Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

“A king is only a king if we bow down.” – Rev. William Barber

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

Stamping your little feets and demanding that they see how important you are? Not working anymore.

He seems like a smart guy, but JFC, what a dick!

“In the future, this lab will be a museum. do not touch it.”

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

Marge, god is saying you’re stupid.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

If you’re gonna whine, it’s time to resign!

No one could have predicted…

“woke” is the new caravan.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

Their boy Ron is an empty plastic cup that will never know pudding.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Not all heroes wear capes.

Dear Washington Post, you are the darkness now.

If rights aren’t universal, they are privilege, not rights.

I’m more christian than these people and i’m an atheist.

I swear, each month of 2025 will have its own history degree.

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News of the Weird Open Thread

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Anduril founder Palmer Luckey says the US should “expand our naval base on Guantanamo Bay into Liberty City [ie, a ‘freedom city’], an American Singapore of the Caribbean.” Anduril is backed by Tech Bros Peter Thiel & Marc Andreessen who support aspiring “network states” via Pronomos Capital. 1/

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— Jenny Cohn (@jennycohn.bsky.social) May 11, 2025 at 1:26 PM

I still have a Make Something happy – kiss an orc today button from a 1970 NYC street fair, but sometimes I wish Tolkien came with an ‘adult content’ warning.

2/ Link for post 1. x.com/palmerluckey…

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— Jenny Cohn (@jennycohn.bsky.social) May 11, 2025 at 1:27 PM

3/ Palmer Luckey’s tweet elicited this reply from the Charter Cities Institute, which promotes the idea of so-called “freedom cities.” x.com/ccidotcity/s…

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— Jenny Cohn (@jennycohn.bsky.social) May 11, 2025 at 1:29 PM

4/ chartercitiesinstitute.org/research/gua…

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— Jenny Cohn (@jennycohn.bsky.social) May 11, 2025 at 1:30 PM

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MAHA Slap Fight! (Open Thread)

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As long time readers of this space know, I have the political instincts of a concussed garden snail, so no one should ever pay any mind to my predictions of what’s going to happen in an election. I confidently predicted the elections of both Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris.

Going back decades, I’ve backed the wrong horse in every Democratic primary with one exception: Barack Obama. So it’s no surprise that among the many things I didn’t see coming, I utterly failed to comprehend the danger when Trump’s MAGA movement merged with RFK the Lesser’s woo-woo kooks last year.

In my defense, at first blush, it made for a seemingly unwieldy base coalition, crunchy granola types who haunt dairy farms and fondle cows for raw milk united with human truck-nuts who subsist on bags of pork cracklings dipped in convenience store nacho sauce. I failed to see what they had in common, which is a propensity to credulously swallow the dumbest conspiracy theories. It was enough, damn it.

But now it looks like the cells within that malignant coalition are busily dividing, and with any luck, maybe that will kill the rotten host eventually. Here’s an excerpt from Michelle Goldberg’s NYT column on a MAHA spat that broke out when Kennedy recommended wellness quack Casey Means for surgeon general.

Means is a close ally of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., now the secretary of health and human services. Yet much of Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again, or MAHA, movement has revolted against her nomination. It’s a rift that underscores the instability of a political coalition built on paranoia, distrust and the dogged pursuit of social media clout.

Among the loudest voices railing against Means is Laura Loomer, the conspiracy theorist who has achieved an outsize role in some of Trump’s personnel decisions. In a post on X, she zeroed in on Means’s new age spiritual practices, detailed in a 2024 newsletter article Means wrote about finding love at 35. The surgeon general nominee described working with a medium, doing full moon ceremonies and “plant medicine experiences,” and asking for help from trees. Loomer called her a crackpot and warned, without a trace of irony, “The inmates are running the asylum!”

Loomer! Calling someone else a crackpot!

Kennedy’s former running mate Nicole Shanahan suggested RFK Jr. is being controlled by his siblings. Naomi Wolf (the nutty Naomi, not the Klein) thinks Means and her wellness entrepreneur brother, who also works at HHS, are CIA plants. RFK Jr.’s pushback is just making things worse, according to Goldberg:

Kennedy has responded to these attacks by accusing Means’s detractors of being paid shills for big food, which, as you can probably imagine, has made some of them even angrier. For decades, he’s been telling people that monstrous totalitarian powers control the medical system. In the subculture he’s helped build, scientific knowledge is found not in peer-reviewed articles, but down internet rabbit holes, and all appeals to authority are necessarily suspect. Now the dark energies he’s manifested are coming back to haunt him.

That’s the downside of the do-your-own-research methodology that rejects science and expertise. There’s no pursuit of truth, only clout chasing, and those who become “authorities” under that rotten system will be in the sights of the next band of kooks looking to tear down “the establishment.”

Couldn’t happen to a more deserving bunch.

Open thread!

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Overnight Open Thread: This and That Plus Some Music

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WaterGirl nudged me this weekend to see if I was still posting…which I am…but right now I’m on my last chapter of the latest book and traveling for the week.  So I won’t be around much to do the overnight thing for a bit. But here are a few videos I had set aside…

And if you can – the full moon is pretty spectacular – so check it out.

 

Feb 28, 2023 • #EarthRestoration #GlobalMovement #JohnDLiu

John D. Liu, the filmmaker, journalist, and ecologist, has created a global movement to restore the Earth. His objective has spread to six continents and has brought together people from different social and cultural contexts. It’s about creating harmony with nature and minimizing poverty, hunger, and social disruptions. Together, we can restore the Earth and create a better future.

 

This is in my Netflix queue when it drops.

 

And a little music:

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War for Ukraine Day 1,173: Well that Didn’t Take Long

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Well that didn’t take long:

🔴 Kremlin rejects Zelenskyy’s offer for peace talks with Putin in Istanbul.

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— UNITED24 Media (@united24media.com) May 12, 2025 at 9:38 AM

UNITED24 Media has the details:

The Kremlin has rejected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s proposal to hold direct talks with Russian leader Vladimir Putin in Istanbul on May 15, with top Russian officials denouncing the idea as political theater and insisting Moscow will not engage under any form of pressure, Konstantin Kosachev, deputy speaker of the Federation Council, dismissed Zelenskyy’s proposal, calling it “comedy and spectacle,” Russian state media TASS reported on May 12.

Moscow issued its response shortly after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced in a video address that he would travel to Türkiye on Thursday and stated that he expected Russian leader Vladimir Putin to join him there for direct talks.

“I will be in Türkiye this Thursday, May 15, and I expect Putin to come to Türkiye as well — in person. I hope that this time, Putin won’t look for excuses for why he ‘can’t’ come,” Zelenskyy said.

“High-level meetings, especially under such difficult circumstances, are absolutely not arranged this way,” Kosachev said, pointing to the long diplomatic groundwork that preceded previous potential summits between Putin and US President Donald Trump.

Kosachev accused Zelenskyy of attempting to “shift blame” onto Russia and questioned the sincerity of the Ukrainian leader’s intentions. “Zelenskyy doesn’t need a meeting with the Russian president — not at all. In fact, he should be afraid of such a meeting,” he added.

Vladimir Dzhabarov, deputy chair of the Federation Council’s foreign affairs committee, rejected the notion entirely, saying Zelenskyy had not been invited to Istanbul in the first place.

“Who invited him to Istanbul? Does he really think our president would meet personally with someone who has blood on his hands, who betrayed the memory of the great heroism of both Ukrainians and the entire Soviet people — the heroism of his own grandfather? Who is he, that we should sit down with him at the negotiating table?” Dzhabarov said.

He characterized Zelenskyy’s statement as a ploy to later claim he was ready for talks, adding, “Negotiations will take place, but through designated representatives, as has happened before.”

Another Federation Council official, Andrey Klimov, said the possibility of a meeting wasn’t entirely off the table, but unlikely.

“There is a chance [it could happen], but it’s not 100 percent, because everything could run into Kyiv’s obstinacy. Fine, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin comes. Zelenskyy comes. And then what? How are the talks supposed to proceed? Will others be involved? Trump will be nearby at the time — will he want to participate? There are still many, many questions,” Klimov said.

Earlier, Zelenskyy called Russia’s proposal for direct peace talks a “good sign,” but stressed that negotiations can only proceed if Moscow confirms a full and lasting ceasefire starting May 12.

Least surprising development ever.

A ceasefire is only possible if Russia is given guarantees that Ukraine will not defend itself when we attack it again.

— Darth Putin (@darthputinkgb.bsky.social) May 11, 2025 at 4:48 AM

Pretty much.

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

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Senator Murphy’s Theory of the Case

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An eternity ago, i.e., last week probably, one of y’all flagged a NYT interview Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) did with Ross Douthat, the neckbearded weirdo Times columnist. “To read or not to read” was a real dilemma for me.

Since I mostly approve of the way Murphy is handling the present authoritarian crisis, I’m interested in what he has to say. But I suspected straining Murphy’s thoughts through a Douthat filter would work like a water un-purifier, adding possibly harmful and foul-tasting crap to an otherwise potable beverage.

I was not wrong. There was way too much Douthat. He predictably tried to shoehorn Murphy into his (Douthat’s) fanatical theocratic worldview. I am not making this example up: Twice, Douthat insisted that Murphy repeat a quote from Barack Obama’s keynote address at the 2004 DNC: “We worship an awesome God in the blue states.”

Murphy acknowledged the reality behind the quote — there are plenty of Christians in blue states. But he declined to repeat the quote, to his credit.

Despite Douthat’s antics, Murphy’s take on where the party is and how it should move forward is interesting, in my opinion. There are a few de-douthatized comments below the fold that outline Murphy’s theory of the case Democrats should be making to voters, and here’s a gift link to the whole thing if you want to pick through the Douthat dung to find the Murphy kernels yourself.

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No Data, No Source, More Vibes

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I started to write this nearly a week ago.

Another mostly “normie” week for me.  The big house project, and the start of gardening season.

10 days or so ago I put up the post titled No Data, No Source, Just Vibes, saying that it sure felt like something was shifting.  At that point the orange monster had already lost the election in Canada and had not yet lost the election in Australia.

A week ago – last Monday, I believe – Joyce Vance wrote her The Week Ahead newsletter, and she seemed to agree with me.  As a country we saved ourselves before, more than once, and she seems to think we can do it again.  She even manages to extend a bit of grace for it taking some time for us to pull ourselves up after the shock.

At dinner this weekend, a friend told me that one of the most encouraging conversations she’d had recently involved a look at how other countries that have been through a democratic backsliding process, like Hungary and Poland, did. It turns out that the temporary paralysis that came with the first 100 days of this administration is fairly normal for countries in this position, especially for the opposition. Then, everyone gathers themselves together and moves forward.

The timing of our conversation was perfect, because as I’ve been doing a lot of research about how other countries have worked through attempts by would-be dictators to take over, as I continue to work on my book. I had reached the same conclusion—that giving ourselves a little grace for the shock of dealing with a president who wants to dismantle democracy is appropriate. But it’s also important to remind ourselves that just like Americans saved the country during the Civil War, during the Civil Rights era, during Watergate, we can do it again.

The moment calls for courage, and if elected officials, regardless of party, can’t muster it, then they need to step out of the way (and we don’t need to reelect them). It’s a failure of imagination to think government has to be the enemy. That it has to be stagnant, cowardly, and mired in gridlock. But at a bare minimum, our elected officials should be capable of defending the Constitution. Why else do they take an oath to uphold it? Trump offers only the politics of grift and revenge, and that is not democracy.

This is where we are as we start the week ahead. It’s time to move forward. Our progress may feel slow. It may not always be linear. But we are beginning, and right now, it feels important to be here and to keep going.

For the final piece of the trifecta,  Trump lost the election for Pope, as well, on May 8.  (How can that be just 4 days ago????)

We have a million miles to go, but it feels like the tide is turning.

It sure feels to me like it’s time for us to ramp things up.

We certainly live in interesting times.

 

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