Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

“Just close your eyes and kiss the girl and go where the tilt-a-whirl takes you.” ~OzarkHillbilly

Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.

The media handbook says “controversial” is the most negative description that can be used for a Republican.

We do not need to pander to people who do not like what we stand for.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

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

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

The republican caucus is covering themselves with something, and it is not glory.

These days, even the boring Republicans are nuts.

People are complicated. Love is not.

Not loving this new fraud based economy.

The unpunished coup was a training exercise.

They spent the last eight months firing professionals and replacing them with ideologues.

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

This blog will pay for itself.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

Wake up. Grow up. Get in the fight.

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

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

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

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

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Cold Grey Pre-Dawn Open Thread: Drop Out Already, Dean

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Dean Phillips’ ill-considered primary challenge is sliding downhill like a ride on a crappy New Hampshire sledding slope — all rocks, furrows, and bare patches. He’ll end up with a pain in his backside and a sore jaw from clenching his teeth, but meanwhile he’s spreading those afflictions to the rest of us Democrats. And for what? To get attention from bigger millionaires and bored media horserace touts… while enshrining his legacy as a would-be spoiler and general sad-sack?

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War for Ukraine Day 693: Speaker Johnson Adds Another Nail to the Ukrainian Supplemental Aid Legislation’s Coffin

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From The New York Times:

Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday dug in against President Biden’s efforts to revive stalled legislation to send aid to Ukraine, saying the Republican-led House would not entertain it unless Democrats agreed to a far more severe crackdown at the U.S.-Mexico border than they have been willing to consider.

Mr. Johnson’s latest ultimatum cast further doubt on the prospects of Congress’s approving Mr. Biden’s request for tens of billions of dollars in emergency security assistance to help Ukraine fight off Russia.

Republicans have insisted that such a package be paired with measures to clamp down on migration at the southwestern border, and a bipartisan group of senators has made considerable progress on striking a compromise to do so. But the plan has no path to enactment if the House, where a sizable far-right contingent is pressing for even tougher immigration policies, refuses to accept it.

I can guarantee that Speaker Johnson’s position was quickly noted in the Kremlin and they were very happy to read about it.

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

The fundamental task is to retain the initiative so that we can become stronger – address by the President of Ukraine

17 January 2024 – 22:12

I wish you health, fellow Ukrainians!

Key points for today.

I held a meeting of the Staff. Operational level – the situation at the front now. Reports from the commanders. Different directions. East. South. North as well – countering subversive groups, fortifying the border.

There was also a strategic level of discussion – our actions this year. And not just defense. Ukraine needs an ambitious, active perspective. We want our country to retain the initiative, not the enemy. We want the end of the war to depend on Ukrainian actions. The world supports those who have a perspective. And this is a fundamental task – to retain the initiative so that we can become stronger.

I also held a debriefing after all the meetings and negotiations within the official visit to Switzerland and participation in the Davos Forum. There were many good, useful meetings. Europe, America, Africa, Asia. We talked to politicians and business leaders.

Today, government officials continued their work at the forum. In particular, to attract more business and technological opportunities to Ukraine – to the defense sector. It is very important that we present not only the needs of Ukraine and our warriors, the entire society, but also, despite all the difficulties of the war, Ukraine’s capabilities – what we do, what we can do, what we can contribute to the common security in Europe.

I held a separate meeting with the Minister of Defense. We are preparing more power for our country.

A meeting with law enforcers. In particular, with the Head of the Security Service of Ukraine. The keynote report was on countering collaborators and destroying enemy logistics. I am grateful to the Service for the results.

Separately, I would like to address the situation with our journalists. In particular, the fact of surveillance of journalists. The Security Service of Ukraine has launched an investigation and will find out all the circumstances. Any pressure on journalists is unacceptable.

Today I would like to recognize and thank all our people who continue to work day and night helping after the Russian strikes. Our rescuers – the State Emergency Service of Ukraine. Local authorities that are truly with their communities, truly with their people. Every Ukrainian doctor. All medical workers. Volunteers. Everyone who helps Kherson and Kherson region, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk region, residents of our frontline and border communities, Kharkiv and the region.

Today there was another Russian air strike on Kupyansk district – two children were injured, including a 10-year-old boy. He was very seriously wounded… One person was killed by that strike. My condolences… It was a deliberate Russian strike with a guided aerial bomb on one of the villages in the Kupyansk district. Kherson is under almost continuous shelling. Unfortunately, there are also wounded and dead. We will definitely respond to the occupiers. And everyone can see that our responses are really tangible.

It is also important not to forget to thank those whose job it is to rescue people after Russian terrorists’ attacks.

Kharkiv: Ihor Fedorchenko, 6th state fire and rescue unit, and Oleksandr Huzhva from the 9th state fire and rescue unit of the region. Thank you!

Odesa: doctor Vladyslav Kryzhanovskyi from the Odesa Regional Emergency Medical Center and firefighters-rescuers: Sergeant Kostiantyn Vilchynskyi and Master Sergeant Serhiy Pihar. Thank you!

Donetsk region: Vladyslav Halushko, a feldsher from the city of Lyman, who works for the State Emergency Service, and Ivan Ponomarenko, a firefighter-rescuer from the city of Toretsk. Thank you very much!

Our Sumy region: Volodymyr Pylypenko and Oleksandr Nebylytsia, employees of the 8th state fire and rescue unit of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine, and Vladyslav Lysokon, the city of Shostka, a feldsher at the emergency medical station. I thank you for your professionalism, and I thank all our doctors, all your colleagues, the entire staff of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine, each emergency medical team, all doctors, feldshers and nurses.

I thank everyone who cares about Ukraine, our people and our country. I thank everyone who is destroying the occupier and working to hold Russia accountable for everything it has done.

Glory to Ukraine!

Germany:

 

We are grateful to our German friends for their steadfast support. The new package of military aid for Ukraine includes:
◾️Ammo for Leopard 1
◾️24 Armored Personnel Carriers
◾️5 border protection vehicles
◾️16 Zetros tankers
◾️3 vehicles (trucks, minibuses, all-terrain vehicles)
◾️25 RQ-35 Heidrun reconnaissance drones
◾️50 SatCom terminals
◾️1,840 combat helmets
◾️500 LED lamps
◾️material for explosive ordnance disposal

Vielen Dank!
🇺🇦🤝🇩🇪
#StandWithUkraine
@BMVg_Bundeswehr

France:

https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1747744968783921641

These announcements from Germany and France are nice to read. But we need to be very honest: until or unless the Biden administration develops an effective legislative strategy to get a supplemental aid package for Ukraine through the GOP majority House, they aren’t going to make a difference. What the GOP is doing now was predictable. It was predictable because they announced back in 2022 that they were going to cut Ukraine off if they retook the House. Instead of doing a Ukraine supplemental while the Democrats still had a majority in the House just in case they lost it, locking that funding in through 2024, the Biden administration decided to wait. And it was that failed legislative strategy that provided the opening for the GOP majority that took over in the House in January 2023 to do what they’re now doing, which is what they told us they were going to do.

Tweet thread between Ruben Gallego and Matt Gaetz regarding Ukraine war funding.

I’m sure Congressman Gallego is NOT happy to have been correct here. But no one can say they were not warned.

Every day that the House GOP holds support for Ukraine hostage, the harder it will become for Ukraine.

Every day there is new reporting about Russia’s military production while neither the US or the EU member states have placed even select portions of their economies on a war footing and while the House GOP slowly strangles its hostage. All the while the Russian leadership watches, listens, reads, and tweaks their strategy to take advantage of the US’s and the EU’s inability to rise to the moment.

President Zelenskyy is correct here:

 

Unfortunately, they are only effective when they have ammunition. And because the House GOP majority is holding the Ukraine supplemental hostage, every time Russia undertakes a bombardment, Ukraine’s supply of that ammunition is further depleted with no real way ahead for resupply.

This isn’t a thought exercise. This isn’t a border skirmish. This is existential.

Stepove, Russian occupied Donetsk Oblast:

https://twitter.com/GloOouD/status/1747741801451045078

An update on the attack on Kharkiv last night:

Soledar, Bakhmut District, Donetsk Oblast:

For you drone enthusiasts:

And for Omnes and the redlegs:

Tonight, Ukraine used the FrankenSAM for the first time in combat conditions. It shot down Shahed from a distance of 9 kilometers.

FrankenSAM is a hybrid air defense system jointly developed by the Pentagon, the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, and the Ministry of Strategic Industry. In fact, these are three anti-aircraft missile complexes: the Soviet Buk air defense system with American RIM-7 Sea Sparrow missiles, AIM-9M air-to-air missiles in combination with Soviet radars and air defense systems based on Ukrainian old systems with Patriot elements and missiles.

https://babel.ua/amp/news/102928-v-ukrajini-vpershe-zastosuvali-sistemu-ppo-proyektu-frankensam-zbili-shahed-na-vidstani-9-km

Rostov Oblast, Russia:

Bashkorostan, Russia:

That’s enough for tonight.

Your daily Patron!

First, some adjacent material:

And a new video from Patron’s official TikTok!

@patron__dsns

Люблю це життя❤️

♬ Little Life – Cordelia

Here’s the machine translation of the caption:

I love this life ❤️

Open thread!

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Wednesday Evening Open Thread: The Cruz Curse

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Felt like posting this earlier would’ve been a challenge to the Trickster God, but it looks like the ERCOT power grid held up safely, so…

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Timeline Cleanser: Inside Kamala Harris & Doug Emhoff’s L.A.

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Just a nice, upbeat, chatty beat-sweetener, for a respite. From the L.A. Times:

… In a city full of celebrities and A-listers, Vice President Kamala Harris and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff’s presence is hard to escape.

On a mid-October weekend, the couple came to town to celebrate the marriage of Emhoff’s 29-year-old son, Cole Emhoff, to his longtime girlfriend, Greenley Littlejohn, 28. Two days after the wedding, the pair was snacking on guacamole, salsa and chips in a dimly lighted vinyl booth upstairs at one of their favorite Mexican haunts, El Cholo in Santa Monica, when Emhoff received a text message from a friend.

The second gentleman’s buddy was just saying hello: He knew Emhoff was in town because he’d seen the motorcade speed by. (So much for sneaking into town)…

For Harris, the impulse to escape Washington — where she faces Republican scorn and criticism within her own party — for downtime at home has been difficult to satisfy over the last few years. While President Biden has made a near weekly habit of returning home to neighboring Delaware, the taxpayer-funded, cross-country flight to L.A. is harder to justify unless it includes official business. Harris’ trips home to L.A. are often camouflaged with an event to celebrate a local small business or a stop to raise awareness about one of her policy focuses such as Black maternal healthcare or reproductive rights. The vice president was also anchored to Washington during the first half of her term to cast tiebreaking votes in an evenly divided Senate.

But the Brentwood home, largely concealed by its verdant surroundings, has become a sanctuary for one of the world’s most visible figures. The four-bedroom, 3,500-square-foot house, less than a mile from Sunset Boulevard and roughly a 10-minute drive from the Will Rogers State Historic Park, is off-limits to reporters. In October, a group of protesters pulled up in cars outside to call for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war, though Harris wasn’t there to hear their pleas.

As vice president, Harris is briefed multiple times a day, and reporters often follow her from event to event. But at home, Harris can avoid the scrutiny to recharge, cooking and chatting with her family as they watch from the kitchen table…

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And I Dream in the Morning That She Brings Me Water

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The beach at Puerto Peñasco

In my post on Chiricahua National Monument, Suzanne mentioned that Organ Pipe National Monument is also a great place, and she’s right.  Organ Pipe figures peripherally in our current border crisis, so I thought I’d tell a little story about how Customs and Border Protection (CBP) fucked over a little town in Mexico.

The Organ Pipe NM visitor’s center is just a couple of miles from the town of Lukeville, Arizona, where there’s a popular border crossing for folks going to Puerto Peñasco, Sonora, a place that is called Rocky Point by Arizonans.  Puerto Peñasco is a little beach town on the northern edge of the Bay of California (also known as the Sea of Cortez), and it has a beautiful beach.  Some people call it “Arizona’s Beach,” and the Mexican government has done everything in their power to make it an easy destination.  The road from Sonoyta, the town on the other side of the border from Lukeville, is one of the best two lane highways in Mexico.  The region is a “no hassle zone” where the Mexican government has gone to great lengths to crack down on police bribe-seeking.  Unlike most of Mexico, you don’t need a tourist visa (FMM) or an import permit for your car (TIP).  (You should have Mexican auto insurance, though, because US policies don’t cover your car in old Mexico.)  Puerto Peñasco is a great “first trip” into Mexico because most of the locals who deal with tourists speak at least enough English to get by, everyone takes dollars (at a not-great exchange rate), the cerveza is cold and the seafood is freshly caught.

Anyway, with our current border crisis, CBP decided that they needed to “surge” resources to different border areas, and those resources would come from Lukeville.  So, with three whole days of warning, they closed the Lukeville Port of Entry on December 4.  This was a massive hit to the Puerto Peñasco economy — locals call it “Muerto (Dead) Peñasco” because the place is empty.   The Lukeville border station is tiny:  a total of 23 officers work there.  Re-assigning those agents to process migrants instead of manning the border couldn’t have made a huge difference to CBP’s enforcement efforts, but it sure made a difference for anyone trying to get to Puerto Peñasco.  Take a look at this:

And I Dream in the Morning That She Brings Me Water

I’ve highlighted Organ Pipe NM and Puerto Peñasco in yellow.  The other border crossings that you could use to get to Puerto Peñasco are highlighted in red.  Both of them add hours to the trip, and the Nogales road is considered fairly dangerous.  I’ve recently driven the road from San Luis Rio Colorado (the red dot to the west) via El Golfo de Santa Clara, and it tends to get big sand drifts and has a lot of potholes.

Lukeville re-opened on January 4, just in time to miss all the Arizona Christmas vacationers who wanted a beach trip.  As far as I’m concerned, this border closing was just fuckery, but it was low-level fuckery that mostly affected Arizona residents who were inclined to travel to Mexico.  We call those people “Democrats”.

Anyway, Organ Pipe is a nice rugged park that protects the massive organ pipe cacti in the only place they grow in the US.  This one is at least 10 feet tall:

And I Dream in the Morning That She Brings Me Water 2

(By the way, I’m not minimizing the issues at the border near Organ Pipe.  The visitor’s center there is named after a Law Enforcement Ranger who was shot by cartel members in 2002, Kris Eggle. )

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This and That in the News

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A few snippets of news today while we (or at least I) wait form the immunity / jurisdiction ruling from the appeals court.  And a couple of images that caught my eye.

🌼  Hell yes!  10-second video that is sheer perfection!

🌼  Is it true that Joe Manchin has promised to not be a spoiler for 2024?  (see chyron)

🌼  It’s about time Roger Stone gets some attention from the FBI for his talk of murdering people.

🌼  One of the many reasons I love Joe Biden.  Great backstory.  Joe is a regular guy in a way that Trump will never be.

🌼  Why do Republicans hate voting?

🌼  How sad is this?  Sad, but smart.  And necessary.

🌼  And a bit of sad truth.

Open thread.

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Florida Flip (Open Thread)

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Fellow Floridians and I have frequently complained in this space about the immiserating political dominance of the FL GOP, which has made the state poorer, sicker and dumber since the turn of the century. But tides turn, even in Florida, and here’s some unalloyed good news from the Orlando Sentinel:

In a race seen as a bellwether for Democratic chances in November, Democrat Tom Keen flipped what had been a Republican state House seat in Central Florida in a special election held Tuesday.

Keen, a Navy flight officer who works in the aerospace training and simulation industry, defeated Republican Erika Booth, a teacher and member of the Osceola School Board. Unofficial totals for the District 35 seat had Keen with 51.3% of the vote to Booth’s 48.7%.

Keen, who made abortion rights and property insurance key issues in the race, got between 65% to 70% of nonpartisan, or NPA, voters to make up for Republicans turning out in larger numbers than Democrats, said Matt Isbell, a Democratic elections analyst.

“What actually clinched the win for Democrats was this massive margin with NPAs and perhaps some Republican moderates as well,” Isbell said. “If anything, this should be concerning for the GOP because it indicates a voter anger that maybe they have not understood.”

State House District 35 is a swing district that Biden won in 2020 by 5 points and DeSantis won by double digits in 2022. The seat was open because DeSantis cronies who are running the state’s higher education system into the ground appointed the completely unqualified Republican cop-impersonator who held the seat, Fred Hawkins, as president of a small public college.

I guess they figured DeSantis’s 12-point margin of victory in 2022 in the district meant the seat was safe. Oops. Florida House Dem Leader Fentrice Driskell on how Keen won:

“This is the blueprint for how we win elections: ground game, early investments and hard work,” Driskell, who chairs the FHDCC, said. “The FHDCC was on the ground immediately in this district, signing up Democrats to vote by mail and registering new voters through his primary and into the general election. The FHDCC is ready to repeat this formula and break the Republican supermajority this November.

She’s not wrong, but I think more is going on here than FL Dems stepping up. As analyst Isbell pointed out in the O-Sen quote up top, more Republicans voted than Democrats, and it looks like NPA voters and perhaps Republican moderates joined with Dems to put Keen over the top, despite a barrage of negative ads featuring dumb culture war themes and dirty tricks to try to split the non-GOP coalition.

My theory is that negative partisanship is coming into play, which this time benefited the Dems. As we know, the national political media built up a DeSantis boomlet by suggesting the sour-puss stilt-boot wearer was “Trump but competent” and heir apparent of the MAGA horde. But the more voters in other states saw of DeSantis when he launched his presidential campaign, the less they liked him.

What’s less widely known is that his numbers have been sinking in Florida at the same time, and DeSantis is underwater here too now. Most local analysts attribute that to people being pissed off about DeSantis abandoning the state. The theory is Florida voters are angry that DeSantis has been galivanting around Iowa stuffing his face with pork chops on a stick while things go to shit back home.

That’s part of it, but I also think normies are belatedly becoming aware of the FL GOP’s rampant corruption and hypocrisy, which has been on full and embarrassing display ever since the DeSantis 2024 campaign launch. And as the governor acquires loser stink, maybe the state party he transformed in his radical right-wing image is catching some of those odiferous fumes too. Non-Dems who are non-MAGA might therefore pause to think before they automatically tick the R on their ballot, as they did in District 35.

To sum up, I don’t expect the FL GOP’s grip on this state to loosen appreciably anytime soon. The structural factors that put them in power are still in force. But political realignments happen, and they usually start small. The Dem-NPA coalition that put Keen in office could be a sign of things to come.

Open thread.

PS: I’ve been unwell recently, unable to sleep and lacking my usually keen interest in food. But I nodded off before dinner last night and slept until 4 AM this morning, and now I am so hungry I’m thinking about trying to replicate a Denny’s “Moons Over My Hammy” special, perhaps with tomatoes substituting for ham. Even though I know this is a bad idea, I’m off to do it anyway!

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