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Proving again that Jamie Foxx can do it, and does it:
- Jason Linkins has about the right take on Scott Pelley, Bari Weiss, and 60 Minutes.
I think @perrybaconjr.bsky.social hits something important on the head, here: We need to treat the people who've wrecked places like CBS and WaPo like the hacks that they are and not the supergeniuses that they're not. Be a Scott Pelley, not a doomer!
newrepublic.com/article/2113…
— Jason Linkins (@dceiver.bsky.social) June 3, 2026 at 2:18 PM
What do Dems plan to do once back in power in regards to oligarchs buying up the media?
— Brandon Mills (@brandonmills.bsky.social) June 3, 2026 at 11:01 PM
Couldn't say, but we will continue to provide them with solutions to this problem.
— Jason Linkins (@dceiver.bsky.social) June 4, 2026 at 12:20 PM
- Master of Rant Max’s Dad points out that the CBS 60 Minutes Pelley debacle was about more than Scott Pelley.
In addition to program integrity, Pelley was also defending several staffers who were fired for doing their jobs.
Dad of Max also glides to Pride Month and the Christian Nationalist response:
Nebraska’s hopelessly inept Governor, whose budget deficits and conflicts of interest are legion…
declared here in Nebraska to be Happy We Hate Homos Month - Noted author John Scalzi explains why he doesn’t like to comment on the news, except on social media. Has to do with the boredom of repetition.
He makes a couple of exceptions.
Scott Pelley:
Weiss and Bilton have to know that in this sort of “they said. he said” situation, Pelley has integrity on his side, and they do… not. It’s also clear that whatever 60 Minutes might be after this, it will probably not be what it was, and it will probably be worse. And that, indeed, that has been the plan from the start.Data Centers:
No, I don’t particularly have a warm, fuzzy feeling for tech execs at the moment.He ends up with a wonderful video from Eleanor Morton mimicking every interview ever with every tech CEO.
- In Hackwhackers, the primary motivation behind the trashing of CBS 60 Minutes had nothing to do with Scott Pelley, or Bari Weiss, or 60 Minutes itself, or even CBS.
It’s all about The Ellisons, anti‑monopoly laws, Paramount wanting to gobble up competitor Warner Bros. Discovery, and needing Trump’s FCC to bend the law to do it.
- M. Bouffant at Web of Evil links to a dozen and a half sources as the Trump administration goes lawless and then some.
Like hiring a convicted Jan 6 rioter for a sensitive counterterrorism position, and refusing to commit to following court orders.
He expands on Bill Pulte’s laughable qualifications for Director of National Intelligence and what the appointment says about Trump.
So far, the guy’s experience, aside from real estate, has been helping find weird and flimsy reasons for government to prosecute people Trump hates. - News Corpse covers the news and related news as Jimmy Kimmel wins the Peabody Award and nails Trump in his acceptance speech.
Watch out for flying ketchup bottles! The Crybaby-in-Chief, Donald Trump, is going to be lobbing caseloads of condiments with both hands when he hears that the “low rated, no talent,” late night comedian, Jimmy Kimmel, has just won a coveted Peabody Award for “embracing the responsibility of comedy to reveal truths amid political volatility.”
- A judge makes an obvious ruling, that Trump cannot just put his name on an institution set up by Congress without authorization from that same Congress.
As Trump explodes in yet another session of middle‑of‑the‑night rage posting, he inexplicably adds an attack against the woman he raped years ago.
Tommy Christopher brings us E. Jean Carroll, interviewed by Anderson Cooper, relating the attack and the original rape.
- Julian Sanchez points out that the current journalistic goal of balance as opposed to truth adds literary abuse to physical assault:
This is really outrageous when you think about it. A jury found Trump sexually assaulted Carroll. News coverage often frames it like they’re political opponents.
— Julian Sanchez (@normative.bsky.social) May 30, 2026 at 10:34 AM
- At The Onion, a tearful Donald Trump claims he was sex-trafficked by Epstein.
Reliving the trauma:
He said he would get me a massage, and I didn’t know what that meant. Before I knew it, he was luring me to a private island with all these promises of real estate deals and then making me have sex with children for his sick pleasure. It was a nightmare I’m just now waking up from. - Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit links to coverage showing most of the damage in Iran was inflicted on civilian areas, with anecdotal indications that the Iranian population, overwhelmingly hostile toward the brutal theocratic rulers, have begun seeing the US, not the Iranian government, as the oppressor.
I hope the Moynihan truism may still hold, that data is not the plural of anecdote. But it seems undeniable that targeting areas holding residents opposed to the thugacracy is unintelligent and, more important, just plain wrong.
What led to such a backfire?
…the stupidity of Hegseth and Netanyahu - Via Nan’s Notebook, another view on the deep and growing despair permeating the opposition within Iran.
- CalicoJack in The Psy of Life suggests a hidden mindset. Are MAGAfolk trying out a test, to see what happens if we elect the biggest screw‑up in the world to the most powerful office in the world? (Okay, so he was more direct than “screw‑up”)
Are there Seventy-Seven Million Little Scientists?
Maybe people really are little scientists, creating and testing hypotheses to better understand the world. - Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson captures what, plausibly, will be on Trump’s speech topic list as he visits the state’s deep dark red districts.
Sheesh!
After due diligence toward the Trump press release, James adds:
The unsanitized list of likely subjects to be covered by Trump’s speech includes:The list itself is funny because it is so plausible.
- Infidel753 suggests that, as current events go to the past, and the past gets written into history, Trump will fade into the wallpaper.
Achievements:
People remember presidents who achieved things. Washington won our national independence. Jefferson played a huge role in creating the institutions and norms that make the US what it is. Lincoln crushed the Confederate insurrection and ended slavery. FDR ended the Great Depression, won World War II, and built the beginnings of the (still threadbare by modern standards) social safety net we have now.
Trump has not achieved anything comparable.Reduction into nothing:
Trump can’t even serve as an inspirational figure. Everything about him is small — petty, mean, spiteful, squalid, boastful, and vulgar. There is no greatness in him, not even great evil. - With a single image, driftglass celebrates the narcissistic collapse of Trump’s Freedom 250 celebration.
- As the musical part Trump’s musical extravaganza in honor of himself neared its collapse, research from the Laguna Beach Democratic Club seemed to discover more talent from Marco Rubio than was generally recognized:
😂🤪
— Laguna Beach Democratic Club (@lagunabeachdems.bsky.social) May 30, 2026 at 5:12 PM
Sadly, in a rare display of good judgment from Trump, this too was dropped.
- Now that Trump’s Jan 6 reward slush fund project seems to be collapsing, even White House insiders are racing to the exits:
Quoting The New York Times:
Some senior White House officials were said to have felt blindsided as the agreement took shape.Journalist Marcy Wheeler at EmptyWheel traces a bit of history and finds reason for skepticism:
She examines how and when details leaked, and what that reveals about how it all started.
I’m interested in why and how Administration insiders are sharing details of this story. One explanation may be an urgency among some Trumpsters to disavow the Terrorist Slush Fund given the pushback from a good chunk of GOP Senators.One figure seems to have enlisted some who are now running away:
Boris Epshteyn was at the center of this scam, even recommending members to serve on the Slush Fund, according to WSJ.And a bit of miscalculation:
Now, it’s a scam that old allies attempted to pull off, with seemingly no clue how controversial it would be. - tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors points to text and testimony. The never‑audit‑Trump order and the J6 slush fund are very much alive, and both involve a whole lot more than audits and slush.
- In one minute, author and educator Amanda Nelson explains how Senate Republicans managed to be for and against the January 6 Reward Slush Fund. So it’s dead and not dead.
I think of it as a kind of Schrödinger’s Slush Cat, at least until Trump opens the box for us:
- Dave Columbo channels Trump administration spox explaining how the slush fund is actually a good, very good, idea!!
- Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger has more numbers. Large majorities of Americans not only reject Republican efforts to slash domestic everything, but want the government to devote more funding when they are asked about specific programs.
- At The Moderate Voice Joe Gandelman takes a look at why teachers are walking away from teaching. It’s a teacher shortage caused by a parenting shortage.
- In Canadian satire, The Beaverton, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman predicts a wonderful AI dominated world:
We see a future where intelligence is a utility, and people buy it from us
…as he speaks from a subterranean lair shaped like a skull.
- Dave Dubya goes through history to what we experience today, defining liberalism as it contrasts with what passes for conservatism in MAGAWorld.
- In Rural Missouri, Jess Piper remembers a poem dedicated to a deadly incident of historic cowardice. One night in 1963, the Klan sneaked under a church window, planted a bomb, and 4 little girls died as they prepared for worship.
Jess contrasts that bloody past, the past MAGA hopes will return, with the decency she remembers that Obama represented as President.
And she is surprised at her inclusion in the new Obama Presidential Library.
My picture and a quote about rural schools are inside the Obama museum. It’s pretty unbelievable to tell you the truth. The archivists reached out to me over two years ago, and I remained completely silent on the topic because I thought that there was no way I was actually going to be included in the museum, and I didn’t want to embarrass myself.The Everyday People Exhibit, The Obama Presidential Museum. 6/2/26:
- In Letters from an American, historian Heather Cox Richardson goes 137 years back to the Johnstown Flood. More than the act of God most of us learned about in high school, the tragedy was the direct result of a group of industrialists enjoying good times in the lake just above Johnstown.
Bothersome safety precautions were scrapped by the new collective owners of the dam overlooking the town: the recently established South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club. What might have seemed common sense safety measures were unneeded interference with elite lives of luxury.
Some safety mechanisms were disassumbled and sold for scrap. The rest just got in the way. They had to go!
Sound familiar?
When heavy rains came and the dam gave out, two thousand, two hundred and eight unsuspecting ordinary people died.
But the club men denied responsibility for the disaster, and all four lawsuits launched against the club failed. Club members and law partners James Hay Reed and Philander Knox defended the club in court, claiming the flood was an act of God for which the members could not be held responsible.The same analysis is now available in audio format, as Richardson narrates in podcast.
- North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz explains that, as taxpaying citizens, we are participants in what we are paying for
I’m An American Taxpayer, and I’m Sick of Killing People
- It isn’t fair to post a picture of a guy just for looking evil.
But PZ Myers does accompany it with this Georgia legislator’s bill to legalize the killing of any woman seeking an abortion.
The idea is that it’s okay to kill in defense of the life of another.
So killing a pregnant woman before she can get an abortion will protect the…Okay. I get it. Here’s the picture:
- Louisiana resident Marshan Camese waited 10 hours to speak before the state Senate redistricting hearing in Baton Rouge.
His laughing rejoinder to an attempted insult from State Senator Blake Miguez was just the start, leading to a thorough and blistering takedown that doubled as entertainment.
Personal note: Just in case, by some cosmic coincidence, I ever meet Mr. Camese and accidentally offend him, I would, right now, please like to apologize in advance.
- Several Democratic policy groups are working on a document analogous to the Republican Project 2025 that has, since he took office, served as a guiding light to Trumpism.
They are calling it Project 2029.
Brian Beutler likes the idea, as far as it goes. The problem is that a list of policy check points is only a fraction of what is needed.Brian suggests we turn Project 2029 into something useful: a fighting document that outlines a plan to mow down obstacles in undoing the damage Trumpism has inflicted on the country.
Sub-headline:
Policy remedies to kitchen-table issues won’t end the fascist threat. I thought we learned this? - Meanwhile, the Senate race in Texas heats up.
The Borowitz Report covers the attack as Republican Paxton blasts Democrat Talarico’s lack of a criminal record.
Paxton:
James Talarico never saw a law he didn’t abide. - So Jesus teaches us the greatest of the commandments: to love God completely, and to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.
In The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser, Bruce voices a question that has to have come to many of us in the faith:
What’s with believers among us coming out against empathy?.
- Forget history and the founders and all that weird leftist stuff.
Right Wing Watch brings us MAGA prophet Hank Kunneman, who explains that those who do not want you to know that America was actually founded as a Christian nation are the Devil and his demons.
- The Propaganda Professor bestows his coveted Bubblegum Crucifix Award to conservative Evangelist Paul Washer.
Paul assures us that there is no such thing as an atheist.
- In Scotties Playtime, Ali Redford devotes This Month In History to the publication in 1940 of Carson McCullers’ The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, about a deaf man in Georgia, largely ignored, and fascinating stories of others he meets, mostly others bypassed, rejected, or outright persecuted by society.
Ali finds and tells the story behind the story: fascinating in its own right.
She brings us the hard living that inspired this first novel, and the travel, sacrifice, and risk young Carson McCullers went through to get it published.
- @whiskeywhistle98 has wonderful advice for amateur devotees of ornithology:
- Dave Barry has helpful observations on planning for your summer vacation, including steps that could have prevented tragedy:
The family vacation road trip is a beloved American tradition dating back to 1846, when the Donner family traveled all the way from Illinois to California, where, unfortunately, they got stuck and wound up eating each other.
Dave begins by skillfully comparing the warning light we of a certain age saw in younger days:
with those warning indicators we experience today:
He explains what some of those indicators mean.
- SilverAppleQueen has cats, sleepy cats on a cold, windy day.
- My long time very conservative friend Darrell Michaels adds archeology to his exploratory trail, accompanying his friend Elsie Sullivan to ancient sites of beauty and history in Utah.
Locals simply call it The Gap, but this 600-foot natural break in the rock is far more than a scenic pass. It is a living calendar, a sacred gathering place, and a vast stone archive shaped by the hands and observations of the Hopi, Paiute, and other Indigenous peoples who lived, traveled, and worshipped here long before roads, fences, or town names existed.
The surrounding cliffs and rocky formations in the area are replete with numerous ancient petroglyphs that researchers believe were created by the Fremont Indians (called Nungwy in Paiute). These Native Americans are closely related to the Hopi, Paiute, and other southwestern tribes. These early people were replaced by those that lived a hunter-gather lifestyle. The Paiute were often found living here when Mormon pioneers began to enter the area in the mid 1800’s. Indeed, the Paiute people still live in the area today.The photos, including those of ancient glyphs, are spectacular.
I am reminded, of course, of the relationship between President John F. Kennedy and his ideological antagonist Barry Goldwater. Goldwater asked Kennedy to autograph a photo. Kennedy’s inscription was said to be treasured by Goldwater:
For Barry Goldwater —
Whom I urge to follow the career
for which he has shown such talent — photography!
— from his friend—John KennedyI wish identical success for my friend Darrell Michaels.
And more internet wisdom from the usual suspects:
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