Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

How any woman could possibly vote for this smug smarmy piece of misogynistic crap is beyond understanding.

The way to stop violence is to stop manufacturing the hatred that fuels it.

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

If you are still in the gop, you are either an extremist yourself, or in bed with those who are.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

Those who are easily outraged are easily manipulated.

Democracy cannot function without a free press.

“Perhaps I should have considered other options.” (head-desk)

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

Someone should tell Republicans that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, or possibly the first.

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

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”

Beware of advice from anyone for whom Democrats are “they” and not “we.”

You’re just a puppy masquerading as an old coot.

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

75% of people clapping liked the show!

Stamping your little feets and demanding that they see how important you are? Not working anymore.

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

Cancel the cowardly Times and Post and set up an equivalent monthly donation to ProPublica.

Relentless negativity is not a sign that you are more realistic.

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

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Wednesday Morning Open Thread

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— Ellsworth Green (@greenellsworth.bsky.social) August 25, 2025 at 7:41 AM

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I’ve signed; I encourage you to do the same
RFK Jr is arguably the most extreme, dangerous anti-vaxx activist/conspiracy theorist on earth—it’s horrific he’s leading the nation’s public health system
Also, his 2 main allies, Bhattacharya & Makary, shown in the photo, are also doing HUGE damage

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— Prof Gavin Yamey (@gavinyamey.bsky.social) August 26, 2025 at 12:58 PM

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Local races: Iowa…

HUGE FLIP: Democrat Catelin Drey wins deep-red state Senate seat in Iowa, breaking the GOP's supermajority.
Drey won by 11 points in a district Donald Trump carried by 11 points last year. It's another massive overperformance. The Iowa GOP should be very worried for the midterms.
Our full writeup:

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— The Downballot (@the-downballot.com) August 26, 2025 at 9:27 PM


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We've now seen Republicans *badly* underperform in four special elections in IA this year. The political environment for the GOP there is terrible.
But Drey's win also means that Gov. Kim Reynolds will need Democratic support for any cabinet or judicial nominees for the last 17 months of her term.

— The Downballot (@the-downballot.com) August 26, 2025 at 9:37 PM

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Late Night Open Thread: Blue Roses

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Dem messaging nerds: Messages about Donald Trump’s “rising authoritarianism” are “unconvincing”
Trump:
www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol…

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— Andrew Perez (@andrewperez.bsky.social) August 26, 2025 at 3:54 PM

I have never been a David Shor fan (getting lucky latching on to the second Obama presidential campaign does not a political genius make), but reports like this could make anyone wonder whether ‘self-described socialist’ Shor isn’t secretly working for the GOP.

… Blue Rose Research, the firm led by Democratic establishment darling David Shor, produced a memo earlier this month digging into the effectiveness of various messages related to Trump’s takeover of Washington, D.C. The firm advised that messaging around Trump’s “rising authoritarianism” was “highly unconvincing,” while messages that say Trump wants to “distract” from his damaging tariffs or horrifying Medicaid cuts were more effective. Meanwhile, Republican messaging about how Trump is clamping down on gang violence tested through the roof…

While Blue Rose Research isn’t a household name, the firm has enormous sway in the Democratic Party and with the liberal pundit class. Vox has described Blue Rose’s leader, Shor, as perhaps “the most influential data scientist in the Democratic Party.” After the election, New York Times liberal columnist and podcaster Ezra Klein invited Shor to explain why Trump won, characterizing him as “a very skilled interpreter of data” who “has gotten a lot of things right before other people did.” …

Blue Rose has worked with much of the Democratic Party apparatus — the Democratic National Committee; the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and its outside spending arm, Senate Majority PAC; the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and its independent arm, House Majority PAC.

The firm is prone to bold proclamations. Among its contributions to the 2024 campaign was the idea that running negative ads against Trump was ineffective, and contrast was more important, according to people familiar with the Blue Rose operation. (Democratic National Committee officials are still incensed that Future Forward eschewed attacks on Trump.) Another was that the Super PAC should deploy its ads late in the campaign, when the cake was already nearly baked…

Of course, I’m prejudiced by having grown up with a certain Rudyard Kipling poem (taken from Kipling’s worst book)…

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War for Ukraine Day 1,279: The Cost

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A painting by Ukrainian artis NEIVANMADE. The background is white. In the center, which is black with blood red bordering, is an hourglass. Inside the hourglass is a Ukrainian Azovstal POW painted in blood red. He is shirtless. His arms are upward along the outer edges of the upper half of the hourglass forming a saltire cross. He is chained with steel gray chains shackled to his wrists. Above his head, in grey, is written "Ruzzian Captivity." below his torso in the lower half of the hourglass, written in gray, is "Kills." To the left of the hourglass "He Saved Others" is painted in gray. To the right of the hourglass "But He Can't Save Himself" is painted in gray.

(Image by NEIVANMADE)

The cost:

Russians slit throats and threw him into a pit: a Ukrainian defender managed to escape and survive.

Vladyslav, a 33-year-old National Guardsman, spent five days making his way back to his unit’s positions. To survive, he had to catch and eat mice.👇

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— Kate from Kharkiv (@kateinkharkiv.bsky.social) August 26, 2025 at 7:47 AM

The defender was taken captive along with seven other Ukrainian soldiers, the youngest of whom appeared to be about 18. According to Serhiy Ryzhenko, the head of Mechnikov Hospital, all of them were tortured one by one until they died.
👇

— Kate from Kharkiv (@kateinkharkiv.bsky.social) August 26, 2025 at 7:47 AM

The doctor said that while 50,000 defenders have passed through his hospital, he had never witnessed such horror.👇

— Kate from Kharkiv (@kateinkharkiv.bsky.social) August 26, 2025 at 7:47 AM

One of the biggest obstacles to real and lasting peace today is the fearful conviction of many Western leaders that russia is invincible while the only way to stop it is appeasement by sacrificing someone weaker.

— Olena Halushka (@halushka.bsky.social) August 26, 2025 at 6:36 AM

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

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Tuesday Night Open Thread

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Tuesday Night Open Thread 19

I’m kinda chuckling at this whole flag burning nonsense- we’re really replaying all the greatest hits. How long before they start rolling out the Willie Horton ads? Personally, I think we should ask the flag- would you rather be burned, used as a weapon on January 6th, or dry-humped by a pervert in orange makeup. At any rate, this veteran took matters into his own hands:

22-year Army veteran was arrested near the White House after setting fire to an American Flag on Monday, hours after President Donald Trump signed an executive order seeking to punish those who burn the American flag.

Jay Carey, a retired combat veteran and Bronze Star recipient, was taken into custody after the incident in Lafayette Park, FOX5 reported.

Newsweek has contacted Carey and the U.S. Park Police for comment via emails sent outside regular business hours.

Good for him. That’s the thing about free speech- the most offensive of it has to be protected or free speech is meaningless. There’s a reason the ACLU defended the nazis being allowed to march in Skokie. Admittedly that seems passé with nazis in the White House, but the point remains.

***

I have been doing that merlin app bird thing on my phone a lot, and I have noticed I have not seen or heard robins in quite some time. This caused me to do a deep dive on robin migration, and I learned a bunch of interesting stuff about them. First off, robins do migrate, but they don’t do it in the way other birds do. Robins head south every year to the same place, they become nomadic when food becomes scarce. So, in the fall and winter, many robins will head south (many go to Florida and Texas), but they are really just going south until they find of climate that supports the kind of food they like- insects, worms, larvae, etc.

At the same time, a substantial number of robins will remain roughly in the same area in the north, moving around to find different varieties of foods, mostly a berry rich diet. They grow extra downy feathers and line their nests and are quite comfortable in the cold climate.

All of which is fascinating, and makes sense through my own anecdotal experiences this summer. When I cut the soccer fields, which is a perfect habitat being ringed by old growth, the robins descend almost immediately onto the cut grass. They almost act like vultures with road kill, because I will cut a strip, they immediately pounce, and they stay hunting and pecking until I come back for a second strip and they wait until the last second and fly off. At any rate, I have not seen them for weeks down there, only the crows, and it is because of the dry spell. It hasn’t rained for a month, really, after daily rain, so the bugs are down and the ground is hard, and the robins have fucked off to better land for now.

Kinda cool. I wonder if we get some fall rain if they will come back or if they are just done until the spring.

***

These fucking idiots:

When the Biden administration created a grant program three years ago to fund transportation projects explicitly dedicated to promoting “neighborhood access and equity,” officials in St. George, Utah, saw an opportunity.

They had long sought funding to build two underpasses to bridge the interstate highway dividing the city in half, creating chronic traffic jams around a pair of schools. So when the president of the United States prioritized equity in transportation projects, city officials submitted a grant for a project that the administration later highlighted as crucial to breaking “a vehicle dependency that is often disproportionately borne by marginalized communities.”

The Biden administration awarded them $87 million.

Then came Republican control of Washington, and President Trump’s initiative to root out “radical and wasteful government D.E.I. programs.” Republicans in Congress pushed through a sprawling domestic policy bill that rescinded all money awarded through the Biden-era transportation program that had not yet been spent — $3.2 billion in total, including all the funding awarded to St. George.

It’s the same with everything- they are just fucking up everyone’s plans. Projects like these take years and decades to plan, prepare, bid out, and no one can make any plans with these idiots in charge.

***

These fucking idiots, part two:

A top Social Security Administration official turned whistleblower says members of the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) uploaded hundreds of millions of Social Security records to a vulnerable cloud server, putting the personal information of most Americans at risk of compromise.

Charles Borges, the Social Security Administration’s chief data officer, said in a newly released whistleblower complaint published Tuesday that other top agency officials signed off on a decision in June to upload “a live copy of the country’s Social Security information in a cloud environment that circumvents oversight,” despite Borges raising concerns.

***

I am very fatigued by the world, and my back and shoulders have ached like I am getting a cold, which is kind of irritating. Time to go recline with Steve or Maxwell and watch Spooks. It’s such a wonderful show.

Was it just careless, or were they just making it easier for Pete Thiel to grab?

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Excellent Read: On the GOP Occupation of DC

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Trump unleashes show and awe on Washington — creating his own Potemkin police state in the nation’s capital.
It’s not going well

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— Rolling Stone (@rollingstone.com) August 20, 2025 at 1:45 PM

Figured I’d share this while we wait for the Blogmaster’s nightly update. (Does anyone still read Armies of the Night, outside of college classrooms?) Stephen Rodrick, for Rolling Stone, on “Fake Armies of the Night”:

A quarter mile from the White House, the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in downtown Washington was once Abraham Lincoln’s place of worship. A black hitching pole where he would tie up the family carriage is still here. Lincoln would come here most Sundays during the Civil War, burying his face in his hands and praying for guidance.

Donald Trump has never been seen here, but the dozen or so homeless people around the church are about to endure his presidential reality. It’s just after 10 a.m. on Friday. A woman is stone asleep on the blazing cement while a couple of men in T-shirts share a cigarette. There are exactly two tents, some shopping bags and a couple of carts. A volunteer’s phone blares out an inspirational sermon from a Christian station…

… A volunteer with long braids named Jakia works the half-asleep crowd and approaches an old man. The church has a center that offers showers for the poor and Jakia urges the man to clean himself.

“Don’t make me go Jackie Chan on your ass. Get in there and wash your booty.”

The man mumbles to himself but doesn’t move. He looks up in time to see and hear the sirens of six police cars bursting the dope-sick silence. The operation is part of a series of raids on D.C.’s homeless encampments overseen by federal law enforcement as part of Trump’s edict to reclaim a city that he already rules with a dictator’s prerogative.

Trump said one of his desires was to take back the city from “drugged out maniacs and homeless people.” There are no maniacs here, just American citizens who have lost their way. Jakia walks around telling the homeless to store any belongings they want to keep inside the church. Some comprehend, and Temitope Ibijemdou, a 35-year-old man, deftly takes down his tent in seconds. (“I’ve had some practice,” he tells me.) Ibijemdou then helps a sick friend into the church. Meanwhile, the old man mumbles to Jakia that the police are just doing their job. She shoots him a look.

“It’s not their job. They took an oath to protect and serve. You can’t protect and serve by preying on other people, especially poor people.” …

DONALD TRUMP’S D.C. TAKEOVER IS the usual Trumpian blend of idiocy, cruelty, and bullshit. Just look at its creation myth. In the early hours of August 3, a 19-year-old was attacked by a group of D.C. teenagers near Washington D.C.’s U Street bar scene as he tried to prevent a friend’s car from being stolen. Beyond that, the details were murky and the lamentable event — I’ve been mugged in D.C., it’s not a life highlight — would have been quickly forgotten except for one thing. The beat-up kid was Edward Coristine, aka “Big Balls,” an Elon Musk hire for his so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. Coristine is too young to legally drink, but is old enough to wipe out a federal employee’s career with a key stroke.

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Tuesday Afternoon Odds & Ends (Open Thread)

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Greetings! Just got back from spending a couple of days kayaking, sometimes in the wind and rain, around Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck. But I got to see a small flock of wild American Flamingos!

Saw 7 wild flamingos today! Had to paddle for a long time into the teeth of the wind. Worth it! #birds 🦩

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— Betty Cracker of Florida (@bettycrackerfl.bsky.social) August 25, 2025 at 12:59 PM

It’s a shitty picture because I took it with my iPhone from a wind-buffeted kayak at a respectful distance so as not to disturb the birds. My phone was in a lanyard drybag, and to get any shot at all, I had to rest my paddle in my lap and briefly remove the phone from the bag at the risk of sending myself, the phone, my car keys, etc., to Davy Jones’ Locker.

Fortunately, it didn’t come to that. I am no Albatrossity, so this is the flamingo picture y’all get.

***

The drunk, corrupt, braying incompetent whom Donald Trump appointed as U.S. attorney in DC fails to persuade a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich three times:

The US attorney’s office in Washington, DC, that’s run by Donald Trump-appointee Jeanine Pirro has struggled to secure a grand jury’s approval of at least one indictment in federal court this month, in an indication of possible issues arising with the office’s crackdown on crime.

In one case this month — related to an FBI agent and an immigration officer allegedly scrapping with a detainee — the federal grand jury in Washington voted “no” three times.

The court record doesn’t say why the grand jury refused to approve the felony assault charge against DC resident Sydney Lori Reid each time it was presented over the past month, after she was arrested in late July for assaulting or impeding federal officers.

Grand jury indictments are infamously easy to secure – and it is exceedingly rare for a grand jury to refuse to approve an indictment prosecutors present.

What a loser.

***

Over at TPM, Josh Marshall notes that the public hates Trump’s attempts to occupy American cities and that this presents an opening for Democrats, a point of opposition they can use to save democracy. Here’s a gift link to a piece called “No Kings, No Occupations — Toward a Democratic Opposition Politics.” Excerpt below:

The president views states and municipalities controlled by political opponents as something akin to conquered territories which must be bent to his will by force. This includes budgetary coercion and as close as he can get to military occupation. This is un-American, outside the constitutional order and, not least in importance, unpopular…

Under the American constitutional order, states and localities are entitled to local control of civil policing, administration of elections and various other features of state and local government. President Trump is trying to upend that part of the federal order not because he thinks he can run this or that local government service or administration any better, but to deprive those states and localities of their liberty and right to self-government. Because he wants that power for himself.

I’m making these general points because the opposition to these actions is deeply embedded in American civic culture — citizens’ basic understanding of what they’re entitled to and what they think is right. So shaping political actions explicitly around opposition to it is not only right and merited but the basis of opposition with the best shot at success…

In this sense Trump and his degenerate advisors are doing us a favor by making face masks a part of the standard ICE and CBP uniform. It marks them out as something different. They’re not soldiers precisely. But they are occupiers. They function in the same way. Masks are for secret police and criminal gangs. They have no place in any kind of legitimate policing authority.

These are all the makings of a powerful opposition politics and Democrats must not run away from it. It’s not only critical to the future of American democracy and civic freedom. It could not be more mainstream, something that appeals to a broad range of the American electorate, across race and ethnicities, regions and ideologies.

I think he’s right, and I’m pleased to see Democratic executives like Newsom, Pritzker and Walz taking the fight to Trump on this ground. More of this, please.

***

If you have HBO, you may want to check out Marc Maron’s comedy special, “Panicked.” I thought it was really good. Maron loathes Trump as deeply as we do and addresses so many political issues we discuss regularly here. Plus, he has funny cat stories. I felt seen.

***

In spite of myself, I became sort of invested in the Taylor Swift – Travis Kelce romance, and today they announced their engagement. Awww.

***

That’s all I’ve got. Now I’m off to unpack, wash all my sweaty kayaking clothes and get back to watching my swamp waterfowl from the porch after an exciting interval of watching Indian River critters, including lots of manatees.

Manatee noses!

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— Betty Cracker of Florida (@bettycrackerfl.bsky.social) August 26, 2025 at 3:56 PM

Open thread!

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Uplifting Read: WE ARE RISING

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Reflecting on women in American politics. We are still rising. www.newsweek.com/we-are-risin…

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— Donna Brazile (@donnabrazile.bsky.social) August 25, 2025 at 3:13 PM

In Newsweek, “A Tribute to the Women Who Lead, and a Call to Those Who Will”:

One year ago, Vice President Kamala Harris made history— not quietly, not incrementally, but with the thunderclap of a nation catching up to the truth Black women have long known: We are not just qualified to lead—we already do.

Her nomination wasn’t just a personal milestone. It was a collective victory, built on generations of resistance, resilience, and rising.

When she accepted the 2024 Democratic nomination in Chicago, the crowd was electric, the moment undeniable. A Black woman at the top of the ticket—not as a symbol, but as a leader, trailblazer and stateswoman…

And Harris didn’t rise alone.

Behind her were powerful Black women who helped steer the transition from Joe to Kamala—strategizing, organizing, and building trust brick by brick. Their leadership was not just tactical, it was spiritual. They reminded the country what Black women have always done: carried the vision and the burden, steered the moment, and steadied the soul.

Harris’ story is only the latest verse in a centuries-old chorus. From Harriet Tubman’s midnight raids to Coretta Scott King’s noonday calls for justice, Black women have been writing this nation’s most essential footnotes—often without credit, always with impact.

Even in defeat, Harris proved the presidency is not out of reach—just overdue. That same year, Angela Alsobrooks and Lisa Blunt Rochester joined the U.S. Senate, bringing fresh voices to a body long overdue for both.

Today, the Congressional Black Caucus boasts 62 members—and counting. We are in the room. We are at the table. We are building longer tables still. To honor this moment, we must also honor the road we’ve traveled—and the women who built it…

Always—in churches and classrooms, at ballot boxes and bus stops—Black women have kept this democracy afloat, even when it tried to throw us overboard.

So where do we go from here? What will it take to keep rising?

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