Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Roe is not about choice. It is about freedom.

Innocent people do not delay justice.

“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”

We need to vote them all out and restore sane Democratic government.

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

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

With all due respect and assumptions of good faith, please fuck off into the sun.

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

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

Hey hey, RFK, how many kids did you kill today?

This fight is for everything.

After dobbs, women are no longer free.

Human rights are not a matter of opinion!

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

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

Consistently wrong since 2002

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

Fear and negativity are contagious, but so is courage!

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

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

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

GOP baffled that ‘we don’t care if you die’ is not a winning slogan.

Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.

You are here: Home / Archives for 2020

Archives for 2020

The Retaliation Begins

by | 140 Comments

This post is in: 

Trump just suspended NEXUS enrollments for New York State residents:

The Trump administration will no longer allow New York residents to enroll in Global Entry or other Trusted Traveler programs, citing new “sanctuary” policies that limit federal access to state driver’s license data, acting homeland security secretary Chad Wolf said on Fox News late Wednesday.

Wolf told host Tucker Carlson that he sent a letter to the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles informing the agency that the state’s new limits on information-sharing with U.S. Customs and Border Protection made it impossible for federal authorities to process travelers’ applications for Global Entry and other programs.

This is huge in Western New York, because many of us travel to Canada regularly and NEXUS cuts a lot of time from the process. The real reason behind it is that New York just passed a law called “Green Light” that lets the undocumented get drivers’ licenses. It’s more race-baiting for the base, we’ll fight it in court, but this is just the start of Trump’s efforts to turn blue state residents into second class citizens.

Edited to add: The flimsy premise of this whole stupid act is that somehow Green Light restricts Homeland Security from accessing the DMV database. It doesn’t, and also kids can get NEXUS (if you’re crossing, to be in the NEXUS lane, everyone has to have it). It’s just stupid and mean, like everything Trump does.

The Retaliation BeginsPost + Comments (140)

Speaking of Satan…

by | 228 Comments

This post is in: , ,

The Beast is apparently holding a victory lap/press conference right now that is spiraling into new heights of craziness. No president has ever been treated so badly, not even those who were shot in the face. Trump has covered the following topics: Comey, Hillary Clinton, Strzok and Page, Pelosi, Jim Jordan’s ears, Scalise’s gunshot wound and his wife’s evidently remarkable concern about the possibility of his death, etc.

I’m not watching, not even clips, but people on Twitter are astonished that the networks aren’t cutting away. I’ll give you two reasons why not: 1) cha 2) ching.

Tom Perez has called on the Iowa Democratic Party to recanvass caucus results:

Meanwhile, Sanders declared victory on Twitter. Jesus, what a day. How about some peaceful birds?

We’re supposed to get a significant wind, rain and lightning event, aka, a storm, later. Maybe we’ll get lucky and be cut off from civilization for several days. We’d be fine. Better, maybe!

Open thread!

Speaking of Satan…Post + Comments (228)

Satan is real

by | 145 Comments

This post is in: , ,

I think what Mitt did in voting for removal was genuinely honorable and even courageous, given the amount of blowback he’ll get from wingers. I predicted at the time that he’d get no love from the professional centrists for it, not even from those who said “McCain is Churchill” every time he wrote a sternly worded tweet. As predicted….

I said it once before (on twitter) but it bears repeating: Bret Stephens is bad but he’s just the frat boy who yells dumb stuff at women, pulls Cs in his classes, and coasts through life on daddy’s money and connections. David Brooks is the fraternity president who lies to the cops about the pledge’s body they stuffed in the chimney.

One thing that I’ve had the misfortune to learn as I’ve gotten older is that some people are bad. Not bad on the outside/good on the inside, not “flawed”, just bad, irredeemably, sociopathically bad. David Brooks is one of these people.

This also bears repeating: Only one thing matters: voting out as many of these clowns in the Senate as we can. Give here to the Balloon Juice Senate fund which is split between the eventual Democratic nominees in Maine, Iowa, NC, Arizona, Georgia, and Colorado. We’ve only got a few more days of trial so trying to raise as much as I can while the sun shines. I raised the goal to 25K.

Goal Thermometer

Satan is realPost + Comments (145)

Sadness Is My Boyfriend

by | 29 Comments

This post is in: 

Dahlia Lithwick is normally very good, but when she’s righteously pissed, she’s extra good:

Murkowski wants you to know that she is sad. We know she is sad because it is the word she used to describe that feeling she gets when the branch of government charged with checking the other branch of government wholly abdicates its responsibility to do so. And she emphatically wants you to know that Congress, which has failed to check the executive, is to blame for this failure: “This process has been the apotheosis of the problem of congressional abdication,” Murkowski said, in her transcendently incoherent floor speech on Monday evening, explaining her own abdication. “Through the refusal to exercise war powers, or relinquishing the power of the purse, selective oversight and unwillingness to check emergency declarations designed to skirt Congress—we have failed.” Having excoriated Congress for its failure to check the runaway executive branch, she then announced her vote to refuse to check the runaway executive branch. It was like a surgeon watching a patient bleed out on the table, while refusing to pick up a scalpel, while also blaming the concept of surgery.

Lithwick also has a good go at the other sad sister, Collins.

Murkowski has always struck me as having a resting sad face, though it is nothing compared to Stellan Skarsgård in the video above.

Also, I posted a comment in the other thread that Jennifer Rubin had let me down on Romney, but I was wrong. She posted a column on the greatness of Mitt about 50 minutes after he gave his speech on the Senate floor – either she writes at the speed of the sound of loneliness, or she had an inkling that her hero would come through. Read it through for the last sentence – I won’t spoil it for my fellow Rubin connoisseurs.

Open thread.

Sadness Is My BoyfriendPost + Comments (29)

The ACA back at SCOTUS this term????

by | 14 Comments

This post is in: 

The Hill reports that the Supreme Court is adding the toss the entire ACA case, Texas v. Azar to its conference at the end of February:

 

The Supreme Court on Wednesday listed a closely watched case seeking to strike down the Affordable Care Act for discussion at the justices’ private conference on Feb. 21.

The justices will consider whether to take up the case and on what schedule.

There is at least some possibility they could decide to take the case this term, meaning a ruling would be issued by June. But most observers expect a ruling will not come until after the 2020 election, either because the court waits until the next term to hear it, or because it decides not to take up the case at all until lower courts have finished considering it.

The logic of the case is bananapants as the government brief conceded in a recent brief that there was no damage being alleged or inflicted that was resolvable by a judicial decision. But that does not matter. What matters is what five justices think on any given day. A faster resolution increases the odds that the NFIB v. Sebelius coalition of Roberts, Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayer and Kagan will re-affirm their rulings. A long slow process through the courts makes actuarial tables far more relevant.

The ACA back at SCOTUS this term????Post + Comments (14)

Kerry On My Wayward Son

by | 136 Comments

This post is in: 

The results from Iowa are almost done and while Pete and Bernie are still neck and neck and fighting it out, one thing is crystal clear: Biden did terribly. He’s in fourth place. The delegate estimate I saw showed zero delegates. [Update: it was wrong.] His campaign had $8 million on hand at the end of last year, versus Sanders, Buttigieg and Warren’s mid-teens numbers. January numbers aren’t out yet, though the Sanders campaign announced another good month ($25 mil), and Warren has said she’s going to have to be careful with her cash. As far as I can tell, there’s been nothing but crickets from the Biden campaign on their fundraising.

For those of you who listen to Pod Save America, you’ve probably heard Favreau tell the story of the 2004 Kerry campaign, where he was a low-level staffer. I can’t find any online stories about it but the gist is that Kerry was almost out of money and Dean was getting a lot of good press and beat him in the DC primary. So Kerry shook things up and then went on to win Iowa and pretty much cruise to the nomination. Those of you with better memories might be able to fill in some blanks.

I was hoping to hope for Biden supporters in the story of the 2004 Kerry turn around (hence the title of the post), but by this time in 2004, the Kerry campaign was already showing serious signs of life. Of course, Kerry wasn’t the former VP, and that’s a huge political bonus. And there’s also Biden’s popularity in the African American community, which makes it possible that he’ll win primaries in the South and more urban states.

That all said, the polling in this race has shown that Democratic voters are moving their allegiance a lot. Look at the calendar and think about Biden. We start with a blowout in Iowa, followed by an almost certain loss in New Hampshire (Warren and Sanders both being almost local there), followed at best by a squeaker win in Nevada (this poll average looks ominous), a win in South Carolina (his “firewall”) and then Super Tuesday on March 3. Super Tuesday has 15 states and 1,344 delegates up for grabs. You need money to compete there, and Biden will head into that Tuesday maybe having one win to brag about.

I just don’t see a Biden win in this. Yeah, in terms of delegates, Iowa doesn’t matter. But it’s not like Biden didn’t contest the state — he ate his share of bacon wrapped deep fried snickers bars with lard dipping sauce. He just didn’t excite the voters there, period. That’s a problem, no matter what office he held prior to this.

Kerry On My Wayward SonPost + Comments (136)

Thursday Morning Open Thread: Stay Defiant

by | 163 Comments

This post is in: , ,

… For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.

Thursday Morning Open Thread: Stay DefiantPost + Comments (163)