Looks like we can use an open thread.
Open Thread: The Great Khan of the Plains Will Not Be Cowed
The State of Illinois at this time has received no requests or outreach from the federal government asking if we need assistance, and we have made no requests for federal intervention.
— Governor JB Pritzker (@govpritzker.illinois.gov) August 23, 2025 at 9:07 PM
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The safety of the people of Illinois is always my top priority.
There is no emergency that warrants the President of the United States federalizing the Illinois National Guard, deploying the National Guard from other states, or sending active duty military within our own borders.— Governor JB Pritzker (@govpritzker.illinois.gov) August 23, 2025 at 9:07 PM
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Donald Trump is attempting to manufacture a crisis, politicize Americans who serve in uniform, and continue abusing his power to distract from the pain he's causing families.
We'll continue to follow the law, stand up for the sovereignty of our state, and protect Illinoisans.— Governor JB Pritzker (@govpritzker.illinois.gov) August 23, 2025 at 9:07 PM
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I will not authorize the use of the Maryland National Guard for any mission that isn’t mission critical or mission aligned.
Full stop.— Governor Wes Moore (@govwesmoore.bsky.social) August 23, 2025 at 10:30 PM
This story hadn’t been published when I posted last night, but Gov. Pritzker’s sources are obviously better than mine. Per the Washington Post, “Pentagon plans military deployment in Chicago as Trump eyes crackdown” [gift link]:
The Pentagon has for weeks been planning a military deployment to Chicago as President Donald Trump says he wants to crack down on crime, homelessness and undocumented immigration, in a model that could later be used in other major cities, officials familiar with the matter said.
The planning, which has not been previously disclosed, involves several options, including mobilizing at least a few thousand members of the National Guard as soon as September to what is the third most populous city in the United States.
The mission, if approved, would have parallels to the polarizing operation that Trump ordered in Los Angeles in June, when he deployed 4,000 members of the California National Guard and 700 active-duty Marines despite the protests of state and local leaders. The use of thousands of active-duty troops in Chicago also has been discussed but is considered less likely at this time, said two officials who, like others interviewed, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue…
Open Thread: The Great Khan of the Plains Will Not Be CowedPost + Comments (292)
Late Saturday Night Open Thread: The Grifter Grifted
The Trump administration has blurred the lines between family, business and government. Michael Boulos, Tiffany Trump's husband, and his family have benefited financially from his connection to her family for years, a New York Times investigation found. nyti.ms/3VavaXk
— The New York Times (@nytimes.com) August 21, 2025 at 12:11 PM
Maybe Tiffany is smarter than she’s assumed to be… [unpaywalled version]
Michael Boulos was an aspiring businessman, just a few years out of college, when he knelt in the White House Rose Garden in January 2021 and asked President Trump’s daughter Tiffany Trump to marry him.
Almost immediately after she said yes, Mr. Boulos, his family and their associates were benefiting financially from his proximity to his soon-to-be in-laws.
The first deal was a family affair. Mr. Boulos, working for his cousin’s international yacht brokerage, sold his future brother-in-law Jared Kushner on an investment in a roughly 50-meter superyacht. Unbeknown to Mr. Kushner, the firm overcharged him and worked to conceal the true price from him, contemporaneous text messages show. The exact amount is unclear but the messages and a lawyer’s written description of the deal say the overcharge was $2.5 million.
The second arrangement involved something less tangible: access to the Trumps. Mr. Boulos’s cousin promised to get a Saudi businessman invited to the Boulos-Trump wedding so that the businessman could pose for photographs with the Trumps and project a closeness with the family. “We want you to be at the top of the guest list,” the cousin, Jimmy Frangi, wrote.
Everyone involved denies wrongdoing, and both deals went bad. Mr. Kushner’s yacht sits unfinished in Greece. And the Saudi businessman never got the access (or the wedding invitation) that he had been offered. But Mr. Boulos received about $300,000 from the yacht sale, his cousin says, and $100,000 from the Saudi businessman…
Late Saturday Night Open Thread: The Grifter GriftedPost + Comments (35)
War for Ukraine Day 1,276: Ukrainian National Flag Day
The cost:
Major Serhiy Bondar, deputy commander of the 40th Tactical Aviation Brigade, was killed overnight, the unit confirmed. He flew MiG-29 combat missions after returning to service post-invasion.
— WarTranslated (Dmitri) (@wartranslated.bsky.social) August 23, 2025 at 5:02 AM
Lord, guard and guide the men fly
Through the great spaces in the sky.
Be with them always in the air,
In darkening storms or sunlight fair;
Oh, hear us when we lift our prayer,
For those in peril in the air!
Mary C. D. Hamilton (1915)
Today – 23 AUG – is Ukrainian National Flag Day.
🇺🇦 Happy National Flag Day of Ukraine!
Every inch of our flag represents blood, pain, courage, and love for our homeland.
It is a symbol of freedom and unity. Under it, we fight, work, and dream of a peaceful future.
May it always fly proudly over our independent Ukraine!— Vitalis Viva (@vitalisviva.bsky.social) August 23, 2025 at 6:55 AM
One day, the Ukrainian Flag will return for good to Crimea, Donetsk, Mariupol, and Luhansk too.
— Olena Halushka (@halushka.bsky.social) August 23, 2025 at 8:44 AM
Happy national flag day
— Mira of Kyiv 🇺🇦 (@reshetz.bsky.social) August 23, 2025 at 8:29 AM
Tomorrow, the 24th of August, is Ukrainian Independence Day.
Today is also the city of Kharkiv’s birthday.
Today marks both Ukrainian National Flag Day and Kharkiv Day.
Kharkiv is a blue-and-yellow city, and it pays a brutal price to remain that way. Wounded, shelled, grieving, yet standing. It refuses to break. It refuses to fade.
It chooses to be Ukraine every single day.
— Kate from Kharkiv (@kateinkharkiv.bsky.social) August 23, 2025 at 7:22 AM
Today is Kharkiv City Day!
A Hero City
A shield of freedom on Europe’s eastern border
Home to over a million
Ukraine’s capital of typography and students
A city that refuses to surrender — living, blooming, enduring
Wounded, yet still breathtakingMy hometown
My endless love— Iryna Voichuk (@irynavoichuk.bsky.social) August 23, 2025 at 1:32 AM
Seeing Kharkiv so alive today brings tears of joy, but also of sorrow — for all it has endured and for the peace it still has not known❤️🩹
— Iryna Voichuk (@irynavoichuk.bsky.social) August 23, 2025 at 2:33 PM
Here is President Zelenskyy’s address for Ukrainian National Flag Day. Video below, English transcript after the jump.
War for Ukraine Day 1,276: Ukrainian National Flag DayPost + Comments (13)
Saturday Evening Open Thread: Let’s Argue About 2028 Candidates!
lotta people gonna run for president and that’s fine, i like a rumble, in this very moment this guy is my guy.
— not an art thief (@famousartthief.bsky.social) August 23, 2025 at 1:51 PM
It’s Saturday night, I’m tired, even if I could put together a coherent post on one of the many serious topics in the news, none of you want to read it right now. So, let’s go low-stakes…
(Nominate your current fav in the comments!)
yeah i’m ready to just pick pritzker and go to battle. you guys know my oaf theory of politics and he has a touch of the oaf but he’s smart and a little bit of a prick. he checks all the boxes
he’s a billionaire which bothers me but he seems okay. tax him to death but he’s pretty good.— not an art thief (@famousartthief.bsky.social) August 23, 2025 at 1:57 PM
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i think tim walz would have won as the presidential candidate, it’s not that i thinks kamala harris was bad, i really like her, she cool. america really likes white guys that played a little football. this is an amazingly racist and sexist country.
so just run pritzker this time, easy win— not an art thief (@famousartthief.bsky.social) August 23, 2025 at 2:03 PM
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going from john mccain republican in 2000 to basically a communist in 2025 i can give you the balcony view of the democratic party and i think they are wimps. get tough. go fucking fight.
— not an art thief (@famousartthief.bsky.social) August 23, 2025 at 2:12 PM
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I applaud Newsom for his redistricting project but Pritzker is meeting the moment as well.
— Charles Gaba (@charlesgaba.com) August 22, 2025 at 10:23 PM
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Saturday Evening Open Thread: Let’s Argue About 2028 Candidates!Post + Comments (130)
James Dobson, Still Dead
If you can't say anything nice about the death of James Dobson, say it to me.
— Cake or Death (@johngcole.bsky.social) August 21, 2025 at 9:00 PM
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Congratulations to James Dobson for achieving the highest level of unwoke
— Ian Boudreau (@ianboudreau.com) August 21, 2025 at 6:08 PM
So we can’t say nothing good happened this week…
James Dobson is dead, was a monster: defector.com/james-dobson…
— Defector (@defector.com) August 22, 2025 at 6:46 PM
Albert Burneko, at Defector:
James Dobson was a nasty dude. He liked to beat children and dogs with a belt and to rain misery and punishment on the vulnerable; we know all of this about him because he said as much in public, repeatedly, over a long and rancid public life. He enlisted a whole bunch of Ideology—patriarchy, social conservatism, utterly fake upside-down Christianity—in service of those basic motivations, not only to justify his own appetite for and personal acts of sadism and domination, but to cast punishment and predation as far out into the world as he could manage. He studied psychology and the Bible so that he could borrow their authority and instrumentalize them to do widespread cruelty more effectively. He was oriented to evil, at vast scale, by continual lifelong choice. It was his calling, and he made it his job.
What a guy like James Dobson does, and what James Dobson did for his whole adult life, is offer people—white men primarily, but not exclusively—a rhetorical framework for doing evil and feeling good about it. Stand right here and look exactly there, he said, and psychology says it’s OK for you to beat your children, that when they cry for more than two minutes of the beating, it is because they are bad and not because you are hurting them; you should beat them harder for crying until they stop. Stand right here and look exactly there, and tradition says your wife should have no will of her own. Stand right here and look exactly there, and love of country says society should press its boot onto the poor and marginalized and crush them until they die. Didn’t you always hate them? Sure you did. Religion says right here that you are right to. He blew softly on a stupid and seething population’s resentments, its will to power, its lust to punish those who complicate their desires by having lives of their own, and watched those appetites stick up like the hairs on your arm, or glow like charcoal in a fire. It feels good. He tempts you with the promise that every cruel, fearful, punitive impulse you have aligns with The Way Things Are Supposed To Be, and that it is even your grim duty is to indulge them. In this respect, James Dobson was very much like Satan.
In American society, there is a lot of money and power in the business of being very much like Satan. Dobson became one of the most important figures in American conservatism in the 1970s; through his organization Focus on the Family, which he ran for nearly 30 years, Dobson exerted huge influence over the tides of American right-wing evangelical Protestantism as the latter exploded into perhaps the most powerful force in the country’s religious life and politics. The Family Policy Alliance, which he founded in 2004, only made formal the vast lobbying power Dobson and his media machine already exerted within Republican politics. In this way Dobson warred against virtually every concerted movement in his lifetime working toward making this country kinder, more just, more equitable, or more merciful. He also fought against efforts to protect the environment and responsibly steward the world’s natural resources, because he was a nasty guy motivated by the thrill of doing evil with impunity and for no other reason whatsoever…
James Dobson won’t see your posts celebrating his death. But you know who will? Everybody that ever loved him or respected him.
So please keep posting— Neon Genesis Jordan Peterson (@hamantaschendog.bsky.social) August 21, 2025 at 10:09 AM
Charles P. Pierce, at Esquire — “A Leader of the Religious Right Just Died. His Terrible Legacy Still Looms over Modern Politics.”:
Some tasty food for worms was delivered on Thursday. One of the most truly horrible humans ever inflicted on this country has ceased to be, and all say, “Amen” and “about goddamn time.” …
… [Dobson] was a leader of the “religious right” whose every public action showed that he understood the message of the Gospels as well as I understand quantum mechanics. He was a bigot and a homophobe who encouraged more bigotry and more homophobia and weaponized it for the political advantage of American conservatism and its primary vehicle, the Republican party.
This is one of those moments when I ask all of our new Never Trump allies: Where were you people when this monster was running things?…
“How ‘Bout Them Gators?” (Open Thread)
There’s a post at LGM that describes how our openly fascist government is/plans to harass perceived enemies, i.e., all of us. It’s worth your time.
definitely, people need to read it and then yell their heads off at their Trump supporting relatives
— Dean Baker (@deanbaker13.bsky.social) August 23, 2025 at 10:03 AM
I’m having lunch with some Trump-voting relatives next week. I will yell at them for supporting a fascist dictatorship.
Afterward, we may discuss the Florida Gators and how much the upcoming season depends on the health of QB DJ Lagway. It’s admittedly a weird way to live.
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Speaking of Lagway, last November, my sister and I were at The Swamp to watch the Gators kick the shit out of Mississippi. An Ole Miss fan nearby yelled “Fagway,” and my sister turned and said, “R-e-a-l-l-y?” in the most acid tone a human being has ever uttered and deployed the Stink-Eye of Doom as only she can.
That dude shut the fuck up and didn’t utter a peep the rest of the game. Not even to summon a concessions vendor!
Sis will be with me at lunch next week. I hope she doesn’t have to give our relatives the Stink-Eye of Doom, but dammit, she will if she has to.
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It’s raining for the second day in a row, and that’s okay with me. We need it, and rain keeps the heat at bay.
I’ve been watching hummingbirds fly between raindrops and observing the waterfowl as they hunt for prey in the storms. Earlier, I saw a Great Egret steal a fish from a Great Blue Heron, who honked indignantly in its pterodactyl language. That was cool.
In between all that, I am making pot roast. What are y’all up to?
Open thread.