Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

No one could have predicted…

Nothing worth doing is easy.

Giving up is unforgivable.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

People identifying as christian while ignoring christ and his teachings is a strange thing indeed.

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

Giving in to doom is how authoritarians win.

Rupert, come get your orange boy, you petrified old dinosaur turd.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.

Sometimes the world just tells you your cat is here.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

Nothing says ‘pro-life’ like letting children go hungry.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

The real work of an opposition party is to hold the people in power accountable.

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Late Night Open Thread: The Coverup *Is* the Crime

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get a load of this conspiracy word salad Grassley served just now on Fox. How can anyone follow this nonsense?

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) July 31, 2025 at 12:03 PM

When all else fails, send out Cranky Granpa to attempt to resurrect an old MAGAt crowd favorite…

NEW: A newly declassified part of the Durham report shows republicans used a Russian-manufactured email as evidence that Hilary Clinton conspired with Russia. ?????? gift link: www.nytimes.com/2025/07/31/u…

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— Mueller, She Wrote (@muellershewrote.com) July 31, 2025 at 10:16 PM

Even the FTFNYTimes… “An annex to a report by the special counsel John H. Durham was the latest in a series of disclosures about the Russia inquiry, as the Trump team seeks to distract from the Jeffrey Epstein files”:

The Trump-era special counsel who scoured the Russia investigation for wrongdoing gathered evidence that undermines a theory pushed by some Republicans that Hillary Clinton’s campaign conspired to frame Donald J. Trump for colluding with Moscow in the 2016 election, information declassified on Thursday shows.

The information, a 29-page annex to the special counsel’s 2023 report, reveals that a foundational document for that theory was most likely stitched together by Russian spies. The document is a purported email from July 27, 2016, that said Mrs. Clinton had approved a campaign proposal to tie Mr. Trump to Russia to distract from the scandal over her use of a private email server.

The release of the annex adds new details to the public’s understanding of a complex trove of 2016 Russian intelligence reports analyzing purported emails that Russian hackers stole from Americans. It also shows how the special counsel, John H. Durham, went to great lengths to try to prove that several of the emails were real, only to ultimately conclude otherwise.

The declassification is the latest disclosure in recent weeks concerning the Russia investigation. The wave has come as the administration is seeking to change the subject from its broken promise to release files related to the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein…

… Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, who has a long history of pushing false claims about the Russia investigation, declared on social media that the annex revealed “evidence that the Clinton campaign plotted to frame President Trump and fabricate the Russia collusion hoax.”

In reality, the annex shows the opposite, indicating that a key piece of supposed evidence for the claim that Mrs. Clinton approved a plan to tie Mr. Trump to Russia is not credible: Mr. Durham concluded that the email from July 27, 2016, and a related one dated two days earlier were probably manufactured…

Mr. Durham was never able to prove any Clinton campaign conspiracy to frame Mr. Trump by spreading information that it knew to be false about his ties to Russia, but he nevertheless used court filings and his final report to insinuate such suspicions. He brought charges of false statements against two people involved in outside efforts to scrutinize possible ties between Mr. Trump and Russia, both of which ended in quick acquittals.

Speaking of Mr. Patel…

Kash Patel—a guy who’s definitely seen National Treasure too many times—when he spots a giant portrait of James Comey at the Hoover Building:
“Alright team, let’s see what’s hiding behind this big boy.”

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— Anna Bower (@annabower.bsky.social) July 30, 2025 at 2:28 PM


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War for Ukraine Day 1,253: The Cost

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A painting by the Ukrainain artist NEIVANMADE. The upper 1/2 is grey and there are black Shahed drones on it aimed towards the bottom of the painting. The bottom half of the painting has a blood red background and in the center of the bottom is a house, to it's left is a swing set, and to its right is a car. They are charcoal grey on the blood red background background. The drones are targeting the house, swing set, and car. Above the house and below the drones are the words "Russia Kills To Erase Free People".

(Image by NEIVANMADE)

It’s been a very long day and my mom’s flight home was delayed because of weather, so I’m just going to run through the basics as I’ve got to run to the airport and pick her up.

Here’s the cost of last night’s/this morning’s Russian attack on Kyiv:

Six-year-old boy killed in this morning’s terror attack on Kyiv by fascist Russia went to the same karate club as my daughter, with the same coach. He was killed 260 meters from our home. The claws of fascist Russia’s war swiped close today – whole family deeply saddened by this.

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— Euan MacDonald (@euanmacdonald.bsky.social) July 31, 2025 at 10:19 AM

15 killed in Kyiv, including a child.
over 140 injured, including 14 children.

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— Iryna Voichuk (@irynavoichuk.bsky.social) July 31, 2025 at 1:23 PM

Death toll after last night’s russian attack on Kyiv has risen to 16, including 2 children.

155 people were injured, including 16 children.

Totally looks like russia wants peace, right?

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— Kate from Kharkiv (@kateinkharkiv.bsky.social) July 31, 2025 at 2:51 PM

This is how Russia attacked Ukraine last night. In total, the Russians launched 317 drones and missiles. Ukrainian air defense successfully intercepted 288 out of 309 strike “Shaheds” and other types of drones, as well as 3 out of 8 Iskander-K cruise missiles.

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— WarTranslated (Dmitri) (@wartranslated.bsky.social) July 31, 2025 at 4:34 AM

And a small bit of good news:

Miracles do happen — if only they happened more often. After 3h+ under the rubble, first responders rescued a man from a house destroyed by a russian missile.

They kept voice contact with him the entire time. He had fallen from the second floor to the first, where he was trapped beneath debris.

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— Olena Halushka (@halushka.bsky.social) July 31, 2025 at 4:24 AM

President Zelenskyy actually made two addresses today. I’m going to post the most recent one first. Video below, English transcript after the jump.

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Open Thread: Roy Cooper Is Off To A Good Start

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BREAKING: Democrat Roy Cooper enters the US Senate race in North Carolina

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— Brian Tyler Cohen (@briantylercohen.bsky.social) July 28, 2025 at 8:32 AM

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Roy Cooper raised $3.4 million in the first 24 hours of his Senate campaign — a record-breaking sum for the former North Carolina governor in one of the most competitive upcoming Senate races. www.politico.com/news/2025/07…

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— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1.bsky.social) July 29, 2025 at 5:36 PM

BlueAmp with the background — “Roy Cooper Raids the GOP Senate Map; it Echoes Across the U.S.”:

… You may remember the seat was left open when Mr. 58-spoons-full-of-sugar to make a lb of crushed Adderall go down, Don-boy, insulted GOP Senator, Thom Tillis.

Tillis gave Trump damn near everything Trump ever wanted (ok, no sharks, batteries or porn stars). But Tillis wouldn’t support his job-killing, debt-exploding Big Barbaric Bill to starve children and kill Americans by confiscating their healthcare. So Trump, per usual, did the adult thing. He insulted Tillis, said he’d support a primary challenger. Tillis responded with a stick it up your *** I’m out. Whoops…

… This decision by Roy Cooper..it’s honestly hard to explain how huge it is. An earthquake. Not a tremor. A tectonic shift that just cracked GOP’s control of the Senate wide open. And I’m here to tell you why—because monopoly media sure won’t.

Cooper isn’t just another name on a ballot. He’s a two-term North Carolina Governor, former four-term NC Attorney General. So, to quote Keith Olbermann, “if you’re scoring at home—or even if you’re alone, ”he’s run a lot in this state and won. The kinda Democrat who’s successful in the South because he doesn’t back down and doesn’t play cute with half measures to make everyone happy.

Sure, he’s a moderate that fits his state, but passionate about equality under the law and helping working people. He fought to expand Medicaid (nice contrast with GOP BBB ghouls), harshen penalties for domestic violence and tighten regulations on guns.

Cooper’s so popular, one wonders what he could’ve done if MAGAs hadn’t gerrymandered their way to state legislative control and stripped him of as much power as possible. Because—and you may know this—when Republicans lose, they cheat. Ya know, like Trump on a Scottish (or really any) golf course…

Roy Cooper is awesome

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— Prof Gavin Yamey (@gavinyamey.bsky.social) July 28, 2025 at 2:26 PM

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A bunch of nitwits & blockheads & shit stirrers & ratfuckers attacking Roy Cooper for being religious probably helped Roy Cooper.

— Dana Houle (@danahoule.bsky.social) July 28, 2025 at 5:47 PM


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Which Side Are You On?

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In this image provided by Senate Television, Sen, Cory Booker, D-N.J. speaks on the Senate floor, Tuesday morning, April 1, 2025. (Senate Television via AP)

(ABC News)

A rare public display of Democrat-on-Democrat Senate infighting took place on the chamber floor Tuesday afternoon, with a heated Sen. Cory Booker laying into Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto and Amy Klobuchar as he shared his objection to a package of bipartisan bills meant to support law enforcement and their families.

During a back-and-forth that lasted almost an hour, an animated Booker called his colleagues “complicit” in President Donald Trump’s agenda by passing the police-related legislation at a time when he said the White House is politicizing funding. He said the Department of Justice is currently withholding money from law enforcement agencies across the country, including his state of New Jersey.

“That is complicity with an authoritarian leader who is trashing our Constitution. It’s time for Democrats to have a backbone. It’s time for us to fight. It’s time for us to draw a line. And when it comes to the safety of my state being denied these grants, that’s why I’m standing here,” Booker shouted on the floor.

Booker’s arguments quickly became a direct criticism of the current state of the Democratic Party as it tries to navigate Trump’s second term.

“This is a call, folks. Democratic Party needs a wake-up call,” Booker said. “This, to me, is the problem with Democrats in America right now … We’re willing to be complicit, to Donald Trump, to let this pass through when we have all the leverage,” he added.

Cortez Masto, of Nevada, and Klobuchar, of Minnesota, shot back at Booker’s accusations by insinuating that he was making his position known in public on the floor, despite the fact that they said he didn’t show up for Judiciary Committee markups on the bills and that he also voted to pass the bills out of committee.

“These bills passed unanimously out of the Judiciary Committee weeks ago. And my colleague from New Jersey — have respect for him — he’s on the committee, he voted to pass these bills. He had an opportunity at that time to present this amendment, this is the first time we’re ever hearing about it,” Cortez Masto said.

“This is ridiculous. This is an attempt to kill all of these bills. I don’t know why. I don’t know why, because, at the end of the day, all of these bills are about bipartisan support,” she added.

“One of the things I don’t understand here, is that we have committees for a reason and we have hearings for a reason, and you can’t do one thing on Police Week and not show up and not object and let these bills go through and then say another a few weeks later in a big speech on the floor,” she said.

Booker had tried to add an amendment to the package which would “provide resources to law enforcement agencies with this important provision that safeguards these grants from politicization.”

Cortez Masto called it a “poison pill.”

“I agree — President Trump’s impoundment of funding, it is a serious concern. But tacking on a poison pill language to these bills won’t guarantee any additional funding makes it to New Jersey, Nevada or any other state. Instead, what it will do … it will keep critical bills from passing in the first place,” Cortez Masto said.

Booker shot back, “Don’t question my integrity. Don’t question my motives. I’m standing for Jersey. I am standing for my police officers. I’m standing for the Constitution and I’m standing for what’s right. And dear God if you want to come at me that way, you’re going to have to take it up with me!”

I am on Team Booker here.

Different strategies.  Which side of this debate are you guys on in this particular instance?

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Very Cool Thread: Neanderthals Living in Fat City

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So they found a 125,000 yr old Neanderthal fat rendering plant & I have thoughts.
Knowing that they loved saturated fat SO MUCH that they industrialized to get as much of it as humanly possible?
Makes me feel seen, heard, supported, etc www.science.org/doi/10.1126/…

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— Sarah Taber (@sarahtaber.bsky.social) July 28, 2025 at 11:59 AM

Jokes aside, this place tells us:

-Large-scale food processing is ~100K+ yrs older than farming.

-So is shelf-stable, high-calorie convenience food.

-So is “thinking about labor & logistics.”

-Romanticizing “cavemen” as tough & austere is really funny.

I love this because when we think of "how ancient people got their food," we like to think about the big game hunting part.
But getting a carcass is just step 1!
We don't think as much about what comes next! But we should!

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— Sarah Taber (@sarahtaber.bsky.social) July 28, 2025 at 11:59 AM

If you’re hunting large animals to stay alive, instead of just for recreation,

“turning them into shelf-stable food you can keep & eat for more than 3 days afterward” is the name of the game.

So Neanderthals brought bones from their kills to this spot by a lake, pounded them to bits, & melted out the fat.
Not just any bones! They brought mostly jaws, skulls, ribs, & the *ends* of leg bones w red marrow. These bones have lots of fat inside- but you have to break them apart to get it.

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— Sarah Taber (@sarahtaber.bsky.social) July 28, 2025 at 11:59 AM

Smashing bones is lots of work! So why do it?

I’m not an archaeologist, but I do lots of food handling logistics.

So my money’s on 3 things:

-it’s free real estate (more food from game already killed)

-people who aren’t able-bodied adults can do it

-RENDERED FAT IS SHELF-STABLE & TASTES AWESOME

We have this idea that tasty, calorie-dense “convenience food” is modern.

Nope!

It’s not unheard of for hunter-gatherers to spend WAY more time processing food into shelf-stable, easy to eat, calorie-dense “convenience” foods than they do on the hunting & gathering part.

Fish & meat? Gotta smoke ’em.

Acorns? Pound them into powder, put them in a bag, & leach in a river for weeks or months so they’re edible.

Maple sap? Boil it down into shelf-stable sugar cakes.

Rendering fat from bones is 100% in line with this.

Think about it: for hunter-gatherers, food availability was spotty.

And they were often on the move from place to place.

So processing food to make it store-able for a long time, and distilling it down so every gram was very rich in calories, is one of our oldest pursuits.

Maybe it’s not weird that Neanderthals were breaking up bones to cook out the fat.

It’s weird that we think it’s weird. You know?

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Virginia, Here We Come!

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Zoom With Four Directions Set for Thursday at 7 pm ET

As you know, Four Directions will be on the ground in Virginia in the run-up to the November 2025 elections.

They will be deploying the same strategies that they successfully deployed in Georgia and in urban Nevada, which means reaching out to Native American voters wherever they are located in Virginia.

That means phone calls and texts to Native voters and likely Native American voters, followed by in person wherever it makes sense, which means wherever there are concentrations of Native people.  That means tribal lands and also concentrations of Native people around military bases and elsewhere.

Beyond that, the Native population tends to be widely dispersed in Virginia.

Phone calls are starting now, and Four Directions will be on the ground going door-to-door before the end of August

Most effective outreach:  1) In-person, 2) live phone calls, 3) texts

As was true in GA, Four  Directions is the only group that is focusing on the native voting population.

The Native American population of voting age exceeds 160,000!

*estimates are based on 2020 census and extrapolations from the 2024 population growth:

What races are on the ballot in Virginia this fall?

  • Governor
  • Lieutenant Governor
  • Attorney General
  • Secretary of the Commonwealth
  • Special election to replace Gerry Connolly in the House (US-11)
  • Virginia House races (but not the Senate)

Fun Facts

  • Elections are run by Board of Elections, not by the Secretary of the Commonwealth
  • Members of the Board of Elections are appointed by the governor
  • Gerry Connolly held his house seat for 17 years in Fairfax County in Northern Virginia
  • Connolly flipped from Republican in 2008, so a likely KEEP for us, but not certain.
  • There are 7 federally recognized tribes in VA
  • The commonwealth of VA recognizes those 7,  plus an additional 4 tribes

External Matches

Four Directions found us external matches!

The first $10k will be DOUBLE-MATCHED

The next $20k will be SINGLE MATCHED

Balloon Juice Angels

Two Balloon Juice Angels have already come forward.

If we have enough Balloon Juice Angels, the first $10k could be 6x matching.

Ex: $100 donation + Bj Angel (100) = $200, matched by external match 1 (200) and external match 2 (200).

That’s $600 if you donate $100!  It’s $150 if you donate $25.  And so forth.

Donations up to $100 up to a total of $1,000 will be Angel-matched.

Let’s do this!

We need wins across the board, of course, but BIG WINS have the potential to stop some of the worst of what they are doing.

Because we all know they all care more about themselves and their power than about the country.

Caring about our democracy is our super power.

Update:  I have ActBlue set to bring up a popup window where you can say whether or not you want to share your information with the recipient.  If you have popups turned off or you have a popup blocker installed, you will not see the message, and I think your info WILL be shared.  So you want to make sure popups are not blocked on the browser you use to make ActBlue donations.

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Stupidity vs. (Worse Than) Malice

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I’ve enjoyed watching Trump squirm and rage for weeks as he tries and fails to make questions about the Epstein files go away. But until this week, I figured it was more likely his motive for refusing to release the files was to avoid humiliation (for example, speculation that the Third Lady may have originally been a short-term rental) than to conceal heinous sex crimes.

As satisfying as it’s been to hear about bungling henchmen like Bondi, Patel and Bongino biting and scratching each other like coked-up trash pandas in a burlap sack, I figured it was more likely they were inept fools who got caught up in lies they told to conspiracy loons for political gain rather than incompetent accessories attempting to cover up their boss’s terrible crimes.

Now, I’m not so sure.

We’ve known for years Trump is a leering creep, an adjudicated rapist, the kind of pervert who barges into dressing rooms to ogle teen girls and brags about his gross sexist exploits. He’s been publicly creepy with random prepubescent girls and even his own daughters forever. (Of course, he’s been accused of much worse than that with minor girls.)

Perversely, all of these barrels of sewage were poured into a toxic pie pan and baked under a mottled orange crust, and 49.81% of U.S. voters elected to eat the shit confection anyway for reasons.

But this week there’s something new: the weird comments and follow-up responses about Epstein poaching teenage spa staff (by my count at least the third story Trump has told about what precipitated his falling out with Epstein). The implications are damning. We can all agree he had to have known what Epstein was doing with those girls, right?

Trump: People were taken out of the spa, hired by Epstein… I told him we don’t want you taking our people, whether it’s spa or not spa. He did it again, I said out of here.

Reporter: Was one of the stolen people Virginia Giuffre?

Trump: I think so. He stole her.

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— Acyn (@acyn.bsky.social) July 29, 2025 at 2:25 PM

Epstein allegedly made his fortune as a “financier,” even though he had no particular qualifications for that job. For what purpose did Trump think Epstein “stole” his “property”? Did he think Epstein hired teen girls as finance interns? Trump knew what was going on, and his only objection was that Epstein took what Trump saw as “his.”

That’s not all.

A couple of days ago, CBS News dropped a story on the Epstein jailhouse video, and it’s way more problematic than we knew. Eight minutes are missing, not one as Bondi initially told us. Experts who analyzed the video for CBS also say what the FBI released is almost certainly screen recordings stitched together rather than footage of the raw recording.

The evidence doesn’t support the conclusions Bondi and Bongino told us it proves, such as that no one but the snoozing guards could have accessed Epstein’s cell without being recorded. Everything Bondi and Bongino told us is bullshit, and sloppy, hastily slapped together bullshit at that.

Also, here’s a good question:

So anyone else find it interesting that Susan Necheles, the one person on Trump’s defense team who seems to have no role in his administration, is currently representing sex traffickers that were tight with the Trumps?

Or is that just me.

— Senate Gabe (@senategabe.bsky.social) July 30, 2025 at 6:35 AM

Here’s who Necheles is representing:

NEW YORK, Dec 11 (Reuters) – Two real estate agents known for promoting flashy properties in New York and Miami have been arrested on sex-trafficking charges, federal prosecutors said on Wednesday, accusing them of raping dozens of women.

The Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s office accused brothers Oren Alexander, 38, and Tal Alexander, 37, the co-founders of the luxury real estate brokerage known as Official, as well as their brother Alon Alexander, 37, of drugging and sexually assaulting women for more than a decade starting in 2010…

“The defendants used their wealth and positions to create and facilitate opportunities to sexually assault women,” Damian Williams, the Manhattan U.S. Attorney, told reporters. “This office is determined to investigate and prosecute anyone who engages in sex trafficking, no matter how powerful or wealthy or famous you may be.”

The accused men were Trump supporters who attended a White House event during Trump’s first term and were involved in property sales in South Florida along with Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner. That’s a hell of a coincidence, no?

Anyhoo, all these weird, rich, perverted criminals are making a believer of me. Release the goddamn files, and let justice be done though the heavens fall.

Open thread.

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