Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

No one could have predicted…

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

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

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

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

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

Infrastructure week. at last.

The willow is too close to the house.

“More of this”, i said to the dog.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

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

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

Not all heroes wear capes.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Extra Early Morning Open Thread

Extra Early Morning Open Thread

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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!

Reader Interactions

48Comments

  1. 1.

    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.

  2. 2.

    NotMax

    Potpourri of items which recently caught the eye.

    Every ounce of payload costing dearly, is this really an optimal exploitation of limited resources?

    Later this year, American artist Jeff Koons will be displaying some of his latest sculptures in their most exotic location yet: the surface of the Moon. Thanks to a new collaboration, Koons will create some new sculptures that will travel to the lunar surface on a robotic lunar lander made by Houston-based company Intuitive Machines. Source

    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.

    Congressman Matt Gaetz kicked off his reelection campaign last week, telling constituents at a Panhandle rally it is time to “choose your fighter.” Source

    ————————————-
    A Russian footnote festering in Hawaii.

    The word “Russian” has been blacked out with spray paint on the entrance sign to Kauai’s Russian Fort Elizabeth, a widely misunderstood 19th century landmark that has become a flashpoint among scholars and government officials from Russia and Hawaii.

    The vandalism is the latest iteration of a debate that has been waged on Kauai, in New York and in government offices in Honolulu and Moscow: What should the site be called and what version of history should it tell?
    [snip]
    [R]esistance was greatly undermined [earlier in March] when a dual Russian American national who tried to influence decision-making around the park’s future was accused of acting as a secret Russian agent on U.S. soil by the U.S. Department of Justice.

    Elena Branson — who organized the fort’s 2017 bicentennial and two years later led Hawaii residents, including an elected official, on an expenses-paid trip to Russia — returned to Moscow after the FBI raided her New York condo. Authorities say she is still at large.Source

    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.

    Anheuser-Busch beer heiress Trudy Busch Valentine on Tuesday announced her candidacy for U.S. Senate, shaking up what has been a low-profile Democratic primary in a solidly red state.

    Busch Valentine’s announcement comes amid widespread calls from Republicans for Eric Greitens to drop out of the race after the Republican former governor’s ex-wife accused him of physically abusing her and one of their kids. Source

  5. 5.

    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.”

  9. 9.

    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:

    Her: “You’re not going up there”
    Me: “No? [shaking head, quizzical smile] “I’m surprised.”
    Her: “I TOLD you!”
    Me: “You never told me anything. I’ve had the courtesy of nothing from you – anything I learned was secondhand.”
    Her: “You’re a DEMOCRAT!” [hissing] “This is for Republicans only!”
    Me: “Even for a nonpartisan race?”

    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….

  12. 12.

    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.

  17. 17.

    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.

  25. 25.

    Villago Delenda Est

    I’d suggest putting Greenwald on a rocket ship to Mars, but it would piss off the Martians something fierce.

  27. 27.

    mrmoshpotato

    My dogs woke me up at 3:30 AM by simultaneously pouncing on me and licking my face

    Awww! ?

  28. 28.

    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.”

  34. 34.

    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.

  35. 35.

    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.

  36. 36.

    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!

  39. 39.

    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.

  43. 43.

    Kalakal

    @MisterDancer:

    but the URL mentions Theo van Gogh of all people?

    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

  44. 44.

    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.

  45. 45.

    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.

  46. 46.

    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

  47. 47.

    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.

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