08/04/25
Good morning! It’s Monday, August 4th.
National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day
Let me give you a hot tip – Obviously when they’re cooked, they’re great but, and most people don’t know this but, you can just eat the dough as well. That’s allowed.
And now, the news.
Montana Shooting
-via ABC News
We start how we start here in America… kind of… with four people dead in Anaconda, Montana after Army veteran Michael P. Brown walked into the bar that he lived next door to at 10:30 Friday morning, killing everyone who was in the bar at the time – one bartender and three customers – before fleeing.
A photo released of him leaving the bar shows him in shorts, it’s unclear if they’re shorts or boxers, and no shirt or shoes.
The car Brown drives has been found, but he was not with it.
One of the bartenders at the bar where the shooting took place, who wasn’t working Friday morning but lives close enough to the bar to have heard the shooting, but thought it was construction, said that Brown came into the bar often but, “he wasn’t a part of the camaraderie.”
He was described by his niece as a veteran who struggled with mental health in the Army and noted he hadn’t been the same since his time in the military. He served from January of 2001 to May of 2005, and his time included a year in Iraq. He also served in the National Guard from April 2006 to March 2009.
Signed up in January of 2001. Talk about signing up for a very different type of service.
Montana authorities are encouraging people to stay inside their homes and keep their doors locked. The biggest concern is that he will return to Anaconda, but no matter where he is, he should be considered armed and extremely dangerous.
Ghislaine Maxwell Moved
Over the weekend, Ghislaine Maxwell, who did the sex crimes with Jeffrey Epstein, let’s be very clear about that, she also committed the crimes. Not only did she bring women to him, terrible on its own, reprehensible without redemption, but some survivors say that, at times, she also participated in the assault. So let’s never minimize what she did here.
And I say that because on Friday, Maxwell, who was in a maximum security prison, somehow got herself moved to a minimum-security federal prison camp in Texas.
A place that, based on their own rules, she shouldn’t even be allowed to be based on the crimes she commited. It is literally against their own rules.
I wonder who made that call? Number two at the Department of Justice, Todd Blance who’s been meeting with Maxwell?
I can’t remember – how’d he get that job? What was he doing before this? Oh yeah, he was Trump’s personal lawyer. Trump’s personal lawyer got Maxwell a deal where she gets to go to a minimum-security prison camp, literally breaking that own camp’s rules, while Trump openly considers a pardon for her (spoiler alert – he’s almost certainly gonna do it)… all the while, the files that definitely include the BFF relationship Trump had with Epstein and Maxwell, will continue to stay buried.
And at first, you could make the argument that even being in the files at all would be bad for him and that’s why he’s hiding them. But now you kind of have to wonder… what’s really in those files? Is it actually really bad?
Anyway, the Trump administration called a minimum-security prison camp and asked them to bend the rules and let a woman who committed the worst kinds of sex crimes against minors have an easier time in prison.
Tell people about that!
Bad Job, Bad Jobs Report
While that was happening on Friday, another story was happening that was also not going to help the Trump administration’s PR rehab.
The jobs report! Things like the jobs report are an apolitical report card on an administration. Sure, he’s probably, almost certainly, going to pardon a woman that literally, as proved by in a court of law, sex trafficked minors, but at least more people are working…
Dude could’ve used a good jobs report on Friday, that would have been very helpful.
But the thing about Trump is that not only is he a bad person, he is also a bad president. Not good, very bad.
So of course the jobs report was bad.
And instead of being like uh oh! …he fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics! He said the numbers were wrong. I’ll tell you what pal – find the square root of four and then you can tell me all you want about numbers and math.
This is wildly rare because it’s a political leader putting grub hands in government data. That doesn’t sound good, does it? It puts the reliability of the numbers at risk, and it puts the independence of government data at risk. It’s all bad.
Just another day in paradise.
Coach Beard Under Investigation
-via CBS News
And speaking of not being able to trust the independence of government blah blah blah… on Saturday the Office of the Special Council announced that they are launching an investigation into Jack Smith, who investigated Trump before he got into office for his classified documents crimes case and election stealing crimes case.
If you’re new here, Jack Smith looks like Coach Beard from Ted Lasso and so that’s what I refer to him as here. This is a professional news show!
He’s being investigated for alleged political activity.
Oh, so it’s just made up? Got it got it got it.
They’re specifically saying it’s a violation of the Hatch Act, which makes it even funnier, to be, a nerd, because the Hatch Act basically just prevents federal employees from certain political activities. So, for example, if Coach Beard were only doing those investigations to sink Trump’s campaign – yes, that’s a Hatch Act violation.
But the stolen confidential documents were found in his heinously decorated bathroom and we heard a recording of him asking Georgia’s Secretary of State to just find enough votes to help him win the state. The investigations are not political acts.
But at least 13 1st term Trump administration employees were found guilty of Hatch Violations, including Mark Meadows, Mike Pompeo, and Jared Kushner – and no one said anything. And don’t even get me started on how often Trump casually violates the Hatch Act. It’s like breathing for him.
But since all this administration does is commit crimes and persecute political enemies… go off ya putzes.
Texas Democrats Step Out to Step Up
-via CNN
Finally – remember last week when I blacked out and just started rambling about the Texas redistricting and how the answer wasn’t democrats also do gerrymandering, but instead actually doing SOMETHING to show they are serious people?
Well it turns out that all Texas democrats listen to this podcast because on Sunday, 62 Texas state House democrats left the state, therefore denying Republicans the quorum needed to advance the gerrymandered map that Trump has asked Texas Republicans to draw, which would hopefully give the Republicans an advantage in five districts.
Some are headed to meet with Illinois’ Governor Pritzker, others will meet with New York’s Governor Hochul, and a third group went to Boston for the National Conference of State Legislatures' annual legislative summit.
There are two weeks left in Texas’ current special session of the legislature, which is also supposed to include measures in response to the July 4 Hill Country floods, stiffer regulations for consumable hemp, and of course, because it’s Texas – tighter restrictions of abortion pills and which bathrooms transgender people can use.
In a statement, the chair of the House Democratic Caucus said, “As of today, this corrupt special session is over.”
So it sounds like 62 Texas state House Democrats have packed two weeks’ worth of chonies.
And that is how you do something. You don’t hear that the Republicans are cheating and say okay well we’re going to cheat too, you say – we’re not going to allow the cheating to happen to begin with.
Well done.
Good trouble.
And that’s it. That’s the news.
I’m proud of those Texas state House democrats.
Also chocolate chip cookies.
Honestly, someone should give them some cookies.
Eh, or I guess they can get their own cookies. They’ve got time. They’re working hard but they’re also OOO so they’ve got some free time.
But more than cookies, because you are also made better when you’re a little salty. I’m proud of you.