Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Stamping your little feets and demanding that they see how important you are? Not working anymore.

Their shamelessness is their super power.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

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

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

“A king is only a king if we bow down.” – Rev. William Barber

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

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

This country desperately needs a functioning fourth estate.

Bad people in a position to do bad things will do bad things because they are bad people. End of story.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

The words do not have to be perfect.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

75% of people clapping liked the show!

These are not very smart people, and things got out of hand.

Cancel the cowardly Times and Post and set up an equivalent monthly donation to ProPublica.

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

Those who are easily outraged are easily manipulated.

Roe is not about choice. It is about freedom.

SCOTUS: It’s not “bribery” unless it comes from the Bribery region of France. Otherwise, it’s merely “sparkling malfeasance”.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

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

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Thursday Morning: Tis the Season (for Seasonal Affective Disorder)

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Thursday Morning: Tis the Season (for Seasonal Affective Disorder)

(Mike Luckovich via GoComics.com)

 
It took me too many years to realize that my worst depressive moods *inexplicably* start around mid-November, and dramatically improve around Martin Luther King Day. (There’s only so much lightboxes can do…)

I have come to believe that I am not alone in this physiological quirk… and I frankly hope that a gradual burst of optimism / energy right around the start of the upcoming maladministration is gonna be lit.

Have to wonder if the media has seen any of this? ??

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— Rio Tazewell (@riotazewell.bsky.social) December 11, 2024 at 10:41 AM

Meanwhile… I fully understand that Kipling is ‘problematic’, but I can’t look at President Biden without thinking “If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken / Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, / Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, / And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools… “

From the Washington Post, “Biden administration finalizes new regulations amid GOP repeal threats” [gift link]:

The Biden administration is preparing new rules that would limit “junk fees,” cap bank overdraft charges and shield Americans from medical debt, as officials race over the next six weeks to finalize the remainder of the president’s economic agenda.

The 11th-hour push has drawn sharp rebukes from President-elect Donald Trump and congressional Republicans, who have signaled they plan to unwind any newly issued regulations — along with a vast set of older Biden-era programs — shortly after they assume power in late January.

At the Federal Trade Commission, for example, Chair Lina Khan is expected to ban businesses from hiding fees and misrepresenting the full cost of their products or services, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the confidential proceeding. An earlier version of her proposal targeted car dealers, hotels, ticket sellers and other large industries.

Another watchdog agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, is preparing rules to restrict the ways that credit-reporting agencies can include unpaid hospital and doctor bills on patients’ credit reports. Under Director Rohit Chopra, the bureau also seeks to limit financial penalties that banks can assess on customers who overextend their checking accounts.

“I don’t think it makes sense for the CFPB to be a dead fish,” Chopra said at a congressional hearing Wednesday, stressing that “people between Election Day and Inauguration Day are still getting scammed.”

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On The Road – Captain C – Road Trip, April 2024 Part 13: National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum Part 5

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I am totally up for doing Christmas / Holidays When We Were Little again this year, staring on Monday.  So send in your pics, please!

Captain C

We continue with the baseball history exhibit, with this set mostly covering the ’70s and Baseball in Latin America

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On The Road - Captain C - Road Trip, April 2024 Part 13: National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum Part 5 9
The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, Cooperstown, NYApril 20, 2024

The ’70s were a portentous time for baseball, with the players’ union, now led by Marvin Miller, pushing for free agency and a greater share of the revenue.  While Curt Flood lost his case, eventually Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally won theirs, and a new era of baseball had arrived.

Late Night Open Thread: Loyalty Tests

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STOCKPILE - Loyalty Test

(John Deering via GoComics.com)

 
It’s gonna be impossible to satirize the upcoming maladministration. Per the NYTimes, “Want a Job in the Trump Administration? Be Prepared for the Loyalty Test” [gift link]:

At the Trump transition offices in West Palm Beach, Fla., prospective occupants of high posts inside the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies typically run through a gamut of three to four interviews, conducted in recent weeks by a mix of Silicon Valley investors and innovators and a team of the MAGA faithful.

The applicants report that they have been asked about how to overhaul the Pentagon, or what technologies could make the intelligence agencies more effective, or how they feel about the use of the military to enforce immigration policy. But before they leave, some of them have been asked a final set of questions that seemed designed to assess their loyalty to President-elect Donald J. Trump.

The questions went further than just affirming allegiance to the incoming administration. The interviewers asked which candidate the applicants had supported in the three most recent elections, what they thought about the events of Jan. 6, 2021, and whether they believed the 2020 election was stolen. The sense they got was that there was only one right answer to each question.

This account is based on interviews with nine people who either interviewed for jobs in the administration or were directly involved in the process. Among those were applicants who said they gave what they intuited to be the wrong answer — either decrying the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6 or saying that President Biden won in 2020. Their answers were met with silence and the taking of notes. They didn’t get the jobs…

Previous administrations, of course, have also been interested in whether new hires were aligned with the president’s agenda. But the distinction between Mr. Trump’s process and past ones is that the interest goes well beyond alignment on policy. The Trump transition team appears to be trying to figure out whether prospective hires have ever shown a hint of daylight between themselves and Mr. Trump on specific issues, particularly as he tried to revise the history of his final weeks in office and its aftermath…

Charlie Kirk, the right-wing activist and pro-MAGA podcaster, is among those conducting the loyalty tests, along with members of the personnel team. That team is led by Sergio Gor, who has helped run the publishing company that produces the president-elect’s books and ran a multimillion-dollar super PAC that supported Mr. Trump…

For some applicants, the process was a jarring mix of substantive policy discussions and clear attempts to assess their fealty. Two applicants said they were impressed by the quality of the questions on how to get new technology into the Pentagon, or change the structure of the intelligence agencies, only to be shocked by the final questions…

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War for Ukraine Day 1,022: A Brief Wednesday Night Update

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A painting by Ukrainian artis NEIVANMADE. The background is white. In the center, which is black with blood red bordering, is an hourglass. Inside the hourglass is a Ukrainian Azovstal POW painted in blood red. He is shirtless. His arms are upward along the outer edges of the upper half of the hourglass forming a saltire cross. He is chained with steel gray chains shackled to his wrists. Above his head, in grey, is written "Ruzzian Captivity." below his torso in the lower half of the hourglass, written in gray, is "Kills." To the left of the hourglass "He Saved Others" is painted in gray. To the right of the hourglass "But He Can't Save Himself" is painted in gray.

(Image by NEIVANMADE)

A quick housekeeping note: I’m feeling a bit better, no fever, but my sinuses are still killing me, so I’m just going to run down the basics.

Russian occupation authorities and proxies in Donetsk have sentenced a group of Azovstal defenders, who are POWs, to lengthy prison sentences:

⚡️ Russian proxies sentence 9 Azovstal defenders to 24 years, life in prison.

Russian occupation authorities in Donetsk jailed nine Ukrainian soldiers captured after defending Mariupol to between 24 years and a life sentence, the city’s exiled authorities reported on Dec. 11.

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— The Kyiv Independent (@kyivindependent.com) December 11, 2024 at 8:55 AM

From The Kyiv Independent:

Russian occupation authorities in Donetsk jailed nine Ukrainian soldiers captured after defending Mariupol to between 24 years and a life sentence, the city’s exiled authorities reported on Dec. 11.

Russia often uses trumped-up charges to jail captured Ukrainian soldiers, activists, journalists, and regular civilians for lengthy terms.

Moscow’s proxies in Donetsk now sentenced soldiers of the 36th Marine Brigade who fell into Russian hands after a gruesome siege of Mariupol and its Azovstal steel plant in the spring of 2022, the exiled Mariupol City Council said on Telegram.

Andrii Shestak, Nazarii Moroz, Vladyslav Yavorskyi, Vadym Shulha, Serhii Yampolskyi, Maksym Kolbasin, Dmytro Shalara, Volodymyr Penzin, and Kostiantyn Romaniuk are to serve their sentence in a high-security prison, according to the statement.

The occupation authorities accused the soldiers of shelling the village of Staryi Krym near Mariupol in March 2022.

Ukraine’s former Prosecutor General said that nine out of 10 Ukrainian prisoners of war (POW) are subjected to physical and moral torture. While Ukraine has managed to bring back home some of the captives, including Azovstal defenders, through prisoner exchanges, many more remain in Russian captivity.

Again, the Azovstal defenders are POWs and these prison sentences constitute violations of the Geneva Conventions and are war crimes.

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

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James Fallows Isn’t Any Happier About This Than We Are

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So many fucking cowards in key positions.

Obeying in Advance: The Christopher Wray Story

James Fallows

Despite these rules, eventually Trump would have found a way to fire Wray. OK. Wray should have made him do so, rather than removing himself.

Wray has done great damage with this decision and deserves to be scorned. Why?

1) Postponing the ‘inevitable’ can make a difference.

Maybe it is “inevitable” that Donald Trump would have gotten his way in controlling the FBI. But other people don’t have to make it quick and easy for him. Which is what Christopher Wray has just done.

Resistance can change the calculations of “inevitability.” An extreme example is Ukraine. In the first few days after Russia’s invasion, it seemed “inevitable” that Kyiv would immediately fall. Then President Zelenskyy and his comrades made their unforgettable “everyone is here” video. What will happen in the long run is unknowable. The price has been severe on all sides. But by resisting, Zelenskyy changed everyone’s calculations. By caving in, Wray did as well.

One of Donald Trump’s main tools, as the GOP has collapsed into subservience, is the perception of un-stoppability. He’s going to get his way in the end. So why waste your time standing up to him? Thus Lindsey Graham, Nikki Haley, “Little Marco,” and countless others have etched their role in history.

By making it slower and harder for Trump to get his way with the FBI, Director Wray might have protected the institution itself, and its dignity, and its commitment to continued leadership through changes of administration, for that much longer.² Crucially, he might have slowed down Donald Trump on other fronts, by inflicting on him another “loss.”

But he stepped aside. He gave Trump an easy and unnecessary win. Christopher Wray, please join James Comey in the ranks of FBI directors who went out having harmed the country.

2) ‘Do Not Obey in Advance.’

For the millionth time, I’ll quote Timothy Snyder, of Yale, from his best-selling book on “Twenty Lessons on Fighting Tyranny.” Christopher Wray has now given us what will stand as the classic example of violating Snyder’s Rule Number One:

1. Do not obey in advance. Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.

“Teaching power what it can do.” That is the lesson Christopher Wray has given us. He magnifies Trump’s power. And demonstrates his own weakness, and by implication that of institutions more broadly.

The second lesson on Snyder’s list is also relevant:

2. Defend institutions. It is institutions that help us to preserve decency. They need our help as well. Do not speak of “our institutions” unless you make them yours by acting on their behalf. Institutions do not protect themselves. So choose an institution you care about and take its side.

I’ve been fired myself, over a much lower-stakes difference of principle. You can survive. Christopher Wray made the wrong choice.

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