Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

The arc of the moral universe does not bend itself. it is up to us to bend it.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

American history and black history cannot be separated.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

“In this country American means white. everybody else has to hyphenate.”

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

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

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

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

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires Republicans to act in good faith.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

Wait, what?

Peak wingnut was a lie.

We can’t confuse what’s necessary to win elections with the policies that we want to implement when we do.

We still have time to mess this up!

Dumb motherfuckers cannot understand a consequence that most 4 year olds have fully sorted out.

The unpunished coup was a training exercise.

Fight for a just cause, love your fellow man, live a good life.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

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

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

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House Update

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People have been asking for a House update — here’s the latest from The Downballot:

About two dozen House races remain uncalled by the Associated Press, but while Democrats have a narrow path to a majority, they’d have to virtually run the table when late-tallied votes are counted.

At the moment, Republicans are guaranteed 211 seats in the next Congress while Democrats are assured of holding 199. That means Democrats would need to win 19 of the unresolved races, including several where they currently trail.

Among the outstanding contests, many favor one party or the other; only around half are in doubt. (You can find a complete list by checking our continually updated overtime tracker.)

Basically, the House will probably end up within a couple of votes either way, so assisting with ballot curing in the disputed districts (if possible) is definitely a worthwhile activity.

The Downballot piece also has a good roundup of state legislatures and ballot initiatives.  Democrats made some gains in some legislatures, and lost a couple seats in others.

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Do Something

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It’s not over til it’s over.  We have to try to win the House.

Here’s one opportunity, I’m sure there are dozens more.

Four Directions is doing ballot curing for the 10,000 or so ballots in Nevada.  “It’s looking good for Jacky Rosen but we’re running through the tape.”

We know that North Carolina Black Alliance and NCAAT are doing ballot curing – we funded a good deal of ballot for both groups.

We need to be doing that everywhere.  Every House seat counts at this point.

Looks like the link from the tweet is for Nevada, but this has to be happening all over the country.

Mobilize Us ballot curing for Nevada

Please add links below for ballot curing operations you can find.

if you wrote postcards, that maybe have a 2-4% impact rate, then please help with ballot curing.  That’s a 100% impact rate – one vote for each ballot that’s cured.  These are people who already voted – no persuasion involved, just sharing information.

A lot of us talked about “no regrets” come November.  We have this one more battle to wage for this election.  The House.

Please.  Wipe your tears, put your fears aside, leave your rage in a box.  Just for a few hours.

Sign up and work your behind off curing ballots.

Ballot Curing Links are in the sidebar!

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TGIFriday Morning Open Thread: The Reckonings Begin

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TGIFriday Morning Open Thread: The Reckonings Begin

(Mike Luckovich via GoComics.com)

Per Aaron Blake, at the Washington Post — “Trump’s mandate isn’t as ‘powerful’ as he suggests. Here’s why.” [gift link]:

When Donald Trump emerged victorious as president-elect in the wee hours of Wednesday morning, he was characteristically hyperbolic about his and the Republican Party’s achievement…

… In fact, Democrats have since been declared the winners of the Senate races in Michigan and Wisconsin, and they’ll likely win Nevada, too.

But what about Trump’s earlier and related claim — that his and the GOP’s mandate was “unprecedented and powerful?”

Unprecedented: Surely not.

Powerful: That’s more subjective. But it’s evidently not that powerful, historically speaking.

While Trump’s win was larger than many expected and every swing state swung in his favor, his level of support is relatively par for the course for a victor. And Republicans on the whole didn’t do as well as he did.

It’s all worth diving into, given the major questions about whether Trump and the GOP will actually pursue some of the extreme proposals he has pitched on the campaign trail — and given that his and his party’s mandate, both perceived and real, will play a role in what lies ahead.

As things stand, Trump probably will sweep the seven swing states, but he will do so with only marginally more electoral votes (probably 312) than he won in 2016 (304) and President Joe Biden won in 2020 (306).

That 312 total would also outpace both of George W. Bush’s elections, but it’s fewer than in any election involving Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush or Ronald Reagan. And the 58 percent of electoral votes Trump probably will win would rank 41st all-time…

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Late Night Open Thread: The Trumpists Are Fighting, Again / Already

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Confusion to our enemies, she said piously; they’re pretty confused already… From the Telegraph, “Trump campaign quietly distances itself from RFK Jr after new vaccine safety comments”:

… Advisers to the president-elect questioned whether Mr Kennedy, a vaccine sceptic who has also been the subject of a series of bizarre stories involving animals, would make it through a security check for a cabinet position.

It raises questions about what role, if any, Mr Kennedy would be given in the Trump administration, as the Republican’s transition team sets about filling thousands of federal posts for his return to the White House.

Mr Kennedy had previously said that Mr Trump had “promised” him control of the Department of Health and Human Services and public health agencies like the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

However, there is disquiet in the Trump team about media attention on the former independent candidate after he was pressed in a post-election interview with NBC about his vaccine scepticism…

Scramble for Cabinet places
Separately, Tom Cotton, the Arkansas senator, reportedly ruled himself out of contention as CIA director or defence secretary despite being seen as a top contender for those positions.

Mr Cotton, a veteran of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, will instead remain in the Senate, where he is a slim favourite to become the GOP conference chairman, sources told Axios. If elected on Wednesday, it would make the 47-year-old the third-ranking Republican in the Senate.

Mike Pompeo, who served as secretary of state in the first Trump administration, could return in his old role but has also been touted as a future defence secretary…

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War for Ukraine Day 988: A Brief Thursday Night Update

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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)

Three quick housekeeping notes. First, Rosie is doing great. I’ll have more of an update after she see’s her regular vet tomorrow for a post chemo check in.

Second, I’m going to just run the basics tonight as I also did the “where we are now/how we got here” post earlier this evening, I’m fried, and I want to rack out.

Third, we’re still trying the Nitter rather than hellsite experiment, so if things look a bit different, that’s why.

Russia had Kyiv under Shahed attack for nine hours earlier today:

From Maria Avdeeva:

Ending the war, huh? That’s what everyone here wants—except Putin has other plans. For nine hours straight, Russia is terrorizing Kyiv with massive Shahed drone attacks

Kyiv, as well as all of north central, eastern, and southern Ukraine is currently – 9:50 PM EST/4:49 AM local time in Ukraine – under air raid alert because of Shahed swarms.

Avdeeva is also reporting that Russia is now equipping their Shaheds with thermobaric warheads:

Russia is now using thermobaric warheads on Shahed drones, modified to inflict more harm on civilians. These high-explosive warheads create a “fire cloud” that spreads widely. Video of a drone over Kyiv this morning

According to @DEFENSEEXPRESS , these drones are assembled and modified at Russia’s Alabuga facility in Tatarstan. Each 52.4 kg warhead combines thermobaric and fragmentation effects to maximize damage.

There’s video of a fire team shooting down Shahed’s at this link:

Mobile fire teams are shooting down a Shahed UAV. Over the past evening, night, and morning, 🇺🇦 air defenders destroyed 74 enemy UAVs. Such attacks happen daily. russia continues its brutal terror. It is important that our warriors feel the support of our partners—in air defense systems, defense packages, and pressure on the aggressor. Together, we can stop terror and achieve a just peace for Ukraine.

President Zelenskyy addressed the Kyiv Economic Forum by video while en route to Budapest for the European Political Movement Summit and to meet with Viktor Orban. Video of the address below, followed by the videos from the Hungary visit after the jump.

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Revolutionary Warfare=Guerrilla Warfare+Political Action

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I’m going to keep this short as I still have to do the Ukraine war update later and I’m very fried from work despite this being day 1 of my mini-staycation.

I want to make this very clear at the outset, this is not a victory lap. It is not an I told you so. I really don’t want to have to write this post at all. I am no happier than any of you.

Let’s start with where we are now.

Where we are now is a revolutionary movement that revolves around a revanchist, reactionary racist, antisemitic, Islamophobic, misogynist, homophobic, xenophobic, nativist, isolationist, and (white) Christian nationalist ideology fused with a cult of personality around the President-elect will soon have control of the executive branch, the Senate, most likely the House, the Supreme Court, a number of the federal appellate courts, and 25 state trifectas.

I think the model or heuristic for understanding what the President-elect’s second term will be like is a combination of two historical examples. The first is Yeltsin and Putin. Yeltsin was old, ill, and infirm from both his alcoholism and other health issues. Putin was an ambitious, angry, revanchist backed by (owned) by powerful and ultra-high net worth individuals. I think this is an apt description for the dynamic between Trump and Vance. History rhymes, it does not repeat, so this does not mean that Vance will eventually be president for life or anything.

The second is the fascist co-president that George Herbert Walker, Prescott Bush, and their co-conspirators wanted to force onto FDR in the first months of his first term of office in what is called the Business Plot. Vance is the vehicle for the current equivalents of Walker, Bush, and their co-conspirators – Thiel, Musk, the Uhliens, Zuckerberg, Bezos, etc – to quietly achieve their goals in the background while the President-elect does whatever he’s going to do in the foreground.

There is also going to be a LOT of chaos. Not everyone that is going to get a senior political appointment is on the same page. They all have their own agendas. There is going to be jockeying for position, the President-elect’s family members, including in-laws, are all going to want their pieces of the action or, at least ill gotten gains. And given how we’ve been watching the President-elect very visibly decline in real time over the past two months, there will be infighting over who is his actual, real successor. I fully expect the President-elect and his team to shiv RFK Jr as they don’t need him anymore.

The fight to be his successor will begin almost immediately. The President-elect’s movement is a cult of personality. But there’s no actual heir apparent to him. None of his children have what his followers see in him and want, which is a combination of anger, spite, bigotry, and entertainment. Same with other GOP officials and MAGA movement conservative elites and notables. Vance, DeStupid, Cotton, Scott, Cruz, etc all have the anger, spite, and bigotry, but they’re not entertaining. Youngkin is just boring. He presents as normal. With the exception of his youngest son, whom we only see so we have no idea if he can do entertaining, the President-elect’s other children don’t have the entertainment value and come off as whiny and spoiled, because they are whiny and spoiled. Stephen Miller has the anger, spite, and bigotry down to a science, but the President-elect’s movement isn’t going to move their allegiance to him because he’s Jewish. Musk is not entertaining at all. He’s just a black hole of entitled, coddled, failed his way upward neediness. Thiel hits the same repellent cords as Rick Scott. Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Green seem to hit all the characteristics like the President-elect, and as I’ve speculated here before I could see either of them making a play for his mantle, but I don’t know if either could or would pull it off.

After the jump I’m going to go through how we got here and why I thought it was likely we would get here.

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