And In Not What It Initially Appears To Be,

Charlotte Clymer with another interesting story about rightwingers.

Why Sydney Sweeney Needs to Be Canceled by Charlotte Clymer

Her career needs to end. Read on Substack

Actually, this has nothing to do with Sydney Sweeney.

I’ve seen some of her movies and shows. She’s a good actor. She seems nice. I have no real opinion of her beyond that.

The rightwing media ecosystem is currently obsessed with Ms. Sweeney, and per their usual outrage machine schtick, they’ve made her their latest vehicle for claiming Democrats are out-of-touch with America.

This week, Fox News and various other conservative outlets have spent considerable time claiming that Democrats are furious over a jeans advertisement featuring Ms. Sweeney—the details of their supposed outrage are too absurd to get into here, and I’d rather not insult your intelligence by pretending you should care.

But I figure tens of millions of Trump supporters are feverishly googling “Democrats” and “Sydney Sweeney” for that sweet, sweet hit of outrage to feed their addiction, and it occurred to me that a provocative headline could be a great opportunity to get them here and offer a read-out on what Democrats and progressives are currently, actually, passionately discussing.

I’m in approximately ~5,000 group chats with fellow Democrats (heavy sigh), give or take a few, and Sydney Sweeney has not come up once in any of them. Not a single one.

Here’s what we’ve really been talking about this week:

We’re pretty horrified by the ongoing horror in Gaza. Children there are starving-to-death, and the Israeli military has brutally slaughtered more than 1,000 innocent civilians attempting to get food assistance, almost all of which is being blocked by Netanyahu’s government.

All of our allies—including the United Kingdom—have been urgently pleading with Netanyahu to end the blockade and feed starving people in Gaza and please, oh please, stop shooting at them.

We’re wondering why Republican Christians in Congress would disregard Christ’s clear teachings on this matter. Pope Leo XIV condemned “the very grave humanitarian situation in Gaza, where the civilian population is crushed by hunger and remains exposed to violence and death.”

But hey, what the hell does he know?

We’re disgusted by the cover-up over the Epstein files, and it’s fairly obvious to everyone that Donald Trump is desperately attempting to conceal and distract from his involvement in a massive sex trafficking operation that targeted children.

Remember when the Republican Party pretended to care about pedophiles and sex trafficking and the so-called “Deep State” and Trump pandered to them for votes by claiming he would released the Epstein files and then he didn’t?

We’ve been talking all month about the fall-out of Trump’s One Big, Beautiful Bill and the fact that upwards of 17 million Americans will lose their health care coverage and millions will lose food assistance and a ton of rural hospitals are about to close down.

We have no idea how we’re going to help all these people when that legislation is fully implemented, and in discussing how to get medical treatment for the sick and food for the hungry, we don’t really care who these vulnerable folks voted for last year.

We’re considerably worried about the country’s total unpreparedness for natural disasters like hurricanes and tsunamis and flooding and earthquakes because Donald Trump and the Republican Party have gutted the NOAA and the National Weather Service and FEMA.

We imagine a lot of people are going to needlessly die in flood waters and devastating cyclones because of Republican incompetence and cruelty, and again: we have no idea how we’re going to help these folks when that happens.

We’ve been talking a lot about the accelerating erosion of constitutional protections and the Trump administration openly forcing colleges and corporations to pay him a bribe in order to avoid being targeted by his dictatorial madness.

We’ve been talking about Trump’s efforts to silence Stephen Colbert and his other most prominent critics in pop culture, except, of course, when he’s too chickenshit to take on the creators of South Park.

We wonder how the Constitution will survive this era. We wonder how the courts can resist threats of violence. We wonder how democracy can endure when even the most concerned Republicans, like Sen. Lisa Murkowski, have largely given up on their oaths.

Sydney Sweeney and which endorsements she’s landed and what ads she’s appearing in and what products she’s hawking to the public — none of that matters to us.

If anything, in regards to Ms. Sweeney, we’re embarrassed for the shamelessness of Republicans who are attempting to exploit her as a distraction from the death and destruction they’re causing and enabling.

Maybe if we got a hungry or sick child in a rural part of the country to record a video talking shit about Ms. Sweeney, that would be enough for Trump and Republicans to pay attention to their suffering. (snip)

Succumbing To The Temptation

to post snarky news about a very bad person.

Alan Dershowitz Suing Martha’s Vineyard Farmer’s Market Vendor For Tortious Withholding Of Dumpling by Rebecca Schoenkopf

He kept his panties on the whole time! Read on Substack

Evan Hurst Jul 31, 2025

Are Good Pierogis the only pierogis you’ll ever need? Yes! Drive to Martha’s Vineyard and eat them. Tell them, “Alan Dershowitz ain’t got no panties on.” We don’t know if they’ll give you a discount, but they might laugh.

If there’s one thing anybody knows about famed lawyer Alan Dershowitz’s life and career, it’s that he has panties on, except for all the times he’s being a nudist, which by definition implies the absence of panties. One time he definitely always had panties on? When he was getting a massage at Jeffrey Epstein’s Haus of Naked. That’s a five-alarm-panty-party for Alan Dershowitz, he has always assured us.

Another time Alan Dershowitz is always wearing panties — at least as far as we’ve heard — is when he’s having his civil rights and his bill of rights and his human rights violated by the evil shopkeepers and librarians of Martha’s Vineyard, where nobody will invite him over for dinner because they hate his guts, avec ou sans panties. Apparently the Jewish Democrats on Martha’s Vineyard really loathe El Chico Desnudo. Also everybody else on Martha’s Vineyard hates him, all the other liberals, and this makes Alan Dershowitz feel lonely and, well, naked. They won’t let him come to brunch, and it’s definitely not because he’s naked and won’t stop dipping his balls in the hollandaise, why would he dip his balls there, that’s not where Alan Dershowitz’s balls go. They won’t let him do his world-renowned standing-room-only readings and lectures at the meeting room at the library, it is an outrage, it is a seven deadly sins, it is a violation of the Geneva Conventions. Larry David doesn’t invite him over, Barack Obama skips his birthday parties, and now he has to sue a Martha’s Vineyard farmer’s market vendor because they wouldn’t give him a dumpling.

A pierogi, to be specific. The vendor wouldn’t give him a pierogi, so now he has to show them his pierogi.

WITH PANTIES ON.

Dershowitz explained what’s going on in exhaustive detail on his Rumble show, but first here’s a tweet:

Dershowitz: Bigoted vendor @ Martha's Vineyard Farmer's Market refused to sell to me for political reasons. I'm suing. Watch the Dershow live @ 5:30pm est on Rumble and Youtube. Become part of the conversation.

OK, so here’s the situation, here is Alan Dershowitz’s Yelp review for “that guy at the farmer’s market with the pierogis.”

“There was the pierogi place,” he said. “They’re Ukrainian, Russian delicacies. And I had gone there a few times before, and I bought the pierogi. They were ok. They were not my grandmother’s pierogi, but they were ok.”

Alan Dershowitz just wanted some pierogis, even though they weren’t that good, just OK.

BUT THEN HERE’S WHAT HAPPENED, ALAN SAYS:

DERSHOWITZ: Can I have six pierogi?

“BIGOTED VENDOR”: No.

DERSHOWITZ: Oh, you’ve run out of pierogi? Too bad.

“BIGOTED VENDOR”: No, no, no. We have plenty of pierogi. I just won’t sell them to you.

DERSHOWITZ: What do you mean you won’t sell them to me?

“BIGOTED VENDOR”: I won’t sell them to you because I don’t approve of your politics. I don’t approve of who you’ve represented. I don’t approve of who you support.

DERSHOWITZ: What is it about my politics that you don’t–

“BIGOTED VENDOR”: I’m not gonna tell you. I just don’t like your politics.

Love it when vendors at the farmer’s market are like “Forsooth, I don’t approve of you! I forsake you! You shan’t have six pierogis today, not to put in your belly, not to eat with panties on, not to slather in your Alan Dershowitz ball-ondaise sauce and save for later!” It’s just how farmer’s market vendors talk.

“The clear implication was that he opposed me because I defended Donald Trump on the floor of the Senate,” Dershowitz added. “I think that’s illegal.”

Alan Dershowitz is a very famous lawyer.

It gets better, because there’s video of at least part of the situation, or at least the aftermath, don’t worry it’s safe for work. Dershowitz was also filming, because he is a serious lawyer and we imagine he knows that sometimes cops and ICE agents and pierogi vendors are full of lies.

This is the other person’s video, though:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Chris Hulbert (@bungee4)

Therein, you can see the cop gently explaining to Alan Dershowitz The Very Famous Lawyer that according to his own understanding, restaurants can refuse service, but if he wants to pursue it further, he can pursue it civilly. Oh yes, Alan Dershowitz says! He is going to put this on the internet too, Alan Dershowitz says! That’ll be the end of this reign of terror for this pierogi seller whose pierogis are OK but not like Alan Dershowitz’s grandmother’s pierogis!

If you’d like to listen to Dershowitz debate the cop for one hundred hours on whether it’s OK for people to discriminate against Alan Dershowitz based on his protected class of sucking so much, that’s in that video. You can’t discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation or race, so how is it fair to discriminate against Alan Dershowitz on the basis of fuck that guy, we hate him? He asks to speak to the manager. The cop explains that actually he’s in charge right now. Dershowitz explains he’s lived here for 53 years and nobody has ever sent him home without pierogi in his belly. He accuses the extremely patient cop of “silencing” him. The cop gently explains that he is causing a disruption, that multiple people have complained, and that no, he may not stand next to the pierogi stand and tell people not to go to the pierogi stand. Alan Dershowitz explains that he would like to get some lemonade.

The user who posted the video says:

“I met Allen Dechowitz [sic] today. I stopped him from harassing a vendor who wouldn’t serve him pierogi at the farmer’s market on Martha’s Vineyard.”

The pierogi person, or the person who is presumably the pierogi person, replied, “Hey, thank you so much!”

Again, Dershowitz rushed to get on Rumble and talk about all of this, and he did so wearing a Martha’s Vineyard Farmer’s Market T-shirt. If you choose to subject yourself to this, skip to 3:54 or so in the video. He talks for a LONG VERY LONG TIME, about how the farmer’s market is on QUASI public land, and he pronounces QUASI like SWAYZE.

He explains that he really wanted to go to the farmer’s market that day because it was corn day, and he got there early, because corn day. He says corn day wasn’t supposed to be until August 1, but he had “insider information” that told him corn day would be this weekend instead.

So that’s insider corn day trading, by his own legal admission, somebody should sue Alan Dershowitz for tortious corn day.

In the Rumble video, Alan Dershowitz is much more agreeable than he is on the video with the cop, so we can only imagine what the actual encounter with the pierogi vendor was like. He does mention that when he was told that the pierogi vendor identifies as non-binary and uses the pronoun “they,” Alan Dershowitz responded, “I’ll use whatever language I choose to use, that’s a matter between me and my grammarian,” and when he said “grammarian,” it was like he was gesturing to the Great Grammarian in the Sky, so that might have also contributed to why Alan Dershowitz did not receive any pierogi, for himself or for his grammarian.

In the video, Dershowitz creates his own new metric for whether it’s OK to discriminate, based on the categories of “race, religion or politics,” which is, legal factcheck, not what it is. (The nice cop also tries to explain that to him.)

Dershowitz says he wrote an op-ed about this, he has sent an email to Sean Hannity — yes because the pierogi person was mean to him — and then, having babbled for over 10 minutes about this, starts explaining other times he’s faced discrimination on Martha’s Vineyard, just for being Alan Dershowitz too much. He’s discriminated against by the book fair, he’s discriminated against by the library, he’s discriminated against by the synagogue — he says they hate Israel — and blah blah blah blah blah Alan Dershowitz.

And then we turned off the video.

If you, like us, don’t want to watch the whole video, here is a screengrab of Alan Dershowitz making an Alan Dershowitz face while he complains.

So that is what has happened. Everybody on Martha’s Vineyard still hates Alan Dershowitz and Alan Dershowitz did not get a pierogi, therefore SUING.

Cannot hardly wait for Pam Bondi’s press conference on how she’s filed charges against the pierogi stand for discrimination and anti-semitism and also probably announcing that she found the real Epstein files in the pierogi stand’s fryers, they were there the whole time. (snip)

Goon Is As Good A Term As Any

Goons of Justice by Clay Jones

Trump puts another loyalist goon on a federal bench for life Read on Substack

Oops! I forgot to put satire in this cartoon.

I do that sometimes. I’ll draw a cartoon that illustrates exactly what happened. What happened here is that Republicans confirmed Emil Bove as a federal appeals court judge, which is a lifetime appointment.

They confirmed Bove despite him serving as Donald Trump’s personal lawyer in the hush money case that found Trump guilty on 34 felony counts. The appeals court is one level below the Supreme Court. A Trump loyalist will be on the court for life. He has more loyalty to Trump than to the Constitution.

He will serve on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which hears cases from Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Bove will be as crooked as the judge in Florida who dismissed his stolen document case.

After Trump reentered the White House in January, he quickly made Bove a top official in the Justice Department where he worked on the dismissal of the corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, and the investigation of everyone who investigated department officials who were involved in the prosecutions of hundreds of Trump supporters who were involved in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

Bove has accused FBI officials of “insubordination” for refusing to hand over the names of agents who investigated the attack and ordered the firing of a group of prosecutors involved in those Jan. 6 criminal cases.

It was bad enough to put a supporter of Trump’s white nationalist terrorists in the DOJ, but now he’s going to be a federal judge.

The whistleblowers provided evidence to the Senate that Bove lied during his testimony, and that he suggested the department should ignore court orders when it came to Trump’s illegal deportations. There’s an audio recording of Bove making statements about the Adams case that contradict his testimony, saying that whoever signed onto the dismissal would be rewarded.

Chuck Schumer said, “It’s unfathomable that just over four years after the insurrection at the Capitol, when rioters smashed windows, ransacked offices, desecrated this chamber, Senate Republicans are willingly putting someone on the bench who shielded these rioters from facing justice, who said their prosecution was a grave national injustice.”

Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski were the only two Republicans to vote against Bove’s confirmation, with Collins saying, “I don’t think that somebody who has counseled other attorneys that you should ignore the law, you should reject the law, I don’t think that that individual should be placed in a lifetime seat on the bench.”

Collins isn’t always right, like the time she voted to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, believing him when he said he wouldn’t overturn Roe. (snip-MORE, and it’s good)

(Note from A: I’m adding this photo, because Emil Bove reminds me of the photo)

A Positive Way To Take Back Identity:

Black Indigenous Chefs Are Reclaiming Identity Through Food — One Dish at a Time by Michael Harriot

Black Native food workers are passing down culinary traditions, restoring lost connections and feeding body and soul. Read on Substack

Crystal Wahpepah (Photo courtesy of Crystal Wahpepah)

The Indigenous food movement has seen a renaissance in North America, with restaurant openings, cookbook releases and community initiatives that announce the presence, expertise and heritage of Indigenous food workers. Amidst this moment, Black Native food workers have seen both the beauty and the harshness of living at the intersection of Blackness and Indigeneity, as the dominant settler colonial culture of the United States often tries to erase or flatten all parts of their identities.

But those attempts at erasure have also provided moments of reflection and insight, and a realization that the mission of Black Indigenous food workers is profoundly spiritual and political healing work. For Stephan Oak, a Black and Lakota forager and woodworker who lives in Detroit, the threads of connection that Black Indigenous people hold in their family stories that are “steeped in violence, but also steeped in love and resistance” are also guides that allow them to connect in the past, present, and future — a shared cosmology.

Crystal Wahpepah, who is Black and Kickapoo and the executive chef and owner of Wahpepah’s Kitchen in Oakland, Calif., says that often, through representation and education, Black Native people in the food industry come to a deeper peace about their identity and heritage. At Wahpepah’s Kitchen, over cornbread dishes from the Ute and Kickapoo people, wild rice from the Great Lakes tribes and bison from the Great Plains, people often find themselves.

“I meet so many people who are Black and Native but never felt connected to their Indigenous side, and when they meet me, they start talking about it, about culture, about those things that have been lost,” she says. Wahpepah is also opening a new restaurant, A Feather and a Fork, which is also the title of her upcoming cookbook.

That loss is something felt in both Black and Indigenous communities and can often feel pronounced because of family separation through residential schools, land expulsions, the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the domestic slave trade that broke up Black families across the country. “Because of colonial violence, there’s a fractured relationship to home or your connection to your ancestors,” says Oak. “The intent of the colonizer is to stop you from looking … to accept the identity of the conditions they’ve placed on you.”

Food is one of the ways Oak and others are reclaiming autonomy over their identities, especially as governments use food as a weapon by depriving communities of affordable, culturally relevant food. Oak points out that even amidst food deserts on reservations and urban Black communities, people find ways to be more self-sufficient and connect back to the land, which helps them reconnect with the essence of who they are. (snip-MORE; lots more but not too long)

Crystal Wahpepah’s wild rice salad with strawberries and pecans (Courtesy of Crystal Wahpepah)

And Now For Some Funny Fun

A Lime-Green Dildo Got Thrown Onto a WNBA Court. Chaos Ensued

Players cracked wise about the launched sex toy on social media.

By James Factora July 30, 2025

Lez Out July might be drawing to a close, but one WNBA fan made damn sure that it’s not going out without a bang, pun semi-intended. And by that, we mean that someone launched a lime- green dildo onto the court at an Atlanta Dream game last night.

The incident occurred during the fourth quarter of the Dream’s July 29 game against the Golden State Valkyries at the Gateway Center Arena in College Park, Georgia. With a minute left on the clock and both teams tied at 75 points, the drama was already high. Perhaps that’s why one attendee felt inspired to launch a dildo into the air and onto the court with truly impressive velocity.

(embedded tweet; I can’t get it, see it on the page, linked in headline)

At about 17 seconds into the above clip, you can see slowed-down footage of the dildo’s journey, seemingly tossed from somewhere high up in the stands and bouncing across the court into the sidelines. And yes, we did get a close-up shot of the “object” in question, as the commentators called it. Absolute Cinema, if you ask us.

(embedded tweet; I can’t get it, see it on the page)

Though the commentators said that there was “no room for that type of activity,” and we certainly don’t support launched objects at concerts and games, it seems that WNBA players themselves have at least enough room to make jokes about that type of activity online. Las Vegas Aces guard Kierstan Bell quote-posted a video of the incident with, “Damn how my shit get there,” and an eyebrow-raised emoji. Indiana Fever point guard Sydney Colson, meanwhile, posted, “Sorry I did NOT mean to throw that so far y’all.” Though she didn’t include a video, that lime-green heart emoji (which is weirdly close to the color of the actual dildo) makes this an unmistakable reference. (snip-good sports, all! MORE)

Last Day Of July In Peace & Justice History

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjuly.htm#july31

Political cartoons / memes / and news I wish to share. 7-31-2025

#free palestine from 🫀

Image from Liberals Are Cool

https://www.tumblr.com/reagan-was-a-horrible-president/790363285417492480

#republican assholes from Rejecting Republicans

#trump from Art de Trump

https://www.tumblr.com/reagan-was-a-horrible-president/790346877485875200

#epstein files from Liberals Are Cool

Image from Liberals Are Cool

#deplorables from The Iron Snowflake

#trump is a threat to democracy from hopes & fears

Image from It seemed like a good idea at the time...

Image from Untitled

Image from Bowlby's Bric-a-brac

#beyonce from Liberals Are Cool

Image from Liberals Are Cool

https://www.tumblr.com/reagan-was-a-horrible-president/790361030849118208

to anyone wondering why they want to shut down the dept of education so badly...here's your answer

nbc poll: opinion of trump

- white men, no degree - +41
- white men, college - +1
-white women, no degree - +14
- white women, college - -38

Kick us off of Medicaid?, Big Beautiful Bill, Big ugly Bill, poor, double-wide, GOP, RNC, Repub ...

Harley Schwadron CagleCartoons.com

https://www.tumblr.com/reagan-was-a-horrible-president/790273307282898944

#meme from Meme Uplift

Image from Liberals Are Cool

#fuck republicans from Protecting My Peace

a bumper sticker that says 'honk if you're amish'

#trump from Art de Trump

Seen in Boston, MA (TỘE) TARO TS CONGR- MỌT CHện"

https://www.tumblr.com/reagan-was-a-horrible-president/790349182867210240

Image from Depsidase

Trump Order Kills Annual Arizona LGBTQ Film Festival

Trump Order Kills Annual Arizona LGBTQ Film Festival

Again the attempt to kill diversity and the LGBTQ+ representation. This may seem small potatoes but again this is about erasing the LGBTQ+ community. Hugs

July 24, 2025

Just in via press release:

We are writing with profound regret to inform you that the 17th annual Desperado LGBTQ+ Film Festival has been canceled. This decision comes in direct response to recent presidential executive orders impacting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) efforts at public institutions, including our community college district.

As a publicly funded institution, we must comply with these orders. Failure to do so would jeopardize the district’s federal funding, including student financial aid and grants that support over 300 positions across our campuses. The loss of such funding would create a ripple effect, significantly affecting students, faculty, staff, the community, and the educational services we provide.

Thank you to our audience that has made Desperado possible for the past sixteen years. You have helped us provide a platform for underrepresented voices and celebrate the richness of the LGBTQ+ community through the power of film. We are deeply grateful.

While we are heartbroken to pause this year’s event, we hope this is not a farewell but a momentary pause. We look forward to the possibility of resuming the festival when conditions allow.

Read the full press release. The festival is hosted by a student organization at Phoenix’s Paradise Valley Community College, which receives federal funds.

A real bad night. What started out being a good one. Trigger warning

I went to bed about normal 7 pm for me. Surprisingly when I told Ron he said he wanted to go also. That was about 2 hours or earlier than he normally goes to bed. His normal time to go to bed is 9 or a bit later. But we went to bed together. Along with Tupac.

We cuddled several hours with me holding him and then us reversing and him cuddling me. We go back and forth during the night. We often fall asleep in each other’s arms, and I often get my most restful sleep while we cuddle. Which is going to seem strange with what I am going to write next.

After four hours of holding each other, I noticed Ron’s legs were fidgeting and fussing. I asked him if he legs were bothering him and he replied yes. I was a bit miffed he did not tell me before I noticed but I told him we needed to take some time off on our own sides and he asked if we could cuddle later to which I agreed.

At some point I started to have a bad memory nightmare. I know in the nightmare I was begging for help, I was screaming for help. Then I could hear Ron’s voice calling me begging me to wake up, but my fear / pain was too much and I still yelled for anyone to help me.

Then With Ron yelling next to me, as he knew better than to touch me when I am in that state, I started to hear him and even as I was still crying out for help I heard him beg me to follow his voice. When I came to he told me I was the loudest I had been in a long time, begging for help at one point I screamed out several times “help me, someone please help me”.

After he woke me I got out of bed and went to the bathroom. When I got back he asked if I wanted to talk. I said no. He told me Scottie that was bad, you were really upset and loud. I just got back into bed and faced away from him. He understood I was not ready to deal with it.

For the next couple of hours I lay there trying not to think of the memories I had just experienced in my nightmare. In the morning I got up early, when Ron got up he twice asked me to talk about what I went through. I told him I was not ready yet. I could see him wanting more but knowing pushing me would only cause me pain.

The memory / nightmare was a really bad hours long rapes by multiple people when I was a really young kid. I was young enough to think that screaming and yelling would get me help. As I got older I understood doing such things only brought more punishment. In the dream I was experiencing it as I did then, with all the pain, panic, desperation and then submission.

I have come to realize burdening Ron with these memories only causes him to feel pain thinking of what I went through with no way to stop it. Trust me my wonderful Ron would have killed to stop a child being abused. Yes he tries to be a grand husband to comfort me, but it is wrong of me to ask that of him I think. Is it transferring my pain on to him in the name of “sharing”, the same question could be asked of my sharing of it on the blog. But he can only take the pain and memories I share as I could only take the abuse. He is then stuck with them in his mind as I am with them in mine. Do I have that right? Is that not abusing my own husband the man I adore to do that, to ask that. Is that the same for when I share with everyone here on my blog. I am giving you my memories and pain with no way to stop it. Have I become a villain, an abuser?

Until I figure out if I am doing more damage than good I will have to keep telling him I just don’t want to talk. Better to suffer in silence than cause him a pain he can not rid himself of. Hugs