Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

It’s pointless to bring up problems that can only be solved with a time machine.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

Let me file that under fuck it.

Democracy cannot function without a free press.

The desire to stay informed is directly at odds with the need to not be constantly enraged.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

Of course you can have champagne before noon. That’s why orange juice was invented.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

It is not hopeless, and we are not helpless.

There are a lot more evil idiots than evil geniuses.

If ‘weird’ was the finish line, they ran through the tape and kept running.

Second rate reporter says what?

When they say they are pro-life, they do not mean yours.

Republicans cannot even be trusted with their own money.

I like political parties that aren’t owned by foreign adversaries.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

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

When you’re a Republican, they let you do it.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

Good lord, these people are nuts.

Dumb motherfuckers cannot understand a consequence that most 4 year olds have fully sorted out.

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

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

This fight is for everything.

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Evening open thread

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We haven’t had snow around these parts until yesterday morning, we got up and there was a couple inches of fresh snow on the ground. It stayed all day, so we had a white Christmas. Got up this morning, and it was raining, so all the snow got washed away.
Some people like it that way, but if I could get several feet of snow, I’d prefer that.
It keeps the idiots down.

Christmas happened, and we all got pretty much what we wanted. We’re an easy bunch. Freddie got gourmet dog biscuits and a sweater because of course he did.
My wife bought a Cure 81 spiral-cut ham, and I smoked it. Yes it was already cooked, but we smoked it low with cherry wood and a glaze made from brown sugar, honey and the drippings. Turned out really nice. I’m getting better at this smoking thing all the time, and yes, I realize I’m a walking stereotype, but it was either smoking meats or becoming an expert in one battle of the civil war or ww2, and I get hungry now and again so that’s the way I went.
Our negotiations with the agency are on hold for the holidays. We’ll hit it hard when we come back and while I strongly suspect the incoming administration will force the agency to cut a bunch of stuff out, we’ll wrap them up in paper for as long as we can because what else can we do?
Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Labor, Lori Chavez-DeRemer happens to be the only Republican that my union, American Federation of Government Employees, endorsed the last election. She has a history of supporting organized labor and supporting civil servants. I wonder how long she’ll last in Trump’s admin, and I wonder what’s going to happen. I honestly don’t think the GOP-controlled Senate would confim her.
Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke Rollins, 52, graduated from Texas A&M University with an undergraduate degree in agricultural development before completing law school at the University of Texas. She served as domestic policy chief during Trump’s first term, a portfolio that included agricultural policy. After leaving the White House, she became president and CEO of the America First Policy Institute, a group helping to lay the groundwork for a second Trump administration. Rollins, in an interview earlier this year, called Trump an “amazing boss.” 
I find that last bit ominous.
We’re going to California for a week here in a couple days.  Looking forward to it.

How did everybody make out for Christmas?

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War for Ukraine Day 1,037: Kyiv Under Fire

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Air raid alert map of Ukraine. There are alerts up for Kyiv, Poltava, and Cherkasy Oblasts, as well as for Luhansk and Crimea, which are always under air raid alert. There are indicators of recent strikes on the City of Kyiv.

As you can see in the air raid alert map above, there are strikes in/near the city of Kyiv. The alert map indicates that these strikes occurred at 2:12 and 2:13 AM local time in Ukraine, which is 7:12 and 7:13 PM EST.

Not only did Russia hit the Azerbaijan Airlines plane with air defense, they then repeatedly denied landing permission and employed GPS spoofing to try to force the plane to crash into the Caspian Sea. Which would’ve made it far harder to ascertain the cause of the crash.

Hoo boy.

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— Daniel Drezner (@dandrezner.bsky.social) December 26, 2024 at 8:00 AM

From EuroNews:

38 passengers were killed on Wednesday after Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8432 crashed as it attempted to make an emergency landing near the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan.

Azerbaijani government sources have exclusively confirmed to Euronews on Thursday that a Russian surface-to-air missile caused the Azerbaijan Airlines plane crash in Aktau on Wednesday.

According to the sources, the missile was fired at Flight 8432 during drone air activity above Grozny, and the shrapnel hit the passengers and cabin crew as it exploded next to the aircraft mid-flight.

Government sources have told Euronews that the damaged aircraft was not allowed to land at any Russian airports despite the pilots’ requests for an emergency landing, and it was ordered to fly across the Caspian Sea towards Aktau in Kazakhstan.

According to data, the plane’s GPS navigation systems were jammed throughout the flight path above the sea.

The missile was fired from a Pantsir-S air defence system, Baku-based international outlet AnewZ reported, citing Azerbaijani government sources.

According to Russian sources, at the time the Azerbaijan Airlines flight was passing over the territory of Chechnya, Russian air defence forces were actively attempting to shoot down Ukrainian UAVs.

The head of the Security Council of the Chechen Republic, Khamzat Kadyrov, confirmed that a drone attack on Grozny took place on Wednesday morning, noting that there were no casualties or damage.

If this preliminary data is confirmed, this would be the second time in a decade that Russian forces have destroyed a commercial aircraft after the MH17 crash in Ukraine. This time, Russia’s own citizens, as well as those from neighbouring countries, are among the casualties.

More at the link.

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

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Excellent Read: ‘Get Ready for Trump’s TV Government’

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trump has won fascism is inevitable, the republic is lost, oligarchy is inevitable. boo hoo.
these guys are dumb and completely disorganized and hate each other. the old man looks like he’s three steps from a date with the grim reaper.
get tough, quit crying in your beer. jesus christ.

— not an art thief (@famousartthief.bsky.social) December 23, 2024 at 1:57 AM

oh hey it ya girl explaining why the recent government shutdown extravaganza is just a preview of the next four years of GORILLA CHANNEL GOVERNANCE
foreignpolicy.com/2024/12/20/t…

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— Dr. Samantha Hancox-Li (@sjshancoxli.bsky.social) December 20, 2024 at 8:31 PM

In 2018, a joke tweet went viral suggesting that then-President Donald Trump spent 17 hours a day watching “the gorilla channel,” a fake TV channel featuring footage of gorillas fighting created by his staffers. In 2024, President-elect Trump nominated Peter Hegseth, whose primary qualification is appearing on Fox and Friends, for secretary of defense. Trump nominated Mehmet Oz (aka Dr. Oz), whose primary qualification is appearing on Oprah, to be Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator.

Since Trump’s election, some on the left have given in to the impulse of doom. They talk as if Trump is a god-emperor who will sweep away the American republic with a wave of his hand. Some on the right believe this too, though in their case, they approve of that course of action. Certainly Trump and his allies have declared their intention to reshape American society in an authoritarian direction.

But what we should expect is not an organized transformation. What we should expect is gorilla channel governance—chaotic, personalist, and based largely on what the president most recently saw on television…

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Greg Casar

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I promised another post on Rep Greg Casar (D-TX-35), the chair of the House Progressive Caucus for the next term.  (Pramila Jayapul, the current chair, is term-limited.). Casar comes from a D+21 district along I-35 between Austin and San Antonio that contains parts of both cities.  He was first elected in 2022.

Here’s a piece in the Texas Tribune about Casar.  It highlights his support for the homeless in Austin, and how he lost a fight an initiated measure to make camping in the city illegal.  In the piece, Casar re-iterates his opposition to that initiative, and reflects on how he could have done better in the fight.  Casar started as a member of the Austin city council at age 25, which is pretty impressive.

Since the big dust-up in the comments was about Casar’s stand on trans rights, based on a paraphrase in a NBC News article, I went looking for his statements on trans rights.  Here’s the page from his House website on that.  He’s a member of the Equality Caucus.  I also found an interview shortly before the election with Casar and Hasan Piker.  Here’s the whole interview [YouTube], and the portion I’m quoting starts around the 21 minute mark.  The context for it is Casar’s trip to Nevada to talk with Latino construction workers there:

Casar: They have had this message where the Democratic Party isn’t focused on them, even if their Congressperson has been there for them, even if we voted for the infrastructure bills that have created the construction jobs they’re working on.  So how does that propaganda break through?  I think we’re going to have this challenge…where people like Gregg Abbott, my governor, pick on LGBTQ youth.  Do you decide you’re not going to stand up for LGBTQ youth because you don’t want a news story that distracts from the economic issues?  No, I mean you’ve gotta do the right thing — trans young people have rights, we should be able to stand up for civil rights.  But then at the same time we don’t want this distraction from the core economic issues these disaffected voters care about.  I think that takes the pairing of the issues and saying why is it that this guy with all this power is picking on trans middle-schoolers?  Isn’t that sick?  Maybe he’s doing it because he’s trying to take money out of your pockets and not have you notice.  I think it’s that connection, that piece, we have to do.  Because we can’t just tell people, hey, don’t worry about what you see on TV.  We need to make that connection for folks.

I can see how this would get paraphrased in stories in a way that sounds like Casar might be wobbling on trans rights, especially since the media narrative of Dems running away from trans rights is something the DC press wants to promote, and some Dems have definitely helped them.  It’s the kind of “dog bites man” story that they crave (because the Progressive Caucus chair who went squishy on trans rights would be big news, since that caucus has always led on LGBTQ issues).  But as far as I can tell, and I looked hard, Casar is a strong advocate of LGBTQ rights.

Biden just signed the Defense Authorization Act  for 2025 (NDAA), which included the first ant-LGBTQ legislation since DADT and DOMA.  It bans TriCare coverage for gender-affirming care to minors.  The House Progressive Caucus came out against it — the trans healthcare ban was part of the reason.  Here’s the roll call.  I don’t see any Progressive Caucus members voting YEA, including Casar.  I don’t know why the hell Dems like Colin Allred and Yadira Caraveo, who both lost elections, felt that one of their last votes had to be for the first bill to take away LGBTQ rights since the ’90s.  These kinds of votes are the issue with trans rights in the Democratic Party, not the new Progressive Caucus chair.

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‘Cause Cheap is How I Feel

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We’ve gotten in the habit of bringing a lot of “big city” food when we come to visit our parents in a small red Dakota town.  The grocery stores here are a combination of expensive and mediocre.  We used to pack it in the 12 volt compressor fridge of our van, but since we’re transitioning to another rig (not yet built), I needed to get a cooler.   We were near a Wal-Mart, so I stopped in and found an Igloo brand 48 quart cooler (iow the big one) for $14.

I just can’t get over that price.  It’s a decent plastic cooler, for $14.  It would take 2-3 styrofoam disposable coolers to carry the same amount of stuff, and that would be more than $14 at the grocery store.  It almost seemed immoral that a cooler of that quality could be purchased for that price.  I wonder what kind of slavery and exploitation was involved in the production, shipping and shelving of this item.

I’m a pretty big devotee of “buy once, cry once,” especially as we’ve radically downsized.  So I buy very little at Wal-Mart, though when we’re traveling in the rural red south or southwest, I’ll stop a Wal-Mart for groceries simply due to lack of a choice.  I’ll also stop at them in Baja because little Mexican tiendas have a terrible supply chain and/or about the same selection as you’d see in a 7-11 in the states.  (There are actually stores in Baja with signs of Costco brands that are full of merchandise purchased and carried down the peninsula from the couple of Costcos near the border or near Cabo.)

This is all to say that I’m no purist, and I also don’t think I’m doing the world a favor by picking (for example) Target instead of Wal-Mart — all big box retail is exploitative, as far as I’m concerned.  So I’ll hold back my shocked face when I read that economists have finally figured out just how deeply Wal-Marts fucked up rural communities:

[…] [T]hey find that the costs Walmart imposes in the form of not only lower earnings but also higher unemployment in the wider community outweigh the savings it provides for shoppers. On net, they conclude, Walmart makes the places it operates in poorer than they would be if it had never shown up at all. Sometimes consumer prices are an incomplete, even misleading, signal of economic well-being.

This is apparently a surprise to economists, since even the head of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors believed that the cheap prices at Wal-Mart outweighed the economic harm to the community.

A couple of weeks ago, I listened to Jon Lovett interview Hasan Piker, who’s one of the young guys trying to build a following  as an alternative to Joe Rogan et. al.   Piker made the point that the rise of Wal-Mart, etc., is part of an implicit social contract:  big box retail and chains would take away local retail, decimate Main Street, deliver a bunch of cookie-cutter restaurants with mediocre food, and in return, everything would be cheap.  When prices went up, people were pissed, because they had kept their part of the bargain and gotten screwed.  That anger was part of the “throw the bums out” election.

This gets abbreviated in the comments here as “cheap eggs”, and, yeah, I get that people shouldn’t vote for racists, sexists and anti-LGBTQ bigots just because prices went up.   But I bought that fucking $14 cooler.  It was something small and frail and plastic, baby, and cheap is how I feel.

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Thursday Morning Open Thread: Boxing Day (Is For Leftovers)

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Two dudes chillin in an eggnog hot tub…

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— Laurasaurus (@laurasaurus.bsky.social) December 7, 2024 at 4:53 PM


 

There's genuinely so much beauty in the American project, even amidst the horrors. There's nothing wrong with this country that can't be fixed by what's right with it.

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— Leonid Baezhnev (@rev-avocado.bsky.social) December 25, 2024 at 9:54 PM

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— Pete Woods- use only as directed (@thatpetewoods.bsky.social) December 24, 2024 at 10:39 PM

 

Some people never got past how they felt in like 2011, so they’re teaming up with those who objected to every inch of progress we’ve had since the civil war.

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— Clean Observer (@hammbear2024.bsky.social) December 25, 2024 at 11:19 PM

My credo for the upcoming year:

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Chag Sameach! Hanukkah Open Thread

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Today, we mark both Christmas and the beginning of Hanukkah. It is very good that in Ukraine we can celebrate such holidays with respect for each other, communicate, live together and wish different people the same victory—the victory of light over darkness.

And today, together with the rabbis of Ukraine, I lit Hanukkah candles. This particular Hanukkah menorah was presented to me by President of Argentina Javier Milei during his inauguration last December.

I congratulate the Jewish community on this holiday. I wish Jewish families peace, joy, and a prosperous future. May the Hanukkiah shine in every home, granting strength, filling hearts with new hopes, and deepening faith in the power of truth and justice

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