Sunday Happy Hour

Get happy

Sure why not

Big beautiful dumbasses.

Papers with U.S. State Department markings, found Friday morning in the business center of an Alaskan hotel, revealed previously undisclosed and potentially sensitive details about the Aug. 15 meetings between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir V. Putin in Anchorage.

Crimecops

The memo went out that Dems need to be "tough on crime," so  if the president sends in troops to DC to be "tough on crime," then Jeffries will only meekly object on technical grounds.

Everything Is A Distraction

Distraction from what, motherfucker, the price of eggs?

What's your reaction to what we've seen so far in in DC?

 

Hakeem Jeffries: I mean the Washington DC situation is a unlawful power grab uh that is in part designed we believe as a distraction uh but a distraction of course that we've got to take seriously uh because it violates the autonomy the home rule statutes of the District of Columbia. I think the DC attorney general uh issued a strong letter making it clear that in his view in the assessment of the authorities in the District of Columbia uh whoever Donald Trump seeks to install allegedly to run the Metropolitan Police Department of Washington DC has no authority and that they should continue uh to take direction solely from the police chief of the Metropolitan police department in Washington DC. I thought that was a strongly worded letter. He cited a lot of statutory provisions. I think the attorney general was exactly right.

The problem is a techincal violation of the rules, not the armed unaccountable thugs harassing people.

Morning

Sunday funday.

Saturday Evening

Enjoy

Sure Why Not

Nothing weird at all. 

A top cybersecurity official for the Israeli government was arrested in Nevada during an undercover operation targeting child sex predators.

Tom Alexandrovich was apprehended and faced felony charges of “Luring a Child with Computer for Sex Act,” according to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, which assisted in conducting the operation from nearby Henderson, Nevada.

Beyond Parody

NYT today vs the Onion pic.twitter.com/32Edw9zkQm

— Assal Rad (@AssalRad) August 15, 2025

Understanding

What did Donald give away?

JOINT BASE ELMENDORF-RICHARDSON, Alaska (AP) — President Donald Trump failed to secure an agreement from Vladimir Putin on Friday to end Russia’s war in Ukraine, falling short in his most significant move yet to stop the bloodshed, even after rolling out the red carpet for the man who started it.

“There’s no deal until there’s a deal,” the U.S. president said, after Putin claimed they had hammered out an “understanding” on Ukraine and warned Europe not to “torpedo the nascent progress.” Trump said he would call Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and European leaders to brief them on the talks.

Morning

Don't put it in the newspaper that he is mad.

Happy Hour

get happy

Good Thing We Cleared That Up

I was worried. Phew.

The Pentagon clarified on Thursday that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth thinks women should have the right to vote, despite his sharing of CNN reporting which featured religious leaders he supports saying they would back the repealing of the 19th Amendment.

“Of course, the secretary thinks that women should have the right to vote,” Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson told reporters on Thursday.

My God What Has Been Happening At U of Chicago

Decades of schemes.

It is tempting to ascribe this betrayal of implied contract—with students, parents, and donors—to the pressure that the Trump administration is placing on higher education. If this were in fact what is happening, the university’s actions would be lamentable but necessary.

But that would be false. The effect of the administration’s moves on university operations—in Chicago’s case—is likely to be small. The true problem is the debased ideals of the university’s leadership and the extraordinary debt it has taken on in pursuit of them. The university’s trustees and leaders view it preeminently as a tax-free technology incubator, and its debt load is so great that it is abandoning ideals it once held dear in order to sustain that goal. We are simply choosing not to be a university.

The story of the University of Chicago is in one sense unique. No peer institution has borrowed so much in relation to its assets; none spends remotely as large a percentage of tuition on servicing debt. Despite gifts and the surge in the stock market, the University’s endowment has actually shrunk under its current president from 2021 to 2024 because it has been liquidating assets to mask the size of its deficits.

...

And for another, in the process of seeking to maximize its gain from technologies discovered in its labs, the University of Chicago now does more than participate in licensing. It actively invests in start-ups by its faculty, millions of dollars in dozens of investments. Quite apart from the fact that these investments have mostly been a bust, the practice raises serious questions. Can a university make rational decisions about the value of a given employee when it co-invests in commercial ventures with that employee?

And more seriously, where does the money come from? Is the university driving down what it spends to educate its own students so that it can use unrestricted funds to invest in startups? Or is the university functioning as a kind of tax-free pass-through organization? Does it receive third-party money that it invests as a tax-free enterprise, to the benefit of other investors in the same start-up?

Always the ones you most suspect.

Fell For It Again

A nice, left-leaning, pretty up-on-things guy I know would say things like, "Well, at least RFKjr will get the pesticides out of the food supply." NO! NO HE WON'T! HE WAS NEVER GOING TO DO THAT!

A highly anticipated White House report on the health of American children would stop short of proposing direct restrictions on ultraprocessed foods and pesticides that the health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has called major threats, according to a draft of the document that was reviewed by The New York Times.

The report, if adopted, would be good news for the food and agriculture industries, which feared far more restrictive proposals than the ones outlined in the draft. Through his “Make America Healthy Again” movement, Mr. Kennedy has sought to overhaul the nation’s diet by pushing those industries to make major changes.

Lunch

eat

President Attention Span

Sure

* KREMLIN SAYS PUTIN-TRUMP TALKS COULD LAST FOR A MINIMUM OF 6-7 HOURS -- RIA @reuters.com

— Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla.bsky.social) August 15, 2025 at 4:16 PM

Don't Mess With Rectus

Much about the appeal of Trump - and Trumpers generally - confuses me. One aspect of it is the endless tough guy posing.

US President Donald Trump said he believes Vladimir Putin wants to make peace in Ukraine, and that the Russian president will not “mess around” at their summit today in Alaska.

“We’re gonna find out where everybody stands. And I’ll know within the first two minutes, three minutes, four minutes or five minutes… whether or not we’re going to have a good meeting or a bad,” Trump told reporters in the White House on Thursday.

“And if it’s a bad meeting, it’ll end very quickly. And if it’s a good meeting, we’re going to end up getting peace in the pretty near future,” he warned.

Sure Why Not

Emergency tariff authority - the emergency being the president isn't getting enough treats and awards.

Donald Trump cold-called Norway’s finance minister last month to ask about a nomination for the Nobel peace prize, Norwegian press reported on Thursday.

The Norwegian outlet Dagens Næringsliv, citing unnamed sources, reported: “Out of the blue, while finance minister Jens Stoltenberg was walking down the street in Oslo, Donald Trump called … He wanted the Nobel prize – and to discuss tariffs.”

Morning

Funky Friday.

Thursday Night

Rock on.