Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

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

The revolution will be supervised.

If you don’t believe freedom is for everybody, then the thing you love isn’t freedom, it is privilege.

Oh FFS you might as well trust a 6-year-old with a flamethrower.

Those who are easily outraged are easily manipulated.

Michigan is a great lesson for Dems everywhere: when you have power…use it!

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Come on, man.

I really should read my own blog.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Their freedom requires your slavery.

Not rolling over. fuck you, make me.

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

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

The world has changed, and neither one recognizes it.

Humiliatingly small and eclipsed by the derision of millions.

Welcome to day five of every-bit-as-bad-as-you-thought-it-would-be.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

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

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Tuesday Morning Open Thread: Good Vibrations

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Morning treat, concerning a Biden/Harris admin stalwart who sometimes gets overlooked a bit. John Heileman, at Puck, transcribes an interview with the Secretary of Transportation, aka ‘Pistol Pete’:

… Among political professionals there’s a broad consensus that Buttigieg is, by a non-trivial margin, the most talented communicator in the Democratic Party this side of the Obamas.

To get a taste of just how good Pete is, head over to YouTube and sample his increasingly viral hits on Fox News, where he has made a point of regularly tangling with the network’s lineup of bad-faith blowhards, calling out their bullshit without ever losing his poise or his patience. His skills on the stump have made him—in a personal capacity, during his off-hours from his day job—one of Team K’s most valued and widely deployed surrogates. Add to that his keen mind, fierce ambition, aw-shucks Midwestern affability, and mind-blowing youth (he is, gulp, just 42) and it’s easy to see why the party’s cognoscenti believe that Pete is the one rising Democratic star with more than a decent shot at being president one day—that he’s close to a mortal lock.

Last week, Pete sat down with me to tape an episode of Impolitic With John Heilemann. Some highlights of that convo are below, and you can listen to the whole thing here. Shortly after we chatted, The New York Times reported that, just as he played the role of Mike Pence in Harris’s V.P. debate prep four years ago, Pete is standing in for J.D. Vance in Tim Walz’s murder-boarding for the understudies’ face-off on October 1. Because of the Times’s lousy timing, I wasn’t able to interrogate Pete about that juicy topic. But we did go deep on the state of the race, why he believes Harris has the stronger hand to play in the homestretch, the appalling hellfire unleashed on Springfield, Ohio, by Trump and Vance’s racist lies about the town’s Haitian immigrants, and what Harris and Walz need to do to seal the deal in the Blue Wall states. As always, this conversation has been lightly edited…

John Heilemann: Seems like you’re spending the vast majority of your time when you’re off the clock from your day job on the campaign trail working to elect Kamala Harris. As we sit here, a little more than six weeks from Election Day, how’s that going?

Pete Buttigieg: Good! The V.P. has been, I think, really clear in reminding us all that there are a lot of underdog qualities to this campaign, but also, I’d rather be us right now [than the Trump campaign]. The American people agree with the vice president on the issues that matter to them most. But we know that just because folks agree with you on the issues doesn’t mean that you get to win the election. You’ve got to earn that. [Kamala Harris] is out there doing that. Tim Walz is out there doing that. And a lot of other Democrats who really care about this—including me, when I get the chance in my personal capacity— are out there doing everything we can…

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On The Road – Captain C – Veryetsmuseum (Resistance Museum) – Amsterdam, October 2024. Part 3

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Captain C

This is the last of three photosets from my visit to the Verzetsmuseum (Resistance Museum) in Amsterdam last October.  Plus one very necessary palate cleanser.

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On The Road - Captain C - Veryetsmuseum (Resistance Museum) -- Amsterdam, October 2024. Part 3 7
Verzetsmuseum (Resistance Museum), Amsterdam, NLOctober 13, 2023

Some photos of the effects of Nazi bombing on the Netherlands, Rotterdam IIRC.

Cold Grey Dawn Open Thread: Everything Must Go!

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This, given the tenor of our times, is a hopeful sign. The autocrat’s family doesn’t start tearing the copper plumbing out of the palace walls, or stripping the gilding off the furniture, until they’re actually worried about being overthrown. Or, then again, maybe the Trump team has access to medical news which hasn’t been shared with us hoi polloi…

But we have perhaps solved the minor mystery of why Melania has been willing to attend Log Cabin Republican events even when she conspicuously avoided her husband’s performances. Per CNN, “Melania Trump was paid for a rare appearance at a political event. It’s not clear who cut the unusual six-figure check”:

Melania Trump has barely been seen on the campaign trail this year. One of the few times she has appeared at a political event, she’s received a six-figure paycheck – a highly unusual move for the spouse of a candidate.

The former first lady spoke at two political fundraisers for the Log Cabin Republicans this year, and she was paid $237,500 for an April event, according to former President Donald Trump’s latest financial disclosure form. The payment was listed as a “speaking engagement.”

Trump’s latest disclosure form said Melania Trump was paid by the Log Cabin Republicans for the April fundraiser. But it’s a mystery who actually cut the check: Charles Moran, president of the Log Cabin Republicans, told CNN earlier this month the group did not put up the money for her to speak, and the disclosure form did not give any more information about the source of the payment.

Ahead of the other fundraiser in July for the conservative LGBTQ group, a person familiar said at least one request was made to a donor about a similar payment. It’s unclear whether Melania Trump was ultimately paid. The campaign has not put out the financial disclosure for that period. The source told CNN that Ric Grenell, former ambassador to Germany and a Trump ally, was the one who made the request on behalf of Melania Trump. Sources said Grenell has also helped the former first lady with other business ventures.

Campaign finance and government ethics experts say a payment to a presidential candidate’s spouse to appear at political fundraisers in an election is unusual, ethically questionable and should, at the very least, be properly noted in the disclosure forms…

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Webistics

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Webistics

The blue mountain heading towards the sea is DJT (Truth Social).

Trump Media’s stock is now trading at $13.55 U.S. a share, down 83% from a peak of $79.38 U.S. reached shortly after the company went public via a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) in March of this year.

The red line is the S&P 500, which hit a record high today.  On March 1, it closed at 5098.  Today it is 5718.  That’s a 12% gain.

If history still exists after the election, this is going to be one of the many WTF parts of the last 8 years.

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War for Ukraine Day 943: President Zelenskyy Travels to the US & Russia Continues Hunting Ukrainians in Kherson with Drones

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Two quick housekeeping notes. First, Rosie is still doing very well. Thank you all for the good thoughts, well wishes, prayers, and donations.

Second, I don’t have the bandwidth to add another conflict for updates right now. But I do want to make a couple of quick points. The first is that Israel has, in just today’s strikes, has killed enough Lebanese to get over the 25% mark of its total campaign numbers from 2006. That campaign lasted 34 days. It is unclear what the proportion of Hezbullah fighters and personnel are to civilian casualties right now, regardless, the overall number and percentage compared to 2006 is astonishing.

Full disclosure: I know Liz Sly. She’s an excellent reporter and knows the Levant exceedingly well. She interviewed me when I was deployed in Iraq.

Second, I don’t know how this ends. The Biden administration had been trying to deescalate this for almost an entire year. That’s not worked for a variety of reasons. Third, the people who will be hurt the worst are just every day Lebanese and Israelis. Some will be Arab, some will be Druze. Some will by Muslim, some Jewish, some Christian, some Druze, some Bahai. They are the real victims. They are the victims of leaders who care more about themselves and their doctrinally derived ideological grievances and megalomaniacal sense of historical over importance than about the people they claim to represent.

Russia is hunting Ukrainian civilians in Kherson:

They’re doing something similar in Nikopol:

❗️The russian bastards are terrorizing Nikopol: they attach heat traps to FPV drones and randomly launch them at houses and cars, thus provoking fires, — the military.

They do not try to find military targets, and these traps are not aimed. The burning temperature is about 2000 degrees.

President Zelenskyy has traveled to the US in order to address the UN General Assembly later in the week. Today he addressed the Plenary Session of the Summit of the Future. Video below, English transcript after the jump.

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Monday Night Open Thread

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Kind of a gross day with cloudy skies and humidity but no real rain. We’ve had such a dry summer, and it was predicted a while back that this region, normally very wet in the summers, would begin to experience regular drought conditions. This is a shame for multiple reasons, notwithstanding the very real blow to tourism as river rafting, fishing, and other activities slow down because it’s hardly very thrilling to white water raft in two inches of water and the fishing ain’t great, either.

It will bring other problems, including straining the deep well aquifers that we use in conjunction with purified water from the Ohio River for drinking water. The most serious issue, though, is after a couple years of drought, we will being to experience forest fires. This will be disastrous for a number of reasons, some obvious, some less so, but the first reason is that West Virginia is one of the most forested state in the nation behind only Maine and NH. Fully 80% of the state is forest, and that is a lot of fuel for fires. Add in the sparse population in much of it meaning there are no fire fighting resources, and the fact that there is precious little in the ways of highways or major waterways to serve as fire breaks.

Making matters worse, WV and Appalachia have the most biodiversity in the nation, and we could wipe a lot of that out, which is why I am wisely moving for six months every year to a desert state that has no fucking water at all god I fucking hate everything

***

This is fucking terrifying:

Amari Marsh had just finished her junior year at South Carolina State University in May 2023 when she received a text message from a law enforcement officer.

“Sorry it has taken this long for paperwork to come back,” the officer wrote. “But I finally have the final report, and wanted to see if you and your boyfriend could meet me Wednesday afternoon for a follow up?”

Marsh understood that the report was related to a pregnancy loss she’d experienced that March, she said. During her second trimester, Marsh said, she unexpectedly gave birth in the middle of the night while on a toilet in her off-campus apartment. She remembered screaming and panicking and said the bathroom was covered in blood.

“I couldn’t breathe,” said Marsh, now 23.

The next day, when Marsh woke up in the hospital, she said, a law enforcement officer asked her questions. Then, a few weeks later, she said, she received a call saying she could collect her daughter’s ashes.

At that point, she said, she didn’t know she was being criminally investigated. Yet three months after her loss, Marsh was charged with murder/homicide by child abuse, law enforcement records show. She spent 22 days at the Orangeburg-Calhoun Regional Detention Center, where she was initially held without bond, facing 20 years to life in prison.

This August, 13 months after she was released from jail to house arrest with an ankle monitor, Marsh was cleared by a grand jury. Her case will not proceed to trial.

I am so sick of these godbothering panty sniffers.

***

This is idiotic but completely unsurprising:

X will now make your posts visible to users you’ve blocked. In a reply on Monday, X owner Elon Musk said the “block function will block that account from engaging with, but not block seeing, public post.”

Currently, X displays a “You’re blocked” message when trying to view the profile of a person who’s blocked you. In addition to blocking all posts, it also prevents you from seeing their replies, media, followers, and following list.

While a source at X told The Verge that the platform is making this change because people can already view posts from users who’ve blocked them when using another account or when logged out, several of us at The Verge (myself included) have noticed that X actually prevents you from viewing someone’s profile if you’re logged out.

Let all the nazis and awful people back on the platform, then make it so you can not block them. Makes abusing exes and intimidating others so much easier. I’m now cross-posting everything on bluesky (@johngcole.bsky.social) and see me migrating completely in the future. Get a fucking desktop app, bluesky. BTW- am I just stupid because I’ve never figured out how to monetize anything on FB or Twitter and yet I read about all these people making bank on social media. Maybe it’s because my ass is too big.

***

I got up super early to get some work done, then made a 100 mile drive down the Ohio River to Little Hocking, Ohio, to pick up a couple hundred Harris/Walz signs for the county hq at a printer they had contracted. A pleasant drive, and I rode in silence the whole way to let my head clear. I have no idea if this means anything, but four and eight years ago that drive was just plastered with Trump signs and never a Clinton sign, and this time around it was about 2-1 Trump to Harris. I don’t know if that means fewer people are going to vote for Trump or that fewer people are willing to publicly admit voting for Trump (this is southeast Ohio so my guess is the latter, but am willing to be pleasantly surprised), but it was definitely an unqualified bonus to see the Harris/Walz signs. I don’t remember even seeing any Biden ones.

At any rate, I am tired, so you guys have at it. And for the record, we are trying to grow the site and get new commenters, so remember that you don’t need to be a total twat to anyone new, particularly those who do not agree with you 100% on every issue.

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Monday Evening Open Thread: Scorpions, Frogs, & the Tribute Vice Pays to Virtue

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Yes, I have enjoyed (and linked to) Olivia Nuzzi’s reporting, because she’s a good writer within the scope of her profession. But I’ve never forgotten that she jump-started her career in journalism as an intern in Anthony Weiner’s office, by sharing the ‘inappropriate sexual images’ he sent her. She never pretended to be other than she was.

Ben Smith, founder of Buzzfeed, now owner of Semafor, hasn’t exactly hidden his own reportorial biases towards the ‘savvy’, so his latest kinsley gaffe is not exactly a shock, either. As described by that renowned — okay, notorious — journalistic institution the New York Post:

… Writing in Semafor, Smith offered a “slightly contrarian view” by noting that “reporters have all sorts of compromising relationships with sources.”

“The most compromising of all, and the most common, is a reporter’s fealty to someone who gives them information,” Smith wrote.

“That’s the real coin of this realm. Sex barely rates.”

Smith made a comparison to the United Kingdom, where “if you’re not sleeping with someone in a position of power, how are you even a journalist?”

He then shared a text message that he received from an advice writer who observed that “the world would be much more exciting with more Nuzzis around, but alas the world is inhabited by anonymously emailing moralists instead!”…

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