“In a big blow to the Trump-deranged community, Melania Trump’s eponymous movie knocked the lights out on its opening weekend. It came in at No. 3 overall, and its $7 million box office take in three days is almost unheard of for a documentary. ‘Melania’ is crushing it on Rotten Tomatoes, too, with a 99% audience score on the ‘popcornometer’ easily besting the sneering critics’ 10% on the Tomatometer ratings. Like everything to do with Donald Trump’s two presidencies, whatever the leftist media’s opinion, the American public thinks the opposite. The inverse media-ometer is one of the most reliable gauges of public sentiment in this country.” (02/01/25)
“A pretty good portion of humanity clearly seems to recognize that we are gazing into the abyss at the moment but how exactly do we turn this ship around from the brink of oblivion? … At some point somebody has to say the word ‘revolution’ and I’m not talking about some commie-scented air-freshener for a champaign socialist candidacy in SOHO. I am talking in no uncertain terms about all of us putting our partisan tribalism aside and doing what I think we all know needs to be done. I am talking about having a serious and ongoing conversation about overthrowing the government of the United States of America.” (02/01/26)
“The California Post is betting its buzzy launch on a war with Gov. Gavin Newsom — and the only surprise so far is the governor’s unbridled enthusiasm for a fight with Rupert Murdoch’s new West Coast tabloid.” (02/01/26)
“Not so long ago, Ammon Bundy was the most famous right-wing militia leader in America. His two armed standoffs with federal agents had made him the face of the Patriot Movement: a loose assemblage of anti-government extremists, Second Amendment maximalists, and more than a few white nationalists. Even some mainstream elements of the Republican Party embraced him as a modern folk hero. But Bundy’s criticism of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown now threatens to make him a pariah within his own community.” (02/01/26)
“Many news reports treat the absence of a large rise in inflation since Liberation Day as a puzzle, a big problem for economists. And of course Trump and co. are crowing that all the experts were wrong. But if you look at the actual numbers, there isn’t much if any puzzle. The key point is that effective tariff rates have risen much less than headline rates. Partly this is because there have been some major carve-outs, like Apple’s exemption from tariffs on India. Partly it’s because high tariffs have led firms to take advantage of exemptions that were already on the books but weren’t worth the paperwork when tariffs were lower.” [editor’s note: Or maybe it has something to do with the fact that price increases are a symptom of inflation, not inflation itself? – TLK] (02/01/26)
“The murders of Alex Pretti and Renee Good by masked federal agents earlier this month shocked our consciences. But it is important to understand these killings were the inevitable result of a culture of violence and lawlessness at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), in which masked DHS agents have been routinely engaging in brazenly criminal acts across the country for months with no accountability or oversight. To be clear, punching someone in the face because you don’t like the sign they are holding is a crime. Same with pulling a gun on or spraying bear mace at a peaceful bystander. And yet we have seen literally thousands of clearly documented crimes like these committed by DHS agents over the past year with no consequences or even investigations. This is part of a broader culture of lawlessness and contempt for accountability that permeates DHS and ICE.” (02/01/26)
“Football taught me rich people could be stupid. Even as a kid, I’d seen plenty of movies and TV shows where rich people were greedy, cruel, vain, and unlikable. But stupid? Obviously, rich people are smart! Otherwise, how did they become rich? But as any NFL fan knows, some franchises are just always bad. Superstars wilt when traded to these teams; top draft picks fail to live up to their billing. No coach can fix their problems. And when you look under the microscope at these teams, to understand why they never win or get their act together, there’s often a common answer: a billionaire, convinced of his own brilliance, swerving the team into a ditch over and over again.” (02/02/25)
“What are we to do with the fact that Christians, like myself, claim to believe in what pastor-theologian Francis Schaeffer once called ‘true truth’ and yet seem to be no less likely to fall into the traps of political tribal thinking and even conspiracy theories? On the one hand, many evangelicals like myself were raised to believe in ‘absolute truth’ and were warned against threats of creeping secular ‘relativism’ and ‘postmodernism.’ But on the other hand, Christians (of all political persuasions) regularly promote ideologically driven propaganda, misinformation, conspiracy theories, and untruths. In fact, according to one survey by the American Enterprise Institute, white evangelical Republicans are more likely than nonevangelical Republicans to believe a host of conspiracies, including something as farcical as the QAnon conspiracies.” (02/01/26)
“The so-called Justice Department issued another tranche of emails from the Jeffery Epstein trove known colloquially as ‘The Epstein Files.’ I imagine that, like previous emissions, Justice has redacted most of the references to the best friend of the infamous serial child-rapist and sex trafficker (who is our current and temporary president Don Trump, in case you didn’t know). And I imagine that, like before, a bit of the tip of Trump’s culpability iceberg will manage to break through to the surface, because when you’re dealing with an iceberg of such magnitude there’s only so much hiding you can do.” (02/01/26)
