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Trump in Scotland

by Betty Cracker| July 26, 20252:59 pm| 73 Comments

This post is in: Foreign Affairs, Open Threads, Politics, Republican Stupidity

O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!

— Robert Burns, national poet of Scotland

The bad news: Trump is burning through tens of millions of our dollars to go play golf in another country with one of the failsons, probably hoping to put some distance between himself and the Epstein scandal.

The good news: He’s is Scotland, and there is perhaps no population as equipped to mercilessly skewer the mottled orange haggis as the Scots.

Scots protesting Trump in Scotland

From America’s shittiest/most influential newspaper:

On Saturday, the Scots, who opinion polls show have low regard for Mr. Trump, let their opposition to his policies be known.

A group called Stop Trump Scotland organized a rally as a “festival of resistance” against Mr. Trump that drew hundreds in Aberdeen, in Scotland’s north, and Edinburgh.

Protesters carried signs objecting to Mr. Trump’s policies, from the environment and immigration to trade and the war in Gaza. Several held signs invoking the current controversy circling around Mr. Trump: his administration’s handling of the so-called Epstein files, the records that pertain to the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein…

Many signs at the rally contained similar insults about Mr. Trump’s relationship with Mr. Epstein. The two men, both wealthy New Yorkers, were friends for some 15 years, before they had a falling out in 2004. Mr. Epstein killed himself in jail in 2019.

Mel Young, 58, of Alloa, held a sign that said “Release The Epstein Files.” She said her opposition to Mr. Trump is far more wide-ranging than concerns about the president’s association with Mr. Epstein, but, she argued, it was the latest example of outrageous behavior.

“I’m just so horrified by the normalization of cruelty, corruption and mass disinformation,” she said. “This is just one tiny plot of the whole thing.”

What Ms. Young said.

PS: Janey Godley is the late Scottish comedian who famously held up a sign that said “Trump is a c**t” outside his golf course during a 2016 visit. (For reasons I don’t really understand, the c-word isn’t considered wildly offensive in the UK.)

Trump in ScotlandPost + Comments (73)

Interesting Arguments: Our Modern American Dracula(s)

by Anne Laurie| July 26, 20259:45 am| 173 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads

Opinion | The Epstein Conspiracy is the Horror Story of Our Age
The conspiracy theory captures our anxieties about how power really works, but the boring version might say more.
go.shr.lc/40wx1co

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— Anne Grete (GoogeliArt) 🦋💙PD (@googeliart.bsky.social) July 25, 2025 at 7:58 AM

Dan Brooks, at Politico — “The Epstein Conspiracy Is the Horror Story of Our Age”:

… As a vehicle for our worst fears about the 21st-century United States, Epstein is our Dracula. You are probably familiar with Count Dracula, the blood-drinking aristocrat with a taste for virgins who is vulnerable only to holy water and garlic. Bram Stoker’s Dracula was published in the United Kingdom in 1897, but the vampire legends on which it was based emerged centuries earlier in Eastern Europe. It doesn’t take a degree in folklore and mythology to notice that the count, who leaves his castle only to drain the life from peasants and corrupt young women, and who persists unnaturally from generation to generation until he is stopped by the power of the church, says something about how medieval Europeans saw their titled aristocracy. Dracula is what literary theorists call a big-time metaphor. His parasitic relationship with working people, his rivalry with priests, and his infamous horniness all reflect the anxieties of the late 19th century, when hereditary landowners vied with industrial capital and religious authority for control of Europe, and ordinary people exercised little power in proportion to their number.

The conspiracy version of the Epstein story expresses similar anxieties about power and who wields it in the 21st-century United States. This conspiracy narrative diverges from the factual version in two ways: (1) Epstein didn’t kill himself while awaiting trial; he was murdered, and (2) he kept a “client list” of wealthy and powerful people to whom he had provided underage girls for sex, which he used to blackmail public figures…

The various Epstein conspiracy theories fill in the gaps between these facts with plausible but unsupported speculation: that Epstein used his private plane to fly public figures to his island, where they engaged in the kind of illegal sex acts he and his clients were rich enough to get away with. The theory holds that along with his Renfield, the British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein secretly videotaped these sexual encounters to use as leverage over his clients, giving them a shared interest in keeping him quiet that again trumped law and decency when they had him killed before his trial.

This narrative, like the Dracula story, says some obvious things about how our culture understands its ruling class. The most powerful figure in it is not an elected politician or celebrity but rather a financial adviser, a guy whose money and connections make him the real force behind the facade of representative government and impartial law. Although he did business in the United States, his company was headquartered in the Virgin Islands for tax purposes, allowing him to avoid the obligations the rest of us owe our country and communities.

The Epstein conspiracy theory describes two Americas, with two sets of laws and standards: the one most of us live in, where you have to go to work, abide by public morals and wait on hold when you call your congressional representative, and the one rich people live in, where statutory rape is an open secret and presidential candidates put aside their differences to hang out on tropical sex islands. In this world, the law, public opinion and party politics have power over ordinary people, but money has the power to transcend all of them. Financiers run the whole thing, literally and figuratively seducing political and cultural leaders in order to control them, while the various rules we democratically agreed on don’t apply to anyone involved — as proven by their successful murder of the only guy with the secrets to bring them down…

The Epstein conspiracy theories are unproven, but you don’t have to say the words “hyoid bone” to read the Epstein story as a fable of how power works in the 21st-century United States. The non-conspiracy version of events says just as much.

In this version, New York’s Metropolitan Correctional Facility, the jail where Epstein died that a court ordered closed in 2021, simply didn’t work very well. The plumbing was leaking, and the building was falling apart. The camera system didn’t work right. The guards were overworked and understaffed and sat in the break room browsing the internet when they were supposed to be making their rounds.

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This story of institutional failure should be familiar to anyone who has been to a VA hospital or worked somewhere that got bought by a private equity fund. It’s the story of a system that prioritizes low taxes and high profits over how well anything actually works, cutting costs and squeezing wages at the expense of long-term success. In other words, it’s the story of a country that runs according to the interests of Epstein’s clients: wealthy people who get their money from rents, investments and inheritances and therefore have a material interest in nothing changing, not this month, unless it’s a lower tax rate. It’s the story of finance taking over the economy and money taking over politics, the story of a system that doesn’t do enough to restrain the power of those few Americans who live well without working, even as the rest of us are supposed to rule by majority. In other words, it is the story of vampires, whose existence is defined by exemption from the rules that determine the shape of ordinary people’s lives.

That is a story of the world we actually live in, and millions of Americans believe it. The conspiracy theory is just the simpler, more dramatic version, and if it gets the facts wrong — which it almost certainly does — the important parts are still true.

As of this writing, Democrats have joined with mutinous congressional Republicans to publicly demand that Trump release information related to the Epstein investigation. It is easy to identify a political motive among the Democrats, but Trump’s failure to corral elected Republicans is unprecedented since 2016. If the money power Epstein represents transcended partisan divisions, so too has our fascination with his story. Should Trump prove unable to quash the public’s interest, and it turns out he loses control of his own party over this issue, of all things, the Epstein legend will have a strong claim to be the defining story of our time.

Supplemental:

what this makes me think about – with regard to right now – is how so much of the information about Trump and Epstein that’s resonated in recent weeks is old stuff, widely and publicly reported. but a lot of it didn’t break through to lots of ppl in their information environments

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— Charlie Warzel (@cwarzel.bsky.social) July 22, 2025 at 6:33 PM

this will sound like some defensive posture about the media, which i don’t mean it to be. media failings are a part of this. but there’s a component too where conditions have to be right for things to break through. the media absolutely can set agendas but it’s far from an absolute power

again, not a defense! some of this is that media broadly gets too responsive to audiences and spends too much time giving people what they want that they don’t challenge audiences. sometimes the agenda is just a bad/wrong one too. but i think there’s another dimension here too…

…which is not to say that audiences are *in control* or the media has no agency. but if you do this long enough online you can feel how attention moves in aggregate and how hard it can be to make people care about things they don’t want to care about. the job should be to counter that, for sure

but i think the salience of old Epstein reporting now is notable in describing how, in addition to agency and responsibility, there’s this other force that literally every person who wants attention comes up against.

i tried to write about this in November after Trump won but it feels sometimes like there’s confusion about who is doing what online and who has narrative power and how much.

Bad News: Legacy media must compete against a choose-your-own-adventure reality.

“You are the media now.” That’s the message that began to cohere among right-wing influencers shortly after Donald Trump won the election this week. Elon Musk first posted the phrase, and others followed. “The legacy media is dead. Hollywood is done. Truth telling is in. No more complaining about the media,” the right-wing activist James O’Keefe posted shortly after. “You are the media.”

It’s a particularly effective message for Musk, who spent $44 billion to purchase a communications platform that he has harnessed to undermine existing media institutions and directly support Trump’s campaign. QAnon devotees also know the phrase as a rallying cry, an invitation to participate in a particular kind of citizen “journalism” that involves ‘just asking questions’ and making stuff up altogether…

Interesting Arguments: Our Modern American Dracula(s)Post + Comments (173)

Psycho Killer (Qu’est-ce que c’est)

by Betty Cracker| July 26, 20258:05 am| 64 Comments

This post is in: C.R.E.A.M., Domestic Politics, Open Threads, Politics, Republican Stupidity, Republican Venality, Assholes, Decline and Fall, General Stupidity

RFK Jr.’s cousin warned us. Caroline Kennedy said her cousin Bobby is unfit to lead HHS because he’s a “predator” who’s “addicted to power.” In her letter to U.S. Senate leaders, she cited the thousands of needless deaths her cousin had already caused with his deeply cynical anti-vax activism and begged them not to put him in charge of public health for hundreds of millions of Americans.

The Republican-controlled U.S. Senate didn’t listen, and now a lot more people will die needlessly. Here’s just one example of how RFK Jr. is using his power as HHS secretary to kill people: (WAMU.org)

The National Cancer Institute, the Bethesda-based research center that has helped drive a more than 30% decline in U.S. cancer deaths since 1991, is being targeted by Trump administration’s downsizing. The NCI, part of the National Institutes of Health, has long been supported by bipartisan funding and plays a critical role in cancer research globally. The U.S. contributes significantly more money to cancer research than any other country around the world.

Current and former employees report that morale has “tanked” as the administration hollows out the agency, with many scientists leaving in frustration. The cuts are already impacting basic operations at the institute, according to KFF Health News correspondent Rachana Pradhan. Scientists say they are having trouble obtaining basic supplies for their research, while websites containing crucial cancer treatment and diagnostic information that both patients and doctors rely on are not being updated…

In response to the cuts, hundreds of current and former NIH employees, including Chou, have signed the Bethesda Declaration, which openly protests the Trump administration’s actions. The declaration argues that the administration is undermining NIH’s mission, wasting public resources, and harming Americans’ health by slashing research projects.

The situation may worsen significantly if the White House gets its way with Congress. The administration is seeking to slash the Cancer Institute’s budget by nearly 40% next year. If approved, scientists warn that NCI would be forced to suspend new research grants or make severe cuts to existing ones, leading to lab closures and bringing clinical research at the institute to a halt.

Predators who are “addicted to power” tend to commit truly heinous crimes. Ted Bundy was such a man, but no one ever put him in charge of the health and well-being of hundreds of millions of people.

At this rate, RFK Jr. might become the most prolific serial killer who ever lived. He has lots of accomplices, including NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya, every Republican senator (except McConnell), and Donald Trump.

I’m not a lawyer, but I think the 77,303,568 Americans who voted for Trump are what might be called “accessories before the fact.” Actuarial tables tell us lots of them will become RFK Jr. victims too, whether they believe this is what they voted for or not.

Open thread.

Psycho Killer (Qu’est-ce que c’est)Post + Comments (64)

Late Night Open Thread: Hulk Hogan Is Dead

by Anne Laurie| July 26, 202512:37 am| 79 Comments

This post is in: Media, Open Threads

Journalism has outlived Hulk Hogan:

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— Lindsay Beyerstein (@beyerstein.bsky.social) July 24, 2025 at 11:49 AM

To update an old saying, Never piss off people who buy pixels by the barrel…

Without Hulk Hogan, Peter Thiel would not have been so effective in media-suppression
Without Peter Thiel, we wouldn't know today's Musk or JDV
Without Musk, we wouldn't have DOGE (and would still have Park Service, State Dept, NIH, etc)
So we note Hulk Hogan's passing, as we might Roy Cohn's.

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— James Fallows (@jfallows.bsky.social) July 24, 2025 at 1:49 PM

Chris Thompson, at Defector:

Terry Bollea died on Thursday. The former professional wrestler was 71 years old. According to his longtime manager, Bollea died at his home in Clearwater, Fla.; different reports say that paramedics responded at dawn to an emergency call reporting that Bollea was suffering from cardiac arrest. He’d had some sort of recent neck surgery, and was rumored to be in failing health. Bollea’s wife, Sky, recently batted away rumors that he was in a coma. Fellow washed-up wrestling luminary Jimmy Hart insisted Tuesday afternoon that Bollea was “doing phenomenal.” That turned out to be not the case…

Bollea eventually seated himself, unsurprisingly, as a champion of Donald Trump’s MAGA movement. He also managed the neat trick of retaining enough general public goodwill from his early wrestling days that it has rarely been considered particularly controversial or damaging to one’s reputation to express ongoing affection for his Hulk Hogan character, despite all that has been learned about the performer. That is not to say that his shtick worked on everyone: At his final WWE appearance, at a Monday Night Raw event back in January, Bollea, in his Hogan character, was booed relentlessly by a Los Angeles crowd. But in a sign of his cultural resilience, and the broad mainstream acceptance of ideas and behaviors that a saner society might otherwise consider grounds for literal exile, he was then invited onto ESPN’s most popular show to talk about the experience with the network’s most prominent media personality.

It would certainly never occur to the writers and editors of Defector to use our platform to dance on a person’s grave. And so I will now bring this blog to a close.

Look, you can say a lot about Hogan's legacy: he was racist, he was terrible to his colleagues, he put himself above other people, he firmly believed in the supremacy of white people, he was a bad wrestler, his life was a net negative for society.
That's it. That's the post.

— Imran Khan (@imrankhan.bsky.social) July 24, 2025 at 11:53 AM

Dave Zirin, at the Nation — “Hulk Hogan Was a Racist, Liar, and Scab”:

… Now that Hulk Hogan has died at 71, the media, top wrestling honchos, and particularly the Trump administration are verbosely mourning this leather-skinned mass of steroids and bile stuffed in spandex. The media is treating Hogan’s death like they are in on a bit. They praise “Hulk Hogan” for being an American hero while ignoring that Terry Bollea led an ugly, amoral life; that he was accused of abuse by both one of his wives and a daughter; that he was broadly loathed by generations of wrestlers; and that his final act involved shilling full-time for Donald Trump. Hulk Hogan was a racist scab and a liar, which his prime-time appearance at Trump’s Republican National Convention a natural fit.

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It is gratifying, however, that last Thursday is, in addition to the day of Hogan’s death, the 10th anniversary of the National Enquirer’s publishing audio of Hogan going on an n-word-laden tirade. The coincidence is serendipitous, allowing the legions he harmed to remind people that many mourning this man are mourning a myth. His racism also matters because it dovetails with years of complaints made by Black wrestlers about both his treatment of them and his role as WWF co-owner Vince McMahon’s right-hand man, making sure they never got a shot at his top spot. (In fairness, many white and brown wrestlers have made the same claim.)

Then, as Hogan has himself admitted following years of accusations, he informed on his coworkers, telling Vince McMahon about a secret unionization push led by Jesse “The Body” Ventura. When one considers the shocking number of wrestlers who prematurely died in the 1980s and ’90s because of depression and addiction, both results of being hellaciously overworked, a union could have saved lives.

But Hogan’s harm can be counted in more ways than just what took place behind the curtain. He sold what was left of his soul to Palantir founder and sweaty, ham-faced fascist Peter Thiel who bankrolled Hogan’s lawsuit that bankrupted Gawker. With Thiel’s help, Hogan crushed an audacious Internet journalism outlet that I guarantee would have published the Epstein lists by now. That we lost Deadspin because of Peter Thiel and Hulk Hogan will never not make me apoplectic…

The Hulk Hogan of 2025 embodied all that is wrong with this country. He should be remembered as a living expression of our national decay: a hero exposed as a fraud, a fraud exposed as a coward, and a coward who cried with joy upon finding an authoritarian who told him that his sins were, in fact, virtues.

J.V. Last, never known for his conciseness, has an interesting argument at the Bulwark — “How Hulk Hogan Made ‘Real America'”:

… It would be an exaggeration to say that Hogan is responsible for what America is today. But not much of one. Hogan, like his friends Vince McMahon and Donald Trump, was both a symptom and a cause of what we have become…

Hogan and his partner, Vince McMahon, brought the structures and mores of professional wrestling to American society. Their innovations changed our culture and politics to a degree that’s rarely appreciated…

In wrestling, every match, promo, and story line is designed to put someone “over”—meaning, to help them get a reaction from the audience. Getting over is the goal of every wrestler. Because once the audience reacts, you can draw money from them.

Here it is important to understand that being over is value-neutral. The crowd can love you or hate you. What matters isn’t the polarity but the valence. Wrestling wants intense reactions. No one does anything in wrestling without first gaming out how the crowd will react. What would be the point?

In that way, wrestling is the purest form of populist entertainment and the rest of American culture has followed its lead.

Edgelords on Twitter. Aspiring influencers. Cable news heads. Republican primary candidates. Their every action is guided by the desire to get over with the audience because America is now an attention economy.

Professional wrestling taught people how to thrive in this new world.

The other important precept that Hogan and wrestling introduced to the country is kayfabe—the pretense that unreality is, in fact, real.

Kayfabe exists because wrestlers have, from the beginning, viewed their audience not as consumers or fans, but as marks. And for generations, it was important that wrestlers make certain that the marks believed that the heels and faces hated one another. That’s why good-guy wrestlers could never appear in public with bad-guy wrestlers out of character. They had to maintain kayfabe, for the sake of the marks…

Hulk Hogan taught us that that the world is made up of sharps and marks. And whatever the sharps do to the marks, the marks deserve it. There is no code; no truth; no honor; no shame. There is only the constant, grinding, unquenchable imperative to get over with the audience. Whatever it takes.

We live in Hulk Hogan’s America now.

71, based on the pile of steroids that man took for a long ass time, is pretty good tbh. That stuff takes years off your life.

— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) July 24, 2025 at 11:57 AM

===

Ozzy Osbourne dies:

"Rest in peace, Ozzy Osbourne."

Hulk Hogan dies:

"Rest in peace, Ozzy Osbourne."

— Middle Age Riot (@middleageriot.bsky.social) July 25, 2025 at 9:04 AM

Late Night Open Thread: Hulk Hogan Is DeadPost + Comments (79)

War for Ukraine Day 1,247: Battlefield Assessments

by Adam L Silverman| July 25, 202510:28 pm| 8 Comments

This post is in: Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Military, Open Threads, Russia, Silverman on Security, War, War in Ukraine

(Image by NEIVANMADE)

I’ve progressed from feeling fried to being ill. I’ve got a bit of a fever and just feel bleh! Good news: it’s not COVID. Test came back negative. So I’m going to just run through the basics tonight, keep this as brief as possible, and go back to bed.

5:22 AM local time/10:22 PM EDT:

Russia yet again struck Kharkiv with cluster munitions, which is a war crime. Just like everything they do.

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— Kate from Kharkiv (@kateinkharkiv.bsky.social) July 25, 2025 at 10:22 PM

Air raid alerts are up for all of eastern and most of central Ukraine at 4:30 AM local time/9:30 PM EDT in Ukraine.

Kharkiv spent all day, all evening, and now overnight into the next morning under Russian attack.

After missile strikes, russia is now attacking Kharkiv with Shahed drones. I have no words for this nightmare.

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— Iryna Voichuk (@irynavoichuk.bsky.social) July 25, 2025 at 7:31 PM

It’s 2:30. Explosions have been shaking Kharkiv all day and into the night. Glide bombs, ballistic missiles, now drones-russia sent everything. Right now, I can hear drones buzzing outside, air defense firing, and the occasional explosion. I’m exhausted. I just want to sleep.

— Kate from Kharkiv (@kateinkharkiv.bsky.social) July 25, 2025 at 7:36 PM

I wish I could express what madness is going on in Kharkiv. Drones buzzing, air defense shooting, dogs barking, drones exploding, more drones buzzing, more air defense shooting.

— Kate from Kharkiv (@kateinkharkiv.bsky.social) July 25, 2025 at 7:49 PM

I can’t believe we have to deal with russian glide bombs in Kharkiv again. They’re “guided” on paper, but in reality strike completely at random. They arrive fast, with no warning sound, unlike drones, and they’re utterly devastating.
I… I don’t know. I just want to wake up.

— Kate from Kharkiv (@kateinkharkiv.bsky.social) July 25, 2025 at 12:56 PM

The counterattack:

Ukrainian drones tonight heading for SW Russia again, like last 2 nights, but also deep into central “European” Russia. A smaller group is heading in the direction of Moscow. Meanwhile, Russian drones threatening N, central and E Ukraine. More drones just launched from Crimea.

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— Euan MacDonald (@euanmacdonald.bsky.social) July 25, 2025 at 4:26 PM

Zelensky says Ukraine urgently needs $6 billion to scale up production of interceptor drones, and $25 billion annually to sustain production of missiles, various drones, and EW systems. The total arms production deficit stands at $65 billion. Talks are underway with partners to address this gap.

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— NOELREPORTS (@noelreports.com) July 25, 2025 at 3:25 AM

Here is President Zelenskyy’s address from earlier today. Video below, English transcript after the jump.

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We Are Preparing More Unpleasant Surprises for the Enemy – Address by the President

25 July 2025 – 20:24

I wish you good health, fellow Ukrainians!

Today, I held a meeting of the Staff. Reports were presented by our intelligence agencies – the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine and the Defense Intelligence of Ukraine – regarding the challenges expected this summer and autumn, as well as Russia’s intentions. We had a detailed discussion about the threats that must be addressed. There was also a report on the operational situation, delivered by Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi. All operational areas were covered, with Pokrovsk receiving primary focus. In the Sumy region, we continue to take action along the border. I also want to thank all our units operating on Russian territory. The Minister of Defense reported on the delivery of assistance from our partners – we are ensuring the reliable transfer of weapons to Ukrainian warriors. I have instructed preparations to begin for a Technology Staff meeting – specifically on drones. A plan has been approved to reach the amount of 500 to 1,000 interceptors per day, which is not easy. Per day within a defined timeframe, and this is a matter of personal responsibility for all our officials involved. Today, I was in the region and visited one of the companies producing drones – this specific type, the interceptors. I thanked the team very much – they are a truly fantastic team of manufacturers. I am grateful to the developers and to all developers who are advancing this very effort, scaling it directly within our forces and in our defense. We are contracting everything we can – at maximum capacity. We are ensuring funding for all drone manufacturers – of all types of drones.

I also visited today one of the medical centers of the Ministry of Internal Affairs – a center specializing in post-injury rehabilitation for our military personnel. I spoke with the guys and presented them with state awards. You know that such gratitude to our warriors, to all our people defending the state by protecting its independence, is always important. Documents are currently being prepared, along with all the necessary submissions, to confer the titles of Hero of Ukraine on several Ukrainian warriors. The decrees will be issued soon.

I also held meetings today on preparing legislative decisions that we are planning to implement in the near future. And of course, our communication with all partners continues to ensure that not a single day is lost this summer, which could add pressure on Russia. I am grateful to the European leaders. I want to thank the United States of America – the pressure on the aggressor is not weakening, and that is crucial. We are preparing more unpleasant surprises for the enemy. I thank everyone who is helping Ukraine!

Glory to Ukraine!

For the 240th consecutive day, the main avenue in Georgia’s capital is blocked. ✅🇬🇪

Protests continue in 8+ cities across the country.

Goal: dissolve the illegitimate, pro-Russian regime.

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— Rusudan Djakeli (@rusudandjakeli.bsky.social) July 25, 2025 at 2:06 PM

The EU says that everything the Georgian Dream claims, from the EU dragging us into war with Russia to them impregnating Georgian men, is a lie.
www.eeas.europa.eu/eeas/georgia…

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— Marika Mikiashvili 🇬🇪🇺🇦🇪🇺 (@marikamikiashvili.bsky.social) July 25, 2025 at 11:17 AM

From The Diplomatic Service of the European Union:

The European Union firmly rejects and condemns the disinformation and baseless accusations by the Georgian authorities regarding the EU’s role in Georgia. Recent statements falsely claiming that the EU seeks to destabilize Georgia, drag it into war or impose so-called “non-traditional values,” constitute a deliberate attempt to mislead the public.

Undermining EU-Georgia relations through Russian-style conspiracy theories and divisive narratives only serves those who oppose Georgia’s democratic and European path.

We strongly denounce the personal attacks against the Ambassador of the European Union to Georgia. The Ambassador plays a vital role in fostering relations between the EU and Georgia. He enjoys the full trust and support of the EU. We urge all political actors in Georgia to refrain from spreading disinformation, avoid inflammatory personal attacks, and work towards the European future for its population.

The EU has been a consistent and reliable partner to Georgia. The EU reaffirms its unwavering support for the territorial integrity of Georgia and reiterates its steadfast solidarity with the Georgian people and its readiness to continue supporting Georgians on their path towards a European future.

The so-called Minister of Defense of Georgia and the Chief of the General Staff didn’t show up at the Agile Spirit opening ceremony.

They can be seen next to Hezbollah and Hamas leaders in Iran but not next to American and NATO troops. 🤡

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— Marika Mikiashvili 🇬🇪🇺🇦🇪🇺 (@marikamikiashvili.bsky.social) July 25, 2025 at 11:17 AM

1/ The British Embassy, alongside the EU, NATO, and global partners, has condemned Russia’s ongoing hybrid operations targeting the UK, Ukraine, and others.

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— Publika.ge (@publikage.bsky.social) July 25, 2025 at 8:54 AM

2/ According to the embassy In response, the UK sanctioned 4 Russian entities and 21 GRU operatives involved in cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns — including those linked to deadly missile strikes in Mariupol and conspiracy-driven interference in West Africa:

— Publika.ge (@publikage.bsky.social) July 25, 2025 at 8:54 AM

3/ “In October 2019, Georgia was also the subject of a damaging cyber-attack by the Russian military intelligence. In February 2020, the UK Government and its partners exposed these cyber-attacks against Georgia as part of Russia’s long-running campaign of hostile and destabilising activity.

— Publika.ge (@publikage.bsky.social) July 25, 2025 at 8:54 AM

4/ We have been clear that the GRU conducted these cyber-attacks in an attempt to undermine Georgia’s sovereignty, to sow discord and disrupt the lives of ordinary Georgian people.

— Publika.ge (@publikage.bsky.social) July 25, 2025 at 8:54 AM

5/ “The UK remains unwavering in its support for Georgia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. The UK and Georgia worked together to build cyber resilience and to publicly attribute that attack …”

— Publika.ge (@publikage.bsky.social) July 25, 2025 at 8:54 AM

6/ … unfortunately Georgian Dream has moved away from Euro-Atlantic co-operation, but the threat from Russia remains, including in the cyber sphere” – the statement reads.

— Publika.ge (@publikage.bsky.social) July 25, 2025 at 8:54 AM

Thea Tsulukiani states that the next generation will completely erase Mikheil Saakashvili from history books.

She’s the regime MP responsible for the history-revising “Parliamentary commission.”

Love him or hate him, he made a state out of a dysfunctional territory 1/2

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— Marika Mikiashvili 🇬🇪🇺🇦🇪🇺 (@marikamikiashvili.bsky.social) July 25, 2025 at 5:23 PM

– the reason Russia felt the need to put an end to it all through a war.

Russia couldn’t change power in Georgia through war in 2008, but covertly succeeded in 2012 through a combination of factors.

And here we are. 2/2.

— Marika Mikiashvili 🇬🇪🇺🇦🇪🇺 (@marikamikiashvili.bsky.social) July 25, 2025 at 5:23 PM

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— Marika Mikiashvili 🇬🇪🇺🇦🇪🇺 (@marikamikiashvili.bsky.social) July 25, 2025 at 9:26 AM

🗣️”Mzia’s refusal to sit is a powerful act of defiance, reminiscent of Rosa Parks, who would not yield her rightful seat on a bus.
🔴Irrespective of how long the hearings last, Mzia stands firm, embodying quiet strength and unyielding resolve,” – Ninia Kakabadze’s blog for MediaChecker.
#FreeMzia

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— Batumelebi&Netgazeti (@netgazeti.org) July 25, 2025 at 10:32 AM

Germany:

The Telegraph: A Patriot air-defence system and more interceptors had already arrived in Ukraine, thanks to a deal with Germany.

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— 🦋Special Kherson Cat🐈🇺🇦 (@specialkhersoncat.bsky.social) July 25, 2025 at 4:47 AM

If you’re trying to keep this straight, German news – Spiegel – has reported it will take a year for this to arrive. British news – The Telegraph – is reporting that one Patriot battery including interceptors has already arrived in Ukraine. It would be very nice if we could get some clarity on this.

Germany has delivered over 60 Gepard anti-aircraft systems to Ukraine and is preparing to send another IRIS-T system, Ukraine’s ambassador to Berlin said. There are ongoing talks on co-producing air defense systems with Ukrainian industry.

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— WarTranslated (Dmitri) (@wartranslated.bsky.social) July 25, 2025 at 5:11 AM

Back to Ukraine.

Ruh Roh!

Uh oh.

Scoop: Scores of Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s MPs are potentially refusing to vote to restore the independence of Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies, fearing the regained powers will be used to take revenge against them. www.ft.com/content/d8c2… via @financialtimes.com

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— Christopher Miller (@christopherjm.ft.com) July 25, 2025 at 12:50 PM

From The Financial Times:

Scores of Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s MPs are potentially refusing to vote to restore the independence of Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies, fearing the regained powers will be used by prosecutors to take revenge against them.

According to three people close to Ukraine’s leader, as many as 70 MPs from the ruling Servant of the People party have signalled their unease with the measure, which rolls back a bill hastily pushed through parliament on Tuesday.

The holdouts may put in jeopardy Zelenskyy’s efforts to undo a bill, widely criticised by Ukraine’s allies and civil society, that subordinated the country’s main anti-corruption agencies under a prosecutor-general chosen by the president.

“People are scared to be unjustly prosecuted as a revenge,” said one of the top managers of Zelenskyy’s parliamentary faction.

Parliament Speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk said on Friday that the new bill would be considered during a session on July 31. But given the doubts over MPs backing the legislation, it may be delayed, or tabled at a time when there are too few MPs present to pass it.

The faction leader and the senior official said that fear of retribution arose after the publication of an interview with the head of the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (Sapo), one of the agencies whose independence was removed by the lawmakers’ votes and Zelenskyy’s signature on the law on Tuesday.

Speaking to the Ukrainian public broadcaster Suspilne on Thursday, head of Sapo, Oleksandr Klymenko, said his organisation was “collecting all the information” about how the original bill came about and vote unfolded.

“We will analyse all the situations, events, statements, all the accusations, claims against us. Down to the molecules,” he said. “We will recreate the chronology of events second by second and give an analysis of all this.”

In a statement to the Financial Times on Friday, Klymenko said “Only people involved in corrupt schemes have reason to fear Nabu and Sapo. We have never engaged in political persecution,” he added. “All investigations by Nabu and Sapo are based totally on facts and evidence, not on political positions or the votes of members of parliament.”

“The independence of anti-corruption institutions is not a threat, but one of the key guarantees of justice, the rule of law and the continued democratic development of Ukraine,’’ he said.

The MP from Zelenskyy’s party confirmed there was concern among many members, but said they believed it still had a good chance to pass.

The senior official said that many people feared Sapo and its partner agency the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (Nabu) would open criminal probes into them. A law enforcement official familiar with Nabu’s work said that there were investigations open that involved sitting MPs.

The senior official said that several MPs from Zelenskyy’s party were considering giving up their mandates rather than voting on the new bill.

Open Thread: Working As… Intended?

by Anne Laurie| July 25, 20253:55 pm| 135 Comments

This post is in: Media, Open Threads, Trump Crime Cartel, Trumpery

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— Mike Luckovich (@mluckovich.bsky.social) July 24, 2025 at 7:40 PM

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very pleased to see trump collapsing with the public but i have to take issue with the assertion made that trump has accomplished what he said he would do. he distinctly hasn't! news.gallup.com/poll/692879/…

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— jamelle (@jamellebouie.net) July 24, 2025 at 5:09 PM

trump promised to lower prices — hasn’t happened.

trump promised that his tariffs would cause an explosion of manufacturing — hasn’t happened.

trump promised to remove criminal illegal immigrants — hasn’t happened.

and the things trump has done — mainly the administrative agenda for Project 2025 — are things he denied he had anything to do with!

if anything, the reason trump is so unpopular is that he had a specific mandate — roll the country back to 2019 — and ignored it in favor of his and his allies autocratic dreams.

Well he said he’d burn the country down to get revenge on his enemies and it seems like he’s done that pretty damn well.

— M in MN (@minnesota-mike.bsky.social) July 24, 2025 at 5:27 PM

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wondering how long it takes for the mainstream press to cover these numbers before they abandon the "he's the tribune of the people and the spirit of ordinary, hard-working American taxpayers" pre-framing they all do in their minds before reporting on him

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— Sean T. Collins (@seantcollins.com) July 25, 2025 at 9:34 AM

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Gallup's been at least a bit GOP friendly (don't mean in the sense of ideological bias just house effects) since 2012. So Trump clocking in with 37% approval seems suboptimal. (For Trump that is …)

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— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm.bsky.social) July 24, 2025 at 2:21 PM

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Meanwhile on a bridge in Jersey ?? pic.twitter.com/mCQFF4Cb09

— Wu Tang is for the Children (@WUTangKids) July 24, 2025

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Well, maybe *this* would change a few minds…

Okely dokely

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— Greg Pinelo (@gregpinelo.bsky.social) July 25, 2025 at 1:49 PM

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you should do it Mr. President I bet that would show all those liberals and make this go away.

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— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) July 25, 2025 at 12:07 PM

Open Thread: Working As… Intended?Post + Comments (135)

Excellent Read: ‘Why Is Jeff Bezos Rakestomping the Post?’

by Anne Laurie| July 25, 20252:45 pm| 64 Comments

This post is in: C.R.E.A.M., Excellent Links, Media

Why is Jeff Bezos Rakestomping the Post? talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/why-i…

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— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm.bsky.social) July 24, 2025 at 4:53 PM

Thw Washington Post is my ‘front page’ news-on-the-internet choice, so the ongoing destruction of its previously valuable op-ed section irks me personally. Josh Marshall, at TPM:

I wanted to flag your attention to this piece by Jonathan Last at The Bulwark: The Washington Post is dying. I can tell you “how.” But not “why.” I’m not sure the central assertion is a big surprise to people. But Last does a good job at running through the details, the steps on the path of descent. He puts some focus on legacy systems — suboptimal arrangements, structures, compromises that any organization builds up over time. I first thought he was distracting from the decisions made under the ownership of Jeff Bezos. But I think he’s right to put some focus on them. These aren’t the reason the Post is dying. But this legacy debt — which most big and old organizations have — adds to the challenges that Bezos would have had even if he weren’t making terrible decisions.

I’m writing this because I want to point to one of the “why” reasons. There are others tied to politics, Trump, the oligarchy, etc. But a big driver is the consultants. Bezos bought the Post in a different era, as one part fun thing to do and one part de facto social philanthropy. In 2013, Bezos was the new Carnegie, Morgan, Vanderbilt. The Post’s historic owners, the Graham Family, had the best of intentions but lacked the resources to bring the Post into the modern age. It had become a classic undercapitalized business, disrupted by a newer, faster and more mercenary class of D.C. publications. Bezos paid a generous price for it and I think saw this as fun and kind of a good thing that an ultra-rich guy should do.

But Bezos had something I’ve seen before, close up, many times. The super rich don’t like losing money, even if it’s at scales that are essentially meaningless to them. This is ironic. Perhaps it’s perverse. But it’s not surprising. You don’t get to be a centi-billionaire by not sweating losing money. It’s deep in the DNA. For several years the Post was hot and growing. That was fun. Then it wasn’t. It started not being hot and losing money. And Bezos decided he’d had enough.

This part of the narrative is pretty straightforward and uncontroversial. Why did things go wrong when Bezos got involved and started making big changes? A big part of the answer is the consultants, the particular ones a guy like Bezos would gravitate toward. In short, he gravitated toward the ones who speak billionaire. Which is to say, the language of leverage, commercial paper, efficiencies, disruption, innovation, the big idea, etc. Why would he go to those people? Because that’s his social world. To the extent Bezos has peers they live in that world, work with those consultants, think in that way. It all makes sense…

…[C]onsultants who speak billionaire… mostly aren’t actually rooted in a meaningful way in the news business. And here I don’t mean “journalism” in all the touchy-feely and important meanings of the term. I mean the more brass-tacks reality of the news business, which is different from “journalism” while also being the substrate journalism requires for its existence. I know this because I’ve been dealing in various ways with these people for more than 20 years. They have these ideas because, like Bezos, they are heavily plugged into the tech business, its assumptions, its business models. Critically, they are hyper-focused on scale and efficiencies — two things which can be positives but are mostly neither here nor there in terms of the challenges facing most news publications. (Obviously, you want to use your cash as efficiently as possible. But marginal efficiency gains aren’t why news publications live or die.)…

… Running a successful digital media operation is really, really hard. Most of our ideas about how journalism is supposed to work in business terms are the product of specific technological and business factors that were undone at the turn of the century. To cite just the most obvious example, most people’s idea of what print (or we should we now say “words”) journalism should be is based on the metropolitan daily paper. But that existed because for quite a few decades one or two companies in a very capital-intensive business could have a de facto monopoly over most commercial speech in a major metropolitan area. That was a lucrative and stable business to be in. But the internet destroyed it. Everyone’s been trying to build something else ever since, with pretty uneven luck. And it all got harder when the tech monopolies became mature about a decade ago.

Bezos got antsy about his money-losing business. He’s also reacting to the political needs of his other businesses (a big factor I’m not addressing in this post). And he’s defaulting to what was probably the biggest error of the first two decades of the 21st century on the business side of the journalism business: the idea that the dynamics, business concepts and mores of the tech world were applicable to the news business. They’re mostly not. And here we mean not the “media” business, to which there is some application, but the news business. Again, not the same thing. Bezos is clearly a really smart and able guy. But since the Post is maybe his fifth or sixth priority he’s even more likely than he might normally be to default to his comfort-level assumptions, that the news business is basically like tech and the people he’ll hire are the people who speak his language, which is billionaire.

First thing we do, let’s kill all the consultants…

Excellent Read: <em>‘Why Is Jeff Bezos Rakestomping the Post?’</em>Post + Comments (64)

Castor Canadensis on Together We Can Be a Force for Good (Nov 11, 2025 @ 5:42pm)

WTFGhost on Tuesday Morning Open Thread: One Must Imagine Sisyphus Happy (Nov 11, 2025 @ 5:42pm)

iKropoclast on Together We Can Be a Force for Good (Nov 11, 2025 @ 5:41pm)

dc on Together We Can Be a Force for Good (Nov 11, 2025 @ 5:40pm)

David_C on Together We Can Be a Force for Good (Nov 11, 2025 @ 5:39pm)

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

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

Since we are repeating ourselves, let me just say fuck that.

Prediction: the gop will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

I really should read my own blog.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

So very ready.

The “burn-it-down” people are good with that until they become part of the kindling.

A norm that restrains only one side really is not a norm – it is a trap.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

If you thought you’d already seen people saying the stupidest things possible on the internet, prepare yourselves.

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

“Until such time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on.”

This really is a full service blog.

This chaos was totally avoidable.

The rest of the comments were smacking Boebert like she was a piñata.

Not loving this new fraud based economy.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

A fool as well as an oath-breaker.

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

Our messy unity will be our strength.

There are more Russians standing up to Putin than Republicans.

Trump in Scotland

Interesting Arguments: Our Modern American Dracula(s)

Psycho Killer (Qu’est-ce que c’est)

Late Night Open Thread: Hulk Hogan Is Dead

War for Ukraine Day 1,247: Battlefield Assessments

We Are Preparing More Unpleasant Surprises for the Enemy – Address by the President

Open Thread: Working As… Intended?

Excellent Read: ‘Why Is Jeff Bezos Rakestomping the Post?’