Darline Graham Nordone is Lindsey Graham’s sister who is not dead. And look, we are about to be mean to her, but there is a reason that if your brain surgeon keels over before your operation, nobody says, “Well why don’t we see if the dead doc’s sister wants to give the scalpel a whirl?” Not that Lindsey Graham was a man of such great skill, but you get the point.
In a debate this week in the Republican special primary runoff, Darline Graham, who has been appointed to fill out her dead brother’s term and decided to keep on truckin’, really fucked the goat. It was awkward when she said there were “50 million people” in South Carolina, for one thing.
And then there was the extremely horrifying moment when moderator Greta Van Susteren (yeah, sure, why not) asked if Taiwan is an important national security interest of the United States and if so, why. Nordone (she calls herself “Graham” for pandering purposes) responded with some embarrassing meandering bullshit about how she don’t know nothin’ about no national security, but she sure does support the military.
It was horrific.
“Does the United States care about Taiwan” is a question for Senate hopefuls that comes somewhere between “state your name” and “please provide the customary stool sample on the way out.” We assume someone has been briefing her on what she’s supposed to care about (more on that in a second) so the idea that she hasn’t gotten at least a 30-second primer on “What is Taiwan?” is appalling.
And not that Lindsey Graham was any great foreign policy mind, or that his thoughts on the matter went deeper than his eternal Cialis boner to inflict pain and destruction and bombs on anybody that he perceived as looking at America funny, but foreign policy was nonetheless kind of his thing. Or at least he thought it was.
“I’m not a polished politician up here,” explained Nordone, about why she couldn’t even attempt to answer the question.
And the audience was appalled. You can hear them in the video above, gasping when she said, “I’m just gonna be honest here. I’m not on national security — I’m not — I’m not that informed on national security. So … but I do support the military.” And that audience should have been appalled. Charlotte Clymer explains why this was such a gimme question here.
Washington DC just hosted its first racing event. City officials didn’t lobby for it. DC residents didn’t ask for it. The Freedom 250 Grand Prix was organized in conjunction with Donald Trump’s White House, and there was nothing DC could do to stop it.
It wasn’t an America 250- or Freedom 250-sponsored event, according to the White House and Freedom 250. It just happened to share a name with Donald Trump’s shadowy LLC that’s siphoned a lot of money from America 250, the bipartisan group created by Congress to celebrate the US’s 250th anniversary. The White House won’t say how much the race costs, or if taxpayers have cover any part of the bill.
Officially, the race was the idea of IndyCar series owner Roger Penske, a fabulously wealthy GOP donor and Trump supporter the president gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2019. The Penske Corporation says it paid for ”the vast majority” of the race, while DC will cover some repaving operations, the AP reports.
Apparently, Penske (the man, not the company) wanted a race in DC for years. Originally, the racetrack was to loop around Congress and the Supreme Court, something organizers thought would be a great scene. Unfortunately, Congress has a no advertising rule, and there weren’t enough congressmen willing to sign off. So organizers bitched to reality TV star and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy to help find an alternate route. Trump quickly approved the new route by fiat, and money began flowing.
The only thing we know that taxpayers definitely have to cover is the massive security apparatus that had to be set up. Most of that comes from federal funds set aside for large events — like a UFC fight on the South Lawn of the White House, or a month-long fair, for example — but federal and city officials aren’t saying how much is left. Usually, it’s around $50 million, but it was increased to $90 million this year as part of the US’s semiquincentennial.
. . .
Freedom 250 Grand Prix race course and surrounding event area map provided by the city of Washington DC.
The race had military flyovers from the Air Force, Coast Guard and Marines, including various jets, helicopters, and B-2, B-1 and B-52 bombers. Trump’s prized possession, his personal Air Force One 747-800 Qatari bribe plane (which runs the call letters “FRDMM01” when he’s not aboard), flew over the track just as he finished his own victory lap in The Beast, the US president’s armored limo.
As the jets roared past, I wasn’t thinking about the sound of “freedom,” loving or hating jet noise, I wondered who was paying for the jet fuel after Trump dragged the US into yet another war in the Middle East.
Flyovers seen from outside the ticketed security bubble in Washington DC during the Freedom 250 Grand Prix. Aug. 23, 2026.
In March, there were reports of how F1’s new new hybrid engines, aerodynamics and rules left drivers righteously pissed. Drivers complained that operational regulations make an already complicated and difficult race more dangerous, increasing the chances of a crash.
Preservationists criticized the potential damage to historical artifacts, with some noting that the National Park Service didn’t ask anyone about the chance of damage to surrounding buildings. The National Gallery of Art had to conduct a study and take precautions in order to protect works of art, but Michelle Arcari Rose, a former associate general counsel at the National Trust for Historic Preservation, told the Washington Post earlier this month, “So whereas people think these grand prix races aren’t a problem, we certainly don’t know, right? It’s a huge risk to then unleash cars at 185 miles per hour in a place where we’ve never had cars really going more than 25 miles an hour.”
On social media, some complained about a lack of screens and enough concessions. WaPo reported that there was a spot on the Mall to buy food, and people inside the security zone had to navigate around the race course to find overpriced crabcakes and something resembling a hot dog. While some complained lack of water, Duffy went on Fox News to fluff the race, and claimed people could buy beer on the Mall for the first time, but that was a lie. People could buy beer and liquor at the UFC event at the White House. They could buy beer during Trump’s “Great American State Fair.” And 30 years ago, before Americans just accepted the tacti-cool security theater of a “post 9/11-world,” families would roll coolers full of beer onto the Mall.
On Reddit, several people posted photos of the saddest damn hot dogs. Eventually, some shops reportedly ran out of buns, and just gave people naked franks paper plates.
But I didn’t see any of that. F1 denied my press credentials. So it goes.
Reports claimed the event had about 150,000 people in attendance. Coincidentally that’s the same number of free tickets that were made available. Outside the gates, there were several thousand people hoping to catch even the faintest glimpse of something, but the layer upon layer of of security and fencing were so thick that there wasn’t much to see.\
When the race started, there was a small alley by Indiana Plaza, near the National Archives, that wasn’t completely blocked off. People had packed themselves in to the little space. They stood on their toes, craned their necks and balanced anxious children on their shoulders. Some stuck phones through the eight-foot security fence desperately hoping to snap a terrible, blurry photo or video of something wholly indecipherable.
Over at the corner of 7th and E Streets, there was a slope that overlooked turn five. With my telephoto lens I could barely capture the brake lights of the cars seven blocks away. There were a few hundred people attempting to do something similar with cellphone cameras.
Some clung to security fences, or stared at a livestream on their phones. Depending on where you stood, you could feel the airspeed wobbles in the pavement. The roar of the cars was deafening, even from a few blocks away.
It seemed like everywhere you turned there were miles of security fencing, federal agents, police and National Guard. Over off Constitution Avenue, I saw a father holding his son on his shoulders. The only thing I could see was a partially obscured sign that read “Freedom.”
. . . the Natty Harp story has broken containment. it’s taken on a life of its own — that’s why Operation Distract From Natalie was launched. and because MAGA has the attention span of a flea and the object permanence of a newborn babe, it worked — on them.
I’m sorry, does MAGA actually believe that these two professional grifters have genuine feelings for each other? fact check—
MAGA may fall for that load of horse shit, but it ain’t working on the rest of us. and because, as Jesus so wisely counseled us in his Sermon on the Mount, ‘blessed are the meme creators, for they shall win the internet,’ I give you today’s winners.
‘where?’ is exactly what reporters wanted to know, when they caught up with the fucking idiot later that day — and the fucking idiot was all ‘that’s for me to know and for you to find out.’
oh, goody. enjoy your un-inspected ground-up mystery meat from god knows where, folks. what could possibly go wrong?
the fucking idiot was on that tarmac because he was on his way to his one public event of the day: a campaign rally in South Carolina for Lindsey Graham’s woefully-unqualified sister Darline.
now, I know what you’re going to ask: ‘did the fucking idiot’s diaper nurse come along, in case he made an unscheduled boom-boom?’yes, she did.
oh look — the fucking idiot managed to be on the wrong side of an issue that literally everybody hates: data centers.
enjoy your noisy, polluting eyesore in the middle of what used to be your quiet community, peons. the fucking idiot doesn’t care. he’s a gazillionaire. he can afford to live far away from it.
the fucking idiot was ostensibly campaigning for Darline Graham, but he barely mentioned her. instead, he rambled incoherently about— what in the actual fuck?
“in fact, hospitals now are doing reverse surgery at my order. they’re doing reverse surgery. nobody ever heard about it.”
**what on earth? nobody ever heard of it, because the fucking idiot just made it up, on the spot. nobody is doing this. **no hospital is doing ‘reverse transgender surgery,’ because the fucking idiot ordered it.
the fucking idiot is fucking insane. he’s completely broken with reality. he’s cuckoo for you know what.
the fucking idiot’s day ended the same way it started, with him typing like a maniac onto his crappy app.
while normal people were winding down their day, the fucking idiot was working himself into a Ginormous Mad, all because tanned-ball-sack aficionado Tucker Swanson McNear Carlson, Thomas Massie and Lady Space Laser were being insufficiently loyal to him.
on Sunday, Georgia Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff delivered a barn-burner of a speech, in which he ripped Preznit Fuckwit several new ones, for being the incompetent imbecile who lied our country into an unwinnable war against Iran, and for being the callous toad who is ignoring the plight of the five thousand sailors trapped aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln.
but all that was lost on the MAGAverse, because there were three words toward the end of Ossoff’s speech that caused every Republican to immediately shit a massive, white-hot brick and explode into paroxysms of performative outrage.
“he wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the Emir of Qatar.”
that’s right, Jon Ossoff went there. he brought up the weird stalker-slash-diaper-nurse who is now Dear Leader’s constant companion.
once those three words — ‘travel with Natalie’ — escaped Ossoff’s lips, the entire Donnyverse clutched their pearls and collapsed onto their fainting couches.
oh my good, how dare Jon Ossoff say such a mean thing!
oh dear, can someone get in here and see if they can revive Tim?
what on earth is Tim Murtaugh talking about? what ‘vulgar innuendo’? all Ossoff did was to accurately describe the situation. Diaper Nurse Natalie travels with Dear Leader. not a day goes by that the two of them aren’t photographed together. to point that out is not ‘innuendo.’
whoa, whoa, slow the fuck down there, Ari. show us on the doll where Ossoff accused Natalie of ‘behaving like that’.
like what?
it’s pretty weird how every Republican immediately interpreted ‘travel together’ to mean that Donny and Nattie are getting it on, isn’t it? this sounds like another one of those ‘every accusation is a confession’ things again, doesn’t it?
that’s because it is. Republicans have eyes. they can see what’s going on.
they know how bad this looks, President Pussygrabber swanning around with some blonde half his age, while his Slovenian green-card rent-a-wife is nowhere to be seen.
look, it’s not Jon Ossoff’s fault that Donny immediately falls for any woman who reminds him of the daughter he want to quote-unquote ‘date,’ if that’s what we’re charitably going to call it. this shit happens over and over. remember the Presidential Pants Steamer, Hope Hicks, who was right by his side throughout his first term?
It remains unclear whom Fedorov plans to meet in the U.S. He has, however, remained in close contact with SpaceX CEO Elon Musk over the potential use of Starlink terminals to counter ballistic missile systems deployed on Russian territory.
Fedorov did not respond to a request for comment. The President's office said they were not aware of any such plans.
Her husband agreed. “It’s very unique,” he said, pointing to his miter-shaped hat emblazoned with a Sox logo. “I wanted to be one of 40,000 people walking around Chicago with this thing on their head.”
Along with the pope hat giveaway, the night featured a fifth-inning passing of the peace, during which fans greeted one another, modeled after a ritual from a Catholic Mass. A group of Catholic school kids, whose mock conclave last year made national headlines, greeted players as they took the field. Legendary organist Nancy Faust provided the soundtrack, with songs like Billy Joel’s “Keeping the Faith,” Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer,” and, of course, Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin.’”
Sister Sobieck delighted fans by bouncing a baseball on her bicep before firing the ball home for the opening pitch. Before her star turn, she posed for selfies and chatted with fans. She said that she loved that so many people had turned out for the pope hat night. It was a sign that the pope can bring people together.
A few people asked her whether the pope giveaway hat, modeled after the pope’s miter, was irreverent.
“Not at all,” she said. “It’s just good fun. You know, baseball unites. The church unites. You put two good things together, and it’s perfect.”
A federal court in Manhattan last week ordered the public release of the files from Giuffre’s defamation lawsuit against the accomplice and partner of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein following eight years of litigation from the Miami Herald, reported Julie Brown, the investigative journalist for the newspaper best known for uncovering Epstein’s crimes.
Maxwell had been fighting to keep the lawsuit details under wraps, but her arguments were not enough to convince U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska, who ruled that the Epstein Files Transparency Act supersedes the grand jury arguments Maxwell cited to keep the records sealed.
Giuffre brought the lawsuit more than a decade ago after Maxwell accused her of lying about being abused by Epstein, Maxwell, Prince Andrew, Alan Dershowitz, and other powerful figures. The lawsuit’s discovery process yielded thousands of pages of documents, including depositions of Maxwell, Giuffre, and many others, and Brown was told that it contains more evidence against Epstein, Maxwell, and their accomplices.
The judge in the initial case, Robert Sweet, took the unusual step of sealing all of the documents because they contained “sensitive” and “private” information. He put a protective order on hearings and decisions made in the case as well as volumes of evidence reportedly proving that Epstein and Maxwell were running an underage sex trafficking ring.
In Canada, Syngenta was the only paraquat manufacturer with a registered product. Syngenta discontinued registering its product in Canada in 2023 following updated risk-mitigation efforts. Although there is not an outright ban, no paraquat products are sold in Canada.
The draft 'Banning of Paraquat Dichloride Order, 2026', issued by the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, was published in the Gazette of India on July 13 and will remain open for public comments for 30 days before a final decision is taken. Did it pass? I cant find much on it
“When you start eating healthy, you don’t need toilet paper,” he claimed. “Animals in the wild have no residual stool on their anus.” He described a proper bowel movement to me this way: odorless, wipe-free, over in three to seven seconds and “nearly orgasmic.”
I have the same question I always have: where do they find these people? every goddamned person in the Donnyverse is a crackpot lunatic. you can start at the top, with the ignorant moron who thinks magnets stop working when they get wet.
then there’s the gin-pickled embarrassment over in the Pentagon, who should be spending less time obsessing over the testosterone levels of his warfighting warfighters, and more time, y’know, counting missiles — because it’s very fucking hard to win a war when you don’t have any.
don’t even get me started on the bear-carcass-kidnapping measles enthusiast who keeps a chainsaw in the trunk of his car, just in case he runs across any whales who need their heads liberated from their bodies.
and now you can add to the mix some quack who literally thinks his shit don’t stink.
the performative screech-monkeys of the entire wingnut outrage-industrial complex are shitting themselves raw over the mere existence of Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, and I am so fucking here for how he’s kicking their tiresome asses in response.
“is that Peter Thiel's boy, with that Ohio charisma he’s got? I think we’ve had enough of him. the last thing that he said that made any sense was Hillbilly Elegy — after he said that Donald Trump had no business being president of anything. that was the last time he made sense, and then he decided to suck up to power. but that’s exactly what this is about. you got Republicans who will do anything for power and money, including corrupt their office.”
as I’ve said before, Abdul El-Sayed sounds like one of us. he’s snarky as fuck. he does everything we’d want him to in that clip but refer to JD Vance as ‘that doughy pantload Couchfuck McGee.’
we’ve all seen the video of Abdul commenting on Dear Leader’s diaper-filling habits, but let’s play it again, because it’s oh-so-satisfyingly good.
Sky News reporter: “[Trump] says you’re full of shit.”
Abdul El-Sayed: “at least I don’t let mine go in the middle of the Oval Office.”
“I know it’s complicated for you, habibi. I’m happy to teach you how this works at our next debate…if you’re not too much a coward to debate me.”
‘habibi,’ by the way, is the Arabic word for ‘my beloved’ — and El-Sayed is employing it sarcastically, in the same way southerners say ‘bless your heart.’
but he’s not just a snark factory. he’s thoughtful. listen to him explain how the dumbfuck exercise videos farted out by Piss-Drunk Pete and Bobby Brainworms are just a hollow version of masculinity.
“you asked me about like Pete Hegseth and RFK, that, like, they’re trying to speak to this particular group of people, and it ends up trying to like, again, just create one more performance that is like, the way to be a masculine person. and you know, as we’ve thought about it on the campaign, [lifting weights] is something that I’ve always done — but a lot of what I’m trying to do is be like hey, look, being a man is not about how you show up at the gym. it’s like how you show up for your family. it’s about how you show up in your community.”
El-Sayed gets it. you show up — for your family, for your community, and for your country. do you think Piss-Drunk Pete or Brainworms have ever shown up for anyone but themselves? of fucking course they haven’t.
as always, the moral rot starts at the top. Dear Leader loves only three things in this world: money, power, and his own porcine self — and not necessarily in that order. he’s the fucking president, and not once has he ever put his country ahead of his own greedy self-interest.
Cue Donald Trump screaming about prosecuting leakers again, we reckon, because the Washington Postdropped a whoa bombshell story about a recent time when Donald Trump lied to the world, for a reason that almost approaches normal.
Remember when Trump pulled that switcheroo in Turkey and suddenly “decided” not to come home on his gabillion dollar bribe plane from the Qataris, since it isn’t outfitted with the security required to carry an American president, even though it is very beautiful and bejeweled and was a bribe? Remember how he lied about that at the time, some dumb shit excuse for why there was going to be a switcheroo, because they suddenly needed to send the bribe plane to the UK so everybody could “ooh” and “aah” at it? Remember how he lied and said he was taking the old stinky Air Force One that he hates, “for old time’s sake”?
Also keep this in context of how the Trump regime has already been on a witch hunt for leakers regarding the security failures of his bribe plane.
Well, get ready to stack lies upon lies upon lies, because every single bit of that was a lie, and Donald Trump rode home in a secret Air Force plane after they snuck him off the big old Air Force One plane in a catering truck, because of fears Iran was going to try to assassinate him.
He’s always scared Iran is going to assassinate him, it makes him poop his pants.
Mommy, why is the catering truck shaking to-and-fro and making squelchy anus sounds? Oh that’s just the president, darling.
Here’s how it went:
In Ankara, Trump boarded the old Air Force One jumbo jet in view of television cameras. He was secretly shuttled minutes later to a smaller plane — an Air Force C-32A — via an airport catering truck typically used to load meals and other supplies preflight, according to the U.S. official and corroborating material reviewed by The Post. That made Air Force One a “decoy” with media and some White House staff aboard, the official said.
The old Air Force One with the journalists aboard? Bait. They didn’t know Trump had been wheeled out of there, and they didn’t know how much danger they were in, according to the assessments of Trump’s security team. He was willing to let Iran murder them.
Invite him to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner again, you bootlicking hacks.
Obviously we are imagining a scene out of a cartoon, because we cannot imagine for one second that Donald Trump was able to behave or play it cool during this experience. We imagine he was scared of being inside the secret truck that took him to the secret plane. We imagine he left puddles inside it.
(They elevated the bed of the catering truck, so he could just waddle directly onto it from the other side of the plane, lest you get some kind of James Bond ideas about how this went down.)
And now, because everybody respects him so much, it’s in the Washington Post a month later.
Anyway, there was much more to the subterfuge, the Washington Post has the tick-tock and even some video that caught parts of the switcheroo. They even managed to get him back on the “correct” plane after landing in Britain, so that he could deplane from it and everybody would still be fooled.
Videos show the legacy Air Force One, after landing,coming to a stop in a place where the C-32A had briefly been parked. The hobbyist videos on YouTube do not show Trump exiting the C-32A or entering the legacy Air Force One, as the stairway entries faced away from the plane spotters’ cameras.
It’s not clear how Trump moved from the C-32A to the legacy Air Force One after landing, but he appeared before television cameras and descended external stairs from the legacy Air Force One about 10:56 p.m., according to a media pool report.
After that, he flew back to DC on the Qatari bribe plane.
On one hand this is exactly what we would expect in the face of true and serious threats upon the life of a sitting United States president. WaPo even describes a couple times when things similar to this have happened, albeit without fully lying to the public forever about the president’s whereabouts the way the Trump White House did:
To transport the president out of Turkey, U.S. officials relied in part on a technique that hasoccasionally become public knowledge. One such mission occurred in March 2000, when President Bill Clinton visited Pakistan. With television cameras recording in Islamabad, Clinton disembarked from a plain white jet that followed the blue-and-white Air Force One, clarifying where he had been.
There have been other times in the last 30 years when Air Force One served as a decoy for the president because of a serious threat or because he was flying to a dangerous location, another U.S. official said, declining to elaborate. The legacy jet is highly secure, but also highly visible, so putting the president on an alternate plane instead can be considered safer, that former official said.
Again, in a way this feels normal, like well, if the life of the US president is under threat, they’re gonna do some trickery to keep him safe.
On the other hand, Trump doesn’t deserve the respect of the office he holds, so it is fine to make jokes about him pooping in the beverage cart in the bed of the catering truck.
Also, he is a coward who’s scared of everything, who’s building a bunker so he can hide from the fruits of his own late-stage emperor syphilis brain destruction of the world, so that is some context.
Also, Trump is currently declaring that we’ve got Iran right where we want ‘em! That we are “low-keying” it with them, letting them run out of money while we don’t attack them, you betcha! Meanwhile Iran is explaining that it’s gonna just wait to negotiate with the US until there’s somebody in office who isn’t totally braindead, let’s pencil it in for 2029 or so.
Iran’s conditions remain unchanged, including $300 billion in compensation, the release of frozen assets and the withdrawal of US forces. Tehran has also linked the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz to the acceptance of its demands.
Trump keeps lying and saying the strait is open, but, you know, it’s not. (Persian Gulf neighbors are increasingly worried Iran’s control of the strait is now permanent, thanks to the inconceivable stupidity of Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth.)
Quick, roll the president’s giant meat body into a catering cart and dump him in a secret plane so nobody can find him!
https://www.wonkette.com/p/lindsey-grahams-undead-sisters-opinionOpen linkView original on lemmy.world
