| second: The Iran War has been a disaster, but markets were beginning to believe that the worst was over — until Trump began bombing Iran again with no clear objective beyond the visceral desire to reach out and hurt someone.
Crude oil prices are surging again, but even more important, prices of refined products — what we actually burn — rising even more than crude. Wholesale diesel prices have just hit their highest level ever. [go to link] |
| second: Launched in 2003, PEPFAR became the largest commitment by any nation to address a single disease, and one of the most successful global-health initiatives of all time. Trump came after PEPFAR on his first day back in office. On January 20, 2025, he signed Executive Order 14155, withdrawing from the World Health Organization, and Executive Order 14169, freezing foreign aid, including PEPFAR. Cuts to PEPFAR cost more than a hundred and seventy-five thousand lives within a year—nearly a quarter of the approximately seven hundred and eighty thousand deaths caused by Trump’s foreign-aid cutbacks as a whole. [go to link] |
| second: In a live interview, the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson asked Trump how he felt watching “Dick Cheney’s repulsive little daughter” campaign against him alongside Harris. Trump suggested that Cheney should be prosecuted by a military tribunal or perhaps shot. “Look, she’s a deranged person,” Trump said. “But the reason she couldn’t stand me is that she always wanted to go to war with people. I don’t want to go to war. She’s a radical war hawk. Let’s put her with a rifle standing there, with nine barrels shooting at her, O.K.? Let’s see how she feels about it when the guns are trained on her face.” [go to link] |
| 6ixStringJack: Fuck off, Shit Golem. |
| second: Military leaders are warning Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that a plan to continue large-scale operations in Iran is unsustainable and is weakening their ability to protect U.S. interests in other places, including at home.
The warning is in the classified Secretary of Defense Orders book of August 14th and is laid out by the heads of the Army, Navy, and Air Force and the four-star commanders who oversee U.S. operations in Europe, Asia, and Latin America.
The Navy's top admiral, along with leaders of the U.S. European Command, the U.S. Pacific Command, and the U.S. Southern Command, register that they did not concur with Trump's plans, although their disagreement does not mean they will not execute the order.
[go to link] |
| Brenda: Oh, squee. I think we have a problem with threads again. |
6ixStringJack: Agreed! ARF! ARF!  |
| THG: Agreed |
| second: Cognitive Dissonance Dominates Hormuz.
Ships can’t navigate a reality that exists only in Trump’s head.
[go to link] STRAIT OF HORMUZ monitor [go to link]/ |
| second: Satanic Priest splashes human blood on WH ballroom building site to bless Trump and prays for his continuing good health. Evangelical supporters have publicly framed the ballroom project in religious terms, such as remarks at prayer gatherings referring to the project as part of a divine plan. Fact-checkers at platforms like Snopes have repeatedly debunked unrelated online hoaxes regarding occult or blood rituals connected to the president. [go to link] |
| 6ixStringJack: Get a life, loser. |
| second: President Donald Trump calls on the Federal Communications Commission to punish "Meet the Press" host Kristen Welker regarding her coverage of his campaign endorsements ahead of the crucial midterm elections. The president abruptly walked away from a recorded interview with Welker in Wisconsin in June and called her either "crooked or stupid" after she challenged his comments about California election security. [go to link] |
| 6ixStringJack: Get a life, loser. |
| second: President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Food and Drug Administration called on conservatives to create new academic journals and to fund science that would explicitly back right-wing policy goals. Heidi Overton called for new science journals that would be dedicated to “conservative-based” science and described a 20-year vision for changing the infrastructure of funding and research to make it more aligned with conservative policy. This vision included “alternate systems” for publishing research. [go to link] |
| second: The president posted images of White House construction, writing: “Cleaning and Regrouting the Granite, for the first time in 63 years, at the White House North Entrance.”
I’m sure that’s exactly what Americans who can’t afford gas wanted an update on.
[go to link] |
| second: Food prices are still high, gas prices are still high. Nothing's better. You don’t see Trump ginning up AI videos of people celebrating the low cost of pantry staples. You don’t see Republican lawmakers on news shows bragging about how successfully they’ve driven down our grocery bills.
[go to link] |
| second: In 2024, Trump swore he would be “getting gasoline below $2 a gallon.” Driving down energy prices was a big part of his reelection campaign and the GOP platform. [go to link] |
| second: With Trump renaming all these geographic features, next up he's going to rename the San Andreas Fault to "Biden's Fault" [go to link] |
| second: The Plot to Steal Venezuela’s Oil.
A scam that is both vile and deeply stupid.
For those who need a refresher, in January U.S. forces raided Venezuela and kidnapped Nicolas Maduro, the nation’s brutal, corrupt dictator. Maduro surely deserved his fate. But the Trump administration made no move to help Venezuela’s democratic opposition. Instead, it made a deal with former members of the Maduro cabal, effectively installing a new regime that may well be even more brutal and corrupt than its predecessor. In return, Trump got an agreement — details are scarce — that will allow U.S. oil companies to extract and sell large quantities of Venezuelan oil [go to link] |
| 6ixStringJack: Just breathe, buddy. I always like to listen to this one when politics gets under my skin too much: [go to link] |