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Comments
60 responses to “Tuesday’s Forum”
Rick DeMent
OK, hive-mind and idiot whisperers … can someone bring me up to speed on what Trump’s obsession with Fort Knox is? Did he finally catch Goldfinger on streaming? What exactly does he thing is going on there? Is there a right-wing conspiracy I haven’t heard yet?
I would love to hear this 🙂
Oh … and good morning.
Jen
This looks like IV bruising on Trump’s hand. What’s interesting are the collection of other photos of this exact bruising at other times.
Looking forward to NYT/CNN/etc. asking questions about this clear indication that something is up with the president’s health.
EU offers its own ‘win-win’ minerals deal to Ukraine
“The added value Europe offers is that we will never demand a deal that’s not mutually beneficial,” top official Stéphane Séjourné says.
If there’s a Ukraine-EU deal, will the Trump administration take the credit?
I forget where I came across it, but apparently there is something bubbling up from the RWNJs about Stacy Abrams and 2 billion in gold bars and something something Ft. Knox. I couldn’t read much about it because it was so stupid that it turned my brain into a lava lamp.
Like, why the hell do people believe that nonsense.
Mister Bluster
@Beth:..Like, why the hell do people believe that nonsense.
For the same reason that some people believe that the earth is flat, that karma (whatever that is) exists or that Donald Trump is The Christ.
They are bereft of rational thought.
CSK
Clint Hill, 93, has dried. RIP, brave man.
Jen
@Beth: I wish you ALLLLLL of the best things. I hope it’s a respite from the nonsense going on here. We’re still trying to figure out our situation. We were all set to pursue a move but some family medical issues have recently cropped up and we need to be in reasonable proximity for whatever comes next.
@Beth: good luck. Remember that if the rain ever gets to you that a trip through the Chunnel will take you to both Paris and Bruges. Sometimes a weekend full of sunshine is necessary.
Min
@Beth
I hope you find some respite over there! Wishing you the best!
Erik
@Jen: I don’t think so (this is something I’m quite familiar with). There’s no puncture site that I can see, and if I were putting a surreptitious IV in someone I wouldn’t use a hand anyway. People at his age can have fragile skin and blood vessels, and this could just be from banging it on something. But it does show his age
“The added value Europe offers is that we will never demand a deal that’s not mutually beneficial,” top official Stéphane Séjourné says.
Both the EU and Ukraine must surely know now, more than ever, that
Trump doesn’t do ‘mutually beneficial.’
Mister Bluster
Disclaimer: I live outside the city limits of Carbondale IL in Makanda Township and can not vote in Carbondale City Council elections. However most of my consumer spending occurs in the city so I contribute to the city coffers.
Supreme Court turns back challenges to laws keeping abortion opponents away from clinics, patients
The Supreme Court refused Monday to hear a pair of cases from abortion opponents who say laws limiting anti-abortion demonstrations near clinics violate their First Amendment rights.
One case comes from Carbondale, Illinois which is located near the state’s southern border and passed an ordinance after becoming a destination for patients from nearby states with abortion bans. The measure was quickly challenged in court, and has never been enforced. The city argued the appeal should be tossed because the ordinance was repealed shortly before abortion opponents went to the Supreme Court.
So the US Supreme Court refused to hear a case about a Carbondale City ordinance that was repealed before the Supreme Court’s action.
On July 13, 2024 – 18 months after the City of Carbondale adopted its bubble zone ordinance – the City Council voted 6-0 to repeal the ordinance in a meeting that lasted just four minutes*. City Attorney Jamie Snyder told WPSD Local 6 that the ordinance was repealed because nobody violated it.
Additionally, City of Carbondale’s brief in opposition to Coalition Life claims that the bubble zone ordinance was never enforced, nor does the city plan to enact it. The council noted that it had already concluded other city and state laws provide “sufficient protection from acts of disorderly conduct.” Source
*Four minutes! That’s what I call government efficiency.
The Carbondale City Council could give Musk and his Flying Monkeys a lesson.
Scott
@Beth: I join the others in wishing you all the best. Your journey has educated and enlightened me and I appreciate that. Come and visit us. We are just an internet away.
Fortune
@Rick DeMent: Have you ever seen a picture of a Trump building? He’s been obsessed with gold all his life.
@Beth: Lee Zeldin accused the Biden administration of “throwing gold bars off the Titanic” in its funding of left-wing groups in its final days. One group or rather coalition of groups is Power Forward Communities, who received $2 billion of funding. Apparently Abrams has ties to one or more of the groups. None of it involves gold bars.
Grumpy realist
@Fortune: I forget where I read the essay, but somewhere someone did an analysis of the interior decorating of architecture indulged in by despots and pointed out they all looked the same. Namely, what he called “Russian bordello.”
Fears that Ft. Knox is being emptied date back more than half a century (see “Gold Bug Variations“). Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) says his measure to audit the Federal Reserve, which passed the House last December, would force the first open audit of Ft. Knox in decades. The Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee, a nonprofit that promotes “the liberation of thee precious metals markets as a matter of international human rights,” suspects that the gold has been raided to manipulate commodities markets in an effort to sink gold prices and bolster the dollar. Some gold bugs go even further, claiming that Ft. Knox’s gold bars have been replaced with fakes filled with super-dense tungsten.
Sounds like something Kramer pushed in early Seinfeld episode.
can someone bring me up to speed on what Trump’s obsession with Fort Knox is
Raid Fort Knox
Sell off the gold
Elevate “fugazi” crypto
Break USD dominance as reserve
currency of choice
Flip off trading partners with tariffs
Trash our economy
Isolate US from allies
Beggar our nation
Preside as Putin’s regent
Everyone buys Trump’s bottled
water.
If only Archimedes had discovered how to easily determine the density of a substance over 2,000 years ago… Oh, wait.
Mister Bluster
…fakes filled with super-dense tungsten.
Much like Chump’s cranial cavity…
Rob1
@Min: Ukraine at slightly over 1/3 Russia’s population has staggered the Russian war machine.
Ukrainian fierceness, inventiveness, liberal democracy orientation, military might, and resources would be a most desirable partner for Western democracies. Which apparently the Trump-MAGA-neoNazi nexus has decided the US is not or shouldn’t be.
I hope Europe embraces a full relationship with Ukraine and give Orban the freeze.
Remember how every single day of Trump’s first Administration the headlines were choked with his name, and usually involving something distressing or inflammatory.
Remember how during whole periods of time during Biden’s
Administration, our media was focused on the normal processes of a country without headlining Biden.
I guess anything goes here, so I just wanted to write that I finally listened to an Ancient Geeks podcast. I happened to hear the Superman one. It was never one of my favorite comics or shows (I also grew up in the ’70s), but it was certainly an interesting discussion, and I look forward to more. Good job, Perfesser!
Jen
@Erik: That makes sense. Any idea why the same spot would be bruised over a longish period of time? Further down the thread there are multiple pictures (shaking hands with Biden, on the golf course, another with him next to Musk) where the same exact bruise appears.
It’s either been there for a long time (not healing), or he keeps re-injuring the exact same spot.
I’m exhausted from working late on Friday, and several hours Saturday and Sunday, and then until 2 am on Monday. So you can expect a lot of silliness on my part today.
On the plus side, cooking went well, though it finished tiring me out on Sunday. I made a stew of beef and mushrooms in the instant pot. I used too much beef broth, with too many beef bullion cubes for good measure. Except that the sauce is more like salty broth, it was quite good. I made pan roasted tiny potatoes on the side.
I meant to make pasta to go with the beef, but was too tired to dirty up another pot. Given the thin sauce, it was just as well. But given the thin sauce, it could use some rice.
Erik
@Jen: It looks like the top right and bottom two photos are the same (and it may be they are from the same event as the original picture also). These kinds of bruises can persist for a long time so it could be that the top left photo is the same bruise as the others and does not represent repeated injuries. I’m not saying you are wrong, just that I don’t find the evidence compelling. I scrolled down the thread for a ways but didn’t see any other pictures that were helpful.
That said, if you look at that first close up picture you can see the skin has fine wrinkles, and looks very dry. This is common in older people as they lose skin elasticity and underlying soft tissue making their skin “thin” (all jokes here about him being thin skinned for a long time are appropriate). This is why they get these bruises, even from a hard handshake or bumping it, but also from IVs. The elasticity of the vein walls is also compromised and the vein lacks supporting/buffering surrounding tissue so they are more prone to rupture-like an old balloon that has dried out and pops instead of stretching to accommodate being squeezed or a finger (IV) poking it. The skin itself will sometimes tear or slough from sheer forces, especially after there is blood stretching the tissue from a bruise like this one.
In short, mostly this says to me that he is pretty old and suggests that he isn’t very healthy, but that isn’t news. It may also suggest that he is on a blood thinner, but not necessarily. That’s far out speculation, but the most common reason for a blood thinner in him is probably that he has atrial fibrillation.
Was reading a piece at LGM today and found out I had totally missed that Kash Patel, the new FBI director, was promoting pills to reverse the effects of covid vaccines. $75 a bottle, $150 for the set of 3 pills that will reverse more of the bad effects of vaccines. Something tells me that if there is one area that neither the FBI nor the DOJ will be investigating it is the supplements industry. Make Snake Oil Great Again!
This could be legit. I think the measles virus destroys memory T cells. So get someone infected with measles, and that could wipe out the protection against the trump virus, as well as all others, plus bacteria, fungi, worms, parasites, and bacilli. But it won’t work if you had an MMR or other measles shot.
Can’t have everything.
On the other hand, one could consume copious quantities of all influenza types, SRV, common cold viruses, various types of bacterial and viral pneumonia pathogens, and get a very realistic simulacrum of the benefits of never having taken a COVID vaccine.
But I seriously doubt an overpriced sugar pill can accomplish all that.
Grumpy realist
Supposedly Musk is trying to come up with an AI device that will automate determining which government employees to fire. That’s why he wanted all that lovely data from the “what did you do last week” question.
Stop the world; I want to get off.
steve
Kathy- If you have the patience to delve into the right wing supplements market I believe you will find a cure for everything. What’s depressing is that in the past I think it was kind of understood this stuff was for the fringe groups, the ones that read and believe the click bait that says stuff like “the cure your doctor doesnt want you to know about”. However, this is now mainstream and having been an actual promoter of this crap seems to be an actual positive.
Steve
CSK
According to the NYT, Karolyn Leavitt has announced that the Trump administration will begin picking and choosing which media outlets will be permitted to participate in the presidential pool.
Goodbye NYT, WaPo, ABC, NBC, CBS, etc.
Hello Gateway Pundit, OAN, RSBN.
gVOR10
For Kathy, near miss between a landing Southwest airliner and a taxiing private jet at Midway, with video. “Oh, you meant that runway.”
MWLib
@Beth: Bon Voyage! Let the rest of us know how it goes, and take good care of yourself.
Not fast enough, imho.
Should be 2.5% now, 3% by 2027, 3.5% by 2030.
But that would take serious welfare budget cuts AND a tax increase.
And likely hypothecated “defence bonds”.
But at least he’s referring to defence industrial base reconstruction; which in turn probably implies joint projects with France, Germany, and Italy.
My parents believed all sorts of idiotic things like that. My mom less, but she’s still at it. The other day she warned me Advil was “bad” for you, based on what doctors say. What doctors? Doctors.*
I’m rather familiar with a lot of these things. Weren’t hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin a pair of bogus remedies for the trump disease? Not to mention the current rejection of vaccines, including the ones their idol funded.
*The only issue I could find out was for frequent use. And that’s similar to frequent use of aspirin and other NSAIDs as well.
I don’t think the Southwest jet managed to touch down. A go around after touchdown takes longer. They might have hit the small jet and killed a bunch of people.
This should be all over the aviation blogs, and in the AvHerald.
Defending against missiles is hard, but not impossible. The US Patriot system, conceived as a surface to air missile, goes back several decades. But it’s one thing to tackle a theater missile, like the infamous Scud, or the small missiles Hamas and Hezbollah lob at Israel, and a very different one to take on hypersonic warheads reentering the atmosphere in large numbers.
The US has never been subjected to the former, and the latter is orders of magnitudes beyond an executive order and an act of unoriginal plagiarism.
An integral theater missile defense might make sense to protect overseas bases in trouble spots. One for the whole country is more like waste of money, resources, time, effort, and will likely amount to less than the rapist’s vaunted border wall did.
Besides, whom does the felon think will be shooting missiles at the US?
Jay L Gischer
This the problem with classifying things as “good” or “bad”. Nothing at all is all good, or all bad.
Nothing.
Advil, it turns out, can have adverse effects on your liver from “excessive or prolonged use”.
It is also a miracle druge with regards to inflammation, particularly of a muscular type. Don’t take it every day, that’s a risk of damge to your liver that probably won’t ever heal. Do take it when you pull a muscle, or have a headache from unusual circumstances (not from migraines!)
But that’s too complicated for some people. All they remember is “good” and “bad”. Sigh.
Jay L Gischer
You know, I just had a pretty scary thought. Some reading I’ve done suggests that while an actual budget deal is still very much in doubt, the debt ceiling is a done deal.
Thing is, the more I read about the Trump monkeyshines, the less I believe that. We might well see a situation where the US defaults on its debt. That will be a world of hurt that nobody will like.
AND, that might be what we need to get voters to understand how bad it is, and why they should punish any candidate that says different. It is so much worse than 5 percent annual inflation.
But we might have a situation where the voters need to see for themselves. It’s going to be misery, but that misery can fuel a change of attitude. I would never do this on purpose. I am not above making use of someone else’s foolish actions, though.
Give it five years and wait for American commentators to start complaining about both
a) European militarism and
b) European reluctance to buy US weapons systems.
lol
That’s Kathy’s First Law: there are downsides to everything.
I do recall Advil being advertised to patients with arthritis, presumably osteoarthritis, with a recommended dose of one pill daily. I wonder how that worked out…
It would be hard for the US to default as long as the felon holds the trifecta and/or ignores all laws and common sense. The country’s debt is entirely nominated in USD, which the US government controls the production of. So just print, figuratively speaking, more money.
Of course, this will devalue the currency and cause inflation. Make the tax cuts large enough, increase subsidies and other welfare for the rich, and you begin to approach Weimar territory.
But, hey, who knows, right? maybe felon memecoins will be the new global reserve currency.
JohnSF
@Kathy:
Cue Fed going absolutely ape, Trump replacing the Fed management by fiat, and the markets having a meltdown.
But the adults have left the room. And many of the libertarian/tech types think the Fed should be abolished anyway. Others would love to replace real money with crypto.
JohnSF
@Kathy:
OTOH, if anything could move the Republican Congresscritters to impeach, and the GoP establishment to back them up, it might be the prospect of their investment wealth waving bye-bye.
By all accounts, one metric Trump does pay attention to are the markets.
Jay L Gischer
Yeah, I don’t think it’s good. There are Members of the House who have said, and who have voted, as if defaulting on US debt was a desirable things. People like MTG, if memory serves.
The House majority is razor thing. Nutcases have enormous influence in this situation. Should the Republicans have to go to the Democrats for this, it’s waving a white flag.
I do not know where this is going. I don’t think anyone does, even at the highest branches of government. I only note that some big, big suffering might be in the cards. Not that there isn’t a already some serious suffering.
However, there is so much going on that signals skepticism over hard-fought lessons that should be automatic. Vaccines, NATO, US Gov Debt. Also patent medicines. Quackery. Measles is making a comeback.
People are making bad decisions right and left because they haven’t experienced the badness of those decisions for themselves. I hope to Marr that there is some other way for them to realign their beliefs, but experiencing the bad for themselves might be the way it happens.
Some people learn by reading. Some people learn by watching others. And some people have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.
A White House official says Amy Gleason is the acting administrator of the Department of Government Efficiency, after the White House struggled to answer who is technically at the top of the organizational chart.
Gleason declined to comment on her appoint as acting DOGE administrator. Gleason’s LinkedIn lists her as a U.S. Digital Services senior adviser, and she has a background in consulting and the medical field.
When CBS News spoke to Gleason Tuesday morning ahead of her announcement as DOGE acting administrator, she said she was in Mexico and declined to comment further.
Gleason’s promotion to acting administrator came as a surprise to USDS employees who, like Gleason, were folded into DOGE, CBS News learned Tuesday evening. Those employees learned of her new position “in the past few hours” even though they had been asking for weeks who was going to fill the job, CBS News was told.
Earlier Tuesday, 21 staff members of DOGE who were part of USDS prior to Musk’s arrival said in a letter sent to the White House that they were resigning.
House GOP pulls key vote in troubling sign for Trump agenda
Speaker Mike Johnson was forced to punt a critical vote on Tuesday to advance Trump’s agenda, though GOP leaders may still try to hold the vote in the coming days, according to multiple lawmakers and aides familiar with the plans. CNN
Earlier there was talk that House Republican leadership was asking Trump to twist the arms of hold out Republican Representatives.
Also I remember reading that Speaker Johnson called on supporters to pray that there would be enough votes to pass the resolution.
When God and Trump can’t get things through the majority Republican House of Representatives I’ve gotta’ ask: “Speaker Johnson what are you going to do?”
Mister Bluster
Just can’t keep up with these rascals:
In a stunning scene on the House floor, top Republican lawmakers decided to scrap plans to vote on the measure after lobbying holdouts in the chamber for more than an hour. They kept the previous vote remained open for far longer than anticipated, allowing leaders to speak with those opposed to the measure.
GOP leaders just minutes later reversed course, bringing the bill to the floor and opening the vote, seemingly signaling it had the support to pass. Source
Here is a live view of the house chamber.
Apparently the resolution has passed.
Comments
60 responses to “Tuesday’s Forum”
OK, hive-mind and idiot whisperers … can someone bring me up to speed on what Trump’s obsession with Fort Knox is? Did he finally catch Goldfinger on streaming? What exactly does he thing is going on there? Is there a right-wing conspiracy I haven’t heard yet?
I would love to hear this 🙂
Oh … and good morning.
This looks like IV bruising on Trump’s hand. What’s interesting are the collection of other photos of this exact bruising at other times.
Looking forward to NYT/CNN/etc. asking questions about this clear indication that something is up with the president’s health.
ETA: Forgot the link, here you go: https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3lixsadkvak2d
From Politico
EU offers its own ‘win-win’ minerals deal to Ukraine
“The added value Europe offers is that we will never demand a deal that’s not mutually beneficial,” top official Stéphane Séjourné says.
If there’s a Ukraine-EU deal, will the Trump administration take the credit?
https://www.politico.eu/article/critical-minerals-rare-earths-deal-eu-not-donald-trump/
House Republicans unfazed by protests: ‘We’re moving forward with the cuts’
Also known as: We don’t care about our constituents and don’t respond to the voters because we don’t have to.
One week from today I leave for the UK.
@Rick DeMent:
I forget where I came across it, but apparently there is something bubbling up from the RWNJs about Stacy Abrams and 2 billion in gold bars and something something Ft. Knox. I couldn’t read much about it because it was so stupid that it turned my brain into a lava lamp.
Like, why the hell do people believe that nonsense.
@Beth:..Like, why the hell do people believe that nonsense.
For the same reason that some people believe that the earth is flat, that karma (whatever that is) exists or that Donald Trump is The Christ.
They are bereft of rational thought.
Clint Hill, 93, has dried. RIP, brave man.
@Beth: I wish you ALLLLLL of the best things. I hope it’s a respite from the nonsense going on here. We’re still trying to figure out our situation. We were all set to pursue a move but some family medical issues have recently cropped up and we need to be in reasonable proximity for whatever comes next.
@Beth:
I join Jen in wishing you all the best.
@Beth: good luck. Remember that if the rain ever gets to you that a trip through the Chunnel will take you to both Paris and Bruges. Sometimes a weekend full of sunshine is necessary.
@Beth
I hope you find some respite over there! Wishing you the best!
@Jen: I don’t think so (this is something I’m quite familiar with). There’s no puncture site that I can see, and if I were putting a surreptitious IV in someone I wouldn’t use a hand anyway. People at his age can have fragile skin and blood vessels, and this could just be from banging it on something. But it does show his age
@Min:
Both the EU and Ukraine must surely know now, more than ever, that
Trump doesn’t do ‘mutually beneficial.’
Disclaimer: I live outside the city limits of Carbondale IL in Makanda Township and can not vote in Carbondale City Council elections. However most of my consumer spending occurs in the city so I contribute to the city coffers.
So the US Supreme Court refused to hear a case about a Carbondale City ordinance that was repealed before the Supreme Court’s action.
*Four minutes! That’s what I call government efficiency.
The Carbondale City Council could give Musk and his Flying Monkeys a lesson.
@Beth: I join the others in wishing you all the best. Your journey has educated and enlightened me and I appreciate that. Come and visit us. We are just an internet away.
@Rick DeMent: Have you ever seen a picture of a Trump building? He’s been obsessed with gold all his life.
@Beth: Lee Zeldin accused the Biden administration of “throwing gold bars off the Titanic” in its funding of left-wing groups in its final days. One group or rather coalition of groups is Power Forward Communities, who received $2 billion of funding. Apparently Abrams has ties to one or more of the groups. None of it involves gold bars.
@Fortune: I forget where I read the essay, but somewhere someone did an analysis of the interior decorating of architecture indulged in by despots and pointed out they all looked the same. Namely, what he called “Russian bordello.”
@Beth:
Keeping in mind that there are no Nirvanas ….
I wish you all the best.
Peace, peace of mind, and good health.
@Rick DeMent:
I vaguely remembered hearing about something years ago.
Mother Jones, 2010
Sounds like something Kramer pushed in early Seinfeld episode.
@Rick DeMent:
Raid Fort Knox
Sell off the gold
Elevate “fugazi” crypto
Break USD dominance as reserve
currency of choice
Flip off trading partners with tariffs
Trash our economy
Isolate US from allies
Beggar our nation
Preside as Putin’s regent
Everyone buys Trump’s bottled
water.
@Kurtz:
If only Archimedes had discovered how to easily determine the density of a substance over 2,000 years ago… Oh, wait.
…fakes filled with super-dense tungsten.
Much like Chump’s cranial cavity…
@Min: Ukraine at slightly over 1/3 Russia’s population has staggered the Russian war machine.
Ukrainian fierceness, inventiveness, liberal democracy orientation, military might, and resources would be a most desirable partner for Western democracies. Which apparently the Trump-MAGA-neoNazi nexus has decided the US is not or shouldn’t be.
I hope Europe embraces a full relationship with Ukraine and give Orban the freeze.
@Kurtz:
@Mister Bluster:
Well, we know it’s not plutonium 186, because that stuff emits positrons like there’s no tomorrow.
@Beth:
Welcome to the land of sunshine!
Remember how every single day of Trump’s first Administration the headlines were choked with his name, and usually involving something distressing or inflammatory.
Remember how during whole periods of time during Biden’s
Administration, our media was focused on the normal processes of a country without headlining Biden.
Situation Abnormal All F’d Up Again. SAAFUA
@Kathy: Does it know something we don’t know?
I guess anything goes here, so I just wanted to write that I finally listened to an Ancient Geeks podcast. I happened to hear the Superman one. It was never one of my favorite comics or shows (I also grew up in the ’70s), but it was certainly an interesting discussion, and I look forward to more. Good job, Perfesser!
@Erik: That makes sense. Any idea why the same spot would be bruised over a longish period of time? Further down the thread there are multiple pictures (shaking hands with Biden, on the golf course, another with him next to Musk) where the same exact bruise appears.
It’s either been there for a long time (not healing), or he keeps re-injuring the exact same spot.
@Jen:
Maybe that’s the hand Ivanka slaps when it gets touchy.
@Jen:
My father is 90 and on blood thinners which cause him to bruise very easily. He has similar marks on the backs of his hands almost constantly.
@ptfe:
I ought to know it shouldn’t exist 🙂
I’m exhausted from working late on Friday, and several hours Saturday and Sunday, and then until 2 am on Monday. So you can expect a lot of silliness on my part today.
On the plus side, cooking went well, though it finished tiring me out on Sunday. I made a stew of beef and mushrooms in the instant pot. I used too much beef broth, with too many beef bullion cubes for good measure. Except that the sauce is more like salty broth, it was quite good. I made pan roasted tiny potatoes on the side.
I meant to make pasta to go with the beef, but was too tired to dirty up another pot. Given the thin sauce, it was just as well. But given the thin sauce, it could use some rice.
@Jen: It looks like the top right and bottom two photos are the same (and it may be they are from the same event as the original picture also). These kinds of bruises can persist for a long time so it could be that the top left photo is the same bruise as the others and does not represent repeated injuries. I’m not saying you are wrong, just that I don’t find the evidence compelling. I scrolled down the thread for a ways but didn’t see any other pictures that were helpful.
That said, if you look at that first close up picture you can see the skin has fine wrinkles, and looks very dry. This is common in older people as they lose skin elasticity and underlying soft tissue making their skin “thin” (all jokes here about him being thin skinned for a long time are appropriate). This is why they get these bruises, even from a hard handshake or bumping it, but also from IVs. The elasticity of the vein walls is also compromised and the vein lacks supporting/buffering surrounding tissue so they are more prone to rupture-like an old balloon that has dried out and pops instead of stretching to accommodate being squeezed or a finger (IV) poking it. The skin itself will sometimes tear or slough from sheer forces, especially after there is blood stretching the tissue from a bruise like this one.
In short, mostly this says to me that he is pretty old and suggests that he isn’t very healthy, but that isn’t news. It may also suggest that he is on a blood thinner, but not necessarily. That’s far out speculation, but the most common reason for a blood thinner in him is probably that he has atrial fibrillation.
Might be time to ditch Kindle (Just kidding, it has always been time to ditch Kindle )…
In the “you don’t own what you buy anymore” department:
https://gizmodo.com/you-should-download-your-kindle-e-books-now-before-its-too-late-2000568009
Was reading a piece at LGM today and found out I had totally missed that Kash Patel, the new FBI director, was promoting pills to reverse the effects of covid vaccines. $75 a bottle, $150 for the set of 3 pills that will reverse more of the bad effects of vaccines. Something tells me that if there is one area that neither the FBI nor the DOJ will be investigating it is the supplements industry. Make Snake Oil Great Again!
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/trump-fbi-director-kash-patel-vaccine-detox-supplements-rcna182434
Steve
@steve:
This could be legit. I think the measles virus destroys memory T cells. So get someone infected with measles, and that could wipe out the protection against the trump virus, as well as all others, plus bacteria, fungi, worms, parasites, and bacilli. But it won’t work if you had an MMR or other measles shot.
Can’t have everything.
On the other hand, one could consume copious quantities of all influenza types, SRV, common cold viruses, various types of bacterial and viral pneumonia pathogens, and get a very realistic simulacrum of the benefits of never having taken a COVID vaccine.
But I seriously doubt an overpriced sugar pill can accomplish all that.
Supposedly Musk is trying to come up with an AI device that will automate determining which government employees to fire. That’s why he wanted all that lovely data from the “what did you do last week” question.
Stop the world; I want to get off.
Kathy- If you have the patience to delve into the right wing supplements market I believe you will find a cure for everything. What’s depressing is that in the past I think it was kind of understood this stuff was for the fringe groups, the ones that read and believe the click bait that says stuff like “the cure your doctor doesnt want you to know about”. However, this is now mainstream and having been an actual promoter of this crap seems to be an actual positive.
Steve
According to the NYT, Karolyn Leavitt has announced that the Trump administration will begin picking and choosing which media outlets will be permitted to participate in the presidential pool.
Goodbye NYT, WaPo, ABC, NBC, CBS, etc.
Hello Gateway Pundit, OAN, RSBN.
For Kathy, near miss between a landing Southwest airliner and a taxiing private jet at Midway, with video. “Oh, you meant that runway.”
@Beth: Bon Voyage! Let the rest of us know how it goes, and take good care of yourself.
Sir Keir Starmer has announced: UK defence budget to go to 2.5% by 2025; 3% by 2030.
Not fast enough, imho.
Should be 2.5% now, 3% by 2027, 3.5% by 2030.
But that would take serious welfare budget cuts AND a tax increase.
And likely hypothecated “defence bonds”.
But at least he’s referring to defence industrial base reconstruction; which in turn probably implies joint projects with France, Germany, and Italy.
@steve:
My parents believed all sorts of idiotic things like that. My mom less, but she’s still at it. The other day she warned me Advil was “bad” for you, based on what doctors say. What doctors? Doctors.*
I’m rather familiar with a lot of these things. Weren’t hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin a pair of bogus remedies for the trump disease? Not to mention the current rejection of vaccines, including the ones their idol funded.
*The only issue I could find out was for frequent use. And that’s similar to frequent use of aspirin and other NSAIDs as well.
@gVOR10:
I don’t think the Southwest jet managed to touch down. A go around after touchdown takes longer. They might have hit the small jet and killed a bunch of people.
This should be all over the aviation blogs, and in the AvHerald.
Speaking of clueless assholery, wasn’t this called Star Wars or SDI in the 80s?
Defending against missiles is hard, but not impossible. The US Patriot system, conceived as a surface to air missile, goes back several decades. But it’s one thing to tackle a theater missile, like the infamous Scud, or the small missiles Hamas and Hezbollah lob at Israel, and a very different one to take on hypersonic warheads reentering the atmosphere in large numbers.
The US has never been subjected to the former, and the latter is orders of magnitudes beyond an executive order and an act of unoriginal plagiarism.
An integral theater missile defense might make sense to protect overseas bases in trouble spots. One for the whole country is more like waste of money, resources, time, effort, and will likely amount to less than the rapist’s vaunted border wall did.
Besides, whom does the felon think will be shooting missiles at the US?
This the problem with classifying things as “good” or “bad”. Nothing at all is all good, or all bad.
Nothing.
Advil, it turns out, can have adverse effects on your liver from “excessive or prolonged use”.
It is also a miracle druge with regards to inflammation, particularly of a muscular type. Don’t take it every day, that’s a risk of damge to your liver that probably won’t ever heal. Do take it when you pull a muscle, or have a headache from unusual circumstances (not from migraines!)
But that’s too complicated for some people. All they remember is “good” and “bad”. Sigh.
You know, I just had a pretty scary thought. Some reading I’ve done suggests that while an actual budget deal is still very much in doubt, the debt ceiling is a done deal.
Thing is, the more I read about the Trump monkeyshines, the less I believe that. We might well see a situation where the US defaults on its debt. That will be a world of hurt that nobody will like.
AND, that might be what we need to get voters to understand how bad it is, and why they should punish any candidate that says different. It is so much worse than 5 percent annual inflation.
But we might have a situation where the voters need to see for themselves. It’s going to be misery, but that misery can fuel a change of attitude. I would never do this on purpose. I am not above making use of someone else’s foolish actions, though.
@JohnSF:
In Germany, reports are coming from Berlin of Merz proposing a €200 billion ($330 billion) special emergency defence fund.
That, is almost 4 times the current annual German defence budget.
In France, Macron has mooted going to 5% GDP, and deploying French Rafale strike aircraft with ASMP nuclear warhead cruise missiles to Germany.
Give it five years and wait for American commentators to start complaining about both
a) European militarism and
b) European reluctance to buy US weapons systems.
lol
@Kathy:
Europeans?
Possibly from Canada?
If you’re not concerned about goon squads playing a bigger role in supporting the current regime, please read this.
@Jay L Gischer:
That’s Kathy’s First Law: there are downsides to everything.
I do recall Advil being advertised to patients with arthritis, presumably osteoarthritis, with a recommended dose of one pill daily. I wonder how that worked out…
@Jay L Gischer:
It would be hard for the US to default as long as the felon holds the trifecta and/or ignores all laws and common sense. The country’s debt is entirely nominated in USD, which the US government controls the production of. So just print, figuratively speaking, more money.
Of course, this will devalue the currency and cause inflation. Make the tax cuts large enough, increase subsidies and other welfare for the rich, and you begin to approach Weimar territory.
But, hey, who knows, right? maybe felon memecoins will be the new global reserve currency.
@Kathy:
Cue Fed going absolutely ape, Trump replacing the Fed management by fiat, and the markets having a meltdown.
@JohnSF:
True.
But the adults have left the room. And many of the libertarian/tech types think the Fed should be abolished anyway. Others would love to replace real money with crypto.
@Kathy:
OTOH, if anything could move the Republican Congresscritters to impeach, and the GoP establishment to back them up, it might be the prospect of their investment wealth waving bye-bye.
By all accounts, one metric Trump does pay attention to are the markets.
Yeah, I don’t think it’s good. There are Members of the House who have said, and who have voted, as if defaulting on US debt was a desirable things. People like MTG, if memory serves.
The House majority is razor thing. Nutcases have enormous influence in this situation. Should the Republicans have to go to the Democrats for this, it’s waving a white flag.
I do not know where this is going. I don’t think anyone does, even at the highest branches of government. I only note that some big, big suffering might be in the cards. Not that there isn’t a already some serious suffering.
However, there is so much going on that signals skepticism over hard-fought lessons that should be automatic. Vaccines, NATO, US Gov Debt. Also patent medicines. Quackery. Measles is making a comeback.
People are making bad decisions right and left because they haven’t experienced the badness of those decisions for themselves. I hope to Marr that there is some other way for them to realign their beliefs, but experiencing the bad for themselves might be the way it happens.
Some people learn by reading. Some people learn by watching others. And some people have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.
Who runs DOGE (today)?
This is who the White House says is the DOGE acting administrator
All clear?
@Scott:
Other nazis have been documented saying things like that
Earlier there was talk that House Republican leadership was asking Trump to twist the arms of hold out Republican Representatives.
Also I remember reading that Speaker Johnson called on supporters to pray that there would be enough votes to pass the resolution.
When God and Trump can’t get things through the majority Republican House of Representatives I’ve gotta’ ask: “Speaker Johnson what are you going to do?”
Just can’t keep up with these rascals:
Here is a live view of the house chamber.
Apparently the resolution has passed.