Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

T R E 4 5 O N

“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”

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

No Kings: Americans standing in the way of bad history saying “Oh, Fuck No!”

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

No one could have predicted…

A tremendous foreign policy asset… to all of our adversaries.

“woke” is the new caravan.

If you can’t control your emotions, someone else will.

This really is a full service blog.

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

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

Also, are you sure you want people to rate your comments?

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

The lights are all blinking red.

“Facilitate” is an active verb, not a weasel word.

You are either for trump or for democracy. Pick one.

It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

“In this country American means white. everybody else has to hyphenate.”

Let’s bury these fuckers at the polls 2 years from now.

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War for Ukraine Day 917: Kharkiv Remains Under the Russian Guns

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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. First, Rosie is still doing great. Her next treatment is on Tuesday. Until then she’s just resting, recovering, and chilling. Thank you all for the good thoughts, well wishes, prayers, and donations.

Second: still fried. It’s been a long week. I’ve got one more long week tomorrow and then I can rest and relax over the long weekend. As such, I’m going to keep tonight’s update as brief as possible.

Two thirds of Ukraine are under air raid alerts as I start writing tonight’s update at 7:40 PM EDT. Only the westernmost oblasts and Odesa Oblast do not have air raid alerts up right now. There are no indications on the alert maps that Russian strategic aviation is up, so this is likely drones.

The Russians are attacking Kharkiv now.

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

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Open Thread: Perhaps the Arlington Cemetary Desecration Has ‘Legs’…

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I’m getting a suspicion — maybe it’s wishcasting — that the disgraceful Arlington photo-grab may not actually redound to the GOP’s credit. Maybe there is a bridge too far? Or, at least, maybe TFG’s antics have finally passed their sell-by date?…

Charles P. Pierce, at Esquire: How The Hell Was Trump Allowed To Use Arlington National Cemetery As A Campaign Prop?:

… [T]he sun was out and shining as this third-generation draft dodger pretended to care about the soldiers who were suckers and losers enough to get killed during the United States’ withdrawal from its Afghanistan adventure. How in the hell this was allowed to happen is beyond me. Arlington is the country’s “most hallowed ground.” (Just ask the tour guides.) Arlington is profaned by his presence on just an average day. But to allow itself to be used for the purpose propping up one of the Republican Party’s most noxious half-truths—as promulgated by its most noxious elements personified by its most noxious candidate—is an insult to the over 400 Medal of Honor awardees buried there…

It will be argued that the former president* was invited to the Monday ceremony by some family members of the slain soldiers, and that’s good as far as it goes, which isn’t very far because, as sure as Mar-a-Lago‘s in hock, they will get nothing in return from this appearance. The man is a black hole of entitlement and of an emotional greed that runs as deeply in him as his lust for money. If the families found a kind of peace in his presence on Monday, I respect that and I hope it brings them solace. But as a citizen of the United States, and therefore someone with a stake in places like Arlington, I choose to look upon his presence there as obscene.

Answer, of course: He wasn’t. But the rules don’t apply to the GOP, not while they can get away with breaking them.

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Wednesday Evening Open Thread: Once Again Trying to Work the Refs

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Our Failed Major Media, with the NYTimes at the forefront…

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Come Down and Meet at the Burial Ground

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Trump’s widely-reported comments about soldiers being “suckers and losers” as well as his reluctance to visit military cemeteries must be making a mark, so LaCivita and his crew of bumblers dragged grandpa to Arlington for a photo op.  But, whoopsy doodle, it’s against the rules to have political photo ops at Arlington (because of course it is, otherwise the place would be full of assholes making some point or other literally on top of dead soldiers).  But rules don’t apply to Trump, as we all know, so fuckery ensued:

Officials at Arlington national cemetery have filed a report over the behavior of members of Donald Trump’s campaign staff who reportedly shoved and verbally abused an employee during a “crass” photo opportunity for the Republican presidential candidate.

The officials confirmed that a confrontation took place at the Virginia cemetery on Monday after the former president participated in a wreath-laying ceremony for 13 US servicemen and -women killed in a 2021 suicide bomb attack in Kabul, Afghanistan.

The person who confronted the Trumps and the family was probably a park ranger.  Here’s the Trump team’s take on that person:

Instead of an apology, the Trump campaign attempted to turn around the narrative of the Arlington incident, with senior officials separately branding the cemetery’s representative “a despicable individual” who was experiencing “a mental health episode”.

“There was no physical altercation as described and we are prepared to release footage if such defamatory claims are made,” the campaign’s communications director, Steven Cheung, said in a statement.

“The fact is that a private photographer was permitted on the premises and for whatever reason an unnamed individual, clearly suffering from a mental health episode, decided to physically block members of President Trump’s team during a very solemn ceremony.”

So “person doing their job” equals “mental health crisis” for these assholes.  And I’m sure they’ll send over the footage of the incident with the draft of the next infrastructure bill.

Anyway, another day, another story of Trump & Co showing their asses.  I await the fact check on Arlington’s claim that it’s against the rules for political photo ops.  My prediction is that the fact checkers will say that Biden lays wreaths all the time, and he’s a politician, so five thousand Pinocchios covered in flaming shit to Arlington and the Harris Campaign.

Edit:  Oh, and JD is having a normal day:

Come Down and Meet at the Burial Ground 1

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Wednesday Morning Open Thread: ‘We’ Versus ‘MeMeMe… ‘

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Mark your schedules:

… The Democratic presidential nominee will be joined by her running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz in an interview with CNN anchor Dana Bash in Savannah, Georgia. The interview will air Thursday at 9 p.m. Eastern time...

During her three-plus years as vice president, she has done on-camera and print interviews with The Associated Press and many other outlets, often at a pace more frequent than Biden…

Earlier this month, Harris had told reporters that she wanted to do her first formal interview before the end of August.

Harris travels with members of the media on Air Force Two for all trips and nearly always comes to the back of the plane to speak to them for a few minutes before takeoff. Her office insists that those conversations are off the record, though, so what she says can’t be used publicly.

She will rally voters in Savannah on Thursday as part of a bus tour that kicks off on Wednesday.

Not my usual upbeat morning material, but I wanted to be sure the following news didn’t get lost in the usual spate…

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COVID-19 Coronavirus (& H5N1) Updates: August 27, 2024

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***********

I’m not even gonna try to summarize this one… it’s short, read the whole thing:

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Late Night Open Thread: JD Vance, Bagman

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Forget about ‘election codes’, this is the real reason Trump’s not replacing Vance in the VP slot. The actual oligarchs funding this year’s GOP campaign want to be known as Powerful Men Meeting in Sober Conclave, behind a decent scrim of reportorial incuriosity. They don’t want to risk a sideshow where some half-crazed high-profile ‘celebrity’ shares his latest tales of exotic animal corpse abuse. They want a grey little nonentity who’ll quietly palm the slip with the wire transfer data while nodding sagely as they share their wishes wisdom… which is why they’re not inviting Trump to their soiree.

This only reinforces Alexandra Petri’s brilliance in the Washington Post — “RFK Jr.’s worm here: I guess I’m supporting Trump, too” [gift link]

… Ultimately, this came down to values. I say now what I have said this whole campaign: I am a parasite and I do not have the country’s best interests at heart. So it is clear to me now that I have no choice but to drop out of the race and support Donald Trump.

As a creature who seeks only to gorge myself willy-nilly on whatever life offers without concern for what devastation I leave in my wake, I have long admired Donald Trump’s way of doing things. To live off the production of others in a harmful way, and to dwell relentlessly in the minds of people who wish they did not have to devote a corner to me — that is a creed we share. And he frequently speaks of his admiration for Hannibal Lecter, who also famously ate brain, so I know that if we ever met, we would have something to talk about…

I understand that this is just injecting more chaos into an already chaotic race. But it feels like the only appropriate course for me, a parasite indifferent to human well-being, and the RFK Jr. campaign, my affiliates. And it is not as though I did not reach out to the Harris campaign, with a standard questionnaire: Are you, or do you possess, a parasitic worm? If not, would you be open to its ideas? We have yet to hear back — because Kamala Harris is afraid of scrutiny, I think…

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