Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Speaker Mike Johnson is a vile traitor to the House and the Constitution.

Jesus watching the most hateful people claiming to be his followers

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

The fight for our country is always worth it. ~Kamala Harris

Beware of advice from anyone for whom Democrats are “they” and not “we.”

Someone should tell Republicans that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, or possibly the first.

We need to vote them all out and restore sane Democratic government.

No one could have predicted…

Good lord, these people are nuts.

The current Supreme Court is a dangerous, rogue court.

I did not have this on my fuck 2025 bingo card.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

The low info voters probably won’t even notice or remember by their next lap around the goldfish bowl.

Their shamelessness is their super power.

“The defense has a certain level of trust in defendant that the government does not.”

Second rate reporter says what?

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

There are a lot more evil idiots than evil geniuses.

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

Let me file that under fuck it.

I like political parties that aren’t owned by foreign adversaries.

The rest of the comments were smacking Boebert like she was a piñata.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Open Thread: Dems Bringing It

Open Thread: Dems Bringing It

by | 205 Comments

This post is in: 

This will be twitter heavy. But some feel good moments:

President Biden watches as Jessica Alba remarks at a Hispanic Heritage Month celebration in the East Room of the White House.

President Biden: Since our founding, the very idea of America has been nurtured, enriched, and advanced by the contributions, sacrifices, hard work, and dreams of immigrants and their descendants

 


Open Thread: Dems Bringing It

I have a post for tonight’s live event – Oprah and Kamala scheduled. That should be fun.

Open thread

Reader Interactions

205Comments

  15. 15.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @comrade scotts agenda of rage:

    Social Studies sure as Hell hasn’t been.  I have put Biden in my category of “Gave us everything, saved our asses time and again, and got shit on for it.” with Obama.  I hope Biden retires into peace and joy because we have no right to ask anything of either of them anymore.  Shit, people here have forgotten that Obama was a brilliant administrator who accomplished historic things.

  18. 18.

    Jeffro

    Those two (Moskowitz and Crockett) are moving up not just on my ‘favorite members of Congress’ list but ‘favorite human beings, period’.  =)

    And need I remind the BJ Commentariat that I have a Jared Moskowitz Congressional Baseball Card??!?  Why, I think I do!  Try not to collapse with envy LOL

  19. 19.

    Sister Golden Bear

    Looks like Space Karen may be finding out. Secret Service Probing Musk’s Post About Threats to Biden and Harris

    The Secret Service is looking into Elon Musk’s post on X that suggested it was strange no one attempted to assassinate President Joe Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris. In response to a FOIA request, the agency said it is withholding records due to “enforcement proceedings.”

    Also worth noting that “DogeDesigner” — the account Musk replied to — is widely believed to be one Musk’s sock puppet accounts that he uses as an excuse to boost right wing claims.

  22. 22.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Sister Golden Bear:

    “DogeDesigner” — the account Musk replied to — is widely believed to be one Musk’s sock puppet accounts

    Yeah, I heard that, and it struck me how incredibly pathetic that is.  It’s the kind of thing a character on a TV sitcom does so the audience knows they’re a loser.

  27. 27.

    moops

    You can bet there are plenty of MAGA employees at the National Weather Service that think their jobs are safe and that the leopard is never going to eat *their* face.  They probably figure Trump will just undertake a purge and replace all their Democratic coworkers with better MAGA coworkers.

     

    No, his administration will just fire the lot of you.  Weather prediction is science.  You’re all going to get fired.

  28. 28.

    Jeffro

    Somewhat related (in terms of Repubs getting their asses handed to them)…meet Hung Cao, the GOP gift to Tim Kaine and VA Democrats.  (If you can find him, that is).

    No ideas, not out there campaigning (except when he can put in an appearance with trumpov)…are we sure Mr. Cao’s really running?  Or did a stray RWNJ Twitter comment gain sentience?

    After Glenn Youngkin won the race for governor in 2021, piercing the myth that Virginia had become a solid-blue splotch on the map of the South, Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine had every reason to be a bit anxious about which suburb-friendly Republican would seek to block his bid for a third term.

    He got Hung Cao.  Kaine is one lucky man.

    Look at the arc of Kaine’s Republican opponents through the years. First, in 2012, came George Allen, the former governor and senator who knew and loved Virginia, football and classic conservative policies. Kaine won, 53 percent to 47 percent.
    Next, in 2018, came Corey Stewart, a proud bomb thrower who sneered at the “Virginia gentleman” notion that the state boasted a better brand of politics.

    Stewart, whose mantra was “I was Trump before Trump was Trump,” was the top elected official in Prince William County, where he won national attention for cutting off undocumented immigrants’ access to public services. Kaine dispatched him, 57 percent to 41 percent.

    Now comes Cao, relatively new to politics, as is the fashion these days, a military man with 25 years in Special Operations, a Vietnamese immigrant who went to the top-shelf Thomas Jefferson High School in Alexandria and the Naval Academy.
    Cao, 53, is running a mystifying campaign. He has turned down all but one invitation to debate Kaine. Cao is so scarce on the campaign trail that Kaine’s opposition trackers show a near-empty calendar for him. No one has even bothered to create a Wikipedia page for the man.

    What Kaine has faced through the years isn’t an arc of Republican challengers. It’s a nosedive.

    LOL so true!  Keep it up VA GOP!

  32. 32.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @Sister Golden Bear: Boy Blunder also has been hitting the drugs extra hard — tweeting 150+ times in 24 hours, in a firehose of disinformation. I doubt it’s solely the ketamine, probably more likely some sort of designer upper, since cocaine and meth are just too common for our Silicon Valley MOTU.

    Elon Musk amplified a flurry of false claims and misinformation Wednesday in a period of online activity which, even by his own standards, was fairly unhinged.

  33. 33.

    New Deal democrat

    Under the “it would be irresponsible not to speculate” rule, CNN has a story so explosive that it is apparently causing Trump and the GOP to pressure GOP NC gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson to drop out of the race allowing a replacement to be named before tonight’s midnight deadline.

    Apparently CNN is waiting for sources to formally confirm it before it publishes the story, which apparently involves “activities on an adult website.”

    One commentator claims Robinson called himself a Nazi, but honestly I can’t see where that would be a problem for them.

    So does the story involve

    a) a dead girl

    b) a live boy

    c) a child

    d) BDSM

    e) other

    f) all of the above

    My money is on c or d. In the meantime, pass the popcorn!

  37. 37.

    JoyceH

    @moops: I remember a few years back when a Republican called for abolishing the National Weather Service because we don’t need it – we can just check the Weather Channel. He apparently missed those National Weather Service logos on all the info on the Weather Channel.

  38. 38.

    VFX Lurker

    @New Deal democrat: Under the “it would be irresponsible not to speculate” rule, CNN has a story so explosive that it is apparently causing Trump and the GOP to pressure GOP NC gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson to drop out of the race allowing a replacement to be named before tonight’s midnight deadline.

    Count me in as one of those who can’t fathom what could hurt Mark Robinson’s chances with GOP voters. I’m afraid to find out.

  39. 39.

    Missouri Buckeye

    @Trollhattan: I was just there last Saturday. The front looks done, but the side facing the Left Bank looked like it had a long way to go.

    They might “open” in December, but I think it’s a long way from being “done.”

  40. 40.

    Booger

    @Jeffro: When Cao was running for representative last go round, he was asked about witches teaching in public schools, and he said he was against them. Showing that (1) he believes witches are real  and (2) Freedom of religion isn’t. What a maroon.

  41. 41.

    VFX Lurker

    @Frankensteinbeck: Social Studies sure as Hell hasn’t been.  I have put Biden in my category of “Gave us everything, saved our asses time and again, and got shit on for it.” with Obama.  I hope Biden retires into peace and joy because we have no right to ask anything of either of them anymore.  Shit, people here have forgotten that Obama was a brilliant administrator who accomplished historic things.

    Hear, hear!

  42. 42.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    @New Deal democrat:

    Apparently CNN is waiting for sources to formally confirm it before it publishes the story, which apparently involves “activities on an adult website.”

    If that’s the case, then Felonious D’s concerns are hysterical given his legally documented history with a porn actress, marriage to a Slovenian hooker, etc.

    A case of “what’s good enough for me is not good enough for thee…if it puts me in electoral jeopardy?”

  43. 43.

    Falling Diphthong

    @Frankensteinbeck: I can feel a bit sad that Musk realized the things that got him laughs from his hangers on didn’t land on Twitter. And “Oh honey” at how he then concluded that there was a lot of nuanced stuff around the implicit context that didn’t come across that meant that his stuff WAS funny and that’s the only reason his hangers on laughed.

    Elmer Fudd bought a website composed of Bugs Bunny mixed with some Nazis, and now there are a lot more Nazis and the Bugs keep laughing at him. He was convinced everyone would finally realize how cool and edgy and super right about everything he was, and then…. they still mocked him.

  44. 44.

    Sister Golden Bear

    Something to freude your schaden…. It appears a major scandal is about to drop on NC Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson, enough that he’s cancelled two campaign events today.

    He’s already a Holocaust denier, virulently anti-LGBTQ+, was a daily regular at local porn shops back in the day (but now he’s born again, so no biggie), and far far more…. So it’ll be interesting  what exactly is “too far” to the point Republicans are pressuring him to leave the race (today is the drop-out deadline, although ballots are already being printed).

    Joe.My.God quotes the National Review saying it has do to “with sexual and race-related comments Robinson made on several online chat rooms” back in the 2000s.

    ETA: @New Deal democrat: got there first.

  48. 48.

    VFX Lurker

    Postcards to Voters just fired up a new postcard-writing campaign for Senator Sherrod Brown in Ohio. They’re asking each volunteer to write 10 cards for this campaign. They’re also asking for a $10 donation from each volunteer.

    I don’t have to tell folks here why re-electing Senator Brown is important. I will write 10 postcards for Senator Brown later today.

  49. 49.

    CaseyL

    Rumors re Robinson are that he made racists remarks about MLK, Jr., anti-semitic remarks, and called himself a Black Nazi.

    None of which would be troublesome in today’s GOP, so I don’t get what the uproar is about.

    Maybe only White GOPers are allowed to say those things?

  50. 50.

    Scout211

    We should have a contest on balloon-juice.  Since the NC Governor’s breaking (soon) scandal has been posted in the last two threads by a cast of thousands (well, maybe a handful of jackals) maybe we should all guess the scandal.

    TBH, I don’t think he will drop out, whatever bombshell it is.  Trump survived numerous scandals and bombshells in 2016 and Robinson will think he can do the same thing.

  51. 51.

    New Deal democrat

    NC-based financial columnist Bryan Anderson:

    ”Source familiar w/ forthcoming CNN story says revelations about Robinson include him saying things in online chats about liking transgender porn, peeping inside women’s locker rooms while he studied at NC A&T and wanting to own slaves.”

    NC GOP: “And???”

  52. 52.

    Belafon

    @Frankensteinbeck: Democrats have a nasty tendency of forgetting how much work something takes, which also causes them to think that if our representatives managed to accomplish something, it must have been easy, so why didn’t they try for more.

  59. 59.

    Redshift

    @Jeffro:

    LOL so true! Keep it up VA GOP!

    Cao seems to be the gift that keeps on giving. He’s talked openly about how he hates dragging down to southside Virginia (the part where all the Republicans are; he lives in Northern Virginia.) He blathers about Kaine supposedly getting rich in contrast to his service in the military, when in fact at the same age he was doing that Kaine was working at a Catholic school in Honduras and then doing plenty of pro-bono legal work.

  60. 60.

    Jeffro

    Comer: You need to take your medication and leave!

    Moskowitz: You’re several decades older than me. We both know who’s taking more medication

    I’m dead

    LOLOLOLOL

  62. 62.

    JPL

    @CaseyL:  This hasn’t been verified yet

    NEWS: MARK ROBINSON has reportedly ADMITTED to SPYING into WOMEN’S LOCKER ROOMS at NC A&T.

    Additionally, the North Carolina candidate for governor discussed liking transgender pornography in an online chat room.

    THEY SURE DO LIKE TO PROJECT!!!

  63. 63.

    SatanicPanic

    @New Deal democrat:

    ”Source familiar w/ forthcoming CNN story says revelations about Robinson include him saying things in online chats about liking transgender porn, peeping inside women’s locker rooms while he studied at NC A&T and wanting to own slaves.”

    I thought it would have something to do with the kind of things he liked to watch. The other two things won’t upset Republicans, but this might.

  65. 65.

    zhena gogolia

    I am buried under a pile of work but Crockett and Moskowitz have given me the greatest laugh break (thanks, TaMara!)!

  67. 67.

    Trollhattan

    @MagdaInBlack:

    Glem probably on his payroll, teaching him the old poli-blog comment tricks.

    How does RICHEST DUDE IN THE HISTORY OF RICH DUDES have time for any of this shit? Shouldn’t he be yelling at employees and swimming in his McDuck money pool?

  68. 68.

    CaseyL

    @JPL: I’m just not able to imagine anything Robinson has done that Trump hasn’t, and that includes doing a Peeping Tom in women’s locker rooms.

  69. 69.

    Redshift

    @JoyceH:

    I remember a few years back when a Republican called for abolishing the National Weather Service because we don’t need it – we can just check the Weather Channel. He apparently missed those National Weather Service logos on all the info on the Weather Channel.

    Though this isn’t actually new — the person who wants it privatized is the guy who owns AccuWeather. He tried to get TCFG to do it in during his term. He somehow thinks he’ll get the contract to do it and sell to everyone else what they now get for free. A change that benefits one person and hurts everyone else, so no surprise Republicans think it’s great.

  72. 72.

    BR

    If they do manage to force Robinson out in NC, I hope NC Dems have some hyper-targeted messaging to the small slice of Black men in the state who are conservative / GOP voters, to basically say “look, the GOP forced Robinson out despite him doing nothing worse than Trump or any other GOP candidate”.

  80. 80.

    cmorenc

    Another strange thing about Robinson’s campaign is that up to around a month ago, Robinson’s TV ads were almost entirely positive promotions of a seemingly warm, charmingly likeable Charles Barkley-type personality (who Robinson does bear a striking physical resemblance to) who rose to prominence from growing up as one of 9 kids in a low-income family – absolutely no hard-political edges presented about issues or opponents.  And then abruptly, the GOP ads flipped a switch to full Willie Horton negative ads – ones focusing on Stein claiming Josh Stein was soft on crime, letting murderers out of prison, but then increasingly displaying him in a group b&w unflattering photo together with Harris & Biden.

    As someone aware of what a far RW nasty fruit-loop Robinson has been as Lt Governor, I’ve got to admit the earlier positive ads about Robinson were very convincingly well-done, such that folks not aware of his hard-edged far-right political background could have been disarmed by those ads.  But alas for Robinson, too many NC voters were already onto him, hence maybe the switch in approach.

  81. 81.

    Jackie

    @VFX Lurker:

    what could hurt Mark Robinson’s chances with GOP voters.

    His wife is a secret Marxist democrat?

    That’s the made up reason MAGA and the GQP hate Harris, after all.

  82. 82.

    Scout211

    Robinson statement.

    Some North Carolina Republicans are bracing for the aftermath of news expected to break Thursday about Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, their party’s candidate for governor. And one Republican candidate for state Senate is publicly calling for Robinson to end his campaign and for another GOP candidate to replace him. But Robinson called the allegations “salacious tabloid trash” in a video posted on social media.

    In the video statement released on X, formerly Twitter, Robinson also described the allegations as “salacious tabloid lies” and accused his Democratic opponent’s campaign of leaking the information that led to the forthcoming CNN story.

    ”Let me reassure you the things that you will see in that story, those are not the words of Mark Robinson,” he said. “You know my words, you know my character and you know that I have been completely transparent in this race and before.”

    Yes, we do know your character, Mark.  It definitely is transparent.

    I don’t think he will drop out over this.  He’s already got his defense accusations of “salacious tabloid lies.” Just like Trump, he’s going on offense. The Republican playbook.

    But I think it will cost him votes.

    Added text

  84. 84.

    rikyrah

    @CaseyL:

    @JPL: I’m just not able to imagine anything Robinson has done that Trump hasn’t, and that includes doing a Peeping Tom in women’s locker rooms.

     

    change locker room to beauty pageant backstage, and it matches up

  85. 85.

    Kristine

    @VFX Lurker: I just received 10 addresses for Brown. They came to my Apple Mail address and the formatting was totally borked—the whole email was in <HTML> with breaks and coding. I converted what I needed over here in the Text box (copy/paste/a little deleting of characters) but I’d be interested to hear if anyone else encountered this.

  86. 86.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @SatanicPanic:

    Source familiar w/ forthcoming CNN story says revelations about Robinson include him saying things in online chats about liking transgender porn, peeping inside women’s locker rooms while he studied at NC A&T and wanting to own slaves.”

    Least surprising thing ever. As any trans woman can tell you, many, many chasers are quite conservative—and they almost always want to be the receiving partner. NTTAWWT except for the hyprocrisy. There’s a reason why porn involving trans women  is one of the more popular subgenres in the industry.

  91. 91.

    rikyrah

    @Sister Golden Bear:

    liking transgender porn

     

    I didn’t know transgender porn was a thing…

    But, I am always suspicious of those who are so ANTI- a group.
    As we have been shown in numerous examples…

    the other side is nothing but pure projection.

  92. 92.

    BritinChicago

    @JoyceH: In fairness to the stupid Republican, the system has been rigged so that the role of the Federal Government in supplying weather information to all the news media is not obvious. It was, of course, anti-government types (Republicans) who did that, but today’s Republicans know nothing about it (or lie).

  93. 93.

    Belafon

    @Scout211:

    Democrats to Biden: Your being on the ticket is hurting us in battleground states. We need you to step down.

    Biden: *Grumble, Grumble* Fine, for the country.

    Republicans to Robinson: Your being on the ticket is hurting us in North Carolina. We need you to step down.

    Robinson: Uh, no.

  94. 94.

    RaflW

    I was told that Joe Biden doesn’t get out of bed anymore, that he’s been deposed in a coup.

    TBF, my Lyft driver was telling me this yesterday as a story his “crazy” right wing neighbor has been telling him.

    The Lyft guy was great. He’s Somali-American, naturalized close to a decade ago, and registered to vote for at least a couple presidential cycles.

    He said he used to identify as Republican, but not since Trump & the crazy. Plus “My wife is VERY liberal” he added, laughing.

    Note, this guy was in traditional garb, and spoke in heavily accented English. But he was up on the GOP shenanigans in GA, AZ and FL.

    He said the Republicans were blowing it, that he and many other naturalized immigrants would be Republican, but not since it became an all white party. “It’s only white people now!” His exact words, repeated three times for emphasis.

  97. 97.

    Falling Diphthong

    @CaseyL: I’m just not able to imagine anything Robinson has done that Trump hasn’t.

    The thing is, Trump’s bizarre immunity to all sane standards doesn’t actually apply to people who aren’t him. Like, he and JD Vance can say the same things, and people object to Vance.

    One of the puzzlements for Republicans in the last few years has been how to get Trump’s appeal (and donors and voters) to transfer over to other Republicans, and their attempts keep failing.

    And Trump knows this–it’s important to his grip on power, that they would love to do this without his easily manipulated stupidity, but he won’t cooperate. Electing Republicans not named Trump matters to him not at all except as a measure of his power.

  100. 100.

    Falling Diphthong

    @Belafon: Given the overwhelming R message of “He needs to vanish completely by 5 pm, at which point we will claim never to have heard of him” and D message of “The GOP needs to carry this sucker to term,” I’m taking this as a good thing.

  104. 104.

    Suzanne

    @SatanicPanic:

    I fundamentally don’t understand why people would hate the people who make them horny. 

    Simone de Beauvoir writes about this….. how many men genuinely hate women, but desire them sexually, and that makes them constantly conflicted and angry. I have no doubt it applies to every other “category” of human variety.

    It’s all tied up in notions of what your social role is supposed to be, fear that you’re not doing well at it, fear of one’s own weakness. All that shit.

  105. 105.

    Chris

    @comrade scotts agenda of rage:

    History will be very kind to President Biden.

    I always thought he had big Truman/LBJ energy.  The workhorse president that liberal nerds a generation or two later read about and are amazed at how much he accomplished, even if he didn’t have the rock star quality of an FDR, JFK, or Obama.

  107. 107.

    Ishiyama

    @rikyrah: Is Robinson doing an Effie?

     
    Query: nothing to do with “This is little Effie’s head, whose brains are made of gingerbread?”

  109. 109.

    Weftage

    @BritinChicago:

    BritinChicago: But what if s/he wasn’t born in the US?

    Repubs: Bargle abortion argle transgender burble applies only to national president & VP something waffle handwave burble Jesus something something

  110. 110.

    rikyrah

    @Ishiyama:

    Query: nothing to do with “This is little Effie’s head, whose brains are made of gingerbread?”

     

    LOL

    This is a Dreamgirls reference…

     

    And, I am telling you…..

    I’m NOT GOING………..

  111. 111.

    Citizen Alan

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    I just hope that once Biden joins Obama in retirement, they can get back to solving crimes and hot-rodding around in Joe’s Camaro. (Or was it a Trans-Am.) Mike Post can write the theme song if he’s still alive.

  113. 113.

    Jeffro

    @Redshift: [Cao] blathers about Kaine supposedly getting rich in contrast to his service in the military, when in fact at the same age he was doing that Kaine was working at a Catholic school in Honduras and then doing plenty of pro-bono legal work.

    1. they all assume that everyone’s just as shallow and venal as they are, which would be funny if it weren’t so pathetic.
    2. they always, ALWAYS, just take the worst thing they’ve  heard in the FoxBubble and run with it…they never think to check their facts about anything (which is understandable: in the FoxBubble, facts don’t matter)
  114. 114.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @MagdaInBlack: One of Boy Blunder’s confirmed sock puppet accounts purported to be his three-year-old son, who made leering comments about women. (Elon admitted to it in court.)

    Another, Adrian Dittmann, is not confirmed but there’s widespread speculation it’s Elon. One Redditor noted that the Adrian’s profile pic is “like a very literal self-visualization, what Elon thinks of himself…a handsome, absolutely cut dude who seems to be the center of the universe.”

  117. 117.

    Matt McIrvin

    @RaflW: A lot of the asylum seekers they’re fearmongering about are fleeing left-wing regimes, and are pretty conservative people– conservatives could get them naturalized and get their votes if they wanted them! But they’d rather sow hate and fear.

  119. 119.

    Fake Irishman

    @Chris:

    I appreciate Truman, but I dunno. His domestic agenda failed (beyond the very real accomplishment of preserving the New Deal), too many of his court picks were old poker buddies, which was costly and his admin’s miscalculations may have started the Korean War.

    He does get serious props for NATO, the Marshall plan and having the courage to fire MacArthur, and integrating the armed forces was a nice touch too.(Had a real big impact on a young sub officer named Carter who served with a few black sailors and really started reconsidering the racial stereotypes he grew up with)

    LBJ though, he was the real deal. That 1965-66 legislative session might be the most productive in US history.

  120. 120.

    Jeffro

    Related (to Cao, Robinson, everyone not named ‘trump’): none of these RWNJ candidates understand the most important thing.

    trump gets away with his shit because he’s been one of America’s most (in)famous and (supposedly) rich people for decades.

    When they copy – or try to top – trump’s essential asshole-ish-ness, they just come off like the bitter, perverted, weirdo losers that they are.  They don’t have that (bless me) ‘aura’ of fame and/or riches, and so, they don’t have nearly the following that the Mango Menace does.

  122. 122.

    New Deal democrat

    @sixthdoctor: He’s denying it was him.

    I do not see him dropping out over this.

    I do not even see this costing him any GOP votes.

     

    Might help drag down Trump though.

  124. 124.

    Baud

    Robinson listed his full name on his profile for Nude Africa, as well as an email address he used on numerous websites across the internet for decades.

    Oh, come on. He should be disowned for this alone.

  125. 125.

    Soprano2

    Right now at work I’m in construction hell. They’re sawing through concrete blocks to create a doorway. For some unknown reason they couldn’t do that while we aren’t here, so they’ve hung up plastic which does almost nothing to stop the dust, and the noise is awful even though I’m not that close to what they’re doing. Plus, I just found out that the boss made a change to something that involves my job and didn’t tell us, plus it was on something he asked me to do something else on just this morning! Lucky for me I didn’t waste my time because I haven’t done it yet. Fuck fuck fuck…..

  126. 126.

    Peale

    @Gin & Tonic: Meh, its damning, but the GOP is well beyond hypocrisy at this point. This would sink a Dem, but that’s because Dem voters don’t want to vote for a cranky perv nazi.

  127. 127.

    Chris

    @moops:

    You can bet there are plenty of MAGA employees at the National Weather Service that think their jobs are safe and that the leopard is never going to eat *their* face.  They probably figure Trump will just undertake a purge and replace all their Democratic coworkers with better MAGA coworkers.

    I live in the DC area and know multiple wingnuts who went to work in the federal government.  It’s amazing how many people hate government bureaucrats in general and think they’re all tax-wasting frauds, except for them personally, who are God’s own gift to the taxpayer.  And if only we elect enough good sensible Republicans, they’ll get to the department one day and really clean house by firing all the dead weight, while recognizing how special and unique they are and rewarding them with a promotion and a raise.

    Not to worry, though.  When the Republicans fire them along with the rest of the “dead weight,” they’ll simply go on blaming their liberal coworkers for making them look bad by association, and/or making the department in general so bad that the poor conservative politicians simply had no choice but to burn it down.

  128. 128.

    Citizen Alan

    @chemiclord: Someone may have answered, but the camera caught them as they were side-stepping out of Joe’s way after marching out directly in front of them.

  130. 130.

    Barbara

    @Gin & Tonic: It had already been reported — and he hadn’t really denied — that he was an active participant in porn sites “years ago,” and he has excused this by saying, basically, that it was before he turned his life around.  If nothing else, the latest story is likely to shut down any remaining hope that he might appeal to Black voters.

  132. 132.

    Geminid

    @VFX Lurker: North Carolina Republicans could be worried about losing Independent voters. They need to hold Democrats to a draw among that group to win; Independents are probably 30% or more of the electorate there.

  136. 136.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Citizen Alan:

    just hope that once Biden joins Obama in retirement, they can get back to solving crimes and hot-rodding around in Joe’s Camaro.

    I want to watch this show so bad.  Obama is the serious investigator, while Biden seems to wander around and eat ice cream and make friends, but every once in awhile Biden will say something brilliant so you know he’s been paying attention and is a full partner.  And they’ll appreciate each other.  Supreme buddy energy.

  137. 137.

    TBone

    Pennsylvania’s Kathleen Kane has entered the chat!

    That scurvy son of a biscuit eater should be keelhauled.

    (Seriously, the online filth that Kane uncovered from R elected officials, judiciary, legislators, and staff all over the Commonwealth makes this dreck look pretty mild.)

  138. 138.

    Chris

    @New Deal democrat:

    Probably D?  One of my longstanding theories about Trumpian politicians in general is that while any number of literal crimes don’t bother them and can’t dent their numbers (that’s been pretty much proven at this point), they’ll absolutely panic if you threaten to publish anything that threatens their tough guy alpha male image, no matter how legal and frankly innocuous.

    You got video footage of them murdering, raping, or assaulting somebody?  No problem.  But you got a sex tape of them that shows they’re a sub not a dom?  END OF THE FUCKING WORLD.

  139. 139.

    CaseyL

    So… Robinson isn’t dropping out?

    The State and/or National GOP is in a panic, but he isn’t budging?

    Is anyone sure there was actually panic in the GOP? Or is this whole thing a storm in a teacup dreamed up by someone at CNN?

  141. 141.

    Jeffro

    @RaflW:

    The Lyft guy was great. He’s Somali-American, naturalized close to a decade ago, and registered to vote for at least a couple presidential cycles.

    …He said the Republicans were blowing it, that he and many other naturalized immigrants would be Republican, but not since it became an all white party. “It’s only white people now!” His exact words, repeated three times for emphasis.

    Lyft driver: “didn’t they read the post-2012 ‘autopsy‘?  Maybe I should send them my copy.  Stupid Republicans!  Stop listening to trump and get with the program!

  144. 144.

    scav

    In an interview with CNN on Thursday, Robinson repeatedly denied that he made the comments on Nude Africa.
    “This is not us. These are not our words. And this is not anything that is characteristic of me,” Robinson said.

    Boy’s gonna be in trouble over his chosen pronouns if nothing else.

  145. 145.

    Falling Diphthong

    Re Trump vs everyone else: Ghislaine Maxwell. He has at least three times gazed into the camera to talk about how much he admires and respects her, and it’s really important to him that she know that. She was at the time, and still is, in jail for child sex trafficking. It’s not hard to guess why he wants her to know he thinks highly of her.

    That wouldn’t fly for Vance, Giulliani, or basically anyone else. But people are willing to bet their place in heaven on him probably just speaking metaphorically there.

  147. 147.

    Peale

    @Barbara: Yep. Its just the double standard for the born again. The left doesn’t know how to forgive anyone, which is why “I was a Goldwater girl” in 1964 was still a sticking point in 2016. He can just say this proves that transexuals lead christians into sin but now he’s forgiven himself and they’ll just ignore it.

  149. 149.

    SatanicPanic

    @CaseyL: Robinson was already polling well behind the D candidate, so I doubt anyone on the R side is happy with him at the moment.

  150. 150.

    Falling Diphthong

    @Jeffro: I’ve read that elsewhere: That recent immigrants often tilt conservative. But the Republican party is so dedicated to racist demonizing of them that they can’t grow by absorbing new people.

  152. 152.

    scav

    @topclimber: Look, if you managed to pirate a thought from my mind, you should take that talent to the high seas!  I mean, only if your skill extends to other people’s unvoiced ideas, mine are demonstrably without resale value.   Arrrrggg.

  153. 153.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @SatanicPanic: @Suzanne:

    Simone de Beauvoir’s comment is on the nose. For porn involving trans women, there’s also high degree of internalized homophobia.

    (It’s a large market and it’s almost exclusively cis het men — I’ve personally never met a gay cis men who’s into it, although some are into, literally and figuratively, gay trans men.)

    As I alluded to earlier, virtually all of it involves trans women who have working penises (through careful regulation of hormones), who are being sucked off by cis men, and/or fucking them as the penetrative partner. Also worth noting that these trans women are invariably presenting as quite feminine, aside from anatomy. So there’s definitely a “it’s not gay, she’s got tits” aspect to it among men who really want dick but can’t admit it to themselves.

    That said, being “trans-amorous” its own sexual flavor, and there’s men (and women) who are legit into that. It part I think there’s a factor of three highly visible sexual signifier (breasts + penis) is “more sexy” than either alone. And the combination of “male/female” energy that some find appealing (in quotes because it’s also social constructs).

    Sadly, men who are attracted to us, but not in a fetish-y way, have traditionally be highly stigmatized for that attraction, and there’s been a least a couple trans hate-killings that happened after friends of the killer discovered his girlfriend was trans.

  157. 157.

    Falling Diphthong

    @CaseyL: Josh Marshall suggests it was a storm by Republicans to try and drive Robinson off the ballot (which is end of day today) so they can try to memory hole him before the election, and then just focus on R turnout for the presidential and down ballot races without having to talk about Our Black Nazi, standing next to those people on the ballot and getting his stink on them.

  159. 159.

    SatanicPanic

    @JPL: They said they’re just publishing a portion. I imagine some enterprising person is going to the Nude Africa website and collecting comments as we speak. Assuming they’re still up.

  160. 160.

    Citizen Alan

    @Frankensteinbeck: I’m getting a “Psych but for older GenXers” vibe. Shawn is no longer pretending to be psychic but is just a laid-back lovable goofball, and Gus has finally mellowed out with age and the love of a good woman.

  163. 163.

    JPL

    @Citizen Alan: I fear that you are right.   The pro-life pro-family party is neither.

    When Walker ran, every day was a new revelation and he ended up to 49 percent to Warnock’s 51 percent.

  164. 164.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @Jeffro: Not specific to Cao, but I’m convinced one reason* Republicans accuse LGBTQ+ people of being pedophiles because it’s so incredibly widespread among the cultists. Almost every day on the Joe.My.God blog, there’s post about a conservative (clergy, cops, teachers) who’s been either arrested, convicted, or sentenced. So they assume everyone else is sexually abusing children as well.

    *The other reason of course is that it’s a way to tar us with one of the worst accusations possible, and portray as deserving elimination.

  165. 165.

    Chris

    @Fake Irishman:

    Domestically, integration is the big thing for me.  This was the first time in seventy years that the civil rights issue was taken off the shelf and given serious attention: the entire next twenty years of civil rights reform started under Truman, though they culminated with LBJ.

    Preserving the New Deal, as you say, was no mean feat, especially since a lot of the people who wanted Truman were old guard types who had squirmed uncomfortably at twelve years of FDR radicalism and were looking forward to a Pendergast machine type slowing down the pace and returning to business as usual.  They did not get what they anticipated.

    Foreign policy wise, of course, the postwar reconstruction of Western Europe with the Marshall Plan and NATO will probably always be the high-water mark of American foreign policy.

    LBJ did much better than Truman on domestic policy (it didn’t hurt that his congressional margins were a lot better), but Truman did better on foreign policy (it didn’t hurt that Truman inherited a first rate foreign policy team from a president whose own on foreign policy had set him up for success, while LBJ was hobbled by twenty years of ever-escalating Cold War and Red Scare rhetorical wars).  IMO.

  168. 168.

    Jeffro

    @Falling Diphthong:I’ve read that elsewhere: That recent immigrants often tilt conservative. But the Republican party is so dedicated to racist demonizing of them that they can’t grow by absorbing new people.

    They’re missing an absolutely huge opportunity.  I would hate for the Dems to take the hit, electorally speaking, if the GOP were to quit acting like monsters, but it’d be good for the country and for POC everywhere.

    Let’s win this one and then hope that the Rs figure it out.  I’m not holding my breath, though.

  169. 169.

    Chris

    @Soprano2:

    Right now at work I’m in construction hell. They’re sawing through concrete blocks to create a doorway. For some unknown reason they couldn’t do that while we aren’t here, so they’ve hung up plastic which does almost nothing to stop the dust, and the noise is awful even though I’m not that close to what they’re doing.

    This is why we need WFH.

  172. 172.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    @Jeffro: ​
     

    That’s great, I had no idea. Q&A from the author:

    The first time I saw Joe Biden in his Ray-Ban aviators, I thought, ‘that guy’s an action hero.’ The sunglasses, the suit, the dead-serious stare—you think you’re looking at James Bond. And then he opens his mouth and sticks his foot in it, and you realize he’s closer to Leslie Nielsen. I toyed with the idea of a solo Joe Biden novel for years, but it never went anywhere. When the Obama/Biden ‘bromance’ memes began circulating on the internet during their final months in office, I dusted off the idea of doing a Joe Biden send-up and tweaked it—namely, to add President Obama as the Sherlock to Joe’s Watson.

    Biden as Leslie Nielson has me LOLing.

  173. 173.

    Jeffro

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym:He’s a Special Ops guy. He’s just practicing Opsec. Never let anyone know your whereabouts, never get photographed.

    oh well, in that case he’s doing an A+ job of OpSec!

    it does seem to be a novel approach for running for political office, though.  LOL

  174. 174.

    Chris

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    I want to watch this show so bad.  Obama is the serious investigator, while Biden seems to wander around and eat ice cream and make friends, but every once in awhile Biden will say something brilliant so you know he’s been paying attention and is a full partner.  And they’ll appreciate each other.  Supreme buddy energy.

    I think Biden gets to be the guy who sets himself up to be underestimated, part Columbo type bumbling scatterbrainedness and part Matlock type folksy old fashionedness, so you don’t realize until it’s too late that he’s actually smarter than most people out there.

    Obama, of course, gets to be the much more conventional straight man.

  176. 176.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Peale:

    He can just say this proves that transexuals lead christians into sin but now he’s forgiven himself and they’ll just ignore it.

    Oh, no.  No no no.  This isn’t sin.  This is icky gay stuff.  This is being less manly.  This is the stuff they’re all terrified someone will find out they want, not the stuff they’re supposed to be tempted by but not do.  It is not the same dynamic.

  178. 178.

    Geminid

    @Chris: Virginia is full of federal workers, and I never thought of them as a solidly Democratic bloc. I suspect a lot of them self-identify as Independents.

    I think the Wason Center has dropped the season’s first poll of registered Virginia voters. I always like to look at the democraphic info as well as ideoplogical and party self-identification. Party identification fluctuates some year to year but typical numbers are D, 36; R, 31; I, 32.

    I remember how Republican self-identification dropped to 26% in the Wason Center poll taken in January of 2021. That was in the wake of the January 6 insurrection.

  182. 182.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    Hah!

    The author wrote a follow-on, ‘Hope Rides Again’.  The cover features Obama in a tan suit.

    Fucking Genius.

  184. 184.

    Mike E

    @BR: if I were the NC Dem party and Black Trump bows out (he won’t willingly, everyone has that guy’s number) I would file lawsuits pronto if only to force our very red appeals court and supreme court to make a last minute ruling, just to get more free political advertising out of it …sticky problems for the TEA party, poor dears!

  185. 185.

    stinger

    Thank you, TaMara. Ol’ Handsome Joe has practically disappeared from these front pages. Sort of understandable, but he’s still prez for another four critical months. Also, I love him!

  186. 186.

    stinger

    @eclare: Probably been answered already, but the two Marines have been standing at attention in front of the door. As the President approaches, they each step smartly to one side. The photo catches them mid-step. It does look as if he’d have to jump between them!

  187. 187.

    JPL

    no way will trump admit that his support was a mistake.   Now that Robinson decided to stay in, trump will play along with, it wasn’t him.

    If 2 percent of repubs just stay home, that’s a big f..king deal.

  190. 190.

    prostratedragon

    @Sister Golden Bear:  Boy Blunder is a mahvelous monicker, dahlink! The tragedy of our times is that the entire first sentence there gives me no way to distinguish among 2,  maybe 3 individuals.

     

    ETA two of whom have the same name, though one of those is easy to ignore.

  192. 192.

    Stacy

    @Jeffro: My second time voting against him after he ran against Rep. Jennifer Wexton last go around. Blue Virginia has an extensive list of his quotes and one particularly sickening one involves him wearing a KKK hood and what shape eyeholes he would need. Very Mark Robinson-ish.

  194. 194.

    Chris

    @Geminid:

    A lot of those Virginia federal workers, especially initially, were in the defense sector, which, especially twenty years ago, often came with certain politics.

    It’s probably a “familiarity breeds contempt” thing, but I’ve long thought that Northern Virginia Republicans were the absolute worst Republicans in the pack.  So many of them are this hellish combination of 1) libertarian-on-welfare types, who think federal workers in general are leeches and parasites but it’s okay for them specifically to spend their whole life on the taxpayer’s dime, 2) chickenhawk types who have never been anywhere near combat but adore the badass-by-association cred they get from being employed as part of the war machine, and 3) Confederate nostalgist types who, even though they’re often not locals or even Southerners themselves, fall in love with the Old South setting that you can still find in a lot of places and try to adopt it as their own (the same way Dubya did with his cowboy image in Texas).  All concentrated in one person.

    I’ve met lots of conservatives from lots of different parts of the country.  The trust fund babies from New York.  The fundiegelicals from the Rockies.  The Cubanos from Miami.  I’ve never found any of them as viscerally annoying, like nails on a blackboard, as the Northern Virginia ones.  No insult to Northern Virginians as a whole.  But man, their conservatives are the worst.

  195. 195.

    Soprano2

    @Chris: Trust me, I would hate WFH. I just don’t understand why they can’t do this extremely dirty and noisy stuff at a time we aren’t in the building.

  197. 197.

    Captain C

    @rikyrah:

    I didn’t know transgender porn was a thing…

    Rule 34:

    If you can think of it, there’s porn of it posted somewhere on the Internet.

    (Rule 36:  If you can think of it, someone, somewhere is turned on by it.)

    (No, I don’t know what Rule 35 is or what happened to it.)

  201. 201.

    Orchid Moon

    I saw a link to Women of Star Trek for Kamala on October 3, and I signed up.  I got in, and am so excited.  (Doing Happy Snoopy Dance). I have been watching Star Trek since it premiered in the 1960s, and  I have seen all the series and movies, except for the animated shows.  I look forward to donating to the Harris campaign.  Any Balloon Juice folks going?

  204. 204.

    laura

    @Baud: Best put your dating pants on first, and by first, I mean Levi’s 501 button fly Jeans in white, like my daddy did. And like my daddy did meant pegging the lower legs on the inside of the big seams so it doesn’t alter the classic seam lines, but it makes you look like a style bad ass. Slip into a pair of Clark’s and then layer a navy blue V-neck sweater over a cotton Tee Shirt. It’s a doggone sure thing. I mean, he had all us kids with just the one Awesome Mama. You (or anyone) could Too.

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