And I would have fucked off at you today too, but writer and editor Paul Slansky was all like oh dear is something wrong with my newsletter email I have not been getting the Wonkette One A Days, and first, how dare you, and second, FINE, PAUL, HERE’S YOUR GODDAMN ROUNDUP.

So many newses in your morning news!

Show me the lie.

Morale is high now that they can kill people on badass car chases again, so yay! Oh wait, not yay.

Can you believe both houses of Congress actually passed a bill? And it was Liz Warren’s? Well yeah, about that.

LOL I’m sorry but I just can’t.

Big strong Oklahoma state troopers arrested a guy for cussing in the vicinity of the Holy Reflecting Pool so that’s how that all is going!

See you bright and early for tabs!

We would like to tell you about some Oklahoma state troopers and members of the Park Police, all of whom are proud members of Der Führer’s stormtrooper brigade now, we reckon.

We don’t know what any of these cops’ bitchass shitmouthed pigfuckin’ names are, or who their loser fuckin’ little beta dads are, or who their slatternly goddamn strumpet-ass-lookin’ moms are, or anything about them really, except that they apparently get real offended when people cuss in front of Donald Trump’s piece of shit, cheap-ass, brokedick, badly contracted, badly renovated Reflecting Pool.

We guess on top of being longer than the Empire State Building if you were able to stand it up on its hind legs, the Reflecting Pool is impressionable and repeats everything it hears.

Also we reckon when you’re the kind of cop who thinks you’re doing an honorable and important job protecting Donald Trump’s bargain-basement vinyl liners from people threatening to point and laugh at them, you are probably also the type of absolute loser who gets upset when people say swears.

So in that situation you — because you’re a joke and a bootlicking fascist — have the Park Police haul the man away in handcuffs, for cussing.

Here is a video report of the arrested guy speaking out, from noted journalism outfit TMZ:

The Guardian explains that what happened here is that a local DC resident named Christian Miles was talking absolute shit at Oklahoma state troopers, who we guess are taking time out of whatever racist totalitarian shit cops do in Oklahoma to “protect” Donald Trump’s clownishly botched re-do of the Reflecting Pool. (The paper notes that, despite Trump’s lies, nobody who has been arrested for damaging the Reflecting Pool has actually been accused of, you know, damaging it. One is a former Olympian.)

Miles fills in some blanks:

[Miles] told the Guardian on Tuesday that he was charged with violating a federal obscenity law for berating a group of Oklahoma state troopers guarding the reflecting pool.

Miles, a freelance video editor and former US navy submariner, has made it a personal project in recent months to “document the creeping police state” since Trump’s federal takeover of policing in Washington DC by filming himself confronting, and often berating, federal troops and officers around the city.

You may also watch the video of Miles yelling at the Oklahoma troopers. (He’s done this before.)

We like the part where the troopers, like all poorly educated American fascists, explain that actually this is freedom because “Go to China, they’d run over you in a tank in Red Square!”

Always have hated those pesky Chinese tanks in Red Square.

Anyway, here is one of the official training videos for the Park Police and the Oklahoma State Troopers:

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In related news, the Park Police has put out a BOLO (Be On the LookOut) for the person who appears in this surveillance video clearly committing the crime of aggravated touching the water in the Reflecting Pool. We don’t know if she whispered any forbidden cusses like “cuntswallop” or “poot” in the Reflecting Pool’s ear, but might as well assume she did:

“The incident.”

Also being noted in the comments of that BOLO tweet:

Yes, that is indeed a thing that happened.

Fucking degenerates.

Finally, yesterday, President Dementia Sharts forced NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte to sit there and keep a straight face for 11 SOLID MINUTES as he blabbered and blubbered and babbled and jangled keys around in his brain about imaginary Reflecting Pool vandalism. (Rutte didn’t mind, he is a tongue-bathing kiss-ass.)

It was, um, well … well, it sure was something!

Here, via Aaron Rupar, is the full 11:55 clip. After that, some shorter excerpts:

“They have a gash on that beautiful pool. It’s a reflecting one!”

There are a lot of lines in that 11 minutes, but we think that’s our favorite, on top of the lies about Obama and Biden spending hundreds of millions of imaginary dollars trying to fix the Reflecting Pool.

They sure do tell Grandpa a lot of stories up there in that White House.

"They’re sick people. I think they’re in big trouble!”

“Here’s the bottom line,” Trump said, before he ranted for seven more minutes.

“You know, grass has a life just like people have a life.”

“They took razor blades, 350 feet. […] They took razor blades and knives and they cut patches like that 350 feet long. […] They cut the lining! And there’s pictures of a guy bending over. I don’t know if anybody saw that!”

Well, considering how Trump hallucinated it inside one of the most seemingly syphilis-infected crevices of his cranial cavity, we imagine there aren’t any pictures of it, at least not until Trump sits on the toilet and starts retweeting AI posts on Truth Social later.

“Ready? THUGS!”

They got the guy, he’s a member of ActBlue! Big Hillary supporter! (It is still 2016 in Trump’s diseased brain.) Big Sleepy Joe supporter! (It is also 2020 in Trump’s diseased brain.)

Factcheck, nobody did anything to the Reflecting Pool. There is no slit, there is no gash. (Here is a good Jim Acosta report on what it actually does look like.)

Donald Trump is just a shitty businessman and a shitty contractor aaaaaaand he’s a grifter. Put it all together! What do you get?

You get the green, chunky algae piece of shit Reflecting Pool that looks like an above-ground swimming pool in the backyard of a foreclosed house in the suburbs.

That’s what you get.

Trump ended the long rant above, and the entire press availability, like this:

“But the 350-foot gash in the side, it’s a terrible thing. Ready? I’m gonna end on this. I’m so proud of Washignton DC, it’s become one of the hottest cities in the world, but what is the hottest thing in the world is the United States of America, we have the hottest city, you know that, you were talking about that two years ago we were laughed at, we were a joke, we were a dead country, now we’re the hottest country anywhere in the world, thank you very much everybody!”

And then, we imagine, they wheeled Ozymandias off as quickly as possible so he could shit his pants somewhere between the Oval and the Residence.

OPEN THREAD.

[Guardian]

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We remain perplexed and annoyed by the screeching and childish whining by various high-profile Democrats who are completely and absolutely and pants-shittingly FREAKING THE FUCK OUT over the Democratic Socialists of America candidates — all endorsed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani — who won primaries in New York City districts on Tuesday. Guys, when you FREAK THE FUCK OUT because some people use the word “socialist” to describe a politics that is really just 21st-century New Dealism, God kills a kitten.

No freakout was more irritating and satisfying at the same time than that by James Carville, the Crypt Keeper doppleganger who used one simple phrase (“It’s the economy, stupid”) as a guiding light for one exciting winning presidential campaign 34 years ago and has been coasting on that fame ever since. He is forever popping up on MS NOW to talk about how all the Democrats are Doin’ It Wrong in that folksy Southern accent that makes him sound like a cross between Yosemite Sam and a general store full of Mississippi cotton farmers in 1947.

Carville made his latest dumb comments on a political podcast with Al Hunt, the longtime DC journalist whose resume reads like a checklist on the stations of the cross of a Washington scene that has long since passed its heyday. Writer for The Wall Street Journal? Check. Panelist on Washington Week in Review and CNN’s Capital Gang? Check. Married to Judy Woodruff? Check. He’s probably attended more than a few of Sally Quinn’s dinner parties.

So here you had the sight of these two eighty-somethings tut-tutting about a couple of DSA members winning deep blue New York districts in a way that can best be illustrated by the famous The Simpsons joke where Grandpa Simpson appears on the front page of the local paper, shaking his fist at the sky under the headline “Old Man Yells at Cloud.”

Here’s Carville talking about Darializa Avila Chevalier, who beat out five-term incumbent and chair of the Hispanic Congressional Caucus Adriano Espaillat by about 2,300 votes in NY-13. During the campaign, some of Chevalier’s past comments about particular Democrats and issues came to light. She waved those comments off with the typical politician’s line about having been young when she expressed certain views that she has since matured past, blah blah blah:

“She is against [unintelligible] far-left views. She has attacked interracial relationships and the American flag. Lady, I ain’t in the same party as you. I’m sorry. I’m just not. And I actually do think it’s time for Democrats to talk the ‘S’ word: Schism. I really do. Everybody’s always said “No no, we’re a coalition, we’re a big tent. And there’s just some shit that I can’t be in the same tent with.”

First, to be clear, we agree Chevalier really has said some incredibly dumb shit about interracial relationships (she’s opposed, apparently), among other subjects. During the 2020 campaign, she labeled Joe Biden a “rapist.” She seems to be somewhere towards the very tip of the horseshoe, the sort of person who hasn’t yet seen through Ryan Grim or the Young Turks. We personally think Mamdani should have stayed away from her and stuck with his original plan to endorse Espaillat, for party comity if for no other reason.

But boy, is Carville’s crack about not being in the same party as her overblown. It’s the shriek of an old man who is seeing a younger generation take over with attitudes and opinions that conflict with how things were done in his day, and he’s not happy about it.

Carville’s comments are of a piece with other Democrats and high-profile figures who have been wetting themselves over the nominations of Chevalier and the other DSA-aligned candidates. Like these two:

Yikes. Fellas. Don’t be mad at the DSA and its candidates. The New York branch of DSA is clearly organized, and it is clearly a huge hotspot of energy for the Democratic Party. Also clearly, these candidates are touching something with the voters in those districts. Maybe it’s simply the fact that those who won on Tuesday — Chevalier barely squeaked through but Mamdani’s other two endorsements, Brad Lander and Claire Valdez, crushed their opponents — are responding to the mood of the electorate even if that electorate doesn’t necessarily agree with every position.

Or as Amanda Litman of Run For Something said, voters “want big swings, they want change, they want the establishment to go fuck itself.”

It is also undeniable that for all the shrieking about Israel and Palestine, equality, and whatever other social issues Carville disagrees with, these candidates are also running an “It’s the economy, stupid” campaign. Policy goals for these candidates include equal access to affordable healthcare, affordable housing, affordable childcare for working families, and in the case of New York City, just making it more affordable in general for anyone who isn’t making hedge fund money. What could be more economy-focused than all of that?

The funny thing is, even Carville and Hunt recognize these candidates are also very New York-specific. You’d think a bunch of Democrats who were alive for Tip O’Neill’s career would remember that all politics is local! Hunt admitted that Tuesday’s results are not a sign that socialists have conquered the Democratic Party, and Carville agreed:

“New York City is not and has not been a harbinger for politics elsewhere. The socialist left can win a few in heavily Democratic urban areas. They’ll be a force whenever they win in Westchester or Wisconsin or North Carolina.”

Yes, exactly. These races might be getting outsized attention — as opposed to, say, talking about Jason Crow of Colorado, as Carville mentioned — because the national media is centered in New York and doesn’t cover the rest of the country. There was a time when it did, when papers like The New York Times had more bureaus in more places, but that’s simply not the case now.

As far as we’re concerned, we’re glad these young people are turning to democratic socialism instead of becoming groypers like so many young Republicans. So James Carville, take a deep breath. You don’t ever have to ever like Darializa Chevalier. But you can live with her for at least the next two years without having a meltdown.

And if you can’t, here, have a pudding cup before your nurse puts you down for your nap.

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In a vanishingly rare moment of bipartisan agreement, both houses of Congress overwhelmingly passed a darn good housing bill this week, after months of negotiations. The “21^st Century ROAD to Housing Act” takes some significant steps to making housing more affordable, with provisions liked by both progressives and conservatives. It makes housing easier to finance, rewards cities for building more housing, and blocks Wall Street investors from buying up huge blocks of homes (thereby raising prices), a provision written and championed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) and touted by Donald Trump as if it were his idea in his State of the Union address in January.

It even clears away some nasty red tape hated by both Republicans and hippie lib housing advocates, eliminating a dumb outdated rule that manufactured housing units be built on a steel frame and axles. People noticed long ago that “mobile homes” seldom go mobile again once they’re in place.

Warren worked with Republican Sen. Tim Scott (South Carolina) and House members from both parties to get the bill passed. Republicans, facing anger over high food and gas prices, were very excited to have something they could wave around and say they do so care about affordability.

Oh, you were wondering what “ROAD” means. It is short for “Return of the American Dream,” not to overstate its likely impact, which is in the “good first step” realm, but not quite a truly democratic remake of housing policy.

The White House even treated the passage of the bill as a big feather in Donald Trump’s cap, because he’d called for the curbs on institutional investors in the State of the Union address earlier this year. White House Propaganda Minister Karoline Leavitt touted plans for Trump to sign it Wednesday, calling it “one of the most significant pieces of housing affordability legislation in American history.” Fox News trumpeted, “Trump scores major win as Congress passes housing crackdown on Wall Street investors.”

Just before noon in Washington, House Republican leaders, including Head Dipshit Mike Johnson, began holding a press conference in the Capitol to brag up what a great job they’d done, complete with a table with the presidential seal where Trump would sign the bill into law, if he could be corralled into sitting there. (He does have a tendency to wander away from signing ceremonies.)

But OOPSIES, Trump instead went on his cheap knockoff social media site to Hereby Declare that the signing ceremony would be “hereby cancelled until such a time as we pass the desperately needed SAVE AMERICA ACT, which I consider to be a National Emergency.” He also grumbled that it was “of minor importance,” and called it “The Elizabeth ‘Pocahontas’ Warren centric housing bill,” because he is disgusting.

Oh, sure, in a really shitty midterm season for Republicans, a few incumbents could have pointed to the bill and said “Message: I care.” But why bother campaigning on some sort of “achievements” when Trump would far prefer limiting the electorate by making sure fewer people can vote? Especially those troublesome married women, who only vote for Republicans and Trump by a slim margin instead of a proper one?

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Feed The Kitty

Asked by reporters whether he’d actually veto the bill instead of simply not signing it, Trump sidestepped the question entirely and explained he knows everything there is to know about housing anyway, and also he has no fucking idea what’s in the bill at all. Just lower interest rates and everything will be great! We don’t need Congress, apparently as long as Trump can order low interest forever. (And higher inflation, not that he understands the connection.)

TRUMP: I said I’m not signing the housing bill, I said I want to see what happens with SAVE. Look, the housing bill is, housing, I made billions of dollars with housing. I know housing better than anybody. It’s all about the interest rate. Lower the interest rates, you’re gonna have all the housing you want. I don’t want to hurt people that own houses either. These people, for the first time in their lives, they have valuable houses. They become rich. I don’t want to hurt them either. You wanna do what’s good for everyone, get the interest rates down.

We will pause to note that despite the historically low interest rates of the past couple of decades, we do not in fact have all the housing we want.

Trump also fumed about that “stupid person” he appointed to head the Federal Reserve, whose name he seems to have forgotten. “Low interest rates will solve everything! Despite that, we’re doing very well on housing.”

Very well indeed. Earlier in the week, Trump reportedly told Johnson, “No one gives a shit about housing.” Obviously, it’s far less important than allowing Trump to rig elections so Republicans keep control of Congress and he won’t be impeached.

Regardless of whether Trump vetoes the bill or just sits on it, Congress will actually decide what happens next. The House passed the ROAD to Housing Act by a huge “veto-proof” bipartisan majority of 358-32, and the Senate passed it 85 to 5, so if Trump vetoes it, an override would be “easy,” as long as all those Republicans are willing to make Trump mad. Oh, we are funny today!

If Trump does nothing, the Constitution provides that the bill would still become law without Trump’s signature 10 days (not including Sundays) after its passage, as long as Congress remains in session. That would be Saturday, July 4. Republicans in the House could either stay in session, letting the bill become law, or they could help Trump sabotage the bill by voting to adjourn before the holiday.

Mike Johnson claimed Wednesday that there’s nothing to worry about, because “The president, when we go through the details of the bill, he’s going to understand that it’s a good product.” And if there’s one thing we all know about Trump, it’s that he’s always persuade by sweet reason, and he’d never sabotage a small win by overreaching and demanding passage of his voter-suppression bill that simply doesn’t have the votes to pass.

Golly, what will Republicans decide to do?

[Bipartisan Policy Center / WaPo (gift link) / NBC News / AP / WaPo (gift link)]

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Nobody Can Afford Trump

Every year, around 400 to 500 people are killed in high speed police chases — about a third of them innocent bystanders. This isn’t too surprising, as around 30 to 45 percent of these chases culminate in a crash. The vast majority of these pursuits are not triggered by violent crimes, but by traffic violations and property offenses like stolen cars, and when I say the vast majority, I’m talking like 90 percent of the time.

It’s pretty horrifying to think of one’s friend or family member being killed because the police were mad that someone ran a damned red light. That is why, a few years back, Washington DC included a ban on police chases for non-violent crimes in the DC Comprehensive Policing and Justice Reform Amendment Act of 2022.

But there was one big problem with that law — police chases make police officers feel like super cool action movie badasses, and people like to watch them, as evidenced by the existence of Pluto TV’s dedicated “Car Chases” channel. So, balancing the needs of people who don’t want to die versus people who like cool action movie stuff, Donald Trump signed an executive order in August 2025 allowing Park Police to engage in high speed chases for any reason they feel.

How’s that been going?

Not great! At least not great for 46-year-old delivery driver Nolberto Meza, who was struck dead when a car being pursued by Park Police this past weekend crashed into his moped.

Meza, an asylum-seeker from Venezuela who was just minding his own damn business trying to do his job and deliver some food, was killed while Park Police were chasing down an allegedly stolen Honda Accord, something they would have been prevented from doing under the previous rule. Reports say that his family back in Venezuela is now “looking for answers,” but there really aren’t any beyond “it was real fun for police officers, who probably could have solved ‘the case’ by some other, less deadly means, given all the surveillance infrastructure available to them.”

For what it’s worth, 80 percent of drivers have comprehensive vehicle insurance, which means that if their car is stolen, they will be reimbursed.

As Judd Legum at Popular Information notes, after Trump initially changed the rule, he got heaps of praise from Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, who was just so goll darn happy that police officers could once again have “so much fun” chasing the “bad guys” who, um, need to get a tail light replaced or something.

During a Cabinet meeting, he said:

“On a lighter note for everybody here, one of the rules that under President Trump we were able to change for the US Park Police was they could do a pursuit. I was shocked to find out when we were talking to him, like, ‘Oh, you pull somebody over and they just drive away and you can't pursue them.’ I mean, like — and they said, ‘no, we can't.’ I said, ‘Oh, rules’ — we got that rule changed in 24 hours because of President Trump's leadership. The next night, they had so much fun. They pulled people over, they started to take off, they chased them, they stopped them. And then the bad guys, some of these guys were in cars that had stolen plates. So they'd take the plate off, they steal them off somebody else's car. They know the plate doesn't match, they know they're doing something. The bad guys in the car said you're not supposed to chase us, like, you're breaking the rules. The bad guys are telling us to — ‘No, no, we're back in action.’ So it's like — and so the morale is high. They all wanted to say ‘thank you’ to you.”

I would just like to put it out there that people who say “bad guys” should not be in charge of anything other than their own action figures.

This is not the first time since the rule change that Park Police have killed someone. Back in March, some “officers chased the driver of a stolen car … that ended when the vehicle struck a tree and burst into flames, killing 18-year-old Josue Chavez.”

Charges were initially filed against the 24-year-old and 19-year-old alleged car thieves, but have since been dropped. Nothing seems to be known about the officers involved yet, but it seems likely that they are reveling in what super cool badasses they are.

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That’s just in DC, by the way. In addition to Nolberto Meza, several others have been killed in police car chases in recent days. Remeious Washington, 48, of Warren, Michigan, was killed last week when police saw a bunch of teenagers in a car, some of whom were wearing ski masks, and attempted to pull them over for a traffic stop. They didn’t pull over and so police chased them until they ultimately crashed into Washington’s car. The driver of the car, a 17-year-old, is being charged with felony murder, while the other kids in the car, ages 11-17, have been charged with receiving and concealing a motor vehicle, possession of burglary tools and possession with intent to steal, and resisting and obstructing.

That did not have to happen, either. As far as the police knew at the time, their only crime was sitting in a car, wearing ski masks — and while that may have been suspicious-seeming, it does not rise to the level of necessitating a high-speed chase.

“We must hold individuals accountable when their choices break the law, and they flee from authorities, and it leads to such devastating consequences,” Warren Police Commissioner Eric Hawkins had the gall to say. But there wouldn’t have been those “devastating consequences” had the police not engaged in a high speed chase for no damn reason.

In Columbia, South Carolina, 74-year-old Frankie Doctor was killed in a police chase when police suspected him of stealing a vehicle. While being pursued, Doctor drove into another vehicle, the driver of which is now in the hospital.

It’s not good to steal a car. We don’t want people stealing cars. But what is worse? A car being stolen or a person being killed, because I am going to go with the latter, even if that person is the driver themselves, because stealing a car is not a capital crime. There is not a person on earth who, upon losing a loved one in a police chase, is going to say “Well, I sure am sad about my kid dying, but at least the Honda Accord is okay.”

PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!

Let’s get this out of the way right now, since there are all these headlines out there about how outgoing Louisiana Republican Senator Bill Cassidy stood up to Donald Trump in a closed-door Senate meeting yesterday.

The coward caved.

The clown who first went renegade by asking Robert F. Kennedy Jr. some real tuff questions about vaccines, and then caved and voted to confirm him anyway; who Trump fucked in his primary by endorsing his opponent; and who now, with nothing to lose, voted along with three other Republicans for this week’s War Powers resolution to, at least symbolically, rein in Trump on his stupid Iran war, which Trump lost on his first day?

Cassidy caved last night.

The barely sentient pile of shit smells named Trump was so mad. He said after Tuesday’s vote that Cassidy and the others had given “aid and comfort to the enemy,” as if the enemy needed any more aid and comfort after they so easily beat Trump and Pete Hegseth in war.

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Reportedly Cassidy and Trump were very shouty shouty during that Senate lunch yesterday:

“I stood and said, ‘You have not told the American people what’s going on. It was supposed to last four weeks, it’s lasted four months. Our original objectives have not been achieved, and I want to know what’s going on,’” Cassidy told reporters after the lunch. […]

When a reporter asked Cassidy if Trump had called him a “lunatic,” as had been rumored, he did not deny it, but stated, “Can I imagine that the president called me things that would be said on a school ... playground? Yeah, I can imagine that.”

Senator John Kennedy had some of his fake folksy descriptions of what happened (he has to pretend to be stupid to please his backwoods Louisiana constituents):

Louisiana Republican John Kennedy said Trump was “mad as a murder hornet” about the vote during lunch.

“Put yourself in his shoes,” Kennedy told reporters. “He’s right in the middle of delicate negotiations and the Senate votes to get out of Iran.”

Well, usually the losing side of a war is expected to gather its things and leave, yes.

The CNN tick-tock is even more dramatic.

At one point inside the luncheon, Trump ordered Cassidy to sit down — but Cassidy refused, another source said. Trump then called him a “lunatic.” In return, Cassidy shouted at Trump, in one instance referring to Trump as his “brother.” Trump told him he wasn’t his “brother” — and eventually Cassidy sat down.

OK, it would be really funny if Bill Cassidy had “my brother in Christ”-ed Trump. Even funnier if Cassidy hadn’t caved immediately.

After the meeting, Cassidy told reporters dramatically that he was not gonna be bullied when he’s just trying to get answers to questions for the American people.

But apparently he was willing to be bullied, as usual, because he caved, as usual.

Just like they answered his concerns about Felchy McBrainworms the Vaccine Stealer at HHS! And once in office, Felchy quickly revealed by his actions that he had just told Cassidy whatever he wanted to hear, because everybody knows Cassidy is a real dumbass.

Trump declared victory last night, which is funny, because he’s talking about the freedom to negotiate his defeat in the war he started. “This vote puts Iran on notice!” he said about the country that now knows it can get what it wants forever by closing the Strait of Hormuz.

Yes, Rand Paul also caved, by changing his vote to “present.”

Susan Collins did not cave, presumably due to her continuing concerns, and neither did Lisa Murkowski.

Trump was also reportedly mad yesterday at Mitch McConnell, who missed the vote due to his ongoing status as a dead person (allegedly!), and at Pennsylvania Senator Dave McCormick, who missed the vote due to his dilly-dallying the fuck around on Air Force One on the way to rallies with, um, Trump.

Democrat Tim Kaine, who introduced the resolution, said in a statement that sure, these two ramequins full of dick cheese caved, but it was only because Trump threw his tantrum, and it doesn’t really change anything:

“The vote is of no consequence and does not undo the expressed position of Congress that further war against Iran is illegal unless Congress votes for it,” Kaine said in a statement.

Maybe, but again, Trump is declaring victory, and now Trump feels much more free to continue losing the war he started for the sole purpose of breaking things so that he could say he fixed it better than Barack Obama did (spoiler about that), and he got to bully dumb little easily frightened coward Bill Cassidy in the process.

So we guess everybody in this post has now technically lost. Except, you know, Iran.

[Daily Beast archive / Washington Post / CNN]

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Good morning good morning, it’s time for your tabs!

Only seeing very dark estimates about the earthquake in Venezuela. I am so sorry Venezuela. What a fucking year for Venezuela. (CP24)

Rep. Dan Goldman, I know it hurts that you lost when you’re a mostly really good lib — and also that coffee shop sounds like an asshole! — but please don’t let Alan Dershowitz rub his panties on you, you’ll just get dirty and the pig likes it :/ (Mediaite)

Air Force re-mandating flu shots after Secretary Drunknstuff preened about no long forcing the manly WARFIGHTERS to get flu shots. (ABC News)

This one’s fun! Idaho Republicans, which is all of Idaho, want to get rid of property taxes and you won’t believe what they want to replace them with. Hint: They don’t know either. (Statesman)

Trump is investing $17 billion of our money into new nuclear plants for his techlord friends’ data centers. (AP) Surely unrelated from March, he’s letting his techlord friends DOGE out all the previous nuclear reactor regulations. Now I know some among you are nerds who (wrongly) think we need nuclear. But I’m guessing you didn’t mean like that. (Pro Publica)

Everyone hates data centers to the point that Utah is throwing out its top Republicans over it (gift link New York Times) but some Democrats just GOSH aren’t SURE! Frank Pallone of New Jersey wants a moratorium on them. I want more Frank Pallones of New Jerseys. (Heatmap)

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“Trump has also helped whittle down his own support in the Senate” because he is JUST TOO GOOD AT THIS. Anyway, that story is about how he was going to go to lunch with the Republican senators yestertoday to yell at John Thune to bring up the Ban Married Women From Voting Act, or else Trump will never sign the bipartisan housing bill that passed both the Senate AND the House and which has something to do with Elizabeth Warren being Pocahontas because the classics (racism) never go out of style. (AP / CBS News)

Trollin trollin trollin keep those doggies trollin.

Oh no Mitch McConnell is ailing, that’s … (People)

Sailing cargo ships! Sailing cargo ships! Use 99 percent less carbon or whatever! And only take two weeks to get across the ocean! I WANT ALL MY SCHMATTES DELIVERED BY SAILING CARGO SHIP. (Gift link Wall Street Journal)

Three hours of free electricity every day in the middle of the day for Australia, so obviously people are complaining about it. (The Conversation) Just how much this climate catastrophe is costing every household. (Bill McKibben)

Uh duh, parks make neighborhoods cooler and less polluted uh duh duh duh. (Surrey)

Uh duh, volunteering makes you feel good uh duh duh duh duh. (Reasons to Be Cheerful)

No. (Nice News)

Happy birthday to our granddaughter Tallulah, seen here shortly after birth bodyswapping with former Fox News anchor Chris Wallace.

Girl, you nine!

SATURDAY, June 27, noon-2 p.m., come see us for our DETROIT METRO Wonkparty at Gator Jake’s in Sterling Heights at 16 Mile and Van Dyke. They have a patio, pool tables, and possibly Ms PacMan! I will see you there with bells on!

Parties upcoming! MISSOULA (July 25), ATLANTA (but we won’t be there, because “see Missoula,” July 25), CLEVELAND (Aug. 8) AND PITTSBURGH (Aug. 9), and SONOMA/SF (Nov. 30)! TIME TO PARTY!

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Just the other day, we discussed the feud Donald Trump started with Italian leader Giorgia Meloni, and which he will not let go of because he doesn’t have the self-esteem to admit the lady beat him, and he doesn’t have the self-control to understand how stupid he looks.

All because he made up a stupid story about her begging for a picture with him, which anybody who isn’t an idiot knows is a lie, because stories like that are his coping mechanism to stop him from from hurling his disgusting body off the roof of Trump Tower as a response to the lifetime of rejection he has endured, a lifetime of rejection he 100 percent deserves.

We imagine that on some level, he actually convinces himself that they’re true.

Anyway, Marine Le Pen, the French far-right asshole fascist lady who’s one of the leaders of the European far-Right, and who back in the early days of MAGA was thought of as one of its big allies among the Euro white nationalists, has weighed in on the spat Trump started with Meloni, and oh boy, she is not impressed.

“He was very insulting, so I fully understand Giorgia Meloni’s reaction, which is one of national pride,” Le Pen said in an interview with French radio France Culture on Wednesday. “Is this a definitive break between the two nations? Certainly not. Is this a severe cooldown of the relationship between the two individuals? Most certainly,” she added.

Elle se montre très diplomate.

We should remind you here that Le Pen is being unimpressed with Trump in French, and if you don’t know how much more humiliating it is to have somebody not impressed with you in French, just ask that homely Clavicular boy, he’s been learning it firsthand this week.

Also she says it’s about national pride, but she may have noticed that Trump feels especially comfortable pulling this shit toward women. Don’t want to accidentally impart good intentions onto Marine Le Pen, but she might have noticed that.

We are just saying.

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For some context, Politico Europe notes that Jordan Bardella, the Le Pen protégé who is the head of her National Rally party, and who might get to be the standard-bearer for that party in presidential elections if Le Pen is not allowed to run — she’s currently not allowed because she was convicted of embezzlement and part of the punishment was she’s not allowed to run until 2030; she is appealing — used to love Trump a whole lot, but now it sounds like he too thinks Trump is an absolute moron:

Trump’s behavior is “not only erratic but also extremely unsteady and constantly shifting,” said Bardella in [an interview]. Asked how he views the American president, he said: “It depends on the day. There’s a Monday attitude, a Tuesday attitude, a Wednesday attitude.”

Ringing endorsement. (Which is a thing he made clear he doesn’t want from Trump.) It turns out that when Trump shits on NATO and our European allies, even the Eurofascists hear him do it, and they don’t like it. “The Americans are allies, and they will remain so,” said Bardella in that interview. “But they are allies who no longer intend to come to Europe’s rescue or to remain the umbrella and protector of European countries.”

All the far-right European nationalists hate Trump’s ass now, in fact.

In the interview where she commented on the Trump-Meloni fight, Le Pen also said that Trump has “[done] the opposite of what he promised” vis-à-vis foreign policy.

It’s not the first time Marine Le Pen has looked at Nazis in the past few years and been like “NON!” You may remember in 2024 when she and her far-right party ended their association with the German “Alternative for Germany” (Alternative für Deutschland, or AfD) party, because they were being li’l bit too Nazi. You know, the Nazi party Elon Musk loves so much! A prominent AfD member had said in an interview that he would “never say that anyone who wore an SS uniform was automatically a criminal.”

As Wonkette wrote at the time, “Imagine being such a Nazi German bigot that the Nazi French bigots want nothing to do with you.”

To that we guess we can probably add, imagine being such a misogynistic Nazi American bigot that the Nazi French bigots want nothing to do with you.

And she said it in French.

OPEN THREAD.

[Politico Europe / Politico Europe]

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New York voters must be pretty happy with how things are going under Mayor Zohran Mamdani, as all three of the progressive candidates he backed won their primaries last night — two of them against incumbents.

First, former New York City Comptroller, democratic socialist, and total sweetiepie Brad Lander handily unseated Rep. Dan Goldman in the Democratic primary for New York’s 10th Congressional District, with about two-thirds of the vote. Lander is a fan of Medicare for All, abolishing ICE (he put his body in between immigrants going for their court appointments and the ICE agents trying to cull them right there in the hall), pausing aid to Israel, support for Palestinians, and rejecting funding from corporations, cryptocurrency operations, and AIPAC, and he is straight up awesome on labor. He opposes non-compete contracts, helped to pass a “just cause” law in New York City which prevented fast food workers from being fired for no reason and wants to extend that to all workers.

I have been saying for years that the smartest damn thing Democrats could do would be to oppose at-will employment in favor of just cause firings. I mean, Big Antacid might not like it, but imagine the peace people would have if they knew they didn’t have to worry about losing their job for no reason or a very bad reason? Quite frankly, I feel like all Democrats should run on a platform of “middle-of-the-night panic reduction.” Because while no politician can do much about the hideously embarrassing thing you suddenly remembered you said 12 years ago, they can make sure you’re not freaking out about losing your job for no reason, having no place to live, and not being able to pay obscene medical bills or your student loans.

But I digress!

Next, state Assembly member Claire Valdez won her bid for retiring Rep. Nydia Velázquez’s seat against Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso — who, to be clear, is also a progressive and would in no way have been a bad choice, but refused to go as far as calling Israel’s actions against Palestine a genocide. And, you know, it’s a little hard to read reports about Netanyahu’s stated desire to take over 70 percent of Gaza and how the UN recently determined that Israel has been deliberately targeting children with bombs and airstrikes, and not feel some kind of way about that.

In her speech, Valdez thanked the UAW, which had also backed her.

“This victory is not mine, it is ours,” Valdez said at her election night party. “It belongs to UAW, and it belongs to New York City DSA. It belongs to the entire coalition that believed in this campaign and built this movement. As I look out at this crowd, I see the faces of those who build hard work into victory.”

Admittedly, I find that pretty delightful. More candidates supported by UAW, please and thank you!

Following Valdez’s victory, Darializa Avila Chevalier, a relatively unknown DSA organizer and activist, defeated 10-year incumbent and chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Rep. Adriano Espaillat. As with the other races, support from AIPAC was a factor here, with the PAC having infused $650,000 into Espaillat’s coffers to keep him from losing to Chevalier, and Chevalier criticizing his support of Israel’s actions in Gaza.

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Of course, not everyone was pleased. Donald Trump more or less lost his mind about the victories, all-capsing on social media about how they are all scary communists. “Many Communists running in badly failing Blue States,” he wrote in one post. “The votes seem to have them doing quite well against each other. The bad news is that history has conclusively shown that the downtrodden States that they will soon be running will ONLY GET WORSE. MAGA!.” He then followed that up with “America the Beautiful will NEVER be a Communist Country!!!”

To be clear, none of the candidates were communists. Also, to be clear, Donald Trump has absolutely no idea what a communist even is.

His old pal Steve Bannon was equally dismayed and shared his thoughts on the matter on his sad internet TV show, and even — please sit down for this — managed to get antisemitic about it.

“New York’s a foreign city. Go look at the Knicks parade. Go look at what’s happening in the streets of New York when millions turn up. Go look at Mamdani’s base. It’s a foreign — these sanctuary cities — this is all by design. These people are smart and they’re vicious and they’re focused and they understand the way to take America down is internally.

“What do you think the MAGA movement started with? Hey, we’ve got to secure our borders and get all the illegal aliens out of the country. […]

“It’s not a conspiracy theory. These people are doing it methodically, and they’re doing it up in your face. The universities, all of it. And the progressives with — mostly driven by Jewish intellectuals — have hated this country and that is why these universities are cesspools.”

I do love how it’s always “in your face” with these people. I swear to God, you could get them outraged about anything just by adding “in your face” to it. You could say “Look at that bitch, eating peanut butter, RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOUR FACE!” and they’d be outraged.

Bannon knows the only argument he and his people have left is “Actually, these people only pretend to want all these nice things for you because they hate America and want to take it down from the inside!” It can’t be that we just want things to be nice for people, that we want them to have jobs and homes and to be able to afford to eat — no, we must have a secretly evil reason for it. They don’t know what it is, they don’t know what the actual end game after “destroy America” would even be, but they know it’s something to do with Jewish intellectuals. And that it’s bad.

Hot tip, if your only argument against someone or something is “Yeah, but I think they’re only doing that because they secretly want to take over the world and then … do evil stuff in some capacity!” you probably don’t have much of a case.

Anyway, congratulations to all these folks on winning their primaries and for making Donald Trump and Steve Bannon very, very sad. May they all continue to do so in the future!

PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!

Tenth time is the charm, we guess!

The Senate voted last night (50-48) to punch Donald Trump’s precious power to war on Iran right in the dick. The resolution “directs the President to remove United States Armed Forces from hostilities against the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

So now Trump has to do that! Haha, just kidding.

But it does matter.

The House passed one of these thingies 215 to 208 on June 3. You might remember that Donald Trump’s party controls all of Congress. One way to remember it is to take note of how these white fascists’ boots are on everybody’s necks from every branch of government! Now you remember!

Point is, Trump’s whole Republican-controlled Congress has now failed him, and failed to back up whatever dumbass shit Benjamin Netanyahu convinced him to do, after Netanyahu correctly assessed that Trump is the only US president in world history stupid enough to say “HOW MUCH BOOM?” when Netanyahu cried “Iran!” in a crowded theater.

Weird how being the most hated, mocked, loathed president in world history doesn’t exactly make all Senate Republicans inclined to keep two-fingering Trump’s war dick in lockstep, donnit? Especially so close to the midterms they’re all about to lose.

Also since a bunch of them have been there forever and also are not stupid enough to think starting an unwinnable war with Iran would be a good idea.

Why nobody trust Dear Leader and Secretary Shitfaced the Great Military Expert Pete Hegseth to make wise war choices?

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More details on the resolution, which was literally Congress’s 10th attempt to get something like this done:

Only if “explicitly authorised by a declaration of war or a specific congressional authorisation” would Trump be allowed to use further military force against Iran, it says.

The resolution, however, does allow for a limited military presence to remain in the Middle East to prevent any “imminent attack” against the US or its allies.

There’s the loophole. Netanyahu merely needs to cry a lot some more about how Iran exists and is very scary, and Trump can do whatever he wants.

Also this is technically a symbolic resolution that doesn’t make a fuck when it comes to the force of law.

Four (4) Republicans told Trump to eat their balls with this vote: Bill Cassidy, maybe because Trump just fucked him in his primary; Rand Paul, because “Rand Paul”; Susan Collins, because concerned; and Lisa Murkowski, because she is just increasingly tired of all this shit and occasionally makes good choices.

Mitch McConnell didn’t vote, because he dead (allegedly!) and Pennsylvania’s Dave McCormick didn’t either, because we don’t know why.

John Fetterman’s broken brain voted with Trump, though!

Obviously, though, most Republicans voted to keep two-fingering Trump’s war dick, so let’s not act like they’ve found God or anything:

“If this passes, the Iranians are going to simply stand up and walk away from negotiations,” Senator James Risch of Idaho told the Senate on Tuesday.

Hahahaha, James Risch, you stupid bitch, we are pretttty sure they were already doing that.

Another entity that has completely walked out of Iran talks and left JD Vance alone with all the couches is the American public. According to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll, only 24 percent of Americans thinks Trump’s dumbass war is worth it, despite how he always dementia-babbles that people are behind him because of whatever lies he’s always swallowing from Netanyahu’s butthole about how Iran is at all times less than 15 minutes from fully forming a nuclear bomb. That poll also shows Trump tied for his lowest approval rating ever, just like all the other polls.

In related news, a new scoop from the Maggie Haberman/Jonathan Swan book suggests that there was a moment last year when Trump might have been at least slightly more skeptical of doing whatever Netanyahu says. During the United Nations General Assembly in 2025, Trump had a call with Netanyahu in which he reportedly said, “Everybody’s sick of you, Bibi. All the Jews are sick of you. Even the two Jews on this call are sick of you.” (The Jews were Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, Trump’s idiot real estate mogul Middle East/Russia guru negotiator.)

Trump has more recently said similar things about Bibi, such as that he is “fucking crazy” and has “no fucking judgment.” But we guess at the end of the day, the Israeli leader has gotten Trump back onside. (Maybe Israel has the full unredacted Epstein Files or something, allegedly.)

And in US military news, Secretary Shitfaced McWarLoser has kicked out yet another four-star general, CD Donahue, a West Point grad who was the last soldier to depart Afghanistan, and who has been leading the Army in Europe and in Africa. “Widely seen as one of the Army’s rising stars,” says The Atlantic.

We guess Pete felt threatened by him, because this is Pete:

Sad.

[Al Jazeera]

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When Josh Hokit, a man who gets repeatedly punched in the head for a living, won his big fight at Donald Trump’s $60 million UFC-themed birthday party on the White House lawn, he took a moment to thank his “Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,” whom he described as “The only person more incredible than the Incredible Hok,” which, embarrassingly, is what he calls himself.

Then, he turned to the camera and, for no discernible reason whatsoever, screamed “Michelle Obama is a man! Am I right America?”

After a week or so of some intermittent “Who the fuck is that guy and why is he such a douchebag?” discourse, Hokit made an appearance on The Ariel Helwani Show. During the interview, Helwani, a Canadian-American sports journalist who covers the UFC, asked him why he felt that was the thing to say, out of all the things he could have possibly said at that time.

“I thought I was giving her a compliment,” Hokit responded, like a douchebag. “Michelle Obama being a man. It’s like, she knows how to deal with adversity. She knows how to work hard like a man when the times get tough. You know, the tough keep going.”

Helwani pointed out that absolutely no one thought that was what he meant, because it is, of course, not what he meant.

“I thought it was a perfect opportunity to show the world how great this country is with the freedom of speech,’’ Hokit said, when pressed further. “You go somewhere and you say something like that and you die. And I’m not suicidal, by the way. I’m in good spirits. I’m a little under the weather right now, but other than that, I’m good.”

Oh, because someone is going to kill him because he said a shitty thing about Michelle Obama? Does he actually think that makes him special? Like the Obamas are going around offing every internet creep who thinks he’s clever calling Michelle “Big Mike”?

“And so in other parts of the world, you say something like that and you’re not here to speak to Ariel Helwani,” he added. “Yeah, I don’t know. There’s a few answers to that and there’s a certain side that pokes at another side and there’s no outrage there. And so I thought it was a perfect time to take a jab.’’

Helwani asked him if he regretted his statement at all.

“That’s one thing about my career,” Hokit said, after citing several instances of other MMA fighters apologizing for their past comments and behavior. “You’ll never hear me backtrack from what I say.”

You know what? I can believe that. Because he is a stupid, stupid man. Far too stupid to be able to learn and process new information in a way that would cause him to learn anything or change his mind about anything. That’s something that requires at least a modicum of intelligence. Oh, except for the part where he immediately backtracked and lied that he was just complimenting her on her machismo and tuffness.

Helwani then pointed out that his comments weren’t only criticized by “The Gavin Newsoms” (worst band name ever), but by UFC head Dana White, himself an enormous douchebag.

Hokit said he didn’t mean to say anything that would piss off Dana White or UFC chief business officer Hunter Campbell, but didn’t care about offending anyone else, because “they weren't they weren't there when I was, you know, down. They weren't there when I was broken.”

Aw, the poor widdle baby was down? He was broken? And millions of people who didn’t know him from a bar of soap failed to be there for him and soothe him until he felt all better? Oh, well that sure is a great reason to be an incredible asshole.

Incredibly, it got worse from there. Helwani then asked him if there was anything he could say that he thought would result in the UFC offering him fewer opportunities.

“You know what that topic is,” Hokit told Helwani, who said he did not, in fact, know what that topic is.

Hokit then complained that you can’t talk about “the Jews” or how “Hitler was a good guy,” because “all companies are owned by by someone.”

Imagine thinking that Jewish people are the only people out there who would have a problem with someone saying that “Hitler was a good guy.” That’s pretty universal! Well, outside of MAGA, anyway.

Helwani pointed out that several UFC fighters had, in fact, recently said some pretty antisemitic things. Hokit said he was talking more about Bryce Mitchell, who did, in fact, literally say that “Hitler was a good guy” who “fought for his country,” with whom he would have enjoyed going fishing. Helwani then pointed out that he is still fighting in the UFC, he just “hasn’t won all his fights.”

“That’s fair,” Hokit replied.

Asked if there is any horrible thing he wouldn’t say, Hokit had trouble coming up with anything, other than “maybe a dead father.” What a peach!

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You know, there’s a Jack Handey quote that I often think of at times like this: “I bet the sparrow looks at the parrot and thinks, ‘Yes, you can talk, but listen to yourself!’”

Josh Hokit has the right to free speech, as do we all. He has the right to use that right to be an incredible asshole who says shitty things about people for no reason. But it’s pretty sad that this is how he, or anyone, chooses to use that right. If he really wants to be a big free speech warrior, he should actually go to one of those countries where you can, in fact, get in trouble for saying certain things. He should go to Russia and promote LGBTQ+ rights. Now that would be an actual act of bravery and a stand for freedom of speech, because they will send you to prison for that there.

But he won’t do that, because he’s a coward. It doesn’t take brass balls to go on American television sounding like a sad, angry internet troll. After all, we have a President that does that shit every day.

PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!

Hey, know that thing where Donald Trump is always patting himself on his distended testicles, telling himself that before he came along America was “dead,” but now it’s “hot” again? (Maybe it’s hot like open wounds get hot as blood rushes to the region to try to repair the damage.)

Well, we have two winning numbers to share, and they are that Trump himself is more hated, loathed, and mocked than ever, and so is America.

USA! USA! USA!

This poll from the American Research Group (ARG) has Trump’s approval rating at a mere 30 percent, a record low for a man who’s known for them. In May it was 31 percent. His disapproval sits at 66. It’s even worse when they start asking specific questions like what do voters think of his job on the economy. There, only 26 percent of Americans approve. (Which suggests four percent of Americans are like “well, he’s skullfucking the economy like a loser, but I reckon I still like the guy!”)

Fully 70 percent disapprove of his handling of the economy.

Only seven (seven!) percent of Americans think the country’s economy is going to get better in the next year.

NJ.com does note that this poll shows some lower numbers than other recent polls, which show Trump with comparatively respectable approval numbers like “38” and “36.” But considering what a shit-awful job Trump is doing and what a shit-awful pathetic loser he is, will it be long before everybody’s polls are showing him at 30 or below?

Then there’s the world’s opinion of the US. Damn.

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A new 36-country survey from Pew Research finds the obvious result, that under Trump the United States of America is more hated and distrusted than ever. Overall among all these countries, 37 percent have a positive opinion of the US, vs. 57 percent who don’t. Overall, only 23 percent have any confidence in loser Trump, and 76 percent don’t. (Not a lot of “I don’t know” answers there!)

Here is a graphic from the pollsters, it’s interesting to see how people in 36 other countries rate how the Trump regime is treating its own people and their personal freedoms:

Pew provides more topline findings:

Overall ratings for the United States are also largely negative. Favorable views of the country have declined in many places over the past year, including double-digit drops in Indonesia, Italy, Nigeria, South Africa, South Korea and Turkey.

But hey, it’s not all bad!

There are seven nations in the study where a majority of adults rate the U.S. positively. The highest rating (81% favorable) comes from Israel.

Yeah, um OK. But indeed, Trump has positive approval ratings in the Philippines, Israel, Nigeria, Ghana, and Kenya. Nowhere else.

Chart!

Here is the chart of countries and their favorable ratings toward the US in general, arranged by region:

And finally, a chart that shows how people’s perceptions of the Americans as reliable partners have changed since Joe Biden, spoiler, it’s precipitous declines almost everywhere:

That is absolutely phenomenal, and so completely deserved. Look at the full survey results here.

New World Cup chant: We’re dead last! We’re dead last!

But hey, did you hear they booked Kash Patel’s girlfriend to perform at one of those Freedom 250 circle jerk parties for Trump’s we mean America’s birthday?

“I was invited to sing this anthem on my own accord,” she said angrily on Twitter.

America is so back, baby!

[Pew]

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Hello of loves. First, some personal business! If I saw you at a Wonkparty in the last two months and told you I might have lung cancer and am sad — I was not being hypochondriacal, this time, I have a honkin’ nodule! — it looks like I DON’T and now I’M NOT. So I can stop lying on my bed feeling sorry for my poor futurely motherless girls and also stop pretending I’m going to ever write a book about all the things I would have taught them in person if I hadn’t gone and fictionally DIED. What time is it? It’s time for a WONKPARTY (METRO) DETROIT!

Your friends Kay Ducky and Up Here in the Clouds have planned this one, which means I didn’t have to! Yay Kay Ducky and Clouds! I’m still buying though. SATURDAY, June 27, noon-2 p.m., at Gator Jake’s in Sterling Heights at 16 Mile and Van Dyke. They have a patio, pool tables, and possibly Ms PacMan! I will see you there with bells on!

Parties upcoming! MISSOULA (July 25), ATLANTA (but we won’t be there, because “see Missoula,” July 25), CLEVELAND (Aug. 8) AND PITTSBURGH (Aug. 9), and SONOMA/SF (Nov. 30)! TIME TO PARTY!

Now it is time when we tabs.

Hmmmm, sure seems like a lot of Republican senators Trump boned no longer want to save him from himself. In this case, we’re talking about his stupid fucking Iran war! (Gift link New York Times)

A professor Senator Edubs Warren housing bill banning private equity from buying houses PASSED the Senate? Well how dee fucking do! (AP)

I made Dok take an Algae Zera pun out of a hed yesterday (you’re welcome) but I am not the boss of the Fucking News so I could not save you from Al Gaeda. (The Fucking News) Shockingly, instead of terrorists, “doing a bad job” is why the paint is peeling, says science. (Scientific American)

I mean, yeah.

Imagine that President Trump pooped his pants, right there in the Oval Office. Then imagine that rather than simply not talking about it and moving on — it’s pretty embarrassing, after all — he sent out a series of angry late-night Truth Social posts about how not only didn’t he poop his pants but actually delivered into his pants a serving of the finest beluga caviar, and no one has ever seen pants so delicious. Then imagine that in the face of incontrovertible evidence that he did in fact poop his pants, he kept talking about the pants-pooping, moving on to spin a deranged theory claiming that a dark conspiracy of leftists had snuck into the White House and planted the poop right there in his pants.

(Paul Waldman)

All the Jews I know are sick of Netanyahu, but I don’t know any Republican Jews or Israeli Jews, so who can say really? (Mediaite)

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The world doesn’t trust us, news at 11, and they used to, which is news at 11! (Pew Research)

So many Americans wrongly believe Joe Biden overturned Roe v. Wade, when according to Susan Collins it was actually Chuck Schumer who overturned Roe v. Wade! Shakes fist CHUUUUCK. (Joe. My. God)

Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer probably also ruled this week that disabled or minority voters who are discriminated against have no “private right of action” (cannot sue for redress to fix the discrimination), probably. (NPR)

Oh here’s four things the Court ruled on that I guess we should know about even though I don’t want to. (Chris Geidner at Law Dork)

Traditional housewives mostly would like to work but can’t afford the childcare, I feel like I remember Joe Manchin fucking childcare, oh right because that’s exactly what happened. Anyway, people poor, yo. (Atlantic)

A very strange accounting of the not-ready-for-any-time “tribunal” startup this Peter Thiel freako wants to sic on journalists. (The Hollywood Reporter)

Eh, I feel like the restored Parthenon still looks like shit, I’m probably wrong though. (Yahoo!)

TWOO CWIME! From some dumb Life of the Epstein as a Young Man thing, I started wondering about Leopold and Loeb. Goodness, guess they weren’t such Supermen after all! (Wik)

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The national crisis on the National Mall continued into another week, with the president of the United States insisting Monday that knife-wielding terrorists had attacked the newly installed lining of the Reflecting Pool, which was just renovated at a cost of more than $16 million.

President Sundowner also claimed he’d personally seen evidence that vandals “cut it, they cut it very violently. The same thing with the floor, they cut it, and then they lifted it. They pulled it. And it is what it is.” He added, “we also have pictures.” But really, you don’t need proof, because the huge 350-foot slit in the lining is all the proof you need.

Yes, even if reporters looking for the huge slit haven’t seen any such thing.

America doesn’t have a “parks department,” but it does have a National Park Service, which also has not responded to journalists asking for proof of these knife-wielding frogmen or whatever.

For what it’s worth, Trump claimed on May 4 that the new liner was nigh-invulnerable, bragging, “You’ll never have a leak, it’s very strong. […] You couldn’t, if you had a knife — I don’t want to give anybody ideas — if you had a knife, you can’t even cut it. So strong, so powerful. It’s like powerful rubber. It is beautiful. Sealed. Like a piece of glass.” OK, but that just means that someone with a TURBO-KNIFE musta got to it.

When Wonkette’s Dominic Gwinn was there this weekend, he didn’t see any turbo-knife damage to the pool.

Asked if he would share proof of that very violent assault on the lining of the Reflecting Pool, Trump should have shown this video from May, showing a crazy person being driven around in a motorcade of six-ton armored Suburbans on the floor of the empty pool while the resurfacing work was still underway.

Instead, Trump said that the shocking proof would be revealed when the time is right, don’tcha know, but you can also get it right away if you just ask, OK?

“Yeah, at the right time you'll see it,” Mr. Trump said. “You'll see it in court. You'll see it in court, but all you have to do is call the Parks Department, call the Department of Interior.”

In a further sign of his cognitive decline, Trump completely forgot to say the pictures or proof or whatever sticky rotting blue matter he was pulling out of his ass would be released in a week or two, his usual disclaimer when he’s lying.

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Trump also went on to speculate — we mean, to reveal a very real conspiracy — blaming unidentified evildoers for causing the trouble, explaining without a shred of evidence that “If you put fertilizer in the water, you get algae, but somebody said they might have put fertilizer, they did something to create the algae.” That’s a bit different from the earlier official explanation that the algae was introduced to the newly renovated Reflecting Pool by “residual algae in the supply lines.”

Actually, if you want to see a disaster at the Reflecting Pool, it was caused by Barack Hussein Obama, Trump lied, repeating his lie that Obama had “spent two years and over $100 million” renovating the reflecting pool, but that it “never even opened.” The AP already fact-checked that lie back in May, noting that Obama’s reconstruction ran around $34 million on a project that was completed (with the pool reopened) in 2012. (Trump was then lying that Obama and Biden had both spent “hundreds of millions” and made the pool worse.) That project also included new landscaping and walking paths, if you’re comparing costs.

Also too, Trump had a nice crazy freakout Monday afternoon when a couple of goofballs paraded around with signs saying they were “pro-algae,” including one goofball in an inflatable frog costume that had “AMPHIFA” painted in colorful letters on its belly. Trump took the comedic protest completely seriously, of course:

Remember, Trump thinks the people making fun of him are the crazy ones.

To cap it all off, here’s White House Lie Secretary Karoline Leavitt explaining to Sean Hannity Monday night that there IS TOO a serious crime spree at the Reflecting Pool, and that it’s being perpetrated by some of the worst scum possible, like even worse than the single-celled kind!

Fact Check: Reporters covering the Reflecting Pool all weekend didn’t see any dastardly knife attackers or algae dumpers, just lots and lots of cops. But then, Antifa may have a lot of invisible ninja operatives.

LEAVITT: The vandalism is very real, despite what Tim Walz wants to say: “It’s an imaginary problem.” No, it is not. It’s a very real problem. In fact, I spoke with the National Park Service just before joining the show. They now have 17 police reports that have been filed in just a matter of a few days.

There’s actually been six arrests at the reflecting pool where, again, these deranged individuals, many of them longtime donors to the Democrat Party, to Barack Obama, to Act Blue, that have been vandalizing and desecrating our federal monument, one of the most beautiful monuments in the world, the reflecting pool.

Look, just because the White House hasn’t actually proven any of these monstrous protesters from the Black Lagoon have done a damn thing, that doesn’t mean that the administration is just arresting people willy-nilly and accusing them. Only fascists would do such a thing!

Leavitt vowed that the algae vandalizers would be prosecuted to the full extent of the law — meaning that no grand jury is likely to indict them, or that the prosecution will fall apart faster than a Subway sandwich splatting on an ICE goon — and this “despicable vandalism” will be fixed before July 4, when the world has a collective orgasm for the 250th anniversary Donald Trump’s writing and signing the Declaration of Independence and then posting it on King George III’s Twitter account.

[ABC News / CBS News / Joe.My.God]

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Abortion rights opponents often claim they’re not trying to hurt women by banning the procedure, but rather that they are protecting life. They love life! They cherish life — so much so that they consider a zygote a fully fledged human being deserving of the same rights as you or me. More, even, because if I needed a kidney, it would not be legal for doctors to commandeer the body of any random person who would be a match and force them to give up a kidney to save my life.

Given this, you might assume (let’s pretend you’re not all that swift) that states that ban abortion would also be the best and safest states in which to get pregnant. However, doctors in those states say that women there are less likely to get the standard of care they need than are those in states where abortion is permitted. This does not come as much of a surprise to those of us who have heard and believe the stories of women dying or nearly dying due to being denied care, but it might to those who have chosen to believe those stories are made up by people who just want to rain on their “forcing people to give birth against their will” parade.

A recent survey of 40 doctors detailed how the laws in these states keep them from being able to provide the best possible care for the pregnant women they are treating. In many cases, they have to delay treatments for emergency complications, putting patients’ lives at risk for fear that performing the regular standard of care could result in them being sent to prison for the rest of their lives.

Via JAMA:

Six major themes emerged: (1) delays in care and deviations from standard practice for EPL, ectopic pregnancy, molar pregnancy, preterm prelabor rupture of membranes, and maternal comorbidities; (2) ambiguity and fear among physicians; (3) loss of patient autonomy and shared decision-making; (4) erosion of trust in the patient-physician relationship; (5) placement of physicians into new gatekeeping roles; and (6) increased health care system burdens. Physicians described requiring additional confirmatory testing, seeking institutional approval even for emergent life-saving interventions, and being forced to determine which patients were sick enough to receive medically indicated care.

And this would be why an estimated 59 women in these states have died as a result of these abortion restrictions, and why pregnant women are twice as likely to die in these states as are women in states that permit abortion (three times as likely, if they are women of color). It’s worth noting that infant mortality rates in these states have also increased, by 5.6 percent, resulting in a total of 478 excess infant deaths by 2023.

But Do “Clarifying” Laws Like The Ones Passed In Texas Help?

Not so much!

Last year, after several well-publicized incidents in which women suffered serious complications or death from being denied care as a result of the state’s abortion ban led to a lot of criticism of said abortion ban, Texas legislators passed a law “clarifying” the ban and explicitly stating that doctors could perform abortions in certain specific situations without worrying that they will be sent to prison for 99 years.

Via NPR, the “clarifications”:

• Specify that a pregnant woman’s death or impairment does not have to be “imminent” for the exception to apply

• Clarify that doctors can talk about abortion with patients or colleagues while determining if it’s the best treatment option

• Confirm that the burden of proof is on the state if a doctor is accused of violating the law.

Except when “99 years in prison” is on the table at all, doctors are going to be hesitant to provide treatment even if that hesitancy leads to a tragic result. A recently filed lawsuit alleges that hospitals in Austin are still denying miscarriage care to women who require abortion medication to help the miscarriage complete.

Lynn Callaway developed an infection from the miscarriage of a wanted pregnancy and went to two different emergency rooms and one other medical facility in the Austin area in hopes of getting abortion-inducing medication or surgery to help expel the tissue. She was already suffering severe cramps, chills and fever so severe she thought she might die. However, despite the fact that doctors were not even dealing with a living fetus, despite the fact that she was clearly at risk of developing a serious infection, doctors sent her home and told her to take a Tylenol.

It took four days of this suffering before she was able to get the care she needed, and when she asked her doctor why she had to go through that, she was told that because of the law, doctors “have to be damned sure that it’s an actual miscarriage to be offering the pill.”

“People don’t walk into emergency rooms with signs on their forehead saying this is a miscarriage, this is an ectopic pregnancy,” Calloway’s lawyer explained. “Pregnancy is complicated and that’s why abortion bans cannot and do not work, because once you ban one type of care, you effectively ban everything.”

Abortion Rights Are Back In Missouri!

Last week, Jackson County Circuit Judge Jerri Zhang struck down practically every abortion-related regulation in the state, including a ban on medication abortion that has been on the books since 2018. As of this week, Planned Parenthood will start taking appointments for abortion medication, which has not been available to women in the state for almost a decade.

Also gone is the controversial requirement of a 72-hour waiting period between the initial consultation and the actual abortion, a rule put into place because legislators assume that women are too stupid to know what they want in these situations, and a host of other fairly pointless and insulting regulations.

Those regulations, via Missouri Independent:

• Special licensing requirements for abortion providers.

• A ban on telemedicine that requires a physician be present when a patient takes abortion medication.

• Hospital admitting privileges for physicians performing abortions.

• A requirement for physicians prescribing medication abortions to have a state-approved complication plan.

• That medication abortion providers carry insurance covering physicians after they leave employment.

• Tissue removed during a surgical abortion be sent to a pathologist

• That patients be given material created by the state Department of Health and Senior Services, including a pamphlet that reads, “The life of each human being begins at conception. Abortion will terminate the life of a separate, unique, living human being.”

Zhang did, however, keep two of the state’s regulations — the requirement of an in-person visit to obtain abortion medication and the requirement that only a physician be allowed to perform an abortion.

This is a great, great development for women in Missouri, so naturally the state’s Republican attorney general has already announced her intent to appeal the decision, weirdly claiming that the aforementioned regulations have something to do with patient safety rather than with making it logistically impossible to get an abortion despite the fact that the citizens of Missouri voted to protect the right to abortion up until viability over a year and a half ago.

You Know Who Else Wants The Chance To Vote For Abortion Rights? Idaho, Nevada, And Virginia!

It’s true — abortion rights activists are close to getting abortion on the ballot in these three states. The initiative in Idaho, which has one of the strictest bans in the nation, has already received over 105,000 signatures, well above what is needed to make it on the ballot. It sounds surprising, but a survey conducted earlier this year found that 61 percent of Idaho voters strongly or somewhat support the proposed initiative, which would allow abortion up until fetal viability.

Things have been pretty bad for Idahoans since Roe was overturned, and not just because they can’t access abortion. They lost over 35 percent of their ob-gyns between 2022 and 2024, and that’s bad for literally everyone with a uterus, whether they are pregnant or not. But it’s also understandable, as they probably don’t want to have to choose between saving someone’s life and going to prison.

Abortion is already legal in Nevada and Virginia, but since that’s something that can always change, advocates want it put explicitly in the state constitution that people have a right to abortion. The initiatives may also do a lot to help any Democrats running in the battleground states, as people may very likely be more motivated to get to the polls with abortion on the ballot. It may also force Republicans to have to get into the abortion fight, which they probably don’t want to do in either of those states.

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Whose Fault Is All Of This? Susan Collins Blames Chuck Schumer!

Maine Senator Susan Collins, whose vote was crucial in getting Brett Kavanaugh on the bench and who swore up and down that neither he nor Neil Gorsuch would touch Roe, said in a recent interview on Fox that she does not think that her votes to confirm them had anything to do with the fact that Roe was overturned.

Transcript Via Joe My God:

FOX HOST: “You held out for quite some time on your vote of support for now-Justice Kavanaugh. Is this an issue that you think is troublesome for you in this race, now that Roe v. Wade was overturned, in Maine, across the country?”

SEN. SUSAN COLLINS: “Well, first of all, let me make clear that I disagreed with the Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision overturning Roe v. Wade, but the fact is that whether Justice Kavanaugh were confirmed or not, Roe v. Wade would have been overturned, given the 6-to-3 vote. And also, I supported the justices like Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Justice Brown Jackson, who voted to sustain Roe v. Wade. I also joined with a bipartisan group of senators to codify Roe v. Wade and make it the law of the land. Regrettably, the then-leader of the Senate, Chuck Schumer, refused to bring up our bill.”

First of all … she’s wrong. While Chief Justice John Roberts voted to uphold the Mississippi law banning abortion after 15 weeks, he actually dissented on overturning Roe and, in fact, argued against doing so. Second, while Chuck Schumer isn’t my favorite person either, he did repeatedly bring bills designed to codify Roe into the law to the floor. Not her bill, per se, but the Women's Health Protection Act and others.

It would be fair of her to say that she was one of the two votes Kavanaugh needed to get a majority of the Senate, and is therefore not solely to blame … but that’s almost worse. She didn’t even have to vote for Kavanaugh in order for him to be confirmed, she could have done the right thing with literally no difference in outcome, but she did so anyway. And fuck her for that.

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There was a moment about two weeks ago when it looked as if overripe shit-gibbon Bill Pulte was not going to replace Tulsi Gabbard as the Director of National Intelligence after all.

You’ll recall that after Gabbard announced her resignation as DNI last month, Donald Trump named Pulte as (Acting) DNI despite a lack of credentials that was alarming even by Trump nominee standards (and also literally illegal). Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, is a real estate heir whose biggest talent is getting people to loathe him on sight. He had spent his first year in the Trump administration trawling through mortgage paperwork to gin up bullshit criminal mortgage “fraud” cases against high-profile Democrats that Trump doesn’t like. That is, when he wasn’t busy making Scott Bessent mad enough to threaten to kick his ass.

In short, the beady-eyed jackwagon had zero background in any field that was even intelligence-adjacent. Shoot, if you served in your high school’s JROTC, you are probably more qualified for the gig than Bill Pulte.

But Pulte had the one qualification that matters to Trump: a servility to the president so complete that if he turned up tomorrow having had plastic surgery to make himself look fatter and more orange, you would nod with your complete lack of surprise.

But then, a bit of a shock: So many Senate Republicans pushed back on the nomination that Trump briefly replaced Pulte with Jay Clayton, an election denier and lickspittle who also sucks, but at least is not so unlikable that he makes a friendless loser like Ted Cruz look popular.

Then last week, Trump changed his mind again and announced Pulte would be (Acting) DNI after all, or at least until Republicans pass the SAVE Act. That is the hunk of crap of a voting bill addressing nonexistent voter fraud with measures like “don’t let married women vote,” because everything is worse than you could possibly believe.

Trump also announced he would not sign any extension of Section 702 of FISA, the controversial surveillance law that Democrats had said they would hold up if Pulte became DNI, unless Pulte became DNI. So basically, we’ve got one giant game of legislative chicken in which terrible laws are being held hostage until an unqualified dirtbag takes over the nation’s most high-level intelligence job. All in the middle of a war, which does not seem like the moment you want chaos at the top of your intelligence community.

Who says American democracy is in a death spiral?

The upshot is that Pulte took over for Gabbard on Friday. And on Monday morning, the mass “deep state firings” began.

Even before he started, Pulte was already giving orders:

Pulte had ordered staff members to identify 400 employees to be fired from the National Counterterrorism Center, which is part of the U.S. intelligence community, in the coming weeks.

Pulte issued the instruction late Thursday — before he officially took over[.]

There really is nothing Bill Pulte likes more than firing people. He fired 14 people from the board of directors of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac when he took them over last year. He fired ethics watchdogs who were allegedly looking into one of his friends. He fired over 200 people at Fannie and Freddie on the dubious proposition that they were DEI hires. Silly employees, don’t they know that jobs should be reserved for unqualified real estate scions instead?

Cutting intelligence jobs was Pulte’s big public mandate from Trump. This after Gabbard reduced the size of her agency by 30 percent in the first six months of her reign in 2025. It makes a lot of sense from Trump’s point of view, since he has zero interest in what intelligence agencies tell him anyway. He prefers to go with his gut feeling, which as Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan have been telling people as they shill their new book, is why he ignored virtually the entire intelligence and national security communities telling him that bombing Iran would not cause its government to fall. What does he need with people who know stuff and things?

Democrats on the House and Senate Intelligence Committees have leaped into action, doing what they do best: Write a strongly worded letter telling Pulte he better not.

Given your lack of experience within the Intelligence Community, it is difficult to imagine that in such a short amount of time you have already developed fully informed views as to how to shrink ODNI without incurring risks to national security. Making significant structural changes to ODNI, to include a reduction in force, is not an appropriate course of action for anyone in an acting capacity, let alone without consultation with Congress, and you should refrain from doing so.

To be fair, there isn’t much Democrats can do besides send strongly worded letters. There is just something hilarious about looking at Bill Pulte, a man who is such an asshole that the board of his own family’s company fired him, and wagging your finger at him like a nun overseeing recess.

But the points the letter makes, that Pulte a) has zero experience or qualifications for this job and b) has shown such a willingness to trawl private documents looking for dirt that the thought of him having unfettered access to America’s most highly classified intelligence is both absurd and terrifying, still stand.

That our intelligence bureaucracy might be bloated is certainly possible. But Bill Pulte is no more qualified to evaluate that than we are. The idea that this sweaty chunk of insecurity is going to engage in mass firings in the intelligence community at any time, but especially when the nation’s situation with Iran is nowhere close to being resolved, is utterly insane.

Giving Pulte this job is like shooting your foot off just before the start of a marathon because you don’t think you really need two feet to go jogging. You can do it, but stumbling and falling flat on your face is inevitable.

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[NBC News]

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We randomly watched that famous 2007 fight between Rosie O’Donnell and Elisabeth Hasselbeck the other day, the one about the Iraq war that led to Rosie’s exit from The View. Rosie was asked recently on Watch What Happens Live if she’d be willing to guest-host The View while she’s in New York, especially now that the vapid twit pictured above who isn’t Rosie is being afforded that privilege. Rosie noted that she hadn’t been asked.

We noticed upon the rewatch though that in that big 10-minute splitscreen fight, even Hasselbeck said Donald Trump was “obnoxious,” which led him to bitch later to the press that she was “the dumbest person on TV.” Not sure if he knew in those days that dumb has a “B” in it. Just kidding, of course he didn’t, the dementia-addled loser is functionally illiterate, and he just learned about the secret “B” in “dumb” very recently.

All of that is to say that it’s kind of wild that today in the year 2026 — 19 years later, oh my God — ABC is having to run an on-air campaign to try to get viewers to help it fight back against the intimidation and censorship threats from President Donald Trump’s ass-frenching sycophant at the FCC Brendan Carr, who wants to control who The View is and is not allowed to have on its TV program, and let’s be honest, wants to ban the show from the airwaves entirely.

This all started, if you will remember, because Republicans, especially milquetoast picked-lasters like Brendan Carr, are very scared of and intimidated by Texas Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico, who models a way to be a Christian man without even having to rape kids or abuse women. (Very threatening to Republicans!) Talarico appeared on The View in February, and suddenly Brendan Carr’s prissy tailfeathers started flapping this way and that, moaning and caterwauling that The View was violating equal time rules for candidates because it is not a “bona fide” news show, blah blah blah, giant wanking motion dot gif.

ABC, for its part, decided to fight back, among other things arguing in a filing that human wedgie Brendan Carr is violating their First Amendment rights. This is a refreshing change of pace for Big Media during Trump 2.0, most of which has been acting like a common Mar-a-Lago-faced Paramount/CBS owner about things, donning a bib and going down on fascist dick like it’s all you can eat fried fascist dick night at Red Lobster.

And as part of that campaign, ABC is now running this ad telling viewers to submit comments telling Brendan Carr what they think of him and to please save The View.

Some dialogue there:

“The View has hosted your favorite guests and covered the issues you care about for nearly 30 years,” one commercial reads. “Now the FCC wants to control who is allowed to appear on the show. Viewers, use your voice. Scan this QR code. You have until July 6.”

You hear that? You have until July 6 to save The View … AND AMERICA IN GENERAL!

They’re also running this ad in local markets:

You know, it’s funny, because The View is one of those things that MAGA dipshits have been trained like drooling, shitting animals to believe is The Liberals’ favorite thing, just like how in the 1990s they imagined we all worshipped Maureen Dowd. It turns out they’ve actually always been the ones who needed to get out of their bubbles and learn what people in the surrounding world are like, and not vice versa. (We’ve always known exactly what they’re like, because so many of us escaped the shithole existence of being surrounded by them.)

But yet here we are, and an actual key fight in the war against fascism is preserving The Joy Behar And Whoopi And Ana Navarro And Token Republican Yelling Show, which none of us actually watches.

C'est comme ça.

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The Washington Post notes that ABC is also the network that hosts Jimmy Kimmel, the man who hurt Melania Trump’s feelings in April, ha ha fuck you, just kidding, Melania Trump does not have feelings. But anyway, he “hurt” her “feelings” when he said this joke, which we will gleefully reprint for the sake of journalistic completeness:

“Look at that. So beautiful. Mrs. Trump, you have the glow of an expectant widow [...] Melania’s birthday is on Sunday. She’s planning to celebrate at home the way she always does: looking out a window and whispering, ‘What have I done.’”

The joke is a light insinuation that Melania might not cry when Donald dies.

Chortle!

Jimmy Kimmel also famously hurt Ch*rl** K*rk’s dead feelings (peace be upon him, in hell) by lightly suggesting that many of the tears over the untimely departure and martyrdom of St. Debate Me were, ahem, some opportunistic fucking bullshit.

And oh boy, ABC just won’t learn its lesson, as Trump explained in this Truth this morning, and now he has to sue them for failing to ACCURATELY REPORT that “Dumocrats” (uh oh, it doesn’t have a “B” in it anymore) Obama and Biden had spent 100 Million Dollars on the Reflecting Pool and none of them could make it as beautiful as he did, you know, before the underwater Antifa sharks started cutting it up with their underwater Antifa shark chompers.

Did any of that happen? Of course not, he’s a fucking lunatic with rapidly advancing dementia.

As always, the only relevant question is oh my God, what did Trump’s bedroom smell like when he typed that out? How many days of skidmarks and nighty night snack wrappers?

That would be a good Hot Topics segment on legitimate news program The View, AKA, democracy’s last hope.

[Washington Post]

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For quite some time now, rejecting science and modern medicine has been the hot trend on the Right — something of a shibboleth, if you will. Nothing will lose you street cred faster than believing that vaccines are necessary or that climate change is real, and there’s no better way to gain it than by eating gallons of horse paste with a side of colloidal silver. And besides, what better way is there to piss off all those smug libs than by rejecting sound medical advice in favor of junk science and snake oil?

Well, there is now some quantitative proof of what a fabulous success that has been. A study published in Nature last month found that conservatives are dying at higher rates than are liberals, as opposed to back in 2010 when we all died at more or less the same rate. Curiously, it’s not just COVID-19 deaths, either. Multiple studies have already shown that Republicans were at least 15 percent more likely to die of COVID-19, particularly after the vaccine dropped. What this shows, however, is that they’re more likely to die of every other cause as well.

We have to assume that this is very good news, as far as they are concerned, as it is proof that not only are their compatriots not selling out and secretly taking the advice of their primary care providers (or seeing a PCP, even), but that they are willing to die for the cause.

Via Fast Company:

“2010 is the last year in which we can say fairly clearly that there is not this gap,” Elizabeth Elder, a coauthor of the study, tells Fast Company. “By 2020 we have pretty clear evidence of a gap in which conservatives are less healthy than liberals.”

By 2016, the gap had begun to appear in biomarker measures. By 2020, it was showing up in deaths from causes such as heart disease, cancer, and stroke. Since then, the gap has only widened. Between 2020 and 2022, only 0.2% of “very liberal” respondents died of internal causes, compared with 1.34% of “very conservative” respondents.

The authors argue in the study that the divide cannot be explained away by COVID-19 deaths, demographic differences, geography, or the simple fact that some groups are older than others. Instead, they point to a widening ideological divide in trust toward doctors and the broader medical system.

The study found that while liberals and conservatives were actually about equally likely to see a primary care provider, conservatives were less likely to trust that doctor’s assessment and follow their advice, particularly after COVID-19. On the other side of things, people on the Left became increasingly more likely to trust their doctors and follow their advice after leaving the office.

Curiously, the study also found that the further left someone is, the more healthy they are likely to be, with those rating themselves as “very liberal” having the lowest mortality rate of all.

“Even once COVID-19 deaths are separated out,” the authors wrote, “liberals, moderates and conservatives were all more likely to die during the 2020–2022 period than the most liberal respondents.”

I mean, I’ve always said that single payer Medicare For All would save lives, but it certainly never occurred to me that simply believing we should have it might have a similar effect.

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I guess if you don’t believe in evolution, if you don’t believe in climate change, if you think vaccines are bad for you, if you imagine that there is some kind of conspiracy among scientists to put out information just to ruin your day or make you question your religious beliefs, it wouldn’t make sense to believe doctors, either, when they say you need to lower your cholesterol intake.

Now, if I were a Republican, I imagine I’d see a study like this and conclude that listening to doctors might actually be a good idea, but that is also why I am not a Republican. Because if I were a Republican, actually, I would just go ahead and assume that this, too, was fake and invented out of whole cloth as an attempt to encourage us to “comply” with health advice from experts instead of getting all of our information from random podcast hosts with no medical background — as a precursor, obviously, to some kind of communist enslavement system. I would also be weirdly oppositional to the point where I would just go ahead and stab myself in the eye if I heard a liberal talking about how people should not stab themselves in the eye.

But hey! They cut off their noses and now we are officially spited, so we’re just going to have to sit with that for a while and think about what we’ve done.

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Hola, es tabs, let’s get started.

Want to see what the Kennedy Center looks like without Donald Trump’s name on it? Now you can, because a reporter got up there on that scaffolding! It’s like Trump was never born! [Washington Post]

Seems kinda totalitarian world shit that ABC is having to run a campaign right now explaining to viewers that Hitler’s Regime is trying to control who’s allowed to come on The View, and if you don’t like that, please say something before time runs out. [Washington Post]

Elon Musk wants to SUE Ro Khanna for suggesting that the chainsaw he took to USAID might have literally murdered millions of little children. Hit dogs, do they holler with clownass white South African apartheid baby accents? [Mediaite]

The Trump regime just cannot stop losing in court in its quest to seize all the states’ voting data and do white supremacist fascist things to it. [Democracy Docket]

And here is a federal judge to explain to Trump’s little pomeranian bitch Todd Blanche that he cannot subpoena Tim Walz simply for the unserious purpose of harassing him to make Dear Leader happy. Sorry, dipshit. [AP]

Here is piggy piggy piggy piggy pigfuck James Comer babbling that all of Joe Biden’s pardons should be nullified. Not the terrorists and kid touchers Trump pardons, or the fraudsters who seem to be getting pardons in the most curious of ways, but Joe Biden pardons.

As we were saying, piggy piggy piggy piggy pigfuck.

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Trump’s dumpy blockheaded mini-me Bill Pulte has started firing people at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, because all these inbreds literally think they’re going after the Deep State. [CNN]

Tucker Carlson is not a Republican anymore. [AP]

And neither is Marjorie Taylor Greene, but don’t worry, she’s not a Democrat now, in case you were worried:

Jesus fucking Christ he is so ugly, Part 1:

Jesus fucking Christ he is so ugly, Part 2:

Two film recs for ya:

Can’t remember if I put this first one in here when I first watched it last year, but 4 Moons or Cuatro Lunas is a delightful Spanish language (Mexican) film to watch during Pride month. It’s one of those films that tracks several different storylines at the same time, four to be exact, about gay men in La Ciudad de México. Available wherever you search and find it! (Tubi with ads, probably other places.)

La segunda película is also Spanish language, this time Paraguayan. It’s called 7 Boxes or 7 Cajas, and it’s just a really fun crime thriller, a 17-year-old porter working at the mercado in Asunción gets offered money to transport these mysterious seven boxes, at which point scary shit starts to immediately hit the fan.

So there you go, watch movies, see how much Spanish you understand.

Mores when we decide to tell you them!

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It was tabs, as per uzh.

AKA never.

JK they’re bigots.

Dear old Dad.

Gay!

Toenails :(

See you next time, tip your bartenders!