They say the empty can rattles the most.

We, the American people, elected the empty can. How can we look ourselves in the mirror ever again, unless we make ourselves just as empty?

There’s been so much inflation that $3/gallon would be really cheap, even for gasoline in the US, by the standards of the last 20 years or so. A very arbitrary number to get stuck on.

US Average Gasoline Price Adjusted for Inflation

$4/gallon just isn’t that high, not much out of line with the last ~15 years.

I think higher fuel prices could be the impetus for quite a lot of alternative energy, alternative transport, and electrification investment. I think if you believe that free markets work, you’d really have to agree.

She’s a terrible rep, she sounds like a tasteless, exhausting, stupid person, yet she does not stand accused of victimizing anyone the way, say, Swalwell is.

So her stance here may be what some would call “ironic,” but I don’t think its hypocritical.

“Look what you made me do” is an abuser’s refrain.

Congress: In that case, best I can do is another $50 billion

It’s well known. Trump attended Norman Vincent Peale’s church as a child. Here’s one story about it, there are others:

How Norman Vincent Peale Taught Donald Trump to Worship Himself (2015)

“I still remember [Peale’s] sermons,” Trump told the Iowa Family Leadership Summit in July. “You could listen to him all day long. And when you left the church, you were disappointed it was over. He was the greatest guy.” A month later, in the same news conference at which Trump tossed out Univision anchor Jorge Ramos, he again referred to Peale as his pastor and said he was “one of the greatest speakers” he’d ever seen.

He’s long been an admirer of “The Power Of Positive Thinking.” Some of his statements and reversals seem like a natural fit with his solipsistic version of that philosophy. And this is one of them.

I know that there’s a lot of crazy to unpack, here, but can we talk about the grass for a second? Just how much soda did he pour on his lawn? To make him think of soda as some kind of grass killer?

Court orders that the regime doesn’t like are meaningless.

What was the joke? Who was the butt of this joke?

Yes yes, I’m sure the pissed-off MAGA base have seen the error of their ways and will make amends by voting for Vance

I’m not a believer myself. And yet. The length and specificity of this list of parallels between what the Bible says about the Anti-Christ and the behavior and character of our dear leader gives me pause.

Could American Evangelicals Spot the Antichrist?

Come on, guys, he’s just saying what everyone is already thinking. Right?

Everything he does makes sense, if you can accept that he sees the United States itself as an rival for the attention and praise that is rightly his. Commanding other people’s attention, redirecting it to himself, has been the only trick behind his falling-up success, his whole life. This is what they mean when they say “all publicity is good publicity.”

Now we’re not talking about Iran, we’re not talking about America’s future, we’re talking about him.

Are… are the ceasefire talks in the room with us now, Donnie?

Edit: Trump Was Watching a U.F.C. Fight in Miami While Iran Talks Collapsed

I don’t think the suggestion is that she’s a victim. Just that what we’re seeing is the fallout of a power struggle from behind the curtain.

This Threads post tells a theory / story that’s worthy of a soap opera. Spoiler: Everything comes back to Epstein, as it always seems to.

Robert Reich had some theories, including:

3. Melania is pissed off at Trump for any number of things, and today’s news conference was a way of letting him know she’s capable of making his life miserable.

Hey, could we automatically register everyone to vote at the same time?

I’m kidding. I know the answer is “no.”

I never see any Christians decide that the president was chosen of God – as a punishment.

That would actually plug seamlessly right in to the whole evangelical world-view and aesthetic. It’s an idea with so much explanatory power, right there for the taking. “We live in a fallen world, and the president is the proof.”

I haven’t got the stomach to watch the whole thing, but in the bits of it I’ve watched, he seems so much more alert, so much more present, so much, dare I say, smarter, than he’s been when speaking publicly recently. He makes jokes, he’s funny, he smiles. He completes some sentences. He doesn’t seem like the tongue-tied partially-senile Fox-News-grandpa he is when he talks to the public or the press.

He quips that somehow he’s a “king” but he can’t get his ballroom approved. He’s a piece of shit, he behaves like he’s here to destroy America as we know it, but that’s a legitimate by-God joke. I’ve never seen him make an actual joke before.

Am I imagining that? I don’t know what to make of it. Is the “flailing senile dumbass” just a character he’s playing? Is it a ruse? So many people who have had face time with him say he’s genuinely a moron.