Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I am pretty sure these ‘journalists’ were not always such a bootlicking sycophants.

Humiliatingly small and eclipsed by the derision of millions.

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

The words do not have to be perfect.

Jack be nimble, jack be quick, hurry up and indict this prick.

The “burn-it-down” people are good with that until they become part of the kindling.

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

Everything is totally normal and fine!!!

Stand up, dammit!

Everybody saw this coming.

This fight is for everything.

Quote tweet friends, screenshot enemies.

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

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

They don’t have outfits that big. nor codpieces that small.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

When we show up, we win.

I desperately hope that, yet again, i am wrong.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

This must be what justice looks like, not vengeful, just peaceful exuberance.

Too little, too late, ftfnyt. fuck all the way off.

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

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

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War for Ukraine Day 753: The Starlink Snowflake Is Allowed To Move Into Geospatial Intelligence

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I’m still exhausted. So this is going to be as brief as I can make it. I apologize in advance for my exceedingly exhaustion driven short temper.

Odesa once again came under Russian attack overnight. Fortunately it was just drones and not cruise missiles.

The Biden administration has decided to give known security risk, drug addict, neo-NAZI, racist eugencist, insider threat, and overall anti-American oligarch Elon Musk a contract to do geo-spatial intelligence.

Reuters has the details:

WASHINGTON, March 16 (Reuters) – SpaceX is building a network of hundreds of spy satellites under a classified contract with a U.S. intelligence agency, five sources familiar with the program said, demonstrating deepening ties between billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s space company and national security agencies.

The network is being built by SpaceX’s Starshield business unit under a $1.8 billion contract signed in 2021 with the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), an intelligence agency that manages spy satellites, the sources said.

The plans show the extent of SpaceX’s involvement in U.S. intelligence and military projects and illustrate a deeper Pentagon investment into vast, low-Earth orbiting satellite systems aimed at supporting ground forces.

If successful, the sources said the program would significantly advance the ability of the U.S. government and military to quickly spot potential targets almost anywhere on the globe.

The contract signals growing trust by the intelligence establishment of a company whose owner has clashed with the Biden administration and sparked controversy, opens new tab over the use of Starlink satellite connectivity in the Ukraine war, the sources said.

The Wall Street Journal reported, opens new tab in February the existence of a $1.8 billion classified Starshield contract with an unknown intelligence agency without detailing the purposes of the program.

Reuters reporting discloses for the first time that the SpaceX contract is for a powerful new spy system with hundreds of satellites bearing Earth-imaging capabilities that can operate as a swarm in low orbits, and that the spy agency that Musk’s company is working with is the NRO.

Reuters was unable to determine when the new network of satellites would come online and could not establish what other companies are part of the program with their own contracts.

SpaceX, the world’s largest satellite operator, did not respond to several requests for comment about the contract, its role in it and details on satellite launches. The Pentagon referred a request for comment to the NRO and SpaceX.

In a statement the NRO acknowledged its mission to develop a sophisticated satellite system and its partnerships with other government agencies, companies, research institutions and nations, but declined to comment on Reuters’ findings about the extent of SpaceX’s involvement in the effort.

“The National Reconnaissance Office is developing the most capable, diverse, and resilient space-based intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance system the world has ever seen,” a spokesperson said.

The satellites can track targets on the ground and share that data with U.S. intelligence and military officials, the sources said. In principle, that would enable the U.S. government to quickly capture continuous imagery of activities on the ground nearly anywhere on the globe, aiding intelligence and military operations, they added.

Roughly a dozen prototypes have been launched since 2020, among other satellites on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets, three of the sources said.

Much more at the link!

Why is the Biden administration doing something this stupid? Here’s why:

“Even though Musk is not technically a diplomat or statesman, I felt it was important to treat him as such, given the influence he had on this issue,” Kahl told me.

Biden’s senior national security appointments: the gifts that keep on giving to dictators, tyrants, authoritarians, oligarchs, and kleptocrats. During the Obama administration these idiots allowed Theil a contract for Palantir that gave Palantir control of all the intelligence that was loaded into the system. So Theil and his companies own all of that, not the US government. The learning curve is flat.

More analysis on this after the jump.

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

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Mad Dog Margaritas

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Mad Dog Margarita

Since it is St. Patrick’s Day, I was listening to a mix of Irish music, and one of them was “Dublin Blues” by Guy Clark.  The song mentions Mad Dog Margaritas, and I googled it, boy did I learn a lot.

First, the recipe:  “[T]wo parts Monte Alban Mezcal, one part Triple Sec, one part fresh lime juice, shaken vigorously with ice and served on the rocks.” (Monte Alban is a low-end Mezcal with a worm in it.  I do like Mezcal, but I’d recommend Del Maguey Vida or, if you can find it and afford it, one of the Bozal varieties.)

Second, the restaurant:

The Chili Parlor first opened that door to the public in 1976. (As a side note, chili was named the official state dish of Texas just a year later.) Among the establishment’s early patrons was a loose-knit assemblage of fun-loving rabble-rousers known as the Mad Dogs, a group founded by legendary Texas Monthly writer Gary Cartwright and his equally legendary wordsmithing compadre Edwin “Bud” Shrake. Circling around the Mad Dog nucleus of Cartwright and Shrake was a constellation of other Lone Star luminaries (as well as out-of-state friends and associates) that included writers, politicians, artists, actors, rascals, and musicians. Larry L. King, Dan Jenkins, Willie Morris, Billy Lee Brammer, George Plimpton, David and Ann Richards (yes, the same Ann Richards who went on to become Texas’s second female governor), Susan and Jerry Jeff Walker, Willie Nelson, and one Guy Clark were all members in good standing.

Individually, the Mad Dogs were mostly creative, productive, and important members of society. As a unit they were less so. Though their proposed plans were big—multiple attempts to buy a town, the production of thirty-minute pornographic movies with socially redeeming value, an all-night general store, the launch of “the world’s first literate and non-hysterical underground newspaper”—these schemes went almost wholly unfulfilled.

Now you know.  Happy St. Patrick’s Day to those who celebrate.

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They Can’t Beat Us If Everyone Knows Their Game

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I have been hearing about and reading about the dangers of autocracy, the road to autocracy, at least since Trump came on the scene in 2015.    But here it is, nicely laid out in just 45 seconds.  I hope you’ll watch it!

My amateur transcript:

The foundation of democracy is somebody has to be wiling to lose.  You have to have faith in the system.

The essence of these autocracies is they destroy faith in the system.

What Republicans have done is – you can’t just say Trump because it’s now Republicans – they have attacked institution after institution in America.

They attacked the Justice Department.  They attacked law enforcement.  They attack elections.

And the purpose of this is to kind of throw up your hands and say “we need a strongman“ to take care of everything because democracy isn’t working.

This is what the Russians have said since 1920s – the Soviet Union – that democracy doesn’t really exist in America.

And it’s a complete lie.  They’re embracing Victor Orban.  It’s a complete roadmap to autocracy.

They want us to feel helpless.  They want us to feel hopeless.  They want us to give up. It gets discouraging.  It wears us down.  We even see it here.  We even say it in the comments.

Except for the “we need a strongman” part.  Here on Balloon Juice, we are saying “hell no, we don’t want a strongman!” and we’re doing everything we can to stop it.

Most normies aren’t going to read a long post from Teri Kanefield or any of the other many people who have been talking and writing about this for years.  But they might take 1 minute to read a tweet and watch a 45-second clip.  Please think about sharing this with everyone you know who doesn’t understand their game plan, and that we are being played.

Not totally unrelated, we still have an Angel match from eponymous, who will match up to $50 per person.  To count toward the match, tell us about your match in the comments.  Or you can let me know by email.

Open thread!

Update: Angel match #4 from eponymous is now complete!  But our anonymous Angel from match #3 just volunteered to match another $1,000 of donations.

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Saturday Night Horrors Open Thread: The Contender

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War for Ukraine Day 752: The Updated Butcher’s Bill from Odesa

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Painting by NEIVANMADE. It has a black border. There are grey buildings with black windows along the left side. The center is a yellowy-grey, perhaps Ukrainian wheat fields. There is a black shadow figure striding through it. The figure's legs and feet are all that is visible of it. On the right side are red Zs, which symbolize Putin's/Russia's "Z" war/special military operation in Ukraine. The sky above the buildings is light grey. "GENOCIDE IS GOING BUT WHO EVEN CARES?" is painted in black in the upper left hand corner.

(Image by NEIVANMADE)

I am completely fried. Just a long week, not necessarily anything bad. So I’m just going to cover the basics tonight so I can go and rack out.

ETA at 10:00 PM EDT: I’m aware of the Starlink Snowflake news. I’ll try to get to it tomorrow night once I’ve gotten some rest.

The Lithuanian Foreign Minister is, as usual, correct:

https://twitter.com/GLandsbergis/status/1768374497193627994

More from Odesa:

https://twitter.com/SESU_UA/status/1768947749867737161

“Today, one more employee of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine, another victim of yesterday’s Russian attack on Odesa, died in the hospital from serious injuries,” Ihor Klymenko reported.

Thus, the death toll from the attack on Odesa on March 15 increased to 21.

“More than 70 people were injured”

President Zelenskyy addressed the increased casualty count from the Odesa attack in his daily address. Video below, English transcript after the jump.

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Fun Saturday Read: Cats Aren’t Jerks…

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Right now, I’d only go as far as ‘Not all cats are jerks’, because the Spousal Unit’s cat Rocky is being… a pain in the neck, which is his default status. Per the Washington Post, “Cats aren’t jerks. They’re just misunderstood.” [gift link]:

If you’ve lived with cats, you’ve probably found yourself staring at them after they’ve toppled a plant or swept a mug off the table, thinking: “Why did you just do that?”

A precise answer isn’t easy to come by. Some recent studies have made strides in assuaging the more self-conscious human anxieties about cat ownership (allegedly, they know their names and they emotionally attach to us). But by and large, research that sinks its claws into domestic cat behavior, genetics and psychology remains somewhat nascent, especially compared to what’s available about dogs…

Cats indeed descended from solitary creatures, but this doesn’t mean they’re hermits. In wild or feral colonies — which form the basis of most feline social research — cats develop dynamic relationships with their peers, selecting a few “preferred associates” (Hollenbeck’s words) to hang out with…

Research into feral colonies shows that cats tend to form matriarchal social bonds; females will adhere more closely to one another (typically in a community of mothers, aunts and sisters). Males, once they’re about a year old, are more likely to move about nomadically. Even though existing research focuses primarily on feral cats, any person who has lived with more than one feline can attest that the domesticated ones form bonds with each other, too — if they so choose.

Monique Udell is the director of the Human-Animal Interaction Lab at Oregon State University, which has been investigating the social potential of domestic cats. According to Udell, cats actually have a “flexible” social structure, meaning they can exist successfully on their own or in groups, depending on early life experiences (such as whether they were exposed to humans as babies) and their environment.

“What we’re finding is that when we give them the same kinds of opportunities or challenges that we regularly give dogs, that oftentimes cats not only can engage in high levels of social behavior, but many cats actually prefer social interaction,” Udell says.

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