Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Many life forms that would benefit from greater intelligence, sadly, do not have it.

The real work of an opposition party is to oppose.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

Is trump is trying to break black America over his knee? signs point to ‘yes’.

Hell hath no fury like a farmer bankrupted.

If you cannot answer whether trump lost the 2020 election, you are unfit for office.

Disappointing to see gov. newsom with his finger to the wind.

I really should read my own blog.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Weird. Rome has an American Pope and America has a Russian President.

Do we throw up our hands or do we roll up our sleeves? (hint, door #2)

Giving in to doom is how authoritarians win.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

“They all knew.”

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Fight for a just cause, love your fellow man, live a good life.

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

Fundamental belief of white supremacy: white people are presumed innocent, minorities are presumed guilty.

Michigan is a great lesson for Dems everywhere: when you have power…use it!

Republicans: The threats are dire, but my tickets are non-refundable!

Books are my comfort food!

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Open Thread: Corey Lewandowski, “Temu Jared”

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This sounds like a job for JD Vance and the Fraud Taskforce!

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— Don Moynihan (@donmoyn.bsky.social) March 19, 2026 at 10:13 AM

“Temu Jared” was the epithet one BlueSky user attached to this post. Going back to Nixon’s White House (and probably the Harding Teapot Dome Scandal), it’s the grabby bagmen and low-level ‘plumbers’ who end up starting the indictments avalanche…

Per NBC, “Some DHS contractors told White House officials they were asked to pay Corey Lewandowski”:

More than a year ago, The GEO Group founder George Zoley asked for a meeting with Corey Lewandowski, a close ally of President Donald Trump who had just started a powerful position as a top adviser to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

As a titan of the private prison industry, GEO Group stood to benefit from Trump’s mass deportation agenda, which would require the federal government to spend tens of billions of dollars to transport, detain, monitor and deport undocumented immigrants. The company’s federal contracts in those areas already totaled more than $1 billion per year.

But Zoley and his advisers were worried that the road to securing new government contracts now ran through Lewandowski. The two had history: Lewandowski and Zoley had butted heads during the transition between Trump’s November 2024 election and his January 2025 inauguration, before Lewandowski officially worked for the government, according to two industry sources and one senior DHS official familiar with the matter.

During the transition, Lewandowski told Zoley that he wanted to be paid in exchange for protecting and growing GEO Group’s DHS contracts, according to a senior DHS official and three people familiar with their discussion. Zoley, concerned about the propriety of the ask, told Lewandowski he would have no part of it, the sources said, describing the confrontation as tense…

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Thursday Morning Open Thread

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Be like a queen bumblebee — don’t let the floods drown you!

NEW: for @nytimes.com, I wrote about a new study showing that queen bumblebees can breathe underwater, surviving submerged for a week
the “remarkable” study stems from a lab snafu, when a co-author thought she accidentally drowned several bees—but later found that they were alive 🧪
gift link 🎁

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— Jason Dinh (@byjasonpdinh.bsky.social) March 11, 2026 at 8:48 AM


Gift link

Here's my bottom line:
Much of what they are doing is bad.
Much of what they are doing is unpopular.
Pushback is working.
We are winning.
Keep fighting.
Be creative.
Push for what you'd want.
Allow for insiders and outsiders.
Realize that change takes time.
Reduce harm in the meantime.

— Chris Geidner (@chrisgeidner.bsky.social) March 11, 2026 at 6:00 PM

Donald Trump's reckless war with Iran put Americans in danger and spiked our gas prices.
Trump's global energy shock and weakening of sanctions also hands a windfall to Putin's war machine.

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— Elizabeth Warren (@warren.senate.gov) March 11, 2026 at 4:55 PM

Money well spent. 🤡
@financialtimes.com $INTC
www.ft.com/content/5506…

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— Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla.bsky.social) March 11, 2026 at 5:25 PM

His one weird trick: Bribing corrupt public officials:
donmoynihan.substack.com/p/pardon-the…

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— Don Moynihan (@donmoyn.bsky.social) March 11, 2026 at 9:32 AM

Recall that Binance co-founder CZ was pardoned by President Trump last October.

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— George Pearkes (@peark.es) March 11, 2026 at 7:04 AM

Our bill sends a clear message: Companies should maintain strong anti-corruption practices.
Trump may be going easy on corporate crime right now, but foreign bribery will be investigated and prosecuted.

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— Elizabeth Warren (@warren.senate.gov) March 11, 2026 at 2:00 PM

www.reuters.com/legal/govern…

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— Elizabeth Warren (@warren.senate.gov) March 11, 2026 at 2:00 PM

… The planned FCPA Reinforcement Act, co-sponsored ​by Elizabeth Warren, Dick Durbin, and 12 other senators, is a response to the ​Justice Department’s decision to pare down enforcement of the decades-old Foreign Corrupt Practices ⁠Act, a 1977 law that outlaws companies operating in the U.S. from bribing foreign officials.

It ​would extend the statute of limitations for anti-bribery violations from five years to 10 years, ​the lawmakers said. The change would last for eight years.

FCPA enforcement had become a cornerstone of U.S. and global anti-corruption efforts. But critics, including President Donald Trump, have said it creates an uneven playing field ​and hurts U.S. interests.

“Our bill sends a clear message: despite President Trump’s disregard for countering ​a range of financial crimes and his disdain for the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, effective enforcement of ‌that ⁠landmark law – a shield for U.S. companies that compete the right way – is here to stay,” Warren said in a statement shared with Reuters, which was first to report the effort.

It is unlikely that the planned bill will gain traction unless Democrats win more seats in ​November’s midterm elections. Still, ​it signals to companies ⁠that a future Democratic administration will likely seek ways to enforce historic FCPA violations.

The DOJ last year paused FCPA enforcement for review ​and later said it would narrow its enforcement of the law to certain ​alleged misconduct, ⁠such as activity that harms U.S. firms’ ability to compete with foreign rivals or is tied to operations of transnational criminal organizations…

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Thursday Morning Open ThreadPost + Comments (153)

Interesting Read: “What mermaids can teach us about misinformation”

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Interesting Read: <em>What mermaids can teach us about misinformation</em>

 
I found this while trawling for the weekly Plagues & Pandemics post. Matt Morgan, at the British Medical Journal:

… Wandering through the Enlightenment gallery, I came across something unexpected. Behind glass lay a small, shrivelled figure, the upper half of something vaguely simian stitched to a fishtail: a Japanese “mermaid.” She was assembled nearly two centuries ago from monkey, fish, wood, and papier-mâché and was shipped to Europe to delight, deceive, or both. She looks like the outcome of a drunken bet with a taxidermist.

She is, however, not a creature of the sea but one of belief. Early collectors cared less about authenticity than spectacle. If a mermaid brought visitors through the door, who cared what was under the stitches? Mermaids were debunked long ago, but this revelation didn’t kill them—it created an industry. “Feejee mermaids,” as they were sometimes known, toured fairs for decades. Being fake was simply another marketing hook.

As I stood there, my phone buzzed with updates from the UK’s covid inquiry: muddled messaging, communication failures, public trust quietly combusting. It felt appropriate—we’re still surrounded by mermaids. They now arrive by WhatsApp rather than sailing ship, sometimes with official logos attached.

Psychologists call this the illusory truth effect. Repeated statements feel more believable, regardless of accuracy. Familiarity does the work. The effect is stubborn and democratic, fooling experts and amateurs alike. Evolutionarily, repetition once served us well. Reliable information rarely echoed endlessly unless it mattered. Then we built the internet, a machine that can repeat anything forever. We weaponised a useful shortcut.

During the pandemic I spent what little time I had outside intensive care trying to debunk misinformation. Vaccines don’t alter DNA. The 5G network doesn’t cause covid. Masks are irritating but are not a rehearsal of government tyranny. In each interview I had to use phrases I’d rather not have mentioned: when I said that “vaccines don’t cause infertility,” some listeners simply stored “vaccines plus infertility” in their memory again. The illusory truth effect doesn’t care which side you’re on—it just counts repetitions. “This is not a mermaid” posters are, to the mermaid, still free advertising…

The writer Naomi Alderman has argued that we’re living through a third great information crisis, after the invention of writing and printing. Her advice includes finding fact checkers you trust and not wading into hopeless online arguments—a form of social distancing for the frontal lobes. For doctors this avoidance feels like heresy, but replying to every mermaid only serves as unpaid public relations…

Back in the museum, the mermaid has been defanged. She’s no longer a fraud but a teaching aid. We see the stitching. We understand the history. We can enjoy the story without believing the biology.

The lies we now face are harder to keep behind glass. They arrive from people we love, wrapped in friendly fonts and “just asking questions.” Perhaps our task is the same as the museum’s: illuminate the construction, explain the motives, and make sure that a better story is already in place. Because the more we parade the myth, the more real it can seem.

Interesting Read: <em>“What mermaids can teach us about misinformation”</em>Post + Comments (47)

Open Thread: President Make-A-Wish’s Latest Mil-Toy Fantasy

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Every announcement is Peak Vulgar, zero class.

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— Mark Chadbourn (@chadbourn.bsky.social) December 22, 2025 at 5:06 PM

Per Breaking Defense, “Trump announces new Trump-class ‘battleship’ as part of ‘Golden Fleet’”

… “They’ll be the fastest, the biggest and by far, 100 times more powerful than any battleship ever built,” Trump said at his Mar-A-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla. “Battleships are the largest, sturdiest and most heavily armed vessel built specifically for naval combat. While America has built many new warships over the years, they’ve tended to be smaller, much smaller, and not conducive to where we are and where we’re going — peace through strength.”

Trump, flanked by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Navy Secretary John Phelan and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, also said the Navy would aim to quickly start building two battleships, but that the class could ultimately have between 20 and 25 ships. Photos on display on each side of Trump suggested at least one of the “Trump class” ships would be named “USS Defiant.”

The new “battleship” is planned to be around 30,000-40,000 tons — considerably larger than the Navy’s current fleet of destroyers — and capable of using a variety of future weapons, such as electromagnetic railguns and hypersonic munitions. Trump said the new ships would also carry nuclear-armed sea-launched missiles, creating what Navy Secretary John Phelan amounted to a new nuclear deterrent.

“These new battleships will stand as the centerpiece of the Navy’s Golden Fleet initiative and will be the first of its kind providing dominant firepower and a decisive advantage over adversaries by integrating the most advanced deep-strike weapons of today with the revolutionary systems of the years ahead,” the Navy said in a statement following Trump’s announcement.

The Wall Street Journal, which first reported Trump’s plans, wrote that the Navy will launch a competition to find a vendor and plans to procure the first ship in 2030…

President Make-A-Wish's Latest Mil-Toy Fantasy

This exists entirely to make Trump feel good & maybe direct money to something that will be useful when he's gone

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— Chatham Harrison dba TRUMP DELENDUS EST (@chathamharrison.bsky.social) December 22, 2025 at 6:37 PM

Trump’s press conference today was among his more haywire performances, and his slushy delivery and meandering answers will not halt speculation about his cognitive health.
www.theatlantic.com/politics/202…

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— Tom Nichols (@radiofreetom.bsky.social) December 22, 2025 at 11:55 PM

Tom Nichols, at the Atlantic, on “Trump’s Vanity Fleet” [gift link]:

Imagine the CEO of a car company telling his engineers and designers that he wants them to make a new line of automobiles. He knows nothing about cars and has no interest in how they’re produced, but he knows one thing for certain: The line will be named after himself. Everyone claps—because of course they do—but no one really knows what comes next, except that the line needs to look sexy and sporty…

Trump and Navy Secretary John Phelan did make some news today. (Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegeseth were also on hand, but they limited themselves to some standard-issue sycophancy.) First, we learned that the president of the United States clearly has no idea what battleships are. Second, the United States is going to invest in a new class of naval vessel. Third, America is going to reverse more than 30 years of wise policy by putting nuclear weapons back on U.S. Navy surface vessels.

Trump announced that the new Trump-class ships will be “battleships,” but they seem to be supersize versions of the existing workhorse of the Navy, the Arleigh Burke–class destroyers; the first ship, called the Defiant, will be about three times the size of a Burke. The Navy has also announced the development of a new class of frigates. Destroyers and frigates, as the Navy knows (and as the commander in chief should know) are not battleships. Battleships are huge and powerful, and are meant to dish out —and withstand—serious punishment. Destroyers and frigates are less rugged, and perform missions that require more speed and agility than battleships can muster. But none of that matters: The goal, apparently, was to give a childlike president a new toy, named after himself, in exchange for gobs of money that the Navy will figure out how to spend later.

Indeed, defense investors cheered the announcement, but the spending will likely come much later, because the United States does not have the capacity to build vessels it hasn’t even designed yet. Trump told a reporter today that he expects the first ship to arrive in two and a half years, which is possible if the Navy slaps some gold paint on a Burke class, adds some missiles, and then stencils USS TRUMP on the side. But the last time the Navy really tried to create a new kind of ship—the Zumwalt-class destroyer—the process took years and ended in failure…

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Open Thread: Turning (On Each Other) Point USA’s First Post-Charlie Convo

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At Turning Point, Erika Kirk acknowledges that major rifts have emerged in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s assassination.
Rifts that could impact midterms.
“We saw infighting. We’ve seen fractures. We’ve seen bridges being burned that shouldn’t be burnt. We saw a lot on full display.”
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— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yasharali.bsky.social) December 18, 2025 at 7:49 PM

Bless Murphy the Trickster God, there are So.Many.Layers of infighting available for us outsiders’ delection here! Per the Associated Press, “Here’s what you missed at Turning Point’s chaotic convention”:

When Turning Point USA’s annual AmericaFest convention reached its halfway point, Erika Kirk tried to put a smiling face on things.

“Say what you want about AmFest, but it’s definitely not boring,” said Kirk, who has led the influential conservative organization since her husband Charlie was assassinated in September. “Feels like a Thanksgiving dinner where your family’s hashing out the family business.” …

Some of the biggest names in conservative media took turns torching each other on the main stage, spending more time targeting right-wing rivals than their left-wing opponents.

The feuds could ultimately define the boundaries of the Republican Party and determine the future of President Donald Trump’s fractious coalition, which appears primed for more schisms in the months and years ahead…

Ben Shapiro, co-founder of the conservative media outlet Daily Wire, set the tone with the first speech after Erika Kirk opened the convention. He attacked fellow commentators in deeply personal terms, saying some of the right’s most popular figures are morally bankrupt.

Candace Owens “has been vomiting all sorts of hideous and conspiratorial nonsense into the public square for years,” he said.

Megyn Kelly is “guilty of cowardice” because she’s refused to condemn Owens for spreading unsubstantiated theories about Kirk’s death.

And Tucker Carlson’s decision to host antisemite Nick Fuentes on his podcast was “an act of moral imbecility.”…

Barely an hour later, Carlson took the same stage and mocked Shapiro’s attempt to “deplatform and denounce” people who disagree with him.

“I watched it,” he said. “I laughed.”

Others had their chance the next night.

“Ben Shapiro is like a cancer, and that cancer spreads,” said Steve Bannon, a former Trump adviser…

I’m a Cynic, of course, but I gotta say that while the ‘celebrities’ on stage seem pretty pumped, the attendees (who paid to be there) look at best dutiful about the whole goat rodeo…

PHOTOS: Turning Point USA is holding its annual youth conference in Phoenix, where conservative influencers have clashed and the women have drawn inspiration from Charlie Kirk’s widow, Erika Kirk.
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— The Associated Press (@apnews.com) December 19, 2025 at 2:30 PM

The NYTimes is just short of gleeful — “Turning Point’s Annual Gathering Turns Into a Gripefest” [gift link]:

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Late Night Open Thread: Dan Bongino Makes His Exit

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He found the job to be too fact-oriented.

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— Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec.bsky.social) December 17, 2025 at 6:20 PM

Bongino’s announcement made a lot of people happy, and I’m not talking about his thousands of podcast listeners. Per MS-NOW, “FBI’s No. 2 confirms he’s moving on – Controversial deputy director has cleared out his office”:

… Bongino had quietly told confidants he planned to formally leave his job early in the new year and would not be returning to headquarters to work this month, according to eight people briefed on his account. He later confirmed the report on X…

With word of an impending departure has come speculation that Bongino is returning to podcasting, which reportedly made him worth $160 million.

In August, after Bongino privately sparred with Bondi, Trump took the unprecedented step of naming a co-deputy director to help share Bongino’s work, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey.

MS NOW reported last month that Trump and his White House aides have been weighing whether to remove FBI Director Kash Patel and replace him with Bailey in the new year…

Bongino faced tremendous backlash from pro-Trump MAGA supporters related to the Jeffrey Epstein case, when he and fellow Justice Department leaders backtracked from earlier claims that the Epstein files contained a secret “client list” of prominent people that Epstein had kept as the fodder for potential blackmail…

“Listen, that Jeffrey Epstein story is a big deal, please do not let that story go. Keep your eye on this,” Bongino told his listeners in 2023. Bongino also suggested he had strong doubts about official government reports that Epstein had committed suicide in his jail cell.

Once inside the bureau, however, Bongino said in a television interview that he had concluded there was no evidence Epstein was murdered. The Justice Department and FBI issued a joint memo in July saying the Epstein files contained no client list, and the furor it unleashed from the MAGA movement led to an angry confrontation between Bongino and Attorney General Bondi in July…

Bongino has drawn disdain and ridicule from a wide swath of FBI agents…

One supposes that a successful podcaster must have a fine sense of timing:

fwiw I think “Bongino quit because of what he saw in the Epstein files” is a lot less likely than “Bongino was/is going to get blamed for the inevitable clusterfuck of the Epstein Files release”

— post malone ergo propter malone (@proptermalone.bsky.social) December 19, 2025 at 5:05 PM

True!

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Late Night Open Thread: (Epstein… Epstein… Epstein… )

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To all marveling at photos of NYT columnist David Brooks dining with Jeffrey Epstein, 2 years after Epstein finished his sentence for procuring a child for prostitution, here's what it was: the 2011 "Edge Billionaire's Dinner". Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos were there too. 1/
www.edge.org/event/the-ed…

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— capitolhunters (@capitolhunters.bsky.social) December 18, 2025 at 2:37 PM

CapitolHunters (followed by e.w. niedermeyer & Jane Mayer, among others) breaks out the thumbtacks & string:

The Edge founder John Brockman was lauded for his "discerning taste in the choice of participants." Funny how the photos they posted – the same as in the Epstein files -include so many luminaries but conveniently leave out convicted felon and registered sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. 2/
www.edge.org

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— capitolhunters (@capitolhunters.bsky.social) December 18, 2025 at 2:37 PM

The NYT imperiously declined to provide details, just declaring their op-ed columnists must of course attend dinners with "noted and important business leaders". But it's not hard to find. The Silicon Valley pantheon was there: Musk, Bezos, Brin, Mayer, Wojcicki, Mundie & Myhrvold of Microsoft… 3/

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— capitolhunters (@capitolhunters.bsky.social) December 18, 2025 at 2:54 PM

Ironically the NYT provided one tremendous service: they confirmed that Epstein was there too; The Edge hid him from the photos. But BuzzFeed reported in 2019 that Epstein funded Brockman's events and used them to gain entry to the "intellectual boys' club". Guess David Brooks was a member too. 4/

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— capitolhunters (@capitolhunters.bsky.social) December 18, 2025 at 3:13 PM

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