Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Giving in to doom is how authoritarians win.

President Musk and Trump are both poorly raised, coddled 8 year old boys.

After dobbs, women are no longer free.

White supremacy is terrorism.

I’m more christian than these people and i’m an atheist.

Not all heroes wear capes.

The willow is too close to the house.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

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

When they say they are pro-life, they do not mean yours.

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

If you voted for Trump, you don’t get to speak about ethics, morals, or rule of law.

So many bastards, so little time.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

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

Republicans: The threats are dire, but my tickets are non-refundable!

They are not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

How stupid are these people?

You come for women, you’re gonna get your ass kicked.

I would try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

Most of you should go to bed and try to be better Jackals in the morning.

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Tuesday Morning Open Thread: Democrats Deliver, Repubs Block & Obfuscate

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On The Road – TKH – Sinai trail Pt. 5 Serabit El Khadem – Traces of the Ancients

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TKH

In Part 1 of this series while introducing the overall route of the hike, I had mentioned the ancient turquoise mine of Serabit El Khadem, one of our waypoints

The explanatory information that follows is something that I have dug up on the internet post trip. I am a chemist by training and I do not have the knowledge and training to evaluate the significance and veracity of what I have dug up and I am perfectly capable of muddling it up as I summarize the summary, so reader beware!  Unfortunately our guides really did not have any information to share on the history of the site owing to their lack of any appreciable formal education courtesy of the tender mercies of the Egyptian government.

At the end I show some pictures from a site near Nueiba on the Gulf of Aqaba where pilgrims to Mecca and probably to St. Katherine have left graffiti behind

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On The Road - TKH - Sinai trail Pt. 5 Serabit El Khadem & Traces of the Ancients 8
Sinai peninsulaNovember 27, 2023

This is actually a turquoise mine a bit before we reached Serabit, but showing this gives me an opportunity to talk briefly about something else. This mine looks almost the same as the one in Serabit, only the pedants will care. What we are looking at here is the mine tailings, the rock thrown over the berm as the miners dig deeper into the rock.

The person in the photo is our guide that day, the only female guide on the Sinai trail, Omm Nasser. She is an incredibly strong-willed character. It is this trait together with the fact that she is married to a sheikh that gives her the leverage to be a guide.

Nonetheless she has to deal with restrictions in her guiding activities. For instance she cannot guide groups with men in them for overnight trips, but can do so with women groups. She and her husband then built a shelter in the village and from there mixed groups can take day trips.

(Photo credit: AMK)

Dank Grey Pre-Dawn Open Thread: Go Away, Dean

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Democratic presidential candidate Rep. Dean Phillips (Minn.) announced significant layoffs within his campaign Friday, but vowed to continue his long-shot bid against President Biden.

“I found it almost impossible to raise enough to do this campaign the way I want,” Phillips said. “And today, sadly, I had to announce layoffs to a lot of my staff members… amazing people who gave up a lot personally and a lot professionally to join this remarkable campaign,” Phillips said in a TikTok posted Friday to his X account, formerly Twitter. “And it was a really tough day for all of us.”

“But I made a promise to them and I’m gonna make it to you, I’m not giving up,” he added. “I’m gonna continue.”

In his X post, Phillips called on supporters to donate so he could stay in the race — claiming a majority of Americans believe Biden is “too old” and the GOP front-runner, former President Trump, is “to corrupt.”…

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On Wisconsin!

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An important day for Wisconsin!

I say this with hope, and as a bit of a prayer – Wisconsin peeps, take back your state, and may you be the next Michigan!

The people of Wisconsin who came out in droves to vote for Janet Protasiewicz in the state Supreme Court race are happy.

The Democratic governor, Tony Evers, is happy.

And Ben Wikler is happy.

Full text from Ben Wikler:

The long, dark night of ultra-partisan gerrymandering is over, and a new day for democracy now dawns in the Badger State.

The stroke of Governor Evers’s pen today marks the end of the shameful period that began in 2011, when Republican lawmakers—bound in secrecy by nondisclosure agreements as they worked with operatives at a lobbying firm—drew legislative lines that guaranteed that even landslide election losses wouldn’t cost them their majorities. The result was one of the most egregious, extreme partisan gerrymanders in American political history.

Ever since, Republican politicians in Wisconsin have used their power to take more power away from the people of our state—restricting access to the ballot, removing authorities that voters had entrusted to statewide elected officials like the Governor and Attorney General, and smashing the freedoms of workers to organize and advocate for themselves. For thirteen years, the democracy-proof legislature has been laying siege to democracy itself.

Last April, years of tireless organizing culminated with Wisconsinites electing Justice Janet Protasiewicz in a landslide, charting a new course for our state that has led us to the new, vastly fairer maps signed into law by Gov. Evers today. In November, at long last, Wisconsin voters will have a real choice in who represents them in Madison. The majority will determine the majority.

The candidate recruitment process now goes into overdrive. And at the same time, we remain vigilant in case Republican politicians in Madison and their allies once again, through the courts or any other strategy, attempt to thwart majority rule.

Today, we made progress towards true democracy in Wisconsin—thanks to the efforts of so many grassroots activists, tireless supporters, and elected leaders. We stand ready to fight back against any attempt by Republicans to undermine the path towards democracy and accountability, and we commit to doing everything in our power to ending the Speakership of Robin Vos and paving the way towards a Democratic trifecta that can, at long last, translate the will of the people of Wisconsin into the law of the land.

It’s been a long time coming.  Big congratulations to the Wisconsin peeps and especially to anyone who worked and wrote and donated to help make a day like today possible.

Open thread.

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War for Ukraine Day 726: Lithuanian Foreign Minister Landsbergis Has Something Else You Need to Hear

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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)

Lithuanian Foreign Minister Landsbergis has something else he wants you to hear.

The Ukrainians splashed two more bandits today.

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

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Foreign Affairs Open Thread: Concerning the Death of Alexei Navalny

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Alexey Navalny spent at least a decade standing up to the Kremlin when it seemed impossible. He was jailed and released. He was poisoned, and survived. He was warned to stay away from Russia and didn’t. He was arrested in front of dozens of cameras, with millions of people watching. In prison, he was defiant and consistently funny. For three years, his jailers put him in solitary confinement, cut off his access to and arrested his lawyers, piled on sentence after sentence, sent him all the way across the world’s largest country to serve out his time in the Arctic, and still, when he appeared on video in court, he laughed at his jailers. Year after year, he faced down the might of one of the world’s cruellest states and the vengeance of one of the world’s cruellest men. His promise was that he would outlive them and lead what he called the Beautiful Russia of the Future. On Friday, they killed him. He was forty-seven years old.

Hours after the news of his death broke, his widow, Yulia Navalnaya, addressed the Munich Security Conference. “I don’t know whether to believe the news, the terrible news, which we are only getting from state-controlled sources in Russia,” she said, from the conference’s main stage. “As you all know, for many years we’ve been unable to believe Putin and his government. They always lie. But, if it is true, I want Putin and everyone around him, his friends and his government, to know that they will be held responsible for what they have done to our country, to my family, and to my husband. The day of reckoning will come very soon.”…

Navalny, who was educated as a lawyer, became active in politics in the early two-thousands and emerged as a public figure around 2010. His early politics were ethno-nationalist, at times overtly xenophobic, and libertarian. He advocated for gun rights and a crackdown on migrants. But he found his agenda and his political voice in documenting corruption. He built a movement based on the premise that citizens, even in Russia, could and should exercise control over the way that government money is spent. In the ensuing years, he evolved from an ethno-nationalist to a civic nationalist, from a libertarian to a social democrat. He learned new languages, read incessantly, and incorporated new ideas into his program. He focussed, increasingly, not only on political power but on social welfare. During the past three years, he used the pulpit provided by an endless series of court hearings to air his political views. In a courtroom speech on February 20, 2021, he outlined a vision for a country with a better health-care system and a more equitable distribution of wealth. He proposed changing the slogan of his political movement from “Russia will be free” to “Russia will be happy.” He continued to assert this hopeful agenda, even as he grew more and more gaunt and even as he was forced to appear in court on a video screen, separated from his audience by glass, a grate, and thousands of miles…

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