Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

Trump should be leading, not lying.

President Musk and Trump are both poorly raised, coddled 8 year old boys.

SCOTUS: It’s not “bribery” unless it comes from the Bribery region of France. Otherwise, it’s merely “sparkling malfeasance”.

One lie, alone, tears the fabric of reality.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

It’s pointless to bring up problems that can only be solved with a time machine.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

Rupert, come get your orange boy, you petrified old dinosaur turd.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

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

If a good thing happens for a bad reason, it’s still a good thing.

Just because you believe it, that does not make it true.

We will not go quietly into the night; we will not vanish without a fight.

The press swings at every pitch, we don’t have to.

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

The current Supreme Court is a dangerous, rogue court.

The lights are all blinking red.

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

If ‘weird’ was the finish line, they ran through the tape and kept running.

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Posted Without Comment

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My mom said if I couldn’t say anything nice, I shouldn’t say anything at all.

Possibly not the result she expected?

Open thread.

Reader Interactions

150Comments

  1. 1.

    RaflW

    I want Starlink nationalized.

    He’s been paid a shit-ton by the gov’t already. Buy him out as a matter of National Security. (Not realistic, but it should happen.)

  8. 8.

    RaflW

    Oh, and that Jenna Ellis item. Tossing out the Jeffies votes (which is awesome, but c’mon) It’s gotta really sting for Scalise:

    Scalise  11.7%
    Johnson 3.2%
    Jordan  85.1%

    Dayum.

  10. 10.

    Ken

    @RaflW: Tossing out the Jeffies votes (which is awesome, but c’mon)

    The really awesome thing is that she limited the poll to members of the House Republican caucus.

    /snark

  11. 11.

    Eyeroller

    @RaflW: One of the few old-fashioned magazines to which I subscribe is Wired, and they’ve had a couple of articles about Neuralink and its treatment of the macaques used as test subjects.  It was horrifying and UC Davis was complicit.  Then Muskmelon lied about it.  He claimed they were old and terminally ill, when they were young and had to be euthanized due to dreadful surgical malpractice and device failures and design flaws.  I can’t believe the FDA approved human trials after the failures with the monkeys.

  19. 19.

    Baud

    I don’t understand. Did she include Jefferies in the poll? Or could users “write in” Jefferies?

  23. 23.

    WaterGirl

    Has everyone seen this announcement from the DOJ?

    The Justice Department issued the following statement from Attorney General Merrick B. Garland on the transfer of approximately 1.1 million 7.62mm rounds to the Ukrainian armed forces. The U.S. Government obtained ownership of these munitions on July 20, through the Justice Department’s civil forfeiture claims against Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The munitions were originally seized by U.S. Central Command naval forces from the transiting stateless dhow MARWAN 1, on Dec. 9, 2022. The munitions were being transferred from the IRGC to the Houthis in Yemen in violation of the United Nations Security Council Resolution 2216.

    “With this weapons transfer, the Justice Department’s forfeiture actions against one authoritarian regime are now directly supporting the Ukrainian people’s fight against another authoritarian regime. We will continue to use every legal authority at our disposal to support Ukraine in their fight for freedom, democracy, and the rule of law.”

    I think we are going to see more of this.  If the Rs fuck with Ukraine funding, I hope Biden has some good, smart ways around it, like he is doing with the student loan stuff.

  25. 25.

    bbleh

    Jordan might actually have the MAGA cred to get the House to get business done, but alas he evidently has neither the brains nor the inclination to do so.

    *sigh*  I hope the WH is getting its PR offensive ready, cuz if the MAGAts shut things down they’re gonna be putting out a LOT of smoke and throwing all the mud they can get their grubby mitts on, and bringing them back to some minimal level of adult-like functionality is going to be a huge lift.

  27. 27.

    Alison Rose

    @Baud: I don’t think you can have write-ins on a Twitter poll. She probably expected Jeffries to have a tiny portion and be well overshadowed by the Republican names, so that the MAGA idiots could laugh at him.

  28. 28.

    gene108

    @WaterGirl:

    The number of national secrets members of Mar-a-Lago must have heard from Trump has to be more than this one instance.

    He must’ve regaled people at the table with or people who wanted to rub elbows with him about all the awesome stuff he knew as President.

  32. 32.

    SpaceUnit

    I fully expect Elon to disappear up his own ass some day.

     

    Just wish he’d hurry up with it.

  35. 35.

    Shalimar

    Someone posted on X-Twitter that Elon can’t name his own kids in chronological order, and I am unsure whether that is snark or something that actually happened when he was high for an interview.

  42. 42.

    Shalimar

    Marjorie Taylor Greene, showing no awareness that she actually has a job where she is supposed to work:

    Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene

    @RepMTG

    If Trump becomes Speaker of the House, the House chamber will be like a Trump rally everyday!! It would be the House of MAGA!!!

    Last edited12:25 PM · Oct 5, 2023
    ·

    2.2M
    Views

  43. 43.

    MattF

    Quote from Bloomberg Opinion (Dave Lee):

    Decency long left the building at X. It flows from the very top. When former executive Yoel Roth, whom Musk wrongly accused of being a pedophile, warned recently about hate speech on X, CEO Linda Yaccarino’s first reaction was to play down his concerns. On Monday, Musk followed up: “I have rarely seen evil in as pure a form as Yoel Roth.”

    Why bother to make excuses for him? Musk is a bad person, period.

  45. 45.

    Alison Rose

    @Baud: The liberal California government wouldn’t let him:

    Following the birth, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Musk announced the news on a post on Twitter, in which he also revealed that his son was called “X Æ A-12 Musk”.

    However, speculation arose that the unusual moniker might not comply with the law in California, where the couple live.

    According to Californian law, names must be written on birth certificates “using the 26 alphabetical letters of the English language”, however apostrophes and dashes can be included.

    Just under a month after the couple announced the name change, the baby’s name was officially confirmed on his birth certificate, according to TMZ.

    On the birth certificate, it states that the baby’s first name is “X”, it’s middle name is “AE A-XII” and its last name is “Musk”.

  46. 46.

    mrmoshpotato

    My mom said if I couldn’t say anything nice, I shouldn’t say anything at all.

    Does maniacal laughter count as saying something?

  50. 50.

    H.E.Wolf

    @Baud: “He should have just used counting numbers as names so he could remember their order.”​
     
     Yan, Tan, Tethera, Methera, Pip, Sethera, Wineberry, Wagtail, Tarrydiddle, Den….

  54. 54.

    Baud

    Y’all are on the wrong side of history from eversor.

    America’s nonreligious are a growing, diverse phenomenon. They really don’t like organized religion

  60. 60.

    Alison Rose

    @Baud: “Organized religion” and yet it’s only about people having left/being bothered by various sects of Christianity. So even the “nones” and the reporting on them act like “religion” = “Christian” and no one else exists.

  62. 62.

    Ken

    @Alison Rose: If, in another dozen years, that child brutally murders Musk, no jury in the world would convict. They might even award a public service medal.

  64. 64.

    Dan B

    @trollhattan: The Australian shared the info about subs with a group of people and it got to a number of foreign nationals and a journalist.  Jack Smith has the goods fortunately.

  66. 66.

    NotMax

    @zhena gogolia

    Like unto the assembled roll call in Goodbye, Mr. Chips.

    “Luddington-Twombley.”
    “Present, Sir.”
    “Luddington-Twombley Secundus.”
    ;)

  67. 67.

    Origuy

    Despite watching Mock the Week, Have I Got News For You, and QI on YouTube or BritBox, I only recognize about half of this bunch. Tony Jay, your thoughts?

     

    The MD guide to the current top 60 worst people in the UK. In order (that aren’t in jail)*

    *many of them should be

    60. Jim Davidson pic.twitter.com/mt5qE2Yzuc
    — Memorial Device (@memorialdevice) September 28, 2023

  71. 71.

    zhena gogolia

    I’m nearing the end of my watching all seven seasons of Mad Men, and the most brilliant thing about the show just hit me. All the male characters keep changing their hairstyles and facial hair to follow the styles, and they look quite accurate for what I remember of the various periods. BUT DON DRAPER NEVER CHANGES HIS HAIRCUT OR GROWS A BEARD OR MUSTACHE. It’s kind of subliminal, but when it hits you, it’s just awesome.

  72. 72.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

     The legendary Chicago Bear Dick Butkus has passed away today at age 80.

  75. 75.

    Bill Arnold

    @WaterGirl:
    Apparently, it goes back a while. The earliest ref found by google is 2012, but it sounds very much like something that 16 year old kid was taught by older people.
    N.R.A. Call to Guard Schools Is Criticized as Too Simplistic (Motoko Rich, Dec. 22, 2012)

    Joseph Dedam, 16, a junior at Elizabethtown-Lewis Central School in Elizabethtown, N.Y., said the proposal “is proactive. Right now, the best a school can do is have the teachers lock the classroom door and have the kids try to hide in a corner. But this is a situation where you can’t fight fire with water. You need to fight fire with fire.” He added, “you would not want a school official who is scared of a gun or not fully trained to have one.”

  76. 76.

    WaterGirl

    Oh my gosh, just saw this in the NY fraud case:

    Michael O’Grady

    TIME TO DISCLOSE WHO OWNS TRUMP.  Judge orders Trump to disclose third party co-owners, equity partners and lenders for ALL of their businesses including the 500 LLCs. Russia, Saudi, China, Egypt…

    This is huge.

    co-owners

    equity partners

    lenders 

    including the 500 LLCs

    It’s all gonna come out.

  80. 80.

    Geminid

    There’s been a little flurry in Turkiye today over US forces shooting down a Turkish drone in Syria. The Pentagon says that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke to his Turkish counterpart about the incident, and both nations seem to be downplaying this event.

    Turkiye just launched a bombing campaign against Kurdish YPG forces in northeast Syria. It’s retaliation for an attack in Ankara Sunday that was claimed by the PKK. Turkiye says the PKK controls the YPG militia that the US has worked with for a decade in its anti-ISIS campaign.

  86. 86.

    Geminid

    @WaterGirl: That will be big.

    The information may be available because of the Corporate Transparency Act passed in the 2020 Lame Duck session. The CTA was attached to a defense bill that had to be passed over Trump’s veto. The mandated financial disclosures are not public records, but can be accessed by federal, state and tribal authorities.

  89. 89.

    RedDirtGirl

    @WaterGirl: I remember a cartoon from (I think) The New Yorker, where someone is being accused of something and he says “Whom, meem?”

  90. 90.

    Jeffro

    “nationalize Starlink” sounds like something that SOME enterprising person oughta trademark and start printing bumper stickers, t-shirts, etc.

    otherwise, you’re just leavin’ money on the table there, fellow libs. ;)

  91. 91.

    Scout211

    Wow, when you’re famous, they let you do anything.

    The details that are coming out are what we all expected but now there are witnesses and evidence.

    From the trial today via AP

    NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump’ s corporate executives once boosted the estimated worth of his Trump Tower penthouse by $20 million partly because of the value of his celebrity, according to trial testimony Thursday.

    Another $100 million hike in the estimate was based on a single email from a real estate broker, who hadn’t commissioned an appraisal, didn’t inspect the triplex and was told it was three times its actual size.

    From a witness stand, former Trump Organization controller Jeffrey McConney shed light Thursday on calculations central to Trump’s New York civil business fraud trial.
    . . .

    But McConney’s testimony came with evidence that the documents were integral to some of Trump’s loan deals. In letters shown in the court, McConney told a bank that he was providing Trump’s 2015 and 2016 financial statements as required under the conditions of a loan for his Seven Springs estate north of New York City.

    To figure the penthouse value, Trump executives combed through real estate listings, looking only for the highest-priced similar apartments, McConney testified.

    And the $100 million increase in 2012?

    I’m basing that on the email from Kevin,” McConney said, referring to real estate agent Kevin Sneddon. The broker had offered a quick estimate based on an asking price for a similar triplex in a Trump-owned building elsewhere in Manhattan – an apartment that ultimately sold for only 40% of the asking price.

    The next year, McConney tacked on another $20 million, upping the estimated value of Trump’s penthouse to $200 million. He said the change was based partly on a Trump real estate executive’s suggestion that the apartment’s celebrity connection warranted a higher price.

    McConney also acknowledged making his own calculations, instead of relying on the numbers in a bank appraisal, to increase the stated worth of Trump’s Wall Street office building by $227 million.

  93. 93.

    The Kropenhagen Interpretation

    @WaterGirl: Is that directed at me?  I am not good with “who” and “whom”.

    It’s the same as the relationship between he and him, she and her; subject or object.

    I also see a lot of trouble with “you and *1st person pronoun*.” If you can replace both words with “we”, it’s “you and I.”  For “us,” it’s “you and me.” Amateur pedants insisting it is always “you and I” drive me up the wall.

    ETA: Or if you’re not sure, think of a similar use case in a Lady Gaga song, then do the opposite.

  94. 94.

    MisterDancer

    @WaterGirl: What if it’s all the real estate and business dealings that brings him down?

    Nothing would be more lovely than to see him hoisted by his own damn petard, in a way.

  95. 95.

    The Kropenhagen Interpretation

    @MisterDancer: I just learned a petard is a type of bomb. I like the expression, but I can’t imagine any bomb being the proper implement to hoist anything.

  97. 97.

    Captain C

    NEW: The SEC is seeking to force Musk to testify about his shady stock trades ahead of his acquisition of Twitter.

    I can think of something nice to say.  It will be very nice to see Musk testify under oath and penalty of perjury about some of his shady dealings.

  98. 98.

    The Kropenhagen Interpretation

    @eclare: We all had the one overly zealous English teacher ranting about people saying “you and me did whatever” and too many of us only got that part and over-corrected.

  101. 101.

    Jeffro

    FYI, trump is willing to “accept the Speakership for a short period of time” (you know, to help out*) while the House GOP works on selecting a long-term replacement Speaker.

    Have at it, snooze media!  I’m sure you’re up to telling Americans about the danger here.

    *and by this, he means “continue to find other avenues in which to inflict revenge on his enemies and wreck the country”

  107. 107.

    Ken B

    @The Kropenhagen Interpretation: A petard was a breaching bomb. They’d secure it to a door or a wall with a spike, light the fuse, and scarper.

    Sometimes the bomb would go boom before they got clear…

    IIRC ‘Hoist’ was the past tense of a verb that’s faded away. Probably the only reason the expression survives is Will Shakespeare had it in a play.

  108. 108.

    eclare

    @NotMax:

    I don’t hear that one as much.  I was watching some show on TV, can’t remember which, but the person used correct grammer, and I was astonished.  Something like “he and I did so and so.”  Astonished.

  113. 113.

    The Kropenhagen Interpretation

    @NotMax: Don’t get me started on people who say can in place of may.

    Can you do this for me?

    I can…

  117. 117.

    WaterGirl

    @Jeffro: You were talking about the news media stepping up and talking about the dangers of that.  I was suggesting that perhaps none were stepping forward to do that.

  125. 125.

    Wapiti

    @The Kropenhagen Interpretation: The early explosives were … iffy. Hoist by one’s own petard means it blew up and hoisted the petard user somewhere.

    And petard in the French of Shakespeare’s day also meant “fart”. Sometimes the actor delivering the line will hop up a little, being hoisted as it were, to get laughs from the courser elements in the audience.

  131. 131.

    Chris Johnson

    @SiubhanDuinne: There’s a story behind that adorableness :) Bambi was one of the first movies where they tried to use real kids for kid voices.

    Thumper was Peter Behn, who was only four and couldn’t read too well… in the audition they had kids reading Thumper lines, and Peter just sort of loudly blurted ‘DID THE YOUNG PRINCE FALL DOWN??’… and the people conducting the auditions thought that was terrible, but in the back of the room the animators went ‘whoa, what was THAT?’ and responded to the character and unforced personality of the kid.

    And so, in that very clip, Peter forgets his line for just a moment. He starts it, and then he freezes, his breath catches, and then he remembers and finishes up.

    So they animated it, just like that :) and that’s what’s in the movie.

  133. 133.

    Jeffro

    @WaterGirl: ah, my bad!

    There was an Axios piece yesterday and a Post piece today about how trump’s violent rhetoric is ramping up?

    Not much (and way, way too late) but it’s a start!

  134. 134.

    gwangung

    @Wapiti: Sometimes the actor delivering the line will hop up a little, being hoisted as it were, to get laughs from the courser elements in the audience.

    That’s Shakespeare indeed….rude, crude, lewd as well as being some of the most well wrought prose of its time.

  135. 135.

    prostratedragon

    @WaterGirl:  That jumped out at me too; talk about “perjury traps!” Jonathan Greenberg, who had that interview with John Barron for Forbes, thinks it’s going to be tough to get compliance, for exactly the same reason most of us catcallers do.

  139. 139.

    zhena gogolia

    @The Kropenhagen Interpretation:

    “Hoist with his own petard” is a phrase from a speech in William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet that has become proverbial. The phrase’s meaning is that a bomb-maker is blown (“hoist”, the past tense of “hoise”) off the ground by his own bomb (“petard”), and indicates an ironic reversal or poetic justice.

    Wikipedia.

  143. 143.

    geg6

    @zhena gogolia:

    I love that show so much.  It feels so existential to me.  Don and Peggy are two of the best characters ever.  And if the show was a novel, I don’t think it would feel any differently.  Not many tv shows have felt that way to me.

  150. 150.

    Ken

    @prostratedragon: Jonathan Greenberg […] thinks it’s going to be tough to get compliance, for exactly the same reason most of us catcallers do.

    He also thinks that Trump took out multiple loans with (ahem) overseas lenders, and didn’t bother telling them about the other creditors? Because I have suspicions along those lines.

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