Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

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

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

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

There are times when telling just part of the truth is effectively a lie.

The world has changed, and neither one recognizes it.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

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

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

We need to vote them all out and restore sane Democratic government.

This must be what justice looks like, not vengeful, just peaceful exuberance.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

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

“They all knew.”

People really shouldn’t expect the government to help after they watched the GOP drown it in a bathtub.

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

Anne Laurie is a fucking hero in so many ways. ~ Betty Cracker

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

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

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

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

Democracy is not a spectator sport.

Fear and negativity are contagious, but so is courage!

Reality always gets a vote in the end.

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Friday Morning Open Thread: Ramadan Mubarak

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It begins. To those who observe, may your fast be easy and your prayers accepted.

(Other religious observances: Lent begins next Wednesday, so Mardi Gras is next Tuesday.)

Meanwhile, on Opposite World…
Friday Morning Open Thread: Ramadan Mubarak

(Joel Pett via GoComics.com)

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Dank Grey Dawn Open Thread: Move Fast & Break Stuff, Ebola Edition

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Elon Musk said DOGE made a mistake by cutting USAID’s Ebola prevention but it had been “restored.”
That’s not true, current and former officials told me and @johnphudson.bsky.social.
“There have been no efforts to ‘turn on’” Ebola prevention, said Nidhi Bouri, who oversaw team until January.

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— Dan Diamond (@ddiamond.bsky.social) February 26, 2025 at 6:41 PM

Who are you gonna believe, every responsible expert, or God-Emperor Musk? Per the Washington Post, “Musk says DOGE ‘restored’ Ebola prevention effort. Officials say that’s not true”: [gift link]

… Hours after Musk asserted that USAID had restored its Ebola prevention efforts, the agency informed several organizations working with the U.S. government to prevent the spread of the virus overseas that their contracts had been terminated, according to two people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive situation. The organizations — which included UNICEF, which had been working with USAID on Ebola prevention in Uganda and other countries — were among thousands of organizations affected by the Trump administration’s move to cancel foreign-assistance contracts on Wednesday…

Last month’s Ebola outbreak has now receded, but some former U.S. officials say that’s in part because of past investments in prevention efforts that helped position Uganda to respond — and that other countries remain far more vulnerable.

Bouri said her former USAID team of 60 people working on disease-response had been cut to about six staffers as of earlier this week. She called the recent USAID response to Uganda’s Ebola outbreak a “one-off,” far diminished from “the full suite” of activities that the agency historically would mount, such as ramping up efforts to monitor whether the disease had spread to neighboring countries…

The good news — don’t panic (yet) — the latest outbreak in Uganda is under control, and it doesn’t seem to have spread beyond the original cluster. On the other hand:

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War for Ukraine Day 1,099: The Drone Swarms Continue

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Air raid alerts for drone swarms are going up and down over most of eastern and central Ukraine as of 7:30 PM EST/2:30 AM local time in Ukraine.

This follows on from drown swarm attacks earlier this evening:

Ukraine is under massive russian drone attack right now

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— Iryna Voichuk (@irynavoichuk.bsky.social) February 27, 2025 at 4:27 PM

russian drones over Kharkiv and Kharkiv region, striking out infrastructure right now ‼️

— Kate from Kharkiv (@kateinkharkiv.bsky.social) February 27, 2025 at 3:23 PM

The reason:

💙💛 She whispered his name, breathing in his scent, and he clung to her tightly, as if afraid she would disappear again. At that moment, the whole world receded, leaving only the two of them, entwined in an embrace where time stood still and the soul finally found peace.

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— Vitalis Viva (@vitalisviva.bsky.social) February 26, 2025 at 2:18 PM

President Zelenskyy did not post an address today. expect it is because he is traveling to the US to “negotiate” with Trump tomorrow. Negotiate is in quotes, because it doesn’t appear that Trump and his natsec team are actually negotiating an end to Russia’s genocidal re-invasion of Ukraine.

The US-Kremlin talks appear to be about restoring relations, not about peace. Similarly, the “minerals deal” with Ukraine doesn’t even address Ukrainian security – it’s about securing US access to critical resources. So far, there doesn’t appear to be a US peace plan or process.

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— Euan MacDonald (@euanmacdonald.bsky.social) February 27, 2025 at 5:18 AM

From The Kyiv Independent:

U.S. and Russian officials will not discuss Russia’s war against Ukraine during their meeting in Istanbul on Feb. 27, a U.S. State Department spokesperson said in an email to Reuters.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced on Feb. 26 that Washington and Moscow would hold a second round of talks in Turkey, just over a week after delegates from the two countries met in Saudi Arabia for their first direct talks since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The meeting will not include discussions on Ukraine, a State Department spokesperson told Reuters.

“To be clear, there are no political or security issues on the agenda. Ukraine is not  on the agenda,” the spokesperson said via email.

Lavrov said the meeting would focus on the reopening of embassies and diplomatic missions, one of three main objectives named at the conclusion of the Saudi Arabia talks.

President Volodymyr Zelensky has said that Kyiv will not accept any decisions about Ukraine’s future that arise from negotiations that exclude Ukraine. No Ukrainians were invited to participate in the U.S.-Russia talks in Riyadh.

As American officials prepare to meet with a Russian delegation for the second time this month, U.S. President Donald Trump has claimed that a ceasefire deal between Kyiv and Moscow is imminent.

Trump said on Feb. 24 — the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion — that the war could be over “within weeks.” Ahead of official peace negotiations, he has already said that Ukraine “can forget about” joining NATO and that he is interested in signing a deal with Russia on rare earth minerals.

The drastic shift in U.S. foreign policy toward Russia has alarmed Ukrainian and European leaders. Zelensky is set to meet with Trump on Feb. 28 to sign a critical minerals agreement and press the U.S. to provide Ukraine with security guarantees.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made a brief stop in Ireland on his way to the United States, with his plane landing at Shannon Airport in the west of the country.

The head of state was met by Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin.

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— WarTranslated (Dmitri) (@wartranslated.bsky.social) February 27, 2025 at 8:43 AM

First Lady Zelenska, however, was one of the judges for the Ukrainian culinary battles competition. Video below, followed by the write up after the jump.

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Thursday Evening Open Thread: Chris Kluwe, Not Punting

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MisterMix posted that YouTube video last week. New development:

Just got fired from being a freshman football coach, if you want to know what MAGA does to communities.
They don’t care about what helps people, because the school is certainly not going to find an ex-NFL player willing to coach there at that level, they only care about trying to hurt people.

— Chris Kluwe (@chriswarcraft.bsky.social) February 27, 2025 at 4:04 PM

Per the Guardian, “Former NFL punter Chris Kluwe says he was fired from coaching job after Maga protest”:

… Kluwe was arrested at the Huntington Beach city council meeting last week, at which he spoke out against the decision to erect a plaque at a local library. The plaque features the words “Magical, Alluring, Galvanizing and Adventurous” and the city commission confirmed it was a reference to Maga. The former Minnesota Vikings player then made critical comments about the Trump administration before saying he would “engage in the time-honored American tradition of peaceful civil disobedience” and walked on to the meeting’s stage. He was arrested and charged with a misdemeanor for disrupting an assembly.

On Thursday Kluwe said he had been fired from his job as a football coach at Edison High School in Huntington Beach.

“I knew it was a possible consequence,” Kluwe told the Guardian by text. “I think it just goes to show what Maga actually stands for – they don’t want to build anything, they just want to tear people and institutions down to make themselves feel better, regardless of what it costs the community. I sincerely doubt Edison is going to find another ex-NFL player to coach freshman football.” He said he was not given a reason for his dismissal but was told he had brought a lot of attention to the school.

At the council meeting, Kluwe was highly critical of the Donald Trump’s Maga movement.

“Maga is profoundly corrupt, unmistakably anti-democracy and most importantly, Maga is explicitly a Nazi movement,” he said. “You may have replaced a swastika with a red hat, but that’s what it is.”

All seven members of the Huntington Beach city council are conservatives and one member, Gracey Van Der Mark, said there was “nothing peaceful” about Kluwe’s protest. She said he was guilty of “causing alarm among those in attendance, including two young students”.

Last week, Kluwe told the Guardian he has a court date in April over his arrest. “We’ll see what happens. There’s a possibility the ACLU might get involved. Some people have been telling me they’re looking to challenge this because they think it might not be legal.”

Kluwe was outspoken on social issues during his NFL career, which lasted from 2005 to 2013, and he claimed he was eventually released by the Vikings because of his beliefs and his support for same-sex marriage…

Chris Kluwe is still making his stand. “If I see someone being oppressed, then it’s my duty to speak up for them,” he told The Washington Post.
Column by @candacedbuckner.bsky.social

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— Post Sports (@postsports.bsky.social) February 23, 2025 at 10:21 AM


[gift link]

(I’m pleased to note that Balloon Juice has been a Kluwe supporter for many years — here’s DougJ in 2012, TomL in 2014, and me with a follow-up.)

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Vaccines FTW

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Unbelievable news.

Pancreatic is one of the deadliest cancers.

New paper shows personalized mRNA vaccines can induce durable T cells that attack pancreatic cancer, with 75% of patients cancer free at three years—far, far better than standard of care.

www.nature.com/articles/s41…

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— Derek Thompson (@dkthomp.bsky.social) February 27, 2025 at 12:03 PM


This is just a wow if the evidence is substantiated in the follow-on Phase 2 and 3 trials. Here are the highlights from Nature:

 

At an extended 3.2-year median follow-up from a phase 1 trial of surgery, atezolizumab (PD-L1 inhibitory antibody), autogene cevumeran1 (individualized neoantigen vaccine with backbone-optimized uridine mRNA–lipoplex nanoparticles) and modified (m) FOLFIRINOX (chemotherapy) in patients with PDAC, we find that responders with vaccine-induced T cells (n = 8) have prolonged recurrence-free survival (RFS; median not reached) compared with non-responders without vaccine-induced T cells (n = 8; median RFS 13.4 months; P  =  0.007).

Vaccines, how the fuck do they work…..

Open thread

UPDATE

Here is part of the acknowledgements section:

This work was supported in part by The Olayan Charitable Foundation and The Tow Foundation, and by a Stand Up to Cancer Convergence Award (to B.D.G. and V.P.B.), the NIH U01 CA224175 Pancreatic Cancer Microenvironment Network Cancer Moonshot Award (to V.P.B.), the Ben and Rose Cole Charitable PRIA Foundation (to V.P.B), the Mark Foundation ASPIRE Award (to B.D.G.), William H. Goodwin and Alice Goodwin and the Commonwealth Foundation for Cancer Research and The Center for Experimental Therapeutics at MSK (to V.P.B. and B.D.G.), the Center for Experimental Immuno-Oncology of MSK (to P.G.) and the American-Italian Cancer Foundation Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship (to M.M.). Services of the Integrated Genomics Core were funded by the NCI Cancer Center Support Grant (CCSG, P30 CA08748), Cycle for Survival and the Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis Center for Molecular Oncology.

The NIH paid for a decent chunk of this work.

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This Country Hates Women

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I mentioned this in passing in the Economic Blackout Tomorrow comments thread, but here are the latest developments on a pair of rapist “influencers” who are currently polluting South Florida. (AP)

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Influencer brothers Andrew and Tristan Tate, who are charged with human trafficking in Romania, arrived Thursday in the U.S. after authorities lifted travel restrictions on the siblings, who have millions of online followers.

A spokesperson for the brothers, Mateea Petrescu, said the two landed in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, around midday.

Who are the Tate brothers? From the linked article:

Andrew Tate, 38, a former professional kickboxer and self-described misogynist who has amassed more than 10 million followers on X, has repeatedly claimed that prosecutors in Romania have no evidence against him and that there is a political conspiracy to silence him. He and Tristan Tate, 36, are vocal supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump.

Just weeks ago, Andrew Tate posted on X: “The Tates will be free, Trump is the president. The good old days are back. And they will be better than ever. Hold on…”

Last August, DIICOT [Romania’s anti-organized crime agency] also launched a second case against the brothers, investigating allegations of human trafficking, the trafficking of minors, sexual intercourse with a minor, influencing statements and money laundering. They have denied those charges as well.

Why did the Romanian authorities release these rapey assholes from house arrest?

The Tates’ departure came after Foreign Minister Emil Hurezeanu said this month that a Trump administration official expressed interest in the brothers’ case at the recent Munich Security Conference. The minister insisted no pressure was applied to lift restrictions on the Tates after a Financial Times report on the meeting caused a stir in Romania.

Sure, Jan.

Ron DeSantis, the shitty governor of my shithole state, will probably never be president, even though America has demonstrated twice that it will even elect a demented, loudmouthed, criminal and worthless old fart if the opponent is a woman.

But DeSantis does occasionally unclench his anus-like lips long enough to hiss out denunciations of human trafficking, mostly as a cover to bash immigrants and show faux concern for women and girls.

It’s all bullshit, of course, a lie just like the anti-trans laws that we’re condescendingly told are to “protect women and girls.” Republican officials don’t give a shit about women and girls and never have, not even the female ones.

The lackey DeSantis installed as AG to replace the lackey he previously installed to replace Trump lackey Marco Rubio made a statement:

“Florida has zero tolerance for human trafficking and violence against women. If any of these alleged crimes trigger Florida jurisdiction, we will hold them accountable,” said Uthmeier, an appointee of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Manifestly, that’s a steaming load of horse shit. Of course the rapist Tates made a beeline to Florida, the sanctuary state for sex offenders. Hell, they’re probably holed up at Trump’s tacky-ass resort.

Florida is where mercifully deceased pedophile (and Trump pal) Jeffrey Epstein cut a deal with corrupt prosecutors who had heard testimony that he had raped girls as young as 14 at his Palm Beach mansion. (The prosecutor who cut that deal, Alexander Acosta, was later appointed labor secretary by Donald Trump, but I’m sure that’s just a coincidence.)

Anyhoo, 77 million Americans voted for Florida’s worst retiree resident, adjudicated rapist and convicted felon Donald Trump, last November. Congressional Republicans voted lockstep to install an array of grotesque sex pests and assorted weirdos to head important federal agencies.

So it’s not just a Florida problem. It’s an America problem. This country just fucking hates women.

ETA: As much as I despise Ron DeSantis, he rolled UP the welcome mat for the rapist Tates: (Newsweek)

Andrew Tate ‘Not Welcome’ in Florida, Ron DeSantis Says

…Governor Ron DeSantis spoke out against the pair, saying, “Florida is not a place where you’re welcome with that type of conduct…”

DeSantis repeated his sentiments about the Tate brothers in comments to the media on Thursday morning, where he discussed the Tate brothers’ arrival in Florida…

“We have no involvement in that. I read about it through the media. Clearly the federal government has jurisdiction whether they want to rebuff his entry into the United States, and I have confidence that whether it’s Pam Bondi or Kristi Noam that they will be looking at that. [Barf! –Ed.]

“I do know our Attorney General, James Uthmeier, is looking at what state hooks and jurisdiction we may have to be able to deal with this. But the reality is, no, Florida is not a place where you’re welcome with that type of conduct in the air. And I don’t know how it came to this. We were not involved, we were not notified, I found out through the media that this was something that was happening.”

For the first and I anticipate ONLY time in my life I’ll ever say this of Ron DeSantis: good for him. (And thanks to Baud for dropping that Newsweek link in comments. I hadn’t seen it.)

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Aviation Update

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The FAA layoffs are still being processed by the aviation community. We know they hit government officials who manage pilot medicals, and they also hit the group that makes navigation charts used by pilots and air traffic controllers. This piece has more detail on all the layoffs.

Elon’s snout is in the trough, this time with a ridiculous accusation against Verizon that got Starlink the contract for communications for the FAA.

 

poor Verizon signed up for Trump 2.0 to get tax cuts and and rubber stamped mergers, but instead an unelected oligarch cosplaying as a government efficiency expert is elbowing in on the company’s $2 billion FAA contract while falsely accusing them of killing air travelers

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— Karl Bode (@karlbode.com) February 26, 2025 at 1:18 PM

It’s easy to root for injuries here, but Starlink is no comparison to a robust fiber-optic connection, which is what I assume Verizon bid to supply. I have Starlink and used it for work (my subscription is inactive). It’s not a robust piece of hardware, it requires a line of sight to the satellites, so it can be disrupted by very heavy rain, snow (the dish has hardware to melt snow) and it must have a clear view of the sky. Every piece of hardware and redundancy engineering for a land-based fiber network is more resilient.

The media is on high alert for aviation incidents, and there have been a lot of them, just as there were before the media was on high alert. This runway incursion at Chicago Midway airport, where tragedy was narrowly averted by a Southwest Airlines’ crew quick go-around is the newest example. It’s pretty clear that the problem was caused by the crew of a private jet misinterpreting clear instructions to hold short of the active runway where the Southwest jet was landing.

This brings me to another general regulatory issue. After the Colgan Air crash in 2009, the FAA tightened up the regulations for commercial airline pilots. In the past, first officers could start flying after 250 hours of experience, now they need 1,500 hours. Regulations about fatigue, and a database of pilot records showing training, and training failures, were also instituted. Taken together, these changes made it harder to find qualified pilots, and wages of pilots flying for regional airlines finally rose to a what people imagine pilots make.

This means that the next tier of pilots, commercial pilots flying passengers for hire but not for an airline (like business jets) might just be not-so-great, or not as good as they used to be. This video about the near-death of Dale Earnhart Jr at the hands of a pair of pilots who did a terrible job is just one example. Another is that incursion at Midway posted above.

Then there’s General Aviation (GA), the doctor in his Beechcraft, the rich guy who likes to fly his plane but doesn’t like his recurrent training. My interest in aviation started reading Flying Magazine at the barbershop, and the Aftermath section of that magazine was, and is, full of GA pilots fucking up and killing people.

My point isn’t to slag on non-airline pilots here. Rather, we all have a huge interest in all pilots being properly certified, trained and following the rules, because they all share the same airspace. That’s part of the FAA’s job. As far as I’m concerned the FAA needs more resources to do this job, not less. Because as we’ve seen recently in DC, even highly experienced pilots flying in regulated airspace can have mid-air collisions. And the history of aviation includes GA pilots having mid-airs with commercial airplanes.

This is another cross-post from my new place — heymistermix.com. John graciously invited me to cross post here, with the comments off.  You’ll need to subscribe to comment. Subscriptions are free, and you can just visit the site to read my stuff. I’ll cross-post some of it here. 

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