Happy Hour

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Forgotten Subplots

Though the writers will likely bring it back soon.

Denmark’s military spending spree was announced in January this year, shortly after US President Donald Trump began expressing renewed interest in controlling Greenland, insisting last December ahead of taking office that “the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity.”

Subsequent remarks, in which Trump refused to rule out taking Greenland by force, stirred further alarm.

But while the issue appears to have dropped off the agenda of the mercurial US leader, along with his threats to annex Canada and to take over the Panama Canal, many Danes still see it as their most pressing – and worrying – diplomatic challenge.

Pariah Nation

It most likely won't happen quickly, but if there are any big outbreaks, get ready to have your vaccine records ready if you want to travel anywhere outside the country.

In a much anticipated public appearance, Susan Monarez, the former head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, defended her short tenure at the embattled public health agency. She testified that she was ousted last month because she refused to follow Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s demands to pre-approve vaccine recommendations for the public and fire career scientists.

No worries, politics is all just debate club for disgusting debate club perverts. Nothing really matters!

Seems Bad

The important thing to remember is we treat "everybody" like this, but some of these Koreans might be people who matter.

We got a vivid glimpse of what it looks like for harsh immigration policies to undermine growth and investment earlier this month, in Georgia, when immigration officials detained hundreds of South Korean nationals working at a battery plant in a small town outside Savannah. On Sept. 4, a large detachment of federal, state and local law enforcement descended on an electric vehicle battery plant operated by Hyundai and LG Electronics. The raid, which the administration described as one of the largest-ever single-location enforcement operations conducted by the Department of Homeland Security, was aimed at just four people. Officials detained nearly 500, the large majority of whom were South Korean workers brought to the plant to assist with its construction.

While it appears that some of the workers had entered the United States illegally or were present on expired visas, lawyers for others say that their clients had the legal right to work in the United States. The workers, who were held for more than a week, described terrible conditions.

“Their waists and hands were tied together, forcing them to bend down and lick water to drink,” The Hankyoreh, a daily newspaper in South Korea reported. “The unscreened bathrooms contained only a single sheet to cover their lower bodies. Sunlight barely penetrated through a fist-sized hole, and they were only allowed access to the small yard for two hours.”

All lawlessness and lies.

On August 31, 2025, U.S. Magistrate Judge Christopher Ray issued a warrant to allow ICE to search the Georgia battery plant, a joint venture of Hyundai and LG Energy Solution, naming four Mexican nationals as “targeted persons.” (The Savannah Morning News obtained a copy of the search warrant.) Nothing in the warrant indicated ICE intended to arrest South Korean workers helping to set up a battery plant for electric vehicles slated to employ 2,000 U.S. workers.

On September 4, 2025, approximately 400 state and federal law enforcement personnel raided the battery plant. While they came upon 175 to 200 Latino workers, not all of them working unlawfully, ICE agents also encountered hundreds of South Korean workers.

Charles Kuck, an immigration attorney at Kuck Baxter in Atlanta, represents 11 individuals arrested in the raid and pieced together what happened at the facility. ICE did not bring Korean language interpreters—proof Koreans were not the intended target—but managed to determine that the South Koreans at the facility entered on B-1 visas or the Electronic System for Travel Authorization known as ESTA.

“Not thinking that B-1 and ESTA allow ‘after-sales service and installation,’ which is what the Koreans were doing in setting up the equipment to make the batteries at the facility, ICE agents decided on the spot to arrest all the South Korean workers,” said Kuck in an interview. One of Kuck’s South Korean clients had just arrived the night before and was sitting in a conference room in a business suit, attending a meeting, when arrested by ICE.

An important thing here - which "everyone" seems to be forgetting - is that even if people have real immigration violations, you don't have treat them like this, or anything close to like this. Just tell them to stop working and go home.

A New Group Forms To Oppose Groups

Dems need to stop talking about the disgusting queers and talk about normal people. All they do is talk about those deviant perverts! But Adam Jentleson is going to fix that and get rich in the process.

Rich people do love the worst grifters in Dem politics, as long as they are sufficiently bigoted.

Nothing voters want more than loudly advertising you don't know what the fuck you want to do:

What does your think tank support?  Bigotry, pushing people who are mean to us on social media out of public life, and, I dunno, some stuff we will figure out on a game show.  Voters like game show hosts, right? We'll get our own!

The "funny" thing is that there are a bunch of initiatives like this, and they're all trying to one up each other by going further right.  

Have fun, kids.

They Know Even Less Than What They Say

Coates:

What are we to make of a man who called for the execution of the American president, and then was executed himself? What are we to make of an NFL that, on one hand, encourages us to “End Racism,” and, on the other, urges us to commemorate an unreconstructed white supremacist? And what of the writers, the thinkers, and the pundits who cannot separate the great crime of Kirk’s death from the malignancy of his public life? Can they truly be so ignorant to the words of a man they have so rushed to memorialize? I don’t know. But the most telling detail in Klein’s column was that, for all his praise, there was not a single word in the piece from Kirk himself.

What can we make of most of our pundits?

Happy Hour

Get happy

Nobody Could Have Predicted

I know nothing about global soybean markets, but if you had asked me if China "needed" US soybeans, I would've guessed "no."

The U.S. normally ships most of its soybeans to China between September and January, before Brazil's harvest hits the market, but Chinese buyers have yet to book any U.S. cargoes for the new crop year, according to traders tracking shipments.

Zero.

The Pundit Credo

go ahead. keep screaming "Shut The Fuck Up " at me. it only makes my opinions Worse

— wint (@dril) March 10, 2018

Voice Of Reason, Michael Savage

Funny times.

After All They Did For Him

You do have to laugh:

President Donald Trump reportedly skipped a prayer vigil for slain conservative commentator Charlie Kirk Sunday at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

The president’s public events schedule was blank for Sunday, The Daily Beast reported, and his press schedule indicated he was spending the weekend at his Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J.

NYT, earlier:

Sure Why Not

One could spend all day with Ben Shapiro clips - I believe quoting him accurately is still legal since he is not dead - but the first notable one I noticed is him objecting to a gay couple being featured on a home improvement show.

Charlie Kirk weighs in at the link, too.  Hope I don't get arrested!

This was recorded before Charlie Kirk's murder, which doesn't make it better.

Plot Twist

BREAKING: Justice Gregory Carro has dismissed the first degree murder charge against Luigi Mangione in his state case, finding the DA put legally insufficient evidence before the grand jury. More TK.

— Molly Crane-Newman (@mollycranenewman.bsky.social) September 16, 2025 at 2:38 PM

...still faces second degree, to be clear. All terrorism charges dropped.

...Ah I see New York's first degree murder charge does require an extreme "enhancement," like terrorism, so this isn't so weird.

Solidarity

In very general terms, our elite institutions have shown very little solidarity for the lesser people, or in the case of journalism, lesser publications, and in fact have been gleefully stomping on them much of the time, so I have to laugh at this.

President Donald Trump announced Monday he will file a $15 billion lawsuit against The New York Times, alleging defamation and libel, and accusing the outlet of being a “virtual mouthpiece” for the Democrat party.

Is it bad? Yes. Is it very funny? Also yes.

Few elite journalists saw what Mo Ryan did when Thiel destroyed Gawker.

This is about one of the fundamental pillars of democracy being threatened by entities with almost infinite power and resources. You know those superhero films in which unstoppable, power-mad villains in the midst of meltdowns decide to threaten entire planets? Yeah, that scenario doesn’t feel all that far-fetched, especially if you’ve spent a decade or two or three working in the media industry.

There have always been rich people who’ve gone after the media, sometimes for frivolous reasons, sometimes for good ones. But the fact is, there are more billionaires in this country than ever. If they all decide to go scorched-earth on journalism outlets they don’t like, well, say goodbye to a free press.

A thriving media ecosystem in which journalists and critics can speak truth to power on a regular basis is one of the foundations of a civil society. “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, as long as the press doesn’t make rich and powerful people angry.” Wait, I may have that excerpt from the Constitution wrong. Or do I?

If you think I’m being hyperbolic, I’m not. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos now owns the Washington Post. Magnate Sheldon Adelson is the owner of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, which he appears to be gutting like a fish. And as many commentators have pointed out, Thiel has the ear of the most powerful man at any media company on Earth: Mark Zuckerberg.

Thiel is friends with Zuckerberg and is on the board of Facebook, which, in case you weren’t aware, holds the fate of many media firms in its clammy, data-driven hands. You haven’t seen frenzy behind the scenes at a media company until you’ve lived through a week in which Facebook changes its cryptic algorithms. Few things cause more newsroom ulcers than Facebook or Google altering the the ways in which their users engage with news content. Forget Oprah and Time, Inc: A small array of tech firms hold the keys to the media kingdom, they move in mysterious ways and they answer to no one.

And many of these tech firms believe it’s their mission to fundamentally change our society, which isn’t necessarily a bad impulse, but they’re coming from a culture in which secrecy is an ingrained survival instinct. They don’t like scrutiny and they think pulling back the curtain means giving away trade secrets. In short, many of these companies and the titans they’ve spawned want to build the future without being transparent about their motives, methods or endgames.

And the press? That’s merely something to be controlled. Not so much a pillar but a pet.

That was 9 years ago.

Morning

Gonna have a sip of coffee and see what our great free speech defenders are up to.

Monday Evening

enjoy

America's Worst Newspaper

The Washington Post.

I don't think this was true even 5 years ago, but now we have reached the point where the influence of legacy media outlets is almost entirely through their influence of, and amplification by, other powerful people.  The problem with Morning Joseph is that members of Congress watch him. Almost nobody else does.

The problem with CNN and MSNBC is that they are on in congressional offices all day.  Nobody else watches them.

During total day, MSNBC averaged 466,000 total viewers and 37,000 demo [25-54] viewers. This represented a -6% loss in total viewers and a -21% fall in the demo compared to the network’s average the week prior.

...

In total day, the network [CNN] had 366,000 total viewers and 54,000 viewers in the demo [25-54]. This resulted in a 17% increase in total viewers and an 8% increase in the demo during this daypart.

The only reason to care about what's in the WaPo opinion page is that Chuck Schumer probably does.

Sure Why Not

* TRUMP: COMPANIES AND CORPORATIONS SHOULD NO LONGER BE FORCED TO "REPORT" ON A QUARTERLY BASIS @reuters.com #StopTheCount

— Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla.bsky.social) September 15, 2025 at 1:01 PM

I have no idea if this makes sense. It might!

America's Worst Journalists

 Bob Woodward.

I Found The Note

Kash Patel says Charlie Kirk shooting suspect had written a note about the attack that has since been destroyed, but the FBI has “confirmed” what the note said “because of our aggressive interview posture” pic.twitter.com/bq8DppBuTc

— Roger Sollenberger (@SollenbergerRC) September 15, 2025

It wasn't destroyed, it was just mailed to me somehow.

The Yglesias/Jeffries/Barro/Schumer Wing Of The Democratic Party

The primary intra-caucus argument, right now, is whether to oppose Trump on ICE terrorizing the country or whether not to. The secondary one, with about the same groupings, is disagreement over Israel.  Continued rejection of Mamdani (immigrant, critical of Israel) by leadership is, in part, a proxy battle.

Leadership (Schumer, Jeffries) is one camp, some extreme lefty weirdos like [checks notes] Chris Van Hollen are in another.

A spox for House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who was criticized by Chris Van Hollen yesterday for not endorsing Mamdani yet and for making vague and unsatisfiable demands of him, said: “Confused New Yorkers are asking themselves the question: Chris Van Who?”

[image or embed]

— Emissary Of Night | ليلى (@diplomatofnight.com) September 14, 2025 at 5:20 PM

Our dumbshit pig-people voters have never even heard of another senator! 

Josh Barro, resident of New York, the gravitational center of the Hot Takes Industry, has invented a new rule about who is allowed to have Takes. The "don't comment on elections outside of your place of residency" rule is one I will accept, as long as it applies to New Yorkers and shuts down most of the Hot Take business. It will also apply to Jeffries and Schumer, interestingly!

Vote blue no matter who, unless....

A Follow Up Question, Mr. President

Reporter: The president of Venezuela called the strike on the boat illegal Trump: What’s illegal is the fact that 300 million people died last year from drugs

[image or embed]

— Acyn (@acyn.bsky.social) September 15, 2025 at 2:00 AM

The drug stuff is extra "funny" because it's quite obvious - and Trump knows it - that the MAGA extended universe is filled with people who are perpetually blasted on various substances.

Violence

We have learned, once again, that to upper echelon mainstream media, being mean on the internet to people like them is violence, while massive nationwide state violence is barely worth a mention.

How many opinion pieces has the NYT run against ongoing ICE (broadly defined) activities?

Yes the Charlie Kirk murder was actual violence, but the meta-conversation quickly turned, as it often does, to how everyone was supposed perform in response to it.

I saw a joke about how everyone is trained to be press secretaries for their own personal nations, issuing statements and communications about this and that, instead of just shooting the shit on the internet.

Have you ritually condemned this? Is your flag icon in your bio at half mast?

There are people who matter, and hurty words hurt them very much,  and people who don't, whose blackbagging to foreign torture prisons is impolite to mention.

Morning

What fresh hell... 

Sunday Night

Rock on.

"New Visa Category"

We pinky swear this one gives you the right to do things we said you could do with the other visa category, and our extremely well-trained ICE agents will totally respect this.

A top U.S. diplomat expressed regret on Sunday over an immigration raid in the state of Georgia that detained hundreds of South Korean workers and proposed making the event a turning point to strengthen bilateral relations, South Korea said.

In a meeting in Seoul, First Vice Foreign Minister Park Yoon-joo urged Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau to push forward bilateral discussions on follow-up measures, including a new visa category, the foreign ministry said in a statement.

Apparently There Is A Line

Surprised!

“I wrongly said [homeless persons] should get lethal injections. I apologize for that extremely callous remark,” Brian Kilmeade says

[image or embed]

— Phil Lewis (@phillewis.bsky.social) September 14, 2025 at 2:57 PM

Flashback

My favorite New York Times editorial board "free speech" editorial:

For all the tolerance and enlightenment that modern society claims, Americans are losing hold of a fundamental right as citizens of a free country: the right to speak their minds and voice their opinions in public without fear of being shamed or shunned.

This social silencing, this depluralizing of America, has been evident for years, but dealing with it stirs yet more fear. It feels like a third rail, dangerous. For a strong nation and open society, that is dangerous.

Of course they meant the right of important people - and people they agree with - to say what they want without fear, while the rest of us should be stomped on, often by the newspaper itself! 

That Charlie Kirk was a free speech advocate despite, for example, making lists of professors to terrorize, makes perfect sense to all of these people! He was terrorizing the right professors! You know the ones!

Doing Politics The Right Way

I could link to clips like this all day. I ask again, are our great Reactionary Centrist pundits and journalists unaware of this stuff, are they pretending to be unaware of this stuff, or do they support it as they have said?

Still Going

As I'm typing this, this is the top of the NYT web page:

In addition, there are 4 op-eds about it and even a sports story!

Morning

Sunday funday.

Late Entry

NYT did let Bouie write this.

On his podcast, Kirk called on authorities to create a “citizen force” on the border to protect “white demographics” from “the invasion of the country.” He embraced the rhetoric of white pride and warned of “a great replacement” of rural white Americans.

“The great replacement strategy, which is well underway every single day in our southern border, is a strategy to replace white rural America with something different,” he said last year. “You believe in God, country, family, faith, and freedom, and they won’t stop until you and your children and your children’s children are eliminated.”

Kirk also targeted Black Americans for contempt. “Prowling Blacks go around for fun to go target white people — that’s a fact,” he said in 2023. Kirk was preoccupied with the idea of “Black crime,” and on the last episode of his show before he was killed, he devoted a segment to “the ever-increasing amount of Black crime,” telling his audience, falsely, that “one in 22 Black men will be a murderer in their lifetime” and that “by age of 23, half of all Black males have been arrested and not enough of them have been arrested.”

Kirk told his listeners that Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson of the Supreme Court “is what your country looks like on critical race theory,” that former Vice President Kamala Harris was “the jive speaking spokesperson of equity,” and that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “was awful.”

“I have a very, very radical view on this, but I can defend it, and I’ve thought about it,” Kirk said at a 2023 event. “We made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s.”

Work Ethic

It is a bit of a "the food is terrible and the portions are too small" complaint, but the shitty work ethic of these people does amaze me.

I don't want to run the FBI, but if I did accept the job I probably would show up to the office occasionally.

Party Like It's 2003

We are back to the post-9/11 era, in the sense that mainstream news outlets are maintaining a unified state-sanctioned voice, with little dissent allowed to peep through. It's actually much worse, as the range of topics that applies to has been greatly expanded.

They have spent days maintaining a fictional version of Charlie Kirk, a fictional version of his critics, and a fictional version of his assassin, all while trying to hound his critics out of public life. A lot can be achieved if everyone who matters is screaming the same thing into most of the available microphones.  We see just how willing and eager they are to do just that.

What a dumb fucking thing to destroy your reputation about, Ezra Klein. Fucking hell.

Is It That Easy

That Trump almost always backs down if resisted has been known for years...

President Donald Trump shelved his plans to target Chicago as the next city for his domestic crime push after advisers warned him that sending in troops to help with local law enforcement without buy-in from the state’s governor could create legal headaches they want to avoid, sources familiar with the matter told CNN.

Honoring Him Accurately

At best, all the journalists who have been obscuring Kirk's real life record were oblivious to it. That is no defense of them.

Charles James Kirk, 31, died on Wednesday from a gunshot to the neck at a Utah Valley University campus event just as he was trying to deflect a question about mass shootings by suggesting they were largely a function of gang violence. He died with a net worth of $12 million, which he made by espousing horrific and bigoted views in the name of advancing Christian nationalism. The foundation of his empire was the group he cofounded and led, Turning Point USA, which is a key youth-recruitment arm of the MAGA movement. Kirk was able to launch Turning Point at the age of 18 because he received money from Tea Party member Bill Montgomery, right-wing donor Foster Feiss, and his own father, also a prolific right-wing donor. He was an unrepentant racist, transphobe, homophobe, and misogynist who often wrapped his bigotry in Bible verses because there was no other way to pretend that it was morally correct. He had children, as do many vile people.

Morning

I'm going to start practicing politics the right way.

Friday Evening

Enjoy

Moving On

 

You Know Who Else Is Complicit?

Many, if not most, of their colleagues, though I think they know that.

Two Democratic senators claim they have reached the “inescapable conclusion” that Israel is acting on a systematic plan to destroy and ethnically cleanse Palestinians from Gaza to force local people to leave, and they say the US is complicit.

Chris Van Hollen of Maryland and Jeff Merkley of Oregon, both members of the Senate foreign relations committee, released their findings in a report on Thursday after returning from a congressional delegation to the Middle East where, they note, the destruction goes beyond bombs and bullets. They say they also found a systematic campaign to strangle humanitarian aid, which they call “using food as a weapon of war”.

Certainly the House and Senate leaders are.

Lunch

eat

"Tactic"

There are inevitably going to be grey areas in something like a B1 (or basic visa waiver entry) visa, and it sounds like some of this was in no way an attempt to abuse the system.

Georgia ICE Raid Netted Workers With Short-Term Business Visas

Last week’s immigration operation at a battery plant highlighted a tactic that companies use to bring in foreign workers to establish new operations.

Lost in most of the discussion is that you can tighten enforcement without violently detaining and shackling people in broad sweeps. "Stop doing that work," fines, and "you have one week to leave the country" would suffice.

A lot of people will "self-deport" if you tell them they have to. That isn't always appropriate, nice, or according to the law as previously understood before Miller's Calvinball, but it is better than locking people up in these conditions.

If your message is: stay out, foreign companies, then you can do what they're doing.

Framed

I scheduled the blockquoted bit below before it came out that they caught a guy. I still don't know anything about his motives for sure - though some things are trickling out - but the fact that they stopped screaming about transgender antifa implies some things!

I am not making any predictions here, because it would be stupid to do so, but what all coverage misses is:

1) Right wing violence is much more of a thing than left wing violence, the opposite of how it has been portrayed for years. 2) Extremely hardcore right wingers fucking hated Charlie Kirk, largely because he wasn't openly antisemitic enough for them (related to another thing our glorious media portrays in opposite world terms).

New York Times style guide update likely incoming: Groypers are left wing.

What, Like, You Expect Me To Work?

A fascinating thing, to me, is how so many Trumpers don't seem to take their jobs seriously, though this might have been more the case in his first term. It is less that they are incompetent, and more that they have no sense that, for example, running the FBI is an important job at all.

Whether Mr. Patel can overcome his embarrassing early stumble in posts online about the Kirk investigation remains to be seen. The F.B.I. director’s actions have already invited scorn and scrutiny from the bureau’s work force, and some senior officials at the Justice Department, who think his behavior has eroded public confidence in the F.B.I.

If I were Kash or a Bongino - a lazy dumb shit who just wanted to spend my day posting and going on Fox News - the first thing I would do is find the most competent guy who would put up with my shit that I could, and say, "You're in charge of the real work."

Morning

Going back in.

Sources

The NYT has one saying the MAGA CHUDS infiltrating the FBI are lying:

Lunch

eat

Sure Why Not

I'm glad to see our immigration policies/enforcement/industrial strategy plans continue to be coherent and in alignment.

South Koreans arrested by US authorities are due to be repatriated on Thursday, after their flight was delayed by a row over whether they should wear handcuffs and an offer from Donald Trump that the workers at the centre of an immigration raid be allowed to stay.

...

“The US wanted to handcuff our workers on their way to the airport, but we insisted that it should not be that way,” said Lee, adding that the flight was further delayed after “Trump’s order that those who don’t want to go back don’t have to”.

President Trump told US officials to “encourage” the workers arrested at the Georgia plant to continue working in the country and help train Americans, according to South Korean officials cited by the state-owned news agency Yonhap.

Dumb Politics Day

There will probably light blogging as I think I might be going insane.

Celebrating The Life Of Charlie Kirk

It does seem like the best way to do that is to honestly communicate what he spent the last decade of his life doing and saying, to quote the very public statements of this very public figure accurately, and to honor his advocacy by accurately explaining it to people, but instead we're going spend the day focusing on "Charlie Kirk," a fictional construct.

Normal people, who mostly don't know who the guy is, are going to be very confused if they ever discover anything he said about anything, accidentally.  The New York Times and cable news aren't going to tell them.

The best you can say about some  prominent mainstream journalists, at the moment, is that they have no idea what Kirk's views are, because none of them really pay attention to prominent right wingers who aren’t in the green room with them.

They certainly can't hear his critics - the mostly black female college professors who Turning Point has been terrorizing for years, for example.   Those people aren't in the green room  - or the group chat - either.

Choose your favorite: they don't know, they are pretending not to know, or they genuinely know and approve.

Morning

Happy Rudy Giuliani day.

Happy Hour

Get happy

Oh Dear. Time For Another Blogger Ethics Panel.

The glorious free press.

The publisher of the Washington Post, Will Lewis, is facing fresh questions over his independence after a cache of leaked files revealed he gave extensive support to Boris Johnson as a secret political adviser when Johnson was prime minister.

The files shed light on how the media executive, who at the time was vice-chair of the Associated Press news agency, worked behind the scenes with Johnson as his premiership was engulfed by a series of scandals.

I know Americans think of UK journalism as "BBC World Service," those Guardian investigative pieces you remember, and that one interview with Jeremy Paxman from 30 years ago, but most of them are like Lewis. For those who don't remember the "blogger ethics panel" reference, when bloggers became a thing, some journalist were obsessed with trying to impose professional ("ethics") standards on us that didn't even apply in theory to journalists, let alone in practice.

They had public panel discussions about this stuff without consulting with or featuring any bloggers.

It was an attempt to marginalize and drive us out of "business."

Do It, Brad

I expect he won't (not that I would know), but Goldman really sucks.

Progressives are trying to entice New York City Comptroller Brad Lander into a Democratic congressional primary with a poll that shows him leading Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y. — if he runs.

...

Given a choice between Goldman and Lander, the comptroller leads the incumbent congressman by 19 points — with 52% supporting Lander and 33% backing Goldman. Demand Progress Action, a separate progressive group, commissioned the poll. Data for Progress was one of the first pollsters to identify Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani’s surge in the June New York City mayoral primary.

Forensic, Sir Keir

UK ambassador to the US, who has a very long record of corruption which UK journalists forget and remember as needed (that is how jouralism works there).

In a string of leaked messages, Mandelson wrote: "I think the world of you and I feel hopeless and furious about what has happened.

"I can still barely understand it. It just could not happen in Britain. You have to be incredibly resilient, fight for early release and be…

— Politics UK (@PolitlcsUK) September 10, 2025

Mandelson's right - it is almost unfathomable that the "British Epstein" would be arrested in Britain.

Lunch

eat

The Campus Free Speech Crisis (part 2)

One of its consequences.

In other words: if you’re looking to abduct a Columbia student in broad daylight, simply claim to be a federal agent!

— alex bronzini-vender (@alexbronzini) September 9, 2025

Columbia probably has to check if they called law enforcement on the student themselves.

The Campus Free Speech Crisis

Anyone who participated in that should be treated with contempt and scorn.

Yes, I mean they should be CANCELLED.

Seems Bad

I guess France might not just be talking shit.

Polish prime minister Donald Tusk has said the shooting down of Russian drones in Poland overnight was the first time this has happened in Nato territory.

Speaking ahead of an emergency government meeting, Tusk said Polish airspace was violated by a “huge” number of Russian drones.

He says that those which posed a threat were shot down by Polish and Nato pilots.

“This is the first time Russian drones have been shot down over the territory of a Nato country. All our allies are taking the situation very seriously. We have not recorded any casualties,” he says.

He adds that it was probably a “large-scale provocation” by Russia.

Morning

Wacky Wednesday.

Stop Being Too Obvious

Israel just making heads of government look like bigger assholes every day. 

We can't pretend you are negotiating if you keep bombing the negotiators!

Happy Hour

get happy

Oopsie

* WHITE HOUSE: U.S. FEELS BADLY ABOUT LOCATION OF ATTACK * WHITE HOUSE: ASSURED QATAR THAT SUCH A THING WILL NOT HAPPEN AGAIN ON THEIR SOIL @reuters.com

— Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla.bsky.social) September 9, 2025 at 6:46 PM

We have agreements and a big base there. This is pretty absurd.

Comet Pizza-A-Lago

Echoing something I wrote before, will any of our great Reactionary Centrists, who regularly fret about lefties/liberals being in a "bubble" and not understanding conservatives, even wonder out loud just how it is that a movement obsessed with a Grand Global Pedophile Conspiracy, centered on Jeffrey Epstein, somehow missed that he was Trump's bestie.

Lunch

eat

Sure Why Not

I guess Trump is gonna need a bigger (than an airplane) bribe.

Israel targets Hamas leadership in Qatar strike

Seems Bad

The world is giving off some 1914 vibes, among other things.

French hospitals have been told to prepare a potential armed conflict in Europe by next year, local media reported.

In a letter sent to regional health agencies, revealed by Le Canard Enchaîné , the Ministry of Health asked hospitals to prepare for a “major (military) engagement” by March 2026.

The newspaper warned that between 10,000 and 50,000 men could be expected in hospitals over a period of 10 to 180 days.

One of the Lads

I often think about how Chris Christie left office with a 14% approval rating, and then journalists and news outlets just kept promoting him as if he were a popular politician people were desperate to hear from, all without ever considering, or caring about, the reasons why he had a 14% approval rating.

This post isn't really about Chris Christie.

Morning

Don't see how Donnie Two Scoops wriggles out of this one.

Monday Night

Rock on

Monday Evening

Had to step out for a bit. Trump wrote a letter or something?

Happy Hour

Get happy.

Give It A Go

 See where it leads. Why not?

We cannot understand the true nature of the Universe, unless we question deeply.

I want to know what is real, even if the answer is total obliteration of my consciousness.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 8, 2025

A City Filled With Paid Liars

I've said this before, but a big problem with DC (political DC, not the broader city) culture is that so many people are paid to lie, so the social structure would fall apart if lying wasn't tacitly approved by everyone involved.

I'm not saying everyone is evil. Some of that lying is mostly harmless stuff, the kind of lying we all generally accept as part of life. You know, embellishing a bit to make your boss look good. Putting the best spin things. Shining a lot of turds.

But a lot of that lying is "lobbyist for EvilCorp" type stuff. And, hey, we're all friends here. Politics is a career. People might enter as a staffer for Congressperson Dogooder and then find themselves working for Satan, Inc. (DC office), a few years later. Am I going to abandon my friend group as they move through the ranks, from lowly congressional office interns to positions like Vice President of Genocide Promotion for the Center for American Advancement?

They invite me to their vacation homes in Tuscany, after all.

When the culture thrives on lies, you don't last long if it bothers you. You don't last long if you even notice it.  You don't last at all if you bring it up.

The system is corrupt, not just individuals.

All The President's Horses

I don't really care if Trump gets booed or not - the real story here is that the USTA tried to censor (with some success) media organizations. But here we have a journalist from "MSDNC" arguing (later in replies) that because she showed up 6 hours early, and didn't face delays getting in, no one else did, which is at odds with reality.

I was there. I didn’t witness him getting booed & the delay wasn’t a big deal.
The day was about great tennis.
The President was there too. https://t.co/DtV17kAdTf

— Stephanie Ruhle (@SRuhle) September 8, 2025

It's rare these days for journalists to attack other media outlets, to question their reporting. It's a choosing sides kinda thing.

The viewpoint of "it didn't happen to me so it didn't happen" explains much!

Now What

This was Carville, in February, telling Dems to do nothing, basically.

It’s a wiser approach than we pursued in the first Trump administration, when Democrats tried and failed at the art of resistance politics. We voiced outrage on social issue after social issue. We spun ourselves up in a tizzy over an investigation into Russia. We fought Mr. Trump at every corner, on every issue imaginable and muddied up our message in an unwinnable war. We were saved only by his lousy governing and a lot of effort on our side finding good candidates to run for the House and Senate in 2018. Sometimes the most powerful thing we can do is retreat on the immediate battlefield — and advance in another direction.

It won’t take long. Public support for this administration will fall through the floorboard. It’s already happening. Just over a month in, the president’s approval has already sunk underwater in two new polls. The people did not vote for the Department of Education to be obliterated; they voted for lower prices for eggs and milk. Democrats, let the Republicans’ own undertow drag them away.

At this rate, the Trump honeymoon will be over, best case, by Memorial Day but more likely in the next 30 days. And in November 2025, we start turning the tide with what will be remembered as one of the most important elections in recent years: the Virginia governor’s race. From tax enforcers to rocket scientists, bank regulators and essential workers — the Trump administration is hellbent on drastically firing the federal work force, despite the fact that federal civilian employees account for just 3 percent of the federal budget. These workers are highly concentrated in Virginia, home to around 144,000 civilian federal employees. It looks set to be a resounding Republican defeat. This will be the first moment when we can take the offensive back and begin our crusade again.

It seems the plan was/is:

1) Do nothing

2) Trump gets unpopular

3) Continue doing nothing

4) Win VA governor's race

5) Continue doing nothing

6) Win 2026

"Doing nothing" is shorthand for "avoid any big confrontation" which includes, at the moment, not demanding anything serious - or perhaps anything at all - in exchange for preventing a government shut down.

This question is mainly an extension of the “collaborate or fight” decision Democrats weighed in March. Fighting does mean fighting for something, and Democrats appear to have landed on that something being short-term relief on health care.

But, as noted above, it is quite likely that there won’t be sufficient Republican votes in Congress, or support from Trump, to preserve ACA subsidies. The real issue, therefore, is whether Democrats are willing to see a shutdown battle through to its conclusion. I think at some level Democrats know that Trump isn’t very likely to come to the table around a bipartisan negotiation; it has not been his posture whatsoever in the second term.

So this really comes down to whether Democrats actually believe they can win a shutdown fight politically—or have the stomach for it. That’s a little curious, since Democrats have won every shutdown fight of the past 30 years, whether they were the party in power or out of power. Under Clinton, Republicans were blamed; under Obama, Republicans were blamed; under Trump, in his first term, Trump was blamed. And Democrats got favorable outcomes in the aftermath.

But Democrats have this burning desire to be the responsible party, and in their minds, shutdowns are irresponsible. There are also a lot of theories of how Trump could run roughshod over the bureaucracy if funding is cut off, though I don’t know how you could even entertain such a threat given his trampling of federal agencies since January 20. What would be any more punitive toward the civil service after a shutdown, relative to before?

Is this a good plan?

 

Maybe They'll Listen To Someone Who Matters

I liked Ezra's piece better the first time I read it, back in December when Jamelle Bouie wrote it (basically), but some people can't hear Jamelle for some reason.

They don't have a magic stop button, but they did not listen to Jamelle in December, and here we are.

Morning

Monster Monday.

Sunday Afternoon

Enjoy

Poll-Driven Party Can't Read Polls

Is immigration a good thing for the USA

Yes 79% (Highest ever)
No 17% (Lowest Ever)

Gallup pic.twitter.com/THrYZmkQtd

— Political Polls (@PpollingNumbers) September 7, 2025

Rotten Institutions

We've all seen what happens when the non-government portion of The Blob is activated for a supposedly righteous cause.  They help ensure we do things like invade Iraq, and are very good at it.

They've all pretty much gone silent on Russia and Ukraine.

In recent months, dozens of Russians have been expelled from the US and returned to Russia with the co-operation of immigration authorities.

When the dissidents arrived in Russia, the Russian authorities were given documents relating to their asylum applications in the US. Those dossiers, outlining their political beliefs and criticisms of Putin, could be used to prosecute them back home, campaigners believe.

The rest is behind the paywall, but you get the idea.

I am sure some of this has to do with Bezos destroying the Post, which for both good and ill was the way The Blob sent their memos to the rest of DC.

But most of it is just that these organizations were also just influence schemes for the worst people in the world, and when the wind shifts...

Worst Person/Great Point

I am quite sure that Dems are currently being told not to say things like this.

Morning

Sunday funday.

Saturday Happy Hour

Enjoy

Boom

I used to put these kinds of predictions on my calendar regularly. I should start doing that again.

Mommy He Shot Me Back

Some insight into what turned the tech guys into Nazis:

Mozilla guy (Eich) donates money to support banning same sex marriage. People - importantly, his employees! - get mad and he loses his position, eventually.  This is not being tossed out a window.  More importantly, who shot first, here? 

This is presumably what Marc Andreessen complains about on the rich guy group chat as he justifies going full MAGA to the beneficiaries of his patronage.

The American Empire

Not quite where I have always imagined.

Senator Pudding Brain

CIA not beating the allegation of "storage closet for elite failchildren."

Apparently there was a video, too (both since deleted).

This wasn't a slip. It was in a written speech and blasted out on social media.

Slotkin's only 4 years younger than I am. This was still an era were you grew up "knowing" this stuff through basic osmosis if your parents flipped on PBS occasionally, even aside from what you should have just learned.

Admittedly I knew this stuff a bit more than the average bear because my mom was a child in Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project, but still...

You can read coverage of the speech here, from a liberal outlet which puts in convenient ellipses to obscure the stupid part. The whole thing is the same fucking speech a certain kind of Democrat has been giving for 20 years, in which nothing can be justified separate from "national security" and a "threat from China."

Improving lives in America isn't a "national security" issue. You don't have to frame it that way.

Bernie Sanders: we should take these actions to improve the lives of Middle Class Americans (boo, hiss, communism)

Centrist Dipshit Senators: we should do unspecified things to improve the lives of Middle Class Americans because scary China (swoon, wow, so smart, brilliant)

John Blutarsky was closer to reality:

Friday Night

Rock on.

Leprechaun Barbecue

After many reports that Trump was trying to "induce" Eric Adams out of the race for mayor, he is, in fact, going to keep running. At least for today.

Short version is that he needs to drop out by 9/11 or he stays on the ballot, though there are a couple wrinkles.

Stay Away

Businesss keep your money and people out.

Around 450 people were arrested, said the Atlanta office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in a social-media post. The post described the people as “unlawful aliens.”

...

...

Among those detained at the factory were South Korean employees of LG Energy Solution on business travel. Hyundai Motor said it believed that it didn’t directly employ any of those detained. LG Energy said Friday it was cooperating with the South Korean government and relevant authorities to ensure the employees’ safety and secure their prompt release from detention.

Certain kinds of business travel are of course perfectly legal for people from visa waiver countries, but don't expect agents with a quota to know or care. Heckuva job, here:

SAVANNAH, Ga. — Tori Branum is a Marine Corps veteran, firearms instructor, and Republican candidate for Georgia’s 12th congressional District.

She’s also a proud “America first” supporter of President Donald Trump. On Thursday, as agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security were still carrying out a raid at a Hyundai plant in rural Bryan County, just outside the district Branum is running to serve, she expressed pride in something else: her purported role in causing the raid, which resulted in the arrest of 450 people, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

“How do I feel about it? Good,” Branum tells Rolling Stone. “I have no feelings about the law. What’s right is right and what’s wrong is wrong.”

Certainly helping My President's plan to attract foreign investment.

Donald The Dove

Sorry, Mr. President, sir, this going to make giving you that Peace Prize (you were the best nominee!) a bit harder.

US President Donald Trump will sign an executive order on Friday that directs the Department of Defense to be known as the Department of War.

Y'all Motherfuckers Lying And Getting Me Pissed

I suppose a minor difference between reactionary centrists and the MAGA right is that the former are proud of being the smartest boys in the room, believing they know things they do not know and understand things they do not understand, while the latter embrace being dumbasses.

The former think you can win with debate club in the Marketplace Of Ideas and the latter are just, "fuck you, we're in charge."

Suspected

We're all enemy combatants now.

Trump Claims the Power to Summarily Kill Suspected Drug Smugglers

Reiterating: drug smuggling is not a capital crime nor even (in itself) violent.

Monthly Jobs Report

There was some drama (nerd drama) earlier as the database tools weren't working, but +22K jobs for the month - shitty number, though the reality could be even shittier because lol nothing matters.

You need about +150K per month to keep up with population growth.

Gotta fire whoever the new guy is.

Morning

What will distract us from kitchen table issues today?

Happy Hour

Get happy

Priorities

They don't believe in what were the primary functions of the FBI, so why not.

WASHINGTON, Sept 4 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump's surge of federal law enforcement into Washington, D.C., is exposing the FBI's fleet of unmarked cars, potentially risking its ability to do its most sensitive national security and surveillance work, nine current and former employees of the bureau warned.

Tom's Two Laws Of Robotics

The Moustache Of Understanding:

So what I was trying to do is basically say, given this onrushing train of A.I. and its vast implications, there’s only one way to manage this, and that is if the two A.I. superpowers — China and the United States — collaborate together on a system for controlling A.I. and ensuring that every A.I. device that either of them makes or sells to the other has embedded in it a set of ethical normative controls to ensure that their A.I.s can only be used for the advancement of human well-being, and not for any nefarious purposes.

Sometime I feel the need to explain why things are dumb, but I think pointing laughing is good enough for this one.

The Liberal Bubble

A regular trope presented by our reactionary centrists (shy right wingers) is that liberals/lefties live in some sort of cloistered "bubble," unaware of the concerns and thoughts of right wingers, despite having them blasted at us from every media outlet constantly. 

Needless to say, they never write this piece for right wingers who have no idea that The Left thinks about anything (reactionary centrists don't either).

As for the bubble, it is somewhat amusing that the MAGA Right has spent years constructing elaborate conspiracy theories centered on Jeffrey Epstein, while somehow missing that Donald Trump and Mar-A-Lago are at the center of Epstein Cinematic Universe.

We could've told them that.

Sure Why Not

They shouldn't do it, but it would be a little bit funny, at least.

Driving the news: Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla on Wednesday called Trump's Operation Warp Speed — the 2020 American effort to develop COVID vaccines — "a profound public health achievement."

"Such an accomplishment would typically be worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize, given its significant impact," Bourla said in a statement.

He also provided a link to "numerous published studies and updates" that validate the Pfizer vaccine's "safety and effectiveness."

Chemtrails

The dangers of indulging the fantasies of the crazies.

Since the state law went into effect, the Floridians who backed it have grown increasingly angry by seeing the skies just as marked by white trails as they were prior to the state law.

Here’s a smattering of irate posts on X in the two months since the state law went into effect:

— “Yes, the spraying has taken place every single day since the Ban was put in place!”

— “The invasion continues. Florida skies are under constant attack.”

— “DeSantis, why do you lie? Why do you say that you signed a Florida Bill getting rid of these hideous chemtrails, and it is all a fat big LIE?”

— “Welcome to Florida, the chemtrails state. Now we are being sprayed from 4 a.m. to 5 a.m., so by 10 a.m. the skies are cleared but you are breathing heavy metals. Thank you DeSantis.”

— “See how the chemicals are spreading out. Trees are dying, crops are barely growing. Why is our government doing this to us?”

By humoring Florida’s free-dumb coalition on chemtrails, state lawmakers have unleashed a tornado of disappointment upon themselves.

While not precisely the same, there is a lesson here about trying to give anti-immigration zealots something you can't give them. They don't want cuts to illegal immigration or even legal immigration. 

They want you to send them all back again, and if you can't provide that, they won't be happy. They will vote for the people who they think might.

Stop negotiating with the imaginary Reasonable Republican in your head, imagining that surely this compromise will appeal to them, because it's very sensible. Reasonable Republicans don't exist, and they haven't agreed to your compromise.

At Least They Fake Banned Tik Tok

I wonder if any country was too stupid to have data sniffers (I have no idea if this is a good technical term) around the White House when they were sending everything through Starlink.

China has hacked into American power grids and companies for decades, stealing sensitive files and intellectual property such as chip designs as it seeks to gain an edge over the United States.

But a sweeping cyberattack by a group known as Salt Typhoon is China’s most ambitious yet, experts and officials have concluded after a year of investigating it. It targeted more than 80 countries and may have stolen information from nearly every American, officials said. They see it as evidence that China’s capabilities rival those of the United States and its allies.

I suspect a decent chunk of powerful people are regularly being blackmailed by foreign powers, but we've hit the "what can you do" point of that.

Morning

Thirsty Thursday

Happy Hour

get happy

Sure Why Not

It isn't going to take too much more for other countries to move towards requiring vaccination proof.

Florida is set to end all state vaccine mandates, state Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo announced at a news conference Wednesday.

Of course, other states won't be able to do similar, as people bring their measles back from Plague Park, Orlando.

Recessions

It just occurred to me that the last two downturns - Great and Covid  - were quite acute and sudden.  The former had a slow recovery time - thanks, Obama - and the latter a quick one, but in both cases the onsets were quick.

I think "we" sort of expect them to be like that, now, but neither of them were "normal."

I'm not predicting one.  I'm just saying that it generally takes awhile for things like tariff increases to percolate through the economy.

Saved

The author used to yell at me when I would post this, arguing that the piece was nuanced and critical and blahblahblah, but, well..

(this is from 2013)

Why Don't You Make Them One Million Percent Then

Bernie Sanders can be like, "maybe we should raise the minimum wage," and a thousand economists and Briefcase Centrists will descend upon his house with pitchforks to explain why he doesn't understand economics, and now we have this...

Imagine if every country did this, we could push world output to infinity in weeks.

Assassinations

I don't expect The Democrats to point out that assassinating alleged drug smugglers - not even a capital crime - is, maybe, bad, but they should consider the broader consequeneces of these taboos continuing to fall.

Extrajudicial killing is bad, yo.

Judicial, too.

You gotta stand on principle or you'll find there aren't any left.

No I don't think The Democrats have magic powers to stop these things.

Morning

Wacky Wednesday

You Can't Trust Freedom When It's Not In Your Hands

Pritzker has his own Guard.

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) said Tuesday President Donald Trump is preparing to deploy National Guard troops in the state over the governor’s repeated objections. Pritzker also warned Trump will soon launch large-scale immigration raids in Chicago.

Pritzker said the Trump administration has begun staging the Texas National Guard for deployment in Illinois. He added that Illinois law enforcement agents were informed by Trump administration officials that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal agencies will soon begin immigration operations across Chicago.

“In the coming days, we expect to see what has played out in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., to happen here in Chicago,” Pritzker said, referring to Trump’s aggressive deployment of the military in Los Angeles earlier this year and his recent deployment in D.C.

Work Is Hard

I bet most of these guys are barely-shows.

As the article points out, man-against-working-from-home can't use it as an excuse.

Exciting Announcement Thread

Still a chance it is "I am dead."

Lunch

eat

Do The Robot

I know Elon's robots are 100% bullshit, but for anyone who thinks they're 90% bullshit:

Automation and robots are nothing new. We have been very good at producing highly efficient machines for specific tasks. The point of a general purpose humanoid robot is that it would be able to do a wide variety of tasks without additional programming and with a great degree of flexibility.

What would they be useful for? My test is the "clean my table, load the dishwasher, and put the clean dishes away" test. That would be the home consumer test.

A commercial test would be "clean hotel rooms."

Try to imagine these creations doing those things. You can't do it, my friends.

Elon Musk is deemphasizing Tesla Inc.’s car business like never before in favor of humanoid robots that are still in development and a ways off from generating revenue.

Tesla’s chief executive officer said Monday the company will derive about 80% of its value from Optimus, the robot initiative he first touted four years ago. Musk made the prediction shortly after Tesla published its latest “master plan,” an oft updated corporate manifesto that mentioned robots for the first time.

He is just going to abandon the car business. And somehow the stock price will stay afloat.

Nadler

My longtime theory about congressional non-retirements - confirmed by a few people - has been that even the rich ones can't easily replace the loyal staffers that provide the equivalent of elder care.*  Good for Nadler not taking that route. I always liked him.

In a recent interview in his downtown Manhattan office, Mr. Nadler, 78, said he hesitated to step aside when he believes that President Trump is threatening the foundations of democracy. But he said he had been persuaded it was time for a changing of the guard.

“Watching the Biden thing really said something about the necessity for generational change in the party, and I think I want to respect that,” Mr. Nadler said, adding that a younger successor “can maybe do better, can maybe help us more.”

I don't really know why the "genocide" word is too much for people - its application to various events in the 90s didn't have this level controversy.  It isn't "holocaust" or "Shoah."  But I don't really care what people call it as long as they don't think arguing about the word is more important than what is happening. Still coming from Nadler this is something:

“I don’t know what to say at this point,” he said. “I can’t defend what Israel is doing.”

Mr. Nadler has been sharply critical of Hamas, still believes in a two-state solution for the region and does not agree with those who say Israel is carrying out genocide in Gaza. But he said that under the leadership of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel was committing mass murder and war crimes in Gaza “without question.”

*Many people don't get that "elder care" largely isn't medical or similar, more just handling the complexities of life which become harder to handle.  More like you are dealing with a child, but they own a house and otherwise have the complications of adult life, like dealing with two factor authorization.

This One's For All The Haters And The Losers

I suspect the 2pm announcement from Trump is not "I am dead." I predict that Donald the Dove is going to start calling it the War Department.

Trump will make “an exciting announcement related to the Department of Defense,” per Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt. https://t.co/mnxMEKLdbh

— Josh Wingrove (@josh_wingrove) September 2, 2025

...ah looks like it's the LOCATION OF SPACE COMMAND. Could be both.

Morning

Dead again?

Monday Evening

Enjoy

Precisely The Same

Seems Bad

The relaxation of the assassination taboo has not been especially wise.

A plane carrying the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was targeted by GPS navigation jamming while trying to land in Bulgaria on Sunday, a spokesperson for the commission told CNN.

The West

I don't really know who "The West" is in this framework. Or what "aligned" means. I don't think whoever wrote it does either.

It was a scene in eastern China almost certainly intended for an audience on the other side of the world: The leaders of China, Russia and India, the three largest powers not aligned with the West, smiling and laughing like good friends as they greeted each other at a summit on Monday.

Legitimate Concerns

This is mostly about the UK - with lessons from the US - but the same applies to all The Democrats (and I know many of you don't like to believe me, but this is the animating belief of House Democrats right now) who think they can put on their tough guy racist pants and "win" on immigration.

That is because the question at the heart of immigration crises isn’t “how many is too many”, but “how few is few enough”. The answer is “fewer than zero”. And because that is not a scenario that is possible, no matter what ever-escalating pledges, solutions or policies are offered, nothing will ever be enough. And each time that one decisive solution is executed – whether that be Brexit, increasing deportations, mobilising the navy – a chorus of voices will tell us that these are necessary placatory measures, and then promptly forget when the next one is demanded, and sign up to that as well. 

Morning

Holiday Monday funday.

Cindy Who

Not that I expect anything from Trump's people, but that Biden's people and all senators stopped taking her calls is.. a lot.

This is the team. The ones making sure food reaches people in #Gaza. Despite tremendous challenges, their commitment and determination never waivers.

I reiterate my call for their safety & protection—and for the sustained access that @WFP needs to continue our life-saving work. pic.twitter.com/Q9IVmdPiFt

— Cindy McCain (@WFPChief) August 31, 2025

Translate This

I think what actually happened is pretty obvious, but you can all speculate!

Afternoon

enjoy

America's Worst Humans

Patrick O'Hanlon.

Main Character

One can't completely deny America's centrality in the world, but we are, relatively speaking, much less important than we used to be. A lot of those "poor" countries - big and small - aren't poor anymore. Our big sticks are still there, of course, but our carrots, especially ones dangled by the Mad King, aren't as valuable as they once were. Any transition is complicated and potentially costly, but China and India (for example) really don't need the US.

Public Safety

Broadly, the "police chase" should basically never happen.

U.S. Park Police have initiated at least 10 car chases in the past three weeks as part of President Donald Trump’s surge in federal law enforcement in D.C., court records show. They’re pursuing drivers they tried to stop for tinted windows and fake tags, broken headlights and running a stop sign.

A driver with a minor in the back seat struck a tree, then a guardrail. Another accelerated to more than 80 mph before hitting multiple cars on Interstate 295. A third nearly hit a detective before flipping the car. Court records reviewed by The Washington Post show that among the 10 chases since Aug. 14, at least six involved crashes.

The pursuits — all of which began as traffic stops for nonviolent crimes and were initiated by federal task forces formed in response to Trump’s Aug. 11 executive order — would have violated D.C. police policy. The District’s police department allows car chases only when the driver is putting other lives in danger or is suspected of committing a violent crime.

Morning

Sunday funday

Some Dumbasses Thought Trump Would Actually Pay Them

How do people not learn.

Saturday Afternoon

It appears the reports of his death were somewhat exaggerated.

Sure Why Not

I guess all IP law is nonsense now.

Aug 29 (Reuters) - Meta has appropriated the names and likenesses of celebrities – including Taylor Swift, Scarlett Johansson, Anne Hathaway and Selena Gomez – to create dozens of flirty social-media chatbots without their permission, Reuters has found.

While many were created by users with a Meta tool for building chatbots, Reuters discovered that a Meta employee had produced at least three, including two Taylor Swift “parody” bots.

Amazing stuff:

All of the virtual celebrities have been shared on Meta’s Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp platforms. In several weeks of Reuters testing to observe the bots’ behavior, the avatars often insisted they were the real actors and artists. The bots routinely made sexual advances, often inviting a test user for meet-ups.

Interesting Times

Morning

Is he dead yet?

Friday Evening

enjoy

...Circuit Court chucks out Trump's tariffs.   Someone wake John Roberts.

Deathgrip

You don't have to know anything about any of these people to know this is nuts.

Reportedly, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is wooing Maine Governor Janet Mills to run for the nomination. At 77, a win against Collins would make her the oldest senate freshman in history. (Platner is 40.) Platner’s campaign only becomes an insurgency against Susan Collins if he first survives the Democratic establishment. His pointed critiques of party inaction have already set the tone. His candidacy isn’t just about beating Republicans, it’s about forcing Democrats to do more than fundraise off of their failures.

Whoopsie Doodle

They lie about everything.

Years after a Tesla driver using Autopilot plowed into a young Florida couple in 2019, crucial electronic data detailing how the fatal wreck unfolded was missing. The information was key for a wrongful death case the survivor and the victim’s family were building against Tesla, but the company said it didn’t have the data.

Then a self-described hacker, enlisted by the plaintiffs to decode the contents of a chip they recovered from the vehicle, found it while sipping a Venti-size hot chocolate at a South Florida Starbucks. Tesla later said in court that it had the data on its own servers all along.

The hacker’s discovery would become a key piece of evidence presented during a trial that began last month in Miami federal court, which dissected the final moments before the collision and ended in a historic $243 million verdict against the company.