Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The republican caucus is covering themselves with something, and it is not glory.

You cannot love your country only when you win.

You’re just a puppy masquerading as an old coot.

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

Jack be nimble, jack be quick, hurry up and indict this prick.

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

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

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

Weird. Rome has an American Pope and America has a Russian President.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

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

I don’t recall signing up for living in a dystopian sci-fi novel.

the 10% who apparently lack object permanence

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

There are some who say that there are too many strawmen arguments on this blog.

Find someone who loves you the way trump and maga love traitors.

The willow is too close to the house.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

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

Optimism opens the door to great things.

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Overnight Open Thread: Quietly Exploring the Moon

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I covered this moon landing in an earlier post, and now Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost has been on the moon since March 2nd. Data is starting to come in. On their YouTube page (here), they have weekly updates.

Seems they are quietly doing science on the moon…

‘We learned so much that we didn’t know’: Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost moon lander mission was full of surprises

By

“So there’s so much new discovery that we found and we can pass that forward to other CLPS missions.”

Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lunar lander captured stunning views of the moon after its second lunar orbit maneuver on Feb. 24, 2025. (Image credit: Firefly Aerospace)

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado — Lessons learned and on-the-spot surprises from the first fully successful commercial lunar lander mission bolsters the chances of long-term robotic and human operations on the moon.

The Firefly Aerospace Blue Ghost Mission 1 safely touched down on March 2 within the targeted Mare Crisium landing zone. Plopping down on its four landing legs, the spacecraft delivered ten science instruments and technology demonstration gear through the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative.

Blue Ghost completed more than 14 days of surface operations during 346 hours of daylight, stretching its lifetime for a little over 5 hours into the super-chilly lunar night.

***

Surprise finding

After landing, Blue Ghost immediately got to work.

Kim spotlighted two payloads, the LISTER drill to probe the moon’s subsurface and the Lunar PlanetVac that successfully collected, transferred, and sorted lunar regolith from the moon using pressurized nitrogen gas. It proved to be a low cost, low mass solution for future robotic sample collection.

LISTER was developed jointly by Texas Tech University and Honeybee Robotics, a Blue Origin company that also provided the Lunar PlanetVac.

The LISTER drill, plowing down an unprecedented three feet instead of a projected 10 feet, “did hit some really hard rock formations,” related Kim, “and that’s the whole discovery. We learned so much that we didn’t know.”

A surprising finding from Blue Ghost was the lunar temperature.

“Nobody has ever done noon operations on the lunar surface. We found out that it’s hotter than expected and modeled.” It actually starts sooner and it lasts longer, Kim said, observing that the temperature swings on the moon “were really, really crazy.”

***

Made in the shade solution

Blue Ghost mission controllers came up with a clever “beat the heat” idea during lunar operations.

When the lander was going through lunar noon and was over-heating, Earth operators wanted to assure radio operations were maintained.

Blue Ghost’s rectangular antenna on the lander’s top deck was gimbaled in such a way as to shade the area in which the radio was contained.

“We’re from Texas so we know about shade,” Kim said. Indeed, that “made in the shade” approach got the radio back into operational configuration.

Blue Ghost’s five-hour sojourn into the lunar night also provided some takeaway messages.

“NASA wanted us to turn on the payloads, so we did, and we actually got some payload data,” Kim said. “The LISTER was the last payload standing. That was pretty spectacular.”

These are just excerpts, the entire article is worth a read here.

 

 

Zander Kitty as a quilt block

I received a surprise gift from QuiltingFool. She took a photo of Zander and turned him into a quilt block and I couldn’t be more touched. I still miss that guy. He’s hanging next to Bixby right now until I decide how I want to display him.

My eyes have really been bothering me this late in the evening, so forgive any typos. I should really be off the screens this late…

This is an open thread

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War for Ukraine Day 1,157: A Meeting of Some Minds

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Air raid alerts for drone swarms are up for all of eastern and most of central Ukraine as of 8:35 PM EDT/3:30 AM local time in Ukraine.

President Zelenskyy traveled to Rome and Vatican City today for Pope Francis’s funeral. While there he had a few bilateral engagements on the sidelines.

“Applause broke out when Zelenskyy, dressed in the black military-style garb that has become his wartime staple, stepped into St Peter’s Square.”
on.ft.com/4jrVruR

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— Christopher Miller (@christopherjm.ft.com) April 26, 2025 at 7:41 AM

Some clearly important diplomacy happening in Rome/Vatican City this morning

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— Mujtaba Rahman (@mijrahman.bsky.social) April 26, 2025 at 8:51 AM

“You did a horrible job” Vs. “Bonjour, mon ami!”

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— Kate from Kharkiv (@kateinkharkiv.bsky.social) April 26, 2025 at 9:30 AM

Don’t just watch this from an American point of view and our handshaking culture.

The French shake EVERYONE’S hands. ALWAYS. In contexts where we don’t.

So for Macron to skip it is wow…

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— Cathy Gellis (@cathygellis.bsky.social) April 26, 2025 at 11:21 AM

Zelenskyy and von der Leyen discussed Ukraine’s EU accession steps in Rome. “Europe will always stand by Ukraine in its pursuit of peace. You can count on our support for a just and lasting peace,” von der Leyen wrote on X. She added they reviewed Ukraine’s efforts to join the EU family of nations.

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— WarTranslated (Dmitri) (@wartranslated.bsky.social) April 26, 2025 at 12:47 PM

Zelenskyy on his Trump meeting to journalists: “We discussed very sensitive issues and the results of the London talks, but I’d prefer not to go into details.”

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— WarTranslated (Dmitri) (@wartranslated.bsky.social) April 26, 2025 at 8:41 AM

Trump after meeting Zelensky in Rome:
“[T]here was no reason for Putin to be shooting missiles into civilian areas, cities… It makes me think that maybe he doesn’t want to stop the war, he’s just tapping me along, and has to be dealt with differently, through “Banking” or “Secondary Sanctions?””

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— Christopher Miller (@christopherjm.ft.com) April 26, 2025 at 9:51 AM

Obligatory:

Last night, way2blue asked:

Tonight’s sparked a couple questions about Trump’s ‘negotiating strategy’:

I will remind everyone that there is no deal to sign.

Is the purpose of Trump saying a deal is close—to simply set the narrative that his failure to end the war is Zelenskyy’s fault?  And when Trump say Ukraine will never join NATO—how does he have any say—given the U.S. is slow walking away from it’s NATO commitments?

Let’s take these in order:

  • Is the purpose of Trump saying a deal is close—to simply set the narrative that his failure to end the war is Zelenskyy’s fault? I think there’s two things going on here. The first is that Trump has been a lifelong adherent to Norman Vincent Peale’s power of positive thinking. That boils down to him believing he can simply conjure his successfully achieving his objectives out of thin air by willing them into being and relentlessly asserting he’s succeeding. Of course when he doesn’t succeed, he then places the blame on everyone but himself and/or asserts that he actually was successful. I would expect that he’s decided that Zelenskyy and all Ukrainians will be quite appropriate to blame.
  • And when Trump say Ukraine will never join NATO—how does he have any say—given the U.S. is slow walking away from it’s NATO commitments? NATO ascension requires unanimous consent of all members. Which is why Orban has been stating he’ll block Ukrainian joining NATO for three years now. This is, of course, Russia’s position and part of Putin’s and Russia’s list of grievances against the US and NATO. Which is that the US expanded NATO into the states that had freed themselves from Russia’s control and orbit at the fall of the Soviet Union, thereby depriving Russia of its historic near abroad and sphere of influence as the successor state to both the Soviet Union and imperial Russia. Orban’s adopting this position is especially rich as Hungary is one of those states that Russia still claims it should hold sway over. I’ve written here before that once this war is over, NATO will need Ukraine as much, if not more than Ukraine needs NATO. Whether Trump is still president by then or even if he’s not he’s pulled the US out of NATO are things we’ll have to wait and see on.

As I’m sure you’ve surmised, President Zelenskyy did not make an address today because he was traveling for Pope  Francis’s funeral.

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A Bit of Perspective on a Saturday Evening

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kalakal shared a lovely story with me earlier, and I asked if we could share it with all of you.  Dog knows we can all use a pallet palate cleanser after talking about the maladministration earlier in the day. (fucking autocorrect!)

kalakal’s story

One thing that helps me get through these troubled days is meeting people who are making the world a better place rather than spreading spite and malice.

Yesterday as I stepped out the door to go to work the first thing I saw was a bedraggled clump of feathers on the ground, which I took to be a dead bird. At which point it raised up it’s head, struggled to its feet, pointed an impressively hooked beak at me and shrieked. Alert as ever first thing in the morning I quickly realised this was not a dead bird but rather a large raptors baby.

Baby raptor all puffed out and beak open, looking indignant

After checking that momma wasn’t around I took a closer look, it seemed healthy except for a bleeding wound around its right ear but was very young, about the size of a 3 month kitten, still with baby feathers. Now I couldn’t just leave it, don’t know how to care for it, so I fired up my Librarian super power and looked for someone who could.

Baby raptor with beak closed looking a bit more uncertain

I found a nearby Raptor Rescue Center and spoke to a very nice lady who said she was just on her way taking an injured squirrel to the vet but could be with me in an hour. I stood guard over the poor little chap/chapess (Hawk sexing is not taught in library school) near enough to stop any cat/dog /raccoon/ hawk etc from getting ideas but far away enough that the poor thing wasn’t shrieking in panic.

An hour later the lady arrives, explains she’s the volunteer rescuer, puts on some big gloves and heads for the hawk.

The poor thing scuttles into the corner of the porch, trying to tuck its head into the wall, for all the world like a little kid doing “If I can’t see you, you can’t see me” , utter cute overload. She picks it up, gives it a check over, announces it is a Red Shouldered Hawk, and that she’ll take it home to rear it until it can be released as it should make a full recovery, unlike the other Red Shouldered Hawk chick she’s looking after which will probably have to stay in the sanctuary.

Red Shouldered Hawk (grown-up version) courtesy of By Andy Morffew on wikipedia

Meanwhile the chick is quietly sitting in her hands doing gentle head bumps on her forearm. Chick goes in a car carrier, we exchange numbers so we can keep up to date on the chicks progress, and off she goes.

I go to work feeling great for 3 reasons:

1) Helped save a beautiful creature
2) Got to see said beautiful creature up close
3) Got to meet someone who spends their life making the world better, helping injured creatures and easing their suffering and does this for no monetary reward.

It’s good to be reminded not everyone is driven by hate and fear.

(Open thread.)

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JD Vance Is the Worst Kind of American Tourist

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Any decent, well-mannered American who travels abroad probably crosses paths with a Stars-and-Stripes Stereotype now and then: a fellow American on holiday making an ass of themselves. I once saw an American guy shaking with rage at an airport counter in Charles De Gaulle. All our flights had been upended by a transport strike, and he was DEMANDING that he be seated in business class, as per his original ticket. “I am an AMERICAN and we don’t care about your little SOCIALIST COUNTRY,” he said. “I have RIGHTS as a CUSTOMER.”

There are the idiots, like the woman I heard insisting that the place we were both visiting—Conwy Castle, in Wales—was a copy of the original, because there was no way the original would still be standing, as “no buildings last more than 400 years.” There are also the people visiting small towns where English isn’t spoken trying to communicate with locals by speaking English LOUDLY AND SLOWLY. (And in the interest of fairness, I’ll note that I’ve also seen a lot of similar behaviour from Brits in Europe. Must be something about faded empires run by white guys.)

These people are all pikers compared to our heinous douchecanoe of a vice president. Per the Times of London, “JD Vance and His Forty 4x4s Visit the Vatican During Trip to Rome” (that’s an archive.is link; there’s no paywall):

A trip to the Sistine Chapel is near the top of the bucket list for most Americans making their first trip to Rome. Few visitors are able to do so in such grand style as JD Vance, who turned up at the Vatican on Saturday aboard a traffic-clogging motorcade of 40 black 4x4s. . . .

He was accompanied to the Vatican by his wife, Usha, and their three young children. The second family was then given a private tour of the Sistine Chapel.

Later Usha enjoyed an evening visit to the Colosseum — which her husband had also been scheduled to attend before a last-minute change of plan — where she was given a personal tour of the arena, famous for its gladiatorial combats and naval battles, by Alfonsina Russo, the director.

Lesser mortals unlucky enough to have booked their own visit had to make do with a refund — but not all of them had got the message. There were chaotic scenes as some would-be visitors tried to open the gates surrounding the building, while others climbed over the fences, ticket in hand, trying to force their way in. Some chanted “shame” or anti-American slogans when they learnt the reason for the closure, Italian media reported.
Haven’t any of those angry tourists heard that Vance doesn’t care about due process? It is grimly amusing that one of the people cheated of their visit by Vance was a MAGAt. His take is quite a thing to behold:
Among the disappointed was Stephen Fishler, 58, a businessman from New York who arrived with his family in good time for his 6pm slot, but was turned away without explanation. “What does he think he is, special?” complained Fishler, himself a Trump voter. “JD should have waited until the Americans who had tickets had their visit and then gone in.” His wife, Anila, tried to calm him down and blamed the Italians.

Screw tourists from any other country, obviously: the Americans deserved special treatment.

I despair. Open thread, though I hope those of you who have visited or lived abroad will vent about the idiot American tourists you’ve encountered.

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Interesting Read: Neera Tanden Unplugged

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Neera Tanden on the difference with Trump 2.0: “Trump number two is far scarier. All of the consequences are more grave. The genuinely scary thing to me is how many independent institutions are bending the knee, and nobody really did that before.”

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— The Bulwark (@thebulwark.com) April 14, 2025 at 5:00 PM

NEERA TANDEN’S LIFE TODAY looks eerily similar to how it did eight years ago: Donald Trump is president, Republicans control Congress, and she is leading one of the most influential institutions in Democratic politics, the Center for American Progress.

Except, of course, nothing is quite the same.

As Tanden sees it, everything is a lot more terrifying. Independent institutions like universities and law firms are bending the knee to Trump in ways that never happened the first go-round; there aren’t any Republican officials willing to stand up to the president like Sen. John McCain did; and the Democratic party’s brand, she believes, is in even more trouble now.

Tanden, who served in senior roles in the Biden administration, including as the director of the Domestic Policy Council, has at times been a divisive figure in her own party, primarily for her pugnacious posts on social media and willingness to scrap with progressives. After grueling confirmation hearings, then-West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin tanked Tanden’s 2021 nomination to lead Biden’s Office of Management and Budget over her social media posts.

Yet four years later, Tanden’s give-no-fucks attitude seems to be what Democratic voters are craving. After staying quiet online during her White House tenure, she is roaring again, earning adoration from some members of the party for viral blowups on CNN with Republican strategist Scott Jennings and for calling out members of her own party—whether it be Sen. Chuck Schumer for his handling of budget negotiations or Doug Emhoff for not quitting his law firm after it struck a deal with the Trump administration…

I sat down with Tanden last week to get a better understanding of how she views the state of the Democratic party and the role she and CAP are trying to play as the party regroups from 2024. That conversation, which has been lightly edited for length and clarity, is below.

LAUREN EGAN: How are you thinking about this moment for the Democratic party?

NEERA TANDEN: I think it’s an existential moment for both the party and the country. In my optimistic moments, I think Trump is over-reading his mandate. I think the opportunity is there [for Democrats] to capture a broad swath of the country. It just requires us to offer an alternative…

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What’s the Truest Thing You’ve Seen or Read This Week?

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For me, I think the truest thing I’ve seen this week is this, from Tim Walz:

If you say you love freedom but you don’t believe freedom is for everybody, then the thing you love isn’t freedom, it is privilege.

How about you guys?

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Saturday Morning Open Thread

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?? BREAKING: President Joe and Jill Biden will attend the funeral of Pope Francis this Saturday in Vatican City. Biden, a devout Catholic, shared a deep bond with the Pope and had planned to award him the Medal of Freedom—until wildfires canceled the trip. Now, he returns to pay tribute.

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— Chris D. Jackson (@chrisdjackson.bsky.social) April 25, 2025 at 1:20 PM

BREAKING: Former U.S. Rep. George Santos has been sentenced to 87 months in prison for fraud and identity theft.

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— The Associated Press (@apnews.com) April 25, 2025 at 12:14 PM

Our Failed Major Media Metaphor:

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