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Let’s begin with a lesson on feline communication:
- Tommy Christopher brings us CNN’s Jake Tapper covering new revelations about Trump. This time, it’s a situation room meeting of top Trump officials. (Yeah, THAT situation room. The room where history, sometimes deadly history, is made). This meeting is about how to battle Epstein related allegations that Trump participated in nipple torture of a little girl.
Warning at the 2:17 mark:
Apologies in advance for some of the blunt language and visuals it will impart, we are going to edit some of it just because we don’t need to go into all of it.As the video closes:
Now, this story summed up the White House dilemma, as the report put it, quote, “Piles of accusations were impossible to disprove and equally impossible to make go away. Every door they opened led to another room and in every room were more claims from more women,” unquote. - Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger has the numbers. A clear majority of Americans don’t much like Donald Trump as a person.
Most Americans Think Donald Trump’s Personal Character Is BAD!
- Disaffected and it Feels So Good has some fun with the NBA booing and Trump’s somnolent response.
Traitor trump’s entire life is one of grievance and resentment at the people of New York and the elite class who treated him for decades like their gauche uncouth scummy slumlord he is.
Well, now they can’t ignore him. Now they can’t deny him entry. Now they have move out of his way. Now they have to bow and scrape for him. And if they don’t? - At The Onion Donald Trump devoted much of the 3rd NBA Finals game angrily demanding that Knicks guard Jalen Brunson put on a suit
Donald Trump:
You’re telling me this guy is supposed to be the star, yet he goes out on the court wearing, what, his bathing suit? - Author and educator Amanda Nelson speaks to Trump about his losses for the week, when it was still only Tuesday.
Losses include high jumping inflation, Trump’s own judges turning on Trump’s own Justice Department Attorney for lying in court, another judge on immigration, and another on the Jan 6 slush fund, another on Trump attacks against food for kids, Trump getting booed, the
Trump-KennedyKennedy Center, and more, oh so much more. - Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit keeps count and announces that Trump Hits the Big Five-Oh. That’s not his age. That’s the number of times Trump has breathlessly announced a peace deal with Iran.
- Hegseth attacks reporters for asking questions that are not “on our side”, since the questions are about war crimes.
Julian Sanchez is somewhat unsympathetic to that reaction:
You’re not on “our side”
— Julian Sanchez (@normative.bsky.social) June 10, 2026 at 4:26 PM
Also “motives” aren’t really relevant to whether bombing civilian critical infrastructure is a war crime.
— Julian Sanchez (@normative.bsky.social) June 10, 2026 at 4:30 PM
Of course, I must offer an opinion:
That it's real wrong is the correct moral objection.
But, of secondary importance is that it's gawdawful stupid.
If reports are correct, about 80% of Iranians hated the ruling thugocracy at the beginning of the attack.So the strategy to attack opponents of the regime is to accomplish what?
— burrland01.bsky.social (@burrland01.bsky.social) June 11, 2026 at 9:50 AM
- Jason Linkins has some fun with the timidity The New York Times shows in its tippy‑toe coverage of Trump and his war.
OH NO! A "dangerous limbo" happened, per the New York Times, apparently all by itself!
— Jason Linkins (@dceiver.bsky.social) June 12, 2026 at 12:17 PM
This is the only criticism offered of Trump, who started the war. It comes in the 25th graf of a 27 paragraph article. (I particularly love the way they use "to some extent" to fill in for "all the extent.")
— Jason Linkins (@dceiver.bsky.social) June 12, 2026 at 12:17 PM
Best response:
A dangerous limbo fell on our roof once. That wasn't fun.
— Dan Murphy (@bungdan.bsky.social) June 12, 2026 at 1:52 PM
- Dave Columbo explains why Trump got so mad at his NBC interview:
- Yeah, he really said it.
News Corpse accurately quotes Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson on accusations of election fraud in California:
HYSTERICAL!
MAGA Mike Johnson is resorting to the old nonsense argument that the fact that you can't prove wrongdoing is proof of wrongdoing.NO! If you can't prove wrongdoing, maybe it's because there is none. Get some proof or STFU! https://t.co/sxiuiqaJwd
— News Corpse (@NewsCorpse) June 9, 2026
The proof is the lack of any evidence:
And he claims that the absence of such proof is therefore proof in itself of wrongdoing. He thinks that Democrats are so good at covering up their schemes that the schemes must have taken place. By that logic, Johnson is actually the Zodiac Killer. And the proof is that there isn’t any evidence of it. So he must have been really good at covering it up.Knowing instinctively:
Who needs facts or evidence when you have strong feelings?The proof is in the lack of any proof.
- Dave Dubya continues his Diogenes-like search for the views of an “honest rational conservative”, or “HRC” and strikes out with Ken LaCorte.
- Infidel753 considers ideas from author and labor activist Les Leopold, who argues that the Democratic Party, like the GOP, is in the hands of wealthy oligarchs and is beyond reform. He argues for a third party.
From Infidel:
It’s the first time I’ve seen a detailed, plausible plan for breaking out of the dead end of two-party polarization and billionaire dominance, and achieving real reform. - Revelations keep coming up about Maine’s Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner. A tattoo, since removed (ouch), that turns out to be a somewhat obscure symbol used by Nazis in the 1930s, sexting messages during his marriage, an allegation of dating abuse made by a conservative operative, and so on.
So, if you lived in Maine, could you vote for a candidate like that against incumbent Susan Collins?
Brian Beutler points out that sometimes we vote against the candidate who, if elected, is likely to do the most harm.
Do we think that over this time span, Platner is likely to cause more harm than Collins would?
The answer is incredibly obvious. And it pertains very little to either candidate’s personal character.He makes a compelling case:
It’s always, always, always about harm reduction; and few people have caused, or threaten to cause, more harm than Susan Collins.Yeah, I’d vote for Platner.
Casting A Ballot Is Not Flashing A Gang Sign - tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors has fun surveying the Senate campaign in Texas, where Republican Ken Paxton is hurling the weirdest accusations against his Democratic opponent, James Talarico.
First, it was that Talarico is a vegan (He isn’t), and now the single Congressman is accused of going out on dates with single women (He has).
“SCANDAL! James Talarico dated yet another hot woman!” – GOP propagandists, for some reason.
Behold, the Republican Party’s new greatest fear: a consensual, age-appropriate, loving relationship with an attractive woman.
— Hunter Dunn (@hunterisntdunn.bsky.social) June 8, 2026 at 5:37 PM
- Ted Cruz (of all people) thinks Texas voters should go with Ken Paxton because, says Ted, Democrat James Talarico lacks the requisite manliness.
M. Bouffant at Web of Evil has fun with Ted over that one.
- In Rural Missouri, Jess Piper gets some pushback on her participation in a public meeting, as a fellow attendee writes…
…gushing praise for our lawmakers who showed up “when they didn’t have to.”
The offended writer seems to target Jess:
She had an apology for the lawmakers who were subjected to questions — unhinged questions from a constituent.Jess responds with a discussion about whether lawmakers have an actual obligation to show up and meet with constituents, and whether pointed questions constitute unhinged behavior.
No one has to like how I asked the questions at the meeting with my Reps. No one has to agree with my politics. Call me unhinged if you want. I’ve been called much worse.
But I hope folks will look at what’s actually happening in Missouri and ask if this is what you voted for. Because this isn’t about me being “unhinged” at a meeting — it’s not about me at all.
It’s about whether the people we elect are listening, or if they’ve decided they don’t have to anymore. - CalicoJack in The Psy of Life uses this week’s legislative seesaw to show how vulnerable Republicans use sight of hand to make themselves appear independent from Trump, while supporting him whenever it actually counts:
Which is why a Republican split may be somewhat illusory.
- Congress established the United States Semiquincentennial Commission to set up celebrations for our national 250th birthday.
At The Moderate Voice Kathy Gill goes into the massive, sometimes convoluted, effort by Trump to make the national celebration all about himself.
The more you investigate semiquincentennial events sponsored by the White House, the more you see it as a tangled and disjointed mess. The White House has sucked oxygen (and financing) away from the Congressionally created America250. It promotes opaque donations to curry favor with Trump. Most events have little if any connection to 250 years of American democracy.
If there is one thread, it’s all about Trump. - From The Borowitz Report, Pope Leo baffles event-promotion experts as he somehow draws a crowd of 12 million people without hosting a UFC fight.
- Noted author John Scalzi says google, using AI for Overview at the top of searches, should be responsible when it produces misinformation that actually defames and damages innocent people. He points to a couple of court rulings, although in other countries, that support his common sense view.
- In Happiness Between Tails da-AL and her guest blogger Bojana Stojčić defend the use of AI in writing, but only to augment, not replace, active thought and creativity.
A sort of enhanced search engine with which to track down sources, and a specialty syntax and spelling check. da-AL uses it to help track her own writing for continuity and character development.
From Bojana Stojčić:
Because AI can assist thinking—or replace it before it begins.
I’ve started noticing how easily it becomes a shortcut past uncertainty—not just finishing thoughts, but forming them. And I don’t want that. I wouldn’t be writing if I didn’t enjoy the process of wrestling with ideas. Whatever the necessary masochism of the process, it’s still my blood, sweat, and tears. So I pulled back—quite possessively, when it comes to my work. - North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz makes what should be an obvious point. If your marriage is threatened by gay marriages, the problem is in your marriage.
First principle:
Marriage isn’t a community exercise or a collective endeavor; it’s a lifelong agreement between two people before the Law and before friends and loved ones as witnesses.Focus:
It’s too bad more straight Christians don’t seem to give half as much time to attending to their own marriages as they do to overseeing others’. - driftglass catches a few of the more absurd attack moments from the rightward side of mainstream press.
- Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson notes that the controversy about Pete Hegseth’s list of approved religions began with Trump supporter Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah).
Turns out Lee is not so concerned with an approved list, but rather that Hegseth left off the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the Mormons.
So the Department of Defense publicly corrected the error. Yay!
Senator Lee:
I agree with this statement, and am grateful to @SecWar {sic} Hegseth for correcting the error:
“The Pentagon’s job is not to adjudicate theological debates, but instead to ensure sincerely-held faith is respected and encouraged in our ranks.”James:
The senator should really have stopped with the government having no business identifying which sects are “Christian” beyond their self-description. The Department of Defense should not be focused on the encouragement of “sincerely-held faith,” as we should not trust Hegseth to decide what “sincerely-held” means. His spiritual advisor, Pastor Doug Wilson, believes women shouldn’t vote and Catholics should not be allowed to practice their beliefs in public. Yet Wilson is not only what Hegseth would consider to be a good Christian, the pastor held a service at the Pentagon at the request of the Secretary of Defense.The real danger:
But as much as we want to make fun of Lee for discovering the hard way that he’s not welcome at the Christian Nationalist party, even if his religion is 100% American made, we cannot. Because behind the movement of Trumpism, there is a concerted effort to push a white nationalist version of Christianity which bears little resemblance to the Gospels but plenty of resemblance to past efforts to use faith to divide our country into “us” and “them,” with an intention to really punish “them.” - In Letters from an American, historian Heather Cox Richardson goes back to 1789 and James Madison’s sponsorship of the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the Constitution.
Madison was especially interested in the First Amendment prohibiting government from establishing religion. He was no outlier in this. Most of the founders and pretty much all of the governments in the 13 new states demanded that separation. They were reacting to European history of sectarian oppression.
Heather Cox Richardson contrasts this with the current debate over which religions Secretary Hegseth will recognize and sponsor in the military.
Madison:
In 1785, in a “Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments,” he explained that what was at stake was not just religion, but also representative government itself. The establishment of one religion over others attacked a fundamental human right—an unalienable right—of conscience. If lawmakers could destroy the right of freedom of conscience, they could destroy all other unalienable rights.Hegseth:
…Hegseth has pushed Christian theocracy through extremist Christian-based prayers services with a Christian nationalist preacher who has said women’s suffrage was a bad idea and has defended slavery, and has described Trump’s war on Iran as a holy war. Michelle Boorstein and Sammy Westfall of the Washington Post add that Hegseth has urged chaplains to focus on scripture rather than psychology and has said those who disagree with him are God’s enemies.The same analysis is now available in audio format, as Richardson narrates in podcast.
- In The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser, Bruce explores why Evangelical Christians believe the Bible is the infallible Word of God, but so many don’t read or study scripture each day.
The answer most often isn’t hypocrisy or personal failing. Bruce remembers his days as a pastor:
They wanted to read and study the Bible, but after working 40-60 hours a week and taking care of domestic obligations, no time was left for them to devote themselves to the Word of God. Did this make them bad Christians? Of course not. They were tired Christians, not backslidden as I alleged. - In Scotties Playtime, Scottie provides a pretty good summary as Dan McClellan goes into what conservative Christians get wrong about the Bible and homosexuality.
The video itself is good, and runs about 22 minutes.
- Southern Baptists have formally banned women from preaching to Southern Baptist congregations.
Well, we in the faith have to acknowledge them as part of our Christian family, with the caveat that most families have at least some perpetually embarrassing members.
PZ Myers remembers his history, especially the part in 1845 when the entire reason Southern Baptists became Southern Baptists was to defend slavery.
So yeah, there is that.
- @whiskeywhistle98 misses her Dad, something with which those of us in the club can empathize:
- SilverAppleQueen reminds us about Anne Frank with an excerpt from her diary. Anne considers the concerns that seemed so major before life in the attic.
- Most folks who have been around social media debates have come across arguments that Adolf Hitler was not a conservative.
I go along with that. Traditionalists, myself included, have regarded conservatism as more Winston Churchill, Adam Smith, or even Barry Goldwater.
Pro-freedom, anti-authoritarian.Occasionally, we come across an argument that goes past the absurd.
Hitler was a leftist because he called his movement National Socialism.
It is an argument that can be easily disposed of by simple reductio.By that argument, North Korea is a democracy. After all, Kim calls his tyranny the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
It is joined by similar “republics” such the People’s Republic of China and the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.So can we sweep that goofiness into the goofy-disposal-bin?
Well, maybe not.
Right Wing Watch brings us right wing personality Seth Gruber with a new argument. Seems Hitler was a leftist because he was vegan who liked soy milk, and also because he was a …you know… National Socialist.
Demonizing Hitler:
There’s a weird thing, obsession, with Hitler where he has become worse than the Lord of Flies and the Prince of Darkness. And that, to me, that’s a really weird thing.Main evidence:
His problem was not that he went too far right. Um if you believe that um that’s You need to stop reading the publications that you’re reading.He was a vegan.
He liked soy milk or whatever the iteration of that was then, Tim.
Of course:
Nazi stands for National Socialist.And more:
There was some weird boy adult sex stuff going on at the highest levels of the Third Reich. Weird sexual perversion.And as we all know, sex with little kids has nothing to do with well‑known redacted files.
- The Propaganda Professor visits the infamous Hanoi Hilton in Vietnam, remembering stories about torture of American prisoners of war.
Were the stories true?
POP looks at two common sources of false narratives that, nonetheless, become widely accepted as true.
The Mandela Effect, in which folk stories are repeated so often they become widely accepted as indisputable truth,
AND
The Challenger Effect in which memories of actual events become distorted over time.
The Propaganda Professor looks at the timing, the evidence, and each possibility and finds that the stories of torture are true, unexaggerated, and verifiable.
It really happened, pretty much exactly as described, with accurate detail, by those who experienced it.
Yet the Vietnamese government denies it all. So the question is, do governments ever lie to us? - Too many scammers, not enough time.
If you are inclined to help the people residing in Ukraine, Hackwhackers has done the research, coming up with 15 legit charities who will take your donation to the right places.
- The Journal of Improbable Research finds a study that answers a troublesome problem. It seems the longer the distance astronauts travel after leaving Earth orbit, landing on some planet or satellite, the more likely they are to be injured in space. That makes a lot of sense to me.
If I drive from Missouri to Duluth, Minnesota and stay there for a while, I am much more likely to be injured in Duluth than I am in Seneca Falls, NY. This would largely be because Duluth would be where I am, as opposed to …say… Seneca Falls where I am not.
Back in space, getting seriously injured poses more serious problems than if the injured party was back home in Duluth, where they have hospitals and ambulances.
Due to payload constraints, in situ production of medical materials is essential.That’s science-speak for make do with what’s there.
So the study, by researchers from Canada, have figured out that space dust on planets and such can help stop serious bleeding.
As Aunt Tildy, in her own homespun wisdom, has always said:
Regolith from the Moon, Mars, and asteroids is rich in silicates, which may serve as a hemostatic agent.Aunt Tildy likes to add that having blood stay inside tends to help living beings keep living.
So there’s that as well.
They’ve been testing extraterrestrial regolith dust complete with interplanetary silicates on bleeding pigs and, sure enough, the hemostatic gets agented and the stuck pigs are still available for more sticking.
Yay! - Dave Barry reads an article about eating, water, biological age, and oysters and becomes obsessed with getting enough zinc, and whether Cheez-Its can help. So, of course, he goes to ChatGPT to find out about the Cheez-Its.
We continue up the mountain to our usual gurus of internet wisdom:
5 responses to “Week of Trump Trip Out on NBC, Trips Over Epstein, Trips Over Iran
Boos at NBA, 250th Celebration, Cage Match”
Thanks as always for including me.
The nutjobs are really clutching at straws desperately trying to justify their “Hitler was a leftist” thing. Just wait till they find out he was against smoking.
I guarantee that no form of “AI” will ever be used, in any capacity, in any aspect of the writing of my blog.
Hitler said he was a Christian a number of times. He was certainly a nationalist.
In 1941 Hitler said, “I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so.”
“The National Government will regard it as its first and foremost duty to revive in the nation the spirit of unity and cooperation. It will preserve and defend those basic principles on which our nation has been built. It regards Christianity as the foundation of our national morality, and the family as the basis of national life.” – Adolf Hitler “My New World Order” – Proclamation to the German Nation, Berlin, February 1, 1933
He outlawed abortion and homosexuality.
He never said he was a leftist. In fact, he hated socialists, minorities, communists, unions, homosexuals, “degenerate art”, and encouraged burning books.
Nothing conservative about that, right?
And:
In the early 1920s, the Nazi Party was a small, radical, right-wing political movement that wanted to overthrow German democracy. Hitler and the Nazis tried and failed to seize power by force in November 1923. – US National Holocaust Memorial Museum
Maybe there’s a similar problem with American Christian nationalism?
Thank you for linking Scottie’s in this week’s magnificent RSB, Burr! We so appreciate that.
Thanks as always. And I spotted a typo in the item, so more thanks!
Thanks for including my blog here & for aptly summarizing it, Burr.