From Greg Fallis:

I’m hesitant to write this. Well, that’s not entirely true. I’m happy to write it. I’m hesitant to hope it might be true. I’ve hoped this hope so many times in the past, and each time that hope has been soundly kicked squarely in the yorbels. But I dunno…this time…maybe? So what the hell, I’m going to write it.

We may actually be seeing the beginning of the end of Comrade President Donald J. Trump.

Why do I think that? Epstein.

Let’s face it, MAGA has repeatedly demonstrated that they’ll forgive Trump for anything. The open corruption, the galactic level hypocrisy, the gobsmacking incompetence, the extravagant lies, the destruction of the East Wing of the White House, the inability to maintain a coherent thought for any length of time, the complete and utter lack of loyalty to his subordinate, the destruction of a health care system they rely on, the destruction of civil liberties. MAGA has always found ways to overlook, justify, or even celebrate that shit.

And to be honest, a sizable chunk of MAGA will forgive Trump for boinking teenaged girls. They may claim to be disappointed that he boinked teenaged girls while he was married, but they’ll forgive him for it. Some will even applaud him for it.

But Epstein?

Epstein is different. Epstein exists outside the ‘boys will be boys’ framework. Epstein has become shorthand for ‘child sex trafficking.’ And child sex trafficking has been a mainstay of right-wing conspiracy theories for a long, long time. These people spend a LOT of time thinking about forced sex with young girls. If you recall, the QAnon movement was solidly locked into the notion that powerful (mostly Democratic) politicians and Hollywood elites (exclusively Democratic) had formed a cabal of Satanic/cannibalistic pedophiles who kidnapped, imprisoned, raped, and murdered children for their adrenochrome.

The loopy passion of QAnon was matched by—and eventually merged with—the loopy passion of MAGA. The membrane between QAnon and MAGA became even more porous and the loopiness escalated when Epstein died while in Federal custody. There was a feeding frenzy of conspiracy theories detailing how and by whom Epstein was murdered. Q/MAGA was energized during the 2024 election by Trump’s promise to release all the Epstein files if he was re-elected.

And hey, bingo…he was. In February, Attorney General Pam Bondi told reporters the Epstein client list “is on my desk right now for review.” Q/MAGA got excited. The truth was going to come out. Any day now. Really. Get ready. It was coming. Finally we’d know the truth. Just as soon as Bondi finished reviewing all the files. The Epstein client list would be made public and the elites would be held accountable for their horrific crimes. Q/MAGA could hardly contain itself. The anticipation was intense.

Then, on a busy Friday over the 4th of July holiday weekend, Bondi quietly announced that the Epstein client list…well, it didn’t exist. Sorry. Oh, and Epstein wasn’t murdered; he just killed himself. Case closed. Nothing to see here. What’s on Netflix this week?

Q/MAGA was…stunned. Then angry. Righteously angry. Now they feel betrayed. Not just by Bondi’s bait-and-switch, but by the possibility—wait, the probability—the OMFG certainty that Trump, his ownself, was on the list. Not just ON the list, but very likely FEATURED throughout the Epstein files. All of that loopy passion began to turn against Trump…and that’s a LOT of loopy passion.

I wrote about this back in July. In response to a question, I said this:

I don’t for a moment believe this will take Trump down. But I DO think it will weaken him. And I’m good with that. I don’t think there’s any single issue or scandal that can pull him down, but I think every issue that causes him to bleed a bit should be amplified. Death by a thousand cuts…that works for me.

I’m starting to change my mind on this. I’m starting to believe the sheer depth and scope of all that Epstein-inspired loopy passion could take Trump down. Again, I’m hesitant to hope for it, because there’s been a Friday the 13th quality to Trump; he doesn’t stay dead.

But maybe this time? Maybe dead Epstein will take Trump down? There would certainly be a sort of poetic justice to that. Maybe this could actually put an end to our national heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks that Trump has inflicted upon us.

‘Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished.

UPDATE: Today Trump announced that he’s asking the Department of Justice to investigate Democrats linked to Epstein. Just Democrats, apparently. The most obvious reason is to draw attention away from himself. A less obvious reason: by getting the DOJ to investigate Democrats, the DOJ can then refuse to release the Epstein files because of an “ongoing investigation.”

EDITORIAL NOTE: Seriously, we need to burn the patriarchy to the ground. Just about everything that’s fucked up in the world has its roots in patriarchy. Or capitalism. Much the same thing, really. Burn patriarchy and capitalism will also go up in smoke. Burn it.

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This vote is gonna be on your record for longer than [Cankles] is gonna be president. And what are you going to do in 2028 and 2030 when you’re in a debate … and they ask, ‘How can we trust you? You covered up for a pedophile back in 2025.'” ~ Thomas Massie, GOP Congressman from Knetucky, taking his own party to task.

Massie is deeply MAGAt so he gets no props for that, but he gets props for stepping up, stepping out, and stepping on his own party of pedophile protectors.

[H/t to Bob.]

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The Court did the right thing in denying cert, and people across our nation can breathe a little easier today but threats to marriage equality will likely continue, so we must not assume marriage, or any rights enjoyed by or due to any marginalized community, is safe. Kim Davis should have lived up to her oath and duties as a public servant by serving everyone in Rowan County, Kentucky; instead, she chose to use her faith to persecute others. It is past time for others in our nation to understand that a person’s faith is not harmed by others who are different. Someone exercising a civil right does not prevent a believer from continuing to practice their faith at home or in their house of worship. As the Sixth Circuit said when denying Kim Davis’s appeal, the Bill of Rights ‘would serve little purpose if it could be so freely ignored whenever an official’s conscience so dictates,. I hope the Supreme Court halts further attempts by public officials to use their personal faith to deny others their civil and human rights.” ~ Jim Obergfell, American civil rights activist and lead plaintiff in the 2015 US Supreme Court case Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage throughout the country, on the SCOTUS decision.

[H/t to Bob.]

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…of a typical night at Mike’s Night Gallery (Folsom Street, SF, 1991)

Oh, the stories I could tell.

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(Not that any of it will shake his core, base support.)

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Also from Mock Paper Scissors:

There’s no way that the Epstein Pedo-Files will ever be fully released without someone leaking them. Honestly, I’m surprised that no one has leaked it yet.

Of course Hair Füror tried to head it off at the pass (as one does), and you can honestly smell the flop sweat/loaded diaper in this story:

Trump and administration officials reached out to Boebert and Mace in the hours ahead of Grijalva signing the petition Wednesday, as either one of them removing their names would have prevented the effort from succeeding. CNN reported that Attorney General Pam Bondi, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel planned to meet with Boebert on Wednesday. Trump called Mace early Wednesday, but the two had not connected as of early afternoon, a source told The Hill.

Both representatives kept their names on the petition.

From the NOTUS email thingie:

Two former Biden White House officials told NOTUS that it was “highly unusual” and “weird” for the Situation Room to be used for non-national security or classified issues. The White House did not respond.

“It’s just an easy SCIF to get to,” Boebert told NOTUS’ Manuela Silva last night when she asked why the meeting took place in a room reserved for high-profile national security issues. “I guess I’m pretty high profile.”

And this little detail makes something clear: “I’m not going to detail conversations that took place in the Situation Room,” semisentient jar of mayo and press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters at the briefing. To gain access to the Situation Room you cannot have any phones or other recording info (including paper and pencils). They chose a SCIF deliberately.

Anyway, here’s the process AND the liabilities for releasing the Epstein Pedo-Files. If the House passes the bill, then…

1. 1. The measure heads to the Senate, where it will be filibustered. Will enough Republicans cross the line to bring the votes to 60?
   2. Any amendment the Senate might attach —no matter how trivial— would send it back to the House, where Pornhub Moses would then smother it in its sleep.
   3. Vulgarmort will never sign it.

Remember, the Epstein estate has the documents, too. That’s how the W$J made the  vulgar birthday card public. And it is also how we will know if the DOJ tampered with them, as it seems likely.

 

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From Mock Paper Scissors:

Drop in U.S. Religiosity Among Largest in World

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The 17-point drop in the percentage of U.S. adults who say religion is an important part of their daily life — from 66% in 2015 to 49% today — ranks among the largest Gallup has recorded in any country over any 10-year period since 2007.

About half of Americans now say religion is not an important part of their daily life. They remain as divided on the question today as they were last year.

Such large declines in religiosity are rare. Since 2007, only 14 out of more than 160 countries in the World Poll have experienced drops of over 15 percentage points in religious importance over any 10-year period.

I honestly do not care about religion one way or the other, that’s up to you. I personally don’t have faith that the next Kleenex will pop up from the box, and much of the time I’m right.

[Source]

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From Politizoom:

 

Wow. The Epstein emails are proving to be real treasures. Jeffrey Epstein may have been besties at one point with Donald Trump but the email that the above-headline was lifted from certainly shows that there was no love lost on Epstein’s part when it was written. Jeffrey Epstein once called Trump a “maniac” with signs of “early dementia,” newly-released emails show. The sex trafficker, once a close friend of the president, had soured on Trump by the time he moved into the White House in 2017, writing at the time that there was “not one decent cell in his body,” says The Daily Beast:

“NO QUESTIONS DONALDS STATEMENT WAS GOOFY,” HE EMAILED IN JANUARY 2018, REFERRING TO A STATEMENT TRUMP GAVE IN REACTION TO A MICHAEL WOLFF BOOK. “EARLY DEMENTIA?”

TRUMP, 79, HAS FACED MANY QUESTIONS ABOUT HIS HEALTH THIS YEAR, INCLUDING HIS MENTAL CAPACITY.

EPSTEIN’S MOST POTENT INDICTMENT OF TRUMP CAME WHILE HE CORRESPONDED WITH KATHRYN RUEMMLER, WHO WAS ONCE THE PRINCIPAL DEPUTY WHITE HOUSE COUNSEL TO BARACK OBAMA.

EPSTEIN EMAILED RUEMMLER IN DECEMBER 2018: “YOU MIGHT WANT TO TELL YOUR DEM FRIENDS THAT TREATING TRUMP LIKE A MAFIA DON, IGNORES THE FACT THAT HE HAS GREAT DANGEROUS POWER. TIGHTENING THE NOOSE TOO SLOWLY, RISKS A VERY BAD SITUATION. GAMBINO WAS NEVER THE COMMANDER IN CHIEF THERE WAS LITTLE GAMBINO COULD DO AS THE WALLS CLOSED IN. NOT SO WITH THIS MANIAC.”

EPSTEIN ALLEGED IN A SEPARATE EMAIL THAT TRUMP WAS NOT TRULY CLOSE WITH ANYONE. THAT ALIGNS WITH WHAT THE FINANCIER ONCE TOLD WOLFF IN BOMBSHELL TAPES FIRST PUBLISHED BY THE DAILY BEAST LAST YEAR.

“DONALD IS CLOSE TO NO ONE,” EPSTEIN EMAILED THE EMIRATI BUSINESSMAN SULTAN AHMED BIN SULAYEM IN 2018. “HE TALKS TO MANY PEOPLE. HE TELLS EACH ONE SOMETHING DIFFERENT.”

Everybody knows what a snake Trump is and the leaders of the world all use him for their own purposes or discard him, for the same reasons. Canada is done with the U.S. and I can’t say as how I blame them. Whether the bridges Trump has dynamited can ever be rebuilt by future American administrations is not known at this time. But if I was Canadian or French or a member of any number of world countries, I would have zero trust in a people who would elect a total scumbag like Trump twice. Not once but twice. That’s the true horror of all this.

Even Jeffrey Epstein, a man of no character himself, saw Trump for who and what he was. Roll that around in your grey matter for a while. Epstein was a man who trafficked in human suffering of the basest kind yet he had enough of a moral compass to realize who and what Donald Trump was. And he gave Trump a failing grade. A pedophile of the lowest kind and he still looked down on Trump morally. And Trump is in our White House. What’s left of it, in any event.

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I think I’m overdosing on schadenfreude right now.

yesterday morning, out of the clear blue, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee dropped an atomic bomb right into our laps, in the form of three emails sent and received by Preznit Fuckwit’s dead pedo bestie, Jeffrey Epstein.

oh, and guess what: Donny’s name is all over that shit.

if it turns out that I’m asleep right now, please don’t wake me — because I’m having one of the best fucking dreams ever.

here’s a quote you’d never want to see the light of day, if you had a dead pedo bestie problem.

“of course he knew about the girls, as he asked Ghislaine to stop.”

I can’t wait to hear all about how Joe Biden’s autopen went back in time and ginned up a bogus email confirming that Donny asked Ghislaine to stop befriending and then trafficking the Motel-a-Lago ‘spa girls’ whom Donny and Eppie used to fight over.

here’s another super fun email, this one from Jeffrey to Ghislaine:

i want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is trump. [VICTIM] spent hours at my house with him ,, he has never once been mentioned. police chief. etc.”

now, let’s not jump to conclusions here. just because Donny was holed up for hours at Epstein’s house with one of those underage ‘spa girls’ doesn’t mean that anything untoward was going on.

maybe Donny was helping her with her math homework. maybe he was explaining how you can lower the price of a prescription drug by a thousand percent. maybe she was giving him makeup tips on how not to look like a fluorescent tangerine fuckwit. if so, he wasn’t listening.

look, let’s not bicker and argue about who was spending hours alone with who.

let’s just look at the third email, from Michael Wolff to Ep.

“I think you should let him hang himself. If he says he hasn’t been on the plane or to the house,… [y]ou can hang him in a way that potentially generates a positive benefit for you, or, if it really looks like he could win, you could save him, generating a debt.”

perfectly normal stuff. just Donny’s official biographer spitballing with Donny’s dead pedo bestie over the best ways to make Donny incriminate himself.

I suppose I should have mentioned earlier that everyone in this story fucking sucks.

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after the Oversight Dems released those three emails, James Comer Fudd, the rake-steppingest fuckwit in Congress, decided that the best way to deal with the situation was to release 20,000 more Epstein documents he’d been sitting on.

what was the logic at work here? was Comer Fudd trying to overwhelm everyone by ‘flooding the zone with shit’? if so, it he failed miserably. reporters eagerly dove headfirst into that pile of docs, and guess fucking what: the stuff that Comer released was just as incriminating — if not more so — as the three emails released by the Dems.

Nearly a month before President Donald Trump met Russian leader Vladimir Putin in Helsinki in 2018, Jeffrey Epstein attempted to pass a message to Russia’s top diplomat: If you want to understand Trump, talk to me.

“I think you might suggest to putin that lavrov can get insight on talking to me,” Epstein wrote in a June 24, 2018, email to Thorbjorn Jagland, a former prime minister of Norway who was leading the Council of Europe at the time of the exchange. Lavrov was an apparent reference to Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s longtime foreign minister.

what in the hallowed name of Stab You In The Back Jesus was going on here? it’s really weird how a guy who maintained an entire island just for raping teenage girls apparently had the email addresses of diplomats and heads of state. what a coincidence. and he sure was super horny to make sure the Russians had dirt on Donny.

did Epstein even like Donny? it really doesn’t sound like it. when told that ‘Trump is so gross,’ he replied ‘worse in real life and upclose.’

here’s another perfectly normal thing: Epstein asking a reporter if they’d like to have “photos of donald and girls in bikinis in my kitchen?”

this is the shit that Comer Fudd thought would diffuse the situation?

I guess that’s what happens when you leave damage control to a rake-stepping fuckwit.

by the way, where is the media on all this? thirty years ago, the press hounded Bill Clinton to resign over a blow job. isn’t what Donny’s caught up in just as bad, if not a whole lot worse? he’s clearly unfit for office. where are all the calls for Donny to step down? come on, you fucking cowards. do your jobs.

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here’s how totally freaked out Donny was by all this new shit coming to light: he started panic-dialing the Republicans who had signed onto Massie’s discharge petition.

“Trump himself called Boebert, regarding her signing onto the Epstein petition and spoke to her yesterday, I am told. Trump playing phone tag with Mace. So far, they are not planning to remove their names from the petition.”

holy shit, Donny had to play phone tag with Nancy Mace! how hilarious is it that when America’s self-appointed bathroom panty inspector’s phone rang and she saw it was Dear Leader, she was all ‘I’m not answering that shit.’

as for five-time international lap-hockey champion Handy Oakley, they actually summoned her to the While House Situation Room — and when she got there, Attorney General Pam Bondi, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, FBI Director Kash Patel were waiting for her.

oh my god, it’s like a Murderer’s Row of morons — a Dumbfuck Hall of Fame — with all these incompetent clowns going ‘pretty please, Lauren, we’ll be your best friend.’

what do you suppose all these geniuses offered Boebert to get her to change her vote? a bag of money? an ambassadorship? some important White House role — something meaty she could get her hands around?

so, how did all that cajoling work out for Donny?

“My understanding is that the relentless pressure campaign that has included carrot, stick, good cop, bad cop, has made her even more dug in, suspicious and convinced there’s a conspiracy at play.”

no fucking duh, it is a conspiracy.

imagine being so clownfuckingly inept at doing a cover-up that even a low-wattage numbskull like Handy Oakley can clearly see what’s going on.

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now let’s enjoy Adelita ‘Oh Gee, I’m The 218th Vote To Release The Files’ Grijalva finally being sworn in.

so, was Finally-A-Rep Grijalva’s first official act as a member of the House to add her name to that discharge petition? oh fuck yes, it was.

Grijalva signed the petition on the House floor immediately after being sworn in as Democrats in the chamber cheered and two Epstein survivors looked on from the gallery.

after which, Rep. Eric Swalwell made a prediction.

“This is the beginning of the end.”

shoot that shit straight into my veins, Eric.

here’s a super-cool fact about that discharge petition:

Once the petition is locked at 218 votes it cannot be unlocked.

that shit’s set in stone now. it’s too late for Handy — or the panty inspector — to have second thoughts.

as for the actual vote on the bill to release the files,

Later on Wednesday, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said that he would bring the Epstein bill for a vote in the House next week — a move that amounts to ripping the band-aid off a vote that neither Johnson nor President Trump wanted.

oh god oh god oh god, if I’m still dreaming, don’t you fucking dare wake me up.

I’d love to give today’s final word to Preznit Fuckwit, but for some reason he’s suddenly clammed up.

Reporter: “can you respond to these Epstein emails that were released today?”

Donny: [gives no answer]

so let’s give the final word to Rotting Stevie Three-Shirts, because he is sodesperate to change the subject right now.

“BANNON: Trump’s not perfect; he’s an imperfect instrument, but one infused by divine providence. Without him, we’d have nothing. So stay focused. This is 12 o’clock high; we’re on a bombing run. Don’t lose sight of the mission.”

cry harder, Rotty Steve.

tick fucking tock.

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this is going to be my closing message for the foreseeable future:

practice self-care. do what you need to do to keep sane. if that means you need to disengage with my daily posts for a while, I get it. this community of ours will still be here when you return.

to all the people who have signed on in the days since the election, welcome aboard. settle in as we all try to deal with the shitfuckery that’s ahead of us.

we are all in this together, and we are all here for each other.

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A beautiful November afternoon with my old faithful chunky monkey, listening to Duke Ellington’s Blues in Orbit while the doggos chase each other around the back yard.

Over on the Minidisc subreddit, I once posed the question, If you could grab only one player from your collection [because all the nerds over there, like me, have multiple portables] in the event of a fire, which one would it be, and why? Personally, it would be a toss up between this MZ-S1 and my blue N707. They both have the same internal mech so the decision would be based be solely on aesthetics. Even then, it would be difficult, although I admit I’ve always been partial to this chunky monkey since I bought my first one new back in 2002.

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Dr. Michael Robinavich (Noah Wyle) and Dr. Dennis Whitaker (Gerran Howell) from The Pitt.

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