Secrets and Enigmas 🤮 🤡 😱 ✡️🌻😱 🤮 🤡 

R is For Recission: Epstein continues to be the gift that keeps giving, but lots of other crazy sh-t happened yesterday too.  The House passed the $9 billion rescission package that cut previously approved funding for foreign aid, including programs related to global health, development, and humanitarian response, though it left PEPFAR AIDs funding intact.  It also cut funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting which supports PBS and NPR because apparently Elmo and Cookie Monster are too woke and don’t even get them started on Miss Piggy.  Anyway, underserved rural communities, including much of Alaska don’t really need news or emergency notifications because environmental catastrophes don’t happen?  Russ Vought, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget,  a co-author of Project 2025, teased that another rescission package is enroute. He also publicly stated that the federal appropriations process should be "less bipartisan," arguing that the focus should be on reducing spending, not on getting any Democrats on board.  Keeping with the theme of cutting “woke” programming CBS announced that they won’t be renewing Stephen Colbert’s late-night program when his contract ends. Not so coincidentally, the Colbert cancellation came just three days after he called out CBS parent company Paramount for its bribery-like $16 million deal with Trump, the payment that is being made to compensate Trump because he didn’t like the way they edited their 60 Minutes Kamala Harris interview and also to get approval for their $8 billion sale to Skydance. Keeping the dear leader happy is how things work in fascist autocracies. Worth noting, Joe Biden never sued Colbert for any of the snippy jokes that targeted his age and mental acuity, and Kamala Harris isn’t suing Fox over its editing of the campaign interview where Trump backtracked on his promise to release all the Epstein files upon his reelection. Though Paramount said their decision was for financial reasons,  Stephen Colbert’s ratings are better than his competitors.

Cankles:  As to the age thing, on Wednesday, Trump who really wants to fire Fed Chair Jerome Powell but keeps getting stymied by market reaction whenever it looks like he’s on the verge of following through said he was “surprised” that Biden appointed the very stupid Powell in the first place. Though Biden reappointed Powell, Trump appointed him during his first term and though the tangerine Mussolini frequently lies, this time he really seemed to believe what he was saying was true. According to Dr. Google mental confusion can be a symptom of chronic venous insufficiency, relevant because after a picture of Trump’s swollen cankles which were on full display during the FIFA game went viral on social media, the White House disclosed that Trump suffers from the age-related incurable condition. They also said that the persistent make-up covered bruise on his hand is due to his daily aspirin intake as well as frequent handshaking, the latter odd because germaphobe Trump keeps his handshaking to a minimum. Credit to Rose O’Donnell for the tangerine moniker, which she included in her clapback to Trump’s recent threat to have her denaturalized. Though it’s unlikely that he can strip Rosie of her citizenship, denaturalization is one of the things his Himmler wannabee Stephen Miller wants to do and since we keep hearing from US citizens, including veterans, about how they’ve been swept up in INS raids, we should not dismiss those threats.  Nor should we dismiss the promise to turn California’s revenue producing Alcatraz tourist site into an INS incarceration facility since co-splay Kristi Noem, with her usual camera crew in tow, went to the delipidated island prison this week to talk about her really expensive, stupid plans to do.  No money for humanitarian aid or public broadcasting but given the newly inflated INS budget, there’s plenty to waste, so Alcatraz.   

Epstein Gate: We’re more than ten days in and the Epstein story continues to dominate the news.  Last night despite Trump’s threats that he’d sue if they did, the Wall Street Journal published an article about the “bawdy” letters that Epstein girlfriend/abettor Ghislaine Maxwell solicited from his friends to put into a leather-bound book for his 50^th birthday.  According to the WSJ one of the letters was from good friend Trump, others came from businessmen, academics, former girlfriends and childhood pals, a group that included lawyer Alan Dershowitz and Leslie Wexner.  Though the WSJ didn’t publish a copy of the Trump letter, they reviewed it and said it included several lines of typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman, breasts and pubic area included, which appeared to be hand-drawn with a heavy marker, a sharpie, perhaps?  Trump’s note referred to their “wonderful secrets,” things they have in common and “enigmas” that “never age.” An irate Trump who’d tried to have Rupert Murdoch squash the article, denied writing the letter or drawing the picture and called the letter fake. It’s fair to assume that the long diatribe that he posted earlier this week was because he knew the WSJ article was incoming. After the article was published, Trump posted on Truth Social that he will be suing the “Disgusting and Filthy” WSJ and NewsCorp the way he sued “Stephanopoulos/ABC, 60 Minutes/CBS and others.” He also said that he never draws pictures, a lie that was almost immediately proven false when California Governor Newsom tweeted out a photo of a signed doodle that Trump had auctioned off at a charity event. In all likelihood we will be seeing more of Trump’s artwork shortly. We may also see the actual letter soon though probably not from AG Pam Bondi who late last night said, in response to a command from Trump, that she will try to get “pertinent” and “releasable” parts of the Epstein grand jury material released. It’s not clear that Bondi can force the release of any of the grand jury material and even if she can her decision about what is pertinent would be highly suspect, however Trump’s order to have something released is an attempt on his part to put his Epstein problem to bed, that may not be possible and certainly won’t be accomplished if he follows through on his threats to sue the Wall Street Journal who must have run the article past their very competent lawyers before publication. One person who is familiar with all of the Epstein files, included the things that were not included in the grand jury dump is Maurene Comey, the now former US Assistant Attorney General from the Southern District of New York.  Comey, the daughter of former FBI Director James Comey, prosecuted the case against Ghislaine Maxwell.  She is an experienced and respected sex crimes prosecutor who also was the lead prosecutor on the Sean Combs case. Trump had her fired this week; frankly, it’s surprising that given his hatred and persecution of her father, he didn’t have her fired sooner. Sparing no punches, in her parting remarks to her colleagues she wrote “Fear is the tool of the tyrant.” Too bad the House Judiciary Committee is chaired by sex offender adjacent Jim “Gym” Jordan and the Senate Committee which just approved the wildly inappropriate partisan Emil Bove’s judicial nomination is chaired by Iowa’s increasingly wacky and mean Chuck Grassley because Ms. Comey would be a good person for them to hear from. She might also be able to shed light on the Epstein related $1.5 billion money trail that Democratic Senator Ron Wyden wants made public.  

Fog:  The situation in the Mideast continues to fester. Israel bombed parts of Damascus this week in response to Syria’s attacks on Israel’s Druze allies.  Bibi Netanyahu whose corruption trial is ongoing, with US Ambassador Mike Huckabee inappropriately sitting in, has seen his coalition shrink.  Israeli missiles and/or fragments have landed on churches and other civilian facilities and some West Bank settlers have proven that sometimes there really are bad people on both sides. Lastly, despite Trump’s assertions otherwise, recent reports are that only one of Iran’s nuclear sites was put out of business by our bunker busting bombs.

#BringThemAllHomeNow