Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

Accountability, motherfuckers.

Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

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

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

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

I did not have telepathic declassification on my 2022 bingo card.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

“Squeaker” McCarthy

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

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

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

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Second rate reporter says what?

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

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

Not all heroes wear capes.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

This really is a full service blog.

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / Thursday Morning Open Thread: Busy, Busy, Busy

Thursday Morning Open Thread: Busy, Busy, Busy

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(N.B.: Justice Thomas remains incommunicado.)

Reader Interactions

76Comments

  1. 1.

    NotMax

    Media notelet.

    Short (six episodes) season of Dimension 404 streaming on Hulu.

    Put one part Twilight Zone, one part The Outer Limits, one part Black Mirror into a blender and frappé thoroughly.

    Apply liberally to the tip of the tongue and insert that organ firmly into cheek.

  3. 3.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    It would be interesting if Biden ended up making an I’ll-advised side trip to Kyiv.

    Even better, a visit to Mariupol with a bunch of supplies and a couple of combat brigades for security.

  8. 8.

    SiubhanDuinne

    You know who you never hear about any more? Kirsten Gillibrand. I don’t think I’ve thought of her or heard her name in a year or more until she popped up in my awareness this morning (I feel as though I might have dreamed about her but not sure). To be honest, I had to Google her name to find out if she was still in the Senate. What happened? She used to be reasonably prominent.

  9. 9.

    NotMax

    The hearings are naught but an excuse for Congressional showboating. Jackson will be confirmed.

  10. 10.

    burnspbesq

    The unpleasantness between Elon and the SEC is heating up again. In Trumpian fashion, he’s trying to get out of an agreement he voluntarily entered into in 2018. His lawyer, who makes Sydney Powell look like a fucking legal genius by comparison, argued that the consent order infringes the poor guy’s freedom of speech. Commission lawyer correctly characterized that argument as “frivolous.”

    Dude, get a grip. Every time you open up your pie hole, the market value of publicly traded stock moves by tens of billions of dollars. Hell yes you’re accountable for the accuracy of your tweets.

  13. 13.

    Chief Oshkosh

    Rubin at WaPo has good opinion piece on how shitty the Republican Senators are, but also asking why THE FUCKING CHAIR OF THE GODAMMNED COMMITTEE DIDN’T STEP IN TO STOP THE SHIT SHOW. Senator Durbin, while you were snoozing, a meteor hit the chamber. I guess he did wake up long enough to plaintively bleat some argle-bargle about “why can’t people follow the rules?” They fucking don’t follow the rules because you don’t enforce them. Idiot.

  14. 14.

    Baud

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    Until this hearing, I hadn’t heard Booker mentioned for a while.  I think a lot of the 2020 candidates went back to focusing on their day jobs.

    Gilibrand was instrumental in recent legislation banning mandatory arbitration for sexual harassment cases, I believe. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn she also worked on VAWA authorization.

  16. 16.

    Another Scott

    KyivIndependent.com news feed:

    14:18

    external Reuters: US to accept up to 100,000 Ukrainians fleeing Russian invasion. Reuters reported citing anonymous sources that the announcement is “forthcoming.”

    Good, good.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  19. 19.

    Soprano2

    I didn’t watch any of it, but it sounds like the Republicans really beclowned themselves yesterday.  Judge Jackson would have been within her rights to get up and leave at the insults some of the Republicans directed at her, but she didn’t because she’s an adult. I get so impatient with the reporting on this where they act like the Republicans are arguing in good faith. I wish reporters would acknowledge that the reason for them acting this way is that they are intent on creating video clips for use on Fox News, Twitter, and right wing Web sites. They don’t really believe she’s soft on child porn, or any of that other crap. I think it was particularly odious that one of them asked her about Kavanaugh’s hearing, as if that has anything to do with her! It’s too bad she couldn’t say in response to a question like that “You can fuck right off with that question, I’m not answering it because it’s ludicrous.”

  22. 22.

    Jeffro

    @Chief Oshkosh:  We would definitely benefit from stronger pushback on these GQP assholes and having them called out in real-time. Not just when they go over their allotted time but when they are completely out of bounds with their questioning, interruptions, badgering, and so on.

    If Amy K was the chair, she’d be having none of this crap.

  23. 23.

    satby

    @sdhays: I know people have been asking for this, angry it hasn’t happened yet and it’s great to finally hear the most vulnerable are coming! It’s going to take all of us to step up.

    Keep in mind we’re still trying to resettle our previous refugee wave from Afghanistan. I’m going to be on a deployment* all next week up in Michigan helping get approximately 50 families relocated and set up in housing. Imagine the logistics and needs if you suddenly had to move to a different continent with only the clothes on your back and whatever you could carry, then multiply it by 100s of thousands.

    * Disaster service assignments are called deployments, and displaced people are always the result of a disaster.

  25. 25.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Baud: 

    She could have said she also likes beer.

    And followed that up with a rant about how the opposition to her is all a big conspiracy organized by the Clintons Kochs.

  29. 29.

    lowtechcyclist

    @burnspbesq: I’d ask her, aren’t the orgs that run women’s sports up to the challenge, or what?  You really need the Supreme Court here?

  32. 32.

    Geminid

    @Chief Oshkosh: I noticed that when Harry Reid retired, the Democratic Caucus voted to jump Chuck Schumer over Dick Durban to be Minority Leader. There could have been several reasons, but they might have seen a hard edge in Schumer that they did not see in Durbin.

  33. 33.

    sixthdoctor

    @Chief Oshkosh: FWIW I’ve been following Elie Mystal on this and his thread touches on this topic.

    I think @DickDurbin did a very good job. Obviously I wanted him to shove the gavel up Ted Cruz’s ass, but I know that’s an unrealistic request.
    Over all, Durbin was very chairman-like. 9/10.

    BUT…
    — Elie Mystal (@ElieNYC) March 24, 2022

  36. 36.

    Kay

    Gabriella Borter
    @gabriellaborter
    Just in from Planned Parenthood
    @ppfa
    : MacKenzie Scott has donated $275 million to the national office and 21 Planned Parenthood affiliates. That’s the largest donation from a single donor in Planned Parenthood’s history.

  38. 38.

    Steeplejack

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    I thought about her briefly last night. A friend and I were talking about the Brown Jackson hearing and Ted Cruz, and I repeated Al Franken’s joke: “”I like Ted Cruz more than most of my other colleagues like Ted Cruz. And I hate Ted Cruz.”

    You can connect the dots.

  40. 40.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Geminid: But people are convinced that Schumer isn’t up to the job.  Just like they thought Reid wasn’t up to the the job before him.  I am thinking that being the Democratic leader in the Senate might just be a very difficult job when you don’t have a huge majority (or are in the minority).  But that’s just me.

  44. 44.

    zhena gogolia

    She makes me cry happy tears. I hate the Republicans with the fire of a thousand suns. Lindsay Graham should be [won’t finish the sentence but it involves Mariupol]

  47. 47.

    satby

    @JPL: Nice! In Germany, but shows pretty well how much it can take to help people.

    I expect that most Ukrainians will want to stay in Europe for a chance to return to their homes once this war ends, unless they decide to join family in places like the US. Chicago has a large Ukrainian population, and can expect refugees from there.

  50. 50.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Steeplejack:

    I can. And now you point it out, I realise that was precisely the train of thought that popped her into my brain.

    Ted Cruz —->  Al Franken —->  Kirsten Gillibrand.

  54. 54.

    Geminid

    @SiubhanDuinne: A lot of Senators are rarely in the news. My Senators Tim Kaine and Mark Warner have a fairly low profile but that’s not because they are not hardworking or effective.

    Usually, Senators achieve prominence through high profile hearings like this one. I remember when Maisy Hirono made a splash at the Kavanaugh hearings. People were like, “Wow! Where’s SHE been hiding?”

    It’s worse in the House, where a few stars can overshadow their many capable, talented colleagues. I thought of this phenomenon when two impeachment trials thrust into the public eye Impeachment Managers Val Demings, Hakeem Jeffries, Stacey Plaskett, Jaime Raskin,  Joe Neguse and others. They became stars and that’s a good thing. But I’m not sure if Democrats realize how many more talented and capable House members there are that they have yet to “discover.”

  55. 55.

    sab

    @satby: Yes. Congress has a deserved bad reputation for not accepting immigrants, but lots of people in America are more than fine with accepting them. It takes a lot of work, and there are organizations all across the US that have been doing this for many decades.

    My city, not big, has taken in former Yugoslavs, Congolese, Nepalis. Our only limitation, and it is severe, is available housing stock.

  59. 59.

    debbie

    I hope that one thing coming out of this special NATO meeting is a statement of outrage and demand that every Ukrainian kidnapped and taken to Russia will be repatriated to Ukraine and made whole by Russia who will provide a very generous compensation plan to each person.

  60. 60.

    Soprano2

    @Geminid: This is true. Sometimes I hear a story where they mention “Senator X” and I say to myself “Who the heck is that?” because I’ve never heard of them.

  62. 62.

    Ishiyama

    So NATO is putting 40,000 troops plus other assets on Putin’s Northern flank; now he has to reserve some of his military to protect St. Petersburg (& Moscow), instead of pouring them into Ukraine.

  63. 63.

    Tony Jay

    @Another Scott:

    Just look at the graceless lump of calcified junkbatter, it can’t even maintain the fake-Churchillian pose it’s been practicing in the mirror all morning because it’s too busy bobbing from foot to foot looking around for someone, anyone, to pretend that they like him.

    And to think, our Media and Political Establishments were so terrified of paying a few pounds more in tax that they promoted that as the lesser of two evils.

    Roll on the apocalypse.

  68. 68.

    Heidi Mom

    @Geminid: PA’s senior senator, Bob Casey, falls in that Warner/Kaine category: quiet, effective, rarely making headlines, but a solid, reliable Democratic vote.  And he was an FOB (friend of Barack), which is a big plus in my book.  Very proud of him.

  70. 70.

    Geminid

    @Heidi Mom: In 2018 Bob Casey won reelection in purple Pennsylvania by over 600,000 votes. He said afterwards that the ACA was his best issue.

  72. 72.

    satby

    @sab: Congress has a deserved bad reputation for not accepting immigrants

    “Congress” doesn’t deserve the bad reputation; Republicans in Congress who have blocked and removed funding from immigration and resettlement programs do. The constant problem in this nation is knowing exactly who fucked shit up and needs to be voted out.

  73. 73.

    debbie

    @satby:

    Sometimes, it’s the principle that matters the most. I’m sure something could be figured out. Other countries have complied with reparations, so it’s not like there hasn’t been precedent.

  74. 74.

    TheronWare

    If I hear one more corporate talking head mention “the red line “ relating to Syria ?? and Ukrain, I will lose my shyt!! Joe Scarborough mentioned it yesterday morning and Andrea Mitchell not only mentioned it later the same day but yet again today!! SMH.

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