My dogs woke me up at 3:30 AM by simultaneously pouncing on me and licking my face, then demanded to be let out in the yard. They returned within minutes and are now snoring peacefully, the selfish beasties, whereas I’m wide awake and doom-scrolling.
Still, that inconvenience ensured I was awake to discover in my timeline what may be the greatest self-own since Twitter ejected Trump from the platform and rendered the “there’s always a tweet” truism inoperative. A certain resident of Brazil (who definitely does not support Putin!) was griping about how Western propaganda is unfair to Russia and had his own words flung back in his face:
Man, did that guy have that guy’s number or what?
Open thread!
Shalimar
If ever anyone in history needed an editor to condense his “never say in 10 words what you can say in 10000” style, it’s Greenwald.
NotMax
Potpourri of items which recently caught the eye.
Every ounce of payload costing dearly, is this really an optimal exploitation of limited resources?
Not to mention the extremes of temperature swings on the surface wreaking havoc on any installation, rendering it into lunar litter.
————————————-
Florida runs true to form.
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A Russian footnote festering in Hawaii.
A bill to effect the name change has already been introduced in the state legislature. Oh, BTW, the same Ms Branson gave political doantions (totaling the curious amount of a whopping $59.95) to one and only one presidential candidate, whose name rhymes with Shmulzie Jabbered.
————————————-
Show Me State shake-up.
Betty Cracker
@Shalimar: Yes. Imagine what a thankless task that would be!
Baud
To be fair, that was before America elected Obama and truly became evil.
Baud
@Shalimar:
No kidding. I notice he consistently uses two words in his speech where one would do. Or as he would say, “I and myself notice and observe that he uses two words and terms in his speech and locution where a single and solitary one would suffice and serve.”
bjacques
@NotMax: there’s better art already on the moon but it’s smol.
David C
Planning the butter lamb in your head?
NotMax
@bjacques
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
That’s fantastic!
On another note, as a candidate for a nonpartisan family court judgeship in a heavily R county, I went to a Republican women-sponsored candidate forum last night. I’d greased the ways in and actually had been the one suggesting that the judicial candidates speak to the GOP chair for the county – he’d been open, enthusiastic, and actually likes my candidacy.
Those good intentions and my idea got hijacked by the head of the Republican women, someone who is married to a guy I used to have an office with. She’s the chief purger from this county, determined to distill things to their purest essence, and has been pitching the candidacy of the unconventional strangely hard even though her own hubs is mostly retired and never had much of a practice anyway. For the past 5 days, I’d gotten word that I wouldn’t be allowed to speak, and knew that a sitting justice of the state Supreme Court was explicit told to not come at all. When I spoke with the other challenger (a registered R) in my race the night before last, she thought that the incumbent wasn’t going to show because of some other event and had said she was going to shake a couple of hands and leave without speaking.
When I got there, I noticed that our office was supposed to be on first, and I want on the program. Incumbent wasn’t there. Other challenger was there, and said “They told me that you’d be allowed to stay to shake hands, but not to speak. I’m not even going to introduce myself, this is bullshit”. She left for her kid’s baseball game.
I figured I’d stay and shake hands, chat, whatever. I’d been seeing bunches of these GOP folks at other events and we were all pretty friendly. There was some amusement as the organizer allowed inordinate stage time some gadfly nutjob from Wisconsin to speak, as he is running against Rand Paul from Wisconsin and thinks that everything is communism.
About an hour in, the pinch-faced incumbent arrives. I texted the other challenger with “something isn’t right – she just showed up”, and shortly after that, the meeting leader announces that family court judges will be heard. Prescience is good.
Joni (the other challenger) arrived, and they call he family court judges up. I just decide to brazen it out and walk up. As I get to the spot by the stage (keep in mind that this nakedly partisan event is in a church hall), the c-word who is leading this hootenanny looks at me with pure contempt and disgust and starts shaking her head “no”. Here’s the exchange, in front of a room with 150 people:
I stepped off to the side, wry smile on my face. Smiled even more when I listened to the incumbent cockblock herself when the other challenger made the mildest, least effective stumbling attack about delays in the issuance of orders.
I then reworked with all the people I’d been friendly with, who weren’t at all amused by the conduct of the woman leading the meeting, they thought it was bullshit. I then had a delightful talk with the wife of the state speaker of the house (he’s our local rep, a chamber of commerce horsey type) about her American Pharoah jacket that I stopped to admire. I hadn’t known who she was, and it turned out that she knew and adored my uncle, a turf writer and Churchill Downs historian with a lot of stature among horsey people.
All in all, it was a good night, despite the white pit of rage in the front of my brain. I made a good impression on the candidates and various spouses I’ve been working, the incumbent screwed up, I made the womens’ leader demonstrate her nasty side….
Betty Cracker
@David C: Easter always sneaks up on me, but you’re right; it’s almost butter lamb time!
Baud
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
I feel like this adventure is going to become a novel one day.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Shalimar:
I’m reminded of Twain’s critique of James Fenimore Cooper whenever I read a long-form Greenwald piece.
NotMax
@Betty Cracker
As a nod to Mama Cole maybe also a butter frog?
:)
Barbara
@NotMax:
Isn’t Greitens the one who resigned as governor?
OzarkHillbilly
@NotMax: Yeah, she’ll never win. Says the guy who’s never right.
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Well done, sir. Very well done.
NotMax
@Barbara
Yuppers.
OzarkHillbilly
@Barbara: Yes, pushed out by the state GOP. But true to Republican form, he is shameless and will let nothing stand in the way of his Presidential ambitions.
Betsy
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: I love this story. You done good!
Tony Jay
@Baud:
Sorry, President B, don’t know why that went to you. Blame the Covid brain.
Tony Jay
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
If she ever feels the need for different skies there’s definitely a place for that delightful woman in the New New Labour Party. With that toxic mix of naked ideological venom married to clubfooted political incompetence she’d fit right in.
Betty Cracker
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Way to keep your cool in the face of outrageous dumbfuckery! See, raising teenagers does have long-term benefits.
debbie
@Shalimar:
Maybe Andrew Sullivan could help him out. //
debbie
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
You’ve shown an admirable amount of self-control, sir!
Cephalus Max
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Wow, between this ♥ and Betty Cracker’s 3:30a discovery of Glenn’s faceplant, you guys have already made my day. And it’s only 7:30a!
Villago Delenda Est
I’d suggest putting Greenwald on a rocket ship to Mars, but it would piss off the Martians something fierce.
Villago Delenda Est
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: This is quite the tale of mirth. Your self control is at Psaki levels. Well done!
mrmoshpotato
Awww! ?
Ken
The Greenwald screed reminds me of Robert Burns’ immortal lines, “O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us; To see oursels as ithers see us!” And not just because it’s from “To a Louse.”
Raven
I get the booster this morning!
MisterDancer
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Awesome work! Thanks for the information and head’s up; it’s good to see people pushing back against these assholes.
mrmoshpotato
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Hahaha, nice! And the womens’ leader is a horse’s ass.
prostratedragon
@Ken: And now you have me wondering if Kafka had read Burns.
Betty Cracker
@Ken: Excellent observation!
@prostratedragon: This too!
MisterDancer
Man, that 2005 Greenwort column has EVERYTHING. Starts with some lovely racism towards then-Rep. McKinney (who has her issues, but was far from “hating America”), takes a swim in the Islamophobia rampant at the time (Something about “European Muslim extremists” executing scores of people — one assumes in Europe, and one assumes in relative silence ? The one link it in goes nowhere, but the URL mentions Theo van Gogh of all people?)…
…and peters out by flinging out some weird Holocaust equivalence who’s primary source appears to be (per a dead link) a Breitbart article that, from context, appears to have quoted an AP wire story? THE HELL.
Tony Jay
So yesterday the first 20 fixed penalty notices were issued by the Metropolitan Police to Tory shitbags found guilty of attending one or more of the 12 parties hosted by 10 Downing Street during the period in 2020 when any non-work gathering of more than 6 people was a criminal offence. There’s apparently many more to come, but the Guild of Paramilitary Freemasons are issuing them in ‘waves’ for reasons that positively have nothing to do with wanting to drag the process out so that the Press get bored with reporting on it.
Regardless of the bullshit and the mendacity surrounding the process, the now fully undeniable fact is that there were parties at Downing Street, they were in complete violation of the rules the people who attended them were telling the Police to enforce on everyone else, Prime Minister Sasha Flobalobalov did attend at least half of them, and he did lie to Parliament when he denied they had taken place. There is zero excuse now for the Tory Party not to do what many of its MPs said they were going to do back when the scandal first broke and force him to resign.
Oh, but, these are Tories, so no.
Instead of an immediate tsunami of letters demanding a new leader cascading through the letter box of the eldritch abominations comprising the Tory 1922 Committee, we’ve instead been gifted with the delightful image of Tory MPs trooping through the doors of a donor-funded Party shindig held that very evening, which was also the anniversary of the dedication of a National Memorial Wall to those who died (and are still dying) from Flobalobalov’s deliberate Covid mismanagement. Just to drive the ‘Fuck You, Proles!’ message home even harder, the MPs invited to their Big Dog’s swanky triumphal bash had to shuffle past a demonstration from the ‘Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK’ group, who totally drowned out their own supposedly non-partisan message (snark) by asking each MP “Going to another party, are you?“.
Once inside, Flobalobalov’s opening message, “Good evening ladies and gentleman, or as Keir Starmer would put it, people who are assigned female or male at birth” was a call-out to their long-term 2024 election strategy of condensing every single national issue down to a toxic Culture War 24/7 message, which makes it even more revolting that this morning, when a Tory MP, Jamie Wallis, issued an emotional open letter announcing that he was trans and detailing some of the horrors he’s suffered while trying to hide/deny who he really is, the Media have run the story without asking any really uncomfortable questions about how Flobalobalov’s anti-trans taunting of the night before conflicts with today’s tweet trying to paint ‘his’ Tory Party as an open, welcoming home for trans people. I guess that would be ‘partisan’ or something.
And anyway, the really ‘big’ story they’re running with is that the doltish hunk of abandoned statuary Dominic Raab, a man so reliably subservient that even the paranoid Flobalobalov trusts him to be a loyal deputy-leader, has done a round of interviews claiming that it’s wrong to say that his boss actually ‘lied’ to Parliament. What really happened was that he told the truth “to the best of his abilities“, which is either proof positive that Raab is so brick-brained he’d lose a ‘counting to three’ competition to a week-old omelette, or actually evidence that he’s a skilled political shapeshifter who playacts the headshot donkey only so he can be in the right position to backstab his rivals.
“Best of his abilities”? Yeah, I can believe that. hey, Dom-Dom Dumb-Dumb, how do you spell “non-exculpatory”?
Anyhoo, yeah, we’re back to rolling around in the muck while the UK News Media tries desperately to find anything positive to say about the wholly owned Mirror-Universe Russian doll (with every new revelation he just gets bigger and bigger) currently cuckooing away in the top job.
And what’s the Opposition doing? Taking advantage of the Government’s litany of missteps and open corruption to build a narrative where they represent a more hopeful future for millions? Ha! No. What are you, some kind of naïve tub-thumper? They’re doing the only thing matters to the restored ancien regime and its intended donor base of billionaire extremists, proscribing leftwing groups so that any support of or contact with them can be dredged up as an excuse to suspend and expel more members in the run-up to May’s local elections. Can’t have dirty lefties thinking they can have any role in selecting candidates for a democratic-socialist Party, can we? Especially not the ones who keep on asking difficult questions about the crumbling anti-Semitism scam that did so much to destroy the previous leadership. Some people might suggest that this is a ridiculous thing to be doing during a news cycle when Tory-bashing should be top of the agenda, but never mind, they’ll get to expelling them as well, and all will be right in the world.
This country is going down the drains faster than an iron-laced turd and part of me thinks we deserve it.
Betty Cracker
According to the NYT, Senator Collins (R – Concerned) says she’s a yes on KBJ. Manchin has already indicated he’s a yes, so even if Sinema flakes out, KBJ should have enough votes for confirmation, barring unforeseen catastrophes. Whew!
Ken
@Betty Cracker: Oh, good, KBJ must have reassured the Senator that she would uphold Roe v. Wade.
Geminid
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Go Comte go!
Betty Cracker
@MisterDancer: GG is terrible but lucky. He rose to prominence in the early days of blogging primarily due to scarcity of competitors. He lucked into the Snowden story since he blew off Snowden’s initial outreach and only started paying attention when Snowden reached out to GG’s far more talented collaborator after being ignored. Etc.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
?
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Good job. You have intestinal fortitude
BellyCat
@Baud: Paid by the word. Much like a few professors believe.
Kalakal
@MisterDancer:
I think he meant the Dutch film director who was assassinated in 2004 by a muslim fundamentalist. He’d directed a film written by Ayaan Hirsi Ali that was very uncomplimentary about the treatment of women in Islamic states.
His death was a cause celebre to Dutch RWNJs
cmorenc
Does anyone actually read Glenn Greenwald, other than progressives as a weird form of SM political porn? I don’t recall any instances of him being referred to at all by GOPers or RWs, let alone as an influential source of allegations or opinion. That doesn’t mean Greenwald isn’t a complete asshole and Russian shill, but there’s a crucial difference between Greenwald and Tucker Carlson (who is also a complete asshole and Russian shill) – Tucker actually has large influence with a large audience within the GOP base.
laura
Well somebody has got to step up and declare Jeff Koons “art” for the crass bullshit it is. You can sure call it and call him something, but it ain’t art. See also, Kincaid. WooHoo! First dreck on the moon.
UncleEbeneezer
@Betty Cracker: He also got lucky with a lot of Enemy-of-My-Enemy solidarity, I admit, I loved the way he went after W. He expressed well, the outrage that many of us felt at the time and served as a good attack dog. But then the election of Obama really brought out what a broken clock he was, and how aside from that brief period where everything aligned just right enough to make Glem seem like a good guy, actually he was pretty terrible on everything else, hypocritical, arrogant, thin-skinned and oh yeah, sexist, racist, Islamophobic, transphobic etc., and just an all around asshole
feebog
Ahhh, 2005. The year it rapidly became apparent to the American public that they had been lied into the Iraq war, that it was going to be anything but a cakewalk, and that Bush/Cheney/Rumsfield had no clue. So Greenwald tries to shore up a rapidly deteriorating sea wall with sandbags of gibberish.
SWMBO
@laura:
Now now. I think both artists works should be on the moon. But only if it was done there in person.