Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

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

In my day, never was longer.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

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

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

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

Ron DeSantis, the grand wizard, oops, governor of FL

Take your GOP plan out of the witness protection program.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

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

How can republicans represent us when they don’t trust women?

Their freedom requires your slavery.

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

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

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

Trump’s legal defense is going to be a dumpster fire inside a clown car on a derailing train.

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

Glad to see john eastman going through some things.

So many bastards, so little time.

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Saturday Mid-Morning Open Thread: Night & Day

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Saturday Mid-Morning Open Thread: Night & Day

(Clay Jones via GoComics.com)

I literally DO care…


More notes about Arnold Schwartnegger’s video appeal:

Now *this* is a subtweet…

Reader Interactions

211Comments

  4. 4.

    VOR

    Rand Paul is a bigger dingus than even Ted Cruz. Who keeps voting for this clown? Is it really just as simple as voting against the Democrat?

  6. 6.

    trollhattan

    Have watched Ahnold’s video a couple of times and can appreciate its effectiveness for the intended audience, also pleasantly surprised it ever made it to the general Russian public.

    An Austrian friend’s father was arrested by the occupying Soviets for “collaborating” with Americans and sent to the gulag, only released after the 1955 treaty establishing Austria as independent. Austrians understand Russia and Russians to their very core, and Arnold is old enough to remember that era.

  9. 9.

    Old Dan and Little Ann

    The nuts are tired of covid and gas prices, They’re bringing back Hunter’s laptop!

  13. 13.

    NotMax

    @The Moar You Know

    James Hagerty, Pierre Salinger and Jerald terHorst weren’t exactly chopped liver.

    ;)

    Trivia: Fellow who served as one of Truman’s press secretaries was named (not nicknamed, mind you) Tubby.

  14. 14.

    different-church-lady

    Kudos to Water Girl and whatever fix she figured out about the Twitter problem. Joint is running like a rocket ship now.

  17. 17.

    SFAW

    As expected, Ferret-Head continues to try to beat Traitor Turtle for the winner of the “Most Disgusting Piece of Shit to Represent Kentucky” contest.

    @VOR:

    Who keeps voting for this clown? Is it really just as simple as voting against the Democrat?

    Pretty much. I imagine there’s some not-insignificant contingent of Party of Traitors supporters who, given the choice between voting for a Dem or embracing worldwide nucular annihilation, will vote against the Dem every time.

  18. 18.

    lowtechcyclist

    @VOR: ​

    Rand Paul is a bigger dingus than even Ted Cruz. Who keeps voting for this clown? Is it really just as simple as voting against the Democrat?

    He represents Kentucky, right? Then it probably is that simple. It’s an R+15 state, IIRC.

    But that’s libertarianism for you. If you were dying of thirst and needed a glass of water, he’d probably give it to you, but make you sign an IOU.

  19. 19.

    SFAW

    @lowtechcyclist:

    If you were dying of thirst and needed a glass of water, he’d probably give it to you, but make you sign an IOU.

    And make you sign it with your own blood, rather than let you borrow his pen.

  20. 20.

    cmorenc

    OAN (Trump’s latest favorite network) was last night showing a purported documentary on the pre-invasion situation in Ukraine what was pure Russian propaganda, including that the purportedly legitimately elected (pro-Russian) government was overthrown in 2014 by Nazi-infiltrated thugs manipulating public demonstrations, backed by the CIA, with an assist by George Soros.

  21. 21.

    sdhays

    @SFAW: And later scream and gnash his teeth upon finding out that such a document is not, currently, legally binding.

  23. 23.

    kindness

    We’re way past the point of any face saving exits wrt Putin’s actions.  Seems to me Putin’s decision to not take any partial outcomes but insist on the whole enchelada that Ukraine and the rest of the world are in a terrible place.  And yet amidst it all we have a major ‘news’ network (Fox) here at home, doing it’s all to torpedo a functional government here in the US only because it is run by Democrats.  For us here, there is no more ‘loyal opponent’ within what Republicans think.  I wish there was a face saving measure to get us all out of all of this.  There aren’t any.  We’ll survive though.  I even have optimistic thoughts on the Democrats doing well in the upcoming elections, regardless of what the MSM would prefer.

  24. 24.

    different-church-lady

    @SFAW:

    And make you sign it with your own blood, rather than let you borrow his pen

    …which is filled with someone else’s blood.

  25. 25.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    “Russian operations have changed. Russia is now pursuing a Strategy of Attrition. This will involve the reckless and indiscriminate use of firepower. This will result in increased civilian casualties [&] destruction of Ukrainian infrastructure”

    Civilians don’t shoot back.

  27. 27.

    lowtechcyclist

    @NotMax: James Hagerty, Pierre Salinger and Jerald terHorst weren’t exactly chopped liver.

    I had to Google Hagerty. Press secretary throughout Ike’s Presidency.  Definitely before my age of awareness of such things.  Hell, he began his tenure before I was born.  Wasn’t that much more aware of Salinger, though I could have told you at the time who he was.

    terHorst wasn’t press secretary very long. IIRC, he resigned when Ford pardoned Nixon. Can’t argue with that decision.

  28. 28.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Old Dan and Little Ann:

    They’re bringing back Hunter’s laptop!

    That New York Times article is vile.  It’s straight up Her Emails 2.0.  The actual facts it presents are that Hunter Biden paid a lot of taxes, the investigation Trump sicced on him not only hasn’t found anything, it’s given up on criminal charges, and emails show Hunter telling his Ukrainian partners he won’t break American lobbying laws.  They describe all of this as if he’s been caught committing crimes and will probably skate on a technicality.

    @SFAW:

    there’s some not-insignificant contingent of Party of Traitors supporters who, given the choice between voting for a Dem or embracing worldwide nucular annihilation, will vote against the Dem

    Yes, and because it’s a a vote against a Dem, they will take it for granted that they personally will survive the nuclear war and be better off for it.  It’s not just voting against Dems.  Dems must be wrong, wrong, always wrong.

  30. 30.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    What Rand “I got mine, fuck you” Paul doesn’t get it supplying the Ukrainians is cheaper than us fighting in a general war in Europe.

  31. 31.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    I keep forgetting Boob in Portland.

    Wonder whatever happened to Ted and Hellen? And was it Boob who was the “Brinks Trucks” guy?

  32. 32.

    Llelldorin

    @VOR: Who keeps voting for this clown?

    I’ve always gotten the impression that among stupid people who think themselves brilliant, Rand Paul is the Kwisatz Haderach, but honestly your guess is as good as mine.

  34. 34.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @lowtechcyclist:

    If you were dying of thirst and needed a glass of water, he’d probably give it to you

    Rand Paul?  No way.  He would refuse, then tell you how principled he is for refusing.  He’s as much a mean little shit as he is a Libertarian.

    @kindness:

    We’re way past the point of any face saving exits wrt Putin’s actions.

    Putin could withdraw from the invasion completely today, with no explanations to anyone, and be in no worse trouble than he is right now.  He would be less likely to lose his throne.  This is 100% Putin’s ego and grudges.

  35. 35.

    MomSense

    @kindness:

    I’m getting awfully tired of the supposed experts the cable news channels and NPR keep bringing on their shows to say the same things.  It’s always Biden/NATO/EU need to do x y and x and provide Putin with an “off ramp”.  Just once I would like to hear a follow up question asking for an example of an off ramp.

  38. 38.

    Ken

    I’m placing mental bets on how the White House Press Corps will move the goalposts, assuming they even bother to acknowledge Psaki’s accomplishment*. Maybe demand that at least three Cabinet secretaries must be available for questions at each conference. Or that Psaki do the ASL herself.

    * That doesn’t seem quite the right word. It’s not really an “accomplishment” to do your job professionally, and to higher standards than a bunch of grifters who didn’t bother to show up for work most days.

  39. 39.

    Kalakal

    @lowtechcyclist:

    But that’s libertarianism for you. If you were dying of thirst and needed a glass of water, he’d  probably give it to you, but make you sign an IOU.

    It would be somebody else’s water

  41. 41.

    Brachiator

    Jen Psaki, one of the most recognisable faces of the Biden administration, passed a milestone this week — she notched up more White House briefings than were held during the entire Trump presidency.

    I love and respect the hell out of Psaki. She is damn good at her job, and a very visible reminder of the overall high quality of Biden Administration staff and appointees.

    And while it is always fun to watch her slap around that Fox News idiot Peter the Dope, the way that she so capably represents this administration also underscores how insipid the Beltway press corp is.

    Yeah, these fools may be biased towards the GOP, but more than that, they have been given a great opportunity to do their jobs right, to ask good, tough questions, and get good, tough responses. Instead, they are comfortable being well-paid hacks, mediocrities who toss out lame “gotcha” questions and fall back of lazy “what about…” and “both sides…” pseudo-journalism.

  46. 46.

    Ken

    @Frankensteinbeck: This is 100% Putin’s ego and grudges.

    I have to think there’s some pour encourager les autres as well. The Central Asian republics, or even Belarus, might be getting ideas.

  49. 49.

    trollhattan

    @Formerly disgruntled in Oregon:

    He seemed legit as a Republican wading into the jackal pack to tweak Lib noses and I believed him that he worked on campaigns–as a functionary and not a bigwig. BiP was surely a trollfarm troll. Then there was BOB, who would stalk refugee immigrants and go to Glenn Beck listening parties. Certifiable, that one.

  50. 50.

    MomSense

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    ????

    Did you see the news that Olga Smirnova publicly condemned the war and left the Bolshoi Ballet?  She is now a guest artist with the Nederlands Ballet. And Jacopo Tissi also quit and went back to Italy.  He was the male lead in Diamonds – the last simulcast with the Bolshoi.

    Smirnova is a major star so this is a big deal.

    Also Jacobi

  52. 52.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Ken:

    The Central Asian republics, or even Belarus, might be getting ideas.

    That’s part of the thing.  Drawing the Russian army away to get their ass handed to them is leaving them weak where he needs them.  Every day this goes on, his grip on his conquered territories gets weaker.  If he stopped now, he could move the troops back and ride out any storm.  In practical terms, stopping immediately is better than continuing, even without easily constructed PR excuses.

  54. 54.

    trollhattan

    @MomSense: Heard a report on Ukrainian ballerinas now training with Polish troupes. The manager of one noted how vital it is for restoring a dancer’s sanity, because they can redirect their anxieties into something they love. Equal parts charming and heartbreaking.

  57. 57.

    Miss Bianca

    @SFAW: No. He would refuse to give you the water, but graciously concede that you had the right to take him to court over the matter.

  58. 58.

    Old Dan and Little Ann

    @Frankensteinbeck: i would not have known except for a book of faces freak who has been bitching about vaccines for 2 years.  He’s decided to recycle the laptop rabbit hole.  I also checked out the ny post for some baseball news and It’s FRONT PAGE!

  60. 60.

    Ken

    @Brachiator: It’s been noted that when they conduct briefings or interviews with outside groups, the questions are usually much better than those we get from the WH press corps. I sometimes imagine (fantasize) that one of those outsiders will be invited to the WH briefing, and will use their time to ask about the insipidness of the official press corps.

    Something like “Many people are saying that this is a room of attention-seeking hacks who waste a unique opportunity by grandstanding and pushing their own agendas, have you any comment?” Though Psaki would shoot down any “many people” phrasing of course; but, we could then say “the question has been asked at an official press conference”.

  61. 61.

    Kalakal

    @Ken: They are getting ideas. Just this month Khazakhstan has rejected a request for troops, refused to recognize Donetsk and Lugansk as republics and, just to troll Putin, sent a plane load of humanitarian aid to Ukraine. A lot of the republics are puppet governments propped up by actual or potential Russian military force. As the Russian army gets sucked into  and chewed up in Ukraine, those ideas are going to grow and an overextended Russian military can do less and less to keep the lid on. And it’s not as if the Russians have the money for bribery anymore

  62. 62.

    topclimber

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: I know Ukraine has better use for its switchblade drones, have no idea whether they can fly far enough, and probably should worry about pissing off Putin even more, but I do fantasize about a scenario like Doolittle’s bombing run on Tokyo where Ukrainian drones do a number on Putin’s Black Sea palace.

  63. 63.

    MomSense

    @trollhattan:

    It’s really tough for dancers, athletes, artists at that level.  You work every day at an intense level and nothing else demands your full body and concentration the same way.  Nothing else works as a coping mechanism.

    One of my Russian teachers used to repeat something her teachers told her. Miss one day you know. Miss two days your teacher knows.  Miss three days and everyone knows.

  64. 64.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @MomSense:

    I did see that, thanks. Had so wanted to introduce my friends to the Bolshoi’s Swan Lake a couple of weeks ago — we had planned the event for months — but we all agreed we couldn’t support anything Russian right now, so we cancelled the ballet outing and just had a nice leisurely lunch instead.

  66. 66.

    Miss Bianca

    Actually have to say I am very impressed by Arnold’s video. I have no idea whether it will reach its intended audience  or not, and if so, whether it will have its intended effect. But major kudos to him for trying.

  67. 67.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Kalakal: I do get the vibe that Putin’s Empire is a House of Cards and will just collapse at some point, but it also seems like now is to early for anyone to make there move.

  70. 70.

    Another Scott

    That first comic had me confused for too long.  “How is the ghost of GHWB relevant here??!”  Then I noticed the sunglasses and something clicked…

    Not enough caffeine!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  71. 71.

    MomSense

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    Then the Bolshoi postponed it indefinitely.  They posted a video of Les cygnets on Instagram as a teaser for the performance and the comments were overwhelmingly negative.

  73. 73.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @MomSense:

    One of my Russian teachers used to repeat something her teachers told her. Miss one day you know. Miss two days your teacher knows. Miss three days and everyone knows.

    I first heard that saying from a violinist. It’s quite true at that high level of discipline.

  75. 75.

    Kay

    Glenn Greenwald
    @ggreenwald
    Dec 8, 2021
    Replying to
    @ggreenwald
    It’s been 8 months since the NYT claimed the DOJ was investigating “whether”
    @MattGaetz
    committed crimes. He’s still not been charged with anything, and thus has no chance to contest the innuendo, yet millions believe he’s guilty. That’s why prosecutorial leaks are so abusive.

    Guess how long the DOJ has been investigating Hunter Biden? Since 2018 and the NYTimes reporter and Glenn Greenwald have been flogging it since 2019-20.
    Oddly no worries on prosecutorial abuse there although they’re now writing stories that the DOJ is in a “bind” because they may not be able to indict him.
    Just frauds.
    “Yet millions believe he’s guilty”. The scolding sanctimony while he’s spewing this bullshit.

  77. 77.

    Brachiator

    @MomSense:

    I’m getting awfully tired of the supposed experts the cable news channels and NPR keep bringing on their shows to say the same things. It’s always Biden/NATO/EU need to do x y and x and provide Putin with an “off ramp”.

    See, that’s just it. You left off the Z, as in “where is z off ramp?” ;)

    But nonsense like this is just as annoying. It is a non-question that childishly assumes that a president controls events and can guarantee an outcome.

    It is as dumb as the idiocy that every war have a predetermined “exit strategy” that guarantees and spells out victory.

  79. 79.

    trollhattan

    @topclimber:

    Found this article about the Switchblade, which notes they’re getting a version not suited to taking out armor. I suppose anti-personnel and not-armored vehicles–maybe AA batteries since they keep things that go boom on top? Guessing the psychological aspect has relevance, because they sound like something from a really dark “X Files” episode.

    I am an internet expert.

  81. 81.

    Kay

    He’s still not been charged with anything, and thus has no chance to contest the innuendo, yet millions believe he’s guilty.

    * Does not apply to Glenn Greenwald’s political enemies, or the (shitty) NYTimes political team.

    They’re already on the second order crime- the claimed “suppression ” of the Hunter Biden story, just as a backup in case they don’t have enough to charge him. Pure weasel. Charged, not charged, won’t matter a bit. Even if there is no crime there’s always an alleged cover up to fall back on.

  83. 83.

    Feathers

    One of the best things about Psaki is that she also riles up the awful left. That her method of dealing with idiot questions from wingnuts might be more effective than whatever preaching they fantasize about is unpossible to imagine.

  88. 88.

    trollhattan

    @NotMax:

    Hard to believe Ernie Kovacs had the latitude to do what he did when he did it. So very different from the standard fare.

    We saw Trockadero de Monte Carlo once; hilarious, and it has to be said they’re good enough dancers to pull it off for the length of an entire show.

  89. 89.

    Kalakal

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques: Yes, it’s definitely getting shakier. When/if it goes, it will go fast.

    The longer the Russian military fail to achieve a ‘win’ , the more losses they take, the more sanctions bite the more likely  it is the whole thing collapses.

    Time is not on Putin’s side, politically he needs to capture Kyiv fast, and I can’t see that happening.

  90. 90.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    It didn’t matter. By the time she had NOT been charged we were already on the backup- how she covered up the non crime. It’s always the same play. It’s not even complex or unusual- every sleazy low talent prosecutor does the same thing. No crime? Ooops. Let’s find some way to smear this person!

  91. 91.

    Brachiator

    @lowtechcyclist:

    If you were dying of thirst and needed a glass of water, he’d probably give it to you, but make you sign an IOU.

    He would offer to sell you the water, and criticize you for wanting the glass to be provided for free.

  93. 93.

    Geminid

    @SFAW: “Negative partisanship” is certainly a big factor in Republican voting. The few people I know who voted for Trump last election did not like Trump much, but saw him as the lesser of two evils. They believed that Joe Biden was a puppet of “the Left.”

  95. 95.

    Baud

    @Kay: Oh sure.  There’s always a smear.  The idea is that the burden is on us to disprove the accusations of cynical people.  The only way to win is not to play.

  96. 96.

    Sherparick

    @VOR: Yes, because Democrats in this Kentucky world that is dominated by RW media & Pentecostal prosperity gospel churches are atheistic Gay pedophile Communist Muslims who want to make Black people equal to white people via CRT.

  97. 97.

    Sloane Ranger

    @SFAW:

     

    Pretty much. I imagine there’s some not-insignificant contingent of Party of Traitors supporters who, given the choice between voting for a Dem or embracing worldwide nucular annihilation, will vote against the Dem every time.

    I saw a YouTube video recently. Someone was interviewing an attendee at some Repuke bash and asked them if, somehow, they were given a choice between voting for Joe Biden as POTUS or Vladamir Putin, who would they choose. The interviewee didn’t even pause before saying Putin. I kid you not.

  98. 98.

    CaseyL

    @Brachiator: The WHPC has always been like that, though.  It’s been kind of a joke for a very long time.

    Linda Ellerbee was a WH correspondent early in her career.  She tells a story of hearing an announcement that a “2-minute lid” was happening, and excitedly calling her producers about it, thinking it was something important.  Her producers had to tell her it just meant that the press conference was happening in two minutes.  She talks about the essential uselessness of the WHPC, and how frustrating it was to be part of it.  And this is in her book, “And So It Goes,” written, like, 40 years ago!

  106. 106.

    Geminid

    @Baud: Last fall sentencing for Gaetz’s ex-wingman Joel Greenberg was postponed to this month, but now it’s been postponed again until May.

    There are signs that prosecutors are tightening the noose. A mutual friend of Gaetz and Greenberg pleaded guilty to felony Adderall sales, and his sentencing is now with the same judge as Greenberg’s. Also, Gaetz’s former girlfriend has been spotted entering the relevant grand jury room.

    I’m hoping that prosecutors are wrapping Gaetz up so tight on so many counts that the best lawyers his wealthy father can buy can’t save him. That would make the wait worthwhile.

  108. 108.

    matt

    @trollhattan: The Javelin missiles are a way bigger deal – the Switchblade drones look like a gimmick to me. They only cost like $5k each so that’s just not much of a commitment sending them. Javelins are ~$200k each.

  111. 111.

    trollhattan

    @Cameron:

    His standard ooga-booga line to scare the pantywaist Libs was “BRINKS TRUCKS OF CASH” i.e., Republicans were going to spend so very much money they will sweep away that Obama feller. He wrote it a lot.

  113. 113.

    Ancient Atheist

    There is a nuclear armed madman in the Kremlin… and we put him there. Our own greed will bear fruit as nuclear clouds rising over Ukraine. A new milestone in man’s lust for war. There will be raised fists and grumblings, but the West will remain impotent as they marvel at Putin’s lack of humanity. That’s the way the world will end… with a bang and a whimper.

  114. 114.

    Jonas

    @trollhattan: As elsewhere in Europe the far right in Austria has forged deep ties to Putin. The head of the Freedom Party got busted a couple of years ago taking bribes from a Russian firm.

  117. 117.

    RaflW

    @Brachiator: these fools may be biased towards the GOP, but more than that, they have been given a great opportunity to do their jobs right, to ask good, tough questions, and get good, tough responses.

    The D.C. press corps, with some exceptions, are ambitious but generally dumb. They can’t fathom asking tough questions and being well prepped for their side of interviews or pressers. Hack is too kind for many of these dolts (and I don’t just mean Fox or it’s more vile siblings).

    My partner is a former newspaperman. Ask him about TV journalists, and the look on his face says it all. And the thing is, even many of the print reporters in the WH press pool have teevee aspirations. The vain & vacuous. The WHCA annual dinner is sufficient evidence of how broken our capitol press is.

  120. 120.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @MomSense: A number of years ago, we took a cruise from Moscow to St. Petersburg along the Volga. One of the guides talked about what happened when some upheaval happened. (Forgive my ignorance. I don’t remember what it was). She said she came out of the Kremlin with a group of tourists and there were tanks in the street.

    Anyhow, for days, the only thing on TV was Swan Lake.

    I remember thinking Americans would have rioted.

  124. 124.

    Brachiator

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    That New York Times article is vile. It’s straight up Her Emails 2.0. The actual facts it presents are that Hunter Biden paid a lot of taxes, the investigation Trump sicced on him not only hasn’t found anything, it’s given up on criminal charges, and emails show Hunter telling his Ukrainian partners he won’t break American lobbying laws.

    Aside from the political rat-fuckery, I never understood what the point of all this was.

    Were we supposed to go “Aha, Hunter Biden is guilty of something. Therefore, Trump really won the election????”

    Meanwhile, the Trump Hell-spawn and Young Jared were doing unethical, arguably criminal stuff every freaking day, but this was just business as usual. Nothing to see here. Move along.

  125. 125.

    Ruckus

    @brantl:

    He learned from what he thought he knew, but didn’t.

    That’s a very rare gift in humans. Most often we close our eyes/ears and minds, thinking we know it all. when all we really know is how to close our minds. As the old saying goes, A mind is a terrible thing to waste, so don’t stop learning, especially from your mistakes.

  127. 127.

    Carlo Graziani

    @trollhattan:

    It’s remarkable how leaky the Russian media crackdown is. They really don’t seem to have given much more advance thought to how to control their information environment than they did to their war plan. So they block CNN, BBC, etc. and they let weaponized content like the Schwartzennegger speech get circulated unhindered?

    I wonder whether they remembered to block content equally hostile to the war — some of it possibly in Russian — from places like Moldova, or Poland, or Bulgaria.

    Either this is gross incompetence or deliberate malfeasance bordering on sabotage by censors who aren’t even trying. The Chinese must be either appalled or just laughing at them by this point.

  130. 130.

    scav

    Aahhh, the Ancient Agitator is just a pip-sized WHPC wannabe looking for what little airtime it can capture.  Nice of it to provide a “real”-world example of the phenomena in “real”-time.

  134. 134.

    SFAW

    @Brachiator:

    Were we supposed to go “Aha, Hunter Biden is guilty of something. Therefore, Trump really won the election????”

    Possible. I think the sequence would be something like: Hunter’s laptop and Burisma would call Joe’s ethics into question, whereupon American voters would reject him at the polls, and TFG would win in a landslide. That the laptop/Burisma “stories” did not dominate tyhe MSM every day, in 48-point type, is because the FTFTFNYT was in the bag for Biden, etc.

  138. 138.

    Another Scott

    ICYMI, another good Galeev thread (a short one):

    Is World War Z popular in Russia?

    80 000 ppl attended Z-rally in Moscow. Midwits compared its size with smaller anti-war protests and concluded it's a proof of mass Z-enthusiasm. Midwits are unable to comprehend two factors that rule this world: leverage and incentives ? pic.twitter.com/0Jdwzsf38P

    — Kamil Galeev (@kamilkazani) March 18, 2022

    tl;dr – people are forced to attend and show support, or lie to them about the purpose.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  139. 139.

    Baud

    @SFAW:

    the FTFTFNYT was in the bag for Biden, etc.

     

    I can see how they would believe that given the comparison with how the NYT covered Clinton.

  141. 141.

    Ken

    @Baud: It was me.  I put Putin into power.

    Tsk, tsk. And after all the times that Marvel and DC have warned us about using our powers without considering the consequences.

  142. 142.

    Feathers

    @NotMax: Reminds me of the local talent show from the 70s, done as a fundraiser for the local hospital. One of the best numbers was several men, in long tutus, makeup and swan crowns, doing Swan Lake – wearing snow shoes! I would have been in elementary school and it’s still one of the funniest things I’ve seen. They were so serious and did well. I can appreciate now how hard it would have been. Found out my ballet teacher did the coaching. It only went into the show if she had enough men who could dance it.

  144. 144.

    Brachiator

    @CaseyL:

    The WHPC has always been like that, though. It’s been kind of a joke for a very long time.

    Yeah. You’re right. The sad and frustrating thing is that the press don’t have to be such sad sacks. In many ways, they choose to be.

    I remember Linda Ellerbee. A very talented and quirky reporter. I wish there were more people like her in the Beltway press corps.  I imagine that a lot of these dopes actually believe that they are as good as she was.

  146. 146.

    Kelly

    @Another Scott: I had to look up midwits.

    Someone who is around average intelligence but is so opinionated and full of themselves that they think they’re some kind of genius.

  147. 147.

    trollhattan

    Holy crap, Deshaun Watson’s new deal (with Cleveland of all places) is nearly a quarter-billion bucks. This, for a guy with copious sexual assault suits against him.

    What a country.

  148. 148.

    trollhattan

    @Another Scott: ​That thing he did was so very Trumpy I have to believe the copycat relationship between the two was rather two-way. “If Donny can be doink, I do also. They love me! Maybe next I shoot a guy in Red Square.”

  150. 150.

    topclimber

    @matt:

    @trollhattan:

    Also an armchair corporal, but if switchblades are cheap yet stealthy, they sound like the perfect weapon to blow up some driveways and rose beds in Putin’s Dacha. Don’t want to kill anybody, just let him understand we can smack him from afar. That’s what Doolittle’s bombers did, inflicting little actual damage but shaking up the Japanese power structure and no doubt many residents of Tokyo.

  151. 151.

    indycat32

    @Geminid: He did bully them into submission.  In 1992 referee Ted Valentine (spit) fouled out most of our (Indiana) team to make sure Duke would get a back-to-back.  What? Me bitter?  Perish the thought.

  152. 152.

    Steeplejack

    @Brachiator:

    The original point was that Hunter Biden was the one who was really involved in corruption in Ukraine, and that was supposed to tar his father. When that started to fall apart they doubled down with wilder and wilder stuff, now aged and distilled so that “Hunter’s laptop!” is the only shorthand you need to know.

  153. 153.

    Ruckus

    @matt:

    Having done some manufacturing in the defense industry, I can tell you that the correlation between cost and effectiveness/usage of the product can be off by miles – in either direction. Now in this instance it seems the products have little in common as they are similar operational concepts but with quite different expected outcomes.

    See, I even know how to use the language of the defense industry.

  154. 154.

    RaflW

    @SFAW: My “with some exceptions” was sincere.

    A quick google yielded this fom PBS, which I do not disagree with:
    Jun 9, 2020 — The WHCA judges said, “Yamiche Alcindor is serious, incisive and — though she has a quiet demeanor — tough as nails.”

  155. 155.

    Geminid

    @trollhattan: A very discreditable move by the Browns. A lot of people will be comparing Watson’s treatment with that of Kaepernick.

    I will make a point of listening to the first hour of Hew Hewitt’s radio show on Monday morning. He’s a big Browns fan, and he’ll be freaking out.

  156. 156.

    smith

    @Carlo Graziani: It’s remarkable how leaky the Russian media crackdown is.

    One of my favorite online radio sites is one that apparently originates in Moscow. Ever since the start of the war they have published pieces by Ukrainians decrying the war. The interesting thing to me is that these are written in Russian, according to Google translate, which suggests that they are aimed directly at Russians accessing the site. I keep expecting this station to disappear, but so far it’s still going strong.

  157. 157.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Another Scott: It’s bit of hysterical comment on how corrupt modern Russia is that apparently lot of them got their War Rally tickets punched and then wandered off to an afternoon of shopping for black market Russian army supplies.  One of these days there is going to be a Dumas meeting were everyone is clapping for Putin and it comes out most of the clapping was per-recorded or the Dumas members hired professional clappers to take their place.

  160. 160.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @smith: Maybe, I gather the terror of being denounced is so bad no one in the Russian government is doing shit unless there is an ordered signed by Putin himself and on line radio is likely something Putin or his inner circle are are not aware of.

  161. 161.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @trollhattan: ​An Austrian friend’s father was arrested by the occupying Soviets for “collaborating” with Americans and sent to the gulag, only released after the 1955 treaty establishing Austria as independent.

    Vienna, 1980, in a wine-cellar downtown, I ended up sitting across from an older guy with a mustache and an Alpine hat and houndstooth jacket. I knew some German so I tried talking to him. He made a guttural noise and pointed to his throat. We then played zwazige Fragen auf deutsch and from his nods and gestures I pieced together his story:

    Drafted into the Wehrmacht after the Anschluss. Served on the Eastern Front til early 1945 when he’d taken a bullet through the vocal cords, was captured by the Red Army and sent to the Gulag. Released and sent home only after the 1955 state treaty that reestablished Austria as a permanently neutral nation.

    We really have lost in the passage of years that sort of gut-level understanding of what it meant to be one small person caught up in the horrors of war. Until now, sfortunamente, as we recover it in the suffering of Ukraine…

    Austrians understand Russia and Russians to their very core, and Arnold is old enough to remember that era.

    Oh yes they do. On that same initial trip to Europe, before leading us Yanks to that wine-cellar, my new Austrian friend had noted how the Russians had forever endeared themselves to the Viennese when they celebrated the liberation of their city by raping every woman between 8 and 80. Later he told me the story behind the Soviet war memorial in Vienna, which stood just outside the Ring on the same compass heading as the Upper and Lower Belvedere Palaces, and which by terms of the 1955 treaty, was to stand there in in perpetuity.

    On the Ring, just inside that exercise in brutalist triumphalism, the Viennese installed a fountain that continuously shot water 15-20 meters into the air. Every day as night fell, they floodlit the palaces and bathed the fountain in brilliant multicolored lights – and left the war memorial in complete darkness.** Very clever.

    ** I went there later to verify this. Wandering through the darkened memorial, with the only light what glinted off the quotes on the walls from Stalin in stainless-steel Cyrillic, I came close to breaking an ankle a couple of times before retreating to the lit world…

  162. 162.

    Brachiator

    @SFAW:

    RE: Were we supposed to go “Aha, Hunter Biden is guilty of something. Therefore, Trump really won the election????”

    Possible. I think the sequence would be something like: Hunter’s laptop and Burisma would call Joe’s ethics into question, whereupon American voters would reject him at the polls, and TFG would win in a landslide.

    But the only people who believe in guilt by association are fools, Republicans and political strategists.

    Biden’s essential “ordinary guy” representation of fairness was too well established for the GOP to attack successfully. Even had Hunter Biden turned out to be a master criminal, at most this would have been personally painful to Biden, but every human being with a lick of sense would have shrugged this off even more definitively than they shrugged off Clinton’s “impeachment level” blow jobs back in the day.

    There was no story here. There never could be a story, outside the addled brains of a Fox News panel of pundits.

  166. 166.

    Steeplejack

    @SFAW:

    Yamiche Alcindor is no longer part of the White House press corps, although I can’t find when she left. (Maybe since December?) She is still the moderator of Washington Week on PBS but also has just been hired as a “Washington correspondent” by NBC. Geoff Bennett replaced her at PBS NewsHour, so maybe he’s their new White House reporter.

    I have gotten a twinge of concern as Alcindor starts to rise the analyst/​pundit ladder. She is a good reporter, and Trump apparently hated her—a plus, of course—and she has long been a guest on a lot of the shows, but recently I saw a segment where she appeared to be leading the conversation and she went for one of those forced “This is trouble for Joe Biden” tie-ins. Ugh. It caused a minor seism on Twitter, but I can’t run it down now.

  168. 168.

    Kent

    Since this is an open thread, here is what life is like in our household this morning.

    My wife the doctor gets woken up by early morning dick-pics texted from her elderly father in Santiago Chile.  For real.  He is about 90 and has growing dementia and has been complaining about his “itchy scrotum” for a week now.  But of course because he has dementia he forgets (1) the 5 or 6 hour time zone difference between Santiago and Portland, and (2) that my wife has been telling him and her mother for a week to just go buy some anti-fungal cream.  But no, he keeps sending her dick-pics of his scrotum so she can do her magic doctor diagnosis virtually.

    On top of that she gets another text this morning from her nephew (also from Chile) who announced he is arriving today with 4 of his buddies.  They have all been working as ski instructors or ski patrol down in CA (Lake Tahoe maybe?) and are taking a week-long road trip to the Northwest to check out the skiing up here.   Of course they are welcome to stay in the basement but a tiny bit of prior notice would have been nice as the teen and her friends have been using it for gaming and hang-outs and who knows what state of mess it is in.

    So I’m laughing my ass off but my wife is very much not amused.   Especially as she hasn’t had her coffee yet.  As she put it. “There are some things you can never un-see.”

  169. 169.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Frankensteinbeck: [T]hey will take it for granted that they personally will survive the nuclear war and be better off for it.

    It’s just a more drastic version of Davis X. Machina’s curtain-rod conjecture from this very blog:

    The salient fact of American politics is that there are fifty to seventy million voters each of whom will volunteer to live, with his family, in a cardboard box under an overpass, and cook sparrows on an old curtain rod, if someone would only guarantee that the black, gay, Hispanic, liberal, whatever, in the next box over doesn’t even have a curtain rod, or a sparrow to put on it.

    They’d sign up in a New York nanosecond for life in a postnuclear hellscape (which FTR they are utterly incapable of conceiving as one one-thousandth as hellish at it would actually be) so long at Those People who don’t look/speak/love/worship/think like them get their comeuppins. And they are serenely convinced that their Big Bad Daddy of a Supreme Being will make it so. If he doesn’t just Rapture them up so they can giggle over the flaming fate of all those lesser folks for all eternity…

    Imbecile fuckers.

  172. 172.

    Steeplejack

    @delk:

    Yes, Right to Rise is the Brink’s guy. Sample thread from 2015.

    Possibly boring note: Roused myself to get off the phone and dive into the Google on the real computer. One thing I learned in my deep dives for the Balloon Juice anniversary threads is that for a lot of ephemeral stuff Google keeps items in the “easily retrieved” cache (my term) for only a few years. I kept hitting a wall around 2016-17. You can overcome it with much more specific search terms, but quite often the more specific terms are exactly the things you can’t remember.

  173. 173.

    Brachiator

    @Kent: 

    But of course because he has dementia he forgets (1) the 5 or 6 hour time zone difference between Santiago and Portland,

    Being a geography doofus, I might have thought that Portland and Chile were in the same time zone, since they are both on the Pacific Ocean. But I forget that South America is not straight down from North America.

    On top of that she gets another text this morning from her nephew (also from Chile) who announced he is arriving today with 4 of his buddies.

    In olden times you might have received the letter informing you of their upcoming visit about four weeks after they had returned home.

    Still, it is more than a little thoughtless that the nephew would not ask permission first, especially in these days of instant communication.

  175. 175.

    different-church-lady

    @Ken:

    And after all the times that Marvel and DC have warned us about using our powers without considering the consequences.

    I know! For starters, nobody can make anything but superhero films now.

  176. 176.

    Kent

    @Brachiator:  Being a geography doofus, I might have thought that Portland and Chile were in the same time zone, since they are both on the Pacific Ocean. But I forget that South America is not straight down from North America.

    Geographically the west coast of South America is on the same latitude as the east coast of the US.  But there is also daylight savings time which operates in reverse in both continents because the seasons are opposite.  They spring forward when we fall back and vice versa.   Anyway, I can never figure out the time difference because it changes by the seasons

     

    Still, it is more than a little thoughtless that the nephew would not ask permission first, especially in these days of instant communication.

    Oh, he apparently asked permission a month or two ago and my wife of course said yes but they never had any dates nailed down.  I guess we are lucky to get 6 hour notice!

  177. 177.

    trollhattan

    @Uncle Cosmo:

    What a trip. Suspect we think of Austria as some Alpine wonderland and forget to ponder the horrors that took place there from the ’40s to the ’60s.

    Time to revisit Wells’ “The Third Man” and ponder the Viennese ruins, and paranoia so prominent in the film.

  178. 178.

    trollhattan

    @Kent:

    Skiers–taking a break from working at a ski resort to go skiing sounds so on brand.

    Sorry about gramps’ junk pics. That he can operate a phone at that age is a wonder unto itself.

  179. 179.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Kalakal: ​As the Russian army gets sucked into and chewed up in Ukraine, those ideas are going to grow and an overextended Russian military can do less and less to keep the lid on.

    Gotta wonder whether the price for Chinese aid to prop up Ptui!n’s warcriming army will be prying the ‘Stans loose from his grip. Trying to reconstitute Greater Russia by force, he may in fact have triggered its final unrecoverable shattering. Hell of a way to go down in the history books.​

  180. 180.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Brachiator:

    Were we supposed to go “Aha, Hunter Biden is guilty of something. Therefore, Trump really won the election????”

    No.  It is ‘Nuh uh, YOU!’ kindergarten level bullshit, which is unfortunately standard Republican rhetorical style.  Trump was wildly corrupt and engaging in active nepotism, and it was public knowledge Republicans were being shamed with.  Therefor, they had to paint Biden as the wildly corrupt one engaging in nepotism.

    This thinking foes from the bottom to the top.  Remember that Trump wasn’t just extorting Ukraine over a Hunter Biden investigation.  He wanted them to turn over a server, which he apparently believed exists and is in Ukraine, that held the 30,000 deleted emails which proved Hilary set him up and she’s the one who conspired with Russia, not him.

  181. 181.

    Another Scott

    @Brachiator: Disagree.  There is a story here.  Just not the one FTFNYT is reporting.

    The story is that the GQP can (directly or indirectly) ransack political opponents’ private communications – even when they are not public figures, not elected representatives, not public servants – and the press willingly and gratefully runs with those communications as if they’re somehow equivalent to the recipe for turning straw into gold.

    I thought there were laws against “receipt of stolen goods” and the like.  Private communication certainly should get the same protection.

    Calling something “leaked” does not make it fair game.

    It’s disappointing to me that the EFF and the like seemingly are not outraged by this absolute trampling of privacy rights.  (Maybe they are – I haven’t heard anything about it, though.)

    Grrr…,
    Scott.

  187. 187.

    Brachiator

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    Trump was wildly corrupt and engaging in active nepotism, and it was public knowledge Republicans were being shamed with. Therefor, they had to paint Biden as the wildly corrupt one engaging in nepotism.

    Great point. The Republicans were trying some weird reverse projection, but it was doomed to fail because it was bullshit. Even if the “nepotism” was 10000 percent right, this did not lead to criminal behavior on the part of Biden.

    By any measure, this was a fool’s errand. But the Republicans foolishly and arrogantly believed that they could get away with this.

    But again, what grates me the most is that the ignorati of the press kept gnawing on this fake bone of a story, insisting that there was some minuscule marrow of relevance to anything.

    And I am sure that some fools will still insist that this “story” was “newsworthy.”

    This thinking foes from the bottom to the top. Remember that Trump wasn’t just extorting Ukraine over a Hunter Biden investigation. He wanted them to turn over a server, which he apparently believed exists and is in Ukraine, that held the 30,000 deleted emails which proved Hilary set him up and she’s the one who conspired with Russia, not him.

    Among the many things that made Trump a scary, unworthy and unpredictable fraud was the fact that he seemed to believe half of the shit that he made up himself or that was fed to him by other fools and handlers.

  189. 189.

    MomSense

    @Kent:

    OMG I’m so sorry but I had a good laugh – with you not at you.  I tell my friends that they call us the sandwich generation, but it feels more like a panini.

  190. 190.

    Brachiator

    @Another Scott:

    The story is that the GQP can (directly or indirectly) ransack political opponents’ private communications – even when they are not public figures, not elected representatives, not public servants – and the press willingly and gratefully runs with those communications as if they’re somehow equivalent to the recipe for turning straw into gold.

    Public figures typically get no protection from the investigations of the press. And this can include semi-public figures and even private individuals if the press deems the story to be sufficiently “hot.”

    And even if the press totally trample someone’s rights to privacy, at best they will apologize and swear that they won’t do it again. And then they will do it again.

    I thought there were laws against “receipt of stolen goods” and the like. Private communication certainly should get the same protection.

    Could be. But there are exceptions carved out for the press, by tradition, if not by outright court rulings.

    BTW: From earlier comments here, I looked and see that the White House Press Corps arose with the fast rise in the number of newspapers in the 1880s during the Grover Cleveland administration. And the press early on hounded Cleveland not in following some important political story, but after his marriage to a 21 year old.

    And here is how they justified their actions:

    The idea of offending the bachelor sensitiveness of President Cleveland or the maidenly reserve of his bride has been far from anybody’s thought…We must insist that the President is public property; that it is perfectly legitimate to send correspondents and reporters to follow him when he goes on a journey, and to keep watch over him and his family.

    And thus a precedent and tradition was established.

  191. 191.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @MomSense:

    Then the Bolshoi postponed it indefinitely.

    Wow, I hadn’t seen that! But I think they’re missing the point. I (and, I guess, many others) weren’t boycotting Swan Lake per se. We are, and were, boycotting the Bolshoi Theatre/Ballet itself as a Russian Government institution. And sadly, that’s going to last as long as Russia is in Ukraine. But I’ll gladly watch a Western company do Swan Lake or The Firebird, or the Met do Boris or Prince Igor, etc.

  192. 192.

    Ruckus

    @Brachiator:

    SFB believes most of the crap that flows out of his mouth, quite possibly all of. He believes himself to be the world’s smartest, bestest man. His ego isn’t any smarter than he is but it is bigger.

  193. 193.

    Sebastian

    @Jonas:

    Actually, he fell victim to a prank. It was a reporter pretending to be one of Putin’s guys offering to bribe him.

  194. 194.

    Kalakal

    @Uncle Cosmo:

    Hell of a way to go down in the history books.

    Yep, not so much Vlad the Great as Vlad the Blithering Idiot. There is a definite chance that he will undo 300 years of Russian Imperial expansion in under a year

  195. 195.

    Sebastian

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques:

    I think we should put up a tip jar, where every time someone posts an amazing link like you just did, the person completely astonished and mesmerized by it (that would be me in this case) has to drop a buck or five into the jar.

    Thank you! I am hooked.

  200. 200.

    Sebastian

    Found this useful.

    Russian GDP was 1.75trillion $’s 3 weeks ago when RUBLE was 72 now Ruble against $ is 30% lower and not convertible if translated GDP in real terms it is already 30% lower. A plunging currency plays havoc with the GDP growth inflation. pic.twitter.com/KjIY6HKUHd
    — Iqbal Latif (@ilatif) March 19, 2022

  201. 201.

    Martin

    Jen should go down as the best press secretary in WH history. She’s absurdly good. I was a bit disappointed when Karine Jean-Pierre didn’t get the job because I adore her, but I get it now.

  202. 202.

    Martin

    @Sebastian: Unfortunately, the higher oil prices combined with few embargoes on Russian energy have resulted in Russia growing their cash reserves despite US currency freezes. The EU has got to get on the stick here as they are now very directly funding Russias side of the war. I know how hard that is to do, but they have to do it.

  204. 204.

    Sebastian

    @Martin:

    Completely agree. Germany’s contribution to this entire situation including their appalling performance at this very moment should never be forgotten.

    Absolutely agree re Jen Psaki. She will be remembered as a Titan.

  205. 205.

    Martin

    If you were wondering why Russia is having so much trouble with their 40 mile convoy coming down west of Chernobyl, it’s because Ukraine is using the Kyiv Reservoir to flood the area to the west. It’s basically now a giant swamp and many roads are flooded. Russia can’t even bridge it. That’s forcing them to swing way out west, even further from support and stretching their supply lines even further. I don’t know how long they can keep up that flooding effort.

  207. 207.

    Captain C

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    Rand Paul?  No way.  He would refuse, then tell you how principled he is for refusing.  He’s as much a mean little shit as he is a Libertarian.

    People who pontificate on how principled they are for screwing you howl the loudest when you return the favor.

  208. 208.

    Captain C

    @Feathers:

    the awful left. That her method of dealing with idiot questions from wingnuts might be more effective than whatever preaching they fantasize about is unpossible to imagine.

    A good chunk of that particular set is probably more in love with the sound of their own voice/sight of their own typed words than anything else.  As are a good chunk of the awful right wing and both sides pundits.  Plus, it’s easier to yell at people than to actually make a workable plan to improve something.

  210. 210.

    Morzer

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2022/mar/19/russia-ukraine-war-latest-zelenskiy-urges-honest-peace-talks-without-delay-russian-forces-tighten-grip-around-mariupol-live#block-62364b108f08ee17b5372dc5

    The Kyiv Independent reported today that Russia is illegally forcing untrained men living in the Russian-controlled Donbas region to fight and putting them on the frontlines.

    “These people have never even held a machine gun in their hands,” said Oleksii, a 24-year-old resident of Russian-occupied Khrestivka in Donetsk, speaking of friends, classmates and former colleagues that he knows have been conscripted.

    One Donbas resident named Anastasia told the news outlet that these civilians from Donbas are forced to serve in frontline positions, with Russian forces threatening to shoot them if they don’t comply.

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