Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The frogs are rarely mistaken.

Let me file that under fuck it.

Baby steps, because the Republican Party is full of angry babies.

Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

An unpunished coup is a training exercise.

The arc of the moral universe doesn’t bend itself. it’s up to us.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

There’s always a light at the end of the frog.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

It’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

There is no compromise when it comes to body autonomy. You either have it or you don’t.

Even though I know this is a bad idea, I’m off to do it anyway!

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

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

Joe Biden can go out like FDR, not by dying in office, but by crushing the fascists.

If you thought you’d already seen people saying the stupidest things possible on the internet, prepare yourselves.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

You are so fucked. Still, I wish you the best of luck.

You are here: Home / Elections 2024 / Trump Vows to Throw NATO to the Wolves

Trump Vows to Throw NATO to the Wolves

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Donald Trump made insane remarks at a rally last night about an extortion racket he claims he ran as POTUS against NATO allies, with Putin providing the muscle. Here’s video from Threads courtesy of Biden-Harris HQ, the campaign’s official account:

 

Post by @bidenharrishq
View on Threads

 

According to the NYT (gift link), Trump made this claim before to “highlight his negotiation skills.” I don’t recall it but can easily believe that. Trump says so many bizarre things and makes outlandish claims so frequently that it’s hard for any one thing to register for long.

I wondered if mainstream media outlets would find Trump’s promise to work in concert with a genocidal dictator to restart an international extortion racket targeting U.S. allies as interesting as they found DOJ-embedded Trump operative Robert Hur’s political hatchet job “report.” Encouragingly, Trump’s promise to throw NATO to the wolves is getting widespread media coverage.

I hate Trump with the white hot heat of ten thousand suns, and the only news I want to hear about him is that he choked on his second lunchtime Filet-O-Fish and is taking a dirt nap while family members step on one another’s heads in a tawdry scramble to grab the remaining assets.

But the Biden campaign wants to make the upcoming election a referendum on Trump, so the more the media covers the crazy shit he says, the better. The good news is there will be an inexhaustible supply of eruptions of stupidity and evil from Trump between now and November.

Open thread.

Reader Interactions

160Comments

  1. 1.

    Alison Rose

    (Reposting from downstairs since it fits better here anyway)

    Fuck yeah, Joe. Love this.

    Trump makes fun of Nikki Haley’s husband, who is stationed overseas serving in the U.S. military: What happened to her husband? Where is he? He’s gone pic.twitter.com/Ass2dtmTWV
    — Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) February 10, 2024

    The answer is that Major Haley is abroad, serving his country right now.

    We know he thinks our troops are “suckers,” but this guy wouldn’t know service to his country if it slapped him in the face. https://t.co/6kXBPHfeK4
    — Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) February 11, 2024

  4. 4.

    clay

    I am not going to play the video embedded in the tweet, but I do want to note that the screen shot of it shows a whole lot of bored white people.

  6. 6.

    Kristine

    I hope this link works b/c this was just the sort of story I needed this morning: The Howling

     

    I’ve been so busy between getting home and staying warm and skijoring and doctor’s appointments…I forgot to tell you the story of our journey home.

  8. 8.

    sdhays

    I’m glad this is getting wide coverage.

    Also – while I detest Facebook/Meta, hooray for the non-Xitter link! Maybe you have done this before, Betty, but it’s the first time it’s registered for me. It’s certainly progress that this kind of content can be leveraged from a non-Musk platform.

  10. 10.

    Baud

    @sdhays:

    I’m not a Facebook fan, but for whatever reason, I haven’t heard much controversy about them in a while. Not sure if that reflects a real change.

  12. 12.

    Mike in NC

    Fat Bastard has hated NATO for decades because he is a deeply fucked up lunatic who always thinks like the mob boss he really is. His plan after the coup in 2021 was to disband the organization as a personal favor to his master in the Kremlin.

  18. 18.

    delphinium

    I am going to try calling my odious rep Claudia Tenney’s office tomorrow to ask about funding for Ukraine and if she intends to vote for the appropriations bills coming due in early March. Since her own website lists Russia as part of the Axis of evil, will also be mentioning this to see if Tenney will be calling out Trump on it. Since she is a walking wingnut bingo card, not expecting much but figure I have to try.

    Mind you, she is the idiot asking to invoke the 25th amendment against Biden. If it was me, would be a bit leery of airing concerns about Biden’s ability to perform his job when the GOP took 15 tries to elect Kevin speaker and then booted him out a short time later and can’t seem pass any bills even when they include what they want.

  19. 19.

    Alison Rose

    @Kristine: Quite a story! Also TIL there is a thing called “skijoring” which I absolutely had to Google because I thought she had made a very weird typo for skiing.

    Skijoring (pronounced /ˈskiːʃɜːrɪŋ/) (skijouring in British English) is a winter sport in which a person on skis is pulled by a horse, a dog (or dogs), another animal, or a motor vehicle. The name is derived from the Norwegian word skikjøring, meaning “ski driving”. Although skijoring is said to have originated as a mode of winter travel, it is currently primarily a competitive sport.

  20. 20.

    Sure Lurkalot

    @clay:

    I am not going to play the video embedded in the tweet, but I do want to note that the screen shot of it shows a whole lot of bored white people.

    Since I can’t stand the fucker’s voice, I played it sound off and the crowd went from looking bored to clapping (and probably cheering). It’s no longer just a basket of deplorables.

  23. 23.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Mike in NC:

    Fat Bastard has hated NATO for decades because he is a deeply fucked up lunatic who always thinks like the mob boss he really is. His plan after the coup in 2021 was to disband the organization as a personal favor to his master in the Kremlin. 

    Thank you for also remembering how much of a traitorous, Kremlin-humping pile of shit Dump is.

  24. 24.

    Hungry Joe

    So, maybe Belgium has reached its credit-card limit, or Poland bounced a check, or Estonia is a little short this month? Screw ‘em.

    This is the guy who brags about refusing to pay contractors the agreed-upon price for renovations on his properties. How this is okay with his goober troops is way, way beyond my understanding.

  25. 25.

    Betty Cracker

    @sdhays: Yep. Both platforms are owned by repulsive oligarchs,  but only one owner is personally amplifying Nazi fuck-squibs. If Bluesky ever gains native video capabilities, I’ll use it instead.

  30. 30.

    mrmoshpotato

    @hueyplong:

    I’d like to spend more time on the concept of Trump choking to death on a Filet-O-Fish. 

    So would I, but I’m thinking about making lunch soon and don’t want to lose my appetite thinking about McTrash’s.

  31. 31.

    Kay

    nycsouthpawTrump’s dogged confusion about how the NATO alliance works—and his fantasias of imagined confrontations about it with world leaders—have persisted despite repeated attempts to correct and educate him, including by the chairman of the joint chief of staff, over 9 years. This is never reported as ‘raising questions’ about his mental acuity.

    He also doesn’t understand how wind turbines work – this isn’t deliberately (and cleverly!) not understanding things as political media believe – he’s really a stupid person. He does not retain information other than like celebrity gossip from 1983.

  32. 32.

    Miss Bianca

    @Alison Rose: There’s dog *and* horse ski-joring. Up in Leadville, which is at 10,000 feet above sea level, there’s a whole weekend devoted to horse ski-joring. They block off the main street, blast it with enough snow to make runways, and then crazoids riding Quarter Horses with special cleated snowshoes take off running, towing even crazier crazoids on skis behind them over a series of jumps.

    It’s nuts. I think I’m going to go back to watch this winter (it’s usually the first weekend in March.)

  34. 34.

    Nukular Biskits

    @delphinium:

    I am going to try calling my odious rep Claudia Tenney’s office tomorrow to ask about funding for Ukraine and if she intends to vote for the appropriations bills coming due in early March.

    Good luck getting an answer.

    My calls to the offices of both my US Senators and my US Representative usually result in the staffer saying something along the lines of the following:

    I’m not aware of Senator/Congressman XYZ’s position on that.  I’ll be glad to take your concern and pass it along to him/her.

  35. 35.

    trollhattan

    He hates NATO, probably because he can’t control it “What good is that?” or because NATO does not supply him with a steady supply of Hot Girls of NATO.

    Trump is far more dangerous today than in 2016. His list of grievances has grown a hundredfold and he will not have a single competent person in his administration.

  38. 38.

    Elizabelle

    @Kay

    [Trump] does not retain information other than like celebrity gossip from 1983.

    Funny, and truer than anything the FTF FF*NYT has published in their long decades of quoting and propping him up.

    The NY Times gets two extra Fs.  For Fascist-Fellating.  Could be Fondling, if you prefer.

  40. 40.

    Gary K

    Man, I can’t believe my little city in Ohio. The Congregational Church there (supposedly the most liberal) hired this atheist as a musician today. Between rehearsal and service I was enjoying a cup of coffee with a retired judge. He mentioned an acquaintance who changed parties to Republican because of “what the Democrats did on January 6th.” Yeah, you read that correctly! The judge himself opined that the insurrection was all because of the embedded FBI agents who riled up the mob. WTF?

  41. 41.

    trollhattan

    Candidate count for US senate in California is 27. That’s for the full term, only seven listed for the final year of DiFi’s term.

    Or, 26 and 6, plus Steve Garvey.

  42. 42.

    Hungry Joe

    I am SO PYCHED about the Big Game.

    Seriously. I never miss a Puppy Bowl. NYTimes story today pulls the curtain back, suggests it’s rigged — or at least, a little staged. I can live with that. Best line was from the ref, when asked what he does when a puppy pees on the field — a clear infraction. “I’m not so quick to throw the flag,” he said. “We’ve got a game to play here.”

  46. 46.

    Ruckus

    @Mike in NC:

    Fat Bastard has hated NATO for decades because he is a deeply fucked up lunatic who always thinks like the mob boss he really (is) would like to be.

    FIXIT for you…. SFB doesn’t have the cojones or brains to be a mob boss. He extremely likely wants/wanted to be one but as I said he just doesn’t have what it takes. He thinks he does and could do it better than any actual mob boss but like everything else going on in that lame excuse for a brain – he’s so far out over his skis and has no idea that he is even wearing skis (with lifts!), and that his 77 yr old brain is just extremely over excited mush.

  49. 49.

    trollhattan

    @Alison Rose: ​
    Bike joring is a thing too, and let me tell you, being towed on a bike by lunatic huskies is not high on my must-do list. Folks nevertheless seem to enjoy the challenge.

  52. 52.

    Betty Cracker

    @Kay: Fran Lebowitz agrees:

    “Everyone says he is crazy – which maybe he is – but the scarier thing about him is that he is stupid. You do not know anyone as stupid as Donald Trump. You just don’t.”

  53. 53.

    WaterGirl

    @Baud: I had clicked the X to close the box, but i hadn’t realized that all I was looking for was the small box of text on the right.  Thanks for the comment, as it sent me back again, and I realized I could click on MORE.

  59. 59.

    mrmoshpotato

    @trollhattan:

    Bike joring is a thing too, and let me tell you, being towed on a bike by lunatic huskies is not high on my must-do list. 

    That sounds terrifying.  Poop and pee your pants terrifying.

  60. 60.

    Kristine

    @TaMara: I loved the (apparent) meet-cute and bonding over family drama and cheese. Assuming Dapper was the astrophysicist mentioned later.

    The whole thing just made me happy.

  61. 61.

    Alison Rose

    My cat is completely entranced by a bright yellow American Goldfinch hanging out in the bare tree outside our windows giving itself a bath or something. Sometimes I think the birds know the cat is there and they enjoy teasing her.

  63. 63.

    delphinium

    @Gary K:

    The judge himself opined that the insurrection was all because of the embedded FBI agents who riled up the mob.

    Only FBI agents have agency, right? Pathetic, glad that judge is retired.

  69. 69.

    Skippy-san

    Trump has never understood how NATO works. Even though he has been told so many times. No nation in NATO is “delinquent”. There is not a “bill” . The 2% GDP is a mutually agreed statement of intent, nothing more. Not to mention that The US gets a lot of things from NATO members that we don’t pay for, not the least of which is the ability to do logistics for the Middle East. Trump’s refusal to understand this is never reported as ‘raising questions’ about his mental acuity. it should be.

  70. 70.

    Tony Jay

    Another unintentionally hilarious article in today’s FTFGuardian where current ‘leftish and brown people correspondent’ Kenan Malik draws attention to the long term project to drive anyone outside the narrow boundaries of the pro-Israeli Right from the conversation around Occupied Palestine and Gaza by labelling them as antisemites, ‘un-Jews’, or both.

    It’s funny because Malik weights his article as a critique of the way the German establishment ’cancels’ anyone who questions Israel’s actions (which leads to much ire from German Jews who have to stomach being lectured on antisemitism by the grandchildren of the people who enacted the Holocaust) because if he used it to critique the British Establishment, and most especially the rag he writes for, they would never have printed it.

    It’s the great unspoken sin of the last decade of British politics, where the ‘centrist-moderates’ jumped into bed with the Right to smear ‘the Left’ as the font of all antisemitism because they were terrified of the prospect of a genuine centre-left government messing with their comfortable affluence. Now they’ve got Bibi and his allies in the UK rubbing their noses in how bad a bargain that was for any kind of ‘progressive’ journalism and the cognitive dissonance is killing their credibility.

    Tiny violins.

  75. 75.

    Quadrillipede

    As a parent of a six-year-old boy, whose mother is currently taking a vacation with here family for a few weeks, I decided I should try to do something to limit his access to YouTube on the Roku, as he generally wakes up about 2-3 hours before me on weekends. So on Friday night, I hid the Roku controller (where he would never find it) and went to sleep feeling all clever like a fox.

    When I emerged from my bedroom on Saturday morning, I discovered that he’d spent an hour or so looking for the remote, but then he installed an app on his tablet (that I must previously have approved), and used that to bypass my ad-hoc “parental lock”, and had resumed watching Let’s Play videos of Minecraft and various other sandbox games. Oh well, that probably would’ve work a year or two ago!

    So I think the next plan is to try to install a phone controlled power switch for just the TV and the Roku, so I can set up a schedule (maybe 7-8am, and 4-6pm or something), so he can have some limited time to watch “nonsense” and I have slightly more chance to intervene with more educational/edutainment content like Kurzgesagt or What If. Let’s see how long it takes him to figure that one out! 🕵‍♂️

  77. 77.

    Ruckus

    @Hungry Joe:

    How this is okay with his goober troops is way, way beyond my understanding.

    Something for nothing is hard to understand?

    That is SFB in a tiny nutshell. He wants needs people to think he’s not shit. I mean we all would like people to think that about us but he NEEDS them to, because he has a mirror in his house, I’m almost amazed that he doesn’t have a room of mirrors, but he wouldn’t because he really doesn’t want to see that he’s shit from every direction. IOW the truth.

  80. 80.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @trollhattan: Conservatives have hated NATO and the UN since the very beginning.  They don’t like the idea of countries working together, especially for the goal of World Peace.  They also hate them because they place somewhat of a check on US Hegemony.

  82. 82.

    kindness

    Trump’s hatred of NATO is probably because a) Putin has video of Trump doing the nasty when he was hosting beauty pagents in Moscow, b) Trump thinks Putin is a higher up mob boss c) Trump sees the amount of money going to defense & NATO, conflates the two and resents that he isn’t getting his cut wetting his beak on that sweet cheese.

  83. 83.

    JWR

    Kristen Welker talked to Chris Christie this morning, and he said that he was doing everything in his power to keep Trump out of the WH, then said that he couldn’t see himself ever voting for Biden. Shocking, I know.

    And I forget which show it was, either CBS or NBC, but that Repub CIA guy Mike Morrell was doing his best to say that the number of items stashed by both Trump and by Biden was roughly the same, (Huh! I guess I forget those forklift loads of boxes down in FL.) But he was Gish galloping it to the hilt.

    But Welker was really pressing some Dem guy about certain other pants-pissing Dems who were freaking out and sending around memos asking who they could put in Biden’s place. Names like Whitmer and a few others came up, but I don’t recall them all. Really stupid stuff.

    CBS was better, in that Margaret Sullivan had Bob Bauer on, who I thought defended Biden quite forcefully, and she followed him with some Dem senator, I think it was Chris Murphy, who actually sounded like a pissed off Dem defending the president. Good!

    PS. Please excuse the early morning grammar. It really bugs me when I can’t seem to write a simple paragraph, but oh well. :(

  89. 89.

    lowtechcyclist

    @delphinium:

    Since her own website lists Russia as part of the Axis of evil, will also be mentioning this to see if Tenney will be calling out Trump on it.

    Clearly it hasn’t been updated lately.

  90. 90.

    Barry

    When I was going to Michigan State in the early 90’s, there was a woman in a wheelchair who had two huskies.  She would go frighteningly fast.

  91. 91.

    Alison Rose

    LOL this came up in my Facebook memories, and I feel like the Pedants Of Balloon Juice would appreciate this joke:

    DEVIL: And this is the lake of lava that you’ll be spending eternity in.

    ME: Actually we’re underground so it would be magma.

    DEVIL: This is why you’re here you realise.
    — Mystery Name (@CumburgGoneburg) December 7, 2021

  93. 93.

    mrmoshpotato

    @kindness: The orange manbaby(brat) also has no concept of cooperation.  All his  fascistic, sad, narcissistic, pathetic life has been dominated by the belief of “I win!  You lose!”

  94. 94.

    FastEdD

    Love the Husky story. Loved the humans being kind to the doggo and each other.

    In other news, Mojo Nixon passed away this week. He went out in a blaze of glory, crazy as ever on an Outlaw Cruise. He wasn’t a great singer/songwriter by his own admission, but he was a character. Some of his finest works were “Elvis Is Everywhere,” “Tie My Pecker To My Leg,” and my favorite “She’s All Liquored Up.” (She used to be a nice girl, but …)

    He was not a fan of the Orange One. Here he explains his deep thoughts on current affairs on “Donald Trump Can Suck My Dick.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMkdvY2Z2Xk

    Pure poetry. Mojo Nixon, RIP. Or not, he’s just raising hell somewhere else.

  95. 95.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Gary K:

    The judge himself opined that the insurrection was all because of the embedded FBI agents who riled up the mob. WTF?

    My response would have been, “so thousands of Republicans were committing crimes because some strangers urged them to?  Sounds like they should be locked up for both their safety and ours.”

  96. 96.

    SFAW

    @Elizabelle:

    The NY Times gets two extra Fs. For Fascist-Fellating. Could be Fondling, if you prefer.

    Not bad. I’ve been using FTFTFNYT for a few years now. The second “TF” stands for “Trump Fluffing.”

    [In case you’re unfamiliar with the term, “fluffing” is/was a term of art (so to speak) in the porn industry. A “fluffer” is/was a young lady who would use her oral skills to ensure the male star was, um, standing at attention.]

  102. 102.

    mrmoshpotato

    @FastEdD: I’d be really concerned about what diseases and infections you’d get from the orange shitstain sucking anyone’s dick.

  103. 103.

    wjca

    @trollhattan: Candidate count for US senate in California is 27. That’s for the full term, only seven listed for the final year of DiFi’s term.

    Or, 26 and 6, plus Steve Garvey.

    It’s easy to disparage Garvey by comparing him to the other (major) candidates.  But it can be interesting to compare him to Republicans eleswhere.  This lifted from from our local paper, The East Bay Times (not related to the NYT!), on Garvey:

    • Supports national assault weapon ban.
    • Says members of Congress should seek federal dollars for local needs.  AKA ear marks — which was traditionally how individual Congressmen were induced to vote for stuff, including when they were otherwise negative on them.
    • opposes a national abortion ban (to respect California’s 2022 vote to establish state abortion rights).

    What are the chances of a serious Republican Senate candidate in any other state taking those positions?  (He does have other positions which are negatives, to be sure.)

    To be clear, I have no intention of voting for him.  And not just because I want the Senate to stay in Democratic hands.  But still, if he somehow were elected, he would be among the least conservative Republicans there.

  109. 109.

    FastEdD

    @wjca: Steve Garvey’s life has been a mess. Multiple children by multiple women, messy divorce, lying to everyone. I’d almost feel sorry for him, but no, he’s a lot like other R’s, a total hypocrite.

  113. 113.

    JWR

    @wjca: Yeah, but Garvey voted for Trump, twice, so I’ll bet these positions are simply taken to get into office.

    Katie Porter is also against earmarks. I think Schiff supports them. Corrections welcomed. ;)

  115. 115.

    Alison Rose

    BTW for any of you following the Bike Saga at my apartment building (you know…all two of you), Additional Bike and Yet Another Bike suddenly disappeared this morning! They were there when I got up, and just now I looked out the window and they’re gone. And I missed it!! I missed the sneaky little creature who owns them coming and snagging them back. This is the worst FOMO ever.

    Now Original Bike is all by its lonesome again.

  119. 119.

    Quadrillipede

    @TBone: I did consider disconnecting the TV power at the connection into to TV itself. That would be (currently) impossible for him to diagnose and fix, but it would also be a real PITA if I actually want to use the TV. So I think using a spare smart plug I have lying around, as long as he doesn’t stealth figure out what app I use, and somehow trick me into approving it on his tablet, that ought to work for a year or so..? 🤔🤷‍♂️

  121. 121.

    Quadrillipede

    @mrmoshpotato: I would actually like some kind of journalist to sit down with former President Howdoesnatowork, and ask him who “wins” when he waddle-rolls into a bread store (with his ID in hand, of course) and buys a loaf of bread? Who is the sucker and loser in this scenario?

  123. 123.

    Chris Johnson

    Don’t chalk up to stupidity and power fantasy what is more easily explained by fealty.

    Trump is only saying what he thinks Putin needs him to say, much like Tucker Carlson is doing, except Trump is a lot stupider than Tucker so he has no sense of whether his remarks will play to an audience.

    Meanwhile, Tucker has the opposite problem: he desperately wants Putin to say stuff that will play to the domestic audience, but he is just another servant. So Putin completely ignores what Tucker wants him to say, and goes off the reservation, while Tucker dies a thousand deaths knowing his boss is doing his own cause harm. But he is a servant. There is nothing he can do. First they make Trump the standard bearer for treason and not him, and now he can’t even get his boss to perform up to standard.

    Poor guy. He should consider quitting and become a double traitor. Probably has a hell of a lot of dirt on Trump.

  126. 126.

    trollhattan

    @JWR: Here’s is Garvey’s voter guide statement, in full. Anybody who can glean something tangible from it, please ‘splain to me!

    From the moment I came to California 50 years ago, it was home. For 20 years, I played
    for the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres. When I took the field, I played for
    all the fans. Everyone was equal. Politics, race, sexual orientation, gender, and
    background didn’t divide us—they brought us together. California used to be the
    heartbeat of America, now it’s just a murmur. Today, career politicians put special
    interests ahead of you and your family’s well-being. Instead of housing, we have
    out-of-control homelessness. Instead of safe neighborhoods, there’s violent crime.
    Instead of afordability, we have record inflation, and too many Californians can’t aford
    rent, groceries, and gas. That’s not the California we love. You deserve better, your
    family deserves better, so let’s work together. I am getting back in the game to fight for
    you and our state. I will bring a fresh perspective to Washington D.C. I will be your voice,
    choosing common sense over tired old politics. We will reduce homelessness by addressing mental health, drug
    addiction, and housing afordability. We will work with law enforcement to make our neighborhoods safe, protect
    our schools, and hold criminals responsible. We will lower inflation so every dollar goes towards supporting your
    family. We will provide our children with the best education. Politicians have failed us. I won’t. When Californians
    join together, anything is possible. I lived my dream, and you deserve to live yours. As your Senator, I will fight for
    your and California’s future.

    Got that? Last time California was “good” Reagan was preznit.

  128. 128.

    TBone

    “If I thought that were true, I’d disown my parents!” Heard from a lady in My Man Godfrey just now and wanted to remember that line 🤣

  131. 131.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @trollhattan: “Politics, race, sexual orientation, gender, and
    background didn’t divide us—they brought us together.”

    Ah yes, the good old days when Reagan and other Republicans showed their solidarity and tolerance by openly making jokes about the AIDS crisis, claiming LGBTQ people were going to Hell,  and spread myths about Welfare Queens/T-Bone Steaks etc…

  132. 132.

    sdhays

    @Alison Rose: My cat is completely entranced by a bright yellow American Goldfinch hanging out in the bare tree outside our windows

    I initially read this as “…entranced by a bright yellow American gold fish…” and thought “…hmmm”.

  136. 136.

    Jackie

    @Kristine: We used to leash up our two German Shepards plus longish rope to the snow sled and give the kiddos some snow fun on our non-hilly residential street. Threw snowballs ahead of the dogs and away they’d go!

  140. 140.

    zhena gogolia

    I heard from a Russian friend that they are comparing Tucker Carlson to a popular cartoon figure named Karlsson who was from an Astrid Lindgren book:

    Karlsson is a very short, plump and overconfident man who lives in a small house hidden behind a chimney on the roof of “a very ordinary apartment building on a very ordinary street” in Vasastan, Stockholm. When Karlsson pushes a button on his stomach, it starts a clever little engine with a propeller on his back, allowing him to fly.

    In his own opinion, Karlsson is the best at everything. He befriends Svante Svantesson, a seven-year-old boy and youngest member of the Svantesson family, who is often referred to as “Little Brother”, Swedish: Lillebror.

  143. 143.

    Ironcity

    @Christopher L Fisher: That is one of my detection methods.  The more flags and the closer they are hugged the more a slime ball grifter the politician (or other character) is.   I’m still in beta testing but it seems to work fairly well.  You can test this also if you like.  So far TIFG has scored an 11 on a 1 to 10 scale.

  144. 144.

    Seanly

    Have I been wrong but wasn’t the USSR & then the Russian Federation like the Big Bad Wolf from 1950 & onward? I never bought into the American side of the jingoism I grew up with but the USSR was bad and Russia is even worse. How can these “patriots” clap for this a$$hole like trained seals and his extortion BS?

    Also, I am so very offended that we’d very flippantly break treaties. Our constant breaking of treaties with Native Americans tribes is already a great stain in our history.

    I can’t stress how much I hate this man and his syncophants.

  154. 154.

    RevRick

    @Seanly: Treaties are supposed to be as binding on our nation as the Constitution itself, and while we got away with breaking them with the Native Americans, doing so with or to appease a near power adversary is playing with a loaded gun. Ask Neville Chamberlin. He threw Czechoslovakia to Hitler, proclaiming it gained “Peace in our time.” That lasted a year.

    Be conceding the Suedetenland to Hitler, he stripped Czechoslovakia of its mountainous terrain to defend itself. Swallowing the rest was a cakewalk. Threatening to throw our NATO allies to the wolf, Putin, which is effectively doing it will only increase the cost to the world in the long run.

  155. 155.

    Matt McIrvin

    @TBone: “Maybe we could use suborbital rockets to transport a global strike force” is a thing that DARPA types have been dreaming about ever since, oh, the 1970s at least. The math never really works out but they keep dreaming about it.

  157. 157.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @Tony Jay:

    It’s funny because Malik weights his article as a critique of the way the German establishment ’cancels’ anyone who questions Israel’s actions (which leads to much ire from German Jews who have to stomach being lectured on antisemitism by the grandchildren of the people who enacted the Holocaust)…

    This has not been covered much in the US, but my Twitter feed is full of German (& other European) establishment canceling or sanctioning voices that criticize Israeli conduct in Gaza. The double standard is especially jarring when juxtaposed w/ the apparent moral clarity these establishments demonstrate wrt Ukraine. Makes one wonder just what actually motivate people in position of power & influence.

  158. 158.

    Tony Jay

    @YY_Sima Qian:

      Makes one wonder just what actuallymotivate people in position of power & influence.

    More and continued power, more and continued influence. Followed by a soft landing padded by wealth, connections and the security of knowing they will always be linked into the networks that ensure their members are in the know about the right places to invest. Thumbing a nose at the settled status quo would threaten that, so it almost never happens.

    Supporting Israel has always been a safe bet as long as the U.S. was its guarantor. It’s taken decades of brutal settler expansionism backed by force of arms and the virtual extinction of any kind of powerful left-wing political grouping in Israel to bring matters to this point, where Palestinian lives are being ended by the thousand just to keep a desperate criminal in office and even long-time supporters of Israel are running out of excuses for keeping the funding-tap turned on.

    Genuinely, I think this is one of those cases where diplomatic success bred laziness bred inability to understand that no sustained propaganda campaign can survive forever, especially not when the crimes it seeks to justify are this egregious and the level of censorship it demands so laughably divorced from lived reality.

    Or shorter – the Israeli Right has enjoyed decades of FA, but I think we’re entering a new era of FO that will upset the board for good.

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