Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Consistently wrong since 2002

No Kings: Americans standing in the way of bad history saying “Oh, Fuck No!”

They are not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

Weird. Rome has an American Pope and America has a Russian President.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

The arc of the moral universe does not bend itself. it is up to us to bend it.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

Republicans in disarray!

“But what about the lurkers?”

So many bastards, so little time.

When you’re a Republican, they let you do it.

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

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

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

Marge, god is saying you’re stupid.

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

One of our two political parties is a cult whose leader admires Vladimir Putin.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

Disagreements are healthy; personal attacks are not.

Second rate reporter says what?

Keep the Immigrants and deport the fascists!

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War for Ukraine Day 1,262: Day 2 of the Current Bout of US Strategic Incoherence

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After ignoring Trump’s words and insulting & belittling him with my actions every single day of his 2nd presidency, he has finally snapped and punished me with a 1-1 summit on US soil.

— Darth Putin (@darthputinkgb.bsky.social) August 9, 2025 at 6:48 AM

We are on the third circle of this.

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— Kate from Kharkiv (@kateinkharkiv.bsky.social) August 9, 2025 at 7:07 PM

It appears that letting a real estate developer with no actual experience doing anything but serve as the President’s extra-special envoy for everything is about as good an idea as it sounds.

When you send a real estate guy to do a diplomat’s job…
unn.ua/en/news/trum…

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— Euan MacDonald (@euanmacdonald.bsky.social) August 9, 2025 at 6:07 AM

From Ukrainska Pravda:

US President Donald Trump’s Special Envoy Steve Witkoff may have misrepresented Russia’s position on a possible ceasefire in Ukraine after he met with Vladimir Putin this week.

Source: Bild, as reported by European Pravda

Details: Bild reports that Russia has not abandoned its demand for complete control over Crimea and Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Luhansk and Kherson oblasts prior to any ceasefire, and has only agreed to a “sectoral” ceasefire.

However, in peace proposals leaked to the media Putin appeared willing to discuss a ceasefire after the withdrawal of Ukrainian forces only from Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts.

Bild’s sources say this could have been the result of Witkoff misinterpreting what Putin said about a “peaceful withdrawal” from Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts: Russia is demanding the withdrawal of Ukrainian forces from these oblasts, but Witkoff thought the proposal was for Russian troops to withdraw from there.

“Witkoff doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” the German tabloid quotes an anonymous Ukrainian official as saying. According to Bild, it’s an assessment shared by “representatives of the German government”.

And no, this doesn’t make me long for the equally strategically incoherent Jake Sullivan.

President Zelenskyy spent all day consulting with his non-American allies in the UK, the EU, European states, etc trying to come up with a strategy to at least limit the damage. And, of course, President Zelenskyy did the only thing he could do: immediately state clearly and publicly that 1) Ukraine would not be ceding any territory to Russia and 2) Ukraine has to be involved in any negotiated resolution to Russia’s genocidal re-invasion of Ukraine.

CBS News is reporting that:

One senior White House official told CBS News the planning for next Friday’s summit is still fluid, and that it is still possible that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy could end up being involved in some way.

This will not happen. Putin has made it clear that he will not meet with Zelenskyy. From DW:

Putin has said a meeting with Zelenskyy is still not on the cards, repeating that the conditions for such talks are far from being met.

His comments came just after Zelenskyy renewed calls for face-to-face talks, but Moscow insists it’s not yet the “final phase” of negotiations.

The conditions are that, at a minimum, Ukraine cedes Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, and Crimea to Russia and Zelenskyy and his government resign. None of that is going to happen.

All of this is maskirovka. Putin is attempting, through manipulating Trump and his natsec team, to shift the blame to for not negotiating an end to Russia’s genocidal re-invasion of Ukraine and to create strategic time and space. Strategic time and space that Putin will use to keep new sanctions being placed on Russia, as well as to rebuild his capabilities.

Here is what the Russians think of the upcoming Trump-Putin meeting:

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

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A Day Later and I’m Still Furious About This

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Someone posted a twitter link to this yesterday, but I didn’t want to link to shitter, so I tracked this down on BlueSky.

Absolutely infuriating!

Pete Hegseth shares a clip saying women shouldn’t have the right to vote, the 19th Amendment should be “repealed,” and women should “submit” to their husbands: “All of Christ for All of Life”

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— People For the American Way (@peoplefor.bsky.social) August 8, 2025 at 10:17 AM

I know this is like tasting something, making a terrible face and then saying, “here, you try it”.  Um, no thanks!

But everyone should know that this shit is being said about women – out loud!  with no shame!  by the current Administration.

It’s really short, maybe less than a minute.  Knowledge is power.

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Saturday Night Slap Fights Open Thread: MoDo Turns on Trump

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President Midas’ Terrible Touch www.nytimes.com/2025/08/09/o…

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— Elizabeth West (@limeylizzie.bsky.social) August 9, 2025 at 5:46 PM

Who else is old enough to remember ‘He trashed the place, and it wasn’t his place’?

Guess Maureen Dowd has decided to claim Sally Quinn’s mantel:

… Real power doesn’t need to shout. In fact, it can whisper.

But Donald Trump was shouting down to reporters on Tuesday as he surveyed his desecration from the White House roof. He looked at his Brutalist Rose Garden renovation, a stone slab with Florida-esque patio furniture and the site of the proposed $200 million ballroom, encroaching on the East Wing and encompassing 90,000 square feet, nearly twice the size of the White House residence.

Trump vowed to pay for the ballroom with private funds, which means, of course, that someone else will curry favor and pay…

Ever since he escaped what he considered a drab existence in Queens, Trump has bedazzled his life — everything from tweezers to seatbelts to TV remotes were gilt. Even as president, he’s selling gold sneakers, gold watches and gold phones.

Now he has tarted up the Oval; it’s the modern version of worshiping the golden calf and just as profane.

Trump’s tacky rococo gold adornments are growing exponentially. He’s piling on more and more garish features — from cherubs to mantelpiece swirls — and sycophants add to the gold rush by bringing offerings to truckle to King Midas….

Trump is making the Justice Department a wholly owned subsidiary of Trump Inc., turning the F.B.I. into his personal, political police force, pursuing his foes with a Javert-like fever. Justice is investigating Letitia James and Adam Schiff, and another agency is investigating Jack Smith. After Democratic legislators left Texas to block Trump’s gerrymandering power grab there, and after Trump said the F.B.I. “may have to” get involved, a Republican senator from Texas said the bureau agreed to help locate the lawmakers. Trump sent his former lawyer, now deputy attorney general, to interview Ghislaine Maxwell, who was then summarily transferred to Club Fed amid whispers of a possible pardon. Brian Driscoll, who briefly served as acting head of the F.B.I., was dismissed because he tried to protect agents from Trump’s purge of anyone involved in investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection. This, even as Jared Wise, a rioter who egged on the mob that day to “kill” the police, has been named an adviser to the Justice Department task force seeking vengeance against Trump’s perceived political foes. Trump slapped Brazil with a 50 percent tariff because the government is prosecuting his far-right buddy Jair Bolsonaro, known as “the Trump of the tropics,” for trying to overturn the election he lost.

The president’s unbridled gilt reflects his unbridled greed.

King Midas of legend paid for his vanity. He was horrified that he could not control the golden touch. He turned his daughter, his food and his drink into gold. Aristotle said his “vain prayer” led to starvation.

It is a lesson Trump will never learn: The flashiest is never the truest.

Corrupt, criminal, destructive… hey, leaders are privileged. But tacky?!? Anathema!

As long as Our Very Serious Mainstream Media has [finally] decided to cut Don TACO loose, I won’t quibble about their reasons.

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Doing the Math in My Head, Sitting at a Stoplight (Open Thread)

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THIS IS AN OPEN THREAD.

If you’re not interested in the update on Virginia, just skip to the comments.

There’s a traffic light near my favorite grocery store, and the red light seems to take forever to turn green.

So today while stuck at the light I started thinking about Four Directions in Virginia.  I was feeling a bit discouraged, but the math made me feel better.

We are now halfway toward our goal for the Native vote this November!

$6k from the raffle and auction.  $12k since we started the regular donations.  That’s $18,000 – half of the $36,000 we want to raise for them directly.

But that $18,000 is already $38,000 because they found someone to match $10k of that with $20k.

It will take another $18k in our thermometer to get us to our goal.  And when we get there, the person they found to match our final $20k will add their $20k.  Together, that will be another $36,000.

All together, that will be $76,000 for the Native vote in November.

I am proud to say that most of the groups we support pay a living wage to the folks who do the work on the ground, and $25 is pretty standard, so I’ll use that for the math here.

The math in my head while sitting at the light:

$76,000.  Divide that by $100 and you get 760.  25 goes into $100 4 times.  760 rounds to 750, and 750 * 2 is roughly 1,500.  multiply by 2 again and that’s 3,000.

That’s 3,000 hours of direct contact with  Native voters.

That’s assuming we raise the remaining $18k so they can get the external match.

Otherwise, we’ll be funding 1,500 of direct contact with Native voters, which is nothing to sneeze at.

Can we do this?

We don’t have any Angels in the wings, but we do have an external match!   So whatever amount you donate through the thermometer is matched.

If we have another Angel at some point, you’ll have to let us know in the comments or by email in order to get the Angel match.  But for now, whatever goes into the thermometer will be matched by the external donor.

How much difference to you think 3,000 hours of direct contact can make in the Virginia elections?

I had one more thought while stuck at the stoplight. (See, I told you it was a long one!)

If we can win overwhelmingly in Virginia that will send a message.  Maybe some Rs start to feel queasy and they don’t vote for some other hideous, harmful thing.  Maybe the administration gets scared and doesn’t implement some hideous plan they are concocting.

With an overwhelming victory in Virginia, I think actual lives will be saved.

Maybe I’m crazy, but I truly believe that, and that helps keep me going.

What keeps you guys going?

Doing the Math in My Head, Sitting at a Stoplight (Open Thread)Post + Comments (70)

Saturday Morning Open Thread: Compare & Contrast

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Last week, I told you about my new book, 107 Days — a behind-the-scenes, candid, and personal account of my time leading the shortest presidential campaign in modern history.
Now, here's a behind-the-scenes look at announcement week.

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— Kamala Harris (@kamalaharris.com) August 8, 2025 at 2:40 PM

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60 years after the Voting Rights Act, voter suppression is still targeting our communities.
That’s why I introduced the SWIFT VOTE Act and the POLL Act. These bills cut the lines, expose the delays, and give folks real power to fight back when states play games with our right to vote.

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— Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett (@crockett.house.gov) August 8, 2025 at 3:38 PM

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Yet another helpful explainer to counter the ignorant disinformation spouted by the unqualified extremist who is currently destroying the HHS

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— Katie Mack (@astrokatie.com) August 7, 2025 at 7:47 AM

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JD Vance = Just Does Vacay.

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— Brian Tyler Cohen (@briantylercohen.bsky.social) August 8, 2025 at 11:52 AM

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Take the human chess game from History of the World Part One, replace it with Battleship, the pips are giant golden dicks and you're calling out coordinates to where you think Trump buried the Epstein Files.

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— Zeddy (@zeddary.bsky.social) August 8, 2025 at 9:43 AM

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Late Night Open Thread: ‘Palace’ Intrigue

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BREAKING: A White House meeting took place last night to discuss the Jeffrey Epstein case, sources tell NBC News.
It's unclear if the president attended, but AG Bondi and FBI Director Patel were present. The president and vice president had previously denied reports of a planned meeting.

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— MSNBC (@msnbc.com) August 7, 2025 at 2:50 PM

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Per the Daily Beast, “White House Did Have Secret Talks on Epstein Crisis”:

… The meeting was reportedly relocated from Vance’s D.C. home to the White House. Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel were also in attendance, according to MSNBC.

It’s unclear whether the talks included Vance, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who were initially reported to be joining the dinner at the vice president’s Naval Observatory mansion.

Vance’s supposed involvement in the talks had drawn criticism. Ever since Watergate, the Justice Department has kept criminal investigations separate from White House influence, to prevent any appearance of political interference.

The meeting’s last-minute relocation, MSNBC legal correspondent Lisa Rubin suggested, was designed to throw off watchful eyes…

The administration appears to be seeking ways to quell MAGA outrage over its handling of the Epstein files, and to redirect attention from the growing spotlight on Trump’s past friendship with the disgraced financier…

One tactic the administration has considered, as it looks for ways to deflect scrutiny, is releasing an audio recording and transcript from Blanche’s interview with Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell, CNN previously reported, citing two administration officials. Another involved getting Blanche into an interview with podcaster Joe Rogan, according to the report…

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Russia, India, semi-conductors, Mamdani…I don’t think any of it is Trump trying to distract us from the Epstein files. I think it’s his staff giving him crazy shit to do to distract Trump from the Epstein files.

— Dana Houle (@danahoule.bsky.social) August 6, 2025 at 6:00 PM

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William Kristol, at the Bulwark — “Dinner Is Off. The Scheming Continues”:

… I don’t think we ever had, at one time, the White House chief of staff, the attorney general, the deputy attorney general, and the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

That was to be the A-list dinner Vance hosted last night, with Susie Wiles, Pam Bondi, Todd Blanche, Kash Patel, and others assembled to decide how to handle Donald Trump’s Jeffrey Epstein problem. Multiple outlets reported that the event was scheduled to happen…

But if the files are harmless or meaningless, why not just release them (obviously with survivors’ names and personally identifiable information redacted)?

Well, because, as Trump explained earlier in the week, he’s concerned about not embarrassing people who haven’t done anything wrong. He doesn’t mean the victims, of course; he’s never expressed any concern about them. Trump’’s worried, he said, about those people who might be mentioned but “aren’t involved” and who could “be hurt by something that would be very, very unfortunate, very unfair to a lot of people.”

This excuse is, to quote the president of the United States, “total bullshit.” The names of many of the big shots who associated with Epstein, but who claim not to have been involved in or aware of his sex trafficking, are already out there. If the files mention those people once again, and they were simply innocent guests, associates, or bystanders on the fringes of Epstein’s dark world, they’ll have no problem explaining that. They’ve done it before.

It won’t be so easy for the ones who weren’t simply innocent bystanders…

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I Haven’t Been Invited to Any Parties Lately, Who Can I Sue?

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These people are so hypocritical – just big, fucking, out of touch, whiny, evil, power-hungry babies – sometimes I cannot figure out how they can be ruling ruining the world.  It feels like the fever has to break soon, it just has to.

Anyway, it’s Friday night so fuck them, let’s talk about anything else BUT them.

Anything good happening in your life?   Anyone you respect or admire?

What’s your favorite season?   How many more weeks do we have before we can stop complaining that it’s too hot and too dry, and start complaining that it’s too cold and that fall is too rainy?  When it turns cold, I always feel kind of sad.

Talk about whatever you want, except them – the bad people. :-)

 

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