Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

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

If you cannot answer whether trump lost the 2020 election, you are unfit for office.

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

Just because you believe it, that does not make it true.

White supremacy is terrorism.

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

Sometimes the world just tells you your cat is here.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

At some point, the ability to learn is a factor of character, not IQ.

She burned that motherfucker down, and I am so here for it. Thank you, Caroline Kennedy.

Republican also-rans: four mules fighting over a turnip.

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

Republicans firmly believe having an abortion is a very personal, very private decision between a woman and J.D. Vance.

Petty moves from a petty man.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

So very ready.

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Open Thread — The IOC: “Look, Over There!… “

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IOC reinstates chromosome testing, banning trans women from competition: defector.com/ioc-reinstat…

[image or embed]

— Defector (@defector.com) March 26, 2026 at 2:51 PM

Whenever the media shows any tendency to investigate the IOC’s myriad failures, the grifters & ticket-punchers have a diversion: Attack the smallest, most vulnerable potential competitors as a Threat To Our Precious Bodily Fluids Integrity. (And they even had a figurehead female official to make the announcement.) But they’re getting some pushback here, at last. Diana Moskovitz, at Defector

The International Olympic Committee announced Thursday that any athletes who do not pass a specific chromosome test will be banned from competition. This means that trans women will no longer be able to compete in the single largest showcase for women’s sports in the world, and neither will any women who test positive for having the SRY gene. The implementation of this policy could lead to similar bans elsewhere in sports, as athletic organizations often take their cues from the global sports powerhouse. The new rules will kick in for the upcoming 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.

The 10-page policy doesn’t provide much detail on how and why the IOC, under the leadership Kirsty Coventry, the first female president in IOC history, reached its decision. The policy recaps a lot of closed-door bureaucracy with little explanation. Olympic leadership “conducted a broad-based review” of women’s sports. That leadership decided it needed a “working group.” The working group talked to a bunch of unnamed “specialists.” And the working group reported back to the IOC, which came up with the ban. The New York Times did name one person involved in the decision-making: Dr. Jane Thornton, a former Olympic rower and the medical and scientific director for the IOC, but the same article said the analysis presented by Thornton “has not been made public.”

So while the new policy makes many assertions—men have advantages over women in sports, all contact sports are more dangerous for women than men—there are few explanations given. No scientific papers are cited. No research is detailed. No citations or attribution can be found. There isn’t even a hyperlink. Everything is stated as fact. This includes a statement that “genetic screening for sex does not create significant problems in practice,” despite the entire history of gender testing creating problems in practice…

Also unaddressed in the IOC’s announcement is how this policy represents a solution in search of a problem. As reported by the Associated Press: “It is unclear how many, if any, transgender women are competing at an Olympic level. No woman who transitioned from being born male competed at the 2024 Paris Summer Games, though weightlifter Laurel Hubbard did at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 without winning a medal.”…

Even USA Today is calling this bullsh*t:

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Joyce Vance: An Inadvertent Release

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Two *longer reads to recommend, unless you have already read them.

Joyce Vance talks about the inadvertent release of materials related to the Jack Smith investigation, and Jamie Raskin writes a letter as ranking member of the Judiciary Committee.

Joyce Vance article

Jamie Raskin’s letter

*My idea of what I consider “long” has sadly been downgraded (upgraded?) because we are all being trained to have the attention span of a gnat.  Neither of those is long by the previous standard!

For an administration that is as evil as it is ruthless, and surely competent at the part that involves evil, I am at least grateful for the incompetence they display – which I believe they are displaying more and more.

Judge Cannon forbade the release of Jack Smith’s special report.  Oops, White House releases a key document!

Judge Aileen Cannon forbade it. There would be no release of Volume II of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s report, the part that dealt with the discovery that Donald Trump kept classified documents, some at the Top Secret/SCI level, when he left the White House. When Smith testified before Congress, he carefully tailored his responses to avoid violating the court’s order.

But not so much the Trump White House. In what appears to be a sloppy but serious error, the administration released a document to Congress that MSNOW’s Carol Leonnig and Jacqueline Alemany reported on yesterday. They write, “In a January 2023 ‘progress memo’ reviewed by MS NOW, Smith’s office discussed the possible motive after the FBI discovered that Trump held on to many documents related to his businesses.” Although the document isn’t publicly available, it sounds like the sort of reports agents and/or prosecutors might prepare for supervisors. This one contains some fascinating details.

The document was released as part of a regular document production DOJ has been making to Congress in support of the Republican inquiry into Smith. House Judiciary Democrats put it like this: “This particular production contained a memorandum detailing non-public information about the classified documents Trump stole when leaving office. The newly produced materials offer a startling view of evidence gathered by Special Counsel Jack Smith during his investigations into the criminal activity of President Trump, even as DOJ continues to suppress Volume II of his final report.”

First, is the hint at motive. Why did Trump do something so obviously criminal, and not do it particularly well? Why did he lie to DOJ officials when asked to return classified material they had learned was still in his possession? What was so important to the former president?

Jamie Raskin’s letter to the Attorney General

Representative Jamie Raskin, the ranking Democratic member of the House Judiciary Committee, slipped another interesting detail into a letter he wrote to AG Pam Bondi. “These new disclosures suggest that Donald Trump stole documents so sensitive that only six people in the entire U.S. government had access to them.” That suggests a document of extraordinary sensitivity.

How did the memo come to light? Raskin explained it like this in the letter to Bondi: “Apparently blinded by the frenzied search to find any scrap of evidence that could be twisted and distorted to level an attack against Special Counsel Smith (despite constantly coming up empty-handed), you have, quite amazingly, missed the fact that some of the documents you provided include damning evidence about your boss’s conduct and may well violate the gag order your DOJ and Donald Trump demanded from Judge Aileen Cannon.”

The reporting so far doesn’t reveal precisely which Trump business interests are involved, but Raskin engages in some educated speculation in the letter, which involves a classified map Trump had. “Without access to Volume II of the Special Counsel’s final report or the investigative files, we do not know what that classified map contained, nor can we determine from this memo the relationship between the classified documents President Trump stole and their pertinence to his ‘business interests,’” Raskin acknowledged. He continued, however, “We do know that around the time of this flight to Bedminster, President Trump was entering into partnerships with Saudi-backed LIV Golf and state-linked real estate firm Dar al Arkan.”

Jamie Raskin’s conclusion in his letter to the AG

Raskin’s conclusion is stark because of what is going on today, years later. “If this map is related to our military posture in the Middle East,” he writes to Bondi, “and it was in fact shown to any foreign official, Saudi or otherwise, that would amount to an unforgiveable betrayal of our men and women in uniform who are currently valiantly fighting in President Trump’s disastrous war against Iran.” Raskin includes a list of questions for DOJ to respond to and demands that DOJ “cease cherry-picking investigative materials and produce all remaining investigative files, including memoranda, emails, and analyses prepared by the Special Counsel’s Office by 5:00 p.m. on April 14, 2026.” I suspect he’ll have even less luck with that than Congress has had obtaining the full Epstein files. But as with those files, public awareness and outcry is essential.

DOJ mistaked its way into providing information it has been desperate to withhold and has been able to keep from public view so far, with Judge Cannon’s help. But her decision is on appeal and a panel at the 11th Circuit will hear oral argument in June. That court could order the release of Volume II of the Special Counsel’s report and complete our understanding of the picture that is only hinted at here.

This one letter that has come to light reminds us that Jack Smith had a serious prosecution that was derailed, and not because it lacked merit. Recent reporting suggests that the Saudi’s continue to push the war in Iran. We have the implications of Raskin’s letter at hand. American lives are at stake in the Middle East, fighting a war that appears poorly thought out at best and likely to seriously impact the economy. The classified documents case, which Trump tried to dismiss and then delay, ultimately succeeding, reemerges as an extraordinarily serious matter.

I cannot wait until it all comes out.  Which it will.  Eventually.  Hopefully sooner than later.

 

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House Tells the Senate to Fuck Off (maybe not in those exact words)

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So the House just told the Senate to fuck off.  Figuratively, if not literally.

Is it wrong that I’m rooting for injuries?

(The Hill)

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Friday rejected a Senate-passed bill to fund much of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), but not immigration enforcement, instead proposing a stopgap to fund the entire department for eight weeks.

The move amounts to a stunning rebuke of the upper chamber by GOP leaders — and extends the length of what is already the longest partial government shutdown in history in its 42nd day.

You can read the entire article at The Hill, but I’ll summarize it for you:

  • The bill had passed the Senate by unanimous consent.
  • Speaker Johnson is blaming Democrats.  (there’s a surprise!)
  • Pretty much everybody is mad at somebody else, but it’s not necessarily the same somebodies.
  • Either way, Trump has already been using the Hideous Awful Bill to pay ICE and CPB during the shutdown.

Somewhat related, Trump hasn’t weighed in directly, except for his executive order to pay TSA.  Is that even legal?  I have seen it both ways already this morning, and I haven’t researched it.

Here’s my question:  If he can pay TSA using the Hideous Awful Bill, why hasn’t he done it before now?

It might appear that there is no logic to what T. says or does.  Spock would be very displeased with that.  (As am I.)

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Fun summary from Simon Rosenberg:

  • This House bill cannot pass the Senate, as Democrats will not support ICE/CBP funding without reform;
  • the Senate is out for two weeks so who knows what happens next;
  • Trump is ordering DHS to pay TSA agents anyway;
  • Johnson just torched his relationship with Thune;
  • despite the begging and pleading from those running 2026 Republican campaigns Trump is keeping the despised ICE front and center in our discourse;
  • and yes, what a start for Secretary Markwayne Mullin!

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Krugman Calls It Adventures in Fantasy Diplomacy

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Thursday Afternoon Open Thread 9

Krugman calls it Adventures in Fantasy Diplomacy.

Another day in America’s self-immolation as a Great Power.

Most excellent phrasing, I think!  The article is too good not to share at least part of it.

It’s Monday morning. Donald Trump has, at least for the time being, called off plans to bomb Iran’s civilian infrastructure. He has done so because, according to him, highly productive negotiations are underway involving the government of Iran, an invisible six-foot white rabbit, and his Canadian girlfriend.

I’m not going to say that Iranian state media is necessarily a credible source, but the odds are that they are in fact telling the truth and the President of the United States is either lying or fantasizing or both. There’s really no reason at all to believe that anything like what he said is happening is in fact happening.

Why do I say that, Aside from the fact that Trump has not exactly been truthful on a lot of things? But beyond that, there are three important reasons to believe he might be making this stuff up.

First, he put himself in a very bad spot with his threat to commit a massive war crime if Iran doesn’t open the Strait of Hormuz. and must be looking for a way out. Another president at another time might say that on careful consideration, We have recalibrated the policy or something like that. Trump doesn’t do that. Trump is always winning, never admits that he’s had a setback, never admits that he’s changed his mind.

Second, Why would the Iranians be making a deal at this point? We can talk a lot about how the war is going, but it’s pretty clear that as the Iranians are likely to see it, they’re winning. I mean, they’re not winning militarily, but that was never on the cards. They are, they have successfully turned what was supposed to be a lightning decapitation of their government into a protracted contest in relative ability to bear pain and all indications are that the Iranians are nowhere near cracking and all indications are that the United States, although obviously we’re not losing thousands of people, and we are having our whole life disrupted, but the American public really doesn’t like higher gas prices, does not believe Trump. The clock is ticking for Trump on this in a way that it is apparently not for the Iranian regime. So Iran has has the upper hand here. And very hard to see why they would be wanting to make a deal until they basically humiliated us substantially more.

Finally, consider possible motives. Imagine that you were somebody close to Trump, somebody close enough to actually have an influence on his decisions as well as inside knowledge. Here’s what you could have done really just between last night and now. You could have sold a bunch of crude oil futures, at very high prices, Brent was over $112 over the weekend, then bought them back immediately after Trump’s announcement of triumphal progress, but before the Iranians said that is not happening. And you could have turned a very, very nice, very large profit.

To say that insider trading might be driving U.S. policy would have been outrageous. in the past. Who thinks that that’s beyond the realm of possibility now? So all of this could be happening.

This is the weirdest timeline.  Apparently there are no high crimes and misdemeanors here.  I must not understand the term.

I love that Krugman is so perfectly dismissive and disdainful re: the guy in the white house.

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Morning News

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The news is certainly a mixed bag this morning.

Is it possible that Trump imaginary talks with Iran exist only in his mind?

All signs point to yes!

Is it possible Trump has just imagined these talks and he just did a super TACO? Iran denies they are happening.

— Simon Rosenberg (@simonwdc.bsky.social) 2026-03-23T13:21:00.531Z

IF YOU’RE FAMOUS, THEY LET YOU SAY ANYTHING WITH NO CONSEQUENCES!

Trump on Democratic opposition to the SAVE America Act: "They know if we get this, they probably won't win an election for 50 years, maybe longer"

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-03-09T21:37:49.728Z

The clip of Trump opening acknowledging that the so-called SAVE Act isn’t what they pretend it should be played everywhere all the time until the bill (please please please) hopefully fails, and then still play it relentlessly between now and November.  Surely there are normies out where who believe that cheating is wrong?

Accelerating all forms of clean energy adoption needs to become central to Dem Party agenda now.

— Simon Rosenberg (@simonwdc.bsky.social) 2026-03-22T14:41:28.057Z

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Robert Reich seems to have a somewhat optimistic view:

No one knows what Trump is going to do from minute to minute, least of all Trump. But it’s looking ever more likely he’ll be exiting Iran within days, declaring his “excursion” into it (as he’s termed his war) a major victory — and then changing the subject.

On Friday, Trump posted on his social media site that “we are getting very close to meeting our objectives as we consider winding down our great Military efforts in the Middle East.”

What objectives? He never said what they were to begin with.

He’s about to wind down and exit because he doesn’t give a damn about anything except maintaining his wealth and power — and the war is now costing him both.

It’s hurting his financial backers in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar — whose wealth has been seriously diminished by the war and whose vulnerability has been exposed.

It’s pissing off Trump’s wealthy political backers at home — who are getting pummeled as the U.S. stock market sinks under the weight of the war.

It’s infuriating American voters, as gasoline sells for nearly $4 a gallon — causing Republicans to become ever more anxious about a political backlash in the midterm elections. Most were elected on Trump’s coattails in the 2024 election, in which Trump promised to reduce prices and avoid foreign entanglements — rather than do the exact opposite.

Let’s hope he’s right.

Some unsurprising but heartening polling news from CBS, via Simon Rosenberg:

Morning News

Heartening, except for the fact that the lowest disapproval number is on immigration.

Does fear of brown people trump everything?

Morning News 1

Open thread.

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Interesting Breakdown of Trump Voters

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I have had this Chicago Sun-Times article open in a browser tab for over a month – finally had time to read it yesterday and I think it’s worth sharing again.

I think we help give T and Republicans and MAGA more power when we talk about them as though more than half the country voted for him or half the country supports what he is doing.

Donald Trump’s base is hate-filled and dangerous, but it is not the majority. Nor is it half of the country.

A new survey from More in Common, an international pro-democracy organization (I sit on its global board), offers a more granular look at Trump 2024 voters and provides further evidence that MAGA is definitely not half the country. They canvassed over 18,000 Americans over eight months. In looking over their findings, the group categorized the Trump voters into four clusters: MAGA hardliners, anti-woke conservatives, mainline Republicans and the reluctant right. Their conclusion? Trump voters were a coalition, not a cult.

MAGA hardliners

These are the people we usually picture sporting red hats. They are highly religious, 91% white, mostly over 45 and less educated than other Trump voters — only 24% hold a college degree or higher compared with 29% of total Trump voters. They have little trust in institutions, believe that a sinister cabal runs media, business and politics, and are not averse to their leader ignoring the Supreme Court or other constitutional checks to “get things done.”

A lamentable majority (60%) of the hardliners say their man should serve a third term. (In case you’re wondering, yes, they do know the Constitution imposes a two-term limit, because it was included in the question.) Nearly three-quarters think we should “use our military to round up everyone who came to the U.S. illegally, put them in mass detention camps, and deport them.” Seventy-four percent say voting for Trump is part of “living out my faith,” and 94% (75% strongly) believe that God intervened to save Trump’s life in Butler, Pennsylvania, so that he could make America great again.

This crowd cannot be trusted with power. They are conspiratorial, cultish, dismissive of constitutional limits and punitive toward their perceived political enemies. There isn’t much good to say about them except this: They represent only 29% of Trump 2024 voters.

Anti-woke conservatives

This next group is a little different. Among Trump voters, they are the least likely to say their faith determines their votes (14% versus an average of 27% among all Trump voters), but also the most hostile to Democrats. This is an alienated bunch who believe (91%) that wokeness is a very serious problem plaguing America. So, while that was enough to put them in the GOP column, only 33% agree that Trump should punish his opponents. This group represents 21% of Trump’s coalition.

Mainline Republicans

Making up some 30% of the coalition, these are the most likely to say that they are Trump supporters and Republicans equally, the least likely to say America is in decline (39% versus 58% of all Trump voters) and somewhat cool (43%) to ignoring court orders. Fifty-four percent of this group, compared with 76% of all Trump voters, agree with the statement “The woke left has ruined American education, news, and entertainment.”

Reluctant right

Of this final cohort, only a scant majority even identifies as Republican, and they were the most likely to say they voted for Trump, because he seemed “less bad” than Kamala Harris. This group, which represented 1 in 5 Trump voters, was the most likely to say they were ashamed of what happened on Jan. 6. Only 28% of this group favored rounding up undocumented immigrants and deporting them (compared with 52% of all Trump voters). Twenty-five percent of the reluctant right say they have doubts about or regret their vote entirely. That’s a start.

Well worth reading the whole thing.

As I said up top:

I think we help give T and Republicans and MAGA more power when we talk about them as though more than half the country voted for him or half the country supports what he is doing.

Agree?  Disagree?

Can we help put a dent in their power if we stop exaggerating the size of his base?

 

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No Good Options?

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This is what the manic maniac president does, and what he will always do.

He causes a problem,  gives it time to get messier, “fix it”, and then take credit for being the savior.

(Robert Reich)

Trump is cornered.

Iran’s missiles, drones, and nuclear facilities have been severely hobbled, but its regime is still standing. Many of its senior political, military, and intelligence leaders are dead, but they have been replaced by others. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard survives.

Iran’s new supreme leader, in his first official message since he took over from his slain father, says Iran will continue to block the Strait of Hormuz by bombarding tankers trying to get through.

The closure has caused “the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market,” according to the International Energy Agency. Oil has reached $100 a barrel, gas at the pump has risen almost 20 percent since the war began, and the stock market continues to slide. Higher oil prices are also raising the costs of food, medicine, electricity, and airline tickets.

Trump knows all this could deliver Congress to the Democrats in the midterms. So — with the Strait of Hormuz blocked and Iran’s new regime sounding more belligerent than ever — what does he do now?

Here are the four options:

1. He declares victory and exits the Middle East within a few days, even though the Strait of Hormuz is still blocked — hoping that Iran will unblock it to sell its own oil.

This poses a high political risk for Trump.  (read more at the link.)

2. He unblocks the Strait of Hormuz with American warships escorting oil tankers, then he declares victory and gets out.

This is militarily risky.  (read more at the link.)

3. He spends the next two weeks trying to decimate what’s left of Iran’s missile and drone capacities and its navy, in the hope that everything will return to normal after Iran is neutered. Then he declares victory and gets out.

This is risky in a different way.  (read more at the link.)

4. He gets Russia, Venezuela, and oil producer allies in the Middle East to dramatically increase production, in hopes this will reduce oil prices and contain the slide of the U.S. stock market.

This will be very hard to do.  (read more at the link.)

He has backed himself into this corner.  This is an own goal, just like the thousand own goals since he came into office.  I have no idea what he will do, but he is guaranteed to make it worse before it gets better.  We will be living with the consequences of his actions for decades.  Possibly forever.

He seems incapable of learning.  Uninterested in learning.

*I love the image Robert Reich used – finally a photo of T that I can bear to look at.

I was reminded of this poem.

“I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost… I am helpless.
It isn’t my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don’t see it.
I fall in again.
I can’t believe I am in the same place.
But, it isn’t my fault.
It still takes me a long time to get out.

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in. It’s a habit.
My eyes are open.
I know where I am.
It is my fault. I get out immediately.

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

I walk down another street.”

― Portia Nelson, There’s a Hole in My Sidewalk: The Romance of Self-Discovery

The current resident of the White House can’t even get past the first verse.

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