Actually open up the New Testament and read it

My Sunday movie was Vermiglio. It is the name of a village high in the Italian Alps. The time is WWII. Cesare runs a farm and is also the area’s school teacher. He has (I think I counted) eight children. Also with the family is Pietro from Sicily who is a friend of son Attilio and a deserter from the army. The movie is mostly about the family, though Pietro does have an influence, mostly by falling in love with oldest daughter Lucia. There’s also little boy Pietrin who is enamored with Pietro and has a lot of questions about life. When the war ends Pietro is encouraged to visit his family back in Sicily. As one character says, “Men who come back from the war have secrets.” With that setting the views, of course, are gorgeous. The acting is well done. The story is quiet and heartbreaking. It deserves the awards it has won and has been nominated for. There might be an LGBTQ angle to the story. Daughter Ada is secretive, has a good friend in Virginia, finds and enjoys her father’s pornography, and has a great deal of guilt over it. The nasty guy made a big deal about signing an agreement with Greenland and Denmark about putting more US forces on the island and doing so while at the United Nations General Assembly. This seems to have quieted his quest to take over Greenland, though my fear is the increased US military will make an attack possible. A tweet by Nero plays golf includes a tweet by Capt. Karjalainen:

Denmark just pulled of the diplomatic heist of the decade. They basically got Trump to re-sign the 1951 Greenland agreement, but added a genius “poison pill”: the deal is only valid as long as the US stays in NATO. Trump gets the domestic headline, but Denmark quietly locked them into the European security architecture. Masterful.

Lisa Needham of Daily Kos reported the nasty guy is doing for his plans for his triumphal arch the same thing he did to his ballroom – declare it is a military site and thus vital to national security. I hate to quote the nasty guy’s tweets, but this is the quickest way to say it. The arch:

will house, store, and have the rapid ability to use large numbers of drones, plus Snipers, on both the roof and plaza areas, and additionally have and hold large quantities of sniper ammunition in storage.

Of course, he also says there was a “strong request” from the military to turn the arch into a military complex. Needham wrote:

How will Americans make a pilgrimage to the Temu Trump Arch to venerate Dear Leader if the thing is also a military installation bristling with weapons? Do civilians normally just get to stroll through those sorts of things?

All this, well the arch all by itself, would be a violation of the Commemorative Works Act. A suit is being brought by a group of veterans. A big question is whether they have standing. The people who do have standing: Congress. The people not doing anything to stop this monstrosity: Congress. When this story broke Michel Martin of NPR spoke to retired Major General Randy Manner about arming the arch. The important points Manner made: Saying the military begged for it is an insult to the military, though it could have come from Secretary Hegseth. Actual admirals and generals are absolutely opposed to this absurd idea. Storing ammunition there is absurd, it offers insufficient protection. One does not advertise where the ammunition is being stored. One puts snipers nests where one intends to do the shooting and the only ones who will be around it are Americans – so the nasty guy is implying the target for the snipers is us. This is close to the flight path to the Reagan Airport, a terrible place to put drones. This is a site that does not need a military presence because there would be no enemy threat there, it would not be a combat zone. All that should scare every American. Needham also reported that Hegseth has announced all male service members 30 and older will be tested for their testosterone levels. Anyone with a deficiency will be given “treatment pathways.” Needham wrote:

That testing is mandatory. You can’t waive it by saying “Pete, unlike you, I am not so insecure in my masculinity as I age that I need to start juicing and shooting T.”

Doctors say screening for low T is weird when there are no symptoms. And high levels of T increase the risk of infertility. Needham noticed that this appears to be gender-affirming care, the same thing this administration is eager to deny to trans people. Hegseth claims it is different. But hypocrisy is frequently the point of this administration. And eventually this requirement is supposed to be rolled out for female service members. How is that going to work out? Definitely not great. Especially since they’re trying to ban actual trans soldiers. Clay Bennett posted a cartoon on Kos. He titled it, “Pete’s gender-affirming care.” It shows Hegseth’s desk with bottles and syringes. The label on one is facing out and says:

Testosterone Warning: High levels of testosterone can cause irritability, aggression, and impaired judgment.

Yup, Hegseth definitely wants the aggression and won’t notice the irritability and impaired judgment. In the comments of Tuesday’s pundit roundup for Kos I saw a cartoon that has been deleted, so I can’t credit the creator. It said essentially, “How can there be a triumphal arch when there have been no triumphs?” David Rothschild tweeted:

Republicans' largest donor (by far) is hosting a robust debate on his platform about whether Jews are white. Corporate Media will ask precisely 0 Republicans about their largest donor's all-consuming misogyny, xenophobia, antisemitism, he will instead by referred to as a visionary industrialist.

A comment by Dartagnan quotes an article in Salon:

If Talarico wins, the white evangelical leadership is very worried about an earthquake among their "faithful." Their biggest nightmare, apparently, is that their congregations actually open up the New Testament and read it. "This is why there’s a growing panic in the Republican ranks over the campaign of James Talarico, the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate in Texas, and it’s not just fear that he could beat Ken Paxton, the state’s Republican attorney general. Win or lose, Talarico — a seminary student-turned-politician — embodies an existential threat to the right’s long-standing myth that to be Christian must necessarily mean voting Republican. “As a young evangelical we were taught repeatedly and clearly: It is not possible to be a Christian and a Democrat,” Brad Onishi, a research associate at the University of California, Berkeley and co-host of the “Straight White American Jesus” podcast, told me. “But candidates like Talarico are changing that. His theological acumen and keen ability to use the language of the New Testament to disarm bad-faith religious attacks is showing a new way forward.”

In response to a tweet and article about Sen. John Cornyn and Bush II holding a fundraiser in Dallas to benefit tight senate races but definitely not Texas candidate Ken Paxton, Evan Sutton tweeted:

lol at all the people who've been going "Why isn't Dubya speaking out about Trump??" folks, he's committed to the same f---ing project.

Back in May nasty junior was married. The big news at the time was that daddy didn’t bother to attend. But it was a lavish, three-day party, befitting someone who is rich and wants to impress people in how important he is. The party was held on private islands in the Bahamas and ended with fireworks launched from a barge. The bride wrote on Instagram, “It was everything we dreamed of and more.” Last week Justin Elliott, Brett Murphy, Joshua Kaplan and Alex Mierjeski of ProPublica investigated one important detail of the party – nasty junior paid for very little of it, even though his financial worth is estimated at $300 million. Umar Kremlev, a Russian oligarch close to President Vladimir Putin paid for a great deal – hundreds of thousands of dollars. There were about 50 guests and most of them wondered why a few tended to stand off by themselves and speak Russian. The obvious questions are: Why? And is this a national security issue? Because also obvious: If Kremlev spent so much money on nasty junior he is expecting something in return from the son of the Oval Office occupant. The article goes into detail on who Kremlev is – he has a record of extortion and battery and Ukraine imposed personal sanctions. It also mentions the everlasting efforts of Kremlin operatives trying to build relationships with US government officials and their families.