Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

White supremacy is terrorism.

Democracy cannot function without a free press.

“Loving your country does not mean lying about its history.”

Never give a known liar the benefit of the doubt.

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

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

“In the future, this lab will be a museum. do not touch it.”

Do we throw up our hands or do we roll up our sleeves? (hint, door #2)

In my day, never was longer.

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

Washington Post Catch and Kill, not noticeably better than the Enquirer’s.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

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

Celebrate the fucking wins.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

You know he’s going to shit a cat.

So fucking stupid, and still doing a tremendous amount of damage.

Live so that if you miss a day of work people aren’t hoping you’re dead.

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

Let the trolls come, and then ignore them. that’s the worst thing you can do to a troll.

Everybody saw this coming.

Fear and negativity are contagious, but so is courage!

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‘Weird’ Doesn’t Quite Seem to Cut It

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'Weird' Doesn't Quite Seem to Cut It
“I’m a plant that grows on rocks and lives off insects that die inside of me.” — Connor Roy but could be RFK Jr

The depths of Trump’s new bestie, the useless nepo-baby RFK, have yet to be plumbed.  His daughter Kick is dating Ben Affleck, and independent reporter Marisa Kabas took a look at Kick’s Instagram, and found this:

'Weird' Doesn't Quite Seem to Cut It 1

There’s a lot more, including Bobby Jr with roadkill, Bobby and fam with a shark, etc.  Then there’s this:

'Weird' Doesn't Quite Seem to Cut It 2

Let’s not forget his nutcase running mate, Nicole Shanahan, who said the RFK Jr/Shanahan ticket shouldn’t endorse Trump until he apologizes for Project Warp Speed.  Of course, Bobby Jr did endorse and withdrew in the battleground states, but he kept his name on the ballot in other states in hopes of being a spoiler, and also to provide him masturbatory fodder when he looks at how many votes he got.

The Trump campaign is like a bowling ball thrown down the alley by a three-year-old when they have the bumpers up.  James Carville is far from my favorite, but he has it right when he says “they go from one stupid jackass thing to another stupid jackass thing”.

Succession  is starting to look like a documentary.  It would all be funny if the anti-vax nonsense hadn’t killed or injured thousands of children.

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Sunday Morning Open Thread: Madam President-to-Be

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Sunday Morning Open Thread: Madam President-to-Be

(Ann Telnaes via Washington Post)

 
Also at the Washington Post, E.J. Dionne – “Harris’s DNC was a master class in coalition building”: [gift link]:

It all seems simple and obvious: If you want to win, embrace patriotism, talk incessantly about freedom and be joyfully hopeful. But Kamala Harris’s campaign feels entirely fresh because American politics lost the art of the simple and obvious somewhere along the way. Both come easier to a barrier-breaking politician who has neither the need nor the desire to look dissident or transgressive…

Harris recognizes coalition politics as a hard but necessary discipline that requires balancing the aspirations of groups that might not easily come together.

Last week’s convention was a preview of the campaign to come. It modeled how the aspirational progressivism of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez could share a stage with the patriotic conservatism of Republican former congressman Adam Kinzinger. It married the buoyant class warfare of United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain with the capitalist spirit of Ken Chenault, the former CEO of American Express. All were happy to speak up for Harris…

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Sunday Morning Garden Chat: Urban Gardening

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Sunday Morning Garden Chat: The Joys of Urban Gardening

From commentor JeffG166:

The heavy rain turned the crape myrtle into a weeping crape myrtle in the first photo.

The second photo is the butternut squash vine that started in the compost pile. I moved it to the present location. The rain has spurred it on to eat the backyard.
Sunday Morning Garden Chat: Urban Gardening

Not sure I will get any squash. The squirrels have tried eating a few of the green ones. They don’t like them but it doesn’t stop them from trying.

 
======
Our ever-helpful OzarkHillbilly sent along this article from the Guardian. The species mentioned are not quite specific for most of us, but I found it encouraging regardless… “The frogs may be gone, but life goes on: how I regained my faith in gardening for wildlife”:

More than two decades ago, I had the honour of running the world’s last (possibly only) frog telephone helpline. No, this is not a set-up for a punchline. It was a real service. Gardeners would grab the Yellow Pages, dial the frog helpline number and physically manifest, using their voice, sentences most of us would type into Google today: “If I dig a pond, will frogs come?” callers would ask, or: “How can I make my garden more attractive to amphibians?”

My role was simple. I was to fire these callers into action, offering realistic guidance on how gardens could be made more suitable for wildlife, especially frogs. Froglife, the charity that owned the helpline, saw in gardens a way for more amphibian habitats to be secured, away from the countryside which was then (and is still) being ravaged by pollution, land-use changes and more. And so, paid a minimum-wage salary, I spoke to 9,000 callers over a period of about three years.

It was perhaps the best job I ever had. In my spare time, I turned our small concrete backyard into a nature oasis, with two ponds for amphibians. In the years that followed, barely a day would go by when I wouldn’t see a frog stirring or hear the distinctive “plop” of one diving for cover as I walked past the pond. Some years, we had 15 frogs at a time; in spring, the bigger pond became a theatre for raucous, slimy sex. It was like a seasonal soap opera.

Until it wasn’t. Because, as of 2024, all the frogs are gone and no frog helpline can save me from despair. As far as I can tell, the cause of this mass-mortality event was twofold: first, many frogs locally were hit by the heatwave of 2022, which saw temperatures soar to 40C; then came Storm Noa in April 2023, which washed countless blobs of neighbourhood spawn, pairs of frogs still coupling, downstream in a deluge of broiling turbidity. The frogs are gone. And so, naturally, I find myself in a reflective mood. Bluntly, I wonder, was it all worth it? Did my little wildlife garden ever really help, in the long term, frogs and other local wildlife? Were my efforts futile?

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Late Night Schadenfreude Open Thread: The Past Has Been Torched

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Late Night Schadenfreude Open Thread: The Past Has Been Torched 1

(Jack Ohman via GoComics.com)

Ed Kilgore, at NYMag — “RFK Jr., Trump Form Coalition of Vengeful Whiners”:

… Well over halfway through his presser, Kennedy finally pivoted to the positive case for endorsing Trump, asserting that they were in agreement on the key issues of “free speech, the Ukraine War, and the war on children.” Again, it seems Trump’s free-speech commitment amounts to little more than being the enemy of Kennedy’s enemies, particularly those who have mocked his subscription to an array of conspiracy theories. He made the most sense in accurately describing the 45th president as lukewarm at best toward Ukraine. As for whether Trump will act on the prime concern of the Kennedy-Shanahan ticket — the alleged government-corporate plot to kill, sicken and fatten up kids to make money for Big Pharma and Big Ag — RFK Jr. seems to be relying mostly on blind faith. He said he hoped that Trump would “keep his promises in this case,” recognizing that hadn’t been a very good bet in the past, along with an acknowledgement that they don’t agree on a lot of issues. (That’s an understatement; in April Trump accused Kennedy of being “far more LIBERAL than anyone running as a Democrat,” and more liberal than Jill Stein or Cornel West.)

And so, this deeply alienated man will form a strange partnership with the Republican candidate for president based mostly on a common sense of grievance with Democrats and other elites, and a common lust for vengeance. As for what his endorsement will be worth, that’s unclear. He’s been dropping like a rock in the polls, especially since Kamala Harris became the Democratic candidate; the most recent national survey, by RMG Research, put him at three percent of the vote. And it is not at all clear how many of his remaining supporters will follow him over the brink into MAGA-land, which some correctly perceive as a place where environmentalists and those who fret about military spending (a particular preoccupation of Kennedy’s running mate, Nicole Shanahan, who wasn’t at the presser but was apparently in on the decision) and childhood health are often treated as hippies and suspected Marxists. The timing of the move was convenient in that many pollsters already in the field to figure out if Harris will get a post-convention “bounce” will also be able to discern whether Kennedy’s move swayed any actual voters.

We’ll also see what, if any, effect RFK Jr.’s support has on Trump, surely the most narcissistic and hard-to-influence presidential candidate ever. At his presser, RFK Jr. said he wanted to introduce a “culture of kindness” into the Trump campaign. Good luck with that, Bobby. Probably should stick to the script of whining and plotting vengeance.

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War for Ukraine Day 913: Ukrainian Independence Day

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Screen grab of NEIVANMADE art of a man and a woman, both with blond hair, wrapped in the Ukrainian flag, and sitting on a pile of Russian rockets and skulls with the "Z" on the skulls' foreheads. It is entitled "The Light Shines in the Darkness and the Darkness Has not Overcome It."

(Image by NEIVANMADE)

Two quick housekeeping notes. First, Rosie is doing great. She’s got all next week off and then she starts the fourth and final round of chemo. Thank you for all the good thoughts, well wishes, prayers, and/or donations.

Second, as I indicated last night, the new shorter in height bed frame went together easily. Getting everything out from under the old one so the mattress and foundations could be moved and the old frame dismantled was a bit of work. As I wrote last night, it was like never ending dog hair under there. But the process was lie down, fish a box our several out from under the bed, stand up, pick up the box, and then carry it into the living room. Stop and brush dog hair off of myself. And repeat. Basically dog hair burpees combined with a shield carry. I am appropriately sore.

And the kicker to all of this is the girls have not yet figured out the bed is now shorter and they can easily jump up on it. Rosie just gave it a sniff before I started writing tonight’s update and then decided she would deign to allow me to lift her onto the bed. Ruby came off the sofa, built up a head of steam through the living room, and then came to an abrupt stop just in front of the doorway of the bedroom, and looked up at me with an expression that said: “Daddy, I’m just your wee baby girl, pick me up.” I will remind everyone that Ruby is a chocolate lab/bull & terrier mix most likely with some beagle or other small hound in her. So imagine a bull & terrier/beagle mix body with a chocolate lab head, moving at full tilt and coming to a sudden stop and trying to look pathetic in order to guilt me into picking her up.

They’re now curled up snoozing.

Today is Ukrainian Independence Day.

An Independence Day observed and celebrated thirty months into Russia’s genocidal re-invasion of Ukraine and over ten years into the overall Russian invasion of Ukraine. It is an independence day that sees parts of Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, and Donetsk Oblasts and all of Luhansk Oblast and Crimea under Russian occupation. It is an independence day that sees Ukrainians fighting to prevent significant portions of Kharkiv Oblast and more of Donestk Oblast from being occupied. It is an independence day that sees Ukraine taking the fight to Russia inside of Russia. And it is an independence day that would never exist had things been up to Moscow and DC thirty-three years ago.

It is also an independence day that sees another 115 Ukrainian POWs liberated from their brutal Russian captivity.

It’s the 55th prisoner swap.

All of the 115 guys freed today were taken POW in the early weeks and months of the full-scale invasion in 2022. All of them are enlisted servicemen or non-commissioned officers.

The list includes 82 (!!!) defenders of Mariupol, including about 50 (!!!!) Azovstal garrison fighters. Also, there are six National Guards who had been taken POW at the Chornobyl NPP.

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

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Saturday Night Open Thread

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Some quick housekeeping- Steve Benen, who many of you have known for decades now from the Washington Monthly and Rachel Maddow and other various places, has a new book. As a long time fan of his and his work- he’s always been a good read and gives a fair shake and accurately reporting facts while also having a progressive outlook without descending into the meanness I find so attractive when dealing with the fuckers. He is a straight shooter and a better person than me, which, admittedly, can at times be a low bar. Having said that, here is the book:

I have asked him if he would like to do a book club zoom with us, and he said yes, so that will be coming up in a bit, so you should have plenty of time ordering a copy and reading. I would like to do something the first week of October to give us all a break from the election and something to think about when we talk to people prior to the election.

***

Had a very good day today, and did all my favorite things. Got my work done, made a solid latte, went and rode the tractor and cut some grass, went to the gym and walked a couple miles and swam, and I came home and had a nice tomato sandwich for dinner. Waiting for the canteloupe to chill and I am going to cut that up and eat it while watching Dark Winds on Netflix (which is a great show about a cop on a Navajo reservation in the 60’s with the most amazing GMC K20).

And I got paid yesterday for the first time in 10 weeks, so that was cool although it’s all gone to pay off the things I needed to buy on credit. Whatever. Nice seeing incoming coming in.

Joelle is also having a great day, having luxuriated at the ASU pool for a while and then pedaling off to a pub to have a cocktail. So good days all around.

I simply can not overstate how much the competence of the Harris/Walz ticket is improving my mental health.

Talk to you all later!

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Fox Is Part of the Reason Trump Still Gets Votes

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Fox

If all you watch is Fox News, you wouldn’t have seen women talking about their abortion experiences at the DNC.  In addition:

[…] Fox News buried a court decision implementing a near-total abortion ban in Arizona; barely covered the Alabama Supreme Court’s ruling that frozen embryos are legally equivalent to children; and almost completely ignored Florida’s implementation of a six-week abortion ban.

You also wouldn’t have seen any of the speeches from disaffected former Republicans:

The DNC speakers included former Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger, who spoke in prime-time before Harris’ Thursday keynote; former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan; former Trump White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham; Olivia Troye, who served as a homeland security aide to former Vice President Mike Pence; and Mesa, Arizona, Mayor John Giles.

I don’t need to go into their constant cleanup efforts on Trump’s behalf when he calls in or when he speaks.

Look, I’m not going to say that someone voting for Trump is doing so only because Fox feeds them a steady diet of their bullshit.  But Fox is definitely the opiate of the old, and once an older person falls down their rathole, there’s no going back.

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