Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The “burn-it-down” people are good with that until they become part of the kindling.

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

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

You passed on an opportunity to be offended? What are you even doing here?

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

Well, whatever it is, it’s better than being a Republican.

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

Giving in to doom is how we fail to fight for ourselves & one another.

Oppose, oppose, oppose. do not congratulate. this is not business as usual.

The lights are all blinking red.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

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

Republicans in disarray!

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

All hail the time of the bunny!

Tick tock motherfuckers!

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

Trump should be leading, not lying.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

Beware of advice from anyone for whom Democrats are “they” and not “we.”

“Just close your eyes and kiss the girl and go where the tilt-a-whirl takes you.” ~OzarkHillbilly

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

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” was supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

Saturday Late Night Open Thread

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Two thoughts to share: the other day Joelle got some popcorn flavored jelly belly jellybeans, and I had resisted trying them on principle but I walked by earlier and they were just sitting there so I threw a handful in my mouth and the only way I can describe how I feel about it is the last time I felt like this about something was when I was 12- 13 and saw Harold and Maude lying in bed naked or when I watched the Caligula movie a year or two later.

The second is that trying to open those vacuum sealed individually wrapped string cheese packages is one of the most maddening damned things I have ever done and you can’t just cut across the top and squeeze it out from the bottom there’s no fucking way that is working that’s like trying to get a fat person out of a wetsuit (don’t ask) and I have yet to open one without blaspheming a god I don’t even believe in at least once.

But I gotta get this dog to like me so here we are handfeeding strips of string cheese without making direct eye contact and not moving fast while keeping Thurston at bay.

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War for Ukraine Day 1,465: A Brief Saturday Night Update

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A modified panel from the Tin Tin comics. Tin Tin is on the left. He is looking at the Captain who is sitting at the bar. There is a drink at the Captain's right elbow and Tin Tin's dog is sniffing it. The Captain's word bubble says "What a year, huh?" Tin Tin replies: "Captain, it's only the 3rd of January."

(Current mood and yes, I know, it’s now 28 FEB)

Given all the whacked out activity of today, I’m just going to run through the basics tonight so I can go off line.

Sign of the Times: While Russia’s war on Ukraine and the Iran war aren’t directly connected, both are symptoms of the breakdown of the “rules-based order.” The breakdown started when the West failed to challenge Putin’s invasion of Crimea.
It’s the rule of the strong from now on, and lots more war.

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— Euan MacDonald (@euanmacdonald.bsky.social) February 28, 2026 at 2:09 PM

The good news is that by the time this is done I won’t be considered the only strategic moron on the global stage

— Darth Putin (@darthputinkgb.bsky.social) February 28, 2026 at 1:16 PM

When I said we wanted a multi-polar world, it was based on the idea that the USA wasn’t going to act like we do. Not sure I like this version.

— Darth Putin (@darthputinkgb.bsky.social) February 28, 2026 at 1:06 PM

War is nature’s way of teaching Americans geography.

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— Darth Putin (@darthputinkgb.bsky.social) February 28, 2026 at 4:08 PM

Donald might have to ask the guy he said had no cards for help shooting down Iranian drones that they can’t currently stop.

Be interesting to see what Zelensky demands in return.

— Darth Putin (@darthputinkgb.bsky.social) February 28, 2026 at 4:50 PM

The next round of negotiations will be fun. Ukraine will be told by a country that started an illegal war to surrender to a country who started an illegal war.

— Darth Putin (@darthputinkgb.bsky.social) February 28, 2026 at 11:57 AM

It’s all funny because it is also unfortunately true.

Bloomberg reports Russia will likely walk away from peace talks unless Zelensky agrees to give up territory. According to the outlet, next week is make or break, and Moscow says it’s ready to sign if Ukraine pulls troops from Donetsk region.

www.bloomberg.com/news/article…

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— WarTranslated (Dmitri) (@wartranslated.bsky.social) February 28, 2026 at 5:27 AM

President Zelenskyy is not going to agree to give up territory. He has been very clear and consistent on that.

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

show full post on front page

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Two Devils Dancing

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Two devils dancing – Putin and T – and I’ll bet that one of them doesn’t understand that he’s only a puppet, with the strings being pulled by the other devil.

I am not a foreign policy expert by any stretch of the imagination, and I have way more questions than answers, but as a human who is able to draw a dotted line from one thing to another, it does seem the height of hubris to not take note of the fact that a head of state assassinating the head of another head of state  is opening Pandora’s box.  That would be true even if that whole region wasn’t a volatile powder keg.  Right?  Or are we so far past the looking glass up is down?

I don’t know whether Politico‘s take is right or wrong or somewhere in between, so I’ll leave it to those more expert than me to hash that out.

As Tehran was being pounded by U.S. and Israeli bombs on Saturday morning, its top diplomat dialed Moscow’s number.

That made me think of all the people frantically calling T for help on Jan 6, looking for help and getting none.

On the other end of the line, according to an official Russian statement, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov offered his Iranian counterpart sympathy and promised his — verbal — support.

Iran, thus, became the latest country after Syria and Venezuela to feel firsthand what partnership with Russia does, and doesn’t, mean.
Since launching its full-scale war in Ukraine four years ago, the Kremlin has flexed its rhetorical muscle as the flag bearer of a so-called multipolar world. But, at decisive moments, its response on the ground in allied nations has been conspicuously anemic as their leaders came under attack.

Iran now threatens to become the latest example of the discrepancy between the Kremlin’s big talk in the face of American hegemony and the real world where that hegemony is increasingly on full display.

For Tehran, Moscow’s lackluster response should come as no surprise.

Frog, meet scorpion.  No, wait, is there a story where they are both scorpions?  And one is more poisonous than the other?

The writing has been on the wall since at least last summer, when — during a 12-day war with Israel that included a massive U.S. assault on Iranian nuclear sites — top Russian officials similarly offered statements of condemnation but no action.

In the months that followed, Moscow has tried to contain the damage. It has defended the Islamic regime’s right to quash protests, which they, reports suggested, used Russian military equipment and technology to put down.

And Moscow has publicly cast itself as a mediator between the U.S. and Iran, proposing to store enriched uranium stockpiles on Russian soil.

Is everything related to foreign policy simply kayfabe now?

In the hours after Saturday’s attack, many social media users dug up Putin’s comments from June 2025 at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum, where he defended Russia’s “neutral” stance during the first U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran.

Russia’s failure to intervene in Iran undoubtedly represents a reputational blow on the global stage. But it also might bring some spoils of war.
Moscow will be hoping to deflect attention away from itself by highlighting the West’s — and particularly the U.S.’s — failure to live up to international norms.

It is also likely to entrench the Kremlin’s rigid position on Ukraine, which it has consistently framed as a defensive move against Western aggression.
“It will be difficult to convince Putin that he was ever wrong [about the danger of the West,]” said Vladimir Pastukhov, a Russian political scientist affiliated with University College London, on Telegram. “To the doubters he’ll point to Tehran and say: ‘It could have been us.’”

At the very least, if U.S.-brokered talks on peace in Ukraine break down, Moscow will have its talking points ready.

Oh my god – IF the US BROKERED TALKS ON PEACE IN UKRAINE BREAK DOWN????

Are we actually pretending that the US is a legitimate actor here?  And that the President of Ukraine is going give up?

I laughed at T being called The Peacekeeper.  The president of the US is being mocked – deservedly so – on the national stage.

Among the first Kremlin figures to react Saturday was the deputy chairman of Russia’s security council and former president, Dmitry Medvedev.

“The peacekeeper is at it again,” he wrote on X, referring to U.S. President Donald Trump. “The talks with Iran were just a cover. Everyone knew that.”

If there’s one thing in this article that I know to be true, it’s that diplomacy with T is pointless.  Will Putin’s last move on the chessboard be to knock over Trump?  The only thing I know for sure is that these are dangerous times.

Fyodr Lukyanov, a Russian foreign policy adviser to the Kremlin, went as far as suggesting that the events in Iran show that diplomacy with Trump was “plain pointless.”

Moscow will be hoping that is the message that stays with its remaining allies — rather than its own inaction.

I am looking forward to hearing from BJ peeps who are more knowledgeable than me in this arena.

Discuss!

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Saturday Night Open Thread

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*BELLS TOLL* THE KING IS DEAD *BELLS TOLL* LONG LIVE THE NEW KING!:

There has been a swirl of reports on the status of Iran’s supreme leader since this morning, when it was clear that his residence had been targeted in the first strikes.

Satellite images showed significant damage to his compound. The first response from Iran was that he had been taken to a safe place. Then came a report that the 86-year-old cleric was to speak on state television, but nothing materialised.

By early evening, the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a televised address used an expression that the supreme leader was “gone” – but he didn’t say Khamenei was “dead”.

But a series of reports on Israeli and US media, quoting unnamed officials, left no doubt about his fate.

All the while, Iranian officials have continued to deny it. One presenter on Iranian state television, without mentioning Khamenei’s name, told the Iranian people to ignore the “enemy’s psychological propaganda”. It is hard to ignore this latest social media post from Donald Trump.

It may be that Iranian officials are preparing to make an announcement with a certain amount of ceremony. It may be that Iran’s Assembly of Experts is already meeting or preparing to do so – they are charged with the responsibility of choosing a new supreme leader.

Orange Julius Caesar is doing victory laps and screaming shit about people taking back the country when we all know that the Iranian mullahs, much like Republicans, have displayed a remarkable ability to replace one awful person or idea with something or someone horrifyingly worse.

Anyone who says they know what is going on is full of shit, but I will say that things will most certainly get messier in the power vacuum and all sorts of craziness may break out. Literally the only thing we can be sure of is that a lot more innocent people will die and that Trump will try to make a buck off this. I’m not even going to bother looking at any casualty reports because early reports are always wrong and our information environment is so fucked up I trust nothing, but I know a lot of kids have ended up dead because of this because they always fucking do. Precision missiles aren’t that fucking precise.

Also direct assassinations of another country’s leader is not really the best precedent for someone who is world reviled.

***

I’ve basically been livid all fucking day since reading that news, so I took it out on some stuff around the house- hosed out Steve’s catio, sprayed a couple of gallons on water, dawn dish soap, epsom salt, and vinegar on all the weeds in the front and on the sidewalks and in the cracks in the street and the cracks by the sewer drains, that will dry them all up and then I will finish them with the propane weed burner in a couple days and then respray, and the weeds will be gone, they won’t be fucking up the streets and sidewalk and I won’t have poured a fuckton of forever chemicals into the water table. Then I went swimming and really did a lot of laps- it was packed! A whole bunch of families and kids in the splash pool, almost every lane was doubled up, and it really was perfect.

After that went to the grocery to get some cilantro, came back home and grilled up a bunch of chicken breasts, and now we are here. My new technique is I marinate them over night (I have been using a marinade with salt, pepper, minced garlic, a litle chile, oregano, a couple limes, an orange or blood orange, and less than a table spoon of oilve oil and let them sit over night). Then I get the grill piping hot, sear them, and then turning the heat down. When they are 95% done, I take them off, and I put them in a glass lasagne tray and cover it with the lid and let them sit for twenty minutes or so. They are so juicy. As I write this I feel like I have already said this before. Whatever- it works that well.

And the marinade is so light it just adds a little sweetness to the sear on the outside from the citrus, so they are the perfect blank canvas to pull out and season and throw on a skillet for thirty seconds. I slice them up and season them for burritos or use different seasonings to put on top of a salad. Minus, of course, the Steve and Bolo taxes.

Despite all this, today is a good day because not only did my quarterly cpap supply arrive but I also got a 19 dollar jewelry cleaner and Joelle, I can report, can finally see out of her glasses. And her wedding ring looks great. And there is a new SNL.

Peace out. I’m not checking any more nws tonight so feel free to document the atrocities below.

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When Doves Lie

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Maureen Dowd will rightly never live down the dumb “Donald the Dove, Hillary the Hawk” framing, but she’s just a crappy NYT columnist. The following bald-faced liars are elected or appointed officials who hold high government office.

WSJ op-ed by JD Vance. Title reads: Trump's Best Foreign Policy? Not Starting Any Ways.

Also, this incompetent lying sack of shit cult weirdo:

Tulsi Gabbard tweet that says, "A vote for Kamala Harris is a vote for Dick Cheney and a vote for war, war and more war..." and additional mindless blather.

And this angry, sadistic fascist prick:

Quote from Stephen Miller that reads: Everyone still gullible enough to fall for the scummy media hoaxes: Trump said warmongering neocons love sending your kids to die for wars they would never fight themselves. Liz Cheney is Kamala's top advisor. Liz wants to invade the whole Middle East. Kamala = WWIII. Trump = Peace.

Overnight, their boss blathered on about protecting the U.S. from a direct threat from the Iranians (without specifying what the alleged threat is) when he yapped on camera about “blood and guts” and urged a brutalized civilian population to cash a worthless check his pinched orange mouth was busily writing.

But this crap he posted in the wee hours was probably closer to the justification that was really ricocheting around his disordered brain:

clip from a bogus "news" source that alleges Iran interfered in the 2020 and 2024 elections and now faces "renewed war with United States."

He’ll never get over the narcissistic injuries of not winning the popular vote in 2016 and losing the 2020 election. And while he lies about winning 2024 in a “landslide,” he actually got 49.81% of the vote and finds that intolerably injurious too.

Like I said yesterday, I think the primary reason Trump teamed up with Netanyahu to attack Iran is because that’s one avenue of power he can exercise with no constraints, at least not at first. The acting out will probably get worse as his popularity plummets and he spirals further. God help us.

PS: I don’t know if any of y’all ever visit Piggy’s crappy social media site to note his ravings, but it’s even weirder than late-stage Nazi Xitter. Lots of scammy ads for OTC boner pills and online casinos and whatnot. One of the more normal ads sells this hat:

USA 250th anniversary hat with an embroidered eagle, statue of liberty and liberty bell.

My MAGA cultist neighbor and his wife replaced their usual hats with hats similar to the above. They also replaced the Trump flag with an American flag and hung bunting on their fence and two banners that say “God, Family and Country” and “In God We Trust.”

The banners have slightly different designs and the same copy, except one banner has a comma inserted into “In God, We Trust” and the other doesn’t. I am uncommonly non-pedantic for an old English major, but for some reason, that comma inconsistency drives me nuts!

Luckily, I rarely see their dumb swag since I can’t see it from our place and almost never pass by their property unless in pursuit of an interesting bird. But it bugs me out of all proportion to the offense.

Open thread!

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Saturday Morning Open Thread

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Because I am a normal human being, I slept in until 7:30 because it is Saturday, and awoke to the news that we have brazenly started another mideast quagmire. It’s modern america in decline and every generation needs their own middle east quagmire, it’s how we keep the anti-Semitism and Islamaphobia alive and the arms dealers fed and get that vital jingoism pumping through the veins sorry about the fact you don’t have health care or clean water, we got bigger priorities- wars of choice, but you won’t be totally ignored we’ll give our old weapons to cops and ICE so they can beat you and shoot at you

USA USA USA!!! I fucking hate this government so fucking much.

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Guest Post: Speaker Emerita Pelosi At the Karsh Institute for Democracy

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Pelosi at UVA 2
 
Thank you, commentor Jeffro:

Below are some of the pics I took while attending the “Congress: Cornerstone of Democracy” event put on at UVA yesterday by the Karsh Institute for Democracy.

(pics were taken inside the Rotunda at UVA)

Speaker Emerita Pelosi was warm and funny as we would all expect. My biggest takeaway at the end came at the end of Q&A, after she had been asked about her biggest concerns and biggest hopes for our country. She said she understands the outrage but her advice was “don’t agonize…ORGANIZE!” I have to agree. 🙂

Pelosi at UVA

Other tidbits:
* She said that our current era reminded her of Thomas Paine’s famous quote about how “the times have found us”. Paraphrasing NP here: “It was true then when it produced the American Revolution. It was true when Abraham Lincoln led us through the Civil War and kept our country together. And it is true now.”

* She kept coming back to the main theme: Congress is in Article 1 for a reason, and that many of our current problems revolve around Congress not doing its job (ie, conducting oversight of trump)

* She closed by noting that she was thrilled to see so many young folks in attendance (I mean come ON, it IS a university Madame Speaker Emerita! LOL) and encouraged young people to not only participate but to run for office – especially the young women in the audience.

Pelosi at UVA 1

She did say a few times that she felt, unfortunately, not enough Americans view ‘preserving democracy’ as a primary motivator for voting, and therefore focusing on issues like health care, affordability, etc was a smart way to go for most Dem candidates. But she did add that ICE’s violent insanity and trump’s Greenland obsession/attacks on NATO were registering with many voters, too.

She predicted that Dems will win the House handily due to the president’s consistent low approval ratings. She also noted poor candidate recruitment for the Rs (and vice versa for us) as well as lots of R retirements. She’s cautiously optimistic about the Senate, too!

Pelosi at UVA 3

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