Day: July 23, 2025

Trump’s Guiding Principle: Presidential Pettiness

Buck Banks

From his first day as a candidate, Trump has appeared animated by anger, fear, and, most of all, pettiness, a small-minded vengefulness that takes the place of actual policy making. It taints the air in the executive branch like a forgotten bag of trash in a warm house on a summer day—even when you can’t see it, you know it’s there.”

— Tom Nichols

Our Fascist Idiocracy: July 23, 2025

Jon Ponder

Tesla Diner in Hollywood blocking the view

Big eye ouchie. At Tesla’s new Hollywood Diner & Drive-In, progress looks like a four-story movie screen blocking the view from the apartment building next door. One Tesla Diner diner said he loved the diner’s Blade Runner vibes. “Looks good on the eyes,” he said. When asked if apartment dwellers might enjoy the oversized spectacle on their doorstep, Roman didn’t miss a beat: “Probably not. That is a huge ouchy for their eyes.”

Meanwhile in Gilead. At a town hall in Tennessee a pregnant woman stood up to tell what happened when the state’s broken moral compass aimed itself directly at her uterus. She and her partner of 15 years are parents of a 13-year-old, but because they are unmarried her doctor denied medical care for her and her unborn child. The denial was based on the state’s 2025 Medical Ethics Defense Act, which puts Christo-fascist morality ahead of science.

Totally not thinking about Epstein now. Trump has been unloading distraction after distraction to avert public attention from his career-killing Trumpstein scandal. One of the low points was his playing politics with First People’s identity. Trump ordered the Washington Commanders to bring back the name “Redskins.” And he’s threatening the owners with withholding stadium permits as leverage. Worse of all, he called his policy “MIGA” — Make Indians Great Again.

Radar causes weather disasters. An diocratic group calling themselves Veterans on Patrol is out to destroy Doppler radar systems because, they say, radar caused the floods in Texas and other disasters. On July 6, they claimed credit for disabling a system in Oklahoma City at the height of tornado season.