Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

DeSantis transforming Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

Never forget that he train is barreling down on Trump, even as he dances on the tracks.

You cannot shame the shameless.

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

People are weird.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

It’s a good piece. click on over. but then come back!!

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

Maybe you would prefer that we take Joelle’s side in ALL CAPS?

Somebody needs to explain to DeSantis that nobody needs to do anything to make him look bad.

This country desperately needs a functioning Fourth Estate.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Republicans in disarray!

Boeing: repeatedly making the case for high speed rail.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

Pelosi: “He either is stupid, or he thinks the rest of us are.” Why not both?

Israel is using food as a weapon of war. Unforgivable.

We need to vote them all out and restore sane Democratic government.

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” is supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

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Friday Night Fights Open Thread: Laura Loomer, TFG’s Latest Emotional-Support Waifu Pillow

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When someone’s too sketchy for Project Veritas and too racist for MTG… Per the Washington Post, “Trump’s time with Loomer, a far-right activist, upsets his GOP allies” [gift link]:

Former president Donald Trump has traveled the country this week accompanied by far-right activist Laura Loomer, unnerving some GOP allies with his increasing embrace of a provocateur with a history of espousing conspiracy theories and incendiary rhetoric…

On Friday, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) posted on X that Loomer is “a crazy conspiracy theorist who regularly utters disgusting garbage intended to divide Republicans. A DNC plant couldn’t do a better job than she is doing to hurt President Trump’s chances of winning re-election. Enough.”

Loomer most notably joined Trump as he made multiple stops Wednesday to mark the 23rd anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, standing nearby as Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), met with firefighters in New York City. Just last year, Loomer posted a video on X that called the 9/11 assault on the United States an “inside job.”…

In addition to joining Trump in New York, Loomer was seen getting off his plane the day before in Philadelphia before his debate with Harris there. And after she visited New York with Trump, Loomer headed with him to Shanksville, Pa., for ceremonies commemorating 9/11.

Loomer emphasized this week that she does “not work” for Trump, but the campaign has declined to say why she has been traveling with him amid increasingly harsh scrutiny from Democrats and some Republicans…

Loomer first gained national notoriety as an undercover agent for Project Veritas, focusing her efforts on infiltrating Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. She left the group in 2017 to do stunts under her own name, such as chaining herself to Twitter’s New York headquarters and leading a group of undocumented immigrants to hop the fence at a Napa, Calif., home owned by former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

Loomer ran for Congress in Florida twice, in 2020 and 2022, and lost both times. Her anti-Muslim rhetoric, among other alleged terms-of-use violations, have led Facebook, Instagram, Lyft, Uber, Venmo, PayPal, GoFundMe and Cash App to ban her, Loomer claims.

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Friday Evening Open Thread: That Was A *Really* Expensive Debate for TFG….

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… [O]n Wednesday, it was pretty clear that Trump’s widely panned debate performance dragged down the shares of his company. Trump Media, which trades under the ticker DJT, fell as much as 19 percent from last night’s highs to its lowest point all year of $15.35. (This year, shares are down about 74 percent from its high in March, shortly after going public.) To put that into perspective, it is now less valuable than it was in January, before the publicly traded shell company that ultimately bought it — Digital World Acquisition Company — was cleared to merge with Trump Media as part of the process of going public through a SPAC. It also erased $467 million of Trump’s net worth about a week before he can cash out all his shares…

Trump Media’s only real asset right now is the social-media network, which is essentially a less reputable version of Elon Musk’s X. It is the kind of place where brain-wormed conspiracy theories about stolen elections, the cops who actually did the January 6 insurrection, and Haitian migrants stealing and eating dogs go unchallenged. The moments when Trump most clearly lost control of himself during the debate was when he seemed to be aping the users of his very own social network. You can see how the plunge in DJT shares is not just a reaction against Trump spinning out in prime time but a broader realization that the kinds of posts on Truth Social have little value outside its tiny network.

This has a direct impact on Trump’s net worth. In March, Bloomberg valued his fortune at $6.5 billion with the majority of his wealth, about $3.9 billion, tied up in his stake of DJT. With shares trading trading below $16 — down from a high of $61.96 in March — that stake has fallen to less than $1.8 billion. The price of the stock is expected to fall even farther during the next few days, as traders look to get ahead of the expiration of the lockup agreement, which prevents insiders like Trump from selling their shares before September 19…

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Schadenfreude Open Thread: Let… Us… SAVOR!

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Schadenfreude Open Thread: Let... Us... SAVOR!

(John Deering via GoComics.com)

 
Harry the retreat, shoot the enemy’s wounded, and loot the corpses!

Come along on a short walk across the battlefield, checking out the smoking ruins, the shattered artillery pieces, and the tattered flags of the MAGA armies.

1) El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago‘s drop-by in the post-debate spin room was a real tell. Usually, candidates avoid the spin room as though it’s a cholera ward. The spin room is a job for vice presidents, at best. (J. Divan Vance did show his face, but mostly to defend the dog-eating fantasy.) But, usually, you trot out experts, or famous senators, to make your case. You don’t allow the ambulatory carcass of what used to be your candidate to come out and blither to Kaitlan Collins of CNN about how he “won all the polls” after the debate was over. That was pure desperation with a fine glaze of flopsweat on it…

9) On the scale of Defending The Indefensible, I think it was a tie between his defending his infamous ad calling for the execution of the now-exonerated Central Park 5 and the following delusional account:

We did a phenomenal job with the pandemic. We handed them over a country where the economy and where the stock market was higher than it was before the pandemic came in. Nobody’s ever seen anything like it. We made ventilators for the entire world. We got gowns. We got masks. We did things that nobody thought possible.

And, somehow, 350,800 Americans died of Covid in 2020. Phenomenal.

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Wednesday Evening Open Thread: Another Russian Disinformation Operation Unmasked

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‘Beanie Boy’ Tim Pool and serial plagiarist Benny Johnson are two of the highest-ranked ‘Just Doing Our Own Research’ right-wing pests on social media. It’s probably true that they’d be almost as persistent in pushing Russian disinformation for free. But then again, it can be assumed that, given the lavish nature of the Wingnut Wurlitzer, they knew they’d never have to go unpaid… Per the Washington Post, “Justice Dept. charges two Russian media operatives in alleged scheme”[gift link]:

The Justice Department on Wednesday charged two Russian media executives in an alleged scheme that authorities say illegally funneled millions of dollars to a Tennessee-based company to create and publish propaganda videos that racked up millions of views on U.S. social media.

The 32-page federal indictment accuses Kostiantyn Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva, employees of RT, a Russian-state news site formerly known as Russia Today, of conducting a money-laundering operation that spent nearly $10 million on efforts to covertly influence public opinion and sow social divisions, including placing blame on Ukraine regarding the war with Russia.

Authorities said the U.S. company, which was not identified by name in the indictment, allegedly created and posted hundreds of English-language videos on social media sites, including TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and X, a site formerly known as Twitter, that echoed Russian state propaganda and garnered 16 million views on YouTube alone.

Kalashnikov and Afanasyeva, Russian citizens who remain at large, were charged with conspiracy to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison, and conspiracy to commit money laundering, which is punishable by up to 20 years, authorities said…

The federal indictment doesn’t name the Tennessee-based company. But a quote from the company’s YouTube channel in the indictment describing it as a “a network of heterodox commentators that focus on Western political and cultural issues” suggest the business is Tenet Media.

Tenet is a Tennessee corporation founded by conservative commentator Lauren Chen, who goes by the name “Roaming Millennial” online and her husband, Liam Donovan. Chen, who also works as a host for Glenn Beck’s BlazeTV online video company and contributes to Turning Point USA, didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The indictment alleges that at least two Tenet contributors were misled about the true source of the site’s funding, while the company’s co-founders knew the money came from Russia.

Tenet Media’s launch in November 2023 was hotly anticipated in the world of right-wing YouTube, a mega-channel combining the work of prominent pundits like Dave Rubin, Tim Pool, Benny Johnson, and Lauren Southern.

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Late Night Open Thread: Tales of the Jagoffwagon

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Late Night Open Thread: Tales of the Jaggoffwagon
 
A little schadenfreude, as we gird up for the work week…


(Optimus Prime, Transformer)

Elsewhere in the Cybergork Universe:


Responses from a whole bunch of snarksters…

didn’t even flag the load smh

Maybe he didn’t think he would actually get far and was just proving his concept?

They didn’t come out before he started driving, so why would you expect that to change just because he drove? Checkmate, moran!

I’m mostly thinking how lucky it is they fell out *before* they got on the highway.

I wonder if there are connection points for straps in the bed? I’m guessing not.
ok, I looked it up. It’s got tie-down connection points, this guy has no idea he needs to use them.

After seeing what happened to the bumper of a cybertruck when a guy tried to pull half the load it is rated for, my guess is the tie-downs are secured by an Elmer’s glue stick.

HE’S IN THE PRO PARKING. 😂

Getting laughed at by the contractors, I hope 😉

That’s Trex, plastic decking boards. Slippery stuff.
Yes, I’m pedantic.
Anyway, great stuff! 10/10 no notes.

In conclusion…

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Late Night Schadenfreude Open Thread: TROMPED

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Late Night Schadenfreude Open Thread: Tromped - STOCKPILE

(Joel Pett via GoComics.com)

Well, it’s always nice to know that Karma is still working, however slowly. Per the Washington Post, “Trump allies try to energize him as he struggles to adapt to Harris”:

… [A]ides did not want a situation where he was watching the [DNC] convention every night, getting angry, and then just golfing all day and stewing, according to people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private interactions. Trump also had grown annoyed with the news coverage that depicted him as not working as hard as his opponent, one person who talked to him said.

So the campaign launched back-to-back events over the past week, with the goal of counterprogramming the Democratic convention and securing news coverage, as other campaigns have often done, but also as a way to keep Trump busy.

The candidate, though, often appeared reluctant. He frequently departed from the policy themes assigned to each day’s event — an attempt to keep him focused on poll-tested messages over his pugnacious impulses — illustrating his continued struggle to find his footing in a changed race.

“The stakes for Trump this election are arguably the highest they’ve ever been. His criminal cases don’t go away if he loses. Yet he seems to be phoning it in, running a remarkably low-energy, undisciplined campaign,” said Alyssa Farah Griffin, a former White House spokeswoman who quit after Trump supporters attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. “From spending days off the campaign trail golfing to coming up with frankly weak nicknames like ‘Kamabala,’ it feels like he’s lost his mojo.”…

Asked about the perception that the change in Democratic candidates had thrown him off, Trump responded: “No, I think we’re doing great.” He proceeded to complain about how “unfair” the change was.

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Late Night Schadenfreude Open Thread: The Past Has Been Torched

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Late Night Schadenfreude Open Thread: The Past Has Been Torched 1

(Jack Ohman via GoComics.com)

Ed Kilgore, at NYMag — “RFK Jr., Trump Form Coalition of Vengeful Whiners”:

… Well over halfway through his presser, Kennedy finally pivoted to the positive case for endorsing Trump, asserting that they were in agreement on the key issues of “free speech, the Ukraine War, and the war on children.” Again, it seems Trump’s free-speech commitment amounts to little more than being the enemy of Kennedy’s enemies, particularly those who have mocked his subscription to an array of conspiracy theories. He made the most sense in accurately describing the 45th president as lukewarm at best toward Ukraine. As for whether Trump will act on the prime concern of the Kennedy-Shanahan ticket — the alleged government-corporate plot to kill, sicken and fatten up kids to make money for Big Pharma and Big Ag — RFK Jr. seems to be relying mostly on blind faith. He said he hoped that Trump would “keep his promises in this case,” recognizing that hadn’t been a very good bet in the past, along with an acknowledgement that they don’t agree on a lot of issues. (That’s an understatement; in April Trump accused Kennedy of being “far more LIBERAL than anyone running as a Democrat,” and more liberal than Jill Stein or Cornel West.)

And so, this deeply alienated man will form a strange partnership with the Republican candidate for president based mostly on a common sense of grievance with Democrats and other elites, and a common lust for vengeance. As for what his endorsement will be worth, that’s unclear. He’s been dropping like a rock in the polls, especially since Kamala Harris became the Democratic candidate; the most recent national survey, by RMG Research, put him at three percent of the vote. And it is not at all clear how many of his remaining supporters will follow him over the brink into MAGA-land, which some correctly perceive as a place where environmentalists and those who fret about military spending (a particular preoccupation of Kennedy’s running mate, Nicole Shanahan, who wasn’t at the presser but was apparently in on the decision) and childhood health are often treated as hippies and suspected Marxists. The timing of the move was convenient in that many pollsters already in the field to figure out if Harris will get a post-convention “bounce” will also be able to discern whether Kennedy’s move swayed any actual voters.

We’ll also see what, if any, effect RFK Jr.’s support has on Trump, surely the most narcissistic and hard-to-influence presidential candidate ever. At his presser, RFK Jr. said he wanted to introduce a “culture of kindness” into the Trump campaign. Good luck with that, Bobby. Probably should stick to the script of whining and plotting vengeance.

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