Good morning. It is August 5th. It is sweltering again in New York City. The air conditioner is off to record this, so we're going to go as fast as we can. And this is your Indignity Morning Podcast. I'm your host, Tom Scocca, taking a look at the day and the news. 

Sheikh Hasina, the Prime Minister of Bangladesh, fled the country and resigned, with the Washington Post reporting that she escaped her residence minutes before it was stormed by protesters, citing local media. More than 50 and possibly more than 100 people were killed in protests over the weekend, leading to the final uprising against the longtime leader. 

A Monday plunge in the global markets reached the Eastern time zone, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average down 2 .6%, the NASDAQ down 4 .7%, and the S &P 500 down 3 .5%, according to CNBC. Japan’s Nikkei index is down 12% in what CNBC calls its worst day since the 1987 Black Monday crash for Wall Street. 

In the newspaper, the lead story on the front of the morning New York Times is two columns about JD Vance, the Republican vice presidential nominee. “To Vance, gaining power means breaking the left. Trump's pick is blunt on wanting to rip up norms and test constitutional limits.” Good piece to do, although undermined somewhat by the New York Times’ inability to use the word “left” in any sort of conceptually coherent way. The first pungent J .D. Vance quote in the story, for instance, is him saying that Trump should “fire every single mid -level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people.” You'd think it would be self -evident that mid -level bureaucrats and civil servants do not represent the left, but as a class would be sort of definitionally the center. But the language to clearly describe that would take the coverage outside the realm of partisan back and forth in which the Times's political coverage necessarily operates. The story also says “he has drawn from influences as varied as a monarchist blogger, post -liberal conservative Catholics, and Prime Minister Viktor Orbán of Hungary,” which is really just about as unvaried a collection of thinkers as you could hope for. They may be far away from the norms of liberal political society, but they're clustered pretty closely together there. 

Below that, below the fold, “Israeli attacks might tighten Hamas's grip” That's right, 10 months after the October Hamas attacks, it's time to discuss whether brutal overwhelming retaliation by Israel may have been a counterproductive policy choice. “Analysts and regional observers in contact with Hamas's leaders see the latest blows it has “ the Times writes, “including the recent killings of Hamas leaders.” As the Times continues, “offering Israeli forces a short -term victory at cost of long -term strategic success.” Really? If only there'd been some case studies about whether untrammeled violence strengthens or weakens one's overall political position toward the targets of that violence. 

Inside the paper on A -15, there's a story about how Donald Trump is mad that Kamala Harris is drawing crowds on the campaign trail. It describes Trump complaining about empty seats in his arena and blaming it on security when the Times notes “If Mr. Trump had looked up from his teleprompter at any point during the second half of his 90 -minute speech, he would have seen his own supporters slipping out of their bright blue seats headed for the exits.” Not even Trump's superfans actually want to hear the man talk anymore. 

And there's something or other about the Harris vice presidential search, but who cares? She'll pick somebody, at which point all the other people that people have been thinking about won't matter. Some potential picks might be better than others, but worrying about that isn't going to change anything. 

That is the news. Thank you for listening. Please subscribe to Indignity to keep us going. And if all goes well, we will talk again, not tomorrow. , I’ll be away from the podcast studio tomorrow morning, but Wednesday.