Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

The line between political reporting and fan fiction continues to blur.

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

Dumb motherfuckers cannot understand a consequence that most 4 year olds have fully sorted out.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

I really should read my own blog.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

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

The words do not have to be perfect.

Marge, god is saying you’re stupid.

I don’t recall signing up for living in a dystopian sci-fi novel.

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

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

Humiliatingly small and eclipsed by the derision of millions.

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

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Just because you believe it, that does not make it true.

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

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

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Sunday Morning Open Thread

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What a Republican majority looks like in action

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— Chatham Harrison dba TRUMP DELENDUS EST (@chathamharrison.bsky.social) August 2, 2025 at 2:54 PM

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The Corporation for Public Broadcasting has long helped pay for PBS, NPR and 1,500 local radio and television stations and programs like “Sesame Street.

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— The Associated Press (@apnews.com) August 2, 2025 at 7:00 PM

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More fireflies than usual are lighting up summer evenings in the U.S. Northeast. But scientists say the lightning bugs are still on the decline.

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— The Associated Press (@apnews.com) August 2, 2025 at 9:15 AM

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"There may not be as much humanity in the world as one would like to see, but there is some. There's more than one would think."
Happy 101st birthday to #JamesBaldwin!
#OnThisDay #BlackHistory #humanity

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— Stefan Bohacek (@stefanbohacek.bsky.social) August 2, 2025 at 12:12 PM

Sunday Morning Open ThreadPost + Comments (88)

Saturday Night Music Thread

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Wooden Ships is one of my all-time favorite songs.

There’s an original and a remaster, and they have clearly worked on the cover artwork, which looks richer in the remaster  It seems like we are supposed to think that remasters are better, but any thoughts on which is actually better?   Not specifically asking about this particular song, but generally speaking.  I’ll be curious to see whether there is agreement on the answer.

Or just share your all-time favorite songs, and ignore the remaster question!

x

Open thread.

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War for Ukraine Day 1,255: The Cost

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A painting by Ukrainian artist NEIVANMADE. The words "NEVER AGAIN" are repeated over and over, from left to right and top to bottom, in a faded, washed out black against a white background. Red, the color of blood, runs and drips down across 2/3rds of the painting. "WHILE YOU TOLERATE TYRANTS" is written/painted in the bottom white corner below the three rows of "NEVER AGAIN".

(Image by NEIVANMADE)

Just a quick note: Rosie had her monthly post-chemo appointment today. She’s still doing great. Thank you all again for the good thoughts, well wishes, prayers, and the donations last year to help cover her chemo.

The air raid alerts are beginning to go back up across wester, southern, northern, and central Ukraine at 4:35 AM local time/9:35 PM EDT. This follows a day where the Russians had already hammered Ukrainian civilian targets with missiles, glide bombs, and drone swarms.

The Ukrainians also went on the front foot today attacking multiple dual use targets in Russia. Dual use refers to facilities – buildings, factories, roads, railways, etc – that have both civilian and military usage and, when used for military purposes, become legitimate targets.

The most effective oil sanctions are enforced not by the price cap. #armukrainenow #ukrainianview

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— Olena Halushka (@halushka.bsky.social) August 2, 2025 at 6:31 AM

The cost:

On July 31st, a Russian missile strike on Kyiv killed Mykyta, Sofiia, and their two-year-old son.

Both Mykyta and Sofiia were only 23 years old. They had moved from Sloviansk to the capital after the start of the full-scale invasion and were renting an apartment.

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— Kate from Kharkiv (@kateinkharkiv.bsky.social) August 2, 2025 at 12:45 PM

The Russian missile hit their building, their bodies were found under the rubble a day later.

War found them. Russia found them and killed them.

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— Kate from Kharkiv (@kateinkharkiv.bsky.social) August 2, 2025 at 12:45 PM

Family that fled war twice did not survive Kyiv bombing

The story of this family is one of thousands, yet it is uniquely painful. They fled the war in the Donbas region, and later from Kharkiv, seeking a safe haven in the capital. But on the night of July 31st, Kyiv also became a target.

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— Kate from Kharkiv (@kateinkharkiv.bsky.social) August 2, 2025 at 12:49 PM

Russia launched another massive combined missile and drone strike, killing 31 people. Among them were Iryna Humeniuk and her two daughters: Anastasiia, a ninth-grader, and Alina, who had just finished sixth grade.

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— Kate from Kharkiv (@kateinkharkiv.bsky.social) August 2, 2025 at 12:49 PM

They did not make it to a shelter in time. The life they had started over twice was cut short in a city where they had hoped to finally find peace.

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— Kate from Kharkiv (@kateinkharkiv.bsky.social) August 2, 2025 at 12:49 PM

Russian drone attacks killed and injured civilians today: one child dead and another wounded in Sumy region, a tractor driver killed near Raiske in Donetsk, and a six-year-old girl injured in a car hit in Kharkiv region, regional prosecutors report.

— WarTranslated (Dmitri) (@wartranslated.bsky.social) August 2, 2025 at 1:04 PM

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

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Two Excellent Reads: Luke Farritor, DOGE Demon

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NEW investigation: DOGE-Pilled
The full story on the transformation of 23 year-old Luke Farritor and how he ended up at the Department of Government Efficiency–slashing, dismantling, undoing–wielding a résumé that "didn’t pass muster”
NO PAYWALL!
www.bloomberg.com/features/202…

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— Jason Leopold (@jasonleopold.bsky.social) July 29, 2025 at 11:54 AM

This article, quite rightfully, is getting a lot of attention, and repays reading:

Before he was called a patriot and a traitor for following Elon Musk to Washington to join DOGE; before he was hired by the US government despite a résumé that would have been previously rejected; before he was granted extensive access to sensitive data and invited to brief the country’s vice president; before he met his Twitter heroes in Silicon Valley; before he became a Thiel Fellow, which required him to become a college dropout; before he was celebrated internationally for using AI to help detect passages in a scroll charred by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius; before all of that, Luke Farritor, now 23, was a homeschooled kid in Lincoln, Nebraska, who called himself lukethecoder64…

Farritor was an inquisitive, uncommonly talented and sometimes obsessive young man. He had opportunities. He had people who cared about him, and those people had ideas of what he might achieve. Their ideas had nothing to do with Washington. Maybe Farritor didn’t know that his decision to help the man he so admired try to slash government spending would mean disappearing from his own life, working secretively but appearing in court documents. That it would mean disappointing and angering some, thrilling others. That in trying to solve one problem, he would play a part in creating chaos and distress and fear. Those he knew would not always be spared. His community in Lincoln would be cleaved. Maybe, some in his hometown say, he didn’t know there would be consequences.

Luke Farritor is the eldest of four children, raised in a modest house with an American flag out front and a workshop in the basement. The family posed there for a photo. It’s on his father’s Facebook page. Farritor’s mother, Tracy Slocum Farritor, is a physician who calls herself a patriot. She wanted to create an animated show, Renny & Bo, about America’s history. Michael Medved, the conservative radio host and author, was a special consultant. “I think America is the greatest nation on Earth, and I think it’s OK to teach that,” she said in a Kickstarter video in 2015. “That doesn’t mean we think any less of other people or other countries.” Her campaign fell short. Farritor told friends she was the best person he knew. Second was his father, Shane Farritor, a mechanical engineering professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln who, for much of his son’s childhood, was developing a miniature surgical robot with millions of dollars in federal funding. It was launched on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and tested on the International Space Station last year. In a talk titled “Don’t Measure, Cut Twice,” he said everyone should make something. “Making is a better way of thinking.” At the end, he showed photos of his four kids doing just that…

As Cohort 2020 began their junior year, Farritor interviewed for a semester-long internship at SpaceX—they asked me all about the guitar project, he told Friedman. He had to solve a math problem in a matter of days. He barely left his room. Someone visiting Farritor’s suitemate saw that Farritor had written calculations all over the mirrors. “It could be that the problem demanded that intensity,” the classmate says. “It’s also true that Luke would hyperfixate on a project.” Later, when asked on X about his process for projects, Farritor replied: “There is no process. I just think about them nonstop.”…

When the rocket blasted off, concrete chunks of the launchpad flew in all directions, debris spread for miles and shockwaves shattered at least one window in a nearby town. Minutes later, Starship spun out of control and SpaceX had to blow it up…

 
But I really wish more people were reading J.V. Last’s rebuttal post at the Bulwark, as well [gift link]:

The Boy Genius Who Killed 14 Million Poor People.

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— Radio Free America (@radiofreeameri.ca) August 1, 2025 at 7:44 AM

“What is the moral weight of responsibility for the men who carried out DOGE’s work?”

… Luke Farritor grew up in Nebraska and what struck me most reading the account of his life is the extent of his privilege.

His father is a university professor. His mother is a physician. Farritor seems to have been a child prodigy whose talents were recognized, encouraged, and incubated almost from the moment he hit puberty. He was supported by both his well-to-do family, his community, and a number of institutions that exist to identify and elevate gifted children…

Farritor was homeschooled and by age 15 he was lauded for the art installations he created. He was recruited into the University of Nebraska’s celebrated Raikes School, which is the engineering equivalent of being given a golden ticket. He got an internship at SpaceX and a $100,000 fellowship from Peter Thiel. He won part of the Vesuvius Prize for contributing to the team that decoded a burnt, ancient scroll using AI routines. According the Bloomberg, he had job offers from more or less all of Silicon Valley by the age of 21…

In a certain way, when you look at Luke Farritor’s life you’d say: The system worked. This is everything we hope that our society will do for gifted kids. In a world where we often lament institutional failures in education, Luke Farritor got the best of everything.

And then he decided to burn it all to the ground. Because in December 2024 he joined DOGE…

Look at DOGE and you don’t see an elite strike force that was needed to figure out how to execute an intricate, novel task. You see a bunch of privileged elites who were granted the honor of unthinkingly mashing the delete button as part of the reward system in their clique.

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Fill in the blank (Open Thread)

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I saw this quote from Marc Elias today:

I do not believe, when it comes to elections, that Democrats should ever engage in any process that requires Republicans to act in good faith.

I cannot come up with a single word to replace elections that wouldn’t be equally true.   So maybe we just eliminate that entire clause?  That leaves us with:

I do not believe that Democrats should ever engage in any process that requires Republicans to act in good faith.

That seems right to me!

Open thread.

 

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Saturday Morning Open Thread

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Democrats are launching a nationwide summer blitz designed to force vulnerable Republicans to defend President Donald Trump’s big tax breaks and spending cuts bill — especially Medicaid cuts that will leave millions of Americans without health care coverage.

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— The Associated Press (@apnews.com) August 1, 2025 at 11:01 AM

Democrats are launching a nationwide summer blitz designed to force vulnerable Republicans to defend President Donald Trump’s big tax breaks and spending cuts bill — especially Medicaid cuts that will leave millions of Americans without health care coverage.

Republican leaders in Washington, meanwhile, have encouraged their members to promote more popular aspects of the bill during smaller controlled appearances where GOP officials are less likely to face difficult questions or protests.

The Democratic National Committee’s “Organizing Summer” will feature events in all 50 states, beginning with Alaska, Texas, Colorado and California over the coming week. The party’s message will be reinforced by online advertising and billboard trucks at state and county fairs in the coming days targeting vulnerable House Republicans in Pennsylvania, Michigan and New Jersey, among other states.

“As Democrats, our job is to ensure that every American across the country understands the devastating impacts of this bill,” DNC Chair Ken Martin said. “Democrats will be holding events, highlighting Republican hypocrisy, and ensuring Americans across the country know exactly who is responsible for taking away health care, food, construction jobs, and nursing homes in order to give massive handouts to billionaires.”…

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