The people of Gaza are starving. The people of Gaza are being starved because of a failed humanitarian system implemented by a vengeful government, run by people who do not seem to care if the people of Gaza starve — or are displaced or shot or bombed. To quote Haaretz, Israel is starving Gaza.

As is so often the case in war, women and children who didn’t start it and did nothing to perpetuate it see unique horrors. According to UNFPA, the birthrate in Gaza has declined by more than 40% since before the war: Many women are too malnourished to get pregnant or to carry pregnancies to term. A third of the babies born in Gaza were born underweight, premature, or with other problems requiring putting them in the NICU. And what NICU? Gaza’s infrastructure has been destroyed, and even basic supplies for infants — things like baby formula — cannot get through the Israeli blockade. The rate of maternal death is 20 times what it was in 2022.

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I can’t find an Israeli statement on these particular stats; I would guess that, as is the case with most statistics coming out of Gaza, Israel disputes them. But I haven’t seen Israel offer its own numbers. Israel has blocked journalists from entering Gaza, so reports are impossible to independently corroborate. Israel has blocked many humanitarian groups from bringing the volume of aid needed.

Writing about Israel and Palestine is exhausting because it requires so much throat-clearing, and it’s a master class in whataboutism. What about what this group did first? What about this other concern? What about this other line of culpability? There are no shortage of bad guys here, no danger in running out of people onto whom to cast blame, no dearth of moments when all of this could have been different. But here, in this reality, Gazans are starving right now. Children are starving. Mothers cannot feed their babies. None of this is a natural disaster. This was both predictable and predicted.

At the core of my politics is the idea that we can care about many things all at once — that acknowledging the suffering of one group does not have to take away from the suffering of another. Proportion matters, of course. But empathy needn’t be finite. The suffering of Israelis on Oct. 7 was immense. The traumas that follow generations of Jewish experience are real. The grief for the hostages remains raw. The evil of Hamas, a group that is now trying to leverage the world’s outrage at mass starvation to enable their own ends even if it means more Palestinians will starve, is hard to overstate. The reality of rising anti-Semitism is terrifying, and makes a Jewish state feel all the more necessary. The fear that rises up when opposition to this war and to the Israeli government gets tied up in opposition to a Jewish state is acute — when the war is discussed in terms of whether or not Israel should exist, a reflexive and in my view pointless and dangerous frame not applied to places like, say, Sudan or South Sudan or Rwanda or the DRC or Russia or Pakistan or any of the Islamic countries that denies equal rights regardless of religion. We can hold all of that.

And also, and I would argue, we can say with the utmost urgency: Mothers in Gaza are cradling babies whose spines are visible through their skin. Desperate, hungry people are being shot by IDF forces at food distribution centers. Far-right Israeli leaders and some average Israelis are saying without fear that they want to take Gaza as part of Israel, that they want an ethnic cleansing, that forget debates over whether this is a genocide — they want a genocide.

Israel controls the food that comes in and out of Gaza. The Israeli government has been using food as leverage, arguing that Hamas steals food supplies, sells them, and then profits, using those resources to continue waging this war. Hamas has proven that they believe vast Palestinian suffering benefits their cause. But Israel also has a choice about how much suffering to impose. You don’t starve a civilian population because horrible actors might steal and sell the food.

Gaza is starving. It is starving because of choices made by the Israeli government. There is no explaining that away.

Israel chose to put into place a new aid system run by private US contractors who dole food out at a tiny number of sites overseen by IDF soldiers. They gutted the previous systems of humanitarian relief and aid delivery. They struggled to find any competent, experienced person to lead this aid scheme, because it was so facially dangerous and foolish. It has turned into a calamity. And despite worldwide outrage, Israel is doing little to fix the situation, because, as far as I can tell, Israel’s current leadership isn’t particularly moved by the reality of Palestinian starvation, suffering, and death. Neither is America’s current leadership, which seems keen to enable the worst parts of the Netanyahu government.

These evil policies are a threat to Palestinian life. But they’re also a threat to Israel. It may not be rational or fair that Israel’s existence is up for debate, but Israel is a small albeit extremely powerful country with some very hostile neighbors, relying on a United States with shrinking global influence and a Europe with shrinking sympathies. Even before the war, Israel’s right-wing government was, like America’s, turning the country away from democracy (and got much farther than the Trump administration has here). The more Israel behaves as a violent, authoritarian power engaging in shocking war crimes, slaughtering civilians, and forcibly displacing an entire population, the harder it gets for anyone decent — including many liberal Jews — to stand in its defense. Israel’s biggest threat to its own existence as even a marginal democracy is itself — or at least, this current iteration of itself. (I would also argue that the emergence on “anti-Zionism” and the end of Israel as a Jewish state as a core requirement of leftist and pro-Palestinian politics is just as much an own goal, insofar as it creates a feedback loop of existential threat that makes conflict easy and compromise nearly impossible, but that’s another post).

Israel, like America, is not just a country but an idea and a set of ideals. And like America, the core of that idea is contested. What is at stake right now, at least for supporters of Israel, is not the nation’s physical existence — Hamas, I am pleased to inform you, does not have the ability to wipe Israel off the map — but its soul.

You can’t starve a civilian population and keep your soul.

As an American, I don’t believe that a vile government impugns the legitimacy of a country, or confirms some inherent badness of a whole people; if that was the case, I’d be in some trouble. But I do think this is a moment that demands clarity and action, not justification or equivocating. Gazans are starving. Babies are wasting away. This is a choice. We can make a different one. And there will be dire consequences to continuing down this path, including for the many people who are turning Gaza into Hell.

xx Jill

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Every now and then, a writer will put out an article that will attract the attention of the worst people on the internet. It’s like the Bat Signal has gone up, and they gather like maggots to spew their “opinions.” Dana DuBois of genXy had this dubious honor the other day when she wrote about how grown men leer at her teenage daughter. Not glance and take note of how attractive she is, but linger and stare, fully aware that she is underage.

genXy

Middle-Aged Men Keep Ogling My 16-Year-Old

“This way, mom!” shouts my eldest daughter, carving a path through the throng gathered for the Fremont Solstice parade…

Read more

5 days ago · 304 likes · 213 comments · Dana DuBois

Now, I could comment on a similar experience in my life. Lila developed a full-grown woman’s body at the annoyingly young age of 13 and has been dealing with ogling teenage boys and creepy men since then. But you really should read Dana’s article if you want that story.

Rather, I am going to stay in my lane and introduce you to some of the delightful “men” that have been flooding her comment section. You see, I have been screaming from the rooftops, FOR YEARS, that there was something deeply wrong with the American right wing. Something gross and vile and dangerous and…growing.

There have always been men who are attracted to young girls. For some, it’s a legitimate sickness, a real mental illness they cannot control and they hate themselves for it. But there is a far larger group who have openly embraced pedophilia for ideological reasons. They have crafted elaborate stories to justify their lust for children and have quietly and very quickly consumed the American far right.

Let’s meet one now. Say hello to “Jason Chastain.” Jason has some thoughts on children. Some very unhealthy but VERY familiar thoughts:

“The male gaze” is catching popularity as a term. It’s a natural phenomena, like gravity. I wonder if women realize it’s the flip side of “The Female Gaze”? I think I’ll have to write about it because there’s a lot to it. But I will share a few points.

Women basically become (physical) “millionaires” age 16 or 17, and get to wreak havoc on male minds for a dozen years. They don’t have to work for it, don’t have to grind in decades of torturous work to build value. They’re born with it.

Men have to build their value with extreme effort, some of them ignored until past their 30’s when they are finally earning.

I have known young men who were wealthy. They got the female gaze. Older married women ogling them for their money or fame. They were grossed out by it, but even more turned off by the crass, grasping materialism. If he was in ordinary clothing in a McDonald’s, she wouldn’t look twice. Repulsive.

I too have felt it. I am an attractive man, did some modeling in Los Angeles years back, so I wasn’t ignored like many younger men. However as I grew older, wearing a suit for my job, the female gaze was discovered. Younger women who ignored me, suddenly were all seductive smiles and batting eyelashes. But their gaze was the suit, the gold watch, the wedding band. And sure enough, in shorts and a polo, the young ones didn’t look twice as. The female gaze, you see, is at the wallet. They don’t want the man, they want a sponsor.

The female and male gazes will happen because they come naturally to the genders. And they each contain something despicable we don’t like when we see it. 🤷‍♂️

If you’re struggling a bit to understand what the actual fuck Jason is talking about, allow me to introduce you to the concept of the “Sexual Market Value.”

If you don’t already know what this is, I am so very very sorry for what I am about to expose you to. However, it’s really REALY important you understand how fucking depraved people like Jason are and exactly how commonplace this way of thinking is.

So, Jason says women are “millionaires” by age 16 or 17 and men have to build their worth. That they’re mostly ignored until they’re in their 30s. Here’s what he’s referring to. This is a chart, a very widely distributed chart, that claims to map out the “value”, or the attractiveness, of men and women to the other sex according to their age.

Aside from grossly objectifying both men AND women, there are a few things to take note of here:

1. A woman’s value is based solely on her physical appeal. How much does she make? Is she successful? Is she a leader in her field? Who fucking cares? Is she young and fuckable? That’s the only relevant aspect in this scenario. That’s why Jason considers 16 and 17-year-olds to be “millionaires.” They’re young and fuckable.

2. A man’s value is based solely on his earning potential. Is he a good man? A good father? Is he a drunken, violent piece of shit? Who fucking cares? Does he have a good job and money? That’s the only relevant aspect in this scenario.

As you can see in Jason’s comment, men are the victims here, not women. Cruel cruel society punishes men and rewards women. When will someone think of the men!?!?!? Boo fucking hoo.

Now, there is a third aspect to this chart that most people do not consider, but you fucking bet I did when I saw it because I’ve been reading the comments from these sick fucks for years.

Look at the chart again. 10 is peak sexual desirability. But 5 is far from undesirable. 4 is pretty good and 3 is OK. It’s only when you get under 3 that you are no longer all that fuckable. Got that?

Now look at the female graph again. What’s the number for age 15? That would be a 5. So in the world of Jason and his fellow creepy kiddie-fiucker weirdos, 15-year-olds are quite attractive to the “male gaze.”

Cool.

Now look at the graph again, and continue the curve to the left. Imagine what would be there if the chart hadn’t been mysteriously cut off. 14 is pretty fuckable. So is 13. 12…maybe 11. Hell, is a 10-year-old a 3 or a 2? We’re not really sure because the skeazy perverts wisely chose not to advertise that aspect of their ideology. But let me tell you right here and right now: They do not see 12-year-olds as out of bounds.

After all, they’ll be “millionaires” in just a few years.

Imagine you’re a 45-year-old man. You lock yourself down a 12-year-old girl. She’s a beautiful little girl so it’s a good bet she’s going to grow up to be a stunning woman. That means when you’re 50 and she’s a 17-year-old “millionaire,” you have another 15 or so years of maximum sexual value before she’s “too old.” That’s a pretty good deal for you, right?

And if you start early, say, 35? Well, you can always get rid of your now-valueless wife in her 30s and find another 12 or 13-year-old.

If that sounds insane and beyond any kind of misogyny you have ever even contemplated, you do not understand how dark and twisted these fucks are.

It gets worse because of course it fucking does.

“Purity.” They loooove to talk about “purity.” They’re obsessed with “purity.” They’ve invented an entire pseudo-science that dictates women who sleep with multiple partners are quite literally genetically damaged. That means any child you have with them isn’t “your” kid. It’s yours and every other man she’s ever fucked. What a whore. Who could ever sleep with a woman with a “high body count?”

So what’s the solution to this made-up problem? Trap them when they’re young and, preferably, a virgin. Oh, and make divorce illegal again so they can never leave. And make birth control illegal so they’ll be forced to have as many children as you want while making them financially dependent on you. Don’t forget to shred the social safety net, making it all but impossible for a mother to flee with her children from an abusive husband.

Now you understand the larger picture here. It’s not JUST about trapping women. It’s about trapping GIRLS, little girls, in abusive, predatory marriages where a grown man can rape them. This is a real thing, not just on the far right, but in mainstream GOP politics.

Why Are Some Republican Lawmakers Hellbent on Preserving Child Marriage?

Jason isn’t the only dipshit weirdo justifying leering at little girls. Dana’s comments were oozing with pedos the FBI should definitely be investigating:

ChiChi is an antivaxxer and a climate change denier. And remember, MEN are the victims of women being sluts and whores. Even when those “women” are only 16.

ChiChi equating urination to arousal suggests he may have his own “pee tape” hidden away. Why are so many of these incel losers also hardcore perverts? I try not to kink shame but…ew. And stop drooling over little girls, you fucking R. Kelly pedo.

Here’s Kyle, a true student of human evolution:

Kyle is wildly racist. He hates Jews and Black people and immigrants. He’s the total scumbag wannabe Nazi package. Literally.

Kyle imagines himself part of the Master Race. Except that he’s afraid of everything. Women. Gay men. Gay women. Feminists. Immigrants. Science. Jews. Blacks. Muslims. The whole world is filled with threats and danger to his precious white maleness. Which is weird because I thought he was the Master Race? If that’s true, why is he such a fragile little bitch?

Did you know the Opinionated Ogre has a weekly podcast? It’s true! New episodes every Thursday! Catch the latest episode here:

The Ogre says "Fuck The Master Race."

Here’s Dan. He knows EXACTLY who to blame. The teenage girls, of course.

It’s important to note that Dan is a fan of Matt Taibbi, a self-professed serial sex pest. I’m sure that’s just a coincidence and not a selling point.

I personally love it when dickless wonders like Dan announce that all men are slavering beasts that cannot control their urges. And then they cry big sobby tears when women say they feel unsafe around men.

“That’s not faaaiiiiiir! Why do you hate men?!?!?” Another whiny little manboy. Fuck off, Dan.

Here’s Richard. He doesn’t get what all the fuss is about! Women stare at him all the time!

My man, they’re not looking at you because they want to fuck you. They’re looking at you because you look like a reject villain from the 1960s Batman show.

Richard appears to be around 55? 60? One wonders how he has walked the earth this long and not learned from a single woman how threatening it is when a man stares at her. How frightening it is when a man approaches her on the street or in an elevator and no one is around. How men fear women laughing at them (for dressing like Temu Doctor Who, perhaps), but women fear men killing them. It doesn’t take much, just a polite refusal to go on a date or exchange phone numbers. “Why don’t you smile when I compliment you, you fucking bitch?!” And then the violence.

But hey, Richard has women stare at him all the time, too, so he totally understands what it’s like for women.

Shut the fuck up, Richard.

Here’s another real winner. This fucktard longs for the day when robots will end his days of being completely unfuckable.

Oh yeah, this is straight up incel shit. He wants a robot fuck toy SOOOOOO badly because it’s currently illegal for him to force a 12-year-old to marry him.

Dana’s comments are littered with this shit. It’s important to understand the rage oozing from these losers. They were never taught to respect women or themselves. They never took a moment of time to understand the world women inhabit because women exist for their sexual gratification and nothing else. Now that women are very much over that bullshit, these sad little manbabies are throwing a temper tantrum because they have to grow up.

But they don’t want to. Why be a man when you can be a fucking pedophile instead? Why better yourself to attract a woman when you can chase after children who don’t know any better and will be trapped in your rapey misogynistic fantasy for decades? It’s so much easier to lower society’s standards to make it easier for you than to raise yourself up. Self-improvement is hard. Destruction is easy.

Just read Jason’s comments if you really want to understand how deep the rot goes.

Women abuse their power. Men are powerless before them. 16-year-old girls have the same body as a 26-year-old. And there it is. That means a 15-year-old is equivalent to 25? 23? A 14-year-old is as good as a 21-year-old? And men just can’t stop themselves!!!

I promise you, when Jason thinks no one will notice, he talks to his fellow pedophiles about how he would fuck a 14-year-old if she were “mature” enough.

This is not the kind of pedophilia where a person is gripped by impulses they cannot control. This is a calculated push to normalize the abnormal. To reduce women to objects and make controlling them as easy as possible because modern women terrify them.

These sick fucks can tell themselves any myth they want to justify it, but at the end of the day, they see their only chance at a long-term relationship is with a child slave. That’s who they are and that’s how they should be treated.

These are dark times but I will continue to tell the stories you need to hear in a clear (and usually profane) voice. If I entertain/anger/inform you, preferably all three, please consider becoming a supporting subscriber today for only $5 a month or just $50 a year.

🖕FUCK THE PATRIARCHY!🖕

Fascism hates organized protests. They fear the public. They fear US. Make fascists afraid again by joining Indivisible or 50501 and show them whose fucking country this is!

The Blue Wave has begun and the fascist fucks are scared. There are 101 days until it hits Virginia and Pennsylvania. If I were a billionaire fascist loser, I’d think REALLY hard about getting out of the way.

Okay, go ahead and pick your jaws up off the floor, so I can get started. What is Trump wrong about this time? The Federal Reserve’s renovation project, because of course he is! He’s a six-time bankrupt former real estate magnate, so what would he know about building construction costs?

As little as you would think, it turns out. Trump made headlines today by forcing a snap visit to the construction site at the Federal Reserve’s Eccles building on Constitution Avenue in Washington. Met by Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, whom Trump has threatened to fire, Trump came quickly to the purpose of his visit to the Fed, the first by a president since 2006 when George W. Bush attended the swearing in of Ben Bernanke.

MAGA ducks nibbling at Chairman Powell, looking for a reason for Trump to fire him, suggested to Trump that he could use the cost overruns on the Fed’s renovation project as a pretext – you know, he’s wasting the people’s money! Fire his ass!

Trump made a show of pulling a sheaf of papers from the folds of his commodious suit and shoving them at Powell, as he claimed that the Fed cost overruns are not the $2.5 billion Powell has quoted, but $3.1 billion. Powell, looking surprised at Trump’s attempt at a “gotcha” moment, quickly scanned the papers he was handed and replied that told Trump had mistakenly lumped in the cost of another Fed renovation, to the Martin building just across C Street behind the Eccles building, which went through its own renovation beginning five years ago. The Fed is using the freshly renovated Martin building to house its offices until the renovation on its headquarters, the Eccles building, is completed.

Trump appeared upset by Chairman Powell’s easy dismissal of his “gotcha” and they moved on to complete the construction site tour. When asked by reporters if he still had plans to fire Powell, Trump brushed aside the questions. He doesn’t want another hiccup in the stock market, which has reacted negatively to Trump’s previous talk of firing Powell.

So, if Donald the genius builder was wrong about the cost overruns being more than advertised, what else could he have gotten wrong?

How about the fact that the Federal Reserve paid for the construction of both of its buildings and is paying for the renovations of the Eccles building from its own funds, over which the Executive Department of the federal government – that would be Donald Trump – has no control or authority whatsoever. Neither does the Congress, which did not appropriate the funds for either Fed building from the public tax coffers. Federal Reserve money is paying for the whole thing.

The cost overruns on the renovation are in line with every other construction project in Washington D.C., as it happens. Buildings as old as the Fed’s headquarters, built in 1935, have to undergo removal of lead and asbestos, just for starters. And then there is the involvement of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts and the National Capital Planning Commission, which both oversee all building projects in Washington to make sure that they meet D.C. building codes and adhere to the federal classical style, which is mandated for government buildings in the nation’s capital.

And then there is the fact that the site of the entire Mall, on which the Fed headquarters sits, is filled with sediment dredged from the Potomac River to erase the creeks and swamps that once existed there. Part of the Fed renovation is to turn the building’s subterranean parking garage into new office space, necessitating the placement of 1,000 “micro-piles” beneath the building’s foundation, which are used when the ground does not permit the driving of regular construction piles.

The short answer: Costs go up, driven by building codes, redesigns, and the natural conditions of building on a former swamp. Powell knew this, and he knew the money in the cost overruns is Federal Reserve money, not Treasury funds. Trump didn’t.

This is what you get when a bumbling buffoon is elected to high office. But we knew that. And it’s what happens when the bumbling buffoon is consumed with ginning up as many distractions as possible to point the attention of his MAGA base and the media away from the real story in Washington D.C.: what is in the Epstein files? We already know the name of Donald Trump is in there, because the Wall Street Journal, already facing a $10 billion lawsuit from Trump, continues to report on details that keep coming its way from within the Trump White House.

And now Trump has to contend with the creators of the animated show, “South Park,” signing a $1.5 billion deal with Trump’s favorite media conglomerate, Paramount, to produce 50 new scathing episodes over the next five years, during four of which Donald Trump will be one of their biggest targets. The episode dropped last night skewered, among other things, Trump’s blackmail of Paramount for $16 million to settle yet another Trump lawsuit and closed with an AI-generated video of the Trump character wandering a desert, removing one piece of clothing after another until he is naked.

Dealing with South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker, newly seated on a pile of Paramount money 100 times bigger than the amount Trump squeezed out of the conglomerate, is going to have him posting Epstein excuses with one thumb and South Park attacks with the other.

I’m thinking this is going to be one of the best August recesses ever.

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The Trump regime is panicking so badly over the Epstein scandal, they shut down the House of Representatives early so Republicans could scurry away like the roaches they are. The clumiest cover-up since Watergate is getting worse by the day and we have all the goodies for you.

Oh, and some other news, too. You know, like Donald Trump probably dying soon and ICE concentration camps being worse than we thought.

Let’s do this.

Ogre Nation News Update!

4:24 - 6:52 Republicans achieve their long-cherished dream of stripping $1 billion in funding from PBS and NPR, which will be a massive blow to…rural America?

6:53 - 15:27 Trump is dying (probably). One less pedophile in the world. Womp womp.

15:28 - 21:15 You Scream I Scream We All Scream Because Of Fucking Ice

21:16 - 53:52 Headlines For Short Attention Spans - Epstein, Epstein, Epstein Edition

53:53 - 1:07:27 Self-care of the Week

Things We Discussed During The Show

Congress votes to strip more than $1 billion in funding for NPR, PBS

What is Trump's vein condition and how serious is it?

“You Feel Like Your Life Is Over” -Abusive Practices at Three Florida Immigration Detention Centers Since January 2025

ICE Agents Invade a Manhattan Little League Field

Exclusive: Pregnant Woman in Tennessee Denied Care for Being Unmarried (Updated)

Mehdi Hasan’s Debate With 20 Far-Right Conservatives On ‘Surrounded’ Goes Viral

Trump administration releases FBI records on MLK Jr. despite his family’s opposition

Durbin: FBI agents were told to ‘flag’ Epstein records that mentioned Trump

Trump's spy chief claims the Obama administration 'manufactured' intel on Russia

House speaker starts August recess early to avoid Jeffrey Epstein votes

Jesse Ventura: Hulk Hogan Ratted Me Out When I Tried To Unionize Wrestling

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A post shared by @thetnholler

Many of the arguments for risings US housing prices relate to events in metro areas. For example, some metro areas like Manhattan and San Franciso have limited land on which to build. Add in rising demand for living in these locations and rules that limit building, and the result is housing prices that rise faster than incomes. Another set of arguments is that in certain destination cities, either big US financial corporations or high-income foreign buyers or investors in short-term rental properties are looking to purchase homes, thus driving up prices.

But in most rural areas, none of these issues really apply . Land on which to build is plentiful, building codes usually aren’t highly restrictive, and buyers from outside the local area are not scooping up properties with the same vigor. But in rural areas, housing prices are rising faster than income anyway.

The Council of Economic Advisers provides a fact sheet showing some of the overall patterns in “The Deterioration of Housing Affordability in Rural America” (March 2025). The first figure shows income and rent for median-income rural renters; the second figure shows income and housing prices for median-income rural homeowners.

(For those interested in detail, “rural” is often defined as “not in an urban area.” CEA writes: “For purposes of this analysis, a rural area is one in which the population density is less than 250 people per square mile.3 With this definition, the estimated rural population in the United States in 2023 comes out to 58 million people, very similar to other estimates.)

It’s not at all obvious why this is happening. One possible explanation, for example, is that the new housing in rural areas has tended to be much more expensive than earlier housing, thus pushing up the average price. But if this was a big factor, then the average age of rural housing should be declining–as a result of this new building–and instead, the average age of rural housing is rising.

Another possible explanation is that the sustained period of low interest rates has cause homebuyers everywhere to feel that they could afford to pay a higher purchase price for a home–because the lower interest rate would hold down their monthly mortgage payments. But it’s not clear why this factor should affect rental housing. Also, if the supply of housing shifts only slowly, then households willing to spend more can drive up price. But shouldn’t the supply of housing in rural areas–with plenty of land and lower levels of regulation–be able to respond to any surge in demand? Or are regulatory constraints on building in rural areas stronger than I have previously believed?

The CEA doesn’t offer an answer here. But the report does point out: “Where housing is expensive and scarce, businesses also face greater difficulties recruiting and retaining workers. Rural America has much to gain if progress can be made revitalizing the growth of housing supply to drive greater affordability …”

The post So Why Has Rural Housing Become Less Affordable? first appeared on Conversable Economist.

Trump is in the Oval Office meeting with Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. seated in front of enough gold leaf to line the tombs of Ferdinand’s mother and father both. A reporter throws a question at him about the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, meeting with Ghislaine Maxwell, the woman incarcerated at the Florida federal prison for sex trafficking young girls.

“I don't know about it, but I think it's something that would be, sounds appropriate to do,” Trump answers. Asked if he thinks it is appropriate that the meeting with Maxwell be conducted by a man who was “your personal attorney,” Trump says, “No, I have no concern. He’s a very talented person, he’s very smart. I didn’t know they were going to do it. I haven’t followed that too much…it’s a…sort of a witch hunt, just a continuation of the witch hunt.”

Trump is impatient with the questions about Epstein. He wants to change the subject, to…uh…“President Obama…they caught President Obama absolutely cold. What they did to this country, starting in 2016, but going up all the way to 2020 and the election, they tried to rig the election, and they got caught. And there should be very severe consequences. After what they did to me? Whether it’s right or wrong, it’s time to go after people. Obama’s been caught directly. People say, oh, you know, it’s a group. It’s not a group. It’s Obama. His orders are on the paper. The papers are signed. What they did in 2016 and 2020, it’s very criminal, very criminal at the highest level. If you look at those papers, they have him stone cold, and it was President Obama. The leader of the gang was President Obama. Barack Hussein Obama. Guilty. He was guilty. This was treason. This was every word you could think of. They tried to steal the election, they tried to obfuscate the election. They did things nobody could ever imagine, even in other countries.”

Over on Capitol Hill, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is shutting down the House of Representatives, putting the place in recess, sending everyone home for the August break more than a week early because Thomas Massie, Republican of Kentucky, is walking around with a discharge petition that could force a vote on the floor on a bipartisan bill that would cause the release of the Epstein files held by the Trump Department of Justice. “The public’s not going to let this die, and rightfully so,” said one of Massie’s Republican allies and a signer of the discharge petition.

Massie himself told reporters, “There are a lot of people here in the swamp who think that, ‘Oh, well, if we spend five weeks on vacation, the pressure for this will dissipate.’ I don’t think it’s going to dissipate. This will be an issue that does follow Republicans through the midterms, and it will follow each individual Republican through the midterms. It will follow people into their primaries. Did you support transparency and justice, or did you come up here, get elected and fall into the swamp? I think it is a watershed moment for the Speaker of the House and the president.”

Nothing to see here, folks. Todd Blanche is the lawyer who defended Trump during his trial in New York on 34 counts of falsifying business records, several of them to cover up the payments he made to shut up Stormy Daniels. Blanche is the lawyer who represented Trump on federal charges that he attempted to overturn the 2020 election. He was on the defense team that took on charges that Trump stole classified documents and illegally stored them in insecure locations within Mar a Lago, such as a public restroom and on the stage in the resort’s ballroom.

That man will be winging his way down to Tallahassee to meet with Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted of child sex trafficking and transporting a minor for the purpose of engaging in a criminal activity, sex with an adult male. “If Ghislaine Maxwell has information about anyone who has committed crimes against victims, the FBI and the DOJ will hear what she has to say,” Blanche said in a statement from the Department of Justice today.

Now, the question is this: Why would Maxwell, who faces 16 more years behind bars on her 20 year sentence in federal prison, be meeting with the former defense attorney for President Donald Trump, with whom she was photographed numerous times in the company of Jeffrey Epstein, for whom she pimped underage girls?

What is Todd Blanche prepared to say to Ghislaine Maxwell? If she refuses to remain silent, she might suffer an accident in federal confinement. She might fall on a stray screwdriver or hand-crafted “shank” that is lying around a prison corridor.

On the other hand, if Maxwell tells Blanche, Trump’s deputy attorney general and former defense lawyer, that she has nothing at all to say about Epstein and sex trafficking of underage girls, because she is innocent of the charges, could she possibly get a deal? Could Blanche himself be prepared to suggest a deal? That if she remains silent about what she knows about Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes, many of which she personally arranged, or about the participation of a certain President of the United States in those crimes, said President will issue her a full and unconditional pardon?

Everything seems to be settling down. The Congress will be in recess. Todd Blanche will be on an airplane. Ghislaine Maxwell will be meeting with her lawyer preparing to meet with the President’s former defense attorney.

By Labor Day, all of this may be old news.

On the other hand, somebody leaked the Epstein birthday book to the Wall Street Journal, and Donald Trump has sued Rupert Murdoch for $10 billion, and Murdoch doesn’t like being sued by a person for whom he did enough favors that he was elected twice to the presidency. Murdoch does not publish stories like the one about Trump’s scribbled birthday card to Jeffrey Epstein on his 50^th birthday that reads like a confession unless he has enough ammo left to defend himself and his media empire. Murdoch is an impatient man. He does not suffer fools gladly. He is not a nice man.

Donald Trump may be about to find out just how not nice Rupert Murdoch is.

Stay tuned. The August recess may not be a vacation from the Epstein story for anyone.

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