Regional Car Dealership Rococo. Tabs, Mon. Aug. 11, 2025
Morning news roundup and things to read!
It’s Monday! What’s going on?
The man somehow elected President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, plans to meet with Russian President Vlad Putin this Friday in Alaska. Why there? Is Putin shopping for more former Russian territory he might want back? Also Trump has not decided yet if Ukrainian President Zelenskyy will be invited to the meeting. Which is supposed to be about peace in Ukraine. Ok. (NBC)
Well, this sounds ominous:
(Crime in DC and nationwide is at a 30-year low.)
Vice President JD Vance, fresh from floating down an Ohio river he’d raised so he wouldn’t scrape his asshole, has set off on his seventh vacation in six months, this time to irritate locals in the Cotswolds. But he’s not all play: The Daily Beast reports that before he left, he did make time for an Epstein Files coverup meeting. (Daily Beast / Observer UK)
Seems like it should be a much bigger story that Sec. Def. Pete Hegseth re-tweeted a clip of men from his Christian Nationalist church saying women should not have the right to vote.
Whatever happened to Alexander Acosta, Trump’s Secretary of Labor who gave Jeffrey Epstein that sweetheart deal that kept him from having to register as a sex offender? He’s been attending White House Bible study with Pam Bondi, and evangelizing in Uruguay and Argentina. Oh. (Johnathan Larsen)
Not content for the US to crash its own satellites so nobody can find out CO2 exists, now Energy Secretary / former fracking company executive Chris Wright is going to go back and re-write the US’s past climate reports. (France24)
After two months, IRS Commissioner Billy Long has been removed from his post and will be nominated ambassador to Iceland, after Long was given a list of 40,000 suspected illegal immigrants and he was only able to find 3 percent of their addresses by delving into their confidential tax records. (Washington Post archive link)
A court ordered ICE in Los Angeles to quit doing arrests by profiling people, but they’re jumping out of Penske trucks at Home Depot anyway. (France24)
ICE raided restaurants in Butler County, PA and utterly wrecked them, and owners say they also emptied the walk-ins of food. Here are agents caught on video carrying out food boxes. (WTAE)
Heartbreaking: “How life has gotten worse for immigrant children under Trump 2.0” (Baltimore Banner)
The founder of the Neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen Division, Brandon Russell, was sentenced to 20 years for his part in a plot to have some minions he’d groomed online blow up a Baltimore Gas & Electric substation. Bye. (Baltimore Banner)
In Brazil, former President and right-wing coup-plotter Jair Bolsonaro could face decades in jail after allegedly leading a murderous conspiracy to seize power after his rival Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva beat him in the 2022 presidential election. Bolsonaro’s supporters are praying for Trump to come save him, but so far Trump has said best he will do is a 50 percent tariff. (The Guardian)
Unsure how to describe what Donald Trump has done, decorating-wise, to the White House? McMansion Hell has found the words you’ve been looking for, and they are “Regional Car Dealership Rococo.” (McMansion Hell)
The mystery of what “retro” nudie “porn” Oklahoma schools head Ryan Walters showed to shocked school board members has been solved! It was Jackie Chan’s “The Protector,” which had been showing on cable at the time. But how it got broadcast to the meeting is still a mystery, and one that the Oklahoma Senate is much hotter to solve than the mystery of why Oklahoma kids don’t read or math so good. (NonDoc)
Between pissing off Canada with tariffs and younger generations drinking less, Kentucky bourbon is going bust. (BBC)
Need happy news? An eight-mile-long anti-Trump protest in Ohio!
WONKMEET in CLEVELAND with me, Shy, and Cleveland’s newest resident, Ziggy Wiggy! Aug. 16, 1 p.m. at the Boss Dog Brewing Company, 2179 Lee Rd., Cleveland Heights, OH 44118. I’m buying!
What time is it? It’s time to IMPEACH!
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Hello, have a Monday kitten gif: https://martiniambassador.substack.com/p/strange-kitten-in-the-mirror
And meme chat: https://open.substack.com/chat/posts/f3ccc0d1-c6fd-42c4-9777-51b0c1cdc709?utm_source=share
Bourbon has been succumbing to price inflation and gimmick bottles for a while. Resellers have been scooping up mid priced bottles sold in statw-controlled pricing stores and reselling them for double the price for years. It was inevitable that the market would collapse at some point.