Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

T R E 4 5 O N

Republicans: The threats are dire, but my tickets are non-refundable!

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

It’s easier to kill a dangerous animal than a man who just happens to have different thoughts/values than one’s own.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

“But what about the lurkers?”

Republicans would impeach Biden if he bit into a whole Kit Kat rather than breaking the sections apart.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

Marge, god is saying you’re stupid.

It’s pointless to bring up problems that can only be solved with a time machine.

When the time comes to make an endorsement, the pain of NYT editors will be palpable as they reluctantly whisper “Biden.”

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

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

This country desperately needs a functioning Fourth Estate.

I might just take the rest of the day off and do even more nothing than usual.

Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”

The revolution will be supervised.

The gop is a fucking disgrace.

SCOTUS: It’s not “bribery” unless it comes from the Bribery region of France. Otherwise, it’s merely “sparkling malfeasance”.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

Fight for a just cause, love your fellow man, live a good life.

Let me file that under fuck it.

Baby steps, because the Republican Party is full of angry babies.

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Archives for February 2019

Late Night Open Thread: Anyone Else Getting Sanders-Spam on Their Cell Phone?

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First thing is, I don’t text. My secondhand Galaxy S6 has texting capabilities, but I don’t need them, so I’ve never bothered to learn them; the only ones who contact me via text are T-Mobile and my dentist’s office, both of whom get phone calls if I need to reply.

Second thing is, I don’t give out my cell number, if I can avoid it. We still have a landline, and that’s what I use for ActBlue or similar sites that demand phone numbers. Even Senator Warren’s people don’t have my cell number, and I *like* her campaign!

So… when I got an exclamation-point-laden text telling me that, as a “Bernie Supporter” I would be *very excited* to add my name!!! to the latest local-voluteer list… I assumed some schmuck had paid for the wrong mailing list. But the tweet here, and the numerous replies with screenshots of similar misdirected Bernie-begs, are making me wonder if this is gonna be a nationwide pest problem going forward. (Especially since the ‘yeah, me neither’ tweets I’m seeing are all from people with feminine nyms. Which could be a coincidence, but then again… )

Any of you jackals getting unsolicited cell-spam from the BernieBros, or from other candidates? Is this yet another form of grift to which we’re gonna have to adapt?

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Waleed Shahid of the Justice Democrats is a Lying Shitbird!

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Earlier today Waleed Shahid, fresh off of getting dragged for posting barbered and highly edited clips of Senator Harris from her town hall on his twitter feed several weeks ago, decided it was time to set his sights on the senior senator from California. As I suspected in the comments to an earlier post, Shahid had once again posted heavily edited videos on his twitter feed to go after someone that doesn’t measure up to his purity fanaticism. Fortunately, just like the last time, someone came along to set the record straight.

Now here’s the crap Shahid posted:

Shahid was once again full of shit, imagine that!!!!

Unfortunately, for all too many, Shahid’s lies will have already been taken as the gospel truth. It is bad enough that Democratic candidates and Democratic officeholders, as well as the organizations and individuals who support them, are going to be subjected to influence operations from the Russians, as well as a host of other state and non-state actors as we move into the 2020 elections, they shouldn’t have to also worry about being targeted by ideological fanatics like Shahid.

And as for the Justice Democrats, apparently they are running a protection scam where they require the candidates they endorse to send them funds rather than raise funds and send them to the candidates they’re endorsing! 

And lining their own pockets too!

https://twitter.com/JohnnyAkzam/status/930549286097637376

https://twitter.com/JohnnyAkzam/status/930586399564292096

https://twitter.com/JohnnyAkzam/status/930911897045618695

These fanatics aren’t interested in making things better, they are interested in promoting themselves, fleecing their donors, and ultimately tearing down the people that have the only real chance of ending the current President’s reelection chances and then beginning the long, hard, slow, and frustrating work of fixing all of the messes that the President, his administration, and his Republican Party and conservative movement enablers have created. I’m all for opening up the debate and pulling the center back somewhere closer to where it should be from where the Republicans and the conservative movement have pulled it for over the past 40 years. Waleed Shahid, the Justice Democrats, his fellow travelers, and their attempt to create an ideological inflexible Tea Party and Breitbart of the left is not the solution to any of these problems.

As I’ve been writing here for almost three years, we were attacked and are still being attacked by a hostile foreign power! We are at war! But rather than everyone that isn’t supporting the domestic beneficiaries of the ongoing attacks – the President, the Republican Party, and the conservative movement that supports them –  pulling together to fix our problems, Shahid and his fellow travelers would rather do the enemy’s work for them and pull us apart. With “friends” like these, Democrats, liberals, progressives, the center left to left of center Americans don’t actually need enemies.

Open thread!

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A North Carolina State Court Declares War on the Republican Dominated North Carolina State Legislature!

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Shots fired!!!

From Rick Hasen’s Election Law Blog:

Release:

The Wake County Superior Court today ruled that the illegally gerrymandered North Carolina General Assembly did not have legal authority to place constitutional amendments on the ballot because it did not act with the full will of the people of North Carolina.  The court voided two constitutional amendment proposals – related to imposing a photo voter ID requirement and lowering the state income tax cap – that were hurriedly enacted in the final 2018 special session of the illegally-constituted legislature before it left office.
Judge Bryan Collins of the Wake County Superior ruled that “[a]n illegally constituted General Assembly does not represent the people of North Carolina and is therefore not empowered to pass legislation that would amend the state’s Constitution.” As a result, the two amendments challenged by the plaintiffs are void, and the constitution will revert to its earlier form.

It is not at all clear that this ruling will stand. Aside from the fact that these amendments went before voters for a popular vote (which was not called into question), this ruling would seem to call into question all the actions of the General Assembly based upon the improper drawing of districts. I have not seen such a holding before.

While Hasen, who is one of the preeminent subject matter experts in the area of election law, may be right that this ruling may not stand, it does appear that other courts, including a Federal court in Connecticut, have made similar holdings in the past.

I’m sure the Republican majorities in the North Carolina legislature, as well as the North Carolina Republican Party, will try to appeal this through the state courts hoping to get the state supreme court to overrule the state court in Wake County. And if that fails to the Federal courts in order to get the case to the Supreme Court and a favorable ruling from the conservative majority. We’ll have to wait to see what happens, but for now this is a bit of good news. Especially as it gives Governor Cooper ammunition within the North Carolina state courts to ignore the ridiculous restrictions that the Republican majorities in the North Carolina legislature keep trying to place on him.

Open thread!

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Friday Evening Open Thread: Keep Calm & Carry On

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Thoughts for Dad

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Dad has had a rough couple of weeks. As you know, they snowbird down in South Carolina, and a couple weeks ago he had a knee replacement (last year, he had the other knee done). It’s just so much easier to have it done down there- the hospital is closer, the weather is nicer, the rehab people come directly to his house, etc. At any rate, everything was fine until last weekend, when dad was reaching to turn off a ceiling fan and fell, ripped his stitches out, and had to go back to the hospital.

On Monday, he had another surgery to fix something he had messed up, sewed him back up, and then kept him until yesterday. They normally let him go the day after, but since he had opened the wound at home and it had been open for several days rather than being open and closed in a surgical setting like the first one, they were super aggressive regarding potential infections and kept him for several days on liquids and antibiotics. They let him come home yesterday, and then last night while trying to sleep he kept gasping for air.

Back to the hospital, worried he had pneumonia, but his heart enzymes were off so they did a heart cath, and lo and behold he has a blockage so he is having a bypass surgery tomorrow. He and mom normally hate it when I talk about them on the website (“YOU ALWAYS EXAGGERATE AND GET THINGS WRONG” and “WHY ARE YOU SO PROFANE I RAISED YOU BETTER THAN THAT”), but you know what, fuck him. You guys did miracles with Lily so I’m asking you all to send some positive vibes.

You can yell at me when you feel better, dad.

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Robert Kraft and Prostitution Should Be Legal

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Bob Kraft has apparently been charged with soliciting prostitution:

In his Tuesday news conference about a major human trafficking investigation , Martin County Sheriff William Snyder said about 100 men would be arrested.

When asked about prominent people or celebrities, Snyder said, “There will be a newsmaker in this one.”

That newsmaker is Robert Kraft, billionaire businessman and owner of the Super Bowl champion New England Patriots.

On Friday, Jupiter Police Chief Daniel Kerr confirmed to WPTV that Kraft is one of 25 men being charged with soliciting another to commit prostitution.

He confirmed that there is video evidence of all of the men being charged. “The question was, does the video contain Mr. Kraft inside receiving the alleged acts. The answer to that is yes,” Sharp said in response to a reporter’s queston.

According to a number of different reports, this involved a human trafficking sting. Beyond the obvious schadenfreude of Kraft being arrested, this whole story pisses me off. Prostitution should be legal, it should be regulated, and it should be out in the open. I don’t mean we need to set up brothels next to schools or churches, you can zone them however you want, but this should not be something that is hidden in back alleys.

Sex workers are people, they provide a service that is clearly a basic human need, and they should be able to perform their job and provide their service safely, with dignity, and they should be regulated and required to have health inspections. You wouldn’t have all the human trafficking issue, you wouldn’t have the other crimes that go with prostitution, and you wouldn’t have the public health issues were we to act like fucking adults about this.

It’s 20 fucking 19.

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Mike Flynn’s Nuclear Adventure – The Companies

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Since elements of the story first appeared, I have been intrigued by the idea that Michael Flynn wanted to sell nuclear reactors to the Saudis. Too much of it doesn’t make sense and still doesn’t. A few things I’ve wondered about:

  • Flynn has no experience with nuclear reactors.
  • Why nuclear reactors? There are a great many problems in selling in building them.
  • Why Russian reactors?
  • Why is the administration so persistent in pushing this deal?

Most importantly, is this activity connected to other varieties of Trumpian corruption?

A simple theory can explain this. The Saudis want nuclear reactors to eventually build a nuclear weapons program. Flynn was at the head of a group of Trump-connected grifters who wanted to make money from that desire. Informed by a profound ignorance of nuclear economics and nonproliferation, it explains everything in a general way, but others also have the uneasy feeling that it’s more than that.

A few years back, I looked at Russian ambition to sell nuclear reactors. Reactors are one of the few manufactured export products Russia has on offer. They were so eager to sell the reactors that the business model they developed was that Russia would provide the up-front costs of building the reactor, which the customer country could then pay back out of electricity profits. That would make it possible for smaller, poorer countries to increase their electrical power capacity.

Something seemed fishy about that to me, too. I added up all the deals Russia had made, and it looked like they would bankrupt the country. I posted it, but the post is lost to internet decay. Since then, some of the deals have come apart, and others are moving slowly enough that they no longer look like Russia will go bankrupt from that any time soon.

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