So here we are, watching closed doors while Biden and McCarthy negotiate behind those doors over how much ransom Biden will pay to avoid a global economic catastrophe. It’s the kind of news situation I hate: I obviously have to cover it, but I don’t actually know anything I can tell you.
So there’s that. There’s another round of authoritarian legislation being passed in red states. House Republicans are protecting George Santos, who is under indictment. Rudy Giuliani had a bad week. It looks like Georgia’s Trump indictment will drop in August. Ukraine will get F-16s.
But the featured posts aren’t about any of that. John Durham’s long-awaited report trying to discredit the Trump/Russia investigations came out, marking the end of one of the biggest wastes of time and money in Department of Justice history. It’s hard to know exactly what to say about the Durham investigation, because its whole point was to distract us from the reality of the Trump/Russia scandal. So doing an involved critique of Durham’s report is just taking the bait.
Instead, I went back to the original questions I wanted the Mueller investigation to answer, and notice that they’re still unanswered: Why did the 2016 Trump campaign have so many contacts with Russians? And why, when Trump’s people were asked about their Russian connections, did almost all of them lie? After all this time, we can speculate, but we still don’t know. That post “Summing Up at the End of the Trump/Russia Investigations”, is more-or-less done and should post soon.
The second featured post isn’t really about the news at all. It’s a meta post about a topic that keeps coming up for me, and probably comes up for you too: how to evaluate the sources you run across on social media.
As you might expect, I run into this question fairly often, and have developed a standard technique for answering it, which I’ve never shared in so many words. “How I evaluate sources” should post before 10 EDT.
The weekly summary has the debt ceiling and all that other stuff to cover. I’ll try to get it out by noon.
The Weekly Sift 
Comments
There is no crisis like every family our government needs to balance its budget and live within its means
The debt limit is a law restricting how much the federal government may borrow.
The current law says $34.4 trillion. If Congress refuses to change the law, it will remain at $34.4 trillion. Borrowing more than that is illegal. So the government will have to pay its debt obligations out of current revenue.
Thus Amendment 14 is illegal will be stopped in court.
Could the federal government do that?
Of course by making choices.
Current revenue is about eight times current interest payments. (In other words, debt service is about 14 % of revenue. Obviously, there’s enough money coming in to pay existing debt while retaining most government services. Of course, the feds would have to trim other parts of the budget.
Durham showed bias – this time favoring Hillary and against the Trump – but as winds blow could be the other way around – never good for any country to have citizens see equal protection is not there.
If gop wins a trifecta next election there will be retribution and just as bad – both sides should be unbiased
Why am I getting this but not the whole weekly soft
Not sure. I can’t reproduce the problem. Is anybody else seeing the same thing?
FWIW, the website seems to be working correctly for me; at https://weeklysift.com/ I see the following articles as the four most recent ones:
– “Free to Dominate, Free to Control”
– “How I evaluate sources”
– “Summing Up at the End of the Trump/Russia Investigations”
– this “The Monday Morning Teaser” article
I can’t speak about email notifications, as I’m not subscribed to those.
Hope this is constructive, and thanks for the ongoing great content.