B

Evil will always triumph, because good is dumb. - Dark Helmet

[shut up, josh @ChiefJosheola]

It absolutely rules that the President of the United States was found guilty of sexually assaulting a woman, then found guilty of defaming her, then continuously goes to the Supreme Court to avoid paying her, and we’re all just like “lol whatever trans athletes, amirite?”

[Acyn @Acyn]

Ossoff: When he first announced the tariffs, you remember that? He called it Liberation Day, and it crashed the markets because it was clown policy. You remember that?

OK, so follow me through on this. He announces the tariffs on April 2 of last year. The markets tank nonstop for like a week because it’s a disastrous trade policy, and six days into the crash, April 8, Trump buys millions in stock. I’m talking Amazon, Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, Berkshire Hathaway, and then the very next morning, April 9, he posts on Truth Social, quote, “This is a great time to buy.” Three exclamation marks.

OK, now listen to this. Three hours and 41 minutes after that post, one day after he bought millions in stock, he canceled the tariffs and triggered one of the biggest same-day rebound rallies in market history.

He’s trying to get money. And you saw, now he’s offering paid subscriptions to presidential announcements, right? Just understand what’s for sale here: The sitting president’s pronouncements on war and peace and economic policy delivered first to paying customers.

What an absolute crook.

[Grace Cathedral Park @gracecthdralprk]

For everything bad you could say about American culture (and it could fill libraries), we used to have a very Protestant aversion to ostentatious displays of wealth and a very republican aversion to veneration of living leaders. The Trump era has virtually destroyed both of those

[Isaac Saul @Ike_Saul]

I know a lot of people have already posted about it. But it's really just... I don't know. The president is selling 6-figure access to his social media feed so Wall Street algorithms can beat you to the punch and fleece you before news even hits your phone. He's making millions on a system designed to give a massive advantage to major corporate traders who can afford a feed that gives them information first. It's the single most corrupt thing I've ever seen a politician do with their office. Literally.

[Bryce Greene @TheGreeneBJ]

Holy shit... Wired reports that back in May, the U.S. Military was testing an experimental GPS jammer and and caused a civilian plane to crash into the side of a mountain, killing everyone on board.

[Scott Schneider @EdLawDude]

Blame Oklahoma and Georgia. 😂😂😂

In 1981, they sued the NCAA over control of their football television rights. They won. The Supreme Court held that the NCAA's television plan violated the Sherman Act -- it fixed prices and limited the number of games available to television.

And thus began the media-rights arms race that now governs nearly every important decision in college sports.

Conferences became television syndicates. Geography became optional. Rivalries became negotiable. Schools began flying volleyball teams across multiple time zones because football inventory was more valuable in a different conference. The richest brands accumulated more money, hired more staff, built larger facilities, and separated themselves further from everyone else.

Meanwhile, Justice Byron White dissented, joined by Justice Rehnquist. White had been a consensus All-American at Colorado. He knew what the product was.

He thought the majority was making a category error. In "reaching this result," he wrote, "the Court traps itself in commercial antitrust rhetoric and ideology and ignores the context in which the restraints have been imposed." Treating college athletics as an ordinary commercial venture, he warned, would make profit maximization increasingly dominant, push college sports toward professionalization, and weaken their connection to education. What the NCAA was protecting, in his view, was "a unique and valuable product, the very existence of which might well be threatened by unbridled competition in the economic sphere."

Forty-two years after the decision, college athletics is reorganizing itself around television value, athletes are receiving direct compensation, conferences stretch from coast to coast, and Congress is being asked to reconstruct the national system that antitrust law helped dismantle.

So, yes, blame Oklahoma and Georgia.

And perhaps admit that White was right -- not necessarily that the NCAA's television cartel was lawful, but that once television money was set free, it would eventually become the organizing principle of the entire enterprise.

The majority correctly predicted a bigger market.

White correctly predicted what that market would consume.

[Fuck You I Quit @fuckyouiquit]

Fun fact: Mitch McConnell has voted against practically every federal paid leave bill in existence

[More Luigis Needed @LisaA311]

Biggest theft of our lives. That was our money and they handed the refund to corporations instead of back to you

[davey @jerseyh0mo]

Breathing in hefty lungfuls of smoke as I get explosive diarrhea from salad, the sky turns apocalyptic orange while oil companies drill in protected lands, screwworms are eating cattle alive and the president just paid $6 million for rape. And I’m also able to bet on all of it!

[George Conway ⚖️🇺🇸 @gtconway3d]

The problem, ultimately, is that restoration of free passage in the Hormuz Strait would require a massive combined-arms offensive that would be extremely costly in blood and treasure, that would necessitate involvement of Western allies who no longer trust us and won't fight with us, and for which there would be little, if any, domestic political support.

Had the Iranians taken control of the strait unilaterally without our provocation, the conditions for such a massive response—involving ground troops, allies, and Congressional authorization—might have been possible.

Which is why the Iranians never did that.

Now Trump—and we—are stuck. And the Iranian regime knows it. They correctly perceive Trump's flailing as weakness, and their new leaders, having gained the upper hand after a decapitation strike, know they have the upper hand. They don't give a shit about Trump's threats.

It's hard to imagine a greater and graver strategic failure than this one, which has resulted solely from Trump's idiocy, ignorance, incompetence, impulsiveness, and insanity.

[Charlie Warzel @cwarzel]

Every Trump debacle follows the same 13 steps. The reflecting pool fiasco is just one of the lower stakes versions of it.
1. Devise unnecessary spectacle
2. Disregard expertise
3. Bypass normal procedures
4. Declare victory too early (bonus if done by AI-slop post)
5. Spend way more than estimated
6. Ignore the haters
7. Realize it is not going well
8. Bypass normal procedures once again
9. Allege conspiracy and sabotage
10. Redeclare victory
11. More blaming
12. Losing interest
13. Pretend it never happened, and move on to the next thing

[John Iadarola @johniadarola]

Do you ever wonder what you'll have to pretend to believe tomorrow? Next week? Next year?

[James Tate @JamesTate121]

Step 1: Remove filters in Reflecting Pool because Obama put them in.
Step 2: Give your criminal neighbor who runs "Greenwater Services" a $20 million no-bid contract to paint the pool.
Step 3: Fill the pool with water from the Potomac River, the phosphates from which cause algae blooms.
Step 4: Freshly sealed pool and extreme heat result in a super scum event
Step 5: Direct National Park Service to dump hydrogen peroxide into the pool which causes the paint to peel.
Step 5: Deploy US National Guard to stop people from taking photos of the swamp as a perfect metaphor for the administration.
Step 6: Blame someone else.

[Aaron Blake @AaronBlake]

The ballroom before:

"No charge to the taxpayer whatsoever.”
“I’m paying for it; the country’s not."
Paid for “100% by me and some friends of mine.”
“Free of charge.”

The ballroom now:

[Tom Nichols @RadioFreeTom]

Unless you're an brain-wormed partisan, "Iran is an evil regime," "this preventive war was stupid and should never have been launched," and "this peace deal is a US humiliation" are three perfectly true things you should be able to believe at the same time.

[B @bpm5012]

Tier 2 is being extremely generous

[Jai @Ardagul3r24]

This stadium belongs to a random tier 2 American university man, the amount of wealth this country has is insane ffs

[one dozen rats at a keyboard @PanasonicDX4500]

I know it’s become pretty cliche and cringey to talk about at this point but if you’re under like 25 I cannot stress enough how one time Obama wore a tan suit and people spent a week arguing over whether or not it was demeaning to the Oval Office and they were serious about it.

[Citizens for Ethics @CREWcrew]

After Nixon’s “I am not a crook” tax scandal, the IRS mandated that the president’s tax returns be audited yearly.

Every president since Nixon (except Trump) publicly released theirs.

With the new DOJ settlement ending his audits, Trump is essentially announcing “I am a crook.”

[Headquarters @HQNewsNow]

He's right. Hitler did it first

[Rep. Jim McGovern @RepMcGovern]

Remember: it was like pulling teeth to get Republicans to fund the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund.

But it took them no time at all to create a $1.8 billion Insurrection Slush Fund to pay off the legal fees of the January 6th rioters who beat cops.

These are sick, corrupt people.