Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

When I was faster i was always behind.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

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

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

It’s possible to be a liberal firebrand without crapping on the party.

Giving up is unforgivable.

Fundamental belief of white supremacy: white people are presumed innocent, minorities are presumed guilty.

So very ready.

Let the trolls come, and then ignore them. that’s the worst thing you can do to a troll.

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

Nothing says ‘pro-life’ like letting children go hungry.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

Wake up. Grow up. Get in the fight.

Disagreements are healthy; personal attacks are not.

Do we throw up our hands or do we roll up our sleeves? (hint, door #2)

You’re just a puppy masquerading as an old coot.

All hail the time of the bunny!

So fucking stupid, and still doing a tremendous amount of damage.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

Oh FFS you might as well trust a 6-year-old with a flamethrower.

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

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Archives for 2024

Thursday Morning Open Thread: Fighting All the Way

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Thursday Morning Open Thread 18

(Joel Pett via GoComics.com)

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Repubs in Disarray! Open Thread: The House GOP Retreat (Noun *and* Verb)

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… Publicly, Republicans have cited a litany of reasons for not attending: from having to tend to reelection races to scheduling conflicts. GOP Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina, for example, is scheduled to appear on “Real Time with Bill Maher” later this week. Meanwhile, when asked if he was attending, GOP Rep. Kelly Armstrong of North Dakota told CNN: “No way, I have to run for governor.” And Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee quipped: “I don’t retreat, I move forward! I got a farm to run.”

But privately, some Republicans have complained about the venue choice. Sources said Speaker Mike Johnson selected the Greenbrier Resort because it was “family friendly,” in a break from past retreats which have taken place in sunny Florida – the preferred location of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

And other GOP lawmakers and aides told CNN they were simply not enthusiastic about the idea of having to huddle with the rest of their party at a time when Republican infighting has prevented them from even passing procedural votes…

In another hiccup for the retreat, the House GOP’s keynote speaker – Fox Business Host Larry Kudlow – had to drop out at the last minute, sources say. Howard Lutnick, the CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, will take his place instead.

Among the Republicans who have decided to skip the retreat include Rep. Mark Green of Tennessee, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee; Reps. Dusty Johnson of South Dakota and Stephanie Bice of Oklahoma, the co-chairs of the Main Street Caucus; and Rep. Dave Joyce of Ohio, chairman of the Republican Governance Group…

 
Per the ever-upbeat USA Today, “‘Everybody’s tired’: Groups of House Republicans skip annual retreat, exhausted by GOP infighting”:

… “Everybody’s tired. I know I’m tired,” one House Republican, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said. The intra-party battles that have roiled the House in recent months, the GOP lawmaker explained, has sapped the energy from some members.

Another House Republican who does not plan to attend noted frustration remains with ultraconservative lawmakers who have impeded House action and “is wearing everyone out” as a result.

The lawmaker reflected that there’s still hard feelings in the Republican conference, since it has been “less than six months since everything happened,” referring to the ouster of former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.

Lawmakers typically use the retreats to talk about policy, hold discussions about ongoing debates and more. But one of the handful of Republicans who voted to oust McCarthy, Rep. Eli Crane, R-Ariz., told USA TODAY the events are “not productive.”…

Dozens of officials are also retiring from Congress in the coming months, given the dysfunction that has consumed the House recently. Those lawmakers don’t have much incentive to attend the retreat and “working on future agendas might not be as interesting,” Rep. David Schweikert, R-Ariz., said.

… The chaos that has plagued House Republicans in the 118th Congress spilled over into the annual event — meant to promote team-building and set priorities — which returned for the first time in several years to The Greenbrier in West Virginia, a historic luxury resort nestled in the Allegheny Mountains.

“We live in challenging times, we live in a time of divided government. Democracy is messy. Sometimes it’s very messy. This is part of that process,” Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters gathered on The Greenbrier’s lawn, with members and their guests watching from one of the hotel balconies. Johnson, R-La., was joined by New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, chair of the House Republican Conference, and North Carolina Rep. Richard Hudson, chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee.

Despite Johnson’s optimism, it was a not-so-triumphant return. Fox Business’ Larry Kudlow, who was scheduled to deliver a keynote speech, dropped out at the last minute. Presumptive presidential nominee Donald Trump won’t be coming. And a spokesperson for the Congressional Institute, which sponsors the Republican Issues Conference, said just over 100 members of the 218-member majority had RSVP’d they were going. Some cited scheduling conflicts. Others were more blunt…

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On The Road – HinTN – The Perimeter Trail

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HinTN

Just up the hill (OK, 1000 feet of elevation change) is The University of the South. It’s situated on top of the Cumberland Plateau and it has a lot of bluff views into the coves below. It maintains a very nice walking and biking trail called, not surprisingly, The Perimeter Trail. One section of this is below a north facing bluff and is home to a profusion of wildflowers. This section is called Shakerag Hollow and today I walked about a mile each way (in and back out) looking for the early show. It was really early because we’ve had a pretty cold winter. The onset of Spring can be really variable here. Anyway, here’s a few shots with my substandard Galaxy S8 from the walk.

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On The Road - HinTN - The Perimeter Trail 9
The western entrance to the wildflower walkFebruary 24, 2024

Shakerag is way back to the right in this picture. The plateau in the distance keeps on narrowing that cove until there’s no more farmland and the mountain side forms one side of the drainage and the bluff above this trail forms the other.

Dank Grey Dawn Open Thread: The Return of Shaun King

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There is a fresh block of naive individuals on social media, angry about a widely publicized tragedy, eager to donate their mite to reparation or retribution — especially if they can gain clout among their peers by doing so.

Of course Shaun King has reemerged from the grey zone, with an eye-catching announcement…

Perhaps we cynics wrong Mr. King… possibly he has seen the errors of his past and renounced them?…

A refresher, if necessary, from Ralph Leonard at Unherd — “Is Shaun King’s Islam conversion a grift?”:

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War for Ukraine Day 749: Russia Attacked Kryvyi Rih, Sumy, and Myrnohrad Overnight!

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Screen shot of new artwork by NEIVANMADE. The background is black. In the bottom foreground are grey Ukrainian homes and apartment buildings being bombarded by red Russian missiles with the Special Military Operation "Z" symbol on them. Above the missiles, written in red is the word "Ruzzians". Below the buildings being attacked is the statement "Turns Homes Into Graves".

(Image by NEIVANMADE)

https://twitter.com/DefenceU/status/1767857756944335132

Myrnohrad, Sumy, and Kryvyi Rih. Overnight, russian attacks destroyed residential buildings in three Ukrainian cities.

In Myrnohrad, 2 people died. 4 people died and more than 50 were injured in Kryvyi Rih. 8 residents were injured in Sumy, 3 people are considered missing.

The world must see the consequences of russian terror. The world has to support Ukraine in our fight against russian evil.

https://twitter.com/maria_avdv/status/1767801305701978254

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

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Wednesday Night Open Thread

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Time zones suck.

Been a busy couple of days as I am wrapping up all the repairs and getting everything finished that I started so that I can do a proper cleanup before leaving. Joelle has to go to her friend’s funeral and is flying out Friday morning and coming back on Sunday, so I have delayed my departure until Monday. One room is finally complete, though- the sun room/room, and we got all the tiki furniture that we had been temporarily using in the living room moved in there:

Wednesday Night Open Thread 4

We finally got a couch- Joelle found a couch on fb market for 800 bucks that was two years old and was originally $3-4k, did some background and the owner was in one of the wealthy neighborhoods, talked them down to 500, and we now have a couch in the living room, which is nice. Apparently Joelle says you can get steals like that all the time depending on where the people live, because they have so much money they just throw shit away. I’m relieved because we went couch shopping a couple times and the sticker shock gave me chest pains.

Wednesday Night Open Thread 5

I gotta go get Joelle and we have to put the living room together, so I wanted to get this up early before I forget.

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Wednesday Evening Open Thread: Has Ol’ Man Trump Lost His Touch?

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Has Ol’ Man Trump Lost His Touch? - STOCKPILE

(Nick Anderson via GoComics.com)

 
Excellent argument from Josh Marshall, at TPM — “Has Ol’ Man Trump Lost His Touch?”:

… [P]olitically [Trump] is very, very rusty. Even in Trumpian terms his speeches these days are disjointed, weird, discordant. And again — not by the standard of who you might want within a mile of the Oval Office. I mean even in terms of Trumpian politics. He’s not the same.

I suspect some of that is his age. Some of it may be that he’s just out of practice, despite basically campaigning from the moment he left office. Trump used to have a very clear eye for what people wanted and what they didn’t. Plausibly or not, back in 2016 he was very clear that he had no interest in touching Social Security or Medicare. Why? Because people like them. Trump wants love and he wants power. The way to get those is to make people happy, to give them what they want or at least tell them you’re going to give them what they want. He was very down on Obamacare. But that is because back in 2016 the word if not the program was still not very popular. A politician like Trump is never in the business of convincing anyone that it’s important to do something that doesn’t sound fun and immediately appealing.

Once in power, of course, Trump essentially delegated most of his policy agenda to the GOP. The only thing that seemed to really animate him was trade policy or using domestic trade subsidies to reward supporters — which amounted mostly to the same thing. But in most respects Trump’s entire presidency amounted to taking office with the assumption that being President meant unlimited power and unlimited love. That quickly turned out not to be the case and much of his subsequent presidency and post-presidency became a mix of grievance and payback for that not being the case.

There is a key difference here that is important to understand. Trump’s 2016 campaign’s success stemmed in large part from channeling the cultural and social grievance of middle aged white American men. His 2024 agenda is heavily focused on his personal grievances and doing away with all the restraints on the presidency that hobbled him and led to ego injuries in during his first term — Trump Unbound, as it were. (Think back to 2016 and consider where the “Deep State” or unbridled marxist civil servants would have figured into anything he was talking about.) His enemies are your enemies and he’s going to kick all of their asses. We know all this. It’s the essence of most of his speeches, threats, and so forth. To execute on this he’s surrounded himself with a cast of ideologues who have created a program for him. The folks making the plans are unsurprisingly hard core right-wingers who support a lot of very unpopular things. That’s why Project 2025, the Trumpian government blueprint assembled by a group of Trump administration alums under the aegis of the Heritage Foundation, looks like such a juicy target for Democrats. The people around Trump now know how to write out the plan, how to plug it into the various departments and agencies, and whatever other right-wing stuff that goes along with it is fine with him because it all means power and retribution in his hands…

I’ve thought for some time that Trump shows a lot of the signs of the kind of rage dementia that often eludes detection because the energy of the aggression gets read as focus and executive function rather than cognitive deterioration. What’s been harder for me to read is what part of this is the psychic pressure of the 2020 defeat combined with the accumulating legal peril and what is the accumulated impact of going from 69 years of age to 77. Whatever the precise mix, it also impacts his political agility and feel for the popular mood. It leads to stuff like this wholly unforced social insurance goof. This probably won’t be the only example. It hasn’t gotten much attention yet because even though Trump gets coverage, he hasn’t been in the mix of an actual campaign in years. We’ll see more of it because, again, he ain’t the same.

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