Author: Joey deVilla

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It’s a gorgeous morning here in Tampa — hope your “Hump Day” is going just as well!

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A lot of what you need to know about the mentality of Trump’s base appears in the final sentence of this New York Times article on the government shutdown’s effects on people who voted for him:

“He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.” That person voted for Trump to not to bring themselves up, but to bring others down — a particularly toxic, violent, and even deadly form of “crabs in a bucket” thinking. The Atlantic was right: The cruelty is the point.

Recommended reading

• Vox: “He’s not hurting the people he needs to be”: a Trump voter says the quiet part out loud
• Anil Dash on Twitter: “The wild thing is, for all their exhortations to listen to Trump voters, major media almost never actually reports on the fact that they consistently, loudly, unapologetically want violence. They think hurting people is good, and somehow all the sympathetic profiles won’t say it.”

I have better things to do than watch a falsehood-filled speech by Trump, but I will be reading the New York Times’ summary and fact-checks later.

Recommended reading

• Fast Company: To keep track of Trump’s lies, play Border Wall Bingo
• ACLU: A Look at Trump’s Biggest Border Lies
• CNN: Jake Tapper debunks Trump’s ‘wall of lies’
• USA Today: 9 facts you should know about the border before Trump addresses the nation
• New York Times: On the Border, Little Enthusiasm for a Wall: ‘We Have Other Problems That Need Fixing’

Thanks to Cameron Barrett for the find!

I’m posting this photo for no other reason than it’s one of my favorites of Anitra and me.

There’s an old saying: “Real life is just like high school, just with more money.” I think that the high school is question is Hogwarts.

I’m pretty sure that “Hufflepuff” is simply the Wizarding World’s answer to “cable/internet customer service representative.”

Also: SLYTHERIN 4 LYFE!

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Many things at ALDI are incredibly good deals. Others, not so much.

The Republican side of the House being sworn in. They’re like leftover instant mashed potatoes in the fridge: white, cold, weirdly uniform, and way too easy to stir.

From Vox:

Thursday’s House speaker vote and opening of the 116th Congress set up a striking visual moment in the lower chamber: On Democrats’ side of the aisle, a historically diverse class of women and people of color were clad in bright outfits as they were sworn in, while on the Republican side, a relatively homogeneous group of mostly white men wore nearly identical dark suits.

The Democrat side of the House being sworn in. A little bit of this, a little bit of that, and much closer to the American ideal.