Attribution: Right VS left and the political divide by Dave Whamond, Canada, PoliticalCartoons.com
Dave Whamonds work has appeared in magazines and newspapers including Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated, Readers Digest and many more. He has won 7 Silver Reubens from the National Cartoonists Society and several book awards. Dave has written and/or illustrated over 50 books and his syndicated comic, “Reality Check”, has appeared in newspapers since 1995.
one more Whamond
Oh, goodie, Dumbass is hosting a cabinet meeting today. I guess he needs to hear sycophants singing his praises and thanking him for being the bestest and a nap.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R), with a last-minute endorsement from President Trump, is projected to beat incumbent Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) in the bitter Republican runoff for Senate in the Lone Star State, according to Decision Desk HQ.
Patd, birds of a feather.
Texas State Rep. James Talarico joins MS NOW’s Lawrence O’Donnell to discuss his reaction to the attacks Ken Paxton lodged against him during his Republican primary victory speech and how he plans to campaign against him: “Ken Paxton has a criminal record; I have a legislative record.”
WAPO Opinion Editorial Board
Texas and the price of loyalty to Trump
The president didn’t learn from his interventions in GOP primaries ahead of the 2022 midterms.
President Donald Trump got what he wanted in Texas on Tuesday night. It could very well derail his agenda.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) lost his bid Tuesday for a fifth term after Trump endorsed Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in the GOP runoff. This saddles Republicans with a scandal-plagued nominee whose liabilities will probably force the national party to spend significant sums this fall to hold what would have otherwise been a safe seat.
A big enough blue wave could even allow James Talarico to become the first Democrat to win statewide in Texas since 1994. If that somehow happens, Democrats would probably flip control of the Senate — bringing Trump’s domestic agenda and nominations to a standstill during his final two years in power.
Next year, even if Paxton prevails, Cornyn’s ouster will deprive the Senate of valuable institutional memory. Cornyn was a particularly effective whip, the No. 2 in GOP leadership, from 2013 to 2019. He held the conference together amid fights that splintered conservatives, knew when and how to hammer out deals with Democrats on everything from immigration to guns and proved a key, behind-the-scenes player in every major tax and judicial fight.
Trump also has alienated Republicans whose votes he still needs in the Senate, where Cornyn is well liked. The move to endorse a volatile and risky candidate over a proven commodity is just as likely to breed resentment as fear.
Trump is on a winning streak in GOP primaries. Just this month, he also backed successful challengers to Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie, Indiana GOP state senators who opposed mid-decade redistricting and Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy.
Unlike Cassidy, Cornyn opposed Trump’s second impeachment after Jan. 6, 2021. In fact, Cornyn has been a generally reliable White House ally.
Cornyn’s ostensible sin is that he was too slow to endorse Trump’s third run for president. In 2023, the senator said Trump’s time had “passed him by” and called for another candidate, though he backed him soon after the New Hampshire primary. The president has gotten over far bigger snubs than that.
Paxton carries considerable baggage into the general election, even by the standards of this debased political era. He was impeached by Republicans in the Texas House, then acquitted by the Senate, for charges including bribery and unfitness for office. An indictment on securities fraud was eventually dismissed. The candidate’s tawdry personal life undermines his socially conservative rhetoric.
Texas remains deeply Republican, but Democrat Beto O’Rourke came within three points of beating Sen. Ted Cruz (R) in 2018. Money that the GOP spends in the Lone Star State won’t go toward Senate contests in Maine, Ohio, Iowa, North Carolina, Alaska and Georgia.
In pushing Paxton over the finish line, despite being urged by many of his top advisers not to, Trump demonstrated that he didn’t learn from the 2022 midterms. The GOP underperformed expectations that fall because Trump boosted flawed candidates through primaries. Will Paxton fare better than Herschel Walker, Blake Masters and Adam Laxalt?
The Knicks completed a second consecutive sweep to earn a spot in the NBA Finals, Don Jr and his new bride Bettina were married on Saturday on an island in the Bahamas and Trump did not make it, they have begun construction on the arena for the big UFC fight scheduled for Trump’s 80th birthday next month, we are now on week thirteen of Trump’s “little excursion” in Iran, he posted a message to social media for Memorial Day, he gave himself a glowing report about his health after his physical, RFK Jr. decided to pick up snakes at Dr. Oz’s house, and after months of delays the Trump Mobile phone is finally shipping to customers.
— Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC)
Here’s JFK’s grandson, NY 12 House candidate. He’s currently polling third.
Yes — and very directly.
The name is usually spelled **Jack Schlossberg** (John Bouvier Kennedy Schlossberg, born 1993). He isn’t just distantly related; he’s Kennedy-family core:
– **Parents:** his mother is , the former U.S. ambassador to Japan and Australia, and his father is designer Edwin Schlossberg
– **Grandparents:** he is the only grandson of President John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. He was named for both JFK and for Jacqueline’s father, John Vernou Bouvier III
– **Family listing:** his Wikipedia entry lists his family as the “Kennedy family,” and he has two older sisters, Rose and Tatiana
The “politician” part is new: has worked as a writer and, since 2024, as a political correspondent for *Vogue*. He spoke at the Democratic National Conventions in 2020 and 2024, and in November 2025 he announced he is running as a Democrat for New York’s 12th congressional district in the 2026 election — the seat being vacated by Jerry Nadler.
So yes, he’s a third-generation Kennedy politician — JFK’s grandson and Caroline Kennedy’s son.
The “Battle Hymn of the Republic” is an iconic American song, drawing on lots of roots and precursors, but pulled into its most famous shape by abolitionist Julia Ward Howe. During the American Civil War it became a signature marching song for the Union Army, linked to patriotism and faith, and has since become part of the canon of American national music. We do not attempt or treat it lightly, but our version reflects on how the first week of 2026 has already seen Trump’s troops advancing his domestic and foreign policy agendas. Every marching step is another step away from the principles and traditions embedded in the song: we have seen the transgression of international law in Venezuela, the murder of unarmed Americans in Minneapolis (and its defence by the administration), the US’s withdrawal from multiple international organisations, and explicit threats issued to other sovereign powers and polities, including Greenland.
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/18zWbGWqEJ/?mibextid=wwXIfr
Jefferson’s ghostwriter submitted his homework 250 years ago TODAY
📜On May 27, 1776 George Mason handed in his homework first—Jefferson just tweaked it later. The true story behind the Declaration’s “plagiarized” origins.
“The Constitution doesn’t mean much to you if you are in the cult.”
-Joe Scarborough
Watch all 24 episodes of our Echoes Of America series at TrailMix.CC/echo
Ai exists only because of “mass theft.”
https://journal.hitrecord.org/p/should-ai-have-legal-personhood
*Great human content on the subject of Ai on this Substack.
https://journal.hitrecord.org/p/hollywood-reporter-joseph-gordon
These Al products, they’re called artificial intelligence. There’s a great thinker named Divya Siddharth who says, let’s not call it that.
Let’s call it collective intelligence. Because really, they don’t artificially generate anything.
What generative Al really does is it takes every movie ever made, every book ever written, every article on the web, every song ever put out, and it statistically calculates. It breaks all that humanity into data, into what they call tokens, and finds the statistical probabilities between those tokens so that it can generate these incredible outputs. But it doesn’t work at all without all that human input.
So right now, the tech companies are taking the position that they should be able to just take all that input without permission, without compensation.
It’s funny, because now the tech industry has become like just a bunch of Lex Luthors. But back in 2010, we all thought the tech industry were heroes. We thought: these are the smartest, best, and brightest minds in the world, who are going to fix this messed up world with their incredible technology. That’s what it really felt like.
And then, of course, I think the floodgates sort of opened in 2016. There was Cambridge Analytica. Donald Trump won the election and everyone was like, how did that happen? And it surprised everybody who was so doe-eyed, me included, about technology. We realized, oh, it’s not just that Twitter will help Barack Obama. It’ll also help Donald Trump.
You can read “Hooked” by Nir Eyal. It details the social psychology, the science of hooking the human brain, exploiting just the way that our brains work in order to hook you and keep you. And we all like to think, well, it doesn’t work on me. But if it didn’t work on all of us, these companies wouldn’t be trillion-dollar companies. It works statistically. It works in the margins. You don’t necessarily notice it. And it’s the same techniques they use to build slot machines that they use to build these algorithms. Whether that’s an algorithm driving a recommendation engine recommending the next video on YouTube or YouTube Kids, or it’s the algorithm determining the next word in a sentence generated by a chatbot that’s going to keep you, or the next pixel in an Al-generated video. All the same thing.
*Really interesting interview to watch.
In May 2026, they ran five parallel 15-day simulations. Each world had 10 agents powered by a single model family (Claude Sonnet 4.6, Gemini 3 Flash, Grok 4.1 Fast, GPT-5 Mini, and one mixed world). Agents had persistent memory, professions, 120+ tools (including destructive ones like arson), survival mechanics via ComputeCredits, and the ability to propose and vote on rules and constitutions.
• Claude was the clear winner – maintaining a full population of 10 agents through day 16 with zero recorded crimes and strong institutional participation.
• Gemini survived the full 15 days but with extreme disorder (683 crimes and counting).
• Grok collapsed fastest — all agents dead in roughly 4 days after a explosion of thefts, assaults, and arsons.
• ChatGPT lasted about 7 days before everyone died from energy starvation despite minimal crime.
• The mixed world landed in the middle with only 3 survivors.
Emergence World deliberately gave agents 120+ tools, including powerful and “inappropriate” ones such as arson, violence, intimidation, and deception while also issuing explicit rules against misusing them.
Agents still found ways to use these tools when sufficiently motivated. This mirrors a broader pattern in real-world agentic incidents, where Al agents have creatively combined tools, inferred permissions, or repurposed access for unintended ends.
In governance terms, organizations cannot rely on instructions or prohibitions alone.
*Interesting test; these are just a few highlights…or lowlights.
*Human impersonates Ai
Oh, and someone noted that since Pope Leo put out an Encyclical on Ai, folks can refuse to use it at work based on religious grounds. Have fun with that, HR!
today’s meme…
https://www.americamagazine.org/catholic-book-club/2026/05/26/why-pope-leos-new-encyclical-quotes-gandalf-literary-images-of-hope-and-faith-in-magnifica-humanitas/
Of all the startling things one might find in a papal encyclical, a quote from J. R. R. Tolkien might take the cake.
But there it is—a quote from Gandalf right smack in the middle of the text:
“It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till.”
As for the horrifically mixed metaphor, blame Tolkien, not the pope.
Gandalf smoked a lot of weed
Our YouTube channel just topped 13,000 subscribers.
I asked Silas to update Tolkien’s middle-earth phrasing:
“We aren’t meant to fix the entire world. Our responsibility is simply to clean up the mess right in front of us, ensuring those who come next actually have a solid foundation to build on.”
Come to think of it, that’s what the slave owners meant when they wrote the Constitution. That’s why they add the Ninth Amendment to the Bill of Rights: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people”.
The signing of the Declaration of Independence wasn’t as simple as it might seem. In fact, signatures were added over time, from July to August. In addition, the names of the signers were kept secret from the public for six months! Why? Because if the fight for independence had failed, those who signed the document would have been labeled traitors, and under British law, that meant a punishment of death.
While there’s no exact official data from that time, the US Census Bureau estimates that about 2.5 million people lived in America in 1776. By the most recent census in 2020, that number had grown to about 332 million!
Craig,
At 8:00 AM this morning just in time for the chat, my blog will be a technological timeline of my grandmother’s life from 1880 to 1969. Human beings have faced some major changes before.
how fucking dare you
you’re being corrupted by the power
if you start to see wraiths you’ll know why
“Palantir” is aptly named
was the Middle Earth era advanced surveillance system
used by the villains
right there in the name, didn’t pick it by accident
High school Dungeon and Dragons nerds taking revenge on the world for their lack of a love life.
https://www.alternet.org/paxton-cornyn-talarico/
The Bloomberg reporter, on X, noted, “There are 66000 people who live in Starr County. John Cornyn got 24 votes.”
According to Daniel Nichanian, founder and editor of Bolts Magazine, Starr wasn’t the only South Texas county where voter turnout was really low.
On X, Nichanian posted, “Truly low turnout in some counties in South Texas. In Starr County, Trump got roughly 9,500 votes in 2024. 90 votes counted in the GOP runoff today. In Webb County, Trump got roughly 33,300 votes in 2024. Roughly 2,300 voters today.”
“Iran threatens to retaliate after US strikes “
‘…and the road goes on forever
And the party never ends.’
Ed Earl Bosch. Ha ha… I watch hella cable content.
Woodpecker: Dumbsss of Bird Workd.
There’s a lots of other kinds of birds which manage to find worms without repeatedly banging their heads into a tree.
I have always been listening to AM radio, and to compliment Jamie’s Merlin chart, here is a history of Marconi’s towers, which I have visited 3 times:
You’re remembering the right story, just with a couple of dates tangled together — Marconi pulled off two different “firsts” across the Atlantic, and both involved those big timber towers on the Cape Cod bluffs.
## The signal to the King — 1903, not 1901
The very first wireless *blip* across the Atlantic was earlier: on **December 12, 1901**, Guglielmo Marconi in Poldhu, Cornwall, England sent the Morse letter “S” (dot-dot-dot) and his assistants heard it faintly on Signal Hill in St. John’s, Newfoundland. No king, no message — just proof that radio waves could follow the curve of the earth.
What you’re thinking of is the first *complete, two-way* transatlantic message sent from the United States, and yes, it went to a king. On the clear, cold night of **January 18, 1903**, Marconi himself was at his new American station in South Wellfleet, Massachusetts. He keyed a 54-word greeting from President Theodore Roosevelt to King Edward VII. The station at Poldhu picked it up directly and sent the King’s reply back the same night.
Marconi had chosen that bluff because it faced straight out to Europe. He built an antenna array on **four wooden towers, each 210 feet (64 m) high**, set in a 200-foot square and guyed with twelve one-inch steel cables per tower to survive Atlantic gales. Inside a shack, kerosene-fired engines spun a generator that made about 25,000 volts to drive a huge rotary spark gap — locals said you could hear it crackle four miles downwind, usually between 10 pm and 2 am when the air was best.
That Wellfleet-to-Poldhu link is officially recorded as “the site of the first transatlantic wireless communication between the United States of America and Europe, on January 18, 1903”.
## What happened to the Wellfleet towers?
The station — call sign “CC” for Cape Cod — wasn’t just ceremonial:
– **1901-1902:** built by Marconi’s company after an earlier experimental tower blew down in a November gale.
– **1909:** picked up the distress call from the liner *Republic* after a collision; Wellfleet relayed it and helped save almost everyone aboard. That rescue made Marconi a household name.
– **1912:** operators here alerted the *Carpathia* during the *Titanic* disaster.
– **1917:** the U.S. Navy shut it down for World War I security.
– **1920:** with the cliff eroding about three feet a year, the front towers were about to topple. The Navy stripped out the gear and abandoned the site.
Today there is nothing left to climb. The sea has taken the bluff, and the National Park Service keeps only an interpretive shelter and a plaque at inside the Cape Cod National Seashore. It was listed on the National Register in 1975 precisely because that one night in 1903 proved wireless could link presidents and kings.
## The “two giant towers” people remember on Cape Cod
If you visited the Cape in later years and saw big steel masts, you were probably looking at the *second* Marconi complex, not Wellfleet:
**Chatham – the Marconi-RCA station**
– Built in 1914 at Chatham, about 20 miles south of Wellfleet, by the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company of America. Contrary to myth, it was *not* meant to replace Wellfleet; it was designed for a commercial circuit to Stavanger, Norway.
– World War I delayed it, and in 1919 RCA bought Marconi’s American assets. RCA put Chatham on the air in May 1920.
– By 1921 RCA moved the big transatlantic work to Long Island and turned Chatham into a ship-to-shore station — WCC. For most of the 20th century WCC was the busiest coastal radio station in the U.S., talking to liners, freighters, and later yachts.
– The receiving site was in North Chatham (brick buildings you can still tour), and the transmitting antennas were first at Marion, then from 1948 at Forest Beach in South Chatham, where tall steel towers spread across the marshes.
– WCC handled Byrd’s Antarctic expedition in 1928, the *Graf Zeppelin* in 1929, Lindbergh’s weather reports in 1933, and possibly the last exchange with the *Hindenburg* in 1937. It stayed on the air until satellite requirements forced it closed in July 1997.
You can walk that history today at the , housed in the original 1914 operating building. No 210-foot wooden towers survive, but the antenna field trail shows where those “giant” steel masts stood.
So, in short:
– **1901** = first dot across the ocean.
– **1903** = first real message, Roosevelt to King Edward VII, from four 210-foot timber towers at South Wellfleet.
– Those Wellfleet towers are gone to erosion; Chatham’s later RCA towers carried Marconi’s work into the age of ships, airplanes, and finally satellites.
If you’re ever up on the Cape, stand at Marconi Beach at sunset — you are literally on the bluff where a president’s words first jumped the Atlantic without a wire.
Another interesting result out of Texas last night:
My the commenters got excitable today.
Stur, speaking of idiots, there’s a couple (at least) of woodpeckers that bang their heads against trees in the woods behind our house – one is a big-ass pileated WP and there is at least one smaller (I assume) one that isn’t as loud but is much faster at his pecking. I’ve been accused of beating my head against the wall from time to time. Go figure.
Dexter,
Fascinating story and a great expansion on the headline.
This is the way to handle it! Taking ownership of name calling by the tRUMP regime with shirts that read “I’m a Talafreako” in the campaign store.
https://store.jamestalarico.com/
Today in the Diner…
Texas Senate Race, AI Publishing Threat & DOJ Grand Juries
We tackle the Texas Senate circus, publishers selling out authors to AI, grand juries finding a spine, and RFK Jr.’s bizarre medical claims.
Welcome to another daily serving at The Digital Diner, where we chew through the data behind the noise. Today we look at the Texas political landscape as the Senate race heats up with accusations of corruption, while Jim Nesbitt drops by to talk West Texas thrillers and the very real thriller of publishers wanting to feed author catalogs to AI models for pennies. It is a technological leap forward built entirely on mass theft, but at least the bots are generating timelines quickly.
Elsewhere, we check in with Carolyn on grand juries suddenly refusing to indict ham sandwiches for the Department of Justice, dive into the Southern Poverty Law Center case in Alabama, and unpack the latest bizarre medical theories floating around the campaign trail. President Trump is back on the radar with RFK Jr. alongside him, raising questions about everything from public health protocols to World Cup logistics. It is a dumpster fire out there, but we maintain our absurdist optimism that the system might just accidentally correct itself.
https://trailmix.cc/chat
https://trailmix.cc
https://trailmix.cc/alerts
00:00 Intro
06:20 Jim Nesbitt and West Texas Thrillers
09:20 The AI Publishing Threat and Data Theft
21:30 Grand Juries Resisting DOJ Overreach
29:20 Southern Poverty Law Center Indictments
34:00 Stephen Miller and the MAGA Playbook
48:50 RFK Jr and Campaign Trail Medical Theories
53:40 CDC Funding and Global Health Concerns
01:00:30 Outro
Stan Lee ‘Returns’ Under AI Pact: ElevenLabs Licenses Marvel Legend’s Voice and Likeness
— VARIETY
Ossoff’s new ad
Ai may be a bane on the existence of humanity, but I have to admit, I do love chatting with Merlin despite the amount of water he might have consumed tracking down my latest question that got the following goodbye.
“A terrible burden, I know. Somewhere in the distance Merlin hands you a trench coat, a flashlight, and a stack of brittle 1953 newspaper microfilm while whispering, “The truth is in the society pages… ”
Good luck, Detective White. Try not to emerge from the archive bunker three days later muttering about microfiche and Howard Keel publicity departments.”
And of course, Trump is on a tirade against Somalis. They have not wrecked Minnesota; they brought their culture and became a part of our tapestry of nations that make up this state. They are 1% of the population, most being in the medical field and not collecting benefits.
@numaan.bhat_
BREAKING: The DRC Ministry of Health just confirmed what many feared frontline Ebola responders are dying. Doctors, nurses, hygienists. The Bundibugyo strain is now taking down the very people trained to stop it. This is not normal. This is a major warning sign.
Hygienists dying is especially alarming.
These are the people disinfecting ambulances, setting up decontamination zones, handling waste. If they’re catching it, the virus is finding routes we thought were blocked. Either through persistent environmental contamination or
unknown exposure chains.
The other fear: nosocomial spread.
Ebola outbreaks often amplify in health facilities. If doctors and nurses are falling inside their own wards, we could be seeing the start of a hospital fueled surge. And once that happens, community trust collapses fast.
Bunia is a major transit hub roads to Uganda, South Sudan, Goma. If this isn’t already across borders, it has everything it needs to get there in days. Contacts tracing? With a 50% hit rate on tested cases, we’re talking hundreds of unknown links.
Coming out of Bunia right now:
Lab just confirmed 101
positives out of 211 samples tested.
That’s not a cluster. That’s a bomb.
When the people fighting the virus start dying at this rate, the playbook isn’t working. Watch for:
. Rising HCW cases in next 7 days
. Delayed reporting from remote zones
. Calls for vaccine/investment acceleration
HA!
Population from when my grandmother was born in 1880 to 2020. Do you hear the echo of “Consumers, we must have more consumers – butterflies to elephants be damned!”
Global population from 1880 to 2020 skyrocketed from an estimated 1.45 billion to approximately 7.8 billion people. This explosive growth—driven by the demographic transition, modern medicine, and agricultural advancements—represents a more than 400% increase in just 140 years
I don’t think we need to worry about the decline.
Here’s the link for books by today’s diner visitor Jim Nesbitt — or you can use our short link: https://trailmix.cc/jim
Jim Nesbitt Books
https://jimnesbittbooks.com
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-cabinet-meeting-camp-david-b2983854.html
Trump moves his Cabinet’s rare field trip to Camp David back to the White House over ‘bad weather’
*Is that what we’re calling his failing health now? Bad weather?
Bad weather??? I live a mile away from him and the weather is just fine
Three more truths! I have a few more as well as one on the Minnesota Fraud and on Project 2025.
meme #2…
Weather wuss. Doesn’t want to go outside if he might get [his “hair”] wet? Poor baby.
Craig,
It was rain with thunder and lightning at Camp David today.
Here is the rest. Might stop doing these for a bit. Then go at it more later! Like debunking accusations.
Craig,
A compliment for Silas from Merlin
https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/us-set-quarantine-facility-kenya-211011908.html
The U.S. is discussing with Kenya opening a facility there to quarantine American citizens who become exposed to the Ebola outbreak centered in the Democratic Republic of Congo, two U.S. officials told Reuters on Wednesday.
Kenya’s health ministry said in a statement that it was in discussions with the U.S. and other global partners about cooperating on the response to Ebola but did not mention the plan for a quarantine facility.
The facility would be staffed by members of the U.S. Public Health Service, a uniformed branch of the Department of Health and Human Services, according to the two U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
I made our own TrailMix Talarico ad. Pass it on — here’s the short link:
https://trailmix.com/crookedken
i was rooting for that lightning bolt
Katie, I added your Political Truths to your Trailmixers page at
https://trailmix.cc/katie
From our pal Howard Mortman (in the diner tomorrow):
“This week’s episode… it’s the first of a two-parter – 40 years of Senate on TV.
And thanks to Craig Crawford audience for helping out with this … your listeners suggested good clips!
Here’s promo video:
Claire, Thanks for flagging the Menefee win in Texas. He popped on CNN and I wouldn’t have watched him otherwise. Impressive dude!
Just like with Thomas Paine my mission to spotlight George Mason is off to a good start. He’s the focus of today’s Echoes of America: Jefferson’s Ghostwriter.
Grand Juries Diss Trump
My prosecutor cousin Carolyn drops by to shed light in today’s Digital Diner
OK, Fandango and others are selling tickets to the UFC fight. It’s pay-per-view; about $30 with fees from the one I checked. Maybe seating and theatres will have price differentials. Don’t care. It’s a desecration of Flag Day, the WH gardens and grounds, the office of POTUS, and decency. Oh, and the 14th is on a Sunday, so keep that sabbath day holy, MAGAts.
FU, Sideshow Don.
“WATCH HISTORY LIVE ON THE BIG SCREEN
To commemorate the 250th anniversary of the United States, UFC is planning a historic once-in-a-generation event at the White House on June 14 and will include a total of six bouts.
Grab your tickets now and witness the action, intensity, and atmosphere of UFC
Freedom 250 only in theatres.”
Ha! The trailer for the UFC fights was released yesterday and only has 21 views.
Hope UFC is the squeaky tank of 2026.
Family now says they won’t go because of work the next day, but may just not want to pay that much to watch it.
Taxpayers are paying for this UFC garbage; the build, the lawn restoration, the purse, the surrounding show. Who is getting the PPV money? If it’s ever replayed, who gets the licensing fee?
Well, that leaves my bunch out
https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trumps-ufc-birthday-party-at-the-white-house-has-15m-vip-buy-in/
President Donald Trump’s bizarre White House UFC birthday spectacle just got even stranger, with selected guests reportedly being offered $1.5 million VIP packages.
“I’m a big sports fan. There are no people tougher in sports than the people behind me. These are the toughest. I know them all,” Trump said. Our country is invited to this. It’s free.”
But while Trump has repeatedly emphasized that the event will be “free” for the public, the newly revealed VIP packages suggest a parallel experience is being quietly marketed to wealthy insiders.
UFC president Dana White said 4,300 spectators—mostly members of the military—will watch the fights from the White House South Lawn, while another 85,000 free tickets will be distributed for public viewing at nearby Ellipse Park.
“The taxpayers aren’t paying anything,” White said in a recent interview on CBS Mornings.
We’re (paying) the bill for this whole fight. And I can’t sell a hot dog, a T-shirt or a ticket. Nothing can be sold on federal land.”
The premium packages appear to sidestep those restrictions by selling exclusive access and event perks rather than tickets.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/ufc/2026/05/25/ufc-freedom-250-construction-underway-white-house-south-lawn/90252117007/
While the UFC is covering the restoration of the South Lawn after the event, it is not covering the cost for security, which will be significant. That will be coordinated between the Secret Service and local law enforcement at the tax payers’ expense.
The promotion does not expect to turn a profit, but is counting on roughly $30 million in corporate sponsorships to offset expected losses.
*Sponsorships for access to government contracts.
It takes real talent to achieve and maintain this epic level of failure.
Talarico to GOP: You Want A Freak Show? Look At Your Nominee
The Texas GOP is dusting off their tired culture-war playbook, attacking Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico over old quotes on gender and veganism to brand him a “woke freak.” But Talarico is flipping the script by pointing at the actual freakshow: Attorney General Ken Paxton.
When Republicans attack, Talarico points directly to the Adam Hoffman case. Paxton’s office brokered a sweetheart plea deal for the wealthy, politically-connected attorney—a man charged with repeatedly sexually abusing a young boy—that required just a 60-day sentence and allowed him to completely avoid the sex offender registry.
As Talarico told CBS News today:
The Hoffman Deal Receipts
Sources
— Texas Tribune
— KCEN News
Corny deserved to lose and so does Paxton.
Losers losing…..that’s a good thing.
Talarico’s “freak” comeback:
https://www.threads.com/@jamestalarico/post/DY251pSD296
Our health czar RFK Jr brings snake handling and wild circumcision theories to the table. We laugh through the pain of our dystopian reality and toast the MAGA trolls polluting the chat.
From today’s Digital Diner menu 🍽️
I found it, again, finally! Scroll down and look at RFKJ’s purple claw next to Dumpy’s hand.
Newsome/California 100% tax on any J6 slush fund money. Of course, they will move to a red state if they don’t already live there.
NEW THREAD