El Mercurio. Tabs, Mon., Aug. 10, 2026
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Good morning, let’s see what’s shaking.
At The Moral High Ground on Friday, I examined the question of who has the derangement syndrome: Is it us? Or is it the weird racists who have decided Abdul El-Sayed did 9/11 because he has a Muslim name, or that Zohran Mamdani wants to teach your babies how to cut their weener peeners off? Teach the controversy! You should read that and subscribe to it! [The Moral High Ground]
Speaking of, shall you next just watch this video of Abdul El-Sayed reacting to Donald Trump’s racist post about him, the masterful way El-Sayed flipped it back on Trump? You shall.
And shall you also be wanting the one where El-Sayed said Trump shits his pants in the Oval Office? You also shall.
Ross Douthat’s final column for the New York Times is woo boy, LOL, neckbeard lunatic. You guys, he thinks he survived “woke”. [New York Times]
Donald Trump is waiting Iran out, you betcha, got ‘em right where he wants ‘em, just waiting until they run out of money. It’s not that Trump has run out of weapons. Nope. Watch the masters at work! [Axios]
Move over, diarrhea lettuce, it’s time for salmonella salsa! [Reuters]
Senile and racist Donald Trump thinks Black and brown voters are “flocking to the GOP” because they have just now remembered that Abraham Lincoln was a Republican. [JoeMyGod}
AOC explains who millennials are, we reckon for the benefit of Boomers who apparently think they are still 21 years old.
Mouthbreathers who weren’t particularly good in the NBA think they are now going to go out for the WNBA as trans. “I’m transgender. I’m a woman… I identify as sometimes identifying as a woman for purposes of… professional basketball,” says Royce White. Just like trans folks are always saying! White played NBA basketball for a couple seasons three games. He sounds more like he played football and has head injuries now, but it was basketball he played. Now he is running for Senate. OK. There is a whole back story to why White and another not particularly accomplished former NBA player who is now a wingnut are doing this. Do you want to know it? [New York Post]
“Civilizational values” is the Marco Rubio State Department’s euphemism for helping spread Nazi ideas while meddling in other countries’ elections. [Guardian]
Woke Bill Kristol has a point to make about this Axios story about thow Republicans are “stuck” with Max Miller, now that he has allowed the deadline to pass to get out of the race.
MOVIE TIME! The 47 (Spanish El 47) is a historical drama about a guy named Manolo Vital who along with his family and friends got kicked out of the Extremadura and Andalucía regions of Spain in the 1950s during the dictatorship and came to Barcelona looking to build a better life. Fast forward to the 1970s, democracy had come, but bizarrely they were still treating these poor people who lived on the other side of the mountain in the community they built with their bare hands like shit. One thing they needed was a simple damn bus line. This is the “based on true events” story of how they got that. It’s good, it just hit Apple TV for renting, Spanish/Catalán with English subtitles.
And for a second movie recommendation, we have Agustín’s Newspaper, a documentary about El Mercurio, the newspaper and its ruling family that propped up Pinochet’s reign of terror in Chile, its disappearances and mass murder. In essence, it’s a do documentary about the role of fascist press in a fascist regime. Sound familiar? By the way, the more we read about and watch documentaries on authoritarian fascist movements in Latinoamérica — and of course it must be said, the way Henry Kissinger and others always made sure the United States was there to help them with their coups and whatnot — we’re struck more and more by the path Marco Rubio is cutting as secretary of State, and the inheritance of right-wing authoritarian sickness that represents. It’s something that deserves more of a magnifying glass, his presence where he is and the actions he’s undertaking, especially as he endeavors to brand left-wing people terrorists and enemies of the state.
Anyway, it seems like an important watch right now. Available on a streaming service called OVID, you can do a free trial. Spanish with subtitles. (You can tinker with the CC settings on the trailer below to first get closed captions and then translate them into English.)
OK, more stories when we have some!
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The long-awaited (?maybe?) post on the radula of gastropods: https://martiniambassador.substack.com/p/banana-slugging-it
And your meme chat: https://open.substack.com/chat/posts/83d5e00b-a4d3-4dbd-bec5-c30955fa8076
“The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience.” - Albert Camus
And yet…🙄