Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

Giving in to doom is how authoritarians win.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

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

Boeing: repeatedly making the case for high speed rail.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

You are so fucked. Still, I wish you the best of luck.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

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

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

Giving up is unforgivable.

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

If you cannot answer whether trump lost the 2020 election, you are unfit for office.

We’re watching the self-immolation of the leading world power on a level unprecedented in human history.

The only way through is to slog through the muck one step at at time.

Fear and negativity are contagious, but so is courage!

Decision time: keep arguing about the last election, or try to win the next one?

Never give a known liar the benefit of the doubt.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

One way or another, he’s a liar.

We know you aren’t a Democrat but since you seem confused let me help you.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

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Tommy Smothers, Now Silent (RIP)

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Tommy Smothers, I think you might have approved of our irreverence here on Balloon Juice.

Rest in peace, Tommy.

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Tommy Smothers, Now Silent (RIP)Post + Comments (84)

Democrats in the House Speak Truth to Power

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Proud to be a Democrat!

The Honorable Clarence Thomas Associate Justice
Supreme Court of the United States 1 First Street NE
Washington, DC 20543 Dear Justice Thomas,

December 15, 2023

This week, Special Counsel Jack Smith asked the Supreme Court to decide a key question in the case of United States of America v. Donald J. Trump, a case in which Mr. Trump is charged with conspiring to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election, conspiring to obstruct the certification of the electoral vote, and actually obstructing the certification of the electoral vote.1 In this week’s filing, Mr. Smith asked the Supreme Court to grant certiorari to decide “Whether a former President is absolutely immune from federal prosecution for crimes committed while in office or is constitutionally protected from federal prosecution when he has been impeached but not convicted before the criminal proceedings begin.”2 The Supreme Court has directed Mr. Trump to file a response to the request for certiorari.3 For the reasons explained below, we strongly implore you to exercise your discretion and recuse yourself from this and any other decisions in the case of United States v. Trump.

Faith in the Supreme Court has plummeted, and fewer than half of all Americans trust the Supreme Court.4 Public perception is growing that the Supreme Court flouts the rules, in large part due to your recently reported ties to and luxury travel with billionaire Republican donors that you hid for decades.5 The public pressure has grown so intense, that last month the Supreme Court announced a formal—though unenforceable—Code of Conduct.6 You signed the Code, publicly proclaiming that you subscribe to it. In Cannon 3B, the Code states that “A Justice should disqualify himself or herself in a proceeding in which the Justice’s impartiality might reasonably be questioned, that is, where an unbiased and reasonable person who is aware of all relevant circumstances would doubt that the Justice could fairly discharge his or her duties.”7 The Code details such instances, including those in which “The Justice or Justice’s spouse…is known by the Justice:…(iii) to have an interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome of the proceeding; or (iv) likely to be a material witness in the proceeding.”8

We know through public reporting and through Congressional investigations that your wife, Virginia (“Ginni”) Thomas was intimately involved in Mr. Trump’s alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election and to obstruct its certification – the very conspiracies at issue in this case. Your wife not only attended the pro-Trump rally that preceded the January 6th attack on the United States Capitol, she was one of nine board members for a conservative political group that helped lead the “Stop the Steal” movement.9 She traded at least 29 text messages with Mr. Trump’s Chief of Staff (Mark Meadows) in which she urged him to “pursue unrelenting efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election,” starting immediately after Election Day 2020 and ending only days after the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol.10 In these text messages, your wife pleaded with Mr. Meadows to continue the fight to overturn the election results, calling the election a “heist” and saying in one message: “Sounds like Sidney and her team are getting inundated with evidence of fraud. Make a plan. Release the Kraken and save us from the left taking America down.”11 Your wife also pressed Arizona and Wisconsin lawmakers to overturn President Biden’s 2020 victory, urging them to set aside President Biden’s popular-vote victory and to choose their own presidential electors, despite state law to the contrary.12 These details about your wife’s activities raise serious questions about your ability to be or even to appear impartial in any cases before the Supreme Court involving the 2020 election and the January 6th insurrection.

If you want to show the American people that the Supreme Court’s recent Code of Conduct is worth more than the paper it is written on, you must do the honorable thing and recuse yourself from any decisions in the case of United States v. Trump.

Sincerely,

Henry C. “Hank” Johnson, Jr. Member of Congress
Jamie Raskin, Member of Congress
Sheila Jackson Lee, Member of Congress
Gerald E. Connolly, Member of Congress
Jasmine Crockett Member of Congress
Madeleine Dean, Member of Congress
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Member of Congress
Dan Goldman, Member of Congress

Open thread.

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Excellent Read: ‘A Timeline of Wolf-Crying’

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In the Washington Post, the dogged and fact-armored Philip Bump on “The year of Republicans throwing accusations against Biden at the wall”:

In the interregnum between Democrats losing control of the House in the 2022 midterm elections and Republicans taking control in January, senior members of the chamber’s Republican conference began discussing their wide-ranging attack on President Biden.

Speaking to The Washington Post a year ago, Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), then the top Republican of House Oversight, pledged to use the power he would gain when assuming control of that committee to “determine if this president and this White House are compromised because of the millions of dollars that his family has received from our adversaries in China, Russia and Ukraine.” He would begin with “probes,” he said, and, if necessary, move on to “investigations.” The desired outcome wasn’t political, Comer suggested, but aimed at developing “a legislative fix” to address influence-peddling.

This is not how Comer’s first year running Oversight worked out. Instead of using his majority to methodically flesh out the existing allegations against the president, Comer and his allies — including Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee — found themselves offering up baseless or debunked allegations to a conservative media ravenous for them. Throughout 2023, Comer, Jordan and their allies made little progress toward Comer’s stated target — but did manage to significantly erode their credibility.

This is most easily demonstrated by considering the slew of allegations and insinuations that Comer in particular offered as 2023 unfolded…

Read — and save for future reference — the whole month-by-month timeline!

<em>'A Timeline of Wolf-Crying'</em> - STOCKPILE

(Jack Ohman via GoComics.com)

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Politics With Friends (Open Thread)

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I had a conversation over lunch with an old friend this week about politics and the 2024 elections. We’ve been friends since 8th grade. She grew up mostly liberal in a family of country club conservatives. I grew up liberal in a divided family of hippies, evangelicals and rural reactionaries.

My friend benefited the first time one of my political prognostications went awry, way back in 1980. We weren’t old enough to vote, but we were avid readers who followed the news, which made us a pair of odd ducks at school.

We were talking over lunch in the school cafeteria, discussing the upcoming presidential election between President Carter and GOP nominee Ronald Reagan. Shouting at times — not from temper but to be heard over the raucous din of our feral, food-flinging classmates — we disagreed about the likely outcome.

I thought the churchy folks would not turn out in droves for the phony old divorced actor from California who made the dumb chimp movies. My friend thought gas prices, the hostage crisis, etc., would cost Mr. Carter reelection.

We bet five bucks on the outcome. She was right and I was wrong, so I had to pay up, and since $5 was my entire allowance, it hurt.

A couple of decades later, we talked about the upcoming 2000 election over many beers. Again I was more sanguine about the prospects for Team Donk than my friend. She predicted it would be very close, and tragically, she was correct — it was close enough to steal.

Fast forward to 36 years after we first discussed presidential politics in the context of Carter vs. Reagan. My friend and I were again talking about an upcoming presidential election, this time while grilling dinner on the deck of a rented houseboat.

I said I couldn’t see an obnoxious, dumb loudmouth like Trump getting elected, if for no other reason than it seemed beneath the dignity of the country to elevate such a buffoon. My friend, always a closer observer of normie behavior than I, said she hoped I was right, but she thought Trump probably would win. No wager that time, so I didn’t lose any money. Only sleep. Lots and lots of sleep.

Nearly eight years after that, over lunch at a cafe on the cusp of the 2024 election year, my friend said she is hoping Trump gets disqualified or otherwise removed from the race because she’s convinced he’ll win if not. I said I think Trump will lose again but told my friend her prediction made me nervous.

I should note that my friend and I don’t always disagree on election outcomes, and she’s not always right. Sometimes I’m right and she’s wrong. Sometimes we agree. The losses mentioned above only stand out because they were such epoch-defining disasters.

***

I think some things will get worse before they get better in the coming year, and that sucks, but I hope it might be clarifying. For example, people will continue to seethe about a Biden-Trump rematch, but once the dreaded scenario becomes real instead of an abstraction to bemoan, I think that will solidify the non-fascist vote for Biden.

I think more women will suffer and/or die in the coming year because elected fanatics will impose religious dogma on patients and physicians, and sometimes we’ll even hear about it in the press. In fact, I think there’s a chance we’ll hear about it much more frequently when Florida’s state supreme court effectively bans abortion in the nation’s third most populous state, stranding desperate and ill patients many hundreds of miles from access to modern healthcare.

Also, I assume the clowns currently running the U.S. House of Representatives will try to impeach the president and may well succeed. The toddlers in the GOP caucus have unlearned the “stove = hot” lesson, so we’ll have a partisan shit-show to watch during an election year. My hope here is that it works out as well for creepy Speaker Johnson as the Clinton impeachment did for Gingrich.

By this time next year, we’ll have a better sense of where we’re headed as a society. It’s a small thing, but there’s a measure of comfort in that too. For me, anyway; I hate suspense.

Open thread.

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Squishable Morning Thread

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This report from The Daily Beast seems odd:

Melania Trump is reportedly ready for her moment in the spotlight. The former first lady, who’s made only a handful of public appearances since Donald Trump left office, was reportedly encouraged by her “positive reception” at Rosalynn Carter’s funeral. She’s “feeling more sure of herself—as both her husband’s representative and her own position as a diplomatic figure,” a Trumpworld source told Page Six.

The report strikes me as weird on two levels, firstly because it implies the Third Lady thinks she earned a “positive reception.” Unsurprisingly given who she is, the context eludes her and therefore she is unable to integrate it into whatever sense of self-awareness she possesses. But here’s the thing: The Carters and former first ladies who interacted with the wife of The Beast at the funeral were gracious because they have class and dignity, and they have some respect for the roles they play in national life.

Maybe Melania Trump doesn’t understand that, having spent years among garish rich people who are so monumentally tacky and grasping that they’re willing to pay her awful husband to hang out at his self-branded resorts. Maybe she never saw what Michelle Obama said publicly about putting aside her personal feelings of dismay, anger and disgust during the 2016 transition to be pleasant to Mrs. Trump for the good of the country. No Trump understands that concept.

Reason #2 that this is weird: the Third Lady wasn’t interested in the job when she was in the White House, so why now? But the article also says all the Trumps are convinced The Beast is going to win a second term, so maybe I’m the one who’s missing the context here. Perhaps his awful other half sees it as a second opportunity to renegotiate the prenup, and this is her way of angling for a higher payout.

Open thread.

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War for Ukraine Day 671: Russia Commits Another War Crime in Kherson

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Graphic by NEIVANMADE of a Russian bomb with a "Z" symbol on it crashing through the roof of the Ukrainian Postal Service delivery hub. "Everyone Is a Target" and "Stop Russia" are written in the space between the destroyed roof and the fins of the bomb.

(Image by NEIVANMADE)

Russia targeted the evacuation train at Kherson train station today:

As of five hours ago there was one police officer killed and four other people were injured. We’ll have to wait until tomorrow for a better accounting of the wounded and murdered.

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

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Coming Live to You From Nashville

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We’re in a little airbnb owned by her friend in Nashville. I have no idea where in Nashville, and we are nowhere near downtown, but in some little gentrified neighborhoodwith affordable housing when they were built, but now are all worth 500k and millennial gray with stainless steel appliances.

The ride was fine, with Thurston being the only issue, because of course he was. He chewed through his harness so I had to buy him another one tonight, and he absolutely refused to take his pill this morning to the point where I just yelled at him, through the pill in cheese into it, and told him to fuck off. When he whined I reminded him that he had two options, he could take the heavy drugs and be happy, or fuck off and be a miserable twat the entire ride. Personally, I’m at the point in my life I would have chosen to be heavily drugged and happy without even knowing what the section option was.

“Would you like to be heavily drugged and sedated for the ride or…”

“YES PLEASE”

“or would you ok nevermind.”

About an hour and a half into the drive we heard silence, so jackass clearly ate the cheese.

Steve and Maxwell were perfect little angels. I put them in their crates, covered them with blankets, and just ignored them until we arrived in Nashville. Fed them, dealt with the litter, put down new pee pads and apologized for shipping them like this, and they seemed fine.

Joelle and I had a relaxing ride otherwise, although we did have a minor disagreement. I previously believed and somewhat still do believe but I will not say it out loud that five miles distance at highway speeds of 70+ is not enough time for one to cycle from “I could use the bathroom in a bit” to “IF YOU DO NOT PULL OVER NOW I AM GOING TO RUIN THE LEATHER.”

When I said that didn’t seem like enough of a warning I was told to “GET A UTERUS AND GET BACK TO ME.” I’m not going to do that so next time I will just pull over immediately when informed someone might need the facilities in a bit.

We ate at a little dumpling place, which was good, and she had a massive rum drink that was set on fire. I made do with water and my fiery demeanor.

Tomorrow’s drive is only six hours, and tomorrow is the fancy place with the hot tub and we can check in early, so I want to be on the road by 6:30 to 7 am so we can get there, and then just have a nice relaxing afternoon and night.

BTW- people of fucking Kentucky and Tennessee- how about you all elect some Democrats, pay some fucking taxes, and expand Route 65 you fucking monsters.

Coming Live to You From NashvillePost + Comments (89)