Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
Auction Starts: NOON on Sunday (Eastern time)
Auction Ends: 7 p.m. on Sunday (Eastern time)
email to watergirl at balloon-juice.com
Bidding starts at $450.
This quilt is 78″ x 84″.
| Nym |
How Many |
| 2liberal |
more than one |
| A Good Woman |
more than one |
| bbleh |
one |
| BeautifulPlumage |
more than one |
| beckya |
more than one |
| Bill P |
more than one |
| CarolM |
one |
| Chat Noir |
one |
| CtLurker |
one |
| Dmkingto |
more than one |
| EarthWindFire |
one |
| eclare |
one |
| Emily B. |
one |
| emrys |
one |
| Fair Economist |
more than one |
| GBinChicago |
more than one |
| Glidwrith |
more than one |
| hinTN |
more than one |
| jhwbiz |
more than one |
| Josie |
more than one |
| KarenH |
more than one |
| KRK |
more than one |
| lowtechcyclist |
more than one |
| Lurker Josh |
more than one |
| Madeleine |
more than one |
| martyll |
more than one |
| Mr. Bemused Senior |
more than one |
| mvr |
more than one |
| PatrickG |
more than one |
| PercysOwner |
more than one |
| realbtl |
more than one |
| rikyrah |
one |
| Sandia Blanca |
more than one |
| sfinny |
more than one |
| Shane in SLC |
more than one |
| Subaru Diane |
more than one |
| SuzieC |
one |
| Tandem |
one |
| tomtofa |
more than one |
| UnwieldyList |
more than one |
| Wapiti |
more than one |
| Z. |
more than one |
Open thread.
Last Call for the Raffle – If You Bought Tickets, Please Check This ListPost + Comments (6)
Even the Gold-Flocked Calf’s hometown paper is dropping Trump-Epstein sleaze stories:
For nearly 15 years, Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein socialized in New York and Florida before a falling out that preceded Epstein’s first arrest. What seemed to draw them together, according to those who knew them at the time, was a common interest in hitting on — and competing for — young women.
— The New York Times (@nytimes.com) July 19, 2025 at 1:55 PM
Desperate to reassert control over the media narrative, Trump keeps fondling his patented string of old grievance beads (Russia Russia Russia!) like an obnoxious rosary. That’s not working, but the Russian asset he put in charge of the U.S. intel establishment did conjure a SQUIRREL! for MAGA “influencers” to chase:
July 19 (UPI) — The Obama administration should be investigated for abuse of power to smear President Donald Trump in 2016, National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard said on Friday.
Gabbard announced the release of files and a memo related to claims of Russia’s alleged attempt to disrupt the 2016 elections to help Trump win the presidency over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
“There was a treasonous conspiracy in 2016 committed by officials at the highest level of government,” Gabbard said in a news release on Friday.
“Their goal was to subvert the will of the American people and enact what was essentially a years-long coup with the objective of trying to usurp the president from fulfilling the mandate bestowed upon him by the American people,” Gabbard said…
Gabbard said she is forwarding relevant materials to the Department of Justice for possible legal action.
The accusations are lame even by MAGA’s subterranean standards. Gabbard absurdly claims that Russia didn’t try to influence the 2016 election at all. She conflates a statement from her DNI predecessor James Clapper that there was no evidence of a Russian cyberattack that altered election results as an admission that the Kremlin hadn’t taken any action to influence the outcome on Trump’s behalf.
That’s a steaming load of horse shit, even according to Republicans now disgracing themselves in the Trump 2.0 administration. In 2020, a Republican-led Senate panel headed by Marco Rubio (R-FL) unanimously concluded that Russia meddled in the 2016 election to help Trump. Their report also contained some details that might prove inconvenient for the purpose of effecting a narrative shift (NYT):
According to the report, Mr. Trump met a former Miss Moscow at a party during one trip in 1996. After the party, a Trump associate told others he had seen Mr. Trump with the woman on multiple occasions and that they “might have had a brief romantic relationship.”
The report also raised the possibility that, during that trip, Mr. Trump spent the night with two young women who joined him the next morning at a business meeting with the mayor of Moscow.
That would have been around the same time Trump was hanging out with Epstein. Whoopsie.
Open thread!
More photos from commentor Ben in NM:
Top photo: ClaretCup – these are some of the first cacti to bloom in the spring. I’m jealous of my neighbors who have large mounds all in prolific blooms.
Yucca – this is a neighbors Yucca. I’m not sure of the specific variety.
Bird of Paradise – I know this as Desert Bird of Paradise and I think it is incredibly beautiful. This one is a volunteer and grew from a seed and obviously really likes this spot. Every year I trim it back by about a quarter to keep in under control. I also only water it about twice a year. Once in the Spring before the first bloom…
When that bloom is done I trim it again around June/July and give it another shot of water and get another bloom out of it. I’ve never quite gotten a third bloom – just run out of sunlight and heat.
TexasYucca – this is also in neighbor’s yard and is a Texas or Red Yucca. I have one in my yard but it wasn’t doing very well so I moved it to a warmer spot. It seems to like it so I’m hopeful.
(Image by NEIVANMADE)
The cost:
🫡🕯️🇺🇦 Odesa has suffered a heavy and irreparable loss: on Friday, July 18, while performing a combat mission on the front line, a legendary figure died – the president of the Odesa Aeroclub, chairman of the board of the Odesa Region Parachuting Federation, Konstantin Oborin.
— Vitalis Viva (@vitalisviva.bsky.social) July 19, 2025 at 7:19 AM
🫡🇺🇦 In 2022, rising into the sky above Odesa, Konstantin Oborin fulfilled the last wish of his student, Hero of Ukraine Vladislav Buvalkin, to scatter his ashes over his native city. That same year, the mayor awarded Colonel Oborin the Order of Grigory Marazli, III degree.
— Vitalis Viva (@vitalisviva.bsky.social) July 19, 2025 at 7:19 AM
16yo Tigran Ogannisian and Mykyta Khanhanov were posthumously awarded the Order of Freedom. The boys were brutally murdered by russian occupiers in Berdiansk. Their last words, recorded before execution, were: Glory to Ukraine!
Let the world remember their names. russian occupation is not peace.
— Olena Halushka (@halushka.bsky.social) July 19, 2025 at 12:09 PM
The reasons:
Ukrainian children share their heartfelt thanks to the brave soldiers defending their country.
📽️ bambilviv
United 24 Media / Instagram
— Eugene McParland 🇺🇦 (@eugenemcparland.bsky.social) July 19, 2025 at 2:41 PM
🏆🇺🇦 Ukrainian veterans won gold at the World Dragon Boat Championships, beating Canada🍁💖 by just half a second!
“In the Ukrainian boat, there are guys without legs. Guys in wheelchairs. With serious injuries. With pain that cannot be seen—but it is there. They are determined to win.”— Vitalis Viva (@vitalisviva.bsky.social) July 19, 2025 at 5:24 PM
Usyk being awesome once again
— Mira of Kyiv 🇺🇦 (@reshetz.bsky.social) July 19, 2025 at 10:36 AM
Undisputed. Our Champion! Congratulations Oleksandr , congratulations fellow Ukrainians! 🥊🏆
— Kate from Kharkiv (@kateinkharkiv.bsky.social) July 19, 2025 at 5:42 PM
🥊Usyk: I want to thank all the guys who are currently defending our country. I received many messages yesterday and today too. From the various units that defend my country on the front lines. Guys – Glory to Ukraine! You are incredible! You allow me to be here now.
— 🦋Special Kherson Cat🐈🇺🇦 (@specialkhersoncat.bsky.social) July 19, 2025 at 6:33 PM
Usyk🥊
Ukrainian cossack🇺🇦— Iryna Voichuk (@irynavoichuk.bsky.social) July 19, 2025 at 5:52 PM
Usyk, a UNITED24 Ambassador, becomes two-time undisputed heavyweight champion
Ukrainian National Anthem, performed by Ukrainian singer Nadya Dorofeeva before the fight in London
United 24 Media / Instagram
— Eugene McParland 🇺🇦 (@eugenemcparland.bsky.social) July 19, 2025 at 5:56 PM
It’s night in Ukraine. our usual wartime curfew, but just listen to how people are celebrating Usyk’s victory, each from their own home. This is how most apartment buildings in Ukraine sound tonight.
— Kate from Kharkiv (@kateinkharkiv.bsky.social) July 19, 2025 at 6:19 PM
Here is President Zelesnkyy’s address from earlier today. Video below, English transcript after the jump.
Spent about eight hours today and no matter how much sunscreen you wear, the sun still beats you up. I have not much to say.
I will note that if the NY Times is to be believed, Donald Trump spent fifteen years banging models and raping teens procured by Jeffrey Epstein. For all the MAGA folks out there, to give you a frame of reference, fifteen years is three times the length of the confederacy. Honestly though, we fucking knew all this in 2016.
In other news, Maxwell fucked around and found out, attacking Steve one too many times today, and he proceeded to brutalize him and then trap him under the dining room table and chairs and kept him there for a solid half hour. He just sauntered around in a circle, always keeping and eye on Maxwell, and giving him the paw of understanding if he tried anything fishy.
That’s it for me.
‘Amy Sherald’s more recent works have a winning clarity of composition: a single figure, thrown against a coloured background, and realised in such a way as to make us ask what it costs to present oneself with this degree of polish.’
Eleanor Nairne at the Whitney: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4…— London Review of Books (@lrb.co.uk) July 19, 2025 at 11:20 AM
I really envy the people who will be able to visit the Whitney Museum in NYC for this exhibit. Eleanor Nairne on “Amy Sherald’s Subjects“:
At his final White House Correspondents’ dinner, Barack Obama joked that he had been grizzled by the presidency while Michelle had barely aged a day. ‘She looks so happy to be here … That’s called practice. It’s like learning to do three-minute planks.’ Amy Sherald’s portrait of Michelle Obama speaks to the effort of looking relaxed in the public eye, not least because, of all Sherald’s paintings currently on display at the Whitney survey of her work (until 10 August), it’s the only one behind glass and the only one with its own room and security guard. Sherald usually gives her works enigmatic titles – Well Prepared and Maladjusted; The Lesson of Falling Leaves – but here we have simply Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama, three generations distilled into one persona.
Sherald was commissioned to paint the portrait in 2017, after the end of Obama’s second term. It was an intriguing choice at the time. She was in her early forties, had only recently been able to give up her job as a waitress and was barely known to the art world. Her painting career had been stalled by the need to care for ailing relatives and her own diagnosis of congestive heart failure (it isn’t often you see an organ donor thanked in a catalogue). Michelle’s husband, by contrast, picked for his portrait the artist Kehinde Wiley, who had already been the subject of a retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum and whose work had sold to institutions including the Met.
Sherald’s star had begun to rise after she won the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition at the Smithsonian in 2016. The prize painting, Miss Everything (Unsuppressed Deliverance), is displayed in an early room at the Whitney and it gives a sense of why she might have had an edge over more established artists for the presidential commission. It shows a young woman, perhaps only a girl, wearing a polka-dot shift dress, white gloves and a red pillbox hat. She holds an oversized tea cup and saucer, lending a note of whimsy to the painting, but everything else suggests furious restraint. Sherald portrays her sitters with a particular tautness. She also has a feeling for vivid colour. Miss Everything is a vision in vermilion and turquoise. Sherald pays meticulous attention to the seams of her gloves and the pompom on her hat, but the girl’s skin is painted with shades of grey in what has become the artist’s signature technique: rendering Black skin as grisaille in order to make us think again about notions of colour and race. Like most of Sherald’s figures, Miss Everything casts an appraising look at the viewer. The overall effect is one of graphic self-possession.
Sherald almost always paints Black subjects, most of whom are strangers she approaches in the street. Together, they select an outfit from the sitter’s clothes (this is another key aspect of her work: her lively interest in the ways we fashion ourselves). Long before she was commissioned to paint a celebrity, Sherald understood that anyone who feels scrutinised in public is likely to use appearance as a kind of armour. After the clothes comes a photography session, which produces the source material for the painting – an image already shaped by hours of posing for the camera (it isn’t surprising that her portraits often feature on magazine covers)…
On entering the exhibition, the viewer immediately encounters a curved wall on which are hung five of Sherald’s most striking paintings, all the same size and placed unusually low: Sherald says she wants visitors to meet her subjects’ gaze. Every detail bristles with life: the fine halo of soft black fur against the salmon pink background in Mama Has Made the Bread (How Things Are Measured), the woven gold of the straw hat in Mother and Child – details that testify to Sherald’s fluency with her materials.
Alice Neel liked to say that she painted all of a person: ‘What the world has done to them and their retaliation’. The opposite might be said of Sherald: she seems less concerned with the bruised interior than with the exterior shell we create under duress. When Ta-Nehisi Coates edited an issue of Vanity Fair in September 2020, he commissioned Sherald to make a cover painting of Breonna Taylor, who had been killed by police earlier that year. Sherald worked with Taylor’s family to create an idealised portrait, a painting of her subject in the future conditional. This is Taylor the way she might have been and would have liked to have been seen, dressed to impress in shades of Tiffany turquoise with fabulous hair and an engagement ring that may have been on its way…
