Tuesday Stuff

Jesse Dollemore informs us of the recent dustup with Brian “Kill The Poor” Kilmeade...under normal circumstances (and I know we don’t live under “normal” circumstances), the same punishment would be exacted towards Kilmeade as that exacted towards, say, Matthew Dowd for repeating completely factual information about the late but hardly lamented (in this space anyway) Charlie Kirk, as well as former WaPo columnist Karen Attiah (h/t Eschaton)...since we appear to be exacting a zero tolerance policy towards anyone not properly genuflecting at the mention of Kirk’s name, I think Kilmeade should endure the same fate for saying something MUCH worse, apology notwithstanding...and oh yeah, the setup from Ainsley Earhardt and Lawrence Jones put the discussion in a bad direction to begin with (and oh yeah, when it comes to mental institutions, let’s not forget this)...good point by Jesse about Kilmeade making the apology to a much smaller audience than the one that heard the offending remark in the first place...and oh yeah, homeless people deserve “empathy and compassion” but ABSOLUTELY NOT ONE BLEEPING DIME OF FUNDING TO SUPPORT SOME KIND OF HOUSING TO HELP THEM TRANSITION INTO A BETTER LIFE as far as conservatives are concerned, amirite?...



...and as a follow-up to the Charlie Kirk stuff, Thom Hartmann points out that nobody in this country should be killed for their politics, and how pathetic is it that we’re at a place where that even needs to be said?...Thom discusses how the “both sides” argument fuels extremism, along with a bit of the history of political violence in this country...I’d forgotten about Poppy Bush resigning from the NRA board of directors because that org went too nuts even for #41...glad Thom mentions Schedule F employees as part of Project 2025 along with Georgia poll workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss and the misery they had to endure merely for doing commendable civic duty...didn’t know that the FBI director for Utah was a Muslim woman who was fired; gee, I wonder if they could use her now?...”violence is their brand” indeed...



...and Sam and Emma of The Majority Report tell us about McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski ringing the alarm bell, as it were, over the money stuff under Combover Caligula...looks like Scott Bessent is going to take the hit for our slumping economy by himself, as opposed to Cheetoh Hitler (and Howard Lutnick, who apparently had a bit of a dustup with Bessent, in part over Lutnick betting against our economy – once more, elect a clown, expect a circus)...good point by Sam about those stinking tariffs raising prices AND slowing the economy, and I also agree with Sam that you could argue that the slowdown in our economy (for lower and middle-class consumers especially) dates back to the end of COVID relief (ties back to Sam’s comment about “two economies,” which I also agree with)...Emma’s remark about basically the .01 percent “making bank” as a result of others’ misfortune in a recession is an accurate call also IMO (and it sounds like AI and for-profit health care are keeping the bottom from falling out for now, but we know what happens to economic “bubbles,” don’t we?)...



...and John of The Damage Report lets us know that Pumpkin Pol Pot and Baby Goebbels are apparently happy with 200K mass deportations, though ICE agents are getting burned out (cue the world’s smallest violin)...and oh yeah, driving up deportations means that investigations into actual honest-to-goodness crime that require more expertise and money to execute are getting shortchanged for these idiotic roundups that gather more wingnut media attention (I wish I could disagree with John’s comment about ICE getting more desperate and their standards getting lower and lower, but in good conscience I really can’t)...



...and RIP legendary actor/director/environmental activist Robert Redford...over-the-hill boomer that I am, I admit that you get to a point where you just get it in your head that certain fixtures of your youth and maturity (I guess you could call it that) will always be there, and it’s a shock when you realize that they’re as mortal as the rest of us...I could probably include a ton of clips of Redford where he made an impact with understated acting talent that he used effectively portraying simple human decency, but this clip from “All The President’s Men” has stuck with me over the years, and so have a bunch of others from that tremendous film, as well as many other pics including Redford...the impact he left also in supporting independent film will never be equaled (clip is briefly NSFW at the very end, but I have a feeling we know that by now)...



Update 9/17/25: Another reason to honor Redford's memory is here.

...and I also know we’ve had a spate of musical acts that have departed recently, and Bobby Hart is another notable loss; he formed a songwriting duo in the ‘60s with Tommy Boyce, and they were instrumental in the rise of The Monkees...the duo also had the following hit from back in the day.