Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The gop is a fucking disgrace.

Marge, god is saying you’re stupid.

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

We’ll be taking my thoughts and prayers to the ballot box.

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

Bark louder, little dog.

It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.

The arc of the moral universe doesn’t bend itself. it’s up to us.

Cole, when it comes to calico cats, restraint is overrated.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

Republicans don’t lie to be believed, they lie to be repeated.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

If you are in line to indict donald trump, stay in line.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

Republicans: “Abortion is murder but you can take a bus to get one.” Easy peasy.

“woke” is the new caravan.

“Let’s not pretend [Trump] wants to engage in high-minded discourse.”

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

“Look, it’s not against the rules anywhere, but a black woman with power was dating and there has to be something wrong with that.”

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Archives for November 2017

Open Thread: Good for Nancy Pelosi

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She didn’t satisfy the ALL DEMOCRATS MUST CONTINUALLY APOLOGIZE FOR ANY DEM’S CRIMES crew, but nevertheless…

Rep. John Conyers said Sunday he was stepping down from his post as the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee amid accusations of sexual harassment that have put his party’s leaders in a bind.

The decision by the Michigan lawmaker — who has held his seat since 1965 and who denies the harassment allegations — followed several days of internal deliberation and pressure from Democratic colleagues, including Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who wanted Conyers to leave the high-profile post but didn’t want to be seen as forcing him out.

Congressional Black Caucus Chairman Cedric Richmond (D-La.) and assistant Democratic leader Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) reached out to some CBC members over the Thanksgiving recess to take the temperature of the caucus, according to multiple sources. The group is arguably the most powerful bloc within the House Democratic Caucus and is fiercely protective of its members, particularly Conyers, who was a founding member.

In an interview Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Pelosi seemed to underscore the cautious approach by taking pains to praise Conyers’ record and call for “due process,” even as she said she believed “he will do the right thing.” She also referred to Conyers as an “icon” for his lengthy service and work “to protect women.” …

Privately, Pelosi has been working behind the scenes with leaders of the CBC and Conyers to figure out his next steps. One senior Democratic aide said she was trying “to lay groundwork for him to step aside gracefully.”….

Conyers is an icon, even if he’s twenty years past his glory days, and a frontal attack on him would’ve served nobody but the authoritarian enablers who’ve been hawking the “Either a Black man or a white woman — only one token can win” strategy since the mid-1800s. (Read Ta-Nahesi Coates’ essay on “The Great Schism” for more detail.)
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MEANWHILE…

(Also, ten quatloos that Chuck Todd has some sexual-harrassment claims in his newsroom closet.)

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No Politics Open Thread

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It’s been a pleasant weekend for me, and now we have to get ready for the week. I thought we might end things up with a no-politics thread.

The cats have had a good weekend too. Ric loves turkey, Zooey less so. Zooey tries to bully Ric about food, but I intercept him most of the time, so Ric has the rare advantage with turkey. Here, Zooey is sleeping on a sheet I bought for the bed to protect it against the dust Zooey loves to roll in when he goes outside.

 

Edited to clarify.

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Steele Dossier Claims Updated

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In February, I published a breakdown of the claims in the Steele dossier in table form, so that they might be more amenable to analysis.

I have now updated that breakdown with material relevant to the claims. My objective is not to prove or disprove the material in the Steele dossier, but rather to provide evidence that has surfaced. What I have collected is not exhaustive, and it is more detailed for some claims than for others. I have used primarily major news sources.

Overall, there is much support for the claims of the dossier. Not surprisingly, there is much less information about interactions within the Kremlin than other claims. Other material that sometimes has been hailed as supporting the dossier’s claims does not fully connect all the parties or actions.

So here it is, a work in progress.

 

Cross-posted at Nuclear Diner.

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STFU Susan

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I honestly don’t know what got my blood pressure running higher, the aforementioned Nazi profile or this Susan Sarandon interview:

Still, I think while there was vast political error on both sides, the inability of Sarandon and her ilk to embrace the lesser of two evils permitted the greater of the two evils to rise. And yet I like Sarandon. It takes real courage to go against the mob. Her inconsistencies are a little wild, but in the age of social-media enforced conformity, I have never met anyone so uninterested in toeing the line.

Did she really say that Hillary was more dangerous than Trump?

“Not exactly, but I don’t mind that quote,” she says. “I did think she was very, very dangerous. We would still be fracking, we would be at war [if she was president]. It wouldn’t be much smoother. Look what happened under Obama that we didn’t notice.”

It’s been a year since the Trump election, and even having seen the daily parade of horrors brought on us by the malignant orange narcissist in the WH, this fucking dolt still is proud to think Clinton would have been worse.

After some thought- Nazis are gonna Nazi. This idiot pisses me off more.

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This Is Fine

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I know we’ve discussed the NYT’s nice young Nazis article already, but I keep coming back to it in my mind. The NYT felt the blow-back from what was widely panned as a puff piece on Ohio Nazi Tony Hovater, his idiotic wife and their scumbag friends. The Times changed the title of the article from “In America’s Heartland, the Nazi Sympathizer Next Door” to “A Voice of Hate in America’s Heartland.”

The author of the piece, Richard Fausset, admitted that “there is a hole at the heart” of his story about Hovater. In Fausset’s telling, the article’s flaw is that it fails to answer the question: “What makes a man start fires?”

That’s not the question the piece raised for me. The normalization of the Ohio Nazis reminded me of the dog in the famous meme below (representing, in this case, the NYT), and my question is, why do you think the fucking fire is fine?

It’s not that Fausset and the Times are sympathetic to Nazis; I really don’t think they are. But they’re ignoring the implications of the fact that people like Hovater feel emboldened and empowered by the Trump administration.

Jasmin Mujanović, an expert on Balkan politics, identifies the “hole at the heart” of Fausset’s piece in a series of tweets, reproduced below:

The NYT Nazi fluff text is only further proof that, at a fundamental level, large segments of the US intelligentsia do not appreciate the existential crisis now facing their republic. In short, they’re not actually concerned — and they really should be.

You can only really write pieces like that if you’re convinced that the violence which these extremists represent, and engineer, will never touch you. Likely because you’re white, wealthy, and mobile and they’ll probably target vulnerable, static “minorities”.

The form is very familiar to me from the Balkans. It was rampant during the 1990s: Karadzic gave interviews to Western media every other day, there’s hours of footage. In the meantime, he was murdering thousands. But hey, dead Bosnians are so “other” and his English was great.

Now the fascists are in the US, they’re in the UK, they’re in the EU and sober ur-journalists roll their eyes at the alarmists who tell you that the normalization of extremism, illiberalism, and violence never ends well — not even in established democratic regimes.

But trust your gut: trust that sick, queasy feeling you’ve had for months, trust your anxiety, and trust the fear you see in your neighbors eyes. All is not well, and everything won’t be OK. Not unless both ordinary citizens and responsible politicians act today.

“That sick, queasy feeling” — yes, that’s it exactly.

Meanwhile, Trump again endorsed the child molester in the Alabama senate race via Twitter today, though he was too cowardly to do so by name. The NYT explains it as “cold political calculus” or maybe sympathy for a fellow sexual predation accusee.

It’s not so much the fire; it’s the “This is fine.”

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Sunday Morning (Not-Garden) Turkey Shoot Open Thread

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If one must go about this mundane globe wearing a sign that says MOCK ME, one should endeavour to have it be a hand-crafted, gilt-edged, premiere-pricing version in bold Black Fraktur of true calfskin vellum…


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Apart from noting that Jane Austen would most certainly have approved of our japery, what’s on the agenda as we wrap up the weekend?

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Late Night Horrorshow Open Thread: “Living in the Awful Parts of the Past”

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In case y’all were wondering why the NYTimes is dutifully whitewashing “nice” Midwestern Nazis, yet again…


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I, for one, think it is time and past time that Iowa lose its first-in-the-nation-caucus status, because they don’t deserve it, and I want Rep. Steve “Pig Muck” King to get his full credit for the loss of all those media-tourist dollars.

Where I took my title here from:

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