Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Innocent people do not delay justice.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

How any woman could possibly vote for this smug smarmy piece of misogynistic crap is beyond understanding.

There are more Russians standing up to Putin than Republicans.

Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”

This must be what justice looks like, not vengeful, just peaceful exuberance.

Not rolling over. fuck you, make me.

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

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

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

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

Everything is totally normal and fine!!!

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

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

It’s pointless to bring up problems that can only be solved with a time machine.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

Bark louder, little dog.

Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.

A norm that restrains only one side really is not a norm – it is a trap.

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

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On The Road – Albatrossity – Monterey Pelagic Birding – 2

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Albatrossity

The Monterey Bay pelagic birding trip that I participated in has a trip report list here, which I have previously linked, but maybe some of you missed those links. Both birds and mammals are recorded on these trips, and we saw lots of both.

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On The Road - Albatrossity - Monterey Pelagic Birding - 2 9
Monterey BaySeptember 22, 2024

Picking up where we left off last week, here’s one more shot of a Sooty Shearwater (Ardenna grisea), this time in flight mode. Dunno how anyone could eat such a cute critter, but cute critters were (and are) probably on the menu in lots of places! Click here for larger image.

Cold Grey Dawn Open Thread: We Live in Hope

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Wonkette is a national treasure, and this Evan Hurst post deserves the widest possible circulation… “Maybe Elon Musk *Is* The 2024 Russian Election Attack”:

With a week and a half to go until the election — and nothing but chaos in sight between now and then — a huge article has come out in the Wall Street Journal about Elon Musk’s secret telephone tonguefuck sessions with blood-covered Russian baby murderer Vladimir Putin, which brings to mind just one question for us:

Is the 2024 Russian attack on the US election actually just one pathetically needy absolute loser of a richest man in the world named Elon Musk?…

  • Putin and Elon been having their little secret fuckchats for a while now, going back as far as 2022, plus Elon’s had other fuckchats with other Russian bigwigs close to Putin.
  • Putin was like hey Elon, can you plz not let Taiwan have Starlink? Asking for a friend who is the dictator-for-life of China.
  • Though Elon was initially supportive of Ukraine’s side in the Russia/Ukraine war— as one would expect any decent person to be, since it’s customary to defend the side that gets invaded for no reason, which in this case also happens to be our ally, as opposed to the side that does the invading/baby murdering — he quickly changed his tune on that later in 2022, when he wouldn’t let Ukraine’s military use Starlink for any kind of offensive operations. Guess who benefited from that? Elon has said he wouldn’t allow it because he — in his infinite fucking wisdom about goddamned nothing — was pretty sure it would cause a nuclear war. Any idea who whispered that Kremlin lie in his butthole? We can only imagine.
  • One of the Russian officials Elon has fuckchatted with is Putin’s first deputy chief of staff Sergei Kiriyenko, who according to the US government has created domains for the spread of Kremlin disinfo, including on the Nazi hell-husk formerly known as Twitter, which Elon owns.
  • The Kremlin has put pressure on Elon and his businesses, and there have been “implicit threats against him.” Cool friends, dude. Beggars can’t be choosers, we guess.

    • As we have discussed previously here, there is just about no Russian propaganda Elon Musk isn’t a stupid enough useful idiot not to fall for. Whenever he speaks on the subject, it’s amazing how he just barfs out whatever Putin wants…

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    Sunday Night Open Thread

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    Well, so that was quite a rally Cheeto Benito threw in NYC tonight. Surely that has to cost him some votes. Surely, right?

    Sweet fancy moses. We are so fucking close to a dystopian fascist sci-fi show of years past. It’s fucking bonkers.

    What is the American historical comparison? Is there one?

    We really are living through the whole “I wonder what I would have done in he 1930’s were I a German” mind exercise and a lot of people are choosing the wrong side.

    Craziness.

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    War for Ukraine Day 977: A Brief Sunday Night Update

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    Two quick housekeeping notes. First, Rosie continues to improve as we get farther away from her final chemo treatment last Monday. Her appetite is coming back and we did a 3/4 of a mile walk this evening. Thank you for all the good thoughts, well wishes, prayers, and donations.

    Second, despite spending much of the weekend asleep, I am still fried. I am just going to run through the basics so I can get cleaned up and racked out. I know I still have to get to the Dougan and Musk influence operations and I will get to them this week.

    Over 75% of Ukraine is currently under air raid alert at 8:50 PM EDT/2:50 AM local time in Ukraine. No indication of Russian strategic aviation aloft, so this morning’s attack will be another drone swarm.

    I’m actually going to start with the Georgian election. Salome Zourabichvili, the President of Georgia, has rejected the outcome of yesterday’s election and alleged that the ruling Georgian Dream Party, which is aligned with Putin and Russia, has engaged in widespread and wholesale election rigging and fraud.

    From Civil Georgia:

    After a day of intensive consultations with opposition parties following the 26 October parliamentary elections, Georgian President Salome Zurabishvili held a briefing in which she said she would not recognize the official results.

    She thanked all the voters who voted for Georgia’s European future: “There were lots of you, you won in these elections and no one has a right to take this European future away from us.”

    President Zurabishvili thanked observers and media who, who in difficult circumstances, did everything to protect the votes.

    But she said “there were so many violations that it was impossible to detect them all”. She said: “We witnessed something very unusual: this was a total falsification, a total stealing of votes, using all the tricks that can be used to falsify elections, and on top of that – the use of modern technologies to whitewash the elections.

    She said it was unprecedented, adding: “We were witnesses and victims of a Russian special operation, a new type of hybrid warfare waged against our people.

    “On that day we were deprived of the right to vote. These were Russian elections, they stole the electoral institution from us, and they stole our constitutional right to vote, including from our emigrants.”

    “I am grateful to our international partners who exposed the violations,” she said, but noted that it was not enough.

    “I want to say, as the only independent institution, that I don’t recognize these elections. These elections cannot be recognized. We won’t accept this.” She added: “We are going to stand together and say: We will not accept this new form of subjugation by Russia”.

    The President called on citizens to gather on Rustaveli Avenue on October 28 and “tell each other and the world that we don’t recognize these elections, we defend our constitutional right and every vote and our future. It is our right to have just, free and fair elections. This will be a symbolic act to show the world our will”.

    She called on international partners to stand by the Georgians.

    “Nothing can make these elections legitimate,” she concluded.

    Putin has already dispatched his catspaw to Tblisi:

    🇬🇪🤝🇭🇺 @PM_ViktorOrban will make an official visit to Georgia on October 28-29.

    📋 Invited by Georgian @PM_Kobakhidze, PM Orbán will be accompanied by Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó, Minister of National Economy Márton Nagy, and Finance Minister Mihály Varga. The visit will feature both one-on-one and plenary discussions, followed by a joint press statement.

    No we wait to see what the Georgians do because at the end of the day, no one – not the EU, not NATO, not the US – is going to do anything more than issue public statements.

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

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    Medium Cool – Halloween!

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    Medium Cool is a weekly series related to popular culture, mostly film, TV, and books, with some music and games thrown in.  We hope it’s a welcome break from the anger, hate, and idiocy we see almost daily from the other side in the political sphere.

    Arguments welcomed, opinions respected, fools un-suffered.  We’re here every Sunday at 7 pm.

    Tonight let’s talk about Halloween!

    Traditions, costumes, memories. Trick or treating with friends.  Family memories.  Puking from eating too much candy as a kid?  Films, stories, horror movies.  Do your pets wear costumes?  Are you more Charlie Brown or Friday the 13th?  Is there such a thing as Halloween music?

    Tonight it’s all things Halloween!

    Note: for those new to Medium Cool, these are not open threads.

     

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    Every GOP Accusation A Confession: Elon Musk, Illegal Immigrant & Aspiring Fifth Columnist

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    Per the Washington Post (presumably not including editor & Murdoch minion Will Lewis), “Elon Musk, enemy of ‘open borders,’ launched his career working illegally” [gift link]:

    Long before he became one of Donald Trump’s biggest donors and campaign surrogates, South African-born Elon Musk worked illegally in the United States as he launched his entrepreneurial career after ditching a graduate studies program in California, according to former business associates, court records and company documents obtained by The Washington Post.

    Musk in recent months has amplified the Republican presidential candidate’s claims that “open borders” and undocumented immigrants are destroying America, broadcasting those views to more than 200 million followers on the site formerly known as Twitter, which Musk bought in 2022 and later renamed X.

    What Musk has not publicly disclosed is that he did not have the legal right to work while building the company that became Zip2, which sold for about $300 million in 1999. It was Musk’s steppingstone to Tesla and the other ventures that have made him the world’s wealthiest person — and arguably America’s most successful immigrant.

    Musk and his brother, Kimbal, have often described their immigrant journey in romantic terms, as a time of personal austerity, undeterred ambition and a willingness to flout conventions. Musk arrived in Palo Alto in 1995 for a graduate degree program at Stanford University but never enrolled in courses, working instead on his start-up…

    The revelation that Musk lacked the legal right to work in the United States stands at odds with his recent focus on undocumented immigrants and U.S. border security, among the issues that have led him to spend more than $100 million helping Trump return to the White House. If Trump wins on Nov. 5, both men have said Musk could have a high-profile role in his administration.

    On X, Musk has become an avid booster of anti-immigrant rhetoric, falsely accusing Vice President Kamala Harris and other Democrats of “importing voters.” Undocumented immigrants are legally barred from voting in state and federal elections. In February, he wrote that “illegals in America can get … insurance, driver’s licenses.”

    Musk would have been required to have both to drive a vehicle, which associates attested he frequently did during the time he lacked a legal work permit…

    And, in light of the Trump campaign’s Madison Square Garden Proud Boy rally tonight, per the New Republic — “Elon Musk Stays Silent After Bombshell Report on Secret Putin Contact”:

    Elon Musk has stayed unusually silent after The Wall Street Journal revealed Thursday night that the tech CEO has been speaking regularly with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

    The newspaper reported that Musk has corresponded with Putin since 2022, discussing personal topics, business, and geopolitical tensions. Putin even made a request of Musk in one conversation: to refrain from setting up his satellite internet service, Starlink, over Taiwan as a favor to Chinese President Xi Jinping.

    Musk has been tweeting around the clock since the story broke at 9 p.m. EST Thursday, but has not mentioned the Journal article once, mostly sticking to right-wing conspiracies and promotion of Donald Trump. According to the Journal, Musk not only had conversations with Putin, but with other high-ranking Kremlin officials as well. He even faced “implicit threats against him,” one source said.

    The report is especially concerning given that the tech mogul has come out as a strong supporter of the former president, spending millions to help Trump return to the White House. The Journal report notes that Putin and Musk have continued contact this year as Musk has ramped up his efforts to reelect Trump.

    In addition to his political activism, Musk has billions of dollars in government contracts attached to his companies. SpaceX, which operates Starlink, has a $1.8 billion classified contract and launches rockets for the Pentagon and NASA. He also has a security clearance giving him access to classified information.

    With all of these government connections, the fact that Musk is consistently talking to one of the United States’ foremost adversaries in Putin presents a danger to national security. His control of Starlink gives him immense power over international communications, too. And Musk’s ownership of X also potentially puts the personal information of anyone who uses the social media service at risk. An anonymous source told the Journal that the Biden administration is aware of Musk and Putin’s relationship, but hasn’t raised any concerns over security breaches.

    However, “they don’t love it,” the source told the Journal…

    Anyone who needs another reason to vote for President Harris should be reminded that her opponent is a puppet for those who demonstrably do not have America’s best interests in mind.

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    Look for the Helpers and the Leaders

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    Call me crazy, but I think that with the latest from Trump campaign, Trump has gone too far.

    I find myself wondering if Trump and company aren’t trying to drum up a Civil War, precisely because they know he’s losing.  To me, it feels like he is trying to set the country on fire.

    It’s a tactic.  If you feel like you are turned upside down by seeing the awful things they are saying, take a step back and realize that’s exactly what they want.   It’s a HUGE DISTRACTiON.  They want you to be upset and outraged.

    Michelle Obama is begging us to stay active and focusing on her DO SOMETHING message – and Trump wants us to be shocked and outraged and paralyzed and disheartened.

    Who are you going to listen to?  Choose carefully – we only have 8 days before election day.  Do not fall for their trap.

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