Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

A fool as well as an oath-breaker.

If rights aren’t universal, they are privilege, not rights.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Every decision we make has lots of baggage with it, known or unknown.

People identifying as christian while ignoring christ and his teachings is a strange thing indeed.

DeSantis transforming Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

America is going up in flames. The NYTimes fawns over MAGA celebrities. No longer a real newspaper.

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

Republicans in disarray!

Peak wingnut was a lie.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

They spent the last eight months firing professionals and replacing them with ideologues.

This blog will pay for itself.

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

One lie, alone, tears the fabric of reality.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

Dear legacy media: you are not here to influence outcomes and policies you find desirable.

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

Stand up, dammit!

Trump should be leading, not lying.

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Campaigns, cash and poorly attached voters

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538 notes that Trump is doing very well among non-voters in the polls.  Biden does very well comparatively speaking among the always voters with a fairly linear gradient of support changes as voting intensity increases.

 

Chart of sub-group vote intentions by # of times voted in past 3 election (0 to 3). Biden does best with always voters. Trump does best with never voters.

I am not a political professional. However, I did enough paid GOTV and GOTV data munging work in my twenties to know a few things. Getting the always voters out to vote is easy. There might be a post-card reminder where their precinct hall is. Perhaps a reminder call that there will also be a bake sale set up in the library parking lot on election day and they make incredible blondies. But that is about it. Always voters are predictable and a campaign does not need to do much to get those voters.

Seldom and never voters are the exact opposite story. Some of them are presidential election only voters. They need to be called. They need to be door knocked. They need to be mailed.

Some of them are never voters… and to get one marginal vote out of this cohort takes a tremendous amount of effort. Converting a never voter into a voter for my preferred candidate is expensive and time consuming. It requires a lot of money and a lot of time and one hell of an organization to apply those resources to the right people in the right doses.

Now the question is — which candidate is likely to have the time, resources and organization to convert never voters into voters at a favorable rate?

I know where I’m placing my bets.

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Monday Morning Open Thread: The Tariff We Pay for Civilization

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Getting what we (*finally*) pay for, per the Associated Press:

On this Tax Day, the IRS is promoting the customer service improvements the agency rolled out since receiving tens of billions in new funding dollars through Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act.

From cutting phone wait times to digitizing more documents and improving the “Where’s My Refund” tool to show more account details in plain language, agency leadership is trying to bring attention to what’s been done to repair the agency’s image as an outdated and maligned tax collector.

The promotion also in part is meant to quickly normalize a more efficient and effective IRS before congressional Republicans threaten another round of cuts to the agency. So time is of the essence for both taxpayers and the agency this season.

“This filing season, the IRS has built off past successes and reached new milestones,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on a Friday call with reporters. “It’s showing that when it has the resources it needs, it will provide taxpayers the service they deserve.”…

 
Consumer promo!

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On The Road – Albatrossity – Spring migration begins

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Happy Monday!

(click the image below for a bigger non-blurry version of this week’s schedule)

On The Road - Albatrossity - Spring migration begins 10

Albatrossity

We’ll take another hiatus from chronicling my 2015 road trip to the Palouse, because migration is warming up here in Flyover Country, and I had an experience I wanted to share with all of you. I took a road trip to one of my favorite national wildlife refuges, Quivira NWR in south-central KS, and most of these pics are from that trip, with a couple of local birds tossed in to fill up this post.

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On The Road - Albatrossity - Spring migration begins 9
Quivira NWRMarch 28, 2024

Shorebird migration is slow to start, and we are a few weeks away from peak numbers. But one of the earliest shorebird migrants here is the Baird’s Sandpiper (Calidris bairdii), which may look like a small undistinguished (or undistinguishable) peep, but it has a cool story or two, especially if you are interested in energetics. This species nests in the high Arctic of Canada, Alaska, and even Siberia. It winters in South America, from the Ecuadorian Andes to the tip of Tierra del Fuego. So twice a year it expends a LOT of calories on a migration that can be as long as 15,000 kilometers (that’s 9,300 miles in American).

More amazingly, the females arrive in the Arctic with essentially zero body fat. Nevertheless, a few days later, they lay one egg a day for four consecutive days. The eggs total up to 120% of her body biomass. As one author understated “The energetics of this accomplishment remain unstudied.” Looking for a doctoral thesis project? You are welcome! Click here for larger image.

Late Night Weekend Wrap-Up Open Thread: Journamalism, Not A Dependable Profit Center

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Per Maxi Tani at Semafor (which has its own problems, yes), “The Intercept is running out of cash”:

The Intercept, the left-wing U.S. newsroom that’s been a thorn in Joe Biden’s side and a hub for pro-Palestinian coverage, is nearly out of money and facing its own bitter civil war, with multiple feuding factions battling for power and two star journalists trying to take control.

At the heart of the crisis is a nonprofit whose founding donor, Pierre Omidyar, decided in late 2022 to end his support for the organization. Now spun off from Omidyar’s First Look Media, The Intercept is losing roughly $300,000 a month, is on track to have a balance of less than a million dollars by November — and could be completely out of cash by May 2025, according to data shared internally in March…

The Intercept’s CEO, Annie Chabel, told Semafor in an interview this week that those projections were a worst-case scenario, and that the Intercept had a “stretch revenue goal that would allow us to continue into a longer horizon.”

The Intercept was born a decade ago in a very different moment for media and politics. Two of its founders, Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras, broke the story of Edward Snowden’s leaked surveillance files in 2013, which reshaped how Americans thought about the government and their privacy. Omidyar, a leftish billionaire with no known appetite for political combat, rapidly pledged deep support for an organization that would combine that anti-establishment mission with a combative form of online journalism born out of Gawker Media.

A decade later, American politics are almost unrecognizable. Greenwald quit in fury to make quixotic allies on the right. Liberal donors have lost their taste for party infighting as the specter of Donald Trump looms, while voices further left are promising to punish Joe Biden over his response to Gaza…

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War for Ukraine Day 781: A Brief(ish) Sunday Night Update

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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)

I chose not to do an update on Israel and Iran because there’s not much to say. The US assembled a coalition with the British, French, Jordanians, and Saudis to either take down Iranian drones and missiles that were overflying their airspaces (the Jordanians and Saudis) or to just shoot them down en route regardless of whose air space they were in (the US, Britain, and France). There was only one Israeli casualty – a 7 year old Bedouin girl was injured and is being treated in an Israel hospital – and minimal damage to the bases in the Golan and the Negev. President Biden apparently got Bibi to not immediately retaliate, thereby lowering the temperature. At the same time he laid it on thick telling Bibi that this was a huge victory for Israel, demonstrated how Israel can defend itself, and that Bibi should take the win. The reality is that had the US and the coalition the Biden administration had not quickly put together interceded, we have no idea whether Israel’s air defense and missile defense would have been effective enough. Because of the intervention of the US led coalition, we don’t really know how effective the David’s Arrow and David’s sling missile defense systems are.

Ukraine condemns Iran’s attack on Israel using “Shahed” drones and missiles. We in Ukraine know very well the horror of similar attacks by Russia, which uses the same “Shahed” drones and Russian missiles, the same tactics of mass air strikes.

Every effort must be made to prevent a further escalation in the Middle East. Iran’s actions threaten the entire region and the world, just as Russia’s actions threaten a larger conflict, and the obvious collaboration between the two regimes in spreading terror must face a resolute and united response from the world.

The sound of “Shahed” drones, a tool of terror, is the same in the skies over the Middle East and Europe. This sound must serve as a wake-up call to the free world, demonstrating that only our unity and resoluteness can save lives and prevent the spread of terror worldwide.

The world cannot wait for discussions to go on. Words do not stop drones and do not intercept missiles. Only tangible assistance does. The assistance we are anticipating. We must strengthen security and resolutely counter all those who want to make terror a new normal.

It is critical that the United States Congress make the necessary decisions to strengthen America’s allies at this critical time.

 

We do know that modern fighter jets are a necessary component of anti-drone and anti-missile defense. While they already knew this, the Ukrainians have again taken note of this reality. And that at the end of the day, despite all the rhetoric, they are on their own. No one is going to launch fighters to intercept inbound drones and missiles targeting Ukrainian civilians and civilian infrastructure. And because the Biden administration dithered, hemmed, hawed, and let Putin have a say in their deliberations, the Ukrainians are still month’s away from getting F-16s. Israel does something strategically stupid and it gets all the help it needs. Ukraine fights for its life and gets fuck all.

As of right now, 7:09 PM EDT, the only air raid alerts are the ones over Russian occupied Luhansk and Crimea.

While the US was leading a coalition to defend Israel, the Russians once again bombarded Kharkiv:

Dnipro was also targeted again today. Unfortunately I can’t embed the tweet with video from Iulia Mendel because it is one of the ones that won’t embed because Musk has manipulated the code to target certain types of posts about Ukraine.

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

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Sunday Night Open Thread

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WTF- I take a couple days off the website and Mistermix and his wife are hitting raves? YOLO, as the kids say. Maybe he’ll send us some fancy pics from coachella and burning man.

In other news, I have just been super busy with work work which is different from just work in that the former is for an organization and the latter is just shit I have to do to keep the house from collapsing on me and from Audrey in the backyard taking over. I apparently am getting more done at my job than the fucking house Republicans, who are dead set on letting Putin win and fucking Ukraine.

In other news, Netanyahu is still doing his level best to drag us into a war with Iran, something he has been trying to do since he was sabotaging the Iran deal a decade or more ago. At some point, we are going to have to decide to do something about Israel. Personally, I would have cut off all military a while back, and at the very least put some conditions on it- which they would have summarily ignored, and then I would have to do something more drastic. But this shit can not go on forever.

I’m starting to see the re-emergence of Trump stickers and paraphernalia around here, but not as much. Just the ones who do have something in their yard have like 40 things. The nutters are fully invested. He’ll win WV by 70%, and there are a number of straight up fascists running as “constitutional conservatives” in these here parts, and they’ll probably win, too. All of this is making my eventual exit from West Virginia easier.

Back to the last few episodes of Black Sails. I think I might let Fallout marinate for a little bit before I watch it

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Medium Cool – Old Time Music Thread

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Medium Cool is a weekly series related to popular culture, mostly film, TV, and books, with some music and games thrown in.  We hope it’s a welcome break from the anger, hate, and idiocy we see almost daily from the other side in the political sphere.

Arguments welcomed, opinions respected, fools un-suffered.  We’re here every Sunday at 7 pm.

Little Boots was mentioned in the Hey Lurkers! thread, and it reminded me of how much I miss the music threads we used to have.  So let’s have one tonight!

You pedants can tell me how to best punctuate the thread title so it’s clear that I am asking for a music thread like we used to have – and not asking for an old-time music thread like polkas or Sinatra or Elvis or whatever.  Though all of those are welcome!

I thought about titling the post Classic Music Thread, but then I figured you’d think I was looking for classical music.  Titles are complicated!

I’ll add a YouTube video up top for one of the first 5 songs that is mentioned in the comments.

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