Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

Dear media: perhaps we ought to let Donald Trump speak for himself!

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

Republicans don’t lie to be believed, they lie to be repeated.

Quote tweet friends, screenshot enemies.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Rupert, come get your orange boy, you petrified old dinosaur turd.

Text STOP to opt out of updates on war plans.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

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

Radicalized white males who support Trump are pitching a tent in the abyss.

Today in our ongoing national embarrassment…

Roe is not about choice. It is about freedom.

Celebrate the fucking wins.

Democracy cannot function without a free press.

Someone should tell Republicans that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, or possibly the first.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

The real work of an opposition party is to hold the people in power accountable.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

Oppose, oppose, oppose. do not congratulate. this is not business as usual.

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Wednesday Morning Open Thread: Madam Vice President, All-American

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Per the Chicago Sun-Times:

…The programming of the four convention nights, starting Aug. 19, is going to be revamped now that Biden bowed out on Sunday. Democrats who didn’t think Biden, 81, had a chance of beating Trump, 78, after the president’s disastrous debate are relieved.

At the convention, Biden will be saluted for his presidential, vice presidential and Senate legacy. When Biden delivers his keynote address, one convention veteran said, he will get a lengthy standing ovation and be treated as a hero.

“We have so many reasons to love Joe Biden,” Harris said when she visited the Delaware campaign headquarters on Monday afternoon. If elected, Harris, who is Black and Asian American, would be the country’s first female president…

Bob Clark, another top Biden donor and fundraiser, was a host of a May event at Chicago’s Palmer House headlined by Biden, bringing in more than $2 million.

With Democrats unifying around Harris, “There is nothing but excitement from my donor base,” Clark said.

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COVID-19 Coronavirus (& H5N1) Updates: July 24, 2024

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… Even with the spate of farmworker infections, the threat of bird flu to humans is, at the moment, considered low. Researchers are keeping an eye out for two red flags. The bigger one would be the virus’s ability to spread between people. All of the people who have tested positive in the U.S. were infected by exposure to sick cows or poultry, and they have not seemed to pass the virus along to anyone else. Symptoms have generally been mild, including respiratory issues, though several people have developed serious cases of conjunctivitis, or pink eye. (No one in the U.S., or globally, has died from this variant of H5N1.) “There is no evidence at this point that this virus is going human to human, and therefore it really does not pose a threat to public health,” Jenna Guthmiller, an immunologist at the University of Colorado Anschutz School of Medicine, told me…

The current strain of H5N1 has already mutated to infect mammals, and a few genetic changes could be all it takes for the virus to spread more efficiently to humans—or, worse, between them. “We’re at the highest risk of the virus” since the early 2000s, when a different strain of H5N1 led to numerous deadly human infections in East and Southeast Asia, Webby said. Not because the virus itself is necessarily more infectious but because it is spreading among so many different animals, and especially mammals—giving it more opportunities than ever to find a way to replicate in humans. But, again, despite all that transmission—all those chances for the virus to mutate into something that can reliably sicken humans—it hasn’t yet. That could “absolutely” continue to be the norm, David Topham, a flu expert at the University of Rochester Medical Center, told me…

But a supercharged bird virus with a taste for infecting mammals is not the kind of thing that should be left up to chance. It is fortunate that only 11 farmworkers have been infected—as far as we know. Tools to curtail the spread of bird flu are available, but they’re not being used, or used appropriately. Personal protective equipment is helpful when worn correctly, but doing so isn’t feasible when it involves wearing respirators and Tyvek suits in temperatures that reach 104 degrees Fahrenheit. Unlike many other countries, the U.S. does not vaccinate chickens against H5N1, in part because it’s expensive to do. And cost is also why only 60 farmworkers have been tested for bird flu, giving an imperfect window into the virus’s spread. “It’s going to be a lot more costly to deal with another pandemic than to deal with immunizing our farms,” Topham said.

America’s response has been painfully shortsighted, and the country is paying the price: Had bird flu been kept in check earlier, it might never have made it into cows, and might never have developed the mutations that allow it to flirt so closely with human-to-human transmission. At this point, bird flu’s future has no good options—only one that’s bad, another that’s abysmal, and one that relies on nothing but dumb luck.

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On The Road – BretH – On The Road – BretH – Australia! Melbourne and Sydney

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BretH

I recently came back from my first and hopefully not my last visit to Australia. My wife has students in pre- and perinatal trauma resolution and was conducting a class in Melbourne and having been there once herself insisted I come along. Although Australia was really not a bucket-list item for me I am so glad I went! I would highly recommend it to anyone who has the opportunity. The trip was long and jet lag (especially on return to the States) was rough, but it’s a wonderful place to visit.

Since my wife was teaching for four days that meant that apart from the wonderful times exploring with her I had several days all to myself in Melbourne (and one in Sydney) which I used to see as much as I could. The stories accompanying the photos will talk about specific places and things we and I did, but I want to share some overall impressions about Australia (or at least Melbourne and Sydney, from the perspective of a North American):

Things are expensive in Australian dollars but the exchange rate was great. So factoring that in it’s maybe even a little cheaper than traveling in the US.

There’s no doubt you are in a very different place, yet there’s no language barrier. There you are, taking in the very different vegetation and trees, and hearing the crazy shrieks of the cockatoos and the brilliantly colored parrots in the trees and all the while you can understand everything people say and shop and go to restaurants and grocery stores stress-free. About the only language issue I encountered was learning to greet people with a proper pronunciation of g’DAY!

There is a feeling of calm and safety that I think is rare to find in the US. I think a large part of it is that there are simply no guns anywhere. It’s not until I visited Australia that I realized that in the US there’s a pervasive undercurrent of unease and tenseness that, for me at least, only goes away when I am out in nature. Australia felt different; the entire time we were there spending heaps of time  plying the streets of two major cities we heard exactly one siren. And that was a fire engine.

People were unfailingly polite, even (or especially) the drivers. The best example I can give is when I was approaching a marked pedestrian crossing and there was a motorcycle food delivery driver coming fairly fast down the street. As a former motorcycle messenger myself I was completely prepared for the driver to press through quickly front of me but no, he stopped at the crosswalk and without a hint of impatience waited for me to step off the curb and cross and only then continue on his way. We do bear in mind that the population near the coasts of Australia is overwhelmingly white or asian and there are almost no indigenous people to be seen. I’m sure that played a part although they are being as proactive as they can in officially recognizing and honoring the original inhabitants – even a small talk on koalas at the zoo starts off with a sincere-sounding tribute to the people who lived there first and the knowledge that has been passed down from them.

Beyond using public transportation, scooter and electric bicycle rentals are a great way to explore the cities, if you are adventurous and comfortable with riding in traffic. I bought a seven day pass for Lime scooters/bicycles that was good for a total of 2 hours of riding and used that extensively to explore areas of both Melbourne and Sydney (the one pass was good for both cities) that I never would have been able to reach otherwise. Find a scooter with decent battery charge, scan the QR code and put on the helmet, hop on and zip away to a new destination, hop off and walk and explore, find another scooter or bicycle and zip off to the next place. Freedom!

I apologize in advance for the multi-part series of posts but there are simply too many cool experiences and photos I want to share.

On The Road – BretH – On The Road – BretH – Australia! Melbourne and SydneyPost + Comments (24)

On The Road - BretH - On The Road - BretH - Australia! Melbourne and Sydney 8
MelbourneMay 15, 2024

From the airport we took a double-decker “SkyBus” to downtown Melbourne, dropped our luggage in a locker at the bus station and began walking towards the Botanical Garden. Little did we know that these steps would the first of many, many more as we ended up walking miles each day we went exploring. We first passed by the Flinders Street train station, an old building that was a rabbit warren inside of tracks here and there departing to all points around the city.

Late Night Open Thread: Ego Husk Can’t Buy Good Help!

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For (the promise of) $45 million a month, you’d think The World’s Richest Man could get more attention than some second-tier oligarch like Peter Thiel…


(If you click on the image, the portrait is *chef’s kiss*…)

Problem is, he won’t pay market rates, and he has a terrible reputation for micro-managing and firing employees on a whim…

… The company’s current operating profit margin, a measure of how much money it makes on every dollar of revenue, was 6.3 percent, compared with 9.6 percent in the same period a year ago.

The results will most likely heighten pressure on Tesla and its chief executive, Elon Musk, to show that the company can find new ways to grow and make money…

Sales of Tesla’s electric cars fell 4.8 percent in the second quarter, to 444,000 vehicles from the same period a year earlier. Production in the period declined 14 percent, to about 411,000 cars.

The second quarter’s setback comes after Tesla reported a 55 percent drop in profit and 9 percent decline in revenue in the first three months of 2024…

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War for Ukraine Day 881: Russia Tries To Disrupt the Olympics

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A quick housekeeping note: Rosie is doing well on her second day after her chemo treatment yesterday. Thank you all for the good thoughts, well wishes, prayers, and donations.

It’s nice to know that there are somethings that you can always depend on. The sun rising in the east and setting in the west. And the Russians prosecuting their world war against the US, the EU, and NATO across using all elements of national power and lines of operation that range from interstate war to low intensity war to cyber warfare to subversion.

AFP has the details:

The man, born in 1984, was held in custody and placed under judicial investigation on suspicion of “organising events likely to lead to destabilisation during the Olympic Games”, a source in the state prosecution service, who asked not to be named, told AFP.

The source said an investigation was opened into “passing intelligence to a foreign power in order to arouse hostilities in France”, adding that the crime was punishable by up to 30 years in jail.

Prosecutors said a visit to the man’s home “at the request of the interior ministry” had uncovered evidence of the suspected plans.

They did not give any details of the alleged plot, except to say that it was not terrorist in nature, and that specialist anti-terrorist prosecutors were not following the case.

Authorities have investigated over a million people, including athletes, coaches, journalists, volunteers, security guards and even local residents near event locations ahead of the Olympics, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin told weekly Paris Match on Tuesday.

Of those, 4,360 were denied access to the Games, with people close to Darmanin telling AFP on Sunday that 880 were barred over suspicions of foreign interference.

In recent months, several high-profile stunts have raised suspicion that foreign actors are trying to influence French public opinion or stoke divisions, notably about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or Israel’s campaign in Gaza after the October 7 attack by Hamas.

They include dummy coffins labelled “French soldiers in Ukraine” left by the Eiffel Tower in June and red hands tagged on Paris’s main Holocaust memorial in May.

In October, soon after Hamas’s attack, stars of David were tagged on buildings in the Paris region, with two Moldovans suspected to be working for the Russian FSB security service later arrested.

After last night’s update posted, the Russians opened up on Ukraine with missiles and drones:

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

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Tuesday Evening Open Thread: JD Vance, the Master(batorial) Choice

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Tuesday Evening Open Thread: JD Vance, the Master(bator)ial Choice 1

(Jack Ohman via GoComics.com)

 

But he has big fans… in our Failed Very Serious Media! Per the reliably terrible Caitlin Flanagan, advertising her ‘Thought Crimes for All Occasions’:

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