DL Open Thread: Saturday, July 19, 2025
‘It Was The Advertising, Stupid’. Wonder how much the Feckless Dems are spending on this:
The Democratic National Committee’s examination of what went wrong in the 2024 election is expected to mostly steer clear of the decisions made by the Biden-turned-Harris campaign and will focus more heavily instead on actions taken by allied groups, according to interviews with six people briefed on the report’s progress.
The audit, which the committee is calling an “after-action review,” is expected to avoid the questions of whether former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. should have run for re-election in the first place, whether he should have exited the race earlier than he did and whether former Vice President Kamala Harris was the right choice to replace him, according to the people briefed on the process so far.
Nor is the review expected to revisit key decisions by the Harris campaign — like framing the election as a choice between democracy and fascism, and refraining from hitting back after an ad by Donald J. Trump memorably attacked Ms. Harris on transgender rights by suggesting that she was for “they/them” while Mr. Trump was “for you” — that have roiled Democrats in the months since Mr. Trump took back the White House.
Party officials described the draft document as focusing on the 2024 election as a whole, but not on the presidential campaign — which is something like eating at a steakhouse and then reviewing the salad.
Not one penny to these Bozos.
‘Never Wrote A Picture In My Life’. Except…:
Jeffrey Epstein, Russian Banks, $1.5 Billion In Suspicious Transactions:
Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, the top Democrat on the powerful Senate Finance Committee, has been digging into Mr. Epstein’s financial network for the past three years. Some members of his staff have viewed confidential files that shed light on the immense sums of money that, they say, Mr. Epstein moved through the banking system to fuel his vast sex-trafficking network.
In particular, filings by four big banks flagged more than $1.5 billion in transactions — including thousands of wire transfers for the purchase and sale of artwork for rich friends, fees paid to Mr. Epstein by wealthy individuals, and payments to numerous women, the senator’s office found. The filings came after Mr. Epstein was arrested in 2019 on federal sex trafficking charges.
Large money transfers to individuals, foreign countries or obscure companies are the kind of things banks are supposed to be examining as potentially suspicious. Some of the Epstein money transfers disclosed in a report from JPMorgan Chase involved accounts at two Russian banks before those institutions were subject to U.S. sanctions. A few transactions red-flagged were for as much as $100 million.
“We felt from the beginning this was a follow-the-money case,” Mr. Wyden said in an interview. “This horrific sex-trafficking operation cost Epstein a lot of money, and he had to get that money from somewhere.”
Not letting go of this, not at all. Anything to take my mind off the daily March Of Fascism. Which reminds me, if I’m Colbert, I spend every remaining day of my show blistering CBS/Paramount and their caving to Trump. Make them fire you, Stephen.
A Fascinating Deep-Dive From Perhaps The Best Epstein Reporter Out There:
…But whenever I ran across a story about him, it never really explained fully to me why he was able to get away with the crimes that he did. And as I was looking for something to do around that time, Donald Trump, who was our newly elected president, nominated a guy by the name of Alex Acosta as his labor secretary. I knew that Acosta was the prosecutor who signed off on this sweetheart deal, so to speak, that Epstein had gotten way back in 2008…
…So at that point, I thought: I wonder what these victims, who we knew were there — at least a dozen or so — they were children when this happened. But now, with the passage of time, they were in their late 20s, early 30s. And I wondered what they thought about this man who had given their predator really such a lenient deal, and he was now in charge of one of the largest agencies in the country, with oversight of human trafficking. So the story really began as: I thought I would do a reaction of the victims to Acosta being appointed labor secretary. But once I started digging into the story, it was like an onion. I found out more and more and more…
…Well actually, one of the many things I came to find out — which hadn’t been reported before — was that they manipulated and downplayed the scope of his crimes. He only pleaded guilty to a charge of soliciting one underage girl. And they purposely picked a girl who was a little older so that the crime that was on the books, so to speak, was downplayed.
It was only one girl, even though it was clear that he had done this to many, many girls. They also hid what they were doing from not only the public but from the victims. They went out of their way to keep this whole deal secret. He sort of slid into a courtroom, pleaded guilty. Nobody knew what he was pleading guilty to because all the records were sealed.
That’s just the beginning. Read. That’s an order.
Is The FBI Doing The, Um, Leaking? BTW, betcha you didn’t hear about the massive effort to ‘flag’ any mention of Trump ties to Epstein. It is–massive:
FBI agents assigned earlier this year to review investigative files in the criminal case against notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein were instructed to “flag” any documents that mentioned President Donald Trump, Sen. Richard Durbin said Friday…
“According to information my office received, the FBI was pressured to put approximately 1,000 personnel in its Information Management Division (IMD) … on 24-hour shifts to review approximately 100,000 Epstein-related records in order to produce more documents that could then be released on an arbitrarily short deadline,” Durbin wrote to Patel.
“This effort, which reportedly took place from March 14 through the end of March, was haphazardly supplemented by hundreds of FBI New York Field Office personnel, many of whom lacked the expertise to identify statutorily-protected information regarding child victims and child witnesses or properly handle FOIA requests,” the letter said.
“My office was told that these personnel were instructed to ‘flag’ any records in which President Trump was mentioned.”
The office in question is that of Sen. Dick Durbin. Shit’s real, folks.
Shower Cap Sums Up The Insanity As Only He Can. Trust me on this–Shower Cap’s the King Of Snark. You. Must. Read. Him:
Well, if you’ve come sniffing around this blog hoping for smug, salacious gossip about perverts in high places, I hope you’re ashamed of yourself. In this household, we honor our president’s wishes, especially the ones about ignoring his intimate friendship with the head of the most infamous child sex trafficking ring in the world.
Yeah, I’m switching teams, gang. Thought I should let you know right up front. I know I haven’t mentioned it often, but I sincerely care about real cane sugar that much.
I’m selling out. Not for fame or fortune, just to make Coke taste the way it did when I was six, because I’m regressing to childhood, not unlike the drooling fuckwit I’ve agreed to worship.
More:
I get why this episode has the White House so shaken. For a decade they’ve somehow managed to maintain control of one of history’s freakier cults without once needing a crowd management strategy more sophisticated than LOOK OVER THERE.
LOOK OVER THERE. Works on dogs and MAGA 100% of the time, from Access Hollywood through a criminal conspiracy to violently overturn an American election to masked cops snatching people off the streets and Alligator Alcatraz and CECOT, and don’t you miss the days when you didn’t know the names of so many extraconstitutional prisons?
LOOK OVER THERE. Undefeated. Until now.
Excuse me, did you say you’re not going to look over there? Drat, that was literally the only card in my hand.
They have no fucking clue how to get out of this now. Poor, overmatched Jimmy Comer, stomping around in a cardboard costume he made himself, “Ooooo, look over heeeeeere children, I’m the auuuuuuuutopen!” Bongino required an entire spa day.
Here’s my Conspiracy Theory: ShowerCap and Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog are the same person. Or dog.
What do you want to talk about?
Your all over the hottest stuff national but local the Data center is trying to sneak in without public scrutiny and don’t let them get away with it please?
Here’s a companion article (from 2020) to the NYT Epstein-related interview. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/10/i-called-everyone-in-jeffrey-epsteins-little-black-book/
(credit for the link goes to a couple ppl on Mastodon)
Thanks!
It’s amazing how much stuff is out there.