Today the news is about the economy. And it ain’t good. Job growth is down, unemployment numbers are stagnant, a “key economic indicator” of inflation is “hot.” I think that means inflation is up.
The jobs report isn’t just kinda bad. It turns out that the last two jobs reports muchly overstated the number of jobs actually created and had to be revised down.
Payrolls have now averaged just 35,000 over the last three months — the weakest pace of job growth since the onset of the pandemic in 2020.
Jobs reports always contain revisions to previous months’ reports, with sizable revisions rare but not entirely uncommon. Last August, under the Biden administration, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said 818,000 fewer jobs had been created over a 12-month period than initially thought.
Maybe Trump’s Golden Age is being postponed.
“Not only was this a much weaker than forecast payrolls number, the monster downward revisions to the past two months inflicts a major blow to the picture of labor market robustness,” Seema Shah, chief strategist with Principal Asset Management, said in a note following the release. “What’s more concerning is that with negative impact of tariffs only just starting to be felt, the coming months are likely to see even clearer evidence of a labor market slowdown.”
See Paul Krurman, The Meaning of a Weak Jobs Report. Most likely, he says, the employment numbers resulted from uncertainty, as Trump’s tariff numbers changed from day to day. However,
These numbers don’t show the long-run damage from Trump’s tariffs, which are really a completely different story. In fact, the short-run jobs picture may improve now that it’s clear that there won’t be any real trade deals, just Smoot-Hawley redux as far as the eye can see.
One thing is clear: The previously reported good numbers were proof of Trump’s brilliance. Now that they’ve been revised away, the bad numbers are clearly Biden’s fault, or maybe Jerome Powell’s, or Barack Obama’s.
Actually, Trump blames the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, whom Trump has promised to fire because of the July report. So these may be the last honest jobs numbers we’ll see for a while.
In other news: I have just read that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting will be shutting down at the end of September. They’ve decided they can’t survive Trump’s cuts. I’m not sure what this will do to PBS and NPR stations around the country.
See also Ghislaine Maxwell moved to federal prison camp in Texas. Her status as a sex offender got waived and she was moved into the same minimum security facility as Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes and some woman who used to be on “Real Housewives of Salt Lake City.” I guess we can assume this is a somewhat cushier place than where she was. And I guess we can assume some quid pro quo was involved.
And see also The FBI Redacted Trump’s Name in the Epstein Files at Bloomberg. Of course they did.
And I want to go back to the new White House ballroom Trump plans to build. One detail I missed yesterday is that said ballroom will take up 90,000 square feet. A regulation football field, including end zones, is 57,600 square feet. Is Trump planning to hold conventions and rock concerts in said ballroom?
This behemoth is not going to be part of the current White House but next to it. Like this:
And my next question is, where is the estimated $200 million (which seems low to me) coming from? Congress didn’t appropriate it. According to CBS, “The approximately $200 million project will be funded by President Trump and other private donors, White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said.” We aren’t being told who the private donors are. And construction will begin in September.
If we ever get our country back, one of the new rules should be that presidents may not remodel the White House or add new buildings or make changes to the grounds without permission from Congress. They can redecorate to their heart’s content, But this is ridiculous. And America really needs to know who the private donors are. That’s not something that should remain secret.
And let’s not forget what he’s done to the Rose Garden. Here’s a recent Before and After. I have no idea where they’re going with the blue lines and little canopy things.
But it’s going to be a really great look for Trump to be building a whopper fancy ballroom with secret money while the U.S. economy tanks. And read all about how Trump is getting played on his tariff deals.
It is so bad, the talking heads are near mute.
It is so bad, even the dogs won't nibble at it.
It is so bad, the word unconscionable seems too tame.
It is so bad it might be bad to even ask about those blue lines.
It is so bad even ascribing numbers (like counting) falls under authoritarian rule. One to one correspondence is not enough if the counting yields a politically unacceptable number. To report a politically unacceptable number is now a firing offense.
What a horror show.
All it needs now is those red Xmas trees.
When the USSR fell, it fell suddenly. US Intelligence was caught flat-footed – they did not have a clue. Later we found out that the reason was that the US was sooooo well plugged into the Russian inside numbers that we were totally unaware how fragile the USSR economy was. The USSR was built on fraud – they were required to hit goals set by the state and (on paper) they succeeded magnificently. In the real world, basic necessities were unavailable to the average communist, but inside the Kremlin, they had report after report of how successful the USSR was. US Intell was too stupid to recognize that either the reality of the average communist consumer was wrong, or the reports were.
I bring this up because Trump fired the lady who assembles and adjusts unemployment numbers. Yesterday, I mentioned that some are saying the WH is fudging the numbers. IMO, this will accelerate as Trump fires anybody who reports unfavorable numbers. 'We' need to find alternate sources of accurate numbers – for example, one of the monster payroll companies can accurately assess if paychecks issued are increasing in number and size. The service that many clients and they are outside government. But are prices rising? Who collects and reports the numbers? (Gas prices at the pump we know – it's avaialble on your phone, Who keeps the history on gas prices and compiles them into national tables?) Auto prices is another item we should be able to track outside what the WH wants to report. In my entire lifetime, this hasn't been a problem – that an entire administration will be committed to providing fictional numbers to please Dear Leader.
The Kremlin got high on their own supply of propaganda and they completely crashed and burned. We The People should be totally ahead of the con with real data that the WH will have to respond to. If the WH says everything is perfect while the reality of the working class sucks, we should be able to weaponize reality in a LOT of elections.
Actually, Tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors is doing Project Price Check. Doesn't have all you might want, but it's a start.
https://mockpaperscissors.com/2025/08/01/project-price-check-3/
Tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors has an occasionally updater price check. Not all you might wish for, but it's a start.
https://mockpaperscissors.com/2025/08/01/project-price-check-3/
Heather Cox Richardson, National Treasure, explains Why Trump's Really Building a White House Ballroom
I'm starting to see fascism like a flood, the waters rise and rise, demolishing everything in its path. But eventually it peaks and topples, and people are left to clean up the wreckage. And the country will never be the same as before.
This is the same thesis of The Fourth Turning, an influential book written back in the 90s, which predicted the kind of things we're seeing today. Influential in the sense that Steve Bannon is a huge proponent and based his thinking on it, and Al Gore sent a copy of the authors' antecedent work to every member of Congress.
Every 80-100 years in American history there's a big crisis, from which the country eventually emerges and is irrevocably changed. That's what it feels like we're in today. I read it years ago, and forgot about it, until I saw that Dr Russell Razzaque made a video about it, The 30-Year-Old Book That Predicted Today’s Chaos | What Comes Next
As for the hideous ballroom project, it's debatable whether 79 year old, scandal plagued 45 will finish it. Nonetheless, his desire to fire the economic statistician who delivered bad news is redolent of Stalin. The waters continue to rise.
The thing that's different from Stalin's time, is that the truth tellers cannot be so easily silenced, thanks to the internet. All the Russians had were printing presses and telegraphs, easy for any despot to shut down. Russia was mostly illiterate anyway. It means that for us, the season of fascism may be over much sooner than in earlier times. Months or Years, not Years and Decades.
Legacy entities like the Washington Post or CBS News have capitulated (will be washed away), but there are thousands of individual bloggers and content producers (truth tellers) replacing them. The country will be radically different by the time the flood finishes its wrecking phase. And there's no turning back.
A final note on The Fourth Turning, and then I’ll stop talking about it.
Howe (one of the authors) wrote an update called The Fourth Turning is Here This is the best video I've seen that explains the the ideas in the book, particularly the graphics.
A turning is like a season: spring – summer – fall – winter. The baby boomers grew up during summer, for example. I remember when summer became autumn, politically in America, around 1980. We're now in Winter. The book has chapter names like: The Crisis of Winter, and the Coming of Spring.
Spring is what Democrats and anyone who rode through this mess should be preparing for, right now.
Spring could well be what China gets to dominate. They think they are in quite a different historical cycle. Then again, the reptiles could make a comeback. They got a real setback with that asteroid.
The trend lines all seem be headed toward a bit of a dead end. Circles are at least a bit less foreboding than lines. Not having a beginning or an end has advantages.