Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

People identifying as christian while ignoring christ and his teachings is a strange thing indeed.

Republicans got rid of McCarthy. Democrats chose not to save him.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

Hey hey, RFK, how many kids did you kill today?

It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Keep the Immigrants and deport the fascists!

Trump’s cabinet: like a magic 8 ball that only gives wrong answers.

There is no compromise when it comes to body autonomy. You either have it or you do not.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

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

These are not very smart people, and things got out of hand.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

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

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

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

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

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

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Thursday Morning Open Thread: Space Cadets Assemble!

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Speaking of space cadets…
Thursday Morning Open Thread: Space Cadets Assemble!

(Jack Ohman via GoComics.com)

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New Dawn Open Thread: Tim Walz Is A Good Man

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And choosing him as her Vice-Presidential candidate is another sign of Kamala Harris’ good instincts.

not gonna harp on this too much but walz is useful in that he allows guys to say yes you can watch college football and hit each other in the nuts as a joke and be stupid guys but also you can want free lunch for kids and free feminine hygiene products in bathrooms and sensible gun laws.

— not an art thief (@famousartthief.bsky.social) Aug 9, 2024 at 12:21 AM

giving guys permission to be liberals is the next great wall to break down and i think it’s actually pretty doable.

— not an art thief (@famousartthief.bsky.social) Aug 9, 2024 at 12:24 AM

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War for Ukraine Day 903: Another Day, Another Horrific Russian War Crime

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Two quick housekeeping notes. First, Rosie is still doing wonderfully between treatments. Here next one is this coming Monday. Thank you all for the good thoughts, well wishes, prayers, and donations.

Second, I’m fried and am going to try to keep tonight’s update as brief as possible.

As soon as the clock struck twelve and today became tomorrow in Ukraine, the air raid alerts started going up.

The Russians blew up a Ukrainian ambulance today killing medics and the wounded civilians they were trying to treat and medevac.

The cost:

“Today, in Kharkiv Oblast, the Russians committed another crime. An fpv drone targeted the evacuation vehicle of hospitallers in Kharkiv Oblast. There were injurys and 1 life lost. 😥😥

Yuriivna Mulkevich
(27.03.1989-14.08.2024)

Information about the farewell ceremony and funeral will be announced later.

The crew of three girls had to work the last day of their rotation today and be home with their families tomorrow. Three brave Ukrainian women, who chose the most peaceful and most dangerous idea as their mission to save human lives, were forced to change their peaceful professions and join the support of the Ukrainian Defense Forces. On the bloody account of the Russians, another torn young fate of a brave Ukrainian woman.

I express my deepest condolences to the family of the fallen Heroine – her husband and mother, her friends, siblings, step-sisters, crew. This is a very heavy loss for our battalion and for the entire state

🫡 Yana Zinkevich, Commander of the Volunteer Medical Battalion of Hospitaliers of the UDA
Source – https://t.me/uda_army/9604

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

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Wednesday Evening Open Thread: Point. Mock.

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Editorial Board Twitter Thread

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I heard there was a bit of a kerfuffle related to this tweet thread.  Here’s a post for those who can’t see this on twitter or don’t want to use twitter.  I did not see an unrolled version.  If there is one, someone post a link in the comments and I’ll add it.   Thanks, WereBear!

What do you guys think?  Is this a big deal?

Kamala Harris is taking power back from the press corps. She learned from Biden’s fatal error. A THREAD.

1. The first thing you need to know about the vice president’s approach to the Washington press corps is look how well she’s doing as a result. Kamala Harris is now leading Donald Trump in some national polling averages as well as in some swing-state polls.

2. True, her lead is within the margin of error in most cases, but that’s an improvement from where the Democrats were before Joe Biden dropped out of the running and orchestrated instantaneous unification around his second-in-command.

3. I don’t think I’m overstating things. Her lead, the millions she’s bringing in, the thousands who are signing up to help, the big big mo’ – I think all of it comes directly from her campaign’s decision not to give the press corps too much access too fast.

4. I think that decision comes directly from the fact that Harris saw firsthand what the press corps did to Joe Biden’s campaign.

5. Some members of the press corps have noticed how well Harris is doing without them, and apparently, it doesn’t sit right. Here’s Chris Cillizza with a representative sampling.

6. The former Post writer said the vice president has been “almost entirely” ignoring the media since she launched her campaign, and that’s bad, he said.

7. Cillizza: It “bypasses the argument that the media is a critical part of our political system and any candidate who wants to be president — whether they are winning or losing — should be regularly subjected to scrutiny from the press.”

8. Even if I agreed that candidates who want to be president should be regularly subjected to media scrutiny, I don’t think this press corps, as it is currently organized, is able to.

9. There are exceptions, of course, but this press corps is generally not equipped to scrutinize candidates on matters of fact and substance. I say this because this press corps has conspicuously traded matters of fact and substance for vibes.

10. It didn’t matter what Joe Biden did – pull the country out of a pandemic, dodge a recession, tame inflation, grow jobs, revive every single one of the “left behind” counties that voted for Trump in 2016 because of “economic anxiety” – it *didn’t matter* what Joe Biden did.

11. The press corps decided nothing was more important than his age, and lo! 2024 became an election about vibes and vibes ended his candidacy.

12. Vibes are this press corps’ forte, not fact and substance. If fact and substance were its strength, there would have been a different reaction to The Disaster Debate during which Biden talked about policy and issues while Trump didn’t bother.

13. Trump was incoherent and false, but he came off as confident and strong, and he came off as that way, because the press corps’ forte isn’t fact and substance.

14. If fact and substance were important, there would also have been a different reaction to Biden’s NATO press conference last month. He did it after the Disaster Debate to show he still had what it takes. He talked for an hour about foreign affairs, international laws and war.

15. But this press corps didn’t hear any of that after Biden said “Vice President Trump” by mistake. There’s no grace for the old in Washington, nor is there interest in anything but vibes in the Washington press corps.

16. There was a time when liberals and Democrats would have nodded in agreement with Chris Cillizza on the merit of candidates being regularly subjected to scrutiny.

17. But after this press corps made a fetish of Biden’s age, I don’t see any more room for the benefit of the doubt – and there’s no going back.

18. This press corps made the election about vibes and it’s going to remain an election about vibes, and if those vibes now grind against the instincts of this press corps, tough shit. You reap what you sow.

19. In the future, we might look back and see the most important difference between the Biden and Harris campaigns is their level of trust in the press corps.

20. The president believed voters would reward him for the substantial things he has done, and he trusted – indeed, he depended on – the press corps to inform voters, as it’s supposed to.

21. But where he saw fact and substance, the press corps saw only vibes. And in depending on the press corps to get his message across to voters, Biden effectively handed over power that was rightfully his.

22. He allowed the press corps to be the principal arbiters of his reality, rather than reserving that right for himself. You could say Biden was waiting for power to be given to him and he suffered gravely for it.

23. By contrast, the Harris campaign is not letting the press corps wedge itself between her and voters. She is not allowing the news media to mediate her message. She’s preventing the press corps from speaking for her and she’s preventing it from exercising a veto on her speech.

24. In that, she is *taking power* – defining her campaign as well as Trump’s. She is turning the narrative about Biden’s age (81) back against Trump’s (78), such that whatever he says in self-defense is seen as proof of the allegations against him.

25. This decision leaves the press corps on the outside looking in. She’s sustaining a conversation with voters directly, on her own terms, and she’s doing well as a direct consequence of that decision.

26. But being on the outside looking in feels bad to people who see themselves as the adjudicators of American politics. They have incentive to turn attention back to where they think it belongs.

27. That’s why some are busy manufacturing a phony moral standard by which to scam Harris into playing by their rules. That phony moral standard goes something like this, courtesy today of Chris Cillizza:

28. He’s being coy but, in essence, he’s saying that Harris is violating some kind of taboo, or worse, that she’s hiding something of great importance from voters. This, of course, is favorable to her opponents, but let’s be clear: she’s violating *nothing*.

29. There is no lawbook declaring that candidates shall talk to reporters. There is a playbook, if that’s what you mean, but not a lawbook. The vice president could go the whole time without talking to one reporter and she would not have done anything morally wrong.

30. I will repeat myself till I burst. This is a democracy. Harris is obliged to talk to Americans. That’s the end of her obligation. She’s not obliged to talk to the press corps, as if it were a constituency. If she stopped talking to voters, that would be disqualifying.

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White Birds, Dark Swamp (Open Thread)

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In a “cheers” open thread I posted yesterday with my phone from the comfort of our veranda, a line of white birds who were browsing from a floating mat of vegetation was visible in the background. Today I got off my butt and schlepped downstairs with the Nikon to get a closer look:

The crew today is a squabbling bunch of Snowy Egrets (identifiable due to their black bills and legs with bright yellow feet). They get in each other’s way and react angrily a lot, jabbing at each other with their sharp bills, raising the crest on their heads and sometimes flying straight up three or four feet breast-to-breast. (These displays kinda remind me of you people sometimes! ;-)

Sometimes they’re joined by Great Egrets, Common Gallinules (called “swamp chickens” or “moorhens” by the locals), Little Blue Herons, White Ibises and/or a beautiful Reddish Egret who keeps eluding my attempts to photograph it. I’ll keep trying to capture an image of that bird, plus a better vid of the egrets when they are squabbling aggressively.

The water in the lagoon looks dark due to the tannins and weeds below the surface. But if you see it over a shallow spot, it’s pretty clear, like the contents of a cup of weak tea in a white mug. I guess that basic cleanliness is how all these birds stay so pristine — that and their constant preening. If I wade in the swamp for even 10 seconds, I come out filthy.

Open thread.

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Heading further south

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I’ve started my new job today.

I’m an assistant professor at the University of South Carolina’s Department of Health Services, Policy and Management. I will be continuing to work on my ACA research agenda. However I also want to broaden my scope over the next few years to look at all individual choice health insurance markets. This means thinking more and more about Medicare Advantage, Medicaid Managed Care, Federal Employee Health Benefits and Individual Contribution Health Reimbursement Accounts. I am convinced that this is the direction we’re heading as we have a strong belief and valence on choice as an unalloyed good thing.

I’ve been able to work with an incredible group of colleagues at Duke and will still have my toes in the water there, but I’m off to a new journey now.

D
Dave at the USC Department of Health Services Policy and Management

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