Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The Supreme Court cannot be allowed to become the ultimate, unaccountable arbiter of everything.

Michigan is a great lesson for Dems everywhere: when you have power…use it!

“Until such time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on.”

If rights aren’t universal, they are privilege, not rights.

You are either for trump or for democracy. Pick one.

Democracy is not a spectator sport.

When I was faster i was always behind.

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

If America since Jan 2025 hasn’t broken your heart, you haven’t loved her enough.

DeSantis transforming Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

Balloon Juice, where there is always someone who will say you’re doing it wrong.

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

People are weird.

How any woman could possibly vote for this smug smarmy piece of misogynistic crap is beyond understanding.

Fucking consultants! (of the political variety)

Disappointing to see gov. newsom with his finger to the wind.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

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

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

I really should read my own blog.

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War for Ukraine Day 894! We’re Back!!!

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A couple of quick housekeeping notes. First, Rosie had her chemo treatment today. She’s still in full remission and is doing excellently. Thank you for all the good thoughts, well wishes, prayers, and donations.

Second, I want to thank TaMara for doing emergency back up duty last night. My power went out around 7 PM last night. Which is unusual as it almost never goes out. Occasionally during a thunderstorm if we get a strike near the house it’ll flicker for a few seconds and come right back on. Last night it was out till after midnight. The power company’s outage map was ambiguous as to the reason, but the fancy weather app I have listed it as tree on power line or lines. Even if that was the case, I have no idea where in the area that would’ve been. Regardless of the reason, we’ve been back up and running.

We have reports of recent – within one to four hours – attacks on Kyiv and Kharkiv:

And just as I finished drafting tonight’s update at 8:50 PM EDT/3:50 AM local time in Ukraine, an air raid alert went up for all of Kharkiv Oblast.

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

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Monday Evening Open Thread: RFK Jr, Pursued By A Bear (Story)

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Actually, you don’t get weirder than Roseanne giving you side-eye…

In the patois of our people: Better to have kept his tongue between his teeth. The New Yorker profile is not an Isaac Chotiner special; it was probably intended as a beat-sweetener, but it reads more like a lawyer’s dutiful plea for his client’s early parole (The tragic chronic illness of substance abuse… traumatic childhood… bad companions… we’re all very pleased with how well Bobby’s incorporated his hard-won lessons. ) Here’s the entirety of the New Yorker’s take on the bear story, four-fifths of the way through a very long, deeply dispiriting narrative:

… One day, in the fall of 2014, Kennedy was driving to a falconry outing in upstate New York when he passed a furry brown mound on the side of the road. He pulled over and discovered that it was the carcass of a black-bear cub. Kennedy was tickled by the find. He loaded the dead bear into the rear hatch of his car and later showed it off to his friends. In a picture from that day, Kennedy is putting his fingers inside the bear’s bloody mouth, a comical grimace across his face. (When I asked Kennedy about the incident, he said, “Maybe that’s where I got my brain worm.”)

After the outing, Kennedy, who was then sixty and recently married to Hines, got an idea. He drove to Manhattan and, as darkness fell, entered Central Park with the bear and a bicycle. A person with knowledge of the event said that Kennedy thought it would be funny to make it look as if the animal had been killed by an errant cyclist. The next day, the bear was discovered by two women walking their dogs, setting off an investigation by the N.Y.P.D. “This is a highly unusual situation,” a spokeswoman for the Central Park Conservancy told the Times. “It’s awful.” In a follow-up piece for the Times, which was coincidentally written by Tatiana Schlossberg, one of J.F.K.’s granddaughters, a retired Bronx homicide commander commented, “People are crazy.”…

My people — our (Irish-American) people — have a tradition of composing proud sagas about our reckless, feckless, substance-abusing Warriors (aka chaos muppets). I was told that our drunks run in packs because there’s got to be at least one guy in the bunch who can piece together a narrative after the event. My old man was a (mostly functional) alcoholic, so this is how I understand RFK’s bear tale, from RFK’s own telling:

Bobby and a bunch of his guys spent the afternoon out in the hunting field, an expedition where a certain amount of celebratory drinking is practically mandatory. Eventually, everybody piled into RFK’s van, which was driven by RFK himself, because of course it would be very wrong to hand over the keys to a(nother) drunk, officer!

At some point on the way to Westchester, a bear cub — probably already dead — was encountered. It seemed like a good idea to stuff the carcass in the back of the van, because Bobby could skin it later, and maybe the meat would be edible, at least for the falcons or something. *Totally* legal, because a retroactive game license for roadkill bear is available in NY state. (Remember, kids: Bobby had not been drinking.)

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Water, water everywhere (open thread)

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What a difference a day makes! Here’s the little peninsula that juts out into the river in front of our house (Pendejo Point) shortly after 6 PM yesterday as the hurricane was moving up the coast:

Water, water everywhere (open thread)

Here it is today after a foot of rain overnight:

Water, water everywhere (open thread) 1

Our river had plenty of excess capacity, unlike the Suwannee, which is getting pounded by the storm now in a way that has my relatives who live on it in a tizzy. (We are a riparian people.)

Please overlook our cruddy screens! It’s tough to keep them clear in the Mildew State.

Open thread!

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They Are All Mob Bosses Now

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They are all mob bosses now.  So brazen – they are confident that they can get away with anything.

Mob Boss Neil Gorsuch:

Don’t like your neighbor?  Don’t like how someone votes?  Now, in Georgia, you don’t have to just grumble about that.  You can request that they be taken off the voter rolls!

.

Lady Justice cannot be happy abut any of this.

In November, let’s show them that they’re wrong about that.

Update:  Drip, drip, drip, you bastard.  Maybe if you step down you won’t be prosecuted.

Justice Clarence Thomas failed to report a 2010 trip from Hawaii to New Zealand on the conservative donor Harlan Crow’s jet, Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat of Oregon and the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said.

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— The New York Times (@nytimes.com) Aug 5, 2024 at 11:52 AM

h/t M31

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Monday Morning Open Thread: Tenterhooks

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We’re supposed to get Harris’ VP pick today, and I have to admit I’m with the Blogfather on this one…

And yet:

Elsewhere…

Calling U.S. citizens abroad who want to volunteer to get Kamala Harris and other Dems elected. Go to www.democratsabroad.org/join to help other people living abroad vote. You can go to www.votefromabroad.org to get your own registration and request your ballot without any commitment to Democrats

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— Michele (@ibumichele.bsky.social) Jul 31, 2024 at 1:42 PM

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Squishable BYO Morning News

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I’m not sure what Anne Laure is up to this morning, but I don’t see anything going on in the back room.  Hopefully we’ll see her soon.  In the meantime, it’s BYO (bring your own) morning news time.

Let’s share some good political news.

I do love this.

Open thread.

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