Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

Bark louder, little dog.

Mediocre white men think RFK Jr’s pathetic midlife crisis is inspirational. The bar is set so low for them, it’s subterranean.

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

Tide comes in. Tide goes out. You can’t explain that.

T R E 4 5 O N

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

Hi god, it’s us. Thanks a heap, you’re having a great week and it’s only Thursday!

When they say they are pro-life, they do not mean yours.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

They want us to be overwhelmed and exhausted. Focus. Resist. Oppose.

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

Hey hey, RFK, how many kids did you kill today?

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

This blog will pay for itself.

Republicans got rid of McCarthy. Democrats chose not to save him.

Books are my comfort food!

“In the future, this lab will be a museum. do not touch it.”

When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty. ~Thomas Jefferson

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

We know you aren’t a Democrat but since you seem confused let me help you.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

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Wednesday Morning Open Thread: No Longer A Serious Country

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The US military will conduct a flyover of the White House and wider DC at 11am tomorrow (Wednesday).
Epstein’s victims will be holding a press conference on Capitol Hill around the same time.

— Mark Chadbourn (@chadbourn.bsky.social) September 2, 2025 at 1:31 PM

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Everyone should watch this and stop pretending this guy isn’t a grave threat to everyone’s health.

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— Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec.bsky.social) September 2, 2025 at 5:35 PM


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52 of 53 Republican senators voted to confirm him.

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— Bill Kristol (@billkristolbulwark.bsky.social) August 31, 2025 at 10:24 AM

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The White House declares that it would be a “hostile act” if House Republicans voted for a complete release of the Epstein files. Trump seems desperate to cover up any connection with his friend who raped children.

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— Mark Jacob (@markjacob.bsky.social) September 2, 2025 at 10:32 PM

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Perfect encapsulation of the Trump administration: The guy suing Harvard for alleged antisemitism is a straight-up Hitler-admiring Nazi.
www.bostonglobe.com/2025/09/02/m…

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— Jonathan Cohn (@jonathancohn.bsky.social) September 2, 2025 at 7:42 AM

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This is legitimately insane in the like “Tsar taking advice from Siberian mystic” sense

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— Vituperative Erb (@vituperativeerb.bsky.social) September 2, 2025 at 11:34 PM

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I made this point over and over again in 2024.

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— Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec.bsky.social) September 1, 2025 at 10:29 AM


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By the way, we didn’t emerge unscathed. Over a million Americans died and the economy saw a historic collapse. That’s not to say Trump caused this, per se, but he certainly presided over it.

— Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec.bsky.social) September 1, 2025 at 10:32 AM

Wednesday Morning Open Thread: No Longer A Serious CountryPost + Comments (239)

Late Night Open Thread: Chicago Throws Down

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A bold move given recent protests and the size/weight of a Portillo's Italian Beef

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— Robert Downen (@robertdownen.bsky.social) September 2, 2025 at 4:36 PM

Per Heather Cherone, at Chicago’s WTTW:

… “Unidentifiable agents in unmarked vehicles with masks are planning to raid Latino communities and say they’re targeting violent criminals, as we saw in Los Angeles,” Pritzker said, adding that the looming deployment was timed to coincide with celebrations of Mexican Independence Day on Sept. 16. “A very, very small percentage of the individuals they will target will be violent criminals.”

Pritzker said federal agents would target Chicagoans based on the color of their skin, and whether they appear to be Latino.

“It breaks my heart to report that we have been told ICE will try to disrupt community picnics and peaceful parades,” Pritzker said. “Let’s be clear — the terror and cruelty is the point, not the safety of anybody living here.”

The Trump administration plans to use Naval Station Great Lakes, nearly 35 miles outside Chicago, to house federal immigration agents or National Guard troops who could be deployed to Chicago, according to federal officials.

While Pritzker said his information came from “unauthorized, patriotic officials” as well as media reports, a source in Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s office told WTTW News that they were “not sure where the governor got his information, but it is not accurate.”

Nearly 52,000 migrants arrived in Chicago starting in 2022, many on buses paid for by Abbott, a Republican, as part of a concerted effort to divide Democratic voters and boost Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign.

Shortly before Pritzker addressed the news media from his offices in downtown Chicago, Trump told reporters that he would send National Guard troops to Chicago despite a federal judge ruling that his administration violated a federal law known as the Posse Comitatus Act by using the military to fight crime in Los Angeles…

Pritzker promised to challenge any deployment in court.

Flanked by Mayor Brandon Johnson, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, Attorney General Kwame Raoul and Deputy Gov. Juliana Stratton, Pritzker said it would be illegal and unconstitutional for the president to deploy the National Guard to Chicago over his objections.

“He has no idea what’s he’s talking about,” Pritzker said. “There is no emergency that warrants deployment of troops. He is insulting the people of Chicago by calling our home a hellhole, and anyone that takes his word at face value is insulting Chicagoans too.” …

Pritzker: "Any rational person who has spent even the most minimal amount of time studying human history has to ask themselves one important question: once they get the citizens of this nation comfortable with the current atrocities committed under the color of law, what comes next?"

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) September 2, 2025 at 4:21 PM

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War for Ukraine Day 1,286: The Small Hours Are, Once Again, the Deadliest Hours

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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)

At 3:30 AM local time in Ukraine/8:30 PM EDT, drone swarms are moving across Ukraine ahead of incoming Russian missiles launched from Russian strategic bombers – Tu-95MS and a Tu-160 – over western Russia.

Russian planes reportedly launched cruise missiles at Ukraine.

I fucking hate russia!

Please keep Ukraine in your thoughts tonight.

— Kate from Kharkiv (@kateinkharkiv.bsky.social) September 2, 2025 at 7:05 PM

People in Kyiv are heading to the Metro for the night – a large number of drone launches have been reported, and Russian strategic bombers are taking off. Another big attack expected. Drones seem to be bypassing Kyiv and heading west, however. Putin escalating his war on Ukraine.

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— Euan MacDonald (@euanmacdonald.bsky.social) September 2, 2025 at 4:20 PM

As putin and Xi meet in Shanghai, russian drones pound Kyiv nonstop all morning, forcing children on their second day of school into subway shelters. russia is trying to destroy Ukraine’s future on every level.
Photo don_spiridon twitter.

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— Olena Halushka (@halushka.bsky.social) September 2, 2025 at 4:24 AM

4;12 AM local time in Ukraine:

4:13 in Ukraine. Air raid alert. Russian missile terror begins again. Turn your sound on 🔊

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— Kate from Kharkiv (@kateinkharkiv.bsky.social) September 2, 2025 at 9:16 PM

Missile alerts have gone up over all the eastern oblasts of Ukraine.

I want to clarify something in regard to last night’s post. It is not that the EU itself, as well as its member states, the US, non-EU NATO allies, non-EU European states, and other allies and partners are not on the front lines of Putin’s and Russia’s world war. Rather, as I’ve written before, including in this professional publication from 2018, the only mapped to geography front lines of this war are in Ukraine. Everywhere else the front lines are everywhere and nowhere. And they’re everywhere and nowhere because Russia is only using direct, state on state military power in Ukraine. Everywhere else the military power is either directed through one of the other elements of national power (diplomatic, information, economic, financial, intelligence, and/or legal/lawfare) or they’re using one or more of the other elements of national power instead of national power. And that means the front lines can be anywhere and almost anything: social media, websites, malware, tv or radio broadcasts, podcasts, actual news reporting, corporate espionage, legal corporate activities, cultural activities like sports or ballet or opera, as well as a host of illegal activities.

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

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Anniversary Coming Up!

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As I was poking through the Media Library looking for our first photos for September, I came across this photo of Rose.   This is the one we use for her author page.

Since we are coming up on the one-year anniversary, I just want to say how glad I am that Rose is one of the authors here.

What a great addition!

That is all.

Open thread.

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Open Thread: Lest We Forget… EPSTEIN EPSTEIN EPSTEIN

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Here we go. Massie discharge petition with help from Ro Khanna, filed.

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— Jay Kuo (@nycjayjay.bsky.social) September 2, 2025 at 2:45 PM

If the Oval Office Occupant hasn’t stroked out yet, let’s see who wants to help him do so…

?? The silence is over. Tomorrow at 10:30 AM, survivors of Epstein’s abuse will speak on Capitol Hill.
Reps. Ro Khanna & Thomas Massie will stand with them.
Listen to the victims. Believe them.
RELEASE THE FILES ??

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— Andrea Devon (@andreadevon.bsky.social) September 2, 2025 at 1:00 PM

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TONIGHT: @chrislhayes.bsky.social sits down with Representatives Thomas Massie and @rokhanna.bsky.social who are holding a press conference tomorrow for Epstein survivors to share their stories.
Watch @allinwithchris.bsky.social tonight at 8pm ET on @msnbc.com

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— MSNBC (@msnbc.com) September 2, 2025 at 2:03 PM

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Open Thread: It’s time to have a serious conversation about Trump’s health

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White House: ok all these death rumors are annoying. Let's use the next excuse to get him in front of the cameras. Hell, Space Command relocating is fine, schedule it.
Trump: 20 minutes late to his own proof of life video and counting

— Kururun! (@kururun.bsky.social) September 2, 2025 at 2:23 PM

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Well, he’s back to haggard, instead of bloated, and he’s wearing a tie (not one of his usual eye-drawing red ones), so I guess the IV diuretics over the long weekend did the job. Still can’t keep him on script, of course…

Trump on moving Space Command to Alabama from Colorado: They went to all mail-in voting. So they have automatically crooked elections. When a state is for mail-in voting, that means they want dishonest elections. That played a big factor also

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— Acyn (@acyn.bsky.social) September 2, 2025 at 2:55 PM

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What's really going on is that the press corpse got their preferred candidate.

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— soonergrunt (@soonergrunt.bsky.social) September 1, 2025 at 10:43 AM

Garrett Graff, at his SubStack, Doomsday Scenario:

If you haven’t been paying attention, Washington and social media have spent Labor Day weekend in a frenzy over Donald Trump’s health. The president, who seems like he can’t stomach staying out of the public eye and spotlight for even a few hours, had no public appearances on Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday — nor any over the long weekend. That’s an unusually long period of time out of public view. Searches for “Is Trump dead?” soared on Google Saturday and became one of the most-searched terms of the holiday weekend, and #whereistrump trended on other social media sites. …

The speculation wasn’t helped by a series of strange answers J.D. Vance gave in a USA Today interview last week, where he said he was ready to be president if needed: “I’ve gotten a lot of good on-the-job training over the last 200 days.” Maybe that’s just Vance being awkward and strange — it’s hard to think of any subject where Vance giving an interview has helped — but Trump himself (or someone on his social media accounts) also engaged with the speculation by posting a “NEVER FELT BETTER IN MY LIFE” post on Truth Social, which might rank second only this weekend to Rudy Giuliani’s bizarre car accident for raising more questions than it answered…

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Lie, Cheat, Steal. Circumvent the Law. Repeat.

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Destruction is their middle name.

So… how do we get the word out about this?

Miss Bianca took the first step by sending it to me.

How widely can we BJ peeps spread this?

Can you all link to this post on social media?  Share it with any climate-related groups you know of?  What else?

The Trump Administration Is Trying to Revoke the ‘Roadless Rule.’ The Public Won’t Have Much Time to Weigh In

The rule protecting remote wilderness areas received 1.6 million public comments when it was developed. People will have just 14 business days to comment on a key part of its rescission.

By Sarah Mattalian

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is giving the public just three weeks to weigh in on a key step of its attempt to scrap the Roadless Rule, which protects almost 59 million acres of forest land from road construction and timber harvesting.

The U.S. Forest Service (USFS) published a notice Friday seeking comment on its intention to develop an environmental impact statement for the proposed rescission of the 2001 rule. The comment period will run until Sept. 19.

The public had a full month to comment when the rule was created. The USFS received more than 1.6 million comments on the rule, the most it has ever received.

Experts caution that the truncated comment period limits the opportunity for public comment, a key part of rulemaking and a hallmark of the original rule.

Sam Evans, an attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, said the three-week comment period—only 14 business days from official publication—is an “unusual choice,” given the norm of 30-day comment periods. This also differs, he said, from when the Bush administration proposed repealing the rule in 2005. At that time, the administration offered a two-month comment period, which it extended an additional two months following a public request to do so.

Evans said that a “lengthy and intensive public process,” including over 600 hearings across the country and a flood of supportive comments, was crucial in the development of a strong rule more than two decades ago.

“Nothing like that can happen with the staff capacity and the timeline that the [USFS] is talking about here,” he said. “I think that just goes to show that the Forest Service here is not interested in developing public buy-in or reflecting the interests of the communities that it is supposedly serving.”

How to Submit a Comment

The Forest Service is taking public comments on a key part of its effort to rescind the Roadless Rule. Comments can be shared at Regulations.gov through Sept. 19.

“Regulations do not specify the length of public comments. For the notice of intent to development an environmental impact statement, the 21 days was determined to be efficient to notify the public and seek comment. The comment period for the draft environmental impact statement and the proposed rule will be longer,” the USDA press office wrote in response to Inside Climate News’ questions about the shorter comment period.

“The rationale for repealing the Roadless Rule, I find very puzzling and a bit of a ruse for perhaps some other agenda,” said Mike Dombeck, who served as the chief of the agency from 1997 to 2001 and helped develop the rule. “The Forest Service has been a conservation leader over the decades. We need to make sure we continue to strengthen that image and that capability, because we need it more now than ever.”

Implemented at the end of the Clinton administration, the rule prohibits road construction, road reconstruction and timber harvesting on a wide swath of USFS land, effectively protecting a variety of places in states from Alaska to Vermont as remote wilderness areas.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announced at a Western Governors’ Association conference in June that USFS, which falls under her agency, planned to rescind it. Like many other conservation professionals, Dombeck said that Rollins’ argument—that repealing the rule would open up forests for timber production—doesn’t have a logical basis.

“As I recall from my involvement in developing the Roadless Rule, only about 8 percent of [forest in] the roadless areas is productive timber base to begin with,” he said. “The assumption that there’s a lot of wood [with economic value in] roadless areas is just simply not true.”

Rulemaking is meant to be a slow, deliberate process, and so too is deregulation. But the Trump administration seems to have a faster outcome in mind, Evans said.

“We’ve heard rumors that the Forest Service … expects to finalize the rule next year,” said Evans, leader of the Southern Environmental Law Center’s National Forests and Parks Program. “Obviously, we don’t think that there is a solid case for repeal of the Roadless Rule. We think that the rule has had tremendous benefits.”

Grassroots organizations across the country got the word out to the public about the initial rule during its development, helping strengthen it. Some groups are now echoing earlier efforts of grassroots organizations in their attempts to fight a repeal.

“Our real interest now is making sure that folks understand what the policy measures are that ensure that public lands actually remain the way that people think of them,” said Alex Craven, a senior campaign representative at the Sierra Club focusing on forest conservation.

The announcement comes as Rollins is proposing a plan to reorganize the Forest Service, including closing nine regional offices over the next year. In the proposal, dated July 24, the agriculture secretary argued that the reorganization would improve “effectiveness and accountability.”

However, experts are cautioning that this could greatly weaken the Forest Service as a whole. The National Association of Forest Service Retirees, for example, submitted comments arguing that the proposal lacks detail and could compromise regional functions. The group urged the USFS to reassess the plan.

“It certainly seems like a disorganized approach to reducing the workforce. If it accomplished anything, it created a lot of chaos, both within the agency and among the partners that depend upon the Forest Service,” Dombeck said.

Craven said that most of the USFS regional offices have been located west of the Rocky Mountains. With the reorganization, “it’s looking like maybe it will be flipped,” he said, despite the fact that wildfire risk is higher in Western states.

Closing regional offices could mean losing staff with knowledge of wildfire mitigation and what to do when invasive bug species arrive in their respective regions, weakening the agency’s ability to respond to disasters.

“Losing the capacity and the research stations is kind of horrifying to me,” Evans said.

The reorganization could also lose the agency irreplaceable institutional knowledge and make it difficult to meet statutory requirements under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), such as producing environmental impact statements.

“Those are really important steps, and with the reorganization, with the drain in capacity that the agency has right now, it’s very hard for you to imagine them doing a good job of that,” Evans said. “Let’s say that they push this through with a truncated NEPA analysis or a really skeletal consultation process. They’re going to be stuck with the loose ends of that forever. … Every project that they do in the future is going to be vulnerable.”

Even with the proposed NEPA changes that the Trump administration announced in July, Evans said that the USFS will still have to follow statutory requirements, which have remained the same. The “ultimate responsibility” of the USFS to consider environmental impacts, he said, still stands.

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