Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

Boeing: repeatedly making the case for high speed rail.

The gop is a fucking disgrace.

The words do not have to be perfect.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” was supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. keep building.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

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

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

Bad people in a position to do bad things will do bad things because they are bad people. End of story.

The arc of the moral universe does not bend itself. it is up to us to bend it.

Text STOP to opt out of updates on war plans.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

Giving in to doom is how we fail to fight for ourselves & one another.

Everybody saw this coming.

If America since Jan 2025 hasn’t broken your heart, you haven’t loved her enough.

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

You are either for trump or for democracy. Pick one.

The only way through is to slog through the muck one step at at time.

You are here: Home / Politics / America / One of Putin’s Other Useful Idiots Weighs In: Swanson TV Dinner Hour of White Power Glower Hour Edition

One of Putin’s Other Useful Idiots Weighs In: Swanson TV Dinner Hour of White Power Glower Hour Edition

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Tonight on The Swanson TV Dinner Hour of White Power Glower Hour, Putin’s other useless idiot has thoughts to share. Bozhe moi!

You can click across if you like for the rest of Dr. Stein’s deep thoughts on the structure and nature of the American political system, American politics, and, of course, Dr. Jill Stein who, Dr. Jill Stein holds in exceedingly high regard.

(Dr. Stein and LTG Flynn dining with Vladimir Putin in December 2015)

It is important to remember that when Dr. Stein and LTG Flynn were dining with Putin and enjoying the gala, the NRA’s delegation was being hosted in Moscow by Alexander Torshin, Mariia Butina, and several Russian government officials. This amount of coincidence takes a lot of planning!

Open thread!

Reader Interactions

98Comments

  1. 1.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    PerpHatWalk
    @ Popehat
    NOOOOO DON’T LISTEN TUCKER, GET THE FLU SHOT

    Tucker’s a grown ass man, let Tucker make his own decisions.

  3. 3.

    Duane

    Her appearance on Fox news kinda says it all. Removes all doubt she’s an idiot. Her and Pucker deserve each other.

  4. 4.

    Ruckus

    Every one of these jackasses couldn’t, on their own, plan to pour water out of a boot if the directions were on the bottom and they were told in advance of that.
    They can however plan on grifting and conspiracy with a foreign power to overthrow the government of this country because they are morons and haven’t been potty trained, so they shit on everything.

  6. 6.

    Ruckus

    @Duane:
    Anyone with more sense than a flat rock has known for ever that she’s an idiot. People have sold communism, fascism, racism, and a lot of other isms since basically the dawn of time, to millions of people, yet she can’t manage to sell anything but herself. And she’s only getting 6 cents a pound so not even smart enough to get list price.

  7. 7.

    different-church-lady

    Anyone else find it weird the way only the Democratic Party is charged with treating candidates who aren’t members of their party well?

  10. 10.

    SFAW

    She seems nice.

    No, wait, that’s not the right word(s) … it’ll come to me … umm … oh yeah

    She seems moronic.

    That’s better

  11. 11.

    Citizen Alan

    I swear I have never been a violent person at any point in my life. I haven’t even been in a fist fight since fourth grade on the playground. But if I ever found myself in the same room as that woman, I would have to be physically restrained from trying to strangle her.

  12. 12.

    Steeplejack

    Jill Stein:

    If you don’t like Fox, please let @CNN, @MSNBC & your favorite channel know I’ll talk with them anytime. :)

    If I was a hip left-wing gadfly with the belief that I could run a serious third-party presidential campaign, the fact that only Fox News is willing to give me air time would give me pause. Just sayin’.

  13. 13.

    The Midnight Lurker

    Can we lobby the FCC to rename Fox News to Traitor TV?

    No? Okay, how about the Collaborator News Network or… never mind.

    I guess we should just stick with Izvestia.

  20. 20.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Steeplejack:

    If I was a hip left-wing gadfly with the belief that I could run a serious third-party presidential campaign, the fact that only Fox News is willing to give me air time would give me pause.

    If she actually were, it would.

  21. 21.

    Suzanne

    @Steeplejack:

    with the belief that I could run a serious third-party presidential campaign

    The egomania and griftiness of these people defies belief.

  24. 24.

    Felanius Kootea

    I’ve been thinking about those Rhode Island students who sued the state for not teaching civics. Those students give me hope and are definitely much smarter than Jill Stein, Instructor, HMS. When I moved to the US, I had to take two years of US history to graduate from high school in Massachusetts. It was easy and I aced it because I already knew a lot of US history because most non-Americans know waaaay more about the US than the US knows about the rest of the world. Years later, in order to become a citizen, I had to learn civics essentially, in addition to history.

    It seems to me that many Americans’ ignorance about the way the US political system works is by design – keep people in the dark and they have no clue how to effect change. I look at how France chose the better of two evils in Macron vs LePen, even though most people voting for Macron had to hold their noses to do so, and think about how the US failed that test in 2016 (for those who thought “Hilary’s emails” were evidence of “evil”). Today, many well-meaning people in the US think a third-party candidate that splits the votes and can’t get to 270 electoral college votes is just fine in the face of an existential threat in the White House. Many don’t understand the impact of gerrymandering and downplay the impact of voter suppression through unreasonable demands for voter ID or closures of polling locations once these closures are framed as budget issues. And too many (not on BJ but elsewhere) make misstatements that essentially betray the thinking that because Trump won the electoral college, the majority of US voters back him/voted for him (he is the president of a democracy, so he got the majority of the vote).

    I’ve been visiting this blog off and on since GWB and it helps keep me sane because sometimes, when I speak to regular people outside BJ and academia about politics I think the US is in serious trouble. In some ways though, having 45 be this much of a fuck up has helped; now, even my hairdresser knows something is wrong and she was a fan of his when he was on the Apprentice. Not anymore.

  26. 26.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Adam L Silverman: She’s not hip and she’s not really left-wing.

    speaking of not-really-left-wing shiny-object “candidates” (I’m not hip enough to know if she’s hip or not):

    Alex Thompson @ AlxThomp
    Scoop w/ DanielStrauss4. Tulsi’s 2020 campaign manager and consulting firm will leave after this weekend’s formal launch. The rollout has been a mini saga with several false starts and then Gabbard catching her own staff unaware when she announced on cnn.

  29. 29.

    Aleta

    Part of a story by by Sarah Stillman in the NYer
    [In Oct. Sindy fled Honduras with her husband Kevin and kids, escaping gangsters who said they’d kill her. At the US border their 17 month old girl was taken from her husband.]
    https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/an-asylum-seekers-quest-to-get-her-toddler-back

    …
    [After detention in a cold cell] Sindy and her older children were released and went to live with her uncle in San Francisco. (Her own removal proceedings are pending, and she hopes to seek asylum.)

    From there, she ramped up her search and discovered that Grethshell had been transferred from California to Texas and placed in a federally contracted shelter for “unaccompanied” children, run by a nonprofit organization called B.C.F.S., in San Antonio.

    The girl, she’d been told, was in the care of a foster mother. Sindy checked every box for Grethshell’s return: she offered proof of identity, gave her fingerprints, and answered interview questions. “There’s not one piece of paper I haven’t filled out,” she told me.

    But, according to Sindy, when she called the shelter, she hit a new obstacle. A person told her that she would have to pay the cost of her daughter’s return: in this case, two plane tickets to San Francisco—one for Grethshell and the other for a government guardian to fly with her.

    “How much is it going to cost to get her back?” Sindy asked. The person couldn’t be sure but estimated up to three thousand dollars. “But I don’t have the money!” she replied. (On Monday, a spokeswoman for B.C.F.S. denied that Sindy will have to pay for her child’s transportation.)

    [There is] a practice that immigration-reform advocates describe as separation for ransom, by which parents are asked to pay for the cost of their children’s return. This practice is sanctioned by official policy; according to the Web site of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (O.R.R.), parents or other legal sponsors of a separated child are “responsible for the unaccompanied alien child’s transportation costs and, if the care provider is escorting the child, for the care provider’s transportation or airfare.”

    In July, the Times documented several cases in which migrant families were asked to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars in fees or transportation costs to secure the return of their children, describing the process as “an exhausting, intimidating—and sometimes expensive—thicket of requirements.” Six months after Trump’s executive order, advocates say that the thicket hasn’t cleared.

    “This is an issue we’ve been dealing with for the past few months,” Blake Vera, the bond coördinator for RAICES, a Texas-based nonprofit organization that advocates for immigrants, told me. Asylum seekers often have no source of income to pay for transportation expenses, which can leave their children languishing in detention for weeks or months. The steps for reunification are opaque, disorganized, and full of misinformation, Vera says, leaving parents vulnerable to scams. “These families get contacted by some random number with a person telling them they have to give them their credit-card information in order to get reunited with their own child,” he told me. “That’s just completely inappropriate.”

    Vera told me that, one day earlier this month, he spent an hour on the phone trying to find a B.C.F.S. worker who was willing to discuss a case of an indigenous Guatemalan child whose family lacked the money for her transportation fee. Two weeks ago, on a call about the same case, Vera said that a B.C.F.S. employee reassured him, “If the family expresses financial hardship, we won’t keep their child hostage—they just need to communicate that.”

    This perplexed Vera; from the start, he told me, “The family had been saying over and over, ‘We don’t have the money.’ ” On Monday, a spokeswoman from B.C.F.S. also told me that the organization does not charge transportation costs to parents who can’t afford it and that it had recently requested a hardship waiver from O.R.R. for the Guatemalan family, which had been approved. “B.C.F.S. works with the parent on this,” she said. “The child is flown at no charge to the parent.” But, according to Vera, who says that RAICES has worked on multiple cases in which O.R.R. shelters asked migrant parents to pay for transportation, many parents are never told about the possibility of receiving a fee waiver.

    On January 17th, a federal prosecutor forwarded Sindy’s uncle’s address to Eric Fish [a trial attorney at the Federal Defenders of San Diego who is representing Kevin] and suggested that Grethshell had been resettled there. “This is the physical location of his child in San Fran,” the prosecutor wrote. But an investigator working in Fish’s office soon reached Sindy, who told him that Grethshell had not been returned and that, to get her back, she needed thousands of dollars—money she didn’t have.

    Fish got in touch with RAICES, and the organization offered to help pay the flight costs for the toddler, which felt to Fish like progress. But, when he reached out to B.C.F.S. about the case, he had trouble getting the personal information about the toddler and chaperone, which was required to purchase the tickets. raices thought that Sindy, with an advocate, had a good chance of receiving a “waiver for hardship” to defray the costs.

    Each day, new hurdles popped up. On Thursday, Fish called me, dumbfounded. He’d just been told that, to return Grethshell, thegovernment requires a form that he hadn’t heard mentioned before: a “letter of designation” from Kevin, stating that he wants Grethshell returned to her mother. Given that Kevin had just been transferred to detention, in Arizona, this feat would prove difficult. “I will have to move mountains to get this form signed,” Fish wrote to B.C.F.S. staff.

    His team worked hard to get the new form signed by Kevin and handed it over to B.C.F.S. on Monday. But, later that day, Fish learned that this would not suffice for O.R.R.’s approval: the form needed to be notarized—a very difficult service to access while in detention.

    When I spoke to the B.C.F.S. spokeswoman on Monday, she told me that Sindy would be not be required to pay for her child’s transportation. “We looked into the situation, and there is no charge,” she said. Instead, the case was being held up, she said, because of O.R.R.’s requirement for the notarized form. “If they need the signature, they need the signature,” she said. “We can’t change the law.”

    Around two hours later, she told me that B.C.F.S. has requested that O.R.R. waive the notary requirement. Following our inquiry, they had moved to expedite Grethshell’s return. On Tuesday evening, as this piece neared publication, Sindy was told that her daughter would soon be put on a flight to San Francisco.
    …
    “I don’t know if they’ve done my daughter psychological harm,” Sindy said. “They say they haven’t—that she’s a little girl, and she has no memories.” (In fact, last year, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a statement opposing family separation because of its psychological effects.
    …

  30. 30.

    plato

    Homeland Security Chair Bennie Thompson to Kirstjen Nielsen: "Your decision to refuse my invitation to testify before the Committee on Homeland Security … is unreasonable and unacceptable. I strongly urge you to reconsider." pic.twitter.com/9pJBrcdXpo

    — Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) January 29, 2019

    So basically, dems in minority = no powers and dems in majority = also no powers, is that it?

  34. 34.

    Brickley Paiste

    @Felanius Kootea:

    Dude, I am in an argument with a guy who has a doctorate in American History from a decent state school and he is arguing that Kamala Harris is not a “natural born” citizen because .. well you see you have to look to the historical context and the writings of Vassel (or some schmuck) who we just know was read by both Jefferson and Madison and he clearly states ….

    I should have fuckin’ moved to NZ when I had the chance.

    I think we are doomed.

  35. 35.

    Miss Bianca

    @different-church-lady:

    Anyone else find it weird the way only the Democratic Party is charged with treating candidates who aren’t members of their party well?

    Yeah…weird…that’s the word…

  36. 36.

    Felanius Kootea

    @Citizen Alan: True story: a few years after GWB won the 2000 election, a friend’s father was at the Springfield, MA airport waiting for a puddle jumper when he ran into Ralph Nader. He walked over, pointed and said, his voice trembling, “You, you, you’re the reason we have this abominable president.” Nader shook his head and walked away but I imagine he was shocked to have this middle-aged man with a thick Nigerian accent try to take him to task at the airport. I wonder how many times Jill Stein has had a similar experience.

  37. 37.

    Miss Bianca

    @Steeplejack:

    If I was a hip left-wing gadfly with the belief that I could run a serious third-party presidential campaign, the fact that only Fox News is willing to give me air time would give me pause. Just sayin’.

    That would argue a degree of honest self-awareness that I am quite sure Dr. Stein does not possess.

    @Omnes Omnibus: or what you said.

  39. 39.

    Ken

    “On the other hand the Republicans are very welcoming of third party candidates. The RNC helped me get on the ballot in several states in 2016, and even hooked me up with some of their own funding sources. General Flynn introduced me to one of them during our trip to Russia.”

    Please please please please please….

  41. 41.

    Felanius Kootea

    @Brickley Paiste: Well, Prickly Waste, I hope to God those Rhode Island students win their lawsuit. It’s too late for some people, but definitely not too late for others.

  43. 43.

    jacy

    @Citizen Alan:

    I have never hated people like I hate this entire raft of cretins. (And I’m a pretty passionate person.) We’re lucky I can’t blow up people’s heads through sheer force of will. There would be a lot of cleanup.

  44. 44.

    Jeffro

    I’m shocked (still! how is that even possible?!?) that some of the same idiots who, to one degree or another, were in on the conspiracy continue to make public appearances, much less actively shill for RWNJ causes and/or try to drag the Dems.

    Stein is one. Spicer is another. Bannon is still free for now. Seriously, why are they not all either in chains or running for their lives?

  46. 46.

    poleaxedbyboatwork

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Subpoena inbound!

    Followed as day follows night by perjury suborned.

    Every-fucking-one in this maladmin lies like cross-ties onna railroad track not b/c it’s second-nature (tho it is that) but b/c they must.

    And then tries to diminish and dismiss their perfidy by calling it a “process crime”.

  48. 48.

    trollhattan

    Sweet pogosticking Jesus there’s so much wrong in play in this post my brain is going Defcon Malt-o-meal.

    One of my kid’s HS soccer teammates was hauled off in an ambulance tonight and we don’t yet know how she’s doing. Hug your kid, scratch your dog.

  50. 50.

    GxB

    @BruceFromOhio: Seen elsewhere on the net (paraphrased): “Tucker Carlson looks like a fairly dumb (but somehow lovable) dog on the internet, trying to figure out a doorknob… Minus the lovable.”

  51. 51.

    Patricia Kayden

    Good to see Dr. Stein once again showing her true colors. She should just come out and endorse Trump and stop playing.

  53. 53.

    PPCLI

    Has “Green Party” candidate Stein ever once commented on Trump’s evisceration of the EPA? Or any other of the core issues that are the Green Party raison d’être?

  54. 54.

    glory b

    @schrodingers_cat: The mean girls’ table is now being populated!
    Who told her that lipstick was a good color for her?
    Also, Karen Hunter, talk show host on Sirius radio’s Urban View, says she’s been trying to get Stein for a while now, but she’s avoiding her.
    Wonder why?

  57. 57.

    Bill Arnold

    @Adam L Silverman:

    She’s not hip and she’s not really left-wing.

    She’s also not Green[1]. At all. She massively helped Fossil Fuel interests (notably in the US and Russia) by helping to get Donald J. Trump elected, at least on a short-term basis. (The Republican party is fragile ATM.) We’re in a slow massive extinction-level global-climate-change emergency, this was abundantly clear in 2015 (and decades earlier, yes), and yet she “helped” the US down that path anyway.

    [1] Green in a real sense, not a US party-membership sense.

  65. 65.

    coin operated

    @Jeffro:

    Stein is one. Spicer is another. Bannon is still free for now. Seriously, why are they not all either in chains or running for their lives?

    As I recall, didn’t Rove amend his grand jury testimony *five* damn times and was still never charged in the Plame affair? I do wish some of these assholes a lifetime in the greybar hotel, but if you give the prosecutor what they want, it’s slap on the wrist time.

    Don’t know for sure if these assholes have cooperated, but that’s usually what it takes to walk free.

  68. 68.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Major Major Major Major: Not so much.

  74. 74.

    Kraux Pas

    @Major Major Major Major:

    Twitter seems to be mad that Kamala Harris dithered on the matter of outlawing private health insurance.

    God forbid we acknowledge that there are innumerable stakeholders affected by changes in health policy, including ordinary wage earners working for the insurance company. If we move away from private insurance, we’ll need a lot of these people’s expertise, but radically doing it all at once without taking the time to phase in a new system is just asking for failure. And enough people recognize this that it would never be passed anyway.

  75. 75.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Amir Khalid: @Adam L Silverman: When I was an army officer, I would ask people under me to do things. If they said something like “I am busy right now,” I would then explain that my request wasn’t really a request. Same here.

  76. 76.

    lgerard

    @Brickley Paiste:

    well you see you have to look to the historical context and the writings of Vassel (or some schmuck)

    Do you mean Vattel and his Law of Nations?

    That is a wingnut classic response

    Just point out he was French (and that it was written 350 years ago)

  77. 77.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Major Major Major Major: I watched Walid Shahid be more or less positive and pleasant about her statement on Hayes tonight, not 24 hours removed from shitting all over her on twitter (because she’s not Bernie). The difference between Harris and Bernie is Harris actually understands how being a legislator works. You have to do three things simultaneously: 1) socialize the ideas and objectives you actually want to achieve, while 2) doing the hard, incremental work to slowly move people to those positions, while 3) actually taking what you can get to improve people’s lives and move things a little closer given the actual reality you live in right now.

    The ultimate goal is universal coverage and access. One of the solutions, and it may ultimately be the best one, is Medicare for All with only not for profit private supplemental insurance companies remaining. But you’re not getting there next week. So you do what you can now in order to get a little closer by next week.

  79. 79.

    Cheryl Rofer

    Speaking of dinner parties with Vova, the Financial Times reported today that Trump had another tete-a-tete with Mr. Putin at the G20 meeting in Argentina in the beginning of December. No note-taker or interpreter.

  81. 81.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Adam L Silverman: This is where Bernie is pure, unadulterated fail. He’s been a legislator for decades but still doesn’t know how to move legislation, or how it is processed. He’s classic “all hat, no cattle.”

  82. 82.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Omnes Omnibus: Politely asking a subordinate to get something done is just a good way of issuing an order. My first battalion commander advised heavily against talking about “direct orders”, as a failure to comply had serious consequences.

  84. 84.

    Mike in NC

    So in 2020 we can expect Sanders, Stein, Shultz, and maybe five other people entering the campaign to reelect Fat Bastard (assuming he isn’t in prison).

  85. 85.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Cheryl Rofer: Melania most likely served as the President’s interpreter. That’s what everyone misses in the reporting on these things. And neither of those are good things.

  86. 86.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Villago Delenda Est: Didn’t keep Paul Ryan or Newt Gingrich from becoming Speaker of the House, nor did it keep Mitch McConnell from becoming Majority Leader of the Senate. None of those three had moved much, if any, legislation prior to assuming their leadership posts. And what few pieces of legislation they did move was trivial stuff like renaming post offices.

  87. 87.

    Brickley Paiste

    @Major Major Major Major:

    There is not an obvious answer for this. If medicare for all is such a great system, why prevent people from wasting their money on something that isn’t needed?

    And if you prevent middle class people from buying insurance that just means that you are going to make it even cheaper for the few people who can afford to pay cash.

    It makes sense for Harris to get some good polling data before she comes out with a position on this. Because there is absolutely no clear “moral” choice so the correct political decision is to embrace whatever answer will yield the most voters?

  97. 97.

    chopper

    @Aleta:

    these people are such fucking assholes. this garbage is the shit that pisses me off the most about this admin. it’s just white hot rage.

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