The Hall of Fire

Somehow I missed an episode that was reported about The Room Where It Happened , the 2020 book by Donald Trump's departed national security advisor, John Bolton. (I wonder if Bolton had even seen Hamilton , which obviously inspired his book's title, and if so, what he thinks about it.) Bolton writes...

The ghostwriter just made up the meeting with the North Korean dictator? That's more like a poltergeist writer. Eta: "erroneously described" huh? So many ways for the journalists to avoid saying "lied about." Noem's people have implausibly claimed that this is a fabrication by a...

I'm not sure how I feel about statutes of limitation. It seems to me that a criminal who cleverly hides his wrongdoing can exploit them to evade the law. And yet, if you're charged with a crime you didn't commit, and it's been a very long time, the government is surely in a better position than the ...

President Biden today awarded former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Edited to note that a Fox News host "joked" last night that Biden should have awarded Pelosi's husband Paul a hammer.

Of course... Could have been worse : [picture of a Vogon from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy ] Edited to add: " infrastruckersureparauhee ." The link was to Donald Trump struggling Wednesday to pronounce the word "vegan" during a campaign rally in Wisconsin. He kept pronoun...

This video really shows what the description says:



FYI, Tucker Carlson is saying that Alex Jones accurately predicted the events of 9/11.

I'm also struck by the fact that Jones recently had dinner at Carlson's house.

The April unemployment rate rose from 3.8% to 3.9% -- where it was in February -- as only 175,000 jobs were added. Forecasters had predicted 240,000 new jobs and that the rate would hold steady. Even so, this marks the 27th straight month under 4%, and this streak is thus now tied for the second-lon...

Will Judge Cannon further delay proceedings because prosecutors today noted that, in the process of going through the many boxes of documents stored at Mar-a-Lago, scanning those documents, documenting those documents, and returning those documents to the boxes -- or in the case of classified docume...

Houston Chronicle: "Texas man takes legal action against ex-partner who went to Colorado for abortion."

On March 26, 2024, the first day that Truth Social was on the stock market, it peaked at $74.79 per share. At the close of business today, April 5, 2024, Truth Social was trading at $40.57 per share, which is 46% below its peak. And it had dropped to $37.17 at close today. Blame it on the eclipse? ...

This probably won't make sense to casual readers without some explanation: [ Tweet from Marcy Wheeler: "Has anyone called Corey Lewandowski and asked if he was ever concerned Noem would shoot him?"] That would be South Dakota governor Kristi Noem, viewed by some as a possible running mate...

Guo Wengui (real name Ho Wan Kwok), the exiled Chinese billionaire and Steve Bannon's erstwhile funder and host ... was charged today in a $1 billion fraud scheme. Additional charges filed against Steve Bannon's backer, Guo Wengui. "Bannon is not referenced in the indictment, but the companies...

Rep. Henry Cuellar, Democrat of Texas, is expected to be indicted . Apparently something to do with business deals in Azerbaijan? It's bad news for Democrats' chances of retaking the House. If he resigns, any would-be Democratic successor would need to run as a write-in candidate, I think. Edited wi...

Very interesting comments by Ben Wittes of Lawfare today on their podcast about this case. He was one of those people who felt that is case was the weakest and least important of the four cases in which Trump was charged, but after sitting through the first week of the case, he has changed his mind...

President Biden today announced the expansion of two national monuments in California by more than 100,000 acres:

I don't know enough about this subject to discuss at length, but I would imagine genocide is not determined by sheer numbers alone. I would think the percentage of the population would be more descriptive. In WWII, by number, more Jewish people were killed than Roma peoples, but by percentage, beca...

I had no idea that Samuel L. Jackson, probably the most financially successful actor ever, kidnapped Martin Luther King Sr. in 1969. (That's the father of the famous civil rights activist, who had been killed in a year before that.) I think this piece is very good as it urges the public to redirect ...

So the Republicans who control Louisiana's state legislature, faced with the likelihood that a court would force the creation of a second Black congressional district (in order to comply with the Voting Rights Act), created that district on their own, but they deliberately made it gerrymandered in ...

While I had a general sense that this was true, I'd never seen this particular comparison of Donald Trump speaking in 2015 and speaking in 2020:



Maybe the selections were cherry-picked, but hat certainly appears to show a mental decline.

Another reminder that Donald Trump's awfulness is just taken for granted and not treated as news: https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1785740908190736479 He's right. If 51% of Democratic Congressional staff said that they doubted Joe Biden had the mental and physical capacity to serve as preside...