Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The current Supreme Court is a dangerous, rogue court.

Museums are not America’s attic for its racist shit.

We will not go quietly into the night; we will not vanish without a fight.

I have other things to bitch about but those will have to wait.

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

T R E 4 5 O N

I like political parties that aren’t owned by foreign adversaries.

In after Baud. Damn.

Republicans do not trust women.

People identifying as christian while ignoring christ and his teachings is a strange thing indeed.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

You cannot shame the shameless.

After dobbs, women are no longer free.

Lick the third rail, it tastes like chocolate!

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

America is going up in flames. The NYTimes fawns over MAGA celebrities. No longer a real newspaper.

“woke” is the new caravan.

She burned that motherfucker down, and I am so here for it. Thank you, Caroline Kennedy.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

Trump’s cabinet: like a magic 8 ball that only gives wrong answers.

Giving in to doom is how authoritarians win.

No Kings: Americans standing in the way of bad history saying “Oh, Fuck No!”

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

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / Late Night Open Thread: From Russia, With Luurve

Late Night Open Thread: From Russia, With Luurve

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From honeypot to professional troll:

Russian lawmaker Maria Butina said she is working on legislation to regulate dolls, pointing to growing diversity and representation in the children’s toys.

Butina was jailed in the United States for working as a foreign agent and deported to Moscow, where she was elected to the lower-house State Duma in this September’s parliamentary elections.

In a Telegram post Tuesday, Butina contrasted a white-skinned Russian doll to a dark-skinned, pink-haired Barbie with a caption saying “Maybe it’s time to think?”

“While the Education Ministry closely monitors school textbooks, there are no standards for educational toys for kindergartens, which is a shame,” she wrote…

In comments to the Znak.com news website, the newly elected lawmaker said she chose doll standards as a pet issue after speaking with the worried parents in her native Kirov region.

“This is a national issue and there can be no opponents here,” Butina was quoted as saying…

Nobody’s buying expensive limited-edition Barbie models for kindergarten classrooms, but then nobody’s teaching CRT to grade schoolers either. If it weren’t for the whole ‘convicted as a foreign agent’ thing, Butina could probably do a very profitable American tour warning ‘worried’ MAGAt parents against dark-skinned dolls, I bet.

Reader Interactions

50Comments

  3. 3.

    Kent

    What has Biden done to Assange? Did he contaminate his hotel room with polonium-210 so that he died drowning in his own fluids of radiation poisoning?

  4. 4.

    PeakVT

    Russian lawmaker Maria Butina

    This is hilarious.  I can’t wait for her to start selling NFTs of the kompromat she gathered while embedded in the NRA.

  5. 5.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Has Putin ever done anything remotely as evil as what Biden is currently doing to Julian Assange?

    I must have missed a news cycle or something. What evil thing is Biden doing to Julian Assange? I have no idea what the tweeter is tweeting about.

  6. 6.

    Anne Laurie

    @SiubhanDuinne: I have no idea what the tweeter is tweeting about.

    To be fair, neither does the bot tweeting it out.

    The Biden administration recently said it was amenable to Assange serving any sentence for espionage against America in his native Australia, instead of announcing he should be freed, and also given a Medal of Honor and a generous pension.  It may have been a wedding gift, since Julian recently married his willing baby-mama, who is also his current lawyer in Britain.

  7. 7.

    Chetan Murthy

    @SiubhanDuinne: Agent of enemy power who worked to destroy our Republic is caught and imprisoned in allied country; he uses every legal trick to get free and/or delay extradition to US, including public opinion.  Video at 11.

    Fuck Assange.  Lock him up in ADX Florence next to Kaczynski and throw away the goddamn key.

  8. 8.

    ian

    Has Putin ever done anything remotely as evil as what Biden is currently doing to Julian Assange?

    I wrote about three paragraphs detailing terrible things Putin has done in the past 22 years, and deleted them because I realized that anyone who thinks like this is so beyond reach.

     

    @SiubhanDuinne:  Presidented while the U.K. extradited, the greatest crime of all.

  9. 9.

    Chetan Murthy

    @SiubhanDuinne: The particular latest “outrage” is that apparently he suffered a stroke from all the stress of these legal proceedings.

    Julian Honey, just give up and let yourself get extradited, or even better, turn state’s evidence, and the stress will all go away.  That, or Vladi will make sure you drink Polonium Tea; fuck if I care which.

  21. 21.

    Brachiator

    Has Putin ever done anything remotely as evil as what Biden is currently doing to Julian Assange?

    I love Biden. About the only thing that would make me love him more is if he actually did something that Putin might do, like have Trump and DeSantis thrown in prison.

  25. 25.

    matt the somewhat reasonable

    Has Putin ever done anything remotely as evil as Mom making me clean my room?

  28. 28.

    lowtechcyclist

    @matt the somewhat reasonable:

    Has Putin ever done anything remotely as evil as Mom making me clean my room?

    For the win.

    And I guess the only reason Butina hasn’t made a video of herself shooting one of those dolls she’s so upset about, is that gun rights aren’t exactly a thing in Putin’s Russia.

  29. 29.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @lowtechcyclist:

    What’s interesting is that there is probably a substantial plurality of current NRA members, directors and officers who would be more than happy with the notion of regulating away diverse doll skin color while completely deregulating weapons.

  30. 30.

    Patricia Kayden

    Well, a stubborn minority anyways.

    Astonishing to me that we see ourselves as this tough, patriotic, do-what-it-takes, quit-yer-complainin’ country, and yet people won’t do the bare minimum of wearing a mask or getting a vaccine.— Chuck Wendig (@ChuckWendig) December 17, 2021

  31. 31.

    Geminid

    It was only a matter of time before the label “PINO” (Progressive In Name Only) began to be thrown around. “Progressive” advocacy group Root Action has labeled  six Congressional Progressive Caucus members as PINOs and called for primary challengers. The six include Jimmy Panetta (CA), Madeleine Dean (PA), and Andy Kim (NJ). The last two flipped Repulican districts in 2018.

  32. 32.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Geminid: Hell, let’s throw it back at them.  AFAIAC, anyone who puts ideological purity above being able to get shit done is the real PINO.

  33. 33.

    Benno

    @Nicole:

    I lost my best aggie in 2nd grade, started drinking, later turned to harder stuff like Now n Laters. By 4th grade I was in detention everyday clapping together chalkboard erasers.

  34. 34.

    Geminid

    @lowtechcyclist: I would agree. I don’t think, thoigh, that this idea will get any traction in these Representatives’districts. It has gotten traction in a left wing publication I call Common Screams. I sometimes read the comments there. A few bitter people arguing about whether the Squad are the only progressives in Congress, or if they are sellouts too.

  35. 35.

    H.E.Wolf

    @Geminid: ​”“Progressive” advocacy group Root Action has labeled six Congressional Progressive Caucus members as PINOs and called for primary challengers. The six include Jimmy Panetta (CA), Madeleine Dean (PA), and Andy Kim (NJ). ”
     Interesting! Thanks for the heads-up.

    The group is RootsAction.org, which is affiliated with an organization called Progressive Hub. The “PINO” press release includes this sentence:

    “It’s worth noting that all the PINOs in our report voted for a $15 minimum wage and support abortion rights, LGBTQ+ equality, and voting rights legislation. ”

    Seems to me they’re being rather persnickety, if they want to evict pro-choice, LGBTQ-friendly, voter-enfranchisement advocates from a barely-majority House Democratic delegation….

    https://progressivehub.net/meet-the-pinos-progressive-in-name-only/

  36. 36.

    q

    Dark skinned Barbies!!!  (I don’t know the Russian word for “Ooga Booga”.)  I hate to break the news to Ms. Hotpants, but dark-skinned Barbies have been common for a least 40 years.  (I have no daughters myself, but one of my old college friends has a bi-racial family with two daughters what are now lovely young women.  When I used to visit that family when the daughters were little girls in the eighties, there would be black/white/brown skinned Barbie dolls all over the place.   This might have been controversial 80 years ago.  It’s certainly not controversial now.

  38. 38.

    Geminid

    @H.E.Wolf: The organization seems to want want a leaner, meaner Progressive Caucus.I doubt if Chairman Jayapal and a majority of the caucus would go along.   I don’t think this effort will have any tangible consequences. The organizers may understand this, and could be just building clout and increasing donations. The leftie world is a weird one.

  41. 41.

    q

    @q: (Are Russians as openly racist as Americans?  If so, then it’s no surprise that the MAGAs (and the anti-anti-Trump “leftists”) like Russian under Putin so much.

  44. 44.

    H.E.Wolf

    @Geminid: “@H.E.Wolf: The organization seems to want want a leaner, meaner Progressive Caucus.I doubt if Chairman Jayapal and a majority of the caucus would go along. “​

     From your lips to the Caucus Chairwoman’s ears. :)

    This Roots group reminds me of the comment in “Ninotchka”, from the (initially) dedicated Communist character played by Greta Garbo, about party purges in Russia. “There will be fewer but better Russians.” In context, it’s a laugh line; and the screenwriters knew it.

  46. 46.

    Johnny Gentle (famous crooner)

     If it weren’t for the whole ‘convicted as a foreign agent’ thing, Butina could probably do a very profitable American tour warning ‘worried’ MAGAt parents against dark-skinned dolls, I bet.

    Like Butina’s convict status even matters. Given republicans’ adulation for European racists and fascists, give it a week or two for this to migrate through the usual Facebook channels to nutcase MAGA headline-chasers like Gosar or Greene, then to a weeklong series of segments on Tucker Carlson’s show, then to an item of faith among every GOP candidate down to local dog-catcher, and finally to “more white dolls” being part of the ’24 presidential platform.

  47. 47.

    Capri

    When my daughters were young, I realized to my dismay that their dolls were all white. It wasn’t planned, it just occurred because folks got them white dolls for presents, they were the ones most often on display, insert all the reasons white is the dominant culture here. When I told them I wanted their toys to look more diverse it took them a millisecond to realize that meant a trip to the toy store to get more dolls and they were 100% on board.

  50. 50.

    Dan B

    @PeakVT: Butina is propsing some awful things to inflict pain on LGBTQ people.  In addition to the rest of her criminal-lite actions.

    Details… doesn’t matter much if you activate the sticks up every GQP’s butt.  They don’t hear Gay they hear Sex!

    Perverts!

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