Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Nothing says ‘pro-life’ like letting children go hungry.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

No Kings: Americans standing in the way of bad history saying “Oh, Fuck No!”

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

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

Fear or fury? The choice is ours.

People are weird.

’Where will you hide, Roberts, the laws all being flat?’

There are some who say that there are too many strawmen arguments on this blog.

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

It’s the corruption, stupid.

They want us to be overwhelmed and exhausted. Focus. Resist. Oppose.

The lights are all blinking red.

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

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

Well, whatever it is, it’s better than being a Republican.

Cancel the cowardly Times and Post and set up an equivalent monthly donation to ProPublica.

These days, even the boring Republicans are nuts.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

America is going up in flames. The NYTimes fawns over MAGA celebrities. No longer a real newspaper.

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War for Ukraine Day 859: A Brief Monday Night Update

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Two quick housekeeping notes. First, Rosie is still doing very well. She’s in her second week off before she starts round three next Monday. Thank you all, again, for all the good thoughts, well wishes, prayers, and donations.

Secondly, I know a lot of you are having significant responses to today’s Supreme Court ruling. As such, I’m going to keep this short.

As I start tonight’s update at 8:36 PM EDT, all of northeastern and north central Ukraine and Kherson Oblast are under an air raid alert.

Russia opened up on Ukrainian wheat field in Kharkiv today.

Russian troops shelled a wheat field in Kharkiv Oblast, causing a fire that threatened 110 hectares of crops intended for future bread production. Fortunately, rescuers managed to extinguish the fire and save the field from destruction. This incident evokes a painful historical parallel to the Holodomor in Ukraine during the early 1930s, when Soviet authorities confiscated grain, leaving the population without bread and resulting in widespread famine. Once again, Ukraine faces the threat of losing its essential grain supply due to deliberate acts of aggression.

As well as the city of Kharkiv:

Search and rescue operations are still underway in Dnipro:

❗ In the Dnipro, the search for people who are probably under the rubble continues. Currently, 2 persons are considered missing.
Canine calculations of the State Emergency Service help to search for people.
Climbers of the State Emergency Service are involved in work at height.
Psychologists of the State Emergency Service provided the necessary assistance to 47 people.

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

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Are We Still Doing This? Jesus.

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Are We Still Doing This?

I was traveling over the weekend and didn’t get to pay much attention to the news, so I’m shocked to see people still in a swivet about last week’s debate and still talking about replacing Biden, preferably with Johnny Unbeatable.

Instead of listening to the news, I listened to a podcast about California State Senator John Briggs and Proposition 6, which was Briggs’ attempt to reverse the progress of gay rights in 1978.

The short story is the that gay activists had a few wins in the early 70s with laws banning discrimination against homosexuals.  Those gains were short-lived because people like Anita Bryant worked to pass anti-gay initiated measures.  By 1978, gay activists had experienced a string of defeats, not only in Florida, but also in supposedly liberal enclaves like Eugene, Oregon.  Briggs, a total right-wing asshole, introduced Prop 6, a draconian rollback of gay rights progress, in an effort to ride the backlash and become Governor of California.  It was a long, circuitous path to the defeat of Prop 6, but there are a couple of parallels to our situation today:

  1. A lot of the old-school gay rights organizations were very timid about challenging Prop 6, and when they did, they were very afraid of “gay looking” gays being at the vanguard of the fight.
  2. There was a lot of disagreement between different factions of the gay community, with a more-liberal vs more-conservative split, among others.
  3. Very few in the gay community expected to win, and many of the organizations opposing Prop 6 were prepared for a loss.
  4. The anti-Prop 6 forces were outspent by the pro-Prop 6 forces, but the gay community and allies had just enough money to mount a true grassroots campaign encompassing the whole state.

These people were a true minority, but they won their fight.  Democrats today are not a true minority.  We’ve been maneuvered into a place where the minority protections of the Constitution have been used by a vocal, well-financed and energetic minority to get them undeserved majorities.  This minority has installed a corrupt federal judiciary that insulates them from legal consequences.  Corporations and corporate media prefer Republicans.  A group of superficial, hanger-on courtiers in that corporate media and the consultant class are constantly jockeying for position to ensure further Republican rule.

I hate to even compare our situation with the dire straits that the gay rights movement was facing in 1978, but given that the LGBTQ community, as well as women, will be some of the first victims of a Democratic loss in November, there is some truth behind the comparison.

Given all that is at stake, the fact that a large number of Democrats are willing to basically give up the fight by running away from Biden at the first hint of weakness makes us look like a party that can’t fight its way out of a paper bag.  Nobody has ideal leaders.  Harvey Milk, one of the leaders of the 1978 anti-Briggs fight, was a deeply flawed human being.  No side of a political fight has full agreement on priorities and appearances.   And a lot of fights look pretty damn grim sometimes, especially after a string of setbacks.  This is just how life works in politics.

I voted against Biden in the 2020 primaries.  But I will be god damned if a bunch of weak, overpaid, professional Democrats and their enablers are going to get me to change my mind about who should be leading the fight in 2024.  It’s Biden – an old man with a stutter who has a harder time making sense when he has a cold, but is a damn good president.  Let’s go fight.  We owe it to the memory of Harvey Milk and every other Democrat who fought against far worse odds to try to do something to better the lot of our fellow citizens.

Also, if any of you still subscribe to the god damn New York Times, I hope by now that you realize that you’re aiding and abetting the enemy for some fucking crosswords, recipes and Wordle.

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Taking Care of Ourselves

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It was downright painful last night to see so many people on Balloon Juice still spinning over what to do about Joe Biden – 4 days after the fucking debate.  There is literally nothing we can to to influence any decision-making that is going on.

And now this corrupt Supreme Court has all but pronounced themselves the arbiters of everything.  And here I though George W. Bush was the decider!  It’s disheartening.

Uncertainty is hard.  It totally sucks.  The stakes this time around are for everything.  Seems like we have a couple of obvious goals here.  First, don’t contribute to the problem.  Second, do everything we can to win everywhere in November.

We’re not formally starting our next round of fundraising for a week or more, as they are working on a match for us, but in case you’re looking for ways to make a difference right now, I have added the Four Directions – Wisconsin thermometer in the sidebar.  Seems like in all the big swings states, the Native population is larger than the margin of victory.

We haven’t hit Wisconsin yet this year, plus, it seems like the obvious choice for right now since the Republicans will be holding their nominating convention in Milwaukee, staring just two weeks from today.

Watching this video  (below) raised my spirits; maybe it will raise yours.   The video starts with a short clip of Pete Buttigieg, but then Brian Tyler Cohen adds a terrific summary.

Open thread.

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Open Thread: Bannon Perp Walk

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I thought we could use a little good news after this morning’s nightmarish rulings.

 

Image

Just something to brighten your day…

Open thread

 

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Supreme Court Decisions Again Today at 10 am (7/1 Edition)

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If you want to follow along on SCOTUSblog.

I’ll copy the short summaries as each one shows up on their website.

Are we going to need another one of these this week?

Here we go!

In Corner Post, Inc. v. Board of Governors, the court holds that a claim under the Administrative Procedure Act to challenge an agency action first comes into being when the plaintiff is injured by final agency action.

OPINION:  6-3   Result:  NOT GOOD

 

The court vacates both decisions on Texas and Florida’s social media laws, in Moody v. NetChoice, LLC and NetChoice v. Paxton, explaining that neither of the lower courts properly considered the nature of the First Amendment challenges.

OPINION:     Result:  

 

In Trump v. United States, the court holds that a former president has absolute immunity for his core constitutional powers.

OPINION:     Result:  

 

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Monday Morning Open Thread: Back to the Normie World

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Good thing it’s a short work week (for most of us); actual hanabi (‘fire flowers’) beat on-line fireworks six days out of five, IMO. (Heard the first burst of a professional show somewhere in the neighborhood last night, and expect more through the next seven to ten days.)


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Monday Morning Open Thread 12

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