Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

Bark louder, little dog.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

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

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

Let there be snark.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

I’m pretty sure there’s only one Jack Smith.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Being the leader of the world means to be the leader of peace.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

John Fetterman: Too Manly for Pennsylvania.  Paid for by the Oz for Senator campaign.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Late Night Open Thread: But I *Meant* So Well!

Late Night Open Thread: But I *Meant* So Well!

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Professional political columnist/analyst:


Someone points out that, unfortunately, combatants in the middle of a shooting war are twitchy about any kind of flying vehicle crossing over disputed territory…


Twitter rule: When in doubt, double down!

If this were a better world, it would have worked!

Another Twitter rule: If it is mockable, it will be mocked!

Reader Interactions

42Comments

  1. 1.

    eclare

    Flying monkeys have been around at least since the Wicked Witch of the West had a fleet…

  6. 6.

    Baud

    I initially read that as Joe Rogan and was wondering when he became concerned about humanitarian problems.

  7. 7.

    NotMax

    It didn’t take The Amazing Kreskin to predict this.

    With oil prices rising, expect your electricity bill to go up, too.

    That’s the message from Hawaiian Electric, which is forecasting that Oahu customers could see their residential bills rise by about 10% in next several months amid the ongoing Ukraine crisis and inflation.

    Hawaii Island and Maui County customers will see bills rise by an estimated 20%. Source

    Entirely due to speculator market jitters, divorced from anything resembling supply constraints.

  8. 8.

    NotMax

    @VeniceRiley

    “Musk announces fast track initiative to develop self-driving monkeys. Plans to program routes via nanochips delivered by vaccination.”

    //

  10. 10.

    lowtechcyclist

    I wonder if this guy actually read the article he cites in support of the notion that drones were used to get aid to Syrians.

    It’s an article *advocating* drone use in Syria, written by someone with a nontrivial financial and professional stake in seeing them used. (It doesn’t say anything about whether they were actually used there.) From the author’s capsule bio at the end of the article:

    Michael Auerbach is a…board member of the Commercial Drone Alliance. He is also an investor and board director of Cybaero – a Swedish commercial drone manufacturer.

    Dear WaPo: please fire this guy, and replace him with someone who reads their cites to make sure they support their arguments. Punditry 101.

  13. 13.

    germy

    Roger Waters has also posted an open letter in response to a Ukrainian fan letter on Facebook. The fan, 19-year-old Alina Mitrofanova, asked the singer-songwriter to speak on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. “I ask Roger to speak publicly about this war, because I still cannot understand how a person, who wrote a significant number of anti-war lyrics, hasn’t spoken about tragedy yet,” wrote Mitrofanova in her letter to Waters. “However, a man who speaks about risks of nuclear catastrophe and about the senselessness of the war cannot be silent in this situation.” The complete statement from Waters is below.

    Dear Alina,

    I read your letter, I feel your pain, I am disgusted by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, it is a criminal mistake in my opinion, the act of a gangster, there must be an immediate ceasefire. I regret that Western governments are fueling the fire that will destroy your beautiful country by pouring arms into Ukraine, instead of engaging in the diplomacy that will be necessary to stop the slaughter. Rest assured if all our leaders don’t turn down the rhetoric and engage in diplomatic negotiations there will be precious little of Ukraine left when the fighting is over. A long drawn out insurgency in Ukraine would be great for the gangster hawks in Washington, it’s what they dream of, “playing the game” as they do, ”with the bravery of being out of range” I desperately hope your President is not a gangster too and that he will do what is best for his people, and demand of the Americans that they come to the table. Sadly however, many world leaders are gangsters and my disgust for political gangsters did not start last week with Putin. I was disgusted by the gangsters Bush and Blair when they invaded Iraq in 2003, I was and still am disgusted by the gangster government of Israel’s invasion of Palestine in 1967 and its subsequent apartheid occupation of that land which has now been going on for over fifty years. I was disgusted by the gangsters Obama and Clinton ordering NATO’s illegal bombings of both Libya and Serbia. I am disgusted by the wholesale destruction of Syria initiated, as it was, in 2011 by outside interference in the cause of regime change. I was disgusted by the invasion of Lebanon in 1982 when the gangster Shimon Peres connived with the Christian Phalangist Militias in the murder of Palestinian refugees in Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in the south of that country.

    I feel for you Alina, and your Mum and Dad and your uncles and aunts and brothers and sisters and cousins, I lost both my father Eric Fletcher Waters and my grandfather George Henry Waters in wars fighting the Germans.

    Please believe me when I tell you that I believe in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights signed in Paris 1948. I have fought as hard as I know how to foster and support human rights for all my brothers and sisters all over the world for as long as I can remember, and I support you and yours now, with all my heart.

    Speaking of gangsters, I do have to take issue with you about one thing in your letter, your “200%” belief that there are no Neo-Nazis in your country is almost certainly mistaken. Both the Azov Battalions in your army, the National Militia and C14 are well known self-proclaimed Neo Nazis groups. They are gangsters too.

    Also, I have not been silent on Ukraine, I wrote a piece which was distributed six days ago by Globetrotter, I shall append it to this post: https://braveneweurope.com/roger-waters-the-war…

    What else Alina? Well, we the people, all of us in every country in the world, including Ukraine and Russia, can fight the gangsters, we can tell them we will not be part of their obscene and deadly wars to garner power and wealth at the expense of others, we can tell them that our families, in fact all families all over the world mean more to us than all the power and money in the world.

    Where I live in the USA we can join Black Lives Matter or Code Pink or BDS or Veterans For Peace or myriad other anti-war, pro law, pro freedom, pro human rights organizations.

    I will do anything I can to help effect the end of this awful war in your country, anything that is except wave a flag to encourage the slaughter. That is what the gangsters want, they want us to wave flags. That is how they divide and control us, by encouraging the waving of flags, to create a smokescreen of enmity to blind us to our innate capacity to empathize with one another, while they plunder and rape our fragile planet. I will do everything in my power to help bring peace back to you and your family and your beautiful country. The long drawn-out war/insurgency that Hillary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice and the rest of the has been gangster Washington Hawks are encouraging is not in your nor Ukraine’s best interests.

    I wish you well Alina. Thank you for your letter, and if you chose to send a reply to this. I will print that reply. I promise.

    Love

    R.

    PS. Have you got a dog? If so please send a pic.

  14. 14.

    NotMax

    @Geminid

    Not nearly enough. Percentage of utility-scale generation for each still in single digits.

    There’s also been pilot programs dabbling in tidal energy generation.

  15. 15.

    NotMax

    @NotMax

    By “each” I refer to wind and solar. Geothermal is highly problematic as by its very nature, speaking on a local geologic basis, it is super corrosive to infrastructure.

  19. 19.

    Ken

    @Amir Khalid: It seems unfair to judge from a single example of his work, but it’s such a long example..

    (I thought the PS was a little weird too. “Hi, I’m being bombed, can you lend your voice of support?” “Got any dog pictures?”)

  20. 20.

    Geminid

    @germy: Waters has at least one fact wrong here: the Sabra and Shitila massacre of September16-18 was enabled by the Israeli forces that invaded Lebanon that year. But Menachim Begin, founder of the Likud Party, was Prime Minister, not Shimon Peres.

    Begin’s government fell a year or so later, partly in consequence of the invasion and it’s toll on Lebanese citizens and Israeli soldiers. Labor Party Peres then succeeded Begin as head of Labor-led coalition.

  22. 22.

    Anne Laurie

    @Amir Khalid: Can Roger Waters really be that stupid?

    There’s a totally unproven folk theory that standing in front of those arena-sized speakers for years on end leads to brain matter changes mimicking Alzheimers.

    One reason it’s unproven, of course, is that the rockers said to be suffering are of an age where geriatric brain degradation is not exactly an unexpected problem…

  23. 23.

    Baud

    @germy:

    I have some sympathy for people who are resolutely antiwar.  But when they stop just being against war and directing their ire against individual actors, then their politics are fair game.

  25. 25.

    Geminid

    @NotMax: I guess geothermal generation requires more stability than is found in your neighborhood.

    The solar and wind generation is coming. I read that Texas is running way ahead of the next state, California, in building solar and wind generation. The reason is that these are now the lowest-cost means of generating electricity.

    One constraint in Hawaii may be long term contracts between producers and customers. Economist Robert Pollin discusses* the constraint that the typical ten-year contract places on a more rapid clean energy transition. You might see more rapid progress later this decade.

    *Robert Pollin in his article “We need a better Green New Deal.” The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, March 2019. Pollin is a U. Mass. economist who has helped draft several state-level clean power plans. The article provides a very good overview of the challenges and potential of the clean energy transition.

  26. 26.

    evodevo

    @matt: Yep…”Can’t we all just get along!!” doesn’t make any sense when Hitler is on the other side of the equation…

  27. 27.

    Baud

    Also too, has Black Lives Matter said anything about the war, or is he just appropriating their name?

  28. 28.

    NotMax

    @Geminid

    State’s goal is to approach 100% renewable by 2045. I expect it’ll be closer to 50% by then. Rumblings of NIMBY already present.

  29. 29.

    Geminid

    @NotMax: I bet Hawaii will hit 50% renewable generation by 2035, unless you guys elect a bunch of Republicans to run the state. Fossil fuel will just get more expensive, while relatively cheap wind and solar power are here to stay.

  31. 31.

    The Thin Black Duke

    I don’t expect intelligent political analysis from rich musical celebrities and nobody else should either.

  34. 34.

    Amir Khalid

    @matt:

    That’s just it. Waters seems to think Ukraine defending itself is just as bad as Russia invading it. That’s just … I have no words to say how dumb that is.

  35. 35.

    LadySuzy

    Is there any way to convince China to intervene for the civilian population ?  Ask them publicly to organize some kind of humanitarian rescue for the civilians in Mariupol, Kharkiv…

    At last it could put China on the spot…  They would certainly squirm …  They’ve been trying to walk a fine line. They want to maintain their links with Russia, yet they don’t want to anger their customers in the West …

    Probably idiotic idea, just brain-storming in desperation here…

  36. 36.

    lowtechcyclist

    I got as far as the second sentence.

    I regret that Western governments are fueling the fire that will destroy your beautiful country by pouring arms into Ukraine, instead of engaging in the diplomacy that will be necessary to stop the slaughter.

    Wasn’t going to read any further after that bit of verbal upchuck.

    Had to Google Roger Waters to find out who he was. I’d never been keen on Pink Floyd back in the day, so it wasn’t one of those groups where I knew the names of some of the members.

  37. 37.

    Miss Bianca

    @Anne Laurie: I just saw a link to an article somewhere (could it have been here?) that cited *traffic noise* as an element leading to Alzheimers and dementia.

    If traffic noise can do it, then yeah…I would definitely imagine that standing in front of arena-sized speakers for years on end might do it, too!

    (Thank God I haven’t heard Pete Townshend come out with anything near this fatuous and stupid, or my heart would truly break.)

  38. 38.

    Kalakal

    @matt: He’s not just an idiot, he’s a horrible, insensitive jerk. Here is a young woman in a terrifying situation asking for him, as an influential person with an reputation of being anti-opression, to use that influence to stregthen the response against an ongoing agression.

    Instead she gets a smug, sanctimonous screed of how he cares deeply, he truly does, but she has to understand that… several paragraphs of whataboutery follow.. . and so he couldn’t possibly do anything without inconveniencing his own, supremely important self image. After all he is deeply concerned and is feeling distress, he’s a victim too!

    The part that makes me hurl is his mention of his father and grandfather dying in ww1 & 2. Had he been around at the time no doubt he’d have have replied to a letter from his younger self that”While he was strongly opposed to Hitler i you have to rember that the despicable actions of… meant that he couldn’t possibly encourage doing anything to stop him”

    I hope she prints out his reply and uses it for toilet paper

  39. 39.

    Cameron

    @LadySuzy: Actually, I think China could do well by doing good, by offering to mediate between Russia and Ukraine.  It has (or should have, by this point) enough clout with Russia that Putin would have to take such an offer seriously.  Could even tender an olive branch to the US and offer to work jointly with us….oh, fuck, I must have taken the wrong pills this morning……

  40. 40.

    Steeplejack

    @Cameron:

    Don’t hold your breath waiting for China to help. Richard McGregor yesterday in The Guardian:

    China offers to mediate! China offers aid! China is “extremely concerned” about the safety of citizens! Xi mentions the word “war”!

    The plethora of headlines alone is evidence for how Beijing has been subtly shifting its language day-to-day to put some distance between itself and Moscow and its increasingly bloody military tactics.

    But for the moment, such protestations should be ignored. Beijing’s core message, especially the one tailored for its domestic audience and Moscow itself, is that it is standing by Russia or, perhaps more the point, against the U.S., which it continues to blame for the war.

    If there was ever any doubt as to Beijing’s authentic view, Zhao Lijian, the foreign ministry spokesperson and the most prominent voice of China’s “wolf warrior” diplomacy, provided it this week.

    Zhao attacked the U.S. for secretly operating biological weapons labs in Ukraine. In doing so, he was echoing a conspiracy theory from Russia, for which there has been no evidence offered.

    Throughout, Beijing has not backed away from its core position, that Moscow has “legitimate security interests” in Ukraine. And, like Moscow, state media in Beijing has labelled the U.S. “an empire of lies.”

    Still, there is little doubt that Beijing is squirming under pressure, not just from the U.S., but also from Europe, Japan and Australia, to condemn the invasion.

  42. 42.

    Dopey-o

    Had to Google Roger Waters to find out who he was. I’d never been keen on Pink Floyd back in the day, so it wasn’t one of those groups where I knew the names of some of the members. @lowtechcyclist: 

    Pink Floyd / Roger Waters plays Air Supply’s songs, but with heavy metal instruments.

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