Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

Peak wingnut was a lie.

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

Mediocre white men think RFK Jr’s pathetic midlife crisis is inspirational. The bar is set so low for them, it’s subterranean.

“In this country American means white. everybody else has to hyphenate.”

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

Republicans firmly believe having an abortion is a very personal, very private decision between a woman and J.D. Vance.

So fucking stupid, and still doing a tremendous amount of damage.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

Those who are easily outraged are easily manipulated.

Fundamental belief of white supremacy: white people are presumed innocent, minorities are presumed guilty.

“I was told there would be no fact checking.”

How stupid are these people?

Let the trolls come, and then ignore them. that’s the worst thing you can do to a troll.

He really is that stupid.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

T R E 4 5 O N

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

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

American history and black history cannot be separated.

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Guyliner

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Here’s the Cincinnati Enquirer’s fact check on JD.  No, he didn’t say he fucked a couch in Hillbilly Elegy.  Yes, he posted about dolphin porn with a twitter post showing he searched for “dolphin” and “women”.  Yeah, he had some Trump critics  on his Venmo, but that could be because he told Venmo to import his contacts.

Then we get to the eyeliner.  Here’s a TikTok user who thinks he wears it.  Pretty convincing.  The Enquirer isn’t sure about this one.

Just to be clear, there’s nothing wrong with wearing eyeliner, if you’re a man, as long as you own it. I think we need to spend a lot more time on this important issue, so here’s a thread to discuss it.

Also, if you think I’m being mean to JD, then you can read this story about how he accused Walz of “stolen valor” because Walz chose to retire after 24 years in the National Guard to run for office, before Walz’ unit was deployed to Iraq.  JD was a press officer for the Marines, served for 4 years and, he admits, saw no real fighting.

 

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Taking a Breath, Venting about the Bad, and Having Some Fun Open Thread

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One of our (mostly) lurkers sent this to me.  Not the video, but the poem below. It’s pretty good!

(I do love it when our lurkers get involved in things.)

by Just Suze

You’re a mean one, Mr. Vance,
You really are a heel,
You’re as cuddly as a cactus, you’re as charming as an eel, Mr.Vance,
You’re a bad banana with a greasy black peel!

You’re a monster, Mr. Vance,
Your heart’s an empty hole,
Your brain is full of spiders, you have garlic in your soul, Mr. Vance,
I wouldn’t touch you with a thirty-nine-and-a-half foot pole!

You’re a foul one, Mr. Vance,
You have termites in your smile,
You have all the tender sweetness of a seasick crocodile, Mr. Vance,
Given a choice between the two of you I’d take the seasick crocodile!

You’re a vile one, Mr. Vance,
You’re a nasty wasty skunk,
Your heart is full of unwashed socks, your soul is full of gunk, Mr. Vance,
The three words that best describe you are as follows, and I quote,
“Stink, stank, stunk”!

You’re a rotter, Mr. Vance,
You’re the king of sinful sots,
Your heart’s a dead tomato splotched with moldy purple spots, Mr. Vance,
Your soul is an appalling dump heap overflowing with the most disgraceful
Assortment of rubbish imaginable mangled up in tangled up knots!

You nauseate me, Mr. Vance,
With a nauseous super “naus”!
You’re a crooked dirty jockey and you drive a crooked hoss, Mr. Vance,
You’re a three decker sauerkraut and toadstool sandwich with arsenic sauce!

I’d like to challenge some of our creative peeps – anybody have an ode to Biden, an ode to Kamala, an ode to Walz in there, just waiting to get out?  Ode is too high a bar?  How about a poem, a rhyme, a limerick.  There are so many words that rhyme with couch, am I right?  Positivity and mockery, as long as they are directed at the right people, are both welcome.

You can put them in the comments, or you can send them to me by email.  I’ll include the best of them in upcoming posts.

Otherwise, this is an open thread.

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The Incel/Stalker Campaign Strategy

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The Incel/Stalker Campaign Strategy
Amanda Marcotte went to both the Harris/Walz rally and the Vance rally in Philly last night, and let’s just say that the chicken man got blown up:

The chanters [saying “He’s so weird”] didn’t know the half of it. Hours earlier, I had been at a South Philly venue where Vance spoke briefly to about 200 supporters and a group of bored journalists. Vance’s event was small, mean, and yes, weird, featuring the unjustified sarcasm of the candidate and a desperate feeling reminiscent of the mood at a strip mall shot bar at 2 AM on “ladies’ night.”

Meanwhile, the Harris/Walz rally felt like a rousing speech by Coach Eric Taylor of “Friday Night Lights” combined with the front row at Coachella. The cheers were so loud that I regretted not bringing my earplugs. The mood was jubilant, even though folks had to wait hours in the heat and humidity to even get into the place. The campaign claimed over 12,000 people showed up, which is not an exaggeration. Even as Harris and Walz gave the final speeches of the evening, the line to get into the overflow room — just to watch the event on TV — went on for multiple city blocks.

[…]Vance’s speech, on the other hand, wasn’t just underwhelming but a little uncanny. Despite using room dividers to shrink the space, the campaign could not hide that the crowd felt like a medium-sized wedding, albeit a pathetic one where no one cares for the couple. Vance, perhaps recognizing charisma isn’t his strong suit, spoke briefly before bringing up a series of local citizens ready to blame Mexicans for their familial tragedies of drug addiction. He spoke for a couple more minutes, before taking the reporters’ questions about cat ladies.

Even in his short speech, it seemed Vance — like the Trump campaign overall — is still struggling to accept that they are running against Harris and not President Joe Biden. It felt like the speechwriter had typed Ctrl-F “Biden” and replaced every instance with “Harris,” whether it made sense or not. […]

I saw a clip of JD answering a reporter’s question about Trump doing one event this week, versus the heavy schedule that Harris and Walz are running. Vance said that Trump is very busy, and mumbled something about raising funds. Yeah, that’s right, JD — your campaign doesn’t have any fucking money because Trump stole it all. Trump doesn’t have a public schedule because their genius plan was to glide to victory over Biden.

Most importantly, they have no strategy. It’s neither strategically or tactically smart to have Vance chase Harris and Walz. Obviously, Harris/Walz were going to have a bigger crowd and more attention than JD in Philly, but even at that, what a weak effort by the Trump/Vance campaign to only get 200 incels to show up.  They also fucked up their sign placement (as shown above), but the “Kamala Chaos” message on the sign is just more of them repeating back the charges made by the Harris campaign instead of coming up with anything new or clever.

Tim Walz said “we’ll sleep when we’re dead” in Philly. The Trump/Vance campaign, at the moment, is just asleep.

Also, I have a correction to make to yesterday’s “Tampon Tim” post. I just assumed that the Minnesota law about menstrual supplies mandated that they were to be supplied in both bathrooms. That’s right-wing lie. Robyn Pennachia at Wonkette has the facts:

But the narrative the Right is putting out is that the bill “requires” schools to put tampons in the boys’ restroom. It does not. It doesn’t require them to be in any particular place, actually.

Here is the whole text of the bill:

A school district or charter school must provide students with access to menstrual products at no charge. The products must be available to all menstruating students in restrooms regularly used by students in grades 4 to 12 according to a plan developed by the school district. For purposes of this section, “menstrual products” means pads, tampons, or other similar products used in connection with the menstrual cycle.

So, sorry about the error and I hope that I’ll remember in future to vet their bullshit better.

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Wednesday Morning Open Thread: Nothin’ But *Blue* Skies!

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They found a solution — “Kamala Harris rally at Detroit airport to include Whitmer, top Michigan Democrats”:

Vice President Kamala Harris, her freshly-announced running mate and a lineup of familiar Michigan political figures will rally supporters at Detroit Metropolitan Airport during her Wednesday, Aug. 7, Michigan visit.

Harris will address the crowd at 7 p.m. during an outdoor event at one of the airport’s hangars, campaign officials said.

While the date of the Democrat’s 2024 presidential nominee’s visit was released last week, most details were kept under wraps until now…

U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow; U.S. House Reps. Shri Thanedar, Hillary Scholten, Haley Stevens, Dan Kildee, Elissa Slotkin, and Debbie Dingell; Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist; United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain; Michigan Democratic Party Chair Lavora Barnes; Wayne County Executive Warren Evans; and Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan will deliver remarks, officials said…

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Late Night Open Thread: 🎵 SCHA-den-FREU-de!🎵

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🎵 HA-le-LU-yah! 🎵

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War for Ukraine Day 895: For Want of a Nail!!!!!!!

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Painting by NEIVANMADE. It has a white background an in the center are Soldiers in green doing air defense by firing at incoming Russian missiles in the upper right. The missiles are red and yellow. In the upper left, written in green, is the text: "SAVE THE BRAVEST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD!" Below the Soldiers, also written in green, is "SUPPORT FOR KHARKIV"

(Image by NEIVANMADE)

Two quick housekeeping notes. First, Rosie is still doing well after her treatment yesterday. Thank you all for the good thoughts, well wishes, prayers, and donations.

Second, tonight’s update is going to be terse, grim, and if you don’t want your mellow harshed from today’s domestic to the US news, you may want to pass on by.

As I start drafting tonight’s post – 8:50 PM EDT/3:50 AM local in Ukraine – Sumy and Kharkiv Oblasts in the east and the central/north-central oblasts of Ukraine are under air raid alert with a strike reported in Khmelnitskyi Oblast.

Shortly after I published last night’s update, which was right after the air raid alert in Kharkiv went back up, the Russian’s launched an Iskander barrage at Kharkiv City:

If you’re wondering why this keeps happening, why Ukraine can’t stop it from happening, part of the reason is going to hurt. One part, obviously, is because Putin and the Russian are undertaking a genocidal re-invasion of Ukraine. If Putin can take it Ukraine and Russianize it into the Ruskiy Mir, great. If not, he’ll destroy it, rebuild, and then repopulate it with real ethnic Russians from the Russian metropoles. The other part, however, is that President Biden has appointed the worst, most risk averse senior national security team possible, which has prevented Ukraine from actually using the weapons they’ve been provided from prosecuting legitimate military targets in Russia. Targets, that had they been targeted when Ukraine had the opportunity, would make it much, much, much harder for Russia to carry out its genocidal attacks on Ukrainian civilians. Forbes has the details: (emphasis mine)

For months, Ukrainian officials have been begging their foreign allies for permission to use the best donated weaponry—in particular, powerful ballistic missiles—to hit Russian warplanes that have been parking out in the open at airfields inside Russia within quick flying time of Ukrainian cities.

For months, those allies have demurred, citing the risk of escalation as Russia’s wider war on Ukraine grinds into its 29th month.

Clearly growing impatient, Ukrainian forces have stepped up their attacks on the most vulnerable Russian airfields—strictly deploying Ukrainian-made munitions. On Saturday, Ukrainian drones targeted Morozovsk air base in southern Russia 200 miles from the front line in eastern Ukraine.

According to the Ukrainian intelligence directorate, the drone raid destroyed a Russian air force Sukhoi Su-34 fighter-bomber, damaged two additional Su-34s and burned down an ammunition warehouse.

The directorate published satellite imagery of the base depicting what it described as “extensive areas of scorched earth” resulting from the ammo cooking off in the aftermath of the attack.

Since dropping its first crude glide bombs on Ukraine last year, the Russian air force has really embraced the satellite-guided munitions. Thanks to their pop-out wings, the hastily-built “KAB” glide bombs possess just enough range—25 miles or more, depending on the model—to allow Su-34 fighter-bombers to hit Ukrainian troops and civilians from beyond the range of the best Ukrainian air defenses.

Every day, the Russians drop as many as 100 KABs, some weighing more than three tons. “Unfortunately, in urban environments, their large and frequent use is highly effective,” Ukrainian analysis group Frontelligence Insight reported.

“Even though they are often imprecise, the sheer payload is enough to demolish or severely damage buildings, even if the KAB doesn’t hit the target directly,” Frontelligence Insight continued. “When buildings collapse, underground basements trap people inside, making rescue operations impossible, especially when the Russians conduct double and triple-tap attacks.”

As urban demolition weapons, the KABs have been a deciding factor in practically every recent Russian victory all along the 700-mile front line. “In the past, like in the battle for Bakhmut [last year], it sometimes took days for Russian artillery to damage buildings enough to force defenders to retreat,” Frontelligence Insight explained. “Now, entire buildings can collapse in seconds, rendering them useless for defensive purposes.”

It’s a top priority of the government in Kyiv to blunt the glide-bombing campaign by destroying the bombers, the bombs—or both.

There was a rare opportunity to deliver a major blow against the KAB infrastructure earlier this summer, when the Russian air force’s 47th Guards Bomber Aviation Regiment parked dozens of Su-34s—out of roughly 100 in service—in open at Voronezh Malshevo air base in southern Russia 100 miles from the border with Ukraine.

Voronezh Malshevo is a reasonably well-defended base, so the Ukrainians pleaded for permission to fire their best American-made Army Tactical Missile System rockets at the base. The ATACMs are almost impossible to intercept.

But the administration of U.S. Pres. Joe Biden said no. “Our policy has not changed,” Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security advisor, told reporters last month. As before, Ukraine would only be allowed to fire ATACMS at targets in Russian-occupied Ukraine.

The Russians observed the heated diplomacy regarding ATACMS—and made a rare proactive decision to pull the Su-34s from Voronezh Malshevo and other border airfields.

“Between the second half of June and mid-July, Russian forces relocated a lion’s [share] of valuable military assets away from the border area with Ukraine,” Frontelligence Insight noted. The departure of Su-34s from Voronezh Malshevo was among “the most notable movements.”

Today many of the Su-34s are at bases hundreds of miles from the border. They’re not invulnerable to Ukrainian drones—the farthest-flying models range more than 1,000 miles.

But they are safe from most Ukrainian drones, as well as from the ATACMS, the most powerful of which range just 190 miles. If the White House ever grants permission for ATACMS raids on Russian bases, it might be too late. The most valuable targets may be too far away.

Obviously, a handful of Su-34s—as well as some stocks of KAB bombs—remain at border airfields such as Morozovsk: Ukraine just hit three of the planes plus their ammo.

But to end the glide-bombing campaign, Ukraine needs to destroy scores of Su-34s—not one or several. And smarter Russian deployments are making that harder to achieve.

For want of a nail!!!

I want to make another point here. The Biden administration has gone all in on an initiative to reduce and mitigate civilian harm. Secretary Austin issued a memo, which was followed by the creation of an action plan and then a DOD instruction. There is a heavy emphasis on protecting civilians. On working with allies and partners to do so. They even set up a Civilian Protection Center of Excellence as directed in the action plan. You know what the Biden administration is not doing? Not doing anything to help protect Ukrainian civilians. It is actively preventing Ukraine from protecting its own civilians. The hypocrisy, strategic malpractice, and risk aversion is overwhelming. We’re not talking about letting Ukraine attack Red Square or the Kremlin or the Winter Palace or even Putin’s mansion in Sochi. We’re talking about legitimate military targets that are targeting and killing Ukrainian civilians every single day! These absolutely unjustifiable decisions aren’t making anyone safer. Not the Ukrainians, not our NATO and EU allies and partners, and not Americans.

For want of a fucking nail!!!

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

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Home Run (Open Thread)

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Just caught the tail-end of the Harris – Walz rally, and wow, Walz hit it out of the park! He talked about freedom and the common good and hit themes that will likely appeal to normies, e.g., that people should mind their own damn business. He even worked in a reference to the sofa-shagger’s online notoriety, saying he was looking forward to debating JD Vance — that is if Vance “gets off the couch and shows up.”

I wish I’d heard more of Harris’s speech; I tuned in just when she was handing it off to Waltz, who thanked her for bringing back the joy. Anyhoo, I thought he was terrific, and I look forward to acquiring a fresh set of bumper stickers. Check out the rally vid if you missed it!

Open thread!

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