Don’t Miss Today’s Last Item: What A Soft Coup Looks Like August 8, 2025 But first . . . NOOM Some numbers make sense. Eat fewer calories than you burn and you’ll lose weight. > Did you know that two 5-ounce cans of BumbleBee solid white albacore tuna have only 260 calories but 58 grams of protein? And cost less than $3 bought by the case? And taste great eaten with pickles? Having begun with Noom weighing 159 pounds seven weeks ago, I’m 150.8 today. At this rate, some of you may be pleased to know (hi, Carl!), I will have disappeared entirely by January 27, 2028. OPRT Other numbers make no sense — at least not to me. > Based on Wednesday’s call projecting earnings of “$1.20 to $1.40” per share for the year, OPRT — then $6.30 and thus selling at five times projected earnings — should have risen nicely. Instead, it’s fallen. I’d be fascinated to know who’s selling and why. They may turn out to be right; yet from all I can tell there’s an equally good chance the company not only earns $1.20 this year but grows to double or triple that over the next few years. For better or worse, I bought more. VOTE 16 Long-time readers may recall my rant . . . Why States Should Lower the Voting Age. Now comes Tuesday’s New York Times: They Are 16 and 17 Years Old, and They Want to Vote. Like, Now. I think we should let them. REVOLT! The violence at the end of this powerful 90-second clip is unacceptable — and not, I’m pretty sure, what the creators are actually advocating. But it sure does capture the feeling of rage that is likely to grow as rural hospitals close; young women can’t get abortions; tariff taxes take hold; poor kids and the elderly lose food stamps; deportations shatter neighbors’ lives; billionaires buy larger yachts — the whole deal. Watch. AND NOW . . . A 3-part alarm every American who prefers democracy to dictatorship — not all do! — should read. “Technical State of Civil War” by Robert Hawks Part One: Edge of Something Worse It begins: Let’s dispense with the pleasantries. We are at war. Not a shooting war. Not yet. But something worse in its own quiet, choking way: a technical state of civil war. The kind of war that makes cowards of rules and turns procedure into shrapnel. Glass shrapnel, completely in violation of the Geneva conventions. And in Texas, Greg Abbott is lighting the fuse. . . . Half the country still thinks the Democrats are overreacting. That we’re all just melting down because we lost a few court cases or that we’re mad we can’t get pronouns printed on our napkins. [But no], we’re reacting because we’re watching the United States be turned inside out by men who believe they should rule forever, or not at all. . . . This is not just about maps. Not just about Abbott. Not just about Trump. This is about a Republican Party that has now declared publicly, and repeatedly, that if a Democrat wins the presidency in 2028, they will refuse to certify the election. Full stop. That’s not politics. That’s war‑by‑other‑means. . . . There’s so much more to Part I, if you have time to read it. Part 2: Anatomy of a Split Nation It begins: The plan is as clear as it is insane: gerrymander the House, win the majority through rigged maps, then throw the 2028 election to the chamber when no consensus can be reached. Install a Republican president—possibly Trump, God help us—by congressional fiat, regardless of the Electoral College or the popular vote. In other words: end elections. Cement minority rule. Burn the scaffolding of democracy and salt the earth where the ballots used to grow. . . . What happens when governors of California, New York, and Illinois say, flat out, “We no longer recognize the authority of a president elected by gerrymandered fiat”? What happens when National Guard units are federalized and told to act against their own citizens? We’ve already seen it. Federal troops in Portland. Federal agents in unmarked vans in Minneapolis. And now, a sitting U.S. president selecting military leadership based not on strategy, but on loyalty. This is what a soft coup looks like. This is how republics become dictatorships—one signed order, one packed court, one nullified election at a time. We are standing on the edge. . . . Again — so much more, if you have time. Finally: Part 3: The Splintered Nation It concludes: . . . We are Rome, late-stage and over-leveraged, watching the aqueducts rot and cheering for the lion fights. We are the USSR in 1991, holding onto flags while the currency dies and the borders shift. We are whatever comes next. And we are not ready. But we’d better get ready. Because if we’re not careful, the only thing we’ll have left to pass on to our children is a flag, a song, and a series of TikTok videos explaining why there’s no more bread. What was America? It was an attempt. And we are failing it. So tell me . . . Am I lying? Join Indivisible. Support the opposition. Spread DIS-disinformation. And have a great weekend.