cult weakens when the guy isn’t directly involved. People keep blaming Obama himself for this, but I don’t think it was his fault. You can’t make people who love you love somebody who isn’t you.
Trump, though, he doesn’t give a shit about that anyway. After him the deluge.
Suzanne
@Geminid: Yeah, I’ve always found suicide very plausible.
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: Agree. Plus, at the kind of social events these people are invited to, there’s just a lot of prominent and rich people circulating. And probably a few of them slip away to a quieter part of the yacht or the mansion and engage in all manner of shitty behavior. Same as it ever was.
hotshoe
@Baud:
[quoted from BBC report based on Ghislane’s court case]
as far as I know, Bill Clinton was never alleged to have contact with any of the girls. Clinton denied knowing about Epstein’s crimes. Why he cut ties with Epstein? Could be because good ol’ BIll was getting the intuition that Epstein was setting up as a political enemy.
satby
@Soprano2: like most marriage breakups, the Gates marriage fell apart because he had multiple affairs and Melinda just got fed up. They’ve both acknowledged that.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@Matt McIrvin: I think that we’re about to learn whether there’s a limit to the IOKIYAR principle, or perhaps where various groups draw their line in the sand.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@schrodingers_cat: The fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of the Third Reich come to mind as rough parallels.
schrodingers_cat
@Chip Daniels: Yep a majority of white people bought into it. 3 times in a row.
Matt McIrvin
@schrodingers_cat: I keep thinking about Teapot Dome. That didn’t have the lurid sex angle[1]. But the way Warren Harding was this popular silver-haired god, and retained most of his popularity even as it started to become clear that his whole administration was shot through with corruption.
But the dam really broke when he suddenly dropped dead in the middle of his “take it to the people” image-burnishing tour. It turned into a funeral train, the masses went crazy with grief… and then the scandal stories just exploded. Everything the Harding administration had touched died.
History doesn’t repeat but it rhymes. Maybe we’re getting to the Teapot Dome moment.
[1] well it did actually, but that only came out later I think
Belafon
@catclub: Why? Bush wasn’t running again. They didn’t care. They also didn’t know that Trump would do what he was going to do.
CaseyL
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: That was a comment about Neil Gaiman, but it applies to oh so many people.
schrodingers_cat
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: I don’t enough about the Roman Empire but Germans had a genuinely terribly economy they were not starting out as the strongest economy in the world.
schrodingers_cat
@Matt McIrvin: I have often thought of the parallels to the early 1920s and our current moment. Including the Smoot-Hawley tariffs and the wave of xenophobia led by the then Republican party.
Belafon
Now if we could just figure out a way to deal with “The Blacks are going to put us in slavery” and all of the other issues they completely made up.
frosty
Right. That’s exactly what will happen, isn’t it?
Eolirin
@Matt McIrvin: It works for Republicans. I’m not so sure it works for Democrats. We have different parts of the electorate we need to turn out. Their voters don’t seem to care about truth nearly as much.
schrodingers_cat
@Belafon: White people know in their bones even if they don’t know the details the cruelty meted out in the last say 300 to 400 years by white people to whom they considered the “other” so they are afraid at any perceived loss of power and status.
I am delving deep into the history of British India. And the arrogance, cruelty and the sheer depravity exhibited is jaw dropping
And the worst of them of all is the hypocrisy
Malthus, Mill and many other “thinkers” of the so called enlightenment made their careers working for the East India Company.
BTW the East India Company, bad as it was, was better than the direct rule of the British Crown.
Matt McIrvin
@schrodingers_cat: Turbo-racism, destructive hyper-capitalism, autocratic leaders and federal bluenoses fucking the First Amendment sideways, it was all there 100+ years ago.
bbleh
@Librettist: Also note the venous insufficiency, which plus the behavior (not to mention his family history) suggests vascular dementia to me.
Eolirin
@schrodingers_cat: Great Leap Forward?
Geminid
@hotshoe: I expect Bill Clinton was warned off by someone who knew Epstein was trouble.
Chief Oshkosh
@Baud: And don’t forget, in addition to the media and misogynists, a bunch of really, really rich people aided MAGA, and the T-Party nitwits before that.
Eat the rich. If you can stomach them.
bbleh
@JiveTurkin: it’s also a domination thing imo, plus I’m willing to bet a HUGE sense of inadequacy (which goes with his NPD). Explains his fixation with younger (ie clearly inferior) women, his resentment of powerful women, and his general misogyny.
schrodingers_cat
@Eolirin: There are parallels but China again like post war Germany was in shambles not like the US which had the best post COVID economy in the world.
u
I have to disagree with the guy who wrote “Honestly I could care less about the Epstein stuff.”. Well, yeah, he can care or not care about whatever he wants. And perhaps Epstein is less important than the suffering and death that will be inflicted on millions by the “DOGE” cuts and by the “Big Beautiful Bill”. But Epstein is a perfect example of the deep corruption in our society — of which Trump is a major part. (And, yeah, I think that Epstein was murdered in prison.)
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: And the people who voted for him, not all of them were millionaires or billionaires but most of them were white or desperately wanted to be white. I am looking at you pathetic Vivek.
BTW it is funny how the internet socialists have dropped their diatribes about millionaires, its only billionaires that are bad now.
lou
@JiveTurkin:
I have a friend whose brother used to organize car shows in Detroit. He had to kick Trump of the Apprentice era out of a Mercedes Benz show after he kept harassing the 15-year-old daughter of a dealer at the show who was manning her father’s booth.
I don’t share the story on social media since it is secondhand. It would explain Trump’s grudge against Mercedes Benz.
bbleh
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Trump never pays.
I sympathize — he’s certainly got away with enough for nine cats — but sometimes he DOES pay.
He paid for Trump University. He paid for Jean Carroll. He paid for his crimes against NY State. He’s been found guilty or liable EVERY TIME he’s been before a jury.
He CAN be brought low, and a big chunk of the MAGAverse with him. “Slowly at first, then all at once.”
prostratedragon
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: The latter is more comparable as to time scale. The Roman Empire was falling for longer than jazz has been dying. (I hope that some day that will no longer be the case.)
Kathleen
@schrodingers_cat: Don’t know if this answers your question but I think you will find it interesting. One of my favorite Twitter follows is Dave Troy, who wrote this overview of anti democracy currents from the 30’s until today. It’s one of the best pieces I’ve read on the topic. My father, who was an American history major, was always concerned about fascism taking hold so I read some of the books he had on the topic when I was in high school and college.
washingtonspectator.org/paranoia-on-parade/?ref=america2.news
Miss Bianca
@Baud: you know, however this all ends up shaking out, for right now, for me, there’s nothing quite like the Schadenfreude of watching this asshole finally getting hoist by his own fucking petard.
kindness
MAGA bubbas & bimbos won’t let the Epstein thing go because for years Trump & his minions promised them Democrats & liberal Hollywood elites were all involved in a secret pedophile ring. They really believed it. This was supposed to be the defining case to blow the lid off and expose Democrats/liberals/Hollywood as totally repugnant. This was the case that was going to sweep them all away and then Republicans/MAGA would live happily after ever with all their opponents in jail for child rape. In their heart of hearts they really believed this. And now that it has come out that it was actually a whole lot of prominent conservatives and Republicans who were joining Epstein in his parties, well that just does not compute. They refuse to believe that and hold their beliefs that it is truly Bill, Hillary and liberals who did it all and they won’t give that up no matter what facts come forth.
Matt McIrvin
(Even the paranoia about sex trafficking that leaned hard into targeting Others was a huge deal 100 years ago. That’s what all the freakouts about “white slavery” were about. )
Trivia Man
@satby: In England the Jim’ll Fix It! Guy did the same. Ultra high end schmoozer. don’t search him up unless you are already very jaded, just horrific stuff.
Miss Bianca
@EarthWindFire: a trauma response to what- the first non-white POTUS being elected?
prostratedragon
@schrodingers_cat:
Billionaires acting individually, especially those with more than a couple or so Bs, can drop great sums of money on monumentally destructive and stupid things, and after losing it all, still be rich. As we’re learning now, that is a problem of a different order for democracy.
Old Man Shadow
Look, I don’t know if there’s anything there, there, but I do find it interesting how hard Trump is trying to hide the release of something and I find it very interesting that despite hobnobbing with very rich and very powerful people constantly, so far only a relatively powerless woman has been charged and tried for anything.
Seems like a lot of rich people and a lot of politicians are getting a free pass on child rape from the government.
chemiclord
@Suzanne: Just like with Rush Limbaugh and other right-wing media, QAnon did not make these people. QAnon merely told them what they wanted to hear all along.
I really wish we’d stop telling ourselves that MAGAts are empty vessels that just accept whatever gets poured into their brain holes. They are people shaped by generations of narratives, looking for specific things that fill the gaps in their already long established bullshit.
Matt McIrvin
@hotshoe: I think it’s entirely possible, maybe even probable that Bill’s dealings with Epstein weren’t worse than an embarrassment. If so, that’s icing on the cake. But being willing to stomach worse revelations as long as they’re true is a good thing, I think.
MAGA people, of course, have this fantasy that Hillary Clinton was Bill’s groomer in chief, that she was committing sex crimes, etc. Because for them, it was always about Hillary, not Bill. She was the primary devil.
Geminid
@prostratedragon: Yes, and by the time Rome fell to German tribes the empire’s center of gravity was already Constantinople. The Eastern Roman Empire lasted almost 1000 years longer.
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodingers_cat: No historical parallel is ever perfectly on point. In order to take any lessons from historical analogies, it is important to note both the similarities and the differences. And I will use this to again recommend a valuable book.
schrodingers_cat
@prostratedragon: Voters have agency too. Letting the biggest MAGA voting block off the hook is a choice.
schrodingers_cat
@Omnes Omnibus: Thanks for the recommendation.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
How far afield do you want to go for a comparison? The white majority supporting Trump is bad, but that majority hasn’t yet gone full Rwanda in response to rapidly changing US society.
prostratedragon
@schrodingers_cat: Not that we don’t. But hyperrich guys have many ways of buying off things to kill them (WaPo is just the latest of a long trend among newspapers) and corrupt things in other ways not easily affected by our sovereignty as voters.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: That is an ominous warning.
prostratedragon
@Geminid: True. I keep trying to work on that Western focus; more effort clearly needed.
Matt McIrvin
@schrodingers_cat: It’s interesting how after “Pirates of the Caribbean”, the EIC is now a stock villain people know about, so it can be used as a metonym for colonialism in general without necessarily villainizing the British Empire itself.
JWR
This seems new. From NBC:
Suzanne
@chemiclord:
Mostly agree. They’re brought up in a culture different than many of us.
I think of this sometimes when we have discussions in the comments here. One of the things we’ve discussed in the past is antisemitism as stemming from conspiracy theory. Honest to God, I never heard any of this until I was an adult, and even then, it was in a “some people were actually told this ludicrous thing!” kind of way. (I had certainly heard what I would consider “normal” stereotype stuff.) But the conspiracy theory aspects of it blew my mind. To the point that I have no idea if most people are actually told this stuff, if they actually believe it or are just into the stereotypes, and how widespread it is.
That saying “the country is too big to know itself” has resonated with me more and more the older I get, because I increasingly realize just how differently people were brought up.
ETA: And I grew up around tons of religious conservatives, evangelical, LDS, and Catholic, white and Latino, and I never heard any conspiracy theory stuff. (Heard a metric fuckton of homophobia.)
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
I didn’t intend it to be a warning. I would say that’s an unlikely outcome at this point.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: The armed MAGA US population all simultaneously going mass shooter is one of those big nightmares I have. They could wipe us out in one afternoon if they really wanted to.
wenchacha
What struck me is the sort of language in the birthday wish to Epstein. Doesn’t it sound similar to the sort of speech Kamala Harris would use, and then be called “word salad?”
Obviously, not intending to drag Kamala Harris, here.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
You’ve obviously never committed genocide. It’s not so logistically easy.
schrodingers_cat
@Matt McIrvin: As I as said direct rule by Vicky was way worse and more insidious than the EIC’s reign.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Its at the back of the mind of all us “others” who don’t need a message from the Ds because we hear the Republican message loud and clear.
karensky
@Baud: Thanks for that.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Good point, the US geographically huge and populous. One of the reasons why the Brits were not at their absolute worst in India was because of British India’s geographic size ( India+ Pak+Bangladesh+Burma and Bhutan) and its huge population.
Sure Lurkalot
Geoduck posted this in the overnight:
Good comments there.
I have no fondness for The Lincoln Project grifters and their ads…maybe an exception here:
Not Like Us
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
It’s in the middle of my mind. We don’t know what harm to others would go too far for the Trump base.
Trump might not know either, which perhaps works a little to our benefit.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud:
There are more than 280k people in Madison, WI. Based on voting records, 210K are left of center. How do you wipe out that many people in an afternoon? You just aren’t going to get them all out in public at once. The amount of ammunition you would need would be in excess of a million rounds. How would you transport it? And so on…
Geminid
@prostratedragon: I tend to have a Western European focus myself. But Britain and France were on the periphery of the Mediterranean world, which itself was one of many centers of world culture..
I only just learned that Muscat, now the capital.of Oman, was identified as a major trading center by Strabo the Geographer in the 1st century AD.
Ed. If and when the strife in the Middle East settles down, I want to learn more about the history of Iran. Also, the spread of Islam among Turkic peoples. But right now I am fixated on the current troubles in the Middle East.
Bupalos
I hope this “Glonzo” thing hasn’t or doesn’t spread and become or the standard Dem lexicon. The Epstein case and the elite impunity and destruction of the weak that it represents and that gives it political fuel are in fact very very real. That the weakest-minded in the electorate understand it in the least symbolic, and most fantastic, literal, and grotesque way – a way designed to give them particular enemies to hate – doesn’t make it silly. This is a case where our own polarization will push us away from considering and speaking about this in the deepest, most honest, and most politically effective ways. And from understanding the dynamics themselves, because we’re more interested in ridiculing our enemies.
The Epstein case is huge and points directly at the deepest ways modern democracy is failing. Yes, partly because people can only give their warped attention to the most fantastical narratives. But also because there really are castes of social and economic privilege and privation that have spiraled to the point that it’s become a society-wide tale of predator and prey. That’s the fundamental truth of our times. If it gets a mythological gloss, well, that’s how you know that it has the deepest kind of social reality. This isn’t Glonzo and the Transmission Lines, It’s Zeus and the Thunderbolt.
We don’t and won’t know the complete detailed reality behind the events that led to the creation of this Epstein myth, and people should stop pretending to. That Trump wants to bury it is huge, and that he is emphatically allying to the side that says it is a nothing-burger is THE MOST IMORTANT AND POLITICALLY SELF-SABOTAGING THING he can do. Democrats, despite the polarized algorithmic forces pushing them that way, must not join him there. And this “Glonzo” framing is the practical definition of doing so. Denying the reality of the deep meaning and seriousness of the Epstein reality and myth, specifically because you won’t allow your enemies to simply be wrong. They must also be silly and worthless.
hueyplong
You could make an argument that the surprising revolt of the “base” boils down to the fact that Trump has told them for a decade that “Democrats call you stupid,” and suddenly Trump himself told them to their faces that he thinks they’re stupid. I saw an excerpt of something with somebody and Tucker Carlson, and his explicitly expressed anger at Trump calling him stupid did not appear to be an acting job.
I’d bet on the selective release of a very few items that would permit someone “doing his own research” to spin them into the clear guilt of the Clintons and a few prominent entertainment business librulz, with the success or failure of that gambit being tied to how much trust has been destroyed by Trump’s (and his minions’) statements over the last 10 days or so.
oldgold
I predict Trump will not sue the WSJ or Rupert Murdoch.
Why?
The discovery process would destroy him.
JWR
From The Hill:
Doug R
@Suzanne:
There’s always been a Bircher fringe BUT Putin took the opportunity of the web and social media to carefully kindle and fan the flames of the fringe.
Baud
@oldgold:
There’s a long period between filling the lawsuit and when discovery begins. So he might file and later withdraw.
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne: First I heard of the “Protocols/ZOG” type stuff was as a teenager, in a “beware, there are violent white supremacists who really believe this shit” context.
But other conspiracy theories were omnipresent– the big ones about the JFK assassination were mainstream among liberals, and I definitely heard the wacky ones about UFOs and the fake moon landing and the 100-mpg carburetor and such. Also the right-wing ones about how FDR knew all about Pearl Harbor in advance and let it happen, that MLK was a Soviet agent etc.
NotMax
@oldgold
It almost doesn’t matter.
Filing the suit will appear on page one. Withdrawing the suit will appear on page 101.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
UFO conspiracy theories are big on Reddit. I could see that as another pain point for Trump down the line.
Soprano2
@satby: I’m sure, but I’ve heard speculation that Gates’ hanging around with Epstein a lot was part of that.
hueyplong
@Baud: Agree. The “discovery would ruin him” argument applies to literally every lawsuit he’s ever brought, so there is no way he perceives that as an impediment to filing.
Citizen Dave
Saw/heard an Inside Edition story the other night, which included a telling of a Bill Clinton/Epstein Africa trip, where Bill took a girl shopping in a jewelry store that was cleared of people for them. Seems sleepy.
The Teapot Dome stuff took years to unravel (come to think of it, eastern has also), but a prominent Republican senator helped lead the prosecuting of it (if memory serves), which seems unlikely now.
ETA: what is up with autocorrect? Eastern becomes “Eastern”
Baud
Apparently Jesus lied a lot.
mrmoshpotato
@Baud:
I believe the legal term for that is chicken out.
Kathleen
@Baud: Maybe God didn’t have reading glasses on and saw a bunch of blurry zeros.
hueyplong
Mike Johnson bids fair to become the most slavish Trump minion ever, and boy howdy that’s a competitive field.
artem1s
Except there is a pretty good chance W and/or Neal and/or Jeb’s name is in the evidence too. Who knows how many GQPers are in those records. These weren’t just sex parties. There was coke too. There were boys. Rove had to bribe a TX judge to get W’s federal indictments for coke possession expunged so he could run for governor. It’s not just TCF that wants this evidence to go away. This goes way beyond this WH. It’s why Epstein pretty much got off in 2009. Why do you think Jeb gave up so easily and the Bush’ ran such a lackluster campaign in 2015; Lindsey, Cruz, Christie all of them. Why did all those Never Trumpers bend the knee? The Bush’ weren’t the only ones doing opposition research. Might have nothing to with Epstein but it’s always been damn suspicious that the Rove well oiled scandal machine couldn’t do anything to clear the field for Jeb in 2015.
That the Dems can say “Release the Kraken!” with utter confidence is part of what is resonating with the cult. Dems are willing to take the hit if something salacious gets revealed. The GQP is not. The MAGAts are not only infuriated by the possibility that Trump is in there, they are infuriated that he’s compromised by The Swamp he promised to clean out and that he’s protecting both RINOs and Demon-crat sexual deviants. The Big Lie that’s being revealed is that their Orange God just another DC crooked politician.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: UFO conspiracism broadly defined is one of the ones that non-MAGA people who should know better are most likely to buy into. If I recall correctly, D-squared of “don’t give liars the benefit of the doubt” fame, a smart and perceptive commentator about a lot of things, was into the stories about the Air Force having secret, possibly Nazi-derived antigravity tech and would bristle if you mocked it.
The problem of course is that some UFO reports genuinely are of secret military technology, that’s a pattern going back to the dawn of the phenomenon and the military sometimes encourages it as a smoke screen. But it’s hard for a non-specialist to see the boundary between the plausible and the cuckoo bananas.
Parfigliano
@Matt McIrvin: Non MAGA have guns too
Bupalos
I thought the sentences preceding this made sense, but these attribute a kind of unified polarization to the new Republican base electorate that it does not have. They have no problem with people with R’s next to their name joining Dems on the pillory. “RINO” has been a thing for them for decades now, and the Trumpified Republican Party was actually formed out of the “both parties are the same and both involved in the elite conspiracy.”
schrodingers_cat
@Geminid: China and India traded with Europe for millennia. The new upstarts wanted the goodies from India and China and had to pay for it with bullion. Something they didn’t want to keep doing.
Their solution was drug trafficking and human trafficking but it was wearing enlightenment clothes of bringing civilization to the cradles of civilization.
JWR
@Baud:
And there’s never been a Speaker as high as you, Mikey.
Josie
@Bupalos:
What would be the most politically honest way for Democrats to approach it? I’m not criticizing your point. I think it’s valid. I’m wondering what is the best approach for us? To push the idea of powerful and not powerful people in our political systems today?
Captain C
@Baud:
Those were for the real pervs.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: This is “I swear on the Bible that I rode a giant blue doggy to the Candy Planet”* level stuff.
* from an early Matt Groening cartoon about “how to make your parents worry unnecessarily”, I’ll always be grateful to him for that one
Suzanne
@Matt McIrvin: I heard the JFK one, and the moon landing, UFOs, and the Satanic Panic stuff, for sure. My FIL, when he was alive, definitely was into some of the more left-leaning conspiracies, which was annoying but not really harmful.
Anyway, my point is just that our country is big and broad, and I try hard to be aware of what people are thinking and feeling (which is why I put myself through reading Rod Dreher and Sohrab Ahmari and the like). And I had just totally missed this whole thing. I had no awareness of it at all. I still have no sense of its scale.
mrmoshpotato
@Baud: Sounds like Ol’ Mikey is high – on porn.
Soprano2
@schrodingers_cat: I’ve thought of that too. History doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes.
Soprano2
@bbleh: That’s definitely a possibility. My husband has that problem, he recently started wearing compression socks to try to help with it.
Bupalos
It’s worth noting that this may be true, but it’s probably true for 2 reasons. First, the hit won’t hurt Dems as a party much because the party simply has practically nothing to lose. It has bottomed out in terms of political brands. Second, they probably know the Republicans can’t actually do it, that it is literally impossible to satisfy the demands of the cult because the expectations have been watered and tended to the point that they have simply outgrown any ability to feed them.
Soprano2
@schrodingers_cat: True, but many people’s perception was that the economy was terrible and we were in a recession. I was yelled at for saying that the economy wasn’t that bad and was better than that of many countries. Sometimes perception is more powerful than reality.
Captain C
@Librettist: If it’s not foot Parkinson’s in a Democrat they really don’t care.
Steve in the ATL
@catclub:
It warms my heart to see that this description is still in use! #neverforget
Suzanne
@Bupalos:
Honestly, that is even more incentive for this stuff to come out now, if it’s going to.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steve in the ATL:
Milwaikee’s 88.9 is currently playing the Violent Femmes’ Good Feelings
schrodingers_cat
@Soprano2: I have no cure for stupidity. Or may be its plausible deniability. Its sounds better to say that you are voting for the economy instead of saying that you are voting for white supremacy and bigotry.
Doug R
@hueyplong:
As Rachel Bitecofer points out, that’s basically how it works-voters don’t generally flip, they tend to either show up or stay home in disgust.
People do really change sometimes, but it’s on the margins.
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodingers_cat:
I am sure that Bup will have one for you.
Bupalos
@Soprano2: I don’t think it repeats or rhymes really. I think it’s more like music, where there are certain combinations of notes that create certain tonal keys that go with certain moods and tempos. But the total pieces are always new and different.
But I would say that climate change, technological disruption of society, and spiraling inequality are playing the same key of deep minor three-note chord that anchored the Robber Barrons of the Industrial Revolution suite.
Omnes Omnibus
@Doug R:
Given the size of loss in 2024, change on the margins could matter.
hotshoe
@JWR:
That’s either more make-believe from Trump/Bondi — or it’s another scary step in govt lawlessness.
Trump can’t order the judges to do his bidding. Bondi has to make a request and the judges can refuse the request.
Grand Jury testimony is sealed. Why on earth would the United States District Courth Southern District of New York unseal the testimony as a favor to Trump? They’re not his minions.
Or is Trump going to be able to pressure / threaten to fire judges until he finally gets one weak enough to agree to unseal it?
Ugh.
And it’s completely worthless for the supposed purpose of disclosing the “Epstein list”. Even if the judges cave to Trump, what will be revealed is only testimony — not the address books, computers, boxes of documents, and other physical items which the FBI has (yes, and 5 Massage Tables).
Unsealing the testimony might make things worse for Trump and Bondi if the MAGAts realize they are being played, with Trump and his associates still holding back the truth.
But on the plus side for him, when the court refuses to go along, he can go back to his MAGAts and say something like “see, we tried, it’s all the corrupt liberal courts that blocked us from giving you the truth”
Gonna be interesting to see how this little sideshow plays out.
In the meantime, where are Epstein’s financial records?
Which banks in Russia handled his accounts?
Who received payment from Epstein for “referral service” or “modeling agency” or ?
Who is liable to be prosecuted for trafficking girls to him?
We know Epstein met one of the girls at Mar-a-Lago where she was a (legitimate) Trump employee.
What did he give Trump in exchange?
That info is all in the FBI document boxes.
As far as I know, that all remains unavailable to us, to the public, to the courts, since Bondi declared the Epstein case has been closed.
Captain C
@Suzanne: I saw where the CEO put an apology/mea culpa note up on instagram, but he closed it by complaining about how (paraphrased) ‘what should have been a private moment went public.’ Dude, if you’re catting around at a rock show that has 20K people attending, you are in public with zero expectation of privacy.
schrodingers_cat
@Omnes Omnibus: He will blame Hispanic men and Black men. And focus on the change in the voting patterns rather than the absolute number of votes. BTW MSM Giggle Sister Amy Walter does the same.
catclub
@lowtechcyclist: 1. it was under the Bush admin that Epstein got the first pass instead of a real prosecution.
2. Bush tried very hard to weaponize the DOJ to attack his opponents. Remember the firings of US attorneys who would not cooperate on that? I do. I am pretty sure Comey was there, possibly on the good side.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@Baud: Isn’t bearing false witness one of the Big Ten “don’t do it” list? You know, the list that Johnson and MTG and Abbott in Texas want to burn into the minds of every grade-schooler whether they’re Christian or not?
Omnes Omnibus
@Captain C: THEY PUT PEOPLE, ESPECIALLY CUDDLY COUPLES, ON THE JUMBOTRON AT THINGS LIKE THAT!!!!
Baud
The Dem big tent gets bigger?
Deputinize America
@Captain C:
That was a parody.
Back in my day, CEOs would bang their 25 year old assistants. Now in this woke world, they’re stuck with the 50-something HR goon who obsesses over whether somebody behaved inappropriately with a subordinate.
Matt McIrvin
@hueyplong: but again, Trump negs his fans all the time. He calls them losers and brags to them with a smile at rallies about how easy they are to jerk around, and they cheer. Up to now they usually didn’t seem to realize that was happening.
Captain C
@Geminid: I wouldn’t be surprised if someone enhanced the chances of Epstein killing himself by pointing out in vivid terms that his life of luxury, power, influence, and rape was over, and that pedos don’t do well in prison, with the best case for them being held in a segregated unit with little or no human contact, ever.
JWR
@hotshoe: Yeah, I read something somewhere else about the courts being their convenient off-ramp. Whether that sooths the awakening beast will remain to be seen.
Omnes Omnibus
@Matt McIrvin:
Nothing changes until it does. And we can’t know in advance what things is going to trigger it. It like the aphorism that half of the money spent on advertising is wasted, but no one knows which half.
Captain C
@Deputinize America: Whoever made that was pitch perfect.
hueyplong
@Matt McIrvin: Kind of disagree. Those rally statements were (I think) intended to be parodies of what liberals say about them and perceived by the audience to be such.
Here, he’s angrily telling them to “shut up” and seriously telling them that if they don’t they’re “stupid.” And Trump really, really doesn’t like to have his will thwarted. If this is not resolved by a narrative that declares Trump right all along and his critics humiliated, then it’s not really resolved yet.
It’s high time his narissistic impulses worked against him in a meaningful way, though I’m not yet confident that this is in fact that moment.
Shalimar
@Nettoyeur: The Grand Jury is a bullshit distraction. There is nothing in the Grand Jury transcripts. No evidence about Trump was presented to the Grand Jury by SDNY prosecutors while Trump was their boss. All of the evidence against Trump is in SDNY interview transcripts and items seized from Epstein and Maxwell, which they are not promising to release.
Deputinize America
@Captain C:
Pedos don’t do well in prison, but in prison-speak, Epstein wasn’t a pedo in the traditional sense (those young women weren’t 8 – and among ordinary criminals, skirting a statutory age limit by a year or two doesn’t merit a shank).
The loss of wealth and privilege was enough to cause his existential despair. I think he had an insurance policy in the form of lists and ledgers that disappeared, which meant that his position had become permanent – so he created his own permanent solution to the problem.
Matt McIrvin
@Doug R: And high-profile converts get attention, which makes the phenomenon seem more important than it is.
Robert Heinlein, of all people, described this correctly in the explanation of how his fictional tyrant Nehemiah Scudder was elected president. Scudder knew base turnout was more important than swing votes.
West of the Rockies
I find myself singing “The Old Razzle Dazzle” (Chicago), watching the various players pushing their narratives on this story. As long as it diminishes the heinous toad and his toadies, it’s a hoot.
prostratedragon
From yesterday:
She’s probably too old, anyway.
Bupalos
@schrodingers_cat: I don’t “blame” anyone when I do political analysis. Not assigning blame is something that isn’t algorithmically useful and is in fact threatening in spaces that insist on conflating politics and morality. No one is ignorant that downscale white men are more republican than they’ve ever been, and now 2 out of 3 are Trumpy, and it forms his core.
Meanwhile, the dynamics related to winning and losing – the marginal electoral difference between winning and losing across time, is a very different thing. The Democratic Party is becoming older, whiter, wealthier, and more female. 3 out of 4 of those trends make us electorally weaker. The Republican Party is becoming younger, more ethnically diverse, poorer, and more male. 3 out of 4 of those trends make them electorally stronger. We’d do well to stop just gnashing our teeth over the dynamics that haven’t changed and start thinking about those that are changing.
Harrison Wesley
I wonder what the next misdirection will be. Announcing the takeover of Greenland?
mrmoshpotato
@Omnes Omnibus: I hear there’s even a thing called the KissCam! And that wasn’t his sister.
p.a
Where is the National Enquirer in all this? Seems a natural. Did tRump buy them off 2015-ish? But it’s been sold, 2023.
Fair Economist
@Baud:
I really want to know how a stuffed dog is evidence in a sex trafficking case.
Or then again, maybe I don’t.
Deputinize America
@prostratedragon:
Not hot, clearly.
trollhattan
For anybody keeping track/score, dog-killer lady is moving on base. Several German shepherds will be sleeping with one eye open.
mrmoshpotato
@p.a: Is that firestarter (meaning use it just to start fires) trash still around?
JBWoodford
@PAM Dirac: That goes, I think, to the rest of what Frank Wilhoit wrote after his famous quote–that a true anticonservatist movement must focus on ensuring that “The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone; and it cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.”
trollhattan
@Fair Economist: Guessing it’s a fill-in for a sweet sofa.
Harrison Wesley
@Fair Economist: Puttin’ on the dog?
rikyrah
David Wildstein
@wildstein
Breaking: U.S. Attorney Alina Habba told her staff that she will depart the office next week after failing to secure enough votes for the state’s seventeen U.S. District Court Judges to remain beyond her initial 120-day term.
x.com/wildstein/status/1946149698152407051
Spanky
@Soprano2:
FIne, but why do we have to be living inside of a naughty limerick?
catclub
@Bupalos:
Huh? Which Democrats are joining him?
Fair Economist
@Suzanne:
I don’t think you can call the Epstein business “shit”. We know he trafficked girls and young women, and that his clients included at least one billionaire (forget his name) and Prince Andrew. It’s a very good bet that there are a number of other important people involved, including Trump. Sure, ideas like “the DNC was running its meetings on Epstein’s island” are shit, but this is genuinely a very big deal, with a number of wealthy and powerful people involved in a heinous sex trafficking conspiracy.
Matt McIrvin
@catclub: On Bsky there’s a big pile-on about Nancy Pelosi calling it “a distraction” or some such thing.
Steve in the ATL
@Omnes Omnibus: that’s the station where I first heard the Shivvers!
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
This may just be me banging on a the same drum for how the legal system needs to speed up and be reformed because its slow pace is at this point is facilitating more injustice than justice (such as with the Trump documents and other cases). That being said, the fact that these documents are sealed because of appeals means the public doesn’t get disclosure on an issue like Epstein’s & Maxwell’s crimes where disclosure IS in the public interest. Its hard to ‘listen to his victims’ about who their abusers are when their testimony is sealed.
evodevo
@Soprano2:
Yes. This. People “remembering” the Fifties/childhood were kids. You didn’t have to worry about mortgage payments/rent/car payments-repairs, job security, harassment at work, nor were you aware of Uncle Bob’s/Cousin Jack’s background of sex crimes, since no adult relative would talk about that in your presence, and these people were seldom held to account. Unless there was domestic abuse occurring in YOUR family, you weren’t cognizant of that. All you had to do was go to school and play outside afterward. No wonder all these wingers want to go back to those days. Ignorance was bliss.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
All the handwringing over how hard to push on this… glad to see it mostly limited to pundits and a few older pols.
It’s not high-minded to refuse to demand justice for the women and girls that Trump raped.
Dems can walk (bring a positive vision for our future) and chew gum (incessantly SLAM Trump over this obvious cover-up) at the same time.
Work the eye!
Bring back ruthless ol’ LBJ (sorry Raven)
satby
@Baud: Source is Nick Fuentes and he big mad 😂😂:
Fair Economist
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I get that you’d want to withhold pictures, but Maxwell was convicted 5 years ago. Surely the appeals process is done by now?
Captain C
@Baud:
I’m not sure there’s ever been a Speaker that high. Whatever he’s on, he needs to either stop taking it or double the dose
eta: and JWR beat me to it at 174
Steve LaBonne
Josh Marshall is starting to think Trump is in real trouble.
rikyrah
Jean Jacques Dessalines 🇭🇹🇵🇸🇳🇪🇲🇱🇧🇫🇨🇺
@JeanJacquesDes7
She was fired for revealing the truth about Epstein.
x.com/JeanJacquesDes7/status/1945851926332977256
trollhattan
@satby:
Now I can finally sleep. Fuentes to the rescue.
JML
@Doug R: Bitecofer is right, at least for how things apply in our current climate. Elections in the 21st century are primarily about turnout.
The idea that there’s this big group of “independents” in the “middle” that move one way or the other based on the election, the candidates, and the policies has long been mostly a DC media fantasy. While there are large numbers of people who identify as “independent” (they’ve been told repeatedly by the media that independents are morally superior to party loyalists, especially Democrats) their voting behavior mostly aligns with one part or the other with high levels of consistency. Whether they show up or not is another question.
Turnout isn’t just motivating the base, though it’s hugely important. It’s also about turning out those people who refuse party ID but will almost always vote for you if you get them to show up.
Anything that depresses GOP turnout is awesome. Hope they stay home, disillusioned, and basically never come back.
JWR
@Baud:
Nick Fuentes? Wow! I wonder if he’s still a big fixture in MAGAland? And wasn’t he just pardoned? If so, that’s MAGA gratitude for you. ;)
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Yes, a lot people, including himself wanted him dead. I suppose assisted suicide is a possibility too.
Think about that letter from Trumps and smug gloating he was doing : I don’t think Epstein and Trump were into teens like a normal guy might have a fetish for a woman with big breasts. I think they were raping teens because it got them attention from other men, negative positive, just as long as it was attention.
lowtechcyclist
@catclub:
So the “Bush Crime Family” is Dubya? That’s like saying the “Oswald Crime Family” killed JFK.
Gimme a break.
satby
@trollhattan: Right?
But I suspect he’s saying what some of his fellow travelers are thinking. Tucker seems to be thinking it too. Avalanches start with a few small stones.
RevRick
@Baud: It wasn’t just Bill and Hillary, but every Democrat imaginable. It’s been an article of faith amongst MAGA that liberal elites are evil. That’s why they whine so much about the tyranny they suffered under Obama and Biden. And Trump played this belief like a fiddle, sure that he could use it as a political weapon against them.
But now… now he’s boxed himself in. His behavior just screams, “I’m guilty!” And the more he tries to make it go away, the more it captures attention.
If this is the club that weakens Trump, I say wield it ruthlessly. He deserves all the hurt he’s caused.
satby
@lowtechcyclist: actually, Prescott Bush fits the description better. That’s where it started.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Yes, while I was a kid at the time, this reminding me of Nixon and Water Gate. Kos was also pointing out, that there is a whole series of things Trump betrayed MAGA on, like the Big Stupid Bill.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@RevRick: Al Capone went to the slammer for tax evasion, after all.
Suzanne
@Fair Economist:
This is very much tied into a whole bunch of ludicrousness. Comet Ping-Pong and the Deep State and blood-drinking and shipping children around in flat-pack furniture. I can very much describe that as shit.
Harrison Wesley
@satby: Boohoohoo
Steve in the ATL
@satby: what’s wrong with a US senator financing the nazi war machine while our country was at war with the nazis?
ExPatExDem
Regarding the recent medical news for POTUS, does anyone else think he might be more ill than he’s letting on?
He had moderate coronary heart disease at least as far back as 2018, and I rather doubt he changed his diet and exercise in any significant way.
Now he has severe lower extremity edema that he can’t hide, so he had to explain away.
I think bro-ski has heart failure.
Fair Economist
@schrodingers_cat:
I think a lot of that is that being a millionaire doesn’t mean you are rich anymore. If you own a house with a mostly paid off mortgage in an coastal city you’re probably a millionaire. Plus, the problems are being driven by the top dogs; the Musks, the Kochs, the Ellisons, the Zuckerbergs, etc., and at this point all such people are multi-billionaires.
Bupalos
@Josie: I think that’s basically it, though I wouldn’t say “push the idea.”
I think we need to acknowledge to ourselves that the growing divide between the powerful and the powerless is the driving force in politics across the globe and in the United States. That the age-old dynamic has been put on steroids and PCP by climate change and technological disruption. We need to interpret perversions like MAGA and their founding myths and their spasmodic flourishes in this light. Not calcify in pat self-satisfied nonsense about good v. evil or subliminal theorizing about superior and inferior humans, some born to intelligence and love and others to stupidity and hate.
Once we do that, we’ll know what to say about Epstein, and the language will be both natural and– most importantly in political terms in this age– authentic. We’ll be able to operate within and through the dominant myths without being corrupted by them, much the way effective progressives worked within and through Christianity. The MAGA version of Epstein has a mythical core that is as compatible with our project of equality as was Christianity with abolition and civil rights. Citing “Glonzo” now is the equivalent of laughing about “The Flying Spaghetti Monster” at an MLK rally.
mrmoshpotato
@ExPatExDem:
Mai Naem mobile
I tuned into FOX news and FOX business this AM for a few minutes each. Bartiromo wasn’t on so there was some replacement(gotta wonder if she called off last minute or if she’s on vacation) and they were covering the Powell and Fed renovation. FOX News was covering Chris Martin having an affair or something. Just wondering what their plan is here. Even the stupidest FOX viewer is going to see this stuff somewhere.
ExPatExDem
@Fair Economist: $1 million cash in a zero risk, interest bearing account is enough to generate about $50,000 a year in annual income. That’s enough for one person to live on, but it’s not buy a yacht money.
I’d say comfortably wealthy starts at about $3 million. FU rich is when your assets generate more than $1 million in passive income annually. So around $50 million.
Just one person’s opinion though.
Baud
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne: And when they talk about Epstein, it’s all “Hillary Clinton had him murdered in his cell” and such. Takes that don’t make any sense.
If there’s a way out for MAGA it’s going to be the sort of Gnostic approach of QAnon. The Trump behavior we’re seeing is just the exoteric version, a smoke screen; the true, esoteric Trump is smashing Hillary’s pedophile conspiracy in secret and the executed are being replaced with vat doubles.
Bupalos
@catclub: Any of us who are laughing about the lack of deep reality that exists in the Epstein myth.
To be sure, in saying they “must not join him” I am not saying Dem politicians are currently doing so. They aren’t and won’t, because the current near-term political incentives dictate something else. I also don’t yet see politicians on our side showing propensity for understanding the real potential here, which goes beyond causing tactical friction for the opponents to actually stealing their thunder. I have hope for some of this though, and will be watching for it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Bupalos: Believe it or not, but most people can separate their online conversations from the irl. Glonzo is a useful shorthand among people who are aware of it. No one here is going to talk about it among the general population. Back when I was a soldier, my everyday conversation with fellow soldiers was full of acronyms and weird army references. Among civilians, I used a different vocabulary. Hell, I even used different vocabulary when talking with fellow officers than I did when talking to soldiers in general. It is not code switching, but it is similar. Most people do it all the time.
artem1s
there is suicide and then there is someone who falls on their own sword to escape a worse fate. Dahmer requested to be returned to the general population. Did he fully understand it was essentially suicide to do so? Arial Castro, the Cleveland rapist and kidnapper who held 3 women hostage for years hung himself after only a few months. He reportedly did it to avoid a lifetime sentence of much less severe treatment he had subjected his victims too.
Who knows whether Epstein took his own life or was compelled to. But I think it would probably be easy to push him towards a desired outcome given what he was facing. And there were certainly plenty of people who had motivation and means to do so.
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus:
When talking to regular folks, I like to call him GlonzX to be inclusive.
Omnes Omnibus
@ExPatExDem: I have seen breakdowns that put “rich” as starting around 10 million. One to 10 million is considered “comfortably affluent”. Whatever that means.
ETA: Where “fuck you” money starts is up to the individual. And it is the only kind that reallly matters once day to day needs are covered.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: That is mighty white of you.
Harrison Wesley
@Baud: Uh-oh. Sounds like our very own Reichstag fire.
Matt McIrvin
@JML: The Trump era turned a demographic pattern upside down. For decades, Republicans did better in low-turnout, obscure elections because they had a more committed base, also wealthier and more likely to have free time. Dems had a lot of voters who would only vote for President every four years. So the general rule was that higher overall turnout was better for Dems.
Trump reversed it–he turned out a lot of low-engagement people who won’t necessarily care about downballot races. So now they’re acting much like Democratic voters of old. And the Dems are furious about Trumpism and turning out to vote for local and state offices.
That’s not all necessarily good for us. But it does mean some of our instincts are probably out of date.
Bupalos
@Steve LaBonne: I think there are a lot of ways to think about what “real trouble” looks like for Trump. Politically, considering he’s already basically a lame duck, and has already broken his own record for passing into law history’s largest upward transfer of wealth, I don’t think his project is in trouble.
In terms of Trump as a leader of the movement that rides on top of our politics, I think he’s effectively cooked. It’s unrecoverable and not dependent on what does or not “come out.” It’s like a schism in Christianity, it has already happened.
In terms of Trump personally…. I think he retains and will retain enough of his following that he’ll be protected, probably even if there is some kind of bombshell that one of his emulators or would-be successors manages to force out.
They Call Me Noni
@mrmoshpotato: Walks from the cart to the tee box and that’s about it.
lowtechcyclist
@satby:
Well sure, but Prescott’s been dead for quite a while. I said ‘within the past 30 years’ because if they were a functional crime family somewhere way back in time, but haven’t been in the past few decades, then the notion that the Bush Crime Family killed the Epstein case is bullshit. Maybe Dubya did it, but Dubya by himself isn’t a ‘crime family.’ Dubya and Darth Cheney isn’t a ‘crime family.’ And Lee Harvey Oswald wasn’t the Oswald Crime Family.
Matt McIrvin
@Omnes Omnibus: Someone who has a few million dollars can stop working and retain a middle-class lifestyle. So often the word for such people is “retired”. That’s the way we do it now instead of having a real pension system.
Having a few million in your thirties, that’s unusual.
Fair Economist
@ExPatExDem:
Reasonable enough lines. Even with that, though, “Eff the Billionaires” is a lot catchier that “F the centimillionaires”, so there’s good reason to use billionaire slogans.
Another issue is that while $50 million is enough for “FU money”, it’s not enough for “F the country money”. You have to be a billionaire to buy a major media operation like Twitter or CBS and twist it to push RW propaganda.
Deputinize America
@u:
Epstein was a common victim of ordinary prison negligence. I was completely unsurprised at all the complacency and neglect, because I’ve seen it.
JWR
Harsh stuff, from Variety:
Baud
For Suzanne
Fair Economist
@Omnes Omnibus:
I’m in that range, and that’s what I feel. Given that there are nice but not remarkable houses on beaches near me that cost more than my and my husband’s combined assets, I don’t think you could call me “rich”.
Deputinize America
@Baud:
I’ve been feeling the money drain out of the economy in my own practice in real time. Its palpable.
geg6
@Baud:
BWAHAHAHA!
I just can’t stop following this story and laughing my ass off. I’m not in any way making light of the horrible crimes committed but how this unraveling is happening is just…chef’s kiss!
chemiclord
@Suzanne:
Young chemi heard ALL sorts of conspiracy shit. He heard the entire “Jews own everything” since he was old enough to remember.
He heard, “If this n*clang* wins the election, he’s gonna take all our money and give it to the blacks” not in reference to Barack Obama in 2008, but in reference to Jesse Jackson’s run in 1984.
The MAGAts have always been this way. It predates Fox News, Rush, the John Birch Society… all of it. The only thing Trump really did was give them the permission slip to be their worst selves.
Matt McIrvin
@Fair Economist: “Rich” is relative. I’m in this category and I feel *rich*, because I know a bunch of poor people.
Suzanne
@Baud: Yeah that’s bad.
2008 decimated a lot of people. One aspect of it that was less discussed was how much of an effect it had on the development, construction, and design/engineering sector. That entire sector lost capacity that has still not been restored. And since buildings are durable goods, the slowdown in construction that occurred (and went on for years) has left us with a shortage that endures. Houses for sure, but many other types.
Bupalos
@Omnes Omnibus: I take the point, and I basically agree with this. It’s a shorthand. But…
Most of my commentary here is about how we ourselves need to change in our thinking, and I think that in the way I said, “Glonzo” (which is making fun of it as a silly thing that only crazy people believe) is emblematic of shallow, ineffective, polarized ways of thinking about the MAGA phenomenon.
There’s a loss of potential here, born of knee-jerk opposition.
It’s “Flying Spaghetti Monster” at an MLK speech.
lowtechcyclist
@Fair Economist:
I wonder what % of American households have a net worth of at least $1M. My WAG would be somewhere between 15% and 20%.
Net worth of $1M beats the hell out of scraping by, but it’s just comfortably upper middle class these days, not rich.
trollhattan
@Fair Economist:
+1. Millionaire once would have meant being worth a million and now it means making a million/year, a whole other level entirely.
Perhaps half of the sales in my zipcode are seven figures, unthinkable when we moved here. And a lot are cash purchases.
Bupalos
@Deputinize America: Probably. In terms of the political meaning of the story and its potential, I don’t think it matters much. It suffices to say that it seems possible that he was killed, and it exists with a range that a normal citizen might consider the murder scenario more probable.
Gin & Tonic
Is “Glonzo” some thing that was made up yesterday, or is it something I should (could?) have known about for a while now? It’s so hard to keep up.
geg6
@Bupalos:
I have no idea what Glonzo is about but I would have no problem with talking about the FSM at an MLK rally. I’m an atheist. Why should I hide it anywhere, let alone an MLK rally? I’m pretty sure MLK wouldn’t give a shit as long as I was on the right side of that moral arc he discussed.
schrodingers_cat
@Bupalos: You are transcendent and above it all, like the Queen of England.
Suzanne
@lowtechcyclist: $1M net worth wouldn’t even be considered “comfortably upper-middle class” in much of the country, depending on liquidity.
Mr. Suzanne’s grandmother died a few years ago. She was still living in the same ranch starter home in Sunnyvale, CA, that she and her husband had purchased in 1958. When they bought it, there was nothing but orange groves around, and it was off the last exit on the highway. Her kids sold the house for a staggering amount of money. If she had wanted to have real access to that money, she would have had to sell and move out of her community, probably out of the state entirely. She was living by clipping coupons and getting rides from friends in her last year.
tam1MI
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: The fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of the Third Reich come to mind as rough parallels.
Also the collapse of the monarchies in WWI.
Omnes Omnibus
@Bupalos: I will also point out that soldiers, ER staff, and others who deal with horrific things on a daily basis use humor, and often very dark humor, as a coping mechanism. The commenters on this website frequently do the same. Glonzo is funny. It doesn’t mean that people here are missing the point. The jokes often mean that we got the point all to well.
prostratedragon
@ExPatExDem:
And apparently won’t wear the compression stockings, as someone above mentioned, which almost certainly have been prescribed for him.
Omnes Omnibus
@Gin & Tonic: It started last November. I didn’t become aware of it until this week, so don’t feel too bad.
Bupalos
@Gin & Tonic: I wonder this as well.
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus:
How much to be considered comfortably low?
Citizen Alan
Actually, Soprano2 has it right. Someone who was born in 1950 is 75 today. Someone who has any clear childhood memories of the 50s is at least 80. The Boomer/GenXers who long for a return to the 1950s are people who lived through the 70s era of 50s nostalgia (Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley, American Graffiti and similar films/tv shows). It’s not just looking through a past era with rose-colored glasses. It’s wearing rose-colored glasses as you contemplate a depiction of a past era as described by someone else who was wearing rose-colored glasses.
An aside: a few years ago, there was some team-building event at the court where I worked that involved dressing up for Halloween and putting on some skit related to our various costumes (or something like that; it was vague). Two older ladies in their 50s dressed up as Laverne and Shirley and sang the theme song to tv show. The people in attendance under the age of 35 looked at them in complete befuddlement because they had not even heard of Laverne & Shirley let alone recalled the theme to it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Omnes Omnibus: The first BlueSky link in the OP is the starting point for Glonzo.
JBWoodford
@geg6: The thing about Fuentes and his ilk is that at least in the early stages of this they were desperately looking for an offramp, for 47 to say something that would make it all go away.
But he didn’t.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: 42?
Bupalos
@geg6: I guess the point is that there are ways to work within the defining myths that power society that are more productive. You don’t always need to express your disbelief in the myth, even when you do fundamentally disbelieve the myth. Redirecting within the confines of the myth is simply more effective.
If MLK says “We are all equal in the eyes of god” it’s probably politically counterproductive to respond “We are all equal, but there is no god, and in fact this belief in god is how the priests perpetuate inequality etc…” Better to work around it in a “yes, and” rather than a “yes, but.” Or as is maybe more the case with “Glonzo” framing, a kind of “HAHA,WTF, OK!”
Bupalos
@schrodingers_cat: Excellent! Thank you!
prostratedragon
@ExPatExDem: Stupid rich is way richer than fuck-you rich. I think at least an order of magnitude greater so to be assured of being able to finance the gap of an unlikely drop from S to FU in one grand unified screwup. Pretty sure the people we mean when we talk about “billionaires” can handle it, hence the pathbreaking levels of stupidity we’re seeing.
Matt McIrvin
@Citizen Alan: And American Graffiti, which sparked the whole 70s wave of 50s nostalgia, was about the 60s.
It was the early 60s though.
stinger
@Omnes Omnibus:
Or maybe it’s the level at which you can afford a politician — local, state, national?
(I’m forgetting the quote about buying votes vs. buying politicians.)
tam1MI
Not to defend Victoria too much here, but by the time she took the throne Great Britain was firmly a constitutional monarchy. It’s Disraeli and Gladstone and their respective governments that are the moving parties here.
trollhattan
Invoking the Eleventh Commandment: Thou shalt summoneth the comet, and cleanseth thou thine planet.
Bupalos
@Baud: I say praise the lord and pass the ballots!
Citizen Alan
@lowtechcyclist: Well, there’s more to it than that. There’s Bush the Elder pardoning everyone who might have been forced to testify to his involvement with Iran Contra. And then there’s Neil’s S&L scandal. The Bush family had a lot of dirty laundry that would have devastated any Democratic politician even tangentially involved with it. (Any body remember “the Other Jennifer (Fitzgerald, Bush I’s mistress, who the media was oddly never interested in).
Matt McIrvin
@Citizen Alan: …In all the weirdly fraught discourse over James Gunn’s Superman movie, you occasionally hear “Superman: The Movie” (1978) with Christopher Reeve described as a product of a kinder, less cynical era. NO! It was a super cynical era! The Salkinds and Richard Donner and Reeve were doing the same thing Gunn is doing, offering up a kind and corny Superman as a counterpoint to the cynicism of their time. People needed him.
rikyrah
Sara Spector (@Miriam2626) posted at 7:08 AM on Fri, Jul 18, 2025:
I’m a former prosecutor. Grand jury transcripts are not going to shed light on anything new in the #Epstein debacle. Grand juries only need probable cause to indict someone. Releasing these transcripts isn’t transparency. It’s a temporary distraction until the next news cycle.
(https://x.com/Miriam2626/status/1946180271390216548?t=FVJVgtZlNewiI0mMra7g1w&s=03)
rikyrah
Henry M. Rosenberg (@DoctorHenryCT) posted at 8:23 AM on Fri, Jul 18, 2025:
This Spring CBS gutted 60 minutes, cancelled 2 FBI shows citing costs & is cancelling Stephen Colbert supposedly for the same reason. If CBS is not willing to invest in entertainment & defend its news shows, who needs them?
(https://x.com/DoctorHenryCT/status/1946199160840970466?t=ihiiw0du0CucKyWYIR5fyg&s=03)
rikyrah
Kyle Clark (@KyleClark) posted at 8:34 PM on Thu, Jul 17, 2025:
Republican election clerks in Colorado say a GOP strategist claiming to work with the Trump administration asked for insider access to voting systems. They refused. #copolitics t.co/pG3z7SGMeA
(https://x.com/KyleClark/status/1946020718166028442?t=xaeC7LWvVIwHLvWPMR9xrw&s=03)
Harrison Wesley
@Baud: Or comfortably numb?
rikyrah
Ron Wyden (@RonWyden) posted at 10:11 AM on Thu, Jul 17, 2025:
Big news from my investigators on Epstein’s sex trafficking operation: the Trump administration has an Epstein file detailing 4,725 wire transfers and almost $1.1 billion flowing through just one of his banks. Hundreds of millions more through others. t.co/2SCA4cGu0I
(https://x.com/RonWyden/status/1945864024672919592?t=7aeB89puJpIjfZMZNaRhWw&s=03)
Dave Troy (@davetroy) posted at 4:09 AM on Fri, Jul 18, 2025:
The creepy sex stuff is just the beginning. The real mess is going to come from unpacking all of the money laundering and off-books manipulations. This is what Trump most wants to avoid exposing.
(https://x.com/davetroy/status/1946135262779613274?t=Agrx5bwMDi1ZcoJ6nVfebQ&s=03)
Harrison Wesley
@trollhattan: Rupert Iscariot!
Baud
Lyrebird
@Trivia Man: FWIW some tabloid says
UGH.
In better news, Ruben Gallego is all in on trying to help that boomerang turn back. From a mass email:
chemiclord
@Fair Economist:
Well… yeah. Millionaires now includes them, so millionaires can no longer be a problem.
Princess
I guess my question is: how much of Epstein’s real business was simple blackmail and compromat of powerful people? I get the impression the girls were the tool rather than the object. And if so, isn’t it interesting that Trump’s two best friends, Epstein and Putin, were in the same line of work.
Eolirin
@Fair Economist: It is not.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
Democratic politicians have been refreshingly quick to jump all over this.
Eolirin
@artem1s: I think the biggest indicator that it wasn’t a murder is that Maxwell isn’t dead. She was deeply involved in all of his business, and if you’re killing him to cover stuff up you’d need to kill her too.
hueyplong
@Princess: Seems like a good time to say porque no los dos
Making money doing what they loved.
Ramona
@artem1s: In her interview linked to above, Julie K. Brown voiced what I too am most interested in, who in the Bush administration got Acosta to back off Epstein in 2006. Brown did not mention the Bush administration but that was who was in power then. There is a small conspiracy to cover up criminal action that has not been chased down. An investigator needs to lean on Alex Acosta hard. I detest qualified immunity. That Epstein got off with being charged with only one ridiculous count which should not even be in the criminal code (procuring a minor for prostitution! Huh?!) with the ridiculous sentence should be investigated thoroughly! Who told Acosta to back off? Compel Acosta to divulge. Grant him immunity if he cites the 5th.
prostratedragon
@Matt McIrvin: Geez, I hope those saying that are not professional media critics. That could not be more wrong, as just a glance at the popular arts, news headlines, and basic economic indicators would make clear.
Superman (1978) was shot in 1977. The NYC location shooting was affected by some of the events in this list.
prostratedragon
@rikyrah: Right wing propagandists.
lowtechcyclist
@Citizen Alan:
I was born in March 1954. I have clear memories from 1958 and 1959, and more blurry ones from 1957.
Miss Bianca
@Citizen Alan: well, Bush 1 was the head of the CIA at one point…our closest thing pre-ICE to a secret police force. Journalists et al probably had a healthy fear of what might befall them if they revealed embarrassing things about Poppy.
Archon
@Matt McIrvin: You think American liberalism, the people who took out the Confederacy, who stood tall to Nazis and Fascists are gonna get wiped out by people who think they are tough because they shot some pepsi cans off their porch with their AR-15?
schrodingers_cat
@tam1MI: Well Vicky was the figurehead of a despotic regime in India.
schrodingers_cat
@chemiclord: Bingo!
tam1MI
@schrodingers_cat: Well Vicky was the figurehead of a despotic regime in India.
True. 😊
Ramona
@Fair Economist: In 2003, Vicki Ward wrote a piece on Epstein where she mentioned a stuffed poodle on his piano in his Manhattan townhouse
vanityfair.com/news/2003/03/jeffrey-epstein-200303
After Epstein was charged in 2006 she said her publisher Graydon (can’t recall last name) censored out her reporting on Epstein’s sexual crimes.
Ramona
@Fair Economist: 2022 if IIRC.
artem1s
W was the third generation of Bush criminals. the number of people in their circle is thousands over 8-9 decades. They included Saudi princes and Russian oligarchs. You have no perception of how long the Bushes have been messing around world economies and politics.
WTFGhost
@Rusty: No, that wouldn’t take the heat off. They were told, by Dagwood, no, wait, his wife, Blondie, no, *BONDI*, the denture adhesive that’s also an attornee jeneral!
They were told the information was there. They won’t take no “investigation” or “special prosecutor,” the time has come for results! Seriously: would *you* be okay with a Democratic House Majority ran out the clock impeaching Trump? No? Well, why should the base be satisfied?
@Baud: Let’s just say the three French “hens” weren’t poultry, there’s a reason there were six “gooses” not “geese”, a-laying, so they had to ruin the numbering scheme, to keep the PG rating.
@catclub: That’s Trump’s claim, but, remember, Epstein was still alive back then.
@rikyrah: YOU again? Coming here to spread cheer and happiness? WTF is up with … oh, hold on. (Drains 32oz very strong coffee, draws a surprisingly long draw from his electric hash pipe, holds, exhales, recalibrates reality to brain spec.)
Good morning!
(Hm? No, I recalibrate *reality* to map to my *brain*. It seems easier these days.)
@satby: Well, I was 25 when I told my mom I realized I knew more women who’d been raped, than I had years on the planet, and she revealed that I actually knew 26 (or more – I stopped counting)… the back-yard neighbor was her attacker. Sexual abuse is frightfully common, especially if you include random grabasses and gropers.
Ramona
@artem1s: Did not GHW’s grandfather enhance the family fortune by doing business with the Nazis?
artem1s
@Citizen Alan: (Any body remember “the Other Jennifer (Fitzgerald, Bush I’s mistress, who the media was oddly never interested in).
Absolutely. The whole issue suddenly disappeared when Poppy rescinded the press credentials of the journalist who brought her up in a press conference. This right around the time Rove was putting together the campaign attacks against Big Dog and his affair with Jennifer Flowers. Always turn your weaknesses into strengths by attacking your opponent with them.Also, Poppy was Chairman of the RNC during Nixon and CIA director under Ford. All of the worst people in W’s administration got their start during the Nixon/Ford years – Rove, Ashcroft, Rumsfeld, Cheney – Ed Fucking Meese. It wasn’t just the Bush were criming – but the CABAL’s power was consolidated and rotated and was strengthened during the Reagan/Bush/Bush administrations.
Geminid
@JBWoodford: Nick Fuentes is being opportunistic here, trying to reel in more adherents. He’s been a vehement Trump critic for months now. Fuentes’ claim is that Trump and his administration have been captured by the “Globalists.”
Nettoyeur
@Suzanne: Congestive heart failure and perhaps kidney issues.
Nettoyeur
@Geminid: He also knew how pedos are treated in Gen Pop. You never reach down to pick up the soap.
WTFGhost
@JiveTurkin: The other thing is, remember, Trump does like hurting people. He likes cuckolding his “friends,” which means it’s a good thing he never befriended me. (Seriously: the women I’ve dated would tell me he shoved his hand down her drawers, and then I’d have been morally obligated to pound the shit out of him. Then, because he’s a whiny ass titty baby, he’d press charges, and I’d have had to go to anger management, just because I ended the asskicking by accidentally stepping on his groin, and then, suddenly spinning on my heel to change direction. No pure-probation for that, unless the judge was one of Trump’s “friends.”)
DUDE! I’m happy for the sacrifice, but you’re worth more than a *TARP*! Let them cower from the raindrops under a TARP, not under you…
Uh, unless, by “cover,” you meant, “reported on.” Which I’m sure you didn’t, because that would be awfully embarrassing.
@Suzanne: Given Clinton’s history, I doubt there’s anything really nasty about him in the Epstein files. He was a womanizer, but, no one’s getting any mileage out of “maybe he slept with a ho-or!”
@Soprano2: Since Bondi is an actual attorney, she has reason to be afraid of doing certain unlawful things that would get Trump slapped on the wrist, but should get her disbarred. She *can’t* release certain information “officially”. It’s why Bill Barr resigned – he wasn’t going to put his name to clearly fraudulent documents. And reporters will be the first out of the gate if the documentation released isn’t complete (even if redacted almost entirely).
@PAM Dirac: My feeling is, let’s Polanski the whole effing bunch of them. Why “Polanski”? Because he was the guy who learned a casting couch interview could land you in jail, and got scared that his power and influence wouldn’t protect him – he faced justice, and it scared the bejabbers out of him. *Good*. Only – this time, let’s take their passports, right? No more fleeing?
Nettoyeur
@Baud: Murdoch knows all about this stuff coz of the phone tapping affair.
WTFGhost
@Geminid: Suicide is actually a really big deal, and while people who are recently arrested, or sentenced, are kept on suicide watch, it’s extraordinarily surprising that Epstein died while under suicide watch.
Think about what you have to do. First, you have to find and conceal something you can use to strangle yourself, and, something to hook it to; alternately, you can try choking yourself by stuffing your throat – not for the faint of heart! All the time you’re doing this, you’re waiting for the guard to come back, and slam a nightstick into the bars, screaming “WAKE UP ASSHOLE! SHOW ME YOU’RE ALIVE!”
Now, remember: is this person infamous? Does every effing guard know that they’re in the sheep dip if they’re caught breathing wrong on this guy? Plus, you get to be mean to a pedophile – what’s not to like about monitoring this asshole?
Put all that together, and *I* am really freakin’ surprised that he pulled it off, and I would believe they covered up the murder. The fact of the matter is, a prisoner dying, with a socially acceptable means of death (like suicide, which everyone imagines they’d commit, until it’s time…), and frankly, no one cares. I mean, you should care – if the most infamous criminal in the jail can’t be kept under suicide watch, that shows a hideous level of negligence for ordinary prisoners. But, alas, we know our jails are hellholes, and “we” don’t care.
We should. We’re the ones who say liberty is a big deal, but we don’t give a flying fig at a rolling banana about removing someone’s freedom, nor even the conditions of their incarceration.
Geminid
@Nettoyeur: I’m not so sure, especially after reading comment #208 by “Deputinize America.” He knows a lot about prison culture on account of his legal practice.
Captain C
@WTFGhost:
Not necessarily, because in that case he’d have to admit under oath that he took an ass-whoopin’.
chemiclord
@WTFGhost:
Well, consider the opposite scenario. That a shadowy cabal of elites who could have offed Epstein at ANY time decided to do so at the moment he had the most attention and scrutiny on him, in the most controlled environment he could have been in. And simultaneously decided that his second in command posed no threat.
It seems far more likely to me that a dude used to a billionaire’s lifestyle was looking at the rest of his life in a shitty prison hellhole and decided to check out early, with guards that weren’t exactly invested in whether this pedo lived or died.
WTFGhost
Well, I’m saying I don’t see the need for a big, shadowy, powerful cabal, to make a murder look like a suicide. It could just have been that they finally had him in a sufficiently controlled/confined state, that they could act. Plus, until he was arrested, he had every reason to stay quiet.
So rather than a grand cabal, my “theory” (far too weak to be called that) is, there were some number of Walter Whites out there (ref: Breaking Bad), and it only takes one with a few prison connections to arrange things.
Now, having seen another link or two, including Mother Jones, I see that the prison is pleading overwork and incompetence, which is also perfectly believable. (MoJo didn’t call leaving him with sheets “incompetence” – I did.) But that’s also the perfect situation for a Walter White to call in a favor with some gang members in prison. Hell – if they know Epstein wanted to kill himself, they might have just offered to help him do it quickly.
So, barring a confession, we’ll never know THE TRUTH. You are right, impulse suicide is a real danger when a person is caught and first jailed, or when found guilty and sentenced, for underage sex. Giving someone enough sheets that they could maybe do a long drop hanging probably helps. And, yes, the prison had inexcusable lapses in life-checks, which, again, should be horrifying to each and every one of us, but, alas, isn’t.
(I don’t mean “people reading/commenting here” – I mean “each and every American, citizen or not.” Again, losing one’s freedom is a big deal – some European countries understand that well enough to make the experience somewhat comfortable. And honestly, didn’t you hate getting sent to your room, sometimes for a whole DAY? In some ways, the relative comfort and nearness of freedom makes the experience that much worse; if only your parents made your room UGLY so you could remind yourself how MEAN they are!
Well – I think a comfortable prison would be, in some ways, worse than a stone floor and iron bars, for precisely that reason. It humanizes the experience. It removes the hate, the contempt-worthiness, the clear anger society feels toward you, and replaces it three hots and a decent cot, and just enough iron bars that you can’t quite forget where you are.
Ah… reading this, I believe I’m near my required THC load. Just a few more hits, and I’ll know I’m so stoned, I’ll babble every response, kind of like this, and did you know I once started a sentence just like this, and managed to take up an entire page of text on old fashioned computers (not the kind that use proportional fonts, curse the luck!) , just because I didn’t realize that my babble-brain was on, when I definitely should have…
Voiceover: One thing nicer than having everything, is knowing when to shut up, right?
)
ETA: closing parenthesis.
Gloria DryGarden
So well said. My abuser had such character witnesses, that very few people ever believed me. imagine how that might play out. The personal repercussions and after-effects (sp?) have been long lived and deeply rooted.
We’ve got eyes on the guys, hoping they crash and lose their base, and that’s needful, under all the dire changes that have gone on.
But my attention has been with the victims. I know the long walk back, the things one carries forever, what one has to live with. Even though It varies person to person.
I haven’t got time to feel sorry for some rich guy who conned and parleyed his way up into high echelons of society and big wealth, and lost it all over abusive and illegal activity. No. I wish he’d gotten a little bigger taste of his own medicine.
Gloria DryGarden
@Baud: I don’t get this thing about bill and Hilary, and trump being aligned with them ( oh no, trump plus evil democrats, in alignment!) But I’m glad they’ll apply a similar horror and disgust to a republican who appears to have actually done what the Clinton’s were smear -rumored to have done.
My thinking is that the trump voters may not have been willing to get over their misogyny or their distaste for a woman leader, but at least they draw a line. They care about their daughters, and dislike sexual abuse, sex trafficking, and coercive sex acts. They aren’t cool with serial rapists.
why the hell didn’t they care about it when that access Hollywood tale/ tape came out? Was it denial?
“Can’t be that bad, it’s not my daughter or my wife, and he’s just bragging, he wouldn’t really..”
Citizen Alan
@lowtechcyclist: I was born in 1969. I have clear memories of the mid-1970s. Specifically of what time the Super Friends came on and how cool the Mach 5 from Speed Racer was.