Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Bark louder, little dog.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the gop

We do not need to pander to people who do not like what we stand for.

That meeting sounds like a shotgun wedding between a shitshow and a clusterfuck.

Not all heroes wear capes.

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

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

With all due respect and assumptions of good faith, please fuck off into the sun.

Relentless negativity is not a sign that you are more realistic.

People are complicated. Love is not.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

They punch you in the face and then start crying because their fist hurts.

75% of people clapping liked the show!

Today’s gop: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

Democracy is not a spectator sport.

President Musk and Trump are both poorly raised, coddled 8 year old boys.

Most of you should go to bed and try to be better Jackals in the morning.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

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

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires.

Disappointing to see gov. newsom with his finger to the wind.

I’m starting to think Jesus may have made a mistake saving people with no questions asked.

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Sunday Morning Open Thread: Messaging

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Two middle-class kids.

One, a daughter of Oakland, California, who was raised by a working mother and had a summer job at McDonald’s.

The other, a son of the Nebraska plains, who spent summers on the farm.

Only in America is it possible that the two of us would be running together all the way to the White House.

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Saturday Night Palate Cleanser: ‘Kamala Harris Yard Signs Trigger Snit… ‘

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In keeping with the Blogmaster’s latest post… The Detroit Free Press reports:

… When Birmingham resident Nikki Sapiro Vinckier adorned her front yard with campaign signs promoting Kamala Harris for president, an anonymous neighbor said they had to come down. Having a batch of signs violated city ordinances that stipulate just one sign, according to the neighbor, who stuck a list of intimidating rules about signs in Sapiro Vinckier’s mailbox.

The rules looked real. But Birmingham’s mayor and city manager both said, in effect, “Nothing doing — put up all the signs you want until the election,” Sapiro Vinckier said. That unleashed her more-than-equal-and-opposite reaction. The happy Harris fan ordered a whole lot more signs and planted them in her front yard. Pink ones are printed with a symbol representing reproductive rights, a design widely available on Etsy and other Internet sites. Others are white with a Harris quote that Sapiro Vinckier chose and that rings true for her: “We must be a nation that trusts women.”

“In total, I have ordered or helped facilitate the ordering with my design of over 7,000 signs,” she said. Many came to Michigan, but “hundreds have shipped to other swing states,” she said.

On Tuesday afternoon, Sapiro Vinckier set up tables at Birmingham’s Adams Park, peddling the signs to all comers, for donations of any amount. After getting more than 12,000 likes and 220,000 views of videos she posted about her experience with freedom of political speech, she expected demand would outstrip supply, even with Tuesday’s ominous weather forecasts. As it happened, with rain pouring down, she and friends had takers for more than 600 signs, she said via text…

“I’ve got family members on both sides of this. And, really, my goal is to start a conversation, not be deprecatory,” Sapiro Vinckier said. Politics has gotten so confrontational that her goal, on social media and in her videos, has been to “stay lighthearted,” she said.

In keeping with that positive spirit, she left on her front lawn a note to the anonymous neighbor. The note sweetly thanked whomever it was for their “concern,” calling that a “beautiful virtue,” but then she warned the interloper not to put anything else in her mailbox. Although widely abused, a regulation of the U.S. Postal Service says that nothing but U.S. mail belongs in mailboxes…

ETA: H/t commentor VeniceRiley…

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War for Ukraine Day 920: The Attacks on Kharkiv Continue While the Butcher’s Bill from Yesterday Is Being Tallied

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Painting by NEIVANMADE. It has a white background an in the center are Soldiers in green doing air defense by firing at incoming Russian missiles in the upper right. The missiles are red and yellow. In the upper left, written in green, is the text: "SAVE THE BRAVEST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD!" Below the Soldiers, also written in green, is "SUPPORT FOR KHARKIV"

(Image by NEIVANMADE)

Two quick housekeeping notes. The first is that Rosie is still going great. Thank you all for the good thoughts, well wishes, prayers, and donations.

Second, despite a fair amount of sleep, I’m still fried. So, just the basics again tonight.

This is the tally of last night’s drone swarm attack:

Today, the death toll in Kharkiv from yesterday’s glide bomb attacks has been revised upwards.

And new victims were added to the genocidal tally.

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

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Saturday Night Open Thread

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I am absolutely knackered. Drove three and a half hours to charleston to the democratic hq there, picked up several boxes of signs, went to the kanawha county dem hq and got more signs, drove up the either side of the state to mon county to drop some of the boxes off, and then back home. Tomorrow I deliver to Ohio, Brooke, and Hancock county. So I am beat.

In other news, Rosie is just fine and my friend has successfully checked into a rehab and was sent to detox and then will be going through extensive rehab. So that is good news.

And finally, a special announcement! In a couple weeks commenter R-Jud will be joining the front page as a poster. She can write, is not problematic, and has some interesting things to say, and despite having been a commenter here and knowing what you fuckers are all about, she still wants to write here and put up with your bullshit. So let’s welcome her aboard.

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Another Day, Another Video of JD Saying Shitty Things

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Another Day, Another Video of JD Saying Shitty Things
I don’t know if this is even the same video as the one quoted in the story, and I really don’t care enough to find out. They’re all bad.

I wonder how many more of these are going to surface:

Donald Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, said that professional women “choose a path to misery” when they prioritize careers over having children in a September 2021 podcast interview in which he also claimed men in America were “suppressed” in their masculinity.

The Ohio senator and vice-presidential candidate said of women like his classmates at Yale Law School that “pursuing racial or gender equity is like the value system that gives their life meaning … [but] they all find that that value system leads to misery”.

Vance also sideswiped the Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar, a one-time Somali refugee, claiming she had shown “ingratitude” to America, and that she “would be living in a craphole” had she not moved to the US.

Of Afghans who assisted US troops during the occupation of that country who were now seeking to come to America, Vance asked whether “certain groups of people can successfully become American citizens”, and said those hostile to Minneapolis’s Somali American community “don’t like people getting hatcheted in the street in [their] own community”.

At the same time, Vance claimed that “the left uses racism as a cudgel”, and that he had been a “little too worried” in the past about such accusations because they can be “career-ending” and “destroy a person’s life”.

That was 2021, but a couple of days ago, Vance posted a meme about Miss Teen USA contestant Caitlin Upton, who famously flubbed a question back in 2007, comparing Upton’s performance to how Harris would perform in the CNN interview.

Vance in turn appeared Friday on CNN, dismissed the video of Upton as little more than “a 20-year-old meme” and urged Upton to “laugh it off”.

“Politics has got way too lame,” Vance said to anchor John Berman. “You can have some fun while making an argument to the American people about improving their lives.

“I’m not going to apologize for posting a joke – but I wish the best for Caitlin and hope she’s doing well.”

A meme that reached its sell-by date in 2007 is, according to Vance, “not lame”, and playing off hostility and hatred as “having fun” is just fine.  Unfortunately, his joke is lame and his barely concealed simmering hatred of women isn’t fun, so here we are with yet another post about the worst VP pick in half a century.

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Reliable Sources

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In the comments of my post yesterday, someone asked for a thread on reliable news sources.  Well, here you go.

A couple that I follow that might be of interest to political junkies:

  • The Down Ballot – this used to be the part of Daily Kos called Daily Kos elections, and it remains an excellent place to keep up-to-date about down ballot elections and state-level polling.
  • Split Ticket – poll analysis by independent data nerds.

I also think that The Guardian is about the best “general purpose” news site around.  It has its limitations, but it’s generally better than the Post or NYT on US politics.  And, of course, Talking Points Memo, which I’ll remind anyone who can’t afford a subscription that they have a pretty liberal free subscription policy.

Anyway, post your suggestions below.

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