Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

So many bastards, so little time.

Disappointing to see gov. newsom with his finger to the wind.

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

Radicalized white males who support Trump are pitching a tent in the abyss.

Republicans: The threats are dire, but my tickets are non-refundable!

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

Disagreements are healthy; personal attacks are not.

The real work of an opposition party is to oppose.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

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

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

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

In after Baud. Damn.

The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

Second rate reporter says what?

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

Come on, man.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

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Domestic Politics

Texas Flood

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Obviously this is horrifying, and I will try to be as delicate as possible while also asking why in the year 2025 we are building campgrounds in flood plains (I mean native americans didn’t fucking build there for a reason), but regardless the whole thing is awful and I am sure we will find out that precautions were avoided and codes were either ignored or nonexistent, such is the way in land of the free and the home of the brave. At any rate, I am not 100% certain that gutting the NOAA and weather service contributed to this disaster, but I think any reasonable person would expect it to have had an impact. And a whole lot of Texans and other Americans are on social media right now asking “why the fuck were the warnings only posted on twitter,” which means some of the American public is catching up to what DOGE was doing in January and February. No time like the present, I suppose.

Having said all that, any Democrat who, when near a microphone, doesn’t mention that Trump and the Republicans gutted these warning systems and it is going to get worse, is committing political malpractice. That is the current battlespace, and you need to meet the Republicans, who will spend the next few months discrediting and attacking weather forecasters and public servants while deflecting queries into their own negligence by saying “thoughts and prayers” and getting all jesusy to distract you from their own culpability.

This administration has enacted a broad swath of policies whose outcomes will be the death of Americans. These kids are just the vanguard. A lot more pain and death is on the way.

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Monday Morning Phone-a-Rama

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Soon to be retired Senator Tillis (R-NC), wearing a bolo tie for reasons I can’t fathom, sort of tells the truth about the reconciliation bill:

Republican Senator Thom Tillis: What do I tell 663,000 people and two years or three years when President Trump breaks his promise by pushing them off of Medicaid. Trump’s advisers in the White House are not telling him that the effect of this bill is to break a promise.

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— Protect Our Care (@protectourcare.org) June 29, 2025 at 9:22 PM

I say “sort of” because Tillis implies that Trump doesn’t understand that the bill will strip healthcare from millions of Americans. The truth is Trump doesn’t give a shit, and whether he knows what the bill does or not is immaterial. But it’s rare enough for a Republican to tell the truth that even a half-truth is remarkable.

Anyway, I contacted my shithead Republican senators and pointlessly left a message asking them to find the courage to oppose this piece of shit bill. They demonstrably don’t give a shit about their constituents either, but maybe they care about their political prospects going forward, so I noted that Trump won’t have to face voters again when the full effects of this bill are known, but they will.

It won’t change my senators’ votes — both are deeply corrupt right-wing hacks. But I do think there’s some value in squawking.

Open thread.

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Masked Goons? What Masked Goons? (Open Thread)

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Wow, what a brazen liar:

PETERS: How are you gonna ensure the safety of the public & officers if they continue to not follow required protocol to ID themselves as law enforcement?

BONDI: That's the first that issue has come to me. You're saying officers when they cover their faces? I do know they are being doxxed.

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) June 25, 2025 at 11:15 AM

So glad Peters brought this up because it’s disturbing that it’s becoming commonplace for unidentified masked goons in tactical gear to pounce on people and drag them into unmarked cars. Of course Bondi knows about it! She’s just lying.

Open thread.

Masked Goons? What Masked Goons? (Open Thread)Post + Comments (103)

(Pace Salsa Voice) Neeeeew York CITY!

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As a humidity-cursed resident of a Florida swamp, I didn’t get a say in New York City’s Democratic primary contest, didn’t know very much about the contestants and have no idea what will happen in the general election. Nonetheless, I take great joy in my fellow Democrats showing a gross, corrupt, belligerent sex pest the fucking door last night.

James: His critics said that he should wait his turn. His critics said that he did not have the experience. His critics said they did not have the right name. Well, now all of them know his god damn name.

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— Acyn (@acyn.bsky.social) June 25, 2025 at 12:20 AM

Also of note: several prominent billionaires set piles of cash on fire to try to stop Mamdani and got nothing for it. Great job, y’all!

Open thread!

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The Vibes War

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“A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons.”

— Hillary Clinton, 2016

Donald Trump and the Republican Party he acquired as a wholly owned subsidiary are a catastrophe for the United States. We’ve lost ground on every important metric, becoming less free and prosperous at home and less influential as a force for democracy and innovation abroad.

Trump’s U.S. has discouraged and betrayed allies while emboldening and strengthening foes. Trump Republicans are reversing fragile social progress and exacerbating wealth inequality, setting in motion repercussions that will reverberate for generations.

Given the massive setbacks we’ve experienced under Trump’s malign and chaotic rule, it’s unsurprising that so many opponents credit a foreign influence operation for Trump’s rise. And indeed bad actors like Russia indisputably played a part in producing this endlessly humiliating clown show.

But the major force in all of this is something much more pathetic and less sophisticated than spy vs. spy shit. The core fact is that it’s trivially easy to manipulate a belligerent, vainglorious bully, as Hillary Clinton pointed out almost a decade ago.

Although it’s easy to manipulate a dumb and insecure yet powerful person, it’s dangerous too. We’ve all witnessed the sad parade of “dignity wraiths” who’ve attached themselves to Trump to achieve their own ends, only to be cast aside when they proved inconvenient. Jefferson Beauregard Chifforobe Sessions was possibly the first in that now very long and pathetic line.

But the fact remains that Trump really is easy to manipulate — it’s just that the consequences are unpredictable. Elon Musk appears to be sorting through that fallout now.

Though currently sidelined, it’s possible Musk will emerge victorious if he and fellow billionaire elites succeed in creating and controlling a surveillance state to underpin a techno-feudal form of government in Trump’s wake. But that outcome isn’t preordained.

Right now, thanks to Trump’s fragile ego, whoever is in charge of Fox News programming is in effect running foreign policy. New York Times political coverage is terrible, but one thing access journalism occasionally horks up is insight into how decisions are made, and holy shit:

Mr. Trump had spent the early months of his administration warning Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel against a strike on Iran. But by the morning of Friday, June 13, hours after the first Israeli attacks, Mr. Trump had changed his tune.

He marveled to advisers about what he said was a brilliant Israeli military operation, which involved a series of precision strikes that killed key figures in Iran’s military leadership and blasted away strategic weapons sites. Mr. Trump took calls on his cellphone from reporters and began hailing the operation as “excellent” and “very successful” and hinting that he had much more to do with it than people realized.

Later that day, Mr. Trump asked an ally how the Israeli strikes were “playing.” He said that “everyone” was telling him he needed to get more involved, including potentially dropping 30,000-pound GBU-57 bombs on Fordo, the Iranian uranium-enrichment facility buried underneath a mountain south of Tehran.

In a podcast released just before the U.S. attacked Iran, Josh Marshall noted that Trump is very much in favor of blowing shit up, but he fears commitment. Marshall said Trump would find a “one-night stand” type of military engagement irresistible, and that turned out to be true.

The president was closely monitoring Fox News, which was airing wall-to-wall praise of Israel’s military operation and featuring guests urging Mr. Trump to get more involved. Several Trump advisers lamented the fact that Mr. Carlson was no longer on Fox, which meant that Mr. Trump was not hearing much of the other side of the debate.

The very silly statements administration officials have made since the bombing — like J.D. Vance’s absurd claim that the U.S. isn’t at war with Iran but only with Iran’s nuclear program — underscore the point that Trump believes this was a “one-and-done” military action. But in a war, the opponent has agency too.

That’s the unknown here. What is known is that for the foreseeable future, we’re all hostage to one uniquely terrible person’s ego-driven whims and how they are shaped by the media he consumes.

Open thread.

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The Horrors (Open Thread)

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Senator Murphy summed it up succinctly:

Donald Trump, a weak and dangerously reckless president, has put the United States on a path to a war in the Middle East that the country does not want, the law does not allow, and our security does not demand.

— Chris Murphy (@chrismurphyct.bsky.social) June 22, 2025 at 12:53 AM

Did anyone else see Kegsbreath’s grotesque and obsequious “briefing” this morning? I just cannot with this shit. Gonna watch just birds for a few days.

Open thread.

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House Bill Passes (Open Thread)

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According to WaPo, Trump’s big ugly bill narrowly passed in the House a little while ago and is now headed to the Senate. Here’s the summary from the linked article:

Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, as the measure is formally known, extends trillions of dollars in tax cuts from his first term along with new campaign promises — including no taxes on tips and overtime wages — and hundreds of billions of dollars in new spending.

But the legislation, carries a hefty price tag. The latest projection from Congressional Budget Office, lawmakers’ nonpartisan bookkeeper, showed it will add $2.4 trillion over 10 years to the national debt, which already exceeds $36 trillion.

To offset the cost, the measure would slash spending on social safety net programs by more than $1 trillion over 10 years. Even then, the mammoth legislation could also force nearly $500 billion in cuts to Medicare over the next decade to keep the national deficit within legal limits, unless Congress later adjusts the limits. The legislation could strip Medicaid coverage from 8.7 million people and lead to 7.6 million more uninsured people over 10 years, CBO projected.

To sum up, billionaires like Trump, Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos, etc., get to keep NOT paying their fair share of taxes, and ordinary citizens who depend on Medicare, Medicaid and other programs get screwed. Same as it ever was when Repubs hold power, only worse because Trump makes everything worse.

The retiree ceremonial head of state took a brief break from golf and crypto grifting yesterday to lean on House Repubs to get the bill passed. But elected Repubs interpreted Trump’s incoherent and uniformed comments on the bill in ways that confirm their priors.

In the meeting, the president scolded blue-state Republicans seeking a higher cap on state and local tax deductions (SALT), and he chided GOP hard-liners not to “f— around with Medicaid” benefits. A consensus, lawmakers said, appeared in the offing.

But lawmakers raced to put their own spin on Trump’s words. To some, the president’s comments about SALT meant refusing to raise the tax deduction, and to others, he meant accepting moderates’ demands.

To one group, his remarks about Medicaid meant searching for only egregious abuses, while another handful thought it meant finding “waste” within the program’s DNA.

A similar dynamic will probably take hold in the Senate, where a modified version of a bill that screws working people in favor of billionaires will almost certainly pass. At the policy level, right-wing “populism” is indistinguishable from the plutocratic agenda, as it was in Trump’s first term.

When millions lose healthcare, when rural hospitals close and nursing homes nationwide are shuttered, when seniors can’t access the benefits they’ve paid into for decades, etc., Trump will either ignore the situation or claim ignorance. Pretending not to know what’s happening under their own watch is a hallmark of the Trump cabinet, and it comes from the top.

I’ll contact my shitty Republican senators today to register my objections, but it feels entirely pointless. Because it is. The only thing we can do is ride this nightmare out and try to shift the balance of power through the next elections. Depressing!

***

I played hooky yesterday to attend the Tampa Bay Rays baseball game. They beat the Houston Astros 8 to 4, so the curse is lifted! (The curse was that the Rays lost every game my sister and I attended.)

Last year’s hurricanes shredded the dome at Tropicana Field in St. Pete, so this year, the team is playing at the New York Yankee’s spring training facility in Tampa, a much smaller and open air venue.

Lord, it was HOT! I’m not used to watching baseball outdoors since the Rays have played in a dome since their inception. I applied sunblock copiously and wore a hat, but I still got fried. Our plastic stadium chairs were so hot we had to pour water on them to avoid scorching our butts.

We entertained ourselves during lulls in the baseball action by watching unwary fans arrive late, sit down in their blazing hot seats and then leap up fanning their flaming hot tushes. We agreed that for the rest of the season, we’ll consider attending night games only.

Open thread!

House Bill Passes (Open Thread)Post + Comments (183)