(((Steve Chapman)))

As I've said many times, I'll worry about big businesses as much as government when Wal-mart and McDonalds start sending armed thugs to force me to spend money there.

They don't quite understand Dem voters do not care if Dem leaders are exposed. We will gladly excommunicate anyone in those files.

The Budget Lab at Yale University, a nonpartisan research center, updated its tariff tracker on Friday. It calculated that American consumers will have to contend with an average effective tariff rate of 18.3 percent, the highest since 1934. As a result, the center estimates that price increases will cost each household on average $2,400 this year. Shoe prices, for example, are expected to rise 40 percent in the short run. America’s total economic output — its gross domestic product — is estimated to shrink by about $120 billion annually in the years to come.

Nonpartisan budget lab at Yale has "calculated that American consumers will have to contend with an average effective tariff rate of 18.3 percent, the highest since 1934. As a result, the center estimates that price increases will cost each household on average $2,400 this year."

Ladies and gentlemen

May I present

Today’s winner of the internet in a single sentence award

U.S. Hiring Slowed Sharply Over the Summer July’s report ​suggests that pockets of weakness in the labor market are starting to take hold. The unemployment rate rose slightly to 4.2%.

"The U.S. added a seasonally adjusted 73,000 jobs in July, the Labor Department reported Friday, below the gain of 100,000 jobs economists polled by The Wall Street Journal had expected to see. ..That left May as having added just 19,000 jobs and June just 14,000." www.wsj.com/economy/jobs...

It's not just war. It's genocide – and it's being done in our name | Opinion ***

"Israel clearly intends to bring about the destruction of Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip, to turn it into an unlivable place. It intends to ethnically cleanse it, whether by genocide or population transfer – preferably both." www.haaretz.com/opinion/2025...

Wow. The Washington Free Beacon has come out expressly and loudly in favor of prison rape, as a valid “ritualistic” aspect of punishment.

GWB ushered thru the Prison Rape Elimination Act—milquetoast in its provisions, significant in its optics.

This reflects a real coarsening on the Right.

Jesus.

When a batter swings and hits the catcher with his bat going around, he ought to be ejected. Dangerous and inexcusable. A rule change would protect catchers.

‘Putin>>>>>NATO’ On a Trump-administration official and the state of the American Right

www.jaynordlinger.com/p/putinnato

Israel committing genocide in Gaza, say Israel-based human rights groups Reports detailing intentional targeting of Palestinians as a group, and systemic destruction of Palestinian society, add to pressure for action

"That was the moment that pushed a whole system and how it operates in Gaza from a policy of control and oppression into one of destruction and extermination.” www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...

The World Has Too Much Steel, but No One Wants to Stop Making It

"The result is sinking prices, shrinking profits and unemployed workers. Measured by the kilogram, steel costs less than bottled water." www.nytimes.com/2025/07/25/b...

YouTube video by Jan Hammer Tom Lehrer - Fight Fiercely Harvard

Tom Lehrer, RIP m.youtube.com/watch?v=27PS...

Just so’s we’re all clear, almost 3/4 of everything we buy from Europe is now 15% more expensive.

Just finished the peerless Rebecca Makkai’s The Hundred Year House and even the acknowledgments are a treat

Today, @chicagotribune.com laid off five guild staff members in a roughly 10% cut to our newsroom. These layoffs underscore a sad but unsurprising failure of leadership by Alden Global Capital, our hedge fund owner, and local management.

Opinion | 11 tips for becoming a columnist Here’s my advice for handling the awesome responsibility of this job.

Some professional news: After more than a decade of columnizing at The Washington Post, I'm taking the buyout.
This is my last column. It is my advice to any other lucky pundits who land a perch like this -- with 11 principles I've aspired to, even if I haven't always achieved them:
wapo.st/3TU2fGw

Opinion | The Lunacy of Lawfare Against the Fed Criminalizing a spat over interest rates is an Argentina-level mistake.

www.wsj.com/opinion/jero...

Yes, Israel Is Committing Genocide in Gaza To deny a genocide as obvious as the one in Gaza is proof of moral and intellectual bankruptcy.

open.substack.com/pub/daniella...

MAGA clamors for arrests as Trump accuses Obama of "treason" Trump's most prominent supporters say he must deliver on his promise of "transparency" and retribution.

Hey MAGA world, what is it you don't understand that if Trump as president has immunity for official acts, so does Obama.

Of course, that is even assuming these accusations have any basis beyond trying to distract you from Trump's connection to Epstein.

www.axios.com/2025/07/23/t...

Never before in the Nation’s almost 250 year history has America’s present and future depended more on the free press than it does today.

‘Absolutely nothing got by him’: Veteran Chicago defense attorney Thomas Anthony Durkin dies at 78 Longtime criminal defense attorney Thomas Anthony Durkin, known as a tireless advocate for his clients who enjoyed holding the government accountable for overstepping authority in everything from t…

I always thought that if I got arrested and charged with a crime, I'd call Tom Durkin. RIP. www.chicagotribune.com/2025/07/21/d...

2004: Transsexual athletes OK for Athens

U.S. Olympic Officials Bar Transgender Women From Women's Competitions

2004 vs 2025

In case you're curious about how many trans women won medals during this period, the answer is zero. But sure, implement a ban anyway, I guess.

Bari’s key insight as an entrepreneur is that there is a bottomless demand for rich people to have their existing opinions sold back to them as forbidden knowledge

uh…hunter biden for president?

#squirrel 🐿️

Actually, they lost their minds because there was a black president. Everything they claimed they had a problem with, like Michelle Obama's very typical first-lady campaign, was a smoke screen for their infantile racism.

i can see this one is going to get a lot of use

YouTube video by Qiu Lan CONNIE FRANCIS - My Heart Has A Mind Of It's Own (1960) with lyrics

Connie Francis, RIP.
youtu.be/Gf7oOugV4EE?...