Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Balloon Juice, where there is always someone who will say you’re doing it wrong.

The desire to stay informed is directly at odds with the need to not be constantly enraged.

I’m starting to think Jesus may have made a mistake saving people with no questions asked.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

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

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

Republicans don’t trust women.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Someone should tell Republicans that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, or possibly the first.

No one could have predicted…

The press swings at every pitch, we don’t have to.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

SCOTUS: It’s not “bribery” unless it comes from the Bribery region of France. Otherwise, it’s merely “sparkling malfeasance”.

We need to vote them all out and restore sane Democratic government.

It’s a good piece. click on over. but then come back!!

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

One lie, alone, tears the fabric of reality.

Trumpflation is an intolerable hardship for every American, and it’s Trump’s fault.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

I desperately hope that, yet again, i am wrong.

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

The revolution will be supervised.

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162Comments

  3. 3.

    Leto

    Interim Manhattan U.S. Attorney Resigns Days After Being Ordered to Drop Case Against Eric Adams

    Interim Manhattan U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon has resigned, four days after President Trump’s Justice Department ordered her to dismiss the corruption indictment pending against Mayor Eric Adams, officials confirmed Thursday.

    On Monday, Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove sent a highly unusual edict to Sassoon, declaring that Adams’ indictment on bribery and campaign finance fraud changes must be terminated because it was interfering with Adams’ ability to help Trump’s top priority initiative of deporting migrants.

    The judge in the case, Dale Ho, must still sign off on such a request, and prosecutors are required to provide some explanation for their change of position. As of Thursday no such motion had been filed with the court.

    Sassoon’s resignation came a day after newly arrived Attorney General Pamela Bondi was asked why the dismissal hadn’t yet been requested at an unrelated press briefing. Bondi said she’d be looking into it.

    Acting Attorney General James McHenry appointed Sassoon to run the Southern District of New York’s U.S. attorney’s office Jan. 21, a month after Damian Williams, the federal prosecutor who brought the case against Adams, stepped down. Sassoon, a member of the conservative Federalist Society, had previously clerked for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

    In ordering Sassoon to end Adams’ case, Bove acknowledged that he hadn’t addressed the merits of the case, linking the decision to his position that it was brought too close to the June 24th primary in New York when the mayor is running for re-election.

    But the memo also took the unprecedented step of linking the decision to a policy initiative of the president, quoting one of Trump’s executive orders and voicing “particular concern” about “the impact of the prosecution on Mayor Adams’ ability to support critical ongoing federal efforts to protect the American people from the disastrous effects of unlawful mass migration and resettlement.”

  5. 5.

    Jackie

    And, apparently as a quid pro quo for having the charges dropped…

    Mayor Eric Adams of New York City announced today that he would issue an executive order to allow federal immigration authorities into the Rikers Island jail complex, a significant shift in the city’s sanctuary policies,” the New York Times reports.

  6. 6.

    different-church-lady

    I’m thinking we’re reaching the point where white people will volunteer to die in their cardboard boxes as long as the minorities in the next cardboard boxes over die first.

  8. 8.

    Josie

    Evidently some are not willing to volunteer. Sassoon is a member of the Federalist Society, clerked for Scalia, and is refusing to follow orders. That sounds interesting to me.

  9. 9.

    Leto

    Along with aircraft accidents, we also have this shit: US aircraft carrier collides with cargo ship off Egypt coast

    WASHINGTON − A U.S. aircraft carrier collided with a cargo ship Wednesday evening in the eastern Mediterranean Sea near Port Said, Egypt, the service’s Sixth Fleet announced.

    The USS Harry S. Truman did not suffer flooding, damage to its nuclear-powered engines, or injuries to its crew, according to the fleet. Port Said, the nearest port to where the collision occurred, is at the northern end of the Suez Canal, which connects the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea.

    The other ship involved in the collision, the Panama-flagged merchant vessel Besiktas-M, is a Panama-flagged bulk cargo carrier, according to the online VesselFinder database. Its status, and that of its crew, is unclear. The ship transited the canal in the hours before the collision.

    The Navy did not provide further details about the incident, which it said “is under investigation.”

  10. 10.

    suzanne

    I admire their integrity.

    However, if all the prosecutors resign, there won’t be any more prosecutors. I know, I know: feature, not bug.

  12. 12.

    HeleninEire

    Yes. New Yorkers know the shit. We’ve hated that asshole and have known he is an asshole for 40 years.

    Woop Woop

  13. 13.

    Leto

    And here’s a little bit more:

    Exclusive: OPM staffers fired en masse on conference call as part of Musk purge, sources say

    All probationary staff at the Office of Personnel Management were fired on Thursday in a conference call and given less than an hour to leave the building in Washington, two sources familiar with the dismissal told Reuters.

    About 100 people were on the call inside OPM, the U.S. government’s human resources agency. Staff on probation were told that because they had not taken the Trump administration’s buyout offer, they were being fired, a union source and an OPM staff member said.

  14. 14.

    Leto

    @Baud: I’d like to say yes, but this is a compounding issue the Navy has had for about ten years now. There’s a lot of training/command issues that the Navy is running full face into, and doesn’t seem to be able to stem/fix.

  15. 15.

    suzanne

    @HeleninEire: I was born on Long Island in 1980, and I remember hearing about that trash POS on the evening news back then. Every night, we ate dinner and watched TV news (local, then World News Tonight with Peter Jennings). Blows my mind to think about it.

  16. 16.

    glory b

    ABC News just announced that there are mass firings across numerous federal agencies as of close of business tonight.

    Emails saying “Based on your performance, it has been determined that your continued employment is not in the public interest.”

    Elon met with Mohdi and other Indian diplomats, pictures show that he attended with what looked like 4 little kids. He said that entire departments are about to be eliminated in their entirety.

    Trump stumbling when asked if Musk met with Indian representatives as a private citizen or a representative of the US government.

  18. 18.

    Captain C

    @Jackie: I can’t wait to vote that fucker out this year.  Possibly the worst NYC mayor of my lifetime and that includes Giuliani.

  19. 19.

    different-church-lady

    America voted in a dictator, even if it was too stupid to know it. Now we have to figure out how to deal with it.

  20. 20.

    frosty

    @different-church-lady: ​
     Nominated! Sorry, I hit enter too soon and didn’t give you credit. WaterGirl is the only one who would see it but I don’t want her to think I was clever enough to write this.

  29. 29.

    zhena gogolia

    I was so ecstatic the day he was convicted by a jury of 34 felonies. I thought, they’ll never elect him president now!

  36. 36.

    frosty

    @zhena gogolia: ​  I was so ecstatic the day he was convicted by a jury of 34 felonies. I thought, they’ll never elect him president now!

    Womp womp!! Sucks to be us!

  38. 38.

    Jackie

    @Captain C:

    I can’t wait to vote that fucker out this year.  Possibly the worst NYC mayor of my lifetime and that includes Giuliani.

    I hope your choice doesn’t boil down to Cuomo vs MAGA (or Adams, for that matter)!

  44. 44.

    Aziz, light!

    @Leto: Probationary federal employees have not done anything wrong, as the word implies. They are simply new employees who lack full job security for the first year or two on the job. The heartless bastards running the show now are booting them all without regard to their performance.

  48. 48.

    Almost Retired

    A glimmer of hope in that Judge Dale Ho has to sign off on the dismissal.  He was head of the voting rights project at the ACLU before he became a judge.  He ain’t Judge Cannon.

  49. 49.

    Ruckus

    @different-church-lady:

    Panicking does nothing positive. Ever.

    None of this is simple nor is it going to be easy to control or eradicate.

    This is changing the concept of our government and of money in this nation. And it’s being done by someone that I’m not even sure is a citizen. Sure he claims to be but is he actually? Or did his money buy him a pass?

  52. 52.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @suzanne:

    Thanks! I sort of assumed that at first, and then realised I had totally lost track of the antecedent.

    “Contusion” works, perfectly cromulently.

  54. 54.

    Geminid

    @Captain C: Does anyone else in the field stand out to you? I’ve heard good things about State Senator Jessica Ramos, but I live 300 miles away and am an observer.

    I just hope Adams switches parties and doesn’t clutter up the Democratic field.

  55. 55.

    Mr. Bemused Senior

    @different-church-lady: Something fundamental is broken in society. We have to figure out what it is and then repair it.

    Agree 💯. There are lots of facets to the problem (propaganda, wealth disparity, foreign intervention, apathy, …). Is there an underlying root cause? I still believe in this country but we’re awfully close to the edge.

    Why are so many people so angry? To me it feels like that’s a big part of the problem.

  56. 56.

    cursorial

    Curious to know, if she had refused to resign and just didn’t follow the order, how hard is it to fire her? (It’s a norm to resign in these situations, but we’re way past norms mattering now. Glad she refuses to cooperate with the thugs in charge, but what I really want is people in those positions to just ignore corrupt orders and gum up the works until security escorts them out.)

  57. 57.

    Kelly

    @Spanky:They have to move fast to break these things before the resistance solidifies

    Even if they are stopped some broken things can’t or won’t be fixed

  58. 58.

    bbleh

    @Baud: @Leto: nonono, it’s like this:

    Trump, Hegseth Lead Pentagon
    Into Series Of Disasters
    A Helicopter, Then Am Aircraft Carrier
    What is Going Wrong?

  59. 59.

    Jay

    Thing is, between Biden rescuing the US from a pandemic, underemployment and inflation, and Harris’s joy campaign, we did not NAZI any of this coming.

    The US is a sick society, I doubt it can heal itself.

  60. 60.

    Kelly

    @Mr. Bemused Senior:Why are so many people so angry?

    Being angry is their hobby. I grew up in now 70%+ Trump rural Oregon. I’m still (barely) in touch with many high school classmates. Yes 70%+ are deplorable

  63. 63.

    bbleh

    @zhena gogolia: @different-church-lady: imo, the problem is, the people who support him celebrate his lawbreaking.  He’s an Alpha, a Man In Charge, who Knows What He Wants And Takes It.  He doesn’t let some silly “law” or some ni[clang] prosector stop him!  If anything that just makes him more Determined!  Something something Jesus something American something [insert McNaughton picture].

    That’s how THEY want to be.  You see it when they drive, among many other places.

    And too many nominal Republicans — the old Liz Cheney types — who see value in a society governed by law are willing to go along with it because tax cuts and/or hordes of lazy-yet-also-somehow-job-stealing immigrants and/or THOSE people getting HANDOUTS.

    (And for the media, of course, it’s all just another WWE show.)

    So yeah, womp womp.

  68. 68.

    YY_Sima Qian

    The Trump Mafia & the reactionary counterrevolutionaries will keep posing these dilemmas to every part of the federal bureaucracy: meekly submit to save your paycheck in these economically uncertain times, or leave government in disgust & outrage. Either way, they win.

    The established institutions will be little more than speed bumps, at best. Time for militant (not necessarily violent, yet) resistance – start laying the groundwork for general strikes. Conditions are not quite ripe for that yet, unfortunately.

  71. 71.

    Mr. Bemused Senior

    @glc: the deniability is well and truly gone now. That’s one thing in our favor, any attempts by Republicans to pretend should be met with derision.

  75. 75.

    Captain C

    @Geminid: I haven’t really delved into it much yet.  It’s too bad Kathryn Garcia doesn’t seem to be running (or if so I haven’t heard anything about it); she would’ve been much better than the disaster that is Eric Adams.

  76. 76.

    Melancholy Jaques

    @Josie:

    Evidently some are not willing to volunteer. Sassoon is a member of the Federalist Society, clerked for Scalia, and is refusing to follow orders. That sounds interesting to me.

    Let’s call it the Kinzinger Wing. I still can’t abide the Cheneys.

  78. 78.

    tobie

    @tobie: I should add Judge O’Toole’s ruling will be appealed. But I suspect his ruling today — the Trump admin’s one victory in court — played a role in the mass firings tonight. Awful.

  80. 80.

    Captain C

    @glc: The lightly concealed racism is definitely a part of it, but I’m also thinking of the general ethos of extreme selfishness that was pushed by Reagan and his backers, the IGMFY attitude.  It was really normalized and having any sort of civic or collective or selfish sense was denigrated.

  83. 83.

    Professor Bigfoot

    @Mr. Bemused Senior: Is there an underlying root cause?

    Yes.

    White supremacy.

    You can draw a direct line from the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to the failure of the Goldwater campaign and his subsequent embrace by conservative Southern white people to the rise of Reagan to the advent of Trump.

    What we’re seeing is conservative white people making damned sure that no other Black will ever be “over” them.

  84. 84.

    Melancholy Jaques

    @Jay:

    The US is a sick society, I doubt it can heal itself.

    Agree our society is sick & our national filled with ignorant, hateful bigots. The question is, has any nation or society every healed itself? Or does there always have to be stacks of corpses before people realize they need to change?

  85. 85.

    Quinerly

    Murkowski takes a stand on something she says isn’t political.

    Murkowski introduced legislation today to rename North America’s highest mountain “Denali.”
    “In Alaska, it’s Denali,” Murkowski said in a statement. “Once you see it in person, and take in the majesty of its size and breathe in its cold air, you can understand why the Koyukon Athabascans referred to it as ‘The Great One.’”
    Murkowski said, “This isn’t a political issue,” noting she’s introduced the same legislation in three previous Congresses.
    The Hill reporting

  87. 87.

    Redshift

    @Josie:

    Evidently some are not willing to volunteer. Sassoon is a member of the Federalist Society, clerked for Scalia, and is refusing to follow orders. That sounds interesting to me.

    Maybe some people are starting to grasp that the lifetime they’ve spent become a high-powered lawyer will become worthless of the rule of law goes away.

  88. 88.

    Professor Bigfoot

    @Captain C: Once conservative white people were convinced that the those dusky others were getting free handouts from the government out of their hard earned tax dollars, all thanks to those Negroes and Jews in the Demon-Rat Party… well, it IS a culture of violence.

    A culture of impunity.

  89. 89.

    Melancholy Jaques

    @Professor Bigfoot:

    While I agree that it’s white supremacy that has been the driving force of every Republican campaign since Reagan, for both Trump wins, it was the misogyny that put them over the top.

    People aren’t going to say “I don’t think a woman should be president” to any pollster. They’ll pick some other excuse off the right-wing bullshit list: emails, should have divorced Bill, price of eggs, didn’t go on Joe Rogan, etc.

  91. 91.

    YY_Sima Qian

    Since this is an open thread, here is a tech. development w/ multiple layers of irony:

    Paul Triolo
    @pstAsiatech

    #TheDeepSeekEffect Ok, wait. US company hit by US export controls on GPU exports to China, using new Chinese AI model to optimize GPU performance?
    Automating GPU Kernel Generation with DeepSeek-R1 and Inference Time Scaling | NVIDIA Technical Blog

    The subject is probably too technical for the vast majority here, the content of the Nvidia tech. blog is certainly beyond my ability to digest, but the highlighted sentence says it all. Furthermore, the advancement shown in the DeepSeek AI model was possible in part because of the resource constraints imposed by US export controls of advanced GPUs to the PRC, forcing Chinese companies to innovate around the resource constraints.

    The Trump-Biden-Trump tech war. to fight tech. diffusion to the PRC was doomed to fail against a state such as the PRC’s, w/ the latter’s industrial capacity, economic diversity/sophistication, broad & deep ecosystems, technical prowess, immense & still rapidly growing skilled human capital, & huge internal market, on matters of applied sciences where the fundamentals breakthroughs are well & widely understood & have long been openly published. The US needs a realistic strategy to navigate the new multipolar world that the Trumpian group of carnival barkers & circus freaks are themselves accelerating into place. Of course, nothing sensible will come from the Trump Administration.

  92. 92.

    eclare

    OK.  “Lightly concealed.”  Reagan kicked off his 1980 campaign in Philadelphia MS.  Not far from where three civil rights workers were murdered.

    These incidents were not lightly concealed.  Everyone threatened knew exactly the threats.

  93. 93.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    @cursorial:
    Curious to know, if she had refused to resign and just didn’t follow the order, how hard is it to fire her?
    If you follow rules, she’s covered by either “Excepted” or “Competitive” status (there are other “statuses” in Club Fed and their might be some special one for DOJ lawyers).  Regardless, what was done is illegal in terms of a summary firing:

    Leave aside for a moment the legality of firing civil servants for the iniquitous crime of filing a (merited) pair of indictments and litigating them tenaciously. I’m sure I will have occasion in the future to emphasize the fact that such a firing is—in fact—not legal and will almost surely be subject to challenge.
    https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/the-situation–the-stakes-in-those-justice-department-firings

    In all probability, she probably saw what had happened to the previous summary DOJ firings and figured if she said “no”, they’d fire her.
    Now, obviously if that happened, either she could go to court or somebody on her behalf (not sure which of the two Fed unions would do this) could go to court.
    She probably thought it wasn’t worth it plus had a shred of integrity despite being a product of the Federalist Society cult.​

  94. 94.

    Professor Bigfoot

    @Melancholy Jaques: I can’t disagree, because the “male” in “white supremacy” is often silent.

    But really they’re about straight white Christian male supremacy, and the rest of us can pray they will tolerate our existence.

  97. 97.

    bbleh

    @Professor Bigfoot: I would say that what we see is conservative White people TRYING to do that.

    I am, though — and have for a long time, before the term was widely popularized — been with the “extinction burst” folks in thinking that this is their Last Gasp.  Obama’s election — and Hillary Clinton’s nomination, and Harris as VP, and Obergefell and and and — have driven them to frantic rage, but it is a rage of despair.

    Their time is over, and they know it.  They’re reactionaries, but they have no foundation on which to try to base a recovery.  And as a consequence — as is evident from their response to what’s happening in the Executive (the more involuted, corrupt parts of which they neither know nor care about) — they’re devolving into nihilism.

    This is not to say, just sit back and let them start fires and burn, because they might well torch us along with themselves.  But it IS to say, there’s no turning back the clock, and even they (except for the REALLY stupid ones) know it as well as we.

  98. 98.

    frog

    @YY_Sima Qian:

    Time for militant (not necessarily violent, yet) resistance – start laying the groundwork for general strikes. Conditions are not quite ripe for that yet, unfortunately.

    A good step before a general strike is to cut discretionary spending as much as possible.  Use that money to pay off credit cards.  Your financial stability will impact how active you can be in an active resistance.

  99. 99.

    glory b

    @Professor Bigfoot: As I have mentioned here before, the Democratic party has not won a majority of the white vote since the passage of the Civil Rights Act.

    Electing Obama was the last straw.

  100. 100.

    Professor Bigfoot

    @bbleh: I wish I could believe that, but I see too many young white men who have signed on with white male supremacy.

    The idea that white supremacy will die out when the old white people die off is… erroneous, at best, IMHO.

  101. 101.

    Professor Bigfoot

    @glory b: A lot of people simply cannot process this.

    Of course, those white men will tell us we can’t possibly be seeing what we see; that history cannot possibly inform us as to who they are and what they want.

  103. 103.

    Scott P.

    I would like to see BJ raise money for a public expression of our gratitude to the US Attorneys who resigned for putting country first. It would have to be something that would reach them.

     

    Maybe something like a full-page ad in the Washington Post? Something of that nature. I would be ready to make a hefty contribution. I am open to suggestions.

  104. 104.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @Melancholy Jaques: If history is any guide…

    The Reform & Opening of the PRC promoted by Deng probably would not have been possible w/o the triple calamities of the Great Leap Forward, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, & the international isolation due to enmity w/ both of the Cold War blocks. That stack of corpses was very high.

    (On the other side of the coin, the PRC’s economic take off from the ’80s on would not have been possible either w/o the broad expansion of access to basic health care & education, the mass entry of women into the work force, & the industrialization that had been achieved, during the Mao years, although it is highly debatable how much credit is due to Mao himself, as opposed to the CPC nomenklatura that Mao sought to wage revolution against during the GPCR.)

    It does not appear that large groups of human beings, as a group, learn (or retain what we have learned) w/o immense pain.

    Of course, the above observation can itself be contested.

  106. 106.

    Sister Golden Bear

    About fucking time: 14 Blue States File Lawsuit: DOGE Is Unconstitutional

    A group of 14 states sued Elon Musk and President Donald Trump on Thursday, arguing that the authority the White House granted the tech billionaire and his advisory DOGE is unconstitutional. The suit, filed by Democratic attorneys general takes aim at the magnitude and scale of Musk’s power, noting that DOGE has led the Trump administration’s efforts to dramatically reduce the size of the federal workforce, dismantle entire agencies and access sensitive data.

    “The founders of this country would be outraged that, 250 years after our nation overthrew a king, the people of this country—many of whom have fought and died to protect our freedoms—are now subject to the whims of a single unelected billionaire,” Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes [photo] said in a statement. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called the lawsuit a “continuation of the weaponization of justice against President Trump.”

    The attorneys general argue that Trump violated the Appointments Clause of the Constitution by creating DOGE — an unofficial government agency — without congressional approval and by granting Musk “sweeping powers” without seeking the advice and consent of the Senate through a confirmation hearing.

    “President Trump has delegated virtually unchecked authority to Mr. Musk without proper legal authorization from Congress and without meaningful supervision of his activities,” the lawsuit reads. “As a result, he has transformed a minor position that was formerly responsible for managing government websites into a designated agent of chaos without limitation and in violation of the separation of powers.”

    The states are seeking a court order blocking Musk from making changes to government funding, canceling contracts, making personnel decisions and more.

    So… how long before DOGE completely defunds the judiciary? Because reasons.

  108. 108.

    bbleh

    @Professor Bigfoot: oh it’ll never die out completely.  I think it’s pretty well accepted that a good 20-35% (depending on the current political trends) of every advanced industrial society is reactionary and authoritarian.  And in the US, racism especially is DEEPLY rooted — hell, we’re not just still fighting the battles of the 60s; we’re still fighting the damn Civil War!

    BUT, their time of SOCIAL CONTROL is ending.  The 50s and early 60s will never come again, nor even the time of Nixon (who created the EPA!) or Reagan.  And to an even greater degree, the time that their values held sway, that they were the societal norm as well as being upheld by the power structure, is over (certain increasingly isolated places excepted).

    They’re done.  Maybe not in the next several years, but they’re done.  And THAT, more than anything, has driven them to nihilistic rage.

  109. 109.

    Melancholy Jaques

    @bbleh:

    I am skeptical about this extinction burst because it sounds too much like the demographic wave that people in 2004 were confident would bring about lasting Democratic dominance.

    But even assuming that it’s an extinction burst, those things can last a lifetime and certainly will last the rest of mine.

  110. 110.

    Redshift

    @Quinerly: I wonder if Murkowski understands that she’s made herself an enemy of Dear Leader by directly contradicting him, if is she’s delusional enough to think that won’t happen because it’s something minor and stupid.

  112. 112.

    glory b

    @Sister Golden Bear: To be fair, filing a massive complaint like this against the federal government, by a number of states, is a massive undertaking. They want to minimize the chances it will be subject to preliminary objections or motions to dismiss.

  113. 113.

    bbleh

    @Melancholy Jaques: yeah, as an Old, I sympathize.

    And yet … we elected Barack Obama as President, TWICE by an outright MAJORITY of the vote (first time since Eisenhower), just 3 and 4 cycles ago.

    So I am not yet willing to despair.  For all their noise and fuss, the clown show is already stumbling far worse than I thought it might, and the honeymoon seems already to be coming to an end. And they won by the thinnest of margins.  Organize!  And Fear Not!

  115. 115.

    Quinerly

    @Redshift:

    I found it interesting that the only other co sponsor of her naming bill is the other senator from Alaska.

    The little I know about Alaska comes from reading travel stuff and indigenous population sites. Locals are up in arms and want Denali back. It’s a hot topic. Alaskans are pissed. Only people in favor of McKinley name change appear to be all MAGA out of state people.

  117. 117.

    Geminid

    @Captain C: Kathryn Garcia almost beat Adams. My recollection is that she came up 8,000 votes short when all the rankings were distributed. But Garcia is not running this year.

    I wonder how that primary would have gone without Ranked-choice voting. Adams pulled in ~32% of first choices. Under the City’s old system, there would have been a runoff because he didn’t break break 40%. Garcia would have faced Adams in a head-to-matchup and I think she would have had the advantage. But we’ll never know.

    I think Cuomo will win if he runs. All he has to do is run against Donald Trump, who’d make a perfect foil. I actually think Cuomo could make a decent Mayor, but I’d still feel sorry for you folks having to listen to that guy’s lugubrious voice for four years.

  118. 118.

    Darkrose

    @Sister Golden Bear: WTF NBC though? In an article about 14 states filing suit, why don’t you say which states? Am I missing something other than “The suit, filed by Democratic attorneys general from states like Arizona, Michigan and Rhode Island” ?

  121. 121.

    glory b

    @Professor Bigfoot: Don’t forget, there will be the added benefit (to Elon & Co), of fundamentally changing the economics of the DC area, a city with one of the highest average black household incomes, based on government employment and employment with or ownership of federal contractors, who are now threatened with Elon’s DEIA madness.

  128. 128.

    Quinerly

    @Darkrose:

    These suits have been consistently filed by 14-16 states with Dem AGs.

    NC, AZ, PA , MI have been on board with the ones I was following last week. The Dem AGs are stepping up even though their states swung to Trump. I think we have 22/23 Dem AGs

  129. 129.

    tobie

    @glory b: i hope Cathy Harris is suing. She seems to have been really good at her job, clearing out the backlog of cases as soon as she was appointed.

    hehttps://www.meritalk.com/articles/mspb-clears-94-of-backlogged-cases-after-5-year-quorum-drought/

  131. 131.

    Jackie

    @Redshift:

    I wonder if Murkowski understands that she’s made herself an enemy of Dear Leader by directly contradicting him, if is she’s delusional enough to think that won’t happen because it’s something minor and stupid.

    I do believe Murkowski has been on the FFOTUS’s shitlist from his first term.

  133. 133.

    glory b

    @bbleh: I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Obama’s elections were the last ones before the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act.

    Since then, we’ve had black people standing in lines for hours, states that declared giving waiting voters a seat, something to eat or drink or holding their places while they went to relieve themselves to be crimes, black people doing 5 year prison terms for voting AFTER election workers told them they could (even for casting provisional ballots) and former prisoners being dragged out of their houses in their underwear and being taken to jail for voting.

    In one instance, a cop can be heard calling his precinct, asking if they were sure this was supposed to happen because EVEN THE POLICE didn’t think it was right.

  134. 134.

    glory b

    @tobie: I hope so too, the constitution gives more protections to government employees than those in the private sector in order to prevent exactly the actions that are occurring now.

  135. 135.

    Jay

    @Professor Bigfoot:

    It’s the GamerGate/Peterson/PUA/Rogan cohort.

    Toxic Social media has convinced them that if they are assholes, they will become “Alpha’s”, get the good jobs, the big promotions, all the girls,

    instead, Polite Society, work and women just recognize them as assholes, dismisses them and in response, they double down.

    When I worked at the place, and I was trying to get along, I went to lunch with the “Lead Tech”, who was 40 years younger than me, (and an asshole), to the local pub. Our server was young, compared to me, pretty, about 5 years older than the asshole.

    He started out “negging her” from the moment she handed us our menu’s. I just complimented her and asked how her day was going. You could have frozen a keg of beer with how she was “just business” with him, cutting him off, cold as ice. I smiled, cracked light jokes and Dad puns, asked about her.

    He went into a sullen sulk.

    When our bills came, his was just thrown down, mine was handed to me, with her phone number and a comment that maybe we could get coffee sometime. I said “that’s a lovely offer, but I am married to the love of my life, but thank you.”

    She was easily 35 years younger than me.

    When we walked back to work, he was all “how did you do that?”

    I said, “Rule #1, stop being an asshole and a dick, and stop being one at work”.

    Instead, he doubled down.

    Prabinder cross trained me on sewer camera repairs and certs, compression tools and certs, and other stuff that he was a specialist at, because I wasn’t an asshole, called him Prabinder from day one, asked, didn’t tell, order him around and only when I asked if it was okay to call him Phrab, and he said okay, that I started calling him Phrab

    The asshole called him Crab and constantly tried to order him around. Phrabinder was getting his Masters in Electrical Engineering, asshole had grade 11 and 2 years in Construction as “quals”.

  136. 136.

    Quinerly

    @Melancholy Jaques:

    I think he’s around 60 isn’t he?

    I like the idea of him in the Senate. Know nothing about anyone who is up and coming in MN. I’m older…know the old guys from my youth… Humphrey, Mondale…then in later years Wellstone and Franken. Great public servants have come from Minnesota, imo.

    Wouldn’t like the idea of him being appointed to SC, though. If we ever get the chance again I think anyone we appoint should be under 50.

    He’s been a popular governor. Name recognition. Seems like he connected with the youth.

    Maybe someone from MN will weigh in on other possibilities.

  137. 137.

    WTFGhost

    @zhena gogolia: “When in danger, or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.” Panic is often suboptimal, but if you’re going to panic anyway, do it right! (ahem) Remember, we lost our chance at a bloodless revolution when they re-elected Trump. He’s going to have to do a lot of damage, to a lot of people, so enough people are calling him nasty names and demanding Fox News stop their “fawning” coverage.

    I don’t mean “get used to this” because you shouldn’t But yes, it is that bad, and we knew Republicans would gladly see a bunch of people die, and we knew Trump was the king of pettiness. Yes, it’s bad, it will get worse, but people need to see what they voted for, before they’ll believe it.

    I will say something that might be unpopular, but: sometimes, responding here can become (for some folks, sometimes) doomscrolling, so, sometimes, well… not responding to a painful thread might be better.

    One thing I heard, that I agree with, is, shared pain is lessened, but, shared fears are easily increased – this might not be the best time for sarcasm or doomsplaining, if you feel folks are panicky.

  139. 139.

    Captain C

    @Geminid:

    Kathryn Garcia almost beat Adams. My recollection is that she came up 8,000 votes short when all the rankings were distributed. But Garcia is not running this year.

    She was my number one and I left Adams off the ballot entirely.  I wish more people had done that, or done what I did and just found the most interesting sounding underdog candidate.

    I wonder how that primary would have gone without Ranked-choice voting. Adams pulled in ~32% of first choices. Under the City’s old system, there would have been a runoff because he didn’t break break 40%. Garcia would have faced Adams in a head-to-matchup and I think she would have had the advantage. But we’ll never know.

    I do think she would have pulled out.  The more people see of Adams the less they like him.  (ETA–I think not enough people realized they could leave Adams off the ballot entirely, even if that meant they only voted for 4 ppl.)

    I think Cuomo will win if he runs. All he has to do is run against Donald Trump, who’d make a perfect foil. I actually think Cuomo could make a decent Mayor, but I’d still feel sorry for you folks having to listen to that guy’s lugubrious voice for four years.

    He could if he stays focused, but yeah, don’t want to have to hear that every time I turn on the local news.

  140. 140.

    frog

    @YY_Sima Qian: I hate to say this, but each dollar paying down one’s debt is a dollar taken from the consumption economy.  I think it will take an economic crash before Trump can be neutered.

  141. 141.

    MagdaInBlack

    @Jay: I have a little sign that says ” Out of all the things in the world you could choose to be, why would you choose asshole?”

  143. 143.

    frosty

    @bbleh: ​…hell, we’re not just still fighting the battles of the 60s; we’re still fighting the damn Civil War!

    Hell, indeed. Read Albion’s Seed . We’re still fighting the English Civil War of the 1600s!​

  144. 144.

    frog

    @glory b:

    Since then, we’ve had black people standing in lines for hours, states that declared giving waiting voters a seat, something to eat or drink or holding their places while they went to relieve themselves to be crimes,

    Oddly, voting districts full of millionaires don’t have lines so long that these problems crop up.

  145. 145.

    Quinerly

    @Jackie:

    And for those shitlist reasons, I am very disappointed that she didn’t stand up and vote against Gabbard and Kennedy. Instead she’s standing up for Denali.

    I despise McConnell but I appreciate what he did. Trump is slamming him tonight and questioning whether McConnell had polio.

    I’m an atheist. But I am fascinated when evil people seem to repent when they hear death knocking….see Lee Attwater and George Wallace for reference. I have McConnell resigning and Beshear appointing a Dem on my Bingo card.

  146. 146.

    frosty

    @Quinerly: ​
     PA doesn’t have Dem AG. He didn’t join the last one Iooked at. He’s supposed to be non-MAGA Republican – I’ll have to look into that.

  148. 148.

    Bill Arnold

    @YY_Sima Qian:
    Interesting. Hotchips 2024 had a couple of tutorials by a NVidia person (Haoxing (Mark) Ren) about the use of AI, particularly LLMs, for chip design. The kernels are software, but at a low level of abstraction fairly close to the hardware, so it is not surprising that LLMs and inference time scaling in particular are being explored for kernel design, and with early successes.

  149. 149.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @frog: Trump & his crew of carnival barkers & circus freaks are doing everything they can to crater the economy for the working & middle classes, so financial prudence is necessary.

    Consumer debt driven consumption is not sustainable, anyway.

  150. 150.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @Bill Arnold: If I understood the commentary around DeepSeek‘s papers for their V3 & R1 models correctly, their team spent quite a bit of energy optimizing at the kernel level to enable their models to be so resource efficient in training & inference. Not sure if they themselves employed their earlier models (such as the V2.5 or R1-Lite) to help them in the optimization.

  152. 152.

    glory b

    @frog: It is puzzling how that works out, isn’t it?

    Comparisons: a few men in The Villages in Florida got caught casting ballots for their deceased wives, they had to take voter information/training classes.

    Glen Youngkin (governor of Virginia) has a son who, at 17years old, got caught voting twice. When asked about it by media, he said he wasn’t going to speak about his family. Nothing happened.

  153. 153.

    Soprano2

    @bbleh: This is their attempt to make the world comfortable for themselves by eliminating everything that makes them uncomfortable – women and non-white people in authority, gay and transgender people in any role – from public life as much as they can. They don’t want to see these things on TV or in movies or music, or in business or any place of employment. It’s so strange to me that they complain about “too many” minorities in commercials and TV shows, but it’s a “tell” for racist attitudes about all kinds of things.

  154. 154.

    Jackie

    @Quinerly:

    And for those shitlist reasons, I am very disappointed that she didn’t stand up and vote against Gabbard and Kennedy. Instead she’s standing up for Denali.

    Oh, I agree. I was just observing Murkowsky is one Republican senator he hates -for voting against Kavanaugh, voting to impeach him, and then publicly stating she wasn’t/didn’t vote for him.

    Her voting for any of the FFOTUS nominees disappoints me, too. But, she is, in the end, a Republican; if not MAGA.

  155. 155.

    Quinerly

    @frosty:

    Oops. Thanks for the correction. Dem Gov/Repug AG in PA. I’m trying to count them out in my head. Maybe it’s Nevada with the Dem AG? Too tired to look up.

  156. 156.

    Quinerly

    @Jackie:

    I really suspect she would have had nothing to lose if she voted against Trump’s unqualified and scum cabinet. Nothing to lose unless Trump were to give Alaska to Putin.

  158. 158.

    Kayla Rudbek

    @Josie: I suppose that even some of the Federalist Society members eventually wised up. But I still think that they all ought to be permanently disbarred.

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