Set your clock to Stockholm time, 'cause only Sweden knows the score.
Cartoon by Pat Byrnes @patbyrnes.bsky.social— Fiona "Fi" Webster ?????? (@fiona-webster22.bsky.social) June 24, 2025 at 6:55 AM
===
Here's an appealing idea that also made me laugh.
— Khashoggi's Ghost (@urocklive1.bsky.social) June 25, 2025 at 1:32 AM
Mr. Bemused Senior
Great title for this thread.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Nominate Trump for a Peace Prize for engaging in an act of war that had no material effect on the enemy.
Baud
Sweden knows that wanting a peace prize is the only thing keeping Trump from nuking something
Scout211
Love the cartoon. Trump has been nominated yet again.
And the rest of the story:
Just a coincidence, I’m sure.
Baud
I’m not a poll person, but others are, so
Ohio Mom
I guess there were problems with the optics of Biden giving Pence a medal, because that would have made more sense than a Nobel Prize. Though there might be an argument to be made that getting rewarded for following the Constitution and doing your job properly is akin to participation trophy.
Baud
@Ohio Mom:
“You might as well give me an award for not robbing a bank.”
Chetan Murthy
I’d have been fine with it. I’m sure he and his family got a ton of death threats after he did that; surely he feared for his life on that day.
Miss Bianca
@Baud: I wonder if the “Everything Trump Touches Dies” doctrine can also, finally, lead to the death in popularity of some of his more hideous policy initiatives.
Chetan Murthy
@Chetan Murthy: What I mean is: yes it was his Constitutional duty. But he did it, and in the face of some considerable danger, both in the moment and after. But he did his duty. We should celebrate that, and I’m OK with it.
ETA: and in that moment, he could not simply resign: he had to act, one way or the other.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: Earlier I noted that I’m hearing anecdata that Trump supporters who actually see peaceful yard workers being dragged off their mowers and hogtied by masked men in street clothes are having second thoughts.
Pity their imaginations were so poor before the election. Mine wasn’t.
ETA: I assume this isn’t happening much in red states, but if it is, I’m wondering if this kind of street atrocity is finally going to get through to some people.
Baud
@Miss Bianca:
Let’s assume we get a trifecta again in 2029 due to the backlash. Will the public support what we want to do on immigration? Will we even achieve consensus within the party?
It’s obviously nice that the public has a negative reaction to Trump’s signature issue rather than a positive one, but it’s hard to tell what the effect will be.
Jay
FYI, the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded by the Norwegian Nobel Committee.
All the other Nobel Awards are awarded by the Swedish Nobel Committee.
Norway and Sweden used to be one big happy country, and then,….. well Norway kept the Peace Prize in the divorce.
Jay
Chetan Murthy
@Jay: ice.gov/news/releases/canadian-national-ice-custody-passes-away
Belafon
@Ohio Mom: Call it an MVP award instead.
Belafon
@Chetan Murthy: Officially proving that ICE detention is worse than prison.
Tony Jay
Surely, surely, somewhere in the archives there is a long dead ‘Colonel Noble’ who once authored a peace treaty between the Federal Government and an aboriginal tribe that some Trump lickspittle can name a spanking new Heroes of Peace trophy after and then nominate The Worst Citizen to be its first recipient?
Give it a few weeks and Don Shitposté will be babbling about how his Noble Prize is better than that unfair Swedish trinket, much better, everyone says so. And no one will be surprised in the least.
JWR
You’re f*cking kidding me, right? From NBC:
How anybody can think that this administration has suddenly found out about the proper way to handle classified information is beyond me. Their behavior is most probably because of what the report says about those “obliterated” nuclear sites.
Jeffro
@Baud: getting ever-closer to that ever-present 27%
dmsilev
@Jay:
Yeah, I was just going to say. Although, maybe having Trump standing outside Stockholm City Hall holding a boombox over his head like he’s John Cusack in Say Anything would keep him out of the way. Sure, it’d annoy the residents of Stockholm, which is a lovely city, but if we arrange for it to be all winter long they won’t actually be outside to hear it so I think it’d be ok.
rikyrah
Variety
@Variety
Anna Wintour is stepping down as editor-in-chief of Vogue after 37 years. Wintour announced to staffers on Thursday that Vogue will begin the search for a new head of editorial content. https://variety.com/2025/digital/news/anna-wintour-stepping-down-vogue-us-editor-in-chief-1236441835/
Jeffro
just wait until ICE checkpoints/roadblocks start screwing up their commutes
Suzanne
Seeing that cartoon reminds me of one of the funnier details of the first FFOTUS Administration: learning that he thinks stealth aircraft are literally invisible.
Y’all can’t see me right now, but I’m laughing so hard.
Harrison Wesley
@Ohio Mom: A non-participation trophy.
Jay
@JWR:
and the leak came from inside the Pentagon, so this is just another move by the Administration to create an “Imperial Presidency”.
M31
@Suzanne: that was a subplot in Spongebob — these two aging superheros named Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy have an “invisible boatmobile” that they keep losing, because it’s invisible.
Brilliantly voiced by Ernest Borgnine and Tim Conway
Captain C
@Baud: If it’s the same cash prize as a Nobel, I’ll take one of those. I haven’t robbed a bank.
(Though strangely enough, I knew someone who did, though like all of his friends, didn’t find out until after he got caught.)
WTFGhost
@Chetan Murthy: For Pence, I’d agree he deserves a polished piece of tin and ribbon, and a Presidential pardon, if, and only if, he spilled all his guts, including the appendix, to the prosecutors about the massive criminal conspiracy to defraud the US, and thereby commit treason – changing the lawfully elected leadership to an unelected criminal.
Otherwise, we should get someone to have him say that anyone who commits treason should be shot, and have that person then pull a gun on him. I’ll leave it to wiser heads whether it’s going to pop out a “bang” flag or fire.
I’m not saying he wasn’t brave – he was. But he participated in the criminal conspiracy, until it got too hot for him, and then, he was going to let the Republican Majority leader stand in for him as President of the Senate, until his farking *son* told him to man the eff up. So, you know, a nice *shiny* piece of tin, and a pardon, sounds about right.
Captain C
@Tony Jay:
Does this Colonel Noble even have to have existed? They could just make it up and FFOTUS would be none the wiser.
(ed. for spelling)
Jeffro
hmmmm…I see that Rep Ogles from TN has decided that he can best represent his district (which is in Tennessee, did I mention that?) by…calling for NYC Mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani to be deported.
(he sent a letter to Party Gal Pam Bondi and everything!)
I was trying to figure out why a MAGAt from Tennessee would give a hoot about NYC and then the OBVIOUS struck me: that performative white nationalism ain’t gonna perform itself, right??!?
Jeffro
@WTFGhost: maybe we give the medal to Pence’s son?
Jay
nbcnews.com/news/latino/court-orders-costa-rica-release-asian-migrants-trump-deported-rcna215206
WTFGhost
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Actually, Digby (digbysblog.net) quoted someone yesterday who pointed out that it might have been worse than nothing.
See, up until this past weekend, Iran had no idea how good our bunker buster bombs were. Two possibilities emerge now:
Now, in circumstance 1), Trump isn’t likely to admit he didn’t “obliterate” Iran’s nuclear program, and in any case, Iran knows what the bombs might do, and disperses their program more broadly. Within 3 years, Iran has a working atom bomb, assuming they do, in fact, feel they need one for deterrence.
In 2), Trump might have instituted a lasting peace, as Iran whistles a happy tune, and has a bunch of dwarves singing “Hi ho!” dig out the tunnels – wait, no, I don’t think Disney does Iran yet – but anyway, they’ll excavate and go on their happy way, smiling like Superman does when the thief draws a gun.
Regardless, I’m pretty sure the Nobel Peace committee has a policy against giving the Peace prize for bombing runs. Even Luke and Han were pissed off.
BlueGuitarist
@Jeffro:
ogles is Tennessee’s George Santos
and represents a grotesquely gerrymandered district, one of the 3 seats into which Rs divided Nashville to steal a Dem seat and mock the concept of representation
Jay
@WTFGhost:
You also forgot the part where “his” SS detail wanted to “escort” him away, (to disappear him) and wiser heads told him “don’t get in the van, they don’t really have candy.”
Chief Oshkosh
@Baud:
I think a more pertinent question is: Will the Democrats in power have learned that, once elected, they should exercise power loudly, brashly, and with lots of bragging about their successes and lots of dragging of Team Loser. Americans love our policies, but they love an in-your-face winner, too. Politics as sports is a thing that we simply must play to win and keep winning. In my opinion.
WTFGhost
@Jay: Costa Rica: where freedom loving immigrants go!
@Jeffro: LOL, yes, good choice, and better.
Jeffro
I actually recoiled from the screen, reading that
They can try to dress it up in legalese all they want, but the idea of a charismatic Democrat running on doing popular things sure does scare the shit out of all the right people.
WTFGhost
@Jay: You’re right, I didn’t mention that part, but, yes, that bit, that showed some real leadership. He had an excuse to let them do what they planned, but, he stayed near the mob, so he could continue his duty.
I wonder if Trump told him he was just being exiled, not killed, like in the Godfather, and alas, Pence, having *seen* the Godfather, knew better than to fall for that. “Not until you explain to me why you have a raw hempen rope in your car!”
Tony Jay
@Captain C:
Kind of makes you think ‘So, that’s why they fired the person who looked after the National Archives!’ Now no one can check up on their claims!
Truly, malice never sleeps.
Harrison Wesley
@Jay: I knew I should have moved there. Constitutional rights – who ever heard of such a thing!
Jay
@WTFGhost:
Well, it did take 6 months to grind it’s way through Costa Rica’s Court System, and they were kept in a temporary tent prison, in Costa Rica, not exactly a nature tour.
RaflW
@Jay: “Norway and Sweden used to be one big happy country”
Not according to several of the Minnesotans I know of Norwegian extraction.
/kidding, mostly
I am not that well steeped in Scandinavian history, but Norway being shunted from a being a Danish subordinate partner, to being a somewhat autonomous but also subordinate partner to Sweden doesn’t really come across as ever having been very popular with rank and file Norwegians. There only having been about 2.3M Norwegians in 1905 compared to over 5M Swedes, one can see where the chip on the shoulder originated.
mark
Openly lobbying for a Nobel Prize. No dignity at all. Never seen anything like it.
mark
@RaflW: Check out the results for past winter Olympics. Norway has been at the top or close to the top for decades. That measurement is in medal count.
Trollhattan
Make of this what you will.
Trollhattan
@mark:
Lillehammer Olympics remains my favorite winter games. Norwegian charm takes center stage.
Jeffro
The kicker was Don Jr saying that Obama getting one but trumpov not getting one was the ‘definition’ of affirmative action
Yes, Jr…no difference at all between the two…sorry your very white nationalist dad got robbed of his rightful prize…
schrodingers_cat
@RaflW: My Norwegian friend calls IKEA, Swedish Walmart.
Layer8Problem
@M31: Bringing the laughs to the grandkids of people who had seen them in McHale’s Navy years before. Another nautical themed show, y’know.
Layer8Problem
Duplicated.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: DSA left hates immigrants and minorities if they stray from the assigned Gungadin role.
Jewish Wonk agrees with me
I have experienced this IRL and here.
Harrison Wesley
@schrodingers_cat: Ouch!
NotMax
@dmsilev
That would be almost too on the money, Stockholm being in Sweden and Oslo being the capital of Norway.
;)
japa21
@schrodingers_cat:
I’ve heard Swedes say the same thing. They are very amused by the fascination Americans have for IKEA.
Jay
@RaflW:
Well, the divorce was reasonably peaceful, and Norwegian’s in Norway, generally bear no ill will towards Sweden or Denmark, other than the occasional joke,
Kinda like I have learned to call my ex-wife, my “starter Wife”.
In some way’s, it’s kinda funny. My Scot’s immigrant Grandfather was more “Scottish” and carried a burning hate for the English, that his relatives in Aberdeen , Inverness and Edenborough, did not carry, none of them had 60 albums of of Scottish Pipe music in constant rotation or cheap prints of all the Scottish, (these days we would call them memes) icons, from Robert Burns to the Bridge over the Dee, cluttering up the walls in every room but the bathroom and the kitchen.
WTFGhost
@Jay: Well, I was just thinking “compare and contrast with America, land of freedom!” where we haven’t even had to question sending a bunch of Venezuelans to an El Salvador gulag, when the vast majority have no criminal record.
During the first Trump admin, his first AG, Klanman (I’m blanking on his name, but I can see the dark stain in his shape in front of my mural labeled “justice”, which exists only in my mind) said that parents losing their kids was what they deserved, for bringing their kids to America.
Like, “they should have known America was an evil, bigoted place; maybe next time, they’ll know better!”
Jesse Helms. That’s the name. Former proud holder of the longest filibuster, intended to gum up civil rights.
I try to imagine, being in a group of men and women, and hearing the AG say something like that, without my heart freezing and my guts starting to churn. “America, where we pledge to provide liberty and justice to all? They deserve to lose their kids for taking them *here*? Our HOME?”
Trollhattan
@japa21:
My takeaways growing up in Seattle.
Norwegians and Danes: Swedes are oversexed
Swedes and Danes: Norwegians are hicks
Norwegians and Swedes: Danes are snooty
Wish I had more intel on #1, but alas.
NotMax
@japa21
It’s the meatballs.
;)
gene108
@JWR:
It’s not about how they handle classified information. It’s about their ability to gaslight the public with lies.
They want to control the flow of information so nothing contradictory gets out to the public.
It’s only a matter of time before they do this with other data, like inflation and unemployment numbers or anything else that might reflect poorly on them.
Anne Laurie
Not so much ‘happy’, according to my Norwegian-American inlaws:
Ten thousand Swedes came thru the weeds, to fight a sick Norwegian;
Ten thousand more stood up and swore – the fairest fight they ever saw!
Anyway
@NotMax: it’s the lutefisk!
Hoodie
@Jay: Sounds like my grandfather. According to what my mom told me, he was totally different from his father, who actually lived most of his life in Edinburgh and didn’t have a lot of romantic notions about Scotland.
lowtechcyclist
@NotMax:
I figured putting Trump in the wrong capital was an intentional part of the joke.
Jay
@Anne Laurie:
The trial separation resulted in an amicable divorce, not a war.
Which for 1905 Europe, was unheard of.
Moreso when the marriage was not consensual.
Anyway
I don’t follow the DSA much but see many South Asian names in the mix — I don’t get it.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Tony Jay: Well William Tecumseh Sherman (yes that Sherman) co-signed the Treaty of Fort Laramie, and the General Sherman “My Last Cracker” Peace Prize would be amusing.
Jay
@Anyway:
Schrodinger’s Cat has a visceral hate on for anyone to the left of Schumer in the Democratic Party and a fondness for parroting RW Talking Points poorly sourced FTMSM talking points, etc.
strange visitor (from another planet)
@WTFGhost: pretty sure you mean jefferson beauregard sessions III.
Elizabelle
Oooh, I want the Nobel Peace Prize to go to Chef Jose Andres and his World Kitchen. A) he and they deserve it; some of his staff were killed by Israel and B) TRUMP would not like that at all.
Five jackals probably already made this point. Have not read the thread.
Bokonon
Many years ago, a new family purchased the house next door to ours. The husband came up and introduced himself to my dad, and got to talking about how proud he was of his Scottish heritage as a Campbell. He went on at length. Great length. Annoying length.
My dad waited until the man finished talking, and then gave him an ice cold smile. “We’re McDonalds” he said.
The guy wilted, and seemed to shrink down in size. Oops. Wrong foot if you want to talk heritage. Really stepped in it. Some wee relationship issues and grudges from the auld country.
Elizabelle
@strange visitor (from another planet): Known around these parts as “Chifferobe,” and thank you Betty Cracker for that.
schrodingers_cat
@Anyway: Racism doesn’t always need a white face as a front person. If you conform ideologically and mouth the platitudes you are accepted.
But you knew that.
schrodingers_cat
@Jay: Thanks for proving my point. Its not enough for you to disagree. You have to disparage my intelligence and call me names. You are not the first leftie to do that and you won’t be the last.
Jay
K-Thug, today.
Baud
@Jay:
Not just centrist Dems urge unity. But he’s correct that the same principle applies.
And in both situations, there will be people who put their ego over the good of the people.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Leader of the Uncommitted movement wants Democrats to bend the knee. How ironic. Not a New Yorker so not my fight. But I don’t like this hostile takeover of the party.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
Krugman was uncommitted?
lowtechcyclist
@schrodingers_cat:
??
He called you Schrodinger’s Cat.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Mamdani who Krugman is telling us to rally behind.
Uncle Cosmo
Olof the Swedish-American and Knut the Norwegian-American were next-door neighbors on a lake in the Great North Woods. One early evening Knut was standing on his pier as Olof’s motorboat, fishing rods up, puttputted back toward his.
“Hej, Olof,” called Knut, “how many fish you catch today?”
“Well i tell ya Knut, if you can guess how many I caught, you can have them both.”
“Why that’s very generous of you, Olof! I’ll guess five.”
< rimshot >
FTR Danish friends are convinced that this joke came from one of their countrymen, because only a Dane could genially and equally despise both groups...
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
I don’t know what Mamdani is saying at this stage. He’s the nominee, and I think every nominee should expect unity, although they can’t overtly demand it.
I’m not sure how this is hostile. The incumbent left the party, and AFAIK, the primary was fair.
Jay
@Bokonon:
Yeah, I got raised on knowing all the old grudges. At one job, there was always one guy who was cold and hostile.
Eventually I asked him why.
He said, “do you know what your Clan did to my Clan?”
I replied, “yeah I know, I also know your Clan started it, according to the Dee Side Tales, and that was over 800 years ago, I also know that my family has been here for over 100 years and your family has been here for close to 200 years, kinda silly to hold a grudge, isn’t it”.
sab
@Bokonon: My family has some highland/island Scottish roots, so I got the joke. That’s hilarious.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: I don’t like these DSA types using the Democratic party to get elected and then shit on it on it 24/7. Check out his tweets as NY assemblyman.
Bernie Sanders runs in the Democratic primary for senate in Vt. And yesterday he shit on KH’s campaign when praising Mamdani’s win.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
I don’t like Bernie. I don’t know enough about Mamdani. The scuttlebutt online is that he had positive things to say about being a Dem.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: He seems charming at a personal level but politically I find a lot of his stances problematic. And his math doesn’t add up.
Also where was this energy from these DSA types for the progressive agenda enacted by Biden or during the Harris campaign?
RaflW
@mark: I remember being a kid and visiting Oslo in 1979. We went to Vigeland Park and the sheer number of bronze penises was mindbending.
I went back about six years ago, and it really is a wonderful exhibit of human emotion.
Gary K
I was going to post about that Sweden/Norway business (while riding as a passenger on our way to vacation) but then suddenly we were rearended by a truck. No injuries, but our plan for the day made a u-turn.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
I haven’t paid attention since it’s a NYC issue.
Plenty of people were excited about Harris. But I think DSA is mostly focused on their own people. I don’t think they reach outside the group often.
Baud
@Gary K:
Damn. Glad no injuries.
Citizen Alan
@BlueGuitarist:
And for the 10,000th time, I would like to remind everyone that if President Hillary Clinton had appointed Scalia’s replacement, Rausch v. Common Cause would have gone the other way, and every state would have had to redraw gerrymandered districts.
Buttery males.
Anonymous At Work
They ought to give Trump the Nobel Peace Prize and ask him to fly to The Hague to pick it up.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: They were disparaging her and urging people to withhold their votes.
Ruckus
@dmsilev:
It’s bad enough that he got elected a second time. And now we want to expose other parts of the world directly to His Shittyness? Are we trying to start WWIII? And why wouldn’t they be outside? Snow? Cold? Believe me, people in Stockholm go outside in the winter. Maybe they don’t hold a soccer game in their yard in winter, but they do go outside. I know because I’ve been quite a ways north of there in the winter time and people walked around.
TurnItOffAndOnAgain
@schrodingers_cat: And the worst of the left feels so superior to the right because they’re kind and gracious and generous about it.
Not realizing, not wanting to realize or not admitting that the condescension itself is the problem, no matter how kind or gentle or generous it is.
Manuel Sander
@Jeffro: this. 1000%
schrodingers_cat
@TurnItOffAndOnAgain: It is not generous. It is self aggrandizing. Look at me, praise me, tell me how wonderful I am, that I have given you this role of the cheerleader.
Marc
This seems pretty condescending in and of itself, but what do I know, I’m just a dumbass.
Steve LaBonne
@Marc: It should be left turned off.
Marc
@Steve LaBonne: Got it :)
brantl
@Baud: they generally haven’t threatened to hang you for not robbing a bank, have they?
brantl
@schrodingers_cat: just because people disagree with you doesn’t mean they’re disagreeing with you because of your ethnicity race or anything else sometimes they just disagree with you as I do
brantl
@schrodingers_cat: you’re inferring something that need not have been implied.
brantl
@schrodingers_cat: with that chip on your shoulder, it’s easy to see why you feel that way.