What Caught My Eye forJuly 23 - August 5 (#24)

There’s no need to participate in any of this. The people who orchestrated Tuesday night’s provocation are fucking insane, and it’s fine to say so.

ELIZABETH WYDRA: It certainly looks like corruption from what we know. You don’t want the president to be thinking of, how can I make money from the way that I time important informations relating to war? You know, people-- service members’ lives are on the line. We want the president to be thinking of those lives, not his personal financial bottom line.

Continuing to grift the American people and enrich himself is all Trump thinks about.

FISMAN: We are seeing a real shift in the norms that govern public office in America, that there’s a much greater sense that you can get what you can while you can. And that’s reflective of the very worst kind of corruption, if it actually takes hold. That’s my deepest fear.

WONG: So, according to our guests, is the Truth Social subscription plan corruption? Yes. Legal? Likely, yes. And could it hurt growth? Also yes.

We need real anti-corruption laws with teeth, and a congress and court system that is ready, willing, and able to enforce it. I can at least dream, right?

Kids are hardly supposed to be seen or heard in our society, especially trans ones. At a protest I attended last year, trans kids’ voices were centered in all their corny, beautiful, galaxy-brain words. In most spaces, however, it is the adults who get the last word. Why do we insist on hearing more from the parents and legislators than the actual children whose lives are at stake? Stories that aim to whip up panic about an alleged boom in trans kids gaining medical resources often only interview people with no firsthand knowledge of transness, infantilizing kids as naive or unreliable narrators.

Parents are supposed to be advocates for their children, but maybe part of that advocacy should be making sure the kids’ voices are heard.

Instead of focusing solely on pitying trans people or writing depressing news stories, trans kids like Sage wish people wrote more about the positive side of the equation — community events and clothing swaps. Of course, Sage knows there aren’t as many clicks in those kinds of banal, optimistic stories. For them, laughter is a big part of survival. So is making plans for the future in spite of the horrors.

Nothing that goes wrong is ever the president’s fault. It’s always the fault of officials with insufficient loyalty or the criminal acts of people out to get him.

Blind loyalty and willingness to distort the truth for our wannabe king is necessary.

If it continues to pursue criminal charges, it can’t possibly expect any subsequent indictments to survive a cursory review in court. Pirro’s office needs to cut and run ASAP. And Pirro should know that it’s too late to save her job. She fucked up when she decided to tell the court the truth. And that’s something Trump will see as unforgivable.

Failure to lie and twist the truth costs you your job.

The missiles are principally the Army’s surface-to-surface weapons, known as Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) and Precision Strike Missiles (PrSM). The U.S. ‌has used “virtually all” of these weapons, according to two of the sources.

Well, that doesn’t sound good.

Because these weapons allow the military to attack targets from a distance, analysts say they would be valuable in a war against an adversary with strong air defenses, such as China. They have been used to strike targets inside Iran, according to a March report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

Sounds even worse and a complete lack of planning and preparation from the Trump administration.