☕️ UNHAPPY CAMPERS ☙ Friday, July 25, 2025 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

Cambodia and Thailand trade blows over occult temple; hard-hatted Trump gets Jerome Powell right where he wants him; RussiaGate speculations; the president signs a major anti-homeless-camping order.

Good morning, C&C, it’s Friday! Here’s your quick vacation-style roundup, drafted under pressure (we have to check out soon). Please forgive typos and inelegant insults against public officials. But it’s solid; enjoy.

🌍 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 🌍

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Yesterday, Reuters ran a story about the latest kinetic world conflict headlined, “Thailand, Cambodia exchange heavy artillery as fighting expands for second day.” The Buddha would not be amused. Here’s what you need to know about what the media is calling a “border conflict.” In short: They are fighting over a tourist site.

Preah Vihear Temple is an overgrown stone relic, a 1,000-year-old Hindu archaeological site situated on a tall, windswept ridge along the border between Thailand and Cambodia. Long ago, the ruins housed a religious order that worshipped Shiva— ironically, the Hindu god of Destruction. Seems like a proper place for conflict. (Conspiracy-minded readers will recall that Shiva’s likeness also decorates CERN’s front yard. No connection; just saying.)

This week, a hot war broke out at the temple involving troops, landmines, artillery, F-16 combat, unguided rockets, and lots of bullets. So far, a couple of dozen or so unlucky civilians have been killed while innocently slurping their Pad Thai.

I have no idea why most reporting avoids describing what’s actually cranked the spice level up to Thai Extreme, but I suppose that’s why we have Substack. The dispute first started cooking back in 1904, when the French (of course) and Thailand drew up maps defining the border to avoid conflict.

The 104 map stuck Shiva’s dilapidated temple on the Cambodia side. Apparently, Thailand didn’t notice when it signed, because it was distracted arguing about a missing side order of shrimp with peanut sauce.

Later, in the 1960s, Thailand stumbled over the missing temple and sued in international court. The ICJ ruled that Preah Vihear was Cambodian. Case not closed. Later still, in 2008, Cambodia successfully applied for World Heritage Site status, which rubbed hot chilies all over Thailand’s face.

The first armed conflict broke out in 2008, in fits and starts, peaking in 2011, when artillery exchanges accidentally damaged the temple.

That year, in 2011, Cambodia returned to the ICJ, asking it to please clarify its earlier 1962 ruling, and this time say that Cambodia owned not just the temple proper, but all the land right around it. Two years later, the ICJ ruled again. This time, it gave Cambodia the entire promontory, temple and all.

Things heated up again earlier this year in May, when a Cambodian soldier was shot after an incomprehensible exchange of Asian insults. Two days ago, a Thai soldier was maimed after he stumbled over a buried landmine near the site. Yesterday, full-blown fighting erupted all along the border near the temple in multiple locations.

Over 130,000 people have been evacuated from the conflict areas.

The description of the involved leaders defies easy description. First of all, their names are unpronounceable, multi-syllabic mouthfuls, and please don’t ask me to try spelling them correctly. It’s an Asian Game of Thrones; the main actors include royal princesses (e.g., Paetongtarn Shinawatra, or something), army chiefs, and a father-son prime ministerial dynasty.

As you’d expect, the world’s governments, including China and the U.S., are calling for ceasefires and diplomatic negotiations. But so far, both Bangkok and Phnom Penh seem more interested in pugilism than talking. Somehow, the remote, broken-down temple has become a noodle-like issue of national pride for both sides, combined with a spicy broth of palace intrigue and rumors of betrayal.

A broader escalation seems unlikely. The countries aren’t proxies in any geopolitical scheme. The Thais are militarily OP (overpowered). At least three other flare-ups between 2008 and 2025 settled down after a few weeks of shelling and escalation. The risk of accidental destruction of the subject matter —the overgrown, vine-covered temple of destruction itself— looms large, casting a dark shadow over the aspirational Muay Tuy match.

It will probably resolve soon. But I suggest against adding the temple to your travel itinerary, at least not this week.

One star. Would not recommend.

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Oh, how I wish for more time to engage with all the media malfeasance. Yesterday, the New York Times ran a stink bomb of a story headlined, “Gabbard’s Attacks on Obama Put the Attorney General in a Tough Spot.”

The Times’s story was a masterclass in media manipulation. It mentioned but promptly ignored all the involved officials’ own words in favor of creating a Frankensteinian narrative stitched together from anonymous opinions about the officials’ real feelings. It airily dismissed all Gabbard’s carefully collated documents as not evidence— without describing a single one.

And the Times’s story still ignored the biggest and most important newsworthy detail— the historicity of the claims themselves. Instead, citing people “familiar with her feelings,” it painted Tulsi’s historic accusation as just an obsequious effort to get back in Trump’s good graces.

🔥 At least NBC came close. The network ran a story yesterday headlined, “Gabbard's unprecedented claim: A president led a 'treasonous conspiracy.’” The sub-headline made it even more clear: “No previous U.S. spy chief has made such an allegation against a chief executive.”

That is the story; real and historic. It’s not Tulsi’s job to prove Obama led a treasonous conspiracy. That is for the DOJ, and probably ultimately the Supreme Court. To be fair, NBC dismissed Gabbard’s claims as partisan attacks, and asserted that prior reviews like Special Counsel John Durham’s were conclusive in clearing the former president.

But at least NBC actually described Tulsi’s claims.

Tulsi Gabbard is just doing her job. If the Director of National Intelligence uncovers credible indicators that past intelligence assessments were manipulated at the highest levels for political ends, then she’s obligated to raise the alarm. Gabbard is not a law enforcement official. She’s not a cop. She’s the head of intelligence gathering.

That’s why the Times story was so awful. The whole narrative revolved around how, from the Times’ assessment, she provided no evidence. But Tulsi Gabbard doesn’t owe the New York Times an evidentiary packet. She isn’t litigating a case before Judge Maggie Haberman. She’s sounding an alarm from inside the machine.

Having cleared that up, let’s address the Times’ only question: why is Tulsi presenting so much evidence in public?

I humbly suggest it is to pave a political path to an ultimate arrest.

🔥 Tulsi Gabbard, as DNI, isn’t trying to win a court case right now. She’s doing what prosecutors, insurgents, and reformers have done throughout history: shaping the political terrain so that the unimaginable becomes not only thinkable, but inevitable. It’s narrative warfare, and she’s playing the long game.

To most Americans, arresting former President Obama would probably feel outrageous and impossible, even after Trump’s arrest. But if the public slowly absorbs repeated official claims, declassified documents, contradictions in past intel narratives, and a pattern of misconduct, then what seemed impossible becomes plausible, or even probable.

In other words, Tulsi is paving a sidewalk to the mugshot booth.

Imagine the uproar if the DOJ had suddenly announced Obama’s arrest without warning. That’s the kind of thing that could touch off a ‘civil war,’ or more likely, national riots and protests. But if Tulsi keeps this up, after weeks of relentless disclosure, moderate voters will become desensitized to the idea of an arrest, especially when no serious rebuttal to the documents is ever offered.

At some point, it’s going to start seeming inevitable to everyone that Obama will soon be charged and processed. Legally, an arrest doesn’t require a slam-dunk case; it only requires probable cause, supported by prima facie evidence. That’s a ridiculously low threshold compared to conviction. And in this context, the only true barrier to arresting Obama is custom, not law.

By the time Tulsi’s disclosures finish reshaping the narrative battlefield, even hostile or skeptical media will be cornered into treating Obama’s indictment and arrest as a logical next step— not as a break with norms, but even to the media, just the next step in Trump’s methodical strategy of “revenge.”

Thus, Tulsi isn’t making a legal case. That’s not her job anyway. She’s plucking the remaining shreds of taboo off the idea of presidential prosecution.

🔥 What happens next? Normally, the next step would be for Trump to appoint a special prosecutor and continue the slow slide into inevitable prosecution. Maybe, but I doubt it. Trump isn’t following the normal playbook. And he can’t afford three years for a special prosecutor to do that job anyway.

Trump’s 2.0 strategy is keep them guessing. For example, he announced unaffordable tariffs, let the media and Democrats react hysterically, and then dialed back the numbers. He’s not a traditional, predictable consensus builder. He keeps his opponents off-balance, reactive, and wrong-footed, so that by the time they finish formulating a defense, he’s already pivoted, reversed, or escalated.

So Trump next needs something big. Something they aren’t already talking about and won’t see coming. Something that will escalate the narrative.

It is difficult to speculate about an escalatory surprise without considering the bigger picture. Tulsi’s laying the foundation with 2016’s RussiaGate, but everyone knows the real payload is 2020’s election theft. That is the emotional core of Trump’s base, the unhealed wound of his first term, and the final link in the chain.

Let’s follow that thread. Do you remember the missing Crossfire Hurricane Binder?

🔥 If Trump and Tulsi are building up to a 2020 payload, that mysterious binder is the Rosetta Stone. It’s not just symbolic. It’s the bridge between 2016’s intel fabrication and 2020’s electoral sabotage. And the fact that it was legally declassified by Trump, then quietly disappeared under Biden, is not just a loose thread. It’s a ticking time bomb.

Set that aside. Consider the current reveal’s timing in light of next year’s midterm elections. As they say, timing is everything. If Trump is running this play for maximum political impact, then the 2026 midterms are the moment of consolidation.

If he plays it right, the pressure will inexorably build as we head into the 2026 campaign season.

Along those lines, it is devilishly hard to ignore the timing of Tafari Campbell’s drowning suddenly reappearing in the week’s news. Fox teased that never-before-seen footage exists— and they are trying to get it. What new horrors face the Obama camp, now that Trump controls the Secret Service video archives?

Trump could force Democrats into the hideous Hobson’s choice of defending Obama even as the evidence keeps piling up. He could turn this into another 70/30 issue. He might even wait, staying above the fray, until public demand for an arrest gets louder than an Ozzie Osbourne concert.

President Trump is holding all the cards. He obviously isn’t afraid to play them. My guess is, he’s planning to run the table. Let’s see.

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Speaking of running the table, as if he had nothing better to do, yesterday President Trump toured the Federal Reserve’s super-lux, multi-billion-dollar headquarters. NPR ran the story below the headline, “Trump visits Federal Reserve and tussles with Jerome Powell in extraordinary moment.”

Trump is currently at war with the Federal Reserve. The Fed Chairman, grandmotherly Jerome Powell, kept interest rates at near-zero during Biden’s entire inflationary term. But mere days after Trump’s election, Jerome suddenly jacked rates up, and has refused to lower them despite all the great financial news.

Trump isn’t happy. Higher interest rates have two big, ugly effects. First, they depress the housing market, since buyers —accustomed to low Biden-era rates in the 3’s and 4’s— don’t want to pay 8% mortgages. Second, high interest rates squeeze the federal budget like an abused lemon, since it must pay massively higher interest to bondholders.

Trump wants to fire Jerome like he washed out in the first round on The Apprentice. But under federal law, Trump needs cause, and Jerome has been as cautious as an old lady crossing a busy intersection. The latest battle has waged over the Fed’s $2.5 billion dollar “renovation” of its headquarters temple, a tone-deaf, gold-lined construction project defying the nation’s mood and Washington’s vast debt.

Trump, who knows the smell of a rigged construction budget like a bloodhound on a contractor’s trail, isn’t buying it. He publicly accused Powell of greenlighting a runaway $3.1 billion boondoggle. Powell, clutching his tie like a scolded intern, gushed that it was only $2.5 billion— plus some different building that was finished years ago.

Jerome stepped right into the trap.

The “other building” Powell used to defend himself was the Fed’s last multi-million-dollar indulgence, completed about five years ago. It was the Martin Building, a.k.a. the William McChesney Martin Jr. Federal Reserve Board Building, which underwent a similarly tone-deaf $350+ million overhaul starting in 2014 and completed in 2021.

So when Powell told Trump that the $3.1 billion figure includes a “separate building” already finished, he referred to that previous round of central planning vanity construction. Which was undoubtedly exactly what Trump wanted him to say.

In other words, how many palatial headquarters does the Fed need? Jerome, you literally just finished your last self-indulgent upgrade.

The trap was sprung. Americans can’t afford houses, but the Fed can afford multiple luxury renovations, stretching over years, in the most expensive city on Earth. Trump —the builder— doesn’t need to allege waste; Powell just confirmed it. He handed Trump a gift-wrapped narrative: a tone-deaf central bank splashing around in a marble pool of high interest rates while average Americans can’t afford a starter home.

This could be the inflection point in Jerome Powell’s inglorious career. The smug, unflappable Fed Chairman has survived Trump’s ire before, thanks to a wall of defenders —even inside Trump’s own orbit— who vouched for his caution, his credibility, and his market-calming presence.

But can they defend him after this? After standing next to Trump in a hard hat, fumbling through a public dispute over billions in renovation costs, and admitting the Fed is juggling not one but multiple luxury headquarters? Powell didn’t look like a steady hand— he looked like a clueless custodian of elite detachment. And now the question isn’t just whether Trump wants to fire him. The question now is, who wants to be connected to this guy?

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Yesterday, President Trump signed another blockbuster presidential order, this one titled, “Ending Crime and Disorder on America's Streets.” The ACLU ran an overwrought story —tone-deafer than Jerome Powell’s building project— under the headline, “ACLU Condemns Trump Executive Order Targeting Disabled and Unhoused People.” In other words, it’s long-overdue great news.

Trump’s order targeted what I call the homelessness-industrial complex— the sprawling, grift-heavy patchwork of programs that have done everything except reduce homelessness. Those include so-called “harm reduction” efforts that hand out free syringes, fentanyl test strips, and even federally-funded crack pipes.

But rather than cutting those programs directly, Trump’s order used a clever lever: federal prioritization. Funding will now be directed first to states and cities that:

• Enforce bans on urban squatting and open drug use,

• reestablish civil commitment standards for the dangerously mentally ill,

• provide treatment instead of “safe injection sites,” and

• track and arrest sex offenders trying to skirt reporting rules by “going homeless.”

Regarding that last one, the order says out loud what we all already know: predators don’t magically become less dangerous because they’re sleeping in a government-supplied tent. If a condition of their release was reporting their current location, then the excuse I live on the street is not a loophole; it’s a violation of probation.

The National Homelessness Law Center called Trump’s order “the most sweeping attack on homeless Americans in modern history.” In other words, it threatens our funding model. A Politico story cited an anonymous city official, who warned, “If the feds start requiring treatment and arresting unregistered sex offenders, we’ll lose half our outreach staff overnight.”

Exactly.

🔥 While our libertarian friends raise valid concerns about the abuse of state power —particularly the danger of locking up mentally ill people indefinitely— the current alternative is undeniably worse. It is not compassionate to hand drug addicts clean needles and Narcan just so they can stay high while they rot in squalor under overpasses and in school playgrounds.

Nor is it compassionate to the rest of us —the commuters, the joggers, the kids, the elderly— who are expected to politely step over decaying bodies and smile politely while being assured that this is the cost of “tolerance.” Public policy doesn’t just exist for the loudest activist coalition or the most tragic case study. It’s supposed to serve everyone, including the sane, sober, and tax-paying majority who’ve been left entirely out of the equation.

CLIP: Related—LA resident describes horrifying homeless encounter in his back yard (4:10).

Trump’s homelessness order isn’t just policy— it’s a brilliant political wedge issue hammered straight into the heart of the urban-suburban realignment. While Democrats defend homeless campers, “harm reduction,” and sex offenders without a fixed address, Trump is talking about treatment, tracking, and public order. He’s daring Democrats to keep siding with chaos. Meanwhile, millions of swing voters, especially urban moderates and working-class families, are ready to flip.

It’s the mom who won’t take her kid to the park anymore. The business owner hosing blood and excrement off the sidewalk. The commuter switching subway cars.

Now, it’s a ballot issue.

This is 2016’s Build the Wall, reimagined as End the Encampments. And just like last time, the more the Left panics and screeches about “criminalizing poverty,” the more the middle class says: “Finally, somebody’s doing something about this.”

Regardless of what the BlueSky hysterics and ACLU performance artists are shrieking today, the order does not call for any new laws to lock up the unhoused. It only prioritizes federal funding for states that enforce existing laws. In that sense, it’s not even a homelessness order. It’s a follow the law order.

If they don’t want to force sex offenders to report their whereabouts, fine, just don’t expect any federal money. Don’t want to civilly commit people who are clearly psychotic and squatting in their own waste? That’s okay, but pay for it yourself.

If Trump keeps this kind of thing up, I’m going to have to find new issues to blog about.

Have a terrific Friday! Regardless of vacation logistics, Coffee & Covid will return tomorrow morning with some kind of amusing and informative Weekend Roundup. Don’t miss it.

Don’t race off! We cannot do it alone. Consider joining up with C&C to help move the nation’s needle and change minds. I could sure use your help getting the truth out and spreading optimism and hope, if you can: ☕ Learn How to Get Involved 🦠

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