Disney deserves every bit of this, and more! Posted without further comment.
*except to say that I found this in an open tab and have no idea who linked to it in the comments here, or elsewhere.
h/t NaijaGal
War for Ukraine Day 1,305: A Few More Thoughts on Russia’s Increased Provocations Towards NATO Member States
A quick housekeeping note: My house has been cleaned. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER!!!!
The last several nights there has been robust discussions regarding what Putin/Russia is trying to accomplish with the incursions into Polish, Romanian, and Estonian air space. One thing that hasn’t been mentioned is that what Putin and Russia are doing with these incursions is forcing not just the Poles, the Romanians, and the Estonians to expend resources in response, but the other NATO allies in Europe as well. The Baltic states are not wealthy. It has been a long slow economic transition for them. They do not have the air forces that the other NATO member states have because they can’t really afford them. Which, because they’re part of NATO, they don’t need to. Or didn’t. The Baltic states bring other things to the alliance. One of them is providing some of the best capabilities for dealing with information warfare and influence operations in the Information Environment, especially within the Cyber Domain; as well as counter Cyber crime and Cyber warfare capabilities. But any response to repeated Russian violations of their air spaces means the expenditure of resources they don’t have. And that’s were NATO comes in. Every time a NATO member state has to respond in support of one of the Baltic States, as well as Poland and Romania, they’re burning resources. Aviation fuel, maintenance costs for their aircraft, flight hours, etc. We need to keep in mind that part of Putin’s/Russia’s objective is to economically exhaust the NATO member states by forcing them to respond to these excursions thereby leveling the playing field between NATO, its member states, and Russia.
Here is President Zelenskyy’s address from earlier today. Video below, English transcript after the jump.
Medium Cool – Desert Island Companions
Medium Cool is a weekly series related to popular culture, mostly film, TV, and books, with some music and games thrown in. We hope it’s a welcome break from the anger, hate, and idiocy we see almost daily from the other side in the political sphere.
Arguments welcomed, opinions respected, fools un-suffered. We’re here every Sunday at 7 pm.
So you’re going to be stranded on a desert island. (With magical electricity!)
You get to bring *one movie, one TV show, one book, one song, and one other item of your choice.
- Your one movie can be just one movie or it can be a series (Rocky, Rocky II… Rocky V).
- Your one TV show can be just one episode or can be the entire series.
- Your one book can be a single book or an entire book series (A is for Alibi, etc)
- Your one song can be just one song or can be an entire album.
- Your one other item of your choice can be anything. (Wilson?)
Tell us what you have on the island with you!
And please please please share the “why” of your choices. The Medium Cools where people share the why are so much more fun and interesting than the ones with just lists!
Open Thread & Gentle Reminder: Last Call to Donate to Elect ‘Good Kim’ in Virginia
Early voting started in Virginia on Friday.
As I write this, we are about $1,200 away from our goal of $7,500 for Kimberly Pope Adams, and I still have hope that we can make that goal.
Either way, we’ll end our fundraising for Kimberly Pope Adams at 10 am on Monday morning.
Dollars go a long way in these Statehouse races, and the funds we have raised have already made a difference in what they have been able to do.
There’s a big push to try to win Virginia with early voting. Wouldn’t that be nice!
Open thread!
Open Thread: Trump & the Graveyard of Empires
Born too Late to go to war against Afghanistan
Born too Early to go to war against Afghanistan
Born just in time to go to war against Afghanistan— QuoProQuid (@quoproquid.bsky.social) September 20, 2025 at 6:27 PM
===
Trump's last deal with the Taliban was a disaster that directly led to the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan. What deal has he made now with the Taliban?
— VoteVets (@votevets.org) September 18, 2025 at 3:11 PM
===
Trump's dream of retaking #Bagram might end up looking like an Afghan #re-invasion, sources say
• Trump's goal could require over 10,000 troops.
• Experts doubt feasibility of retaking Bagram air base.
• Former officials see more #risks than benefits in retaking Bagram.— [The Great War & Modern Memory] (@ps9714.bsky.social) September 21, 2025 at 1:30 PM
I have faith in Adam’s expertise, and since he didn’t mention this yesterday, I’m assuming we can treat it as one more example in the long catalog of Trump Says Sh*t, aka … In Two More Weeks. Per Reuters:
… The sprawling airfield was the main base for American forces in Afghanistan during the two decades of war that followed the September 11, 2001, attacks in New York and Washington by al Qaeda.
Trump, who has previously said he wants the United States to acquire territories and sites ranging from the Panama Canal to Greenland, has appeared focused on Bagram for years.
He hinted on Thursday that the U.S. could acquire the base with some kind of Taliban consent but it was unclear what form such an agreement might take. It would be a remarkable turnaround for the Taliban, which fought to expel U.S. troops and retake the country from a U.S.-backed government.
The base once counted fast-food restaurants like Burger King and Pizza Hut catering to U.S. troops as well as shops selling everything from electronics to Afghan rugs. It also hosted a massive prison complex.
A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there was no active planning to militarily take over Bagram air base, which the U.S. abandoned along with the rest of the country when it withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021…
Open Thread: Trump & the Graveyard of EmpiresPost + Comments (100)
Re-Upping for the Weekend Peeps: Tune in on Thursday to Find Out 🤵🏻👰🏻
Re-upping this post from Friday so we can catch everyone who might be interested in attending by Zoom.
Cole and Joelle’s big day is on Thursday – 6 days from today!
I can’t decide whether we’ll see what I like to call “deer in the headlights” Cole, “calm cool and collected” Cole, or the panicked energy of Bill O’Reilly in that famous clip.
Tune in this Thursday – just 4 days from now – for the Cole / Joelle nuptials.
🤵🏻👰🏻
Thursday, September 25, 2025
5 PM EST
It’s a Zoom, and if you want to attend, please send email to WaterGirl. I’ll send out the link the day before the zoom.
Please include your Balloon Juice nym! No zoom link without a nym.
Pro tip: It’s best wishes to the bride, congratulations to the groom. No congratulations to the bride for landing her man.
🤵🏻👰🏻
Zoom Details
The zoom will be set up to see the ceremony. All of us will be muted.
Then we’ll see the picture taking (short), cutting of the cake, and refreshments. Assuming that room setup will be conducive to that.
They are not providing cake and refreshments to the zoom attendees, which I think sucks, so everybody bake your own cake and have your favorite beverage at hand.
🤵🏻👰🏻
Zoom Etiquette
The zoom will be hosted by a formal institution, so we are expected to be on good behavior in the zoom chat.
Chat suggestions: The bride looks beautiful! Cole looks pretty good, too! The cake is gorgeous! Oh, there’s Mom Cole!
🤵🏻👰🏻
Balloon Juice Post at the same time as the Zoom
I will put up a BJ post where we can point and laugh and mock and make jokes about not wearing pants and wonder how Cole ever landed a beautiful bride like this.
Questions?
Re-Upping for the Weekend Peeps: Tune in on Thursday to Find Out 🤵🏻👰🏻Post + Comments (53)
Bag Men & Slam Books (Open Thread)
News of two massive scandals involving the Trump Department of Justice emerged yesterday. In other words, a typical weekend in 2025. First up from MSNBC, “border czar” Tom Homan was allegedly caught on video being a gigantic crook:
In an undercover operation last year, the FBI recorded Tom Homan, now the White House border czar, accepting $50,000 in cash after indicating he could help the agents — who were posing as business executives — win government contracts in a second Trump administration, according to multiple people familiar with the probe and internal documents reviewed by MSNBC.
I’m not a lawyer or investigator, so maybe I’m off base here, but this part seems almost touching and precious in its naivety:
The FBI and the Justice Department planned to wait to see whether Homan would deliver on his alleged promise once he became the nation’s top immigration official. But the case indefinitely stalled soon after Donald Trump became president again in January, according to six sources familiar with the matter. In recent weeks, Trump appointees officially closed the investigation, after FBI Director Kash Patel requested a status update on the case, two of the people said.
So the plan was to forego busting Homan for accepting money and conspiring to corruptly influence future government contract awards with the expectation that if the crooked ex-president was elected in 2024 and once again took charge of the DOJ in 2025, the crooked president would allow the DOJ to bust his ally Homan for being a crook? Do I have that right?
***
Next up, it appears the crooked and possibly demented president thought he was sending a private direct message to his corrupt attorney general via his Twitter knock-off platform, leaning on her to persecute his political enemies faster. Only he posted it publicly instead:
There’s no hiding the political retaliation and weaponization.
It’s all out in the open.
— Sen. Adam Schiff (@schiff.senate.gov) September 20, 2025 at 9:44 PM
Oops — not supposed to document a criminal fucking conspiracy like that, Trump! The post was subsequently deleted, which indicates that yep, the dotard meant to send a DM.
Lindsey Halligan, the White House aide Trump name-checks in the post as a replacement U.S. attorney, is a crappy Florida insurance lawyer who has never prosecuted a case. So I’m sure she’ll work out just fine!
For some reason, the way Trump told Bondi that Halligan “likes you, a lot” reminds me of the handwritten notes kids used to surreptitiously pass around classrooms in 6th grade:
Do you like me? [ ] yes [ ] no
I suppose kids today send irony-drenched disappearing Snapchats instead of passing notes — or slam books, remember them, fellow olds? So that’s another lost art.
Anyhoo, typical stuff, these massive scandals that would make the shade of Richard Nixon cringe in shame. I reckon today’s blanket media coverage of the MAGA star-studded Circle Kirk* will knock this stuff out of the news before one in a thousand Americans even hears about it.
But hopefully the statute of limitations won’t lapse before these crooks can be prosecuted, if democracy and the rule of law are restored. Maybe after directing officials to revise signage, stationery, URLs, etc., to restore the U.S. Department of Defense’s proper name from the childish and cringe Department of WAAAAR, the next Democratic president can rename the Department of Justice: Department of JAILING CROOKS.
Just kidding about that last part. But for real, if voters step up and hand Democrats a trifecta again, we need to refocus that department on the white collar crime wave that is engulfing the republic and prosecute every goddamn one of the many Trump crooks.
Open thread.
*Stolen from someone on Bluesky who called the nauseating levels of Charlie Kirk hagiography this.