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Feed The Kitty

It was tabs, as per uzh.

AKA never.

JK they’re bigots.

Dear old Dad.

Gay!

Toenails :(

See you next time, tip your bartenders!

About halfway through the big new Washington Post deep dive into Tulsi Gabbard’s tangled relationship with the cult to which she has allegedly belonged since childhood, we found ourselves pondering this question: Does Tulsi Gabbard exist?

No, your Wonkette has not been taking an Introduction to Philosophy class at the Learning Annex. Nor have we been smoking any of that dank weed Donald Sutherland was holding in Animal House. What we mean is, would Tulsi Gabbard do or believe anything if she did not have her cult there to tell her what to do or believe? Would she be a sentient and independent-minded creature in the Cartesian sense of “I think, therefore I am”? Or would she simply have never been?

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We don’t know. What we do know, based on the story, is that Gabbard reportedly had nearly constant guidance from the Science of Identity Foundation (SIF), the breakaway Hare Krishna sect to which she has long been connected. (We’ve written about SIF in depth before.) And when we say guidance, we mean the sect/cult leader reportedly told her what policies to embrace, what legislation to introduce when she was in the House of Representatives, what to say in media appearances and speeches, and how to act on camera.

Of course, lots of elected officials have image consultants and handlers and advisers without whom they might be lost all day. But in Gabbard’s case, the flurry of orders was so all-encompassing that it is hard to see her as anything other than an empty vessel serving her mysterious and reclusive guru’s wishes. It was as if the Tulsi Gabbard we all saw yammering about the aloha spirit and America’s misunderstanding of the humanity of Bashar al-Assad was basically just Chris Butler, AKA Guru Dev Srila Siddhaswarupananda Paramahamsa (try saying that ten times fast, or even one time fast), in a Tulsi Gabbard skinsuit.

Spokespeople for Gabbard and for SIF deny it, but one of the big questions raised by the story is whether Butler is for sure the one behind all these memos and all this advice. The whistleblower who provided this trove of memos to Jon Swaine of the Post says duh, yes:

But the main speaker in each memo — the person who appeared to be issuing directives and sometimes castigating Gabbard — wasn’t named. There was simply no attribution or mention of who they were.

When I asked [whistleblower Rebecca] Saltzburg about this, she seemed amused. It was Butler, of course, she said. No one else could speak to Gabbard like that, she added. Saltzburg said the memos were unattributed precisely to mask Butler’s identity if they ever became public.

Whether it was Butler or one of his minions, the memos could be harsh. Swaine quotes one memo telling Gabbard “nobody gives a shit” about her opinions of a Barack Obama State of the Union speech. The memo goes on to sneer that “You’re not even trying. You’ve become really intellectually lazy.” Another memo calls her “chickenshit” and “mealymouthed” about a policy proposal.

If you have read about the psychology of cults, you know that one method leaders use to ensure loyalty from members is to destroy an individual’s self-esteem. This makes that person more desperate for and dependent on the cult leader’s approval. The disparagement continues forever, and the person is forced to prove her loyalty over and over.

This is also why commentators often dismiss Donald Trump’s fans and enablers as cultists of a sort. How often have we seen his staffers debase themselves for the sentient tube of bronzer, smiling as he insults them in the most personal and crude terms. The difference is, those people are on his payroll. Butler, as far as anyone can tell, isn’t on Gabbard’s. If anything, it seems like it’s the other way around.

Swaine has several examples of times when Gabbard received instructions on which policies to back from Butler and SIF, what talking points to use in media appearances, and what bills to introduce in Congress. But when he asked anyone in Gabbard’s orbit about any of this, the answers when he got them were mostly of the The Washington Post hates Hindus variety:

A vice president at a Manhattan-based public relations firm also contacted me on SIF’s behalf ... [H]e provided me with a statement: “Hinduphobia, anti-Hindu religious bigotry, that’s all this is,” the statement said. “When a Hindu public figure has a spiritual teacher or shares views with a Hindu religious figure, that alone is somehow evidence of sinister control.”

The “sharing views” with her alleged guru isn’t the issue. It’s the “this weirdo guru whose followers reportedly eat his toenails seems to control every part of her life from what she says on TV to what policies she pursues in office” that’s the issue.

You know who else of all damn people is accusing the media of “anti-Hindu bias” in talking about Tulsi Gabbard? Meghan McCain, who is a Gabbard friend and also the daughter of John McCain, in case you hadn’t heard her mention that before:

What’s this about Gabbard’s release on Dr. Anthony Fauci?

Oh well, her last day as DNI this past Thursday, Gabbard released a whole tranche of documents rehashing the old conspiracist claims that Fauci fund gain-of-function research at the same lab in Wuhan that some people think the COVID virus leaked out of, and Fauci wouldn’t admit he kicked off the whole thing and the intelligence community covered it all up while Americans died and everyone had to stay home and Bethany Mandel’s kids cruelly had to wear masks every time they entered a Harris Teeter:

If you watch the video — and why would you — you’ll see that this is the same usual mash-up of conspiracist thinking and baseless smearing of Fauci that we have been hearing for six years now. We propose that the media paid no attention to it for the following reasons:

• It’s bullshit.

• It’s bullshit that has been debunked about a gazillion times, including by congressional committees, and the only people who still buy it are cranks and idiots.

• There is a lot else going on — war with Iran, the World Cup, Donald Trump turning the Reflecting Pool into a fetid, algae-ridden, duck-killing swamp. Our media is pretty busy!

• It’s bullshit.

The people who still buy this stuff are, unfortunately, in charge of our government right now. Like this asshole:

Gabbard has supposedly been on the outs with Trump and much of the administration for quite some time over her position on the Iran War (she’s opposed) and her inability to prove that George Soros and his secret antifa army committed voter fraud on a massive scale to steal the 2020 election from Herr Trump. Could this video be one last desperate grasp for Trump’s approval on Gabbard’s way out the door? Maybe! But based on everything else we’ve talked about, we can’t say whose approval is most important to her.

In any case, Gabbard is out of government. We wish her a (hopefully) permanent retirement surfing and yammering about aloha and snacking on her leader’s toenails if she finds ‘em tasty (allegedly!) and whatever else she wants to do that will never, ever again bring her to our attention.

OPEN THREAD.

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For over three decades now, starting in 1994 with their “Until There’s a Cure” HIV/AIDS awareness game, the San Francisco Giants have been hosting official Pride and LGBTQ+ nights at the ballpark, which makes sense, given where they are located. They were the first major league baseball team to do so, and were also the first MLB team to officially join the It Gets Better campaign, as well as the first to put rainbows on their team uniforms for Pride nights in June.

Well, last week, three of the team’s pitchers, Landen Roupp, JT Brubaker, and Ryan Walker, really wanted to drive it home that, if they have anything to say about it, It Will Not Get Better And Will In Fact Get Worse. They decided to protest the rainbow hats that they were not even required to wear in the first place, by writing Bible verses on them.

Specifically, they cited Genesis 9:12-16, a passage about how the rainbow is meant to be a symbol of their God’s promise to not kill everyone on earth by drowning them again.

As they are not actually allowed to write stuff on their uniforms (and also had the option, again, of not wearing the hats, an option another player took advantage of), the players were reprimanded by the League, just like other players who have written other things on their hats or uniforms in the past.

Naturally, the Right (the same people who were very upset about Colin Kaepernick kneeling during the national anthem and not actually defacing anything) absolutely lost its shit over this, claiming the players were being discriminated against for “expressing their Christian faith,” and the Trump Department of Justice announced on Friday plans to launch a “civil rights investigation” into the MLB. You know, because of how they are very desperate to prove that Christians are being discriminated against in a country in which they are the majority and have the most actual power of any belief group.

Why? Because they think the “oppression olympics” are a real thing and that if they can successfully convince the rest of us that white heterosexual Christian men are the true victims of discrimination, they will be able to get the sweet, sweet “special treatment” they think all of the people who actually are oppressed have been getting. Or something? I guess?

However, the pitchers themselves now say that they do not feel they were discriminated against.

Via The New York Post:

“At the end of the day, I don’t think it’s discrimination,” Brubaker said. “It’s just people getting a hold of something and turning it into something. I just wanted to put my message and my beliefs [out there], and that was the end of it.”

Walker declined to comment on the specific question of religious persecution but explained that his decision to write a Bible verse, Genesis 9:12-16, on the side of his rainbow-colored cap the Giants wore for LGBTQ Pride Night had to do with internal, not external, pressure.

“I wouldn’t say I was necessarily pressured by anybody, MLB or whatever,” Walker said. “I’m more so questioning myself and what does my faith mean to me? Like, I have my beliefs and my side. What am I going to do to make sure I stand for my faith?”

And what beliefs are those, exactly? They’re not specific, but they claim it wasn’t about “hate.”

Both players stressed in interviews with The California Post and San Francisco Chronicle before Friday’s series opener against the Marlins that they didn’t intend to spread hate.

“I don’t have any hatred toward anyone,” Walker said. “I have gay friends.”

I’m sorry, but what is it that we’re supposed to believe here? That these guys just happened to choose this particular time, for no reason whatsoever, to express their religious beliefs about rainbows? Because, for people who are saying that all they want is to “stand for their faith,” they’re not doing a great job of explaining what they even mean by that. Are they trying to say “Look, it’s just that my religion that I believe in says LGBTQ+ people are bad, not that I, personally, am a mean person who thinks that LGBTQ+ people are bad?” Are they trying to be the rainbow police? Like, is it their actual contention that Christians own the rainbow and no one else can use it? What is it that they are trying to say?

The most generous reading of the situation is that they are mad about LGBTQ+ people using the rainbow as a symbol to represent something that they believe is against their religion, when “in fact,” the rainbow actually belongs to Christians. Because, you know, this one time their god flooded the entire world, save for one family and two of every animal (except for the unicorn, cause that bitch was running late or whatever), but then he felt like, really bad afterwards so he promised never to do it again and gave them a colorful sky arch to prove it.

I’m sorry, but if someone were in a relationship with a person who went on a mass murder spree and then apologized by saying “My bad, I’ll never do it again, please accept this meteorological phenomenon as proof of my promise,” no one in their right mind would tell them to stay. That’s not a thing to celebrate! Especially given that, apparently, the promise is only to not drown people again, not to kill everyone off again, as these people also believe that their god will eventually end the world by killing everyone with fire.

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I do try to not be too mean about religion because, while it’s obviously not my thing, there are lots of perfectly lovely people who are believers and it feels rude to be like “I’m sorry but there’s no way that actually happened, it makes no sense.” I don’t actually want to rain on anyone’s parade like that. But when motherfuckers are out here like “I’m not hateful, I’m just a rainbow fact-checker!” I think it’s fair to ask some questions.

I’m glad that these pitchers understand that they weren’t discriminated against, but they should perhaps take a minute to consider why defacing a Pride-themed hat with a Bible verse insinuating that the rainbow belongs exclusively to Christians might be a shitty thing to do. I don’t know much about Christianity beyond what I have learned from the musical works of Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, but the Ted Neeley Jesus I know seems like he’d prefer that people spend more time caring about the poor and the sick then getting petty about who owns what colors.

PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!

Sunday might have been the day we try to show some love to the dads in our lives, but some of us were just dealing with motherfuckers.

Specifically, the lying ones employed by or beholden to Donald Trump.

So let’s dive right in!

Chris Wright

We start with Trump’s Low Energy Secretary, Chris Wright, on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos Jonathan Karl.

Wright praised the Iran Memorandum of Understanding (MOU … or is that IOU? We get it mixed up). Jonathan Karl then asked about the flow of ships through the Strait of Hormuz, noting that Vice President Couchfucker Vance said it’s been about 55 ships a day. But Wright couldn’t help slipping a lie between some truth (which we caught).

WRIGHT: Well, 55 ships two days ago, as you said, 67 went through yesterday on an oil and oil products volumes about equal to where we were before the war.

The prewar average was 140 ships per day passing through the Strait of Hormuz. So, if by “about equal,” he means less than half that, then sure, bud. But if words have meanings, then no.

Wright then tried to praise and puff up Donald Trump’s ego, but somehow did the opposite.

WRIGHT: [B]ut look, the president has been advised all along, despite the media proclamations, that there was enormous risk to energy flows to engage […] the Iranians on their nuclear program in a military fashion. […] He knew he was going to drive up energy prices in the short run. He had the courage to take the action anyway.

Knowing something is dumb and doing it anyway is not courage, it’s stupidity. Which explains why the entire “war” has basically been a long string of bumbles, stumbles and foolhardy charges that would make Leroy Jenkins proud.

Our favorite quote from Wright was this Freudian slip.

WRIGHT: We knew that was a risk to energy prices. We've paid the price with higher energy prices in the midterm.

What a perfectly clippable soundbite for every Democratic Party midterm campaign ad!

Thanks, Chris Wright, you sack of sentient bland oatmeal!

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Mike Waltz

Speaking of midterms, Margaret Brennan on CBS’s Face The Nation began her interview of UN Ambassador Mike Waltz by showing viewers the polls about Trump’s Iran blunder.

BRENNAN: Our CBS News poll out this morning shows that more than three-quarters of Americans want to end the conflict now, with 69 percent saying the conflict with Iran was not worth the costs. More than half, 57 percent, say the president’s war with Iran created more problems than it solved. And two in three believe that the administration reached agreement with Iran mainly because it wanted the conflict to be over.

We’re joined now by U.N. Ambassador Mike Waltz…

The look on Waltz face, after receiving what can be categorized as the opposite of a James Brown intro, was priceless.

Brennan continued with her first question:

BRENNAN: The war is unpopular, as you just heard […] And if even the president's own team doubts this is a win, how do you sell this to the public?

Waltz tried to defend himself, and the administration, the only way politicians know how: By answering a question they were never asked.

WALTZ: I'll go back to other polling that shows the American people absolutely agree with President Trump that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon.

Those are two very different things. If someone kicks you in the balls and when you complain they answer with “I thought you cared if Iran got a nuke,” you rightly dismiss it at ridiculous obfuscating. And, let’s face it, that’s precisely what the Trump administration has done to the average American’s economic situation with this idiot-ass war that’s done absolutely zero to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuke.

Lindsey Graham

Staying on Face The Nation, South Carolina Republican Senator and political remora Lindsey Graham was a little miffed his warmongering boner has been merely edged instead of fully satisfied by Trump’s “war.”

So, much like a toxic guy with blue balls, Graham started “negging” Trump.

GRAHAM: Let's try this. Let's try a diplomatic solution. I think it's going to fail.

But Graham, ever the hopeless romantic for the wanton killing of people in foreign lands, shared his hope for future satisfaction after trying to influence talking to Trump.

GRAHAM: I spent 4.5 hours with President Trump Friday. Here's what I think will happen next. If this deal fails, President Trump is going to take the Strait of Hormuz over by force. […] We'll charge a fee for all those who go through – through to pay for the operation. […] And if Iran contests control of the Strait of Hormuz by the United States, we will obliterate them. So, to all the people listening, if this diplomatic effort fails, President Trump is going to take the Strait of Hormuz.

It’s always the “bravest” guys who’ve never fought in a war who want our country to go to one.

Jeanine Pirro

We conclude this week with DC US Attorney Jeanine “Boxwine” Pirro, on Fox News’s The Sunday Briefing, vowing to get the vandals who destroyed Trump’s precious green/blue Reflecting Pool renovation.

PIRRO: Anyone who is in a position to vandalize or attempting to vandalize the Reflecting Pool will face the criminal justice system in D.C.

Wow, sounds serious. We like to help, so here are some suspects we found. Be on the lookout for this guy who looks like the WWE’s Paul Bearer, men in reflective vests with bottles of peroxide, and the mastermind who revealed his evil plans on TV.

Throw the book at them with the viciousness you would a sandwich tosser!

Have a week.

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The press credential for the 2026 Capital Pride parade and concert in Washington DC this weekend was a simple black-and-white four-by-six-inch card quoting the First Amendment of the US Constitution in a large, bold monotype font. It’s a simple, subtle message aimed squarely at the ultra-conservative, Bible-thumping theocratic nuts and fascist-sympathizing freeloaders infesting the federal government just down the road.

"Exist. Resist. Have the Audacity."

That was the theme adopted by the Capital Pride Alliance. It’s a DC region nonprofit that organizes and leads many of the city’s activities and events around Pride. Its goal is to “celebrate, educate, support, and inspire our multi-faceted communities in order to grow and preserve our history and protect our rights for current and future generations.” That includes the parade, a huge block party in DuPont Circle (DC’s gayborhood), and a music festival on Pennsylvania Avenue, directly in front of the US Capitol building.

“Fifty-one years of pride in the future 51st state, and both movements are rooted in the same belief: every person deserves to be seen, heard and fully represented,” DC Mayor Muriel Bowser said June 1 during the start of Pride celebrations. “We’re celebrating Pride Month in the gayest city in the world.” Mayor Bowser then raised a big, gay flag on the John A. Wilson building, which houses the offices of the mayor and city council.

Still, with tens of thousands of residents and tourists flooding the city, not everyone was pleased to party outside on a nice day. For better or worse, there was a noticeable lack of rainbow-washing as the bevy of corporate sponsors from previous years was absent. I saw a special operations DC cop sending a group text that mocked students marching in the Montgomery County Public Schools (Maryland) delegation. And as the parade made its way to Pennsylvania Avenue, a gaggle of flag-wrapped tourists bitched quietly from behind a barrier at the people dancing down 14th Street in their Pup Play leather underwear and fetish masks.

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It was a little ironic, considering that the Lovecraftian terror dome housing Donald Trump’s UFC birthday fight the week before was still visible just over the treeline on the South Lawn of the White House. Apparently, sweaty, half-naked men trapped in a cage, embracing one another while wearing brightly colored panties, is only acceptable when there are absolutely zero erections. Period. (Allegedly.)

Pride celebrations have been giving tourists flooding the city to celebrate the US’s 250th anniversary a reality check. They’re learning that the founding of the country isn’t just about exiled religious cranks, slaveowners, drunks and a newsletter publisher who screwed half the women in Paris. American freedoms exist because of people like Dr. Franklin Kameny, who was fired from the US Army Map Service for being gay, and Bayard Rustin, who helped organize Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963.

Because the US is the seat of government for the United States, LGBTQ+ people from all over the world live and work in the city in an official capacity for their countries. Representatives from all over the world often get their first experience with LGBTQ+ people in DC because residents have fought for their rights, and the rights of future generations. They take those experiences home, and where they tell more people that it’s okay to be different.

Amidst every other embarrassment, every other news headline that makes you go “Oh for fuck’s sake,” every Ozymandian moment, every peace talk blown up, every queen-out as we watch Donald Trump fuck up the Reflecting Pool, when renovation/construction is allegedly the one thing he’s good at, there is also the fact that Trump cannot seem to stop making the fight he started with right-wing Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni even worse.

"Trump è un coglione". Roughly, it means Trump is an asshole. That was the cover of the right-wing Libero Quotidiano in Italy this weekend.

Meloni was maybe his only friend in Europe, especially now that Viktor Orbán has lost power. But Trump, because he is a needy little dementia queen, just the smallest, weakest man in history, couldn’t stop himself from trying to aggrandize himself/self-soothe by making up lies about her begging him for a picture at the G7, like he’s some dreamy celebrity.

She might be kind of a fascist — which is why she was his only friend — but she at least has self-respect.

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After he bumblefucked around and humiliated himself at the G7, Trump tried to make himself look cool in an interview with Italian network La7, telling a reporter that Meloni “begged me to take a photo with her. She wanted a photo with me so badly — I could have skipped it, but I felt sorry for her.”

To which Meloni responded:

Meloni called what Trump said “made up”, adding: “Neither I nor Italy ever beg.”

“I don’t know why the president of the United States behaves this way with his own allies,” the far-right leader wrote on X.

“I can only say that it’s a pity he doesn’t show the same determination with enemies of the West, with enemies of the United States, with leaders with whom, instead, he is far more accommodating,” she said.

Ohhhhh, that wounded Trump somethin’ FIERCE. You know what a whiny, thin-skinned little bitchbaby he is. So he tried again this weekend, looking more and more ridiculous:

That time, she replied on Instagram:

President Trump, these constant, unprovoked attacks are senseless. As for my popularity, being your friend certainly has not helped it, nor does it depend on my relationship with you. My popularity depends on my ability to defend Italy’s national interest, and that is exactly what I have always done. That is also what I did regarding the American military bases in Italy. Their use is governed by agreements that we have always respected, and that cannot be violated as long as I am Prime Minister. Italy remains a sovereign nation. In any case, my popularity is none of your concern. I suggest you focus on yours.

“Bitch,” she did not add.

During all of this, Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani canceled a trip to the United States this weekend, saying Trump’s words were “serious and offensive” toward the prime minister and toward Italy.

And STILL the limp-dicked troll cannot control himself, cannot stop doubling down on this stupid war of words he started for no reason beyond his own insecurities.

Trump’s latest missive came this morning in one of his posting sprees, as he sadly, desperately is still trying to get the upper hand. And each time he just looks more shriveled and pathetic.

So he’s basically back to the same loser refrain he’s been babbling about ever since Meloni wouldn’t let him use an Italian base as a staging ground for his chosen war, the one where he’s in the middle of totally surrendering to the nation he invaded.

In case you think he can’t make himself look weaker, he’s got another week ahead of him of losing the Iran war and the paint on the bottom of the reflecting pool peeling off in strips and everything else he touches continuing to die.

We’re sure he’s not done fighting with Meloni either.

Quite a fuckin’ 250th birthday celebration for America this is turning out to be.

[France 24]

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Morning, here thine tabs!

Lord, did y’all SEE Michelle Obama fuck Donald Trump up the other day at the grand opening of the Obama Center? She’s not going high anymore, that’s for sure. Barack was pretty good too. Come see it and subscribe and share at The Moral High Ground! [The Moral High Ground]

Trump says everyone is vandalizing the Reflecting Pool, stop, everyone, stop! Wht an absolutely insane loser. [JoeMyGod]

Hahahahaha, US Attorney Boxwine might try to prosecute ABC’s Jonathan Karl for “vandalizing” the Reflecting Pool, so we are sure that will go as well as all her other [slurp!] “prosecutions.” [JoeMyGod]

Dead duck in the Reflecting Pool. Is it because of something Donald Trump did? [JoeMyGod]

Oh, you think Ukraine can’t liberate Crimea from Russia? Ha ha ha ha ha. [Phillips O’Brien’s newsletter]

The whole world needs to spend a whole lot more time making fun of US Ambassador to Belgium and loser token gay conservative Bill White, who makes Scott Bessent look like a normal gay guy, ha ha, no he doesn’t, they’re all undesirable losers. [JoeMyGod]

Yeah, scratch that, read this article about what Bessent has had to say about Ukrainian Volodymyr Zelenskyy (a real man compared to every MAGA man) and tell us what a little bitch Bessent is. [Guardian]

And speaking of little bitches, sure looks like that little bitch Marco Rubio is now detaining immigrants because they’re exercising free speech against people Trump likes in their own native countries. [New York Times]

Can Trump’s clownishly criminal DOJ intervene in the NAACP’s lawsuit against Elon Musk’s xAI as the plaintiff in order to try to get it dismissed? It sure thinks it’s going to try! [Balls & Strikes]

Speaking of the Trump DOJ, what a shock to learn that they killed an investigation into the mysterious circumstances surrounding a convicted fraudster who somehow suddenly got clemency from Trump. [New York Times]

Anthony Fauci needs to start filing hella libel lawsuits against Secretary Felch-So-Much. [RawStory]

Is Tulsi Gabbard literally just a full-on puppet of her cult leader guru guy? Uhhhhhhh. [Washington Post]

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Should Donald Trump spell it “Dumocrat” or “Dumbocrat”? Most people do not know “dumb” has a “B” in it! This is a poll, because Donald Trump has discovered how to do polls on Truth Social! [JoeMyGod]

Should Donald Trump change the name of “ICE” to “NICE,” in order to very much confuse the libs, who will not even know what to do? This is another poll, because Donald Trump has discovered how to do polls on Truth Social, and he is very clever! [JoeMyGod]

Polls are fun! Finishing writing tabs is fun!

More stories when we got ‘em.

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Oh my God. What have you done to me????

Look at me. I’m greener than the Phillie Phanatic. I look like a bunch of Peter Pan impersonators melted. I look like Lime Cucumber Gatorade. I look like a leprechaun orgy.

Jesus. I’m the most hideous shade of bridesmaid dress ever.

You’re going to be clean and sparkly and beautiful, they said. We’re going to paint you a lovely color of American Flag Blue and you’ll look more gorgeous than ever, they told me. Instead I look like a bayou after a spill at a nearby Mountain Dew plant.

This is the worst algae bloom in me in at least five years. And it was totally avoidable. Washington DC is in a bad heat wave, even for June. Algae loves warm water, and I am warm right now. To top this all off, the “American Flag Blue” is so dark that it might be helping trap heat in me. People in the administration are yapping about “residual algae in the supply lines.” Did no one check the supply lines feeding water into me as part of this grand beautification project? No one considered it? No one said There is anti-algae paint on the market, maybe we should consider using it?

Another theory is that I’m now full of orthophosphate, which is in DC’s city water. Orthophosphate is like super-food for algae. And I hold 6.75 million gallons of water. So the geniuses running this fustercluck of an operation might have refilled me with what amounts to a nearly 7-million-gallon algae buffet.

Was this all foreseeable? Sure, if you believe in trifling bullshit like “biology” and “physics.” We already knew that was asking too much of the crew of slope-browed Neanderthals currently running our national government. So now I’m the same shade as a Nerf football. Fabulous.

And to top it all off, that blue paint or epoxy or whatever they painted on me is already peeling off in clumps. It’s supposed to be waterproof, and it couldn’t survive its first contact with water.

Wait, what’s that? The hydrogen peroxide the National Park Service was pouring in me to kill the algae this week can also act as a paint stripper? Terrific. The water’s off the hook on peeling up my new coat of paint. Congrats, water.

Anyway, everyone come on down and grab clumps of my new paint job. You can take them home and in 20 years show them off to your kids the way Cold Warriors like to show off chunks of the Berlin Wall they brought home in 1991.

Actually, scratch that. The po-po are arresting people for that now. And the National Guard is patrolling my perimeter like they’re on guard duty at Bagram. Only instead of Taliban sappers, they’re warning vacuum salesmen from Milwaukee to not touch me. What a relief.

Goddamn Donald Trump. He hands a no-bid contract to clean me up and paint me to a guy you knew was grifting him. I can tell this because the dude looks like a cross between a white-collar crook who owns a bunch of Rust Belt AutoZones and John Candy playing a jolly paper cup salesman in some dumb family comedy from the late ‘80s. Where does Trump find these weirdos, you ask? Why, Palm Beach, home of Mar-a-Lago and nexus of everything unholy in America for the last decade.

Seriously, look at this dude, is he purposely dressed like a knockoff Gomez Adams?

Does he look like the sort of flamboyant twice-arrested asshole who once was fined $150,000 for bribing a congressman and spent three years on probation for violating campaign finance laws? Because that is exactly who he is, having once been one of the many idiots who handed Jim Traficant money back during the man’s heyday of bribe-taking.

And to really put the cherry on top of this crap sundae, the name of the company the dude owns that did the work? Green Water Solutions! I’m fairly sure the name is not supposed to indicate it will literally turn water the same color as the Jolly Green Giant, but there you go.

Of course, if you listen to the Right, none of this is happening. This Fox News idiot gave Trump major props for cleaning me up this week when he’s the one who made a mess of me in the first place! It’s like how the guy wants props for ending the war with Iran and getting the Strait of Hormuz open, like it wasn’t open before he ordered the military to start lobbing Tomahawk missiles at Iranian water storage tanks.

And no, wingnuts, Antifa saboteurs are not secretly dumping algae into me just to mess up your big special boy’s plan to pretty me up by July 4. No one is dumping algae into me, unless the Potomac River is now someone. Jesus, Lara Logan. Remember when you were a respectable journalist? Now you’re a fedora away from being Donald Sutherland telling Kevin Costner to keep looking into the JFK assassination while sitting on a bench next to me. Ironic, that.

Yeah, I don’t care what the president said. Of course he thinks his enemies dumped algae in me on purpose just to fuck with him. He probably already has the entire Justice Department investigating George Soros for funding the development of a strain of chemical-resistant super-algae or something. The one time anyone in his administration will admit science is a thing.

Of course it’s the Trump administration, so all they can say is WHAT ABOUT OBAMA’S $35 MILLION RENOVATION TEN YEARS AGO, HENNNNGGGHHHHHH? Well, what about it? If there were problems stemming from that renovation, shouldn’t this renovation have been geared towards fixing them? Maybe you should have taken your time and done it right instead of rushing to push through a no-bid contract because the giant wet baby of a president had to have his pretty blue color by July 4.

Now the Park Service has to scramble to clean me up using a metric fuckton of chemicals and something called “nanobubbler technology,” whatever that even is.

Anyway, sure, NPS is just “vacuuming up” dead algae, which President Deals vanquished as surely as he vanquished the Iranian navy. By Trump’s standards, that means he should be making a deal to hand over $300 billion for my reconstruction.

So if you’re in DC, come on over and watch my algae-heavy, lime-colored water get drained into the Potomac. But no touching! That might be a comic book villain origin story waiting to happen.

Apologies to all the fish in the river. In Donald Trump’s America, no living thing is safe.

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[WaPo]

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Three generations of women: granddaughter, mother, and grandma, complicated people with complicated relationships. Grandma is the story of three women and their confused but very human connectedness. Yet the story is a fairly simple one.

A granddaughter (Sage) gets pregnant and goes to her more liberal-minded, lesbian grandma (Elle) for help over her business-focused mother (Judy). Sage needs money for an abortion that she has scheduled at the end of the day.

The two women embark on a journey in Elle’s 1955 Dodge Royal Lancer (which was Lily Tomlin’s personal vehicle) to get the money. The journey they take is of remembrances of Elle’s life and the people whose lives she touched.

The movie is full of sharp wit delivered perfectly by the talented cast but the amazing Lily Tomlin steals the show. When I was first looking for movies to schedule for Pride month I wanted half of the movies to be centered on women. So I picked two films that offered entirely different takes on lesbians and the power of women. The first was Bound, a film I had seen a couple of times.

The other was this film, and just like Rebecca I had never heard of it. I saw the cast, read the description and watched the trailer. A film starring Lily Tomlin as a lesbian, hippie, poet grandma who helps her granddaughter get an abortion; AND the cast is almost entirely women with Sam Elliott tacked on? Fuck yeah I’m in.

Granddaughter Sage has much to learn from her grandma and her mother, but of course they all end up learning from each other. What drives their need to overcome the anxieties and complexities that come from being in a family, the families we are born into and the families we choose?

You know me, hopeful and cup half full ziggy; I say it is love.

This is not to say there is not a lot of emotional baggage and psychological scars that comes with these relationships. Grandma does not shy away from these deeper issues, it packs a big story into a short time frame at just 79 minutes.

Spoiler alert.

Sam Elliott’s acting is such that you want to kick him in the nuts and yet you feel the pure emotional pain he is experiencing, you think of him portraying strong but kind figures and yet he is not that kind of character in this movie. It is an amazing reflection on his talent among the many performances in this incredibly well-acted film. I found the young Julia Garner’s (Sage) acting to be stunning, how she shifts between dealing with her grandma and interacting with her mom is perfection.

So I, like most of you, had never heard of this film but I am so glad I picked it. A quote from the film that stuck with me was when grandma Elle was explaining to granddaughter Sage why she had had relationships with men in the past.

And liking yourself is the usually the hardest thing to do.

I need to add this, Lily Tomlin is a total hero. For a woman to do what she has done in comedy requires incredible talent and courage. She has been with her partner Jane Wagner for 55 years. They officially married in 2013.

Grandma stars Lily Tomlin, Julia Garner, Marcia Gay Harden, Judy Greer, Laverne Cox, and Sam Elliott. Directed by Paul Weitz.

Grandma is free with ads on Tubi. $3.99 in the usual places.

To make requests and see the movie lists and schedules go to WonkMovie.

The animated short is Alterous by Arwynn the Frog.

Next week’s Movie Night selection is the documentary Stonewall Uprising free on YouTube and PBS.

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Back in April, Fox News Drunk Pete Hegseth, who somehow won confirmation to be Defense Secretary, had a great idea to keep the administration’s lunatic base happy: He ended the Pentagon’s requirement that all service members get the flu vaccine. The move was modeled on the Trump administration’s decision last year to end mandatory COVID vaccinations. After years of lying to themselves that COVID is “no worse than the flu,” the numpties have apparently convinced themselves that influenza is no big deal either.

That’s despite the fact that flu hospitalizes hundreds of thousands of Americans annually and leads to tens of thousands of deaths. But those most at risk are older people and young children, so in the eugenics-driven logic of this administration, there’s no need to worry. Those groups aren’t warfighters, so fuck ‘em. The fit will survive and the unfit are expendable.

Repealing the military flu vaccine mandate was a bold step forward for individual freedom, Hegseth said, claiming that requiring vaccines for all service members was “just overly broad and not rational.” He explained that the people who keep America safe should have the right to increase their chances of getting sick and spreading the flu to others they serve with, often in restricted spaces like barracks, submarines, and aircraft. Said the dipshit, “Our new policy is simple: If you, an American warrior entrusted to defend this nation, believe that the flu vaccine is in your best interest, then you are free to take it; you should. But we will not force you. Because your body, your faith are not negotiable.” Then an eagle landed on his shoulder and everyone clapped.

The effectiveness of Hegseth’s new policy became instantly clear this week, at least for the flu virus: Thanks to a sharp drop in vaccination rates among new recruits, a flu outbreak at Lackland Air Force has left around 220 people sick so far, sending at least two people to hospitals. In addition to the reported flu cases, the Air Force is also investigating the death last week of trainee Keon McDaniel, who was in his sixth week of basic when he “experienced a medical emergency” June 12. He was taken to Brooke Army Medical Center on Joint Base San Antonio, where he later died. It’s not yet clear whether his death was linked to the flu outbreak, but we’re sure the Pentagon will inform the public as soon as the investigation makes a finding, because this is the most transparent administration in history, right?

Lackland AFB is where all new enlisted members of the Air Force and Air National Guard (ooh, and Spaaaaace Forrrrce too!) go for basic military training. As the New York Times points out, it’s an ideal theater of operations for highly motivated warrior viruses to attack and overwhelm undefended targets of opportunity, because “new recruits sleep on bunk beds in open bays and share meals at large communal tables.”

After Hegseth ended the flu vaccine mandate, vaccination rates among incoming recruits dropped from nearly 100 percent to only around 40 percent, proving that when people are free to make decisions about their own health, they will always make wise choices. Except for when they don’t.

Even so, it’s all about individual freedom and autonomy, because what is basic training but a festival of open-minded Socratic dialogue about making voluntary choices in your own best interests?

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Feed The Kitty

Hegseth said in April that it was all about respecting servicemembers’ religious beliefs (and dedication to wackaloon conspiracy theories), which had been violated by Joe Biden, America’s greatest enemy:

“Our men and women in uniform were forced to choose between their conscience and their country, even when those decisions posed no threat to our military readiness,” Hegseth said. “That era of betrayal is over. Under President Trump, the War Department continues to take decisive action to once again restore freedom and strength to our joint force. We’re seizing this moment to discard any absurd overreaching mandates that only weaken our warfighting capabilities.”

Hegseth has not been available to comment on how the outbreak at Lackland has strengthened America’s warfighting capabilities, but maybe he’ll eventually point out that since many or most of those who fell ill were in basic training, they weren’t even ready to fight any wars just yet, so what’s the big deal?

The Times notes that in April, when Hegseth rolled back the flu vaccine mandate, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi) said that maybe doing so might be a bad idea. Wicker, an Air Force veteran, said, “The reason it was mandatory was to enhance readiness. […] You know, you do give up certain rights when you take the oath. It’s just part of it.” What wild, rebellious thinking!

Also too, let’s all take a quick moment to glare our most skeptical glare at the Times for including this utterly nonsense sentence in its coverage of the Lackland outbreak:

While he has changed his tone since the spring, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has a history of loudly questioning the safety and effectiveness of many standard vaccines.

No, RFK Jr. has not “changed his tone” on vaccines, as Yr Wonkette pointed out when the Times started pushing that nonsense in April. He has always said very different things about vaccines when he’s talking to his tribe of antivaxxer zealots and when he’s talking to normal people, and shame once more on the Times for continuing to sanewash his extremism.

Fortunately, not everyone in the Pentagon is as stupid as Hegseth. In response to the outbreak, the Air Force has allowed an exemption to Hegseth’s new policy so all recruits at Lackland can be ordered to get the flu vaccine as part of the effort to contain the spread of the virus. As of blogtime, we haven’t yet heard of any brave warriors refusing the shots or complaining that the new mandate is tyrannical. We guess that during a flu outbreak, there aren’t a lot of antivaxxers in foxholes, or in barracks.

[ABC News / NYT]

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Catch You With My Truth Jab!

Happy Weekend!

If there is one thing I have learned from watching a truly unhealthy amount of Dateline, it is that the most dangerous activity to do with anyone with whom you are romantically involved is hiking. I am not actually mad at this, personally, as I don’t think I would like it very much anyway and do not own the appropriate footwear. The second-most dangerous activity is sailing, although that I actually like, and would thus be careful to take all the proper precautions. (Life jacket! Ability to swim! Other people! Not inviting Robert Wagner or Christopher Walken!)

I would imagine that hiking with a geek could be especially precarious, if we are talking about, like, an incel or tech bro-type geek. So I would not celebrate this holiday!

It is also the birthday of Olympia Dukakis, John Mahoney, and Danny Aiello, all of whom starred in one of my favorite movies of all time, Moonstruck. It’s actually kind of weird when you think about it, because Dukakis, who played Cher’s mother, was only two years older than Aiello, who played Cher’s initial love interest.

Oh, and Cher’s 80th birthday was exactly a month ago, on May 20, but we all knew that and celebrated accordingly, I am sure.

Anyway, your first present this week is, naturally, a scene between Dukakis and Aiello in Moonstruck.

And the follow-up to that conversation with John Mahoney.

Actually, if you feel like watching the whole thing, it’s free on a number of platforms, including YouTube. You are welcome! If it were up to me, I would make Moonstruck Day a national holiday rather than anything involving hiking.

Today is also Brian Wilson’s birthday, and my God, there are at least 80 presents I could bless you with to celebrate that, because Brian Wilson did a whole lot of weird shit. It’s so hard to choose!

So, first I’m going to go with “Smart Girls” — the one and only (thank goodness?) rap song that Wilson ever did, from his unreleased 1990 album Sweet Insanity.

It is … interesting.

“Fun” fact, all of the songs on Sweet Insanity were written or co-written by Eugene Landy, the rather controversial psychologist who treated Wilson during two of his breakdowns.

The album was also meant to include a duet with Weird Al, which honestly kind of just warms my entire heart. I hope they were friends!

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Talk amongst yourselves!

Greetings, Wonketeers! I’m Hooper, your bartender. And I’ve just come off a double shift with a deadline approaching for this article, so bear with me if we ramble a bit. I’m working on rum, three shots of Fernet, and spite. Fortunately for all of us, I’ve been thinking about this cocktail for a while. Let’s make a Dry Margarita. Here’s the recipe:

Dry Margarita

1 ½ oz Milagro Blanco tequila

1 oz fresh lime juice

1 oz dry curacao

¾ oz honey syrup

¼ oz Del Maguey Clásico mezcal

Pinch smoked sea salt

Shake all ingredients and strain into an iced rocks glass. Garnish with a dehydrated lime.

It’s summer. It’s margarita season. But honestly, when isn’t it margarita season? Margaritas are delicious, easy to make, and incredibly flexible. A margarita, at its core, is tequila, orange liqueur, and lime. That’s tasty on its own, but there’s space in the recipe for more sugar. Tweak the amount of lime juice — or just commit to making a sweet margarita — and you can add all sorts of flavors. Agave syrup is the standard add-in. I prefer honey syrup. But dive bars will go nuts with that extra space. Any sugary fruit-flavored glop can go into that basic margarita recipe, and something pretty drinkable will come out. The Mexican joints here in town have a dozen margaritas on the menu, and they’re all margarita and syrup concoctions. Passion fruit margaritas, blood orange margaritas ... It’s all just different frostings on the same layer cake.

We don’t have a solid margarita on the menu at Hemingway’s right now. I wanted to add a margarita for summer, but I didn’t want to fall into the same “marg and a fruit” trap. Instead, I decided to push the limits of the core recipe and see if I could make a tart, dry margarita that was still recognizable. I started by boosting the lime juice in our drink to a full ounce. Then, I replaced the triple sec in a standard margarita with dry curacao. Triple sec is made with a neutral spirit and a ton of orange flavor. The dirt-cheap triple sec used by the taco joints in town tastes like Orange Crush. Curacao uses brandy as its base. Dry curacao has less sugar than triple sec by a country mile. Everything I thought I knew about balancing a margarita went out the window. Life was good.

Smoky, acrid mezcal made our margarita even drier. Some extra sugar was needed to make the cocktail drinkable. Agave syrup was an easy answer, but I’m really fond of honey in my tequila drinks. Agave syrup and tequila are kissing cousins, but honey and tequila complement each other. Tequila also loves salt. A pinch of smoked Malbon leaned into the mezcal’s smokiness while enhancing the drink’s flavor. The result is a unique margarita that defies convention, tasting unique without leaning on sticky-sweet fruit syrup.

Let’s talk ingredients:

Milagro Blanco Tequila: Milagro is our rail blanco tequila at Hemingway’s. It’s fairly mild as blanco tequilas go. I prefer a big hit of agave flavor at my home bar; El Jimador is still my cheap blanco of choice. Use what you like best. Bear in mind that a subtle, layered blanco tequila is going to get swamped by the other flavors in this drink. Patron might not be the best choice here.

Lime Juice: Fresh. No exceptions. Especially not in this drink. Limes are small and dry this season, but do your best.

Ferrand Dry Curacao: This orange liquor uses the bare minimum of sugar; it’s not dry, exactly, but it is far less sugary than triple sec. It’s really interesting to use this as a substitute for a sugary liquor and see what happens to the balance of a cocktail. I put a lot of thought into the balance of tart, sweet, and bitter when working behind the stick. Challenging my core assumptions about what works in a “normal” drink like the margarita is a lot of fun.

Honey syrup: 1 part honey, 1 part water, heated until the honey dissolves. Undiluted honey is too thick to use in a cocktail. It’s hard to portion and turns into taffy when it hits ice.

Del Maguey Clásico mezcal: Del Maguey is a balanced, earthy mezcal that doesn’t taste too strongly of smoke or iodine. It’s the rail mezcal for summer at the bar. I like something a little rougher, like Peloton de la Muerte, for the home bar. Taste some options and find what you love. Mezcal is much less consistent in flavor than blanco tequila. Finding a good one will be a bit of a project, but it’s nice to have a hobby over the summer.

Smoked sea salt: Use plain sea salt if you can’t get a smoked salt you like. We use Malbon sea salt at the bar because we’re snobs, and it dissolves easily in cocktails.

I’m in shock, folks. You helped raise $1,000 for my trip to Tales of the Cocktail next month. In addition to a generous contribution by Yr Editrix, I’m fully covered for the trip. Thank you. I’m humbled. I’m also thinking very hard about where my journey as an author will go next. Needless to say, there will be stories to share. And they will be epic. You deserve no less.

My home bar is Hemingway’s Underground, the hottest cocktail bar in pretty little Medina, Ohio. I’m behind the stick Wednesday - Saturday, 4 -10. Last call’s at midnight. Swing on by, and I’ll make a drink for you … or anything else from our little Happy Hour here at Wonkette. We’ll make it through this together.

OPEN THREAD!

For the tipping of the keep

News keeps pouring out from the new Maggie Haberman/Jonathan Swan book, the one that has among other things revealed that Donald Trump loves comparing himself to Mao and Hitler and Genghis Khan, because he thinks he’s more powerful than they are — “they didn’t have airplanes,” he reportedly said. Then there’s all those disgusting Epstein revelations from the book, including about how it’s apparently considered a Situation Room-worthy event to convene all the principals to discuss the best ways to cover up Trump revelations from the child rape files.

The Daily Mail read the book and focused on what really matters, which is what fucking disgusting manners President Shits-A-Bunch has. It’s part of a larger article/excerpt about how Trump and Melon don’t sleep in the same bedroom, obviously. She sleeps in what’s known as the Master Bedroom on White House floor plans, whereas he’s in the room next door, which is typically labeled as the Living Room. (Daily Mail has a floor plan if you want to see, in order to better visualize where the president shits.)

First of all, Trump is such a trash pig that he thinks carpet in the bathroom is nice, as opposed to being a catch-all for all his dead skin and the dried cum from his most recent poop-sturbation session. The Daily Mail notes that this was a trend that existed for about 12 seconds in the 1970s, until everybody noticed it was fucking disgusting. But not with Trump! He had a carpeted bathroom in his first term, the Bidens obviously got rid of it, then he brought it back.

'The portion nearest the shower would often be soaked through; the staff was never quite sure why, but they worried about mold growing underneath,' Haberman and Swan wrote. 'The solution was to lay a small piece of the same carpet - never an actual bath mat - over the larger one.'

Sick.

And then here is the part that’s making all the headlines, how Trump is always eating garbage in bed and apparently just throws the wrappers on the floor, like a dirty scumbag.

‘A nighttime snacker, the President would frequently leave an array of empty potato chip bags, Starbucks wrappers, and ice cream cartons in the trash, or on the floor,’ Haberman and Swan wrote.

Don’t shit where you eat, unless you’re Donald Trump we guess and you’re shitting and eating in your carpeted bedroom and bathroom, which you don’t share with your wife for reasons that are abundantly clear.

‘The staff had to begin monitoring the trash after it was discovered he was sometimes throwing out White House sterling silver utensils,’ they said.

Fucking idiot.

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He is also reportedly such a rude pig that when they moved back into the White House and Melon wasn’t there much — obviously — he started stealing things from all over the White House, including things she had personally picked out for her room, and putting them in his room:

Once, when staff gently reminded the President that he was taking things from the Center Hall his wife had personally selected, he made clear he didn’t care,’ the authors wrote.

‘He seemed almost to be competing with her - determined to have the better room,’ they noted.

Some of the items Melania had picked out also ended up in the Oval Office or outside of it.

The enormous ‘selfie’ mirror that was hung alongside Trump’s outdoor ‘Presidential Walk of Fame,’ where former President Joe Biden is depicted as an autopen, had been a centerpiece in Melania’s first-term redesign of the Queen’s Bedroom.

Not anymore.

‘The President’s redecorating generated such a flurry of activity that staff often felt caught between the two Trumps, who were the only presidential couple to regularly use and maintain separate bedrooms since Richard and Pat Nixon,’ the journalists wrote.

She apparently wasn’t keen either on Trump’s destruction of the East Wing, AKA her office, but oh well, she knew what she was getting into when she married him, no sympathy. Haberman and Swan write that President Dementia McLaserPointer has been fixated on a White House ballroom since 2010, and literally was bothering David Axelrod about this when Barack Obama was president.

Read the whole article for yourself for more grossness. Might as well, since Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, like so many Beltway journalists, have this habit of bogarting stories like this, even if they have national security implications, until it’s BOOK-SELLIN’ TIME.

In related news of MAGA people being absolutely disgusting people who like to teach the controversy over whether hygiene and in general not being a disgusting person is A) recommended or B) gay, anti-trans windsock Riley Gaines explained to Katie Miller on her “Fascist Fashion” podcast that she really doesn’t like getting in the bath or shower these days after all that swimming. (Probably reminds her what a fifth-place kinda girl she is.) So she just rubs some beef tallow on her nasty bits and calls it a day.

As Madeline Peltz reminds us at her Number Two Pencil Substack, this puts Gaines in good company on the Right, most notably with filthy Pete Hegseth, who before he controlled the US military was most famous for being the Fox News weekender who didn’t believe in washing his hands because it’s not like there’s any visible poop on them right now.

Hey remember that time we were all supposed to be highly offended that former FBI agent Peter Strzok texted his LUVVAH Lisa Page that he “Just went to a southern Virginia Walmart” and that he “could SMELL the Trump support”?

This post tells you a lot of what MAGA smells like. It smells like beef tallow rubbed on unwashed genitals, it smells like Pete Hegseth’s shit hands, and oh my God, it smells like Donald Trump’s used food wrappers, the carpet in his bathroom, and whatever the sounds that come out of his asshole smell like.

[Daily Mail]

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Hello friendlies of love! Wonkette is taking Juneteenth off because hell yeah we are. Enjoy some morning tabs, maybe something around noon, and then an early cocktail! Reduced posting this weekend as well! Your weekend movie? Never heard of it! But you can join your friend Ziggy Wiggy Saturday night at 9 p.m. Eastern for Grandma, free with ads on Tubi; $3.99 in the usual places.

Now here’s your damn tabs!

The unconditional surrender was ours — and this absolutely terrible deal is absolutely the best we’re going to get. Eat your shit sandwich, everybody! (Paul Waldman)

Don’t worry, there’s always time to make it worse! Iran could become Delaware.

We’re entering a 60-day negotiating period, which will probably end with Iran annexing Texas, being given the recipe to KFC chicken, and renaming the Grand Canyon “The Infidel’s Vagina”. In exchange, Iran will agree to only use their nuclear arsenal against states that didn’t vote for Trump.

(I Might Be Wrong)

Oh huh! Is this the first time we’ve seen Pete Hegseth under Trump’s Double Dutch bus?

All the other Shitpile of Failure (^TM Tiedrich) we’ve underlooked (^TM The Fucking News)

Twitter and Lara Logan, who used to be a journalist, know who put the algae in Trump’s immaculate reflecting ocean, it was Antifa and (Acting) Attorney General Todd Blanche is putting them all in JAIL!

Meanwhile, it seems the bros who wanted to gun down the UFC White House lawnfight — there seem to have been no concrete plans beyond just yapping — were rightwing militant accelerationists who want to kill him now, yikes! (Casey Steele Dale)

DC is getting a new Girl Mamdani to be its new prog-rock socialista mayorista! :D :D :D (Laura Bassett)

Keep Wonkette alive FOREVER!

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Texas AG and Republican Senate nominee Ken Paxton is suing all the Democrats and Democratic fundraising platforms for fraud because he loves to lie and isn’t embarrassed when judges tear him a new asshole. (Our Liz at Public Notice)

From April, a deep dive on Joe Biden: Just How Good At The Economy Was He Goddammit We Boned Ourselves (But Not By Making Him Leave, He Was Going To Lose Even Worse). (The American Prospect)

I so can’t wait until my retirement funds (?) force me to invest in Elon Musk’s unprofitable pyramid scheme of a moneysuck! I guess Elon is still vowing that Grok is worth two-thirds of the US GDP, and we’re all going along with it! (Paul Krugman)

Two girlfriends and I sat at the same restaurant table and each summoned an Uber to go from that table to my house at the same time. Our prices were more than $20 apart for a 10ish minute ride. Consumer Reports has the Uber/Lyft wtf with these disparate pricings 411. (They’re also taking more and more of the drivers’ fees, and charging higher prices from nonwhite neigbhorhoods!) Let’s all move to Montreal and do walking and public transit instead. (CR)

Parties upcoming! DETROIT (June 27), 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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We aren’t going to shock anyone by saying that Donald Trump is so fantastically corrupt that it’s hard to comprehend the probably thousands of grifts he’s horned in on, though heaven knows journalists and good-government groups keep busy trying. He sells pardons. Nobody knows how many billions in quiet crypto he’s accepted from foreign governments and crimers trying to get ahead of the law. Taxpayers are going to be on the hook for his vanity ballroom-bunker, and his UFC kickwrasslin’ birthday party was put on by media companies who are eager to please him — and of course, Trump owns stock in TKO Group, the owner of UFC.

Naturally enough, it’s the perfect time for Trump’s Justice Department to launch a fishing expedition into the finances of California Gov. Gavin Newsom and his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, which Newsom revealed Monday. Newsom said that federal agents have been “abusing the grand jury process” and “digging through years and years of random documents” in search of anything that might be used against him in the upcoming 2028 campaign.

Always keen to help root out corruption at the highest levels when it isn’t Trump, rightwing media outlets are trying to figure out what the DOJ might be looking into. Yesterday, the Orange County Register ran a Very Concerned editorial column about how Newsom has “steered millions to favorite charities” — over the past 15 years. During that decade and a half, mandatory disclosure records show, “charitable contributions made at Newsom’s request totaled $347.2 million.” That included roughly $4.3 million to the “California Partners Project,” a nonprofit co-founded by Newsom’s wife.

Such donations, called “behested payments,” are legal under Californis law as long as they’re reported. Behested payments happen when an elected official loves a charity very much (or even a government agency), and requests that voluntary donations be made to that entity. As the Institute for Local Government ‘splainers, elected officials may “see a need in their community and they take steps to see that that need is met” by reaching out to donors.

For instance, following last year’s LA fires, Newsom asked for donations to the California Fire Foundation, which raised millions of dollars. To keep politicians accountable, behested donations over $5000 must be reported to the state. (As it turns out, in a bit of weird timing, Newsom agreed this week to pay a late-reporting fine of $31,500 to the California Fair Political Practices Commission for missing the 30-day reporting requirement for some of those very donations. There’s no indication that anything improper happened beyond the late reporting.)

Even with the transparency built into the system with the reporting requirements, Good Government types still worry that such donations are a way for companies and big money interests to signal their support for pols, while the pols point out that supporting charities is a good thing in itself, as long as it’s all aboveboard.

OC Register columnist Teri Sforza suggests that Newsom’s own behests for charitable contributions “may have something to do with the federal investigation into Newsom and first partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom.” She also explains why some ethics experts consider the practice potentially ethically questionable, not that there’s any evidence Newsom has done anything shady.

Oh, hey, speaking of ethically questionable, the OC Register column just happened to come two days after a Very Concerned report Monday in the California Post (a Murdoch NewsCorp spinoff of the New York Post) about how Newsom encouraged those charitable donations. The New York Post mothership ran its own version of the story, too, by Breitbart alum Joel Pollak. And in a complete coincidence, Fox Business also ran the story Monday to make sure it would get national exposure and injection into the rightwing mediasphere. All of it published as soon as Newsom said he was being investigated.

Oddly, Sforza’s OC Register editorial doesn’t mention the Murdoch tabloid origins of this “controversy.” After all, now that it’s a matter of national concern, no need. Forget we even implied that should have been mentioned. Serious journalism, legitimate public concern and all that. Ain’t nobody in that henhouse but some consent-manufacturing chickens.

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Feed The Kitty

But with near-daily news breaking about how the Grifter In Chief is making billions for his family businesses at every fucking opportunity — and yes, that man who is somehow president of the United States of America in fact used to use his own “charitable” foundation to deal to himself until a judge said he wasn’t allowed to run a charity any more, that’s how fucking corrupt this son of a bitch is — it’s not exactly a Chief Inspector Gamache mystery why all of a sudden the rightwing press is trying to whip up a feeding frenzy around Newsom. (Besides, Gamache is with the Sûreté du Québec, and lacks jurisdiction.)

To her credit, Sforza includes in this ridiculous contretemps in which no lawbreaking has been alleged a disclaimer that this is “not to say that all politicians use behests with ill or nefarious intent. A lot of this money does indeed go to good causes — Newsom’s list includes groups working on wildfire recovery, public health initiatives, housing, education and much more.”

And she brings in legitimately nonpartisan good-government person Sean McMorris, of California Common Cause, to explain why this is a money-in-politics issue that should be addressed:

“Behests often go to good causes, but they are ripe for abuse,” he said. “Politicians in positions of power can direct money in a way that they otherwise would not be allowed to do under campaign finance or conflict-of-interest laws. They really exploded during the pandemic and afterward, a lot of politicians realized, ‘This is a kind of an avenue I can use.’”

But first, it’s probably a far bigger priority for America to eject the nation’s top Ethics Arsonist, take away his money-sucking apparatus, and get control over the raging five-alarm ethics wildfire consuming national politics. Gosh, there we go with our Trump Derangement Syndrome blinding us to Newsom’s alleged … well, not crimes, but maybe something that would be a crime if he broke the rules, which he hasn’t.

OPEN THREAD.

[OC Register / California Post]

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Gangster Of Love's Protection Racket

Despite the creeping right-wing obsession with “pronatalism,” demands that people have “more babies than they can afford” (weird sentiment for those who complain about that exact thing when people have to go on public assistance to take care of their children, but okay), and Donald Trump’s pledge to make in-vitro fertilization free for anyone who wants it, Republicans have been surreptitiously going after IVF, likely in an effort to appease anti-abortion-rights activists.

This past weekend, with very little fanfare, the Texas Republican Party voted to add a plank to their platform citing their desire to “protect fetal life from destructive practices, such as IVF and commercial surrogacy” — even though 65 percent of actual Texas Republican voters support keeping it legal and accessible.

Then, this week, also with very little fanfare, the Trump administration changed the language on its page promoting the Department of Health and Human Services Embryo Adoption Awareness and Services program to replace the word “embryos” in several sections with the words “child,” “children” and “children who already exist.” The EAA program is a relatively obscure program that provides grants to organizations that facilitate the adoption of unused embryos created during the IVF process, usually by couples struggling with infertility or same sex couples.

The summary now includes 37 instances of the words child or children, including:

OPA's Embryo Adoption Awareness and Services program recognizes embryo adoption first and foremost as a response to the needs of children who already exist and are in need of a family […]

The program places the best interests of the child at the center of all activities, encompassing the child's right to know their biological origins and medical history, the child's right to be placed with adoptive parents who have undergone rigorous screening […]

Rather than addressing the reproductive needs of prospective parents, it serves the needs of a child already in existence, offering that child the opportunity for life within a stable and loving family. This distinction is fundamental to the design and purpose of this program.

The language change is something of a way for the administration to have their cake and eat it, too, because while the vast majority of the country supports IVF, anti-abortion-rights activists oppose it due to the creation of these excess embryos, which they like to pretend are fully formed humans. Basically, the logic there is that if they can get those embryos classified as human beings with a right to be gestated and born into existence, the easier it will be to institute a national abortion ban on the same grounds.

Naturally, reproductive rights experts are a tad concerned.

Via HuffPost:

“This is essentially a Trojan horse,” said Dorianne Mason, [the National Women’s Law Center's] senior director of health equity and contraceptive access. “It’s this program that on the surface feels like a non-problematic program, but inside of it, the administration has now inserted something that is incredibly harmful.” […]

“Inserting this sort of language — referring to an embryo as a person or child — is all part of their long-term plan to eventually ban abortion,” Heather Shumaker, NWLC’s senior director of state abortion access and current lead on fetal personhood work, told HuffPost. […]

“Any effort to introduce personhood concepts into government programs is alarming because of the potential impact on IVF and other fertility treatments,” [Danielle Melfi, president and CEO of RESOLVE, a national fertility advocacy group] told HuffPost. “Policymakers should be working to protect and expand access to care, not revising federal grants in ways that raise new concerns for patients and their families.”

The language change also feels as though it is meant to exclude LGBTQ+ parents, with mentions of faith-based services and all of the language about “the best interests of the child.” Those who oppose same-sex couples adopting or using surrogates to have children have recently been trying to reframe these practices as selfish and against “the best interests of the child” and trying to suggest that there is something untoward about using a surrogate to have a child and derisively referring to it as “renting a womb” and comparing it to slavery. You know, because these people don’t generally get how consent works.

Earlier this year, Live Action’s Lila Rose and The Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles, along with a coalition of 47 anti-LGBTQ+ organizations, launched their “Greater Than” campaign to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges and end same sex marriage, the crux of which is their claim that a child’s “right” to be raised by a mother and a father is “greater than adult desires” to be able to have and raise children. There has been a concerted effort on the Right recently to frame same-sex couples who adopt children as “groomers” who only adopt children for the purpose of sexually abusing them or using them as status symbols of some kind.

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Previous efforts to label embryos as “children” have not gone over especially well. Two years ago, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos qualified as “children” for the purposes of the state’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act — a move that briefly forced IVF clinics in the state to close. The implications of the ruling were so incredibly unpopular that the state’s Republican supermajority Legislature immediately went ahead and passed a law exempting IVF clinics from liability under the law. Trump and other prominent Republicans also sought to distance themselves from it and to assert that they support keeping IVF legal.

All of this factors in, however, with plans to ban abortion, ban same-sex adoption/surrogacy and marriage, and generally create the kind of horrible dystopian nightmare society that so many Republicans seem to crave. Hopefully, however, this will all go over about as well as the Alabama ruling and they will be forced to distance themselves from it all over again.

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Did you hear the one about how French President Emmanuel Macron convinced Trump to surrender to Iran at Versailles? That’s a pretty funny one, especially so because he’s too stupid to understand why educated people are laughing so hard right now.

We know that we’re supposed to believe Trump is doing a victory poopy in his underwear over how he did a better Iran deal than Barack Obama (grand opening of the man’s presidential library with actual celebrities happening as we speak).

But everybody knows Trump is surrendering in the war he started for no reason besides his own insecurities that the Black man is better than him, plus the fact that he’s the only American president stupid enough to take orders from Benjamin Netanyahu on bombing Iran. That’s why he and everybody else are blaming it on JD Vance, a man with no future. (Trump actually admitted this at the G7 by the way. “If it works out, I’m going to take the credit. If it doesn’t work out, I’m blaming JD.” Spoiler: It’s not working out.)

Know who else knows it? Trump’s own White House. Off the record, of course, because the alternate choice in Dear Leader’s regime would be “Off with their heads!”

But they’re talking to reporters, nonetheless. Isn’t that humiliating? Especially when you compound that with the fact that Trump has been waddling around the G7 confused all week, totally embarrassing himself and the United States?

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Asawin Suebsaeng got all the quotes for Zeteo, but he leads with this summary, a paraphrase from what he says he’s been hearing the past week and a half from “numerous Trump advisers and administration officials”:

We cannot afford to keep this war going much longer. We are weeks away from it plunging the global economy off a massive cliff. And not only is it shredding the Republican Party’s chances ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, but it’s been tearing apart this administration and could very well bring it down. We do not have the leverage that the Trump White House keeps publicly pretending that we have.

That’s quite a summary!

And then there’s this direct quote from a Trump official:

“They’ve got him by the balls,” this official — who, like others, is remaining anonymous because they don’t want to be fired or jailed by Team Trump — noted. “We want out, and [the Iranians] know we don’t have all the cards.”

Know how Trump is always trying to big dick people like Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy by telling them they don’t have any cards? It’s because Trump is the one who literally, at all times, has zero cards, therefore he projects his own weak and sad failings on to others as a coping mechanism.

Speaking of Zelenskyy, have you seen the videos of him drone-bombing the shit out of Moscow today? Whew! That man has CARDS!

But this post is about a loser, not a winner, so back to Trump!

Here, via Democratic strategist Jon Cooper, is a handy side-by-side of Trump’s Art of the Iran Deal vs. Barack Obama’s. You might want to print out a copy to rub your MAGA uncle’s nose in like it’s a pile of dogshit.

And here is Trump yesterday saying that he guesses it’s fine for Iran to have ballistic missiles after all. It’s not like he has any tools to stop them from doing so, after all.

And here is outgoing Republican Senator Bill Cassidy, whom Trump fucked in his primary, speaking more freely now about Trump’s big failure:

“Reagan is rolling over in his grave,” Cassidy said. “Iran’s nuclear ambitions were not curbed, and they have learned that threatening the Strait of Hormuz works and will undoubtedly leverage it in the future. Now, Iran gets to build brand-new infrastructure under this deal.

“Before the war, the strait was open, Iran was being crushed by sanctions, and 13 service members were still alive. Now, 13 Americans are dead, families have paid billions at the pump, sanctions will be lifted, and the bombing has stopped.

“This is the worst foreign policy blunder in decades.”

In summary and in conclusion, it’s too bad Barack Obama is busy having his big party celebrating his library opening on the South Side of Chicago, with Bruce Springsteen and Christina Aguilera and Common and Stevie Wonder and The Roots and John Legend and Eddie Vedder and a whole bunch of people who wouldn’t piss on any member of the Trump family if they were on fire.

We bet Obama could negotiate a new Iran deal this week, easy.

You know, if he wasn’t busy being a winner.

[Zeteo]

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In one of the most devastating examples of police brutality in recent memory, a police officer in Senatobia, Mississippi, shot and killed one-year-old Kohen Kartier Wiley in a Walmart parking lot this past weekend. Was it because the child was some kind of a threat to them? Was he wearing a hoodie? Did he refuse to “comply”?

No. It was because someone at Walmart thought that his mother might have stolen a box of diapers.

Rather than just letting it go once Wiley’s mother and another woman got into the car, because, you know, it’s a box of diapers and stores like Walmart have insurance to cover shrinkage, the officers actually shot into the silver sedan in an attempt to stop them from leaving with what was most likely about $39 worth of merchandise.

Was it a terrible mistake? Did they not know there was a literal baby in the car or that a box of diapers hardly ranks as grand larceny?

Well, we can’t be certain about the latter, but a statement released by the Senatobia police department acknowledges that the officers were well aware that Wiley was in the vehicle and shot anyway.

Because ACAB, they referred to the one-year-old as a “juvenile child.”

“Law enforcement officers responded to a shoplifting call at Walmart on U.S. 51. Upon arrival, officers encountered two subjects and a juvenile child fleeing from the store into a vehicle. Officers attempted to stop the vehicle, but the driver drove in the direction of the officers, almost striking one,” the statement read. “An officer then discharged their weapon and the vehicle fled the scene. The subjects arrived at a local hospital where one juvenile child in the vehicle was pronounced deceased, and another subject had critical injuries. No law enforcement officers received any serious physical injury.”

For the record, the family denies that any shoplifting took place.

“I seen the officers take off running, not in the car, I’m talking about on feet, and these are the sheriffs and the police,” a witness told WREG. “They’re running through the parking lot and I see the car take off you know, so in my head, I’m like, I know they’re not chasing the car, they don’t think they’re going to catch the car. Then I hear gunshots and I’m like, I know they’re not shooting at a car that’s leaving in a public, this is Walmart.”

And yet they were.

Vellesiya Wiley, who is now being represented by famed civil rights attorney Ben Crump, said that she and her son were walking to her friend’s car when the friend was approached by police and accused of shoplifting; Wiley says they paid at self-checkout. Wiley said she kept going because it “had nothing to do” with her. The friend got in the car and started to drive away, and that’s when Wiley noticed police were running towards the car with their guns.

“I raised my baby up, trying to show them that he was in the car,” Wiley said in a video posted to Crump’s Instagram. “By the time I sat my baby down, it was like three to four shots.”

Police claimed that the car was driving towards them, but Wiley said they were on the right and the car was going left.

After they shot at the car, hitting Wiley in his ribcage, she said they “just kept telling the crowd that, ‘They were shoplifting. They were shoplifting.’ But I don’t know if they found anything, it’s nothing to find.”

And even if there were — no amount of diapers is worth killing a child over.

According to WREG, this is not the first horrific incident involving the Senatobia police or that particular Walmart.

Last year, at the same Walmart, the department came under fire after a woman had a Taser pulled on her and was tackled to the ground after the department claimed she illegally parked in a handicapped spot. The woman claimed she had just dropped off her grandmother at the store.

In 2023, the case of a 10-year-old boy made national news after he was detained for urinating in public at an attorney’s office private parking lot. […]

In 2022, the police department and the housing authority went head-to-head after what many called a rough arrest of a 31-year-old man was caught on camera.

Since these incidents, the police department has new leadership.

Which, clearly, is not much better than the old leadership.

Clearly, they haven’t learned much from those incidents or even from this one, as they actually tear-gassed a group of people who were protesting Wiley’s killing in the parking lot of the Walmart on Tuesday.

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I worked in retail for a long time, and the only time I ever even called mall security was on the guy who kept trying to jack off behind the earring stands at The Icing. The loss prevention rule is and always should be that you discourage it as best you can with customer service and simply being around and visible, but when they leave with shit, you let them go, because a pair of cheap earrings or a tube top or a box of diapers is not worth your safety or anyone else’s. Every manager I ever had, no matter how shitty, was clear about that, and for good reason. “It’s not worth it.”

And sure, that was partially also because the lawsuit that someone might file against you if you confront them and are wrong, or that you or your family might file if you confront them and are hurt or killed, are not “worth it,” but the truth of it stands. It’s not worth it. It was not worth Kohen Wiley’s life to recover a box of diapers.

At most — at most! — if you are at a place like Walmart that has security, unarmed security guards can confront them in the parking lot. There is no need to involve police and there is certainly no need for police to involve a gun. Not over a box of diapers that cost, at most, $39, and will no longer be needed because the child they were for is now dead.

It’s so funny when Donald Trump calls somebody “highly respected,” as it is like the kiss of death, the clearest indicator that exists that that person is considered somewhere below anal tumors on the human respectability chart. Anyway, he has a new nickname for Georgia Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff, who is now running against the HIGHLY RESPECTED Mike Collins.

Os(jerk!)off. It has a sort of ring to it, if your lips move when you read, or if you’re a particularly stupid 12-year-old who hasn’t figured out yet that nicknames need rhythm.

Also he spelled “Ossoff” wrong when he was angrily adding “jerk!” in the middle.

Oh well, someday he will die and on that day everyone in the world will rejoice, including those who have nicknames.

By the way, has the Ossoff campaign turned that into a T-shirt yet? They should. James Talarico started selling “I’m a Talafreako” shirts when Ken Paxton started calling him that and handed him that fundraising opportunity on a silver platter by dubbing him with that nickname.

Admittedly, “Talafreako” at least works as a nickname, as opposed to Os(jerk!)off, which sounds like something a person with Tourette’s screams mid-shit.

Though “I’m A Talafreako For Os(Jerk!)off” has a certain ring, maybe?

Nah.

Ossoff told Jen Psaki what he thinks about the name last night on her show:

Not his best work.

And then he, who looks direct out of central casting, which usually is what gets Trump’s 80-year-old mushroom dick hard, explained that “more to the point, he is increasingly unstable. And I think it flows from the fact that he is globally humiliated from this failed war.” He added, “we see him lashing out and behaving erratically in ways that put the nation at risk.”

And he pivoted to the HIGHLY RESPECTED Mike Collins, whom he referred to as Trump’s little puppet.

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Speaking of Collins, Os(jerk!)off has a new ad about him, and it is brutal. Here is the Washington Examiner to explain how it targets directly Collins’s myth of himself as some kind of self-made businessperson. (All these MAGA men with their businesses we’re supposed to be impressed with, that their dads gave them!)

In the new ad, Ossoff’s reelection campaign targeted the Republican challenger’s history in the trucking business, specifically how Collins didn’t work his way from the ground up in the trucking industry. “Truth is, Mike took over his dad’s trucking company and followed in his footsteps straight to Congress,” a narrator said in the two-minute video.

Former Rep. Mac Collins, who served in the House between 1993 and 2005, once owned Collins Trucking in Jackson, Georgia, before his son inherited the business. “His rich daddy, a former congressman and career politician himself, handed Mike the keys to a company with dozens of employees, making multimillionaire Mike richer, while real truckers did the actual work,” the narrator continued.

Yeah that’s rough. Watch it:

Finally, you may enjoy this clip of Ezra Klein and Chris Hayes talking about what this Jon Ossoff is all about, how he’s emerging as this 2028 dark horse, how he has this distinctly Obama quality to him, especially when you see him stare handsomely into the distance.

Know who wouldn’t invade Iran just to immediately lose a war with Iran?

Jon Os(jerk!)off.

We are just saying.

[Washington Examiner]

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Bonjour amigos, I have returned. First your tabs!

Giving up our putative goodness has made us weaker too, and that’s why we lost the stupid motherfucking Iran war. (Noah Berlatsky at Everything Is Horrible)

Is $300 billion more than $3 billion? There is simply no way to know. (The Fucking News)

Just because Lisa Needham can’t find the crime in this mission statement doesn’t mean all these indicted Minneapolitans can’t go to jail for aggravated woke.

“Direct Action Minnesota (DAMN) is a decentralized, anti-capitalist. and anti-authoritarian organization of working class people committed to defending our community against the violence committed by the state and the far right. We employ an intersectional approach of resisting oppression in all of its forms, and seek to foster a greater capacity within our group, and within the working class more generally, to meet this end.”

(Public Notice)

A “slipshod indictment” of everyone who looked at ICE wrong in Minneapolis, for the tort of bad opinions. (Chris Geidner) Looks like we’ll be probing the US Attorney who pulled that same shit in Chicago! :D (Chicago Sun-Times)

Pry his accursed name off all our shit. He can’t have it. (Brian Beutler) The stupid lawyer tricks his idiots tried to keep his name where it doesn’t belong. (Our Liz at Law and Chaos)

“If the Titanic is going down,” JD Vance wrote vis a vis the Catholic Church, “I’d rather be on board than hop on a lifeboat.” Does JD Vance know what happened to the Titanic? (Alexandra Petri at The Atlantic)

Keep Wonkette alive FOREVER!

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Elon’s latest race war. (The New Republic) No it isn’t, they didn’t need his help. (The Handbasket)

If you already have a Bulwark subscription, this newest Ryan Fournier crimegrift is … completely typical for all the Trump hangers-on crimegrifters, which is all of them. (Paywalled the Bulwark)

Damn, Tim Walz’s approval in the absolute shitter. He should have fought back harder, more. (Minneapolis Star Tribune)

I gave you this tab months and months and months ago, but now that I’ve actually read it, I think we should share it again! (Gift link New York Times)

Blueberry peach brown sugar muffins? Word. (The Peach Truck)

Now it is time for Montreal field trip Wonkparty report! However did you wait this long???

First! We surprised Donna Rose on her 11th birthday on Thursday by waking her and telling her to PACK HER M-F-ING BAG, it’s LE MOMENT MONTREAL! Haha, boy she had no idea.

The next day we walked from our apartment bon in Plateau Mont Royal to Marche Jean Talon to eat crepes and huitres. Along the way, we learned how to take the metro and the bus, which were both very easy as soon as we actually tried. That night, we went on a pretty boring ghost tour, I won’t tell you which one because she was nice and nobody wants her to feel bad :(

Saturday! Time for le biodome, le insectarium, and the magnificent Aura light show at the Basilique du Notre Dame! First of all, I think it’s very important we recognize the invention of fairies. LOOK AT THOSE FUCKING FAIRIES! Then the invention of capybaras I guess.

Then Donna Rose flipped off a terrorist, and we do not have any pictures of the light show at Aura but goddamn it was cool. This was just what it looked like without light show.

On Sunday, we went vintage shopping because it was cold and none of us brought sweaters, and then you know what time it was. TIME TO HOST A DOZEN OF OUR DEAREST AND NEAREST IN MONTREAL! Pizzeria Stella was absolutely delicious shut up yes it was but also they were just so nice — as was literally every single person we met all week, and there were many, we are the people-meeting type.

And finally, on our last full day in Montreal, as per usual we walked a solid 14 or so miles, this time from our pretty apartment down to Parc Lafontaine and then Saint Louis Square and then back up via Saint Laurent and Duluth. How many bitchen things we saw! Tag yourself, I’m sexwork strike.

And another!

Parties upcoming! DETROIT (June 27), 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!

WE LOVE YOU GOODBYE!

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