Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

If you can’t control your emotions, someone else will.

Dear legacy media: you are not here to influence outcomes and policies you find desirable.

The republican ‘Pastor’ of the House is an odious authoritarian little creep.

Republicans in disarray!

You cannot shame the shameless.

Their boy Ron is an empty plastic cup that will never know pudding.

Stamping your little feets and demanding that they see how important you are? Not working anymore.

A norm that restrains only one side really is not a norm – it is a trap.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

Welcome to day five of every-bit-as-bad-as-you-thought-it-would-be.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

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

People are complicated. Love is not.

The unpunished coup was a training exercise.

Mediocre white men think RFK Jr’s pathetic midlife crisis is inspirational. The bar is set so low for them, it’s subterranean.

Reality always gets a vote in the end.

Hell hath no fury like a farmer bankrupted.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

Their shamelessness is their super power.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

Petty moves from a petty man.

Dear media: perhaps we ought to let Donald Trump speak for himself!

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

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Archives for 2020

Election Year Open Thread: Cancel Iowa

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I’m sorry, Iowans, you’re lovely people and I’m sure you mean well, but this is not an optimal way to select the leadership for a country as large and diverse as ours. Because the rest of us are tired of finding euphemisms — unpredictable! — for the fact that too many of you are actually insulated from the effects of your choices:

And, no, you’re not responsible for the DNC’s weirder efforts to please all its warring factions, but if we weren’t all fixated on your antiquated caucus system (yes, and NH’s cranky insistence on being FRIST IN THE NATION, forty-nine other states be damned), the DNC would have a much more practical path…

… “I think that people need to idle their engines a little bit,” says Penny Rosfjord, an Iowa Democratic Party district chair. “A caucus was never meant to be smooth; it’s kind of a messy process. It’s not a straightforward, check a box and move on.”…

Of course, it’s never easy to give up a perceived entitlement...

… but once you’ve laid down this burden, we’ll all be happier voters!

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2019 Music Discovery

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What’s your favorite band or performer that you discovered in 2019? It doesn’t have to be music made in 2019 – just something you found last year. Here’s mine – Cigarettes After Sex. Their new album, Cry, dropped last Fall, but they’ve been around for a while. Honorable mention – Big Thief.

Also, whoever gave KEXP a bunch of money for their new performance space, and the money to make really good performance videos, is showing other rich people how rich people ought to spend a little bit of their money, even after we institute higher taxes.

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Seemingly Reasonable Advice That’s Hard to Follow

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There was a post the other day with this recommendation from HRC:

Try to vote for the person you think is most likely to win because at the end of the day that is what will matter. And not just the popular vote, but the electoral college too.

Well, OK, how do I do that? Do I become a mini-pundit and have an imaginary Cletus safari to some diner in Ohio or Wisconsin where I imagine which candidate will appeal to the Obama/Trump voters there? Or should I instead take a stroll down 12th Ave in Tucson, stopping in a few restaurants on the way (yum) and interviewing some non-voting latinos to see which candidate would motivate them to go the polls? And even if my little made-up thief sample of voters yielded a clear answer about which candidate is most likely to win, can I trust it?

Every person reading this blog is in many ways unable to determine who will win because we aren’t the kinds of voters who need to be persuaded to turn out, or to change their vote. Most of us will crawl over broken glass to vote for whomever the Democrats nominate. We are not the voters who need to be convinced to vote for a Democrat, or even to vote. So, for many primary voters like us, this exercise of imagining who can win is pointless – we just lack the imagination to do it. Our brains don’t work the way theirs do. We’re not better or worse, just different.

Instead of trying to pick a winner, my suggestion is to choose a candidate that speaks to you, but try not to get too hung up on your chosen candidate. Pretty much anyone who didn’t buy their way on the debate stage the other night could beat Trump under the right circumstances. Hell, Corey Booker and Kamala Harris could have beaten him. With the right six sigma strategy and a good SWOT analysis, even Pete might get it done. So, if your candidate isn’t the final winner, don’t look for a fucking conspiracy, and don’t listen to the conspiracy mongers. They’re the ones that will cause real damage to the party, not Democrats who pick a candidate because they like their message without worrying about whether they can win.

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All the President’s Henchmen

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Maddow on AM Joy yesterday:

Me too, Rachel. The Trumps and their mobbed-up flunkies are an extreme danger to the republic and must be defeated. But GOP establishment figures like Barr, who’ve proved willing to go to any lengths to keep the con going, are a more insidious menace.

Some connected and elected Democrats vouched for Barr when Trump nominated him. They figured a long-term DC player could be trusted to protect institutions instead of subverting them on behalf of the demented conman. It was a bad bet.

The hot tub salesman who filled the AG job on an acting basis was an unqualified numpty, but at least he was impeded in his corruption by lack of familiarity with the job. Not so Mr. Barr. Consider a small sample of Barr’s inappropriate actions since his confirmation:

  • Lied about the contents of the Mueller report before its release
  • Held a press conference just prior to the Mueller report release to lie about it some more
  • Buried the whistleblower report and unlawfully failed to transmit the complaint to the FEC
  • Dismissed IG investigations that cleared Trump’s perceived enemies and reopened investigations
  • Undermined relationships with allies to investigate “deep state” conspiracy theories
  • Obstructed investigations into corrupt attempts to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census

Parnas is a shady character with his own agenda, so it makes sense to treat his unverified claims about Barr or anyone else with skepticism. But as Maddow points out, Trump did mention Barr as well as Giuliani during the phone call with Zelensky to advance the extortion scheme.

Speaker Pelosi gets it. She called Barr a “rogue attorney general” and one of “the president’s henchmen” the other day at a press conference (clip included in another post). She’s right:

Does anybody think that the rogue attorney general is going to support–appoint a special prosecutor? No, because he’s implicated in all of this. This is an example of all of the president’s henchmen, and I hope that the senators do not become part of the president’s henchmen.

Pelosi’s remarks about Barr didn’t get the attention they deserved because of the media circus around Trump’s impeachment. But it was reassuring (for me, at least) that she chose to make them.

Because only a portion of one half of one branch of government is currently acting as guardians of the Constitution the entire government swore to uphold, it’s a heavy lift to ask the House Dems to investigate the attorney general too. But no one else is going to shoulder that load. It’s up to the Speaker.

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Sunday Morning Garden Chat: The Promise of Tulips

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Thanks to WaterGirl (again) for a winter mood-brightener:

At my house, there are happy tulips everywhere you look in the spring!

These solid pink ones are my favorites, and the white ones really make everything else pop. The white ones are sensational at dusk, when they seem to jump out at you.

Double tulips

I can look up the name of the double tulips if anyone wants to know what they are. I just love them, even though they don’t really look like tulips.

tulips

I get all my bulbs from Colorblends, which satby turned me on to several years ago.

favorite pink tulip

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I’m trying a tulip experiment myself this year — I planted a bunch of double-tiered Angelique bulbs in a 20″ bowl planter, along with some little blue scilla for contrast. Both of us have really enjoyed the ‘spring roses’ (as the Spousal Unit dubbed them) when I’ve tried them before. But they’re effectively annuals in our yard, so I’m going to see if the bulbs survive the winter under conditions where I can just move the pot when they’re done flowering, and use the space for annuals.

Reminder: If you have garden pics that you never had the chance to send me last summer, this would be the *perfect* time to share them!

What’s going on in your garden (planning), this week?

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Election Year Open Thread: What A Coincidence, Guys!

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The media starts talking about Warren’s sterling debate performance, and suddenly it occurs to her competitors that she could very well be a useful second banana…

Still looking for the offer from Buttigieg’s team, but maybe he’s young enough not to automatically assume that any woman would automatically be flattered to be offered a job as his backup. Because Bernie and Biden both have the feeble, misogynistic ‘in my day’ excuse. Unlike, I suspect, the Bernie / Biden staffers who thought it would be smart marketing to put it out there at this point in the race…

Clownshow Mike, demonstrating their ‘rationale’:

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Respite Open Thread: Can’t Teach Your Grandma…

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… to rock a bitchin’ velociraptor costume!

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