Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Optimism opens the door to great things.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

I’m pretty sure there’s only one Jack Smith.

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

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

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

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

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

Speaker Mike Johnson is a vile traitor to the House and the Constitution.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Prediction: the GOP will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

How can republicans represent us when they don’t trust women?

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

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Archives for April 2019

Has No One Ever Heard of a Disinformation Campaign Fer Fuck’s Sake

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You’d think with the 2016 election being recent history, people would recognize what is going on. I mean, fer fuck’s sake, everyone and their brother has heard of gaslighting by now. Apparently not, though:

THIS IS PRECISELY WHAT BARR WANTED. The reason he sent the initial letter was sent by Barr WITHOUT RELEASING THE REPORT is so that useful idiots and hacks could run around and make statements about how Trump was totally cleared, and then by the time the actual report was released the waters would be sufficiently muddied that it didn’t matter what the actual report said because now there could be a debate about it. It’s what they fucking do with everything. It’s why corporations spend so much money funding alternative studies debating shit that is undebatable, like climate change or whether cigarettes are addictive and on and on.

The media didn’t intentionally misrepresent the report- Barr did and misled the media. That was his intent.

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A Few Thoughts on the Venezuela Mess

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This isn’t going to be a long post. I know Cheryl is working on a longer one/deeper dive that she’ll publish when she’s finished it, but I figured we should put something up. Right now the news I’ve seen out of Venezuela from today make it pretty clear that Juan Guiado’s Operacion Libertad is long on concept and short on execution. I’m not a big fan of Maduro, but you’re not going to overturn an established government that is being supported by both the Venezuelan military and the Russians – including Russian military contractors. Despite how much the President, the Secretary of State, and/or the Assistant to the President-National Security Advisor (APNSA/NSA) cheerlead for you on Twitter. Moreover, they can’t seem to get their stories straight. The President and Bolton have warned Cuba off of providing Maduro support, while Secretary Pompeo is claiming Russia is keeping Maduro in power. It also doesn’t help if the newly freed political prisoner, Leopoldo Lopez, that you’ve brought to the announcement of your people’s revolution to lend legitimacy decides he needs to seek refuge from the Maduro government in the Chilean Embassy in Caracas.

It also doesn’t help if you can’t be bothered to do the minimal staff work required to make your video statement of solidarity and support to Guiado and the Venezuelan people in Spanish. For Deity’s sake, White House Director of Strategic Communication Mercedes Schlapp is a fluent Spanish speaker, even if it’s Cuban Spanish, not Venezuelan Spanish. Ask her to write the damn statement out in transliterated Spanish and then take the 30 minutes to practice getting it right with her. Strategic communication is why she’s on payroll! You know how I know that? It’s in her job title!

It would also be really nice if the administration could coordinate their messaging on this matter. Coordinating those types of things are actually part of Bolton’s job, but like all the rest of his job that doesn’t involve warmongering, he’s neither interested in it nor good at it.

No answers for the Venezuelan people, but the US is determined to assist the Venezuelan people. What does that even mean? That isn’t a strategic communication, that’s a mixed message that says: 1) We’ve got nothing for you, but 2) You all go for it, we’re here for you. Huh?

https://youtu.be/zAvKZAPhOUU?t=3

There’s really no coup here as Guiado’s doesn’t have the resources. Unless he’s able to flip the military and the police, he may have Venezuela’s constitution and law on his side, but that’s all he has. Sixty-nine people were hurt today, which is, fortunately, not a higher number of casualties. Other than that, it doesn’t appear much of anything is really happening. Guiado’s got nothing to work with here. Maduro knows it and, more importantly, Maduro’s patron Putin knows it. The President can tweet orders at the Cubans, Bolton can preen and posture on video or Fox News all he wants, but there’s no victory here for the opposition he’s supporting.

Things could, of course, get worse…

 Erik Prince – the founder of the controversial private security firm Blackwater and a prominent supporter of U.S. President Donald Trump – has been pushing a plan to deploy a private army to help topple Venezuela’s socialist president, Nicolas Maduro, four sources with knowledge of the effort told Reuters.

Lital Leshem – the director of investor relations at Prince’s private equity firm, Frontier Resource Group – earlier confirmed Prince’s interest in Venezuela security operations.

“He does have a solution for Venezuela, just as he has a solution for many other places,” she said, declining to elaborate on his proposal.

The two sources with direct knowledge of Prince’s pitch said it calls for starting with intelligence operations and later deploying 4,000 to 5,000 soldiers-for-hire from Colombia and other Latin American nations to conduct combat and stabilization operations.

Prince’s delusions of grandeur are unlikely to go anywhere. Everyone in the region, as well as everywhere else, knows that Prince is a wholly owned subsidiary of the PRC who bankroll his Frontier Services Group. The last thing anyone wants is to have the PRC occupy Venezuela via their proxy Erik Prince.

I think the key takeaways here are:

  • Guiado doesn’t have the resources to overthrow Maduro
  • Maduro currently has the resources and the backing of Putin
  • Putin has a plan
  • Erik Prince has a plan
  • Erik Prince’s plan is a bad plan
  • Erik Prince’s bad plan would put Xi and the PRC in control of Venezuela
  • The US doesn’t have a plan
  • The US does, however, have the President, the Secretary of State, and the Assistant to the President-National Security Advisor tweeting about Venezuela, which, of course, is what’s really important…

What could possibly go wrong?

Open thread!

 

 

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Respite Open Thread: The Cats Are Winning

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https://twitter.com/TheDreamGhoul/status/1121926645215047680

 

Commenter Joey Maloney sent along two adorable photos of her kitteh, Elvira (Mistress of the Dark). First up, day one at home:

And nine months later.

That is one happy adoption, I’d say.

This is from 1997 but still sweet.

That’s your reprieve from life for the moment.

Non-politics open thread.

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Spring Open Thread

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I was sworn to secrecy so I can not divulge who my dealer is, but tomorrow I will be feasting on an omelet made from farm fresh eggs, ramp pesto, and morels.

I had a long post mentally composed that I wanted to make about how we remember things, but now I am too tired to write it all, so we’ll have to wait until I am in stream of consciousness mode again.

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Mueller: Barr Is A Dick Head (Okay, I May Be Paraphrasing)

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Fasten your seatbelts. It’s gonna get bumpy:

“The summary letter the Department sent to Congress and released to the public late in the afternoon of March 24 did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this office’s work and conclusions,” Mueller wrote. “There is now public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation. This threatens to undermine a central purpose for which the Department appointed the Special Counsel: to assure full public confidence in the outcome of the investigations.”

The letter made a key request: that Barr release the 448-page report’s introductions and executive summaries, and made some initial suggested redactions for doing so, according to Justice Department officials.

Justice Department officials said Tuesday they were taken aback by the tone of Mueller’s letter,

Oh, I’m just sure they were taken aback…that it leaked.  Shot across the bow.

ETA this tweet I posted down thread:

 

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Repub Stupidity Open Thread: Donald Never Had Much Use for Education

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‘Ignorant and proud of it’ is pretty much his brand, and the GOP’s as well. As Jimmy Breslin used to say, Class tells, when there is no class…

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God I Hate These People

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Fucking christ:

A Republican county committee in Idaho says it’s just trying to help one of its constituents get married. She happens to be an alt-right YouTuber who promotes “white genocide” theories, and she’s engaged to an Austrian white nationalist leader with alleged ties to the New Zealand mosque shooter.

The Kootenai County Republican Committee, representing the GOP in Idaho’s third-most-populous county, unanimously passed a resolution Monday to pressure the federal government to reinstate travel abilities for the Austrian fiancé, Martin Sellner, who leads the right-wing “Identitarian Movement Austria.” Sellner is engaged to Brittany Pettibone, an alt-right YouTuber who lives in the solidly-red county, and the two hope to wed in Idaho this summer.

Sellner says he lost his travel privileges after he was investigated by Austrian authorities following the two mosque shootings in Christchurch last month.

The Birchers, neo-confederates, nazis and neo-nazis, klansmen, and lost causers have always existed in American society, bubbling below the surface, every now and then belching up some noxious bile, but now that the Republican party has started to openly embrace them rather than just pander and dogwhisper to them, I don’t know how we put this genie back in the bottle. We’re going to be a majority minority nation with a petulant, armed, and violent minority causing problems for a century if we don’t crush this shit. There’s a reason these fuckers all worship Rhodesia and South Africa.

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