Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I’m sure you banged some questionable people yourself.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

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

It’s the corruption, stupid.

Today’s GOP: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

Happy indictment week to all who celebrate!

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

White supremacy is terrorism.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

Let’s finish the job.

Innocent people don’t delay justice.

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

A consequence of cucumbers

The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.

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Domestic Terrorism

Domestic Terrorism Open Thread: Aryans Assemble!

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I try not to overrate the ‘damaged individual attempts damage’ trope, but this particular story adds a twist to the old ‘Timothy McVeigh with a U-Haul’ pattern:

… The white U-Haul box truck crashed into the barriers on the north side of Lafayette Square, a few hundred feet from the White House, just before 10 p.m. ET.

A bystander appeared to capture on his cellphone the moment when a 26-foot U-Haul truck jumped a curb but couldn’t fit through barriers set on the sidewalk.

“There were no injuries to any Secret Service or White House personnel and the cause and manner of the crash remain under investigation,” Anthony Guglielmi, the Secret Service chief of communications, said in a statement Monday night…

The Reuters news agency published an image showing a Nazi-style red flag emblazoned with a swastika laid on the ground beside the van. Reuters, citing its own photographer on the scene and a witness, reported that the items apparently taken from the truck had been placed on the sidewalk and were seized by officers.

Video footage later showed a robot opening the back of the truck, which appeared to be empty.


His poor family…

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Late Night Open Thread: Former NYC Field Office F.B.I. Agent Charged in Jan. 6 Riot

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Federal prosecutors have charged a former F.B.I. agent with illegally entering the Capitol during the Jan. 6 riot and said he had called police officers Nazis as he encouraged a mob of Trump loyalists to kill them.

The former agent, Jared L. Wise, was arrested on Monday and faces four misdemeanor counts, including disrupting the orderly conduct of government and trespassing, after agents received a tip in January last year that he had been inside the Capitol, according to a criminal complaint…

Over the past two years, scores of rioters with military experience have been arrested in connection with the Capitol attack. But Mr. Wise is the rare former federal agent to have been charged. The F.B.I. said agents first found Mr. Wise living in New Braunfels, Texas, before he moved to Bend, Ore., in June…

From 2004 to 2017, Mr. Wise worked on public corruption and counterterrorism matters at the F.B.I. field offices in Washington, D.C., and New York. He was briefly detailed to Libya to help agents investigate the terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012, that killed four Americans. Mr. Wise left the bureau after his supervisors in New York became unhappy with his work, and his career had stalled, a former senior F.B.I. official said.

Mr. Wise later joined the conservative group Project Veritas under the supervision of a former British spy, Richard Seddon, who had been recruited by the security contractor Erik Prince to train operatives to infiltrate trade unions, Democratic congressional campaigns and other targets…

I swear, one of the big reasons the MAGAts worship TFG is that he did his best to live out their Walter Mitty fantasies.

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Tuesday Morning Open Thread: ‘Speaker’ McCarthy Already In Over His Head

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Tuesday Morning Open Thread: 'Speaker' McCarthy Already In Over His Head

(Jack Ohman via GoComics.com)

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Foreign Affairs Open Thread: The Bolsonaro From Brazil

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Bolsonaro might quite plausibly need medical care — he’s had repeated hospitalizations for bowel obstructions since surviving an assassination attempt some years ago, not to mention suffering the aftereffects of multiple coronavirus infections. And no doubt it’s very stressful when your supporters’ attempts to overthrow your legitimately elected successor fail miserably and publicly.

NPR has more details:

Google Translate: White House: Biden invited Lula to visit Washington in early February. Lula accepted the invitation.

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Cold Grey Pre-Dawn Open Thread: “Post-Election Unrest” in Brazil

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A three-hour tour, on a Sunday afternoon… There will be much more information coming out, I’m sure, but here’s a post of immediate reactions, to mark the event.

Brazil’s Supreme Court late on Sunday removed the governor of Brasilia from office for 90 days due to flaws in security in the capital, after thousands of backers of far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro ransacked government buildings.

Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes also ordered social media platforms Facebook, Twitter and TikTok to block coup-mongering propaganda.

Brazilian authorities have begun investigating the worst attack on the country’s institutions since democracy was restored four decades ago, with President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva vowing to bring those responsible for the riot to justice.

Tens of thousands of anti-democratic demonstrators on Sunday invaded the Supreme Court, Congress and the presidential palace and smashed windows, overturned furniture, destroyed art works and stole the country’s original 1988 Constitution. Guns were also seized from a presidential security office…

Lula blamed Bolsonaro for inflaming his supporters after a campaign of baseless allegations about election fraud after the end of his rule marked by divisive nationalist populism.

From Florida, where he flew 48 hours before his term ended, Bolsonaro rejected the accusation, tweeting that peaceful demonstrations were democratic but the invasion of government buildings “crossed the line.”…

Police retook the damaged public buildings in the iconic futuristic capital after three hours and dispersed the crowd with tear gas.

Justice Minister Flavio Dino said 200 demonstrators had been arrested, but governor Rocha put the number at 400.

Dino said investigations will aim to uncover who financed the several hundred buses that brought Bolsonaro’s supporters to Brasilia and also probe Rocha for not preparing security…

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Stochastic Terrorism Comes To Boston

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Talking Points Memo reported yesterday on a series of bomb threats delivered to Tufts University.  Tufts–which occupies the border region between Somerville and Medford, west and north of Cambridge and Boston, had, it seemed committed the sin of teaching about race and the concept and history of whiteness in the US.

The first threat came last Wednesday, following the Tuft’s Diversity and Inclusion department hosting “Unpacking Whiteness” — part of a series of programs focused on addressing “the experience of those who have racial privilege and who would like to find support in understanding how to practice anti-racism in their daily lives.”

The bomb threat, emailed to the Diversity and Inclusion department, said it was a response to the event.

“Tufts university continues to fuel anti white racism in this country by having bullshit courses like ‘unpack whiteness’ which is anti white propaganda,” the email read. “We are a multiracial group who doesn’t want white people to be treated like shit… We placed several bombs in Tufts university, we don’t want anyone to die, we are just here to send a message.”

This was followed by renewed threats on Thursday, Friday, Monday, Tuesday and yesterday.  They seem all to have been hoaxes, though the group escalated this week by adding the Boston office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms to their target list.  That will, I think, prove to be a notable mistake. Whatever the feds may feel about university DEIJ efforts, they do not take kindly to threats against themselves.

Tufts has moved its finals online, which seems to me to be prudent.

Stochastic Terrorism Comes To Boston

But that’s already a minor win for the terrorists behind these threats.  As Adam has written many, many times, the American radical right wants to destroy civic space, the places where we encounter each other, experience things together, talk and learn. That space at Tufts has been narrowed this week.

The only other comment I have is that the GOP is to the people behind this as pre-1933 Nazi members of the Reichstag were to the Brown Shirts: the “polite” wing of a movement explicitly aiming to seize power by any means available to them.

But we knew that.

Happy holidays, I guess…and open thread.

Image: Albert Anker, The School Examination, 1862.

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Attack on Speaker’s husband sounds like domestic terrorism

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Here’s an excerpt from the Wall Street Journal coverage:

The intruder shouted, “Where is Nancy?” before attacking her husband, one of the officials said.

The intruder broke in through a sliding-glass door and beat Mr. Pelosi with a hammer, one of the officials said, leaving him badly injured with wounds to the head and body. The alleged assailant was arrested.

The suspected attacker has espoused extreme right-wing views on social media, including conspiracy theories about Covid-19, according to one of the law-enforcement officials.

Here’s further information on the suspect, 42-year-old David DePape, from CNN:

Last year, David DePape posted links on his Facebook page to multiple videos produced by My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell falsely alleging that the 2020 election was stolen. Other posts included transphobic images and linked to websites claiming Covid-19 vaccines were deadly. “The death rates being promoted are what ever ‘THEY’ want to be promoted as the death rate,” one post read.

DePape also posted links to YouTube videos with titles like “Democrat FARCE Commission to Investigate January 6th Capitol Riot COLLAPSES in Congress!!!” and “Global Elites Plan To Take Control Of YOUR Money! (Revealed)”

Two days after former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin was found guilty of killing George Floyd, DePape wrote that the trial was “a modern lynching,” falsely indicating that Floyd died of a drug overdose.

So, yeah — a violent rightwing nutcase, which means the attack was almost certainly domestic terrorism. According to the SF police briefing, DePape attempted to tie Mr. Pelosi up and wait for the Speaker to return home, presumably so he could assault her too.

Kevin McCarthy, who recently said it would be “hard not to hit her with it” if Nancy Pelosi relinquishes the Speaker’s gavel to him after the midterms, sent thoughts and prayers, I assume.

Open thread.

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