Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

In after Baud. Damn.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

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

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

We know you aren’t a Democrat but since you seem confused let me help you.

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

Boeing: repeatedly making the case for high speed rail.

“But what about the lurkers?”

There are a lot more evil idiots than evil geniuses.

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

This blog will pay for itself.

So very ready.

Stand up, dammit!

Good lord, these people are nuts.

American history and black history cannot be separated.

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

Books are my comfort food!

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

You cannot shame the shameless.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

DeSantis transforming Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

“woke” is the new caravan.

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On The Road – Alain at Udvar-Hazy Museum

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Good Morning, Everybody,

I hope this finds you well! Today’s submission is mine.

 

This past weekend, I caught a movie at the Smithsonian Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Air & Space Museum near Dulles Airport, in Virginia. It’s the largest IMAX screen in the state and is a great place to see a movie, even if the food and seats are sub-optimal.

The way this free museum works is that parking is $15 per car until 4 pm, then it’s free until the 5:30 pm museum closing time. Movies are scheduled around 4:30, so you can avoid paying the parking fee, and the theater area is open into the night. For movies, we try to arrive precisely at 4 so we have some time to wander the museum before the show.

In this visit, I ran around and grabbed a few shots of the aircraft (and spacecraft!) to help share this amazing museum. The moment I walked in, I knew I had to scurry around and get some pictures for Balloon Juice, something that I hadn’t planned on until inspiration hit. I plan to go back and spend a day there so I can look at, and photograph, as many individual exhibits as possible, which I will of course post. They are open every day except Christmas Day, so I plan to go when it’s a bad weather day sometime soon.

Today’s photos are, for the most part, filled with too many vehicles to mention (plus I didn’t take notes since I was rushed), but I wanted to share this wonderful museum with you. Consider this an appetizer for a series of posts later this year.

I know that many of you travel as part of your work, as I used to. The museum is just a few minutes’ shuttle bus ride from Dulles Airport, and it’s easy to spend 2-4 hours minimum looking around and marveling at the exhibits. For years I’ve recommended that folks consider routing themselves through Dulles for connecting flights, leaving themselves a 4-6 hour layover to enjoy the museum at leisure.  It’s worth it, and beats spending 2 hours laid-over at another airport with nothing to improve you.

 

Since this is a standard post and not the OTR interface, accept my apologies for the different formatting. There are a host of pics after the “Read More” link.

This is an overhead view showing some WWI and prior aircraft. I always enter the exhibit area from above, on this side. It just feels right to start with an overhead view and with ~WWI aircraft and then work towards WWII, modern, and then the Space stuff as the final leg.

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Impeachment Inquiry Open Thread: The Process Continues

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Great photo choice, IMO — reminiscent of the evacuation of Saigon. Per the Washington Post:

Top Senate Republicans on Monday rejected President Trump’s call for outright dismissal of the impeachment charges against him, but continued to grapple with the shape of the Senate trial that could begin as soon as this week.

Most Senate Republicans are eager to stage a trial that ends with Trump’s acquittal and vindication on charges that he abused the power of his office in his dealings with Ukraine and obstructed a subsequent investigation in the House. But over the weekend, Trump urged the Senate simply to dismiss the charges against him — without hearing arguments from House prosecutors or his own legal team.

On Monday, senior Republicans said immediate dismissal could not win approval in the chamber, where Republicans hold a 53-seat majority. And even some staunch Trump allies argued that the president’s legacy would benefit from a robust trial…

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has said that he wants the trial — only the third impeachment of a president in U.S. history — to follow the format used 21 years ago in the trial of President Bill Clinton. In that case, the Senate approved a resolution that would have allowed the Senate to vote to dismiss the charges.

But senior Republicans signaled Monday that they are not inclined to include such a provision in the resolution that will kick off Trump’s trial, perhaps as soon as Thursday…

Speaking of elaborate fantasies… it’s probably too much to hope Roooody Colludi will get his wish here:

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Late Night Open Thread: The Pleasant Feeling of Distant Superiority

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Entertainment value has always been part of a royal family’s utility; now that there are better ways of managing foreign policy, that’s arguably their highest utility…

So, it’s hard on Grandma that her youngest great-grandchild won’t be quite as accessible, going forward. On the other hand, the Designated Heir (to the designated heir, but c’mon, Charles is unlikely to ever achieve the role he’s literally waited for since his birth) has certainly shown willing, having already produced three more contestants between Harry and the throne.

Harry certainly has no reason to appease the British media; after driving his beloved (if unstable) mother to her death, the tabloids have done their best to just-ask-questions into convincing their readers that Harry isn’t even Charles’ son, and that was before he had the nerve to — shall we say — color outside the lines when it came to picking a spouse to generate another generation of public entertainment.

And it’s not as though the young family is gonna be indigent when they ask for Canadian sanctuary:

… According to British press reports, Harry’s net worth is estimated to be around $39 million, most of it inherited from his mother, Princess Diana, and his great-grandmother, the Queen Mother. Meghan’s net worth is estimated to be around $5 million, much of it coming from her acting role on the TV series “Suits.”…

The Family has reputedly been discussing a heavy-duty revamp, where the ‘less central’ members would be weaned off the public teat. It will probably be speculated, some day, that the Harry/Meghan ‘escape’ was the semi-covert start of this laudable plan.

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The Black PSYOP Part V: Russia Was, Apparently, Listening – Election 2020 Edition

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I’ve written several posts about Black PSYOPs, which are attempts to launder misinformation, disinformation, and agitprop through legitimate sources to influence people’s, groups’, and governments’ attitudes and actions. I’ve specifically focused on attempts by Republican elected and appointed officials, as well as the President’s surrogates, to launder the debunked, factually inaccurate, lie that Vice President Biden knuckled the Ukrainian prosecutor back in 2014 and 2015 in order to protect his son Hunter Biden. The truth is that Vice President Biden, representing the official policy of the United States and working with US allies in Britain, the EU, and the IMF sought to force out a corrupt prosecutor who was covering up and slow walking investigations into corruption in the post-Maidan Ukraine.

Moreover, as I’ve repeatedly covered since September, the assertion that Hunter Biden did anything wrong is actually Russian created agitprop that was first put forward in Russian state backed news media in May 2014. It emerged because it was being reported at the time that Vice President Biden was considering running for president in 2016 and Putin was looking to dirty him up should he emerge as the Democratic nominee. It is the same reason that one of Secretary Kerry’s, who was also being reported in 2014 as considering another run for the presidency, step-sons was mentioned in the reporting by RIA-Novosti.

The New York Times is reporting that the GRU, Russian military intelligence, appears to have now hacked Burisma, which is the Ukrainian natural gas company that employed Hunter Biden.

https://twitter.com/nicoleperlroth/status/1216868836806283265

With President Trump facing an impeachment trial over his efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his son Hunter Biden, Russian military hackers have been boring into the Ukrainian gas company at the center of the affair, according to security experts.

The hacking attempts against Burisma, the Ukrainian gas company on whose board Hunter Biden served, began in early November, as talk of the Bidens, Ukraine and impeachment was dominating the news in the United States.

It is not yet clear what the hackers found, or precisely what they were searching for. But the experts say the timing and scale of the attacks suggest that the Russians could be searching for potentially embarrassing material on the Bidens — the same kind of information that Mr. Trump wanted from Ukraine when he pressed for an investigation of the Bidens and Burisma, setting off a chain of events that led to his impeachment.

The Russian tactics are strikingly similar to what American intelligence agencies say was Russia’s hacking of emails from Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman and the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 presidential campaign. In that case, once they had the emails, the Russians used trolls to spread and spin the material, and built an echo chamber to widen its effect.

Then, as now, the Russian hackers from a military intelligence unit known formerly as the G.R.U., and to private researchers by the alias “Fancy Bear,” used so-called phishing emails that appear designed to steal usernames and passwords, according to Area 1, the Silicon Valley security firm that detected the hacking. In this instance, the hackers set up fake websites that mimicked sign-in pages of Burisma subsidiaries, and have been blasting Burisma employees with emails meant to look like they are coming from inside the company.

The hackers fooled some of them into handing over their login credentials, and managed to get inside one of Burisma’s servers, Area 1 said.

“The attacks were successful,” said Oren Falkowitz, a co-founder of Area 1, who previously served at the National Security Agency. Mr. Falkowitz’s firm maintains a network of sensors on web servers around the globe — many known to be used by state-sponsored hackers — which gives the firm a front-row seat to phishing attacks, and allows them to block attacks on their customers.

“The timing of the Russian campaign mirrors the G.R.U. hacks we saw in 2016 against the D.N.C. and John Podesta,” the Clinton campaign chairman, Mr. Falkowitz said. “Once again, they are stealing email credentials, in what we can only assume is a repeat of Russian interference in the last election.”

The purpose of this hacking is not just to get access to emails and other documents, remove them, and either leak them through third parties to gullible members of the US news media who will be all to happy to publish them in a repeat of 2016 or to credulous surrogates of the President like his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani. The purpose of hacking into these systems is also to be able to adjust actual emails and documents, as well as plant false ones, that can then be removed, leaked, and laundered through the news media with the real emails and documents as part of the ongoing Black PSYOP campaign. If there’s nothing actually incriminating in Burisma’s employees’ or board of directors member’s emails or the company’s documents about Hunter Biden, then the GRU will be happy to fabricate them (agitprop), embed them with the real information, and then ensure that all of that information – real and fabricated – makes its way to the information laundries of the US news media so it can be weaponized against Vice President Biden and on behalf of the President. They did this with the Clinton campaign and DNC emails in 2016 and they’ll do it again here too.

And the GRU’s, as well as other hostile state actors and, most likely, those of some partners who have a preference in the outcome of the 2020 elections efforts will not be confined to Vice President Biden. I guarantee that they have operations ready to go for any of the leading Democratic candidates contesting for the Democratic nomination. Some of these efforts will be easier than others. Attempts will be made to get to files, documents, and emails from Senator Warren’s time doing legal consulting. And you’ll see hacks attempting to bring to light that she got unfair treatment by falsely claiming to be Native American or lying about when she was pregnant. Four decades of speeches and public access show episodes and writings from Senator Sanders will be released in toto (the most controversial ones) or barbered and adjusted for maximum influence effect to make fairly banal left of center statements seem nefarious. Documents, emails, and records from Senator Klobuchar’s time as a local prosecutor will be combed through. And attempts will be made to get into McKinsey’s systems, as well as those of South Bend, Indiana looking for anything that can be used against Mayor Buttigieg. And if nothing really damaging can be found on any of these candidates, then it will be manufactured and that will be weaponized. Remember, part of what led FBI Director Comey to usurp the authority of the Attorney General in 2016, including not even just recommending that then Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates take the lead regarding Secretary Clinton’s email investigation, was a false memo fabricated by the GRU, which they allowed US intelligence to collect. When even the most senior professionals with extensive experience can be manipulated to make terrible professional errors through agitprop, imagine what it is going to do to the Ken Vogels and Mike Allens of the world, let alone Rudy Giuliani, Jeanine Pirro, Seant Hannity, and Lou Dobbs? All of whom are just salivating for someone to hand them this type of information gift wrapped and ready to go regardless of who is providing it and whether or not it is accurate or even germane to the election.

As I wrote way back in March 2019, the 2020 elections are an information war. And that information war is wrapped within an undeclared interstate war between Russia and the US. And that is the reality that every Democratic campaign, up and down the ballot from municipal special districts to those seeking the presidency, America’s Intelligence Community, the National Security Directorate’s at the DOJ and FBI, and the news media, especially those covering politics, need to understand and prepare for. After the 2016 election and what has now been well documented as happening since as far back as 2014, there is no good excuse for refusing to learn from the past 5 and 1/2 years, for campaigns and the new media to not have counter-influence operations in place and operating, and for Americans not to be informed and realize that we are at war. The 2020 election is not just taking place while that war is ongoing; the 2020 election is actually one theater of operations in that war.

Aux armes, citoyens!

Open thread!

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Excellent Read: “May 17, 1954”

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Michael Harriot (last seen here discussing the forgotten history of Andrew Johnson’s impeachment), deduces that was the date Donald Trump imagines when he talks about making America great again…


(Click on the link above to read the whole thing in post format)

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Grifters Gonna Grift Open Thread: Why Is the Sanders Campaign Suddenly In Need of A Big Distraction?

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Warren is an unelectable whore! Biden is an elderly racist! Buttigieg is a larval robot! Sure, it’s crunch time in Iowa, but I had been expecting this kind of noisy media-friendly shite-flinging from the Sanders campaign ever since a certain AP article appeared last week — “Shadow group provides Sanders super PAC support he scorns”:

Bernie Sanders says he doesn’t want a super PAC. Instead, he has Our Revolution, a nonprofit political organization he founded that functions much the same as one.

Like a super PAC, which is shorthand for super political action committee, Our Revolution can raise unlimited sums from wealthy patrons that dwarf the limits faced by candidates and conventional PACs. Unlike a super PAC, however, the group doesn’t have to disclose its donors — a stream of revenue commonly referred to as “dark money.”

Now, with less than one month to go before the Iowa caucuses, Our Revolution appears to be skirting campaign finance law, which forbids groups founded by federal candidates and officeholders from using large donations to finance federal election activity, including Sanders’ 2020 bid.…

…[W]hile Warren has come under fire for courting wealthy financiers in her past Senate campaigns, Sanders and Our Revolution have largely avoided scrutiny during the primary, even as he has accelerated his criticism of others, among them Biden, for relying on super PACs founded by their allies.

In the case of Our Revolution, which aims to boost voter turnout for Sanders, the Vermont senator was the founder…

The campaign finance act says groups “directly or indirectly established” by federal officeholders or candidates can’t “solicit, receive, direct, transfer, or spend funds” for federal electoral activity that exceeds the “limitations, prohibitions, and reporting requirements” of the law. Those limits are currently set at $2,800 for candidates and $5,000 for political action committees.

Our Revolution has taken in nearly $1 million from donors who gave more than the limits and whose identities it hasn’t fully disclosed, according to tax filings for 2016, 2017 and 2018. Much of it came from those who contributed six-figure sums.

It won’t have to publicly reveal its 2019 fundraising until after this year’s presidential election. And money it raises between now and then won’t have to be disclosed until the following year…

Read the whole thing. I’d been waiting to see how much this story would be amplified outside sources like the Daily Caller, or whether the Sanders campaign would mount a defense. But that defense, as ever with St. Bernie, turns out to be “I HAVE NO FLAWS, unlike every other Democratic candidate!”

So, no, I don’t expect to hear Word One about this during tomorrow’s debate — the other candidates can’t afford to waste resources fighting a million bad-faith assaults on their staff and volunteers from the Bernie mob, and the media has no interest in damping down such an ‘exciting’ candidate. They’re saving their ammo until, in Chris Cillizza’s dreams, it’s a two-army battle between the Oval Office Occupant and his mirror-world doppelganger. And as long as he can keep squirreling away money for his ongoing, never-ending national campaign (and his fourth house), Sanders is perfectly happy to take advantage.

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Tomorrow’s debate will be LIT…

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CNN is reporting that during a private meeting last year, Sanders told Warren a woman couldn’t win:

The stakes were high when Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren met at Warren’s apartment in Washington, DC, one evening in December 2018. The longtime friends knew that they could soon be running against each other for president.

The two agreed that if they ultimately faced each other as presidential candidates, they should remain civil and avoid attacking one another, so as not to hurt the progressive movement. They also discussed how to best take on President Donald Trump, and Warren laid out two main reasons she believed she would be a strong candidate: She could make a robust argument about the economy and earn broad support from female voters. Sanders responded that he did not believe a woman could win.

The description of that meeting is based on the accounts of four people: two people Warren spoke with directly soon after the encounter, and two people familiar with the meeting.

One of CNN’s sources also says Sanders groused about the party’s “growing focus among Democrats on identity politics.” Sanders is on record decrying “identity politics,” but he denies telling Warren a woman can’t get elected president:

“It is ludicrous to believe that at the same meeting where Elizabeth Warren told me she was going to run for president, I would tell her that a woman couldn’t win,” Sanders said. “It’s sad that, three weeks before the Iowa caucus and a year after that private conversation, staff who weren’t in the room are lying about what happened. What I did say that night was that Donald Trump is a sexist, a racist and a liar who would weaponize whatever he could. Do I believe a woman can win in 2020? Of course! After all, Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump by 3 million votes in 2016.”

CNN is moderating the debate tomorrow, along with The Des Moines Register. There’s absolutely zero chance they won’t hound Warren over this. Not Sanders — Warren. No comment from the candidate herself so far.

Open thread.

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