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wonkette_feedMan, today sucked and the children went fucking nutballs and I actually had Shy come pick me up two hours early from school (I work at the girls’ school part-time, helping out all the kids when they’re wilding) because me yelling at the children is not the way I like to be in the world.
Here’s some posts!
The tabs were … bountiful.
Evan yelled at JD Vance before the ICE man’s personal snuff film came out. No lies.
The children ARE enemies, or at least they were my enemies, today!
Bless you Zohran Mamdani and Kathy Hochul!
This is just true.
Gary was mean to the poor AI newsanchor.
Fever might be breaking for some of them.
Don’t know about you, but I’m having a drink.
wonkette_feedGreetings, Wonketeers! I’m Hooper, your bartender. Last week, I wrote about the first day of my trip to New Orleans. Today, I’ll cover the remainder of my weekend bender in NOLA. Spoiler alert: Eventually, my liver decided enough was enough. Let’s start drinking.
Day 2: 12:28 PM, Cafe Fleur de Lis
Bloody Mary #2
1 oz Tito’s Vodka
½ oz Worcester sauce
½ oz horseradish
2-3 oz Bloody Mary mix
Shake and strain into a pint glass over ice. Garish with a lemon wedge, olive, and pickled okra.
If you’re taking notes, this is my second Bloody Mary on day two of my trip. I have it on good authority that only scoundrels of low character drink Bloody Marys after noon, which tracks. I had this one with brunch at Cafe Fleur de Lis on Chartres Street. My wife had fallen in love with the seafood Benedict last time we were here, and I’m pleased to report that a Bloody Mary with crab cakes, perfectly poached eggs, and Hollandaise sauce is a match made in heaven.
After a delightful lunch, I needed to take a walk to Rampart Street. I definitely needed to clear my head, but I also had a destination in mind. The Quarter often feels like a fairyland built for tourists. Rampart Street starts to resemble a real street in a real city, with mundane hardware stores interspersed with quirky sandwich shops and genuine 24-hour dive bars. But it’s also home to Bar Tonique, the oldest craft bar in NOLA. I definitely wanted to visit this particular landmark to mixology … and they were serving $6 Mai Tais for happy hour.
Day 2, 2:24 PM, $6 Mai Tai, Bar Tonique
Discount Mai Tai
1 ½ oz El Dorado 5 Year Rum
¾ oz curacao
½ oz house orgeat
½ oz lime juice
Shake and strain into a rocks glass over ice. Garnish with a mint sprig.
House Orgeat
1 cup unsweetened almond milk
1 cup sugar
3-4 drops orange blossom water
Heat all ingredients over a small saucepan until the sugar is fully dissolved. Strain and store in a sealable bottle. Keeps 1 month refrigerated.
$6 for a Mai Tai is really cheap. I haven’t had a good one for less than $15 to date. But this glass was delightfully restrained and mellow. The curacao and orgeat supported the rum rather than competing with it, resulting in a beautifully rum-forward drink that was eminently sippable. I’m reconsidering my approach to Mai Tais after this. There’s a lot to be said for letting the rum speak for itself in this glass.
After this tasty treat, I made friends with some fellow Midwesterners and discussed the specs for a perfect lemon-drop martini. Then I asked the bartender for a taste of whatever she’d been working on lately. She offered a spiced candy cocktail that reminded me of Red Hots, but in a complex, compelling way. Then the president of the Bartender’s Guild in Cleveland reached out to me and informed me that the Sazeracs at Bar Tonique were particularly good. This would be my third Sazerac of the day … but sure, why not? I stopped taking photographs. My notes started getting a touch vague. Time to retreat and regroup.
Day 2: 5 O’ Clock Somewhere, The Will And The Way
I walked, more or less in a straight line, to my final destination, The Will and the Way. This little oasis in the heart of the Quarter has some lovely cocktails, but I was so far gone at this point that I was reduced to taking a few sips of one, scrawling some notes, and ordering another. I recall drinking an ube-and-umami vermouth cocktail that was ... purple. And thick. Possibly too much umami there. And a “Dr. Pepper” Manhattan that was rich with cherry flavors at the front, but had too much black pepper on the finish. I don’t remember much else. Definitely time to go home.
That evening, I had a lovely Revillon menu at a nearby restaurant with my wife. I might have had another Sazerac. I definitely had some red snapper. In the wee hours of the morning, my liver and GI tract explained to me, in excruciating detail, that I’m almost 55 years old and can’t drink like this anymore without consequences. I am very lucky that my spouse loves me as much as she does.
Day 3: 9:55 AM, Cafe Beignet
Cafe Au Lait
4 oz chicory coffee
4 oz steamed whole milk
Add coffee to a warmed coffee cup. Slowly stir in the warmed milk. Sip gently.
… yeah, no more Bloody Marys for me.
The rest of the trip involves shopping the French Market, seeing the sights, and enjoying a much more pleasant Revillon dinner at the Court of Two Sisters. With a glass of house wine. Everything in moderation. I did swing by Jean Lafitte’s Absinthe House before leaving my favorite city on earth. I explained, carefully, that it was rather cold out and that I’d had too much to drink. They understood completely.
Day 3, 9:49 PM, Jean Lafitte’s Absinthe House
Irish Coffee
2 oz Tullamore D.E.W.
1 oz brown sugar
4-5 oz chicory coffee
Add brown sugar to a footed coffee cup. Pour 1 oz of coffee into the cup and stir until fully dissolved. Add the remaining coffee and serve.
… here’s hoping you never change, NOLA.
My home bar is Hemingway’s Underground, the hottest cocktail bar in pretty little Medina, Ohio. I’m behind the stick Wednesday-Saturday, 4-10. Last call’s at midnight. Swing on by and I’ll make a drink for you… or anything else from our little Happy Hour here at Wonkette.
OPEN THREAD!
lucymonsterelyusion
vriddywonkette_feed
Out of nowhere yesterday, the House of Representatives passed a three-year extension of the Obamacare premium subsidies that expired on January 1 and sent premiums spiking. Seventeen Republicans joined all the Democrats in the House to pass the bill 230 to 196. Maybe some of the Rs voted for the bill for the sake of campaign ass-covering because they were certain the stand-alone bill has little chance of passing in the Senate or being signed by Donald Trump. That sure would be cynical of them.
Please take a moment to share in some giddiness from Rep. Lauren Underwood.
Hilariously, the New York Times initially headlined its story on the vote “House Passes Doomed Bill to Restore ACA Subsidies” before going with the marginally less dour “House Votes to Restore Health Subsidies, Raising Hopes of a Deal.” Both versions included a subhead explaining that the legislation “has no path forward” in the Senate. The story itself notes that the Senate already rejected a similar standalone bill, suggesting that at best, the vote “could fuel ongoing negotiations to reach a long-shot election-year compromise on a health care package.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) briefly reminded us that Mitch McConnell no longer has that job, and said there’s “no appetite” in the Senate for extending the subsidies, thanks, but added that maybe bipartisan negotiations between members of the House and Senate will “come up with something that has reforms.” Or not.
That bipartisan working group met Thursday to work on possible subsidy reforms, like changing the income cap for eligibility, allowing “flexible savings accounts” (a bullshit scam Trump looooves), and ways to combat “fraud.” That last resulted in some progress, likely because fraud in the Affordable Care Act is already low, but it’s something Goopers won’t shut up about, so fine, tweak it a little and declare victory.
“We're trying to see if we can get to some agreement that's going to help them, and the sooner we can do that, the better,” New Hampshire Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen told reporters as she left the meeting. “So there was agreement on addressing fraud.”
Shaheen did not divulge details of an impending deal but said the next step will be crafting bill text in the coming days.
Some Republicans also want any subsidies bill to ban federal funds for abortion even more than the Hyde Amendment already does. No telling whether “moderate” Republicans can convince their more fire-breathing antiabortion brethren to just admit that Hyde protections are already in the ACA.
Trump, for his part, didn’t make a damn bit of sense in comments Tuesday, in which he continued to oppose extension of the subsidies. Instead, he insisted that Republicans should completely remake the healthcare system by cutting funds and … OK, your guess is as good as ours: “We’re going to reduce health care by a lot. One other thing on health care, it’s never been our issue. It should be our issue,” said Dear Leader.
No, we don’t know either.
In unrelated but coincidental news, the Senate yesterday advanced a war powers bill that would block Trump from any further military action “within or against Venezuela” unless Congress authorizes it. Five Republicans — Rand Paul, Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, Josh Hawley, and Todd Young (who? He’s from Indiana) joined all 47 Democrats in the Senate to pass the bill, although on this one, there’s little chance that the House will take up the bill, and Trump is certain to veto it. The 52-47 vote moves the resolution to the Senate floor, where it’s expected to get a vote next week.
Trump called the vote an act of “stupidity” and said the five should “never be elected to office again” because Congress has no say in what he can do, because he’s commander in chief and he says the War Powers Act is unconstitutional, so there.
And in a third example of (some, few) Republicans deciding to stop with the blank checks already, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-retiring) has put a hold on any DHS nominees until Kristi Noem gets her ass to Congress.
Even though the two votes (and the Tillis hold) had nothing to do with each other, we’d like to think they might mean at least a few Republicans are noticing just how completely unpopular Trump is outside the MAGA crowd. Hell, maybe there’s a slim chance more will decide it’s better for their reelection prospects to very carefully not go along with every insane thing he does. Perhaps Susan Collins has learned her lesson. Or maybe yesterday was a fluke; we’re not going to be throwing any parades just yet. Pass something that will rein in the Secret Deportation Police and maybe we’ll talk.
Yr Wonkette is funded entirely by reader donations. If you can, please become a paid subscriber, or if you’d like to make Donald Trump big mad, use this button to make a one-time donation. (OK, he won’t even notice, but we will, and we already like you.)
ysabetwordsmith
nyctantheswonkette_feed
When we wrote a week ago about Bari Weiss stooge Tony Dokoupil taking over the anchor chair at CBS Evening News, we of course had no way of knowing that in his first week he would get to cover both America using a military raid to bomb a foreign country and illegally kidnap its head of state, and an immigration officer flat-out murdering, on camera, an unarmed lesbian mother and poet for the crime of driving away from him and his team of masked goons. What an opportunity right out of the gate to show the world what kind of journalism the Weiss-Dokoupil less-than-dynamic duo could pull off under pressure, covering two of the biggest stories that will likely come their way this year.
How did they do? In a word, poorly. In a word preceded by an intensifier, really poorly. In a word preceded by multiple intensifiers, really, really, really poorly.
There were technical issues. There was the fluff interview of keg fiend Secretary of Defense Pete (Hic!) Hegseth. There was the ill-conceived “Look! Marco Rubio is a meme on the Internet!” segment, which we suppose makes some weird sense to run when the age of your average viewer is 58, but which was just embarrassing from a “high-level journalism is not whatever dumb shit is running across your Twitter feed at any moment” perspective. Way to confuse America’s grandparents, Tony.
Then there was Thursday night, when Dokoupil signed off with a short commentary about Renee Good’s murder and its aftermath that can only be summed up as — and we really struggled, as a professional writer, to come up with the most accurate word we could to describe it — ass. Ass, ass, ass, ass, ass. The statement was total ass.
How do you “both sides” this situation? If you are Tony Dokoupil and the Bari Weiss-ified CBS Evening News, you do it by ignoring any analysis of the facts of the event in favor of some bromides about Americans needing to learn to live with each other. All delivered to you by a straight man so white, you could use him as printer paper.
“There is so much to say about the last 24 hours, but sometimes what matters most is what is yet to be said at all, and what we all still need to hear.”
Is it that ICE is getting the fuck out of Minneapolis and every other city it is currently plowing through like the character of George in the old Rampage video game? Because that’s all we need to hear right now.
“Renee Good is alive and those videos, behind the wheel of her SUV, her three children expecting mom home again soon come. And we’ve seen the freeze frames, too. We’ve heard the political warfare, the clashing declarations about what happened, and unfortunately, we know the ending for Renee Good. Nothing is going to change that. Yet what we have not yet heard is one another.”
Oh, we’ve heard one another plenty. We heard the president, the vice president, and multiple other high government officials trash this woman with apocalyptic fan fiction out of an airport thriller: She was a “domestic terrorist” who tried to run down an ICE officer because she’s part of a trained cabal of bleeding-heart antifa operatives who hate America’s laws, and so she bears culpability for her own death, which she invited by daring to oppose the Trump administration.
We’ve heard more than enough.
“I spoke to people today who haven’t slept since it happened, who want ICE out now, who don’t like masked men on their street, don’t want their neighbors arrested, don’t want families ripped apart.”
But ...
“I’ve heard, too, not on the streets protesting but in passionate notes in my inbox, from people who want to see our immigration laws enforced, legally and peacefully and with safety for all, including the officers who, in many cases, are also parents themselves. These are both deeply American sentiments.”
Are those emails from other people in Minneapolis or any other city that ICE has invaded with his squadrons of psychotic ROTC washouts? Or are they from conservatives with brains pickled in rightwing media who write over and over “THIS IS WHAT I VOTED FOR!” Because with respect, those people are fucking idiots.
Okay, maybe without respect.
See, on the one hand, Dokoupil walked around Minneapolis and got residents to comment on camera how furious and traumatized they are by ICE’s very public, very cruel actions in their city. On the other hand, he also got emails from people in Bumfuck, Nowhere, who don’t see that the people preventing immigration laws from being enforced peacefully are the trigger-happy Trump-approved yahoos who are supposed to be peacefully enforcing them.
“But our job now is maybe the most American thing of all. It’s to find a way to live with people who are genuinely different from us. To try to be fair to them, and in doing so, to make things better, and keep things decent. Because in America, no one is going to do it for us.”
This is the airheaded Bari Weiss/radical contrarian centrist view of the world, where there must be two sides to every story, neither of which can be given more moral weight than the other. In this world, Good was standing in the way of the Real Americans and their avatar Donald Trump. So, her punishment (summary execution in the street by a cop) is simply one more disagreement about our views of what America should be.
So thanks for the condescending lecture about how we should treat each other, Wonder Bread. Next time, leave it in your Drafts folder.
The relevant clip of Dokoupil farting word sounds out of his yap hole starts around the 18:06 mark in this video. Or you could spare yourself and do something more worthwhile with two irretrievable minutes of your life, like swan-dive into a swimming pool full of broken glass.
[YouTube]
There has never been a better time to support independent media outlets. Like, oh, off the top of our heads, Wonkette.
ysabetwordsmithsnowflake_challenge ends. There are plenty of ways to build momentum and keep up your posting frequency. Here are some ideas. jesse_the_k posting in access_fandomHeated Rivalry, the Canadian show about queer hockey romance, is popping up all over Dreamwidth (as well as every other platform). The Squeaky Wheel, which bills itself as "the first-ever satire publication that focuses on the experience of having a disability" channels The Onion as it mocks our disabled lives. Here’s their first take on the series:
Audio Description Ruins Family TV Night During Unexpected Sex Scene - The Squeaky Wheel
[hero photo not reproduced here; its alt text is "a family watching Heated Rivalry"]
A recent family TV night at the household of 14-year-old Sarah Mason ended abruptly when the audio description began to vividly relay the details of an unexpected and lengthy sex scene.
“It went on and on about the positions, and how much pleasure was on their faces, and so much ‘thrusting,’” said Sarah’s mother, Beverly Mason. “It was excruciating. I shut it off and told everyone to go to bed.”
I'd love to learn whether Heated Rivalry's audio description is as sexy as the Squeaky Wheel would have it.
vriddy
runpunkrunwickedgame posting in lgbtrainbow| 1st Place | 2nd Place | 3rd Place |
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| wickedgame | magicrubbish | wickedgame |
| Best Color | Best Crop | Best Composition |
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| wickedgame | goodbyebird | wickedgame |
ysabetwordsmith
senmut - Fandom Fifty: Knocking this outfull_metal_ox in findthatbook - Anecdote/legend about an (anemic?) White Englishwoman in the British Raj mistaken for a vampire?linky - Fannish Fifty #4: Tumblr Tag Ramble About Gotchardysabetwordsmith - New Year's Resolutions Check Inwonkette_feed - Today I yelled at all the children at school. Anyway here's today's posts!wonkette_feed - Welcome To Wonkette Happy Hour, With More NOLA Shenanigans!lucymonster - Reading postelyusion - Snowflake Challenge #5vriddy - New K-9 fic: It's magicalwonkette_feed - *Over 20* Republicans Decide To Not Be Sh*theads, On Multiple Topics!ysabetwordsmith - Birdfeedingnyctanthes - InstaLinkswonkette_feed - In Wake Of Renee Good's Murder, Tony Dokoupil Would Like America To Hug It Outysabetwordsmith - How to Post Frequently on Dreamwidthjesse_the_k in access_fandom - Requisite #Heated Rivalry Contentlinky - Snowflake Challenge 2026 #5vriddy - K-9 Cosplay :Drunpunkrun - Strange Houses, by Uketsu, translated by Jim Rionwickedgame in lgbtrainbow - round #19 - results.ysabetwordsmith - Snowflake Challenge 5: Wishlistcarisma_senseitimeasmymeasure
