Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Hi god, it’s us. Thanks a heap, you’re having a great week and it’s only Thursday!

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

She burned that motherfucker down, and I am so here for it. Thank you, Caroline Kennedy.

You cannot love your country only when you win.

The National Guard is not Batman.

“But what about the lurkers?”

People really shouldn’t expect the government to help after they watched the GOP drown it in a bathtub.

Is trump is trying to break black America over his knee? signs point to ‘yes’.

A norm that restrains only one side really is not a norm – it is a trap.

The real work of an opposition party is to oppose.

Conservatism: there are people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

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

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

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

Their boy Ron is an empty plastic cup that will never know pudding.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Donald Trump found guilty as fuck – May 30, 2024!

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

When I was faster i was always behind.

These days, even the boring Republicans are nuts.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

GOP baffled that ‘we don’t care if you die’ is not a winning slogan.

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” was supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

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Slow News Day (Yes, That’s Sarcasm)

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President Biden is bringing his best game.

Slow News Day 1

Wowser, what could go wrong here?

And this:


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This is the clearest summary I have seen yet:


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Between this and the US abstaining today at the UN, Bibi is apparently not having a good day.

Good things are happening on a lot of fronts; now we just need to fund Ukraine.

I would sleep a lot better at night if we could do that.

Open thread.

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Meet the Press Flap (Open Thread)

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Our shitty political press has been trading credibility for access and pushing horse race coverage as news forever, so it wasn’t surprising when NBC News hired Ronna McDaniel as a paid election analyst. But it was still an outrage because she is (or at least was until the conditions attached to receiving a paycheck changed) an election denier. One line the MSM outlets kinda-sorta enforced was refusing to pay people who lie about the outcome of the 2020 election.

Chuck Todd — of all people! — called his own employer out over the weekend about the hire: (Politico)

“There’s a reason why there’s a lot of journalists at NBC News uncomfortable with this,” Todd told Welker, citing prior “gaslighting” and “character assassination” from McDaniel’s RNC.

But this paragraph from the Politico piece demonstrates how MSM outlets STILL don’t get it and perhaps never will, even with a fascist dictatorship breathing down our necks:

The on-air protests represent what could be a seminal moment in political media as news organizations continue to grapple with how to responsibly represent voices from the Trump right on their screens and in their pages without handing their platforms over to election deniers or bad faith actors who have attacked and attempted to discredit their own reporters.

Emphasis mine because it’s as impossible to “responsibly represent voices from the Trump right” in news coverage as it is to responsibly serve botulism-infused pig rectums at a restaurant. Just don’t fucking try that. Cover “the Trump right” like you’d cover a violent fascist cult, because that’s what it is. 

Open thread.

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No Reason Given (Open Thread)

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No reason given, but to me it looks like “no one is above the law” isn’t exactly true, if you read the fine print.

Hopefully Omnes or one of our other BJ attorneys will be able to explain why it isn’t what it appears to be. I certainly hope they can.

Full text:

No Reason Given

Open thread.

Update:  This is the clearest summary I have seen yet.

 

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Monday Morning Open Thread: Holi Hai!

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Sounds like a pretty good Monday to me… “What is Holi, the Hindu festival of colors and how is it celebrated?”:

… Typically observed in March in India, Nepal, other South Asian countries and across the diaspora, the festival celebrates love and signifies a time of rebirth and rejuvenation — a time to embrace the positive and let go of negative energy.

For one of Holi’s most well-known traditions, celebrants clad in all white, come out to the street and throw colored powders at each other, leaving behind a kaleidoscope of pigments and joy. Festivities with music, dancing and food ensue.

Holi is celebrated at the end of winter and the beginning of spring, on the last full moon day of the Hindu luni-solar calendar month of Falgun. The date of the festival varies depending on the lunar cycle. Typically, it falls in March, and will be celebrated this year on March 25…

In many parts of India, people light large bonfires the night before the festival to signify the destruction of evil and victory of good.

On the day of Holi, entire streets and towns are filled with people who throw colored powder in the air. Some fling balloons filled with colored water from rooftops and others use squirt guns. For one day, it’s all fair game. Cries of “Holi hai!” which means “It’s Holi!” can be heard on the streets. Holi has also been romanticized and popularized over the decades in Bollywood films.

The colors seen during Holi symbolize different things. Blue represents the color of Lord Krishna’s skin while green symbolizes spring and rebirth. Red symbolizes marriage or fertility while both red and yellow — commonly used in ritual and ceremony — symbolize auspiciousness.

An array of special foods are part of the celebration, with the most popular food during Holi being “gujia,” a flaky, deep-fried sweet pastry stuffed with milk curd, nuts and dried fruits. Holi parties also feature “thandai,” a cold drink prepared with a mix of almonds, fennel seeds, rose petals, poppy seeds, saffron, milk and sugar…

 
Lots of Americans are hoping for a somewhat different celebration…
Monday Morning Open Thread: Holi Hai!

(John Deering via GoComics.com)

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On The Road – Albatrossity – Westward 2015, week 2

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It’s Albatrossity Monday!  Then we take the last of the 2022 trips with frosty and finish up the week with our 2nd day in Quebec with Argiope.

I don’t have anything else in the queue after this week, so unless some On the Road submissions arrive, it looks like we could be taking a break.  OTR submissions tend to ebb and flow – usually we have about 4 weeks in the queue.   Occasionally the queue is just a couple of weeks out, and sometimes we have so many that it can take 2 months or more to see yours published.  But in the 4 years since i took this on, we have never run this close to running on empty.

We’ll see what this week brings!

(click the image below for a bigger, non-blurry version of the schedule for this week)On The Road - Albatrossity - Westward 2015, week 2 10

Albatrossity

Back to our excursion westward in 2015, after a brief detour for Sandhill Cranes last Monday.

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On The Road - Albatrossity - Westward 2015, week 2 9
Somewhere in northwest WyomingJune 20, 2015

After coming down from the Bighorns, we ended up in Cody WY for the night. There are some might-fine big-sky vistas in that part of Wyoming. This was taken somewhere along the route from the Bighorn Medicine Wheel to Cody. Click here for larger image.

Late Night Reading Open Thread: RFK Jr, Chasing the Dragon of Celebrity

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It’s supposed to happen Tuesday, but who knows?

… Kennedy’s decision to unveil his vice-presidential pick next Tuesday shows a longevity to his bid that many Democrats hoped would have fizzled out by now. Announcing a running mate means the independent candidate has met a necessary benchmark required by two dozen states to be listed on the ballot, something that will bring even more attention to his campaign…

Team Kennedy’s search for a No. 2 has gotten noticed for the unconventional names it produced. While many believe Kennedy is likely to choose Nicole Shanahan, a lawyer and mega-donor, others have been privately mused about, with mixed reactions.

Kennedy has publicly talked up a number of people. He previously said that he was considering NFL star Aaron Rodgers, who shares much of Kennedy’s anti-vaccine outlook toward public health.

Rodgers fell into the background, however, after comments he made questioning the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School surfaced, sparking outrage. Known to look beyond the bounds of convention, Kennedy also expressed support for wrestler and former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura and former Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who each have nontraditional ideologies, as well as tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang.

As his event in Oakland, Calif., grew nearer, Shanahan became a front-runner. The West Coast lawyer, who has deep ties in Silicon Valley and is the ex-wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin, would theoretically bring more money to put toward his ballot access effort…

Vulgar skeptics will express a certain schadenfreude for Cheryl Hines, but the woman knew what she was getting into when she married him.
 
The common clay of the new West!…

… Kennedy’s deep ties with anti-vaccine and environmental activism coupled with his campaign’s dedication to new media is engaging people like Michelle Frank, a yoga studio owner who is not registered to vote but has already chipped a few hundred dollars to Kennedy’s campaign.

“I haven’t voted in about over 15 to 20 years, actually,” Frank told POLITICO.

After hearing Kennedy on a podcast, Frank hosted an aerial yoga class for local Kennedy supporters at her studio outside of Austin, Texas, attracting a small group of fellow political neophytes. She said one attendee came to the event because of the Super Bowl ad, paid for by the super PAC American Values 2024, that aired the week before.

“Knowing that he has this great, this most pure intention like his uncle and his dad did. I feel like the purity and the intention is really what drew me to him,” she said…

Roughly 21,000 donors have given Kennedy’s campaign at least $200 since he declared his independent run in October, and a POLITICO analysis found that 74 percent of them did not make any political donations during the 2020 cycle. And interviews with numerous Kennedy backers reveal it’s made up of a powerful bloc of people not only drawn to Kennedy but turned off by the general election matchup…

 
Which reminded me — I’ve been meaning to post a link to this excellent read:

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We’re All Mad Here

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Today was another long day, and it is so weird. I keep having flashbacks to when I was back in my old apartment 20 years ago when I went through this the last time. I actually woke up this morning and walked into the wall because I was walking in the dark using the path to the bathroom in my old apartment I lived in two place previous to this. I hit the wall and was “wtf” and realized what had happened.

I guess what I want most to say (other than thanks for the well wishes) is that if you are currently on anti-depressants and decide that you want to raw-dog life and get off them because you are feeling better, don’t. Unless a doctor comes to you and says “I really think you need to go off this” and then you check with a couple other doctors, STAY ON YOUR FUCKING MEDS. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. You fucking moron (and this is directed at me).

For those of you who have gone through this or are going through it, you know what it feels like- to some extent. I’m sure it manifests in different ways in different people, but for me it’s just a number of different things- a general sense of twitchiness and nervousness. Sometimes I’m reading something and notice my hands or as I am typing this I feel like someone else looking through my eyes- “there’s someone in my head but it’s not me.”

Anything that presents a minor cognitive challenge can almost bring me to tears. I wanted to check my email but could not remember my password because my password manager was locked and I would need to find my phone to authorize the account and it was all just too much- “Welp, that’s not going to happen.”

Rolling waves of fear. You know how sometimes when you sneeze or you get asmr from music and the hairs on your arms and legs stand up and you get a tingling pleasant feeling roll over your body- like that, but it feels cancerous and rotting and evil.

Heightened awareness of anything going on with your body- this hurts, is it a heart attack? I coughed- do I have lung cancer?

The fear that this is never going to go away. You know it is, because you have been here before, but will it end this time? Can I go on like this? What if the meds do not work? What if this isn’t my head but some horrible disease that is undiagnosed and there is poison running through my veins.

For me, a loss of appetite. I’ve eaten a can of soup in the can, a couple bananas, and a bowl of cereal in the past 48 hours. I wasn’t even hungry to eat that, but made myself.

Just a horrifying sense of fragility. Just the whole sense of “I can not do this today” whenever the idea of an interaction with another person not in my close circle tries to interact or talk with me. The fear I am forgetting something important. And on and on.

For those of you who have gone through this, does any of this sound familiar? I didn’t really talk about this much the first time it happened because I was ashamed and felt weak and that I was letting the people who counted on me down. This time around my attitude is fuck them they can all wait I’ll be there when I am well.

Light sensitivity.

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