Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

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

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

So many bastards, so little time.

Many life forms that would benefit from greater intelligence, sadly, do not have it.

Of course you can have champagne before noon. That’s why orange juice was invented.

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

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

You cannot love your country only when you win.

In my day, never was longer.

We still have time to mess this up!

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

Second rate reporter says what?

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

A fool as well as an oath-breaker.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

Today in our ongoing national embarrassment…

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

We are learning that “working class” means “white” for way too many people.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

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How to Bluesky

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Commenter Mousebumples shares some Bluesky tips:

  • Follow a TON of people. No algorithm, so you only see what is posted by people you follow or what they reskeet.
  • https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:z3kpwld75x5aj2f7jyhuwjrw/feed/Jackals – Balloon Juice jackals feed. You can follow this without needing to follow all the Juicers, if you want
  • There are tons of feeds generally, and I think it’s fairly searchable. Find what interests you!
  • Since there’s no algorithm, if you want to share something with your own followers, you need to reskeet or quoteskeet. Liking is great… But that isn’t shown to your followers, typically (*there may be a setting to turn that on but I have that off)
  • Check out all the settings. I have a WARN IF ALT TEXT MISSING thing turned on so if I try to post an image or GIF, I remember to make it accessibility friendly.
  • Be sure to check out your default DM and autoplay settings so they match what you want.
  • Block lists are public; mute lists are not. Block as you want – the nuclear block is great. But just something to be aware of.

I’m sure I’m forgetting stuff, but hopefully all these guides help you get acclimated.

You’ll find your # to follow sweet spot, but I’m following 2K people, though I’ve been here over a year at this point…

You can find way more starter kits here – https://blueskydirectory.com/starter-packs/all

Mousebumples also shared this link for more Bluesky information.

I’ll link this post in the future to help promote Bluesky, so please add more advice in the comments below. I’m by no means a social networking expert, so everyone’s advice is welcome.

 

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Hot Takes: 14 to 18 Million Fewer Democrats Voted in 2024 than in 2022 Another One Bites the Dust

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This is how it happens, right?  There’s a hot take, and it gets picked up, and 20 years later there are still arguments and accusations about who voted for Nader or how X group didn’t show up in year Y, and lie helps divide our side.

Hot takes ≠ Facts

Yeah, data and information take time, and hot takes are readily available.  Right now!!!  Because a hot take isn’t hot for very long, so everybody’s got to get theirs out there.  Because fast is more important than true.

Can we at least make a pact not to be our own worst enemy?

It’s Not About Turnout

There’s a popular and wrong theory floating around twitter that Trump’s win can be attributed to “millions of Democrats who stayed home” or “14 million missing Democratic votes”. This theory is, as far as I can tell, the result of a mistake made by people who want to run takes before all the results are in, and shows up most years. It is also extremely wrong, and the evidence so far shows turnout roughly in line with 2020.

Origins of the Take

The laziest possible turnout analysis is to load up the NYT election night page and compare the popular vote numbers at the top to the numbers in the 2020 page.

If you do that, as of right now, you see around 68 million votes for Harris, and around 81 million votes for Biden in 2020. So, 13 million missing Democratic voters, right? No, not right.

The Votes Aren’t All In Yet

Counting votes is a slow process, and some states are slower than others.

Open thread.

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Morning Reads

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Morning Reads

Podcasts have the business model that you can access them for free but you have to tolerate ads.  Legacy media is so locked down that they don’t even give you one or two free page views a month.

For those of you who are interested in YouTube / TikTok feminist yv_edit’s take on why white women voted the way they did, here it is. (That’s a TikTok link, she only crossposts some of her videos on YouTube.).  In the comments yesterday, some of you didn’t like that she began with a Nick Fuentes video (the guy who goes on and on about “Your Body, My Choice”).  There’s no video like that in this post from her.

James Joyner at OTB (there’s a blast from the past) has a long post with a lot of interesting takes on the media environment.

Marci Wheeler includes this in her analysis:

WSJ has a piece describing the collapse of both legacy media and cable news. Of particular note: the referrals to legacy media started collapsing in 2023; but we know that was an intentional choice made by some of the richest men in the world to change their algorithms.

I think what she means is that social media sites tuned their algorithms to stop sending referrals to legacy media in the 2023 timeframe, but I don’t subscribe to the WSJ. It’s an interesting point, but even if something happened in 2023 that made it worse, when the advertising model collapsed and the subscription model took over, there was an inherent structural tension between the needs of social medial (keep everything in our walled garden) and traditional media like the Post and NYT (who want subscriber revenue).  You can’t keep everything in your walled garden while at the same time posting content that people can only read with a subscription.  So you tune your algorithm to news aggregators or right-wing “news sites”.  I’m not trying to excuse the social media oligarchs, just to explain it.

Finally, someone a while ago posted a Balloon-Juice “starter pack” for Bluesky.  Since we’re seeing a migration from Xitter after the election, could that person put it in the comments again, and maybe we’ll be able to add it to the sidebar.

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That Was Then, This Is Now

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That was then, this is now.

There was so much hope for the future, excitement at the possibilities, the dream of being able to make real progress, to stop the chaos of the last 9 years.

In just one moment, the earth cracked, and everything changed.  Now there is only grief and loss.  And fear.  The impossible has become possible, and I’m struggling to accept this new reality where the United States might cease to be a democracy, where all the power is in the hands of an evil madman and his henchmen.  We have lost power, we have lost standing; no one will see the US the same again.

The hate and ugliness and stupidity and gullibility and short-sightedness of 1/3 of our citizens have squandered our standing in the world.  It has put so many of us in danger.

We know what’s coming, at least some of it.  It’s as though we have advance warning that our country will soon be occupied by the enemy.  Our dreams have been replaced with nightmares.  We’ve seen the blueprints, so we know a lot of what could be coming, and I can’t be the only one who, at any given moment, thinks of yet one more safeguard that will likely be gone, one more terrible thing that may come to pass.

I am trying to stay calm, or at least calm-adjacent, because we don’t have enough information yet.  We have had the major accident; we know it’s bad, but we haven’t seen the car yet so we don’t know if it’s totaled or if repair is possible.

Until we know how close the House will be, and have final results for the Senate and key down ballot races, we can’t fully assess the damage.  If we keep the House very close, there will still be a lot of damage on a lot of fronts, but we’ll be able to stop some of it.  And in two years, when they have destroyed the economy, when more people who voted red will have seen a woman they know die because of their hate, the Senate races could be a bloodbath for the Republicans.

Can we come back from 4 years of total Republican rule?  Doubtful.  Can we come back from 2 years, if the House is very close to even?  I think so.  There will be a lot of damage, but I don’t think the car will be totaled.

For this post we can share our worries (civil service destroyed, national guard shooting into crowds of protesters).

I want this thread to be a place where we can share without judgment.  Not “I don’t think they will do that” and no “the business sector won’t allow that” or “this is what we need to do abut that”.

Then in a separate thread, A WEEK OR SO FROM NOW, when all the election results are in we can look at that list and better assess what is realistic and what is catastrophizing.

Then we can look at that list and see where there is the potential for real impact, and where there isn’t.

Then we can look at the list and identify what requires near-immediate actions, and what is less urgent.

Then we can work to mitigate the damage, so there will still be a country that can still be salvaged.

Then we can think and talk in a more realistic way about what we can do to protect the people who need to be protected.

Then we can focus on what we can do.

There are dark days ahead, but we are not without agency.

I am working hard at staying calm until we know more about the House, and the senate, and the statehouses.  Panic and despair get us nowhere, and calm allows us to be smart and to work to mitigate the damage where we can.

This is not an open thread.

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Sunday Morning Open Thread: Once More Unto the Boulder-Pushing Brigades

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Do these numbers look correct to you jackals? I wanna start screaming like a weasel about the Trump Recession as soon as his band of miscreants prop him up on the inaugural riser…


I still love my senior Senator — she’s an inspiration. A heartening epistle via Time, “Here’s the Plan to Fight Back”:

… As we confront a second Donald Trump presidency, we have two tasks ahead. First, try to learn from what happened. And then, make a plan…

What comes next? Trump won the election, but more than 67 million people voted for Democrats and they don’t expect us to roll over and play dead. We will have a peaceful transition of power, followed by a vigorous challenge from the party out of power, because that’s how democracy works. Here’s a path forward.

First, fight every fight in Congress.
We won’t always win, but we can slow or sometimes limit Trump’s destruction. With every fight, we can build political power to put more checks on his administration and build the foundation for future wins. Remember that during the first Trump term, mass mobilization—including some of the largest peaceful protests in world history—was the battery that charged the resistance. There is power in solidarity, and we can’t win if we don’t get in the fight…

Second, fight Trump in the courts.
Yes, extremist courts, including a Supreme Court stocked with MAGA loyalists, are poised to rubber-stamp Trump’s lawlessness. But litigation can slow Trump down, give us time to prepare and help the vulnerable, and deliver some victories.

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War for Ukraine Day 990: Mixed Signals

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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)

A quick housekeeping note: Rosie is doing great. Thank you for all the good thoughts, well wishes, prayers, and donations.

As I start tonight’s update – 8:55 PM EST/3:55 AM local time in Ukraine – over 2/3rds of Ukraine is under air raid alert. Other than an indicator of a potential sea launched threat, there’s no indicators that Russian fixed wing aviation is up.

Noga Tarnopolsky has reported that Brian Lanza, who is a senior natsec advisor to the President-elect gave an interview to BBC Weekend. His remarks are not encouraging:

💥Senior Trump advisor Bryan Lanza throws Ukraine under the bus (if Zelensky wants Creemiyah back, forget it, he says, its gone) says there is no two state solution and Netanyahu– “he can do whatever he wants to get the hostages back.” ⁦@AlbanaKasapi bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0k3gh…

From the BBC:

A former adviser to President-elect Donald Trump says the incoming administration will focus on achieving peace in Ukraine rather than enabling the country to gain back territory occupied by Russia.

Bryan Lanza, who worked on Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, told the BBC the incoming administration would ask Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for his version of a “realistic vision for peace”.

“And if President Zelensky comes to the table and says, well we can only have peace if we have Crimea, he shows to us that he’s not serious,” he said. “Crimea is gone.”

A spokesperson for Trump distanced the incoming president from the remarks, saying Mr Lanza “does not speak for him”.

The president-elect has consistently said his priority is to end the war and stem what he characterises as a drain on US resources, in the form of military aid to Ukraine.

But he has yet to divulge how he intends to do so – and will likely be hearing competing visions for Ukraine’s future from his various advisers.

Mr Lanza, a Trump political adviser during his 2016 and 2024 campaigns, did not mention areas of eastern Ukraine, but he said regaining Crimea from Russia was unrealistic and “not the goal of the United States”.

“When Zelensky says we will only stop this fighting, there will only be peace once Crimea is returned, we’ve got news for President Zelensky: Crimea is gone,” he told the BBC World Service’s Weekend programme.

“And if that is your priority of getting Crimea back and having American soldiers fight to get Crimea back, you’re on your own.”

The US has never deployed American soldiers to fight in Ukraine, nor has Kyiv requested American troops fight on its behalf. Ukraine has only requested American military aid to arm its own soldiers.

Mr Lanza said he had tremendous respect for the Ukrainian people, whose “hearts are made of lions”. But he said the US priority was “peace and to stop the killing”.

“What we’re going to say to Ukraine is, you know what you see? What do you see as a realistic vision for peace. It’s not a vision for winning, but it’s a vision for peace. And let’s start having the honest conversation,” he said.

In response, Zelensky’s adviser Dmytro Lytvyn characterised Mr Lanza’s remarks as placing the pressure for peace on Ukraine when it was “Putin who wants more war”.

“Putin loses most of his people in assaults at the front. What does this indicate? It is obvious that he wants to fight on,” he said.

“Ukraine has been offering peace since 2022 – there are quite realistic proposals. And it is Russia that must be made to hear that peace is needed and that peace must be reliable, so that there is simply no repetition of Russian strikes.”

A spokesperson for Trump’s transition team – which prepares the incoming administration for office – said Mr Lanza was “a contractor for the campaign”, but “does not work for President Trump and does not speak for him”.

Trump is expected to handle peace talks with a close circle of aides once in office.

An unnamed National Security Council aide who previously served under Trump told the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday: “Anyone – no matter how senior in Trump’s circle – who claims to have a different view or more detailed window into his plans on Ukraine simply doesn’t know what he or she is talking about.”

They said that the former president “makes his own calls on national security issues” and had done so “many times in the moment”.

Here’s Maria Avdeeva’s take:

If Mr. Lanza wants an honest conversation, here it is. This strategy doesn’t just empower Putin; it encourages other rogue states to use nuclear blackmail and invade neighboring countries, tearing down the world order. And, honestly, Putin has already said as much himself.

We’ve got a lot of mixed signals here. We’ve got the Ukrainian take away from yesterday’s call between President Zelenskyy and the President-elect (and the Starlink Snowflake). We’ve got Brian Lanza’s statements to the BBC. We’ve got several different spokespeople for the President-elect contradicting Lanza.

This is going to be the same ongoing problem it was during the President-elect’s first term. As we’ve seen over the past year with the various Middle East states and non-state actors that are in conflict, as well as the past three years in regard to Ukraine and Russia, things get immeasurably harder if there is not clear, deliberate communication and messaging. It is going to be especially bad during the transition as a number of people are jockeying for not just political appointments, but for specific positions with specific rank.

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

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