Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Days Since JD Vance Insulted Women Across America: Zero

Republicans firmly believe having an abortion is a very personal, very private decision between a woman and J.D. Vance.

Second rate reporter says what?

I conferred with the team and they all agree – still not tired of winning!

People are complicated. Love is not.

The US Supreme Court is on the ballot in november.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

with the Kraken taking a plea, the Cheese stands alone.

‘Museums aren’t America’s attic for its racist shit.’

Somebody needs to explain to DeSantis that nobody needs to do anything to make him look bad.

When you’re a Republican, they let you do it.

The problem people have with Biden’s age is the color of the VPs skin.

Pelosi: “He either is stupid, or he thinks the rest of us are.” Why not both?

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

It could be worse. Vance could have said “post-menopausal sows.” Waiting for that audiotape to surface.

An unpunished coup is a training exercise.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

Everyone is in a bubble, but some bubbles model reality far better than others!

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

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  • Arclite
  • Baud
  • Betty
  • bjacques
  • BR
  • Chet Murthy
  • cmorenc
  • David 🐝KHive🐝 Koch
  • eclare
  • frosty
  • Geminid
  • Geoduck
  • Gin & Tonic
  • Gloria DryGarden
  • HumboldtBlue
  • Jackie
  • Jay
  • Kathleen
  • like a metaphor
  • Liminal Owl
  • Matt McIrvin
  • NotMax
  • opiejeanne
  • Peke Daddy
  • Pennsylvanian
  • piratedan
  • prostratedragon
  • Ramona
  • sab
  • schrodingers_cat
  • Shalimar
  • something fabulous
  • Starfish
  • stinger
  • StringOnAStick
  • Torrey
  • TS
  • wjca
  • zhena gogolia

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    74Comments

    2. 2.

      Gin & Tonic

      OCR has gotten really quite good. I’m working with my grandmother’s memoirs, composed 50-55 years ago on a typewriter (in Ukrainian, of course) so I can pass them along to my children and grandchildren, and am continually impressed by how well it comes out. Still needs a bit of editing/formatting, but only a bit.

      Lots of interesting stuff about turn-of-the-century Austro-Hungary.

      Reply
    3. 3.

      Jackie

      Barack done did great!

      Barack Obama headlined his first solo fundraiser for Kamala Harris in Los Angeles on Friday night, bringing in $4 million for her campaign as he framed the election as a struggle against radical forces in America that want to take the country backward,” the Washington Post reports.

      Reply
    10. 10.

      wjca

      @piratedan: found a non-X link for the Montana GOP bullshit on overseas ballots

      On one hand, glad to see iit’s only on the online ballots, i.e. not on the physically mailed ballots.  A fix for that should be quick and easy.  (Sure, it’s an exceptionally dumb mistake, and obviously their QA sucks.  But at least the fix is easy.)

      On the other hand, when I just read the tweet, and thought it was all overseas ballots, I got my hopes up.  Because that wouldn’t happen, I thought, unless somebody close on the scene in Helena thought Montana was in play.** And wouldn’t that be fun?

      ** EDT – Maybe Tester’s got coattails….

      Reply
    17. 17.

      Arclite

      There are sites that count up the number of lies Trump uttered as president, somewhere around 30,000. Are there any sites that have tallied up the number of violent statements he has uttered over the past decade?

      I ask because the two norm-breaking attempts against his life can be directly traced back to the norm-breaking that he himself has poisoned the national discourse with over the past ten years. Knowing the number of violent utterances compared to previous presidents would be informative.

      Reply
    18. 18.

      wjca

      At a local intersection, there are a bunch of small campaign signs for various local races: town council, school board, etc.  All very colorful.

      Plus one plain white sign with understated black lettering:

      vote for any non-felon for president

      Reply
    24. 24.

      Pennsylvanian

      I have had a fucked up summer, plus resigned from my toxic job.

      Got a new job! Hope springs eternal!

      Saw my first “Taylor Swift 2024” flag. Pink! So awesome! I am Pennsylvanian, but also Mainer now. Mainers love flags! Will get pics.

      Reply
    32. 32.

      StringOnAStick

      Husband and I are winding down from day 3 of Djangofest NW 2024 on Whidbey island across from Seattle.  It’s a festival of music in the style of Django Reinhardt; incredible international talent and some pretty hot locals too.  Will definitely be coming back to this event!

      Reply
    34. 34.

      sab

      OT We moved this summer.Not far at all but very different. Our old house was in a neighborhood, Everyone knew your business, but everyone cared about your welfare,

      New neighborhood not so much. We have been here six weeks and only one neighbor talked to us and she wanted to sue us. We hired a surveyor to confirm what the generator installer already knew. It is on our property. Bad news is the tacky badly maintaineed fence she thinks is hers is actually ours.

      Also too: today I took the dog out at midnight when she needed to pee.

      Ten minutes later I checked out our new ADT account  and theire was a strange animal. But it wasn’t strange or stray. It was our Sadie, wandering around the house. I have checked the videos repearedly and I do not know how she got out, but there she was wandering for ten minutes.

      ADT i1s fucking expensive, but it did save our cat.

      Reply
    37. 37.

      Shalimar

      Sky News is airing a clip of Biden at an event in Wilmington not being sure which speaker he was supposed to introduce next.  The presenter called it “another mixup.”

      It seems like something that could happen to anyone and not a sign of any kind of decline.  It shows how media wishes they could have presented the presidential race for the last 2 months.  I didn’t think he should have to back out of the campaign, but I am relieved he did.

      Reply
    40. 40.

      opiejeanne

      @Arclite: They are saying that we are the ones encouraging violence.  As if.

      I saw a Twitter post with a video claiming that every democrat from Pelosi to Biden to Kamala had encouraged violence, used violent rhetoric, etc.  I didn’t watch it because I’m pretty sure the clips are heavily edited, taken out of context, or possibly even deep fakes.

      The first 8 or 9 comments were from MAGAt trolls, so you have a good idea of the amount of pearl clasping that went on.

      Reply
    42. 42.

      piratedan

      @TS: procedural oversight, I’m sure /////

       

      this was an online ballot supposedly sent electronically to all Montanans working/serving overseas.  Unsure on how many that actually is, still disturbing.

      Reply
    43. 43.

      something fabulous

      @schrodingers_cat: So glad you were able to get there: our traditions are different, but it helped me very much to be able to be home with my family and say goodbye. Sending support from a stranger from afar.

      Reply
    44. 44.

      opiejeanne

      My sister’s ex died this week, probably on Sunday. They found him on Tuesday morning. He was living in an apartment organized by the VA for vets with little or no money.

      He was a larger than life figure, handsome, patrician, looked like the drawing of the guy in the Arrow Shirt ads in the Saturday Evening Post. He was from a wealthy family that lived on Lido Isle and had a hunting lodge in Canada; his mom was a HUntington.  His business partners bought him out and he stopped paying the mortgage. After that he worked in Hollywood as an extra in everything from Men in Black to  Star Trek as a Klingon, a Vulcan, and part of Q. He was Norman the Doorman in the Suite Life of Zack and Cody. He ate pie in Pushing Daisies and ate more pie at the end of Million Dollar Baby because Clint Eastwood wanted to direct the final scene, and Tony looked enough like Clint that they only had to trim his eyebrows a bit. Sir Anthony Hopkins fed my nieces lunch and played card games with them when Tony had to be on set during a movie. (Hannibal Lecter had lunch with my nieces!)

      As a husband he was a total rat, cheated on my sister with his prevous wife, was arrested for soliciting a prostitute who turned out to be a cop, lost lifelong friends because of his behavior around their teenage children, and spent 3 hours taking a babysitter home when she lived 15 minutes away. When my sister came into some money he made sure they spent every nickel of it. At my dad’s funeral he spotted my daughters and asked them in his best seductive voice, “And who might you two be?” My sister is bereft.

      The nicest things I can think to say about him is that he loved his daughters, and he won’t get to vote for Trump.

      Reply
    45. 45.

      David 🐝KHive🐝 Koch

      ActBlue raised $114 million last week.  Since Kamala entered the campaign ActBlue has raised $1.209 billion.

      It sounds like a lot, but its needed to counter the media giving Dump hundreds of millions, if not billions, in free air time.​

      Reply
    46. 46.

      Geminid

      @wjca: Montana is unlikely to be in play at the Presidential level, but John Tester’s race could determine control of the Senate so that might be this year’s second most critical contest nationally.

      One of the state’s two House seats could possibly be in play. This is only the second cycle that Montana has had two House districts, at least in the modern era.

      Reply
    48. 48.

      Baud

      I don’t follow entertainment news, but apparently Janet Jackson needs to be put on the list.

      Via reddit

      Janet Jackson Repeats Right Wing Conspiracy Theory About Kamala Harris’ Race in Wild Guardian Interview

      Reply
    49. 49.

      Matt McIrvin

      @wjca: Though it certainly isn’t enough to turn me against it, one disadvantage of going to a national popular vote for president (or even the congressional district method, nationwide) is that it would give deep red states the power to fuck with the national result in a close election. As it is, we mostly have to worry about a few swing states with Republican governments.

      Reply
    63. 63.

      cmorenc

      @Matt McIrvin: A presidential vote by congressional district would indeed easily manipulated by gerrymandering, but I don’t get why you think a presidential vote by national popular vote would be easily manipulated by red states, unless you assume they would corruptly mis-count votes in their respective states.

      Reply
    64. 64.

      Chet Murthy

      @cmorenc: the obvious easy way to fuck with the NPV Compact is:

      If the popular vote goes the same way that the current electoral votes would go, and that is to the liking of (let’s say) Texas’ governor and legislature (G(r)OPer trifecta), then they let it be.  If OTOH the popular vote goes against the current electoral vote, and it awards the Presidency to a Dem, and (let’s say) Texas awards its votes to the G(r)OPer, then Texas passes a law abolishing its participation in the NPV Compact, and voila,  if enough Red States do the same thing, they effectively get to force a G(r)OPer win.

      That seems the obvious way to game the NPV Compact, if you’re a bad-faith Red State.  And since all Red States are bad faith …..

      Reply
    65. 65.

      Matt McIrvin

      @cmorenc: They’d do all the vote-suppression things they do, like this one, just leaving the Democratic candidate’s name off the ballot. Making it nearly impossible to vote in blue districts, passing draconian ID requirements, telling people the election is on Wednesday, etc.

      Right now, these generally don’t matter for the Presidential election because the Democratic candidate has no hope in these states anyway. But with a national popular vote they would matter.

      Reply
    66. 66.

      Matt McIrvin

      @Chet Murthy: My understanding of the NPV Compact is that it *only* has any effect if enough states are participating that their combined electoral votes add up to an Electoral College majority.

      But I haven’t studied the text closely enough to see if it goes back OUT of effect if the electoral votes drop below the threshold again (it would be very bad if it didn’t, because the states where it was still operating would be really fucked).

      And of course if people voted with the understanding that it was in effect and it turned out not to be in effect, that might have a distorting effect itself.

      I personally am very skeptical that this kind of Weird Trick could pass a court challenge, though it’s a cute idea. Really getting rid of the Electoral College would require a constitutional amendment and the NPVC feels like a hack to get around that requirement.

      Reply
    67. 67.

      cmorenc

      @Chet Murthy: I was referring to a constitutional change to a straightforward national popular vote determining the winner, not some interstate NPV compact, which does have the potenial problem you mention.  However, consider that the allocation of water from the Colorado River is governed by an Interstate Compact among several western US states – and despite obvious incentives for a few of them to repudiate the compact because it now works to their disadvantage, none have yet done so.  It’s not clear under the Compacts clause of the US whether a compact entered among states with congressional authorization can be arbitrarily withdrawn from by one of the states, depending on the terms of the compact.  It is obvious, however that there is ample room for a partisan-compromised SCOTUS like we currently have to do creative mischief with such a compact, justified by *argle bargle* reasoning of the sort indulged in with respect to Presidential Immunity (a decision the 6 made at a moment when they were likely, still reasonably assuming a Trump win in November).

      Reply
    70. 70.

      Matt McIrvin

      @cmorenc: Right, and my initial response was just imagining a US with such a constitutional amendment. Currently, while local and state elections are sensitive to local election fuckery, the US presidential election is only sensitive to it in states that are purple enough that the state-level majority swings on it. With a national popular vote, everyone’s vote matters equally, which also means that some local Boss Hogg fucking with everyone’s vote matters equally. But that’s inherent in democracy.

      Reply
    71. 71.

      StringOnAStick

      @Liminal Owl: It is, you should do so!  There isn’t a bad seat in the house at the Whidbey of Culture and Arts centre (WICA) and the amount of talent packed into these 4 days is stunning.  Just walk around Langley and catch the impromptu jam sessions; just so much joyful music!

      Reply

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