Texas Two Step 🤡 😱 ✡️🌻😱 🤡

Killing the Messenger: Who hasn’t considered junking their scale after a particularly gluttonous holiday season, blaming it rather than a lack of will power for the scary number flashing on its screen.  Alas, tossing the scale won’t make it easier to zip your jeans nor will firing economist Erika McEntarfer, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Commissioner,  goose hiring or inspire confidence in a jittery market.  Trump whose caddy was seen again this weekend dropping his golf balls closer to the hole and whose medical team routinely lies about his weight axed McEntarfer, holding her rather than his policies, responsible when Friday’s July jobs report showed the addition of only 73,000 jobs as well as a downward revision in the May and June numbers of an unprecedented 258,000 jobs. Trump accused McEntarfer, a respected Biden appointee who’d been confirmed by a vote of 86-8 with the support of both JD Vance and Marco Rubio, of playing politics saying that she had intentionally manipulated the numbers to make him look bad, as if the 🍊 🤡 ever needs help looking bad. Jobs reports are quirky; they rely on survey data that do not always come in on time so it’s not unusual for them to be revised.  This month’s revisions were larger than usual likely because Trump’s economic policies, particularly his on again, off again and who knows what again tariffs have injected uncertainty into corporate planning and hiring. Quirky or not, as Larry Summers said on Sunday “These numbers are put together by teams of literally hundreds of people following detailed procedures that are in manuals, there’s no conceivable way that the head of the BLS could have manipulated this number.” Firing the Commissioner won’t change the number though it will inject fear into the people who do the day-to- day work and will likely put her replacement into a bind, unless of course that replacement behaves like Trump’s doctors and golf caddies, churning out results that make him happy, who knows maybe one of Trump’s caddies will be the next Commissioner, after all one of his prior ones, Dan Scavino, is now Deputy Chief of Staff.  On Sunday, Trump’s ever complicit and smirking economic advisor Kevin Hasset, more or less implied that’s what will happen.  He defended the decision to fire the Commissioner, adding that Trump “wants his own people at the bureau.” Going forward, no one will know what to believe.  Manipulating statistics is another thing that autocrats do, the results are never good because actual hiring doesn’t go up and inflation doesn’t go down just because you say they do.

Epstein, Maxwell, Texas:  Ghislaine Maxwell hasn’t been pardoned yet for her two days of chatting, or conspiring, with Trump’s Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, but she has been rewarded with better digs.  The convicted sex offender has been quietly moved to a minimum-security federal prison camp in Texas where she will get to hob nob with “entrepreneur” Elizabeth Holmes who is serving 11 years for her Theranos mirage and Jen Shah, the former Housewife of Salt Lake City, who is serving 6.5 years for telemarketing fraud.  Convicted sex offenders are not supposed to be eligible for transfers to minimum-security “Club Fed” jails but somehow or other Maxwell was granted an exception by the Bureau of Prisons for her move perhaps because the party line among Trump’s abettors is shifting to Maxwell wasn’t really an offender, just another Epstein victim.  While Maxwell is now in Texas, a whole crowd of Democratic lawmakers aren’t.  They’ve temporarily fled the state to make it impossible, at least for now, for Texas’ lower chamber to have the quorum necessary to move forward with the redistricting that will create a new map intended to eliminate five Democratic House seats. The 150-member Texas House can only conduct business if at least 100 members are present, meaning the absence of 51 or more Democrats can bring the legislature’s ongoing special session to a halt.   Governor Abbot is now threatening to have them arrested.  If he needs help finding them, all he’ll have to do is turn on the TV or send his henchman, to New York, Chicago, or California where the peripatetic Democratic lawmakers be discussing with their blue state counterpart’s ways to counter Texas politically motivated redistricting plans. Don’t put it past Abbott, Trump, or cosplay Kristi to find some henchman who will help with the tracking, after all there are lots of extra INS agents and other military types who are available.  According to the Department of Justice, junior Goebbels Stephen Miller’s oft repeated insistence that he’s put in place a quota requiring that 3000 illegals be rounded-up every day isn’t true, not because the quota isn’t still in effect but because the DOJ has been getting pushback from federal judges about the INS and its racial profiling that’s been resulting in the arrest of anyone who looks like they might be Hispanic, know someone who is Hispanic, or gotten good grades in Spanish class.

Retribution:  Trump is bigly mad at Chuck Schumer, something that probably makes Chuck very happy.  Over the weekend Trump called for Schumer to go to Hell after he successfully blocked the confirmation of scores of Trump nominees before the Senate went out on recess.  Unfortunately, despite Schumer’s efforts, a few confirmations did make it through, including one for Jeanine Pirro who is now officially the US Attorney for Washington DC.   Pirro was one of the Fox folks named in the Dominion Voting Machine lawsuit for her repeated assertions that the 2020 election had been stolen. She is seriously all into all of Trump’s conspiracies which of course makes her perfect for the job.  The Office of Special Counsel announced over the weekend that it’s opening an investigation into former Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, accusing him of Hatch Act violations for “unlawfully taking political actions to influence the 2024 election to harm then-candidate” Trump.  It’s not normal for prosecutorial decisions to be investigated by watchdogs but since Trump’s watchdogs are lap dogs, abnormal is the new normal. In any case Smith didn’t do anything wrong but he’ll now have to spend boatloads of money defending himself.  Along those lines, as part of his divert attention from Epstein by throwing shiny objects into the air strategy, Trump and his cohorts have accused Hillary Clinton of inventing the emails that suggested Trump was in cahoots with Putin back in 2016.  Former Special Counsel John Durham who was appointed by Trump during his first administration already looked into that assertion.  He concluded that the emails in question were likely fabricated by Russian, not by Hillary but she, like Obama, is one of Trump’s favorite foils so obviously she’s the guilty party.  Trump is also really mad at Charlemagne tha God, the popular radio show host for saying during an interview with daughter-in-law Lara Trump that he “wouldn’t give him (Trump) a good rating, simply because the least of us are still being impacted the worst……Right now, people are hurting.” Thin skinned Trump called Charlemagne, who tends to speak his mind and was a frequent Biden critic, a racist and a sleazebag. It didn’t help that on his Breakfast Club show Tha God also listed all the signs that Trump is suffering from dementia. Trump also questioned the use of “god” in Charlemagne’s name because obviously Trump who thinks he’s god, finds that particularly offensive.

#BringThemAllHomeNow