My Grandma Came To Olive Garden THE RIGHT WAY. Tabs, Wed., July 22, 2026
Not like your grandma, AKA Old Breadsticks, that's what we call your grandma, because she steals all the breadsticks meant for HARD-WORKING OLIVE GARDEN LOYALTY PROGRAM MEMBERS.
Good morning, hay tabs.
But first, a tiny piece of housekeeping! I will be doing one of them Substack Live thingies on Friday with Jonathan Larsen, AKA your pal who does The Fucking News. It’ll be Friday at 12:00 noon ET at this link, but to make sure you get the reminder/notification when it’s gonna happen, best to go ahead and subscribe to The Moral High Ground, which you should be doing anyway.
OK, stories!
Donald Trump is really excited the stupid, pointless war he and Pete Hegseth have lost in Iran has only murdered 18 American troops for no reason (so far). We guess that’s what this Truth Social post means, unless he’s trying to remind himself that if he wants a much bigger body count, he has to be patient, because pointless forever wars take time.
Related: Pete Hegseth, Trump’s sycophantic butt-sniffing beta at the Department of WAR!, told the Senate yesterday that Daddy “deserves the kind of praise he should get for undertaking this effort,” AKA for starting a losing loser war like this. "Having the courage to ensure that crazy Islamists can't have a nuclear weapon to hold us at issue." OK, Sparky the Fox News hairstyle expert. Daddy knows you love him. [Rolling Stone]
Also, Jeanne Shaheen for the win:
More related: Senate Democrats would like some answers from Secretary Shitfaced on his new manly testosterone policy for manly men, considering how it is the stupidest most cucked thing any of them have ever fucking heard of. [The Hill]
With all the news out there right now, it seems like a good time to re-read Timothy Snyder from a few months ago on “The Desire For Terror.” The Trump regime’s, to be specific. Especially now that the Iran war is going so poorly and nobody supports it. Especially with the approach of the midterms the Trump regime’s party is set to lose in humiliating fashion. How much they would probably love a terrorist attack to happen to the US, real or staged, blamed on Iran, or even better, staged and blamed on “Antifa” or immigrants. Makes you wonder even more why the FBI director is heading to Russia before the midterms, considering Putin’s own history of using fake terrorist attacks to consolidate his power. Snyder:
Russia is [a] possible source of a terror attack inside the United States. It is not hard to see why Moscow would contemplate such a thing. In the current circumstances, it would be easy to deflect blame. Given that Putin himself consolidated authoritarian power on the strength of wars against Muslims and terrorist attacks inside his own country, he will have had no trouble imagining such a path for Trump. It is not hard to see him giving Trump such a gift. Russia has some relevant capabilities.
During the first year of this second Trump administration, defenses against all of these vectors of terrorism have been removed. There are three levels of the problem: policies have been changed; leadership is incompetent and experienced personnel are gone; and fiction about immigrants has displaced the actual problem of terrorism.
And now add fiction about “left-wing terrorism” like that which Marco Rubio and Stephen Miller are hawking around the country. Like we said, a good one to go back and read and bookmark. And remember that if anything bad happens in the US to believe nothing the Trump regime says about it. [Thinking About …]
My grandma went to Olive Garden the RIGHT WAY, through the front door, and she waited her turn for a table, didn’t just take everybody else’s hard-earned breadsticks and put them under her armpits and stick her tongue out.
Cool. All of their messaging is built on knowing their constituents are the dumbest fucking pigs who ever lived.
Your boyfriend Zohran Mamdani currently has 31.1 million views (as of this writing) for this video he posted to Twitter last night encouraging the feds to carry out the international warrant and arrest Benjamin Netanyahu, explaining that he’s a war criminal, but that he’s determined the city and the NYPD don’t have the “independent legal authority” to do it. So he’s handling it this way:
“Argentina lost more than the World Cup final. It lost its class and decorum.” Good article. [LA Times]
A nice story out of Memphis, where a great restaurant called Tamboli’s refused to serve National Guard occupiers, there was a whole manufactured outrage by the sorts of MAGA cow people who infest comments sections but don’t actually live in the city, and now you can’t get a table at Tamboli’s, because people who actually live in the city are lining up around the block to eat there. (Related, Donald Trump’s “Memphis Safe Task Force” of occupiers have now killed four people in Memphis. And of course ICE is still terrorizing people.) If you’re in or around Memphis soon, go there! [Guardian]
Finally, we may have given you this movie rec before but we just rewatched it, so giving it again. For a number of reasons, Argentina, 1985 is a really good and important watch right now. It’s the story of the Trial of the Juntas, the trials that put away the leaders of Argentina’s genocidal military dictatorship, indeed the first time that ever happened to the disgraced leaders of a military dictatorship. Watching what’s happening in Argentina now under the Trump douchelord Javier Milei, and the political symbolism of freedom and goodness vs. creepy MAGA authoritarianism that the World Cup turned into, it’s even more timely. Plus, Americans need to start brushing up their imaginations for what lawful and real tribunals can look like, for when good and decent Americans finally get the opportunity to hold our monsters accountable, whenever that happens. Streaming on Prime Video.
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Hello Everyone
I had to visit Wonkette last night after hearing the sad news of Gav Ashdown's passing. He was unique, a good man, and I miss him.
It was good to see you all. I don't have the mental or metabolic bandwidth to do politics and war all day anymore, so I'm stepping away.
Be safe.