Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

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

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

T R E 4 5 O N

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

Since we are repeating ourselves, let me just say fuck that.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

Fear or fury? The choice is ours.

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

GOP baffled that ‘we don’t care if you die’ is not a winning slogan.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

We’re watching the self-immolation of the leading world power on a level unprecedented in human history.

One way or another, he’s a liar.

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

If a good thing happens for a bad reason, it’s still a good thing.

“But what about the lurkers?”

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Hi god, it’s us. Thanks a heap, you’re having a great week and it’s only Thursday!

In my day, never was longer.

A tremendous foreign policy asset… to all of our adversaries.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

Conservatism: there are people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

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War for Ukraine Day 864: Russia Sends the Shaheds Against Sumy Oblast

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A painting by Ukrainian artist NEIVANMADE. The words "NEVER AGAIN" are repeated over and over, from left to right and top to bottom, in a faded, washed out black against a white background. Red, the color of blood, runs and drips down across 2/3rds of the painting. "WHILE YOU TOLERATE TYRANTS" is written/painted in the bottom white corner below the three rows of "NEVER AGAIN".

(Image by NEIVANMADE)

A quick housekeeping note: Rosie is still doing well. She starts round 3 of chemotherapy on Monday. Thank you all, again, for the good thoughts, well wishes, prayers, and donations.

Last night Russia launched a drone attack against Sumy Oblast, as well as other parts of Ukraine.

Here’s the full text of the first tweet:

⚡️Russian drones damage energy infrastructure in Sumy Oblast.

A Russian drone attack overnight on July 6 caused damage to energy infrastructure in Sumy Oblast, leaving several communities in the region without power, the Sumy Oblast Military Administration reported.

The Kyiv Independent has the details.

Editor’s Note: This is a developing story and is being updated.

A Russian drone attack overnight on July 6 caused damage to energy infrastructure in Sumy Oblast, leaving several communities in the region without power, the Sumy Oblast Military Administration reported.

In recent months, Russia has intensified its attacks against Ukraine’s critical infrastructure in a renewed assault against the country’s energy grid.

Explosions were heard in Sumy Oblast shortly after midnight local time, Suspilne reported, as the Air Force warned of the threat of Russian Shahed-type drone attacks.

Emergency crews are currently on scene and are investigating the extent of the damage, the military administration said.

Earlier in the night, local officials in the city of Sumy said that a Russian drone attack temporarily cut off power to the local water system and disrupted the water supply. Water usage was restored by 7:30 a.m. local time, Suspilne Sumy reported.

As a result of the attacks on energy infrastructure, Ukraine began implementing rolling blackouts on May 15.

Due to dwindling energy supplies caused by Russian attacks, Ukraine’s largest privately-owned energy provider DTEK has warned that Ukrainians have only have electricity for 6-7 hours per day in the upcoming winter.

In a “worst-case” scenario in which Ukraine is unable to repair damaged energy facilities and prevent future attacks, Ukrainians could experience up to 20 hours of blackouts a day, DTEK Executive Director Dmytro Sakharuk told the Kyiv Independent in an interview on June 9.

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

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Forewarned Is Forearmed Open Thread

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Two quick things for this open thread.

First.  Biden cancels his speech (scheduled for Sunday) because there is a strike, with picket lines, and we all know that Joe Biden will not be crossing a picket line. h/t Chris Johnson

You know what the media will say, you know what social media trolls will say; now you know what the real deal is in advance.  Forewarned is forearmed.

Second.   An interesting take on troll behavior, from Chris Johnson the comments.  I’ll be interested in hearing your thoughts on these thoughts!

I coin the term ‘Trollster’, check it out :)

You can (and we did!) get pairs of trolls with the following characteristics:

  • Instead of trying to persuade, they’re hammering narratives very unappealingly. It’s brazen, annoying.
  • The narratives may have a common factor (Biden bad) but will outline OPPOSITE positions. Trump stronk/weak,  Kamala Prez/dumped, like that.
  • The trolls WILL NOT intersect. Strictly one thread for the one, one thread for the other. If invited they will not intersect, though they seemingly have opposite takes.
  • If discovered they can retreat or one will drop out so the other can troll normally.

The purpose of Trollstering is to get information back about the subjects that have opposite takes. They, or somebody, is taking note of how they’re argued against and what sticks. The reason they will not intersect even when invited, is because it’s actively a rule for them not to do, and the reason for that is it’d ruin the data! They can’t argue with each other, they’re strictly gathering data on YOU. I would bet money there’s an actual rule against them posting in each others’ threads.

So, if the trollage seems unusually obnoxious and it really seems to be picking fights, check to see if you’re being Trollstered. Is there a nearby thread with a whole other troll, who is being just as obnoxious but over literally opposite points?

Getting normally trolled requires getting some sympathy, but getting Trollstered can be way more adversarial, because you’re being watched on how you respond to the side-issues. They’ll be incredibly on-message, but there’ll be another one where the message has a contradictory aspect. It’s a poll

Here’s the usefulness: it’s a window into what narrative might get pushed next, and it reveals weakness. If the narrative is going perfect they don’t need to do this.

If anyone has questions about how the pie filter works, we have answers.  Just ask!

Open thread.

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What Else You Got Going On Between Now and November?

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What else you got going on between now and November?
Surely nothing more important than this.

In the words of Tony Jay

The only thing that has changed since last week is that the corporate media have gone balls to the wall to create an ‘ongoing crisis’ for Democrats that they can milk until election day – which they were always going to do anyway – and the utter scum infesting the Supreme Court have gone balls to the wall inventing a Conservaconstitution to replace the one that has worked for 200+ years – which they were always going to do anyway.

You can’t do anything about that. Bad people in a position to do bad things will do bad things because they are bad people. End of.

All you lot can do is donate, volunteer, campaign, and keep on taking any opportunity you can to remind ‘normal’ voters that the choice is between progressive Government under Democrats and a descent into crab barrel fascism under Stench and the Hench Party.

What else you got going on between now and November that’s a better way to pass the time?

We have an angel match from RaflW and (very likely) an external match, so donations will almost certainly be 4x.  The usual match rules apply.

We have a lot to do and a lot of boots to get on the ground between now and November.  

Let’s do this!
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Black Women Are Showing Us The Way. Again.

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Busy week working, and I am back at it today, but I took one minute to check in on my buddy, the (fake) jack Smith.

Let’s model Taraji’s behavior, shall we?  We are not famous, but what if each one of us shared Project 2025 information with just one person this weekend.  What would the ripples be?

And if you didn’t catch the awesome poem by niqaeli torres in yesterday’s thread, go check it out.

Four Directions Wisconsin – We Have Angels, and Poetry!

She is right.  All there is is what we do now.  This fight is for everything.  Get up and fight.

Open thread.

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Saturday Morning Open Thread: Hot Enough for Ya?

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*********

Related, and yet not: This is a very important piece of legislation!

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Late Night Open Thread: RFK Jr, Chaos Agent

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The family may not have shared every unpleasant detail, but all the cousins knew enough not to ask each other too many questions. Bobby Jr was, and is, someone who “smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness… and let other people clean up the mess they had made.” Here’s the article that seems to have sparked this week’s agita, Vanity Fair “RFK Jr.’s Family Doesn’t Want Him to Run. Even They May Not Know His Darkest Secrets.”:

… Long before he entered the 2024 race with a wagon train of conspiracy theories, the wider Kennedy family was intimately familiar with RFK Jr.’s problematic personality—the outsize confidence masquerading as expertise, the “savior complex” (as one family member called it) that drives him to take up quixotic causes and cast himself as a lone hero against established powers, and, above all, as one old friend calls it, his “pathological need for attention.” A few months ago I began talking to Kennedy family members and close friends, some on the record, others on background, to get insights into the man they know well, and to ask some pointed questions: Rather than merely rubber-stamping Joe Biden’s already fatally faltering campaign, shouldn’t you be telling voters what you know about your brother and cousin, whose candidacy threatens to swing the presidential election to Donald Trump and upend American history forever? With the future of the country riding on the narrowest of polling margins, shouldn’t you be describing in fine detail the acute dangers of the person you know so well—before your own family’s tragedy becomes the nation’s?…

After initially denouncing his candidacy last summer, most of the 105 Kennedy relatives —including Bobby’s eight siblings, the largest branch of the family—had hoped his campaign would collapse under the weight of his many bizarre claims and alliances with anti-vax cranks and Trumpworld figures like Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson. Instead the family has played defense, going public only when Kennedy’s statements went so far out of bounds they had no choice, like when he suggested COVID was “ethnically targeted” to spare Jewish and Chinese people; or his claim that anti-vaxxers suffered worse oppression than Anne Frank (a statement sister Kerry called “sickening and destructive”); or when he claimed there was a mysterious alternative shooter in the death of his father in 1968 (going so far as to interview Sirhan B. Sirhan in prison and proclaim him innocent); or that the CIA was possibly involved in the assassination—claims that caused deep pain for his siblings.

Their private efforts to get Bobby to drop out—or at least wait until 2028 to run—have also come to naught. “I’ve spoken to Bobby about this race, about what’s at stake, about the importance of supporting Joe Biden, of the impact of the Trump presidency on our country and on the world,” Kerry Kennedy, who leads the nonprofit Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights and is disciplined in how she speaks of her brother, tells me, “and I was clearly unpersuasive.”…

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War for Ukraine Day 863: A Brief Friday Night Update

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(Image by NEIVANMADE)

A couple of quick housekeeping notes. First, Rosie is still doing well. Nothing much new to report. Thank you all, again, for the good thoughts, well wishes, prayers, and donations.

Second, just a brief update from the Israel-Hamas war update from earlier today. The news is not as good as Reuters had reported. Basically, Hamas wants some written commitments from the US, Egypt, and Qatar is a problem for Israel, which you can read as a problem for Bibi. Things are much closer than they’ve been, but this is not a done deal. Negotiations are supposed to resume next week.

Back to Ukraine.

Russia seems to be attempting to burn large portions of Ukraine down in addition to blowing them up.

27 fires per day broke out in the Kherson region due to enemy shelling ❗️
8 residential buildings, 10 farm buildings, 13 dryland fires with a total area of ​​22.68 hectares and a wheat field with an area of ​​1 hectare burned.
Repeated attacks and scorching sun did not prevent rescuers from doing their job 💪

In the morning, the enemy shelled the front-line town of Kupyansk and the village of Hlushkivka in Kharkiv Oblast.
Private houses and commercial buildings were destroyed and damaged. 4 civilians were injured in Hlushkivka.
The total area of ​​the fires was about 270 sq.m. Specialists of the State Emergency Service extinguished all fires.

This is a photo of one of the fires that occurred outside the city of Novy Bug, Bashtan district, Mykolaiv region. The dead tree burned, and the pheasant chicks burned with it…
Firefighters managed to save this little boy. They took him to a safe place.
We hope he’ll be fine 🙏

The enemy shelled Kharkiv Oblast. In the village A person died in Losivka. Civil infrastructure was damaged – fires broke out, burning grass and reeds on an area of ​​1.5 hectares.
A warehouse building burned down in the village of Bily Kolodyaz. There were no casualties.
The rescuers worked under constant fire.

Enemy shelling in the Kherson region caused 6 fires in ecosystems. The extinguishing area was 11.5 ha 🔥
Also, 2 residential buildings, 4 outbuildings and garages burned down in populated areas of the region from the hits of enemy ammunition. The fire has been extinguished.

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

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