Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

One way or another, he’s a liar.

Republicans firmly believe having an abortion is a very personal, very private decision between a woman and J.D. Vance.

Text STOP to opt out of updates on war plans.

The desire to stay informed is directly at odds with the need to not be constantly enraged.

All hail the time of the bunny!

DeSantis transforming Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

Democracy cannot function without a free press.

My right to basic bodily autonomy is not on the table. that’s the new deal.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

GOP baffled that ‘we don’t care if you die’ is not a winning slogan.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

This must be what justice looks like, not vengeful, just peaceful exuberance.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

I would try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Live so that if you miss a day of work people aren’t hoping you’re dead.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

So many bastards, so little time.

Of course you can have champagne before noon. That’s why orange juice was invented.

Stamping your little feets and demanding that they see how important you are? Not working anymore.

Trump should be leading, not lying.

After dobbs, women are no longer free.

You passed on an opportunity to be offended? What are you even doing here?

The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.

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Open Thread: Look, Over There! — An Even *More* Execrable Media Oligarch!

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— MisterJayEm (@misterjayem.bsky.social) April 13, 2026 at 5:22 PM

When the FTFNYTimes assigns Amy ‘Chasing Hillary’ Choznick to write a puff piece about the wife of its most powerful competitor… they’re not a disinterested party. “Someone Has to Be Happy. Why Not Lauren Sánchez Bezos?” [gift link]:

A lot of things make Lauren Sánchez Bezos ridiculously happy. Helicopters. Fashion. Protecting the narwhal. Her little sister, Elena. Her five best girlfriends. And, of course, her new husband, Jeff Bezos.

She and Mr. Bezos do everything together. On a typical day, the newlyweds wake up around 6 in their new, roughly $230 million compound on Indian Creek, an exclusive private island in Miami often called “Billionaire Bunker.” They don’t touch their phones. Instead, they begin each day by listing 10 things they’re grateful for — and they can’t repeat what they named the day before.

From there, the couple drink their morning coffee in a sunroom and watch the sun rise: hers from a mug that reads “Woke Up Sexy as Hell Again,” his from one she got him that spells HUNK in symbols from the periodic table. They play pickleball. Six days a week, they work out for an hour with a private trainer. “He looks good, doesn’t he?” Mrs. Sánchez Bezos said of her new husband, in an interview in Miami in January. She slow-nodded, repeating, “He looks good.”

By now, it is hard to conjure the version of Mr. Bezos that existed before. Mildly awkward; faintly hermetic in Seattle. The logistical mastermind of two-day shipping. Now, he is gym-hardened, frequently shirtless, captured mid-laugh in paparazzi photos, canoodling on his megayacht, a man who has discovered joy, love and cosmetic dermatology.

Mrs. Sánchez Bezos has, in turn, adopted some Jeff-isms, like Amazon corporate rituals — such as requesting memos no more than six-pages long ahead of meetings at the Bezos Earth Fund, where she is the vice chair…

… Mrs. Sánchez Bezos has shown that with the right attitude and mind-boggling wealth, anything is possible. Space travel. The Met Gala. Fertility after 50.

Her happiness is infectious, undeniable, world-historical. Mrs. Sánchez Bezos treats the pursuit — and spreading — of joy as a kind of mandate. But when one of the world’s wealthiest people radiates this much happiness, is it celebration, or provocation? Is she just rubbing it in?…

Gosh, why don’t you tell us, Amy?

She used to look normal!

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— Parker Molloy (@parkermolloy.com) April 13, 2026 at 5:32 PM

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Open Thread: Elon Musk’s Bagnarok

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Subscribe the SpaceX IPO

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— Mr Market Miscalculates 🇪🇺🇺🇦🏴‍☠️ (@mrmarketmis.bsky.social) April 12, 2026 at 4:04 PM

SpaceX posted nearly $5 billion loss in 2025, The Information reports reut.rs/4miyWL8

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— Reuters (@reuters.com) April 10, 2026 at 2:05 AM

Probably this is wishcasting on my part, but Musk staging his World’s Biggest IPO Ever just as everything is about to fall apart would be a very satisfying sort of tragicomedy…

How the math works on a $1.75 trillion SpaceX valuation reut.rs/4ty4mQ7

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— Reuters (@reuters.com) April 8, 2026 at 9:01 AM

Spoiler: it doesn’t, without considerable thimblerigging. Per the Irish Times, “SpaceX IPO shows how Wall Street bends to Musk”:

“Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them … well, I have others,” Groucho Marx famously quipped. SpaceX, in advance of its planned June initial public offering (IPO), is proving the point, with banks and index providers alike bending to Elon Musk’s will…

One might expect little different from bankers eager to get a piece of what may become the largest IPO in history, but the rule adjustments being made by index providers is unprecedented, bending long-standing norms to accommodate a single company.

Nasdaq has approved a fast entry for supersized listings, allowing SpaceX to join the Nasdaq-100 15 days after listing, far shorter than the usual three months. S&P Dow Jones is reportedly considering letting SpaceX join the S&P 500 immediately, bypassing the usual 12-month public trading rule, while FTSE cut its wait to five days.

A track record as a public company aids price discovery by giving markets time to settle on a fair price. In contrast, early index inclusion will create predictable, forced demand from passive funds.

Early price inflation mainly benefits the issuer – in this case, SpaceX – allowing it to sell more shares at a higher price. Index investors risk losing out, being forced to buy high.

It seems the market is not setting the terms of the IPO; the IPO is setting the terms of the market.

From what I can tell, SpaceX is valuable because of Starlink — which is entirely dependent on huge government contracts. Government contracts, according to many business reporters, deeply dependent on Republican control of the U.S. government. Funny how that works!

Pay no attention to the sweaty grifter behind the curtain…

strange signs and portents, as BAGNAROK approaches

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— e.w. niedermeyer (@niedermeyer.online) April 12, 2026 at 7:51 PM

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Late Night Open Thread: Murphy The Trickster God Pricks Up His Ears

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Oh man, the audiobook version of the Maye Musk autobiography is sure to be a quantum leap in Geneva busting torture technologies. I'd rather have the car battery to the scrotum

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— Rude Law Dog (@esghound.com) April 3, 2026 at 10:37 PM

BAGNAROCK proceeds apace

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— GOLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachine.com) April 3, 2026 at 1:55 PM

Gift link:

It’s not uncommon for large companies doing big deals to make demands of their bankers and lawyers.

But Elon Musk has made a particularly bold demand of his Wall Street advisers ahead of the initial public offering of his company SpaceX.

Mr. Musk is requiring banks, law firms, auditors and other advisers working on the I.P.O. to buy subscriptions to Grok, his artificial intelligence chatbot, which is part of SpaceX, according to four people with knowledge of the matter, who were not authorized to speak publicly about confidential discussions.

Some of the banks have agreed to spend tens of millions on the chatbot, and they have already started integrating Grok into their I.T. systems, three of the people said…

For almost any major initial public offering, banks find ways to ingratiate themselves with the company going public, as well as its chief executive. But after several years with few significant public offerings coming to market, Wall Street has been salivating for a deal like SpaceX, which is forecast to be one of the largest in history.

The I.P.O. is expected to raise more than $50 billion at a valuation above $1 trillion, which means the banks could generate fees in excess of $500 million for advising on the deal…

The banks’ purchases of Grok subscriptions were not merely good-will gestures, according to three people with knowledge of the arrangements. Mr. Musk insisted that they purchase the chatbot services. He has also asked the banks to advertise on X, his social media site, which is also owned by SpaceX, but was less adamant about that request, according to two of those people.

For now, five banks are expected to work on the offering — Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley. The law firms Gibson Dunn and Davis Polk are also advising on the deal…

If Musk’s newest no-pig-in-an-overpriced-poke initial public offering turns out to be anywhere near as disasterous as the Musk haterz are happy to predict, his mother’s newest book release might just be as special as her firstborn son!

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Open Thread: No Cash for GOP Trash

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the republican party distilled to its essence, thank you donald trump for saying what every liberal has said about republicans and been chastised about
thank you so much for saying the quiet part loud.

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— not an art thief (@famousartthief.bsky.social) April 4, 2026 at 7:02 PM

Donald Trump might be happy to spend more money on bombs in the Middle East than on families here in America—but I am not.
The only responsible thing to do with a budget this morally bankrupt is to toss it in the trash.

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— Senator Patty Murray (@murray.senate.gov) April 3, 2026 at 11:37 AM

I certainly hope we can make Russell Vought the face of this demented budget… and watch the GOP choke on it. Politico, “The White House has a war-funding sales pitch the GOP might not buy”:

… After teasing an ambitious increase to military spending for months, the president made it official Friday by releasing a budget blueprint that would boost the Pentagon by more than 40 percent in the fiscal year beginning in October.

Yet among the congressional Republicans who will need to pass the funding, many are concerned about supersizing defense spending ahead of the coming midterm elections, especially as voters begin to feel the economic consequences of the Iran war and Democrats look to campaign on that issue…

The president’s budget asks Republicans to pass a large chunk of his defense proposal — some $350 billion — using the party-line reconciliation process to skirt the Senate filibuster and forgo bipartisan negotiations. Congressional GOP leaders have already started to embrace the concept of sidelining Democrats to boost Pentagon dollars and immigration enforcement accounts that are currently unfunded amid the broader Department of Homeland Security shutdown…

But reconciliation will require nearly every GOP lawmaker in both chambers to vote in support of a 12-figure boost for Pentagon coffers in order to bring Trump’s wish list to fruition. That will require an aggressive persuasion campaign targeting fiscal hawks who don’t want to spend on overseas wars and more moderate Republicans who don’t want to increase military spending while slashing priorities at home.

Even before Trump sent his budget request to Congress Friday, Democratic political groups had begun airing attack ads to hit incumbent Republicans for supporting military funding increases amid the U.S.-Israel onslaught in Iran, while backing cuts to health care and other domestic programs…

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Saturday Morning Open Thread

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While Artemis II astronauts make their way around the moon and back, take a look at some Apollo items that have touched the lunar surface.
#NASA #space #Apollo

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— The Associated Press (@apnews.com) April 3, 2026 at 1:26 PM

Republicans control the House, the Senate, and the White House. Mike Johnson sets the schedule. He chose to leave Washington without a vote on the Senate compromise to pay the TSA, FEMA, and the Coast Guard.
He should do his damn job, call us back to Washington, and reopen the government now.

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— Rep. Jim McGovern (@repmcgovern.bsky.social) April 3, 2026 at 3:08 PM

Pope Leo's Good Friday service offers prayer for deported children reut.rs/47Hznc1

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— Reuters (@reuters.com) April 3, 2026 at 4:15 PM

This might be the largest party lead I've ever seen among the double haters
www.cnn.com/2026/04/03/p…

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— G Elliott Morris (@gelliottmorris.com) April 3, 2026 at 10:18 AM

Winning double haters by 10% is usually enough to swing most elections. Winning them by 30% and things are going to get wild.

— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) April 3, 2026 at 11:07 AM

The political calculations that result in cutting NASA funding the day after the Artemis II launch must be fascinating

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— Tina Smith (@smith.senate.gov) April 3, 2026 at 6:10 PM

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Late Night Diversion Open Thread: Sam Bankman-Fried’s Mother Is *Very* Disappointed…

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www.citationneeded.news/sam-bankman-…

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— Anne Laurie (@annelaurie.bsky.social) March 30, 2026 at 1:39 AM

… That very nasty judge simply refuses to understand why her favorite performing pet beloved son should not be treated like some common felon!!!… Molly White’s Citation Needed, always a good read:

On Monday, Federal Judge Lewis Kaplan issued an order: Sam Bankman-Fried — currently serving a 25-year sentence for the massive fraud he perpetrated at his FTX cryptocurrency exchange — must declare, under penalty of perjury, whether attorneys drafted the supposedly pro se filings submitted under his name.

The order is the latest episode in an increasingly bizarre saga involving Bankman-Fried and his Stanford law professor parents, who are filing — and perhaps also drafting — legal documents on behalf of their 34-year-old son.

The whole mess began in February, when Barbara Fried — professor emerita of legal ethics at Stanford who retired in 2022a — filed on her son’s behalf a motion seeking a new trial before a new judge. This was odd from the start, as Bankman-Fried currently has an appeal under consideration before the Second Circuit, where a panel of judges heard his arguments in November that FTX merely had a liquidity problem, not a solvency problem, and that all his customers were repaid anyway, so no harm no foul. He also argued that he was deprived of a fair trial by Judge Kaplan, who presided over his 2023 trial, and who had prohibited him from discussing his reliance on FTX attorneys’ counsel after he opted not to present a formal advice-of-counsel defense. With an appeal open in which he presents the same arguments with the assistance of high-powered legal counsel, why file a separate motion at all — and why opt to proceed pro se (represent himself) despite having no legal background, rather than use those attorneys to help him draft it?

He probably shouldn’t, and legally, he can’t. A defendant cannot simultaneously be represented by counsel and proceed pro se. Furthermore, if either of his parents, or any other attorney, drafted the motion and then filed it claiming it was from their son acting pro se, they would be misleading the court. The pro se designation exists to give judges discretion to be more lenient with defendants who lack legal training, not as a vehicle for attorneys to file motions in courts where they’re not admitted while avoiding the requirements that would apply if they were openly representing their client.

If an attorney drafted Bankman-Fried’s motion, then it’s not pro se. If Barbara Fried wrote it, she’s practicing law in a court where she’s not admitted. And if Sam Bankman-Fried signed off on a filing claiming he wrote something someone else actually wrote, he’s lying to a federal judge…

Also on March 11, Barbara Fried published a Substack post comparing Judge Kaplan to Irving Kaufman — the judge who sentenced the Rosenbergs to death in the 1950s — and wrote that Kaplan “seems to take pleasure in his cruelty.”…

Sam Bankman-Fried’s campaign
This motion for a new trial is part of a multi-front public relations and legal campaign by Bankman-Fried and his family to secure his freedom, alongside his ongoing Second Circuit appeal and an increasingly overt appeal for a presidential pardon.

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Late Night Open Thread: Bari Weiss (& David Ellison) Not Having A Great Month

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One would actually suggest with the debt load paramount is carrying, the current trajectory of CBS is very dangerous for it.

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— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) March 27, 2026 at 10:12 AM

Noah Berlatsky, at his SubStack — “Bari Weiss Is A Losing Loser Who Is Losing”:

Bari Weiss, the fash-friendly new editor-in-chief of CBS News, has in six months turned a historic and respected news org into a punchline from which viewers are running like rats fleeing a ship that is sinking, on fire, and beset with plague. According to Oliver Darcy at Status, the network is “on track for its lowest-rated first quarter of the 21st century in both total viewers and the advertiser-coveted 25-54 demo.” Darcy also points out that ABC and NBC have had viewership increases in both morning and evening—which means that CBS is bucking positive trends, and/or is bleeding viewers to its competitors…

And yet, whenever more news of her disastrous tenure hits the interwebs, many on the left insist that the disasters were all part of the plan. Billionaire asshole Trump cronies David and Larry Ellison wanted to destroy CBS journalism and align the network with Trumpism, the argument goes. They don’t care if it bleeds viewers and dollars as long as its reporting is kneecapped and it toes the party line.

It’s true that the Ellisons wanted to make CBS into a Fox News clone. But part of the allure of Fox News clone status is cloning Fox’s audience numbers and revenue. Oligarchs like the Ellisons and Jeff Bezos sincerely believe that taking their media properties hard right will be a financial bonanza. When it isn’t, they lose—and the rest of us win, not everything, but real ground….

…[B]illionaires like the Ellisons and their sycophantic boot-lickers like Bari Weiss all sincerely, truly believe that they speak for the real, true core of Americanness. Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bill Ackman, Donald Trump—all these heirs and hedge fund assholes and grotesque corrupt swindlers bloated with avarice and hate—they all think they are the true voice of the common man, and that the branch-campus professors pointing out that racism exists, or the trans middle-schoolers who want to play basketball, or the Palestinian-Americans existing, are the out of touch elite who must be stifled and ridiculed in the name of the volk. The oligarchs see themselves not as disgusting parasites bleeding the public dry, but as bold everydudes whose success demonstrates both their brilliance and their understanding of white male cishet bigoted Joe Average, who has been sitting in front of his television all day every day just waiting for the chance to turn his TV from Fox News to Johnny-come-lately Fox News that’s somewhat more ambivalent about being state TV for Trump and somewhat less ambivalent about being state TV for Netanyahu.

Obviously if you are not paid to stuff your head up a billionaire’s asshole every day, you are probably aware that billionaires are not in fact psychically connected to the volk. Also, it may have occurred to you that the conservative marketplace is incredibly saturated already, and that CBS viewers probably would turn on Fox News if they wanted Fox News…

Weiss believes she is the voice of the people and the people have solidly rejected her and her bullshit. That has to be a foul pill for her to swallow. Less discussed, but perhaps even more humiliating, is her utter failure to turn CBS into a force in the right-wing marketplace.

Weiss’ blogging platform, The Free Press (which CBS acquired) carved out a position as a clearinghouse for supposedly highbrow right-wing screeds, making the intellectual case for DEI, transphobia and hate—a place for Ivy Leaguers and would-be Ivy Leaguers to come together and rigorously apportion footnotes to their genocidal impulses. Weiss clearly hoped that with the oomph of CBS behind her, she could move more forcefully into the right-wing media sphere, influencing the discourse and poaching the audience of quasi-Nazi bloggers, Christofascist podcasters and manosphere YouTubers alike…

Ellison did get some of what he wanted. But he didn’t get the monetary windfall he expected. He almost surely still believes that right-wing news is a goldmine if only he could put the right person in charge. Weiss is clearly not that person—which means that her job is by no means secure. Ellison has to be doing a real gut check, too, about whether Weiss—who has destroyed CBS’ ratings and influence—is the right person to helm his new acquisition of CNN.

So yes, CBS and probably CNN have been badly damaged, oligarchy has been strengthened, journalism and a free press are harmed. But it’s also true that Weiss humiliating failures serve as a helpful tonic for all the mainstream media bozos constantly looking with wistful envy at Fox News and dreaming of a conservative turn that drives up viewer or reader numbers.

The story of CBS and the Washington Post over the last two years is a cautionary tale about right-wing branding. The country does not have some huge untapped well of underserved rabid fascists; Trump’s narrow 2024 victory did not herald a massive cultural shift for all time. Oligarchs and their minions who ignore that truth are going to lose (a lot) of money and (even more) status. And yes, billionaires hate to lose money and status. Not enough to admit they’re wrong, perhaps. But enough to take it out on people like Bari Weiss.

If I understand correctly, David Ellison is doing all this on his Daddy’s dollars. Of course, Oracle can afford to throw away a billion here & there, and Larry has been extremely indulgent of his #failson’s grandious fantasies… but one would suspect that eventually, the old man is gonna decide that it’s time for a little #tough love, yes?

Bari Weiss was given a role outside of her skillset. She’s good at finding issues the enemy coalition is cross-pressured on and relentlessly hammering them from a facially neutral position. But doing that from a Substack is different from doing it at CBS.

— William B. Fuckley (@opinionhaver.bsky.social) March 18, 2026 at 10:06 PM

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