Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

You passed on an opportunity to be offended? What are you even doing here?

“Alexa, change the president.”

Jesus watching the most hateful people claiming to be his followers

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

Stamping your little feets and demanding that they see how important you are? Not working anymore.

… gradually, and then suddenly.

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

Prediction: the gop will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

Roe is not about choice. It is about freedom.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Republicans: “Abortion is murder but you can take a bus to get one.” Easy peasy.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

We can show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

Let there be snark.

“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”

Someone should tell Republicans that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, or possibly the first.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

“But what about the lurkers?”

“I was told there would be no fact checking.”

We are aware of all internet traditions.

The snowflake in chief appeared visibly frustrated when questioned by a reporter about egg prices.

I might just take the rest of the day off and do even more nothing than usual.

There are times when telling just part of the truth is effectively a lie.

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RIP Ingenuity! It Was A Good Run (Open Thread)

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Just a remarkable accomplishment.  Farewell Ingenuity…and we thank you (h/t Apollo 13)

I am working on combining our good news posts and some hopeful climate change information in a series of posts. I’m just trying to figure out how best to approach it. It is a LOT of good information and I am overwhelmed by it all and want to disseminate it in a way that you are not. Stay tuned…

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TGIFriday Morning Open Thread: Bringing Minnesota & Wisconsin Together

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Late Night Open Thread: Dean Phillips Is Making No New Friends

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I’m beginning to wonder if Phillips has any friends, as opposed to people he pays to tell him how good his ideas are. Dude is beginning to look more and more like a shaved bear at the mercy of a bunch of (GOP) carnies. From the hipsters at Slate, “Nevertheless, Dean Persisted”:

… With the dust nearly settled in New Hampshire, Dean Phillips looks to have pulled in just below 20 percent of the vote in the state’s unofficial Democratic primary. For a candidate who staked his entire campaign on his success in that state and who outspent the rest of the field there—and who may not even be on the ballot in some other states—that number doesn’t seem so heartening.

But for Phillips, the backbench Minnesota congressman, losing by 35-plus to someone who wasn’t even on the ballot, in a race that can’t award any delegates to the Democratic National Convention, is actually akin to winning, if you really think about it. “I’ve built business and brands and studied the best successes in marketing history,” Phillips posted on X the morning after the primary. “Never known one that generated 20% market share in just ten weeks, as we did last evening in New Hampshire.”…

It’s possible that Phillips was trying to appeal directly to his benefactors in Silicon Valley and on Wall Street by using their favored parlance. Because it’s very clear that the baby that needs to be kept “going,” the market share that needs to keep being “generated,” is the torrent of big-money donations that will be sunk into his doomed campaign. (Phillips’ pals in the Valley, in particular, should have no real aversion to lighting resources on fire in a quixotic, money-losing venture; they do that often.)

But the message may just as well have been a pep talk directed from Phillips’ consultants, vendors, and staffers to Phillips himself. The gelato and liquor tycoon has an estimated net worth of $124 million, more than enough to keep this gravy train rolling well into July, when he has pledged a contested convention. It is unclear whether he will have any delegates by that point. He has committed to self-fund at least part of this enterprise, and the people on his payroll are no doubt gleeful that he has decided to soldier on…

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War for Ukraine Day 701: More on Yesterday’s Plane Crash, Some Clarifying Context, & the GOP Senate Caucus Telegraph that Its Going to Take a Dive

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There was a robust discussion regarding Norwegian doctoral fellow RF Hoffman’s thread on the risk Putin and Russia poses to Europe and the world. And by robust I mean both interesting and good. Which I read when I got up this morning. I wanted to make a couple of points. The first is that Carlo is, indeed, correct that the international relations theory concept of rational versus irrational actors is hollow. Putin isn’t irrational. Rather, a la Weber, he operates within bounded rationality. Which means within his specific context, his decision making – from process to actual decision – is rational. As in it makes sense given what he believes about the world, the global system, Russian history, etc. The problem, of course, is that what Putin believes, and what those around him, working for him, most likely to replace him one day believe, is inaccurate, ahistorical, etc.

The second is that Putin and contemporary Russia are not the Soviet Union. The USSR, for all it being officially big C Communist, was inherently small c conservative. Putin and the Russia that has evolved, or perhaps devolved, under his long rule, is reactionary, revanchist, and irredentist. Russia’s neighbors who were subjected to Soviet rule look at what he’d done, what he’s doing, and what he threatens to do and draw very different conclusions than we do. Finland and Sweden didn’t decide to join NATO in the past 2 years for shits and giggles.

Third, we need to remember that NATO Article V does not compel a member state to come to the self defense of another that has been attacked. As former US ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder explains:

Legally, the U.S. (or any other NATO member, for that matter) is merely obliged to take “such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.” In other words, each member is left to decide for itself whether and how to act in case of an armed attack on an ally. And even that provision, in Article 5, is only binding after all NATO members agree to invoke the commitment.

Putin knows this. And he thinks, based on observation over the past two years, that he’s taken the measure of the US, the EU, and NATO and found them lacking in resolve. Which leads to my fourth and final point: our EU partners, in or out of NATO, do not have the means to actually fight a war. Max Bergmann from CSIS explains:

Europe’s approach to supporting Ukraine’s war effort is no longer fit for purpose. There is a desperate need for Europe to ramp up its defense industrial production. But despite a clear consensus behind this urgent need, European production lines are not yet maxing out their capacity. The root of the issue is not so much a lack of political will but, as is frequently the case with European defense, a failure to cooperate and a lack of funding.

Time is of the utmost urgency. Russian defense production is accelerating, with Russia gearing up for a winter offensive and bombarding Ukrainian cities in the December at the highest rate since the conflict began. It is clear that Putin is not seeking an off-ramp or negotiated settlement to this war but to reverse Russia’s humiliation and subjugate Ukraine. However, Europe has not yet shifted to the new reality that Ukraine faces a long war. Should the U.S. Congress fail to pass more funding for Ukraine, the transfer of U.S. weapons, most worryingly munitions, will slow to a trickle. With U.S. support for Ukraine on thin ice in Congress, former president Donald Trump leading the polls, and Russia ramping up its war machine, Europe needs to act urgently to both support Ukraine and restock its warehouses to improve its own military readiness.

Over the past two years, Europeans have supported Ukraine by emptying their warehouses of aging equipment and munitions. The European Union’s European Peace Facility (EPF) has incentivized its member states to give military equipment to Ukraine by reimbursing them for some of the costs.  However, there is now little left to give, as most of the old equipment has been divested. As such, European military support to Kyiv is lagging. The problem is that there is a tension between rebuilding European militaries and supporting Ukraine. Thus, European countries are much more reluctant to give Ukraine newer, more expensive equipment, which is vital for national defense and meeting NATO targets.

Much more at the link.

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

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Means Test All the Things

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I’ve been in and out of Denver a few times in the last couple of years.  Last year, riding the RTA RTD light rail train was free.  Since I’m staying near a light rail station, it was nice to be able to jump on a train and get downtown without hassle.

This year, the free ride is over, but don’t worry!  If you can prove to RTA RTD that you are at or below 185% of the Federal poverty line, have a valid address (as all people below 185% of FPL do) and also a current photograph in the right format, you can get a whopping half off your fare.

For those of you over 185% of FPL, you’ll need to try to buy a ticket at the kiosk (which didn’t work for me) or use the app where it’s not possible to buy a ticket without first depositing money using a credit card (possibly a debit card will work, but I didn’t try it).

RTA RTD did lower fares — it’s $5.50 for a whole day of unlimited rides, and $2.75 for a three-hour pass.  If you’re over 65, (and can prove it with an id, of course) it’s half off.  While these fares are reasonable, if you’re fairly close to where you’re going and a group of people are going, a $15 Uber or Lyft ride each way is within shouting distance of  the $22 RTA RTD fare for four people, and it’s faster.

The whole fare infrastructure also requires conductors on light rail to check tickets, and they do intermittently — so some people recommend buying a ticket in the app but not activating it, so you’ll only pay if they’re checking.  In other words, fare dodging is basically risk-free for people who have the app and a credit card.

This is, in a microcosm, America’s attitude towards anyone getting any kind of break.  Here we are in a sprawled out town that has a real smog and traffic problem, and the cure — mass transit — is set up to be a barrier to the working poor, plus there are lots of cases where the price makes ride sharing a reasonable alternative.   But, if it were free, then perhaps someone “undeserving” might board a train or bus and get where they need to go, thus causing collapse of the social order.

As I travel through the West, I’m simultaneously surprised at how many towns have some kind of light rail (Tucson, who knew?) and by how few people ride it.  I’m sure there’s a lot more than fare prices involved, but free would be a good start to increasing ridership.

Edit:  Of course I screwed up the abbreviation for the Denver transit authority. Sheesh.

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“Forget it, Jake. It’s Dinertown.”

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Stipulated: the political press in the United States is steaming hot garbage. Sometimes I wonder if we spend too much time complaining about it. Sometimes I think the theories folks put forth to explain its willful toxicity cross the line into paranoia.

But for me at least, the core issue is never in doubt: The D.C. press is wired for Republicans, and over the better part of a decade now,* the political media herd has demonstrated it lacks the capacity to adjust to changing circumstances and is poised to both-sides a democracy into a dictatorship.

The bumbling DC MSM are too rigid or compromised or stupid or whatever to perceive the threat and come down on the side of democracy. Even when a fluorescent orange fascist and his slack-jawed horde scream “enemy of the people” in their goddamn faces daily.

I thought I’d accepted that and made my peace with it. Then I saw this CNN analysis by Stephen Collinson with a promising lede, and it awakened my fury at these gormless sheep all over again:

CNN — Donald Trump’s voters get all the attention. But it’s Joe Biden’s who may decide the general election.

That’s promising, right? I braced myself for the shock of reading about, I dunno, maybe a union member who appreciated the president’s stint on the picket line, or a person whose crushing student debt had been forgiven, or someone whose town was in the process of being revitalized due to a long-neglected infrastructure project.

Hahaha, nope! Here’s a screenshot of a video clip that prominently illustrates and allegedly adds to the discussion of Biden voters — the subject is a Trump-voting moron who’s so mind-bendingly gullible that he’s convinced himself one of the most corrupt villains to ever walk the earth is incorruptible.

Screenshot of voter who says Trump can't be bought

Other clips include 82-year-old Bernie Sanders speaking for America’s youth about their discontent with Biden’s policy on Israel and several black voters who worry that people won’t show up for Biden because there’s been too little progress on issues they care about. And you know what? Fair enough on the latter two clips.

Some Democrats do worry that the president is getting played by Netanyahu and/or hasn’t sufficiently used U.S. leverage to protect civilians in Gaza and the West Bank. Some Democrats do question the administration’s priorities. These are legit angles to cover in the runup to an election where coalition turnout will be key.

But can we not get some fucking balance here? I mean, if you’re going to include the views of a white man who is so self-lobotomized that he sincerely believes international commodity Donald Trump “pretty much can’t be bought,” how about a mention of a Democrat who can’t wait to vote for Biden again?

I shit you not, y’all — here’s how the CNN piece on Biden voters ends:

“They didn’t like his act or his Twitter, but he got things done,” said [Dominick] Lombardi, [vice chairman of the Orange Republican Party in New Haven County, Connecticut], who was wearing a red “Make America Great Again” baseball cap at a Trump rally in New Hampshire last weekend.

If democracy is to be saved, we Biden voters will have to do the saving without any assistance from the Fourth Estate. In fact, we’ll have to save democracy with their dead fucking weight strapped to our backs.

Open thread.

*God help us, next year will mark the 10th anniversary of Donald Trump’s descent down the golden escalator to launch his campaign. I laughed at the time. What kind of goddamn moron thinks a bloated, scammy jerk and his stale, scowling arm-candy riding an escalator down to a lobby constitutes a grand entrance? What I did not understand back then is that the rest of us were descending too, straight into Dante’s Nine Circles of Hell, where we will apparently remain until that fucker finally dies. 

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