Katie Phang is one of my favorite follows on any platform. Always a smart take on things. But this was brilliant.
The HOOHA Act > Aid to Ukraine https://t.co/HC6GthwLLP
— Katie Phang (@KatiePhang) April 12, 2024
Unfortunately, this is all too real.
This is an open thread
hedgehog mobile
It’s too early in Denver to start drinking.
The fact that this is scheduled for Tax Day? (Screw it, puts Baileys in coffee)
TBone
Heather Cox Richardson today is a good read on topic.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/april-11-2024
Then, there’s this million dollar question:
https://www.jefftiedrich.com/p/why-the-fuck-is-an-88-count-indicted
TBone
I mean, we HAVE the law, WHERE is the enforcement???
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logan_Act
It’s even ORIGINALUST ferfukksake!
I chose not to correct the spelling.
LiminalOwl
re: the Derek Young comment–Mike Johnson has said publicly that he and his 17-year-old son monitor each other’s use of Internet porn, and that he has an ‘accountability” app on his computer. I think we can be sure that he DOES love porn, secretly or not-so-secretly.
mrmoshpotato
@TBone: Three indictments were dropped?
Baud
@LiminalOwl:
That’s what his burner phone says.
Jackie
Moved from last thread:
THIS IS HAPPENING TODAY!!!
Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveria are asking Judge Cannon to drop their charges re the MAL purloined classified documents!
Will Jack Smith have any recourses left, should this happen, or????
JAFD
To quote either Tom Lehrer or Justice Douglas …
The parts of women’s anatomy
That appeal to men’s depravity
Are fashioned with considerable care.
And what at first appears to be
A simple little cavity
Is actually a quite complex affair.
Baud
@Jackie:
He can appeal.
TBone
Because Alvin Bragg is about to absolutely pants the rotting carbunkle attached to the ass of our nation, I expect any number of outrageous shenanigans to occur. Buckle up, kids!
TaMara
@hedgehog mobile: I’m just drinking chocolate syrup straight from the bottle at this point.
TBone
@JAFD: If it could fire bullets, we’d really be in business! We have half the money and ALL the p***y!
Chief Oshkosh
@TBone: Yep. It really pisses me off that Nixon, Reagan, both Bushes, and Trump ALL very likely are guilty of transgressing the Logan Act. Hell, Trump is doing it right out in the open.
Every godammned Republican President in my lifetime entered office a fucking unconnected (hell, uninvestigated) felon.
TBone
@mrmoshpotato:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/trump-charges-jan-6-classified-documents/
wjca
You gotta admit, it’s a great way for him to find sites he might otherwise have missed.
TBone
@TaMara: 😘 wasting no time with frivolity. I like yer style.
Mr. Bemused Senior
To me it seems like going after Grenell would be a good idea.
TBone
@Chief Oshkosh: even before I knew I was a Democrat (socialist as I am), I could literally smell what’s wrong with rethugs. Even as a very young teenager. Delaware County had a Rethuglican machine so utterly and viciously corrupt that you could literally smell it in the air. That stranglehold was recently broken, a harbinger of good things to come!
dmsilev
I must, reluctantly, give a tiny amount of credit to whoever came up with the backronym for the SUDS Act. But given that it’s a companion to the HOOHA Act, yeah no.
It should be noted that all of those bills are substantively the same, a demand that the Department of Energy cease and desist any and all efforts to improve efficiency standards for household appliances. None of them have a hope of being passed into law, they’re all purely performative bullshit. And the GOP has degenerated to such a degree that even their performative bullshit is sad and pathetic.
Kristine
@TaMara: I’ve got some with whiskey in it. It’s pretty good.
TBone
@TBone: the only other place I got that same smell-feeling was at border crossings before the Berlin Wall came down. Dad trained me real good, like a bird dog.
oldster
@dmsilev:
Right — whenever the Republicans say “freedom,” you know that they want to take yours away. In this case, what they mean is “we want to take away your freedom to have safe, efficient things, and replace it with our freedom to get rich by selling you unsafe, inefficient things.”
Every one of these bills is just an attempt to defang regulations that protect consumers, in order to enrich corporations.
rikyrah
Any word on tomfoolery from the Orange Menace trying to get out of the trial starting?
JPL
I want my edison lightbulb back and why doesn’t congress fix that.
TBone
@rikyrah: everyone is hard at work running interference for him
Ken
@dmsilev: I will be tickled, though, if the House passes one of these things and Schumer somehow uses it to pass Ukraine aid, similar to the way the ACA was pushed through.
Bill Arnold
@TBone:
My father was known to be able to smell Germain soldiers in his infantry company in WWII. He could poke his nose into a building and say confidently that there were Germans inside, maybe in the basement.
That was physical smell (due to the goulash that the German cooks prepared, though “intuition”/”danger sense” was also involved), but yeah, a dominant fascist mindset in an area is recognizable. (I call it smell, too; the mechanism is not obvious.)
TBone
@rikyrah: Exhibit B
https://www.wonkette.com/p/why-does-this-louisiana-woman-want
TBone
@Bill Arnold: 😍😘
Math Guy
@Ken: Something like a “SUDS and SCUDS Act”?
satby
@JPL: they make LED ones now, so you can!
greenergood
@dmsilev: OMG, I just went back up to the original post and saw that ‘this is not a joke’ – I thought someone was just being snarky/sarky … Now I’m truly despairing – this is not government, it’s kindergarten, only kindergarten is more accountable ..
dmsilev
@Ken: One of the amendments proposed by Democrats to the HOOHA Act was to replace all of the text with, essentially, “pass the Ukraine aid bill that the Senate sent us”. Another one would have changed the title of the bill to the “Make Appliances Great Again” Act.
TBone
@Bill Arnold: my Dad also put a shotgun in my 12 y.o. hands and made me stand back up and shoot straight every time it knocked me down. “Just in case” he said over Mom’s protestations.
Ruckus
@dmsilev:
And the GOP has degenerated to such a degree that even their performative bullshit is sad and pathetic.
Sad and pathetic is all they have. Of course in my opinion that’s all they ever had.
Their main desire is that everyone lives a public life that conforms to their rules so that they can understand – anything. Because if everything is not within their 4 page rulebook of life then they are very afraid that someone will actually have a nice day, while all the while – they are suffering from the concept that they have to have permission from some entity that they can’t see or understand to actually enjoy breathing and walking upright. Their guilt that they might actually have any kind of life without constant pain and regret is their guiding premise. And if they have to put up with that amount of self inflicted bullshit then everyone else should have to as well.
Baud
@Ruckus:
👍
moops
Well, that’s what you get when you just hand your legislative responsibility over to lobbyists so you have be attention whoring culture warriors every day on television and social media.
TBone
@Ruckus: they are incapable of thinking. This is about much more than loneliness (see description of the trouble with Eichmann).
https://www.vox.com/vox-conversations-podcast/23048597/vox-conversations-hannah-arendt-totalitarianism-the-philosophers
Article is not that long, it’s a truncated version of the podcast.
Matt McIrvin
@JPL: A few years ago I was looking for a replacement bulb for the front door light and was pleased and amused to find that there’s a brisk business going in LED lights that look like old Edison bulbs if you don’t examine them too closely.
RevRick
I just registered for the United Church of Christ’s Second Annual Earth Summit, which features noted author and modern prophet, Bill McKibben. It’s next Saturday (20th) at 1 pm via Zoom, and it’s free to all. Even if you can’t join at that time, you’ll receive a link so you can view it at a later date.
If any are interested, please go to http://www.ucc.org and scroll down the homepage to the Earth Summit button. You should receive the link promptly.
TBone
The inability to concern oneself with deep thinking is socially reinforced in the RWNJ bubble. They are unable, therefore, to judge reality.
WaterGirl
@Ken: There was talk of doing exactly that with one of these stupid bills yesterday.
Bill Arnold
Sister Golden Bear linked this a week back, but worth re-linking:
Cool Gray City of Tech Authoritarians: Balaji’s dark vision for San Francisco (Gil Duran, Apr 3, 2024)
Captain C
@LiminalOwl:
I suspect they use the monitor app to alert each other of particularly good porn that they find.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Matt McIrvin:
We’ve utilized them for a ceiling spider pendant lamp rig and they’re great. Can also be dimmed.
Been up 4+ years, never have had to change bulb.
TBone
🎶 mood
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TLV4_xaYynY
Ken
Or, from what I’ve heard about this guy and his project, you just go with a Hugo Boss original.
lowtechcyclist
@TBone:
Also hard at work reinforcing Tennessee’s hick reputation – let those first cousins marry!
lowtechcyclist
@TBone:
https://www.wonkette.com/p/why-does-this-louisiana-woman-want
They’ve given up on trying to win hearts to Jesus (I can’t imagine why they do so badly at it!), so they’ve gone back to trying to force him on us.
TBone
@lowtechcyclist: it’s gonna get more and more outrageous with each passing day. Steel yourself.
TBone
Socrates believed that philosophy – the love of wisdom – was the most important pursuit above all else. For some, he exemplifies more than anyone else in history the pursuit of wisdom through questioning and logical argument, by examining and by thinking. His “examination” of life in this way spilled out into the lives of others, such that they began their own “examination” of life, but he knew they would all die one day, as saying that a life without philosophy – an “unexamined” life – was not worth living…
(Wikipedia excerpt)
TBone
@lowtechcyclist: they will never not try to succeed with that no matter who is elected.
TBone
@RevRick: you are not being ignored. I am reading on it now. 💜
And, I’m registered. I’ll watch whenever if I can’t be present
UncleEbeneezer
Ugh, just realized a dude I generally like and have worked with on local police reform efforts, in the past, is all-in promoting Cornel West Spoiler attempts. Not super-surprising considering he was a Stein voter in 2016 but I had hoped he’d learned a lesson from that.
Baud
@UncleEbeneezer: Sorry, man. That’s disappointing, but sounds like not really a surprise.
TBone
@UncleEbeneezer: why is he wasting his time on someone who is grifting with no chance of getting anything but a ruined reputation? Is that something you can ask?
kindness
Which billionaires are funding Putin’s interests within the Republican party? Seems to me they should be talked about more.
UncleEbeneezer
@TBone: He’s one of those dudes who always thinks Dems are the problem. He wraps that up in his very pro-Black Liberation identity and Social Justice language, but imo, he just hates the Dem Party too much to really be rational. I mean, he’s a Stein voter…
UncleEbeneezer
@Baud: I often get disappointed in my hopes that people will evolve, learn, be better etc. In fact, most of the people I’ve unfriended over recent years, it wasn’t so much their bad positions but that they still cling to them several years after they really should’ve learned to know better. Like I could understand skepticism about Covid and the vaccines early on, but to still feel that way now…there’s just no excuse. I find that shit way more offensive. In this case, this is a guy who talks a big game about Equality for Black People (which is good) but he completely skips past the part of Trump getting elected and stacking a SCOTUS who destroyed Affirmative Action. He’ll just pivot to “yeah but Joe Biden, something, something…” It’s sad because he’s not a dullard at all.
Mr. Bemused Senior
As you indicate, intelligence is no guarantee of wisdom. I have a friend who went off the RWNJ deep end years ago, someone I knew from childhood, a very bright guy. I haven’t spoken with him in years, alas.
Baud
@UncleEbeneezer: Lots of smart people are right wing too. Lots of right wing people donate to charities. Doesn’t make their political decisions morally righteous.
The reality is, there are a lot of people who will ask things of others, but will not join with others to promote the common good. I’m at the point where I just don’t find these people credible, even if I recognize their cause is credible. But they exist, just like MAGA exist, and I’m not going to fret over them.
TBone
@UncleEbeneezer: show him this and ask if his favorite thought leaders appear
https://vatniksoup.com/
UncleEbeneezer
@Baud: Yeah I know. My one aspect of optimism is hoping people will wake up. But so many just keep being Bozos…
RaflW
PM Kishida said, “the leadership of the United States is indispensable. Without U.S. support, how long before the hopes of Ukraine would collapse under the onslaught from Moscow?” he asked. “Without the presence of the United States, how long before the Indo-Pacific would face even harsher realities?”
I think/hope we’ll turn the corner in November, but it’s worth noting that Trump’s insanely dark American Carnage inaugural address fits with a world of harsh realities. He and the GOP can lean more heavily into the “only the daddy party can fix it (even though they won’t)” bid for greater and greater authoritarian and intrusive government.
UncleEbeneezer
@TBone: West isn’t on there but he maybe should be:
RevRick
@TBone: great!
Manyakitty
@TaMara: been eating spoons of chocolate frosting leftover from my eclipse day cupcakes over here. Great minds and all.
Also, too, so sorry about the magnificent and noble Xander. Hoping my beloved Heisenberg and Schrodinger were there to welcome him to the next stop.
wjca
The trouble with this theory is that the 10 Commandments she is pushing is Old Testament. Jesus was supposed to be replacing that. But maybe her knowledge of her nominal religion doesn’t include those inconvenient details. (Somehow I’m guessing she’d be outraged if it was pointed out that what her proposal is actually pushing is Judaism.)
JGreen
@wjca: You know, the 1st Commandment (as I learned it) was “I am the Lord, your God, who led you out of the land of Egypt”. Do all these highly, highly, highly, Christian people believe this? Were they led out of Egypt–along with all those Hebrews? Doesn’t sound like Christian doctrine to me. Wonder if they know this. I know most of them couldn’t tell you the 10 Commandments even they were on a teleprompter right in front of them.
wjca
More like wouldn’t. Because some of them would be just waaaay too inconvenient.
TBone
@UncleEbeneezer: he SHOULD be prominently listed!
lowtechcyclist
@TBone:
Tru dat. But coming from where I’m coming from, I’m talking about it in terms of its being a failure on the part of their supposed faith.
lowtechcyclist
@wjca:
Nah, they love the Decalogue; they want to be in a position to be judgmental. Now those Beatitudes, OTOH, are way too woke. ;-)
@JGreen:
No one alive anytime in the past three millennia was led out of Egypt. But they believe they are the true spiritual descendants of pre-Christian Judaism, and that the Jews who didn’t follow Christ got it all wrong. (But are still useful for satisfying the preconditions of the End Times, so that they can be Raptured out of here.)
@wjca:
Um, Matthew 5:17 – Jesus said he didn’t come to abolish the Law but to fulfill it. And when he gave his two Great Commandments, he said that summed up the Law and the Prophets.
Paul in KY
@LiminalOwl: That is so so so so weird. If I was his kid, I would be mortified that I had to do that, mortified it came out, etc. etc. etc.
There is some serious weirdness in that family. Feel bad for his kids.
Paul in KY
@wjca: I had never thought of that…
Paul in KY
@TBone: Good point. He should at least go with RFK Nutwad.
Paul in KY
@UncleEbeneezer: Does he like Clarence Thomas? Doe he admire him in any way?
Paul in KY
@wjca: She thinks Jesus was a hippy loving peacnik commie Roman-lover. Better Joshua and Ezekiel and David and Moses! Gnarr!
Ramalama
@Bill Arnold: what? Can you tell us more about your father and his abilities?.
pluky
@UncleEbeneezer: “He’s not a dullard”. One of the most disconcerting things I have had to admit about myself is that a major drawback to my intelligence is the ability to spin elaborate webs of rationalization that serve only to justify my own BS.