Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Wake up. Grow up. Get in the fight.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

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

Since we are repeating ourselves, let me just say fuck that.

There is no compromise when it comes to body autonomy. You either have it or you do not.

In my day, never was longer.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

When I was faster i was always behind.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

The National Guard is not Batman.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

One of our two political parties is a cult whose leader admires Vladimir Putin.

Books are my comfort food!

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Innocent people do not delay justice.

Celebrate the fucking wins.

You know he’s going to shit a cat.

Republicans got rid of McCarthy. Democrats chose not to save him.

At some point, the ability to learn is a factor of character, not IQ.

The willow is too close to the house.

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

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

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War for Ukraine Day 997: Russian Drone Swarms After Midnight (local time)

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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)

Two quick housekeeping notes. First, Rosie is doing great. We did an 8th of a mile walk this morning, which is her longest since starting chemo. Thank you all for the good thoughts, well wishes, prayers, and donations for her chemo.

Second, I am still fried. Though less so than yesterday. I’m just going to run through the basics again tonight.

Air raid alerts are up over half of Ukraine as of 7:25 PM EST/2:25 AM local time in Ukraine.

The glide bomb strikes have begun (8:05 PM EST/3:05 AM local time in Ukraine):

Explosion in Kharkiv ‼️ the city is under the russian glide bomb attack right now ‼️

— Kate from Kharkiv (@kateinkharkiv.bsky.social) November 16, 2024 at 8:04 PM

And the Russian drones are swarming.

More russian drones incoming to Kharkiv ‼️

— Kate from Kharkiv (@kateinkharkiv.bsky.social) November 16, 2024 at 6:53 PM

For those of you on BlueSky looking for Ukrainian accounts to follow, someone created a starter pack:

If you want to follow some lovely Ukrainians on Bluesky, this is the list i have put together❤️
go.bsky.app/8iJqzrP

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— Sofia (@sofiaukraini.bsky.social) November 16, 2024 at 11:26 AM

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

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Interesting Read(s): You Are The Media Now

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Charlie Warzel, at the Atlantic, wrote this a whole week ago, which already feels like forever. “Bad News: Legacy media must compete against a choose-your-own-adventure reality.”:

“You are the media now.” That’s the message that began to cohere among right-wing influencers shortly after Donald Trump won the election this week. Elon Musk first posted the phrase, and others followed. “The legacy media is dead. Hollywood is done. Truth telling is in. No more complaining about the media,” the right-wing activist James O’Keefe posted shortly after. “You are the media.”…

A defining quality of this election cycle has been that few people seem to be able to agree on who constitutes “the media,” what their role ought to be, or even how much influence they have in 2024. Based on Trump’s and Kamala Harris’s appearances on various shows—and especially Trump’s and J. D. Vance’s late-race interviews with Joe Rogan, which culminated in the popular host’s endorsement—some have argued that this was the “podcast election.” But there’s broad confusion over what actually moves the needle. Is the press the bulwark against fascism, or is it ignored by a meaningful percentage of the country? It is certainly beleaguered by a conservative effort to undermine media institutions, with Trump as its champion and the fracturing caused by algorithmic social media. It can feel existential at times competing for attention and reckoning with the truth that many Americans don’t read, trust, or really care all that much about what papers, magazines, or cable news have to say.

All of this contributes to a well-documented, slow-moving crisis of legacy media—a cocktail whose ingredients also include declining trust, bad economics, political pressure, vulture capitalists, the rise of the internet, and no shortage of coverage decisions from mainstream institutions that have alienated or infuriated some portion of their audiences. Each and every one of these things affected how Americans experienced this election, though it is impossible to say what the impact is in aggregate. If “you are the media,” then there is no longer a consensus reality informed by what audiences see and hear: Everyone chooses their own adventure…

I’ve watched for the past year with grim fascination as both the media industry and its audience have sparred and tried to come to some shared understanding of what the hell is going on. The internet destroyed monoculture years ago, but as I wrote last December, it’s recently felt harder to know what anyone else is doing, seeing, or hearing online anymore.

News sites everywhere have seen traffic plummet in the past two years. That’s partly the fault of technology companies and their algorithmic changes, which have made people less likely to see or click on articles when using products like Google Search or Facebook. But research suggests that isn’t the entire story: Audiences are breaking up with news, too. An influencer economy has emerged on social-media platforms. It’s not an ecosystem that produces tons of original reporting, but it feels authentic to its audience…

Independent online creators aren’t encumbered by any of this hand-wringing over objectivity or standards: They are concerned with publishing as much as they can, in order to cultivate audiences and build relationships with them. For them, posting is a volume game. It’s also about working ideas out in public. Creators post and figure it out later; if they make mistakes, they post through it. Eventually people forget. When I covered the rise of the less professionalized pro-Trump media in 2016, what felt notable to me was its allergy to editing. These people livestreamed and published unpolished three-hour podcasts. It’s easier to build a relationship with people when you’re in their ears 15 hours a week: Letting it all hang out can feel more authentic, like you have nothing to hide.

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Onion Update

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Onion Update

This is a great summary of how the bankruptcy judge handled the bid by The Onion combined with the Sandy Hook parents.  The bid was out of the bounds of normal bankruptcy practice, and the judge wanted a hearing to make sure that he understood everything.  We’ll see how it goes, but I’m hopeful that the parents will get a small measure of peace from this long delayed legal action, emphasis on “small”.

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Send money for lawyers in North Carolina

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HUGE news – last night, the outcomes of two extremely narrow races in North Carolina flipped when all valid absentee and provisional ballots were counted, with major implications.

Both the NC Supreme Court race and Senate District 18 flipped from counting provisional ballots. #northcarolina

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— Carolina Forward (@carolinaforward.bsky.social) November 16, 2024 at 7:22 AM

We are in recount land on two important state races in North Carolina.  Both have Democrats inching ahead by less than the enrollment count of a freshman year survey course in a large lecture hall.

The Riggs race is important for if she wins, there is a reasonable pathway that does not involve meteor strikes for Democrats to regain a majority on the state Supreme Court by 2028.  There will be a lot of hard work between now and then.

So in the next day or so, get ready to start sending money for the recount lawyers in North Carolina.

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(Bipartisanship) Lovers in a Dangerous Time

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The aching desire for business as usual is strong in our institutionalists:

REP. HAKEEM JEFFRIES (D-NY): Well, great to be with you, Jake. Since the election we’ve made clear that we will work to find bipartisan common ground with the incoming administration on any issue whenever and wherever possible in order to make life better for the American people, but, of course, we will push back against far-right extremism whenever necessary. […]

TAPPER: Do you think the House Ethics Committee should report — should release the report on Gaetz even though he’s no longer a member of Congress, so it’s no longer his — their jurisdiction I suppose?

JEFFRIES: Well, the House Ethics Committee has traditionally operated in a bipartisan fashion. You know, I have great amount of trust and respect in the top Democrat on that committee, Representative Susan Wild. I haven’t had an opportunity to have a conversation with her about what’s possible.

Certainly, full transparency is always the preferred approach, but the House Ethics Committee has always operated in a straightforward fashion, not as part of a command and control structure connected to leadership from either the House Republican side or the House Democratic side, and I’m just hopeful that consistent with that background, with that history with the integrity of what the House Ethics Committee should represent, that it chooses to do the right thing, consistent with House rules and with the law.

That’s the way to put the milque in the toast.  It’s notably weak from the man who’s potentially one election away from the third most powerful post in our government.  Most importantly, it’s a lie.  He seems like an intelligent guy, and any intelligent person who’s looked at the workings of the House for the last few decades knows that there’s no appetite for bipartisanship with the current crop of Republicans.  They just don’t want it, nor does Jeffries’ caucus, nor does, probably, Jeffries.

What is the downside of Jeffries’ being at least a little bit honest in this moment?  Would it hurt for him to say something to even slightly acknowledge the danger to the rule of law and public health posed by Trump’s latest appointments? Something like, “Serious allegations of illegal actions have been raised against Rep. Gaetz, and the nomination process for the chief law enforcement officer of the land should have all the facts.”

He can’t even get the tip of his pinky dirty because he’s so focused on protecting institutional norms (bipartisan independence of the Ethics Committee) that only Democrats follow.  His counterpart, Rev. Speaker Johnson, has already called for the ethics report to be suppressed, and the committee is dutifully delaying votes.

The link above, and this link,  go to Steve M’s detailed discussion of Hakeem Jeffries reaction to the nomination of Gaetz and RFK the lesser, for more context, and Steve M is on target here:

In this segment, Jeffries does the two terrible things Democrats invariably do when they get TV time: He embraces a bipartisan approach to governing that Republicans have rejected since the Newt Gingrich era thirty years ago, and he talks to the public as if all of his listeners read three print newspapers a day cover to cover and already know all the relevant facts. It’s a terrible approach to public communication.

I’ll add:  if you’re going on TV, you should know that highlights are going to be clipped and spread on social media.  Try not to generate demoralizing business-as-usual clips less than two weeks after a losing election.  Get a little angry.  Read this piece on RFK Jr a couple of times in the green room if you need some ammo.  Read what Megan McCain’s husband wrote about Gaetz and what a filthy sex pest piece of shit he is.  Do what it takes to appear that you care about the potential grave harm that’s coming down the pike for your constituents.  Jesus, does it have to be so hard?

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Saturday Morning Open Thread: November Projects

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******


Community projects don’t necessarily have to be ‘political’, do they? (Or, for that matter, done under sub-zero conditions?

The sun had yet to come up in Edmonton, Alberta, and it was more than 20 degrees below zero. Tanis Smith layered up anyway, ready to run up and down hundreds of stairs among the trees in the Saskatchewan River Valley.

When she arrived at 6 a.m., 10 other people joined her. It wouldn’t be the last time they risked freezing their toes off to get in a workout before the rest of the world wakes up….

Since that winter of 2013, Smith has rarely missed a workout with the group, called November Project, a network of free outdoor group exercise classes that started in Boston. No matter the month or weather, participants roll out of bed before dawn at least once a week and shield their faces from the blistering cold.

One part intense training and one part abject silliness, the project is a model for how to stay motivated to exercise outside throughout the winter…

“A party is better when there’s more people around,” said Bojan Mandaric, who created the project with Brogan Graham in 2011. “We would talk to anybody who would listen.”

Soon, their meetings were attracting a few dozen people, who then brought the idea to other cities when they moved. Now there are 52 chapters in eight countries, including 44 in the United States and Canada…

******

@joshtpm.bsky.social has it right here, as usual. Don’t surrender in advance. Don’t confer to Trump a competence and ability he has never exhibited.

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— The Fig Economy (@figgityfigs.bsky.social) November 14, 2024 at 6:08 PM

“The Most Pernicious Anticipatory Obedience Hides in Plain Sight”:

… During harrowing times some people become overwhelmed and even lose hope. It’s not a one-way progress. Almost everyone has their moments. But there’s a particular kind of militant doomerism afoot at the moment. Any discussions of next steps in the battle against Trumpism or the preservation of civic democracy, any suggestions or strategies, are met with a chorus of, “don’t you get how it worked under Hitler and Stalin!!?!” Or “don’t you know rules don’t matter to Donald Trump!?!?!”

In a sense, it’s a dialog genetically related to what I called “competitive hyperbole” two days ago. Strategies for the future or even the assumption that there will be a future get shouted down as a hopeless naiveté. And at least within that stream of conversation — which I’m certainly not saying is dominant, but it is there — it leads to the same escalating declarations of dystopia and totalism.

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Dank Grey Dawn Open Thread: Department of Disease Efficiency

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Perhaps it is a sign of how much Trump respects his most loyal constituency, the People of Garbage, that he was willing to promote one of their avatars despite said avatar’s narcissistic competition for the limelight. (As a fellow Irish-American, let me assure the sensitive: The Kennedys are very much ‘American aristocracy’ — a clan of violent grifters with a strong streak of neurodiversity and a not-unrelated fondness for substance abuse in all its forms. And despite his extremely bigoted statements about autism, if Bobby Jr. were fifty years younger, he would have had an IEP as thick as a Potter novel and quite possibly have been diagnosed on the spectrum.)

Robert F. Kennedy Jr evokes Camelot, you know, the time of King Arthur when there was no fucking medicine.

— Frank Conniff (@frankconniff.bsky.social) November 14, 2024 at 6:48 PM

If RFK Jr. does end up in Trump’s administration — there’s still plenty of time for him to foul it up — he’ll probably be under-bused for his assaults on ‘Big Ag’ and ‘Big Grocery’ before he can do too much damage to America’s medical industry… although it would be less worrying if not for the looming H5N1 threat.

Meanwhile, Alexandra Petri remains a national treasure. From the Washington Post, “RFK Jr. to head newly formed Department of Disease Efficiency” [gift link]:

Well, President-elect Donald Trump has picked Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as the new head of the Department of Health and Human Services. “He wants to do some things and we’re going to let him go to it,” Trump said. “Go have a good time, Bobby.”

Everyone who is an HHS employee and is not the measles virus: You are on notice! We’re taking this department in a new direction! Measles, stand back and stand by. It’s about to be your time.

We’re doing our best to give the people what they want. For many years we thought what they wanted was clean drinking water, safe and tested vaccines to drive down deaths from childhood diseases, and food that is produced in sanitary conditions so the people who eat it don’t get sick. But we were wrong, and the change starts now.

Similarly, we mistakenly thought that finding a dead mouse in your frozen ravioli dinner was a shock. Now, we know better. It’s a surprise! People love surprises. People love danger! Our ancestors didn’t stare down death every time they went out to hunt and eat food that had not been subject to Food and Drug Administration inspection so we wouldn’t have to stare down death every day as we went out to buy food that has not been subject to FDA inspection. You want to consume a can of beans and live? TOUGH LUCK! THIS IS DONALD TRUMP’S AMERICA!

In light of this, and of the nomination of RFK Jr. as our leader, we at the Department of Health and Human Services are announcing a rebrand as the Department of Disease Efficiency. Given our new mandate to root out expertise wherever it might lurk and replace it with Something That Came To RFK Jr. In A Dream Once, we felt it was proper to release “Health” and “Human Services” back into the wild, where maybe RFK Jr. can hunt them down with his falcon and eat them before they have undergone an FDA inspection.

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