Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

This is dead girl, live boy, a goat, two wetsuits and a dildo territory.  oh, and pink furry handcuffs.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

So many bastards, so little time.

I am pretty sure these ‘journalists’ were not always such a bootlicking sycophants.

I might just take the rest of the day off and do even more nothing than usual.

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

Jack be nimble, jack be quick, hurry up and indict this prick.

“woke” is the new caravan.

The gop is a fucking disgrace.

Everything is totally normal and fine!!!

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

Oppose, oppose, oppose. do not congratulate. this is not business as usual.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

Trump’s cabinet: like a magic 8 ball that only gives wrong answers.

SCOTUS: It’s not “bribery” unless it comes from the Bribery region of France. Otherwise, it’s merely “sparkling malfeasance”.

“A king is only a king if we bow down.” – Rev. William Barber

If America since Jan 2025 hasn’t broken your heart, you haven’t loved her enough.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

The National Guard is not Batman.

At some point, the ability to learn is a factor of character, not IQ.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

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

Find someone who loves you the way trump and maga love traitors.

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War for Ukraine Day 1,197: Putin Gives Trump His Answer

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Air raid alert map of Ukraine. All of Ukraine is colored in different shades of red indicated threats from Russian drones, missiles, and/or bombs. Russian bombers are indicated in white on the right side of the map.

At 4:10 AM local time in Ukraine/9:10 AM EDT, all of Ukraine is under air raid attack from drones or missiles and bombs launched from what’s left of Russia’s fixed wing aviation.

This is part of Putin’s answer to Trump regarding ceasefires, peace negotiations, and ending the war. What is being communicated is not in doubt. What is in doubt is whether Trump can either receive the message he is being sent or whether one of his people can and is able to communicate it to him in a way that he accepts it.

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

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Thursday Evening Open Thread: Repub Influencers in Disarray

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For some reason, BlueSky has — temporarily, I hope — disabled its drop-down embed function. This is annoying, not only because it makes my posts less vivid, but because I stockpile those snippets for future use.

Anybody got a work=around for a tech illiterate like me?
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Meanwhile, we can but hope this is a harbinger. Will Sommer, at the Bulwark — MAGA World Starts Turning on Trump’s Star Vote Getter:

EVERY RIGHT-WING INFLUENCER needs a shtick. Scott Presler’s is that he registers tons and tons of new Republican voters. Whenever there’s a crucial election coming up, there’s a good chance Presler will be in the area, registering scads of new voters for the GOP—and posting about it. A lot.

Often, Presler advertises how he targets unique demographic groups, like truck drivers or the Amish. This has made him into a heroic figure on the right and earned him more than 2 million followers on X. Every time the RNC chair seat is open, Presler’s fanbase demands that he be appointed to run the party. The president’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump nearly did hire Presler to work for the RNC last year, until the resurfacing of an unsavory incident from Presler’s past in which he had sex in a Republican office, then posted the pictures on Craigslist. Presler is also gay, which made the incident a bit harder to land in GOP circles.

That colorful backstory hasn’t dimmed Presler’s star much, though. Last year, Elon Musk gave $1 million to Presler’s voter-registration PAC. Presler criss-crossed Wisconsin ahead of the state’s much-watched Supreme Court election in April, vowing that “the cavalry is on the way.”

But the cavalry failed to prevent a 10-point Republican defeat in that race. And since April, Presler has faced a growing chorus of Republican critics who say he is overstating the value of his voter-registration work, particularly in the battleground state of Pennsylvania…

Presler’s most prominent critic on the right has been Brandon Straka, a former friend of his who made his own name on the right as the head of the “WalkAway” movement, which encourages traditionally Democratic groups like LGBTQ people and racial minorities to “walk away” and become Republicans.

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No Backsies for Musk

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It’s always gratifying to watch Republican villains fighting like half a dozen coked-up weasels in a tote sack. There’s nothing wrong with smiling as you read about Elon Musk threatening to primary Repubs who vote for Trump’s massive murder bill, Mike Johnson whining about being ghosted by the ketamine king, Trump trashing Rand Paul and calling Leonard Leo a sleazebag, etc. Oh, and this:

Over on the other site…. 👀

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— Jen Bendery (@jbendery.bsky.social) June 5, 2025 at 12:40 PM

These are all unambiguously positive developments in the fight against the fascists and their shitty agenda!

But of course the U.S. political press is sifting through that gigantic shit-pile to find a “Dems in disarray” angle, and a few of the usual suspects are helpful on that score. Politico headline:

Dems eye a villain-to-ally arc for Musk

Two elected Dems quoted in that story are exactly whom you’d expect to catch making dumb mouth-farts on the topic of Musk: Reps Ro Khanna (D-CA) and Ritchie Torres (D-NY).

“We should ultimately be trying to convince him that the Democratic Party has more of the values that he agrees with,” Khanna said. “A commitment to science funding, a commitment to clean technology, a commitment to seeing international students like him.”

“I’m a believer in redemption, and he is telling the truth about the legislation,” said Rep. RITCHIE TORRES (D-N.Y.). But, he added, Musk has “done an enormous amount of damage” and “there are Democrats who see his decimation of the federal workforce and the federal government as an unforgivable sin.”

For fuck’s sake, Musk is NOT telling the truth about the legislation! He dislikes the bill because he considers it too generous to non-billionaires, and it takes public money off the table that Musk had hoped to funnel into his own government-subsidized pockets.

And yeah, the vandalization of U.S. soft power, scientific leadership, etc., is “an unforgiveable sin,” and Musk’s “commitment to science funding” is contingent upon Musk personally receiving the funding, you absolute dinguses.  (Unless they are unicorns who are the only electable Dems in their districts, I hope both of these guys get primaried so hard they materialize in a distant galaxy.)

The Politico article cites a couple of other Dem Musk-fluffers too, though I don’t personally find their takes nearly as egregious.

LIAM KERR, co-founder of the group behind the centrist Democrats’ WelcomeFest meeting today in Washington, said “of course” Democrats should, ahem, welcome Musk back into the party.

“You don’t want anyone wildly distorting your politics, which he has a unique capability to do. But it’s a zero-sum game,” Kerr said. “Anything that he does that moves more toward Democrats hurts Republicans.”

Rep. BRAD SCHNEIDER (D-Ill.), the chair of the New Democrat Coalition who earlier this year supported the party’s targeting of Musk as the Department of Government Efficiency slashed through federal agencies, said that with his departure from Washington, Democrats shouldn’t make Musk their focus. “We should be talking about what we’re doing for the American people,” he said.

While not as catastrophically dumb as what Khanna and Torres said, this too is stupid. “We” are not doing shit for the American people right now for the simple reason that “we” are shut out of power.

Musk is unpopular, and what he did (and is still doing!) to the federal government and with our personal data is unpopular. Musk is the very embodiment of the corrosive influence of money in politics, as is the wildly corrupt crypto scammer Musk installed as ceremonial president for the rock-bottom price of $288 million. Of course we should focus on that — all of it!

But Musk’s recent heel-turn also risks reopening a divide between progressives and moderates over how to approach him and other billionaires.

“Our caucus has done the right thing and gone toe-to-toe against Musk,” said Rep. GREG CASAR (D-Texas), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and one of the party’s most vocal advocates for making Musk an antagonist on the campaign trail.

Others are taking a wait-and-see approach. “I don’t think we should take one ketamine-fueled tweet as evidence of a change of heart,” said MATT BENNETT, co-founder of the center-left group Third Way. “It’s more complicated.”

The highlighted material is such a bullshit take. Khanna and Torres both have ties to Bernie Sanders of “Fighting Oligarchy” rally fame. Kerr and Schneider are center-left figures.

Again, I think the divide is between people who understand that our democracy is under grievous assault and know what must be done to neutralize the threat and people who don’t get it. It’s not ideological, so I reject that bait.

Open thread.

No Backsies for MuskPost + Comments (141)

This Explains So Much

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Someone said something in the comments at some point, and I thought it was important enough that I wrote it down.  But of course I forgot to make note of who said this, so I can’t credit them.  (But feel free to out yourself if you like!)

It’s emotionally safer to be angry at Dems all the time. If they end up prevailing, you can say you made it possible by holding their feet to the fire. If they don’t, you can say you were right not to trust them all along.

I think that explains so much.  I doubt that it’s a conscious choice, but it is most certainly a coping mechanism.

But if we’re still doing that 6 months later, I think it’s worth thinking about.  For some of us, I wonder if maybe we are getting in our own way.  Is that why it’s easier to talk abut what we should be doing, instead of making the call, or writing the letter, or making the public comment, or donating to a fundraiser, or going to a protest, or talking to people who aren’t MAGA but still don’t get it.  I am certainly not doing everything I can.

Maybe we’re just exhausted?  Is it that hope is hard?

We’re 6 months in, and if anything is holding us back personally, it seems like we damn well need to figure out what it is.

We need to stop calling out the abused wife for staying, and start calling out the bastard who is beating her.

About 3 times a week I leave the house to run an errand, only to find that I have forgotten my phone or my purse.  It’s annoying!  The last time I did that I remembered that when my -ex and I we were raising his son, it seemed like he was always leaving the house without something he needed, or he was leaving something behind when he came home.  So we asked him to get in the habit of pausing and asking himself  “do I have everything I need” before he left the house or left the swimming pool, etc.  So I have been trying that myself this week, and so far, so good.

So is there a question we should be asking ourselves if we’re not doing everything we possibly can in these terrible times?

This Explains So MuchPost + Comments (88)

Open Thread: It’s Both Entertaining *and* Effective!

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Why, asks our Very Serious Media, must we Dems be so meeeean to poor Don TACO?

To piggyback on this slightly, this is why "TACO" is such a brilliant piece of political speech. You can say it anywhere, people can say it on television or in public without swearing or w/e, and it perfectly encapsulates the fact that Trump is a whiny baby in a way that will infuriate him.

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— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) June 4, 2025 at 10:22 AM

I know this is a hard concept to grasp for most of the brainwormed political posters on this site, but one of the ways that Rs were able to pull down Bidens favorables was millions of tiny cuts in the form of mockery, derision, & shitposting online over the years. Volume mattered more than quality.

“Why mock Trump and point out that he sucks at doing the things that he says he’ll do?”

Bc Trumps *entire fucking political project* depends on projecting strength and inevitability. Mockery works to undercut that and the more of it that happens in places where ppl consume info online, the better.

We don't even have to guess on this! A reporter asked about it and he nearly lost his shit!

— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) June 4, 2025 at 10:22 AM


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Another day on bluesky

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— tmbhmltn.bsky.social (@tmbhmltn.bsky.social) June 4, 2025 at 11:18 AM

Open Thread: It’s Both Entertaining *and* Effective!Post + Comments (49)

Foreign Affairs Open Thread: Chinese Puzzle(d)

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‘The president is obsessed’: Trump fixates on Xi call amid faltering trade talks
www.politico.com/news/2025/06…

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— Mike Walker (@newnarrative.bsky.social) June 3, 2025 at 10:48 AM

LOOK! Over there! Another Very Serious distraction from Don TACO’s flailing One Big Murder Budget Bill!… Never change, Politico:

… “The president is obsessed with having a call with Xi,” said one person familiar with the trade talks, convinced he can personally hash out deep-seated divisions between the world’s two largest economies mano a mano with Xi.

That conviction belies the difficult position the U.S. is in as it tries to pressure China to fundamentally reorder their nearly $600 billion trade relationship, without doing lasting political damage at home. And it renews questions about what Trump’s endgame is in a trade war with China that is increasingly turning into a game of chicken.

The person familiar with the trade talks, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about their private conversations, said the administration is under “a lot of pressure” because of China’s block on critical minerals, crucial components for everything from auto and electronics manufacturing to munitions production. “I don’t think Xi is too interested in exporting any more rare earths or magnets to the United States, he’s made his position clear,” the person added, though they predicted there’s a “good likelihood” Xi would take the call to at least hear Trump out. “The president has some leverage, and the question is when he’s ready to impose maximum pressure on the Chinese government.”

A former Trump official close to the White House, granted anonymity to candidly discuss the president’s strategy, said: “Trump feels like a call between principles is a way to cut through a lot of this noise, and get right to the heart of the matter.”…

But the former Trump official dismissed the idea that there are major downsides to pushing for a Trump-Xi conversation. “From the U.S. perspective, what’s the big downside to the call? You ask for it. If they don’t do it, it’s like, ‘well, you know, we’re trying, they’re not even trying,’” the former official said. “And if they do it, maybe we get some progress.”

LUCE: “.. You can't blame Xi for being wary of talking to Trump. In late April, Trump told Time that Xi had called him — ‘and I don’t think that’s a sign of weakness on his behalf.’ No such call had taken place.”
@edwardluce.bsky.social
www.ft.com/content/d64c…

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— Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla.bsky.social) June 3, 2025 at 7:38 AM

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War for Ukraine Day 1,196: If You Look Around the Table & Can’t Tell Who the Mark Is, You’re the Mark

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This is never going to happen. There is no way Trump is going to agree to new sanctions:

🇺🇸❗️ Kellogg stated that US sanctions against Russia are ready, and Congress and White House are ready to approve them:

🗣️ “I spoke with Senator Lindsey Graham. The bill is called the “Russia Sanctions Act of 2025.” And I think Graham is ready to apply them.”

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— Savchenko Volodymyr (@savchenkoua.bsky.social) June 4, 2025 at 2:35 AM

And here’s why:

“Every day or so, Trump says Russia wouldn’t have attacked Ukraine if he were president. And every time he says it, Russia attacks Ukraine.”

“Russia’s continuing onslaught makes a mockery of his boasts.” But he keeps repeating his story.

Putin respects this guy? What a joke. It’s another Big Lie.

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— Will Saletan (@saletan.bsky.social) June 4, 2025 at 9:08 AM

If you look around the table and can’t tell who the mark is, you’re the mark.

From The Bulwark:

EVER SINCE DONALD TRUMP RETURNED to the White House, the darnedest thing has been happening in Ukraine. Every day or so, Trump says Russia wouldn’t have attacked Ukraine if he were president. And every time he says it, Russia attacks Ukraine.

You might have thought that by now, Trump would stop saying it, since Russia’s continuing onslaught makes a mockery of his boasts. But he’s no more fazed by this falsification than he is by the evidence that he lost the 2020 election. He just keeps repeating his story.

In March, Trump proposed a 30-day ceasefire. Ukraine accepted the proposal, but Russia didn’t. Russian forces pushed into eastern Ukraine, and on April 13, Russia fired missiles into Sumy, a Ukrainian city, killing at least 34 civilians and injuring more than 100.

When reporters asked Trump about the missile strike, he excused it as “a mistake” and said the war had started only because Vladimir Putin “had so little respect for [Joe] Biden.” “If I were president,” said Trump, “that war would have never started.”

The next day, Trump claimed that in his first term, he had deterred Putin from invading Ukraine. “I told him, ‘Don’t do it,’” said Trump. But now that Trump was back in office, Putin seemed strangely undeterred. While Trump was touting his magical ability to rein in Putin, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov repeated that Russia wouldn’t accept Trump’s ceasefire plan. Meanwhile, along the front, Russian troops continued their assaults on Ukraine.

On May 16, Fox News host Bret Baier reminded Trump: “You said, ‘Stop bombing.’ He [Putin] hasn’t stopped bombing. He’s not at the table.” But Trump—with the same delusional confidence he routinely expresses about massive fraud in the 2020 election—insisted, “He is at the table.” Throughout the interview, Trump tried to shift blame to Zelensky.

The next day, Russia launched its biggest drone attack of the three-year war.

Last Wednesday, after another barrage of Russian missiles and drones, a reporter asked Trump, “What stopped you from imposing new sanctions on Russia?” Trump answered that peace might be at hand. “If I think I’m close to getting a deal,” he explained, “I don’t want to screw it up by doing that.”

Then, on Friday, Fox News reporter Peter Doocy tried to ask Trump about the challenges of dealing with “a very stubborn Vladimir Putin.” Trump, offended that Putin was being singled out, interrupted the question. “And Zelensky,” Trump added. “Very stubborn Zelensky, too.”

What Trump doesn’t understand is that the world’s crises and tragedies—the war in Ukraine, the war in Gaza, the October 2023 massacre in Israel, the plight of Afghans abandoned by the United States—aren’t a stage for his ego. He treats these scenes of suffering as opportunities to promote himself, by crowing that if he had been president, they never would have happened. He doesn’t understand that being president is a job, and the job is to alleviate crises, not exploit them.

Putin recognizes that this is how Trump thinks. He knows that the American president, while yapping that the war never would have happened on his watch, won’t lift a finger against the aggressor.

And that’s why the war goes on.

More at the link.

That’s not the only reason the war goes on. The war goes on because Putin will not give up on his genocidal desire to possess the territory that is Ukraine even if he has to raze it all to the ground. And that has been the case for years now regardless of who is president or could be president.

Putin once again claimed that “Ukraine does not want peace” and called the authorities in Kyiv “terrorists.”

In his latest aggressive rhetoric, the Russian dictator stated: “Who negotiates with terrorists?”

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— WarTranslated (Dmitri) (@wartranslated.bsky.social) June 4, 2025 at 1:55 PM

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— Kate from Kharkiv (@kateinkharkiv.bsky.social) June 4, 2025 at 6:36 PM

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

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