In this accursed time of exuberantly fascist rule-to-ruin via literally the worst fucking people on the planet, it can be difficult to make out the diminutive cockroach skittering among all the jackboots — the little bug trying desperately not to get squashed while also fancying itself a part of the victorious march. And yet attention should be paid — briefly, as befits the topic — to the contemptible wretch Marco Rubio.
A man who has always embodied the Platonic Ideal of mediocrity, Rubio was preposterously hailed by Time as “the Republican savior” a dozen years ago. As one of the unfortunates who witnessed his rise in Florida politics, I snort-laughed aloud when I saw that cover. Rubio has always been utterly devoid of any trait aside from ambition.
The way Rubio tells his own story — always in an nauseatingly reverent, sing-song tone — has long been a tell about the snobbery, dishonesty and cowardice at his core. A Cuban-American who came up in the rabidly anti-Castro batshit paranoid South Florida GOP stronghold, Rubio used to condescendingly say “immigrants” were all well and good, but he was proud to be “the son of exiles” whose parents fled Cuba when Fidel Castro came to power.
He had to drop that cherished stump speech line when a reporter reviewed official documents that revealed the senior Rubios left Cuba years before the Marxists took power. Instead, they fled the corrupt U.S.-backed Batista regime, coming to America in search of better economic opportunities, just as generations of immigrants before and after.
Now playing Ribbentrop in the modern version of the infamous Stalin-Hitler pact, Rubio is carrying out Trump’s mandate to betray Ukraine. He was retconned as “head” of USAID to give cover to Musk’s gleeful “woodchipper” destruction of that agency, a pillar of American soft power, which Rubio pretended to care about before Trump came on the scene.
Perhaps the most ungenerous wretch who ever lived, Trump once taunted Rubio with the nickname “Lil’ Marco.” It was far too generous a pejorative; Microscopic Marco is more like it.
Rubio makes me ashamed to be an American, a Floridian and a Florida Gator, in that order. More to the point, his inexcusable actions on behalf of Trump predictably bring shame upon every Democrat who voted to confirm him, which is all of them.
Open thread.
Rocks
But how do you really feel about him, Betty?
zhena gogolia
Shouldn’t he be Molotov rather than Ribbentrop?
I am so disgusted and sick to my stomach. I have to focus on my work or I’ll be throwing up.
Gin & Tonic
Rubiotrop.
TBone
Your prose never fails to give me new life, B.C.
narya
Since it’s an open thread, thank you to everyone on this nearly top-10,000 blog–especially the front pagers (I’ve learned to avoid drinking anything while reading a BCrack post . . .), but also all the rest of you jackals. I had a rough day yesterday mentally, and being able to check in here and find the usual squabbles and comments and music links lifted me up. I learn from you, and you all help me keep working to be a better person. To quote Eleanor Shelstrop, “Just try.” You all make that easier for me. Thanks.
Shalimar
On a positive note*, Rubio has attached his name as the figurehead on what will be one of the most dramatic declines in diplomatic power we have seen in world history.
*for people who hate Rubio. This stupidity really sucks for the country and everyone who wants a stable world.
Kay
Don’t be ashamed, BC. Every single place any of us live has produced fascist Right wingers, with NYC producing the head Nazi. This isn’t just Florida.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
As I recall, Ribbentrop’s career ended at Nuremberg. As in the tribunal, not the rallies. And yes, I’m hoping Ribbentrop’s deplatforming at Nuremberg will be a harbinger of the fate that awaits Marco and all his collaborators.
Kay
I saw on Reddit that the German far Right party Elon Musk is promoting is slipping in the polls since they became associated with the US Right.
Running against the US regime is probably good politics Left, Right and Center in Canada, Mexico and now Europe.
Chris
Fuck that noise. Give me all the immigrants you’ve got, but political “exiles” can go fuck themselves. 90% of them are grifters trying to con Uncle Sam into financing their rise to power because they couldn’t convince any of their own countrymen to back it. We don’t need any more Ahmed Chalabis.
Soprano2
Oh no, Ed Martin the destroyer in D.C. came from Missouri, as does Josh Hawley. We have our own crop of destroyers.
Snowmageddon turned out to be not as bad as advertised. I think we got between 8-9 inches, which is a lot but not 14″. I was able to get to work today, although a lot of my co-workers didn’t. I think having my employment formative years be during a time when unemployment was 8-10% and even higher for teenagers, when there were 10 people waiting to take your job if you lost it, made me the way I am. I won’t miss work unless I just can’t get here. If it had snowed 12″ I wouldn’t have been able to get my car out, so I would have stayed home.
ETA – it was the light, blowing snow not the wet heavy stuff, which makes a big difference. Also, it’s zero degrees out there right now. It’s not usually that cold at this time in February. My birthday is on the 24, and while I’ve had many big snows on or around my birthday, it’s not usually zero degrees.
Lynn Dee
Wow. Most powerful writing I’ve read in quite a while, in a time of (very much called for) powerful writing. Bravo, Betty.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@Kay: Yeah, after Elmo cracked off his Sieg Heil, and Vance said we need to be nice to the neo-Nazis, all of a sudden it’s coming back to the public consciousness exactly what those bastards stood for, and it’s tougher for the neo-Nazis to pretend they’re the reasonable ones.
YY_Sima Qian
Part of the formation of a new world:
At leasts this new effort is an attempt at multilateralism, rather than block formation, exclusive spheres of influence, coercive hegemony.
Kay
I don’t think “rampant, unchecked corruption by an unelected billionaire class and their media outlets” is an attractive look for the US Right, and that’s what the rest of the world sees.
Danes who watched Vance’s speech joked that he had US tech oligarchs hands up his ass operating his mouth. They don’t think these people are bold contrarians with a New World Order. They think they’re bought and paid for and the US is collapsing. No one wants to emulate this. Its horrifying.
Kay
@Bruce K in ATH-GR:
A rare hopeful sign. People may not buy this shitty US export. It may sit on the shelves.
Soprano2
They’re right, and I don’t blame them. I hate it, but I’m probably going to live to see the diminishment of the U.S. as a world power and the rise of Europe or China. I wonder, is this how British people felt as they saw their empire fade away?
ETA – I’m pretty sure most of the people who voted for FFOTUS didn’t vote to eviscerate the CDC and USDA, for example. I doubt most of them thought about that at all, they were too busy blaming the Biden administration for high prices in the grocery store, which they can now magically see are due to other causes. Strange, isn’t it?
narya
Also: I don’t have a link, but yesterday the judge overseeing the EO declaring there to be only two sexes SCHOOLED the administration’s lawyer about the variety of x and y combos and manifestations and declared the EO to be factually incorrect.
Baud
@Kay:
Good. Hopefully that will happen here as time slowly marches forward. It hasn’t even been a month yet.
Betsy
It’s cold & I’m sad, so I’ve already decided I’m going to just eat all day — but your post really warmed the cockles of my heart and even cheered me up a little. Thanks, Betty!
davek319
@Lynn Dee: This, x 1000.
Rubio is the archetypal GOP Man of our corrupt, venal, degenerate age; constructed of brittle shiny plastic, standing for nothing, without a heart, no soul,no history, no morals, not even really human in all the ways that would count, nothing but a throbbing urge to belong near Power and share in the sadism, a rough beast whose truest destiny is to swing by the neck from a rope.
Steve LaBonne
@narya: As a retired forensic scientist there are few things that warm my heart more than judges who are actually scientifically literate.
Baud
@Soprano2:
It’s a good thing. How long have people wished the US had less influence in the world? Well, that’s where we’re headed.
Chris
Huh, my Cuban relatives are the exact same! Giant bug up their butt about Castro, but it turns out their move to the U.S. actually predated Castro by a few years and they’d been coming back and forth across the straits for decades.
To be fair, dumping on Batista isn’t exactly uncommon in the exile community either (though always with an emphatic insistence that Castro’s been worse), but even that comes with asterisks. A lot of the better classes in Cuba had a dislike of Batista that goes back to his first presidency, in which he implemented a fair chunk of progressive and pro-labor policies, even being on the same side as the socialists and communists at the time. The fact that he came from humble origins and that his skin tone was darker than the Castros also doesn’t exactly help his case as far as they’re concerned.
Steve LaBonne
@Kay: Now let’s hope voters in France and Germany who were considering voting for the far right will take a look at us and have second thoughts.
We can still be an inspiration to the world!YY_Sima Qian
I mentioned in the latest Ukraine daily post by Adam the futility & a-historicity of MAGA FP “strategy” of “Reverse Kissinger” to attempt to split Russia away from the PRC & enlist its help to contain the PRC. Indeed, that “strategy” represents a [widespread] misunderstanding what Kissinger actually pulled off.
As usual, Evan Feigenbaum demolishes the fantasy in a more pithy manner:
The PRC & the USSR actually fought 2 bloody skirmishes before Kissinger came calling, once on border between Manchuria & Eastern Siberia, another on the border between Xinjiang & Kazakhstan.
Ohio Mom
@narya: Glad we could help. Strength to you in this rough patch of your life — though these days, it’s hard to draw a line between personal rough patches and the big rough patch of this coup.
stinger
I love your writing, Ms. Cracker.
Baud
I’m still a little surprised that being associated with Trump is considered worse in Europe than being associated with Putin.
American Exceptionalism, I guess.
narya
@Steve LaBonne: here you go:
Judge Reyes: You understand, as a matter of biology, it’s just incorrect that there are only two sexes, right?
Jason C. Lynch: Do I understand that to be incorrect as a biological matter?
Judge Reyes: Yes. It is incorrect as a biological matter. You understand that, right?
Jason C. Lynch: I don’t understand that to be incorrect.
Judge Reyes: You understand that not everyone has an xx or an xy chromosome, right?
Jason C. Lynch: Honestly, no, I don’t.
Judge Reyes: It’s actually kind of a really important point because this executive order is premised on an assertion that’s not biologically correct. There are anywhere near about 30 different intersex examples. So someone who does not have just xx or xy chromosome is not just male or female. They’re intersex. And there are over 30 potential different intersex examples. We’ve got genetic differences. We have people with xxx chromosomes. We have androgen insensitivity, xy genetically, that may have female external sex characteristics and internally have testes. There’s a five alpha reductase deficiency that causes changes in testosterone metabolism, xy that may have female external genitalia or ambiguous genitalia. The point being, and I’m happy to have you guys brief this more if you want, but I’m telling you right now that there are people who are neither male or female. And so the premise of the executive order is just incorrect.
YY_Sima Qian
@Kay: That’s what I was hoping to see, MAGA making their far right simpaticos everywhere toxic to their respective electorates.
Baud
@Steve LaBonne:
We. Are. Goofus.
Learn. From. Us.
Chris
@Soprano2:
British people had nothing to complain about; their quality of life went up massively at the same time they were losing their empire, and their successor was a country that respected their democracy and largely treated them as BFFs to a degree that they did no other country.
I’d fucking love to lose American hegemony, if it meant we were getting a staggering number of progressive reforms that would endure for generations, and if the foreign power we were passing the torch to were the EU or Canada or Japan. That’s a fantastic deal. We’re not going to be that lucky on either count, I’m afraid.
Steve LaBonne
@davek319: We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour.
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
stinger
@narya: Oh, that’s wonderful! I’ll try to find a link, if somebody here hasn’t beat me to it already.
And you yourself have done so! Thanks!
lowtechcyclist
@narya:
Yay!!!!! About fucking time someone at that level pointed this out!!
Chris
@Steve LaBonne:
I worry about that. Europeans have a long history of seeing something horrific in the United States, shaking their heads about how those crazy Americans are just crazy, and then cheerfully voting for a toned-down version of the exact same thing in their own country.
JML
@Chris: there’s also the class of Cuban “exiles” who loudly talk trash about Castro and how awful he is and how much they’d love to return to their beloved home, but have been traveling back in forth for years via Canada and only go back to Cuba to lord it over the relatives they left behind. They’d never return in a million years, unless they got to be the new oligarchs ruling over the plantation…
stinger
@Steve LaBonne: God, I’d love to hear more about this and in fact, about everybody’s careers here. Being now very happily retired myself.
tam1MI
The Brits saw a horrifying rise in Neo- Nazism in the 70s and 80s, as it was borne in on them that their empire was gone.
Westyny
My nightmare is that Trump swings over to rearming Russia. Tell me that’s impossible.
Baud
Catholic Church could take a turn to the right soon.
YY_Sima Qian
@Chris: The solution to one increasingly problematic hegemony is not another hegemony, no matter how benign one imagines the alternative.
Japan has been trending revanchist & reactionary for over 2 decades, & its democracy is sclerotic & dominated by the LDP. Its treatment of the Ainu in Hokkaido, the people of the Ryukyu Islands, & SE Asian guest workers can be pretty horrendous.
Japan seems tame now because the Japanese elite know that Japanese hegemony is not in the card, due to the rise of the PRC, ROK, Taiwan, SE Asia, & due to the rapidly aging population & lack of economic dynamism. The Japanese elite absolutely fear a PRC hegemony (even a regional one) that might look to settle historical scores, & the Japanese right wing (the mainstream in the LDP) has been happy to rub salt into the wounds of the countries Imperial Japan had victimized since the end of WW II.
Kay
@YY_Sima Qian:
Wanted to ask you. I took a CLE training (continuing legal education) on AI. The instructor said China, India, Brazil and Panama were using AI to produce entire judicial decisions – to determine guilt in criminal proceedings. Is that true do you know? The training was by the state supreme court which is usually high quality but Ohio is SO fucking corrupt now that who knows. He said only Utah and Delaware have barred this use of AI.
Kay
@Baud:
I’m sorry. He seemed like a good one.
lowtechcyclist
@davek319:
The perfect exemplar of “who goes Nazi.”
Let us hope this period of our history is brief, and ends with a number of people in this Administration meeting that fate.
I am not the sort to wish ill on anyone, but unless justice is served, there is no reason for people not to try shit like this.
TBone
@Baud: Jiminy Cricket could this timeline please take a break with me
PSA on TCM right now
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z_(1969_film)
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Gin & Tonic:
It’s typically impossible to top something like BCrack’s first paragraph but you have succeeded!
Elizabelle
@Baud: Yeah, they have been preparing us for a few days.
BUT: Ratzinger was a disaster. I rather hope the Catholic Church will pick another pope in the mold of Pope Francis. He has appointed a LOT of cardinals.
Pope Francis has been about as good as possible in that corrupted entity, albeit his declaration that there were problems with both The Felon and Kamala Harris was … nonsensical. As we are now seeing.
Would you say the Catholic Church is stuck in the 19th century? Or 18th?
AWOL
@Soprano2: I don’t care what any of them “thought” when they voted for Trump.
They threw our partial white supremacist–based democracy into the vat of acid they themselves and their empty existences should have jumped into.
Fuck them forever.
Baud
@Elizabelle:
I don’t know what will happen. Reactionary forces are making their lives everywhere.
Belafon
@narya: I’m hoping someone can find a transcript for the entire session yesterday.
Elizabelle
@Baud: Me neither. And I left that Church, anyway, decades ago.
But one has to have hope.
@Chris:
One has to hope that seeing Trump, Orban, and what Putin is doing to and in Ukraine is a bracing lesson in what not to do. Plus, Brexit.
Interesting that Brazil is taking Bolsonaro to trial for fomenting an insurrection.
Maybe the US role in the early 21st century is to serve as a warning to others of what NOT to do.
suzanne
There is very little I loathe more in political life than ladder-puller-uppers. I would yeet them into a volcano.
TBone
@narya: thank you for that palate cleanser! Judge Reyes is my new Undaunted Hero of the
WeakWeek!lowtechcyclist
@narya:
Awesome!
Jeffg166
@narya:
That is too inconvenient for them to wrap their heads around.
i read a story about a woman who work as a state employee to explain to couples of intersex children what was going on.
She had a daughter who at age 16 still hadn’t menstruated. Took her to a doctor that told her daughter had undescended testis.
She was unaware her daughter was intersex.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Elizabelle:
The fact that we couldn’t do that in one form or another (including the second impeachment) is all one needs to see when recognizing just how broken “the system” here is.
suzanne
@Jeffg166: From what I understand, that’s pretty common; many intersex people don’t find out until they’re older. Some until they have fertility struggles and get medical testing to find out why.
PaulWartenberg
When I blogged about Marco, I dubbed him Third Place.
noticeatrend.blogspot.com/2016/03/face-it-rnc-rubios-not-going-to-happen.html
Jeffg166
@Baud:
They have always sucked up to money.
I love George Carlin’s routine about how an omnipotent god forgot he needed money.
NotMax
@PaulWartenberg
Contender for Thirst Place?
//
Steve LaBonne
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: It’s the whole country that’s broken- 40% of the population is all in and many of the rest don’t care.
YY_Sima Qian
@Kay: I am not aware of the judicial system in the PRC using AI to replace judges. Googling produced the below articles that might be relevant:
Reads like AI is being used as assistance tools, & not in places of humans in rendering judgement & sentencing. Actually using AI to replace human judges in judgment & sentencing will likely cause a huge popular backlash, & there will be huge vested interests in the judiciary not to make the judges themselves obsolete.
OTOH, the CPC regime did employ mass surveillance/AI/Big Data analysis tools during the period of intense oppressions of Uyghurs in Xinjiang in the late ’10s, & still does, even if the regime has eased up on the oppression since. (Link to report from the HRW):
The system used then was probably much less sophisticated compared to the models available now, rife w/ errors & opportunities for abuse. I recall reporting that one Big Data tool used at the time decided that ~ 10% of the Uyghur population of a county in Xinjiang were suspected of being under the sway of the “Three Evils” – Separatism, Terrorism & Religious Extremism (basically Salafism), but could not identify individuals. In response, the local apparatchiks proceeded to round up 10% of the local Uyghur population to be sent to the “vocational training facilities”, to meet a perceived quota. That made for plenty for opportunities for settling of petty scores w/in the Uyghur community.
Chris
@JML:
Frankly, I get the feeling that behind closed doors, there’s a hell of a lot of shady shit going on between the regime bigwigs in Havana and the richer exiles in Miami that indicates they’re not nearly the blood enemies in private that they are in public.
Miss Bianca
Micro Marco?
Yeah, seldom has there been a person for whom the term “pusillanimous wretch” could have been more justly coined.
japa21
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: I think Brazil’s Supreme Court is more reality based than ours. There was no way the Robert’s court would ever have allowed Trump to come to trial on Federal charges.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@YY_Sima Qian: The Trumpys do seem to be talkin to themselves on this. If Putin wants to use the US to counter balance China, maybe Putin should have thought about that before he started his stupid war that makes Russia so dependent on trade with China.
But then again it would be classic Putin to piss off the China like he did with Europe so this might not be as futile of Trump as it seems,..
Miss Bianca
@narya: DAMN, Skippy.
That’s some world-class schooling! But will it penetrate the MAGAt-brain bubble? We wonders, yes, we wonders…
Quiltingfool
@zhena gogolia: I’m focusing on your Patron block today. I started on it yesterday! Moving right along…
We got a crap ton of snow yesterday. Mr. Quiltingfool works for the county road department so he didn’t come last night, lots of miles of snow to remove. He will be pretty tired when he gets home today.
Belafon
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: They went through the broken system phase that we haven’t yet.
Chris
@YY_Sima Qian:
Somebody’s going to end up at the top regardless; that’s not a problem that can be “solved” except by that power being the least bad option available.
America wasn’t all that admirable in the 1940s (or today) either, but it was unquestionably the best choice available from the point of view of the British.
Japan wouldn’t be my first choice either, except if the other choices are Russia and China. Heck, for that matter I’d take India over them; still more democratic institutions, even in the Modi era, and less of a hostile relationship with the U.S.
Quiltingfool
@Kay: Missouri is waving over here. It ain’t just Florida.
Chris
@Elizabelle:
Yeah, I’m really hoping that Francis’ changes to the college of cardinals at least preserves us from getting another JPII or BXVI.
Booger
Thank you for expressing this so well.
Chris
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
There’s absolutely no sign that Putin wants to use the West to counterbalance China. Russian-Chinese relations have been very good throughout his presidency. The idea of a Western-Russian alliance against China is just fan fiction.
Elizabelle
@Quiltingfool: could you make me a Patron block? Might you do some more??
karen gail
Since this is open thread; my comments are about SSA-1099’s. I didn’t get one in mail, finally got login via mail since I have trouble hearing and the long code wasn’t clear over phone. I don’t have cell phone; still have landline since I make about 1 phone call a month and my internet is tied via that line.
So I downloaded 1099 and letter about cost of living since it appears that you now have to request to be sent paper ones. I must have missed a message or notice which is good chance the messages were sent to email address that died and had to build a new one. If they sent a paper letter I either didn’t get it or lost it.
Quiltingfool
@Quiltingfool:
Edit: come HOME last night.
Boy, I really need to edit my writing. This is not Balloon Juice after dark. Yikes.
Another Scott
Wilson has lots of issues, but the fact that he can admit a mistake shows that he’s no longer a Republican. That’s one thing going for him.
Thanks, BC.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Quiltingfool
@Elizabelle: Well, I’ve got the fabrics out, the light board is out, so…
And I probably won’t have quilt guild tomorrow, lotsa snow and we’re all old hens who really don’t want to share snowy roads with the crazies, so I got time, so yes.
I just finished a Sawtooth Cat quilt top for a potential customer. It’s different than the other Sawtooths I’ve made – the cats have cat fur colors (black, white, calico, gray). I kinda like it!
Here’s a photo of one of my Sawtooth Cat quilts…https://pin.it/5OUz3agQ7
I better get to work!
Another Scott
@Baud: Didn’t Frank stack the College of Cardinals?
(Citations elided.)
Will be interesting.
Best wishes,
Scott.
YY_Sima Qian
@Chris: W/ the way Modi expanded transnational repression into the West, up to & including assassinations of perceived enemies (which the CPC regime has never done), I don’t think an Indian hegemony animated by Hindutva will be preferable to a Sino-centric world order. In any case, India/Russia/Japan are all a ways away from anywhere close to even regional hegemony, let along global ones.
The only candidates are the PRC & the EU. The PRC is never going to be dominant enough to dictate to the world, as the US once did. Neither is the EU, which is further encumbered by disunity & paralysis (by design).
YY_Sima Qian
@Chris: The Sino-Russian relationship was already pretty good in the 2nd half of Yeltsin’s presidency, after Yeltsin became disillusioned w/ the West. But it only blossomed into a partnership w/ true depth & substance after the 2014 invasion of Ukraine, & Putin found himself having fewer options west.
Kay
@YY_Sima Qian:
Thank you. There was a request to clarify after he said it and he did clarify that the decisions were AI generated – not just a tool. I’m familiar with the AI legal tools – there’s one judges are using for sentencing factors – can be complex, there are mandates, etc. but they could have been doing the same thing with a spreadsheet or a paper and pencil if they want to go very old school.
Thanks for the links.
Kay
@YY_Sima Qian:
He said Brazil is using AI to address a backlog of decisions – they are tens of thousands of cases behind.
But that seems nuts. If your problem is you are tens of thousands of cases behind the answer is not “turn it over to AI!” – why are they tens of thousands of cases behind?
YY_Sima Qian
@Kay: Chinese judges could be using AI tools to help write decisions (like how lawyers the world over are using ChatGPT & now DeepSeek), but I highly doubt AI tools are rendering the judgments.
Soprano2
@Quiltingfool: How much did you get? Our official reading says 6.4 as of midnight; I think we ended up with between 8-9 inches.
Gretchen
@Quiltingfool: Very pretty
Geminid
Germany holds national parliamentary elections this coming Sunday. PoliticoEU has an article today saying that 20% of voters were still undecided, with 7% of voters saying they would make up their minds election day.*
The reporters noted that 63% of voters were getting their election news from TV, newspapers, radio and online news portals. Some 42% were also informing themselves through conversations with friends and aquaintences. Some got their information from social media:
The PoliticoEU article has a chart of polling over the last year ending with February 17. The latest polling showed CDU/CSU with 29% and AfD at 21%. The Social Democratic Party (SDP) came in at 16% and the Green Party at 13%.
Three parties were close to the 5% threshold for representation. Those were the FDP at 4%, The Left at 7% and another left-wing party, BSW at 5%.
* The 20% Undecided might be attributed to the many choices. There could also be tactical decision making as well. The distribution of votes among CDU/CSU, SPD and Greens will influence the strengh and character of the next coalition.
And voters favoring the lowest polling parties risk stranding their votes if that party falls short of the threshold. This problem is acute for backers of the FDP (Free Democrat Party?). That used to be Germany’s third largest party, but it might not have any representation in the next Bundestag..
Mustang Bobby
All he needs is a bristly mustache and an umbrella and he’s Neville Chamberlain.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@suzanne: That comes up in the movie Conclave.
Aziz, light!
Electoral-vote.com has the goods on Micro Rubio:
Geminid
@Aziz, light!: Turkish journalist Ragip Soylu reposted this March 9, 2022 tweet from Marco Rubio:
Soylu commented, “Oh, you say?”
Citizen Alan
@Baud: according to some conspiracy theories based on obscure prophecies, francis will be “the last pope.” According to the left behind series, the pope who takes office at the same time as the rise of the antichrist will be one of his minions.
Baud
@Citizen Alan:
Isn’t Vance Catholic?
Geminid
@Geminid: Ragip Soylu also posted video of Trump saying Zelensky started the war and commented:
Ragip Soylu is Istanbul bureau chief for Middle East Eye and his reporting beat is Turkiye. But he follows this war closely because his nation has a lot riding on its outcome.
UncleEbeneezer
@Geminid: Russia, like Hamas, was just minding it’s own business…/sarcasm
Bulgakov
That first paragraph is quite the banger🤣🤣🤣
Geminid
@Geminid: Another post from Ragip Soylu:
Soylu’s articlea on this was published today by Middle East Eye. It covers remarks Zelensky made at the prss conference held after his meeting with Turkish President Erdogan on Monday.
Among other items Soylu reported that Zelensky also met with executives from Baykar Industries on his visit to Turkiye. Drone maker Baykar produces the Bayraktar drones that made a big difference in the first weeks of Russia’s invasion.
Selim Bayraktar and his brother, Baykar’s owners, are stauncly pro-Ukraine and have opened offices in that nation with an eye towards opening a factory. Zelensky spoke of other areas of defense cooperation including production of Ukrainia turbojet engines for use in Turkish aircraft including Turkiye’s 5th generation Kaan fighter.
dww44
@Jeffg166: do you have a link to that routine?
Elizabelle
@Quiltingfool: Thank you, thank you, thank you! I love Patron. And your beautiful quilts.
Geminid
And there is some sad news out of Israel. There is an exchange scheduled for tomorrow in which Hamas will return bodies of four of those kidnapped October 7. Israel will in turn release Gazan women and children taken from Gaza during the war.
Israeli government sources confirm that three of the bodies Hamas says it will release are remains of Shiri Bibas and her two sons. The younger was 9 months old when he was abducted October 7, 2023. This is not a big surprise; when the Bibises were not among the hostages released so far people feared the worst.
dww44
@karen gail: As Treasurer of a couple of non-profits, one does have to request the paper copies. This was all too much work, so we hired our CPA to generate the 1099’s for us. They’ve the system to do so and it’s kinda worth the time and money.
brantl
@Kay: I have little good to say about the Catholic Church, unless it concerns Pope Francis; he’s one of the real ones. (Christians)
brantl
@Elizabelle: A great deal of it is stuck in the 12th century.
Lynn Dee
@narya: Did the lawyer’s head explode? I would’ve loved to see that, or whatever his response was.
WTFGhost
@Baud: Yeah, but he doesn’t care about the Pope saying we shouldn’t be mean to immigrants, because eff the pope, what does *he* know about being a good Catholic.
That said: ol’ Franky did say that it’s cool to vote for Trump, so, “one of his minions” would work. (Seriously, Franky-boy, he SPED UP EXECUTIONS! You’re supposed to be ANTI-death penalty, you effing *moron*.)
Keep in mind, all that is based upon Fundy interpretations of prophecy, and this is one where the most important part of “fundamentalist” is where they get their ideas: the fundament.
That said, there’s an uncomfortable sense of prophecy, and I strongly suspect that’s mostly due to people like Speaker RAPTURE_ME trying to create prophecy out of worldly power, which always works well.
Denali5
@Kay:
Just watched The Two Popes on Netflix. Well worth seeing.
Kayla Rudbek
@narya: good! I’ll go looking for the opinion.
Kayla Rudbek
@Steve LaBonne: it’s so rare to find a judge who understands the science, isn’t it?
The latest decision in an AI case seemed to come out more correctly because it’s Thomson Reuters Westlaw versus the AI company, and the judge is finally catching a clue because Westlaw has been one of the big players in legal research since the 1970s. So the judge has likely been working with Westlaw products since he was in law school. District of Delaware, it made it onto the Patently-O blog and you can download the decision for free without a subscription to Patently-O.
Kayla Rudbek
@Kay: I have been taking a lot of AI-related CLE through Strafford and I have NOT seen anything like this yet, and Strafford does touch on foreign law. With the caveat that I have been taking all the courses focused on AI and intellectual property law.
The persistent theme for using AI as a lawyer that I have seen in over a year’s worth of courses is that it’s unreliable and prone to hallucinations (that is, making up lies about the subject matter) so do NOT use it to cite cases or you will be subject to discipline by the judge.
Morgan and Morgan (huge personal injury firm) just got into trouble in Wyoming for using AI to cite false case law (suit involving Walmart), and I think it made it all the way to Ars Technica. The judge was dressing them down and reminding them of rules of federal procedure that they should have learned in the first year of law school. Go get the popcorn, it’s a glorious opinion to read if you’re the defense counsel.
Kayla Rudbek
@Elizabelle: barely into the 18th century in my opinion