Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Anne Laurie is a fucking hero in so many ways. ~ Betty Cracker

Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.

The only way through is to slog through the muck one step at at time.

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

You passed on an opportunity to be offended? What are you even doing here?

The world has changed, and neither one recognizes it.

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

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Bark louder, little dog.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

“woke” is the new caravan.

Consistently wrong since 2002

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

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

Those who are easily outraged are easily manipulated.

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

“The defense has a certain level of trust in defendant that the government does not.”

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

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

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

They want us to be overwhelmed and exhausted. Focus. Resist. Oppose.

Let me file that under fuck it.

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War for Ukraine Day 843: The Global Peace Summit

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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)

Quick Rosie update: she’s doing fine. There’s seems to have been no systemic negative side effects of the chemo this past week. Her next treatment is Monday. Thank you all for the good thoughts, well wishes, prayers, and donations.

Right now the skies over Ukraine are quiet. However, as the Global Peace Summit kicks off we have have the butcher’s bill from last night’s Russian attacks on Kharkiv:

Here is President Zelenskyy’s address from the Global Peace Summit. Video below, English transcript after the jump.

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This Week’s Inside Baseball Journalism: Does Jeff Bezos ❤️ Will Lewis?

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Starting back in the 1980s, when they published a weekly tabloid for out-of-town readers, the Washington Post has been my personal paper of record. So, while the NYTimes‘ ongoing journalistic degradation has been interesting, the current attempted Murdochisation of the Post has been personally alarming. I have to assume I’m not alone in this bias!

When billionaire publishers fight with their awards-winning reporters, many words will be expended. This is probably more of them than anyone really needs, but it’s still only a small portion of what I’ve seen this week…


The [ridiculous] number is in the NYTimes piece, for what little that’s worth:

… Mr. Bezos’ decisions to reshape The Post underscore the central role he is playing at the paper he bought for $250 million more than 10 years ago. Mr. Bezos spends more time on other projects, including his space company, Blue Origin, leaving the day-to-day operations and editorial strategy to the chief executive and top editors. But he is ultimately The Post’s most important figure.

He has picked The Post’s chief executives and set the agenda for its business, according to multiple people with knowledge of his interactions with people at the newspaper. He approves The Post’s budget and advises the newspaper on business matters through regular phone calls with the chief executive and occasional meetings with its leadership team.

According to people who have spoken to him, he has said that he believes The Post could reach 100 million paying subscribers, a feat that would catapult it far ahead of competitors. (The Post now has about 2.5 million paying subscribers.)…

Drew Magary, “The Washington Post is about to embrace the darkness”:

It’s easy to execute a news dump when you’re one of the scant few remaining places that bother to properly cover news at all. Such was the case earlier this week at Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post, when executive editor Sally Buzbee — who had replaced venerated former news chief Marty Baron — was unceremoniously forced out by Post leadership after just three years at the helm. The news that Buzbee was given the gate arrived via a companywide email late Sunday night, seemingly without much in the way of advance notice down the masthead: Many of Buzbee’s closest colleagues were caught off guard by the move, Vanity Fair reported, as were the rank and file.

By the time all of those groups had learned of the regime change, it was too late for them to do anything about it. And when Post reporters demanded answers, CEO Will Lewis gave them all of the wrong ones at an all-hands meeting the following morning:

“We are going to turn this thing around, but let’s not sugarcoat it. It needs turning around. We are losing large amounts of money. Your audience has halved in recent years. People are not reading your stuff.”

After casually dumping on his employees’ work (conveniently eliding any external or managerial factors that surely played a much larger role in the paper’s decreased readership), Lewis then told them that the search for Buzbee’s successor was an “iterative, messy” one that he couldn’t describe in any further detail. All reporters there were allowed to know was that their CEO had settled on two men that, by sheer coincidence, happened to be his friends: Matt Murray (who will serve as interim editor) and Robert Winnett (who will assume the job permanently after the election). Not only are all three of these men as white as a block of Monterey Jack, they also happen to have deep roots in upscale conservative media. Lewis and Murray both did long stints with Rupert Murdoch, with Lewis running News Corp’s Dow Jones and Murray coming over from the Wall Street Journal. As for Winnett, he currently runs England’s Daily Telegraph, purveyor of such fine op-ed pieces as, “No one ever says it, but in many ways global warming will be a good thing.”…

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Some Media Selections

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Some Media Selections

Here are a few varied things I’ve been watching/listening to that aren’t cable or big media.

First, the picture above of Iranian women in the 70’s is via the the_YV_edit TikTok.  Since TikTok is a totally impossible to search platform, I can’t link directly to the particular video where she says she thinks about this picture at least once a week (and how reactionary men in power will, when they get the chance, crush women).  But, pick any of her videos and you’ll get the picture.  She has a no-bullshit take on relationships between women and men from a perspective that is rarely heard in mainstream media.

Lauren Boebert Can’t Lose is a podcast by the City Cast Denver podcasters, and it’s a good review of Boebert’s rise in Colorado politics.  I learned a lot about Boebert and, specifically, why she ran from CO-3 to CO-4.  The third episode, “The Pueblo Problem,” explains how her vote against legislation to provide healthcare to burn pit victims affected Pueblo (which is sort of the blue dot in CO-3), and turned that city, which is heavily populated by veterans, against her.

The regular Denver City Cast is pretty good, too.  Their post-mortem on the CO-4 debate with Kyle Clark is worth a listen to get some experience Colorado journalists’ take on the CO-4 race.  The short summary is that they think that Boebert will win simply because she has 5 opponents and (like the 2016 Republican Presidential primary) nobody was willing to drop out even though it’s clear that they’ll all split the anti-Boebert vote.  Kyle Clark also makes this observation:

I can give you a list of 20 times that Lauren Boebert lied to the public. We could have spent the entire hour on that, so she gets a discount by doing it in bulk. And that’s the problem. And the problem is also that it’s unfair to everybody else up on that stage. And by extension, every other politician that we cover, whether it’s the Mayor of Denver or the Mayor of Aurora or anything else, because things that they would get dinged [for she slides on].

Clark at least recognizes and calls out the fundamental problem with our current media structure and prolific liars like Boebert.  He doesn’t offer a solution other than transparency.

Politico’s piece on Kevin McCarthy’s revenge tour is worth a skim, but one thing stood out — Republicans are spending $14 million in a primary battle in VA-05 to try to (keep/unseat) incumbent Bob Good.  Here’s the thing about that district:  it has a R+7 PVI, which is a reach, but possible for a good Democratic challenger.  (CO-3, which is R+6, would almost certainly have gone to Democratic challenger Adam Frisch).  Hopefully the $14 million of shit talk ads will have some impact on the general election.

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Saturday Morning Open Thread: Vice-President Harris Is Busy

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Longish read, which is why I saved it for the weekend. Rolling Stone, “Kamala Harris: ‘What Kind of Country Do We Want to Live In?’”:

ONE AFTERNOON IN LATE APRIL, Vice President Kamala Harris climbed into a large black car parked in the garage of the CBS Broadcast Center on New York’s West 57th Street and sat bolt-upright in the leather seat. She’d just finished taping an episode of The Drew Barrymore Show — remaining magnanimous as Barrymore had pawed at Harris’ burgundy blazer and pleaded with her to be the country’s “Momala” — and was shortly on her way to a dinner in the GM Building that software and investment executive Charles Phillips had arranged in order for Black finance leaders to share their advice for the campaign (“We’ve got a lot to fight, but this is a fight we can win,” she’d assured those assembled at one end of a sleek room with soaring views of Manhattan). These were strategic visits, and evidence of the administration’s growing reliance on Harris to connect with key demographics (suburban women, Black men) who may not be overly enamored with the prospect of another four years helmed by one of two old white men.

But for the moment, Harris’ thoughts were not on the day’s specific demands or what they might mean come November. They were on what had happened that morning at the Supreme Court. More specifically, they were on the arguments that had taken place over what should befall a pregnant woman were she to enter an emergency room in Idaho: Should she be treated like a real person and offered the full range of medical interventions available to protect her health, her organs, and her future fertility? Or should she be treated like a vessel of the unborn and only granted an abortion if the imminent alternative were death?

“Did you hear the oral arguments? What did you think?” Harris asked, shaking her head and never dropping eye contact as the motorcade made its way toward Central Park. “I knew this was coming.” She had anticipated, she went on to explain, the many legal battles and unintended consequences the fall of Roe would have. And she’d envisioned how those consequences would play out, not just for women having miscarriages or dangerous pregnancy complications, but also for the health care providers trying to care for them. “It’s fucked up,” she said, dropping her voice at the word “fucked,” as we pulled up to the hotel where she and her staff were stationed…

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Stern Grey Dawn Open Thread: Another Judgement Against Alex Jones

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Alex Jones was ordered to liquidate his personal assets Friday, as a bankruptcy judge was still considering forcing him to sell his far-right website InfoWars to begin paying the roughly $1.5 billion in damages he owes for claiming the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was a hoax.

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— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost.com) Jun 14, 2024 at 4:01 PM

Per the Associated Press, “Alex Jones’ personal assets to be sold to pay $1.5B Sandy Hook debt. Company bankruptcy is dismissed”:

… Judge Christopher Lopez approved converting Jones’ proposed personal bankruptcy reorganization to a liquidation. But Lopez threw out the case of his company, Austin, Texas-based Free Speech Systems, after failed attempts by Jones to reach an agreement with Sandy Hook families on his proposals to reorganize and keep operating the company while paying them millions of dollars.

It wasn’t immediately clear what will happen in the coming weeks to Free Speech Systems, Infowars’ parent company, which Jones built into a multimillion-dollar moneymaker over the past 25 years by selling dietary supplements and other products. But both Jones and lawyers for the Sandy Hook families said they expect Infowars to cease operating at some point because of the huge debt.

A trustee appointed Friday in Jones’ personal bankruptcy case to oversee the liquidation now has control over his assets, including Infowars, according to lawyers for Sandy Hook families.

Dismissal of Free Speech Systems’ case means the families can now move immediately to collect on the $1.5 billion in state courts in Texas and Connecticut where they won defamation lawsuits against Jones and the company. It’s possible Infowars will continue operating during the collection efforts, which could include selling off the company’s assets.

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Late Night Open Thread: ‘Let’s Talk About Trump’s Gibberish’

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… For too long, Trump has gotten away with pretending that his emotional issues are just part of some offbeat New York charm or an expression of his enthusiasm for public performance. But Trump is obviously unfit—and something is profoundly wrong with a political environment in which he can now say almost anything, no matter how weird, and his comments will get a couple of days of coverage and then a shrug, as if to say: Another day, another Trump rant about sharks…

… In Las Vegas on Sunday, Trump went off-script—I have to assume that no competent speechwriter would have drafted this—and riffed on the important question of how to electrocute a shark while one attacks. He had been talking, he claims, to someone about electric boats: “I say, ‘What would happen if the boat sank from its weight and you’re in the boat, and you have this tremendously powerful battery, and the battery’s now underwater, and there’s a shark that’s approximately 10 yards over there?’”…

Why hasn’t there been more sustained and serious attention paid to Trump’s emotional state?

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