Fully depreciated
This sort.
The woman's face is redacted. The three smiling Mar a Lago men are the proprietor, an unidentified member and the late Jeffrey Epstein, who writes, "Even though I handled the deal I didn't get any of the money or the girl!" The giant golf tournament check is a nice touch, a reference to their second-favorite sport.
Is anybody doing journalism anymore but the Wall Street Journal? Backed up by top-drawer legal advice and Murdoch money, they seem to like their chances. We'll see if they stay committed now that Lachlan Murdoch has won the titanic struggle to keep News Corporation the "protector of the conservative voice in the English-speaking world," which is an amusingly tall order.
I hope you're not eating, because today's Guardian has a selection of birthday book pages which may cause reflux unless you're a MAGA, a pervert or both. For example:
There is it -- the dates, the plane, a dark-haired Epstein handing balloons and candy to children, a gray Epstein enjoying the result twenty years on. It says one woman has "JE" tattooed on her buttock but to me it looks more like a capital "T." What a great country indeed. House Oversight 000155.
And letters from Lord Peter Mandelson, now UK ambassador to Washington (but for how long?), and Bill Clinton. A photo of George W. Bush with the features erased, although no evidence of a contribution to the "birthday book." Photos of lions and zebras copulating, if that's your kink.
What does the chairman of House Oversight have to say? "It's appalling Democrats on the Oversight Committee are cherry-picking documents and politicizing information received from the Epstein Estate today." At least Comer acknowledges that the documents are from the Epstein estate. Tim Burchett was caught on video shoving a protester, just the opposite of what he said happened, so it's no surprise that his response was to pretend that the pubic-hair signature on Trump's drawing was done with an autopen, no doubt by some Biden operative. Ex-OSU wrestling coach Jim Jordan couldn't even summon up a conspiracy theory: "I haven't seen it...don't buy it," and a walk-off. The Speaker of the House: "I've heard about it, but no -- and the White House says it's not true." Comer: "I take the president's word." Your elected representatives, America.
This is going to take a lot more distracting than even these practiced distracters have managed. If I were a Venezuelan fisherman I would think about taking the rest of the month off. They're running out of ideas.
A couple of Congressional Christians named Cloud and Thompson introduced a bill to designate September 12 "National Day of the Bible." They're tying it to a long-forgotten event in 1782, when the Continental Congress approved the Aitken translation as "The Bible of the Revolution." (Makes sense -- you don't want to read King James while you fight King George.) Then they forgot about it until it was time to write "no religious test" and the First Amendment into the Constitution. Reversing them is probably the next step for these two, only one of whom graduated from Oral Roberts University.
In a related gesture, the White House found time for a press release inviting "at least ten people to meet each week for one hour to pray for America." The goal is one million Americans a week, which sounds modest but achievable, a lot less than Oprah's Book Club at its height. They include a list of "resources and ideas," just as for a real book club. Christians only, of course. While Trump was blathering at the Museum of the Bible, wouldn't it have been splendid for someone to ask, "Sir, could you read us your favorite passage? Or recite it from memory?" I hear he's especially fond of Paul's Epistle to the Hypocrites.
While discussing Biblical scholarship Trump managed to weave in some boasting about how much the military occupation of Washington has reduced crime. "They said 87 percent. I said "No no no, it's more than 87 percent. Virtually nothing." His critics want to belittle his achievement by including piffle like domestic abuse. "If a man has a little fight with the wife, they say, 'This was a crime, see?'" Last month two police officers in Utah were killed while responding to a domestic violence call. It turns out that "a little fight with the wife" is involved in a majority of the state's homicides. Utah pays special attention to this category because of a "lethality assessment protocol" which was established after Lieutenant Governor Deidre Henderson's cousin was killed by her ex-husband. Who knows what goes on in other states? I haven't read the Book of Mormon but there's plenty of Old Testament justification for beating the hell out of your wife (and children). Maybe this is something the prayer minyans could discuss.
As reported in the Wall Street Journal some 280,000 Ukrainians who fled here under the U4U program are losing their right to work and may have to return home to become fresh targets for Trump's boss Putin. Of course Trump prefers to dwell on the terrible case of one Ukrainian woman, Iryna Zarutska, who was stabbed to death on a train in North Carolina. A homeless schizophrenic named Decarlos Brown has been charged with her murder. Trump reported that he watched video of the crime, slavering over the blood "dripping from the killer's knife" and onto the hands of Joe Biden and Senate candidate Roy Cooper. They should have prevented the crime by knowing about it in advance and locking Brown up. Yes, Zarutska was "beautiful, young" and blonde, the next Ashli Babbitt. He is incapable of shame or any other human emotion. But any distraction in a shitstorm.
Jonathan Braun was serving ten years for drug dealing when his sentence was commuted just before Trump left office in 2021. He was part of an international drug gang of the kind the regime likes to attack in Mexico, but his gang operated out of Canada and his rich parents were friends of Charles Kushner, Ivanka's father-in-law, so he only served a year. He has violated the terms of his supervised probation by threatening a man at his synagogue and a hospital staffer, and hilariously, by evading bridge tolls to the tune of $160. Now he's been sentenced to another five years in federal prison, while New York authorities build a case for "predatory lending" (loan sharking). Nice people Trump knows.
Oops! Turns out the jobs report was...inaccurate. In fact there were 911,000 fewer jobs opening up between April 2024 and March 2025, meaning some of it can be blamed on Biden. All right, podcasters, you know what to do. Also: Benghazi, Chappaquiddick, Comet Ping Pong, Judge Crater and Who Lost China?
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