Balloon Juice - Open Threads Archives

Light Show (Open Thread)

by Betty Cracker| July 22, 202411:59 pm| 171 Comments

A lightning storm parked itself slightly east of us last night, and we were treated to an impressive light show for well over an hour. Here’s 30 seconds of it:

Because of the distance, it was the best of both worlds to watch the storm from the porch. It was far enough away that it didn’t feel menacing but close enough so we could be awed by its power.

If you listen to the audio, you’ll hear the tree frogs singing. Toward the end, you may hear a motor because yes, an idiot was out in a boat, heading upriver towards the storm. I hope they got home safely.

Open thread!

Light Show (Open Thread)Post + Comments (171)

NC Black Alliance Phase II Fundraising – Angel Match + Bonus $5k Angel If we reach $10,000 by Midnight

by WaterGirl| July 22, 202410:02 pm| 61 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads

Just a reminder that we have a challenge from one of our BJ Angels. If we reach $10,000 by midnight, he will pop another $5,000 into the thermometer.

Right now the thermometer is basically at $7,400. That’s because our second (regular, not bonus) $2,000 Angel today put their match in early. I won’t be up when we (hopefully) meet it, so they wanted to be sure and get it in. So there’s $1,600 left on the current angel match. If we can match that, we’ll be at $9,000 – so maybe there’s a decent chance that we’ll get that $5,000 bonus.

The last two days have feels like a month, and I have looked at my phone a half a dozen times today to pick it up to call Steep, and that’s exhausting, too.

So I’m gonna say that if the thermometer is at $10,000 by the time I get up tomorrow morning, that will be close enough for government work, and if so, I’m confident that we’ll get the bonus.

I’m putting this up after Cole’s nightly post so our night crew will see it, hoping you might pop in and donate, but knowing that you’ll be mostly commenting on Cole’s thread, which was really heartening to read.

Goodnight everybody, we have to hang together, or we will surely hang separately under a Trump regime.

Peace to all my fellow travelers.

We have a Balloon Juice angel for the first $2,500, matching up to $100 per person
with donations in the comments or email to WaterGirl.

And we have an angel that is willing to pop in $5,000 if we get to $10,000
by ~~midnight~~ the time I get out of bed on Tuesday morning.

Donate

NC Black Alliance Phase II Fundraising – Angel Match + Bonus $5k Angel If we reach $10,000 by MidnightPost + Comments (61)

Paging IvanX – No, Make That Front-Paging Ivan X

by WaterGirl| July 22, 20248:34 pm| 167 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads

IvanX, I have always liked you! And now even more so.

IvanX

Ok, like, I know I’m being stupid and naïve, but can we not make it so hot and personal in these threads?

Can we not call each other names and insults? We’re all readers of this blog. We might be getting on each others’ nerves, but can we not flay each other?

A) there are a lot of people here who are relieved and/or happy it’s Harris and not Biden. I’m in this camp.

B) there are a lot of people here who are angry it’s Harris not Biden, and feel they, and Biden, were cheated because of how things went down. I’m certainly sympathetic to people in this camp.

The B) camp has had barely a day to process their feelings about a shocking change of situation. I think they’re entitled to some rage and hurt for a period of time. When TaMara tried to give them a space for it, which I see nothing wrong with, I think it’s true that the a) camp came in and told them why they should feel differently. But at the same time, the B) camp has been telling the a) camp why *they* should feel differently, and should instead feel shitty about accepting an undemocratic process that trivializes their participation thus far.

We are not gonna get very far by telling each other how to feel. It’s just not gonna work. We’re definitely not going to get very far with outright hostilities. Let people mourn and grieve, and let people express their relief or happiness. Just keep on scrollng! It doesn’t cost you anything. We are not all gonna feel understood by each other, right now, and we don’t all need to.

WE ARE ALL IN THIS AGAINST TRUMP.

Please, can we let everyone feel the way they feel, and give the wounded some space, so that we move the fuck on and elect Democrats around this country?

Paging IvanX – No, Make That Front-Paging Ivan XPost + Comments (167)

War for Ukraine Day 880: Russia Attacks A Nikopol School with Flechette Rounds!

by Adam L Silverman| July 22, 20247:32 pm| 18 Comments

This post is in: Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Military, Open Threads, Russia, Silverman on Security, War, War in Ukraine

(Image by NEIVANMADE)

A quick housekeeping note. Rosie had her second treatment of round three today. So far she’s doing great. Thank you all for the good thoughts, well wishes, prayers, and donations.

The Russians shot flechette rounds into a school in Nikopol today.

These steel darts are called flechettes.

Russia just sent thousands of these sharp darts, designed to inflict maximum damage on humans, into a Ukrainian school near Nikopol.

Russia uses them constantly against civilians living near the frontlinehttps://t.co/BykpIZGBa3 pic.twitter.com/Fj9bMGbqEq

— Euromaidan Press (@EuromaidanPress) July 22, 2024

Euromaidan Press has the details:

On Saturday, 20 July 2024, Russian forces targeted a school in Ukraine’s Nikopol district, Dnipropetrovsk oblast, using artillery shells containing flechettes – thousands of sharp steel darts designed to inflict maximum damage on human targets.

Yevhen Yevtushenko, head of the Nikopol District Military Administration, reported the attack on Telegram on Sunday. He stated, “Yesterday, the Russians shelled a settlement of the Marhanets community with tube artillery. Many shells hit an educational institution.”

The school suffered significant damage, but fortunately, no casualties were reported. Yevtushenko emphasized that this was not an isolated incident, noting that the villages of Illinka and Dobra Nadiia “suffer from armed aggression almost daily.”

The use of flechette rounds in this attack is particularly concerning. These artillery shells can contain up to 9,000 small, sharp darts capable of causing severe injuries and fatalities. Yevtushenko highlighted the indiscriminate nature of these weapons, stating, “By shelling a settlement where civilians live, the occupiers used ammunition designed for maximum damage to people.”

This incident is not the first time flechettes have been used in the area. Yevtushenko revealed that over two years of shelling, residents of coastal settlements have frequently found these darts on streets, fences, roofs, and vehicles, underscoring the ongoing danger to civilians even after attacks have ceased.

The attack on the school in Marhanets community serves as a stark reminder of the continued threat faced by Ukrainian civilians in areas near the front lines, as the war in Ukraine enters its third year since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

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

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Our Team Is Preparing Four New Security Agreements for Ukraine – Address by the President

22 July 2024 – 19:31

I wish you health, fellow Ukrainians!

A brief summary of the day.

Our team is preparing four new security agreements for Ukraine. Very soon, we will begin negotiations and quite promptly prepare the documents for signing. These agreements will cover defense support, finances, and humanitarian cooperation. With these, we will have almost thirty such agreements with our partners. We aimed to include various countries, not just NATO members. However, all of them are equally ready to help us defend our shared values. And this will happen. No matter what happens in the world, we need our own tools to support our people and state, our own security agreements that will work under any conditions. This is exactly what we are doing.

And the most important thing for today. I want to thank all our people, all our rescuers from the State Emergency Service of Ukraine working to protect people’s lives in different regions of our country, both in the rear and in the frontline and border areas of Ukraine. These are the people who always, under any circumstances, arrive at the scene after Russian attacks and shelling and do absolutely everything to help as quickly as possible. Our state services remain functional in all regions. I especially want to mention the employees of the State Emergency Service in the Kharkiv region – the entire team of rescuers in the region, particularly Andriy Sydorchenko, Yevhen Popov, Maksym Hunko, Viktor Koval, and Serhiy Lysytsia. Thank you and all your colleagues! Also, the State Emergency Service in the Kherson region – all the employees of the department, especially Ivan Smolenskyi, Taras Staryshchak, Serhiy Yachmeniov, Vladyslav Pylypenko, and Oleksandr Vasechko… Thank you! And our Sumy region – a region that, unfortunately, is also constantly suffering from Russian terror. But there, as elsewhere, our rescuers always help. Thank you to the entire team of the main department of the State Emergency Service in the Sumy region, especially Yaroslav Samoylenko, Oleh Moroz, Andriy Shchennikov, Andriy Pokydiuk, Oleksandr Klochkov, and Ruslan Pylypets.

Thank you to everyone who protects our state, our people, and our Ukrainian interests!

Thank you to everyone in the world who helps us!

Glory to Ukraine!

We are constantly looking for better solutions for training Ukrainian soldiers.
On Defense Vision Day in Kyiv, dozens of VR and AR-based training, education, and simulation systems were presented. https://t.co/NPEV7JYsme

— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) July 22, 2024

Here’s the video:

Illia Ponomarenko is absolutely correct in his assessment below:

When it comes to Ukraine, Joe Biden made a lot of mistakes.

The most painful thing about that is that so many of those mistakes could have been easily avoided if Biden had people in his team who genuinely understood what Putin’s Russia was and how things worked with the Kremlin…

— Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 (@IAPonomarenko) July 22, 2024

When it comes to Ukraine, Joe Biden made a lot of mistakes.

The most painful thing about that is that so many of those mistakes could have been easily avoided if Biden had people in his team who genuinely understood what Putin’s Russia was and how things worked with the Kremlin mafia.

Heaven knows, and we know it too, that the Biden administration, along with other Western leaders, spent way too much time in vain trying to talk Putin out of invading Ukraine.

We all remember those endless, humiliating summits, diplomatic powwows, meetings, calls, and conversations behind closed doors that resulted in nothing in the winter of 2021-22— nothing but Putin and his cronies openly jesting at their frantic attempts and spitting at their faces.

The decision to invade and devour Ukraine had been made a long time ago. Putin’s TV propaganda within Russia was only using those pictures to send a message to the domestic audience: Look, the American president is now seeking Putin’s attention and is reasoning with Russia, but who is he in the face of the inevitable?

(Yes, the galaxy brains who keep saying that Biden “never tried diplomacy with Russia” are either fucking utterly dumb, or extraordinarily shameless, or just never actually followed the developments at all).

I think it would be honest and true to say that the U.S. administration in the days of February 2022 was ready to accept the option of Ukraine going down, establishing a national government in exile somewhere in Poland, and gradually coming to terms with “new territorial realities in Europe.”

They decided to go the easiest way and take as little action as possible, assume as little responsibility as possible, and make decisions as free from risk as possible. Moreover, the administration appeared to be very, very reluctant to change its course due to new circumstances and opportunities.

That was one of the Biden administration’s key mistakes regarding Ukraine, which, in a certain way, has affected Biden today’s electoral chances.

A very unexpected and catastrophic Russian defeat at Kyiv (which essentially spelled the failure of Putin’s “special military operation”) in 2022 should have destroyed a lot of long-ingrained illusions.

And it shouldn’t have taken months of Ukrainian begging to start providing Ukraine with artillery to stand against Russian “walls of fire,” destroying everything on their way in Donbas.

It shouldn’t have taken months of Ukrainian begging to provide Ukraine with a handful of HIMARS systems that effectively derailed Russian offensive campaigns in the summer of 2022 and precipitated the liberation of Kherson in November 2022.

It shouldn’t have taken months and years of Ukrainian begging to provide Ukraine with PATRIOT missile defense systems, which not only did not lead to “World War III” but instead demonstrated the greatest results in the type’s entire operational history and set a number of milestones in defending the Ukrainian capital from Russian missiles and saving lives.

It shouldn’t have taken months and years of Ukrainian begging to give the green light to provide Ukraine with armored vehicles, particularly M2 Bradleys, which demonstrated extraordinary results in Ukrainian hands. The same goes with tanks, particularly a handful of M1 Abrams, which unblocked the scarce deliveries of Leopard tanks from European nations.

It shouldn’t have taken years of Ukrainian begging to get long-outdated ATACMS missiles that not only did not trigger “a major escalation” but effectively wiped out Russian military airfields and sophisticated air defense systems used against Ukraine.

And, of course, it shouldn’t have taken years to finally admit the fact that the policy of not allowing Ukraine to use American weapons to strike Russia’s military infrastructure in Russian territory is deeply absurd and ineffective; it only provides the aggressor with a safe haven for escalating its offensive operations and terror bombing campaigns in Ukraine and only encourages to move on unpunished.

This list can be continued for a long time.

The problem is that way too much authority was given to people who graduated from the most elite universities and read all of Kissinger — but never had the experience of fighting back to street thugs and discouraging them from harassing someone with a good old punch in the face.

Amid endless “escalation management” and heeding Russia’s “nuclear threats,” way too much time was given to Putin to recover from the initial stress of the failure in Ukraine, to restructure production and economy, to adapt to sanctions, to find allies in Iran and North Korea, and reshape Russia into a totalitarian state obsessed with exterminating a neighboring country.

This is what our military has had to deal with for more than a decade since Russia invaded Ukraine for the first time in 2014.

Even in the final months before the resignation from the presidential race, the Biden administration was still placing way too much hope on trying to reason with Putin or trying to motivate Putin to get reasonable to strike a fair deal on Ukraine via the tactics of slow bites. So, after two years of war, Putin is still not ready to talk serious business and leave Ukraine alone? Okay, we let Ukraine use ATACMS, but only in Crimea and not against Russian territory.

Many months later, Putin is still defiant as always? Okay, let’s let Ukrainians strike targets in Russian territory, but only within 100 miles of the Ukrainian border and no ATACMS.

And this drags on, and on, and on. And failure to realize that the moment when Putin says “Okay, now I’m ready to leave Ukraine alone” would never come unless Putin is forced to stop and calm down was among Biden biggest mistakes.

Yet — even though so many mistakes were made, every Ukrainian should remember that we owe a lot to the old man.

Even though there have been a lot of incompetent Putin appeasers whispering things in his ear, without his faith and without his decisions — even though many of them were half-hearted, terribly belated, and questionable — there wouldn’t be the Ukraine as we know it now.

Half of us would have been rotting in mass graves with Russian bullets in our foreheads and with our heads tied behind our backs.

For this, we will always be thankful as we should.

But there were critical, terrible mistakes that prevented Joe Biden from having a large geopolitical victory right now.

I really, really hope that whoever replaces the old man in the Oval Office will be smart enough to draw conclusions.

Kyiv:

Ukraine strikes deal to restructure $20bn of debt https://t.co/j95o8OsPJT

— Financial Times (@FT) July 22, 2024

From The Financial Times:

Ukraine has struck a deal with international bondholders to restructure about $20bn of debt, boosting Kyiv’s drive to use private capital to finance its war effort against Russia.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government said on Monday that it won support from investors to reduce the face value of the debt by more than a third, paving the way for a formal restructuring in the coming weeks.

The agreement will replace a two-year moratorium on bond payments that was granted after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 but was due to expire next month.

Ukraine sought debt relief as part of its conditions for continuing bailout loans from the IMF, which said it had endorsed Monday’s deal alongside backing from the US, UK and other allies that are financing Kyiv’s war effort.

Ukraine finalised terms last week during talks with a committee of bondholders, as well as other investors, which together own about a quarter of the debt.

“As long-term investors in Ukraine, we are pleased to be able to provide significant debt relief to Ukraine, assist its efforts to regain its access to international capital markets, and support the future reconstruction of the country to the benefit of the Ukrainian people,” the committee said.

The terms of the deal reflect deep uncertainty over the impact of a longer conflict on Ukraine’s economy and its ability to bear significant amounts of debt.

In return for writing off 37 cents per dollar of the old debt, bondholders will firstly receive bonds worth 40 cents of their original claim. These will restore interest payments immediately, rising from 1.75 per cent over the next year to 4.5 per cent from 2026, with later increases.

They will also receive a bond worth 23 cents, which will not pay interest for the next three years, but could increase to 35 cents if Ukraine’s nominal gross domestic product exceeds IMF targets by at least 3 per cent, and up to 7.5 per cent, in 2028.

Overall, the restructuring will slash Ukraine’s previously scheduled bond payments by more than $11bn, or 90 per cent, in the next three years.

By restarting payments to private investors after the moratorium, Ukraine hopes it can entice them to finance reconstruction, people familiar with the talks said.

Ukraine’s full return to bond markets is seen as unlikely as long as the war continues, but it could attract other sources of private capital such as loans guaranteed by development banks. Such funding could mitigate a feared reduction in support if Republican nominee Donald Trump wins the US presidential election, investors and analysts have said.

Ukraine and the bondholder committee broke off initial discussions last month with positions far apart on the level of debt reduction that was needed, before formal talks restarted in the past two weeks.

Monday Evening Open Thread: A Dish Best Served Cold

by Anne Laurie| July 22, 20246:48 pm| 238 Comments

This post is in: Elections 2024, GOP Death Cult, Open Threads, President Biden, Proud to Be A Democrat, Vice-President Harris

This Kamala Harris ad goes hard.

Her 2020 campaign was absolutely COOKING.

If anyone was curious what a general election against Trump would look like: pic.twitter.com/C07qHwXeJm

— Dream for America (@DreamAmerica_) July 21, 2024

I want to post a President Biden appreciation thread, but I figure I’d get this out of the way first.

We’ve all got genuine, reasonable doubts about the average American voters’ misogyny / racism, but here’s the thing: People who survive smallpox are immune for life — to *all* the various poxes. Back in 2016, even though Hillary got millions more votes, TFG was able to eke out an electoral-college victory because of a combination of basic sexism, years of GOP anti-Clinton propaganda, boatloads of foreign money, and the weight of James Comey’s thumb on the scales. Every bad thing that’s happened over the last eight years has spotlighted *just* how dishonest and destructive the GOP was, is, and wants to continue to be. They’ve gone mask off, and the sight is uglier than late-period Darth Vader.

***********

I endorse this as the wisest of the *many* hundreds of comments I’ve read here in the past several days. Thank you, (original & significant) commentor Martin:

The last 9 years have been a real shitshow – things happening that don’t make sense, lack of leadership, lack of control…

When this happens, we try and anchor ourselves on things that are known and stable and predictable. Reject public outings, embrace knitting. Joe was one of those known and stable and predictable things in 2020. And now that’s (sorta) gone. This place, even more than Joe, is many people’s anchor thanks to our FPers, the familiarity we’ve built among the commentators, etc. Don’t throw that away – we’re all going to need it.

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Monday Evening Open Thread: A Dish Best Served *Cold*Post + Comments (238)

Trumpers are Shitting Themselves

by @heymistermix.com| July 22, 20243:40 pm| 457 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads

Josh Kovensky at TPM:

Within hours of President Joe Biden withdrawing from the presidential race and endorsing Kamala Harris to run in his stead, Donald Trump had a response: It was all very unfair.

It’s his classic MO, leaning wantonly into personal grievance when nothing else will do. Biden, Trump suggested, was lying about having COVID. The Republican Party, he said, should “be reimbursed for fraud” because it had been so grossly misled.

And, Trump added, he would no longer agree to the terms of the next debate. He’d rather it be held on friendly turf – Fox News – effectively signaling that he’s dropping out of the next debate as currently scheduled.

It was a cacophony of a reaction from one man, but it’s reflective of the broader response on the far right to Harris becoming the likely Democratic nominee. In the hours after Biden announced that he would withdraw, Republicans from Trump on down flailed for a response. Some Republicans expressed anger, while others were visibly baffled by how to react to the shift. Many reacted by suggesting that the shift from Biden to Harris itself was illegitimate, calling the President’s withdrawal from the race a “coup” and proclaiming that they’re actually running against a system, not a candidate.

Trump’s campaign was sitting around huffing each others’ farts while looking at the polls and high-fiving. Now things have changed and they’ll have to work. Unfortunately, they’re not very good, especially when trying to twist their instinctual response to a black woman into something that doesn’t sound like 1950’s Jim Crow racism. Once they lock in on the exact way that Republicans should hate Harris, it’s going to get ugly, but right now it’s pretty damn entertaining to see them struggle.

Edit: I forgot to mention how JD stepped into it, as mentioned by numerous commenters:

“We’re effectively run in this country via the Democrats, via the corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too. It’s just a basic fact. You have Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC, the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children. How does that make any sense when we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t have a direct stake in it.”

It really takes some jumbo-brained political talent to shit on adoptive parents (Buttigieg) and step parents (Harris) by calling them “childless”. Masterful.

Trumpers are Shitting ThemselvesPost + Comments (457)

The Real Danger is Still Out There

by @heymistermix.com| July 22, 20241:08 pm| 282 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads

My Take

I was traveling from Friday to last night, and the only political media I saw was AOC’s post to Instagram, which was nearly an hour of her take on the whole Biden issue, which I think she posted late on Thursday. I think that post is still relevant, because she made some points about what might happen if Biden dropped out that are important:

Early voting in some states starts as early as sometime in September. That’s 2 months away.
No serious Democrat who hopes to be President someday will want to be the nominee of an open convention. It’s political suicide because they’d be starting from zero 2 months from the start of early voting. So an open convention will yield a mediocre candidate, at best.
The Ohio issue means that Democratic delegates will be voting in a virtual convention the week after next, and there’s no way in hell we should trust a Republican official in Ohio to be fair to Democrats.
Even if we believe that we can delay the delegate vote until the non-virtual convention, Michigan’s deadline to have a name for the ballot is the day after the convention, which means an open convention is a real risk since it could drag on past that date.
The pundits, donors and Democrats influenced by them who are advocating for an open convention are not advocating for Kamala Harris — they want someone else.
Delegates are pledged to support Biden and are generally very loyal to him — and having them vote is inherently risky because they might be pissed. (I don’t think this is happening.)
Trump is beatable and the Democrats whispering that they’re prepared for a Trump win should STFU and resign.

So a big risk of Biden dropping out wasn’t Kamala Harris per se — it was the chaos that the chaos agents were generating in hopes of replacing Harris on the ticket. I think the donors who gave her ~$90 million in the last 24 hours sent a hell of a message to anyone who thinks an open convention is still a possibility. Still, there are senior Democrats who aren’t listening.

Among them are Obama, who did not endorse Harris and said “I have extraordinary confidence that the leaders of our party will be able to create a process from which an outstanding nominee emerges” in his written statement. Media is interpreting that as a call for an open convention. I’m not so sure, but I see little wisdom in dragging out his endorsement of the obvious nominee. Schumer, Jeffries and Pelosi have not endorsed Harris, that I’ve seen. Perhaps we can chalk that up to them checking in with the caucus. Still, we don’t have the luxury of infinite time to dream up some Aaron Sorkin horseshit process. We need to get all of our wood behind the Harris arrow.

To me, this is the real danger that is still lurking — the people and pundits who want to replace the person who was Biden’s clear choice for VP, someone whom every primary voter knew was his potential replacement, with an unknown and probably mediocre candidate. If any of your Democratic members of Congress are waffling or silent on a Harris endorsement, I’d give them a call and give them a piece of your mind.

One final lesson from AOC’s video. She made a sharp distinction between pundits and whisperers who were advocating that Biden drop out, versus concerned Democratic voters who wanted Biden replaced. She thought we should reserve our anger for the former, not the latter. This is how I feel, too. There are a number of fair-minded, long-time commenters who thought Biden should be replaced with Harris. Those people took a lot of shit in the comments. Well, here we are, and we need to get along, because we all want to win in November. I’m pissed about the way the pundits and whisperers acted, and I’m keeping my list. But we don’t have time to have a fight about this, or withdraw from working on the campaign. There’s too little time and too much at stake to continue fighting about it. Harris is our candidate now, and we need to support her full stop, especially since her candidacy is still in danger.

Update: Pelosi just endorsed Harris.

The Real Danger is Still Out TherePost + Comments (282)

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

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

We will not go quietly into the night; we will not vanish without a fight.

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

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

A norm that restrains only one side really is not a norm – it is a trap.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

Reality always gets a vote in the end.

Lick the third rail, it tastes like chocolate!

Roe is not about choice. It is about freedom.

Bad people in a position to do bad things will do bad things because they are bad people. End of story.

Our messy unity will be our strength.

Trump should be leading, not lying.

When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty. ~Thomas Jefferson

A fool as well as an oath-breaker.

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

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

This country desperately needs a functioning fourth estate.

Consistently wrong since 2002

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

My right to basic bodily autonomy is not on the table. that’s the new deal.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

We will not go back.

Light Show (Open Thread)

NC Black Alliance Phase II Fundraising – Angel Match + Bonus $5k Angel If we reach $10,000 by Midnight

Paging IvanX – No, Make That Front-Paging Ivan X

War for Ukraine Day 880: Russia Attacks A Nikopol School with Flechette Rounds!

Our Team Is Preparing Four New Security Agreements for Ukraine – Address by the President

Monday Evening Open Thread: A Dish Best Served Cold

Trumpers are Shitting Themselves

The Real Danger is Still Out There