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One of our two political parties is a cult whose leader admires Vladimir Putin.

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Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” was supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

I would try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

She burned that motherfucker down, and I am so here for it. Thank you, Caroline Kennedy.

Giving up is unforgivable.

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

If you’re gonna whine, it’s time to resign!

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

The way to stop violence is to stop manufacturing the hatred that fuels it.

In my day, never was longer.

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I have other things to bitch about but those will have to wait.

It’s a good piece. click on over. but then come back!!

These days, even the boring Republicans are nuts.

The line between political reporting and fan fiction continues to blur.

Bark louder, little dog.

’Where will you hide, Roberts, the laws all being flat?’

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You are here: Home / Archives for 2024

Archives for 2024

Friday Night Open Thread

by John Cole|  September 20, 20249:09 pm| 139 Comments

This post is in: John Cole Presents "This Fucking Old House"

Kind of a shitty 48 hours here- Wednesday night I went in to feed Rosie, and as I was entering Maxwell shot through my legs like a bullet and attacked her. She’s fast as fuck and oddly enough has catlike reflexes and was never touched by him, but when I went to grab Maxwell the fucker bit the palm of my hand so hard it went to the bone. I let it bleed out then cleaned it under cold water, iced it a bit, and went to bed. Yesterday I could barely use my hand, but I just iced it and dealt with the pain, hoping I would not need to go to the doctor. Woke up this morning and it hurt like hell and was swollen, so I went in and got a prophylactic antibiotic.

Normally my standard practice is to let something bleed out, clean it, then just let my body do it’s thing, but I keep a close eye for any redness, excessive swelling, or heat and an itchy sensation, because those to me are the earlier indicators of an infection that come before the obvious stuff like a fever or streaking. Regardless, it was really swollen and painful without all those things, so I went in. They put me on augmentin and I swear to god in the eight hours since I took it, it has gotten less swollen. So not a prophylactic antibiotic at all. I did ice it and do my best to keep it elevated all day, so that had to help. And I took an edible about an hour ago and let me tell you, I feel no pain right now although I am craving ice cream.

***

The Republicans are so maddening, and what irritates me the most about the greasy palmed extremely online black nazi Mark Robinson is that other than the nazi shit and the peeping tom stuff, there’s nothing wrong with any of his kinks. If getting off on transgender porn gets your patriotic ass to full staff, you go, champ. My rule of thumb my entire life has been whatever you do in your bedroom is your thing just do me a solid and spare me the details. Even as a young Republican in the 80’s and early 90’s I never gave a fuck- my attitude was “they don’t want to fuck me” and “whatever.” You do you, if you will. Everyone has a kink. The hard part should be finding someone who shares it, not the rest of the bullshit we lay on people.

But this motherfucker goes out of his way to hurt people who don’t live their lives according to some arbitrary standard he doesn’t even follow. Not only is he attacking transgender and gay people and drag queens and everyone else all the time, but there will be a side effect to his liking transgender porn because it will be used as proof that there is something weird or wrong with transgender people because only a sick fuck like Robinson would like that. They’re gonna get hurt doubly because of this fucking asshole, and all they want to do is be themselves and figure their own lives out in a world already really dangerous or traumatic to anyone “different.”

Side note I remember a while back at homecoming someone asked me what my type was and I said “willing” and I think that may be my best fast response quip of all time and everyone got hysterical.

***

Speaking of homecoming, Joelle will be here in a couple weeks for… Homecoming. We had considered getting hitched here but I was kind of being a twat about things (I don’t want to get married in Bethany I have given this place enough of me) but she does, and then all the other bullshit happened (her mom being ill, her best friend getting early retired), so now it is off the books. We had thought about just going to California for a weekend at the end of November, but I don’t want to spend that kind of money when she needs a new fridge and all the bullshit here. As you can see, I have a lot of unresolved stuff bouncing around my head and have to sort things out. I need to just stop being a douchebag and say yes to whatever she wants to do when she wants to do it.

This entire section of this post is for me. Sometimes I need to say things out loud and make you motherfuckers bear witness so I don’t change my mind again. Like I did getting Lily. And becoming a Democrat. And quitting drinking. That’s just how I roll and you fools are here for the ride.

***

I see that R-Jud was champing at the bit to start posting, so here is a proper welcome to the front page. Fool.

***

This seems absolutely fucking bonkers to me:

Pennsylvania’s dormant Three Mile Island nuclear plant would be brought back to life to feed the voracious energy needs of Microsoft under an unprecedented deal announced Friday in which the tech giant would buy 100 percent of its power for 20 years.

The restart of Three Mile Island, the site of the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history, would mark a bold advance in the tech industry’s quest to find enough electric power to support its boom in artificial intelligence. The plant, which Pennsylvanians thought had closed for good in 2019 amid financial strain, would come back online by 2028 under the agreement, according to plant owner Constellation Energy.

If approved by regulators, Three Mile Island would provide Microsoft with the energy equivalent it takes to power 800,000 homes, or 835 megawatts. Never before has a U.S. nuclear plant come back into service after being decommissioned, and never before has all of a single commercial nuclear power plant’s output been allocated to a single customer.

There are so many layers to how bad this is (and fucking hell we are just skipping and jumping our way to becoming the batteries for the Synthients in the Matrix, aren’t we?), but chief of them has to be using old nuclear technology. I am all for nuclear energy, think we need to construct new plants, but not recommissioning an accident zone and definitely not so my facebook feed can be jammed with more fucking ai art.

***

Gonna go ice my hand and watch the Boys, season 4. TTYL.

Friday Night Open ThreadPost + Comments (139)

War for Ukraine Day 940: Today It Was Odesa’s Turn & Kharkiv Too

by Adam L Silverman|  September 20, 20248:13 pm| 17 Comments

This post is in: Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Military, Open Threads, Russia, Silverman on Security, War, War in Ukraine

Screen shot of painting by NEIVANMADE. It has a grey border. On the left is a Ukrainian apartment block in the background. In the left foreground is an armored forearm and fist blocking incoming Russian rockets and missiles. The Russian rockets and missiles are red and have the "Z" symbol on them. The backgound is black. Above the armored arm and fist, written in white, is "Every Single Day in Ukraine."

(Image by NEIVANMADE)

Three quick housekeeping notes. Rosie is doing great. Thank you all for the good thoughts, well wishes, prayers, and donations. Her next treatment is a week from Monday.

Second, we have made it to Friday. Which is good as I’m fried.

Third, because the whole point should be to NOT make anyone dumber, last night, based on the information reported at the time, I included in the update:

Romania:

⚡️ Romania has called on Ukraine to intercept and shoot down Russian drones that enter its airspace.https://t.co/3oZUxP9J5e

— UNITED24 Media (@United24media) September 19, 2024

Let’s make this really clear: NATO and NATO member states will not shoot down Russian missiles or drones aimed at Ukrainian targets over Ukraine, but a NATO member state is now asking Ukraine to shoot down Russian drones aimed at Romania over Romania.

After I went to bed, Bill Arnold posted in the comments:

Ukraine, Not Romania, Requested Action Against Russian Drones, FAZ Clarifies (Sep 19, 2024)

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) agency made a mistake by writing that Romania asked Ukraine to shoot down Russian drones in Romanian airspace
In fact, it was Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha who, during his visit to Bucharest, asked his Romanian counterpart Luminita Odobescu for Romania to shoot down Russian UAVs in the skies over Ukraine.
Previously, FAZ reported that Romania was the one to call on Ukraine to intercept and shoot down Russian drones that enter its airspace.

Here’s Ukraine’s air defense tally from last night/early this morning:

Ukrainian Air Force says air defense units shot down 61 of 70 Shahed drones fired at Ukraine by Russian overnight, as well as a Kh-59 missile fired at Dnipro. The other 9 Shaheds were disabled by jamming and crashed in various regions of Ukraine. No casualties or damage reported. pic.twitter.com/VbsP2Qs0EP

— Euan MacDonald (@Euan_MacDonald) September 20, 2024

Russia struck Odesa with ballistic missiles this morning:

⚡️ Russian forces attacked Odesa on Sept. 20, injuring four people, Governor Oleh Kiper reported.

According to the preliminary data, Russia launched Iskander-M ballistic missiles, damaging a port and a civilian ship under the Antiguan flag.https://t.co/8qnDhUa1bv

— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) September 20, 2024

The Kyiv Independent has the details:

Editor’s note: This is a developing story.

Russian forces attacked Odesa on Sept. 20, injuring four people, Governor Oleh Kiper reported.

According to the preliminary data, Russia launched Iskander-M ballistic missiles, damaging port and civilian infrastructure, as well as a civilian ship under the Antiguan flag.

An air raid alert sounded in Odesa Oblast at around 2 p.m. local time, and the first explosions were heard in the city a few minutes later.

Odesa Oblast and other southern regions of Ukraine are regular targets of Russian missile and drone attacks.

Russian troops attacked Odesa Oblast with a ballistic missile on July 4, killing one civilian, injuring seven others, and hitting port infrastructure.

Here’s President Zelenskyy’s address from earlier today. Video below, English transcript after the jump.

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War for Ukraine Day 940: Today It Was Odesa’s Turn & Kharkiv TooPost + Comments (17)

Friday Evening Bigfoot Bait Open Thread: American Apartheid’s Strongest Nepo-Babies

by Anne Laurie|  September 20, 20248:02 pm| 30 Comments

This post is in: Grifters Gonna Grift, Open Threads, Racial Justice

⬆️ Think this aspect of MAGA billionaire tech leaders does not get covered as much in US media, in part because most Americans — including the reporters — fail to understand how South Africa's apartheid era is secretly viewed with nostalgia from quite a few white South Africans.

— Melissa Chan (@melissakchan) September 19, 2024

Forget South Africans, apartheid is ‘viewed with nostalgia’ by far too many Americans. Most of us, I assume, knew that Apartheid Clyde, his mini-me fanboi David Sacks, and even JD Vance / Blake Masters sugar daddy Peter Thiel spent their formative years in a society where White supremacy was literally enforced by law, but I didn’t know the probable founder of QAnon was also a member of that select club. Per the Financial Times:

Elon Musk lived in apartheid South Africa until he was 17. David Sacks, the venture capitalist who has become a fundraiser for Donald Trump and a troll of Ukraine, left aged five, and grew up in a South African diaspora family in Tennessee. Peter Thiel spent years of childhood in South Africa and Namibia, where his father was involved in uranium mining as part of the apartheid regime’s clandestine drive to acquire nuclear weapons. And Paul Furber, an obscure South African software developer and tech journalist living near Johannesburg, has been identified by two teams of forensic linguists as the originator of the QAnon conspiracy, which helped shape Trump’s Maga movement. (Furber denies being “Q”.)

In short, four of Maga’s most influential voices are fiftysomething white men with formative experiences in apartheid South Africa. This probably isn’t a coincidence…

So what connects these men’s southern African backgrounds with Maga today? Southern Africa under apartheid offered an extreme version of some of the main themes of American life today. First, there was tremendous inequality. The mine where Thiel’s father worked was “known for conditions not far removed from indentured servitude”, writes Thiel’s biographer Max Chafkin. “White managers, like the Thiels, had access to a brand-new medical and dental centre in Swakopmund and membership in the company country club.” The mine’s black migrant workers lived in work camps.

To whites of a certain mindset, this inequality wasn’t due to apartheid. They thought it was inscribed in nature. Certain people were equipped to succeed in capitalism, while others weren’t. That was simply the way it was, and it was pointless to try to mess with nature. Two of Thiel’s contemporaries at Stanford in the 1980s recall him telling them that apartheid “works” and was “economically sound”. His spokesman has denied that he ever supported apartheid.

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Friday Evening Bigfoot Bait Open Thread: American Apartheid’s Strongest Nepo-BabiesPost + Comments (30)

Palate Cleanser

by @heymistermix.com|  September 20, 20245:10 pm| 119 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads


I will never tire of watching Tim Walz and his Scout. He has a ’79, and I’m shocked that he found one with a 345 V-8 that still works. From personal experience, there’s nothing like being 16 and driving that overpowered death trap waaay too fast. They cut the actual fix (to the cruise control) but it doesn’t matter, because there are probably 100 of these still running today, and that’s a high estimate.

A lot of people point out that Walz’ “dad energy” is pretty strong. I can see how he was a good coach, teacher, and sergeant in the Guard. In the video above, he’s really passionate about how you can tell if someone is serious about car maintenance by looking at the air cleaner. When he was on Subway Takes with Kareem, he had a pretty serious riff on home gutter maintenance. Since my last post was about shitty men (and a shitty woman), it’s nice to see a guy who puts his time and energy into something constructive.

If you like watching Walz talk about cars, here’s another video.

Palate CleanserPost + Comments (119)

Let’s Be Sure I Didn’t Miss Any Sex News

by @heymistermix.com|  September 20, 20244:08 pm| 179 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads

I was out of signal for a couple of days, so I missed all the different ways that some Republicans and Republican-enablers acted out sexually.  Let’s see if I’ve caught up:

  • Mark Robinson, candidate for Governor in NC, admitted to jerking it to trans porn, being a “black Nazi”, but even though Republicans really, really want him to quit, he’s going to keep jerking it on the ballot until the election.
  • Olivia Nuzzi, “journalist” sexted RFK Jr. during/after the time she was writing stories about him and also stupidly tweeting about the election.  She was engaged to Ryan Lizza, who was fired from the New Yorker for an inappropriate sexual relationship.  She’ll be on Fox News or writing for the NY Post in a few days, I’m sure.
  • A court filing in one of Matt Gaetz’ legal entanglements says that he attended a sex party with a 17 year-old high school junior.  This happened in 2017, so Matt was but a wee lad of 35 at the time.

That was yesterday, right?

While I’m on the subject of partners, imaginary or real, in-person or virtual, does it strike anyone funny that the spouse of one of the members of the Republican ticket is nowhere to be seen, and that the other member of the ticket doesn’t seem able to mount an honest defense of her against racial slurs from his running mate?

Let's Be Sure I Didn't Miss Any Sex News

Edited to add:  Chris Rufo!  Forgot he was on Ashley Madison (allegedly).  Thanks to fancycwabs in the comments, who also helpfully pointed out TN Congressman Mark Green’s alleged affair (came out a few days ago) and Laura Loomer (also a few days ago) and possibly some Trump/Diddy entanglement.

Let’s Be Sure I Didn’t Miss Any Sex NewsPost + Comments (179)

Operation Blue Arizona, Day 5 (with 45 days left)

by WaterGirl|  September 20, 20242:12 pm| 35 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Political Action, Political Fundraising, Politics, Targeted Political Fundraising 2023-24

It’s Day 5 of Operation Blue Arizona, and we have some new Balloon Juice Angels!

Angel Summary for Day 2

We have angels for 3 of our thermometers today!

lurker – Worker Power

silvery – Four Directions (+ external match!) so 4x matching

anonymous – Arizona Candidates 


If you’re up for helping us get to our goal faster, we have an Operation Blue Arizona fundraising page that you can share with friends and family and on social media.

It’s easy!  I sent the page to DougJ and he tweeted it, so all you have to do is share his tweet!

Breaking character: Balloon Juice found some terrific groups in Arizona to donate to. I love giving to these kinds of organizations that function as long-term infrastructure, not just quick hit ads.https://t.co/K7E4DbIXP8

— DougJBalloon (@DougJBalloon) September 20, 2024

Or, if you prefer, here’s a direct link to the page.

If you didn’t get a chance to read all the info about Four Directions and Worker Power and the candidates, you can click on the post below.

Balloon Juice Operation Blue Arizona

Or if you just want the Operation Blue Arizona thermometers, here you go!

We took 3 days off – I hope you enjoyed the rest!

Open thread!

 

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Operation Blue Arizona, Day 5 (with 45 days left)Post + Comments (35)

Soft Launch Open Thread

by Rose Judson|  September 20, 202412:00 pm| 257 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Politics, Republican Stupidity

Bonjour! I see the morning thread has gone long, so I thought I’d open up a new one for you all now that I have the power to do so.

meme comparing josh stein's normie political message with Mark Robinson's pornographic rantings.

I’ve got a proper intro post coming tomorrow. I’ve got to run off to an important appointment* in the meantime. Totally open thread!

EDIT: With thanks to rikyrah in the comments, here’s MVP Harris’s Wired Autocomplete interview. Worth your time:

 

*I am going to the pub.

Soft Launch Open ThreadPost + Comments (257)

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