Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

When they say they are pro-life, they do not mean yours.

We are learning that “working class” means “white” for way too many people.

Everything is totally normal and fine!!!

Reality always gets a vote in the end.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

The National Guard is not Batman.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

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

This blog will pay for itself.

All hail the time of the bunny!

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

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

Giving in to doom is how we fail to fight for ourselves & one another.

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

Many life forms that would benefit from greater intelligence, sadly, do not have it.

Republicans do not trust women.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

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

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

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

Oppose, oppose, oppose. do not congratulate. this is not business as usual.

You are here: Home / Archives for Open Threads

Monday Morning Open Thread: Ready for Another Week

by | 198 Comments

This post is in: , , , ,

show full post on front page

Monday Morning Open Thread: Ready for Another WeekPost + Comments (198)

Katie Lies – You Can See It in Her Eyes

by | 79 Comments

This post is in: 

Katie Lies - You Can See It in Her Eyes 1

Katie Britt has arisen from deep, prayerful reflection on her disaster of a SOTU response to double down on the lie that she didn’t lie about the sexual abuse she called out (the account of the abuse she heard was real, but the abuse itself happened in Mexico during the GWB administration, not during the Biden administration, something she was at a minimum crystal unclear about).  I thought the Guardian headline captured it well: Katie Britt defends sex trafficking story she falsely links to Biden presidency.

Anyway, yeah, nobody’s buying her bullshit excuses except perhaps her fellow evangelicals, and why is that?  I think it’s because lying is so baked into their game that they expect it, tolerate it, and find comfort in it.  Their church experience is full of lies, and I’m not talking about  the belief in some benevolent sky prince as described in their fairytale bible.  Rather, it’s the other shit that they swallow all day.  “We love everyone” except  trans and gay folks, and sluts who use birth control and/or have abortions.  (Of course, they use birth control and have abortions, in the closet, just as many of them are gay or bi, in the closet.)  “We live chaste, virtuous lives” except for their clergy, who are forever being found sticking their dicks in kids and women who aren’t their wives.  “We tithe for the greater good” which includes lining the pockets of their leadership.  They are also brought up to seek coded messages in the main text of their faith, since that’s the only way to make sense of a bunch of disjointed rambling assembled over hundreds of years from disparate sources.

I think there are a fair number of evangelicals who live their faith and won’t vote for Trump, but for every one of them, there are ten who find him a familiar, comforting presence.  He’s a leader who molests women and is notoriously unfaithful to his wives (just like their preachers).  He rips off his followers, fucks them over with scammy shit like golden sneakers and generally treats them as marks, just as they are treated in their megachurches.  He’s full of coded messages and wink-wink, again, something they hear every day.  It’s no mystery why these people flock to Trump, when you take a clear-eyed look at what happens in their churches.

I believe that what I’ve expressed here is pretty much commonly acknowledged truth about a lot of evangelicals, but because they have “beliefs”, the media (which they despise and would destroy the minute they’re in power) treats them with kid gloves.  These fuckers have burrowed themselves far too deeply into our society already, and we need to start seeing them as the threat they are.  They’re un-American because they would burn the Constitution as soon as they’re in power, they’re un-Christian, in the sense of following the teachings of Christ, and they are a god damned menace to civil society with their church school ignorance and anti-vaxxism.  Katie did us all a service with her Stepford wife performance (more on that from Cheryl Rofer, well worth reading).  She reminded us that she, and her kind, are the enemy, and it’s good to remember that.

Katie Lies – You Can See It in Her EyesPost + Comments (79)

War for Ukraine Day 746: A Brief Sunday Night Update

by | 19 Comments

This post is in: , , , , , , ,

Just a quick housekeeping note. Last week was very busy and I have two more – this and the one after – just like it. So updates may be briefer as I just touch the basics and important breaking news.

Last night in comments Wombat Probability Cloud asked:

Adam, you may have addressed this already, but if not can you comment on whether interdiction of Iranian munitions is possible and the potential blowback? If “we” (UKA/US/NATO) could pull that off, who would they cry to?

The answer is yes and probably not. Anything that Iran ships via ship is something we could interdict. Provided we have the resources available to do so. Anything that Iran sends overland by rail or truck or by air is much, much harder. Provided the land routes are through states that are either friendly towards Iran, Russia, or both, we would have almost no ability to stop the shipments. Anything in the air would require us to force down an Iranian or Russian cargo plane. We’re not going to do that.

West of the Rockies asked:

“Russia is using social media” as a weapon against the West.  Is the West doing the same in return?  If not, why not?  If so, can anyone point to any publicly known examples?

NATO has a Strategic Communication Center of Excellence (COE). Their 2016 report on Russian information warfare was linked to last night in the Foreign Policy piece I copied and pasted.

What’s America doing? This:

U.S. Cyber Command saw an opportunity to strike a blow in the meme wars last October — just in time for Halloween.

The command had identified two new pieces of Russian malware and was looking for a way to publicize the threat. A hoped-for bonus: Cyber Command wanted to land a sick burn on Russian hackers.

But according to internal communications obtained by the nonprofit open government organization MuckRock through the Freedom of Information Act, Cyber Command took more than three weeks to design and fine-tune the meme before posting it — an eternity in the fleeting world of online feuding.

And though Cyber Command intended to create something to wound Russian hackers’ egos and cause “their boss to … [lose] their s*** on them” after seeing it, as an unidentified official told CyberScoop last year, what they posted was significantly less savage: A bumbling cartoon bear trick-or-treating in stereotypical Soviet get-up, tripping over itself and spilling candy labeled with Russian malware such as ComRAT and X-Agent.

Peter Singer, a senior fellow at the think tank New America and expert on cybersecurity and cyberwar, told Military.com on Thursday that the episode shows the government is starting to take some necessary steps forward, but still has a long way to go “in the new battle of ‘likes’ that actually have real-world impact.”

Most notably, Singer said, the government needs to move a lot faster if it hopes to keep up in the fast-moving world of online discourse.

Here’s the meme:

https://twitter.com/CNMF_CyberAlert/status/1321863548486770689

And here’s the link to the FOIAed After Action Report (AAR). I’m sure there’s other stuff going on. I wouldn’t expect much.

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

show full post on front page

War for Ukraine Day 746: A Brief Sunday Night UpdatePost + Comments (19)

Sunday Evening Open Thread: What Passes for Bold Leadership Among ‘Moderate’ Repubs

by | 40 Comments

This post is in: , , ,

The voice of the modern ‘sensible’ Republican, folks: We’ll get in line like good little toadies, but trust us — we’ll cheat on Dear Leader like we cheat on everything else!

(I rag on the ‘Live Free or Die Equivocating’ state… and NH leaders like the Sununu clan make it damned easy.)

Sunday Evening Open Thread: What Passes for Bold Leadership Among ‘Moderate’ RepubsPost + Comments (40)

This and That Sunday Open Thread

by | 175 Comments

This post is in: , ,

My first thought on reading about this.  Holy shit, Pennsylvania!

So here’s my question to PA peeps.  Is this a pie-in-the-sky thing that Gov. Shapiro is saying he’d like to do – in the state equivalent of the State of the Union?  Or is he actually trying to make this happen?

If Republicans had to take a vote on this, and vote against it, could this proposal provide an opportunity for Dems to get a majority in both chambers in PA in November?  Or is that totally out of reach?

Also, totally unrelated.  Holy cow-ski, did everyone see this great news?  $Endorsements all around – Latino, Asian American, black communities – and $30 million dollars.

Also unrelated.  All over the thread last night in the comments, but so great that it deserves the front page.

Open thread.

This and That Sunday Open ThreadPost + Comments (175)

Sunday Morning Open Thread: President Joe Biden, Happy Warrior

by | 197 Comments

This post is in: , ,

Good luck with Daylight Savings Time, especially to those of us who do *not* celebrate its advent.

Let the man have his well-earned reward! Jennifer Bendery, at HuffPo, says “At 81, Joe Biden Is Still The Last Guy To Leave The Party”:

… Just seconds after stepping down from the dais in the House chamber, as most news networks pulled their cameras away, Biden was playfully saluting people in the audience and shouting out jokes…

The House chamber was packed with so many of his old friends, former colleagues, his judicial and executive appointments, and even critics who wanted to talk to him. And Biden, all smiles, was here for it. He spent the next half an hour talking to anyone in earshot, taking selfies, telling stories and weighing in on climate change, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin, border security, reproductive rights and whatever other policy topics people threw his way.

HuffPost caught most of these details by watching bits of livestreams that were still going and hearing him on hot mics.

“Thank you for mentioning climate change,” said Rep. Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.), the first person to get to Biden when he stepped into the crowd.

“That’s why I’m working so hard,” Biden replied, referencing Democrats taking back the House. “I’m going to do whatever I can.”

“You were the Baptist preacher tonight!” chimed in Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.).

Biden leaned in and started telling a story about someone in “Del-a-WARRR,” or Delaware, who offered to campaign for him but only in certain places, because “in some places you’ll help, in some places you’ll hurt.” Meeks and others laughed at the end.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) was near the front, eager to shake his hand. So was Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), an actual Baptist preacher.

“That was a sermon tonight!” he told the president.

show full post on front page

Sunday Morning Open Thread: President Joe Biden, Happy WarriorPost + Comments (197)

Saturday Night Open Thread (and question)

by | 118 Comments

This post is in: 

Looks like we can use an open thread.

This is totally worth watching.

Plus, two people have just reported that they got the “Slow down, you are posting too quickly” message.

Is anyone else getting that?  If you are, and you can’t post, please send me email.

Open thread!

Saturday Night Open Thread (and question)Post + Comments (118)