"Vic: CRAP!!!!" (opens in separate window)

far bigger than jeffrey epstein

friday, july 18th, 2025

On Tuesday, President Trump took umbrage at a question about the Justice Department’s assertion that there are no Epstein tapes, there is no client list, and there is nothing more to be released. The Twitterverse has been brutal towards AG Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel, and his #2, Dan Bongino. Many people were saying they felt betrayed, given the fact that, before the election, we were told that the files would be released and the criminals held to account.

[FULL TITLE: "The Jeffrey Epstein Case Is Far Bigger Than Jeffrey Epstein"]

The president has a point. There is a lot going on in Washington. There are natural disasters with dozens dead across Texas. There are continuing ICE protests across the country. There are budgets that need to be attended to, as well as rogue judges who need to be corralled, and numerous conflicts outside our borders that need to be midwifed. And all of that besides the basic blocking and tackling of running the government and trying to advance the administration’s rather ambitious agenda. And taking the time to talk about some files from a guy who’s been dead for six years seems like it might distract from all of that.

But, you see, here’s the thing: People want answers that seem logical, that provide rational explanations to obvious questions, that provide proof that the speculation is wrong. This is particularly true when the people now saying there’s nothing there were the very people who promised that answers, transparency, and accountability would be coming when they won. Well, they won, and we’re getting the same obfuscation.

The truth is that, if this were just a matter of a senator cheating on his wife with a lobbyist for some industry he regulates, it wouldn’t really matter in the big picture. If this were some bureaucrat taking bribes to sign a service contract for some shipping company, nobody would really care. Sure, the first is an ethics question, and the second is illegal, but beyond the participants themselves, they aren’t very important in the grand scheme of things.

The problem here is that this is all happening in an environment where Americans are coming to believe that no one is ever accountable for their actions. We see city centers across the country imploding as stores, shops, and hotels close because of the crime that sees hoodlums, thugs, and drug addicts in urban centers basically take or destroy with impunity whatever they want. We see judges issue injunctions against the administration despite SCOTUS specifically ruling they can’t. At the same time, we have politicians, Antifa, and activists undermining, hindering, and assaulting ICE agents who are trying to deport criminals, and the chances of them being held accountable for these crimes are almost nonexistent.

Nobody seems accountable for anything. It seems that, in 2025 in America, it’s only fools who actually obey the rules because everyone else seems to do whatever the hell they want.

It gets worse when you add to all that the fact that we’ve just spent much of the last 15 years watching politicians and the politically connected do whatever the hell they wanted and never face a reckoning. Remember Lois Lerner targeting Tea Party groups?

How about Eric Holder being in Contempt of Congress? Jail time? Nope. Compare that to Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro.

How about Hillary wiping her computer or Hunter Biden breaking basically every law in the book and getting a pardon from his daddy? Or Lisa Page and Peter Strzok not only not getting charged, but getting millions of dollars from the Justice Department after conspiring to keep Donald Trump out of the White House

And the list goes on. In modern America, it seems as if no one is ever held accountable for their actions.

And so it is onto this backdrop that the Trump administration tells us that 1) Jeffrey Epstein killed himself, and 2) there was no client list and there are no videos.

And when reporters ask about it, the President gets indignant.

The problem with that is the Epstein case no longer has much of anything to do with Jeffrey Epstein, per se. The guy’s dead and he’s not coming back. None of the crimes for which he was responsible can be undone.

But Americans have heard rumors that rich and powerful men, from politicians to tech billionaires to justices to high-priced lawyers and Hollywood stars, were all clients of Epstein in his sex trade with minors, yet they remain free as birds. The one person who was clearly demonstrated to have a connection reportedly settled with his accuser for millions of dollars.

We were told Epstein had logs and tapes that chronicled all of it and used them to blackmail his powerful clients. Indeed, in February, AG Pam Bondi said she hoped to release a “lot of flight logs, a lot of names, a lot of information” on Epstein and said of the material, “It’s sitting on my desk right now to review.”

Then, of course, there’s the fact that Epstein’s “assistant” Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted of sex trafficking of a minor as well as transporting a minor with the intent to engage in criminal sexual activity. He himself was convicted of procuring underage prostitutes in 2008. Then the guy conveniently “committed suicide” in 2019 after being arrested on child trafficking charges, and the video of his cell was “accidentally erased, or the cameras “malfunctioned,” or the video was inconclusive. His lawyers claimed that the particulars of his death were far more consistent with murder than suicide, and many Americans agreed.

And if all of that were not enough, Jeffrey Epstein was once a money man for the CIA, and Ghislaine Maxwell’s father was reputedly an MI6, KGB, and Mossad agent before, according to one theory, the Mossad allegedly killed him.

So here is where we are. A high flying millionaire with connections to the CIA and possibly the Mossad and MI6, who owned an island in the Atlantic and who is reported to have used it as a honey trap for the rich and powerful ends up dead and suddenly the people who were telling us they were going to expose the entire thing when they were on the outside are now telling us that there’s nothing to tell now that they’re on the inside.

The reality is that the Jeffrey Epstein case is far more important than Jeffrey Epstein ever was. There is evidence that Epstein was an asset for one or more intelligence agencies that were very possibly blackmailing powerful men in government, finance, and elsewhere. Against this backdrop, Americans feel like they have a right to know. There is a great deal of smoke around the Epstein case, and Occam’s razor suggests that it is likely to be exactly what it looks like: A honeypot operation set up by the CIA / Mossad / MI6 as a blackmail vehicle.

This case may not be as important as others on the President’s desk, but it’s a far bigger deal than I think he understands. He promised transparency and accountability. We are getting neither, and the more his administration obfuscates, the less people are going to trust him on those bigger issues. Americans want to know we’re moving back towards no one being above the law. This case exemplifies exactly that. How the President chooses to handle it will tell us a lot.

A Day In The Life.

Up at 8a on Friday, a humid, 77°F, cloudy morning, I made coffee, took an aspirin for R/S Sciatic pain, plus 5 other "KEEP ME ALIVE" PILLS among the 16 other Rxs as part of the morning regimen -- same in the evening --, fired-up the Win-7 Pentium HP Desktop to let 32 million lines of code load, had a couple smokes in the garage and checked the leftover errands list. I scanned the news and weather, tuned into the "CS Show LIVE" from 6-9, and the "CP Show LIVE" from 9-12. I had a couple slices of (the freshest bread from Sherry) Italian Herb Toast and planned the day.

I ran a couple of errands, traffic was the usual Friday heavy, and got back around 2:30p. After some of Sis' chili -- which I "adjusted to 4 Alarm" -- I took a nice 90min nap on the LR couch. It was a 'comfy' 110° and 55% humidity on the back patio, so I smoked in the 89° garage. Yuk. I sent $100 to the Kerr County Flood Relief Fund in Texas, did some paperwork and made a 5-stack of French Toast for dinner; wow, was that good! I watched various episodes of History's "Gold Rush" until 1a, and bagged it for the night.

Sleeping-in until 9:30a on Saturday, a heavily-overcast, 77°, very humid morning, forecast to hit 88°, I made coffee, had a smoke in the very warm garage. Very groggy for what was left of the morning, I scanned the news and weather. WEIS Market made a 1p delivery, and I got that stuff put away. After lunch, I had some condo chores to do, Sherry called and we made plans for next week, and I grabbed a 2hr snooze on the LR couch. After dinner, I watched the news, switched to History's "unXplained Mysteries" until 12:30a, and unplugged.

Awake at 6a, and up at 9a on Sunday, a heavily-overcast, 78°, stormy morning, I made coffee, dealt with Win-7's corrupted start, finally scanned the news and weather, as a MASSIVE, ugly t-storm slowly moved just northwest of York. It took 2 carafes of Kona to get awake, but by 11:30, I was upstairs getting ready for the day. I had 2 loads of laundry to do -- nothing compared to Sherry's laundry task -- and several other condo chores to get done. A ***FLASH FLOOD WARNING *** was posted for York and Lancaster Counties, Chores done, garbage and recycle bin out, I had dinner and watched the news.

It's impossible to hate the media enough.

94° and 55% humidity, I cut back my smoking outside -- don't smoke inside since 2018 -- to a quarter of what it used to be. Hard to breathe in all that heat and humidity. I switched TV to TWC's "Claw Hunters" for a while, and finally to History's "unXplained Mysteries" until 1a. Lights out.

Up at 8:15a on Monday, I made coffee, took my morning Rx 16 pill regimen, had a smoke in he open garage, and tuned into the "CP Show LIVE", from 9-12. It was a cloudy, very humid, 78° morning, with severe t-storms and widespread flooding, forecast for the afternoon and evening. I left at 12:30p, for my usual 3 stop trip to points south of York. As I was heading home, the skies got seriously dark and ugly, but so far, most of the t-storms were passing to out west. I unloaded, had a large lunch, and garaged the Jeep. After a 2hr snooze, I watched the evening news and switched to MT's "Iron Resurrection" until 11p, and switched back to the news. After the Rx 13 pill regimen, it was lights out at 1:30a.

Awake at 4a, 6 and finally 8, I got up on Tuesday, a cloudy, very humid, foggy, 73°, made coffee, had a smoke in the garage, and fired-up the Ol' HP Desktop. The Kona Coffee was amazing. I tuned into the morning's "CP Show LIVE", from 9-12, and planned the day. My 2 Galco FED212 Paddle Holsters needed attention, so I'd drive back down to Contino's Shoes & Repair in Dallastown, and see if the remaining premier shoe "cobbler" could do it, and as a back-up, drive further south to the Shrewsbury area and visit Freedom Armory, and check out their selection of paddle and belt holsters, for a replacement. I left at 12:30p.

Traffic was initially heavy, but thinned out quickly. Contino's wasn't able to help, because their machineryt wouldn't handle the heavy duty holster leather, so I drove down to Freedom Armory. I checked the 3 racks of in stock holsters, and zip. Then I spent a few minutes with the Gunsmith, and used Loc-Tite on the stripped threads of both holster, told me to give it 24hrs to fully cure, and I headed back home. After so many years -- now 35yrs -- of carrying CCW, it felt seriously weird to be wo/ my daily CCW piece.

Back home after almost 3hrs, I had some lunch -- Sis' Chili and WEIS' Cornbread -- scanned the news and weather, and grabbed a 2hr nap on the LR couch. Later, I watched the news, had some dinner, and switched to History's "The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch" until 12:30a, and unplugged.

Damn, the Net is SOOOOOOOOOO SLOOOOOOOOOOOW, this morning. Pitiful. Even the xfinity (Commiecast) streaming was sloooooooooow, too. But, the Nation's first and still-the-largest state/county fair, is on again, here: The York Fair. It's AWFUL outside: 91° and 60% humidity, and hard to breathe. No wind, not even a wisp of a breeze, same as we've had fort 2mos, except when t-storms come thru, and then only for 15-20mins. I have a 3:30p meeting w/ Sis and the manager of Mt Rose Cemetery, to make a proposal for a hardscaping project (paver walkway), and then I'm back inside for the day.

Since 8a, the Net has been at a crawl, with my 100bls Cable Modem acting like a 12.2bps dial-up POS. Remember back to the late-80s and all thru the 90s? AWFUL! I've unplugged/replugged the modem, and that isn't working. After calling Commiecast/xfinity, I got an Indian girl -- probably in Calcutta or Bombay or another third world hellhole call center -- and it took 1:04:15 (!) to get some remote 'testing' done, and get a simple service app't scheduled tomorrow, with all new equipment. My 3 set-top boxes and high speed modem are 7+yrs old, and have needed replacement, for several years, apparently. So my monthly bill goes up to $315/mo,covering the cost of new equipment and a tech, and then drops back down to the current rate, $276/mo. Commiecast/xfinity has a 100% monopoly in this region, so don't bother complaining. There isn't a competitive alternative.

I scanned the weather radar maps, as the skies darkened, and the rain arrived, with the humidity skyrocketing to 75%. The 1hr+ lightening display in the southern and western sky was beyond AWESOME, and unlike anything I've seen in years! By 11p, the massive t-storm cells had moved thru the region, the humidity amped-up, but still no wind or breeze. I watched History's "American Pickers" all evening, until 1a, and called it a day.

Up at 0:30a on Thursday, a sunny, bright, post-storm, 79° and headed to 93°, morning. A ***HEAT WARNING*** was posted for the Susquehanna Valley. I made coffee, had breakfast, scanned the news and weather, and got ready for the day. Sherry arrived around 1p, and we had a great time, as always. She left a little early, with a grocery stop to make on the way home. I had some dinner, watched the news, and switched to TV CRAP. Worst night for TV in a L-O-N-G time. I fell asleep in the LR-TVR leather lounger, and woke up after 12 midnight. Heh. Lights out.

Tomorrow staqrts a new week, here in the "Journal", and with a Dr's appt and labs/bloodwork to get done, I'll save 1-2 days for Sherry. xfinity CATV Tech in tomorrow between 2-4p, with new equipment and installation. I hope it helps the Net and CATV.

Summer Storms.

You can rightly say that Mr. Trump has handled this Epstein business rather awkwardly — especially last Wednesday’s little show of vexation in the cabinet meeting, barking, nothing to see. . . just move along. What? You’ve been watching the Epstein psychodrama unspool for nearly twenty years, so how can it possibly come to this? Theories on the Epstein mess fly around like a murmuration of starlings wheeling across an angry summer sky. The birds are just birds. They are not the storm clouds in the background. Mark the difference.

Looks like Pam Bondi fumbled badly in those early days on the job, promising things she was less than fully informed about. The public was already convinced that the entire power structure of the nation — of all Western Civ, actually — was a convocation of perverts, and that a vast trove of evidence was sitting there waiting to be laid on them. And then Mr. Trump slammed the door shut. Mssers. Patel and Bongino at the FBI got caught flat-footed, and “Danny Boombatz” especially freaked, seeing his reputation as a truth-teller likely to shred all over cable TV. Most unfortunate, the whole appalling episode.

But then, Sunday, the president suggested on his social media that the Epstein business had become a Democratic Party op. He did not elaborate. And maybe it sounds suspiciously spurious. But, is it not worth considering? Consider also: In all of Epstein’s dark activities there was surely a there there. He did run a concerted blackmail enterprise for some combo of Israel’s Mossad, the CIA, and the UK’s MI6 intel outfit. And, since blackmail requires documentation, there was a ton of it, eventually scooped out of his various domiciles by the FBI.

The key is: had become a Democratic Party op. Didn’t start out that way, but might have turned into one. Consider: The Democratic Party was up to its eyeballs in ops against Mr. Trump since he rode down that fabled escalator in 2015. The “intel community” was the chief player in these operations. The intel community ran rings around Mr. Trump with all manner of fabricated nonsense during the election campaign of 2016 and throughout his first term. You could say — and I believe the DOJ under Ms. Bondi will say in cases waiting to be brought — that these many operations amounted to one continuous seditious conspiracy to overthrow a president. It ran from the Steele dossier, through the Mueller Investigation, through the Norm Eisen / Adam Schiff engineered impeachment No 1, through the gamed election of 2020, through the J-6 committee, and through all the nefarious lawfare gambits against Mr. Trump during the “Joe Biden” fake presidency.

Why wouldn’t the Epstein files now turn out to be an extension of these same operations? The DOJ first moved against Epstein in 2005. The case culminated in 2008 with a plea deal on some Mickey Mouse state prostitution charges and a non-prosecution agreement with the feds under US Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, Alex Acosta — who was reported later saying that Epstein “belonged to intelligence,” and that the case was therefore “beyond my pay-grade” to prosecute.

Between 2008 and 2019, Epstein returned to his international swashbuckling ways. Strangely, he was finally busted on June 6, 2019, by then-AG William Barr, whose father, Donald Barr, had been headmaster of New York City’s Dalton prep school, where Jeffrey Epstein, age twenty-one, was hired to teach math and physics in 1974, though he lacked a college degree. All that may just be coincidental, of course.

A little more than a month after his arrest on sex trafficking charges in the summer of 2019, Epstein died in the Manhattan federal lockup under mysterious circumstances. The outstanding question even afterward was: trafficking with-and-to whom? And the general assumption among the public was: trafficking teenage girls to a long list of public officials, movie stars, financial bigshots, and miscellaneous celebs such as Prince Andrew of the British royal family.

Astoundingly little was learned from the prosecution of Ghislaine Maxwell in 2021-22, which was led by Maurene Comey, daughter of former FBI Director James Comey (fired in 2017). Small world. The case only covered Ms. Maxwell’s activities between 1994 and 2004. Why only that period? Never explained. Rumors of a “client list” being among the evidence have never been substantiated, and were repudiated last week by AG Pam Bondi and President Trump.

Okay, all very well, such as it is. But consider: all the evidence, in all the cases against Jeffrey Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell, has been in the possession of the FBI and the DOJ since at least the first Epstein case in 2005-08. If there was any evidence of Donald Trump caught in some indecent act, why did it not get leaked during the campaign of 2016, or any time since then? His political adversaries tried virtually everything else to knock him out of the arena, up to even assassination — but not that?

The DOJ and FBI were arguably in their most roguish phase as weaponized agencies during the “Joe Biden” years. All the Epstein evidence resided in the New York City field office of the FBI. These were also the years when the apparatus of the Democratic Party — and its rank-and-file — fell into a fugue of vicious, psychotic animus against Mr. Trump and the populist movement he led, not just in the USA, but spreading throughout Western Civ.

Do you suppose that the FBI might have worked some hoodoo with those Epstein evidence files, especially to set the table for the 2026 mid-term elections, when knocking a few Republicans out of office might flip the House and Senate back to the Democratic Party? I would suppose it’s not just a thing; I think it’s the thing. I would imagine that this is exactly what Mr. Trump was hinting at the other day when he referred to this business as yet another Democratic Party op. He knows the mainstream media will never investigate it or report it. And the alt-media is too momentarily disconcerted to entertain the idea. So, he just slammed the door shut.

Nobody likes it, but it may be necessary. Other storms are brewing: financial gales, geopolitical thunderheads, and apparently — we are officially informed — the coming cases against John Brennan, James Comey, and other figures who initiated the coup, which is a much bigger deal than who might have been having sex with whom sixteen years ago.

Liberal Women Are America’s Unhappiest, Study Finds.

Progressive politics may promise empowerment, but for many liberal women, the result appears to be rising misery and isolation.

A growing body of data points to a clear trend: liberal women are statistically the most dissatisfied and mentally unwell demographic in the country, and experts say it may have more to do with worldview than circumstance.

According to a 2024 survey from the Institute for Family Studies (IFS), just 12% of liberal women aged 18-40 report being “completely satisfied” with their lives.

In contrast, 37% of conservative women in the same age group report full satisfaction, a difference that speaks volumes.

The findings come from the 2024 American Family Survey, which also shows that liberal women are two to three times more likely to say they are “not satisfied” with their lives.

Marriage and faith, two traditional anchors of community and stability, may play a key role in the satisfaction divide.

56% of conservative women in the study are married, while only 37% of liberal women are.

Church attendance reflects a similar gap: 53% of conservative women attend religious services weekly, compared to just 12% of liberal women.

That detachment from relational and spiritual communities may be fueling widespread loneliness.

Nearly 30% of liberal women report frequent loneliness, while only 11% of conservatives say the same.

“These women are lacking key support systems that help weather life’s inevitable challenges,” said Brad Wilcox, a senior fellow at IFS.

“We’ve seen in the research that conservative women tend to be more likely to embrace a sense of agency and to have the sense that they are not, in any way, the victim of larger structural realities or forces.

“They’re also less likely to catastrophize about public events and concerns and more likely to think of themselves as captains of their own fate.”

This isn’t a new development. A 2020 Pew Research study found that 56% of young liberal white women had been diagnosed with a mental health condition, compared to fewer than 30% of moderate or conservative women.

Cognitive psychologist Jonathan Haidt traces the issue to a culture of “catastrophizing,” a mental habit of exaggerating negative outcomes, often amplified by social media and activist narratives.

“Once you equate words with guns, you’re closer to hell than salvation,” Haidt warned.

Journalist Matt Yglesias also noted the link between heavy social media use and negative cognitive patterns that mimic clinical depression:

“Mentally processing ambiguous events with a negative spin mirrors depression,” he explained.

That tendency toward pessimism has implications for electoral politics as well.

Political analyst Nate Silver argued that the Democratic Party’s messaging, shaped by its increasingly anxious, predominantly female base, may be turning off male voters.

“I think an underrated factor in the ‘how can Democrats win back young men’ debate is the effects of personality, which differ especially among younger voters,” Silver noted.

A cultural rejection of traditional roles may also be contributing to the crisis.

A 2024 analysis by Evie Magazine argued that dismissing marriage and motherhood as “oppressive” leaves many progressive women isolated from relationships that offer meaning, support, and long-term joy.

Haidt has argued that modern feminism’s emphasis on systemic oppression may backfire, trapping women in a cycle of resentment and helplessness.

Feminism’s focus on systemic oppression can backfire,” he said.

“It may create a generation trapped in a cycle of entitlement and empathy deficits.”

The broader shift among Gen Z toward an external locus of control.

The belief that one’s life is controlled by outside forces has also been tied to rising anxiety and depression.

This has especially been the case since the explosion of social media in the early 2010s.

Progressive campus policies may only worsen the trend.

Greg Lukianoff, co-author with Haidt of The Coddling of the American Mind, has warned that safe spaces, trigger warnings, and ideological echo chambers act as “reverse cognitive behavioral therapy,” validating fear and fragility instead of fostering strength and resilience.

For liberal women, the data suggests that politics may be part of the problem, not the solution.