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

Peak wingnut was a lie.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

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

It’s the corruption, stupid.

Come on, man.

Today in our ongoing national embarrassment…

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

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

Roe is not about choice. It is about freedom.

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

… gradually, and then suddenly.

It’s a good piece. click on over. but then come back!!

I swear, each month of 2025 will have its own history degree.

Not rolling over. fuck you, make me.

Hell hath no fury like a farmer bankrupted.

The willow is too close to the house.

Not loving this new fraud based economy.

Let me file that under fuck it.

Dear elected officials: Trump is temporary, dishonor is forever.

People are complicated. Love is not.

If you are still in the gop, you are either an extremist yourself, or in bed with those who are.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

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67Comments

  3. 3.

    dmsilev

    @WaterGirl:They’re making her into a martyr to the Glorious Revolution, and the officer who (totally did his job) into a villain. My fear is that some Republican Rep will learn that officer’s name in a classified briefing and will ‘accidentally’ leak it to the lynch mob.

    Edit: I guess you deleted the comment I’m replying to. ‘She’ was the rioter killed by the Capitol Police on Insurrection Day.

  5. 5.

    WaterGirl

    @dmsilev: I actually deleted that tweet because there was too much Trump on it.  That would be a helluva way to start a post.

    I think the officer that shot her saved a lot of lives that day.  Lives of our elected officials.  As far as I could tell, that stopped the protesters dead in their tracks, and no one else tried to get through the window to where our elected officials were.

    Your fear is well-founded, though.

  8. 8.

    WaterGirl

    What do we know about the Haiti president who was assassinated in his own home?  That’s scary.

    I also haven’t had time to follow the New York City mayor’s race.  The guy who won (Adams) was not who anyone thought would win, right?  Is he any good?  I can’t see how someone who was Lt. with the NYC cops could be a move in the right direction. But that pretty much covers everything I know about him – his last name and that he was a cop.

  10. 10.

    burnspbesq

    @WaterGirl:

    Area code for Atlanta.

    We haven’t seen temps in the 90s for at least a week in the Austin area, with plenty of rain, and no 90s in the forecast until Sunday. It’s pretty delightful, if you can deal with some humidity.

    Also too, the rainout of last night’s Mets – Brewers game may mean that deGrom will be available to pitch in the All-Star Game. He was scheduled to pitch last night, and his regular cycle would have had him pitching on Sunday. He pitched the makeup game today, and his regular cycle would have him pitch again next Monday, when there are no games.

  14. 14.

    Patricia Kayden

    Of course Marjorie Taylor Greene is comparing life-saving vaccine efforts to Nazi-era Brown Shirts… Her visit to the Holocaust Museum was for INSPIRATION on how to further trivialize a genocide, not to actually apologize. She's not fucking sorry.She's dangerous.Expel her.— Jake Lobin (@JakeLobin) July 7, 2021

  18. 18.

    burnspbesq

    Kitteh update: we have named the little maniacs Grayson (male) and Minnie (female). Grayson pretty much named himself after the former Duke basketball player: he loves to run around like a nut and dive on loose balls. Minnie is sort of pearl-colored; probably has some Siamese in her ancestry.

    Today they discovered a route that gets them onto my desk. I’m so doomed.

  19. 19.

    Urza

    @WaterGirl: The Haitian president stayed more than 5 years after the previous president left.  Many people had a problem with that.  He said he should be allowed since the election where he was actually elected was almost a year after he took office.  Lots of problems, no good answers.
    Was a mention that the assassins claimed to be American before killing him, but that could just be a rumor.

  20. 20.

    mrmoshpotato

    @debbie:

    I read that her parents are insisting that her civil rights were violated. ??‍♀️

    LO-Fuck ’em!

    We’ve seen the video. We know that Ashli Babbitt was at the front of a rampaging, screaming mob, smashing down the doors to the House chamber, trying to climb through. That’s why she was shot. She deserved it, 100%. She was committing a violent crime.— Charles Johnson (@Green_Footballs) July 7, 2021

    Second comment from Charles inside.

    When we were watching Congressman Swalwell, etal, here in the comments, during the second impeachment of the orange bastard, someone (I think raven) said more of these fuckers should’ve been shot. I agree.

    Also, I watched the FTFNYT video from start to finish. Not gonna do that again, but it’s good that they put it together.

  21. 21.

    Betty

    @WaterGirl: Here is what I understand. The President was corrupt and resisting holding elections. Protests have been going on for a while. Haiti remains pretty much a basket case. Long history of abusive leaders. Adams ran on law and order and seems a little kooky. Insists he has been living in a tiny, illegal basement apartment despite owning a nice home in New Jersey, says we don’t need so many teachers as each one can handle 500 students, says he plans to build a house in the Golan Heights, et., etc. Brooklyn Borough Council was his previous experience.

  23. 23.

    dr. bloor

    @dmsilev: ​
     

    My fear is that some Republican Rep will learn that officer’s name in a classified briefing and will ‘accidentally’ leak it to the lynch mob.

    I don’t see how this doesn’t happen.

    I have no clue as to whether this will be the breaking point–ok, almost certainly not–but the ongoing Republican research project that is testing the credulity of the base is a fascinating little enterprise you couldn’t get past an Institutional Review Board any place but Trump U.

    At some point, they’re going to push a point that even the ambulatory brain stems that are TFG’s Base won’t be able to buy into. I think.

  26. 26.

    HalfAssedHomesteader

    @mrmoshpotato: The only reason a lot more of them weren’t shot is because the cops were out numbered.  The only reason the insurrection got as far as it did is because the cops were out numbered.  The only reason they were out numbered is because Trump (and probably Roger Stone) made sure of it.

  29. 29.

    Elizabelle

    I have a suggestion for when the blog gets moribund.

    One of the best thing about this place is the links to interesting stories/items others put up. I comb the threads for them some days, even if I don’t participate.

    SO:  it might be nice to have a thread where we can pop in links for others — or check what others are sharing.  Could be an occasional feature.  Someplace to archive stuff like that.

  37. 37.

    Betty

    @WaterGirl: What I understand is that it was a strange race with Andrew Yang polling well until the end. Both Garcia and Wiley looked better to me, but the fearmongering about the rise in murders pushed Adams ahead. It also appears nearly all the winners are from Brooklyn – which I was surprised to learn has the largest population of all the boroughs.

  38. 38.

    Mike in NC

    The Capitol Police should be issued with M-60s to deal with the next Trumpist assault, which is sure to come.

  39. 39.

    Elizabelle

    @mrmoshpotato:   I have no sympathy for Ashli Babbitt, except that she might have been a better person at some point before she drank the Q-Ade.  That is on her.

    And the Washington Post reader commenters did not have any sympathy for her either.  Before the Post started locking down comment threads in the aftermath of 1/6, readers were on there slamming her for her traitorous behavior.  (The Post shut down a lot of their political threads for a few days, but early on, before they did, they would open a story about Ashli to comments and then scrub it, because the commenters had no sympathy for a recently dead person.)

    She was from the San Diego area.  Her uncle was stunned that she was killed, but he described her as “fanatical” 3 times in an interview with the local CBS station.  Unedited cut from the story:

    “She loved her country. She loved our president Trump,” said Anthony Mazziott Jr., Babbitt’s uncle.

    …..  “She was fanatical, she loves her country and president and did everything she could to get the president reelected… And she thought she could influence whatever was happening in Washington that day,” said Mazziott.

    Babbitt was the CEO of Fowler’s Pool Service & Supply, Inc. in Spring Valley.

    “She had no children. She was fanatical about running her business. She loved people,” said Mazziott .

    Her uncle tell us that she has four brothers who all live in San Diego, along with her parents and grandfather.

    Her uncle says she was fanatical about our democracy.

    And for those who are calling her a domestic terrorist, this is how he wants her to be remembered.

    “Someone who served her country and loved it. And our democracy and ultimately gave her life for it,” said Mazziott.

    He has these final words.

    “I wish we could all come down and figure out how to get along. God bless America,” added Mazziott.

  41. 41.

    Patricia Kayden

    Brain disease, insanity, bigotry, stupidity, greed, fear of prison, what's your take on these people who still say Trump won the election?— Don Lewis (@DonLew87) July 8, 2021

  42. 42.

    Redshift

    @dr. bloor:

    I don’t see how this doesn’t happen.

    The whole point of the “who killed her” campaign by insurrectionists and sympathizers among elected officials is to try to out the officer who fired so they can be targeted for harassment or worse. It’s the exact same thing they did with trying to expose the state department whistleblower during impeachment. It’s despicable.

  43. 43.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Redshift: Yes.  They’re trying to find out the identity of the officer who fired the shot, so Trump trash can find and murder him.

  45. 45.

    Madeleine

    @Betty: Regarding Eric Adams, he was a law and order candidate when people are worried abou crime. He does claim to live in a basement apt. In Brooklyn (gave reporters a tour) though it looked more like his son’s home, and he owns a place with his girlfriend in nearby NJ. He was a NYC Police officer who started 100 Blacks for Law Enforcement. I had not heard that he proposed reducing the number of teachers; spoke about his concern that all students recieve a good education. And I hadn’t heard the Golan Heights story either. He was Brooklyn Borough President and was popular in Brooklyn. There were 13 candidates, some of them good ones. He was expected to win. I’d have preferred someone else.

  47. 47.

    AWOL

    @burnspbesq: deGrom said he would pitch his normal reps and announce if he’ll be available to pitch Sunday. He has no intention of going to the AS Game. He wants to rest, heal, see family, and thinks it’s stupid to fly to Colorado and not pitch, so he is lobbying for teammate Taijuan Walker to take his place for the AS Game. The Mets postgame show on SNY always features a long, detailed interview with deGrom, and he’s well-spoken and honest.

  48. 48.

    dmsilev

    @Elizabelle:

    “Someone who served her country and loved it. And our democracy and ultimately gave her life for it,” said Mazziott.

    Yeah, no. She literally died trying to overthrow an election.

  50. 50.

    James E Powell

    @Elizabelle:

    I get the uncle is feeling for his niece, but the truth is she did not love our democracy. She wanted to negate our democracy to get the outcome she wanted.

  51. 51.

    Elizabelle

    @dmsilev:   Yup.  No sympathy for Ashli the fanatic.  But I do feel for her uncle, ending up on camera not long after his niece’s shocking and violent death.  Which she brought upon herself.

    It is insanity that anyone would second-guess the police officer, in this case.  I’d have shot Ashli myself, were I in his shoes.

  52. 52.

    Anotherlurker

    @raven: Here is my Wahoo story:  15 years ago, I was working deck for a friend, on his boat, for a corporate charter out of Montauk.  We were trolling the 100 fathom line at Atlantas Canyon, looking for Tuna.

    Typical of my preferred trolling pattern, we were running 6 lines on or around the first 2 wakes + a 7th line, 75 yards back, down the center.  Typical of trolling, things were slow and drowsy on a calm day.

    As folks were nodding out, we get a solid hook up on the center rod. Line is smoking off the TLD 50 and chaos ensues.  Between my brother (also working deck) and I we managed to get all the lines cleared and the angler into a fighting harness .  It was a blazingly fast moving fish but definitely not a Tuna or a Billfish.

    Well, with some expert boat handling by my buddy, we reached our end game in 20 minutes.  When we saw color, we saw a 6ft long monster of the sea, a massive Wahoo.  As my brother wired the fish, I reached out with a long handled straight gaff and stuck the fish. It was the perfect gaff shot, right in the collar on the dorsal side, just aft the head.  All eyes were bugged out as I hauled this beast thru the door and across the deck.  We all felt great.

    However, since it was a beautiful, sunny,  August day I broke my every rule of working deck. I was working barefoot.  Big mistake since I dragged this critter close enough to my bare feet to just nick my instep with just one of the teeth that make up the Wahoo’s impressive dentition.  I was a very minor scratch but it bled and bled.  I soaked it in a bucket of saltwater and ice, dried off, applied iodine and bandaged up.

    I was then the object of good natured ball breaking from the rest of the crew and eventually, the denizens of the dock.  I earned it.

    The fish weighed in at 93lbs. at the time this was close to the NYS record.

  53. 53.

    HalfAssedHomesteader

    I really hope the House investigation implicates not just Republican pols and operatives but the entire right-wing media landscape.  Babbit was a dupe.  She could not have been duped without Trump’s incitement and his incitement wouldn’t have gotten much traction without right-wing media’s eager assistance.

  54. 54.

    Kattails

    @burnspbesq: yup, totally screwed you are. (Snicker)

    There is a reason why I adopt the older kitties, aside from them being less adoptable. I let someone else do the breaking in…

    As for Ashli Babbitt, the fact that her parents have the brass balls to talk about HER civil rights pretty much destroys any trace of sympathy I might have felt for a misguided soul. It’s like the shaman dude’s mommy saying oh my poor widdle boy isn’t eating well in jail.  Or the business man who wants out because he’s never been in jail before and it’s so hard.

    Fuck all of them. I know exactly why they were there and what they were thinking. If anyone had a legit reason to try this crap it was those who voted for Hillary and got screwed.  We we endured four years of an abomination and won at the ballot box and these bastards thought they had the right to just steal it again.
    When Trump dies his memorial should be a public pay to use rest room with a golden toilet, his face in the porcelain bowl. We could retire the national debt. Thinking of Judi Dench and her brother’s ashes in “Shipping News”.

  55. 55.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @dmsilev:

    I’m pretty certain that the moron was a catspaw, as in “they surely won’t shoot a youngish unarmed woman at the tip of the spear breaching a secure area – once behind the barrier, they can be torn down and the mob can rush in”.

  56. 56.

    Elizabelle

    This NY Times story is not that great, but the reader comments (sort for “Reader picks”) are gold.  The readers know a lot more about Haiti’s history and culture than the two reporters who put together this story, and left too much Haitian history out of it.  The messy stuff.  Like being forced to pay reparations to France until 1947(!), after their 1804 independence.  Like not being recognized by the United States until the Lincoln administration.  (The slave revolt scared the hell out of the Southern slaveholding class.).   It broke Haiti’s back.

    The infant United States might not have survived those imposed conditions.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/07/world/americas/haiti-president-killed.html

  57. 57.

    Kay

    Secretary Katie Hobbs
    @SecretaryHobbs
    Local reporting recently uncovered intense efforts to interfere with the tabulation of ballots and canvass of the 2020 election in Maricopa County. In Arizona, interfering with election officials is a felony. Today, I asked @GeneralBrnovich to investigate.

    You’re not allowed to make phone calls telling election workers to “stop counting” in order to attempt to overthrow an election and install your candidate. That’s not permitted.

    Just amazing that these people haven’t been charged with anything. If any of you did this in a local election you would be charged. You’d be three months into your prison sentence of 5 years.

  58. 58.

    Kay

    I’m excited that we’re getting around to thinking about charging people who interfere with elections but I admit I’m baffled why it took so long. We’re going to have to assign a police officer to every GOP election official in the country just to keep an eye on them and, you know, perhaps catch one or two sooner than 7 months after the crime.

    Did the people who were contacted report it at the time? They were supposed to. It’s a crime.

  59. 59.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Elizabelle:

    As I recall the history, the French would drop by every 10-20 years during the reparations period in order to inspire payment of arrears. While they couldn’t control Haiti, they could trash Port-au-Prince. This had a double effect – made it impossible for a prosperous middle class to get established in the seat of government  AND made the government appear ineffectual, thus eliminating respect for institutions.

    The reparations that the French demanded? Those were for the loss of sugar plantations and slaves.

  60. 60.

    Groucho48

    @Betty: And, here’s how our two major papers of record headlined the results…
    The centrist candidate, Adams,  got 403000 votes. The two leftist candidates got 395000 and 253000. Yang got 135000.
    The two liberal candidates got 650000 votes between them.
    NYT…
    Why Voters Favored Centrists in the New York City Mayor’s Race
    Wash Post…
    The Democratic Left was Defeated in NYC
    Also, neither of them mentioned that in the down races, progressives did VERY well. Fox, of course, also mocked AOC, because her choices for mayor didn’t win, not mentioning that a majority of the people she endorsed for other positions did win.

  62. 62.

    PaulWartenberg

    Hockey fans!

    Tampa Bay Lightning goes back to back! Vasy pitches a shutout for the fifth time he closes out a playoff series, feels like a record, and he earns the MVP trophy tonight!

  63. 63.

    Cacti

    The President of Haiti’s surviving wife has already been whisked away to Florida, ostensibly for treatment.

    Am I the only one who finds it more than a little suspicious that she survived, and in the same day, ends up at the landing pad for every US backed coup plotter in this hemisphere?

  64. 64.

    James E Powell

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:

    From what I saw in the two videos, Babbitt was aggressive during the minutes leading up to the shooting. She pushed herself forward. My take – speculation of course – is that she went first because she is small and fit easily into the window opening.

    The fact that there were police on their side of the windows who were walking away surely gave the insurrectionists the impression that they were free to go forward. There are numerous people shouting about the guy with the gun, but it’s possible not everyone heard it.

  65. 65.

    James E Powell

    @Groucho48:

    Looks like progressives shouldn’t have had two candidates in the race. Were they maybe thinking they’d each be 1-2 on each other’s ballots?

    Even if progressives won every primary, those two closet-Republican corporate news outlets would never acknowledge a progressive win without shading it with some “but some say . . .” bullshit.

    And is Eric Adams a bad choice? Wouldn’t he be the most able to reform the NYPD?

  66. 66.

    ian

    @Urza:

    What I have read indicated they claimed they were DEA in order to clear out potential witness, and to confuse the situation.

    As someone pointed out in the long tech thread, it would be foolish for actual US agents to identify themselves as such before shooting a president we wanted to stay in power until 2022

  67. 67.

    Groucho48

    @James E Powell: I don’t know enough about him to say. Most of the negative things I’ve heard about him is that he is a kook and he doesn’t really live in NYC.

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