Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

They don’t have outfits that big. nor codpieces that small.

the 10% who apparently lack object permanence

Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.

Second rate reporter says what?

Someone should tell Republicans that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, or possibly the first.

Let’s bury these fuckers at the polls 2 years from now.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires.

The snowflake in chief appeared visibly frustrated when questioned by a reporter about egg prices.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

Peak wingnut was a lie.

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

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

“Facilitate” is an active verb, not a weasel word.

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Cancel the cowardly Times and Post and set up an equivalent monthly donation to ProPublica.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

When we show up, we win.

At some point, the ability to learn is a factor of character, not IQ.

I desperately hope that, yet again, i am wrong.

Republicans cannot even be trusted with their own money.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

After dobbs, women are no longer free.

When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty. ~Thomas Jefferson

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COVID-19 Update (Domestic Edition) – Friday/Saturday, March 6/7

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Yes, it’s (comparatively) ‘old news’… but, for my health, I refuse to hash through this kind of crap more than once a day.

show full post on front page

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Late Night GOP Venality Open Thread: Colorado Congressman

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It’s always performative bullshit…

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Alexandra Petri is a National Treasure

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Petri, Michelle Goldberg, and Adam Serwer are the three writers who I would say are the most responsible for keeping me mostly sane the last few years. This, from Petri, is fucking beautimous:

Too bad! Look, there was, once again, a problem with the female candidate, and I am very sorry about it. We have sure had a run of bad luck with these candidates! I would have said 10 years ago that there was no way Cyborg Dave would be president before a human woman, and that Armored Bob would be president SIX TIMES, but — that just shows why I am so highly compensated as a pundit: I am always so surprised, and people love to see it.

But the good news is that there are a lot of women who are already getting my hopes up for 2152. I can just tell. This new crop is everything that the past hundred-plus years of female contenders was not! They just feel right to me. This is going to be the time, for sure. (Coincidentally, those were the last words my now-140-year-old mother said, in 2076, right before we placed her in the Cryo-Tank so that she could not see the results and be disappointed yet again.)

It’s amazing to me, the weird coincidences we’ve had with these female candidates. First Hillary. Then Liz, Amy, Kamala and Kirsten. Then Alexandria. Then Fiona. Then Tiffany. Then Siri. Then Glorm (1 through 19). They always seem so presidential, and then, every time, like clockwork, the second they enter the race, it turns out that something is the matter with them and that a vote for them would betray the ideals I hold dearest. It almost feels deliberate and malicious on their part. Maybe they are the real cyborgs, not President Dave! (No, I am joking. Dave is certainly a cyborg.)

Related:

Alexandra Petri is a National Treasure

*SIGH*

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COVID-19 Anti-Fun Thread: SXSW2020 Cancelled, Emerald City Comic Con ‘Postponed’

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Which means a lot of people — not just acts & vendors, but everyone involved in Austin’s tourist / entertainment scene — are losing revenue they badly needed. Per the Verge:

SXSW, the annual tech, music, and film meetup held in downtown Austin, is the latest major conference to be canceled due to the coronavirus outbreak, and just one week before it was slated to start. It is the first time in the event’s 34-year history that it’s been canceled. The festival was scheduled to take place from March 13th to March 22nd, yet Austin Mayor Steve Adler today announced that, amid an increasing number of high-profile speaker and company withdrawals and growing public health concerns, the festival will no longer be taking place.

“I’ve issued an order that effectively cancels South by Southwest,” Adler said, referencing an emergency order put in place Friday over the coronavirus. The decision will almost certainly be a harsh blow to the city’s economy, as SXSW brings in hundreds of millions of dollars in tourism, ticket sales, and other revenue streams every year. Last year, the festival made $355.9 million for the city of Austin, SXSW said in November.

The private company that organizes SXSW, which has yet to detail its refund policies, made clear in a statement issued on Twitter and its website that this was a decision made by Austin city officials and out of its hands. Yet the festival may end up taking place in some form or another later this year…

A petition on the website Change.org calling for the event’s cancellation amassed more than 55,000 signatures, and high-profile speakers like Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey pulled out ahead of the announcement. Amazon, Apple, and Netflix all said they would no longer premiere new film and TV projects at the show, and countless companies — tech firms Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, and Intel and news organizations like CNN and Mashable — also withdrew from having official, on-the-ground presences at the festival…

And since #ECCC was included in this morning’s COVID-19 roundup — per the Seattle Times, “Emerald City Comic Con postponed due to coronavirus concerns”:

… Organizers announced the decision to move the four-day celebration of pop culture to this summer because of the coronavirus outbreak in Seattle. The event was originally scheduled for March 12-15 at Washington State Convention Center. The event draws around 100,000 people annually.

The company made the announcement in a statement on its website Friday morning…

Earlier this week, fans and creators had debated whether to attend the con in the days leading up to the postponement. Some thought it was irresponsible to hold the event because of the potential to spread the disease around the country, while others took a more sanguine wait-and-see approach. Many wrote on social media that their livelihoods would be impacted by a cancelation or postponement, while others wondered if it was worth attending a diminished event.

Reedpop acknowledged the heavy impact the decision would likely have on the hundreds of participants — from artists to security guards — who depend on the annual event as part of their financial plan.

“We know that this decision is going to greatly impact many of our individual creators, small businesses and service workers,” Friday’s statement read. “To those whose careers depend on ECCC – we will do everything that we can over the coming days and weeks to highlight your work and we ask that our entire community support you as we realize your personal livelihoods may be impacted.”…

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Taking Stock Post Super Tuesday: Why We Are Where We Are

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On Wednesday night commenter dww44 posted that:

Mom is also sad because she cannot understand how we ended up, after such a promising start, with a 77 year old white man and a 78 year old one, both of whom if nominated and elected will be a year older at inaugaration.

I responded to that comment and several of you have either asked if it could be shared or lamented that it should be somewhere more easily accessible than a comment. So here is my response with a couple of minor tweaks:

We ended up here because of a combination of four things. The first is that Senator Sanders has been running non-stop for president since 2016. He never really stopped running when that election ended. This has allowed him to build a large organization to support his candidacy, keep his name recognition high, and mobilize his supporters. The second is Vice President Biden’s name recognition and connection to President Obama. The third is the sad reality of our news media, especially our political news media and how they frame and shape and weight things in a campaign. The fourth and final reason this happened is that the 2020 presidential election is not about Medicare for All or any other specific policy or plan. It is solely a referendum on the President. On whether he gets four more years and the Republic is fully transformed into a white Christian herrenvolk democracy where the rest of us are either considered white on sufferance – for instance Jews – or become some variant of second class citizens if not actual unpersons or whether a hard stop is placed on what he and his administration are trying to do. And because this is the reality of the campaign, and a good part of the context of it, the 2020 presidential election becomes a choice of either “more Trump” or “make it stop”. VP Biden, partially because of his connection to President Obama, partially because of his personal biography, and partially because of his ability to be really and genuinely publicly and privately empathetic and sympathetic personifies this choice.

The 2020 presidential election is really about whether the house (the US) will continue to be burned down by the President, his administration, the GOP, and the conservative movement or whether the fire will be put out, the structure assessed for damage, a determination made about what can be salvaged and refurbished versus what has to be thrown away and replaced with something updated and better. That’s what the election is about. The President obviously represents the arson and burn down the house side of the analogy. VP Biden, better than almost anyone, represents the put the fire out, everyone take a deep breath, assess the damage, and make repairs side of the analogy. Senator Warren, as impressive as she is and despite being the most competent person to oversee the assessments, repairs, and refurbishment, doesn’t convey this. Or, perhaps, she conveys this all too well and it scares far too many Americans, including Democrats. Senator Sanders, however, is the representation of someone who always thought the house was an eyesore and structurally unsound so he wants to accelerate the fire because he has this completely different idea of what should replace it.

The vast majority of Americans just want this administration to stop. Stop here means cease to be, go away, be replaced. They don’t want to have to pay attention every minute of every day to what the President, his administration, his party, and the conservative movement are doing because failure to do so could lead to a terrible outcome for them, their families, and their communities. Most Americans want to be able to go back to not paying attention to who is or is not president for days at a time; to not having to be hyper-vigilant regarding politics. They want the pain to stop. They want the horror to stop. That’s it. And for significant groups within the Democratic coalition they can’t afford to take a risk on revolution. Because they know that it isn’t easy and isn’t safe. And they know that it is always met with overwhelming resistance and pushback from those who want the US to be a white Christian herrenvolk. And that’s why VP Biden has reemerged this week despite his age and his baggage and his malapropisms and occasionally Munchausenian stories. It is why the people with the most to lose in the Democratic coalition who have been the coalition’s and the party’s back bone for decades are supporting VP Biden and rejecting Senator Sanders. And it is why for all that she would be the best of the three as president to actually clean up this mess, Senator Warren can’t get any traction.

The primaries aren’t over. Things may move in a different direction again. The novel Coronavirus and COVID-19, as well as the administration’s response are still outstanding factors that will significant political, economic, and social effects on the remainder of the primary and the general election.

Just remember to vote!

Open thread!

Taking Stock Post Super Tuesday: Why We Are Where We ArePost + Comments (218)

I Just Want a Fish Sandwich and To Be Left Alone

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It’s a Friday during Lent, which means that basically the goal for my entire day is to have a fish sandwich and not be fucked with. I have frequently stated, only half joking, that my three favorite things in the world are sitting, napping, and not being fucked with. As I age, and in particular during the Trump era, this becomes more the case.

I honestly think that a great deal of the reason Biden has re-emerged as the frontrunner is that there are a lot of people who are basically just sick and tired of the fucking chaos. I’m tired of being yelled at. I’m tired of every fucking time I turn on the god damned television that malignant motherfucker or one of his cronies is either on my screen or being talked about or something awful they have done is being talked about. It’s fucking exhausting.

It’s exhausting not only because he is just so awful and is an energy vampire who just sucks the life out of everyone, it’s exhausting because you have to constantly pay attention to navigate the constant stream of lies and to keep telling yourself “This is not normal.” You can’t let your guard down for a minute with the guy because they are constantly gaslighting. Even on the one in a million times he says something you agree with- “We should not be involved in so many foreign wars” you have to sit and figure out why is he saying this how does he plan to rob the country.

I remember when Obama, hell, even George Bush, that fucking idiot, and you could go an entire week without seeing the President’s fat fucking mug on television being awful. Remember when Obama went on vacation to Hawaii, and other than that idiot Cokie Roberts calling it exotic in a pretty clear dogwhistle, he was actually on vacation and fucked off out of sight for two weeks? My god, were Trump to just fuck off the national stage for a month his poll numbers would go up ten points.

I would not be at all surprised if part of Biden’s surge is a lot of people in the country are to the point that they just want to have a fish sandwich and be left the fuck alone. Yes, decency and making things better would be awesome, but please, can we just stop the torture?

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There Is Such A Thing As Too Much Decency

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Those of us who think government should work, i.e., Democrats, are also ones who are willing to give government a break. The right-wing desire to shit on even the smallest mistake made by government — “mistakes” that are often distortions or outright fabrications — has made us less than eager to criticize government, because most government workers are doing their best, and government will be the solution to a lot of the problems that Democrats want to solve.

So, the CDC’s fuckup with the COVID-19 test, which is serious, is a tough one for Democrats to criticize, as it should be. The CDC is a world-class organization, creating a test quickly is a major scientific and biomedical engineering challenge, and it will go wrong once in a while despite best efforts of all involved. The decent thing to do is to not make a big deal about it, in the spirit of all of us pulling together in the face of a shared danger, and wait for a careful fact-finding investigation so we can all learn how it won’t happen again.

That may be our impulse, and it could be right, but I can’t help but think that decency by Democrats is always leveraged to full political advantage by the Republicans. Everybody knows that when the documents are revealed long after the fact, we’ll find that Trump stooges have downplayed the COVID-19 danger and pressured career bureaucrats to engage in a coverup. Whether or not Trumpers were directly responsible for the failure at the CDC, we know that every Trump budget has proposed CDC cuts. And we all know that, no matter what Democrats say, Trumpers will feign outrage that we’ve dared to criticize brave soldiers in the war against the virus while the battle is occurring, all while they do their best to blame any and all failures on Democrats.

The only real reason that might justify not going after Trumpers now would be to increase panic, but anyone watching the clown show that Trump & Co have put on so far knows damn well that they’re a bunch of fools, and fools playing with fire is a legitimate cause for deep concern. So why not go after them all hammer and tongs, starting now? I know it’s usually considered politically smart to wait until the dust settles, but Trump never does, so why should we?

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